pumpkinstrokemarrow

Sufficiently bored to pursue this one (see 25 April). So I find, deep in the system somewhere, a policeman option. If you are a policeman and want to know whether or not someone has been in the zone or to see images from congestion zone cameras, please phone the following number and we will see what you can do to help. So it does seem to be possible to find out. So I phone the help desk. Helpful gentleman explains that yes, you can find out whether you need to pay the charge. There is an option on the congestion charge website, the URL of which he gives me. Which promptly redirects me to the website I was at at the first place. Still no option. So I send a message using the email option which I can find. And, to be fair, get an email reply within a day or so. A reasonably organised reply, so they must get asked this one fairly often. Bottom line, still no.

But there seems to be a flaw in their line. Every charging night, they match the registration numbers of cars who have zoned with the numbers of cars who have paid. Matches are dropped for data protection reasons, leaved the residue to be penalised. Ergo, they say, we cannot tell you whether you have been in the zone. Well no, not exactly, but they could tell you whether you have been in the zone and not yet paid, which is about what I wanted to know. Now when I was little, it was drummed into me that, as a reasonably public person, I should never admit fault. Admit fault and the punters will really get dug in. Much better to deny. Now, in the year of our lord 2009, I am not so sure. The Metropolitan Police would, to my mind, look a lot better if they admitted to the serious mistakes they make from time to time, rather than being in denial. In the same way, I would be much more impressed with TFL if they just said: yes, we cocked up; oversight at design time. Too late to fix now. Rather than all this data protection waffle. I note in passing that the same applies to the decent Brown and/or the greedy Blair. They refuse to admit any responsibility for the mess we are in, that the regulatory regime which they were somewhat, if not largely, responsible for putting in place, failed to blow any whistles. With the distastrous return to blow-hot-blow-cold-blow-something-else which they had been telling us for a decade that they had abolished.

Returning from this diversion, I got to thinking about all this data protection waffle, and maybe they did have a point. Registration on the TFL site was not exactly hard-core. So if the facility to ask TFL whether a vehicle had been in the zone or not was available, I could check up on the wife and found out whether she had been to London or not when she said she had been to Reigate. Or on Mr Jones down the road. So, OK, a minor intrusion of their privacy. But then, in order to do this, I think I had to supply my postcode. It would not be a big deal for TFL to check whether the registration number I was interested in was registered at the postcode I had given, and if it was to allow the query. That would more or less kill off random trawling. If I knew both postcode and registration number they would not be giving so much more away. And if the deviant Mr Jones was prompt about paying his charge, they would not be giving anything away. So, after all due reflection, I remain unconvinced that it would not be better to provide the enquiry facility I was after in the first place.

Yesterday, being a Wednesday, was indulgence day. So I thought to have a shoulder of south downs lamb. Scary the speed with which the butcher detached the thing from the more or less entire sheep it came from. Then slightly alarmed to find that I had five pounds of shoulder and only two hours to cook it in. So whacked the temperature up to 190C - rather than the long slow 175C that I usually do shoulder of lamb at. Leach all the fat out sort of thing. As it turned out, I rather liked the high temperature option. OK, so there was more fat left hanging around the lean, but the lean was moister with more open texture and better flavour, not reduced to succulent but chewy morsels. Accompanying swede not so hot. Must be getting towards their sell by date for last season. But spring cabbage and autumn potatoes fine. Balance of the lamb will find its way into today's sandwiches, in which context that bit of fat provides the lubrication which might otherwise have had to come from additional butter, or, heaven forfend, from the dreaded emulsified vegetable oil (aka Flora original with added omega threes).

More horticultural images from http://gardenplan-ken.blogspot.com/.

Various signs of activity on the Mr G. front. Various incremental changes to the search and mail screens. Like getting things put up in a fancy google viewer when downloaded. Tales of being charged to intall Google Earth - something which I am sure was free when I installed it. And now invitations to be chromed. Do I want to disturb this PC to that extent? Do I want so many eggs in one basket - this despite the reassuring noises about open source? We shall see.

Last Saturday to Dorking to hear Piers Lane, both a pianist and a showman, with, inter alia, a nice line in introductory chat. Old colonial. So we learn that Brahms was into games, with a three note theme in his third sonata being made up of the first letters of the sentimental motto - 'free but lonely' - of a friend. In the right order. Or something like that. And that the Chopin preludes are in a systematic order. Each major key followed by its relative minor and then by the major key which is a fifth below. Or something like that. Seems obvious enough once you have been told, given that he is going through all 24. Doing them at random would seem most unsatisfactory. Something new for me was a sense, over the first few preludes that major equalled cheerful and minor equalled mournful - but a sense which was lost as the thing proceeded, with the major-minor thing losing any predictive force of that sort. Got three encores. A nocture, Dudley Moore's version of Beethoven (which was very entertaining and a useful tension breaker after the serious business) and a Bach cantata (I think. Also a well known hymn. A useful winder down to cocoa, car-park and bed). All in all a very good evening.

Then there were more alcohol fuelled rug bubbles (see March 13 2009), to the extent that I have now found out that the rug is a hand made Iranian Kashgai. Colours - with a lot of red - wonderfully rich under electric light. And rich, geometric patterns (with glimses of stylised animals) on several levels. With the pleasing quirk that the patterns are not completely regular. It looks to have been done by eye, so that sometimes the weaver (if that is the right word) runs out of space for a particular motif and has to improvise.

The rug moment was preceeded by what might have been a rather embarassing senior moment on the train. Climb on train to see a jacket in the overhead shelf where I had decided to sit. Can't see an owner so get it down and wonder what to do with it. After a while take a peek in the pockets to find a small amount of small change and a rather nifty key holder containing two Chubbs, two Yales and the fob for a Merc. Decide the only thing to be done is to hand it into Epsom station, assuming that there is anyone there to hand it into at this time of night. No identification so can't contact owner myself. Much pondering. And then the rather posh looking gent. from a few seats down (in the part of the carriage where there are no overhead shelves) looks up and wonders where his jacket has gone. He looked vaguely familiar so maybe a minor celeb. Fortunately he was not, or at least did not appear to be, too peeved at this invasion of his privacy. Complete mystery why it never occured to me in the first place that it might be his jacket.

The train moment was preceeded, perhaps accounted for, by a visit to the Wheatsheaf in Vauxhall. As it was raining I had my Mount Gay umbrella, so it was entirely appropriate to sample the Mount Gay rum sold there. The bottle had been full last time I saw it, now about two fifths down so the stuff does move. Good rum in a posh glass, but rather dear at £3.50. Perhaps that just shows how long it is since I bought spirits in a public house. The surveillance helicopter was out again, and seemed very loud, perhaps because the noise from the thing was bouncing off the low cloud. There appeared to be some accompanying police action in the vicinity of the Wandsworth Road Sainsbury's to judge by the directions. But then I learnt something new. My rule of thumb was that at busy times, airplanes put down at Heathrow at a rate of about one every two minutes. But this evening, over a space of half a dozen planes, it was at a rate of about one every minute going over, not counting the city airport traffic in the other direction. OK so I was counting rather than using a watch, but I would not have thought that I would be that much out. If anything, counting to sixty would be less than a minute rather than more. And Vauxhall seemed to be the mouth of the funnel. Swinging in from quite a wide range of direction to line up on the landing runway.

Two oddities from the Clapham Junction Odd Bins, a chain I generally approve of. First, they were selling a red wine for about £8 a pop, which was described amongst other things as having an interesting, challenging flavour with caramelized overtones. Now, in the world of work, the word challenging usually means there is a problem. Perhaps the sense here is that of difficult, when applied to a peice of classical music, when it usually means that hard to get to grips with but probably worth the bother. Still not deeply encouraging, and the man behind the jump was unable to help, so settled for something with a more neutral blurb. Blackberries or something like that. Second, no thin white paper - the sort of stuff used to wrap blouses in in ladies' clothes shops - to wrap the booze in. They expected me to march down the road clinking. Reduced to accepting a copy of London Lite. But still probably better value than the rather grand 'Eagle Wines' just up the road. That is more for yuppies, a label for which I no longer qualify, that is supposing that I ever did.

Cod fish on Saturday not great; entirely eatable but a little mushy and BH was not impressed by the extent to which the fish stuck to the foil cover. Now it may be that having bought it on Friday it was getting a bit old, or it may be that we getting into the summer season when white fish generally is not so hot. Made up on Sunday however, with a bit of organic outdoor vegetable fed loin of pork. A good way of eating pork chops, with the meat nice and moist. Plus we had some new season curly cabbage. Preceeded by the first globe artichokes that we have had for a while. Good as a light weight appetiser; too many of my appetisers are very splendid but apt to remove rather than stimulate appetite for the intended main business. That said, it remains odd that the calorific content of food is a poor guide to the amount that it fills you up. A butter filled meat stew or curry certainly does fill you up. But a cake, maybe filled with fluffy white stuff, every bit as calorific as the stew, if not more so, does not. Clearly the stomach is not a very intelligent organ.

