Mayday! Mayday!

What a strange conglomerate the English language is. It is a rich tapestry of linguistic colours that are derived from so many languages around the globe.

It is not, in historical terms, so long ago that Britain, as a Nation of fourteen million souls, ruled a third of the land masses of the World.

We have mentioned previously that the American War of Independence involved no Americans and that titular reference to them is for convenience and their own pride only.

No, the American War of Independence was fought between the armies of King George III and the thirteen British Colonies. The Colonies had, on their side, Spain, France, Holland (The Dutch Republic) as well as sundry Indian tribes. King George had some tribes with his armies, too.

Benjamin Franklin went to London and spoke of the unfairness of the British Parliament—his parliament, taxing the colonists heavily to fund the wars with France and Spain (note that Britain was already at war with these two so it took little pushing for them to get involved!). He told Parliament that they, the Colonists, had already contributed heavily in terms of money and men to the British cause in these wars. The cry was, “No taxation without representation!”

That was just one Colony, of course. There has only been one Colony since that fought for Independence and that was Rhodesia when the Rhodesians, now Zimbabwe, set up a Unilateral Declaration of Independence’ (UDI).

America is the only ex-Colony of Great Britain that is not a member of the British Commonwealth.

The mixture of language that has entwined itself into English started a long time before the ‘Empire’. The Empire brought words into the language that were from farther afield but no less colourful.

Britain has been invaded many times by foreigners from Europe. Being an ‘Island State’ helped it little in those bygone days. Indeed, the Germans call us ‘insel äpfen’ (island apes) to this day.

Even the names of Britain began as foreign terms.

When the Romans arrived under the banner of Julius Caesar they beheld the white cliffs of what is now Dover and exclaimed ‘they are white!’ The Latin for ‘white’ is ‘alba’ and so Britain started out as ‘Albion’.

Ultimately we were invaded by Angles and Saxons so we became ‘Anglo-Saxons’ that gave us the name ‘Angle-land’ or ‘England’. Savage attacks from the Vikings occurred on a regular basis especially down the east coast.

The Vikings also attacked and settled in the North of France where they became the ‘North Men’ or ‘Normans’ and they, in their turn, invaded and set up house.

The Vikings, under Oleg, also settled in Kiev. His tribe were called the ‘Rus’ and so the land there became ‘Russia’.

After the Romans, but before the Normans, the north of France belonged to Britain. That was Brittany. It is known there as Bretagne. It was the small part. The big part was ‘Grande Bretagne’—Great Britain.

We clung on to that part of France for quite a time; we fought battles there at places like Creçy and Agincourt, amongst others, in order to keep it.

It is understandable that many words in English are derived from Latin and French but what about German?

We take our children to ‘kindergarten’. ‘Kinder’ means ‘children’ and ‘garten’ is clearly ‘garden’. Thus we send the children to a kindergarten where they will play and be looked after.

Perhaps we might visit a delicatessen. ‘Delikat’ is ‘delicate’ and ‘essen’ is ‘eat’. So a delicatessen is a place of ‘delicate eats’.

Ultimately we spread around the World. We collected words from many sources. We got ‘bungalow’ from India, ‘amok’ from Malay and ‘boomerang’ from the indigenous tribes of Australia.

Liverpool football ground has an end called ‘The (Spion) Kop’ from South Africa where a battle was fought there.

More locally we have adopted a French phrase that means ‘Help Me’ as, now, an international cry for assistance.

‘Mayday’ started life as “(vous) m’aidez,” which means ‘(you) help me (please)’. The ‘please’ is inferred!

This is just a tiny sample. There are thousands of words in the ‘Oxford Concise Dictionary’ that have an etymology with echoes in far-flung lands with strange sounding names.

English is, indeed, a rich tapestry of linguistic colours. It is up to you, as a writer, to make the patterns.

Angry Birds

Perhaps it is a reflection of our modern mindset. Perhaps we have always been like that but modern technology has allowed for it to be communicated farther and faster. Perhaps it is the natural order of things for humans.

I speak of dissatisfaction. Of anger, even.

This came to light a short while ago when I was introduced to a strange occurrence called ‘Angry Birds’.

