Reflect

 

Our summer didn’t turn out as we hoped. One thing after another put obstacles in the way of our plans, but we were fortunate enough to salvage one pre-booked break away by changing location. We’ve had plenty of time to reflect on the situations we’ve faced, and looking ahead, think about what to do next. We’ll take what comes and do our best to keep a positive outlook.

Saturday put a smile on my face. It wasn’t just Blackpool F.C.’s 4-0 win placing them at the top of the League One table, it was the return and involvement of the player in the number 12 shirt, Jerry Yates. His signature song, ‘Spirit in the Sky’ never sounded better. If you’re reading this, Jerry, - you never know – welcome home.

Sylvia Plath’s only novel, The Bell Jar stayed untouched on my ‘awaiting reading’ shelf for months before I decided it was time. Things I’d read about her unnerved me and yet I felt compelled to read her work. I wanted to know. I wanted to understand and reflect on the complexities of her life. I found it to be a great read. I took it slowly, to process carefully and often stopped reading to reflect on what she, or her main character, Esther Greenwood was doing. I found this poem,

Mirror

I am silver and exact. I have no preconceptions.
Whatever I see I swallow immediately
Just as it is, unmisted by love or dislike.
I am not cruel, only truthful,
The eye of a little god, four-cornered.
Most of the time I meditate on the opposite wall.
It is pink, with speckles. I have looked at it so long
I think it is part of my heart. But it flickers.
Faces and darkness separate us over and over.

Now I am a lake. A woman bends over me,
Searching my reaches for what she really is.
Then she turns to those liars, the candles or the moon.
I see her back, and reflect it faithfully.
She rewards me with tears and an agitation of hands.
I am important to her. She comes and goes.
Each morning it is her face that replaces the darkness.
In me she has drowned a young girl, and in me an old woman
Rises toward her day after day, like a terrible fish.

Sylvia Plath (1932 – 1963)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Lost In Translation

Some (on the right, in the fossil fuel lobbies, among the climate catastrophe deniers and net zero detractors) are advocating heavily for the UK to increase rates of extraction of oil and gas from our offshore North Sea fields, by honouring two licences currently subject to litigation and by approving new licences.

They claim it will (a) bring down the price of fuel to UK consumers, (b) make us less reliant on imports of oil and gas, (c) provide revenue to the exchequer, (d) create jobs and (e) that as everybody else continues to drill anyway, why shouldn't we, "in the national interest".

Leaving aside that such a move would run contrary to both the legally binding Climate Change Act (2008) and the current government's manifesto, there are several compelling reasons for not doing so, but they mostly get conveniently lost in translation, so let me set the record straight.

this leads...

Even giving the go-ahead for the already approved Rosebank oil and gas field near the Shetland Islands and the Jackdaw gas field near Aberdeen won't actually achieve objectives (a), (b) and (c) for the following reasons:

Rosebank contains very little gas: it is 90% heavy crude oil. UK refineries are not equipped to refine it, and as such, it is not suitable for domestic use. It would be loaded onto tankers and sold by the fuel companies on international markets at global market prices to the highest bidder. Extracting more of it would not change the international cost of oil and gas. It would not heat British homes, fuel British industry, or lower British bills. Activating Rosebank would actually increase the UK's CO2 emissions by some 10% per year!

What is more, the primary financial beneficiaries of proceeding with Rosebank would be its owners, not the exchequer or UK taxpayers. Rosebank is owned jointly by Shell and Equinor (80%) and Ithaca Energy (20%). Based on a long-term average oil price of $70 per barrel, the field's owners stand to earn £1.5 billion in profit. UK taxpayers, by contrast, would shoulder over 80% of Rosebank's development costs through tax relief. Shell and Equinor effectively pay no tax in the UK because it is offset by the tax relief they receive, and Equinor pays tax in Norway, to that country's benefit.

Jackdaw has gas, probably enough to supply a mere 2% of UK requirements up to 2036. It would be relatively straightforward to connect that platform to the UK pipeline network. However, the gas beneath Jackdaw is CO2 dense and drilling it could produce 35.8m tonnes of carbon over its 10-year lifetime, the equivalent of 90% of Scotland's emissions for 2023. As for new jobs created, the estimate is 15 permanent positions (yes 15). 

