pumpkinstrokemarrow

Breakfasted off Irish farls from the baker at Cheam. Who had gone to the bother of printing use by dated labels for the little bags he sold them in. Plus an ingredients list - which included vegetable butter (presumably a polite term for margarine) and yogurt. These DIY labels must have accounted for a few pence of the 92p selling price. Farls not bad at all. A sort of fattish griddle cake, sold in quarters. According to OED, something which used to be baked in most of the remoter and poorer parts of the country, not just Ireland. Rather in the way that haggis did not used to be restricted to Scotland.

Then off for the second blackberry picking of the season and we now have nearly four pounds of the things, bagged up small in the freezer. Most of them will be used to gee up cooking apples over the coming winter. Both lots came from around Horton Lane but I do not suppose there will be that many more. The berries looked as if they had peaked early in the month and had been rather spoilt by the recent heavy rain. Didn't see anyone else at it, although we caught a French lady last year and a foreign language student earlier this year. It looks as if foreigns are more in touch with their berries than we are.

Next stop was a foot bath, the ford in Shere being the best place around here. Stopped off on the way at 'The Sheepleas', a pleasant but mainly young wood. Which included an unusual avenue of tall yews, presumably the relic of someone's drive. Also some quite big yews - one forgets that they can grow to quite a size - these ones maybe half the dimensions of a mature sycamore. Also lots of beeches, some quite big, some of rather fantastic shape. Pleased that there was no recent chain saw action, with all the deaths on view being of natural causes. On our next visit we must try the adjacent 'Effingham Forest'.

Onto Shere where we took a look at the church. Norman base but much restored by the Victorians. Runs to a brass on the chancel floor of a knight in armour on which I could not decipher any date. Important enough that we were asked not to walk on it. Fair amount of old stonework. The front door rates a mention in Parker and the church as a whole a page in Pevsner, who is a bit sniffy, as is his wont, about the village as a whole. Which had rather a messy layout and a lot of very old cottages as well as more recent stuff. Well worth a chocolate box or jigsaw. We settled for a cream tea which was not at all bad. Tea good, cream fresh and jam adequate. Scones large, warm and fresh. Not quite right although they tasted well enough. BH thought that maybe they had put a bit too much water in the mix; in any event the finish was not quite right with a bit too much brown crust. By way of compensation they could manage something both decent and gluten free for FIL.

Closed the visit with the visit to the ford for feet bathing. Passers by clearly did not understand the therapeutic value of chalk stream water and looked rather puzzled. It was quite cold.

Firstly, the otherwise excellent googlemail for some reason has not implemented a resend feature. Which means that when you do want to resend - which I do reasonably often - you have to fiddle about. Maybe tweaking a forward - which googlemail does do - to make it look like a resend. Went onto the googlemail forum to ask about it and discovered a whole lot of people out there beefing about googlemail. Some of the beefing was fairly crudely presented and some of the people appeared to be spending a fair bit of time beefing - to the extent that they appear to be given ranks or grades by google. Master contributor, artisan contributor, apprentice contributor sort of thing. So that the rest of us know who to place our faith in.

Secondly, while doing a touch of banking the other day, someone or something saw fit to put up a window about something called Trusteer. Just tick the box and we will make your computer even more protected than it is already. I vaguely remember getting something of the sort before and ticking the box without any untoward effects. And the window is professionally presented and might well be appearing on behalf of my bank. But I don't know how one can be sure; how can one be sure that some evil person is not spoofing the thing to gain access? Why is Trusteer coming back for more? Maybe the bank ought to have sent one a letter saying that they were going to distribute this thing. But life is too short to fuss too much. I just ticked the box and let the thing do its worst. Which so far seems to amount to telling me from time to time about all the cookies it has eaten.

Thirdly, on the third occasion that I have used Paypal, the first two occasions going fine, got into a minor pickle, with Paypal declining to make a payment requested by a third party. We will see how slick their help operation is.

To close with a literary factoid, was moved to look Oscar Wilde's favourite marquess up in Burke's Peerage. Where I find that the Marquess of Queensberry is the head of a very ancient and honourable family occupying very nearly 9 large pages of small type in double columns. The marquess in question being 9 out of 12. The dreadful Bosie eventually married and had one son who died relatively young, without issue, after a stint in the Scots Guards.

But what really caught my eye was that the Queensberry's appear to be, or be some part of the Clan Douglas, with the lineage starting with William Douglas, 1st of Douglas, born 1174. A subsequent Douglas was the Douglas who pops up in Henry IV part 1 as being captured by Hotspur at the battle of Homildon Hill and fighting with him at the battle of Shrewsbury. Subsequently became the Duke of Touraine and was killed at the battle of Verneuil fighting for the French. I wonder if Oscar, with his fondness for the bardic quote was aware of this connection? It seems likely.

Other medieval Douglas's did things like getting killed in Spain and fighting at the battle of Poitiers (on the wrong side, naturally) . Quite enough of them had their heads chopped off for treason for them to qualify as gentlemen - a criterion I think I first came across in Proust.

For the very curious, the ancestral seat of the Queensberry's appears to be a mountain a few miles north of Dumfries. At 2,286 feet nothing like big enough to be a Munro. Maybe there used to be a castle on the top. Nothing else listed under that name on my map.

This brought on the speculation about the purpose of suburban gates, that is to say gates to suburban houses, speculation brought on by the arrival of a large and imposing wooden version of a farm gate at a house near here. My belief is that such gates are largely to do with creating an impression.

Once upon a time we had stately homes in the country. Quite of lot of them had enclosing brick walls. The brick walls including one or more gatehouses or entrances, usually equipped with large and imposing wrought iron gates. Kept shut to keep the natives out. We also had farms in the country. Quite a lot of them had gates - five barred wooden affairs. Kept shut to keep the cows in and to give the toffs on horses something to jump over. In both cases there is a real function for the gates. They were generally kept shut and in working order.

Suburban houses are rather different, and neither of the aforementioned applications applies, although many of them still have gates.

In our road in Epsom, most of the between wars houses were built with low brick walls to the front garden, pierced with both pedestrian and vehicular gates of wrought iron. Most of these are now missing and few of those that are still there are used.

Our roads and nearby roads also sport a number of wooden gates. Some of them quite large and imposing, like the one where we started at. Some of them are kept shut. None of them, to my knowledge at least, are dog-proof, so that cannot be the purpose.

One house (of entirely ordinary size. Not at all stately) sports modern tubular steel fence with brick pillars and matching steel gates. These are kept shut and are, I believe, on a remote control. Altogether a rather elaborate affair, almost certainly the most expensive this side of Epsom. I think the people who live in the house come from abroad and so may have brought an abroad custom with them. Or maybe they have been burgled and are a bit twitchy on that account. The fence and gates would deter a casual youth burglar, at least from frontal assault. I don't know what they do about the back, which backs onto the stream running along the allotments where I used to allot. Probably not much of a deterrent, but you do have to go to the bother of getting into the stream.

My parents' post war house in Cambridge was built with a single pair of gates, made of wood, probably by the house builder, wood being cheaper than wrought iron at that time. While the gates were not lockable, when shut they may well have proved a useful deterrent to the exit of small children, there being no barrier between the front and back gardens of the sort that most of the houses in our road have (nice children not playing in the front garden). I don't suppose any of these wooden gates are still there, not that I have looked recently.

Our house in Norwich was on an estate built in the 1970's and the front gardens were open plan. No serious fences or gates at all, although I think our house had loops of ornamental chain hanging between short posts by way of a fence. There may have been restrictive covenants. But the effect was pleasingly open.

