pumpkinstrokemarrow

Through the fine new tunnel and dog leg back to Hindhead, no longer approachable from the north. Park up in the punchbowl caff and take a stroll to admire the view down the bowl to the north, which is all very spiffing. Rumblings and knockings drift through the warm morning air, rumblings and knockings from the crews ripping up the old A3. Notices explained that the old A3 will be obliterated, returned to nature, thus joining together two area of outstanding natural beauty, so long separated. Further notices explain that the natural beauty is not natural at all. Left to itself the land would revert to woodland, birch in the first instance, and the heathland would be no more. So National Trust in a bit of a bind and they appear to have settled for a bit of a compromise, clearing some of the land for heath but leaving the rest under trees. So we get fine views over the punchbowl heaths and still have woodland walks, walks which include some big pine trees, some exotic. And a fine line of pylons bringing heat and hot water up to London. Not a bad solution at all.

To the caff for lunch, the caff which used to be run by a proper caff keeper (a species known in some parts as kaffirs) and sold meat pies but which has now been colonised by the Trust and now sells second division Trust Grub. Out of respect for the proper caff keeper they still do fry ups, but not so much respect that they still do meat pies. I had something called a leek and potato pie which turned out to be one of those tubs heated up in a microwave containing some very hot (temperature not chilli) sauce made out of powdered cheese with various bits of potato and leek floating around in it. Eatable but I would have preferred a pie. Pukka perhaps.

All in all, while I stand by my former view that the thing is not a good use of public money, good has come out of it. Minutes have been clipped off the time required to get down to Pompey for the footer, and a site of outstanding natural beauty is now even more outstanding.

On the way home we opted for Guildford Cathedral rather than Godalming, which last had been my first thought. One point in its favour being a car park right outside. Not having been for a while, found it all quite impressive, inside and out. Not perfect, but not a bad shot for a new build church. The large nave very impressive when you first get into it, but not so good round the back of the altar and I did not think that the lady chapel worked very well at all. On the other hand, some good stained glass and a fine baptistery at the other end. Some interesting stone work amongst the bricks outside, including a memorial plaque (illustrated) which explained that most of the land under and around the cathedral had been bought and donated by an eminent & generous Canadian, Richard Bennett. A chap who started out in the Maritimes, in the far east of Canada, but wound up in the far west, in Calgary, the birth place of my mother. But cross that he had been rejected by the electors of Canada, emigrated to Surrey and was buried in Mickleham, not far from us in Epsom.

There were also a couple of odd green huts tucked up under the tower, one on each transcept roof. Presumably green because they were made of copper but not clear at all what they were doing there.

Comfortable refectory, bit more space and air than is usual in such places. Plus a bar. The advantages of new build and plenty of land.

Also worth mentioning that the two male leads made the most of their smoking privileges, to the point where a warning notice about smoke & haze had been posted at the entrance to the auditorium. A little puff for freedom.

To escape from such nonsense, on Tuesday to the half full Rose to see 'The Importance of Being Earnest', a play which I thought I had been to before but was sufficiently strange that I must have been mistaken; just taken in several TV versions. Not bad, but I felt that the thing was a little dull, the humour a little forced. Needed a bit more sparkle and zip. The thing had only been open for a few days so perhaps it will sharpen up as they get into the run.

One problem was that the play being not much more than a vehicle for a string of epigrams (if that is the right term for a couple of sentences neatly turning some gem of conventional and/or conversational wisdom upside down, putting it into reverse as it were. OED a bit vague for once; I just learn that the epi bit means upon and that the gram bit means write. Vaguely the same root as grammar), it does not help if the epigrams themselves are a little tired, having been heard too many times before, and if the delivery is a little overdone. I notice in passing that the same brand of epigrammic humour is the mainstay of the Alex strip in the DT.

And turning philosophical, I notice that most proverbs work in reverse too. Which is perhaps related to that other fact that you only say that something is good if there is the possibility of it being bad. So something being good or bad is a matter of opinion or circumstance. Furthermore, chemical reactions do it. One could go on.

Another problem was the programme which advertised, in addition to the importance another important play, a world première no less, called 'Farewell to the Theatre', apparently a short piece of one act. The programme left me with the impression that we would get two plays for the price of one. I was further confused by the barman asking whether I wanted fortification for the first or the second interval. I plumped blindly for the second, but then scoured the programme for information about intervals. BH eventually ran it to ground in small print at the bottom of a purple page headed 'cast'. Oh for the days when programmes included a timetable printed more or less in the middle of a page where you could find it: Act 1, Act 2, Interval of 15 minutes, Act 3 sort of thing. But we were still unsure about whether it was one play or two and our lady usher was none the wiser. Luckily someone in our row knew that it was one play, the earnest one. To think that we paid £3 for this not very helpful programme.

Then last night a DVD of a romcom, a genre which I would not usually touch, but this was a special occasion, the DVD of the book noticed on 25th September and good fun it was too. I have decided that I like Reese Wetherspoon; not her fault that she is named after a chain of pubs. She is also the star in our version of 'Vanity Fair' - a version which I liked enough not to have noticed her US accent. Also fun to work out how the book had been tweaked to make the film; certainly large chunks of the former had been lost from the latter, although the compression ratio was the relatively high 2.956 pages to the minute. Washed down with an amusing little Rioja, bottled in Viana (the Spanish one) and sold at Kiln Lane.

PS: working out which of the many 'epi' words are derived from the same Greek stem is left as an exercise for the reader. OED lists around 12 three column pages of them, so the reader may be away for some time.

Is the answer to cut funding in schools in favour of funding in statisticians at the aforesaid Department of Life Skills & Enhancement?

Or making a party matter of it after all, is the answer to privatise the whole educational enterprise? Get rid of the dead hand of central planning. Let that superior knowledge machine, that superior neural network known as the invisible hand of the market sort everything out, without pain or crunching of gears. Not.

Back in Epsom our failure is nearer to nature. The former bottle for tequila (illustrated) refuses to bloom. It has an adequate supply of water & sunlight and an adequate supply of organic detritus, animal and vegetable, but the bugs & bacteria are not playing the game. No visible activity at all. Maybe a microscope would detect something but my specs. from Boots do not.

While one of the two jars of blackberries and whisky has been blooming merrily. With the catch that the bubbles generated by the fermentation process get trapped in the blackberries and the whole thing boils over, completely swamping the bubble contraption designed to let off excess & unwanted gases. As a result there were clean-up operations on successive mornings. But yesterday, or perhaps the day before, I bit the bullet and decided to deal with the problem. Empty the jar, strain the fluid back into it and then reseal with the cleaned out bubble contraption - after which all should be well. It should be able to bubble away without boiling over and without needing daily, if any, attention. But easier said than done: emptying a one gallon narrow-necked glass flagon full of blackberry pulp and a dark liquid looking a bit like neat Ribena but not smelling much like it without making a prodigious mess is no mean feat. However, several saucepans, funnels, jelly bags & so on & so forths later we had the fluid back in the jar, slightly diluted. Hopefully without too much alcohol evaporating. It is now bubbling gently and a light pink froth has formed on the surface. Oddly, no odours, pleasant or otherwise, generated by the gases leaving the bubble contraption. They must be mostly water.

Turns out to be a good book indeed, with various points of contact with my own affairs. A novelised account of three lefties who had to leave Germany in something of a hurry after Hitler came to power. The only catch being that as a novelised account, while one might reasonably rely on the general tone of the thing, one can't be too sure about the detail; can't really use it in pub quizzes.

