Archive for August, 2010

sentry I

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

The wind beats my cheeks and blows back my hair as I stand on the breakwater gazing out to sea.

sentry I

wind: pummels cheeks
blows hair, unkempt, across face
catching eye, distracting not

as I search the scudding clouds
and foaming waves,
a swirl of whiteness, green and grey,
the cormorant and black guillemot
patrol their beat, cry for my attention,
ignore me and plunge
for their cold fish supper.

after five hundred years of watching
a lone sail sets its course

and now the fishing boats return
men in industrial overalls
Foillan Beg, Lenague, Coral Strand 2nd
Genesis of Peel, Aleena,
stocky, thick set queenie-catching bottom-dredgers,
The Manx Cat, a “Sutton work boat out of Peel”
with two deck hands and a cargo of crabs
bright red buoys contrast with navy blue,
a swath of rust pours down the side,
dirty green nylon nets hang down.

oily sheen on the water.

Meg’s a swimmer

Monday, August 23rd, 2010

Meg’s a swimmer
she swims lengths while she plays on her cello
and while she’s pulling on that bow
I hear from someone in the know
Meg lives in Wiltshire

Holt it right there. What’s going on here? How is Megan supposed to know what that first verse is all about? I mean to say that even her mum and dad might struggle.

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stella and the duck

Monday, August 16th, 2010

They looked at each other, with a certain degree of suspicion at first. Neither had expected the other to be there. You know how it goes. One minute you’re walking along minding your own business when bang, it happens.

Sometimes it literally does happen with a bang and you bump into each other. In Stella’s case it was metaphoric bang. She had just been ambling along with her mind somewhere else and had stopped by the river bank. There might have been something that had caught her eye but then again there might not.

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The Ferry

Monday, August 9th, 2010

The boredom of the long ferry journey
hearkens back to another age.
No internet connectivity,
the flicker of the TV glimmers hope
but it is Sky News –
repetition accentuates tedium.

I imagine we are on a spaceflight to Mars but I already only have one hour of laptop battery left. With two years to get there and two years to come back (you would hope we would be spending some time looking round when we arrive) the question of the moment is what to write in my remaining laptop hour?

the condemned man drug free
draws in deeply the sea air,
wonders at wind-born birdsong
and absorbs the sun’s facial caress.
instant relief,
a care free moment that will end;
the lure of the laptop-reconnected.

pictures of tref

Saturday, August 7th, 2010
tref

tref

this is a picture of tref

The British summer holiday weather

Tuesday, August 3rd, 2010

Today
Weather:
Early rain / drizzle then dry for a time but further rain / showers later. Hill fog, especially early & again later
Wind:
SW veering W or NW, 10 to 18
Visibility:
Good, occasionally moderate. Very poor in hill fog.
Comments:
Slight risk of higher rainfall totals tonight.

Wednesday 4th August
Weather:
Scattered showers. Hill fog patches.
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Richard Dawkins and the Cancer of Creationism

Monday, August 2nd, 2010

A Christian’s critic’s critic writes:
For the most part, Richard Dawkin’s “The Greatest Show on Earth” is a beautifully written and well argued piece of work. In it he puts forward many convincing data and explanations which demonstrate categorically that the world is about 4.6 billion years old and that all species on earth can trace their origins back to the dawn of life itself. That is, the creationist view of the earth having existed for less than 10,000 years is dogma of the worst kind; deliberate ignorance and denial of fact to satisfy one’s own, in this case, religious agenda.
Admittedly, Dawkin’s well-documented arrogance surfaces regularly; here, for example, in the form of intellectual snobbery:
“…….reminds me of Peter Medawar’s wickedly astute observation that ‘the spread of secondary and latterly of tertiary (more…)