Things I once knew
When I look back over an increasingly long life, I am
sometimes surprised by the things I once knew and which of them have stuck in
my increasingly leaky brain.
Take using a theodolite, for instance. It’s the small box on
a tall tripod which you see men use on footpaths around building sites (and
they are always men; I wonder why). My theodolite lessons came on the first
archaeological dig in which I participated, at the end of my first year at university.
We were digging a very large midden under an extensive rock overhang and I
think the theodolite was used to work out the height of various levels. There
was no need for me to learn this rather arcane skill but the two chaps tasked
with the job seemed to enjoy teaching. If I recall correctly, there was also
the use of a slide rule, something which I suspect has gone the way of the dinosaur.
Now this is the extent of my memory of theodolites but there
were several other things I learned that digging season which have stuck with
me. For instance, if you dig a latrine in the bush, you have to pour creosote
and lavender water into the trench on a regular basis to make it usable. Yes,
much to the amazement of my friends, I survived four weeks of tent living and
latrine use. I learned how to dress and undress inside a sleeping bag and I
also learned how to make a Coolgardie Cooler, a rough substitute for a fridge based
on the scientific fact that water cools as it evaporates. So you build a frame
with shelves, cover it with some hessian, put a bucket on top with a tiny hole in
its bottom and keep the bucket full. The slow drip of the water down the
hessian evaporates and keeps your food cool. Brilliant!
I learned three other things in those four weeks. The most
crucial was learning how not to get bitten by snakes as you walked through the
bush. The secret is to make a loud tramping noise as you go, and always step onto
logs, never over them, on the grounds that snakes often bask in the sun on the
other side.
In these years before Vatican II, when the lives of
Catholics were radically changed, Anglicans – my school mates – and Catholics
had nothing to do with each other and whole professions were one or the other. So
it shouldn’t have surprised me that, in my first meeting with a Catholic, she
knew absolutely nothing about Judaism. She actually asked me if I had the same
God as she did.
And the third thing was not to go in the public bar of a pub
if you were female. Some lads who were giving me a lift home for the weekend
took me to a pub – my very first time – and bundled me into the ladies section,
to my surprise.
There is a range of other things I used to know which are
spectacularly unimportant but it’s such a pleasure when my brain actually works
properly so I’m going to list some of them.
For instance, I knew the longest word in the dictionary,
which has now been replaced by something scientific. It was “antidisestablishmentarianism”.
I know the motto of NSW: “Orta recens quam pura nites” which
more or less means “Newly rise, how brightly you shine”. I know one of Newton’s
laws although I can’t remember which one. The one I know says: “A body at rest
will remain at rest and a moving body will continue moving at constant speed
unless acted upon by a force.”
Then there’s the opening words of Caesar’s Gallic Wars: “All
Gaul is divided into three parts” or in the original Latin: “Gallia est omnis
divisa in partes tres.” I admit I had to check the Latin but I’m puzzled why
this particular bit of ancient writing stuck when so much else has gone. For
instance, I spent a year studying Egyptian hieroglyphics and could stagger
through a translation of hieroglyphic texts. Now … nothing!
I know the distance of the earth to the sun in miles: 93
mjillion. And I know that “buggerup” is the New Guinea Tok Pisin word for “broken
down”. I was also told the probably apocryphal story that in Tok Pisin (New
Guinea “pigeon”) the phrase for “helicopter” is “Mixmaster bilong Jesus Christ”!
These trips down memory lane may be continued next week.
Stay tuned!.
Quote of the week from Chambers Dictionary of Modern
Quotations:
US writer and critic Alexander Woollcott coined what is now
an immortal phrase: “All the things I really like to do are either illegal,
immoral or fattening.”