Evolution Explained (in 403 words)

No creature is an exact copy of its parent. Any part of it might be slightly bigger or smaller or differently shaped. As the creature breeds it passes traits on to its offspring. As various traits combine they become exaggerated, such as two tall parents having taller children and two smaller parents having smaller children.

If all the most nutritious food in a supermarket was moved to the highest shelf and the shelves were impossible to climb it would be the tallest children in the next generation who would be the best fed, those with the tallest parents.

If the lower shelves were emptied and the unit toppled over scattering the little remaining nutritious food onto the floor it would be the smallest who would be most satisfied, their needs being the least, and only the most flexible of the tall would eat at all.

If the supermarket were to run out completely it would be those with the stamina to reach the next and the speed to get there before the crowds who would eat.

It can be misleading to say a creature evolved to have a long neck to eat the highest fruit to survive. This wrongly implies a purposeful advance.

It is clearer to say that of the range of neck lengths that had existed it was the shorter ones that died out because they could no longer reach the fruit. Which is just a natural filtering out of the least efficient when times get tough.

It will generally have been a significant environmental change causing a scarcity of food that will have brought about the natural extinction of any one version of a species if it cannot compete with any other version or species sharing the food resource.

Mankind has also brought about the extinction of many species though its own action and through the accidental or intentional contamination of separate balanced ecosystems with species or diseases from elsewhere.

The deepest areas of the ocean are the places where changes to the climate on the surface of our planet has had least effect and where the environment still supports creatures that have remained successful in very early versions.

On the surface of the earth the swamp seems to have been the most consistent environment, always existing somewhere as the perfect home for crocodiles and alligators, they being among the oldest versions of any creatures we can see easily today.

28/12/14 [A snapshot]

I visited Guildford again, it was unpleasantly cold there, in a wintry way not an unwelcoming one.

The Shops are more fun today, I thought, as a I chanced upon a gentleman with a stand filled with booklets next to him. The printed cardboard sign above his stand bore the legend "What You Should Know About Mental Disorders" and a logo, the initials of the Jehovah's Witnesses dot org.

I was not rude, I was not loud, I don't think I drew a crowd as I questioned him on the appropriateness of using the emotive and very serious subject of mental health as a hook to attract attention to his worship club flyers. He was stumped but started to move the booklets that mentioned the subject on their covers to the top of the stand, nearest to the sign, and the ones that did not he moved down.

We spoke for some minutes. I was cheerfully nimble-minded and more learned than he expected. Eventually, when standing still in the cold had become tiresome for me, he could come up with no answer at all when asked the straight question, "What benefit is it to me or anyone else to be a member of your club?" and he was equally at a loss when then asked, "What ill will befall me or misfortune will I suffer if I don't join?".

With no apparent upside to membership and no downside to non-membership he appeared momentarily baffled as to why he was a member of the club himself, though I should commend him for conceding positively that the JWs are not an appropriate organisation to advise on any aspect of mental health.

I left the idiot pondering my assertion that every time he and those like him said to do something benign or worthwhile just because a particular book said so he and those like him were giving authority to anyone else's instruction to other people to do harmful things just because the same particular book said do them, too.

I tried on some shoes but they were too small and no larger the same were in stock at that or any other branch or their warehouse. I ate a sausage sandwich perhaps eight feet to the side from an ex-colleague from two jobs ago to whom I would have had nothing to say beyond acknowledging that we had been colleagues so said nothing.

I despise in passing the individual or committee that decided to put HP Sauce in small sachets which are impossible to open without getting some sauce on your fingers and those who dare distribute as napkins the flimsiest of paper sheets that adhere, tear and leave themselves attached to drying sauce instead of wiping one's digits clean. More wandering about ensued. I needed a cigarette.

I warmed up by queuing in Costa, before sitting outside in the cold to consume hot milk with coffee in it, to smoke and to watch the herds of pedestrians I had numbered amongst only moments earlier. As a seated observer of the hustle and bustle I was undistracted from reflection on the remarkable dexterity of the young barista whose work had had me mesmerised while awaiting my beverage.

