Monday, June 30, 2008

 

Jack the Dripper

Reminded by a picture in the TLS that I was reminded of Jack the Dripper by the West window of Winchester cathedral. This old stained glass had been trashed during the civil war and afterwards the peices were stuck back into the window, without any attempt being made to reconstitute the original picture of St Winchester and his cow or whatever. The result was both attractive and very modern looking - reminding me of one of the drips of said Jack the Dripper. Modern before their time.

But stinks on the road-over-rail bridge on the way to Cheam. Sweet sickly smell. Probably the ivy coming into flower. But so moved to go to the butcher for a bit of rump steak to try a new sort of stew for lunch. Cut steak into small strips, maybe 2cm by 1cm by 5mm, cut across the grain. Brown in butter. Add finely chopped onion. Some minutes later add finely chopped tomato. Towards the end add some mushrooms. Serve with broad beans and rice. I was a bit anxious that the tomato flavour was going to be too strong - they certainly smelt quite strong - but as it turned out they made a strong contribution to the texture (a very important matter to my mind) while their flavour was nicely damped down by the mushrooms.

Two vegetable factoids. First, I learn that elderly mushrooms can ooze a sort of green jelly stuff. Maybe that's the Mr S 'taste the differance' ingredient being released. Second, I learn that broad beans cost as much as steak. That is to say around 4 pounds of beans which when shelled gave enough beans for the two of us cost around £6. They were also rather pale and of very mixed size. Not as good as what I used to grow on my allotments - this being just the time of year when we would be overrun with the things.

And to finish up, a literary factoid. It turns out that there is a further connection between the Joyce and the Theroux from Honiton. The BH found out from Theroux that Molly from Ulyssees was born and lost her virginity in Gibralter - the Theroux being a Mediterranean travel book. A factoid which can be confirmed by perusal of the somewhat obscure last section of Ulysses. Somewhat shocked by some of the language therein despite my mature years and the language at TB. And as it happens we have a neighbour who was born there too. What a small world.

 

Park benches

Someone who is keen on park benches: http://www.benchpics.blogspot.com.



Sunday, June 29, 2008

 

Wordoids

Tickled by three words over the last few days. First, pompous. In reading Neale on Elizabeth, I was reminded that pompous was not always a word of abuse. Once upon a time it meant simply something done with pomp and ceremony. Something we sometimes forget our need for in this age of fake informalilty from our leaders. Second, that artificial was not always a word of abuse. Merely something made with art or craft or skill. The same root as art, artefact and artificer. Not altogether clear how it went to the bad, but maybe it was the contrast between art, that is to say done by hoomans, and nature. Nature being the creed for 19th century romantics. Hoomans bad, nature good. A precursor of our fad for the natural and organic - forgetting, along the way, that a lot of very nasty poisons (not to mention various psycho active substances) are of vegetable, that is to say, natural and organic origin. And third, the span of meaning of magazine. Not clear from the OED where it came from but it appears to be the same word in English, French, Spanish and Arabic. So perhaps we got the word from the land of the tangerines. The common thread, in English anyway, seems to be store. So a store of goods, perhaps a warehouse, a ship (obsolete) or a shop. A store of military goods, particularly gunpowder. A store for bullets. A store for entertaining titbits of the reading variety, possibly the late lamented 'Titbits' itself.

A little sorry for the architect of the small block of flats put up by Devine Homes PLC along the Cheam Road. (As an aside, Mr G tells me that Devine Homes PLC is registered in Cheam, looks to go in for smallish, posh housing and flat developments and to be a subsidiary of Devine Developments of Tufnell Park. Nice web site at http://www.devinehomes.co.uk/. A whiff of the Irish about the operation). They went to a fair amount of bother to build a block of flats which fakes up a large and tasteful Edwardian house in the grounds of what used to be a couple of suburban villas. Landscape the garden and all that sort of thing. Tasteful brick shed with a pointed roof for the dustbins. Then the electricity board come along and plant a large green steel box - maybe something smaller than a 2 metre cube - in the front garden. Presumably it contains all the meters and whathaveyou for the flats. But not very pretty. I notice that one of the blocks of flats just gone up in the centre of Epsom has a similar white box. So maybe a developer does get to choose the colour of his mandatory box. After that, the block is handed over to a maintenance company. Which is not bothering to water the trees - maybe 12 foot high - planted in the Spring and which are now struggling a bit. One might of thought that one of the residents would chuck a few buckets of water at them. But not a community spirit among the score of them.

Yesterday, quite by chance (that is to saying, falling asleep on the train and forgetting to get off at Clapham Junction) to an open day at Battersea Power station. It seems that there are plans for a flashy new development there with a massive new chimney, taller than Canary Wharf, generating eco-energy from a giant flat-containing green house. Plus the shell of a power station preserved for posterity. Those who toured the exhibition, filled out a survey and filled out a disclaimer (in case one fell over a dandelion or fell into the river and tried to sue) got to walk around the site a bit with free bottles of water. At two points one was allowed near enough the main halls to feel the interior. I had not known that it is a steel frame building underneath all the brick, rather like lots of skyscrapers in New York. But the steel must be good stuff because the building is still standing despite the great holes that have been carved out of it over the years. Good to see the place, but I am not sure that I would go to a lot of bother to preserve it. If one can find a good use for it, well and good. But if not, knock it down. The developer's idea is to make an unroofed garden out of the shell of the building. A large semi-open space. Probably with some paying elements in the mix as well. Maybe it will be work.

But one suspects that long service residents of Battersea may not be so keen to see this large new nest for the gilded youth of London in their midst.

The developer appears to have been on the move for a few years now, proposes to put in a planning application next year and then, if all goes well, start building two years after that. A long and expensive game in which there must be lots of dosh for someone. Part of the planning game is the expensive consultation exercise which included our being able to visit the place. Reminded how hard it is to consult the great unwashed. You have to get them to spend time, to answer a lot of questions, some of which they can hardly have a clue about - while keeping up the pretence that you really care what they think and that you have not already made up your mind. In my limited experience of such things, very hard to pull off.

Thursday, June 26, 2008

 

On a retirement

To mark this occasion, I have a short parable.

