Wednesday, December 03, 2008

Fibs


I've been diverted from onerous minute-writing (though made more accurate by our new Edirol recorder) by a new form of word-smithing: The Fib. Look here for the lowdown; I am indebted to Jim at Living Wittily for the link.

Like a haiku, only different, this relies on a mathematical sequence of the number of syllables in each line, in which each line's syllables number the sum of the previous two lines. Jim explains it clearly. And, having had some interesting forays down the hill yesterday and before dawn this morning (the dawning realisation that the gritter is just starting its rounds when you're already committed to a black slope brings a pang of panic) I felt this was an appropriate first try:

Black
ice
sneering
as it lies
deceptively there
on the supposedly gritted
pavement where old ladies pirouette in lethal dance.

I could have gone on...but mercifully the gas man arrived. It was fun while it lasted.

6 comments:

  1. Anonymous5:46 PM

    Could've been worse. Could've been factorial. :)

    ReplyDelete
  2. I like it Chris - and the "pirouette in lethal dance" is just the right image - which afflicts middle aged men in Paisley as well!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Anonymous7:55 PM

    Fib? Fib? Of course! It's a sequence of Fibonacci numbers, which occur in Nature in the most surprising places - e.g. some flower heads. What fun!
    I
    am
    surprised
    that I saw
    the underlying
    sequence; but not before I'd looked
    at the link, where the numbers are helpfully listed.

    ReplyDelete
  4. abf, I do believe I've tempted you at last! You clever old thing...

    ReplyDelete
  5. Anonymous11:39 PM

    I yielded to temptation - even though yielding is sin. It's a weakness - but the weakness is so strong. (Two influences on my life are in there somewhere.)

    ReplyDelete
  6. Gosh abf - Church and State in the one short post.

    ReplyDelete