A Search for Donald Cottee by Philip Spires

Author:Philip Spires
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: benidorm, quixote, spain, costa blanca, yorkshire, comedy, tragedy, retire, blog, class, windmill, school, education, caravan, coal, nightclub, holiday, hero, comic, tragic
ISBN: 9781782341994
Publisher: Andrews UK
Published: 2012-08-21T04:00:00+00:00

Thirty One

I never did a lot of pure science... - Don analyses the relationship between instinct, learning and intelligence. This is apposite, since he again visits the cave in Montesinos in search of his life’s new goal. Fearing Maureen, he actually encounters new characters, who seem to be expecting him. He unsuccessfully tries to convince them he is a quality control manager and as time passes begins to find the experience distinctly less pleasurable.

I never did a lot of pure science. I tried a couple of theory courses, but most of the options needed facilities for practical work. For the courses I did, they used to send experiments in cardboard boxes and the fees were exorbitant, so I opted out of all but the most basic science units. I did a little biology, however, because to do that you could study wild flowers, plants, trees and locally available fauna. It certainly took me back, because I had to go off across Kiddington Common to collect my samples. I even bought a new fishing net to catch things in the dam. In days of old, my nets were prized possessions, made from garden canes, bent wire and cut up onion sacks, usually bright red or green, but sometimes the same iridescent brown as a Spanish onion skin. My new one, of course, could not be so constructed, since we now inhabit an age when one daren’t be seen with anything obviously home made in case people think you can’t afford to buy the real thing. So I paid a tenner for a piece of plastic whose net split on its first contact with a submerged twig and whose shaft broke when I dropped it. It was made in Britian - at least that’s what it said on the label.

I returned the next day with an old hair net - I’ve not seen Suzie ever wear one of them, but I found it at the bottom of the drawer by her side of the bed - stretched round a piece of stiff wire and tacked with cotton. The two ends of the wire, bent parallel, neatly fit down the central cavity of a runner-bean cane that had to be specially purchased from the garden centre beyond the church because I hadn’t done any bean growing of my own for at least a decade. You can’t get the manure any more. One cane cost me as much as half a kilo of sliced beans out of the supermarket freezer.

With my stick I managed to catch what I was looking for, which was a few water-boatmen, a snail or two and one of those wonderful breast-stroking beetles that seemed to be able to swim faster than Donald Campbell’s Bluebird.

I took my catch home. I inspected the water-boatmen under the special purchase microscope that only cost fifty quid along with the course materials. I drew the bits the assignment demanded. I then did various indicator tests on snail trail mucus and, for my own special project, I dissected a water beetle.

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