Pondemonium

It has been quite wet over the last few days, with the small ponds bursting their banks, or at least overflowing from their black plastic tubs, for the first time for a while.

Note the rushes in the left hand tub, cut back for the first time for a couple of years. Not cutting seems to have resulted in rot and die-back in the middle of the clump so we shall see what happens next year.

The apple tree visible top left is one of the last relics of the orchard that occupied the land before the housing estate that is there now, so quite old for an apple tree, usually dug up after fifty years or so, quite unlike pear trees in that respect. There is even an urban myth about how pigs were run beneath, hovering up the windfalls. Which reminds me that our own supply of apples and windfalls from various tree owning neighbours is starting to run low and will probably run out before our supply of blackberries. We might be reduced to purchase.

Note also how the estate agent's angle makes the garden look rather wider than it is in real life - one of the narrowest in the road, albeit of good length.

Sonatas

Just before Christmas we went to hear some violin sonatas, the first for a while, with the violin part being played on an instrument made in 1737 by one Bartolomeo Giuseppe Guarneri 'del Gesù'. One such, not this particular one, is illustrated left. For which, thanks to reference 1, also the people who wrote the corresponding section of the programme notes.

An instrument which was previously played by Isaac Stern and before that by Eugène Ysaÿe. I had thought some Stern was included in my haul from the Oxfam shop at Tavistock, but inspection today suggests that I don't actually own any vinyl featuring either of them. Several violinists of the same sort of Ukrainian or Russian background as Stern, but not the man himself.

So Renaud Capuçon on the violin and David Fray on the piano, giving us Bach No.5, Beethoven Op.24, Bachish in C minor and Beethoven Op.30 No.2. Where by Bachish I mean a sonata once attributed to Bach, but now there just seems to be ignorance. We just don't know. While it seems that we have heard Capuçon just the once, just about three years ago. Fray never. See reference 2.

Unlike on Sunday mornings, the Wigmore front of house team neglected to guard the back entrance to the hall, the one you get to from the Bechstein Room, so no inspection of tickets. Further slippage in that the fine flower arrangements which usually flank the stage were missing, we think a first. We then showed how carelessly we look at things by having thought that the large flower vases were usually mounted on wall brackets set into the brown marble. But the vases were not there and there were neither brackets nor fixings for brackets, so it must have been pedestals. Not clear whether it is Helen Aristidou or Helen Aristidov who does the flowers, but either way it is probably the people at reference 3, and the arrangements are usually very good. We were not able to find out why they were missing on this occasion.

Further puzzlement in the bar, where we found that the miniature aloes in little pots on the tables there appeared to have little in the way of roots, and what there was did not penetrate into the pots. Maybe aloes, being succulents, can manage without regular rooting arrangements.

The sonatas were very good; we were reminded why we like such things. With Capuçon and Fray making a good team. The Beethoven was very much what we have come to expect, but neither Bach nor Bachish sounded much like the Bach we are used to. Good, but new. We got one encore, which did not sound quite like what had gone before either, so we did not know, and no-one near us knew, what it was.

Unusually, the pianist did not play from a piano stool, sitting upright, choosing to play instead from a common or garden tubular steel chair, into which he sat well back. Perhaps he has more respect for his back than your average pianist. His page turner was a very serious looking young man, but not so serious that he did not allow himself a certain amount of head movement, in time to the music. Given that he was quite possibly a student of music of some sort, I wondered whether he was running an inner commentary; how this fingering was good, that bad and that a mistake. Maybe there was such a tendency and he was really having to concentrate to keep his mind on the more mundane business of keeping the pages turned.

On to the train home to find ourselves sitting next to three very exuberant young ladies, disporting themselves around their three seats. Perhaps just a touch of épater la bourgeoisie about it all. So much so that another young lady, we thought on her way home from Edinburgh University to her parents in Leatherhead, perhaps after her first term away from home, thought to ask us if that was the way that we behaved when we were young. Speaking for myself, at that age I dare say I was loud enough in my cups, but BH was firm that she would never have been so publically exuberant. Either way, it all seemed a very long time ago,

Reference 1: https://tarisio.com/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/two-out-of-three.html.

Reference 3: http://www.flowershopdocklands.co.uk/aboutus.

Trolley 114

Another M&S food hall trolley, captured in passage to the station, probably the last of the season. Learned that M&S still operate a pound deposit, this being the white blob at the right hand end of the handle (click to enlarge), so I am now the proud owner of a natty little token which does the job of a pound. Easy enough to get hold of according to the M&S trolley jockeys on the stand - with mine coming from BUPA.

Thought about fancy white wine for the New Year and desisted.

Popped into the Works to find another remaindered book by Barney White-Spunner, this one about the partition of what was British India in 1947. I rather enjoyed my last book of his, about the Household Cavalry, sourced from the branch of the Works in Exeter. I associate to an observation in some learned magazine about how professional historians have disappeared up their statistical orifices, leaving the field of history for the general reader to the amateurs. With this particular amateur having actually been a general.

Popped into O2 to inquire about the jittering focus on the camera on my Microsoft telephone, a telephone on which I am about to make the last HP payment. Jittering, accompanied by a sound of grinding gears (perhaps generated for effect, by software, rather than there actually being any lens moving gears that could grind), but which usually settles down after a second or so. Jittering which might be some aftershock of my breaking the screen by dropping a year or so ago.

Well sir, they said, you can send it off to the menders who might be able to do something. It will take about five days for them to give an opinion on the matter. Can I phone them up and ask if there is any likelihood of their being able to mend it? No. A pain, but I can see that they might spend a lot of unprofitable time on the phone if such calls were allowed.

Then it transpired that MS have given up on mobile phones, having failed to make significant inroads into the market, leaving me high and dry. I have been pleased with my Lumia phone, but it is now starting to go wrong and I am looking at all the bother of change. All the bother of, for example, moving to a new calendar. So I shall carry on for the time being, in the hope that these jitters do not become terminal.

Tweeted some redwings down Longmead Road, redwings which have largely spurned our garden this year.

And on into Costcutter to be greeted by headlines about the dastardly Russians interfering with our Brexit referendum. On which I make two points. First, the exit people had it by 52% to 48%. I would be very surprised if this interference amounted to more than a small fraction - say more than a quarter - of that difference. So it made no difference to the outcome, given the rules of the game, as set by the careless Cameron. Second, it was OK when the UK and the US beamed radio propaganda (and Bibles and spies) into what was then the Soviet Union, during the cold war. Or cheered so loudly when the said Soviet Union fell apart, with the pieces being gobbled up by oligarchs and gangsters. Less consultancy fees to all kinds of consultants from the likes of Price Waterhouse, Ernst & Young and the late lamented Arthur Anderson. So who are we to get so touchy now about a bit of dirty work on Facebook?

End of faits divers.

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

Materials science

Now tucking into the Comté noticed at reference 1. Reserve stock hanging from the roof in the garage, ready stock in the kitchen, illustrated.

The point being the interestingly smooth and curved fracture in the cheese, the like of which I have never seen before.

There must be something odd about the physics of this particular cheese, or this particular bit of cheese, to have generated such a thing.

