Brass Monkey

I woke up this morning to find that it had snowed during the night.  There was a ‘blanket’ (or ‘carpet’!) of snow everywhere.  The snow won’t last long (won’t remain .. it will soon go away) as spring is now dawning.  The snow was unexpected, too.

It was quite cold first thing (early) this morning.  Freezing cold actually.  Very cold.  Maybe you’ve heard the expression ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’?  Or ‘brass monkey weather’.. or even .. somebody might say ‘it’s brass monkeys’ … meaning that it’s very cold outside.

Now, in everyday English ‘balls’ (or ‘bollocks’) is used to describe a male’s testicles – his private parts.  Balls and bollocks aren’t rude words as such.  If you said  to someone ‘you’re talking ‘a load of balls/bollocks’’ .. all you mean is they are talking nonsense.

It’s a common misconception (misunderstanding) – if somebody says it’s cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey, they don’t actually mean it is cold enough to freeze the testicles off a monkey made from brass  ..

 A pile/heap of canon balls.  They used to put them on a brass tray called a 'monkey'

A brass monkey was a tray used to stack/pile/keep cannonballs on. A tray is something that you carry things on .. for example .. you can carry cups or food on a  tray.  A couple of hundred years ago they used to stack (pile-up/keep) cannonballs on brass trays which were called ‘brass monkey’s.

Brass contracts (becomes smaller/shrinks) more than iron does.  In cold weather the brass monkey – the tray – would contract-become smaller – and the iron cannonballs rolled off (fell off) .. Hence the expression ‘cold enough to freeze the balls off a brass monkey’.

It was brass monkey weather first thing this morning.  Damn cold ..  Of course as the sun rose the snow and ice began to thaw (warm up) and turn to slush.  Slush is wet-melting snow and ice.  I could also say the ground was defrosting. You defrost –or thaw- frozen food before cooking it.  The ground thaws or defrosts, just like frozen food that becomes warmer.

 The defrosting/thawing snow and ice - turning to 'slush'

By mid morning the roads were ‘slushy’.  That’s when I went to the coast with my dog.  There’s not many people on the beach at this time of year-particularly where I live in the north east of England.  It’s the North Sea .. cold .. and cold winds blow.  There were a couple of people walking dogs along the coast and one guy fishing.  Nobody else.

A 'heavy swell' on the sea - waves breaking on the rocks and shoreline. The angler is patiently waiting .. and hoping .. to catch fish

There must have been a storm at sea last night.  Today the sea was ‘rough and angry’ and although the waves weren’t big, they still broke onto the rocks in a flurry of spray.  Big waves are called ‘breakers’ … just where the sea ‘breaks’ on the rocks and seashore.

The seashore was littered with flotsam and jetsam.  Littered . that just means pieces of things lying everywhere, ‘cast’ (thrown up) by the sea.  Flotsam is things like seaweed, pieces of wood, dead fish, shells ..  Jetsam, comes from the French word jette, which means to throw.  Jetsam are things that have purposely been cast (thrown) away – things like plastic bottles, old car tyres … thrown away by people.  Of course the sea casts up both flotsam and jetsam.  All that debris (sounds like ‘day-bree’ -trash/rubbish gets left behind when the tide goes out (the sea recedes).

The area is called Snab Point, Cresswell and Druridge bay (just names).  I think years ago I put other photos onto wikepidia.com

200,000,000 (two hundred million) years ago this part of England was much further south.  About 1500 km further south, below southern Spain. Tectonics (movement of the Earth’s ‘plates’) and time has brought it to where it is now.

Not too easy to see in the photo. Remnants of ancient trees, now fossilised.  There's tonnes of them here

Back then, the trees were 100 metres tall and it was a swampy/marshy area with broad (wide) rivers.  Now .. the area is littered (covered/has many) with the remnants of that ancient forest.  Everywhere in the rocks you can see pieces of fossilized tree.  Fossilized just means they have now become stone.  Like extinct ancient animals – the bones fossilise. They are fossils.  Beneath the sea and land there is a lot of coal, which of course used to be trees 200 million years ago.

 The dinosaurs 'died out' (became extinct) 65 million years ago.