Ernst Toller was Jewish, war hero, poet, playwright and left revolutionary. Joined the army in the nationalist ferment at the start of the first war, keen to prove himself a good German, along with many other German Jews. Famous for much of the twenties and thirties and made a good living from his royalties. Two other main characters are his former lover & secretary and a female cousin of this last. The female cousin surviving to a ripe old age in Australia, where the author of this book came to know her.

My father was rather younger, so a lefty young man at the time this book was set, a lefty young man who had spent time in both Germany and Austria. Not to mention the Soviet Union. So he must have been aware of his namesake, although I don't remember him ever talking about him. I don't think he had any of his plays. Perhaps they were on different sides of one of the internecine disputes which tore the left movement apart at that time.

I was rather shocked to read of the assassinations & kidnappings (which usually amounted to much the same thing) carried out by the German secret police at this time in England, France and elsewhere. Activities which we did not do too much about as we were still in appeasement mode at the time, despite the activities of the likes of Fenner Brockway, who gets an honourable walk on part in the book. And then there was the rule that said that if political refugees from Germany indulged in political activity in England - political activity which might well have been their whole life in Germany and which might have taken the form here of trying to alert the free world both to the true nature of the Nazi regime and the pace at which it was rearming - they were apt to be sent back to that Nazi regime, where they were apt to end up in a concentration camp or worse. Not very honourable at all.

Now we have human rights: see http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/.

And then there is the rather unsavoury spectacle of the Dowler family being set to take the Murdochs for millions over the business of their daughter's mobile phone being hacked. Bad that such things should happen in the first place but not very edifying when the victims parlay this bad into lots of dosh. Do we have ambulance chasers for this sort of thing? Perhaps I would feel better about it if any monies extracted from the Murdochs were donated to some charity without prior links to the Dowler family.

All in all we seem to be getting into a bit of a muddle about access to information about others. The presumption that public affairs are public and that private affairs are private is fine, but we do have to be sensible about the huge grey area in the middle. The private affairs of those who have made a great deal of money out of publicising their exotic private affairs being a good example. Improper access to sensitive economic statistics prior to their official release on the official date being another. And we should try not to get too hysterical when some particular case falls on what we regard as the wrong side of the line. Keep the damage actually done to the cuddly victims in mind when getting excited about the evil perpetrators. Keep a sense of proportion. I am reminded that I read somewhere that our brains are hard wired for binary distinctions - fight or flight being an elementary example - and anything else can be a bit taxing, particularly if there is any anxiety or stress floating about. When we tend to leave grey areas out of it.

The same issue of the Guardian then went on to a rather po-faced account of the lives of that small number of women in France who persist in wearing full face masks, in defiance of the law to the contrary. Granted that it is all rather petty and unpleasant, but the French thought long and hard about the law in question. There is a serious issue here. But the Guardian had no space for anything but sympathy for these poor downtrodden females. I am reminded here that both France and the US have ticklish relations between the state and the church. An area where we with our established & largely unused church seem, oddly, to be more relaxed. Perhaps unused is the key.

There is also the analogy with our own Dale Farm. For how long can one put up with flagrant disregard of the law? Either one backs the law up or one changes it.

Turning to matters in the kitchen, a new variant yesterday on lentil soup. Did the old style version without spice or spicy sausage, but used four chopped tomatoes in the simmering lentils rather than three sliced carrots. It seemed an improvement. Pleased to note that there were, for once, no unidentified fly like black specks floating on the finished soup.

After which we were off to our first Wigmore Hall concert of the new season, to hear one Andreas Staier play late Schubert on a fortepiano, instead of the usual pianoforte from Steinway. Very good it was too. Good program, starting out with Impromptu in C minor (D899 No.1), the sonata in G (D894) for entrée, the sonata in Bb (D960) for roast and the Schubert variation on a theme by Diabelli for sorbet. Pinot Gris was taken along the way, having muddled it up with Pinot Noir.

In the margins we learnt that while Wigmore Street might have been a place where rugby coaches got their medical supplies, it is now a place where footballers and their wives buy their kitchens. The street seems to be awash with very fancy looking kitchen shops - for people with kitchens about the size of the entire ground floor of our house. One of them sold kitchen taps which looked as is they might cost £1,000 or more. To be fair, you did get hot and cold in the same contraption. And some of the kitchens were graced with rather nifty looking candelabra on the worktops - assuming one still talks about lowly worktops in such grand establishments.

The heroes of the Neibelungenlied were just about Christians, as were the Saxons of the cake story. Thinking of that acid and noisy pair, Hitchens & Dawkins, the story that Hodgkin tells is that, in the middle of the interval, becoming Christians was progress. It made behaving yourself respectable; it might earn you a place in a heaven which sounded much more attractive than that on offer in Wotan land. Warriors suddenly saw that there might be another way of being, other than hacking each other to death in the intervals between drinking bouts. All in all Hitchens & Dawkins are a bit dated; their hate the pope belongs to the time of my parents, a time when the church really did have more power than it should and when hate the pope was a reasonable political position. When one is in the thick of things there is little time for nuances. But now the church does not matter very much (except to some of our leaders), we can be a bit calmer.

On reflection, and to be fair to them, they do do most of their acid and noise in the US where Jesus is still very important to plenty of people. Still do baptism and that sort of thing. So perhaps there is still work to do there. But I now wonder if the audiences pay to go and hear them there, the land of the lecture circuit. Is their crusade (not quite the right word but never mind) a paying proposition?

Moving onto a contemporary best seller, just finished a quick canter through 'Et si c'était vrai...' a book of which and author (Marc Levy) of whom I had had not heard until Sutton Library offered them to me for 30p. Wikipedia tells me that he is an interesting cove, with careers in IT and office furnishings before he started clocking up a best seller a year at the mature age of 39. This one was the first. A silly tale, quite readable, about a girl in a coma in a hospital whose spirit returns to fall in love with the occupant of her old flat, the only chap in the world, it seems, who can interact with her spirit. To everyone else the spirit is intangible (see through, invisible and inaudible). I was amused that the last third of the book introduced a retiring policeman, a device which reminded of that of Houellebecq in his prize book. Quite a lot of medical colour, perhaps derived from his stint with the Red Cross. Oddly for a big cheese, Levy does not seem to have a web site of his own but he does have a fairly elaborate blog. I wonder he has his personal assistants do it for him or whether he does it himself? See http://www.toslog.com/marclevy/accueil.

I await the film of the book, just to entertain the BH you understand, from Amazon at £2.46 plus postage. One of the cheaper films that I have bought.

Just read an interesting story in Hodgkin on the Anglo-Saxons (see 30th August). It seems that back in AD755, in the first half of the interval (see 14th September), Wessex was in the uncertain grip of a number of kinglets. They were taking a little while to learn that peace was a better recipe for long life and happiness than continual raids, riots, feuds and brawls – raids, riots, feuds and brawls which resulted on the one hand in rather low life expectancy among the warrior elite and on the other in some rather memorable poetry, poetry which survived to be compulsory at Oxford, Durham & St. Andrews today. In any event, this particular story is confirmed by an Internet translation of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle. I offer a translation of my own.

