Saucepan hunt concluded

First stop on Monday was the lunchtime Wiggers to hear a young Norwegian, Christian Ihle Hadland, playing Mozart (K576) and Schubert (D959). A young man's playing, but none the worse for that. Both pieces fully up to expectations, with me even getting a bit emotional during the second. I wonder whether it counts for anything that the pianist was about the same age when he played it as Schubert was when he wrote it?

Outing only slightly marred by annoyances front and back. Front we had an oriental couple, middle aged and perhaps Japanese. The husband started by being more demonstrative with his wife than is usual on such occasions and then moved on to spend the first few minutes of the Schubert studying the Wigmore programme for the weeks ahead. For some reason I found the turn of each page rather irritating; I suppose he had caught my attention and I was not able to shut him out completely. At the end he closed his performance by energetic photography with his mobile phone. Back we had a chap who found it necessary before the off to converse loudly about matters musical, incidentally giving the people around the benefit of his views. Also rather irritating, but at least he stopped when the music started. Standing up at the end of the concert, the offending gent. was found to be very floridly dressed, by far the most florid chap in the audience.

Headed on exit up towards Marylebone High Street. Plenty of fancy & decent looking eateries about but we settled for fish and chips at the Golden Hind, partly because it was fairly full (I find now that it also has a large and enthusiastic web presence despite not having a site). Fish and chips pretty good although I think I might have done better to have the faster moving cod than the slower moving haddock, which had probably been in the hot cupboard for some minutes. Treacle pudding pretty good although they forgot to minimise the portion of custard, custard being for me a garnish rather than a sea.

Moved on to some excellent opportunities to spend some more, and passing up the butcher (lots of good looking beef) and fromagerie (name a bit pretentious but the cheese looked good. Rippon Cheese a more sensible name ), we settled for the kitchen shop called Divertimenti, northern branch (http://www.divertimenti.co.uk/). As luck would have it we were able to agree on new saucepans here within minutes, having failed to find anything that suited us both in either Kingston or Oxford Street. Exited, BH having flexed her plastic, took a quick look at Daunt Books, where I was disappointed in their not very interesting collection of books about Canada, perhaps not a top ten tourist destination, then on to the upstairs of a No. 2 bus to take a run through the centre of town, to the bus station at Vauxhall.

Very pleased with the Aga saucepans which seem to need less power than the very similar, if elderly, Prestige saucepans that they replaced. Presumably the bottoms of the latter have warped a little over time and more of the heat from the hot plates is blowing off into the kitchen rather than up into the grub. Maybe warping caused by the composite construction of the bottoms - a sort of metallic plywood - giving rise to all kinds of thermal stresses.

Stop press

Good news for fatties! I read in the Guardian that after intensive lobbying by the fast food industry and by the Lard Council (the trade association of lard manufacturers in the UK and (oddly) in Ireland. Perhaps because so much of the lard that we eat here in the UK is grown in Ireland), the government has called the dogs off the fatties. But to fill the void so left in the affairs of the bizzies, the government is set to interfere, possibly legislatively, in the admittedly tawdry affairs of the Football Association.

So much for the party of small government.

When is a bush a tree?

We got very excited over lunch the other day arguing about whether olives grew on bushes or trees, leading to reflection on what exactly it meant to be a tree.

First thought was that trees had trunks. A tree is a plant consisting of a substantial cylindrical trunk with roots below, branches and leaves above.

Second thought was that, in order to keep trees separate from bushes, the first section of the trunk, accounting for at least 17% of the overall height of the tree above ground level, should be clear of branches. But this criterion fails on many fir trees which sprout branches all the way up the trunk. OK, so they may die away when the tree is in a forest, but they are certainly there when the tree is grown as a specimen, in the open.

Then how about the trunk being a substantial, vertical cylinder? There may be branches emanating from the trunk but these will be substantially less substantial, with diameters not exceeding 23% of that of the trunk at the point of emanation. This criterion fails on cedars from Lebanon, the sort of the thing that you have in the garden of Osborne House on the Isle of Wight, where the branches are sometimes of more or less the same diameter as the trunks. And I recall trees in the botanical garden at Puerto de la Cruz in Tenerife having trunks of very bizarre form, certainly when compared to those of, say, an ash tree.

To avoid confusion with large weeds like teazles, we can say that the trunk must persist from year to year. We do not allow annual trees.

To avoid confusion with climbers like clemati, we can say that the trunk must be rigid and carry the weight of the branches and so forth above.

But what about tree ferns? I suspect that the general appearance of the trunk is not going to be enough to keep tree ferns out of trees; maybe we are going to have to get into modes of reproduction. A tree must have seeds while a fern must have spores. But then, is distinguishing a spore from a seed as fraught as distinguishing a bush from a tree? Or do we have to rest our case on trees and ferns being on different branches of the evolutionary tree? What happens if the same species evolves two or more times on two or more branches of the evolutionary tree? Suppose one population of lions evolved from spiders and another population of lions evolved from cat fish, with the two populations looking identical and being able to interbreed? Perhaps this last is a bit unlikely; the genome of the spider lion being likely to be far too different from that of the cat fish lion for fertilization to work, however alike the two sorts of lions might look. Which might result in lots of infertile unions. One lion could fall in love with another lion of the wrong sort.

What about unnatural trees? Trees which have been deformed by human intervention like coppices and which do not have trunks in the ordinary way. Or trees which have been deformed by storm and where the original tree has fallen over and a new tree has sprouted out of the side of the trunk of the old tree? The old tree still having enough root left to support the new.

All very puzzling. I wonder if there is a simple answer to be found in an NVQ on botany? That there really is some simple botanical principle which separates out trees from the rest of the plant world, preferably a principle for which long range eyeball inspection is enough, which does not depend on microscopes and preferably keeping bushes out too.

PS: taken a peek now at Lecointre & Le Guyader which tells me that while trees might be on a very different part of the evolutionary tree to ferns, a birch tree is a lot more closely related to a cucumber than it is to a plane tree. So it all remains very puzzling and God has a lot to answer for.

Nanki-Poo

On Saturday to the Coliseum for our first experience of a full-on Gilbert & Sullivan: 'The Mikado', having been attracted by an advertisment in some newspaper or other before Christmas. My own prior experience amounted to an amateur performance many years ago, while BH could boast rather more, including some touring shows with FIL. FIL was very into it, as were his brother and sister-in-law, both of whom were very into performing G&S and clones (the second being a way to avoid the performing rights charges on the first, charges which were significant for amateurs. And there were rain coated sleuths who checked that the clones were not too like the original).

So lots of preparation indicated, which in my case took the form of perusing various Wikipedia entries on the  subject and in BH's of taking a look at one of her (two) DVD's. I learn that 'The Mikado' was something of a smash hit in its day, with a record breaking run and with hundreds of companies, amateur and professional, putting in on in outposts of empire and around the world generally.

First impressions of the Coliseum good. Natty DIY arrangements for leaving ones' coats which, as it turned out, were not crowded on exit and yielded a profit of £1, a neighbour having omitted to recover his or her deposit from the arrangement. Auditorium looking much brighter and grander than I remember, although it has been quite soon time since we were last there and I think there has been a refurb. in the interval. Fairly full house, not dressy (so my new-to-me cardy was not out of place), mixed ages (so not all fellow pensioners turned out for the matinée) plus a noticeable number of young children, the opera presumably substituted for the Christmas pantomime. Again, as it turned out, I wondered whether they thought the substitution was a good wheeze. The opera did not, it seemed to me, have much to offer for children, beyond the excitement of a grand and crowded theatre.

I thought that the show itself was showing its age, and while it was slick, I thought it lacked the verve that the restoration company had brought to the DVD in the early 80's. It also lacked the silly costumes, being firmly set in the time of Poirot and involving a great deal of white paint. I liked the second half better than the first and, for me, the man of the match was the Mikado himself, who managed to bring the right touch of silliness to his performance.

The infantile names - one of which is the heading of this post - were perhaps appropriate given that they were conceived around the time that the pétomane was active, also a time when most people did not have internal sanitation. Broad jokes quite the thing. But perhaps we have now moved on.

The show was the most expensive we had ever been too. Good to have been, but not sure that I would go again. We shall see.

Back to Waterloo over the eastern walkway attached to Hungerford Bridge, with eastern London looking spiffing in the early evening light. Lots of illuminations. Shard looking good, National Theatre looking good. With a full moon over all, disappearing behind a cloud when we were half way across.

Couple of cakes to take home from the market behind the Festival Hall then on to the fine new mezzanine at Waterloo where we took refreshment at a café awash with fake. A serving counter with tiles and trestles. Homely wooden eating tables. Generally kitted up to look artisanale and apple pie, this despite it being brand new and being perched above the Waterloo concourse. But that said, we had a perfectly decent banana cup cake with a glass of perfectly decent house wine.

Decant

When we were newly married we considered it quite the thing to mess about with decanters, of which we owned several. However, after a while the use of decanters waned and after a further while the decanters moved on to a jumble sale - this being before the era of the high street charity shop.

