Columns

An interesting extension in a road near us. Interesting in the sense that I have never seen round columns used in such a way before.

Outside the new wall, they will presumably be left exposed and painted in the completed extension. Is the idea for there to be an outdoor passage on the left hand side? Is the heavy steel work going to support a first storey which is bigger than the ground floor, after the way of the Elizabethans making the most of their crowded town plots?

We await developments.

Second coming

Back to Wisley for a second go at the butterflies, the first go having been about a month before, the occasion on which we had borrowed some Brussels Sprouts. See reference 1.

Butterflies still up and running, all very big & exotic. Some of them see-through, in the sense that large chunks of their wings were clear see-through. Some of them the subject of the attention of serious cameras, not capable of making telephone calls - or put another way the attention of a visiting camera club. Mainly older people, both men and women.

Outside there was a chap sporting a Duffel coat, the same colour if not the same brand as the one I was wearing. We were able to indulge in a little Duffel coat chat before his wife turned up to (cheerfully) stop what she called our boasting about our coats. He seemed English enough but I don't think she was native.

There were a lot of rather smelly bushes about the place, about a cubic metre in size. It seemed rather wasteful to be generating all this expensive (and not very pleasant) smell at a time when there were no insects about, or at least very few. Evolution had got it wrong for once  - or perhaps they were growing in the wrong climate. According to the shop appropriately named 'sarcococca confusa'. And according to wikipedia a Chinese member of the box family. The fact that there were a lot of them is probably mixed up with the fact that the plant was once awarded the Royal Horticultural Society's award for Distinguished Garden Merit (the DGM).

Also lots of daffodils, hellebores, cyclamen and crocuses. Some camelias. Also some large yellow witch hazels. Large enough to see the point of the things - with those in our garden being a bit puny. Either they grow slow or they don't like our clay.

And lots of outdoor sculpture, brightly painted sheet metal stuff modelling various insects, present to amuse the children who had come to see the butterflies. Hopefully it will soon be taken down. As well as finding it irritating, I guess that it was very expensive. Hundreds of pounds a pop.

The upper alpine house in good form, with lots of interest. Lower alpine house relatively dormant. But we failed to find any purple gentians, which had cropped up being grazed by goats in something BH had been reading. Possibly to do with the fact that they flower in the summer rather than the winter.

One semi-tweet in the form of a rather sick looking - obese - chaffinch and his wife. Semi on account of the obesity; you only get a full tweet for a healthy bird. There was also something very wrong about one of his feet.

PS 1: The sarcococca confusa was also an example of BH remembering things better than I. She still claimed to know the name this morning, while I would not have had a clue without looking at the picture. Claimed in the sense that knowledge was claimed but not tested - with my thinking here that when younger I often used to claim such knowledge when possibly, or even probably, I should not have. Hard to know without testing, a bit awkward in the context of a normal conversation.

PS 2: sculpture the work of Alison Catchlove, whose web site suggests that the stuff is more affordable than I had thought. See reference 2.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/butterflies-1.html.

Reference 2: http://www.alisoncatchlove.co.uk/.

Queen Loana

Queen Loana, or the Sunday morning factlet.

A book I have recently been reminded about, having first read it getting on for four years ago, in full: 'The mysterious flame of Queen Loana'. See reference 1. Starting the second reading yesterday evening, I found it quite alarming to find how little of it I had remembered - and at the moment it is more or less as if I am reading it for the first time - but I expect that will wear off if I persist. Rather in the way that, at first, one remembers nothing of the story when watching an episode of Morse for the second or third time, but bits and pieces gradually come back. Quite often one ends up guessing who the villain is, rightly, but without having a clue as to why. All very appropriate as this book is all about the tricks & accidents of memory.

However, all that is beside the point. The major factlet I want to notice is that the 36th college to be founded in Oxford is called Kellogg College in honour of the manufacturer of the well known brand of corn flakes. Progress in that, in the matter of names at least, they have moved on from kings, landed gentry and religious matters. The minor factlet is that the college appears, from its entry in wikipedia, to be the Birkbeck College of the north, catering primarily to adult part timers, many of whom also either row or play rugby. Their boxing team is known as 'The Corn Flakes'.

The connection is the fact that the author of the book was an honorary fellow of the college.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=loana.

Heath Quartet

Fairly full house in one of the smaller halls at Dorking for the first of this year's three string quartet concerts, given this year by the Heath Quartet (reference 1), heard once by us once before, for Haydn and Beethoven at a Wigmore lunchtime, and on which occasion they served us well (reference 2). Larger hall taken by a collectibles fair.

Before the break we had Mozart's K.421 and Beethoven's Op.135, both truly fine pieces but neither was quite right on this occasion, with some sort of drifting in the second halves of both of them. Probably me having had too much lunch beforehand.

While the Tchaikovsky Op.11 after the break was pleasant, but rather anodyne by comparison, despite the energetic puff given for the second movement, the Andante Cantabile. While the cello, who seemed to have a fair amount of open string work, seemed to be quite the reverse of energetic, rather laid back. Bored even.

But the good news was that, at long last, they seemed to have managed to organise refreshments for the performers in the interval, and they did not have to come looking, as has been the case in the past.

PS: I have now tried one of the YouTube versions - the Borodin Quartet one at reference 3 - and while the 'pleasant' above seems a bit harsh, I can't come up with a better word. Perhaps it would do better after a gentle evening meal, taken with a little red, rather than in the full glare of a Sunday afternoon.

Reference 1: http://www.heathquartet.com/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/op131.html.

Reference 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eZFUaQxuymA.

Gypos

When I was young, one sometimes used to talk with older men who would reminisce about punch-ups outside dance halls at closing time. In terms of more or less civilised buttng sessions, as you might see among deer in the rutting season. And we certainly did not use glasses, bottles or knives in the way of youth today. Maybe a few bruises, but no-one got really hurt. Or, at least that was the story.

And since then, while I have come across the odd fight in and around pubs, they were the exception rather than the rule. And few people that I knew at all well ever stood ready to use their fists.

Then last night, a Friday night at around 1130, we were on a train to Dorking. In the open space between one of the sets of doors near us there was a group of half a dozen or so youths, who, it soon became clear had been hitting the drink. There was also talk of us gypsy boys (on the way to Leatherhead), cocaine and one of them, rather more drunk than the others, talked of celebrating the birth of a son. He was also very handy with his fists and looked eager to find an excuse to use them on someone. Quite a lot of loud & unpleasant obscenity, some of it concerning grandmothers - perhaps a serious insult in gypo land, fighting talk - and perhaps with the purpose of dominating the space, of shocking and of provoking. Like small children, they wanted a reaction, they wanted to exist. Plus a few unpleasant remarks about passing girls, perhaps deliberately pitched at the margins of their likely hearing.

A bit depressing that, at a time when most of us have been weaned off violence of this sort - or were never weaned on - violence had been bred into these youths from the off. Displays of aggression and violence were manly.

There were thoughts of intervention, of trying to calm them down a bit. But then one thought that at least some of them wanted a fight and that the rest of them would back the others up. No point in intervening unless you wanted a serious fight on your hands - something that they were going to be a lot better at than you were. One would have needed something that I certainly have not got to have faced them down without a fight. Perhaps the ex-military policeman whom I once knew would have managed. Or the ex-paratrooper hero of 'L'Art français de la guerre' (see reference 2). As it was, rather shamefacedly, one kept one's head down, one's mouth shut and got off at Epsom - in one piece.