Once upon a time, in the town of Wolverton (famous for its concrete cows), there was a company which made sanitary ware. Possibly French. And in this company there was a board consisting of the lord and three wise men. One day, there was a board meeting, held in a fine nearby golf club. I think it hosted an open once (shortly before I was there on some very important user group business). Something to do with the Forest of Arden. Anyway, wise man number 1 says: "I had this great idea in my bath this morning. Why don't we drill holes in the bottom of our baths so that the water runs out? Rather than having to fetch it out with a jug. The customer can plug his hole with a chargeable plug. Maybe even a rentable plug". Wise man number 2 (responsible for contractor relations) says: "That's a really great idea. I'll bring in a team tomorrow to get cracking on it. We'll have a feasibility study out before Christmas". Wise man number 3 (a rather quiet chap, responsible for employee relations) muses for a while. Then he sez, sezzee: "I think a couple of chaps in team D are already doing something like that. They might even have shipped a few. I'm absolutely sure that I signed a claim form for a big drill bit, along with some fags and sandwiches". At this point in the discussion the lord turns apoplectic. He says, or rather storms: "Never mind about the fags and sandwiches you f***. How often do I have to tell you. If you get on out and drill the holes like that, where is our project. How can we possibly make a project out of perforated baths? You must recall them at once". Wise man number 3 very crestfallen. Gazes at his cooling coffee. Very quietly he sez, sezzee: "Sorry sir. Three bags full sir. But it just so happens I've got a luvvy coming in this afternoon to do a luvvin with team D. I'll tell them the're stood down in the camomile break. No great harm down". And so the great plug hole project was born and has lived on to be with us still. Long life and happiness!

 

Disgusted of Epsom

Moved to keyboard by two items in this morning's DT. First, we have a very senior diverse policeman complaining because he is not an even more senior policeman. I suppose, being diverse, one gets paranoid, and assume that every blip on the ascent up the slippery pole is down to discrimination. Whereas I believe that at his level there are relatively few opportunities further up the pole and progression is in large part a matter of luck. But I am sorry that someone who has been so successful is still pulling the diversity card. Like those lady bankers that annoy me so much. Second, we have the tawdry tale of a luvvy and the failure of her mother's lover (another lady) to leave her her house. Not bothered by the luvvy and her failure to manage her affairs better, but am I bothered by the house, not exactly a stately home, being left for poster(ior)ity to some heritage gang called the Landmark Trust. What on earth is the point? The house is not grand enough to attract visitors and is only any use to live in. So why not leave the free market and our heritage planning laws (which, to my mind, are well OTT anyway) to look after it? Do we really need to encourage yet another bunch of trusties and nannies to look after things?

On a more cheerful note, I am pleased to see that Poldy shares my puzzlement about sea fish not tasting salty. Or to be less obscure, Bloom somewhere in the first third of my shiny new copy of Ulysses. I had thought the reference was page 71 but that seems to be firmly in the middle of the kidney episode. Annoying that I can't reliably remember a page number overnight. I will have to see if I can find one of those electronic copies on which to catch it.

One of the highpoints of the visit West, was a visit to Winchester Cathedral. Being the Lord's Day we only had to stump up a suggested donation, rather than an equivalent entry charge. As a cemetary, an interesting mix. Six Jacobean treasure chests - rather like the relic container we came across in Paris last year - containing the remains of ancient kings - chaps like Canute and Ethelbert - sitting on top of a wall at the East end. One of those under the wall was a younger son of William the Conqueror, duke of somewhere which I couldn't quite decipher. Apart from that, the cathedral seemed to be the place to erect elaborate memorials - chapels even - for the more eminent bishops. They clearly did very well for themselves. BH tells me that the see was one of the most wealthy, if not the most wealthy, in the country. Couldn't have done too badly having run to their own prison (the clink) somewhere near the London Dungeon. Plus the odd knight among the clutter of the North transcept.

Oddly, the choir occupied the crossing. I can't think of any other cathedral which does this. Perhaps the bishops were ashamed of their ancient Norman transcepts and wanting to take the eye away from them, blocked the crossing with an elaborate choir. Huge altar piece - from the same stable as that at Ilmister but hugely bigger and, sadly, unpainted. Quite a lot of old stone carving, but completely lacking the exuberance of that at Ely. No monsters and no green men. Perhaps the bishops, being pompous and wealthy, were too strict to allow their carvers license of that sort. But the nave roof was spectacular. An excellent example of my Ely-fuelled notion of cathedrals being inside-out sculpture. That is to say that sculpture (not the performance and conceptual rubbish variety) usually sits on a plinth and you look at it from the outside in. And there is not usually very much inside on view. In the case of a cathedral you are inside the sculpture and the way it carves out space is much more varied and vivid. It also contained the only second hand bookshop I have come across in a cathedral. Bucket loads of unsorted books from which we failed to find anything of interest. Tempted by three stray volumes of Saint Simon translated into English but put off by their size and state.

Sculpture reminds me of that other bete noire Sir Dame Emin (see 10 November 2007 above. Can't believe it is so long since I have had a pop at her). She popped up as a member - perhaps acamedician or academission - of the Royal Academy if you please, hanging an exhibition of erotica. I think she said something about needing to shock people out of their complacence. I suspect her trouble is that she hasn't got any.

What is it about us that we are so terrified of being thought old, old-fashioned, or stuffy or of failing to back a winner, that we back anything young and noisy? Just in case it turns out to be memorable and we want to be listed on the role of honour of those who backed it before the herd turned out. Then there is the degree of wish fulfillment. If enough of us believe something is memorable, even a something without objective merit (my belief in which I cling onto, just about. Despite all those post structuralists or antedecon structuralists or whatever), it will become so.

Tuesday, June 24, 2008

 

The plasterer's apprentice

Two small holes (formerly for side lights) now packed with chicken wire, rendered and plastered. Let's hope the live wires I left in the holes in case we or our successors want the side lights back don't short in the meantime. One large hole (formerly for the stove chimney) now rendered and plastered. Getting the right amount on proved easier than expected. Getting a decent finish harder. But a whole lot easier for big holes than Polyfilla which behaves likes thick soup and does not stay where it is put - unlike this stuff from Thistle which stays where it is put despite looking rather wet. Overall, not too bad. Should be OK when dry give or take a bit of sanding. The big hole will not be an invisible mend - something that I think is more or less impossible, even for a real plasterer - but with a pot plant in front of it, no-one is going to notice.

Another Israeli factlet via a TLS review of a book by one Benny Morris. To the effect that during the second world war (aka the second world complex emergency in emerging UN speak), many Arab nationalists from Palestine took refuge in Germany and that the Arab population at large was strongly pro-German. The Jews in Palestine were understandably concerned at what would have happened to them in the event of a German victory. Apparently a suitable German unit had been earmarked for the task.

