Being now on the second reading of 'Au Rendez-Vous-des-Terres-Neuvas', I came across a new-to-me bit of trawler jargon this morning, a patron pêcheur. Literally the chap in charge of the fishing and out of context one might have thought the captain or skipper of a fishing boat, fisherman for short, but in this context it seems to be the chap in charge of the trawl, a position subordinate to that of captain of the trawler. Perhaps 'trawl master' would be a good translation. But a translation which reference 2 does not recognise, even when I get the right accent on the fish bit. Wrong accent and I get rather poor results.
Simenon also suggests - and I dare say he knew - that the deep-sea trawlers of his day - say the early 1930s - were rough places where the captain, on occasion, might need to get out his revolver to calm his crew down a bit. This making a captain a tough customer: I would not care to have to face down an angry crew on a trawler in the middle of the Atlantic, with or without a revolver. With my own understanding being that Hull was a rough enough place, with all its trawlermen, in the 50s and 60s.
I was also prompted to look up patron, a word with a boss flavour in French, but more of a client flavour in English. OED did the full business on this occasion, with three columns on 'patron' itself and as much again on various relatives. A word with all kinds of interesting meanings, with the common client meaning occupying just a couple of lines at meaning I/3c - in a list of meanings which goes on to V/12c. While from Larousse I learn that half patron, patron and full patron are three sizes of top hat.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/deck-chairs.html.
Reference 2: http://www.linguee.fr/francais-anglais/search?source=auto&query=patron+p%C3%AAcheur.
Sunday, 31 July 2016
Trolley 46
And after that, according to TB, a place where the Civil Defence people played war games amid the rubble & ruins during the Cold War. Also a splendid place for the local children.
Trolley 45
To add interest, I took the trolley back to Sainsbury's via the foot bridge over the railway between Epsom Coaches and West Street. Getting it over the bridge was a touch awkward, but one got the hand of the necessary action soon enough.
At Sainsbury's, I thought to be helpful by telling the trolley jockey that this one had been in a stream and that it might be an idea to wipe the pond weed off the front of the basket before a customer got to it. The jockey seemed rather frightened of me, never mind about replying, or even acknowledging my presence. I thought sub-normal rather than foreign. So good for Sainsbury's for giving him house room.
The first for two months.
Madeira cake
We had a roulard - a rather splendid sort of cream cheese version of a slice of Swiss roll - to keep us going in the car and an almond flavoured Madeira cake for the main business. Very good it was too, taken with a little Sauvignon Blanc, from Dog Point in New Zealand.
Note the double cardboard underneath, apt to foil the unwary server and intended, so BH thought, to allow a neat job to be done with the icing glaze. Note also the flatness of the cake, only obtained by slicing off the humps natural to cake baking - a slicing which has caused some home friction in the past, with me being firmly in the no-slicing camp, particularly in the case of something like a fruit cake where there is only one hump to contend with. In this case, however, I grant the necessity.
The first time that we have visited this shop, in so far as can be told from the blog record, for more than four years. BH made the cake which prompted reference 2, but I am fairly sure that we bought another from Bachmann's shortly afterwards, it being one of their staples.
Reference 1: http://www.bachmanns.co.uk/.
Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=linzer+torte.
On the wisdom of general knowledge
My starting point on this occasion being wondering about the impact of google and the internet on the point of having lots of general knowledge. Or, put another way, what is the point of knowing lots of stuff when you can just ask google when you need to know? This being prompted by a question on some quiz program on afternoon television.
With general knowledge being defined as the sort of knowledge which half a century ago would have enabled the owner to participate in an intelligent conversation about the affairs of the day, perhaps as reported by the Manchester Guardian. Conversations which might have taken place in the hospital canteen, the staff room, the dining room or the local saloon bar; conversations which might be described as being of the middling sort: neither the high flown conversations of the seminar room or the board room nor those of the public bar. Possession of general knowledge was then regarded as important and some schools went to some trouble to impart it to their charges. Now it seems entirely likely that people with such knowledge might well do well at general knowledge quizzes – but then, so might people who have crammed for such quizzes without having much useful general knowledge at all. And google is very good at such quizzes, to the point where it is bad form to use your telephone when you are at one.
I think that in thinking about the impact of google on the value of having general knowledge, it would be helpful to be a bit clearer about what exactly general knowledge might amount to – and so, I look first at a sample of the questions which you might be asked in a general knowledge quiz.
What is the longest river in Africa?
With the name alone being of little value in itself. What might be more interesting would be collateral stuff like the actual length of the river, the length of Africa, the proportion of Africa occupied by the river valley in question, the length of other large rivers in Africa and the length of other large rivers in the world. The place of large rivers in the economy of the world. Knowledge of the name would be evidence of the possibility of knowledge of these other matters. It would also be an entry point to the wisdom contained in an encyclopaedia or that provided by google – although in this particular case you can just ask google the question (‘the longest river in africa’) and you very quickly get to the right answer – and to the collateral should you be interested.
Who was the prime minister (of the UK) who came immediately after Edward Heath?
When I was at school, some teachers used to get one to recite lists of kings, queens and prime ministers, and I can still do a reasonable job on the kings and queens of England, at least on those who came after the Conquest. Not so good on prime ministers, although with two of us on the case, we found that we could do the prime ministers from 1945. Knowledge of the name would be evidence of having gone to that sort of school and of having a serious interest in political history, to which one might expect knowledge of this sort to be incidental. But perhaps it is more than that, perhaps it is a way to organise one’s considerable knowledge: one can go through them in one’s mind, rehearsing the main points about each. Perhaps, thereby, prompting the unconscious to some interesting conclusion, interesting enough to use in some forthcoming lecture or paper. To my mind, this is the essence of thinking. You keep the conscious mind on the case in some routine, banal way, thereby giving the unconscious mind the space and opportunity to do something interesting. A something which, on a good day, pops into the conscious mind so that one can log it and subsequently put it to work.
Are the head of state and the head of government one and the same person in present-day Angola? Supplementary question: give the name, sex and approximate age of at least one of these persons.
A question which someone who is not Angolan and who is living in the UK is unlikely to be able to answer, except in the event of Angola being in the news for some reason or other. Not generally a matter of general knowledge. However, I ask google ‘angola head of state’, and I learn that the current head of state of Angola has just made his daughter the boss of the state oil corporation. From which we deduce that politics in Angola have not yet reached the heights of those in the western parts of Europe.
Name the courses in England which have hosted the UK open golf championships on any occasion since the start of that competition. Supplementary question: when was that and what was the occasion?
There are plenty of people about who have prodigious memories for special subjects of this sort. I can think of at least two such from my days of pub quizzes (they used to do rather good ones at the Tooting Mitre), one who was a wow on popular sport and another who was a wow on popular music. And if two such, specialising in the same subject, happen to get together, there may well be some competitive and entertaining banter about that subject, particularly if spirituous liquors have been served. The prodigious memories provide a peg on which to hang some general entertainment; they have served that purpose at the very least.
How many leap years have there been since the rumble in the jungle?
An interesting question in that it combines two strands. First you have to remember what, where and when the rumble in the jungle was. Second you have to remember how to distinguish leap years from other years and then to count them up on your fingers – fingers which would suffice in this case, assuming that is that your brain could cope with going around more than once.
How many steps are there on the main staircase leading up from the platform of Tooting Broadway underground station?
This question is interesting in different ways. First, there is no right answer, as the main staircase is an escalator, with the steps fading down to nothing both top and bottom. So what steps does one count? The question does not help on this point. Second, the only people who are going to be able to answer such a question, even approximately, are people like myself who use Tooting Broadway underground station reasonably regularly, who make a point of climbing the stairs and who are old and slow enough to count as they go. So even less like general knowledge than the river question, although even here one can think of interesting collateral. What is the distribution of the length of stairs and escalators in the underground train system of London? What do we know about the people who walk or even run, rather than ride? What about the show-offs who run up an escalator which is moving down? What about other countries? In this case google is only going to be helpful in the event of someone having made a study of such matters, perhaps in pursuit of some higher degree, a someone vain enough to publish the results of that study on the internet. (As it happens, google has pointed me at several such studies in the last week or so. Not of stairs, but of matters nearly as obscure).