It appears that this ‘Angry Birds’ is a computer programme with which I am unfamiliar. It is, I am told, a game.

I do not wish to become familiar with it since the very name deters me from playing it. Not, I confess, that I play any computer game ever since ‘Elite’ dropped out of the market.

These ‘Angry Birds’ appear to have enemies called ‘Bad Piggies’. This merely compounds the revulsion that I feel towards this game.

These birds have, at best, embryonic wings and proportions that make them entirely un-birdlike, if I might coin an expression. But it is not their appearance or, for that matter, what they purport to do that irritates me so much.

It is just their name. ‘Angry Birds’.

Why can’t we have ‘Happy Birds’? Maybe ‘Content Birds’, ‘Cheerful Birds’, ‘Friendly Birds’ whose enemies are called ‘Chubby Piggies’ or some such.

Why is it necessary to promote negatives? What is it about negatives that is attractive, that makes this game so popular?

Have we become so inured to violent death and hatred on films and television that we see no other version of life?

Why is a bird called ‘Eggbeater’ much admired when, clearly, it has cannibalistic tendencies? Although, that said, there are many birds that rob other birds’ nests and eat the offspring.

Speaking of which, there is a Yellow Vented Bulbul, even now, pecking my window. Angrily. I am sure that it believes its reflection is a competitor.

We see, as I have mentioned before on oft occasion, a predilection for people to spread rumours and theories based on hatred on the social media. This immediately makes it ‘Unsocial Media’, of course.

There are so many comments debasing and denigrating the views of other people in, often, verbally violent ways. There are calls to ‘ban this’ and ‘proscribe that’.

Many of these comments are without basis of fact and are posted by people with little or no knowledge of what they speak; they are just passing along something someone else has said. These are comments that are based on misquotes and misperceptions.

It is almost possible to see the person ‘sharing’ or writing these posts being angry about it. Yet there is no reasonable, and I stress the word ‘reasonable’, excuse for that anger.

Anger has become the socially accepted ‘norm’. We are supposed to get angry. About anything, really.

Someone dumps trash in the road so we get angry and say that ‘somebody should do something’. We should skip past the idea that the person saying that could, equally, be the person ‘doing something’ because that will never happen. Nobody wants to ‘get involved’.

We should get angry about that, too. People should get involved. It is their civic and moral duty to get involved.

It is entirely possible that we could get angry about almost anything. Irrationally angry.

I get angry about ‘aves iratus’ computer games.

Master Race from Space

Given that there are billions and billions of galaxies out there and given that each galaxy contains billions of stars it becomes incomprehensible that we are alone.

It is entirely possible that we are accompanied by our travels through space at vast speeds by planets full of microbes or bugs. On the other end of the scale there could be life out there with technologies far exceeding our own.

But.

(There’s always a ‘but’.)

Shall we just consider that for a few moments.

We are reliable informed by ‘people that know’ that our universe is around thirteen (13.798 ± 0.037) billion years old.

It took, we are told by those same people, many billions of years for the galaxies that form our universe to coalesce out of the whirling mass of expanding soup thrown outwards by ‘The Big Bang’. Or whatever.

There then followed several billions of years for the solar systems to form within those galaxies. One of those systems was ours.

It was only about four billion years ago (4.54 ± 0.05 billion years) that the Earth was formed as a glowing ball of molten rock made up of materials manufactured within stars ‘out there’.

There followed an unimaginably long time in which there were only simple cells that ultimately developed into plants. Plants fired up the photosynthesis that gives us oxygen; oxygen enabled higher life forms until, eventually, came beasts. Not like us, for certain, but animals nonetheless. Their bones have been discovered and analysed.

This is only about six hundred million years ago—not ‘billions’ but ‘millions’!

We have struggled out of the mud and gradually developed until, in the blink of a galactic eye, we are here. ‘Ping’! Look, Mum! Humans!

We have achieved our technology in the last two or three thousand years. It is only in the last two hundred years that our technology has taken on a life of its own and progressed in leaps and bounds.

The ‘American Civil War’ (how the Americans love wars. If there is nobody else there to fight they will do battle with themselves!) was the very first industrialised war—courtesy, in part, to the Springfield Armoury.

Now we have all sorts of strange things floating around in space above our heads.

