Saturday, October 31, 2009
Gun fun
Came across a blogging lady (address on application) yesterday who seems to be very into guns. A couple of quotes: "I carry this as my duty weapon as director of security for a private school". "I am getting ready to enter a police academy and need advice on which handgun to purchase". In between the two there is a lot of stuff about things called Taurus guns (http://www.taurususa.com/. Glossy looking site). While it is not clear whether the two quotes come from the same person, it is clear that there are people out there who really love guns. Who sound as if they keep their guns in beautiful mahogany boxes with dark blue velvet lining. I met a chap once from Hertford, Connecticut who was very into fancy shotguns. He might have been into boxes. But I have not yet met a hand tool using craftsman who drooled over his tools. In my limited experience, craftsmen like to have decent tools, but they do not sit up at night over them. The one possible exception was a car mechanic who was hooked on Snap-on (http://www.snapon.com/) hand tools, to the extent of having a special wheeled cupboard to keep them in. So the question is, do we really approve of people who drool over guns? Do we care?
Now if one was a soldier, it would seem reasonable enough. You are probably going to want the best gear you can get your hands on. You may well spend quality time talking about it. Cleaning it. Taking it to pieces and putting it back together again. Tenth century soldiers of wealth used to spend a great deal on their swords. Amongst other things they liked to work a lot of gold into the pommel. Pounds of the stuff it seems, the idea being to provide some balance to the weight of the blade. Plus, incidentally, to show off. They must have been very hot on wrist exercises for this to be a good thing in battle, which sometimes went on all day. But I am not sure that I want civilians getting similarly enthused.
That said, when I was a child, say around the age of 13, a gang of us were very keen on penknives, used for various scout-like purposes on our roams around the neighbouring lands and woods. And the quality of one's penknife did affect one's status. Something which must have stuck, as in my closing years in the world of work I used a rather splendid penknife from Laguiole (http://www.layole.com/, cunningly the first hit if you ask Mr G. about French pen knives) as the bread knife with which to prepare my lunch. I believe I could have been done for an offensive weapon if caught with it blade out in the wrong circumstances, the blade being a little longer than the magic 3 inches or something; fortunately this was never put to the test. I was always very discrete when using it outside. I dare say that if guns had been available all those years ago, we might well have enthused about them too. Fortunately they were not, and now, as an adult, not very interested any more.
A few days ago the DT announced that policemen are going to patrol dodgy areas, presumably in London, carrying machine guns. Glock & Wesson or something. Not at all sure about this. Given their rather dodgy record of blasting off at the wrong person and blasting off inappropriately at the right person, do we really want them waving machine guns about? Does this really deter bad people any more than wearing protective clothing and carrying a more modest handgun? Or even a serious baton?
And then today it announces that a scientific advisor to HMG who had the temerity to suggest in public that maybe fags and booze do more damage than cannabis and ecstasy and that maybe we need to rethink things a bit in this area. Bearing in mind that lots of otherwise decent people are very keen on one or more of the substances mentioned. Now while if both A and B are bad with A more bad than B, and A is legal and B is not, it does not follow that one should make B legal. But, if A and B are related activities, it does suggest something of a muddle. Maybe that the law is a bit of an ass. Now while it is true that the various parts of HMG do need to stick to the party line or the whole will become incoherent, and so this scientific advisor maybe stepped out of line, I do have a lot of time for his suggestion. Our present arrangements in this whole area are indeed a incoherent muddle.
Lastly a factlet about incest from the same source at that about pommels. It seems that the small gene pool available to inbred groups is not the only problem. It seems also that middle size groups - say in the clans of the aboriginal inhabitants of Australia - which allow inbreeding fairly rapidly break up into small size groups, this threatening the integrity of the sensible sized, viable, middle sized group. The solution is exogamy, so that the men of one group have to import women from another group as mates. That this addresses the gene pool issue is clear enough. Presumably the idea on the second point is that by importing a mate one is not making a special tie to another member of one's own group, or making a special enemy of another spurned, member of one's own group. Outsider mates, if that is the rule, bother no-one.
Friday, October 30, 2009
Consistancy of lentil soup
First thing on Tuesday, around 0930 that is, very impressed to take delivery of a couple of books from Amazon which I had ordered around 1200 the day previous. Given the shennanighans on the postal front, thought I would try for express delivery or some such. Amazon seemed to have various offerings on their front. At £8, it did not seem an unreasonable proportion of the total bill. So at 0930 the day following, a van from some outfit called Citylink turned up with large box containing two books. Both of which turned out to be OK, something one cannot always be sure of buying sight unseen.
Anyway, resolved to take more care with measuring in future, in order to bring some consistency to consistency. Then had the odd thought that the way forward would be to drill a small hole - maybe 1.5mm in diameter - in the side of the soup pan at the desired level. Water in the pan would then find that level, provided, of course, that one had a level surface on which to place the pan. During the cooking operations a plug would be a good idea. Something hard and plastic, the texture perhaps of lego. One of those plastic holders used for erecting candles on birthday cakes in the fifties would be just the thing. Going further, one might have several holes, each marking the proper level for some recipe or other.
On Wednesday, neck of lamb stew, with the large soup pan being repurposed as the large stew pan. Balance turned into soup for supper yesterday.
On Thursday, watched a slab of Wycliff on ITV3 (where the advertisements must be up to a quarter or so of the running time. Not as bad as the US but heading that way). Where the police side use a white board to draw a diagram of their case, with added pictures. Not something that Morse or Poiret stoop to; they believe that it can all be done with the little grey cells without the need for props.
All of which more or less, for once, determined my dream of last night. I was back in Cambridge and my mother was about - not someone whom I recollect being in a dream before. She had the bright idea, that when making neck of lamb stew, rather than cooking the greens separately, one just shoved a few heads of greens down the side of the stew, entire. I was rather shocked by this but did nothing about it, choosing instead to retire to the next room to examine the book which had just arrived. I had been looking for a biology textbook and chose this one from a catalogue. It turned out to be rather larger than I expected. To the point where it was not a book in the ordinary sense at all. One had a display contraption, rather in the form of a triptych, maybe 2 feet high by 4 feet across. The left hand panel (of the three) contained rows of nifty little plastic pockets. The idea was that each chapter of the book was printed on a little booklet, maybe 3 inches wide by 4 inches high, and one arranged the booklets of the book in the plastic pockets of the left hand panel. A piece of blue card in each pocket made it visually obvious when its booklet was missing. A neat little device, but taken as a whole, all seemed rather tedious. Not too sure that I had made a good choice although still trying to maintain denial. Then there were a whole lot of blank booklets, of the same dimensions, in which one made notes and which one stored in the pockets on the centre and right hand panels. There was some way of linking pockets, some sort of cross referencing mechanism, but I don't recall how that worked. Maybe in the dream it was just there, as an idea, without being condensed into a mechanism that stood some change of working. Ribbons or something. Some rather officious person comes to show me how it all works. Getting even more doubtful about the whole business and wake up.
Wednesday, October 28, 2009
Abandon ship!
For once in a while, I am admitting defeat. During the local mental health awareness week at Epsom Library, I borrowed a more or less new copy of 'History of Madness' by Michel Foucault, partly on the strength of a heavy endorsement reproduced inside the front cover by R. D Laing, a somewhat renegade psychiatrist of yesteryear (see http://laingsociety.org/biograph.htm), partly on the strength of a forward by Ian Hacking, the writer of a book I think I have noticed here. The book appeared to be unread, despite having been loaned out to a Warwickshire library at some point.
I have now been trying for some weeks and one renewal to properly get to grips with its 725 pages, including appendices, notes and index. Tried starting at the beginning and started well. Some interesting stuff on the perception and treatment of fools at the end of the middle ages in western Europe. But got bogged down. Upped sticks and tried dipping in at various other places through the 725 pages. Got bogged down again in clouds of what I take to be French style philisophising. Maybe not helped by being in translation, but my French is not good enough to read this sort of thing in the original. All rather a shame as I think there is good stuff inside the clouds. But life is too short. Michel has had his ration of my quality time.
