Cello

My last musical outing of September was also my last Bullingdon: Waterloo Station 1, Waterloo to Beaumont Street, Marylebone at 23 minutes and 13 seconds.

On the way, passing a tramp who was down but not out, with trousers down, on the top of the steps down to the gents toilet at Waterloo. Lucky old police dealing. Then out onto the roads which were very quiet this late afternoon, more pedestrians than drivers. And while cyclists were nearly all well-behaved, there were two who were not, with one having flagrant disregard of traffic lights, to the point of being a danger to others as well as to himself.

Arrived at Baker Street a little early, I thought it right to try the Villa Maria at the Wetherspoon's there, once, I think, part of a large hotel above the tube station. Entertained there by an old poster advertising something called the 'Glaciarium', one of the first ice rinks in London, with the very same poster included by Wikipedia at reference 1. Curiously, my telephone had told of the ice involving pork fat, but today I had to work a bit to find Henry Kirk's 1841 patent for making artificial ice by mixing crushed alum with pork fat, the mixture eventually being cast into slabs.

The event was being held in the (newish) David Josefowitz Hall at the Royal Academy of Music, a small but handsome hall, just right for an event of this sort. Most of the talking was done by the cellist Mats Lidström and the cello maker & mender John Dilworth, with the session consisting of seven cellos, one after the other, from the late seventeenth century to the present, four Italian, two French and one English, with each of the two giving us a few words for each. Plus a bit of a cello suite for each, plus a bit of something more modern for each. With the cellist's son helping out on the piano. I think he also said that his father had been a cellist and his wife was a cellist, although there was a wayward son who did jazz trumpet. We did not get to know about the Dilworth family, although that it was clear that there had a been a lot of family businesses in the trade in days gone by.

For me, without a trained ear, let alone being cello player, there was an awful lot of material for an event lasting just about 90 minutes. They clearly had enough to take all day, although I doubt whether I would have had the stamina for that. Nevertheless, an interesting event with lots of good information to take away. I share some of it below.

We were reminded that a consort of four viols echoed the music for four voices: treble, alto, tenor and bass. Was very into elaborate and delicate counterpoint. Well known to the likes of Pepys. With London being the centre of the viol universe, in much the same  way that Cremona was the centre of the violin universe at about the same time. With violins starting life as vulgar street instruments to provide the backing for popular dances.

Nor did string quartets do four parts in quite the same way as viols, having two violins.

The cello was a tricky instrument, with musicians wanting a lot of sound in rather too small a compass, which was difficult, with the modern design being something of a compromise. In which connection the earliest cello on show, a 1690 Giacomo, had at some point been cut down in length by a few inches, in line with the then prevailing fashion. Dilworth was clearly not convinced by the Stradivarius tradition in such matters.

He also told us that things had slipped a bit from the glory days of the Giacomo, when time and money were no object and nothing but the best would do. Modern cellos were all very well in their way, but fell short of the standard set at that time. Also that instruments of the violin family were unusual in that their sound improved with age, although they sometimes went through a bad patch in adolescence, just like people. That apart, there was something about the slabs with which their backs were made which meant that they got better with age and use. With the back of the Giacomo having a beautiful figure as well, much the best of the seven as far as that went. But, for what it was worth, I found its sound a bit blurred.

A surprising amount of variation in weight, with lots of more subtle variations in shape and in the amount of belly given to back and front. One could also fiddle around with strings, apparently a rather expensive business.

There seemed to be an element of horses for courses about it all, with different sorts of instrument suiting different sorts of players. On the other hand, one might start off not liking an instrument, but grow into it. Or vice-versa.

All in all, a good event, well worth the journey.

On the way out, reminded that places of this sort have separate toilets for staff and students. Reasonable enough, but rather old speak. On the other hand, new speak enough to have an office suite labelled senior management team.

Out to drizzle, so elected to tube it home.

PS: it was the wrong event to ask about slope cut tail pieces. But the King's Place people who put this event on also put on one day fairs for violin makers and such, so perhaps that would be the right event. Note that it was a two part search to find the related reference 4: first ask bing about violin makers in the west end, turn up the name of one which was both unusual and familiar and then ask the blog.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glaciarium.

