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Escalator and staircase from the country end of newly-opened platforms 12 & 13 to the transfer deck. Each pair of platforms also has a pair of escalators to the London end, and a lift to and from the transfer deck.
Smithfield Library celebrates National Student Athlete Week with UAB.
Here a student athlete and new friends read a story.
Meadow Cranesbill
Since rupture bleeds within me from our parting,
And none can still the pain, or staunch the flow,
I’ll search the hedge, where cranesbill blooms are starting
And pluck them up before their flowers blow.
The dove-foot herbage and the pale-veined petal
I take in claret one and twenty days
With red snails melded, all to raise my mettle
While her choice divides her changing ways.
As pistils thrust through air and carpels close
About the seeds developing within,
I ache to hear what she cannot disclose
And sip the philtre down, through lips grown thin.
But if she should return, I’ll no more bleed
When the cranesbill springs, and shoots the seed.
Source material: Gerard and Culpepper called the blue flowered Meadow Cranesbill “Dove’s Foot” because of the perceived similarity between the leaves and the feet of doves. The more common name alludes to the strong resemblance of the enlarged stylar column and seed capsule to the head and bill of a crane. Gerard recommended the herb, taken in claret before sleep, for the miraculous healing of “ruptures and burstings, as my selfe have often proved, whereby I have gotten crownes and credit”. He adds that “the powder of red snailes (those without shels) dried in an oven in number nine” should be added to the concoction if it is to be used on an older person. Elizabethans used the plant not for healing physical ills, but as the main ingredient in love potions, but it is not clear whether they added the red slugs as well. More recently, botanists have noticed that Cranesbills have an unusual method of seed dispersal. W.B. Turrill, British Plant Life, London, 1962, p. explains: “The long ‘bill’ of the fruit is structurally the persistent and enlarged stylar column. At maturity the lower two-thirds above each one-seeded compartment splits away from the compact central portion. The seeds become detached, but each remains in a carpellary pocket attached by two threads to the corresponding stylar strip. The stylar strip acts as a spring and when a certain degree of tension is attained by the drying-out process it suddenly curls up and breaks away from the central column, with such force that the partial fruit with a seed at the bottom is shot for a distance of about seven yards...” Poem by Giles Watson.
Recording from my poetry reading at Longstone Heritage Centre, St Mary's, Isles of Scilly, 17th August 2006.
I came across Abbie sprawled up the stairs this morning, book in hand. She's still on book 1, but it amused me nonetheless!
Back in Reading, the MATDs are pulling their typefaces into their final shape for submission in 4 weeks.
Here's another slightly disturbing series of books that delights the young reluctant reader to fits of laughter that end in puddles and other such unsanitariness and irreverance.
Join our brand new beginner readers club on Goodreads:
When the actors weren't on the set they sat on a blanket and practiced reading books. During extra long breaks we brought out a laptop and they got to watch Finding Nemo.