Love and Einstein

“Gravitation cannot be held responsible for people falling in love.”

I found this quotation in a book. How nice, I thought and went to look for it. It turned out that Einstein indeed wrote it, but not quite:

“Falling in love is not at all the most stupid thing that people do – but gravitation cannot be held responsible for it.”

A Farewell to Arms

I finished the book today. If you haven’t read it I recommend it. I didn’t like Catherine Barkley. I felt that her character was too wishy washy, there was nothing about her that you could get your teeth into. I seem to remember thinking something similar of the leading lady in ‘For Whom the Bell Tolls’.

Anyway, this post is about a strange and interesting coincidence. In the book, while Frederic Henry is having his wounds tended to, the doctor says ‘You will have nothing to worry about if it doesn’t infect and it rarely does now’. Amongst our purchases at the auction in Limoges this week we picked up a leaflet written for French surgeons in 1914. The leaflet explains how German bullets are smooth and leave clean wounds that do not infect, are easy to deal with and heal well. Allied bullets however, left a lot of damage and danger of infection, etc. as they shattered on impact. How is that for propaganda? Even your wounds healed better if you were on the right side.

Up the Junction

Back to 1979 we go and a lot of memories. In 1973 I went on my first course in London. As I was underage I stayed at a retired bank employee’s house in Streatham with another girl from Barclays. To get to Teddington every morning, we had to change trains at Clapham Junction. We were both from the sticks and managed not to get too lost. Yesteday, I turned on Radio 4 to a program about how the song Up the Junction came to be written. It’s available to listen to for one week only. Here are the lyrics too.

Is the stuffed dog still on display there?

Wah Wah

Turn up the volume !! Get out the air guitar (or even a real one if you’ve got one)

George is still my favourite Beatle.

I had a lot of problems getting hold of the boxed set of the Concert for Bangladesh when it came out. A lot of shops didn’t stock it because there was no profit to be made from it – it all went to help the people who badly needed it. US$ 243,418.51 was raised.

Hands up if you’ve still got the boxed set

Mighty Eucalyptus from little seeds grow

Nearly 20 years ago I bought a packet of seeds from the supermarket; they were Eucalyptus seeds. It seemed ambitious growing a Eucalyptus tree from a tiny seed, I couldn’t afford a baby tree, so I thought I’d give it a go. At first I put the seeds into small pots they I transferred them into bigger posts and later when they were even bigger planted three of them in the garden.

During the first year I didn’t think that they were growing. I started to measure them once a week – and they were!. They all grew for a couple more years until they were coming along nicely. Especially the one which reminded me of a graceful lady in long skirts. In the mid nineties we had a very cold winter. I knew that the trees could withstand up to -15°C, so I wasn’t too worried. Unfortunately, the end of the winter was very windy and all three of my trees looked as if they had died. The graceful lady in long skirts had been the largest and closest to the street so needed cutting down because as the tree rotted the branches would become dangerous.

One of my kind neighbours said that he would cut the tree down, another would cut up the wood and take it away to use (we didn’t have a fire place). When the tree was cut down we discovered a small shoot which looked alive, so we decided to leave it and see what happened.

The small shoot grew from strength to strength and soon became a big tree, much bigger than we imagined it would ever become. This time the tree was definitely male, strong and straight.

These pictures were all taken this spring

The barn

The first time I saw the old barn that was to serve as our garage I was intrigued by it. Built of limestone a long time ago, the ivy covered walls were beginning to crumble away. Inside; the enormous beams that supported the roof sported the scars of ancient generations of woodworm.

The barn really captured my imagination. Everyone that visited the house that summer was invited to look around my barn and write a short story about it by the beginning of September. What a mistake that was – my inspiration flew out of the window.

Sometimes on a hot day, I would just go into the cool barn and look at the walls. I loved their creamy yellow colour, no stone was the same size or shape and looking closely, I could make out the faint traces of fossils. At the far end was the timber frame of what once had been a doorway. The floor had been concreted years ago and was showing more signs of wear than the ancient walls! Still no inspiration came to me.

I discovered that under the village the remains of a network of tunnels had been found in recent years. Where had the blocked up doorway led to? What kind of lives did the people live who had called the barn their own in the past?

I never did write that short story about the barn. The people who came and went through the now blocked up doorway, carried their secrets away with them.

The Globetrotting Beefeater: Part 2

Part 1 is here

A few days later the beefeater heard the excited voices of children and was aware of the comfortable envelope being ripped open. He had arrived at his new home. He was placed on the refrigerator alongside a team of football (soccer) shirts and an ocean of fridge poetry.

At first the Beefeater was happy to sit on the fridge door and watch the comings and goings of the family. Sometimes he joined in with the games of football, sometimes he tried to read the poetry to himself. This way learnt some French words, but he didn’t understand all of the poems. He felt lonely despite his busy life. He wished that he had someone to talk too.

Time passed and sometimes our brave Beefeater was forgotten about. He slipped down to the bottom of the fridge, past all of the poetry and onto the floor. He was always found and dusted off before being put back at the top of the fridge. He couldn’t help thinking that no one really cared much about what happened to him…

One afternoon his life was to change forever. he was put back at the top of the fridge and joined by a real princess. She was pink with yellow hair and a golden crown. The Beefeater thought that she was the most beautiful magnet he had ever seen. From that day onwards she always watched him play football and they read poetry together all night long. He never ever felt lonely again.