Compulsion - Lost In Music

"Patient 'B' is an interesting case study," said my friend the psychiatrist over a pint of the finest and a large white wine at a pub near Lancaster Moor Hospital (formerly the Lancaster County Lunatic Asylum). I'd told her I was researching compulsion and she'd agreed to share some details of three individuals with me, in complete anonymity of course. This was back in the 1990s. Lancaster Moor Hospital closed before the millennium and my psychiatrist friend is no longer with us.

She was right. Of the three, Patient 'B' was by far the most interesting. A long term inmate since their teens, they exhibited multiple personalities, all of them obsessed in some way with the world of popular music, a condition which first manifested itself simply as a compulsion to invent names for rock groups (their school exercise books were covered in such inventions) but which proliferated remarkably within the confines of the institution.

As DJ Half Life they hosted a regular hits show on Radio Therapy, the pirate station founded and owned by another of their personalities, Ronan O'Reality, which broadcast nightly from a ghost ship moored somewhere off the Lancashire coast. DJ Half Life only played tracks by groups signed to SKL Records, the label of another of their personalities, rock impresario Stephen Kirkby Lonsdale, and published by More Than Songs. 

As John Lemon, one half of the famous and successful song-writing partnership Lemon & Lime (they were also Barry Lime), they wrote a constant flow of song lyrics for the SKL roster of groups to perform. The hits kept coming. There was even talk of the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame.

In addition, as Stella North they acted as SKL publicist, writing sleeve liner notes, constantly drafting press releases, creating pen portraits of many of the group members in the various bands within the SKL empire, and even writing two full music biographies, one of Joe Cockermouth and the other of the pop combo Brian Blackpool & the Coasters.  

Finally, as Van Ordinaire, they were the visual artist for the constantly evolving and expanding roster of talent on SKL Records. They designed all the groups' LP covers as well as their tour posters and a variety of promotional materials, from badges to t-shirts. 

My psychiatrist friend showed me one sample, the latest LP from SKL's current most popular group.

Remarkably, patient 'B' couldn't sing (except out of tune) nor could they play a musical instrument, but that hadn't stopped them from concocting an alternative music industry reality within the confines of Lancaster Moor, the perpetuation of which imaginative feat took all of their waking hours and mental powers. 

I was impressed. I asked my psychiatrist friend if 'Patient B' understood they were mad (a clumsy question, I know), or if they might have been able to use some of their obvious talents in the music industry out in the real world. She said she didn't think so, on either count.

Here, my hearties, is a swashbuckling new poem (in progress) about compulsion... 

The Midnight Disease

Tossed for some time on a ship of dreams

I wake with a scream echoing in my head

as midnight chimes its dozen doomy bells.

'Pieces of fruit! Pieces of fruit!'  My parrot,

damnable bird, proposes a healthy option

as I walk the plank into insomnia, eyepatch

slipping, limbs shivering with nightmarish

sweat. I rip wide the fridge to plunder a tub

of rum and raisin Cornish ice-cream, salve

for yellow feverish thoughts. Xavier, pirate

cat, scrutinizes with a disdainful expression

as I gulp huge cooling spoonsful. Only then

can I settle to compulsive re-drawing of my

treasure map: the island to which you lured

me, the beach on which I was wrecked and

the shady grove where our hearts lie buried

marked, from memory, with a bright red X.

Every night the same, every night the same.

Thanks for reading, S ;-}

Read More

Compulsion

I’ve written before about sitting down at my desk faced with a blank A4 piece of paper, pencil and rubber and no idea what to write about. A common enough feeling for writers of all types. But until I started to look up stuff about compulsion I had never heard of the opposite of this concern.

Hypergraphia is a behavioural condition characterized by the intense desire to write or draw. Hypergraphia is not mere journaling, nor is it the careful crafting of prose. It is a flood, a torrent, a demand from the brain to put words to paper without pause. The writer may fill pages upon pages, notebooks upon notebooks, barely stopping to eat or sleep. The compulsion is not always cathartic; sometimes, it is simply uncontrollable.