Another oddity has been that not having taken Comté recently, having been sticking with my more usual Lincolnshire Poacher, the Comté tasted very odd at first: texture good but taste odd. I put this down to Waitrose shrink-wrap as opposed to Borough Market cut off the wheel, but now my palette has adjusted and it tastes fine. Maybe I had better get some of the Borough stuff as soon as this supply is exhausted to see what it then tastes like. Maybe a cousin of the business of my not liking the first sip, in a restaurant, of a newly opened bottle of a white wine.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/fancy-spirits.html.

Afterthought

Continuing to think about the notches in karabiners of the last post, I went back to the book by Levi, noticed most recently at reference 1.

He talks of the conservatism of the manufacturers of chemicals. They have a recipe X for chemical Y which has worked for years and years. No-one understands the recipe any more, but they don't change it. Don't mend what ain't broke.

But this sometimes means that the recipe might include something which is no longer needed, possibly even harmful. Perhaps years and years ago some small quantity of chemical P was added to the brew to mitigate the unfortunate effects of the poor quality of chemical Q, all that was available at the time. Then, after a while, the people making chemical Q get their act together, by which time the people using chemical P had forgotten the connection. So P gets left in, for ever and ever.

I imagine that evolution might work in much the same way. Some genetic chance, some mutation results in some feature F which improves the fitness of the host animal. But then, millions of years later, another chance results in some new feature G which makes F redundant. But F might hang around, perhaps in some reduced or vestigial form, for some more millions of years. Perhaps my notch is such a feature?

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/levi.html.

Karabiners

The grappling iron noticed at reference 1 involved two clips which I remembered as being called karabiners, remembered from an Outward Bound course taken in Aberdovey just about 50 years ago. Something you clipped onto a belt made up of maybe twenty 3mm strands, round and round the waist and tied with a single reef knot. Thinking about it now, I imagine the point of making a belt thus was that it was comfortable, effective and easy. A reef knot of 3mm strands being a lot more effective in this context than a reef knot of 15mm strands.

But these new karabiners involved a sprung joint which was also both notched and threaded, while I remember neither notch nor threading. They were also rounded triangular rather than rounded rectangular in shape.

I can see that having the thread means that one can lock the karabiner shut, a safety feature which has the upside that it is not going to open at a bad time, the downside that it would be hard to open quickly with one hand, should need arise. But what is the point of the notch? Does the rather feeble looking bit of steel making up the notch provide a bit of additional protection against the karabiner deforming, perhaps coming apart, under the stress of a sudden shock, the shock of the rope snatching at the end of a fall?

Once I explained to Bing that I was not talking about carbines, he came up with lots of images of karabiners, and it seems that triangular and threaded is the most popular variety, although the sort that I remember do come in, well down the results page.

I am fairly sure that my memory of rectangular rather than triangular is right, and I am fairly sure that the joint was just bevelled rather than notched. But I am not sure at all about the threading.

PS: notice also how the telephone has done something very odd with the angles of the two halves of the joint, which look quite out of alignment.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/santa.html.

For a life

In the morning it is green, and groweth up: but in the evening it is cut down, dried up, and withered.

From Psalm 90.

Levi

I first read the book described at reference 1 about five years ago, a reading noticed at reference 2. Then a few weeks ago, for some reason I now forget, I took it down from its shelf again, a taking down noticed in the margins of trolley 113 at reference 3. Second reading now completed, and I am impressed now as I was five years ago.

I offer a few comments, in addition to those I made five years ago.

I start with the matter of records, a matter in which regular readers will know that I take some interest. See, for example, references 4 and 5. Now industrial chemistry seems to be rather like cooking, with recipes and boiling things up in large saucepans, perhaps now called vessels, perhaps just the sort of thing which used to be made from sheets of stainless steel by Vestec, on the Longmead industrial estate just down the road. These ingredients all come with specifications of their own and the success of any particular batch often depends critically on all the ingredients conforming to those specifications. So you expect your supplier to check ingredients before dispatch and you check them on delivery. All of which generates lots of records. You also keep records of the cooking of each batch, records of all the temperatures, pressures and times.

Then, perhaps some weeks, months or even years later, there is some kind of a problem. One of your customers complains that whatever it is that you are selling is not working properly. So you get your chemists to go on a long expedition, trawling through all the records to try and find out what might have gone wrong with these particular batches. What might turn out to be an ongoing, if intermittent problem. But an expedition which is only possible if you keep good records.

All of which might explain why BP used to employ state of the art records people to look after all their records. People whom we came across from the Treasury, on the other side of the river.

In one of the cases that Levi mentioned, it turned out to be to do with the days of the week on which a local tannery was flushing its waste into the local river, which then contaminated the water used by the laundry a little way downstream, which then contaminated the overalls used in the laboratories of the company with the problem.

Then, having run down your problem, there might be the question of remedial action. In Levi's time this might have meant a time consuming search of the relevant chemical literature for new recipes, of which literature there could easily be a good deal. With a lot of it in German, just to complicate things a bit more. I wonder now whether this searching has got easier with internet and computers: the search time per unit volume has probably come down hugely, but then the volume has probably come up hugely. Probably cheaper, as one no longer needs a library, with book and librarians, of the old sort. Who knows.

All of which leads onto lawyers and litigation. In a complicated process of this sort, it is always going to be tempting to cut corners, to cut costs. To bear down on expensive ingredients. And then things are going to go wrong in a more or less random way. Putting all this right often costs a great deal of money and those costs have to be apportioned between the various parties in some way. Apportionment which might be helped along or even specified by the relevant contracts. All those contracts which commercial departments spend much quality time on. And all the various parties are going to find it worth their while to hire lawyers to fight their corner, perhaps all the way to some branch of the European Court of Justice.

Which strikes me as a good reason for having both lawyers and European Courts of Justice. The world is a complicated place and you cannot wish these sorts of problems away. However much you spend on quality control, things are still going to go wrong and the costs of putting them right are still going to have to be apportioned. Enter the lawyers to do your pushing and shoving for you. No need to get your own hands dirty.

PS 1: I don't think that, in the event, I ever got around to reading the other two books of Levi's that I own, sitting next to this one. Perhaps I will now.

PS 2: when I left the civil service, commercial department was the then fashionable name for the people who did what might otherwise be called procurement, purchasing or even buying. No doubt there is some other term now. Maybe, even, the fashion for big, central, all-powerful commercial departments has faded and people are allowed to do their own thing once again.

Reference 1: The Periodic Table - Primo Levi - 1975.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/more-red-book.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/trolley-113.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-paperkeepers-tale.html.

Reference 5: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=towers+filenet.

Santa

Santa must have been reading my dreams and taken pity on the trolley fishing gear noticed at reference 1 and 2. With the result that I am now kitted out with a state-of-the-art trolley recovery set. With the grappling iron (probably some kind of stainless steel) folding up neatly, rather like an umbrella, when not in use.

The modern rope is a lot lighter and more flexible than it might look, and with a little practise I dare say I could swing the iron up to the battlements of, for example, Castle Rising. Probably best done in the dark when the chaps up top can't see to pour their boiling oil. See reference 4.

Note also the shrink wrap yellow plastic, the modern alternative to the eye splice, something which I could actually do, many years ago.

No excuse now for not tackling the challenge noticed at reference 3. Still there yesterday morning, along with another regular trolley a bit further upstream. Might be best to try that one first.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/trolley-109a.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/trolley-109b.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/a-challenge.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/a-norfolk-village-2.html.

