pumpkinstrokemarrow

Various translations of the word 'fit', for example, occupy an entire closely printed column. I learn that the Swedes have different words for the brother of your mother and the brother of your father - although they also have 'onkel' for the less literate. Or when they want to talk about onkel sam. The dictionary includes thegn which translates to thane. What one would have expected given where the Saxons are supposed to have come from. It also includes thane which translates to tan, said to be something to do with anglo saxons. And the other meaning of thane as in Macbeth. Baron translates to baron or friherre.

One could go on, but instead of that attention wandered to the defence review mentioned on October 28th. Rather better document than I was expecting. A bit pompous at times but I guess it is hard to talk about this sort of thing without. And while one may not agree with a lot of it, the stall is set out in a sensible way. A way which does facilitate debate.

One is reminded, for example, that we as a country need the military (to avoid the newspeak defence) to deal with some local contingencies and the world as a collective needs the military to deal with more global contingencies - such as a failed state massacring a section of their own population. Or a rogue state harbouring or otherwise supporting terrorists. The tricky bit is deciding how much and what. All things considered, is 5% of GDP about where we should be - that is to say a bit less than where we are now?

One aspect of this is that it does not seem to be a very good idea (or fair) to leave it all to the US. And given that very few other countries want to step up to this particular plate, perhaps we had better stay at the plate - punching above our weight and above the level we can comfortably afford - until the likes of India and China start contributing. Our contribution to the world. Maybe.

Another is that while we might want to play, we can only play in a way which we can afford. The review recognises that one cannot run a healthy military without the support of a healthy economy - any more than one can run a healthy NHS (although one wonders how long will it be before that is pushed off balance sheet, into the welcoming arms of US insurance and health care corporations). But maybe there can be some sharing. We do the motor boats to do pirates and leave the French to do the aircraft carriers to do rogue states. I should note that, I am, as a result of reading the review, rather less anti aircraft carriers than I was, despite them looking so big and vulnerable. Maybe there are circumstances when one needs such things and for one reason or another the US does not want to play, or at least does not want to play in quite the way that we would want.

Or, more far fetched, we allow suitable countries to act on our joint behalf. Rather in the way that the Swiss used to supply mercenaries and the Nepalese still do. Perhaps, given our weakness at making things, we, as a country, should go into the military for hire business. NATO pays us to run a couple of carriers. EC pays us to run an air defence capability. Would this be a better role for our once glorious country than selling space in stately homes and rounds of golf on golf courses? There would have to be a shiny new OffMilt to keep an eye on the sort of ventures we got into. We would have morals.

Another is the difficulty of drawing boundaries around things. Where does the work of the police stop and the military start? Maybe it does not matter too much provided that the civilians remain firmly in charge.

The good news is that we are disbanding the army of the Rhine. In fact all three services are being shrunk by around 5,000 non-civilians each, rather more than a tenth of the present total. The bad news is that it has been decided that half a dozen or so nuclear attack submarines are good value for money and that half a dozen or so nuclear deterrent submarines are good value for money. Review not convincing in that rather expensive department.

I also wondered about how secure the deterrent is. Presumably, once one of our ever so secret and silent submarines fires a missile, everybody knows where it is and can whack it. So very much a one shot thing. And second, how long will it be before someone learns out how to shoot down the missiles fired by a submarine? Can it be done already? Neither point going to weaken my view that we should get rid of the things.

Amused at the end of the review, given the recent bonfire of New Labour quangos, to read about the creation by our new regime of a whole lot of new military flavoured agencies, directorship-generals, director-generals and co-ordinators. My quangos good, your quangos bad. Certainly full up with your pensioners, place men and women. Move them over (or preferably out) to give my lot a go.

After all this action, time for a siesta.

A quick look at their well organised support page reveals that if I pay then £50 or so they will reply to me personally. A peek at the free fora recognised clock stopping problems - but they seemed to be the whole clock stopping, not just the slave on the task bar. All mixed up with CMOS and motherboards and other unspeakable things. I also learn that Windows XP is out of support, but hopefully that will not be an issue for me. Given that this PC is offline, don't need all the latest patches on the grounds that if it works don't fix it. But maybe one day soon an ailing clock will extract the plastic from the pocket.

On the other hand, been quietly pleased with Windows 7 and Office 2000. Nothing spectacular but quite a few changes which I like. Adding up to the upgrade being worth while. Casting back to my days at work and the world of document management, interested to see that Windows 7 does seem to be making a bit of an effort in that direction - although not so far as to allow one to attach text or other custom properties to a folder. An essential feature of document management. They seem to have put a lot of effort into search - in the sense that it looks as if it does a lot more for you than it used to - with the catch that one has to learn a whole new interface to get the benefit. Next week perhaps.

Back on the 4th October guessed that 96% of ladies do 86.5% of their weekly shopping in big shops. Have now finally got around to verification of this guess and after a bit of stumbling around, stumbled upon an outfit called http://www.cobwebinfo.com/. I presume that their business is selling business information and intelligence, but they offered as a freebie something called 'UK Market Synopsis: Food and Grocery Retail', an interesting quantified canter through said retail scene, running to some 18 pages. Where I learn that a year or so ago the major supermarkets had 75% of the market with the minor supermarkets taking a further 11% - giving a total within spitting distance of my guess of 86.5%. Spiffing stuff for anyone lumbered with some kind of an essay about shopping and maybe even for someone thinking of entering the food business as a principal. It would make rather depressing reading but at least you would be entering with eyes opened.

Also that a recent boss of OFSTED, a crowd who say that they exist to '... inspect and regulate to achieve excellence in the care of children and young people, and in education and skills for learners of all ages', was a bouncy looking blonde who was chucked out of her private school at 16 and never made any further progress. She presumably has talent as well as dimlexia to have made it to the top of this particular pole - but it does seem odd that someone without education should have been in charge of those providing the stuff. Was she in charge of punctuating the oddly punctuated mission statement included above? But I suppose it is all OK. I remember being told many years ago that being good at a being a carpenter was neither a necessary nor sufficient condition for being good at being the foreman.

Last week's TLS having gone awol in our postal system, the BH treated me to a NYRB where I read a rather depressing article about how we are getting on with the Somali pirates. It seems that we are getting better at keeping them off our ships but we are still be pretty soft about it. So, for example, if we catch a small boat full of heavily armed young men we don't do much about it. Not illegal to carry weapons on the high seas but it is illegal to interfere with people going about their lawful business on the high seas. Why don't we start getting a bit heavy with these people? The exclusion zone I proposed on November 17 2009? In the meantime the senior service, while not worrying about pirates, manage to run some sodding great submarine aground near Skye, thus conclusively demonstrating their competence to pour billions down the plug hole on our behalf. Why on earth to they think we need such things for any reason other than bolstering their careers? I suppose chasing pirates around in the very hot Indian Ocean is not nearly so much fun as playing around with a £1b toy. Maybe if they were allowed to shoot the pirates they would be a bit keener?

