A bit of Anvil

Metal on Metal - 1983



666- 2005

Only because I'm reading the story of Anvil at the moment.... I haven't had a chance to see the film yet. It'll probably be a dvd rental now rather than a trip to the cinema

Photo Hunt - Stripes

Hover fly in its stripey glory

A rather coy bumble bee

The theme for this week's Photo Hunt is stripes. Again I don;t have a lot that fits in wth the theme so shere's a repeat of hover fly photo posted originally in 2007. Also a bumble bee that chooses not to flaunt its delicious stripines... or should that be hoops? Ah well another stretched theme!

My cast means that I still can't spend too much time at the pc so please bear with me

A U-boat in Ireland

I have no inspiration for another post today so here is a post recycled from 2006

Contrary to rumours there were no secret U boat bases in Eire during World War II. The chances of one staying secret were virtually nil. Besides if there had been any evidence of one, the resultant British action would have been swift and drastic I am sure. That is not to say that U boats were not present in Irish waters. In one case a U Boat did actually land in Eire in rather unusual circumstances.



On 4 October 1939, the residents of Ballymore near Dingle noticed a strange craft heading for the rock at Ventry Harbour. They rushed towards the shore and to their amazement found that members of the crew of the German submarine, U 35, were landing two Greek sailors from a rubber dinghy.. After landing the men, the German sailors rowed back to the U Boat and brought in two more men, and they continued to make the trip until 28 men were put ashore. They were survivors from a Greek freighter, Diamantis, which had been bound from Freetown to Barrow on Furness with 4,000 tons of iron ore when it was intercepted by the U Boat off south of Ireland the previous day. The sea was so rough at the time that one of their life boats was overturned and in a rare show of chivalry, the German commander, Werner Lott, ordered his crew to rescue the Greek sailors.

All 28 seamen from the Diamantis were brought on board the U 35. The Greek crew were offered beds and told to make themselves comfortable.. Some of the men later expressed their keen appreciation of the way in which they had been treated. “When the Greek sailors said good bye to me on the conning tower they went on their knees and kissed my wedding ring as if I was a bishop,” Lott recalled. “I did not want this but they said ‘we owe our lives to you. You have treated us very nicely’.” After dropping off the Greek seamen, the U Boat left Ventry Harbour at a very slow speed. before submerging.

Much to the embarrassment of the Dublin government, the story was reported not only in the local newspapers but also in the international press. It actually made the cover story of Life Magazine on October 16, 1939.From the Taoiseach Eamon de Valera’s standpoint, however, the report was embarrassing because it gave credence to rumours that German U Boats were being succored by the Irish.

When U 35 returned to Germany, Lott was reprimanded by Admiral Karl Donitz, the head of the German Navy, for endangering the life of his crew. But he was still in charge of U 35 on its next tour of duty. On 29 November 29 U 35 was cruising on the surface in the North Sea, east of the Shetland Islands when she was spotted by the British destroyer HMS Icarus. Blinded by the rising sun, the crew of U 35 failed to see the Icarus approaching until it was too late. The submarine managed to submerge but was hit and badly damaged in the ensuing depth charge attack. The Icarus was joined by other destroyers under the direction of the Captain of HMS Kelly, Lord Louis Mountbatten. Realising that their vessel was doomed, Lott ordered the boat to surface. As U 35 flooded, the crew took to the water - all 43 of whom survived the ordeal.

Normally the British would not wait to rescue German sailors, because the British ships would be sitting targets for any other U boats in the vicinity, but on this occasion Mountbatten ordered that all of the German sailors be rescued. Lott sought him out when they reached England. “I thanked him for the extraordinary efforts his destroyer made to pick us up,” Lott recalled. “That is how life is,” Mountbatten replied. “You were extraordinary picking up the Greeks.”. After the conflict Lott made friends with Mountbatten and they corresponded with one another until Mountbatten was murdered by the Provisional IRA in bomb blast on his boat off Mullaghmore, Co Sligo, in 1979.


This post is based on an article by Ryle Dwyer in teh Irish Examiner, U-Boat net and the U35 website. See links below:

Irish Examiner

U 35 homepage

U boat net

Robyn and Bebe

This week's entry for the Friday Ark and Carnival of the Cats.

Now we are Three

Here starts the fourth year of the Poor Mouth's existence. When I started I didn't know how long I would last before I got tired and gave up - I didn't expect to make it to to three years, nearly 2300 posts, over 400,000 visits and thousands of comments!

I am grateful to everyone who continues to visit, everyone who has linked to the Poor Mouth and to everyone who has left comments over the years. Without you the Poor Mouth is nothing.

Chick may not be bird brains after all

Again this looked like an April Fool joke when I saw it but it is too widespread t be a prank. According to yesterday’s Guardian (and many other sources), scientists have discovered that chicks can do simple sums soon after they hatch.

Researchers observed "impressive arithmetic" in newly hatched chicks. Rosa Rugani at the University of Trento stated that the chicks had to perform simple arithmetic to work out which screen obscured the larger number of objects.

The chicks were reared with five plastic containers of the kind found inside Kinder chocolate eggs. This meant the chicks bonded with the capsules, much as they do with their mother, making them want to be near the containers as they grew up. In a series of simple maths tests, Rugani's team attached a fishing line to each of the plastic capsules and used it to move them behind two screens that the chick could see from behind a clear plastic door. When all of the containers had been hidden, the chick was set free to investigate.

Rugani's team found that when the chicks went in search of the capsules, they peered first behind the screen that concealed the larger number of containers.In a more difficult test, the researchers moved the containers back and forth behind the two screens while the chicks watched. When they were released into the enclosure, the chicks still made for the screen obscuring the most containers, suggesting they had been able to keep track of the number of capsules behind each by adding and subtracting them as they moved.