All of which leaves me with the thought that the gates of suburban houses are mainly to do with the occupants feeling the need for a bit of aggrandizement. Or perhaps a need for a bit of symbolic closure? To reinforce the privacy of the nest. Or perhaps a need to provide some visual emphasis to the front garden? To make it quite clear to passers by that this was not one of those houses which opened direct onto the pavement. Clearly an admirable topic for a bit of research. Perhaps an MPhil from the University of the Creative Arts entitled 'Expressing the need for spatial closure in the suburbs of northern Surrey'? Or perhaps the sort of footslogging research they like for GSCEs? Marching in mixed pairs around the suburbs and plotting the incidence of gates of various sorts on various diagrams and maps.

But irritating that the brain came up with the wrong answer, rather than no answer, yesterday. As we were told when taking O-levels, you don't get a mark if you don't answer the question. But you lose a mark if you answer it wrong. Which I used to think was a little unfair in that you got penalised for trying. I suppose they would have said that you ought to know when you don't know.

And returning to the matter in hand, I am reminded once again of the advantages of being able to afford an editor to check one's pearls of wisdom. If one likes to splash about in deep water, good idea to have a life guard.

And returning to the double bill, this started with a good omen in that a maggot was observed in the butter dish at lunch. Well known to be a good omen since Etruscan times. BH thought that the maggot may have escaped from a home grown organic cabbage which had been resident near the butter dish for a while but I am not so sure. Organic cabbages do carry bugs but it was not the sort of maggot that you get on cabbages, more the sort of maggot you get on meat. But we decided not to pursue the matter and simply ejected the maggot out of the back door. Food for the young blue tits that had been flying around earlier in the day.

Then off to Epsom Playhouse for the matinee showing of the 2009 adaption of 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', a story of which I had not previously heard. But the author, Oscar Wilde, was a sufficient draw. Turned out to be a film of some interest, but a film which was rather too long and not helped by the rather uncomfortable seats in the Playhouse. Rather hard with not much leg room, which may have accounted for flagging interest in the orgy scenes. The rest of the audience consisted of a row of six middle aged ladies a few rows in front of us and another six middle aged ladies a few rows behind us. There may have been the odd gent. besides myself. Also a lady in a wheel chair. Reminded of the time when we went to see 'Last Tango in Paris' many years ago, which also included orgy scenes, considered fairly wild at the time. As yesterday, the audience then consisted mainly of middle aged and older ladies. Perhaps it is all part of the coarsening of one's tastes and senses as one gets older.

The some interest was sufficient to propel me to Garrett Lane to stock up on Wildery. So we now have a picture book about Wilde's life and times (£3.50 from a charity shop) and a learned edition of the original book; a learned edition containing 150 pages of version 1 of the book, 150 pages of version 2 of the book and 150 pages of commentary. Plus lots of scholarly apparatus and notes. Telling the US audience things like the Brits have the quaint habit of calling private schools public schools and that Whitechapel was on the boundary of the bad lands of the 1900's East End of London. But started first on the life and times, from which I share a couple of factlets. First, that the Marquess who brought Wilde down was divorced by his second wife on grounds of impotence. Or perhaps annulled is the proper term in such a case. This despite the fact that he managed five children (2 gay) with his first wife. Second, that Reading jail was not that bad. Wilde was lucky in that the governor of the second half of his sentence was a civilised chap who allowed him, as a gentleman fallen on bad times, various privileges. Like books and a cushy job.

Back home to the second item on the double bill, a 2006 retread of 'The Wicker Man'. At least, the second half thereof. I am fairly sure that we had started to watch it before and not liked it. But this time, starting in the middle, it seemed OK. Atmosphere managed well, without needing either flesh or blood to gee things up. Unusually for a Hollywood film of this sort, without needing hypodermic needles, which suited me just fine as I not keen on the things. The matriarchal island with its geometrically arranged old-style bee hives and its drones (the human as well as the bee variety) worked well. In fact, up to the standard of the original, which while a good film, does seem a bit dated now. I shall have to look out for a DVD of the retread in the charity shops.

All this brought half way through Lawrence's 'The Plumed Serpent' (TPS) - an original version from Penguin with an orange trimmed cover, rather incongruously decorated with a rather ferocious looking bird, rather than a serpent of any variety.

A short while ago I acquired a book about Lawrence by Leavis (August 9), a critical celebrity of yesteryear who is now, perhaps, out of print. Not yet read, but I did get as far as a bit where Leavis was at pains to explain that Lawrence, despite appearances, was not any kind of Facist. The appearance being that he was very keen on people who spoke from the depths of their being, dark swirlings from parts below the heart, on life (this perhaps after all the death of the first war) and on clearing away the anxious and pretentious clutter of life among the chattering classes. On standing strong, upright and clean.

I find that TPS has rather a lot of this. It also contains a lot of comment about race. That is to say Europeans have this or that characteristic. Citizens of the United States have this or that characteristic. Mexicans of more or less pure Spanish blood. Mexicans of more or less pure native blood (aka natives). With allowance for the various different races: natives from one part quite different from natives from another. Mexicans of mixed blood. Some of these characteristics are admirable, some not so admirable. Lawrence appears to have a deep love-hate relationship with the natives; perhaps appropriate since I think it was he who first made the term popular. Now the question is, does all this amount to racism?

I try a few examples from our world.

I do not think anyone will fuss if I say that 'black people are better at athletics than white people'. Or 'black women look good in prints with strong patterns and strong colours'.

More tricky would be the observation that young black males of West Indian (rather than African) background are more likely to be mentally ill that young white males. Although I believe the observation to be true.

Kipling once wrote something about black people having a distinctive smell. Now this might be true, but I think it goes beyond what is regarded as polite these days. Don't know whether Kipling would count as a racist these days - but he was certainly an acute observer of race. And I am sure that I have read somewhere that Chinese people find that white people have a rather unpleasant smell due to their excess consumption of cows' milk.

Then there was a lot of fuss a few years ago about a book that asserted that black people were not as clever as white people. Or to be more precise, that black people did not do as well at IQ tests as white people and that IQ tests were a good predictor of life time achievement. I think the book also asserted that the difference between black and white was a good deal smaller than the range of variation in either black or white. Which rather reduces the impact of the first assertion. Pushes it in the direction of rude rather than helpful.

From time to time there are fusses about doctors who talk about race sensitive diseases in an insensitive way.

One way to cut the cloth might be to say that a comment or behaviour is racist if it is intended either to offend, to discriminate inappropriately or to promote racism. With racism defined as inappropriate dislike, aversion or hate of people of a race or breed other than one's own. Where in inappropriate I include indiscriminate: a dislike based on the fact of race alone, without regard to any other characteristic.

But this is not quite good enough. One can be racist without meaning to. Not meaning is less obnoxious than meaning, but it might amount to much the same thing. Or as has been said in other connections, the road to hell is paved with good intentions. Or as is the case with dangerous driving, intention is irrelevant, at best mitigating. It is the fact of dangerous driving which counts.

Another angle is that one might say offensive things. But the saying might help to change them. Statisticians of racial matters argue that it you don't count things up, how do you know if there is a problem or how to deal with it?

Against that, there is a question of manners. It is not good manners to draw attention to aspects of a person which that person might be a bit uncomfortable about. So one does not bang on about dentures to a person with false teeth unless they introduce the subject themselves. And even then one tries to tread carefully.

And we cannot ban discrimination on racial grounds altogether. There will be times when discrimination will be appropriate. But perhaps we can be clear when such discrimination will not do.

So where does Lawrence stand? I think he says things about natives which Mexicans, never mind natives, would find offensive. But I do not think he meant badly or to promote racism and what he says was said in books which are not much read these days. And perhaps only read by people who can take it in their stride. Grasp the essence of what he is on about without being diverted by what might be regarded as the canard of racism. Which sounds elitist and which will not do these days.

