Peace

As someone wrote recently, the world has got itself into a bit of a state, what with Greece going down the pan, Ukraine in a  mess, Muslim fundamentalists and the globe warming up, to name the first few. So as my offering for peace & goodwill, I have a peace rose.

This rose has been looking well over the last week or so, with a succession of fine blooms. The telephone completely failed at taking a snap of the whole two bushes, but it succeeded at this single bloom, bringing out quite well the delicate mix of pink and yellow of the mature bloom which I am so keen on. The bushes came from the nursery linked at reference 2.

When thinking of the title to this post, I was thinking of peace and goodwill to all men, the slogan which often appears on Christmas cards, but checking I find that the quote should be 'Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will toward men', Luke 2:14. Various inferior versions are offered at reference 1.

I call this rose the peace rose as I believe that my mother had them and that is what she called them. The images offered by google are much brighter, with a lot more red than we get, so perhaps there is variation within the cultivar.

I had thought that the rose was invented after the second world war to celebrate the peace, but wikipedia puts me right. The rose was invented by a Frenchman, just before the outbreak of that war and according to the international code of nomenclature for cultivated plants he named it, as was his right as the inventor, 'Madame A. Meilland', after his mother. Subsequently, Field Marshal Alan Brooke was asked if he would allow his name to be used, but he modestly suggested that 'Peace' would be a better name and that is the name with which the rose went on to have the success it did in the western world. Present but not in force at Wisley earlier in the week - a visit which will be the subject of the next post.

Reference 1: http://biblehub.com/luke/2-14.htm.

Reference 2: http://www.hillparkroses.co.uk/.

Nonsuch 2

This tree caught the eye because of the way the branch on the left is growing straight up out of the big horizontal branch, for all the world as if it were a second tree which had taken root in the first.

Perhaps it is some kind of defect or arboreal oddity; only a few of the other branches seem to be behaving in the same way.

Nonsuch 1

To Nonsuch Park earlier in the week, to be reminded what a good place it is.

I like the way they leave the big field unmown, with just a few paths mown through, so that you can walk in comfort, even when the grass is wet. The various grasses and field plants were looking very well in the morning sunlight.

We also came across various fine clumps of trees from angles unusual for us, one of which is illustrated left.

Then the formal beds, with bedding plants, as you get close to the mansion. Well done the volunteers! A much more satisfactory job than that of the chainsaw volunteers in and around Epsom Common.

Plus a proper supply of dogs and small children to provide interaction opportunities.

Wimbledon

I find strolling slowly up and down the platform a good way to pass the time while waiting for trains and when that palls, provided one is at a suitable station at the right time & on the right sort of day, one can always play aeroplanes, which I do at both Wimbledon and Earlsfield.

Both of which stations have now sprouted serious fences to stop one straying from the slow to the fast platforms and I suppose that the considerable expense was directed at hindering people from jumping in front of trains, which, apart from anything else, can be a considerable rush hour disturbance, disturbing the journeys of plenty of tired people on their way home, or perhaps to the pub. There might have been a crowd control angle at Wimbledon but that does not run at Earlsfield. So what is special about these two stations? Do they have fences at Surbiton or Vaushall?

It is not as if we have mental hospitals which they might be near these days - unlike the high bridge over the M5 at gmaps 50.682907, -3.511766, which at one time had both big fences and big mental hospital. Or at least that is what I thought, with fences well above waist height, but the fences do not look very big in streetview this morning. So is memory defective, streetview misleading or have the fences changed?

And what about the central platforms at places like Clapham Common tube station? Platforms which I always thought rather dangerous, although one only rarely hears of accidents.

For a similar view of Wimbledon before fence see http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/trio.html.

A sanitary engineer

On Friday back to the Royal Institute (see reference 1) to hear Yewande Akinola talk to us about re-engineering our spaces. Ms. Akinola turned out to be an engaging speaker who gave us an interesting talk - she certainly did better than I would have done, and a great deal better than I would have done when I was her age. Nevertheless, I offer a few comments.

She appears to be a successful and well-regarded building services engineer working for Arup, a prestige outfit not particularly known to me for their commitment to helping the world's poor or to saving the planet. I think she should have been a bit more up-front about her affiliation.

Instead, she set off with a series of slides illustrating how in the olden days we liked to build show-off buildings like the British Museum and the Crystal Palace, whereas now we would do better to focus on providing decent and sensible housing for the several billion new people coming on stream over the next few decades. She missed, I thought, an opportunity to explain that there was much to be said, in this context, for building big buildings in big cities, this being the cheapest way, in all sorts of ways, to do the job. From these overview slides, she launched out into various intriguing schemes and wheezes which had caught her eye over the years.

She appears to specialise in providing watery services to buildings: clean water in for baths and dirty water out from toilets. But her sense of what would work on a powerpoint was not that clever and some of her stuff, while clever from a technical point of view, did not work for me. Perhaps she needs to change her media affairs adviser.

One of her schemes was built on the idea that if you collected rain water on the roof, it could just flow down the building, doing its business on its way and so avoiding the need for expensive pumping. On her way she suggested that making services in buildings more visible was good, one should not have to hide such things away at great expense, a proposition I entirely agree with. But I fail to see how collecting rain water on the roof is ever going to be a big part of supplying water to tower blocks, of either the residential or bureaucratic variety.

Another was the idea that one should not devote space to the exclusive service of the bathroom. Baths and toilets should be folded away when not in use and the space recycled for some other purpose. I was reminded of the hotels we came across recently which did something on the same lines, not bothering to put baths in bathrooms at all. Something which might be OK for the young & beautiful, but which struck me as a bit off for the rest of us. An engaging snippet in this connection was the idea of the talking bathroom, a bathroom which could tell you when you were getting a bit smelly and needed to take a shower or, alternatively, when you had been in the shower long enough and should get out. You had used quite enough water and should make way for someone else.

Along the way we had a not very satisfactory demonstration of a silica based coating which would protect all kinds of materials from damp and stains. The trick, it seems, is to fiddle slightly with basic sand to make it water repellent. A wonder of chemical engineering, but a wonder which did not quite come off to those of us who were sitting at the side of the lecture theatre. Must remember to sit in the middle next time.

At question time she was asked to comment on how awful it was that lots of the fancy new flats going up in London just presently were destined to stand empty for their natural life, having been bought by rich foreigners of one sort or another. Had I thought of it in time I might have chipped in with the observation that this was a jolly good way of balancing our otherwise dreadful balance of payments. If rich foreigners were happy to pump their money into fancy buildings in London and not trouble us with their presence, great. A trick that the people of Devon have been trying to pull off with holiday makers for years. Keeping the flats empty was a small price to pay. Instead, just think of all the job creation.

Refreshment at the Goat, followed by a Green Park tube station rather full of rather noisy young people. And this well before closing time. What were they thinking of?

PS: according to the owners, Taylor Walker, there has been a Goat on roughly the same site in Albemarle Street since 1696, with the present building dating from 1878.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/boundaries.html.

Reference 2: http://www.yewandeakinola.co.uk/.

Reference 3: http://www.arup.com/News/.

A judge's view of life and death

This prompted by a short piece in Saturday's DT headed up, rather misleadingly, as is the way with the DT: 'Judge: Only God can end patient's life'.

