pumpkinstrokemarrow

At the time of purchase it was suggested that occasionally, when warming the things in the microwave, the lumps of kidney burst through the crust and unless restrained by some cling film were apt to wind up on the ceiling of the microwave. Which all sounded rather unlikely and I am happy to say that no such thing happened on this occasion.

All of which meant that by the following day we were well up for the book fair at the Dorking Halls. Say fifteen years ago, these used to be rather grand affairs with the main hall full, including the stage, and with overflow into neighbouring rooms. Serious books for sale and plenty of punters. The world has clearly moved on and yesterday's affair was rather subdued by comparison. By the time we got there there seemed to be as much action between the dealers as there was between the dealers and the public.

Managed two purchases. The first was 19th century Russia volume of the 'Oxford History of Modern Europe' by one Hugh Seton-Watson. Just over 800 good condition pages for £4 plus a plastic wrapped fly leaf. The seller managed to make me feel even better about it by managing to insinuate that the book was worth rather more but that since it was marked at £4 he had better let me have it for that. Few maps and no pictures but it looks to be a good book for all that. Written at a time when history was designed to be read rather than waded. And I feel even better about it now that I find that Amazon can do me second hand ones for £40 and upwards.

The second was the Pléiade complete Baudelaire. 1,842 good condition pages for £10 plus plastic wrapped fly leaf, slip case (now discarded) and binding which might well be leather. I had not realised that the chap wrote a lot more prose than poetry, was a translator of Poe and was a major critic in his day. The biography was a bit coy about cause of death, but there was mention of general paralysis, aphasia and hemiplegia, from which we deduced syphilis - a diagnosis confirmed by Mr Google. Amazon France would do me a second hand one for 25 euros (35 with plastic wrapped fly leaf and slip case) or the two volume current edition for 50 euros a go. So not a bad buy at all. All I need to do now is actually read some of thing. I did try 'Fleurs du Mal' once before but did not get very far.

As an extra we got what looked like the shopping list of the original purchaser, perhaps a well heeled, first year undergraduate student of French. Very neatly written on a leaf torn from a spiral bound note pad, dated July 1967 (just about the time I was starting out as an undergraduate), starting with Claudel and Jarry and running through to Genet and Beckett, taking in the likes of Baudelaire and Molière on the way. Some of whom I have heard of. Must have come to quite a bit altogether.

Other people fuss about grammar and take to heart rules about not starting sentences with conjunctions, not mixing metaphors and all the sort of thing which one used to learn in English language classes.

My own fuss point is vocabulary. I am irritated when I think that someone else is abusing a word or is using it in an inappropriate context. Commonly by using a strong word like 'emasculated' when a weak word like 'weakened' would have done. Or 'disaster' for 'disappointment'. But it does have to be someone else; quite OK if I do it myself.

So not best pleased in the TB the other day when I got found out not knowing what an oxymoron was and had to have it explained to me that it meant a phrase which was nonsense, typically an adjective applied to an inappropriate noun. The example given at TB is not fit for onward transmission, so I offer 'tall dwarf' instead. To save face, I explained that the derivation was probably from the state people got into when electrocuted in the course of treatment by a 19th century psychiatric quack by the name of Dr. Moroni.

Coming home some time later, I found myself locked out. The first time that I recall such a thing happening. Maybe had difficulty getting the key in the lock from time to time, but never actually locked out - in this case by the chain on the back door having been put up. Luckily there was no difficulty about getting into the garage but it was far too cold to think of sleeping there. So out with one of my collection of crow bars to see if I could get the chain off the door frame without doing too much damage. Answer, no. Could get the bar in OK, but couldn't get a decent purchase on the fitting which fixed the chain to the door frame and chickened out of really putting any welly into it. Next thought door bell, but decided that this was a bit of a blunt instrument. Might wake everybody or nobody. So settled for getting the ladder up the front of the house and tapping on a bedroom window with a key, a proceeding which instantly had the desired effect and shortly after I was in the warm inspecting an undisturbed chain fitting. So much for crow bars. And so much for neighbourhood watch; not so much as a flicker of a net curtain. Nor remark the following day.

At this point I remembered to check oxymoron and had the satisfaction of finding my TB informant to be in the wrong. According to the OED it is a common misapprehension that oxymoron means nonsense. Rather it means a rather strained conjunction of words, but a conjunction which nevertheless makes a neat point. They offer the example of an Epicurean pessimist.

On the other hand, oxymoron did not come from Dr. Moroni, rather from two Greek words, one meaning sharp - the oxy bit - and one meaning dull - the moron bit. I cannot yet trace Dr. Moroni and it now seems likely that under the influence I confused him with a certain Franz Anton Mesmer from whom the term mesmerised is derived. Not moronised at all. Moron is an old word for a sort of salamander.

Anyway, it turns out that I have probably been making my dough far too dry. The wetter the better seems to be the the maxim for the bakers' training school. And one of the devices he suggests for keeping the dough wetter is to prove the loaves inside propagation trays.

Now as it happens I have two of these things and they have been sitting on the study window cill for a couple of years or more, waiting to see what happens. I did not put any seeds in them but the idea was to see what turned up under its own steam. Over the time there has been some interest - there were some liverworts at one point and a spider at another (see early April last year) - but most of the time grass and moss has been dominant. But neither have thrived. The grass I can understand as the containers are not very large and the ambience is damp. But I would of thought that that was just what the moss liked. But no, refused to thrive. So yesterday it was time to call time. The trays have been called to the higher calling of keeping my proving dough damp. Contents now in compost dustbin. As it turned out they were very damp, the compost in the trays was full of roots, roots which made the compost into a mat, and there was no smell. Which I would have thought there would have been. OK, so there were no animals to pong but some plants pong too.

Yesterday, back to London to hear Pollini do Book 1 of the 'Well Tempered Clavier'. A pianist for whom my brother had a lot of time but who did not do much for me because he always seemed to be playing what I call clever clogs pieces - show off pieces if you like - which I do not like. I go for simpler music. Well the 'Well Tempered Clavier' qualifies as far as that is concerned, and Pollini did well. Quite a performance - two slugs of an hour each - for someone who is six or seven years older than I am. Once again, I did not know the music as well as I thought I did, but I now know it a good deal better. I flagged a bit towards the end of the first half, but picked up again and paced myself better for the second. Even to the point where it is maybe time that I get myself a proper hi-fi on which to play the thing at home. My version being Richter, probably ex-Oxfam, Tavistock.

Enthusiastic audience, house more or less full. Lots of foreigners. I noticed several groups of French people and there were lots of people from the Far East, probably Japanese. They seem to be well into western classical music. But I noticed no-one who looked as if they came from the Middle East, North Africa or as if they might be Muslims. No-one who looked as if they or their parents came from the Indian sub-continent. And just one black. But the audience was probably OK on non-race aspects of diversity.

On the way home, got to pondering about the economics. The seats in the Festival Hall were maybe twice as much as those in the Wigmore Hall had been the previous evening. The Festival Hall had maybe four times as many people. So the Festival Hall had eight revenues for one artist while the Wigmore Hall had one revenue for ten. Dorking Halls charge maybe half what the Wigmore Hall charges and holds about the same number of people. The inference seems to be that the same arrangements about pay prevail as does in the world of professional football; that is to say there is a lot of difference between the top and the bottom of the heap.

There was one sign of primadonnishness in that Pollini did not quite seem to get his act together with his page turner, a gentleman of mature years but probably a bit younger than himself. The piece was broken into 48 smaller pieces, two for each of the 24 possible keys, and many of the pieces occupied exactly two pages of score. Pollini seemed to want to hold onto the page until the closing notes had completely died away, before the page was turned. A proceeding I entirely approve of: lay one thing to rest properly before moving onto the next. But sometimes the page turner left it too long and Pollini started to turn the page himself, glaring ferociously at the official page turner the while. Or at least, that is what it seemed like to me.

