Spectrum 2

Described as a single mass spectra of horse heart myoglobin, which I presume to be something a lot more complicated than whatever was the subject of the last post.

No idea what all the noise at the bottom of the graph is about.

Readers should note that this blog having hit the 2,000 post mark, I shall now be moving off to the next volume, volume 3, at reference 1. Orange banner a bit unsightly, but when I set it up I did not notice; maybe I will find out how to do something about it.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.co.uk/.

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Spectrum 1

A mass spectrograph from what I take to be a relatively simple sample. Lifted from google.

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Bells of Bond Street

Off to Albemarle Street again last week, to hear Carol Robinson tell us about her adventures in the land of mass spectroscopy.

Being a little early, I took a stroll around the area, with the first item of note being Asprey's, where I could buy one of the suitcases illustrated left. Now as it happens I had a long and happy relationship with a company of suitcase makers called Globetrotter, starting around 45 years ago, that is to say when Globetrotter was still a brand to be reckoned with, the suitcase of choice for civilian flight crews. And they were still turning up at car boots sales when we arrived at Epsom. But at about that time the brand took a nose dive: while the suitcases looked much the same, the quality of the materials was not and they no longer wore at all well, which did not do, given that they were still expensive. I think the brand is now more or less dead, but these suitcases from Asprey's look very similar indeed. Perhaps they bought Globetrotter up and luxurified their products; added the trimmings which converted hard wearing & practical travel goods (work goods in my case), into luxury items for people who like to flaunt their money in airport lounges.

The second item of note were the bells, properly the Atkinson's carillon, up until this point occasionally seen but never heard. Carilling away very cheerfully, perhaps to mark the fact that it was 1900.

The lecture hall was as full as usual, with one rather incongruous couple, not particularly young, turning up in an approximation to full-dress punk gear.

Robinson, aka Dame Carol Robinson, started out by telling us of some of the former scientists who had lectured from the very desk that she was lecturing from, an eminent line which included, as well as Faraday, her own doctoral supervisor and her supervisor's supervisor. She also explained that having started out with mass spectroscopy when she left school at 16 to become a laboratory technician, she never really left. Not only that, she managed what I imagine is the unusual feat of climbing back into the front seat of research after taking an eight year career break to have a family. An entertaining and engaging speaker, who did not stand on the dignity of her professional eminence. She also had the manners to include small mug shots of lots of her team - many of whom were there - in her visuals.

She explained that her career had been a successful punt on what had seemed to others to be an unlikely field - using mass spectroscopy to look at large molecules - proteins and such like - rather than the very much smaller - by orders of magnitude - molecules which the machinery had been used on up until that point. But she wanted to be in a field where she had a chance of making an impact, rather than some established but heavily populated field in which it would be hard to stand out from the crowd. A punt which has, in the event, paid off handsomely.

At which point my very limited knowledge of mass spectroscopy began to break down. I thought the idea was to take a small sample of whatever it was you wanted to analyse, to heat it up to the point where it broke into its constituent elements and then to squirt the resultant ions through an electrical contraption which measured the mass charge ratio of the ions, plotting the result as something which looked very like the sort of thing you got from light spectroscopy. The next post gives an example. And with a bit of experience you could say what all the peaks were, add them all up and so say what it was you started with.

It seems that things are a lot more complicated than that, and apart from the difficulty of converting samples into a spray of bits small enough to work in the spectroscope without completely destroying it, the idea now seems to be to observe how the process breaks these large molecule into chunks, chunks which result in tell-tale signatures on the spectrograph. Chunks which tell you something about the three dimensional structure of the large molecule - typically a very long chain folded up into something three dimensional and very complicated. Structure rather than analysis is the object of the exercise. I think the sort of thing you might get here is shown at the next but one post. One rather striking visual was of a molecule which looked and behaved rather like a spinning top and was something to do with supplying energy to or from a cell.

It would have been interesting to have been told something about how much all this equipment cost - say compared to the scanners used in hospitals - and about what sort of skill sets the teams using it needed to deploy. Did they need plumbers, electricians and statisticians - as well as biologists? As so often, this did not occur to me until too late.

The chap next to me was another tourist, rather than a scientist, and it turned out that he worked on customer surveys for investment banks, polling their clients to see if they were getting the service and products they wanted. Not altogether what sort of surveys these were, as the sort of technical issues which used to vex the Government Social Survey in the days when I sat on the floor above them, did not seem to be the sort of thing that vexed his working day.

Passed a big pile of 'City' and 'Country Life' magazines on the way back to the tube, very roughly his and hers magazines for the waiting room of a fancy dentist or the lounge of a fancy hotel. The former was rather brash and included a lot of advertisements for expensive toys and for expensive property. I learned that you can, for example, spend as much on a large flat in docklands as on a small country house in the outer home counties. Say a small number of millions. The latter was more genteel, with the riches not quite so obviously nouveaux.

Tried the aeroplane game at Clapham Junction, more or less under the flight path, but was more or less defeated by low flying cloud. Managed a lowly one in a hole in the cloud before my train came - the trouble with holes in the cloud being that you had to be looking right at them when the plane went over, and this being the first time I had played the Junction for a while, I did not know where to look.

Champion snorer in the compartment next to me, otherwise full of a French family. Several of us wondered whether to wake him at Epsom but did not, partly in my case because the last time I did such a thing, the sleeper concerned was going to the end of the line at Dorking, I used to find that some sort of internal clock usually woke one up at the right place, but perhaps commuters who wish to sleep after after work beverages should be encouraged to hang a luggage label around their necks so that concerned passers-by know whether to wake them up or not. Perhaps one day I shall fake it to see what happens; if nothing else it would make a change from the aeroplane game.

Reference 1: http://robinsonweb.chem.ox.ac.uk/. Despite which it seems that Dame Carol is actually a professor at Cambridge.

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Higher thoughts

Moved to higher thoughts yesterday by being reminded about cellular automata, in particular about the way that you can generate very complicated behaviour out of very simple rules, in a visually appealing framework. One example being the game of life, invented at about the time I was an undergraduate, but which I thought was little more than a toy. Nothing very higher about it at all.

Now of course I know better, having just read a little about it in a very fat book written by Stephen Wolfram (see reference 1), whom I suspect of having made a lot more money out of being a mathematician than John Conway (illustrated), the chap who invented the game in the first place. So I now know, for example, that the game of life has the power of Turing machine and can compute anything that one of those can - which is to say, a great deal.

Musing further this morning, I suppose that Mandelbrot sets are another example of the same thing - fairly simple rules generating pictures of breathtaking complexity. And then, there are all the elementary mathematical structures like natural numbers and groups, mostly capable of great complexity from great simplicity.

All this complexity and structure emerging, as it were, from thin air. An act of primal creation, not needing any human creative input at all.

I dare say there is a philosophical point lurking here somewhere, but I suspect that a drop of something alcoholic is needed to bring it to the surface.

From where I associate to the thought that I vaguely recall there being something you can pour on the ground to bring the worms to the surface. Clearly time to move on.

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

Reference 2: for pictures of cellular automata, goto https://www.google.co.uk/search?q=cellular+automata and ask for images.

