Back in February 2008, I bought an HP Pavilion desktop from John Lewis.
Upgraded to Windows 7 from Vista and to MS Office 2010 from Office something else in October 2010.
An offline PC - it does not even seem to be wifi capable - which has served well since, at least until recently, say the last few months, when it started to crash for no apparent reason. Sometimes when in Excel and most recently without even going that far.
So I thought maybe an update to Windows 8 was called for, at least as something worth trying before going back to John Lewis for a whole new PC. I wondered about whether having Windows 8 on an offline PC was going to be a problem and asked google, who dug up a DT flavoured pundit who assured some reader with a similar query that it was not: Windows 8 might be keen on the internet but it was not mandatory.
So off to Staples, where for a little less than £100 I was able to buy Windows 8 in a box.
Loaded up OK, even keeping the user files which I had said it could dump.
Found the original media and reloaded up Office 2010 OK, with my managing to copy the 30 digit activation code from the telephone OK. Presumably OK as this was only the second installation from that disc.
At which point, I notice that the screen - an HP w2207h - was not OK. Most of the text was too large and some of it was fuzzy. The only relevant option I could find was to take the resolution up to maximum, which was not recommended but which did seem to make things better, even if everything was rather flatter than it should be. Dark talk of drivers from google, which will be a bit of a pain to sort out on an offline PC.
Prompt reply from an contact address on an HP page on the internet, telling me to try some other address. This I have yet to do.
Some time later, Windows 10 announces that it wants an activation code too. Taken on a drop of alcohol by this time, so it took a bit longer than the first time, but I get there.
At which point, I find that I am not being asked for a password when the screen wakes up, which I thought I had asked it to do. Also that while there is an option to tell an idle screen to go to sleep, there does not seem to be an option to tell an idle computer to go to sleep. Which it doesn't, even if I leave the thing overnight. Rather a pain as that means I will need to turn the thing off and the end of every working day.
I also find that the help which comes out of the box is not that great and what it seems best at is suggesting that I get myself online where I can get some proper help.
Another oddity, which seems to have passed, was powerpoints firing up when I had not thought I had asked for them.
One way forward, would be to hump the thing downstairs, plug it into my BT infinity router and get the helpful BT people to look at it. But then I have to worry about anti-virus and I have used up the three seats included in my current license from Norton. Don't really want to have to stump up the necessary to get some more, just for the temporary use I have in mind.
Go to Norton (having remembered to use my googlemail flavoured account rather than the gmail one), to find that I can buy a shiny new product at £50.00 for 5 seats for a year. Log into to my account to find that I have indeed used the 3 seats that I bought back in 2011, but that I can have 3 more for £45, not quite the same as their headline offer. On the other hand, as things stand, I have Norton on just 2 PCs, and one is buying seats not installs. Maybe I can work out which one of the three to disable and so free up a key. Can I be bothered?
Verdict so far, OK but not great. At least I have not had a crash.
PS: just remembered that maybe I have used the 3 seats after all, with the third being on a PC I gave away some time ago. Plot thickens.
Saturday, 28 February 2015
Intifada
Now finished my three volume set on matters Mediterranean (see reference 2) with a fatter book called 'The French Intifada' by one Andrew Hussey, who appears to be British but a long time resident of France, with the biog. I read being published online by the University of London Institute in Paris. A rather better writer (of books anyway) than either of the other two, my only reservation being the irritation of his supplying parenthesised translations to lots of fairly obvious bits of French. But maybe the younger generation's grasp of elementary French is even more elementary than my own.
The largest section of the book is that on Algeria, this being followed by a section on Morocco and another on Tunisia. With the whole wrapped in opening and closing sections on the North Africans (a lot of whom are Berbers rather than Arabs) in France, particularly Paris, the outlying areas of which sound much worse than corresponding areas of London, say Eltham or Peckham.
Algeria sounds like a dreadful mistake. The French needed a bit of national glamour to make up for losing the Napoleonic wars and thought that grabbing Algeria and stuffing it with rejects from all parts of the northern litteral of the Mediterranean was the way forward. There seems to have been a sense that Algeria was France's Wild West, a wonderful land of opportunity, with just a few colourful indigenous to brush aside. How wrong could they be.
A thought from Morocco was the suggestion that Moroccans were deeply insulted by being the unwilling hosts for lots of dissolute arty types from the west, there for the sun, the booze and the (mainly gay) sex. Not people with traditional, conservative Muslim virtues at all. The insult being aggravated by being portrayed in lots of successful films, such as 'Casablanca'.
A scary aspect of the book is the fact that most of the violence appears to be driven by anger and hate born of hopelessness. These angry young men (and some women) do not have an agenda, they just want to smash things up, to make a big ugly mark on the hated white world. And if they can grab a few consumer goods - say flashy trainers - while they are at it, so much the better. Anger and hate which is bubbling away, just under the surface, ready to blow off at the slightest thing, often the police trying to do their duty.
Another is the way that radical Islam provides a home, a cloak and a focus for such people. The home which we have failed to provide by other means. A home which means that their first allegiance is to their faith, rather than their country. From where I associate both to our own very nasty religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to our own anti-Semitism. Which seems to have been a much bigger feature of French life than it was, or is, of English life.
One thought on exit is that while this mess, particularly in Algeria, was of French manufacture with unforced errors (to use a term from tennis) carrying on into the second half of the twentieth century, there would probably have been something of a mess however the Ottomans withdrew from North Africa. As the tide of empire goes out, leaving behind a foreshore littered with hate, weak institutions and mixed-up populations, there is usually trouble.
Another is that while poverty appears to have fueled many of the dreadful events chronicled in this book, absence of poverty is not a sufficient condition for all to be well. One only has to look at Saudi Arabia, awash with money, to see that.
Another is that legalising drugs is not going to be a magic bullet. It might empty our prisons and free up some money for some more productive use, but it is not, of itself going to provide gainful employment for all the people with colour, without qualifications and without much experience of the world of legitimate work. And in one sense, rather the reverse, in that it will take away the illegitimate work that they do have.
Time to take another peek at Hourani, for a longer view. It will be interesting to see how well a book written 25 years ago reads now. See reference 1.
Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=hourani.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=promised+land.
The largest section of the book is that on Algeria, this being followed by a section on Morocco and another on Tunisia. With the whole wrapped in opening and closing sections on the North Africans (a lot of whom are Berbers rather than Arabs) in France, particularly Paris, the outlying areas of which sound much worse than corresponding areas of London, say Eltham or Peckham.
Algeria sounds like a dreadful mistake. The French needed a bit of national glamour to make up for losing the Napoleonic wars and thought that grabbing Algeria and stuffing it with rejects from all parts of the northern litteral of the Mediterranean was the way forward. There seems to have been a sense that Algeria was France's Wild West, a wonderful land of opportunity, with just a few colourful indigenous to brush aside. How wrong could they be.
A thought from Morocco was the suggestion that Moroccans were deeply insulted by being the unwilling hosts for lots of dissolute arty types from the west, there for the sun, the booze and the (mainly gay) sex. Not people with traditional, conservative Muslim virtues at all. The insult being aggravated by being portrayed in lots of successful films, such as 'Casablanca'.
