Bonkers 2!

By Stephen Day

Bonkers 2! is a compilation of personal short stories, largely nonfiction (is there such a thing?), on the bizarre side of life. Hopefully, readers on both sides of the pond, in spite of being divided by a common language, will relate to the quirky humor, and will agree the title is more than apt.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Lulu Publishing Services
• Release date: Apr 29, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483448565

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Day

Copyright © 2016 Stephen M. D. Day.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored, or transmitted by any means—whether auditory, graphic, mechanical, or electronic—without written permission of both publisher and author, except in the case of brief excerpts used in critical articles and reviews. Unauthorized reproduction of any part of this work is illegal and is punishable by law.

ISBN: 978-1-3296-1000-2 (sc)

ISBN: 978-1-4834-4856-5 (e)

Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.

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Lulu Publishing Services rev. date: 4/7/2016

BONKERS 2!

Stephen Day

Dedication

This sequel to Bonkers is dedicated to my darling Mum, Diana Rosemary Day, who brought me into this world in 1944 and nurtured me through those tough adolescent years, with unconditional love and endless encouragement—and lived to see her two grandsons, Gordon and Colin, develop into fine young men.

Today I saw you unfurl those glimmering wings

Too far away to tell you apart from tiger or zebra swallowtail;

Should have known it was you, ephemeral as the wind

Lifted for a moment in that warm breeze of life;

A breeze you left with us when you flew off a while ago.

Mourning cloak or Camberwell beauty, with its regal yellow-bordered magenta was your favorite.

I see you now in butterflies.

Spirit free to change from Chalk Hill blue to Rocky Mountain fritillary,

As was your wont.

You taught us so much of how to see things others couldn’t.

We wanted to keep you with us. You said you had to fly away

On a Milkweed breeze no less.

I saw you again this afternoon

Floating above lavender

Wings extended with daring scarlet tippets—

Zebra swallowtail!

Guess it had to be you who always

Understood my love

Of butterflies….

Yes, it was you, my darling mother.

SMDD

Contents

I. University Interview

II. Out Damned Wasp!

III. Inauspicious Black Mass

IV. Skye Sketches

V. Last train to Kota Kinabalu

VI. Meeting my future Mother-in-Law … .

VII. Lord What-Not’s Pheasant

VIII. Fond Memories of ‘Uncle Wol’

IX. Yacoubian Building Redux

X. Family road-trip around the Great Lakes

XI. Luggala Magic

XII. Fishing the Tongariro, New Zealand

XIII. Death of an Oriole

XIV. Extreme Sailing Lessons

XV. The Nose

XVI. A Shropshire lunch

XVII. Core Beliefs

XVIII. Seventy-something favorite Quotes & Aphorisms

Front cover photo Thanks, I’ll have another G&T, please! Annual bass fishing competition hosted by Hugh Weidinger, Matunuck, Rhode Island, 2012. Photo by Ken Woodcock.

Acknowledgements

I wish to acknowledge Wikipedia for background information on various subjects. The cover photograph was taken by my good friend Ken Woodcock at a bass fishing contest in Rhode Island in 2012 where we were served gin and tonics on silver trays while fishing, by black tie waiters in canoes. Permission was given to use content from various websites, specifically the Luggala and Tongariro Lodges. In addition, my godfather and author BB gave me exclusive use of two of his paintings I have used, gifted to me on the occasion of my wedding.

My wife Sara, companion for life, sleeping partner, and serious author in her own right, helped me enormously with the editing of this modest work, especially to curb certain of the more outlandish happenings in a couple of stories.

A close friend Eliot Marshall, previous editor-at-large at Science magazine, helped enormously with his wise counsel and final editing.

I would also like to thank my family and dear friends who collectively agreed my title Bonkers 2! is more than half apt. My father Michael Day, who also had such a huge influence on me, would have recognized some of his dry humor percolating through these stories.

Stephen Day

Washington, DC, 2016

Disclaimer

While situations and settings in these short stories are largely factual, much of the recreated dialogue is inevitably fictitious, since I had neither recorder nor notebook at hand at the time. I have therefore sometimes wildly embellished, and occasionally under embellished, certain comments for satire, humor and, not least, self-preservation, to justify the title Bonkers 2.

