More concrete

While the concreting was generally pretty good, this snap illustrates the dangers of using raw concrete, without the plank shuttering camouflage favoured fifty years ago. At, for example, the National Theatre, a little way upstream.

Rather ugly joins between the sheets of cheap plywood used to make the shutters and rather ugly joins between one pour and the next. Some signs of segregation at the bottom of shutters.

Presumably cheaper than the marble cladding favoured by financial institutions, despite the large overall bill mentioned earlier. But it is an honest approach: what you see is what you get - rather than one inch slabs of marble being fixed on top of and hiding the concrete structure. A lot of fancy dead weight.

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New space

A bit of as yet unoccupied space towards the top of the new extension.

Concrete work pretty good, although some small voids can be seen in the dark slab bottom left in the snap left.

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Steelwork

View of the steel work of the roof of the turbine hall, from the bridge from the old extension to the new extension. The embossing lower down on the steel work suggests that, like the tug & barge of the the previous post, it comes from Scotland.

Vertigo did not kick in unless I tried getting too close to the balustrade.

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Pity about the art

At the beginning of the week off to inspect the newly opened extension to Tate Modern.

Onto the beach at Coin Street, from where we were able to walk all the way to the Tate. There were not as many bones as I remember.

Amused to notice, as we arrived, the tug Forth Trojan and the barge Forth Olympian arriving, perhaps to do something with the four pile cases piled up on a barge on our side of the river, just visible on the right of the snap above. Would we carry on contracting out such stuff to the Scots if they were to do a bunk? Also a reminder of a similar view of his river by a chap called Vermeer.

Barges led on to thoughts of fuel. There used to be - perhaps still are - cranes and wharves outside Battersea Power Station to handle all the coal. Nothing of that sort here, so was it all swept away at the time of the first conversion? Was it oil fired by some huge underground pipe?

Handsome new extension to Tate Modern, inside and out. Fine views from the viewing gallery, although I failed to muster the nerve to actually go outside. Perhaps that will come. We passed on the rather expensive looking and near empty restaurant. Moved onto to inspect some art which struck me as pretty rubbishy. Perhaps we missed the good stuff.

Next thought was that while the new extension was very handsome, with its odd shape it did not actually provide that much more gallery space - not that that is really a problem if what we saw was a fair sample of what they have been keeping in their cellars. Was it really worth the £250 million the Standard claimed to have been spent on it? What did the other 100,000 visitors over the first two days think? Clearly a success as far as feet on floor is concerned.

Back to Coin Street for lunch where I took linguine with red meat sauce is the style of Bolgona at the Gourmet Pizza outlet there. Restaurants are usually quite good at this sauce, with the water content generally being spot on, that is to say quite low, and this particular sauce was indeed quite good. Friendly foreign staff, as is usual in such places. What will become of them all if we really do dump freedom of movement of labour? What will become of all the restaurants which depend on them? Will they suck in shed loads of unemployed youngsters from somewhere up north?

Inspected, for the first time in a while, the books under Waterloo Bridge, but failed to find either Tolstoy or Chekov. The latter was also absent from Epsom Library - world famous writer of short stories though he may have once been.

PS: the Standard did not like the restaurant either. Going so far as to describe the puddings as nonsense.

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Bitcoin

My first intimate encounter with the world of bitcoin snapped left - with the very long bitcoin address - mixed alpha numeric - suppressed just to be on the safe side.

I have taken a download, despite what appears to be a breach of the Elsevier copyright on this paper, but I have not contributed to the cause as, apart from any other considerations, of which I can think of several, I don't have a clue how to.

I might say that I do rather resent the rates that Elsevier and others try to charge for access to publicly funded research; charges which are often in excess of $30 for a single paper, perhaps on the strength of a short abstract, perhaps turned up by google - and which strike me as being far in excess of what might be reasonably charged for the rather creaky - and very probably unpaid - editorial and peer review processes. With one chap at the Wikimania conference I attended a couple of years ago alleging that this editorial support could often be close to zero. See reference 1.

There is, however, plenty of leakage. Authors like to be read and the number of reads per paper is depressingly low, with the average probably in single figures. So they put themselves about a bit.

PS: also my first intimate encounter with the University of Belgrade, the home of all eight authors of the paper in question.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/and-another-six.html.

The mystery of the blue train

The last few days have been spent on a favourite pastime - that is to say compare and contrast the original Agatha Christie story (AV) - the mystery of the blue train - with the adaptation for television (TV).

TV preserves the  main lines of the story: rich young lady goes to Nice on a luxury train and is murdered for her jewels on the way. Nice young lady, newly rich as a result of an inheritance from an old lady to whom she had been companion, also happens to be on the train. Plus Poirot, semi-retired. Plus the rich young lady's estranged husband, aristocratic but impecunious; a marriage of convenience. Plus the French bounder who is her lover.

Estranged husband the red-herring in both versions. But, oddly, TV makes him into an unpleasant alcoholic with no redeeming virtues apart from the prospect of a title. Whereas in AV he has an exotic French dancer for a mistress, he does have redeeming virtues and he ends up getting together with the nice young lady. Why did the television people suppress the exotic dancer, whom one might have thought was good for a bit of telly? Why did it make the husband into such a bad lot?

TV also minimises the role of French justice and eliminates that of the Greek jewel dealer. Perhaps having a dodgy Greek Jew who deals in fancy stolen jewels was deemed incorrect. OK in the thirties of the last century, but not now. Also perhaps that it was OK in the thirties for AV to have the good Poirot on friendly terms with the bad Greek; both gentlemen of honour - who just happened to be playing on different sides. It wouldn't really do now, when we worry about morals and conflicts of interest. I note in passing that Chesterton's Father Brown, from roughly the same period, also has his tame villain, Flambard, to provide a bit of colour. And rather earlier we had Balzac's Vautrin. Both French as it happens.

TV also eliminates old lady 2, of St. Mary's Mead (the home of Miss. Marple), to whom the nice young lady returns to await the denouement.

To make up, it introduces us to the father's wife (mad) and mistress (exotic and foreign), this last taking the place, at least in part, of the exotic dancer. It makes rather a meal of the introduction of the nice young lady into the sort of society to which her new found money entitles her. Much period colour.

It preserves the satisfying ending, with the two people who are supposed to be trustworthy, the maid and the aide, turning out to be the villains. Can't get the servants these days. I note in passing that the aide might well have been damaged, not to say brutalised, by his service on the Western Front during the First War - a point not made in either version.

I suppose, as one might expect, that the overall effect of all this is that TV simplifies things and leaves out a lot of background. Necessary for the medium and the time allotted - say 100 minutes for 300 pages.

PS: I think that the small safe introduced by TV to hold the jewels while on the train was the original of module 1 of the luggage discussed at reference 1.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/a-dream-in-four-parts.html.

Gut rot

Moved on yesterday from the yellow dog story to 'La Nuit du Carrefour' and a whole new crop of interesting words.

So this morning, having taken on some white last night, we have 'tord-boyaux', literally twist (tord) intestines (boyaux). But according to Larousse a proletarian term for a cheap but strong eau de vie.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/woolly-pully.html. For the last outing of this sort.