Chemistry labs are places where you can find dozens of different types of glassware. Nowadays a lot of it has been replaced by plastic, but the old names are retained. You can have plastic beakers, plastic test tubes, plastic Florence flasks, plastic watch glasses. Of course you still need glass if there is a need to apply a flame to heat up some brew. Then there are the particular pieces of glassware that have rather interesting names like a Liebig Condenser, a Markham Still, a Nestler Tube, a Conway Dish and a Dewar Flask. The latter is, or was, quite common in the world outside the laboratory, only there it was usually known as a Thermos Flask. The original device was designed by a gentleman named Dewar funnily enough, and this is the usual name applied in laboratories. It comprises of a hollow walled glass vessel with the insides of the wall coated with silver and all the air pumped out of this cavity. This greatly reduces the passage of heat through the walls, so any material contained stays hot or cold for long periods, but you know that, don’t you?

Periodically, a clerical type bloke used to turn up at our lab to run an audit on our equipment. Now glass has a tendency to fracture and even the most careful technician has had a flask, beaker, tube or bottle disintegrate and screw up a morning’s work. The causes are manifold. Explosions, implosions, thermal and gravitational. The beauty of plastic is that it bounces and bends better. So glassware is not usually listed on the lab manifest. However there may be some exceptions due to the capital cost of the piece. If such a valuable item becomes unusable than it has to be kept until it is removed from the manifest by the appropriate official, i.e. the auditor. So you store the useless thing. Them’s the rules.

One memorable day, the auditor arrived and we commenced to go through the inventory, checking off the entries. The work proceeded smoothly until we came upon an item we had difficulty locating. It was one of those small but expensive bits of glassware that had unfortunately cracked in use and so become unusable. It had happened months before and we knew we had shoved it in the back of some cupboard, but none of us could recall which one. So the hunt began. Beakers and flasks were hauled out of cupboard after cupboard and placed on the bench top. From the deepest recess of one cupboard emerged one very interesting item, a whiskey bottle. We all knew it was a whiskey bottle. It was a very famous type of whiskey bottle due to its very distinctive shape. The auditor raised an eyebrow, the right one. “And what do you call that piece of apparatus?” he enquired. Without any hesitation and with a totally straight face the boss said “A Dewar Flask”. This was followed by a lot of groans and giggles. I don’t think that item got entered into the manifest, mainly because it was empty. Had it been full, it may have been another matter, and I wonder if it would have been as a Bell Flask or a Dimple Flask.

F Brown ©

The road was straight, flat and smooth. The bus was big, cool and quiet. We passengers had been exposed to a remarkable range of vistas in the previous few hours. Hills, forests, gorges, grassland, mountains. Now we were traversing the Mojave Desert. It was not that the place was uninteresting, but the unvaried picture of sand and scrub meant one could close the eyes for a while, or chat quietly and not be afraid of missing the "never to be repeated sight". You could sense the relaxed atmosphere. The excitement level was well down.

In the seat immediately behind the driver, I could see the Tour Director, Bob, leafing through a collection of CD’s. It took no great mental effort to deduce he was going to play us some music while we cruised toward the horizon along the unbending, unending highway. Bob was a part-time Director. For most of the year he was a tutor at a university, running courses on biology and environmental studies. This was his summer job. I assumed that as a highly educated man who associated with many intellectuals, his preference would be for classical music. However, he had shown an outstanding ability to deliver information in non-technical language that was a model of clarity and not in the least condescending. He was a good mixer, a good communicator and knew his charge’s characteristics pretty well by now. We were a pretty ordinary bunch. No "arty" types, nor any "loud mouth" types. Just a group of middle class, middle aged, middle income people on a tour. So I guessed his choice of music would most likely be something in the light classical area. Something that most would have heard if not actually able to identify. I tried to predict his choice.

My first thought was Dvořák’s New World Symphony. It is a happy piece of music and suited the occasion as far as I was concerned. Then I discarded the notion — The Czech’s music was a bit too brusque for the present atmosphere. Ferde Grofé's The Grand Canyon Suite would be more appropriate the day we reached that phenomenon. The next thought was Borodin’s In the Steppes of Central Asia. Perfect, thought I. The almost imperceptible opening refrain that introduces the piece, depicting a caravan appearing in the distance. The caravan nears and the music swells, the caravan passes and the music fades. A haunting, undemanding melody. What we got was Willy Nelson.

