Paying good money for rubbish

In 1987 Marie Jones, a playwright in Northern Ireland, wrote a play called “Somewhere Over the Balcony” that is set in Belfast at some time after the “Troubles” but when they were very fresh in people’s minds.

At one point in the play a character talks about the fact that the Troubles have made Belfast a popular tourist destination – people want to see where the riots and murders took place. She is particularly concerned with the actions of a German couple who are fascinated by everything to do with the events, including the fact that Republican women would bang the lids of their metal dustbins to alert their men when the security forces were approaching.

In the play, the Germans want to buy Kate Tidy’s dustbin lid as a souvenir. They offer her ten pounds for it, but then comes the good bit, as she tells the Germans:

“That was the first bin lid ever banged on Internment morning . . .  it was handed down from my granny. It is a collector’s item. It’s worth . . . two hundred pounds”

OK – so it’s a play, but I can just imagine something like that happening. It strikes me that nothing has changed in centuries – throughout history gullible people have been offered all sorts of trash for huge sums of money, in the belief that it has some particular significance. If all the supposed bits of the “true cross” of Christ’s crucifixion were put together you’d be able to build Noah’s Ark with them!

This was the trade that Chaucer’s Pardoner was in back in the 14^th century – ripping people off by conning them into believing that something of no intrinsic worth has miraculous properties.

Nothing has changed – people still pay absurd sums of money for items that once belonged to celebrities, or so they are told. The average human being seems to be just as gullible as ever!

© John Welford

Jet: a mineral that gives its name to black

Jet is an organic material that is closely related to coal and is often worked as though it were a mineral.

It is mainly found in strata from the Lower Jurassic era, originating from logs of ancient Araucaria trees (ancestors of the modern ‘monkey puzzle’) that fell and were washed out to sea, eventually being buried under other sediment that, over millions of years of heat and pressure, converted them into a relatively soft form of lignite or coal.

Pieces of jet are often found on beaches in such places as Whitby in North Yorkshire, where they have fallen from nearby cliffs as a result of local erosion.

The softness of jet allows it to be carved into many different shapes. It can also be polished to a brilliant sheen, which has long made it a popular material for use in jewellery.

Examples of jet jewellery have been found from Bronze Age and Roman times. It underwent a revival in popularity during the late Victorian era when people copied the fashion set by Queen Victoria for ‘mourning jewellery’ after the death of Prince Albert (she never wore anything that wasn’t black for the rest of her life).

© John Welford

Malala Yousafzai: Nobel Peace Prize winner

Malala Yousafzai was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 2014, at the age of 17. Apart from being the youngest ever recipient of the prize, she is surely one of the most deserving.

Malala Yousafzai

The Nobel Committee awarded the 2014 Peace Prize jointly to Malala Yousafzai and Kailash Satyarthi "for their struggle against the suppression of children and young people". The latter name is probably not all that well known, but he is certainly a deserving recipient for his lifetime’s work in raising awareness of the problem of child labour, particularly in his native India.

However, the headlines for Malala are also well deserved. This is a young girl who, at the age of 12, was boarding a bus to go to school in her home province of Swat in Pakistan when a Taliban gunman fired three shots at her, one of which hit her in the head.

Malala survived and made a near-complete recovery, largely thanks to the sterling efforts of surgeons at Queen Elizabeth Hospital, Birmingham, England. The deliberate attack on her led to worldwide condemnation of her attackers, not least for their desire to murder a young girl simply because she was determined to go to school and was campaigning locally for the right to be educated to be extended to all girls.

The Taliban continued to threaten Malala and her family, who were subsequently given permanent residence in the United Kingdom.

Since her recovery, Malala has campaigned ceaselessly for the right of all children, everywhere, to be given a proper education. She has been given platforms to speak in countries all over the world, been feted by Presidents and Premiers, and on 12^th July 2013 addressed a session of the United Nations.

She is undoubtedly the world’s most famous teenager, having been included on lists of the “world’s most influential people”. She has received honours and plaudits from many countries, but she is probably most happy about the fact that the government of her native country has now introduced legislation in favour of girls’ education.

Few people would deny that she thoroughly deserved the Nobel Peace Prize – not for being a victim but for refusing to be bowed by her experience and indeed going much, much further in her unstinted campaign to achieve justice for young people. As a highly articulate young woman who speaks her mind and “tells it how it is” she is someone who is listened to and is making a real difference as well as setting a positive example that others are following.  

© John Welford

Teeth and the land bridge theory

Did you know that people of Native American descent are quite likely to have grooves on the back of their front teeth? This is something that has been noted by dentists for at least 100 years, but it is undoubtedly a feature that goes way back and did not suddenly manifest itself a century or so ago.

Another odd thing is that the same feature has been noted in people in Siberia, which adds strength to the generally held belief that America’s first inhabitants migrated from North Asia by crossing the land bridge that once existed where the Bering Straits are now. This would have been during the last Ice Age.

The big question, however, is why such a feature should have evolved in the first place? What possible advantage could there be in having grooves at the back of your front teeth? Maybe some Native American (or Siberian) out there can enlighten us!

© John Welford