I write, as a fully paid up supporter of the 'Dignity in Dying' campaign (see reference 1), as a life-long atheist and as someone who is not usually keen on the way that judges and lawyers are pushing into areas which I would rather they stayed out of.

We have a subject whom I call X.  He appears to be a middle aged man whose brain is damaged and who has sunk into a minimally conscious state following a heart attack. He is, or at least was, a devout Muslim. Many Muslims share with many Christians a belief that life is sacred and that the giving and taking of it is the exclusive preserve of the deity.

X is on life support and the hospital, probably St. George's Tooting, thought that the time had come to turn life support off. Without having access to the detail, I think that they were probably right about that.

However, X does not appear to have left any instructions covering the case, while his relatives want life support to continue, to the point of fighting the matter through the courts.

Now while I think that they are wrong, I think the judge was right to rule in their favour. In the absence of instructions from X, I think that the views of the relatives should ordinarily trump those of the doctors or the accountants. It seems unlikely that X is suffering and prolonging his life is not causing further suffering, so if his relatives want to carry on, so be it, at least for now. The rest of us just have to carry the expense, just as we have to carry those arising from people who smoke or drink themselves to death. Or who are addicted to climbing mountains without ropes. That is what a national health service is all about.

PS: I do not think that the very remote chance that someone in such a state will return to life bears on the matter. It can be put aside.

Reference 1: http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/.

Kreutzer

To St. Luke's on Thursday for violin sonatas again: Mozart No.21 and Beethoven No. 9, this last being the Kreutzer, heard no less than three times last year, with at least two of the performances being hot stuff.

Annoyed once again by the large Hiscox advertisement at Epsom station, the one featuring a very large hamburger. Prompting the rather sour thought that a hamburger was supposed to be a handy snack, more like a bacon roll, not a full meal in inconveniently cylindrical formation and requiring a skewer to hold it all together. Maybe sour, but I do think that hamburgers have got a bit above themselves, lost their roots.

See reference 2 for a slightly different take. Still no image from google, but the one I offer instead is similarly offensive, although I have never seen it myself, at Epsom or anywhere else. I can only suppose that offensive is the point.

Bullingdon'd from Waterloo 1 to Roscoe Street. There seemed to be as many broken bikes on the ramp as there were working bikes, but I got one OK. Down the ramp and onto the roundabout where, for once, I was cut up by a van who wanted the bridge while I wanted Stamford Street. But I survived, for a cyclist to balance the books at a subsequent junction by ignoring a red light. Got crusty bread with my bacon this week so that was alright.

For some reason arrived at St. Luke's to get that sense of heightened awareness while waiting for the off; not sure what could have brought it on, not having got my pills wrong again. A sense which lasted well into the Mozart, which went down very well.

But something went wrong with the Beethoven, which did not go down as well as usual at all. The first movement in particular seemed very loud & noisy, with the violin sounding a bit of a blur in the fast bits. All clarity lost. Altogether far too much like the rather unpleasant Tolstoy short story said to be inspired by this very movement. I say unpleasant, and I did find it unpleasant when I last read it a few years ago, but I gathered afterwards that the short story was the talk of the town when it was first published around 1890. A time, I suppose, when women's liberation was really getting under way and about the same time that our own Hardy was fulminating about our own lack of sensible provision & practice for divorce.

Perhaps I was having an off day and the sonata will be better next time. I have had such off days with Schubert's Octet.

Performed by Benedetti & Grynyuk. The former in a rather flashy but not particularly successful skirt with a loud orange pattern and half a dozen or more big black pleats. The pair of them last heard at the same place about fifteen months ago at reference 1.

Marked the occasion with a new world rather than an old world drop of white, more specifically with some Villa Maria sov. blanc from Wetherspoons. I liked it rather better than the chardonnay I have usually been taking from Wetherspoons, to the point where I may even order a box from Waitrose, buying by the box not being my usual thing at all. We shall see.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/on-cheap.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/tooting-trivia.html.

Saaspel lives!

Following yesterday's post about saaspel, it so happened that I started to read 'Reading in the Brain' by Stanislas Dehaene, who appears to be a Frenchman who writes in English, at least on this occasion.

He explains that there is rather more to changing the spelling of English than I had realised, observing, for example, that the various different spellings of homonyms - such as draft and draught - have an important function in facilitating the comprehension of written English. Even more so in Chinese, which is awash with the things. Also that US English, unlike UK English, is moving in the right direction, with that movement being accelerated by youth texting habits on telephones.

In support of further change & progress, he cites first the precedent of overnight alphabet & spelling change in Turkey in 1925 or so. Maybe spelling reform is not just the province of cranks. And second, the much reduced incidence of dyslexia and other reading problems in countries where they have sensible spelling.

The piece illustrated is alleged to be circulating somewhere in Brussels.

Saaspel

A couple years ago I went to the language show at Olympia noticed at reference 1 and today I happen to have turned up a small booklet acquired there about something then called saaspel and now, seemingly called sayspel at reference 2. Illustrated left.

It seems that the late Mr Blain made enough money out of making hydraulic control valves that he could indulge in the rich man's hobby of trying to reform the spelling of English.

Somewhere along the line I have picked up the idea that English spelling is the mess that it is (I use the word as someone whose spelling is not very good) because of the very mixed origins of English, with the more Latin languages being much better in this regard. In any event, wikipedia offer an interesting article about the long history of spelling reform, going back some centuries and reminding me that Mr. Blain is in the excellent company of Mr. Bernard Shaw, who left most of his considerable fortune to the cause. And telling me that spelling reform has been more successful in the US than in the old country, with a lot of the differences between us being improvements in Mr. Blain's sense.

The results of the Blain proposals are surprisingly easy to read, surprising given that words look completely differant, with tradishnl, pridictubli, dreem and coozi being just a few examples. And with coozi illustrating the use of the double vowel to mark the long O of the cozy rather than the loose variety. It all strikes me as terribly Quixotic: the man has a point but will it ever happen? Would we do better just to accept and adopt the drift in the US towards a more sensible spelling system?

At which point I remember that in the 17th century people used to be far less fussy about spelling. What has changed that we have got so hung up on it, making unfortunate school children spend such a large chunk of their time learning their spellings? Is it just like learning Latin, essentially useless but quite good enough for children to sharpen their intellectual teeth on until they are old enough to learn about the real world? Or is it that we just need a few national things, things to maintain our separate, national identity in an ironed out, EU sort of world - so we Brits get into a lather about our funny spelling while the French get into a lather about their funny vocabulary and the Irish persevere with their funny language. In the US they have state trees and state flowers.

PS: depressing that this apparently English manufacturer, doing the sort of thing that we used to be good at, actually operates out of Germany rather than England, or even the UK. See reference 3. On the other hand pleasing to be reminded that there is still room in the world for the eccentric; it hasn't all been ironed out by management consultants and bean counters.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=choral+matins.

Reference 2: http://sayspel.com/.

Reference 3: http://www.blain.de/.

More DIY

It has been a DIY week, with following the cooker door at reference 1, we had the tap illustrated, which had been in a delicate condition for some months, even rating a mention at reference 2 back in early April.

