Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Sail to the moon

Feeling a mite rootless, I wandered yesterday up the usual lunchtime lanes. It was a beautiful sunny autumnal day.

“What a beautiful sunny autumnal day it is,” I said to the local character, who was standing alongside his big horse. He agreed that it was. I often encounter this wizened ex-leisure centre manager on the lanes and we always have a chat about how he wouldn’t want to be anywhere else. I pat his dog and admire his horse, his cowboy hat and his exceptionally broad westcountry accent. “Some people loike to garn retoire to Spain or whartever and sit boi a pool orl day. Fair play to them but oi think you carn’t beat this. But everywon’s diffrent, would be a dull world otherwoise.”

We stood in our respective shoes, socks, trousers, shirts, jackets, hair and skin and looked out across the fields. Photons from the world hit the lenses of our eyes and were focused onto the photoreceptive rod and cone cells of our retinas.

It occurred to me that if, unlikely as it seems, the warmists are right, then all these green valleys could be underwater soon. But I was comforted by the presence of the ex-leisure centre manager. He seems a practical sort who would calmly solve the problem. In the flood he would probably build an ark, and sail us to the moon.



13 comments:

Uncle Dick Madeley said...

If the ark is run like most leisure centres, I'll be taking my chances in the water.

worm said...

ahh I wondered when we going to see another one of your rural rides!

I imagine you two like Ted and Ralph.

Brit said...

A frighteningly perceptive analogy, I fear, Worm. But without the sexual tension (though, reading it back, there may be a certain erotic je ne sais quois in the post).

Dick - Kingswood was the best goddamn run leisure centre in the country. I expect.

martpol said...

If it was patrolled by a philosopher on a horse, I'm not surprised.

Gareth Williams said...

I think the biggest concern you'd have if the water does rise is how to go about peaceably sharing your little Somerset archipelago with your friendly Horseman of the Apocalypse and a group of shivering immigrants from East Anglia.

Gareth Williams said...

BTW I liked what you did in the third para. Funny those little epiphanies aren't they?

Brit said...

No Easterners on the ark. Strict rule, Gaw.

Anonymous said...

We stood in our respective shoes, socks, trousers, shirts, jackets, hair and skin and looked out across the fields. Photons from the world hit the lenses of our eyes and were focused onto the photoreceptive rod and cone cells of our retinas.

Love that paragraph. A nice start to a beautiful sunny autumnal day.

Brit said...

Cheers. Photons From the World... good name for a band, that.

Anonymous said...

Sure, like you, everyone is happy to ride to fame on the backs of the photons, but what of the lowly electron. Will no one think of the electrons?

malty said...

Just been visiting the local eye operative, he said absolutely nothing about photoreceptive rod and cone cells, should I worry? It's just that he contradicted a certain high street eye establishment that I use who, for the measly sum of twenty five crisp ones per month make sure that I don't crash the motor and am able to read this blog, Elberry.
PS.. when you say ex leisure centre manager do you mean that the leisure centre is ex, or he is.?

malty said...

Just packets n' waves Peter, packets n' waves.

martpol said...

Photons From The World would be a side project of the Flaming Lips, I think.

And by the way, that's one of my all time favourite Radiohead songs you've got there.