More moaning - episode 1

A few days ago I had a moan (at reference 1) about the standard of debate about our health service. Today it is the turn of all those migrants making a living out of our benefit system. Episode 1 as the matter is a complicated one to which I ought to return when better informed than I am now.

My first thought is a fairly crude one. Rich people like migrants because cheap migrant labour in their factories makes for good profits. Cheap migrant help around the home is useful too. Poor people don't like migrants because they pull wages down. So where does that leave the politicians who count rich people among their friends but who depend on poor people for their votes?

My second thought is that for all the sound and fury in the press and from Leader David, there is very little in the way of numbers. How much benefit are the migrants and refugees claiming? How much tax do they pay? What proportion of the health and care industry workforce is migrant or refugee? How much benefit is being claimed elsewhere by UK nationals?

So this morning I take a quick look at google, to find, as I should have guessed, that the statistics are tricky and abusable - with there having been quite a row last November about what was perceived as inappropriate use of statistics by Leader David. Part of the trouble seems to be that the statistics about migrant benefit are actually statistics about households claiming benefit which contain at least one person who was not a  national at the time they acquired their National Insurance number, statistics which could well the the subject of many technical notes.

But I did turn up what looked to be solid (if not very penetrable) statistics from the House of Commons, and to these I shall now turn. See reference 2 if you want to have a go yourself. Illustrated above.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/morning-moan.html.

Reference 2: https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/8152054/SN06955.pdf.

Chessington

Having done Wisley fairly recently, we thought it was time to take a swing around Chessington (reference 1). We also had the excuse that stocks of lawn sand were already quite low after just two sessions of perforation.

So off down Christchurch Road, which gave us an opportunity to survey the traffic on the new cycle way. I am pleased to report that, for the first time, we saw a cyclist actually on the cycle way - although in fairness I should say that there were about a dozen who were not. Also that, walking back later, I noticed that the cycle way was not being swept and was littered with a fair amount of possibly tyre-damaging litter from neighbouring bushes and trees. Not sure that I would use it if I was cycling that way.

Arrived at Chessington, to find that they were just putting the finished touches to the removal of Christmas stock and decoration, with the centre piece illustrated above. I was quite struck by the creativity of whoever it was who dreamed up the idea of smokey barbecue flavoured rock salt. Even, perhaps, starting to muscle in on the foodie territory claimed for its own by the sea salt people. Regarding the illustration, the careful reader will be able to spot BH, or at least some of her hair - and we were indeed able to find something which will come in useful later in the year.

Moving into the store proper, I was very much reminded of T. K. Maxx, perhaps a T. K. Maxx with a large restaurant operation stuck in the middle. Very much the same sort of mixture of tat and poshly wrapped tat, leavened with a dash of real posh.

Having loaded up the lawn sand, I decided to walk home and take another look at the housing estate on the site of West Park Hospital. Which turned out to be rather smart, with the houses that I saw not looking at all cheap, neither starter homes nor affordables - but I thought they had done quite a good job of blending the old and the new.

The water tower conversion was approaching completion, but I did not think that asking the chaps doing the outside paving was going to be very profitable and relied on google to tell me what was going on. A reliance which turned out to be quite misplaced, so I still don't know what the tower has been converted into - or how much of the available space has been soaked up with stairs and lift. Presumably somebody would have insisted on there being both. No sign of the peregrines. A before-snap of the tower at reference 2.

Quite a lot of leaf sprouting on the sunny side of the hedge along the western side of Horton Lane.

A load of garden rubbish dumped on the grass along Longmead Road. Did the person who got his hedge trimmed on the cheap give any thought to where the trimmings might end up? Will he or she write stroppy letters to the council about the rubbish on the roads?

PS: I have just learned that for some reason I know not, T. K. Maxx is known as T. J. Maxx in its native North America. See reference 3 for the full story.

Reference 1: http://www.chessingtongardencentre.co.uk/. Not to be confused with the world of adventure next door, a world which sports a much bigger car park and a Holiday Inn.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/water-tower.html.

Reference 3: http://www.tjx.com/index.html.

Stop tweet

Just tweeted the first in-garden redwing of the year, well, in garden in the sense of being just over the fence in the next door garden, behind our garage.

Not the first redwing of the year, as I have seen them somewhere else, perhaps in the road somewhere, but I cannot now recall and there does not seem to be any record.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/stop-tweet.html.

Today's bet

Today's bet is that it will turn out that while I might call what you see as blue, blue, I might actually be seeing red. A problem which has been vexing colour vision scientists in public houses for almost as long as there have been colour vision scientists.

A simple way to do this would be to simply rotate the colour wheel by 120 or 240 degrees and let brain plasticity do the rest. This would preserve primary colours, in the sense that each primary colour would be mapped onto another, and both black & white would stay as they are - which I believe to be helpful - and would preserve addition, subtraction and proximity of colours - which I believe to be necessary.

A quick peek at google suggests that, maybe, technology is starting to let some light in on this one. Maybe we really will find out in the next few years - and so my bet is in. Or at least it will be when I have had a chance to chat to our local Paddy Power people.

Illustration possibly lightly adapted from http://www.bluelobsterart.co.uk/. The place I thought it had come from - www.bluelobsterart.com - does not seem to exist.

Johnson

For some reason that I cannot now recover, Dr. Johnson came to mind when I was composing the post at reference 1.

But I have now read the one book of his that turned out to be sitting on the top shelf, Rasselas, a book which wikipedia tells me was knocked out by the good doctor in a week or so in 1759 to help pay for his mother's funeral. My own copy is a bit newer than that, perhaps from around 1900, but in any event from before the time when publishers were obliged to put dates in books, an old but otherwise handsome small book from Routledge & Sons of London, one of their new universal library, and once the property of a T. W. Beuke, possibly a German. A book of just under 300 pages arranged with some odd pages at the front and some more odd pages at the back sandwiching 18 signatures of 16 pages each. Labelled from A to S, with something odd happening around the J-K mark, clearly some secret of the printers' craft. With another secret being the business of the odd pages front and back.

Another odd feature of the book is the large amount of white space, mainly between the 49 short chapters, usually of two or three pages each, with pages being approximately 150mm by 100mm, which does not seem to fit any of the standard sizes for books offered by google, with the nearest I came being something called B6. Another secret of the trade. But in any event the book must have been produced at a time when paper was relatively cheap.

The book is the story of an Abyssinian prince, Rasselas, and his sister Nekayah, who start off sequestered in a palatial prison, ringed in by mountains and which no-one, once in, is allowed to leave. We spend the first fifteen chapters learning that being sequestered in a palace is not that great and then escaping. The next thirty five chapters learning about all the things that can go wrong with people and their lives in the wide world. Just short of 50 short tales in all, each replete with pithy observation - and a moral. For example, just because shepherds work in pretty surroundings with pretty animals, does not make them into nice or happy people. Or just because a chap can give a nicely judged talk about how to live, don't assume that his own life is particularly edifying or happy. The sort of thing that might have done quite well to power improving drawing room conversation: you get one of your number to read one of the chapters, which might take five or ten minutes, and you then build a conversation on it. Inter alia, economical on candles.