Shell owns Jackdaw, so the financial caveats attached to Rosebank largely apply to Jackdaw as well. The fuel company and its shareholders will be the prime beneficiaries and any potential revenue to the UK exchequer will be offset by the tax relief the government affords Shell (which paid zero tax in the UK last tax year).

Those are the facts which have been roundly ignored in the pronouncements and soundbites of Tory and Reform politicians advocating a "drill, baby, drill" policy in recent months.

Actually, the best way to achieve the goals of (a), (b), (c) and (d) is by steadfastly opposing option (e) and by accelerating our endeavours to switch over to renewable energy and achieve net zero as fast as possible. Britain has led the way since 2008. Our best hope is to continue to do so.

The alternative is more of what we have seen this summer.

...to this

“As flies to wanton boys are we to the gods; They kill us for their sport.” (King Lear IV:I:37–38)

Here's my latest, a work-in-progress:

Bad Gods And Greedy Fuels

If ever the saga of our hellish end-of- times 

gets uncovered by some intrepid voyagers 

from across the sea of stars, 

as they disinter our history from earth's silent, 

cinderous shell, wondering what catastrophe 

befell so mighty a civilised world, will they 

struggle to believe they've translated aright, 

that we brought it all on ourselves? 

That bad gods and greedy fuels conspired

like wanton boys to wreck the very paradise

they enjoyed, the ecosphere that sustained them?

How could such crass stupidity, such lack 

of care, of empathy play out on a planet 

once so beautiful and bountiful, now pocked

with burnt out cities and the ashen ghosts

of monstrous fallen data temples dedicated

to Artifice? How could they give reality the slip?

And why did nobody try harder to stop them?

Was it a collective death wish?

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Lost in Translation

Robert Frost is usually credited for the quote that ‘Poetry is what gets lost in translation.’ But however good and whatever is translated in poetry or prose then what is also usually lost is the name of the person who translates the work. Which seems unfair as it is a highly skilled art and profession which I know little about.

All of Georges Simenon's Maigret works have been fully translated into English. Jean Stewart translated them through the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. 

In 2013 Penguin translated the full series but included no information whatsoever about the translators, such as Linda Asher, Anthea Bell, or Siân Reynolds. They are credited on the title page, but otherwise completely anonymous.

However, there are two organisations in the UK that do represent the profession.

The Institute of Translation and Interpreting (ITI) is a professional association representing translators, interpreters and language services businesses. ITI is affiliated with the International Federation of Translators (FIT). As the principal professional association of translators and interpreters it has become one of the primary sources of information on translation and interpreting to government, industry, the media and the public.

The Chartered Institute of Linguists (CIOL) is the UK's not-for-profit royal charter body for languages and linguists. They support linguists in their careers and lives. They do have a Diploma in Translation, a Master's-level qualification for work as a translator and a Certificate in Translation a Degree-level qualification for translation.

The International Association of Professional Translators and Interpreters (IAPTI) is an international professional association of translators and interpreters based in Argentina. I mention this as on its website there is an article by Marie Lebert entitled ‘60 translators who changed the world’. Well worth a look.

The Bukhman International Booker Prize, which is awarded annually, celebrates the best works of long-form fiction or collections of short stories translated into English and published in the UK and/or Ireland.  It recognises the vital work of translators, with the £100,000 prize money divided equally between authors and translators. In addition, shortlisted authors and translators each receive £2,500. This year ‘Taiwan Travelogue’ by Yáng Shuāng-zǐ, translated by Lin King, was announced as the winner.

In February of this year The Society of Authors announced the following:

‘Tonight we shine the spotlight on the often “invisible” creativity of translators, at a ceremony announcing the winners of our 2025 Translation Prizes.

Nine literary translators and one editor will be named winners at the event at the British Library, with more than £32,000 in prize money shared among the winners and runners-up. The prizes celebrate outstanding translations of prose, poetry and non-fiction, from languages from around the globe and across a range of genres.’

But I can only judge by how my reading has been affected by a translated book. I have no idea if they follow the original or read as well in English but I have loved them when reading. These are a few of my favourites.