A scary aspect of the book is the fact that most of the violence appears to be driven by anger and hate born of hopelessness. These angry young men (and some women) do not have an agenda, they just want to smash things up, to make a big ugly mark on the hated white world. And if they can grab a few consumer goods - say flashy trainers - while they are at it, so much the better. Anger and hate which is bubbling away, just under the surface, ready to blow off at the slightest thing, often the police trying to do their duty.
Another is the way that radical Islam provides a home, a cloak and a focus for such people. The home which we have failed to provide by other means. A home which means that their first allegiance is to their faith, rather than their country. From where I associate both to our own very nasty religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries and to our own anti-Semitism. Which seems to have been a much bigger feature of French life than it was, or is, of English life.
One thought on exit is that while this mess, particularly in Algeria, was of French manufacture with unforced errors (to use a term from tennis) carrying on into the second half of the twentieth century, there would probably have been something of a mess however the Ottomans withdrew from North Africa. As the tide of empire goes out, leaving behind a foreshore littered with hate, weak institutions and mixed-up populations, there is usually trouble.
Another is that while poverty appears to have fueled many of the dreadful events chronicled in this book, absence of poverty is not a sufficient condition for all to be well. One only has to look at Saudi Arabia, awash with money, to see that.
Another is that legalising drugs is not going to be a magic bullet. It might empty our prisons and free up some money for some more productive use, but it is not, of itself going to provide gainful employment for all the people with colour, without qualifications and without much experience of the world of legitimate work. And in one sense, rather the reverse, in that it will take away the illegitimate work that they do have.
Time to take another peek at Hourani, for a longer view. It will be interesting to see how well a book written 25 years ago reads now. See reference 1.
Reference 1: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=hourani.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=promised+land.
Friday, 27 February 2015
Gardiner's Atlas of English History
Printed in 1910, long enough ago that if you wanted colour on your maps, you could only have them printed on one side of the paper. Also that topography was shown by means of what a hirsute teacher of geography at my secondary school used to call woolly bear caterpillars.
An interesting selection of maps. Plenty of Great Britain, as one would expect. Quite a lot of Ireland, showing the ebb and flow of tribes and of English interest there. Quite a lot of Europe generally. Several each for North America and the Indian sub-continent, on which last lower Burma just about makes the bottom right hand corner. One of Africa as a whole.
Then at the end we have a selection of maps of important battles. I learn, for example, that at the Battle of Senlac Hill (aka Hastings), the English had an output on a spur of their main hill, just below their right wing. The map of Waterloo looks entirely recognisable from my recent reading of Heyer on the subject (see reference 1).
The illustration was chosen for its presentation of the Ottoman Empire, showing clearly that while the Ukraine was at that time (1730) part of Russia, large chunks of what is now the Ukraine were then Polish and the Crimea & its hinterland were Turkish. Not really part of mother Russia at all. And showing clearly that most of what is now the Middle East and North Africa were Turkish too. With Morocco just about making it as an independent state on the far west, just out of reach of the Sublime Porte. Cyprus is also shown as Turkish although on a later map it is described at British but paying tribute to the Turks. I was surprised that in those wave-ruling days we put up with such a shameful arrangement.
Note also the substantial Persian finger pushing up the east of the Caucasus.
No red underlining for Tangier, so perhaps our attempts to make it a twin of Gibraltar had been given up. Attempts out of which I recall S. Pepys making a few bob in backhanders.
Furthermore, the area which on a previous map had been called 'Finnish Tribes' had by 1730 been divided between the Kingdom of Sweden and the Russians.
Refrence 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/georgette-heyer.html.
Thursday, 26 February 2015
More Great British Public
The relevant question was: 'generally speaking, please say whether you would or would not like to do each of the following for a living'.
Respondents were asked this question in respect of a list of eight jobs, with each respondent's list being very nearly a random quarter of the list as a whole. The result of which was that for each job the question was asked of some 3,500 people. But I didn't get as far as working out how many of the jobs listed the average respondent would go for.
One can only suppose that while people might go weak at the knees at the idea of being an author or librarian, they are nevertheless sensible enough about getting to their next shift at the burger bar. The BH thought was that there were plenty of people out there doing either unpleasant or boring menial work, to whom the idea of being a librarian, all warm, clean and cosy, would seem both attractive and not so unrealistic as to be uninteresting. For example, care workers.
The exercise points up the difficulty of getting information about this sort of thing on the basis of a simple yes-no question, with this particular question not telling us all that much about how many people would apply for a librarian's job, how many people are qualified for such a job or how many school children (excluded from this sample) would so aspire.
Dreamtime
Somewhere on the fringes of the world of work, perhaps somewhere from my days (now nearly half a century ago) on construction sites. I had the sense of being due some money from some work a few days or a few weeks previously, but not being due in any very clear way.
Someone gives me a package, which I take to be the money due. Open it up to find a something, about the size of a small shoe, shrink wrapped in some kind of thin oil, the sort of oil I sometimes use on my bicycle chain. The something which appears to be some kind of complicated bolt, the sort of thing that you drill into concrete to provide a fixing or point of attachment for something or other, perhaps a ring bolt. In any event, the bolt is made of some kind of pale yellow metal, perhaps some kind of bronze.
It then dawns on me that the package is not actually a shrink wrapped bolt, rather it is an invitation to buy into a bond which a bolting company is floating to finance an expansion, perhaps into one of the Gulf States where workers from the further east have such a bad time. I start to worry. Should I risk my money in a bolting business about which I know next to nothing? On the other hand, it might be a jolly good thing which it would be a pity to miss. Greed starts to kick in, at which point I wake up.
Once again, a sense of getting just a few features from the feature database, rather than the whole picture, as at reference 1.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/dreamtime.html.
Someone gives me a package, which I take to be the money due. Open it up to find a something, about the size of a small shoe, shrink wrapped in some kind of thin oil, the sort of oil I sometimes use on my bicycle chain. The something which appears to be some kind of complicated bolt, the sort of thing that you drill into concrete to provide a fixing or point of attachment for something or other, perhaps a ring bolt. In any event, the bolt is made of some kind of pale yellow metal, perhaps some kind of bronze.
It then dawns on me that the package is not actually a shrink wrapped bolt, rather it is an invitation to buy into a bond which a bolting company is floating to finance an expansion, perhaps into one of the Gulf States where workers from the further east have such a bad time. I start to worry. Should I risk my money in a bolting business about which I know next to nothing? On the other hand, it might be a jolly good thing which it would be a pity to miss. Greed starts to kick in, at which point I wake up.
Once again, a sense of getting just a few features from the feature database, rather than the whole picture, as at reference 1.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/dreamtime.html.
