Steam toy

Last week, after the second helping of HenyVI, we were strolling along Kingston's Riverside Walk when we spotted and snapped, on the other side of the river, what looked like the once elegant, now shabby, steam launch 'Enchantress'. More or less opposite the Comptoir Libanais. The sort of thing that would be rather splendid on Lake Windemere or Loch Lomond.

My snap no good, so I offer this one from the steamboat register, from which I learn that the boat was built electric. The full details given being: 'Built as electric launch for River Thames, converted motor 1910, sold to Henry Miller, Oulton Broad as a trip boat, renamed VISCOUNTESS BURY, 1923 to Leo Robinson, Oulton Board, renamed ENCHANTRESS after complaints by owner of the 1888 VISCOUNTESS BURY. Holiday cruiser on Broads to 1962, 1971 sold as wreck to Frank Bell, Cambridge. Acquired 1978 by Ian Ford restoration completed and steam plant fitted 1990, first steamed summer 1990. Acquired October 1999. Engine formerly in ANTHRACITE 1973-6 and VICEROY for short period'. A chequered history. And a fake.

Wikipedia says that at the time this launch was built, electric with (car) batteries was more common than steam and internal combustion together for this class of boat.

Must have been handsome in its varnished hey-day, but I guess the maintenance is heavy. Not to mention mooring. Too much if all one wants is a boat for family cruising. And maybe too old and too small for the modern tripping market.

More toys

Heathrow airport saw fit to remind me this morning that the Avro Vulcan No. XH588 made what will almost certainly be its last flight, perhaps the last flight ever of one of these aeroplanes, a couple of days ago.

Not really a toy at all as according to wikipedia (from where I have taken the illustration), the Vulcan was the backbone of our nuclear deterrent during much of the cold war, say from 1955 to 1975, and surviving in other roles for ten years after that. And then there was the starring role in the first 'Thunderball' film. Interestingly, unlike the heavily armed Lancaster which preceded it, the Vulcan carried no defensive weapons, relying instead on speed and height.

While I am no fan of nuclear deterrents, a reminder in the presently troubled times, that there was a time when we could design and build serious aeroplanes all by ourselves. Whereas I understand now that we would have trouble knocking out serious quantities of explosives, never mind a flying machine to carry them about in. Hopefully we can contribute in other ways.

For previous thoughts on the subject, see reference 1.

Not quite the same as drifting from left to right as one gets older, more a case of getting more security conscious as one gets older. Spending far more time thinking about various catastrophic possibilities than one did when young, fit & strong.

PS: I was interested to see that there is an intermediate state between scrap and airworthiness called taxiable. It seems that there are enough plane spotters in the world to keep examples of various famous aeroplanes in it - and I can see something of the point. The Vulcan does look a lot bigger & impressive on the move, on the ground, that it does when parked up. At least it does on YouTube.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/brainstorm.html.

Toys for the boys

The boys in question being the ones who have taken over the Kingsway chunk of the operations of what used to be a proud public service, that is to say, London Buses. Noticed in the last post.

I suppose it is yet another case of the IT boys being so pleased with themselves and with the strokes that they can now pull, that they managed to persuade their bosses of the merits of the display. An offence of which I have to say that I was guilty, from time to time at least, during my days in the world of work.

Conway Hall

Having been pleased by the New Scientist effort noticed at reference 1, thought to try one of their lectures, charged at approximately the same hourly rate, but held in the comparatively dowdy Conway Hall, first seen for the very hopeful, but ultimately unfulfilled meeting of  'Dignity in Dying' noticed at reference 2.

So out at Waterloo and scratched around for a bus to Holborn. Do a walk pass of Red Lion Square for orientation, then head north for refreshment. I stop on the way to buy a sandwich from a convenience store on Southampton Row, just by the exit from Cosmo Place (which, oddly, has not been the subject of google's streetview camera's attentions. Not a proper road I suppose).  A large and reasonably priced roll, one of those more or less tasteless sausage shaped rolls you get from freezers, full of a tasty but strange confection described as cheese and spring onion but which I might have described as chopped egg on a blind trial. Whatever it was, the result, 24 hours later, was a sev.3 gastric disturbance. That, however, was in the future, and oblivious we headed into the Swan, a quiet old fashioned boozer, which did, bending to the winds of time, sell food but which, at this time of day, was given over to booze. Tired but pleasant barmaid, then not half way through her six hour shift.

Suitably refreshed, back to the full Conway Hall, to seats in the rear gallery. Hard seats, but there were even harder seats at the very back, just behind us. A rather bigger hall from this position than it had seemed on the previous occasion, from the nave. A rather mixed audience, by no means all pensioners.

The subject matter was the rather improbable feat of landing a space craft on a comet, a rather odd shaped lump of soft rock (illustrated). 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko, maybe three miles long by two miles wide.

To entertain us we had the master of ceremonies from the New Scientist, a large chap of what I call faux-jovial manner, possibly the same chap who did the conference. Academic 1, who saw fit to appear in short sleeves and shorts, possibly to show off his extensive collection of tattoos. (I learned afterwards that he is a veteran of television shows, during which he is prone to boast about his bricklaying father). Academic 2, a large lady. Both academics thought it necessary to intersperse their talks with lots of rather silly asides. One of them observed that he had given the same talk to dozens of audiences, of all shapes and sizes, and the net result was that one learned little about the landing, rather less than one might have learned by reading the wikipedia entry. Rather cross, we left during the rather desultory questions. But I don't blame them for that, live questions at such an event are always going to be difficult. Perhaps the New Scientist got it right at the conference by taking questions in writing and sorting out something usable behind the scenes, although I had not been very pleased about that at the time. And not a wheeze which is going to work in the context of a one hour rather than a one day show.

Took a bus back to the 'Hole in the Wall' at Waterloo to take something to put us back together again. A bus which came with at least ten camera positions for its CCTV cameras and which had sensors in the upstairs seats so that a display downstairs could tell you where the vacant seats, if any, were. I think the real point of the display was to remind you, without making a parade of it, that the bus was fully tooled up and that any misbehaviour was going to be recorded on camera, ten positions of which were revealed by the display when it was not telling you about the upstairs seats.

Hole in the Wall, very much its old self, with the front bar quiet, but not empty, and comfortable.

But it did not quite do the trick, as I found it necessary on the way home to bang on about how awful it was that we had to do business with the Saudis and their friends in the Gulf. Roll on the day when we had got fusion to work and could manage without them. See reference 4.

PS 1: I wondered afterwards whether the lady was a fair sample of an OU scientist, thinking of their recent announcement of the closure of most of their regional centres. Will they survive the advent of the high quality, online stuff being put out by the likes of MIT? See reference 3.

PS 2: wikipedia tells me the the 'Queen's Larder' of Cosmo Place, which we did not try on this occasion, was named for the stash of grub kept there by the wife of George III when the latter was being treated nearby. But I do remember using the place many years ago, when it used to be full of medicos in the evening and when I used to work nearby.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/new-scientist.html.

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

Reference 3: http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/big-doughnuts.html.

Odds and ends

Following the 'Wars of the Roses' at the Rose, and the rather unsatisfactory way in which Richard III's appointment as monarch was depicted there, I thought I would look up his coronation in Strong's book of coronations.

It seems that we have the needlework account, so we know that £3,124, twelve shillings and three farthings was spent on liveries - essentially fancy dress for the participants - and banners. A great deal of money at that time. The needlemen and women of London must have made a very good thing out of all the dynastic turmoil, rather as those of Paris did out of the Napoleonic penchant for the same sort of thing, slightly updated. From which we may deduce that the coronation was actually quite a performance. A performance which went all the better for the preparations which had been made beforehand, but not carried through to performance for Edward V, who went on instead to become one the missing princes in the tower.