'The Name of the Rose' by Italian author Umberto Eco was translated into English by William Weaver in 1983.

'The Shadow of the Wind' by Carlos Ruiz Zafón was published in 2004 and translated by Lucia Graves.

The Icelandic crime novel 'Jar City' by Arnaldur Indriðason was translated into English by Bernard Scudder.

When I was working at Butlins back in about 1970 the bloke in the next staff chalet said ‘You like reading, don’t you? Try this.’ It was a Penguin Modern European Poets copy of 'Rilke Selected Poems'. 3/6. Translated by J.B. Leishman. 

I was knocked out by it at the time. But I’m mentioning it now to show how there is no one way to translate a piece of work. I’m taking the first verse of Autumn Day from that book translated by J. B. Leishman and showing other translations.

Autumn Day

Lord, it is time. The summer was so great.
Impose upon the sundials now your shadows
and round the meadows let the winds rotate.
                                                  J. B. Leishman

Lord: it is time. The summer was immense.
Lay your shadow on the sundials
and let loose the wind in the fields.
                                                  Galway Kinnell, Hannah Liebmann

Lord: it is time. The huge summer has gone by.
Now overlap the sundials with your shadows,
and on the meadows let the wind go free.
                                                  Stephen Mitchell

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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DNA

I wonder if the name Colin Pitchfork means anything to anyone reading my DNA blog. The possible early release from prison of violent offenders is a hot topic at the moment and although Pitchfork (now aged 66) was originally sentenced to imprisonment for 30 years in 1988, he is still behind bars 38 years after his conviction, and was last denied parole by a review board in 2025.

His crimes? The rape and murder of two schoolgirls, Lynda Mann and Dawn Ashworth, in Leicestershire in the 1980s, plus two other counts of sexual assault on young women, and an attempt to pervert the course of justice.

The real significance of his case? It was the first ever conviction secured on the basis of DNA evidence.

Colin Pitchfork

He nearly got away with it, for when the police arranged for 9,000 men in the locality between the ages of 16 and 34 to report in and give blood for DNA sampling, he sent along a friend of his with a fake passport purporting to be Pitchfork, a ruse that was only discovered after an overheard conversation in a pub. When Pitchfork finally provided a sample, his DNA was a match for that found on both murdered schoolgirls. Professor (now Sir) Alex Jeffreys of Leicester University was the scientist who helped the police with that investigation and whose pioneering work on techniques for genetic fingerprinting and DNA profiling became standard practice worldwide.

I was intrigued by a book review in New Scientist a couple of months ago. That book is 'The Secrets of Our DNA ' by Turi King. (It's currently on order.) One anecdote in particular intrigued me, so I will share it in full with you:

"In 1993, a 62-year-old woman in Idar-Oberstein in Germany was found strangled. DNA on a coffee cup suggested that two people were present besides the victim, and that one of the apparent killers was a woman. In 2001, the suspected female murderer's DNA turned up again in Germany, this time on the body of a 61-year-old man in Freiburg. Then her DNA started appearing at crime scenes in Austria and France as well.

"In 2007, the mysterious woman hit the headlines when two police officers were shot, one fatally, in their car in the German city of Heilbronn, and her DNA was found in the back seat. This sparked a major hunt for the 'Phantom of Heilbronn' as she became known. But the phantom proved elusive, despite being linked to forty-one crimes via her DNA. In some cases, her accomplices were caught, but they denied that any woman was involved. Police started to consider the possibility that the criminal was transgender.

swabbing for human DNA

"It wasn't until 2009 that the 'Phantom of Heilbronn' was finally identified - as a woman who worked in a factory that made swabs for DNA testing! Contamination in the production process had been the problem and the police had wasted years on the trail of a non-existent killer. The 'Phantom of Heilbronn' really was a phantom."

While the majority of convictions based on DNA are sound, the example above and a few notable miscarriages of justice mean that DNA 'evidence' has to be interpreted very carefully, as crime scenes are often complex and the process of collecting materials for DNA profiling can give rise to cross-contamination, the unintentional transference of DNA evidence from one item or location to another.  

DNA is omnipresent in the animal world. There is no living, reproducing organism that doesn't have DNA as the genome. In fact all animals share some DNA with human beings - probably dating back to the origins of animal life on earth in the hot vents of underwater volcanoes in the planet's oceans.