Then rather more than a year ago there was a bout of adding spirits to hedgerow fruit: gin to sloes and whisky to blackberries, the product of which we are now getting around to consuming. But due to errors in the manufacturing process, there is a reasonable amount of sludge and after a while it occurred to me that what we needed was a decanter. The real point of a decanter is not to add class to one's catering operation but rather to serve as an secondary wine container, leaving the sludge behind in the primary container, the bottle. One could then shake the secondary vessel about with impunity, the sort of thing one might get up to half cut, safe in the knowledge that the sludge was no more.

Next stop one of the charity shops in Epsom High Street, where I acquired a heavy, if rather ordinary, decanter (including stopper) for £6.

Decant one of the bottles of sloe gin into the decanter and drink. Not bad stuff at all, although we learned that the lip of the decanter was not really up to the neat pouring of a rather sticky fluid. Maybe a grander decanter would have a thinner lip and pour better; maybe we will get to check this theory in the upcoming car booter season.

Next decant one of the bottles of blackberry whisky into the decanter and start to drink. Strong whiff of blackberries about the stuff which was good but the taste was not so good. In conference, we decided that despite having added a pound or so of preserving sugar to the flagon back in 2011 (see August 22nd in the other place), more sugar was appropriate. So yesterday evening, while waiting for ITV3 to come on stream, added a further 3oz of granulated sugar. Still there this morning, so gave the decanter a good shake, after which it vanished. Current plan is to try the stuff again this evening.

Next conference will consider the shelf life of the stuff in the decanter. Will the weak winter light and the strong winter heating do the stuff in? Some sort of unpleasant oxidisation process? There will be a further report in due course.

Postscript

The fruity gravies and sauces on offer last night triggered worrying about the possible cranberry content, something which is on my warfarin user's stop list. At least cranberry juice is, and it is hard to see why any other sort of cranberry would be a good thing. But I did not like to bother the rather busy waitress with what she might have thought was a frivolous or facetious enquiry.

Perhaps if I can find the time I should start a Warfarin Society, a society dedicated to the promotion of warfarin labeling on food, in the same way as many restaurants and supermarkets now go in for gluten labeling. A first task would be to design the seal to be used on suitable items, or, and this needs some thought, on unsuitable items.

An obvious if rather banal design would involve a small disc containing a number of even smaller discs taking the internationally recognised colours used for indicating the dosage of the various warfarin pills on offer. Mid brown for 1mg, light blue for 3mg and so on. Assuming that is, one was not thereby infringing some Hirst intellectual property right. I think he was early on the scene with expensive art work composed entirely of pill coloured discs.

Burns & Kindle

We were prompted by a promotional email to attend a Burn's Night Eve supper at the Shy Horse last night, an establishment which is part of the Vintage Inns family and which is said to be  'a country pub & restaurant oozing rural charm and rustic character'. I must say that the décor people from Vintage have done quite well and for a place which probably makes most of its money out of food, have contrived to maintain quite a pubby flavour, including warm beer (which I failed to sample on this occasion). Maybe it is the smell of the burning logs in the fireplaces which do it. Do they add the smell or does it come naturally?

Supper consisted of cullen skink (served with cheese on toast), a new version of haggis & mash and a pudding consisting mainly of cream and cherry jam, but with some toasted rolled oats stirred into it to give it the necessary Scottish flavour. Mistakenly served in a rather large green glass globe on a stem; it would have looked better in a simple bowl. All in all, not bad. Nor was the Châteauneuf-du-Pape with which we washed it down. Decided against Tallisker and settled for Jameson for a winderupper. We shall continue to visit the place from time to time, the only catch being that it is slightly too far away to walk, at least in the winter, so BH had to limit herself to one glass of wine.

Back home to watch another episode of the ancient BBC adaptation of 'War and Peace', which has replaced 'The Pallisers' as our standby for when ITV3 fails us. An adaptation which I quite like, despite not quite liking Natasha. Sometimes it works for me and sometimes it doesn't. Hélène a bit wooden - and not very attractive - one can't see the point - but most of the rest of the cast good.

Now once upon a time I used to pride myself on knowing the book quite well, but this is no longer true. I need to be reminded of lots of episodes, for example of the existence of Natasha's aunt. Worse still I was quite sure that it was Dolokhov who tried to elope with Natasha, and who subsequently took a lot of money off Rostov at cards in revenge for the failure. But the adaptation plumped for Anatole, with Dolokhov present but in a supporting role. Clearly need to check. Started to wail about if I still had hard copy I could turn the pages and soon find the scene in question. Not possible on the Kindle, now the home of my only copy of the book. And being a freebie from Gutenburg it did not have the sort of extended table of contents which would have told me where this particular episode was.

But I learn. On the off chance I try the Kindle search facility (which involves the not very good and rarely used Kindle keyboard) and ask it for the word 'elope'. Of the not very many hits the episode I wanted was second. I had found what I wanted rather faster than I would have with hard copy, the only complaint being that the BBC was right and I was wrong. At least I move on in the Kindle department; I'll make geek first class yet.

Culinary affairs

During 2011, FIL was from time to time annoyed by the fad, acquired from the pub which used to be known as the Wheatsheaf in South London Road when it offered roast oxtail on its evening dining menu, Brazilian style. FIL being annoyed by the oxtail being a touch firm, tough even, for his dentures. I put up with the toughness on account of the more interesting taste and texture, over that of boiled oxtail. Subconsciously having a pop at FIL along the way, a chap who had been a touch overbearing in his prime?

Now he has gone, the worm has turned, as I am no longer confident that the alimentary department can cope with full on oxtail; indeed, I have not cooked the cut at all for more than a year. But this week I have been moved to give it another go. Phase 1, buy the oxtail. I was pleased to get as many large lumps as small lumps, usually preferring the large lumps. As do most others, so the butcher has to maintain a fair mix as sales proceed. Phase 2, cover with water and simmer gently with three onions coarsely chopped for around 4 hours. Phase 3, remove the meat from the liquor, strain the onions from the liquor and allow the liquor to cool.

In the morning, remove fat from the top of the liquor, which by this time has set to a translucent pale green, with the odd thing being that there was not all that much fat from what I regard as a fatty cut, maybe a quarter of a pint, and it did not set at all firmly. Nothing like as firmly as, for example, lard, even when left in the refrigerator. Maybe the liquor was too strong, too strong for the fat to separate cleanly, with the result that the fat which made its escape from the liquor was was rather watery and that there was a lot of fat which never made it at all. Having said all this, perhaps not such a bad thing. If you strip all the fat out of the liquor, it can seem a bit thin.

Phase 4, put the ingredients back together again, add 3 ounces of pearl barley and simmer for a further hour. Serve with rice and cabbage, both boiled and white. Not bad, but I think next time the first simmer will be for just three hours. I like the meat a bit firmer than it turned out on this occasion. As it turned out, small lumps (see Phase 1 above) were better on this occasion because they were firmer.

Liquor, of which there was plenty, entirely drinkable, without meat lumps, as soup.

Phase 5, mix the fat, which never did go off properly, with breadcrumbs and raisins and paste the mixture into the glazed pottery bird feeder obtained from a craft fair at Bourne Hall. Hang feeder from hawthorne tree behind the pond and await bird action. Nothing so far, some two hours later. Will the mixture drip out in the morning sun, be eaten by the birds or go mouldy?

Today's lunch was a lot cheaper - enough oxtail for 2 costs around £10 - and a lot simpler, being the trusty pork soup. With the development that I grated two medium sized raw potatoes into the mix at the outset, there not being any left over mashed potato to hand. Result excellent; a health giving mixture of carbohydrate, vegetable fibre and protein. Not much fat at all, despite the meat part of the operation being pork. Was there more fat in the pearl barley than there was in the pork?

A serious matter

I have not checked the small print recently, but my understanding is that all public posts in the dominion or in one of the provinces of Canada are only available on the basis of bi-lingualism, that is to say the Canadian variation of English and the Québécois variation of French. I am no expert, but I believe this last to be an interesting cocktail of old French brought over with the original colonists and of new English imported for reasons of convenience. So blonde is the Québécois word for a girl friend, or at least that is what I deduced from a Fred Vargas story set partly in Québec.

So I was rather shocked to find in a recent Economist an advertisement for a replacement for the Governor of the Bank of Canada, recently poached for service in this country, almost entirely in English, although it does indeed make it clear that candidates must be bilingual. They must also be Canadian, so no foreigners parachuted in for them. Perhaps someone ought to alert the péquistes. Maybe they will be able to get the Economist to print an apology in some future issue.

A couple of pages earlier there was a half page filler about the trials and tribulations of the people in charge of the standard kilogram, which caught my eye as the New York Times had run a similar piece back in May 2003. And the New York Times did at least make it clear that while the standard kilogram might be a French idea which lives outside Paris, it was cast by an Englishman. Plus it includes interesting snippets like that fact that some of the 80 copies were issued to countries which no longer exist, in that they have been gobbled up by neighbouring countries, countries such as Bavaria (which upon closer inspection sports a separatist movement, just like Québec).