We also know that Richard added lustre to his coronation by the creation of 17 knights of the bath, which creation, in those days, really did involve a bath, this being attested by the nearly contemporary book of the garter written by one Writhe. Out of stock at Amazon, but Abebooks can do you one for $700 or so. Some kind of a reprint.

From there I went on to read that the Poles, having exported a couple of million of their younger citizens to the UK and other destinations in western Europe in recent years, are getting cross that people like M&S and BHS are springing up in their High Streets, springing up in places where there should be good Polish shops. Also that they are getting even crosser at the idea that they should take in a few Syrian refugees, this despite the facts that their population density is less than half that of the UK (according to the Economist 2014 pocket book of such facts) and that what must be their rapidly ageing population could do with some youngsters to staff up their care homes. One wonders whether the remaining Jews there are any more accommodating on this point, more ready to take in some fellow Semites, than their Catholic compatriots. Perhaps they just keep their heads down.

Inflation

I have been reading Paul Donovan on inflation, in a short book in which he tells us the truth about inflation, a phenomenon which he claims has been badly misrepresented in the past and on which he is going to put the record straight.

Having been moved by him to two posts already (reference 1 and reference 2), time to wrap the man up.

Donovan, a PPE man from Oxford, is an economist with UBS, so not that far removed from the economists whom I used to service at the Treasury. He is also a senior member of St Anne’s College, one of the more modern elements of Oxford University, one which was only invented in 1879 and I am not sure that Chief Insepector Morse would be seen taking tea there. Donovan's present duties include being wheeled out to give talks to important clients, something which I understand he is very good at. I suspect that the present book ('The truth about inflation', Routledge, 2015) is a lightly edited version of some of those talks. A down side of this is the rather chatty style, well larded with witty asides about economists, which I found rather irritating. As a way to liven up the after lunch slot of a one day seminar fine, irritating on the printed page. Also rather irritating was the way in which he claimed to be expounding a complicated topic without using any long words, inflation for dummies as it were, the dummies books being yet another of my pet hates. They might be fine books - although I dare say that quality has suffered with quantity - but the packaging annoys me: I am not a dummie yet and I do not like to be talked to as if I were. But he rather smooths things over with the quote illustrated above, used to head up the last chapter.

Further smoothing in that he devotes quite a lot of space to explain that the statisticians are doing the best they can to produce simple measures of a complicated business. Smoothing in that I used to be acquainted with several such statisticians, in the course of my time with the Department of Employment, such departments being traditionally in charge of inflation, then seen as a scourge of the labouring rather than of the rentier class.

He also managed to claim that the Duc de Saint-Simon had views on central banks back in 1716. The things you get to learn when you do PPE. I am excused from checking the reference as neither of my editions of the great man's memoirs make it as far as 1716.

But putting all this aside, there is plenty of good stuff here for the saloon bar economist to feed on.

So, for example, he demonstrates beyond all reasonable doubt that putting all your dosh into gold is not a good plan.

He demonstrates that governments cannot inflate their way out of debt by printing money. A demonstration which caught my eye as, not having much thought about it, I had thought that they could. One of the reasons why not being that most government debt is short term, and the cost of rolling that debt over will rise with inflation, quite possibly by more than inflation as bond buyers will add something in for increased risk.

He explains why printing money does not necessarily feed through into inflation. I think he mentions the Jenkins of the Guardian panacea of printing money and handing it out to the labouring class to be spent, rather than to be hidden away in the balance sheets of banks, but I forget what his verdict was already. Time for a second read.

Various excursions into ancient history. Mildly entertaining first time around, but they pall with repetition.

I got lost in his discussion of the labour cost content of inflation. Perhaps he was paying the dummies price for going very easy on graphs and equations.

I did not find anything about why a certain amount of inflation - say around 2% - is now thought to be a good thing. I shall continue with my guess that it provides a relatively pain free path for the ever ongoing adjustment of relative prices.

By the end, I was not sure why the average investor would need to know so much about inflation. But it was all presented in a reasonably accessible way and I dare say it was as good an introduction to the subject for the layman as you are going to get. A good antidote for a lot of the stuff which appears in other media.

PS: attempting to check the Coleridge quote, the best that google could do was to refer me to this very book. But I did learn that Coleridge was born in Ottery St. Mary, a village I know slightly as having a very fine church and a very fine off license. Or at least it did on our last visit - although. a quick check at the other place suggests that I was disappointed by the stained glass. November 2009.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/on-price.html.

Reference 2: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/on-account.html.

The end

Having bogoffed all three parts of the 'Wars of the Roses' at the Rose some time ago and having seen the first two of the three parts, I decided that I wanted more. By that time there was not all that much left, but I was able to get a seat in the circle for part 1, 1100 on Saturday morning past.

The Rose, being a modern theatre, albeit something of a replica, it turned out that being a bit off-centre in the dress circle, rather than in a centre front stall, was fine. I even had the sense that the actors were talking more to the circle than they were to the stalls. In any event, they came across better than they had previously; perhaps they had got themselves all cranked up for the Saturday three parter and were well on top of their game for part one, first thing in the morning. Certainly more power than they had bothered to whack out for the Thursday matinée of the first part one. Or is it all in the ear of the hearer, rather than in the mouths of the actors?

Being a little early, started the proceedings by inspecting the fish at the bridge over the Hogsmill. Present, but not in great numbers. They may have not cared for all the noise being generated by Thames Water with work on top of the bridge.

Continued by inspecting the audience, some of whom were carrying the picnic bags which suggested three part marathons. Rather younger and rather more serious looking than that at the aforementioned matinée, tendencies towards a Wigmore audience from a starting point of WI. Or Probus, the gang which many an old gentlemen has claimed to be far too young to join. See reference 4. Having tired of them, I drifted onto the décor which included what appeared to be an early twentieth century fireplace screwed to the wall of this early twenty first century building and a couple of bays done out in all-bar-one style, that is to say with well spaced shelves tastefully stocked with bottles, crockery and bric-à-brac, the sort of thing that graces the better class of charity shop. Or a dealer stall at a Hook Road car-booter.

Richard III, having fluffed the ambling wanton line (see reference 3), did rather well as a foppish Alençon. Playing that much closer to his base character clearly suited.

Suffolk much better this time around (see reference 1). As was Margaret. As was Henry himself. He kept up the irritating, childish mannerisms, but he did work up some real power when (contrariwise) his weakness led him to concur with the disgrace of Gloucester. He was a failed force, but a force nonetheless, for good among the ebbs, flows and swirls of evil all around him. Or, perhaps more prosaically, a world in which all his nobles cared about was the power and the glory. And the fight. Perhaps also for their lineages and the money needed to keep them up and running. An age before the nation as we know it had come to pass. An age of nations, which might have done away with over mighty subjects, but which brought plenty of problems of its own. Look no further than eastern Europe or the Balkans.

I read this morning that Henry was around 40, a noted founder of educational institutions, at the time most of the play was set, so was certainly no child. But this was also the time of his mental breakdown, so what should that give us? Do people regress to childhood when they break down? It sounds reasonable enough, but it is a matter of which I have neither knowledge nor experience. And not something that I think FIL would have been very good on, despite his knowledge etc, derived from near half his life having been spent in the trade. Would the bard have known better, have been able to intuit better?

I noticed a small number of slight changes in the staging, in the positions of actors and actresses, from first time around. I had thought they all worked to exact spots, marked off on the floor in chalk, but who knows; it might just as well be faulty memory. I also noticed a lot of references to liming for birds, presumably a common practice at the end of the sixteenth century - one which I don't suppose the animal rights people would much approve of these days. I must ask google if someone has counted all the references up.

By the end, I was very pleased to have gone for a second helping.

