Mark Forsyth

Pooling your money began in France, and has nothing whatsoever to do with swimming pools, and a lot to do with chickens and genetics.

And then he grew bigger than any of us, because, since the phrase was invented in 1941, we have all become part of the gene pool, which, etymologically, means that we are all little bits of chicken.

Being a scientist, he of course dressed this up in Greek, and the Greek for water producer is hydro-gen. The bit of air that made things acidic he decided to call the acid-maker or oxy-gen, and the one that produced nitre then got called nitro-gen.

Argon, the other major gas in air, wasn’t known about at the time, because it’s an inert gas and doesn’t produce anything at all. That’s why it’s called argon. Argon is Greek for lazy.

‘What then is time? If no one asks me, I know what it is. If I wish to explain it to him who asks, I do not know.’

Ideally, I’d like to arrest her and take her mugshot, but I’m not sure it’s possible. At least then, when that curious alien asked me what drunkenness was, I would have something to show.

‘If you indulge their love of drinking by supplying them with as much as they desire, they will be overcome by their own vices as easily as by the arms of an enemy.’

Not even the Westerners drink alcohol like we do. They pour a neat glass of wine and sip it. We here put a four-litre barrel of vodka on the floor and drink it until we go blind. We don’t even know how to drink alcohol or anything. What a bunch we are! We’re all the masters of excess and wastage.

A new drug is a dangerous thing, not because the drug is dangerous in and of itself, but because the culture has not yet laid down rules on how to consume it.

He knew that the jury would have to be composed of soldiers and free settlers, all of whom he had in his pocket, and all of whom had already taken a dislike to Bligh.