So what can I deduce from all this?
I leave aside the question of the accuracy of the information supplied by google, beyond observing that I believe that in matters of this sort it is very accurate, particularly if you avoid the more chatty fora, hosting all-comers.
I leave aside the consideration that displaying general knowledge is more a way of showing off, of marking status than of helping the conversation along.
Instead, returning to my deduction, I think the question about prime ministers gives us a clue. Good general knowledge is not about memorising lists, it is about knowing how the world works, at least those parts of the world in which lots of sentient adults take an interest, in this case the post-war politics of the UK. And google, while a very useful supplement to such knowledge, is not a replacement – at least not yet. DeepMind is not that deep, despite its recent success at the game of Go. See reference 1.
So what do I need to be able to answer to a practical question like ‘is having the Crow as leader of the Labour Party helpful to the left-wing cause?’
Typing the question direct into google results in some confusion about which crow is meant, which is not unreasonable, my take on the leader’s name not having caught on (see reference 2). But it also turns up quite a lot of stuff, mostly from newspapers and magazines, some respectable, which is relevant and it seems likely that reading it would go to the practical question. One catch with this would be that it would be quite slow. Another would be the need to sort the wheat from the chaff. And yet another would be the passivity. In reading all this stuff there would be a tendency just to soak it all up and to end up agreeing with whatever one had read last, before falling asleep.
Maybe what general knowledge of the old sort is offering is some basis, some framework from which to judge others. The more you bring to the stuff turned up by google, the more you will take away from it. Much the same point as used to be made about going to see Shakespeare. It is also a sensible & helpful framework within which to generate your own thoughts and questions, perhaps in the way pointed to above. Maybe, even, an original thought. And if the framework is a reasonably shared framework, it can be the basis for collective thought and conversation, with such collective thought often being both an excellent spur to and a check on private thought. On a good day, the one complements the other – and again, not yet something that DeepMind can manage. I believe that it does do something of the sort in playing Go, being able to play itself, but that it not the same as being able to discuss the merits of the Crow.
But what if all that I want is the answer? I am not interested in the whys and wherefores; I have not got time to work it out for myself and I just want the answer to plug into something that I am doing, something that I am really interested in. In which case, I might look to google to provide the answer and, if I am being careful, something about the provenance of the answer. What about the credentials of the person supplying the answer? I might be satisfied by learning that the person had a number of university degrees and was very successful in his or her chosen career. I might be content to trust the opinion of such a person, a person with an entry in wikipedia, without further ado. A more direct approach would be to quiz the person in person about former prime ministers, to which end it would be easy enough to ask google about prime ministers and to come up with a few questions which would test those credentials; I would not need to know very much about politics at all to generate some impressive sounding questions. And general purpose interviewing technique & experience would enable me to judge the worth of the person from the way that he handled those questions, a judgement which should not be greatly disturbed by the fact that the person might have swatted up on this very sort of thing beforehand.
So where I think I have got to for the moment is that general knowledge and google knowledge are complementary; the two sorts of knowledge work together to deliver something greater than either of the parts. For the time being at least, humans and computers have complementary strengths and weaknesses. While being good at pub quizzes is evidence of good memory - but is not good evidence of general knowledge of a useful sort. It doesn’t make one an idiot savant but it does have tendencies in that direction.
A minor plus point of google is its reminder that knowing the names of all the rivers in the world, while a possibly impressive feat, does not serve any wider purpose, in the absence of knowledge about rivers. The name is a point of entry to that knowledge, but it is not the knowledge itself.
Reference 1: https://deepmind.com/.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/theres-hope-yet.html.
With general knowledge being defined as the sort of knowledge which half a century ago would have enabled the owner to participate in an intelligent conversation about the affairs of the day, perhaps as reported by the Manchester Guardian. Conversations which might have taken place in the hospital canteen, the staff room, the dining room or the local saloon bar; conversations which might be described as being of the middling sort: neither the high flown conversations of the seminar room or the board room nor those of the public bar. Possession of general knowledge was then regarded as important and some schools went to some trouble to impart it to their charges. Now it seems entirely likely that people with such knowledge might well do well at general knowledge quizzes – but then, so might people who have crammed for such quizzes without having much useful general knowledge at all. And google is very good at such quizzes, to the point where it is bad form to use your telephone when you are at one.
I think that in thinking about the impact of google on the value of having general knowledge, it would be helpful to be a bit clearer about what exactly general knowledge might amount to – and so, I look first at a sample of the questions which you might be asked in a general knowledge quiz.
What is the longest river in Africa?
With the name alone being of little value in itself. What might be more interesting would be collateral stuff like the actual length of the river, the length of Africa, the proportion of Africa occupied by the river valley in question, the length of other large rivers in Africa and the length of other large rivers in the world. The place of large rivers in the economy of the world. Knowledge of the name would be evidence of the possibility of knowledge of these other matters. It would also be an entry point to the wisdom contained in an encyclopaedia or that provided by google – although in this particular case you can just ask google the question (‘the longest river in africa’) and you very quickly get to the right answer – and to the collateral should you be interested.
Who was the prime minister (of the UK) who came immediately after Edward Heath?
When I was at school, some teachers used to get one to recite lists of kings, queens and prime ministers, and I can still do a reasonable job on the kings and queens of England, at least on those who came after the Conquest. Not so good on prime ministers, although with two of us on the case, we found that we could do the prime ministers from 1945. Knowledge of the name would be evidence of having gone to that sort of school and of having a serious interest in political history, to which one might expect knowledge of this sort to be incidental. But perhaps it is more than that, perhaps it is a way to organise one’s considerable knowledge: one can go through them in one’s mind, rehearsing the main points about each. Perhaps, thereby, prompting the unconscious to some interesting conclusion, interesting enough to use in some forthcoming lecture or paper. To my mind, this is the essence of thinking. You keep the conscious mind on the case in some routine, banal way, thereby giving the unconscious mind the space and opportunity to do something interesting. A something which, on a good day, pops into the conscious mind so that one can log it and subsequently put it to work.
Are the head of state and the head of government one and the same person in present-day Angola? Supplementary question: give the name, sex and approximate age of at least one of these persons.
A question which someone who is not Angolan and who is living in the UK is unlikely to be able to answer, except in the event of Angola being in the news for some reason or other. Not generally a matter of general knowledge. However, I ask google ‘angola head of state’, and I learn that the current head of state of Angola has just made his daughter the boss of the state oil corporation. From which we deduce that politics in Angola have not yet reached the heights of those in the western parts of Europe.
Name the courses in England which have hosted the UK open golf championships on any occasion since the start of that competition. Supplementary question: when was that and what was the occasion?
There are plenty of people about who have prodigious memories for special subjects of this sort. I can think of at least two such from my days of pub quizzes (they used to do rather good ones at the Tooting Mitre), one who was a wow on popular sport and another who was a wow on popular music. And if two such, specialising in the same subject, happen to get together, there may well be some competitive and entertaining banter about that subject, particularly if spirituous liquors have been served. The prodigious memories provide a peg on which to hang some general entertainment; they have served that purpose at the very least.
How many leap years have there been since the rumble in the jungle?
An interesting question in that it combines two strands. First you have to remember what, where and when the rumble in the jungle was. Second you have to remember how to distinguish leap years from other years and then to count them up on your fingers – fingers which would suffice in this case, assuming that is that your brain could cope with going around more than once.
How many steps are there on the main staircase leading up from the platform of Tooting Broadway underground station?
This question is interesting in different ways. First, there is no right answer, as the main staircase is an escalator, with the steps fading down to nothing both top and bottom. So what steps does one count? The question does not help on this point. Second, the only people who are going to be able to answer such a question, even approximately, are people like myself who use Tooting Broadway underground station reasonably regularly, who make a point of climbing the stairs and who are old and slow enough to count as they go. So even less like general knowledge than the river question, although even here one can think of interesting collateral. What is the distribution of the length of stairs and escalators in the underground train system of London? What do we know about the people who walk or even run, rather than ride? What about the show-offs who run up an escalator which is moving down? What about other countries? In this case google is only going to be helpful in the event of someone having made a study of such matters, perhaps in pursuit of some higher degree, a someone vain enough to publish the results of that study on the internet. (As it happens, google has pointed me at several such studies in the last week or so. Not of stairs, but of matters nearly as obscure).