PS: back home I gave thought to the people at A&E who have to deal with the likely consequences of this sort of thing. Pity the charge nurse who had the youth who was handy with his fists prancing around her waiting room, mouthing off. I also associated to the time when we came a across a convoy of traveler vans, somewhere on the A11 in East Anglia, the drivers of which thought it great fun to descend on a filling station and terrorise the young people, including several girls, manning it.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/they-wonder-why-we-hate-them.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=guerre+nasty.

A tale of London life

Saturday – Ian McEwan – 2005.

A book which came to my notice through its use as an example in a recent book by the narratologist Jens Brockmeier . Or to be more precise, he builds a chapter on less than a page taken from the first part of the book, illustrated left. Or from the top of page 57 of the paperback edition, if you happen to have it to hand. A book billed on the front cover as the No.1 bestseller. It’s coming into my possession was noticed at reference 1.

This post follows close on a first reading. We shall see how well it stands the test of time.

The phenomenon in the middle of the page, being left with a troubling emotion, a troubling feeling, but with no memory of from where it came, is said to be well documented in the psychological literature, although I cannot put my hand to a neat quote just now. Freud knew all about it and more recently there has been interest in connection with those with amnesia and/or dementia: so the hoof mark of someone interested in the psychology of it all.

The book has no contents page but is nevertheless organised into five chapters or parts – we are not told which. Five chapters of very nearly equal length, something over fifty pages each. One wonders at the meaning – if any – of this compromise. Is the author or his editor trying to send us some subtle message? An oversight seems unlikely in this otherwise nicely produced paperback from Vintage.

The book is one of the select band of day in the life stories. Along with those, for example, from James Joyce (type long) and Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn (type short) – with this one being type medium. The day in the life of a well-heeled neurosurgical consultant who both lives and works somewhere in the vicinity of University College Hospital in London.

It is also the story of the life of a well-heeled London family at the start of the third millennium. How it probably was for people rather better off than most of the readers of the story.

What follows probably best not read if you have yet to read the book.

Some threads

The neurosurgeon – Henry – is pretty much centre stage for the whole book. Mostly third person narrative, but quite a lot of stream-of-consciousness stuff. Quite a lot of memories from his past.

The father-in-law, a reasonably famous poet, living in a large house in France. Serial housekeepers and a problem with drink. The talented daughter follows in her grandfather’s footsteps.

The blues, favoured, followed and performed by the talented son.

The life and times of a surgical team in a major hospital. Who, for example, gets to choose the music? Why do they have music – speaking for myself, I don’t care to have music on when I am doing anything important, other, that is, than listening to the music.

The Goldberg Variations crop up from time to time. Another coincidence, given reference 3.

Some oddments

Various scenes in which we are shown the privileged access that doctors have to their patients and, sometimes, to people in the world at large. Their knowledge gives them a knowledge of people not given to the rest of us. But not, I suppose, so different, say, from the sort of knowledge that the milkman used to have of his round or the plumber has of his customers.

McEwan participates in the modern taste for taking, as it were, the covers off the drains. In common with, for example, Jonathan Franzen. For my own thoughts on this last, see reference 4.

Brockmeier is interested, I think, in the way that the narratives we tell of our lives interact with those lives, with the lives both shaping and being shaped by the narratives. Narratives of what we might have been as well as of what we were; narratives of what we might be or might like to become as well as of what we are or what we are likely to become. But I am not sure, not yet sure anyway, why Brockmeier chose this particular passage from ‘Saturday’ for his text. Or whether McEwan shares his interests.

I don’t think I have read McEwan before, although BH may have and we have seen the film of ‘Atonement’. Notwithstanding, I think that McEwan is interested here in the multi-layered fragility of life. The fragility of the society in which we live and the ease and frequency with which it is disturbed. The fragility of our family life, even that of the comfortable upper middle classes. That of ourselves, so vulnerable to attack by chance, disease, illness or old age. When, for example, we become subject to the accidents of care in homes and care in hospitals. The unpredictability of our shifting moods and emotions. Unusually for a non-scientist, he is, quite soon, to give a discourse at the Royal Institution to which he has given the title ‘Examining the self’. It will be interesting to hear what he has to say – even if, like so many famous people, he disappoints in person, as a lecturer. For some reason, I associate at this point to a memory of Fred Hoyle giving a talk, looking as if he had spilled his breakfast down his front earlier in the day.

A touch of the Aldous Huxley’s, in the sense that sometimes the author’s musings on the state of the world drift up and away from the narrative. Which sometimes irritates.

Page 1, chapter 1

Early morning of a day when we are about to go to war to rid the world of Saddam Hussein. And when lots of people came to London to protest that proposed ridding.

An aeroplane on fire in the early morning sky which might have been a terrorist attack, but wasn’t.
An introduction to the world of a neurosurgeon, his life, his family and his work – on which last McEwan has clearly done his homework – and seemingly having been given considerable access to the subject matter.

Largely set in the Fitzrovia of the ramble noticed at reference 2. A happy chance that we happened to renew our acquaintance with the area at about the same time as I was pointed at this book.

Page 53, chapter 2

Should we attack Saddam Hussein? With the doctor happening to be in closer contact with his violence and cruelty than most of the rest of us. The big demonstration – in part just a happy gathering of like-minded people.

Fitzroy Square, its inhabitants and low-life. The big and expensive Mercedes. The collision off Tottenham Court Road and its sordid, violent aftermath. Introduction to Baxter, a villain with an incurable & fatal neurological complaint. The escape to the unpleasantly violent game of squash with a colleague – with some ambivalence towards that violence.

Page 119, chapter 3

His family. Remembering the row between his daughter and his too well oiled father-in-law. Remembering his short meeting with Blair – when the latter’s mask almost slipped for a moment. Shopping. Remembering his mother’s talent for swimming. Visit to his mother, now with a benign version of dementia, benign in the sense of not shouting and screaming, preserving many of the decencies of life in a care home in Perivale, out on the A40, north of Southall.

Complete with favourable mention of the Westway, my favourite motorway, ever since I spent some months testing the concrete which went into it.

Page 173, chapter 4

Early evening and cooking. Discussion with daughter about the proposed invasion. Arrival of father-in-law and then, a little later, his wife. The shocking intrusion of Baxter and side-kick into the bosom of the family. The comely daughter stripped, more or less at knife point. Saved by a lucky choice of poem. A reasonably happy ending after Baxter has been thrown down the stairs – causing serious damage to his head.

The aftermath in the early hours. The call from the hospital, unware of the connection.

Page 235, chapter 5

The hospital in the early hours. The operation on Baxter – with plenty of medical details. Back to bed with his wife, where we started. Close.

Page 281, end papers

A reproduction of Matthew Arnold’s poem of 1867, ‘Dover Beach’.

Credits and advertisements.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/comte.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/a-swing-through-fitzrovia.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/goldberg.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=franzen.

Diana

The Diana mentioned in the last post. I was very taken with it, so it is a pity we don't have a large enough space in which to hang a reproduction.

Group search key: hcb.

Royal cabbage patch

Of to inspect the royal cabbage patch at Hampton Court last weekend.

Noticed on the way out that the 'Cap in Hand' Wetherspoon's at the crossing of Hook Road and the A3 has closed. A large old pub in what I would have thought was an awkward position, but Wetherspoon's have had it for a while - and I have never known one to close before. They have a big estate, so it must happen - but not to my knowledge before. The sign of a mature operation?