Atkinson Maigret

Unusually, yesterday evening, we started watching a drama on ITV1 which started as late as 2030. The draw being a new version of 'Maigret au Picratt's', called 'Maigret in Montmatre' and starring the comedy artist Rowan Atkinson.

The original story is to be found in Volume XV of the collected works, sandwiched between 'Les Mémoires de Maigret' and 'L'Homme dans la Rue'. Sadly, one of the volumes which is missing from my collection. On the other hand, we do have and have watched, on several occasions, the adaptation called 'Maigret and the night club dancer' starring Michael Gambon - with the Gambon version being for us the authorised version, the Hickson of Maigret.

Atkinson did not do badly, he survived the translation from his more usual stuff, although he tended to look a bit small done up in a large winter coat. A lot of this not doing too badly was his standing still and not saying too much. Not bad, although I think Gambon did it rather better, was more relaxed in the role. A better size and shape, and generally more in keeping with what we know of Maigret from the original stories.

But the adaptation suffered from the same problem as recent Agatha adaptations. A huge amount of effort appeared to have been poured in making a period drama out of a roman policier, but the result was overcooked. There was far too much going on visually and we only managed the first forty minutes or so before calling it a day.

We have yet to find out where it was filmed. The Gambon version was Budapest, so perhaps thirty years later they have had to go further east to find the authentic Paris of the 1930's and 1940's, the Paris which Simenon remembered from his hideaway in Connecticut in 1950. Kiev? Smolensk?

Half way through getting hold of Volume XV from ebay France (it seems that my edition is the standard, popular edition) so maybe, in due course, I will be able to compare and contrast the selection of episodes from the original story and the insertion of new episodes thought necessary to fill the story out to current tastes & fashions.

Winter solstice

As it turned out, I celebrated the winter solstice in Wetherspoon's at Tooting. Rather overcast, so an appropriately dark evening.

Wetherspoon's was surprisingly quiet, so the conversation rolled along rather solemn and serious lines.

First up was what was to me the shocking level of racial abuse the Irish had to put up with when landing in England - say Liverpool or Fishguard - during the 1960's. I had been vaguely aware of signs on rooming houses saying things like 'No blacks, no Irish' - although I cannot now say whether I ever actually saw such a thing for myself - but I had not been aware of abuse administered by the officers of Her Majesty's Customs.

Second up were our various culinary affairs. My contribution to the entertainment was an extended version of the tale of the crumpet. See reference 3.

Third up was what I thought was rather a good suggestion for our new white elephant, the giant aircraft carrier without aircraft. We could stock the thing up with tents, blankets, food and drink, and then deploy it as a floating tent city to accommodate a few thousand - perhaps as many as twenty thousand - homeless refugees - a few thousand miles away. A tent city with state of the art operating theatres and gymnasiums. Maybe able to offer engineering apprenticeships down in the engine rooms to well motivated young adults. This way we would salve our consciences a bit without having to take them in here at home.

A few glasses down, we moved onto the question of one's office computer being used for the consumption of pornography. My opening position was - and remains - that I would be very surprised if the computer in question did not contain a large amount of active pornography at the time in question. My closing position was that any serious workplace - and I am sure that the Palace of Westminster qualifies - both bans the use of office computers for the consumption of pornography and does its best to stop such stuff getting onto them. A reasonable supplementary rule would be that you are responsible for what is on your computer, and if you allow other people to use your computer, to use your email account, you are responsible for whatever they might get up to. The only cop-out would be if it turned out that the computer support people were the culprits. Computer support people who, of necessity, have to hold all the keys. So guilty as charged, at least for the purposes of office management. Criminal charges quite another matter.

Lastly, we pondered on what I believe is the practise in county of Devon for the placement of people who need to live in some kind of supported or enclosed environment, given that the public provision of such places has, in large part, been sold off for housing estates. As I understand things, when the county needs to place a client or group of clients, they make up what amounts to an invitation to tender document. This is then made available to the various commercial and charitable providers in the area, perhaps by being posted on some suitable private website, in the hope that one or more of them will submit a tender. And then, hopefully, one of the tenders can be accepted. Job done. Which all sounds a bit like a cattle market, a bit mercenary, but given a bit of thought seemed perfectly reasonable. We could not think of anything better.

On the way out, I picked up copies of the books at reference 1 and 2, with the second of these noticed in the last post. BH has been very pleased with the first - and I learn of people in the backwoods of British Columbia who actually made their own paper. I wonder?

Out in the street I noticed that the Guleed Internet Café - illustrated above - appeared to have shut up shop. A place which I have found convenient - and very cheap - on various occasions in the past - although I may have baulked at deploying my google password there. Strictly research only.

Reference 1: The cure for death by lighting - Gail Anderson-Dargatz - 1996.

Reference 2: From Berlin to Jerusalem - Gershom Scholem - 1977.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/crumpets.html.

Scholem

Just finished reading a fascinating memoir by one Gershom Scholem, a pick-me-up from the library at the Tooting Wetherspoon's. 150 pages or so of it. No idea how it came to be there, but, like the platform library at Raynes Park, the standard is a lot higher than one might expect.

Scholem came from a family of Berlin Jews, originally from Silesia. He was clearly a very able chap, pursuing both mathematical and Jewish studies at various German and Swiss universities, rather than going into the family printing business, and who emigrated to Palestine in 1923. Meeting along the way all kinds of people who were, or who became, eminent. And spending most of his subsequent career in the study of Jewish mysticism, picking up Yiddish, Hebrew and Arabic along the way. And I dare say other languages.

I did not give him more than a quick read, but I was struck by the fervour with which a lot of European Jews studied their roots, a reaction in some cases from the enthusiastic assimilation pursued by others in the face of a lot of institutional hostility. I associated to the fervour with which, at roughly the same time, a lot of Irish studied their Gaelic roots. Or, more recently, the fervour with which the Welsh and the Scots have dug up their Gaelic roots. A Gaelic fervour which probably had little if any of the intellectual firepower which European Jews brought to their quest.

While I can see the pull of a continuing tradition which is more than two thousand years' old, more than us Christians and a lot more than the Moslems, I don't think I could have devoted a good part of my adult life to it, even had I had any talent for languages. I think, if I had had to chose, I would have settled for mathematics.

This book was written in 1977, when Scholem was an old man. I was disappointed by his almost total lack of recognition of the problems which mass immigration into a land which was by no means empty was going to cause, mass immigration which started well before the horrors of the second world war.

But I was pleased to be able to turn out my FlexiMap of Berlin to help me along with all the Berlin street names. Bought in the margins of a very important conference, a gift from my manager during my time at the Home Office. Largely funded by Sun Microsystems, a then proud corporation, subsequently swallowed up by Oracle. Also to be found in the margins, was a rather strange bar in the vicinity of the Pankow underground station. Probably not a good place to have been in late at night.

PS: it seems that the aforesaid family printing business did very well out of printing some of the millions of forms needed to oil the bureaucratic wheels of the first world war. Scholem senior certainly spotted an opportunity there.

Corner evergreens

A little garden which has been planted in the corner of the front lawn of Ewell Castle School.

Not the sort of establishment which I approve of - being all for properly funded public education where the children all mix it in together - but the garden is, nevertheless, a small pleasure on the road running between West Ewell railway station and Ewell village. It looks rather well from the road, off snap to the right.

