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Friday 28 March 2014

Library Tales: Dedications V

To Ronald and Jennifer,
my son and daughter,
cited in order of age,
not any discrimination of sex.

For Julie,
who makes the sun shine,
and for
Rhian and Patricia,
who do the same for my sons.
[despite being amused by son/suns, it's also an extraordinarily sapping dedication 
for a book about System Dynamic Modelling]

"If we investigate our ideas, we have
to be willing to give them up."
                                           Gordon Hewitt, PhD
                                                          Wellington

In all the world, few indeed are those who have a clear 
insight into both mathematical analysis and how it does, 
and does not, fit physical phenomena.
[Wind Turbine Engineering Design by David M. Eggleston]


To the memory of Jubalani Nobleman Nxumalo 
('Comrade Mzala') who would have liked bits 
of this book but disapproved of others

[Not a dedication but worth a mention. Hand-written under the main title on the inside cover of The Rootes Brothers]
This book is full of mistakes
                                         ABPM

This book is dedicated to all the middle-class
workers who toil every day in manufacturing.
[But NOT the working-class. F*ck those guys]


This book is dedicated to my wife, without whom it could not have been
written. The dedication poem below is written in a mixture of Buchan
Claik (Buchan dialect) and Lallans (Lowland Scots), as befits a marriage
between a husband from Edinburgh, but of Glaswegian ubringing, and
a wife from Aberdeen. In Buchan Claik loons (m) and quines (f) are
marriageable young people.

My Bucksburn Quine

O Mary, it's lang syne we click'd,
While touching over teacups,
I tak't ye fae a jilted loon,
Sair sick doon in his stommick.

My Bucksburn quine had black dark hair,
That spark'd a'twixt the bed sheets,
Glintin' the way tae lovers rites,
That spritely gint the hert leap.

The potter's clay from high she thumps,
Upon the caring plaster,
Wi' micht an main, tae get it richt,
Tae form, and fire, and gloster.

My Buchan quine, ma ain guidwife,
In the game o'life, a winner,
O'er wrongs and rights, and deil made plights,
That yowt the heid's wee spinner.
A doughty fechter in the fight,
Wi' posture, and good balance,
An' shak', will she, the hand o' God,
When life's brief flash is darkened.

Our bairns, and bairns's bairns are fair,
A trace we'll leave behind us,
Meantime the bonds o'blood is there,
That joins and keeps and twines us.

A fortun'd, fair starred man am I,
Health's, wealth beyond conception,
And love thy neighbour as they self,
Preculdes the deil's pre-emption.
[Fuel Cells, Engines and Hydrogen by Frederick J. Barclay]