It's All Too Much

Get your head around this:

These archaeological finds of recent months have been pretty incredible. Things from thousands of years ago and things from a couple of hundred years ago.

Now, how many of you have been to the coast? Specifically the Jurassic Coast line or the south coast in general? There's some big cliffs, yes? You know how some of these cliffs vary in colour and shade as they go up? That's different levels of the earth at different times in its life.

Now think about some of the finds in the UK recently that are between a 1000 and 2000 years old and think about the fact they are a couple of feet below a farmer's field.

At the very bottom of my garden is a bit of waste ground; about three feet deep with a fence and another 3 feet after that to the garden that backs onto ours, where they also have a fence. When my dad and I erected that fence in 2001, we filled the gap between the new fence and the neighbours fence with just about every bit of garden refuse we'd cleared from the recently tidied up garden. Twigs, branches, leaves, roots, bricks, stones, bits of rusty metal - you name it, we chucked it behind the fence. It was packed out so much, it started to make the fence bow and we ended up having to drive metal spikes into the ground to stop the fence from caving forwards back onto our garden.

Now, stick with me because I'm getting there. Yesterday evening, I was down the bottom of the garden trying to work out how I could have a safe bonfire, especially as I have a fireman next door and I noticed that the path which went down the side of this bit of garden wasn't there any more. I grabbed my shovel and scraped off a good three inches of soil, loam and perfectly usable natural compost. I thought that it was quite extraordinary that so much earth could accumulate in so little time. this made me think that I'd not looked over the fence for about 5 years.

In many respects, I'm amazed that the fence is still standing, considering what sits on both sides of it. Piled up against it on my side of the fence is three years worth of shrubbery, and very much the same thing that went over the other side.

The fence is six feet tall and in 2002 the debris behind it reached to within touching distance of the top. My initial intention was that it was a deterrent for anyone trying to gain access to my house via the back. In 2010, there is nearly 5 feet of fence visible. Everything, even the wood, has broken down, rotted and compacted down.

The point I'm trying to illustrate is that if you look at the way composting works on a global scale, the earth is getting bigger and it makes me wonder what the topography of the planet will look like in a thousand years. How much of what we walk on today will be two feet higher?

An idea I've been working on recently is set 100million years in Earth's future, when scientists believe that all the continents, which are continuously moving, will slowly crash back into each other and form a kind of new Pangea, turning the Atlantic into a massive inland ocean and leaving a huge Pacific ocean covering half of the planet. It made me wonder if there is anything that exists today that would be recognisable in the year 100,000,000AD?

It is obviously something in the realms of science fiction, but you'll be lucky to find any 'knowledgeable' person even contemplating it. Do a Google search and you'll find very little aside from the New Pangea theory and a few really crap nerd sites. You're lucky if you can find any one theorising on what the planet will be like in a million years time, so I suppose it's understandable. But, if you work on the premise that there's a bout 150 feet of the past, in layers, below our feet, then our houses and buildings, if they survived that long, would be buried completely by general build up of planet detritus.

Nice.

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The Pope's visit is costing us £12million even before the policing bill comes in. That's £12million of tax payers money for a man who represents only the Catholics in this country. Not the Christians, the Hindus, the Muslims, the Jews, the atheists, the Mormons, the JWs or any other religious (or not) group. He is also a man who will not condemn priests who devalue the frock by fiddling with kids.

The wife said tonight, "He looks like an SS officer. It's those cold, dead eyes..."

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Joke of the day from my mate Paul:

My boss said he's going to fire the employee with the worst posture.
I've got a hunch it might be me.