If you recall my adventure with the ladder, my acceleration to the ground was cushioned by the large glossy green leaves of our Castor Oil plant. Today my wife, of the unerring memory for detail, recalls that the plant was bought from Woolworths by her grandmother, for 9 pennies, exactly 70 years ago. That was in Warrington, Lancashire. In the meantime we transplanted it to our garden in Huddersfield in the 70s then Chester. In that eyeball-freezing winter’s night of 11th Jan 1982 when the temperature reached minus 22 Celsius in Chester, the poor plant shrivelled to its roots. The whole of the upper part wasted away, and I thought that was that. (I rode my bike to school with the chain clunking around because some of the links had frozen. It was only a 15 minute ride but my forehead felt as if a band had tightened around it.) Spring came and the root of the Castor Oil plant spurted like a slow oil well.
Always on the lookout for a celebratory excuse, I bought an iced birthday cake for that once-frozen plant. It didn’t want any so we helped it out.
I see from the BBC4′s Science Fiction documentary, ‘The Martians and us’ that the public don’t want catastrophe novels and films any more. WRONG! Just watch this space…