I get the impression that Johnson was very conscious of the fragility of life and its pleasures. People could very easily do bad things to you, you might very easily get ill or worse and if you managed to avoid that lot, you would certainly get old and decrepit. Sans eyes, sans teeth and so on; see Jacques on the subject in Act II, Scene VII of 'As You Like It' - and see reference 2 for a picture of same. Perhaps a sensible approach to the uncertain world of his time, uncertain even for the rich. Perhaps this is the link to reference 1 - you might think you are doing great, but you never know whether or when dementia is going to grab you.

Johnson was clearly a very able chap. Perhaps I shall see what else I can find.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/still-alice.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/rosalind.html.

Morning moan

This triggered by a story in one of yesterday's free papers - Standard or Metro - about how the Secretary of State for Health is telling us how awful this or that widget in the health service is, a health service of which has charge, and how he is going to fix it. More guidance, more savings, more inspections or something. Maybe more court cases. Anything but more money for more people.

This annoyed me because the Secretary is, in effect, suggesting that we can have a world class health service, where accidents never happen, at third world rates. The government of which he is part has been squeezing the health service for years and still has the nerve to bang on about how awful it is that there has been an accident.

New Labour took a different line, throwing a great deal of money at the health service, probably more money than it could usefully absorb in the time (think of all those fine new computer systems which soaked up all those billions) and certainly more money than we could sustain.

But neither party seems to be in the least bit interested in trying to explain to the electorate that they get the health service that they are prepared to pay for. They can't have all the booze they can drink, all the consumer toys from China that they can play with - and health. If they pay more taxes, then they can have a better health service. And it is this that I find really annoying, this abject failure to put the public debate on a realistic financial footing.

Blaming it all on inefficient public servants doesn't wash with me. By the standards of the western world we get quite a good bang for our buck - perhaps twice as much bang for our buck as they manage in the land of trump and free enterprise.

PS 1: I observe in passing than spending money on people to work in the health service would be much better for our dire balance of payments than spending money on consumer goods from China. Much more sustainable, even if lots of the people involved do come from elsewhere.

PS 2: and I noticed yesterday that the line of ambulances outside Epsom Hospital was provided by G4S, rather than by the South East Coast Ambulance Trust which, I think, used to do the job. I suppose it is not that different from using ordinary taxis for a lot a patient movements, but one does wonder about the attitudes and style that G4S operatives will bring to this sometimes difficult work. I wonder even more whether it will prove any cheaper in the long run.

A swing through Fitzrovia

A rare visit to Fitzrovia earlier in the week.

Kicked off with tea, coffee and cake at the handy sub-ground café at Debenhams. Which was fine, but, despite the smart décor, I did notice the odd flaw in and around the escalator well, which all goes to show that it is very hard to completely obliterate the fact that one is working with quite an old building. The old will poke through in one way or another.

Then into the Wigmore for a bit of lunchtime recital, given on this occasion by the Armida Quartet from Germany, not heard by us before. Interesting seating arrangements. For the Mozart K80 quartet, from left to right 1st violin, cello, viola, 2nd violin (on the piano stool), while for the Beethoven Op.59, we had 1st violin, 2nd violin, viola, cello (on the piano stool), that is to say the usual arrangement, apart from the stool, usually the seat of honour for the 1st violin. Presumably the quartet felt that there was something about the Mozart which suggested a different seating plan. That apart, a young performance with plenty of brio. So much so that at several points I thought brass. I found the Mozart a little fast, perhaps I should have revised, but the Beethoven was excellent, packing a formidable punch. And we had Contrapunctus 4 for an encore, for which it did very well. Rounded off and rounded down nicely. Audience enthusiastic.

BH explained that the flowers flanking the stage were green (once again, see reference 3), because they were dyed green, not natural, let alone organic. I think she said by standing them in a suitable green dye, but thinking about it now, I would have thought that this would take a very long time to result in green flowers. Why not just dip the flowers in the green dye direct?

To Ponti's for an entirely satisfactory lunch, slightly let down by their bread being very salty. And to think that Mediterranean diets are supposed to be so healthy. See reference 1.

From there we decided to head across to Eastcastle Street and then hang left up to Warren Street, to find the whole area awash with dinky little eateries, dinky little galleries and even the odd pub. What looked like some kind of upstairs HQ for Baslers, a relic of the days when the whole area was awash with the clothing trade rather than the eating and arting trades. See reference 2. I vaguely recall using one of the eateries, having just missed an exhibition of cartoons to do with Russian ballet, but, irritatingly, cannot now find the relevant post. Nor could we find the site of the famous Schmidt's in Charlotte Street, probably because we got into the street half way along and turned north rather than south.

But we did come across Carr-Saunders Hall, which looked strangely small viewed from Fitzroy Street, not having seen it for some years now, but which nevertheless refused to fit into the telephone's view finder, with the truncated results illustrated. I was slightly surprised not to find the place picketed by students with placards. given that Carr-Saunders was an old Etonian who had a lot to do with setting up colleges and universities in what were then our colonies, colour bars and all, right after the second war. Is it right that a hall of residence for the LSE should be named for such a person, that person's service in the first war and long time directorship of LSE notwithstanding? I might say that I am mildly embarrassed now to have known so little about the chap, despite having been a student at LSE just ten years after he left - a studentship which included sundry visits to this very hall.

Closely followed by the nearby theatre book shop, of which more in due course. Then down the hole at Warren Street, two long escalators down to the Victoria Line, and so to Vauxhall and home. Walked up the escalator at Vauxhall, but I think I would have chickened out of the longer of the two escalators at Warren Street, should we have happened to be going up rather than down. Drew a blank at Raynes Park on this occasion.

PS: later, I eventually find that memory is defective once again. The cartoons were not in Eastcastle Street at all, rather the nearby Little Portland Street. See reference 4.

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

Reference 2: http://www.basler-fashion.com/en/. To be found in what used, in racing days, to be the Spread Eagle pub in Epsom.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/debussy.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/big-fugue.html.

Trolley 39

Barely a month since the last one, this one turned up at the junction of Kiln Lane and East Street. Once again, rather an odd place to leave such a thing, so I shall spend the next tea break working up a scenario or two.

Unlike trolley 38, this one did have the contraption on the front nearside wheel. No beeping when I crossed the boundary from public to Sainsbury's land, so if the sign about detectors is not just for show, the detector must be able to distinguish trolleys going in from trolleys going out. That is to say it can detect movement as well as presence. Does this seem likely?

Perhaps I ought to experiment with taking a trolley back and forth across the boundary and seeing whether burly security men come charging out of their dugout at the back of the car park?

The dismal science

As young people living in North London, we used occasionally to stroll down Bishop's Avenue to gaze in adoration at all the fancy houses there, fancy houses which we were never going to be able to afford. So I was amused to read over breakfast today that in 2014 there were 16 derelict properties there, of which that illustrated in one. Not that dereliction seems to affect price all that much. Bizarre, but no more bizarre, I suppose, than Centre Point (at the top of Charing Cross Road) standing empty for years after its construction, while its owner waited for the rent to be right. A build to let merchant rather than a buy to let one.

And then there was a short piece about how EDF (in full, Électricité de France) is worrying whether the power station deal at Hinkley Point is going to bankrupt them, while us lefties are wondering whether us promising to pay them twice the going rate for electricity for ever is a good deal for England. Bring critical national infrastructure back into national ownership say I! And bring on the nuclear!