Well there you go - proof positive that chicks are smarter that many Nuts and Okay readers and every single member of the BNP

Her Sorrow - Sohrab Sepheri

Like Her Grief by Ahmad Shamlou, Sohrab Sepheri's poem is a tribute to Forough Farrokzad

She was grand.

She was a noble native of today.

She was grand.

Her realm was all boundless spheres,

And she sensed, so intensely, the ways of water and the earth.

The tone of her voice pictured

the anxious sadness of the truth.

Her eyes recalled the live direction of the roots.

And her hands, one day,

waved tender steam of generosity

and floated us in the stream of care.

She played the intimacy of her soul,

And she portrayed the straightness of her love

in all sharp bends of her time,

for the mirrors.

She was alike the rain,

full of freshness of the flow.

She was alike the tree,

spread in the ease of lights.

She was always calling early years of the breeze

And she forever tied strings of her words

to the neat relevance of rivers.

One night, for us

she spelled so plainly the green prayer of innocence

that we reached out for the kind texture of the soil

and we revived… alike refreshing accent of a pail.

Many times we saw:

with plenty of wooden baskets, she left

to gather bushes of golden plaques.

But it couldn’t be

that she’d stand in front of crystal belief of the birds.

Thus she went to the limits of naught

and laid in the wake of white serenity of the lights.

And she didn’t believe,

She didn’t believe at all,

that within revolted intonation of the gates

we would be left massively alone.

Even to taste a piece of fruit,

we are now left extremely alone.

By: Sohrab Sepehri

Translation: Maryam Dilmaghani

From the Maryam Dilmaghani's website Forough Farrokhzad - The sad little fairy

Miss Universe’s Gitmo travelogue

When I saw this in today’s Independent I thought that this must surely be an April Fool’s joke but the BBC says otherwise.

It would seem that Miss Universe, Venezuelan Dayana Mendoza, has been fulsome in her praise for Guantanamo Bay. "I didn't want to leave, it was such a relaxing place, so calm and beautiful," she wrote in her blog at the end of a five-day trip.

Ms Mendoza, a Venezuelan model, was crowned Miss Universe last summer. Since then, she has clocked up stops in Indonesia, Spain, the Bahamas and Puerto Rico. "This week, Guantanamo!!!" she trumpeted on her blog. Her visit to the base was designed as a morale-boosting treat for troops. "The first thing we did was attend a big lunch and then we visited one of the bars they have in the base. We talked about Gitmo and what it was like living there," wrote Ms Mendoza.

Other highlights included meeting the military dogs – who "did a very nice demonstration of their skills" – and a first-hand look at the detainee camps with their orange jump-suited inmates. "We saw the jails, where they shower, how they recreate themselves with movies, classes of art, books," she said. "It was very interesting."

Cori Crider, who has represented more than 40 current and former Guantanamo prisoners, described the visit as the "latest surreal chapter" in the history of the prison. The lawyer had just finished visiting an inmate, who had been shackled to the floor, and was driving back to her office when she saw a large crowd of jostling soldiers. "At the centre of the uniform swarm was a shock of glossy hair and a brightly patterned top that looked more like one you'd wear on beach holiday, her hip was out, her arm around a Marine," said Ms Crider. "It's obviously tempting to blame her for posing for a photo a stone's throw away from the isolation camps, but people don't think. They miss human suffering going on right under their nose."

Miss Mendoza described the sea thus: "The water... is soooo beautiful! We went to the glass beach, and realised the name of it comes from the little pieces of broken glass from hundreds of years ago. It is pretty to see all the colours shining with the sun." Miss Universe's final encounter was with a jewellery maker. "I bought a necklace from her that will remind me of Guantanamo Bay."

Hmm I wonder if some of the longer term visitors will have similar fond memories, but then I doubt any of them had the chance to buy a necklace or visit the glass beach...

WW - Warley Place

This week's entry for the Tuesday and Wednesday editions of Wordless Wednesday. Warley Place is an abandoned garden not far from where I live

The Tayside tragedian on the Bard

AN ADDRESS TO SHAKESPEARE by William McGonagall

Immortal! William Shakespeare, there's none can you excel,
You have drawn out your characters remarkably well,
Which is delightful for to see enacted upon the stage
For instance, the love-sick Romeo, or Othello, in a rage;
His writings are a treasure, which the world cannot repay,
He was the greatest poet of the past or of the present day
Also the greatest dramatist, and is worthy of the name,
I'm afraid the world shall never look upon his like again.
His tragedy of Hamlet is moral and sublime,
And for purity of language, nothing can be more fine
For instance, to hear the fair Ophelia making her moan,
At her father's grave, sad and alone....
In his beautiful play, "As You Like It," one passage is very fine,
Just for instance in fhe forest of Arden, the language is sublime,
Where Orlando speaks of his Rosilind, most lovely and divine,
And no other poet I am sure has written anything more fine;
His language is spoken in the Church and by the Advocate at the bar,
Here and there and everywhere throughout the world afar;
His writings abound with gospel truths, moral and sublime,
And I'm sure in my opinion they are surpassing fine;
In his beautiful tragedy of Othello, one passage is very fine,
Just for instance where Cassio looses his lieutenancy
... By drinking too much wine;
And in grief he exclaims, "Oh! that men should put an
Enemy in their mouths to steal away their brains."
In his great tragedy of Richard the III, one passage is very fine
Where the Duchess of York invokes the aid of the Divine
For to protect her innocent babes from the murderer's uplifted hand,
And smite him powerless, and save her babes, I'm sure 'tis really grand.
Immortal! Bard of Avon, your writings are divine,
And will live in the memories of your admirers until the end of time;
Your plays are read in family circles with wonder and delight,
While seated around the fireside on a cold winter's night.

Ah utterly sublime!