Caveat Emptor - The Leica Sniff Test

Well shipmates - 'tis time to keelhaul your dandos, because the Old Grey Mare is a grungin' in the meadow . . 

Yes, it's time to clamber aboard the Happy Shippe FogBlog and set sail on the seas of improbability!
And what a week it's been . . .
Start of week:
Quiet. Too damn quiet. Somethin' was brewin'

Midweek:

Sheephouse clambered up onto the deck shouting,
"It's all about photography!" 

He was clutchin' some sheets of paper, and he'd spilled his lunch all down his shirt, so I thoughts to meself, Oh yes, it's got him bad.

Later in the week:

We's discovered that there was a stowaway on board. 

Firsts I thought it was another cat. 

Mog was acting funny and we chanced to see a slinky figure sulking around the galley. 

But luck was with us and we trapped it with a barrel o' good salt Herring.

'Twas a strange creature - it ate a great mouthful o' Herring, chewed and then spat the whole lot back out on deck, proclaiming,

"Nassty, salty fishes. Not sweet. No. Ruined, ruined!"
and ran off.

We couldn't find hide nor tail o'him, but on Friday we had him.

He must have been powerful hungry, for Matey Mate (the Ship's Mate, believe it or not - what a happy happenstance o' namin' that was for his parents) said we should use some of the remnants of the Ramen disaster from last week, to trap him.

We shoved a bucket of Prawn/Beef/Chicken/Kimchi flavoured noodle-bilge into a quiet corner and stayed on watch. 

It worked.

"Hmmm. Nices wormses. Wormses good. Sso tassty for nice Smeagol. Happy Smeagol. Nice food. Plenty too. Not nassty, like nassty, salty fishes."

He slurped away some more, and spoke some more.

"More than enough here Precious, Plenty for us. 

But we don't like that nassty catses, oh no! 

Not catses. Catses eat fishes. 

Smeagol loves fishes more. 

Nassty catses eat Smeagol's fishes. 

Maybe nassty catses has to go! 

Maybe when it's sleeping Precious. 
Maybe when it's dreaming of mices, we creeps up and throttles it. 
Hmmm, then no more nassty catses"

I'll tell ee mates, that was enough for me. I broke cover with the burlap sack I had, popped it over his head and lashed it tight. 

It was a struggle to get him onto deck, but I managed.

"Threaten my Mog would ye!" I shouted as I held him over the waves.

"No, no, Nice catses, nice catses. Maybe share nice fishes with nice catses!"

I didn't wait to hear any more but pulled off the sack and dropped him over the side, shouting,

"There's plenty o'fish for you in there matey!"
and we sailed on, for it was a strong wind and we was makin' good time. 

I used my spyglass and saw him lithely clamber aboard some flotsam and start sculling off in the opposite direction.

A curious creature and that's no mistake.

Anyway's me hearties, we arrived back in time for Mr.Sheephouse to dash into the printers and set the type and pull a few copies of his broadsheet.

Oh yes, an eventful week and no mistake!

***

This week's FB is all about photography, which is a relief because I thought I had lost it!
Anyway, I chanced upon a copy of the 1974 Leica Manual in my local Oxfam recently - it was a decent price so I bought it.
If you've never read a copy, I can recommend it! There are lots of different ones out there, but they do seem to be climbing the charts with regard to pricing . . . anyway, in trawling through its pages I encountered a picture of a Japanese gentleman doing something rather extraordinary . . .
Here he is.

"Hmmm - smell like it hasn't been aired in long time."

Curious isn't it.

Reading the text, I discovered that as well as the usual visual and aural inspections that one should normally make when purchasing a new secondhand camera, there was another . . the olfactory test!

Yep - I was a bit astounded, because I have never heard of such a thing. Sniffing a camera? That's a bit, how shall we say . . . deviant, isn't it?

I say I say I say sir. 

Wot 'ave we 'ere.

A little illicit camera sniffing?

Oy say Sir. 

That's illegal 'round these 'ere parts. 

Aven't you read By-law 136, Subsection B, Paragraph 2?

It cleary states:

"Anyone involved in, or indulging in, the nasal inhalation of camera air for such purposes that are outwith the normal olfactory motions of product purchase, will be prosecuted"

In uvver words Sir:

If you are are caught havin' a nifty snortle of your camera, you are deemed to be in breech of said by-law and as such will be asked to face the correct consequences of such actions.

In uvver words Sir:

You're nicked.

Something along those lines.

