Naked Astronaut
You were rather spoilt by the multiple spurts of January with its numerous entries and unending wittery, but after an official complaint from an unnamed family member (you know who you are) I'm back with some more Bertie action.
The best news? She has a tooth. Stealthily it sprouted from her lower jaw without any fuss and Bertie was unmoved - for now at least. It is rather remarkable that something so permanent, so hard could emerge from the her unending gumminess. But there it is all the same, ready to chomp on an unsuspecting finger. Or worse.
Bertie continues to astound - the subtlety with which her being affects one's behaviour is ridiculous. One finds oneself subconsciously taking the middle escalator at Manor House tube as it escalates just that little bit faster than the one on the left and taking two steps at a time rather than one as one lurches out of the tube station in search of a bus to carry you homeward. A tooth emerging from her gums is enough to swell the eyes and make one dance a jig of delight in a stairwell - there is no explaining it. And this is just the start - she is the most perfect little naked astronaut.
And now for some babee poetry; not many of you could have predicted that. Most baby poetry is rather horrific (you little bean is my dream/you are my perfect queen etc) a la baby-poetry.com and tests the gag reflex. But if one searches hard enough - or happens to stumble across a rather lovely faber volume on Charing Cross Road - there has been some solid efforts from some unlikely sources. Sylvia Plath anyone (before the Ted Hughes effect kicked in).....
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.
Bertie is jumpy like a Mexican bean. She is the bounciest bean you've ever seen. She can bounce so high she can almost touch the sky.
At the other end of the spectrum there some rather darker material which I include her to prove that I've not become a totally saccharine numchuck. And is something of a counterpoint to the frippery of Plath, that noted happy go lucky sort.
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
Rather.
And now for what you've all be waiting for. Some pictures of Bertrando. The penultimate and ultimate pictures will make your brain soften and maybe you'll even dance a little jig.
The best news? She has a tooth. Stealthily it sprouted from her lower jaw without any fuss and Bertie was unmoved - for now at least. It is rather remarkable that something so permanent, so hard could emerge from the her unending gumminess. But there it is all the same, ready to chomp on an unsuspecting finger. Or worse.
Bertie continues to astound - the subtlety with which her being affects one's behaviour is ridiculous. One finds oneself subconsciously taking the middle escalator at Manor House tube as it escalates just that little bit faster than the one on the left and taking two steps at a time rather than one as one lurches out of the tube station in search of a bus to carry you homeward. A tooth emerging from her gums is enough to swell the eyes and make one dance a jig of delight in a stairwell - there is no explaining it. And this is just the start - she is the most perfect little naked astronaut.
And now for some babee poetry; not many of you could have predicted that. Most baby poetry is rather horrific (you little bean is my dream/you are my perfect queen etc) a la baby-poetry.com and tests the gag reflex. But if one searches hard enough - or happens to stumble across a rather lovely faber volume on Charing Cross Road - there has been some solid efforts from some unlikely sources. Sylvia Plath anyone (before the Ted Hughes effect kicked in).....
Clownlike, happiest on your hands,
Feet to the stars, and moon-skulled,
Gilled like a fish. A common-sense
Thumbs-down on the dodo's mode.
Wrapped up in yourself like a spool,
Trawling your dark, as owls do.
Mute as a turnip from the Fourth
Of July to All Fools' Day,
O high-riser, my little loaf.
Vague as fog and looked for like mail.
Farther off than Australia.
Bent-backed Atlas, our traveled prawn.
Snug as a bud and at home
Like a sprat in a pickle jug.
A creel of eels, all ripples.
Jumpy as a Mexican bean.
Right, like a well-done sum.
A clean slate, with your own face on.
Bertie is jumpy like a Mexican bean. She is the bounciest bean you've ever seen. She can bounce so high she can almost touch the sky.
At the other end of the spectrum there some rather darker material which I include her to prove that I've not become a totally saccharine numchuck. And is something of a counterpoint to the frippery of Plath, that noted happy go lucky sort.
I am not yet born; O hear me.
Let not the bloodsucking bat or the rat or the stoat or the
club-footed ghoul come near me.
I am not yet born, console me.
I fear that the human race may with tall walls wall me,
with strong drugs dope me, with wise lies lure me,
on black racks rack me, in blood-baths roll me.
I am not yet born; provide me
With water to dandle me, grass to grow for me, trees to talk
to me, sky to sing to me, birds and a white light
in the back of my mind to guide me.
I am not yet born; forgive me
For the sins that in me the world shall commit, my words
when they speak me, my thoughts when they think me,
my treason engendered by traitors beyond me,
my life when they murder by means of my
hands, my death when they live me.
I am not yet born; rehearse me
In the parts I must play and the cues I must take when
old men lecture me, bureaucrats hector me, mountains
frown at me, lovers laugh at me, the white
waves call me to folly and the desert calls
me to doom and the beggar refuses
my gift and my children curse me.
I am not yet born; O hear me,
Let not the man who is beast or who thinks he is God
come near me.
I am not yet born; O fill me
With strength against those who would freeze my
humanity, would dragoon me into a lethal automaton,
would make me a cog in a machine, a thing with
one face, a thing, and against all those
who would dissipate my entirety, would
blow me like thistledown hither and
thither or hither and thither
like water held in the
hands would spill me.
Let them not make me a stone and let them not spill me.
Otherwise kill me.
Rather.
And now for what you've all be waiting for. Some pictures of Bertrando. The penultimate and ultimate pictures will make your brain soften and maybe you'll even dance a little jig.
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| Lacking in Gorm. |
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| Tower of Chud. |
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| Blue Cross Sale. |
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| Salad 1 - 0 Bertie |
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| Try and look at this picture and not end up smiling. It is impossible. Quite Impossible. In fact tomorrow or the next day or one day soon your mind will wander back to this image and once more a smile will break out on your face. Trust Me. |
I think you need a fisheye lens
ReplyDeleteComment should not be empty.
ReplyDeleteI think she will not be blown like thistledown. Let her not be blown in this way.
Here is an abstract of a recent article in Nature. I only understand one word in 3. Imagine that Gary Birtles understands perhaps one word in 25 that she hears. How perplexed must she feel?
Potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) is the world’s most important non-grain food crop and is central to global food security. It is clonally propagated, highly heterozygous, autotetraploid, and suffers acute inbreeding depression. Here we use a homozygous doubled-monoploid potato clone to sequence and assemble 86% of the 844-megabase genome. We predict 39,031 protein-coding genes and present evidence for at least two genome duplication events indicative of a palaeopolyploid origin. As the first genome sequence of an asterid, the potato genome reveals 2,642 genes specific to this large angiosperm clade. We also sequenced a heterozygous diploid clone and show that gene presence/absence variants and other potentially deleterious mutations occur frequently and are a likely cause of inbreeding depression. Gene family expansion, tissue-specific expression and recruitment of genes to new pathways contributed to the evolution of tuber development. The potato genome sequence provides a platform for genetic improvement of this vital crop.