So what can I deduce from all this?
I leave aside the question of the accuracy of the information supplied by google, beyond observing that I believe that in matters of this sort it is very accurate, particularly if you avoid the more chatty fora, hosting all-comers.
I leave aside the consideration that displaying general knowledge is more a way of showing off, of marking status than of helping the conversation along.
Instead, returning to my deduction, I think the question about prime ministers gives us a clue. Good general knowledge is not about memorising lists, it is about knowing how the world works, at least those parts of the world in which lots of sentient adults take an interest, in this case the post-war politics of the UK. And google, while a very useful supplement to such knowledge, is not a replacement – at least not yet. DeepMind is not that deep, despite its recent success at the game of Go. See reference 1.
So what do I need to be able to answer to a practical question like ‘is having the Crow as leader of the Labour Party helpful to the left-wing cause?’
Typing the question direct into google results in some confusion about which crow is meant, which is not unreasonable, my take on the leader’s name not having caught on (see reference 2). But it also turns up quite a lot of stuff, mostly from newspapers and magazines, some respectable, which is relevant and it seems likely that reading it would go to the practical question. One catch with this would be that it would be quite slow. Another would be the need to sort the wheat from the chaff. And yet another would be the passivity. In reading all this stuff there would be a tendency just to soak it all up and to end up agreeing with whatever one had read last, before falling asleep.
Maybe what general knowledge of the old sort is offering is some basis, some framework from which to judge others. The more you bring to the stuff turned up by google, the more you will take away from it. Much the same point as used to be made about going to see Shakespeare. It is also a sensible & helpful framework within which to generate your own thoughts and questions, perhaps in the way pointed to above. Maybe, even, an original thought. And if the framework is a reasonably shared framework, it can be the basis for collective thought and conversation, with such collective thought often being both an excellent spur to and a check on private thought. On a good day, the one complements the other – and again, not yet something that DeepMind can manage. I believe that it does do something of the sort in playing Go, being able to play itself, but that it not the same as being able to discuss the merits of the Crow.
But what if all that I want is the answer? I am not interested in the whys and wherefores; I have not got time to work it out for myself and I just want the answer to plug into something that I am doing, something that I am really interested in. In which case, I might look to google to provide the answer and, if I am being careful, something about the provenance of the answer. What about the credentials of the person supplying the answer? I might be satisfied by learning that the person had a number of university degrees and was very successful in his or her chosen career. I might be content to trust the opinion of such a person, a person with an entry in wikipedia, without further ado. A more direct approach would be to quiz the person in person about former prime ministers, to which end it would be easy enough to ask google about prime ministers and to come up with a few questions which would test those credentials; I would not need to know very much about politics at all to generate some impressive sounding questions. And general purpose interviewing technique & experience would enable me to judge the worth of the person from the way that he handled those questions, a judgement which should not be greatly disturbed by the fact that the person might have swatted up on this very sort of thing beforehand.
So where I think I have got to for the moment is that general knowledge and google knowledge are complementary; the two sorts of knowledge work together to deliver something greater than either of the parts. For the time being at least, humans and computers have complementary strengths and weaknesses. While being good at pub quizzes is evidence of good memory - but is not good evidence of general knowledge of a useful sort. It doesn’t make one an idiot savant but it does have tendencies in that direction.
A minor plus point of google is its reminder that knowing the names of all the rivers in the world, while a possibly impressive feat, does not serve any wider purpose, in the absence of knowledge about rivers. The name is a point of entry to that knowledge, but it is not the knowledge itself.
Reference 1: https://deepmind.com/.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/theres-hope-yet.html.
Saturday, 30 July 2016
Brave Borderer
Earlier in the month I had occasion to think of inshore patrol vessels at reference 1. Today I am prompted by the news on the front page of the DT to think of them again.
I wonder if all those UKIP types who want to stem the tide of foreigners, are wondering whether we might not have done better to build a few more of them, rather than punting most of our naval budget on huge submarines - one of which has managed to crash into a cargo ship near Gibraltar? Those UKIP types that is, other than the Kentish ones who are cashing in with their rubber boats. I wonder also how all these starving foreigners come to have so much fare-money about their persons.
Surely national disaster Corbyn doesn't have a point about Trident and value for money after all?
PS: oddly the news item which provided the core of the DT's front page news this morning is not to be found on their web site, but it is to be found on the BBC web site. But in my perambulations, I was pleased to come across Kingston Mouldings (see reference 2). A relic of our glory days as a manufacturing country.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/model-boats.html.
Reference 2: http://www.kingstonmouldings.co.uk/pdhmsbrave.htm.
I wonder if all those UKIP types who want to stem the tide of foreigners, are wondering whether we might not have done better to build a few more of them, rather than punting most of our naval budget on huge submarines - one of which has managed to crash into a cargo ship near Gibraltar? Those UKIP types that is, other than the Kentish ones who are cashing in with their rubber boats. I wonder also how all these starving foreigners come to have so much fare-money about their persons.
Surely national disaster Corbyn doesn't have a point about Trident and value for money after all?
PS: oddly the news item which provided the core of the DT's front page news this morning is not to be found on their web site, but it is to be found on the BBC web site. But in my perambulations, I was pleased to come across Kingston Mouldings (see reference 2). A relic of our glory days as a manufacturing country.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/model-boats.html.
Reference 2: http://www.kingstonmouldings.co.uk/pdhmsbrave.htm.
Roman beans
Group search key: rva.
Faking it
A device which goes back at least to the Greeks and the trim around the tops of their temples, but one which they pulled off rather better.
Group search key: rva.
Woodwork
Group search key: rva.
Friday, 29 July 2016
Roman villa
Some of the masks had been reconstructed from the real things from cunning photographs with a 3D printer, a method of exhibition I had not come across before.
One display suggested that acting in masks has been part of actor training in the west, being seen as a device to force the trainee actor to use his body and move, rather than just rely on the face, important though this last is as a vehicle of expression, part of our repertoire since we were mere monkeys.
Masks used in Greek plays, for much of the classical era, seemingly particularly associated with Menander. Rather stereotyped, in the way of the Commedia dell’Arte masks (see below), but with a suggestion that the expression of the mask might depend on the angle from which it was seen – which could be controlled by the actor to some extent. I got the impression that most of the masks on display were made to some well-known and long-standing pattern. Not a lot of free-lancing going on.
Masks used in Commedia dell’Arte. Often made of leather, perhaps only covering the upper part of the face, the nose and eyes, with some of the tools involved on display.
Masks used in the Japanese No theatre. Usually made of wood, with some of the tools on display, together with one mask (of a young woman) being shown in various stages of construction.
Masks from Mexico, Africa (I think), Korea and Indonesia (Java). Some of the Mexican ones had moving eyes or eyelids. Some helmet masks, but I forget from where they came.
All in all, a good show, something to draw one back to the Villa, something which one might otherwise pass on, there being a limit to the interest one can take in a villa, however stunningly presented. A show which left one pondering, as such a show should, about the place of such masks in the world. Going further, about the role of stereotypes more generally. The place of a stereotyped, caricatured character in serious drama. Or in not so serious drama, say in Marple, Lewis or Midsomer. With the thought that perhaps an actor nudging at the boundaries of the stereotype he is temporarily inhabiting is not so different from other artists nudging at the rules of their particular games. Perhaps, for example, the rules of harmony.
Investigating afterwards, I find that the outfit at reference 1 do indeed offer a travelling show, which you can take into your museum, stately home or whatever for a small number of thousands of pounds. A show which has been trundling around the country from some years. Which seems like a very good idea: one often reads of museums having lots of stuff in their basements which they do not have room to show, so packaging it up so that others can is a winner for everybody. And for those whose interest in masks has really taken off there is the thesis at reference 2. Possibly also of interest to those who learned the word ‘praxis’ in their student days. A word which used to be bandied about by theoreticians of the left.