One of these kinglets was a chap called Nogbad the Bed, a kinglet in south Wessex, a kinglet with both an agenda and a lady friend who lived in north Wessex. One day, in the autumn, after the harvest was in, he thought he would go trysting, go to pay his lady friend a visit in her stockade, a stockade which was almost grand enough to be called a borough. As this was a private visit, he only took a portion of his household troops with him and gave the rest the day off. On arrival, after a hearty picnic in the outer garth, he repairs to the boudoir and his guard repairs to the mead hall, for their respective entertainments.

Meanwhile, a pretender to his kingletship, a cousin called Nogtoad the Stoat (or it may have been Stoute. This copy of the chronicle is a bit smudged at this point) and who had been outlawed to the forest of Andred, gets to hear about this visit. Maybe he had one of Nogbad’s slaves in his pay. In any event, he decided that this was a once in a lifetime opportunity to whack Nogbad and take his kingletship. So off he goes, taking all his household troops with him, and after riding for a night and a day arrives at the stockade and knocks at the gate. Nogbad’s troops come to the gate and are offered safe passage if they care to leave. They look a bit grim. Death before dishonour. Semper fidelis. They lock shields and start a slow beat on them with their long swords. Stamp in time. Scary stuff. “Come on if you dare” they shout, along with various oaths, sacred and profane. Nogtoad’s troops do come on, with their own shouts, sacred and profane, and after a while Nogbad’s troops are vanquished to a man. Nogbad himself was chopped into pieces and his favourite sword, Cynewulf, was later deposited in the shrine of St. Edband in Winchester Cathedral, where it became a holy relic. It is not told what happened to the lady; whether she was taken on as live bait or whether she shared the fate of her swain.

But while all this is going on, or perhaps meanwhile, the rest of Nogbad’s household get to hear about what was going on. So they ride for a night and a day and arrive at the stockade and knock at the gate. And then we go around again, but this time with Nogtoad and his household being vanquished. Some other of Nogbad’s cousins takes up the coronet (a device borrowed from the Byzantines of all people). And the feud, thus refuelled, went on for centuries until it was, at last, snuffed out by Canute the Cane.

The lady’s stockade was eventually sold on to the church who built Merton Abbey there, now the site of a Sainsbury’s Superstore. With a few runic bead sellers lurking at the margins.

First, we have a learned book about the trials of Margaret Clitherow, I lady whom I spell with a terminal 'e' rather than a terminal 'w' (Google jury hung), and whom I noticed on 20th July. Ah, I thought to myself, maybe here is a book to explain why she dun it; a matter of some interest to me. But it turns out to be nothing of the sort, rather '... a dense and detailed dissection of the politics of Elizabethan religion that may not easily engage a non-specialist readership ...'. The review includes the interesting word 'synecdoche' which I have yet to consult the OED about. The work of a pair of academic historians more interested in the battles of academia than outreach, so they may lose points in the all important Richter Scale of Relevance to the life of ordinary folk in UK PLC. And I did not end up reaching for the plastic. On the other hand, there was an interesting seventeenth century Dutch engraving of her execution, an engraving which bore little resemblance to my understanding of the matter.

Second, we have a short notice of the recent appearance of the 8th volume of a Hittite Etymological Dictionary, 221 pages of it at just over 1$ a page. From a gang to be found at http://www.degruyter.de/ so Germany is clearly working to regain its 19th century eminence in these matters. A worthy endeavour, but one which, sadly, reminds me of Casaubon in Middlemarch. But I am wrong to sneer; plenty of us spend quality time on this sort of thing. A therapist might say stamp collecting or model trains in fancy clothes.

Third, we have an article on the occasion of the publication of a book about the Nagas. Which contains the idea, new to me, of a place called Zomia; Zomia being the upland interiors of the whole of that part of south east Asia. The upland interiors of Bengal, Burma, Thailand, Vietnam and China. The home of many small peoples, but perhaps totalling 200m, who have been driven into the hills by the more successful rice growing agrarians of the lowlands. With each bunch of agrarians taking a rather arbitary slice of the uplands as they tidied up their boundaries European fashion. Uplands which have been causing problems ever since. An interesting story, a large scale version of that of the Kurds perhaps, but one which is complicated by a peek at my trusty Permagon Atlas (the one done by the Poles and wrapped in green plastic). Zomia is not a nice tidy lump of land, more or less convex, as the western chunk, the chunk containing the Nagas as it happens, has more or less been sliced off from the rest by the Irrawaddy valley.

With that off my chest, FIL is back from the newsagent and it is time to settle down to today's ration of doom from the DT.

So a hundred or more daffodil bulbs now planted in the area bounded by the two lines of little white posts, with the aconites and snowdrops to the right and left of the white post lines in due course. A proceeding which was hugely speeded up by using a bulb planter. I had had one before and it collapsed on the second or third bulb so, I thought that this time I would get a fancy looking heritage one, for £10 rather than £3. Sturdy stainless steel affair with a real wood handle, with the two parts being tied together with a pair substantial looking brass nails.

Soil in good condition and the planter crashed through the lumpy compost full soil admirably. But you could feel that it was taking some stick. That a £3 one might well have collapsed. And as it was one of the substantial looking brass nails worked loose - although it held on to the end. But off to Screwfix in slow time to get some more sensible fixing. Heritage might look fine but it doesn't fix like the modern gear does.

Having got the bulbs planted, the next step was to plant grass on top - low maintenance daffodils being what we have in mind. So continuing with the heritage line of thought, put out £10 on country meadow mixed grass seed, which prompted me to wonder how much it would cost in seed to do a whole lawn and which came in the same sort as packaging as tuna fish - in the sense that the box was about four times as big as it need have been for the amount of grass seed & etc inside. Ploughed the field and scattered (as we used to say in infant school. See http://www.hymns.me.uk/we-plough-the-fields-and-scatter-hymn.htm for a good rendering) and then gave thought to foxes and squirrels, both of which are apt to dig up freshly ploughed ground.

Which thought resulted in the rather awkward hanging of two sorts of net illustrated. The law of Mr. Sod meant that I had disposed of most of my supply of garden netting after I disposed of my supply of allotments. But so far, a rather half hearted attempt by a squirrel apart, the ground has been left alone. Green shoots are starting to appear.

So, disappointed, we leave the London HQ of the Nike operation without buying any shoes. I observe in passing that while the place was rather noisy it was also rather spacious. So one could cope.

Disappointed on the trainer front, we turn our minds to the problem of tins for bread baking. I have got the idea that if I let the second rise run for longer, maybe I would get better white bread. But as things stand, if I let the second rise run for longer, the rising dough first does a mushroom over the edges of the tin and then is apt to collapse. So the thought is that I need tins deeper than 2.75 inches. So into the Oxford Street John Lewis and down into the kitchen department. Lots of baking tins of all sorts. Including something which is just the ticket at 3.5 inches deep - the catch being that they cost £26 a pop. Supposed to be the business, just the thing for the busy, professional standard baker, from Mermaid (http://www.mermaidcookware.com/). But I thought that the £10 a pop I paid at Lakeland for the ones that I am using now was bad enough.

Break for lunch at this point at Pontis (see 2nd August) where we had a very decent and reasonable lunch. Good decor, good staff and not too crowded. And we learn that the better Italian restaurants serve their very own version of poppadoms, flying them under the banner of 'mixed Italian breads'. We also had some very fine green olives, something more than an inch long.