Almost home, at TB to be precise, heard a story about the top and bottom of another kind of heap. It seems that this chap had been working for the same builder for the whole of his working life, say forty years. Hard working sort of chap, fond of his drink and his grub. Let's call him A. The builder, a middling sort of concern I should imagine, rather into speciality work like mending bits of Windsor Castle, did well and wound up with a grand house in some leafy part of Surrey. He has now wound up his affairs and paid off his staff, managing to organise things so that he does not have to pay them any kind of redundancy. So he is now enjoying his well earned and well padded retirement, while A is reduced to his state pension, a considerable drop in his income. Well you may say, that is way of the world. Well I reply, well it might be. But it is a rough old world.

The same issue also included moans and groans about the private finance initiative, a wheeze which came into fashion at Her Majesty's Treasury around 20 years ago. The public argument at the time was that private sector efficiencies would more than compensate for the high cost of private sector capital; the private argument was that the initiative would get capital expenditure on public works off the public balance sheet, thus keeping various international financiers happy. As it turns out, what the private sector was really efficient at was not so much actually running the hospitals and such like but, rather, at extracting money from the public sector, far more so than anyone imagined at the time and so, according to the DT, we are now saddled with all kinds of duff contracts let under said initiative. Leaving aside the fact that all their private sector friends are doing very nicely out of them thank you.

Yesterday off to London Town to be greeted at the station by a poster paid for by the Royal Academy of Arts and advertising some sculpture gig. Most of the poster consisted of a tasteful photograph of a couple of square metres of badly compacted hard core. Not altogether sure whether the joke is on them for advertising some of the rubbish that passes for sculpture these days - or on us for paying for the stuff.

Which reminds me of an anecdote about a New York sculptor in the late sixties of the last century. He had an arrangement with his quarry whereby they chopped a lump of rock out of the hillside - say half a cubic metre or so - and mounted it nicely on whatever sort of plinth was in vogue at the time and then shipped it directly to the sculptor's gallery for sale - without bothering the sculptor at all. The story went that the stuff went fast enough to make comfortable livings for quarry, sculptor and gallery; the sculptor's contribution being to assist in the creation of a brand which sold. We were not told how long it was before they were rumbled and the scam fell apart: we might be gullible but we do not like to be seen to be gulls, however ever much we might like lumps of rock au naturel. There is at least one such rock in Hyde Park, the gift, as I recall, of the grateful Norwegian nation.

Then onto the train. For the first part of the journey we were entertained by a couple of teenage lads whose idea of fun was to have a loud conversation interspersed with much inane laughter and consisting mainly of expletives drawn from a very limited store of same. I guess the idea was to shock the grown ups, so we obliged by moving to the other end of the carriage where we were entertained by a mixed couple of the same age. Slightly fewer expletives but similarly inane. Mainly about deeds of derring-do on Facebook. Something called bitch fights. They got off after a while, with their place in the sound zone being replaced by the regular announcements about the need to keep one's luggage with one and a very serious young man having a very serious mobile phone conversation about selling his car. We learned that identity theft of cars is a big issue in the world in which he moved. Or something of that sort.

Exiting at Oxford Circus we take a light meal in an Italian cafe in the region of John Prince's Street, not the Ponti's, rather the sort of small private cafe which used to be very common in central London, now largely displaced by the likes of 'Pret a Manger' and 'Bella Italia'. Then off to the Wigmore Hall for a Haydn quartet (Op. 20 No. 4), wind pieces by Janacek & Musgrave and the Brahms clarinet quintet (Op. 115) to close. With Endellion providing the strings, Michael Collins the clarinet and his London Winds the balance. I note in passing that the Endellions must be our far and away most heard quartet, over a period of probably 15 years or more with the last occasion being on or about October 13th last year. Defected once in favour of the Hagens since then.

For once the programme seemed a little unbalanced, in that although each piece was fine in itself, especially the first and the last, I took a while to adjust to the clarinet quintet after the interval. I wonder this morning whether including the two wind pieces and his London Winds in the programme was a quid-pro-quo for the eminent Collins doing the well worn - if well loved - clarinet quintet. One of the wind pieces had been commissioned by the Wigmore Hall from one Thea Musgrave. Last night was not its first outing but we were, nevertheless, honoured by the presence of the composer in the audience.

A first of a different kind was the presence of a bass clarinet among the winds, something I have never seen before. It looks like a giant clarinet, with black body and silver keys like an ordinary clarinet, but with a turned down mouth and turned up bell, like a saxophone.

At first glance the fat book by a gent. is going to be more helpful than the thin book by a lady. The latter is a picture book despite being called a bible, while the former has a lot of information and very few pictures. I shall report further in due course.

While collecting the bread books from the library, I also picked up a copy of 'Never let me go', the book which sparked the interest in Ishiguro and the 'Remains of the Day' and which is about to be released in film form. Struck by his coming up with the idea of breeding humans specifically to act as organ donors, with the fourth donation being fatal. You can only manage without so many organs. Rather Japanese you might think. But I found I could not read the book. Got through the first quarter and then skipped to read the last ten pages to see how it ended. On closer inspection the whole idea of organ donors became more and more distasteful. Neat at a distance, nasty close range. One then wonders whether Ishiguro's world is populated by the sort of half baked people I have come across so far? Is this a product of his creative writing course at UEA or his being born in Nagasaki at a time when the experience of the second bomb must have still been raw? Or of English being his second language?

Another odd dream last night. I was back in the Home Office, near Victoria. A lady colleague and I went out shopping one lunch time, taking a bus to get there. At some point I noticed this large second hand bookshop, in the dream at the Victoria end of Victoria street, where there is no second hand bookshop of this sort in real life. There was also a large building site next door, which had been the site of the Cabinet Office war rooms and which was now, many years after the war, being noisily rebuilt. But at least the people in the bookshop had a bit of a view for a while, before the new building filled the hole. Get off bus a few hundreds yards up the road and, after hesitating for a moment, decide to walk back and take a closer look. Wander into the shop, thinking to creep in quiet and unobserved, but am spotted by a couple of smartly suited floorwalkers who clearly want to tell me all about their shop before I get any further. Which one of them proceeds to do.

Along the way he tells me of the very elaborate locks used to secure the more expensive books to their bookshelves, rather in the manner of a medieval chained library. The locks were a bit more sophisticated than chains and had all kinds of strange, biometrical keys. I also get presented with a bunch of flowers when I set off on my tour of the shop.

Which turns out to be more like a provincial auction room than a bookshop, with all kinds of second division second hand furniture awaiting sale. Deposit the flowers on one of the second hand tables. Don't find anything of interest in the book department - a lot of the books being far to big and expensive for me - and emerge unscathed to find myself in a street which I ought to know but don't. Everything completely strange. Hilly, which Victoria Street is not. Decide that the way forward is to get a bus. I might be lost but hopefully the bus would not be. So I get on a bus which says it is going to Westminster via Horton Hill - this last being in Epsom rather than anywhere near Westminster. But I should be able to find my way from Westminster to the Home Office. But, unfortunately, the bus pulls up in a bus garage inside Victoria tube station and I am still lost. I think I must have woken up at that point, rather mystified. Unusual in that my dreams are usually more or less complete fabrication, with just a few bits drawn from life, pegs on which to hang the thing, or more or less completely feasible and reasonable. This one falls between the two stools.