I leave with the thought that those who write laws about these sorts of things will have to tread carefully too. And perhaps leave a fair amount of room for interpretation and discretion. Hard to capture all this in simple rules. But I think I am moved to look up how the law writers do things. My efforts above are rather clumsy.

We were clued up enough not to take it to the tip up the road. They might well have thrown a bit of a wobbly. Instead we paid them a visit. Chaps very polite, but no. They were not properly equipped to deal with asbestos of any variety. Perhaps madam would like to phone the town hall to find out what the drill was. It was possible that the tip (aka waste transfer station) at Godalming would be able to deal with the stuff.

We thought that this was rather unlikely and also rather too much bother for a mat. So we wrapped the thing up in a Tesco carrier bag (recyclable) and dropped the thing into the green wheelie bin. Next day was collection day and we thought that that would be the end of the matter.

The next day, about breakfast time, the collector came along and hitched the bin to the hoist in the regular way. The magnetic resonance scanner tucked behind the hoist scanned the bin in the regular way. We did not mind about this as we had been assured that the information collected was anonymized and only used for statistical purposes. Analysis of supra-national rubbish trends and that sort of thing. What we had not expected was for the siren on the dustcart to go off and for an orange light to start flashing. It seems that our mat had triggered a level 2 alert.

The dustmen doubled into the cab of the dustcart and donned protective clothing - the sort of plastic white pyjamas that the police like to flaunt. They then emerged holding what looked like rather flashy litter pickers. Our green wheelie bin was ceremoniously emptied over our front lawn. The mat was picked out with the litter pickers and placed on an especial little pedestal to be photographed for evidence. The chief dustman - the one who drives the dustcart - was then able to issue us with a fine and a 28 day ASBO on the spot. We were so flummoxed that we paid the fine - the dustcart was fitted with one of those gadgets that they have in restaurants and shops - and took in the ASBO.

They were terribly polite about it all. But you could see that they just loved getting one over people who live in streets with grass verges. Certain amount of sniggering in the ranks.

Meanwhile the Surrey police helicopter arrived overhead, just checking that everything was under control. Probably took the opportunity to check the temperature of our roof.

After a while the dust settles. The mat is back on the picnic table. We resumed our interrupted breakfast and read the small print on the ASBO. Perhaps going the 25 miles to Godalming would have been a better bet.

For most of yesterday our minds were on higher things, starting out at the new Renaissance galleries at the V&A, where they have assembled a truly remarkable collection. OK, so not quite the same as seeing the stuff in-situ, in the church, the palace or whatever, as one can at Florence. But given that one is not in Florence, a rather good second best. Some fascinating carved stone well heads which I had not come across before, clearly an item of conspicuous consumption in Italy at that time. A splendid round tomb stone carved in low relief. And some splendid balcony panels, also carved in low relief. The dominant note in both stone and panels being very effective, but simple geometric pattern. Some rather lurid altar pieces from Germany reminding one how exactly martyrs got martyred. We gave the middle of the three floors a reasonable look. Going to have to go back to do more on the other two.

Rounded this off with a whizz around the theatrical galleries up on the third floor. Lots of costume but what was interesting me yesterday were the models of theatres and sets.

Next stop the Brompton Oratory. Very grand and gloomy on this rather overcast day. Spent some time in the small chapel to the right of the altar, behind the elaborate altar to Mary. Bold but effective detailing to the stone work.

Couldn't get into the CofE church nestling behind. Only open on Sundays, despite the fancy new porch and despite the fact that I am sure that is was open last time I tried. Maybe some time ago now.

Moved onto Pont Street to see the Presbyterian Church of Scotland church there. Post war reconstruction; large and rather impressive. Good pillars and capitals; the latter having restrained but effective carving. Circular, restrained, modest and effective east window. A building which provides space for a congregation without trying to overwhelm it. Of which more shortly.

Down the rather curious and rather long Pavilion Street, running just behind Sloane Street. A proper old mews street with lots of large and ancient garage doors, perhaps dating from the days of horse and carriage. There were also quite a few old houses. Some new build. No pub for the refreshment of those in service but passed three young ladies dressed up as maids in full black and white gear having a fag on a door step. Foreign; BH thought French.

Quick pick-me-up in a place called the 'Chelsea Brasserie'. Tea and cake. Not much choice but a good carrot cake with a good, slightly crunchy topping I had not come across before. Clientele very metropolitan. Not like the Cafe Rouge in Epsom at all.

Rounded off the arts and crafts with a place described as the cathedral of the arts and crafts movement. A place which I must have been past tens if not hundreds of times but have never before gotten around to going in. Around 130 years old and big. No expense spared on the windows which included big-name artists for the stained glass. The east window was something special with stained glass playing well to the tracery. The lady told us that it look especially special if you happened to be there at dawn, with the sun rising behind it. North aisle windows rather different, breaking the Pugin rule about not having pictorial elements cutting across the tracery, but working just the same. Other windows different again. The lady also told us that the place is full on Sunday - quite an achievement for a place of this size. But congregation well heeled enough to support a rather grandly printed book of the church for £5 - from the Trinity Arts and Crafts Guild. See matching web site at http://www.holytrinitysloanesquare.co.uk.

Seems odd now that they thought seriously about knocking the place down in the late sixties.

All of which led to a deep thought this morning. The Elizabethan apron stage was very lightly propped. Not much interest in fancy decor or fancy clothes. The idea was to focus on the actors and what they were saying, rather than on their packaging. Is it a coincidence that this sort of stage flourished at the same time and place as the Puritans, not that different from the Presbyterians above, who wanted to move the focus of a service from the rituals of remote priests in fancy (if affective) surroundings to a something simpler, in which the word was more important than the decor? Leaving aside as irrelevant - to my mind anyway - the fact that Puritans were rather anti-theatre, elaborate or not.

Yesterday, the first time for a while, woke up to two odd dreams.

The first involved my needing to go to the optician, a chap called Roper, that I used as a child. The shop was still there (in the dream, that is. Long gone in real life) and Roper was still there, alive although very old. As he was so very old and not able to move about much, the drill was that I sat in something like a dentist chair, with my head in a sort of clamp, at one end of the consulting room, while he sat in something similar at the other end. But he had some kind of remote control apparatus, the main function of which appeared to be to drive a shaver on the end of an arm coming out of the back of my chair and with which he, very laboriously, proceeded to shave me, rather badly. There was also some very rudimentary optical activity which involved us both kneeling on the carpet around his box of tricks as he was unable to stand up. Not very convinced that the consultation had been worth while. My eyes needed better care than Roper was able to offer.

Perhaps this is the brain's tactful way of telling me that it is time for me to visit the dentist, which indeed it is. Or perhaps that it knows something about my eyes which I don't.

The second involved a rather troublesome journey from London Bridge to Waterloo. Started out on the northern river bank somewhere near London Bridge. Down among the old wooden piles and all the detritus washed up onto the bank. I know I am on the north bank so I ought to be able to deduce direction, but don't. But I do know that I need to head west. Not enough sun visible to work out direction from that. Hills vaguely in the distance in one direction. Office buildings in the other. Decide that the best bet is to head for the hills, deemed to be those of west London. After a bit, change my mind and head back again. After a bit, the sky ahead clears and I get a sight of Canary Wharf in the distance. Right first time after all. About turn again. Decide that it is getting rather late so get a bus. A very crowded bus which seems to be heading vaguely in the right direction. Pick up BH and FIL somewhere along the way. Somehow, the bus drops me off at Bow, which is not where I want to be at all. Luckily another very crowded bus comes along which we are told will get us to Waterloo. All three of us pile on. Bus takes off through all kinds of dark and twisting streets which gradually morph into a dark and twisting (urban) canal. A rather dirty one at that. We seem to be heading north rather than the south west desired. The bus has morphed into some kind of large speed boat with me at the very front of the thing. Pounding the waves in a very alarming manner. Bang. Bang. Bang. All seems rather dangerous and most unlikely that we are going to get to Waterloo any time soon. Wake up. No idea what could have brought this on, let alone what it might mean.

