Song of the sky is a
book in my bookcase written in
1954 by
the war correspondent and Air Transport
Command pilot navigator Guy
Murchie a 1950s paean to the age of modern flying in four prop crates such as
C54, Constellation. Electra,, DC6 across the
trans Atlantic aero route via the
Azores to Bermuda Shannon to Gander or
Prestwick to Goose
Bay
This book was of the
monochrome silver wings era of Observers
Books /Eagle comic cut away
drawing Aeroplanes
and shares the bookcase with
them.
In his chapter on future flying Murche writes
of new horizons in 1960s
supersonic VTOL "the
pogo planes , the secret atomic ships
and ram jet helicopters "
the irony is that
the pogo hyperjets were
unrealised and four prop crates are
still flying cargo as viewers
of the Canadian TV series "Ice Pilots" will know.
Murchie a pilot from
1935 navigates by
sextant sighting from the aeroplane
astrodome and three star fix and
uses Sun compass and non magnetic
bearing via Pelorus on
his Arctic circle flights
" I could see
Alphard off to the south of Regulus and Kochab
by the pole "
A navigator in the tradition of the Astrolabe and
the Bethlehem star compass
Murchie relates how in
Arabia " you can follow your way
as Alpheratz shone over Mount Sinai Albireo on Tebuk, Hamal on Medina and Markab
on the great southland of Sheba
"
Like wagonner charts
of coastal landmarks in 16th
century sailing a notched and serrated stick with
points could have served as early pointing star compass.
I have tried out my star compass Alpheratz is my south pointer in summer and
procyon pollux my south in winter
Ironic that today a
local councillor was complaining "58% of the over 65 in the
Cheshire area not on
online or have any IT skills -
why is not something done about
providing IT training "
did he not know there
was a local learning
centre where I was delivering IT
courses for a number of years to
that very age group until
closure last year !!!
that age group however
from my teaching experience
tended to treat me as either "their personal computer servant " or as
an weekly internet
demonstrator demonstrating youtube, flickr and history pin over a number of weeks
Re website design
emailed CWCA how it was doing and got
terse email back saying " I
have not yet seen other
applicants "
I have learnt Office 2013
skills simply to pass the
time interesting business
oriented program with its web app for Access Sparkline for Excel and saving direct to Sharepoint
and Skydrive
first Microsoft product
since Office 97 I have not taught
at ITQ level in any lifelong learning environment
Office 2007 and
Office 2010 totally passe but if
you notice the basic structure
is the same in Office 2013 programs
as it was in Office 97 programs even down to
keyboard shortcuts
Access still the most exciting software on the planet
Read New poetry an anthology of
modern poets from 2008 by that haven of mediocrity Bloodaxe
books the type of book taken out on average twice a year
from the local library and for the first time and last
time I read Liz Lochhead, Peter Didsbury,
Ian Macmillan and 48 other
new British and Irish poets from
the 1980s and 90s
what an load of
outdated interchangeable angst from our New poets (
you can tell they are really our young poets when the bio informs you
so and so born in 1946)
all oh oh rambling
randle thinkie rinkie
we the
stream of clicheness telling me
tripe
of poems
eating a sauce buttie
remembering church and chapel childhoods -complaining but not blaspheming ,
depression in local dialect ,
bit of slash taken
out of newspapers to pseudo shock along the lines of he stole grannies teeth and kicked her in for pension
the sudden
TS Elly bosh mixing
produce placement memories and classical lost his oil can so like
a poet sudden cleverish
pseudo Poundies Aeolus
and Nebuchadnezzar had the making of chess players, good violinists
Unfortunately this
woefully outdated modern poetry is
stifling the whole medium with
day job free lance writers with
two collections to their name
churning out this same old same old
in style and content that does
not amuse me or tell a story.
So that when it comes
to poetry book editors
expect more like this and
merely comment to me on "my
diction that makes this poem unsuitable for inclusion in our current
publication"
and of course with
something like atom spider versus radio
killer space mystery
"not an appropriate genre " salters ghost " we do not publish supernatural "
and there is me with two collections to my name!!