And lastly, the long running story in the serious newspapers about how cheap oil is going to be the ruin of us all. I can see that oil producers like the Russians and the Nigerians might be a lot happier if oil were a bit dearer, but surely oil consumers like the UK and China ought to be delighted? Cheap oil ought to be kick-starting a splendid bit of recovery with the Saudi's picking up the tab for once?

So, with the dismal science producing three jokes of this sort, it can't be as dismal as all that.

PS: I imagine that Corby the Crow is all for nationalising critical national infrastructure but is completely opposed to anything nuclear. Anything nuclear down to and including the radioactive bits and bobs which are important in various medical gadgets. So he won't be much help.

Life among the anacondas

Don't Sleep, There are Snakes: Life and Language in the Amazonian Jungle - Daniel Everett – 2008. With the illustration left being what google returns at the top of the list for anaconda. I wonder what the jungle dwellers concerned would have made of it.

An interesting but rather odd book, drawing on long experience in the Amazonian jungle with the Pirahã, a very small people living on the banks of a tributary of the Amazon – a tributary which can be 40 feet deep in the rainy season. At the time Everett was there, they appeared to have numbered less than 500 people, scattered in a number of small villages – so it is hard to see how they are going to survive as a people, even supposing that was what they wanted. Odd in that we are given no clear narrative of how Everett spent the thirty or more years during which he was associated with the Pirahã, and we have to try and pick that up from a rather fragmented narrative, broken up by long stretches of material about the Pirahã language. With the reason for my having arrived at the book in the first place being that it is a very odd language.

But before language, just a few words about the thirty or more years. Everett starts out as a missionary from SIL (reference 3), this despite the fact that the Brazilians had forbidden missionary work among the tribes. A born again Christian with a lot of evangelical experience, topped up with training in linguistics. And he probably started out with Spanish rather than Portuguese. After a spell by himself in the deepest jungle, he takes his wife and young family there – and lived there for years. Eventually in the face of Pirahã refusal to take any serious interest in Jesus, he loses Jesus himself, and in consequence loses his family and his funding. At which point I lose the thread; perhaps that is when he became a university teacher.

I am doubtful about the wisdom of inflicting such a life on one’s young children. They were certainly doing something unusual and it was no doubt rewarding in its way. But it was scarcely much of a preparation for life back in the United States. After spending their formative years in a real jungle, how are they going to survive in the urban jungle? I have similar doubts about sending children to very small schools – like our Cornerstone School here in Epsom (reference 4) – or, worse still, home education. Unless, of course, there are special needs.

The language was built on a very small number of sounds, with one of those that they did have being for men only. By way of compensation, they made a lot of use of tone and stress, to the point that one could drop the sounds and hum the language. This was a form of communication used by nursing mothers and lovers. The men could also whistle it and both sexes went in for yelling it and singing it. Or they could use their sounds and speak it in the ordinary way of western folk.

There were no articles – words like ‘a’ and ‘the’ – and no quantifiers – words like ‘any’, ‘all’ and ‘most’. As far as could be ascertained there were no words for numbers and the Pirahã could not even count on their fingers and toes – leading them wide open to exploitation from the river traders to whom they sold jungle products – like Brazil nuts.

The sentences were simple, with a low limit on permitted complexity, and no subordinate clauses. So there had to be work arounds for sentences like ‘the man in the punt was smoking’.

On the other hand, verbs were very complicated with a number of sets of particles for tagging on the end. Particles which I assume were mostly, in English, accommodated by free standing particles. A different parceling up of the world of language into words than ours.

Everett makes a lot of the interaction between language and culture, taking time out to join in the Chomsky hunt – with it seeming to be open season for Chomsky bashing these days. Perhaps he is paying the price for having been such a huge force in linguistics in the second half of the last century. That aside, it seems to me that there is an interaction between language, culture and the inner world; the language one ends up with, for whatever reason, does shape one’s inner world. One’s inner world, in part, is a vision of the outer world seen through the lens of language. And one lens is not the same as another.

One aspect of this is that the Pirahã live very much in the present. They are not interested in stuff which cannot reported by someone who has seen it for themselves. Stories about someone who lived two thousand years ago being out of it altogether – although they do allow reports about conversation with spirits, deemed to be as real as you or I.

Language apart, the Pirahã appear to have been a happy people, with a lot of smiling and laughing. They did well on the various indices of happiness brandished by sociologists and anthropologists. On the other hand, there was a high rate of sudden death, not least in child birth. Some person-on-person violence, including some rape. Some drunkenness, when they got hold of drink. Don’t know about tobacco. Very little property of any sort. And while happy to take in some conveniences from the outside, like picture books, they showed no great interest, at that time, in joining the wide world, never mind the world wide web.

So, as I started out by saying, interesting if odd. Very pleased that I happened upon it.

PS: given that Everett used to be a professor at Illinois State University, I thought there might be a tie in with the Illinois flavoured funding of ‘The Key’, noticed at reference 2. Maybe in the minds of the Illinois arty folk, gaelic was another quaint language from deep in the jungle, worthy of a grant from the anthropology department. Digging a bit, I find that the Illinois Arts Council seems to be all about promoting the arts by the Illinois people for the Illinois people. Now the Dalkey Archive people do claim connections to two places in Illinois, Champaign and McLean, of which two the latter is only a village - and that is as close as I can get. No connection with the Amazon at all, after all.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Everett.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/the-paperkeepers-tale.html.

Reference 3: http://www.sil.org/. They look there like an outfit for studying small languages around the world, but Wikipedia says ‘SIL International (formerly known as the Summer Institute of Linguistics) is a U.S. based, worldwide, Christian non-profit organization, whose main purpose is to study, develop and document languages, especially those that are lesser-known, in order to expand linguistic knowledge, promote literacy, translate the Christian Bible into local languages, and aid minority language development’. Certainly Everett talks of them as a missionary outfit. Nevertheless, a centre of excellence in the matter of small languages. Maybe world class.

Reference 4: http://www.cornerstoneschool.org.uk/.

House

There is something of a glut of 'House' DVDs in Epsom, so knowing next to nothing about it, beyond it being a medical soap featuring Bertie Wooster (whom we had liked when he appeared on ITV3), thought to give it a go and so became the temporary owner of series 5 and 6. We have seen two episodes and have now returned the two boxes to the pool.

It all seemed rather noisy, manic, frantic and rectal to us. This last because of a seeming fascination with rectal examinations. Also rather medical in general, with lots of hypodermics (which I am still a bit touchy about) and other medical apparatus on view. Lots of cod-psychiatry, particularly as regards the medical staff. Furthermore, we were sufficiently out of touch with US taste in medical soap for it to take some time for us to realise that this one was really a spoof.

The DVDs came with a fair amount of advertisement filled packaging, all rather irritating, and although the episodes themselves had no advertisement breaks, the gaps where they had been were clearly visible. We wondered how much the need to work in six minute takes and the need to compete with the very expensively crafted advertisements screened between takes disturbed things.