Yesterday afternoon to the 'Derby Arms', a place which used to be a proper pub (with real gypsies on Derby days. I also know of someone who claimed to have driven his motor bike into the public bar when young) and which is now, after at least two refurbishments, a gastro pub. Fair amount of trade yesterday lunchtime, not all seniors. Staff struck us as a little inexperienced with the bar maid committing the solecism of putting the beer into glass before the lemonade when making up the shandy for BH. They had the usually excellent 'Landlord' from Timothy Taylor: this particular sample was OK but nowhere near as good as that which had been served in the 'Salisbury' in St Martins Lane the previous evening. But then, that was a proper pub with the fancy woodwork and fancy glass to prove it. Starter very good: a very thin round of warm pizza bread with a bit of oil, dressing and rocket scattered on top. Simple but effective. BH main course good - a heap of some sort of salad leaves with a couple of goat's cheese fritters on the side; my main course not so good. Calves liver with bits and pieces which I think would have been fine had someone not seen fit to include far too much vinegar in the sauce. Something I don't much care to taste in my meat and two veg. at all. Or fish and chips. Two large, shiny, round white plates in two varieties for the two meals, as one expects from any self respecting gastro pub. Bill entirely reasonable.

Yesterday evening was taken up with the second showing of our DVD of 'The Remains of the Day'. Part of the course work for our MPhil's in Media Studies with the university of the fourth age. This came about because while investigating whether Bourne Hall library had a copy of a book by Ishiguro about an odd school - which I now know is called 'Never Let Me Go' - I discovered that he was also the author of 'The Remains of the Day'. Took it out and for the first time in a long time bought a new DVD from HMV for the modest sum of £5. Fortunately the sales girl worked out that I was far to old to find my way around such a shop and she went and fetched it for me. Saw the film, then read the book (an easy read) then saw the film again. Now into my second read.

As always, interesting to see how the book has been adapted to make the film. Not done the leg-work yet, but I think the film takes some liberties with the framing story, the motor trip to the west country. Most seriously by omitting the episode very near the end of the book when the butler meets another butler on a pier. An episode for which the book is named. Most of the humour has been lost in translation. And most of that part of the book which is about the trade and craft of butlering has been lost, leaving the film freer to focus on the romantic angle. Including the bits about a version of the Junior Ganymede Club which Wodehouse had created perhaps 60 years previously. Most of the key incidents have been retained, although some of them got a bit distorted during compression. A bit puzzled as to why the housekeeper might have thought of the butler as a marriage prospect; the ages seem too different despite the mutual professional respect, although I suppose that younger women marrying older men was commoner then than it is now.

Lastly, I do not think the DVD is quite the same as the film we saw, probably near the time when it first came out. At least, I have a memory of a scene which does not seem to be there. Need to work out somehow whether it is a fake memory. Perhaps the DVD contains some of those extra scenes which the wrappers of some DVDs tell one about.

Good book and good film for all that.

PS: bread 6 day.

A first in the sense that we had never before been in such a small audience, which with the two of us totalled 4. Not including the 2 attendants who were sufficiently interested to sit in with us.

A strange and compelling film, with much of the interest arising from its setting in a rather run down - run down not a shanty town - suburb of Buenos Aires and from using what looked like locals for much of the cast. A tale of a famous, unpleasant and absent father hanging over a hung-up and broken-up son. The Guardian review made much of the Oedipal content, something it seems that Coppola is rather into. With the additional twist that Coppola Junior had a middle ranking role in the production of the film. The Guardian review put it all down as rather pretentious. But I thought that trying to do something important, running the risk of being thought to be pretending, was better than not trying. Settling, perhaps, for some banal tale of drug running and corrupt police in the suburbs.

Last night I did some pretending of a different sort by attending, in a front stalls seat returned by a young Russian lady, a performance of the 'Three Sisters' by a famous Moscow Theatre - see http://www.sovremennik.ru/ - in Russian. A language which I do not speak at all. Nor had I ever been to a performance of this particular play before. I did take the precaution of reading it in advance - my 1927 reprint from Chatto & Windus coming in handy for the purpose. An edition sufficiently old fashioned that it came entirely naked. Apart from a contents page and such like, no preface, no introduction and no notes. The only concession was to list the characters in the play at the beginning of each play. Which was just as well. Not being able to read Russian names, I find it takes a while before they stick, so a list of characters is essential. I almost went to the bother of photocopying the thing so that I did not have to keep flipping backwards and forwards.

The performance was made possible by the generosity of Oligarch Roman so I shall be able to make hay in TB, an establishment which contains many supporters of his football club. The audience appeared to be in large part young, dressy (in a foreign sort of way) and Russian. There were also some older Russian ladies who looked exactly how I had imagined them to look. Plus various English speakers, including Sir P. Hall himself some rows behind me. Luckily there was another English speaker, another return, sitting next to me.

I was surprised at how well the thing worked. Performed with terrific verve over three hours with subtitles which I was too far forward to see with comfort - but which I could manage none the less. There seemed to be a lot more verve than we put into Chekov. A lot more brassy and a lot less shabby genteel. Lots more noisy music than I am used to - but which worked on this occasion. It came across as a tragedy - which it was - but I think the tragedy would have been more tempered by the comedy had one understood the Russaian.

See 5 February 5 and 20 March 2008 for previous thoughts on the chekovian subject. I am sorry to say that I could remember more or less nothing of it last night and not much more when I read my contemporary thoughts this morning. Perhaps it will start to come back to me during the day. Perhaps I will dig the play out and reread it.

PS: as I will be visiting the big town several times this week, I had thought to indulge myself in a weekly season ticket for old times sake. Not the same as a proper annual season, but something. Only to discover that even were I to travel four times in the week, travelling off-peak with my wrinkly, it is still cheaper to buy the tickets one at a time. So no indulgence on that front. But I did come across a job description for a post at JPMorgan Asset Management. Amusing now to read all the crud that finds its way into such things. How you must be strong in this, that and the other. Team skills got a mention, naturally.

I thought it appropriate that I should compose an ode to mark the occasion and that it should be set up in the font called 'trendy'.

Turning to a different sort of heritage, I had occasion to notice a few days ago - 13th January to be precise - the efforts our cousins over the water are making to preserve the literary heritage of the western world.

A few days later I chanced upon an LP containing a selection of French childrens' songs sung by Catherine Clouzot and Jacques Rousseau. Very good they are too; the French managing to be gay (in the old sense of the word) about these things. We tend to be sentimental, mawkish or solemn. Very taken with one called 'C'est le Chevalier du Guet' which I thought was all about a knight in shining armour romancing a lady leaning out of the window of her husband's castle. On closer inspection, it turns out that it is all about some town's night watchman, or at best the chap in charge of the night watch. A duty usually given to a well to do butcher or baker. Not something a knight in shining armour would be doing at all. Just to show that there are no hard feelings, they have also included 'Malbrouck s'en va t'en Guerre'. And just to show how old it is, there is a song about how my excellent tobacco is not for you, more precisely not for your rotten nose. Clearly this one would have to be taken out of any second issue. Most corrupting.

Then, on closer inspection again, it turns out that the LP does not come from France at all, but from the Spoken Arts Corporation of New Rochelle in New York State. A city with ancient French antecedents but now virtually part of New York City.

Inside the record sleeve was a large piece of yellowing paper, folded into six and about three feet by two feet altogether. Perhaps a multiple of the old quarto and certainly not a multiple of the presently omniscient A4. The point of interest being that at the time that the LP was produced it was convenient to reproduce the words of the song direct from typescript onto this large piece of paper. I imagine that the words were typed onto some sort of stencil and the resultant stencils were then used to produce what I have in my record sleeve. Some process like the duplication which used to exist at about the time I entered the world of work. In those far off days when carbon paper was big business. And Gestetner ran one of the largest factories in north east London.

Then off on my morning constitutional, paying a visit to the 'Spring Tavern', at least to the outside of it, it being a bit early for alcohol. Last passed on 1st January. This former pick up joint which used to host the odd skirmish, is now at the gastro. end of pub grub and the shiny new pub sign tells me, inter alia, that there is a rôtisserie in the kitchen and that there are crustacea on the menu. Pub grub gets more pretentious by the minute. For once Wikipedia lets me down and does not spell rôtisserie with an "ô". Does this provide me with an opportunity to make my first wiki-edit?