Alice W. Flaherty

Alice W. Flaherty, a neurologist and author of 'The Midnight Disease: The Drive to Write, Writer’s Block, and the Creative Brain ', describes it as a condition driven by abnormal activity in the temporal lobe, often seen in epilepsy, mania, or intense grief.

The above was taken from an article in Psychology Today written by S. Fenella Das Gupta Ph.D., MFT. She goes on to explain that:

Hypergraphia exists on a spectrum. At one end, it is a deep, reflective practice, allowing words to give shape to emotions through a rhythmic pulse. For some, grief is turned into poetry, essays, and even books, giving purpose to their pain. In this way, hypergraphia becomes a bridge, not just for the writer, but for others who have suffered in silence. On the other, it is an overwhelming force, entangled with mental health struggles such as bipolar disorder, severe anxiety, and sometimes psychosis.

The article discusses the underlying problems in some depth and I don’t feel able to précis this enough to do the subject justice.

I would like to continue by looking at how Hypergraphia has affected people. For instance:

Hypergraphia was one of the central issues in the 1999 trial of Alvin Ridley for the imprisonment and murder of his wife Virginia Ridley who had died in bed of apparent suffocation and who had remained secluded in her home for 27 years in the small town of Ringgold, Georgia, United States. Her 10,000-page journal provided evidence that she had remained housebound of her own will and was instrumental in the acquittal of her husband.

Isaac Asimov

Isaac Asimov famously said "The only thing about myself that I consider to be severe enough to warrant psychoanalytic treatment is my compulsion to write ... That means that my idea of a pleasant time is to go up to my attic, sit at my electric typewriter (as I am doing right now), and bang away, watching the words take shape like magic before my eyes." He wrote or edited more than 500 books and an estimated 90,000 letters and postcards.

Other artistic figures reported to have been affected by hypergraphia include Fyodor Dostoevsky and Robert Burns. 'Alice in Wonderland ' author Lewis Carroll is also said to have had the condition having written more than 98,000 letters in various formats throughout his life. Some were written backward, in rebus, and in patterns, as with "The Mouse's Tale" in Alice.

Eleanor Alice Burford, whose pen-names included Jean Plaidy, Victoria Holt, Philippa Carr, Eleanor Burford, Elbur Ford, Kathleen Kellow, Anna Percival, and Ellalice Tate, described herself as a compulsive writer. Naomi Mitchison wrote over 90 books of historical and science fiction, travel writing and autobiography, has been described as a compulsive writer.

Compulsion

my Oxford English
defines the word as
an irresistible urge
to behave in a certain way

but what I need is
a word to describe
resistible urges
that I hardly ever resist

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More

Trial & Error

Not exactly trial & error on my part, but this is my third shot at today's Saturday blog. Take one was going to describe my ongoing attempts to painstakingly rebuild the complex decorative coving in Adele's front room ceiling. It had been hacked into by previous owners who had installed hardboard arches into alcoves. The restoration is nearly complete, though it has taken ages. You'd be bored.

Take two was inspired by my recent reading of 'The Amateur ' by Robert Littell. It's a literary cold war thriller about a backroom CIA cryptologist who turns rogue assassin to avenge the murder of his girlfriend by a red brigade faction in Europe, because the CIA refuse to act even though they know who the culprits are. The grieving cryptologist succeeds by trial and error, but that's only a fraction of the story. (You'll also find out how he discovered that Francis Bacon wrote the plays attributed to Shakespeare.) If you like cryptology, espionage and brilliant writing, I highly recommend it.

Which leaves us with take three, all about fat narcissus and the reflecting pool, which also happens to be the title of my latest poem. (We'll get to that in a while.)

Donald J Trump is well known for wanting to put his odious and overblown personal stamp on various institutions and symbols of American civic life. First of all there is the ballroom under construction at the White House. Then he tried (and failed) to get both New York's Penn Station and Washington's Dulles International Airport renamed after himself. He did however succeed in getting Palm Beach International Airport renamed President Donald J Trump International Airport. Emboldened, he then renamed the US Institute of Peace the Donald J Trump US Institute of Peace and temporarily added his name to the Kennedy Centre for Performing Arts, though that has since been removed by order of the courts.