I. University Interview

The year was 1963. I know that because I had a life-altering interview at Queen Elizabeth College, London University, and my sister Zoe was born that year. We had zero college counseling at my British public boarding school (college counseling―what’s that?), so it was up to us students to select a university and to decide on our own what we wanted to study. The problem was we were only allowed to apply to five universities, due to the British Government’s attempt to rationalize the university application process by enacting a type of clearing house. At the time less than fifteen percent of the eligible population attended university and, other than Oxford and Cambridge, all universities were pretty comparable in entrance requirements and standards, though they differed considerably by academic disciplines.

My predilection at the time was to obtain a degree in biochemistry, mainly because I enjoyed biology and chemistry. It hadn’t dawned on me what exactly biochemistry entailed, but it sounded glamorous and esoteric enough in discussions with other students, and especially with my parents (who thought I would be damned lucky to study anything anywhere). It did occur to me as I leafed through the directory of U.K. universities with details of faculties, curricula, etc., that, if all else failed, as I’m certain my parents predicted, it would probably be wise to have a safety net—what in cricket terms is known as a long stop if the wicket-keeper fails to catch the ball behind the batsman’s stumps. So I leafed through the directory the day before applications were due to be posted to find a sufficiently obscure subject that had something vaguely to do with chemistry, and chose Textile Chemistry at Leeds University in the north of England. At the time, we had zero connection to the textile industry in our family, and were firmly southerners.

Miraculously, I was summoned for an interview at London University (Queen Elizabeth College) for an interview with the dean of biochemistry. I remember it well, and was seated outside the dean’s office with several other nervous applicants. My reconstruction of that interview went something like this:

Day, please take a seat. Maybe we could get started by you explaining why you want to read biochemistry.

Although I thought this an entirely reasonable question, I hadn’t given this much thought, and was more focused on simply getting a degree, anywhere, anyhow. So I launched off into a spirited soliloquy about the future fusion, indeed confluence, of biology and chemistry, and the wellspring of useful innovations such as pesticides, emanating from this fusion.

Quite fascinating, Day. And what specific pesticide, or application of biochemistry, had you in mind?

This really took me aback. I hadn’t prepared for such a direct question, particularly on a subject I knew absolutely nothing about (though our two lads say to this day, that fact has never bothered me). I racked my porous brain for a half reasonable response:

Eliminating Colorado beetles, sir, I said, with firm conviction.

Really! Most interesting, Day. And why, might I ask, are you interested in eradicating Colorado beetles in England?

Here we go again, another great question, I thought, as I scrambled mentally to come up with an answer and dig myself out of an ever deepening hole. At that stage, I hadn’t heard of the law of holes, that when you find yourself in one, for god’s sake stop digging!

Well, I think it would be extremely useful to exterminate the Colorado beetles with pesticides, because those beetles destroy our potato crops, don’t they, sir?

This gets more fascinating by the moment, Day. Are you aware that the last scare from an infestation of Colorado beetles in England occurred during World War II, when the Germans were planning an aerial infestation of our farms with Heinkel bombers, over twenty years ago— and a Colorado beetle hasn’t been seen since in the U.K.?

Well, that really took the wind out of my sails. While I was pondering a response to this colossal conundrum, the Dean interrupted me.

Thank you Day, that’s all. Next, please.

My scorecard at that point for biochemistry acceptances was a dismal zero for four. However, somehow my ‘long stop’ worked. I was accepted at Leeds University to study Textile Chemistry—which, on arrival, I changed to a bachelor’s degree in Textile Technology, after realizing that the chemistry focus looked far too difficult, esoteric, and obscure. That led to a productive serendipitous career spanning some twelve years in the textile industry, starting with Courtaulds in the north of England for a couple of years, and then joining DuPont in the U.S.

As an amusing sideline, immediately before my interview, I visited my mother at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, London, with my father to see my baby sister Zoe, who had been born a few days earlier. We drove to the hospital together, but encountered a bureaucratic stipulation that only one visitor at a time was permitted in the maternity ward. Because of my pending interview, my father suggested I pop in first so I could be quickly on my way. When I left the hospital, my father went in and overheard the nurses tittering away about some young chap who had just left,