Wednesday, 25 February 2015
Alcoholic factoid
I have just read in a news item written by one Sarah C. P. Williams in an online magazine that flies under the AAAS banner, that our ability to metabolize alcohol is down an ancient mutation to do with something called ADH4. The selective advantage of which was that it enabled us to manage with fallen and partially rotten fruit when we came down from the trees and no longer had such ready access to the fresh stuff. It was no good being drunk in the jungle, red in tooth and claw as it was, so we needed the mutant ADH4 so that we could both eat the rotten fruit and burn the alcohol off.
Vauxhall Cross
See previous post.
Palace
So off to Vauxhall, where not for the first time, I was able to view the stainless steel canopy from below, from where it looked rather good. From some angles it looks a bit odd & ugly and one thinks of waste of money, but from others the composition works well.
From there by bus to Victoria, from which we spotted the missing chimney at Battersea Power station. Google tells me this morning that all four chimneys were badly corroded by the bad things in the stuff which used to go up them and that all four will be taken down and rebuilt. All of which strikes me as a colossal waste of money. OK, so they they have made a fine space out of the Bankside Turbine Hall, but are we reduced to recycling turbine halls to make decent public spaces? In this particular case, the artist's impression of the resulting interior looks just like just another shopping mall. Was it really worth all that heritage angst and expense? All being done from the pocket of a Malaysian, who, speculating, is quite possibly a Muslim and quite possibly rich on the proceeds of palm oil. So Battersea Power Station is en-route to becoming a monument to halal margarine.
Got to the rather ponderous & pompous Doric flavoured entrance to the Queen's Gallery, to be greeted by the rather pleasantly amateurish palace servants who man the place. On in to admire the entrance hall (illustrated) which I had not really taken in on previous visits. A cunning transition from the severe Doric of the entrance to the Wigmore Hall lush of the interior, with the large mahagony doors at the palace being particularly Wigmorish.
I was interested by the Egyptian habit of having short square sectioned columns added on top of their nicely carved vegetable capitals on top of round sectioned columns. Their way of making the transition from the round columns which one wants at ground level, where square would be rather severe, to the square sectioned and square arranged roof beams. Gothic does everything with points rather than squares, so the issues are rather different, but perhaps a visit to St. Paul's is indicated to see how things are done there. And while arches in the mosques in the exhibition had moved from the Egyptian & Greek flat to Roman round, I did come across one old pointed arch. Perhaps the crusaders managed a few points before they were chucked out.
I noticed that the photographs of buildings and townscapes worked much better than the landscapes. These last involved slabs of half tones which did not come across very well. Buildings with lots of edges, angles and corners came across much better. No doubt there is some techy reason why this was.
I also noticed that the Muslims were quite fond of building their mosques out of what had been Christian churches. A bit like the Aztec habit of smashing up your enemies' shrines on top of their pyramids and replacing them with your own. A visible and permanent reminder of conquest. Keeps the conquered in their place.
And I was amused by the picture of an emperor in India being weighed for charity. That is to say he sat in a scale pan, and a balancing amount of gold was put in the other. The gold was then distributed to the poor or whatever. Exercise repeated with silver, then tin and so on. Perhaps we ought to institute such a custom here, with the Queen and the PM taking alternate years.
A good lunch at the nearby 'Pronto a Mangià', a tourist place but rather good. Very pleasant and possibly real Italian waitresses. A Spaghetti Bolognese the like of which I have not had since I took lunch in the staff canteen at the Savoy Hotel, maybe forty five years ago. Both spaghetti and sauce light and dry, a lightness and dryness which I have never managed to replicate at home and which I only rarely come across elsewhere.
Followed up by a rare visit to Rippon Cheese, to find that it was still there, although the people I knew had hired a new young manager and were taking something of a back seat. No longer visible. No emmenthal to be had, but they did do what turned out to be a very nice young Comté. The new young manager started out by pretending that he had never heard of the Comté man at Borough Market, but gradually softened, to the point where I wondered whether that was where he got his from. That being as it may be, his shop certainly had a very fine range of cheese.
Final purchase of the day was a boxed set of some television series about two policemen from the Netherlands. A sort of low countries Morse. I was betting on there being subtitles and lost, so we shall have to see how we get on without. Ten CDs to get through (so 50p each), series 1 to 4, Grijpstra & De Gier rather than Morse & Lewis or Starsky & Hutch.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/old-chablis-old-pix.html.
Tuesday, 24 February 2015
A little extra does not always help
I have been pondering over the last few days over the gigantism which seems to afflict so many organisations these days.
I am prompted by the travails of Tesco, brought on in part by growing too big, by building too many shops at a time when the protracted depression, the Internet, Lidl and Aldi were changing the game, and by going in for too many foreign adventures, a good number of which do not seem to have fared too well.
Why is it that a company like Tesco cannot define for itself and then stick to the business that it wants to be in and the slice of the pie that it wants to go for. So these days it might say that it wants 100 maxi-stores, 500 regular-stores and 1,000 mini-stores. And then concentrate on doing that well. Have a big enough management team to do that, but without a lot of time and energy to spend on dreaming up new projects (rather like IT teams in the civil service were, and perhaps are, said to do. Dream up some new wheeze and then hunt around for someone on the make to pay for it). Put some serious board level hurdles in the way of going significantly beyond the established framework, perhaps, for example, by requiring a two thirds majority for the change on the board. By not allowing any such proposal to be tabled for five years after once failing to make the cut.
If there is money washing around with nothing to do, one can always improve the offering. Or cut the prices or pay the hard pressed suppliers or shelf stackers a tad more. Maybe even raise the divi. No difficulty about dealing with surplus dosh.
If some bunch of management mavericks does dream up some splendid but offside scheme, let them go elsewhere to realise their vision.
Some people might argue that bigger and bigger means more and more economies of scale. But I am not so sure. What about the increasing costs of maintaining the quality of the offer over an ever increasing number of shops? What about the increasing costs of keeping a proper grip on the growing headquarters operation? What about the monopolies people, who might be looking for, say, at least three operators of this sort covering the UK? Quite apart from anything else, pushing against that door is apt to stir up the traditional English love of the underdog (I don't presume to speak for the first nations).
Other people might argue that gigantism is the fault of shareholders, always pushing for more dividends, always with their greedy eyes on the greener grass on the other side of the wall, on what they think that rival outfits are up to. But I think the fault lies more with the management team who have got their even more greedy eyes on the rewards that gigantism will bring them in the short term and which subsequent failure is not going to claw back. The fault of the shareholders is more passive, a failure to rein their board in.
In the olden days, they used to say that water companies were very safe and solid businesses to invest in. Perhaps this was in part because water companies were monopoly providers in a reasonably well defined geographical area. There was not much scope for expanding the area or for other kinds of adventure. The sort of household support services that British Gas are now pushing out into, for example, did not exist. Water companies did neither expansion nor adventures. Sadly, mostly beyond the reach of the small time investor these days, mostly swallowed up in entities one has not heard of and which may well not be listed.
I have been thinking here of commercial, for-profit companies, but one does see some of the same same sort of things in, for example, the National Trust and the Wikimedia Foundation.
