Dreamtime

Following the dream after Islington reported on the 28th, I had a very similarly flavoured dream following Greenwich. Different story line, but somehow had the same flavour, perhaps reflecting waking up at the same point in the sleep cycle.

The Greenwich dream involved bicycles, vaguely involving both Bullingdons and the Treasury. On some sort of a journey in London, presumably on a bicycle, but with there being some issue with the helmet, perhaps no more complicated than not wearing it or having lost it.

Get to my destination to start worrying about this and start to search for it the bag that I had with me - without regard to the fact that the bag in question, the one that fell off in the report on the 20th, was much too small for a bicycle helmet. Rummage around in the bag, finding a new cycle chain and a new gear block, loose and unwrapped, but no helmet. Chain with a very thin coating of that stiff, clear grease that new chains seem to come with. Not sure what the chain and block are doing there, rummage a bit further to come across a rather dishevelled receipt, the sort of thing that you get from the self-checkout machines at Waitrose, the ones that so frequently flash red to summon a member of the team to help you. Start to study the receipt when someone takes it from me and says that it comes from such and such a shop. I now realise that I can remember nothing about the journey; a complete blank. On the other hand, I do recall a shop of this name, a low, wide shed/workshop sort of place, somewhere near a river, perhaps on an island. Perhaps a Dawes dealer. Somewhere in the Jesus Green area of Cambridge. But then the someone says that this particular shop has branches in a couple of places where I never go near, but not in Cambridge. (Editor's note: I once bought a Dawes cycle in a cycle shop, in Cambridge, but not otherwise answering this description, although I did get the shop to remove the gear block from the cycle to make it a fixed wheeler. I now think that the dream shop does not actually exist, but is, nevertheless, a place which I visit in dreams occasionally. All very puzzling).

At this point, I start to dream that I am in a dream, thinking that all is OK after all because dreams are allowed to be nonsense. The fabric of dream world is allowed to include strange rents and holes, perhaps white holes (the helmet in the dream was definitely white and like a motor cycle helmet, although my actual cycling helmet is a stripey fluorescent yellow) rather than black holes. I start to tell the dream in all its silly glory to a couple of colleagues at work, then start to think that maybe I should not sharing this kind of stuff with colleagues. Not that it is in any way embarrassing, but maybe it is not cool to share one's dreams in this way.

Then I really do wake up.

Towers of glass and steel

Snapped in a winter afternoon light from London Bridge during our return from Greenwich. To my mind, a handsome if rather extravagant building which, inter alia, offers a good solution to the problem of attaching a large building to the ground. A problem in which I take an abiding interest.

Turner

Off to Greenwich earlier in the to take a look at the Nelson exhibition which opened there a little while ago now.

Started off with tea and cakes in Greenwich High Street which were good. My cake being a sort of posh flapjack involving almonds and dates as well as the more traditional ingredients.

Onto the Maritime Museum where a lot of work had been done in the fairly recent past, with courtyards glassed over in the way of the British Museum and some handsome extensions. Not too sure about this fashion for glassing over museum courtyards, but I suppose it does increase the amount of space available in a useful way. Lots more space for shops and restaurants. I was a bit disappointed with the Nelson exhibition, although there was a fine model of one of his battleships, a model which has left me a bit muddled up about which sails of square riggers have yards to control their lower edges as well as yards to which to fix their upper edges. Perhaps it all depends on the type of ship (see Cutty Sark later on).

However, the museum more than made up for this disappointment with its exhibition of Turner paintings, taking us through his prolific & profitable career, spanning, more or less, the first half of the nineteenth century, the golden age of sail. His stuff was interspersed with that of his contemporaries and included, inter alia, a Constable, a Gainsborough and a Bonington. I was much taken with this last, a view of a beach in Normandy somewhere near the mouth of the Somme. As far as Turner was concerned, I think I like his middle period the best, where he has moved away from pictures of seas, ships and shipping towards something more abstract, mainly watery, but not so far that there is no conventional content. The picture called 'The Fighting Temeraire tugged to her last berth to be broken up, 1838' is justly both popular and famous.

An adequate lunch in a handsome new cafeteria, looking out over the park, then off to take a quick look at the town before catching the train home. First we came across a hotel which had recently been inspected by the hotel inspector, so I hope no one thinks that I have become a hotel inspector tourist. For the record, I do not even watch the programme, except perhaps a snippet when it precedes Agatha on ITV3. Next came a walk around the new version of the Cutty Sark, also featuring a glassing over, this one over the dock in which the ship now lives, so that you walk around the outside of the bottom of the ship in the warm. The overall effect was of the Cutty Sark sitting on a huge, inflatable, see-through cushion. I was not convinced, and I gather from the letters' page in today's DT that there are mixed views on the subject.

Lastly we took a look inside the church, an impressive example of English Baroque dedicated to St. Alfege, an Archbishop of Canterbury who fell victim to the vikings around 1000AD, having withheld his consent to being ransomed on the grounds that he did not want to burden his flock. One wonders how many of his successors would have been, or would be, so considerate. One of the notable features of the interior of the church was the cunning painting around the altar, simulating elaborate stone and wood work, presumably from the same stable as that in the neighbouring banqueting hall. Or, that in Ham House near us at Epsom. Only slightly marred by a rude and offensive young man complaining about his handout from the the food bank there.

We had run out of puff by the time we got back to the second hand bookshop outside the station, so that will have to wait for our next visit, probably soon, not having realised before what an interesting place Greenwich is.

PS: for collectors of odd facts, I offer the following two. One, a cutty sark is the name of the very short nightie in which erring females were dressed when they were exhibited in church in Scotland. The preacher preached, the female portion of the congregation tutted and the male portion gawped. All very edifying. Two, H. M. Tomlinson, an author from the 1930's of whom I am fond, records coming across a rather grubby Cutty Sark in the Surrey Commercial Docks, rebadged as the Portuguese barquentine 'Ferriera'. Her day as a clipper was done, but she had not then made it to the land of heritage, this being some time before 1920.

Pub pic

When one confesses to having been a public servant in the pub it is usually assumed - at least in the sort of pubs that I use - that one is a tax man. And it is well known that tax men, like field marshalls, never retire. They always hang on to their special lines to HQ in case they pick up any tasty morsels during their travels.

So I like to keep a grip on where all the tax goes to give my splutterings a bit of backbone. Quick trawl for an update to find that included here, courtesy of a site called http://www.ukpublicspending.co.uk/, which looks useful and is the work of an expatriate conservative to be found at http://www.christopherchantrill.com/. Not the best credentials to puff the site to an old lefty like myself, but it does carry a lot of stuff, including a lot of useful links. Lets hope the man has done his homework properly.

A little startled to find that the biggest single item was public pensions, but I dare say the definitions have been cunningly tweaked to make it so. Not untrue exactly, but not the only way to present the information. And I have not yet found a way to check but I assume that 'State Protection' includes police, justice, spies, snooping and all that kind of thing. A rather sinister sounding term, but at least it was not the even more sinister 'State Security', with its German connections.

An adventure in Islington

Following the visit to Kingston to see Ghosts reported on 10th October, last Saturday we visited Islington to see Ghosts again.

Starting at Highbury & Islington, which smelt slightly of football, we headed south down Upper Street, the ambience rapidly becoming suitable for the great, the good and the Blairs. Lots of dinky little independant shops and restaurants. Hardly a charity shop in sight. But the first stop was the Almeida theatre, being a tad concerned that our restricted view seats (one partially and one fully) might be fairly rubbish and wanting to try for a return. That was no go, but impressed by their handsome new foyer/bar/restaurant area we decided to take a snack, in the form of two quite acceptable sandwiches. Then, having a little time in hand, pushed on south to St. Mary's, where we found that the nave had been largely rebuilt after the second war in a very fifties sort of style. Lots of light brown brick, lots of tall windows; the stuff of many a telephone exchange and many a town hall of the same period. Must have been a swine to heat with all those steel framed windows. But the church interior was handsome enough, although a little large and empty looking. A trustee claimed that they filled the place for important services, like carols by candle. And I learned this morning that the church was the scene of the baptism of one of the son's of King Birempong Cudjo, by that time well on his way to becoming a missionary back in his native land, part of what is now Ghana, all this being some time in the 18th century.