Perhaps the pork brought on the vapours because I have been wondering what the Lord would do in the event of the human race being exterminated, something that seems reasonably likely over the next thousand years or so. Nukes itself or runs out of fresh water or something. Would he just forget the whole humanity business and get on with the main business of life, viz playing backgammon with Satan? Or would he try again? And if he elected for trying again, would he just throw the dice again or would he fiddle with things a bit? Maybe cut down the ration of original sin a bit. Go for a peach rather than an apple. Maybe try with whales rather than monkeys. Take a leaf out of Tolkein's book and go in for intelligent trees. Maybe he would move onto another stellar system and try with a whole new world. I guess the trick is that the life form he goes for has to be sophisticated enough to be interesting, but not so sophisticated that heaven on earth is established after a few millennia and lives happily ever after, to the greater boredom of all concerned.

A more far fetched possibility would be that there are a whole bunch of Lords up there, and they take it in turns at creating heaven on earth. They take bets on how long each creation lasts before it all goes pear shaped. Maybe Satan could be charged with writing the rule book. It would need to be a bit like the class books which regulate, for example, the size and shape of racing cars or ocean racing yachts. Then who would the best job on a Formula 3 ape? A throw back to the ancient Greek way of seeing things.

PS on Churchill 2: maybe he was fascinated by the whole business of the personal treachery by Churchill 1, being a serial side changer himself.

This from my cheapest place yet, 50p a go, somewhere near the Wandsworth Road Sainsburys, on the other side of the road.

Very important materiel for sprog 1.1 bought from a car boot sale at the primary school previously attended by sprogs 1&2. Also a 1961 reprint of second edition of the 'The Sword in the Stone', a book I much loved about 50 years ago. At a quick glance the humour looks a touch dated, rather like that of '1066 and all that'. But quite good enough for me.

We have a large collection of suitcases in the roof, nearly if not all the produce of car-boot sales. They have done very well for quite a few years now, but after a family conference one morning, we decided that we ought to retire one, in the interests of reducing clutter. Then proceeded to flatpacking it, which proved more interesting than expected. First operation, take stanley knife to the top and bottom of the thing, which is made of some sort of not-trying-very-hard imitation brown leather. Stanley knife went through the stuff like butter, so clearly not things to allow on the baggage handling floor at Heathrow (supposing, that is, that they are not forbidden for other reasons). But the four sides were made of stronger stuff. There was a light-weight steel cable stitched into the top and bottom edges, not the sort of stuff that the sort of pliers that I own was going to get through. Fibre board corner peices worked into each of the eight corners. Peice of plywood, maybe twelve inches by five worked into where the two hinges were for support of same. Aluminium strip - bit like the sort of stuff used to finish off fitted carpets in doorways - running around the whole with one end fixed into each end of the peice of plywood. So the four sides went into the wheelie bin entire. Interest exhausted having worked out how the thing was built. Reminded me rather of the highly composite construction of a modern shoe. Tricky but effective.

Unlike the last Globetrotter attache case (not that I was an attache, but that was what they called the brief case sized suitcase. Not that I was a barrister with a brief either but never mind). That was made with a nice, simple, old fashioned construction. One sheet of fibreboard moulded into one side of the case, another moulded into the other. Metal reinforcing strip on both exposed edges. Metal reinforcement things rivetted onto each corner. Wooden bead reinforcing the inside of the fat side. Lined with what looked like linen. Nice looking thing. The first one I bought lasted a very long time, despite having tried to wrap it around a parking meter while under the influence. Settled down to a business-like dull gray. Served to carry my bread, cheese and other materials around for many years. Also got to the point where I could carry two days important business travel clothes in it. But finally decided to retire it and get a new one. £120 smackers from Selfridges (the only place that still seemed to stock what had been a very famous brand. Used by the great and good for many years. Appears on Poirot and other reputable programmes of that kind) so not a cheap item at all. Superficially the same, but the board wasn't up to it at all. It turned out to be painted rather than colour integral and the paint fell off. Thing looked like a right mess after a year or so. Got a replacement from the supplier and the same thing happened. So clearly I should have moved with the times and gone for the tricky composite. Alternatively, at about the same time, you could get an aluminium brief case sized thing from the likes of Travis Perkins for about a tenner. Might have been the best value.

Getting deeper into Churchill on Churchill, aka the first Duke of Marlborough. Two points of interest. Firstly, it seems that Churchill attracted a lot of flak by deserting James II at the crucial moment, together with some of the soldiers under his command, thus ensuring that the Glorious Revolution of 1688 was more or less bloodless. And in any case it was a good thing. Resulted in good old England turning into the world beating Protestant democracy that it once was, instead of a Catholic province of Greater France. The catch was that Churchill 1 had been very close to James II for a very long time and this desertion was a gross breach of trust. At a time when a gentleman's word was supposed to be his bond, a time when loyalty to state did not have priority over loyalty to persons. But as Churchill 2 points out, at such a time what was one supposed to do when one's lord was embarked on madness? If you disagreed with him, you might get your head chopped off, or worse. Apart from going down with your lord (the Anglo Saxon answer, at least in theory), the only other option was conspiracy and deceit.

Secondly, Churchill 2 has the hates for Louis XIV of France, whom he believes to be, along with Napoleon, responsible for a huge amount of unecessary slaughter and misery - although I suppose the French think that the enlargement of France engineered by the former was worth the cost. I imagine both are premier league heroes in the sort of history taught in French schools. And then there is that dreadful monument to Napoleon's glory in Paris, the Pantheon or something.

Not impressed the other day to read of the case of a middle aged lady with a confused mother. It seems that the powers that be found it necessary to confiscate the confused mother from the home of the middle aged lady, a process which required the presence of 4 people from social services, 4 police officers and one of those contraptions for bashing down the doors of drug barons just in case. No doubt numerous vehicles, marked and unmarked. I dare it also needed to be done during anti-social hours so that all 8 of them could claim double time. According to the DT, this all came about because the social services did not think that the adaptions that the middle aged lady had made to her home resulted in an environment suitable for the confused mother. Now I dare say that there is rather more to it than this, but even supposing that confiscation was justified, was it really necessary to bring in such a heavy gang in the first instance? Would 2 social workers not have been a better opening gambit, with the threat of more if the middle aged lady proved difficult? Then escalate the presence if it proves necessary.

According to someone at TB, the fire brigade are quite keen on knocking doors down too. If you call them out, it is mandatory that they bash your door down with those evil looking axes that they use, whatever the nature, state or location of whatever it is that you have called them out for. But I think that factlet is well sub-DT, although not going to experiment with my own front door.

But another brush with government was more benign. Was moved to become a member of the government gateway, on behalf of the pension of the BH, partly because of having known people who were involved in its construction. Initially a little put off by the elaborate registration and signing on procedures, but found the pension forecast service to be well designed with nicely designed screens. I guess the people responsible for putting the gateway together must be a little disappointed that this splendid bit of software engineering has not managed to persuade many government services to put their services under their umbrella. A rather small ratbag (a word on which my OED offers no information. Rat has all kinds of odd meanings, only very vaguely to do with four legged vermin, for example it was the name of the wheel on which criminals used to be broken, and is part of all kinds of compounds, but no bags). So, for example, I can tune into the rent and repairs website for Lambeth or get into DEFRA's seed certificate game.

Not so impressed with the congestion charge website though. Don't start off a big fan of this thing and I have posted before my belief that the principal beneficiary is the computer services company which built and operates the thing. Which is perhaps overdoing a bit. Poking around the TFL website I find that in 2005-6, congestion charge revenue was around £250m and its costs were around £150. Not a very efficient tax, compared with the HMCR variety, but it does show a profit.

But yesterday was driving around south and west central London, more or less skirting the congestion charge zone. But not altogether sure whether or not I had crossed the line at some point, so I thought I would try logging into the congestion charge web site and ask it. It did not seem unreasonable, since it would quite quickly issue me with a fine if I did not pay, that it should be able to tell me whether or not I needed to pay. A TB resident thought that it did not, which spurred me on to check. Went to the bother of registering my new car (which it knew all about) and so forth, and then find, that as far as I can see anyway, that it will let me pay congestion charges in 57 varieties and pay penalty charges in 1 variety. But nowhere does it say what, if anything, I owe. A reasonably basic oversight to my mind. This is not that big a computer system and I imagine, that had this been thought of at the outset, the added cost of providing this facility would have been very small. Probably far too late now.

Not so impressed with the three ponds in the back garden either. Still no lillies but all three appear to have caught duckweed, despite the fresh start. Did they come with the plants? Does Franklin carry the stuff around on his feet? Ask Mr G. and the first site I come across - http://www.geocities.com/rainforest/canopy/3631/ - seems to think that duckweed is an important resource which we should make more of. They already grow the stuff industrially in Louisiana. Another site (there are pots of them) explains that duckweed usually overwinters in the form of little critters called turions which sink to the bottom of the pond during the winter, then rise to conquer in the spring. Presumably this includes lurking in the bases of water plants sold by garden centres. Goldfish seems to be the simplest form of control; they love the stuff. Must get BH onto it.