Started off properly with a quick foray into Bridge Road for bread and wine. I had thought that such a trendy road would do trendy bread, but failed to find anything better than Mother's Pride disguised as a bloomer. Furthermore Lancelot's, the wine (plus cheese plus cigars) shop had succumbed to a new wine shop called Erik Laan Fine Wines Ltd. Same sort of higher grade wine, perhaps a bigger choice and a very nifty salesgirl, who certainly knew her business. She also had some stock, including both fake Chambertin and two sorts of Greco di Tufo white. We left with one bottle of the former and two of the latter. See reference 3 - about as close to an independent as you are going to get; hopefully small enough to be cuddly, big enough to survive.

Over the road to the cabbage patch where it was all rather wintry. So rather derelict cabbages, some winter greens and some spring greens on the way. Some pea like plants - with the peas that I used to plant being late spring items, not liking the frost. I have noticed these winter peas before but forget what the story was.

Out the back, the Merlin Entertainments concession (see reference 1) is coming on well, sign illustrated. A good fit with some of the other stuff put on these days at the Palace, but I am a bit uncomfortable. Not sure that I want all our national heritage to go the way of Warwick Castle or Chessington World of Adventures.

Puzzled by long pendulous shoots on the metasequoias which might have been flower buds but which might also have been leaf buds. Must keep an eye on them.

Daffodils in the wilderness coming along nicely, along with various other spring flowers. Oddly, no winter aconites. And I think that having made lots of paths through the daffodils, over the grass, may prove a mistake. I am not at all sure that once people are allowed, indeed encouraged to stray off the proper, made up paths, they are not going to wander & trample, or at least let their children so to do. And even if they didn't, worn patches on the wet winter ground don't look too good.

Onto the privy garden, looking as good as it usually does in the winter morning light. Quick peek at the sunken gardens then into the Palace itself, with first stop the Cumberland Gallery, with our previous visit to this newish attraction being noticed at reference 2. Some new things, for example a Duccio travelling triptych and an odd but oddly compelling 'Noli me tangere' by Hans Holbein the younger. Nothing like his better known court portraits at all. But I was most taken by an unusual Gainsborough sketch - a large sketch, possibly a painting unfinished at his death - of Diana and Actaeon.

Took a good look at the series of 12 Canalettos of the Grand Canal - in one of which I was interested to see a house with a spot of garden. Presumably a house with a garden commanded a considerable premium in the Venice of the time. In any event, a nicely presented display.

A walk through the Georgian state rooms, also nicely presented. Very taken with the large guard chamber - not least for the reminder of the need for such things at the time of William & Mary.

Out to a very satisfactory lunch at the Pizza Express opposite the railway station - where we learned that the chap whom we now take to be the franchise holder, despairing of the rents & rates of Hampton Court, is shortly to move to a much better proposition at Antwerp. Maybe we will visit him there!

Reference 1: http://www.merlinentertainments.biz/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/cumberland-treat.html.

Reference 3: http://www.thevineking.com/.

Group search key: hcb.

Do I need to worry?

I find today that EDF - a company incorporated in that most Catholic realm of France - has paid the Devil's number of pennies into my bank account, that is to say 6,666. For those who don't know them, the details of this number can be found at reference 1.

Is the payment some kind of curse they put on card-carrying atheists like myself?

Reference 1: http://www.ridingthebeast.com/numbers/nu6666.php.

Carducci

Last week to St. Luke's again to hear the Carducci Quartet, not before heard by me and assisted by Denis Kozhukhin. Shostakovich String Quartet No.10 and the G minor Piano Quintet, this last being a long time favourite.

Started off at Epsom where there was a long queue for a personal ticket machine, with one of the ticket persons being on a break, and no queue for the machines proper. I have noticed before that there are plenty of people, not all old, who do not like the machines proper.

No working Bullingdons on the ramp at Waterloo and there was already one person waiting, so off to Concert Hall Approach 2, where there was one, and so off to Roscoe Street. The Bullingdon, once again, turned out to have ropey gears; gears which didn't slip, but which made one nervous that they might, which could be awkward at the wrong moment. Maintenance of the system not what it was.

Bacon sandwich on form. One waitress the same, one reverted.

The BBC, rather irritatingly, have resumed inflicting their radio patter on the audience at St. Luke's, after having spared us for a year or more, there not being any production requirement so to do. Patter which includes asking rather awkward questions to a not terribly articulate member of the performing team. The BBC person added a long, floaty green scarf to the whole rather tiresome business.

Rather a modern quartet, from the 1960's, but OK. But I did not enjoy the quintet as much as usual, partly because the young pianist was very loud in his bits. Plus, I wondered afterwards whether the quintet is an evening rather than a lunchtime piece, better played in subdued artificial light rather than natural light. I believe that some classical Indian music is keyed to time of day in this way, so why not classical Western music?

Nor was I impressed by the talk of the quartet having done all 10 quartets in one day at the Wanamaker Playhouse. I don't see the point of marathons of this sort - especially in a place as uncomfortable as the Playhouse, interesting venture though it is. We are even booked to go back there in the not too distant future to see 'The Winter's Tale' . See reference 3 for the previous occasions.

Rounded out by a pair of older people behind me discussing their ailments, warfarin and all.

Having commented on the pillars last week at reference 4 and the post before, and having spotted some possibly relevant bolts from ground level, I climbed up to the balcony and established that the columns were attached to the roof and were probably load bearing. Poor detailing to have them look as if they were not.

Picked up a second Bullingdon at Finsbury Leisure Centre and took the long route to Blackfriars Bridge, not having been able to find a stand anywhere near the north end of the wobbling bridge at St. Paul's. Parked at Bankside Mix (TFL-speak for the Blue Fin Buildings) and went off to see the Calder exhibition at the Tate Modern. Rather crowded - with the better sort of mother and child combinations - and, to my mind, rather badly hung. The whole thing was wrong for these rather light weight, light weight in every sense, compositions and I think they would have done much better to use the Turbine Hall and make sure that the were a few currents to keep the mobiles on the move. Instead of which we had the scaffolding composition mentioned at reference 5, now sprouting weeds and illustrated above.

Late lunch at Gail's Bakery. Adequate soup, nothing like as good as home made. Good bread for the ham and cheese sandwich, but filling not too clever and far too much of it. Eaten deconstructed. Expensive for what it was. but jolly staff and pleasant ambience.

A bit nervous about the Bullingdon situation as the docking lights had not worked on docking, but I was able to take the same one out again and checking later revealed that all was well. Only incident on the way back to the second position on the ramp at Waterloo, doing the roundabout on this occasion, being a cycle courier trying to have an altercation with the driver of a Heidelburg cement tanker, perched high above him. I doubt whether he noticed.

Spent the journey back to Epsom trying to work out how rotate worked on the telephone. Complete failure, despite visiting both the user manual and the relevant help forum. But I have learned that it is all under control of the gyroscope.

Reference 1: http://www.carducciquartet.com/.

Reference 2: http://deniskozhukhin.com/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/the-social-whirl-in-dublin.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/steel-work.html.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/art-old-and-new-1.html.

Thrift

Spotted this morning when extracting the day's shirt from the cupboad - a naval uncle repaired hanger.