By which time it was time to head back to the Almeida where we find a rather larger theatre than I remembered - it being more than 10 years since I was last there - maybe 350 seats to the West End 700. And restricted view meant nothing graver than one of those cast iron pillars you get in gin palaces of a certain age, maybe ten feet in front. As the chap next to me pointed out, I would probably not notice it once the show got underway and that he was much worse off with the chap in front of him sitting on an elevating cushion, ostensibly to spare his bony posterior from the lower grade seats of the place - rather like, as it happens, those at Kingston, that is to say doubles without armrests. For which mild inconvenience I got my seat for £8, perhaps half the proper price. Good job that there were not any returns.

Ghosts was an adaptation rather than a translation, which meant that the language was a lot more racy than that which would have pervaded the homes of Norwegian middle classes of the day (and which I found rather irritating) and that the show as a whole was a little shorter (which meant they could manage without an interval, which was a good thing). As befitting a show in Islington, plenty of regional accents and just a modest amount of on-stage puffing. Casting generally good, apart from Pastor Manders who was too young and played too wet to convince. Good set, with clever use of a net curtain to partially screen the room behind that of the action. Very emotional climax, not quite the same as the Rose version, with the mother here very nearly steeling herself to give her son the necessary lethal dose of morphine. A version which must be good for a few more votes & contributions to http://www.dignityindying.org.uk/, which must be good. and a plus for the Almeida. That apart, while I enjoyed the show, better paced than that at the Rose, I preferred the more sedate tone of this last. But perhaps I could not have one without the other. Will we go at and see it a second time when it transfers to the West End?

This was the penultimate show of the run and the house was full, as it had been for most of the run, hence the business with restricted view. Mostly couples such as ourselves, perhaps a little grander than the Rose; a theatrical Wigmore Hall. An enthusiastic house at the end, to the point of breaking into loud clapping more or less the instant the play ended, while I prefer a short wait, to come down a bit from the climax, before changing gear into applause. BH suspected one particular lady was responsible for kicking it off so soon and further suspected a member of the management team.

Out to stroll back up Upper Street, taking in the Gill Wing Cookshop on the way, to see if they had any baking trays large enough to make the sort of contraptions noticed on 22nd November unnecessary. They did have, substantial enough but covered in teflon and not quite big enough. But the lady told me that there was a bigger version which I could probably buy on the Internet - which I perhaps could if Mr. Google knew anything about the brand concerned, 'Dexan'.

Home to dream about an alternative involving buying some sheet steel - without teflon - from Sparrowhawk's of Tadworth. A dream which was very vivid and carrying plenty of charge. Waking, it all seemed a bit OTT, plus, a couple of bits of sheet steel might cost as much as the teflon jobs and would probably need careful finishing to get rid of rough edges and sharp corners. But maybe I will go as far as measuring the oven. It would be a good solution, if a tad over-engineered. Although this last would be very much in line with my better efforts at carpentry.

A worm by any other name

For once I thought in time not to go to the link. Maybe harmless, maybe Norton would stop anything bad, but it looks like something improper. So for the first time for a long time, I have actually deleted an email.

Having got hold of me, easy enough to guess the two addresses, but how did whoever this is get hold of me? Who do I know who lives in Turkey and has access to Turkish flavoured addresses? I do know someone who has lived in Turkey within the last ten years, but that is about as close as I can get.

Is it a coincidence that Norton came up with a red alert for some trojan a couple of weeks ago? He claimed to have dealt with it.

Thoughts

Been thinking again, on this occasion as I swung through Ewell Village on the way to Longmead Road, where, as it happens, another small tree was down. The not-storm referred to yesterday clearly did weaken things.

These thoughts concerned the activities of young Muslim men. They are allowed to smoke, although not in any kind of a public place (not aware of their having any kind of exemption), but they are not allowed to drink and their access to women is a bit more complicated than it is for us whiteys. Which, from what I can remember of my youth, is apt to make one a bit quarrelsome and aggressive. One solution for us was to play rugby until something more interesting turned up, but I am not aware that they do that either.

In the olden days, for those living in the desert and according to Lawrence of Arabia, the young men would dissipate their energies, and often their lives, in more or less continuous, low level tribal warfare with camels. Stealing sheep, goats and perhaps women. But I imagine that this meant that in-between times, having burnt off all the relevant hormones and what have you, they were reasonably calm and contented, contented enough just to sit back and puff on their hookahs.

But what can they do now? Is there some link with all their religiously flavoured fighting? I remember asking a young Muslim man with whom I used to work. He smoked, did not like to be in public houses, let alone drink in them, but I do not remember his answer being very satisfactory. At least, his account of his recreational activities - which did include watching if not playing football - did not strike much of a chord with me. I grant that watching football on telly in the boozer is quite a big recreational activity around here, certainly in TB, but I have never heard of it being teetotal.

Crims

Mildly annoyed to find that the Guardian is publishing pieces by one convicted but recently released criminal and that the DT is publishing interviews with another, the former wife of the first.

Now it is one thing for political criminals - say people who cut fences at Greenham Common - to boast about their experiences mucking it in with the lower classes - when they are released, but it is quite different for common or garden criminals from the upper classes. They should keep their heads down, their mouths shut and do good works, following the example set by John Profumo.

Although, I should add in fairness, that for a senior politician to share a mistress with a Russian diplomat, perhaps spy, at the height of the cold war, was perhaps a tad more serious than fiddling your license points. But that does not materially affect the argument: both incidents involved public people lying to their public.

Round and about in Epsom (2)

Out on the Horton Clockwise yesterday, on what must have been the first time for more days than I had realised, as in the interval this tree had fallen and been more or less cleared up. Not aware of serious wind in the recent past, since the storm that wasn't (at least around here - see 28th October - and which I had thought was just a couple of weeks ago before looking it up. Biological clock must be really speeding up with age now), but perhaps the storm did loosen the thing up, getting it ready for the next little push to finish the job.

While I was peering at the thing, clearly rotten at the base of the trunk, even though the drums from higher up looked sound enough, I was joined by a gentleman of about my age, a foreigner of some sort who has lived for a long time in this country. He seemed to know something about trees and timber and proceeded to explain that it was the wrong sort of oak, a turkey oak, and that all the trees nuts, most of whom know nothing about trees, would do much better to plant the native oak rather than the turkey oak, which grows fast but is good for nothing better than firewood and is apt to die young (often of fungus) in our damp climate. Apart from the tree nuts, all the fault of the accountants. He had the manners to check that I was not an accountant before adding in this last bit.

Checking in Wikipedia this morning, I find that, for once, the Ministry of Defence is well ahead of the game. I quote: 'the tree harbours the gall wasp Andricus quercuscalicis whose larvae seriously damage the acorns of native British oaks. In 1998, the Ministry of Defence ordered the felling of all turkey oaks on its UK bases'. Perhaps I should pass this on to the chief trusties lurking at Polesden Lacey, perhaps more focused presently on all the small birds who like to eat the larvae, at the expense of the trees. And in case you are wondering, turkey oaks do indeed grow in Turkey and are nothing to do with Thanksgiving in New England.

PS: note the brown fungus emerging from the trunk, just to the right of the root and just below the red & white tape. One of several. The lower part of the trunk was also spotted with a number of holes, up to a centimetre in diameter. The work of beetles, woodpeckers or fungi?

Round and about in Epsom (1)

I've heard of and occasionally come across pleached limes (see, for example 12th August), but I have not come across pleached leylandii before - or, at least, that is rather what they look like. Captured out the front of Bourne Hall Library.

And if they really are leylandii - and not, say, some kind of yew - what on earth is going to happen as time goes on? Someone has clearly gone to a fair bit of trouble and expense so I must take a closer look and get proper identification off the thing

Inspection day

BH tells me that some nanny quango or other, or perhaps some child development version of Ms. Portas, has castigated Epsom & Ewell Borough Council for its poor provision of facilities for children, this castigation pushing our hard pressed council into spending some of their (or rather our) money on upgrading the skateboard facility in the park which Google Maps calls Long Grove Park despite its being adjacent to Southfield Park Primary School. I wonder if Google have a mapping control unit buried somewhere in Idaho to which you can send emails labelling places on their maps and to which some bright spark sent an email saying that since this park used to be part of the grounds of Long Grove Hospital, that ought to be the name of the park? Despite the fact that some of us are trying hard to hold the line that there is no need for mental hospitals and that it is probably better not to remind people that those before us thought otherwise. Let their would-be customers be cared for in the community! I think there is some kind of a free for all when it comes to posting pictures onto Google's maps, but I had not thought that this extended to labels. Surely they take some responsibility for what they put out under their banner?