PS: checking this morning, I was pleased to find that the word ‘Jung’ does get several mentions at reference 2. I was not the only one to make that particular link.
Reference 1: http://www.maskandpuppet.co.uk/collections/.
Reference 2: http://theses.gla.ac.uk/3942/1/2004KnightPhD.pdf.
Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/roman-villa.html.
Group search key: rva.
Classic car
Still plenty of them to be seen around Newquay, often rather curiously resprayed, particularly when there is some serious surfing action, but not so common here in Epsom.
Thursday, 28 July 2016
Deck chairs
She spends her day on the beach on a fauteuil transatlantique with red stripes, while he spends his day snuffling around the Rendez-Vous-des-Terres-Neuvas in search of a murderer.
Eventually I arrive at the notion that she was sitting on the sort of chair that used to be supplied to the better class of passenger, those allowed on deck, on transatlantic liners, in other words a fancy phrase for a sea-side deck chair. Took me a while.
But, just to be sure that it was not some special kind of deck chair, I then go off to the dictionary noticed at reference 1, where my notion is confirmed. And where I am taken off to what seems to be some German patent site where we have a diagram of a deck chair which can be converted into a sun bed. As it happens, we used to have something not so different when I was a child, but I think the idea then was to have an easy chair which could be converted into a single bed. Wonderful thing to play with as a child, but I do not recall it ever being used as a bed.
While I am at it, I also check up on Terres-Neuvas, which I had thought was some old word for Newfoundland, despite it not fitting into the name of the café very well. Very sloppy. It turns out that Terre-Neuve is the word for Newfoundland while Terres-Neuvas is the name of the fishermen from Brittany who used to summer there for the cod fishing, which makes much more sense. Also the name of the odd street in Brittany. Also mixed up with those islands just off the south coast of Newfoundland which still belong to France. Good to be reminded that we're not the only people with colonial anachronisms in our portfolio.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/briar.html.
Wednesday, 27 July 2016
Pay
On the one hand, we pillory the chap who extracted £500m from a dying chain of shops and then walked away from the corpse.
On the other, we have a chappess who is not in the pillory, but who took £100m (say) from a sick technology company (Yahoo) in pay and benefits and who will probably now be invited to spend more time with her family.
Both of these characters spent something under 5 years with their charges, although I suspect that the chappess worked a bit harder at trying to put some life back into hers.
The chap actually owned his company, while the chappess was - still is for the moment - a senior employee. It was not her money in the game, just her reputation.
The shareholders at the sick technology company were probably content to bung someone a lot of money in the possibly forlorn hope of that someone bringing some life to the price of their shares. They thought that it was worth taking the chance that one well paid person might add serious value to a serious problem. What else could they do?
On the other hand, the lady in question was probably already very rich, at least by the standards of suburban Epsom. She was not that unhappy spending more time with her family, or her dahlias or whatever. But she neither was she that averse to going back to a high status job for a salary which would put her firmly among the movers and shakers. It was probably not the money itself which moved her, rather the prestige and status which came with it, with it being known that she was one of the highest paid executives in the land. And she rather liked the idea of swanning around the town in a corporate helicopter with a lot of pretty Ivy League flunkies to fawn on her. Not so unlike our own queen in her prime. Or her own president.
All of which leaves me in rather a muddle. I think the world has got it roughly right, with the chap in the pillory and the chappess not. But I still find it a bit distasteful that she was paid so much.
PS: I wonder if she likes to be seen at church every Sunday - rather in the way of queens and presidents.
On the other, we have a chappess who is not in the pillory, but who took £100m (say) from a sick technology company (Yahoo) in pay and benefits and who will probably now be invited to spend more time with her family.
Both of these characters spent something under 5 years with their charges, although I suspect that the chappess worked a bit harder at trying to put some life back into hers.
The chap actually owned his company, while the chappess was - still is for the moment - a senior employee. It was not her money in the game, just her reputation.
The shareholders at the sick technology company were probably content to bung someone a lot of money in the possibly forlorn hope of that someone bringing some life to the price of their shares. They thought that it was worth taking the chance that one well paid person might add serious value to a serious problem. What else could they do?
On the other hand, the lady in question was probably already very rich, at least by the standards of suburban Epsom. She was not that unhappy spending more time with her family, or her dahlias or whatever. But she neither was she that averse to going back to a high status job for a salary which would put her firmly among the movers and shakers. It was probably not the money itself which moved her, rather the prestige and status which came with it, with it being known that she was one of the highest paid executives in the land. And she rather liked the idea of swanning around the town in a corporate helicopter with a lot of pretty Ivy League flunkies to fawn on her. Not so unlike our own queen in her prime. Or her own president.
All of which leaves me in rather a muddle. I think the world has got it roughly right, with the chap in the pillory and the chappess not. But I still find it a bit distasteful that she was paid so much.
PS: I wonder if she likes to be seen at church every Sunday - rather in the way of queens and presidents.
Crab
Back for lunch at another successful seaside eatery, the 'Lifeboat View Café, housed in what amounted to a large, pretty shed with lots of windows and doing well enough to run to a team of young lady waitresses. Rock cake to start, to keep me going, followed by crab sandwiches. Very good, but I made the mistake of ordering a portion of chips to supplement the sandwiches, when, as it turned out, I would have done better to have two sandwiches.
After which it was the turn of the south beach, different from, but as good as the north beach. Sundry swifts, swallows and egrets to supplement the seagulls, crows and pigeons. One horse and one very badly behaved dog, the owners of which did not seem to have a clue. The second example of a badly behaved dog on a beach.
Stopped off at the Bembridge church on the way home, built in the early nineteenth century and where I was struck by the memorial illustrated above, it being unusual, in my experience at least, to have a first world war memorial for an individual, albeit an officer in a crack regiment, decorated in this way. I wondered what the standing of the flag was, looking, as it did, very like the sort of thing hung up in cathedrals or regimental museums.
Group search key: bmc.
Shells
Group search key: bmc.
Mud
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Art opportunity
There must be plenty of artists about who would be able to make something of them - with either brush, burin or telephone. Even the humble pencil. They can't all be doing performance art all of the time.
Note the crumbling gravel cliffs behind.
Group search key: bmc.
The other sea mark
PS: the first sea mark being that on Ashey Down, noticed on various occasions in the past.
Group search key: bmc
Tuesday, 26 July 2016
St. Helen's
St. Helen's also boasted a good second-hand bookshop with interesting stock, but showing signs of being overwhelmed by stock, with a lot of it piled on the floor or in boxes. We made several purchases, certainly including a new-to-me but old Everyman edition of War & Peace, having been irritated the the translation of the vernacular in the new translation at home. A 1958 reprint of an 1886 translation; oddly, a translation which has sold many copies over the years, but which is anonymous. Maybe google knows
Next door tea & cake shop closed, but we found we could still buy same in the Post Office cum corner shop across the way. All very quaint.
PS: telephone struggling with the focus here. Perhaps the depth of focus needed to get a good snap here was beyond it. Or perhaps I was not holding it right.
Group search key: bmc.
Rude
While I can understand that being pestered by uninvited traders trying to sell things is a nuisance, particularly as one gets on in years and getting from the armchair to the front door is a serious matter, not to be undertaken frequently or lightly, this notice struck me as rather loud and unpleasant. Not something which added to the tone of the place.
Perhaps the occupant of the house was old and fed up and could not think of any other way to respond. Any more than we can think of any way to respond to the rising tide of uninvited phone calls from call centres which mostly sound as if they are in India or somewhere even further east and which are thinking up ever more tricky ways to sound as if they have some good reason to phone you up - which they don't.
Call centres which have perhaps been set up, perfectly legally, by some relative of Sir. P. Green.
Nuts 3
From where we loop back to the Vaughan Williams of reference 2 and his memorial library at reference 1, where searching for 6308 delivers a dozen or more versions of the song in question, one of which is reproduced left.
Vaughan Williams seems to have been popping up a lot recently, so perhaps someone is trying to tell me something.