The greatest of these is, arguably, the ‘Hubble Space Telescope’ that enables us to see, without atmospheric distortion, into the great depths where, some day, we should hope to go.

So that is our history.

Let us, just for a few moments, think about the history of some other, anonymous, planet.

It is unlikely that they would have developed very much differently to us in the first instance.

The time taken to evolve into higher life forms must be regarded as quite similar.

Logically, then, there would be similar extinction periods caused by whatever it was that wiped out the dinosaurs here on Earth. Perhaps they, too, suffered a massive meteor/asteroid strike or a devastating volcanic explosion. Maybe they had an all-encroaching ice age that reduced the food levels sufficiently to create an untenable environment for certain beasts.

Eventually a life form would come about by whatever means is appropriate to them that would have the ability to reason, to think, to analyse and synthesise.

Tools would be developed. This happens quite slowly until such time as there is some kind of industrial revolution that creates an environment where ideas can be sent out quickly and efficiently. Printing spreads thoughts and ideas as it also creates an opportunity for universal education.

From this develops the idea of mass production—not just vehicles but pens, typewriters. Electricity is discovered and used in all manner of ways so that people now have light; working at night is now a far clearer possibility.

Their technology accelerates at a rapid pace. Perhaps they have fewer wars but that idea suggests that technology develops more slowly. We need these people to develop their technological growth extremely fast and so there must be wars, devastating wars that propels them ever forwards into greater and greater discoveries until their social life catches up and they discover that they can grow faster by cooperation, by combining the thoughts of the best brains.

These people are now more advanced than we are but are they sufficiently advanced to come and visit us?

Has there been enough elapsed time between their origins and their current technology to hurl themselves through space (and time, perhaps) to come and see what we, out on the fringes of the Milky Way Galaxy, are doing?

The cost would be enormous. Why would anyone choose our planet in the first place and then expend planet sized wads of cash to come and see us and then not say, ‘Hello’?

There are, without doubt, people out there who are looking up into their night sky and wondering if they are alone in this great expanse.

Is their technology far enough advanced to come here and visit us?

I think not. There has not been enough time for them to develop sufficiently beyond our own efforts to come here and compare notes.

‘Ancient Aliens’? A lovely thought and an interesting take on the evidence but not, I think, hitting the mark.

Still, cutting a flat rock out from a blind hole is intriguing; one wonders how they did that.

There are lots of mysteries out there but the only star people who can solve them are us.

We cannot expect, or hope, for some master race to come blasting from outer space to solve our problems.

Our problems are ours to solve and we really ought to be doing that right away or there will be nobody for the master race from space to visit.

Sport by Accident

It may be that the last ‘Blog’ might have given the impression that I grew up in the back of beyond. This is not quite true.

If you went to a small hill near the house I grew up in and used a pair of powerful binoculars you could possibly just make out the back of beyond from there.

A bus ride would take you to that point and then, of course, it was relatively easy to get to parts that were construed as civilised but were, as a matter of fact, not quite.

Civilisation seemed to start around a hundred and eighty miles away outside Gran’s house in Mortlake, Surrey.

It is at Mortlake where the annual Boat Race contested between the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge are concluded. Level with what was ‘Watney’s Brewery’ but is now ‘Budweiser’, I am told.

Appropriate, really. It seems that a large percentage of the boat crews are American. Makes them feel at home, no doubt, to see the ‘Budweiser’ sign at the end of their exhausting struggle up the River Thames.

“Older Budweiser,” as the saying goes. Perhaps, in their case, the difference may be regarded as marginal at best.

As a small lad I went in for sport. It was completely accidental. If I had my time over again I feel that I should possibly do something better with my time.

Sport is wonderful to watch but, for some reason, I find it arduous to participate.

Over the years I have tried many sports. Mostly accidentally. For example, we went to Bristol with the Air Training Corps swimming team. Bristol is another of those places that you feel should be civilised but, somehow, never quite grasped the concept and fell by the wayside. We may come back to that.

The thing about this trip is that I cannot swim. It is inexplicable how it is that I came to be involved with this trip other than as a general dogsbody. Sadly, they discovered that they were one short for the team and asked if I could swim. In a rash act of total stupidity I mentioned that I could probably manage a width backstroke without drowning.