Anyway, inspection last week revealed the skate park is still in good hands, having been handed over to a specialised skate park contractor who has now been on site for some months, certainly landscaping and possibly enlarging what was there before. Some of the new earth banks are quite steep and it will be interesting to see how they settle down. Will the grass take? Will they actually, physically settle down, so disturbing their tasteful sculpting? I wonder also if the boys who use such places will be grateful. Or do they only really like to use places which are vaguely illicit and will be put off by this grand display of licitness? Certainly the contractor feels the need to lock his diggers inside containers overnight (see above), a proceeding I have not come across before.

But maybe I am going on a bit. The skate park attracted quite a lot of use in the past and maybe it will attract even more in the future.

Next stop inspection of the Blackfriars branch of El Vino's (http://www.elvino.co.uk/), the Fleet Street branch of which was famous for a while for trying to keep women out of the public bar at the front and to confine them to the saloon bar at the back. Not that the public bar was ever that public, being mainly the preserve of journalists and lawyers on the liquid lunch. Noisy and pushy bunch they were too; not very welcoming to people who were obviously from some other gang. But I do remember going there a long time ago, at a quiet time, to buy a bottle of the then favoured Blue Nun, to be told by the oldish chap who was minding the shop that day that he thought that he could do rather better than that sir. And so he did.

Anyway, heading north from Epsom, arrived at the stand at Vauxhall Cross to find it being replenished so no problem about it being empty (which has happened once or twice). Along the river to Lambeth Bridge, over the bridge and along the other side of the river to Parliament Square, around the square and from there onto the Victoria Embankment. Attracted an impatient honk from a white van at the turning to Temple Place, waiting the few seconds while I peddled across the left hand exit being too much for its driver. Up the ramp onto the exit from Blackfriars Bridge to find the Bullingdon Stand there closed so had to push on to the one at Stonecutter Street, rather further from El Vino's than I had intended.

Into El Vino's to find it pleasantly quiet and old fashioned, with an ambience not unlike that of a boozer of the same era. Quite unlike the glitzy, glassy sort of thing favoured by watering hole designers these days. A bit disappointed by the wine list, not offering all that much by the glass, looking strong on French red by the bottle, but a bit weak on white, preferably German, this being my country of the month. I suppose their list seemed  much more distinguished in the days when grocers (at least in England) did not sell wine and wine bars had not been invented. Notwithstanding, not a bad place at all for a drink and a natter.

Strolled back along the south of the river to Vauxhall, paying a visit to a hotel I used to use a bit when I was a servant of the Home Department, the Park Plaza, the place on the Albert Embankment with a ball room with a huge window overlooking the river. Again, not a bad place for a drink and a natter, albeit of a rather different kind. Also good to be reminded that I no longer get made to go to the sort of corporate hugging events which were all the rage at the time that I retired and which are core business for places like this, for all the world as if the Home Department was some pyramid sales outfit.

And so to Vauxhall Station where, quite by chance, I located the Bullingdon Stand actually under the overground station. For some years now I have been walking across to that called Vauxhall Cross. It is, of course, possible that the one I failed to find before would have been empty most of the times that I wanted to use it, being that much nearer the station. But the real test, of course, is will I be able to find the place again, tucked under one of the arches as it is? Which arch was that?

Had not had time to visit Luso Trading on this occasion, but we did liven up the evening Poirot with a bottle of their 'Alvarihno' from the 'Palacio da Brejoeira'. Very good it was too, despite not being German. Also, and this was a first for us, in a bottle which had been numbered by hand, this one being 35986. Someone has been busy with the biro. Someone has also been busy with the rather elaborate web site at http://www.palaciodabrejoeira.pt.

Pensions and who pays for them

The illustrated chart from the Economist caught my eye the other day, making in a rather more serious way one of the long runs I was making on the second of the two posts attributed to 17th November (these attributions being a little dodgy, being geared up to some Californian time rather than the Greenwich Mean Time which rules in this part of the world).

Interesting that four large and important countries - Japan, Spain, Germany and France - choose to pay their pensioners out of current income, rather than having prospective pensioners do some saving while they still can. While, on the one hand one might say that it all amounts to much the same thing in the end, that the people working now have to make the bread & bacon for the people not working now as well as for themselves, one might also say that pensioners living off their savings have a different sort of title to their pensions than, say, retired civil servants like myself who may have earned their pensions but do not own them in quite the same way.

I was moved to go and take a peek at the OECD website where there is a whole forest of stuff about all this, presumably the work of heaps of globe trotting actuaries, and where I found something called the 'OECD Pensions Outlook 2012'. While I could not find the chart that the Economist had highlighted there was lots of stuff, as you can see for yourself if you click on http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/finance-and-investment/oecd-pensions-outlook-2012_9789264169401-en;jsessionid=59e703gs7dp1s.x-oecd-live-01. Someone has put a lot of work into all this; everything a policy wonk could possibly need to know about the international pensions scene, with lots of material ready to hand, ready to be shipped into policy papers and passed off as one's own stuff.

Perhaps the Guardian has heaps of interns (unpaid) reading it all and turning it into suitable size gobbets to pad out the rag on days when news is slow or when all the journos. have hangovers or worse and when more topical or more lively copy is not to be had.

Perhaps pensions finance will be the hot topic for aspiring statisticians for a while, giving them a break from the well worked topic of housing finance, the stuff from which the great global recession of 2008-2012 was made. Can I smell gloom and doom on the horizon once more?

PS: one might also try higher up the tree at http://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/. Pensions is not the only fruit on offer.

Jigsaw 22, Series 2

Another jigsasw which has been some time in the solving, this one having been started around 2000 on Sunday 3rd November and finished around 0800 yesterday, 22nd November.

A slow start, and for perhaps the first time, did not finish the border before embarking on the interior, having found the sky part of the border a lot more difficult than the sky line. Then worked down to the blue line of rocks to the left and of distant woods to the right, probably leaving an island of water behind to do at the end. All fairly straightforward.

Then got around to finishing the top border, finishing that around the 9th, but leaving a twenty by two patch of sky, difficult for such a narrow patch because of the regularity of the pieces. Four of which met at every interior vertex and every interior one of which was of the hole-prong-hole-prong configuration with little variation in size or shape, beyond a slight variation in aspect ratio, a variation which usually told you which way round a piece went, up to reflection anyway. Sky eventually completed after a fashion, but the result was a little bumpy and there were probably mistakes - but having finally got a completed sky decided to leave what was at least fairly well, alone.

Then came the rocks and woods of the lower half of the image - somewhere alpine not further specified - which were also difficult. Gradually built some islands of rock, which, after what seemed like a long time started to coalesce, both to each other and to the containing surroundings.

Got there yesterday morning, but as with the sky, the result was a little bumpy.

All in all an unattractive picture - not sure why, would probably be spectacular in real life - and an unsatisfying puzzle. Not without some pleasures of search and solve along the way, but overall not good. Consigned without honour to the compost heap rather than storage in an upstairs cupboard.

For the record, a Puzzle Factory 500 piece puzzle from the British Heart Foundation for the outrageous sum of £2 - double what Oxfam in Ewell Village would have charged. All my own fault for not sticking with the latter.

Kingston

Off to Kingston earlier in the week, to see the sights and generally to start to ramp up for the Christmas festivities. Also our first use of the Christmas shopping park and ride service from Chessington - cheaper and more convenient than travelling by car.

Off to a good start by spotting, the first time for a long time, a bicycle fitted with the same model (and same colour) carriers from Karrimor that I have on my own bike, once a leading brand for such things, now, I am told, dropped down a bit in the league table. I forget whether this is because their quality has fallen off or because they have simply fallen victim to some movement of fashion in the fast moving world of cycling. Quality of my old bags good: I have had them for around 30 years and their only weakness is in the large size rubber bands which attach the bottoms of the bags to the hub, to stop them flapping around. Perhaps I forgot to get the frame which ought to have come with the bags and with which the rubber bands would not have been a problem. (It looks as if the owner of this bike might be having a frame problem too). And it remains a puzzle why so few younger cyclists use carriers and prefer small back packs: to my mind carriers are far superior, and thinking of carnage, far safer. Perhaps I ought to tell Boris.