Perhaps also I should be consulting Frazer on the significance of the cob nut as a fertility symbol in the ancient and other worlds. Except that Mr. Sod will no doubt rule that nuts are dealt with in one of the volumes that I do not have.
Reference 1: http://www.vwml.org.uk/.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/back-to-st-lukes.html.
Groups search key: hna.
Monday, 25 July 2016
Nuts 2
Group search key: hna.
Nuts 1
There could not have been much inside, but I imagine that there must have been something for the squirrels to be so thorough. Perhaps they like immature nuts - rather in the way that we like immature beans and immature rape in salad.
Whatever the case, they have been in the tree on most mornings since our return, just to make sure there are none left for us on St. Crispin's day, the 14th October, the traditional start of the nut season and, as it happens, the day of the patron saint of the long bow. At least that is what I had thought, but it seems to be yet another case of my memory playing tricks on me.
I can trace no association of St. Crispin and nuts, with his martyrdom involving mill stones rather than nuts. The best I can do is St. Philbert's day, the 20th August, in the middle of the nut season in France, with nuts ripening on that day being called filberts rather than cobs. Second best is Holy Cross day, the 14th September, a traditional day for nutting in Elizabethan England. With Agincourt being on the 25th October.
So one can see how I came to be wrong, but I had rather have been right.
The only good news is that I have learned that at about the same time of year it was customary for courting couples to put a cluster of good looking cob nuts into a small fire. If the nuts burned together quietly, all was going to be well. But if the nuts, in burning, burst apart, the union was like to be discordant.
Group search key: hna.
Anthem
Although I do have to confess that while I remembered the tune more or less correctly, I have become rather shaky on the words. Worse still, I had conflated the red flag with the internationale. Nor do I know what the panda skins are about, nor do I know who Harry Caine is. Perhaps for panda skins I needed to have read the previous few days' strips, but I don't suppose I will ever know now.
But I do know now, thanks to wikipedia, that the tune started life as a 16th century Silesian folk song. Then part of Germany but now part of Poland.
Wildlife
Up this morning to find a large bee buzzing around the inside of the kitchen window, maybe an inch long. Not a regular honey bee or a regular bumblebee. Not a wasp or a hornet.Out with the telephone to find that it struggled. It could not cope with buzzing and the bee could not cope with not buzzing, so it took a quite a few goes to get as good as this - and even now the detail of the body is lost.
Probably coincidentally, the desktop then proceeded to struggle when I loaded the pictures up, and continued to struggle for as long as the telephone was plugged in. Maybe it was trying to do something clever, to retrieve a better picture from the around 5Mb of enriched jpg - rather less, I might say, than the 25Mb it sometimes clocks up - for a single snap that is. From where I associate to the days when I had to attend a very serious review meeting with no less a personage than a deputy secretary in the chair to get permission to spend maybe £20,000 on maybe 60Mb worth of disc units... I don't think those numbers are quite right, but they do give the right idea. See reference 1 for more of the same.
Bee propelled out of the window with the washing up bowl.
Reference 1: http://royal.pingdom.com/2010/02/18/amazing-facts-and-figures-about-the-evolution-of-hard-disk-drives/.
Sunday, 24 July 2016
Sausages
Our second meal on return from holiday was sausages. That is to say 'Top Table' sausages from Tesco's, their version, I think, of 'Taste the Difference' from Sainsbury's, mashed potatoes and lightly boiled crinkly cabbage, this last being a summer version of the ever popular Savoy cabbage, good stuff but easy to over cook. And a very good meal it was too.
While when away from home, for example in the dining area of a public house on the Isle of Wight, if one wants sausages and mash, one is unlikely to be offered cabbage at all, but one will get lashings of a dark brown gravy poured all over, maybe a quarter of a pint or more of the stuff. A gravy which seems to involve some kind of red fruit, some brown sugar and some E-numbers. If one remembered, I dare say the better places could give you the gravy in the jug - but with the downside that you would then find out that the mashed potatoes were not very good. They might even be persuaded to omit the drizzles of the other brown goo all over the margins of the plate, a brown goo which I think might be balsamic vinegar.
A further reminder of the difficulty that public eating houses have in matching the quality to be found in the better private ones.
But all that said, sausages and mash are a fairly safe bet when out; one knows what one is likely to get. So I must work on remembering to ask for the gravy in a jug.
While when away from home, for example in the dining area of a public house on the Isle of Wight, if one wants sausages and mash, one is unlikely to be offered cabbage at all, but one will get lashings of a dark brown gravy poured all over, maybe a quarter of a pint or more of the stuff. A gravy which seems to involve some kind of red fruit, some brown sugar and some E-numbers. If one remembered, I dare say the better places could give you the gravy in the jug - but with the downside that you would then find out that the mashed potatoes were not very good. They might even be persuaded to omit the drizzles of the other brown goo all over the margins of the plate, a brown goo which I think might be balsamic vinegar.
A further reminder of the difficulty that public eating houses have in matching the quality to be found in the better private ones.
But all that said, sausages and mash are a fairly safe bet when out; one knows what one is likely to get. So I must work on remembering to ask for the gravy in a jug.
Thatch
Note also the hoist which has been installed over one of the windows, in the style of an Amsterdam town house. A hoist which in this country is more properly associated with London warehouses and Provincial hay lofts - which last has been absent from this building for a long time, if there was ever one at all.
Group search key: wwb.
Waxworks
But the point of the post is that somewhere along the way the building acquired a handsome thatch roof, some half timbering and a lot of white paint. Plus a rather lurid figurehead attached to the corner of the building, poking out over the sidewalk. A pink lady, with yellow hair and naked to the navel; presumably once an ornament to one of his or her majesty's ships.
Google a little behind the game on this occasion, with the streetview picture at 50.681884, -1.143293 showing the building, now known as the Rectory Mansion, in an intermediate condition.
Perhaps we need those building detective people from afternoon TV to give it the once over to determine the exact sequence of events.
Group search key: wwb.
Saturday, 23 July 2016
Keat's Kitchen
Took a look at Daish's Hotel over the road, which had caught our eye on previous visits, but which turned out to be an establishment which mainly catered to coach parties, with coaches, as google now tells us, being very much a part of the Daish empire.
So back across the road to 'Keat's Cottage', a place which BH had noticed in magazines. A place which rather fancied itself, but which did us quite well.
Started off well by being able to offer us a gewürztraminer, or at least something involving that sort of grape. An excellent crab starter, essentially a dollup of white crabby stuff with a few light trimmings. But I came unstuck with the main course, a crab linguini ('crab and prawn linguini in a creamy garlic sauce served with fresh salad'), which was substantial but which was far too rich and saucy for me: I like my linguini to be pasta, a few bits and pieces, the whole only very lightly dressed. I should have been warned off by the qualifier 'creamy'. Nevertheless, despite all the creamy, I thought I would give an interesting sounding cake a try for dessert, but this turned out to be rather too damp for my taste. Possibly involving polenta.
The bread was entirely ordinary, appearing to have been bought sliced. Which I thought odd for a place which clearly thought it was the business.
Brandy satisfactory, from Rémy Martin.
BH did rather better with her 'pan-fried fillet of seabass with rosti potato, asparagus, green beans, carrots and homemade hollandaise sauce', although she did say that she thought that she did a better job on rosti.
Just caught the train home, with the rather pleasant and relaxed attitude of this part of Southwest Trains serving us well on this occasion. Plus there was a young Polish couple with a very cute baby - I no longer remember the sex - who were able to provide in-train entertainment.
PS: I was convinced that the proprietor was the chap who played the struggling antique dealer in Morse's 'Dead on Time', David Haig, a stalwart of ITV3 drama. But while the proprietor is also called David, I think I am now sure that he is not the same person, not least because his wife is Polish. They do occasional evenings with more continental food and I am sure we would support them if we lived nearby.
Illustration provided by google, of what the place was before it was a restaurant. There is a real connection with the poet, with an estate agent through which the property went when it was still a gift shop having this to say: 'John Keats stayed and wrote at 'Keats Cottage' in the room named 'Keats Room' for 3 months in the summer of 1819, completing works such as Otho the Great, parts of Lamia and some of his famous odes'. While wikipedia says that Otho was badly mauled by the critics and languished in a drawer for more than a hundred years, but the estate agent does not go into that.