Lincoln Memorial Reflecting Pool

His campaign of tasteless self-aggrandisement didn't go quite so far as renaming the Lincoln Memorial after himself, though he did have plans for redesigning the iconic Reflecting Pool to his taste ready for the recent 250th Anniversary of US Independence celebrations.

The Reflecting Pool, which holds four million gallons of water and was last renovated in 2012 at a cost of $34m, was not to Trump's liking. Specifically, he didn't approve of the grey stone it was constructed from. In April of this year he commissioned a transformation. "The original gray stone was never good. It never had the color people wanted, but now it’s going to have a great color.” (People? What people?) That colour was going to be "American flag blue", like a Mar-a-Lago swimming pool.

The administration initiated a 'fast-track'  no-bid project to to drain the pool, seal seams and coat the basin bottom in “American flag blue”. The plan envisaged a one-to-two-week timeline and costs were estimated at $1.5m-$2m. Contracts went to companies whose owners were neighbours of Trump in Florida and donors to his presidential re-election fund.

Work was delayed while legal challenges were made on the grounds of lack of competitive tendering and concerns about historic conservation, but the project ground on through May. Once the blue lining was in place, Trump's motorcade even drove through the drained, coated basis to show off the magnificent new hue. The Pool was then refilled  with another four million gallons of water.

It wasn't long, however, before problems began to show themselves. The blue liner began to peel and bubble. Algae started to bloom and cloud the water. Maintenance crews poured in hydrogen peroxide to try and clean up the problem. A nanobubble ozone technology water purification system was installed. The costs of the makeover climbed to $16m (eight times the original estimate) and the water was still scummy green.

Reflecting Pool after Trump's 'Renovation'

Trump was furious and pilloried mercilessly by his detractors. He blamed 'vandals' for the shocking state of the Reflecting Pool, even citing one individual, 67 year old former US Olympian canoeist David Hearn, as being a ringleader. Hearn was arrested and charged but pleaded not guilty.

As Independence Day celebrations approached, anti-algae and clean-up efforts continued apace but the problems persisted. In the event, soon after the July 4th celebrations, the Pool was emptied again and then it was revealed that the root cause was  “a rushed and flawed installation process, with repeated failures of the lining during the installation process, and extensive peeling of the lining throughout the Reflecting Pool”. (Read for that - a cost-cutting project with inadequate materials and sub-par contractors.) The government conceded that the damage was the result of a botched installation and not vandalism as initially represented by the interior department. 

It is a huge embarrassment for the administration. The Reflecting Pool remains unfinished, the costs continue to rise, and attorneys for Hearn have said the government “owes Mr Hearn an apology” for falsely accusing him of criminal damage. As for Donald J Trump...

Trump plumbing the metaphorical depths

... here's that poem, based on a Greek myth, by way of Ovid, in which Narcissus fell in love with himself on seeing his reflection in a pool of water, giving us narcissism - a self-centred personality disorder, marked by grandiosity, excessive need for attention and admiration, and an impaired ability to empathize. I've subverted, obviously.

Fat Narcissus And The Reflecting Pool

Oi Ovid! Some modern metamorph this is.

See fat narcissus, more bloated ogre 

than handsome toga'd praetor, kneeling

by his scummy algae-covered pool, cursing

vandals or goths - he doesn't know

the difference, doesn't care - for a loss of face.

Of course the restoration

which was meant to glorify Trump

and the Nation on its big anniversary

was a dumb, cheapskate plan

given without tender to a bunch 

of his out of state cowboys, 

riding roughshod over all concerns,

executed without due diligence 

and ending in expensive disaster.

Yet all the orange buffoon can make out,

as his simple brain tries to plumb

the metaphorical depths 

of his repair gone wrong,

is that someone, not him, 

must have fucked up and yet

he's the one looking like a clown 

in the ripples of green scum.

It's been a giant cock-up for the Pres.

and it's being whispered 

in the corridors of the Capitol

by senators of a back-stabbing bent

that he's less Narcissus poeticus

and more Amorphophallus titanum, 

one of the smelliest plants on Earth -

also nicknamed the corpse flower.

