Tuesday, December 15, 2009
On the trail of the BMW
Yesterday we thought we ought to see what we could see of BMWs on the road, a family member having recently acquired a new-to-them one. We thought that maybe Hampton Court was the place. Posh enough to have a butcher but without the whacking great road through the middle, like Esher, which would make car spotting difficult. And so it turned out to be: the area had plenty of BMWs, Mercedes and Audis. And our efforts were rewarded by spotting a black BMW saloon with the registration mark of 'C CRISP'. Presumably owned by one Mr. C. Crisp. Presumably reasonably rich to want to spend money on a registration mark. But Mr G. only reveals a Mrs C. Crisp, who appears to be of Dutch origin and to work as a secretary for Baker Concrete Construction somewhere in Texas. Probably the wrong C. Crisp but what I have learned is that Google searches places like Facebook and Twitter for names and profiles.
Then got to thinking about whether I would want a registration mark that was or approximated to my name. With the result that I canned the idea as being rather vulgar. It might be convenient in a working environment to wear a legible name badge. But I would not go so far as to want my name in foot high letters stencilled onto the back of my formerly tasteful tweed jacket. Still less would I want the name of somebody else, be he or she an ever so successful seller of fashion items.
Even better, heading south over the Isles of Scilly (roundabout), caught a most magnificent sunset. Sun a flaring yellow, just dropping beneath white cloud. Lots of cloud of strange appearance and lots of bright lights. Followed the sunset by continuing to head south and lost it over Horn's Hill (1km north west of junction 9 on the M25), by which time the thing had turned pink, but still magnificent.
I close with two factlets, both about recreational substances. First, if you rinse an empty Rum bottle with maybe 50cc of cool water, the product fizzes. A slight but distinct fizz. Is the water setting off some secondary fermentation process which had been stopped by the strength of the Rum? If it is, it has to have kicked in very fast. Second, in the course of a learned review article in the TLS (which had appealed to me for having a pop at the arrogant Mr Dawkins), I find that certain recreational substances are antinomian. A word which is both old and odd and which the OED tells me is both noun and adjective and applies to people who do not think that moral laws bind them, perhaps because they are already in a state of grace. They already have purchased their tickets for heaven and no subsequent sinning can invalidate them. There was a sect, which got bloodily squashed, which went in for this sort of thing in Germany in the sixteenth century. Maybe called Anabaptists. Presumably the idea is that people who get stoned can get up to some pretty bad things, thinking all along that it is OK, for them anyway. Which, given the recent case in Perugia, seems all too likely. One might think that using such an obscure word was just the reviewer showing off, but I got my money's worth!
# posted by Jim @ 4:19 AM 
