Rural Ramblings

Perhaps there are those who wonder what's so special about chrysolite ?

I spent much of my childhood in rural Suffolk. If I had ever been interested in football (and I never have been, not even remotely) I would have been more or less mid-way between the choice of being a 'Tractor Boy' or a 'Canary'. I'm glad I never had to make that choice at least. If I had chosen the former and then given up, would that have made me an ex-tractor fan ?

I have so many memories of Lavenham, Horringer, Debenham, Wenhaston, Bramfield, Halesworth, Beccles and Oulton Broad. Amazing how far you can get on a bike in a day, even those days and on the bikes of the 50s and early 60s - lovely cycling country. However, the memories that have stuck are mostly of Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth. I remember the plaice and chips from the shop just round the corner from my aunt's. I've since learned that if plaice is almost transparent as you clean it, it's really fresh and tastes SO good. Hated the bones. That's one of the reasons I rarely enjoyed eating fish. I have so many memories of going to the harbour in Lowestoft and fishing off the harbour wall. Never actually caught anything though. I remember the boats in Lowestoft and Great Yarmouth, crowded in the harbours, the raucous sea-birds, the salty tang of the sea and the smell of fish.

Strange. I never actually really liked to eat fish until I was in my forties. I ate it though. We were never that well off when I was young. It didn't matter which meal it was or what was in it - if it was put in front of you, you ate it - truly, end of story. Mum used to tell us of the times that, as a young girl, she had things that were put in front of her and, if you didn't eat it, they reappeared at the next meal-time - and the next ad infinitum - until you ate it. She had really great loving (and, I guess, hungry) brothers who would eat what she left so that she didn't have to suffer. When I went to Goshwhatta University in the far north I had a friend Ken from the Western Isles. I mentioned that about my mother. He told me how he had to eat his porridge. A huge pot was made at the start of the week. Nearly all was poured into a lined drawer, allowed to cool and cold slices were served up at every meal for the rest of the week. Horrible.

Near Beccles was where my Mum's nan, Auntie Mabel Bo lived. She lived in a small-holding with apple trees (where, as she kept telling me, she and my mum were strafed by a German warplane during the war as they collected apples). My brother and I used to share this tiny bed in the attic whenever we went to stay. She had hen houses where they kept bantams. I only just remember her husband, Sergeant. Early every morning in the one year I remember him, he took my brother and me out to collect eggs. Just before we were to leave at the end of our holidays, we went downstairs and found a fox had got into the shed and slaughtered all of the bantams. How many were eaten ? Why, only four out of the one hundred and fifty killed. My brother and I wept for ages over that. Now ask me why I have such a strong hatred of foxes (and, incidentally, minks which share the same murderous tendency). Not too long after that, Sergeant died and Auntie Mabel Bo lived on alone - sans bantams - for nearly another 45 years.

Anyway, I developed a love of sailing in the Norfolk Broads. My aunt worked for a restauranteur who had a boat; genuinely sea-going but he only ever sailed it in the Broads. He took a bit of a shine to my brother and me and so he used to take us sailing quite a lot in our summer holidays. I have so many happy memories of that. Even now, I enjoy any form of sailing.

We used to go to other places for holidays. I remember staying in a bed and breakfast in Keswick one year. The sun never shone. It was cloudy and misty all of the time. It rained a lot too. I didn't mind. One of the things that made my holiday - a Lotus Seven parked out in the street. It had a chrome-plated body and made a fantastic growl when it started up. I still have occasional longings for a Caterham (modern equivalent) even now.

However, Chrysolite. One summer we went to Port Seton near Edinburgh. If I remember correctly the swimming pool was called the Pond Hall. It was open and, being unheated, was five times colder than a witch's heart. My brother and I spent nearly all of the fortnight in there - blue but happy. Afterwards, each day, we went into a big cafe owned by some Italian family just up the slope for something to eat and drink. The chips were so good ! Did you know Scots don't ask for fish and chips ? It's a fish supper ! Anyway, we used to walk around the harbour and look at the fishing boats before they went out in the evening. One in particular, used to catch my eye. It's name - Chrysolite. It was so much more nicely painted than the rest with a deep green banding. I just loved that name.