PS: I wonder if the likes of Tesco operate anything like the running costs and programme costs regime used by the Treasury in its management of government spending. Which, paraphrasing and for example, is very fierce on the headquarters' costs of the prison service but much less fierce about the costs of building and operating prisons. If you have an overblown defence headquarters, you wind up with too many overblown aircraft carriers, teams of admirals flying desks can get very keen on having lots of big boats.
I am prompted by the travails of Tesco, brought on in part by growing too big, by building too many shops at a time when the protracted depression, the Internet, Lidl and Aldi were changing the game, and by going in for too many foreign adventures, a good number of which do not seem to have fared too well.
Why is it that a company like Tesco cannot define for itself and then stick to the business that it wants to be in and the slice of the pie that it wants to go for. So these days it might say that it wants 100 maxi-stores, 500 regular-stores and 1,000 mini-stores. And then concentrate on doing that well. Have a big enough management team to do that, but without a lot of time and energy to spend on dreaming up new projects (rather like IT teams in the civil service were, and perhaps are, said to do. Dream up some new wheeze and then hunt around for someone on the make to pay for it). Put some serious board level hurdles in the way of going significantly beyond the established framework, perhaps, for example, by requiring a two thirds majority for the change on the board. By not allowing any such proposal to be tabled for five years after once failing to make the cut.
If there is money washing around with nothing to do, one can always improve the offering. Or cut the prices or pay the hard pressed suppliers or shelf stackers a tad more. Maybe even raise the divi. No difficulty about dealing with surplus dosh.
If some bunch of management mavericks does dream up some splendid but offside scheme, let them go elsewhere to realise their vision.
Some people might argue that bigger and bigger means more and more economies of scale. But I am not so sure. What about the increasing costs of maintaining the quality of the offer over an ever increasing number of shops? What about the increasing costs of keeping a proper grip on the growing headquarters operation? What about the monopolies people, who might be looking for, say, at least three operators of this sort covering the UK? Quite apart from anything else, pushing against that door is apt to stir up the traditional English love of the underdog (I don't presume to speak for the first nations).
Other people might argue that gigantism is the fault of shareholders, always pushing for more dividends, always with their greedy eyes on the greener grass on the other side of the wall, on what they think that rival outfits are up to. But I think the fault lies more with the management team who have got their even more greedy eyes on the rewards that gigantism will bring them in the short term and which subsequent failure is not going to claw back. The fault of the shareholders is more passive, a failure to rein their board in.
In the olden days, they used to say that water companies were very safe and solid businesses to invest in. Perhaps this was in part because water companies were monopoly providers in a reasonably well defined geographical area. There was not much scope for expanding the area or for other kinds of adventure. The sort of household support services that British Gas are now pushing out into, for example, did not exist. Water companies did neither expansion nor adventures. Sadly, mostly beyond the reach of the small time investor these days, mostly swallowed up in entities one has not heard of and which may well not be listed.
I have been thinking here of commercial, for-profit companies, but one does see some of the same same sort of things in, for example, the National Trust and the Wikimedia Foundation.
PS: I wonder if the likes of Tesco operate anything like the running costs and programme costs regime used by the Treasury in its management of government spending. Which, paraphrasing and for example, is very fierce on the headquarters' costs of the prison service but much less fierce about the costs of building and operating prisons. If you have an overblown defence headquarters, you wind up with too many overblown aircraft carriers, teams of admirals flying desks can get very keen on having lots of big boats.
Monday, 23 February 2015
Great British public
In the meantime I was not impressed by a YouGov claim that 40% - near half - of the Great British public support a total ban on smoking. Whatever happened to those both great and Great British virtues of tolerance and forbearance?
Are we planning to get as sanctimonious as the mullahs we bang on about so much in other contexts?
Too modern for me
The eastern end of Stamford Street was up the spout, guarded by a member of the Metropolitan Police Cycle-Mounted Division (MPCMD, not to be confused with the RCMP) and which would have been an annoyance had I been mounted. As it was I proceeded on foot as far as Stonecutter Street. The stands were still flashing red and I was running out of time, it looking like a choice between walking and no bacon or a taxi. Settled for the last which carried me off to Whitecross Street, just about it time for a bacon sandwich.
To be disturbed by the HSBC fraud department, who appeared to be based nearer Bangalore than Birmingham and who after a secret security question interaction conducted in open restaurant, told me that they were worried by a series of attempted transactions involving TFL, all of which had been declined by the bank. Nothing to do with TFL at all. They did not say what had got them going in the first place, but after a bit they unblocked my card and I was able to finish what was left of my bacon sandwich in peace. Having broken the unwritten code that says you do not have loud conversations with your camera in a restaurant.
Made it to St. Luke's in time to hear Natalie Clein again, this time with the violinist Antony Marwood.. Not bad, but she made what I might call the Cooper error (see reference 1) of running the first two items of the programme together, without a break between for one to gather one's wits. This was. she told us, to help us better appreciate the links between the two items, between the Bach and the Ravel. Didn't work for me, already confused by the printed programme not matching the played programme, which was, I think, Bach then Ravel then Kodály. There were some good bits, reminding me of a bit in a Fred Hoyle science fiction novel about how we, brought up in the classical tradition, had mostly forgotten the beauty of simplicity and single notes, but, in the round, mostly too modern for me. I like some discernible-to-me structure.
Out to be greeted outside the Wetherspoons by three chaps from the mosque at Morden, trying to persuade passers by that not all Muslims were like the murderous thugs in Syria. One can sympathise with them, as they themselves are persecuted by mainstream Muslims as heretics, and if not burnt at the stake, sometimes lynched or otherwise disposed of in riots in their Pakistani homeland. But they had no sense of choosing their ground, any more than they had had at Hampton Court previously (see reference 2). As it was, they were just a bit in the way and irritating, which did nothing for their cause. See reference 3 for our first encounter.
That apart, while they are entirely entitled to their beliefs, I do find them rather odd and I can see why they might annoy mainstreamers, Shia or Sunni. All to do with what I was recently reminded that Freud christened (as it were) the narcissism of small differences - something us lefties know all about. They believe, for example that the second coming has already happened.
Out of Wetherspoons to Roscoe Street where I was immediately treated to a green light and was able to pedal off into the damp and gloomy afternoon, dropping off without incident at Waterloo Station 3, which, if memory serves, is somewhere up the ramp. Three stands for the price of one, like at Grant Road, Clapham Junction, to which I must return. Excellent Turkish Delight to be had nearby.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/02/schubert.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/herald-tilt.html.
Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=Merton+Campus+of+South+Thames+College.
PS: efforts to find the concert for a second try on BBC iplayer failed this morning. Lots of Clein but not the right ones. BBC might plead, I suppose, that this concert has not yet been broadcast, but what about the other two?
Sunday, 22 February 2015
Saturday, 21 February 2015
A thought
The second might be offensive to Muslims for its depiction of a partly unclothed female.
While the first might be offensive for its intrusion into what was and is a very private space. Worse, the intrusion of a European conqueror. Painted in 1834, about the time that the very bloody invasion of Algeria by the French was getting under way.