And then, drawn by the word consciousness in the title, a subject in which I take an interest, I try to read a hefty review of a philosophy book, the review being by that philosophical eminence Jerry Fodor. Slightly irritated by his homely style, thinly scattered with slightly quaint slang. (Odd to be irritated as it is a style I try for myself). But he makes a lot of waves about two examples. First example is that we have two identical glasses full of what appears to be water. But one is full of water and one is full of something else altogether. Second example is that of a well camouflaged brown moth sitting on a brown tree trunk. I gaze intently at that bit of the tree trunk, not seeing the moth, at least in the sense that I am not aware of it. Fodor, and the book he is reviewing, manage to make an awful lot of this sort of thing. It seems that it bears hard on what we mean by a concept. But I think they are both barking up the wrong tree. Trying to tie down what a concept - like tree or number 2 - in abstract is not the way forward. What we should be trying to do is work out how the brain - which is only a fancy computer - does things. For example, what is the balance of information flow when I see a dog? Does the dog inform my concept of dog or does my prior concept of dog inform what I see? (An issue which, to be fair, gets a mention in the review). And it may well be that the concept we have of concept does not map at all cleanly onto the goings on brainside. But trying to find out is more worthy - at least more interesting as far as I am concerned - than the sort of speculations that push their buttons. Remain unconvinced that philosophy as presently practised is worth the shelf space. But presumably somebody has been so convinced so I rest content, if aside.
Next puzzle comes from the world of marketing. I have been pondering about the use of tokens like 'old-fashioned', 'home made' and 'artificial' in advertising. All tokens which to my mind are bivalent; that is to say, depending on context, they might have a bad flavour or a good flavour. So if you say that the jam has been made according to an old-fashioned recipe you are puffing it. But if you say that the vacuum cleaner has been made according to an old-fashioned design you are probably panning it. Now one can usually assume that advertisements are more into puff than pan, but that is not good enough. If the word is to carry some positive weight, it is not enough to be able to work out that that is what the advertiser intended. The weight, the good association has to be there. So when advertisers use these words, how can they be sure? Do they do surveys and tests to check things out? Do they avoid such words?
PS I included artificial in the list as I am amused by its more or less entirely negative connotation. But I am sure that there was a time when to be made by art, rather than just landing on the dung heap from somewhere, was regarded as a good thing. So bivalency of a sort.
Worn down by all this, cleared the brain with a visit to the tip at Wandsworth, with their array of giant walk in bins, each about the size of a standard container. We had an empty one all to ourselves. Very satisfying way to dispose of a car load of mixed rubbish. Must have been room for 100 or more such loads in the thing. The attendants did not seem anything like as fussed about recycling as the ones in Surrey. Nor did we have to present any credentials.
One day I shall have to try and organise a visit to the giant waste transfer station next door. Giant red shed of complicated shape. It might involve the lorries full of rubbish driving up a great ramp to dump their stuff onto a gravity feed conveyor belt - rather in the way the cows have to walk up a great ramp at slaughterhouses so that their carcases can be gravity fed in the same way.
Tuesday, October 27, 2009
Beans means Heinz
Having made baked beans the hard way the other day, with chick peas, have been moved to try the real thing, our larder having acquired a tin from Exminster recently. So on the first outing, most of the tin on white toast, about 1cm thick, without butter. On the second outing, the remains of the tin on white bread, details otherwise the same as before. Not as interesting as the chickpea variant but there is no doubt that it comes much cheaper and quicker from a tin. I preferred the toast version; the smoothness and sweetness of the beans needing a bit of crunchiness for variety.
Moving back to more exalted topics, I continue to ponder about human rights. Consider this DT inspired example, it not mattering much whether it is true or not. It could easily be. Suppose we have a black Nigerian lady in this country, illegally. That is to say that she arrived on a visitor's visa, went to ground and has been working hard as a chambermaid in some otherwise respectable hotel since. Or perhaps as a skivvy for some otherwise respectable cabinet minister. Suppose also that she has a ten year old daughter. The immigration people then catch up with the lady. They do not believe her story that she will be tortured if returned to Nigeria and make plans to do just that. The daughter has to go too. Now here we have a problem. The daughter is a child and got here under her mother's wing. Not her fault that she is here. But she now likes it here and will kick and scream if we try to remove her. She wants to stay whether or not her mother does. We may well inflict various kinds of social worker attention requiring trauma if we persist with removal. Now, on the one hand, despite our colonial guilt and so forth, I do not believe that the UK has a duty to feed and clothe all the poor of the world, even all the poor of Nigeria, a former colony. On the other hand, deportation seems a bit unfair on the child. Not very nice either for those Securicor chaps whom we hire to do our dirty work to have to carry kicking and spitting child onto aeroplane - assuming that they do not enjoy that kind of thing. Separating her from her mother not too hot either. I don't see any good solution to all this. I tried airing the problem in TB where, to be fair, I got a hearing. But all too difficult after a few pints; people would rather talk about ladders and what Mary was up to after closing time last night. I wonder if the Guardian did any better?
One answer might be that once people are in for so many months, they are legal. Rather like the outlaws of Robin Hood's day who got off if they survived as outlaws for a year and a day. They became regular inlaws again. But I think the price of this answer would be that control on entry would become very fierce. Or if that was too difficult in our open sort of country, that control after entry would become very fierce. Much day to day harassment of blacks in the streets who look a bit illegal. So this would not be too hot either.
And then there is the cost-benefit problem. Enforcement in this case probably costs much more than it is worth. Much more than it would cost to provide the extra infrastructure needed to support two more people. And, if we suppose that the lady is paying income tax, she might even be paying her way in that regard. So we are enforcing for the sake of example. Punitive damages to deter others. But I think that this bit is OK. If you are going to have rules, you have to enforce them. Just don't push it too far.
At least as a retired person, I have done my bit. Not up to me to dream up solutions to these problems any more. Let the next lot do their best. I can burble in the boozer with a clear conscience.
Monday, October 26, 2009
Human rights
I see another teacher has been busted for getting a bit physical with a pupil. In this case a long serving special needs teacher who bundled an offensive special needs pupil out of his class. Fined £3,000 or something and every prospect of losing his job. What on earth are teachers supposed to do with misbehaving pupils who do not respond to the voice? And given that not everybody is gifted with a voice of power, there have to be other options. If we insisted that all teachers were brilliant we might be a bit short; so while getting mildly physical works, why not? Calling the police not really a very good option in the middle of a class, even supposing they were to turn up in half an hour or so. Why should the brat get away with it? Why should his or her parents be able to scream blue murder about their little darling? Who is not a little darling. Maybe we should get the people who make all these rules to try a few days in a special needs school for adolescents and see how they get on.
I also see that the Czechs are worried about another aspect of human rights. All those Germans who were ejected from the Sudetenland without notice or compensation at the end of the second war (sixty years ago that is) are exploring whether they can use human rights to get something back. Now while the ejection was a bit crude and few of those ejected were war criminals, the ejection was a political act a long time ago. I am not sure that human rights is or should be very applicable to that sort of thing. And what about the Palestinians? And the Diego Garcians? If the human rights net is cast too wide, I suspect the principal beneficiaries will be the lawyers. Remedy should be a political, not a legal, matter.
Presumably the US has not signed up, given the way it treats some of its prisoners. Presumably their lawyers are already doing well enough, thank you. Which reminds me that I read somewhere once that the road to corporate dizzy heights in the US lies through law school, whereas in the UK it lies through the accountancy crammer. Or perhaps this was a deduction from watching films set in the US.
Watched one such the other night called 'The Truman Show' and very entertaining it was too. The first time I have watched something on page 1 or main television for a long time. From the late nineties and about a chap who, from birth, had unknowingly been the centre of an elaborate soap. His whole world, apart from himself, was a film studio. A very large film studio, including roads, sea and weather (sometimes more localised than intended), in addition to lots and lots of actors and lots and lots of hidden cameras. The product was broadcast continuously, making its dosh from collateral merchandising rather than from advertising. Apart from being a good film, the thing that most interested me was where did the story come from? As a child - say twelve or thirteen - I sometimes used to have fantasies about being the centre of such a performance. That I was the only real person and everything else around me was a fix. Nonsense, but I subsequently read somewhere that it was fairly common nonsense, a fairly common fantasy. So I suspect that this is the ultimate source of the story.