BH then suggests that House of Fraser do kitchenware and that there is one of those a bit further down the street. Up to the third floor where we find that they do indeed to kitchenware, including bakeware. They don't do a deep tin but they did do a bigger one, a touch heavy but which might amount to the same thing. Own brand job at £10 a pop, so we snapped up two of them. BH being rewarded by the information that Mary Portas might possibly be downstairs, a lady famous in our household for making television programmes about hotels which BH loves and I loathe. Sadly she had escaped by the time we made it to her part of the shop. By way of consolation prize, we visit the ladies' fashions floor and part with a few pounds there.

This morning, moving from the top to the bottom of the market, I enter TKMaxx in Epsom. Where I find that they have lots of trainers for men, a lot of which are from Karrimor (the people who made my very satisfactory 30 years old bicycle panniers) and few of which are in my size. But they do have a pair of trainers in my size, without netting (perforated thin leather instead), from an outfit called Airwalk of which I had never heard. But which Google later reveals to be an outfit which is very into people who do skate boarding, stunt biking and surfing. They also sell shoes. Elaborate web site but not in the same league as Bacardi or Nike: see http://www.airwalk.com. Perhaps they are more into niche markets than mass markets. And what is more, a site search revealed neither the name nor the number of the shoes that I had bought, although there were things which were quite similar. Are TKMaxx into selling dodgy clones from the wrong part of the far east?

But all that is afterwards. The things seems to fit and at £20 instead of the £80 one might pay Nike, it seems worth a try. Put them on outside the shop and proceed on my morning stroll, at the end of which I am fairly sure that the things do not squeak. On the other hand they are neither as pretty as Nikes - which while sometimes a bit young for me are mostly well designed. You are buying a genuine fashion item - nor as comfortable. Time will tell.

And a second go at the brussel sprouts this lunchtime. Much improved by reducing the cooking time. They lost the taint of boiled cabbage. Served with ox kidneys (stewed with butter, caraway seeds, onions and tomatoes) and mashed potatoes.

Meal rounded off by a freshly picked eating apple, maybe 2.5 inches across and 2 inches high. Green with a red cheek and well streaked. Crisp, sharp and sweet all at the same time. Having given up the allotment one forgets what eating apples should taste like, mostly being reduced to supermarket fare from the atmosphere controlled, all year round warehouse.

The start point was a very short proof of the famous theorem of Pythagoras illustrated. The start square is ABC from which one constructs the large square. One then observes that CBED is also a square and the theorem emerges.

I objected that this depended on knowing all about the areas of triangles and squares, and that the area of a whole was the sum of the areas of the parts. These being matters which I did not think that Euclid knew about. How do you get from pencils, straight edges and a pair of compasses to area?

Eventually I get around to asking Google who takes me to a long list of proofs of the theorem, one of which avoided the use of the concept of area but did require you to know the rule about the ratios of the sides of similar triangles. This also being a matter which I did not think that Euclid knew about. Try Google again and this time find my way to the helpful site at http://aleph0.clarku.edu/~djoyce/java/elements/elements.html where I am able to inspect Euclid's proof of the theorem.

Which is a bit longer than that illustrated above but only depends on the ideas that the area of a triangle is half that of a suitable parallelogram constructed on one of its sides, that the areas of all parallelograms constructed on a given side between given parallels are the same and that the area of an oblong is the product of the lengths of two adjacent sides. Then there is a catch in that the demonstration of the second of these requires the additional idea that the area of a whole is the sum of the area of the parts - which is obviously true in the simple case of an oblong chopped into two smaller oblongs but which is not so obviously true otherwise.

So I have still to find a proof of the theorem which does not appeal to notions about area or require limit arguments. This last being necessary, I think, to prove the ratio rule of similar triangles.

All of which made me regret that my undergraduate course on mathematical logic was not illustrated by recourse to Euclid. I think it would have made a good teaching vehicle. As things were, I do not think I did any geometry of that sort once I had acquired my O-level ticket at the tender age of 15 or so. On the other hand all this has prompted me to make use of the parallel rules which I have sentimentally retained but not used since about the same time.

PS: first brussel sprouts of the season yesterday. Not brilliant but OK.

For this or perhaps other reasons woke up to a complicated dream this morning, drawn once again from the world of work. Also featuring long stairways in dank and cavernous buildings, a product in part, but not I think in entirety, of my time in the old, pre PFI/PPP Treasury Building. In the days when a government building really felt like the offices of government rather than the offices of some dodgy commercial enterprise.

I start off at some boring meeting. I am about to go away for a week and I am spending my time at the meeting working on a job application for which I have been short listed and the interview for which is the day I come back, maybe at 1720. I rush off without putting my papers away properly.

Come back a week later, bright and early, and start to look for the papers. Somebody helpfully retrieves the papers, in a plain manilla folder, from where it had been put away in the front of an open fronted cupboard. Luckily no-one had disturbed or removed it.

The folder contained, inter alia, papers for applications for several jobs, together with feed back from the various paper boards at which my applications had featured - if not exactly starred. I had failed to make the short list for one of them, one which had lots of illustrious candidates, so I did not feel too badly about it. Another job was more vague. I did not seem to be on the short list but I was mentioned in a positive way. Perhaps there was hope? This job was flavoured by the Fire Service College at Moreton-in-Marsh, a place where I had once done a bit of work. There was lots of other stuff but I could not find the papers for the interview later that day. Or rather I kept coming across them but they kept slipping away from me. I spend the whole day fiddling about, not getting any closer to where or when the interview was to be.

I don't think to try phoning anybody up to find out - which would look bad but which would be betting than a no-show.

I do very little of the preparation needed to impress the board. All that whoop-whoop stuff which seems to be part of applying for jobs these days. All that whoop-whoop stuff which boards think mean that you will hit the ground running. Maybe they have a point.

I eventually run the papers down about the time it turns out I am supposed to be at interview. I decide to do nothing. Still don't think to phone to apologise or even try to wangle another date.

At which point a rather cross mandarin turns up, modelled on someone who was a big cheese in my first department. I thought we were supposed to be talking about this job you are applying for, he says. I didn't think so at all, although I did remember talking to him about it before I went away. He was clearly peeved, particularly when he heard about the missed interview. He wanted me off his books and started to lecture me about the need to take getting another job, getting off his books, more seriously. I tell him that I have half a dozen or more applications in progress. Not mentioning that actually most of them have already hit the buffers. I start to think that maybe I am going to get made redundant and am rather emotional about it - even though this would be rather a good outcome. Anyway, cross mandarin calms down and slopes off.

It is now about 1815 and clearly time to go home. Go down lots of stairs. Come to a river, vaguely Thames-like but the detail is all wrong. Seems familiar just the same. As I cross the river, I see the gutted carcases of two large mechanical sharks dragged up out of the river onto the muddy foreshore, one rather larger than the other. Interesting, but not especially so. Get across the river and join the crowd streaming away to the left on their way to the railway station. Which is the way one would turn, as it happens, after crossing Westminster Bridge heading for Waterloo.

Wake up to remember that I do not need to worry about this sort of stuff any more. At my age I should be concentrating on the state of my various bowels. Not to mention that of one of the jars of blackberries and whisky (see 29th August) which is fermenting and which should not be. Just as well that I gave it a bubble closure rather than a close closure.

The mosque complex occupies the site of what used to be a large milk bottling plant and incorporates quite a lot of the original building, with the former chimneys being marble clad to become minarets, although the mosque proper is new build and described as one of the largest in western Europe. They were rather full of how many tons of concrete, reinforcing steel and marble went into the thing.