A substantial dream for the first time for a while last night. Rather more nonsensical that usual, not even to the extent of being able to pick out a few triggers from yesterday's events. I dream that I wake up to find our shiny new car and another car all smashed up in the road outside our bedroom window, this despite our car having been left in our drive the night before. Strange lady in the house using our upstairs toilet. I go downstairs in dressing gown to find out what is going on, to find that my car has already been carried off by some rather dodgy looking recovery person - possibly of no fixed abode. That is to say one of the odd-jobbing travellers/gypsies that you get around here. Car going rapidly down the road on the back of his scruffy trailer. Other car in the process of being picked up by another dodgy looking recovery person. I start going off about my wrecked car having been stolen. Going to call the police. Person 2 says he will chase after person 1 and get may car back. Exit person 2 with car 2. I go back into the house to find that the strange lady has vanished without leaving her name and address. I start to suspect that she is the perpetrator. We now have no car nothing to take to the insurance people. Cut to next morning when I wake up to find a wrecked car being delivered. Ah good, I think. My car has been brought back and I can start to deal with the accident in the normal way. Then it turns out to belong to the lady over the road. A third smashed up car. What am I going to do about the insurance? Wake up.

Better news on the scales front. Came home yesterday afternoon to ask Mr G. about them. More precisely, to ask him about a Mr Ellis, an English music theorist and researcher from the late 19th century, who invented the unit of musical interval called the cent, which for some reason I now think to be the key to the whole mystery: Mr Ellis being mentioned in the fat music theory book mentioned yesterday. Mr G. does his stuff and I get a completely apposite article from Mr W. which explains in fairly short order all I need to know. Also something which, with my mathematical background, I should have worked out for myself. So the trick is, that he makes musical intervals additive by taking logs. More specifically, his measure of an interval is 1200*log2(a/b) where a and b are the two frequencies of the two tones making up the interval. This gives 1200 cents as the measure of an octave. And it so happens that the traditional carving up of the octave in the west, gives twelve intervals of approximately but not exactly 100 cents apeice. The equal temperament wheeze just says, lets make those intervals exactly 100 cents apeice for the purposes of tuning musical instruments, in particular the piano. So the interval between any two adjacent notes on the piano, taking in both black and white notes, is 100 cents. From which flows the explosion of western music in the 17th century. And a certain loss of harmonic beauty, still known to the practitioners of ethno and folk music, who have not yet adopted equal temperament. The article on Ellis also points to an html rendering of the original article by Ellis, which turns out to be interesting stuff, although not so moved as to read it all the way through. But I do learn that the Scottish bagpipes use a very odd scale, better known in the middle east than in Europe. Ellis speculates that the pipes were brought back during the crusades. Scales, you will be pleased to hear, now off the agenda for the moment.

Yesterday to Kingston to have another go getting the shiny new car around the ramps in the Rose car park (formerly known as the Drapers car park). Getting better in that I managed not to clip the entry to the ramp about 5 times out of 10 going up and perhaps 6 times out of 10 coming down. Getting better at judging how near the corner of the unseen nearside bonnet is to the approaching wall. (Not that I can see the offside corner either. Perhaps I should stick little poles on the corners as navigational aids). Also learn that half the ramps are easier than others, as in the others the turning space has been reduced by the stairs (or something) occupying the corner. Also that going down when the car park is largely empty is easier as one can swing in the space otherwise occupied by cars. Must be doing dreadful things to the offside rear tyre, the only trigger I can see for the dream I started this post out with.

Occupied the time between going up and coming down by going to the Rose Theatre to see the Northern Broadsides theatre company - who did, in the main, sound very regional and which did include someone called Lenny Henry - do Othello. Theatre rather more finished than when we went to see Chekov a few months ago, although whoever made the presumably expensive oak planking for the floors did not bother to sharpen the circular saw blade used to slice them up. Planks covered in saw marks which have not been fully planed out. Very sloppy. Production adequate, about on a par with that seen at the Globe a little while ago (see August 15 2007). Henry clearly lacked stage experience and seemed clumsy at times - but he had both presence and voice. I wonder how much it bugged him that he was playing what might be read as a 16th century caricature of a childish - if large and powerful - black man. A heritage racist stereotype (small prize for anyone who remembers what stereotype is. If stuck, Mr W. will no doubt reveal the answer) if you like. He certainly appeared to be a bit cheesed off when he left the stage at the end of the performance. As with the Globe, Iago was played as someone entirely ordinary who encompasses great evil, almost by accident, but with great good humour. Desdemona was weak and she managed to make her death tawdry - worse than Helen Mirren stripping off as Cleopatra, without having to go that far. Emelia much better - although an unlikely spouse for Iago. Bianca good. Roderigo and Cassio OK, balance of supporting cast a bit weak. But they made an entertaining meal of the drinking song in act 2 scene 3. Stage very noisy with the clattering of feet - sometimes deliberate - rather distracting. Rather a lot of inappropriate tittering from the audience - something which seems to be a feature of going to Shakespeare these days. Audiences are just embarassed by the things that people got steamed up about in his day.

After the play, while working up to part 2 of the car park challenge, wandered down to the mouth of the Hogsmill. Pleased to see that it was well fished up, with some specimens of 18 inches long. First time we have seen fish there this year. Also four very small chicks in charge of dysfunctional parents. That is to say, something frightful had happened to the beak of the mother with the result that the father kept trying to chase her away. All very sad but nothing much to be done about it. Certainly was not going to fish the chicks out and carry them off to the Leatherhead sanctuary for distressed animals.

Yesterday, being a Wednesday, was another cow chop day. Four and a bit pounds of it. Served as usual with boiled white rice and pointy cabbage (Portugese pointy cabbage of the spring rather than the possibly English crinkly cabbage of the winter). But the cow chop, while entirely edible, was not quite up to the usual standard. Had rather a watery taste (texture?) to it. Cooking was entirely standard, so where lay the differance? Not sure how the butcher would react to starting a discussion on the point, so I don't suppose that I will. But, thinking further, the problem may have been the gravy. This was made by frying some elderly, finely chopped garlic in butter, then adding a couple of chopped onions and fying some more. Then adding a few mushrooms, coarsely chopped. Then adding some juices from the cow chop. A very brown and garlicky concoction which served well enough to flavour up the boiled rice but may have spoiled the palette for the more delicate flavour of the beef. Maybe we will know the answer after cold beef for lunch today.

A reasonably busy day at the garden ponds. That is to say still no sign of the water lilly and although its pond is clear of green froth, it is clearly biologically active in some other way. Rather murky looking with some bubbles. Topped up two of the three ponds with rain water from the butt, probably rather colder than the water already in the ponds, the butt living on a relatively shady side of the house. Try to pour it in slowly so as not to disturb things too much. Shortly afterwards, newts made their appearance in the marigold pond. And they were busy, with two of them making heroic efforts to jump out of the pond onto the rim, something which was possible with the pond now being full. But jumping out did not seem to be the point. They seemed to be balancing on their front paws on the rim while other newts were up to something below. Were they mating? Were weak males being chased out of the pond by strong males? In any event, they both dropped back into the pond after a while. Must ask Mr G. what newt eggs (assuming that that is what they do) look like. Plus the sedge pond contains quite a lot of egg shaped speckled black things, maybe 1mm by 2mm. They might be the eggs of something, but then again they might be something fallen off a neighbouring tree. Need to keep an eye on them.

Begining to feel that I am making progress on the matter of scales. It seems that for melody to work, one needs to use a limited group of related notes which span an octave, which last seem to be hard wired into our aural machinery. Such groups were called modes. Gradually modes with seven intervals, five tones and two semi-tones became popular, the division of octaves into twelve semi-tones being something to do with physics and numbers. Gradually one particular arrangement of tones and semi-tones known as the Ionic mode became popular as our major scale and another arrangement, a bit more tricky and known as the Aeolian mode became our minor scale. So, to a large extent, all twelve (or more, if one allows more than one name for any one scale) major scales are the same and all twelve minor scales are the same, apart from the differance of pitch which most of us are not too clear about. With these twenty four scales doing more or less all the business which counts, leaving aside folk music and other exotica which do their own things. And the whole story woven into the equal tempering business, about which I have noticed at least two entire books. To get this far, seems to require me to jump between the fat book and the thin book (undated, but by one Hilda Hunter, B.A., L.R.A.M.). One has a good way of explaining some things, one a good way of explaining others. I suspect that where I will get to, is that the thin book does a jolly good job of summarising the whole business, providing that you know it all already. Maybe another way of saying that the book is intended to be used with a teacher.

Yesterday's small plain bloomer for breakfast today, and very good it was too despite being a day old. Golden crust, slightly crackly. Today's, not yet tasted, does not look quite so good, with the crust a more muddy brown.

Getting there was the first shirt-sleeves job of the year, having started out with jacket. Which led me to ponder on the oddness of the expression. Did it derive from the days when clerks in offices had detachable shirt sleeves so as not to get their shirt sleeves proper dirty? Came back to consult OED on the matter and found it was no help at all. The phrase has been being used in its present sense for 500 years or more and there was nothing about detachable shirt sleeves. The next word listed was shirty, with no indication of how it came to mean bad tempered, then shish, then shisham, this last being a valuble timber obtainable from the Indian sub-continent. Then the s-word proper, of ancient lineage (old english, middle lower german and old norse (including here old icelandic)) but said to be no longer in decent use.