Reference 1: https://www.keatscottage.co.uk/.
Group search key: mka.
Mikado
The theatre turns out to be a rather large place, probably seating around 700 people - 500 down and 200 up although the audience on this Saturday matinée was perhaps getting on for a 100, probably including a fair number of friends & family. A leaflet explained that the theatre, then called the institute, was first built in 1879, then rebuilt after a fire in 1934. It did well for maybe 25 years, with a regular summer repertory company, concerts, dances and amateur offerings in the winter. Handed over to a community trust in 2013, which is keeping the place turning over, if not full. Rather in the way, I think of the huge lido at Balham - and the hey-day of which was probably much the same as that of this theatre.
The occasion was a semi-staged performance of the Mikado from the Island Savoyards, a format which I have not seen before, but which we thought did very well - with the lead singers doing very well - if helped along a bit by a sound system. Although if one had not seen the apparatus - the head mikes, the loudspeakers at the front and the control panel at the back - I think the only give away for me would have been the volume. It was a big old theatre for an amateur voice.
All the leads were good but Andrew Wilson-Jenner deserves a special mention as the Lord High Executioner, lately of the Astwood Bank Operatic Society of Redditch. See reference 3. It also seems likely that he was once the owner of Carousel Costumes about which I read, thanks to google: '... Here is a great opportunity to lay your hands on quality costumes for upcoming performances this autumn. Due to the retirement of its owner Andrew Wilson-Jenner, Carousel Costumes is putting its 20,000 plus theatrical costumes up for auction this September. The company, which is based in Leamington Spa and was opened in 1990, has dressed thousands of actors and celebrities and has benefited from Andrew’s experience working in the Royal Opera House wardrobe departments. Included in the auction are the very boots worn by Errol Flynn in the 1938 film The Adventures of Robin Hood, plus lots of other collectable costumes'.
Further special mentions for the orchestra - presumably mainly made up of local music teachers - the wardrobe department and the ladies chorus. The vaguely Japanese costumes - complete with top hats for some of the men - did very well indeed. And moving across the Pacific, the rather Aztec - or at least ancient Mexican - looking costume for the Mikado was great. Maybe all something to do with the Carousel Costumes mentioned above. While the ladies chorus was not only splendidly dressed and made up - they also moved and sang well. All in all, much more satisfactory than the vastly more expensive modern dress version which we saw at Sadlers Wells - see reference 2 for my notice at the time.
Overall, the best Mikado we have seen yet, amateur or professional.
PS: the illustration is nothing to do with the Mikado itself, but is taken from the web site of a Bembridge voice trainer who advertised in the programme. There may,of course, be some connection. See reference 1.
Reference 1: http://www.vocal-chords.co.uk/.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/nanki-poo.html.
Reference 3: http://astwoodbankoperatic.co.uk/dev/wordpress/.
Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/the-mikado-visits-leatherhead.html.
Group search key: mka.
Sea mark
A few days later I found that the sea mark was not visible from Bembridge Down, so perhaps the mark was intended for the use of shipping entering the Solent (from the east).
Not visible in the this snap is the unusual shape of the sea mark, eschewing both symmetry and right angles. We continue to wonder whether the builder had had some run in the with the Masons and was having a pop at them, with the early eighteenth century date being about right for such a stunt.
Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=triangular+tapering.
Group search key: mka.
Brading beans
Skirted the woods and emerged into the open behind Nunwell House, and pushed on to find three fine fields of broad beans, one of which is included left and is to be found at gmaps 50.683022, -1.169637. Slightly puzzled by the small size of the beans, as I think mine would have been harvested by now. Perhaps they are grown as a fodder crop.
On past the beans, through the gate and turned right up the hill (behind the trees top left on the snap above), skirting a field of something grainy which had not long been cut. Slightly puzzled by what it might have been, the wheat round about looking some weeks off being ready for harvest.
But rewarded at the top of the hill by the sight of the Ashey Down sea mark a couple of fields away. A winter close up is to be found at reference 1.
PS: not much carex pendula to be found on this route. But I was to find a good specimen a couple of days later. See reference 2.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/tweet-tweet.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/carex.html.
Group search key: mka.
Help
From time to time I moan about the poor quality of the help which comes with many consumer software and computer products.
So I have been pleased with my good experience this week with the Microsoft Community (reference 1). For a site that must soak up a lot of complaints, queries and problems from around the world, they did very well with my OneNote problem.
A pain that one sometimes has problems with Microsoft products, but this part of their support operation is good.
Reference 1: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us.
So I have been pleased with my good experience this week with the Microsoft Community (reference 1). For a site that must soak up a lot of complaints, queries and problems from around the world, they did very well with my OneNote problem.
A pain that one sometimes has problems with Microsoft products, but this part of their support operation is good.
Reference 1: http://answers.microsoft.com/en-us.
Model boats
Sadly, since the Guardian published their piece and despite launch-aid from the Royal Navy, the model went aground on Chesil Beach. See references 1 and 2.
I think that the illustration shows the track from launch until tracking malfunction.
PS: the Royal Navy was visible during our stay on the Isle of Wight, taking the form of an occasional frigate, or perhaps something smaller. Do they still do corvettes? One was even small enough to have been some kind of inshore patrol vessel. The name 'Brave Borderer' springs to mind, a boat which is long gone, but which in its day could clock up an impressive 50 knots - with its gas turbine engines being the naval wonder of that day.
Reference 1: http://www.epsom-stem.org.uk/.
Reference 2: http://www.tsogpss.co.uk.gridhosted.co.uk/rbepsom1.htm.
Friday, 22 July 2016
Flower
Perhaps if I got cracking with Photoshop I could get it up to her standard. Getting rid of the wire might an instructive preliminary. Would she, I wonder, have approved?
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/unknown.html.
Group search key: bmb.
Morton's last stand
Group search key: bmb.
Abandoned posts
One of the first Victorians to make a million pounds out of barbed wire fencing, along the way helping along with the enclosure of places such as Hardy's Egdon Heath, on which, before Morton's wire, it not worth the bother and expense of trying to run cows.
Presumably now, even with the Chinese dumping cut price iron & steel all over, a farmer could not afford fence posts of this quality. Relative prices have shifted, so iron posts are out and wood posts are in.
Group search key: bmb.
Crumpled horns
I can now report that they are still there, with quite a lot of them with sucking calves - for which I feel sure there is a proper agricultural term, but neither I nor google can turn it up. I stood by the fence for a while, long enough for a couple of them to get inquisitive enough to wander over, with this one being very patient while I took her photograph, even if the results were not that good.
I think also I have the answer to the question about why these cows still have horns. The land is owned by the National Trust and part of the land management arrangement that they have with their tenants is that there should be proper country cows, rather than the black and white machines which pass for stock in places which make the milk sold in places like Waitrose and Tesco. Proper country cows means, inter alia, proper horns. With at least 10% of them crumpled. This is what the members of the National Trust expect to see when they visit the country.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/07/cows-and-other-livestock.html.
Group search key: bmb.
Wheelbarrow enabled furniture
Next up was the rather larger table at our holiday home in Brading on the Isle of Wight. A table which when packed up took up a space maybe 4 feet by 2.5 feet by 1 foot. Two leaves folded out to make a decent sized dining table - so decent that the two of us managed very well with just one of them. And four folding chairs could be extracted from the interior to sit on. Not particularly comfortable, but it was all very smart and neat.
Added to which, the base of the contraption had been wheelbarrow enabled in just the same way as the smaller table of June. Even more useful in this case, as the packed up table was quite heavy and awkward.
Working out how the post relates to the picture is left as an exercise for the reader.
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/cunning-furniture.html.
