Black and Red

At 08.20 hrs on the morning of 8th October 1952 in lifting fog the Night Sleeper bound for Euston from Perth thundered past three adverse signals and ploughed into the end of a local train stopped at the Up Express platform in Harrow and Wealdstone station. Minutes later a Northbound express struck the pile of debris, mounted the platform and took out the station foot-bridge. It was a mess:

Railway carriages were / are built to keep the rain out not trains and there is a hella stack of inertia in 700 tonnes of train travelling at 100km/hr. The carriages which adsorbed this energy were shattered if primarily wooden or crushed like a compacted coke-can if steel. The people inside were not restrained in anyway. At least the folk waiting on the platforms could dodge out of the way, although several of them were among the 112 who were killed and +300 injured.

There were many heroes but many reports singled out Lt Abbie Sweetman USAF [L holding a drip] - The Angel of Platform Six. She was part of a medical team from a nearby USAF air-base who arrived asap after the crash and started a triage station on one of the empty platforms. Triage is where competent people make decisions about [further] treatment. It is a key skill where there are numerous casualties. David Nott, the MSF surgeon, recognised that triage was as important as treatment. It takes somebody with blunted affect to keep calm and carry on rather than go all to pieces. Lt Sweetman administered morphine to those most clearly needing its relief but she also marked their foreheads with a clear red M with her lipstick before shipping the injured to hospital. She also tagged the untreated (and so in need of extra care and attention) with X and explained to the ambulance men what the glyphs meant.

It was a lesson to the English paramedics, who as lowly "ambulance drivers" were trained to scoop and run. Getting the injured to trained medical staff in hospital with expedition. They were empowered by the example of USAF effectives that they could also stay and play and make a difference.

Another the past is a foreign country story is that of 14 y.o. boy scout Gilbert Powell who heard the >!crash!< and jumped off the bus to school to see what he could do. Being small and agile, he was sent in under the pile of shattered railway stock to see if anyone was still alive in there! There was a different baseline for health and safety in 1952, not least because it was barely 10 years since the blitz when you couldn't wait for someone in authority to start digging your neighbours out of the rubble. Poor young Gilbert got roasted successively by his father, his mother and his headmaster for getting his uniform dirty and being late for school.

My Son The Railway Engineer would like to add that the disaster at Harrow and Wealdstone - the worst peacetime rail-crash in Britain - gave significant oomph to the roll out of AWS advance warning system. AWS is a nifty system for bringing the signals inside the drivers cab and making them audible. It works by electromagnetic induction from devices installed between that tracks which is picked up by detectors on the train.  For a variety of reasons SPAD [signal passed at danger] is still a problem but AWS internalization is a step in the right direction.

Me Da's bDay

introit

• Alone in the Alpine sun
• Nick Gardner at 81 - still bagging Munros
• Disguised Toast, a Twitch-streamer comes clean on his income
• Emilie Graslie [R] is back . . . back in 2013 
• 97 other women in science
• Bike vigilante cops a perp
• Ellis Island [prev] did not mangle any immigrant names
• Finding Fukue primary school besties lost touch

Requiem for Zollies

 I confess that I have only the haziest idea where Solomon Islands, the country, is. South Pacific but nearer to New Guinea? Ethnically Melanesian rather than Polynesian? Guadalcanal? Yes to all. And it's not Arthur Grimble's Pattern of Islands - that's Kiribati. Mount Popomanaseu on Guadalcanal, is 2,310m high so less at risk from climate change and The Ice-shelf Apocalypse than  the whole island on Ireland. But Guadalcanal is only the biggest, fattest and most populous of the 1,000 islands that string out across the Ocean between Bougainville [NW] and Vanuatu [SE]. Stats and Map.

I am sorry to report that, in my lifetime, 5 of these tropical paradises have been wiped off the map except in the memory of the last people to have a clam-bake on the islands. They are part of a barrier reef along the North coast of Santa Isabelrom the West:

Name	1947	2014	ID
Kale	4.9 ha	nul	16
Rapita	4.6 ha	nix	14
Kakatina	1.5 ha	zonders	12
Zollies	1.2 ha	nada	2
Rehana	3.8 ha	zero	1

These findings are the headline of a 2016 paper Interactions between sea-level rise and wave exposure on reef island dynamics in the Solomon Islands by Albert et al. Well that's how the Guardian treated the news in May of that year. 