Moving from fantasies to aristos., the last but one TLS carried a full page review of a book about a book about aristos.. That is to say a book which claimed to unlock the key to Brideshead Revisted. It says something about the Brit. fascination with the aristos. that used to run the place that such a book should be written and that it should attract so much space in a respectable literary mag.. It seems that the posh people that the original book was built on were a fairly rum lot. Drunks, druggies, the lot. But one aspect of the rumness did not get a mention, which omission drew down a hurt letter in the following TLS. From someone whose mother had spent time in the in-castle orphanage run by the chatelaine, the chatelaine on which one of the characters of Brideshead was built. It seems that the orphanage was run on rather Victorian lines with the orphans, who spent their weekdays doing the castle laundry, and their Sundays being paraded (for the real guests) in the castle church, being seriously underfed. Next time I come across a copy of Brideshead I must see if the orphans get a mention there.
This following TLS also included a long review article about a book about modern art. The reviewer was brave enough to say that some people thought that most of the work of the Brit. Art. crew was an embarrassing con trick. Pretentious and sometimes offensive rubbish talked up to dizzy prices by people dazzled by the emperor's new clothes. People who are terrified of being thought to miss some important point or some important new trend. People who are desperate to keep their grip on the arty gravy train and all the recreational substance fuelled fun which goes with it. All credit to these entrepreneurs of art who can pull such lucrative stunts off, but we are not going to clap forever. Maybe the next reviewer will be brave enough to say that he thinks such and such, rather than reporting that someone else thinks such and such.
Saturday, October 24, 2009
More computer written letters
Today it is the turn of those nice people from HMCR. So I get a letter from their computer asking me whether, given that I have paid 40 years worth of national insurance contributions and that I need 30 years worth to get a full state pension when I am 65, whether I would like to top up my contributions for last year, when I contributed nothing. The only possibility of there being any sense in this was that BH would not be eligible for bereavement benefit unless I have 40 years contribution. Without giving any clues in the letter to when she might be eligible and what she might get if she was. As far as I can make out from their web site she would not be eligible. What about all the poor saps who do not do Internet or who maybe do not read?
But an interesting factoid for any DIY person who might be thinking of laying some kerb stones. I noticed today that when the granite kerb stones were laid around here a long time ago, well before you had the sort of stone saws you have now, the form was to bed the stone in concrete with about half an inch between them, making room for a mortar joint. Most of these joints seems to have fallen out now. But if you are laying sawn granite stones - which seems to be the sort of kerb stone in vogue at the moment- or if you are using common or garden concrete ones, you bed them in concrete in the same way, but but them up to each other with no mortar joint between them. Large wooden mallet - something I think used to be called a beetle - needed to tap one stone onto its predecessor. That apart, I would have thought that sawn granite was a lot dearer than concrete and not any prettier. So why are they doing it? Should I complain about the waste to our local council? Do I complain to Epsom and Ewell Borough Council, Surrey County Council, the Highways Authority or the Department of Transport Consumer Council - assuming that both department and council have survived the vicissitudes of the reorganisations of the last few years.
Along the way I found out that the Cheam baker had been mass producing small carrots, presumably with sugar. Maybe an inch and a half long. BH tells me that this is normal for carrot cake, but I have never seen a carrotted carrot cake. Usually just to much goo and icing on an otherwise useful cake which stands in the cafe well. Must look out.
Got back to browse the DT. Irritated by an advertisement which told me I could have a great heap of Beatrix Potter worth £200 for £20. Being in a pedantic mood, I thought that this was rubbish. If they were worth £200, no-one is going to sell them to me for £20. Even with the minor catch that I have to sign up with the Folio people to the extent of two books further. Why do advertisers have to bombard us with this rubbish? Have they no manners?
Years ago I was less pedantic and actually signed up with these people. I think the special offer was a whole lot of Oxford History of England for next to nothing. Good buy despite their being some kind of low grade reprint, maybe involving photography. The catch was that one was hard pressed to find two other books from the catalogue that one wanted. Plus, to my mind, the Folio peoples' own books are a very mixed bag and some of them poor, as pieces of book production that is. Pretentious but poor.
Friday, October 23, 2009
Grumpy old man
First grump is about the fact that someone has invented wide format printing on sheets of plastic. And like the atomic bomb, once invented it does not go away. But it means that anyone, with even a modest publicity budget, can afford to have sheets of plastic, maybe 8 feet by 3 feet, advertising some worthy or revenue generating event, or other, strapped to their railings. Schools and sports facilities seem to be particularly prone to this sort of thing. Generally adding to the generally large amount of visual clutter about.
Like those people who like to drive in gentle rain with their headlights on.
And then we have the fun of filling in forms on computers. Some weeks ago I participated in the completion of an application form for a visa to visit Russia on a computer. Leaving aside the fact that the whole bureaucratic thing would have done well in the dying days of the first Russian empire, they had chosen to deliver their form using Acrobat. Now Acrobat at some point must have issued a forms version. That is to say you make the form available over the web, then punters can fill it in and print it using nothing more than Acrobat, freeware from Adobe which most PC's have on-board anyway. Not expecting the punters to have Word and not having to go to the expense and bother of a proper online application. The catch was that lots of the questions, if taken seriously, required quite long answers, far longer than the number of charecters allowed by the form. And the fields did not grow to hold the answers. So one was caught between a rock and a hard place; between being told to tell the whole truth and nothing but the truth, with the Lubyanka and Room 101 looming in the background, and a field which could only manage half the truth. So we settled for some interesting abbreviations, which in the event, served their turn. But one might have thought that a wannabee-serious-country-again like Russia could have done better.
Then we move onto proper online applications. So today with Shearings the bus people (http://www.shearings.com), who have quite a whizzy system. You can do things like ask for a gluten free diet - and on the one occasion tested it worked. But you do have to do things in the right order. You have to start off by specifying a particular holiday for a particular date. If you then find that you cannot have the seat number on the bus that you want or that you cannot have the number of rooms with a sea view that you want, you have to go back to the beginning. But at least either they, or possibly Chrome, remember a lot of what you typed last time around and do most of it for you.
Feeling very pleased with ourselves, we then moved onto Epsom coaches (http://www.epsomcoaches.com/) , a company which I am fond of because I really like the crimson and cream livery of their coaches. Very smart to my mind. But perhaps because they are a smaller company and cannot afford to spend so much on their computers, we did not get on so well with them. Fell at three hurdles. First, BIL wanting to see some bulbs in the Netherlands (I seem to remember recently that the Netherlanders do not like their country being called Holland. Equivalent to talking about Surrey when you mean England), we asked for holidays in Europe and got nothing. Asked for all holidays and up they popped. At which point the left hand brain power of BH kicked in. Apparently I was selecting on the name of a brochure, not on a destination. Bulbs did not figure in the brochure called European Holidays. Get through that and onto the seat allocation system. BIL, being short, likes to sit in front. But although the system appeared to know all about seat numbers, you were not allowed to pick one for yourself. It just filled the coach up from the front, working from left to right as you face forward. No chance of buying a block of seats to make up a den at the back of the coach. Crawled through that hurdle, achieving second row seats, and onto insurance where we did not understand what they were asking or what we would be getting. Maybe one needed to have read the small print in their brochure first. Decided to abandon ship - and perhaps abandon the online discount - at that point. We shall go to their office in person tomorrow to to talk to a person. This second person will quite possibly have to talk to the same booking system as us but at least they will be able to explain it as we go along.
On the other hand, the codfish was very good today. 75 minutes at 180C seems to do the business. No pepper, ground or otherwise. Nice and firm as it should be.
In a post luncheon surf, interested to find that asking Mr G. about a colour resulted in the Dulux Paint peoples' main site coming top of the list - http://www.dulux.co.uk. Odd I thought. Then when I tried it, found it was quite good at giving me a sample of a named colour. So fair enough.
Thursday, October 22, 2009
Waste transfer facilities: user policies
I was almost turned away from the Epsom facility the other week as I was not carrying appropriate identification. It seems that London people are free loading on Surrey services who have, in consequence, decided to fight back. No waste transfer without proper identification. On the visit after that I flashed my nice new freedom pass (its second outing) and the guard at the gate was very polite.
