Sunday, January 31, 2010
Stop press
I thought I ought to share a tit-bit from one of our free local newspapers, probably the 'Epsom Guardian'. It seems that a Surrey housewife has been honoured for her contribution to the world of Jamie Oliver parties. These, it seems, are organised and run in much the same way as Tupperware parties. The Surrey housewife is a star in this world. Having felt honoured by being allowed to work in the great Oliver world, she was now overwhelmed by being allowed to meet the great man himself.
Celebrity chefs are up there on my pedestal of hate along with television personalities (that is to say people whose only talent is either to be bright and bubbly on screen or to be appropriately solemn when reading off the teleprompter), but this really takes the biscuit. Has the man no pride at all?
Saturday, January 30, 2010
The blair witch project
Yesterday was the big day for the blair witch and I was moved to go and see the thing on telly in the auditorium provided in the same building as the actual event itself, rather than doing the couch potato thing and watching it in the comfort of may own home. Which would probably have included tea and biscuits, something the Chilcot budget did not run to, at least not for the great unwashed.
The first event was arriving at the doors to the conference centre to be greeted by a collection of people wearing the sort of thing the people in police firearms units wear - baseball caps and blue woolly sweaters. They were manning the bomb detectors, while the more diverse crew usually on duty at places of this sort waited in the background.
The second event was flashing my freedom pass (cut price Surrey variety) at the checkin. 'Haven't you got a passport or something like that?' the checkin operative asked me. But my freedom pass is a travel document issued by a local authority and as such is on the list of approved photographic identifiers. Oh, said the checkin operative, is it. OK then. What about your utility bill? And after presenting same, I am in.
The third event was discovering a minature version of the boxes you often find outside the sheds on industrial estates containing rat poison. This one was a neat white affair, carefully placed at the base of some ventilation panels. Such a smart modern building too. My neighbour, who used to work in a food processing industry, assured me that the thing was indeed a mouse trap. This discovery kept me amused until the off.
Very sober, maybe sombre, mainly male, establishment inquiry team. But maybe the best one can do. One needs establishment people who can be trusted to see most of the material and who know their way around the system. I was impressed how most of them could sit still doing nothing most of the time. Pretending to pay attention. Perhaps actually paying attention. (Which was not really necessary as they would always have the transcript afterwards). Something that I was very bad at when I used to go to meetings. Couldn't bear to sit there doing nothing, which meant that I was prone to say far too much and brass everyone else off. Only slightly better than falling asleep. Things got better when I started going to meetings where it was OK to sit behind one's laptop, provided that the chairman (very rarely a chairwomen or member of any other minority in this part of this particular outfit) did not catch one out by asking a question when you were clearly deep into something entirely other than his meeting and hadn't got a clue what he was on about. The Microsoft people we were working with at this time were very good at this game and were quite hard to catch out, even one got to play chairman and could have a go oneself.
Mr Blair very smartly turned out, had clearly retained the services of a superior couture person. Polished, if over rehearsed performance sustained through the day, despite appearing rather nervous. Being the centre of attention does help keep one going. He was very keen on the word 'calculus' which must have had dozens of outings during the day. The calculus being one of the things which changed beyond recognition after 9/11. But which did not seem to extend to calculating how many Iraqis might die as a result of intervention or thinking about what the rest of the Muslim world might think about it.
Other parts of the calculus seemed to go like this. Iraq was a rogue state and Saddam Hussein was very evil. Rogue states are rather unpredictable in their behaviour and are not too fussy about who they share their military equipment with. This rogue state had been very keen on getting lots of fancy military equipment and was not at all shy about using it, albeit mainly on its own people and albeit that sanctions had made continued procurement of such equipment difficult. This rogue state presented a threat to our way of life and it was our duty to stand shoulder to shoulder with our allies in order to do something about it. How would things look now if Saddam Hussein was still alive and well in the Iraqi chair? I was more impressed by calculus than I expected.
Despite the various flaws, such as the mistakes (to call them by no worse name) in the intelligence assessment, the failure to get proper UN authority for intervention, the failure of countries a lot nearer the scene of action to feel the need to intervene themselves and the failure of most of the governing classes of this country to exert effective restraint or check on their leader. He had decided to go for it and most of the rest was window dressing.
And the rather unsavoury sight of someone far more concerned to prove that he had been right all along, rather than to ponder about how things might have turned out better or to express any sorrow at the cost. Unsavoury in the same way as the failure of both him and his deputy to admit that there was anything that they might have done, perhaps with hindsight, to steer clear of the banking iceberg.
So I was left thinking that Mr Blair's position was not stupid, even if I thought it was mistaken. Also that he has become a fallen idol. Everybody rushing in to trample on him, without much regard to their own position at the time. (My own position at the time was more or less neutral with Mr Blair never having been any idol of mine).
Also that it is very hard to establish exactly how decisions are taken after this lapse of time. It seems quite likely to me that the people taking them might well not really understand the balance of forces which led to this or that decision. Perhaps never really articulated them at the time. But this inquiry was not a bad shot. Conducted by decent people, more or less in public and not dragging in lots of lawyers or dragging on for a very long time.
Also that we should not be in the business of chopping off our leaders' head when we decide that they have made a mistake, even a costly mistake, after the event. The idea of our indirect democracy is that we empower people to act for us. We share the responsibility for what they do. They embody our will. So while we might decline to re-elect them we do not punish them otherwise for what happened on their watch, that is to say our watch, short of flagrant abuse of power. And I am not sure that is what we have here.
Some time later, arrived home at Epsom to be greeted by a large team of police officers in the exit to the station. Including a slightly scruffy lady in the same baseball cap and blue sweater as the bomb detectors, but holding, instead, a large yellow labrador which I was asked not to pet, rather to walk past. Presumably so that he could sniff any illegal substance which I might have picked up in the big bad town. Not too delighted to be greeted in this way. At the very least the dog handler could have had a proper uniform on.
Thursday, January 28, 2010
Health and Safety
The complicated junction by the railway bridge at the bottom of West Hill has recently had its traffic lights upgraded. Users will be glad to learn that it was visited by 6 people wearing high visibility tabards who wandered around in clumps looking rather bored for about 15 minutes before climbing back into their transport. One of them told me that this was a safety inspection of the upgrade, although they did not appear to be carrying stop watches, clip boards, cameras or anything like that.
Picked up an interesting thought on why it was that Stalin was to continue to be allowed to be a thug in the years after the war. The
The other day, being on newspaper duty again, thought to buy an Independent. Not very impressed at all. All I seem to have purchased was a lot of stuff about the extermination of elephants and a pull out about film. Or perhaps film stars. Didn't seem to be much in the way of news at all. I wonder how long they had had the stuff on elephants on the shelf against a slow Sunday night with an empty newspaper? So little news in fact that I was moved to have a go at the elementary Sudoku. Which took me about half an hour - but at least I think I got the right answer. Hate to think how long the more serious one would have taken, assuming, that is, that I could have done it at all. The first Sudoku I have attempted for a few weeks, the last attempt on the Guardian version of elementary having ended in error. Not nearly interested enough to copy the thing onto a scrap of paper - or even a spreadsheet - so that I can back up in the case of error - so error is almost always fatal.
For some reason I then got to thinking that with my, albeit rather elderly, experience of demonstrations, I should perhaps start organising the pensioners on my estate. Agitsencit. Start with a few basic protests with a couple of dozen us marching around in a circle outside a protestable house, banging our placards up and down in a rhythmical fashion. Then move onto a flying squad of activists ready to descend on a protestable location at the drop of a walking stick when alerted by mobile phone or email. I wonder which would give the better result? Annual general meetings with a general secretary. Deputations to the council chamber. Need to think about the sort of things that are protestable. Withdrawal of sherry from the meals on wheels service. Care workers refusing to buys fags along with your fish fingers. Being ejected from the television lounge for snoring with open mouth. Younger people whining about the volume I play the rollen balls.
Which reminds me of another own goal by the FIFA gang. It seems that they are about to select a Somali rapper as chief crooner for the upcoming world cup, a Somali who seems to think that the piracy conducted by his fellow countrymen is OK. Well, it is bad enough that we do not seem to have the collective bottle to sort this business out, but do we have to sink to giving air time to advocates for said piracy? He might just about be entitled to have such views in private but I would not go much further than that.
Wednesday, January 27, 2010
Leurre erratum
On the 24 January I was puzzling about the meaning of the French word curee, in the context of the novel by Zola. It now comes to me that it means neither lure (for which the French is, it seems, leurre) nor quarry. Or at least, not exactly. Rather, those parts of the quarry which are given to the hounds at the kill as their reward. The balance is taken home to be pied or jugged for human consumption.
Yesterday to QEH to hear the Tackacs Quartet do Beethoven quartets, a well known gang, quite up to the minute enough to sport their own web site at http://www.takacsquartet.com/. The hall was full, including some people near us who clearly knew their stuff, some loudly, some more discretely, and the quartet were on good form. 18.5 which I did not know, 18.4 which I had come across with much delight a few years ago and the rather grander 132 as the main course. All very impressive stuff; almost moved to the odd tear. I dare say some of the ladies were. Struck by a longish passage in the middle of 18.5 and a short passage towards the end of 18.4 where the composer seems to boil over. Slides - not lapses - temporarily into what I call village hop mode when everybody, especially the musicians (in the days when village hops had musicians) get a bit excited. Perhaps the Irish still do it. A release of tension, of which there was pots knocking about. Struck also by the feel they gave to the quieter passages: wonderful ensemble playing. They really were playing together in a way that I do not always hear. And the third movement of 132, the Lydian hymn, was worth every word that Huxley gives it in Point Counter Point. Maybe to the point where I will get it out of the library again. Although very much the better for being heard as part of the whole, rather than as a highlight, an approach to listening which does not work well for me.