Having been collected, we thought to do the gourmet beefburger place nearby, but were put off by the noise and the crowd, so tried the Persian restaurant next to Stein's instead. The Narenj, alleged to be Persian for a certain sort of orange, and quite like the word for orange in the Canaries. All Aryans together I suppose. Staff all very pleasant, quite possibly real Persians, at least they reminded me of the Persians at LSE in my undergraduate days. Food generally good, although I made a mistake with the main course, attracted by the mention of lentils in the menu, but unimpressed by the amount of tomato purée and something called a dried lime in the dish itself. Persian salt was claimed to be a sovereign remedy against cancer, a factlet which does not seem to be sustained by a very light skim of reference 5. Persian tea came in little glasses and went down rather well.

Out to continue the bogoff theme at TK Maxx where we were able to buy a very decent dressing gown - perhaps there called leisure wear - at a what seemed to be a very knock down price. The only catch was an irritating white logo (Ralph Lauren) very firmly sewn onto the front of the thing. The patch which would be left after removal would probably look worse than the thing itself so I will just have to get used to it. My jacket from Dax has the same fault, albeit on a smaller scale, despite my having paid the full price.

Closed the visit to Kington with a visit to the rather foodified market, in particular to the cheese stall noticed at reference 6. From which arose some confusion about the three ages of Comté. The young lady on this stall was very firm that the Comté on her stall, which looked and tasted very like the young Comté on his stall, was actually the middle aged Comté. I settled for a chunk of her middle aged, but on closer acquaintance I now think that it is older and drier than his stuff had been, despite being from the same manufacturer in France. So old remains bad in my table of Comté. And one more confusion to be worked through.

PS: on the way to bogoff, on the waterfront, there was a small boy, perhaps two years old, very excited about discovering how exciting the world was. Swans, puddles, fag-ends, the whole lot. Very engaging but, I imagine, hard work.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/part-one-of-three.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/part-two-of-three.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/part-three-of-three.html.

Reference 4: http://www.probusworld.com/.

Reference 5: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4581363/.

Reference 6: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/tea-ceremony-1.html.

For the record again

Trainers on the blink again, after just about six months, almost to the day (see reference 1). On this occasion, the sponge making up the inside of the right heel was the point of collapse (black in the illustration left), the soles of both heels were quite worn and the front right netting was developing a hole. Plus, the trainers had become a bit feeble, they did not seem to be offering much foot support. After four or five pairs of this popular trainer (Moab Ventilator), was it time to raise my game?

And there the matter rested until I passed the Epsom Millets, where there appeared to be some sort of a sale on. Were they, once again, on the brink of closing down? However, despite the modest appearance of their boot and shoe section, right at the back of the shop, they could manage at least two different sorts of Merrells in my size, the Moabs and something else, a something else which was more boot like than shoe like. Maybe offering more support. With another important difference being that the covering of the inside of the heel looked to be some kind of fabric, rather than some kind of sponge. Maybe that and the slightly different shape would prolong its life beyond six months. Yet another important difference was a label claiming massive discount and that I could have these boots for only very slightly more than I paid Cotswold for the shoes, that is to say £85.

The young man assisting me was slightly bemused to be presented with a pair of old shoes, less laces but still warm. The laces, in memory of FIL and his customs, will be recycled. I still have his bag for this very purpose.

Hopefully, I will now be able to climb like an animal, like it says on their site (see above). The things the marketing chaps think up for us to buy into.

BH not too happy about my universal footwear now being boots rather than shoes, but I don't think the average person, certainly not the average male, would notice unless one was wearing shorts, a practice I parted company from more the fifty years ago.

Oddly, when I go to the Merrells site to see how much I had actually saved, these particular boots, despite there being between 50 and 100 different sorts on offer, did not seem to exist. (Counting having been confused by my being confused about whether boots and shoes and were mutually exclusive categories on the Merrells web site - and I was certainly not into that kind of checking). Were Millets into fakes from somewhere in the Far East, other, that is, than the shoetown in China where the real things were assembled? That apart, it does seem very wasteful to have so many variations on sale, most of which must be very slight variations and the only good reason I can think of is that it gives urban males of a certain age and orientation something to talk about on street corners. All that energy which is not going in gainful employment needs to find an outlet somewhere.

I associate to the equally wasteful number of brands, shapes and sizes of bottled water.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/for-record.html.

Part three of three

That is to say Richard III at the Rose at Kingston. Once again a full house and a good show, but I did have complaints.

I did not care for what struck me as a rather squeaky, childish and foppish take on Richard III, whom I had thought to be something of a seasoned veteran by the time of the action of the play - although checking this afternoon, I find what while he was indeed a veteran, he was only 32 at the time of his death. Perhaps that counted as mature and middle aged at the time. So I stand by my point: Robert Sheehan seemed too young, despite being 27, and failed to bring enough of the proper force, malice and gravitas to the role.

Before the show I had been rather struck by the wonderful line involving a wanton ambling nymph, but, as all too often when one marks something of that sort down, it got lost on the day. Clearly had not struck Sheehan in the same way.

I liked the old Queen Margaret better than the young one, was not so keen on Queen Elizabeth on this second outing, liked the Lady Anne better when she was Joan of Arc while the Duke of Clarence was better on his third outing than on his first two. I found Henry VI reappearing in supporting roles making comments on his own reign slightly distracting; that sort of thing being the proper business of ghosts. Stanley (aka Derby) suitably shifty, but did not quite pull it off for me. Interested to read afterwards that he survived the battle by 20 years, along with quite a number of the others; perhaps Henry Tudor really did bury the hatchet.

At various points there was a rather silly looking executioner's axe. Executioners are supposed to be grim, not silly, and it would have been easy enough to get a proper axe.

Some scenes rather spoilt by inappropriate tittering from the audience. Perhaps modern audiences find in hard to cope with people who really do believe in God, devils and evil spirits. Or think that honour is important. Set piece speeches generally good.

Carping aside, it was in sum a good play, a play which came through its ordeal in good shape.

The lady next to me in a rather flashy red dress admitted to being rather tired by the end, having sat through all three parts in one day. An older chap behind me, also in for all three parts, had set off from Greenwich around 0600 that morning and was still up an running at the interval, say 2100. But he left pretty fast at the end for what must have been his two hour drive home. There was also a chara from Kirby Longsdale, right from the heart of the lands of the red and white roses. I didn't get to find out whether they were driving back through the night but I do remember that we once did two plays in one day at Stratford, busing it back to London afterwards - and, as I recall, I was not that keen at the time, let alone now. Whereas, as things stand, with the Rose just twenty minutes up the road from Epsom, one a week worked well. Well done the Rose!

No refreshment at the Ram on this occasion, having taken drink at the theatre, but we managed well at the car park as BH had read the small print on the theatre tickets and bothered to collect her discounted car park exit ticket from the desk at the Rose. With the result that we were able to amble past the long queue which had formed at the machine at the bottom.

PS: google offers just one rather tacky image for 'wanton ambling nymph', so I leave the post with the words of the bard, unadorned.

On colonels

Once upon a time there was a famous regiment, the 14th of the line, also known as the Dumbshyre Devils, or the Devils for short. The regiment had a colonel, known as the Colonel.

We leave aside the real life complication of battalions and depots. We suppose the regiment to be a whole, something that lives and breathes more or less as a single entity.

We try here to develop the analogy that the Devils are the body and the Colonel is the soul. The soul being the combination of the free will and consciousness; sometimes thought to be a gift from God and it is certain that you do not get the one without the other. So in this regiment, we have body and soul. An analogy which I am sure has been developed many times before, although I cannot, just presently, put my finger on an example, apart from the inverted version which often crops up in Shakespeare, with the body standing for the kingdom and the head for the king. The proper organisation of the parts into a whole which is pleasing to God. Also a variation on the rather discredited story of the homunculus. Or the deus ex machina.