The only reference to sniffing cameras I can find is more akin to that new car smell thing where people go and luxuriate in acres of tanned leather, so for instance, you unbox your camera and sniff the new smell. Nowhere have a I seen it being an essential part of the used camera buyers armament.

Well folks, here it is, right now. Buying a secondhand camera?

Take the lens off and sniff the bloody thing!

Have a really good snort, savour what you smell and sniff again. **

Why?

Well, readers of FB will know that I recently purchased a very nice Leica IIIf RD DA (serial number 72****) - it was made in 1954 and you know what, in the short period of time I have owned it I have become rather attached to it . . wanting to buy it little treats like a case and a new strap and so on. I am glad I didn't though.

Its 3 month guarantee ran out this week, and I thought last weekend, I had better give it a quick going over just to make sure there was nothing untoward that was going to show up (typically) the day after the guarantee ran out. It has had a hazy finder since I bought it, and I accepted what the vendor said about it being a little hazy . . it didn't bother me that much and didn't seem to be too bad. To be fair, he had offered to get it cleaned at a discounted price, but I opted to pay what he was asking with a Russian lens chucked in to the bargain.

Lieca IIIf RD DA RF 'Haze'.
Don't just take such descriptions at face value my friends.

Anyway, in checking it out last weekend I did something I hadn't done originally. I used my small Photon torch to shine a light through from the rear of the camera, through the viewfinder and rangefinder windows, fully expecting them to just be hazy. I donned a pair of reading glasses, because to be honest, working with computer screens all week, my eyes are fast becoming shot. Anyway, what did I see? Hmmm. Curious. Hmmm. Bloody hell! FUNGUS!!

Was I annoyed and upset? YES. How can haze be fungus? Well, it can and was.
And to this I will say: Caveat Emptor.
Check and double check everything. In fact treble check everything.

My brain is funny sometimes. Illogical and then all of a sudden, everything drops into place.

A Japanese man doing something deviant jumped into my head. And so did my own actions when I purchased the camera. I had unmounted the Jupiter 8 lens it was supplied with and my nostrils were tickled with quite a 'musty' smell - you know the sort - it just smelled like it hadn't been aired in a long time. It wasn't too bad, but it was there, and I (in my naivity) just thought it was the smell of a camera that had been unused for a while and that it would dissipate fairly soon. Of course, eventually putting 3 and 3 together I realised that the reason it smelled 'musty', was because there was fungus growing inside the camera.

Re-reading the text of the Leica manual again, sure enough, it clearly stated the very same thing:

"Now a word to those of you who would stick your noses into a Leica. Do it! The telltale odor of mildew or fungus growth is hard to mistake. If you detect it in a used camera it means trouble."

There, writ large in black and white.

Sniff your camera!

Why on earth have I never read this anywhere else?
I have read screeds about buying cameras, and yet this very obvious and seemingly silly piece of advice is missing.

Well, I exhort you now:

Go forth and SNIFF.

I have gone over all my others with a fine tooth comb, however what I am more bothered about is that I have had a vastly infected camera nestling up tight with my (not exactly slight) collection. I have also recently purchased a nicely ancient uncoated 1934 50mm Elmar which has been mounted on the IIIf's body, so I will have to watch that too.

I am rather cheesed off to be honest - the whole thing has been a waste of time and postage and expectation, however the vendor has accepted it back no questions asked and I have scraped together some more money, and hopefully should receive a nice little 1960 Leica M2 soon.
But back to sniffing - it is as basic a check as anything - probably the most basic thing you can do when checking a camera - I exhort you to do it!
If you've read about fungus, you'll know that fungal growth in cameras doesn't just appear overnight - it often takes months and years to establish itself, so it was pretty obviously there when it was described as 'haze'.

The importance of a torch test

Shelob's Lair

Can you spots me in there my Precious?
Nasty smelly caveses - we hates them.

Even innocuous bits inside a camera viewing system can mean trouble

Strangely when viewing normally through the VF and RF windows, this was all just apparent as 'haze', it really was - to my naked eye it looked a bit iffy but nothing drastic - it has taken the power of the mighty Photon II torch to bring it out in its full, nasty glory.

So there you go - Sniff Sniff Sniff.

In the words of me old mate Gollum:

Bests to check your nasty caveses my darlings.

Curse us and crush us - nasty stuffses inside.

Bad surprises for the unwary. Poor Precious, poor Smeagol!

Oh yes.

Goblinses and nassty black beasties and webses

But we're not going back. No. We're not. 