The big surprise was that this complex was not built for Moslems at large, but as the headquarters of the Ahmadiyya Community (http://www.alislam.org/), a community which claims tens of millions worldwide, although in at least one place the claim goes up to 160 million, or 10% of the total. In any event a strong showing given that they have only been going for a little over 100 years. One fly in the ointment is that some other Muslims do not think that these Muslims qualify, possibly finding their belief in a Messiah who started his ministry in 1889 in northern India obnoxious. There have been some ugly incidents.

The visit was well organised. There were exhibitions, videos and refreshments. We were taken around, in a small group, by a very pleasant & competent young lady; a young lady dressed mainly in black and whose seriousness reminded me of that of the young lady who took us around the Florence Synagogue (see October 4th 2008). And, just as at Florence, it had been deemed necessary to have airport style scanning machinery at the entrance, although it was not turned on yesterday. But there the resemblance ended; while the synagogue was quite like a Christian church, the mosque was nothing like one. Two very large and empty spaces, the grand one with a dome for the men and the more comfortable one for the women. Nicely done but bare, although a lot of attention had been paid to matters ecological and audiovisual, the ladies' room getting a live feed from the mens' room.

One point of interest for a bookish person was their library, an eclectic mix of religious, computing and general. Good coverage of all the big religions. I think I even spotted a Koran in Polish. But the thing that was new to me was multi volume books with the spinal decorations running across all the volumes, a wheeze which went rather well with their colourful taste in cover design.

Back home we were amused to learn that FIL used to take parties of student nurses from the Maudsley there during the late fifties, as part of their hygiene module. Presumably, at that time, the place was a model of dairy hygiene & efficiency.

A bonus was the fact that it is a handsomely produced book. Good paper, typeface and page layout. From the Belknap Press and a credit to their book designers.

I needed fortification before embarking on the second pass, so off to 'Mixed Blessings' for another couple of doses of their potato puddin (see September 1st). Slightly confused by its changed shape but the young lady behind the jump quite reasonably explained that it all depended on which tray they cooked the stuff in. Sufficiently artisanale that they do not always used the same one.

Arrived at the bus stop outside the Antelope and found, for the first time, the information available helpful. The computer screen said that the next bus to Earlsfield was some 20 minutes away but that there was a 57 in no time at all. The helpful map said that the 57 went to Wimbledon so off we went. My first time on a strange bus for a long time.

Along the way reminded about the huge Sainsbury at Colliers Wood and that the river Wandle runs alongside part of Merton High Street., a place which looked worth a visit.

In no time at all dropped off at Wimbledon which seemed to be crawling with bright young things, this being around 2030 on a Friday evening. A few minutes later on a train to Dorking. First item of interest was a chap, maybe 35-40, with a very flashy looking road bike and wearing two rucksacks. Not for the first time, amused by these people who are so proud of their bikes they won't have a pannier frame on the bike's back and would rather put up with the discomfort & danger of a rucksack on their own back. Most odd. Second item was a young lady with a mobile phone which doubled as a piece of costume jewellery. Very sparkly. I suppose if you are seriously rich the sparkles might actually be diamonds rather than glass. No doubt Damien Hirst would knock one up for you if he was not too busy sticking diamonds onto skulls. Incidentally someone whose fascination with innards I find rather off putting. Third item was five bright young things who liked to exhibit themselves and who might well have been inmates of the University of the Creative Arts. One clue was that one of them was leafing through a glossy fashion magazine called Phoenix (http://www.phoenixmag.co.uk/). Another was that another of them was flashing a large camera about - the sort of thing which is the size of a small book rather than a large packet of cigarettes. I restrained myself from enquiring what she needed such a thing for but I did wonder what on earth do all these people do when their time is up. There can't be a lot of jobs for fashion designers. All of which kept me entertained to Epsom where I was pleased to find that TB had restocked its newky. And also learned about a pool version of killer, the darts version of which I used to play years ago. Pool version good fun and a good leveller. One still gets a game even if one is rubbish at pool.

Earlier in the week to Westminster Abbey, part of the spin-off from current reading material. See yesterday's history for the other part. The last visit, according to the blog record, since January 8th 2009, although I had thought that I have been back since then.

Walking across from Waterloo rather alarmed by the number of people sculling about. Round the eye, on the bridge, outside the Palace of Westminster. Were they all heading for the Abbey? Luckily this turned out not to be the case, although the place was pretty crowded. Not too pleased to find that they have implemented a one way system for one's tour of the abbey. One can see why this is necessary, but it does not improve the visit experience and does best as a tour of the many tombs and monuments in the place. At the end we tried to sneak back to the beginning by tagging onto the end of a guided tour. Promptly detected and pulled out of line by a red cloaked trusty, but he did the decent thing and let us go round again without extra charge. We could, I suppose, have gone back against the flow but this would have been a bit tiresome, as well as ending up at the entrance rather than the exit.

Prompted by Roy Strong, took a good look at the Cosmati Pavement, the pavement on which crownings are done, and which I had not bothered with before. Impressive looking thing, but it would be more impressive if one was allowed to walk on it or even look at it from above, rather than from the side. Strangely modern looking thing by design, although a touch worn with its 750 years or so. Rather like an eastern carpet. Strong interesting on coronations at that time, the ceremony being not unlike that by which one becomes a priest. Prostration, undressing, annointing, redressing, rebirth and all that sort of thing. Since then coronation has become less priestly and more secular, the church not really liking the idea of the king being a chief priest, this getting in the way of the pope and his chaps.

Very strange carvings on the underside of the wooden misericords of the new lady chapel, which was not, as it happens, very lady like. All knights in armour rather than virgin marys. Rather like some of the exuberant stone carving in the lady chapel at Ely and including at least one green man. Something which, as it happens, they are big on at Ely.

Came across the tomb of Richard II and wondered how he came to be there, having expired in some provincial castle on the orders of his usurper, Henry IV. It turned out, according to Wikipedia, that the usurper's son, Henry V, had had his bod moved to the Abbey, partly as an act of penance and partly to quieten rumours that Richard still lived. Rumours despite the fact that said bod had been put on exhibition for a few days shortly after death. All of which was very appropriate given that Richard spent a lot of time and treasure on the Abbey in life. See note about the Richard following at 4th September. Clearly becoming prescient.

Also came across the tomb of Sir Clowdisley Shovell, a very grand affair. I remembered wondering about the name, in particular wondering why I was wondering. This turned out to be on August 28th 2008, and not as far as I could see anything to do with a visit to the abbey.

All in all a tremendous building, but not very sacred. Hard to get a proper view with its being chopped in half by the choir (this to make a suitably grand space for royal coronations) and with all the clutter of monuments. The worst offender seemed to be the renaissance, the lords and ladies of which went in for very fancy boxes and box holders. Not equalled since.

But an opportunity to turn the pages in my large book of the abbey, 100 years old itself, weighing in this morning at just 7lbs and costing £10 from somewhere in Bridport (I think). Not suitable for vegetarians as the spine looks like parchment or something of that sort. Said to be a limited edition but the space to put the number in is blank so I don't know. But I do now know that while most of the building is ancient, the west front was stuck on by Christopher Wren and the north front was stuck on by Gilbert Scott. Just like the churches in Florence.

My second, following on from Bertolli margarine yesterday, is that the label on our jar of Sainbury's basic jam tells us that in order to make a better spreading product they have lowered the amount of lump & seed (also a pain with dentures) bearing fruit they put in the stuff. Down to 33g to the 100g, compared with the 100g to the 100g of the home made of my childhood. The arithmetic working because one boiled an awful lot of the water off of the 100g of fruit during manufacture.