Back in the real world, moved to enquire of a second Newky Brown web site about a certain batch of ale being served at TB which is continuing to taste a bit odd. (See August 5). After decades of regularity. Now this web site is very flashy indeed, all style and no content as far as I can see. See for yourself at http://newcastlebrown.com/. But it did include a customer service email address so I try that. Not may hours later a computer at the other end suggests that I phone some number in the US, helpfully explaining when their ET working hours are. Helpfully explaining how important my feedback on the packaging of the product is to the Newky Brown Corporation. Quite clear that the computer has not attempted to read my email. Or given it a call number or anything like that. Nevertheless, less than an hour later I work out what ET means in GMT and how to phone the US, something I have not done for a long time. Call answered in less than 10 rings by a gentleman with an accent clearly of the US. Why are you phoning me sir? You sound English and this is the Newky Brown care operation for our US customers on behalf of Heineken USA Consumer Affairs. I explain. Ah sezzee. Point 1, we have certainly not changed the recipe. Point 2, I will see if I can get you the right numbers to call. Which after a few minutes hold he does. Tomorrow I may try them. In the meantime, no offer to forward my email - which I do not think he was able to locate - to the appropriate authorities. Score 2 out of 10 so far. Maybe it will get better.

Onto agriculture land for a lesson in agricultural mechanics. Which turned out to be entirely topical given my recent post re the Empire State Building and the lack of health and safety thereon (August 7). The task before us was the connection of a tractor (contraption A) to an implement (contraption B). This means bringing the male and female halves of the joint together and popping the retaining bolt in. Tolerances are sub-millimetre. See illustration in previous post.

If one is doing the advanced task the two halves of the joint are rigidly connected to their contraptions. Which means that one has to bring the two contraptions into alignment in their entirety. You lose points every time you impale yourself on one of the spikes with which the contraptions are decorated. One is allowed the use of grease, crowbars, club and sledge hammers. Either or both of the contraptions may be motorised and mobile - although mobility is not very sensitive. Contraptions apt to jerk about in the mud a bit.

The elementary task - the one I tried - is rather easier. The requirement for the joint halves to be rigidly connected to their contraptions is relaxed a little. One or more degrees of freedom are introduced, at the discretion of the instructor. At six degrees of freedom - three each for position and orientation - the task becomes near trivial; you can just screw the two halves into alignment. No pushing, shoving or swearing required at all. As I was not a complete novice I was allowed two degrees of freedom. Task took about an hour.

Which left me very impressed by the idea of doing the same sort of stunt a mile in the air (on the Dublane spike) or several miles under the sea (the BP blowout). Or maybe on the deck of a drilling rig. The scope for accidents must be huge.

But it also occurred to me that with a bit of design effort the agricultural task could be made a lot easier. The design could include degrees of freedom. I suppose the catch is that the joint has to be more or less universal - any female will fit any male - and that it has to be very robust. These joints take a lot of stick and get attended to by people with rough ways. I shall try again in a few years time and see if things have moved on at all.

First, the amount of trade in goods is rather more than our production of goods. So there must be an awful lot of coming and going in production.

Second, we do more trade in goods than we do in services.

Third, services is growing as a proportion of exports. From a third to a half from 1996 to 2006.

Fourth, the killer blow. Financial services were in surplus by around £15 billion in 2005. Other business services were in surplus by around another £15 billion in the same year. The total of £30 billion is about the same as the surplus on services as a whole. And about the same as the overall deficit on goods and services, also £30 billion. This because of balancing deficit of £60 billion in goods. So while financial services might not be that important absolutely, they are important as a contribution to our balance of payments.

Policy advice: ban holidays abroad. Travel - most of it by bog standards - is in deficit by yet another £15 billion, completely knocking out that tremendous contribution from the boys in the city.

Challenged, was moved to inspect the blue book at shorter range. To be precise, table 2.3. I am pleased to find that GDP is still of the order of £1.4 thousand billion a year. So far so good. But then I find that manufacturing is a paltry £150 billion of that. Financial intermediation - which I think includes all those financial services which are commonly supposed to be the economic engine room of the country - does £117 billion. Real estate services do a lot more at £303 billion. Services as a whole maybe four fifths of the total.

But then, developed economies generally do lots of services. We can all afford to be quite keen on shopping, holidays and health. So how does our manufacturing compare with the rest of the world? At this point I sail into very troubled waters. Various people offer international statistics - the US Bureau of the Census, the OECD and various agencies of the UN. There are an awful lot of statistics out there, a lot of them downloadable for free. But what I did not find in the fifteen minutes or so that I gave it, was something on one side of a piece of paper saying how manufacturing in the UK did compared with the rest of the world. Probably not helped in this by the Chinese being a special case from a statistical point of view but a special case which does a great deal of manufacturing. Nor by the fondness of statisticians for publishing indices or rates of growth rather than the levels that I am interested in.

Perhaps I have stumbled on the value that all these chaps working in financial intermediation are adding. They are digging away in all this stuff, producing material that the rest of us stand some chance of understanding. Which they can pass on to the DT or put out as high grade market information under plain cover to their valued customers. For their eyes only.

Or perhaps I have just stubbed my toe on the old truth that it is often very hard to answer what sound like very simple statistical questions. An example from a different place being 'how many people live in the UK'. And with the art being to provide a simple answer which is not too economical with the truth.

Spent part of the afternoon pondering about legal aid, the bill for which is said to be huge and which is also said to be funding all kinds of bad causes. Ridiculous appeals from various kinds of bad people. Habitual and violent criminals whose barrister manages to find some flaw in the entirely sensible conviction. Unpleasant seekers of political asylum who manage to spin the process out so long that they acquire an English wife at which point it becomes their human right to stay, irrespective of how unpleasant they might be. Whatever bad habits they may have brought with them from their dump of a country.

So start to surf around a bit. Fairly quickly find out that legal aid is around £2b, roughly half criminal and half civil. Most of the civil is family - presumably divorce and such like - but there is a chunk for immigration matters. Also fairly quickly find out that the whole point is to make justice accessible to all. Subject to constraints of fairness, common sense and affordability. Which seems eminently reasonable. Then try to drill down a layer and get lost in a morass of stuff from the Ministry of Justice and the Legal Services Commission, this last being the gang that runs legal aid in England and Wales. Some at least of which appears to have been posted on the Internet in a form which shows the last revision. All that crossing out in red stuff which you can get Word to do if you are clever. Very un-clever; careless even. But there does appear to be a lot of good work going on to drive the costs of legal aid down. To come to some more sensible accommodation with the legal trades, every bit a match for the boiler making trades of yesteryear.

But I fail to get a more detailed, lay-legible analysis of where the legal aid money goes. So try a different tack. Do I care? Take a peek at HMG's financial statistics - the blue book I think - and after some head and other scratching, decide that the country is worth maybe £1.4 thousand billion a year. Take a peek at the HMT website to find the thing illustrated in the previous posting. Which tells me without any scratching at all that the government annual spend is around half the available total, say £0.7 thousand billion. From which I work out that legal aid, that prop to civilisation as we know it (not to mention all those fat mortgages which our fat lawyers have secured on it), accounts for perhaps a seventh of a percent of the big cake, a third of a percent of the government cake. Which does not sound like much at all.