One of the school's most famous graduates is the late Oliver Reed, well known actor and boozer, who went on to host well oiled parties from his base in Leatherhead. I had thought that there was also a long suffering Danish wife, but Wikipedia tells me that while there was such a wife, a second wife, she was entirely English and that she met Reed when she was just sixteen. And their base was not Leatherhead, rather a place called Pinkhurst Farm near Dorking. A grade two listed building.

PS: later: it comes to me now that I had probably confused Oliver Reed with another well known boozer, George Best, who perhaps did sport a Danish wife in his home near Leatherhead. An which includes some of the richest people and some of the fanciest houses in the land, despite the London overspill moved there after the second world war.

McCarthy & Stone

McCarthy & Stone being a well known provider of accommodation for the older person, noticed here occasionally, for example at reference 1. McCarthy & Stone themselves being found at reference 2.

They crop up today for two reasons.

First, I have learned that Abbeyfield, another provider of accommodation for the older person, but a charitable provider rather than a for-profit provider, is moving away from their bedsit model to something much more like the apartment model of McCarthy & Stone. Which led me to wonder where Abbeyfield get their capital from. Do they get government funding of some sort? Do they raise money on the market like any other business? Could I lend them money on interest? I dare say that I could find out if I did more than skim their annual report, but as it is the best that I can do is 'with an agreed loan facility to drive further growth', which suggests that they are raising money on the market.

Nothing wrong with a certain amount of convergence and consolidation as the market matures.

Second, quite by chance, I notice from the bottom of some promotional material, that RHS Wisley are proud to be sponsored by McCarthy & Stone. Here one is led to wonder about the scale of the sponsorship; the sponsorship of a retirement visitor attraction by a retirement home provider. All very incestuous.

PS: I was pleased to read on the McCarthy & Stone website that Messrs McCarthy & Stone really exist, or at least they did back in 1963 when the company was founded. 'John McCarthy and Bill Stone enter into partnership in 1963 and the McCarthy & Stone story begins.  Early work focuses on building houses and bungalows for the open market'. They are not just names dreamt up by the marketing department of some large conglomerate seeking to push into the older person market. Although it is always possible that they will be swallowed up by some such conglomerate in due course, with their marketing department retaining the names and branding because they work. Don't mend what ain't broke.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/walmer.html.

Reference 2: https://www.mccarthyandstone.co.uk/. Note all the children running around on the front page. Don't want the places to feel too old!

Reference 3: https://www.abbeyfield.com/.

Escape with me!

I am now half way through my second reading of reference 3, a travel book by Osbert Sitwell, prompted by reference 1. A relic of the days when celebrities were able to fund their travels by writing books about them; unlike nowadays when celebrities are paid to tell us about their travels on trains on television. As if it could be said to be travelling when one is traipsing about with a camera team and support lorry.

A book with history in its own right, once the property of one William Valentine, lately chairman of University College, Dundee (the place noticed at reference 2), donated to the library there by his widow in 1972 and found it way to me August just past, via Better World Books Ltd for little more than the price of postage and packing. A nicely produced book from MacMillan, with the rather pretty endpapers being the reproduction of a fragment of the Empress Dowagers favourite wallpaper. This famous Empress having started out as Imperial Concubine Yi in 1852.

An interesting read, not least for its descriptions of Angkor Wat and the Forbidden City.

This particular page caught my fancy, with its description of our opium relations with the Chinese. First we fight two wars with them to make them take opium in return for all the tea that we took off them. All the tea in China. Then the missionaries get in on the act and want the British authorities to make the Chinese authorities to make the stuff illegal. Then all the British tourists to Chinese towns wanted to taken by their guides to the most picturesque opium den in town, a very important part of their grand tour. But if you click to enlarge you can read all about it for yourself.

PS: while reference 4, which came to me via the University of Bristol library and a charity shop, is about to receive honourable burial in the brick compost bin at the bottom of the garden, unread. No doubt M. Butor is a fine writer, famous even in French literary critical circles, but life is too short. The pile of unread books is too high. A book which came interestingly bound with thick cardboard covers (possibly by les éditions de minuit, possibly by the library on arrival there) and which came complete with a variety of interesting library stickers, including one which instructed the reader that the book was confined to the library.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/08/facades.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/puzzle.html.

Reference 3: Escape with me: an oriental sketch book - Osbert Sitwell - 1939.

Reference 4: Répertoire IV - Michel Butor - 1974.

Potholes

For once in a while, I did a Ewell Village circuit today, anti-clockwise, so starting on West Hill rather than Longmead Road.

Quite struck by the poor state of the roads from a cyclist's point of view, with plenty of potholes plenty big enough to give one a painful jolt, or worse, with the stretch from Ewell Village down to Pound Lane school being particularly bad.

So as far as this cyclist is concerned, the hundreds of thousands of pounds spent on the barely used cycle path from Malden Rushett to Epsom would have been much better spent patching up these potholes in the roads. But to be fair to the council, they were probably only responding to pressure from some middle aged and not very representative pressure group made up of greens, cyclists and eco-warriors. Probably the same people that inflict hornéd cows on Epsom Common.

All the real cyclists, the young lycra types, charging up and down Horton Lane, stick to the roads, as I generally do. And I might add that while I have never worn lycra, I do now wear a helmet.

No skin in the game

I was thinking this morning that it was all very well for our Foreign Secretary to make careless bets on the future of our country and to take risks, because he is rich. And if he were to be chucked out of politics, he could, in the short term at least, make a good living as a journalist. Nothing that Brexit might chuck at the rest of us is going to affect him all that much. And if push comes to shove, he can always skulk off to the Virgin Islands or some such place and live his time out in the tax-free sun.

But some of the rest of us, not so fortunate in money matters, will not be so lucky.

But then again, to have too much skin in the game might mean that one was not prepared to take risks at all. Which would not be too clever either. A bit like negotiating the price of the house one wants oneself, rather than getting a professional, an estate agent, to do it one's behalf.

Notwithstanding, I think we might have got a better result if our Secretary had had a bit more skin in this game.

Fancy spirits

Last Sunday to hear the new-to-us Novus String Quartet at the Wigmore Hall, a quartet founded at the Korean National University of the Arts, which presumably means the right Korea rather than the wrong one (which we have been bashing about or slagging off in one way or another for a very long time. No wonder they are a bit odd). But even the right one is a bit odd as the university web site is declared by MS Edge to be antique technology and suggests that I try that other antique, MS Internet Explorer, instead. See the rather slow reference 1.

Off to a tweeting start with a clutch of coal tits flapping about in the corkscrew willows (a domesticated version of the Chinese salix matsudana) on Clay Hill Green, a bird we only seem to see in the winter.

Trains behaving themselves this particular Sunday, with our riding in an unusually six coached train, complete with the name of the new franchise holder, but All-Bar-One in Regent Street was not, with service very poor. Reduced to going to Pret for BH's coffee fix. While I was reduced to watching as I don't trust the tea sold in such places.

Wigmore Hall full. We were expecting the quartet, being both young and far eastern to be sporting apples instead of scores, but in the event they turned out to be smartly turned out, in black, carrying regular scores.