My third is to report the first neck of lamb stew of the 2011-2012 season. At £10 a good bit cheaper than those which I was buying in the spring. It may have been a bit smaller and cooking for 2 hours was perhaps a touch too long - although the resultant broth will go down well in tomorrow's breakfast. A new feature was the butcher sawing the neck through longitudinally before chopping across: the resultant lumps were both more attractive and easier to deal with. Served with white cabbage with about three quarters of a small one not being quite enough for the two of us.

Click on it to get a larger version.

And then I find in the small ads part of the NYRB, a dating agency for NYRB reading NY resident intellectuals which calls itself 'Infidelities'. Which I find irritating for a different reason. Breaking faith ought to be regarded as a bad thing. My word is my bond and all that. Death before dishonour. There is far too much of it around to be making a sort of jokey virtue of it.

And then there are the Bertolli people who give their margarine cuddly Italianate packaging and advertising. Closer inspection reveals that the stuff actually comes from Unilever, the same people who brought us Port Sunlight and Sunlight Soap. Furthermore, the primary ingredient of the margarine is water and it looks as if there is pretty much as much rape seed oil as olive oil. Rape seed oil which might well be grown in the Wirral. Not to mention whey. All in all a big con. Just the same as the corresponding product from Sainsbury's.

More satisfactory was an easy read from one Branko Milanovic about the haves and have nots. A thoroughly recommended and engaging canter through the world of income & wealth distribution by someone who, inter alia, seems to be a wow on these matters in ancient Rome. In the scheme of things were Augustus and Crassus richer than Page, Brin and Gates?

I have been reminded about the coefficient of gini. I have learned that the biggest component of inequality is inequality between countries, rather than inequality within countries, although this last is big and rising in both the UK and the US. Not healthy - and one consequence of which is claimed to be the recent crash. The rich people had managed to corner so much of the money that they did not know what to do with it. Nothing sensible left to invest it in. Nothing sensible left to spend it on. But they couldn't bear to actually part with it so they came up with the wheeze of lending it to people who couldn't afford to pay them back. The rest being history.

And despite the fact that otherwise respectable US academics - such as Rawls - do not seem to find it obnoxious that there are huge differences between countries - he makes a convincing case for the importance of these differences.

Countries which have different parts with very different levels of income are apt to fall apart. He cites the former USSR and Yugoslavia as example of this problem, while pointing out that while the US might be very unequal, it is very unequal across the board. All the states are pretty much the same, so inequality is not driving the states apart. While Europe is busily playing catch up with its poor eastern periphery and it is doubtful whether it has any stomach for another dose in the form of Turkey. Young and energetic people who live in very poor countries are going to invest a lot of effort into making it to very rich countries: bog cleaner in London better than unemployed clerk in Ubundu. So rich countries like Spain which are near poor countries are going to have problems.

We thought the casting was good - Stiva & Betsy, for example, seemed spot on - but were struck by the Asiatic appearance of the two motherly types - Dolly & Kitty. A trait we did not notice in the ladies and gents of high society. One wonders whether Asiatic appearance is a good or a bad thing from a caste point of view: either way there must be plenty of it given Russia's long involvement with parts east. It also looked as if they had gone to a fair amount of trouble from a costume drama point of view. Authentic period furniture and all that sort of thing. Fully up to the standard of the BBC. Overall, a good film which captured the core of the story.

One lapse in the costume drama side of things was the big hay making scene where one had odd looking, presumably old-style Russian, scythes and lots of the whistling noise made by a scythe well swung. The mowers were mowing in a very heritage bit of countryside with very tasteful summer evening lighting effects. The catch was that the long lines of mowers appeared to be mowing on the spot, rather than working their way forwards. Plus the film gave the impression that the hay was carted home the day it was cut, which it not the usual practise in this country, not unless you are making silage, which the Russians were not.

Prompted to take another look at the book, now on Kindle. Problem 1 was that Kindle does not support flicking through, perhaps looking for a particular bit. It does give a size indicator and you can tell it where to go in terms of that size indicator and then page up and down, but this is not quite the same. There is no detailed contents page which might help you to find the bit you want and there is no cast list when you forget what the relationship between Dolly and Kitty is - if any. All things which would be easier to fix (from an IT point of view) on one of those (more expensive) apple jobs. Problem 2 was that when I plumped down about two thirds of the way through, end of line seemed to have come unstuck. As if the scanning process had, for some reason, dropped end of line markers in at odd places where there should not be one. Perhaps, somehow or other, some of the actual end of lines in the actual book from which my electronic book was scanned have been incorporated, cutting across the Kindle model of simply wrapping the text to fit the screen in the absence of some formatting directive to the contrary.

More important though, reminded what a big & subtle story it is. A lot more story and a lot more nuance than one might have guessed from the film - although if one spoke Russian I dare say more nuance would have made it through.

All of which moved me to ponder over this morning's blackberry jam sandwiches about the way in which the plots of so many of the big novels of this period have been made obsolete by the accessibility of divorce. And also to wonder to what extent the gain of those no longer locked in failed marriages has been offset by the damage done to those brought up in single parent families in consequence. Can Mr. Google tell me how strong an indicator of trouble ahead that is? Stronger than simply being brought up in a poor family?

PS: I have yet to talk to Google about single parents, but Amazon tells me I can have a more modern, 1977, version of Anna K. for getting on for £35. Why is this relatively old film so expensive? Why do the prices vary so much? Is it simply a case of choosing a price which will maximise revenue, irrespective of either costs or marginal costs? Offer, for the present anyway, declined; perhaps the thing will turn up in a late season car booter.

I was quite pleased though. My current shaver, a hand-me-down from I forget quite where, was starting to sound as if the windings of the motor were giving out and was certainly quite old. So quite nice to have a smart new one. Quieter, lighter and more effective. I have even taken the plunge and got one which involved batteries, something which I have avoided in the past, but which seems to be mandatory now.

Instructions not so nice. They come in four portions and cater for 22 different languages and 8 different models in one fell swoop. I list them in descending order of surface area. Something called important information, which appears to mean stuff that no-one bothers to read but which covers the seller in the event of a health and safety flavoured incident. The guarantee, in the form of a piece of what looks like recycled paper, the size of 3 sheets of A4 and printed on both sides. No-one bothers to read. The user manual, a short document which eschews language in favour of small diagrams, rather like the sort of things you get on road signs. A bad attack of unintelligible logitis. But they have saved themselves the bother and space of translating the diagrams into words. An advertisement for accessories in the form of a glossy bit of A5. All in all, pretty useless. It does not tell me, for example, whether the thing comes ready charged and whether I will damage it by leaving it on charge overnight. Plus, to keep things simple for themselves, the plug for the charger is a two pin job, like you used to get on shavers, rather than the three pin affairs used in the rest of the house. Just as well we hung onto our supply of adaptors. Just as well the shaver itself seems to work OK.

Visits of a different sort on the occasion of Epsom's heritage day. Which seems to mean that the owners or occupiers of various old buildings volunteer to have heritage folk tramp around them for the day, an activity which turned out to be an ambulatory version of a pensioner outing on a bus, with nearly all the takers being ladies of pensionable age, with a few sheepish looking husbands, yours truly included, tagging along.