Thursday, 21 July 2016
Laughter in the next room
This being the fourth volume of Osbert Sitwell’s much acclaimed autobiography, an autobiography which peters out in a fifth volume of sketches of interesting people that he had known. This fourth volume was bought in a second-hand bookshop here on the Isle of Wight – either in Ryde or St. Helen’s – which had a good selection of Sitwell, including the fifth volume which I declined. With this fourth volume being a proper edition, possibly even a first edition complete with an only slightly damaged dust jacket, to replace the book club edition I already had, and with my own Sitwell saga appearing to have started just about two years ago at reference 1.
I have been re-reading this fourth volume, and it so happened that on the day that I had been researching chain mail (reference 2) and on the day before that I was to research briar pipes (reference 3), on page 119, towards the end of chapter 2, entitled ‘The Word’, I came across some paragraphs on the life of words, starting with that well-known quotation: ‘In the beginning there was the word’. I was struck by his idea that in each of us a word has a life of its own, changing or shifting slightly each time that we use it – but a life with perhaps thousands of other lives stretching behind it, stretching back in time.
There were also some thoughts about the accessibility and longevity of works of art in the various modalities – with works of art worked with words doomed to grow moribund when their host language moves on – rather as, say, that of Chaucer has moved on – and eventually to die. The plastic arts do rather better in that respect, being able to speak to us, at least after a fashion, over the chasms of history; we can still value a truly ancient – and possibly quite crude – figurine dug out of the sands of Iraq or Afghanistan, a figurine quite possibly made by someone who could neither read nor write. Notwithstanding, Sitwell, as a poet, puts in a strong plea for the primacy of words.
Plus, the rather old fashioned idea that English, the language of the conquerors of so much of the world, was clearly top language - old fashioned, already, by the time that he wrote it down, shortly after the end of the second world war.
But it was the first idea which caught my attention, with my first association being to another book that I have been reading recently, a book about memory: ‘Pieces of Light’ by Charles Fernyhough (reference 4). The theme of this book being the theory, the fact even, that our memories are rebuilt from their (very fragmentary and scattered) raw materials each time that we use them, a corollary of this rebuilding being that a memory is slightly different each time we use it, not at all like playing a favourite track on a CD. I think the idea here is that each fragment of the memory, indeed the memory as a whole, is repainted, recoloured by the needs and context of the time of recall. And that recoloured memory becomes part of what is recalled next time, perhaps, in time, to the point of more or less totally obscuring what had been there in the first place. Perhaps the sort of drift you can get in whispers passed down the line, a game we used to hear about, if not actually play, when I was in the Cubs. And while allowing this as the general, also allowing the particular, that different people are different in this regard; that the memory of some is more plastic than that of others. Not to mention the tricks which we can play on each other – perhaps as a cognitive psychologist – or perhaps as therapist with the very best of intentions.
All of which seems very like what Sitwell was talking about in the context of words.
But as well as the parallel between the organisation and life cycle of memories and those of words, there is also the connection between words and the memories keyed to those words. Memories which might be of other words, of general knowledge or of things, events or reports of same which have figured in one’s life. The web of words does not reach into the whole of the web of memories, but it does reach into a goodly chunk of them.
Connections which are useful but not always reliable. So sometimes, when playing the animal game of reference 5, one can think of the name of an animal without having much of a clue as to what it looks like. While at other times, you can picture an animal, perhaps know quite a lot about it, but quite fail to bring its name into mind. And no name means no place in the animal game.
That said, words seem to be much better than dates. Very few people can get at memories through dates – with a rare exception being noticed at reference 6.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/a-wet-and-overcast-day.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/chain-mail.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/briar.html.
Reference 4: http://www.charlesfernyhough.com/. When I was little, it was considered very bad form for academics to be good on the box. No doubt, had personal web sites existed in those days, they would have been even worse. Perpetrators denied access to the high table at Lonsdale while Morse is Master.
Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/new-game.html.
Reference 6: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/remainder-shelf.html.
I have been re-reading this fourth volume, and it so happened that on the day that I had been researching chain mail (reference 2) and on the day before that I was to research briar pipes (reference 3), on page 119, towards the end of chapter 2, entitled ‘The Word’, I came across some paragraphs on the life of words, starting with that well-known quotation: ‘In the beginning there was the word’. I was struck by his idea that in each of us a word has a life of its own, changing or shifting slightly each time that we use it – but a life with perhaps thousands of other lives stretching behind it, stretching back in time.
There were also some thoughts about the accessibility and longevity of works of art in the various modalities – with works of art worked with words doomed to grow moribund when their host language moves on – rather as, say, that of Chaucer has moved on – and eventually to die. The plastic arts do rather better in that respect, being able to speak to us, at least after a fashion, over the chasms of history; we can still value a truly ancient – and possibly quite crude – figurine dug out of the sands of Iraq or Afghanistan, a figurine quite possibly made by someone who could neither read nor write. Notwithstanding, Sitwell, as a poet, puts in a strong plea for the primacy of words.
Plus, the rather old fashioned idea that English, the language of the conquerors of so much of the world, was clearly top language - old fashioned, already, by the time that he wrote it down, shortly after the end of the second world war.
But it was the first idea which caught my attention, with my first association being to another book that I have been reading recently, a book about memory: ‘Pieces of Light’ by Charles Fernyhough (reference 4). The theme of this book being the theory, the fact even, that our memories are rebuilt from their (very fragmentary and scattered) raw materials each time that we use them, a corollary of this rebuilding being that a memory is slightly different each time we use it, not at all like playing a favourite track on a CD. I think the idea here is that each fragment of the memory, indeed the memory as a whole, is repainted, recoloured by the needs and context of the time of recall. And that recoloured memory becomes part of what is recalled next time, perhaps, in time, to the point of more or less totally obscuring what had been there in the first place. Perhaps the sort of drift you can get in whispers passed down the line, a game we used to hear about, if not actually play, when I was in the Cubs. And while allowing this as the general, also allowing the particular, that different people are different in this regard; that the memory of some is more plastic than that of others. Not to mention the tricks which we can play on each other – perhaps as a cognitive psychologist – or perhaps as therapist with the very best of intentions.
All of which seems very like what Sitwell was talking about in the context of words.
But as well as the parallel between the organisation and life cycle of memories and those of words, there is also the connection between words and the memories keyed to those words. Memories which might be of other words, of general knowledge or of things, events or reports of same which have figured in one’s life. The web of words does not reach into the whole of the web of memories, but it does reach into a goodly chunk of them.
Connections which are useful but not always reliable. So sometimes, when playing the animal game of reference 5, one can think of the name of an animal without having much of a clue as to what it looks like. While at other times, you can picture an animal, perhaps know quite a lot about it, but quite fail to bring its name into mind. And no name means no place in the animal game.
That said, words seem to be much better than dates. Very few people can get at memories through dates – with a rare exception being noticed at reference 6.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/a-wet-and-overcast-day.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/chain-mail.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/briar.html.
Reference 4: http://www.charlesfernyhough.com/. When I was little, it was considered very bad form for academics to be good on the box. No doubt, had personal web sites existed in those days, they would have been even worse. Perpetrators denied access to the high table at Lonsdale while Morse is Master.
Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/new-game.html.
Reference 6: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/remainder-shelf.html.
Wednesday, 20 July 2016
Briar
Maigret was walking along the street with a chap called Baes (a corruption, I think of our word 'boss'). He had his pipe 'en bruyère' and Baes had his pipe 'en terre blanche'. We note at this point that Simenon was a life long pipe smoker and I had a short phase, less than a year, of pipe smoking.
It seems quite likely that 'terre blanche' is meerschaum, or perhaps just a more ordinary white clay. Not too bothered about that one. But what on earth is 'bruyère'?
Next stop Larousse, which talks of a plant which makes me think of heather, without being very sure about it. There is a sketch of the plant which does not greatly help. There is talk of 'terre de bruyère', which sounds a bit like a peat or a compost made from the plant, the sort of thing you might buy in plastic bags from garden centres.
Next stop the new found reference 1, where it is suddenly made clear to me that the word is a corruption of our word 'briar', which according to wikipedia is 'a common name for any of a number of unrelated thorny plants... Plants termed briar include species in the genera Rosa, Rubus, and Smilax'. But not including, heather. With the root of the briar being made into pipes, and with my guess being that the briar in question is the dog rose.
