What is Your Favourite Metal?

I asked my daughter this question yesterday and she said 'magnets' which I thought was a fine answer. Of course normal metal doesn't actually do anything other than rest where gravity puts it. It erodes I suppose but you can't see that happening unless you happen to have the metabolism of a Solar System. I would choose Mercury for similar reasons.

Citizenship Test: -


Name Frankie Howerd's character in Carry on Doctor and the Tribe which Boudicca was queen of. And that is as ludicrous as any real test set up by the Government will be. I am an Internationalist - some of the time. I cannot help the animal prejudices which flow through me but I can recognise them.

Soundtrack - Mars Audiac Quintet - Stereolab

No time for any poetry.

Random Poem

The Garden called to me last night I thought,
A cry of sadness at the lack of water,
an urge to me to not regret that I had left it,
forever in the darkness and without light or noise.
I took it tea this morning, waded through the pond
and chatted briefly about the 'aphid problem',
(worse than '76 apparently). We parted, friends again
and promising to keep in touch at weekends.

Where did that come from? Some junk sitting around in here. I wanted to write a poem about the Ghost Ships but nothing came of that so you got this Pathetic Fallacy. Like the prejudices, I can at least recognise which poems are really bad. I was going to say all of them but there has been too much negativity over that last few days and it could almost be the start of depression. Reading of the final hours of Doctor Kelly and the speculation about his state of mind was a factor in this. You think, that had he been able to get over the black hours of despair, he would now be back at work and no one would remember his name. Of course, telling a person in such a state of mind that they simply need to cheer up is useless; it never works when I am depressed. Even if you could turn back time and not make the same mistakes again, the results of such a depression are deeply affecting and take ages to fade to a level where normal life' reasserts itself. For ages I have been trying to define a feeling I have about life. I suppose I was focused on it after September 11th which made it clear how close to disaster we all actually are. Some people I know live at such a speed that there is little difference between normal life and any disasters, which might overcome it. Personally I need time away from the routine. It seems that everything blurs together. Sometimes I find the thought of the drive home after work to be overwhelming, a chore which I could do without and then I extend that to the fact that the next day will be the drive back and all the routine events of the day. Then the future stretches out like a patchwork of the same things over and over. Then again, some things, which I think about repeatedly and often, have the opposite result. I love the come down after all the routines of the evening are done with, the short time reading before sleep, just doing something other than the normal repeating stuff. Reading is good because each book is different and during times of real upset, a familiar book from childhood can remind you of calming times. This has strayed from my feeling about life being a step away from disaster. In reality most of us lead quiet lives. If all the year were playing holidays etc.


Orwell kept Jura in his head from the start of the war and it seemed to have been his focus through the dark days not that the days here and now are as dark as that but you know what I mean.