Then over the river to take a walk along the bank towards Hampton Court. Interested to see, tied up abreast under the small block of flats which has been built next to the north eastern corner of the bridge, three identical houseboats, made out of steel barges and managing to look both ugly and expensive. Why would anyone want all the bother of living in such a thing? A lot of the bother without the fun of a proper boat which you might actually move around occasionally when you fall out with your neighbours. Or get fed up with the view. And what about the people in the ground floor flats, with their view out of the their windows blocked by blue and grey steel?

Along the path to admire the cold, mirror like quality of the expanse of still winter water. And to be reminded - it being a while since we took this walk - of the odd houses there, one of two of them very big indeed. Who lives in such places? And then there was rather an odd house, more a pavilion, which had been built to replace a burnt out pavilion, a pavilion which I imagine had been built a little before the First World War and which had been derelict for some time. Something else which managed to look both ugly and expensive, not helped by some rather dingy green netting stuff strapped to the long, path-side fence, presumably to stop prying eyes. Odd how some people who live in beautiful, reasonably secluded parts of the world get a thing on about privacy, a thing which one might think is out of all proportion to any likely intrusion. Odd, but, as I have noticed before, common enough in Surrey.

Back to the John Lewis canteen on the river, where we took our National Trust style lunch at a table overlooking the river. Not a bad place at all: I am not usually a fan of eating in shops but this was one of the better experiences. But startled on the way out by the amount of space given over to coffee makers and their prices, a lot of them being £1,299, which to me, a near non-drinker of coffee, is an extraordinary amount to pay for a machine to make coffee at home. Although, reflecting now, is it so unreasonable to pay about as much for one's coffee as I paid for my hifi; the amount of time and pleasure is perhaps not that out of line? Some people are keen on coffee.

We also came across an interesting gadget for making bread: a mixing ceramic/earthenware/? bowl with a fitted lid which doubles as a baking stone. Quite a neat gadget, but slightly too small for present cooking requirements, slightly too large for current storage facilities and rather dear at £35 a pop. I need two. Perhaps I can come up with some DIY alternative. Maybe some sheet steel from Sparrowhawks to serve both as lids to our existing stainless steel bowls and baking trays?

Then visited the various shops in Old London Road, which is showing signs of redevelopment, a pity as the rag-tag of shops there now is a pleasant change from the chain stores of the shopping centre proper. But after a tour of the antique market decided that when it came to it, I was not that keen on a florid replacement to the demure and decent cheese dish (from Poole Pottery) which got broken recently. Funny how one is attracted to something, maybe mull over it for a while, but when it actually comes to it, when the thing becomes possible, one backs right off, back to where one started out from.

And so back to Chessington World of Adventures to recover our car from the park and ride.

White Rose

Just finished an interesting and moving read of 'Sophie Scholl and the White Rose', a fictionalised account of a pocket of student resistance to Hitler and his regime in war time Munich.

Perhaps doubly interesting because firstly these students were not that much younger than my own parents, both more or less of the same generation and inhabiting more or less the same sort of world, and secondly because we had student resistance in my own day, albeit of a rather different kind, not least because it was risk free, both in the sense that resistance was unlikely to have consequences and in that one was not going to be drafted to fight in Vietnam from the UK. This resistance was likely to have consequences and did; it must have taken a lot of courage.

The numbers of students involved appears to have been small, but it is nevertheless good to read that there were some. Humanity had not been completely snuffed out by Hitler's regime from the gutters and there were perhaps plenty of people who resented being pushed around by the sort of people who floated to the top of the Nazi party brew. I suppose that all revolutions are going to provide opportunities for such people, after all, that is in part what revolutions are about, but perhaps the Nazi party was unique in the way it promoted the gutter; being good at leading a bunch of thugs at beating people up in the street was what got you promoted, at least in the early days. And a love of marching, marching songs, marches and drums helped too - activities drawing, certainly in part, from the same well as those of our own Boy Scouts.

I don't suppose we will ever now know the balance: how many Germans were actively for Hitler, how many went along for the ride, how many were sullen but passive and how many actively opposed. How many were swept into the brutality of it all? What happened to all those members of parties of the left which fought (and lost) against Hitler's rise? But at least we do know that at least some Germans were actively opposed. And books like this one do give one an accessible feel for the complexity of it all.

One snippet at the end stuck for some reason. It seems that the executioner at the regular prison at Munich - that is to say not the place where the Gestapo did most of its stuff - was in place before Hitler and was still in place after Hitler, apparently living more or less peacefully through it all. The civil service lives on! I was reminded of the sometimes hereditary nature of the occupation in both Britain and France.

Codfish

Innovative codfish recipe today, the man from Hastings happening to be in town.

Take one large onion and chop fine. Gently fry in a little rapeseed oil. Add one ounce of chopped salt ham (cooked). After a while place a 12 ounce piece of cod on top, skin down. After a while turn cod and remove skin. Replace lid and continue to cook gently.

Meanwhile, boil up 6 ounces of white rice (preferably from Kerala) with a little chopped celery and a lot of water. Drain after simmering for 10 minutes, dump on top of the cod and replace the lid for the second time. Simmer for a few more minutes then stir it all up and serve with boiled green kale. Good gear - but take care to look at what you eat, there being apt to be the odd bone.

PS: and while we are on watery subjects, we have http://www.reagan.navy.mil/ - a ship which carries no less than three captains and a rear admiral and looks to be of a different order than either of the two carriers that we are building, one of which reports that 'painters have started in the F to G join up areas and are progressing well' and that 'a total of 7,188 pipes across the block installed to date'. So the question is, given that we can no longer afford to compete with the Yanks (or, presumably, the Chinese), should we be in this sort of game at all? Should we just pay the US a membership sub. to be included under their umbrella?

Cycle carnage

I learn from the rather loud head line of yesterday's Evening Standard that the Mayor of London is going to have a bicycle safety campaign, which despite its apparent focus on motorists may do something to curb the poor road use & manners of far too many London cyclists. From where I cycle, most motorists are considerate towards the cyclists who are often in their way (no fault on either side here, a consequence of having both on the one road) and the motorists who are not are far outnumbered by the bad cyclists.

BH puts the flurry of deaths down to inexperienced cyclists getting to grips with cycling in the poor winter light of early mornings and early evenings.

My own most recent experience was exemplary. Thinking to sample a few old haunts around London Bridge, picked up a Bullingdon at Waterloo Roundabout and made good time towards London Bridge, when heading east along a quiet Southwark Street, my bag, despite it being fixed on by the Bullingdon's large size rubber band in the usual way, fell off. Luckily it was quiet, the lady cyclist behind me smiled sympathetically as she avoided the bag and I was able to retrieve it undamaged and unmarked. Then a hundred yards or so further on, a middle aged chap shot out into the road on one of those small folding bikes and I had no chance of avoiding him. Luckily for me anyway, the Bullingdon is a fairly sturdy & heavy thing and just brushed the miniature aside and its rider was on the deck. I stopped and turned around to see the rider waving in an apologetic way at me, apparently unhurt. So I carried on to dock at the Hop Exchange, slightly surprised that a stand so near a big railway station should have spaces in the middle of the evening rush hour.

Sampled a few haunts, including a Young's house just by the market distinguished by the crush of breezy youth and the state of the art smoking den, used more as an overflow area from the interior rather than for smoking. All in all rather struck by the number of drinkers out so early in the week.

Not having taken much on, and it being cold enough to blow off what I had, took a chance and picked up a Bullingdon for the return leg from the same Hop Exchange at which I had arrived for a leisurely and uneventful ride back to Waterloo, to find the two stands on or about the roundabout full and the first two stands by the Festival Hall full. Pedalled on, thinking that I might have to try Vauxhall, when I came across a new to me stand called Jubilee Gardens which was half empty. Job done and no distance at all to walk back to the station, just in time to catch the 1939 (having picked up the aforementioned Evening Standard).