HMT used to have a story that the successive spending rounds which they conduct are a good way of getting money allocated to the right things. That pressures at the margin, expressed by fighting among the spending departments and their ministers, work towards an equilibrium, rather like prices do the same sort of thing in first year undergraduate economics. Those nice graphs which always have a sensible and stable equilibrium point. I think I believe this story. That in the round, the money is allocated to the right things. So £2 billion is probably what we should be spending to make justice accessible to all. Nevertheless, the £2 billion is going to have to take its share of the hit, along with everything else.

Reminded that HMT does quite a good job of making government money policy visible in this document. A good deal better than some other parts of HMG which I have visited recently.

In the course of which I find I need something that I call packing thread. BH has a small amount of it, wrapped on a small card, from a certain J. Wenzel. But the card does not carry a label; nothing to say what I am supposed to ask for.

Ask the baker at Cheam for a haberdashery and they point me to a wool shop a few hundred yards up the road. They do indeed sell haberdashery items although they clearly major on wool. Shop staffed by a couple of ladies older than me who give the impression that they are not very used to having men in their shop. Have you any packing thread by any chance? What's that? Thick green thread for mending haversacks and such like. No. We only cater for needlework in this shop, not that sort of thing. Why don't you try the sports shop up the road. They can probably help you.

Try the sports shop up the road and explain what I want. Hmm. I've got the sort of string you restring tennis rackets with but nothing like that. Tennis racket string not suitable at all so no luck here either.

On the way to the butcher notice a dry cleaners which also does keys. Maybe he does shoes and has thread for them. And so he does. Big reel of green thread from which he gives me a couple of meters, gratis. But he has never heard of packing thread. Get the stuff home to find that it is the same sort of thing as my packing thread but a good bit lighter. Maybe half a millimetre in diameter rather than getting on for a millimetre. So it will do, but not ideal.

Next stop, thinking that the ladies of Inner London may be plying their needles in a way that those of Surrey clearly are not, try the Wandworth Road where I come across well stocked fabric shop staffed by a couple of ladies very much younger than me. Attractive. Who also look a little surprised to see me. And they have never heard of packing thread and certainly don't stock anything like that.

Getting a bit tired at this point so stop for a quick snifter at the bottom of Thorncroft Street. To find that in this part of the Wandsworth Road you pay 35p less for a bottle of warm brown Newky than I do in a very similar establishment in Epsom. Sit outside and count the joggers, all shapes, sizes and ages, going past.

Carry onto Wilcox Road where I find a chap who does curtains and upholstery. He's never heard of packing thread either but offers me a couple of lengths of some green stuff from a large hank hanging on the wall. Odd that he does not have it on a reel. Why does he prefer hanks of ready cut? He calls the stuff upholstery thread. Gratis once again. Get it home to find that it is about the right weight but a different finish. Doesn't have the waxed appearance of the stuff from J. Wenzel. But it will probably do. Search deemed to be completed.

But just to round the thing off, have a quick poke at Google. Who knows all about packing thread, which he seems to think is something mainly used by packaging machines to sew up tea bags. Presumably rather bigger tea bags than I might use. And I think I have seen other kinds of dry goods packed and sold in small brown paper sacks sewn at the top. But curious that I know this particular stuff as packing thread. Presumably the name that my mother knew it as, perhaps from a time when Montreal was a garment town like New York.

Then ask Google about J. Wenzel and he falters. There is a Wenzel Inc. but they are into something much more complicated than thread. And Wenzel thread products appear to have a presence on places like e-bay. But I don't find the company itself. Curious again.

PS: Mr G. on the case this morning. He thinks I want to buy a hat.

Been having a spate of musical fads over the last couple of weeks or so. Started off with Bach's orchestral suites - some of which I had clearly heard before - but on which I had never focussed. That lasted for a week or so. Then moved onto Chopin's nocturnes, particularly sides 1, 3 and 4 of the 4 available. Not quite got my head around side 2 yet.

Then a swift foray into the third movement of Beethoven's Op. 132 string quartet, featured in the closing chapters of 'Point Counter Point'. A thing of great beauty and intensity. But it suddenly dawned on me as I listened what (D. H.) Lawrence's puppet, Rampion, in the book was on about. It might be a thing of great beauty but it was also terribly private. One is one's own private heaven, shut off from the rest of the brave new world that has such people in it. One might as well be on some substance induced trip - which I am told is also, often, terribly private. Not including here alcohol induced trips. Alcohol can generate a lot of community spirit when consumed in the right circumstances, this presumably accounting for its use for such purposes for millennia.

I think Rampion's point was that being shut up inside a private and cerebral world is not the way forward. We ought be much more in tune with other parts of ourselves and others. Not sure that I agree with him, but I think I can see what he means. Not just ranting - which Rampion rather does in the book in question.

I suppose he would be happier with singing in a choir, an experience which I imagine to be both cerebral and collective. At least I would think so from my limited recent experience of singing at carol services and the like. An experience which can be heightened by taking place in the dimly lit interior of a good class church.

From there moved onto Schuberts D935 impromptus. And sufficiently moved, happening to pass a music shop in Kingston, to procure a Wiener Urtext Edition. Proper full size thing that one might play from, not like the miniature scores from Eulenburg. Which I was recently reminded of by getting a score of the Schubert Octet. Miniature is OK but all of the print is small and some of it not so clear. Not so easy on older eyes and brains. Full size thing much better. Quite impressed that the shop in Kingston had it, along with quite a lot of the standard chamber repertoire. Must be quite a lot of musicians knocking around Kingston. Once home, I find I can just about follow the score. To the extent of seeing that there is a lot more there than I am likely to hear unaided. Not that I can follow every note, rather I keep leaping from highlight to highlight, trying to avoid the odd elephant trap where my recording leaves out a repeat. All of which left me with the thought that writing music must be an odd business. Even supposing that you have thought it all out, it is going to take you a lot longer to set the notes down that it takes to play them. A few seconds playing time might be a lot of inches of stave. One is writing in a different time zone as it were. As the composer you are seeing the thing as a picture which you are copying down, rather than a one dimensional stream of noise entering the ear holes. Maybe one day I will meet someone who knows.

Whereas I woke up to a vision of a large black box car, the sort of thing you might get in a Poirot or a film of a book by Dennis Wheatley. Great big thing with a long bonnet, four doors, big lamps and so on & so forth. Parked in some suburban street, pointing down hill somewhere in north London. I was with someone but the dream did not bother to tell me who. Quite clear about where I was but not who I was with. Then the car morphed into something rather larger, but clearly a conversion of a Routemaster bus, despite the much enlarged hole to the left of the driver. Still black. Then it morphed again to something which was clearly a conversion of two Routemaster buses. The front two thirds of one and the back two thirds of another. Still black and still a family car, albeit a rather large one. The only prompt I can think of is one of those Chelsea tractor things parked across the road from us. Which on closer inspection turns out to be a black Land Rover. Nothing like the sort of Land Rover I used to break half shafts in all those years ago.

Which reminds me of somebody else's blue long wheel base I once used to move half a yard of wet concrete. The thing could manage but it did make the handling rather odd.

This week's TLS very feeble. Much banter about the bard, but apart from that I glean two factlets. First, that our very own Pevsner was, by origin, an assimilated German Jew of a Russian flavour. A very talented art historian with a university lectureship. Who was of a mildly right wing persuasion and mildly pro-Hitler, up to the point when the racial laws cost him his job. He was not very sure that we in the UK were very into his sort of art history, but as things turned out this is where he turned up. And the rest is history. All of which reminds me of Irene Nemirovsky and her sympathetic portrait of the occupying German forces in France in 1940. According to the TLS, this sort of thing was quite common in the Europe of the time, strange and sad as it might seem after the event.