Reading the programme on the way home, impressed to read the claim that they do 90 concerts a year - which struck me a very large number. Something like one every 4 days. Excluding their recording, teaching and other work. How long can one keep up that kind of schedule?
Today down to Epsom to visit the fish man - this being the Wednesday visit to Epsom of the man who is in Cheam on Fridays, as it seems that it will still be a week or two before I am pedalling that way. Fine piece of cod for lunch, with boiled potatoes and crinkly cabbage. Also to the library where I thought to reserve a book. The problem being that I seem to now have around a metre more books than I have shelves and do not think that BH would tolerate any more shelves. In any case, while it is nice to collect things and to have things, there comes a point when one has to recognise that one is not getting that much use out of the stuff - particularly in an age when if one suddenly finds one wants something that one has chucked the week before, it does not take long to get hold of another one, and failing that one can always ask Mr G. whatever it was one wanted to find out. Although not consume. Internet not that good yet at supplying free text of miscellaneous books. There is some out there but there is an awful lot which is missing.
So the order of the day is weeding. Every time a charity bag comes around, try and get rid of a couple more. So yesterday the Ben Okri went, back the charity world from whence it came. Interesting to read once for the African setting, but I doubt whether I will want to read them again. Today various books about dreadful deeds in the USA. Presidents being economical with the truth and big corporations cutting the odd corner in their drive to make a buck. Again, all good stuff which was comforting because it confirmed my prior opinions, but I am not going to need a second fix of the same.
In keeping with the weeding spirit, thought to ask the library today for a history of the Arabs by one Eugen Rogan, recently published by Allen Lane. Not an expensive book by TLS standards, but must try and stick with the New Year's resolution for a day or two yet. And it turns out that the Surrey Library system has 5 of them. So I have now reserved and await email. But then I thought that if Surrey has five of them, that means the country's libraries maybe have five hundred of them altogether. Not a very big number, although I suppose there are other English speaking countries where a few might be placed. But what proportion of the readership has that soaked up? Are libraries plugged into some copyright agreement so that authors and publishers get a share of the lending cake? Who will take a bet on how long it takes for me to turn up this particular book in a second hand book shop, a remainder place or a charity shop? Do authors stay out of such places so as not to have their feelings hurt by coming across their own book in a heap of remainders?
On the livestock front, pleased to report that the first flies of the year have appeared in the house. That the grey pin cushion mould in the compost heap is thriving. The stronger stuff maybe an inch tall now, the whole spreading over more than an irregular square foot. Watch this space. That the triffids which pop up in the broken ground on the patio are showing a bit. With there being a green variety and a much darker brown variety. And last but not least, a car down the road has had its fuel pipe eaten through by a rat. Maybe rats get a buzz out of petrol sniffing when they can't put their paws on any glue. People nearby having all sorts of interesting conversation about the habits and control of rats - which might be a problem given their proximity to the common. Maybe chopping down all the trees there is really a covert, and very badly informed, attempt to control the rat population.
On a more serious note, I had a very scary experience once when the hire car I was hammering down the fast lane of the M4 near Reading lost power. As it happened the cars around me worked out what was happening and I was able to drift across to the hard shoulder. But they might easily not have. What does one do when stuck on the central reservation? Without one's mobile phone? Which, as it happened, I actually had charged and on me on this particular occasion.
Tuesday, January 26, 2010
It's your funeral
Given the large headline in today's DT about a mother mercy killing her daughter, I thought it appropriate to put down, once again, some thoughts of my own on the subject.
The first exhibit is a story told by Robert A. Kaster. It seems that back in the principate of Tiberius, a couple of worthies happened to be visiting the island of Ceos where they came across a distinguished old lady who had decided that it was time to go. She asked the two worthies to grace her suicide by attending. It seems that suicides of this sort were not particularly unusual in this area at that time and the form was to do it dressed in one's finest, surrounded by friends and family. The two worthies, after making the proper attempt to dissuade her, fell in with her wishes and subsequently memorialised the deed in writing, which is how we get to know about it.
The second exhibit is a film called Soylent Green. In this world (New York, I think, in the not too distant future), when one had had enough, one could pop along to the local euthanasia centre, where one checked in, much as if one was boarding a plane. All very civilised, although no family and friends. I recall that in the example given, the chap chose to be wafted away to the sight (360 degrees of it) of nature in all its glory and light classical music. The catch was that one's corpse was rendered down to make the Soylent Green biscuits for which the film was named.
The third exhibit is that well known clinic in Switzerland (http://www.dignitas.ch/).
We must find some middle ground between these various options and I look forward to the day when one can indeed go to one's own funeral. One answer would be for crematoria to have two entrances, one for those that arrive live and one for those that arrive dead. The same sort of ceremony could be observed in either case, although in the former case the subject might have more say than he or she often gets in the latter case. Not sure that cremation is a very eco. way to go though. I suppose I am rather in favour of some variant of the Soylent Green option. At least one gets some value from all the energy that has been poured into one over the years, rather than pouring even more in.
Talking of which last, today we had haggis for lunch. With mash and swede. Plus the second of the two feeble choux pointus from Waitrose (see above). A very fine haggis it was too. Vegetarian readers might like to know that the same shop in Tavistock also sold a vegetarian version, from the same butcher. And now, I think, time for my siesta. Maybe that will give me energy needed to repeat my donation to http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/. About time.
Monday, January 25, 2010
Erratum
A bit further into 'The Way We Live Now', Trollope does retrieve the situation a bit. He does allow that the swindler is a man with b***s, which is more than can be said for the blueish blooded cad who wanted to marry his daughter. And he does allow that the banker, while maybe fat and vulgar, does behave very properly, if not very romantically, to the skint sloane who had thought to marry him for his dosh. He also alludes to the scaling of crowning heights and assimilation generally which was going on apace at the time. All of which goes a little way to undo the unfortunate impression of yesterday.
I also got around to taking a look at the introduction, being interested in a book which had exactly 100 chapters. It seems that it was intended from the outset to come in two volumes of 10 sections each, each section to contain 5 chapters. I imagine that sections were supposed to be of more or less uniform length. The first volume was to end hanging of a cliff (metaphorically speaking of course). Trollope prided himself on being able to write his novels within this kind of framework. Which, the introduction tells me, was more or less obsolete by the time this book was written, but Trollope and his publisher were entranced by the success of Middlemarch, which had recently been published in this sort of way.
Not sure that Trollope did himself any favours with his loyal readers by exposing some of the grubby workings of the literary world. When you are writing a novel, including privileged material about the production and promotion of the novel itself is a little self indulgent. One should stick to knocking everybody else rather than oneself, or those near one. In any event, his star started to wane about this point and the fixed price contracts he liked with his publishers started to involve fewer naughts.
Today a double stick outing to Epsom. That is to say that FIL and I tapped our way down with near identical walking sticks, although the stick of which his was made had a green tinge to it and mine is an inch or so longer so we should not get into too much of a muddle. I also notice that my rubber ferrule wears most on the rear inside corner. Clearly something odd about the way I crock along.
Then further along the way to Epsom, passed a flock of thrush like birds feeding on Clayhill Green. FIL thought that they were redwings in consequence of their being a in a flock, something that regular thrushes do not do. Plus redwings are winter visitors. Seemed fair enough, but I could not make out the distinctive yellow flashes I thought that redwings had over and under the eyes. Must take bins down next time. But why do neither these nor any other sorts of thrushes ever seem to appear on the bit of green between Hookfield and Wheelers Lane or on Court Rec.? One might have thought that they were very much the same sort of green. And why do Google maps fail to label both Clayhill Green and the bit of green between Hookfield etc? The latter used to be moderately important as the site of an occasional fair. Perhaps there are customary rights in such matters. And, as it happens, the site was left in a dreadful mess after the last such fair, maybe ten or fifteen years ago. The fair ground people involved seemed to be completely without common decency when it came to making mess or to clearing it up.
Today was also the third day for the Tavistock top rib. The second day had been cold with my version of Dauphinoise potatoes and crinkly cabbage. The potatoes were boiled for 10 minutes, then coarsely sliced and arranged with some finely sliced onions in a baking dish. Pour blood and fat from the top rib over. Bake for an hour. A bit greasy but good gear. The third day we minced most of the balance, using our fine No. 10 Spong Mincer, a heavy cast steel contraption I do not suppose one could buy new these days. Very fond of the sort of mince you get by mincing cold roast meat; a quite different thing from the raw mince you get from the butcher. Add a bit of minced carrot, minced onion, a little water, a little browning, a handful of red lentils and simmer for 90 minutes. Serve with crinkly cabbage and mashed potatoes.
The crinkly cabbage from Waitrose at 89p a pop, with most of the outer green leaves missing. Not such a good buy as the crinkly cabbage from the market, late Saturday afternoon, at 75p a pop or £1 for two. Sadly BH had drifted off at that point, having given me the 75p, so I was unable to indulge myself in two of the things, well wrapped in outer green leaves, as they should be. Perhaps Waitrose customers are deemed to be older folk with challenged dentition who do not care for the more chewy outer leaves.