Some nice fishses and cool water away from the burning torchses.

What's it got in its camera Precious?
Not fair.
What's it got in its camera?

If this has interested you at all, I have done a wee squinty pdf of the original article by Norman Goldberg. It is a wise selection of advice, which, whilst Leica oriented, is actually of use to anyone buying a secondhand mechanical camera.

Feel free to download it here

Obviously the Leica Manual is copyrighted material. The publishers were Morgan & Morgan of New York, however in checking around they don't seem to exist any more, also Mr.Norman Goldberg who wrote the piece obviously owned the copyright, however he died in 2006. You can find an intersting article about one of his inventions here

So to conclude and wave goodbye to my IIIf, I thought I would include a photograph from the last film I put through it - Ilford HP5 at EI 320, developed in HC 110 Dilution G for 20 minutes.

I still have the 1934 Elmar lens though (which I purchased from a different vendor) - that I am keeping, and I am trying to negotiate a semi-swap/trade-in for another Leica.

Hopefully this one won't smell musty.



Beyonce And The Imagination Witch

So that is farewell to my 1954 Leica IIIf - a real shame as I don't think I have enjoyed using another camera quite as much. And before you ask, yes I could get the vendor to clean it all up and get it back, but can they really eradicate everything? The seeds of doubt would be sown and would grow into an expensive paranoia, so it has gone out of my life. I hope someone else finds it as nice to use as I did.

As usual, thanks for reading, and God bless.

** Camera Sniffers and Camera Sniffing are ® Sheephouse Inc. 2012

Outside The Office Hangs The Man On The Gibbet

Greetings playmates. well, yet another strange week, but interesting.
We have an old sayin' 'round these parts, and it is part law too:
Never Dip Your Nib In The Office Ink
Meaning don't get your real life involved in your work, or in our case, don't help yourself to any of the cargo.
But we had to.
We couldn't lay into port and we were short rationed.
Mog offered us some of his fermenting Cod, but I've been there before and had to warn everyone. It's no use with an entire crew making the side of your boat look like a sea-cliff, so we had to see what we had below.
We ended up with some very nice Jaspers Cheese, from the Santaroga Valley **. it was curious stuff, but you know what, I think it brought us all closer together.
Mr.Sheephouse had his on some crackers with half a bottle of port.
He vanished for a day or so, and then emerged into the noon sun, waving some scraps of paper, his usually crisp white linen shirt stained with rummelled.
Yes, strange stuff, but it did a power of good.
Even Mog had some spread on a freshly caught Conger.

***

Let me take you back friends . . . waaaaay back.

Back to a time, some 40 years ago, when people were people.

Where cheese was guaranteed.

Where, looking back from this wonderful viewpoint of the 21st Century, we never had it so good!

Yes, it's the 1970's.

I never ever thought I would say this, but now I can see the '70's as some sort of cultural highpoint. It really is an astonishing thing to say that isn't it, who could have imagined that the Brown Decade could be considered to be anything other than ten years of nonsense.

Of course the nonsense was there, but I am going to be contentious here; rather like there are numerous people who say that "if you can remember the '60's you weren't really there", there are people at large who say the 70's was a time defined by Abigail's Party, Cheesy Pop Music, Flares and Moustaches. A time where every man looked like a catalogue advert, and where every woman drifted around in either a.) dreamy, flowing dresses or b.) platforms and midi-skirts. The men were either Bond or Bowie, Carradine or Travolta, or (ahem) The Fonz; the women either Greer, Twiggy, Farah Fawcett or a 'Dolly Bird'.

Lovely to be able to gather culture together so neatly eh!

Well folks, it was almost nothing like that.

I have a good memory for these things.

The 70's started out in a semi-impoverished state where the greyness of the late 40's and early 50's was still carried over, blended with new found-60's freedom and an unhealthy dose of Americana, and ended in a massive release of youth-inspired energy, which tore down the walls for ever.

It was a time of strikes, factions, civil outrage, injustice and very real violence - you could get your head kicked in pretty much anywhere .

Football violence, racial violence, plain stupidity.

The youth of the day also had a lot to be angry about and they showed it - no wonder - look at the clothes they had to wear!
Ah, clothing, the great leveller - what a joyous subject. Strangely, these days the '70's are a lot less lampooned than they used to be, or should be, but by Jingo . . why?
WHY?
There were some truly shocking styles, running the gamut from Hippy-inspired Chic, through Droopy Collars and Hipsters, Velveteen, Corduroy, Tanktops, Tesco's PVC Bomber Jackets ('Tesco's Bomber' - always a term of insult on my estate) through to Levi 501's, Doctor Martens, Braces, Sta-Press, Ben Sherman, Brushed Denim, Rayon, Lee Cooper, Brentford Nylons and a healthy dose of design blindness.