Second, that the famous Lenin had an elder brother, executed for participation in a failed assassination in late 19th century Russia. A question of interest to the writer of the book under review being the extent to which Lenin's later career was driven by an urge, perhaps subconscious, to obtain revenge for his lost brother.

Back to the front where we kick off the main business with a three page lament of the demise of French food and French cooking. Very foodie, very Islington. Or perhaps Oval these days.

Back to the back again where a proper lefty tone is restored with a three page rant about the iniquities of big oil in general and BP in Louisiana in particular.

Somewhere in the middle I came across a review of a book with title 'Eighteenth-Century Ireland' and subtitle 'The Isle of Slaves'. At the time I read this as yet another rant by some Irishman about the iniquities of the Brits. two hundred years ago. When will they move on? They have been independent for getting on for a hundred years now. Yawn, yawn. Re-read the review yesterday, in a more sober frame of mind, and find that the thing was not quite as much as a rant as I had originally thought. Pointing out, for example, that the Presbyterians in the north did rampage and riot for much the same reasons as the Catholics in the south. Neither lot much liked the Anglicans in the chair. That the population of Ireland was proportionately much bigger then that it is now, perhaps half that of England & Wales rather than a tenth. That at one point it was up to 8 million. Clearly the potato was a wonderfully productive crop in a good year.

It then dawns on me that I had some time previously read a review of this same book in the TLS where the subtitle was given as 'The Long Peace'. With stuff about how, despite all the talk, the Ireland of that time was a prosperous and pleasant place in which to live. Intrigued, off to Amazon to buy the paperback version, reduced there from £19.99 to £14 something, pushed back up to £16 something by postage and packing. Hopefully, some day soon, I shall be able to make my own mind up about the reliability of the reviewers of these illustrious organs.

Big decision point this autumn. Is the lilly strong enough to be lowered from sitting on two bricks at the bottom of the tub to one brick?

Plenty of stuff to interest a modern audience. For example, a leakily plotting Hotspur to his wife, recycled from Seneca: 'Thou wilt not utter what thou dost not know;/And so far will I trust thee, gentle Kate.' Oddly, this did not raise hissing from that part of the female audience of a femmy age.

On the other hand, Hotspur very much the drawing room gallant rather than the battlefield gallant he is supposed to be. He does die as one after all. So when he complained of the king's messenger as '... shine so brisk, and smell so sweet,/And talk so like a waiting gentlewoman', one's first thought that he was not doing badly in that department himself. The Globe seems to have no idea of how to make heroes heroic.

Worcester and Glendower both rather spoilt by caricature. Contrariwise, I rather liked the comic Poins. Don't mind the lower orders acting the fool. Henry IV started very feeble but much better by the end. Harry and Falstaff competent. Mistress Quickly played as an old bawd; a bit too old to my mind. Lady Mortimer in a smaller part rather better than Lady Percy in a bigger one.

Fight scenes difficult to pull off but the Globe did not do a bad job on that front. But it did not seem very sporting for King Henry to field a bunch of decoys at the battle of Shrewsbury (a fielding attested by chronicle, not just bard), with the result that poor old Hotspur wore himself out killing off the decoys rather than killing off the king. Is it the sort of thing one would boast about in the pub afterwards? What would the Homeric Greeks thought of such a ploy? I seem to remember that Patroclus dresses himself up as Achilles when he goes out to fight for the last time, so they were not completely above such trickery.

Very good they were too. Pastry spot on, not like that fatty fluffy stuff favoured by central London tourist pubs, pastry top and bottom, contents cubic inch meat lumps in a modest amount of gravy. Not padded out with vegetables or spices. Which is OK in pasties if they go easy on the spices but is not proper in pies. Two large pies a bit much for two, so part of one of the chicken pies served as a snack later on. I shall be back for more in due course.

Thus fortified, resumed the hunt for the occupant of the cycle shop in Pound Lane. Good shop but a little relaxed about attendance so I had to get rather fed up with the clicking noises coming from the bicycle transmission before I ran him down. Couldn't get the clicking noises when the bike was hung up in the garage. Clicking noises intermittent when on the road. Never get the clicking noises when not pedalling. Clicking noises appear to be independent of gear. From all of which we deduce there is a bearing problem at the crank wheel end. The business part of which was replaced not all that long ago to cure another clicking problem and which was clearly inscribed 'do not disassemble'. So I didn't. Luckily clicking noises were on when I did track the occupant down and after a certain amount of teeth sucking, trial pedallings and so on & so forth, he decided that the problem was the pedal bearings. Something that had not crossed my mind. So now have had shiny new pedals fitted, I managed to refit the toe straps (not being keen on the sort of pedals which lock onto the sole of your specialised shoe) and, so far, the clickings have not reappeared. Another satisfactory bit of shopping.

So while sailing along this morning on my newly silenced bicycle, got to thinking about the people who live in the Netherlands and who do not like their country to be described as Holland and do not like to be called Dutch. Now I can understand the first problem as I believe that Holland is one of the provinces of the Netherlands. So calling the Netherlands Holland is a bit like calling the British Isles Scotland. Those of us living in the south east of the country get a bit peeved. (See October 23, 2009. The tape must be running on an approximately 8 month cycle). But it dawned on me this morning that Dutch sounded quite like Deutsch and certainly had the same root. The Netherlanders spoke high German and the Germans spoke low German. Or vice-versa. And while the Netherlanders are a tolerant bunch, they perhaps do no care to be reminded of their close kindred with the Germans given what happened in the last war. So Dutch is out. All very plausible perhaps, but a line of reasoning which feels a bit stretched. I will have to find a Netherlander and get the story from the horse's mouth.

From the last war, moved onto heroes of the last war. And got to thinking about my father and my father-in-law, both of whom spent the war in the army medical services. Assuming, that is, that the army medical services subsumed the army dental services. So a rather unheroic, if entirely worthy and important part of the war effort. But then it struck me that with both of them doing a good bit of time in operating theatres, they probably had occasion to be up close and personal with a good many more mangled bodies than the average foot soldier would have had. Never mind aircrew. Father-in-law mostly in field hospitals in parts east, not that far removed from the front line, and father mostly in base hospitals in England, hospitals which probably took in casualties from the invasion of France. So while they missed out on both the trumpets and the terror, they had to cope with trauma of a different kind. I wonder if this is part of why father-in-law does not watch violent films and I do not recall my father doing so. Seen quite enough of the results of the real thing to want to watch fake perpetration.

Which led me to wonder out loud what St Austell's brewery do, the people who have managed to flood at least the south of the country with quite a decent beer called Tribute. From nowhere, one can suddenly buy it all over the place. They must have hired a very bright and bushy tailed new sales director. I believe that there is a brewery at St Austell and that this beer was invented there. The puzzle is, does that same brewery knock out all the stuff being consumed out of county?

A fellow toper pointed out that a small brewery can get into a pickle by going national. 99% of its product rides the wave of some fashion or other, and then, all of a sudden, the wave dies away as quickly as it came. All of a sudden there is a lot of product which is not being shifted. One is left with the local outlets which one has quite probably rather neglected while strutting on the big stage. Is this is what has happened to Wadworth's 4X, another decent beer which used to be everywhere? And I have certainly heard of other kinds of small producer - say dairies - getting into trouble when they commit a lot of money to supplying some temporarily fashionable product to those hard nosed and fickle buyers from the big supermarkets.

