"Return To The Son Of Nothing"

With Apologies To Pink Floyd
Only small apologies, they're big boys now, they can cope with a little joshing and japery.  The title today refers to an early version of "Echoes", from their seminal LP "Meddle", which - a little frighteningly - is over 40 years old.  Art?  Provide these skeptics with evidence, please:

Close enough

     "What can the sober old reprobate mean this time?" I hear you quandary.  "This is a bit thin, even for him."
     Stay with me, this is about to get even thinner, to the point where you may need a refreshing burst of oxygen.
     "Return To The Son Of Nothing" sounds exactly the same as "Return To The Sun Of Nothing", which sounds almost like "Return To The Sum Of Nothing", which is where I wanted to start, as today I returned to work after a couple of weeks off.
     A couple of people had missed me - Tom, for one, who said he had been starved of witty banter.  He didn't specify which party had provided same, so I shall merely take this as the compliment it so surely is.  Pete, meanwhile, had been spectacularly accommodating and had saved up a ton of Metro's, since he knows I like tormenting myself with the Cryptic Crossword there.  Art?

     What a splendid chap - he and his charming lady wife and their descendants are guaranteed to be spared from the Roving Organ Collection Robots when my invasion fleet arrives.  Tom - well, we'll see how on-form he is this week.
     So, my grand blog title has been thoroughly underwhelmed thanks to the generosity of Pete, which I will not hold against him.

Watch Out!  It's The Devil's Porridge!
Not, as my extremely Scottish parents would have it, porridge made with anything but milk and salt - the approach of anything like sugar, syrup or honey to the breakfast table would have been watched by them with ready suspicion.  Sweet porridge was held in our household to be unseemly, Sassenach and responsible for at least as much woe in the world as money or high explosives.
     No, "Devil's Porridge" is the delightfully descriptive Irish name for Conium Maculatum, which you might know better as "Hemlock".

Pretty poison.  And, pretty poisonous

     This slayer of the incautious was an item I came across quite by accident, officer, as I can assure you I was not deliberately seeking out this information.  It was present on the io9 website under the title "Poisons of Antiquity".  Starting as they did with Hemlock, naturlich, as this is the go-to (if I may use a modernism) poison of classical Hellenic culture.
     If the polis* decided you were a drug on the market they might well sentence you to death by hemlock.
     This delightful stuff tended to be drunk as an beverage, making it a killer smoothie, and it acted as a paralytic, doing in the central nervous system, gradually shutting your functions down until it reached the lungs, at which point the next thing you saw was either Saint Peter or a group of chaps with pitchforks.  The most famous victim of hemlock was the Greek philosopher Socrates.  He actually gave a running commentary to witnesses about how the poison was affecting him, which was very scientifically-minded and a win for analytical pharmacology, if rather less so for Soccy.

"Hoorah for science, Socrates!  Er - Socrates?"

     There we shall leave poisons for tonight.

Parsing A Ghost Story With Logic
 - quite in the spirit of Socrates, I'll have you know.
     Your humble scribe remembers being told a ghost story back in secondary school about a haunted house in London, where anyone who stayed the night would be found dying the next morning, lasting only long enough to choke out "I've seen it" before expiring.
     Hmmmm.  Conrad, child of logic and skepticism, balks at this, rather.  There are so many holes in this tale it stands comparison with a lace doily or fishnet tights.

Yeah.  Thus.

     What happens if nobody goes inside next morning - does the victim hang on in mortal torment endlessly?
     What if they stole in secretly, so nobody ever comes to check on them?  
     What if the victim was blind?  Or had a blindfold rigidly bound into place?
     What if they were mute or didn't speak English?
     What if they were driven to suicide by the spine-chilling terror of Whatever It Was?
     How come they didn't get a photo?
     What happens when this part of London (inevitably) gets either gentrified or <shudder> re-developed?  Do ghosts and spirits adjust their haunt in accordance with the Greater London Council's Housing Rules and Specifications?

Not sure what their angle is ...

     I suppose the biggest question is why there isn't a blue plaque on the wall of this house with an entry in the local Tourist Information Board.  Or, if you have a nastier take on things, why the local magistrates aren't sentencing local delinquents to an overnight stay "to see if they're hard enough."

"Please!  PLEASE! Send us to jail!

     There we shall leave the spirits for tonight, safely in the bottle, as I am now on Day 17 of being Sober in October.


*  "Polis" meaning "city-state", although ironically it is how the Scots pronounce "Police"