If you had ever thought that She sells sea-shells on the sea-shore was difficult – consider a puzzle in the style of Carroll –
Chinese is already confusing enough with all of its tones, characters, markers and lack of articles, inflections and tenses, but this poem really shows just how difficult Chinese is especially for the native Mandarin.
A Chinese author, 趙元任, expressed the puzzle in this way:
In a stone den lived a poet called Shi Shi, who was a lion addict. He had resolved to eat ten lions. He often went to the market to look for lions. At ten o’clock, ten lions had just arrived at the market. At that same time, Shi Shi arrived at the market. He saw those ten lions, and using his trusty arrows, caused the ten lions to die. He took the corpses of the ten lions to the stone den. The stone den was damp, so he asked his servants to dry it. After the stone den had been wiped dry, he tried to eat those ten lions. When he ate, he realized that the ten lions were in fact ten stone lion corpses.
Try to explain this matter.
石狮
Coco thought you might like to hear Google read the words for you in languages that either still use Hanzi (漢字) or have only recently adopted other forms of writing.
MandarinJapaneseVietnamese
Empty block
Coco cannot explain it, but a useful discussion of the purpose of the puzzle may still be found here: pinyin.info
With apologies in advance for errors of syntax, orthography and grammar which may be found embedded in this document whether arising from oversight, incorrect application of language packs or generally any other misadventure; and in general for any offence given inadvertently or inappropriately or both taken or not taken by those whose sensibilities, whether grammatical, orthographical, moral or simply personable, have been offended whether, not or if you have not incorrectly misunderstood the content, intent, meaning and purpose of this article, and to those whose copyrights may have been inadvertently or wantonly infringed, but never as to cause damage the copy holder’s rights, and, if you have managed to read this far, for any errors or omissions whether wilful, unintended, innocent or deliberate in the content of this polemic, and with thanks to you who have made it thus far for your patience.
Another year has passed us by And still we hear the song As tulips blossom in the tree And wild sparrows fly a-free. A thought springs up into the night – A cranial response to the plight – Appraising what we sensed must be April has come and now must we Advert to a remembrance day Apply ourselves to the affray Appropriate to ourselves a pen And write, again, two more than ten.
Did you read the recent article about the black light?
You have probably heard about them before, perhaps in the context of a disco or the sun tan parlour. Black lights were given that name because they produced ultra violet light which of course we cannot see, but which when absorbed by other materials produces photosynthesis, suntan, strange glows, which were considered to add atmosphere, or ambience, to the venue, otherwise known as fluorescence, sunburn and cancers. But the article was not talking about that sort of black light, but something quite different. It was felt for a long time that the search for the black light was rather akin to the long running race to breed the first truly black tulip. Many very dark tulips have been bred of course, but rather like the familiar black lights used in discos they are actually simply a very dark shade of violet¹.
The actual engineering of a black light showed itself as a possibility with the advent of the wave particle duality coupled with its quantum mechanical aspects. In theory a black light light could be produced simply by reference to wave mechanics, and an appropriate use of laser technology. Interference is a well understood phenomena, even if it is generally unwelcome when used in actual communications (aka TV signals), and the existence of nodes, essentially a point in space in which the wave dynamic amplitude is reduced to nil. In sonic applications, in particular sound damping applications in industry, interference is often used to silence what would otherwise be an intolerable sound. This works well where the sounds are regular and predictable. Often however the complexity of the wave formations in the real world, and we are thinking now of the electromagnetic waves which we experience as light, make the use only of wave mechanics an impossible mountain to climb, and even if it were possible to climb it the computing power required to control the laser output is simply beyond anything that we have yet been able to build. Quantum computing may overcome this of course, but that is still in its infancy.