Quite often other people refer to the regiment as the Colonel. The Colonel does this and the Colonel is going to do that. The Colonel personifies the regiment.

But the Colonel is also human. He does need to sleep, to get his seven hours or so a night. The regiment, however, as a whole, does not sleep. The regiment is up and running 24 by 7. Sometimes important things go down when the Colonel is asleep, before his orderly has been able to wake him up (we have no lady colonels in this world). The Colonel knows nothing of these important things at the time; the Colonel is unconscious and the regiment has not had the benefit of his free will. Life – perhaps in the form of a raid on the next battalion’s drink cupboard – had to go on.

We note in passing that sometimes the Colonel talks in his sleep, but he has left strict instructions that nobody should take any notice of what he then says.

In the morning, he wakes up, and along with his regiment he is hungry. But he can express his hunger in words because he can read and write. He writes out an order to go and raid the next battalion’s food cupboard and gives the order to his adjutant. So this time we have an action which is both conscious and willed.

There are radios in this world and the Colonel is kept informed of the progress of the raid. There is, so as to speak, interoceptic feedback about the remaining supplies of ammunition, proprioceptric feedback about the company which is pinned down in the communications trench and exteroceptric feedback about the five hundred yard advance of the enemy fusiliers, all of which goes to bolster his consciousness and sense of agency. But it is all a bit of a fraud really; the raid has taken on a life of its own, even though he is now awake, and he is rather deluding himself when he thinks that he is in command.

But, to be fair, sometimes he is. Sometimes, when the going gets a bit rough, he gets down there and takes charge in person. He puts the mettle and the fire back into his regiment which, having faltered, gets stuck back in. Perhaps he stands at the back of the firing line, steadying it with his calm and measured commands. On these days, he does earn his oats.

Then there is delegation. He might order the regiment to march, but that marching order has to be translated by others into detailed orders for all the various components of the regiment. Breakfast has to be cooked before the off. Billets have to be prepared for the night to come. Companies have to set off at 15 minute intervals so as not to get in each other’s way or to block the roads and junctions. Military police are needed to look after those junctions. In the same sort of way, I might decide to go for a catch at a cricket match, perhaps giving myself an order, as it were, without attempting to control the detail of the action, the complicated and dynamically modified movement, once I have made the decision.

Sometimes the order will be countermanded. Perhaps with the lead companies only being pulled back in the nick of time.

Sometimes the Colonel will issue an order, but there is not all that much free will about it. The regiment is about to mutiny and he needs to get the rum into the mess tins before it does. Or there might be orders from on high. Sometimes the free will of the Colonel is superseded by the free will of the General. The analogy can take this alright.

Sometimes something will go wrong. Maybe the captain who looks after the 4th company is no good and has to be replaced. The analogy, perhaps, of some kind of transplant. Or a sergeant of the 7th company is too rough on his men and needs to be sent on a training course. The analogy, perhaps, of going to the physiotherapist about a bad ankle. Getting lost in smoke and mirrors, perhaps the Colonel himself needs a spot of psychoanalysis. But the analogy breaks down when the Colonel is posted after his three year tour, in that we cannot, as yet anyway, transplant brains.

From all of which we can deduce that consciousness and free will, like regiments, are complicated things.

PS 1: with apologies to the family of Lieutenant Colonel John Cameron.

PS 2: I remember now, Monday morning. This post is pretty much the same as reference 1; an armed service version of that civil service one. Which is OK, but I would have felt much better about it had I remembered the first while posting the second. Perhaps we are getting to the point where I need a personal assistant or an editor to keep me on the straight and narrow.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/an-analogy.html.

Art club 3

The Lord's view. Old Chapel lower right.

Art club 2

The quad.

Art club 1

Back to Leatherhead last week to take in the annual exhibition of the Leatherhead Art Club, held on this occasion in the old chapel of St. John's School. As much, truth be told, an opportunity to take a peek at the school as a peek at the art.

School mainly late nineteenth century, institutional red brick, as can be seen in the snap left. The old chapel, from much the same, out front and now linked to the main building by a handsome linking pavilion. A pavilion containing offices such as cloakrooms, which made it possible to use what had been the chapel for concerts and art exhibitions. A handsome chapel inside, unfrocked, with a quite decent looking Yamaha grand where the altar used to be. Substantial roof timbers left exposed and brown.

Art rather mixed, as one would expect, some quite good and some sold. We wondered about the etiquette of buying and selling in such a show. Did some members sink so low as to buying their own work through a proxy so as to earn one of the coveted red spots? The art exhibition episode of Mapp & Lucia comes to mind.

The school, as can be seen in the aerial scene to follow, was loosely modeled on an Oxbridge college. Main entrance and old chapel around a small courtyard opening out onto the Epsom Road (bottom right). Main buildings, including new chapel and (separate, much larger) hall around a large quadrangle out back. Probably a house for the headmaster - or whatever they call the headmaster of such a place. Sundry newer buildings scattered about the site and playing fields out back. A school which started out in north London as a home for the children of poor clergy who could be trained up to be the choir of what must have been a rich & fashionable church in St. John's Wood. A school which had moved to Leatherhead and become a full blown private school by, say, the 1930's. Perhaps as a relatively new school, more like the Leys of my home town, rather than the Perse. It certainly shares red brick with the Leys.

In round numbers, £7,500 a term for day pupils, £10,000 a term for boarders. And like all the best care homes, plenty of extras. Although, if you can take the shame, you can claim a small discount if your child is ill. All of which would have been a fairly crippling expense for the likes of us, even supposing that I approved of such places. There is also the question of who stumped up what must have been a lot cash to build the place in the first place, say in the closing years of the nineteenth century? Was it a filthy rich capitalist who, having made a lot of dosh on the back of workers, out of their taste for strong drink or both, wanted to put a bit back? Wanted to do a bit of philanthropy? Not that it would do said workers much good. Or was it a speculative builder with a job lot of red bricks to find a home for?

Then this morning I get to ponder on how art clubs work. Does one do art at their meetings? Do you take it in turns to give talks about your craft? Or bring in outsiders to do same? Do they do trips to studios? Is their a strong hierarchy built, at least in large part, on artistic merit rather than seniority? Are they just an excuse for dating & mating of like minded souls?

I imagine that many clubs, although perhaps not art clubs, were, in some large part, a place where working men could both get away from the cramped confines of their family life and ape their betters. To have officers, committees, constitutions, minutes and points of order. Posh people keen on, say, their leeks, were not excluded, but they had to know their place. Here they were rank and file. Similar in that way to the nonconformist chapels which sprang up all over the place in the nineteenth century, places where working people could get away from the nobs and squires.

I associate to the masons, a club which, along with some rather odd features, had admirable charitable aims and admirably democratic practices. The electrician really can rub shoulders with the general, to the improvement of all. Although that said, it may well be that those claiming royal blood are excused clambering through the ranks in the ordinary way, with their entry level being Grand Sword Bearer or above.

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

Tea ceremony 3

Not Auerbach's EOW, but something of the same sort.

The EOW paint had cracked a little, hardly surprising given the thickness in which it had been applied, but this was not visible if one stayed at around 18 inches out, the best distance for me.

Rather surprised at myself for liking it, there being no content of a regular sort, despite it being someone's head. But I think there may be some connection with the interest in pictures of complicated folds in cloth noticed elsewhere.

Tea ceremony 2

A rather silly bit of furniture - pub dressing might be a better word - in the 'Half Way House'. A sort of take on a Welsh Dresser, complete with fish life. Silly, but it did not seem to matter in this context. Amusing and certainly no worse than all the other junk used to dress pubs these days.

PS: note to animal lovers. The fish were not real.

Tea ceremony 1

With usage in this third year falling off, I felt the need to exercise my Tate membership card, so off to Millbank to see the Auerbach.