A reasonably neat mend, which must have taken a couple of hours, the time one has got one's tools out and fiddled around. Not the sort of mend I can imagine anyone under 60 years of age undertaking.

Think of the terrible waste of quality time! But probably not thinking of the quality activity, the satisfaction of doing something with one's own hands, of shaping something to one's own will.

I associate to the fact that D. H. Lawrence was said (in the Maddox biography) to be very handy about the house. He might have been odd and ill, but he was very good at putting up shelves and easing doors. There is also the thought that naval gentlemen might get used to having to make do and mend when on a voyage, with no access to the corner, or any other, shop.

PS: just about at the limit of the Lumia close-up, at least without getting the book out.

Gatton 5

The pocket church behind the not so pocket tomb of Big Coleman, so called to distinguish him from his son, Little Coleman. We did not learn whether the son spreed his inheritance - or built on it. In any event, the family firm has now, I think, been swallowed up by Unilever of Bootle, the people who paid Millais to give us 'Bubbles'. A far cry from leafy Surrey.

Group search key: gpa.

Gatton 4

The Hall was owned by Coleman the Mustard King at the time the handsome portico was built. This snap being of the record of same set into the base of one of its pillars.

Rather better stone than the soft, pale limestone which appears to have been used for the church tower of the next post.

Group search key: gpa.

Gatton 3

One of the fine park trees, down in the angle between the big lake and the Serpentine.

Group search key: gpa.

Gatton 2

The willow weaving mentioned in the previous post.

A picture from which I was unable to exclude my own shadow and which blogger had great trouble loading up into its picture archive. Possibly because for some lumiac reason it occupied no less than 11.1Mb. We shall see what that does to display times.

To think that when I was little, 10Mb was quite a serious database.

Group search key: gpa.

Gatton 1

Drawn last week to Gatton Park by talk of snowdrops, with the park at reference 1 turning out to be the home for the school at reference 2.

The school buildings were at the top of the park, with the hall itself on the crest of the slope looking down to a large lake. Beyond that suburban housing and the M23, with the odd plane going in or out of Gatwick.

Through the hall to collect our tickets from what we took to be parents on volunteer duty, then out onto the terrace and down into the gardens, where there were indeed some snowdrops although not as many as we had been expecting. It turns out that the gardens and park had been rather neglected for some years and were only now being brought back to something like the original intentions. With the park as a whole showing its age with rather a lot of rather old trees.

But while there might have been fewer snowdrops than expected, they did manage a bed full of winter aconites - which have not come up in our garden at all and which do not seem to have done very well in Hampton Court (on which matter I shall be further reporting in due course). Their ponds also had plenty of duckweed - unlike our own ponds in which the stuff has mostly died back for the winter. Or to be more precise, sunk to the bottom in the form of spores or seeds or something, ready to surface when the weather improves.

Through the gardens and the rather more elaborate willow weaving than I had managed on my allotment before I abandoned it, and down the slope to the large lake, off the right hand side of the snap above, through the horse paddocks, with rather more horses than the grass could decently support. A common failing with suburban horses.

Down the western edge of the big lake to the pretty small lake, the main subject of the snap above, called the Serpentine, running north west, vaguely back towards the big house, rather ugly from the bottom of the slope. A bit of a barrack block perched on the top of the hill - on which Pevsner does one of his slightly pompous hatchet jobs - which made me think of the Professor Ullman whom we saw in a Morse recently. Perhaps that was the idea of the adaptor.

Some handsome pine trees on the way back up to the house. Passed on tea & cake voluntarily and passed on the church - described by Pevsner as a museum of a Grand Tour - involuntarily - which was a pity as others have said the interior was well worth a visit. A pocket church, more or less the private property of the owner of the Hall, complete with a covered way between the two so that he did not get wet on his way to Divine Service. There was also a pocket town hall, perhaps a Whig joke about what fun it was to have a Gatton Hall with two members of Parliament and more or less no electors.

We shall be back.

I thought that the place had the smell of a special school, that is to say a residential school catering for children with special needs - something which the people we asked denied. However, the admissions policy inspected later talks of priority being given to 'any child who has a statement of Special Educational Needs or Education, Health and Care Plan (EHCP)', which I believe is the current jargon for special needs. I suppose there is a fine line to be drawn between promoting the image of a normal school with normal aspirations & expectations and explaining that a proportion, perhaps a large proportion, of the pupils do in fact have special needs - particularly when, as I understand it, current policy favours integration rather than segregation. I imagine that the head of such a place needs - and no doubt has - special qualities.

Reference 1: http://www.gattonpark.com/.

Reference 2: http://www.raa-school.co.uk/.

Group search key: gpa.

European thoughts continued

Following my thoughts of last week at reference 1, we now have our very own Trump. Big hair, big wad and big mouth. But it may be true that the home grown one would do better in a Latin test - not that the Latinos over the water would care much about that. Probably count against you. Also true that the home grown one is a lot younger - it seeming to be the year of the geriatrics over there.

I suppose, in our adversarial way, the public debate about Europe will now move into its childish phase, with each side making out the other to be morons defending a moronic position.

When will the crow give us the benefit of his view? Or do we need to give him a little time to make one up? Will he prove any less adversarial than the rest of us?

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/three-european-thoughts.html.

A flap by any other name

We woke this morning to a tale of flapjacks, with a flapjack being included in the handbag of a suspect in an Agatha mystery. BH thought was that a smart young lady would not keep a flapjack in her handbag and that actually it was thirties slang for a powder compact, one of those slim round jobs with a click open lid with a mirror inside. A task which still exists, in that girls on the tube still do it, but the gadget has moved on.

So off to the OED (first edition), which tells a tale of pancakes, with the term gradually broadening out to include the baked item we call a flapjack here in England. Students in the US would nip out to the flapjack, by which they meant the pancake house, an example of the US preserving an old meaning for a word, an old meaning which we have lost. So perhaps the young lady in question had a wrapped flapjack, what one might now call a granola bar, in her handbag as a standby snack, not wanting to spend her valuable time & money on a proper meal. She was not particularly well off, only being on the aeroplane of the story as a result of winning the sweepstake at the flower shop where she worked.

There was also the snippet that the flap bit of flapjack came from the flip of flipping the pancake.

BH, however, persisted with powder compacts, to the point of getting her Concise Oxford down, where in two lines it mentioned both the small round pancake and the powder compact - but not our sort of flapjack at all. This dictionary dating from around 1960, while mine dated from around 1900. Somewhat put out, I consult my Shorter Oxford, also from around 1960 (at least revised up to that point, having been first published in 1933), and no powder compact. So how did this more or less slang meaning creep into the small Concise Oxford while it was left out of the roughly contemporary & large Shorter Oxford. Was the Concise targeting the sort of people who might use slang of that sort?

We then moved onto jack, a word for which the OED had all kinds of interesting meanings. Starting out as a working person, a sort of lower labourer, then moving onto the various contraptions which might be used to replace such a person, then contraptions generally. So a flapjack was a kitchen utensil for turning over cakes which were being fried in a fying pan. Then the thing that was so turned. Then they added syrup and moved to the oven, giving us the current English meaning.

Next stop râblé from my new Simenon, the origin of which seems to be to do with rabbits, but is now something to do with backs. From where I associate to the fact that the lower back of rabbits, about where the tenderloin would be in a pig, is the best cut. Cut crosswise, and I am now not sure whether you get one or two of them to the rabbit.