Adults started the decade still looking sort of like their Mums and Dads, then had a quick run by Jason King's house for some nice gear and a droopy moustache, and by the end of the decade they were the newly burgeoning Yuppie generation.
Kids wore what they were told to, and it was always awful.
Strangely for me, I escaped a large amount of this 'stylishness' simply because my parents couldn't afford it, so it was Green Flash or Rucanor plimsouls, Levi jeans (cos they lasted longest), Fred Perry polo shirts (ditto) and a hand me down windcheater!

Two Pages From The Oracle.
Mid-1970's Kays Catalogue

Very Typical Indeed. Nice.

Just About Every Girl That Got On The 114 Bus Looked Like This

It was a world away from the now populist cod-70's view based upon the magazines of the time (oh the power of advertising - it was so good, it is now taken as historical accuracy!) and perpetuated and evolved from the 'Yeah Baby' Austen Powers view of the 60's.

Anyway, I have headed off across country again, so let's get back on the main road . . vroom vroom!

In the early '70's my friend Steve and I used to indulge in something which these days would be questionable.

If not downright dangerous.

And frowned upon.

Can you imagine, two twelve year old lads left to their own devices.

What are they going to do?

Yes, you've guessed it . . . head up to London on their own and spend the day wandering around museums!

We had two favourites - the Geology Museum (literally one of the finest and most interesting museums I have ever been in) and the absolute pinnacle, The Imperial War Museum.

(I had been fascinated with all things war from a very early age and it still surprises me that I never joined the Army, but then again all that male bonding stuff was never my scene. I can sort of imagine what it would have been like though, after working for a summer with the Forestry Commission: they were a hard bunch of guys, both drinkers and talkers, but I sort of found my footing and actually the cameraderie they showed towards me is something I have an incredible fondness for.)

Anyway, more digression. The Imperial War Museum (or just IWM from now on) is an incredible place. And it isn't all battles and bombs and tanks and subs either. It has a huge social aspect to it, and I suppose, now, thinking back, this was what I found fascinating.

My mother had been a nurse at Ashridge Hospital dealing with burns victims (one of them a poor RAF pilot with 80% burns); my father an engineer at CAV involved in the manufacture of fuel injection systems for Merlin engines and so on. The roots of my wartime fascination were here, as there were cupboards in our house where there were lots of old looking things: my father's kitbag from when he had initially joined the Royal Artillery (though he was called back as a reserved occupation, being an engineer and all that); an ARP helmet; an ARP medical tin (with instructions!); a Royal Artillery collar badge; a Notts Forest Yeomanry badge; an Australian army hat (with a side that popped up); lots of stuff like that basically.

I suppose rooted in my subconscious were questions like: 

What must it have been like facing down the might of the German Armies?

Dealing with rationing and hardship?

Bombing and bad news?

That next silence after a V1's engine cut out, might well have your name on it.

Anyway, Steve and I used to get the tube and head up to town on a regular basis.

London at the time was nothing like it is now. Yes, it was the hub of the nation. Yes, it was incredibly busy. Yes, it was somewhat daunting. But it was also fascinating and along with that fascination, the museums occupied days for us - they were and still are incredible places.

Forget shopping . . we were teenage boys!

How could we be bored in London when there was all that free entertainment!

We interspersed our museum visits with trips to HMS Belfast, and long walks along the South bank of the river between the Belfast and Tower Bridge.

These days it is unrecognisable. Not that I've been there since the late 1970's, but you see it on TV and in films - changed beyond a shadow of a doubt.

Back then, it was a labyrthine collection of warehouses and wrecked buildings, dirty, tired streets and pends. Evidence of war was still very obvious.

It was littered with small greasy spoons and pubs, bric-a-brac shops and stables, warehouses and manufacturers, occupied by remnants of London's mid-low underclasses: shabby old men and proto-bag ladies; hardened teenagers; neat gentlemen working hard at their trade; workmen in Transit vans going about shady looking business; draymen with horse-drawn drays and cheery road sweepers. Newsagents shops, billowing fag smoke out onto the street, occupied by older ladies and gents of the wartime generation who remembered what it was like to have incendiary bombs raining down on their heads.