It had been getting slowly worse, and BH was moved the other day to phone up the spares people that came with it to get a new washer, that is to say two brass units, the top of one of which can be seen in the illustration, at around £20 for two including packing, postage and VAT. Rather more than a good old tap washer.

I was wondering what to do with them, when I suddenly realised that the small hole in base of the handle was actually the hole part of a small allen headed screw. Furthermore, the chap who installed the tap had thought to include a shut off, one of those you work with a half turn with a screwdriver, the sort used for old-fashioned, slot headed screws. Thus inspired, the whole job was done in perhaps 15 minutes.

I now have a spare washer unit for the hot side of the tap and I wonder whether the hot and cold units are the same, apart from one having a blue flash and the other having a red flash. They look the same, but why would you bother colour coding an invisible washer unit if they really were the same?

PS: by forgetting in the first instance to give this post a title, I am reminded of the quirk in the blogger software whereby the name of the file which holds the post, generated from the title when there is one, never changes once the post is first posted. With the resulting rather odd name for this one.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/show-time.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/lateralism.html.

Aeroplanes 2

Not content with race tracks, the parks people were also spending a lot on the permanent attractions. This shot being of the reconstruction of the crazy golf course. It all looked very expensive, but rather more useful, to my mind anyway, than a race track.

Lumia not quite up to the complexity of the scene, not being able to bring it all into focus.

Aeroplanes 1

Earlier in the week, despairing of getting a proper game of aeroplanes on Horton Lane, we decided to go to Battersea Park and get right under the flight path, assuming that is that the problem was not that the flight path had moved.

Expedition got off to a good start, with the charity shop on York Road doing us ten episodes of the 'Tudors' for a modest £2. At that price one did not care that the star on the front of the box looked more like a male model than a 16th century aristo.. Hopefully they will do for holiday viewing in due course, as while holiday cottages are much better turned out than they used to be, this does not usually include a supply of easy viewing for when one returns from one's day on the beach.

On to 'Il Molino', at the top of Balfern Street, for elevenses, including in my case a quite respectable ham and cheese roll of the old size. For some reason the clientele at the time seemed to be mainly youngish women, some with children. A place for which, for some other reason, I have a soft spot.

And so to the park to find that it had been taken over by some motor racing people (see reference 1) and illustration above. Somewhat irritated that our visit to the park for a bit of peace and quiet (and aeroplanes) had been hijacked by some noisy and presumably money spinning event, with the construction of the one-day track knocking out great chunks of the park and making access to the remaining chunks difficult. Not to mention the damage being done. Somewhat puzzled by the cost of the barriers, which looked brand new, heavy duty and expensive. Did one get enough money back from paying punters to pay for them all or was the event being subsidised by the London taxpayer?

Eventually made our way through to the lake where there were some fine specimens of carex pendula (see reference 2). Also sisyrinchium striatum and a number of herons. Took lunch in the café there, with two toasties proving slightly too much for me after the ham and cheese roll. On the other hand, sitting outside, there was a regular supply of aeroplanes heading west, and I even scored the odd two, despite the trees obscuring the horizons.

On to the fountains built for the Festival of Britain which were in fine form. I was able to continue aeroplane spotting from a recumbent position, while BH was able to watch all the people, large and small, playing at the edge of the fountain. The aeroplanes were coming across at two or three minute intervals and I got the impression that the Park might have been the start of the flight path down proper, with planes swinging onto it from a maybe 90 degree sector. Larger planes holding straight, presumably not as nippy and manoeuvrable as the smaller ones. Surprised once again at how large and how low some of the planes are when seen from central London.

The last stop in the park was the enclosed, old English garden which was looking very well in a carefully designed, quiet sort of way. In the capable care of the Thrive organisation (see reference 3), a charity which looks to be doing lots of good work. Including something which we had never seen before, a pomegranate tree. This one in bush format, maybe six feet high.

Took a decent glass of New Zealand white at the branch of the Draft House, more or less opposite the RCA in Battersea Bridge Road. Quiet when we were there, but looked as if it might be full of young people later. Wine done, hopped on a 49 bus which took us the long way back to Clapham Junction, learning on the way the the roof of the hall at the back of the Battersea Arts Centre (a repurposed town hall) was missing. Google tells me this morning that this was the result of a big fire in March, an event which we had missed at the time. Eagle Wine also looked firmly shut, so I hope they have not gone down. They used to be a convenient & well stocked place for the odd bottle of wine, a lot more convenient than fighting one's way into the 24 hour ASDA.

Reference 1: http://www.fiaformulae.com/.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/apsley-3.html.

Reference 3: http://www.thrive.org.uk/.

Tweet, tweet

Great excitement this evening as, for once in a while, a thrush-like bird came to sit on the lawn, just outside the extension window at the back of the house. A thrush-like bird which just sat there as we peered at it, yanking the occasional bug out of the lawn.

It defied identification in both of the two, admittedly small, bird books that we could lay our hands on. It sat there while I nipped off for the bins, which did not, however, prove any help. It looked decidedly dopey - sitting duck, as it were, for any visiting cat. But eventually it made off, uneaten.

Some time later I decided, using the irritatingly poor quality bird identifier on the RSPB website, that it was a juvenile mistle thrush. White spotted, slightly fluffy front, grey-green topsides. Longish tail. Middle sized, neither too long nor too short, straight black beak. Black eyes.

I have seen thrush-like birds down the Longmead Road. But none that sat still long enough to be peered at, so this is the first one which can be ticked off as a year tweet.

PS: perhaps I should start a thread on Streetlife. The inhabitants of Epsom Streetlife got very worked up about the bad & worse manners of people on bicycles, so perhaps I can get them worked up about the RSPB bird identifier and about how some of all those socking great bequests from old ladies ought to go towards sorting it out.

Ripieno

Back to All Saints' Weston Green last weekend for their summer concert, having missed, for one reason or another their last two, making it just about a year since we last saw the Ripieno Choir (see reference 1).

I had forgotten what a good place this church is for a concert of this sort. The illustration gives the idea, but the church is well worth a visit if you happen to be in the vicinity of gmaps 51.3841446, -0.3492391. Failing that I have just discovered that you get a virtual tour of the inside of the church as part of the google maps service. See, for example, the handsome chancel - very plain for a place which describes itself as liberal catholic within the Church of England. The only slightly off note was the large sign hanging over the door advertising their upcoming Wild West themed church fête, for all the world like a sign advertising a car boot sale at Hook Road.

The conductor explained that it was a variety programme, acknowledging that some people liked to get stuck into someone - say Tomás Luis de Victoria - while others liked more variety. Although I incline to the stuck in camp, I was told off, as it were, this morning by the late Charles Rosen in his book 'Piano Notes' - and a pianist whom, as it happened, we were lucky enough to have heard back in 2007 (see reference 2). His point being that tastes & fashions in these matters have changed a great deal over time and so, by inference, it was perhaps better not to get too precious about it. He also mentions the case of some of Bach's music, now regularly played in the concert hall, which was perhaps only intended for private consumption at the time it was written, perhaps something to use for a work-out with one of his pupils; a work-out featuring just score, instrument, pupil and master.

