2ND APRIL, 2025
Hello.
Philip Larkin begins one of my favourite poems:
I have started to say
“A quarter of a century”
Or “thirty years back”
About my own life.It makes me breathless…
Six decades ago today, four young women went into labour in a brick-built, Victorian-era maternity home a few hundred yards from the River Mersey on the Wirral peninsula. Unfortunately, the home only had three birthing beds, so one of the young women, Brenda, had to give birth to her first child on some wooden boards hastily laid across the top of a roll-top, cast-iron bath. The trauma of such an ignominious introduction into the world was no doubt to blame for her son being such an ugly looking baby. But Brenda loved him:
At 08:45 BST this morning, I completed my sixtieth circuit around our local G2-class star. It’s ironic: I might not look a day over 59, but that is literally what I am. This afternoon, Jen and I shall be marking the occasion down the pub with beer and a crossword puzzle: ‘getting one down’ in both senses of the phrase. I shall also be pretending none of this is actually happening.
Sixty… It makes me breathless!
Some stuff I thought worth sharing
- Remembering Nan Shepherd
Writer Fraser MacDonald on his childhood encounters with the Scottish poet and nature writer. - The gift of the gab: did an iron age brain drain bring Celtic to Ireland?
In one chapter of my book On the Moor, I wrote about the relationships between the so-called P-Celtic and Q-Celtic languages. As this piece explains, the rise of the precursor to the Irish language remains a historical mystery that linguists, geneticists and archaeologists continue to debate. - A day of street photography with Eduardo Ortiz (video)
A well-regarded street photographer interviewed as he works. - Beyond Mesopotamia: Linear Elamite deciphered
The story of how ancient silver vessels of unknown provenance held in a private collection provided clues to the decipherment of a mysterious ancient language. - Sebald Lecture 2024: Rowan Williams (video)
My favourite former Archbishop of Canterbury delivers an interesting lecture on the challenges of translating poetry. - Plants more likely to be ‘eavesdroppers’ than altruists when tapping into underground networks, study finds
A sceptical new take on the so-called ‘wood wide web’: do plants really transmit warnings to others when attacked by herbivores and pathogens, or are the other plants simply picking up on clues those under attack can’t suppress? • See also: Original scientific paper - Volcanic eruptions linked to Neolithic ‘sun stone’ sacrifices in Denmark
Scientists have suggested ritual sacrifices around 4,900 years ago coincided with a large volcanic eruption that made the sun disappear throughout Northern Europe. • See also: Original scientific paper - Mammoth as key food source for ancient Americans
Scientists have uncovered the first direct evidence that ancient Americans relied primarily on mammoth and other large animals for food. Their research sheds new light on both the rapid expansion of humans throughout the Americas and the extinction of large ice age mammals. • See also: Original scientific paper - Prophet of the past: blame it on Malthus
A piece on Rev. Thomas Malthus whose ideas on struggles for diminishing resources as populations increase inspired Charles Darwin.
Recent reading
Cairn by Kathleen Jamie
Next week, we’ll be spending the first full week of my 61st circuit around the sun on the Isle of Anglesey: a place very dear to me, which I’ve been visiting since I was a foetus. I plan, as usual, to spend several hours each day sitting on my favourite rock, gazing out to sea, waiting to see what comes along. I’m also very much looking forward to re-reading Kathleen Jamie’s fabulous recent book Cairn: a collection of short pieces and a handful of poems she wrote to mark her own 60th birthday. I’m hoping it will help me put one or two things in perspective. As Jamie writes in one of her poems:
…there’s more days past than ahead of you
—now you can begin.
Thank you, Kathleen. Excellent call. Let’s go!
Book update
As recently announced, I completed the one-and-a-halfth draft of my book Through Darwin’s Eyes at the end of January. Progress on the second draft has been slow but steady. I’ve revised the first six chapters, and have been pleasantly surprised at how little work they needed. It’s early days yet, but I suspect there might actually be the makings of a good book in there.
Let’s keep going!
And finally…
Thanks as always for making time to read this newsletter. If you’ve enjoyed it, please spread the word.
Take care, and I’ll see you next time.
Your ancient pal,
Richard
richardcarter.com
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