Sitting in class fidgeting, feet kicking under the desk into the panelled kickboard that drapes from the chemical trough that runs like the Panama canal all the way down the left row of desks, too many experiments have found their way in there, too many concoctions of chemicals that shouldn’t have been concocted. There’s a little silvered nipple that sits out like a spike on a Roman chariot, when you place the Bunsen burner plug across it, it becomes active, a whiff of natural gas fixes the air and you’re ready with the match. FOOMPH! The yellow centred flame is beckoning the test tube,

You’ve already got it clamped in a claw, the cork lining protecting the fragile yet thick glass and now you swing it back and forth inside the tickle of the flame – rocking your baby to sleep. The chemical combination begins to grow active. You watch it change colour and froth and bubble. You see particles swilling about in the depths. You chew hard on your gum in anticipation of the desired result, the experiment, the aim – as laid out in your well formulated plan – will it work this time? The gum spits out another round of sickly sweet pink flavour while the tube begins to play and sing like a trumpet, it’s throaty cackle plays a melody to the hissing harmony of the flame and the leaky gas. Ammonia and Sulfur and chemicals you have no names for fill the sweet perfumed air of the lab as you watch it all come to fruition and you write down your conclusion and dispense it all into the Panama Canal and you think it s a big deal, but you’ve only done your duty. And now your books close like butterfly wings…..