And an oddity from the previous edition. It seems that despite our heavy use of the word 'Tudor', the word was hardly recognised or used by the Tudors or their subjects, except perhaps in Wales. Henry Tudor - Henry VII - was far keener to promote his link to the Lancastrian house through his mother, a descendant of John of Gaunt and his third wife - than to advertise his father's obscure Welsh family - which amid some scandal had picked up Henry V's French widow. It was left to Hume in the mid 18th century to raise the term 'Tudor' to the pedestal it has been on ever since.

Forgot to mention the excellent Dorset apple cake from Ilminster. A fresh, sweet cake without icing or gunk. So many otherwise good cakes are spoilt by surfeit of same. Don't recall ever having had such a cake before. Maybe, we will try and make one when the cooking apples come around again. Also the fact that there was a grammer school at Ilminster, which served the community there from 1546 or so until dissolution in 1976 or so. While I have no strong view on grammer schools, slightly saddened at the sweeping away of such an ancient institution. As at Blair's sweeping away of the Lord Chancellor. Abolishing a bit of tradition - which was doing no harm and still had some life in it - just to prove how go ahead New Labour is. Or perhaps it was just to remind us that Blair was in charge and we had better not forget it or we might be abolished. Or perhaps The Cherry was cheesed off that some judge did not care to curstey to her and so nagged hubby until he had a go at the lot of them.

Prior to Ilminster we passed Stonehenge which was being prepped with a large number of yellow cones for the summer solstice the dawn following. There were even four new yellow trucks specially adapted for the carriage and management of cones. Perhaps on the basis of one cone for every solstice nut. Whatever, I expect the cone men had just as much fun as the solstice nuts they were bossing about and they were getting paid. Did they have bivvies, camp fires and cocoa, traditional parephrenalia for nocturnal scouts and nannies?

And a reminder from Honiton of the passing of wordly honour. I could buy a mint condition 1960 edition of Ulysses, from the Bodley Head, less dust jacket and without any bow, for £3. A centenarian master work practically remaindered. Whereas a large and somewhat worn travel paperback from Paul Theroux went for £4. We had them both.

And lastly an agricultural curiosity. Driving through the New Forest on the way to Winchester, we pass a large pink field. The pink appeared to be the flowers of some tallish thick crop, maybe two feet tall. But not a clue what it might be.

Monday, June 23, 2008

 

B&Q rules!

I learn today that B&Q does indeed stock small and very small bags of bonding, universal and finishing plaster. Next thing is to find out whether finishing plaster sticks to sand and cement rendering. I shall certainly not be sticking to the letter of the instructions which presumably lets the maker of the stuff off the hook.

I also learn about a new wonder way of growing rice. Said to be capable of doubling the crop while halving the amount of seed used. So why is it not catching on? Is it a plot by academia to blackball something not invented by them (the wonder way having been invented by a long service Jesuit in Madagascar) or by the agrocombines who are only interested in wonder ways involving lots of their products? Feeling full of beans this Monday morning, I actually get around to asking Mr G about the matter. Lots of hits. And, I should have guessed, all much more complicated that one might have thought having scanned a few square inches in one of the weekend papers. The wonder way itself seems easy enough. Transplant the rice seedlings very young, plant them a long way apart - feet rather than inches - and don't flood the fields from the outset. This way each rice plant grows much much bigger, overcompensating nicely for the much smaller number of plants. What is not easy is deciding whether it works or not. It seems that there are lots of ways for one field of rice to be differant from another and one needs large scale careful trialls to be sure. But Dr Uphoff seems pretty sure he is onto a winner. I would have posted a picture of happy peasant holding handful of giant new rice in one hand and handful of dwarf old rice in the other - but my paint skills do not extend to trimming off the large right hand white space I get when pasting it into Paint for saving as a jpg file - having failed to find the saving direct option. Back to geek school.

Parts West at the weekend, starting with Illminster, which boasts a country drapers with fine stocks of knitting wool and tweed jackets and with handsomely dressed windows. Must be a lot of county types in the area to carry such a place. Opposite, one has the minster. Large, impressive but oddly cold place, more or less rebuilt by the Victorians. Rebuilding included a substantial peice behind the alter, maybe 12 feet high by 8 feet across, full of niches for sculptures of saints and lords and what have you - all painted in the sort of bright colours - lots of blue and white - one associates with statues in Catholic churches - although they had not gone as far as dressing the sculptures. Maybe the church is a touch high. Large gallery at the back of the church but entry to the substantial flight of stairs which would get one there forbidden on grounds of health and safety. Did not seem quite right to ignore such a direction in the house of the Lord.

Having spent some of the weekend pondering that other Lordly matter, the nature of sin, much helped by taking on some liquid freight, have now moved on to the relationship between taste, esteem and price. I declare an interest at the outset, in that I prefer cod and haddock to salmon, which I have always thought to be OK but overrated - even when we went to the lengths of going to a restaurant in Wales somewhere for which the (English, nicely tweeded as I recall) proprietor of the local salmon rights used to provide the daily salmon. Now in the England of my childhood, salmon was much dearer than most other fish and this was true whether it came in a chunk or in a tin - frozen not having been invented at that point. So salmon was posh and cod was what your parents' parents bought for their cats and maids (who thought themselves lucky not to get coley). This didn't run in Scotland and parts of Canada where the peasants were paid in salmon rather than money, but we stick with England for present purposes. Now, fresh cod and haddock have been a lot dearer then salmon for some years. So how long will salmon hold its posh image?

More worryingly, is what we dignify as good taste, little or nothing more than a dishonest, hypocritical way of saying that I can afford to spend more on my fish - or whatever - than you can. Or that I have spent more time and money learning how to tell the differance. But nothing much to do with one being instrinsically better than the other; we just train ourselves to like one more than the other. To the point where both the like and dislike are both perfectly genuinely felt. I am reminded of some savages, I think somewhere near Papua, who used to grow special pigs. The grander the spiral tusks, the more special the pig, the more valuble. So you grow a very special pig, then on a very special day you club it to death. By clubbing, you acquired all the value of the pig, you might even move up a grade or two in the grand order of the pig, and the value of very special pig dropped to zero. It was promptly roasted and eaten. A sort of very conspicuous consumption of something harmless (leaving the pig aside) which does not involve the consumption fossil resources. And there is no fooling about. Growing pigs is about growing status, not about feeding the starving millions. (PS: one has to know about the late Left Book Club Editions, in this case of a book by one Tom Harrisson, to know about such arcane matters).