Maybe also, if they were allowed to shoot pirates in the open, that would vent their bloodlust and they would no longer feel the need to more or less torture people on the qt.. Something the Guardian seems to think is routine enough for our army to have a manual about how to do it. Not good. The world might be a rough place but we need to set an example in such matters if we want other peoples to follow our example in other matters. Quibbling that suspected terrorists are not peoples not good enough.

In an effort to find out the reason why we go in for sodding great submarines, I now have my very own copy of the 'The Strategic Defence and Security Review', having found it a bit heavy going on the screen and thinking that printing out the pdf would cost me more in printer ink than the book would. This at a time, maybe two days after the budget statement, when the computer delivering the pdf version was still not responding. Presumably massively overloaded. A state in which it continues as far as I can see. Is it just a snafu or does someone not want me to read the budget statement? So I thought I would try the defence review instead. It turns out to be a rather low key affair, printed in just two colours - green and black - on rather grotty recycled paper. Bad type face. Poor book design generally.

I will report further in due course, but on what I have seen so far, I will be surprised if I am convinced. That we need battle tanks, submarines or aircraft carriers that is.

Revived a camping recipe yesterday. Buy four fat pork chops. Fry some coriander and black pepper in butter. Add finely chopped onion and start cooking them. Add the chops and brown a bit. Add finely chopped green pepper and tomatoes. Add a bit of water. Simmer for a couple of hours, serve the resultant orangey stew with white rice and brussels sprouts. I remember the pork chops being terribly expensive in France and there was a certain amount of muttering in the ranks about cooking them this way. Mutterers not having worked out that one did not have much choice with an entry level camping stove.

Someone must have told the guard house that we were in town as the third troop of the Life Guards turned out to greet us. We had to make do without the Gold Stick and the Silver Stick who sent their apologies from the polo field and the golf course respectively.

Headed north up South Audley Street where we passed a huge black car, registration L1, called a Zeppelin, a species of Daimler. Parked up opposite the embassy of somewhere. Maybe a Middle Eastern statelet. But then, as luck would have it, we chanced upon Mayfair Library where we were able to have a poke in their Mayfair section where a rather tatty book confirmed our identification of the view in the postcard with an aerial shot of much the same view of HPC taken in the 1920's. They were also selling off some books - but of rather low grade, much lower grade than those discarded at Epsom and Ewell. Unless you wanted a three inch tome on how to buy wine that is.

Quick peek in the Grosvenor Chapel, which must have looked quite something when new. Could go with a coat of paint now. Presumably once the home of fashionable preachers, the sort with a following of devout ladies of a certain age. The organ was working up to a recital, sounded rather good but decided not to stay for it.

Onto Richoux for lunch, a place which we had not come across before. Very pleasant with a good line in Tiramisu. Very reasonably priced considering the location.

Climbed up onto the odd little garden in Brown Hart Gardens. Took a peek through the lattice work underneath at what appeared to be some very serious electrical machinery on at least two levels, later identified as the Duke Street Sub-Station. A different order of size to the sub station which serves the roads near us. Perhaps they had a lot of electic kettles to feed in 1905 when it was built. And just to prove that the inhabitants of Mayfair were really decent and democratic folk there were also a few blocks of Peabody. Presumably to house the servants and their hangers on.

Tourist part of the day over, moved onto the serious business of shopping. Including a further visit to Niketown to renew my trainers - bought in January. Oh no sir, you can't have a pair of those. That was years ago. But you can have a pair of these. A bit serious and sober but I am sure they will do as well as the first pair. And a visit to Foyles which could do one of the two books I was looking for - in browse mode that is, at which Amazon is pretty useless. Remains a very good shop, despite one of the book rooms near what used to be the psychology section having turned into a cafe. Didn't think any of the assistants would have had a clue had I tried to find out which book room.

She also included a diagram of an ear, which on reflection I found rather perturbing. There being, in turns out, a hole through the skull behind each ear, holes through which pass the hearing nerves. I had rather thought, without thinking as it were, that all the wiring into the skull went in through the bottom, safe and out of the way. Taxed FIL on the matter and he explained, with the aid of his trusty 'Nurses' Illustrated Physiology' (E & S Livingston Ltd, 1964), that there are 12 cranial nerves that do this, attending to important things like seeing, hearing, smelling and tasting. Motor control of the head and of the heart. He was also able to remember a training ditty, including various naughty words, used to commit the rather complicated names of said 12 nerves to memory. We taxed him further on the appropriateness of naughty words in an environment containing lots of nice young women and he defended himself by explaining that, generally speaking, it was the nice young women who taught one the ditties.

Pursued the matter through the advertising breaks that evening with Dr. A. S. Romer on vertebrates, partly in order to find out what a dorsal horn was, a term I come across occasionally and had not hitherto bothered to track down. Where I find that I having been suffering from a major misunderstanding about spinal cords. I had thought that the spinal cord ran down the middle of the vertebral column, again, safe and out of the way. Romer explains that actually it runs down the dorsal surface of the vertebral column proper, encased by add-ons called neural arches. What might run down the middle of the vertebral column is something called the notocord, a first attempt at a spinal cord by the dinosaurs (or maybe before then), more or less absent in modern vertebrates. Never too late to learn.

I also find out what a dorsal horn is; the only catch being that there seem to be lots of them rather than just one. Still working on that.

PS: not impressed to read in yesterday's DT that the epidemic of second war memorials has not yet died down. It is proposed to spend around £5m on a memorial near Green Park to those who gave their lives while serving in Bomber Command. 50,000 or so of them I think. I had thought the day for this sort of thing was done; particularly as many have reservations about what Bomber Command got up to towards the end of the war. All of which prompts me to wonder what sort of memorial those who gave their lives while serving in U-boat command got? About 50,000 or so them too, I think. Mr Google gives the answer in one: http://www.ubootehrenmal.de.

The arboretum itself more or less the vision of one man, a Dr Fox, who bought the place in 1937 and gave it to the Trust a mere 15 years later. Presumably a lot of the now mature trees were already there when he bought the place. An artful wood rather than a natural one, but none the worse for that. Lots of interesting trees at a colourful time of year, including some very large beeches and lot of once coppiced sweet chestnuts. These last now tall, slender and very handsome clumps of four or five trunks apiece. Quite a lot of Scots pine. Lots of small trees with red leaves. Lots of varieties of holly - including one specimen with a trunk a foot or more in diameter although, sadly, it did not have the height to match. Some trees with very large leaves, maybe nine inches long and four wide. One tree very properly described as a cypress oak being tall and thin in shape but with oaken leaves. There were also some odd smells about the place which neither we nor anyone else were able to run down. In particular, a strong and very localised smell of candyfloss. Did not seem likely that it was from something dropped or buried, but we failed to find the source despite sniffing lots of leaves, dead and alive. All in all, an excellent place. Lot more to it as far as I was concerned than Polesdon Lacy.

