Fragments

By Steve J Wainwright

Fragments is written by an astronomer who started a revolution in amateur astronomical imaging. This book is not just about that story, but entwined within it is how he became friends with the iconic astronomer, Sir Patrick Moore and how on occasions, they worked together, how it all became an astronomical adventure, and how Patrick influenced him,

• Language: English
• Publisher: AS-Publishing
• Release date: Oct 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9780992979645

Book preview

Fragments

Dr S.J. Wainwright

Copyright © Steve Wainwright 2014

First Published in Great Britain

2013 by AS-Publishing

Second Edition Published in Great Britain

2014 by aSys Publishing

All rights reserved

No part of this document may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without prior written permission of the Author.

Published by aSys Publishing

http://www.asys-publishing.co.uk

ISBN: 978-0-9929796-4-5

Table of Contents

Preface

Bus Pass

The Last Grannie

The Dark

Do you ever wish you had kept that Photograph?

Passing of a Friend

Pitfall

Poetry

Silverwood Fall

What is Art?

Bad Light

Christmas Night

What am I?

Tempus Omnia Vincit

Coincidence of Light

Comet

Welsh Stones

Mesopotamian War

D-Day

Preface

Fragments, is a collection of writings from the heart and mind of a romantic scientist, not half way between a biologist and an astronomer, but both. It ranges over essays, stories and poems, mostly based on fact and reality, but all written with passion, and sometimes with a tear in my eye.

The reader is invited into my soul for the duration of his/her reading and she/he is invited to look through my eyes, and to feel with my heart.

I have hardly changed the names of anyone `to protect the innocent` or for any other reason, for everyone in this book is innocent. In the main, I refer to real people, some alive and some now passed away, but all with the greatest respect.

In this work the arrow of time is not respected. The mind jumps from moment to moment, and not always in the order in which events occurred. Such is the nature of fragmented thought. Make of it what you will.

Dear reader, do enjoy!

Steve Wainwright BSc, PhD, CBiol, MSB, FRAS.

Swansea 2013

Bus pass

She told me that poems don't have to rhyme. Ted Hughes and Sylvia Plath showed this unashamedly.

'Bus pass' is not a poem but why not? Here it is: a poem without rhyme or meter but encapsulating the rhythm of a still beating heart.

I wrote Bus pass in 2008 when something in me broke.

Today I am an old man. It is official!

I live alone in a small rented cottage on the Gower. Idyllic but for the loneliness. Birds tap at the feeder on the south-facing window and swing from the seed containers hanging under the veranda outside the north-facing window of the small living room/kitchen.

An acrobat squirrel hangs over the eaves and peers in to ask me for peanuts, which I duly give him. He sits on the veranda with his pile and, if it is warm, I sit with him, marvel his simple life and ponder on the nature of pleasures that he might feel.

Three ducks visit me daily, and quack loudly on the veranda until I give them clean water with seeds and bread. A white duck called Jemima, Dinky, the smallest Mallard in the world and a large drake called Delmont. Two horses, Millie and Katy whinny at the fence a few feet away asking for their carrots and apples. So many dependents, and yet none! Great pleasures, only to be had if shared.

She gave the ducks their names and they seem to know them. This empty morning I walked round to check the post and there was a long awaited envelope. Inside was my free bus pass that will enable me to escape this isolation without overspending on petrol.

The walk to the bus stop was different. I have never walked there before. It was something we had not done together. It only took eight minutes, which surprised me. I looked at the shelter and wondered what it would be like in the rain. Today there was a wan sun casting pale shadows like myself.

I was early and had a wait but the bus came on time and I climbed aboard displaying my pass to a smiling driver. The journey to town should have been exciting. It was only familiar and was over in twenty-five minutes, the same time it took to drive. No need to find a parking place. I looked around, lost in an ugly, lovely town I know better than anywhere on Earth. The sky cleared even more and the wind was still. A balmy, solo, stroll through the town. I had two and a half hours to kill before I would wait for my return bus at the station.

I reminded myself of why I had taken this bus ride. It was to save the cost of petrol. I am a senior citizen. I am entitled to travel anywhere in Wales free of charge because our Welsh Assembly says so. I can have free prescriptions too. I wonder what it is like for my cousins in England and I realise that I don’t know. I remembered why I was in town. I had to buy some seeds to feed the birds. It would have been top of her list. I also had to buy some bread and something else, I suppose, for myself. There was something else, but I can’t remember.

I wandered down St. Helens road checking out phone cards in the Asian shop windows. No Say G’day card here! Each claiming it is the best, so confusing! How can I be confused? She said I had a mind ‘like a steel trap’. Now it is just trapped. In an empty cottage, an empty car, an empty bus and an empty town.

I went to the Tesco supermarket, but now I had a basket instead of a trolley. What was a joyful adventure is now an effort, only worth it because of the savings to be made. I checked out at the Ten-items till and the lady asked if I was OK. I could hardly see as I entered my pin at the checkout card machine. She helped me pack our bag. I thanked her for her help and left quickly before anyone I might know saw me.

A cup of tea for sixty-five pence in the café feels like an extravagance. I looked around the café and saw others like myself, white haired and alone. I wondered what they were thinking and what they were feeling. I didn’t really care.

The watch she bought me a few Christmases ago told me that my bus was almost due. I checked uncertainly the bay at the bus station and found that I had five minutes to spare. The bus was on time as I have always been. I smiled at this.

The return journey was also twenty-five minutes with the driver chatting to the inspector all the way, even though the sign tells us not to distract the driver. I stepped down onto my country lane and the bus departed with a puff of smoke. Eight minutes later my shopping and I entered the cottage to a chorus of quacks from the pursuing ducks.

I sat on the veranda, throwing seeds to the ducks and staring at my feet. I closed my eyes and remembered.

The last grannie

During our early days at the cottage an aeon ago there were five ducks and seven guinea fowl that visited us every day. They expected food and first thing every morning at 7am, the cacophony of guinea fowl chattering was better than any alarm clock. She loved all of them and buying food for them all was always top of her list. She called the guinea fowl ‘grannies’ because they squabbled like little old ladies arguing about who should draw their pension first.

After a few weeks, one morning we noticed that there were only six grannies outside the cottage demanding food. Then there were five. The ducks dwindled to three as the predator took them one by one. Each loss saddened us but there were still eight avian visitors making life rich and more interesting than it would otherwise be. A family of bold squirrels swung from the eaves and ventured in the door hoping as always for a friendly soul to dispense peanuts and talk gently to them. They distracted us and took us away from our writing, but oh such delightful distractions. It felt as though this would go on forever, and while predators took their toll, offspring replenished those who had gone. Then she was gone!

I was alone but not alone. I could have set my watch by the visits of my small animal friends and they grew in importance, preserving my sanity and refreshing my memories. Sometimes I would talk to them oblivious to the world and I acquired the nickname of Dr. Doolittle.

The ducks dwindled to one, a small mallard she had named 'Dinkie'. Without his duck companions he had changed from his old, bold self, to a frightened, pathetic, heartbroken soul whose only friend was Dr Doolittle, who, in turn, depended on his visits. I used to sit on the veranda with a book and a cup of tea, or sometimes my small laptop computer, and Dinkie would sit there by my side, feeling safe. Maybe he had seen the predator take Jemima and then Delmont, his last two companions, I think so. I would talk to him and he would talk back, although I never figured out what he 'said'. We would sit and watch the rabbits hopping on the grass just yards from the veranda like a stage with a never ending silent play, perpetually enacted just for us.