Friday, June 20, 2008

 

Hedges

I have a sneaky feeling that I have moaned about this before, but until I can afford an editor I guess we are going to have to put up with the odd quirk. Anyway, the moan in question is about the bushes that grow in the outer verge in some parts of this estate. The outer verge in question is outside one of a group of 20 year old infills (which no doubt, in their day, occasioned much blood, sweat and tears from the planning protest group), each of which is worth, perhaps, £750,000 or more. Now the owner of this one is happy to let the box bush outside - something bigger than a cubic metre - to become steadily infested with blackberry runners and ash seedlings. Last year it would have been the work of minutes to remove them. This year it might take hours. Next year who know? But the council contractors who cut the grass clearly think that box bushes are no part of their contract. And the house owner clearly thinks it is no part of his. I don't live in a stonking great house to house to sweep the verge outside. That's for peasants. So with the owners of such houses setting such a poor example of civic (or even neighbourhood) spirit, what chance do we have with the inhabitants of social housing on the other side of Hook Road? Although, saying that, I remember reading about the decent poor of yesterday, the wives among which would run a very fierce contest for the best polished doorstep. Wives like that did not have verges or bushes in them, but one might suppose that they would care for them if they had.

Prompted to a childhood memory this morning by the bath. Or to be more precise, the bath plug chain becoming detached from its point of attachment on the overflow. A few minutes with a couple of pairs of dental pliers and job done. The memory being of this being a regular task in my childhood bath. Even to the point of having to tie the chain to its attachment with a bit of wire. Maybe I had had to bend the fitting supplied so much that it gave up the ghost.

And this follows the serious DIY in the extension where the stove hole in the wall has now been rendered over to within half a centimetre of the surface - having decided that the modest amount of mortar in the hand was better than a huge bag of bonding in the shop. So all ready for that tricky stuff, finish plaster. Which I have not touched for many years. Wickes only sell that in 10kg bags - maybe three times as much as I want - so I will have to shop around. I don't think the stuff lasts too long and at £11 a bag, worth checking out B&Q for a smaller one. I am sure I have seen very small bags somewhere. The trick being not to undershoot: not too clever to run out half way through on a piddling size patch of this sort.

Stewing steak soup worked OK. Had to vary the plot the day following as the supplies of pearl barley had given out and had to use posh small greeen lentils (puy?) instead. Not quite as pretty to look at but entirely edible.

And the DT has a very 'Titbits' like feel to it today. We learn of the bronze monument to enemas in some Russian spa town. Of the Putin fanzine, on the back of which it would be fun to spoof a Brown version. Brown in a lap dancing bar puffing on a suspiciously fat and loosely rolled cigarette? It also seems that calling Putin a vampire is serious praise in today's Russia. Of the brother of some huge crim in Naples, recently confined for his natural, who modelled his lifestyle on that of some huge, but fictional crim, in some film called 'Scarface'.

Wednesday, June 18, 2008

 

Aeronautics

If you stand at the North end of platform 11 at Clapham Junction on a summer's afternoon you can see a line of aircraft heading in West to land at Heathrow. I think I have had as many as four in sight at one time, although three is a more usual day-best. They are on their final descent so they are going to hold their course until they land. But if you stood in my garden yesterday morning at around 0700 the sky was a striking patch work of vapour trails of varying ages, mostly very high up. Evidence that our turn on the rota for aeroplanes has come around again. But the thing is, where are these planes going to or coming from? Heading West over Clapham Junction takes you nowhere near Epsom and I think they also mostly take off heading West which also takes you nowhere near Epsom. That is to say, both taking off and landing in the direction of the prevailing wind. And I thought that the big holding stacks where aircraft are queued up are over the Thames estuary - where - say at Purfleet - on a clear summer's night you get a spectacular sky show. So what are are they doing over Epsom? Maybe the aircraft heading East turn around West of London then swing back over Epsom on their way East - which would account for their height. Or the ones coming in from the West get to the holding stacks in the estuary by flying over Epsom. How long would it take to find out the way all this is organised in our public library? Or on Google. If I get bored this afternoon maybe I will find out. My bet is that Gatwick has nothing much to do with it all.

Yesterday to Epsom and Ashtead commons. Where we were pleased to learn that the cows belonging to the ecos' toy farm are being held at Coulsdon for their innoculation against blue tongue. Also pleased to see our first nuthatch for years. We used to get them on our bird feeder in the winter but with the feeder having passed over, no more nuthatches in the garden. Lots of small butterflies. No deer - BH telling me that they tend to come out late afternoon - also that the bark a dog makes when it sees a squirrel is distinguishable from that when it sees a deer. A good crop of foxgloves. One oak tree with something sticking out of the side of it which was the size and shape of a saddle fungus but which appeared to be made of the same bark as the rest of the tree. Just below a large branch so it seems unlikely that it was the remnant of a branch. A pile of sawdust at the bottom of one small tree which appeared to be the product of woodworms. And lots of large birch trees. I had forgotten that they came so large on these commons.

Having a problem with hornbeams (see May 4 and elsewhere). The trees in Garratt Lane deemed to be hornbeam on account of their plaited bark, now turn out to have pinnately compound small round leaves - which means that they are not hornbeams. Another trip to the library indicated, my store of tree books being exhausted.

And now it is time for soup. A new one: take half a pound of stewing steak, cut into very small strips and four ounces of pearl barley. Boil up for an hour. Add some finely sliced summer cabbage. Simmer for a few more minutes and serve. We shall see how it goes shortly.

 

Bottled beer

www.stpetersbrewery.co.uk - maybe the best bottled beer I have ever tasted, discovered in a cellar near Lots Road. Warm and flat in an exotic medicine shaped bottle. All this despite it being loudly organic. Picture is of their pub in Britton Street, Clerkenwell. Clearly deserves a visit.

Monday, June 16, 2008

 

Cleans

The variety of approaches to cleanliness and tidiness continues to intrigue. At a personal level, the choice of things to be tidy or clean about seems to be completely random. Some of us obsess about organising the pencils in our desk drawer, some of us obsess about the water in the soap holder in the bath. At a community level, there seems to be a national biais, in that English people seem to be fairly dirty. Aldous Huxley thought that Indians were too, but that was back in the 30's of the last century. Not sure if he was right though: another line of memory is that people in hot countries are a lot hotter about personal hygeine that we Brits from our cold climate where it matters much less.

So coming home by train yesterday, impressed once again by the huge amount of litter generated by the free newspapers - of which there seem to be four or five in the evening. Plus all the additional litter generated by there being litter there in the first place. My theory being that one is much more likely to dump one's half empty drink bottle onto a discarded free newspaper than onto a clean carriage floor. So not only are the purveyors of free newspapers helping to dumb down our taste in newspapers, they are also generating a huge amount of mess. I wonder if they contribute to the cleaning costs? I think the world would be a better place if they did not exist - although not easy to see how one can wind the clock back without making repressive laws about not being able to give away newspapers in or within 100 metres of a railway station.

