Books by Ian Rogers
Books by Ian Rogers
The ‘Pearls and Carbuncles’ series of books are compiled from my blog, approximately one book per year, and consist of a wide range of short pieces on various subjects. Some are Christian reflections, others humorous short stories; some pieces are about pets or wildlife, there are even a few recipes. There are a few poems and pieces from other contributors. Most pieces are written for adult readers but there are also some for children.
Jade had always wanted to see the Olympics in person. She had missed them in 2046 but now, in 2050, she was really here – seated in the amazing mega stadium in Cajamarca, Peru. Her comfortable seat, reserved by fingerprint matching pads on the arms, contoured itself perfectly to her shape and adjusted itself when she moved about. With temperatures above 35oC she was grateful it was in the shaded part of the auditorium. The overarching hood would also protect her from the regular afternoon thunder storm.
There was movement down on the track so Jade unclipped the bracelet from her wrist and held it to her face. It instantly moulded itself over her nose and across her eyes, giving her an augmented reality view with self adjusting focus wherever she looked. It was amazing to think that only a decade ago people had viewed on smart phones the size of credit cards which used pop-out 3-D self-magnifying screens.
On the track the athletes were gathering for the 500 metre sprint. Out in the open, they shed their u.v. resistant, colloidally chilled tracksuits and did a little stretching and jogging. Slathered as they were in multicoloured sun block and evapocreams, it was hard to tell who was who, but one contestant stood out. Swathed in brown grease, it was Dwayne ‘Greased Lightening’ Patrovic – Khan representing the United Kingdom of England and the Channel Isles.
Jade pressed a raised icon on the edge of her viewer and zoomed in on Dwayne, then pressed another to receive enhanced real-time sound instead of the inane commentary from the English-speaking wifi piped to her seat. “I’ll show them,” Dwayne was muttering. “When I’m Olympic champion they’ll notice me.” Elegantly tall and thin, he was nothing like the average height, mediocre sportsman she remembered from school. She had beaten him easily on every sports day. Either he’d had an amazing late growth spurt or something peculiar had happened to him. He towered over the other sprinters, none of whom was particularly short..
The starter called the runners to the start line. They crouched in their blocks and – they were off! Dwayne shot out of his blocks and flew along his lane. As the athletes came out of the curved section of track and into the straight Dwayne was well ahead. Jade could see his trademark grease falling away in globs as sweat gushed from his pores. He crossed the finishing line in record time, arms raised in triumph and a look of gloating self satisfaction on his face. Only he knew that a bribed paramedic doctor had replaced his bones with longer, light weight carbon fibre copies. His blood tests were clear, he didn’t take drugs but he could stride further and weighed less than anyone else.
The sky darkened and thunder rumbled as he completed his victory lap and mounted the winners’ podium, the second- and third-place contestants on either side. The national anthems were played and a giant gold medal was place around his neck as heavy spots of rain began to fall. Jade watched with mixed feelings as he raised his arms to the sky, holding up his medal for all to see. Suddenly her optical amplifier went black for a split second. Self-protectively it cut out as lightening lanced down from the sky. It recovered almost at once and Jade saw the second and third athletes blown away to the left and right and a fountain of incandescent sparks where Dwayne had stood, fading into a shower of grey ash. Officials started picking up hardened blobs of molten gold from the turf as the remaining athletes struggled to their feet.
Carbon fibre makes a great lightening conductor.
© Ian Rogers 2018
Science is necessarily incomplete. We don’t know everything - but we hope to know more. There are two areas that we explore. First, and most obvious, we are aware of the boundaries of our knowledge. What happens inside a black hole? What is dark energy? Is there life elsewhere in the universe? We talk of ‘pushing out the boundaries’ of our knowledge. This is like a short-sighted beetle , walking about in a cullender and peering over the edge. Just what is out there?