More tree

Another tree, this one in a tabular view, with thanks to the emotion machine corporation.

Group search key: tra.

More tree

Another tree view.

Group search key: tra.

More tree

Another tree view.

Group search key: tra.

More tree

Another tree view, possibly generated by a computer out of thin air.

Group search key: tra.

A story about a tree

Many people are fond of trees, in particular of tree structures. Many of us like to classify things into more or less complicated tree structures, albeit one directional – that is to say that we like to do either the twigs or the roots, but not both at the same time. Others prefer organising data to organising things and so they organise their data into tree structures – the HTML and its relatives which underpin the internet doing something of the this sort, with their <head>’s and </head>’s – heads and tails to you or I. Perhaps to the point where the drive to classify and to organise is a biological urge.

So today I am going to write about a tree structure, prompted in part by the tree of life at reference 1 and in part by the opening of the book of Genesis, which goes, in the Alter translation: ‘When God began to create heaven and earth, and the earth then was welter and waste and darkness over the deep and God’s breath hovering over the waters, God said …’. Which, digressing, leads one to think that some of the chaps who contributed to the Old Testament knew what they were talking about, more than two thousand years ago though it might have been.

So babies are born with functioning brains, but not having had much sensory input to bite on. Their brains have not exactly been idling, but they have not had much to bite on. Then all of a sudden, all kinds of sensations kick in. And according to this story, in the beginning, these sensations are all rather undifferentiated. There might be a sort of memory in that one sensation can be distinguished from another, but the sensations are not yet organised in the way that ours are. There is no distinction, for example, between sight, hearing, taste and touch. Or smell. While thought is as yet absent and doesn’t usually ever have a smell – although there are, as so often in matters of this sort, exceptions.

But over time, the baby’s brain learns to sort all this stuff out. Perhaps the first divide – taxonomists are keen, these days, on binary trees, with just two branches at each divide – is between taste and everything else. Then everything else divides into touch and everything else. Until, after some months, we have the full panoply of senses, carved up in a more or less adult way. And consciousness of a sort. And scientists of the future can spend happy years working out exactly how and when this tree comes to be.

Fairly early on, perhaps before birth, the brain had already learned to associate a quality – effectively a small real number, positive, negative or zero – with these sensations. Some sensations are good and some are bad. To some we are pretty much indifferent. Very important for deciding quickly enough what to do about the tiger which has jumped in through the kitchen window. Some people call this number the valence of the sensation, by analogy, I suppose with the valence of the chemists.

Then there is a bit of a pause while language kicks in. And then classification proper can kick in – with language, while perhaps not essential, certainly being very helpful. The baby learns the different sorts of tastes, the different sorts of smell, the different sorts of colours. The different sorts of feelings about things, feelings being a subtle combination of quality and something else (and if you fancy a bit of DIY on this one see reference 2). Lots of classification.

Then there are some people who get into a bit of a muddle, who never get to fully sort out the difference between, for example, what most of us call taste and what most of us call hearing.

This story can be disturbed by a different sort of reality. The fact that some things do not classify into trees very well and are much better described in some low dimensional Euclidean space. So colours can be nicely described as points in a three dimensional space, with the three dimensions standing for red, green and blue. The fact that some things do not divide in a binary way. That it might make more sense to divide taste, for example, into six basic categories (say) at the outset, rather than try to sort out a binary tree. The history of exactly how the baby comes to know the six categories, the evolution of the six categories is not important; it is the six categories themselves which are important.

This story is possibly further disturbed by the fact that horses are born in a better shape that we are, able to see and to walk more or less from the off. I, along with plenty of others, also believe that they are conscious, at least in some sense. So maybe whatever consciousness they have develops too fast for the sort of tree I talk about above to have the time it needs to grow.

Nevertheless, to be continued in due course. Perhaps an episode covering the other end of life, that is to say how all this classifying falls apart as we get older or become demented?

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/tree-of-life.html.

Reference 2: http://www.theemotionmachine.com/.

Group search key: tra.

Three European thoughts

First, the referendum is a very blunt instrument. Representative democracy has served us well in the past and it is a pity that the level of trust in that system has fallen to the point where we feel the need to resort to it.

Second, as noted in connection with the Scots, first past the post is a rather low bar. Some countries insist on massive majorities for massive changes.

Third, if someone has worked for years to prop up our troubled health & care systems and is now eligible for child benefit, why should we worry if the child is not in this country? We might be paying the benefit, but we are not paying for all the health and education services which go with children. Not to mention not paying for the construction of all that children friendly family accommodation.

End of puncture campaign

This to record the end of the puncture campaign for this winter, after perhaps four or five sessions. The gardening committee ruled yesterday that it was too late to do any more this year and that work was to stop forthwith.

See reference 1 for the start of the campaign.

The plan is to do the two chunks at the back of the back lawn over the next two winters, a total of five in all, and then to start at the beginning again. Depending that is, on how things look then. Perhaps the punctured lawn will, by then, be perfect.

Worth noting that while the top soil is a heavy clay, with brown clay not far below, the chalk is not far below that, maybe a foot from the surface. I have never hit chalk in the garden, but the people who dig holes in the road certainly do. So here on the edge of the downs, the clay, heavy though it is, is just a smear on the surface of the chalk. But a smear which wrecks the ground for many gardening purposes.

It would be interesting to know, given the low hills hereabouts, how much the depth to the chalk varies. It ought to be easy enough to design a chalk detecting spike, so a project for some keen geography teacher hereabouts, something to vary the land usage or street furniture surveys  they usually dish out to their GCSE students. Or whatever they call GCSE these days. Perhaps a letter to Glynn is indicated.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/2015-2016-puncture-campaign.html.

Raynes Park platform library

I mentioned a strange haul from the Raynes Park platform library in the last post, the platform library taking the form of a flat topped bookcase in the corner of the waiting room between the southbound platforms.

I think the main idea is that the bookcase is stocked up with chuck-outs from the nearby regular library and that commuters take them and return them - or not - as they see fit. I suspect that this arrangement is topped up by local residents, possibly people something like ourselves, who see this bookcase as a handy way of getting rid of their own no-longer wanted books, in a way which gives them some chance of a good home, an entirely understandable sentiment. One might be dumping one's stuff, but one did once care for it and it is nice if one can do better than the dump. Whatever the case, over the months, we have come across all kinds of interesting stuff there.

I don't think we have yet deposited, mainly because it would involve trekking back from the northbound platform with the books to be deposited, quite a walk, or carrying them through a day out in London. Rather feeble reasons really, but enough to block a deposit, at least so far.

This day's haul consisted of three books.

One, Edith Wharton's 'The Age of Innocence', in a not very attractive Penguin retro format, photographically reproduced rather than printed properly. But a book of the right age to be consumed as a costume drama, very much of the same period as much of Agatha. I expect it will go down one or other of us smoothly enough - although its length at just over 350 pages may tell against it. Oddly, for a reasonably well known author, not hitherto read by either of us.

Two, a book of poems by Yrsa Daley-Ward, a handsome looking girl of mixed Jamaican-Nigerian heritage, brought up in the north of England. A rather arty production, as books of poetry which are not going to sell in large numbers often are. The wrapping is rather low on provenance and I did think vanity publication, but there is a bit inside the back cover saying printed in Germany by Amazon Distribution GbBH of Leipzig. No idea what sort of thing this outfit gets up to, and google only turns up German. See illustration above. Speculation: self publication offered as a staff perk to all the girls and boys who work the warehouse on zero-hours contracts.

