Remainder shelf (2)

I reported buying shrinkery on 24th April and can now report on the second of the two books making up that package - 'My Father's Keeper' by Julie Gregory, the best selling author of 'Sickened', a lady who seems to have emerged from her strange - if not awful - upbringing to make a living out of it.

The book exemplifies the difficulty about writing about this sort of thing. If you are the subject of the interesting experience, although you might have the inside knowledge, you might not be best placed to write about it. Perhaps because it is all too charged, perhaps because you can't write. On the other hand, if you are not the subject, you might be constrained by considerations of privacy. I can write what I like about myself, but not about someone else. And while one can write anonymized accounts, the process of anonymization might well damage the accounting. Or be constrained by lack of knowledge. In this case I found the writing rather tiresome at first, but it seemed to get better as the story progressed.

The story of a girl with two difficult parents, both biological, with the focus in this second book being on the father, who while having some good points, does not sound like a very good father, the not very good not being a question of fault, rather just the way things were. But I felt I could really see how a bad upbringing could be transmitted from one generation to the next. How the bad things in my upbringing might turn into bad things in me which might turn into bad things in my children's upbringing which might turn into bad things in them. This being one reason why some people with difficult backgrounds might think it better not to have children. It was also interesting to see 1) how abuse of an authority position damages both parties, in particular how the abused person might try too hard to appease the abuser. Develop habits of appeasement which can't easily be shaken off. A problem perhaps related to that of hostages who, over time, get uncomfortably (for us outside) close to their captors. And 2) how nearly normal a fairly abnormal person can be; how the abnormal bits can be quite confined in time, with the rest of the time the person functioning pretty much as everyone else. Outside the immediate family you might easily not notice.

Amused - perhaps I should have been shocked - to read that in Ohioan hospitals they have signs asking  people not to bring guns in. As usual, Professor Google knew all about them. Less amused by the rather gross humour which, and the rather gross people who, seem to feature in much Ohioan life, at least as portrayed in this book.

Sufficiently interested by this second book to order up the first from Epsom Library - although this last required a bit of fiddling about as the author search facility of the Surrey Library Catalogue is not that clever, or at least not clever enough to be able to deal with me. From which we learn incidentally that while the library might have dumped at least one copy of the second book they are still holding multiple copies of the first.

PS: read in the NYRB about a new universal library on the internet yesterday evening, to pick up from where Google was forced to put down, for reasons to do, I think, with copyright - see http://www.dp.la/. I have not yet got a grip on how it works (it is said to be work in progress), but hopefully that will come. I was also made to feel old in that I remember, many years ago, reading the book which started the author of the piece on his climb to his present eminence. A book about massacring cats, published in 1984, bought that year and which is presently on the top shelf, having survived recent culls. A touch dusty.

Jack the Dripper

We are honoured here in Surrey to have a budding Jack the Dripper in our midst.

Can't afford proper canvases so he makes up his board using second hand tongue & groove, recovered from garden sheds. Can't afford proper paint so he makes do with second hand bitumen, recovered from roofing felt.

Good stuff, but sadly too big to be conveniently hung in one of the exhibitions at Bourne Hall where his oeuvre might reach a wider audience than reaches his back yard.

Note the artist's  interesting use of the verticals of the board to capture the intensity of oriental calligraphy. Maybe he has spent quality time in eastern Asia.

PS: pleased to report that yesterday's batch of fixes for Windows 8, spontaneously downloaded from the horse's mouth, seem to have fixed the 'require password on waking' bug. At least I have been asked for a password in those circumstances twice so far this morning. Which is a lot better than the never I have had during the last couple of weeks or so.

The rocks of Rochester

Following the near miss during our visit to the Kentish jigsaw on or about 27th December last, we finally made it to Rochester last week.

Following much discussion over toast (with very fine new French marmalade from the good mummy ('Bonne Maman') marque), we opted for the train rather than drive and we further opted for day trip rather than overnight, the thinking being that parking in Rochester, an ancient town, might be a bit of a pain and it was unlikely that any hotel actually in the town was going to have integral parking.

The visit was in three parts: cathedral, castle and guildhall. Cathedral very old - if heavily restored over the years - and rather unusual. Some old carving, not quite as exuberant as that at Ely but tendencies in that direction. Quite a lot of rather good stained glass, presumably mainly Victorian. Quiet and pleasant cloister for the consumption of sandwiches, followed by tea in an old outbuilding. An outbuilding with its masonry the wrong way around; that is to say corners, frames and edges in brick with stone being used to fill in - the more usual arrangement being the other way around. The mortar between the stones was decorated with slivers of flint, pushed into the wet mortar on the diagonal.

Castle also very old, with a five or six storey square keep in very good condition. Last serious activity was to provide a venue for the visit of the Holy Roman Emperor and his suite - around 1,000 of them in full parade armour - in 1400 or so. Very Neibelungenlied (see, for example, July 25th 2010). Some of the rooms had once been rather grand, with rather grand pillars, some of which were still visible. The place reminded me of a modern tower block, albeit inside out. So rather than a hollow central lift shaft holding up the floors around it, we had similarly hollow walls containing the various services around the outside, with floors up the inside. Massive great holes let into the walls for the floor joists, maybe 9 by 9 (inches). Didn't make it to the top as my vertigo kicked in half way up and completely overlooked the fact that one of the four corner towers had had to be rebuilt after being badly knocked about when the place was besieged by Good King John; something to look out for next time - along with the monument to the forty pigs whose lard contributed in some important way to the knocking about.

Fine view from the outer bailey of the rocks of Rochester across the water, that is to say the white cliffs of Rochester. River cliffs, which our friends from across the big water might call bluffs.

Running out of puff by now, but onto to a quick visit to the Guildhall Museum, where, in the handsome council chamber, we came across Sir Clowdisley Shovell again (see, for example, August 27th 2008 in the other place). As well as being a naval hero of some note, he was also a local boy responsible for much philanthropy in the town and was, in consequence, honoured by a full length portrait in said chamber. It was a decent local museum with a good collection of exhibits, geological, ancient, old and more recent, which will bear more time on our next visit. There were, for example, some interesting examples of straw work, being jewellery boxes and such decorated with straw, rather in the way of marquetry. Never seen such a thing before. The work of prisoners of war in the hulks in the 18th and 19th centuries, these hulks being the subject of this particular part of the museum. There was also a rather odd cherub hanging face down from the ceiling of the main stairwell: white, naked, chubby and maybe five feet long from top to toe. Not sure that social workers would approve of such a thing if it were being fashioned and erected now.

In fact, rather an odd town altogether with lots of sweet shops, novelty shops, charity shops and book shops. Clearly not where the locals do their day to day shopping. Visited one of the book shops where I paid for my visit with a rather handsome £5 copy of 'The British Pharmaceutical Codex' from my birth year, 1949. A first impression (of a paltry 20,000 copies) full of all kinds of fascinating stuff. No entries for heroin or methadone but there are for heparin (of warfarin fame), honey (pure) and for tartrazine, which last surprised me, having assumed the stuff to have been of more recent origin. I also learned that, despite the name, surgical cat gut is made from sheep gut. I am now wondering whether such a book still exists, with what I presume to be a massive increase in the number of pharmaceuticals to be listed and their rate of change: the 1949 edition was getting on for three inches thick. Perhaps the thing only exists now in some electrical form.

Finally closed the visit to Rochester with a visit to the butcher, one A.E Capon & Son (a very suitable name for a poultry man), where we bought one home cooked sausage roll (room temperature) for immediate consumption and some chuck steak for evening consumption with the Rioja from the Cabin of the last but one post. Chuck steak cut very small and fried in a little rape seed oil from the Co-op. Add at little water, a little celery, one orange pepper and one medium onion and simmer for an hour. Serve with, in addition to the Rioja, boiled white rice and boiled white cabbage. Excellent. I think I have decided that dishes are not improved by adding lots of onion. One was quite enough for pound and a bit of meat, for which full marks to the Capon.

PS: jam lovers might care to visit http://www.lovebonnemaman.co.uk/.

Jonathan Franzen

The book which I acquired at St. Luke's was an early Franzen called 'Strong Motion', and for once in a while I shall recycle this book only slightly read.

Franzen is clearly a clever chap and I dare say his portrait of middling urban types in the US is true enough. But I don't have to like it, his scraping around at the bottom of the behavioural barrel or his seeming preoccupation with bodily fluids. I think I can say that I have had enough of him, having now done two and a bit of his books.