Now, it is not that I dislike Willy or his music. He has quite a peasant tone and I bet he is glad he never got his adenoids fixed. But I do think Bob could have picked something better, more appropriate. However, Bob’s experience proved the wisdom of his selection. Within a couple of minutes you could hear the low murmuring of co-crooners. Oh well, can’t beat them. Altogether now,

♫Grab your coat and get your hat, leave your worries on the doorstep
Just direct your feet to the sunny side of the street.♫

F. Brown. ©

Be quiet for your Granny small person
While I Velcro you Huggies on tight,
Your Mum needs to pay off the bankcard
So she’s working real late tonight.

So drink up your Ritalin small person
With me there is nothing to fear
Your Dad’s coming home in his Hummer
With a Blue Tooth stuck in his ear.

I’ve defrosted a small person’s dinner
I’ll microwave it very soon
Feed you from melamine dishes
With a plastic disposable spoon.

So be quiet for your Granny small person
Chill out, as you watch DVDs
I’ll buy you an I-pod tomorrow
You can download whatever you please.

In one of those museum shops you have to pass through before leaving the place, I found a fridge magnet that portrayed the Brown family Coat of Arms. I had to buy two, one for us and one for our son, as a joke souvenir. With a name like Brown you do not overly concern yourself about your presumed ancestors unlike many people with less popular identifiers. I have always been lightly amused by the antics of the amateur genealogist, and suspect of the professional. DNA studies in some of the less salubrious parts of a few English cities have shown that 20% of the kids are calling the wrong guy Daddy. The same percentage has been demonstrated in the Broker Belt of the Home Counties. Just goes to show that all men are randy and “The colonel’s lady and Judy O’Grady, are sisters under the skin.”

Then there is the oft repeated case you can see when trooping through many of the stately homes. The walls of the Long Gallery are festooned with oil paintings of the tenant’s ancestors, most of whom are no oil paintings. “This” says the guide “is the fifth Duke and his family. He married her when he was 56 and she was 16, and they had 7 children.” Oh Yeah? They probably had one, maybe two, but the rest were more likely to have been sired by the third footman, the second groom, or some other young buck more appealing than the smelly old sod Her Grace was shackled to. It was also equally likely that His Grace was out ensuring the perpetuation of his genes with pulchritudinous peasants.

Getting back to the fridge magnet. The accompanying flyer gave a brief history of that particular, and probably unrelated, tribe of Browns. It appeared the first member of this lot in Britain was one of the Norman thugs that came over with William the Bastard---that was one of his titles--- and took over subjugating the serfs from the previous bunch of thugs in Harold’s mob. They continued the tradition down the generations, slightly changing the methods of control from outright bullying to more subtle brainwashing; that is instilling into all from their earliest years that “Some are noble, some may become noble, and the rest have nobility sitting on top of them”. As the majority of the population could not read, lurid, showy badges were created so that these medieval Mafiosi could be recognised by the lesser beings.

So now I have one of those badges, and it is not much to write about. Three fleurs-de-lis on a blue background. Why? They weren’t Frogs; they were Bloody Normans, in the full meaning of the word. If I had to design a coat of arms for my tribe today I think I could do a whole lot better. First I would choose a symbol of the fecundity and proliferation of our clan. A rabbit? Don’t think so. Got to be something that breeds well, is a survivor and widely distributed. I think the fox would be appropriate. Been persecuted for centuries, but is well entrenched. Nice looking and eats just about anything. Smart. Just like me. So a fox is the choice. I can see the emblazoned shield in my imagination. A brown fox with its hind leg raised anointing a crown. And the motto? “Attain Turgidity”. Work it out for yourself.

According to those less fortunate souls who reside on the big, flat, hot island to our North, Tasmania is a cold, bleak place, inhabited by strange types. We don’t bother to correct them. It would take too long. Besides, if they knew the truth, the place would be overrun. So don’t let on, will you? Sure it gets a bit cool in the winter in the high country. Even get some snow on the mountains if we are lucky. Lower down we get frosts, but they usually clear a couple of hours after sunrise. All country kids have memories of trooping of to school beside white coated, tree lined paddocks under a blue sky with a couple of clouds in it. Nothin’ prettier, believe me.