The alternative approach which relies upon the quantum effects of the wave particle duality however help us to overcome the computing difficulty. What we are doing, in layman’s terms, is moving the computing power required out of the machines that we build and into the real world and utilising its own quantum effects. This is analogous to the industrial sound damping problem where a digital solution fails, but an analogue solution prevails. You will all be aware of the difficulties of quantum mechanics in the real world; this is the Schrödinger’s cat problem. The Schrödinger’s cat problem however relates to a single quantum event. In the real world we are dealing with billiards of events and across these we can predict with certainty the outcome of the events taken as a whole. This has been understood clearly throughout most of the twentieth century, but the problem then became how can this understanding be applied to the black light problem? The breakthrough came in the early years of the twenty first century. One year before beforehand the year 2000 problem hit many of our computers. Of course adequate preparations had been, by all who knew that moving from dates with years commencing 19 to years commencing 20 would be an issue, made and most of the popular operating systems had addressed the matter many years earlier. A few machines were however ill-prepared for the change.
The specific issues that these machines faced is not the subject of the article, of course. They were not machines that had any public impact, but were used in many academic laboratories. The anomalous results produced in that final year of the twentieth century led to an investigation into the nullification (actual nihilifaction, but that is quite a difficult technical term to describe in this bus passengers’ summary of the scientific article. I also read of kenotic interactions in the main article, a term which inspired more dread even than the first) of photons in free space, and it was discovered that this was a process that had taken place quite naturally and we had not even noticed. Quantum interactions took place in parallel with the interference observed in wave mechanics to produce nodes in the space-time continuum which were free of, in simple terms, light. In other words those nodes were in complete darkness.
This discovery led the academic teams to consider three general areas:
whether the size of these nodes could be controlled
whether it was possible to generate these nodes – in whatever way
whether it was possible to stabilise the nodes in the fourth (time) dimension
This is a huge simplification of course, and others may take exception to the way I have presented the issues in these three areas. It will do for me today, if you can think of a better simplification, and I have no doubt that text books will soon be published which provide a different but nevertheless isodocic, or at least not incongruent, with mine, presentation; please, let me know.
The first step was to demonstrate the possibility of supporting negative energy fields. Other so-called forbidden energy states, and in particular transitions to and from them, are well understood, in the matter for example of phosphorescence. The ideas underlying this concept had been present in quantum theory since at least the days of Paul Dirac’s quantum sea proposal: Don’t worry that is the only equation you will see in this article. It is perfectly well explained in other publications, but in any event it has been superseded by a better understanding of these things. The results of the new work were presented at the Icarus Project. At that stage the end game of the studies was kept well under wraps.
Further work however was required to answer the questions that had been posed. Progress was slow, but the theory answered yes to each of these matters. Having shown in theory that it may be possible to control the nodes, various aspects of the theory were put to the test, primarily through post graduate doctoral theses, as these were relatively cheap, and being quite narrow in their scope would not give away the big idea too soon. Each thesis had to design, run and prove experiments to test some aspect of the theory. After several years the original team had dispersed across several universities, but continued to work together on this project utilising the time of whatever PhD student was willing to work on it. As the individual parts of the theory were proven, where they could, testing began on multiple aspects. All of the abstracts to these doctoral theses are available online in the usual places, if you have access to the appropriate libraries. For the full script you must approach the authors or visit the university libraries.
Eventually it was possible to involve the engineers, who were to build prototype engines which were intended to control the size, shape, intensity and stability of the nodes. One engineer of German descent hit upon a relatively simple model engine, which his colleagues wished to name Awesome, but he insisted in honour of his much loved Oma that it be named Aweful which was a play on her name and his family name, though it required significant power input. At a power input of 40kw it was able to produce a stable intensity of -300lumens/s/cu.m in a volume of 2.5l for a period just under 10ms. The earlier attempts were able to produce nodes for durations measured only in nanometres and µs.