Coming round on the second lap, took in Chertsey Lane on the old Manor Hospital site where I found that the council had been pruning some of the young trees. Not a bad time of year, and not a bad idea to shape them up a bit. But very clumsily executed with branches being cut off several inches from their parent stem, leaving unsightly and unhealthy horns. From which one deduces that whatever contractor was hired to do the work did not use people who knew too much about pruning trees.

Pushing on towards Southfields Park, the large pollard London Plane has acquired its surrounding spring pond, complete with three ducks. How long will the pond last? One would not of thought that the tree would care about being waterlogged for months at a time but it looks OK for the present.

Back home, decided that the 'Spring Tavern' was not for us and settled for the 'Shy Horse' on the Leatherhead Road. A place modern enough to have Doombar behind the bar and worm eaten wooden beams stuck to the ceiling. Quite decent bread, oil and olives to start. The three different main courses came on three different shapes of shiny white plate: large round mark 1, large round mark 2 and oblong. The waitress seemed to think that the allocation of dish to plate was more or less random. I think they may have the same system at the Tooting Wetherspoons where one also sees the odd oblong or square plate. We all have to move with the times. Menu was more interesting than some and I have learned that you can have confit of pig as well as confit of duck. The chef explained that this meant stewing the piece of pig in its own fat: the resultant flesh was firm but tasty. Noting in passing that although it had been listed as one of the three specials of the day, it seemed a bit unlikely that it had been cooked that day; presumably boil in the bag like everything else. But satisfactory, nonetheless. The rest of the food was satisfactory too, leaving aside the rather firm 'new' potatoes.

Out of one of the windows one could see a farmed field. We thought that this must be one of the very few pubs in Epsom where this was possible. Downs possibly but not farmed fields.

Seem to be reading more fiction at the moment, this week even going so far as to read one of BH's books - 'The curious incident of the dog in the night time' by Mark Haddon, an easy-read fictional first person narrative of an autistic boy. This one was good at mathematics and had all kinds of strange likes and dislikes. He had, for example, a problem with yellow food and carried red food colouring just in case he was stuck. Very bad with strange people and strange situations. Not very good with people generally. All in all a very difficult person to be responsible for. Not at all sure that I could be.

But 'Securing the State' by Sir David Omand was a much better bet. Affordable even. Partly because it is a rather cheaply produced book from India. Sufficiently cheap that the Sienese fresco which Omand uses as a framing device for the book is reproduced in diagrammatic rather than colour photographic form.

Omand is a well educated person. The sort of person who likes to introduce quotes ancient and modern into his text. So we learn, for example, that Robert Frost wrote a poem involving the idea that good fences make for good neighbours. He is also very well qualified to write about state security having worked his way up through the ranks of the securocrats of the UK and served at the very top of the tree for quite some years. But, sadly, he is not a writer and he has not been well served by his publishers. The text smells of Powerpoint, is stodgy and repeats itself - sometimes word for word. But despite these last faults, I learned a lot from this book.

I should perhaps say that I started from the lefty/libertarian position that gentlemen do not read each others' mail and that public business should be conducted in public. This despite the appalling record of the Soviets in such matters.

So I learn from Omand, that states spy on each other because they do not trust each other and that states spy on their own citizens because of the criminals lurking in their midst. Criminals who are determined, dangerous and devious and who are hard to root out by other means. Including here terrorists both of the religious and the animal rights persuasions. And the own goal of the criminals who make a living out of those drugs which we elect to make illegal. Both sorts of spying entail secrets and secrecy, whence grows a large part of the secret (surveillance) state.

He is very keen on how to organise the secret state. And on how to join the secret state up with the rest of the state. Such as the manager of a key warehouse in the Tesco Corporation, loss of which would bring half the country to its knees in days. All of which is clearly a problem as he gives it a lot of air time.

He is also keen on the moral hazards involved in work of this sort, on proportionality and on the difficulty of carrying the public with it. Part of his answer is that all the sharp end work in this country is done by the police. They might be acting on information from the secret squirrels but it is the police, with their separate organisation and accountability who do the dirty work. Another part is that we have various trusted public figures, neither secret squirrels nor part of government themselves, with oversight of secret affairs. Another part is that secret affairs might be dirty and secret but they are, nevertheless, now subject to the rule of law. They are no longer arbitrary, covered only by the Royal Prerogative.

Another topic is the international character of much of the crime we are talking about. Dealing with it has to be an international venture. So a lot of terrorism is mixed up with Pakistan and dealing with that has to involve dealing with the Pakistani security services. We cannot afford to say that their standards - say on the treatment of their detainees - are not ours and so we cannot work with them.

And lastly, it is all very difficult. Despite all the money and all the secrets, mistakes will be made and the bad people will get through, from time to time. I offer a simple example, drawn from the fiction of Houellebecq. One has a horrible crime, involving the use of a sort of laser powered carving knife, the sort of thing a surgeon might use for an amputation. I assume that such things really exist. So the police write to the two or three hundred organisations in France who have such a thing to ask whether they have one missing. Generally to rattle the cage a bit. One of the organisations is a clinic in Cannes, which submits a nil response. Some years later it turns out that the owner of this clinic is the villain of the piece and that his clinic is a cosmetic surgery outfit which had no need of such a carving knife. So on a good day it might have occurred to whoever processed the nil return from this clinic that it was the wrong sort of clinic. But is it reasonable to expect the average busy detective to spot such a thing?

The lesson being that the bad people can slip through fine nets. So they had better be fairly fine to keep the level of risk reasonable.

We shall see whether the link survives update.

The day previous to Teddington to see what the well-stocked Fara childrens' shop there could do for us. We were in luck and emerged with a box called 'Meccano DESIGN 6700' which cost us £2.50 on the basis that we took it with whatever bits missing or broken there might be. The box claimed 287 parts. Opening I find that this probably includes the nuts and bolts. There was also an electric motor to which various brackets had been bolted and wanting to start from a completely deconstructed state, I wanted to get the brackets off. The box contained a suitable spanner but no screwdriver. None of the six cross head screwdrivers from my toolbox that I tried did the business and it finally dawned on me that the odd shaped holes in the top of the bolts were not intended for screwdrivers at all but for allen keys. Having got this far, I then find that there was indeed a suitable allen key in the box. Not like that in my day. The good news is that instructions are present and I will presently embark on the first of the 10 models available. Or would I do better to pass it onto FIL to provide some dietary variation from jigsaws? It will be a while before sprogs 1.1 or 1.2 are up for it as the box says 8-15.

Mr Google suggests that this particular box is no longer available new but that I can get one from ebay for around £30. So we did get a bargain after all.

Having done Fara, went to admire the locks and weir. River looking high and angry with the water downstream of the weir not much lower of that upstream. Various seagulls fishing. That is to say flying up and down a likely stretch of water, fishing on the downstream leg, darting down and hovering over likely titbits before grabbing them. No fighting; they seemed content to do their own fishing rather than stealing the fish caught by others.

Couldn't get into the large half church, now an arts centre and closed on Mondays and Tuesdays despite being clearly staffed, but we could get into the neighbouring small church, devoted to SS Mary & Alban. Some interesting stained glass inside, including an east window which defied the edicts of Pugin in that the scene portrayed paid no regard to the mullions, cutting straight across them. No attempt to play the picture into the window. Lots of elaborate tombs outside, mainly from the second half of the 19th century. Some exhibiting the head stone, foot stone & low barrel between format, with the inscriptions on the outsides of the stones, rather than the insides, which we had read about somewhere recently. Pevsner or DT?