The pubs were run down and brown from decades of smoke. Bodies slumped in gutters, not from drugs, but from whisky and rum and beer.

In a word, it had character.

But back to the main meat and potatoes . . . during my first visit to the IWM, I purchased something which I wish I still had . . but it fell apart years ago.

It was a poster, a fairly large one actually, but I loved it, because it said something.
I stuck it on my wall, and absorbed its message, which is a truism more appropriate today than it ever was.

This poster was designed by the cartoonist Kenneth Bird, otherwise known under his pseudonym ‘Fougasse’.
He was the Art Editor for Punch from 1937 – 1948.
Pure genius, and like most of Bird’s propaganda during the Second World War, given to the nation.

If  ever a hammer was used to crack a nut it was the Careless Talk campaign - simply brilliant, managing to get home the importance of wartime secrecy in the very foundations of society, in a funny but utterly memorable way.
They were the work of Kenneth Bird otherwise known as 'Fougasse', a cartoonist and editor for Punch magazine.
They are graphic design heaven, and  I can say that because I trained as one!
To my mind they sum up the war years perfectly. Their clean lines and concise use of words getting a profound message across in just a glance, sending you on your way with a laugh and a smile and a remembered point.

Here are some more for your enjoyment and elightenment:

As you can see, it was an extensive campaign.
Don't you just love how he has managed to incorporate Hitler and Goering into most of the images.
Having heard the phrase 'Walls Have Ears' used frequently during my life I can only concur that it found its way into the national consciousness, which was the intention in the first place.
Incredible the power of good copy isn't it!

So why am I showing you all this stuff from 60 years ago?

Simple really.

The message has never been more necessary!

Far from it for me to tell you what to do, you have to realise one thing, these days, walls really do have ears!

From the inappropriate Facebook comment, to Tweeting about shite that you're unhappy with; from blethering aloud on the bus about just when you are going on holiday, to emailing a friend about just why you hate your boss, it is all out there, and all accessible. From the overheard and misconstrued remark, to the quotation taken out of context, you have to be cautious.

And total, stupid un-cautiousness is an obvious and very real danger these days.

I have sat on buses and heard people saying when they were going away and for how long. I've stood in B&Q and listened whilst a hapless husband has told his wife that the lock they were looking for to replace the broken one wasn't in stock, so did she think they could just shut the door and leave it unlocked!

Were I of a certain frame of mind, I could follow these people and bingo, an easy target for a burglary!

You know all the stories of arrests made because of Facebook comments, of Tweets that have gone awry.

I think people view the digital world we have created as some happy clappy playground, where everything is joy and light, and like a playground, adults will be around to protect you from the dark exterior. This is not the case at all. There are vast numbers of predators out there, both benevolent and malicious.

VAST.

And they all want one thing. You. Whether it be to protect you from yourself; whether it be to take away someone's (albeit often stupid) freedom of speech. Your money or identity? Your passwords or information?

The wolves are circling and there is little we can do about it.

This Blog will be being registered somewhere.

The thought police will even at this moment be wondering why I recommended the Olympus Trip 35 as the perfect covert camera (my post 'Granny Takes A Trip' is by far my most popular, and I am wondering whether that is due to the fact that it describes the Trip as covert).

In other words we are being monitored, 24/7 as they say in the colloquial. Big Brother is here and now and masquearding as a benevolent Big Brother, working hard to help you live a happy life so that you can keep paying your taxes and knuckling under.

And it is utterly bizarre to me to think how the simple world of my childhood (where two twelve year olds could walk relatively safely around the more down-at-heel parts of Central London) has been so vastly changed.

These days, lone children are viewed with suspicion, and you know what, being suspected and expected of being suspicious can only lead to one thing in a rebellious mind! Rebellion. 

Trust has been replaced with fear. Truth has been replaced with falsehood.

The real guardians are gone and the wolves rule the forests.

The digital plantation owners are the establishment, and you'd better believe that for all the lovely, generous bonhomie, there is a truly serious price to pay.

You are watched and tracked and monitored.
Your phone is as good as a voluntary tracking device.
Every word you type and send out into the world; every unguarded remark.
Your registration with Facebook and Twitter shackles you to machines that crunch everything about you - likes  and dislikes, thoughts, preferences, whereabouts. ***

For all our so-called 'freedom' we are hardly free.
The machine age is here, we are in thrall to it.

Can you imagine?
Mankind without freedom?

Why, that sounds a lot like slavery to me.