Sunday, January 24, 2010
Herald of spring
Stumped down the garden this morning to discover the first signs of life in the compost bin. To wit, some grey pin cushion mould on last week's potato peelings. Next to the bin we have one clump of daffodills well up and next to that the blue bells (Spanish variety, not the woodland sort favoured by the ecos) starting to poke through. In the hawthorne next to the pond there were two blue tits and one long tailed tit. One of the blue tits was singing away, maybe with the idea of impressing the other one. The long tailed tit was very pretty.
Thought to go and take a peek at the bulbs at Hampton Court this afternoon, but not much action yet. A few snowdrops and even fewer aconites in sheltered spots, a few daffodils starting to poke up. Must remember 1) to go and see the spiffing snowdrops at Nonsuch Park in a week or two and 2) to keep an eye on the even more spiffing bulbs at Hampton Court. They might be up for a month but it is easy enough to miss them.
Given that the baker at Cheam is still out of range and I am not that keen on the Waitrose offering, BH thought to buy me some bread from the market on Saturday. Man on the stall makes much of the fact that he cooks in stone rather than steam, which he alleges is the preferred method for the in-store bakers. I'm not sure about this: I would have thought that they use electric ovens like other small bakers. I would have thought a steam oven might be OK for a factory but not quite the thing for a kitchen operation. That being as it may be, I get one large white bloomer (with poppy seed) and something more wholemeal looking. The white bloomer looked good with the right sort of crackle about the crust. Good colour. But not all that fresh. Maybe made on Friday to sell on Saturday. But still a good deal better than the Waitrose offering. Best available until I am up and cycling again, hopefully in a week or so now.
Tried climbing on the thing yesterday. Managed to get on and off OK, but did not think it would be wise to try pedalling off quite yet. Not too sure how well the legs would stand up to being asked to do a bit of stabilizing quite yet, let alone a crash landing, which is a touch confidence sapping. Settled for oiling the chain for now. Maybe try a mount in the road tomorrow, rather than a mount in the garage. Advice from various sources is to take it easy at first so it looks as if the stone baker will be getting our trade for at least a few Saturdays.
Continued to tuck into 'The Way We Live Now', prompted by the review noticed on 12th October, and drawn from Epsom Library the other day, along with a map of Dartmoor. A rather lurid thing, the product of the end of Trollope's career. He seems to have decided that the world had gone to the dogs and that standards had slipped badly since the rosy days of his youth. Gets stuck into a flash swindler with all the zest of a Zola in La Curee - both presumably reacting to the dreadful capitalist excesses of the 1870's or thereabouts. And for the first time I catch Wikipedia out, it agreeing with Harraps in seeming to think that La Curee means the kill or quarry when hunting, while I think it means a lure used when hunting. Not quite the same thing at all. I will poke Mr G. a bit harder when I have done here. But he also gets stuck into the Jews with some pages reading rather badly, much worse than the odd jibe in Buchan. Fat greasy types in the city, speaking broken English and almost certainly up to no good. Now given that the book is a reasonably OTT bit of satire, it is faintly possible that he is satirising anti-semites. But I do not think so. A shame, as I had thought of Trollope as being quite civilised for a writer.
So for example, he makes the point that one gentleman (one Roger Carbury) makes the mistake of thinking that it is possible to tell nothing but the truth the whole time, to always behave decently and to never need to retract anything. That the word of an English gentleman rules, even in situations where people are not apt to insist on the point. Trollope, I think, is inclined to give his English gentlemen - a breed he appears to be rather attached to - a touch more lee-way. Or as someone else once put it to me - a propos of boning on about music - if one worried too much about talking rubbish, one would be able to say very little at all.
Saturday, January 23, 2010
Last exit to crocklyn
Continue to push out the boundaries of walking stick life. Yesterday, the first time on a train for a fortnight. Started with the stairs at Epsom; not too bad at all when they are more or less empty and you have unimpeded access to the handrail. Going down at Vauxhall not quite so clever as lots of people were coming up and I was reduced to using the handrail on my right, that is to say my walking stick side. But managed. Retracing steps OK. Next challenge the flight at Earlsfield which I think is rather longer than that at Vauxhall.
But getting on and off the trains rather more intimidating, especially when there is maybe a 50cm gap between the platform edge and the carriage edge. Just as well that there are large yellow grab rails just inside the doors, these rails coming with the last refurbishment, replacing something which was rather less crock friendly. Getting off slightly more challenging than getting on. Maybe the expensive sounding contraptions which raise and lower buses so that there is virtually no step at all are worth their while after all. Next challenge a tube train.
Home Broadband up and running again after a service break of something under 48 hours. The Help desk was unable to fix the problem remotely but was able to send an engineer round the following day, that is today, Saturday. Engineer turned up in the middle of the agreed half day slot. Put some test equipment on the line and went off somewhere. Came back, removed test equipment, went off somewhere else. After a decent interval he phones to say that has fixed something, which is encouraging. One feels more confident if he actually does something to get the service back, rather than it just springing into life spontaneously. Service has now been back for a couple of hours.
Had the top rib mentioned above today. Weighed in at 7 pounds and decided to give it 3 hours at 170C, which I now know is equivalent to the relatively low gas mark 3. An issue as I always time my meat roasting using our trusty Radiation cook book - 'Radiation', presumably, being the name of some long lost line in gas cookers. I think my Mum had one. Oven opened just the once to insert parsnips. Meat left to rest in oven for 10 minutes after shut down. Good stuff, with just a whiff of pink in the interior and I propose to have some in sandwiches later - but I think if I ever manage to get the cut again I might go for 4 hours at 160C. A more chewy cut than fore rib so cool and long rather than hot and short indicated. Parsnips were about 2 inches across and 6 inches long. Cut in half length wise, coated in dripping by tossing them around the frying pan for a few minutes, before giving them the last hour of the meat. Spot on; the secret here being to roast big lumps rather than small lumps. Mashed potato with butter in the usual way. Pointy cabbage from Spain via Waitrose. Decent enough, but a bit feeble compared with the pointy cabbage which grows in England a bit later in the year. I suspect this Spanish stuff of having been forced in a poly-tunnel and being a bit feeble in consequence.
For afters, finished off the last of the wind-fall cooking apples donated by various neighbours. Preparation and removal of grot a bit of a pain, but apples themselves fine. Boiled for a few minutes in water which had previously been sugared and brought to the boil.
In between whiles, been having a thought experiment about airport security checks. Suppose 90% of the population is normal. That is to say that the outer corners of the eyes and the tip of the nose make an isosceles right triangle, sloping back from the nose up to the eyes, with the right angle at the nose. Suppose also that in the case of the other 10% of the population, the same three points make an equilateral triangle. Over the years this other 10% have had to put up with a lot of ragging and worse about their equilateral triangles.
Unfortunately, at any one time, about 1 in 10,000,000 of the equilaterals has an internal tumour which will spontaneously explode when it reaches 10,000 feet. The propensity to have such a tumour can be reduced by smoking, which seems to interfere with the various sub-atomic processes involved. There have been just three recorded cases of an exploding tumour in an isosceles.
We now turn our minds to how this might work in a world with much air travel. The tumours are very fast growing and only show up on a full body scan - the sort involving a surgical gown, radio activity and about 10 minutes a pop - shortly before they become dangerous. Most people prefer to go through the procedure in a single sex environment. This means that checks up-front are not going to work and we are going to have a lot of expense and delay at airports. But there is hope. One can buy a scanner which can reliably distinguish an equilateral from an isosceles. Can be used to screen a long queue of people without anyone in the queue having to do anything. Quick, cheap and effective. So now we can segregate the equilaterals from the isosceleses (?). Isosceleses report for check-in ten minutes before take off. After and full and fair consultation conducted by the electoral reform society, it is decided that we can neglect the risk of an exploding isosceles. Then equilaterals have a choice. They can either check into an equilaterals only flight - including staff (all volunteers), or they can check in 250 minutes before take off and queue up for the full body scan. Unfortunately the equilaterals cried foul. Geometrical discrimination. Take the matter to the European Commission for Geometric Rights (ECGR). ECGR responded well within the time allowed in their service agreement, blocking any further air travel until they have had time to rule on this ticklish matter, including the business of the single sex environment.
Friday, January 22, 2010
Font peace
An oddity to intrigue the meanest of geeks here. When I uploaded from Word to Blogger yesterday, during an interval of Broadband service, Blogger thought it would do something funny with the font and I have no idea - yet anyway - how to change the font of a post. I can do bold and italic but that is about it. So I went to the bother of inspecting the html that you get if you download a chunk of blog and found that it was using something called Verdana. Plus a whole lot of qualifiers which were not quite in the sort of format I would expect. Probably more to do with my lack of knowledge of html than anything else. But, if push came to shove, I could try putting the Word text into Verdana, uploading that (by copy and paste) and seeing if that did the trick.
Then, service continuing absent, off to Epsom library where normal service appears to have been resumed after some difficulties with the snow. Or something. Where I find that if you upload from Word, Blogger puts the thing into the right font, that is to say the font that it usually uses when you do not try and do anything clever. The only thing that was differant is that at home I use Google Chrome, whereas the library uses Internet Explorer. I suppose it is entirely plausible that the two products handle the passage through the clipboard in subtly different ways. But I do not propose to investigate further. I shall wait until I have the opportunity to ask a real geek.