Lunch at 'Tide End Cottage', a Greene King establishment which appeared to be serving as a seniors' light drinking afternoon club. A middle class version of certain Wetherspoons establishments. Perfectly decent beef burger for £8 or so. There was also a Dunkirk connection in it being very near the moorings from which some 100 or so light craft set off for Dunkirk beaches as part of the 1940 rescue mission.

Back home to a second reading of 'In Araby Orion', a book mentioned on 13th March last and which I had forgotten to return to Wetherspoons. Found it a bit heavier going this second time around, finding the various literary illusions a bit difficult to follow. Perhaps I did not try first time around? But, a little Google work and I find the relevant poem from Longfollow and the quote from Marcus Aurelius. Checking with my atlas of the Holy Land (Hodder & Stoughton, 1915), I also find that Thompson had done his homework even if he had not served in the area. The geographical references check out. But all in all, it looks to be a fitting memorial to the Lance-Corporal Henry Osborn to whom it is dedicated.

The only bits missing from the web is anything about the author, Edward Thompson or the dedicatee, Henry Osborn. The book is very visible and lots of Edward Thompsons are visible. But not the right ones. Henry Osborn was not visible on a quick pass, but I dare he would turn up if I worked at it. There is lots of stuff about people who fought in the first war.

The small size, 20 side, leaflet tells us what the changes mean for us. The big size, 36 side, leaflet tells us about changes in the terms and conditions of bank accounts. The economy size, 44 side, leaflet tells us about changes in the terms and conditions of savings accounts. The small size leaflet, presumably directed at those of us who can't manage the other two, comes complete with two colour pictures of smiling customers with smiling advisers from their friendly bank. The cost of all this must be a pound or so for every customer. A million pounds or so in total. And how many of these things are going to get read? Ours won't.

Presumably there is some rule somewhere which not unreasonably directs such outfits to provide full information about changes to customers. But perhaps it would be more sensible if the full information was sent to the chap who wrote the rule, who could then be tasked with reading the full information and, if really necessary, passing on a suitable digest to the rest of us. Or placing a suitable advertisement on page 3 of a certain newspaper. Or having a full and frank exchange with the bank if he found the full information was either un-full or otherwise un-satisfactory.

And then there was a rather different, rather lower tech. communication from the Surrey Chapter of the neighbourhood watch. There was a not very posh form letter, cheaply photocopied and complete with name, rank, telephone number and email address of the sender. But not the actual, bricks and mortar address, just the box number for the Surrey Police. Plus a form to fill in if either of us wanted to be an active citizen. All in a hand addressed envelope which had been franked with a Reigate police postcode for 25p. Then we come to the odd bit. A stamped envelope addressed to Epsom Police Station. Stamped with a real, 2nd class stamp of the sort that you or I might use. So why do they frank the outer envelope but stamp the inner envelope? Closer inspection of the stamp reveals two small cartouches stamped onto the stamp. The idea being, I think, that if you try to get the stamp off the Police envelope and use it for your own purposes, the two cartouches get left behind and you are left with a stamp with two holes which is not valid for your purposes. All very cunning. Is this linked to a deal between the Police and the Post Office which gives the Police a discount on stamps used for pre-paid reply purposes? The Police could say that only 17% of them get returned and so it is reasonable that they only pay 25% (say) of the cover price.

Would we be more or less impressed if the Police did a slicker job on all this? Would we be pleased with a higher standard of communication or cross that the Police were spending all our grudgingly paid tax money on fancy administration and touchy-feely stuff, rather than getting out onto the streets and banging up crims.?

An outing also for numbers of thin worms trying to cross the rather wide pedestrian path along the western side of Horton Lane. Odd that the crows were not taking them.

Also came across a rather large pneumatic drill in West Ewell, much larger than the one I was using last May (May 21st). Drill bit looked as if it was more than two inches in diameter. Not too good for the back I was thinking to myself, when it dawned on me that this was the sort of pneumatic drill which was attached to the end of a digger rather than being swung around by hand. So no back problems and no pneumatics - the drill being driven by hydraulic fluid, just like the JCB one. Although the digger in question was a different brand.

On into Longmead Road where the stream up the side was in full spate. Although for some reason or other the water was flowing much faster in some places than others. All down to the detail of the profile of the stream and of the various drains emptying into it, I suppose. The stream was a couple of feet or so short of bursting its banks but there was one very impressive puddle in the road, at about the place where it does burst its banks from time to time. A moorhen was waddling about between the bank of the stream and a rough thicket which prompted the thought 'where did it come from'. Never seen one around there before. A puzzle as my belief was, based on appearances and experience, that the things could not fly. Had it been washed down the culvert from Stamford Green Pond? However, consultation at TB later in the day suggested that they can indeed fly, a suggestion confirmed this morning by Wikipedia. So its presence now rather less of a mystery.

Back home to the fourth go at bread making. For the third go I did rather more kneading and the result was more like baker bread than the second go. For the fourth go, cut the salt down to a teaspoon - in line with the relevant guidance from the Chief Medical Officer for Baking and Bakeries - and used a mixture of Dove strong white flour and Allinson very strong white flour. The latter was rather different in appearance from the former and appeared to be a little coarser, taking a good deal more jogging to get it through the sieve. For the avoidance of doubt, did the two kneadings to the minute minder. Maybe we will be able to establish whether more kneading is good or whether there is a turning point. But in any event the books are right: handling the dough, watching and feeling the way it changes through the process is very therapeutic. The bread was cooked in two shiny new 2lb loaf tines from Robert Dyas, much cheaper on their bogoff than the same sort of thing would have been from our new Lakelands. Bit of a puzzle about the 2lbs though. I thought that the standard white loaf from a baker was a 2lb loaf but these tins would be no where near big enough for them.

Fourth bread better again than third bread. When fresh, not unlike real bread. Must keep pegging away though: crust too chewy and the loaf not soft and springy when fresh. More than a whiff of the Jacob's Cream Crackers about the things. Next step might be a bread baking manual which might explain. Bread boring moves up to the next level.

Moving onto a higher plane, the night before last I completed my first pass of Chesterton's 'The Return of Don Quixote', an author with whom I had only a slight prior acquaintance, this through his 'Father Brown' stories. Pointed in this direction by Houellebecq who has his fictional version spout a plug for both William Morris and this book. Oddly, one got the impression that Houellebecq really was quite keen on both chaps, never mind what his fictional version might be saying.

A rather odd book, a sort of mild fantasy set in the 1920's or so. Quite a lot of very funny bits but generally a bit of a poke at the various isms and fads of the day. Bit like Huxley, although Chesterton does not go in for the sex or the clever clogs stuff. Lighter touch altogether. Warmly recommended. I wonder how the French chap came to come across it.

My copy, from somebody plugged into the Amazon world, is a first edition from Chatto & Windus of 97 & 99 St. Martin's Lane. Nicely printed at a time when print fashions were a bit different from those we have now and when pages were not nearly as neatly cut. Amused to find the company that Chesterton keeps in the selection from the C & W list of the day printed after the end of the book. Huxley prominent, Proust and Stendhal present. Also books from T. F. Powys, the younger brother of the J. C. Powys who is still in print. Also 'Lolly Willowes' from Sylvia Townsend Warner, which I suspect, has not stood the test of time. Nor 'Out Mr. Dormer' from R. H. Mottram. But why do some people get initials while some get there name in full? Did this used to be a matter of fevered debates between literary agents and publishers?

PS: a little later I find that I suspect wrong. It seems that 'Lolly Willowes' is a forgotten classic, well known to Mr. Google, Wikipedia and Virago amongst others. A 'subversive fantasia in which women are urged to take power and resist '. Perhaps I should get a copy for the BH.