This was a great achievement, in scientific and academic terms, but a wholly impracticable solution for the real world. Further developments were made. Input to output ratios were lowered by a factor of ten thousand, but stability proved to be a greater problem. Advances in other forms of lighting engineering however were adopted which produced significant improvements. The original machine design was retained, but the components were upgraded to use the newer materials which had become available. There was then an unexpected shift in both the I/O ratio and the stability of the luminous intensity. For the academics, this required further work on the theory, as they were reluctant to proceed without a proper understanding of what had changed. The engineers however were delighted with the result and pressed ahead building into their designs and machines control mechanisms to prevent overloading of the output. At the same time they looked at the possibility of controlling the output through processes similar to the optical amplification and stimulation techniques which were used for lasers. In their view this would provide a much safer source than the original idea of a random source.
The engineers raced ahead with the material they had, though not understanding why things were working until the academic team had caught up with them and were able to confirm an understanding of the results that had been seen in the real world.
They were then ready to go public on the matter. By now the engineers had been able to produce a machine that was little larger than a lectern and would run, though admittedly not for very long, on batteries. They packed the batteries into the lectern stand, controls on the face of the reading desks and the source into a rather bulbous expansion box at the top of the reading desk. The academics sought the lecturer who had given the negative enegry field presentation at the Icarus Project and arranged for the first public presentation to take place from a viewing platform high above the city.
The quality of the picture is not good, but the engineering did not fail. The source was able to produce a black out flux at approximately -10000 lumens/s/cu. m for thirty seconds. This black out flux was able to control the whole of the pyramidical space delineated in the image, a volume of roughly 1 cu. m. You will note from the shadows that the source was pointing directly at the sun, thus demonstrating the efficacy of the flux. An appendix to the paper provides technical details explaining the marginal effects of tinting in the windows.
The academic team are now looking for industrial partners to develop the Aweful engine further. There are many commercial, industrial and military uses for Aweful, providing it can be scaled up.
It is seen as an effective and non-lethal weapon. A sufficiently powerful source would be able to provide a black out flux across a wide area, such as a battlefield, ensuring that no fighting could take place. Infrared and night vision goggles would be rendered ineffective. Radio and wireless communication of all sorts would also be impossible as the flux operates on all electromagnetic waves through their quantum interactions. With further work it is thought that frequency specific holes could be left in the black out to allow defenders to communicate. Laser technology would allow the source to be placed high in the sky, perhaps even ultimately on a satellite, and the black out applied with precision and considerable accuracy. Presently the technical challenges of providing a sufficiently powerful energy supply would militate against the use of a satellite.
It is also seen as a security device. A black out device could be used in any place which requires high security, even in homes, to protect against intruders. But perhaps the most likely use will be in the field of entertainment. There are many places which would benefit from such a device. A lower powered device, which would be able say to continuously provide -5000 l/s/cu. m, would be sufficient to provide a sufficiently dark ‘room’ even in the open air as it operates by bathing the area in negative luminous energy, the flux. In a completely blacked out zone, any light from sources in, or shining into, the zone is nihilifactored (neutralised to you and me) by the kenotic quantum interactions with the flux from the source, but if the black out is not complete then it is rather like being in a room with very low level lighting. This would provide some very interesting possibilities if the frequency specific holes problem can be solved.
Thus there are many exciting commercial prospects and already the engineers have prepared to lodge a planning application to the Sydney City council for the provision of a day time open air discothèque on Bondi beach, concluding that the black out lighting would have not only value as an entertainment venue, but also have collateral health benefits, in that day time exercise could be obtained in the open air without the issues of overdoses of UV. It would also reduce the number of shark attacks as the day time occupants of the beach would be likely more attracted to the disco than to the sea.
Shark attack
In the assured prospect that the appropriate planning consents will be provided, the dear lady after whom the Aweful flux engine has been named, Frau Awril Fuhldü, has agreed to be present for the opening of the venue, and she has said, to be the first to dance the floor.
1 The claim may be disputed by some. The date of that article, unlike this, is undisclosed. 2 Apologies to anyone whose copyrights Coco may have inadvertently infringed.
Coco thought he would offer two different perspectives on the day which we call Good Friday. Please grant him an indulgence for this first one. The second perspective has been inspired by events at the focus of the Sinospheric regions. He shall come to that shortly.
