Saturday 4 October 2008

Snail signs

Keith Bradnam the geneticist the Mystic foretells the week ahead* for you in the Molluskan Zodiac, which has its roots in the ancient belief ' that certain mollusks are watching over sailors and can influence their fate'. Among those molluscs is the barnacle, the inclusion of which has already yielded some discussion and — Coleridge scholars rejoice! — a lost verse from the Rime of the Ancient Mariner, which supports the unusual taxonomic arrangement.

Mind you, Coleridge also regarded slugs as poem-worthy harbingers of spring, so I'm not sure how reliable he was.
All Nature seems at work. Slugs leave their lair –
The bees are stirring – birds are on the wing –
And WINTER slumbering in the open air,
Wears on his smiling face a dream of Spring !
Work without Hope, 1825

And then there's the laudanum ...
______

*Because it's difficult to foretell the week that's just passed.


HT: The Other 95%