Meantime I can ponder about what I suspect to be a bit of contraband tree felling in the road next to us. You appear to have a refurbishment operation going on in a house which had a large if not particularly handsome tree in the front garden. One fine day the tree gets chopped down. But the chaps chopping the tree down do not take most of it away. And the chaps doing the refurbishment have slowly been transferring chunks of tree into the skip that one had thought intended for old ceilings, used sanitaryware and the like. What is more, for the first time for a very long time, I have seen people making big chunks of tree into smaller chunks of tree using wedges and a sledgehammer. So why are they going about it in this odd way? I suspect that they did not get proper authority from the bizzies and had to get some dodgy tree operator in to do the dirty work, someone dodgy enough not to bother about the lack of paperwork. Dodgy enough to say that he wasn't going to take the bulky stuff away. How could he dispose of it without paperwork? I shall reflect on where my duty lies in this matter.
Amused the other day to read a piece, maybe not in the DT for once in a while, about how the Labour Party had been wrong footed when the Conservative Party dumped Thatcher in favour of Major. It seems that the former had ramped up their entire election campaign on the basis of trashing Thatcher, a campaign which had to be binned in her absence. It then took them some time to build a new campaign, one which targeted the right leader. Re-brief and re-train all the thousands of campaign workers. Re-print all the junk that has to be pushed through letter boxes. Re-shoot the ad. of Kate Moss doing something desirable with the proposed leader. Maybe they were reduced to targetting the policy rather than the leader. Needs must in an emergency. In any event, they lost. What amused me was the sight of a political party having the same sort of management problems as the rest of us. Having to turn their carefully crafted and heavy machine on a dime, rather in the way that they always expect their long suffering civil servants to when they happen to be in the chair.
PS: another geekery. Blogger viewed through the Library does not check my spelling. Blogger viewed through Google Chrome does. Nothing that I did.
Then, service continuing absent, off to Epsom library where normal service appears to have been resumed after some difficulties with the snow. Or something. Where I find that if you upload from Word, Blogger puts the thing into the right font, that is to say the font that it usually uses when you do not try and do anything clever. The only thing that was differant is that at home I use Google Chrome, whereas the library uses Internet Explorer. I suppose it is entirely plausible that the two products handle the passage through the clipboard in subtly different ways. But I do not propose to investigate further. I shall wait until I have the opportunity to ask a real geek.
Meantime I can ponder about what I suspect to be a bit of contraband tree felling in the road next to us. You appear to have a refurbishment operation going on in a house which had a large if not particularly handsome tree in the front garden. One fine day the tree gets chopped down. But the chaps chopping the tree down do not take most of it away. And the chaps doing the refurbishment have slowly been transferring chunks of tree into the skip that one had thought intended for old ceilings, used sanitaryware and the like. What is more, for the first time for a very long time, I have seen people making big chunks of tree into smaller chunks of tree using wedges and a sledgehammer. So why are they going about it in this odd way? I suspect that they did not get proper authority from the bizzies and had to get some dodgy tree operator in to do the dirty work, someone dodgy enough not to bother about the lack of paperwork. Dodgy enough to say that he wasn't going to take the bulky stuff away. How could he dispose of it without paperwork? I shall reflect on where my duty lies in this matter.
Amused the other day to read a piece, maybe not in the DT for once in a while, about how the Labour Party had been wrong footed when the Conservative Party dumped Thatcher in favour of Major. It seems that the former had ramped up their entire election campaign on the basis of trashing Thatcher, a campaign which had to be binned in her absence. It then took them some time to build a new campaign, one which targeted the right leader. Re-brief and re-train all the thousands of campaign workers. Re-print all the junk that has to be pushed through letter boxes. Re-shoot the ad. of Kate Moss doing something desirable with the proposed leader. Maybe they were reduced to targetting the policy rather than the leader. Needs must in an emergency. In any event, they lost. What amused me was the sight of a political party having the same sort of management problems as the rest of us. Having to turn their carefully crafted and heavy machine on a dime, rather in the way that they always expect their long suffering civil servants to when they happen to be in the chair.
PS: another geekery. Blogger viewed through the Library does not check my spelling. Blogger viewed through Google Chrome does. Nothing that I did.
Beds
The interesting plaster work on the ceiling of the ballroom built on the back of the agent's house. See above.Thursday, January 21, 2010
Resquiat in pacem
Just back from Tavistock, the place with an Oxfam shop with the biggest selection of classical vinyl that I know of. Sadly, now down to opera and other specialised items. Managed a box of Mozart violin concertos but passed on a large collection of Horowitz recordings, which, as it happened, did not include the Schubert impromptus that I was particularly looking for. I suspect that the shop has now consumed the best part of its inheritance. Should not be looking for any more windfalls.
The visit was notable in various other ways. I start with the fact that both a butcher in Oakhampton and a butcher in Tavistock - the only two that I tried - sold top rib of beef. Something which seems to be more or less unobtainable in Surrey, even from the otherwise useful butcher in Cheam. Both more into selling it boned rather than on the bone, actually catching the chap in Tavistock (either J or S Downing, both of the Pannier Market) at it. But at least I now know what an entire top rib looks like: a giant cutlet to the fore ribs' chop. Now also the proud possessor of a six pound piece of rolled top rib, the first time I have had such a thing since I bought one 36 years ago in Histon, Cambridgeshire, shortly after the consolidation of the Isle of Ely, the Soke of Peterborough, Huntingdonshire and Cambridgeshire into a county taking the name of this last. Too bad for the rest of them. More recently I have had one on the bone from Cheam, very good, but he has been unable to repeat the trick. I shall report on how this new one goes down in due course.
We stayed in what had been built in 1722 as a house for the Duke of Bedford's agent in Tavistock, the Duke at that time owning a good chunk of the town and surrounding land. Converted to a hotel in 1822. We suspect that our bedroom was in what had been built, as part of the first conversion, as a ballroom, with the ballroom having been divided both horizontally and vertically into bedrooms in some subsequent conversion. With the result that our bedroom had ceiling vaulting, vaguely mock Tudor, which was clearly intended for a much bigger and a much taller room. The odd effect being compounded by a bed decorated in four poster fashion with black steel tubes, rather after the fashion of a garden pergola. Maybe one could of made something of it if one were a good deal younger and lighter than we actually are.
All kinds of interesting furnishings in the public areas of the hotel. So lots of grandfather clocks, with and without innards, but none of which appeared to work. Some rather fat, bigger than live size naked infants in brass, locked in an embrace which might give a passing social worker a cause for concern. A splendid contraption for serving roast beef. One of those large domed affairs on claw and ball legs, made of silver plate, EPNS, chrome or something of that sort, that they used to wheel around the Savoy Grill before the nouveau cuisine brigade did away with the roast beef there (not that I ever managed a visit to the place. Something missing from an otherwise reasonably full life. A colleague once managed it as a guest of the trade association of one of his contractors. The United Federation of Licensed Waste Disposal Contractors or some such). The hotel assured us that they did wheel the thing out on state occasions.
The restaurant was rather a grand affair, not too big but heavily plastered in white and two shades of magnolia, which rather gave the effect of sitting inside an inside-out wedding cake or perhaps a giant and very elaborate macaroon. Quite cosy really. The food was very up-to-date, served on the finest shiny white plates of various shapes and sizes, mainly large. For the first time I thought I tasted the point of the sort of cooking that involves small tabs of this and that arranged in a very arty way on a large white plate. A sort of poem in appearance, texture and taste. Maybe chords and harmony. They managed fish very well, considering it was presumably cooked from frozen. Did not do so well with the fillet steaklet. Various interesting soups and sauces involving parsnips. Some very small apples, looking a bit like yellow cherries, very hot and sweet and decorating slices of black pudding. So interesting and well worth having given it a go. (Plus, very reasonable given the two night full board offer we had taken up). But a bit too fancy for me and with far too high a proportion of protein, sugar and fat. I like a bit more padding with my grub and a lot more cabbage. I suspect that a fair proportion of the people at the hotel thought the same as they were going for the more traditional offerings served in the bar.
A reasonable kipper in the morning, although not up to simmerered Waitrose. Decorated with a very natty half lemon, with a thin sliver of peel unpeeled from maybe three quarters of the circumference and tied up in a pretty little knot. Looked well although a little OTT for me as I do not usually take lemon with my fish.
All in all, a good hotel, of the centre of old market town variety. Not too many of them left these days. We shall go there again.
Visit closed with a visit to the baker, which I thought, on appearance, was going to produce something dire. Did not look like your artisanale baker at all, despite claiming to have been on the premises for a very long time. We settled for something called a goose loaf, known to the rest of us as a white floured split tin. As it turned out, it was fine. Served with some smoked ham from the much more fancily got up old-style grocer a little further down the road. Possibly old style to the point where they cooked their own coffee but I am not sure on that point. Good cheese and cooked meats in any event.
This from the library, the BT service having failed me again, uploaded from Word. We shall see if we manage to get the font right. Then we shall have to think about BT: starting to fail too often. But will the grass really be greener on the other side of the fence? Is it really worth having the man come and connect the junction box in the pavement to our house? How much damage to the house and garden will be done in the process? Clearly a great deal to be thought about here.
