Posts

Notes & Queries 21st September, 2013 - Longinquusphyta: A boring aquatic plant

-
Image
image generated by Grok Skim an empty brandy glass (or any drinking vessel of your choosing) across the surface of a pond, or standing body of fresh water. Now raise it up to the light and examine its contents: You will hold in your hand a veritable cornucopia, teeming with microscopic aquatic life – a movable feast fit for a tiny king. Drifting without purpose across this thriving ecosystem will be millions of Longinquusphyta algal spores. Longinquusphyta plays no role in the food chain in the sense that no other species goes out of its way to consume it (because of its small size it is commonly eaten by accident, despite the absence of any tangible nutritional value). It does not contribute or impact upon its environment in any meaningful way. It has no known antibiotic properties and is one of a rare class of living things that pharmaceutical companies regard as being completely and utterly useless to man. “If all the Longinquusphyta died tomorrow, the world would be neither a bette...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes and Queries 21st September, 2013 - The UK's oldest standing castle

-
Image
image generated by Grok At an estimated of age of 127 years old, the Borough Market Tower – a giant tortoise, who labours under the prosaic Christian name of Andrew, may not be the UK's oldest standing castle, but he is certainly the most enigmatic. Andrew's nickname is derived from his unusually peaked shell, whose pleurals are raised up into bumps resembling the crenelations on the fortified walls of a medieval stronghold. He first lumbers into the footnotes of history on the 4th June, 1920, shouldering his way through crowds of bemused travellers and well-wishers, along one of the platforms at Paddington Railway Station, in London, having apparently disembarked from the morning train from Plymouth. The two young boys riding on the back of the tortoise claim no connection to the animal when challenged by a porter, and make themselves scarce before a constable can be summoned. Astonishingly the tortoise is allowed to leave the station and it is only half a mile later, as it en...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes & Queries, 3rd December 2013: Has anyone got a better name for mincemeat?

-
Image
image generated by Grok If, for the sake of festive novelty, you are prepared to endure weary expressions from friends whenever you offer them a mince pie, you could revert to using the old English word: Hafbæmbodig. This superannuated fragment of Anglo-Saxon is derived from the pagan god Haf, who is associated with cycles of birth, decay, death, and rebirth, as they relate to agriculture, the waxing and waning of the moon, and the gradual changing of the seasons. Haf was worshipped in sacred groves across England and in parts of Northern Europe. The first mention of him is in a Roman document called the Inventarium, which has been dated to 51BC and describes the indigenous tribes of Britannia, their culture and religions. The focal point of Haf worship was a mature apple tree. In the summer months this was usually colonised by one or more bee hives, and surrounded by fruit-bearing brambles and briars. Careful excavation around the roots would have unearthed subterranean epiphytes such...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes & Queries response: Why did whistling go out of fashion?

-
Image
image generated by DreamStudio In June of 1970, as the Great British electorate lined-up outside polling stations to cement their collective opinion on the Wilson Government, another public-led sea change was in the works. Guided by the silent hand of mob rule it percolated through the honeycomb of the United Kingdom's porous island culture, eventually enacting a social change that was at once both innocuous and profound. To understand the roots of this cultural shift, we must travel further back in time to the previous year: Up until March 1969, the three television channels operating in the UK had been broadcast across a grab-bag of named frequencies. BBC One typically went out into the world on the back of the Gray Band, though the corporation would sometimes resort to the Innell Band during wet weather. Their independent rival – ITV – broadcast on the Stenhouse frequency. BBC Two, then the new kids on the block, used the Morley Band. The Ridgewell channel (that bankrupted its c...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes & Queries response - How different are modern humans from the first Homo sapiens?

-
Image
image generated by Craiyon George Klynman was a casual acquaintance of mine over what was roughly a two-year period. I assume that our unlikely crossing of paths was the result of our names having found their way onto one of those off-the-peg guest lists that do the rounds among PR firms. For a while, we seemed to be continually bumping into each other at social functions. He is a tall man – I believe 6ft4 – and well-built; not an easy person to miss in a crowd. He is gregarious to boot. Though I liked him a lot, I came to dread his intimidating, wall-like smile broadcasting his recognition from across the room, followed by the raised glass of fizz and the over-friendly cry of “alright there Redders,” which I did not appreciate. This would be followed by a restrained slap across the shoulders that, despite his efforts to rein-in his strength, I always had to brace for, to avoid being knocked over. The repeated experience has left me with a greatly enhanced respect for anyone who has ab...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes & Queries response: If Shakespeare wrote for the masses, why is his work now an intellectual preserve?

-
Image
image generated by Craiyon “Earlier, I saw from the window of my room, your men loading a quantity of barrels onto one of my wagons,” said Sir Echarde. “I counted eight in total.” His fingertips absently probed a dewy rosette of deep-pink petals, forcing the flower head down under his touch. He continued to dawdle along the brick fringe of the earth bed until his trailing hand strayed from the rose. The stem sprang back to its approximate original position, oscillating stiffly, hither and yon, between converging poles, shaking off old raindrops. A blackbird, that had been hopping around on the damp topsoil, silently took to the air. “Shale from the Norwegian fjord beds, preserved in its own water,” said Southwell. The blackbird alighted as a silhouette on the wiry branch of a nearby quince tree, where it scattered a rising alarm call across the ornamental gardens. Southwell was a fellow of the Unified Wells. Two years before, he had been made a Knight of the Loft in recognition of his ...
Post a Comment
Read more

Notes & Queries response: What are the best defunct products and overlooked innovations?

-
Image
image generated by Craiyon The massive hull of The Nore Croft was fashioned from half-metre-thick glass that had been clouded with aqueous salt, rendering it opaque. It was named after a ramshackle navigational marker, formerly a small cottage, that once occupied a brackish peninsula at the mouth of the Thames Estuary. The heaped rubble of the smallholding, around which sheep had once grazed, with strands of green seaweed straggling their fleeces, was commonly lit as a beacon during inclement weather. By the end of 1918, it had been swamped by rising tide levels: “Displaced by the bodies of those fighting men whose lives were claimed by the sea,” according to Rose Kirtley – the writer of a hugely-popular, but now largely forgotten, volume of self-penned meditational verse, titled Tea Breaths: Poems for Secretaries . I have, on my desk in front of me, copies of the notes for an unwritten autobiography that were made by the architect of The Nore Croft – one Leonard Shapland. He recalls t...
Post a Comment
Read more