Wicksteed

When I was small, roundabouts like the one illustrated left were common but are now deemed to be dangerous or at the very least obsolete.

Even so, I was pleased to find this morning that Wicksteed are still alive and well and still offering a full range of playground equipment and a showcase park. Perhaps if had we visited the place when we lived nearer Kettering than we do now, I might have got a bigger picture of a retro-roundabout than the otherwise very suitable one which google offer now.

See next post, the one to come, for relevance.

Winter in Ottawa

A few days ago I noticed the snow we had at Epsom (see reference 1). Today I get shown some real snow from a similar sort of street in western Ottawa.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/winter-in-epsom-2.html.

The ladies of Spain

A couple of weeks or so ago, I mentioned the gentlemen - or at least the hildalgos - of Spain doing each other in with knives.

Then yesterday, I heard a knife story about a lady of Spain. It seems that her husband really got on her nerves with his scratching behind his ears while watching the Spanish version of 'Big Brother'. This made her so mad that she was ramping up to stick a kitchen knife in him. But just before take-off she paused and phoned the police. Come quick she says, come quick before I do something terrible to my husband. So the police did come quick and they calmed the situation down, with their solution including some soothing cream for application to the backsides of ears.

My interest in this case is the notion that you can be mad enough about someone to be on the verge of sticking a knife into them, but in control enough to pause and phone the police.

How real was the madness? Has the idea of being mad simply been used as an excuse to get the police in to put the husband to shame? Was she really mad about him watching 'Big Brother' (you can take a peek on YouTube to see the sort of things they get up to), with the ear scratching business just being a screen?

There was the additional factor that the lady in question was a cook, with cooks and chefs being well known temperamentals.

I remember the one time I got mad enough at someone to think of using the Irish spade (the sort of long-shafted spade without a handle but with a blade shaped like the spades on playing cards) I was holding on him. But it did not occur to me to phone the police, not that that would have been easy at a time well before before the invention of mobile phones. Maybe the significant difference was my lack of experience of both anger and anger management - whereas my Spanish lady knew all about both. Knew how to canalise her anger, to use her anger as a management tool, whereas I just get angry, hot and bothered, which is much less effective.

I associate to a split in personality, but the sort where one of the splits is aware of the other. One has two personalities running along in the one brain, with one of them being able to stand back and admire (or not) the other. Another trick which I can't manage.

PS: I also associate to Mr, Karenin's way of cracking his fingers which so got on the nerves of his wife Anna,

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/a-country-of-contrasts.html.

Dante at Dorking

On Sunday to the Dorking Halls to hear the Dante Quartet, another quartet with Cambridge connections, along with the Endellion. They also share links to Prussia Cove and 'Death and the Maiden'. See references 1 and 2 - the whole business has a long pedigree.

On this occasion in the Martineau Hall rather than the main hall, smaller but otherwise very similar in style and kitted out for the occasion with movable raking seats.

We had the Haydn string quartet Op.33 No. 1, the Kodály Op.10 and the Schubert D.810, aka 'Death and the Maiden'. Haydn good, Kodály new to us and good, Schubert odd. Part of the oddness may have been the acoustics of the hall, also new to us, which seemed to result in a rather coarse & grating sound. Or it may have been that we were sitting too close to the action, although this last, while usually making for a different sound, does not make for an odd one.

The second violin had introduced the Schubert as being gaudy, which I had taken to mean a bit loud, a bit over emotional, perhaps a little vulgar and certainly a bit OTT. Not a descriptor of this quartet that I had heard before, but what with one thing and another, this was certainly how it came across on this occasion. Certainly when compared with the Beethoven Op.59 No.1 of reference 3.

Will I ever recover my enthusiasm for this particular Schubert, of which I have been very fond for many years?

Another short bit of Kodály for an encore. Perhaps someone to investigate. Do I hear Spottify calling? Or will YouTube do the business?

PS: the first violin was born in England of Polish parents, making her way through the Yehudi Menuhin School, at a time when the man himself was still there, to Cambridge. She has also worked with the Radu Lupu whom we heard do the Mozart violin sonatas with Szymon Goldberg maybe forty years ago. So perhaps she is very much of our own generation.

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

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/der-tod-und-das-madchen.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/tuition.html.

A real car

For once in a while, a real car (all the way from the US of A) came visiting, complete with dual fuel capability. I learned that you can usually rely on BP garages to supply the LPG, which works out a bit more than half the price of petrol, with this last being needed for starting and backup.

An owner who takes cleaning his car rather more seriously than I do, although my car is cunningly placed in this shot so as to look its best. Not too shameful.

Trolley 23

Clay Hill Green, first spotted around midday yesterday and collected around 1000 today. M&S.

Decision time

Following the puzzle reported at reference 1, I have now gotten around to finishing the clearing up, after what I now take to be a quite reasonable job by the fire brigade. Shovel and plastic lawn rake were just the ticket.

It will be interesting to watch the progress of the grass as spring unfolds. How much of a scar will be visible this time next year?

A mixture of broken glass, melted metal (presumably from a battery), bits and pieces of engine, bits and pieces of tyre and earth. The glass was mostly the shattered sort you get from a car windscreen, but the debris struck me as being that from a motorbike. Do bike windscreens shatter in the same way as car windscreens?

The collected waste illustrated occasioned some head scratching at the nearby waste transfer site. Did it count as inert being what was left after a fire? The decision was that it was not and that it should go for land fill. Now on its way.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/a-puzzle.html.