So I thought it was time to see how such things were done in Devon. One difference was that all the signage was expressed in terms of recycling centre rather than waste transfer station, let alone tip or dump. The next difference was that no-one cared who I was. I suppose with Exeter being in the heart of Devon, it was not that likely that there would be many alien freeloaders. A much smaller facility than ours at Epsom but much more friendly. Attendants really helpful, first thing in the morning anyway. So a C-max full of assorted rubbish, some of it none to savoury, disposed of in about ten minutes. All terribly wasteful: a lot of the stuff had a fair bit of life in it desite having no resale value. I suppose we are all too rich these days to want hand-me-downs. But the attendants did say that they did their best to find good homes for the rubbish. I dare say they have K-factors about how well they do.
The day before, I had had occasion to talk to a furniture dealer, who having explained that all FIL's perfectly decent brown wood furniture was rubbish (bar one peice) as far as he was concerned and that I would have to pay him well to take it away. He went on to explain that if he took it to the waste transfer station - this being another entrance to what I now know as the recycling centre - he had to pay for the privilege and then whole lot just went to landfill. No nice attendants sorting it all out. Just sling it in the heap and the loader will squish it all into large dustbins for onward transmission to landfill. One day we will have a more coherent approach to all this eco-lark.
When younger, I might have recycled some of the timber into bookcases. Only using hand tools. But while I have the books, I don't have the energy any more. Plus BH might take a dim view as we have a long standing agreement on the shelf metres I am allowed and I have been at max. for some time. So pondering what to do on the furniture front.
The one thing he claimed he could sell was an entirely ordinary chest of drawers. Oak finished, nothing fancy. All the other stuff - some nice cupboards and sideboards - of no interest at all. I suppose as well as having too much money, we also have too much stuff. Furniture built in the twenties and thirties just can't cope with it all. Must have giant fitted wardrobes - which make a room seem a lot smaller - but do pack the stuff in big time.
Having been brought up to wash bottles and jars before recycling them, I tried to wash a more or less full but ancient bottle of gravy browning. Pity, because the ancient gear was much stronger and cheaper than the stuff you get now. The other catch was that I probably used more energy in hot water and detergent cleaning the thing than I saved by recycling it. Plus brown splashes got into all sorts of odd places, some of which I cleaned up.
The dead flies also deserve a mention. There must have been twenty or thirty of them lying about the house, with more expiring as I went. Must be a time of year thing.
Wound up the day with a visit to the pub opposite. By mistake started on Tribute. A perfectly good beer, but a mistake as it is quite widely available in London, unlike the Otter which they also had but which is not. Then onto a special of the day, cottage pie. Which came scalding hot in a shiny white boat with some mixed veg. to the side. Cottage pie decent, although not improved by there being too much butter in or on the potato. I had been told the day before that butter is a good way to tart up reheated potato but it did not do the cottage pie any favours for me. Cottage pie should taste of mutton (or possibly beef) dripping, not butter. I then wondered about the route to my plate. Did the things come off the lorry in the white boats and then, some time later, go direct from freezer to microwave? Or was there one drum of brown stuff and one drum of white stuff, with the pie actually being assembled to order, prior to insertion in the microwave? In which case calling it a special of the day might actually mean something, for a change, my being firmly of the opinion that special of the day is just a marketing ploy. Doesn't mean any more than home cooking. Finished off the meal with Doombar. Another perfectly good beer which is widely available in London.
Must have been good stuff because I became convinced that the beach with ducks in the picture on the wall opposite was covered in pampas grass. Didn't like to inspect it too closely.
Tuesday, October 20, 2009
Baked beans by any other name.
Some people, when they feel the need for baked beans, pop along to Lidl where they can probably be had for 10p a tin. Or 9p a tin if you prefer your baked beans with lumps - aka sausage. It seems that lump is cheaper than bean.
Other people, on the same need, catch a plane to Tenerife in order to buy some garbanzos at one of the bars there. Chick peas with pork and other matters. Very good they are too. And I dare say the Tenerifeans would be very pleased to see you, their being rather short of Brit money what with the credit crisis and the sliding pound. Remember not to wear your Barca football scarf; they are mad on Real Madrid. I remember being in a bar behind the bus station at Puerto and only escaping by protesting that I was a Manchester United supporter and nothing to do with Barcelona. That little difficulty over they were very hospitable. Even more so if you can say garbanzos so they understand you first time around. A trick I have yet to master.
Us Epsomians do it the hard way. Buy a pork belly. Have it boned. Cut a six inch square from the fillet and separate the fat from the lean. A fiddly procedure for which you will need time and a small sharp knife. You will find that the pig seems to have two bands of muscle around its stomach, one paler than the other. I forget to check whether the grains are cross wise, as in the layers of veneer in plywood. Meanwhile, soak two pounds of chick peas overnight. At the same time, boil up the bones from the pork belly. After about three hours, strain stock and remove meat from the bones, gristle and pipe. Return meat to the stock. Add the strained chick peas. Bring to boil. After a bit of boiling turn down to simmer. Add three medium onions, chopped. Add three medium tomatoes chopped. Simmer for an hour or so. Work in some corn flour and tomato puree (this last cheating a bit) to thicken the gravy a bit. Add some chopped streaky bacon from happy pigs from Cheam. Add the chopped pork belly from step 1. Simmer for another hour or so. Add some button mushrooms and serve your gallon or so of garbanzos. Not all that differant from the stuff from the tin. It all goes to show that you can do it if you try. And you learn that, as the Heinz tin points out, they are saving you a lot of bother with a complicated recipe.
On the second outing, it being unlikely that you will do the whole gallon on the first outing, add a little flaked baked cod and rather more flaked boiled smoked (not dyed) haddock. This adds a bit of heart-healthy alpha-15d oil as well as a bit of additional zing to the flavour. Go for it!
As an optional extra, roll up the balance of the pork belly and roast it. Makes a good succulent joint, rather cheaper than leg, blade bone or loin. Or even one of those strange cuts sold by Mr S..
Monday, October 19, 2009
Monday morning blues
Started off the day by being invited to view my gas account on the British Gas web site. Very whizzy thing but deeply depressing. Very busy design, festooned with offers and sugary computer generated messages. Couldn't make head nor tail of it all. Bring back the days when you could trust British Gas to sell you gas at a fair price without all this fuss and bother.
So I thought I had better have a crack at module 1 of NVQ (level 5) (media studies) to take my mind of it. Take 1 free Evening Standard from 15 October and do a bit of content analysis. Not actually read the thing you understand, just do a bit of counting up. So I find that of the 64 pages 32 are completely clear of advertising, if you overlook the 5 pages of listings - sport, TV and city prices. Very odd that these two key numbers are both powers of two? Is the thing produced by taking a very large sheet of paper and folding it 6 times? Does the editor have a numerology thing going, like so many giants of the 17th and 18th centuries? 10 pages were entirely adverts and the remaining 22 pages were mixed. Overall, quite cleverly distributed so as to give a nice variegated and sparkly feel to the thing. One did not feel overwhelmed by the adverts. Something the Sun has always been very good at, in contrast to the Mirror which, to me anyway, always has a very dull feel to it. Never mind what it might or might not actually be saying; I very rarely get that far. It would be interesting to get a peek at the Evening Standard numbers. How much does the thing cost to produce, how much do they charge for adverts? Does the price for adverts vary with shape, position in paper, position in week or circulation on the day? Presumably an interesting judgement call here: a paper which is entirely adverts would not have a very good circulation. I feel one of those graphs one used to do in economics coming on. Strong on concept and shape, weak on actual numbers.
And while we are on the subject of adverts, intrigued by the fact that the Yorkshire Tourist Board sees fit to be the prime sponsor for peak time ITV3. Which must account for 97% of my TV watching, being a steady diet of murder mystery retreads. Just the thing in the early evening.
Moving on, it seems that one Fiona Mantelpeice has won the Booker Prize for a peice of historical fiction. Also that there is quite a lot of heavily researched historical fiction about these days. So heavily researched that the resultant fiction can get a bit heavy. A lot of fact cluttering up the love interest. So I spent the second half of last week pondering on the evils of historical fiction, of books where you can never be sure whether the interesting fact you had come across was indeed, fact or fiction. Could you safely peddle it as fact in the pub? Now I like my peddlings to be reasonably true. I don't like to peddle something which sounds factlike but which in fact is not. Leaving aside a bit of occasional banter. So if I want to learn about Henry VIII, I turn up a history book, not a story book.