They knew it was not just to be a normal day, but a mood of gloom had spread over the hosts of angels which was, if it could be, even deeper than the gloom which rested upon the earth1. They thought it would never end. Gabriel was in his office, he really did not know what to do. They saw what was going on, but did not understand it at all. They knew it was very serious, they had heard someone say in Egypt2: the gods must be very angry about something. He looked at the throne. He could not approach it, God was clearly angry, very angry. Gabriel had never seen this sort of anger before.
Just a twenty four hours earlier they had had instructions to prepare and twelve thousand angels had spent several hours polishing their armour and sharpening their swords, for it was not known whether they would be called upon or not3. But the call to arms did not come. What had happened? One of their number had been sent to a garden, but had not returned with a message to send more4. They were in limbo (not that there is a limbo of course, but you understand Coco’s meaning).
They knew of course what was happening on earth. They had seen it before the thick darkness fell. Three men had been taken to a hill to be crucified, and one of them was their lord, the other two were thieves. Why had they not been sent to rescue him? They had not been short in their preparation. But now the darkness had fallen, they could not see through it, this was the kind of darkness that they had never seen before. Even though they knew that when light shines in the darkness the darkness cannot overcome it5, this darkness seemed to be even darker than that and had all the appearance of being able to prevail.
Just when Gabriel thought it could not get any worse, a large shipment of cloth arrived. Gabriel was not unused to this, red, blue and gold cloth6 were not uncommon as they were used for the priestly garments, but this was different. It was fine white linen. Gabriel could not think of a use for it (He should have remembered what one of his co-workers had done when Joshua appeared before the throne7). Where was he going to store it? He had no idea, and even if he did none of the others had at that time any motivation to be able to do anything. Then a note came giving instructions on what to do with it. They were to make garments out of it, and quickly as one set would be needed within the next hour.
Gabriel was almost at his wits end. How could he do this? No-one had a heart to work, and he had no pattern to use, and even if he did, he did not know what size would be required. Just as he was pondering this, there was a knock on his office door and an angel burst in.
“Gabriel,” he said, “something big is happening. There is an enormous commotion over by the gate, and we cannot control it. The gates, you know they are normally quite sedentary, but they are moving, not only that they are lifting up the doors. Another group of angels is singing8 to them: ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates! Be lifted up you everlasting doors.’ What was going on? Can you tell us?“
Then Gabriel remembered the words of David in Psalm 249, and asked: “Has the darkness gone?” The message quickly went out to the others, they all looked. “Yes!” they shouted back, “The darkness on the earth has gone.” “Then we had better get ready quickly, the King is coming back. David spoke about it9: ‘Lift up your heads, O you gates, be lifted up you everlasting doors and the King of Glory shall come in.’ Quickly, everyone go to your posts! We must welcome our lord, he is coming home.” Then another angel shouted out: “I heard him cry out: ‘It is finished‘10, just before the darkness went.”
Gabriel went to the gates, they had now stopped moving. They were ready, they had lifted up their heads and lifted up the doors, and were waiting.
Then a man appeared, it was one of the two thieves who had been crucified that day. ‘What is he doing here?11‘ they thought. He was filthy, he looked as if he had been running around the street all night and was very much the worse for wear, he needed a good wash and new clothes. They were aghast. An angel stepped forward to bar the way12 of the man. The thief gave him a slip of paper, which was passed to another angel to give to Gabriel. It simply said, ‘Put clean clothes of fine linen on him.’ Gabriel then remembered what the prophet Zechariah had said13 and understood why the fine white linen had arrived. In the earlier commotion he had forgotten about the linen and the instructions, and was about to be embarrassed by the lack of a fine linen tunic, when another angel stepped forward and placed one in his hands. One of the deputies had seen the instructions which Gabriel had left behind and several of the angels had already started work. This was the first item, which had only been sent over as a sample for approval. Gabriel went over to the thief and placed the fine linen tunic on him, at which point the old clothes and all of the filth was washed away.