They put me down as the Squadron backstroke champion.

I was last. By a very, very long chalk! It is entirely possible that most people had gone home before I finished the one length required of me.

The ‘Boss’ was jubilant. I had earned the team a point by the simple expedient of actually finishing.

Athletics. I accidently won the school high jump in the annual sports day. That doomed me to represent the school in the area championships. I accidentally won that, too. I had no technique, no skill, no real clue what I was supposed to be doing but I won and represented the County at the National Schools Sports Day in Sheffield.

A nightmare.

Nothing wrong with Sheffield. Myself and another fellow were lodged with a guy from the Royal Observer Corps who had a gammy leg and a jubilant expression when he discovered I was in the Air Training Corps. He took us to see the sights that were, largely, the Bessemer furnaces firing up at night. Impressive. The sight is still an image in my memory to this day.

I lost. Fortunately. Being well outclassed by many other boys was such a relief.

I tried rugby but was banned for violent misconduct; football (soccer) showed up my inability to coordinate with the ball—something that has left me to eschew the likes of golf, tennis and badminton. I can barely hit a cricket ball with a bat but the direction that the ball ends up in is a complete mystery to me before and after striking the ball.

I found a niche refereeing football. I like football so this was convenient. It is always worthwhile doing something physical in the military; the ‘powers that be’ seem to like that sort of thing. Doing physical things with young ladies seems to be frowned upon so we kept that side of things carefully under wraps!

At a ‘certain age’ they seem content to let you do more restful things. I went fishing. In the sea. The advantage with such a sport is that you can eat the result for tea.

I try to avoid becoming accidentally entwined with sport now.

A weekly sortie into the worlds of football predictions is plenty of exercise for my ancient muscles now.

The doctor told me to get more exercise so I bought a bigger keyboard.

"Thinking is the Best Way to Travel"

When I was growing up, in a small village somewhere far removed from the place that has become known as ‘civilisation’, we had geography lessons.

This was mandatory. Our head teacher insisted on it.

‘Head Teacher’ is, perhaps, a little grandiose for such a school. The ‘Senior of the Two Teachers’ may be a more apposite title.

She was known to us as the ‘Head Teacher’. And thus it remains.

There were lots of pupils split into two groups. There were those that were junior and went to one room and those that were senior—the ‘big’ people, that went to another room. Both rooms were large to us although they looked quite small when I went back a few years ago.

One wonders, now, how two teachers coped with two disparate groups. Not only were we different in terms of ages but also we were also quite varied in our abilities.

Jeannie, for example, was good at numbers. It was her that got me through the arithmetic required for the Eleven-Plus Exam that I took when I was ten years old.

I took it early because of my birth date and not because I was thought to be particularly gifted.

I had a bit of a crush on Jeannie. Sally, too, was someone I thought of as a bit special. Sixty years on there are the occasional thoughts of what they might be doing now.

Geography.

We had to learn all about other countries. We learnt about them partly because it would broaden our minds and partly because the State said so.

There were wonderful far-flung places that stirred the imagination.

The Gold Coast. A small boy’s mind would wander off into strange thoughts about beaches lined with glittering gold in the form of dust and nuggets just ripe for the picking.

It’s called Ghana now.

Then there was Burma. Deep jungles filled with Japanese soldiers waiting in ambush for Ord Wingate’s Chindits who would, heroically, rescue the local tribes people from the yoke of Nipponese oppression. A little boy could easily imagine himself creeping fearlessly through the damp, humid and moss-filled forests that were continually abuzz with the noise of insects and monkeys.

Now, of course, it is Myanmar.

One day we were treated to a visit from a man who represented ‘Ceylon Tea’. He came from the city so he was very posh and exciting.

He told us that the tea was Singhalese because that was the name of the people who grew it.

There were photos of exotic buildings and towns; one was called Colombo. He told us that there was a large industry there devoted to producing gemstones.

Then we had the tea. It was superb. It was mostly superb because we were there, in Ceylon, drinking it—in our mind’s eye. I’m sure that most of us could almost feel the heat on our skins.

It is, of course, not Ceylon now, it is Sri Lanka.