Lunched on very un-trusty beefburgers from the overflow caravan parked up next to the place where you can buy very trusty veggie gear.

Started off on the way home wondering about corporate management. Does every NT site have a full time, paid manager? How much local discretion does he have? Can he fire volunteers who persist in not shaving before reporting for duty? Does he get a visitor income related bonus? Can he retain all his earnings for his site or do the successful sites have to subsidise the less successful sites, with the centre creaming off a tithe to pay for their fancy business lunches on the way? Does he have to find the funds for improvements himself or can he go cap in hand to the centre? Who can then busy themselves with his affairs. Is their an NT inspectorate of retired public servants trundling around expecting free (wet) lunches if they are not to start nit-picking about the state of the litter bins? All the stuff in fact that one might find in any regular PLC with a chain store operation.

Next stop was Hydestile Hospitals, which caught the eye as a large establishment tucked away in the country. Was it a lunatic asylum for hard core lunatics? There was a very full moon yesterday as it happened. Using our rather elderly OS map (priced 65p when the current price is more like 650p), we tracked down the road where it should have been and drove up and down it several times. Spotted a few houses that might have been hospital houses but of the hospitals themselves not a flicker. Maybe a new map is indicated - which as well as being better at locating hospitals would probably do a better job on entries and exits to the A3, which seem to have moved on a bit since our map was printed.

Back home, Mr Google (earth) displays not a trace, apart from a tennis court which might have once been for the recreation of nursing staff. Reminded once again of how hard it is to read aerial photographs; the roads we had used and which we knew were there were more or less invisible. See October 21. Mr Google (search) tells us that the site was that of the King George 5 and Saint Thomas hospitals. The first named having been a large and prestigious TB sanatorium and the second having been a nissen-hutted evacuation job from the hospital of the same name in Lambeth. All demolished in the late nineties having been derelict for years and now the site appears to be home to a higher class residential development.

Amused also to find a link between yesterday's Arthurian film and the helmet at Christies (see September 19). According to the catalogue entry, helmets of this sort are depicted on Trajan's column, among heaps of captured Sarmatian armour. These Sarmatians coming from the Sarmatia near the Danube, and being the ones who, in the film, were the knights in shining armour who kept the Saxons at bay at Hadrian's Wall (with the help of the blue painted savages from further north. Including a somewhat dressed Keira Knightley. Now known as the Scotch). So the shining armour was not altogether a figment of the film's history advisor's fertile imagination.

However, careful reading of the Christies catalogue revealed nothing about the state in which the helmet was found, my understanding being that it was found in many pieces big and small. Indeed, just reading the entry would leave one, by default, with the impression that the thing had been found entire. Perhaps buffed up a bit for display. The assistant I asked at the sale room trotted off to inspect the database, which would usually have contained a conservation report which I could probably have carried off to read in the local pub before placing a bid. However, for this item the database said please apply to a certain Miss L D. Which I did, by email, some weeks ago. Not a flicker. To be fair, the catalogue does point out that one ought to get one's own expert to take a peek at the thing before bidding; but I do find it strange that Christies are so economical with the truth in the catalogue entry for an item which ultimately sold for about ten times its estimate at £2.5m or so. Presumably some banker with a bonus to burn.

And today the Arthurian connection continues with a young lady trusty at a certain NT establishment who gloried in the name of Guinevere. But more of that tomorrow.

But somehow I found the novel irritating. I started off by being irritated by the flipping between Arthur and George, allocated more or less alternate pages at the start. Something that I find equally irritating in films. I like my stories to move forward rather than to jump all over the place. Then I was irritated by the inclusion of lots of letters. Some of them rather unpleasant letters which did not need to be included quite so fulsomely to make the point. And the tendency to point up the scatalogical and messy aspects of life. What with one thing and another I end up skipping, maybe reading one paragraph in three, something that does not happen very often in my reading life.

It turns out that the novel is a fictional account of a real life miscarriage of justice. So perhaps we have another illustration of the old truth that life is not nearly so much fun or so interesting as art. There is also the point, made several times before, that I disapprove of fictional accounts of real events, the confusion of fact and fiction. Indeed, one of the points of this novel is that there quite enough different ways of telling what seem to be the facts without adding fiction.

The opportunity which yielded 'Arthur & George' also yielded the director's cut of 'King Arthur' for the rather greater sum of £3.99. Leaving aside the marketing nonsense that the director's cut is something better than what was seen fit to release to the film going public at large, this film had been warmly recommended by an ex-naval member of TB fraternity. So we gave it a go, consuming it in two sittings. Given the considerable difficulty of making films about knights in armour - hundred year old stately homes a mere trifle by comparison - I thought they did rather well, including a neat solution to the problem of how flash knights in armour turn up in dark ages Britain at about the time the Romans are calling it a day. Quite hard to distinguish the human knights from the Intel variety although Hadrian's Wall was a bit obvious. Maybe the Intel chaps got a bit full of themselves as some of the battle scenes are a bit long. But, interestingly, the tone was much closer to the savagery of the Nibelungenlied than the chivalry of Arthur. At least the Arthur from Roger Lancelyn Green on which I was brought up.

But maybe memory defective again. Wikipedia has just told me that Roger Lancelyn Green was big mates with JRR Tolkien and C S Lewis and so would certainly have known all about the Niebelungenlied. They took their old English studies seriously in those days.

So they hoofed it the 500 odd miles to the coast of Morocco from where they swam out to Lanzerote. The walk was quite a feat, the swim even more so. Only possible because Mr Ohgloomah had had the foresight to take along a couple of barrels of palm wine which served the triple ends of warmth, sustenance and flotation. Once landed in Lanzerote, the Spanish rule is that you cannot be sent back to your point of origin. You do not have much status or standing but you can stay. Most such people are sent to mainland Spain where they can get lost in the free movement of labour around the EU. And this is what happened to the Ohgloomahs.

Eventually they wound up in Wimbledon without any money and without any intention of working since there were very few palm trees. They were going to spunge. So they went to the council who gave them a nice flat in a block which had been built on what had been Wimbledon Football Club. Along with many of their fellow continental men and women. Other helpful people gave them various benefits and the Ohgloomahs prospered. They had many children, for all of whom they were able to claim child benefit. They were even able to claim attendance allowance for their poorly attested old relatives back in darkest Africa. While, out on the streets of Wimbledon, decent white folks were unable to get decent housing, despite having paid all their taxes and done all the right things for ever so many years.

It is too soon to say whether the Ohgloomahs lived happily ever afterwards but what I do know is that this story, and stories like it, are truly believed in TB. There are some people who believe with much vehemence and are ready with all kinds of more or less crude remedies.