More fun to be had from the interesting list biro'd into the first page of the book. What is 'benefit' doing on such a list? Is this a sturdy beggaress taking in the benefit office as she trundles around town on her chores? More fun still to sit in the 'New Sphynx' bar to see if one could spot the author but sadly, Professor Google does not seem to know of the place, if indeed it is in London at all.

Jerwood 2

Off to St. Luke's on Thursday to hear Britten (suite for violin and piano) and Shostokovitch (sonata for viola and piano) from Lawrence Power and Simon-Crawford-Phillips.

Off to a good start with there being a Bullingdon at Waterloo Bridge and clocking just 19 minutes to get to Old Street. Giving plenty of time for a bacon sandwich at the trusty Market Café and a quick browse in the neighbouring charity shop, from which I emerge with one book and two DVDs, of which more in due course.

Onto the concert, where I did not know either piece, but I liked the Britten in patches and liked the Shostakovich a lot. It was explained that this last was the last thing that Shostokovich wrote, written while he was in hospital dying of lung cancer and that he never got to hear it - which associated to the fact that my music loving father, whom I think knew Shostaklovich's work well, died of lung cancer around the same time. The piece was said to be full of musical quotes - from his own work and that of others - and that the third and last movement was, in the main, a tribute to Beethoven with most of the tunes taken from the same Moonlight Sonata which I had heard the other week at the RFH. All very strange, with the piano part seeming to be simply a toned down version of the Beethoven and the viola part a sort of echo, some bars behind. The violinist, who did the explaining, thought that the knowledge that this would be his last piece does come through in the music. This did not get through to me, but I did get to wonder how a production of this sort - be it a piece of music, a piece of cabinet work or a pot - might be affected by the knowledge that it was to be one's last. Would one try just to turn out a good piece, very much in the usual way, or would the production be a more self conscious, valedictory affair? I suppose, as so often, it would all depend.

Second hop on the Bullingdon from Finsbury Leisure Centre to Union Street a bit closer to the line at 27 minutes. With the bonus of coming across the second Jerwood Hall of the day, containing yet another café but also a small gallery, containing inter alia the picture illustrated. Checking today I find that there is a whole Jerwood Foundation (http://www.jerwood.org/), with the founder being one John Jerwood, a John Jerwood who seems to be very private, as a quick search revealed nothing more about him. I must try a bit harder when I am at a loose end.

Third hop from Southwark Station 2 back to Waterloo Roundabout, a piffling 5 minutes. Now slightly confused as I had thought that I had started and finished at the same stand.

Onto Waterloo Station where I bought a second loaf from Carluccio's, not quite as fresh as the first but still quite acceptable, and a couple of bottles of wine from the new to me 'Cabin', seemingly a newish venture from a poshish looking wine merchant with some odd locations called Corney & Barrow (http://www.corneyandbarrow.com/). Quite a swanky choice at what struck me as quite reasonable prices for a railway station so I treated myself to a Rioja and a Gevrey Chambertin, this last pretty much top of the range for me, although no where near the Cabin's top of the range.

Home to refreshment at TB where I learnt the interesting fact that tube drivers who have three jumpers (people who jump in front of their train) get retired, presumably on full pay until they reach retiring age, then full pension. Not quite the same thing, but I wonder if there is anything similar for lorry drivers and cyclists?

A day at the races

The people at the Epsom racecourse see fit to give free tickets to Epsom residents, so after a very modest amount of internet palaver we find ourselves in possession of two free tickets to the Spring Meeting, tickets which provide access to second class and a good part of the first class grandstands on this not hugely busy day.

Free bus from town centre up to the Derby Arms where we wait for 5 or 10 minutes before deciding that we might just as well proceed into the grandstand and go for bacon rolls (long, but not exactly a baguette of the 'Upper Crust' variety) instead of a beverage.

From bacon rolls we pass to the parade ring where we are able to pass our expert eyes over the runners for the first race. I remember something about a sweating horse being bad at this stage; a fit horse should not yet have worked up a sweat. Then I remember something else about how an unscrupulous yard might chuck a bucket of water over their horse to mislead the punters - this being a day or so after the famed Godolphin yard was caught feeding illegal substances to its horses. So we are not much further ahead.

BH puts some money on the Fallon horse in the first race, but some other horse leads all the way, to be pipped at the post by another. Couldn't have been more than a couple of inches or so in it, all very exciting. But no good to us with Fallon fourth. Interesting that the horse that nearly won had led from the front, more or less the whole way - an approach to a race which I was once told was favoured in the US but not here, where we think it much more sporting to let some other poor sod do all the work and make the pace and then steam past him in the home straight. Talking of him, not very sure whether the horses were him or her, but there were some lady jockeys and somebody told us that lady jockeys were much better these days than they used to be; perhaps the ladies are the only ones still prepared to put up with the grotty conditions accorded to apprentice jockeys.

Onto the favourite for the second race, which led all the way and won by half a length or something - although at the time I thought we had lost. BH rested on her laurels at this point, being somewhat ahead, and we were just spectator sportspeople for the remainder of our visit. Which included another exciting win by a nose - in which circumstances all the theatricals of the jockeys bounding about in the saddle might well make a difference. Thought about chucking a few quid at rank outsiders at 66 to 1 - in memory of the time when we backed 'Jet Ski Lady' - and didn't, which was just as well as it was not a good day for outsiders. The chaps setting the odds had known their business.

Out to the yard to find the van illustrated, probably not covering his costs on this day. But he did still sell tobacco, as it says on the tin, including some quite respectable looking cigars, although I am not sure that I would risk buying a respectable cigar from such a person. A person who told us that he has to cover up from 2015. But maybe the business will be finished by then: during the day we saw one person smoking a proper cigar and probably less than ten others smoking cigarettes, and this on an occasion which would have been full of puffers when we first started racing at Epsom more then twenty years ago.

Passed on the smokes, but I did queue up for a couple of mini bottles of white wine which were quite satisfactory. As was the standard of fancy dress: quite enough fancy ladies in full war paint to keep us entertained between races.

See http://www.epsomdowns.co.uk/ for the next occasion.

PHI

Now finished the second pass of an unusual book called 'PHI', no less, according to the subtitle, than a voyage from the brain to the soul. Offered by Giulio Tononi.

Unusual started when the package from Amazon landed on the mat, as for a book of its size it was unusually heavy. Weight which looked to be caused by the use of the sort of paper used in art books which can take good quality colour printing. Next step was clearly to check out the publisher, Pantheon. According to Wikipedia the publisher 'was founded in 1942 in New York City by European intellectuals who had come to the United States to escape fascism and the Holocaust' but which more recently 'moved aggressively into the comics market'. In the meantime the abridged story seems to be that Random House bought Pantheon, RCA bought Knopf and gave it Pantheon, RCA bought Random House, RCA sold Random House, Bertelsmann AG bought Random House.  Bertelsmann AG (http://www.bertelsmann.com/) is a large German multi-media outfit of which I had not previously heard, but which turns an annual profit in excess of €500m and which had rather a bad war, in the sense that it was heavily involved in work for the Nazi regime. But it survived to become what it is now.

Unusual continued when it turned out (I had bought the book blind apart from the name of the author) to be something of a Thames & Hudson job, in the form of a fantasy (if also scientific) tour through consciousness, complete with eminent tour guides (mainly now dead) and illustrated by all kinds of art works, mainly paintings, some tweaked.

One slightly irritating feature of the art works was that they were not labelled and one had to ferret around in the notes to find out about them. Tononi would no doubt argue that the labels of the pictures were not relevant to the tour. At least one major art gallery (I think in Philadelphia) makes the same point and does not label its paintings. A fat photo book about Kate Moss, pretty much pornography, does it as well, relegating labels and provenances ('first appeared in Harper's Bazaar, July 1978' sort of thing. There may also have been stuff about the film, the lens, the stop and all that photographic stuff) to the notes at the back. You can have a collectible version from Amazon for a snip at £129. But I find it rather irritating: are we to be denied the innocent, if more or less irrelevant, pleasure of knowing from where this or that striking image came from? Where we might go and see the original? Without going to all that bother.

But despite the oddities, the Tononi book was a useful canter through many of the odd features of the strange phenomenon which is our consciousness - and that of other, reasonably complex animals. We are invited to think about all kinds of odd effects which arise when consciousness is altered or damaged in some way or another, usually mechanically rather than chemically. We are invited to try and share the experience of a bat as it echo sounds its way around a pitch dark cave. When a bat sees red, it seems plausible that its experience of red is not that unlike ours: but what happens when it gets a ping from its echo sounder? Does it image the cave in some way that we would recognise? So the book was worth its money.