And then there is the ongoing hospital scandal. The one about how dirty our hospitals are. It is, of course, quite hard to know to what extent this scandal has been fabricated by the DT or for grubby political purposes, but on the face of it our hospitals are a lot dirtier than those of our friends across the channel. One reason might be that (I think according to some article some time ago in the Economist) the French spend a lot more on health care than we do and that some of this filters through into the cleaning systems. One argument is that we employ contract cleaners who employ non-English speaking illegal immigrants to do the cleaning which is no longer managed by the eagle eyes of the right-thinking Florence Nightingale types who used be in charge of our wards. But I imagine that the French are just as much in the thrall of the outsourcing culture as we are and also that they have just as many diversities in the cleaning trade as we do. So do we send the bossy looking middle aged ladies who seem to be in charge of hospitals these days (former nurses who have made it up the expanding management ladder?) on expensive beanos to find out why the French are better at this than we are? Or is it just that the DT makes a point of featuring the bosses of hospitals which get into a mess if they happen to be bossy looking middle aged ladies? If I spent an hour on Google would I feel any closer to the answers to any of this? If I spent a week on Google, what would the Guardian pay me to print my in-depth research article?

I see that we continue to edge towards treating ourselves with the same consideration as we treat our pets. That is to say, someone being helped by 'Dignity in Dying' has succeeded in getting a judicial review of the witholding by the CPS of its internal guidelines on prosecution of people involved in assisted suicides. By such arcane procedures we inch forward.

Now while this is, for me, a very good cause, I fret about the wisdom of making governments divulge all kinds of internal memoranda of this sort. While one would not want them to be making up the law as they go along, without telling us or anyone else, nor does one want to destroy their flexibility to respond to particular circumstances in a particular, not to say, sensitive way. I believe that making people publish all the internal memoranda heads towards giving them the status of law and making it very hard for their users to use any flexibility. The point of our system of indirect democracy is that we trust those we put in power to exercise that power on our behalf without our needing to meddle in every nook and cranny.

A trust that the other scandal about the expenses of national and European MPs continues to erode. How can they be so blind as to see that their behaviour is slowly destroying the trust which gives meaning to their functions. Perhaps it is just that they are as greedy as the rest of us; content to grab a quick buck where they can and to hell with the future. For some reason I am pleased that the European MPs seem to be worse than our national MPs. Perhaps I am pleased - not sure why - to have another reason to knock the Belgian gravy train? A weaker version of the feeling that England should be run by the English and that Europeans (including the Scots) can butt out?

Sunday, June 15, 2008

 

Still trying

Tried to impale the water filter on the kettle prong three times this morning before working out why it was not working. Things are getting better all the time.

On the other hand completely foxed by yesterday's recycling puzzle from the council. What do you do with a drinking chocolate container, clearly marked as recycleable, made in approximately equal parts of plastic (lid), cardboard (body) and tin plate (base). Mistakes punished by four weeks withdrawal of bin emptying services. Presumably the more modern dust carts are equipped with on-board laptops and cameras linked back to the environmental services headquarters underneath Nonsuch Park so that they can keep track of such things. Enter 1 for a display in Polish.

And a more taxing puzzle for those taking their NVQ in social studies at the university of the beard age. Explain (using not more than one keyboard at a time) why the theatrical industry does not achieve the level of excellence of the football industry with particular reference to the continuing ability of the former to find house room for nonentities? There are some similarities. There are maybe a couple of thousand people earning their living on the boards and maybe the same number on the turf. Both professions are very selective with a very high drop out rate among the young hopefulls; very well paid at the top of the heap and very badly paid at the bottom of the heap. Both professions are full of big egos and dodgy private lives. Both big luvvies and big footballers appear on TV commercials. Both industries used to depend on getting bums on seats (or at least, feet on stands), although I imagine that football now get more dosh from collateral activities like selling clothes, modelling and TV rights. The luvvies have not really succeeded in those departments. The footballers get much bigger audiences and the turnover of the footballers is much bigger. Other things being equal, this should mean that they can afford better management and support services. Against this background, it is alleged that survival in the theatrical world depends more than it should on coming from, being married or partnered into a theatrical family, networking and greasy pole rather than grease paint skills. I very much doubt if this is true in the football world. You might get a trial on the basis of being baby Beckham but you won't get much further unless you are good. Perhaps this is a consequence of success being very clear cut in the world of football. Either the team won or it did not and there is not - in so far as I am aware - all that much dispute about who in the team contributed the most. Although there is, I believe, a differance between simply winning and being entertaining; theatrical skills do not go for nothing on the football field. But football failure is punished. A manager does not carry his favourites if they are not performing. Whereas a play can be a success without making any money. Some performance in an empty shed somewhere in West London can attract very cuddly reviews from the Guardian, reviews which can be very career enhancing for those involved. And serious theatre is, I believe, fairly heavily subsidised either by sugar daddies or by government; with living on subsidy corrosive, just as living on the social is. On could go on for ages.

Borrowed my second book from the Tooting Witherspoons the other day. An entertaining guide to the perils of playing in amateur string quartets, written by a couple of Germans (Aulic & Heimeran) back in 1936. Which reminded me that to be an amateur of something used to be praiseworthy rather than blameworthy. To love something worthy was worthy; more so than being involved in something worthy in a professional capacity, for filthy lucre. In the days, perhaps, when gentlemen ranked above players. Maybe a link here to the cult of excellence. Once upon a time one was happy enough to grow pumpkins, to be an amateur pumpkin grower, with the reward being the activity rather than the product. Now we are all too aware of the superior skills of the professional TV pumpkin grower and much more focussed on the product. I get depressed and stop growing my pumpkins because they pale into insignificance beside his. With amateur getting its bad name in consequence. Everything has to be best - which is clearly a nonsense. Must move back from product and think about process.

 

Calling all cat lovers

Plenty more to be found at http://www.pbase.com/davecq. Also swans.

Thursday, June 12, 2008

 

Victory!

We have lift off. Yesterday, for the first time, I actually poured the cold water into the tea pot rather than into the kettle. On all previous attempts something kicked in and spoiled the fun.