Two large bicycles inside the first door to the first carriage. I had forgotten what a pain they are in a busy train. When I used to do it, many years ago, we had the use of a luggage van and so did not disturb the foot soldiers. Also a time when I used to occupy one of the few smoking seats, as most travelers on the trains in question either abhorred the smell of smoky seats or did not care to be associated with puffs or puffing, while I got a seat near the luggage van, which was handy.

PS: pleased to report that the user facing part of the Bullingdon Computer System is up and running again after the recently reported glitch. Furthermore, their command centre had acknowledged my email report of same within hours.

Johann Baptist Mayrhofer

On Saturday to the Wigmore Hall to hear some of Mayrhofer's poems set to music by Schubert, all new to us, usually sticking to the better known song cycles such as the Winterreise. Interpreted (as the French say) by Wolfgang Holzmair and Imogen Cooper. Probably the last performance by Holzmair at the Wigmore Hall and possibly the end of his long partnership with Imogen Cooper.

Altogether something of an occasion, and I suspect that at least some of the audience were at his first performance at the Hall in 1989, about, as it happens, the time that we moved back to London, but I don't think we ever went to any of his 35 or so performances since then. Along the way we learned that the director of the Hall has a discretely regional accent.

But these songs were tremendous, even though we had not heard them before and even though we were not able to follow the words in English as they went along. Too much of a bother with older eyes and the head bobbing up and down, not to mention the irritation that the bobbing might cause behind. Only having the most general of ideas of what the songs were about seemed to be enough - the title of one of them 'Journey to Hades' gives the general idea - and it might even be that knowing the words would have distracted.

On the point of clapping, Holzmair had that completely under control, without needing to give us any direction on the point. Clapping at the pause, the interval and the end - and not elsewhere, which is how I like it.

Took in the Christmas lights in Oxford Street and Regent Street on the way home, which we thought rather good, albeit fairly low key. Special mention for John Lewis. Evening wrapped up by the enthusiastic offering by a group of young people of seats on the tube, declined.

And today I learn from Wikipedia that as well as being a poet, Mayrhofer was a middle aged suicide with a taste for much younger women. Also a hypochondriac.

PS: Imogen Cooper was born approximately 30 days before I was. And still going strong!

Experiment

We had a heated discussion in the pub the other day about whether the moon phase was the same the world over. If you had a horned moon with the horns pointing left as you faced them in, say, Afghanistan, how would they look in Columbia? One theory was that since the moon was quite a long way from the earth, its relationship with the sun ought to look pretty much the same from wherever on the earth you looked at it. But there were other theories and there were no winners. Apart, that is, from the boozer.

However, for the first time in many years, I have supervised a scientific experiment and can now confirm that the moon does indeed look pretty much the same from Madras (aka Chennai) as it does from London, so the aforesaid first theory is confirmed. I am grateful to UBS (see http://www.ubs.com) for making this experiment possible.

PS: there is also the question of whether horns left is a waxing or a waning moon, but that requires deeper thought. Plus the related question of why crescent moons on national flags are the way round that they are, whatever that might be, which might be one for the mullahs. A question which is complicated by the fact that, depending on how exactly the moon on the flag is made, it might be one way from one side of the flag and the other way from the other.

St. Luke's

Last Thursday saw the last lunch time concert of the Autumn series at St. Luke's. So picked up a Bullingdon from the stand at (51.50479,-0.113015) and headed off, via Blackfriars Bridge, for Clerkenwell - and as the sign into the Bullingdon Bike part of TFL is down for the first time ever, I have had to resort to latitude and longitude from Google Maps rather than using the proper TFL name for the stand. The coordinates given are confirmed in broad terms by Wikipedia to be those of London. Plus, it is common knowledge that Waterloo is just a touch to the west of the Greenwich Meridian.

Arrived in time both for bacon sandwich and to browse the DVDs in the charity shop just up the street, getting two of the latter for £2 each. Not particularly cheap, but then it looked like a good cause. Further entertained by an incident outside the nail buffing shop (http://www.hulanails.com/). A white van managed to drive over their advertising board which had been standing on the pavement, at which point two or three girls dressed up like cocktail waitresses dashed out of the shop and one of them grabbed the van and brought it back for questioning. One wondered whether more exotic services were on offer in addition to the nail buffing.

Onto the concert where we heard the Quatuor Ébène (with a very swish if not very easy to use web site at http://www.quatuorebene.com/) do a Mozart programme: Divertimentos K136 & K138 followed by the String Quartet in D minor, K421. Truly an excellent concert to wind up the season with.

Quick beverage at the Wetherspoon's, then Bullingdoned it back to Waterloo to pick up from Konditur & Cook a couple more of their fruit & almond tarts, to find that they also do their own stollen, just arrived from their HQ under the Gherkin. And I had thought that the Waterloo branch where I shop was the HQ. I was tempted, but eventually thought that I had better report back in case there were pre-existing stollen plans in Epsom. Maybe there were plans to pick up a near freebie from the Aldi (or perhaps Lidl) stand by the ice rink which they sometimes erect in the Christmas fair at the south eastern corner of Hyde Park.

Back to view one of the DVDs, 'Men of Honour', about the trials and torments of the first black master diver in the US Navy. A good film, although we thought that it was all laid on a bit thick. It was hard to believe that such racism could be so pervasive, that there would be so few vaguely decent whites. After all, not all whites came from the deep south, and even some of those might have had a bit of good in them. One also thought that if someone really went through what was shown, that someone was apt to end up a rather damaged person. Maybe also one would have to be rather unusual, if not odd, to stay such a course. But it was a good sign that the US could make a film like this about itself

Baked apple

It being the time of year when the supply of cooking apples far outstrips demand, time to put in plug for the baked apple.

Select apples without gross flaws (particularly those involving livestock), maybe 3 inches in diameter and 2 inches high. Allow one or two to the person, according to taste and appetite.

Core them, this being done most easily with one of those corers which looks a bit like an old fashioned potato peeler and which takes a half inch cylindrical plug out of the centre of the apple.

Score the peel around the equator of the apples, thus giving them expansion capability, without which they are apt to burst.

Place apples in a shallow tray, bunched up close so that they can hold each other up.

Fill the holes with dried fruit; raisins, dates or some such. Small knob of butter on top.

Add a little water to the tray.

Bake for 47 minutes at 173C, or until soft. The equators should have parted by this point. Leave in the hot oven and serve within half an hour or so.

One more fine dish which a restaurant is going to have trouble with. They don't stand too well, they take too long to cook to order and I don't think boil in the bag or microwaves are going to help with this one.

But there again, maybe I will be proved wrong one day and I will will take a baked apple in a restaurant, complete with a drizzle of hedgerow fruit coulis and topped with a squirt of cream from something which looks like a large tube of toothpaste. Served on a shiny white plate in the shape of a trapezium with gently rounded corners and slightly curled up edges. £4.50 a pop plus VAT and service.

Ponderosa postcript

Thinking of the long run, Keynes once said that in the long run we are all dead.

It is also true that, in the long run, if current trends continue and the proportion of the pie taken by rich continues to rise, the poor people in this country will get so fed up with the rich people taking such a big slice of the pie that there will be disturbances, perhaps revolutions. Perhaps they will fiddle their benefits.

In the long run, we here in Great Britain will have to consume less. We cannot cover our current account deficit with the rest of the world with capital for ever. We've managed this trick for fifty years now, and maybe for fifty years to come, but not for ever.

In the long run, if current trends continue and the proportion of the population at work continues to fall, those of us of at work will have to consume less so that there is something left, or perhaps care homes left, for those of us not at work to consume. As least for those of us not at work for respectable reasons: as they used to say in the Middle Ages when this problem wore different clothes, no consumption for sturdy beggars.

In the long run, financial services will follow the money, that is to say out of London. London got to be a financial centre because it was the capital of a very rich and powerful country, which is already a lot less true than it was and will get even less true as time goes on.

None of this need bother the current rich too much. The third and fourth long runs don't apply to them and the second and fifth long runs are probably a few years off yet.

