pumpkinstrokemarrow

Early last Friday morning, while I was in Cambridge (see January 27th), I happened to notice a lot of patterned frost on car roofs, something I do not recall seeing for ages. So this morning, out early on a frosty morning in Epsom and not a thing. Plenty of frost of car roofs but no interesting patterns. So what is different about the frost in Romsey Town?

At 0900 this morning, three pairs of magpies were to be seen at the top of the large oak tree at the bottom of the garden. By 1000 some crows appeared and after something of a tussle things settled down with two pairs of magpies, presumably two of the original three, and one pair of more ordinary crows, probably rooks. But by 1200 we were down to one pair of magpies, 3 single magpies and no crows. Given that I read that crows are monogamous, presumably there had been some discord at the spring renewal of vows.

Before that, had finished off one Hamid Dabashi on 'Shi'ism', having chanced across a kind review in NYRB, a review which I now think was perhaps a little too kind. The book was nicely produced by Belknap and was indeed interesting, but it was heavy going: the sort of thing which would have been damned with the label 'bubbles' when I was a student; the sort of incomprehensible gobblydegook beloved by the sociologists of the day. So, opening the book entirely at random, it takes me about a second to light upon '... a subconscious that works through the mimetic consequences of alienating aesthetics, which is tantamount (but not identical) to the Brechtian ...'. Perhaps like all too many modern arts-side academics (the science-side ones have more excuse), Mr. Dabashi seeks only to communicate within his own community within Columbia University, despite the fact that he is billed as an internationally renowned professor.

But, as I say, the book is not without interest, nonetheless.

So, Shi'is have their own versions of Jesus, in the form of martyred leaders, the first in an illustrious line being the Prophet's much beloved nephew, killed in the struggles following the Prophet's death. Dabashi gets very Freudian about the whole business of son murder displacing the father murder posited as the original sin by Freud.

Generally speaking, the Shi'is seem to be much more into pope and saint like figures than the Sunnis: the Prophet and the Koran are not enough. They are also very into the sort of metaphysics which has largely disappeared from the Christian world, at least from the lay part of it. But I dare say that Jesuits still do this kind of stuff in the privacy of their seminaries.

Partly because in most places they were in a minority, the Shi'is do not seem to have arrived at a satisfactory separation of civil and religious powers, but do seem to have arrived at very literal interpretations of their various written traditions and some rather sanguinary rituals. Even in Iran, where they are in a majority, they do not seem to have done that much better. To be fair, it took us several hundred years to reach a satisfactory solution to the problem in western Europe, and perhaps only did get there with the waning of the power of the Christian church.

On the up side, there seems to be a huge corpus of Persian literature, in particular poetry, largely out of reach to us in the west, but not out of reach at all to the Muslims of, for example, 'A Passage to India', where I remember a doctor being told to ease up on the stuff in the interests of community relations. Not sure if that bit was from the book or the film now. A corpus which perhaps explains the existence, until quite recently, of a reader in ancient Persian languages at Cambridge, sadly a reader who attracted very few students. I think the post was rolled over into something more western.

There is a rather anti European tone in the book and a lot of talk of the evils of colonialism. A tone which does not pervade his discussion of the colonisation of much of the Mediterranean world by the Arabs in remarkably short order after the death of the Prophet. A little irritating given that Dabashi chooses to make his living in the US of A rather than, for example, Iran.

PS: like some other things in the Microsoft world, I am finding their search facility too clever by half. And that in Gmail does not seem to be as easy as it was. They generally work fine but today they do not work fine and I am finding it hard to be sure exactly what I am asking them to look for. Maybe quicker just to recreate the file in question rather than struggle.

During the early years of the present crisis the DT used to irritate me with its continual prophesies of doom, prophesies which I thought were adding fuel to the bonfire. Behaviour worthy of the lowest redtop.

Yesterday I was irritated by a piece by one Vicki Woods which was having a pop at HMCR for complaining about the number of middling sort of people who do not pay the tax they should.

One leg of her complaint rests on the large amount of schmoozing between senior officials of HMCR and senior officers of large companies, schmoozing which from time to time results in deals which look very cosy to the lay eye. One rule for the rich and another for the poor. Which is indeed all rather irritating, but I dare say some other columnist in the DT would get just as cross if HMCR appeared to be being aggressive in its approach to the wealth creating businesses of these green and pleasant islands.

The other leg is to poor scorn on the very idea of trying to pull up small business men - say gardeners, plumbers and roofers - over their predilection for cash payments which they do not then declare to anyone. Now she has a point that most people do not like to sneak and do like to be on good terms with their plumber; you never know when you might need him. But we are not talking peanuts. While the Treasury web site is silent on the matter - at least search for 'black economy' did not get me very far - a 2 year old article from the Independent suggests that tax avoidance is running at about 10% of the UK total, say £45 billion, and that it gets much worse as you move south down the rest of the world, roughly speaking. Of this total, some £15 billion is missing VAT from all sorts of people, £6 billion is missing income tax from small people and £6 billion is missing corporation tax from big people. It seems likely that current pressures are pushing all these figures up.

I think she is quite wrong to take this tone and would have done better to keep her mouth shut. It is quite hard enough for the government of the day, of whatever colour, to balance the books without having supposedly responsible newspapers more or less saying that it is OK to cheat. Not the attitude we need to promote: we need to move to a world where my plumber (or whatever) does not abandon ship merely because I ask for a bill so that I can pay the 20% VAT. Plumbers make good money and I do not see why they should not pay their whack along with the rest of us - any less than Microsoft. A company which I believe cycles a lot of the large profits it makes in this part of the world through the low cost Irish regime - a low cost regime which the rest of us are having to pay good money to prop up. But that is another story.

Took a turn around Epsom Common this afternoon to be greeted by the remains of about 20 more mature trees laid low by the chain saw volunteers. Logged and neatly stacked to provide habitat for the lesser grey spotted death watch beetle. I continue to look forward to the day when these people take up a more discrete hobby, one which does not disturb the rest of us so much. Perhaps a tiddlywinks league sponsored by Wetherspoons (London, South West)?

Back home to peruse two rather different obituaries for Nicol Williamson, one from the Guardian and one from the DT. That in the Guardian dwells on his huge talent, talent which was rather spoilt by his unpredicability. That in the DT is much less kind and uses the occasion to take a pop at Lawrence Olivier, alleging that his need to hog the lime light drove a host of young talent such as Williamson and Burton onto the bottle and into lucrative but otherwise second division film, often fantasy. While Williamson is portrayed as an exhibitionist drunk, along the lines of the late Oliver Reed. Contrariwise, the obituary closes with a lament for the passing of the days of these unpredictable giants in favour of dull but reliable. Certainly not much in the way of giants to be seen on my recent outings to the Globe.

All of which led me to wonder, not for the first time, what an odd trade it is to spend your day pretending to be someone else. At not being yourself. At this point I ought perhaps declare an interest in that I went to a school which was quite hot on the then fashionable teaching of drama and which ran to a quite decently equipped, small teaching theatre. The catch was that I discovered very quickly that I had no aptitude at all for the acting lark; a lack of aptitude which translated in the world of work to weak performances as after dinner speaker, lecturer or presenter - although it did get better with practise.

Going back to the wonder, the next thought was for the science fiction story in which the ruling classes were so indolent that they hired actors to perform their ruling roles for them. Then there was that rather different ruling class, the Sun King, who starred as himself in his own production; a good part of his life was a performance, perhaps even to the way he treated his various mistresses. Courtiers is his sort of court would also be performers, albeit second division. We expect our own ruling classes to turn in good performances at things like coronations and royal weddings. We expect our politicians to be masters of the small screen. Prime Minister Blair was, I believe, a master of that particularly obnoxious genre, the decent chap in cardigan and chinos, clutching a mug of coffee, not so very different from you or me.

