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Other summer sounds will soon be with us: the thwack of the tennis racquet on ball and its inevitable accompaniment, at least at Wimbledon, of me immortal words "Come on, Tim!" Another is the noise of children up far too late in the long daylight, so quiet dozes in the garden are interrupted by football, of all things. Still, I recall my own childhood in Northern Ireland during the war, when we had something called Double Summer Time and that far north and west, it was nearly midnight before the light failed and I witnessed it, still not in bed. One lack of sound associated with summer that is pleasant: no politicians in Parliament, is what I have in mind, all of them being off on fact-finding missions to the sunnier parts of the world for incredibly long vacations. This year, someone will spoil it, probably something to do with the EU Constitution. Oui? Non? Peutetre. Some of our leaders (Leaders? No, leaders) will be around for a date in July to mark May 6th. and/or August 15th., but I hope nobody takes any notice. One or the other, or both, but not some 'convenient' day out of a diary in No. 10, thanks. The weather will no doubt come up to expectations, despite what the BBC has done to their weather maps. There was a time when the BBC used actual met. men and women from the Meteorological Office who used proper weather maps with fronts and isobars, but nowadays it has been dummed down for the masses, so blue on me map means rain, not sunshine, which itself is a smog-coloured brown. Oh, yes, dumming down: You must have seen the notices in the windows of a charity shop proclaiming "PRICE'S SLASHED", as though they were greengrocers. Apostrophes arise! Fight for your rights! Andy Thomas promised us a revelation in the matter of Crop Circles at our May meeting and that is exactly what he did. He spoke to an audience of unbelievers, if he was to convince us that they were more than just the result of twisted academic minds playing games in the middle of me night. Quietly and calmly, he put us in the picture and convinced more than just me that there truly is something strange happening out there. There is nothing new about crop circles: in 1678, in Hertfordshire one was reported to the amazement of the locals; photographs of similar objects were published in 1932 and for the past forty years they have been regularly seen and equally regularly dismissed as pranks. But they are not made with planks of wood or rollers on the end of a rope. How do we know this? Because the crops are not damaged as they would be if heavy-footed undergraduates were working in the dark and at high speed. Even the bloom on the sides of the barley blades is retained and regrow for a full crop later. Unsmooth crops like potatoes or maize are subject to circles too. Any damage has been done by the investigators the following day. So what are we dealing with? Andy showed us photographs of incredible shapes that no meteorological action could have made; not even ball lightning nor any 'natural' force has the precise advanced mathematical skills displayed in some circles. Stonehenge and the Avebury Ring might be early examples, though there was nothing hurried about their erection. UFOs? Well, why not? The very expression Unidentified Flying Objects leaves the answer open and could account for the occasional reports of lights in the sky and strange sounds heard. And the speed of construction, sometimes only a hour or so from untouched field to a complicated design based on fractals and other mathematics which we humans are only beginning to understand. No doubt as we learn more, we shall see our new discoveries represented. Why so frequently (though not exclusively) in England? Why circles in a temporary canvas like a growing crop? Is it the geology of the land? Anglo-Saxon genes? Ley Lines, for Heaven's sakes? Who knows? Andy's photographs were works of art in themselves and showed us the quite astonishing complication and beauty of these overnight phenomena. A fascinating subject covered by a particularly good speaker.
We regret to have to report that Eric Cracknell died in March in his 85th year. An updating: Last month I mentioned the non-appearance of payment for the advertisement we carried in our March edition, so it is only fair to tell you that two days after our last meeting I receive the cheque and handed it over to Malcolm. Our brand new member, Laurie Painting has joined the small band of brethren prepared to offer their memories to the Newsletter, for which we thank him and you can find his first contribution overleaf. Perfect length and with a subject and a time that many of us can relate to, more or less, given our age bracket. Dear Lord, I suppose even that is no longer true: your Editor is hardly the youngest Probean and yet he was still at school during me war, but it should be important that those with memories of that time keep their stories fresh in their minds, either by telling their grandchildren or, better by far, giving the Newsletter the chance to immortalise them. My own father served as a infantry subaltern on the Western Front during WWI and he would never talk about it, so his stories are lost for ever. A cautionary tale: Last week I was looking at and admiring the splendid work I had done over the past month painting the front elevation of my house, a job long overdue. A line of lead flashing over the garage door, I decided, would look better painted. Ladders don't bother me and I had got used to climbing right to the top, so this job was no problem, I thought. Prop it onto the low roof and climb it, I thought. So I did. Up to the top with a wire brush to scrape off most of the accumulated dirt and I was doing this when the ladder slipped down the front path, dropping me some nine feet onto the hard bitumen surface. I examined the hurting bits while I lay mere: right shoulder, arm, hand, hip, all seemed functional if damned sore. Then I got to my knee which was bleeding profusely and badly swollen. As it turns out, nothing broken and I just have extensive bruising right down to my foot. I then first-aided the knee and put the ladder up again, (CAUTION COMING UP) this time tying it with a rope to the garage as I have always done in the past, but didn't bother to last Monday. Job completed, lesson learned. Annual Ladiesf Luncheon I gave Aunt Rose a lift home from Vi's funeral and found that she had my grandad's old wooden armchair at home. I so remember that chair in the dining room of Robletts in the village of Sampford (we never called it Great Sampford) in the old days. Out of the window my grandad could see most of what was the best part of an acre of his own land; and beyond his garden there was a field in which the Hurricane crashed that fateful day. I must have been about 12, playing in the garden and I looked up in the air and there was this aeroplane diving almost lazily towards me. I had no time to see that most of one wing was fluttering down separately. The plane did not hit me but crashed beyond the hedge and there was noise and things flying through the air. Then silence, followed by a sudden chattering of voices as my relatives, who had been watching the wrong aeroplane (two had collided), woke up to what had happened. Then people running and one of my uncles going indoors to change his trousers.(He said he had stepped into a bucket of water. I believed him.) Meanwhile there was nothing that anybody could do for the pilot: his plane had left a crater. Afterwards I heard that he was Czech. But ever since then I have had recurring dreams in which a crashing aircraft is coming towards me. The curious thing is that I feel no fear. Some years after my grandfather died, and his bungalow was sold. I visited the village in the 70s and photographed the place when it was up for sale once again. Soon afterwards, it was demolished, but not by an aeroplane. I dont like to think what has replaced it. In mind's eye, grandad's chair is still in its place and the crash crater merely a slight depression in the ground. I walk through the field, wondering if they left any ammunition. We would put cartridges into a vice in the barn and twist the bullets out, then extract the contents for fireworks; then hit the caps with a hammer and nail. No, nothing interesting left for us - but wait a moment, here's a piece of bone. No, it can't be. Surely not. Better leave it. Yes, I did find that bone; I did hit those bullets. And I tried so hard to light that incendiary bomb which didn't work when the Germans dropped it. Memories. May 2005 postscript: Sometimes I think I remember schooldays from the early 1940s better than things which happened last week, but events seem to stick in my mind better than names or places. In the 70s I managed to get lost in a lane about 2 miles from the village and stopped the car to ask an old boy the way. I said I felt a bit silly because my grandfather, who died in 1943, had lived opposite the Red Lion pub. "Oh yes" he said, "that'll be Singer Andrews." Not only had I forgotten the way, I had forgotten my grandfather's nickname in the village?
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