We know there were various versions of human beings (hominins) back along our evolutionary road, maybe as many as thirteen different types over eight million years since we diverged from chimpanzees (whose DNA is 98.4% identical to human DNA). Nowadays only one exists, Homo sapiens. We know about our ancestors mainly thanks to fossil remains and DNA analysis.

There are also only two types of alligators alive today of the ten species that are known to have existed, from fossil remains and DNA analysis, and one of those, the Chinese alligator, is on the critically endangered list. In the wild, it lives only in about a 5km square region of freshwater ponds in the Anhui province of south-western China. Its close cousin, the American alligator is in much better shape, being widespread though the freshwater wetlands of the southern United States. It is thought that alligators originated in North America some 37 million years ago and that the Chinese branch migrated to Asia across the Bering land bridge some 20 million years ago. They are, of course, the template for the Chinese Dragon of myth and legend.

swabbing for alligator DNA

Why did I want to introduce alligators into this blog about DNA? It's not as though they kill people and need tracking down. That's much more in the nature of crocodiles, who are vicious predators. Alligators by contrast are quite shy and peaceable creatures. No, I had a poem about alligators and thought I might as well use it here masquerading as a DNA piece.

Alligators

There are two types of alligators.

They are known as

type 1 alligators and type 2 alligators

and it is perfectly possible 

to catch either but not both of them.

Type 1 alligators can quite often

be caught during pregnancy

or at birth. DNA might suggest 

a pre-disposition for doing so,

and for type 1 alligators

life is fraught  from an early age

which seems particularly unfair.

For type 2 alligators, generally

caught later in life 

most often as a result of being 

somewhat fat and lazy

and having a sweet tooth

despite the warnings,

it ought to be an avoidable fate.

As a result of being caught,

both type 1 and type 2 alligators

are awkward customers

prone to spiky, insulting

and moody  behaviour and need

careful handling to keep them

from becoming a threat to life.

Wait. No. What am I saying?

Diabetes, Not Alligators.

That makes way more sense.

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Lancashire Dead Good Poets' September Open Mic Night

Here's notice of our September open mic night on zoom...

Everyone is welcome - to read and/or listen in. It's free and early booking is advised. To secure a slot, email: deadgoodpoets@hotmaul.co.uk

Steve ;-)

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DNA

Free flowing, attractive and attacking football is in the DNA of Birmingham City FC. 

There are quite a few inaccuracies in that statement. But not to worry as the term DNA has now been used as a marketing gimmick or metaphorical shorthand for a few years now.

Let’s get the basic bits out of the way:

DNA stands for Deoxyribonucleic acid and it is the only molecule capable of reproducing itself. DNA is present in almost all living cells of all living things. Only DNA, and no other molecule, carries the ability to copy and then pass heritable information to subsequent generations.

The famous double helix structure consists of two strands of DNA combining a bit like a spiral staircase. Sugars and phosphates make up the sides and base pairs make up the middle or rungs. Base pairs are the compounds adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G) and thymine (T). Crucially, adenine (A) pairs only with thymine (T), and cytosine (C) only pairs with guanine (G). Only the pairs of either A:T or C:G fit as rungs between the two siderails.

The difference between human DNA and tomato DNA is the sequence of DNA base pairs A, T, C, and G. A common analogy used in introductions to this subject is that two different recipes in an English language cookbook may use the same 26 letters to make words but differ in the exact sequence of those same 26 letters, resulting in different recipes.

The differences, although small, can have dramatic consequences. Your DNA sequence determines your basic blood type (A, B, AB, or O), hair and eye colour, whether your earlobes dangle, and whether you can roll your tongue.

But where to go after that very brief overview? Just a couple of weeks ago I was reading this by Alison George in the New Scientist:

Ancient human DNA found on cave art for the first time. DNA from ancient humans has been found on a prehistoric cave painting and on cave walls, demonstrating the potential to one day identify individual artists and resolve the debate over Neanderthals' artistic abilities. She was writing about samples from 5,000 to 17,000 years ago.

