Wednesday, April 06, 2011
World's End
Up to yesterday we knew of just two world's ends: one near Hambledon in Hampshire and one near Chelsea in London. Quite by chance we have now discovered another behind the Chalk Lane Hotel - which does not do afternoon tea so is not really a proper hotel at all - in Epsom. World's End turns out to be the name given to the lane running between what was the back of Lord Rosebery's Durdans estate and the Woodcote estate. A bit of dead land colonised by an interesting mixture of trees, ponds, houses and occupants.The wall illustrated is the back wall to the Rosebery estate and it is interesting because it is in large part made of chalk. It is also perforated by a very grand back gate, large enough to admit the large carts which used to bear the necessaries for Rosebery racing suppers. The lane itself is unadopted which means that there are DIY lamp posts rather than council ones, one of which is visible in the illustration.
We also came across some large and very fine sculptured hedges, hiding the houses which have now filled up the Woodcote estate from the garden of an elderly lodge near the Chalk Lane Hotel. Didn't seem right to peep over the wall and take a picture as the garden was occupied at the time. So no illustration on this occasion.
After this pastoral interlude, greeted this morning, while only just awake, by some strange beeping noises. Decided that it was not part of the dawn chorus. That it was probably not emanating from one of FIL's various contraptions, rather from something in the kitchen. Peered suspiciously at the cooker which is rather prone to beeping but it was not the right sort of beeping. Peered suspiciously at the central heating clock which might well be into beeping. Then BH suddenly thought that it might be the carbon monoxide detector palmed off on us (for forty quid or something) by some pushy gas maintenance man a few years ago. Climbed up onto the kitchen units and retrieved the offending detector which did indeed turn out to be the source of the beeping. It appeared to be a sealed unit with which we meddled at risk to life, limb and warranty. So took the thing onto the patio and administered three bashes with FIL's trusty club hammer. This was enough to reduce the thing to a reasonable number of pieces, including three perfectly ordinary batteries, presumably near end of life, thus initiating warning beeping. Plus a printed circuit board which looked impressively complicated. All now consigned to the regular dustbin. BH will look suitably vague if the gas maintenance man has the nerve to mention the thing again.
I close with a quote from the man (Boon of 25 February and other places) who writes about copies: ' ... and compare them to Chinese qi, Tibetan rLung, and Indian prana. Without claiming that these words all refer to the same thing, one can say that mimesis plays a crucial role in all such theories, since the search for the fundamental building blocks of reality is almost inevitably a mimetic one. This applies equally to traditional or religious models, to the reductionisms of contemporary neuroscience, and to the laws of physics and the quest for a theory of everything. These words serve to track or label qualities of flux, transfer ... '. Plenty more available.
PS: please do not confuse the Lord Rosebery who is the subject of the first part of this post with the seed potato of the same name. No relation at all.
# posted by Jim @ 12:57 AM 