Their three Haydn quartets (Op.17 No.6, Op.50 No.3 and Op.55 No.1) were all very good, just the thing for a Sunday morning. Music from a time when music was supposed to be reasonably complicated. but also pleasant and graceful. The words courtois and courtoisie come to mind. Possibly even funny. Before the heavies moved in with their rather heavier demands on both performers and audience. Before the moderns wanted to make instruments of the violin family do things for which they were not intended. Not that instruments have intentions, but I think the point is fair.

For a change, we thought to take lunch in the bar at the Langham Hotel, the place presently called the Artesian, for the well that the site or the building was once supposed to have had. This in preference to somewhere else in the same hotel which would have sold us a champagne tea for £65 a head or so and which might have been called the Palm Court. First, it was lunch time. Second, I am not that keen on that sort of a meal. Third, I might well have had to sit on a banquette rather than a chair. Need I go on?

But the Artesian was fine for lunch. It also sold a fine range of spirits and cocktails, including some which were very expensive indeed, although we did not partake on this occasion. Instead we had the background noise of the barman smashing up ice in a cocktail shaker. Quite a lot of smashing for what did not seem like a lot of takers for cocktails.

Classic romaine Caesar, aged parmesan, garlic croutons, Cajun ‘blackened’ chicken. This was nicely turned out and Cajun chicken was fine, nothing alarming or red sauce covered at all. For dessert I took biscuits - a nice touch that they can just give you a few biscuits - while BH had a flashily turned out dessert in a glass, a sort of layered affair involving various kinds of chocolate, white and brown. Very good apparently, probably getting on for 0.7 Mars Bar equivalents. All washed down with an entirely acceptable white wine - with another nice touch being that they pour it from the bottle at your table. My only mistake being that for the price of three small glasses, I might have done better to buy the whole bottle.

The sugar came with silver plated sugar tongs, and I dare say any butter would have come with a butter knife. Niceties which we have more or less abandoned here in Epsom, although they were still up and running in my childhood home.

Interestingly mixed clientele. Excellent service. All in all, well worth the extra one is paying over and above, for example, All-Bar-One.

Next stop the Waitrose food hall to buy a lump of Comté, the same brand as it happens, as one gets in Borough Market. I bought a fair sized lump, shrink wrapped, so we will see how it does for Christmas. Presently hanging in the roof of the garage, triple wrapped against the frost.

Three interesting buildings in the course of the visit. First, Chandos House, a relic of the past in Queen Anne Street, once the property of the Royal Society of Medicine, now a rather fancy looking B&B. Not particularly expensive, so maybe we will give it a try one day, rather than scuttling back to Vauxhall. No to be confused with Great Queen Street, home to quite a different sort of outfit. Second, the Harold de Walden estate office, also in Queen Anne Street, for all the world like the embassy for a small but proud country. Third, what was the Regent Street Poly in Regent Steet. I had never realised how grand it was inside. Very art deco. I remember it from the days of student unrest, back in the late 1960's, when shabby looking people with long hair used to hang about outside with fags on. Not sure if I ever went inside.

As it turned out, folding umbies was just the right thing for the modest amount of rain about.

Back to Vauxhall just in time to catch the 1506, so home at a respectable hour. Taxis had been down to two on the way out, but the line had been stocked up again by the time that we got back.

PS: reference 4 suggests that there is only one brand of Comté, in something of the same way as there is only one brand of Lincolnshire Poacher, my usual tipple. Maybe next time I am in Borough I will ask one of the young foreigns selling the stuff. From which I associate to the factlet that foreign is much the same word as the French word for someone who makes his or her living from working the fairs. See reference 5.

Reference 1: http://www.karts.ac.kr/index_karts.jsp.

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

Reference 3: https://www.hdwe.co.uk/.

Reference 4: http://www.comtecheese.co.uk/.

Reference 5: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/03/following-precedent-set-back-in-autumn.html.

Reference 6: http://www.langhamhotels.com/en/the-langham/london.

Reference 7: http://www.artesian-bar.co.uk/.

Trolley 113

For a change, an M&S food hall trolley with current livery. Rescued from the horse trough end of the Ashley Centre and returned to a crowded M&S food hall at the Wetherspoon's end.

A food hall which actually contained small bags of walnuts for sale, something one does not seem to come across much these days. However, on closer inspection they looked a bit dried up, from Hungary, nothing like as nice looking as the red diamond jobs from California. I shall hold out in the hope of coming across some of them. Maybe a Borough Market thing.

Failing there, I thought to buy an Economist at Smith's, not having bought one for a bit. But they have sunk down to a Christmas Bumper Edition, so I passed. And I had thought of the Economist and the Financial Times as holding out as the last bastions of news rather than sleaze, trivia and padding. With the Financial Time being - for the moment anyway - my fall back position should the Guardian continue its decline into trivia.

PS: as it happens, only the other day, I was reading of Primo Levi, in his youth, buying some kind of chestnut pudding snack from a street vendor in his native Piedmont. Not quite the same as walnuts but tendencies in that directions. And from where I further associate to the chestnut factlets at reference 1.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/03/maigret-meets-marple.html.

Reference 2: The Periodic Table - Primo Levi - 1975. In my case, a rather nice, top-of-the-range Everyman's edition.

Cavern

The cavern at the top of one of the loaves of the 447th batch of bread, baked yesterday, was quite intriguing when inspected by eye at close quarters, and I thought that the telephone did quite a good job on it. I wonder how much better a real camera could do?

I associated to the sort of caverns you might see if you poked a small camera inside a heart - or even a stomach or a large intestine.

The caverns seem to be the result of a switch from Waitrose's own brand Leckford Estate strong white flour to Allinsons. A switch only made because Waitrose had run out of their own stuff a couple of weeks ago. Maybe time to switch back: caverns might be fun, but they do make for a lot of fragments spread around the kitchen.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/background-processing.html. For deep background.

Fake 21

A common enough fake these days, common outside restaurants, not so common in hanging ball format.

In this case the restaurant that used to be the 'Old Bank' public house, the very place where BH and I used to meet of a Friday afternoon before finding somewhere suitable to eat. Perhaps Caspers, a rather good restaurant, said to have been run as a vanity operation for a son in law, now long departed. One part of the complex was a B&B, probably dating from the days when travelling salesmen stayed over, and another was a wine bar, a place which used to do a good trade on a Sunday afternoon. With the restaurant being the place which introduced us to chateaubriand steak and which also allowed one to take a cigar after one's meal. Just presently, possibly going through a Persian phase.

While the master of ceremonies at the Old Bank used to start dropping heavy hints around 1930 about it being time for older people to move on. And we make a fair amount of use of the place in its current format: reliable and reasonable, but it is wise to book for times like early evening on a Saturday. It might be near empty, but then again, it might not be - and we have been caught out a couple of times.

I suppose I show my age by being irritated by plastic pot plants, perhaps particularly because I am rather fond of box (see reference 1). But by the time the children are my age I expect they will be surprised to learn that such things ever were real plants. Just think of all the bother and mess.

And it is not as if fake plants are any more inappropriate that all that architectural trim which faintly echoes building practises of bygone eras. The plants brighten the place up. They probably, for the moment anyway, carry the positive emotional charge of real plants. They make us feel good, provided we do not stop and look too closely.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/09/buxus-sempervirens.html.

