Keys

Still with reference 1, I have been puzzling over wrecking bars.

Maigret quite often comes across things called 'clés anglaises' and for some reason I had decided that this meant what I call wrecking bars, a sort of tempered steel crowbar which comes in various sizes and which is very handy for all kinds of demolition work. Including the removal of large nails from things like joists and rafters. Also used by burglars for forcing entry through doors and windows, to the point where being seen carrying one at night used to sufficient reason to be stopped and searched.

But at reference 1, first noticed at reference 2, Simenon uses 'clé anglaise' as a synonym of 'clé à molette', an adjustable spanner. Perhaps a wrench, monkey wrench or stillson. This last also coming in various sizes and being very handy for all kinds of work with pipes and nuts. More generally, also used by criminals for bashing the innocent over the head. The original blunt instrument. With a 'molette' also being the little wheel you get inside that kind of spurs. Or a glass cutter.

So how did I come to get it wrong?

The Bing translation service which surfaced at reference 3 during my investigations offers 'barre d'épave' for wrecking bar, but I think that this might be a literal translation, not much used by French speakers. A brico shop suggested instead 'pince à décoffrer'. Not convinced by either, they both seem a lot more clumsy that our wrecking bar.

Then Littré suggested that a 'clef anglaise' is a dental forceps, the thing used for pulling teeth. So perhaps a key in France is anything which gets one in, gets the job done. And an English key is anything used for a bit of rough work, with what exactly depending on context.

Maybe I was not so far wrong after all.

I leave it to readers to suggest what kind of rough work the key illustrated might be for.

Reference 1: Maigret et les Témoins récalcitrants - Simenon - 1958. Volume 21 of the collected works.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/changing-guard.html.

Reference 3: https://www.bing.com/translator/.

Taro

In the beginning we have a taro plant, widely grown in the east. To all appearances, a sort of mutant cabbage.

But underneath we have the roots, rather like those of one of our own potatoes, or perhaps those of a sweet potato.

And then you have the taro flavoured pudding, not yet set, so not yet tried. As things stand we are slightly puzzled as to why one would want to flavour a milk pudding, possibly a relative of the Bird's Instant Whip of my childhood, with a potato.

I am sure I have read somewhere of tribes in what used to be called the East Indies, now mostly Indonesia, making steamed puddings with taro which they flavoured by threading worms through them. With worms being a high grade protein food, so a sort of tribal version of our own fish and chips.

PS 1: with thanks to Wikipedia for the first two pictures. And a moan that they don't manage to calm down their rather loud calls for money for those who have already given. They provide an important service and they deserve their money, but it is a pity they can't tune their calls a bit better. Maybe the real problem is that funds are short and the present advertisement-free public service is under threat.

PS 2: some hours later, nearly gone. I am advised that it was rather like blancmange.

Stupidity

Something over a hundred years ago, a section of the Tory Lords led us onto the rocks over Ireland - with their powers of stupidity only being curtailed after that horse had bolted. Is a section of the Tory Commons about to celebrate the centenary of that stupidity with another?

Not to mention the antics of the parties concerned in Northern Ireland.

Sonatas

Last week to the Royal Festival Hall to hear Uchida do some Schubert piano sonatas. Middle ones rather than late ones, so not all thunder, doom and gloom. D575, D845 and D850.

Various warnings about potential threats to service on the way to Waterloo, threats which were translated into our being a few minutes late. Talkative guards both in and out, so perhaps the new franchise holder is trying to drum up some enthusiasm among their working classes.

Got to the Festival Hall to find that they are at the same game as the Elizabeth Hall, with what was intended to be the ante-chamber for people going to the concert, having become a venue for a free concert. Which meant that there was nowhere near the bar for me to sit and I was reduced to carrying my drink upstairs, away from the noise and bustle downstairs. All very irritating.

Into the hall where I was in the fourth row, with my eyes about level with the keyboard, rather closer than I am used to - but in the event I rather liked the immediacy, despite my talk in the past of preferring a more blended sound. Oddly, the sound seemed to come from her hands and the very front of the instrument, an illusion which reminded me of the rubber hand trick. See reference 1.

The seat just my right in the second row had been dedicated by Salmon Rusdie. I forebore telling the occupant (who could not see the dedicatory ticket) about this.

The downstairs seemed pretty much full and there were plenty of people from the far east there, I dare say mostly from Japan. The platform was full of them, mostly quite young, possibly music students or wannabees.

On my left I had a smartly dressed Japanese lady, perhaps in her early 40's, not overly impressed with the way that Uchida had turned herself out. But she was impressed by her playing, which she may have known all about. As did the other chap sitting next to her, who, at the end, seemed to think it the right moment to go on about how it was about time that Uchida retired - and with her only a year older than myself. Something about how it is best to go out on a high, rather than from the bottom of the slope. Which is fair enough, but not so easy when it is oneself on the slope, rather than someone else. But I do remember that that my arty uncle did, on these grounds, hang up his engraving tools after a minor stroke, just allowing himself a few watercolours. In any event, I thought that Uchida was very good, whatever the learned gentleman might have thought.

Whereas my Japanese lady was rather taken about by my suggestion that it was just as bad for young footballers, having given their childhood to football, to find at twenty that they were not going to make the cut, as it was for young musicians. I don't think it had occurred to her before to put young footballers and young musicians in the same drawer - but, to be fair, while they do football in Japan, it is not yet their national sport, in the way that it is here.