In more humble spheres, we might have role models. We might ape the fashions and manners of our favourite football star or soap star. Or television detective. We might go on training courses where we are expected to act something out in the interests of some teaching point or other. When we take the chair at a meeting, we assume the demeanour and gravitas appropriate to the meeting and if it were a legal meeting we might emphasise the point by wearing funny clothes and talking a funny language. A bit of ritual to prop up the performance. Some people are alleged to  project the appearance of some readily recognisable type, an appearance behind which the real self can dwell in peace and quiet, unaffected by the noise and bustle of the outside world.

So while we do not go as far as pretending to be someone else, running along a script written by a third party, some of us do spend a fair part of our life in a role, pretending to a role in the case that we are not very good at it. Perhaps to the point where what we are is what we pretend to be - rather than anything else? What counts is what is shown to the outside world, the show put on for the outside world; anything else that might be swirling around inside is of lesser importance and certainly not for public consumption. To that extent we are what we choose to be in our dance to the music of time.

Professional actors just get a bit more license; they are allowed to vary their diet in a way which the rest of us are not and to get paid to educate or entertain us in the process. Amateur actors can try out being someone else, to see if some new role would suit them better than the one they are in. While the rest of us are supposed to stick to just the one role, at least at any one time; splitting being generally regarded as a bad thing.

Deep stuff. Perhaps I had something odd for lunch.

I have had various reasons to be envious of Cambridge in the course of a visit over the last couple of days.

First, their urban gardens sport chaffinches, something which rarely if ever visits our own, suburban garden. What is special about Romsey Town on the eastern fringes of the town proper? Furthermore, a pub on the fringes of said Romsey Town sported a log fire. Not one of those swank affairs you get in warming pan pubs out in the country; just a perfectly sensible log fire in a perfectly sensible grate.

Second, the winter aconites in the avenue leading from King's College out to Queen's Road are well out. A lot more out than those in Hampton Court were a week or so ago and a lot lot more out than those planted in our back garden last November or so and illustrated on 13th December. In fact, ours were nowhere to be seen last time I looked. Their snowdrops not doing badly either.

Third, one of the central parks boasts a world heritage public convenience, illustrated. Not something that the Borough of Epsom & Ewell would even aspire to. But then it has to be admitted that the standard of modern building in Cambridge is quite high. They boast quite a number of quite decent modern buildings. Certainly a much higher hit rate than Epsom.

Back home, Amazon, in its usually efficient way, has delivered to my door a set of Schubert piano sonatas played by Wilhelm Kempf and I can now get down to some serious listening.

I think we discovered Schubert's impromptus more or less by chance when we happened to hear Imogen Cooper play one of them (D899 No.1) on or about December 9th 2009. Since then I have acquired Barenboim doing rather more of them on vinyl and earlier this year we heard Andreas Staier do the same D899 No.1. Maybe there have been other occasions.

Anyway, by way of preparation for a concert on Monday past, last week I thought to give the Barenboims a go, to find myself quite stunned by the opening bars of same D899 No. 1. Throat tight & all the trimmings, all of which took some seconds to wear off: and this from a bit of vinyl at home. Music clearly has occasional fast track access to important parts of the brain; or at least it is stronger in this department, for me anyway, than words in a book, spoken words or pictures. It is rare that any of these last come anywhere close to matching the visceral effect on this vinyl occasion. Played it again a few hours later and the effect was much reduced.

So off to the Wigmore on Monday, for our first outing of this sort this year, to hear Nikolai Demidenko on a rather loudly labelled Fazioli (I am sure we have seen such a thing before but blog is silent on the point) do all four D899 impromptus, the D946 three piano pieces and the D958 sonata. Usual full and enthusiastic house, only marred for BH by her having as an immediate neighbour a fidgety Russian lady who was old enough to have known better. Luckily for me she was not in my field of vision.

D899 might not have achieved immediate impact in the vinyl way, but impact did build. I do not think I had heard any of D946 before - no vinyl despite having the script in the fine Wiener Urtext Edition, so no opportunity for swatting. They went off well enough nonetheless. And I am not sure if we had heard D958 before, but it was certainly quite something and it did appear to include several bits which I had heard before; perhaps they were quotes from other pieces. All in all a very successful evening.

Coffee, wine and cake from http://www.pontis.co.uk/jsp/pontis.jsp. A bit more comfortable than squatting in the downstairs bar at the Wiggers.

Must chase down a set of Schubert sonatas. Only seem to be able to manage one or two of them as things stand.

Following the post about water towers of May 8th last, we have been keeping a firm eye on the water tower in question. I can now report, that after a period of dormancy, the tower is now half encased in scaffolding. We think it is rising scaffolding rather than falling scaffolding, so it is possible that the tower itself is about to start falling.

Can it be that the Water Tower Heritage & Safety Department of Epsom & Ewell Borough Council has found a bit of money left over towards the end of the year which it had better spend before those rotters from the Finance Department claw it back?

So tower spotters and other connoisseurs of water towers had better get down Horton Lane sharpish for a last gander at this monument to Victorian care for those in trouble on the sea of the world.

Following my report of an important new work by The Dame Emin on May 12th 2010, interested to see that it is indeed now on tour and has been made available to grace the opening of the new BBC building on Salford Quays. Grateful to the DT for supplying the photograph, not so grateful to HP for a scan which falls short of its usual high standard.

Unusual dream last night in that it appeared to be giving advice. Set maybe twenty years ago.

First element was what seemed in the dream to be a very important fact about the settlement after the Napoleonic wars, a settlement which by being generous to the losing side managed to hold for forty years rather than the twenty we managed after the first world war. The dream went on to say that Napoleon was so grateful that he presented Wellington with a deluxe edition of the collected works of Balzac, an anachronism for which I can offer no explanation.

Second element was my being promoted to manage a very important mathematical research project. A project which involved looking for very large numbers, rather in the way that you might look for very large stars, and in which I would have several direct reports which were far more experienced in the field, had far more track record in the field than I. In fact, it was not clear that I had any track record at all. The chap who promoted me explained that it was time to focus if I wanted to achieve anything and I must set an example to myself by not going to some very important meeting  to share the very important factlet about Napoleon and Balzac with them. It was also apparent that he had some agenda of his own in promoting me, nothing much to do with my welfare.

Third element was my being carted off on a bus around the periphery of Paris looking for something or other connected with the mathematical project. I was a bit puzzled that we were in a double decker bus and that the bit of outer Paris that we were in looked very much like outer London. Never seen a double decker bus in Paris and I am reasonably sure that outer Paris does not look much like outer London. It would have a distinctly French flavour.

While waking up, I started to wonder what finding a very large number might involve. Sure we know there are lots of them, so perhaps finding one means finding some feature of the natural world to which that number is appropriate. Part of the game seemed to be that the number had to be exact, which might translate as integral. Would the number of phosphorus atoms in the box of matches qualify? Is that actually an exact number, or at the margins is there far too much coming and going for one to be exact? And then, even a small number like the number of planets circulating our sun is not very determinate just presently, with much dispute about exactly which lumps of rock count as planets. All in all, a rather difficult project. Will I make any progress?

This morning, another day for a clockwise stroll around the Horton Lane circuit, standard version without additions or subtractions. Beautiful bright morning with lots of twittering, but with the only tweet being a flock of starlings at the top of a rather knackered oak tree. Just as well I went out early as now rather overcast. The only other item of note on the stroll was the downfall of a bevy of lycra loonies coming around a roundabout. No vehicles in sight, but the third bike must have taken the thing too fast - or perhaps skidded while leaning into the curve on some loose stones - and took a tumble, with the fourth bike taking a tumble when he braked sharply to avoid the third. Third cyclist slightly battered, fourth cyclist OK. But they did not pass me as I went forward, so perhaps either the third cycle or the third cyclist was a bit shaken up. I have been surprised before how much damage a fairly innocent looking tumble can cause a racing bike, although I had not noticed any on this occasion.

Back home, I have been dipping into Visser on Sant'Agnese fuori le Mura in Rome again. It seems that the early Christians were just as much into column envy as the pagans of their day. That is to say they were really keen on their buildings having the best columns that they could afford, which meant, in this case, recycling rather fine columns from some pagan building into a Christian one. The more leisured members of the congregation could then sit about after mass discussing the finer points of their columns: the stone, the finish, the fluting, the capitals. Perhaps even the provenance.