Sometimes on these cool days the kids would find a goanna lying still and stiff by the track. Caught in the open overnight, the poor beggar had got frozen stiff. Not dead you understand. They are cold blooded, and when the temperature drops to zero they ice up. Left alone in the rising heat of the day, they thaw out, warm up and wander off. But kids are interfering little sods and being kids they poke it and pick it up. If they were still close to home they might run back and load the lizard into the oven of the perpetually warm fuel stove in the kitchen. They’d reckon they were saving its life or something If not, they would more likely take it on to school and put it in somebody’s desk. More than one town bred teacher has had an interesting start to the day when they opened a desk drawer and met an annoyed Blue Tongue.

The farm up the road from our place was a nice little dairy farm run by a mum and dad and their three kids. The two youngest were still at school, and walked the two mile there each morning and back at night. The eldest was about 17 and had finished school. She was helping out at home till she took off for the city to be a nurse or typist or shop girl. She was a real country girl, pretty and nice with it. So when her brother came barging through the kitchen door with a frigid, foot long goanna in his hand, she calmly accepted the fact that he was carrying on the old tradition of thawing lizards. Once he was gone she carried on with her housekeeping jobs, sweeping, dusting, washing, and so on. Mum and dad had gone to the sales and were due back for lunch. Then there was a knock on the front door. Had to be a stranger, all the locals came round the back. In the porch was a travelling salesman. Used to be a lot of them back then. He was nicely surprised to be greeted by a good looking girl at the door, and just about the time for morning tea. He must have thought his luck was right in. He started his line of chat, and she was happy to have a new face around. She was wondering if it would be a good idea of inviting him in for a cuppa, when she suddenly remembered. “Excuse me, I have a goanna in the oven” and she darted back to the kitchen. Removing the unroasted reptile, and dropping it into a box, she returned to the front door. 50 yards away, the travelling rep was hastily climbing into his car. Must have been something she said.

Our factory canteen was popular with the workers as it provided adequate meals for a fair price. The food was plain, not always well cooked, often not very hot, but always ample servings. You could get a three course meal and a cuppa for a few shillings. When you were earning less than ten quid a week, that was important. As long as you did not get poisoned, you would put up with one star cuisine if you could save some cash. Normally there was a choice of two hot meals and in the summer, a salad was on offer. Soup made from yesterday’s left-over vegetables was ladled out into thick white china bowls, and tea or coffee served up in bullet proof china mugs. Usually there were a couple of sweets available, tinned fruit or pie with ice cream was most common. As the place had to serve about 200 of the staff in pretty quick time, there was a double queue system from each end of the counter. These met at the till where the canteen manager took your money and handed out change. She was big girl and miserable with it, but scrupulously careful with the pennies. However from her position she could keep one eye on the customers and one on the staff behind the counter. She even had a partial view of the kitchen through two hatches. She was a busy girl and had no time for chat or enquiry.

The day of the mystery was like most others. I had wandered over to the canteen for lunch as usual and joined the queue on the right. In front of me one of the electricians loaded a salad onto his tray, then a dish of apple pie, a mug of tea and shuffled forward towards the till. On the counter near the till was a white pint jug containing a white substance. The electrician picked up the jug, sniffed it and poured a measure over his apple pie. Ah! The mysterious fluid was custard. Certainly not cream. We moved forward and in turn paid our money and moved to an available seat. The tables in the canteen accommodated ten patrons, four on the long sides and a single seat at each end. The electrician sat at the end of a table close to the till. I joined him, sitting on one of the middle chair between two of the office boys. This seat was facing the till and the two queues, so I could see each person as they came up with their choices. I noticed one bloke, who, as he came abreast of the aforementioned jug, like the abovementioned electrician, picked it up and sniffed the contents. He also had a salad and apple pie. He poured a drizzle over his salad, obviously thinking the liquid contents to be dressing. Oh oh! This could be fun, though I. He duly paid the lady and came to our table, sitting in the single chair at the opposite end to the electrician. I continued to eat, but at the same time I slowly swung my view back and forth between the two as they forked the comestibles into their mouths. The latecomer was chomping through his salad with no sign of distress, so I assumed the mystery material was indeed salad dressing. I waited gleefully for the electrician to take the first spoonful of apple pie and mayonnaise. He finished his last piece of lettuce, pushed the plate to one side, pulled the sweet dish to his front and plunged in the spoon. Up went the spoon, filled with apple, pie crust and dripping whitely. Into the open mouth and then the chomp down. I held my breath, waiting, expecting at least a splutter, perhaps a grimace, but hopefully an explosive reaction. Nothing. Not the least flicker of an eyelid. No emotion displayed at all. He just kept right on eating. And I still don’t know what was in that damn jug.