So perhaps it is tactless to have such a picture on public view. It ought to be in the basement, to be seen by special appointment only, on production of a certificate of legitimate interest from a recognised faculty. But then I wonder whether there are comparable paintings of Europeans being bashed about or otherwise abused. What about paintings of Romans doing bad things to ancient Britons or of William the Bastard having the corpse of King Harold mutilated after the Battle of Hastings? Are there any such? I can only think of the Holman Hunt painting of British Christians hiding from the Druids which is not the same at all. And what about the insult of Waterloo station as the temporary endpoint of the Channel Tunnel?
In any event, a curious juxtaposition, one which makes one think. So perhaps curatorial mission accomplished.
I end with the thought that there should be a statute of limitations. That one does not get into a sweat about works of art created more than 100 years ago. One simply puts stickers on the door warning that there may be material offensive to some. Perhaps one could have little glyphs like those used on Wetherspoons menus to mark out the vegetarian and gluten free dishes. See reference 1 and the post which follows.
Reference 1: http://www.jdwetherspoon.co.uk/home/food.
PS 1: readers wishing to develop the discussion should note that the models used for the paintng illustrated were French.
PS 2: and furthermore, the French should regard Waterloo as a great victory for the forces of 'Liberté, égalité, fraternité'. The battle which finally did for the blood thirsty tyrant who had lorded it over France and Europe for far too long. Personally responsible for far too many excess deaths.
Thongs and restraint
So pulled a Bullingdon at Waterloo 1 and pedalled to Hinde Street. On the way, somewhere in New Oxford Street, a black Ferrari, no doubt the property of a footballer or worse, thought he would overtake rather faster than I thought was proper, but he did not reckon with the traffic and I caught him up comfortably. About which I was so pleased that I forebore giving him a piece of my mind.
Even more pleased to find just the sort of brown twisted cord I had in mind at Rouleaux, which turned out to be staffed by lightly sloaned young ladies and occupied by enthusiasts. Regular readers can make bets with themselves about how long it is before I get around to making the new toggles.
Business done I thought to try the white at the Coach Makers, responsible for the rather unusual web site at http://www.thecoachmakers.com/home.html. Also unusual in that I was personally greeted by an energetic bar maid, possibly Latin, who was convinced that what I needed was a glass of Viogner Marsanne, Hermit Crab 2012. At least that is what it said on the bottle. Not bad at all and available at Amazon, where a bottle costs less than double what I paid for a glass. The bar maid closed the transaction by a firm handshake on exit, something that has never happened to me in such circumstances before.
Being in the area, popped into the Wigmore Hall to hear some violin sonatas, Bach and Mozart, with a fortepiano rather than a piano. I was sitting very near the front and was able to admire the wooden case, which I suspected of being veneered chipboard, despite not being very sure about the acoustic properties of same, and the very slender legs. On the one hand one is impressed how much weight such thin wood will take, on the other by how easy it would be to break the legs off by giving them a whack to the side. Very near the front and very much to the right, on the wall in front, which I was not that keen on. But it did enable me to work out that the fancy red-brown marble columns were actually veneer, maybe half a centimeter thick.
Sonatas very good with, for some reason, the violin of the Bach sonatas (No.2 and No.3) reminding me of trumpet. Mozart (K526) all I would have expected.
Slight puzzle in that the programme suggested that the concert was broadcast live, as part of the Radio 3 lunchtime series, whereas the St. Luke's concerts are usually, if not always, aired a couple of days or so after the event. Perhaps the Wigmore, as the senior venue, is the only one to get the respect of live broadcast.
Back to Hinde Street to pull another Bullingdon, to pedal off in the drizzle to Vauxhall. Did Park Lane Southbound for the first time for while, which was fine except for a BMW saloon pulling right out from a left hand side road, rather than wait a few seconds until the lights just up the road changed. Pushy so and so. There was also the diversion of a slender lady cyclist who was into restraint (I think that is the proper term) and wore a large chain a few inches below what would have thought was the belt line, that is to say the waist.
Victoria OK and Vauxhall Cross OK, although this last might easily have not been if it was not for the consideration of drivers round about. Parked up at the South Lambeth Road stand. Sandwich (good) on South Lambeth Road and cake (substantial) at Stockwell. I learn that Stockwell, unlike Epsom, still boasts a real post office. There are some advantages of living in such a place.
The Swan was still there and appeared to be alive. Many years since I heard quite a decent folk group downstairs there and a noisy band upstairs, kitted out with blue lights for the occasion.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/op131.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/12/cotton-balls.html.
A short illness
For once in a while I actually felt ill yesterday, rather than just being ill.
We got back from London around 1600 and I was feeling fine. Fed and watered, and then about 2000 I started feeling cold. This is not particularly unusual at that time of day and I put it down to a combination of warfarin and old age. Took a glass of Chablis (not the £150 a bottle stuff to be found at Hedonism) and settled down for the evening dose of ITV3. But, unfortunately, instead of appreciating the costume drama/murder mystery on offer (from Great Western as it happens, see previous post), I started to feel rather odd. Took another glass on the grounds that this would help me sleep and went to bed (having been up rather early that morning). And then I started to feel very odd indeed, with an attack of the shivers, particularly in the lower limbs. Eventually I got the shivers under control and didn't feel too bad, although rather hot. Eventually I got off to sleep, to troubled dreams.
It so happens that I do Visual Basic with an array of things that I call internal objects, an array of maybe twenty five columns and fifteen thousand rows. In the dream my troubles with health were all mixed up with troubles with this array, troubles in particular with putting dates onto new objects, with the computation of the date to be used being very mixed up. There was a flavour of induction but an induction without the all important starting point.There was also a flavour that my body and the array had been conflated. I suppose a fever was giving me hallucinations, even though I was asleep.
I woke up around 0600, feeling much better and having sweated a good bit during the night. But it took me some minutes to disentangle my state of my health from the state of my array. All rather odd again.
Eventually I was fully awake, a bit washed out, but hopefully OK. I think I was the last time something like this happened, maybe at some point last year.
We got back from London around 1600 and I was feeling fine. Fed and watered, and then about 2000 I started feeling cold. This is not particularly unusual at that time of day and I put it down to a combination of warfarin and old age. Took a glass of Chablis (not the £150 a bottle stuff to be found at Hedonism) and settled down for the evening dose of ITV3. But, unfortunately, instead of appreciating the costume drama/murder mystery on offer (from Great Western as it happens, see previous post), I started to feel rather odd. Took another glass on the grounds that this would help me sleep and went to bed (having been up rather early that morning). And then I started to feel very odd indeed, with an attack of the shivers, particularly in the lower limbs. Eventually I got the shivers under control and didn't feel too bad, although rather hot. Eventually I got off to sleep, to troubled dreams.
It so happens that I do Visual Basic with an array of things that I call internal objects, an array of maybe twenty five columns and fifteen thousand rows. In the dream my troubles with health were all mixed up with troubles with this array, troubles in particular with putting dates onto new objects, with the computation of the date to be used being very mixed up. There was a flavour of induction but an induction without the all important starting point.There was also a flavour that my body and the array had been conflated. I suppose a fever was giving me hallucinations, even though I was asleep.
