Friday 24 August 2012

Strange Connections


Just recently, I’ve been making connections between the Olympic Games, a small corner of Warwickshire and a remote area of Siberia.  I’m sorry – that’s just how the Gerry Shedd brain works.  Here’s how:
Anyone tuned in to the Olympics will probably have heard mention of the previous Games held in London – the so-called austerity games of 1948 and the 1908 games when Great Britain won a record haul of 146 medals, including 56 golds.
It was the mention of the 1908 Olympics that reminded me of another momentous but largely forgotten event that took place in that year.
On 30 June 1908, in Tunguska, a remote area of Siberia, north-west of Lake Baikal, an enormous explosion occurred.  It was probably around 1000 times more powerful than the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima at the end of World War 2; and it remains the largest explosion ever recorded on Earth. Had it occurred in London, it would have totally destroyed the city and killed the whole population (including, of course, the Olympic athletes assembled there).  As it is, there were no known human casualties.  Just a lot of dead reindeer.  As many as 80 million trees were uprooted.
Even now, no-one is completely sure of the cause of the explosion.  The most likely explanation is that it was a comet that entered our atmosphere and exploded.  There is no massive crater, which suggests that the explosion took place in the air before impact. 
What intrigues me especially about the Tunguska event is the effect it had further afield.  For days after the explosion, the night skies in Europe and Asia were aglow; and the sunsets were a spectacularly colourful salmon pink.  In England, so bright was the sky that there were midnight games of cricket and golf; and birds would start their dawn chorus at a ridiculously early hour.
Why am I interested in these strange phenomena?  The answer to that takes me to the Warwickshire hamlet of Darley Green near Dorridge. 
The day after the explosion, on 1 July, a baby was born to a working class couple there.  The proud father was the gardener and general odd-job man at nearby Packwood Hall.  The mother sometimes also worked (unpaid) at the Hall, because that was what her husband’s boss expected of her.  Those were different times.
No doubt the little baby, named Albert Ernest, was too preoccupied with the things that newborns do to be conscious of the strange phenomena around him.  But almost certainly his parents would have been aware of these odd happenings.  Maybe they wondered at the conjunction of a birth and unusual sights in the sky.
Don’t get me wrong.  There were no shepherds, no wise men and no star in the east.  Just an unnatural glow in the sky.  The baby wasn’t the only one born at that time and was no saviour of mankind. 
As it happens, though, he did grow up to be quite a special human being – kind, caring, funny and wise.  To me,  he was just my dad.

Wednesday 1 August 2012

Tall tales


Talkeetna is a small Alaskan town (population around 900). There is very little to distinguish it from other similar remote places.  Its main claim to fame ended in 2009 when the annual Moose Dropping Festival erupted into chaos and violence. 
The festival comprised a two-day celebration held each July.  The highlight was a lottery where participants would place bets on numbered, varnished pieces of moose droppings that were dropped from a helicopter onto a target.  Sadly, according to the Anchorage Daily News, the 2009 festival turned into a "weekend of mayhem" with "a lot of drunken, high, stupid people doing stupid things."  Worst of all, the manager of Nagley's General Store had his bike stolen.  Mayhem, indeed.  Unsurprisingly, the festival has not been repeated since 2009.  The Daily News is silent on whether the inhabitants are still polishing their moose turds and what they do with them now that they can't do the obvious and drop them from a helicopter.
So, since 2009, there has been nothing more to say about life in Talkeetna.   Until, that is, the story of Mayor Stubbs hit the international headlines.
As politicians go, Mayor Stubbs of Talkeetna takes some beating.  He’s celebrating 15 years in office, has an almost 100% approval rating and has never raised taxes at any time. He is totally untainted by scandal.  There are no suggestions of financial impropriety, no sex scandals and no accusations of lucrative contracts being awarded to close friends and associates.  He is a clean, decent citizen who goes about his daily tasks with a quiet dignity almost unknown in the sometimes grubby world of politics where pride and inflated egos often flourish.
There are only two things wrong with this story.  The first is that Mayor Stubbs is actually a cat.  The story is that he was initially put forward as a joke candidate for mayor but easily beat the two human candidates.
The second is that the story isn’t true. 
The false feline tale was launched by an Alaskan TV station and rapidly spread around the world.  Headline writers couldn’t resist references to the cat’s pyjamas; and the non-word “purrfect” appeared many times.  What everyone had missed in the original piece were the words “as the story goes”.
Apparently, Talkeetna doesn’t actually have a mayor and the district mayor who covers Talkeetna is a man. 
All is not lost, however.  The feline Mayor Stubbs does actually exist, resides at the aforesaid Nagley’s General Store and is unofficially regarded as the honorary mayor of the town, though he has never been elected.  All that has happened is that, by accident or design, Mayor Stubbs has been turned into an international tourist attraction.
So maybe the story isn’t such a catastrophe (sorry!) after all.  Having someone in office who doesn’t actually do any harm but attracts tourists and revenue doesn’t seem like such a bad idea.  
I pause here for someone to say “don’t we already have a more expensive version of that with our monarchy?” but I’d rather not go there.
What the whole episode maybe demonstrates is how open we are to the idea that no political leadership is better than the bad leadership of cynical, self-interested politicians, whatever their political complexion.  It seems that we might prefer our politicians to be not red, blue, yellow or even green but tabby. 
After all, a couple of years ago, Belgium managed to go 541 days with no government at all without too many negative consequences.  If only the unimaginative Belgians had thought of appointing a handsome Belgian Shepherd dog as prime minister, they might have lived off the tourist influx for years.  And if they had launched a lottery based on collecting his turds, polishing them and dropping them from a helicopter, the whole Euro crisis might have been averted. 
Frau Merkel, remember that you read it here first – and give due credit to Mayor Stubbs and the good citizens of Talkeetna.