I wondered whether there were any other jobs left in the modern world where the demonstrated attention to detailed and complex manual procedures performed at high speed had not been mechanised, whether such skills were transferable to a higher earnings bracket, as I am sure they were not being adequately rewarded where they were.

There is a lady who carries out similar tasks rather more slowly in the Liphook Sainsbury's Cafe, where I sometimes pause on shorter walks from home, who wields a J-cloth in the most disturbing fashion when attending to a steam-pipe dripping with just foamed milk. I do hope it is not just for my benefit.

I am having to remember I don't and won't have a bakery to stop at on the way to work now or a lunch-break to remind me to go to a café. My default daily calorie intake is down as a result by a sausage roll, a doughnut, some crisps and a bacon roll. It may have been a diet devoid of goodness but it was a diet of sorts.

Tomorrow I shall have a far healthier festive feast with my sister and her family and doubtless will feel uncomfortably full and suffer the wind of the sparsely-toothed for some while afterwards. I suppose that is what crimbo is all about.

Borders [2015]

Borders are just the boundaries of

Where sets of rules apply.

Where being different, for example,

You can live or you must die.

I don't want persecution

Of people like me

To wander free.

Neither do I want persecution of you.

______

Somewhere between

The far side of

The Middle East

And just over there

The rules change.

A transsexual stoned

In Seaside City

Is a

Recreational

Happenstance.

A transsexual stoned

In the Middle East

Is a

Public

Execution.

______

Especially,

I am wary of people

Who have been raised to

Believe it is their god's will to

Stone me.

Perhaps it

Is no surprise

I am wary of people

Who refuse to respect

Our bounded freedoms.

It is true,

You cannot see

Political boundaries

From the depth of space

But they are very real on earth,

This planet where we have to live.

______

Europe is an area of land.

It has hot bits and cold bits,

Flat bits and bumpy bits,

Bits that are dry and

Bits that are less so but,

It isn't the land that

Made Europe the magnet

For the disenfranchised

From elsewhere in the world.

______

Soil has no more or less problem than sand

With colour or gender or preference,

With who walks hand in hand

With whom or for why

They can't stand

Each other.

It's just

Land.

______

I am fifty-three, born

Only seventeen years

After World War Two.

When I was born a

European, peace was

barely old enough to

ride a motorcycle and

still too young to vote.

This year,

European Peace

Is seventy years old

And we take it for granted.

______

But it has taken people seventy years

Of tolerance, of understanding,

Education and co-operation

To get where we are,

To become where

Everyone else

Wants to

Be.

It didn't come for free.

______

We did not achieve this

Lasting peace in secret.

Our methods are in

The public domain.

______

Our methods are

The European public.

Our customs and practices,

Our rules and regulations,

Our laws and public behaviour

Are what makes Europe

And Europeans

Successful.

The peace

And calm,

The time

To think

Can no more

Be stormed

Or occupied

Than a pub's

Quiet ambience,

Its calm can be

Enjoyed

By anyone

If one

Pugnacious

Seeker

Of it destroys

The very thing

That drew them.

I heard a little girl sing a wartime song today [2014]

I heard a little girl sing a wartime song today, she sang
Words that resonate in me as a collective brave face,
As a desperate attempt at cheer in the face of death.

But that's not
How she sang it.

It was a song from the war after the one we remember
Having joined a hundred years ago today,
A song from the war fought by men whose fathers, uncles and
Elder brothers had fought the War To End All Wars,
Men who were under no illusions as to their likely fate.

But that's not
How she sang it.
______
______

The morning of Pride came to me slowly and slightly after noon.

An Eve of Pride Party had come to me hard and fast
Staying with me till some way after dawn.

It was fully light and already warm
When I fell to sleep beneath
The open window at the bed end
Of my just over bed-wide flat.

I slept soundly but only until the parade approached,
The crowd's enthusiasm rising and reaching its crescendo
As it passed along the road not seventy yards from where I lay.
______

My father, by now in generous old age,
Had been admitted to hospital a week before.