A second man then walked through the gates, he too was bruised, battered, covered in his own blood, with fresh wounds in his hands, feet and side14, but he was glorious in appearance15. The angels fell on their faces and worshipped him as he walked over to the former thief, and said to him: “I told you, today! Come, let me show you to your room and then let us go to the Father16, 17 & 18. Then I must leave you, for I have more work to do.“
Coco Spring 2019
Of course this is an entirely fantastic (lit.) story, but Coco hopes to have given you enough references to see it is not entirely implausible. Perhaps the biggest error here is that Coco has attributed human limitations to the angels, but as Coco does not know any angels yet, he does not know what the limitations are that should be placed upon them, though we can see some of them in God’s word, so he hopes you will be indulgent towards him.
The real point here is that two men were crucified with Jesus19. One of them said to the other one: “We deserve to be here, but [Jesus] does not.” Then he bowed the knee (not that when you are nailed to a cross you can do that literally, but he did so in the way that matters – he submitted his heart and mind to the Lord) to Jesus and said: “Lord, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.” Jesus replied: “Today, you will be with me in paradise.”
The other thief continued to blaspheme and was lost.
There are only two possible endings, a good one and a bad one. One thief knew that Jesus was the Christ, but did nothing with it. The other thief appeared to know but a little about Jesus, but he took what he did know and went to Jesus with it. Take what you know about him to him, and ask him to show you what you do not know, and get to know him as Saviour and Lord.
Please bear with me. There have been many cæsars who have not cared for the king of kings. It was on a day like today that the representative of one such cæsar asked a man: ‘Are you a king then?‘ Only to be told that though he was a king, his kingdom is not of this world. And so, we may understand, that if his kingdom is not of this world then it is no threat to the kings of this world. Indeed, where his subjects live in another kingdom they bring great benefit to that kingdom. ‘What am I to do with these Christians?‘ Pliny wrote to Cæsar20, ‘They don’t do any harm, indeed they do good to everyone in the city‘ (I paraphrase Pliny). Now you must remember that these cæsars were originally a bit like the chairman of the senate, it took a little while for them to attain a godlike status in the empire.
But the kings of the earth cannot bear to think that they have a rival. The meetings of the subjects of the king of kings are treated as politically subversive, seeking to overturn the established social order, without actually considering that the king himself taught that his subjects are like the yeast which fills the whole of the dough and makes the bread bread21. In practice they were to be subject to the earthly kings22 & 23 and indeed to pray for them24.
So, these cæsars required men to come into line. They demanded from men what was not fitting or proper either for men to give to them or for men to receive. They wanted to be worshipped as gods themselves. All you had to do was say ‘Cæsar is lord‘ and burn a little incense. This has continued to this day. It is still within living memory that one king gave up his claim to divinity, but this view that cæsars have of themselves seems to have made a resurgence in other places.
This resurgence however has made for some interesting apposition. If anyone was going to report on this it had to be an Australian source25, who would get there first after the original post.
In the photograph we see a picture of a cross on a hill flanked by the photographs of two gentlemen the heads and shoulders of whom are placed, perhaps auspiciously, at the same level as the head and shoulders of the one who would have been on the empty cross. It is strangely reminiscent of another occasion when an empty cross (I presume that because Jesus was already dead, he was taken down before the two thieves were taken down) was flanked by two other men: ὅπου αὐτὸν ἐσταύρωσαν, καὶ μετ᾿ αὐτοῦ ἄλλους δύο ἐντεῦθεν καὶ ἐντεῦθεν, μέσον δὲ τὸν Ἰησοῦν26. For those who like Coco cannot read Greek this is broadly understood to read: In that place him they crucified, and with him others two side and side, in the middle Jesus. We read that both of these two men mocked and blasphemed Jesus, as did most of the crowd who were gathered there to watch27, but as time went on28 one of the thieves saw something that the other did not. As the first railed at Jesus, saying: “Are you not the Christ? Save yourself and us!” the second replied to him: “Don’t you fear God, since you are under the same condemnation? We are getting what we deserve for what we did, but this man has done nothing wrong.” Then this second one turned to Jesus and said to him: “Lord, remember me, when you come into your kingdom.”