Now, I do not believe such stories; or at least, I do not believe the lessons that are drawn from them.

As it happens, I am one of those people who would most probably walk the other way if I saw a gang of youths smashing up a park bench. A bit feeble, but then I am a bit feeble in such matters. No aptitude or talent for the necessary fisticuffs. Or enough brass to look as if I had. But the story of the Ohgloomahs is something that I ought to be able to engage in. I can do stories and there is very little danger of getting bashed. The worse that might happen is that I lose out on the odd pint of Newky Brown.

My usual point of departure is that yes, there is abuse, by all sorts of people, but that is not really the point. Abuse of this sort is at the margin. Much more to the point is giving child benefit to lots of people who can well afford to do without and disability benefit to people who should get off their bottoms and do a bit of work for once. Knocking off legal aid for bad causes. Knocking off the tridents. And building a lot more houses. Joke about the possibility of using superfluous aircraft carriers for estuary housing. Maybe one could beach them on the Isle of Sheppey or maybe even the more convenient Isle of Dogs. The next point is that the Ohgloomahs and their kind are generally hard working, tax paying people who are willing to do all kinds of not particularly nice jobs which we do not want to do ourselves. At least, not at the wages offered. One can sow a bit of confusion by pointing out that if we had not smashed up Iraq, there would not be so many Iraqis trying to rebuild their lives over here. Or by explaining how long the BH and I lived in a bed-sit before moving to a small flat containing a shared bath in one of the kitchen cupboards. We had to vacate on Tuesdays and Fridays to let the other lodgers have their baths. People were content not to have smart new flats in those days. At least for a while.

I can usually get a hearing, but I do not usually make much headway. Going to have to work on my lines.

Somewhat humbled to find out what a big and interesting place India is, with lots going in the days when I thought I took an intelligent interest in politics - but to which I must have paid very little attention at all at the time. Only the vaguest awareness of most of what Guha writes about.

Book would have been improved by the addition of some more maps. Preferably with a decent sized fold out one at the back. The publishers went for photographs - mainly of heads of important people - but clearly decided that decent provision of maps was off. Which is OK for readers who know India but not so OK for those that don't. Started off the remedy by asking Google Earth about the Vale of Kashmir. Which it did OK, but which reminded me of how much more useful to the average punter a proper artist prepared map is than an aerial photograph. Then onto the Readers' Digest atlas which had the right sort of map of India, which turned out to be rather fitter for purpose than the more detailed offering in the Britannica atlas. But what I really need is an Indian atlas with historical angles. Maybe Stanfords can do the business. In the meantime, off to Waterstones where I get a perfectly serviceable map of India from Budapest; much better than the Readers' Digest offering. It will have to do for the moment.

Inter alia, it tells me that India own the Andaman and Nicobar islands, which might be thought to be more properly a part of Burma or Malaya. Presumably Indians pushed the indigenous out during the colonial era and hung on at independence.

The good news is that India is a democracy, more or less. Clocked up twenty rather noisy but pretty much OK general elections to the Pakistani two.

Despite the fact that lots of well informed people thought that the union would never last. That it would collapse, rather in the way that the similar but smaller Burma did. Similar in the sense that neither place had ever been a country before independence and that both places had a majority group with tendencies to lord it over the minority groups. No doubt students of these matters spend lots of time comparing and contrasting India with the EC, with the US, with the USSR and with China. Perhaps India really is showing us the way forward into the 21st century. A federation of parts which are content to be different.

Guha reports that one unifying force is the huge Hindi film industry - the products of which are loved across the south Asia basin and beyond. The Pakistanis might not be very keen on Indians but they gobble up their films right enough. A useful by-product at home is that it is facilitating the spread of Hindi across the non-Hindi speaking parts of India in a way that coercion did not. Hindi might end up as their lingua-franca yet.

And there has been progress towards western morals. In the olden days a film had to have one good lady star who embodied all the proper feminine virtues and one bad lady star who was sultry and who embodied all the improper feminine virtues. The two things had to be kept separate. Nowadays, it is OK to combine the whole lot in one star. More economical of course. While the Taliban just ban the whole lot. Proper kill-joys.

The bad news is that there are plenty of racists in India, particularly but by no means exclusively of the Hindu vs. Muslim variety. A lot more than we have and apt to be a lot more violent. Riot, rape and pillage. Fire and sword. Torture.

Part of which can be seen on the map. The Muslim invaders of old grabbed, and have held onto, a large chunk of the good land.

I wonder how much of this is caused by a shortage of girls? It seems that there are 5%-10% more boys than girls - which means that the boys are either sharing or going short. The media used to make much of a similar problem in China before their economy took off.

To close on a less serious note, I find that the important road in New Delhi called Kingsway - much more important than our Kingsway or even Queensway - has been decolonialised by renaming it Rajpath. This despite path being a very old English word. Perhaps there is an Aryan root in common.

Then the following lunch time celery redeemed itself (see October 16), a modest amount doing very well as a padder in the luncheon steak and kidney. Steak and kidney followed up by some of those fair trade organic mars bars, actually fat and squishy dates, maybe half an ounce a pop. But which cannot contain much other than sugar with a splash of fibre. So lunch not very slimming either.

Moving onto literary matters, the other day went to get a book by one Marina Lewycka of Ukrainian tractor fame. First stop the library, where they could do a large print book or an audio book, which would not do at all. But they did have on their books a book called 'Caring for someone with a hearing loss' by someone of the same name. Plus a number of other books of the same ilk. So I reserve the hearing loss one and it turns up a couple of days later. In the meanwhile, off to Amazon to see what they can do. Where we find, that for books of this sort anyway, the second hand dealers with whom Amazon deal, price their books at 1p and make their money out of the £2.50 postage. Or at least I assume that is what they are up to. A wheeze to get their offering at the top of the page if you sort by price. So we now have the sequel to the Ukrainian tractor story, a book called 'Two Caravans'. Readable condition although the cover a bit tatty, a consequence of being a soft matt finish card rather than the shiny stuff that Penguin usually use. As a result of all of which, we learn that the two Marina's are one and the same, a lecturer, presumably in care work studies, social studies, social work studies or perhaps even sociology, at Sheffield Hallam university. Oddly, the two books maintain their distance. They are not mutually aware. Good for her. A 100% diet of caring might be a bit wearing.

PS: just checked with Sheffield Hallam and I am now a doubting Thomas. Maybe the name is not that rare in whatever part of Europe she comes from? She is listed as a member of the 'Humanities Research Centre' and one of her research outputs is listed as 'Two Caravans'. Perhaps the caring side of her personality will resurface after her research centre hits this morning's buffers.