There an emergency tracheotomy had suddenly denied him
Both speech and the ability to feed except by tube for life.
______

I feel duty bound to experience the magical day
As proof of its existence and to have something to say

When I hospital visit my father, still twenty-four hours away.
______

I am hanging, a little stoned, it feels early and my mind is racing
At the finality of my father's situation and how desperately frustrating
And unsatisfying the remainder of his time will be, however long or short.

All the while I am making my way, against the flow of the crowd, toward the
Headspace I know I will find when I reach the sea and look out over what man
Has not since the dawn of time worked out how to colonise and fuck up like land.

It is my father's life that flashes through my mind while I dodge and weave through an
Oncoming shoal of unsubtly smuggled budgies and booty-shorts that shimmer in the sun.

I am not ashamed that I have tears on my cheeks at a carnival to celebrate the diversity of life.
______

I am head-wrestling my self.

It hurts as my emotions struggle
To take and hold my imagination,

Flitting as it always does between
Extremes of pleasure and of pain.

There is nothing more important in my world
Than my father lying uncomfortably in hospital.

I am today his eyes, his ears, his experience of
The world outside a sterile, single bedded room.

I cannot lie to him when I download as best I can my bedside head to his
So it is my bounden duty to make the truth of the day as entertaining as I can.
______

I have by now escaped the crowd and stand, battered sausage in hand, by the sea.

One pound and twenty pence invested in making a true story a little lighter to listen to.

My eyes are red with both tears and tiredness and the rings beneath are as puffy as puffy can be.

I am on my second convenience-store handy-pack of tissues as I now almost ignore the waves of

Sadness at projected imaginings of a time yet to be in a place or places unknown crashing against the rock

That is the reality of now, today, and all the days that have gone before to enable this one to be what it is.
______

I feel safe to lean against the railings above the beach
To look back at the land, to see how little has changed,
Then I think of the day and how much is very different.

I am hungry but can't face another battered sausage joke
So start walking back along the Promenade toward the pier.

I am thinking out now, looking around me, listening for detail
I can use to distract from my father's woes and maybe, just
Maybe, put a smile on his face when I see him tomorrow.

Three chrome-laden-Harley-boys rock up to the posing park,
Remove their helmets and as I pass by I hear them laughing,
About their bingo-wings billowing at speed on the motorway.

It’s the price of high bars and sleeveless vests and waistcoats
For all but the most Easy Rider scrawny of Peter Fonda wannabes.
______

Me, I like my arms.
They are not the finest, magazine grade
You might ever see
But you'd probably agree
They look right
With an all-over covering of skin
And that does it for me
______

I wear sleeves when I ride my bike
So as not to have to when I don't.
______

It's early evening and I am calm when I return to my one-bed wide flat.
My thoughts are still volatile but I have become used to cerebral bangs
And flashes of all the things I know not to write down in the moment.

I am not in the mood for an After-Pride Party but I will make the effort
Because that is what I have planned to do and I can't report back that I
Stayed in because I was miserable that one day soon my dad will die.

I shaved and showered, probably shat,
Making full use of all the facilities in the flat
I cooked myself something my father never would

Because he loved his son.

I never cared so much for me as did he.

I dressed and I walked the short road to the club
Where I drank and I smoked and danced to rub-a-dub dub.

It was long after dawn when I climbed into bed and
Set my alarm to leave just enough time to drive
Fifty miles into a summer Sunday afternoon.

To do my best at shutting out the shit
Of the whole sorry circumstance
And to ignore my yesterday
Insofar as I had mourned
The passing of much
Of what my
Father
Was

Yet
He was
Still there,
Albeit fragile.
______

I told my tale jokily
And raised a smile or two.

It was too soon to explain what I wanted,
That what I had witnessed the day before
With my own eyes, however blearily it was
And through however many tears of either
Sadness or of celebration, was proof positive
That he and his father had not lived in vain.

It isn't that they fought battles and won.
Instead, they demonstrated
How to do peace.
______
______

That is the key.

It's impossible to impose peace.

People have to notice how others achieve it.

If they amend their behaviour to match they achieve it, too.

It isn't about militarily suppressing revolt, anyone with firepower can do that.