We also wondered about the way that the structure of this medical soap paralleled that of a murder soap, for example, Inspector Morse, or perhaps Sherlock Holmes. The way, for example, that life threatening situations licensed all kinds of prying, prying which is not normally allowed. Then there are all the red-herrings. Perhaps a fit topic for a dissertation for a student at our University of Creation - although that said I am not sure that they do this sort of creation. More a fashion place. See reference 2.

We thought perhaps that the idea was that Wooster took this show on because he did not want to go down in history as the chap who did a great job of portraying a rich prat from England - but in the end just settled for the money - the show having done very well indeed in the ratings. Maybe, even more episodes than our own 'Midsomer Murders'. Wikipedia tells me that he was on £250,000 or so an episode.

It also tells me that he was a product of Eton, Cambridge and Cambridge Footlights. A champion rower, talented musician and even dabbles a bit in writing. So clearly a very talented chap. But sadly, 'House' was not for us. At least Tadworth Children's Trust is near £10 better off.

Reference 1: https://www.thechildrenstrust.org.uk/.

Reference 2: http://www.uca.ac.uk/life-at-uca/locations/epsom/.
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Judgement

I was rather irritated this morning to read stories alleging that Cameron wants to rush into a referendum on Europe this June, stories which, if true, suggest to me a serious error of judgement.

Western Europe is facing two related and serious problems: the various conflicts and problems in the Middle East and the millions of refugees arising therefrom. While they are not exactly our problems, we are rich and powerful and they are more or less on our doorstep. We have a history of meddling, sometimes for good reasons, sometimes not for such good reasons, and we cannot stand aside now. We need, we have to work with the others involved or interested to deal with these problems.

Against this background, the UK whining about more or less parochial concerns seems to me to strike the wrong note. Mainland Europeans might just say "we have got more important problems to worry about than you at the moment, so shut up or get out. We don't got time to bother with you. PS: and stop being so selfish.

And collectively we really don't have the management bandwidth to cope with both the external problems and the relatively unimportant, internal problems. Cameron, his team, and the country at large, should put their shoulders to the collective wheel of sorting out the external problems. It is even possible that if a few major powers get serious about this, some of the big backsliders - like Poland, Russia and Saudi Arabia - might be shamed into constructive action. Pigs might even fly.

PS: and we might say the same to the Scots. Pipe down for the moment and we will get to you in due course. It is not as if they have anything like the grievance that the Irish had in their time, a hundred years ago, when we stood their independence down for the duration of the first war.

Carex pendula

The carex pendula and euphorbia mentioned in the last post. Pond in the background at the top of the snap.

Group search key: bpa

Chelsea chatter

Last week we went to the the winter number of Battersea Park's decorative fair. Objects and stuff rather than paint and wallpaper. Somebody or something had sent us a ticket so off we went, along with lots of other people. They did check at the door but nobody we saw actually paid.

Started out well with a tweeting of three coal tits in one of the small trees in the verges of our road.

Then to the café run with special needs people, handily outside Clapham Junction railway station. Pleasant atmosphere, pleasantly quiet. Tea fine, bacon sandwiches adequate - that is to say the bacon was fine but the white bread had not been out of the freezer long enough and was rather cold on the tongue.

Thus fortified up past the Islamic centre under a much needed reconstruction to the 'Asparagus' for a right turn into Battersea Park Road to inspect the creeping gentrification there. From whence to the south west corner of the Park, also known as the Sun Gate.

The playground which was under reconstruction on our last visit (reference 2, more than six months ago) was now complete (and illustrated above), but being a week day largely without customers. Just the one family having a go at the crazy golf under the trees. with children just about old enough to get the idea.

The invitation had been a little coy about exactly where the fair was to be held, but eventually we found a large tent, in shape a bit like a small office block, complete with a fancy entrance and a car park. Luckily someone had left a side gate to the car park open so we did not have to walk the entire perimeter to get in, get in to find a rather crowded variation on the theme of car boot sale crossed with second hand (or even antiquarian) book fair. There was considerable variation among the accents of the vendors, but those of the visitors mainly sounded money, as did most of their clothes. More women than men, mostly middle aged, perhaps a little younger than ourselves. Some loud. The stuff was mostly the sort of thing that an interior designer on a commission to furnish a restaurant or an expensive town flat would buy, rather than our good selves. In part because the prices were a bit steep, in part because the objects were mostly rather big.

About an hour of that was enough, after which we left by the same gate that we had come in by to take tea at a rather sad looking Gondola Café - not enough business during the week to make it worth their putting much food on or to cover up the shabbiness. But a good cuppa outside on the terrace, watching the birds fooling around on the ice on the pond. Seagulls practising their landings on the ice and coots practising getting out of the holes in the ice that they kept falling into.

From there around the south of the pond to inspect the herons, some of which had made nests in the trees on the big island. Another large bird sitting in one of the same trees which we were unable to identify; very frustrating - with a tourist passing with a camera with a zoom lens not understanding me well enough to help - and his best offer was fat chicken. The zoom on my telephone not being anywhere near powerful enough for the purpose. A first in that we saw a heron joining in a feeding of the seagulls - a heron which didn't like the bread on offer but couldn't bear to leave the action.

Past a fine bed of carex pendula and euphorbias. Spotted a chinook to the west. One assumes some sort of military but we wondered whether they were allowed to tank up at the Battersea heliport, saving them the journey back to base proper, perhaps giving the special forces therein more air time over important targets. See reference 2.

Passing an estate agent after we had left the Park we pondered the merits of having a flat in the area. Without resident children and being less keen these days on gardening, one could certainly see the point. But there was quite a big catch in that our house in Epsom would not buy much flat in Battersea, at least not on the right side of the railway line.

Finished up at the Battersea Food & Wine store in Falcon Road (a little south of gmaps 51.4666467,-0.1697279), where we were able to stock up on dried figs and Turkish Delight. Both very good; figs quite dear, delight quite cheap. There was also the best display of dried vegetables we had ever seen. Mental note to give it some serious attention on our next visit.

Well not quite finished up, as we also managed a quick visit to the platform library at Raynes Park where I was able to pick up a vintage edition of the National Trust guide to Ben Lawers, even older than the one we already had from maybe twenty years ago when we went up the thing. I had not realised, or perhaps not remembered, what an interesting place it was from both a geological and botanical point of view. But I shall return to that in due course.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/06/aeroplanes-2.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/a-touch-of-pepys.html.

Group search key: bpa

Poor detailing

A snap from the West Hill cycleway project, noticed more than once before.

A snap which illustrates the way in which the tactile lino tiles (noticed at reference 1) have been cut in around drain covers, a matter which neither the detailing architect nor the workmen doing the work gave enough attention to, resulting in the mess shown.

It makes one nostalgic for those far off days when the Mayor of Epsom could buy the borough drain covers with the name of the borough cast into the steel and when public workmanship of this order would never have been tolerated.

PS: assuming that is, that the 'Epsom' on this drain cover signifies the customer, not where the thing was made. I am not aware that we ever had any steel foundries in the area, but you never know - after all, we did have gunpowder mills. Pity I didn't take the picture the right way up. Pity the telephone has translated yellow ochre into something close to white.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/golf-bores.html.