Just missed a proper train to Waterloo to went second best on a Southern train to Clapham Junction, not without noticing that Southern provide 13-amp sockets for the convenience of laptop users, unlike Southwest Trains. Their trains also have things like first class compartments and toilets, so perhaps Southern have just the one carriage for all their routes, unlike Southwest Trains which differentiate commuter from main line services.

Fine view of pylons over Mitcham Common, rather better than that noticed, if badly illustrated, at reference 3.

Not as many Bullingdons at Grant Road as there used to be, so maybe trade there is building up. The gears on the one I pulled, as often seems to happen these days, could have used a bit of adjustment - but at least they were not slipping. For a change took the Nine Elms Lane route into London, with the idea of seeing some of the many building sites between Battersea power station and Vauxhall tube station. But this did not work out and I saw more or less no building action, which is odd as gmaps says that I should have. Maybe it was big advertising hoardings hiding the all action from the passing cyclist.

Onto the Auerbach, which I found both interesting and patchy. On the whole I did not like the paintings of heads, while I did like a lot of the town/landscapes, particularly those in the middle of this exhibition. The man's idiom seemed to be to make up these pictures with lots of broad, well laden brush strokes, maybe 2 inches long and 1 centimetre wide, sometimes achieving a quite magical effect. For example Primrose Hill, 1978. This afternoon anyway, 'auerbach primrose hill 1978' gets it to the top of the google image list - but sadly it does not reproduce very well. Magic gone.

I was also rather taken by what might be called a low relief in paint, described as EOW reclining head 2, 1966. Google declines to provide an image for this one, but see the post to come to get the idea.

A lot of the pictures were a bit picky about from how far away you looked at them, with some of them look surprisingly different at different distances. And some of theme did not seem to work unless you were at the right distance.

I wondered what bit of the brain pictures of this sort are talking to, given that their connection with the real world is tenuous. One is not buying 'Primose Hill' to be told, or even reminded, what the hill looks like. Perhaps they talk to parts of the brain which are only interested in colours, edges and angles, without much regard to what these bits might add up to, somewhere on the complicated road between what arrives at the retina and what is projected onto the mind's eye.

Off to the members caff for lunch, where I had a cake, a sort of Nordic open sandwich featuring a topping of white crab meat (complete with a few bits of shell to test the unwary filling), and tea. The tea served in a sort of specialised glass jug, illustrated. Perhaps it doubles as something to serve coffee in, but in any event the tea was OK, if rather dingy in colour. A word of warning: it is easy to spill milk from this sort of milk container, although I got the knack by the end of the proceedings. And a word to the people who use music to cover conversations in public places like public houses and hotel lounges: the bird song recordings (at least that is what they sounded like. Perhaps they were a work of art) used by the Tate made a welcome change from musak. All in all, a decent lunch at quite a reasonable price, that is to say not much more than a tenner.

Back for a second helping of Auerbach, but found that I was not longer in the mood. Perhaps the brain's blood supply had been hijacked by the stomach while it processed the crab. One of the joys of getting older. Have to go back on another day.

Pulled second Bullingdon to take me to London Bridge, via St. George's Circus, where it struck me that it would more properly be called King George's Circus. Quite wrongly, as this afternoon wikipedia tells me it was named for the St. George's Fields there at the time it was first erected, nothing to do with the reigning King George at all.

Cox's apples from a stall called Chegworth Valley (reference 1). Nice enough looking apples and they came in a splendid brown paper bag, sturdy like those you used to get in the US, but the apples were OK rather than good. A few days past their best, probably the result of their having been picked for the weekend trade but sold to me on a Monday

The stall from which I usually buy cheese was missing, so I was reduced to buying my Comté from a chap who was probably French. He sold the cheese in three ages, with samples. I much preferred the youngest, finding the older cheeses a bit strong. I am the same with Emmenthal, not liking the expensively matured ones. I was a bit suspicious about how long the piece of Comté that I bought had been cut, but my fears were misplaced and the cheese turned out to be fine. So maybe I will try to make it to the much nearer Kingston Market, where the wrapper said that they had another stall. Probably the people I turned my nose up at at reference 2.

On to Tooting for a further snack at the Delta Café, a place handily near the Wetherspoons and said by Trip Advisor or some such to be awash with the genuine flavour of the genuine Tooting. I selected what I thought was an interestingly spiral raisin pastry and persisted when I found out that what I had thought were raisins was actually spinach, with the slice of tart being sold warm. Rather good it was too.

On to test Siri on films by asking her how many film versions of 'Brighton Rock' had been made. She clearly didn't understand the question, although she did come up with stuff about the various films. I tried Cortana on the way home and she did rather better, coming back with just three hits, two for the two films and one for a review of one of them, having been confused by the date of the review being the year after the release of the film. An honourable mistake, so a win to Cortana.

I also learned that the Vatican City was the last place on earth to move its age of consent up from a medieval 13 to the 16 which is more usual now. Second last was Alabama or somewhere like that. I was amused, so I recycle this fact without checking it.

A final stop in the 'Halfway House', one of a number of Young's establishments in south London made over for the benefit of young city workers. This one was quiet enough at around 1800, a good place for a quiet beverage. I pondered on the demise of the quiet boozer, of the sort that used to be common when I was young. On the market forces which mean that the owners of quiet boozers want more from their investment than the profit that can be extracted from a few old soaks. Which is understandable, but a loss from the point of view of those of us who have fond memories of such places. Smoke filled, naturally.

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

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/zanussi-or-bust.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/rural-pylons-1.html.

Fungus

The fungus season continues with this fine specimen snapped down Horton Lane, in the course of a Clockwise. Maybe 9 inches across.

See reference 1 for the last such noticed.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/goose.html.

Flexa side wheel push mower

Bing came up with much the same web sites for this search term as google, but it clearly had a different approach to pictures. But it did, among the huge number of pictures of motor mowers it turned up, manage to include two pictures of mowers quite like the flexa I used to knew, despite the absence of wood and the presence of tubular steel - and one of which is included here.

Whereas the one turned up by google was at the top of its image list, and while a rather poor picture of a machine in rather poor condition, may have actually been the real thing. So google wins on points.

PS: note the sprung steel cutters, quite unlike those of modern rotary mowers.

Flat pack

Today saw the completion of a purchase and assembly of a lawn mower from Argos.

BH was clear about which lawn mower she wanted, so no bother in that department. Off to the Argos website, keyed in the product number from an advertisement and up it pops. The good news is that rather than fiddle about with collecting the mower from Epsom town centre or with their delivering it, we can have it sent to Homebase on the Ewell by-pass, where we can park our car and from where we can collect it. Maybe 10 minutes away.

But then I get stuck into the Argos website for real and get myself into a right muddle in the course of creating the account which seem to be needed so that they could sent me junk mail. Or, at least, that is how it seemed. But I managed to reverse out of all of that and opted for the reserve now pay later deal - which meant that if I reserved by 1100 the mower would be at Homebase by 1600.

Having got this far and set their wheels in motion, Argos were quite keen that I turned up and collected the thing - I imagine that like for others providing free services, like for NHS facilities, that no-show is a bit of a problem - and I get a trickle of texts and emails through the day to keep me on my toes. With a text at around 1530 announcing that the mower is ready to be collected.

So we go, braving the end of school traffic and dropping off the old mower at the tip - having failed, for want of the proper screwdriver, to take it into useful pieces with which to clutter up the garage. To discover that a branch of Argos has opened up inside Homebase. Sorry madam, that item appears to be out of stock. After some seconds it occurs to me that maybe he wants the reservation number that came with the text, at which point the item is back in stock again. Back in the car 10 minutes later, with sturdily boxed mower, sundry coupons, vouchers and nectar points.

