John Marks: Singularities Part II

image © 2003 nick lown.

I've just had an email from John Marks whose collection Lifting the Veil I published some years ago.

He hoped I might find a place for this. Now, whilst I don't usually consider submissions any longer, in this case I'm prepared to make an exception and use it here.

SINGULARITIES PART II

Near is very far
space, time,
continuum,
hope.

there's a vastness that appals
chemotherapy,
white walls

scurrying through
the corridors
of the christie this monday morning
early
meeting emile, yes, named after Jean Jacque's eponymous hero,
as if I didn't know,
married at the weekend, it has spread,
we fear we'll soon be dead.

his carribean lilt
echoes in my head.

we smile and laugh and joke with the nurses
as they try searching for a vein
in vain.

what else can you do
blues the colour of blue?

john marks

Shadow Sunday: North Western Street

These are the shadows of trees on North Western Street, Manchester.

The street follows the side of the long viaduct into Manchester Piccadilly Station. The viaduct arches are homes to numerous small business.

See the fuller picture on Geograph.

Visit Hey Harriet to discover more contributions to Shadow Shot Sunday.

Friday Bench (13): Old Parsonage Gardens

This week's bench is one I discovered in the Old Parsonage Gardens at Didsbury, Manchester.

It was a hot day when I visited the gardens at the beginning of June. The outside of two nearby hostelries were thronged with lunchtime drinkers, but inside these gardens was quiet peace; a girl was reading a book nearby and a couple of blokes were looking at a laptop.

You can read more about this oasis on the Didsbury Civic Society website.

Benches I most enjoyed discovering last week include Tom's salvaged from the Great Western Railway, Yellerbelly's tattoed bench in Warsaw, PERB's at the grocery store, Naturegirl's in Ontario and Smarteyes's cozy bench in London.

ABC Wednesday - F is for Fairfield Junction

Fairfield Junction lies on the Ashton Canal at Droylsden.

Here the canal divides into two. The main canal forks right towards Ashton, whilst the left hand side used to lead to the Hollinwood Canal.

That canal was closed and most of its length filled in. Now it leads into the Droylsden Marina opened in 2008 but still under development.


Meanwhile here is looking back at the canal as it heads towards Manchester.





For more F posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Astropoetry to the International Year of Astronomy 2009 2nd quarter.

MOON AND VENUS IN THE MORNING AURORA, 23rd April 2009 photo © Valentin Grigore.

The 2nd quarter issue of Astropoetry to the International Year of Astronomy has just been released.

It includes many photographs, artworks and poetry related to all aspects of astronomy.

Alastair McBeath (UK Vice-President of the International Meteor Organization) reports

April 4 brought another widely-seen fireball to the British Isles,
around 23:32 UT, the magnitude -8/-10 object probably moving roughly south to north over western Wales or the seas nearby. ... May 11 produced a magnitude -9 fireball at 21:35 UT or so ... Being up all the short night in June has much to recommend it (though not the unexpectedly late, patchy frost on June 17/18...), particularly when the crescent Moon starts or ends the night, and still more so when the Moon slips by a planet or two, like the brilliant Venus and the binocular-bright Mars on June 19.

Ion(ut) Moraru contributes HEAVENLY PARTY

The Moon, Mercury and the Pleiades
thought to make a party:

The Moon turned off the light on her surface,
Mercury turned to the Sun,
and the Pleiades exploded:
fireworks!

Alin Iosif wrotes about how he SAW VENUS DURING THE DAYLIGHT

At about 12 o’clock,
my boss asked me again what happened with me.
I tried to show him the reason, but he could find only the Moon.
It was enough:
he didn’t note me as an absent at the job office.

My own contribution is the haiku

something stirs
on one of the moons
of Saturn

Gerald England

John Francis Haines contributes ALONE, AGAIN

After the fury of the tsunami subsided,
We saw the Moon was gone,
Wrenched out of its orbit and flung
Across the sky, to become
Just another minor planet.

There are highlights of an Astro-philosphical debate on Global Warming.

Andrei Dorian Gheorghe in LIMITS writes

Using a lunette,
Galileo showed that
the sky of the fixed stars
is not a stellar limit.

Discovering the planet Uranus,
Herschel showed that
the planet Saturn
is not a planetary limit.

We still have to discover that
love and passion
are not human limits.