Debussy

Wigmore again last Monday, picked, I should imagine in spite of Debussy, rather than for him, his being a composer I think of as fast, complicated and modern, adjectives with a negative rather than positive valence in this context.

As it turned, out the Debussy was both familiar and good, familiar on the strength of a single hearing about nine months ago. So the brain remembered the music, but I did not remember its name or the fact that I had heard it before. Clearly keep the different bits of that hearing in different compartments, with different keys. See reference 1.

But to start at the beginning, it was a cold night, despite being quite hazy overhead. Quite cold enough for me to be glad of my gloves but not cold enough to stop lots of young people working their telephones gloves-off. I blame the warfarin. And at Oxford Circus there was even a family of tourists buying ice-creams, clearly an essential part of a holiday as far as they were concerned.

On the way, what seemed to be a succession of young ladies talking to their telephones about having fun. Perhaps it is just because I am not young, but it all seemed a bit forced to me - with my limited experience being that the harder you go after fun, the harder it is to find it, with a more relaxed approach usually being more productive. Or is it more a matter of personality than age? But the diet of fun was varied by a story about an avalanche while out skiing - or to be more precise, I got to hear the various responses to such a story. But responses of a kind that was one able to have a fair crack at reconstruction. No real damage, so the two concerned could enter into the whole business with cheerful gusto, without feeling any impropriety.

Arrived at the Wigmore to find that their flowers had moved into red and green, to the extent of including what appeared to be green flowers, of a daisy variety. The lead flowers were red anthuriums, as last seen - in the white on that occasion - at reference 2 - so perhaps the lady that did that arrangement was back on watch.

Started with the Schubert D703 which was fine, but it made an odd prelude to the Haydn which followed (Op.20 No.6). Too much of a change of gear for me, a change which seemed to throw what followed a bit out of kilter. Serioso (Op.95) good, but would perhaps have been better had I done a bit of revision beforehand. Enough to remind me of how it went, not so much as to take the gloss off. But back at the change of gear, I think the problem there was that the three pieces making up the programme proper did not amount to a concert of what was thought to be of sufficient length, so the Schubert was tacked on front as a make weight. And a slow movement from Haydn (Op.54 No.1) was tacked on behind as an encore. At least this last worked fine, making a good closure to the very different Debussy.

I felt rather sorry for the cello at one point, obliged by the sponsor, Lark Insurance, to put in an advert for them - and he looked most uncomfortable about doing it. A chap who usually has much more aplomb when it comes to talking to the audience, something the Endellions are rather partial to. I wonder what Mr. Lark made of it; he can at least take comfort from my remembering all about it, which might be enough for him.

The programme was done under the Endellion flag, making it a bright orange on this occasion. The chap on the door would say no more than that they liked to do their own programme, so they did. One result being a more cantabrian flavour than a normal Wigmore produced programme. I wondered this morning about the business arrangement. Does the Wigmore hire the quartet and take all the risk? Does the agent for the Endellions hire the hall and take all the risk? Or is there some profit share agreement? Or do the they hire in it their own name - taking all the risk but also taking all the profits, should there be any. And printing their own programmes. Hall pretty much full on this occasion, so I suppose there would have been some profits. For the terms and conditions for hiring the hall, interested readers can follow the lead given at reference 4. I wondered also whether the Wigmore do better at providing their artists & artistes with refreshments than the Dorking Halls - a place which does not seem to be able to manage this basic civility, despite my poking them twice on the matter. Possibly the result of the catering there being sub-contracted out, with most of the staff being young, transient and zero-hours.

Home via the Jubilee Line, something I do not recall doing before, having been put off by the notion that it was a long way down and a long way back up again at Waterloo. In the event, one lost the walk to Oxford Circus, good for the circulation after sitting down for a while, but gained some minutes on the journey time, useful at what is, these days, late at night for me.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/its-those-dantes-again.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/09/borodin.html.

Reference 3: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z2i6pX5kLBg. A rendering of the encore from the Conway Hall. I had not realised that they do concerts there.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/trios.html.

2015-2016 puncture campaign

This to record that this year's lawn puncture campaign started at 1500 on Saturday 23rd January 2016, with one row completed during the (successful) second rise of the 345th batch of bread.

Prompted by the observation that the half of the back lawn nearest the house, that is to say the half punctured so far, seemed to be doing better in the damp mild weather we have been having than the other half. Although I should say that the evidence is a bit confused in detail; no nice sharp line along the end of the punctures separating the good from the bad. There must be some other factors at work here.

See reference 1 for the end of the last campaign.

PS 1: so damp and mild that I caught one lady mowing her front lawn last week.

PS 2: it is a pity that references take you to the post indicated in single post mode. Continuous mode would be better, allowing the context of the post referenced to be more readily taken on, but presumably more tricky to arrange. Further thought needed.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/punctures.html.

YouGov

Another YouGov day today. Once again they wanted to know what I knew and what I thought about all kinds of financial services outfits, with about two thirds of those being offered being outfits which I had heard of.

However, the questions asked presupposed a high level of interest in such matters. They expected me, for example, to remember with whom I insured our car. Which, given that the days of sitting with the same reputable insurer for ever are over, is quite unrealistic. Even more unrealistic was the idea that I had heard anything positive or negative about, say, Hiscox. But I could do the one about whether I would be embarrassed if a family member worked for Hiscox because, as it happens, I find their advertisements on railway platforms rather offensive and I would, in consequence, be so embarrassed. See reference 1.

YouGov then branched off onto my equally non-existent use of air travel and my near non-existent use of hotels. Perhaps as a government pensioner (I am fairly sure that that sort of thing was covered in the start up questions when I first joined their panel), I am expected to be more into that sort of thing.

But I was spared the excursion into coffee shops & fast food, another favourite with the YouGov people and another sector of which I have little knowledge and almost no experience.

Perhaps my failure to meet all these expectations accounts for my continuing failure to win anything in the prize draws offered as a reward for my participation.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/tooting-trivia.html.

More suspicions

BH has become convinced that somebody has touched up the spook marks noticed at reference 1. The allegation being that someone is going around touching up all the marks, as opposed to getting on and doing whatever it is that the marks are supposed to mark.

Checking the picture at reference 1 against the marks now in the road myself, I am not so sure, but just to be on the safe side we have given some thought to what might be going on, and have come to the conclusion that we have learned nothing new about the ownership of the marks. Given the paucity of the data available to us, one owner is just as likely to embark on a round of touching up as another. Dr Bayes, on this occasion, is of no help at all.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/suspicions.html.

Clandon redux

I read in the Guardian that the National Trust have settled for a compromise on the burnt out Clandon: rebuild downstairs, recycle upstairs. My last visit to which was noticed at reference 1 and my last thoughts on which were noticed at reference 2.

For what it is worth, I still think that the Trust have come to the wrong answer, despite the pull of the picture left, suggesting that much of the load bearing structure, apart from the timber, is more or less intact.

While there has clearly been some kind of announcement - see the Guardian of Tuesday 19th January - I have not been able - in a few minutes anyway - to turn up the report - perhaps written by a bunch of expensive consultants - perhaps written by a bunch of retired civil servants (such luminati as the Director General of the the National Trust and, indeed, your truly) - which must have been written about the whole business. A report containing lots of chapters, hierarchically numbered paragraphs, graphics and appendices. At least one management summary. At least three options, not counting the null option. A contents page spanning two pages at the very least. Perhaps a forward signed off with the facsimile signature of the almighty. So what I write here does not have the benefit of the wisdom no doubt contained therein. But here goes...