That was all quite enough for one day, so assembling the mower was this afternoon's project. A mower which despite saying made by Bosch on the box says made in China on the mower - and we wonder why their steel is cheaper than ours. I took my time, attempted to follow the instructions and the job was done in about half an hour. I say attempted, because even the mighty name of Bosch cannot make the instructions about assembly to agree with the parts supplied. But they did, near enough. I might also say that the whole thing was very plastic and very lightweight. The engine might be sound enough - and that in my Bosch drill looks sound enough when you open it up - and the cable and plug look sound enough. But that is the end of sound, all the rest of it is clever, but very light. Or lite. Not like the favourite mower of my youth - called a Flexa - at all, which was a handsome piece of old style engineering involving lots of steel and a modest amount of wood. From the days when we used to make things in Birmingham and places up-north. Known to collectors - of which there seem to be plenty - as a Flexa side wheel push mower. Google can even offer a picture of one, albeit rather brown and battered.

Notwithstanding, I plugged the thing in hand into our shiny new trip switched outdoor power point and it worked, after just a few permutations of the switches available. Rain stopped play at this point.

Then taking a look at google for an illustration to this post, I find quite a variety of mowers sailing under the one flag. Perhaps they update them every year. But, persisting, I find a decent sized image of the right one (above) which shows conclusively that I have got the handles on upside down. I am also a bit unhappy about the fittings which fix the handles to the body of the mower, which seem a bit feeble for something which, although not very heavy, will take a fair amount of stick. Does this feebleness buy a handle angle adjustment capability, thus accounting for the ergo word in the model name, but which I have yet to fathom out?

I will report further in due course.

PS: the handle fixing fittings on most of the other pictures are quite different and look rather less feeble.

Michelangelo

Last Friday to hear the Michelangelo Quartet at the Wigmore Hall. Not to be confused with the Quartet illustrated who are quite different. My own record is also slightly confused by visits to the Michelangelo restaurant in Ryde (on the Isle of Wight), but the story seems to be that I have heard this Quartet once before, back in 2010. See reference 1 for a record of the fact, but little else.

The programme explained that the quartet was unusual both in that the four members account for four countries between them and in that they were all established musicians before coming together in this quartet. The programme did not explain how they came to meet, but I would have thought that there were pluses and minuses to a late start. Minus in that one does not grow up together in the quite the same way. Plus in that one is bringing more to the party. Who knows? Are there dating agencies which exist to bring together wannabee quartettists?

It was dark by the time that we got to Cavendish Square and the only bench that we know outside the by then closed enclosure was occupied by two bright young things busy with bottle and fags, so we were reduced to taking our picnic propped up against the enclosure. But we managed.

Picnic followed by what turned out to be an excellent program: Haydn Op.64, No.5; Shostakovitch Op.68; and, Beethoven Op.59, No.2. In the right order too, at least for me. Classical style & restraint, Russian emotion to follow, wrapped up with commanding heights.

More or less full house, the only snag being that the chap in front of us, out with his young lady, did not appear to want to be there at all and could not sit still, to the point where his young lady was trying to quieten him down. A nuisance as his head was in my eye line for the quartet on the stage.

Row G was good on this occasion, near enough for the four parts to still have their individual voices but not so near that one was distracted by trivia.

But not so entranced that I did not find time to wonder how important being able to see the action was. There was a time when I would have maintained that the music was all and the musicians were almost irrelevant. But since then there have been at least two bits of new information. The first came from dipping into Rosen on piano playing (last mentioned at reference 3), where he makes much of the physicality of playing the piano, with a good part of the body playing a part. He also says that a concert pianist may take more time to get the right seat than he spends with the tuner to get the right sound. Seating arrangements are important. The second came from talk somewhere of mirror neurons, with the idea being that when you see someone doing something, a good part of the corresponding parts of your own motor apparatus is activated and some part of what you feel about that someone comes from echoes, as it were, from your own body. So taking both points, seeing the musician or musicians in action may be an important element of a live performance. Something which people used to the physical exhibitionism of rock stars on stage would presumably take for granted and wonder why I am making such a meal of the point. Presumably the reason why people like to see the keyboard at a piano concert. Perhaps all the more important to a musician than a non-musician: a violinist watching another violinist would perhaps get twitches and tinglings in the arms and fingers while a non-musician would not, not having been wired up for the purpose. But would this add or subtract to the quality of the experience?

There is also the consideration that one can only be doing one thing at a time, so one cannot be mirror neuron'ing all four players of a quartet at once. One cannot move one hand in two directions at once, so one would have to take the players one at a time. Perhaps all we actually have here is another case of a little knowledge being dangerous.

All that said, I find a lot of filming of concerts rather irritating. The cameraman and the producer, with their continual change of shot, panning and zooming around, are intruding their view of what is going on on me. A view which might well include shots of unsuspecting members of the audience which caught their eye for one reason or another. So, by way of example, I much prefer the radio version of carol services to the television version.

Out to a fairly quiet London Town, fairly quiet that is for a Friday night. The only bit of busy in the whole evening was a great crowd pushing onto the north bound train at Victoria. We did not even get any bright young things piling out to sample the night life of Epsom - which one usually does of a Friday evening.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Michelangelo+quartet.

Reference 2: http://www.michelangelostringquartet.com/cms/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/cuarteto-casals.html.

On account

Further musings prompted by Donovan (see previous post).

In the beginning, not long after Adam delved and Eve span, people were self sufficient, or at least the households of which they were part were. They managed pretty much everything for themselves. Maybe gave a few goats by way of protection money to their local sheikh from time to time, but that was about it.

But then along came the other Adam, the Smith one, who told us all to specialise, to concentrate on our core businesses, the things that we were good at. So we started to do that, with the result that we also started taking other things, other services off of others. And while money had been invented by this time, we did not have any of the stuff out in the boondocks, so we took things on tick, on account.

The idea was that rather than bother about accounts in real-time, as we would say now, we would settle up once a quarter. Something our great grandparents, if not our grandparents, used to do with their butchers, bakers and candlestick makers.

The catch was that this all depended on trust. I had to trust lots of people to settle their accounts each quarter day (my own birthday being one such, as it happens) - and if they defaulted on their accounts with me, I would default on my accounts with others. The whole system would break down.

So we needed somebody who would take this risk on. And so it came to pass that we had money lenders and banks. They would, in effect, take on all these bilateral accounts and write them up into one giant balance sheet. And the people writing up and balancing all these accounts were adding value and so it was only reasonable that they got paid. But that is another story.

In the meantime, there were, of course, some people whom even the money lender could not afford to trust, so in dealing with those people one had to have recourse to money, to specie. And sometimes, one had a trust problem with the bank, or they had with you, and so, again, one had to have recourse to money.

But accounts are the way forward. Money is out! Holes in the trouser pockets are out! And, hopefully, thieving for cash is out. All the thieves too dumb for electric crime - which is, hopefully, most of them - will have to get honest jobs instead.

PS 1: with thanks to wikipedia for the picture of a money lender, painted by one Quentin Massys just about 500 years ago. A breed said to be the scourge of some parts of rural India.

PS 2: having thought that boondocks was an Appalachian word for where the hillbillies live, while checking this morning, I find that it is a corruption of a word from the Phillipines - and not even a Spanish one at that.

On price

Post-tea, pre-breakfast musings on prices, prompted by Donovan on inflation (of which more in due course).

Let us suppose that there is a world of things out there, things which are sorted into groups like oranges, apples and plums.

Let us suppose further that I have preferences about these things. So maybe I prefer oranges to apples. But we will also suppose that there is some tidy region of the brain which insists on transitivity in such matters, which means that if I prefer oranges to apples, and apples to plums, then I prefer oranges to plums. (Be warned: one can construct scenarios in which transitivity does not work for preferences about people, so maybe transitivity does not always work in real life).