Marge Simon writes of THE AMERICAN SOLAR SYSTEM

Pluto remains number nine
in primary schools where
teachers must use manuals
updated time to time.

Astrophysicists may
change their minds...

Arlene Carol is

.. angry with the stars.
They are such liars.

Appearing to be there, when in reality,
They may have gone millennia ago.

Another page is dedicated to VISIONS OF A SUMMER SOLSTICE EXPEDITION, Bucegi Mountains, Romania, 18-21, June 2009.

This has even more photographs of the Milky Way, The Moon-Venus Conjugation, sunsets and many other astronomical phenomena captured amid magnificent scenery.

Shadow Sunday: Edgeley Bowling Club

This week's shadows are from the bowling club at Alexandra Park, Edgeley, Stockport. The park has three greens. These are all flat greens as opposed the crown greens you see in some other places. If you want any information on the game you could do worse than start with good old wikipedia.

You can see a low-res version of the original photograph from which this was cropped on Geograph.

Visit Hey Harriet to discover more contributions to Shadow Shot Sunday.

Friday Bench (12): Broadbottom Road, Mottram

This week's bench is on Broadbottom Road at Mottram in Longdendale. Behind it is a huge clump of ragwort, a perennial weed but nonetheless pretty.


Here you can see it in situ. On the left is The Waggon, a popular hostelry currently undergoing renovation.

My favourite benches discovered last week include East Gwillimbury's with a hat, PERB's at the Clark County Fair, Rune's old school bench, Cheryl's artistic benches in Hickory, Irina's in Moscow and Gregor's in Innsbruck.

ABC Wednesday - E is for Easter at East Didsbury

On Easter Sunday this year I travelled out to East Didsbury. This flowerbed was the central feature inside the junction of the A34 Kingsway out of Manchester to Wilmslow and the A5145 from Stockport to Chorlton cum Hardy.


The reason for the huge space given to this junction is that originally it was where the trams turned round. All that is left of the old tram depot is this clock tower, preserved by Tesco as a landmark.


Despite the 24 hour sign though, even Tesco is closed on Easter Sunday and the normally busy carpark is Empty.

For more E posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Shadow Sunday: M67 at Denton

Shadows on the M67 at Denton near Manchester, UK.

You can see a low-res version of the original photograph from which this was cropped on Geograph.

Visit Hey Harriet to discover more contributions to Shadow Shot Sunday.

Friday Bench (11): Donkey Stone Bench

This week's bench is at Donkey Stone Wharf on the Ashton Canal.

Not only are there live geese, but also a weather vane comprising three sculptured geese.

Read all about them on my earlier post: Donkey Stone Wharf.

My favourite benches discovered last week include East Gwillimbury's looking down on Lake Simcoe, Barbara's en route to Lion's Gate Bridge, Dina's in the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, Leatherdyke's in Whitby, Tom's recycled plastic in Hyde Park, VP's in Weymouth and Yvan's with sleepers in Beijing.

ABC Wednesday - D is for Donkey Stone Wharf

Donkey Stone Wharf, as it is known, is part of the Ashton Old Wharf at the end of the Ashton Canal before it links into the Huddersfield Narrow Canal. This is where Eli Whalley founded his company in the 1890s to manufacture donkey stones, which were produced in huge quantities to meet the demand for the mainly northern tradition of donkey-stoning stone steps, windowsills and the area of pavement outside (known as the 'flags' or 'front').

Donkey stones were about the size of a large bar of soap and when being used they needed to be wetted as they were scoured over stone surfaces. This was a regular chore performed by generations of housewives at the terraced houses of Lancashire and Yorkshire.


Donkey stones took their name from the image of a donkey used by the largest 19th century manufacturer. On the other hand, Eli Whalley used a lion as his trademark and the inspiration for this came from childhood visits to Belle Vue Zoo at Gorton, Manchester.

Eli Whalley's company reached its peak during the 1930s when it was producing around 2.5 million donkey stones every year. By 1973 the owners of the company were Gilbert Garside and his son, Harry, but, by this time, production had shrunk to about 720,000 stones a year. However, it outlived all other manufacturers to become the world's last surviving donkey stone manufacturer and Eli Whalley & Company remained in business until 1979.


In recent years a new entrance has been created on Lower Wharf Street with gates and a sculpture designed by Paul Margetts.


The sculpture is Flying Geese Wind Vanes. They are 5.5 metres high and turn in the lightest breeze.