We also have a new unfact. Someone or something alleged recently that one's comprehensive car insurance does not cover one for deer crashing through the windscreen. Something which happens about 500 times a year in this country. Something which none of the main line insurers cover you for. Unfortunately I forget the source of this allegation. But reading the exclusions - handily printed in red - in my insurance policy I can't see anything about deer. Not covered for civil commotions, nuclear accidents or carrying inappropriate livestock, but nothing about hitting livestock.

Then start to wonder exactly what one is covered for, the words at the front of the policy not shining with insight. Not covered if the car breaks down on the highway and just stops. Covered if a truck runs into the back 0f me while I am motoring along the highway, irrespective of whoose fault it was. Covered if I drive into a wall because I am tired because I was up all last night. Covered if the engine management system shuts down because I forgot to put any oil in the engine and a truck runs into the back of me while I am drifting to a halt in the fast lane. Is the trick that there has to be some immediate cause of damage, external to the vehicle itself? It can't just fall apart of its own volition. But am I covered if the car hits a bump in the road and my knackered exhaust falls off and car stops? Is the bump too marginal to qualify as an external cause? Perhaps we now get into familiar territory. Very few real problems admit of open and shut solutions at the margin. That is the feeding ground of the lawyers not five-pint enthusiasts. Those of us of age - that is more than eighteen these days - are supposed to know that.

Talking of which I learn from today's TLS that one Lady Margeret Beaufort, heiress to the Duke of Somerset, was widowed, and became a mother shortly afterwards, at the tender age of 13. I always knew there was something a bit dodgy about those Tudors. Presumably in those days of early death, a serious aristo would be concerned that his or her (her or his sounds very odd. I think we have to have male priority here for the sake of the sound of the thing) kids got on and preserved the line at the earliest possible moment. Not a moment to waste. A more tricky point would be to what extent, if at all, a bride of 13 would suffer all the traumas presently associated with precocious sex. Maybe there were so many other, far more traumatic, things going on, that this particular thing did not achieve any importance in the scheme of things. Or maybe some part of the trauma is of our own manufacture: something becomes a trauma because it is said to be one. Or maybe the world, and the people in it have just changed. Glad I am not expected to know all the answers here. But I do remember that one Norbert Elias has some interesting stuff on how much it has changed.

Back to St Dominic's Priory in Kentish Town the other day, even if our route there could have been improved with possession of a map. Not that we were lost, but there were faster ways of doing it. Priory just as impressive on the second visit as on the first, despite having talked it up a bit. Struck on this occasion by the way in which the saints and what not in the stained glass windows were portrayed, in the glass, as standing in the sort of stone niches as in which stone saints would have been exhibited in, in the main entrance of a cathedral. Niches also rather like those fancy choir stalls in a cathedral, or perhaps in somewhere like the Sainte Chapelle (where I think they were painted in dull reds, greens and gold) or the chapel at Windsor castle. Perhaps fancy versions of the things that kings would sit in when holding court (or boozing with their mates) at home. Struck also by the fine stained glass in the lady chapel to the North of the altar - which, oddly, was in the West rather than the East. Was that a consequence of entrance to the site being at the Eastern end, and it not being thought appropriate to have the front door opening onto the altar? Places like this are a wonderful sanctuary of quiet in London - where peace and quiet is not always easy to find.

And then there was pub which offered the same near by. Near empty. No music. Peaceful sunny afternoon, with the sun streaming in through the window while one knocked back a few of the glasses that cheer. All that was missing was watching the smoke lazily curling around in the sun beams. I guess it would be legal to have smoke from some contraption which was not nicotine flavoured, but it would not be quite the same.

 

Bats

From Sri Lanka via http://sophandjujuenvoyage.blogspot.com/. The black splodges in the middle of the frame. Maybe they should try this at Kew or Regents Park.

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

 

DT

DT clearly has the DTs again this morning. What with one thing and another it seems that the world is fast heading for its end.

A couple of Muslim flavoured items caught my eye. First, it might be more grown up, at the time we are running on about our 100 heroes (this without commenting on whether we are doing the right thing and without detracting from their hero status. These are not the points being made), to at least report how many of the other side we are killing. Reading between the lines we are killing a lot more of them than they are killing of us. And if the number is large, whatever the rights and wrongs of the business and despite the Afghan addiction to violence, there will be scars to heal and a bit more honesty about the damage we are doing might win us a few friends in the Muslim community. The time has passed, I guess, for similar honesty about the much larger number of Iraqis who are now dead as a result of our efforts there. Second, I see that the Israeli ambassador is unhappy about the British view of his country. So in the same vein, while the time has long passed to deny their right to exist, a bit more honesty (from the Israelis) about the unpleasant way they acquired their country might win them a few friends.

But the 100 heroes plus a peice in one of the Sunday papers about how our prisons are not only overflowing with people put there for drug related business but are also overflowing with drugs, only go to strengthen my view that some sort of legalisation would be a better place to be than where we are now. What I have in mind is something like the state liquor shops they have in Scandanavia. Don't make recreational drugs illegal - including here alcohol and nicotine - but do cut down the number of places from which they can be bought for consumption off the premises. And given that a lot of drug users are rather unpleasant and smelly people, maybe have separate counters for the various differant sorts of recreational drugs. But watch out. Sell your shares in Group 4 and Serco before the idea catches on. They have lots to lose.

I also see that the Tate Britain, hitherto largely an oasis of artistic sanity, has now succumbed to a fit of self-flagellation., with a lot of PC twaddle about the evil doings of the UK in the past filling out their catalogue of an exhibition of British Oriental art - that is to say pictures by British artists with an oriental theme. Artists who were probably mainly decent, middle aged, cultured tweedy types, possibly a touch Bohemian (maybe the odd puff of opium with their post prandial pipe?) in their habits, but not particularly into savage beatings or massacres of people of colour. And the word oriental conveniently carrying the bad overtones given it by the late Mr Said. But maybe I ought to go and see the thing for myself rather than relying on the DT.

Now finished my first roman dur from Simenon - the snow is dirty. Odd sort of book, written in 1948. Appears to be set in a town with a low town and a high town - which usually suggests a town on a large inland river with cliffs - a town which is also a port, is occupied and whose inhabitants mainly appear to have German flavoured surnames. Perhaps we are on the Rhine in the Alsace. Rather depressing - if gripping - portrait of a young low life, with a fair amount of coverage given to the drearily unpleasant ways of the people who operated and used brothels in those days. A rather sordid view of the world - the flavour of which one does not catch from the much more rose tinted worlds of Frost, Midsomer and their like. Or is the differance just one of timing? In 1948, the war, the poverty and other troubles that came with it were all much more recent. Much more in the minds of ones' readers. And one wonders, despite the energy with which Simenon explains his devotion to family in his memoires, what writing about such stuff tells us about him? Must go for a bigger sample and see if low lives of this sort feature in all of these roman durs. And what about the occupation theme? How much of that is there? Another rather dreary business, some way removed from the more rose tinted tales of the home front that we get.