I woke up around 0600, feeling much better and having sweated a good bit during the night. But it took me some minutes to disentangle my state of my health from the state of my array. All rather odd again.
Eventually I was fully awake, a bit washed out, but hopefully OK. I think I was the last time something like this happened, maybe at some point last year.
Friday, 20 February 2015
Best Western
We are also grateful to Best Western for sponsoring our evening fix of mystery drama on ITV3. It's not their fault that the adapters of Agatha Christie stories are prone to intrude Miss. Marple where she does not belong, that is to say in stories in which she does not appear in print.
So we were interested to come across the hotel illustrated in darkest Pimlico today, not far from Denbigh Street, the southern section of which was rather shabby in our student days and in which houses now go for £3m or more. We wondered whether it was the smallest Best Western in the world and were rather disappointed to find that it was an annex to the main hotel in fairly nearby Warwick Way.
That said, visitors paying off their taxi at Warwick Way might not be too pleased to find that they have to hump their transatlantic baggage up the road to the annex, ever so bijou might it be. Any more than we are pleased when we check into our attractively illustrated old country town hotel, perhaps covered in ivy and called the 'George and Dragon' or something like that, to find that we have been allocated one of the beach chalets erected in what used to be the garden.
Or have we got it completely wrong and the place illustrated is actually a house intended for short term lets, but one which you can book through Best Western without having to get involved with estate agents? One might think that there would be room for such a service in a town like London.
Sects and worse
Having noticed reading about death and intrigue in the promised land a few days ago, I now notice the second read of the three read set, set a little to the north, in what used to be called the Levant. 'Isis and the new Sunni revolution', the work of another journalist, Patrick Cockburn. Easier going than the first read, almost a read rather than a skim.
But another depressing tale of bloody terrorism. More depressing in that there is a lot more bloodshed, a lot more recently. Oddly less depressing in some way, perhaps because it is not the work of a small numbers of people who should have known better, rather the product of hundreds of years of misrule and deprivation.
Glimmers of hope in that some of those who thought it a good idea to promote what has turned out to be no better than anarchic, sectarian violence & atrocity are now seeing the error of their ways, that there are worse things in the world than praying while wearing the wrong colour tie or while facing in the wrong direction, and are trying to put the genie back into the bottle. Maybe some of the oil money that has been poured into weaponry and wahabi madrasas will now make it to more useful ends.
An interesting chapter on the interactions between whatever it is that is happening on the ground, the war correspondents, the press & media more generally and the internet, with the advent of this last coming across as something of a mixed blessing. On balance probably a force for good, but a good that is partly balanced by its unmediated use for the propagation of lies and worse. One example of which was a video clip purporting to be a Levantine atrocity perpetrated by one or other of the factions there, but which was actually a re-purposed clip from the drug wars of Mexico.
Perhaps a lesson nearer home would be for our politicians to close down their twitter accounts. Off the cuff remarks of not more than 250 charecters are unlikely to be a useful contribution to public debate.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/death-and-intrigue-in-promised-land.html.
But another depressing tale of bloody terrorism. More depressing in that there is a lot more bloodshed, a lot more recently. Oddly less depressing in some way, perhaps because it is not the work of a small numbers of people who should have known better, rather the product of hundreds of years of misrule and deprivation.
Glimmers of hope in that some of those who thought it a good idea to promote what has turned out to be no better than anarchic, sectarian violence & atrocity are now seeing the error of their ways, that there are worse things in the world than praying while wearing the wrong colour tie or while facing in the wrong direction, and are trying to put the genie back into the bottle. Maybe some of the oil money that has been poured into weaponry and wahabi madrasas will now make it to more useful ends.
An interesting chapter on the interactions between whatever it is that is happening on the ground, the war correspondents, the press & media more generally and the internet, with the advent of this last coming across as something of a mixed blessing. On balance probably a force for good, but a good that is partly balanced by its unmediated use for the propagation of lies and worse. One example of which was a video clip purporting to be a Levantine atrocity perpetrated by one or other of the factions there, but which was actually a re-purposed clip from the drug wars of Mexico.
Perhaps a lesson nearer home would be for our politicians to close down their twitter accounts. Off the cuff remarks of not more than 250 charecters are unlikely to be a useful contribution to public debate.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/death-and-intrigue-in-promised-land.html.
Thursday, 19 February 2015
Herald & Tilt
Herald Copse coming on well, as illustrated, not quite in full bloom. Plus the odd clump of crocus and signs of daffodils coming on. Decided against the café on this occasion, so it is now some time since we favoured this particular establishment with our custom.
Illustration not quite from the same spot as that as reference 1, so I am also some way off the standards set by the homicidal photographers from an episode of Midsomer. And never going to make the grade of the real camera buffs as I use a digital telephone rather than a proper camera with film. Which reminds me that I need to get back to the spiffing albumens of reference 2 before they close.
More snowdrops in the Wilderness than on the previous visit, a small number of daffodils and quite a lot of winter aconites, of which my failure to grow any in our new daffodil bed makes me even fonder. Not sure what I did wrong, with the patch of ground involved being well dug over and manured, or at least composted. I shall make a close inspection this morning to see if there is any trace, as there is of the not quite moribund snowdrops at the other end. See, for example, the posts at reference 3.
We were moved to try the café on this second occasion, the Tilt Yard café. I have moaned in the past about the rather unsatisfactory coffee shop they have established to the left of the entrance, but this time around, the refectory at the back was also open, selling tea & coffee in paper cups and a new-to-me sort of tart called a 'maids of honour'. Very good it was too, and entirely appropriate to a heritage place as there were strong associations to Anne Boleyn, a maid of honour herself before her elevation to throne & block.
Accosted on the bridge by two lots of the Muslims of Morden, of which more in due course. But you can read all about them at reference 4 in the meantime.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/herald-copse.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/old-chablis-old-pix.html.
Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=daffodil+bed.
Reference 4: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=mosque+at+Morden.
PS: all these references remind me of the threaded products that one might use, rather than blogger from google that I do in fact use. I associate to Collabra Share from California, once an innovative & thrusting new product, now deceased, but the history of which is still turned up by google. I once even owned a lump of commemorative glass, in token of my then employer's commitment to the product. Thrusting it might have been, but, as I recall, it supported a tree structure of entries rather than the network that I need, and I suspect that other threaded products are going to be the same.
The right stuff
I picked up a book the other day about a chap called Szmuel Gelbfisz, aka Samuel Goldwyn, the chap who put the middle in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer. But having given his name, he didn't have a role and went on to be a big cheese independent producer. He also turns out to be a chap who invented a stirring founding tale, some of which might be true.
Born somewhere near Warsaw. Walks to Hamburg, a walk which involved swimming across a river at night to avoid the border guards. Scratches around with relatives until he can catch a boat to England. Scratches around with more relatives until he walks to Liverpool to catch a boat to Halifax, the one in Canada, in the winter. Walks through the snow to New York. Scratches around some more. Walks to upstate new York where he works his way to big-cheese-hood in the glove business in Gloversville NY, not that far from where we were last Autumn. Not much good at making gloves, but he turned out to be very good at selling them.
