Exhibitions

Readers may be interested to know that Grayson Perry, noticed at reference 1, has or has had an exhibition in a re-purposed warehouse on the banks of the Dnieper River at Kiev. A beacon of civilisation in an otherwise rather uncivilised place. Just about visible in streetview, as is a very large river. Makes the Thames at London Bridge look a bit puny.

And if that were not enough, the Gagosian Gallery in New York is offering an exhibition of the works of one Ed Rucha, one of which is offered here. I can find no guidance on the sort of prices this sort of thing commands, but they do offer a catalogue raisonné of the works on paper, in seven volumes, covering the period 1956-2011. A mere $200 a pop. A snip. I wonder how many of them they will sell? You have until the end of June to find out for yourself.

With thanks to the NYRB of 25th May for these fascinating snippets.

PS: you can get a sample of the catalogue from Amazon for as little as £89.12. Probably plus postage.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/01/sewing_23.html.

Reference 2: https://izolyatsia.org/en/collection/.

Reference 3: http://www.gagosian.com/.

Crow

Crow Corbyn may not be a very clever choice to lead the Labour Party, but he does have, or at least peddle, some good ideas.

I think, in particular, of the proposed rule that the range of salary from top to bottom of a company should not exceed a factor of 20. Say from £10,000 (which is around minimum wage) to £200,000. I associated to the Red Flag slogan of 'from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs'. Also a very Christian sentiment, the sort of thing one might have thought that mid-western bible bashers in the US might sign up to. But I'm sure that they don't. Far too good at smelling out commies to be caught by that one.

My suggestion would be that respectable companies should publish statistics about this sort of thing in their annual accounts - perhaps some of them already do. And while they are at it, they could include something about labour-only subcontractors, be they CEOs, cleaners or geeks (aka IT consultants & contractors). And something about zero-hours contracts too.

Perhaps there is someone out there who would pay me a token salary to investigate such matters. An entirely proper activity for a lapsed government statistician, particularly one who put in a stint at what used to be called the Department of Employment, with fond memories of their large headquarters building in St. Jame's Square. Not to mention the railings to which I chained my bicycle. A Dawes in those days, then a quite decent brand.

PS: I note in passing that plenty of public sector organisations would fall foul of a rule like this. Think of all those bosses of schools, colleges and hospitals on grossly inflated salaries and their hosts of cleaners and porters on minimum wage. Not to mention all the zero-hours contracts for lecturers at Edinburgh University.

Tweets

Struck once again last week by all the birds one sees out in the country - in this case the edge of Dartmoor - so many more than we get in our garden in Surrey, plentiful bird feeders and proximity of Epsom Common notwithstanding.

Star turn was the cuckoo, with lots of them to be heard out on Holne Moor. just above where we were staying. A bird which we have not heard in years in Epsom. According to the magazine picked up in the Forest Inn in Hexworthy, this moor is a well known haven for them, with the cover illustration being of one such, on said moor.

Runners up were, first, the yellow hammers which visited the lawn outside our kitchen window, browsing in the lawn for seeds falling out of the bird feeders above. Very distinctive yellow heads and shoulders with striped brown bodies. And second, possibly another lifetime first sighting, a whinchat, with a small party of them being glimpsed through the monocular on top of a gorse bush, back on Holne Moor. Using the monocular confused me as to size and then I thought of coal tit. But memory, pictures and words at the RSPB site together suggest something more exotic.

Swallows and skylarks plentiful. Also sparrows (which are rare in our own garden), chaffinches, goldfinches and greenfinches. One nuthatch. One dim spotted woodpecker who took a long time to work out that the anti-squirrel bird feeder was going to keep him out too. Not sure about whether it was greater or lesser, the RSPB site not seeming to bother with sizes.

A couple of large black pheasants. Sundry rabbits. Sundry grey squirrels. Probable bats. One mouse.

Magpies occasional.

No raptors - which surprised me.

And no foxes - perhaps they are more timid out in the country, with farmers shooting them on sight.

Known world

For once in a while, we have just spent a week off the edge of the known world, that is to say with a laptop without connection to the internet. The best it could do was an intermittent signal from a secure circuit from the Huawei people noticed at reference 1. Why them? What about BT?

There was, as it happens, a well equipped pole from BT just outside the entrance to where we were staying, in Holne on the edge of Dartmoor, but that did not seem to help. I did not go so far as to take the laptop to the pole.

The telephone (from Microsoft) seemed to be betwixt and between. It would not connect to the internet for me, but it did seem to be able to pick up email from google on a regular basis. And most of the time it was able to do text and phone calls. More annoyingly, OneNote got itself into a muddle on the telephone, a muddle which it declined to fix in the absence of said internet connection. So no OneNote for the second half.

Return to the real world was not entirely painless as I had to resort to hand cranking to get the laptop to take the latest virus & malware updates from Microsoft. But at least their help system told me how to do this.

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

Marron tasting

The marrons noticed at reference 1 have now been tasted.