Pondrosa

A Horton Clockwise this morning, sprouting various thoughts, for which the collective noun of ponderosa seemed appropriate. Actually the name of a tree which is widespread in the US if not elsewhere. Furthermore, while checking up on the ponderosa pine I found that Australia, Canada, US and various states in the US operate registers of big trees. A splendid idea, but Google did not come up with a British equivalent. We can't go round inspecting our big trees on Sundays (which would be a welcome change from stately homes) and ticking them off on our spreadsheets, rather in the way of bird spotters. Maybe it would make the most sense to do it on a British Isles basis, including here the whole of Ireland, the Isle of Man and the Scilly Isles, but excluding the Channel Islands which belong to France for such purposes. The US model is to be found at http://www.americanforests.org/our-programs/bigtree/.

First ponderous thoughts concerned cyclists. During the walk I was overtaken by two cyclists riding on the footpath, one a young adult female and one a child male. The former used a bell and overtook me wide while the latter did not use a bell and overtook me close, almost clipping my ear. I was too slow to remonstrate either with him or his accompanying father, although to be fair the father was a little way off.

Second ponderous thoughts concerned rubbish. A middle aged white man leading a dog carrying a fullish but light looking black dustbin bag was walking along the back of the houses which back onto the stream running along this particular part of Longmead Road. After a while he appears to dump the bag between a back fence and a bush and carries on, all innocent, far too far away for me to challenge him, even if had been minded to try. But what on earth was he doing? Why go to the bother to carefully bag up your rubbish and then deposit it in the wrong place? The tip, after all, was probably no further for him to walk with the thing. Why not put the rubbish in a wheelie bin, plenty big enough for most people? The least bad solution that I can think of is that it was garden waste, emptied out in a sensible enough place with the bag being consigned, unseen, to a pocket. Otherwise, what a plonker.

Third ponderous thoughts concerned the DT, which continues to bang on about the national scandal of older people having to sell their houses to pay their own bills at their care homes. This being the same paper which bangs on at other times about the national scandal of people having to pay maybe half their income in tax to the government, when it is well known that governments will just go on the spree with it, assuming they don't just save themselves the bother and pour it down the drain. Where on earth do they think the money to pay all these care home bills is going to come from? Especially if we stop employing Romanians and start paying care workers a living wage.

Which puts the people at the DT, all of whom probably have enough education that they ought to know better, in the same ball park as the rubbish plonker of the second thoughts.

PS: there is the Irish solution to this problem, noticed here before. But that is probably far too simple for us Brits. Can't put my finger on it just presently, but it may pop up in due course, in which case a reference will be supplied.

Mission accomplished!

Off to the Library again, phone in hand.

Got connected to the internet very smoothly. Clearly starting to get the hang of things.

Got into my email account. Got into the email from Microsoft and clicked on it. And then, wonder of wonders, my very first app (free, naturally) actually did download and I was able to view my one and only PDF document, as it happens a recent annual report from the National Trust. So I will now be able to check up on their finances as I munch in the restaurant at Polesden Lacey, whether or not they are fully hot spotted, which I trust and expect that they are.

The google interface did not appear to have an option to remember my email password, so let's hope that it has not, being slightly worried about security aspects of all this integration. There is also the thought that having gone through all this rigmarole, I will now be tempted to spend money by downloading apps which are not free. Perhaps it is just as well that there is no wifi at home.

But pleased by the assurance from the pleasant people at Carphone Warehouse that there is no charge from my phone services provider - Talkmobile - for using the Library wifi, or anybody else's wifi for that matter. I had suspected that they might be levying their own version of VAT on such activities. Not completely convinced yet because the pleasant people at Carphone Warehouse, while pleasant, have not done terribly well on giving me advice. I dare say I am both too old to warrant quality attention and too phone dumb to ask the right questions.

I forgot to mention yesterday that I can now see contacts from the phone on the PC and I succeeded in downloading an Excel readable (CSV)  file of them. So having today succeeded in downloading an app, I declare the new phone set up mission to be accomplished.

I celebrated by taking a snap of a new build British Telecom public phone box. Presumably the once proud estate of such things is now much shrunk in the face of the onslaught of the mobile phones, but interesting to see that they are still putting up some new ones. I did not get as far as investigating whether it actually worked, but it did look smart enough. And sensibly placed right outside our Job Centre, the customers for which might not all be fully paid up members of the connected world.

Which gives rise to the thought that it might not be such a bad way to keep track of people. No self respecting hoodie is going to be without a phone and he is unlikely to want to keep changing the thing with all the pack drill that that involves, so here we have a ready made tracking device. One which is going to cause far less bother than the ankle mounted gadgets one might otherwise use. And then there are the national register people: no need to invent yet another universal reference number for people. Just insist that they have an active mobile phone. No citizenship - and certainly no NHS and  no benefits - for persons without phones.

99% complete

Following my efforts reported on 14th November, the special code Nokia sent me to activate their understanding of my phone number seems to have mysteriously expired. I am not aware of having using it successfully, but Nokia do now seem to know what my phone number is - not that this helps much. When I get into my account with them it just seems to tell me what my credentials are, without giving me access to anything.

And then I thought, maybe the right way to try to connect my phone to my pre-existing Microsoft account is to try to do it from the phone, rather than from the PC with the phone plugged into it, which I had hoped would enable the phone to see the internet - and the internet to see it. Home being equipped with an antique BT Voyager 210 router (a technology which is at least five years old) which does cables rather than the all important wifi.

So off to Epsom library where they have a wifi hotspot, a wheeze which seems to be eating away at the provision of public internet capable computers, and try there. After two or three attempts I succeed in telling Microsoft about my shiny new Lumia phone (which is now, after all, one of their brands). I also succeed, for the first time, in using the phone to talk to the internet, slowly coming to realise along the way that phone access means that fancy new programs are needed to display things on a screen 3 inches by 2 which were designed for a screen 24 inches by 16. It might take a while before they are much good. In the meantime, can I plug my phone into my computer and get the computer screen to repeat in big what can be seen in small on the phone? Clearly a question for the experts' panel at the Tooting Wetherspoon's.

That aside, at this point I think that I am home and dry. So I get home an hour or so later, plug the phone in and try to download the free app to read acrobat files. I get invited to log into my Microsoft account, which I then try to do, several times. Sometimes it waits a while before telling me there is a problem. Sometimes it just tells me that this user name password combination are wrong - which I am fairly sure they are not. And just to check I make sure I can get to my Microsoft account otherwise.

Next thought is that maybe the new link to my phone is taking a while to rattle through what must be the many layers of Microsoft systems and that maybe I should try again some time later.

Some time later I do indeed seem to get a bit further into downloading the app (using the PC with the phone plugged into it), this time ticking a terms and conditions box along the way. I even get as far as the thing trying to download, only to be told that they can't reach my phone just now. Perhaps sir would like to open the email they have just sent to me from the phone. Which I don't seem to be able to do just presently, so off to the library again tomorrow to see what I can do there.

In the meantime I have been prompted to put some documents on something called my Skydrive. Where does that leave Dropbox?

Getting warm I think.

Surface to an important tweet from Prime Minister, dispatched in haste from his seat on the top of an elephant in a theme park in Bangalore. It seems that he thinks that some of things being done by his coalition were not in the national interest. Which I did not think worth the tweet: the whole point of a coalition is that because the electorate were not very sure where their national interest was, he had to agree with Mr. Clegg to fudge their differences of opinion about same, otherwise the party of Blair & Brown might have had another five years to impose their faded vision on us.

Quality control alert!

I spotted what looked like a very shoddy bit of concreting on the way into London today, perhaps, to judge from the background, at Worcester Park. Not at all clear on what grounds this large bit of steel work is justified - it would take a lot of wheelchairs to pay for it - but that is not my point. My point is that the far section of the concrete base was laid or perhaps poured very carelessly, perhaps without bothering with a vibrator, with the result that this rather thin section is full of rather fat voids, clearly visible if you click on the image to enlarge it. Not at all clear what sort of a load it is good for...

Will they just hide the offending concrete from view, will they squirt grout into the holes to hide them from the inspector or what?

Would British Rail have done a better job?

An Englishman's home is his castle

I noticed 'The Eye of the Storm' on 16th October and am still slowly working my way through the kindle version. View not changing: interesting stuff but rather heavy going.