The Weber was straightforward enough, although I thought the the first violins got off to a slow start. But the Brahms was a much more complex piece: I think I would have got on better with a bit of preparation. As it was, as fascinated by the two young soloists from the nearby Yehudi Menuhin school as I was by the music. A boy and a girl who seemed terribly young despite their grown up clothes - full diva dress in the case of the girl. We learned afterwards that they were probably 16 or so. Was it their first outing with a first division orchestra? Was it their prize for meritorious performance in the school in the previous academic year? What did the gray haired second violins think about playing second fiddle to a couple of child prodigies possibly or even probably on the brink of a rather grander career than their own? Did it take the leader back to the day when he was a child prodigy on his first grown up outing?

But the Dvořák was much easier going. A justly popular piece. But I found I had largely forgotten what an orchestra sounded like, spending most of our music periods with chamber work. Great slabs of sound swirling around. All very noisy and emotional. But this is OK in a concert hall; I will still find it rather odd on the hifi at home. Great parts for the wind and the brass. Trombones making an impressive racket at their proper moments. The triangle coming through clear if not loud in its proper moments.

On the way home - the much shorter journey than that from central London being a big plus point - we pondered about the mechanics. What proportion of the orchestra would turn out for a provincial venue? We thought perhaps half the full RFH complement. Would the players on the night be selected according as to whether they lived north or south of the river? Are they on salary and get paid the same whether they are selected or not? Or do they get a basic plus appearance money for each outing? What does the large furniture van carry about - as we noticed a number of players leaving with their instruments? We thought perhaps the chairs, the music stands, the music, the percussion and the double basses. With lots of specialised racking inside the vehicle to hold the instruments. Despite the amount of space that this would leave, we thought it unlikely that the top half of the van was equipped as a dormitory for lesser members of the touring orchestra (with bigger members making it to B&Bs).

PS: for once in a while, while the rest of the web seems to be OK, gmail is very slow. Slower than I recall it ever having been. Are they under attack by the friends of wikileaks? Or is the cause some more mundane loss of some critical bit of infrastructure?

Yesterday for our second and last visit to the Canalettos & etc at the National Gallery. Mostly very good stuff, although I was not so keen on the large paintings of ceremonies. But it did seem odd that the Venetians were clearly spending a fortune on fancy dress at a time when the Serene Republic was in terminal decline. Although, as BH pointed out, the fancy dress was probably carried over from one year to the next, much in the way as they do now for town carnivals in the west country.

I had not realised, although I suppose I should have, how many liberties these painters took with the views that they were painting. Not very photographic at all.

Curious the way that my mood changed between the first and second visits. Some paintings that I had really liked on my first visit I was not so keen on on the second and vice-versa. With the early 'The Piazza San Marco, looking East' being in the first category and 'The Campo Santa Maria Formosa' being in the second. I also decided that if I were a rich man, while some of the Guardis were great on first acquaintance, they would not wear as well on the wall as the more sober Canalettos.

I learn incidentally that Maria Formosa translates as voluptuous Mary. Does this have anything to do with the island off China?

None of them seemed to reproduce very well. While the pictures in the book of the exhibition serve as mementoes, an awful lot is lost. I wonder what sort of a job those reproduction artists from mainland China would do?

And most of them needed to be looked at from the right distance, not always easy in a crowded special exhibition. Not very flexible in that regard. The book of the exhibition suggesting that this might have been the result of some at least of the painters starting out as painters of scenes for theatres. Scenes designed to be looked at from a known position.

Slightly sobered by the thought that this was the last time that I shall see most of the pictures on show, with a good proportion of them vanishing back into private collections. Although I suppose if one was keen, one could probably wangle a private view by suitable private approach. Not going to happen though.

Interested by an African lady on the tube on the way home. Thick, deep green cloth wrapped around her head and draped around the upper half of her body. No hair or ears to be seen. But the lower half of her body was wrapped in some very fancy & flimsy light green material. Different rules appearing to apply to the upper and lower halves - rules perhaps set out in the devotional text she appeared to be reading. Cheaply produced paperback in her native tongue with dollops of arabic thrown in. Her daughter, maybe seven or eight, was more soberly dressed with black lower half. Her son, so the daughter solemnly informed me, was one year and seven months old. He and his buggy were entirely conventional.

I also discovered during the course of the day that you can buy a whisky for around £50 a bottle which answers to the description: 'a combination of flavours from vanilla-rich bourbon casks and two years in Oloroso sherry casks. Tastes like Pedro Ximinez sherry drizzled on good vanilla ice cream'. I must have stunted taste buds because I can never taste this sort of thing in the sort of thing that I drink. But it did make me wonder whether it would not be simpler just to buy some sherry and vanilla ice cream. Alternatively you can buy not more than two bottles of 'another release matured in ex-bourbon casks which has a richer, deeper palate than the 1997 with bananas, raisins, apples and lots of toffee-ish vanilla. A delicious easy-drinker with so many appealing characteristics'.

Part of the price that we pay for progress.

Then got to wondering why the French call this branch of the judiciary by this name. I was able to find out that it was a sub-directorate (rather than a branch) of the technical and scientific police. But I did not find out where the judicious identity came from, although a clue may be that I believe that one, if French, is supposed to carry one's identity card while in France and be able to produce it for verification on demand by an authorised agent of the state. A useful KPI of state control being the number of people who are so authorised expressed as a percentage of the total population.

Nearer home, I read recently that our own FSS (Forensic Science Service, the people who, inter alia, used to do thousands and thousands of DNA tests at a large facility near Meriden, an interesting little village nicely documented by Wikipedia. Not the one in Connecticut) is about to be abolished in favour of private testing laboratories. Part, presumably of the bonfire of quangoes. I have a recollection that the FSS has not been in existence all that long, having been created from one or more outfits which used to live inside the Home Office. The wheel of management fashion continues to spin. But as I found with CJIT the other day (10th January), not so easy to trace the evolution of government from the web, with the FSS web site being very gung ho about how spiff they are at all kinds of forensic services but much less gung ho about their own history.

But perhaps that is just me. I remember organising a lecture about the internet once, which was full of the history of the internet and which I found fascinating. But I was taken to task by most of the audience for wasting their time with all this ancient history. They wanted to be told about the scene today, not the scene yesterday.

This morning another trip around the all weather path around Epsom Common. Did not come across many birds or any deer, but I did spot a bunch of people in the undergrowth. A lot of them were wearing high visibility jackets and hard hats. Some of them were wielding chain saws. Maybe a chevauchée by one of the chain saw gangs organised by the ECA (see http://www.epsomcommon.org.uk/) combined with a seniors' nature stroll organised by the community centre at Sefton Road?

I decided not to go and explain to their leader that I did not like what they were doing on the grounds that I do not have the knack of doing such things nicely. Instead, a ditty came to mind, with apologies to the anti-war demonstrators of the late sixties:

Perhaps I shall start pinning 'leave our trees alone' notices to trees which appear to be under threat. Or hiding tape recorders in the bushes to chant the ditty to passers by.

Lunch was the third go at roast oxtail. See 9th December for the second attempt. This time, did not bother with boiling up the smaller bits to make gravy. Just put an oxtail and a half in the pyrex dish, bits big and small, covered the dish and popped it in the oven on slow at 2200 hours yesterday. Stirred at 0800 this morning. Added some slivered onion and perhaps half a pint of water at 0900. Turned up from slow to 110C. Stirred again at 1200 and eat at 1300. Served with a perforated spoon so as to leave the fatty water behind. I think I have got it about right. The right balance between succulence and chewiness. Positive remarks from the BH, no chewy remarks from FIL.