Furthermore, at one point, the prize objects in this church were five marble lamp holders. Elaborate Greek flavoured affairs, with animals frolicking at the base morphing into vegetables climbing up the column which supported a basin for the oil for the lamp at the top. Four of them were pinched by some pope or other for one of his projects at some point and just the fifth remains, reworked to take the sanctuary lamp.

Worse still, one of the very important statues of the saint herself has been built around a fragment of another Greek sculpture.

I have found it a bit odd to find an old church in Rome recycling pagan bits and bobs in this way. Not something which arises so much in our own churches. A few bits of stone and tile maybe, but not furniture and fittings.

A little poking around online revealed the postcard above (reference lost. Apologies to the owner), in which I think the four removed candlesticks can be seen standing in recesses behind the main columns. Whacking great things, maybe 10 feet tall. Closer inspection will have to await our visit; a visit which might, the book having been written and the church popularised, involve creeping around in a crowded crocodile to the dulcet tones of some obnoxious tour guide.

Happy to report that the jelly lichen on the back patio, at least the green one, has been doing rather well all winter. Usually comes up after heavy rain spring & autumn, but it seems that the mild winter has been both warm and damp enough. Also that the first celandines and dandelions are showing through on the banks of the stream running down Longmead Road. Dandelions not particularly splendid examples, but they are up, running and yellow. Neither celandines nor dandelions in our own garden yet; not even a bit of leaf showing through, never mind flowers. Will have to take a more careful look in the morning.

In the meantime, I have been pondering about freedom of thoughts, speech & belief and about how much of it is a good thing. The start point for all this being pondering about whether I would employ a creationist as a biology teacher in a secondary school, against a background of faith schools and large numbers of both Christians and Muslims who are creationists. Or at least, that is my understanding.

First thought was that people are free to think what they like. We are not yet into the land of thought crime, although it might be fun to bet on how many years it will be before the shrinks can wire you up and get a text transcript of what you are thinking, or at least that part of what you are thinking which can conveniently expressed in words.

Second thought was that people are reasonably free to say what they like in a private place, particularly in their own home. A freedom which is, however, limited by the criminality of conspiracy to commit a crime, although that would raise the question of how the forces of law and order could get to know about this conspiracy without themselves breaking the law. And people are not free to say what they like in a public place. All kinds of rules and regulations here. In the olden days you might get done for blasphemy; nowadays you might get done for racism or homophobia.

Third thought was that, as a school governor, I should be free to choose someone to teach the children biology who is in the mainstream. Who is signed up to the central, mainstream tenets of biology. And I am free to reject someone who is not. I would not trust such a person to teach our children, our future, biology as I know it.

All of which adds up to, for me, that if a person thinks that God created the world as we know it in seven days and that Darwin is tripe, I am free not to hire him, even if he or she promises to teach evolution as per the syllabus and never to mention seven days in front of impressionable children.

Which further adds up to a consequence rather than a restriction on your freedom to think. If it is known that you hold objectionable beliefs, and I am not aware that creationists are in the least secretive about their beliefs, your employment in the state system, at least, will be limited. And I dare say that if I was director of a private laboratory, I would be very dubious about employing such a person. Someone who flies in the face of scientific wisdom is not likely to be a very good scientist. OK, so scientific wisdom sometimes turns out not to have been very wise, but it is, nevertheless, far and away the best show in town.

But a tricky area. One wants to be clear what sorts of beliefs would exclude in what contexts; one needs a bit of transparency and accountability. I would not mind, for example, having a Muslim teach Shakespeare. Although I dare say there are plenty of Muslims who would not care to be taught about the Koran by a Christian. Not sure if an atheist would be better or worse from that point of view. And one might argue that any exclusion on the ground of belief is the thin end of a nasty wedge. One has to prove that the belief has intruded into the work before exclusive action is appropriate.

Have now made a follow up visit to Homebase to buy a third hank of clothes line. I also had a browse around to see if I could find something to join two lengths together in a less obtrusive way than I had managed until then. Maybe there would be a little bit of mild steel one could crimp over the two ends: one should get quite a decent grip in the softish plastic outer coating. As it turned out, there was nothing like that but I did light upon the idea of pinching the two ends between a couple of large washers, so bought one packet of washers and one packet of five bolts. Which last turned out to contain four bolts and five nuts, but not a big enough problem to be worth cycling back to Homebase and attacking the customer services desk.

Out in the garden, removed the short, outer length of line from the rotary frame and installed the new, longer length, which turned out to be long enough. Fixed the outer end in an entirely satisfactory way using the washer wheeze. Left the other two joins with their temporary fixings while the thing stretches and settles down.

So we look to be getting a reasonably satisfactory outcome - although for perhaps twice the outlay we could have got an entirely new, ready lined rotary. Next time I am at Homebase I shall check.

Chores out of the way, was able to resume tweeting on the morning clockwise circuit of the Horton Lane walk. In Horton Lane there was a close encounter with a green woodpecker; not rare around here but it was unusual for me to get so close to one. Then back in my own road, for the first time for a long time, came across half a dozen sparrows tweeting away in the lower branches of an open bush. And back home got a proper tweet in the form of four or five redwings sitting on top of the small oak tree overhanging our small ponds. I did not have a clue what they were, but for once the RSPB identification tool came up very quickly with a convincing answer.

I close with a factlet, drawn from the Economist Book of World Factlets. Japan is two thirds forest, a reasonable proportion of that two thirds being virgin forest; a lot more forest, as a proportion, than almost all other countries. This was something of a surprise to me. I had thought that Japan was a very crowded place and the bits that were not battery houses for people or paddy fields for rice were volcanoes and such like. My next thought was the that economist team had made a mistake - easy enough when you are collecting up lots of factlets from lots of countries. But the two thirds figure was amply confirmed by Google. So my first thought was entirely wrong.

Yesterday to Painshill for a stroll around this splendid 18th century garden, which as well as having lots of trees and plants also has a range of grottos, ruins and other fancies.

Like on Epsom Common, there were signs of a fair amount of chain saw action. But in this case I did not mind: the place is an old, fake natural garden which needs to be maintained; it is not a piece of rough woodland which does not. Furthermore, we came across a couple of gardeners pruning some laurel by hand and they were properly shocked at the idea that one might use a flail on such things. As they do on sundry hedges in our Borough of Epsom & Ewell.

The one lapse of taste was the presence of a permanent marquee in or behind the walled garden. To me, a marquee as a temporary affair for summer receptions is fine. But to have the thing up permanently seems a bit off, a bit of a fraud. Maybe a wheeze for evading the planning consents which might be withheld from a permanent structure.

That apart, the important feature of the visit was the tweeting of two geese sitting high up in a large cedar tree. Geese which were said to be Egyptian geese, which are really a sort of duck. The first time I have seen either geese or ducks sitting in a tree. Later that day off hot foot to TB to announce this amazing tweet, to be told that ducks in trees is not particularly odd at all. They do it down Longmead Road and they also sit on the roof of the school there, along with the seagulls. Now I have seen plenty of seagulls sitting on roofs and they have webbed feet like ducks so that is perhaps OK. But I have never seen a seagull sitting in a tree.

Somewhat deflated, settled for a few jars.

I am sometimes informed by reading George Monbiot's column in the Guardian, a journalist perhaps better known in these columns for being the grandson of a famous restaurateur, a Belgian who operated in London. A foodie's Poirot as it were. And today I was surprised by Google who instructed me to remove the 'n' from the restaurant keeper word, an instruction which is, as it turns out, confirmed by Collins. I am also moved to issue a correction.

Three years ago I happened, quite by chance, to pick up a fat book in Tooting Broadway Oxfam about a child abuse witch hunt in North Wales by one Richard Webster. A tale which was disgraceful less for the child abuse that was indeed involved, than for the way that some of those involved were hounded by press & police & uncletomcobleyandall and for the way in which disturbed young adults were, in effect, paid to make serious and life-changing allegations about their former carers, some years after the events. See January 17th 2009.