We did three buildings and a church, which turned out to be more interesting than one might of thought. The oldest building was owned by a property company which was owned by the GP partnership which occupied the building. The partnership including someone with the first name of Vojka. The next oldest was owned and occupied by a nursing home and the newest was owned and occupied by the headquarters of a middle sized building society. The newest extensions to the oldest building dated from the 18th century and we learned that when the building was new, the windows counted as fittings. Tenants brought them with them when they came and took them away again when they went. Expensive items. The modern extension to the nursing home (which we did not get to see the inside of) was rather bigger than the original building and visits to the public rooms in the original building were fitted in around the residents. Perhaps the younger ones had pushed off for the day. Lastly, the modern extension to the headquarters completely dwarfed the original building but it was all very tasteful; they had done the heritage crew proud and you would not have known from a casual glance from the road. Senior officers got their own offices in the original building, the layout of which was properly cluttered, while the groundlings lived in the open plan areas in the extension. Gardens dug up to provide car parking space. Would the the world have been better off had they simply knocked the whole thing down and started again?

The church was an expression of municipal hubris. It seems that they made a bid to be Guildford Cathedral when that diocese was being invented and built the east end of the church on the basis that their bid would win. But they lost out to Guildford and the west end of the church was either left as it was or built on a much smaller scale. Leaving us with the two tone affair we have now.

PS: what is it about this post which makes Mr. Google tell me about '24000 Women Photo & Video Profiles Find Your Special One from Russia!'?

The second of the two went down better for my knowing it reasonably well. The first was a touch loud; Douglas being able to make a great deal of noise - but with very little in the way of body movement. Thumper maybe, but not a flamboyant thumper; he must have much power in his hands and forearms. Enough power that sometimes the (Steinway) piano was not able to cope and made complaining noises.

Lunch in the form of egg sandwiches made from my very own bread, out of the oven the previous afternoon, in the church yard.

On the way to Old Street, I had been saddened to find that the fine old tobacco shop which might have given its image to 'Old Holborn' cigarette tobacco has shut. A notice in handwriting worthy of a graphologist directed customers to Smiths in Charing Cross road, an establishment which is old-fashioned enough not to have a web site although it has a considerable web footprint. As luck would have it though I came across a branch of Nicolas in Cowcross Street (appropriately, very near what is left of the central markets at Smithfield) which had a reasonable selection. Settled for the junior relative of the Siglo IV cigars reported on on August 5th. Quite dear enough for me.

Home via Balham, a place where I had a bedsit for a while, while in transit from East Anglia. Having a few minutes to wait for a connection it seemed proper to make sure that the Bedford Arms was still present, which it was, although a little quiet. Decent pint of wallop, but what brand I do not remember. Slightly taken aback to have a young lady hold the door for me as I went back in for a refill. Slightly annoyed to find that the plastic netting which makes up most of my shiny new trainers, strong as steel at room temperature, was as dust in the face of a bit of cigar ash. Must see if I can get some toecaps for the next pair. Then, by way of diversion, there was an old chap going down the road in his mobility scooter, all dolled up with indicator lights and registration plate. Decent of him to get off the pavement but I would not care to drive such a thing in Balham's rush hour traffic. Much safer on a bicycle.

On the way back to the station, found that the station wall had been decorated with a number of works of cement art, one of which is illustrated. Don't think that they were there in my day.

Onto the platform where there were lots of people, mainly quite young. A lot younger mix than you get, for example, at Waterloo. Being a recent convert to red braces, those of one young lady caught my eye. Rather expensive looking things, but worn hanging down rather than up and over the shoulders. The man in Lester Bowden had not mentioned that aspect of the fashion.

PS: the continuing drip of Darling revelations only goes to confirm my belief that Brown was in power for too long. All those years of being surrounded by toadies had clearly gone to his head. Perhaps if we could go back to the days when things were actually debated in Cabinet and when prime ministers were occasionally overruled by the sub-prime ministers, their peers, prime ministers would get chucked out by the voters before they started to confuse themselves with the Almighty. Losing the occasional vote would slow down the onset of dementia. Did Blair having to confess all to his confessor slow the onset down in his case?

I start with a thought experiment. On the one hand I have a terrorist and on the other a large bomb which is ticking. If the bomb goes off millions of people will be killed. I know that the terrorist knows the magic number which will stop the bomb ticking. Is it right to bash the terrorist until he tells me the magic number?

I think the answer to this question is yes. I am also sure that that would be the answer of more or less every customer of TB.

This albeit rather improbable example suggests to me that there might be circumstances when torture was the right thing to do. That is it not obvious that we should try to enforce a blanket ban on torture in any circumstances whatsoever. Or throw up our hands in horror at the very thought.

In this example, the fact that you might not be able to extract the magic number by torture would not be a reason not to try. In any event, I continue to believe that good quality torture would extract the magic number. It may well be, for all I know, that torture is getting better and better, along with everything else. Perhaps there will come a time when pain and fear are not necessary ingredients.

The next difficulty is that you might make a mistake and torture the wrong person. Which is going to happen from time to time in the best regulated system. One might regard this as part of the price one has to pay for saving the world most of the time. I believe that when summary hanging justice was routinely administered in the territories of the land of the free, it was understood that there would be mistakes. But the subjects of those mistakes would be compensated by fast track entry to heaven, so it would all work out OK in the end. However, an argument which is not available to me. (I am also reminded that in the olden days it was quite OK for the deity to torture you for millions & millions of years, until such time as your worldly sins had been purged).

Another is analogous to that we have with nuclear weapons. It is OK for proper countries like the US and Israel to have nuclear weapons but it is not OK for improper countries like Iran and Pakistan to have them. In the same way one might trust countries like Sweden or the Netherlands to operate a torture regime in a responsible way but not countries like Russia or Costa Rica. Perhaps the answer here would be to entrust such matters entirely to the UN. No one else allowed. Affirmative vote of the security council needed before anyone was tortured, an arrangement which would mean, inter alia, that one did not do it very often.

Another is analogous to that we have with capital punishment. Someone has to do it. What sort of a somebody is that likely to be? Would one want such a person on the government payroll? And then we might have the whole media circus that went with it - assuming that is, that we did not trust the UN or anybody else to do this sort of thing in secret.

Another is deciding where to draw the line. How horrible a secret am I allowed to hold before you are entitled to drag it out of me?

All starting to sound rather difficult; certainly too complicated & tricky a subject to be dealt with in this casual fashion. It is going to be difficult put in place an acceptable regime and given that UN is not going to be doing anything on this front any time soon, I do not think I want my government to have an established (in the civil service sense of the word) bunch of people empowered to torture its citizens or anyone else. And I certainly would not want such powers to be delegated to, for example, individual police forces.

But I still draw back from a blanket ban.

Having heard of the chap but not knowing much more about him, we did just that, taking the precaution of buying tickets just in case. Perhaps an unnecessary precaution given that they were reduced to mail shots of this sort, but a drag to turn up to such a place to be invited to come back 3 hours later or the next day.

Also took the precaution of printing off some bumpf to read on the train, learning the important fact that it was a big exhibition occupying no less than 13 rooms. Which meant that, on arrival, I whizzed through all 13 rooms to orientate myself before settling down to a steadier progression through the life of Miró, the rooms being organised more or less chronologically. An arrangement I liked. Plus there was no nonsense about deeply meaningful & illuminating juxtaposition with 12th century crucifixes from Sienna, or any other curatorial fancy of that sort.