There is a 10 by 8 black and white photo of me on the wall of the headquarters of the local emergency unit. It shows me hauling on a heavy electric cable hanging from a power pole. It is a night time shot and the road is wet. In the background you can see a couple of men struggling with long lengths of roofing iron while holding hand lanterns. We are all dressed in dark overalls, boots and wide brimmed safety helmets, the uniform of Civil Defence volunteers. Our predecessors, my boyhood heroes, the ARP, had worn exactly the same dress in World War II, except their helmets were steel and ours were plastic. This was about the main difference apart from the fact that nobody was dropping explosives on us, or likely to. The situation was naturally not as serious as an air raid, but there was an urgency in our work. A three figure wind had come howling down over the mountain and hit South Hobart a smashing blow a couple of hours earlier. Trees and power lines were down, rooves damaged, and all the services were in action. My unit had been requested to go to the Cascades and put tarpaulins over a house that had lost its roof. We had been heading up Macquarie Street cautiously in our truck as the wind was still gusting strongly and there was a lot of debris either on the road or in the air. A small blue flashing light appeared a hundred metres or more in front, and then a police car became visible. The car was parked across the road, providing a temporary block to prevent traffic driving into a bunch of drooping electric cables, only a metre or so above the tarmac. Dimly visible up in the rest of the wires were long lengths of bent and twisted roof cladding, flapping in an awesome display in the gale.
The constable showed me the house that had lost its entire roof, the source of the fantastic roadside decorations. There was nothing that we could do for that place as all the beams and supports had gone with the wind. That left the wires across the road. We needed to move them so we could proceed to our designated task, and to let the constable get to his next assignment. Among our issued equipment was the "Utility" saw. This was designed to be used on soft woods, not Aussie hardwoods, but its super toughened teeth would cut through nails without being unduly blunted. It was obvious that the power was definitely out. No lights were visible apart from the vehicles and torches and the mess of wires and steel cladding were emitting no sparks or flashes. Nonetheless, I approached the cables with just a little trepidation. The chance of being electrocuted was, I thought, slight, but I was dimly aware of the weird nature of high tension electricity. Then there was the action of cutting the wire. Would that leave me liable to be charged with vandalism, or would it make the restoration of power more difficult and time consuming. The nearby hospital was running on its emergency generators, and may have had only have a few hours latitude. One o'clock in the morning, in the middle of a gale is not the best time for this sort of analysis. I grabbed the cable. The lowly rated saw actually did an excellent job, or maybe it was fear that drove my efforts, but I was though in quick time. Then I grabbed the cable and hauled it back to the road side to wrap it round the power pole. I returned to do the same to the second cable. After cutting this one, I commence hauling when suddenly there was a brilliant, blinding flash. Naturally I thought the worst, said a few appropriate words and then realised I was still standing. Blind, but standing. A photographer from the Mercury had come up unseen and unheard in the storm and snapped an action shot for his rag. I had found out what it really meant to have the "wind up".

