The Writings and Thoughts of Gittus Miserabilis

The Exercise Write down five sounds that you can hear. Then list the things that you associate with those sounds. Five sounds heard while sitting on the balcony. A pigeon. The Wind. Traffic Noise. A car horn. Unseen voices. A pigeon. A sound that has two quite conflicting connotations. Firstly, last night’s dinner, pigeon (Wood Pigeon) breasts on a warm mushroom and spinach salad with a blueberry vinaigrette. Secondly, the menace of the flying rat that is the bane of the urban environment, and with which we have an ongoing battle to keep away from our balcony. The wind. The sound of the wind sparks reminiscence and nostalgia. It transports me back to earlier, even childhood, days in Cornwall. It stirs memories of being beside the sea, sitting on a rock watching and listening to the symphony of sounds associated with a beach or harbour, and once more bringing those sounds clear in the mind. Traffic noise. Right now this is a sound very much associated with frustration. Why frustratio...

When I think of the seaside, I think of tranquillity, being beside the sea as calming for the soul, even in the roughest of weather, as it is a place where the elements are constantly changing. The seaside is a place of transitions. Peter Baldwin sums this up well: “The shore marks the border between the solid land and the fluid sea. The seaside is therefore a liminal space - a threshold - where people may move from one element to another” (Baldwin, 2008, p.215) In many ways the seaside has developed steadily, sometimes frantically, following changing societal conditions, and not always as a place of tranquillity. The tendency is to think of the seaside resort as a Victorian phenomenon, but it goes back to Georgian times when it was more a domain of the wealthy/privileged classes. The aristocracy went there for extended periods for the ‘cures’ on offer from the various spas etc., along with the ‘curative’ sea bathing, and all of the ‘rules’ that this entailed. Of course, these resorts...

This essay addresses the question ‘Islamic scholars added little to the sum of medical knowledge: they simply passed on Greek medical ideas to later generations.’ Do you agree with this statement? In this day and age we receive knowledge in a variety of forms that we take for granted, radio television, books, newspapers, the Internet etc.. Most of the time we don’t even think about how this information reaches us, how and where it is published, how journalists translate the technical language for the understanding of the layman, or how the knowledge is translated into other languages and disseminated around the world. The transmission of knowledge is a complex business, and was a much slower and more involved process before the age of mass communication. What actually happened in the past? How did information/knowledge travel in the days before radio, television, the internet etc.? One might assume that in the pre mass communication days that information/knowledge travelled neither ve...

Over the hill he came, and there they stood “Poor souls”, intoned a deep ethereal voice He looked about but no one was there. “They have a tragic history you know” Am I going mad he thought, or is there Some more rational explanation. “A terrible blight” the voice continues “Shall I tell you their story?” He had an interest in standing stones And their ancient mystical associations, Coming to Cornwall to view those stones Known as the Merry Maidens and the Pipers. He knew the story of how nineteen maidens, On their way to church, had been seduced By the music of the Pipers and began to dance; And how a thunderbolt came to punish them For dancing and piping on the Sabbath. Counting the stones accounted for the maidens, But where were the Pipers? He turned around And there a few hundred yards distant Stood two tall stones, obviously the Pipers. “So tell me your story” he challenged the voice “Let’s see if your story matches my version.” But silence was the only reply that he got, The s...