Turning over the pages of the NYRB after lunch, was pleased to see that the humanities are alive and well in the US. So if they get closed down in our universities in favour of soap studies and such like, someone will be carrying the torches over there. The first torch was the LOEB classical library which publishes hundreds of classical texts in Greek and Latin in parallel text format. An operation of the university press at Harvard. And the second torch was the Tatti renaissance library which publishes rather fewer renaissance texts in Latin in parallel text format. Plus welter weight academic apparatus. Also from the people at Harvard. To think that there are enough people out there wanting to read renaissance texts in two languages at once to justify publishing such a library. For the fainter hearted, the same issue of NYRB offers no fewer than 24 lectures, on DVD or CD, which will enable you to discover the secrets of artful reading from Dr. Timothy Spurgin, Bonnie Glidden Buchanan Professor of English Literature at Lawrence University at http://www.lawrence.edu/. A curiously US sort of offering. Don't see too much of this sort of thing over here. Another facet of their admirable thirst for learning and self-improvement.

PS: à propos of my labour costs, got through to the HMCR help desk yesterday. Five minutes conversation with a pleasant young operator from up north somewhere cost me 30 minutes sitting at the telephone listening to their idea of soothing music. Luckily BH turned up in the nick of time to tell the pleasant young operator that I was fully authorised to talk about her tax affairs, otherwise the call would probably have been entirely wasted. As it was, we established that the forms and instructions that we had been sent in the first part of last year had never turned up. With the result that we never knew that they had ever existed. At least now we know better.

I very much doubt whether the concern is fire hazards in the grass huts dotting the plains of Tanzania South.

After a while the battery fell out. Then the key board fell out. A thin floppy thing, rather like a large version of what you get in a mobile phone. What a surprise! Revealing no less than two small fans. But I still could not prise the two halves of the body of the thing apart. Found a few more screws to remove and still no joy. Eventually had to force things a bit, with the result that reassembly would probably have been difficult. Separated the screen from the computer. Snipped a few wires in the process. Eventually dug down to the disc unit which said that it was made by Hitachi. At least it was not Samsung, said to make the insides of all kinds of things these days.

Being properly security conscious, decided that I needed to finish the disc off, but the screws were too small for my jewellers kit. Maybe the disc chamber was a sealed unit. Warranty invalidated if you tamper with. Resorted to smashing the thing - about the size and shape of a 20 pack of Players - with a ball pein hammer. Interestingly, the disc itself, maybe two inches in diameter, shattered into very small slivers. Rather in the way of a car windscreen and rather different from the way in which a regular CD shatters.

Dumped all the bits and pieces in a stout plastic bag. Wondered about what identification I should take to the waste transfer station. First thought was to take my wrinkly - a form of photo pass issued by Epsom & Ewell Council - so that I could have an argument with the chap manning the control point about whether this constituted proof of residence in the borough. Last time I tried this, I failed. Second thought was to take along a recent utility bill, as asked.

Scored a tweet along the way when, for the third time in my life, I saw a kingfisher flying down the brook running down the side of Longmead Road. A flash of intense blue which could not possibly be anything else. As it happens the first time in my life I saw one was more or less at the same spot, maybe a couple of years ago.

Trudged passed the caravan café at the corner of Blenheim Road where several dustcart crews were taking their mid morning break. Sociological factlet: despite it being rather warm, the crews preferred to sit in the cabs of their carts while taking their breaks, rather than interacting with the other crews. As far as I could see they were not smoking - which would, of course, have been illegal but which was still odd as I would have thought there was a strong correlation between being a dustcart engineer and being a smoker.

Entered the waste transfer station to find that the control point was not manned so I could get inside without having to present my utility bill. The two containers which appeared to be for monitors and such like were firmly shut, so the wreckage of the Viao found rest amongst an assortment of vacuum cleaners, toasters and printers.

Back past the butcher in Manor Green Road where I had a sudden desire for grilled pork belly with tomato sauce for lunch - having had a rather inferior version of same during a second visit to L'Ulivo's the previous day (see 8th December). This turned out very well. Tomato sauce made by frying some chopped garlic in butter. Then adding two finely chopped medium sized onions. Cooked them until soft. Add two finely sliced celery stalk and one chopped orange pepper. Cook for a bit. Chop tomatoes of various varieties and sizes. Add to the mixture and simmer for 45 minutes. Very good with grilled pork, mashed potato and crinkly cabbage.

And then, just before I started on this, amused to find that Amazon France have a zone called 'Bébés et Puériculture'. I shall have to find out what the corresponding section of our Amazon is called. Not as good, I don't suppose.

Second plug for the Kings Speech. A film which has been heavily advertised on the sort of TV which we watch and which arrived at the local cinema last week. So we went. A good film, if a little too long, which got one rooting for the stammerer alright. One also learnt something about how one comes to be a stammerer and what one might do about it. If a bit jazzed up. Unsympathetic portrait of the Duke of Windsor and his wife. Thinking about it afterwards, I wondered what the royals made of it. Rather intrusive, verging on breach of medical etiquette. Including portrayal of at least one person still living, to wit HRH, The Queen. Did they get permission? Did the royals get a preview with some sort of rights of edit?

Having over the last fifty years moved from strongly republican to mildly royalist on the grounds that our queen is much less obnoxious than some presidents one hears about, reminded of a serious defect of hereditary monarchies: the fact that you will, from time to time, get a dud. OK, in the olden days you could usually rely on the duds being knocked off by the barons, but we don't do that any more. Does that change the game?

Third plug for North by Northwest, a film acquired from a local charity shop for the sum of £2.99. Watched it last night, first time ever, and judged it very good value. It had worn very well for a film which was around 50 years old, much better than the Bond films which followed shortly after and which it appeared, in many ways, to anticipate. But without the violence, the sex or the silly toys. Started off a bit alarmed by the amount of noise being chucked out of the TV, but once the film was properly started, it calmed down to a watchable level.

Slightly puzzled by the title, not having been so gripped by the film so as to not consult the atlas during the proceedings. Where I find, rather to my surprise, that Chicago is more or less due west of New York when I had thought it would be further south than that, and that Mount Rushmore is more or less the same amount west again, on the eastern edge of the Rockies. So where does north by northwest come in, the action having moved steadily west across the US of A?

Furthermore, Google Earth suggested that Mount Rushmore was not that far from the site of the battle of Little Big Horn. So this important national monument is placed fair and square in the middle of lands ripped away from the aborigines. I think someone ought to apologise to the aboriginal nation on behalf of the successor nation.

Then took a peek at our own house. I was pleased to see that the picture had been updated and our new neighbours have indeed moved in. Their car was properly visible even if the new lid to our compost heap (see October 14th last) was hidden under some trees. BH, having taken on a drop of Martini, was upset about Google's invasion of her air space. I had taken on a drop of the Christmas Grey Goose (see January 1st and 2nd). Very nice it was too.

So off to the high street where two computer repair shops have pronounced it beyond repair, the second one charging me £45 for this bit of news. Probably could not get it to work even if one managed to break through the password challenge - which a quick trawl with Mr. G. had suggested was entirely possible. He added the cheerful rider that I was lucky to get as long as 7 years out of the thing. Not built to last you know. Much better in the bad old days when it was permitted to use lead in their construction. Much better at soaking up the heat than what they have to use now.

So, rather sadly, I have come to the conclusion that, rather than spend any more time or energy on the thing, it is time for a visit to our local waste transfer station. One more link with the world of work broken for ever. But I shall keep the carry bag as a souvenir, it having worn rather better than the thing it was intended to carry.

I might add that at one point along the way I had thought to phone up my late employer and see if I could track down the chap who had done the spring cleaning. An outside chance that he would remember the password. Type in the CJIT address to get one of those chatty "Oops!" messages from Chrome. Ask Mr. G. about CJIT to find that it appears to have been abolished. Nothing about it on the http://frontline.cjsonline.gov.uk/ site to which one is directed. But I did find a bit of a CV from a chap who worked for them briefly. Amused to see what a grand thing he made of his short stay. See http://www.technodot.com/cjit_uk_government.html. I also found something about something called secure email: so what had been the Cinderella of the outfit during my time there, appears to be all that is left of it.

