Monday, April 07, 2008
Inappropriate snow
The plum blossom was looking really good a couple of days ago. We will see whether yesterday's snow destroys the set. Apple blossom should be OK being some days behind. On the other hand, did a double take with the hawthorn in our front garden. With the snow on it, it looked as if it was in full strength flower. The snow mimicked the way that the white flowers carpet the top side of the long straggly boughs rather well.
Despite it having been a cold morning, virtually all the snow gone now. Just the odd patch on Cheam Park, the odd relic of a snowman (or snow woman) and that was about it.
Interested to see in today's DT that the conservatives say that they will restore the authority of schools to expell pupils. Now while it does not seem very satisfactory for schools to expell unpleasant pupils and for some local authority appeals board to say thay they have to have them back, another rule says that people of school age have to be at school. A head teacher uncle of mine had an in-between solution. He used to have a bare room - presumably with desks and chairs - to which he used to expel the unruly. His story was that no-one expelled to the bare room lasted more than a few days before asking to be readmitted to the fold. (I believe the Japanese use a related technique to get rid of people they do not like to make redundant but whom they do not wish to keep). One differance between then and now was that there were approved schools which were unpleasant without (one hopes) being abusive and to which the persistant unruly could be sent. I am not sure that we have such places now and we maybe settle for sending them to counselling sessions. Another differance might be that teachers, at least a significant proportion of them, have lost the authority needed to dispatch the unruly to bare rooms. They would need the support of guards of some sort. Who knows. Glad it is not my problem.
Been pondering about domes - things reaching such a pass that such pondering does not need alcoholic encouragement. The drum and dome of St Paul's in particular, a dome which I have hitherto thought rather splendid. But, suddenly, I have decided that it is much too big and heavy. That the dome and the lantern on top of it looked far too heavy for the thing to work - this in the knowledge of an invisible inner cone, between the inner and outer domes, which actually holds the lantern up. Now I was brought up to think that in order to look well, the structure and function of a building should be the same in some sense. Now while I don't think this does as the whole story, it does do as a starting point. Buildings do need to look as if they work, with look being the operative word. Most lookers - myself included - don't know too much about what holds buildings up - but on the basis of what we do know about building - perhaps from wooden bricks, sand castles and lego - we do want buildings to look as if they are going to stay up. This introducing the problem that what person might want on the basis of his experience with sand, another might not want on the basis of his experience with clay. But leaving that aside, some buildings look bad because their concrete legs - no doubt entirely adequate from an engineering point of view - look too thin for the building on top of them. While other buildings look OK without appearing - from a distance anyway - to have any legs at all; rather to float. Millbank Tower being a good example of this last. And then some of the appearing to work can be very fake - like the pilasters on many neo-classical buildings. Which look to be holding the building up but are entirely decorative. Or the stone work in some entabulatures echoing the ends of the wooden beams needed to hold the roof up. At which point the idea of structure and function being the same no longer seems to be helpful.
Nevertheless, I do not much care for those architects of making a point of their buildings being counter-intuitive in this sense. What on earth is the point of making a building which looks as if it should not work. A gimmick which might amuse for a while, but not one that runs the course with me.
Yesterday was also the day of the problem with fish paste, or to be more precise beef paste from Shippams. Somewhat derided in Islington circles (or even Dorset Square circles), but much the same thing as our continental friends serve as pate in arty tubs. The problem was that the inside lid of this pot was not very clean, and looked to have been put on the pot that way. In my new consumer activist role, onto the Internet to discover that Shippams is no longer some cuddly Yorkshire firm dating from grandma's recipe 0f 1845, but merely a brand name belonging to Princes, a food conglomerate, HQ'd directly underneath the Liver birds in darkest Lancashire - where they are not nearly as cuddly if the near zero tendency to use their accents in television advertisements is anything to go by - and who do not rate a mention on the pot. At least I think they didn't. Anyway, I have written to them, enclosing the offending lid, protesting my loyalty to their fine brand but suggesting they might like to know about the lapse in hygiene. We will see what they say. My bet is a £1 voucher for use in Sainsbury to buy more paste.