Anyway, we did have a mixed programme, but dominated by the work of Rutter, Taverner and Britten. Added to the mix we also had a large flute, with a 'B' extension at the end (or something), from which we had Debussy's Syrinx and Clarke's Zoom Tube.

In the event I liked it all a lot better than I had thought likely from the programme. But I don't think I need to hear Zoom Tube again, demonstration of Catherine Coulter-Young's oral mastery or not. The only mistake to my mind was having some flute accompaniment to the choir for one of the early pieces, with us being between the choir and the flute, which did not work for me.

Outside we were able to admire what appeared to be a large cherry tree, much higher at least than a standard apple. Trunk getting on for a foot in diameter at the base.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/ripieno.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Rosen+Appassionata+Diabelli.

Palace of Westminster

I was interested to read a piece by Simon Jenkins about doing something about the crumbling Palace of Westminster in yesterday's Evening Standard.

As he rightly observes, if you hire expensive accountants who go on to hire expensive architects to tell you what to do about a large old building, you should not be surprised that they all get the smell of the trough up their nostrils and go on to suggest that £10 billion or so of public money needs to be thrown at the place.

Building on Jenkins, my suggestion is that they kick all the riff-raff out of the near derelict vegetable markets at Nine Elms and build a smart new parliament building there, very handy for Sainsbury's and, as a cynic might say, for consultations with their masters in the shiny new US embassy going up nearby. Move parliament into the new building.

While all this is going on, decide what to do with the old building - which might be parliament or it might be some combination of conference centre, tourist attraction, museum and stately home. Maybe hand it over to one of the heritage outfits. Or to Merlin Entertainments (see reference 1). Or to Boris, who could make a splendid vanity project out of the place when he stops being mayor. He might even get to live in what is presently the speaker's tied cottage, so expensively redecorated for the current incumbent.

Then once you have vacant possession, get the builders in and make it fit for whatever its intended purpose has turned out to be.

In due course, if that is what the decision was, move parliament back.

Reference 1: http://www.merlinentertainments.biz/.

Show time!

Or rather the day of the cooker door, come around once again after 15 months or so. See reference 1. And reference 2 for the time before that.

Handle fell off again in the course of yesterday's bread bake, so at it this morning. Did it once to have the handle fall off again. On further inspection, I decided that the female thread for the relevant screw was probably stripped - only a soft bit of cast aluminum - and needed a bigger screw. Poked around in the screw box to find one which was the right gauge and only slightly too long and have now installed it. Not terribly satisfactory, but I was not confident that I could shorten the screw sufficiently neatly.

For the record, against the case that I actually bother to read it before the next time, take the top bracket of the door off the cooker rather than off the door. That way you don't have to fiddle around with tweezers with the floating attachment.

And put the bits and pieces down in an organised way so that you remember which bit goes where on re-assembly.

Bit poor this second one, basic fitting. The first one is a bit more specialised and one could not be expected to know just by looking. But one could be expected to read the instructions...

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/02/its-that-cooker-time-again.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/01/a-different-kind-of-truth.html.

Catherine the Great 2

The statue of the previous post, illustration from wikipedia.

Such a good illustration with so many pixels that, for once, the blogger software refused, or at least failed, to load it. I had to pass it through the MS snipping tool to get it on board. But still a good picture.

Catherine the Great 1

On 29th November 2012 I bought a large biography of Catherine the Great by Robert K. Massie, 574 pages exclusive of notes and index. I probably made a start at the time, but then stopped and I think I restarted earlier this year, more than two years later. Reading gradually gathered pace, interest being reflected in various posts, particularly that at reference 1, and finally finishing a week or so ago.

An extraordinary figure who must have had extraordinary charisma, overcoming a dreadful young womanhood to go on to be one of the longest reigning of all the tzars of Russia, notching up more than thirty five years, rather longer than Stalin himself managed.

This biography gives a lot of space to her love life, which would probably have attracted far less interest had she been a man, getting through a dozen or so lovers in her life, major and minor. Carrying on, in fact, in much the same way as her contemporary, Louis XV.

Sadly, the upbringing of her son and heir Paul, was a bit of a mess. This was not, in the first instance her own fault, the infant Paul having been confiscated by the then Empress Elizabeth. But Catherine, when she came to throne herself, was unable to mend matters and her relations with her son were awkward. Not helped by Paul being a fairly hopeless specimen, sharing a passion for playing soldiers with his official father, the murdered Peter III. I suppose that Paul had to fixate on his official father, although widely believed to be the son of Catherine's first lover, as otherwise he would have little blood claim to the Russian throne, still important despite Peter the Great's rule that a tzar could nominate his successor. She also more or less confiscated Paul's son Alexander, in much the same way as Paul had been confiscated, thus perpetuating the error.

The whole messy business is an excellent illustration of a major weakness of hereditary autocracy. At least in the other sort of autocracy, the successor has to fight his way to the top, rather than just being born there; the fighting might be a bit messy but you might end up with someone who knows his (or her) business. I associate to a story about the Zulu kings who made a practice of killing off all their male relatives in a bid to keep the fighting down, at least during their own lifetime.

That said, she did have a serious go at being a good thing. She worked hard to bring her country into the mainstream of Europe, both from the political and cultural points of view. She also seemed to have access to huge amounts of money. I suppose that Russia might have been, relatively speaking, a poor and backward country, but it was very big and if she was able to grab a big enough share of the cake she would, indeed, be very rich. I associate to our own arrangements here in Britain, where our rich are very into getting bigger and bigger shares of the cake; perhaps they ought to have some regard to how it all ended in both France and Russia.

I share four other odd episodes.

We have here famous statue of Peter the Great, the work of a Frenchman previously known for his work on porcelain at the Sèvres factory and which sat on a huge lump of rock which had to be dragged then floated from Finland.

We have the French revolution towards the end of her reign, a business which must have made her very twitchy, and prompts Massie to a short excursion on medical aspects of the workings of the guillotine.

We have the smallpox scare, with smallpox being one of the scourges of the time, affecting all classes, and resulting in the recruitment of a middle aged Scottish doctor to come and inoculate the Russian royals, this at a time before such inoculation was widespread. One of Catherine's good deeds.

And last we have the young lovers of the second half of her reign, with a conspicuous feature being the smooth way in which she arranged the changing of the guard (as it were) with old lovers generally being quietly pensioned off to live in the country. Not a cruel or vindictive person, despite her absolute power, this despite absolute power being held by many to corrupt absolutely. Perhaps this also was part of why she was great.

In sum and eventually, a good read. But it is a personal biography and you do not learn all that much about Russia or its government during her reign. Although I do now know a lot more than I did about the push south to the warm water and the extent of Russian ambitions, never realised, to get hold of Constantinople. With Catherine going so far as to have Alexander's brother named for the place - but who actually wound up dying of cholera in Poland.

With thanks to wikipdia for the illustration.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/transfers-of-power.html.

Rats

A rather striking image of the cortex of a rat, nose left. Brought to me by the Dana Foundation but actually the work of Bota, Sporns & Swanson, and first published in PNAS, one of the pay as you go repositories of science.

An image built by analysing all known connections between the 75 or so regions of the rat brain and producing a summary diagram, or connectome. Other bits of the brain to the right, in pale grey. Cerebellum top right.