Having achieved big-cheese-hood at about the time that films were invented, he moved in on that and the rest is history.
What impressed me was the sort of poverty and misery - or perhaps hate - there must have been to drive ambitious and able men to such lengths.
The book, however, was a bit dense & dreary. Not really that interested in all that Hollywood tittle-tattle, so the book is now en-route to the Oxfam skip at the Kiln Road branch of Sainsbury's.
Born somewhere near Warsaw. Walks to Hamburg, a walk which involved swimming across a river at night to avoid the border guards. Scratches around with relatives until he can catch a boat to England. Scratches around with more relatives until he walks to Liverpool to catch a boat to Halifax, the one in Canada, in the winter. Walks through the snow to New York. Scratches around some more. Walks to upstate new York where he works his way to big-cheese-hood in the glove business in Gloversville NY, not that far from where we were last Autumn. Not much good at making gloves, but he turned out to be very good at selling them.
Having achieved big-cheese-hood at about the time that films were invented, he moved in on that and the rest is history.
What impressed me was the sort of poverty and misery - or perhaps hate - there must have been to drive ambitious and able men to such lengths.
The book, however, was a bit dense & dreary. Not really that interested in all that Hollywood tittle-tattle, so the book is now en-route to the Oxfam skip at the Kiln Road branch of Sainsbury's.
Wednesday, 18 February 2015
Paywalls
Coincidentally, I went on to read a free puff for an article about something called the claustrum by one Kristoff Koch. Having read and read of the chap before, I thought I would follow up.
After some registration pack-drill, I learn that Elsevier would be happy to sell me a two page article from 'Epilepsy & Behavior' for the modest sum of $31.50 USD exclusive of taxes and delivery charges. It then turns out that this is not quite what I wanted, merely being editorial comment on the wanted article, the five pages of which one could have for a further $31.50 USD exclusive of taxes and delivery charges. From which we deduce that they work to a flat rate, rather than charging by the page or according to the eminence of the authors. The good news is that an article which in some part fired all this up can be downloaded for free from our own Royal Society and all you have to do is ask google for 'phil trans roy soc series b biol'. Not only does it weigh in at a rather longer nine and a bit pages, you also get no less than 70 references to follow up.
But, to be fair, as with Brill (see reference 1), Elsevier do offer open access publication, with the model that you pay them to publish your paper rather than your readers paying. Presumably in this case the universities involved - five of them spanning three countries and at least two languages (how on earth can you do research on this basis) - did not care to pay to publish. Perhaps the money to pay their subscriptions to the likes of Elsevier comes from a different pot, with a different cost code.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/08/academic-presses.html.
Death and intrigue in the promised land
This being the inappropriately jaunty subtitle of a book I have just skimmed about the Stern Gang in Palestine in the run up to and during the Second World War.
The author, one Patrick Bishop, once and possibly still a journalist who appears to have turned his hand to writing successful books about dirty wars. Which despite the publisher's puffs I found neither brisk nor engrossing, but nevertheless a profoundly depressing tale.
A tale of bloody terrorism, with plenty of innocent victims, Arabs, Jews and British, part of the mix which continues to brew hatred so many years later. It seems that Stern himself, a Jew from the messy borderlands between Poland and Russia, was shot dead in uncertain circumstances by a British policeman in Palestine and has since been elevated to the status of a national hero in Israel, along with various other former terrorists.
A tale of the British, trying to steer a reasonable course in Palestine between the Arabs on one hand and the Jews on the other, at a time when we were fighting for our national life against the Germans in Europe, and not doing very well, managing to make enemies of both sides. We were also desperate to keep the US, with its large Jewish population, onside. But I am rather guiltily aware that we British could and should have done more to take in the refugees.
I was struck by the parallel with Ireland, which while a mess which was more of our own making, has involved some of the same elements. A large expatriate population in the US, unsympathetic to British interests and difficulties. Half the population hating the other half. Terrorist outrage sparking official outrage. Subsequent rehabilitation if not honouring of said terrorists. Elements who thought that trying to do a deal with the Germans might be better than trying to do a deal with the British. But at least the Irish issue was largely confined to an island, without continental complications, not attracting mass immigration and most of which we were able to walk away from. We do seem to be edging into a time of peace & reconciliation, with the old passions fading away.
But I have no such rosy view of what is going on in what was Palestine.
The author, one Patrick Bishop, once and possibly still a journalist who appears to have turned his hand to writing successful books about dirty wars. Which despite the publisher's puffs I found neither brisk nor engrossing, but nevertheless a profoundly depressing tale.
A tale of bloody terrorism, with plenty of innocent victims, Arabs, Jews and British, part of the mix which continues to brew hatred so many years later. It seems that Stern himself, a Jew from the messy borderlands between Poland and Russia, was shot dead in uncertain circumstances by a British policeman in Palestine and has since been elevated to the status of a national hero in Israel, along with various other former terrorists.
A tale of the British, trying to steer a reasonable course in Palestine between the Arabs on one hand and the Jews on the other, at a time when we were fighting for our national life against the Germans in Europe, and not doing very well, managing to make enemies of both sides. We were also desperate to keep the US, with its large Jewish population, onside. But I am rather guiltily aware that we British could and should have done more to take in the refugees.
I was struck by the parallel with Ireland, which while a mess which was more of our own making, has involved some of the same elements. A large expatriate population in the US, unsympathetic to British interests and difficulties. Half the population hating the other half. Terrorist outrage sparking official outrage. Subsequent rehabilitation if not honouring of said terrorists. Elements who thought that trying to do a deal with the Germans might be better than trying to do a deal with the British. But at least the Irish issue was largely confined to an island, without continental complications, not attracting mass immigration and most of which we were able to walk away from. We do seem to be edging into a time of peace & reconciliation, with the old passions fading away.
But I have no such rosy view of what is going on in what was Palestine.
Tuesday, 17 February 2015
Trolley 27
So I can declare a record of four reclaimed trolleys in one day. Which being so, I felt I could pass up the other two opportunities sculling around the market area when I returned this one.
No idea what the bit of light weight galvanised in the tray came from and no idea how it might have got there, but it will be recycled separately, not thinking that M&S would be interested.
Trolleys 24, 25 and 26
A popular trolley location, being next to the Clocktower taxi rank. Perhaps someone ought to suggest to the drivers that clearing up customers' trolleys is part of their duties.
Monday, 16 February 2015
Festival of Rattle
Got off to a bad start with it being Friday 13th and things were not improved by our pushing through the busy street food market in the rain outside to arrive in the QEH to find the foyer full of noise and bustle as some freebie jazz concert was just winding up. Not a proper way to start a concert at all. And then there was the irritating powerpoint slide projected above the stage in the auditorium itself. All in all, the QEH, basically a fine concert hall, is getting a bit tired. It has been mucked about with too much and it is getting a bit long in the tooth. Programme slightly irritating too, being one of those compendium jobs for the festival as a whole. So a fiver for just a couple of pages on our concert, which you have to poke about to find, and none of those glossy adverts that you usually get in a Wigmore programme.