One of the two men had suggested that revolution does not come in quietly like a well-beloved, courteous and welcome friend, but it is troublesome and harsh. The other seems to show the same sort of concern that the recipient of Pliny’s letter showed. He did not want any subversion of the current social order, and people who thought in a different way were perceived to be such a threat. It is strange that the cæsars of this world are all pretty much the same. Can they not learn from history? The history of the Roman Cæsars shows that they cannot overcome the kingdom which is not of this world. Eventually one of their number joined that kingdom and the persecutions ceased. Coco shall make no further comment here on the consequences of that capitulation.
Let us come back to the present, do you remember the promise Jesus made to the second thief? ‘I tell you the truth, today you will be with me in Paradise.’ he said.
Only one of the men flanking the cross of Jesus joined the kingdom which is not of this world. Only one of the thieves entered Paradise. Only one of the men flanking the empty cross in our picture is alive today. Only one of them can join the kingdom. Only one can enter Paradise. Will he do so?
‘Therefore I urge first of all that that supplications, prayers, intercessions and giving of thanks be made…for kings and all who are in authority‘29… Paul, a servant of the king in his first letter to Timothy.
Coco heard the other day about Bill and Ben, not the famous flower pot men, but a pair of mountaineering brothers, indeed twins, and their little sister. They were well known by all for their many adventures. They did everything together, and would only ever climb if they were both in the team.
Although they were twins, the two brothers were very different. Bill was tall and lanky, a head and shoulders above anyone else. Ben was quite short and stocky. Whilst Bill was able to reach out to the hold that no one else could reach, Ben could scramble across anything. So by working together no mountain side was outside their capabilities; it was really little wonder that the club were always very glad when they were able to join the expeditions. Faith, who being ten years younger was still but a child always came along to help. She was not allowed to climb, but she did not care about that. She was quite happy to sit in the Gelato parlour or play in the park whilst they battled with the mountain. Even better, she thought, that Bill and Ben had to pay for her.
It was much like that at home too. Contrary to expectations, Bill was no tenor, but he had a voice so deep that even Rachmaninoff had not written anything that could do justice to his lowest notes which we were quite as strong as your or my middle C. On the other hand Ben had an exquisite tenor range which really only began beyond where any baritone would be embarrassed to go. When the family sang together at home, Ben led them from above, Bill supported them from below and mother, father and little Faith just filled in the middle as best they could.
Now whilst Bill and Ben loved their little sister, Faith was always up to tricks with them. She teased them mercilessly. There was an occasion when, knowing how much common sense they lacked she took advantage of it. They were a little younger then, shall we say immature? at the time. Whenever they went away, their mother made sure that Bill and Ben each had their names stitched into every item of clothing that they had. Was this for their benefit or to let others know whose cllothes they were in mother’s mind? Well little Faith was quite sure that the boys were so lacking in common sense it was to make sure that they wore their own clothes not each others. So one night whilst on camp she crept into their room, stole away all of their clothes and took them to her own room where she proceeded to carefully unpick every label and stitch them back into the other brother’s clothes.
She did not believe it would work as well as it did. The following morning, she was up early for breakfast much to the astonishment of her parents who had learned that she really did prefer to lie in the hot bath than to eat, but despite the lack of sleep, she did not want to miss anything that might happen that morning. Suddenly the breakfast hall fell into fits. Bill had arrived in what could have been a pair of shorts, followed by Ben who appeared to be wearing the bellows of an accordian on his legs when you caught a glimpse of them peeping out from underneath a rather long and tight Jersey jumper. There were hoots and whistles from their fellow campers which did not seem to perturb them until they were taken across to a mirror. How embarrassed they became, especially when Faith asked: Did you not realise the labels were the wrong way round? She had caught them once again.