When we got home I looked up the meaning of the name and found it to be a mineral. Shortly after, I was stricken with a monumental bout of bronchitis. My Mum and Dad had just bought Encyclopedia Britannica so I was not short of reading material for the 9 months I was in bed. I spent an awful lot of time reading up on minerals and, what did I do at university - Geology. Strange how the name of a fishing boat can influence your life.

Oxymoron Of Our Time : Microsoft Works

I use Apple Computers. There. It's out in the open. I do use Windoze but only if there's absolutely no choice. At one point, my employer retrenched from Apples to Dell/HP machines. After several years in this technological Hell, we're gradually seeing Apples reappearing especially when we're given the choice. That may not be too surprising. One or two of the key and very influential techs use Apple at home, regardless of the third-rate stuff they're forced to use at work and they're beginning to have an influence. There are a few who cannot and will not discuss anything other than Windows. For "I.T. Specialist" read "Windows Apologist". At the end of the day it's not too surprising. Windows machines, according to most independent surveys, require nearly 60% more I.T. support than Apple computers. Intelligent turkeys would never, ever, vote for Christmas.

I recently received an iBook - yay. That's complementing the 20" Intel Duo iMac I just purchased, my 800MHz 'sunflower' iMac (the one with a flat screen on top of the upturned white fruit bowl), and my little Mac Colour Classic which I just love to bits. If and when its circuit board finally goes to that great silicon heaven in the sky I'll replace its innards with the Mac Mini and link it up to the existing screen. Could be quite a long time though: Apple computers are built up to a standard rather than down to a price.

I also love playing with words hence the title of this post. Oxymoron and Litotes were the last two figures of speech we studied before we left Year Seven. Loved oxymorons. Military Intelligence, Microsoft Works (who remembers that package now ?). My current favourite - "Change is the only constant"; actually I think I used a version of that in my first post on this blog. I noticed that Easyjet and Virgin are considering setting a cheap airline for asian destinations ; will they call it "Easy Virgin' ? Now there's an oxymoron.

My English teacher in the Upper Sixth - a fearsome brute with tombstone teeth, a bristling sandy beard, one arm attached to a barrel chest and a truly savage manner - scared seven colours of something out of me. He never missed an opportunity to rip into us and point out our lnadequacies in using the written word (not to mention our lack of proficiency in spoken language). "You fool, Barbarian. Is that the best you can do ?" (Actually my choice of 'Barbarian' as a blog-name dates back to him calling me a barbarian on various occasions and is, partially, a tribute to him. There is, however, another reason too.) The 'bald' adjective came along later. No prizes for working that part out though.

Actually, now I look back and see I was one of the few he ever addressed pejoratively. The rest were only ever called by their surnames. With hindsight I've decided he probably thought I was just a total chancer or waster. I would always argue or try to talk my way out of trouble. More fool me. It just brought calumnies and vituperation down on me. Everything had to be just so to meet his standards. Infinitives unsplit, no mixed metaphors, the correct use of pronouns, no aberrant apostrophes, foreign words - all had to be used appropriately. I, me, myself - woe betide you if you used them wrongly. So now, when I see words like 'embonpoint' used by journalists to describe a woman's 'balcon' instead of a man's corpulence I get quite annoyed.

He told us to go away and read a worthwhile book - no hints what "worthwhile" actually meant - once and gave us 10 days to do it. I went away, looked in the library and found "The Worm Ouroborous" (Eddison) and "Lord Of The Rings" (Tolkien) jumping off the shelves into my hands. I read "Lord Of The Rings" in four days (All of the Saturday, Sunday, the Monday and Tuesday evenings after I'd done my homework.) As for the 'Worm' I have started it about nine times so far and still, 45 years on, I have never reached the third chapter. By now, a little bit like Christopher Lee who reads it annually, I have read the 'Lord Of The Rings' more times than I've started 'The Worm'. I have absolutely no idea what that says about me other than I like the story.

I went into class on the due day. Needless to say, the others had all found works of serious literature and were able to give some sort of precis. For some reason I was last to say what I'd chosen. I started into what should have been a few minutes' summary and after 10 minutes I had only reached Weathertop when he stopped me. He asked me some questions about the various characters and about one or two incidents in later sections then asked me - very quietly by his standards - "Is this really a worthwhile book ?". I knew the answer would be "no" and, crumpling inside, said "I suppose not". I fully expected to be punished then sent away to find something else - but - he looked around the class and said that any book which which got someone so wrapped up in it for four days, gave them so much enjoyment and gave them so much to think about was definitely worthwhile. I was dumbfounded. Normally the butt of so many of his scathing comments, I was - for that one time at least - able to walk out of his room with the merest hint of a smile.