Even more interesting was the tale of the team which want to make a perfectly spherical ball of silicon which weighs approximately the same as the current standard kilogram - with suitably pure silicon being made by repurposing the centrifuges which once made the Soviet nuclear deterrent. Or perhaps the Iranians could be persuaded to help the world out by repurposing some of theirs? One then counts the number of atoms in the perfect sphere and that becomes the new standard, a standard which reduces the standard kilogram to a matter of counting, a reasonably robust and repeatable activity. The team has made a test ball which is the most spherical object which has ever been made, a lot smoother, for example, than our earth. But counting what must be a very large number sounds like very hard work to me.

So much so indeed that both the New York Times and the Economist look to be backing the team working on something called a Watt Balance to carry off the laurels.

While I don't like the sound of the fact that the Watt Balance requires exact knowledge of the force of gravity at the time and place of measurement, something which, it seems varies with the phases of the moon. All very dodgy, if not circular. Very hard to please.

The frozen wastes of Surrey

Our back garden remains covered in snow, although it is now starting to melt, with this result in the three ponds depression.

Starting at the far left and moving clockwise we have rush pond, stepping stones, water lily pond, king cup pond - although while these last might be called king they are, I think, a dwarf variety.

The water lily was also intended to be a dwarf variety and the sample in the tank at Chessington Garden Centre certainly was. But this particular one seems to be growing year by year, with the leaves getting bigger each year instead of staying at a modest three or four inches diameter. Plus the root has broken free of its bottom of the pond moorings and it now floating, with the growing tip at the surface instead of eighteen inches down. I think we had exactly the same trouble with its predecessor.

Give the thing one more year and then maybe, next Autumn, we will try again. Or maybe try something different. Hopefully without upsetting the newt colony which share the pond too much.

More fishy thoughts

I ruminated about fishy pain in the other place on June 1st 2010, prompted by reading a book by a Victoria Braithwaite. Been moved to take another look at the book and have now spent some time ruminating about one of the other examples she gives.

Which is that if you give a healthy rat the choice between good water from one bottle and bad water - identical in appearance - from another, the rat will fairly quickly learn only to take water from the good bottle. However, the reason that the bad water is bad is that it has a bitter taste because of the pain killer which has been added to the water. So if we then do the same experiment with an old arthritic rat, that rat will fairly quickly learn only to take water from the bad bottle.

It is easy to give a human interpretation to this. The rat feels the pain in its joints. It associates the pain going with the bad bottle. It learns that the water from the bad bottle makes the pain go away. So it then opts for the bad bottle with the intention of getting the pain to go away. Or perhaps, more complicated, to get the pain to stay away. The rat is behaving in the same way as you or I would in similar circumstances. You or I would be making a conscious decision to put up with the unpleasant taste to get the longer term benefit. Take your medicine dear it's good for you sort of thing. So we infer that the rat is making a conscious decision in much the same way as you or I. That the rat is conscious in much the same way as you or I.

But while at first blush the experiment is very suggestive, we need to be careful. It would not be at all difficult to model the rats' behaviour with a computer; the program would not need to be very complicated and we would have no difficulty in judging the program to be unconscious, despite it copying, replicating or otherwise mimicking the rats' behaviour.

There is also confusion arising between the source of the pain and the signal of the pain. Doing something about the signal of the pain is not doing anything about the source and may not be very adaptive. But then, perhaps a rat brain is not up to worrying about the distinction. Learning to get rid of the signal of the pain is quite tricky enough as it is.

On the other hand, evolution is gradual and parsimonious. It does seem unlikely that we are the only animals to have consciousness and there seems to be general agreement that some mammals are conscious in the same way that we are, certainly conscious of pain and past causes of pain, but also capable of emotions. See, for example, Jeffrey Masson on cats (2002) (see also January 21st 2009 in the other place).

In this case, the rat body has clearly signalled pain to the rat brain, and I dare say the signalling is pretty much the same sort of thing that you would get in a human. The rat brain is clearly able to factor the circumstances of past pain and those of past absence of pain into its (usually correct) decision about which water bottle to use, a decision which needs memory, an ability to think about something other than the here and now. To send that decision down from the brain to the body and to get it done. Sophisticated stuff. But what does it all add up to? Is it the sort of action which I might manage unconsciously, somewhere in the lower regions of the brain, while pondering about when I might next be allowed to make lentil soup in the upper regions? Ambulatory ruminations clearly called for at this point.

Jigsaw 7, Series 2

Photograph taken in winter light with a lot of reflection off the snow. Even worse than usual.

But good enough to exhibit another chocolate box scene from Waddingtons on one of their De Luxe 500 puzzles (99p). Sadly the box tells me nothing about where these cottages are, beyond the fact that they are in England, so we will not be able to visit. I wonder if the image searching capability being worked up by the search fraternity would be able to find this image with in the same ease that I was able to find the image of Worcester Cathedral (see October 19th in the other place)? I recall that the interest at the time I was in contact with such people was being able to do things like scan the faces in the crowds at terminal 5 at Heathrow for known bad people, but all I can manage now is various people offering to search for pictures given verbal rather than image clues. I don't seem to be able to say give me all the pictures like this one, let alone all the pictures containing a picture like this one. Or all the faces with a nose like this one.

Considerations of this sort aside, went at the edge in the usual way, but found the pieces to have an uncertain key and I was not very happy with the sky edge I came up with. But pushed on and did the sky line where one has enough image to give one confidence, even if the fit of the pieces is a bit uncertain. Then worked up from the skyline to do the sky, when I found that I had indeed got the sky edge fairly wrong. Needed to unpick a fair bit of it and then work up from the more secure foundation of the sky line before putting the sky edge back together again.

Sky apart and trees apart, I solved the puzzle by working down. Roofs first, left, then right then middle. Then the windows, then worked out and down from the windows to complete the buildings. Then the path, then the garden between the river - barely visible at the bottom right - and the path. Left a few holes in the garden, knocked off the river (which included sorting out a few minor errors in the river edge) and then dealt with the remaining holes.

Somewhere along the way I must have knocked off the trees. Perhaps one of those things where the brain can process odd bits of the puzzle in background, enabling one to gradually finish, in this case the trees, while foreground or conscious processing focuses on some other part of the jigsaw.

An easy going jigsaw. The sky had no image features to help but was narrow, not very big and there was enough piece shape variation to be able to pick out the right piece fairly quickly without too much recourse to trial and error. And the rest of the puzzle had plenty of image features. OK, so I had to leave the odd hole during the sweep down the puzzle, but the aforementioned background processing got them all before the end.

Having finished the jigsaw took a clockwise walk around the so-called all-weather path around Epsom Common, taking the variation which goes around the south of the Wells Estate. Shoe contraptions did very well on the softening ice and snow. Snow on trees and bushes very pretty in the winter morning sun. But on the way, passed a parked up removal lorry from Bishop's Move, an outfit which I had thought was based in Bishop's Bridge Road in Paddington, an area which I used to frequent during the construction of Westway, some of the concrete for which I was privileged to test. But checking, I find that Bishop's Move is actually based in nearby Chessington and as far as I can tell there is no connection to Paddington at all. I also learn along the way that Bishop's Bridge Road is named for Edward VI's Bishop of London, which is a bit puzzling as the bridge is over railway and canal which were not built until some time after the reign of good king Edward. Perhaps Wikipedia has simplified a bit. In any event, all very disappointing; I had rather liked the Paddington version. Perhaps because it was a link with an entertaining & instructive episode of my youth.

Information age

Yesterday's money section in the DT had one of their shock horror articles about the iniquities of the proposals to change state pensions, an article which, as is usual in our so sophisticated media, neglected to mention how hard it is to change things like this without there being losers as well as winners when you are not in a position to chuck money at them. Article contained scary talk about the plight of people born in the fifties and sixties of the last century - of which BH is just one. Did we need to move into expensive topping up action? I was not so sure that pension changes would be allowed to affect people who were already getting their state pension and managed to find words of comfort in another piece about all the people who had already retired who would not get any benefit from the change. So, having done the DT, we were unsure what all this meant for BH. I'll sort it out, sezzaye. I'll sort it out on the web.

So off to the web. First stop Google, second stop the Ministry of Work and Pensions. All kinds of helpful stuff but nothing at all about the proposed changes. At least nothing that I could find.

Back to Google to get pointed at a whole lot of media coverage of the proposals and eventually spotted talk of a statement by one Steve Webb. Brain suddenly springs into life and I think Hansard.

Hansard turns out to be published on quite a fancy web site and I am quite quickly able to find Steve's statement. Not terribly long but there is talk of a White Paper. The 'White Paper' phrase was highlighted so I thought home and dry but the link turned out to take me to a Wikipedia article about white papers in general.

So back to Google where I am quite quickly connected to the White Paper and where it turns out that the proposals are the product of some elaborate consultation exercise. All the great and the good in the world of pensions. Clear that change is needed, not really a party political matter at all and I dare say ground work had been done during the New Labour time on the bridge. Neither side has any real ideological axe to grind, although both will seek traction on the issue; that is the way our two party, adversarial system is intended to work. But that is by the by, what I want to know is how does all this affect BH.