Even though I found the central argument unconvincing. So 1) one can measure the complexity of an information system such as a modern telephone or an ancient brain. 2) call this measure phi. 3) assert that consciousness is measured by phi. For large enough values of phi we have a consciousness of the sort that we know and love and that is all that there is to it. No need for further explanation. 4) as an aside, one can model this complexity by mapping the system onto an object in a multi-dimensional space, where the multi is measured in millions if not billions, Tononi and his friends not being satisfied with the dozen or so that even the most ambitious physicists make do with. Part of the book is given over to wandering through such an object.

But not that unconvincing that I won't try to run down some mathematical description of this space. The sort of description avoided in this determinedly non-technical presentation. I shall report back in due course.

Remainder shelf

Another visit to the remainder shelf at Bourne Hall Library resulted in another two books. What with one thing and another, the stock of books is climbing again, despite continuing, but clearly desultory, action to keep it down.

One of them was an easy and interesting read called 'The Woman Who Can't Forget', a memoir by Jill Price from Simon & Schuster. I had never heard of it before so I don't know how it came to Surrey Libraries - although Bourne Hall Remainders do have a particularly strong line in this sort of psychiatric social worker/shrinky sort of stuff. Maybe someone in the area is requesting the stuff, maybe a chuck out from the asylums of the Epsom Cluster spending more time with his or her family.

A lady with an unusual complaint, a complaint which on the one hand might be thought to be a gift, on the other as a disability. The gift being that she remembers pretty much everything that has happened to her. Certainly after the age of ten or so, and much stronger than usual prior to that. If you give her a date, she can say what day of the week that was and what happened. If you give her what happened, she can say the date, including the day of the week. Memories are popping into her mind, complete with the original emotions and smells, all the time, triggered by all sorts of chance events - or smells. Memories of, for example, childish rage at some childish check, stuff which is quite scary to experience as an adult and which most of us have forgotten.

The complaint was sufficiently unusual to be given the name hyperthymestic syndrome. Oddly, having an exceptional memory in this way does not mean that one is necessarily any good at the sort of memory needed to pass examinations at school or college. And in the case of this lady at least, a disability rather than a gift in the sense that there was plenty of difficulty & trouble in the first 40 years or so of her life.

Prompted to turn up my copy of 'Memory' by Mary Warnock from back in 1987, a book which is not into shrinkery or neurons at all, Warnock being of a more philosophical bent. More in the Mary Beard mould. I shall take a peek to see what it can still tell me after my recent diet of said shrinkery and neurons.

PS: and from the remainder shelf of Epsom Library, I have a memoir of Dante Gabriel Rossetti by his niece (the gent. one of whose pictures I admired on 9th January). I was reminded that he was into chloral and his wife was into laudanum - prompting the niece to talk of grandmotherly legislation to prevent people from indulging in such convenient palliatives. So maybe in 1949 - when this book was published - one talked of the grandmother state, a locution which has since morphed into the nanny state. Yet another topic for my MPhil in semiotics?

Spring is here!

You wouldn't really know from this picture, but the celandines at the bottom of the garden were absolutely spiffing this afternoon, despite the damage reported on 7th April. Spreading nicely from the one small clump removed from a Devon hedgerow, at the dead of night, at moon rise, some years ago.

The first leaf of the water lily relocated on the 21st March has reached the surface of its pond, maybe 3 inches in diameter. Newts investigating.

New daffodil bed a bit slack in so far as daffodils are concerned, but we do have some snake's head fritillaries.

The one and a bit year old clematis rüütel is shooting strongly.

And last but not least, I took my first afternoon snooze in the garden of the season this afternoon. Very nice it was too.

PS: we talk of partridges in a pear tree at Christmas. But up the morning after this post to see three fat wood pigeons perched precariously in the small plum tree outside the study window, munching away on the buds. Very comical. Blossom very nice too.

Spreadorist

Interested to read in yesterday's Guardian about the erring spreadsheet. It seems that a major plank in our Chancellor's evidence based policy making has got a touch warped. Or maybe a touch of dry rot. It seems that Professors Rheinegold and Bogoff late of the IMF and other illustrious institutions got a bit overconfident and published the spreadsheet containing the evidence on which some important policy advice was founded. A rival gang took the spreadsheet apart and found various errors, errors which did the evidence no good at all.

But I do have some sympathy for the careless professors. Excel is a very powerful tool and one can use it to build more or less arbitrarily complicated spreadsheets. The catch being that all the fun is in the building and it is all too easy to ease up on the boring old business of testing. Even those academic drudges who used to be called research assistants but who probably now have a grander title might baulk at it. Not part of my job description guv..

At about the time I packed up work, the drill was that you hired testers whose only business was to test and so test they did. It almost got to the point where you paid them by results: £A times the number of severity 1 errors plus £B times the number of severity 2 errors and so on and so forth. And if you did not keep them under control, they could get you under control, more or less taking over the management of the development cycle for the fattening of their budgets and pay cheques. But I doubt if an economic professor would care to burn up his budget in this way - it is not as if he has any penalty clauses hanging over his work. Maybe he just relies on good old academic rivalry to push any errors up to the surface, one gang being only too pleased to be able to trash the work of the other gang, although if they have good manners they try not to let it show too much what a bang they get out of said trashing. Much wailing and many crocodile tears instead.

There was also mention in the Guardian of a gang called the 'European Spreadsheet Risk Group' (see http://www.eusprig.org/) which made me wonder whether any thought was given to the risk of a disgruntled Microsoft employee or contractor putting time bombs into the Excel code itself. Something which would sit there, inactive, until triggered by something or other, when it would start corrupting execution in some reasonably subtle way. So that big spreadsheets slowly degraded, putting out all kinds of slightly duff stuff in the meanwhile. I would have thought that such code could be quite hard to detect; it would not need to be bulky and it would not need to do odd things with core data. Let us hope that our Security Service is on the case.

DIY fest episode 1

I noticed the tool rack action of the shed removal project on April 13th.

Since then we have pondered long and hard about whether to install some serious shelving to accommodate the various stuff arriving from the shed. First thought was angle iron, and not thinking to ask the Professor, took a look in B&Q (of which more in due course), where the main offering was plastic shelving with a reasonably sturdy looking 3 foot wide unit coming in at £80. Not quite the right width for the intended destination and one could not choose the number of shelves or their position.

Second thought was DIY, having recovered a whole lot more four by two sawn (moderately twisted) from the shed and having a fair bit of plywood left over from the trestle tables and the late lamented lid of the compost bin. Plus a whole lot of countersunk 3 inch No. 10 steel screws, only once used and only slightly chewed up.

So over the last couple of days, took the plunge and knocked up the garage table illustrated, the sort of thing that my father would have called shut-knife work, by which he presumably meant the sort of thing that the villagers of his youth would turn out, before the days of DIY. A bit more than six feet long and a bit less than three feet wide. Plenty of space under for the storage boxes which we already have and which would not have worked very well on shelves.

The four by two is in its third incarnation, that before the shed having been the stud work of the partition which once divided our dining room into a bedroom and a corridor. Table top new. Angle plates probably in their second incarnation. The (dark oak) lower rails probably in their third. I suspect north London origin for these last. Thought slightly posh and let the legs into the upper rails with half inch housings. Thought slightly more posh and actually patched the hole left in one of the legs by a previous housing, a patching which prompted me to sharpen my plane. I was pleased to find that I could still manage this. Not sure about a saw - too easy just to pop down to Travis Perkins and get one of those hard teeth affairs which you throw away when they eventually blunt. Good things, although when new they can make savage cuts in hands and forearms, something I had better avoid as a paid-up warfarin snuffler.

Discovered a large tin of varnish lurking at the back of the garage, a tin the seal of which had held and the varnish was fine, so gave the table top a coat, not for appearance's sake but rather to harden up the soft wood surface a bit. Make it a bit fitter to stand the knocks and dubious chemicals it will shortly be hosting.

So at zero expense at the point of consumption, I think I have avoided the expense and bother of shelving. The only error was that I forget that the garage floor slopes and I should have made the back legs half an inch or so shorter than the front legs. Although that might have been a pain later if I ever came to put the thing somewhere else; unlikely but possible. The only omission was not bothering to treat the bottom of the legs for damp with creosote (probably an illegal substance these days) or some such. But I dare say they will see me out as they are. Let the next man in line worry about that.