As a result, I think that the way that Monbiot mentions North Wales in yesterday's piece is inappropriate. I thought of commenting online to the Guardian but this requires registration pack drill but then found that one could comment privately with no pack drill at all to his very own web site (http://www.monbiot.com/).

A couple of weeks ago, on or about 2nd January, decanted the first half of the sloe gin. Today was the day for the second half. The stuff had been made on 31st August 2011 by adding 100g of sugar to the litre bottle of sloes and then topping up with Gordon's finest. Decanted, we get two standard bottles of sloe gin, plus a cup left over, from a start point of 2.5 litres. The cup might vanish some time soon.

While we were in the spirit of the thing, decanted the second of the two demijohns of blackberry whisky, made with Sainsbury's own brand blended whisky - see September 28th and December 24th. The second half being the half which was not decanted early due to fermentation problems - the first half having almost but not quite stopped bubbling now. Decanted the second half on top of the first half, filling up that demijohn and resealing with the bubbler. The balance was more or less a standard bottle, sealed with a screw top. We shall see if it goes bang in the night.

Compost heap will be a couple of gallons of alcohol soaked fruit richer quite soon. What will those little red worms make of it all? Do they get drunk? Is alcohol toxic for them? Will I have the animal rights people on my case?

PS: impressed to see in yesterday's DT that Boris J. has managed to spin a morality tale out of the grounding of a cruise ship, the Titanic and our problems with our Scottish friends. Not much solids or substance, but the chap has managed to knock out a third of a square foot of copy with commendable speed. As I have wondered before, does our mayor have research assistants to do the grunt work for him? Perhaps they are called interns and do it for free?

Given that our new daffodills are coming up and our new snowdrops are showing through (although the new winter aconites are nowhere to be seen), thought it was time to check out Hampton Court again. Where there were indeed, in sheltered spots, daffodils, snowdrops and winter aconites. There were also lots of points showing up in the open areas. And just one young family that thought it was OK to charge around on those same open areas, points and notices (not many to be fair) notwithstanding. A cross BH tried out her teacher voice on them, sadly to no avail. Probably the sort of people who are made aggressive by being pulled up in public, rather than embarrassed. Maybe a quiet word would have worked better? Maybe they won't do it next time when they have nothing to prove? We will never know.

Round the formal garden, splendid as ever in the winter sun and on into the small banqueting house by the river,  the first time it has been open for us. Rum place, with one room panelled, one room painted (in the tromp d'oeil style of, say, the banqueting hall at Greenwich) and (unopen) kitchen underneath. Not clear if there were dumb waiters to haul the grub up to the festive feasters, but it was clear that the place would be cold in the winter. Young's 'Winter Warmer' strongly indicated.

The following day, back to chores in the form of a new line for our rotary washing line. Without bothering to check or measure anything, off to Homebase where we buy two hanks of steel cored washing line, which we thought was what we had last time. On the strength of this purchase, Sainbury's get a new round of coupons to us by the following day.

While I am struggling to open the hanks. I eventually get one open by cutting it, which turns out to leave me with one piece of one third and another piece of two thirds. Not a brilliant start but I have learned that the stuff is a swine to cut with elderly wire cutters and I have also acquired two small cuts from the shaggy wire. Next step, strip out the old line. No problem here although it turns out that we had actually installed the polypropylene (or something) cored line rather than the steel cored line. Next step, start installing the new line. I think that if I start from the outside and work in, I will have a better chance of the four arms of the rotary being at right angles when I have finished. But I fail to think that the line has to spiral, and that spiralling works much better if you start on the inside.

So now I have various knots - despite it being quite difficult to tie knots in this stuff - to undo, at which point the trusty & rusty knife comes in, bought long ago in one of those shops which described themselves as army surplus and which, in those far off days, may have actually been just that. For perhaps the second time in its life with me, I used the spike, said in my Boy Scout days to be to do with removing stones from horses' hooves, to undo knots. Very useful it was for that purpose too. There is also a fairly fearsome, old-style tin opener, guaranteed to open any tinned food or beverage known to man.

A little while later, start to install the line, this time from the inside. Get on fine until I realise that I am going to have to make at least two joins in the line, joins which do not snag or otherwise damage the wet washing, bearing in mind the difficulty of tying knots in the stuff. After much exercise of the little grey cells, I decide that the thing to do is to locate the joins on one of the four arms. Shortly after that I find that the holes in the arms are two small to take two strands of the new hard core line. Out with the trusty rat's tail file (a relic of BH's naval uncle) to enlarge the hole, a proceeding which turns out to take around five minutes a hole.

A little while later still, I have all three pieces of line installed, but finishing maybe two turns short of the finishing line. Which means we will have to return to Homebase for a third hank. Meanwhile, BH has a rather temporary rotary washing line. I will report further progress in due course.

This time from the NYRB of 22 December in which David Cole gives us two and a half pages about the growing dependence of government upon invasion of privacy, particular that which avoids the use of smelly snoopers on the ground by the use of various forms of hi-tech and lo-cost snooping.

The US being a place with a constitution, a lot of the legal argument seems to revolve around something called the fourth amendment, written maybe 250 years ago with rather different threats in mind, both as to methods & motive and, in part, part of the response to what was seen as tyrannical enforcement of law from the mother country. Which all strikes me as rather artificial; one should not need to be making policy by dancing on the pin heads of words from another world.

Some of the moral argument revolves around what sort of privacy might we reasonably inspect. Does the state have the right to read all my emails and listen to all my phone calls? Does the state have a right to build up a picture of my life from the various records of credit card companies, banks, CCTV cameras, supermarkets and the like? As the article points out, such a picture could quite feasibly be quite comprehensive these days. Can I sensibly deny the state that right when I happily divulge all sorts of stuff about myself on Facebook or on some TV reality show? Should there be rules about the ways in which the Google Corporation or British Telecom are allowed to read the emails they process on our behalf?

Some people go for the nothing to hide argument. If I have nothing to hide, why would I care if some bored operative up north is trawling through my emails? Or if some computer is flagging up every email containing the word 'bomb' or the word 'monosodiumglutamate'? Provided the people doing the trawling are not the same people that I come across in the course of my daily affairs, I couldn't care less. I think I am fairly relaxed about this, although I recognise that different people might have rather different ideas about what privacy they want. I might regard my toe clipping activities as deeply private while someone else might be more concerned about the privacy of their religious beliefs. Or the detail of their night life.

And then, from the point of view of the government, particularly those on the front line of the wars on drugs and terror (wars which seem to be the main drivers for all this surveillance and leaving aside one's views on those wars), people in the round are far more tolerant of discrete, electronic surveillance than they are of overt surveillance involving human agents.

On the whole I think I go along with discrete surveillance. The worry is one of trust: does one trust the government of the day not to abuse the information it collects in this way? Some of the worriers point to the bad record of 20th century dictatorships in this regard. The NYRB only points to the case of a Oregon lawyer who happened to be a Muslim and who got unpleasantly caught up in a trawl for terrorists as a result of a mistake over a fingerprint. I do not find either argument very convincing and I would settle for proper surveillance of the surveillance. As I have suggested in other contexts, the former should be public and open while the latter can be discrete and secret.  One of the public considerations would be proportionality: the style and volume of the surveillance should be proportionate to the importance of the offence being trawled for.

So to echo the end of my last post, perhaps you had better join the debate! Write to your MP!

Stumbleupon (http://www.stumbleupon.com/) is an outfit which finds interesting snippets from the Internet for you, making clever use of your preferences and viewing history. As far as I can make out, Stumbleupon is a fast growing corporation which makes its living from advertisements in one form or another, while providing its services free of direct charge. And if you work for them, amongst other benefits, you get free breakfast & lunch and reimbursement for your wellness. Clearly a very go-ahead outfit.