But the divil is in the detail. When you zoom into Figure 2c [L], you get the explanatory "Note: Kale Island was completely displaced by 2014". Kale, much battered by storms and greatly reduced in size, is still keeping its nose above the water. I guess that there is not a grain of sand left dry at low tide that was present above the tide-line in 1947, but surely its the same island by any sensible definition. It's the same with your pointy finger: every molecule in every phalange has been replaced since you stopped growing. The calcium phosphate matrix is in a state of dynamic equilibrium [TMI prev] with the circulatory system because calcium is essential for muscle and nerve function. Whatever about the detail, this is not looking good: Zollies is a straw in the wind for a lot of low lying archipelago nations. But remember that Amsterdam, Bristol, Cork, Dublin are all at sea level and will need to stockpile sand-bags. Did someone mention sand? That's disappearing into concrete at an alarming rate.

Lots more islands

Feathers and stones

For my birthday, I was given Thin Places by Kerri ní Dochartaigh to read because it is about landscape and language. I really should have slowed down and started with more care and attention because I found myself giving a judgmental <tsk> when the word unimaginable was used 3 times in the first 10 pages. That's a lazy word, I thought with my copy-editor's hat on. But ní Dochartaigh was quite right: for comfortable middle-class patriarchal me, the terrors meted out upon a younger Kerri in Derry during the twilight of the last century are indeed unimaginable. At the age of 11, petrol bombs were pegged through her bedroom window and her family fled in the night leaving everything behind. There was no obvious safe-haven because one parent was catholic the other protestant. The family fractured under the pressure and the rump of it left Derry for the rural idyll of integrated and inclusive Ballykelly. At the age 16, Kerri's boy friend was murdered and buried in a shallow grave in the woods. Too late, the Good Friday agreement which had been signed off a year earlier but not implemented until 7 months later.

No snowflake, she, Kerri battled on through school [recurrent chickenpox during her A-Level exams!] and secured a place in Trinity College Dublin vowing never to return to Derry. Sojourns of exile in Edinburgh and Bristol followed: consuming her 20s pursued by the Black Dog and unresolved, indeed undiagnosed, denied,  PTSD. Her restless, disfigured soul sought solace in Thin Places - where the spirit world was separated from quotidian 'reality' by shell of a robin's egg. She had been introduced to such places in Donegal by her beloved slightly off-kilter grandfather who was both Seanathar and Seanachaí. Wherever she washed up for college or work, Kerri made time to roam, not always alone, in wild places where curlews uttered their plaintive cry and waves smashed against the cliffbase.

For a city-girl she learned to pay attention to moths and dragonflies and frogs. And often she'd pick a sprig of gorse, a perfick stone or a bright feather from moor or foreshore to hold the memory of a flaming sunset or a buffeting wild-water swim. Sometimes these found treasures would travel with her on the next stage of her not-Derry journey; sometimes they became another entry in the catalogue of loss.

Now here's the thing; some pretty other-worldly events have impinged on Kerri ní Dochartaigh's life. I found myself asking if that was just because she was paying attention and so opened the doors of perception or if her teetering about on Thin Places somehow opened a crack in the fabric of the universe. I have two daughters. One of them strides through the world making her way to purchase cheese and return home to cook: she often stops to talk to the homeless guy on the bridge between her quayside home and The English Market, where she chats away to her friends the cheese-mongers. Otherwise she walks invisible. Her sister, OTOH, will frequently be asked for directions to the station; or at work be a magnet for questions about the catalogue, Excel, tomorrow's weather or the favorite for the 2:30 at Newmarket. Is there something in her demeanor which says bother me?

Thin Places is poetry, and it's not always clear to this reader if crows, foxes or butterflies are out there or in her troubled mind; but she seems to attract 'wild' animals in the way that Sts Francis and Clare did in 12thC Italy. There's one cathartic incident when she is sitting on the stoop reading a book and watching the day when her phone beeps <where there is no coverage!> on the kitchen table within. She gets up to answer and a window, complete with frame shatters out on the still warm step. The poor chippy responsible lets out a synchronic howl of despair thinking he's killed the girl downstairs. Maybe, it's the unexplainable unaccident that we can all expect once in a life time. I had mine in 1992.