PS: but I did, at this point, ask the Professor about angle iron - someone must sell the stuff after all - and found that yes indeed, there are lots of people out there who sell the stuff. But it would probably have cost more than the plastic stuff and would probably have involved a lot more work to cut out assemble than was involved in the table we now have. So no regrets just yet.

Visit the jigsaw

Today being bright and sunny we thought of the spring flowers at Hampton Court, having last seen them on a visit not logged here but logged on our annual garden  tickets purchased on the occasion, vis Saturday 6th April. An occasion when we paid the Saturday rate at the railway station car park of £6, it being a matter of luck whether paying £1.50 an hour at the Court is a better deal. A plus of the railway station is that it makes it more likely that one will sample the exotic wares in Bridge Street, rather than settling for the decent but dull Heritage Canteen (aka the Tiltyard Café). On this occasion we paid the Sunday rate of £2, clearly a good deal. Plus walking across the bridge not a penance on what was a warm and sunny spring day. But oddly, not a day which brought the crowds out, at least not in the first half. Maybe tourists do marathons too.

Two weeks ago the daffodils in the Wilderness were just coming into flower. They looked well enough, but I think the day was quite cold and overcast. But today they were in full flood in the bright sunshine. Some going, lots here and some to come. Plus various other stuff in between, not to mention the seven trunked magnolia which was in splendid form (in the bit of garden to the immediate north of the rose garden. North north west if one is being picky).

Onto the formal gardens where there were lots of hyacinths, mainly blue, interplanted with early bedding plants. There is no doubt that the gardeners at Hampton Court know their stuff, getting a much better result, for example, than those small competition show gardens you get at flower shows - including the one at Hampton Court - which I do not care for at all, even supposing that they were not full of people.

Onto the privy garden, looking as well as ever. Today including a very effective display of some frothy white hyacinths to complement the usually dominant greens.

Onto to the two sunken gardens, also looking as well as ever, with strong floral scents (of hyacinths) as a bonus. I was reminded that jigsaw 16, Series 1 (July 7th 2012 in the other place) is only good as a souvenir and does not capture the spirit of the place for someone who has not been there, not unless they are better endowed than I with gardening imagination.

Snacked on this occasion at the Heritage Canteen, where BH was happy with her soup but I thought my fish pie was a little dear at near £10. For that money I expect white fish, not salmon, and a bigger portion of green veg.. Back across the bridge to inspect the little poster stuck on the hoardings hiding what we presume is the about to be built on building plot at the south eastern end of the bridge, vacant for years but tidied up last year so that visitors to the bicycling part of the Olympics did not get the wrong idea. I believe that there has been debate for most of those years about what to do with this prime site, with fine views of the river and palace, fine facilities (although it has to be said that the wet & dry fish shop in Bridge Street is no longer with us) and the handy railway. Residents' Associations and others have been pushing for a park, but it seems that it has now been resolved to build flats, five stories of them, in a number of blocks. How awfuls all round. But I was reminded of the poor standard of public debate about such matters. No-one appears to be pondering in public about whether it is better to forego the cash flowing in from such a development in favour of cash flowing out from a park. Parks are all very well but who is going to pay for them at a time when council budgets are being hammered? Are you sure you want a park rather than keeping the drop in centre for the elderly up the road up and running?

Park lovers are very good about banging on about how accountants are running the show, but they are often not very good at coming up with the filthy lucre needed to run the show themselves. And they need to remember that we are no longer filthy rich Victorians awash with dosh for good works. Times have changed since Sir Josh. Bazelgette CB and his kind were up and running.

Thomas Hardy regained

For some reason, probably a dearth of Christie fare on ITV3, I was moved a few weeks ago to buy the BBC versions of 'Wessex Tales' and 'Jude the Obscure' from Amazon, rounded out by their collected edition in Kindle format, this last for the grand sum of £1.95 or some such. Very collected, that is to say very complete but not very conveniently presented. One can't really complain at the price.

We have now consumed the whole of the BBC purchase and some of the Kindle, that is to say the BBC stuff plus the last novel 'The Well Beloved', which I do not remember reading before. All good stuff, although it was a surprise how much the adaptations left out, leaving me with the thought that watching the adaptations was rather like looking at a mountain landscape with something, probably mist, obscuring all but the higher peaks. Inter alia, the adaptations seem to lose a lot of the background details which round the characters out, make them more believable, and most of the lightening, humourous asides.

One bit of input before we got going was that Hardy had a thing about hanging. And once this had been pointed out, one did come across rather a lot of it. What streak in his background drove it - given that both 'Jude the Obscure' and 'The Well Beloved' struck me as having plenty of material drawn from his own life? Lots of failed relationships, lots of unhappy marriages, lots of unhappy people. These last perhaps locked, unhappily, into the life of an artisan or the life of a married woman by the conventions of the time. Interesting how I found the Arabella of Jude quite a decent sort this time around, whereas my memory had her as a rather coarse and unpleasant women - and whereas her whole point, or so it seems now, is that she is attractive, even as an older woman, perhaps in part because she is common.

I quite often re-read the beginning of a book when I finish the first read, so I am now reading Jude again, although I don't suppose I will get terribly far before I drift off somewhere else, possibly D H Lawrence, the scene for whom was very much set, to my mind, by Hardy. Maybe I will have another go at the 'Wessex Tales', also new to me and also rather good. Just the thing for a spot of bedtime reading.

There is also the question of the unconscious, very much in Jude and very much in the air if not actually invented at the time that Hardy was writing. One wonders if he was conscious of the question or whether it was just in the air - while I don't recall it being in any of George Elliot's hair. In any event, one product of all this was a rather odd dream. I start off in some work-like environment, with some boss figure telling a young female colleague to give me a lift somewhere in her car, although it is clear to me that she is busy about something else and doesn't really want me in her car. Another young female and a child vaguely present. As a result of which I get her to drop me off as soon as we reach the main drag in town, let us say Christminster. Across the road is a large gate, opening out into a vista of colleges on the right. Open space to the left. I go through the gate to find that all the college buildings which had looked so imposing are pretty much ruins. Shells, perhaps bombed or burnt out. I push on past these buildings to find myself in a swimming pool, rather like that next to Dorking Halls, although that particular identification was not made in the dream. One large pool and one small. Quite a lot of people, large and small, in the pools. There is some kerfuffle about who is swimming and whether I ought to be there at all. Perhaps it is some special day for which I am not qualified. Somewhat flustered I get through the pool, at which point I wake up.

A plangent pop concert

Yesterday back to the Festival Hall for a pop concert, that is to say Yundi (doesn't seem to use two names like most of us, like Morse, but probably for different reasons. See http://www.yundimusic.com/) playing the piano. On the way, journey entertainment in the form of a young lady telling her telephone about her tangled love life. We started to think that she was just talking to her telephone, that there was no-one at the other end, but at Raynes Park she drew breath for a few tens of seconds to let her interlocutor get a few locutions in.

Yundi is clearly a well known and popular person among the Chinese community, with maybe half the nearly full Festival Hall being mainly young and mainly female Chinese, some of them quite dressed up for the occasion. Popular programme of Chopin's two Opus 9 Nocturnes, followed by Beethoven's Appassionata, Pathétique and Moonlight sonatas. With an encore of something modern and French sounding. All sounded very well, his playing having a new to me flavour and/or touch, for some reason associating to plangent. Checking the trusty OED which accords the word a mere two column inches, I read a meaning two 'loud sounding, striking the ear powerfully; applied sometimes to a metallic; sometimes to a loud, thrilling or plaintive sound'. So, for once, the association was pretty much spot on. Except perhaps plaintive is not quite right; the quiet bits didn't really plain.

Much louder hum of chatter while we waited than was usual, which was OK, but the audience was not terribly well behaved otherwise with a lot of camera clicking, some of the cameras being very large and some of the clicking persisting into the performance. Clapping after the first movements of two of the sonatas, which Yundi tried to suppress by moving rather more quickly than I like between movements. Why on earth don't they just say, along with the turn off your telephone announcements: see 8th February for a similar complaint at the Wigmore Hall.

Prize for the best dressed lady went to a young lady, blonde and probably foreign but not Chinese at all, sitting just in front of me. Professional standard, flashy white coat, flashy white woolly dress underneath with natty lacy things sticking out from the short arms of the dress, over the forearms of the young lady. As it happens, one of the offending camera clickers, but there were so many others doing it that a poke in the back seemed a bit OTT.

Nipped out after the encore to be almost run down by a wave of young Chinese girls rushing down the stairs to get into line for an autograph.

