The Island Of Stability - Flash Fiction

As dead as the dinosaurs. Though not of course coeval with them. In laboratories chemists create super-heavy elements which exist for mere milliseconds before transforming back into more stabile arrangement of protons, neutrons and electrons. Such elements, if they ever existed in Nature, have such rapid decay rates that they have long ago become iron, lead, radon and the like. Their half lives played out into immutability. Why do the scientists bother when these elements have such a short lifespan, they offer no practical use at all? Because they quest after an ‘island of stability’ at some point on this spectrum, where elements exist with increasing half-lives that mean they have a much more stable existence, only no one has figured out how to create them, nor found them existing naturally. 

Such decay would have taken place by the time man appeared on the earth, but hey who’s present to say what time is at this pre-temporal stage? We use carbon dating and other radioactive decay metrics to back-define chronology, so this cavil still holds in real time. Not that there is such a thing of course. Experienced time is not stable. Only in mathematical terms is it regularly sequenced and segmented.

Ug had mined some lead by cracking open a rock. Unsurprisingly he was unaware that it was a radioactive isotope of lead (210), as he used it for a pillow to cradle his head at night. His body absorbed its decay and would have sparked off carcinogenic mutations within his body, only the era’s low natural life expectancy meant he would not outlive the lead’s twenty two year half-life that would have ravaged him unto death.

Ug pointed to the animal skins on his feet with the very spear that had smote the beast. Unk just assumed he was boasting and flouting his fortune from the recent hunt. Ug danced from one foot to the other, waggling the raised one in Unk’s direction. Unk’s blood was rising at the perceived continued sleight. Ug emitted some sounds, but Unk just shrugged his shoulders, or scratched his head, or held his hands out wide while crinkling the lower features of his face, the precise gestures not having been set in mutual comprehension as such. Ug threw himself at Unk’s feet, then struggled to lift one of them off the ground, sending Unk into a frenzy of hopping trying to keep his balance. Ug pointed at the scars and scabs and blisters on his confrere's foot, then pointed to the skins wrapped around his own and emitted some more sounds to convey the comparative weals of skin. Look Unk, we went through all this yesterday, remember, the petroglyphs? Unk smashed him over the head with his club as his final indecipherable and yet inviolable thought on the matter. 

Wait, hold on a minute Sonny Jim, I can smell it on you. Spliff. Skunk. Yes you do. Marijuana. Sinsimilla, Mary Jane. Grass. Cannabis. Bud. Weed. Collieweed. Reefer. Chronic. Blunt. Draw. Ganja. Herb. Whacky tobaccy. Oh this is hopeless. Let me open my Urban Dictionary translation app… What? Give me a moment here. Is that ‘dope’ as in isotope 13 or 15? Come on, throw me a bone here please. Open your mouth wide and enunciate clearly. As if any imaginary doobie between your lips would fall out… Do you mean ‘bad’ in the sense of isotopes 6, 8 or 10…? Damn youth and their rapidly mutating argot. Or is it ‘ergot’? Either way I’m getting a migraine… Not least think about how much money you waste on that stuff. No not waste, ‘spunk’. What? Money, you know, money? Oh sorry, English as a second language. Bank (isotope 72). Swag. Scratch (isotope 52). Dosh. Readies. Moolah. Lucre. Lolly. Loot. Booty (isotope 107). P’s. Spondoolicks. Skrill. Ah we have lift off! Docking with the mothership. Docking your pocket money might be an idea… Hold it, I’m an ‘askhole’? What the hell is ‘askhole’ when it’s at home...? Oh here we are. Hmmmm. You’re lucky I heard that right first time mistah, see you can enunciate when you choose to… I may be your mum, but even I can see that’s a fauxpology. See not quite as beyond redemption as you might think… How do you spell that…? No, nothing, guess Urban Dic hasn’t even caught up to that one yet goddamnit… Would you care to enlighten me as to its meaning…? Pretty please…? Oh, so it’s just the silent treatment now is it? Words fail me….

The Great Unknown - UK politics and the 2015 general election

I try and avoid talking about UK politics because I am a disaffected voter who in the last few elections has spoiled his ballot paper by scrawling on it 'None of The Above'.




The upcoming election will be impossible to predict, since we just don't know what the effect will be of UKIP taking votes away from all three major parties. It will vary from seat to seat, depending on how tactical the local electorate will be. At least it should mean rather than 40 or so seats out of 600+ being genuinely contested rather than 'safe' for the incumbent party, we could well have many times more seats changing hands.

For what it's worth and please don't go down the bookmakers on the basis of what I say, I don't think there will be an outright winner at the polls able to form a majority government. Instead it will be a 3-party coalition, involving Lib-Dems and SNP with Labour Or LibDems and the Northern Irish DUP with Conservatives. UKIP will win no more than 6 seats, Greens will be lucky to hold on to their lone single seat. This is just how the first past the post electoral system works. UKIP will take votes away from both Labour and Conservative, enough to ensure either of the latter lose seats, but not enough to win the seat outright for UKIP. If Miliband weren't such a walking disaster as a leader, Labour should romp this election. But he is an electoral liability, so much so that the vapid Cameron has a greater popularity rating than Miliband. Also Labour will lose seats in Scotland as the SNP managed to sustain their post-independence bandwagon of support, which they really shouldn't be able to do since they lost the referendum, which removes a good portion of their raison d'etre. Instead we now have the irony of them potentially being kingmakers down in Westminster. They might be able to negotiate a devolution of powers from Westminster to Edinburgh so large that it becomes de facto independence in all but name.


As an example of how fragmented and inchoate the psephology is, take a look at London. London is a wealthy city, a natural constituency for the Conservatives you would have thought. And yet it is overwhelmingly Labour and Labour are predicted to take some more seats in May, off both Conservatives and Lib-Dems. And yet Londoners have voted to re-elect a Conservative Mayor in the form of Boris Johnson!



So, what will be the outcome? Almost certainly a lot of surprising results on an individual level and I reckon no one party will have a majority. I think there will be a lot of tooing and froing which may not result in putting a coalition together, or a coalition that is too strained and collapses quickly, so that we might actually have 2 elections within a period of 12 months. Which would crucify the finances of all the parties.

Buckle up, it's going to be a bumpy ride.