Next, the military theme was blended with the forthcoming spending cuts. For some reason, I was back in the Treasury charged with some very important support function in the run up to sealing and publishing the deal on cuts. The scene was the old building where I did most of my time, rather the new building the Treasury occupies now. With an Islington flavoured canteen, an Internet Cafe and a sadly diminished library. I had to go down to the second floor where all the bosses lived, presumably to see about a printer jam, to find that the place was full of top brass. Chaps with lots of braid and medals. With special coloured hats - this was what someone in the dream said - to distinguish members of the Army Council. Something I learn after the event that the IRA still have but which we have abandoned. Not sure what we have in its place. There were also some very junior squaddies out in the corridors, all suited, booted and tooled up, there to guard the distinguished members. Someone tells me that as there were no suitable barracks available in London, they were having to put the guards up in the Netherlands and fly them in each morning for the cuts negotiations.

The next day, the dreams get a lot more vague with only a few snippets surviving long after waking. There is a vague flavour of execution and hanging, but a flavour not translated into scene or action. In fact, the only scene I can remember now is being in some large shopping mall, in the Netherlands, so we have a link to the previous dream there, a shopping mall selling all kinds of bizarre goods and services. Eventually I work my way through to a delicatessen where I am able to buy bread and sausage. Bread, round and inferior. Rather like the stuff BH has to buy at Sainsburys in an emergency. Sausage looked like quite decent cabanos. They were sold by the each rather than by weight, so I chose a Siamese sausage. That is to say a sausage which branched into two half way along, making a Y-shaped sausage. Cheap, but not much better than the bread. Nothing like as good as the brand sold by Waitrose. Bread element of the dream presumably brought on by my failure to make it to Cheam yesterday; not sure where any of the rest of it came from.

Dreams of a different sort are documented in this week's TLS, in the form of an article purporting to review three books about one A. Warhol, about whom I had known next to nothing before. He makes Dame Emin look like a complete joker, being able to parley his modest talent as a commercial artist into a huge empire with his considerable talents for self publication and business. A huge empire which is the subject of much musing in academe - but musing with not much more at its core than paintings of tins of soup. On the way, seeing off the previously fashionable gang (Ab. Ex.) who were macho and drunk and with whom he did not get on. Impressive as a life story but depressing that so much fame rests on personality rather than product. But he will survive as it seems he was rich enough to endow a serious museum in his home town. On a par with Carnegie.

I also learned that he had a personal proctologist. A sort of doctor that one does not hear about very often. So rarely in fact that the usually reliable OED (first edition, somethingth reprint) makes it clear enough what one does without listing the word itself.

To take our minds off these knotty problems, BH suggested a swing through Mickelham, a village in the Mole Gap. Contains, amongst other things, a gastro pub called the Running Horse, a private school related to Gordonstoun and the benefits from which are to be had from £25,000 a year per pupil. You would have to be earning a lot more than I ever managed to extract from HMG to be able to afford this, even supposing one thought mixing one's sprogs in with the wannabee toffs rather than getting on with regular, lager drinking folk was a good plan. Perhaps Cameron should claw back a little extra by stripping the charitable status from these places.

There was also an unusual church, so unusual that Pevsner (or at least one of his young collaborators) was moved to some dry wit on its account. He even talked of the chancel arch being duffed up. Perhaps this is the sort of slang one acquires at the school. We were told that there had been a church to St Michael and all the angels (Michelangelo in Italian?) since Saxon times and that chunks of the present fabric were late Norman. Neither the Saxons nor the Normans seem to have thought it worth their while to plant a castle there to guard the gap against aliens marching up from Sussex, although the Normans did get around to planting one at Betchworth around, the corner to the south east. There is, I think, the odd pill box in the vicinity but those, of course, were rather later.

What was unusual, for me anyway, was the Norman, Romanesque or Byzantine style of the extravagant renovations in the 19th century. Usually such things are done in the Decorated style, and while Norman & etc is common enough in the low church prayer booths in towns which were built in considerable numbers at about that time, I have never come across it in the country. All in all, as they say about the amber nectar, an amusing little church.

Three more oddities in the outer regions. First, it seems that if you are a viscount either you come big or you just rate a bigger gravestone. The viscount's stone here must have been about ten feet long and three feet wide. Didn't say anything about burying his horse, dogs and family with him. Second, despite it being rather a dinky part of Surrey, some of those buried here could not afford grave stones and had to settle for grave boards. Maybe four feet long by one foot deep and mounted along the middle of the grave. Name and details painted on the board by the local sign writer. But not sure that I approve of renovating such things. They should be allowed to moulder away undisturbed along with the remains of the person concerned. From that point of view, wooden board much more sensible than a stone board. Third, somewhere at the chancel end, was a bit of wall built in a chequerboard pattern with one foot alternating squares of dressed black flint and white clunch. A rather grander version of what can be seen in the garden walls at either or both of Hampton Court Palace and Nonsuch Park Mansion. Must go and check.

After the church, a stroll in the woods behind, mainly beech. Which appear to have naturally regenerated after some fairly drastic clearance event about 30 years ago. Maybe a hurricane. Which gave the wood a flavour quite unlike that of undisturbed mature woods - but a flavour which did not seem to include any birds.

Then moved onto something called Aguadente de Medronho from the Algarve which came in at 48.5% by volume. Not bad at all, although as usual with spirits, once the bottle is opened (something which proved rather challenging. Interesting plastic contraption inside the top of the neck of the bottle. Maybe there is some special second contraption required to break into the first contraption, not supplied with the bottle), it went down fairly quickly. Now one third full. BH accounted for perhaps one sixth. We had thought that aquadente was Portuguese for tooth water but investigation reveals that it really means fire water - ardent for fiery rather than dente for dental - and made out of the fruit of the strawberry tree, an important member of the heather family.

Prompted by all this alcohol to two thoughts. First, a number of the plays of Shakespeare which I know about deal with the problems of succession to power. Julius Caesar, Richard 2, Henry 4p2, Lear. Macbeth, Antony & Cleopatra and Hamlet after a fashion. A topic clearly close to the heart of the gentry and others in early modern England, fairly fresh from the rigours of the Wars of the Roses. But nevertheless impressive that it was possible to talk about such things out loud, albeit in a veiled, parabolic form. Perhaps part of the story whereby after a lurch to the right (Charles 1) and a lurch to the left (Commonwealth), we Brits were early on the road to modern forms of government and succession.

Second, a division of people into two types. In the first type, exemplified by some authorities by D H Lawrence in particular and women in general, thinking is done by the various organs below the nose. The thoughts are primary, free standing and true. There is no need for any justification, connection or consistency. A and B are clearly both true, despite the fact that any attempt to bring the two together results in a contradiction. Which can lead one into odd places. In the second type, exemplified by some authorities by men and the French, thinking is done by that large organ behind the nose. Thoughts have to exist in a connected, logical world. Thoughts have to be consistent, one with another. Thoughts can be propagated by logic from the inner world, without regard to the outer world or common sense. Which can also lead one into odd places.

Perhaps a day off the fire water is indicated.