Crumpets

A few weeks ago we remembered about crumpets and since then we have been eating quite a few of them, with Warburtons being the presently preferred brand - available at both Costcutter and Waitrose, so presumably a popular item.

First time around, I went to the bother of grilling them, as I would toast. This produced a rather overcooked crumpet, rather like that served at Poundbury and noticed at reference 1. Then I discovered the merits of the pop-up toaster, which did a much more satisfactory job. Also a good deal quicker and more convenient.

Then I thought it might be a bit of fun to make some for myself. The recipe made this look like a fair bit of bother, but eventually I weakened and was pleasantly surprised to find that I could buy crumpet rings at Lakeland.

Then yesterday I had my first go, with most of the weight being accounted for by 8oz of flour and 12oz of green top milk. Unfortunately, I misread the recipe and used a teaspoon of yeast rather than a tablespoon, which meant the yeast did not froth in the proper way, even with extra time.

Fried in butter, three at a time, in our regular frying pan, ladling the mixture into the rings with our soup ladle. About three quarters full.

Cooked for between 5 and 10 minutes. Rings easily removed with the dental forceps first mentioned at reference 2. Crumpets - sporting just a few of the holes that should have covered the things - turned and cooked for another 5 minutes or so. Looked quite attractive, rather soft inside and did not taste much like crumpets, rather somewhere between the dough balls you might get in a pizza place and English-style pancakes, the sort you fry in lard and roll up with sugar and lemon juice. Maybe we get crumpets with holes next time.

PS: I feel sure that I have posted a picture of the forceps in question at some point, but cannot now trace it. Maybe the necessary search terms will come to me during the morning. Rather unusual forceps with long slender jaws, which I think my dentist told me were for extracting the incisors of children. Just the ticket for extracting the hot rings out of the frying pan.

PPS: it did, and the post in question is now at reference 3. However, memory shown to be defective once again. Not the incisors of children, rather the fragments of upper molars which sometimes snap off, in-situ, during extractions. Google suggests that it is a bit like hammers, with there being a particular sort of hammer for every conceivable job. Once upon a time, big tool shops like Buck & Ryan of Tottenham Court Road, would stock a hundred or more varieties.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/10/fine-dining.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=kemptown+kit.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/papier-mache.html.

Gull?

An interesting bird noise at about 2200 last night, that is to say Monday night.

The same sort of temporal structure as the hoot of an owl. That is to say, two or three squawks, perhaps a second or so in duration, perhaps separated by a second or so, then a pause, then a few more.

A loud, deep noise, which made one think of a large bird, like a crow, rather than a small bird, like a robin.

It seemed to come and go, as if it was flying around the area in a rather haphazard way.

On the other hand, any one squawk was not like the hoot of any owl that I am familiar with. No ter-wit ter-woo about it at all.

Nor was it the squawk of a crow, the bark of a pigeon or the mew of a gull. Nor the scream of a fox, the scream of a cat fight or the bark of a dog.

So what was it?

Gullible

Yesterday I exhibited incompetence regarding my own razor. While today I exhibited gullibility regarding my broadband connection.

We were phoned up at around 1300, just as we were tucking into our meat loaf, by a young lady claiming to be phoning from some central London address for BT. A young lady with a strong accent, quite possibly sitting in some call centre in the far east. Communication was not easy.

I was a little suspicious, but I vaguely recalled speaking to a BT call centre in the subcontinent or in the far east before and I have certainly spoken about fraud to an HSBC call centre in the subcontinent. So it was not impossible that the call, purporting to be about some invisible-to-me problem with my broadband connection which might well get worse, was genuine.

After a short while I am passed to someone described as a supervisor, but in any event a young man with rather better English.

He takes me through various trickery, involving command prompts and peering at system information. Including him being able to recite to me a long identifier that I was looking at, rather like the license numbers that you get when you buy MS Windows or Office, but not the same. And including looking at a log which was full of errors and warnings to do with the internet connection. Oh dear says the man. I think we need to do a bit more checking. Please use the command line to go to this website.

At which point I start to think that BT would not ask me to do such a thing. So I go to Chrome to find that the site is called TeamViewer (see reference 1) and looks far too tricky for comfort so I tell the young man that I am going to check with BT. At which point he gets rather cross. I have been talking to you for fifteen minutes so why are you getting difficult now. At which point I put the phone down.

Pick it up again to find him still there. Hold the trigger down for a bit, he goes and a dialling tone comes.

In short order I am talking to the excellent BT IT Help Desk (a subscription service) and the young man there knows what is going on almost before I tell him. Nothing wrong with that error log, that is what you would expect. With the wheeze being for you to get the wind up, to get going with a shared session with TeamViewer, probably in itself perfectly respectable, damage your computer and then, amid clouds of waffle, for them to suggest that you stump up a couple of hundred quid for them to mend it. Another time, the man from BT tells me, you will know that it is not us, if only because we use xxx for shared sessions, not TeamViewer.

The call centre number involved has now been blocked using the BT custom call blocker (a free service), a blocker which has reduced the volume of nuisance calls to a trickle.

After the event, BH explains that she thought it was all a bit dodgy all along, but she did not like to interfere in this man stuff.

Quite an elaborate scam with quite a complicated script, one which would only work with a just about IT literate person such as myself. Enough knowledge to follow the instructions, but not so much as to smell a rat. A little knowledge is dangerous and all that. Elaborate and time consuming, but I suppose that if each operator catches one gull a shift, their employer is going to be turning a respectable profit. The operators gets to eat the gulls, fishy taste and all. One almost feels sorry for them.

Reference 1: https://www.teamviewer.com/en/.

Incompetence

For some time now I have been irritated by how long it takes to shave in the morning and by how poor a shave I was getting notwithstanding. It did not cross my mind that a bit of maintenance was in order.

Eventually, BH takes me in hand and we clean the thing, which is then better but not good. So then I took the rather drastic step of going down to Boots.

Where, having been shown where the shavers were, I found that I needed to know the model number of the shaver, which I had, surprisingly, had the wit to take with me. But the model number was embossed on the plastic case, was not given a contrasting colour, was very small and was very hard to read. Spectacles off and hold the thing about two inches from the right eyeball job. But I think I got there in the end as the new heads are now installed and working nicely.

For just half the price of a new shaver.

Followed this morning by a memory failure, with my being quite confident that the shops in Oxford Street opened at 1100 on a Sunday, while BH was voting for 1200. She was right.

Perhaps we have a bit of sexual dimorphism going on here.

Trolley 112

Captured in Stones Road and returned to the special needs bay at Kiln Lane.

Same format basket as the regular Sainsbury's trolley (see, for example, reference 1), but a much more heavily built frame. Heavy enough, I should think, to carry things like 25kg bags of rice on the bottom shelf. Do they sell anything like at Kiln Lane?

Heavy enough also to be rather awkward to wheel on the not very level pavement of Middle Lane. Particularly when one is also worrying about slipping on the frost - something I do worry about having had a couple of falls in the past couple of months or so. Full of dark thoughts about how falls often used to be fatal - carrying off, for one, my maternal grandmother, whose broken hip led to pneumonia.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/trolley-110.html.

Winter journey

Following the rehearsal (as it were) noticed at reference 1, last week to the Wigmore Hall to hear Mark Padmore and Mitsuko Uchida do Schubert's Winterreise.

