Personal Blogs

I used to love sailing the seven seas. But the glamour's worn off... Now I'm just going through them oceans.

Thinking of the 'Alla Barnen' verses reminded me of Ruthless Rhymes for Heartless Homes by Harry Graham.

I don't know if you are familiar with these: they exploit a strain of black humour. Here's an example

  Father heard his children scream
  So he threw them in the stream
  Saying, as he drowned the third,
  "Children should be seen, not heard!"

Here's my contribution to the genre, an updated version of the Ruthless Rhyme above. 

  When Father heard his children shriek,
  He flung them in an icy creek.
  Musing, as he watched them freeze,
  "That should save on Uni fees!"

Image: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Graham_(poet)#/media/File:Ruthless_Rhymes_1898.jpg

A hand-axe but a headache too. 

What was it used for?

• Cooking
  
• Leatherworking
• Carpentry
• Some other craft
• Gardening
  
• Forestry
  
• Hunting
  
• Fighting
  

or some combination of these? Or some other purpose?

Was it fitted to a wooden handle ('hafted')?

If so was it?

• Bound into a split in the handle
  
• Fitted into a socket
  

Or perhaps it was just hand-held.

Where was it from?

Here we are on firmer ground. It was

• Found in North Hertfordshire or South Bedfordshire 30+ years ago
  
• Made about 4000 years ago in a stone axe factory in North Wales, at Penmaenmawr. BBC 'A History of the World' shows a very similar object. But the BBC site says that axe is made of a rock 'similar to slate'; I'm not sure that's right. I think it may be diorite; any geologists are watching please write in! My hand-axe also seems smaller, about 12 cm.
  

So it had travelled 200+ hundred miles.

How did the owner lose it (or didn't they?)

The cutting edge is sharp and the polished faces on either side unscratched. So perhaps

• A stone-axe trader dropped it
  
• The owner dropped it on the way home from the local axe-sharpener
  
• The owner deliberately discarded it as a offering to supernatural beings. (But it was such a votive offering we would expect to find other objects nearby, and it was found in isolation.)
  
• A hunter threw it at a prey animal, missed, then couldn't find the axe again.
  

We can never know exactly.

The history of objects

When anyone brings an object like this into my local The Moon Under Water, many people ask to see it. Their first question is always 'How old is it?' 

'About 4000 years.' 

'Can I touch it?

'Yes.'

And then, reverentially, 

'So apart from you I'm the first person to touch it for 4000 years.' 

'Yes'.

Everyone is very quiet and thoughtful at that point. I find the respect they display is very moving. It shows that the human race is noble, in spite of everything.

Not afraid to die.

Or to live either.

The old cat wiping against my hand.

Hearing a bird, and lifting my eyes to the trees.

Seeing the fog, and peering along the lane.

What a Spring day!

remember us
when you pick over our bones.

For we are proud to have lived
as you are proud to live also.

Know us by our kin,
And let your hearts soar.

My girlfriend stood me up. Mind you, I'd fallen over first.

I found these small flints on country walks and I think they have been worked into 'thumbnail scrapers'. The name is from their size; to give you an idea, the red arrow is 1 centimetre. I don't think any one really knows what they were used for, but they are very interesting objects.

A friend told me about her whirlwind romance. It had a bad ending, because he turned out to be a twister.

Many animals think about solving problems, but only humans think about problem solving.