bleuks....

...I've got a really bad cold, so no farming me for me this week! What a shame when the weather is so lovely!!!

Antarctica:Eliduke

But I am reading a book about why explorers risked their lives and various bits of their anatomy ( frost bite!)  to go to the antarctic. Apart from the usual stuff about " because it's there" both poles were presented in the thought and literature of the period as places at the extreme of the world and experience .... think about Mary Shelley's Frankenstein....

And, of course, they didn't know what was there.

In the early 1800s Captain Symmes of Cincinnati  seriously put forward the theory that there was a passageway at both poles that lead under the earth's crust to onion layers of different worlds where other beings lived.... weird!

The hundred or so years of speculation  all contributed to a sense of sublime awfulness - which fed into a love of gothic horror - which fascinated both the explorers and the public that read about their efforts.


I'll be better next week!

If you want to volunteer at the urban farm come along on Tuesdays after 10.00 for a chat or contact Dave at : dave_meara@hotmail.com