PS: either the PC or something connected still very creaky. Has the fire water got into an unsuitable place?

This after a visit to an outfit calling itself the Chinese State Circus at Hook Road Arena, a name presumably judged to cash in on the reputation of the circuses which commy states run. Ironic that commy states are supposed to be good at circuses but to be bad at pretty much everything else. Anyway, this state circus turned out to be one of the branches of 'The Entertainment Corporation', headquartered at Malmesbury, the oldest borough in our green and pleasant land. Not to be confused with the place with a similar name in Australia. The corporation also operate a Russian flavoured circus and a German flavoured circus. Presumably no connection with the Chinese or any other state at all.

The ground crew appeared to come from Eastern Europe while the artists and artistes were indeed from China or somewhere nearby. Their accommodation looked to be fairly basic; none of the grand four caravans you used to get up on the downs on Derby Day before they were evicted to make way for the police enclosure. Dormitory vans rather than private suites. Accommodation notwithstanding, a fairly small number of them - maybe 30 - managed to put on a very varied and nicely paced performance. The six ladies, some not so young at all, were particularly versatile. Good clean fun - some of it requiring much strength in unusual places. FIL very pleased to be reminded of the visit he paid to the Beijing version.

My second error touches the difficult business of making cuts. I find that my standard pub line of 'if you want to get more revenue you have to get middle England to pay more income tax. They provide the government with most of their income and if the government wants more it is just going to have to hit them a bit harder. Whacking the rich might make you feel better but doesn't help much' is fairly wide of the mark. I shall have to get up a new one.

In the first place, about two minutes on the helpful budget site put up by the Treasury, tells me that income tax is just over just a quarter of total revenue and direct personal taxes taken all together are just over a half. So direct personal taxes might not be the whole answer.

In the second, some helpful tables from those helpful people at HMCR, tell me that both income and tax is a lot more skewed than I had realised. So the top half of the population pay nine tenths of the income tax and get three quarters of the income. The top twentieth pay half the tax and get a quarter of the income.

So the government is not whacking middle England, it is whacking the top half of England. And while tax is fairly regressive already, there might be room for whacking the top quarter even harder. A catch being that you might scare them away to Ireland, to the Cocoa Islands or into the welcoming arms of expensive tax lawyers.

The red worms in the compost dustbin were clearly not happy just waiting for their transfer to the compost bin. Making determined bids for escape. Which all goes to show that they must be worms of very little brain as they would be snapped up by the aforementioned birds in no time. However, I have now emptied the dustbin into the bin and most of the worms are back where they are supposed to be. How will they get on with the smell of fresh Dulux Weathershield, which the blurb on the tin suggests should not be used indoors as Dulux cannot be responsible for any unpleasant ailments you might catch in consequence?

Have now received the Autumn newsletter of the chain saw gang. They tell us that they have now chopped down enough trees to make room for 23 cows. So they are now pumping 23 cows worth of global warming into the sky all day every day. A regular 24 by 7 job.They appeal for volunteers to play herdsmen and women: it seems that one is supposed to peer at the cows' tongues every day to make sure that they are not ailing. Why do they bother? Why can't they play at Horton Park Childrens' Farm and leave our common out of it? Possibly because they don't have cows there any more, in case the children touch them and catch some unpleasant ailment that way. Lot of fuss in the papers on this account a year or so ago. But they do have a large play barn where the children can tear around shouting on apparatus. Perhaps this is what Childrens' Farms are really for.

And a little while ago I read in one of our free papers that the chain saw gang have been awarded some award for their management of Epsom Common. To quote the press release: 'Epsom Common Local Nature Reserve has won the Green Flag Award for the first time. The Green Flag scheme, which has been running for 11 years, awards those parks and open spaces judged to be welcoming, safe and well maintained and involve the local community'. Mr Google tells me that the Green Flag award is a subsidiary operation of the 'Keep Britain Tidy' campaign: see http://www.keepbritaintidy.org/. Presumably leaving dead trees lying around does not count as litter.

Picked up a book of reminiscences by J. Conrad yesterday from which I share three snippets. First, it seems that if you are a seaman used to being up close and personal with wild and hellish seas, the idea of drowning in a calm sun-lit pond seems all very calm and peaceful. Not like being sucked into the mouth of hell at all. Second, he gets very hot and bothered about people who talk about casting anchor. He says that anchors are far too heavy for casting; one just drops them. Odd that the casting word should have irritated him so much. Perhaps I will find out as I read on. Third, the magic went out of seafaring for him when sail gave way to steam. A sailing ship was a beautiful, but frail and wayward thing which needed love and art to survive. A steam ship just trudges through. No love or art at all by comparison.

I see from yesterday's DT that the badgers are winning. That is to say that despite the fact that they are digging up a church graveyard - with the result that bones are being scattered about the place - the parishioners are not allowed to do anything drastic about it. Like shooting them. So live badgers are deemed to be more important than dead people. I wonder what the story would be if it was a Muslim graveyard. Or a national heritage Inuit burial ground. I bet they would be able to claim religious immunity for direct action.

But a dead person who is fairly important just presently is the drunken barrister waving a shotgun about who was shot by a large posse of armed police somewhere in Kensington in 2008. Now while the Metropolitan Police record in such matters is not very good at all, I do have some sympathy in this case. A chap is waving a shotgun at you in the dark and ranting. Shooting him is unfortunate but not unreasonable. OK, so there might have been a better outcome, but I am not sure that putting the police through the wringer in public is the best way forward.

My last dead person is Aldous H., a chap whom I mention quite often. A urbane, civilised sort of chap for whom I have a high regard. So reading a short story - 'Chawdron' - last night, rather surprised and disappointed to come across some Jew remarks. Not written as words of the author himself, rather put into the mouth of one of his charecters, but not in a way which dissociated the author from them. Not particularly offensive, the sort of thing which was common enough at the time he was writing and Aldous H. does takes pops at all kinds of people, but nevertheless I was surprised. Published at a time when Hitler was up and running and he ought to have known better. Not the sort of remarks one would make about black people now.

On the way there, found ourselves sitting opposite two book lovers on the tube to Oxford Circus. The first, a small old lady in red cardy and red beret, presumably French, was reading a well thumbed paper back copy of Levi Strauss's 'Tristes Tropiques' in the original French. Which I recall as being a rather impressive and moving book. Quite accessible by L-S's standards. But quite a serious book for someone who had to read with the aid of an illuminating magnifying glass. Must have been very keen. The second, a rather larger and younger lady. But notable because she was reading a fat paperback called 'The Museum of Innocence' by one Orhan Pamuk. Or more precisely, notable because I had never heard of the chap until the day before when I had come across him in Vauxhall. On exit at Oxford Circus rather bewildered by the large number of people milling about. This at around 1830 when one might of thought that the rush hour was calming down and decent citizens were heading off home. It was also getting dark which meant that we were unable to eat our sandwiches in Cavendish Square as planned. But I did remember about a stray bench just outside, alongside the motor cycle parking bay, so that had to do instead.

