The Colour of Money; The New Financial Services Regulations

Two of the best things about being in law librarianship for decades are 1. seeing the changes in colours of institutions’ rule books; 2. the learning and relearning of industry acronyms. London Stock Exchange Listing Rules went from being the ‘yellow’ book to ‘that weird aubergine colour’ and the SFA, SIB, FIMBRA, PIA rule books all had their own coloured binders which had to be painstakingly updated by hand. I vaguely remember one of them being green, though the Bank of England reports tended to be a very elegant expensive looking white and gold. However when the FSA overturned these organisations in 2000-01 all their rules were subsumed into the multiple FSA Handbooks (white, purple and pale turquoise green), horrible new binders which would take your thumb off if you let them. 

A Knitted Landscape

A knitted landscape

Rows upon rows

Textures in twine

Stitched by wheat

Embroidered by barley

Endless colours

Boats casting off




Whimsy from the Isle of Sheppey

The Lime Street Naturalists

It's true what they say

About poems, nature, death and life. 

Pausing for thought whilst looking for 

Scientific heroes amongst rhythm of stones

The musical notes of poetic meter 

The names of my City churches muttered:

Some gone and half forgotten:

Saint Antholin, Benet, Dionis, All Hallows.

The people moved in death by 

A vigorous space needing City

The magpie approaches 

Drawn by my stillness
Looking for life under leaves

His glisten of blue-black-white

Like marble enlivened, shrieks.

The oblivious bee pauses 
Hovers and vanishes
A fleeting meeting of buzz and Ethel
Sweetness over Geranium robertianum

And earthly detritus

The squirrel scratches up the tree

Flickingly shy, peering at me 

Whilst other sounds bring the stones alive

The irony is I'm looking for naturalists 

And they're here, still, looking at nature

Written for the 16th Century Lime Street Naturalists who were moved to the City of London Cemetery in the 1900s.

The Art of Writing; Or the Science of Writing

'Stop it with all the damn metaphors'
Kirk to 'Bones' McCoy in irritated exasperation 
Star Trek: Into Darkness (2013)

Science writing has held a peculiar interest for me this week, given my Trekkie credentials. I've seen the new Star Trek movie twice and have contemplated buying the original 'Wrath of Khan' to compare the change in writing and production styles. However for the purposes of these notes, the quote above is the perfect introduction to the Birkbeck Science and Writing Symposium, 21 May 2013.

A universe of cheese and worms

A rare group of people – two poets, a playwright, an astronomer, a science/history/cultural academic, two actors and a cartoonist - were brought together not just to discuss the way they communicate their ideas but to actually demonstrate and showcase their skills. I’m not going to simply narrate what each person said but try to highlight themes. What I must say is, so often at academic symposia the emphasis is on the presentation of paper after paper with little or no presenter animation. No matter how interesting the topic, my eyes glaze over eventually but not here, not this time, we were off; starting with the Big Bang. Before I come on to the themes, I want to dwell a little on the poets and their poetry.