I then thought that perhaps the answer was to mark the text of the story book in some way. So the pillars of fact around which one arranges the romance to be printed in distinguishing red. Or perhaps twigs of fact. Which, for some reason, reminds me of an uncle who invited you to make a few scribbles on a blank sheet of paper which he would then proceed to incorporate into a picture.
And then I remembered that lots of books which I do regard as respectable incorporate fact. So War and Peace includes lots of facts. Facts which includes people, such as Napoleon and facts in the form of period colour, most of which I have always assumed to be reasonably accurate. Nevertheless, the main interest is not in those facts. And then there is a much more recent book called 'The Battle' by someone called Rimbaud, a fictional reconstruction of the battle of Aspern, an unpleasant slogging match of a battle. Now Rimbaud probably did lots of research, read lots of memoires and his pillars of fact are in consequence quite thick on the ground. Here much more of the interest is in the facts of the matter. Love interest quite slender.
All of which leaves me thinking that my initial disdain for the Mantelpeice effort was quite misplaced. A disdain fuelled by something quite other than the literary merits of the case. Something to try and fathom on the way to the baker.
One answer would be that if the Mantelpeice effort sells, why bother enquiring further? Selling well is sufficient unto itself. Honour is its own reward and all that. But I like to think one can do better.
Friday, October 16, 2009
Freedom pass
A trip to Earlsfield yesterday to inaugurate my new freedom pass. But a sullied inauguration. As I was about to engage with the ticket machine at Epsom station, someone tapped me on my shoulder and gave me a nearly new travelcard. I accepted, despite thinking that using someone else's travelcard was probably some kind of violation. Earlier moralising on such subjects as MPs' expenses notwithstanding. The combination of wanting neither to give offence by declining the travelcard nor to be mistaken for a prat, weighed more heavily than the theft from southwest trains. Then I wondered whether the ticket machine would object to the card's being used for two outward journeys from Epsom. As luck would have it the barrier was open. Then, careful reading of the travelcard on the train revealed nothing about non-transferability; unlike pay and display car park tickets which certainly do so reveal. Some even include bits of your car number just to be on the safe side. There was a general reference to rules and regulations paraded at great length somewhere else and it did say not for resale. So maybe I was not committing an offence after all? Decided that in the unlikely event of being challenged by a roving southwest trainer, I would brass it out. Sure someone gave it to me. Where does it say that he shouldn't have? Unlikely event did not come to pass and got through the barrier at Earlsfield OK. Walked one way to Tooting and bused back, as is my custom. Sort of inaugurated the freedom pass by flashing it in the bus, despite having the travelcard in my pocket. Barriers at both Earlsfield and Epsom open by this time so travelcard not further tested.
Various changes afoot in Epsom, first our Young's pub, the Kings Arms, has fallen for gastro. A pub which used to serve people who wanted to drink beer rather than people who wanted to ingest Thai fish cakes with glutone sauce. Pub shut while major building works carried out. Including a fifty gallon stainless steel jus container being installed in the roof and a similar drizzle container being installed in the basement. It seems that jus is best delivered by gravity, just dripping down from the roof, whereas drizzle is best delivered under slight pressure from the cellar, in the same way as fizzy beer. I think I also saw specialised wooden racks going in for all that shiny white crockery which is all the rage now. If stuck, http://www.ustores.com/de_gruchy.aspx in Jersey carry a goodly range.
We will see if whoever is pouring hundreds of thousands into yet another gastro pub will get his or her money back. Place a bit out of town although that does mean that it has quite a decent sized car park.
Second, our station. There have been mutterings about redevelopment for 20 years but it looks as if they are finally on the move. I had been concerned that they were going to erect some whacking great tower over the whole station, doing away with the handsome Victorian arcade roofs over the platforms. Making the place all dark and dingy like the western side of Victoria station, not to mention the view from the houses beneath, in Hazon Way. But reassured by the slimline exhibition - not a grand affair with computer mockups and models at all. Maybe developers are feeling the recessionary breeze - or perhaps this one has already been given the nod on the QT so does not need to go a bundle on this consultation lark. It turns out that they are not going to build over the platforms at all, just on the footprint of the station entrance building and a bit of scrubby car park. Cramming in car park, shops, station ticket hall, flats (with separate entrances for proper folk and affordables) and a hotel. And while we will lose some of the view to the east from the platform, their general feel is not going to change that much. Maybe you can't build over the platforms as they are on an embankment which would not take the weight of a real building. So I am content. Pity that the space has to be sweated in this way and we couldn't just settle for a new station entrance building. But I guess I have to move with the times. If the Hazon Way people want to protest, that is up to them.
Thursday, October 15, 2009
Afternoon lecture
Having just taken down a good portion of beef stew, involving amongst other things, a good dose of butter beans (tinned, from Mr S.) and a fine crinkly cabbage, time for the post prandial lecture. Standing in for the listen with mother of my childhood, which I believe ran at about this time of day. If I had been especially good I think I was allowed to listen to it perched on top of our step ladder, imported for the purpose into what was called our lounge. Not sure if this is a word much in use, in this sense anyway, these days. The ladder, I am pleased to report, remains in possession of the family, albeit a little holed by the wood worms. Good bit of beech work otherwise.
The text for the day is the notion of an individual, which one might start by thinking was entirely straightforward. Not worth talking about whether there are four apples or fifteen apples. Three people or two people.
The thesis for the day is the notion that this concept, like all others, breaks down at the margin. One can always find cases which bend the rules or frustrate the intention of the rules. Something that people who write laws for literal interpretation - this being the Anglo-Saxon custom - should bear in mind.
The first awkward case is that of the siamese twins. Something that occurs, for example, amongst apples as well as amonst people. Two apples which have fused together. To my mind, the answer is that we have two or more individuals here. But it gets more awkward when the siamese twins are not simply two entire people joined by a band of flesh. Maybe the two people share a lower half. More rarely, but I think that it does happen, the two people share an upper half. More speculatively, one person might be entire but have a few extras derived from something that might have become somebody else but in the event got subsumed in the first person. So I might have an extra leg. But I think in this case that I would count as one person, not two.
One option, in the absence of much knowledge of these matters, is that we started with two distinct eggs, fertilised by distinct sperms, which are distinct genetically, but which got a bit mixed up for some reason. Another option, is that we start with one fertilised egg which at some point splits into two clones. But the two clones fail to separate properly and instead of two identical twins we get two siamese twins or worse.
Clones bring me on to the second awkward case. Suppose one has an abandoned beech hedgerow, something that one comes across quite often in the lanes and woods to the south and west of Dorking. So we have a lot of distinct beech trees planted rather close together which grow both upstairs and downstairs. Their roots get all mixed up. Maybe one root from one tree fuses with another root from another tree. Maybe the roots start suckering all over the place. Who is to say how many individuals there are now? Would saying that once a sucker is severed from the mother ship it becomes an individual in its own right work?
A third awkward case arises when this sort of thing happens as a result of gardener intervention. When a bud from one tree is budded onto the trunk of another. When this works one chops the trunk off immediately above the now growing bud and one has roots from one tree and a tree from another. One has fused one individual with another, while preserving the genetic characteristics of both. Suckers from the roots would carry on the line of one tree, seeds from the tree would carry on the line of the other. So both are alive in some sense. A wheeze that does not work in the case of people as we cannot, as yet, reproduce asexually, let alone blend. A much easier trick with plants and one which with larger animals seems to require a wheeze called cloning. Although my understanding is that we probably could do it if it were to be allowed.
A variant, which I was told about many years ago, is that if you put sausages from a good butcher in a suitable growing medium, they will grow. The cells in the meat in the sausages are not so dead that they will not grow and reproduce. At the cell level that is, not the sausage level. I don't know how long the cells will keep this up. Can they carry on forever if you keep feeding it, like a tumour? Not sure that I know what question to ask Mr G. to get the answer to this one. Will have to try a person.
A fourth awkward case arises from collective animals, when it is not clear whether it it better to regard the colony as an individual or the members of the colony. Not thinking here of bees, rather various marine animals where the members are more intimately connected than the bees are in a hive. Mr G. tells me that these things are properly called bryozoans, a term sufficiently obscure not to appear in his spell checker.
