I don't know the man but I hope he comes from good healthy stock and keeps fit.

With Alan Mallitt (dear old thing that he is), now the Authority Vice chairman, many would deem this to be a true Sarah Pallin situation - as in one cough away from The Stunned Mallet grasping the tiller. Its a frightening metaphor, isn't it?

Or perhaps we might cynically assume that it really doesn't matter either way who chairs the membership, or what constitutes the actual membership in the first place?

Ah, Seasurge the Hobbit.

How can one forget his defining speech to the assembled at Acle., when he assured us that 'decisions were taken by members' and that policy was decided in a similar fashion.

Laughed so hard I disgraced myself with a premature senior moment..

Tomorrow, if there is time, I shall compose an ode in tribute to this redoubtable environmental scientist.

Edited to remove damp spot.

..and so, and not without acknowledgement of a difficult task in difficult times. and in tribute to all the Little Men everywhere, and also the fact that GF loves a sing-song....


He may be waist-high to a Waller
And knee-high to blokes like Old Frank,
But he sure knows his wetlands from woodlands,
And how tidal anomalies rank

Brainy and cute
Brainy and cute
Seasurge the Hobbit
Is brainy and cute.

But at politics, profs may be unsighted
when seeing the wood for the trees
Or telling wakeboarders from whimbrels
Or if Blackbeard is just what he seems?

Little and smart
Little and smart,
Seasurge the Hobbit
is little and smart

So farewell to the small but the brilliant,
He is giving the chairdom a rest,
The sustainably under-developed ones
going back to what he does the best

Clever and small
Clever and small
Seasurge the Hobbit
Is clever and small.