Despite it having been a cold morning, virtually all the snow gone now. Just the odd patch on Cheam Park, the odd relic of a snowman (or snow woman) and that was about it.
Interested to see in today's DT that the conservatives say that they will restore the authority of schools to expell pupils. Now while it does not seem very satisfactory for schools to expell unpleasant pupils and for some local authority appeals board to say thay they have to have them back, another rule says that people of school age have to be at school. A head teacher uncle of mine had an in-between solution. He used to have a bare room - presumably with desks and chairs - to which he used to expel the unruly. His story was that no-one expelled to the bare room lasted more than a few days before asking to be readmitted to the fold. (I believe the Japanese use a related technique to get rid of people they do not like to make redundant but whom they do not wish to keep). One differance between then and now was that there were approved schools which were unpleasant without (one hopes) being abusive and to which the persistant unruly could be sent. I am not sure that we have such places now and we maybe settle for sending them to counselling sessions. Another differance might be that teachers, at least a significant proportion of them, have lost the authority needed to dispatch the unruly to bare rooms. They would need the support of guards of some sort. Who knows. Glad it is not my problem.
Been pondering about domes - things reaching such a pass that such pondering does not need alcoholic encouragement. The drum and dome of St Paul's in particular, a dome which I have hitherto thought rather splendid. But, suddenly, I have decided that it is much too big and heavy. That the dome and the lantern on top of it looked far too heavy for the thing to work - this in the knowledge of an invisible inner cone, between the inner and outer domes, which actually holds the lantern up. Now I was brought up to think that in order to look well, the structure and function of a building should be the same in some sense. Now while I don't think this does as the whole story, it does do as a starting point. Buildings do need to look as if they work, with look being the operative word. Most lookers - myself included - don't know too much about what holds buildings up - but on the basis of what we do know about building - perhaps from wooden bricks, sand castles and lego - we do want buildings to look as if they are going to stay up. This introducing the problem that what person might want on the basis of his experience with sand, another might not want on the basis of his experience with clay. But leaving that aside, some buildings look bad because their concrete legs - no doubt entirely adequate from an engineering point of view - look too thin for the building on top of them. While other buildings look OK without appearing - from a distance anyway - to have any legs at all; rather to float. Millbank Tower being a good example of this last. And then some of the appearing to work can be very fake - like the pilasters on many neo-classical buildings. Which look to be holding the building up but are entirely decorative. Or the stone work in some entabulatures echoing the ends of the wooden beams needed to hold the roof up. At which point the idea of structure and function being the same no longer seems to be helpful.
Nevertheless, I do not much care for those architects of making a point of their buildings being counter-intuitive in this sense. What on earth is the point of making a building which looks as if it should not work. A gimmick which might amuse for a while, but not one that runs the course with me.
Yesterday was also the day of the problem with fish paste, or to be more precise beef paste from Shippams. Somewhat derided in Islington circles (or even Dorset Square circles), but much the same thing as our continental friends serve as pate in arty tubs. The problem was that the inside lid of this pot was not very clean, and looked to have been put on the pot that way. In my new consumer activist role, onto the Internet to discover that Shippams is no longer some cuddly Yorkshire firm dating from grandma's recipe 0f 1845, but merely a brand name belonging to Princes, a food conglomerate, HQ'd directly underneath the Liver birds in darkest Lancashire - where they are not nearly as cuddly if the near zero tendency to use their accents in television advertisements is anything to go by - and who do not rate a mention on the pot. At least I think they didn't. Anyway, I have written to them, enclosing the offending lid, protesting my loyalty to their fine brand but suggesting they might like to know about the lapse in hygiene. We will see what they say. My bet is a £1 voucher for use in Sainsbury to buy more paste.
# posted by Jim @ 3:11 AM 
