Verne’s The Mysterious Island is a cracking adventure story featuring a volcano, pirates, castaways and even some orang-utans. Set during the American Civil War, four Union soldiers and their dog find themselves stranded on an uncharted island in the Pacific Ocean, after a daring escape from a Confederate prison in a makeshift balloon, and a terrifying ride over thousands of miles carried in the teeth of possibly the fastest moving and largest storm in literature. Forced to fight for survival, the stranded soldiers start out with next to nothing, scattered across the island by their crash landing, but slowly gather resources and bootstrap their way up, determined to make their new home a self-sufficient colony of the USA. (more…)
0 comments 2008-06-28 19:43 Categories: Books, Reviews
This is Wilfred Hugh Ryan. He was born at 12.09 on 22 June 2008 by emergency Caesarean section after 18 hours of mayhem, during which we tried everything the NHS has to offer for getting a baby out into the world. We started off at home before heading to Huddersfield Royal Infirmary to try the new Birth Centre, where things progressed nicely for a bit before grinding to a halt. From there we were transferred to the delivery suite where my wife was given an epidural and hours of syntocinon and examinations and did some serious pushing before heading off to theatre for the grand finale, which was terrifying but successful. For an encore he decided to develop some breathing problems and got himself taken off to special care where he spent the afternoon in an incubator, but he’s now back with mum and both are doing very well. All of the various twenty-plus NHS nurses, midwives, doctors, anaesthetists and surgeons who looked after us were brilliant, professional and reassuring and lovely throughout, and I am in awe of them all. I’m even more in awe of the little chap in that picture though. I’m quite absurdly pleased with him, and with his mother. They’re both incredible.
4 comments 2008-06-23 06:26 Categories: Personal
The predominant image of the British Empire in popular culture of bewhiskered bastards mechanically exterminating entire nations of noble savages is challenged repeatedly in the history related by Jan Morris in Heaven’s Command. Morris tells the story from the point of view of the invading conquerors, rather than those invaded, and it is interesting to discover that the British didn’t spend all their time murdering innocents in a mad drive to conquer the world, and that the imperial actions of the early years of Queen Victoria’s reign seem to have been characterised by rather more altruistic, if misguided, aims. (more…)
2 comments 2008-06-18 11:18 Categories: Books, Reviews
Rational Fear is a splendid website which allows you to search a database of causes of death by age, sex and nationality in order to ascertain what you should really be scared of in this world. It throws up some enlightening results. For example, were I to die tomorrow, it would most likely be because I had hanged myself. My wife is perhaps more likely to die from epilepsy, but given that she’s not a heroin addict her next most likely immediate exit route is the same. It is pleasant to know that neither of us is likely to be rubbed out by a random axe murderer.
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0 comments 2008-06-02 21:51 Categories: Miscellaneous