First job was to get into them, with the confectionery being wrapped up rather like an ancient Egyptian sarcophagus. Outer plastic wrapping. Then wooden box. Then inner plastic wrapping. Then a covered plastic tray, with compartments, much as one would get in a box of chocolates. Then eight individually wrapped marrons glacés. Perhaps a little bigger than the chestnuts sold here for toasting at Christmas.

Apart from being of interest, they tasted much better than I expected; not like a chestnut toffee apple at all. Rather good in fact. And with the fancy wrapping, they would make a change from chocolates at the end of a fancy meal. Drop of brandy for the gents and marrons glacés for the ladies.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/marrons.html.

Sanguine

Yet another word from Simenon, this time from 'Maigret chez le Coroner', caught my attention.

A story which complements that noticed at reference 1, in that it is built on Maigret being on a fact finding mission (as we would call it now) in the US, rather than on Maigret hosting a chap from Scotland Yard who was on a fact finding mission in France. Including various interesting observations on the differences between being a host for and being a guest on such a mission and on those between coroners' courts in the US and the equivalent process in France (in the 1930's and 1940's). Written just a couple of months before I was hatched.

The word being 'sanguin', used to describe a young airman, one of five who went on the beano with a young woman, a beano which resulted in her being smashed up by a train out in the desert between Tuscon and Nogales - with this last being the den of iniquity to which drunks with cars resorted when the bars in Tuscon shut up shop. The phrase being 'un sanguin, qui devait avoir de gross appétits sexuels', from a few pages into chapter II.

The English word 'sanguine' meant cheerful, optimistic to me, having lost the connection to blood, but which did not seem to fit, so out with Larousse which offered 1) adjective to do with blood and 2) someone who was rather impulsive. Hachette juniors only bothered with the first of these and the sometimes useful online dictionary, Linguee, could not escape from groupe sanguin. Littré petit did a bit better with the suggestion of having too much of it, which starts to tie in with OED, which started with various anodyne adjectival meanings, moved onto someone who was rather blood thirsty and then into the four humours of early modern medicine, of which blood was one. Dominance of this humour was 'indicated by a ruddy countenance and a courageous, hopeful and amorous disposition' - which connects with both Simenon's usage and my rather different prior understanding. Then shifting to the modern hopeful and optimistic. This being followed by getting on for a further three columns, that is to say a page, of compounds and meanings not related to the present case.

I think if I was doing the translation I would settle for something on the lines of hot blooded.

PS: the fence, of current interest, between the two halves of Nogales, is illustrated above. Getty 101586999 will find it.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/rings.html.

Repeats

Just about over a week ago we went to Milton Court to hear Biss & Padmore do, inter alia, Schubert's Schwanengesang. See reference 3. While earlier this week, we went to the Wigmore Hall to hear Vogt & Bostridge do the Schwanengesang again. Furthermore, in a programme, almost identical to that noticed near thirty moons ago at reference 1.

Tried the wine of the month in the basement bar, an Italian white. Rather good.

New style of flowers, more green and white than usual, but which looked well enough when the lights went down.

Moving onto to the/this recital, it seemed to us that Bostridge's voice, while perhaps not as strong as Padmore's, had a greater range of expression and was deployed with a much greater range of volume, with more very quiet bits. He was also much more mobile, both as regards face and body. He seemed to have a much more intimate relationship with both the piano and the pianist, inter alia, better capturing the original, almost domestic, setting for this kind of singing. One can see why he might have thought the staged, Zender version noticed at reference 2 was a good idea.

We rather liked Vogt's rather loud and brash style. It seemed to balance the tenor line well. Also, another Ipad user - something which seems to be getting more common. Confidence in the things is building up.

Being slightly further back at row J, rather than the row F at the Court, was not a problem. And we sat next to a lady from Amsterdam who told us that she knew a lady who knew Haitink. Put him up, rather than danced with him.

Yuja Wang, dressed in a short red dress and draped over a piano had finally vanished from the programme, her job taken by gentleman pianist, also from China. Another child prodigy.

We were not altogether sure about the wisdom of the repeat beforehand, but in the event it worked very well indeed. The Schwanengesang had improved with age, as it were. Moved to the point of getting out the Bostridge book about 'Die Winterreise'.

Our first quibble was the tacking of 'Die Taubenpost' onto the programme at the last minute, a song which on the first occasion had been tacked on as an encore. To our mind, you need this song at the end for the cycle as a whole to end in the right way, for the despair and the tension to be broken. But either put it into the programme proper or do it as an encore - not as something in between with a loose sheet popped into the programme. And certainly without a Brahms encore - no doubt a good song in its way, but out of place here.

Our second, was the batting order. Breaking the Schwanengesang into two halves by poet with Beethoven in the middle worked well enough - but I think we prefer our Schwanengesang done in one take.

PS: I had forgotten that Beethoven was the inventor of the classical song cycle, with this Op.98. 'An die ferne Geliebte'.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/last-stand-at-wiggers.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2016/05/winterreises-old-and-new.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/2017/05/back-at-court.html.