Tuesday, January 19, 2010
Postscript continued
In the absence of today's paper, fell to perusing the ingredients list of the first packet of Austrian kabanos started yesterday over breakfast this morning. One of them was natural smoke so I do hope that Waitrose staff have the option of protective clothing if they should have occasion to remove the things from their protective wrapping. But another was cheese. Which struck me as a very odd thing to put in a sausage which is fairly well spiced up as it was. But there we are. Kabanos with cheese. At least the things were mainly made with pork and beef rather than chicken - which last we came across the other week at the Polish deli. in Surrey Street, Croydon. The good news is that, even now that I know there is cheese there, I can't taste it. But it will put me off buying that particular brand again. Gimmicky. Anyone might think oneself in a McDonalds (http://www.mcdonalds.co.uk/) in need of a flavour fix.
Monday, January 18, 2010
A supermarket near me
We are lucky enough to have a small Waitrose's near us. Just behind the Wetherspoons in fact. Very reliable place for kippers from Craster. Brought three of them the other day and they have done very well, despite being significantly bigger than before. It is an odd thing that Waitrose can deliver much better kippers than any of the fish men that I know who peddle their wares on the streets around here. They do OK on fresh white fish but one needs to take care with the processed. Which looks greasy and when cooked oozes oil everywhere, leaving a not altogether satisfactory kipper. Whereas the Waitrose version, when simmered gently for 10 minute or so in water has a clean, firm texture. Not greasy at all.
Then I moved onto to the raisins, something which I can consume far more of than the BH is comfortable with. So I can do maybe 4 or 5 ounces by way of a snack during the averts in Poirot, while she would find this well OTT. Packet of Quavers no problem, but raisins no. Well I ask you. Waitrose sell raisins which have been reared on the slopes of hills somewhere in South Africa. Struck me as a bit dear but they did the business. Sweet without being either dry or sticky - a tricky trick with a commodity which is just a fancy way of delivering a sugar fix.
So far so good. But then I moved onto the bread. Thinking maybe that here there was an in-store bakery which knew something about bread. Bought something called a large white bloomer - the sort of thing that I buy all the time from Cheam when the legs are not in a state - but which from this establishment was a bit firm and very rubbery. Sell by date the next day ( a bad sign in itself. What decent bread is fit for sale (at the very least) 26 hours after manufacture?) and which admitted to having been made for Waitrose at an undisclosed factory in the south of England. Not too good at all. But luckily I had taken the precaution of visiting the deli. counter and bought some Austrian kabanos, in preference to the rather thinner and drier looking Polish ones that were also available. And they were very good. Made up entirely for the poor, crumbly texture of the white bread from the bloomer with which I was eating them. I am told that the poor, crumbly texture is all to do with being in too much of a hurry. Decent white bread takes a bit of time and TLC. You can get away with murder if you are selling flavoured stuff. Made with exotic organic pulses from somewhere in south eastern Europe with a bit of chopped olive thrown in. But that is not white bread as I know it.
Which lead me back to a long standing puzzle. In a world where billions of pounds are spent on celebrity chefs and glossy cookbooks, how is it that we put up with such junk in the bread department? We will salivate all evening over some ponce in a big white hat doing something original with some obscure shell fish (maybe from the foot of some outfall near you?), but we do not bother to insist on decent basics?
PS: Mr Kazin (vide supra) was also very into eating as a child. It seems that for families of his generation, serious eating was very important. Whack the calories down. I don't suppose they cared or knew about organics, salt or additives. So a good feast on the Lord's day was a very important part of the weekly round. Presumably something that could not be relied on back home.
Sunday, January 17, 2010
Tequila done
The Christmas tequila from Padron has now been polished off. Sufficiently not bad that I might even buy a bottle of the stuff on my own account one day. The bottle, having been lovingly handcrafted by Padron's genuine original american handcraftsmen and women, has been brought into service as a third moss garden, the first two, in common or garden germinators looking a touch sorry for themselves. Pour about an inch of mixed soil and potting compost into the bottle. Add maybe half a tablespoon of breadcrumbs to give the mix a bit of power, add water so that the top of the mixture is just above sea level. Replace cork and place bottle on the window sill between the two germinators. Watch and wait. Much better than watching paint dry. Further reports in due course.
Just finished 'A Walker in the City' by one Alfred Kazin, noticed above. Rather a splendid (short) memoir of a second generation immigrant from Poland (that is to say, born in the US of parents born in Poland) growing up in somewhere called Brownsville, then on the inhabited margins of New York. There was even the odd chicken wandering about at that time. Made more interesting for me by having been to New York, albeit briefly and not to Brownsville, although I may have passed through it on the way to Far Rockaway, a subway terminus which caught my eye on my last day. On the same visit I did go to Hester Street, prompted by a rather good film of the same name, to find that the street had been taken over by, I think, Koreans and Vietnamese. Not a trace of the Jewish community which had thrived there between the wars. So maybe I would not have found too much of the community in Brownsville either. Who it seems, were prone to poke fun at people who came from different parts of Poland than they did, with their funny accents. People from Warsaw, for example. Kazin was striking for the way he devoured books from the well stocked public libraries of his day. I have read plenty of books in my time but I never had a passion for books of the sort that he describes. I read books in the first place because my parents told me that it was good for me and came to like them later; but no passion.
But I do have a fascination with words, something my mother used to say that she had although I cannot remember any evidence of this fascination. So yesterday, it was claimed in TB that the word pikey, in Epsom an abusive word applied to persons, with traveller or gipsy undertones, came from the pikemen who protected the longbowmen in our battles against the French. At the time I thought this all sounded a bit unlikely and so this morning I checked. Meaning 1 of piker is a chap who weilds a pike, from the French. Meaning 2 is a thief, a variant of picker, someone who picks things up that he or she should not. Meaning 3 is slang for a turnpike and by extension perhaps someone who hangs around the turnpike, a vagrant or gypsy. Variant pikey.
We then turn to turnpike which turns out to be a wooden contraption used as a barrier against cavalry. A central horizontal spar, maybe 15 feet long and 6 inches in diameter, with spiked posts maybe 5 feet long socketted into it at short intervals, arranged in an outward facing spiral, which could then be rolled around the battlefield. Not something a horse would want to charge into or attempt to jump over. No mention of these things being used at Agincourt or anywhere like that, but we are headed for TB's allegation. Then by extension to name the barriers put across toll roads, aka turnpike roads, so that you could collect the tolls.
So while I now think that the TB allegation is a bit wide of the mark, it is not as silly as I first thought. I wonder where it came from? Some television quiz show? A pub quiz? I shall have to see my source again.
Friday, January 15, 2010
Pushing out the boundaries
Today, for the first time since the fall, a visit to a pub. Or to be more precise, visits to two pubs, although, in the words of the immortal Svejk, I cannot claim to have had more than two drinks in any of them. Added to that, a visit to town, more precisely to Epsom library. Where I find that they are selling off maybe four carrels full of books. Around half of them looked to be fiction and around half of them looked to be travel books, the sort of thing published by Lonely Planet, Blue Guides and so on & so forth. Slightly irritated by this last. There must have been between £500 and £1,000 worth of travel books there, nearly new, being more or less given away. Now that might be a small fraction of the daily running costs of the place, and I imagine that disposal in this way, in barrows outside the shop as it were, is the best way to do it. At least there is a chance that some of them will find good homes. But one does wonder about their acquisitions policy. How many of these books had been taken out and how many times? Presumably the librarian could easily find out in this age of computers.
Although perhaps not today. The self service stations were down and the librarians had to do it themselves on their computers. It seems that they even had to do it by hand one day during the past week. Even signs up saying that their usually reliable Internet service was a touch off-colour. All this made me think that doing it by hand must have been a bit of a palaver, copying out lots of long book numbers and a slightly smaller number of long person numbers. Plenty of room for transcription errors. But then we come to the senior moment. It must have taken me a good thirty seconds to take my mind back to what used to happen in the olden days. When you used to hand over two or three cardboard tickets into which the librarians popped the ticket of the books that you were taking out. Good reliable system which lasted, I should imagine, more than 100 years. But my random access memory clearly not what it used to be; not lasted anything like so long.
The library was also the locale for another couple of firsts. Passing through a motorised revolving door and climbing on and off an escalator, stick wise. A slightly intimidating experience. I am clearly headed to be the third string spokesman for those with impaired mobility at TB, standing in for the first string who is wheelchair bound and the second string who sports the double sticks, as occasion arises. I must try not to sport the enthusiasm of the newly converted.
Worn out by all this, reduced to emptying the waste transfer facility (vide supra) outside the kitchen window by bucket. Decided that moving a dustbin half full with dirty water and scraps, 50 yards slightly uphill, was going to be too much of a challenge. Full buckets were quite bad enough, especially when Franklin thought he would join in. The up side was that, it still being fairly cold, the week old kitchen waste did not smell of much. But I dare say our small four footed friends know better.
And while we are thinking of acquisitions policy, I noticed a shock horror piece in today's DT about a centenarian who was evicted from her home by an uncaring council despite the intervention of the great and the good in the matter. Now the home in question is a care home run, I think, by said council, but which has reached its sell by date. Too many bedrooms do not have en-suite facilities and the kitchens are short on microwaves. No facilities for customers to have pets or overnight guests. Or whatever. Why the thing is past its sell by date is not the point. The point is, how does one run such a thing down in a graceful way? Do you stop taking in new patients and run the thing until the last patient snuffs it? Do you run it, more or less at full throttle, until one fine day you move all the customers to a new home and knock down the old one? Hiring some expensive management consultant to design a process for some slightly less expensive project manager to execute. Something between the two extremes? Given that the first option is not giving very good value for money (something that the DT is not very clued up on when it comes to spending the taxpayers money, despite the amount of ink it spends on the subject), one of the customers is going to have to be the last to leave.
