Little Eilerts

Who knows how electricity works - how the stuff is even made I mean?

It seems like some big arcane secret. I'll tell you: all you need is a Big Magnet and a Big Metal Stick. That's all you need! But they make it oh-so-secret, don't they. From trainlines to coal-fired power stations to transformahs, they make it all big secret don't they.

The first - or at least the most historicuh - image we have of electricity is some dark elf sorcerah at his boggy alchemicouh table, and then an explosions starts, don't it. And we're met with a big ladybeetle explosion of blues and purples and pinks and purples and musting smell like the tuna sandwiches I get at Greg's. He only leaves me the crumbs though.

That's alright, that's enough for me.

The second image is somefing like they have in Australia, right? Somefing like the Snowy Mountains Hydroelectricity scheme.

There's all these opal generatahs, all these wires trickling, spools of wiah they've got overhead like them dodgem cars - yes I've lived a long time, I know what those are. Or it's like them little paperclip lines at train stations that melts into a consistent wiah so the train can hang onto it or somefing for its food and powah and milk of human ingenuity.

Nah, you don't need all that, all you need is a big metal stick, like I said. Go and dig a magnet what a they call it a lodestone or somefing, get one of those blue horseshoe magnets and just hold it up, right. Now get your metal club and smack the air around it, around the magnet, and you'll get the shock of your life. Now you don't want anyone finding you a cave man, so don't do dis out in public, right. But you get the idea.

Wear some gloves.

Now get your metal implement and just twist it to your muse magnet like a music conductor, for sweet melodious electricity. Some people say electricity is like water or honey wif all its analogies of pumps and viscous currents - to get the idea across to the mewling school child. Some people say it's like a firework in constant mitosis right, constantly splitting like a little fungus on the line. Like a horned pineapple lizard twirling around a cord.

Aye, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Now don't be frightened, no please don't - it's not the walls talkin' to you. I'm down here, look down here would you.

Yes, it's me the little tin soldier. Yes, the one all bandaged and on crutches. Put me on that train one more time and I'll really get you. The next time you pick your nose, you'll find me delving up their sticking for a piece of brain.

Tha's right. You won't find gold, but you'll find all dis tin.

I remember when I was nuffin' but die cast metal, colour all gone from my cheeks. Murky and stone-cold just like that basalt you make them model trains wif, or not you the modelling factory you buy them off.

Then you painted me, then you tortured me, and you put me at high-speeds on deaf contraptions. At first it was fun, like some carnivouh ride, but now it seems obvious you fink my life is nuffin but a game. I know it might seem obvious I'm tuggin at your heart strings, but what else am I to do .

You know people used to gaffer round just to see two steam trains crashing in de middle of nowhere in Ohio or Phoenix back in the day. Tha's what trains mean to people - sudden destrucshun. Not to you though, to you it means "fun."

And then a little later you could always watch it on one of dem nickelodeons, of course deh nickels was always a little to heavy for me to hold. But they upgraded to pennies a little while latah. They say a silver ant can carry four times its size, but I never seen 'em do it. But I'm getting a little sore now let me just get a drink of wa'er.

You know dey gave Mistah Abraham Lincoln himself a train ride? Showboatin' his casket like it was nuffin, right disrespectfuh I say.

That's what trains mean to people - mourning. "Deff". Not games, not sport. But sudden deff.

You've heard of a funeral train. You've heard of a train on a wedding dress. Mourning. Solemnity.

Oh but you're investigating momentum you say.

"Pullere equals mass times velocity."

That's already been figured out like hundreds of years ago - you nitwit. Don't you remember Galileo watching them chandeliers swinging to and fro and rolling them metal spheres on his roller-coasters made of wood - that's fun and games, not you putting me on a chugging death-trap.

Why don't you stop all your Neanderfal science. Here let me tell you a new trick, you know Albert Einstein right?

Albert. Einstein?

Well there's a lot more you can do wif trains than racing around all deh same tracks and tourneys and stuff. The parables of special Relativity for instance, you know de one about the 3:12 and the 3:15 seeing de lightning strike at the same time or somefing? Give me a break, give me a good show to remember once in a while.

I tell ya, it's like a dragonfly's little life sometimes. I wake up and don't know what I ate for breakfast dat morning or the day before.

But I can tell you exactly what I ate when Queen Victoria or Elizabeff was around and got coronated. And den I wake up in deh mornin', and as soon as I get my wits about me, I'm plucked from this dusty carpet pink and purple - I fink I've got allergies you know - and then I'm dropped from the sweet air onto one of dem hellrides you call a locomotive. Then I hear the horn blast and suddenly remember what's coming.

"Locomotive".

"Locomotive", you say.

Why can't you call it somefing a little more menial? "Train" is too crude. Too unassuming. But don't fink it don't convey the dumb crusher you've set me on - it does.

You might as well put me in a bag of marbles and shake and shake - at least there's a sight to behold. Milkyways and constellations. And planets of striped colour. Like that necromantic explosion I was talking about.

And why don't you stop calling it a "locomotive". Please. It don't quite convey the big hulking beast you've got runnin' at sixty miles per hour - forgive me if I'm not quite used to your Imperial system. I fought we settled dat one at Waterloo. And it's hard to gauge in distance when I'm measuring in broken bones per hour.

Although it do convey something - more of a hulking piece of cogwork or wrench or spanner in the works don't it, a greater part of the whole, just like us guinea pigs.

Sometimes I wish I could go back to the Snowy Mountains. All that gushing water. All the snow like sour cream and milk. All those honeysuckles and casuarinas.

It's a sad, dragonfly's life, isn't it? No more than a simple dawn to dusk existence.