A puzzle

I have become aware of the word 'resection' over the last year or so, both as a noun and a verb, meaning a cutting out. This I found slightly puzzling, the associations for me for the word 'section' being to do with cross sections of things like buildings, tubes and geological formation and those diagrams of cross sections often called sections for short. Eventually I make my way to the OED to find that resection is the prefix 're-' plus 'secare', this last being the Latin for to cut. Resect may be used as a past participle, so one might be resect from the community of saints, but this use is a bit obsolete, along with the community of saints. More commonly used as a verb in a medical sense, meaning to cut away, with resection being a noun denoting an action or operation of that sort.

So far, so good. But why the 're-' bit, which to me means re for repeat. Look it up to find that it is an originally Latin prefix of rather diffuse meaning, occupying a three column page in the dictionary. Original meaning back, or backwards, as in , for example, repel or repeal. Then back to an original position, then again. All kinds of words have the 're' prefix, including, for example, religion which is (on some authorities anyway) 're' plus 'ligare', to tie. So perhaps we have the notion of cutting back, cutting back to the good, rather as if one was tidying up one's apple trees.

For good measure I check up on 'section', occupying another three column page. Which I find can be a cutting verb, but is now more usually a having been cut noun denoting a part of a whole. The original sense of being a part sectioned, or cut away from a whole, rather lost in the section of a book, where sections build up to books just as much as books cut down to sections. There is also the more recent sense involving technical drawings, which is where I came in.

So there.

Meal time

The day before yesterday the thoughts turned to lentils and so, against some sort of lentil stew on the morrow, retrieved half a tenderloin from the freezer. But come the morrow, the tide of mood had shifted against lentils and I opted for something both new-to-me and simpler. Cut the tenderloin into pieces, roughly a centimeter cubed and fry gently in half an ounce of butter. Add coarsely chopped onion (two) and orange pepper (one) and continue to fry gently. Add a dozen miniature tomatoes, quartered. (Note the absence of garlic, spices, herbs or e-numbers). Simmer for an hour, at the end of which one should have a stew of firm consistency. Not too much liquid oozing out of the bottom when a portion is placed on a plate. Serve with boiled white cabbage and boiled white rice. Excellent it was too, with the remainder micro-waved for a savoury supplement to breakfast this morning.

Over which I read of the impending doom of the pangolin, being eaten to extinction by gourmets in their native lands, particularly China. Which brought me back to the solution of the elephant problem noticed on 7th March. Why not farm the things? We manage to farm salmon, which in the wild have an exotic life style, so why not pangolins?

It may be that they need a hot climate, but pangolin farming in Africa would help to pay the Chinese for all the stuff they are installing there. It may also be that they need ants, but it should not be beyond the wit of man to either farm ants and supply them that way, or to make pellets out of something nutritionally equivalent, rather as we do for salmon. A good wheeze might be to harvest the periodic plagues of locusts. Dried locust pellets would then feed the pangolins from one plague to the next, thus, as it were, killing two birds with one stone.

An obvious punt for one of those entrepreneurial game shows.

A bit more depressing was the fate of care workers, mentioned in the context of the late Lady Thatcher. It seems that it is normal these days to only pay care workers for contact hours, contact hours shortly to be logged by smart phones, a 3rd millennium version of the clocking on machine, and not for travel time. Furthermore, their hourly rate is not that hot, if above minimum wage at all. Leading to the thought that if we, collectively, treat our care workers with this lack of respect, is it any surprise that some of them lack respect for us, their customers? And then, are there agencies out there which cater to the better off, agencies which treat both the workers and their customers with respect - for a price? Are we drifting back to the world where the rich do all right in such matters while the poor suffer? And while we might be prepared to do something for the deserving poor, to what extent are we going to help out the feckless & improvident in their declining years? Supposing they smoked?

Up the Pompeys

Yesterday to the British Museum to see the Pompeii exhibition and being a special occasion we took the front left upstairs seats on the 59 bus from the new-to-us remodelling of the north bound bus stops north of Waterloo Station for our journey to Russell Square, where we took our sandwiches, while being entertained by the strenuous looking exercises of what appeared to be a young man on his lunch break. The only odd thing was that he did nor more than five or so of any one movement before moving onto the next. I would prefer to have a proper go at one before moving onto the next, although it should be said that my days for public exercises of this sort are long gone.

Despite entertainment we were still a little early for our timed tickets for Pompeii, so we took a quick peek at the nearby Enlightenment Room (see March 6th 2012 in the other place) where I found a case containing both an old Greek pot and the Wedgwood version of it and it was interesting to see how Josiah had smoothed the original design down, lost all of its rawness and most of its punch. A smooth and anodyne possession for an upwardly mobile bourgeois.

Subsequent management of entry to the Pompeii exhibition was a bit slack, not up to the standards of the Tate, and the exhibition itself was badly overcrowded, both in the sense that there were far too many people and that there were far too many exhibits for the space. Also rather hot. I was left feeling that what had been an impressive domed reading room had been put to a poor & wasteful use. Could they not have found something better to do with it?

What one could see of the exhibits did interest, but would have interested a lot more in better conditions. Curious how these special exhibitions attract huge crowds when all the stuff, much of it of comparable interest in the regular galleries, does not. I have observed the same phenomena in picture galleries.

Out to the courtyard for tea and hotdog, this last not bad at all taken without ketchup or mustard. Here we were entertained by a smart, slim young lady in full warpaint including high heels and a smart pleated skirt, something I have always had a weakness for. Not altogether clear what she was doing there, apart from having herself photographed while posing, on her mobile phone by some Japanese tourists.

On the way back to the 59 bus stop strolled past the very grand looking Victoria House and wondered what it might have been built for, having now sunk to housing Amway (http://www.amway.co.uk/) on the ground floor, an outfit which we knew as a rather odd pyramid sales outfit back in the 70's of the last century. Checking Wikipedia this morning, I find that I had guessed right and the place was built for Liverpool Victoria Friendly Society, which I believe now operates out of some far less grand building on the outskirts of Bournemouth. Probably not a Friendly Society any more either, rather some rapacious member of the capitalist clan.

At Waterloo we attempted to find bread, to find that Kronditur & Cook could not help us. However, on the off chance strolled up to the Carluccio's on the new mezzanine, where I was able to buy a very decent Italian loaf, well worth the £2.95 I paid for it. Not least because of the nice manners of the young lady who sold it to me. The bread was taken with chicken soup, this being the last two of the six meals we had out of our perch reared chicken for £5 from Tesco's. Excellent value. And excellent soup, demonstrating once again the value of adding mashed potato to the stock once boiled. Further flavoured with celery & carrot, sliced thin, and the remainder of the chicken, diced coarse. All in all, a good day out.

Puzzled

While finishing breakfast this morning, turned the pages of yesterday's Guardian to be rather puzzled by the piece illustrated. Why was anyone slack jawed and why were there claims that his comments were ill-judged and insensitive?

Mr. Bieber is, so I believe, a successful young pop singer with a large teen following. It neither surprises nor offends me that he likes to think that Anne Frank, should she have lived now, might have been a fan of his. She was a relatively ordinary girl caught up in extraordinary events; why should she not like pop music, along with lots of other girls, ordinary or extraordinary? I suppose there is offence in that his comment is rather me-centric at a time when he should have been she-centric, but to my mind the offence is mild. Pop singers are always going to be rather me-centric. Furthermore, he said what he thought, rather than concocting some solemn sounding banality for the record. Is that so bad?

On the opposite page my eye was caught by what turned out to be a full page advertisement from a large Japanese tobacco company (see http://www.jti.com/: you have to work to find the Japanese connection) featuring a letter from our department of health to the Australian department of health about the costs and benefits of forcing tobacco into plain packaging. While I am rather doubtful about whether such forcing is right, I am even more doubtful about whether tobacco companies should be entering the debate in this way, interested parties as they are, with their track record on healthy matters as it is. Presumably the point from their point of view is not the overt content but that it is a way in which they can advertise in newspapers, getting around the ban on tobacco advertisements?

Sufficiently shocked by all this that I had a senior moment with wet results. That is to say, while putting away the plates and mugs which had been washed up and dried after breakfast, I very nearly put a mug full of water away with them. I stopped myself in time not to put the by-then half full mug into the cupboard but not in time to stop a lot of water getting onto the floor.

West Memphis Three

There was a long piece about this affair, of which I had never previously heard, in a recent issue of NYRB. An affair involving the murder of three young boys, the conviction of three older boys and their release getting on for 20 years later. The release in large part being the result of attracting celebrity backing - notably Peter Jackson of the 'Lord of the Rings'.