Further pondering on the various dress rules and habits of the various religions of the book, the result of stumbling across http://hazeraves.blogspot.com/ from where you can buy, amongst other things, the latest thing in head scarves from Selangor in Malaysia. It seems that they do not always have to be made of some dark, heavy material. But why did older Italian women always wear black? Was black cloth cheap and practical? Did the priest say that it was proper? Do they still do it? Not much evidence of same when we visited Florence last year. Maybe it only happens in films about godfathers. Perhaps the common thread is puritanical and practical: dressing for show is bad; perhaps a more reasonable line to take in the olden days when more of us were poor and for whom show was the way to penury, sickness and starvation. Or perhaps it is fear of the possibly disruptive effects of show. If we all dress down then we don't start covetting (or covering) our neighbours's partners, with all the complications that can bring in its train. Which associates to the arrangements in some countries of yore where you let everything rip for a few days from time to time. Saturnalias. You could repress this sort of thing for most of the year, leaving people free to get on with growing carrots and making pots - but you had to let the genie out of the bottle from time to time. With lower grade versions surviving into early modern England. Perhaps the residues are holiday romances for girls and gross behaviour in foreign bars for boys.

Good news from the Wheatsheaf on South Lambeth Road. Firstly, that it has reopened and now sells a very fine pint of Doombar. Secondly, that it is the first pub that I have come across since I moved onto my Mount Gay umbrella which actually serves the stuff. It came with a rum-buff barmaid who was able to go on about the various amounts of caramelization in the various brands of rum. Sadly she very soon realised that I knew next to nothing about rum and returned to her crossword. Must make a point of visiting the place with my umbrella; perhaps that way I will hold her attention for more than 30 seconds.

Muddy brown loaf now tasted. And it tasted much better than it looked. Maybe the indoor glasses made all the differance. Washed down with a couple of pints of lentil soup. This last made with ready washed carrots from Mr S. The carrots tasted OK when cooked, but they looked very odd when first removed from their plastic bag, being much too damply red, and, in one case, in consequence, being more or less rotten. But the rest of them settled down to a more natural colour after a few hours in the air.

Third big chunk of gorse in flower today, this one along the northern edge of the M25 somewhere between Sevenoaks and Leatherhead. Second was somewhere on Dartmoor and the first was along both edges of the M3 somewhere just to the west of its junction with the M25. Surrey heaths I suppose. This both first and last was far and away the most impressive. Must have been something to do with the mid morning light last week with great banks of the stuff overhanging the hard shoulder. Fascinating contrast between the irregular and jagged blocks of yellow flowers and black plant. Must have been something in the avuncular claim that yellow and black make for a much stronger contrast the white and black. Something also that some manufacturers of car number plates seem to have cottoned onto. Must get to Headley Heath while the flowers are still out to catch that wonderful eau de coconut perfume again.

Have paused on Little Dorrit at the half way mark, rather better than I have done before, but tired a little of the leisurely and well padded pace. Plus it is all starting to seem a bit predictable and the charectars are starting to be irritating rather than amusing. For example, the various faults of Mr Dorrit and his elder offspring. So picked up a copy of 'August 1914' for £1 in Tavistock indoor market. Which turns out to be even more prolix and leisurely. Great sprawl of a book which would have been easier to follow had it been provided with a cast list and some maps. Gave up despite the interesting subject matter. Odd to think that this peice of verbosity sprang to fame with the very spare 'One Day in the Life of Ivan Desinovich', last read (by me) as a school boy. Odd also to think that while I vaguely recall bad reviews at the time, there must have been good reviews because this particular copy was a book club reprint and my understanding of book clubs is that they only go in for block busters. No art house for them.

This particular copy now in the general waste wheelie bin awaiting transfer to a land fill site where, at least, it can do something useful by locking down a bit of carbon for a few years.

So its back to a couple of finds from the bookshop just outside the railway station at Earlsfield. Both major works reprinted as multi-volume paperbacks by Sphere quite a long time ago. Firstly, the biog. of Marlborough by Winston Churchill, something which I have been after for a while but have missed in the piles of Churchilliana to be found in most second hand bookshops. This four volume edition published in 1967 when it cost in cash terms - in shillings and pence - something less than half what I had to pay in 2009. Another wordy writer but getting on quite well so far. Quote of the week: '... by some occult dispensation our hero was able to extract various modern sunbeams from this ancient cucumber'.

If that fails, I have, secondly, a three volume edition of Trotsky's history of the Russian Revolution. The Deutscher line was that Trotsky, while flawed (and not a founder member of the Bolshevik club, despite his starring role in their revolution), was also a very able and well educated man. Able, for example, to turn his hand to theatre criticism when funds ran low. So it will be interesting to see how well he reads now.

Having missed out on real bread for nearly a week, pleased to be able to get to Cheam on Saturday. And, for once in a while, I forget why, I went before breakfast. This meant that, again for once in a while, was able to indulge in fresh bread for breakfast. Small white bloomer with small black seeds. Finest butter from Mr S.. Luxury. I don't do it more often because the effort of getting up, out and over to Cheam before breakfast is a bit much for me these days. Back in Wood Green now, we had a baker just across the road so I was able to get over to him before breakfast. Odd sort of chap; most of the time his white bread was very good, but he was rather dirty (with a slatterny wife and dirty children) and was not very reliable. Bread was quite often burnt. I have a feeling he went out and a Cypriot came in, just before we moved away. Differant class of bread altogether; Cypriots don't make bread quite the way we do, although not bad of its kind. Good if you like chunks of olives incorporated.

At least I assume that is what it is, my oriental languages not being up to much these days. From http://minipova.blogspot.com/.

On Wednesday to Crewkerne to see if the Johnson's dictionary had moved in six months. It hadn't - and at £150 for four volumes it was still too steep for me, although it would have been a nice thing to have. Or I could have had a rather smaller two volume one for £200. They also had Holman Hunt's book on the Pre-Rafphaelites, the first time I have come across such a thing. Also too steep for me. I will keep an eye on the place to see if the price moves down.

Then nearly to West Sedge Moor. The area nearby reminded me more than I remembered of the fens north of Cambridge, with an important differance being the large number of rather small and scruffy heffalump nests in apple trees (see Hampton Court postings), something I had not seen before. Then on to Kingsbury Episcopi and Hugh Episcopi to see a couple of Somerset Towers. Both rather splendid affairs with large louvre windows to the bell chamber. Not convinced that louvre window is quite the right word for such a window but that is the best that Mr G. can do with my Bannister Fletcher in hiding. I also sticks in my mind that as well as keeping the weather out while also letting the sound out, that these windows were necessary to stop the building vibrating to peices, but Mr G. silent on that point. Kinsbury impressive but not very holy to my mind. The place seemed rather dead. Hugh rather better; maybe the windows by Burne Jones made all the differance, but I think the slightly smaller interior was more to the point. Didn't feel so cold and empty. Kingsbury also boasts a nifty village lockup and Hugh a rather odd war memorial.

Then to Axminster for restauration, after which I discovered that I had lost my Filofax at some point during the day. Very bad news, this being the seventh filofax I have had (staring at the age of 11 or so), and this one having lasted for more than 15 years, although it was getting a bit knackered. Full of all kinds of ancient history. Bios passwords to PCs long gone to the great skip in the sky. BH had drawn my attention some years ago to the fact that this particular model (made in Portugal) was being taken out of production, but I failed to stock up while I could, so will now have to move onto some inferior contemporary version.

Yesterday to Tavistock for another visit to the church of St E************s. Rather more impressed this time than I was last time (October 14 2008). Continued to be amused by the recumbent fat gent. in chapel to the right of the altar, looking very pleased with himself, and with his wife, very properly, kneeling on the floor by his side. BH discovered that a number of the bosses (including some of those which have not been tricked out in coloured paint) were decorated with a three hare motif, something which it seems had travelled across Europe from Persia to wind up in the further reaches of England. I think it said that they do them in China too.

Then onto the Oxfam shop with lots of vinyl (the best collection I know) where I learn that a music buff in the area had given them his entire collection of vinyl, thousands of records, which they were slowly working through. So they should be good for a few years yet. For about £1 a disc got another copy of the Art of Fugue (this one explaining that the only way to do it was on a harpsicord. It also seemed to be in a non-standard order), a Well Tempered Clavier (interpreted by one S. Richter), some Haydn sting quartets (Op. 20) and a complete Beethoven violin sonatas. Not a bad haul at all. One of the sets was notable in that, the music occupying an odd number of sides, the last side had been left blank. Must have been ancient; I am sure a newer recording would have padded the set out with something or other.