I suppose my biggest thought is that it is very odd to be spending serious money to recreate this treasure of inequality. This treasure, the construction of which was made possible by exploitation of the working classes, the construction of which was intended to symbolise, to advertise the power, presence & permanence of the oligarchy which ran the country at the time. A world in which servants moved around in a parallel world so as not to disturb the goings on of the house's real inhabitants - although to be fair, I don't think that Clandon went as far in that department as some other similar buildings in the neigbbourhood, for example Cleremont.

But perhaps appropriate in the sense that the distribution of wealth in this country is as skewed presently as it has been for a long time. Perhaps even - I have not checked - approaching the level of inequality around at the time Clandon was built.

There is also the consideration that there is a huge appetite for shows of this kind, shows which taken together clock up millions of visits a year. We all swoon with pleasure at the sight of the glories that we were never intended to share by the people who once lived in them. We gobble up the period soaps on television which cater for the same appetites. Not to mention the documentaries lovingly dwelling on the recreation of the very roof tiles used by the original builders. Camel hair reinforcement and all.

Perhaps there has been a huge fight inside the National Trust, and Ghosh is just fronting the collective - not to say unanimous - view which has emerged from that fight - with it not being the custom in this country for the governing classes to exhibit the interior workings of their governance. What does that other ex civil servant, this one with a spell at the Treasury to his credit, Chairman Parker think? A chairman who does not seem to be anything like as much in the public eye as his predecessor, Simon Jenkins - but then he doesn't have a column, a pulpit in a national newspaper to advertise his wares.

My suggestion, for what is worth, is that they should knock the place down and build a shiny new mental hospital on the footprint. A shiny new mental hospital in beautiful grounds (complete, I seem to recall, with its own church on the perimeter) to provide asylum for some at least of the many casualties of our (collective) dash for wealth. A grand opportunity to emulate Victorian philanthropic endeavour, an opportunity which is not going to be repeated very often.

A move which would probably require the trust deeds of the National Trust to be be amended, but I am sure that where there was a will there would be a way.

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

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/05/to-clandon-or-not-to-clandon.html.

Butterflies 5

There were quite a lot of very fancy cameras in the hot house, working out on the butterflies. So I kept my telephone's powder dry for the trees.

Group search key: wsa.

Butterflies 4

Group search key: wsa.

Butterflies 3

The stolen Brussels sprouts, shortly before they were taken with a fine scrambled eggs on brown bread.

Perhaps I should add in my defense, that a lot of the sprouts appeared to have been left to rot on the plants and that it was hard to see any outstanding horticultural purpose for them to be there. But then, I suppose they all say that.

PS: In passing I might say that, to Falstaff, I think that scrambled eggs were known either as buttered eggs or eggs and butter. No mention of milk. Furthermore in these healthy times of ours, I dare say there are people who use vegetable oil rather than butter, although, not having tried it, I am a bit sceptical how that might turn out. See reference 1. Also MWW, this last to be seen shortly at the Rose. Hopefully the relevant lines will not be cut.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/henry-iv-part-i-part-ii.html

Group search key: wsa.

Butterflies 2

Spiffing leeks, a little way up from the Brussels sprouts. They put anything that I have managed to grow completely in the shade.

Group search key: wsa.

Butterflies 1

I was once told that if one has a farm, one has two options. You can either take the low road, use very little bought in fertilizer, take things gently and raise a few crops and a few animals, perhaps making a living on the way. Or you can take the high road, use lots of bought in fertilizer, lots of equipment and raise rather more crops and animals. By deploying more capital you make more money - but with it come more worries and greater exposure to the vicissitudes of the markets.

Wisley, on this account are taking the high road. They offer lots of splendid gardens, lots of splendid trees and one very large hot house. Plus other attractions too numerous to enumerate here. But all this costs of lot of money, even if a lot of your gardeners were students or volunteers - which might be the case, but I don't know to be the case. So Wisley does lots of catering, a shop, a garden centre (some of the plants in which come from the same wholesaler as is used by the rather nearer Chessington Garden Centre) and attractions. Various attractions put on in the course of the Wisley year. So in late January the very large hot house is turned over to a lot of exotic butterflies, most of which are hatched on the premises. No idea where the eggs come from, and their web site seems to be more interested in selling me tickets than telling me about eggs.

So on Saturday to Wisley with butterflies in mind, to find that lots of other people have had the same idea, complete with lots of children, a fair proportion of whom were far too young to take much interest. There were also signs that over the next year or so they might move to charging extra (entry to Wisley is presently free to members, with membership being good value for us as we live quite nearby) and to timed tickets, for all the world like one of those shows at the National Gallery. The net result was that one did not get to see all that much of the splendid plants on offer - but, to be fair, the butterflies were pretty splendid too. With the bigger ones having oddly drooping wings with a flight to match. It was also very hot, all the more so as it had just turned cold outside.

Out and off to the main café for tea and cake, my cake being a rather fine,mainly yellow confection of polenta with almonds and apricots on top.

From there to inspect Battleston Hill, to find magnolias well in bud and quite a lot of camelias in flower. But the star of this part of the visit was the stand of eucalyptus trees, with their patterned bark looking really special in the winter light. From their down to the trial beds of Brussels Sprouts from which I abstracted three sprouts, it being too late by the time that I found the notice about thieves being prosecuted. Another bed, not looking particularly special, but clearly special to someone, came with a fairly serious looking electric fence, perhaps serving to deter both humans and rabbits.

The trial beds field was ringed with some fine trees, including some sequoia, sequoia which are visible but not really shown off to good effect in the snap above.

Quite a lot of snowdrops, some winter aconites and a few small daffodils, maybe the sort called narcissii. Whereas my winter aconites, in the new daffodil bed, seem to have more or less vanished.

One good tweet in the form of a pair of chaffinches, the first sighting of such around here for a while, with the last notices being from January 2014 and December 2012. With a similarly thin record at the other place, that is to say reference 1.

One very strange sedum on the way out. I remember 'sedum monstrous' or something like that but the best that google can do with that is something called 'stapelia leendertziae cristata', the wrong plant but with some of the more droopy offerings having vaguely the same shape and habit. Must remember to snap its ticket next time.

Last visit more than a couple of months ago. See reference 2. Notice also the lamentable failure to settle to a standard protocol for search keys.

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

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/wisley-1.html.

Group search key: wsa.

Those power people again

Following the activity reported on a couple of weeks ago (see reference 1), there has been different activity in Longmead Road. On two days running last week I passed the three Power Networks vans illustrated, parked up next to holes in the road, but with no-one in sight. Perhaps on both occasions the workmen had taken a walk to the caravan on the green just up the road, the dispensary of bacon sandwiches and other necessities of working life. See reference 2.

They must have been quite serious holes in the road because there were more holes in the road outside Pound Lane School, perhaps a hundred yards away. Still no workmen, but there were two impressive looking machines humming away in the playground, possibly generators, certainly something to do with back-up supply.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/workmanship.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/longmead-fall.html.

