Arden 2

Quite by chance, a few days after I had bought the German book, I found the one I already had but had lost. Not in one of the odd places I had looked in, rather very nearly exactly where it should have been. But tucked behind Part II where I did not see it, even though I had looked behind, in case it had fallen down the back of the bookcase, which, in a sense, it had. See illustration left, third book up from the bottom.

The bookshelves were wide enough for such a thing to happen.

BH yet to be brought up to date on this one.

Group search key: ara.

Arden 1

For some reason, probably because they were all the thing when I was an adolescent, I like to read my Shakespeare - which I like to do before going to see one played - in the blue hardback edition called 'Arden' from Methuen. Hardbacks which have been properly bound and more or less stay open on the page without your having to hold the pages down. Easy to read while reclining, with one hand. Plenty of support in the way of critical apparatus, without that support being visually, or in any other way, intrusive. Probably rather dear in their day, which meant that schoolboys usually had to make do with Signets.

The hardback Ardens went out of print some time ago, but over the years I have built up a more or less complete collection, some in duplicate and some going back near a hundred years. A brand which had quite a long life, taking in several changes of cover colour.

So on the occasions of the two outings to Herny IV Part I before Christmas (see, for example, reference 1), I got the Arden down and it was sculling around the house for a few weeks. Then I forgot about it, and then I remembered about it, to find that it was not in it's spot on the shelf. Hunted high and low, including all the silly places you look when something is really bugging you. Eventually I was instructed to stop; the thing would turn up of its own accord if I left it alone. But while I could stop looking, I could not stop worrying. One symptom of which was taking a look in the theatre bookshop mentioned at reference 2, quite near Carr-Saunders hall, where the best they could do was a rather poor quality paperback reproduction from, I think, Bloomsbury. No good at all.

Next stop Abebooks, on this occasion no help at all. In desperation, I try Ebay, where they look to have lots of them, a good proportion in the US, which is fine but the delivery can be weeks. So I selected one from Germany, from Antiquariat Bookfarm, Engertstrasse 6, 04177 Leipzig, streetviewed above. The lesson clearly being that if you want a decent edition of a classic book of England, go to Germany where they still read them. See reference 3.

A fortnight or so later, the book turns up, once the property of the English Department of Munich University (Institut für Englische Philologie), bookmarked 'Sh H4 300' and complete with brown card holder for the library ticket. No dust jacket but otherwise in good condition; used but not worn. But perhaps even there, in the heart of Bavaria, Bard studies are fading. Maybe they no longer even memorise great swathes of Goethe and Heine. Two more metal clips used to close the packet, rather smaller than those mentioned at reference 3 and not brass. I wonder that the German Postal Workers Union has not had the things banned on the grounds that they would be apt to catch and tear cold fingers.

PS: really don't like the orange banner to the new blog. Must try to do something about it.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/henry-iv-part-i-part-ii.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/a-swing-through-fitzrovia.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/romeo-beta.html.

Group search key: ara.

Clarinet Collins

This year's Dorking Halls season has started, with a concert given by Michael Collins with the Philharmonia Orchestra, with the provincial setting giving the concert an oddly provincial feel. One did not forget that the same hall had probably seen a lot more Saturday night dances, complete with a bit of fisticuffs afterwards, the sort of thing that was just about dying out when I was of an age to go to such things, than concerts.

That apart, much the same sort of event as the corresponding event least year noticed at reference 1. But I offer a few additional thoughts.

Grand Hall pretty much full, including some people of working age and a sprinkling of children. Good that they can still fill the place. There is life yet!

It remains odd for me to be listening to an orchestra; altogether too much going on really. Prokofiev pleasant enough, but a bit banal. Mozart very good. Beethoven good, but oddly, nothing like it had sounded on the gramophone the day before. Not a work I know, despite the lady behind announcing that it was her favourite because it was jolly. After the event, not very sure what she might have meant, other than there being an absence of solemnity; jolly by negation.

While his sparkly tie was OK, I was not keen on Collins conducting from the clarinet, which I found a bit distracting. Furthermore his clarinet seemed to be very long and looked rather heavy for a clarinet heavy work like the Mozart concerto. According to the programme, a Basset clarinet from Yamaha, an instrument which google suggests he might have paid £5,000 for (assuming that is, that Yamaha don't lend or give it to him gratis). A far cry from the £25 for the instrument which I once tried to play on.

Leadership tie apart the dress of the musicians was rather mixed, with one member of the audience spotting the odd frock coat. But all dark & decent enough en-masse.

Thinking of the striking capitals at Smith Square, we had striking ceiling bosses at Dorking, picked out in a blue light, at the distance not unlike the ultraviolet of dance floors in pubs and discos of my day.

Next stop the Heath Quartet, first heard a bit more than a year ago in town. See reference 2.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/dorking-time-again.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/op131.html.

Hunter gatherers

Once upon a time when the children were young, when we were on long car journeys and when the sky was in a suitable condition, we used to play spotting things in the clouds. Ducks, whales, faces, whatever a cloud and a fancy brought to mind. I also remember seeing a painting of a sky in which the painter had worked a row of faces into the clouds, so it is not just us.

A bit more recently, when I used to travel on the Northern Line at night, after have taken on a few beers, I used to peer at the floor – a pale blue broken up with lots of specks of various colours – local councils used to use finishes of the same sort on the walls of public area in blocks of council flats – supposed to be very durable and to degrade well – and spot things there. Sometimes the things spotted were surprisingly vivid. There was a variation to be played with one’s shoes, which could also be persuaded to take on surprising shapes.

