Wirm.
“Save yersel son. Let yir brakwast wirm go.”
Translated:
wirm, wurm: worm.
“Save yourself son. Let your breakfast worm go.”
![[wirm spelled out in the phonetic alphabet.]](comics/phonetics/wirmph.gif){kind=small}
subterranean drama.
If you were in a hot air balloon looking down on a rainforest it would look like a big flat green carpet.
Yet you know that it is a jungle stuffed with all manner of exotic birds, plants, insects and animals.
Next time you look down at the mud in estuaries or the grass on the ground think the same.
These miniature jungles you only see from the top generate food for worms, moles and flocks and flocks of birds. Us too if you’ve got a garden or fish.
Next time you’re laying tarmac, concrete or slabs spare a thought for the life you’ve stopped and the dust, noise and floodwater generator you’ve made.
Plants and soil siphon up water, dampen noise and trap dust, they cool and freshen the air. These are only the less obvious benefits.
A concrete driveway barely provides enough sustenance for even a spider.
More info:
Centre for confidence and well being; Scotland.
Polution Reduction: Lakeland Ledger; USA.
“Wirm” sounds a bit English, actually. I remember an English biology teacher at my Edinburgh school writing the following on the blackboard, to accompany an illustration: “This is a wrm. Not a wurrum.”
I pronounce it like your enlightened teacher where the vowel is hardly sounded at all. Unlike the poshest English pronunciation with two marbles in the mouth where the vowel sound ends up longer than the whole of the rest of the word. weuuuurm.