On the way back got to thinking about the significance of the letter B. Why do so many celebrated composers start with B? Bach, Beethoven, Benda, Bruch, Britten, Berlioz, Boyce, Brahms, Bartok & Borodin to name the ones on just my shelves. Is there some numerological link out there that I don't know about? No other letter seems to come anywhere near.

And then this morning I get to read about how that superman of retail, Sir Philip Green, is going to sort out all that waste in the public sector. Off hand, I can think of three other supermen brought in for much the same purpose over my time there. Sir Derek Rayner, another superman of retail, Lord Levene and Sir Peter Gershon. These last two from that bastion of efficiency and common sense, the defence industry. I suppose, given that public servants are apt to be more interested in public service and less interested in money than their peers out there in the real world, one has to do this sort of thing from time to time to keep them on their toes. I certainly never exhibited, nor saw exhibited, the sort of zeal for making savings such as is said to be exhibited by the likes, for example, of the Aldi brothers.

So the man probably has a point. But I bet that if you set someone of his calibre onto any large and complicated organisation he is going to be able to identify savings. That is what calibre is all about. This is not to say that he should not be let loose on public servants; just that in fairness one should remember that one could do much the same thing anywhere else. But anywhere else is the responsibility of those other dead sheep (see October 11), the shareholders. Nothing to do with the public at large for whom, however, public service is fair game.

PS: PC very wobbly today. Crashed while idle and now blogger is very twitchy. Keeps being unavailable despite all the lights on the router looking hunky-dory. It there a bit of trouble down at the Google server farm? I wonder if they do tours. Must be quite a sight.

All well deserved in that I had spent part of the morning upgrading one of my PCs twice. That is to say upgrade from Vista to Windows 7 followed by upgrade from MS Office 2007 to MS Office 2010. Apart from a slight wobble when the PC said that I was not allowed to upgrade from bog standard windows to professional windows and had to do something else, both went smoothly, in both cases the hardest part being typing in the long authentication numbers without making a mistake. Clever the way the Microsoft authentication telephone now sends you a text message rather than getting you to write the authentication number down to its dictation while at the same time trying to keep one's phone in one's ear. The new windows has got a new decor and there are probably some new features I will learn to use one day. The new office has not got a new decor but, so far, does run my code in much the same way as the old. With the exception of some irritating changes for the worse to the way in which it decides which window is current at any one time. First task, to get to the bottom of them. Second task, to start going through what's new.

I am left with a worry though. Installation of both products rather assumed that the PC being upgraded was connected to the internet. There was an offline option but for how long? I can't be the only customer who wants a PC for reasons other than poking around in google or twitter. And so do not want the bother and expense of anti-virus software and so on & so forth.

For some reason, taken to leafing through the Crossman Diaries in the advertising breaks on ITV3. I have two volumes - were there three in all? - and have often thought of recycling them, not having looked at them much if at all for the last twenty years.

The things he writes about all seem a terribly long time ago. In another age. But he does write a lot better than most politicians and he does give a sense of how hard ministers have to work if they want to keep a grip on the greasy pole. Never mind actually doing any good. Came across a surprisingly student friendly comment on the troubles at LSE in the late sixties, closely followed by quite a lot of stuff on a scandal at the Ely mental hospital in Cardiff. There still appears to be a hospital of that name in that place although it seems quite likely that the scandalous one has been knocked down along with the rest of our provision for the mentally deficient.

Given the family connection with such places, read the stuff with a bit of care and followed up with a bit of Google. Which very quickly got me to a copy of the report by that well known dead sheep, then an up and coming barrister, Geoffrey Howe. For some reason the report was hosted by the socialist health association - http://www.sochealth.co.uk/ - the sort of gang that my father might have belonged to - being politically active at a time when most doctors and dentists thought that the national health service was a commy plot - a notion which still seems to fly in the US of A.

It seems that this particular hospital was underfunded, understaffed, overcrowded and in a bit of a state. Various members of staff tried to complain and eventually one, in desperation, went to the News of the World which ran one of its exposées (are such things masculine or feminine?) and which triggered the Howe led review. It turned out that while the hospital was indeed in a bit of a state and that some of the nursing was poor if not worse, there was not much, if any, active cruelty. Cruelty by incompetence rather than by design. The Howe answer, backed by Crossman, was the invention of an inspectorate. Couldn't trust management to keep their house in order. A bunch of busies which was needed at the time and which in time grew to be the army of supervisors (rather than doers) that we have now for what has replaced such places.

All of which puts a different colour on an anecdote from the Exminster mental hospital where FIL was the chief teacher of nurses at the time of the scandal. The story that I got told was that the News of the World came down (to Exminster) intent on stirring up trouble and that the best that they could do was report on the fact that some of the better class of patients were allowed to go to the pub occasionally. The tone of the story I got told being that the News of the World was just out to make trouble & sell newspapers and had no understanding of or real interest in the rather depressing and shabby world of mental health. Whereas now it turns out that there was indeed a public interest.

Asked FIL about the whole business today and he had a job to remember it at all. Which I found a bit odd. OK, so it was forty years ago, but I would have thought that the whole business resulted in big shake ups. Something that as chief teacher of nurses he would have been quite close to. Perhaps this blot on his profession has been repressed.

PS: even more red worms made it to the surface of the compost over the last couple of days. A bit pale; not the rich red I usually associate with their interior cousins.

After that moved into a bit of computing DIY, moving one of our PCs from Vista to Windows 7, a move precipitated by a desire to try out the new version of MS Office. Off to our small Staples where a helpful chap with title 'General Manager' made sure that I knew the difference between an upgrade and a clean install and gave me a quick tutorial on the pros and cons of going to 64 bit, which I think is an option on the PC in question. Despite my being a fairly heavy Excel user, he persuaded me that it was not worth the bother just yet. Reasonable risk that I would hit problems which would cost me money - in the form of a support engineer - to fix. Maybe in years to come when it has matured a bit or if one has an IT department to bail one out of trouble. Box now sitting on desk waiting for action. Shall I buy a few shares in Microsoft to make me feel better? Their site says they come at about $25 a pop so it will really have to be just a few.

Then after a short break for a cup that cheered, onto woodworking DIY. Time for a new lid to the compost bin or we might be having some rats take up permanent residence. The current one was made out of the door - tongue and groove affair - which came with our shed twenty years ago but has sagged badly following reinforcement last year. Start off with a sheet of WBP plywood from our helpful Travis Perkins at Blenheim Road. Said to be weather and boil proof whatever that might mean. £25 which seemed enough for a compost bin lid. Wasn't going to go as far as marine ply. Turns out to be a middle grade ply which looks to have been made of some sort of rain forest, rather than the birch ply I grew up with. Reasonable number of voids visible on the sawn edges. Cut to size. Attach a length of three by two along the long way to stop the thing sagging. Re-purpose a massive steel handle - heavy thing, maybe eight inches long. Re-purpose some mahogany from North London. Attach the handle to the leading edge of the lid with a mahogany sandwich and a couple of coach bolts. Didn't think that attaching the handle direct to the ply would last very long. And I have always rather liked the massive approach to fittings.

