I am very fortunate that one of my carers enjoys reading to me, and I am beginning to catch up with some of the reading that I missed when I was a child.
I suppose my problem was partly that I had quite an advanced reading age, and although I was always reading, sometimes even when I was walking around school, I missed out on so many of the children's classics, and opted instead to go straight to more advanced reading.
It is only in later life, past the age of 50, and unable to pick up and hold a book thanks to my disability, that I regret this, but am unable to do anything about it. Until now.
I read much of the typical canon of literature for boys, such as Treasure Island, and recently I was reminded of that scene where Robinson Crusoe discovers a footprint on the beach, and later discovers and meets with Man Friday.
Of all things, it was a comedy programme that made me think of it. One of those very funny programmes that was ostensibly about science, but in the course of it you discover interesting things about what we have done to the planet that succours us.
If in millions of years and advanced alien race were to discover this planet and examine it carefully, they might discover traces of the uranium atom decayed into the isotopes of lead that would enable the date of our first discovery of the possibilities of nuclear fission.
On this same programme, it was fascinating that a specialist Professor in the study of meteorites had brought with her two meteorites one of which she introduced as approximately 4.77 billion years old, and the other about 1.3 billion years old, and having originated from Mars.
In other words, much was to be gained from the study of what has already arrived here on earth from elsewhere in the solar system, rather than take the time and expense of sending mankind into space.
It was particularly interesting that these meteorites could be dated so specifically, and on questioning, the professor explained that this was possible because of the amount of the isotopes of uranium that exist within them, that can be analysed quite specifically by the use of a mass spectrometer.
As uranium has such a long half life, its presence in the form of the lead isotopes that it will eventually decay to is a good indicator of the age of ancient rocks.
This reminded me of a story I was told many years ago when my job involved my spending several weeks each year on the Orkney island of Hoy, the largest of the Orkney islands, separated from mainland Orkney by the body of water called Scapa Flow, that has been the home port for the British Navy for most of the 20th century. It is deep water, and protected from the vicious currents that are to be found in the water just North of Scotland.
It was in Scapa Flow that the entire German fleet was kept during the first part of the Great War, until it was scuttled in 1916. Without a shot ever being fired at sea.
Thus a great deal of valuable scrap existed in the deep waters of this extraordinary naval base, and the story I was told when I was hosted on the island by a farming family that lived at the eastern end of the island I have always remembered.
Of course because the fleet was simply scuttled to prevent its use during the war, none of the sunken vessels were considered to be war graves.
Thus the local young men for decades after the second world war, a debt at the use of boats and no doubt at diving, would salvage the valuable chromium plate which formed the major part of the scuttled fleet, which was of exceptional value after the war mainly because it had spent more than 50 years underwater, at a time when the first atom bombs had been used in Japan. Plus all those tests that had taken place in the American desert, and later on Bikini Atoll in the South Seas for the hydrogen bomb.
It seems that this chromium was of exceptional value partly because it had never been exposed to radioactivity of any kind, and this made it especially useful in the manufacture of scientific instruments.
Thus for decades the young men of Hoy would plunder the sunken ships beneath the waters of Scapa Flow, to supplement their meagre earnings from agriculture or whatever supported them on the islands.
Islands which have of course been inhabited for between 5000 and 7000 years, leaving the island rich in Neolithic relics.
The farm location at which I was hosted was described as the Bu of Hoy, meaning that it had first been established at least 1000 years before as a Viking farmstead, and the view from my bedroom window perhaps explained why it was so useful to the Vikings.
From my window, I could see a gently sloping sandy beach that ran straight in to Scapa Flow, ideal for hauling up a Viking longship onto the beach.
And perfectly suited as a point of stocking up on food and water for those long journeys of exploration undertaken by the Vikings certainly to Greenland and to Nova Scotia, and possibly further down the east coast of the United States themselves.
It is quite a sobering thought that it was the discovery of atomic fission that had given such value to the metal concealed beneath those waters, and brings me back to the title of this posting, those footprints in the sand that cannot be removed by the cleansing tide.
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