Back, via a quick stroll on Dartmoor, to Trago Mills (http://www.trago.co.uk/) to see what they could do about replacing the defunct Filofax. FIL can remember the place from very modest beginnings, many years ago, but now it is rather like the 'Chessington World of Adventure', but with rather more for the grown ups to do. Must provide youth and holiday employment for miles around, welcome change from a diet of hotel work. Very fine quarter size steam engine to go with the large train set in a shed (£1 a pop). Pot bellied pigs. And in the shop proper, we found that they did indeed sell Filofax, but rather like TK Maxx, only sold rather odd lines from the range. The diary bit ran from mid year to mid year and you had to have lots on inserts which I did not use. Decided to reflect, possibly to visit the Filofax Shop itself, somewhere in London.

And so back to the remains of the turkey stew, served with the local spring cabbage sourced from Tavistock. Tasted very differant to the Portuguese stuff we had been eating from Cheam. Early to bed, and woke up to discover the lost Filofax in a secret pocket of the shiny new vehicle. So small and secret that I had forgotten it was there. All's well that ends well, although BH not impressed with the large amount of nugatory flap and bother.

Sailed up the Exe valley cycle path (does not appear to be known to google maps, in the sense of it displaying a map with the path marked, but Mr G. does quite a presentable job of finding it otherwise), gentle adverse wind and went pass a thirtysomething couple going slightly slower than me. So far so good. Then I dismount at the quay to walk up the, what is to me fairly steep, bank up onto South Street. Said couple gently ring the bells on their mountain bikes and sail past me up the slope, in saddle. OK, so the lady of the pair struggled a bit but they did make it to the top without stopping. Somewhat peeved, but whether I am peeved enough to try it myself tomorrow remains to be seen.

Two visits by the gas man since the last post; an afternoon one and a breakfast one. At the first visit we established that the radio receiver in the boiler was on the blink and that the small tank of water in the boiler was empty. Thus causing the boiler to overheat every time it cut in and so promptly cutting out. Hence the sinusoidal hot water supply. This last was fixed by a procedure not unlike that of bleeding a radiator, using a natty little white plastic tool strapped onto the boiler somewhere just in case. Might even have a go myself one day, the symptom being zero pressure on the pressure guage on the boiler control panel. Gas man goes away, promising to come back the next morning with a new receiver. It seems this particular model goes wrong often enough for them to be kept in stock. Now they tell us. That notwithstanding, we thought splendid. We can all have a bath and wash away the day's odours. But no. After a little while the green light started flashing again and back with sinusoidal and a near cold bath.

At the breakfast visit, the new receiver is fitted and we agree that the hot water problem was probably caused by the communications breakdown interfering with the controls. We run a bath this time, just to be on the safe side. All seems well. Then we ask the gas man what he has at home. Turns out to be something called a Valor rather than a Worcester, a rather more expensive item, although he does have a radio control. Maybe being German makes all the differance. He claims that after the Valor, the Worcester is a splendid bit of kit, much better than the sort of junk you can pick up in certain home supply supermarkets. Anyway, we will see if all is still well when I get back downriver.

In between the two visits, took the air in the village, to discover that one of the two pubs has lost its roof, down to and including the first floor ceilings, with the whole covered by a tin lid. Lady neighbouring explains that this was the result of two fires, one of which seemed to coincide with some irregularity with the VAT returns. But undismayed, or at least unable to move onto flats (which one might have thought would make them more money as we pull out of the recession), the brewery are about to start rebuilding with a view to being up and running again by July.

So down to inspect the 'Swans' Nest', an establishment which invented the concept of the food pub, at least in this region, back in the early seventies. They were doing ploughmens' lunches on slices of tree daintily ornamented with cress and crisps while the rest of us were still eating pies. Decor seemed much the same as I remember from those days, with quite old but repro Jacobean furniture scattered about. Various interesting ornaments. One in particular caught the eye. Start with what looked like a 12 inch diameter copper tub. Add lamp. Add two small plant pot holders. Add three trays to form a simple water cascade onto a small (rotating) water wheel. The whole, apart from the lamp shade and the plants being made of copper (hope the thing had a good earth). Standing maybe eighteen inches high. Rather quaint, and I would of thought rather expensive to make, although not very arty. Two warm beers, of which I went for the red otter. Only six country style wines of the sloe variety. In the good old days they must have had a lot more of the things: parsnip, swede, dandelion, you name it they had it. But it seems they did not sell now that you can get real wine in pubs, and so had a cull.

Woke to be informed by the DT that not only is it a felony to smack a child, it will soon be a felony (on the parent) when the child does something bad as a result of failure to smack. So the nannies have got us both ways. When they move onto a more sensible discipline model? Also that the PM has very bad handwriting and appears to use a felt tip pen when he feels constrained to write - if not compose - a letter in his own fair hand. I expect he was taught handwriting as a child, so maybe he should have practised for a bit to get a better result. But worse, in the unlikely event of my acquiring a jet to take me about my business, the nannies will get into a grump if I insist on having an attractive stewardess to go with my attractive new toy. What is the point of such a thing if I have to lumber it with cabin staff I don't like? Whose plane is it? How long will it be before a bunch of sex workers hire the Cherry (hubby and wife who chalked up some £20m last year) to fight a sex and age discrimination case for them?

Back at the library of the regional capital of the west, that it to say Exeter, having cycled up the cycle path up the river again. Cycle number 2 (retentive readers will remember that cycle number 2 is a classy if elderly road racer) more or less OK after having been in the garage for some months. One tyre a bit flat and the bell needed oiling, although I did not discover this until I was well up the river, trying to attract the attention of a family of three (or possibly four, there was a small (male) outrider out ahead) out for a two wheeled poodle. But the attempt was successful, with their pulling up at the side of the path while I passed. Including the outrider when his turn came. Pleased to be part of the cycling heavy gang fraternity. That apart, no livestock worthy of notice, not even a cormorant sitting on the weir at the start of the ship canal.

The challenge this morning has been the regional boiler, a shiny new Worcester from British Gas.

The arrangement for the one in Epsom is that there is a thermostat on the wall in the hall hard wired to a digital control unit on a wall next to the boiler itself in the kitchen. The basic idea of this last is that hot water is on for two periods a day and heating is on for two periods a day, with one being able to select differant periods for each day, should you be fussy about such things. Bath after Coronation Street on Thursdays but bath before Crossroads on Saturdays sort of thing. And then there are various overrides, like turn the hot water on or turn the heating off. We also have such threats to health and safety as a hot water tank in an airing cupboard and fumes which go up the chimney. As I have moaned before, since British Gas installed this boiler, they have changed the rules, just to make sure we buy a new one before too long. But although the control unit is a bit fiddly, BH has kept hold of the instructions through thick and thin and the thing does do what it says on the tin, that is to say on the instructions.

The regional arrangement is quite differant. There is indeed a thermostat on the wall in the hall, but the thermostat is also a battery powered electro-mechanical device which sends commands by radio to the boiler in the kitchen (which sends its fumes through the wall into the drive). There are accessible controls on the boiler. There are also thermostats on all the radiators which can override a turn heating on command from the thermostat (but not a turn heating off command. I guess we have to live with this, given that heat is distributed by hot water by pump and the boiler does not have a cold water option). The electro-mechanical device is, in very important ways, a throw back to our controller of thirty years ago, in that it contains a clock wheel equiped with radial sliders, one for each 15 minutes in the 24 hours. Pushing in says that 15 minutes counts as day, pulling out says it counts as night. Then one sets a temperature setting for day on a little thumb wheel and one for night on another. Hot water available all the time on demand. All sounds fine now we have got the hang of it although it did take some time to switch from the Surrey to the Devon concept of heating and we did have to have the thing replaced last Autumn, last time we were down.

So turn up on a cool April afternoon to a rather cool house. BH wants some heat. I says, sez I, just crank the day temperature up a bit on the control unit and bobs your uncle. But uncle was not playing. An hour later radiators still stone cold. Temperature at BH rising and all three of us start playing with all the various controls at the same time. After a while we discover that an interesting light in the boiler is flashing continuously. Manual says that this means that the boiler has lost contact with its controller in the hall. Communications down. So we try pressing the override button, thoughtfully provided against the very remote possibility of failure. Downstairs radiators come to life. After further flapping around we discover that the upstairs radiators have all been turned off at their own personal thermostatic controls. Fix that, off to the pub for a few Doombars while we watch the local twenty somethings playing darts and so happily to bed.

Wake up in the morning to a cold BH who has completely failed to run a hot bath. Hot water not on demand at all. Ah well sez I, the thing is a flow heater and you must have been trying to run the hot water too fast, when, naturally, it will become cold water. BH not appeased but tries again with the same result. Then I try. And even I fail to do better than slowly flowing water which is sometimes hot and sometimes cold.

At this point, by some happy coincidence, we are phoned up by a computer in the British Gas control centre which confirms that a gas man is coming to see us the next day, as arranged some weeks ago, in the interests of regular service. After a short family conference we decide to phone the number the computer has given us to say that this is not good enough. Go through the usual palaver, a little more sophisticated than in Surrey in the sense that I talk to the computer rather than keying in lots of digits from my last bill (assuming that I can find it). Eventually get through to a person and suggest that the gas man visits us today rather than tomorrow. Explain that we have some heating and some hot water but not enough of either. After a lot of sucking of thumbs, the person suggests that someone comes this afternoon. And that without playing the elderly parent card, although our card at the control centre ought, already, be marked to that effect. So fair enough. They have advanced our visit by 18 hours at very short notice. Perhaps we will get the very pleasant and helpful chap, well used to dealing with the elderly, that we had last time. (Shame that the thing broke down again).