Monday, June 09, 2008

 

Senior moment Monday

It being my turn to produce the morning cup that cheers, descend to the kitchen at dawn (or at least what passes for dawn in this very relaxed household). Put small tea cup (for green tea), large tea cup (for BH tea) and tea pot on tray while the kettle boils. Successfully extract tea bag from its container. Then go to drop the tea bag in the small tea cup, then the teapot and last of all, the correct place, the large tea cup. I suppose the good news is that I did not have to fish it out of the wrong place. Or that I had to fish the green tea pellets out of the wrong place, which might have been fiddly.

The mishap may have been a result of the prior psychology experiment, which went as follows. Load a word document. Locate an adjacent 'i' and 'n', with the former to the left and the latter to the right. Move the document so as to bring the two letters to the middle of the screen and place the cursor between them. Focus on the blinking cursor. Effect one is that the middle of the image starts to slide around in a modest way. Effect two is that the shapes of the two letters start to seem strange and ridiculous. Why on earth should these stupid shapes have anything to do with reading and writing? I remember that when I was younger one could achieve a similar effect by focussing on a spoken, rather than a written word. Focus enough and it starts to sound very strange and ridiculous. Must see if I can reproduce.

Having reported on the moss garden in my last post, I now find we have a mould garden, lurking, in of all places, our not so new and shiny Brita water filter. Suddenly noticed an interesting rash of a black mould around the rim of the filter cell (the thing you have to replace every month). At least it is on the right side of the filter so the pure water we are tapping off is still, presumably, pure. Obvious when you come to think of it that something which is more or less permanently full of water and is never washed is going to develop problems of this sort. But I did not come to think of it.

And we have a very obscure factlet. Has it ever been used in a pub quiz anywhere? Having got to the letter L in my classical dictionary, I come across the third entry for Leonidas, the first being the heroic Spartan chap. The third was an astrologer turned poet, who specialised in poems called isopsepha, so composed that if you convert each letter to a number according to its position in the alphabet (so that, for example, in our alphabet, a 'c' would become 3), the sum of those numbers for each couplet is a constant. Perhaps, as he was an astrologer, he also thought that the charectar of the poem would be detirmined by the nature of the sum. Odd, even, prime, that sort of thing. Juvenal, it seems, dismissed the genre as a toy, fit only for Greeklings. But to my mind a precursor of the labyrinthine Joyce.

Scanning up to the hero, I learn that he started out at Thermopylae with a confederate Greek army of around 4,000 and that there is more than one pass. It all went pear shaped when the Persians decided to cheat and turn his flank using one of the minor passes, after which most of his army did a bunk. He was left to face the music (the book says that the point was to cover the retreat of the fleet not the army) with his 300 Spartans.

No entry for the chocolates. Perhaps the ancient Greeks did not make it to Mexico and so did not have chocolate.

Thursday, June 05, 2008

 

Moss side

The allotments having been abandoned, the two pumpkin seed germinators on an upstairs window sill are now turning into a moss garden. At least three varieties so far - a bright green sessile one, a bright green upright one and a dull green thready one, a bit like a very small cloud of very fine green glass wool. We will continue to test the theory that the pleasure to be extracted from a garden is only very loosely related to its size. In small gardens one can focus on the many small things. The pumpkin seeds must have known what was in the wind because none of them came up.

Much pondering over the past few days about knees. Does a health service have the right to withhold treatment of one's knees because one is overweight? First reaction is that I have paid lots of taxes for many years and I am now approaching the time when I might want some medical care. I've paid for it and I should have it. Not for some bunch of health busies to tell me how to lead my life or how to spend my health pot. That's not what they are being paid for. OK, they can advise me. They might point out in a tactful way that being very overweight increases the chance of something going wrong when I am on the table. But that should be the end of it. Second reaction, from the medical end of the family, why should I spend half a day patching up the knees of some undeserving oaf? Who might cause my colleagues and I much trauma by snuffing it on the table. Or who might sue me for ridiculous anounts of money because the result of our intervention was not quite what his lawyers argued it ought to have been. When we could be doing something much more worthwhile, like mending the knees of some skinny chap who can produce evidence of having read the Guardian for 500 years. Such triage has become a perfectly respectable activity in a battlefield hospital - although one might hope we were not quite in that position. And perfectly respectable in the micro-matter of deciding which teeth to save when. But it was not always so. In the Nelsonian navy, everyone was treated in order of delivery to the sickbay, without regard to rank or anything else. And one can see the sense of that too.

Another angle is that the medical industry, under the thumb of commerce, in particular the big pharmaceuticals, if very hot on life style causes of illness. That throws any blame there might be firmly back on the punter, and well clear of any unpleasant occupational or environment nonsense which Guardian readers (who, peversely, occupy both positions at the same time) might try and put at the door of commerce. It seems that 20 years ago there were pots of PhDs to be had on said occupational and environmental questions, but funds have mysteriously dried up.

And then is a streak in all of us which is keen on life style causes (or at least in all those of us who have the time to track the bewildering shifts and shakes in the fashions in these matters). They give us a splendid reason to run on why so and so is such a plonker. If only he had been wacking down his basking shark liver extract three times a day for the last 20 years like all good thinking people, he would never have had that thrombosis of the big toe. Running on about individuals is much more satisfying that running on about a company or a corporation. And under that streak is the Puritan streak. Anything that someone else enjoys - particularly something from one of the recreational substances' departments and which might divert her from the all important business of wealth creation - is a bad thing. And if I can dress this up in health clothes so much the better. I am not so obviously someone who does not know how to have a bit of fun so who wants to do his level best to make sure that no-one else does. All dressed up to oneself in much more worthy clothes, naturally.

 

Somebody's eunuch's boudoir

Somewhere in the Persian Gulf. Good to know that the squeeze is going towards something so tasteful.