Cover a bit loud, but the poems themselves are printed rather nicely. Perhaps I shall read some of them.

Three, 'The Book of the Law', a little red book in plastic covers, a slimmer version of Mao's little red book of the late sixties. Some kind of a revelation, delivered from on high to someone in Cairo in 1904 and first printed by an outfit called Ordo Templi Orientis, based in Berlin, in 1938. Were they some kind of affiliate of the branch of the Nazis who went in for runes and pre-Christian religions? This version including a facsimile of the original autograph and printed in Canada for Red Wheel/Weiser of Maine. Who, from a glance at reference 1, appear to be the same sort of publisher of bizarre exotica as is to be found in the vicinity of the British Museum or Cecil Court.

Priced at $7.95, rather a lot for a very small book.

It looks to be twaddle, with possibly unpleasant strands running through it and there may well be a connection to aforementioned Nazis. I don't think I am going to make time to read it and given that BH did not approve & did not want the thing in the house at all, I think I shall strip the covers off and give it over to Compost Bin No.1, from whence it can, in due course, ascend back on high, from whence it came.

Reference 1: http://redwheelweiser.com/p.php?id=2.

Goldberg

Last Sunday to the Goldberg Variations, the last time I had been to them properly having been as long ago as March 2007. See reference 1. That apart there was just the aberrant trio version at St. Luke's, just about a year ago. See reference 2. Had I had to guess, I would have guessed more hearings.

Journey uneventful enough. Lots of football people on the train. Striking window dressing at Niketown, lots of black and white stripes as I recall. BHS shut, so it was back to All Bar One and their little pots of smarties.

Into the hall, to find a person with oddly estuarine accents sitting in front of me, a person who was talking into his phone right up to the off. Almost a tapping on the shoulder job, but I restrained myself. Then during the performance, one phone, quite quiet, one sweet paper and several snoozes. One cello, that is to say the cellist from the Endellion Quartet, last seen by me on the stage - an occasion on which he was embarrassed by having to puff his sponsor. On this occasion, he managed to sit in entirely the wrong seat - several rows out - but he was excused by the right seat on the grounds that he was a musician and could not be expected to get rows rights.

The performance, by an American of whom I had not previously hear, Jeremy Denk, was very good - and very intensive. Perhaps all the more so because of his very restrained stage manners - only enlivened by his appearing to sing along with himself, silently I think.

Running time was 75 minutes, about which my neighbour was puzzled (having come for Denk rather than Bach). And so was I, thinking that my LP version ran to just two sides, not usually 75 minutes together. But that turned out to be quite wrong, as my LP version turned out to run to nearly four sides, so quite probably more than 75 minutes. To think that, as young people, we once heard the variations twice in one sitting, once harpsichord, once piano. Back home, there was talk in wikipedia of different performers taking a different line with all the repeats, so I thought a score was indicated to get to the bottom of it all - with the result that I am now the proud possessor of a fine edition from G. Henle Verlag. Lots of repeats all over the place.

Rendezvous'd afterwards with BH and off to the V&A to see the exhibition of Cameron photographs there, so that we can sound suitably impressive on this year's visit to Dimbola Lodge at Freshwater Bay.

First stop was eating, and lots of other people in South Kensington seemed to be on the same mission, but we found seats at a place called 'Roots and Bulbs' where we took tuna sandwiches and a very organic brownie. All rather dear, but the water was free and the service was very cheerful. Furthermore they would take our feedback very seriously. See reference 3.

The Cameron was crowded, but interesting. I had not realised, for example, that her photographic life was not much more than ten years long and started when she was near fifty. Or that her use of soft focus was much derided by the professionals of the time, who liked sharp focus. See reference 4. Sadly, I could not find the original of the picture at reference 5 , with that at Dimbola being, I think, a photographic reproduction of the original. I now wonder how many prints Cameron would typically have made of any one shot: perhaps the Dimbola people will know.

Trains still crowded on the way home, partly with Arsenal people who were by then happy that their team had started winning again after a long bad patch. Also the occasion for a second standing up for a lady - on both occasions by foreign gentlemen. Outing wrapped up by a very strange haul from the Raynes Park platform library, to which I think I had better return in a fresh post.

PS: is one supposed to use the 'Verlag' bit of 'G. Henle Verlag' in this sort of context? Are companies like continental gentlemen who are quite keen on their occupational titles?)

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=addictive+activity.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Kraut+und+R%C3%BCben.

Reference 3: http://www.rootsandbulbs.com/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Julia_Margaret_Cameron.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/photography.html. Which also links into a book which I am reading just presently about a chap with a very unusual memory for images. To which I shall return. In the meantime readers can ask google about luria.

A good clockwise

A good stroll around the Horton Clockwise this morning.

Started off with a near-tweet at the end of Manor Green Road, s small thrush like bird, all creams and browns, rather slow to clear off on my approach. Possibly a juvenile? The tit traffic in and out of our leylandii would suggests that some birds at least are off to an early start this year.

Into Horton Lane to score an easy two. Viewing conditions good, but aeroplanes quite low on the horizon, so one had to be in one of the few places on the lane with a clear view to the north. - and as I was moving, this meant that I was not able to get it up to three.

Then a splendid display of celandines, very bright and cheerful in the bright morning light. But rather lost in the Lumia, perhaps not good at yellow on green in bright light. Perhaps I should have done something with one of the settings...

There have been leaves out in the hedgerow for some weeks, but now the buds in the trees are starting to swell, and to show a bit of colour when seen from a little way away. Not quite as bare and wintry looking as they were.

Next up, I am pleased to report that the mess noticed at reference 1 has been cleared up. Did they get youth offenders to do it? It might have been a useful lesson for them in how communities work better when we all show each other a bit of respect.

A sprinkling of grey wagtails around the stream running down Longmead Road, with a redwing, on the ground for once, at the top. that is to say the school end.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/they-wonder-why-we-hate-them.html.

Fact of the day

I have just come across a fact which I thought I ought to share.

It seems that we have constructed a very detailed story about the evolution of the horse over the last 50 million years or so, a story over which the creationists and the scientists regularly do battle.

The fact in question, part of that story, is that the horse originated in North America and migrated from there over the Bering Bridge, into Asia, where it thrived in the steppes, going on to carry many hordes of invaders into more prosperous parts, not least Eastern Europe.

Some of the horses stayed on in North America, becoming extinct there rather suddenly, around 10 to 15,000 years ago, about the time that humans were coming across the Bering Bridge in the other direction. Maybe the North American horse was hunted to death by these humans, tiring of their traditional diet of sea-side shell fish.

Reintroduced by the Spaniards towards the end of the fifteenth century, just 500 years ago. Thus completing, as it were, an evolutionary circumnavigation of the globe.

Not trolley

A snap of a ladies bicycle which has been chained to the railings by the West Hill bridge for some weeks now, a bicycle which I have straightened at least once.

But despite the continuing dearth of trolleys, not in the running, being chained to the railings. Not really a collectible or even a returnable.

That apart, how long will it have to be there before someone has the wheels, not included in the chaining arrangements? How long will it be before the council men sweep it up in one of their sweeps through the borough? What has happened to the owner of what looks like a relatively new bicycle?