My present take is that this fine Worcester boiler has too many customer accessible controls for its own good. We will see what I think tomorrow.

I think I first saw 'The Battleship Potemkin' at school, at a sort of informal film club run by an enthusiastic teacher, which would be some 45 years ago. Second viewing a week or so ago. Interesting watch, although not altogether clear what it means to say that it is the greatest film of all time, which seems to be the film buff line.

I was not convinced that the second version was quite the same as the first version, the famous steps sequence seeming rather differant and rather shorter second time around. Less pram bumping on steps. Presumably, like now, the idea of a definitive print is rather elusive, with the various prints around being variously assembled from the great heap of raw material. An analogy might be the many copies of pictures that sold well being knocked out by Breughal Enterprises SA back in the sixteenth century. Or the endless fiddlings with the text in proof by the likes of Joyce and Proust. No such thing as definitive. I have dilated before on all this in connection with reruns of TV detective dramas.

All that aside, some things struck me about the film itself. First, a snippet of what would count these days as anti-semitism, perhaps a reflection of the unpopularity of the get-rich-quick merchants of the NEP era? Second, a lot of time was devoted to arty shots of things - clouds, waves, washing, any old thing - which were quite unconnected with the action. At least in any direct way. Perhaps they were intended to provide a bit of emotional colour, useful at a time when we had neither colour pictures nor talkies? Did Eisentein think that a bit of padding was needed to keep the temperature even? Or was he just being self indulgent? Third, the film did not seem as ancient as it should have. It felt as if it had been tarted up digitally. Had been restored, as it were. One could go on about that for just as long as they go on about restoring old masters of the paint variety. A wondrous source of bar room babble. I must get onto it.

The other scholastic venture is a dip into the theory of music, following a visit to Epsom Library back in the middle of March. Now the pround borrower of two books on same, one thin and one fat. Both appear to have been extracted from reserve stock, one appears not to have been borrowed for twenty five years and the other appears to have been borrowed once in twenty five years. Perhaps people don't study the theory of music any more. For myself, while making rather heavy weather of it all, I do think that I would have done rather better on the clarinet (another venture from 45 years ago), had I done a bit of theory too.

Despite both books being good, in rather differant ways, making heavy weather on the subject of how you get 15 major keys and 15 minor keys out of 12 semitones to the octave. And why do we have keys with anything from one to seven (?) sharps or one to seven flats but no keys with sharps and flats? Who chose the particular sequence of tones and semi-tones used for the two sorts of key? Who chose the pattern of black and white notes on the piano? On the other hand I am learning what seems fairly obvious once you have been told. Viz, that Western classical music evolved quite quickly from Gregorian chants, side swipe at troubadors, through harmony, counterpoint, chromaticism and so on. Peaking around the end of the 18th century and downhill ever since. Beginning to see the point of the enthnomusicology which my brother had so little time for; a point being, perhaps, that said enthnobabble is very much talking about music rather than doing music. All a question of preferences.

I suspect the weather would calm down if I had a piano and did the exercises in the books as well as read the words. Didn't try and treat it all as a bit of mathematics. A wheeze that used to work with mathematics books themselves. However, that would be a monster drain on time for a passing fancy.

The pond with green bubbles is presently clear; the recent rain seems to have cleared them. And newts were seen today in two of three ponds. Sedge grass and marigolds continue to put on weight but still no sign of the water lilly. Maybe we will be invoking the two year plant replacement guarantee after all. Starting to think that there is such a guarantee for a reason.

Having lost my blue and white umbrella, as featured on my profile and which had done good service for some years, extracted a large red umbrella from the roof, provenance unknown, which advertises in large yellow letters something called 'Mount Gay Rum'. BH not to sure about being seen out with this thing, so this morning I thought I ought to check with the all-knowing Mr G, perhaps the closest thing to the all-knowing that there has ever been. He tells me that Mount Gay Rum is indeed a big name in rum. Move onto their web site where, for the first time ever, I am invited to state my age and country of residence before entry. It seems the site includes a little bit of code which checks for one being of drinking age in the country concerned before allowing entry. Well I pass this check, and move on into a rather loud website, which appears to be very into boats. Maybe the big market for this stuff is boaty North Americans. In passing, come across http://www.sailingscuttlebutt.com/ which seems to be just the place for those who like the latest boaty news.

That out of the way, thoughts can drift back from the cellar to the kitchen. Tried another Sussex pie earlier in the week. 5 pounds of chuck steak, well marbled with fat, a brick maybe 8 inches by 6 inches by 5 inches, grain running across the 6 inches. At the last moment realised that I should not use mushroom ketchup as this contained malt extract which contained gluten. So settled for 9 tablespoons of Taylor's finest port and a large but segmented red onion. Wrap in foil, place in covered glass dish (which it more or less filled up). Cook for 9 hours at 120C and for the last 2 hours at 90C. Serve with mashed potato, mashed swede and cauliflower. Plus the pint or so of gravy which had emerged from the beef. Beef just right, loose but still in one peice. The sort of texture that salt beef ought to be but usually isn't (the palace of salt beef in Great Windmill Steet having been closed for many a long year). Might have been improved by the ketchup but pretty good as it was.

The next day, decided that it was time to do some pearl barley again, so knocked up some soup with some chicken bones we happened to have lying about. This did very well on its first outing. Then, for the second outing, entrusted warming up to the BH. She saw fit to scrape the fat off what was left of the beef gravy (see above) and use what was left to top up what was left of the soup. Made for a very rich brew. Chicken, pork and bacon works quite well in stews but not sure if one ought to be mixing chicken and beef in one soup.

Talking of pork stews, had occasion the day before the beef to test the colour fastness of red onions. Add butter, garlic (being the flavour of the month) and well-pummelled black pepper to saucepan and cook for a bit. Add three red onions. Rather an odd colour at this point. Add one and one half pork tenderloins, cut across the grain into slices, maybe 2cm by 2cm by 1cm. Cook for a bit. Add four and one half tomatoes, chopped small. Cook for an hour. Colour now a healthy orange. The red of the red onions has almost vanished at this point. Just the odd bit in an otherwise healthy sea of orange. Presumably the red in onions has not got the strength of the red in beet roots. Just breaks down in the face of prolonged heat. Add ten small carrots, unskinned, cut into 2cc lumps. Not skinned greatly improves the texture of the finished carrot, leaves it with an inside and an outside, rather than just being a homogenous orange softy. Cook for a further 10 minutes. Add half a pound of small button mushrooms. Serve with rice and new pointy cabbage, this last still from Portugal.

In between times, for the first time in years, having another crack at Dickens. Someone I have failed to get on with in the past, despite sundry attempts. This time with 'Little Dorrit', £2 new from Wordsworth Classics, a decent paper back, rather cheaper than one is likely to get from a secondhand shop. And perhaps because I saw a couple of episodes from the recent telly version, I am getting on with the thing. 150 pages down. A bit verbose, but plenty of warmth and a fair bit of gentle humour. The sort of humour which does not depend on bashing someone or other. Maybe, if I come to like the book, I will come to dislike the adaption as being too highly coloured, in the same way as Austen adaptions. The book is highly coloured, but that remains with the imagination. Highly coloured moving images are too intrusive - and too destructive of said imagination.

Following the last post, I thought I ought to see what I could find out about classroom discipline.

First stop, national statistics. Nice whizzy web site. Asked it about discipline and got a few irrelevant results. Asked it about classroom discipline and got nothing.

Second stop, department for training and life statistics. Or whatever they are called. Asked it about classroom discipline and got pointed at a whole lot of what appeared to be teacher statistics. Not much help either.

Third stop, asked Mr G about classroom discipline. Zillions of articles about how to manage difficult classes, mostly with a transatlantic flavour. Lots of articles from teachers who have or can sell the magic bullet or the magic incantation. So, to that extent, there is clearly an issue out there. But did not spot anything on trends on same.

So, so far, no further ahead on deciding whether things are better or worse than they were in the good old days.

But have done rather better on the tweeting front. On the way home, just at dusk, saw the first fly catcher of the year swinging about above the trees. Quite small, so a marten, I think, rather than a swift or swallow. Tried to check, but Mr G. a bit quirky on the subject of 'marten bird'. He seems to think that I want to buy a loudspeaker or to play poker.

In the absence of anything to watch on freeview (it is rare that there is anything I want to watch on otherview), fell to musing on the state of our education system, prompted by something in the DT about how discipline in schools is falling apart.

Item 1, it is hard to know whether this is true or not. And it gets harder the further back one tries to go. Hard enough for a teacher to be able to convince one that it has got better or worse during his or her working life, let alone to go further back. Not easy to get a firm grip on this one either by talking to teachers or conducting surveys. I wonder what I might find out about all this if I started burrowing in educational statistics? Maybe tomorrow.