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

Reference 3: http://johndilworthviolins.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/more-tuition.html.

Trolley 94a and 94b

Captured on East Street, not far short of the Kiln Lane turning for Sainsbury's.

Easy enough to wheel the two of them when the pavement was flat, but hard on any kind of a slope, that is to say slope down towards the road, rather than up and down a hill, with the front end trying very hard to veer off down the slope.

I had thought it fair to score two trolleys, but clearing the litter out on arrival I found that they had been jammed together rather tightly, and feared doing myself - or at least my hands - some injury if I persisted. So I didn't, left them not far from the front entrance and downgraded the score from two to one.

PS: as can be seen, there was one wheel lock between the two trolleys, but it had not deployed. Not sure that I would have scored at all if it had of been.

Big car

The house in Lower Court Road which owns the flashily coloured Range Rover noticed at reference 1, also owns a nearly as flashily coloured Lamborghini. A quick bing suggests that the two together might be worth more than half the house in which they are parked. Clearly someone who cares more about his wheels than I do.

I did not look, but I wonder now whether they are protected, at least to some extent, by CCTV?

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/04/well-keep-red-flag-flying-here.html.

A tale of two boozers

It so happened that we took both our midday and evening meals in public houses yesterday: in my case a ham sandwich in the 'Boathouse' between Ryde and Seaview and a portion of lasagne in the Wetherspoon's in Union Street in Ryde. What follows is some thoughts arising from our patronage of these two rather different establishments.

Both meals cost around £7.50 a head, although that at Wetherspoon's could have included a free drink, had I worked out that one was available. Both came on round plates and both came with salad.

Wetherspoon's rather busier in the evening than the Boathouse had been at lunchtime. More boozers in the former, but more dogs in the latter. Former public bar, latter saloon bar.

The ham sandwich

Rather a posh looking sandwich, posh enough to have a salad only lightly dressed, with pink coleslaw and without crisps of any sort. So salad good.

Bread was rather better than is usual in such establishments, sliced from a bloomer of some sort, which may have come from a proper commercial baker. Ham looked OK, but had been cut rather thick and liberally dosed with apple chutney. This last was a good deal better than Branston's, which I do not like at all, but which meant that one could barely taste the ham. Furthermore, the sandwich was fat enough to be rather heavy going and I did much better with the second half eating the top and bottoms slices separately, there being quite enough ham to cover both. And if there is a next time, I shall ask for the chutney on the side.

Served in a near private side room, which suited very well on this occasion. Taken with sparkling water.

The Boathouse is part of a three house chain. 'An inn of distinction'.

The portion of lasagne

Looked much better in real life than it does in this flash assisted snap. The salad was simple and unpretentious, served with dressing on the side, a plus for me as I generally prefer salad without. So salad good again, albeit in a different way.

Lasagne entirely satisfactory. We speculated about how it might have arrived on the premises, with my voting for frozen portions coming in boxes of dozens or whatever. Heat up in microwave and slide out of bag onto plate. But the lasagne survived this treatment very well and I enjoyed it more than I had enjoyed the ham sandwich, although it did have the advantage of coming with a coup de blanc (Villa Maria Sauvignon Blanc from the Antipodes).

One portion of oven chips for the two of us was plenty. BH explained that the trick with these chips was to coat them with flavoured semolina before cooking them, semolina being very absorbant stuff, which meant you could pack lots of flavours in. Flavours which were supposed to make up for their being oven chips rather than real chips.

We also speculated on the fact that while Wetherspoon's is now a very big chain, one never sees Wetherspoon's trucks. They must get all their suppliers to deliver direct to their houses, rather than operating their own distribution depots - no doubt some management type has thought long and hard about all this. My subsequent attempt on my telephone to find out about ready made lasagne portions which might suit Wetherspoon's failed completely: I was able to find a number of outfits which were into ready meals, but none of them were up for supplying any details to my telephone. To be investigated in slower time. Further speculations about the sort of reception that would be put on for the visits of the buyer from Wetherspoon's. Bigger and better than that put on for the buyers from Waitrose or Tesco? Or do restaurants not use the same suppliers as shops?