Or is it that I get up too late these days to see the railings before the owner goes to work? Spot of record keeping needed to get to the bottom of the matter. Perhaps a note of exactly which rail it is chained to? Or a long hair carefully pasted between cycle and rail, after the manner of James Bond?

A festival of McCarthy

Many years ago I bought a book by Cormac McCarthy called 'Blood Meridian', a rather brutal story built around a band from the US who collected bounties for the ears of First Americans which they turned into the municipal authorities of a town in northern Mexico. Sometimes without being too fussy about exactly whose ears they were collecting. Set twenty years before the American Civil War, but even then a time when a lot of damaged and unpleasant people were drifting around the wild west. A brutal but oddly compelling story which I must have read, at least in part, several times. Compelling, in part, for its evocation of the country, of the vanished south west; bright, harsh and unforgiving.

Then last year I picked up a two inch block from Picador containing three more stories, stories which I think I read about on or near publication and passed on. The border trilogy. See reference 1. One of these, 'All the pretty horses' I have now read, another rather brutal story, set in the same general area as 'Blood Meridian', but in the fifties of the last century rather than the forties of the one before that. A time when there were still cowboys on horses - and plenty of them in neighbouring Mexico. I have now paused and we wonder whether to pass the book on, or whether to retain it against the possibility that I will, one day, push on to parts two and three.

At which point we were told about a film called 'No country for old men', based on yet another McCarthy story. A sufficiently enthusiastic report that we actually paid full price for the thing from Amazon and have now watched all the way through, in one sitting.

The same mix of country and violence, but bang up to date with the story built around sanguinary infighting among the mobs which import recreational drugs into the US from Mexico - and their bounty hunters. Not to mention sundry more or less innocent bystanders. Not as much dramatic scenery as I was expecting, but, nevertheless, a well made film, which held one, but which at the end left one wondering about the culture and customs of a country which could produce such a thing. Game of Thrones might be just as violent, but it is a fantasy, a fairy tale, only very loosely based on a real world of a long time ago. While this film is based on the real world of now - which left one asking oneself, yet again, how could a sophisticated country like the US, awash with education, science and money, persist with its strange policies with regard to drugs and guns?

One also wonders about what sort of a person McCarthy might be. He is clearly sold on the country, which he describes so well. But he is also sold on brutality. Not exactly pointless violence, but not exactly pointful either; just integral to the milieu described. But what does that say about the describer? Is he a gun-nut, a fully paid up member of the NRA? See reference 2. Does he play with heavy machine guns in the ranch he has bought with the proceeds of his books? Does he like slaughtering deer? Is he covered in tattoos? Or is he a strictly arm-chair man? Perhaps wikipedia will tell me.

I think I have talked myself into recycling the two new items. If I need a dose of western violence, I can always go back to the meridian.

PS: I don't seem to be able to stop the pop-up on the illustration. From the NRA website, a website on which a great deal of money has been spent - and money which, for once, outwits the MS snipping tool.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/not-salt.html.

Reference 2: https://home.nra.org/.

Chicken soup

It seems to be around two months since I lasted reported on chicken soup, at reference 1, so having had a good one today, it seems right to notice the recipe.

Take one small chicken and discard most of the flesh. Place the carcasse in a large saucepan with 3 pints of water, four stalks of celery, three small carrots, two medium onions and one peppercorn. Boil for around 3 hours then strain. Wash the debris through the strainer, into the strained liquor to get the last knockings.

Add two and a half coffee jar lids full of red lentils and bring back to the boil. Turn heat off and leave to cool.

Following day, add a pint of the gravy which had accompanied the flesh of the chicken, together with the jelly from the roasting juices. Slice crosswise any celery that might be left and add that.

Bring back to the boil and simmer for an hour to finish cooking the lentils.

Slice two large carrots crosswise. Coarsely chop any cold boiled potatoes that might be lying around. Coarsely chop 200 grams of saucisson sec. Add to the simmering soup about 10 minutes before you want to serve.

Thinly slice any stump of white cabbage that might be lying about. Say 200 grams worth. Add that about 5  minutes before you want to serve.

Serve with brown bread. By which time the lentils should have almost dissolved and there should be a scattering of lentil fly floating on top. See reference 2. The soup should be thick with plenty of lumps, but it should still be wet and you should still be able to strain a yellow liquor from it. Not like, for example, custard or the sort of creamed soup you get from tins.

I think I can say, with no false modesty, that after around 50 years, I have finally got the hang of chicken soup with lentils.

PS: a pity that we did not make it to the experimental farm at Ottawa when we were there back in 2014, where I think they would have been more forthcoming about dead flies in the lentils than our supermarkets have proved.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/chicken-soup.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/candid-camera.html.

Steel work

A not very good picture of the rather ugly columns mentioned in the previous post. A blot on an otherwise very successful barn conversion.

But at least google had some pictures, two or three of them.

Group search key: lka.

Mostly new to me

Last week to St. Luke's again, to hear a programme from which two of the three items were new to me. There was also a short encore, but I cannot now remember what it was, never mind whether it was new to me. But I did like it.

The ramp at Waterloo Station had been resupplied after the rush hour by the time I got there, around 1200. Stamford Street not too bad, but Farringdon Road very cluttered up with what looked to be the building of a new north bound cycle way. Another few million splashed out on us cyclists.

Roscoe Street full when I got there, but there was a Chinook flying east, somewhere over London Bridge. Back to Finsbury Leisure Centre to drop the Bullingdon, then back to Whitecross Street, the full stand at Roscoe perhaps costing me around 10 minutes of my valuable time. Must be more of a pain for a holiday maker who does not know the area.

Still with two young waitresses at the Market Restaurant, one the same, but one from a new country, so they were not so easily able to chatter in the inevitable intervals between serving. Pleased to report that my bacon sandwich was back to its usual high standard. No problem with the bread.

Must be getting capital sensitive, as I went on to admire those of the two pilasters which flanked what had been the altar, while waiting for the off at St. Luke's. Not the flashy Corinthian jobs of St. John's (see reference 4), but a handsome bit of stone detailing just the same. It also struck me that the rather bulbous steel pillars, of a cut fashionable twenty years ago but now a little dated, were not really holding up the roof at all, despite appearances, they were not making contact with it in a weight bearing way. But they were holding up the balconies, so they were not just a bit of expensive décor. However, while I do not approve of such gross departure of structure from function as a matter of principle, I had better take another look before condemning them. The illustrations offered by google are not very good, but they serve to give the general idea. See next post.

I liked the Suk, from whom I have at least one record, unplayed, was good. The meditation on an old Bohemian chorale. Janáček's String Quartet No.2 (Intimate Letters), like the Kreutzer of the week before, as good and as fresh as new. The cello - the chap with the diagonal cut to his tail piece (see reference 1) - told us that the piece really was keyed to letters written to the composers young muse while he was writing it. He also told us about the eastern tinge to the Fisher String Quartet No.1 which followed, contrasting with the western, not to say German, tinge of most Czech music, that is to say from Prague and the west of the country. It struck me how quaint and amusing other people's little nationalisms were - in contrast to one's own, which were just an expensive nuisance. I liked the Fisher quartet, despite it being unusual for me to like contemporary music, Kurtág being the exception which proves the rule, but I am not sure it would wear very well, being, to my mind, more a medley than a proper composition.