We can then deduce that we can assign prices - positive real numbers - to things, prices which express our preferences. For the purposes of this discussion we exclude the possibility of zero or negative prices.

We might then wonder about the relationship of the price of two oranges to that of one orange. It seems reasonable to require the price of two oranges to be more than that of one orange, but not so reasonable to require it to be double. Which means that we cannot deduce that, while preferring oranges to apples, there will always be some number of apples which I prefer to one orange. The price of an increasing number of apples may converge to some number less than the price of an orange.

But putting that complication aside, one of the reasons for doing all this was to facilitate exchange. How do we bring some order into swapping apples for oranges?

So having constructed prices based on my preferences, we then construct prices based on someone else's. In general, even with a touch of normalisation to try to bring them into line, your prices are not going to be the same as mine. I might think that four apples are worth three oranges while you might think that two apples are worth seven oranges.

The up side of this is that if we swap my four apples for your seven oranges, we are both coming out ahead. I am getting extra oranges and you are getting extra apples. Trade, as one learns in elementary economics, is good for everybody. Everybody comes out ahead.

Then, if I get the idea that the world is full of people prepared to do swaps of this sort, perhaps I am going to adjust my preferences to align with other people's. If I know that you are very keen on apples, I will up my preference for apples in the knowledge that I can always do a good swap with you later.

And how do my preferences vary with my stocks? Does my preference for oranges decline as I accumulate the things? Or their supply? Does my preference for oranges increase as I learn about a world shortage of them? A world-wide failure of the orange crop? Or am I sensible, and just dump the whole orange thing in favour of plums?

Notwithstanding, maybe over time, all this will shake down and a stable, shared exchange rate between every pair of things will emerge. Perhaps there will be special markets specialising in particular sorts of swaps. Special markets with special market days.

Maybe given a bit more time, the local council, or other relevant authority, will invent a special thing called money, and the shared, stable exchange rate between any other thing and money will be its price. We get there in the end.

Perhaps there are people out there who make elaborate models on computers of systems of this sort, full of virtual agents with views about apples and oranges. People who go on to prove various elegant theorems about how systems of this sort pan out over time. Time to my mind being important as these systems do not settle down instantaneously, they evolve over time, in the course of lots of fruity transactions, time during which things may not be as optimal as one might like.

With the take-home being a glimmer of understanding about why one can go to university to learn about these matters and perhaps, afterwards, to write fat books about them.

PS: I remember now a story about trade in some far off island. The trader would come ashore and put up piles of stuff along the beach. He would then go back onto his boat to wait. The islanders would then take up some of the piles of his stuff, replacing them with piles of their stuff. Next morning, the trader would come and collect the piles. If he thought he had come out ahead, he would come back the following year and the whole process would be repeated.

Part two of three

Back to the Rose last week for part two of the wars of the Roses - with part one being at reference 1.

Started off in the Rose car park with a fine example being set by the lady owner of a Chelsea Tractor who, rather than going up to the top of the car park where there was plenty of space, chose a spot half way up and proceeded to reverse her tractor into it, rather slowly, while carrying on a conversation on her mobile phone, while blocking the rest of us from getting on up to the top.

However, I was rewarded at the top by a count of two aeroplanes, having made the executive decision that it was OK to count aeroplanes coming up out of Heathrow as an alternative to counting those going down. This particular car park quite good and there are no signs, as I think there are at Heathrow, saying that it is forbidden.

Onto the theatre, once again full this Thursday afternoon, much the same sort of audience as last time. Waiting for the off, I puzzled about all the white smoke which seemed to be near stationary in the beams from the lights. Why was it not moving about more? What about all the currents of air floating around such a space? From which I moved onto all the candles, probably the same as the electric ones from IKEA that they had at Strawberry Hill.

Moving on, it was, once again, a good show - but I am starting to get a bit picky.

So the balletic, strobe lit sword fights became tiresome, despite their necessary role in punctuating the action. The fight master had been given far too much rope.

The younger lords did not convince in the way that the older lords, their fathers, had done in part I. The Duke of Yorks' three sons in particular did not convince, with one of them being the chap who had played the unconvincing Suffolk previously. The oldest was played as more of a slob than lord and the youngest, Richard III to be, sported a leg caliper which would have made him a dead loss (to coin a phrase) in any real battle. Maybe an idea taken from Spacey at the Old Vic, who sported something similar (see reference 4).

They did not convince at the time, but then I wonder this morning what would convince. What were the young bloods of that time like? Young bloods who were very much what they were by virtue of blood (at least from one side of the bed) than ability, to that extent just like those who provided most of the officer corps for Wellington, or the sloanes of the fifties and sixties just past. Perhaps it is just an odd sort of fantasy that I have about the nobility of yore, that they were all noble, even when young.

The bog-standard accents of Cade irritated. But then again, what are they to do? He is supposed to be a man of the people and wikipedia says that bog-standard origins get the vote from among those who ought to know. Or turning around again. he was not just of the people, he was also a leader of the people. He might have had bog-standard accents but he would have had charisma.

I liked the widow Grey, played by the same actress whom I had previously liked as the Duchess of Gloucester. Margaret did OK, but again she failed to convince as one of the leading lights of her day. Something a bit tougher would have been needed. And she looked a bit silly dressed up in tight fitting armour to show off her legs.

Some of those with big speeches looked a bit uncomfortable with them, as if they were not used to that sort of acting. And the young Richard III, then just the younger son of a duke, seemed to pre-empt his grand opening speech in Richard III proper, that is to say part III of this production. The 'Now is the winter of our discontent/Made glorious summer by this son of York/etc' one. We shall see what they do with it next week

Refreshment at the 'Ram' included what I had taken to be a currant pastry but which turned out to be a savoury pastry, full of cheese and herbs. I had mistaken the herbs for currants - OK, but I think I may pass on the next occasion.

Wanting an illustration for this post, google turned up that above. From which I learn that there is another version of the Rose Theatre in Staunton, Virginia, in the heart of the Shenandoah Valley. Or to be more precise a version of the Blackfriars Theatre, also once the home of the bard himself. No idea how old the place is, but the pictures make it look like a more practical version of the Sam Wannamaker Playhouse at the Globe (on Bankside). And if we were really keen they just happen to be doing Henry VI Part I at the moment, billed under an armour plated Joan of Arc. Maybe ten years ago we would have legged it over there for the show!

Taking in Stratford, Ontario, maybe North America is the real home of bardic performance these days: we might have the heritage, but they can put the bums on seats. Or as Stalin once asked of the Pope, 'how many divisions has he got?'.

But maybe we can take a leaf out of their book, and given the parallel taste for complete works in the world of classical music, maybe we can spread that taste to classical theatre, cast the sixties bowdlerisation aside and persuade the Globe to give us all four parts of the wars, complete. In the meantime, Surrey saloon bars can echo to long discussions about the relationships between facts as they have been handed down to us, the original bardic plays, the sixties bowdlerisation and the version offered by the Rose today.

PS: on turning the pages of the sources for part II this morning, I find that, as part of her punishment, the Duchess of Gloucester had to make amende honorable. I shall return to the subject of the place of ritual humiliation of the erring great and good in due course. Perhaps even taking in an episode of 'West Wing', in the course of which the President accepts censure from Congress.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/10/part-one-of-three.html.

Reference 2: http://www.shakespeareances.com/.

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

Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=king+kev+dowdy.

Removal day

Last week saw a stocking up with kabanos, which meant that it was convenient to move a large book from Epsom to Tooting. A large art book, actually two books in a case fancy enough to include cardboard slips to stop the pages of the books drooping between their boards when stored upright.