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Somewhat thawed
I had thought that last night's thaw would have seen the snow and ice off the sidewalk, but no. Loose snow washed off leaving the ice below, worse to walk on than it was yesterday so settled for walking down the middle of the road which was largely clear. Got to the shops to find supplies of the Guardian exhausted and so for once in a while got an Independent. Quite a good read so far today, so maybe I will get to buy another. Also made it to the compost heap at the bottom of the garden for the first time for a week; a visit made essential by the waste transfer station (aka dustbin) outside the kitchen window reaching capacity during my incapacity.
Now polished off the last of the Agatha Christie's acquired from the Oxfam Shop in Ewell, this one a very late Poirot called the Hallowe'en party, published some 6 or 7 years before she died. Quite long at 336 easy on the eyes paperback pages and I found it quite hard to get into although the story gripped well enough once one had, despite the silly plot. Rather like the television versions in that regard. The word meretricious cropped up at least twice, an unusually unusual word for AC and, while I had the vague idea that it meant false I did go so far as to look it up to find that it has the same root as merit, from the Latin for to earn own's keep. But it comes from us via ladies who earn their keep horizontally and who are apt to dress in the flashy, vulgar way which has come to be known as meretricious. Entirely different from the mendacious with which I had muddled it up. Not sure what prompted AC to drag the word into her usually easy going prose where at least one of the two uses did not seem appropriate at all.
Interested to see how she gives us the story from various points of view, without needing to go in for the flash backs which I have always found rather tiresome, especially in film. Accomplished by telling the bulk of the story as we might see it as flies on the wall, but then having Poirot discuss the case so that we see it from another, preferably privileged, point of view. In this case he has both a crime writer (to the character of which she can, of course, bring a bit of inside knowledge) and an ex-policeman to discuss with, in addition to the wrap up lecture at the end. But a device which makes the whole a bit more lively than it might otherwise be. Plus I am not going to spot many of the clues without a bit of help from these discussions on the side.
Interested also to see how Poirot has been allowed to age over the forty odd years she was writing his stories. How many of her readers grew up and grew old, as it were, both with her and her creation? Because I think she is showing her age too, with the preoccupations of people of her age and generation being allowed plenty of air time. Far too many lunatics running around who ought to be in asylums. Far too many criminals being let off too lightly for a promise to behave better in the future. Far too many young girls being slaughtered down shady lanes by sex perverts. She is also harder on Poirot than the TV. She makes him a bit of a prat about his moustache, his patent leather shoes and his dress generally, while on the box these traits have been cuddlerised. All part of what makes us love him. Perhaps that is a necessary part of the transition to the small screen.
And having pondered before on how much plotting is done before one actually starts writing proper, I now wonder whether this story could not simply have been written out, without having any clear idea of how it was going to end until she got to the end. One lets the thing unfold, sprinkling complications about and then one just lets the appropriate one select itself as the vehicle for the denouement. Let that come to one in one's sleep, as the solutions to so many other problems do. Perhaps this will work well enough with experience. As a beginner one might need to go back over what one has written and do a little touching up to bring the beginning into line with the end.
Now starting to worry about the new Logitech mouse I picked up outside the Prince of Wales (on the evening before New Year'e Eve. See post 31/12. Blog search still working for me). I have connected this uncertified piece of equipment to a PC without virus protection. It seems to me, having done this, that it would be entirely possible to load something into whatever chip one finds inside a mouse which could dig in through the USB port and do something frightful. Given that you can connect more or less anything to the port, it must have a fairly powerful interface. Certainly powerful enough to load up and execute code resident on data sticks because I have one which appears to generate exactly that result. So all I need to do is infiltrate what I imagine to be a fairly low-security mouse operation and away I go. People who go around scraping mice off the pavement beware!
The good news is that the mouse itself is, on balance, an improvement on the Kensington mouse it replaces. Apart from not having an elasticated cord, the thing fits the palm better and the keys have a more positive touch. Nice clean click. The only bad point is that the scroll roller on the centre line is too sensitive, sometimes resulting in the screen jumping a line or two when you do not particularly want it to.
Snow white
Deep in a secluded part of Epsom Common the white witch is lurking... Known to her familiars as Snow White.Wednesday, January 13, 2010
Bangalored
An another outage yesterday. Forgot to try the Desktop Help - which has done the business some of the time - but phoned Bangalore this morning. Their usual helpful selves, although they did try the would sir like to change the router game. The line flickered but failed to hold on the first call, then on the second call, their having called back around lunch time, some 3 hours after the first call, it came back to life and has been up for two hours now. Bangalore had been on the point of sending an actual, real life in the flesh engineer into the actual & etc street and claimed to have done nothing to poke the connection back into life. Not bad that they were prepared to field an engineer on a next day basis. And presumably these computer driven networks have enough on-board connection repair capability to make it hard for the chaps on the phone to be clear about what exactly is going on.
Deprived of my daily fix, hobbled as far as the shops instead. Which took me about as long as it takes FIL. Odd how tiring it is. Then today, found that clearing snow was a lot easier than walking, so we now have a very clean side walk out front. All made much easier by having the proper gear: besom yard broom (with the socket joint which holds the head onto the handle reinforced with mild steel wire stays) and a builders shovel. I noticed that many of the volunteers shown clearing some school in the DT were into garden spades. Not the thing at all. Also despite all the chuntering about community values which goes on in suburbs such as ours, well under half the houses bother to clear their share of side walk. A young woman, sounding a bit eastern European, suggested that back where she comes from, snow clearing was a community activity. Lines of eager suburbanites wielding brooms to a time kept by the local broom-major on a kettle drum. Maybe a career opportunity here for all those bossy Blair babes who are going to be out of work next spring.
The DT also suggested that on the afternoon of the recently flopping coup d'etat, our leader had spent his time penning an article, for the DT itself no less, on the burning topic of supplying broadband out to the starving countryside. Perhaps he is very alive to the needs of all those MPs with second homes out there - and not nearly so alive to his retired servants in the suburbs. I am not able to confirm this suggestion, in the sense that I have not seen the article in question. Nevertheless, I think the DT has a point. What is our leader bothering his head with such stuff for? Isn't he supposed to be saving the world - or at least those of us here in good old Blightly - from imminent doom?
It rather sounds as if he has fallen into a common trap for those with both energy and grey cells. They think that they can manage everything, they poke their noses into every saucepan in the kitchen and find it hard to delegate successfully. I have read that the Clinton menage had this problem, while the seemingly less gifted Reagans and Bushes (junior) are much better at listening to their advisers - and maybe get more done in consequence. Whether one cares for what they get done is, of course, another matter.
Brown notwithstanding, the most notable event of the day was the quick brown fox strolling across the back lawn with a wood pigeon in his mouth. Plus, I had not really checked before, but I find that the famous sentence starting with that phrase does indeed contain every letter of the alphabet, but also contains some of them more than once. There is even a duplicate word. How do I get Mr G. to tell me of the neatest, shortest sentence which uses every letter? Is there one which uses every letter just once? Apart from that, good to see that the urban foxes of which we have far too many do do something other than scavenge for our left overs. Maybe they help with the rats.
Monday, January 11, 2010
Exit visa'd
Ventured out to the great outsides today, the first time since last Thursday, armed with trusty stick. Made it all the way to one end of the road on the first outing, all the way to the other end on the second. Bit slow but we did get there. Maybe tomorrow, if it continues to thaw, I shall make it all the way to TB.
I find that the stick can be used for various tasks. Poking the mouse on the computer to wake the display up. Opening and closing the curtains. Pushing unwanted bedding off the bed. But one could do so much more, so I am starting to think of various gadgets which one might attach to the end of the stick. Maybe what one needs is a universal coupler together with a range of gadgets which fit it, rather like the gardening tools from Wolf which do this (see http://www.worldofwolf.co.uk/). Idea neat, but I was not that keen on the tool heads themselves which struck me as being made on the cheap out of poor quality steel. Plus the universal connector was not that tight; the tool head wobbled enough on it so that your hands knew, which irritated. If I go into making gadgets to hang onto the end of walking sticks I shall, of course, do rather better than that. First gadget would be one of those things for picking litter up. Which one could use at home to retrieve things on the floor when one did not feel up to getting down there or retrieve things on higher shelves when one did not feel up to getting up there. Or out of doors to pick wild flowers or to pick up litter. Second gadget would be some sort of a basket in which to put things when you wanted to hold something with the non stick hand. Perhaps for a railway ticket when ascending the long flight at Earlsfield and one wanted, additionally, to hang onto the hand rail. Third gadget would be a frost spike ferrule for when it was frosty and one did not trust the rubber ferrule to grip the ice adequately. I would publish diagrams, but I shall have to hold off on that until I have got a bit clearer on the patent front.
Moving on, from time to time I have a pop at book reviewers who used the space provided to grand-stand rather than to review the book under review. But last week (January 1 2010) the TLS carried an interesting article all about ENO and its roots in the Old Vic, ostensibly reviewing a book about the same. I am not very interested in opera, although I have been to ENO from time to time, but there was an interesting story here, the enterprise starting out as a vehicle for providing something better for the proles in Waterloo at the turn into the 20th century than booze & fornication. Opera, drama, dance and improving lectures. Cut price productions with cut price seats, although it seems that the audience gentrified after a bit and chaps with duffle coats and scores started to displace the chaps with cheesecutters.