She never ceased to plan little tricks like this, and Bill and Ben had to be constantly on the watch for the next one, but they would never be without her. As she grew the tricks became more elaborate, she waited to catch them out when they were not expecting it. Well, she was now a young woman and she had planned this one for years. She knew that she would only be able to do it once, and she also had to get it exactly right otherwise the consequences might be, as she put it, somewhat unfortunate. So she waited for the right opportunity. It would come she said to herself.
But she needed to practice somewhere first to ensure she would get it right, so the previous summer she had gone to Iceland on her own. It was most unusual. She never went out on the mountains to climb with her brothers so they wondered whether she had met someone but didn’t want any one to know at the time. She explored the interior, not the usual tourist spots, which was of great concern to them as Iceland is geologically active, and whilst she was there there were reports of some irregular geologic activity. But all was well, and after she returned try as they would they could not get anything out of her. They had to think that whatever it was, it had all come to nothing.
This year the boys had planned to go with their club up the face of a little climbed mountain in Switzerland. There was only one route and so she would know exactly where they all were and when they would come back down. They walked together down the main street in the pretty little Swiss village. She was rather out of place in her prim white blouse, dark skirt, white gloves and delicate hat, when everyone else either wore mountaineering kit or Lederhosen. The boys left her as she made her way into a very neat Italian coffee shop.
A few hours or so later, ‘This is it’, she thought to herself as she supped her Gelato and espresso in the quaint little parlour at the foot of the mountain. She was now a young woman and had discovered the joys of Gelato and coffee. Everything, she mused, was ready. One of the awful things about her tricks on them was that she was often not around to see the expressions on their faces when it was pulled off. She had to listen afterwards to their own remonstrations with her, as they tried to justify their own ridiculous behaviour, as in the switched clothes episode, or themselves, and listen also to the reports and corrections of other people who were there and saw it all. Oh! how she giggled as she remembered how often she had caught them out, but felt a little sad that she was never there to see it. ‘Ah, well, at least the other club members will give me an accurate report’, she said to herself.
On the mountain, they were all well underway. They were about ten thousand feet above the coffee shop where their little sister sat eating her gelato and Bill, who, by reason of his height, had just enabled them to move across a particularly tricky part far more quickly than anyone had expected, turned his mind to her as Ben was away moving across the scree like a gazelle leading a long rope behind him that the others could use to cross more easily. It was perhaps not, or maybe it was the right time to turn your minds to your little sister. He crossed the scree on Ben’s rope. To his astonishment, Ben said to him: ‘Do you remember that morning at camp, Bill? Do you think there is something wrong with Sissy? She has left us alone ever since she came back from Iceland’. Just then there was a crack, not an unfamiliar sound to mountaineers. Rocks move, and when they do so they crack. But this crack was different. It was loud. It was impossibly loud.
Later, when she heard about it, the only thing the other members of the club could remember after that were the words screaming from the lips of Ben, as only a tenor could scream them, simultaneously with the deepest roar from Bill that any auditor had ever heard, which were:
Hmmm…this may not turn out quite as Coco had hoped..ah well here goes.
In the old days people used to write letters. Some of you will not even know what a letter could be different than these characters that we use to spell out words, but these different kind of letters were rather like posts in in this forum except that they had been written by hand using a pen to scribe letters out on a piece of paper. Such letters were greeted with great enthusiasm when they arrived in your house. They may have come from another part of the world and it may have taken several weeks to reach you (in those days in the UK you could send a letter in the morning and by the afternoon it would have reached and have been read by its recipient, but the postal service in the rest of the world was not quite as efficient as that. Since those days the UK has worked very hard to reach the same standard as the rest of the world). Often these letters would begin with an interesting story or description of an unusual event before going on to the real subject matter. Interesting things might be like, well, so much seems to revolve around those endless pictures of what is on the plate in front of you today, but it might be that you would be interested to know what I, the writer, of the letter had for breakfast this morning. Well, of course you are! Most of the time it was quite different, like the lady from sub-Saharan African who announced in her opening words that they had had a new toilet installed at their house. The choice of the preposition at is deliberate and accurate.