There was a clear division into four zones or modules, with, very roughly speaking: red looking after sight and hearing, blue looking after the body, yellow being front limbic plus smell and green being back limbic. The limbic system in humans being the stuff which sits in the middle, between upper and lower brains and which does all kinds of important things. You don't want to be without one - unlike the cerebellum which, oddly, one can do without, with a case reported quite recently from China.

Grumpy of Epsom

For some years I have some software on my now Windows 8 PC, at the behest of HSBC, called Rapport Trusteer. Something to do with keeping the bad people at bay.

All was well for a long time, but now it has started to burn up nearly half the PC's cpu cycles for say 10 minutes when I turn the thing on in the morning. So what with Norton taking the other half for much the same time, all rather a pain.

Shall I ring the helpful people at the BT help desk or shall I try HSBC? Is it really worth digging out all the details you have to supply before the HSBC computer will talk to you, never mind put you through to a person? I decide that I will give it a try and collect all the details. After keying it all in and then listening to some terrible music for some minutes, I get put through to a call centre operator who tells me that I have come through to the wrong number. I don't think she had a clue what I was talking about but she did manage to say why didn't I phone the Rapport support number.

So I gave up on her and went back to the HSBC website, from where I eventually got to the IBM website, from where I could send IBM an email about the problem. I suspect that will go to the wrong person too, but we will see what happens. Their computer said it would get back to me within two working days.

To be continued.

PS: maybe I ought to take Norton off. Said by some to be superfluous or worse on a Windows 8 PC.

Apsley 3

BH was not impressed by finding this fine carex pendula in the rose garden, something she regards as a weed in our own garden. I rather like it and cultivate it down the bottom, by the compost heaps. Quite often to be found growing wild in woods. Bottom left of the illustration.

I was impressed to be able to find its proper name in google in about 30 seconds, using the search term 'woodland grass long flower stems'.

Not so impressed by the performance of the telephone on this occasion. In the bright sunlight it did not seem to know what to make of all the flower heads, and failed to bring the target plant into proper focus.

Apsley 2

We might have missed the banquet but we did catch this fine clutch of polo playing range rovers.

Apsley 1

The day after the big day, we thought last week to go to Apsley House to pay our respects. In fairness, we had not been invited for the big day itself, so the day after was not really so bad.

Started off with tea & cake at the Café de Pierre. My cake was rather good, new to me, a sort of apple tart, possibly a member of the fangipane family. In fact the café was rather good altogether, although the background music was a little loud. I was also rather struck by the casual, not to say shabby, dress of most of the tourists, both inside or on the street. There was the odd person smartly turned out, but that was the exception rather than the rule.

Then off to Apsley House, free to us given the membership we had bought, as it happens, at Walmer Castle, the place where Wellington died (see reference 1). My first visit since my undocumented visit with FIL, which must now be some years ago. BH's first visit for a lot longer than that.

The dining room had been cleared up after the banquet of the night before. BH was rather shocked to find silk flowers on the table, but the trusty explained that most of the real flowers used for the banquet had been carried off and replaced with the regular silk. But the two big displays, one at each end of the table were the real thing. He also explained that although the banquet was laid on by outside caterers, rather than by the Palace or by the Heritage people, he himself had been there with his vacuum cleaner at 0800, clearing up the royal crumbs - but failed to comment on my suggestion that he should get each crumb encased in a little block of clear plastic and sold off to souvenir hunters.

We rather liked the way that the house was presented, fairly much as it was in the first Duke's day, with no special effort having been made, apart from the banquet, for the bicentenary. There was lots of interesting stuff. Collections of field marshalls' batons and of swords, these last mainly from India. But they did make one wonder how many of the general officers in the portraits had the wrist and arm needed to work such things as I would have thought that a good deal of regular exercise would be needed to keep a sword arm battle ready, particularly if the sword in question was a whacking great sabre. See, for example, Herbig's portrait of Frederick William III.

Quite a lot of the royals illustrated looked like rather rum specimens. That by Gérard of Louis XVIII made one wonder, at first, why one spent all that treasure & blood getting rid of Napoleon, but then one remembered that in those days it was royals or revolution on the continent, none of the sensible middle ground which we managed to carve out on our island. We did not get to find out why a white hand on the end of a short stick was part of his regalia.

Quite a lot of quite good paintings, with plenty of old masters around. Unusually good for a stately home.

We quite understood why the large model of an Egyptian temple did not much impress the former empress Josephine when it was given to her by Napoleon as a present to mark the occasion of their divorce.

Out to the Hard Rock for lunch to find that we would have to wait for half an hour or more to sit in what used to be considerable noise, so repaired to the nearby Rose and Crown where we had a perfectly respectable caesar salad for about a tenner each. A good invention, which places like pubs can turn out reasonably reliably; not much excuse for getting it wrong. The Rose and Crown, which we were using as a restaurant, was quite a decent specimen of an old style London pub. Plenty of character in the furnishings, both of the wooden and two legged varieties. Including, for example a very large piece of fried fish being shared by some Dutchmen and a party of older gentlemen out for a walk - quite a long walk by the sound of it. But despite their big talk, they only managed a pint apiece during the course of our luncheon.

And so onto the rose gardens at the south eastern corner of Hyde Park which were in splendid form, could not have been better. BH pleased that they were keen on the sisyrinchium striatum of which we have quite a few in our own garden but rather irritated by the smell of someone's cigar, a cigar which I had, unusually, failed to notice. Usually I can smell the things from a long way away.

Unable to find the bus stop to get us back to Vauxhall - despite there being at least three buses which worked the route - so got a bus back to Victoria. Where we actually got to ride in a Southern Trains ten coacher. And saw some aeroplanes flying down to Heathrow as we rode.

Back home, I made up for missing the cigar by a hallucination while watching ITV3. Someone was lighting a fag on the box, a lighting up which induced in me, for a second or so, a strong hallucination of both the taste and smell of a freshly lighted cigarette. Something that I have not experienced for real for many years now. And I don't recall ever having had a hallucination of quite this sort ever before.

PS: the Heritage people offer a handy public catalogue of their paintings. See https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8152054/apsleyhouseartcatalogue.pdf.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/walmer.html.

Trolley 34

Captured at around gmaps 51.351347, -0.264484 on the Chessington Road in West Ewell and returned to the Ewell Village small Sainsbury's, discovering on the way that the replacement front wheel, while apparently having the same relevant geometry as the original, was very prone to spontaneous swiveling, which made for rather a bumpy ride. The only difference that I thought might be relevant was that the tyre of the replacement wheel was a lot wider than that of the original. Front left in the illustration.

Most of the area outside the shop was paved with a cunningly bumpy sort of brick which made wheeling a trolley on them hard work - but which had not deterred the borrowing of this particular trolley.

The new wine bar which had been proposed for Ewell Village, just along from Sainsbury's, seems to have failed to take off, there having been no action at the proposed premises for some time now. A wine bar which would have suited me, as it might have had a more interesting range of wine than our pubs manage, but which may not have floated for long, given that the nearby Star failed as a pub, despite it seeming quite busy when we visited, and which has now been stalled for some months, half was through a major refurbishment.

