Bread bags

I read recently that Tesco's is making something of a comeback following its extravagant overseas's adventures, its extravagant accounting for its supply chain and the onslaught by German discounters. Perhaps part of this is the quality bags supplied with their bread. The bread in question, granary with large hard lumps, all to likely to damage one's filings, is ordinary, but the bags it comes in are good. Today promoted to the picnic service along with the equally good, albeit rather different, plastic bags from Neal's Yard Dairy.

The second matter of note, is last night's dream involving leaving my warfarin at work, extracting individual (but still wrapped) warfarin tablets from a dusty mess at the back of a drawer, attendance at a Filenet user conference, much decayed from its glory days in the 1990's, possibly having to give a short talk at said conference (the price of my being allowed to go) and travelling in a bus with BH in the vicinity of Parliament Square. All a bit of a muddle.

Then, once woken up, I read a few pages of Renault on Alexander, first noticed at reference 1. She goes to some length to explain that it was quite OK for Greek men of the time of Alexander, say around 350BC, a century before Rome got going with its Punic wars, to boast about their deeds, to sing their own praises, although there is a slight complication here in that being good at singing was not considered very manly. But the deeds had to be there, empty boasting was despised - so the important thing was to have stuff to boast about. One built one's life around making opportunities to do boastful stuff, with battles being best. First you dreamed the dream, then you set out to live it.

There is also an aside about kings of that day being expected to lead from the front, quoting the words of Sarpedon from the Iliad in support. Both Alexander and his father did their fair share of such leading, so perhaps this is part of why she has a bit of a down on Demosthenes, all word and no deed. Like Trump, great on exhorting others to do battle, not so keen at all on his own account. See reference 4.

All picking up neatly from the wanderings at references 2 and 3.

PS: much later: a corollary of all this boasting was, it seems, vanity, with Alexander being a very vain man. Presumably in the same way and for the same reasons as our nearest thing to Alexander here in the UK, Vice Admiral Nelson, another very vain man. I dare say that the Emperor Napoleon was too, although I do not recall ever reading about that. Perhaps the essays on vanity in Ecclesiastes ought to be compulsory bed-time reading for all such people, to help them retain just a bit of humility. Although perhaps atheletes, with their short working lives, could be let off, as the transience of their earthly glory is clear to all, even to themselves.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/a-work-for-sundays.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/peanuts.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/padella.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/07/more-trump.html.