The Wetherspoon's menu, presumably a nationwide thing, managed a short paragraph about the origins of this particular establishment, once a fancy shop and taken over by Wetherspoon's after a fire. A shop with the gunmetal shop window frames still sported by a number of the shops in this once posh street. And, in this case, with cylindrically curved glass at the corners, visible left in the illustration taken from gmaps streetview below, not something that shops of today would run to.

S Fowler & Co.

I had thought that Ryde was a patriotic town, very hot on whichever royal had made in fashionable back in the first half of the nineteenth century and that Union Street was named for the union of England and Scotland. In the margins of this outing, I learned that this was quite wrong and that it was named for the union of the villages of Upper and Lower Ryde, which this rather steep street joined together. I must now investigate the origins of the union streets of London and Plymouth. This last being the merest shadow of what it once was.

The shelter

The rather grand shelter provided for the young people who were too young to be let into Wetherspoon's or who were too short of funds. Sometimes quite busy, and we did not have the nerve to find out what they were busy about.

Reference 1: http://www.theboathouseiow.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.jdwetherspoon.com/pubs/all-pubs/england/isle-of-wight/s-fowler--co-ryde.

Back home

Having eaten out for the last few days, it was good to get home to some real food this lunchtime. Eating out is all fine and dandy, but the food is apt to be rather rich and, after a while, no match for plain home cooking.

So this lunchtime it was white pudding again, on this occasion served with boiled potatoes and boiled white cabbage. Potatoes from Sainsbury's, white cabbage from the Costcutter up the road, white pudding from the butcher up the road and extra virgin rape seed oil from Waitrose. Very good it all was too, with the 500g of pudding doing the two of us just nicely. And just fitting in the frying pan.

With the apples mentioned at reference 2 to round things off. Now starting to taste a little riper, lost their first crispness, but still good.

PS: Costcutter also provided the second occasion of the day to help out an old lady blocking up the works by fumbling around in the bottom of her bag for coppers. Were they lonely and doing it for sport to see what happens?

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/second-communion.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/more-apples.html.

Words blocking thought

I have commented in the past on a particular weakness in the way that we make difficult and important decisions. See for example, references 2 and 3.

To recap, suppose we have to make a difficult decision about something, perhaps whether X or Y is the villain in some country house murder, or in some story by Simenon. We mull the thing over, mull over points for and against. Then all of a sudden we come to a decision, not a very consciously made decision, rather a light bulb moment, powered by something going on in the unconscious (UCS). But the UCS having made the decision for us, we then take it into consciousness by expressing it in words, publish it and hold to it against all comers for ever more. We grab all the evidence for the decision and fail to consider or even see all the evidence against, except perhaps evidence against which we are confident we have already rebutted. We only look in places where we are going to find evidence for.

This phenomenon is pervasive. With mathematicians one talks of so and so having good intuition. Some people have gut feelings. Some people like to sleep on problems and wake up to the solution. Government purchasing decisions, at least in my own modest experience, can also be the subject of light bulb moments. But all these feelings and moments are notoriously unreliable, and bigger organisations, particularly police forces and governments, have worked hard to keep them under control with process, governments being reinforced in this by their equally pervasive belief that it is process which enables them to extract silk purses from the ears of sows (see reference 7). Have a bit of process to support them and you really can get monkeys to type out a Shakespeare. So important decisions are subordinated to structured and transparent processes and process police are pushed into the foreground, often to the annoyance of the people who are hot on light bulbs.

Rather different is talking oneself, writing oneself or being talked into a decision. So one talks away and after a while one realises that one has expressed a decision without having consciously made it. But while one might go along with such a decision, one might stick with it, there is often a nagging sense that the internal logic of the words, the flow of the words has come to the wrong answer, without one being able to put one’s finger on quite what it is that is wrong with the logic. In this case at least, one is actually quite grateful to have some process to fall back on.

That aside, my point is that once we articulate a decision which has been made by the UCS in words, we lock on. Which might be good for getting the business of the moment carried through, but which does not always get one to the right place.

Against this background I was interested a few days ago to come across reference 1, a paper which was the work of a husband and wife team getting on for thirty years ago and which appears to have started life as the husband’s doctoral dissertation, a husband who is now a professor of psychological and brain sciences at the University of California, Santa Barbara.