One of their things was the notion that operas should be performed in English rather than some foreign language. Foreign language in fancy dress was all very well for the toffs at Covent Garden, but the proles needed more serious fare. And how could they be expected to engage with musical drama if they had not got a clue what the drama was about? An argument that I am not all that convinced by; I get quite a big enough bang out of Schubert songs with only the sketchiest idea about what is going on. Might overload if I had a better idea. Anyway, was moved by the article to give my one and only Britten record its first outing in the near forty years I have had it. Illuminations for soprano and strings; a musical setting of some material from Rimbaud. And very impressed I was too, despite not having a clue what Rimbaud had written and not understanding a word of the sung French. Turned the record over and it was a tenor, a horn and some strings doing some settings of English poems by various people. Not quite so as impressed as I had been with side one, possibly because it was more of a medley and lacked the necessary inner coherence & consistency. My switch time is far too slow for me to much go for lots of switching. And I still did not understand a word of the sung English either.
Not much cop on poetry so not sure if it is worth the bother drumming up the text of the Rimbaud to see if having read it makes any differance to the reception of the music.
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Five thing soup
Being crocked and cold, soup was clearly the thing. Take 4 ounces of pearl barley, soak for 4 hours in 3 pints of water. Bring to boil. Add 8 ounces of diced tenderloin of pork. Simmer for an hour or so. Add 8 ounces of finely slivered white cabbage. Simmer for 5 minutes. Add 4 ounces of button mushrooms, past their best. Simmer for 1 minute and serve. Consume remainder, if any, for breakfast. Reliable and simple. But only known to work with pork. Beef, lamb, mutton and goat no. Chicken maybe, provided one had some decent stock. There is, after all, the play of that name by Arnold Wesker, which I believe to be notable but which I have never seen to be performed, never mind seen performed.
While gently snuffling the soup we got to pondering about the state of affairs when our state spends a relatively large amount of money on things which go bang, manages to shoot the wrong person at Stockwell and manages to sit by while some pirates make off with a couple of senior yachties somewhere in the Indian ocean. As I understand things, the senior yachties had been told that going for the sail they had in mind was not a good plan but they persisted. But then, when they got caught by the pirates, according to the DT, there was a boat load of marines - more or less special forces - about fifty yards away who were instructed not to engage. Now this strikes me as barmy. We are dealing with serious people who are going to need a good smack before they desist - and this is likely to involve some casualties on our side. In this case, my line is that the whole pirate show should have been surrounded. It made quite clear that there was no way they were going back home. That they could either release their captives and surrender themselves for trial in some relatively civilised country or be shot on the spot. We do not negotiate with people like this in such circumstances. Apt to be a bit rough on the victims and their families in the short run but there are going to be a lot more victims and families if we carry on the way we are. Standard of debate on this matter in the papers I see more or less non-existent. Maybe I should start reading the 'Economist' again.
Less seriously we moved onto pondering about the educational guru or something who had opined for a newspaper that three greatest novels in the world in all time were 'War and Peace', 'Nineteen Eighty Four' and 'Ulysses', in that order. First thought was that the desire to rank things of this sort was rather silly. To rank suitable things according to weight, height or even IQ is relatively straightforward. Maybe even useful and/or necessary in some contexts. But to rank novels is hard. What criteria do one use? Number of qualifying educational courses for which the novel is a set book? The number of pages? The value sold? The number sold? Number of times cited in qualifying learned journals? Number of times cited in the BBC version of 'Desert Island Discs' between 1950 and 2000? Number of times lent by qualifying libraries? Some weighted average of the foregoing? And what does it all mean when you have your ranked list? What is the point?
Second thought was that we did indeed have copies of all three masterworks. Go to the top of the class. I have probably spent the most time on the first and the least time on the third, which means that they have got the order right to that extent. I have probably read the first two all the way through several times each, leaving out the historico-philosophical nonsense which decorates the first; the last just the once, topped up with reasonably frequent dipping.
Third thought, why 'War and Peace' rather than 'Anna Karenina', which some respected authorities believe to be the better book? Why 'Nineteen Eighty Four' at all? A slight and rather dated piece compared with the other two. Why not 'Brave New World', which while dated, albeit in a different way, turned out to be a lot nearer the mark? What about 'Don Quixote'? What about 'A la Recerche du Temps Perdu'? What about 'Middlemarch'?
All in all, rather silly. One would do much better asking 'tell me about a book you enjoyed last year'. Which I suppose is what it all amounts to. But why don't they say that in the first place, rather than going for all this rankism?
Saturday, January 09, 2010
Culinary catch up
Become aware that foodie content is slipping well below par. So a few notes by way of mitigation. The half-price gammon from Tesco at Cheshunt went down very well. No skin but boiled, impaled with many cloves. First take hot, second and subsequent takes cold. Good texture - which might mostly be about water content - and flavour. By comparison, the back to basics tinned rice pudding from Mr S. did not look very hot at all. A cream coloured fluid with a modest amount of rice floating about in it. FIL, a careful man, said that this was fine as he did not get on with the calorie and chloresterol packed versions offered by other brands. What I don't understand is that when the BH makes a rice pudding it is brilliant white. Not a hint of cream. So what are the tinners up to to get cream? Only of academic interest as I stopped using rice pudding when I came of age.
Then there was the pot of festive pear jam from our next door neighbour, something we have never had before. Must have been made with quite hard pears as the jammed chunks - maybe quarter inch cubes - were still firm. Texture not unlike that of the tinned pineapple jam we used to have when I was a child. Excellent with middle aged wholemeal bread. And an excellent present idea. Easy enough to do and to consume and no great expense. Shows a bit of care and attention without lumbering one. And today was the day of the big bratwurst from the Lidl at Leatherhead. Stonking great things about 10 inches long and 1 inch in diameter. Served with Polish sauerkraut and mashed potatoes. These last needed a fair amount of preparation having been a bit bashed about at some time in their career. But we are grateful still to have a corner shop to help out on those few days in the year when we can't get the shiny new car to the supermarket. Bratwurst warmed up in the fish kettle and did fine. A bit like saveloys but with a milder flavour than I remember these last having. And memory might be right on this occasion as Wikipedia thinks that they are bright red and highly spiced - and I am quite confident about the bright red bit.
Which reminds me of bit I read a few days ago about Google being OK as a research tool for our young while Wikipedia is not OK, with the source being some educational pundit, tsar or whatever. While my understanding is that Wikipedia is as accurate as the Encylopedia Britannica. The model may be open access but, on the whole, it seems to work. OK, so some of the high profile entries - such as those for our leader - are a bit vulnerable to vandalism, but the vast majority are fine. There is a whole army of conscientious, hard working and unpaid Wikipedia editors out their, ploughing their lonely furrows. The advice to aspiring editors is to pick some obscure topic which no-one has had much of a go at and get on with it. Most of the time you are left in peace and quiet to build your own little bit of on-line knowledge. Ideal, partly because worthwhile, occupation for the semi-retired geek.
But then I started to think about the business of verification and peer review which the pundit mentioned above was on about. Supposing I was to insert an article in Wikipedia, all dressed up in respectable clothes, about how wolves were the original lunatics, only do it when the moon is full and the reproductive cycles of lady wolves are aligned, in one of the more straightforward examples of natural selection, with the moon. Studies have been done on the time it takes the cycle to realign itself when you move a lady wolf from one place to another, with the interesting result that the time to realign varies as the cube root of the misalignment, rather than varying as a simple linear function, which one might have expected. So after a while, this might become the accepted truth. Anyone who wants to know about the reproductive behaviour of wolves picks this up and uses it, bamboozled by the respectable clothes.
Now suppose I am a respectable academic, who really does know something about wolves, and come across this interesting factlet. What do I do about it? I know next to nothing about Wikipedia and could not possibly interupt my valuable and interesting research to do anything about the bad entry. I'll just use the experience to slag off the whole enterprise over port at the high table.
But a better solution might be if every university in receipt of state funding were obliged to appoint a fixed term, three year fellowship in wikipedian regulatory affairs (WRA). A fellowship suitable for the decent but not stellar young scholar. Then whenever anyone at said university came across something that they thought ought to be put right, they simply email their local WRA fellow, whose job it was to do something about it. The WRA fellows could have regional and national conferences from time to time to share information. They could publish articles about their affairs. Perhaps run a scholarly journal, peer reviewed naturally. People who throve in the national WRA fora would get free passes to the international ones. They might even be allowed to take their partners. In this way we could all be some much more confident that the Wikipedian ship was steering a good course.
I close with a mention of one of the heroes of the sixties, which means that I have heard of him. Name of Ginger Baker, a noted snuffler of white powders and basher of percussion instruments. It seems that he now runs polo ponies on 75 acres of South Africa and is short of money. How more establishment than that can you get? It would be interesting to know how such a person moved from one state to the other - but not so interesting that I am going to go and find out. I shall make enquires at TB. Probably someone there who knows all about him.
Friday, January 08, 2010
24 hours
24 hours and 4 dispirin later that is. I had forgotten how you can take a bang, think you are OK and get home OK, only to be overtaken by all kinds of aches and pains later. But, hopefully, over the worst.