On the other hand the Village has acquired a country shop selling all the sorts of expensive togs and trimmings which us suburban people like to think that country people like to wear. The place would do very well as a prop store for Midsomer Murders. And we wait with interest to find out who has just taken what used to be the Oxfam shop, the one which kept me supplied with 500 piece arty jigsaws during my jigsaw phase.

Nearer home, Epsom coaches were discovered to have collared the contract for the Marsden Hospital bus and to have started to colonise the empty City Link site next door. While Blenheim Road has acquired a middle sized caravan, firmly shut but with a gas bottle standing outside and connected. How long will it last?

On the way out, the second enthusiastic small boy in two days. The first had been very keen to demonstrate how fast he could pedal his new tricycle. The second was getting very excited, I thought about me, but actually about a small digger behind me. I thought that maybe small boys like diggers because they are a large and visible demonstration of action and reaction at work. They can see something happening which they can understand, understand just enough to be fascinated by it.

But the really good news is that I saw an aeroplane on the flight path down into Heathrow from Horton Lane today, the first time for what seems like weeks. Sadly, despite the one proving that the cloud cover was above the flight path, I was not able to make it two.

PS: once again, about a month since the last capture. Although I did turn one up on the way home from the last car booter, down the passage running between Chessington Road and Hook Road, not passing it at a time when it was convenient to detour to Sainsbury's. Not yet found an opportunity to go back to see if it is still there.

George Caleb Bingham

I was interested to read about an artist of this name in a recent number of the NYRB, an artist of whom I had not previously heard. An article prompted by an exhibition presently at the Metropolitan Museum at New York.

As I am unlikely to make it there in time, it is just as well that google seem to be able to offer high quality images for free, of which this is one example.

It is claimed that the pose of the left hand man is taken from a once popular print of Raphael's 'Judgement of Paris'. Also that the same pose was recycled again in Manet's rather later 'Le déjeuner sur l’herbe'. Not presently clear to me how one can be sure about such things - given that I would have thought the pose was common enough in real life, without needing to go poking about in the arty archives for inspiration.

Bankroll the Greeks?

There has been a lot of talk in the media about how the Greeks have got to do something about their pensions if they want any more money (with, rather to my surprise, UK banks' exposure to Greek bonds being roughly the same as that of US and German banks. But I forget now from where I got that particular snippet).

Banks aside, I thought I would find out a bit more about why Greek pensions needed attention and turned up two documents. Greece-1 (reference 1) is pensions at a glance from OECD and its message seems to be that while Greek pensions are no longer particularly generous, having been much reformed in recent years, they still can't afford them. Pensions are set to eat up too big a chunk of their GDP. Greece-2 (reference 2) is a more in-depth look at the Greek pensions scene from Bethlehem, Pennsylvania. Or more particularly from a place described at reference 3 as a premier private residential research university. With this particular offering coming from the Martindale Center for the Study of Private Enterprise at said LeHigh University.

This second story is essentially an expanded version of the first. Greek pensions are indeed a bit of a mess, but the big problem is that Greece is a poor country where people are not keen on paying taxes but where they are keen on collecting pensions. It will be a bit rough on the many poor Greeks, but they really do have to get their house in order, they can't expect to live for ever on charity from the rest of the world, despite their first class contribution to western civilisation in the past.

That said, the bankers must take some of the pain too; they had no business lending all this money to people who can't afford it. Or put another way, don't they look at the balance sheets of outfits from which they propose to buy bonds? Why are their shareholders not getting into a lather about their lack of due diligence? Have the banks behaved much better than the much slagged off Wonga? On which topic, you can turn to reference 4 for last year's thoughts.

With thanks to wikipedia for the postcard.

Reference 1: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8152054/Greece-1.pdf.

Reference 2: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8152054/Greece-2.pdf.

Reference 3: http://www1.lehigh.edu/home.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/11/nonsense.html.

Lifits at Lukos

I leveraged my journey to Old Street on Thursday this week by continuing my investigations into carriage valency. Outbound, we had a Southern Trains southbound at ten carriages but the only Southwest Trains to be seen were eight carriages. Inbound, Southwest Trains fail to deliver ten carriages, yet again.

But my failure to ride in a ten carriage train was compensated by the presence of quite a lot of ladies in fancy dress at Waterloo Station, presumably on the way to the races. Didn't see any gents. who were similarly dolled up.

The three Bullingdon stands at Waterloo were near empty, but I was able to take one from Waterloo Station 3 for my ride to Old Street where the stands were near full. I was, nevertheless, able to get a post at the stand at Roscoe Street. On the way, a Chinook flying low over Stamford Street and an open top grey Mercedes driving up Farringdon Road. First guess from the back view of the driver was footballer, second guess was drug dealer, but when I caught him up he was a paunchy middle aged chap, so perhaps retired. Alternatively estate agent.

At the Market Café I didn't need to tell the girl my order, but she managed to get it slightly wrong, giving me regular rather than crusty bread for my bacon sandwich. I coped with this on this occasion, but I shall have to be more careful on the next.

St. Luke's fairly full again, for Veronika Eberle (violin) and Michail Lifits (piano) giving us the Beethoven violin sonata No. 3 and the Schumann violin sonata No. 2. Both very good, but I think the Beethoven is more me than the Schumann. Bit more control and a bit less chiaroscuro. This despite the violin being more closely coupled with the piano - while in the Beethoven we seemed to go piano dominant for the first part, violin for the second and all together for the third and last. Eberle impressed with her control and lightness of touch, which included a very fast flash of the left hand to turn a page. There must have been a lot of power about as her music stand swayed slightly during the power bits, although whether the energy was coming off her or the piano was not clear.

While I felt very sorry for the young page turner for the piano, presumably a piano student at the nearby Guildhall School, with a draft from somewhere continually trying to blow the left hand page up. But both she and the pianist kept their cool.

The printed programme included a note about Salieri, one of Beethoven's teachers. Sad that this musician, both decent and illustrious, should now be best known for his role in the popular pantomime 'Amadeus'. Also sad that such a man should die of dementia at the not very advanced age of 75.

The chap in front of me was obviously a regular customer as he has brought two thin cushions to put between himself and the rather hard seats. I learned in passing that he was getting cross about the decline and fall of his spoken French, this despite his attendance at adult education. It seemed that he spoke English, French and Polish from childhood, this despite his English, at least what I could hear of it, being accent free. Quite unlike the often thick accents of many Polish speakers from Poland.

From there I pulled a Bullingdon at Finsbury Leisure Centre for a quick hop to Stamford Street where I took a quick look at the new exhibition at the Hayward Gallery - decision by Carsten Höller, inter alia a Belgian expert on agricultural bugs who spends quality time in Ghana. An exhibition which I was told by the 'Evening Standard' offered profound sensory and intellectual stimulation. It also contained the roaming beds which UK readers may have read about elsewhere.

All very slick & clever, but for me anyway, also rather empty, despite the some of the older people (most of the people there were young and foreign, including one chap with a very fine moustache, pulled out to two very fine, horizontal points) at the exhibition being very earnest about it.. But at least it was not offensive and the work exuded care and attention. Which last I liked: I like my artists to take a bit of trouble with their work, and certainly not to make a parade of being slap dash or worse, to make a parade of taking their paying customers for twats.