Be safe, and be guarded.

Thanks for listening, God bless for reading, and remember, this Sunday, on the 11th hour, of the 11th day, of the 11th month, all those men, women and children who gave their lives for something that is fast becoming, in today's upside-down world, an abstract concept.

Walls Have Ears

You Never Know Who's Listening.


** http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Santaroga_Barrier

*** http://isc.sans.edu/diary.html?storyid=5728

*** http://www.buzzom.com/2012/06/companies-use-twitter-more-than-facebook-to-gather-information-about-the-market-and-competitors/

Stay Glued To Your TV Set

Morning maties. Well today Mr.Sheephouse has depressed the hell out of me.

It's been a long time since we been there, but he says there's trouble afoot in the Doldrums and not even anything can be done about it. This makes me sad, because many's the time we scooted the Goode Shippe FB up into the becalmed waters to lay out a sea anchor and drift with the currents.
But no more.
Some stupid bastarding Cap'n has been emptying his bilge there and the water's gone bad.
Not only gone bad, but gone unusable. At least you can boil bad water. But this new stuff isn't just water - it's mixed with a new sort of bilge and there's no escaping it.

Why? Where's the sense in it?
Me old shipmate Berty McGurty had an adage that I still carries with me:
"Don't shit where you eat."
Common sense really, but there's precious little of it when it comes to the world.
It makes me powerful angry.
There's no thought from some folk.

Neptune rot 'em.

***

Sorry folks but this week's FB is not at all photographic again. Normal service will be resumed soon, but to be honest I just haven't felt like writing about photography, hence this weeks little diatribe. I suppose that is the nature of blogging really. You can write whatever you like and there is no set agenda, but please be aware that unless you are of sound heart and mind, this FB is going to fill you with despair.

Why?

Because what has been actioned can never now be returned to it's original state.

It is a problem so vast that everyone (and by everyone I mean the Governments of the World) tries to ignore it.
There are a lot of concerned individuals out there, but like a lone voice calling for calm at a Nazi rally, there is no one listening. (Even the WWF are simply not addressing it in the way they could - honest, as a supporter I have written to them about it but never received replies.)
But what I am going to tell you about (though surely you must have heard of it) is like a hungry bear outside a Honey Factory. It isn't going to go away. It isn't even going to bother hiding around the corner. Sooner or later when it gets hungry enough it is going to beat down the factory gates and enter and there will be nowhere to hide.

The story starts simply:

Once upon a time someone on a ship carelessly chucked a piece of rubbish overboard.
It can also start with:
Once upon a time someone, somewhere, on a lost highway, threw a piece of packaging out of a window, and the wind and a river took it on a great journey to the sea.
Nothing new in that, the ocean has been the depository for mankind's detritus for centuries, but this wasn't rope or wood or glass, this was plastic.
This little piece of plastic was joined by other debris from everywhere, carried by wind and water and keel and foot: bottles and tyres, floats and fishing nylon, cellophane and wrapping, carrier bags, more bottles, syringes, grommets, washers, bottle caps, bags, beads, toothbrushes, fishing nets, lighters, bags, junk food cartons, more bottles, gloves, toys, shoes, bracelets, razors, condoms, wrappers, bags, polystyrene food cartons, plastic nurdles *, more bottles and larger items too: synthetic rope and plastic barrels, panelling and lost life preservers. Lists of items so vast that even the namer of names in Ursula LeGuin's Earthsea books (Kurremkarmerruk, in case you were wondering) would be hard pressed to keep a count of a tenth of them.
And the sea gathered this mass and moved it and circuited it and worked its magic the way it has always done and the way it will always do: softening them with wave action. And the plastic, responding to this coarse and gentle wooing, did as anything will do; it started to break down, slowly and with time.
Strong UV enbrittled it, so it became less pliable and resilient.
Storms crashed through and with it.
Surges smashed and crushed and weathered and continued the breaking process.
The larger chunks becoming smaller and smaller and smaller still.
The smallest pieces were scooped up by hungry birds, by hungry fish; by whales and turtles and all creatures of the waves.
The pieces that escaped this hungry attack became smaller still so that now they were tiny, and then, through time, tinier still, eventually becoming like plankton.
The source of all life.
Except plankton is a biodegradable organic material.
It is food and fertilizer.
It gives life.
But this was plastic plankton. Man made. Nature-formed.
Plastic plankton that is even now, at this tiny size, becoming ground and pummelled and stressed.
Like stars.
Like sand.
Like atoms.
Until it can become no more.