Interesting how CJIT, on which some tens of millions were lavished during its 5-10 year life, perhaps as much as £100 million, seems to have vanished from the Internet. Will all the quangos which Cameron is supposed to be abolishing be similarly consigned to oblivion? What about the feelings of all those hard working, decent people who used to work for these outfits? Couldn't they have a special site for governmental back-numbers where we could read about the stirring deeds we had done in years gone by and contact old colleagues?

I then thought, maybe I can find out how much was spent on CJIT. Maybe there will be a trace of CJIT in the accounts. So off to the HM Treasury website. Easy enough to get at estimates past and present there. But far too broad brush to be useful for present purposes. They suggest going off to the departmental website. Where I completely fail to find anything about how much the Home Office spends in anything other than the current year, despite following the link to the National Archive where back numbers are said to live. Perhaps what I need is a research assistant who can spend quality time on what might think was the simple problem 'How much did CJIT spend in each year of its short existence?'.

Reminding me of a truth I learned very early in my career: it is very easy to ask easy sounding questions which cannot be answered at reasonable cost.

Hitherto, I have regarded making bread and making beer as the proper province of craftsmen doing it for a living. Something which one gets better at with practise. Something which one does better for doing a fair amount of it. All this because, for a while, while young, family bound and skint, I used to make some of my own beer. The product was clean & clear, alcoholic and drinkable but too strong, too fizzy and too flavoured. In the couple of years or so that I was trying, I never achieved anything like the quality of proper brewer beer. I don't recall when I last tasted someone else's home brew but I do recall tasting a fair amount of home or hotel baked bread and that never achieved anything like the quality of proper baker bread either. The difference being that there are very few proper bakers these days.

So, yesterday, being in a tight spot, I decided to move out of the blogchair and onto the offensive and try, for the first time in my life, to make my own bread. White, naturally. A decision made easier by the facts that BH had recipes from Delia to guide me and the materials she uses for making pizza dough.

First time around, a fair amount of performance. One does not know what things should feel like or look like. Continual consultation of the words of Delia. Started out OK, and the dried yeast responded well to sugar and warm water. Surprised by the suggestion that I should put a level table spoon of salt into a pound and a half of flour and settled for a level desert spoon. Don't use salt in cooking at all as a rule - beyond that which comes with preserved meat. Mixed everything up as per instructions to find that the dough was too damp. Had to add a fair amount of flour to bring it back to what I thought was the proper condition. Let it rise at room temperature and then went for the second knead. Dough starting to look quite like bread now. Went for the second rise. Cooked the two loaves for around 40 minutes at 210C (fan oven speak).

The result was quite eatable but nothing much like the white bloomers I get from Cheam. The finish of the crust was quite different and the crust was much thicker - rather more like that on the round Italian loaves I sometimes get from Alio's than that on English bloomers. The flesh was off-white rather than the on-white of baker bread. Rather heavier in texture than Cheam, again rather more like that of the Italian bread. But the bread had risen evenly with none of those compacted damp bits you get from Cheam on a bad day. Warm it tasted more like cake than bread. This morning, it has moved a bit in the bread direction.

I shall try again and will aim for a drier dough and see what difference that makes. I suspect it is going to be a while before I get the stuff right; for a recipe with few ingredients there are an awful lot of variables and an awful lot of variation in the product.

Or will I get fed up with the amount of time that it soaks up? Yesterday's effort knocked out most of the afternoon.

In the margins, interested to see one of those country league tables in the Guardian, à propos of one of those articles where the author moans about the declining position of the UK in the world. No. 7 and going down. Doom and gloom. Must apply magic bullet patented by the author to put things right. The claim was that, apart from the Indias and Brazils doing well, Turkey and Nigeria would be up there with us by 2050. With Turkey only being just behind Canada now. And I had thought that Turkey was a poor country. Beset with lots of religious bother and lots of barren mountain. Not to mention the curds. Turn to the CIA factbook to see what they say, to find that the population of Turkey is somewhat bigger than our own and that they have a rapidly growing economy. Lots of clothing and textiles - which is odd given that pub wisdom is that all that sort of thing is knocked out in the far east, not the near east.

Trains all up the spout last night because of a security alert or something. Indicators boards all up the spout too so one did not have a clue what was going on. So decided to grab a train to Chessington North while the going was good and hoof it from there, thereby taking in a couple of different hostelries.

The first was fairly full with youngish people. A lot of women in tight clothes and high heels. Dancing. Rather off warm beer with a name I had never heard of before; clearly not their thing. While I was doing the beer, the young men next to me were discussing the poker game of the night before. It seems that one of them, a novice player, had scooped £400. Felt a bit bad about taking the money but did anyway. My thought was that this was a lot more money than I would care to gamble in a pub, although I dare say I could afford it better than they could. Next thought was for the young lady I met after the Derby years ago. She was a shop assistant or a clerk or something and she had had a win bet £400 on a horse called Imperial Scholar which came in second. One might have thought that this was a lot of money for her but she did not seem terribly upset. But I did alright because I remembered the name of the horse and had occasion to back it on some subsequent occasion when it won. The question is, are the people who use pubs of this sort more likely to bet serious money than the city gents who make their day money by betting with other peoples' money?

The golf club, which includes a pub, was next, but the gates were firmly shut by the time I got there. Clearly a pub with restricted hours. Or maybe they did lock-ins. I wondered whether to investigate whether the pub operated by the polo people at the back of their indoor riding school was up and running again and then thought not. Bit out of my way in the likely event of it being either shut or shut to me.

So onto the second, a couple of miles further on from the first, which was not so full. On the left was a party of rather tough looking young men playing cards. Neatly enough turned out, neither scruffy nor dirty. Modest amount of drink on the table. Very little in the way of female company despite it being a Friday night. On the right were various groups of mainly older men, some of whom had been toughs when younger. I was in the middle having a discussion about a variation on the mad cow disease. After a while, an older man who had taken on a fair bit of beer & etc wandered over to the young men playing cards and started a discussion about a rather scruffy small dog which I think belonged to one of them. After a while some of the younger men rare up. Things look to be heading for a fight. Manager intervenes and calms things down. Older man retires to his side of the bar. Much muttering on both sides. But then the older man can't resist making some audible crack - at least it was audible to the young men. Who rare up again. Manager intervenes again. Older man does it again. After a bit the young men leave. But one of them, small and very aggressive, just before he leaves, says that he will just go round and bash the gadjo who insulted him. Or at least, that was the word I thought he used. At which he nips around and administers two smart bashes to the head of the older man. He knew how to use his fists. Small aggressive man leaves. Older man unconscious on the floor. Various people gather round to help. After a while he starts to sing in a silly way but does not get up. Ambulance summoned and arrives in about five minutes. Police car cruises around outside. Opinions divided in the pub: some people thought the older man should have shut up and he got what he deserved. Others thought that the young man had no business bashing such an old man on such a slight provocation. Indeed, I think the original provocation was entirely accidental. I leave.

Somewhat shocked by the mindless violence of the young man. Every bit as aggressive as one of those fighting dogs that people of his sort are fond of. Presumably these travelling people - for that was what the young men were - are almost as violent among themselves as they are towards us gadjos. I have heard that their level of domestic violence and wife bashing is pretty horrendous. When will they grow up and start living decent like the rest of us?

PS: tried to contact the Inland Revenue today, with a view to giving them some money. I couldn't find a way to send them an email but I could find a call centre number. Which behaved just the same as everybody else's. Very keen on maximising the work rate of their staff, thereby maximising the waiting time of yours truly. Why do all these people behave as if their time is so much more important than ours? Lots of press 3 if you want to blah and lots of please continue to hold because your call is so important to us. Trashy music. Give up after five minutes or so. Try again next month.