addendum

I wanted to let you know about the doggerelist’s memorial service for completeness and to thank you all who have felt inspired to share your thoughts and feelings in this relatively public place. I am very thankful for these kind words.

His memorial will take place on Tuesday 26 August at Exeter and Devon Crematorium in the St Peter Chapel at 3.30pm. The service will be held in the humanist tradition and I hope I can convince the official to read some of Steve’s lighthearted and silly works (my favourite at the moment is ‘A mole by any other name’ which in truth is a collaboration with our dear Mishari).

Please do not feel pressed to attend. I think Steve would be happy to have a few jars raised in his name at any appropriate time. I know he left me instructions to ‘be happy and have fun’ and ‘take care of myself’ a couple of years ago when he thought his illness was moving in that direction. I will try my best to keep the promise I made, but it may take a while.

I have found a few unpublished items in his Drafts section but he obviously didn’t feel these were up to his own standards and so I shall respect his judgement. I have also found some poems handwritten that spoke powerfully of his struggle to live with his illness. I know he did not espouse ‘poetry as therapy’ but he crystallized his thoughts and situation. I can only say ‘You can but thank you for choosing not to’.

I will leave comments open for a while for those who might wish to propose other verses written by the doggerelist. I am also aware that there are other gems that have not been gathered in. Should you locate one I would appreciate a brief note of where to find it.

Please take care of yourselves.
Mrs cs.

In loving memory

It falls to me to write the last post for the doggerelist. He died in the early hours of this morning. He was a wonderfully intelligent man who was cruelly cut down by illness the last years of his life. I know he enjoyed greatly the intellectual challenge that the real poets and scholars presented to him. He couldn’t always follow you but he loved the banter. He left no written instructions but had mentioned something about King Crimson Starless and Bible Black – so if you ever hear it playing please spare a moment to remember the doggerelist.

Mrs cs aka doggerelist

Flowers of all hue, and without thorn (but no roses….)

I haven’t posted any plant pics for a while – here’s the last tranche from the folder….all from 2004 or thereabouts….by coincidence, all are shots of individual gaudy flowers….and taken on sunnier days than those offered by this year’s summer….

Leonotis leonuris from southern Africa….I think it’s technically a perennial, although not in the UK….a strange looking plant which sprouts three or four tufts of bright orange flowers at intervals from its stem like a series of garish inverted grass skirts….

Magnolia wilsonii….beautiful downward facing saucers, lemon scented….

One of the newer Papaver orientale hybrids whose name I forget….

A blood red P. orientale in bud….we had several different P. orientale hybrids – they’re more or less indestructible, so I have high hopes that at least a few remain under the nettles….

A cute spring flowering pulsatilla – could be P. cernua or P. zimmermannii – from Eastern Europe….

Kniphofia hybrid….one plant I read about and desperately wanted to grow was a 3m high tender kniphofia species….this isn’t it….

Gentiana asclepiadea….one of the easiest and tallest gentians….

An unusual Rudbeckia species….[very unusual, as it's actually Ratibida pinnata, he says with hindsight]….it bugs me greatly that I can neither remember its name nor find my big blue garden notebook in which is recorded, very nerdily, the name and location of practically every plant in my garden….

Clematis x durandii….a non-climbing hybrid….

Ipomoea….a climbing annual variety….

Given all the daffodil parodies scattered throughout the blog, this just had to be the last picture….Narcissus poeticus recurvus, the so-called “Poet’s Daffodil”….but it’s not very Wordsworthian….

Dumb questions….

Once upon a time, one of my duties was to help out in a weekly class where the basic principles of pharmacology were demonstrated to medical students. In pairs, the future doctors performed a simple experiment not dissimilar to those performed by pioneers in the field a century or so previously, whereby a dose-response curve to a particular compound was constructed. Crucial to such experiments was (and still is) the preparation of a series of dilutions of the compound in question. Naturally each dilution vial must be distinctly labelled with a marker pen to avoid confusion. One week, I noticed that one pair of students seemed to be having trouble getting started. When I offered to help, one of the students asked, “How do I get the top off my marker pen?”

As some of you will be aware, I have been much exercised recently in trying to deal with scrapers: people who copy others’ blog posts and use them as hooks to their own battalions of dodgy websites. There is an established process to deal with these copyright infringements which, although relatively simple, is nonetheless fiddly, and must be followed accurately. In trying to understand the process, I’ve asked questions on various forums; questions which, to those familiar with these things, must be irritatingly familiar. Some people have responded with patient advice which they must have provided to others dozens of times before; others have been dismissively ratty. The assumption sometimes seems to be that with all the information available online, one must be an idiot not to be able to work the process out via a few searches.

I am sure there are plenty of nuclear physicists unable to boil an egg; brain surgeons who don’t know when to prune their fruit bushes; and rocket scientists who scratch their heads when their cars malfunction. (Many poets notoriously can’t even drive….but that’s another story….) Similarly, there are plenty of smart people out there who are at sea with one or more aspects of computing, even though they use the wretched machines daily. But getting answers to computer-related queries can be a fraught business. Those experienced in this field often seem disproportionately patronising. And yet, from discussing scraping on this blog and Michele’s, it’s become clear that even people who are knowledgeable about certain aspects of computing can be in the dark on DMCA notices and how to serve them. No-one is an expert in every field. Even smart people can ask apparently dumb questions.

D.Litt….

It is a truth universally acknowledged that you can’t write anything remotely literary unless either you’re on drugs or you’ve given them up following a heroic struggle. Fortunately help is at hand for the pharmaceutically challenged: a new age of chemical inspiration is about to begin. Novel drugs will shortly be released which will not only result in the removal of the very phrase “writer’s block” from future dictionaries, but will also enable writers to elicit inspiration selectively in their chosen genre.

So if you find yourself stuck for a plot for your next whodunnit, just pop a pill of texasolvin and your mind will instantly come up with a convoluted mystery. Need help with your next Aga saga or similarly themed pink-covered book? Chixalit is the drug for you. Would-be comic novelists even have a choice of stimulation: icudnastoplaffin or mysydzasplitin should help the jokes flow. Graphic novels are stimulated by a dose of pikchurzazwel.

Nor should non-fiction writers feel left out: for biographers there is a series of compounds known as the laifantimes; travellers may find travlinanritin as essential as antimalarials; and for religious writers the controversial new compound skipixibuc is the answer to their prayers. If your literary criticism has lost its sparkle, cemiotix signifies the way forward.

Neither have poets been forgotten. If your finely crafted verse suffers from an excess of rhyming fervour, why not try norimzatol or its derivative rimezaborin? There is even an antidote to these should you overdose: tozatappin. Just be careful though, for some test batches of poetry drugs were contaminated with kalthisapome.

Incidentally, there is some evidence that two of the earlier, less desirable, litdrugs are already widely available on the street: itzabad and mybuxapawlin.

Pryzezforal is anticipated to be popular amongst the Booker set, as is ritinzadodal. Martzaprat and makuwinzadic will have limited use. Initial hopes for nobelzasert have not been met in trials, and quidzin has shown efficacy in only a handful of cases.

Some compounds have been developed with the rarefied heights of the litosphere in mind: tukopisold and sloazucan. Others, such as tomaftatome are aimed blatantly at the lower end of the market. And for ghost writers? Proxipen, of course….

Happy litpill-popping!