To get some idea of the weight before posting this, I weighed one of our Phaidon old master series, the one, as it happens, about Raphael, which was entirely appropriate. It weighed 3lbs 9oz and I thought six of them to the big books, which thus weighed in at around 10kg, rather less than a half of one of those feebly modern bags of cement. The point of all this being that it was quite heavy and awkward.

Digressing, I was interested to see that the Raphael, a book roughly A3 portrait in size, about an inch thick and with plenty of illustrations, some in colour, had been published in 1943, and so while this particular copy may not have dated from exactly that year, there was clearly house room for art book activity at the height of the second world war. Mobilisation, which I understand to have been more total in this country than it was in Germany (where Hitler had to buy off all those working classes who had voted left rather than for him), had clearly not been totally total.

Back at the heavy and awkward, I was not going to manage to carry the thing very far at all and some kind of apparatus was indicated and a circuit around the Horton Clockwise came up with that illustrated. It worked well, with the only error being the tendency of the wooden handle to tip over sideways as one was holding it well below the weight bearing holes. And on any future occasion I would do a neater job on the knots, those illustrated not being a credit to my scouting days.

Note also the trusty bag from TKMaxx, first noticed at reference 1 and still going strong. Also a corner of the substantial fence separating customers for Waterloo at Earlsfield from the main line platform, generally host to main line trains at speed. From which one deduces that a jumper at Earlsfield, as well as being a tragedy, must also be a major pain for Southwest Trains for them to have spent so much money on fence.

From Earlsfield onto the bus, where I noticed that the grab rails were exactly the same shade of yellow as those on the newer District Line trains out of Wimbledon. Perhaps a job lot of paint from Health & Safety people on a hi-vis binge.

Needing a googlefix, I next looked into the recently refurbished Tooting library, to find that there was no room at the inn. Downstairs was not intended for study or sitting, and upstairs, which was, was very full of young adults beavering away on their assignments. Presumably young adults who, for one reason or another, had difficulty getting any work done at home.

So I carried on to Maciek's (see reference 2 for the last visit), well stocked on this occasion with a lot of very gooey looking cakes. So gooey, that some care was needed to get them from the display into a box without visible damage. Perhaps like Canadians, Poles are into high energy snacks in the winter. The kabanos stock had changed, including some which were short and very thin. Maybe six inches long and a quarter of an inch fat. I settled some of more regular size which were entirely satisfactory, if a little dry to my taste. But one does not seem to be able to get the bigger, fresher ones any more, the ones which are a paler brown outside and maybe three quarters of an inch thick. And you could bend rather than snap them.

Rounded out the visit with a visit to the little bar near Amen Corner where I took half a litre of some quite acceptable white wine. Rumanian with the zest of a ripe gooseberry. The bar was quite busy at 1730 on a Friday, with rather different clientèle to that at the Wetherspoons up the road, the place with the other library.

Feeling a touch lazy, I took another bus back to Earlsfield - I usually walk at least one way - on which I happened to be next to two Muslim ladies, both in hijabs, and both (guessing) late twenties but otherwise quite different. One was dressed entirely in black which made her face (no make-up as far as I could tell) look very pale and very plain. Her personality had been almost completely obscured, not to say flattened, by her uniform. The other had dressed up to go out, and while she might have been hooded, she was quite flamboyantly turned out and there was no question of hiding her personality. Which made me wonder about how much observant Muslim ladies are missing out on, stuff which most western ladies take for granted, in this case the right to dress up to go out, to catch the eyes of passing males, to have a bit of fun with your mates. It is all very well keeping yourself for your husband (if you have one) in the privacy of your own home, but a bit of variety, of the eye catching variety that is, is well too.

PS: and come to think of it, the Canadians are quite good at sausage too. See references 3 and 4.

Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=69.99.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/bill-fail-1.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/home-cooking.html.

Reference 4: http://www.sausagekitchen.ca/index.html.

The preacher again

‘Then shall the dust return to the earth as it was: and the spirit shall return unto God who gave it’. Ecclesiastes, Chapter 12, verse 7. Ascribed by Cortana to around 250BC.

‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God’. St. John, Chapter 1, verse 1. Ascribed to around 100AD, say three hundred years later.

The late Zoltan Torey is described by his publisher, MIT Press, as a clinical psychologist and independent scholar. One of that dying breed of scholars who, having got their crust with some day job – or otherwise – can scoll along, quite happily, without ever needing to set foot on the slippery steps of the ladder of the academic career or to do battle with the bean counters who dish out the grants. Without needing to festoon his work, should he see fit to put pen to paper or fingers to keyboard, with hundreds of references to all and sundry. To exhibit his family tree, as it were, to all comers. You scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours.

I associate here to some bit of Balzac where he goes on about the pernicious results of the carrière getting everywhere, no doubt from somewhere in his ‘La Comédie humaine’.

All this is prompted by my recent reading of what I think is Torey’s last book, ‘The Conscious Mind’, a short and accessible take on this matter as it stood in the early years of the present decade, handsomely produced by the MIT press.

Torey sees the universe in a series of stages.

In the beginning was the big bang, the beginning of matter as we now know it.

Some time later, perhaps a few billion years later, came life, which came to take the form of a cell, a complicated object which pulled off the trick of describing its own self, within itself, by means of a genome. A genome which can be replicated but which can also evolve. The first campaign against the second law of thermodynamics, an early enunciation of which is quoted above.

A few more billion years and we have multi-cellular organisms with nervous systems. Organisms which can exhibit more sophisticated responses to their environments.

A bit later still, perhaps in hundreds of millions of years now rather than billions, we have organisms with brains. Organisms which can exhibit still more sophisticated responses to their environments. Some of which are on the threshold of consciousness.

And then, quite recently, in the last couple of hundred thousand years or so, we have the invention of words. Words which empower consciousness proper and which provide a more up to date way of storing information than the genome. With the consequent invention of free will heralding victory in this second campaign against the second law of thermodynamics.

Which brings us up to the present.

So the preacher was not that far wrong, except that he still went in for God. And St. John was not that far wrong either, except that he did not think to mention the earlier campaigns.

Reference 1: for another mention of the preacher, see http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/sonia-o.html.

Reference 2: or http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=ecclesiastes.

Migrations and other movements

Reading about the troubles in Syria, I was struck by the way that things come around again. So the Hungarians and other peoples in southeastern Europe were fighting for centuries to stem the Turkish tide, say around the time that we here in England were busily inventing constitutional monarchy. The Turkish tide no doubt included many foot soldiers from what is now Syria. Syrians who are once again, knocking at the door, albeit in rather different clothes: this time they don't want to bring their stuff to Europe, they want a share of good European stuff instead - or at least one hopes that that is what they want. Rather a lot of them to be checking them all with care.

From where I jump to the Indian subcontinent where we spent some centuries taking our stuff to them. And now we have far more people from the subcontinent living here in the UK than we ever sent there.

From there to the Isle of Wight where we were once shown around the home which had, until recently, been the property of a family which boasted an unbroken male line back to the companions of the conqueror, with one of those males inscribed on the roll of honour of same, along with our own Count Eustace, illustrated. I should add, in fairness, that while our chap was higher up on the roll, our line was also a bit thinner, open to dispute even.

The house is now the property of an illustrious Anglo-Irish military family, another relic of a complicated past. Irish Guards and all.

From there to the beaches of Morocco, in reaching which the Arab tide from the Hejaz must have been getting a bit thin too. But that does not stop, I understand, posh families there boasting unbroken male lines back to the companions of their conqueror.

A tide which was finally brought to bay just north of the Pyrenees by a combined Franco-Spanish army at the first battle of Poitiers. In time for descendants of our conqueror to whack the French at the second battle of that name.

PS: google suggests that travelling from the Hejaz to Morocco now, as opposed to then, is best done via southern Europe. A distance of some 7,620 kilometres. Google also offers a natty map complete with directions, for example, to bear left at Montpellier.