Wednesday, November 14, 2007
Wakes
Convinced that I was a real geek, just spent an hour attempting to download an electronic version of Finnegans Wake from Trent University in Canada who have a site devoted to Joyceiarna. I was very pleased with having downloaded a compressed file (.gz), downloaded the uncompression program and even managed to find the command line prompt from which to run it. Even managed to run it with what I thought were the right option settings. But then I find I possess 10Mb of file which looks like html (although it starts a bit odd) but which crashes Internet Explorer. Looking at the thing in Notepad, there appears to be lots of text there, but not starting at the beginning. Maybe I am looking in the wrong place. So I deem myself to have failed the geek test at the second hurdle.
On the other hand, earlier in the week, I attended my first drinking man's wake, for one John Etherington, who was a TB veteran long before I arrived in Epsom. I didn't go to the funeral - although Epsom town centre was blocked up for a while by the cortege led by a horse drawn hearse, plumes and all - but I did get to TB for that part of the operation. All most impressive. Packed with black suits (and at least one great grand child) and a fair amount of drinking going on. After a while people got rather maudlin (I only got half the plot on 17 May. Not only do Cambridge people say maudlin for magdalene, but maudlin as in maudlin drunk is the same word. For the tears of Mary Magdalene) and emotional - as is proper on such an occasion. Much kareoke with songs proper on such an occasion. Two nice touches which I have not come across before. First, a board with photographs from John's life. Nice to see some pictures of him as a younger man, having only known him as an older man. Second, his collection of pickled onions was auctioned off. Half the money to go to something for the grave, half to go on a horse - John having done a fair bit of money in that way in his time. All in all, a good send off.
Yesterday off to the Tate to see the Millais. Entertained on our shiny new train from Southern by announcements telling us which car out of how many we were riding in. But the stupidity of this announcement did not quite rise to the irritating bossiness of the lady computer who does the announcements for South West trains. Perhaps because BH discovered in a leaflet she had found in Epsom station which entitled us to half price entry to said Millais - a not insignificant saving of £11. When we got there - no need for any of this timed entry nonsense - the first question from the ticket lady was did we have a voucher. So we deduced that Millais is not selling as well as ancient Chinese pots. Despite being a bit too crowded for comfort (with quite a lot of commentary from older ladies whom BH suspected of being on a flower arrangers' outing), an excellent exhibition. I had not realised the range of the man - with the portraits and the landscapes being completely new to me. Nor did I realise how much he moved away from the painstaking (botanical) detail of his PRB phase in later phases, with some of the later works being much more impressionistic. On the other hand, I was not convinced by Josephs's famous wood shavings. While they were certainly most expertly painted, I am sure he was using 19th century wood shavings as a model. Quite unconvinced that the sort of plane which would have been available in 10AD or so would have been capable of producing the shavings shown. But perhaps he knew better. In any event we will be back.
Wound down in the Lord High Admiral in Vauxhall Bridge Road which used to be entirely dubious and is now a rather cheap and cheerful gastro pub - which being run by foreigners can even run to decent bread and olives. And they also managed an acceptable if not brilliant pint of Bombardier.
On the other hand, earlier in the week, I attended my first drinking man's wake, for one John Etherington, who was a TB veteran long before I arrived in Epsom. I didn't go to the funeral - although Epsom town centre was blocked up for a while by the cortege led by a horse drawn hearse, plumes and all - but I did get to TB for that part of the operation. All most impressive. Packed with black suits (and at least one great grand child) and a fair amount of drinking going on. After a while people got rather maudlin (I only got half the plot on 17 May. Not only do Cambridge people say maudlin for magdalene, but maudlin as in maudlin drunk is the same word. For the tears of Mary Magdalene) and emotional - as is proper on such an occasion. Much kareoke with songs proper on such an occasion. Two nice touches which I have not come across before. First, a board with photographs from John's life. Nice to see some pictures of him as a younger man, having only known him as an older man. Second, his collection of pickled onions was auctioned off. Half the money to go to something for the grave, half to go on a horse - John having done a fair bit of money in that way in his time. All in all, a good send off.
Yesterday off to the Tate to see the Millais. Entertained on our shiny new train from Southern by announcements telling us which car out of how many we were riding in. But the stupidity of this announcement did not quite rise to the irritating bossiness of the lady computer who does the announcements for South West trains. Perhaps because BH discovered in a leaflet she had found in Epsom station which entitled us to half price entry to said Millais - a not insignificant saving of £11. When we got there - no need for any of this timed entry nonsense - the first question from the ticket lady was did we have a voucher. So we deduced that Millais is not selling as well as ancient Chinese pots. Despite being a bit too crowded for comfort (with quite a lot of commentary from older ladies whom BH suspected of being on a flower arrangers' outing), an excellent exhibition. I had not realised the range of the man - with the portraits and the landscapes being completely new to me. Nor did I realise how much he moved away from the painstaking (botanical) detail of his PRB phase in later phases, with some of the later works being much more impressionistic. On the other hand, I was not convinced by Josephs's famous wood shavings. While they were certainly most expertly painted, I am sure he was using 19th century wood shavings as a model. Quite unconvinced that the sort of plane which would have been available in 10AD or so would have been capable of producing the shavings shown. But perhaps he knew better. In any event we will be back.
Wound down in the Lord High Admiral in Vauxhall Bridge Road which used to be entirely dubious and is now a rather cheap and cheerful gastro pub - which being run by foreigners can even run to decent bread and olives. And they also managed an acceptable if not brilliant pint of Bombardier.
# posted by Jim @ 4:26 AM 