The reason for mentioning them is that they came up with an interesting link this morning, telling me all about something called SOPA, a bit of legislation presently before the US Congress, but which is alleged to be the subject of oddly little comment in the media, perhaps because all the big media companies are all for it. Big fat article in Wikipedia though.

SOPA is all about bearing down on online theft, mainly of other peoples' information, like downloading and watching a new movie without contributing to its profit and loss account. Which does not sound too bad, but SOPA also seems to be about stopping people in the US, mainly poorer, older people for whom the medicine bill looms large in the budget, from buying their medicines cheap from Canada - a rather more murky business.

But what seems even more murky is that copyright holders will be able to put blocking orders on websites which they believe to be infringing their rights by an administrative process, not involving public hearings in courts or anything like that. That implementing such blocking orders might disturb the domain name system which underpins the Internet as we know it and might provide the US government with all its needs to implement the sort of censorship it is so censorious about it others, should it see fit so to do. With the best possible motives of course: so they might block sites which ran against their latest concern for our welfare, sites which promoted, for example, the excessive consumption of unsuitable & unhealthy foods. Does one trust them not to see fit?

There is also much disquiet about the potential impact on various internet service providers - the host for this blog for example - who might be held responsible for the misdeeds of their users.

If you care about the Internet, maybe you had better join the debate! Write to your local MP!

Thought to listen to the Kreutzer Sonata (Beethoven's that is. Opus 47) last night, having left it alone for a bit. Very good it was too, to the point of prompting a bit of abstract expressionism on the powerpoint during the second half. Or perhaps one would call it automatic writing.

A dozen or more powerpoint objects altogether, it being hard not to let the mouse button go from time to time, thus closing the object that one is on. Very lightly touched up after the event by colouring the various objects. Must find a way to do it so that the result is serial as well as pictorial, so that one can track the music on the line.

Second frosty morning on the trot this morning, not having had a frost for some weeks. Back garden looked very pretty at first light what with the light mist, the trees and the frost. Couple of hours later mist gone and frost going. From which one can work out what counts as first light around here. Wouldn't do down at TB.

Excellent steak and kidney yesterday, confected from some nicely marbled shin of beef and kidneys of sheep. Plus a little lard, a little water, three onions and eight mushrooms. Served with mashed potato and crinkly cabbage. Good grub which prompted a conversation about livers, their sizes (FIL estimated 2 gallons) and why we don't seem to eat them from sheep. I get around to asking Google and he seems to be more interested in liver flukes than liver fried, although he did offer a recipe from Turkey. I must ask the butcher.

Rounded off the day with visits to the Old Vic and the nearby Duke of Sussex, the first sold out and the latter rather quiet. Rather too quiet for a Thursday.

The Old Vic was offering Frayn's (F1) 'Noises Off', a farce which turned out to a very incestuous affair. A farce (F2) about a farce (F3) being put on by that extinct breed, a company of travelling players. Travelling players who stay in theatrical digs with landladies. For good measure, F3 also involved a house which was owned by a playwright. And as it happened, we were also offered theatrical chatter after the show in the form of a Q&A session with some of those involved, presumably including F1 himself as had graced one of the boxes during F2. We declined Q&A in favour of the 'Duke of Sussex' where the drink was a good deal cheaper than at the 'Old Vic'. Quite a decent pint of Greene King IPA.

The programme explained that F2 grew up from small beginnings, has been a huge success in dozens of languages and hundreds of venues and has been extensively reworked over the years. The version we saw was in three acts: in act 1 we see the dress rehearsal of F3 from the audience side, in act 2 we see a performance from the back side and then in act 3 we are back with the audience for a catastrophic closing performance. A cunning design, which started off very well with lots of nice cracks and japes about the lives and loves of strolling players. But for me, it had all started to wear a bit thin by the end, although they were, to be fair, still pulling off stunts, both verbal and physical, right up to said end. The thing could have done with being a bit shorter. Maybe they lost control of the catastrophe: the programme suggests that successful farce requires meticulous attention to timing and detail - which requires rehearsal time which may not be available these days. Maybe we do not have the skilled practitioners either, farce not being a common offering these days. First one I have been to anyway.

Full credit to King Kev though. He continues to deliver interesting offerings, very handy to those who happen to live in Epsom.

Following my remarks on 4th December last and yesterday's announcement, I was interested to see the coverage in the Guardian of the announcement that we are indeed to spend billions and billions on a giant white elephant stretched out between London and Birmingham. The editorial was mildly for, while Simon Jenkins was unmildly against. He put it all down to collusion between show-offs in government, big business and big consultants to build big show-off projects. Which, in this case, as well as making pots of money for the Polish and Irish grunts on the ground, will make pots of money for big business and big consultants. While the government takes on the risk and borrows the money from big business on advice from big consultants. Big wins every which way.

I have been coming at the same problem from a slightly different angle. So once upon a time there was a chap called Keynes who thought that, when big business (didn't have big consultants in his day) lost its nerve, it would be a good idea if government stepped in to prime the pump of the business cycle. Big, long term infrastructure projects involving lots of hard labour were the thing, projects where the low cost of credit to blue chip governments would give them a relative advantage. So in the US, during the great depression, they built pots of dams to generate pots of cheap power. Dams which would generate income for years to come, dams having quite a good life span, better than the average power station. As it turned out, the dams were not a complete test of the Keynes thought as the second world war came along and wiped out the depression otherwise.

Another variant on the Keynes thought is that governments borrow money which they use to fund employment. Just hire lots of people to dig holes and then fill them up again. The holes might be useless in themselves, but lots of ordinary working people who might otherwise be becoming benefit junkies are taught the habits of work and money is fed back into the pockets of those same ordinary working people from where it can be used to stimulate demand. I dare say there are economists who can demonstrate with mathematical models that this is all OK, but if one is a bit nervous about spending lots of money on something as null as holes in the ground, one can always dress it up a bit by hosting the Olympics, building an aircraft carrier or building a very big tent. A tent which should hold its place in the Guinness Book of Records for many a year - see http://www.guinnessworldrecords.com where, oddly, searching for tent produces the entirely wrong tent. Maybe Alastair Campbell was too busy in Iraq that day to give any time to the Guinness people.

One might argue that a fancy railway between London and Birmingham is better than a big tent, although one might also argue that it does a lot more damage to the environment. Either way it is a bit poor that the great and the good can't come up with something a bit more convincing.

There is also the catch that our government, amongst others, is not so blue chip these days.

Yesterday to the smash hit show in the basement of the extension to the National Gallery - an extension which, as it happens, I rather like, even if I can quibble with some of the detailing - to see some Leonardo, along with a few hundred others.

On the way I had time to read the potted biography in Canady's 'Lives of the Painters' and I learn that Leonardo was one of the four giants of the high renaissance. That when the 'Mona Lisa' was last on loan in New York in 1963, the thousands of paying punters were lined up four abreast to be marched past the great work, a few seconds pause being allowed to each file as it drew abreast. And that, for some commentators, if one had to chose between the notebooks - the things containing, amongst other treasures, his designs for tanks and helicopters (as befitted his day job as a combat engineer) - and the paintings, one would chose the notebooks.

Get into the show itself to find that there are a relatively small number of paintings by the maestro, but some additional paintings by contemporaries and lots of drawings, which last I passed on given the crowds, the reproducability and availability elsewhere of the drawings, although I did pause long enough to think that some of the women by the contemporaries had a bit more life in them than those of the the maestro. In so far as the maestro works themselves were concerned, being reasonably tall was a help as this meant one could stand at a reasonable distance and peer over the peering heads. I did not like his portraits of men but I did like the two portraits of ladies, especially the one with a ferret. I had forgotten that his custom was to paint a head and shoulders against a more or less black background, which for me made for a rather unbalanced picture. I prefer a bit of background to round out the composition.

On the way out of part 1 of the exhibition, slightly annoyed by the sight of one the the attendants - a pretty young Asian woman - chewing gum, a habit which I have been conditioned to abhor. On the way up to part 2 of the exhibition, we were reminded of all the other, resident treasures in the sparsely populated remainder of the National Gallery, which one can see in comfort. Odd how these specials pulls in the punters - but one cannot blame the trustees: if specials pulls in the dosh, that helps oil the wheels of the rest of the operation. They are not in a position these days to look a gift horse in the mouth.