But along comes the NYRB with an article mainly about the publication of a hitherto unknown fragment of a book by the same Patrick White. Some of the article is given over to a discussion of the fact that White left quite explicit instructions to his literary executor to destroy all papers, letters and ephemera that he might have left around. Also to try and recall any of his letters that might be being held by friends and to destroy them too.

Now according to the Statute of Wills (32 Hen. 8, c. 1 - enacted in 1540) (confirmed in essentials by the Wills Act of 1837) an Englishman is free to leave his possessions to whomsoever he might please, the prior situation being rather more complicated, particular in foreign lands where Salic Law might have applied. But according to NYRB, this simple and sensible arrangement is being nibbled away at by the judiciary in the US and in Australia, a judiciary which is no doubt delighted with this extension to their field of interference - or put it another way, one more revenue opportunity. So if I wrote in my will 'everything to Mr. J. Doe', when I die the lawyers are entitled if not enjoined to inquire into exactly what I meant by 'everything' (or, to reprise a bon-mot from Ryan of Ryanair, which bit about everything do you find difficult - 'every' or 'thing'?). Did I really mean 'everything except the bits that my family thought they could sell and make some dosh out of' or 'everything except the naughty bits which can be flogged off to the Mail on Sunday'? Surely I didn't mean to destroy all that literary trivia which would otherwise be food for a thousand PhD's? Surely I meant by everything, everything as understood by a reasonable man, that is to say everything excluding anything of interest? Perhaps by saying everything I was not really specifying, merely suggesting to my executor that he consider what should be kept and what might be thrown away, merely prompting a discussion, rather in the way that I might start a conversation by saying of a dress which looked blue 'I like the red tones in that dress'. Red doesn't mean red, it is just a way of raising a marker about the colour of the dress. Now turning to 'Mr. J. Doe', was this just a witty way of saying everyone, that is to say to the public at large? And so it might go on, with the lawyers clocking up another US$500 every time you dial their number.

It seems that the only answer is to destroy everything yourself before you go. But this is rather like having to trot off to Zurich when it is time to call time on oneself. You have to call time rather earlier than you might otherwise have done because of all the unnecessary travel & pack drill.

I might also say that I am in complete agreement with White. If I had a heritage, I would want to control it. To say what was in and what was out. To get rid of all the juvenilia and all the dementilia. I would want my heritage to be my published work and and I would not want a lot of sleuths creeping about the odd corners of my life demonstrating how this or that bit of the oeuvre came to be. Although I do accept that if you make a lot of money out of the public, they do have prying rights. You cannot be both big public and big private.

PS 1: all rather odd as, in so far as I understand such matters, Anglo Saxon law depends heavily on exactly what a law says, unlike continental law which puts more weight on what it thinks that the writers of a law intended. They might, for example, be influenced by the introduction, the preamble to a bill, or even the context in which it passed into law, as well as by what the bill actually says.

PS 2: rather heavy going on the Lumia today. Tried to download a reader from Adobe to be told that I couldn't do any shopping (for this free item) as my phone was not registered, although it was plugged into the PC which does have a Microsoft account. Logged into that just to make sure. Still no joy. Poke around in the Microsoft help - where all I learn is that plenty of people seem to be in the same pickle - and in the Lumia help where there is talk of a Nokia account. So I set one of those up and it has now verified my email address and is trying to verify my mobile phone number but I don't seem to be able to do the necessary with the text message which has arrived on the Lumia. Pulled it off the PC for the moment to get on with something more interesting - but as with the eye of the storm, I think I am making some progress.

Soweto Gospel Choir

On what was something of a change for us, off to the New Theatre at Wimbledon yesterday to hear the Soweto Gospel Choir on the first leg of their UK tour. They had flown in from Stockholm earlier in the day, were busing it up to Gateshead (in the far north) later in the day and with about 11 shows in not that many more days, it must be a grind that takes some getting used to.

About 25 of them on stage altogether, slightly more men than women and including the small number of musicians. An ensemble affair: some of them were more equal than others but they all took their turns. Vaguely traditional costumes, rather good, with one change during the interval. Some of the ladies of traditional shape. Front music traditional but with a keyboard lurking at the back, becoming more important as the show proceeded. Language mainly traditional.

Audience mainly white and middle aged, but with a good sprinkling of young people and blacks. The very smart couple next to us were probably from Africa direct rather than via the West Indies, South Africa rather than West Africa, and were quite happy to laugh and joke through the proceedings, which all seemed OK in a way that it would not be at the Wigmore Hall. The lady was also into much dancing on the spot when it came to the standing up part at the end. I found it hard to keep time, so settled for backwards and forwards rather than side to side.

High impact opening, with me being always very susceptible to adult choirs singing more or less in unison; a rather different kettle of fish from the choir boys of the likes of King's College chapel, although some of the solo voices could have done with a bit more of their sort of training. But the impact faded as the performance went on; as with our own folk music, there is not enough going on to carry you through long periods.

That said, all very physical and immediate and would, I imagine, do even better in a more collective, participatory & intimate format than the them and us of a large proscenium arch theatre - perhaps in the churches of their beginnings. You might have a choir out front but the congregation do join in the easy bits, perhaps more often than is allowed in King's College festivals of carols. There was also a fair topping of humour, mainly from the men, which nicely spiced up the proceedings; not quite a po-faced as an Anglo choir.

The theatre looked to have been restored in the not too distant past with some very theatrical paintings on the ceilings, larger scale versions of those on the ceiling of the 'Tottenham', just across the road from Tottenham Court Road tube station. A handsome place but essentially an empty shell, used by ATG for travelling shows rather than being a full blow theatre in its own right and with not a Chekhov or a Frayn in sight on their autumn programme. They don't even seem to run to their own web site. On the other hand, their bar was surprisingly cheap for a theatre bar and I was given a large Martell in a plastic glass for the modest sum of £3.60. No more, I should imagine, than the Wetherspoon's across the road, a Wetherspoon's which I remember as being something of a soaks' bar on weekday evenings, those being the times on which I used occasionally to visit, but busy and decent enough, mainly for eating purposes, when we visited before the show.

PS: The Tottenham does still exist, although no web site despite its central location. It seems to have become a member of the Nicholson family. See http://www.nicholsonspubs.co.uk. Along the way I also came across an outfit called http://www.smoke-spots.co.uk/, the first site to confirm the continuing existence of the place.

Brideshead Revisited (2)

The present interest in 'Brideshead Revisited' was triggered by coming across an Epsom Library chuck out, a small boxed set of 3 DVDs which looked as if they had been chucked out because they had been loaned out so often that their box was falling apart - see the right hand part of the bottom edge of the illustration. But a snip at £2 for the 3 DVD's, which as far as we could tell were in perfect working order.

Like a lot of other stuff that we watch, a costume drama now, but when written, set in the recent past, in this case maybe 25 years before the time of writing, the time of the youth of the author. At 12 hours or so viewing, a condensation rate (minutes of film to page of the book) somewhere between that where a 10 page short story from Agatha Christie is turned into an hour's drama and where a substantial novel from D. H Lawrence is turned into a two hour feature. A nicely made, well cast thing, gently paced and without the drumming, insistent and insidious sound track you get with the same sort of thing made now. Little breast baring and no violence. Not a social worker in sight although we do get the odd don and the odd parson. Good viewing for something which is more than 30 years old.

All that said, a rather odd entertainment in that none of the people in it were very likeable. A rather flawed bunch.

Moved to read the book again, to find that it had not made the last cut, so off to Ashtead Library to find that they do still carry Waugh - unlike, for example, his contemporary Huxley, who has more or less vanished from the shelves - and I was able to take out a nice Everyman's Edition, which came with an introduction by Frank Kermode and a chronology of the life and times of the author, Evelyn Waugh. Just the thing for the regular reader. Now read with an interest which declined through the three parts, while still finding that none of the people in it were very likeable and with part of the interest being the oddity of a convert to Catholicism writing such a book. How on earth could someone who saw so clearly what (at least upper class) Catholics were like go in for it himself? Also of interest that I liked the evocation of a possibly fairy tale Oxford of the twenties best, and liked the moralising of the second and third parts least.