Started out on Epsom platform by the sight of an advertising hoarding showing off bad behaviour by a male model, that is to say standing outside, grinning at us with a large and expensive radio sitting on his shoulder. Just the sort of thing that FIL tried to bear down on beaches in the west country - with rather mixed success. No idea what the hoarding was supposed to be advertising, apart from bad behaviour.

We then find that the trains are in disarray for a variety of reasons and elect to take a Southern train to Victoria, which involved standing until Sutton, but it did get us there, taking only a few more minutes that the proper train would have done.

Onto Wigmore Hall to find that we were at a gala occasion, probably the reason why we had been consigned to row M. The artists had donated their fees to the Wigmore Hall, there were various posh looking people in the bar and we were to be addressed by the director. An address which mainly consisted of telling us that he had just got back from Vienna where it was rather cold. Perhaps he had been to some concert hall directors' conference there, where, in between their wienerschnitzels, they told each other what they were doing about the loss of government grants and exchanged views about the best people to get to refurbish one's seats.

The hall was full, but luckily for us the two seats in front of us were empty, perhaps caught up in the trains, which meant we both had excellent, full body views.

Uchida marked the occasion by being rather more smartly turned out than she had been for the RFH the week before (see reference 2), to the extent of wearing a white sash. I had worried that as a premier league piano player, she would attempt to steal the occasion, but in the event she did not. In fact, she did very well indeed, bringing out a lot of bits of the piano parts that I had not really heard before. Only occasionally did I feel she was a little too loud.

Padmore also excellent, with great power and range, neatly but not flashily turned out and with stage manners to match. Contrary to the paternal line that one should end loud, he ended rather quiet - but managed to pack a lot of punch into his quiet.

Regarding the words, the same form as last time. I watched the stage while BH watched the words. I am clearly losing out, but on this occasion I wondered how many of the words a German speaker would actually catch, assuming that he (or she) did not know them by heart - with my finding quite a lot of singing in English quite difficult from that point of view.

Back at Vauxhall the trains were still in disarray with a rather disconsolate small crowd by the gates listening to the words of wisdom of a station attendant. Some talk, inter alia, of a track side fire at Waterloo. Pushed through them and onto an empty platform. We had just started to think that maybe we should have gone to Victoria after all, when a near empty train pulled in. We had waited less than five minutes as it turned out.

Disarray continued in that the usually well filled taxi rank outside Epsom station was empty, a consequence we learned of trains beyond Epsom being out of action and all the Epsom taxis having been taken by all the people who lived beyond Epsom, out in the country. Another wait of less than five minutes.

Home to turn out Bostridge again. Where, I had read beforehand, that the key transitions between the songs of the cycle were sometimes important, key transitions which could be disturbed by transposition, perhaps for a bass singer rather than a tenor - which might explain why Coote was not as good at 'Auf dem Wasser zu singen' as I had expected (see reference 4). Unfortunately, as I had thought that changing key just meant multiplying everything by 1.234 or whatever, leaving the relationships between the transposed notes unchanged, my music theory is clearly not good enough to understand how this could be so. Maybe one day I will come across someone who can put me right.

PS: we could not manage snow for the illustration but we could manage a segment of the John Lewis Christmas monster display in Oxford Street. Said to be tied in with a whole raft of expensive advertising on television and elsewhere. Very expensive looking it was too.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/back-at-court.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/sonatas.html.

Reference 3: Schubert's Winter Journey - Ian Bostridge - 2015.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/trouser-roles.html.

Shrinking phone

I have just woken from a dream involving a building I used to know quite well, Government Offices, Great George Street, GOGGS to its friends. A GOGGS which had been refurbished in a way that one could no longer get from one part to another without going outside, an outside which had morphed into something between Edinburgh Castle, stuck up on its mound, and Parliament Street with its clutter of old buildings, or at least old facades. This last having been brought on by their appearance in a half watched episode of 'Morse' the evening before.

At some point I was on the relic & rubble cluttered slopes outside and came across a really interesting plant, a plant which I wanted to photograph for posterity, or perhaps for the blog. So out with the telephone and try to get down to business.

To discover that this particular sort of mobile phone shrank as its battery ran down, in this case to the point where it was about the size of one's thumbnail. All a bit awkward as things like the power switch did not shrink.

Not an important enough matter to wake me up, I just gave up and moved onto the next episode in the dream.

With thanks to Google for the illustration. Famous public house off snap to the right. Hardened bollards foreground. Such an important street that the image is only a few weeks old - see bottom right.

More law

The original idea of getting the book at reference 2 was to learn all about the high incidence of crime in the middle ages, that is to say the first half of the 14th century.

We do not get to learn much about the incidence of crime, partly because, in 1979 at least, no-one had much idea about how people there were in England or about their age structure, beyond a suspicion that with high mortality it was probably a young population with lots of young men of criminal age - with bulges of such often being responsible, even now, for bulges in the crime statistics.

But there is a great deal of documentary evidence in the form of pipe rolls maintained by the courts, tales of dirty deeds, their victims and perpetrators from, in this case, around seven hundred years ago, many of which have survived the various ravages of time. Evidence which includes all kinds of fascinating legal jargon, jargon which can, I dare say, be traced through to our own jargon and practises. Do students of law spend any time on such stuff? It would be a pity if they have so much other stuff to learn - perhaps about the mountains of regulations coming from both our own Houses of Parliament and the gang in Brussels - that there was no room for a bit of background. Just in case, I offer a few bits of said jargon.

Trespass. I had always thought of trespass in terms of being on someone's land without their permission. Trespassers will be prosecuted and all that. But it seems that in the olden days it was almost any offence not serious enough to count as a felony or treason. And given that the economy of the time was largely agricultural, and that agriculture meant land, a fair bit of this involved being on someone else's land.

Also excluded were misprisions of a felony or treason. With a misprision, it seems, being a failure to report something, in this case a felony or a treason, to the proper authorities.

I think that the Hanawalt hierarchy of larceny, burglary, robbery and homicide were all forms of felony. Larceny being simple theft, burglary involving breaking and entering, robbery involving violence against persons, or threats of same and homicides meaning murder of one sort of another. Which looks very like our own hierarchy. Maybe the form was that if the value of goods involved was low, the victim was un-important or the perpetrator was important, then the offence was either dismissed or treated as a trespass.

Then we had commissions of trailbaston. OED tells me that a trailbaston is a corruption of a French expression meaning somebody carrying a cudgel, or by extension anything else of that sort, something of a serious menace in the 14th century. A commission of trailbaston empowered someone to go after these people.

And commissions of oyer and terminer. A corruption of another French expression, this one meaning to hear and determine, a sort of paraphrase of the legal process of the time. Commissions of oyer and terminer were usually used to go after people involved in major disturbances, rebellions even. Nobles even, people who were usually exempted from due process.

Lastly we had juries and jurors. It seems that the form back then was that the jurors acted as private detectives, made their own assessment of a case before it was heard by a justice and with the hearing consisting largely of their testimony to the justice. Plus, they were much more apt to come down hard on strangers than on people from their own towns and villages, the friends and relatives of whom they would want to continue to live with. Not how we do things now at all.

All great fun.

PS: it is a pity now that I did not get a senior official of what is now the National Archives to show me a real live pipe roll when I had the chance. I made do with some tallies instead; Treasury flavoured and interesting enough, but not as interesting as a pipe roll.

