David's Tiger

This rather eye-catching butterfly is called David's Tiger. The tiger obviously refers to it's distinctive markings, but quite how David claimed this butterfly for himself, I don't know. I went to see my beloved Brighton and Hove Albion beat Newcastle United 2-0 in the FA Cup today and Brighton's right-back had the name David on the back of his shirt (his full name is David Lopez and he played pretty well although he is getting criticised for diving by some Facebookers). Perhaps he is the owner of the butterfly species known as David's Tiger, although this unlikely leap of logic is unlikely to be actually true, but if it is, then Mr David needs to pay a bit closer attention to his Philippine butterflies are critically endangered.

I've tried to find out what has caused this endangered situation, but I'm afraid I am none the wiser. I've seen quite a lot of butterflies stuck on pins in the Booth Museum and perhaps this barbaric turning of butterflies into lollipops is the cause, but I reckon that most museum butterflies are from a bygone era and that no one does this anymore unless the butterfly has died of natural causes. I once followed a local aspiring politician into the woods on a 'Bug Hunt' and with his massive net (big enough to catch a badger in), he managed to ensnare some butterflies. He then put them in jars and showed me a clever trick - if you turn the jamjarred butterfly upside-down, when you then release the butterfly, they sit calmly on your shoulder for a little while to get over the confusion of being in topsy-turvy land. Dave Bangs is this bloke's name if you think my brief anecdote is enough to get you voting for him.

I may start my own political campaign to ensure the saving of this particularly attractive butterfly (although I worry that attractive endangered animals get more attention than ugly ones), but until I know how their salvation will come, I will have to leave you with a dull ache in your hearts for our stripy friends.

Derecho

It seems like rain is getting far too much attention today. It rained a lot last year apparently, the second most since records began, but they don't seem to measure wind records unless they are individual high speedy ones that blow things all over the place. The only big-wind memory I have is of 'The Great Storm' of 1987. I was seven at the time and got to go home early from school in case my scrawny bones took to the skies. I remember being quite excited by the prospect of windiness, thinking it an opportunity for flight - I attempted spreading my arms and taking off on the way home, but all the only real effect that the wind had on my frame was that it made it slightly more troublesome to walk to the bus-stop. The wind couldn't have been particularly high at this point, otherwise double-decker buses would surely not have been careering down Portland Road carrying ruined haircuts homewards.
  The most ferocious point of the storm took place in the night and I slept through the whole thing and was surprised to find that a tree had fallen onto our shed when I awoke in the morning. Now that I've finished with my wind-autobiography (that type of wind anyway), I shall move onto the point of this post, and explore the language of wind and where the boundary between a light breeze and a gentle breeze occurs. I remember learning about the twelve-stage Beaufort Scale in Primary School. Here's some brief details: a light breeze starts at 4 miles per hour at Beaufort number two and this is when wind can be felt on exposed skin. Breezes then travel through stages gentle (Beaufort 3), moderate (4) - the average human breathes out at 15 mph which in this category - , fresh (5) and peaks at strong (6). A strong breeze is between 25 and 30 mph which seems pretty quick to still be in the breeze category. If you're traveling in the direction of the wind at the same speed as the wind, would that mean that you wouldn't be able to feel the wind? I'm afraid I have no answer to that question that has just popped into my head.
  Beaufort number 7 moves us into near-gale category at 31 mph. This is when it becomes hard work to walk into the wind - I reckon this must have been where we were at when I exited my school in 1987, although I was only a young child, so perhaps it wasn't that fast yet. As I tappetty-tap, another wind memory has crawled into my mind. I was on a school trip somewhere and my memory suggests that we were really close to the edge of a cliff although that seems unlikely. On this occasion, my classmates and I were testing the wind's ability to hold us up if we leant backwards into it. With the assistance of a Tesco carrier-bag providing a little more drag, I seem to remember one boy achieving very close to an equilibrium between his weight and the wind's power.
  39 mph is where a near-gale becomes an actual gale (8) and then at 47 mph a strong gale (9). 1987, the time in my life where wind was at its highest was at point 10 - storm, somewhere between 55-63 mph. At 64 mph (11), the storm becomes a violent storm and at 74 mph (12), we have the hurricane. Did you know, the fastest speed that snot is recorded to have travelled out of someone's nose is 102 mph, so if you got lots of people in a line and they all sneezed at once in the same direction, then you would have a pretty ferocious snot hurricane in the few millimetres in front of their noses.
  The Beaufort Scale is all about wind-speed, but there are also words to describe the way the wind blows. For example, a tornado is a vortex of rapidly rotating winds created by a thunderstorm and extends all the way from the clouds to the ground, whereas a whirlwind is just a column of air moving about, but not necessarily connected to the ground or clouds; a typhoon is specific to a tropical area.
  Finally, I come to the word that entitles this blog entry: derecho. This refers to a wind that travels in a straight line and they often come with a fast-moving band of extreme thunderstorms. This year's high winds in Argentina and in the east of America were examples of derechos. So there you go: I feel fairly educated about wind now and I hope you do also. Derecho is also a potentially helpful word in Scrabble.