Police now use DNA to identify long forgotten cold cases but the first use of DNA in an ongoing investigation occurred in Britain in 1986. Professor Alec Jeffreys was assisting the British police in solving two separate rape-murders and was able to prove that the man arrested was not guilty.

Historians use DNA to identify the remains of lost soldiers, from WWI infantry missing in action at Vimy Ridge to King Richard III under a car park in Leicester.

The popularity of DNA is reflected in the rise of direct-to-consumer DNA testing. For a relatively small fee, several companies will conduct a DNA analysis from the cells in your cheek swab or spit sample. However, these DNA tests are not 100 per cent accurate.

Molecular geneticists have learned not only how to read the information carried by a DNA strand, but also how to edit or supplement it. These innovations allow development of a number of commercial products such as insulin and cheese.

Much of the above was taken from an article on the BBC Science Forum by Dr Alan McHughen published on October 18, 2020.

I do feel there should be a bit of romance in DNA. This was written a few years ago.

Anniversary Road
(for the Horrocks family)

Back home
the kids probably think
you’re settling for tea
and a nice gateaux
in the boring café
of another boring gallery.

And if they were around
they’d be right,
mostly,
a touch of your fingers
hidden from a groan
of embarrassed teenagers.

But not this year
this aisle of months
leading away from silver
this is for you
twenty six years

and a letter from every one.

Amsterdam was holding hands
keeping out the cold
on the Keizersgracht Canal.
Bruges was kissing
under the tartan blanket
of a horse-drawn carriage.

Calais is a secret
that only two can share
arms linked by a window
a double helix in a single room
a bond that’s for life
discussing Dundee or Dresden.

First published in ‘away’, 2010.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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DNA - Who Am I?

 

DNA is the abbreviation of deoxyribonucleic acid.

I admit to getting out of my depth trying to research this. Science was never a strong point and even now, with an interest in the subject, I’m literally blinded by science. This description is what I found online, in terms I could understand,

“DNA is the special molecule inside your cells that holds the genetic code. This code tells your body how to grow, look and work. In shape, it looks like a twisted ladder called a double helix. The rungs of the ladder are made of four chemicals, Adenine, Thymine, Cytosine and Guanine. You get half of your DNA from each parent.”

It reads as if aimed at KS2 primary level children and it is as much as I think I need to know.

There is a saying, ‘It is a wise child that knows his own father’. It is in Homer’s Odyssey and also in William Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice. It means, as we know, ‘One can never be sure of one’s paternity’.

This was something in the back of my mind. Remarks were made when I was in my teens, but I didn’t pay much attention because I didn’t want to give any satisfaction to the person trying to get under my skin.

I’ve used Ancestry and similar online sites to help grow my family tree for a long time. It’s one of those things I dip in and out of, usually when something new grabs my interest. When Ancestry introduced DNA tests, I considered it for ages. What I’d kept in the back of my mind came into the forefront and I spent hours of ‘what if’ self-counselling. I didn’t apply straight away, but when the cost was reduced on a special offer, I decided to go ahead. The results didn’t throw up anything unexpected. Those remarks, intended to make me doubt the foundation of my existence, had no substance and up to now, no surprises.

I found a couple of poems on Poetry Soup,

A Dash of DNA

A dash of DNA decides
The colour of our eyes
And probably our hair and skin
And possibly our size.

Genetics, though, is just a part
Of who we grow to be,
For many other factors count,
Each one to some degree.

Our family life, our neighbourhood,
Our friends, religion, schools,
All help determine how we’ll use
Our inborn molecules.

We learn from our experience;
So much of it holds sway
That over all it counts more than
That dash of DNA

by Ilene Bauer


Finn’s Lament in Two Parts, Limerick

Finn boasted he was all Irish,
A DNA test he would relish.
When Danes showed up
He got lost in his cup
And said DNA was all rubbish.

Finn’s kids never did care
That they had bright blond hair,
But still he was wrought
At the very thought
That Danes were everywhere.

by Peter W Iversen


Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Compulsion

"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, the

shady grove wherein twin hearts lie buried,

marked, from memory, with a bright red X.

Every night the same, every night the same.

Thanks for reading, S ;-}

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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.

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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

for its stench of death.

Thanks for reading, keep resisting. S ;-)

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