Thanks for reading, keep resisting. S ;-)

Read More

Trial and Error

Trial and error is pretty much the basis for most forms of activity but as this is a site based around poetry let’s stick with the writing of a poem. I don’t know what the ratio of poets starting a new work on a computer screen or with a blank piece of paper, pencil and rubber are, but I’m of the latter persuasion. A4, Lamy mechanical 0.7 mm lead and rubber.

But, obviously, not a choice that could be made a hundred and more years ago, although I’ve just thought of typewriters. Surely not for poems?

Back to the subject. I reckon there are two methods of addressing trial and error. The first is by oneself and the second by an input from another’s perspective. With the presumption that one knows there is an error to be taken care of in the first place. Not necessarily the case.

I’m starting with Walt Whitman, one of my heroes, and his collection entitled ‘Leaves of Grass ’. He self published the first version in 1855 when it contained a mere twelve poems and then spent the rest of his life altering and expanding the collection until he died in 1892, when the collection contained over four hundred poems.

Among the poems in the early Leaves of Grass editions (albeit sometimes under different titles) were "Song of Myself", "Song of the Open Road", "I Sing the Body Electric", "Out of the Cradle Endlessly Rocking", and "Crossing Brooklyn Ferry". Later editions would contain Whitman's elegy to the assassinated President Abraham Lincoln, "When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom'd".

The only known extant manuscript page of the first edition of 'Leaves of Grass ' shows the trial and errors needed to get to this:

The pure contralto sings in the organloft.
The carpenter dresses his plank. . . the tongue of his foreplane whistles its wild ascending lisp,
The married and unmarried children ride home to their Thanksgiving dinner,
The pilot seizes the king-pin, he heaves down with a strong arm, . . .

Walt Whitman and Leaves of Grass revisions

For someone who looked for advice from someone else then it’s hard to escape from the influence of Ezra Pound on T S Eliot and the writing of The Wasteland.

He advised Eliot to cut the original draft of around eight hundred lines to 433 plus he told him to change the title from ‘He Do the Police in Different Voices ’ which came from a Dickens character in 'Our Mutual Friend ' who was noted for his ability to imitate the voices of the police in crime reports. Eliot thought it was brilliant. Pound insisted it was cut.

Here’s an image showing revisions made by Pound and Vivienne, Eliot’s first wife, to The Wasteland's  "On Margate Sands" stanza.

I can connect
Nothing with nothing.
(ll. 300–02)

revisions to Eliot's On Margate Sands stanza in The Wasteland

And in the note accompanying the information it states that "After straining one of his hands rowing while at graduate school, Eliot preferred to write by using a typewriter where possible".

Pound told him to chuck an entire opening section set in a Boston saloon with stuff like:

First we had a couple of feelers down at Tom’s place,
There was old Tom, boiled to the eyes, blind,

and start with this:

I. The Burial of the Dead

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.
Winter kept us warm, covering
Earth in forgetful snow, feeding
A little life with dried tubers.
Summer surprised us, coming over the Starnbergersee
With a shower of rain; we stopped in the colonnade,
And went on in sunlight, into the Hofgarten,
And drank coffee, and talked for an hour.
Bin gar keine Russin, stamm’ aus Litauen, echt deutsch.
And when we were children, staying at the archduke’s,
My cousin’s, he took me out on a sled,
And I was frightened. He said, Marie,
Marie, hold on tight. And down we went.
In the mountains, there you feel free.
I read, much of the night, and go south in the winter.

TS Eliot and Ezra Pound

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More

Abracadabra!

It's a mystical phrase, a magical incantation beloved of conjurers and illusionists the world over, but what is its true origin? Nobody actually knows. There are theories, claims and counter-claims, but nothing definitive. Let's look at a few possibilities.

There was a suggestion that it might derive from Aramaic (a Semitic language that originated in Syria and quickly spread to Mesopotamia, Levant, Sinai, Anatolia, the Caucasus, and Eastern Arabia), meaning "I create like the word" (אברא כדברא).However, that is refuted by Aramaic linguist Steve Caruso.

Claims have been made for it stemming from Greek, where ΑΒΓΔ (alpha-beta-gamma-delta) are the first four letters, or from Greek language Gnostic Christian bible texts, where Abraxas (Ἀβράξας) is a term for the great creator of the universe. There might be something in that.

