Fertile ground
NOMINATIVE determinism has been posited exhaustively on these pages, to the point that on more than one occasion we have declared the subject forbidden, off-limits, no more.
Yet Feedback is powerless to ignore the news that one in eight employees at the UK’s Royal Horticultural Society (RHS) have a name associated with green fingers.
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An announcement preceding this year’s National Gardening Week, 30 April to 6 May, reveals that the organisation’s 900 staff include “four Heathers, three Berrys and another three called Moss”. Visitors to RHS gardens may be served by a Gardiner, Marsh or Shears, a Garlick, Greenfield, Moore, Shaw or Goodacre among others.
Whether nature-themed monikers are significantly more common at the RHS than among the general UK population is still an open question. Yet Feedback feels that one groundskeeper working at Garden Hyde Hall in Essex deserves a special mention: step forward, Heather Cutmore.
“The antimicrobial lining in Ian Moseley’s new shoes promises to keep them “clean and tidy”. Sadly he reports that the shoes “remain wherever I have kicked them off””
Marching chowder
PREVIOUSLY, Feedback heard from Richard Machin on the topic of “puros” in Colombia: the distance covered on horseback in the time it takes to smoke one puro, a cigar (10 March). “When I was climbing in the Andes in Peru in 1962, the distance up the access valley, 17 kilometres, was said to be seven ‘cocadas‘,” says Charles Sawyer.
“A cocada was a wad of coca leaves and lime placed between the back teeth and chewed, causing all fatigue and exhaustion to vanish. When this no longer happened, it was time for a new cocada.”
As the trail climbed some 1250 metres into the mountains, progress in the upward direction was “not quite one cocada per hour”. But he says, since the cocada was based on human effort rather than absolute distance, the downhill return was half the cocadas of the uphill trek.
Village markets along the way kept barrels of coca leaves for weary travellers, although Charles doesn’t mention if he stopped in for this particular local delicacy.
Units of distanc
MEANWHILE, Gloucester resident Keith Waldon is reminded of an encounter with a Canadian while on holiday in Mexico. The man described himself as being from just outside Toronto, “about five beers away”. This, Keith learned, equated to a distance of a few hundred kilometres. “When he asked where I was from, I replied ‘just outside Paris'”.
From Tae to Z
FINALLY, Noel Cramer reports that in the early 1930s, his father was chief engineer for the construction of the transit road linking the Turkish Black Sea town of Trebizond to the Eastern Anatolian town of Erzurum.
“While reconnoitring the land, my father had sometimes to ask local people for the way and distance to given villages,” says Noel. The answer was always a gesture in the direction with an outstretched arm, accompanied by Taeeeee…, “the length of which gave the distance.”
Somehow, Noel’s father was able to make use of this information, although Noel says “I no longer recollect how the relation between that utterance and distance was calibrated.”
Long in the tooth
MORE theories out of the mouths of babes: Tony Green writes “As a young child, I noticed that my parents were taller than I was. I also noticed that my gran was shorter than my parents. I came to the obvious conclusion: people start out small, grow, then later in life they start shrinking again. It all made perfect sense!” Perhaps then a daily spell on the rack could increase one’s, er, lifespan?
Star drops
ALSO pondering the big questions was a young Paul Hargreaves, who writes: “One night when I was a young boy, I was riding in the family car down a rural road. Leaning out of the open window and watching the canopy of stars overhead, I exclaimed to my parents ‘So that’s how it works’.”
Apparently used to these gnostic outbursts, his family readied themselves to receive young Paul’s latest wisdom. “When it rains,” he told them, “the water must fall through all those little holes in the sky.”
No half measures
BOOKING a place at the upcoming Royal College of Psychiatrists Congress, Adrian Leathart notes a banner on their website proclaiming “50% of 0 users rate our live chat as ‘fantastic'”. Adrian says “I’m not sure if they are exaggerating or being too modest.”
Element of doubt
BRYN GLOVER writes: “I have just returned from my local Morrisons supermarket, where they now sell edible gold leaf. This gold is described as 23 carat, and the packet has helpful instructions on how to lay it on one’s food.”
So far, so nouvelle cuisine. Yet one detail has Bryn scratching his head – the packet also carries a best-before date, recommending he use up his gold leaf before November 2019.
“I think it is absolutely fantastic how they have managed to catch this batch of gold, manufactured perhaps 10 billion years ago in an early universe supernova, just a few months before its usability expires,” says Bryn. “How do they manage that?”
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