F Brown
2007©

Ian was a nondescript sort of bloke. Medium height, medium build, medium colouring, mediocre. At school he never won a prize, a race, a second glance. He lived in a small country town with small horizons and smaller potential. He had a job at the local concrete block factory which made concrete blocks. He was the storeman clerk for the factory. He had to make sure there were enough materials to make the concrete blocks, and enough other materials so that the factory could continue to make concrete blocks. He had been at the same place for 36 years. On Saturday morning he and his wife did the weeks shopping. On Saturday afternoon he mowed the lawn and washed the car. On Sunday they went to church in the morning and visited her mother in the afternoon. For the annual fortnight's leave they went to the same caravan park in the same sea side town. His life was regular. His life was comfortable. His life was predictable. In the main Ian was content. But sometimes, at the odd moment, he would raise his head from his desk, or newspaper and look out of the window or at the wall, as if looking to see if there was more to life. Quietly wo©ndering. A buried, indefinable itch. The mood seldom lasted long. There was always another stock check to do, another order form to fill in, another shipment of cement to check in, another Saturday, another Sunday.
He had made a couple of attempts to enliven his secure but mundane life. Bowls with some workmates proved to be less than satisfactory. Most of his launches had ended in the ditch and the session in the bar afterwards was not encouraging. An invitation to go fly fishing required departure before daybreak, a long ride in the back of a 4WD with eskies and camping gear, long hours on the banks of a mountain stream while being tasted by mozzies and midges and no bloody fish. He tried tennis. Too much effort. He tried golf. Too much frustration. The Bridge club. Too damned hard. He always returned to the dull and dreary but comfortable lifestyle. But the small itch remained.
One Friday afternoon a new bloke came into his small, windowless office at the back of the store. Joe something or other. The fitter mechanic in charge of maintenance. Joined the company a few weeks back. "What can I do for you? Said Ian, ever courteous, ever cautious.
"Got a bit of a problem" said Joe. "Thought you might be able to help".
"What's the problem?" And it all poured out.
"I have just taken over the bush fire brigade. The last bloke has let things run down a bit. The stores are a mess, the files are a mess, and the whole flamin' place is a mess. I need somebody to tell me how to get the whole damn office into some sort of order. I thought maybe you could give me some clues. I haven't got the foggiest bloomin' idea of where to start. I know how to fight fires, and that's about all. Now they have landed me with this rotten job but I just don't know how to do it."
"Well" said Ian "I don't know much about how you run a fire brigade, but I could have a look at your stores."
"Good enough" replied Joe' "How about Sunday Afternoon? Two o'clock"
That meant a change to the time honoured visit to his ancient mother-in-law. Would his lady wife object? But it was in a good cause. Ian was not a bad sort. Just dull. But a dull man with an itch.
"I'll be there."
"Beaudy!"
Come Sunday and Ian turned up at the station. Joe greeted him at the door. "Come on in, mate. I'll show you round the place first. Then we'll look at the office."
It was a concrete block building comprising of a garage, a store , an office that doubled as an op's room, a shower and a toilet and an all purpose lounge, bar, lecture room, bunk room,. A tall radio mast tower pointed skywards from the roof. At the back was a shed that housed a generator and fuel. It all looked pretty functional to Ian's untrained eye. The office was a different story. One vinyl topped desk with sundry cigarette burns and stains, one battered swivel chair, one ancient, wooden filing cabinet, two battle scarred card files and a collection of dried out biros in a beer glass. Two filing baskets contained a dozen or more dog-eared grimy manila folders. A two year old calendar advertising a local hard ware merchant hung lopsided on the wall beneath a 24 hour clock that was 20 minutes slow. A quick shuffle through the files in the cabinet showed the vestiges of a system that was probably capable of being resuscitated. There were a dozen letters requiring response. The roster list had two members who had died last year. Looked like a couple of days work to sort Ian told Joe, but not much more.
Then they went to the store. Joe had called it a mess. That was a polite term. Ian may have been a dull man, not given to strong emotion, but this place was everything a storeman loathed. It was untidy, it was messy, it was mucky, it was unorganised, it was chaotic, it was indescribable. Old hose, drip torches, pump spares, buckets, beaters, overalls, batteries, fuel drums, helmets, sparkplugs, rope, more hose, light globes, wire, cable, chain, saws, axes, boxes were piled atop each other on shelf and floor. And everywhere was dust and dirt.
"What do you reckon?' said Joe.
"Somebody needs a kick up the backside. It needs a complete and total clean out, sort the garbage from the useful, draw up an inventory and restore. It'll take days. How could anybody function with a crap heap like that?"
"Well they didn't function real well as it happens. That's why I got the job. Care to do what is necessary? I can organise a work party if you show them what they have to do"
"Sure, glad to, and I sure would need a lot of help" replied Ian "And what about keeping everything up to scratch once we get this pig sty straightened out."
"Why don't you just keep it goin'?" said Joe. "Train up somebody as a deputy. Of course there would be a load of other jobs around, like running the radio when the boys are out, organising drinks and tucker, answering the bloody phone, that sort of thing."
All his life, without realising it, Ian had been searching for some deeper purpose to his life. This was the itch that had sometimes surfaced. It was not a big step. Just another job as storeman, but a storeman with a bit of glamour, a bit macho.  Ian scratched his head a moment, and then said …."I'll think about it."