I would say an even chance that I will be back.

On exit I thought to speed my way up the ramp to Waterloo by taking a Bullingdon from Concert Hall approach 1, but foiled by the tunnel (the one that used to be home to a cardboard box village) being shut, I had to go round the roundabout to get at the ramp, with the result that the hop on the Bullingdon took about the same time as walking would have done. And the ultimate post on the ramp was occupied by a broken Bullingdon, with the best I could do being the ninth post.

PS: Eberle last heard just about a year ago, offering much the same sort of thing. See reference 1. Lifits more like eighteen months ago, doing Mozart violin sonatas. See reference 2. Didn't remember either of them.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/eberle-wosner-kreutzer.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/11/frang-lifts.html.

Older teeth

A few weeks ago I was given a stern talking to by a young dental hygienist about the state of my gums, to which I had paid little attention for the preceding half century or more, despite periodic dental admonishment.

She asked about my dental hygiene habits and when I suggested that I brushed my teeth twice a day for a minute or two, she counter suggested that I should brush my teeth twice a day for at least three minutes.

For some reason, on this occasion I have taken the stern talking to to heart and I thought that the way ahead was an egg timer, the standard egg time being three minutes. Much more convenient than some sort of clockwork or electrical timer. I was also mindful of a memory of my father explaining that he scrubbed up before (as it happens, dental) operations by the clock. Doing it by the clock was the only way to be sure that one's hands were clean.

Next step, source an egg timer. BH did not think that I was going to be able to buy one new, at least not in Epsom where we no longer have one of those fancy kitchen equipment shops, with Lakeland, despite its many virtues, not qualifiying. So trawl the charity shops it was, with success in the fourth, an Oxfam shop, where I was able to buy the timer illustrated for £2.

Timing it against a clock, the sands of time (not sure what the sands in question actually are) ran out in 3 minutes and 10 seconds. I only did the one trial and I did not bother to check that they ran the same in both directions, trusting the manufacturers to have done that.

So I now brush my teeth to the sounds of the egg timer. Furthermore, it seems likely that I was not brushing my teeth for a minute in the past, never mind the one or two I had claimed when challenged by the hygienist. As it happens, she asked to see me in three months rather than the usual six, so we will see what she has to say in August. And in the meantime, my mouth does feel a lot cleaner than it did.

Walls

There was a short piece in yesterday's DT about how the EU and others are getting cross about a Hungarian plan to erect a tall fence, possibly topped with barbed wire, along their border with Serbia.

The piece also said that Hungary, a relatively poor country, is accommodating more immigrants per capita of its own population than any country in the union, apart from Sweden.

It seems quite likely to me that the rule of law might be a bit stretched in a place like Serbia and with one result being that large scale transit through Serbia of people from troubled parts south and east is entirely probable. Also entirely probable that any such fence will simply push the traffic through next door Romania, which has much longer borders with both Hungary and Serbia.

But I fail to see what the moral outrage is about. While the EU is failing to manage immigrants from said parts, it is clear that we can only cope with so much of it and management is needed. Unless we get our collective act together, countries on the front line like Italy and Hungary are going to take unilateral action.

Hopefully such outrage is not coming from the UK, rather more protected by the English Channel than our fellow Europeans are by lack of management. On the other hand, the possibility of such management, for reasons which I do not understand, is resulting in outrage coming from the UK. What is our problem with our doing our fair share? Not least because we are responsible, at least in part, for the various messes which are fuelling all this migration.

Resweded

Over the past couple of years, as reference 1 shows, Sweden has popped over the horizon at various times, but without the house getting to own a one volume history of the place, suitable for family reading.

And then last week, as reference 2 shows, I declined to spend £16 on a magnificent collection of Ironside DVD's.

But a few days after than I did fall for a magnificent collection of  Garbo DVD's for £10. Not exactly sure now why Garbo was in and Ironside was out, given that the cost per DVD for Garbo was considerably higher. Maybe £16 was just over some important threshold for charity shop purchases.

Last night we watched the first of them, 'Queen Christina', dating from 1933 when Garbo was 28. A film, set in her native Sweden, which wore its years very well. I am not usually very keen on old films, however buffish they may be, but this one was good. Not being very familiar with Garbo, I found her very striking but also very odd, not fitting in with modern taste in such matters very well at all. She also appeared to be wearing a lot of white makeup which did her, in so far as I was concerned, no favours at all.

The film also served to renew our acquaintance with Sweden, to remind us how little about the history of the place we knew. Not even that a girl child succeeded to the throne of the famous Gustavus Adolphus, killed at what should have been his moment of glory at the battle of Lützen (see reference 4), and went on to abdicate, twenty years later, for romantic reasons. She converted to Catholicism and went on to a long, fairly happy and well provided for retirement in Rome, dying eventually of complications of diabetes. An extraordinary career, an early example of someone stepping down from supreme power without getting hidden away in some far away fortress or executed. Sadly, she tarnished her declining years with a messy and unpleasant palace execution of her master of the horse. Also an early experiment in rule by a lady, fitting in well with my present bedtime reading, Massie on Catherine the Great.

I shall try again for the missing one volume history, that which I have got stopping at 1577. In the meantime, I have turned up Gardiner's atlas of English history, from which I learn that at some point not so far away from Christina, Sweden regained its southern tip from Denmark. I had forgotten, if I had ever known, that Denmark had expanded over the straits in that way.

With thanks to wikipedia for the picture of the death of Gustavus Adolphus.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=sweden&max-results=20&by-date=true.

Reference 2: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/luko.html.

Reference 3: http://www.gretagarbo.com/Offical_Website_of_Greta_Garbo/Home.html.

Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=L%C3%BCtzen.

Winterreise

On Monday to the Wigmore Hall to hear Christophe Prégardien do the Winterreise, accompanied by Michael Gees. A great performance, as it turned out. Hall full and enthusiastic - and which, for once in a while, waited for a decent time before clapping at the end. I get quite cross with clapping which starts before the piano (or whatever) has completely stopped.

No interval. A matter of mood and judgement, but on this occasion no interval worked for us. Would the bar have accepted an order for interval drinks?

The performers were both smartly dressed in what might have been period Schubertian costume. Both German despite their names.

The singer did not bother with a script, but the pianist did, having carefully arranged things so that each of the twenty four songs occupied one side of one spread or one side of one page. Some of the spreads looked quite wide, which may be why he opted for having the music stand on the piano at an acute angle to the horizontal, to the point where one might have thought that it was difficult to read from. As it turned out though, he spent most of the time with his eye on the singer rather than on his script.

I thought about scripts beforehand, having of late found that knowing what is being sung does add value, having managed without before. Now, following the German words as they are sung, keeping an eye on the English the while, seems to be the thing for home listening, so for Hall listening I went as far as printing one off the Internet, nicely arranged with German on the left hand column and English on the right, one page to the song. Nice big print which would be a bit easier to read with the wrong spectacles than the micro print you get in concert programmes and CD booklets. But there was also rather a lot of white space and rather a lot of pages, so I fiddled around with the photocopying functions on the printer and got it down to maybe a dozen pages. Sadly, a bit of practice soon revealed that it was very hard to turn the pages silently, even when one had plenty of space. Or at least to turn them silently in a reliable way. So I opted for reading the script in the train and not using it during the performance at all - with one result being that I completely missed the phrase 'eine reiche Braut' in the second song which had looked so bleak on the page. But amused that our brat and their bride seem to have the same root.