But what about paint? The stuff might be water proof and boil proof, but might it not be an idea to put some gloss on a lid which is going to spend its life horizontal, collecting water? Despite the drain holes that I will put in tomorrow. Settled for painting just the top and edges, and will leave the underside to the slugs. So now spent another few pounds worth on Dulux Weathershield Undercoat. Good stuff though. Will spend another few pounds worth on Dulux Weathershield Gloss (white). Total cost, not counting recycled material and my time, maybe as much as £40. How much would have it cost me to get someone else to do it? Then how much more to do it to my specification and under my supervision? Would certainly have taken a lot longer.

And then one ought to take the ecological temperature of this operation. Nice new lid will keep the heat in and this will mean that the compost will rot down good and fast. Plenty of oxygen sucked out of the atmosphere, plenty of carbon dioxide and heat pumped back in. New lid made out of tropical rain forest and glue. Glue and paint probably made out of oil. Upside, modest amount of crumbly brown compost to spread around the roses. Maybe the planet would have done better had I entrusted all the food and veg. which went into it to our local council for them to recycle properly?

Compost must be fairly warm already. Spread some grass clippings - which generate heat at a good clip - on it yesterday with the result that the bin was warm enough that a number of red worms had to come up for air. Alternatively they are breeding so fast that the bin is getting crowded and lesser mortals have to take their chances on the surface. A surface which might, just for the moment, involve rats. At least, at night. Non residents.

Tremendous play - despite the introduction in the Arden sniffing about whether the sequel was as good as the original - and an adequate production. Good bits and bad bits. For once, not too long at over three hours including interval.

Falstaff rather dominated the proceedings and I ended up by thinking that there was rather too much of him. Over exposed. He came across as a man who was rather unpleasant - a scrounger, thief and drunkard - without being truly comic. Not even a comic in his declining years.

Percy's widow put on a good show rating her trimming father-in-law, Northumberland. Pulled him up good and proper for banging on about his honour.

Henry the older started a bit weak but ended strongly. Most impressive and Lear-like. Leaving me with the thought that, perhaps, part of the point is that he was not a very good king. He was the matinee idol who became king almost by accident and who did not grow into his new role.

Another thought was that they are all tainted. Some of the people in the play are more successful than others - but none of them are very nice people. The nearest misses come from the lower orders - leaving us with the reminder that, on the whole, one does not get on in this world by being nice. Give or take the odd saint with charisma.

Lord Chief Justice, Warwick and the archbishop weak. Globe still finding it hard to field men with the presence that one supposes such people would have had in real life. Lancaster better. Mistress Quickly still too old. Surrender of Coleville to Falstaff weak.

They managed not to turn it into a musical farce with lashings of song and dance - which I had feared they might. But they did manage a bit of peeing and spewing and they did over paint the contrasts. Between, for example, Falstaff and his contemporary Shallow. Shallow was, after all, a respectable provincial type who had made some money over the years. Inappropriate to make him a silly old fool in his dotage. With a penchant for boys to boot.

All in all, a good outing. The play shines through. I would even go again should occasion arise. Also good value for money: convenient to Waterloo and a lot cheaper than the West End.

After the event I find that Roger Allam who played Falstaff (see http://www.rogerallam.co.uk/) also played the scum bag but best selling author in Tamara Drew. A film in which he has the decency to end up dead. See September 15.

I also find out that they need an awful lot of people to run the Globe. They might have twenty actors on the payroll - during the season at least - but they also have lots of supporting staff who are presumably on the payroll all year round. I counted 64 in the first of the three and a half columns of them. They also have lots of governance. Almost up to National Trust standards with a board of 20 or so trustees and a council of 100 or so councillors. What on earth happens when the council meets? Far too many people to have a working meeting with. Or is it just a way of getting big names and donor names onto the programmes with style?

And the LRB tells me about some more odd research. It seems that given names are a fascinating business. One can study the rise and fall of particular given names. One can study the number of names. Why do some cultures have lots and some have few? One can research into why mums think that this or that name is posh. One can look into what names mean or into whether they mean. One might learn, for example, that Dennis is a derivative of Dionysus, the god of booze. Clearly the parents of the late Sir Dennis Thatcher Bart. had him marked down from an early age. And there is a large bunch of people out there who think that the study of names in ancient Greece is fascinating. To the point where the OUP is publishing volume Va of its lexicon of ancient Greek names. A snip at £125 for 496 pages. There may be an even better deal for concessions. Now this is all good fun, but is it the sort of thing the government should be funding when they can't whack up the washers for a new trident?

The same LRB had a much less fun article about the relative merits of literary criticism and creative writing as subjects for study at university. Didn't understand much of its several pages at all. But I do think I prefer the days when writers wrote in garrets and did not need the support of group therapy to ply their trade. Something vaguely indecent about exhibiting all the tricks of the trade in that way.

And then there is the chap in the TLS to whom I shall refer to as HCE. As far as I can make out HCE is a middling sort of poet who ekes out his income by doing poetry readings in festivals in places like Sandbach and hosting residential creative writing workshops in places like rural France. HCE also writes what used to be a weekly column for the TLS, although, of late, he seems to have been demoted to occasional. But I like his pieces. Light and jolly while erudite apercus on the life of the working poet. So rather surprised to come across one of his poems which involves him drilling though his own head, more or less from ear to ear, with an electric drill, while watching the proceedings in his bathroom mirror. Rather unpleasant and I would much rather not know about it.

But went away thinking that Beethoven managed to do a lot more with a lot less than his successors.

Today was the return of the sheep's neck for lunch. Usual recipe although I had a fit of the veggies in that before commencing the boil, I removed most of the pair of tendons running along the back of the neck and which the sheep, in life, presumably used to wag its head up and down. They can be a bit off-putting on the plate. Over the neck bones, FIL and I wondered whether being in the surgical trade would put one off meat eating. FIL, who during the second war had put in many hours in operating theatres, thought not. Certainly never caused him any problem in that department.

Wound up the day with a visit to our local Travis Perkins. A helpful and obliging bunch, the only catch being that one of the cast iron covers to the drain trench - about 9 inches wide and 12 inches deep - in their shared car park was missing - and clearly had been for some time. Only noticed the gap when my leg went down it. At which point I noticed that the front tyre must have missed it by an inch or so. Could have been nasty. Decided not to be busy and to go and pester the Travis Perkins chaps about it but spent the journey home wondering whether it would have been fair to sue had I broken my leg.