Soon enough after that NDE, Kerri is called home, not by her family but by the unresolved trauma that her family had been unable to cope with, let alone help her. Help comes in the form of a man, who has patience, compassion and a sort of unconditional love; against this rock the fear, self-hatred and anger break in waves until their energy is spent. Weekly sessions with a professional therapist helps, too.

So in contrast to my other recently read see the nature, hug the trees books [Dara McNulty - Nan Shepherd;- Andrew Grieg - John Burns] Thin Places is not fluffy. But Thin Places shows that what kills not fattens for taming the savage heart. Those who go the edge and return can tell us something worth knowing about the human spirit and what courage can achieve.

Sheep as fluffy

 The flight to the city and consolidation of rural holdings into latifundia operated by robot-tractors means few farmers are getting their hands dirty. But publishers recognise a market for romanticized tales of embracing rural bliss. I'm their mark! Return to Ithaka or Driving over Lemons or The Shepherd's Life. Maybe 1'm not the core demographic of folk who read these Good Life books . . . and dream; because we are living that life and have been for the last 25 years. I could write a book too, but it wouldn't find a ready market because our farm life has no publishing hook: no hilarious pratfalls, no earnest tragedy, no stoical privation. I even have a title Ten Minutes from Ballindaggin. It's all in The Blob anyway, just needs a filter to fillet out the farmlife fables.

The hook for Sheepish: Two Women, Fifty Sheep & Enough Wool to Save the Planet might be lesbian yarn because the author Catherine Friend does get into carding, spinning, weaving and knitting towards the end of her book. Friend was an author before her partner Melissa brought her into farming: first as the indoor hand but more and more into the bodily fluids cycle of tup, take, birth, shots, suck, wean, feed, shear and death. It's pleasant and empowering to see a city-bred keyboard-jockey get increasingly engaged with farming and the outdoors. It's good see see anyone changing their strongly held opinions about something and embrace The Other. You can't easily call knitting-and-stitching folk "fiber-freaks" if you're knitting your own comfy shockin'pink winter socks. Bonus: knitting from your own wool!

Doing something anything with our wool is a touchy issue. This year we took 15c a kilo for raw fleece and the Agri Strore wouldn't even pay us until they had been paid in turn by the wholesaler. What is the point of subsidizing sheep farmers if the product is mere drugget on the market? There are 3 million sheep in the Republic each producing 3kg of wool that's 9,000 tonnes of wool but there is not a single plant for processing this mass of fibre in the country. Here's the math:

• Sheep's wool house insulation density = 18kg/cu.m.
• 1 roll 100mm x 400mm x 6500mm = ¼ cu.m. costs £30
• or £120 / cu.m.
• we get €2.70 for 18kg of raw fleece
• if They can make a profit on this transaction in Germany and Britain, why not here?

Did someone mention Cumbria? Sheepish mentions in passing that Dalefoot Composting is making a peat-free potting compost from fleece and bracken. I've spent 6 working days on the hill thrashing bracken to free the grass and forbs for sheep. The dead plants were left lying in their own spores. Dalefoot says there is value in bracken and fleece. I'll scythe bracken if you bale it!

Sunday Roundabout

Bits n pieces

• Tatsuya Tanaka makes small [broccoli safari R]
• Transhumance [bloboprev] in Spain BBC
• Divil in the detail: dating atlases and mappes
• Surprized by joy: Devon Rodriguez draws randomers on the subway.
• Waitin' on a Sunny Boss uit Belgie
• Fud:
• Blaas and wall-art: a puff for The Déise on RTE
• Sohla and Ham make 4 course peanut-butter themed gourmet meal
• Crème brulée: Glenisk yoghurt plant burns to ground
• Materials: harvesting lake ice by meitheal
• Building dry-stone in New England
• Flagged from MeFi
• Digger: tonka-toys in the abyss
• Bowls: but can you do it twice?
• Driver: EU truck drivers systematically dissed in UK

Across the river

Maybe it's because we're the last farmlet in Co Carlow but I am endlessly fascinated by frontiers, borders and what lies beyond. In our case, it's a six acre field of Wexford cows. Most of the time you can tip-toe across the rocks of the R. Aughnabriskey, which marks the county boundary here, without getting wet feet. Don't try it during a wet Winter, though; the stream can be a roaring torrent 2m deep, ready to sweep you off your feet to an undignified battering death.