Interbrew might be a better option. Small brewery creates the brand and gets it on the move. Then it cuts a deal with Interbrew to make the stuff in bulk and distribute it. OK, so small brewery has to share the profit but Interbrew, being so much bigger, is much better able to ride the waves of fashion. If it is not on one wave there will no doubt be another.

Second puzzle, is why does Epsom, an affluent suburban town, have fewer decent adult drinking holes than the neighbouring, but far smaller Carshalton. A visit yesterday established that there were at least five dotted around the place. Is it anything to do with the presence of a large Catholic girls school? Or the heritage water tower? Or the fact that John Ruskin did something to rate a white tablet? Why has the youth of south west London decided to descend on Epsom every Friday night?

One point might be that it is a former racing town. That a lot of liquid trade used to be generated by the races, trade, to the extent that it still exists at all, now tends to go direct to the downs and by pass the town. Were the town pubs able to float on this occasional but lucrative trade and not bother with building up a decent local trade?

Another might be the much larger amount of open space to mill around in in the centre of Epsom. Plenty of room for noisy interactions, chases, skirmishes, parades and posings. Wouldn't be the same in the more village like layout of Carshalton.

Third puzzle is more by way of a project. The sort of thing that 15 year olds might do as part of their art GCSE. The project is to catalogue, map and otherwise describe the various sorts of iron (or steel) column used to hold up the canopies of railway stations in south west London. Much as one might of done the same sort of thing with parish churches in my day.

This idea being brought on by observing that the columns holding up the canopies at Carshalton station were elaborate gothic revival affairs, presumably from around 1875. Held together with nut and bolts rather than rivets or welds. Far more to them than was strictly necessary for the purpose of holding up the canopy. Poor match of structure and function, a criterion used by some arty types of my father's generation. Those at the next couple of stations were similar, with a much larger variant being observed at the much larger Sutton station. Those at Epsom station were known to be much more prosaic, the difference perhaps being that between two railway companies of the day. Although this was not the whole story as at least one station between Carshalton and Epsom had new-build columns, not like the fancy jobs at all. One would need to think about whether the giant concrete bus shelters you get on the Chessington line instead of canopies were worthy of inclusion at all. The steel of the pillars having morphed into the reinforcing bars of the bus shelters.

For our late afternoon snack we moved on to the more traditional white cabbage and white pork soup. With pearl barley and mushrooms on this occasion. No problem about being watery, this being a thin rather than a thick soup. Odd how I am quite happy with watery soup but not at all happy with watery stew. Stews have to be reduced to the point that they would burn if not stirred regularly. Thick dropping consistency as they say in cake recipe books.

All this to make up for the fact that on Monday I had been touched by a beggar for a few quid. When I used to commute regularly this was something that used to happen maybe every couple of years or so.

On the last occasion I was approached leaving Vauxhall station in the morning by a dishevelled and distraught young lady, maybe early twenties and certainly looking a bit battered if once good looking, with some rigmarole about how she had been at some club and had been picked up by some chap, from where things went from bad to worse. She was now stranded in London without the funds to make it to the parental nest in Redhill or some such place. She got £20 out of me although she nearly queered her pitch by pushing for £40, which struck me as greedy. My thinking was that it was quite possible that she was a trickster but it was also true that I would not like to deny someone in need, given that I could well afford the £20.

The next morning I noticed the same young lady making the same pitch to the next sucker. A bit annoyed, but I also thought that her act was almost worth the £20 and I did not disturb her. On reflection I suppose I should have done. But it is very easy to walk on, past all kinds of grief, when you are in get to work mode first thing in the morning.

So this Monday it was a distraught gent., maybe 30-35 and suited but not tied. He had some rigmarole about how he worked for some very important outfit in the city, had been to a funeral, had had his laptop pinched and was now without a bean in the world to make his way home to Bath. Asked lots of people but I was the first person to give me a hearing. And I was not a foreigner like everybody else on London Bridge. Fare £55 or so. He got £10 and took my email down into his mobile phone so that he could sort out repayment in the morning. Not done so yet.

On reflection, his story even less probable than that of the young lady. I suppose my thought was that it was possible that it was true.

On the assumption that it was not, who are these people? Are they ingenious beggars? Are they drama students polishing their brass? Are they students of psychiatry learning about human beings? Are they working up some stunt for telly?

I then start to wonder what I would do. When, many years ago, I had my wallet pinched at Liverpool Street station, the form was that the police allowed me to phone my employer at Norwich who were able to arrange for me to pick up a replacement ticket at the ticket office. I imagine I got BH to meet the train, rather than do the three or four mile walk.

If it happened now, assuming I had or could find a telephone, I would phone home. If I was in luck, BH would be at home and would come and fetch me. Or arrange for my listening bank to give me some money. Or something.

If that failed but I still had my mobile, I would probably still be OK. There would be somebody I could touch for the necessary to get home.

No mobile and no Filofax and things would start to get more tricky as I would now not have any phone numbers - the only one I can remember these days being my own. Assuming it was daytime and that I was sober and decent, I guess the next step would be to make my way to a sproggly place of employment and see what I could do there. Hopefully there would be a library nearby where I could look up where they were. Or, if I was lucky, with internet facilties which I was allowed to use without any form of identification.

Maybe the key words here are sober and decent. I can see that one might start to panic if one was in a state. Even start to accost passers by... Or would I start to walk? Would I collapse on the way if I attempted the 20 mile walk home with neither liquid nor solid refreshment?

School carriculum does not look that different to that of my day. Greek, Latin, Ancient History and German missing, with the space being filled with newer things like ICT and Design Technology. Science compressed to a single heading rather than the three we had.

But I did wonder about the merits of having what appeared to be a black school. I don't suppose anybody planned it; it just turned out that way. I think there are merits - but on the whole doesn't strike me as an ideal preparation for life in our multi-cultural society. What one can do about it is another matter. Not sure that I would like the compulsion and bussing which would be needed to break it up.

Nearer home a bit of recreational DIY last week. Decided that sitting down to the upstairs computer for hours at a time was not good for me and that what I needed was a stand up desk - the sort of thing that Pooter might have used, although my copy of his diary only has a picture of people sitting at high stools at desks, rather than standing at them. I am sure I have seen a picture of Pooter like people standing at desks somewhere.

Anyway, this one is made using the leaf from one of those square oak dining tables with two extension leaves - things which you could pick up for a £1 or so at jumble sales in the 70's - attached to the window sill and propped up by legs running down to the skirting board. By accident, I managed to fit the legs sloping slightly inwards rather than straight, maybe two inches in fifty, which looks much more elegant than it might of otherwise.

The only catch is that taking it down takes about five minutes and involves a screwdriver. The thing is essentially a fixture rather than a bit of furniture. The up side of this particular coin being firmness and rigidity. Laptop unlikely to fall off. BH unlikely to knock it off with the vacuum cleaner.

Main herbaceous border in pretty good shape with lots of interest. One or two places where it could have done with a bit more TLC. We are getting to the point now where we can tell when a chunk of the border needs to be dug up and restarted, when the perennial weeds are getting a grip or when some proper plants are getting too big and vigorous. We wondered what the cycle was, not getting further than thinking that it was more than five years but less than ten.

Formal beds spot on. Some designed as a mass to be viewed from a distance, some more complicated and designed to be viewed close-up, taking an interest in the individual plants. Some of these last were getting to be more like flower arrangements than flower beds. Around the corner, the new formal garden looking very good. And the first sunken garden was tremendous. An island of botanical peace and heaven on a warm and busy afternoon. Good wheeze not allowing people into it.