F Brown
2007©

One of the reasons for our trip to England last May was to attend the 25th anniversary meeting of the International Guild of Knot Tyers. It was to be held in Fareham, an old town in Hampshire, halfway between Portsmouth and Southampton. On the way, we had a stopover in Hong Kong for a couple of days where I had arranged to meet a local member of the guild, Glory Ling. He turned up at our hotel bang on time and we immediately started to talk about knots and ropes, exchanging little articles made from string. We did do other things that day, like visit and ancient walled village and brand new temple way out in the hills behind Kowloon and have lunch of fish balls and noodles in a café at a table with ten other customers. But there was a lot of chat about knots.

Then it was on to London and the mandatory visits to museums and galleries and pubs. Somehow I regularly found examples of good and bad ropework wherever we went. Then there were the bookshops, particularly Foyles in Charing Cross Road. I fossicked among the stacks looking for knot texts, but found none I did not already possess. Funnily enough, while wandering around Hampton Court we came across the Knot Garden. All the time Lynn patiently endured my small obsession. She just smiled when I pointed out some peculiarity in the rope rigging of a boat in an oil painting by some Dutch or Italian master. She has known me for quite a few years now, so it was not unexpected behavior.

Come the morning of the day for the trip south, we hauled our cases to the station and boarded the train. In a few hours we were in Fareham, booked into our hotel, and heading down the narrow road to The Red Lion, one of the forty pubs in the town. This was the knotter's conference centre and principle watering hole. We crossed the threshold and were confronted by a score of knotters chatting in a dozen accents. Cockney, Brum, Scouse, Taffy, Geordie, Yank, Swede, Gerry, Jap, Frog, and Clog. Each was grasping a length of string or cord or twine or braid or marlin and even some rope. Turk's Heads, Monkey Fists, Fobs, lanyards in various stages of completion dangled from fist and fingers. I was in heaven.

The next couple of days literally flew by at a rate of knots. I tied knots, talked knots, inspected knots, and learned knots. Lynn was kept busy drawing on an A5 sheet each member's pet knotted construction. The builder proudly signed beside the finished drawing, and the completed document was copied and presented to all as a memento. By the time the conference was over, my lady was super saturated with knots and knotters. But it was not the end of her exposure. Next stop after leaving Fareham was Bath, and a couple of days in the company of Richard. That's right, another knotter. He took us to the marvelous Black Country Museum in Dudley. This place is a collection of buildings and structures and articles from the start of the Industrial Revolution to mid 20th century. Naturally canal barges were well represented, with all their hawsers, lines, fenders, springs, and even some rope decoration. Fantastic!

Leaving Richard and Bath we headed for Cornwall where we had been invited to stay with a lady member of the guild. At least Janet was more involved with the gentle arts, so Lynn was actually quite happy to visit with a kindred spirit, albeit another bloody knotter.

Unfortunately, the totally reliable British weather caused a cancellation of the plan. Rain, fog and a forecast of more to come, forced a turnaround and we regretfully headed east.

So we drove through town and village and moor, stopping at Honiton on the one day the lace museum was closed. No knotting that day. Eventually we arrived at Chichester, swung north and headed for the Down and Weald Museum. This was truly a delightful place. A collection of houses and farm buildings from all over southeast England set up in a tree lined valley. A fully functioning mill was grinding wheat and selling bags of genuine stone ground flour, complete I would guess with ground stone. A bodger was turning a piece of beech wood on a pole lathe, not stopping as he answered questions and described his craft. I was slightly amused by his use of nylon line to drive his medieval machine.

A lady dressed in 17th century attire turned a great wheel and spun hand-carded wool, all the time chatting to the onlookers. Yes, she did know of Bothwell, and yes, she would love to go to the next spin-in there.

We wandered from house to barn to stable and then to a paddock, sorry, field, where an event involving draught horses was being staged. Feather-footed Clydesdales, bulky Pecherons and short-legged Suffolk Punches dragged and drew wagons and carts and drays across the green, green grass. A row of tents stood at the head of the field. Tea and scones in one, horse accoutrements in another. In the last tent a familiar figure stood weaving a length of cotton rope into a halter. It was one of the knotters from Fareham and of course we chatted. Lynn looked at me suspiciously. Pure chance I told her.

