Two Topics of Conversation

Having only ….. two topics of conversation, ….. Second World War and ….. greengrocery trade, Sydney Faraday had talked exhaustively about ….. battles and beetroot, ….. former slightly dominating. He had been ….. sergeant with ….. tank regiment, ….. part of Montgomery's Second Army that swept across ….. northern Germany in ….. spring of 1945. One of his favourite stories was how he and ….. corporal and ….. private had gone into ….. farmhouse kitchen near the Weser, found ….. occupants gone, nothing to eat but ….. sucking pig roasting, in fact ready to eat at that moment, in ….. oven. Another was ….. one about ….. gun. Outside Bremen Sydney had found ….. dead German officer lying in ….. ditch. He was still holding ….. gun in his hand which led Sydney to believe (on no other evidence) that he had shot himself out of despair at ….. way the war was going. On …. altruistic grounds of not wanting ….. man branded ….. suicide, Sydney took ….. gun and kept it. It was ….. Luger.

'….. German military small-bore automatic pistol,’ Sydney would explain to the company, rather in ….. manner of ….. encyclopedia.

….. first time Victor heard this story had been after ….. Christmas dinner. He was only seventeen and still going about with his parents. He heard it again ten years later when his mother said she never saw him these days and then nagged him into going with them to Muriel's on Christmas Day. Things were just the same: ….. same under-cooked defrosted turkey, this time with canned potatoes, for there had been ….. technological progress during ….. intervening decade, and ….. greens that were perhaps sub-standard for ….. shop. While they ate ….. shop-bought, home-boiled pudding and drank ….. only pleasing constituent of ….. meal, Sydney's port, Sydney told ….. story of ….. German officer and ….. gun once more. Victor's mother murmured, though to no avail, that she had heard it before. Muriel, who had no doubt heard it many many times, interjected mechanically with 'My goodness!' and I say!', uttered expressionlessly as if she was learning these exclamations as ….. part of ….. minor role in ….. play. She had grown fat, and ….. more fat she became ….. more withdrawn. It was as if whatever spirit she had ever had was being steadily suppressed, muffled and smothered under ….. layers of ….. flesh.

Live Flesh by Ruth Rendell (BrE)

The Thoughts of Henry Wilt

Whenever Henry Wilt took ….. dog for ….. walk, or, to be more accurate, when ….. dog took him, or, to be exact, when Mrs Wilt told them both to go and take themselves out of ….. house so that she could do her yoga exercises, he always took ….. same route. In fact ….. dog followed ….. route and Wilt followed ….. dog. They went down past ….. Post Office, across ….. playground, under ….. railway bridge and out on to ….. footpath by ….. river. ….. mile along ….. river and then under ….. railway line again and back through ….. streets where ….. houses were bigger than Wilt's semi and where there were ….. large trees and gardens and ….. cars were all Rovers and Mercedes. It was here that Clem, ….. pedigree Labrador, evidently feeling more at home, did his business while Wilt stood looking around rather uneasily, conscious that this was not his sort of ….. neighbourhood and wishing it was. It was about ….. only time during their walk that he was at all aware of his surroundings. For ….. rest of ….. way Wilt's walk was ….. interior one and followed ….. itinerary completely at ….. variance with his own appearance and that of his route. It was in fact ….. journey of ….. wishful thinking, ….. pilgrimage along ….. trails of remote possibility involving ….. irrevocable disappearance of Mrs Wilt, ….. sudden acquisition of wealth, power, what he would do if he was appointed ….. Minister of Education or, better still, ….. Prime Minister. It was partly concocted of ….. series of desperate expedients and partly in ….. unspoken dialogue so that anyone noticing Wilt (and most people didn't) might have seen his lips move occasionally and his mouth curl into what he fondly imagined was ….. sardonic smile as he dealt with ….. questions or parried arguments with ….. devastating repartee. It was on one of these walks taken in ….. rain after ….. particularly trying day at ….. Tech that Wilt first conceived ….. notion that he would only be able to fulfil his latent promise and call his life his own if some not entirely fortuitous disaster overtook his wife.

Wilt by Tom Sharpe (BrE)

Dinosaurs on a Tidal Wave

In ….. river valley not far from Houston, Texas, ….. team of ….. American scientists have found ….. geological evidence that ….. vast tidal wave swept ….. whole Caribbean region 65 million years ago, just as ….. Cretaceous period - ….. age of ….. dinosaurs - was ending. Writing in ….. latest issue of ….. US journal Science, ….. geologists claim that ….. tidal wave on this scale could only have been caused by ….. impact of ….. asteroid, probably five to ten kilometres in ….. diameter, plunging through ….. Earth's atmosphere and into ….. sea. That spectacular picture fits well with ….. view of ….. 'catastrophists', ….. geologists who think that ….. sudden disappearance of ….. dinosaurs, along with ….. diverse range of other living things, was caused by ….. series of asteroid impacts.

Each impact would have thrown up ….. world-embracing dust cloud, blotting out ….. Sun and lowering ….. temperatures to ….. point where many plants and animals could not survive. Evidence for that view already comes in ….. clays from ….. end of ….. Cretaceous period. They are enriched in ….. iridium, an element which is very rare in ….. Earth's crust but much more abundant in asteroids.

Of course, ….. clinching evidence for ….. catastrophic view would be ….. discovery of ….. remains of ….. craters where ….. asteroids struck. Unfortunately, no crater of ….. right age has been definitely identified, although if they are all at ….. bottom of ….. sea that is not so surprising. But ….. new work published in Science does provide ….. next best thing - if not the crater itself, evidence of the wave the asteroid created when it struck the sea. The ….. evidence comes in ….. puzzling layer of ….. rippled sandstone found in ….. Brazos River valley, Texas. ….. sandstone is curious because, at first, there seems no good reason why it should be there. It is ….. sudden, thin interruption in ….. thick deposit of ….. mudstone. That, as its name suggests, is ….. compacted mud that quietly accumulated over ….. millions of years that ….. region lay at ….. bottom of ….. shallow, undisturbed sea.

The Times (BrE)