Second wonder was, who gets to be head gardener? Is he parachuted in from some favoured gardening consultancy or television programme, or do the chaps who have worked there for years get a look in? Do they get a management type, a botanist or a gardener? It might have been a reward for a worthy retiring soldier at one time. After all, it was a royal palace. And then, does he (or she) do the formal bed designs all by himself, on graph paper, years before the planned date? Does each gardener get a bed to play with, subject to some management guidelines? Do they have an away-day in some swanky hotel and brainstorm it out with flip charts and canapes?

Back home to more A. Huxley, a re-reading prompted by acquiring a bit of Lit. Crit. while on the Isle of Wight. Now, since I was in my teens, I have always thought it more worthy to read, say, Das Kapital (in English that is), than to read a book about Das Kapital, a book of highlights from Das Kapital or a biography of the author. Let alone some talking head of a university lecturer on BBC3. One should go to the horse's mouth. In the same way, I have been wary of Lit. Crit. More worthy to read 'War and Peace' than to read of it. So over the years, despite higher than average consumption of books, I have only got as far as four biographies of literary giants (George Eliot, James Joyce, Charles Dickens and Aldous Huxley) (all from charity shops) and two autobiographies (both Simenon) (one bought, one borrowed). And with the exception of Dickens, with whom I still do not get on, despite the occasional effort, reading the book about the person did quicken the interest in the books by the person.

So now, more or less by accident, I have tried a bit of Lit. Crit., written at about the time I was a first year undergraduate, by one Jerome Meckier from the University of Massachucetts. Not got all the way through yet, but it does remind me of the difficulty of writing this sort of stuff. Treading the narrow line between rubbish, pomp and vacuity. Unreasonable to expect someone to keep on the narrow line all the way through 223 pages including the index.

But I do learn something, particularly about Huxley's relationship with D. H. Lawrence, a man from whom he differed as chalk from cheese, but one whom he greatly admired. As a result read 'After the fireworks' for the first time and 'Point Counter Point' again. Both remain worth reading, despite the passage of time, and both appear to be awash with portraits of chunks of his friends and chunks of himself, particularly the latter. It seems that this was all the thing at the time. They all knew each other and they were all at it, and nobody much got too upset about it.

But it was then odd to come across a short essay in 'Music at Night', the sort of civilised, erudite and funny essay that one would expect from Huxley, all about how he had found it impossible to accept a very generous offer from an American magazine of large circulation to contribute a piece about his private life. Despite being rather keen on the money. So OK to write about himself in a slightly dressed up form in a novel, but not OK to be honest and up-front about it (in so far as that is possible about oneself, never mind desirable). He did not make a moral issue of it, just a personal preference. He did not care to exhibit himself in this way. He had a point in that the magazine was rather more into the secrets of the bedroom than was his custom in his novels, which tend to remain fairly cerebral whatever the subject matter. But a nice distinction; one that I sign up to: much happier about being an exhibitionist in matters of the brain than matters of the body, leaving aside, for the moment, their connection. And I sure the man himself would have agreed that it all depends where one's talents, such as they might be, happen to lie.

By way of a postscript on baring all for the great British (or US) public, a bit of hearsay about the hotel inspectress. It seems that she was giving some gent the benefit of her advice about his hotel and that he was rather prone to making embarrassing asides when he thought he was off-camera, some of which were transmitted. Now if this was scripted, it just goes to show that reality TV is just as bad as I thought it was. If it was done without his knowledge, verging on the illegal. If it was done with his knowledge, what sort of a chap is he? Do we really want to clog up our airwaves with this stuff?

The point being, I suppose, that revealing all is apt to be something of a confection. One can never be sure that it is what it says on the tin. Even if one was a shrink.

Armed with the latin name tried Mr. G. again who took me to a site called http://www.pfaf.org/user/default.aspx which was able to tell me about what twigs the flower buds grow on. To wit, both this year's growth and older wood. So at the least the question was reasonable.

I guess I had been put off the track by the rather different habit of our winter jasmine. Will climb up a trellis but does not have tendrils and has yellow flowers in the spring rather than white flowers in the summer. It seems that white jasmine has been a popular cottage garden plant for centuries. Now I need to get to grips with the 198 or so other versions of jasmine, a branch of the olive family.

Getting back onto serious matters, the DT ran stories for a few days recently about the terrible rake off taken by our financial services wizards - world beaters we are told by some - when they sell us investment products. Far more than their colleagues in Europe or the US. With the result that our pension pots are considerably smaller when we get around to wanting them than they might otherwise be. Which prompted me to take a peek at the investment products section of the business part of the DT and then onto the corresponding part of the JP Morgan web site.

Where I find that there are hundreds if not thousands of investment products out there, mostly variations on the unit trust theme. But they do much better than Heinz. Which prompts me to wonder, why are there so many products? If I was that interested in playing the investor wouldn't I get more fun out of taking a punt on some shares rather than one of these complicated products? And if I just want somewhere safe to put my savings, it would be good enough to have low risk, medium risk and high risk. I don't want to have to spend weeks poking the whole business around or employing some unemployed encyclopedia salesman to masquerade as my financial advisor.

So it strikes me that it is the same game as the mobile phone people and the banks (the former building societies) are playing. Blind the punter with variety and information. That way they just give up and take the first product on the list. Incidentally, well known as the way to manage troublesome trade union officials. Deluge them with stuff and they will soon retire hurt to the boozer and leave management alone.

Next stop of the day was http://yourfreedom.hmg.gov.uk/, a site I had been prompted to look at by the dignity in dying people. An interesting venture, presumably the work of the Lib Dems. Of rather dull appearance but a place where you can twitter about laws you would like to see changed or repealed, although, oddly, twittering about new laws is not encouraged, although it is easy enough to piggy back new laws on relevant old laws. Some of the stuff that has been submitted is quite sophisticated. I don't suppose that there will much that is new to the central policy wonks, but it does strike me as a reasonable to thing to give a whirl. A crude way of taking the nation's pulse. I wonder why they have opted for such a low key design? Very dull next to commercial sites.

Which prompts the wonder, why do booze companies have such flashy looking web sites? For example, http://www.mountgayrum.com/. Lots of fancy art work and pictures, if fairly low on content. Who looks at these things? And why do they bother with the nonsense of asking your age before you go in?

Over the cup that cheers, moved to try and work out why the Independent of yesterday was all in a dither about Google trying to make some deal with Verizon, who appear to be an internet service provider. As I understand things, a huge amount of internet bandwidth is burned up by people moving films and such like about - rather than watching the stuff provided for them on the regular channels - this last being much less greedy on bandwidth. It seems to me to be quite reasonable to ration this kind of thing - by price or whatever. The Independent completely failed to explain to me either what exactly Google are up to or what is meant by net neutrality but it does not strike me as the end of the Internet as we know it if there were to be a bit more management of its use. Shouting on the front page not supported by the story on the inside pages. Bit of a sunjob really.

So gave up on that and moved onto plant identification, the objective being to try to name a climbing plant that I was watching yesterday evening. With a view to finding out whether it was picky about where it flowered - that is to say on new growth or old growth - my understanding being that some plants will only develop flower buds on a shoot in the second year. At least you only get the flowers in the second year. Had to give this up as a bad job too. Unable to find on online version of one of those binary choice trees which botanists devise as an aid to plant identification by others. Question 1: does it have bark? If yes, go to question 2, else go to question 47..... Question 47: does it grow independently or does it need support. If yes, go to question 48, else go to question 113. Sounds easy enough but the questions are apt to include a fair amount of botanist speak about the finer points of leaves and flowers. But I thought I could manage. But sadly Mr G. failed to find me such a thing. Mostly just more or less elaborate sites from nurseries which wanted to sell me plants.

So gave up on that one too and moved off to the baker.