Nor about scaring gullibles into brainwashed accord with outdated "divine" instruction manuals.

The best thing we can do to help those at war in far off lands is to keep doing exactly what we peacefully do.

Eventually they might notice, give it a go and discover how much easier peace is than war. If not it is their own loss.
______
______

It's not my job to save the world.
But if everyone behaved like me
There would be no religion or war.

Just saying.
_____

The song I heard the little girl sing was from my father's war.

It was his generation that wanted luck wished them
When their loved ones waved them goodbye.
______

My father was one of the very lucky ones,
He came home at the end of the war.
Having sung that song himself with
Friends and fellows who didn't,
A good few years before.

He will have sung it since in memory
Of those who were less lucky than he,
The chorus rising and rousing but empty
From those living in defiance for the dead.

But that's not
How she sang it.

The little girl sang the lyric with innocent enthusiasm,
With the broadest and happiest of smiles
She stripped it of all connotations,
She deleted its history files.
______

I wish my father had lived to hear it sung that way, too,
And that he had witnessed also Pride in Seaside City.
______

It is a hundred years since we entered the Great War
And nearly seventy since we emerged from the Second.
We have come a long way since Europe last fought.

A lot is said for the men, women and children who died.
Not enough is said for those who survived,
For those who made the changes
That enable us to enjoy
Our freedoms
Today,

That enable small children
To grow up here in peace
And in happiness
Without experience
Or knowledge of war.

Because that
Is how the little girl sang it
And because that
Made it special to hear.

© Po 2014

The System

My most recently FB-encountered proponent of dismantling the current "system", that which has evolved over many thousands of years and which has made life gradually easier for all those who engage with it than it would be for them to scratch a living from the earth with their bare hands, was a city-dwelling DJ, one who was pictured on their profile page living in a modest but softly furnished flat, fully clothed and smoking a suspiciously large, hand-rolled cigarette.

Were it not for the current "system" they would have no electricity, food, water, flat or furnishings, they would be naked and the only psycho-active substances available to them would be mushrooms and toadstools unlikely to be found growing nearby, and if they wanted to go anywhere else they would have to walk barefoot to get there.

They really haven't thought it through. Unless, of course, what they really want is for everyone else to continue to operate the current "system" and for themselves just to freeload.

We are all of us enlightened

Anyone who has discovered or re-interpreted something in such a way that it is their genuine belief that it is of unselfish benefit to humankind will have a link direct to the text of it from their FB page (if they have one) and not to a site charging upfront for downloadable copies of it.

A person who says they will make you feel better about yourself but who implies your guilt for the deeds of others or uses unpleasant or upsetting imagery as a tool in any part of their process is a manipulative git, not a guru.

And, of course, no sage worth their salt goes around quoting other people.

So, please, do not go looking for spiritual advice from anyone who either derives or intends to derive income [or elevated status] from giving it. 

The longer they can keep you from discovering that you already have what you seek, and that it is only the looking for it that is preventing you from finding it, the more they earn.

______

We are all of us enlightened

Unless we let some body

Convince us otherwise.

(© John Barrow (Po))

______

You have not been charged for reading this message

Three Little Piggies 2017

Three Little Piggies 2017

[Only the president's name has been changed]

_____

Across Europe houses are built of brick, stone, concrete and other durable materials.

Mediaeval houses had the stoutest of timber frames with solid infills. The timbers were connected with simple push fit joints and held in place with wooden pegs.

Even in the changing climate, at least for now, Europe does not suffer destructive typhoons and hurricanes.

Yet, in almost every photo of the aftermath of a seriously destructive storm in the USA I see a pile of wood, a bank, a pile of wood, maybe a hotel, a pile of wood, a gas station, a pile of wood etc..

I suspect even Donald Trump could be explained to that it isn’t just when big bad wolves huff and puff that houses of sticks and straw offer little protection.

Surely it is cheaper for the taxpayer to subsidise the building of strong houses that will last for generations, even in such vulnerable areas, than it is to deal with emergency evacuations and the constant rebuilding of homes just as fragile as those they must replace.

© John Barrow (Po) 2007 & 2017