While now it is a game that I sometimes play with one of our bedroom curtains. The illustration gives something of it, but does not really capture the full flavour of the curtain in the half light, without one’s specs on, when all kinds of strange things are to be spotted.

From where I associated to the hunter gatherers of the Amazon rain forest (most recently noticed at reference 1), a rain forest full of all kinds of threats to life and limb. It really would be quite helpful if you were good at picking out such threats from the half light of the thick jungle on either side of the path that you were on. If you were able to spot the jaguar and take appropriate action before it did.

So perhaps what happens is that the vision bit of the brain is continually scanning the scene, sent across from the retina, for threats. But because the scene is confused and noisy, most of the time all the brain has to go on is vague clues. So what it does is take each clue it comes across, guesses at what it might be and then guesses at what it might see in the jungle if that was the iceberg of which the clue was the tip. The brain uses that extra information, dredged up from memory, to run a fuller check on the clue in the jungle scene. Much more efficient than checking everything. And maybe a jaguar does spring into view - or maybe the clue dissolves into nothing of significance.

Sometimes the brain will get it wrong, amplifying the clue into a full blow jaguar when there is nothing of the sort there at all. A powerful illusion which might persist for some seconds. Something of the sort happens quite often when I am out walking. One sees something, it turns into, say, a redwing, a nice clear redwing, and then it goes again and one sees the discarded cigarette packet for what it is. And sometimes, as when one is idly gazing at the clouds in the summer sky, the brain does not care all that much, does not care enough to check - and just fancies away.

Another angle, not to be neglected, is that one can project one's hopes and fears, or anything much else of importance, onto the world around one. So if I am very thirsty, I am going to see drink everywhere. If I am very afraid of spiders, I am going to see spiders everywhere. But perhaps this last case takes us back full circle, back to the jungle, because if I pick up the spiders early enough, I am going to be able to take evasive action before they get up close and personal, and really scary.

And so off to Horton Lane. Or is today a day for the Ewell Village anti-clockwise?

PS 1: there was also the business of the blackberries, a story from the same sort of place. See, for example, reference 2.

PS 2: and asking google about ‘faces in clouds’ now, he comes up with lots of stuff, if not the painting in question. So lots of people are at it.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/life-among-anacondas.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/a-suggestion.html.

Morning sickness

Or rather, Detritus 4. With apologies to Dame Trace for having plagiarised her original concept, with an advertisement for her work included at reference 1 by way of an apology.

This particular detritus was gathered on West Hill Green, on the way back from Epsom, and carefully reassembled on our own verge before passing it along for recycling.

It was clear that the telephone was not going to recover, but it was odd in that it was not all there. One can understand dropping a telephone. One can even understand stealing one and then trashing it because one is angry that one cannot get into it and get it to work. But why trash it and then carry some of the bits off? There is clearly no rhyme or reason to the matter at all. Perhaps it was foolish of me to have expected there to be.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/detritus-3.html.

Boustrophedon

A couple of nights ago, things being slack on ITV3, we had a go at Morse in the 'Service of All the Dead'. Yet another one of those whodunnits which have a quiet pop at the high Anglican church, all incense and shakers. Midsomer Murders is doing it all the time. We managed just over half at the first sitting, before calling it a night.

We also got out the book version, this being one of those episodes which is based on a book rather than dreamed up by some script writer, and have both now had a bit of a go. Bit too heavy going to read all the way through.

But the point of the present post is that at one point Dexter wants to flaunt his fancy education by finding a use for the obscure word (aka a word that I have not come across before) 'boustrophedon'. I was content to make a stab at it from the context, getting it very vaguely right, associating to ducks for some reason, but BH was more demanding and so I asked Cortana, who came up with various offerings from various dictionaries.

It was a bit early in the morning, but eventually I got the idea, which was that some early writings alternated the direction of read as one went down the page, so that you read the page rather in the way that an ox ploughs a field, first right to left then left to right and so on. From bous the Greek for oxen and troph (or something) for turning.

I was then directed to the Encyclopaedia Britannica, volume 16, slice 6. Whatever slice 6 may have been. After a few taps I was taken through the Gutenburg Project (see reference 1) to a copy of the J-K part of a version of that encyclopaedia. Complete puzzle: what had J-K got to do with a B-word?

And now, having moved downstairs, I have another go and Cortana doesn't bother with Gutenburg any more and takes me straight to the boustrophedon article in what appears to be some other version of the encyclopaedia. Perhaps she is learning - which is, after all, what it says she does on her tin.

The result of all of which is that I am unlikely for forget what this word means for a day or two, even if I never get the hang of writing it down - or even of saying it.

PS: conversation over breakfast turned to how one took going back to front. Did one just have the words in the wrong order, or did one reverse the letters within the words too? Or even the letters themselves? It may have been relevant that ancient Latin did not bother about spaces between words. It was certainly the result that we all settled for reading in just the one direction, the eye being quite good at flicking back to the beginning again. Maybe someone has done some research on the underlying causes of settling on left to right as opposed to right to left. Or vice versa. Something to do with diet or, perhaps, latitude?

Reference 1: https://www.gutenberg.org/.

Activation day

As advertised at reference 1, this blog is officially declared open, it being volume three of the ongoing saga about when the pumpkin stroked the marrow.

Having regard to the length of the active life of these blogs, my own age and inclinations, I thought it unlikely that I would stray beyond five volumes, so have taken this opportunity to reserve the fifth volume, to be found at reference 2. Hopefully not too many bugs have crept into the reservation process.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.psmv5.blogspot.co.uk/.