I rather like Uchida's low key dressing. Comfortable and covering, without a hint of flashy - except about her shoes. A slight lady, with no obvious enlargement of shoulders, arms or hands, which I have noticed in the odd cello player. But I could not quite make out her spectacles, which seemed to come with white flaps at the side which put me in mind of the blinkers you used to put on cart horses. She had clearly worked on her bowing, with various grades of bow in evidence: so we got the occasional very deep bow, while most of the time the young people on the platform rated little more than a nod.

PS 1: once again, I wondered about her pre-concert rituals. I feel sure there are some. See reference 2 for similar thoughts on the last occasion.

PS 2: to round off a successful evening, all I need to do is keep the programme, which will serve again in February. And to remember about it in February, and to remember the special place that I have put it in for safe keeping.

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

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/02/uchida.html.

Stash

The stash of trolleys behind the dustbins at Majestic Wine, in Epsom's East Street. A  mixture of Sainsbury's, M&S (both old and new style) and Waitrose. A fair step from any of them.

The young lady inside assured me that most of them had not been there the day before. Then observed that there were students living in the area, who might be responsible. Then that people were odd and got up to all sorts of odd things that you would not expect. And lastly, that she knew who to phone to deal with them, the trolleys that is.

Being rather dense after the first Horton Clockwise for a few weeks, I did not think to ask who she phoned until I was already half way home.

PS: a bonus point has been awarded to Majestic Wine for stocking no fewer than three different grades, or at least three different prices, of Calvados. I settled for middle-of-the road, that is to say the Roger Groult Réserve 3-Year-Old - which we are told is 'made from hand-sorted cider apples from the Pays d’'Auge area, this Calvados has been aged and blended in old French casks...'. Pays d'Auge being to the east of Caen and to the south of Honfleur. Honfleur being just across the river from Harfleur, the place where Ian Holm put in an impressive cameo as a Welsh mercenary on his way to Agincourt. And, after all this time, I have learned that Harfleur is related to Le Havre. Part of, even.

Poultry slang

A couple of nice expressions from the Agatha Christie story first noticed at reference 1.

So 'eu une prise de bec avec la vieille' for 'to have a spat with the old bag'.

And 's'étaient volé dans les plumes' for 'to have a spat with the young tart'.

Idioms which I suppose date from a time when more people kept chickens, or at least knew people who did. And from the English, we can add the version involving the fur flying, a product of our predilection for cats.

I suppose that this translation, dating from 1994, will involve more up-to-date slang & idiom than that Simenon, from forty years earlier, it seeming unlikely that the translator would have attempted to cast his French back 50 years, to the time when the story was written. A whole new crop of words, slang and idioms for me to ponder over and relish. But oddly, I find the newer French harder than the older.

All very timely, as I have just been reading about poultry fights at reference 2. In connection with reading about how people like chickens, back off from fights they are not going to win, at least most of the time. Or, more particularly, tests they are not going to pass. Of which, more in due course.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/11/bon-dieu-de-bois.html.

Reference 2: Aggressive behavior of chickens: some effects of social and physical environments - J. V. Craig – 1978. To be found at http://www.poultryscience.org/docs/pba/1952-2003/1978/1978%20Craig.pdf. Be aware that vegetarians and vegans may find some of this material offensive.

The land of the free

I have just been reading a rather depressing article in the NYRB about how rich people in the US are making sure that they get even richer. Part of this is cutting taxes, another part is moving what used to be public services to the private sector, where there are no unions to speak of and there are good profits to be made out of what are euphemistically called efficiency savings. Yet another part is to so arrange things that poor people vote for all this - which one might have thought tricky - but clearly not impossible in the land of the free - where, for example, the gerrymandering of congressional districts had been going on for a long time. I think the article said somewhere that there are no limits on how much rich people can spend on this kind of thing.

One of their devices is an organisation called ALEC, the American Legislative Exchange Council, which appears to exist to promote the interests of corporate America (a reasonably proxy for the rich), with a focus on state legislatures. One of the services they offer is model legislation, which states can take off the shelf and apply with a minimum of change. Makes it easier for states to, for example, privatise their prisons or their schools.

ALEC is also said to be big into climate change denial. One supposes that there is more to be made from fracking than there is to be made from wind - although not obvious from where I sit why this should be so. So perhaps it is more a matter of sunk investments and vested interests.

However, when one goes to reference 1, under the criminal justice reform bit, one finds: '...The American Legislative Exchange Council is proud to be a leader on criminal justice reforms in the states. Since 2008, the ALEC task force on criminal justice reform, called the Justice Performance Project, has brought state legislators and stakeholders together to combat the trend of unforgiving and harsh criminal laws. ALEC members focus on new and innovative state policies that reduce prison populations, prioritize criminal justice spending and help rehabilitate and restore offenders’ lives...'. Which even I could sign up to. So while I dare say the general tenor of the NYRB article is about right, they ought to deal with this sort of thing too.

The other side has set up website called ALECexposed at reference 2 which tries to counter the stuff put out by the first one.

Inter alia, they are big into guns and the gun lobby. Which is said to include Walmart, which sells lots of them.

I was sorry to read that all the big ticket technology companies - Google (the people who, not so long ago, were proud to do no evil), Microsoft and so on - were paid up members of ALEC. Pleased to read at reference 2 that they are no longer.

PS: paranoia being fed by Edge starting to behave very oddly around the ALEC website, not caring to have me copy the address to reference 1. Has it smelt out a commie? Chrome seems to be a little more relaxed.

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

Reference 2: https://www.alecexposed.org/wiki/ALEC_Exposed.