Diary of James Kochalka

About four years ago I came across the online diary of James Kochalka; from October 26 1998 up until New Year's Eve, he sketched a moment from his day, often brief meaningless moments, but moments nonetheless. When I found the diary, I shuffled right back to the beginning and read the lot and have continued to visit his site: americanelf.com every few days since to keep up with what's going on in his life.

During the thirteen years of American Elf, Kochalka (it seems weird using his surname like I would with another writer because it kind of feels like I know him) has documented not only the small joys and painful lows of everyday life, but also the big events that have happened during that time: the birth of his two children and recently, the death of his father. The diaries, whilst brief, are intimate and Kochalka has freedom, that makes good art into great art, to lay his life (the good bits and the bad bits) before his reader and it makes for fascinating and addictive stuff.

My twins boys, Ned and Jarvis, had been born shortly before I found his diaries and I found his entries helpful, I guess enlightening. This sounds a bit grandiose because he's a very different person to me, and I don't particularly aspire to be like him, but the day to day emotional accounts of being a dad rang true for me. Novels that discuss being a father can tend to focus on big events and use these to reflect truths about relationships, but these diaries simply paint the tick-tock of day to day existence which is surely everyone's experience, and the emotional experience of moving from one day to the next can swing around the emotional compass in a haphazard fashion which is exactly what Kochalka expresses, not deliberately, but naturally because he is simply penning his life.

I will certainly miss his daily diaries.

Dungeons

"Jarvis, can you think of any things beginning with the letter D?"

"Dog."

"Can you think of any other words?"

"Prison."

"That doesn't begin with D."

"I can see a dungeon outside and it's got wheels and the baddies are bringing it to get Ned. I'll shoot you with... tricked you, they weren't really coming."

"What's the difference between a dungeon and a prison?"

"Er, you get trapped in dungeons and prisons?"

"But, are they the same thing or are there any differences between dungeons and prisons?"

"Er, there's no differences between them."

"Shall I have a look in the dictionary?"

"Yeah."

"Okay, a prison says: a building to which people are legally committed as a punishment for crimes they have committed, and a dungeon says: a strong underground prison cell, especially in a castle. What do you think about that?"

"Yeah."

"Have you ever seen a dungeon?"

"No. We haven't. We've never seen a dungeon."

"Would you like to see a dungeon?"

"Yeah."

"What do you think it would be like?"

"I don't know."

"Would it smell of anything?"

"Yes."

"What would it smell of?"

"I don't know."

"Would it be a nice smell or a horrible smell?"

"A nice one."

"What would be inside the dungeon?"

"Er, I don't know. Maybe goblins' things."

"What do goblins have?"

"I don't know."

"Do they have toys?"

"No. On Noddy they do."

"What do goblins do?"

"Er, steal things."

"Who do they steal from?"

"Er, I don't know. Maybe everyone's things. Maybe grown-ups' things."

"Have they ever stolen anything from you?"

"No."

"Why do they steal?"

"Because they're a bit bad."

"What do goblins look like?"

"Er, I don't know because I've never seen a goblin."