Anyway, over the year I became more and more interested in language in all of its forms. He never ever eased up on me. Yet somehow it never felt too bad. All bar one of my previous English teachers were a waste of space as far as I was concerned. He got me fired up and interested in an area of the curriculum I had previously trudged through. Even his most vicious baiting made me ever more determined to match his standards. He was really into the precision inherent in language. "Fool, Barbarian. Language is a scalpel. You use it like the bluntest instrument imaginable."

He, and one other English teacher I learned from, both instilled a lot into me. Thanks A.R., J.W. They're probably sitting on a cloud now, looking over my shoulder and wincing at my less-than-deathless-and-disjointed-prose together with my comma-splices. Yet, in so many ways, the fact that I blog is largely down to them getting me into the disciplines and enjoyment of writing.

It was a combination of these disparate streams of thoughts that came together when I read another blog.
http://blog.wired.com/monkeybites/2006/12/microsoft_tries_1.html

I perceived a certain irony in the following :

"It seems that Microsoft and AMD have partnered to hand out some nice Christmas presents to select bloggers. Microsoft has reportedly sent out new AMD-equipped Acer laptops in an effort to get prominent bloggers using Microsoft’s new Vista operating system," Michael Calore blogs for Wired.

Calore writes, "If Microsoft were to give away copies of Vista that would make sense and probably raise no eyebrows at all, but giving away a whole laptop understandably strikes some as little more than bribery... Dan Warne a journalist at APCmag left a comment at the site linked above in which he points out:"

It’s bizarre for one of the world’s largest PR companies, Edelman, to think it could get away with this. Perhaps they don’t know bloggers as well as they thought they did… now that some of the bloggers have disclosed the receipt of the gift, the public knows. Whatever the subtleties of the offer were, it comes across as nothing more than a bribe, and that is a very bad look for Microsoft.

Calore writes, "As Warne says, now that the word is out, expect the negative publicity to be every bit as shrill as the positive which means Microsoft’s PR move may well end up backfiring."

The irony, to me, is that if it had not been for Apple we would still be using an updated version of DOS with key commands or command lines to operate computers - a bit like Linux now I suppose. Apple saw the potential for an effective GUI in Alto Palo and the desktop we now know and - in Apple's case, love - was born. Then it was bastardised by Microsoft for Windows but let's not go there.

That's not the main irony though. The real irony though, is that Bill Gates wrote the Word package for Apple, together with the elements that went on to become the Office suite and a large part of the early income for Microsoft. Now you hear people expressing doubt as to whether to buy a Mac "because I need to use Word/Excel" . Well my dears - you can ! (Pages and Numbers, the Apple applications are far better though).

All I can say is that Microsoft must be getting really desperate. Windoze is, and remains, seriously flawed even after all of these years. Office is an over-hyped and bloated piece of software - how many people use more than 25% of the features ? Zune is a total brick with hopelessly restrictive DRM. X-box loses money hand over fist. From what I've seen so far, Vista is more like another Service Pack for Windows with some cosmetic additions. Most of the features they've touted over the last couple of years have been dropped. As for Windows, well we all know that the Windows Operating system has even more viruses than your average NHS ward on one of its better days. I'm just glad that I chose an operating system that actually works and has features that won't be seen on Vista for a long time. As for getting a present of a laptop for blogging ? Mr Jobs, I know I'm not a particularly widely-read blogger, but if you're reading this in Cupertino I would just LOVE a 17" MacBook Pro with Aperture and more memory than a large herd of elephants !!! A just reward for having been into Apple computers from the very beginning, no ?

Footnote 1 :
If I were a betting man - and I'm not - I would suggest that this is possibly the last operating system that will ever come out of Redmond. We are almost at the stage of the browser (Safari, Firefox, Camino, Opera, Omniweb and, yes, even Explorer) being able to access all of the software eg from Google that you'll ever need. Add to that virtually universal access to the internet, broadband speeds, plus on-line storage in frighteningly large amounts, and we are at the stage of the home computer being simply a terminal.

