I know, I know. The (mis)spelling is deliberate. Who would have guessed? Other bases having been covered, you're in for one more perversely oblique approach to the weekly theme, pivoted on a pun and bonkers as toffee-apples.
Light buoys primarily act as a navigational aid at night. They are usually anchored in shallow waters to warn of dangerous rocks , sunken wrecks, or to mark out channels to sail through in the dark. Originally the lights would literally have been flames (coal or wood in a floating brazier). These were superseded by candles, then battery-powered lamps and nowadays they are often solar-powered affairs.
The specialized Byzantine fireships known as dromons were manned and thus manoeuvrable, able to get up close to the enemy and then unleash 'Greek Fire' on the target via a flamethrower. The recipe for 'Greek Fire' was a closely guarded state secret but was believed to be composed of a mixture of pine resin, naphtha, quicklime, calcium phosphide and sulphur. It was heated and pressurized in containers on board the dromons and then delivered flaming using a siphon and funnel onto the target, adhering to and burning everything it touched - much like modern napalm. Unsurprisingly, it was a fearful and much feared weapon delivery system in the armoury of the Byzantine navy. I'll leave it there.
The derivation of flamboyant is the French flamboyer meaning to flame, to flash, to shine. Yes it gets applied as an adjective to anyone or anything "showy" (animals, architecture, clothes, Eurovision, flowers, influencers, models and popular music divas), but add a 'u' in the appropriate place and you get flambuoyant. Voila! I give you the light buoy. It floats as it shines as it warns. (I'm so pleased I never took that job in advertising.)
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| a light buoy ready for the night's work |
They are in practice (despite my humorous wordplay) the very antithesis of flamboyant, being plain and serviceable structures, but absolutely vital to safe shipping in tricky waters.
What's more, I can't even claim any credit for the contraction of the words flamboyant and buoyancy that result in flambuoyant. It's been a member of the urban dictionary for quite some time as: "a description of a body's tendency to float as a result of vivid or over-the-top mannerisms and/or swim apparel".
However, my meticulous research did lead me to the wonderful Pfeffer's Cuttlefish (sometimes actually called the Flamboyant Cuttlefish), which graces the warm waters off the northern coast of Australia.
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| the Eurovision of cuttlefish |
It's a tiny creature (the size of a coin) and a poor swimmer, preferring to move ungainly across the seabed, "like a dog in a wheelchair". Note well that it's also poisonous if eaten (even with chips and gravy).
To round out this Saturday's ramblings on things flambuoyant, mention must be made of those cunning Byzantines who from the 6th century onwards used fireships to devastating effect against the Turkish enemy in their naval wars in the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean. Over a thousand years before the English Navy tried sending unmanned flaming ships filled with explosives in amongst the boats of the Spanish Armada in an attempt to set the enemy fleet on fire (a plan which failed to succeed, by the way), the Byzantine navy had perfected the art of using fire, that gift of the gods, at sea.
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| temporary like Prometheus |
To conclude, another work-in-progress from the imaginarium. Make of it what you will. I'll take it to the Blackpool & Fylde Stanza group for their considered input.
Greek Fire
Dona Ferentes in a different age
might have found fame as a culinary sage:
How to roast a whole bull on the shore,
Mouth-watering meals for Moors,
Sarcen pie with village greens,
Ambrosia pudding for vestal teens
or 101 things you can cover in honey, but
there were no Saturday Celebrity TV Cooks
and no Sunday Supplement recipe books
(the printing-press was not invented yet),
so even if being a woman and of mixed blood
and a Spanish witch hadn't killed her career
before it was born, she would have struggled
to make a name for herself, plus
her best recipe, the one that might have
earned a wage, was top-secret by Order
of The Byzantine State, known only to a few
on a strictly need-to-know basis, meaning she
got little credit in her lifetime and died,
dark tar in her soul, a disregarded Danaan
dowager in a cypress grove grave, though
the fearful sticky sauce the Dona devised
for fireships to spray on their adversaries,
frittering Arabs and Turks on the middle sea
from Carthage to Canaan, stood satisfaction
of sorts, vengeance in perpetuity for the ire
she nursed against those who razed homes,
slaughtered parents, stole childhoods, worse.
Thanks for reading, S ;-)