pumpkinstrokemarrow

Remains of the potato, cabbage and sauce fried up in a little more butter for tea. An excellent variation on the bubble and squeak theme.

Can also report on a further coup at the Bourne Hall library where I acquired an aristo. book by David Cannadine for 50p, a pleasure wars book by Peter Gay for 50p and a GCSE music revision guide from Longmans for 20p. The first two because I had heard of them, the last because I thought it might throw some light on scales, a subject I find intriguing but impenetrable. More than £50 worth of book for £1.20. The first two in good condition, only slightly used, the revision text much more battered. All three marred by the library habit of crudely ripping out the front page when they sell books. One would think that librarians, who ought to be book lovers, would show more respect. Why do they need to remove the page anyway? And if they really do have to remove it (which I find hard to credit), why can't they cut the page out neatly?

Did not, in the event, learn much about scales from the revision guide, but I did learn something about GCSE music, a subject considered hard in my day and not much taken, with the guide containing almost as much material about GCSE as about music. It seems that this GCSE has been made much more accessible, open to those of all ability and including both non European music (Islamic music is not singled out here, although it rates an article in Wikipedia) and popular music, while seemingly retaining a classical European core. In three roughly equal parts: listening to music, playing music and composing music. Still looked quite difficult to me - despite which, 20% of candidates get an A grade.

On the subject of Islamic music, I do not think that pupils should be allowed to mix and match their lessons. One lot objecting to music, another lot objecting to history and yet another lot to biology. All far too disruptive and expensive. Quite apart from it being a bad thing: children should get the benefit of a general education. So if you go to a state school, you can jolly well fit in with what the state sees fit to teach. Otherwise your parents are free to make their own arrangements.

I close with something I have learned about the word draconian. Which started off by my thinking, a propos of some bit of news or other, that it was odd describe spending cuts as draconian. Given that dragons are creatures of fantasy, not clear what their attitude to spending cuts would be. Or, indeed, to anything much else. So off to the OED where I find a wealth of draco flavoured words, some of them to do with dragons (I learn, for example, that a lady dragon is a dracaena and that a dracunculus is a muscular hair worm) but some of them to do with a chap called Draco, a fierce legislator operating in Athens six centuries before the birth of our lord. So our draconian is used both in the sense of dragon-like and that of Draco-like.