An entirely different problem arises with the idea that one should be able to say of any bit of matter whether it is part of some nominated individual or not. That there is a clear sense of this is of the individual and that is not. A scheme which works well enough at a safe distance. But again, breaks down badly close up. So viewed at a suitable magnification, our skin is a rather rough and holey thing. Lots of pot holes and worm holes. Maybe the ruling here is that once a molecule crosses the cellular boundary it becomes part of the individual to which that cell belongs. Sounds well enough, but cells frequently detach themselves from the parent individual and may remain in it's vicinity for some time. Then there are lots of small animals which live in the alimentary canal and sometimes elsewhere - although the first is essential and the latter undesirable. They might spend their entire life swanning around our small intestine. Do we claim them as part of us or are they individuals in their own right?
And now, having exhausted the time allowed to listen with mother, time for the post prandial snooze.
Wednesday, October 14, 2009
Back to normal grub
Now restaurant grub is all very well, especially for BH who enjoys a bit of flummery and a bit less washing up, but it is good to get home to proper cooking after a week of it. So, on Sunday, happy woodland finished chicken from Mr S. for the princely sum of £4.99. Roast with external stuffing , external to avoid FIL gluten problems. Stuffing breadcrumbs (white bread, crust removed), fresh sage, fresh hazel nuts, black pepper, onion, celery, one egg and topped with low grade bacon. This last to provide a bit of fat. Excellent stuff. Not on the same planet as the stuffing served by Mr Paxo or in the Toby Carvery.
Second half of the chicken went for stew. Boil carcase with one large onion for two hours. Pummel occasionally with the potato masher to bring out the juices. Strain. Wash detritus with a small amount of water to extract a bit more juice. Reject detritus. Add four ounces of red lentils. Simmer for a while. Add five medium sized carrots, not peeled but thinly sliced. Simmer for a bit longer, remembering that it is important that the carrots should not be overcooked. Those who like them that way can use tins to save time. Meanwhile, gently fry two large chopped onions in the chicken fat held over from the roasting tin from Sunday. Prepare cold chicken. Prepare mushrooms. Blend the whole lot together and simmer for a few more minutes. Serve with spring cabbage and white rice. Turned out really well. And for some reason tasted of cocoanut. Option 1, there is some active ingredient in common. Option 2, lentils associate to subcontinental food which associates to cocoanut. Option 3, the sauce has very much the texture of that of one of those very mild curries containing cocoanut, so associate directly to cocoanut. Must consult the curry experts in Tooting.
Then, thinking of a Tooting Zimbabwean who had once demonstrated to me the clicking aspects of her native language, coming home the other night, thought I would give clicking a go. Most intrigued to find that one could click more or less continuously, with variations, while breathing both in and out. Now I believe it is possible to blow a wind instrument on this basis, and birds can do it because they can breathe round and round as well as in and out, but I don't see how one can sing without stopping to breathe. Although experiment suggests that one can make noises when breathing in, noises but not song. At least not yet. Presumably singing requires air to be moving over the vocal chords in an upwards direction, on the way out, so that we can hear it. Only the stomach gets to hear what you sing in the downwards direction.
Opening remark notwithstanding, it being a fine Autumn day yesterday, across Epsom Common for lunch at the Star. Not a bad bit of calves liver for boil in the bag (or however they do it). On the way back, very surprised to put up what looked like a buzzard. Never seen such a thing in these parts before. Was it one of those kites which are supposed to be getting more common? Then thought to get back without being irritated by the activities of the eco-vandals, but failed. Stumbled across two of their activities: charcoal and pasture preparation for cows. First thought, very odd how the eco-chain(saw)- gang is allowed to chop trees down wholesale, whereas me, should I have the temerity to want to chop down some middle aged oak tree in my own garden, an oak tree which I planted and which is now smashing the drains, shading the jigsaw table in the back room and taking light from my dahlias, I have to go cap in hand to these very same eco-vandals to get their permission. Very odd.
Second thought, perhaps most of what I want from Epsom Common is peace and tranquillity, untouched by the busy world. A place where it is not all hustle, bustle and activity. Or loud with the chatterings of fools. And so, more or less any purposeful activity is going to detract from that. Doesn't matter how worthy or well-intentioned. To take away from the more or less religious feel to the place. Religious in that one can get the same peace in a large empty church. Just sit there in this large quiet space, with a nice bit of masonic beauty around one for occasional distraction. Maybe a bit of singing in the background.
Freedom pass now turned up, some weeks late. Pipped at the post by some interesting literature from the NHS, triggered by the same birthday event, suggesting that I ought to indulge in a bit of preventative maintenance. But it all looked a bit gruesome and I binned it. Despite the fact that I understand them to fill you so full of Vallium while they do it that you don't care any more. Foolish but there we are.
Chrome threw a wobbly today. Took a reboot and some huffing and puffing to get it back onto the straight and narrow again. It - or something at least, nothing else open at the time - even managed to get in the way of the task manager.
Monday, October 12, 2009
Ecowarriers
Someone else who does not care for some of the trusties who look after our public open spaces. This one near Sheffield. I'm not alone! See http://theblackamoorsite.blogspot.com/.Topic for an educational project
Help at hand for someone in search of a project. Perhaps somebody from our local University of the Media Arts. BH has drawn my attention to the obituary of one Paul Ashbee, an eminent archeologist who died on the 19th August and who was obiturised on the 10th October. BH's interest was in the Mildenhall Treasure Trove, now thought to have been looted from somewhere in Europe at the end of the second world war by our gallant allies. My interest is in the dates. What sort of circumstances result in one being obiturised getting on for two months after the event? Assuming, that is, that the DT has not done a typo. And even if it has, I think the idea remains sound. Step 1: obtain access to a run of DT's. Libraries used to be able to do this, although I suspect you would need to go to a specialist library these days, Step 2: enter key details of all the obituaries onto an Excel spreadsheet. Optional step 3 for those seeking a higher qualification: repeat steps 1 and 2 for 1 or more other quality newspapers. Making sure that the newspaper code is included in key details. Might be an idea to do this anyway, just in case. Step 4: analyse. What is the distribution of obituary lags? What sort of a person do you have to be to rate a two month lag? A three month lag? Compare and contrast the various quality newspapers. Would any of them be open to negociation. I bung you £W and you guarantee me to obuturise me within not less than X days and not more than Y days (of the day of death) provided I die within Z months. Penalty clauses, liquidated damages and all that sort of thing. One might even engage the interest of a bored librarian to the extent that he or she did much of the leg-work for you. Only reasonable in this case that he or she got an hon. mensch. when you came to write the thing up. Along with your long suffering partner and so on.
Holiday reading in Jersey included a slender tome lifted from the second hand bookshop at Earlsfield - an Oxford Classic edition of A. Trollope's autobiography, prompted by some kind words about him in a review of a book about the treatment of lady villains in Victorian fiction in a recent TLS. The reviewer thought that Trollope's treatment of same was both kinder and more sensible than the more emotional treatment in Hardy and Elliot. Anyway, at £2 for a slender tome, rather dear to the cubic inch, but an interesting read all the same. Amongst other things a sort of inverted snobbery in treating his work as a writer, a breed who by the end of his time were supposed to be superior, arty beings with strange life styles, in much the same way as a car mechanic might talk about building up his business of mending cars. A sort of self-help manual for budding writers. Perhaps this last was what he was about, perhaps having seen plenty of hopeful and dewy eyed youngsters crashing onto the rocks of despair. And including a list of all his books and the amount he received from each one of them, down to the last penny. Did quite well as he appears to have averaged more than £2,000 a year over nearly thirty years; quite a good screw in those days. Plus his salary from the Post Office.
As it happens, his mother, F. Trollope, was also a writer, and one who gets a mention in this week's TLS as having been deeply shocked by Jefferson's sexual abuse of the women slaves he owned. A tricky topic these days for a national hero.
Another bit of holiday reading was Narayan, prompted by that same recent TLS. Something I have, for some reason, never tried before. Included an odd story about a young chap who fought off a tiger with furniture. First odd thing was that he managed to chop of three tiger claws using a kitchen knife. Even when barricaded under a very solid table this seems a bit unlikely. I would have thought the tiger would be able to wave his paw around with far too much power for such a thing to be possible. Probably taking your hand off on the way. Second odd thing was the observation that tigers are afraid of chairs. Now I can see some sense in that. A chair is obviously an artefact. Something which is entirely out of place and strange in a jungle. Something which any sensible animal would be afraid of until such time as it knew better.