They changed the name of Malaya, too.

I collected stamps as a result of these geography lessons. Not really a philatelist but more of a wanderer around the World using stamps as cues.

I had stamps from all sorts of places that would require me to go to the ‘World Atlas’ and the encyclopaedia to search out the location of these countries.

Some of the stamps from Yemen had overprinting on them on them saying ‘Aden’ or 'Aden Protectorate’.

This necessitated another trip to the library to find out what a ‘Protectorate’ was and, indeed, where ‘Aden’ might be.

Malaya used to have stamps for each State including the ‘Straits Settlements’.

Then Singapore joined the Federation of Malay States so the name changed to Malaysia. Singapore left the Federation but the name remained as Malaysia. Singapore seems so fickle, doesn’t it?

We, in Malaysia, say that Singapore is a ‘fine City’. They fine you for this and they fine you for that!

I had hundreds of stamps from all over the World. Hundreds. Where are they now? Scattered, lost. When I joined the Air Force my Mum spread most of my things out to sundry small boys around the neighbourhood on the grounds that I should no longer need them.

The memories are still there.

The stamps joined up with a need for books. I had stamps from Brazil. I knew about Brazil nuts in terms of trying to get the things out of their shells without smashing them into small fragments but it took quite a lot of effort to find out about where they grew and what they looked like on the tree.

Amazing to discover that a Brazil Nut tree is the centre of an entire ecosystem within the jungle. If Brazil Nut trees disappear so will most of the wildlife.

That led to books that told of epic journies; books like ‘The Rivers Ran East’ by Leonard Clark that enthralled the adventurous spirit in a small body like mine.

There were stories of Scott and the Antarctic; Dr. Livingstone in Africa when there were places like Rhodesia named after Sir Cecil Rhodes; Nyasaland, Tanganyika were all countries in Africa then.

We learned of searches for the North-West passage, the Klondike Gold Rush, the Cowboys of the Argentine Pampas and many more.

We learnt from school and from stamps. From atlases and encyclopaedias. But, mostly, we learnt from books. Some seemed unlikely. For example, Arthur Conan Doyle of Sherlock Holmes fame had a son called Adrian who wrote about hunting the Tiger Shark in "Lone Dhow".

Stirring stuff.

Such are the words that stir the imagination of a small boy and now? A boy that is not quite so small.

There is still excitement in books. There is still that stirring of the soul that comes from reading about adventures in far off lands.

But now those far off lands are the stuff of Edgar Rice Burroughs, Arthur C Clarke, Isaac Asimov and Robert Anson Heinlein.

Places that exist only in the imagination.

Places that don’t have their names changed to confuse us elderly boys!

The 'End of December Winter Holiday Cum Spending Spree'

A few weeks is all that now separates us from the lilting strains of ‘Rudolph the Snowman’ and ‘Frosty the Red Nosed Reindeer’ leaking at high volume from the speaker systems in every shopping mall in the world.

The idea, of course, is to persuade us that the mid-winter holiday season is a time of great happiness and cheer; a time when we should be wandering the streets with wide smiles, open hearts and wallets agape.

It is a time when the limitations imposed upon us by sundry financial institutions are no longer enforced, we can, with considerable abandon, spend freely with our credit cards and disburse our hard earned cash throughout the commercial and retail outlets far and, courtesy of the Internet, wide.

There are times when we shall find bargains on the Internet. We may find that it is cheaper (= ‘less expensive’) to purchase on-line than it is to visit our local store.

Sometimes, for the retailer, this is less of a golden period.

As many of you will know, we have written a book that is for sale on ‘Amazon’. A physical book. It is called ‘A Simple Guide to Understanding Jet Engines’. The object of the book was to give students an easy bite at the gas turbine engine; it would tell them the basics required to understand it without going into deep theories. It is written to IATA (International Air Travel Association) knowledge level 3; the English used is to IATA Level 4. This is acceptable to all aviation authorities as the level required for Licensed Aircraft Maintenance Engineers.

So far, so good.

As a secondary consideration it was required to keep the price down so that it would be more accessible to students. The size of the book was designed to fit easily into a lap-top bag and to be fairly light. The paper used is good quality so that it will last through the rigours of aviation training programmes.