Start to browse the White Paper, which all seemed very thorough & decent and after some to-ing and fro-ing, eventually light on paragraph 13 of the executive summary and saw light where it said: 'Those already over State Pension age when the reforms are implemented will continue to receive their state pension (and the Savings Credit, where applicable) in line with existing rules'. So we had arrived: none of this will affect BH at all.

Finding this out took me about half an hour. A younger nerd might have done it faster but I dare say that there are plenty who would have done it slower, if at all. Wouldn't it be nice if papers like the DT made such important things clear up front? Focused more on providing information and less on spreading doom and gloom?

Boiler plates

I noticed an advertisement in the first issue of my shiny new subscription to the NYRB for a book which went over the extensive use of long boilerplate texts in the contracts for all kinds of commercial transactions. And which, to judge by the puff prose, was thought to be a bad thing. Demeaning to the noble trade of lawyering?

I have not gone as far as buying the book which might be interesting but might also be impenetrable to a non-lawyer. But I did get as far as pondering on the periphery on the way home from town this morning.

One experience with boiler plate has been with the contracts which accompany the private sector doing very well out of government IT. There was a time when an outfit called CCTA went to a lot of time and trouble to devise and agree with the trade a standard form of contract which should have needed very little tweaking for any particular contract. Big savings all round, or at least that was the idea. But by the time I finished I was witness to the hiring of some swanky commercial lawyers from the city to crawl over a proposed contract, a contract perhaps to the value of tens of millions of pounds, in the first decade of this century. Presumably our swanky lawyers talked to the vendor's swanky lawyers, we eventually got a contract - which we quite possibly never looked at again - and the swanky lawyers trousered the dough. I would guess that the swanky lawyers' bill was a very small number of hundreds of thousands of pounds, so perhaps a percent or two of the contract value. But an example, nevertheless, where the idea was to do boilerplate, but where the plates had come unstuck.

Then there is buying a house, which one might have thought was a fairly routine transaction, certainly more routine than buying a computer system. The first time that we bought a property, a flat as it happened, I tried to read the contract before I signed it and got very bogged down in the prose which tried to define what part of the block was down to me and what part was down to the freeholder. Prose which was full of rather ancient sounding words; perhaps demesne was one of them. Not sure where the prose came from, this being the days before word processors had reached the offices of provincial solicitors. It was not a form, so maybe it had actually been copy typed from the previous contract, just for me? The lawyer was rather surprised that I even tried to read the thing; I suppose that that was what he thought, quite reasonably, that I was paying him for. And then, more recently, despite the best efforts of  New Labour to make the Land Registry accessible, I chickened out of DIY and got lawyers to handle the various operations arising from FIL's house in Devon. An example where boilerplate is the ideal but which we have not quite attained.

A more common experience with boiler plate is all the stuff in microscopic print which accompanies all kinds of retail transactions. The vendor, involved in lots of similar transactions, can afford to invest in lawyer time to write all this microscopic print, microscopic print which goes, one assumes, to limit their liability if things go pear shaped. But who reads all this stuff on the buyer side? Not many buyers, I don't suppose. And the transactions don't warrant hiring even slummy lawyers to read it for you. Maybe consumer organisations like the Consumers' Association (see http://www.consumersinternational.org/. I was pleased to see that his outfit is active in Afghanistan amongst other places) get in on the act, but I have never heard of such a thing. Do we just have to rely on an agony aunt in the money part of a weekend newspaper when the vendor starts reading the microscopic print back to one as part of refusing to sort out this or that problem?

On the up side there is sometimes talk of signing the small print not affecting one's statutory rights. So perhaps I can rest easy in the knowledge that my statutory rights are on the case.

Turning to the matter of grub, very impressed by a gilt head sea bream yesterday which BH had turned up under offer at Sainsbury's. Don't recall having such a thing before, but it baked very well for lunch. One fish per person was about right, with each fish being about the length of a kipper, albeit of rather different shape. Followed up by pork soup for tea - water, pork, barley, onion and white cabbage, with the liquor strengthened with a little mashed potato left over from the fish. That went down very well too.

PS: slightly annoyed this afternoon to find that I now have five task bar like things at the top of this screen. I am sure it did not used to be so many. Shall I devote quality time to trying to get rid of any of them? And then Norton flavoured things are starting to poke themselves into Google search screens - the whole point of Norton for me being invisible protection. I might pay for it but I don't want to see it. And then there is a problem with the Windows search feature which can no longer find important files for me. Shall I devote quality time to talking to the usually helpful - but time consuming - BT help desk?

A different kind of truth

We presently have an electric cooker, bought as a single unit but with the top half coming from Creda and the bottom half coming from Hotpoint. It was about the simplest cooker we could buy at the time, with solid plates above (two of which are surprisingly fast for solid), fan oven below and with very little in the way of dials and flashing lights.

Now a few months into its ninth year and we have probably spent more on maintenance than we paid for it. But no complaints: we like the cooker and don't want to change it.

All this prompted by a bit of maintenance last week, needed when the door to the main oven started to fall apart. This door has a steel back frame with its glass window, with a fancier glass sheet over the whole of the front. Now the current fashion in kitchenware is that all the fixings should be invisible; housewives don't want to know about all the messy details; they want a nice, clean & uncluttered appearance. So how do we fix the glass front - quite a heavy thing, maybe 0.5 cm thick - to the back frame? We are OK at the top because the clean & uncluttered appearance does allow a handle, the fixing for which can be used to hide the fixing for the top of the glass front. But this does not work at the bottom, where, instead, we have a metal fitting glued to the back of the glass front with some kind of black mastic stuff. Black mastic stuff which broke down after 8 years and left the door in a rather flappy condition. A flappy condition which could only be corrected by total replacement of the glass front - about £80 worth to you or me - which presumably came with the black mastic stuff and its fitting ready attached.

Wouldn't it have been simpler and more robust to allow a couple of holes at the bottom of the front? It should not have been beyond the wit of one of these chaps with a masters degree in design to make a feature of the fixing, pleasing enough to keep the most discerning housewife happy.

It is an interesting feature of the design world that sometimes it is good to hide how things work and sometimes it is good to show. Sometimes it is even better to make a feature of things which look as if they are what make a thing work but which are actually entirely decorative.

So on the whole, with kitchen furniture, it is good to hide. All the things which fix fronts onto frames and carcasses have to be invisible - something which cunning modern fixings make possible. With a lot of wooden furniture, old style, one went to a lot of bother to make joints invisible: double stopped dovetails and all that sort of thing. Whereas with some jeans one includes a lot of prominent stitching, stitching which I suspect has nothing to do with holding the jeans together. Buildings can get very complicated. So the famous fan vaults of places like King's College Chapel do not have all that much to do with holding the roof up, despite the appearance of the thing. The fan vault is decorative, but looking as if it is not is all part of the design and the attraction. The fancy stonework of the huge columns holding up the nave walls of cathedrals is similarly phony, the only structural role of the fancy stonework being to act as a container for the rubbly concrete inside which actually carries the weight. The fancy stonework which often clads modern buildings is often just that, cladding. Attractive looking panels which look pretty, which add a great deal of weight and which do little for the structure, apart perhaps from providing a little stiffening. The fancy pipe work which often festoons the outside of modern buildings is, in a similar way, largely cladding. It might have a structural function, but a function which could have been satisfied with a lot less pipe work, had one so chosen. The striving for a visible & honest blend of structure and function, which some architects between the two world wars aspired to, seems to be a long way away.

The good news is that we are very happy with our service agreement with Indesit-Hotpoint. Not cheap, but they get fitters to your house in good order and the job gets done. None of this rather unreliable word of mouth stuff from some chap in the pub: just pick up the phone and the thing is done. The men in the white vans had better get their act together or they are going to lose a lot of business to these call centre driven operations.

New dream (2)

Having posted a dream which for once did not involve the world of work, the following night I had one which did. But it was not so striking that the memory of it survived brushing my teeth.

Last night was a dream about four (exactly four, neither more nor less) bolts, the sort of large, half inch diameter, bronzed steel bolts you sink into concrete or stone to hold serious things down, things like the temporary footbridge at Earlsfield station. I wonder now, not in the dream but in passing, how long it will take them to take the thing down, now that the need for it has passed.

Sadly, the dream is now incoherent, there is no narrative. But it seemed to involve a worry that the bolts were needed to do something but were fixed into the floor of a church and were not available. Perhaps because the church was still there, perhaps because one of the bolts was badly bent and was no longer fit for purpose. All a bit of a puzzle: was it all triggered by passing through Earlsfield the other day? I don't think so, but one can't be sure about these things, not without expensive shrink services.

Economy with the truth

Once upon a time I read in a Russian novel, possibly Tolstoy, of nostalgia for the time when one could run a country estate as a self contained unit, meeting all one's needs from one's own resources and not needing to go to market with all the chicanery, lies, greed & worse which accompany the business of buying and selling. One can understand this nostalgia, albeit for an estate where most of the work was done by serfs, but sadly it does not get us anywhere. Self sufficient small holdings and crofts have not provided a decent living for a long time and where, apart from anything else, there is the problem of generating enough cash to buy refrigerators and televisions which can hardly be made on the spot. Large estates might avoid some of the problems of smallness but would bring the problems of largeness, with some workers being more equal than others, the management of which might make the evils of the market place seem like the lesser evil. After all, the mathematical proof that trade was a good thing seemed elementary as a first year undergraduate.