Lost and found

An item found on SouthWest Trains, with the bowl of the foreshortened teaspoon giving some idea of actual size.

We spent some moments wondering what exactly it was, coming down on ornament for the younger lady, perhaps something to be worn from the ear. There was writing but no hall mark (at least we thought not), so perhaps a couple of pounds for two from a stall in the market.

There was then debate about how it attached to the ear, with me opting for pushing the clip at one o'clock through the hole in the ear lobe, while BH, who has pierced ears, thought that perhaps the idea was to hang this ring off some more delicate ring, with this last being pushed through said hole.

Thinking further this morning, I think that the small knob on the very end of the clip suggests intended for pushing through. So no additional ring. In any event, now headed for metal recycling along with various other odds and ends, having decided against placing it on our front wall and seeing how long it would have taken to go. See reference 1.

PS: quite impressed with the close-up job done by the telephone here, without my doing more than tapping the camera spot on the screen a few times. Perhaps it liked the bright morning light in our west facing kitchen. Click to enlarge to get it in all its once Nokia now MS glory

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/11/the-wall-test.html.

Marylebone Lane

Being in Marylebone Lane the other day, on the way to the Wigmore Hall, quite near Bond Street Tube Station, I was surprised to see through some plate glass some pictures of very lightly clad young ladies, without succeeding, as I passed by, in working out what they might be doing there.

Checking with google this afternoon, I find that the place is a higher grade girlie bar, the lower grade cousins of which have been largely swept away from Soho, a little to the south and rather more to the east. See reference 1.

The whole area used to be, and perhaps still is, owned by the Dukes of Portland, a lot who, according to google, came across with William of Orange and went on to make some very successful marriages, with money that is. Do they know what one of their buildings is being used for? Would it bother them?

Consulting my copy of the sixth duke's memoirs - a fascinating book picked up from I now know not where - with the duke seeming to have quite an eye for the ladies - I find nothing about Marylebone Lane, but am reminded that he also liked a good shoot, once entertaining the arch duke who was later assassinated at Sarajevo for some of the same. Also keen on horses. Clearly time that I read them again - a counterpoise to the Sitwell memoirs I have noticed in the past, with the Sitwells being near neighbours by county, not to say ducal, standards. See reference 2.

PS: punters seeking Bond Street Tube Station in gmaps should take care that they do not take directions to the one in Blackpool, actually an electrical goods shop, but handy for South Pier, a favourite spot for visiting sea anglers.

Reference 1: http://www.socats.co.uk/index.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/05/osbert.html.

Preludes

Back to Smith Square on Friday past for our next installation of Chopin from Mailley-Smith, maybe six weeks since the last. See reference 1. The main draw for me was the 24 preludes, not heard since we hear Pollini back in 2011, and with two or three outings before that - including the Australian Piers Lane, described as a showman. Not seen or heard of him since. See reference 2.

It was rather cold by 1800 or so when we set off, so brain not really up and running. Evidence for this being the purchase of the wrong train tickets and getting into a tangle with a pole which I thought was blocking an aisle seat on the train. However, as it turned out, getting the wrong tickets moved us to explore getting a bus from Vauxhall, rather than getting the tube to Pimlico, with the result that we caught an 88 bus which got us to Smith Square in record time, plenty of time to take refreshment in the basement, not too hot and crowded for once. We passed on the pre-concert concert.

Up to the hall to find our young lady enthusiast to the right and another lady, not so young to the left. This last was something in shipping insurance with Newfoundland connections and seemed to know Canada pretty well. I was slightly miffed to find that, from her shipping connections, she was able to wangle rides on cargo boats to Canada, partly because her aversion to flying was a lot stronger than mine. A lot less than the cost of taking a cruise ship to New York - which was the only vaguely viable alternative that I had been able to turn up. But she reacted with some horror to my suggestion - founded on recollection of some weekend magazine article - that Newfies ate whales and seals and stuff like that; perhaps she was a veggie.

The concert was very good, once again, including one piece from when Chopin was 12 (a high proportion of the famous seem to have been precociously very good at at least something, if not what they subsequently became famous for) and another which was only published posthumously. Mazurkas continued good, and the preludes pleased as ever.

After the concert a little talk with the enthusiast about how, in such a programme played without notes or score, one did not come to lose one's place from time to time. Either play the wrong piece or jump into the wrong piece from the right piece - not that I would be likely to notice either accident. I think that the enthusiast said that such things happened to her quite often. A computer score, such as I have seen twice now (see reference 3), would, when it was working, get around this problem. It could also pop up chatty introductory notes to share with the audience, should you be that sort of performer.

After the show, thought to try an 88 bus again, at least if one of those turned up before a taxi. As it happened, the street containing the relevant bus stop, possibly John Islip Street, was very quiet and where, tired of waiting, we just caught the first bus that came along, a C10, which took an interesting route to Victoria, swinging through the back of Pimlico, on the way passing an elaborately dressed grocer's shop, lights blazing in the wilderness. It being past ten by then we got to wondering whether he had to take his display down at the close of business each day, or whether he had some tent like contraption he could draw down over it. Did he have any trouble with drunks?

Then, entrained from Victoria, we were prompted to wonder why George Clooney is so much in the news. I think I have only knowingly seen one film with him in it, but the chap seems to pop up everywhere, often with his new young wife. Maybe he has a good touch when it comes to opening shops and fetes - or maybe he just has a very good publicity agent. Checking wikipedia this morning, I find that he is busy with various good causes and he gets to chat with Obama about world problems. Never ceases to amaze me the standing we accord successful luvvies; we have moved on since they were told to use the back entrance lest they dirty the guests.

We also picked up a Red Bull bulletin, a magazine which claimed that one could pay £2.50 for it. A bit like the country house magazines read by ladies, that is to say a magazine full of show-off stuff that your man in the street could dream about, maybe aspire to. So a lot of rugged holidays and a lot of bronzed young ladies. Leavened with the odd posh watch and some instructions about how to deal with a grizzly bear, should one get up close and personal.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/12/by-appointment.html.

Reference 2: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=preludes+chopin.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/dorking-time-again.html.

A snip

I came across this fine set of books from Wiley in the course of trying to find something completely different, a set which costs approximately ten times more than the other offerings that I came across - not that I can afford them either. Presumably targeted at the libraries of various organs of government. Perhaps those of consultancies in this line of work. But how many individuals?

The pdf of the table of contents runs to six pages, pages which suggest a large family of contributors. I don't suppose that even they get free copies of the whole thing, just a couple of reprints of their own contributions, on the grounds that it is nice for contributors to see how their contribution looks when set up in real type.

From where, for some reason, I associate to the document that was so secret that the chap who wrote it was excluded from the circulation list. A small prize is offered to the reader who comes up with the best explanation of why one might do such a thing.

PS: the table of contents does not tell us when the various chapters were written. How many years was construction of this magnificent book spread over? How much use is a book put to bed over five years ago in this fast moving world of ours? Why don't they do it online with regular updates, all included in the price, in the way of the more modern lawyers?

Kitchen life 2

The scone cutters of the previous post. Cookie cutters to our friends over the water. The one on the left is that usually used for scones.