In fact one of these letter writers did so think that you would be interested in breakfast. Coco knew some people who worked in Brazil, well, actually in the Amazon basin, just a little way up the river…sorry it is easier to say down from the source a few hundred miles or so. Some would say the area was uncivilised, but there was a civil society among the tribes, just not the sort of civil society that you or Coco would expect, though Coco supposes today they are as busy posting into the forum of social media as anyone else. We would have called them hunter gatherers. Well one day, actually it was probably in a quarterly letter so far they were from any kind of even an irregular postal system, we were introduced to a typical breakfast, which could only be consumed of course after you had actually gone out of the village circle to gather it. French snails are interesting, aren’t they? Prawns, those cockroaches of the sea, are consumed in their millions. Aardvarks are known by another name which betrays their voracious diet. Well, here it is a five star Amazonian breakfast…
No, the grapes are not an illustration of that breakfast. Coco thought better of it. Coco changed his mind. Coco repented. It might put you off anything else that you might eat or want to eat today, or even for the rest of the week as ‘it’, the breakfast, preys upon your mind.
So let him turn to the point of this tale. The photograph is not there to show you what Coco had for supper, or anyone else had for breakfast, though it might actually do that, but to point out a fault in the grapes. There is probably also a fault in the image of the grapes, but Coco takes responsibility for that.
Should Coco take them back to the store which sold them and complain about their lack of quality control? Is this a defective grape, or has it been genetically modified? Or is it a twin? That is incorrect, are they Siamese twin grapes? Is it edible? Does the mechanism which controls twinning in grapes also produce other intensely kenotic or phthartic metabolic agents which would be toxic if ingested? These and many other similar thoughts and questions swim around as it were in a delirium.
Answers to these and many other questions may be sent on a postcard please to all of your friends. And if every one of those friends send this message, and any further messages, on on the day of receipt within one month the postal services would have to deliver approximately π billiard tonnes of postcards on the next day, if any postcards were available to be had.
In the middle of the night As the stars were burning bright And the owl in midst of flight Did catch the sound and the sight Of those who their tent did pight,
In the middle of the bight. This at first did seem not right But the ropes and stays kept tight As could be seen from that height Where the soaring of the kite
In the middle of the light Would cause, on earth, to incite In creatures small all their might To turn at once into fright When cognisant of their plight.
In the middle of the site Thus began the strangest rite Which the creatures did excite When faced by this did it quite Turn their visage pallid white.
In the midst I now indite, Though this ode oft seem trite (It is worth naught but a mite), Yet to speak without respite My words all placed are aright:
In the middle of the eight Where the circles do invite One to be seen, but in spite, Three in hex not on its right Thus it seems to implicate In the meaning of this date.
Last night the moon, in all her fullness veiled, Hung in the steel blue sky of winter’s night Fell from her true face a nebulous shroud Silently slipping o’er the starry sight.
Hoots of owl and shrieks of bat from below Made competition, just as feline eyes, Which cared not for the silver mournful glow, With stealth stalked o’er the verdant grassy rise.
Such unfeeling works of poor nature’s lines Neither see nor comprehend such beauty. The moon rides high, and proudly shines. She gives her light and asks no tax or fee.
For she receives from a greater sphere In whose burning flame she pales her splendour Fearing not to hide from mortal’s gaze and view. And I, what would I have compared you to?
If it were not to the well-shrouded moon, Should that be not less than I ought to say? But were I to say, to the very same, Would that not be then more than you should know? Therefore, let me stand as did good Queen Bess, And leave the question just as: Answerless.
If you don’t want the name, give the money back – isn’t it as easy as that?
Charities are minded to understand that if the source of the funds offered to them is questionable, they should refuse the offer.
And, as a tax professional, Coco would welcome the opportunity to refresh his estate duty knowledge as it is tracked how the Codrington Library building and contents would have passed through all of the generations of his family, and calculate the amount of estate duty due on each death, and he would also assume IHT, would now become payable – a very welcome windfall to be sure.
Shark attack