A thought which reminds me of the park wall we drove past coming out of Weymouth on the way home. Whacking great thing, a brick wall maybe five feet high and miles long, running around the outside of some great man's park. A belt of trees just inside so that from the interior of the park you do not have view of ugly wall. A symbolic wall; too low to keep out either deer or determined people. But a blot on the landscape from the outside. A blot which must have been much worse when it was new. What business does a man have, however rich, enclosing a great chunk of country and asserting his total control of it in this crude way? A softer fence, perhaps chestnut paling, would have been cheaper, more ecological and a much better fit to the countryside. Part of the point being that chestnut paling is see through, unlike a wall which is a blank. A problem of transition. How do I move from the house, onto the ground, out through the park and into the open countryside in an elegant way? The first bit of which problem lots of outdoor sculptures get wrong. That is to say, how to park the sculpture on the ground. What sort of plinth, if any, is appropriate?
The excuse might be that the whacking great wall was just a job creation scheme in some period of agricultural depression. Something a bit less depressing than digging cubic metre holes then filling them up again all day. But a something with a persistent an ugly outcome.
Sunday, October 11, 2009
Ancient monument
Courtesy, wikipedia. View of entrance to passage church mentioned in previous post with newer church on top. Some of the stone facing original if touched up.Vale of tiers
Some time ago I was told by a Tooting Dubliner who used to be in the hotel trade and who during that time did a stint in Jersey, that social life in Jersey was two tier. Apart from what most of us see, there was a thriving underlife, dominated at that time by the Irish who worked the hotels. Before the era of waves of people from other parts of Europe. And so it turned out to be. In our week on the island we visited five public houses. The two in St Helier were what the Epsom Guardian describes as working mens' pubs. We had a drink in one of them although neither sold warm beer. Of the three country pubs, all sold warm beer. Two had mixed company and one was a working mens' pub. We had a drink in two of them. So a far higher proportion, in this small sample anyway, of working mens' pubs.
Restaurants rather better than in Epsom, and rather a lot of them for what is quite a small place. Apart from the large amount of sea food we got through, two notable events. First, we were in a restaurant on the wrong side of the St Helier tracks, that is to say to the west of the large hillock on the western edge of town centre, run by a Portuguese and even containing some Portuguese customers, in addition to the home and away Brits. Amongst other things we had a sea food stew based on dried cod. Very good it was too, discovering along the way that dried cod, even when stewed, is a lot more chewy and bony than the fresh sort and not particularly salty. The proprietor explained that in the olden days, where he came from, there would be racks of cod hanging out to dry outside the houses. The real thing. Sadly no more, the dried cod all coming from kilns in factories. We were much taken to find that he knew all about the Estrella in Vauxhall as he stayed in the nearby Comfort Inn when visiting relatives in the vicinity. He was even keener on what sounded like a similar establishment in Stockwell. Must investigate.
Second, it being a wet day, we had spent the morning creeping around St Helier, taking in, in particular, the fish market and the (in large part) vegetable market. Both large iron, indoor affairs of the sort found on the periphery of England and abroad. The vegetable market boasted very large globe artichokes, good looking spring greens (despite it being October) and a walk in weights and measures office. The main function of this last, we were told by the lady behind the jump, was to provide a public personal weighing service, the sort of scales used by doctors and nurses being provided for the purpose. Not the sort of service our own Epsom Council sees fit to offer. The fish market boasted several large fish stalls, carrying far more fish than it looked likely that they would sell that day, so not as fresh as the fish that the man from Hastings sells (Terry). Plus several dinky fish restaurants in outdoor cafe format. Plus a working mens' cafe called 'Choky's cafe' or some such. Customers a mixture of us, hooded youth of both sexes and a rather dodgy looking lady whom I took to be a drug wreck. Served by a lady who looked poor and overworked (having three children to mind as well as the cafe), but who was uniformly kind and pleasant to all comers. I had a very fine bacon and egg bap. Set me up for the rest of the day.
As it happens there was another working mens' cafe by the car park we were in. Looked to be staffed and used mainly by Portuguese. We would have joined in but there were no free tables at the relevant moment so Choky's cafe got the business instead. And next door to that was a large Salvation Army establishment providing a variety of services.
Jersey being a well churched place generally, with lots of churches in addition to the 12 ancient churches for the 12 ancient parishes. Including some really big methodist temples - churches that is with mock classical facades - pillars and all that sort of thing - some right out of the way in the country. There must have been lots of methodist money on the island at some point.
A tradition which we learned went back some 6000 years as there was a very fine stone age church under a hill erected on the highest point on the island. A passage church which must have been about twenty five yards long, lined with pink granite slabs to side and top and ending in a chamber big enough to stand up in. Granite cap stones of this chamber weighing in at 25 tons or something. Orientated so that the rising sun struck down the length of the thing to the altar stone in the inner chamber at dawn of the spring solstice. From the few remains it had been deduced that the thing was a church rather than a sepulchre, despite antedating druids by some millennia. Biggest and best preserved such thing for many miles around. Rather newer church erected on top of the mound just to show who was boss. In between the two traditions there was a rather murderous george and the dragon story. See http://www.jerseyheritage.org/audio-tours/the-spiritual-landscape for the full story.
Plus a bunker memorial to those who died building fortifications during the war; the bunker having housed those who had manned the wooden watchtower which had been erected next to the church on top of the mound. I had been a bit irritated before arrival by the amount of war talk there seemed to be around Jersey, but once there, realised that the fortification are very extensive and very visible. Gun emplacements all over the place. An expensive place - not least in forced labour lives - many Polish or Russian - to fortify.
Plus a nicely presented museum, one section on island geology and one on island archeology.
Plus our own personal trusty to show us around; a much pleasanter experience than being harangued by the National Trust variety in England.
All in all well worth the £20 or so it took to get the two of us in there.
Saturday, October 10, 2009
De retour de Jersey
We find that the triffids have sprung up in our absence (see 8 August 2009), having been absent in the interval. It looks as if it did rain quite a bit in the week we have been away, so option 1 is that the triffids like water. Option 2 is that they like not being walked on. I shall keep an eye on them and maybe have another go with Mr G. to find out what they really are.
In tracing this post, more bother with the blogsearch. Ask the thing for slime mould and get nothing. Ask it for mould and get something else. Having found the relevant post the hard way - well not so hard. One can scan for the rare pictures quite quickly - and find that the phrase I should have been looking for was slime moulds. So that, I think, is a reasonable cause for complaint. A proper search engine would strip all search terms down to their cores. So that David, david and davids would all reduce to david. OK, so this is not so straightforward with more complicated words - for example irregular verbs - but it is easy enough for regular nouns.
Get back to an interesting picture in today's DT of what appears to be a farmer smoking a cigar while working his laptop on top of a bale, with tractor and dog looking on. Well, not exactly looking on: the dog has clearly found something more interesting than the laptop to gaze at. And to be fair to the DT, the caption says nothing about the scene reproduced being a farmer, even if it has been constructed to give that impression. Leaving aside the disgraceful fact that we have an image of someone smoking a cigar in a family newspaper which might be seen by children, it seems that the POW has been sounding off about how dreadful it is that country dwellers do not have as good access to Broadband as us townies. Now this is all very sad, but what on earth do they expect? If you live in the country you cannot expect all the amenities which can be conveniently provided in a town. You can't have it both ways. One wonders how much longer they will get the benefit of daily deliveries of post, something else which must cost a fortune. All these subsidies and they have the cheek to tell us subsidising townies that we shouldn't get any say in their affairs.
Acquired some interesting factoids in Jersey. More later, but one for now is that the most tricky part of the millenium wheel was the axle, something which had not crossed my mind. It seems that it is very hard to make steel of the required dimensions with the required characteristics. The stuff does not scale up in quite the way the average lay person - like myself - might have thought. You can make a propeller shaft for a super tanker OK. A steel shaft maybe six inches in diameter and twenty yards long. Now this is taking a fair amount of torque stress (if that is the right term) but very little flex stress - of the sort that the millenium wheel axle will take (think of a rod suspended at its middle with a heavy weight hanging off each end) and which will need to be rather bigger in consequence. Which is where the problems began. It seems that this part of the job was hawked around a number of engineering companies before it was finally taken on by a Japanese outfit. Maybe the same people as make propellers for big windmills - although the problem here is a little different. The propeller has to turn the axle to drive the alternator. In the case of the millenium wheel, the wheel can just spin on the axle - most of which need not be round in section at all. A square bar with a round bit at the end would do.
