THE MORRISONVILLE CHAIN.
On the morning ofTuesday 9th June 1891, the wife of a local newspaper publisher in Morrisonville, Illinois, Mrs S.W. Culp was filling her coal scuttle. As one of the lumps of coal was too large, she began to break it up. It broke in two, splitting almost down the middle. Inside Mrs Culp saw exposed a delicate gold chain perhaps 10 inches long "of antique and quaint workmanship."
Mrs Culp's first reaction was that the chain had been accidently dropped into the coal,maybe by one of the miners. This thought proved wrong. When she went to lift the chain out she discovered that, while the middle of the chain had loosened, the two ends, lying close together, were still firmly embedded. The chain was evidently AS OLD AS THE COAL ITSELF.When taken to an expert it proved to be of eight carot gold and weighing 12 grammes.
The coal in this area is between 260 and 350 million years old.
Geologists confidently claim that the first signs of man, ape like and incapable of creating something as fine and ornate as a gold chain wer around 4 million years ago. What culture could have possibly existed that far back in time?
MIND JELLY.
Wednesday 24 November 2010
Sunday 21 November 2010
THE BEATLES ON I-TUNES.
S finally, the greatest music catalouge of all time raises it's head above the quagmire of available dross and roots itself firmly a head and shoulders over all the tinned spaghetti that sells on this very popular site. Artists of a lower calibre should be afeared, for now, the kids out there, brainwashed by the rubbish they listen to, because i-tunes is all, can now choose to listen and buy music that has the ability to inspire, unlike the sample driven monotonous drivel that passes for music today.
Saturday 20 November 2010
THE LITTLE GREEN STONES.
When you're young, summers are warm and endless. The six weeks of school holidays seem to last an eternity, Blue skied foolish childhood games, fights ,arguments, music, Saturday morning cinemas and fancying the girl who lives at the bottom of the street, marvelling with your mates about the size of her breasts. And she's all of twelve and you a man of the world at thirteen who knows everything and knows nothing and the most important part of the week is getting down to your newsagents on a Saturday morning for your weekly "Whizzer and chips". Two comics in one! Heavens!
Then there were the expeditions. The journeys into the countryside armed with just a bottle of weak orange squash and maybe a few pennies in your pocket, those long days when you would set out early morning and return at dusk and your parents aren't even aware that you've been missing all day. There were winding long lanes all around the estate I grew up on. Our Town was surrounded by farmlands and hills. The country lanes led up into them and during those boring long summer months, before the days of the cheap working class two week holiday to Benidorm, a gang of us would regularly walk those lanes, heading for the hills.
Me, Stevie, who always carried a knife and was very excitable, Scarfey, who had a permenant dribble of snot running down his left nostril, Brownie, who could fabricate the greatest bullshitting stories I ever heard, Jenks my loyal cousin. A motley crew. But we had fun. One of the lanes heading up to the hills had a Church. Only a small thing, just off the lane and through a little Iron gate. There was a small Cemetry around it and on this particular day, we went in. It seemed that the Cemetry was no longer in use, some of the headstones dating back to the 1700's and reaching no later than the early 1900's. One particular grave intrigued me. The headstone was old, faded, but a relative had built a little concrete border around the head stone, a place to put a vase of flowers.Packed tightly into this small plot were hundreds of little Green stones, now dirty and dusty, unused, sprouts of weeds shooting up through them.
I immediatley thought of my Goldfish, a poor little thing on my bedroom windowsill, swimming around an empty glass tank and I thought how good that glass tank would look with a layer of those little green stones at the bottom. We were heading up the hill, but I made a mental note to come back to the Church on our way home and get a couple of handfuls.
On our return, later and dusk, I entered the Church graveyard and found the grave. I stuffed handfuls of those little green stones into my pockets and headed home. Once there, after a nagging off my Mother, her greatest talent, I went into the kitchen, found her colander and emptied the stones into it. I ran the taps at the sink, washing the stones thoroughly. Clean and free of dust they looked like Emeralds.
I poured the stones into the tank, severly frightening the poor goldfish, but they looked good.
I went to bed.
Something awoke me in the early hours of the morning. Shuffling. Creaking. Opening my eyes, adjusting themselves to the dark, the moonlight filtering into my quiet room, there, stood in the middle of my bedroom, a man.