Then there is the theory that it might stem from the Latin word abecadarius (itself derived from Greek), essentially meaning “alphabetical order,” in which case it might once have implied putting everything magically back in its correct place. Ingenious but contrived?

However, I think the likeliest source, based on sound alone, is Hebrew. Historian Don Skemer suggests that it might originate from the Hebrew phrase "ha brachah dabarah" (name of the blessed). I'll go with that, but feel free to take your pick.

What is certain is that it was an incantation with supposed magical properties. The first accredited appearance of the word  abracadabra is in the writings of the second century AD Roman physician Serenus Sammonicus in his book 'Liber Medicinalis ', where it appears in connection with treatments for fever (most likely malaria). He prescribed the wearing of an amulet with the word written as an inverted triangle (see below), to ward off the sickness - and by extension, many other afflictions, palsies and plagues.

Quite how abracadabra came to be used by magicians is as shrouded in mystery as the origins of the word itself. They appear to have adopted it by the early 19th century, as an aid to their art, invoking abracadabra to magically assist them in their tricks, in much the same way that a feverous patient would once have called on it to assist them in their recovery.

For evidence, I cite a play by W. T. Moncrieff that was being staged at London's Olympic New Theatre in 1819. In act two, scene three of 'Rochester; or, King Charles the Second's Merry Days ' we find the following: 

"Well then, if you won’t tell our fortunes for us, suppose we tell you yours, our art is very potent - we've studied under Zoroaster and Agrippa! Hey presto pass! Abracadabra!—By the lines of your face, I can perceive... [etc.]"

Used by conjurors and magicians as an exclamation imparting supposed magical power, as when performing a trick, it has come more generally since to be used as an exclamation accompanying any seemingly remarkable feat or occurrence. So there you have it. 

And finally, I'm sure you're expecting a magic new poem. So.... "Abracadabra!" I create like the word...😉

Disillusionist

Wonder while you can.

Once you know it's sleight of hand

Innocence is damned.

Thanks for reading, Steve :-)

Read More

Lancashire Dead Good Poets' August Open Mic Night

Coming up on Thursday. Book now.

Everyone is welcome. You don't have to be from Lancashire! 

Steve ;-)

Read More

Abracadabra

"Abra-abracadabra
I wanna reach out and grab ya"

That damn song by the Steve Miller Band. An earworm that started immediately I saw the word for this week’s blog. In all sorts of ways, how did they get away with lyrics like that? It almost turned into a brainworm, if there is such a word, when I started to look up the origins of the song and how Eminem got involved in 2024.

But I went for a cup of tea and when I got back it was to the second century CE and the first known mention of the word in a book called Liber Medicinalis (sometimes known as De Medicina Praecepta Saluberrima) by Serenus Sammonicus, physician to the Roman emperor Caracalla, who in chapter 52 prescribed that malaria sufferers wear an amulet containing Abracadabra written in the form of a triangle that acted like a funnel and drove the sickness out of the body.

It’s considered unlikely that Sammonicus came up with the word himself and it could be from a phrase in Aramaic that means "I create like the word". The historian Don Skemer suggests that it might originate from the Hebrew phrase ha brachah dabarah (name of the blessed), said to be a magical phrase. There are quite a few other theories as to the word’s origin however, according to the Oxford English Dictionary, ‘no documentation has been found to support any of the various conjectures’.

Abracadabra was still used as a cure into the 18th century, for there is a book by Daniel Defoe entitled 'Journal of the Plague Year', which lamented the use of such charms:

People deceiv’d; and this was in wearing Charms, Philters, Exorcisms, Amulets, and I know not what Preparations, to fortify the Body with them against the Plague; as if the Plague was but a kind of a Possession of an evil Spirit; and that it was to be kept off with Crossings, Signs of the Zodiac, Papers tied up with so many Knots; and certain Words, or Figures written on them, as particularly the Word Abracadabra, form’d in Triangle, or Pyramid…

And nowadays, or at least from the early 19th century, the word has been used by magicians of the show business type. The exact origins are unclear, but the use of the word Abracadabra likely started in the early 1800s. Some early references point to the first theatrical usage in a performance in 1812 in Rochester, NY, by dramatist and author William Thomas Moncrieff. This was a stage play written by Moncrieff, where the word was used as an example of a word magicians would utter.