All this prompted by the recent coverage of Tesco buying a 49% holding in a small chain of coffee bars, much of which focused on Tesco seeming to be hiding behind a sweet & cuddly independent business exterior, not a full blown lie but an economy with the truth which I found rather irritating. The Tesco story was that they were backing what looked like a good concept, which is fair enough, good for them even; but I would have preferred their contribution to have been recognised in the packaging. And for myself, I am quite happy to recognise their contribution: being sweet & cuddly and truly independent is not much of a proposition these days, not unless you are content to work for very long hours and to put at risk a lot of your own money.

Inconsistently, I am not bothered by Pret (the chain formerly known as Pret a Manger) being 33% & invisibly owned by what looks like a finance house called Bridgepoint Capital, these last having bought out McDonald's. But I do remember the Pret big cheeses enthusing about the fast food skills which McDonald's were bringing to the party - while I missed them enthusing about what Bridgepoint bought to the party.

The difference is not accounted for my using one but not the other as I very rarely use either coffee bars or sandwich bars, my own preference being for independent cafés staffed by foreigners and serving tea & bacon sandwiches. I've never been that strong on coffee whether in a café or elsewhere.

The mysteries of the ownership of pubs and chains of pubs present slightly different issues. I continue to mourn the passing of the traditional boozer and I do not much care for the idea of some large company running a stable of pub chains, each chain targeted at some particular customer group, each chain the subject of careful interior design and packaging to match with aforesaid customer group. It all makes one feel like a sheep waiting to be shorn rather than a customer. The decor & style of a pub should evolve out of the publican and his customers, not be something which is imported ready made from headquarters. But I guess the value for money of the import is going to beat the old fashioned mine host.

And I learned from a fellow blogger a couple of years ago that there is an analogy with restaurant chains in the US where an outfit called Darden Restaurants operate a chain to satisfy every taste and every pocket. And you wouldn't know sitting in one of the branches of one of the chains. Sadly, the blog in question seems to have cleaned up its act since I last looked in. Maybe management took an interest. See http://rlserver.blogspot.co.uk/.

PS: slightly puzzled how a blog which I think of as coming from the US should come with some UK dressing. A dot-co-uk suffix and an advert for RSPB. All very confusing.

St. Paul

Yesterday we though to pay a visit to St. Paul's, not having been there for a while. Rather dearer than a provincial cathedral at £14 each for OAPs but worth it.

First item of disappointment was the leaflet you got with your ticket, the leaflet which is mainly diagrams of the cathedral. But the front is a smiling picture of the Queen and the back is a couple of lurid advertisements for other attractions. St. Paul's sinking to the level of a.n. other attraction. As a heritage loving atheist, I want a bit more decorum in my churches. Perhaps further evidence - after the squatter performance last year - of the lack of judgement of the management of the place.

I had forgotten what a big place it is, with the central space seeming much larger than that in a more old-fashioned cathedral, although this might be as much to do with the absence of rood screen as with size of nave. Choir not shut off from the customers, although there might be a price in the form of more drafts for the choir boys - and girls - there was a lady assistant at Communion, so I dare say there are choir ladies too.

First item of interest was the very large font, which, rather irreverently, made me think of ducks in the bath.

Second item of interest was the collection of rather louche statues of naval heroes. A rather hard life, with two or three that I noticed having joined up at 13 or 14 and served until they found glory as captains (or post-captains for those that remember their Hornblower) at 45 or 46, quite possibly without all that much time ashore in their 30 years or so of naval life. One of the monuments, in addition to a lightly clad hero, included what looked like a frieze of Lemuel Gulliver being tied up by the natives. Another with one which reminded me of Noah's Ark.

Up to the high altar to admire the elaborate canopy. If one sat in the right place one had an elaborately gilded vista, rather impressive if rather Romish in flavour, despite the absence of statues of the Virgin. Not sure if the canopy counted as a ciborium.

As a round off to the Pre-Raphaelites, admired the large version of 'The Light of the World', which here did not seem to be such a silly picture as it did in the exhibition at the Tate; there is still some point in what Hunt is saying. A pity that it was so badly lit, which meant that one only got a decent view from one spot to the right.

Walking west back from behind the altar, I was impressed by the unfolding vistas of the crossing, effects which one did not get when stationary. And further impressed by the trompe-l'œil painting on the inside of the dome: Wren (or one of his chaps) was confident enough to mix the real with the fake in this in-your-face way. Not sure if a modern architect would get away with it.

Down to the basement where the tablets for various arty types had been confined. And while Wellington had pride up place upstairs, Nelson had the grander monument downstairs. Perhaps because he got there first, he was able to snaffle the best spot.

Rather cold and wet we bused it back to Waterloo, where we paid a visit to the headquarters of Konditor & Cook which, despite being a fancy baker, appeared to be doing as much business in lunch time sandwiches as in cakes. And fancy enough that we had to settle for one loaf of rosemary & potato and another of rye. The first turned out to be rather good, even if I would never have known about the potato had it not said on the label. Of a texture and appearance which I cannot get near in my own efforts. The second remains to be opened but I suspect it will be rather dark and heavy, best consumed in thin slices with cheese.

Pulling into Epsom we kept an eye out for the horselet (see 7th January) but could see him (or her). Checked this morning to find that he had been rescued (see illustration). I wondered when a rescue counted as a theft.

New dream

An entirely new dream last night, involving new elements not previously appearing in my dreams, at least not in ones that I remembered about. And, unusually, it did not include anything from my old world of work.

All a bit incoherent now, in roughly three parts.

In the first part I am flying some kind of small plane with an outsize & rather scruffy open cockpit over a more or less round natural harbour containing a number of ships large and small. There is quite a swell and some of the smaller ships are moving around quite a bit. I am in danger of snagging the mast of one of the larger ships - something looking a bit like an outsize tug - and want to climb. Can't find the controls at first but then find that the controls are two ropes running along the bottom of the cockpit, right and left, a bit like the tiller ropes sometimes used to steer rowing boats. Plane very sluggish and climbs very slowly but I don't hit anything.

At about this point the plane becomes a helicopter which I am flying around the deck of some large ship, maybe a cruise liner. I do various stunts, including picking up a lady - a lady who is wearing a red and white summer frock and who looks like she fell out of an episode of Poirot - in such a way that she is standing on the top button of the rotor, a button which does not appear, in this helicopter anyway, to rotate. Not clear how this stunt was accomplished.

There is then an interlude in which I am trying to get my lunch from some sort of a buffet, maybe that of the possible cruise liner. A film industry flavour to the scene. The buffet area full of people sitting on the floor eating their lunches. An alternative living flavour to the scene. Don't fancy this, so try and find somewhere a bit quieter, hopefully involving chairs and tables.

At the far end of the of the buffet area there is a large motor yacht which I am heading for when I find that I have lost my shoes. Get into a right lather poking among the various piles of shoes, shoes belonging to the alternative people sitting on the floor.The captain of the yacht persuades me to push on for the yacht, where he is sure the shoe problem will sort itself out. As indeed it does, with the shoes having been dropped on the deck where we board. But at this point the yacht relocates, leaving the captain and I behind.

In the third part I am trying, along with the captain, to get back on board the yacht, now moored on the right, downstream from the large ship of part one. We get ourselves to the quay where the yacht is tied up to find some sort of a davits contraption from which was suspended a very rusty capsule, vaguely like the sort of thing you might get on a fairground ride. I was thinking about getting into the capsule, or at least onto it, when I realised that the capsule would only run up and down a short length of wire and was not going to take me anywhere, never mind to the yacht.

Yacht reappeared upstream in the middle of the channel. Keen as mustard, I nip back up the quay, jump down onto the beach and head across the mud for the yacht. Promptly find myself up to the oxters in wet, smelly mud. Manage to extricate myself OK but I am very concerned about whether I have damaged my posh new wallet (something which I do actually possess). I find some tatty polythene bag to put it in.

And that is all I can remember. Part 1 might well be debris from my reading Chichester's autobiography (see October 7th last, in the other place). Part 3 might possibly be debris from our last summer's visits to Iflracombe and Watermouth harbours. But I don't have a clue about part 2.

Clothing

Woke up this morning and decided that I can finally retire what is probably the last item of parental clothing still in active use, to wit one heavy duty brown woollen sweater, which we suspect of being more than 40 years old. It was getting very frayed around the edges and it took up a lot of shelf space. I shall have to manage with the new blue sweater which is a little lighter and the newish-to-me multi coloured (Jacob sheep sort of thing) sweater which is a little heavier. Hopefully I shall manage. Hopefully also the large amount - 1lb 9oz - maybe £50 worth of wool retail - of sound brown wool will be recycled somewhere useful.