A blue plaque celebrating the life of Eli Whalley has been fitted in the gable of his bothy.

For more about Eli Whalley see the Eli Whalley website.

Fore more information about Donkey stones see Pony Brand Cleaning Stones

For more D posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Shadow Sunday: Trondheim

On a sunny July day in 2005 we visited Trondheim in Norway.

I took a tour around the streets in a road-train called Thomas.

You can read an account of the day on my Cruise Journal.

Visit Hey Harriet to discover more contributions to Shadow Shot Sunday.

Is this Me or I?

They say that if you want to know about someone you should do a google. But beware, how do you know that the information is actually about the particular person you are interested in and not one of their namesakes?

Checking the first ten pages of a google-search on my name brought a few surprises, some pleasant, some not so.

First hit is my website www.geraldengland.co.uk/.

In at #3 is my page on the Famous Poets website.

Fourth is this blog and sixth is my Geograph profile.

At #7 is a link to Gerald England's Facebook profile. Now I do have a facebook profile but this one is NOT ME.

The eighth entry is for someone who was at Illinois State University 1973 — 1977; it ain't me.

At #13 is something about the Gerald England Track & Field Invitational. References to this crop up quite frequently. My father was an athlete but I'm not. I don't know who the GE was who gave his name to this regular event but it sounds to be well supported.

Another namesake appears to have a patent for "Measuring energy contamination using time-of-flight techniques".

Note the org.uk domain which bears my name has no longer any connection with yours truly.

At #43 is the first to cause me concern. The Zoom Info page lists four sources of information, three of which are about me and which quote me as the publisher of New Hope International, but it associates me with a different New Hope International which is a charitable organisation in Colorado with which I have no connection whatsoever.

I am not the GE on classmates who was in the class of 1952 at East Prairie High School, MO., nor am I a personal trainer specialising in boxing, weight management, muscle building and conditioning. I do not work for Blue Shield Of California nor am I the ex-reverend who visited Pinelands in 2008.

At #58 is another namesake's Facebook profile.

At #79 I discover (hope the link works as it is a long URL) translations into Romanian by Florentin Smarandach of some of my poems.

I also find a poem of mine in Processed World #31, Fall 1993. It isn't listed in my bibliography but I can't remember all the magazines I submitted to around then, so the original must have gone astray in the post.

At #99 I find a 123people page which has two photos of my son Craig and others which I suspect are of his namesakes. These are not public domain photos and have not been posted there with my permission. On investigation, however, I find the site is little more than an indiscriminate search engine and the photos no more than thumbnails. I don't care for the way it imbeds links within its own frames, but ...

enough searching for one day.

I must send good wishes to all my namesakes.

Friday Bench (10): Carrbrook Bowling Club

This is a follow up to my ABC Wednesday post about Carrbrook.

The bowling green dates from at least 1909. In 1988 the Friends of Carrbrook was formed, whose members restored the bowling green, which was reopened on Friday 17th April 1992. The new pavillion was opened in 1999.

Information from Carrbrook Village website.

My favourite benches discovered last week include Leatherdyke's with a banana tree in Leamington Spa, Tom's with magpies, Barbara's en route to a nudist beach, Carrie's in Portrush and PERB's stone benches at a farmers' market.

ABC Wednesday - C is for Carrbrook

Cows at Carrbrook Fold under Slatepit Moor.


In the opposite direction looking North down Swallow Lane towards the village with Buckton Castle (earthwork not building) in the background.


Turning towards the East we see an estate of new houses where once stood Shaw Mill, founded around 1777, on the site where the Stonemead housing estate is today. In 1825 the old Shaw Mill was demolished and a new block-printing works erected. Later this became steam powered. From the 1870s extensions to the works were made. In 1899 it became part of the "Calico Printers Association". The works closed in 1969.


The streets on the new estate are named Printers Drive and Calico Crescent.

More information can be found on the Carrbrook Village website.

For more C posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Shadow Shot Sunday: Warnemünde

These seats on the Sea Promenade at Warnemünde, Germany, cast beautiful shadows.

The promenade leads to the Lighthouse and Teepot. See the fuller photograph on my 2006 Cruise Journal.

You can see what is currently going on here by visiting the Strand Hotel's webcam which overlooks the area.

Visit Hey Harriet to discover more contributions to Shadow Shot Sunday.