This paper described some work testing aspects of the then prevalent theory that verbalising things helped to lock them down into memory. Quite a lot of space was given to discussing the work that had been done by others on visual and verbal aspects of visual memories, including the idea that this processing is both time and resource limited and that the brain has to decide about how to allocate resources between the various threads of processing, just in the way that a computer would. And maybe the brain thinks that using words about some image in memory is a lot quicker and easier than going back to the image itself, or whatever condensed version of the image has been retained.

I dare say that a lot of work has been done since on finding out at what level the brain tries to match features when it does face recognition. Does it do crude least squares matching at the level of pixels? Does it do stuff at a rather mathematical level, say estimating the geometry of facial features, say the distance between the point of the nose and the point of the chin or the distance between the two ear lobes? Does it do stuff at the level of the sort of features that can easily be described in words, things like the presence of blue eyes, ear rings, long hair or a bent nose? With the work reported at reference 5 and noticed at reference 6 suggesting that the answer, in the case of at least a couple of monkeys, neither of whom do words, is indeed rather mathematical.

However, the core of this much earlier paper is an account of six experiments, experiments which involved using possibly as many as hundreds of subjects, students from the University of Washington (the one at Seattle), students who were described as ‘who participated for course credit’. I suppose the not unreasonable idea is that one learns by participating.

The basic structure of the experiments was as follows:

• Show the subjects a short film, involving a face
• Pause
• Get one group of subjects to write a description of the face, get the other to do some unrelated activity
• Pause
• Test the ability of both groups of subjects to pick the original face out of a small collection of similar faces.

The basic result, tested and elaborated over the course of five experiments, was that verbalising the face made it harder to pick the first face out of a line-up up later.

Part of this was that where there where a face had easily verbalised cues – say a beard or a tattoo – which distinguished it from other faces in the line-up, then verbalising helped. But not otherwise. Somehow, the business of verbalising a visual memory seemed to be interfering with visual access to that memory later.

There was a sixth experiment (actually third in sequence) which did something similar for colours, another area where peoples’ recollections are very unreliable.

So there is something going at this more basic level which nicely reflects the problem with which I started. With verbalising the face taking the role of verbalising the light bulb moment.

PS: as it happens, at about the same time I happened to read a few pages about Cicero from the beginning of Trollope’s life (reference 4). Where I found a discussion of the relative merits of making one’s mind up and crashing on with it and those of swinging in the wind, drifting this way and that, honestly and reasonably unable to decide. With, on this story, the former being the way of both Julius and Augustus Caesar, the latter that of Cicero. Perhaps the former were more prone to light bulb moments than the latter, who managed to keep an open mind for ever and ever. Of the three, only Augustus died in his bed, so there is no simple moral to be drawn.

References

Reference 1: Verbal overshadowing of visual memories: some things are better left unsaid – Schooler, J.W. and Engstler-Schooler, T.Y. – 1990.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/flou.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/10/a-choice.html.

Reference 4: The Life of Cicero, Volume One – Anthony Trollope – 1880.

Reference 5: The Code for Facial Identity in the Primate Brain – Le Chang and Doris Y. Tsao – 2017. Open access.

Reference 6: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/06/reading-minds-of-monkeys.html.

Reference 7: https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-1-4020-8427-0_21.

Bath taps

One of the minor irritations of travelling is the way in which every hotel seems to have its own way of doing its bath taps. At every new hotel one has to learn how to work the bath all over again, sometimes getting scalded in the process. With the present hotel in Ryde, on the Isle of Wight, having particularly unusual bath taps.

Against which background it is unfortunate that we are pulling out of the EU, and hotels in the UK will not have to comply with the Bath Taps Directive which is being cooked up by the Commission's Executive Agency for Consumers, Health, Agriculture and Food, under the supervision of the Directorate General for Health and Food Safety. Commissioner Andriukaitis (a former heart surgeon from Lithuania) is on the case. At least he understands the benefits of standardisation, for example the benefits that the standard 13 amp plug, as used here in the UK, might have brought to the world, had the standards people been a bit quicker off the blocks.

Perhaps our Foreign Secretary always has an aide going on ahead to get the hang of the bath taps at his hotels before he turns up, with the result that he has never had to bother his head about them.