PS: after I had made this post, BH told me that she knows at least one person who unpicks old sweaters and reuses the wool. Unravel the sweater, wash the resultant wool, do something to get most of the wrinkles out, rewind it and you are ready to go. Apparently wool will go around many times in this way; you lose a bit each time but the wool itself is sturdy stuff. We thought about doing something of the sort, mainly so that we could boast about it later, but decided against. Let the recyclers do their stuff.

Two days in suburbia and two blasts from the past

Yesterday I felt that the supply of jigsaws was getting a touch low, so off to Ewell Village Oxfam shop to buy some more - as might have been deduced from yesterday's post. But before we got to the Oxfam Shop paid a visit to the Bourne Hall museum, a small but cunningly stocked local history museum which repays a visit once in a while. I share two factlets from this visit.

First, that Stoneleigh is named, indirectly anyway, for the Stone family, a prosperous family from hereabouts who used, amongst other things, to farm the land on which Stoneleigh is now built, with 'Stoneleigh' being the name of the house which had once housed some of the clan.

Second, that if you live in a timber framed and finished house and feel the need for the solid appearance of bricks to make sure that no-one thinks you are only one generation away from being a traveller, you can achieve this with very little disturbance by the use of what are called mathematical tiles. Why mathematical I have no idea, but in shape they are a hybrid between a tile and a brick, being hung like a tile but pointed like a brick, with the finished job being a brick wall which a layman would have a job distinguishing from the real thing. I dare say that the iron clouts holding the tiles to their outsize battens would rot eventually but they would be good enough for fifty years, which is apt to see out any adult caring to do such a thing.

Having bought a DVD and a higher grade Waddington's De Luxe jigsaw from the Oxfam shop off to the ever satisfactory Neopolitan Kitchen (http://www.theneapolitankitchen.co.uk/) for a light lunch. Long may they last! There is also a fine summer smoking den out the back should I ever get back on the brandy & cigars.

The DVD was a retread of the 1930 film of 'All Quiet on the Western Front' which we found to have worn very well, to the point that we were shocked by the carnage - and this without the dubious benefit of high tech. flesh and blood in the face. So not a happy film but a good one. Also quite long at something more than 2 hours. Slightly frustrated in that I recall there being something not quite right about the author, Erich Maria Remarque, but all that Wikipedia reveals is that he only spent about a month at the front proper. Maybe he passed himself off as more of a veteran but got caught out, not that that really takes away from the achievement of the book. Our own copy of which is from the 4th impression of the first English edition published in 1929, once the property of my father's brother in law, who, as it happened, died around 1960 of the long term consequences of being buried alive in a western front dugout.

Late to bed and woke up to find BH reading about the mother of Edward Benson and from there we branched to Frederick Rolfe, the one time lover of one of Benson's brothers. As a young man I must have read 'Hadrian the Seventh' several times, but this book, bought at a time when Penguin Modern Classics were very chic, at least at my school, has not survived. So I turn to Surrey Libraries to find that the whole of the Surrey Library system is without a copy. They can only manage a couple of copies of the play of the book. This is, I think, the second time, that I have come across a book once considered important which Surrey has culled: either an accident or a serious policy of use it or lose it. Gutenburg don't have it either, despite the fact that it must be out of copyright by now, so they don't rate it any higher than Surrey. Amazon could do me a second hand Penguin at 1p but I was put off by the £2.67 postage.

Shook off Rolfe as I marched around the Horton Circuit (clockwise) to wonder about why referees attracted the 'ee' suffix appropriate to people having things done to them. Like murderees or employees. Decided eventually that the suffix arose from the idea that one refers to a referee for a reference. The referee is the object of refer and the fact that the referee is subsequently the agent in the consequent activity is put aside. At which point I came across further activity of the phantom smasher (see 9th December). Luckily there was a fast food container near at hand and I was able to collect up the debris, large and small, and dump it in the litter bin, also near at hand. Although not so near to hand that the container was in it. BH tells me that she recently came across some broken crockery outside the Barnardo's shop opposite the Tesco Local (or is it Metro?), quite possibly the work of the same moron (not the mormonic angel that is).

Jigsaw 6, Series 2

Another 99p job from the Oxfam Shop at Ewell Village - where I learn today that they actually check assemble the smaller puzzles they sell - that is to say 500 pieces and less. True, smaller puzzles are in a minority, but still not much of a business if you spend say 10 hours checking something you are selling for 99p, although it would explain why I have had so few missing pieces over the past year. Just as well they don't pay most of their volunteers.

The puzzle is from Empress (not net visible), my first such. A rather cheap affair of thin cardboard with the fit of pieces not being very positive. One is not sure whether one has got it right or not. On the other hand, it does photograph a lot better than most of my puzzles.

A fairly regular puzzle with the great majority of pieces being of the prong-hole-prong-hole variety, with the largest being perhaps twice the area of the smallest and with few if any of the pieces of the prong-prong-hole-hole variety. Four pieces met at the great majority of internal vertices.

Started with the edge, as usual, making a few mistakes along the way which required a bit of unpicking. I put this down to the lack of positive fit. Then the skyline. Made a start on the trees. Did the bridge line and then filled in the buildings and the bridge. Did the water. Finished the tree.

This left a reasonably large lump of sky with very little colour variation, rather less than the picture on the box had suggested. This, together with the fact that nearly all the pieces were of the prong-hole-prong-hole variety meant that there was very little to go on. I tried to be clever and pick out pieces from the heap but decided in the end that this was slower than systematic trial and error, which is rather quicker than one might think at the outset, particularly if one is tidy and arranges the pieces tidily. Rule: only attempt to place pieces in corners and one makes contact with two pieces. Good contact with one piece not enough, certainly in a loose puzzle like this one. Unless, as happens sometimes, there is something distinctive going on. Connaisseurs of rules will appreciate that this rule is only reliable in the case that one has finished the edge, this being sufficient and probably necessary for there always to be a corner hole to be filled.

However, despite all my system I ended up with two regular sized holes and two irregular pieces - that is to say one 1.5 unit piece (three holes and one prong) and one 0.5 unit piece (one hole and three prongs) which when linked together made up 2 one unit pieces (two holes and two prongs in the standard configuration). So the trick was to find two adjacent & regular pieces in the assembled part of the puzzle which matched the two irregular pieces. I could then swap the irregulars in and with a bit of luck the now freed up regulars would fit the two regular holes mentioned at the start of the paragraph. I failed yesterday evening, but found the solution at a glance this morning. A solution rather simpler than that I had envisaged the evening before, in that a suitable home for the two irregular pieces was made by enlarging one of the regular holes and putting the regular piece so freed up in the other regular hole. A small prize is offered to any reader who can supply a diagram to support this text.

Interesting that all my mistakes so far have been confined to a small portion of the puzzle and have been, in consequence, relatively easy to correct. None of them have chained around the puzzle, perhaps involving a large portion of it, which I would have thought quite possible, in theory at least. Perhaps the odds are against complex errors but I am not sure I have enough brain cells left to do the sorts of sums involved to check. Also left to the reader as an exercise.

Friend Freud

After what seems like some months, have finally finished my first pass through a life of Freud by Ronald Clark, a biographer rather than any kind of shrink, with previous biographies of, for example, Albert Einstein and Bertrand Russell. From this book I get the impression that Clark is interested in scientists and their place in the scheme of things, rather than the science itself. All the personalities involved in the often unseemly and not so scientific - or perhaps more professional or academic - wrangles among the scientists, rather than the wrangles or the science themselves.

Book acquired second hand and as there is no price inside the front cover my money is on the chap who sells books from tables in Epsom market place on bric-à-brac day, a chap who charges a flat rate of £1 for hard backs and from whom I have bought several good books over the last few months.

I don't think that this is the first biography of Freud that I have read, although I cannot remember who the first one was by. I do remember passing up a three volume Freud by Jones, this last being another rather odd bird (see Brenda Maddox. See also January 13th, 2009, in the other place). Regretted it ever since. Should have stumped up the £20 - which presumably seemed far too much at the time.

Apart from being an interesting read generally I was struck by the amount of space given, both in the book and in the wide world more generally, to the question of the extent to which the shape of psycho-analysis was a product of Freud's own personality, quirks and neuroses. The man himself is said to have believed that psycho-analysis was a science with its roots in science; a science which was revealed by scientific method and which was not a product of his own personality - and just to be on the safe side it seems that he destroyed a lot of material about his early life which might have fed those who did not believe him. His followers carried on the good work, carefully sanitising things like letters when they were unable or did not want to suppress publication altogether. My own view is in two parts. First, one can, to some extent have it both ways. Psycho-analysis might indeed be the revealed truth, but it did need someone with Freud's particular talents and background to do the revealing. Second, does it really matter all that much? It is interesting because one is interested in Freud the man, but it is not relevant to a discussion of the truth of otherwise of the truth which he revealed.

But the book may now be a bit dated, having been written over thirty years ago, at a time, it seems, when many primary sources were embargoed  (suppression was temporary rather than definitive. A compromise) and which might be available now. Which might go some way to explaining the rather bad press Freud has been getting recently, with allegations, for example, that some at least of his case histories were substantially touched up to fit in with whatever theory he was pushing at the time. This may all be so, but I remain a true believer. Disregarding some of the tricky details, like the universality of the Oedipus Complex, I believe that the sort of wordy way in which he looked at the brain will come to coexist with the chemical way which dominates - in part because chemicals are cost effective and profit generating - now. Words and chemicals will turn out to interact, with causation going in both directions.

