Raves About Caves

We Don't Normally Do Current Affairs
But I'll make an exception if I think it might lure in a bit of passing traffic.  Now, I can feel you cringe with horror as I refer back to the Thailand cave rescue -
     Here an aside.  I went on about the Purple Mangosteen yesterday, because tangential is what we do here, and Thailand is the major supplier of this fruit, which is rare and expensive in the West.

Back to caves

     Well, you'd better steel yourself to the fact that this is going to be made into a film, locally if not by Hollywood, and there are doubtless dozens of hacks busily churning out scripts even as I speak.  The ones going to Sci-Fi will feature battles with giant spiders and fire-breathing lizards, and the one that Asylum does will have people fleeing into the caves as Thailand (looking suspiciously like southern California) is over-run by sentient, hostile mangosteens paving-stones.  If Conrad were to submit a script, then of course the caves would be infested by KILLER EELS!
     Anyway, the Beeb has an article about caving here in the Allotment of Eden, and I can proudly repeat one of the caver's boasts that we have the finest caves in the whole of Europe.  How this is so when you don't know if there are any undiscovered caves around is an interesting question.  Art?

Include me out!

     That above looks rather strenuous, not to mention dark and wet.  Why not just go for a long walk in the rain?*  
     'Because it's the last true wilderness' explains a caver.  O Rlly?

Hard to miss

     You can understand why people climb mountains: because they are there.  That above is K2 in the Himalayas, and it rather stands out, whereas a cave by definition is hidden from sight.  
     We may come back to this claustrophobic subject later, as it has proven rather fruitful.**     Now it's time to tie industrial firework rockets to the soles of the motley's shoes, light the blue touchpaper and see how far it gets before it falls over!

Look, a cave!  Quick, catch it before it escapes -

"Keeping Cave"
Nothing to do with speleology (the posh word for caving), rather this is something that your humble scribe first came across waaaay back in the Seventies, where Leslie Phillips featured in a ghastly sitcom, the name of which escapes me and which I don't care about enough to go ferret it out.  He was revisiting his alma mater (the posh words for old school) and encountered a group of small boys obviously up to no good.

Ol' Les - less a lounge lizard and more a lounge iguana

     "Don't you have someone to keep cave?" he asked - and damned if I can remember how it's pronounced - only to be told that, this being the Seventies and the white heat of technology and all that, they had a closed-circuit television to keep an electronic eye out for prefects.
     It is a slang term from Eton, one of those English public schools that are nothing of the sort and which are actually very, very private.

Eaten.  Close enough.

     
From Gravy To Cavy
I can hear you quibbling "Where's the gravy?
     In the photograph above!  Do keep up, this is excellent mental exercise for the future, when I rule the world and you have to anticipate my every whimsical notion.  Apart from Mark Kermode, because he's a fan of The Comsat Angels, and Russell Brand, who will have been sent to the organ banks straight away.
     Anyway: cavies.
     "What is a cavy?" I hear you ask - yes I have very good hearing - and I am tempted to answer "delicious!" but that would get me in trouble with Anna.  Art?

"What?  You want me on a dish with roast potatoes and peas?"

     They are rodents, originally native to South America, and include wild varieties as well as the domesticated guinea pig and the capybarya.  
     Incidentally, who on earth decided to call those above "guinea pigs"?  They neither come from Guinea, nor look like pigs.  I suspect the taxonomist was the worse for drink.
     They feature here simply because their name sounds like "Cave" and that's the theme we're going with today.

A congeries of cavies

Oh.  Who's this popping in?

"I like your theme, Connie.  Works for me."

     Oh, er - thanks, Nick.

And with that, we are done (still not sure about being called "Connie")
*  Because it might KILL YOU!  Oh - no, sorry, that's "The Rain", isn't it?  Which isn't real.
**  Mangosteens?