Paintings included some impressive stuff, with the strongest stuff, as one might expect, in the middle period. I find it took a little while to get into any one painting, but then it seemed to suck you in. The ones which really impressed me had the right balance between having enough content to interest, but not so much content that one could not project oneself onto the thing. This last bit, presumably, accounting for the sucking in. The constellations series qualified here. As did 'Nocturne' and 'Still Life with Old Shoe'.

At the very end of his life he started to move into Jack the Dripper territory. Quite good at it he was too. But here, to my mind, we are in the land of high end wall covering rather than high art.

Once again surprised by the poor quality of some of the reproductions in the catalogue. The reproduction of the picture called 'The rut', for example, seemed particularly feeble, certainly when the real thing was fresh in the mind. Perhaps it will not seem so feeble in the weeks and months ahead. A useful and reasonably priced aide-memoire nonetheless.

Good lunch at the 'Founders Arms' followed by tea & cakes at the outpost of http://www.konditorandcook.com/ to be found on Stamford Street. Excellent cakes, if a touch dear.

Back home, after a modicum of liquid refreshment, decided that the proper end to the evening was a touch of Art of Fugue on the organ (heard for real around March 15th 2009). Good stuff, but struck for the first time that one person playing four parts must be hard work. Got to keep four strands up and running in one brain box at one time. OK so the strands are all related, and maybe only two or three strands are really on the go at any one time, but still and all.

Notwithstanding, the notes accompanying the discs explained that the composer had taken great care to make the thing playable by one person. To keep the hand movements, feet movements and stretches within reasonable bounds. The inference being that it was intended that the thing should be played on an organ.

Thought to read the first paragraph off the Kindle and came to the sentence end: 'he died before it amounted to a plum'. What on earth did this mean? Had the scanning come unstuck? I was vaguely reminded of the French custom of needing to put together a proper amount of land before one could call oneself a proper duke. However, apart from p for peerage or the cognate pairie this did not seem to fit, so got no further.

But not having transferred hard copy to Oxfam, I was able to see what it said, which was 'he died before it amounted to a Plum', with Plum end noted. The end note explained that Plum was mid 18th century slang for £100,000. All now makes perfect sense.

Which illustrates the weakness of scanning in, into a format which does not seem to support end notes. Even a capital P would have been a help, a warning that this Plum was not a regular plum, which might have sent me off to the OED, which did indeed list the meaning in question, without, as it happens, referring me back to my own snippet of text. Which weakness is not going to be much of a problem with most contemporary fiction which is where, I imagine, that Amazon look to make their dosh. Plus I believe that Kindle books from Amazon use a more sophisticated format than Kindle books from Gutenberg. Maybe their format does support end notes.

On the other hand, their version of the OED only lists three meaning for plum, not including the one that my version lists. But then I paid for my version, albeit second hand, ex Royal Guildford Grammar School (http://www.rgs-guildford.co.uk). Despite their fancy web site, they still needed to free up space in the library for something other than the OED. Furthermore, at the time their OED was purchased, they rode under different colours, being then known as 'King Edward VI's Grammar School'. I think it is the same place.

PS: as it happens, a recent TLS makes the point that books of this sort are plot rich and character development poor. Lots of chapters and lots of adventures but not too much in the way of tear jerking. This had to wait until the end of the century. Is there any need to read it at all? The lurid cover is quite encouraging.

For some reason, an external meeting is convened in something of a rush, without an internal meeting. It is to be held in a long low room, rather like a large barrack hut or one of those old fashioned village halls. Tables arranged in a hollow open oblong (one narrow side missing), occupying pretty much the whole room, with the chairman, his acolytes & toadies occupying the narrow side which is present. Lots of people turn up. Quite a lot of enthusiastic young people. Much hubbub. But without the usual preparatory work the meeting is likely to be a complete waste of time.

I scurry around trying to find my laptop or some paperwork so that I can get on with something useful during the useless meeting. I completely fail in this, in part because the head of the table seems to have become muddled up with my office and I can't get at anything, although my laptop is to be seen, all opened up & in pieces, in an open suitcase, sitting on my desk.

I find a seat at the already crowded table, about half way down the right wing from chairman. I start to wonder about refreshments and some canteen ladies wearing canteen lady coats appear delivering coffees and biscuits, these last still in their packets on their plates. Green Beryl Ware from Wood's, just like they used to use in the better mental hospitals & such like places, which we still do use at home and which is still available from http://www.chinamatchers.co.uk/. All seems a bit tacky, but then some quite decent loaves of bread start to arrive - but without knives, plates, butter, cheese or anything of that sort. Somehow we contrive a sort of runway and the loaves of bread start sliding in a rather uncertain fashion, up the table, towards the chairman.

The chap on my left, a smartly dressed young black, gets out a very fancy cigar, cuts it and makes his way outside to smoke it, leaving the cut end upended on the table to mark his place.

The meeting gradually gets under way. There is much confusion. I start to wonder if I can sneak out without being noticed, the only catch being that I certainly can't go back to my office without being noticed.

All of a sudden more or less everybody on my wing of the table decides that enough is enough, stand up and start to make their way out. I can exit unnoticed in the scrum.

At which point I wake up and the story comes to an end.

PS: even asleep, I seem to have a proper sense of public economy. The Home Office I knew often had to use rather fancy hotel meeting rooms rather than dowdy village halls. The result of meeting room muddle consequent on an office move. It got sorted out after a while.

Got the thing home to find that not only did it come with USB port and plug but also with batteries for the remote. Things have moved on from the days when you had to faff around buying the batteries to drive expensive Christmas presents for the sprogs.

Decided that the thing to do was try out one of the read failures on the new machine, the Mel Gibson version of Hamlet. A version which I rather go for, despite my objections to Mr. Gibson, a person far too much into Jesus, blood, gore and pain for my taste. Not to mention stray remarks about Jews. Or perhaps not so stray. Read OK on this occasion.

Then moved onto the Kenneth Branagh version of the same play. A version which, once again I rather go for, despite the modernish setting and the fact that Mr. Branagh does not convince as a Hamlet in the way that Mr. Gibson does. He has fire and passion (rather too much in some scenes), but most of the time he comes across as a 20th century business man. A bit hard, not above playing a bit rough. Which is perhaps what he mainly is these days? But I do like the fact that it is a full text version. This spins out the running time to something which I could not cope with in a real theatre, let alone the Globe with its bus shelter seats. But at home, in the comfort of our arm chairs, the length is not a problem.

What came across in last night's viewing of the scenes up to the meeting with Fortinbras on his way to bashing the Polacks, was confirmation of my notion that Hamlet has had a bad press. He is not indecisive, rather he needs some evidence to go on. He is sufficiently modern not to put blind faith in a ghost and needs to build his case against his uncle; something more substantial than distaste for his hasty marriage with his mother. And it is not until we get to the play within the play that we have it. But after that his uncle is onto him and packs him off to England.

And then we had a new to me turning point, handily at the end of DVD 1 of 2, when Hamlet, observing Fortinbras off to wreak death and destruction over a mere patch of land, is brought to the sticking point over the murder of his far more important father. The point where he will stick at nothing. Which suddenly makes his murder of the relatively guiltless Guildenstern and Rozencrantz seem more reasonable. A turning point which only turns because of our exposure to the seeming irrelevant sub-plot about Fortinbras. Much of which is often cut.

All in all, getting near the time when the Samsung and the box of the Panasonic can be carried off to the waste transfer station.