November 5th

 

broken necked clothmen

paraded, stuffed with paper

tonight they will die

murder bonfires made

pushed in prams, propped on trollies

penny for the Guy

As a kid I thought it kind of sinister that other kids made effigies of a man who was to be executed through fire. Dragging him through the streets asking for money, his disturbing strawman bloated body, stuffed with paper and old cloth, filling out a pair of grubby old discarded trousers and threadbare jumper. He didn’t have hands and feet, just stumps tied with string, to stop his innards from spilling outwards. His head was a sackcloth bag, with a crude face painted on. It was fairly hideous. And he was normally smiling, you wouldn’t expect a condemned man to be smiling. This was a man we were going to plant on top of a bonfire and burn to death. Smiling would be last thing he’d be doing. We pushed this abomination along on an old trolley or in a pram. “Penny for the guy” kids used to shout. “Here’s a shilling, now fuck off and get that evil looking thing away from me!”. I never made one myself, but sometimes I used to tag along with some of the other kids in north London, I never kept the money for myself as it wasn’t my Guy, I was just grateful to be part of this disturbing ritual.

Now that this tradition has all but disappeared, I kind of miss it, it’s an interesting part of social history. Barbaric if thought of in isolation, but in historical context, fascinating. I want to burn effigies of people on a bonfire

As for fireworks, I’ve never been fussed about them. I read too much into them. The nihilism of their pointless lives extinguished so soon! Also I associate fireworks with feeling sad. When you’re a kid, you want what other kids have and so I wanted fireworks too, but I never asked for them. Our family were hard working, working all hours. Fireworks (like bicycles – I’ve never learnt to ride or ever owned a bike) would have been considered a frivolity, an unnecessary expense. I don’t begrudge my parents this, I knew they worked hard, saved and scrimped, so I never demanded anything of them which might be considered a luxury, but that didn’t stop me feeling sad. So on November the 5th I used to sit in the dark and look out of the first floor back window and try to catch glimpses of other people’s displays. If there was nothing in the terraced back gardens, I’d look to the skyline and try to catch the explosions of distant rockets bursting, note the colours, the greens, reds, blues, brilliant whites, the mortars pop pop popping into the air and exploding. For those really far away displays I’d hold my breath in expectation, the silent burst of light, then a moment later hear the boom or crackle. I’d be excited by the magic of science, the speed of light and the speed of sound, the sync ever so slightly out. And then I’d go to bed. The next day some of the kids at school would marvel at the displays they’d been to, but a lot of kids were like me, they watched the fireworks from their windows too.

October 9th

 

Screaming tomatoes

the gasping cries of turnips

Do plants have feelings?

A silly Haiku today. I was reading the latest issue of Fortean Times and an article speculating (in that amusingly sceptical way only the Fortean Times pulls off) whether plants have a nervous system / feel pain caught my eye. (written by David Hambling)

The fact that L.Ron Hubbard performed (seemingly serious) experiments on tomatoes to ‘prove’ this seemed utterly bizarre. The reference to an interview Alan Whicker conducted with him asking whether he considered it cruel to prune roses also made me laugh. However it also covered the history of the research, from the work of Darwin too, who later in life worked in this very field. This magazine is gold. A mine of fun facts on strange phenomena and, screaming tomatoes aside, serious research thrown in too. Sometimes fact is stranger than fiction.

Pic from Fortean Times article.

September 15th

 

scarlet seamstress works

from the beating heart outward

hare formed from fine twine

It was the last weekend of Animals Inside Out at the Natural History Museum. I popped down early on Saturday to check it out.

I’d previously been to see Gunther von Hagens' Body Worlds exhibition many years ago when it first toured London. I have a both an admiration, yet a certain ambivalence to his work. I guess, and preposterous as it sounds, despite my love and support of science, there is still some deep seated superstition within me which makes me uneasy around death. Especially when the corpses (plastinised or not) are playing flippin’ tennis or something equally mundane.

Luckily, there wasn’t a giant squid playing tennis against a bull in this exhibition. It was educational, with a real art aesthetic that made you gasp and look deeply. The animals all had died of natural causes, but it still made me sad to see such magnificent animals displayed in this way. The elephant seemed especially haunting somehow. Not because von Hagens had done anything wrong, it just seems sad that so many animals are at threat of extinction and soon our knowledge of them will be driven from travelling sideshows such as these.

The pedestals with the small animals, such as the Hare below were beautiful. Every capillary captured. The tiny tracks of where blood once flowed.

Pic from the Sun

I also popped next door, to the Science Museum, where they had an Alan Turing exhibition. This is Alan Turing year, it would have been his 100th birthday. What a genius. What a sad story.

April 25th

 

In the library

a sunny child explorer

is picked by a book

Rainy days are book days. I’m not a kindle person, I feel traitorous to that smell of new books, or the feel and smell of the battered lived in books that adorn my collection. A new purchase of mine is the Magic Of Reality by Richard Dawkins, illustrated by one of my favourite artists Dave McKean. That’s not to say I wouldn’t own the App which goes with it, it sounds fab, but alas I do not own an iPad, otherwise I’d be right there in that interactive world! But it would be to complement the book, not to replace it.

The Magic of Reality has that quality to inform and entertain, to keep you captivated. It covers the science of grand concepts beautifully and of course it is furnished with absolutely lovely art. It fired neurones in my brain which released happiness associated with childhood. Those wide eyed times when a trip to the library was a proper day out. Wandering through the shelves, being drawn to an evocative title, a story of true adventure or books where you could peel away the layers of skin for a subject and understand what makes things tick (literally so in the case of anatomy books).

Those were times where it felt books were precious. When the book chose you.

March 23rd

Firing a warning

Shock absorbing skull rattles

Eager drummer boy

 

Woodpeckers, specifically the Greater Spotted are getting right into their woodpecking at this time of year. I went for a run and I could hear one clearly. The biology of a woodpeckers skull is quite incredible. The cushioning of their brain casing is a miracle of evolution (if I’m allowed to use the words “miracle” and “evolution” in the same sentence).

This article from the Independent gives some indication as to how Woodpeckers avoid serious brain damage from their incessant head banging.

I quote:

“Brain injuries may be caused by an impact or a sudden change in the velocity of the head.

However, woodpeckers experience no ill effects even though their beaks hit tree trunks at six to seven metres a second, with deceleration producing enormous forces of up to 1,000G.”

Yes, 1,000G.

Now, your average human, according to my sources – i.e the internet :) usually gets knocked out when G-force suddenly reaches between 7G and 9G, so this is an incredible feat. I shudder to think what would happen to a person if they were suddenly  subjected to 1,000G, the least of our worries would be our eyes popping out cartoon style (or retracting to pea sized shrivelled raisins), considering what would be happening to our brains.

So here is a vid of a test subject being subjected to extreme G-force through a wind blast test. Purely for scientific purposes and not in any way comedic.

 

And finally a pic of a male Greater Spotted Woodpecker, the UK’s most common woodpecker. (from RSPB website).