Leaving the site we headed further east into the wilds of West Sussex. Time to start looking for a cot for the night. I am not sure precisely where it was, but a pub with a sign advertising rooms with en-suite appeared. I parked and went in to see if they had room for us. Sorry, full up, I was told. Can you suggest anywhere else I asked? Try the Coach and Horses at Cowfold was the reply. A few miles along the road stood the hostelry, and yes they had a room for us. The landlady came from behind the bar and handed me a key. It was attached to a magnificent piece of knotwork. 2 mm nylon braid, three strand flat plait round the thimble, Diamond knot doubled, six part crown sinnet to a tripled wall and crown knob knot. "Someone knows what they were doing" I commented. "Oh we have a heap of these made by a bunch of daft blokes who meet here every month. They belong to some sort of club that does stuff with rope or something". In a country with more pubs than the whole of Australia, we had stumbled on the local of the Sussex Branch of the Guild. Pure coincidence I assured Lynn. I don't think she believed me.

The modern bushwalkers, with their dinky little stoves, miss all the atavistic pleasures of the campfire. Sure they can crawl into their space age tents, ignite the meth or gas or hexamine and have a brew within minutes and a hot meal in just a few more. But what then? What do they do for the rest of the evening before curling up in their rainbow hued sleeping bags? Read by the light of a 9 L E D head lamp? Listen to music on their I-pod? They certainly can't sit around the dying embers of a camp fire, chatting about past events and future trips. Sure they can sit and chat, but without the warm glow and smell of wood smoke, there is no focus point to stare into and dream as you discourse. Not like in my day.
I vividly remember my first walking trip to Cooks Beach on Freycinet Peninsular. We had only the most basic gear, but with a frypan, dehydes, bully beef, rice and a fire, we cooked up a meal that I can still taste 50 years later. The smoke got in eyes and up noses, but kept the mozzies at bay. Then there was my first trip with the caverneers. I knew a lot of them were Rover Scouts, so anticipated the obligatory camp fire, and geared up accordingly. Come the evening in a bush hut, and as I fronted up to the fireplace with tucker bag, billy and frypan I found they were all fiddling round trying to get their infamous "chuffers" going. So I had to go out and gather twigs, fern, bark and logs, and get a fire going. Either that or have a cold dinner. As soon as I had the wood burning nicely and a good bed of embers, the scouts all decided to abandon their smelly, noisy, and potentially lethal heat sources and take advantage of my creation. To this day, I believe that they only used the stoves in a spirit of keeping up with the latest trends. Fashion victims!
One truly memorable trip, four of us trooped across the Ben Lomond plateau for a whole day in fog. Late in the afternoon the fog turned to drizzle, gradually increasing in intensity. We located an overhanging cliff which provided sufficient shelter to set up a campfire. There was plenty of dry wood and soon a cheerful crackling blaze was going hard up against the rock face. Bad move. The rock was full of minute water filled cracks. The water turned rapidly into steam, and the rock started to disintegrate. Explosively! Bits of hot, sharp-edged rock came zooming out of the immediate vicinity of the fire, and we were rapidly forced to take cover. And what was the cover? Boulders big enough to shield us, but out in the downpour.
Then there was the time in the South West when we were woken at piccaninny daylight by a typical Cox Bight shower. Forced out of my fart sack by hydraulic pressure, I decided to stay up and do everybody a favour and make up a brew. I put my acquired skills to work and collected dry twigs from branches of standing trees, split a few with the indispensible sheath knife and made a small pile over a candle stub. Lit the candle, got the kindling going, removed the candle, added more and bigger sticks, blew into the core of the fire using my drinking tube, a length of PVC piping with copper tubing nozzle. Hung the billy and had it boiling in minutes, Handful of tea and a couple of swings, and then called "Tea's up". "Bugger off Brownie" was the mildest suggestion.
Once I was forced to ignore fire regulations and light a campfire in a National Park. It was at the end of a hard, cold, wet day. I was experiencing the first symptoms of exposure. I needed food and warmth. When I tried to get my meth stove working I found my fuel had been contaminated with water. Shaking and shivering I gathered kindling and sticks, and managed to get a fire going. Two big cups of soup and a pan of dehyde stew later, in my bag with a cup of sweet coffee; I was well on the recovery trail.
Somewhere under my house is a battered frypan with a hollow handle. This is my campfire pan. I would shove a suitable stick into the handle and sit a couple of feet away from the fire. No burned knuckles, no balancing the pan on unstable foundations. Modern methods are great when you need to do your cooking in a tent, but I treasure my evenings spent beside a campfire.