I was enticed to read at piece on RTE Brainstorm How Ireland's county boundaries define us, which was a bit rambling and unsatisfying given that title. But Dr Siobhán Doyle, a cultural historian from TUDublin, did have some interesting views on cases where the traditional county borders, frequently defined by rivers, have been modified subsequently to consolidate urban development. There are four cases, I am familiar with, two cited by Dr Doyle:

• On foot of the Local Government (Ireland) Act 1898, Carlow town [and County] annexed a 50 hectare triangular chunk of Kilkenny across the Barrow Bridge which includes Carlow Town Park and playground [map above]. The boundaries are two straight lines are right angles: clearly drawn boldly upon on a map in the late 19thC rather than surveyed on the ground.  It is certainly not obvious at eye-level where Carlow ends and Graiguecullen, Co Laois begins. The boundary clips a corner of Killeshin CoI parish church leaving half the graveyard in another county. There is a huge flap periodically "widespread shock and outrage" when another Boundary Commission announces that the whole of Graiguecullen will be transferred to Das Grossekarlowreich to simplify the administration of what is clearly the same urban district. These petty local loyalties are greatly exacerbated by the existence of the GAA which encourages tribal flag-wagging in order to sell more county-colour jerseys.
• 50km down stream, 30 hectares of the Kilkenny=West bank of the Barrow were assigned to the "Urban" District of New Ross and thus to Co Wexford. New Ross for many years competed for the least attractive town in Ireland prize and having the derelict asbestos-roofed Albatross fertiliser factory in this Rosbercon exclave did nothing to enhance the view. The site was cleared in 2018 - people are brightening up the other side of town with floral displays and colourful murals.
• Still further South, the same 1898 Act transferred Ferrybank, including the railway station, North of the mighty River Suir from Kilkenny to Waterford. Again, more recently Boundary Commissions have advised rationalising the county border to weight domestic and commercial common ground, rather than the geological accident of where the R Suir heads off to the sea. As with Carlow, Waterford was founded and grew to commercial greatness because it could act as a gatekeeper for river traffic in days before there were reliable roads let alone railways to transport goods and people. You really should check out Dr Doyle's article if only for the paint war on the cliff above the railway station. 
• Further North, in the heart of the Midlands, Athlone sits astride the Shannon, which is here the border between Counties Westmeath [East] and Roscommon [West].  As above, the 1898 Act formalised the addition of the railway station and the big church of St Peter and Paul and the army barracks into Co Westmeath. This is a much bigger area than that added to Carlow or Ross, somewhere between 200 and 250 hectares. You can see below that was rather an ambitious "urban" transfer because swathes of New Westmeath are still manifestly agricultural fields even 120 years after 1898:

For me the most intriguing aspect of this map is the straight blue line which joins the two ends of the triangle of annexation. Zooming in on Google Maps confirms the suspicion that it is a canal: taking an efficient direct line while the Shannon takes a lazy eastward bight. The existence of this artificial water way was a complete surprise to me . . . and to The Beloved who spent all her school days in Athlone.

But the Athlone canal had not escaped the attention of Brian Goggin at Irish Waterways History.  Mr Goggin was an enthusiast who acted as a one man compendium of knowledge: the kind of chap who'd do really well at Mastermind. His website seems to be a clearing house of information and a regular port of call for fellow navigation enthusiasts.  Mr Goggin died last year and is clearly much lamented by his family, friends and correspondents.

The Athlone Canal was started in 1757 at the behest of the Commissioners of Inland Navigation. It was designed with a single lock rising 4.5 feet = 1.4m. The whole scheme was by-passed and rendered obsolete when the present weir and lock was constructed in the actual river during the 1840s. In Easter week 1989, we were moored above the "new" lock waiting our turn to descend when the sky darkened and a ferocious blast of horizontal sleety-snow swept the river. By the time we'd negotiated the lock and were on our way South to Portumna, the snow was forgotten and the sun burst out from behind the clouds. In Ireland we have weather, not climate!