Pulled a second Bullingdon from the leisure centre for the trip home, to find Farringdon Road in an even worse state. And, unusually, a van on the city side of Blackfriars Bridge with bad manners vis-á-vis cyclists, that is to say me. He would not give way when he might have done, leaving me stranded in the middle of the road. Turned out OK in the end as I was turning right on the other side of the bridge. And my once favourite building looking rather well in the cold winter light. See reference 2.

For once in a while took an Upper Crust sandwich at Waterloo Station, to be reminded that while their rolls remain good, their fillings are not so good. In this case an inferior cheese, probably processed bought ready sliced, tomato and, quite wrongly for this particular filling, mayo. But quite eatable and I managed to get nearly all of it down before I had to board my train. I should add that I finished it by the door, before I sat down in front of someone who might not care for the sights and sounds of my munching. See reference 3 for my regular thoughts on the subject of eating on trains.

Loud discussion from a young mixed pair of flat sharers on the train to Epsom about shared kitchen manners, something which was clearly a bit of an issue in their flat. This became quite tiresome after a while but at least they did not get onto bathroom manners which would probably have been a lot worse.

PS: I read somewhere recently that the ancient history of western Europe was one of wave after wave of invaders heading west, pushing the lot before them, at least the ones who did not cooperate and inter-breed, into the sea. Just a matter of luck who ends up on the western periphery, that is to say Galway (and the Arran islanders who used to scratch a precarious living out of basking sharks), at any particular time. Which to my mind, rather takes the wind out of the Celtic sails.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/back-on-bullingdon.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/exciting-building.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/master-builder.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/jerusalem.html.

Group search key: lka.

Marker

Sometime ago we acquired a hand-me-down DVD of a 2011 version of Rattigan's 'The Deep Blue Sea' and thought it was rather good.

Then last night, prompted by allegations that the National Theatre was to put it on again, we watched it again and it was still good. We particularly liked the two leads - Rachel Weisz as Hester and Tom Hiddleston as Freddie - both people of whom I had never before heard. Not that that means that much as I usually have great trouble remembering who plays what.

Then this morning I go to the National Theatre site to find it tells me nothing. However, google turns up a site called 'WhatsOnStage' where it says that the revival was announced in September last year for June this year - with the horizon on the National Theatre site seeming to be May. Not impressed; they should provide a better service for their followers.

So today's punt is even money on our getting to see it.

PS: the story line of the world war two hero having trouble adapting to the peace crops up in Agatha, I think more than once. It was also something my mother, who went through the second war at or near Winchester, used to talk about occasionally. I am trying to think now whether it cropped up after the first world war - without success. Perhaps it takes the particular sort of heroism involved in being a pilot, the flying of sorties day after day, with the chances of coming through being not too good at all. Perhaps there was not enough of this in the first war for the tendency to be observed. Or perhaps the explanation is simpler, that the literary & artistic focus was on the senseless slaughter, slaughter of a kind which was not repeated the second time around, at least not on the western front.

Good occupations

From time to time I get nostalgic about the large classification schemes which were around in the 80's of the last century, about CODOT in particular, for which I have retained the three volume hard copy through numerous culls. CODOT being a classification of occupation. See, for example, reference 1.

So I was pleased to be reminded by the Kurzweil organisation today that such classifications still exist, with something called the SOC code running to no less than 6 digits. Standard occupational classification. And surprised to find that the SOC code is actually a descendant of CODOT and lives in our own ONS stable. Large classification schemes are alive and well and still run to three volumes! See reference 2.

But there is a snag. They do one in the US too, to be found at the rather nicely organised reference 3, and a quick check suggests that it is the US SOC which has been used in the table snapped above. Britannia does not rule these particular waves. And don't be confused by all the talk of  OES; SOC is what they are about.

The point of the table is to list the twenty five occupations in the US which are least under threat from automation, so all career changers and school leavers take note. Unsurprising headline message: health and caring occupations good!

Other graphics point out that jobs in parts of the developing world are under even greater threat. Maybe their problem is their dependence on factory work, on the manufacture of cheap consumer goods for the developed world. Work which can be done by robots. And for once, the UK is back on top of the heap, with the smallest proportion of jobs under this particular threat, a modest 35%. Maybe all those creative types in Old Street are doing something useful after all.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/dream-time.html.

Reference 2: http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/guide-method/classifications/current-standard-classifications/soc2010/index.html.

Reference 3: http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_stru.htm#29-0000.

Pancakes

Let down by streetview for once in a while, with the signage of the pancake café mentioned in the previous post being completely obscured; perhaps the google cameraman did not realise what an important establishment he was brushing over. Although to be fair to him, it is possible that the café in question is actually in the building then inside the scaffolding & green hoardings to the right. Can't be sure without paying another visit.

At least the Bullingdons are all present and correct, bottom right. Even if they are in the now discarded Barclays livery.

Group search key: pca

Comté

Felt the need for a bit of Comté last week, to make a change from my usual Poacher, so off to Borough Market.

Arrive at Waterloo and for once in quite a long while, actually book a book in a bookshop, the surprisingly well stocked branch of Foyles at the station there. An international best seller by Ian McEwan called 'Saturday', prompted by the Brockmeier of reference 1, an international best seller which must have passed me by when it was published around 10 years ago. So full marks to Foyles for still having it. And furthermore, I find that McEwan knows all about the Fitzrovia we swung through the other week - see reference 2. But more of him in due course.

Pulled a Bullingdon from the ramp and pedaled off to the Hop Exchange in Borough, where I took one of the last empty stands. Spotted two large helicopters flying west over Stamford Steet, helicopters which might have been old Westlands and which did not look very commercial at all.

Arrived at a closing cheese shop in the market, but I was able to buy a chunk of medium mature - which is eating well. No walnuts to be seen, so I had a quick look in Southwark Cathedral, where a few dribs and drabs were turning up for Evensong, which meant that most of the Cathedral was shut off. But a verger did tell me that on another occasion I would be able to inspect the tomb of Shakepeare's brother. He also claimed that it was the oldest church in London, presumably in the sense of oldest foundation, as I don't suppose any of the present fabric dates from before the older parts of St. Batholomew the Great of West Smithfield. Although I suppose that, for these purposes, Smithfield being a field might have been outside the city walls. But then, what about Southwark? See reference 3.

Quick visit to the Barrow Boy & Banker, where I heard all about the very Italian tricks being played in connection with the cruise liner driven onto the rocks - the Costa Concordia - while the captain dallied with a young lady from eastern Europe. It seems that the mayor of the town on whose land the liner has been parked is pulling all kinds of orgo-eco stunts which mean that breaking the liner up is costing more than the thing cost in the first place, bringing lots of much needed dosh and work to his beleaguered town. At least that is how the story went. The regular story to be found at reference 4. Refreshments from the ubiquitous Marlborough. Perfectly acceptable but one does wonder how much of the surface of New Zealand they have taken over.

By the time I got back to the Hop Exchange there was a light drizzle and there was a large queue outside a café advertising pancakes. A queue of bright young things, so clearly queuing has become chic. Came quite close to scraping the side of a Mercedes saloon with the handle of my Bullingdon at the exit to Stamford Street but luckily the driver did not, or at least so affected, see my swerve away from his near side. Plenty of slots at the Waterloo Road stand, much the most convenient for getting back into the station - although it does have a bit more style to go around the roundabout and up the ramp. Not on this occasion.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/02/a-spark-from-anvil-of-academe.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/a-swing-through-fitzrovia.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=batholomew.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Concordia_disaster.

Group search key: pca.