Footnote 2 :
This probably seems weird to modern kids but, as boys, we were always referred to by our surnames - Smith, Johnson - whatever from Year One until the end of Lower Sixth. The exception was in Upper Sixth when we became Mr Johnson, Mr Smith. The girls, on the other hand, were always called by their Christian names eg Christine, Deborah. I never understood that.

Saharan Sandstorms Sloughing Seawards

I was talking to a friend who, like me, has a background in Geology. I'm more into the palaeogeography and climate change, he's more into rocks from the structural and engineering side. However, we were talking about the sudden spells of stormy weather we're getting just now. My thought was my day would only be complete when someone from Fiends of The Earth or some other eco-nasty group was on tv, spluttering 'global warming' or 'climate change' as is their wont. He absolutely threw me when he said "Bet he" - it's nearly always a he, isn't it - "never even mentions the effects of dust storms from the Sahara."

At that point I stopped in my tracks. I realised a long time ago that desert sand gets everywhere. Usually it's into places you don't want it. Inside cameras, clothes, eyes and ears (look at how camels have evolved to keep it out) plus others too delicate to mention as well ! That fine, silky stuff is in the air around you all the time. Often you don't realise how much there is until the sun starts to set. Then that golden orb suddenly changes to a hazy reddish ball which becomes ever more indistinct as it settles through the last 15 degrees of arc down to the horizon, its rays passing through progressively more and more dust-laden air and their angle becomes more oblique. I'm almost willing to bet that's why camel are so tall - keeps their heads above the worst of the air-borne sand. That and keeping their bodies above the really hot air immediately above the day-time sand would be my best bets.

I found out quite a bit more about its movement 30 years ago from general curiosity. In 1976, that lovely hot dry summer, my car was rained on by a heavy convectional shower (near Pratt's Bottom, of all places. No rude comments please). Drying rapidly, it was covered by fine red blotches. On taking a few samples and testing them I found it was Saharan sand. (Red is the colour of the desert, more or less - oxidised iron, once again). Intrigued by this I actually spent some time with my nose in a book on weather and found out about air streams. It seems that we were being affected by 'cT air' (Tropical continental) from the Sahara. Why they reverse the name compared to the letters is lost on me I'm afraid. It seems that large blobs of air 'sit' over source areas such as the Sahara and take on the temperature and moisture conditions of the source area. After a while they start to stream out. In this case, over us. They take their characteristics with them and modify the weather we would normally get. In the case of 1976, we had that really long spell of hot dry weather. So that fine dust can travel all the way from northern Africa to Britain.

From my studies into the effects of volcanoes I knew a fair amount about the various cooling effects of dust from eruptions. Tambora in 1815 put so much of the stuff into the air that there was no summer and it was known as 'Eighteen Hundred and Frozen To Death'. Turner's paintings with their spectacular skies are about the only real evidence we have of the global spread of that dust since photography didn't exist. Krakatoa in 1883 wasn't quite as devastating but it still caused significant cooling and incredible sunsets. Did you know that the background in 'The Scream' by Munch is that of a sunset affected by volcanic dust, not long after Krakatoa blew its cone away ? I was surprised to find that out. It's one of those stupid little factoids I'm liable to use from time to time. For what it's worth, my favourite factoid of the moment is that Pietro Mascagnia was so proud of his Intermezzo in "Cavaliere Rusticana" that he used to rush up to people whenever he heard it being played and tell them he wrote it. Mind you, I'd be proud to have written anything even half as good at that: it's really stood the test of time. It must be on the radio several times a week.

Dust in the air is also a contributor to the variation in sun's energy reaching the surface of the Earth. At the Equator the sun's rays are close to vertical all the time. They reach the surface and are concentrated into a small area, giving strong heating. At higher latitudes the sun's rays are quite oblique so they have to pass through a lot of atmosphere. On the way through the insolation is reduced significantly by the dust. That plus the diffusion of the sun's rays over larger areas make higher latitudes quite a lot cooler.

Anyway, once I'd thought it through, I wasn't so surprised. On reading up various articles while I've been unwell, I've found that there is an amazingly strong correlation between hurricanes in the Atlantic and the absence of sand blown from the Sahara. When there is no dust there are hurricanes and vice versa. It looks as though these sand storms can blow up in as little as five days and they smother hurricanes by depriving them of the heat and moisture they need to grow. Some years it seems to happen, others not.

Now there's something constructive to build into the analysis and forecasting of hurricanes.