Bayes 1

Having started off professional life under the guidance of someone who was not very keen on Bayes, a guide who would now be regarded as a-dyed-in the-wool frequentist, I find I am stumbling across the chap quite often, so I thought I ought to pay my respects to his mortal remains at Bunhill Fields.

Off to a good start with a Bullingdon from the first position on the first stand on the ramp at Waterloo. The pole position as it were, despite the stand being called, in TFL speak, Waterloo Station 3. Alighted at Bunhill Row after a reasonably uneventful journey, apart from two encounters with very large, blue, mobile cranes from France, the property of Sarens. I say French as some of the signage on the cranes was in French and they had French plates. Why do we have to import our crane hires from France? Does the answer lie in the huge range which appears when you ask to see the load tables? How do you get the things through the tunnel? And why were there two of them or was it just the one, following me about?

Onto the cemetery which I found in transition to a nature preserve, with access to the Bayes Monument denied. See illustration above. What about pious family members who take regular visits a little more regularly than I do? But I was able to peek over another part of the fence to see what I took to be the Bayes Monument, where he appeared to be mixed up with a lot of Cottons. Maybe if I read the biography offered at reference 2, rather than skimming it, I would learn whether these Cottons are anything to do with the one who collected manuscripts such as the Lindisfarne Gospels.

Plenty of pigeons and squirrels running about. Was their lot being improved by the denial of access? What was denial going to do to the trade in food scraps derived from the lunch boxes of salarymen?

From Bayes to a rare visit to Moorgate tube station from where I had myself taken to Tooting Broadway for a visit to the Wetherspoons Library there, quite well stocked on this occasion. I thought about a memoir by on James Pope-Hennessy, but decided against on the grounds that we had quite enough of memoirs of the same sort from Osbert Sitwell. See, for example, reference 3. I then moved onto, and eventually carried off a relic from the depths of psychoanalysis, to wit, the annual survey of psychoanalysis, volume 1, 1950. With the legend saying 'International Universities Press, Inc' being stuck over with a sticker from George Allen & Unwin Ltd, presumably the UK agents. Perhaps some quirk of the then extant copyright laws. Containing the bookplate, a decent but elementary line drawing, probably cut in lino, for Pearl King, a prominent analyst of the time, a mediating figure from the end of the Freud-Klein wars of the war years. See reference 4. Altogether a fitting addition to my shrink library.

She only died in January of this year, not leaving much time for her library, no doubt extensive, to filter down to Tooting, so perhaps most of it had been sold off before then. It also shows that the Wetherspoons buyers are still busy.

Back through Earlsfield, where there was a fair bit of low, heavy cloud, but quite a few aeroplanes. A good spread of flight paths and some considerable variation in height, with one aeroplane being surprisingly low for this part of  London. I managed one two.

One fancy bike on the train, with caliper brakes, which I am told are back in fashion again, that for cantilevers having passed over. Oddly, the owner was wearing regular trainers despite the pedals on his cycle being intended for the sort of cycling shoes which have a metal fitting nailed onto the bottoms of their soles.

PS: wikipedia tells me that some agitate to have the Lindisfarne Gospels moved to the north on the grounds that that is where they were made. This, it seems to me, shows scant disregard for the property rights on which our national wealth was built. In a nutshell, no property rights, no enterprise. Cotton bought the Gospels fair and square and they are the inalienable property of his heirs, that is to say the British Library at Kings Cross. The northerners have no case, any more than the Greeks do over marbles. Such return might be a matter for ex gratia courtesy, but certainly not for legal coercion.

Reference 1: http://www.sarens.com/en.aspx.

Reference 2: http://www.york.ac.uk/depts/maths/histstat/bayesbiog.pdf.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/osbert.html.

Reference 4: http://www.bpc.org.uk/news/pearl-king.