In the margins, another visit to St. Patrick's at Soho Square. Then past another church (illustrated) which has not done so well, having served, I believe, in the recent past, as a lap dancing joint. Maybe part of the Stringfellow operation. It might have been more decorous to have knocked the thing down.

And another visit to St. Martins, with its stunningly restored ceiling, rather marred by the new east window, which for my money is completely out of keeping with the intended tone of the place. All very well to try to be more than a museum piece and to accommodate the contemporary, but there are limits. There were probably more winos there than regulars, something which posters outside suggested was encouraged: somewhere quiet and warm for them to snooze. Nor did I care for the rather phallic baby Jesus in the portico - assuming that is who it was. A second lapse of taste on the part of the church authorities.

But the good news is that the Toucan Bar in Carlisle Street has survived the demise of its sister operation near the Wigmore Hall. Excellent spot for a quiet afternoon drink, Irish stew is served as is a very impressive range of Irish whisky. I settled for an excellent spot of Green Spot while being entertained with tales about how the price of a bottle of the stuff might be affected by considerations such as there being a rare fault in this particular batch of labels. Real stamp collector stuff, going rather beyond paying a lot for a fine whisky because there is not very much of it about.

Yesterday I thought to make a dash for the east pole, that is to say the eastern most stand of the Bullingdon bike system, starting from Waterloo rather than my usual Vauxhall, to give me a bit of a head start. East down the Cut and along the length of Union Street. Down Marshalsea Road, a road I have not knowingly been down before and well keyed to the ongoing Dickens' Fest (both on the box and in-house), and then down Great Dover Street to the Bricklayers Arms which now seems to be the name of a large junction rather than a pub. But I did get to pass what must have been a serious gin palace at one time, The Roebuck. Massive great place. Full marks for managing to stay open, albeit as a foodies' establishment. See http://www.theroebuck.net/ where it does not look quite as big and impressive, at least from the outside, as it did in real life.

All this involved swinging around to the east of the Shard, where the building has reached the cab of the uppermost crane without having yet narrowed to a point, which I assume is the intention. The uppermost crane is a luffing crane so maybe it will serve to lift the pinnacle into place. We shall see. Onto to Tower Bridge approaches to pass another giant pub, but this one was a Wetherspoons, called 'The Pommelers' Rest'. From the look of a place a reasonable bet that it was never a serious gin palace, perhaps a shop or a bank instead. Wetherspoons do not seem to think that the apostrophe is needed but OED suggests that the word might be some sort of east end slang for a bruiser or a fighter derived from the pommel of a sword, so maybe there was a pub of that name in the vicinity at some point.

Over Tower Bridge where I manage to get slightly lost on the way to Whitechapel, but make it in the end. Only to be hit by a double whammy. First, getting a bit windy about breaking the half hour limit, I park up by mistake one stand short of the east pole. Whitechapel west rather than Whitechapel east or something. Rather like Scott who got windy on his penultimate attempt on the south pole and pulled up slightly short - but at least he and his men got back in one piece that time. Second, I find this morning that I broke the half hour limit anyway, by maybe eight minutes, thus incurring a £1 fine. The good news is that Whitechapel looks to be an interesting place and well worth a proper visit. The bell founders, for example, have been in the area, if not on the present premises, since 1420. After waiting the 15 minutes or so it takes the Bullingdon Computer to realise that I am ready to ride again, much faster run back to Smith Square, along the northern embankment, and into Tate Real for a second bite at the John Martin cherry (first bite November 13th), this time taking in the audio visual accompaniments to the big triptych. All great fun, but this time left with the feeling that while Martin had clearly tapped into a fat seam of the 19th century subconscious (part of which was providing lightly clad ladies and gentlemen in a form fit for consumption on the Sabbath) and has served as inspiration for plenty of science fiction illustrators, maybe not all that much there for the conventional art lover.

Rounded out the day with a smoke test at the Goring Hotel and I can confirm that as well as providing quite a decent line in bottled beer, if a touch cold, they also have a very decent smoking den. Otherwise the veranda to be seen at http://www.thegoring.com/.

There used to be a saying in cowboy films that if you rode with outlaws you swung with them; the general idea being that if you were caught in the company of someone known to be an outlaw, you were an outlaw too. Very few exceptions made.

I was reminded of all this by a rather telling story in the DT told by a policeman about the stop and search of a black man. The point of the story being that if bad black men have a uniform - say grey hoody, blue baggies, green Worsted socks and red & white Nike trainers - good black men who chose to wear the uniform must expect to get caught up in stop and searches more often than they might otherwise.

It seems that in some areas of London at least there is such a uniform. Some men who are not gangsters - both black and white - like to wear it because it makes them feel hard. Some like to wear it because they want to be inconspicuous in a land of gangsters. Or perhaps just to be part of the scene, part of the peer group. The result being that if you are a white policeman, nothing like as good as a black policeman at describing a black face or distinguishing one from another at a distance, and you get given the description of a black gangster who has just done something bad and who needs to be apprehended, you are apt to stop a lot of wrong people before you stop the right one.

So one part of the answer is to get more black policemen. Another part of the answer is to persuade good black men that wearing the uniform of bad black men is not very helpful to the forces for good. Yet another is to train white policemen to get better at looking at black faces.

This story at least had a good ending. The policeman took the time and trouble to explain what the problem was and the person who had been stopped, searched and angered calmed down enough to understand.

On or about 12th December we went to hear Schubert's late quintet, a matter reported at the time, but which the blog search button does not recognise. It is visible to Google proper but that returns a month at a time which is less than ideal. The point of all this being that we now have a sparkly new CD of a sparkly but not new performance (by the Alban Berg Quartet) to play on the new CD player. Very good it is too, rather less mushy than my elderly vinyls. One of which is a French printing of a Decca recording recorded in Great Britain, a printing which must be quite old because the sleeve tells one nothing about the Weller Quartet and confines itself to a fairly short piece about the music, which looks to have been adapted from the English of one T. Eastwood, an old Etonian. From a time when executants did not need to strut quite as much as has become the custom since.

I think my brother would have approved of the half of the short piece about the quintet because, while being a teacher of music who also played, he was also rather uneasy about his business of having to wrap up the music he loved in words. To deconstruct it.

I was not able to find out anything about the quartet this morning, but they must have been reasonably grand as there is still a market for their wares.

The other cultural event was prompted by watching 1.75 of the 3 episodes of 'Great Expectation' during the holiday. I missed the other 1.25 episodes - the ones in the middle - as I found Pip altogether too unpleasant a character. Now Dickens is a writer whom I try from time to time and have hitherto failed to get on with, but on this occasion I saw fit to download another freebie onto my Kindle from Gutenberg and I am now 49% (according to the progress bar at the bottom of the screen) through it. And while I am reminded of why I find Dickens hard, I am also rather impressed of his unsparing portrayal of Pip, who looks to contain a good deal of the author. Also a rather more rounded portrait than it is possible to get off on the box, even in three hours without the adverts.

It also strikes me that the obsession with class with which the English - if not the Welsh, the Scots and the Irish - are often accused, is, in part, a product of social mobility. It is precisely because that in 19th century England there was a lot of social mobility, that we were so interested in all the stresses, strains and tell-tale signs which that mobility gave rise to. In a more rigid society it would be easier to pay less attention to such matters.

A two Bullingdon day yesterday although I entirely failed to make it to either unscaled pole. I did, however, manage a more serious circuit of the Elephant & Castle than on the first occasion, to pass St. George's Cathedral twice and to come near to the south pole at the Oval. Celebrated by checking that the the 'Hole in the Wall' at Waterloo was still up and running, which it was. More than forty years now that I have been visiting the place, starting from when it was a place where winos got cheap cider and sandwiches. Rather different now, but a decent pint of Greene King IPA nonetheless, served by a pole.