Coincidentally, the end of this read coincides with a rather odd correspondence in the letters' pages of the TLS about the way in which Freud died. Was he killed by a morphine injection? Did the morphine shorten his life? Given the longstanding agreement about this he had with his doctor, does this count as suicide? Is the perjorative word 'suicide' appropriate in these particular circumstances? It all seems a touch unseemly, but I suppose it does nudge along the debate about assisted suicide.

Notwithstanding, the man must have had uncommon inner strength to put up with with 15 years or so of cancer of the mouth, with lots of operations, a prosthesis in what was left of his mouth and lots of pain - and for most of this time carrying on the good work. And smoking his cigars.

Horne

When I was a child I read a history of the first world war battle - or perhaps siege - of Verdun by one Alistair Horne, a book which impressed me so much that the 5/- Penguin paperback from 1964 survived the various vicissitudes, culls & cuts in the half century since and sits in our bookcase to this day, albeit a little battered. I can't remember when I last looked inside it.

But quite recently, I think at the book stall at the entrance to the museum at Bourne Hall, I came across another book by the same Horne called 'How far from Austerlitz?', a history of Napoleon's battles from Austerlitz to Waterloo with the theme being overreach and eventual failure after Austerlitz, a stunning victory which made Napoleon too big for his boots. A snip at £1.50, just 6 times the price of the first book.

I started out being rather irritated by the easy going style. And by error in the accounts of Trafalgar and Waterloo, battles of which I had some prior knowledge. But after a while I decided that the errors did not really bear on the main story and could be overlooked. The main story was a good one, the irritations dissipated and the story of Austerlitz in particular became interesting.

Taking my cue from 'War and Peace', I had vaguely thought of Austerlitz as being a stunning victory, over in little more than minutes and not involving huge casualties. It turns out to be a far larger affair, involving a march from Boulogne-sur-Mer to southern Germany, reminding me of the march by Marlborough to the battle of Blenheim a century or so previous. It was also a long and complicated battle with considerable casualties, particularly on the Russian side. A foretaste of the carnage to come in Napoleon's later battles; slogging matches with tens if not hundreds of thousands of participants and hundreds if not thousands of cannon - and with casualties on the same scale. A battle which also, for me, added to the discussion of the 'what if' branch of history, the subject of some derision in some quarters, it being argued that the proper matter of history is what actually happened, not what might have happened - with me being a proponent of the value & interest of whatifery: see, for example, the entry for November 27th 2010 in the other place - an entry which, as it happens, mentions Austerlitz.

But today I am thinking of soldiers. Soldiers pore over old battles to try and learn how to conduct new ones. Napoleon pored & worked over his plan for Austerlitz before the event and tried to think of all the things that the enemy might do in response to his moves and how he would respond to their response. He tried to put himself in their place and to put baits in his traps which they would take - with the catch that the baits had to be substantial. He had to take real risks to tempt the Russians to make fatal mistakes - and these real risks meant that he might have come unstuck. In all of this I think one is indulging in entirely reasonable whatifery. Whatifery which is probably much more interesting in a battle of this era where not only does planning really count for something but one also has the chance of making a difference during the battle, of  making a decisive and winning decision. Something which I gather was not usually possible in the olden days when once battle was joined the generals might just as well chuck generalling and muck in with the rest of them in the mêlée.

In the course of all this I wondered how a writer could check all the facts in a book like this and decided that it was difficult. One could hire an assistant to have a go at it, but I think one has to rely more on careful writing. One does not write down a fact about which there is reasonable doubt without checking it, with the time of writing being the right time to do the checking as it is too easy to miss things at any other. And if the fact is important, difficult or contentious, footnote it with the source. In short, the discipline of a professional historian - which is all made so much easier with the advent of word processing programs like 'Word'. I think I would fail the test, putting too much faith in my formerly reliable memory.

So a good and improving  read, although probably unwise to rely on the details. And the maps are poor. The book would have been much improved by better and larger maps of the battles, preferably of the fold out variety one sees so rarely in modern books.

Over and out

Third and last visit to the Pre-Raphaelites yesterday, on this occasion being pushed into the 1000 slot. The bad thing about this was that the main doors do not open until 1000, so arriving early I was reduced to patrolling the environs for half an hour. But this was probably better for me than sitting inside doing nothing much and it was neither cold nor wet.

The good thing was that although I got into the exhibition towards the end of the opening rush - perhaps between 50 and 100 people - by passing through the first couple of rooms without pause, I had the next few rooms more or less to myself for 15 minutes or more, it taking that long for the herd to move through. And the crowd never reached anything like the pitch of the previous, lunch time visit. It proved worth getting up early and paying double on the train.

Part of this worth was that I got a good look at 'The Scapegoat', a picture first seen in Birkenhead. A picture much improved by peace and quiet, and the story of which was very alive yesterday. The prize goat, groomed and perfumed so as all the better to carry the sins of the people out into the wilderness. Presumably pushed out there to the accompaniment of wine, women and song, although we don't get to see that bit. All with an ambivalence and uncertainty which seems to pervade Hunt's better paintings, or at least the ones which I like the best.

Onto 'Chill October', also much improved by peace and quiet. The book of the exhibition says that it was painted more or less from life, from which I deduce that Millais must have learned a lot about river banks in the process, some of which he is able to pass on to us. I don't think it pointless to spend so much skill, time and effort painting the stalks of perhaps hundreds of reeds; such a concentration can teach something important about the world to both Millais and his customers. I think it does on this occasion.

From there to 'Monna Vanna', which I like the best of the various paintings in the series on offer yesterday.. More a still life than a portrait, and none the worse for that. The sense of still life was even stronger in the next door 'Isabella and the Pot of Basil', although the impact of this picture first time around seems to have gone.

But I did enjoy Hunt's 'The Lady of Shallot', a picture of a very special lady kept in a very special gilded cage. Lady as an expensive toy. Struck on this occasion by the very fancy loom on which The Lady weaves; a loom which looks as if it was worth a good deal more than anything that might ever be woven on it. Also by the wealth of circles in the picture - but all of them broken for one reason or another. A subconscious echo of the mirror crack'd from side to side? But there was a certain looseness about the picture and it lacked the intensity of, for example, 'The Scapegoat', a product of his youth rather than of his old age.

I don't suppose I shall see such a collection in London again, so perhaps we will have to get up north to see what the galleries of Birmingham and Manchester have to offer.

PS: the only tiresome feature of the visit was a small group of two or three people who appeared to have hired a tour guide to tell them about everything. I had to keep jumping rooms to escape the irritating drone of some arty typess in full flow.

The last chance saloon

Some days ago I managed to do something unpleasant to my right hand by sleeping on top of it or something, with the upshot after a day or so being some swelling & discomfort. Both of which are gradually fading, but I thought that a bit of support might be helpful, the sort of support which can be procured without sitting for half a day in the emergency room and without running down the sports injury person who might have been rather more suitable.

First stop was the medicine cupboard which was found to contain a hand support of FIL's; a sort of fingerless glove made out of a rather thick version of the whiteish stuff you make bandages out of. But a bit ancient looking and in any case far too small for me.

Second stop was Lloyds the Chemist. On no sir. We don't carry anything like that. Why don't you try Boots the Chemist next door?

Third stop was Boots the Chemist next door. On no sir. We don't carry anything like that. Why don't you try Lloyds the Chemist next door?

At which point BH suggested trying the Internet but I thought that this might be a bit slow. Plus I would quite like to try the merchandise before buying.

So today off to Wigmore Street to visit John Bell & Croyden (see http://www.johnbellcroyden.co.uk/), the last survivor of what I remember as a  number of such healthy emporiums there. Places which could sell you life size models of backbones as well as all bits and bobs a busy young doctor might need for the removal of one's hand. Places catering for all the medicos and worse with offices in the streets, like Harley & Wimpole Street, in the vicinity. And yes, John Bell & Croyden did indeed have the sort of thing I had in mind, despite having given over a fair bit of floor space to the better sorts of cosmetics. Only one brand, but at least it came in various sizes, so there was a pair which did not fit too tightly. And made by Australians who, as sports nuts, might be expected to know all about what to do about sports injuries. Product recommended by the Australian Physiotherapy Association and sold to the Australian Institute of Sport (see http://www.ausport.gov.au/ais. They really are keen and the programme even includes beach volleyball scholarships - a phrase which one might otherwise have thought an oxymoron).

I have now worn the thing for a day. Not too hot, not too tight and the hand seems to have subsided a little more than it might have otherwise. I shall wear it tomorrow.

Mr. Google agrees with the illustration and gives the impression that the main users of gloves such as these are people with handy arthritis - which I why I think FIL had a pair. Which one might have thought was a common enough complaint for a middle sized branch of Boots to cater for - but clearly one might be wrong.