Just to be sure, I go to google which, among a lot of sites for pipe manufacturers which are more interested in sales than information, it turns up reference 2. From which I learn that the briar pipe is made from the root of erica arborea, or tree heather, found on Mediterranean heaths. It dawning on me at last that heath and heather are related.
We get there in the end - with me starting to wonder how much more quickly I might have got to the bottom of this had I been, say, thirty years younger than I am. I don't mind about the confusion arising from the various plants which one might see in a briar patch, but I do mind about not picking up on briar and 'bruyère' or on heath and heather.
PS: later: BH reminds me that briar patch is very much a thing of the US, of 'Uncle Remus' even (see reference 3). And she has just been reading in Bill Bryson about how the Europeans arrived in north America to find all kinds of new things, many of which they named by adapting old words. Thus giving rise to all kinds of confusion when they went back to the mother countries.
Reference 1: http://www.linguee.fr/francais-anglais/traduction/bruy%C3%A8re.html.
Reference 2: https://pipedia.org/wiki/Materials_and_Construction.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-modern-way-of-doing-things.html.
It seems quite likely that 'terre blanche' is meerschaum, or perhaps just a more ordinary white clay. Not too bothered about that one. But what on earth is 'bruyère'?
Next stop Larousse, which talks of a plant which makes me think of heather, without being very sure about it. There is a sketch of the plant which does not greatly help. There is talk of 'terre de bruyère', which sounds a bit like a peat or a compost made from the plant, the sort of thing you might buy in plastic bags from garden centres.
Next stop the new found reference 1, where it is suddenly made clear to me that the word is a corruption of our word 'briar', which according to wikipedia is 'a common name for any of a number of unrelated thorny plants... Plants termed briar include species in the genera Rosa, Rubus, and Smilax'. But not including, heather. With the root of the briar being made into pipes, and with my guess being that the briar in question is the dog rose.
Just to be sure, I go to google which, among a lot of sites for pipe manufacturers which are more interested in sales than information, it turns up reference 2. From which I learn that the briar pipe is made from the root of erica arborea, or tree heather, found on Mediterranean heaths. It dawning on me at last that heath and heather are related.
We get there in the end - with me starting to wonder how much more quickly I might have got to the bottom of this had I been, say, thirty years younger than I am. I don't mind about the confusion arising from the various plants which one might see in a briar patch, but I do mind about not picking up on briar and 'bruyère' or on heath and heather.
PS: later: BH reminds me that briar patch is very much a thing of the US, of 'Uncle Remus' even (see reference 3). And she has just been reading in Bill Bryson about how the Europeans arrived in north America to find all kinds of new things, many of which they named by adapting old words. Thus giving rise to all kinds of confusion when they went back to the mother countries.
Reference 1: http://www.linguee.fr/francais-anglais/traduction/bruy%C3%A8re.html.
Reference 2: https://pipedia.org/wiki/Materials_and_Construction.
Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/the-modern-way-of-doing-things.html.
Tuesday, 19 July 2016
Graves 2
But a fad which gave me cause, while its image was uploading, to wonder about the size of the image. The main camera in the telephone is described as being 8mp, which I assume means 8 million pixels, with this particular image coming in at 7.86mb, at the top end of a range which starts at around 4mb.
The fact that the size varies suggests that some kind of compression is going on, which is what I would expect, considering the elaborate compression which I have only just been reading about in the world of MPEG and JPEG. But the fact that we are left with about as many pixels as bytes is a puzzle, with my simple equivalence of pixels and bytes coming unstuck.
At which point I put on my thinking cap, and suppose that each pixel is stored as the three RGB values (which it, I believe, is not, but the telephone might be doing something equivalent). RGB values in Powerpoint are in the range 0 thru 255, with 256 equal to 2^8 and so needing 8 bits. So three of them for one pixel would be a lot more than one byte. Bingo. Brain back in gear again...
Graves 1
One supposed three children from one family, perhaps struck down in some epidemic or some accident. There were inscriptions, but they were too faint to be read, at least without taking some bother about it.
Not a motif that I ever recall seeing before. Perhaps a speciality of the town's monumental mason of the time: I certainly recall other fads and fashions in graveyards reflecting such.
Chain mail?
Still on 'Un Crime en Hollande' and in the course of finding out that a 'serviette' could be a sort of slimline briefcase as well as a towel, I came across 'tissu bouclé' in Larousse, literally and approximately buckled cloth. Overlooking the connection with towels, I thought of chain mail, which did not seem to fit at all. BH thought that it might be the sort of dimpled or padded waterproof material that one uses to make toilet bags.
But this was not really good enough, so we ask google who takes us to the new-to-me but interesting looking site at reference 1. A place where they give you a long list of sentences containing the word or phrase that you are interested in, together with a translation into English. And where I learn that, in this case, the buckles in question are the thousands and thousands of small loops that you pull out in a towelling material, and might well cut, to make it soft, fluffy and absorbent.
Furthermore, there are more words on the manufacture of such material than someone who is not into such manufacture is likely to want to read. A someone who is, these days, more likely to be found in the far East than in western Europe.
Tomorrow I shall try it on some more words and phrases.
Reference 1: http://www.linguee.fr/francais-anglais/traduction/tissu+boucl%C3%A9.html.
Reference 2: http://www.linguee.fr/.
But this was not really good enough, so we ask google who takes us to the new-to-me but interesting looking site at reference 1. A place where they give you a long list of sentences containing the word or phrase that you are interested in, together with a translation into English. And where I learn that, in this case, the buckles in question are the thousands and thousands of small loops that you pull out in a towelling material, and might well cut, to make it soft, fluffy and absorbent.
Furthermore, there are more words on the manufacture of such material than someone who is not into such manufacture is likely to want to read. A someone who is, these days, more likely to be found in the far East than in western Europe.
Tomorrow I shall try it on some more words and phrases.
Reference 1: http://www.linguee.fr/francais-anglais/traduction/tissu+boucl%C3%A9.html.
Reference 2: http://www.linguee.fr/.
Drama
BH goes off to the church across the road where the cleaner is able to tell her that one of the village bee keepers lives just down the road. They get knocked up and they trundle up the road with the paraphernalia of their trade. They start to poke around, quite unbothered by the bees, and the makings of a swarm is revealed hanging off a bush behind the bench. With quite a lot of bees on the ground under.
We leave them to it, to come back to the scene of the snap some hours later, with just a few bees now buzzing about. We presume that most of the bees are inside the inverted basket to the left of the snap and that the bee keepers are waiting for the right moment to carry them off to their new hive. In the meantime, the whole area is roped off and signed. We wondered about the law of property as regards wandering swarms.
The other drama of the day concerned what I had taken to be a FCH coming into Southampton on the noon high tide. I had been fondly thinking that perhaps it was the Barchester Rose, launched in time for the last season by the wife of the owner of Barchester Homes. She had thought to use the names of characters from Trollope's Barchester novels - names like Griselda Grantly - but, sadly, that was vetoed by the marketing people.
However, back home and back online, no cruise liner appears to have docked in Southampton at that time. Further poking suggests that it was not Portsmouth either. Still further poking and I find that it is yet another Brittany Ferry, the MV Normandie, albeit a big one carrying more than 500 vehicles and 2,000 passengers. Big disappointment.
The only upside is the discovery of a website which tracks ships in real time, in much the same way as those websites which track aeroplane movements. Feed in the ship identifier and off you go. See reference 1.
Reference 1: https://www.vesselfinder.com/?imo=9006253.
Reference 2: the whole FCH saga can be traced from http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/fchw.html.
Carex
According to wikipedia, they like damp, heavy clay soils - while here on the island there is going to be a lot of chalk and gravel - unlike our own garden back on the mainland which ticks the heavy clay - if not the damp - part of the wikipedia specification. While Battersea Park probably ticks all three parts, certainly down by the lake. See reference 1.
But this morning, I did find this rather fine specimen, just down the lane from where we are staying. Perhaps they water it a lot.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/carex-pendula.html.
Monday, 18 July 2016
Hot house
Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/botany-1.html.
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