It was also a two building day. The first building, illustrated, exhibited, included two features of interest. First, the building's designer was sufficiently arrogant to defy the forces of gravity by bending some of the columns, despite it being well known that leaning towers present problems. Second, it seemed to be necessary to prop up the concrete floors after their shuttering had been removed. In my day the system was that you waited until the concrete was hard enough before you removed the shuttering. They are doing the same thing at building being put up presently at Epsom Station. Hopefully, everything is under control, unlike at the Hammersmith Flyover where it sounds as if some of the steel ropes which tie the flyover segments together have rotted away. I imagine that if enough of the ropes go, the flyover will go.

The second building was Westminster Cathedral. Following up the Visser book (see 4th January), I wanted to visit a holy church. The two I had in mind were Westminster Abbey and Brompton Oratory. Ummed and ahhed as I came across Vauxhall Bridge, eventually settling on the Abbey. But then I cycled past the place, looking for a Bullingdon Stand, and realised that the Abbey was going to be crowded and not very holy at all, despite being an impressive building (last thoughts on the subject being at September 14th 2011). So I settled for the Cathedral instead, which while not very old, did manage to be holy. Part of the difference being that the Cathedral is a live church in a way that the Abbey is not; people actually used the place, to the extent of touching the steps to an altar with one's forehead and kissing one's fingers after touching the feet of a marble saint.

First stop was the All Souls' Chapel where I was reminded that everybody in purgatory has a valid ticket to heaven. They might have to be boiled in oil for a bit to purge their sins but they will all get there in the end. There was a slightly tacky altar piece, where a Jesus was surrounded by seven rather odd heads which appeared to be wrapped in wings and not much else. There was a glass box containing the earthly remains of St. John Southworth who had been hung, drawn and quartered for being a Catholic priest during Cromwell's reign. I had known that Cromwell had done some bad things in Ireland but I had not known that he was doing this sort of thing at home. At least this was the last time such a thing happened. The chapel as a whole was handsomely decorated with marble and mosaic, and, again as a whole, strangely impressive. And it had far more votive candles than any of the other chapels.

Continued round the chapels, ending up spending a bit of time on a seat in the nave gazing at the altar, the crucifixion hanging from the ceiling (very like the sort of thing you might see in Florence, a painting in the shape of a cross, with small oblong extensions to each of the four ends) and the ceiling itself. The building being clad in pale marble up to maybe 20 feet but then being dark brick above gave one the impression of being in touch with the sky - in a way one certainly is not in the average gothic cathedral or renaissance church, where one is very conscious of being enclosed in a structure, rather than being open to heaven. A throw back to the open air temples of the distant past?

Another difference was the way that mosaic cladding changed the texture and softened the features of the arches and domes. Quite unlike the carved stone of our vaulted roofs - but not completely without the trompe-l'œil trickery of some Florentine churches.

All in all, a very holy building. Something that, as far as I am aware, Protestants, Evangelicals and such like do not go in for. For them the holiness is just in the people and in what they are doing together, not in the building. The buildings that they do those giant services in in the southern United States are only holy when a service is under way. Empty, such a building might just as well be a conference centre. I suppose Anglicans stand between the two traditions in this respect.

Had two rounds of cabbage soup recently, as a result of which I can report a new soupoid. I normally make cabbage soup by simmering four ounces of pearl barley with twelve ounces of diced pork tenderloin and some sliced celery sticks for an hour or so, then adding lots of white cabbage sliced sauerkraut wise for the last five minutes. First round made in this way went down very well. Come the second round however, neither fresh nor frozen tenderloin to hand, and so I thought I would try making the soup with some cold cooked pork that we had instead, adding it at the end rather than the beginning, together with some mushrooms by way of compensation. And I am happy to report that the second round was entirely OK, even though the broth did not quite have the body it should have and the texture of the pork was not quite right. But an entirely satisfactory substitute in an emergency.

Perhaps as a result of soup deviance, for once in a while I did the Christchurch Road-Horton Lane-West Ewell-Longmead Road-Manor Green Road circuit anti-clockwise this morning rather than clockwise, and adding in the East Street leg for good measure. This circuit is far and away my most common walk and clockwise is far and away my most common direction, so I shall ponder further on what may have prompted and/or triggered this change. Will it happen again in the near future?

That apart, the only unusual note was some people loitering with what looked like intent on a piece of rough ground between Horton Land and Christchurch Road, one of them wearing a hi-vis. Were they a pride of dealers simply trying to fix up the next deal or were they a clutch of surveyors simply eyeing up a bit of old hospital land with a view to a spot of infill? Something which I had understood to be off-limits under the terms of the dissolution of the asylums, but will probably become on-limits as part of the drive to promote affordable housing. At least the cause is a bit more worthy that that of the chain saw volunteers, if equally intrusive visually.

I read in this morning's DT that a commission is suggesting that maybe people should be allowed to chose to die decently - while recognising that not all that many are likely to want so to do.

So maybe there will be progress on this front.

I wonder if PaddyPower would give me odds on bets built around guessing whether our leaders will get around to changing our laws on suicide before they get around to changing our equally antiquated laws on drugs? A whole range of betting options spring to mind. But, maybe, as a company registered in Ireland they are constitutionally barred from meddling within the precincts of mother church. Or maybe one could do the deal through their IoM affiliate (Paddy Power Holdings Limited, 1st Floor, 14 Athol Street, Douglas, Isle of Man), presumably there for some tax avoidance reason, but which might just serve the present purpose.

Yesterday was our day to pay homage to that monument to enterprise, J. D. Wetherspoon, a man who has built a huge pubco from nothing in not much more than twenty five years. We chose the branch near the railway station at Kingston upon Thames for the purpose, a typical rather than grand example of the genre.

Tuesday is the day of the steak deal, two steaks with all the bits and a bottle of wine for £15.99. It was reasonably clear that salmon counted as a steak but it took a little while to establish that rib-eye steak was not, even with a £2 supplement. We were also interested to see that if we had opted for baked potato rather than chips that the resultant meal would be gluten free: thoughtful of them to mention it, but a bit of a puzzle as to why chips should not be gluten free. Were they concerned about contamination from battered goods in the fryer?

Wine a touch bland but perfectly drinkable, meals perfectly eatable and the whole perfectly good value. Rounded up to perhaps £20 by a supplementary London Pride and white coffee, during the service of which the waitress had the grace to laugh when I asked her how on earth I was supposed to know whether the coffee was to be taken with hot or cold milk.

Back home to finish the first pass of 'The Geometry of Love' by Margaret Visser (see 16th, 20th and 27th December), an interesting and successful book built around an old church called Sant'Agnese fuori le mura, in Rome, the name being the same sort of thing as that of London's St. Sepulchre without. I had not really realised before how much closer to the Lord these old churches in Rome are, some of them dating back to the first centuries of Christianity and this one boasting seemingly genuine relics of Saint Agnes, done to death for the faith at the tender age of 13 or so in 305AD. I can now better see why the much newer churches in western Europe might want to acquire status & sanctity by getting hold of relics from that same era.

Visser is clearly fascinated by words and shares the derivations of lots of churchy words. So we learn, for example, that the word for bell in both French and German is derived from the Irish Gaelic 'clok' (or perhaps 'cloc') and the then Irish fondness for bells in churches, a fondness which then spread east. And that well cast bells ring on three octave notes, plus a perfect fifth plus a minor third, this accounting for their apparently distinctive timbre. And from bells to clocks. All good stuff - but one hopes she has done her homework and proof reading so that one can safely recycle the stuff in the pub.

She is also fascinated by the business of lady martyrs both being virgins and being raped, and the book ends rather luridly.

For a writer who appears to put a fair amount of herself on the line in her books, her web site - http://www.margaretvisser.com/ - is very coy about the rest of her life and one learns very little about it at all. The site also looks as if it might be rather out of date. Maybe her agent only gives it a wash and brush up when a new book - she is not a prolific writer - is rolling off the stocks.