While to the right of us was a chap who fiddled with his CD booklet all the way through, which I found very irritating out of the corner of the eye. I think I would have poked him had he been a bit nearer, while BH, more charitable, thought he had some health issues, possibly asthma or some other kind of allergic reaction to something.

I also thought about the age of the singer, with this one rather older than Schubert was when he wrote the songs. Perhaps like Hamlet, you need to be old enough to understand the role but young enough to be in it. In any event, this singer was able to bring a physical passion - not to mention a very mobile face - to the work which I do not recall seeing before.

And then there was the Bostridge question. Given the reviews of his book about the Winterreise have just been the subject of heavy reviews, with the one in the NYRB by Brendal, did he show up on this occasion? Brendal made the point that he tried to avoid noticing fellow musicians in an audience and was full of admiration that Bostridge could not only do this without messing up his performance, he could also remember where they were sitting. Would Bostridge have put the Germans off their stroke?

On the way home, we came across dispatches 56, 75 and 76 from @goatoftruth, of which the last two are illustrated. Google not very clear on who this person might be, although there are myspace, facebook and twitter accounts with that name. I thought twitter did '#', but maybe the '@' has some other, special significance. In any event amusing to think of someone beavering away his (seems more likely than a her) commute by writing little messages of this sort and then sticking them on the inside walls of railway carriages.

And while there were still no aeroplanes on the way home, at either Vauxhall, Earlsfield or Wimbledon, we did ride in a ten coach train from Vauxhall to Wimbledon and we may well have ridden in one from Wimbledon to Epsom. They do exist.

Reference 1: http://www.pregardien.com/en.

Reference 2: http://www.michaelgees.de/.

Collectors' item

I think that I acquired the book illustrated for 50p at a recent Hook Road car booter, a book which turned out to be interesting in various ways.

First, it was a heavy book, in the way of that at reference 1. The same thick white paper and the same profusion of illustrations, although in this case they were all black and white, perhaps reflecting their mostly dating from the first half of the last century.

Second, it was a first edition, limited to 1,000 copies.

Third, it was an Egyptian book, a book which was printed in Egypt (at least they print their own picture books. So many of ours seem to come from the Far East) and which was sold by the Diwan Bookstore for L.E. 250. Probably the Cairo establishment of reference 2. And I guessed rightly that LE's are Egyptian Pounds. The name being a relic of the days when we looked after Egypt to make sure that they looked after the Suez Canal in our interest?  In any event, at around around 8.5 of our pence for their pound, an expensive book, limited or not. Furthermore, the only Egyptian book in my possession. A pity that I will never know how it came to be in Hook Road. An expatriate doctor from Egypt who used to work one of our mental hospitals?

Fourth, while first impressions were of a vacant royal, mostly interested in her wardrobe and social calendar, there was more to it than that. The Egyptian royals were also, until 1950 or so, the rulers, for much of that period uncomfortably positioned between us and their people. On the one hand they were much like our own royals, probably lunching with them on occasion, on the other they chafed under foreign rule. I notice in passing that it seems that some of our supervising officials were rather unpleasant and overbearing, which may have made the problem of Egyptian rulers siding with Germany during the second war rather worse than it might otherwise have been. With the nocturnal behaviour of our allied troops not being much better.

Be that as it may, the Egyptian king of around 1950 was not much good and was swept away by the army, in the form of Nasser, who for a while seemed to represent a more rosy future for the Arabs than has, in the event, come to pass. With the royals generally going into exile over the following ten years or so, some having managed to get their dosh out and some not. And with the religious gradually pushing the secular leaders of the first revolution aside - rather as they have in a number of our former colonies. See the June 4th number of the NYRB for a review of a book by Michael Walzer about this very subject.

But maybe I should read this book all the way through, before going on to waltz.

PS: Amazon know all about the book, but say that it is presently unavailable. No indication of what they would charge for it if it were.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/phi.html.

Reference 2: https://www.diwanegypt.com/.

New horse

A view of the field attached to what was the house provided for the superintendent of what was West Park Hospital, aka Hollytree Lodge, but not to be confused with reference 1. Now derelict, status unknown.

But the field has been occupied by horses for some time, and to judge by the arrangements illustrated I would guess that the owners travel.

I had not noticed the foal before, which I would judge to be just weeks, if not days, old. Did it come into the world in the field, or did it turn up in a van? Do horses need to be looked after when they are foaling, or are they best left to get on with it?

Reference 1: http://www.hollytreecare.co.uk/.

Action on the Horton Clockwise

First item on the clockwise yesterday was the new horse which will be dealt with on the next post.

The second was an outbreak of red spots on some of the smaller trees in the eastern hedgerow. Possibly the work of an adolescent playing with his new tin of spray paint, but more likely to be the work of a supervising chain saw volunteer, marking down trees for slimming or slaughter. What is it about these people that makes them so keen on chopping things down? Why can't they leave well alone? Should I try to contact the supervising tree warden at reference 1?

The third was a gathering at the roundabout providing access to David Lloyd of maybe 20 white vans, plus a lorry carrying what I took to be three or four  mobile phone masts. I couldn't see the auger truck which one might have thought would have been provided to make the holes into which to drop the poles, but I was amused by the number of vans that seemed to be needed. Alternatively, maybe they like to assemble from all around for their mid morning tea & fags. Safety in numbers in these smoke free days.

The fourth was the continuing absence of aeroplanes on the flight path down into Heathrow, despite the clear view of the reasonably clear sky at several places along the way. There was the odd plane, including one that had probably taken off from Heathrow, and the odd track, but nothing going down. All very odd.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/tree-buffs.html.

The Hospital Map

In the course of a bit of garage clearance yesterday came across this splendid map of most of the Epsom hospital cluster prepared by the developers. More than three feet square and a tribute to the amount of money to be made out of such developments. Couldn't bring myself to throw it away so it now has shelf space in the study.

For once, a pity I did not have a proper camera which could have produced a decent image, something one could really zoom into and inspect.

The rest of the papers, about half a barrow full, were buried in the informal compost heap behind the copper beech screen. This avoided both sorting out the stuff which ought to be shredded and overloading our domestic grade shredder.

Scraping the top layer off a patch of the heap revealed loose brown soil, plenty of humus with a scattering of lumps of bush and tree in the course of rotting down. Very dry and no worms, in fact no visible livestock at all, although I dare say a low power microscope would have revealed all kinds of monsters. Under that, a very clear transition to the clay underneath, very flat and very hard. I did not even try to dig down into that, contenting myself with dumping the paper on top of the clay and pulling the brown stuff back on top. At a guess the paper will be more or less rotted into the surrounding soil in about two years' time.

PL4

The peonies, which we caught on just the right day. Very handsome, but taking up far too much space to copy in a suburban garden, particularly since you only get the flowers for a few days in any one year.

PL3

The chain saw art.