The obvious face of sea-borne pollution.
Sadly it is mostly nothing like this

And when it can become no more, it settles in vast clouds, like a never-ending drift of silt.
But not real silt, the stuff of stone and sand and mud. This silt has the names of the great plastics manufacturers of the world embedded in its DNA. It is the stuff of bottles and garbage and packaging gathering in the great currents of the world, generated in such mass that you could fill an ocean with it.

And we will continue to make this wunderkind material until the last drop of oil is gone. But then what?
What happens to this layer of plastic silt?
Does it affect all life?
Is there, as I believe will happen, a great big plastic full stop placed on marine life because they cannot separate miniscule plastic from real food, and stomachs and beaks, gills and maws become blocked and unable to function, and the creatures die? And die not just in ones and twos, but in vast uncountable numbers.

And when life in the oceans dies what happens to those oceans?
They die too, because oceans and their creatures are symbiotic relationships.
A dead ocean is a terrible concept.
Everyone knows what stagnant water is like - water that has gone bad because it has lost the ability to be oxygenated.

Can you imagine the Pacific devoid of even the most basic non-bacterial life form?
Dead water. Ocean sized. Vast and stinking with the carcasses of ruin.

How will mankind eat?

What will happen to planetary weather when the driving force of the oceans (the creatures it gave life too) are gone and the ocean can no longer function as a living entity and dies too?
A dead ocean?
Non-regulating, wild and appalling?
Can you imagine?

And thinking further, does the plastic silt become sedimentary? Does mankind (if it somehow survies) in umpteen million years time find thick layers of plastic sediment become stilled and solid and become stone, or oil re-born?
Can you see what I am saying?
When you really start to think about it, this is an environmental disaster of such magnitude that it moves beyond the bounds of the mind, it moves beyond fiction - it is now stomping around the globe in the land of the inconceivable.

And what would happen if the plastic became so small that it was capable of bonding to water molecules and being evaporated from the sea inside them?

Can you imagine that?

Plastic rain on dwindling crops?

Or is it a thought too far?

***

When I was quite young I loved to pore through my Uncle's National Geographics.
They were a rich snapshot of the world and a fascinating insight into the wonders of life.
But one day I found something that concerned me.
At the time, I loved fish, and I also loved fishing, but what I saw I think put down roots in my mind that have never left me - they changed how I felt about my beloved hobby.
They caused me concern.
The issue I was reading was an old one, from about 1965, and one of the articles was about one of the great American rivers and concerns at the time about environmental pollution.
Anyway there were lots of pictures to accompany the article, but the one that hit home was of a pair of legs, two arms and the most massive ball of fishing line.
The line contained lures and hooks and so on and had been recovered from a pool downstream from a popular fishing beat.
Initially I thought - Gosh, imagine, all that free fishing tackle, but then I realised that the man holding it could barely carry it.
You couldn't see his torso, and you couldn't see his head.
His arms were spread wide to contain this mass.
It was huge.
This is a bad thing, I thought.
It was one of those moments.
And that was then. Early 1970's, and an old article, from when plastics were just coming into their own.
Can you imagine it now?
Nearly 50 years of popular fishing.
All the lead and shot, all the hooks and lures.
And I love, well loved, fishing, so I am not knocking it in the slightest (indeed most fishermen I have met are mostly highly concerned environmentalists) but if that is one small concern (albeit one of the world's most popular hobbies) and doesn't take into account the mass littering of this beautiful planet then what can it be like now?
The rape of the sea is another thing altogether.
Every second of every day, waste is ejected into it, like it was the flushing of a toilet. Chemicals and debris, waste and garbage. Is it any wonder we have one angry planet on our hands?
One broken and lost fishing net at sea is a matter for concern. it is firstly a huge financial loss, but worse still, it is it's own environmental disaster.
Some purse nets are larger than Westminster Cathedral.
Can you imagine one of those loose and lost, with everything that will get stuck in it, as it drifts slowly on a current like an enemy you cannot avoid.

Actually, hold it a second - forget about the animals - what do they matter.
They're a minor concern compared with what is building.
And anyway, they're all going to die.
Nope what is growing and growing has the power to change things forever. And it isn't going away.
Massive quantities of waste plastic are dumped overboard by the worlds navies and commercial shippers every day of the week and no one cares.
Littering goes on in unimaginable quantities and no one thinks.