All very sad and the proceedings appear to be yet another example of the quality of evidence needed to convict declining with the the horror of the crime. Release was the result of an odd plea called an Alford plea where, by some sort of legal double speak permitted in the land of the free, the convicts both plead guilty and reserve the right to plead their innocence. The point of this from the state's (Arkansas) point of view is that by pleading guilty they (the convicts) are no longer able to sue anyone for wrongful arrest or imprisonment or anything like that and that they (the state) does not need to look for anyone else to convict. The case is closed.

The NYRB article focused on the celebrity, media and public interest - without which, the older boys, all rather disadvantaged in one way or another, would never have got out. And one of them might well have been executed. And without which we would not have the four DVDs about the whole business that we now have. We also have websites supporting crowd discussions of the same whole business; trial by twitter as it were.

There was also the business of satanic cults, very much to the fore in peoples' minds at the time, if not exactly facts on the ground.

Turning to Wikipedia, among the mountain of stuff turned up by Professor Google, I find another long article - with no fewer than 91 references - but a lot drier and a lot more neutral than the NYRB article. There are still people out there who believe that the older boys were in fact guilty.

All in all rather disturbing. We do not have a very good process and we do not have a very satisfactory outcome - from any point of view except that of those turning a few bucks out of it all.

Jigsaw 13, Series 2

The twin of Jigsaw 10 of 11th March, bought on the same occasion. But while the puzzle was OK, the image irritated. Described as 'London Market' it looked more like a still life confected by the photographer from the sort of stuff you might find in a suburban flower shop, with the strange and improbable looking wheel barrow being particularly irritating. Sufficiently irritating that the puzzle will be recycled to a charity shop instanter, contrary to my usual practise of keeping them. More favoured ones in an upper bedroom cupboard, less favoured ones in the roof. I have yet to try to repeat a puzzle once solved, but I have not, hitherto or nevertheless cared to get rid of them.

Started with the edge in the usual way. Then the left hand bucket, then the smaller, right hand bucket. Red tulips above the right hand bucket, then worked up through the upper flowers. Then the lower flowers.

This left me with a rather large heap of dull coloured pieces. Little in the way of distinguishing features at first  glance. But, rightly as it turned out, I thought that the lower barrow handle would provide a way in. From there to the rest of the barrow, ending with the upper handle, then polished off the brown paper beneath the yellow tulips which had been left aside.

Then the green curtains top left, then closed with the dark area bottom left.

As is often the case, colour was the key for a lot of the time. One attuned to the subtle variations in the green of the top left - not much like the green of the image when in a piece - and was able to select pieces to try on the basis of their colour. Some pieces were selected on the basis of an odd prong shape, but not many, the puzzle being as regular as its twin. A small number of quite distinctive pieces were seen wrong. That is to say, one was sure that they were not the right piece for some particular position, so sure that one did not try. But then, coming back a few hours later, the brain cleared and was able to position the once wrong piece in its right position.

Despite colour, shape and the generally positive fit of the (thick) pieces, I managed to make a number of mistakes along the way, with most in the dark area. But they were not large mistakes and order was restored on each occasion, after a bit of fiddling around.

And now for a special visit to a charity shop. We will make the necessary selection - the choice in our neighbourhood being large - over our morning toast. But will BH argue that the very modest price of the thing means that the petrol to get it to a charity shop is not justified?

PS: a plus point for the Windows 8 version of Chrome. The way it deals with blog illustrations is much improved. Click on the image to get enlarged version overlaying the blog, click on the 'X' top right to get rid of it again. Much better than what there was before.

Shed time

For reasons which are too complicated and too tortuous to go into in full, we have decided to retire our garden shed and turn the area over to a patio with a bit of sun, this last being absent from the patio we have just presently.

One effect of this is that the various garden gear which presently lives in the shed is being moved to the garage, including garden tools and the rack which kept them in order. Adapting this rack to its new home necessitated the most serious bit of woodwork since the construction of the trestle tables (see June 27th 2011, in the other place, that is to say http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/). Adaption included the addition of a new divider which gave me a rare excuse to have a bash with my half inch mortice chisel (made by Marples with a box wood handle, naturally) and the results are illustrated above.

What the illustration does not show are the facts that 1) the backbone of the rack, a length of sawn four by two (which after metrication and various other weights & measures or health & safety flavoured regulations is an endangered species) was quite badly twisted and 2) that the floor of the garage sloped east, thus enabling any water in it to drain towards the drain. Quite sensible really. But these two facts occasioned a fair amount of fiddling about; a rack that looked crooked, as opposed to just being crooked, would not have done at all.

Having moved the tools to their new home, I then started to clear away some of the stuff behind the shed, which included the lid to the compost bin reported on October 14th 2010, this having been decommissioned a year or so ago in a drive to reduce the vermin at the bottom of the garden. A lid of short life, despite the impressive handle. The lid needed to be dismantled so that the various parts could be consigned to their various recycling destinations, and in the course of this dismantling I discovered that the substantial treated plywood which made up core of the lid was fairly rotten after less than three years in the open, rotten to the point where one could almost snap the sheet - say five feet by three feet of it - in half by jumping on it. And with a little help with the saw I did snap the sheet in just this way. So much for the treatment.

The work continues.

A tale of two books

Started out at South London Library in South Lambeth Road where they were selling off a very small selection from their stock. I opted for 'Saving Stan' by Alan Combes at 25p; an interesting little book which appeared to be aimed at young adults learning to read, from what looks like a serious educational publisher at http://www.barringtonstoke.co.uk/. Sticker price of £5.99, large relative to the size of the book and the number of words in it, presumably reflecting low volumes.

Off towards Stockwell to find the vegetable garden illustrated in the front garden of one of the large town houses fronting South Lambeth Road. I wish the unlikely gardener well! Nearly opposite there was a van from Rippon Cheese in Pimlico, parked up as if it lived there. Perhaps I have lighted upon the domicile of the Rippon Cheesers, a shop which I have not used for some little while now, preferring to settle for the Lincolnshire Poacher offered by our local Waitrose (at £17 or so a kilo. Dear stuff, but I like it).

Pushed onto Tooting to try the Oxfam Library there to make a change from the Wetherspoon's Library and lighted upon a biography of an Archbishop of York, the splendidly named Cosmo Gordon Lang. The child of a reasonably modest manse in Lanarkshire, but who had the benefit of a good schooling in Glasgow and went on to Oxford. While the more or less contemporary artisans of 'Jude the Obscure' (on which more in due course) did not manage to claw their way out of their class at all, artisans who might well have been earning much the same money as the man of the manse.

Did not abandon Wetherspoons altogether, but found that they were having another of their micro beer festivals which meant that one had not heard of any of the dozen or so warm beers on offer and that selection was, in consequence, pretty much pot luck. I plumped for something with a Bohemiam flavoured name (which I forget) which turned out to be fine; a light, bitter like beer, not very pilsener at all. I check the Wetherspoons web site this morning and the nearest that it came up with was something called 'Purkmistr Bohemian Schwarzbier'. This is not the right one as it is a dark beer and despite the foreign sounding name it is brewed by Marston's at Burton upon Trent especially for the Wetherspoon's fest.. Complicated old world isn't it?

I also learnt about a fine old bourbon from http://www.buffalotrace.com/ which I had never before heard of, but which Wetherspoons stock and which the congoscenti of booze (in all its forms) present knew all about. I suspect that this trace, being from Kentucky, may well be a relative of the trace noticed on 3rd April.

Adaptations

On Tuesday off to the RFH to hear the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra do Brahms (Piano Concerto No.2 Op.67), Schoenberg (Theme and Variations, Op.43b) and Schoenberg flavoured Brahms (Piano Quartet No.1 Op.25), all under the baton of Mr. Tilson Thomas.

All fairly new to me in that I do not get further into Brahms than a couple of popular chamber pieces (this despite my quite extensive holdings of him on vinyl) and I do not do Schoenberg at all. Furthermore, of recent years I have done orchestras very rarely. So an orchestra sporting 8 double basses and 4 percussionists was something of a novelty. Not to mention the brass player who had a mute for all the world like one of the black plastic buckets we use in the garden. There was also a triangle which I could not place, sounding as if it came from the back of the second violins, nowhere near the percussionists at all. Most annoying. As was the large gentleman sitting slap bang in the middle of the front row of the choir wearing a short sleeved, loud blue sweat shirt, made even louder by a loud design on the chest. People who sit in such conspicuous positions should have more consideration for those of us sitting out front.

