Catching The Rain

Friday dilemna - stay in, or go out?

Drama hit the tranquility of west London last night when Fire sparked overnight evacuation in South Ealing, just down the road from me. The immediate and real drama was for those in the vicinity, including a few friends of ours, who faced a sudden evacuation in the middle of the night. The BBC reporter seemed a little more vague about it, stating “Hundreds of people were told to stay indoors or leave their homes when a fire broke out overnight”. How exactly were they supposed to make that choice. Perhaps it was if they could see flames? Or if it was starting to feel a bit warm?

Of course to many the biggest ‘drama’, and to me the biggest source of amusement, was the traffic chaos that ensued. When the parents driving five hundred yards to drop their kids off at school met with all the others going back the same five hundred yards cos they had found out the schools were shut, all hell broke loose. Ho hum.

The dangers of searching for plants names on Google

I don’t often read the Stamford Mercury in my quest for botanical news, but in the mysterious way that the web works (or sometimes doesn’t) I found myself at their story Plant mystery solved!. It seems they published a story about a mystery plant (subsequently identified by Kew Gardens as Paulinia tomentosa) and since then the phones haven’t stopped ringing. The latest article has a picture of a new oddity, and from the limited information and the incy-wincy picture I had a hunch it might be Ecballium elatarium.

Which brings me to the real point of this post. As a botanist of sorts I am always told to use scientific names. But as a person who also lives in the real world I know that’s just not what ordinary people do. So in order to confirm to myself that I was somewhere near right I stuck the common name of the above mentioned plant into a Google Image search. So why am I not giving the common name and providing a direct link to the search results? Well, to be honest I got a bit of a shock when I saw what I got. Plus the fact that my mum reads this from time to time. Go ahead and put the pieces together and try it if you wish, but DON’T do it if you’re of a sensitive disposition and don’t have a broad mind! NOR if you’re sitting in an open-plan office and want to keep your job. And certainly NOT with the kids around!

It’s not the first time this has happened either. Years ago I was sent a dried chilli pepper that was labelled ‘Pompino’. Back in the early days of the web there really wasn’t any content filtering, and I got nowhere with a search for the name on whatever pre-Google search engine I was trying, save for an endless stream of Italian porn sites. A search today on Google seems to avoid all of those, and instead shows us it’s the name for a bike, and a restaurant in Auckland (although their offer of catering for group functions and home delivery makes the mind boggle!), with the only hint of anything untoward being a link to an Italian slang dictionary.

What, you can eat wild plants?

The BBC seems very proud to reveal that blackberries grow on plants and not in plastic punnets. Their BBC Audio slideshow: Food from the wild is portrayed as being something that is a great revelation of a dying past-time.

Maybe it’s sitting in the concrete jungle that is White City that does it.

Methinks they should get out more.

Anti-junk mail postie loses round - revenge

I read with dismay the story Anti-junk mail postie loses round on the BBC news site.

But my devious mind immediately turned to thoughts of how to let the post office know just how annoying junk (e)mail can be, and to my surprise very quickly found a direct email address in the very appropriate ‘Corporate & Social Responsibility’ area of their site.

So, if you want to join my little campaign, visit the BBC News site article linked above, and use the ‘email to a friend’ link on the page and send it to CSR@royalmail.com - do you think they might get the hint? I doubt it.