Tuesday, June 03, 2008

 

Third visit to the market

I missed this third visit, a dream visit, in yesterday's post. A bit vague, but it starts with my having bought two items from some sort of remote auction, maybe musical instruments, one of them maybe a set of drums, for about £125 and £5. Slightly uneasy about this as I do not play any instruments and may have left it a bit late to learn - particularly given my lack of talent in that department. Then on to the auction house with a friend (name withheld. Two aitches?). It turns out to be run by some young men with long lanky hair and in goth clothes, in some sort of open air next-to-the-arches scrap yard. The sort of thing you might find in Coldharbour Lane. The young man I talk to seems to think that the items I have boughts cost £25 and £5 rather than the £125 and £5 mentioned earlier. I don't like to correct him, particularly as I am a bit embarassed about admitting to spending that sort of money on this sort of thing in front of my friend. But the most striking feature of the dream was the young mens' fingernails. These were painted in a pale mauve, lilac maybe, with glitter, and shaped into a point. The shape of the blade of those pointed spades used in Ireland and on the Continent. With the point of each terminated by a small sharp blade, maybe a couple of millimetres long, growing out of the nail like a tooth.

Intrigued by a short item in today's DT. It seems that a formerly top lawyer has been set to jail for a year or so for racketeering. The racketeering in question was described as giving his clients backhanders. The intrigue being, why would a lawyer do that and how does it amount to racketeering? Or is it just yet another misprint in the DT?

Intrigued in a more solemn way by the case of the child who having started off with much talent, acquired a devastating condition which left him (let us say. It is the generality which interests, not the particular details of the particular case) blind, mute and more or less paralysed, but who nevertheless managed to live to be about 30. His parents appeared to have devoted those thirty years of their life to him, with the spin-off of having identified something which helps with the disease in question, if caught in the early stages, which in case of the their son, it was not. The intrigue here being, was doing all this the right thing? Would it have been better to have allowed the son to slip away much sooner? What about pushing rather than slipping? Is it right to use someone in a condition like this as a vehicle for the development of medicine? Is it right for parents to wreck their lives on the wreck of their son - as I imagine they have done in this case. One supposes that they still believe that they did the right thing - it being fairly dreadful to change your mind after such an event. Perhaps they would not have done had there been other children. (Presumably a Catholic believes that the soul of the dead child will arrive in heaven in good order and good condition, untainted by its bad deal in this world. John Donne, I suspect, might have been doubtful. He pondered in one sermon about the difficulty the Lord would have re-assembling his various parts on Judgement Day, some of which were scattered far and wide. A toe here, an arm there. Not to mention teeth, toe nails and hair clippings).

Monday, June 02, 2008

 

More DIY

Not content with XP SP2 and new Norton, went for IE7. Not too bad, although we now get the pop-up posted above on booting. Maybe I will take the half day out needed to get to the bottom of it some day. But I like the improved display quality that comes with IE7 - to me the screens are much clearer.

On the other hand, I think there is even more clunking and whirring on boot-up than there was and there is a whole new automatic update when you shut down.

Feeling slightly guilty about chimney disposal. I suspect the double skinned metal tubes it was made of of containing some sort of insulating material. But I asked the tip man and he said chuck it in there, so I did. Didn't want to risk being invited to take the thing to Reigate as we can't deal with that sort of thing here sir.

But an event on the way. At the entrance to the tip, overtook a lady who must be my sort of age pushing a trailer - the sort that is usually towed by a car - with garden waste in it. She had, she told me, come from Pound Lane which must be at least a kilometre away. But she did come equipped with folding chair, water bottle and so forth so that she could take breaks on the way. It seems that two trips in any one day is about enough. She also told me that she was once told that she could not deliver garden waste in a trailer. It had to come in a car. Fortunately she still had one at that point and was able to tranship the waste from the trailer to the car. (This is the tip where somebody died last year in the wake of some Sunday afternoon tip rage). But while she might be quite fit pushing this thing about, not terribly practical. The trailer would have been a lot easier to push had it been adapted as a hand cart - which would not be difficult - rather than pushing the thing using the tow bar intended to latch onto a car. Far too low and awkward.

Two visit to the market recently. First to the bank holiday car booter at Hook Road Arena. The usual sort of bumper event and the ground was good and hard despite all the rain in the preceding weeks. Acquired for the princely sum of 50p an interesting ornament made of some sort of rain forest - a polished hard wood with broad dark brown and dark yellow stripes - and made into a sort of wooden flower arrangement. An arrangement with all the bits falling out of the base if shaken up too much. About nine inches high. Maybe some sort of sixties thing. Then there was the man with boxes and boxes of what looked like table furniture - crockery - maybe bone china even - for the expensive part of a British Airways aeroplane. Sadly, apart from having plenty of that sort of stuff anyway, it would have been like office furniture in the home. Good substantial stuff on the cheap but out of place. More usefully, two boxes of wood screws to add to my collection at 150p for the two.

The collection of wood screws lives in a wooden box, the sort of thing that one might otherwise use for fire tongs or shoe cleaning equipment. I find this much easier than the tidier arrangements of other folk who have pots of tobacco tins with neatly painted labels. Or the even tidier arrangement I heard about recently of screwing jam jar lids to the underside of a stout shelf and then screwing the jam jars into their lids. Pouring them into our special hand forged paella dish (acquired from some previous booter, maybe 18 inches across and vaguely wokkish in shape) and stirring through the whole lot is much more satisfying. Today, having constructed a rather boy-scoutish steel yard, I learn that I have around 15kg of screws. They are topped up as booters permit and they rarely let me down - in the sense that I can usually find what I need.

The steel yard was actually another piece of rain forest - this time a bit of some kind of close grained brown stuff, maybe some sort of low grade mahogany, perhaps originally destined for the base of a door or window. A yard of six by one. Strung up with various bits of blue rope, a butcher hook and a couple of 2.5kg weights that the sprogs used to abuse their joints with. Probably accurate to within 50 grams or so.

Second visit much less successful. Tried to bid on some furniture on E-bay but completely failed to register. The bidding part of E-bay seemed to be alive and well but not the registration part. Must try again with my fine new browser. In any event, the thing in question was a showroom soiled three piece suite, proper price around £5,000, which went for £2,000. I was only prepared to go to £1,000 without having seen the thing, or its twin in a showroom near me - and didn't have time for that.

And last but not least, an interesting piece of PC from Canada. They want a director for their national gallery. We are told that they are "committed to ensuring that its appointments are representative of Canada's regions and official languages, as well as women, Aboriginal peoples, disabled persons and visible minorities". Does that mean I would get preference because I can speak Inuit? Or Huron? Would I be excluded if I cannot speak English or French? And I would have thought that Abos was a bit old speak. I am sure there is some newer word for them. Presumably "visible minorities" are the shiny new words for people of colour. But what about age, sex and religion diversity? That doesn't get mentioned at all. All very well meaning but I think they ought to fire their search consultants.

 

Geeko

Further work on PC leaves this bit of boot time trash.

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