And now the hard part.

The postage from here to the United Kingdom and the United States of America from here is quite high. The profit the publisher made, per copy, was minimal—after ‘Amazon’ had taken their (large) cut of the cover price.

The postage rate has just doubled. Sending books to overseas locations has been reclassified from ‘documents’ to ‘small packages’.

The publisher now makes a loss on each copy. A large loss. As a result the book has had to be discontinued for sale through ‘Amazon’.

It is hoped that the book can be converted into an e-book soon otherwise the only source of an actual paper book will be to write directly to the publisher (http://www.ebbnfolks.com/) or go to a bookstore in Malaysia.

Coming here on holiday might be a good idea. You will, I am certain, enjoy it.

Be that as it may, the withdrawal of the book from ‘Amazon’ is a big blow to me personally and to the publisher, too.

It means that those starting their training programmes in aviation in the autumn (fall) will now find it less readily available.

I apologise for that.

I am also sorry for those that had considered it as a great Christmas gift for their loved ones who are entering aviation or who are interested in aeroplanes generally.

Oh! Sorry about that. I meant to say ‘a mid-winter holiday’ gift.

So much for my roast reindeer with Yorkshire puddings.

Humanising Everything!

An expert in local flora and fauna posted a short film clip taken on his travels in the interior. It depicted a Proboscis Monkey dining on some leaves.

The odd thing about it is that the monkey was described as ‘feeding on’ the leaves. Can’t argue with that, it was certainly feeding away most happily.

So why do I view that as odd?

If it was one of ‘us’ we should say that we were eating leaves.

Animals feed—we eat.

There’s a difference. A difference where there should be no difference. Because we anthropomorphise everything.

Yes, everything.

Anthropomorfication (yes, yes! I know there is no such word but, surely, us wordsmiths can smith a word or two when the urge comes upon us) abounds, it is all around us.

I know for a fact that computers do what you tell them to do rather than what you want them to do. And yet you will curse at it because it did something at variance with your wishes.

It did not comply with your wishes—not your commands. So it was you who got it wrong but, rather than blame yourself, you will say that the computer screwed up.

Then you will hurl abuse at it; maybe you will argue with it.

It’s a machine. You are in discussion, heated perhaps, with a machine. It is an inanimate object.

So your car won’t start in the morning? Soft words of encouragement are in order.

You will entreat it, “Come on, Baby! You can do it, Sweety!”

Further failure to comply with your wishes may mean that you will resort to a more argumentative posture; you may even, perhaps, indulge in language unbecoming of an educated young person.

You are arguing with a machine.

Like the computer, it is an inanimate object.

You might as well argue or rant at a snake.

Snakes have no ears. They are not deaf they have no ears to start with. They are incapable of listening to you.

A large number of snakes really do not care if you speak to them. They are, for the most part, above such things as conversations with humans.

What about things that have ears?

Bats, for example.

Surely we could have a conversation with bats.

We could if only they understood our language—or we understood theirs.

My capacity to squeak in the ranges above twenty kilocycles is sorely limited.

Perhaps something a little more ‘normal’.

Cats and dogs can hear us.

Of course, we hit the same barrier that we did with the bats. Language.

In spite of a fervent and heartfelt wish for our companions to understand what we say the inevitable answer is that they do not understand us. At all.

They possibly understand tone and actions but words? No. Really.

The idea that animals comprehend what we say to them is a terrible arrogance. It borders on the idea that we are alone in the Universe or that the sun rotates about the Earth.

What is it about us that demand us to become the ‘Masters’ of everything?

We are masters of almost nothing, in truth.

We have yet to tame soldier ants, rats are an incessant and ubiquitous problem and there are almost limitless diseases and viral infections that we have yet to fully understand let alone cope with or cure.

We are reliably informed that we have brought back some rocks from the moon and yet the deeps of the oceans remain a mystery.

Perhaps it is the idea of mastery over cats and dogs that satisfies that inner compulsion to rule over something, to be ‘Leader of the Pack’, the Lord and Master of all we survey.

Perhaps that is why we argue with stones that have broken our toes—to show that they will not have the last laugh over us, the 'Master of Small Stones and Rocks’.