Item 2, corporal punishment was common in the past and is, I think, forbidden now. For example, FIL tells me that at his school in 30's Portsmouth, there was usually a caning a day. And then there were the more vicious instruments used in Scotland and Ireland, in the former case at least, until quite recently.

Item 3, class room discipline was a minor issue in my (country) primary school in the fifties. One teacher out of the ten or so had discipline problems bad enough for parents to complain about the classroom in question not being a fit place for their children to be taught.

Item 4, class room discipline was not an issue in my (town) secondary school in the sixties. Nor, incidentally, was theft. Property was left in open desks and cloakrooms and I don't recall there ever having been a theft. I do recall one case of corporal punishment.

Item 5, I have heard it alleged that a decent teacher can control more or less any class by force of charectar. While I believe this to be true, the allegation may be setting the bar for decent unreasonably high. We do not have enough teachers who are that decent, and are not likely to have until we pay them a good deal more.

Observation: I have also heard teachers say yes, they can keep control, but it takes up 99% of their available energy, leaving little for imparting useful or any other knowledge.

Item 6, I do not think it fair that a teacher is not allowed to use reasonable force to deal with a pupil who is being violent in one way or another. If a pupil is bashing me, I should not be held to account for bashing him, undesirable though that might be. It does not make much sense to me to say at the outset that the teacher is not allowed to use force, whatever the pupil might get up to. I believe that there are pupils who will take full advantage of such a rule, if indeed there is one.

Item 7, in a similar way, it does not help maintain discipline if the head teacher is not allowed more or less absolute discretion and command in the day-to-day running of his school. Bad pupils and bad parents are going to play up if they know that they can always appeal to some bunch of good intentioned lay people detirmined to do good (aka sub-committee of the board of governors, or worse some sub-committee of the local authority. At least the first gang are more likely to have some regard for the school in question).

Observation: the human rights of one pupil should not be allowed to grossly interfere with the human rights of others. Going further, one forfeits such rights by bad behaviour. Or in the memorable words of some freeview film or other (which go rather further than I would): 'this guy hasn't got any human rights. We are due to hang him in three hours'.

Item 8, I would hope that we never have to go back to the level of teacher violence that I believe was both prevalent and acceptable in FIL's day.

Having got that little lot off my chest, I do believe in some vague way that the DT is right. That classroom discipline is worse than it was. But what to do about it is another matter.

In the course of a visit to a den of lawyers, those well known and overpaid agents of well known and overpaid bankers known as S&M, had a bit of a wander around the St Luke's area of the city, an area I have not visited for some time. Interesting mix of old and new, commercial and residential. Passed a specialist supermarket for janitors. Learnt that while Smithfield meat market might not be the hive of carnivoral activity that it once was, there was still activity at 0800 Monday morning. Lots of stands shut up, maybe definatively, but one could still glimpse the odd row of half cow carcases hung up and waiting for buyers. Quite a lot of meat in a more butchered condition and for sale shrink wrapped - which is how I suspect quite a lot of the meat arrives at Cheam. Doesn't look too good in the shrink wrap, but once out and dusted down looks OK.

Also came across large graveyard known as Bunhill Fields. Appeared to be a fairly old place and the star attraction was the chest tomb of the relict of Sir Gregory Page, Bart. Sadly, the this line of Page's appears to have been extinguished, leaving no trace in my copy of Burke's Peerage. Only rather modern creations there. Oxford Dictionnary of National Biography reports a second baronet of the same name dying in 1775, so extinction could not have been immediate. I forbore digging further as ODNB suggested that I got my credit card out at that point.

However, said relict did achieve glory of a sort, the tomb explaining she died in 1728 after having had 240 gallons of water tapped from her over the preceeding 67 months. It seems she bore the tapping with great fortitude and withough complaint. This, allowing 30 days to the month, I compute to work out at 0.955 pints a day. The tomb did not reveal the frequency of tapping operations. But she must have been a tough old bird not to have snuffed it of sepsis.

FIL tells us that this sort of thing was quite common at the time, before chemical treatments for dropsy (aka water retention in soft tissue) were available. People could swell up to impressive sizes, lurid details available on application. He recalls personally pumping 11 pints of water from the liver of a Sikh during the war, using something rather like a bicycle pump, happily with the benefit of anaesthetic.

Then moved north and had occasion to walk up Stapleton Hall Road, which contained the downstairs front room bedsit we occupied for our first months of married life, more than 35 years ago. Having not thought to go armed with the number of the house, could only narrow it down to three; the one I thought most likely looking to have been chopped into six flats, now rather shabby. The bedsit house was remarkable for the excellent hot water system and the bedsit was remarkable for its Baby Belling, being the beast in which we cooked our very first joint of top rib of beef. The local Cypriot butcher - no longer there - being something of an expert on the preparation of joints for an oven of this sort - perhaps a eight inch cube cube inside. I also recall that I built the first of our various bed-head bookcases while there. That is to say made out of the oak bed heads that one could acquired at jumble sales of the time for around £1 a pop. Must have had plenty of time as this particular bookcase involved an impressive number of mortice and tenon joints. All seems a bit improbable now, but that is the recollection. Moved on round into Mountview Road which looked rather more prosperous than I remember, if a little mixed. Lots of TLC gone into the front gardens. Rather differant tone from Epsom, and, I imagine, rather dearer by the square metre.

Last week was the salesman in front room experience. FIL had decided that he needed a proper motorised chair and after a perfunctory market search, we invited a man from a well known motorised chair manufacturer to visit us. He turns up with a chair in his van and proceeds to demonstrate the thing. All very smooth, inter alia explaining that they had tried doing showrooms but, in the nature of the business, rather a lot of potential customers were not very mobile, so the showrooms did not pay. Home visit it had to be. The down side of that is that, having visited, the salesman is very keen to sign you up on the spot and not at all keen that you try anybody else. So he moves into serious flannel mode. Do you know that the usual price of this chair is £10,000 (say). But times are a bit hard, rather a lot of them in the showroom. If you buy today I am sure I can persuade my manager to give you a good price. Maybe as little as £3,000. What is your budget? Are you a time waster? We suggest that he is pushing too hard and better take his chair away while we reflect. He packs up and we go into a huddle. As he looks as if he is about to leave, we say how about £2,000? He looks very solemn. Must go and talk to my manager. He retreats to his van to wait for the five minutes indicated (perhaps taking in a fag) and then comes back and says yes. In view of all the circumstances, just for you, we can do £1,995. OK we say. Just for good measure, we get another spiel about this world beating chair, engine sourced from the finest German engineering companies.

Chair now due in a few days. We think the chair will be a good thing and that we got reasonable value - but why do we have to go through all this rigmarole? As bad as the mobile phone companies and the insurance companies. Makes the whole business feel a bit grubby to me. I remember tales from my youth of people who have shown salesmen who play this game the door. You mean to say that you are now prepared to let me have for £5,000 what was £10,000 a few minutes ago. Charlatan and cheat, do not darken my house any longer. But life is too short, and as it is we soon expect to have a satisfactory chair.

On receipt of intelligence that the interesting archipelago of green bubbles in the deep tub might be something to do with silk weed, decided to remove the stuff with a kitchen seive. On closer inspection, the bubbles did indeed appear to contain something very like silk weed, small size. I thought that removal would let some light onto the lilly, which might then start to show signs of life. However, after a couple of days, the green bubbles are about back to where they were, at least to all appearances. Must be made of much more vigorous stuff than the lilly, of which there remains no sign. Oddly reluctant to hoik the thing out of the tub for inspection. On the other hand, the newts in this tub remain lively. Quite a lot of plopping noises, which at first one thinks is the result of returning frogs (the old pond usually had frogs, but nothing so far this year. And now past the time for frog spawn), but which seem to be result of newts leaping out of the water. Perhaps in the course of a nuptial dance.

Further down the garden, in addition to the celandine display, the violets have done very well this year. Lords and ladies not bad either (see Mr G. for the large number of alternative names. It also seems you can eat the roots of the stuff. Or failing that, starch your shirt collars with them) although there is a bit of a puzzle on that front. The things come up well enough at this time of year, down in the wild bit of the garden. And the patches seem to be expanding. But they seem to die down again quite quickly. Not generating any of the red berries in the autumn, as described by Mr G (http://www.plantpress.com/wildlife/o662-lordsandladies.php). But they can't be that unhealthy or they would not keeping coming up. Maybe they are a sterile mutant, the result of too much compost made with meat (shock horror. All the compost web sites are very hot about not using meat waste. But that always seems to me to be very wasteful. And the rodents are not usually a problem).

Yesterday, bright fine spring afternoon so off to Hampton Court to see the tail end of the daffodill display. Started off with a long senior moment with the pay and display machine at Hampton Court Station (to which we had been diverted by a wedding). Took me ages to work out how much I was supposed to pay. Kept offering the machine £2, and it kept spitting it out, until finally I managed to work out that actually it wanted £4. Gave it £4.10 - the best I could do with the change available - and it printed out a ticket without a murmer. The instructions were clear enough once I had arrived at the right answer but it took a long time to get there.