My friend, Canadian Bob, loves Hawaii, for its whale watching and clear waters and being a good stop-off point for migratory birds, but I don't think he knows that on Kamilo Beach on the South East corner, where few tourists tread there is a layer of plastic (more plastic than sand) over a foot deep.
Gyred and washed up, conveniently, in an out of the way place.
Here's a picture of it:

On Pagan Island (between Hawaii and the Philippines) they have a beach called the shopping beach.

It's a great place. You can pick up pretty much anything you like, very reasonably. Well, free actually.

All detritus.

All dumped with no thought.

And that is just the Pacific.

Plastic debris has been carried and moved everywhere. It is an increasing and insurmountable problem in all the world's oceans.

A man on Radio 4 a couple of years back had written a book about trying to find wilderness in Britain. He said he had walked a large portion of the West Coast of Scotland and there on nearly the Northern-most tip, he found a beach, calf-deep in plastic, carried on the Gulf Stream. And that is Britain. That is one of the wild and unpopulated parts of old Alba

Look to all the nodal points of the world's great currents and you'll find mass.

Surfers and concerned marine types talk about it. But no one listens, simply from the fact that nothing can be done. It is quite simply, the biggest environmental problem the world faces, bigger by far than climate change, because this is not transitory.
I'll liken it to a Big Plastic Tattoo on the world that will never be erased.

But because you cannot see the mass of it, no one seems to  care. Out of sight out of mind.
Concern will only start to occur when it hurts mankind most.
Right in the Fish Supper **.
When the EU bans you from eating Haddock and Cod and Mackerel. When Shrimp and Langoustine are out of bounds. Anchovies on your pizza sir? Sorry. They're banned because they've been found to contain trace micro-plastic.
When seals are washed up with micro-plastic particles suffusing their guts.
When fishing fleets are locked up for good, because the catches are polluted.
Certainly fish stocks might increase, but what good is that when they are inedible.
Can you see how fcecked everything is?
And yet no one listens. And maybe that is because there is nothing that can be done.
Like that fast-approaching train, nothing can stop it and anyway you're bound too tightly to the tracks.
As Jim Morrison said 'my friend, this is the end'.
It might not be the end right now, but it will be.
We are born of the oceans, they drive the world, but hey-ho, they're dying; no blue flag award for a clean beach can do anything about this.

At the end of the day, there is only one thing that rules this world and that is money. The plastics manufacturers are fully geared up to continue manufacturing. It is  BIG business. But it isn't really their fault.
We want our food perfect and in pristine condition.
We want our bottles of pristine water. The manufacturers are just responding to demand.
I don't know about you, but I struggle with my plastics recycling. The City I live in has a great record as being one of the early adopters of pretty much full recycling, and yet plastic . . . it seems to accumulate in massive quantities.
I tried not to buy so much of it, but to be honest it became actually so impossible that I have given up.
It is endemic.
It is epidemic.
Everything has to be protected.
Not prepared to get your cakes in a little cardboard carton?
NO! I want my cakes to be perfect.
Any sliding about within the box is not allowed.
Give me my cakes in individually isolated plastic.

And so on they go.  Demand and supply.

More plastic nurdles shipped and spilled and used.

Day and night.

More packaging and stuff and more and more, until the last drop of oil (remember a finite resource) is gone.
Until the last sea bird dies.
Until the last turtle drowns.
The last fish rises to the surface.
The last whale sinks.
Until the vast expanse of the world's greatest rubbish tip is filled.
Then and only then will the unconcerned consumer and litterer stagger forth from their home or wherever with their starving, dying children in their arms and look around at the plastic world they made.
And it really will be the end.

I used to think that maybe the problem was surmountable. I used to believe that someone somewhere would come up with a solution, but you know what,  I now realise, some 8 or 9 years after reading about it, that it isn't going to go anywhere and thinking logically, there is simply nothing that can be done.
How could we be so stupid.
I know some of the concepts in this piece can seem a bit far-fetched and SF-like, but just because they're not visible and a long way away doesn't mean to say they're not happening.
You just have to apply some lateral thought.

God bless and thanks for reading.
I hope I haven't depressed anyone, but you really do need to know about stuff like this.
The carpet simply isn't big enough to sweep all of this plastic under.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/environment/5208645/Drowning-in-plastic-The-Great-Pacific-Garbage-Patch-is-twice-the-size-of-France.html

* Nurdles. Basically these are pre-production plastic pellets. They're moved around the world in vast quantities and are to be found in all oceans.

** In Scotland we call Fish and Chips a Fish Supper, just in case you wondered.