I have noticed the absence of black people at classical concerts before, but there were at least two at this concert. There were also a lot of east asians in the audience and maybe 10% of the orchestra were women. I wondered why there were no women conductors when there were plenty of women soloists. What puts them off? Is being a conductor any less family friendly than being a soloist?

The Schoenberg was good fun, although I am not sure that it is a piece I would want to hear very often. Both Brahms pieces were very good, although it took a while to adjust to an orchestra and there was a striking difference in size between the conductor and the pianist. The audience was sufficiently enthusiastic to earn an encore and I wondered whether the orchestra has a small repertoire of encores which they can crash into with no music and no notice: the conductor just has to whisper 'encore 3' and bring down his baton.

The adjustment to the orchestra was a little odd, in that one seemed to have to let go in some sense and let oneself be swept along. All rather passive compared with the more cerebral experience of chamber, but maybe this would change with time. It was also odd in that I was hearing an orchestral adaptation of a chamber piece - and I failed completely to find the trace of the piano in the orchestral score - but at least it made a change from pondering over screen adaptations of Agatha Christie. I nearly bought both chamber and orchestral versions from Amazon this morning with a view to comparing and contrasting, but in the end I thought that I was unlikely to do very much of that sort of thing and settled for the chamber version for now.

All in all, very good. Only marred by the publicity people decorating the printed programme with images from the 1930s, a programme which was already making a tiresome feature of 'The Rest is Noise'. Trying to make the programme like a course book for GSCE history is not going to do anything for their core audience, at least not this part time member of it.

Britannia rules the waves

We celebrate this week the passing of the last flickering of our great power past, a flickering which managed in its time to power the great adventure in the South Atlantic, a great adventure which has and which looks to continue to cost us a great deal.

Perhaps appropriate that the Guardian should have majored in recent weeks on another vestige of our past, the havens we operate, or at least allow to operate, for the criminal and greedy of the world, most notably the British Virgin Islands. As with arms, we no doubt mount the morally feeble defense that if we did not do it there are plenty out there who would. But I would prefer to live in a poorer country with cleaner hands.

Not that one should overdo the poorer country business. According the OECD website, we are still very firmly in the top ten in so far as GDP is concerned and we are still very average as far as GDP per head in proper countries is concerned. We are not doing that badly, even if our financial and tourist services sectors account for a bigger share of the total than one might think prudent: the coalition is right in that we need to get away from virtual production and to put more time into more real production, even if they are not having too much success in making the move.

And thinking of our wonderful financial services sector, the Guardian also spilled much ink on the incompetence of the banking knights who ran HBOS. Not only did these chaps get paid indecent amounts of money, they were not even any good at what they were supposed to be doing. Which brings me back to one of my hobby horses, the moral decline of the once proud and mutual Halifax Building Society on their watch. A moral decline which allows them to rack up the housing insurance premiums of their regular customers on the basis that most of them are too idle or too ignorant to do anything about it. I mourn the passing of the days when one could trust one's building society to treat one decently without having to bother about it. Without having to wade through the thickets of so called information published far and wide for our convenience, for our customers whose experience matters o so much to us.

Not to mention the thickets of information in the various online bills I now get from the various utilities. Not quite impenetrable, but a lot less easy to understand than the much simpler bills which used to come through the letter box. All part of the same tendency to keep the man in the street firmly in his (or her) place with information overload masquerading as customer service. Capitalists and computers have a lot to answer for.

PS: in the interests of fairness, I suppose I ought to acknowledge the growing number of insurance scroungers (that is to say people who make false or at least dubious claims), many of whom read the 'Daily Mail' and get very excited about benefit scroungers.

Lichtenstein, take 2

Following the first visit to the Lichtenstein exhibition on or about 6th April, back for a second bite yesterday, feeling the need to maximise the value from my shiny new membership.

As a result of which the view remains unchanged: interesting but a bit of a puzzle why the chap is such an eminence. Although a bit content lite, compared, for example with Canaletto, I was attracted by his sense of humour and by his craft and certainly at the time he did them, the works on show must have involved a lot of craft work, not for the faint hearted, although even he wobbled a bit around the edges, with quite a bit of sloppy brush work visible up close. One positive dislike was the late nudes which I thought ugly - and if they were ugly what on earth was the point? And I found the mirrors and entablatures unsettling, unsettling not in their content (not that I care for that either) but in the way that they seemed to interfere with my sight. All the cunningly placed dots and lines interfered with the way that my brain worked, which may well have been the intention, but I did not care for it.

Then down into the tanks below, with their strong smell of fresh concrete. An interesting space, full on this occasion with screens screening throbby music and low grade ballet. One wonders what they will do with them during the advertised closure for fitting out: will they do as well as they have done with the turbine hall?

Followed by a careful inspection of the members bar, particularly the two verandas, the larger one with a splendid modernist outlook, big chimney, big glass and all, but we decided not to partake and wandered down to the street to sample the new to us 'Vapiano' instead - see http://www.vapiano.com/ to see how many of the places there are, scattered across the globe Lots in Germany and places nearby. A restaurant with a new take on canteen, in that you queue up with a tray at one of a number of hatches while your meal is thrown together and cooked while you watch (mine involving a small packet of frozen ravioli among the fresher ingredients). But instead of the 'common table' format of some other chains, at this one you can have your own table. Visually both the food and the place were attractive. Reasonably priced with reasonable, sensible bread supplied free, including seconds. Sensible in the sense that it was just warm white bread, none of this complicated stuff with nuts, lumps and what have you favoured by other establishments, for example 'The (nearby) Refinery' of the week before. So a big plus for their bread arrangements. Food fine, if mine was a little cream full, but that could be avoided on another occasion. We speculate on whether there will be one, given the number of decent restaurants in the vicinity of Big Tate, but we do think that we would avoid busy times when the queueing at the hatches might turn into a bit of a pain.

Back home to wonder why one pays a premium for stone ground flour. What has it got, apart from enhanced price and stone dust, that steel milled flour hasn't got? How have stones managed to work their way into the organic, natural slot, to the exclusion of steels?

Bottom of the class

Since taking the class test the other day, I have been wondering what the point of it all was. I suppose that if I bothered to read the stuff which came with the test I could find out, but it is much more educational to try and work it out for oneself first.

A prior wonder is about what sort of a classification we have here. Some things come in a small number of natural categories, so sex is male, female, other, refused and not known, with other being a very small category indeed, usually omitted. Other things come in numbers, so age is anything from nothing to more than a hundred, with anything in between being allowed, including fractions, and if one were numerological or perhaps whimsical, one might celebrate a person achieving the age of pi or e and light a candle at just the right moment. But statisticians (of which I used to be one) and sociologists (of which I once aspired to be one) like to classify people, so we have to chop the number age into a small number of fairly arbitrary groups: under one, one to under 5, 5 to under 15 and so on. We can then tabulate people by sex and age. But what sort of a classification is class? Is it sex-like or age-like? Do people fall into well-defined, well-separated groups like sex, or is it all rather arbitrary like age, with one group drifting into another, more or less imperceptibly?

No doubt, if I were to read the forthcoming article in 'Sociology' I would get to find out.

But coming back to the point, what it is all for? Is it more than a device for the upper classes to put the lower classes in their place? Is it very polite for the upper classes to spill so much ink explaining why the lower classes are lower? Would it not be better and less divisive to preserve a decent silence, to draw a veil over the whole matter? Not to draw attention to the uncomfortable fact that the upper classes are getting more upper, more different from the lower classes as time goes on, certainly in this country? That some people are very much more equal than others.

I can see that if we were to record class, postcode and email address on our census form and this information was made available to retailers, those retailers could better target their advertisements than would otherwise be the case. We would gain because more of the advertisements arriving in our letter boxes, be those boxes bricks or clicks, would be for things that we might actually be interested in and they would gain because they would sell more stuff.

In the same way, civil servants could target their efforts. Statisticians might have worked out that people in Class VIIa were much more likely than those in other classes to be underweight and to eventually peg out of streptomianasis, costing the health service untold billions. So then the civil servants could target Class VIIa for action. All members of the class to be visited by action teams carrying weighing machines and packets of pasta, the latter for stuffing into the people who fail the former. Or the sociologists might have worked out that Class XXXIIIc was bottom of the class and ought to be eliminated, by fair means rather than foul. Nobody in the New Labour world is allowed to be bottom of the class, so let the civil servants chew on that one.

And journalists could fill up their pages with think pieces on days when news was a bit slow.