Decided against popping down to the A&E for a wash and brush up just in case. Would have been a bit of a problem getting there and would probably have been a bit of a problem being seen. I dare say, almost up to Saturday night closing time standards. Then one would have had to put up with been told what a prat one had been by all and sundry. Alternatively, some locum from Zindankovska explaining that cold weather was a jolly good thing as it generated lots of extra work at double time for the likes of him. Instead of that, FIl and BH gathered up 11 preparations for use in cases of bruising and presented them to me in a plastic tub. If I get tired of reading all the boxes, they do have some more salted away. I am also becoming better acquainted with a substantial bent wood walking stick which we acquired from some car boot sale on the off chance. Got to pondering about what it was made of. Light and fast growing which brings ash, beech, chestnut and hazel to mind. Not ash as the knots are not arranged in anything like opposite pairs. Grain not right and weight not right for beech. No idea what chestnut looks like in this state so I plump for hazel. Try asking Mr G. and all he can suggest is cane and hickory, both aliens so doubtful in this case.
But have learned a little humility. That while it might not have happened on a good day, it might easily have been a lot worse. That it does not take much from being a free-standing person to a high-dependency person. So no more taking chances on ice and maybe a bit more understanding of those with mobility problems.
So not in the best position to throw stones today, but was amused nonetheless to learn that Ms Harman, that doughty publisher of rules for all and sundry, is said by the DT to have been using her mobile phone while trying to extract her car from its parking slot. The charge on that front dropped as part of a plea bargain.
Interesting puzzle yesterday, while dozing. I had the snippet of a dream in which there was a senior moment. That is to say I put the butter in the oven instead of the refrigerator or some such. The puzzle being, was the dream just replaying some senior moment which actually happened in the past, or was it a dream state senior moment. That in the dream I was holding the butter, confronted by oven and refrigerator and the dream made the wrong choice and with the dream knowing shortly afterwards that this was a mistake. How can I discriminate between the two options?
And then, while reading the opening pages of 'Boule de Suif', came across the word flannel which the footnote tells me means red tabs, the sort of thing a colonel might wear. Turn to Littre which tells me that flannel is a species of woollen cloth but also that the word is used in a derogatory sense, just as we do in English. As least we used to in the civil service. This or that was a load of old flannel. Turn to OED which starts to suggest that the word was of Welsh origin as they have been making the stuff there for hundreds of years but then backs off. Quite right too as a Welsh origin does not fit to well with the French having the same word. But no mention of old flannel or red tabs. I suspect that this word for red tabs is slang and derogatory, and so related to our usage old flannel.
Getting bored with that, open up Powicke on Henry III and the Lord Edward again, where I read that in the middle of the 13th century, Henry and his cronies thought it was much more fun to bang around the south west corner of what is now France, fighting battles, besieging castles, spending huge amounts of treasure while in no way stopping the tide of the King of France reaching the Pyrenees, at a time when for a fraction of that treasure he could have conquered Ireland properly, in which case it would have become a proper part of the British Isles, like Wales, rather than a running sore. I suppose fighting in the bogs was all a bit naff. Much more fun to do it with all your friends and relatives, who know how to fight according to the rules, down in the Gascon sun. No sense of his strategic interest at all.
Also that marrying for love was a bit unusual for the aristos. of the day. Everything had to be subordinated to property interests, an important part of which was the castles aforementioned. And it was quite OK for reluctant brides to be seriously encouraged (to consent) by the two families concerned. But in the Ireland of the day they went one better. It was OK to use force. Presumably their faith in the sacrament of marriage was such that once you said the words the deed was done, rather like saying the words of a spell. Consent was irrelevant. Alternatively, consummation might have been the thing. Consent of parents, contract of marriage signed, marriage consummated and the job was done. Contract fully binding in the king's courts, with the priests not getting a look in. Plus, if you took out the insurance option, the king undertook to supply up to 67 knights for up to 67 days each, including horses, fodder, servants, armagnac at discretion and other rations, to enforce the contract, should any of the parties sustain complaint of breach. Copy of the contract held in escrow by the Knights Templar, just in case.
All this having previously read of a rather more benign example of forcing the hand, a proceeding which meant that the father could honourably avoid paying a marriage portion. If your chosen son-in-law kidnapped your daughter: it both showed that he was a man and absolved you from paying him to take her away. A nifty way of avoiding crippling marriage portion contests; but one which presumably only works very well when the daughter in question is desirable.
Thursday, January 07, 2010
Prat fall
I did have a go, but I had to admit defeat today. Ignoring advice from the BH and the state of the roads, set off to the baker around 0915. Our road fairly bad, but with a thin layer of uncompacted snow on top, so not too bad. Next road much worse, with the surface not much better than a layer of grey ice. After the odd little slide, got as far as getting off and walking down to the road after that, Hook Road, which had been clear yesterday. OK, so there was a bit of snow at the kerbsides but the carriageway was wet and clear. Today not so hot, but I thought I would give it a go. Didn't seem to bad but a few moments after that slipped sideways to come down with a bump. Luckily the lady behind me had already decided that I was being a bit dumb and was a sufficient distance behind. At this point admitted defeat and trudged home. I did not think myself qualified to offer advice to the one cyclist I saw setting out on his mountain tyres. I wonder if they grip better in the snow than my high pressure road tyres? I had thought that the high pressure meant more pressure to the square inch on the ice and more chance of getting a grip but not so sure now.
Today's first conundrum is about shops, or more precisely the shops on the edge of the new estate on the western edge of Epsom, on the grounds of what used to be an asylum for all those people who are now cared for in the community. The planners in their wisdom said that there had to be community in the new estate. There had to be a village centre where a sense of community could thrive and grow. How do we do this? Answer, we make the developer build some shops. Given that the development was hatched before the bubble burst and everybody was making lots of dosh, the developer could afford to take the pain. So we now have a natty little development containing perhaps 12 shop units with flats above. The shop units have now been empty for about a year.
Down at TB we have been pondering about what one might do with 12 shop units in such a place. Back in the late fifties, they put 4 shop units in the middle of the (mainly) established estate where I was living at the time. So there was a grocer, a butcher, a newsagent and a hairdresser. None of which thrived, even in those far off days before Tescos was really invented. I would not be surprised to learn that they have been turned into houses. So now we have twelve units. Let us suppose that an all purpose store - Spar, Tesco, whatever - take three units. That will take care of fags, booze, sweets, newspapers and grocery. So no more room for any of that. A hairdresser might take one. The TB view is that a bookmaker would not thrive in this part of town; people on new estates not much into betting. Maybe when the market picks up an estate agent might take one. Maybe the Lib Dems will take one for their local office while they build up their vote there. Which pushes us up to six, maybe. But what on earth are the other six going to do? Are the planners going to run community building displays and consultations in them?
Maybe the answer is that, as with farms in the countryside, we have to subsidise small shops on estates if we want them. But is that a sensible way forward either?
Meanwhile, the former asylum chapel stands empty nearby. The Muslims were blocked from doing a bit of building of their community there and have now settled for a former church hall elsewhere, on condition that there is no sign. Probably a better location for them despite the lack of parking facilities. No-one else seems to be taking any interest in this prime community opportunity.
The second conundrum, concerns the interesting brochure put out by the Department of Business, Innovation & Skills (The Marquess of Mandelson's lot) called 'Parent Motivators'. This was the subject of a facetious piece in the DT on or about New Year's Eve. What on earth is New Labour doing spending taxpayers' money to publish a booklet advising mums not to do their adult childrens' ironing? Is there no end to the nanny state? Now the facetious piece did not include sufficient clues to enable me to find the thing itself so I send off an email to the department in question asking them where I might find it. Lo and behold, the next working day, I get an email back containing a pointer to an electronic copy. So that part of the system works. I now get to find out the title of the brochure, which Mr G. then finds without any trouble at all - in fact, the same address as in my email. So that part of the system works.
Now things start to get more sticky. At my age, not very good at reading brochures on the screen, so I go to print the thing off. Awash with colour. Every page a colour. It is going to burn up a great rake of expensive own-brand HP toner or whatever they call the stuff in those expensive little plastic boxes. But I do find that I can select the text, transfer it to a Word document, reset the font and print that. A bit of a mess but it is legible. Suggestion: that such brochures come in a home printer friendly version as well and the bells and whistles version.
I now start to read the advice which turns out to have been written for the benefit of parents of young people who have recently graduated to an absence of job. Now most of the advice is fairly sensible, although I am not too sure about the merits of scheduling weekly progress meetings with one's offspring, so that you can keep things on the move without being a pain. But it is also rather banal, maybe patronising. Do people with the go to propel their offspring to university, albeit to the University of South Hook Road, need to be told this kind of stuff?
And how are they going to be told? There does not appear to be a price so presumably the thing is a handout, to be found lying about in various support dens like job centres.
So should New Labour be doing this sort of stuff? Should it be whacking out fairly basic guidance of this sort? Do they have the processes in place to make sure that they are getting value for money? At a guess, the thing has cost £100,000 for a print run of 10,000. With maybe half of that going to the people who wrote the words and turned them into camera ready copy. Would not of thought that it would take a Registered Guidance Practitioner (one of the descriptors of the author) more than a day or so to whack out a good draft. Like falling of a bridge to folk such as that. So not a huge sum. But would a couple of new space age baths in one of the Epsom day centres been a better buy? Register your vote immediately.
PS Google ads much better targeted today. They think that I ought to be phoning up Screwfix for some ice clear granules in their half price sale. Next day delivery guaranteed! As it happens, I find our shiny new Screwfix place in Blenheim Road (no where very near the pub of the same name) quite handy altogether, being a lot nearer than any of Robert Dyas, B&Q or Wickes and slightly nearer our mini Travis Perkins, with which last there is some overlap of stock. Visit the one near you (http://www.screwfix.com)!