Apparently magicians misdirect audience attention in two basic ways. One leads the audience to look away for a fleeting moment, so that they don't detect some sleight or move.

The other approach re-frames the audience's perception, distracting them into thinking that an extraneous factor has much to do with the accomplishment of the feat when it really has no bearing on the effect at all. Such as shouting Abracadabra at a crucial moment in the trick.

I’ve been to quite a few magic performances over the years and it seems to me that the use of such words as abracadabra have died away. Contemporary professional magicians consider the word too cheesy or clichéd for serious performances. When the word does appear today, it is typically reserved for children's entertainment, self-aware comedy, or pop-culture references rather than serious modern magic acts.

I told my friend
that I was writing a poem
just for her
she asked what it was called
I said

ABRACADABRA

and she disappeared

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More

Abracadabra

 Abracadabra. I wish I had a magic wand to wave over everything that needs sorting out at home. When the time is right, it will all fall into place – I keep telling myself.

When I was eight, I really wanted a magic set. My birthday, then Christmas came and went, and still no magic set. I don’t know why I wanted one because I didn’t like magicians. David Nixon doing tricks didn’t appeal to me at all and I thought Tommy Cooper was being silly. What did I know at eight years old? I was invited to a school friend’s birthday party, which I was excited about. My mother bought a gift for me to take. A magic set. I think my reaction was to call my mum ‘a cheeky madam’. My feet didn’t touch the floor from one room into another and I was suitably chastised. Threatened with missing the party, I remained on my very best behaviour and when the day of the party arrived, I was pleased to be allowed to go.

I don’t think the lack of owning a magic set stunted me in any way. I’m still not a fan of magicians, though, regardless of their skill.

                              

I found this poem,

The Art of Illusion

Amazing crowds, just like that
Pulling rabbits from a hat
Producing coins from your ear
Making tigers disappear.
Doing card tricks for a laugh
Sawing assistants in half
It’s abracadabra presto,
The Magician’s Manifesto.

                                 Randy Freie



Here's one of mine, from a few years ago,

The Love Spell

She visited after midnight
And I listened to what she said.
Her voice was quiet and distant
For she was seven decades dead.
Her threadbare clothes were shades of black,
Her knitted shawl faded to grey.
Old eyes, soft in her wizened face
Still had a kind and gentle way.

I adored my great-great grandma,
Her ghost brought me no fear.
She always knew what I needed
And I loved to sense her so near.
She said, “I believe I can help
I know of a very old spell.
Come sit a-while beside me
And write it all down as I tell.

“Get some milk thistle and nettle,
Buttercup, daisy and clover.
Leave it to rest in rose water
Until the petals turn over.
Slowly stir in bramble honey,
A splash of dandelion wine
And sprinkle the seeds of the poppy
While you sing ‘Oh Let Him Be Mine’.”

“You want him so much,” she whispered.
“This spell will bring him along.
He will love you as you love him
And together you will belong.
Follow instructions exactly,
Choose every item with great care
And take your time, do not hurry,
Be of glad mind as you prepare.”

Her cold, hard fingers stroked my face
And I felt the warmth of her love.
Her presence drifted out of sight,
Carried floating somewhere above.
She’d died long before I was born,
Yet she was always there for me.
I am blessed to share the blood-line
Of a free spirit such as she.

The spell worked. We’ve been married forever and a day.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

Read More

Birdspeed

Squawk. Vroom. What's the fastest bird in the world? 

That's not the lead in to a joke, by the way. And the answer is not the swift, for that doesn't even make the top five, despite its impressive maximum airspeed of 100 miles per hour (or 160km/h if you prefer). 

When it comes to  birdspeed , the accolade goes to the peregrine, a falcon which is capable of speeds in excess of an astonishing 240mph (or 385 km/h). That's faster than the quickest F1 racing car (233mph or 375 km/h) and only slightly slower than the WWII Hawker Hurricane, the first RAF plane to fly in excess of 300mph (480 km/h). Some physicists have calculated that theoretically the peregrine might be capable of even higher speeds at altitude, of up to 380mph (608 km/h). That's simply mind-boggling. 