I suppose it does all add up to a reasonable case for class analysis. But I do fret about the divisiveness, the existence of top and bottom classes. It would be so much simpler if classes were more like occupations, just different, rather than arranged on a ladder from top to bottom. Which reminds me of the stage hand who comes on the very last page of the very long CODOT classification of occupation (see February 15th 2010) with the code 991.30: I wonder how he (or she) feels about ladders and rankings? Although there is always comfort in that coming last does have some distinction, much more so than coming in a few pages from the end.

PS: having some white bread for once, thought to celebrate with a fried egg sandwich for breakfast this morning. We also had lard and egg, so all systems go. Produced a perfectly decent fried egg sandwich but did not enjoy it as much as I had expected. Seemed to have lost the taste for the things. Noticed the lardy taste from the lard. And we are left wondering what to do with a tablespoon of liquid lard, no longer running the fat bowl of our more lardy years.

Jigsaw 12, Series 2

A first puzzle from Wilkinsons, an own brand 'Wilko' one at that, made in China from 75% recycled paper. When first opened, the impression given is of what Tesco calls 'every day value' (see March 13th), but on closer acquaintance a perfectly decent puzzle. But I don't think that the charity shop understood about Wilko prices and charged the same as it would for a regular puzzle.

The most regular puzzle which I have done for a while with four pieces meeting at every interior vertex and with every interior piece being of prong-hole-prong-hole configuration. Pieces were all very much of a size. But simplicity at these levels was compensated for by an interesting take on piece shape, both the shape of the piece overall and the shapes of the four corners, with lots of scimitar or oriental dagger shapes (see 5th April). One could sometimes pick the right piece out of the heap on the basis of corner shape. One even starts to develop a special vocabulary to describe shape, rather as one does with Lego if one does enough of it.

Started with the edge. Then the skyline, the pieces of which were harder than usual to pick out. Then built on the skyline a bit, doing the buildings and the ship. Then the dark cloud running right from the lighthouse, above the ship. Then the sky below the dark cloud. Very unusual to hit on the sky at this early stage.

But then at a bit of a loss. What to do next? Eventually settled on the lower rock-water boundary. Then the white water above, then most of the rock below.

Then at a bit of a loss again, eventually settling of the upper rock-water boundary. Then finished the sea and the sky.

Then finished the lower rocks and finished by finishing the upper rocks. More psycho puzzling in that I often picked out the right piece from the heap for the position under consideration, thought that it looked wrong, then found that it was right. More disconnect between conscious and unconscious processing.

All in all an unusual and unexpectedly satisfying puzzle. Perhaps I shall visit the horse's mouth, that is to say our very own branch of Wilkinsons, for another one.

Top of the class

I was interested to see an article in the Guardian about a new class structure into which we can all be popped. See, rather than read, at least in the first instance, but I did gather that the new class structure has seven classes, further evidence of the magic power of the number seven, which does seem to pop up in all kinds of unlikely places. I wonder if Masons are into sevens?

I was also interested enough to ask Professor Google about it all this morning and found that most of the first few pages of hits were mixed up with the BBC, who seem to be intimately involved with the survey which has resulted in the new structure. At least I assume that it is that way around.

Next step was to complete the BBC questionnaire, interested in such things as my ethnic orientation to restaurants and the brand of popular music which I favour. Got through this in around 10 minutes and was rather cross not to be assigned to one of the seven classes at the end. All I seemed to get was scores for my economic, social and cultural capital and there was nothing about whether I was to be assigned to the securiat or to the precariat. But I did get to wonder about the value of a computerised survey which appears to be restricted to self selecting people who like playing with their computers. I suppose I should read all about it in an upcoming issue of 'Sociology' - although there seem to an awful lot of magazines with titles along these lines.

Not to put too fine a point on it, more than somewhat cross not to be assigned to the elite, in which my blogging skills clearly place me. But then, quite by chance I found a much shorter questionnaire to fill in which quite happily popped me into the right box (see above) although I don't recall telling it about my elite education. Not sure what it would have based its guess on. But content and so happily off on the Horton Clockwise, where I came across plenty of celandines in flower, glowing yellow in the morning sun, and some early dandelions. The celandines in our own garden seem to have been rather bashed about by something, perhaps by a fox rolling in them, and are barely flowering at all, while dandelions nowhere to be seen at all.

I notice in closing that the small flock of thrushes which had been grazing down Longmead Road for the past week or so seems to have moved on.

Inspection time again

Off to London earlier in the week to inspect the picture inspired by my last jigsaw (see 2nd April). It being a filthy day there were a few Bullingdons left at Vauxhall, saving me the walk across the bridge or up the embankment. Filthy enough that it took some minutes to warm up, despite being fully rigged out in gloves, wool sweater, wool scarf (from the street market near San Lorenzo in Florence, a tribute to their ancient wool industry) and duffle coat. And this time I remembered my smart new helmet. Along the embankment, across Lambeth Bridge, along the other side of the embankment, round Parliament Square, up Whitehall and onto the stand at Cockspur Street which was, as usual, full, Pushed onto St. Martin's Street behind the National Gallery where there were vacancies, clocking just 17 minutes for the whole.

Into the Canaletto Room at the National Gallery where I was able to examine 'Venice: The Grand Canal with S. Simeone Piccolo' at my leisure, the gallery being crowded but this particular picture not being particularly popular. It was a much better picture than I was expecting, amongst other things being a picture which worked close up, from across the gallery and at distances in-between. Also, as it happens, next to 'Venice: The Feast Day of Saint Roch', the subject of jigsaw 3. I report just one feature of interest, the horizontal striping of the sky, visible at close quarters. Not clear (to me anyway) whether the stripes were the result of application of paint in long strokes or of the grain of the underlying wooden panel showing through, rather in the way that joists show through the plaster of ceilings. But, in summary, the two liner at their web site gets it about right with 'impressive for the control of lighting and perspectival effects, and also for the lively representation of incidental details'.

Having decided that it was a double culture day, took my Bullingdon back from its stand out the back and made my way to Poured Lines, Bankside, this being Bullingdon speak for a stand on Southwark Street, but a name which they did not bother to tell Google about. Coincidentally, just 17 minutes again.

Into the Tate Modern, where I was pleased to find the main hall empty of art and, in consequence, very impressive. A handsomely converted space, big enough for parties to picnic on the floor without getting in anybody's way. Finding the second class saloon rather crowded decided to bite the bullet and go for annual membership which gave one access to the first class saloon where there was slightly less choice but much faster service. Decorated by smart ladies from Chicago in expensive looking fur coats. Membership also gave one access to the Lichtenstein retrospective without needing a timed ticket, a retrospective which turned out to be more interesting than I was expecting - there was content as well as dots and primary colours. But still hard to see why the chap commands such enormous prices; he must have had commercial mouth & brio of even greater size than those of our own Hirst.

Lunch at the 'Refinery' in Southwark Street (http://www.therefinerybar.co.uk/), the weather still being too foul to stray far. One of those large open plan spaces with open plan kitchen, high ceilings with pipes and miscellaneous furniture down below. Very hot on presentation and interesting ways of serving things - so, for example, the bread came in a brown paper bag rather than in the basket or bowl one might have expected. The sort of place which is just the thing just now and which, as it happens, I rather like. A good lunch, with good wine, even if the sausages in my sausages and mash were very ordinary, this despite my being spared lumps of apple and excess herbs à la Sainsbury. Mash served in an identical dish to that Wisley served their pie in (see 4th April). Like bread, we might live in the midst of great wealth and much foodie flannel, but it is still hard to get hold of a decent English sausage. Have not had anything as good as the late Porky White's (late of Chessington Road, West Ewell) for ages.

Barge life

I noticed the attractive barge in Topsham on 14th March. You can now read all about it in the 'Express & Echo' and see all about it in their online picture archive. Go to http://www.thisisexeter.co.uk/ and ask for vigilant, the barge being a few entries down, at least it is just presently.

The illustration gives a good idea of the amount of work to be done, even if the words are barely legible, with the bonus that scanning it taught me that my recent Windows 8 upgrade had trashed the desktop software for my printer (all £30 worth of it. I must have spent many times that on genuine & original HP ink over the small number of years that I have had it. Presumably the printer itself is sold at a loss with an eye to the gains to follow). Luckily for me, HP have a well organised site which enabled me to download the new software now needed. Took all of ten minutes or so and it seems to be OK, even to the extent of not trying to print to One Note or some such thing by default from Word, with the only problem being that I have got to get used to a whole new user interface. Happy days.

I also remember the happy days of forty five years ago when the 'Express & Echo' was a broadside and included listings of all the evening entertainments suitable for young people. Dances in far off Whimple and that sort of thing.