Wispy white hair sprouting from a white specled thin skull. A faded black pinstriped suit. He looked old, slightly hunched. His eyes were deep empty sockets. There was a smell of earth, damp and muddy. He lifted an arm, thin and long and stretched out a boney finger with a crack. He was pointing at my goldfish tank.
His jaw cracked open. A plume of dry dust ballooned into the air.
"My stones.......give...me...back...my...stones..."
I pulled my blanket up over my head, paralysed with fear, panting, shaking. A second later, he was gone.
The next morning i scooped the stones up out of the tank, every last one of them, and returned to the Cemetry alone. It was a Sunday. I poured them back over the ground in front of the headstone. The cleaner washed stones mingling with the dull dusty ones. I left quicky before anyone saw me.
When I arrived home, the fish was dead. I wasn't suprised somehow.
Never steal. Even from the dead. It's not nice.
Then there were the expeditions. The journeys into the countryside armed with just a bottle of weak orange squash and maybe a few pennies in your pocket, those long days when you would set out early morning and return at dusk and your parents aren't even aware that you've been missing all day. There were winding long lanes all around the estate I grew up on. Our Town was surrounded by farmlands and hills. The country lanes led up into them and during those boring long summer months, before the days of the cheap working class two week holiday to Benidorm, a gang of us would regularly walk those lanes, heading for the hills.
Me, Stevie, who always carried a knife and was very excitable, Scarfey, who had a permenant dribble of snot running down his left nostril, Brownie, who could fabricate the greatest bullshitting stories I ever heard, Jenks my loyal cousin. A motley crew. But we had fun. One of the lanes heading up to the hills had a Church. Only a small thing, just off the lane and through a little Iron gate. There was a small Cemetry around it and on this particular day, we went in. It seemed that the Cemetry was no longer in use, some of the headstones dating back to the 1700's and reaching no later than the early 1900's. One particular grave intrigued me. The headstone was old, faded, but a relative had built a little concrete border around the head stone, a place to put a vase of flowers.Packed tightly into this small plot were hundreds of little Green stones, now dirty and dusty, unused, sprouts of weeds shooting up through them.
I immediatley thought of my Goldfish, a poor little thing on my bedroom windowsill, swimming around an empty glass tank and I thought how good that glass tank would look with a layer of those little green stones at the bottom. We were heading up the hill, but I made a mental note to come back to the Church on our way home and get a couple of handfuls.
On our return, later and dusk, I entered the Church graveyard and found the grave. I stuffed handfuls of those little green stones into my pockets and headed home. Once there, after a nagging off my Mother, her greatest talent, I went into the kitchen, found her colander and emptied the stones into it. I ran the taps at the sink, washing the stones thoroughly. Clean and free of dust they looked like Emeralds.
I poured the stones into the tank, severly frightening the poor goldfish, but they looked good.
I went to bed.
Something awoke me in the early hours of the morning. Shuffling. Creaking. Opening my eyes, adjusting themselves to the dark, the moonlight filtering into my quiet room, there, stood in the middle of my bedroom, a man.
Wispy white hair sprouting from a white specled thin skull. A faded black pinstriped suit. He looked old, slightly hunched. His eyes were deep empty sockets. There was a smell of earth, damp and muddy. He lifted an arm, thin and long and stretched out a boney finger with a crack. He was pointing at my goldfish tank.
His jaw cracked open. A plume of dry dust ballooned into the air.
"My stones.......give...me...back...my...stones..."
I pulled my blanket up over my head, paralysed with fear, panting, shaking. A second later, he was gone.
The next morning i scooped the stones up out of the tank, every last one of them, and returned to the Cemetry alone. It was a Sunday. I poured them back over the ground in front of the headstone. The cleaner washed stones mingling with the dull dusty ones. I left quicky before anyone saw me.
When I arrived home, the fish was dead. I wasn't suprised somehow.
Never steal. Even from the dead. It's not nice.
Sunday 14 November 2010
INTERESTING MIND JELLY.
I spout. I have verbal diaoherria. But why the hell not? Speak one's mind i say! Keep tuned! Be alert! Don't be A Lert..........Listen up! Here there be DEMONS. Stories. Weird stuff. It begins soon with a little story entitled........"LITTLE GREEN STONES." Stay away from those cemetries!
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