As well as being the fastest bird, the peregrine (the falcon part is optional) is also the quickest of all animals on the planet. No wonder then that it was revered by the Ancient Egyptians as the god Horus.

a peregrine soaring

The peregrine (Falco peregrinus) is a raptor, or bird of prey. It is the second most widespread bird species on earth, being found everywhere except in the polar extremities and New Zealand. Before you ask, the most widespread bird is the pigeon - which is good news for the peregrine, because its diet consists almost exclusively of birds, and pigeon makes up the majority of its food, though it will also eat any other medium-sized birds it can get its claws on (waterfowl, game birds, seabirds, songbirds, waders, the lot).

The peregrine has a body length between 12 and 24 inches (34 to 58cm) and a wingspan from  29 to 47 inches (74 to 120cm). The male and female have similar markings and plumage but, as with many birds of prey, the peregrine displays marked sexual dimorphism in size, the female being up to 30% larger and heavier than the male. Peregrines can live for up to twenty years in the wild, though mortality rates are high in the first few years (50 to 75% of birds don't make it to two years old). 

As mentioned, the peregrine subsists mainly on other birds. It catches most of its prey on the wing, which is where its diving skills and incredible airspeed come in. It will hover above and then swoop.  With a force of up to 25g acting on its little body, it's amazing it doesn't black out or get shredded by the buffeting air as it descends. It clips its prey in one wing, to minimise the force of impact.

a peregrine diving

The fact that it remains intact is down to its incredible aerodynamic efficiency, its very powerful beak and the streamlined shape it maintains in the dive. Its nostrils are protected by small bony tubercles which guide the powerful airflow away from the intakes, enabling it to breathe more easily by reducing the change in air pressure. In addition, it uses a third eyelid to spread tears and clear debris from the eyes while maintaining vision. And the peregrine has a flicker fusion frequency of 129 Hz (cycles per second), which is very fast for a bird of its size, and much faster than mammals. All of which makes it the perfect hunting bird. And it is no coincidence that the most modern American stealth fighter plane mimics the peregrine's aerodynamic lines. The B-2 Spirit has an airspeed of 628mph (1010 km/h)

American B-2 'Spirit' stealth fighter

Just for the sake of completeness, the other four birds that have recorded a faster airspeed than the swift are the saker falcon, golden eagle, grey-headed albatross and the gyrfalcon. But bear in mind that all of the above achieve that remarkable velocity while diving. The record for the fastest confirmed level flight by a bird is 69.3 mph (111.5 km/h) and that is held by the common swift.

If you want to read a poem about a falcon, I refer you to Gerard Manley Hopkins' brilliant 'The Windhover', though the "dapple-dawn-drawn Falcon" of his poem was actually a kestrel. 

My new poem takes an altogether different approach to the week's theme, and it comes with the usual caveat about it being a first draft/work in progress. It's a narrative poem based on a true event, the night I didn't get to see Josef K's London debut at a Camden music venue...

Birdspeed

Dim lights,  black walls,  a DJ in thrall

to the high water mark of sixties jangle

as prologue to the new sound  in  town.

There's a buzz in the club for these four

Scottish lads and I stand, beer in hand,

when one of their tribe, by the sound of

her slurred brogue,  engages me in talk

about how your boots stick to this floor 

and do I have their album? Do I like it?

She says how great they are live, more

potent in  person, loud,  raw, sexy, and

poised to conquer. I might smile at her

monologue, cannot recall later if I gave

any  other  signs of encouragement, but

suddenly  I'm  pinned to the wall as she

presses her body up against mine hands

either side of my face kissing, with her

tongue probing my mouth. I'm shocked.

Is this Scottish for seduction? She's not

unattractive, but that's not the point. I'm 

locked in an embrace with someone I've 

only just met, don't even know her name 

yet and it feels presumptuous, predatory,

feral, as if I've been swooped upon from a

great height by a bright-eyed bird of prey

and it's not at all a turn on, I can tell you.