Horselet

Pleased to report that the small horse noticed on 2 January is still alive and well. Fast food container still there, moved along but water apparently untouched.

But clearly a properly trained horse as it responded to my clucking by trundling across the field to see me, whereas it had ignored the clucking of the two young ladies whose clucking, from the same position by the fence, had preceded mine.

But not so pleased to report that I have now seen two hydraulic platforms - the sort of thing that one might use to repair fifth floor windows from the outside - left unpropped and hanging over public access areas near the new buildings on top of Epsom Station. One of them had been so left overnight.

My understanding of hydraulic safety in garages is that one should never work underneath something which has been lifted up by hydraulics unless the something concerned has first been locked into place, by props, locking bolts or otherwise. By extension, one should not walk away from a hydraulic platform left hanging hydraulically over innocent members of the travelling public; it should be put properly to bed first. What on earth would happen if some deranged hoodie took a bolt cutter to a hydraulic hose? Apart from getting hydraulic fluid squirting into his or her face that is. Are the Health & Safety people asleep on the job? Or are they fully committed to policing the regulations concerning the employment of faggies and fatties? Should I report them to headquarters?

Tarka the Otter

The other day I came across a short article about Henry Williamson, the 'Tarka the Otter' chap, in a Christmas present called 'Slightly Foxed' and was rather surprised to find that the author of this national treasure was a great admirer of Hitler and remained one throughout his long life.

First step was to take down our copy of 'Tarka the Otter', a book which I do not think I have read before, despite this copy appearing to have been bought secondhand at a sale by Cambridgeshire Libraries, and take a peek. I find that the book is very much in the earth bursting full of life genre, popular after the carnage of the first world war. A world which when not full of fat juicy buds just waiting to burst forth with new life at the coming of the spring was very red in tooth and claw. This book is in the latter category and is full of the gory details of an otter's daily routine, said to be based on years of patient observation, braving much cold and damp. A wonder that the chap did not die of rheumatism or pneumonia.

I find that the otter is a far more versatile carnivore than I had realised. It might take fish for preference but will also take frogs (which have a tough skin and needed to be peeled), ducks, swans, rabbits, chickens and pheasants. Ducks and swans by swimming up underneath them and making a grab for the neck. All this put otters on the gamekeeper's kill list. Presumably also the reason given for otter hunting, although this last came across as rather a brutal sport than a necessity, not least because in one early episode the dogs are called off Tarka's mother as she was visibly pregnant, not something one would do if one was hunting down vermin. Plus I find that a heron will take a rat should opportunity arise: spear the thing first then swallow whole. But I doubt if I shall read very much more, having found both subject matter and prose rather tiresome, this last chock full of all kinds of obscure country and dialect words for country things, words which were probably obscure and affected when the book was written getting on for a hundred years ago, never mind now. The thing might be a national treasure but I can't see many nationals reading it, young or old. Maybe most readers make do with a abridged text - although Amazon does not seem to offer one such. Only the full blown book.

Next step was to look into Williamson's politics, which the preface to Tarka by some military sounding eminence said nothing about at all. First I find that the Wikipedia article mentions his offensive views on matters Hitler but rather glosses over them. But second I find my way to a long article by a Mark Deavin which does not mince words at all. We have for example: 'And in one scene Phillip Maddison, in conversation with his girl friend Laura, questions whether it was Hitler's essential goodness and righteousness that was responsible for his downfall in the midst of evil and barbarity'. And this at a site for something called the 'National Vanguard', the rules for membership for which (first paragraphs illustrated) I would have thought were not legal in this country. Both scary and depressing that such outfits exist in the free world.

But national treasure status is carefully guarded in the holiday areas of North Devon where they make a great thing of all things tarkish. Perhaps someone ought to tell Devon County Council that Williamson is not just furry animals which put bums on seats.

PS: I did wonder whether the National Vanguard site was not some kind of tasteless spoof. But I don't think so.

DIY

The extension where we usually sit in the evening has two walls lights and one ceiling light. The ceiling light was a matt black metal affair with four bulbs, entirely new but with an oldie-worldie flavour, and the wall lights were of a very similar but not identical design with one bulb each. Now these lights had done good service for some years until some weeks ago, if not months ago, one of the wall lights stopped working.

Investigations, sufficiently complex to require working out which fuse controlled the lights in the extension, eventually revealed that the female end of the bayonet connection in the offending wall light had given up. That is to say the spring behind one of the two prongs had given up and the prong was not engaging with the corresponding contact on the bulb. Sometimes this just means that the prong has got a bit stuck, having been held in the same position for months if not years, and with a little bit of pushing and pulling and the prong is as good as new. But not in this case and the bulb remained firmly dead, and as far as I could see there was no way of getting inside the wall light (costing some tens of pounds) to replace the small spring (costing some fraction of a penny) which had given up. The whole wall light was rubbish and that meant that all the lights in the extension were now rubbish, there being no chance of replacing the one light with anything remotely like the others. BH was not pleased because her extension was one light down and I was not pleased because doing anything about it meant a fair bit of DIY - and probably bother.

But eventually woke up one morning and decided that I was up for a fair bit of DIY. Thought about going to somewhere fancy like Christopher Wray (see http://www.christopherwray.com/) but we decided in the end to start the hunt for new lights in our local Homebase. Where, as it turned out we were able to buy new lights, a five bulb job for the ceiling and two two bulb jobs for the walls, antique brass finish, with very little bother indeed. And having spent far less than we might otherwise have spent at Wray. There is also the consideration that the stuff that Homebase sells suits our kind of house. Wray suits a much grander sort of abode.

I then get down to the serious business of putting the things up.

The only problem with taking the old lights down was the discovery that despite being the proud possessor of many screwdrivers, I did not have a screwdriver which suited the connector which connected the wires coming out of the plaster with the wires coming out of the lights. So off to buy a screwdriver. First stop the electrical shop in Pound Lane. Closed while proprietor on an errand. Second stop Travis Perkins on the Longmead. He could sell me a large screwdriver or a set of fifty screwdrivers, which set might have included something small enough. Third stop the plumbing shop across the road from Travis Perkins which advertised an electrical counter on the outside wall, but which turned out to have decamped to Kiln Lane before Christmas. Fourth stop Screwfix, also keen to sell me sets of screwdrivers. But eventually, working hard at their catalogue, I found that one could buy screwdrivers singly, in particular one with a tip 2.5mm by 0.4mm, a tip which was toughened with vanadium or some such. So back home to find that it was just the job.

Start to investigate first wall light to find that it was attached to the wall using the fitting illustrated. Holes B and C  used to fix the fitting to the wall, C being more of a slot than a hole to allow horizontal adjustment, it being more or less impossible to get two holes in the wall which are close together anything like on the square, while holes A and D were threaded to allow the foundation cup of the wall light to be fixed to the fitting using a couple of short screws. Now the idea might have been that one screwed the fitting to the wall unit embedded in the plaster, but there were two problems with this. Firstly, holes B and C were too far apart. Secondly, the corresponding holes in the wall unit were on the diagonal rather than on the square, whoever having installed the wall unit having had no regard to the needs of the second fixer. To get around this last time around I had cut a small piece of mature oak (you need a hard wood for this sort of job), maybe 3cm by 1cm by 0.67cm which was fitted behind the lugs of the wall unit containing the useless holes and to which I was then able to bolt the fitting by a central hole at E. Not entirely satisfactory as the fitting was a pretty thin bit of mild steel which was going to bend if one put too much wellie into the fixing bolt. But had done, and it did again for the new light, with the only modification required being the cutting of a recess to hold the nut at the back of the oak to stop it spinning. Don't understand why that was not a problem last time around.

Next problem was getting all the wires and connectors to fit in the fairly small hole that was left. Why do the people who design electrical fitting make everything so awkward? Would the posh jobs from Wray have been any better? Anyway, we hope that fixing has been accomplished without breaking the earth bond.

So after some hours the first wall light was on the wall and illuminating. And some minutes after that, the second wall light was on the wall and illuminating. Onto the ceiling light.

The light which was coming down had quite a good fixing, with the light simply being hung off a ceiling beam, with the fixing being hidden by a cup sliding up the hanging pole and being fixed up with a small screw. But the light which was going up was done quite differently, in fact just like its cousins on the wall. But at least this time I was able to screw through holes B and C directly into the ceiling beam, with there being no need to faff around with little pieces of oak. But there was the problem of there being no where near enough room for all the wires and connectors between the ceiling and the foundation cup. But we got there in the end, without having to dig a hole in the ceiling, and BH now has the full complement of lights in the extension.

One last point. The old lights involved fancy glass shades hanging from the arms holding the bulbs, by spring contraptions which were entirely unsatisfactory and which were apt to damage, if not break, the glass on installation. The new lights involve rather less fancy glass shades sitting on, rather than hanging down from, the arms holding the bulbs, with a much simpler and more satisfactory fitting. But the whole thing, while looking well enough, is fairly cheaply put together and one does not get the satisfaction of feeling that one is installing a bit of quality. But probably not worth paying two or three times what we paid just for a bit of installer satisfaction. One forgets about all the little problems and fudges soon enough.