Spectacular magnolia on the way in. Odd sort of tree with five or six small trunks, fanning out in a sort of circle. Not huge but huge display of flowers, only a few days past their best. Very impressive against the clear, light blue sky. Lie on the grass, look up and think bubbles. My woodcut of magnolias, in black and white, is from a differant planet.

First wave of daffodills more or less over, but second wave doing well and a smaller third wave in bud. Lots of differant varieties; lots of shapes, sizes and colours, with some of the flower heads being too heavy for their stems. Presumably bred past the point of natural selection. Light just right and the overall effect spiffing. Plus crown imperials, hyacinths and lots of other spring flowers in the beds and the herbaceous borders were on the move. Had to pay £4.50 a pop (£4 for concessions) to get beyond the daffodills, it being beyond the 1st April or something, but it was well worth it, not least because lots of people did not want to pay so it was a bit more select for those who did.

Went around the 20 century garden, formerly the apprentices' garden (maybe they don't do apprentice gardeners any more) where there is a good collection of unusual trees, including a good variety of camelias, in fine form just presently. All kinds of differant colours.

Shortly after that, while dozing under the new avenue, attacked by a swan. Maybe he thought I had taken his spot. I had been admiring the shimmering green of the about to burst buds, a fine sight from ground level. Won't be long before all the arboreal heffalump nests for which the garden is so famous will, once again, be hidden by leaves for the summer.

Just breakfasted off the remains of Wednesday's cow chop, in slices of bread and fashioned as rolls. Very fine breakfast it was too.

So fine that I thought of a very fine wheeze to tweak the tails of all those smoking bisease. Readers will recall that it is legal, perhaps because luvease have friends in high places, for actors (and actresses) to smoke on-stage during the course of bona-fide theatrical productions (http://www.smokefreeengland.co.uk/thefacts/the-regulations.html).

So, step 1, find a brave licensee who is prepared to take a poke at the authorities. A poke which might poke his pocket a bit. But I dare say the rest of us would chip in a bit.

Step 2, find a resting actor fond of fags and booze. Needs to be someone who is an Equity member so that the artistic element of the event is indeed bona-fide. Get him to put together a small show involving lots of extras, fags and booze. Perhaps saying something about conceptual art as the true drama of life. Need to get the right words from the Arts Council for Surrey website, guide for applicants for dosh page (http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/funding/).

Step 3, find a sponsor from the tobacco industry. Maybe through a blind trust as they could not seem to be taking a poke at the tabernacle of the law themselves. Perhaps invite the Cuban ambassador (http://www.cubaldn.com/).

Step 4, prepare stage in the upstairs front room of selected public house. Install supplies of smoking and drinking kit. Warm beer (needs a few days to settle). Ashtrays. Chairs for extras to sit on when not extring. Web-cam.

Step 5, advertise production. Set up blog. Invite George Galloway (http://www.georgegalloway.com/).

Step 6, actor and extras proceed to booze and smoke the night away in the course of this very important artistic statement.

Step 7, wait to see what, if anything, the bisease do about it. My charitable guess is that the licensee would get a slap over the wrist with a limp lettuce leaf and told not to do it again. You've had your fun but don't push your luck.

Step 8, acquire life-style related ailment. But we leave that aside in the interests of freedom.

An interesting appercu on our moeurs in these matters. It seems that if one wants a bit of porn there is no need to pay your cable television provider; you just tune into channel 4 where they are punting out lashings of late night sex education. All the while being beamed on by the massed ranks of Blair babes. Sex in the cause of education is one thing, sex for pleasure is quite another.

However, interest in all this has been displaced by a much more important matter, on which I have dilated and sometimes waxed lyrical at odd times in the past. For me, it all started in the Treasury in the mid nineties. The IT chaps discovered that it was possible to broadcast messages which the lucky punters received every time they turned their PC on. Shortly after that the HR folk joined in and after that the premises people. So after a while there were lots of messages flying about about the latest course on hugging or the fact the the Marquess of Oliver had blessed the potatoes being used in the (outsourced) canteen that day. But the Treasury is a fairly small community and it was possible for the punters to gang up on the providers and put a stop to it. Broadcast messages only to be used for matters of vital interest. More or less.

The next people in on the act were Southwest Trains. Their IT people thought that announcement drivel dripping out of loudspeakers throughout one's journey would be a good wheeze. And the people on Southern Trains went one better and managed to customise the message to the carriage. A bit of IT onemanupship. But in this case the punters are a very large and diffuse community who have not found it possible to exert the pressure needed to put a stop to it. Although, if one was bold, one would take a white foam spray can to the loudspeakers and take one's chance on the all-present CCTV cameras tracking one down. And if they did and one was very bold, one could take the opportunity to bang on about the matter in front of the magistrate, who might or might not be sympathetic. But it might generate a bit of helpful publicity. God fearing and respectable retired public servant sent to jail for protesting the invasion of our aural space by train operators. Frightful waste of public money. Jails far too crowded as it is.

After that came the roads people. Some enterprising company in the road sign and marking industry designed a large contraption which could display messages in lights over motorways which could be controlled from some central bunker which could be manned by some busy. Perhaps a senior principal principal road management engineer. Double time at weekends and triple time on bank holidays. Free meals on duty. Contraptions which must cost £100,000 or more a pop, time they are erected. Now occasionally these things carry useful information, but the rest of the time they add to the considerable visual clutter on our roads and leave one wondering about the huge amount of money that someone must have made by foisting so many of the things on the unsuspecting public purse.

And today, up comes Epsom & Ewell borough council. Someone has sold them a whole lot of mobile display boards, maybe eight feet square. These things can be programmed to display interesting messages in very bright, yellow flashing lights. And having bought them, they just have to use them. So today, several of these things have been posted on the way to Cheam to tell me about forthcoming gas pipe works in Ewell High Street. Yet more visual clutter, distracting me from the perilous business of staying alive on a bicycle in fast moving traffic. Bring back the olden days when they just stuck up a few posters. Quite sufficient, possibly efficient and hugely cheaper.

But there is some good news. Yesterday, the celandines at the bottom of the garden (stolen some years ago from a back lane hedgerow in Exminster, thrived since) looked absolutely great in the bright sunlight. Flowers fully open. A proper sort of flower with a proper balance between green and colour, unlike some of those gaudy tropical things you see on films.

And this was capped by one of the best cow chops I remember eating. Nicely framed in new season cabbage from Portugal and rice from somewhere. The mushrooms were probably the only item that came from England. But the lunch was none the worse for that.

Mushroom tip: cook in a smaller amount of butter and water. Pour juices into roasting tin, swill about a bit then pour back over mushrooms.

As a former public servant, I feel I must join the chorus on this subject. In my day, significant fiddling on the expenses was one of the few things you got the rapid push for. Significant cock-up on the work front and you might get shunted to some backwater (I remember being told when I was young that the traditional backwaters for no-hopers were premises, statistics and personnel. I was statistics) but you would not get fired. Now in this case, the fiddling is insignificant, accidental even rather than deliberate. And apart from the fact that sex and money in high places is always good for a laugh and a joke, I do believe that it is just one more nail in the coffin of disrepute into which our governments have been falling for some time. Something which eats away at the core of our democracy, something which has had awful consequences in the past. It also draws attention to the fact that the way that pay and rations are managed for our politicians is risible, and while the linkage is unfair (given that most of them do not actually do anything apart from putting money in their relatives' pockets, patting babies in their constituencies and other good deeds of that sort), it does not increase one's confidence that other, rather larger amounts of public money are being spent wisely.

Better luck on the domestic front. While I was surfacing this morning, BH mentioned that the washing machine was taking rather a long time about its business. Maybe time to buy a new one. This really galvanised me into action and on return from the baker a few hours later, dragged the washing machine out of it hole. Disconnected the electricity. Removed the waste pipe from its holder. Then inspected the back of the thing to find that that the back did not come off in the way of its predecessors. Reduced to reading the manual (thoughtfully kept by BH in a plastic bag on top of the machine) where I learn that there was no need to have dragged the thing out of its hole at all. This fine new machine has a waste water inspection hatch at the front. So I open the hatch - something that does not even require a screwdriver, phillips or otherwise - and drain off a bit of water containing a bit of gray gunk. Then open up the pump chamber to find three peices of bent wire, a legacy of some bit of outdoor DIY or other which had got stranded in a shirt pocket. Maybe they account for the strange behaviour? In the meantime I collect a few points for trying.

Two of the three new ponds definately on the move now. The sedge is growing, albeit slowly, and its water has cleared. The marigold in growing rather faster, is now up to three or four bright yellow flowers and its water has cleared. But the third pond, that with the water lilly, is still rather murky and there is no sign of lilly action. On the other hand, the surface of the pond is covered in an interested green pattern, made up of green foam. It reminds me rather of one of those arial photographs of the Amazon, mainly green but with various waterways wandering around. A linked archipelago of bright green, floating on a sea of dull green. Odd newt bobbing about. But what is making the green foam? Waste products of newts? Algae? Decomposition of failed lilly?