Tuesday, January 06, 2009
Xmas exit
Twelfth night just being past, we are now leaving Christmas for another year. The two Christmas trees are heading for their boxes for another year in the dark. The Christmas turkey soup has long been finished. The Christmas boiling beef has been gone for a day or so. The Christmas gammon will come to an end today. Christmas pudding and mince pies gone. All that is left is a substantial proportion of the Christmas cake which I expect to go on for a week or so yet. A good thing too, as to my mind, the things improve with standing. They can be a little dry when first baked, but seem to sog up a bit standing.
Celebrated the passing with a rather heavy lunch. Not wanting another turkey, had a chicken. A chicken, which, so the label said, had led a full and happy life prior to being strung up for our consumption. A warming thought. And given that it was such a posh chicken, we had all the bits and peices - bread sauce (this time much better without cayenne pepper), sage and onion stuffing, brussells sprouts and syllabub (this last with the blackberry and apple crumble to follow, rather than with the all consumed Christmas pudding). Managed to consume enough that I did not eat again until a couple of minutes ago, that is to say some 18 hours later.
Celebrated the evening by finally finishing 'Tender is the Night' - another Fitzgerald after doing 'The Great Gatsby' last year. Now while I thought the latter rather an odd book, it was short and one got through it quickly, without strain. The former is another odd book but I found it quite an effort to get through it. But work ethic wins. Once picked up, it grates to put a book down unread, particularly if it is a case of returning it to the library unread. This seems like a defeat, while putting one's own brand new book back on the shelf for later is merely a postponement. A book which did not compell, despite the impression that the author knew all about the subject matter - the interior of private clinics for the mentally ill, excess drinking, and pretty people in the south of France after the first world war. I don't think I shall be trying any more from Mr S G.
But I am admitting defeat on another library book, a rather heavy history of the Spanish part (as opposed to the Wellingtonian part) of the war of liberation in Spain in the first years of the 19th century. It seems that it was rather an unpleasant business in what was, in many ways, rather a backward country, its glory days then being some time in the past. A interesting business, but somehow made dull in a book with irritating design which did nothing for the leaden prose. Maybe I will try again one day.
More fun with Burke though. Once I had got the hang of his numbering system again, having thought that I had got the hang of it before. Maybe the bottles from Lidl (I have got straight between Aldi and Lidl in Kingston and Leatherhead, if not elsewhere. Helpful mnenonic from the BH) clouded the vision. But eventually I got there. The initial digit indicates how many generations down we are from the head entry. So 3 for grandchildren. The following letter indicates the parity of the child in question. So 3a for the eldest grandchild. The bit which took some working out was that the men children and the women children are both numbered from a, the women after any men that might be present. Perhaps a hangover from the days when women did not hold peerages and only figured in books such as these for the purposes of establishing lineage.
I learn that you have to be careful in other ways. One peer, the peerage having been around from the while, married a lady in Ontario. According to the splendidly stuffy phrasing of Burke, the marriage was valid in Ontario but did not satisfy the requirements of the College of Heralds, or whomsoever it might be that polices such matters, for a marriage fit to carry a title. Any children would not be eligible to inherit. Sadly I forget the name so I cannot quote chapter and verse.
But I can on the G's. There is, for example, a 13th Earl of Galloway who is also Lord of Garlies, 12th baronet of Carsewell, and the 10th baronet of Burray. The first listed ancester was one Sir John Stewart, who married the daughter and heir of Sir Alexander de Bonkyl of that Ilk who was killed by the dastardly English at the battle of Falkirk back on the 29th July 1298. After 1298, the Galloways rate more than four pages of close print. Then, after even more pages about some old Galways, we get a two inch entry for a new Galway. Who started out at a secondary modern school in Belfast, then was flautist with the wind band of the Royal Shakespeare Company, then principal sole flute with the Berlin Philarmonic Orchestra - perhaps the pinnacle of the fluting world - and created a knight in 2001. A real rags to riches story. I have never heard of a flautist being ennobled before.
Celebrated the passing with a rather heavy lunch. Not wanting another turkey, had a chicken. A chicken, which, so the label said, had led a full and happy life prior to being strung up for our consumption. A warming thought. And given that it was such a posh chicken, we had all the bits and peices - bread sauce (this time much better without cayenne pepper), sage and onion stuffing, brussells sprouts and syllabub (this last with the blackberry and apple crumble to follow, rather than with the all consumed Christmas pudding). Managed to consume enough that I did not eat again until a couple of minutes ago, that is to say some 18 hours later.
Celebrated the evening by finally finishing 'Tender is the Night' - another Fitzgerald after doing 'The Great Gatsby' last year. Now while I thought the latter rather an odd book, it was short and one got through it quickly, without strain. The former is another odd book but I found it quite an effort to get through it. But work ethic wins. Once picked up, it grates to put a book down unread, particularly if it is a case of returning it to the library unread. This seems like a defeat, while putting one's own brand new book back on the shelf for later is merely a postponement. A book which did not compell, despite the impression that the author knew all about the subject matter - the interior of private clinics for the mentally ill, excess drinking, and pretty people in the south of France after the first world war. I don't think I shall be trying any more from Mr S G.
But I am admitting defeat on another library book, a rather heavy history of the Spanish part (as opposed to the Wellingtonian part) of the war of liberation in Spain in the first years of the 19th century. It seems that it was rather an unpleasant business in what was, in many ways, rather a backward country, its glory days then being some time in the past. A interesting business, but somehow made dull in a book with irritating design which did nothing for the leaden prose. Maybe I will try again one day.
More fun with Burke though. Once I had got the hang of his numbering system again, having thought that I had got the hang of it before. Maybe the bottles from Lidl (I have got straight between Aldi and Lidl in Kingston and Leatherhead, if not elsewhere. Helpful mnenonic from the BH) clouded the vision. But eventually I got there. The initial digit indicates how many generations down we are from the head entry. So 3 for grandchildren. The following letter indicates the parity of the child in question. So 3a for the eldest grandchild. The bit which took some working out was that the men children and the women children are both numbered from a, the women after any men that might be present. Perhaps a hangover from the days when women did not hold peerages and only figured in books such as these for the purposes of establishing lineage.
I learn that you have to be careful in other ways. One peer, the peerage having been around from the while, married a lady in Ontario. According to the splendidly stuffy phrasing of Burke, the marriage was valid in Ontario but did not satisfy the requirements of the College of Heralds, or whomsoever it might be that polices such matters, for a marriage fit to carry a title. Any children would not be eligible to inherit. Sadly I forget the name so I cannot quote chapter and verse.
But I can on the G's. There is, for example, a 13th Earl of Galloway who is also Lord of Garlies, 12th baronet of Carsewell, and the 10th baronet of Burray. The first listed ancester was one Sir John Stewart, who married the daughter and heir of Sir Alexander de Bonkyl of that Ilk who was killed by the dastardly English at the battle of Falkirk back on the 29th July 1298. After 1298, the Galloways rate more than four pages of close print. Then, after even more pages about some old Galways, we get a two inch entry for a new Galway. Who started out at a secondary modern school in Belfast, then was flautist with the wind band of the Royal Shakespeare Company, then principal sole flute with the Berlin Philarmonic Orchestra - perhaps the pinnacle of the fluting world - and created a knight in 2001. A real rags to riches story. I have never heard of a flautist being ennobled before.
# posted by Jim @ 1:11 AM 