I squirm out of her clutches, mutter about

needing to do something and head for the

gents, buy time buying condoms, think...

She'll have eyes on the door for sure and

though I've never done so before, out by

the window seems the best bet, a tight fit

but I drop into the yard, breathing hard on

cold night air, then up over a wall to slip 

off into the safety of Camden, taste of her

Southern Comfort still on my bruised lips.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

Read More

Speed

I’ve just checked Planefinder as there’s a plane going over Preston at the moment and I’ve looked to check where it’s going and how fast it’s going. It’s on its way to Toronto and it’s going at a speed of 487 kts. As in knots which is a unit of speed, equal to exactly one nautical mile (nm) per hour. Which doesn’t really help. Let me go back a bit.

I was a sucker for Long John Silver and voyages to far-away places like the Coral Island but there was a down side to these long journeys in real life because sailors could soon lose track of where they were and many died due to scurvy and lack of fresh water. Unless they knew their speed they could end up miles away from where they thought they were.

Camila Caballero, from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology explains thus:
‘With no landmarks to gauge their progress across the open sea, sailors couldn’t tell how fast or how far they were travelling,’ But when the nautical mile — 1.852 kilometres — was introduced in the 15th century, they had a handy standard against which to measure speed and created out of necessity the log, the world’s first maritime speedometer. ‘They used materials they had on hand, she explains. ‘A wedge-shaped piece of wood, a small glass timer, and a really long rope.’ The rope was knotted at intervals of 47 feet and 3 inches.

measuring a ship's speed

John Prescott, Cutty Sark volunteer, tells us:
To determine distance, early navigators recorded the ship’s speed regularly, once every half an hour or more. To do this, they dropped a measuring device known as a log into the sea from the stern of the ship. All ships, including Cutty Sark, used a similar method until more advanced mechanical instruments were introduced in the twentieth century.

The log is made up of a wooden, weighted, triangular drag device that stays stationary in the sea, known as the ‘ship’ or ‘chip’, and a line on a spool that is unwound as the ship sails away from the chip. The officer of the watch, with sandglass in hand, times the log as the line runs out and shouts ‘Belay!’ at a specified interval.

‘Hand the log!’ is then shouted and the sailors start hauling the log in. The line is divided by evenly spaced knots which act as markers. On hearing the order, the seaman watching at the stern checks how many knots in the rope have passed into the sea in the given time, thereby providing a reading of the ship’s speed in knots.

If the speed measured by logline is 9 knots and the wind has stayed constant in strength and direction for the half hour since the log was last streamed to measure the speed, then, as 1 knot is equal to 1 nm/hour, the distance travelled in that time is 4.5 nm.

constituent parts of the 'log'

Speed is equal to distance divided by time. If you know the distance travelled (by measuring the amount of logline that has been dropped into the sea) and the time elapsed (from the officer of the watch’s sandglass), the calculation is relatively easy.

The top recorded speed of Cutty Sark, for instance, was more than 17 knots a speed many power-driven merchant ships today cannot achieve (although remember, Cutty Sark needed a favourable and constant breeze to sail at that speed, such as the Trade winds).

To convert use this: 1 knot = 1.15078 miles per hour

Interestingly the knot is an almost universal term, with identical or similar sounding words in many languages, such as knoten (German), nudo (Spanish) and notto (Japanese).

I do have a poem that mentions knots.

Au Revoir
(for Julie)

I’ve waited until
the tracker tells me
you’re over Moulin Huet Bay
09.27hrs
278.9 knots
32,520 feet
17,108 kilometres
to go home

but far too cloudy today
to see last Thursday
strolling its Bailiwick heart
down Ruettes Tranquilles
grateful for the shade
you gliding your hand
along moss ridden walls
telling me they’re capillaries
furred with curiosity
slowing us down

down to a Tea Room
that deserves its capital letters
where a tuna salad took you
less time to demolish
than a wave crashing on rocks
from our perfect view
of Renoir’s blues browns greens
and Guernsey’s sparse white clouds
without a single contrail
to break the spell.

First published in the French Literary Review, March 2019

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

Read More