We now come to the second modern marvel. The book has just one illustration, but a few clicks at Google and I have a wealth of information. Plans, diagrams and pictures - including one of Visser which has been attached to the church. I wonder how much traffic she has generated at the church? I would certainly like to take a look if I was ever in the vicinity. Google Maps excelled itself with close up aerial photographs of the area which gave one a really good feel for what the church might look like from the outside and for the area in which it sits.

The third modern marvel was the freak show on television last night. Both odd and unpleasant in that at a time when a teacher might get the sack for offering a pupil a lift home on a wet afternoon, a grotesquely fat lady is displayed, more or less naked, on our televisions. Did she do it for pay or for the glory?

Yesterday we paid our first visit to Hampton Court of the year, prompted by tales of daffodils flowering at the Esher Common roundabout, underneath the A3. We also had the evidence of daffodils old and new pushing up in our own garden, although, as yet, some way off flowering.

It turned out that Hampton Court was rather crowded, winter fun still funning strong, and we were reduced to taking a chance by parking in the coach park at the railway station across the river. The car park was full, the coach park contained no coaches but did contain quite a lot of cars and so we hoped that our blue badge was sufficient protection against the signs about fines and tow away. As indeed proved to be the case, although by the time we returned, one of South West Trains' old retainers was reading aforesaid mentioned sign with great care. He may have been contemplating executive action, although it was hard to see him organising the lorries needed to tow away the number of cars involved that late - say 1530 - on a Bank Holiday afternoon.

It also turned out that the bulbs at Hampton Court were barely showing. In the odd sheltered spot there was the odd snowdrop or brave crocus and in the odd bed there were a few points showing through. Even the odd daffodil bud. But that was about it; they had not even seen fit to erect the 'keep of the grass' signs which grace that part of the gardens once the bulbs get going properly. We shall try again in a few weeks time.

Back home to a viewing of my Christmas copy of Kozintsev's rendering of King Lear, of 1970 vintage. Very good it was too. Spare but strong score from Shostakovitch, the last film score that he wrote. Terrific Lear & fool. Suitably demure and decorative Cordelia. Large scale scenic effects with lots of extras, all rather Mother Russia flavoured and deployed to good, if unusual, effect. Or perhaps they were Estonians. All in all, very moving; a truly universal play. The only downer was that the subtitles, many of them bits from the original play and some of them presumably reverse translations from the Pasternak, were played very quickly, too quickly for the brain to readily latch on to, but that will not be a problem on a second viewing, particularly if we arm ourselves with the Wikipedia plot summary to help keep track of who is in love with who. Or perhaps it should be whom; getting a bit vague these days on the trickier points of our language.

This, it seems, was a well known poster during the second world war in the US. Given the subsequent history, one wonders where exactly it got displayed. With thanks to http://blog.largeformatposters.com/ and http://www.stumbleupon.com.

Fowl, its trimmings and the consequent soup now long finished.

The 10kg of brussels sprouts now down to 7lbs 8oz plus 600g, neither set of scale weights going the whole distance. So we have done about two thirds, with the remaining third now a touch yellow but still serviceable. Possible but now unlikely that we will go the whole distance either.

Triple smoked gammon now down to chewing off the bone. A surprisingly large bone, including what was probably the near side back knee, maybe more than two inches diameter at apogee.

Christmas pudding and its trimmings now finished. We felt empowered, in consequence, to crack open the Christmas cake yesterday evening. Oddly, the cake which was baked was moister than the pudding which was boiled.

Chocolate long finished. Dates and figs just finished. BH now chomping her way through the toffees.

FIL knocked off his last gluten free mince pie yesterday lunch time. Taken with cold custard from Birds.

Johnnie Walker Black Label now finished, having survived just two sittings, the people in 'The Vintage House' in Old Compton Street having assured me that it was OK to drink blended whisky. Virtually all other consumables are blended for consistency so why not whisky? All this single malt stuff a lot of snobbery from north of the border; maybe not enough to be snobbish about up there otherwise. The Vintage House could offer a Johnnie Walker special at £168, one of their dearer offerings, but I declined. So interested to read this morning that the Black Label that I did have was the chosen brew of the late C. Hitchens.

All this prompted me to make a start on decanting the sloe gin (see 1st September 2011). Rather more than half now decanted, yielding three standard bottles of the stuff, now back under the stairs to prevent it being spoiled by the light. We also have half a gallon of damp sloes which BH threatens to do something chocolate flavoured with. Will need to be careful eating the results as one could easily do in a filling accidentally crunching on a sloe stone.

Current thinking is that we will wind up the proceedings by taking down the decorations - such as they are - on 12th night. Still thinking about what form that occasion might take.

It occurred to us last night that an appropriate first activity for the New Year would be to make the water dance (see September 30th 2010). So up reasonably early to give the thing a go. Using warm water, got it to dance straight off on the tile. Then thought to try without the tile, just on the small paving slab, on which I could sustain a fast vibration which generated a high pitched hum and a small version of the desired action on the water, but not what could be called dancing. Back with the tile and we were in business again with a slow vibration. Counter intuitively, or at least counter my intuition, you get a fast vibration on a soft surface and a slow vibration on a hard surface. Did sprog 1 ever know enough about fluid dynamics to explain what is going on?

It also seems appropriate to have a stock take on the bread baking front, an activity which has been going on for just about a year now, the first bake being on 8th January and the last of the year, the 94th on 30th December. Will I make the ton this year?

The full story can be found at http://dl.dropbox.com/u/8152054/Bread-20110120.xls but I offer a few more highlights here.

By the end of November I was making white bread which ate well, if not too much like good quality English white bread, of the sort usually available at Cheam before I decided that I was spending too much time on a bicycle for the good of my back. I then switched to brown for the good of my guts and found, like most people who talk about baking bread, that brown is easier than white. That one can make decent brown bread which, as it happens, is much the same as good quality English brown bread. Perhaps best though to lay off the serious wholemeal flour, the sort of stuff made in a ragstone quern by druids in a shed next to a stream in darkest Cornwall; a place where the druidesses dance while the druids quern. The local duke - aka the Prince of Wales - taking a benevolent interest in the proceedings and sometimes, graciously, allowing for a fee the flour to be sold under his 'Duchy Originals' banner.

Most of the year I was using Hovis Super Strong Premium White, in part because it comes in handy 3kg bags but have now moved off that and am using half Sainsbury's Strong White and half some kind of wholemeal or other. Both bready ladies that I have consulted said that it should not really matter what flour one uses; no need to be precious about it.

Tried various things in the course of the year, generally failing to stick to the sensible advice that one should only change one thing at a time. So we made progress by continental drift rather than by scientific method, progress which leaves us in the following position.

Sieve 1lb 4oz of white flour, including half a level tablespoon of salt, into large stainless steel mixing bowl, catching the occasional foreign body. Add 1lb 4oz of brown flour (too coarse to sieve). Add a level tablespoon of rape seed oil. Add a sachet of dried yeast pellets. Use hands to stir it all up. Add 24oz of warm water - roughly half cold tap and half boiling - and blend with hands. Turn out onto formica table and knead for 15 minutes, the detail of the action depending on mood. Put the dough back in the bowl, cover it with a wooden lid and put in the airing cupboard for around 2 hours first rise. Turn out, knock back and then knead for another 5 minutes. Dough quite damp feeling at this point but workable. Grease two 2lb loaf tins (Linea) with butter. Cut the dough into 2 2lb lumps, roughly shape the lumps into fat sausages and place in tins. Place each tin in a propagating tray (the things used for starting seeds and which come with clear plastic lids) and place the propagating trays in the airing cupboard for around 2 hours second rise, by which time to dough should have risen to smooth round humps, well above the sides of the tins. But not drooping down said sides. Remove and then bake for 20 minutes at 210C in a fan oven. Remove and turn out from tins onto a cooling rack, taking care not to boil the eyeballs when opening the hot oven. It helps to wear spectacles.

Rising in the sun, when available, is rather faster. Greenhouse effect on the lids of the propagating trays and all that.