The company in question being Mitsubishi (http://www.mitsubishi.com/) whose name I am sure I have seen on windmills. And a search of this site for windmill does get some results. Searching for millenium wheel london does too - and it turns out that while they are building - or have built - an even bigger wheel for Singapore, they do not claim the credit for ours. Despite it being a rather nice search facility.
I am clearly an engineer who lost his way on leaving school.
Saturday, October 03, 2009
Stop press
Nasty green scum on pond number 3. That is to say, the lilly pond. Lilly now more or less died down, which seems a little previous to me. But I suppose it is still a juvenile. Hopefully it will reappear next year. Big decision: given that we put it on two bricks this summer so that it was a bit nearer the light and to get it going, would it be right to drop down to one brick now? Should we wait until it is a bit stronger? Meanwhile, what it causing the green scum? What is rotting down there?
The other two ponds don't have green scum but do have Canadian pond weed, silk weed, duckweed and so on. In addition that is to the plants that are supposed to be there. One in each pond.
Compost bin still less than half full. It did not get much grass this year but it did get a lot more water. Been making sure that the kitchen waste came with plenty. Water from the potatoes, water from the cabbage. Top up from tap if necessary. I imagine that this will have increased the rot rate, which may explain the failure to fill the bin. Upside is that we have plenty of room for the leaf fall. Downside is that the reclaimed land around the three ponds has sunk two or three inches this year and we need something to top it up. Provide a bit more cover over the pale brown clay.
Friday, October 02, 2009
Cycle lanes
With the DT berating Boris J. for his bicyclic enthusiasm, and as a long time enthusiasm myself, I thought it time to dump my thoughts.
For me, cycle lanes are a pain. I am happy to use the road and, more or less, follow the same rules as cars. Stopping at lights, cycling on the right side of the road and not cycling on the pavements. Rules which, sadly, a large minority of metropolitan cyclists seem to ignore. My special hate used to be reserved for the ones that cycled down the Albert Embankment in the morning, with scant regard for the quite large numbers of pedestrians. Having been hit, while on foot, a glancing blow by a slow moving bicycle once, not too keen on sharing space in that way. Cycle lanes in England - can't speak for Wales, Scotland etc - are no use. They keep stopping and starting. They are often full of litter of various shapes and sizes. On Hook Road, near us, one is quite likely to get caught up in blackberry bushes. On Horton Lane, what appear to be cycle lanes, taper down to nothing as one approaches the roundabouts. But they do provide an excuse for even more road signage and road markings. Making an even bigger mess of our already messy roads.
In Amsterdam where I recall that they had rather more full blooded bicycle lanes, maybe there is some point. Although not too sure about value for money, given the amount of space burnt up. Notwithstanding, it is not going to happen in London. Furthermore, the bicycle fad will no doubt pass soon. Maybe it has peaked already?
Now despite the negative tone of the foregoing, I did try the cycle path down through the Manor Park Estate behind our estate today. Pleasant path with plenty of grass and trees, maybe a mile long. Will be quite a wood as the trees grow. Not too sure I would be too happy to be a pedestrian if there were many cycles, but OK from a bicycle. So rolling along quite happily when a border collie decided to stand across the path. Just stood there as I rolled up to him and edged past with a cheery "Hello dog!". Fifty yards later border collie and companion came bounding alongside. Very aggressive shout from dog owner behind me: "What did you say?". "Talking to the dog", sezzaye. Another aggressive shout from owner: "It's my dog. What did you say to him?". "Hello", sezzaye. "Oh" sezzee. Over and out. What on earth was his problem?
Cholla in round format today for the third week running. Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur and Succot according to the trusty Filofax. Next week is Shemini Atzeret and Simchat Torah, so my bet is that the cholla will be in round format again.
Cod remains in good form. Decided that cooking it slightly longer is the thing. An hour and 10 minutes at 180C, rather than 50 minutes. The extra time results in a firmer, dryer product which I prefer. Not keen on the texture of rare fish. Or smoked salmon. Arbroath Smokies another matter. Maybe they are hot smoked and are so both cooked and preserved.
FIL now completed his introduction to IT course at NESCOT (http://www.nescot.ac.uk/). Not too impressed. To start with, when he signed up, we had been told that he would be getting an assessment. (The HR folk back at work used to get very enthusiastic about training needs assessments. I can better see their point now). Followed, we naively thought, by some advice about what sort of courses would be appropriate for an older person with hearing difficulties. But no, he just wound up stumping up £90 for their standard offering, 4 two hour sessions in an eight person class. And while he has come away with some keyboard and word skills, he still has more or less no basic understanding of how a PC is organised. How windows and files work. Still little idea about how to load and play DVD's - an important activity when you are his age. Altogether, a long way off lift-off. Now OK, I can try and teach him, but I am no trainer. That was what we thought NESCOT did. Maybe we will try something else when he has got his breath back. Maybe a two or three person class would work better.
Thursday, October 01, 2009
Balzac
Bought what must be one of my more expensive books at the hospice charity shop in Cheam this week, along with a big cat circular jigsaw for FIL. The book, at £5.50 was a French picture book about Balzac, containing twelve essays on same by what I presume are French worthies. A picture book from the era when they could manage half tone and line illustrations in page but when colour pictures were a luxury item which had to be stuck onto their own, more or less blank pages by hand.
As always with something French, I learn a few things. For example, in English we have things called adulterine castles. I had forgotten what they were, but Mr G. tells me in short order that they were castles erected without royal permission, particularly during the reign of good king Stephen. Control of castles being a big deal in those days; own the castle and you get to collect the tax in the surrounding area. Some years after Stephen, the young Henry III had trouble of the same sort, but managed to put his chaps into his castles without provoking a civil war. So, going back to the French and on a more domestic note, they have things called adulterine brothers and sisters - the meaning of which is perfectly clear - whereas in English we chose not to be so direct. Step brother is ambiguous and quite charged enough without going the whole hog.
Then that M. Balzac was a very strange fish, rather more strange than the roughly contemporary Dickens and Thackery, although he deployed the same manic energy is his writing as Dickens. He also only managed 50 years to their 70. I was struck to read that he was very struck on visiting Italy to find that the Italians were into enjoying themselves, by comparison with the French, who were into showing off. A finding which fits well with the current presidents of the two countries. Sarkosy likes to wear expensive watches while Berlusconi likes to wear the totty, expensive or otherwise. Amused also that he was very into showing off. Got through many more pots of money than he earned buying items of conspicuous consumption. Fancy books, pots and pictures to adorn the public rooms of his houses with. Some of the balance being made up by rich mistresses.
Which takes us straight back to Troilus and Cressida. In the bad old days, a very popular way to acquire status was to be good at killing people in public. Which in itself was reasonably unpleasant, so you got extra marks for doing it with panache and style. The honour lay mainly in the deed itself, which had to be endlessly renewed, more than in the symbols of the deed. Battle trophies and poems about the deed by the posh poet of the day were all very well when one was old and being eclipsed by younger blood, but the public deed and its public clapping were the things. A way of doing things very close to our own footballers.
But then along came money. Not something that was particularly useful in itself, only in what it could buy. Buying expensive durable artefacts to display in one's home became a more reliable way of acquiring honour than going out and killing people. After all, one might get killed oneself. And gradually the honour transfers to the symbol - the fancy pot - rather than to the underlying deed, in this case the acquisition of money. So M. Balzac can acquire honour, or at least he thinks he can, by displaying fancy pots which he has paid for, if at all, by popping his pictures. And others, much less worthy, could acquire honour merely by displaying fancy pots which they had inherited. No need for any acquisition at all.
And then there is the whole question of what constitutes panache and style in such matters. A question to which the weekend newspapers devote square miles of copy. Do you acquire more honour by following the existing fashion or more by inventing a new one? All a matter of judgement. Clappers are very fickle and need to have their diet varied for the clapping to keep coming. Some decadent types avoid many of these problems by internalising the clappers and the clapping; then they get to be judge and jury. Handy if you are on a desert island, but I guess most of us prefer real clappers to virtual ones. Clearly time for the pub clappers.
