Rabbie Burns, George Bush, and Church Bells

As it was the 250^th anniversary of Rabbie Burns’ birthday last Sunday, I thought I would give the great man a mention in my ramblings. Having been taught in Scottish schools in the 50s and 60s, I was one of those unfortunates who weren’t given lessons in Scottish history, literature, or culture –we were only colonists in this great British Empire after all, and should be indoctrinated in all things English.

The Scottish media carried innumerable stories about the Bard last week, and all that coverage reminded me of a story I’d heard back in 2005. The G8 Summit was being held in Gleneagles, Scotland, and George W. Bush, quite a man with words himself, went to visit patients in a nearby hospital. In one of the wards, he went round greeting the patients, asked them how they were getting on etc, and was answered by each one with such snippets as:-

“Fair fa your honest sonsie face, Great chieftain o the puddin race”, “Some hae meat an canna eat, And some wad eat that want it, But we hae meat an we can eat, So let the Lord be thankit.”, and “Wee sleekit, cowerin, timorous beasty”.

What he thought of it all was not mentioned, but I do know that he didn’t go around the White House saying that he’d been to the Serious Burns Unit.

Back to the present time, or maybe not. It was reported a couple of days ago that the timepiece at All Saints Church in Sudbury, Suffolk, which is nearly 130-years-old, recently began striking 13 times. George Orwell's famous parable on fascism and the erosion of freedom famously begins, of course, with Big Brother time striking 13. Could this be a sign of what our government is doing nowadays, with any privacy we had slowly being eroded?

Anyway, the report continues, “Neither the vicar or clock builders can get to the bottom of the inauspicious chime.” Well, I can understand the vicar trying to sort things, but the clock builders? I’m not sure that it would be safe for them to climb up there, given the amount of time that they seem to have been drawing their Old Age Pensions.

Coffee, Ghosts, Bush, and Birds

After a year of being told that just about everything that we eat is bad for us, I see that coffee has now been added to the list of dangerous substances. A new study suggests that people who take in the caffeine equivalent of three cups of brewed coffee (or seven cups of instant) are more likely to hallucinate. I usually have about twenty cups of instant a day, so, assuming that I’m supposed to see a ghost, or something similar, after eight cups, I should be in contact with two and a half of those spectres per day. I’ve already had my daily chat with two of them, and I think I saw the half disappearing into a bedroom — I’m not sure if it was the upper or lower half, as I was so confused. Of course, maybe this study sheds some light on what George W. Bush was drinking when he saw the weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.

No hallucinations with my next gripe, though. A year last summer, I painted my garden wall coping slabs a nice brick red colour, and by the time May 2008 had arrived, they were in a mess with bird droppings of a white hue. I thought that this could easily be remedied, so last summer I was in Picasso mode again, and painted them white. However, they are in a mess again, this time with mostly black deposits. I feed those birds really well throughout the winter, and this is how they repay me! In spite of that, I am very fond of our feathered friends, and there is no truth in the rumour that I’m about to buy a couple of snakes in order to solve the problem, as happened on an island in the western Pacific. 

In the mid-1940s, the brown tree snake was accidentally introduced to what was then snake-free Guam. This snake became Guam's new top predator and ate its way through a buffet of the island's bird community. As a result, 10 of the island's 12 forest bird species are now extinct on Guam and the two surviving forest bird species remain only in tiny, localized populations where snakes are controlled. Guam's now silent forests currently hold about 13,000 snakes per square mile.

I vaguely recall that there are sayings about "a bird in the hand is worth two in the Bush", and "a snake in the grass", but I cannot seem to make a connection at the moment. Confusion reigns – I really do have to cut down on the caffeine.