Another point of interest was the name of the first part of the book,  'Et in arcadio ego', which I had always assumed to mean something like 'and I was in heaven', with the I being the narrator Charles Ryder, and in some part Waugh himself, luxuriating in the joys of undergraduate Oxford in the 1920's for those with money. A quote from Horace or Martial or someone like that. But the all-knowing Professor Google seems fairly clear that I have got it wrong. At, for example, http://quintessentialpublications.com/twyman/?page_id=30, I am told that the I in question is death and a loose translation might be 'death is everywhere, even in Paradise', a Renaissance rather than a classical thought. Also the title of a painting by Poussin in the Louvre. All of which fits the Kermode line that the book is really about death. But take care, Wikipedia is not that impressed with the line taken by the likes of quintessential publications.

Brideshead Revisited (1)

Prompted by the illustration taken from our free Epsom Guardian and by a recent revisit to Brideshead Revisited, I thought to make some enquiries, and as I thought probable, there are various extras available for a modest extra charge.

You can visit on a day when characters from the novel will be on parade, in full period costume borrowed from Miss Marple's Theatrical Costumier (http://www.prangsta.co.uk/) and when a small but select Puffing Poirot on loan from the National Steam Museum at York will be steaming majestically around the extensive grounds.

You can enjoy a sherry party in the Great Hall where there will be an opportunity to meet characters from the novel in a setting both informal and intimate.

Accompanied by a Sebastian and a Horrocks, you can get drunk in the style of an upper class twat of the 1920's. Conveniently, Miss Marple also does a nice line in dusty & dirty bottles.

For a rather less modest charge, you can take lunch with either a member of the Howard Family (the present inhabitants of the house, having bought it cheap after it fell into disrepair during the second world war) or a member of the Waugh Family, possibly a lineal descendant of Evelyn.

And, finally, anyone who purchases any of the above extras will get an absolutely free, vintage copy of the DVD of the famous TV serialisation of the book from 1981, featuring Mona Washbourne as Nanny Hawkins. There were also cameo roles for Messrs. Gielgud and Olivier.

I should also add, that, for those who fancy themselves as thespians, they will be interviewing for roles at the house for the forthcoming season during the second half of November. CV's on not more than one side of one piece of paper to house@castlehoward.co.uk please.

Park Life

On Sunday 3rd to the Woodland Gardens at Bushy Park, via the Diana Fountain. This being the fountain that often looks to me as if it is leaning to the right, the odd thing being that it look like this from whatever angle you look at her. As it happens, not too much of that on this occasion. But the woodland gardens having a lot of mature trees, we did learn that the policy was to let them lie where they fell, subject to a bit of tidying up. A policy intended to promote beetle life. Lots of cute small children, running about and generally being appealing. Good almond slice in the café, a rather handsome affair, presumably reflecting the affluence of the area as well as the royal status of the park.

Then on Sunday 10th, yesterday, to Hampton Court, for what seemed like the first visit for a while, and the first since, according to the search button, 3rd July, when we came to take a look at the roses. Not many roses yesterday, but a bright sunny day with lots of autumn interest. We hoped that the metasequoias were deciduous as their feathery leaves were looking rather brown (there were lots of small buds, which was hopeful). Some berries on the mistletoe. For a change we took a walk along the Pavilion Terrace to admire the interesting collection of pine trees planted along and the river over the wall. A river containing one or two eights out for Sunday practice.

Quite a lot of garden work going on, including a complete makeover of the western garden, the one to the north of the main entrance and immediately to the east of the western extremity of Hampton Court Road. We rather liked it the way it was, a sort of quiet antidote to the fancier gardening elsewhere in the palace, so it will be interesting to see what they will make of it, the standard of gardening at the palace being very high.

Took the opportunity to pay one of our infrequent visits to Lancelot Wines and picked up what turned out to be rather a good Franco-German wine called gewurztaminer from Steinert in the Alsace. No traces of the small bubbles that you sometimes get with German wine and on which I am not that keen.

PS: according to Wikipedia: 'metasequoia is a fast-growing, deciduous tree, and the sole living species, metasequoia glyptostroboides, is one of three species of conifers known as redwoods. It is native to the Sichuan–Hubei region of China'. I would never have guessed that they were Chinese. Nor would I have guessed that they were members of the cypress family, some of which manage to get along in the middle of the Sahara desert. So there.

Frang & Lifits

To St. Luke's earlier in the week to hear Vilde Frang (violin) and Michail Lifits (piano) do three Mozart violin sonatas: K376, K379 and K481. Ms. Frang very smartly turned out in a dress which perhaps cost her a fair proportion of her fee, her sensitive playing only let down by being sometimes in the shadow of the piano - a complaint I see I made the last time I heard any of these sonatas (see October 2nd 2012 in the other place), with the excuse there being that at the time of writing these sonatas violinists did not have the standing they do now and would not expect to lead. Still not convinced.

I liked them in the order I knew them: that is to say I knew K379 best and liked it the best (the first movement had also served well at FIL's funeral), K376 not at all and liked it the least. But that is only relative; all good stuff.

Having neglected bacon sandwich at the Market Café beforehand, went for a ham roll at the café at the north eastern corner of the A1 and Old Street, and a very good ham roll it was too, very like the ham rolls which were sold from a myriad of sandwich bars at the time I started regular work in the early 1970's, well before pesto was invented.

Thus fortified, headed south to the Museum of London to inspect the recently unearthed eagle, which I, in my innocence, had assumed was the sort of eagle which Romans (and Napoleon) stuck on the end of a pole and the loss of which caused much anguish, to the point of spawning of the stories by Rosemary Sutcliff which I read when small. But it turned out to be a funerary eagle, only very recently unearthed from under what is to be a hotel (with thanks to the Daily Mail web site for the picture). It was, I think the first time that I had visited the museum, which was much busier that I was expecting. Lots of tourists as well as school children, which last I gathered were responsible, via their curating panel, for some of the noisier and more tiresome exhibits. We only took a quick peek at the Roman section where I liked the various models of how London's municipal buildings might have been. I also put my head in the section devoted to London before people, a variant on the theme first seen earlier in the year at Exeter (see 12th March). The bit that sticks in the mind just now is the large graph showing what looked like a very regular temperature cycle over the last half million years, with a period of 100,000 years, all, it seems, mixed up with a succession of ice ages. Presently near the top of a wave - which would suggest that the future is down rather than up. All very confusing. We shall be back to see it all properly.

Wound up with a very decent tea and cake in the spacious ground floor café operated by benugo (see http://www.benugo.com/), an outfit of which I was previously only dimly aware but which I shall now keep an eye out for.

Back home, I pondered about the A1 and found that it appeared to enter London proper by way of Aldersgate, which all seemed very proper. The old trunk roads - say from A1 to A6 inclusive - should all enter London by one of the old city gates. But then it turns out that Aldersgate was not quite a city gate, being some kind of a fort just to the north of the wall proper. And the road for this gate was Watling Street or the A5 rather than the A1. Furthermore, the A1 heads all the way south from Scotland to get muddled up with the source of the M1 some where around Edware, from where it cuts south east to London proper. All in all, rather unsatisfactory. Not very proper at all.

Naturewatch

One of the roundabouts on the southern half of Horton Lane has been turfed with bark chippings and planted with a number of presently small shrubs, some azaleas. Today there was a fine show of autumn toadstools, clumps of them all over the place. Maybe they feed on the rotting bark chippings underneath,.

Then the day before yesterday we heard the first evening owl for a bit, quite an energetic specimen, most of the time doing the full 'terwit-terwhoo' business - unlike the ones we more usually get that only get as far as the 'terwit' bit. That said there were some 'terwit's the day before yesterday, which might easily have been mistaken for bats.

Home to be impressed by the MS Excel VB editor. I asked it to replace one string with another, forgetting to say only to do it in the current procedure. So it went through the whole project doing more than 9,000 replacements. Which could easily have been a disaster, at least to the extent of losing a couple of hours of undocumented work, but as luck would have it the 'undo' button did its business and all 9,000 edits were undone in a second or two. All very impressive.

I remember that when I first had access to computers, ICL had just invented George III which came with rather a sophisticated editor, sophisticated enough that one could almost write programs with it. A good deal more than can be done with the MS editor now, at least without recourse to moving one's text file into a spreadsheet and fiddling with it there, a wheeze not available to ICL as spreadsheets had not then been invented. And I am fairly that the 'undo' button hadn't been invented either, so I dare say I sometimes got into a bit of a pickle with their editor.