Reference 1: Crime and conflict in English communities 1300-1348 - Barbara Hanawalt - 1979.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/12/felony.html.

Fish soup

Yesterday being a day for fish soup, made from left overs, rather than the more elaborate proceeding noticed at reference 1. Not the first time that I have used fish in this way, but I think that this is the first time that I have noticed it.

BH got four slices of salmon, described as lightly smoked, in the same format as that illustrated left. On special from the Leatherhead Tesco's, so very reasonable. We took two and a half of them fried in a little oil for lunch. Rather good, with the smoking (or whatever passes for smoking at Tesco's) having left the flesh of the fish firm, how I like it.

This left us with some boiled potatoes, parsnips, carrots and cauliflower and one and a half slices of cooked salmon.

So, somewhat later, chop the potatoes and parsnips into roughly centimetre cubes. Chop the carrots finely, so as to bring colour but not lumps to the mix. Add, together with 2oz of red lentils to 1.5l of water, bring to the boil and simmer for about 45 minutes. Chop the cauliflower into roughly centimetre cubes and add that. Remove grey matter (peripheral nervous system, aka lateral line), white matter (fat) and skin from the fish, crumble the pink remainder and add that. Simmer the whole for a further five minutes and serve with brown bread.

Just the ticket on a cold winter evening.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/fish-soup.html.

Detailing

Figure 1

Following the last post, I thought a few architectural thoughts about Hall No.1 at Kings Place were in order. Figure 1 above, turned up by Bing, gives some idea of the construction, if not the atmosphere of the place under concert lighting.

The dominant motif from where I was sitting was that of the rows of pillars, left, front and right, arranged so as to look as if they are free standing against a dark space. I was not sure whether they were free standing or not, being reasonably sure that cunning lighting could give that illusion. A rather good idea, but the effect was rather spoiled by the chunkiness of the pillars.

A chunkiness which was accentuated by the use of distance between two successive pillars, measured from left hand edge of one to the left hand edge of the next, or put another way the interval plus one pillar width, as the unit of length from which the design as a whole was put together. I associate to the old difficulty with telegraph poles, where the number of poles is one plus the number of spaces between poles, an endless source of confusion and error in computer programs.

Figure 2

A unit of length which was used for the panels beneath the pillars, which, inter alia, gave the unfortunate effect of the pillars sitting on the gaps between two successive panels. This might be clearer in Figure 2 than Figure 1.

The ceiling, which was lightly coffered with square panels of the same size, worked rather better.

The sound might have been good but while the hall was not as bad to look at as it had seemed on the first occasion, it was still not good. It would be interesting to know whether it was done on a tight budget or whether there was money to burn on this prestige project

In any event, it seemed to me that this was a hall which had been designed about some good ideas, but by someone who either disdained detailing in favour of a modern look - or did not know how to do it. A lack of basic training in architects' school. Perhaps all wannabee architects should be made to study London's County Hall, where the exterior stone detailing is generally very good and gave me much pleasure through the years when I walked past it, twice every day.

So, for example, the panels underneath the pillars could have been done much better, perhaps by allowing the pillars to run down between successive panels, rather than having them sitting on the crack. Perhaps a little coffering of the panels, to pick up that of the ceiling. While stopped bevels running most of the length of the two outside edges of the pillars would have taken away their unsightly chunkiness, and provided some relief from the brown - of which there was, as things stand, rather too much. And something better could have been done at the corners, something better than sticking rigidly to the unit of length.

A hall which might have been.

PS: Bogger, for some reason, has taken to varying the font within a post without my knowingly asking it to. The only remedy I can think of is to pass the offending test through Notepad to strip off the formatting. Tiresome. No doubt some erring paragraphs will slip through my editorial net.

Reference 1: https://www.kingsplace.co.uk/.

Suite

Following the concert noticed at reference 1, another go at the cello suites last week at Kings Place.

Pieter Wispelwey giving us suites 1 and 3, plus a suite from Britten and a sonata from Ligeti.

Bad start in that we had a new-to-me sort of carriage to take me from Epsom, arranged with heaters under all the seats, taking away what might otherwise have been room for one's feet.

But things got better when I found that the Pentonville Road exit from the Victoria Line at Kings Cross meant a lot less underground walking than last time.

I turned down the various bars on offer along York Way, and settled for the bar in the Rotunda, in Kings Place itself. Another of those central London bars which manages to provide good service when it is busy. Furthermore, it seemed quite cheap for the location. And they gave you a fancy glass for your whisky - which seems to have become the norm in the better class of bar. Very few people were using cash, so my presenting the barman with a tenner slowed things down a bit.

Oddly, the central, multi-floor space outside the bar seemed rather cold, despite being smart, modern, reasonably well populated and decorated with inoffensive art. Maybe a bit too much like an office - which is, of course, what a lot of it was.

On into the hall to be greeted by a much smarter cello stand than that which I noticed at reference 3. Given that this was a solo performance and there was no need to raise the sitting cello to the level of the standing violins and viola, one can only suppose that the floor manager thought that the cello looked better sitting on a little stand that sitting on the stage. The net result was that my eyes were about level with the holes and the sound from the middle of row F was very good indeed.

But also close enough for there to be various odd noises, in addition to those arising from bowing or plucking the strings. Some were breathing. Some were the fingers of the left hand tapping the finger board. Some were the bow catching the case. But quite a lot I could not place at all and I wondered if catching the still moving string with the bow could sometimes produce a click on impact. Something else to ask a cellist if I ever get up close and personal with one.

Hall a little more than half full, rather less full that it had been for Clein and with some leaving at half time. Why, I know not. But quite a lot of young people, quite a lot of working age. So a lot younger that most of our musical events.

There was a Chinese couple a little in front of me and the lady of the couple would have taken the prize for the most naked lady of the evening, with the back of her dress consisting of little more than narrow straps, but she had to be disqualified by being one of the leavers.

The Britten and the Ligeti were interesting, with some good passages, including echoes of the Bach, but not really my thing, despite Wispelwey giving us a musical introduction to the Britten so we knew what to expect. Maybe they are musicians' pieces, better suited to the trained ear. But the Bach was very good indeed, particularly No.3 - so much so that at exit one learned lady was talking about there perhaps being too much attack. But I liked it.

Bit of a wait on the way home, just missing a connection, so put in a visit, the first for a while, to the Halfway House at Earlsfield. Busy, but not packed around 2200 on a Friday evening.

Earlsfield station was remarkably clean and tidy, with all the free papers and other litter collected up. Very large half moon to the east, illuminated by the sun somewhere to its left, well below the horizon. (The papers have been talking about large moons, something to do with its orbit around the earth not being very circular). Then, for a few minutes I had an excellent position on the platform, but the best I could do was a couple of singles. Aeroplanes that is.

Lot of burbling from the guard over the intercom, more or less incomprehensible.

Next stop Jean-Guihen Queyras in June next year.

PS: checking this morning, I find I had heard Wispelwey before, about 5 years ago and noticed at reference 2. It looks as if I liked him at much on that occasion, rounded out, as it happens, by a first visit to the nearby Saint Bartholomew the Great.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/the-home-of-guardian.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Wispelwey.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/cello-stand.html.