Secondly, science examines, or is sometimes forced by other knowledge to examine, what we think we already know. Whatever happened to ‘phlogiston’? More recently, it used to be dogma that the brain, once structurally formed, was fixed. It was a hard-wired computer into which all sorts of programs and data could be poured. We now know that the brain is ‘plastic’. Experiences actually change the microstructure of the brain. We can even change (or reprogram) our own brains to a degree, hence neuro-linguistic programming and ‘the power of positive thinking’. We are not who we were a few moments ago! Discovering new things about what we thought we knew is a bit like our beetle, walking about in the cullender, suddenly noticing the holes in the structure and peering down through a hole. Oh dear! This atom isn’t really a small, hard, indivisible ball It can be broken up!
None of the above means that science is overall wrong , nor that it’s useless. A cullender is a useful object. We just need to be aware that we live on a porous surface with a ragged outer edge (perhaps the dog chewed it). We like safety and certainty in our lives and tend to ignore the uncertainties but we are safe even with the uncertainties. The holes are too small for the beetle to fall through and it has more sense than to throw itself off the edge.
P.S. For purists among you, ‘cullender’, according to Chambers 20th Century Dictionary, is an acceptable variant of ‘colander’.
When I was 13 my father’s job moved from a small town to a large town. They found an estate where houses were about to be built and chose a smashing plot, right on the corner, looking out down a sloping field to the flood plains of the nearby river.
We lived in a rented house for 12 months while the building was put up. Our rented house was in a rural village some miles out of town. We had a dog, Taff, who had been my birthday present a few years earlier, naturally he was with us and, knowing he was inclined to run off, my Dad fixed up a horizontal wire from which a running line dangled. The end nearest Taff’s collar was chain so he couldn’t chew through it.
A local stray started coming round, initially to play with Taff. She also stole his bones and dog toys and would lie just out of his reach, chewing happily. She was a friendly dog, thin, gangly, muddy, matted and all black. She loved to be talked to and, although we never fed her, she adopted us, returning to her lair each night.
I remember an occasion when we all had to go into town. Mum, Dad, my brother Andrew and I piled into our car and drove off. ‘Blackie’, as I called her, realised we were leaving and chased anxiously after us, striving to catch up until the car outpaced her. She watched miserably as we drove away. Naturally she was delighted to see us when we returned an hour later and we made a fuss of her.
As summer progressed, Taff started to escape. We’d see him loose in the garden or find him exploring the wood-yard next door. How did he manage to chew himself free when he couldn’t reach the rope part of his tether? Then we saw lanky ‘Blackie’ reaching up and chewing through his rope while he patiently lay down and let her!
I remember another occasion, as autumn drew on and the nights got colder, when ’Blackie’ was allowed in the house. She thought she was in heaven, lying on the hearthrug in front of the open fire. When we all went to bed, we had to drag her along, back arched and all four feet dug, resisting, into the carpet, to push her out of the front door! She did learn to leave when she was told to go.
While ‘Blackie’ was ingratiating herself with us, Taff’s behaviour was becoming more erratic and aggressive. It was stressful to be around him. Realising this was a literally dead-end situation, I made enquiries and found out that ’Blackie’ belonged to a nearby farm. Without telling my parents, I took along my pocket money (ten shillings, now 50p) and talked to the farmer’s wife. Judy, as she was really called, had been a collie look-alike puppy at a rescue shelter and they had adopted her in the hope of training her to round up sheep.
Although as a puppy she looked collie-ish, as she grew it became obvious she was crossed with retriever. As she didn’t take to herding she just became a barn dog and roamed freely to entertain herself. They were willing to give her to a good home, provided my Mum agreed, which she did. She already loved this gangly, soft-natured animal. A little later, as feared, Taff made a vicious, unprovoked attack on my mum and bit her. I remember sitting on the floor by the fire, talking to Judy while Mum and Dad were away at the vet’s. I even remember the programme on the old black-and-white television. I was sad to see Taff go but knew he would never be safe as a household pet. Now I had Judy - and I hadn’t even spent my pocket money!