But we did have very good seats in a full house and, for once, BH was able to see all the performers all the way through. Raking seats good.
The first half was made up of a very short piece and a short piece, both pleasant enough but of which I do not remember a great deal. No prior knowledge.
The second half was the Schubert Octet which worked its old magic, having been disappointed at some of its outings over the last few years (see reference 1). Row G did very well for us, close enough to hear what one wanted to hear but not so close that one heard all the puffing & blowing which comes with it. Close enough to get back the sense of too & fro between the clarinet on the right and the violin on the left, with the double bass & cello jointly acting as a hinge or pivot in the middle. Stage manners of the tall double bass were very good, adding a little something to the performance as a whole. Oddly, for a German outfit, not all in ties. I had thought that Germans were sticklers for such.
The bassoon player rather caught my eye with, for some reason, the thin spout of the bassoon seeming a much odder thing to have in one's mouth than a clarinet or a French horn. And I was close enough to hear some of the distinctive clank of the clarinet's keys - a clank which I remember from my days as a wannabee clarinetist. That is to say, the distinctive transition in the sound you get when a pad clamps down on its appointed hole. Nothing else quite like it.
Audience very enthusiastic, with quite a lot of them standing up to applaud at the end.
Back via Raynes Park where we inspected the library in the waiting room, which we learned from a poster has been going for getting on for 10 years. Fine selection of VHS tapes and of lurid paperbacks. BH picked out Kitty Kelley's biography of Nancy Reagan, who is turning out to be a very strange bird altogether.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/03/more-travel-variations.html.
Cabbage patch
Perhaps they were not selling very well in the royal vegetable shop, so they did not think it worth the bother to net them, as some of the others clearly have been.
But then again, it is their first year. Perhaps they will have better luck next year.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/hampton-kitsch.html.
Sunday, 15 February 2015
Yams (2)
I had bought a section of root, maybe three inches in diameter and three inches long. The outside of the root was brown with a rough texture. The smooth cut faces, initially a pale yellow, were somewhat stained after the day or so since they were cut at the stall.
The lumps as prepared for cooking were again a pale yellow when first cut, oozing a sticky clear liquid and staining quite quickly. Maybe they don't like steel knives. About half of them were added to the beef stew at some point through its cooking and cooked there, resulting in the yellow lumps front centre of the illustration. The remaining half were boiled in water resulting in the rather slimy looking green lumps front right.
The lumps boiled in water had very little taste but had a lot of texture, a bit like soft hot water pastry or a paste filling for something like an almond tart. When cut they looked rather like a mutant truffle chocolate, the inside was right, granular and a very pale yellow, but the outside skin, maybe a millimetre thick, was yellow rather than brown. Pleasant enough, different from our potato but serving much the same function. I think they could grow on one.
The lumps cooked in the stew were stew flavoured and otherwise were a toned down version of the others.
PS: note the 'Beryl' Woodsware plate, as used by institutions until quite recently and as seen in all the best costume dramas, for example, Poirot.
Yams (1)
The runner beans have it: in this picture the yam bean plants, that is to say the plants between the banana plants in front and the forest on the hill at the back. look a lot more like runner beans than pumpkins.
Saturday, 14 February 2015
Kraut und Rüben
For a change, started out by walking, to come across a small flock of chattering female students in the vicinity of one of the student blocks down Stamford Street. Struck by a beam of curiosity, we enquired what it might cost to stay in such a place to find that it was around £125 a term week, perhaps £4,000 the academic year. Half of what you would pay in Epsom for the two bedroom flat noticed at reference 1 and a fifth of what you would pay for one of the fancy student flats for the children of the rich noticed recently by the Evening Standard. I remember paying 5 guineas for a posh bed-sit during one of my undergraduate years - but how that compares with £125 now I do not have the energy this morning to check.
From where pushed onto St. Bride Street, where we explored the mysteries of hiring a Bullingdon with a credit card, rather than with the white plastic key that I usually use. It turned out to be a right performance, with much clicking through of terms and conditions, but we got there in the end with a receipt containing a short code made up of 1's, 2's and 3's which we found one could enter into the post of one's choice to extract the Bullingdon locked therein. I had never noticed the three little buttons put there for the purpose before. Cycled across the top of what is left of Smithfield Market to return our Bullingdons to the stand at Roscoe Street, from where it was but a short step to the Market Restaurant for our bacon sandwiches. A bonus was that we had time afterwards to visit the interesting charity shop nearby, only to find that the biblical west Africans had been replaced by a secular eastern European, but I did manage to find a more or less new Franzen which I did not want to read, but which I did want to present to someone else for their opinion. I wonder whether the original owner was also the owner of the one at reference 2.
Into St. Luke's where we found that Ms. Clein had chosen a far more suitable dress for this occasion. And on the whole I found that the arrangement chosen for the variations also worked very well. There were only two or three out of the 30 odd variations which I thought failed the transcription and I was not sure about the pizzicato variation. Which was odd as, thinking for oneself, one might have thought that a work for the harpsicord, a plucking instrument, would not work for a bunch of bowed instruments. A plucked note is not the same thing at all as a sustained note and one might have thought that this would have had compositional repercussions.
More generally, the work illustrates the subordinacity of music theory, by which I mean that one can get on perfectly well with the work without having a clue about the theory. However, looking at the splendidly illustrated wikipedia article this morning, I hope I find time to take on the theory found there, as I expect any future outing to be greatly enhanced thereby.
From cabbages and turnips (the name of one of the songs worked into one of the variations), we moved onto even more exotic vegetables to be had from the still thriving indoor market at Tooting Broadway (the indoor markets of both Epsom and Exeter being long gone), emerging with supplies of plantains, okra and yam, together with instructions for cooking them donated by various people loitering around the chosen stall. I learned that plantains are not the same as green bananas. I have found that okra tastes rather like courgettes. And yams are yet to come, with some of the chunk that I bought having been incorporated into today's beef stew.
I suppose that the huge yam roots must have come from a correspondingly huge plant with the loiterers having suggested something perhaps like a runner bean plant or perhaps like a pumpkin plant. Next stop wikipedia.
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/no-let.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/04/jonathan-franzen.html.
Copper box time
Train to Waterloo, then up onto the mezzanine to take tea and cake at the Benugo's there. The cake was described as a blackberry tart and turned out to be yet another take on the continental take on our own Bakewell Tart. Rather good.
From there to the beach where they do sand castles, to find just one under construction. A fine array of trowels but no sieves that I could see; perhaps they would contravene local rules in such matters. Short walk along the beach, including testing the echo underneath Blackfriars Bridge, which was not bad. The bridge was wider than the Silver Street Bridge at Cambridge and higher, so the echo, while not bad, had a rather different quality to that of the other place. Doing it from pebbles, glass and bone rather than from a punt might have made a difference too.
On into the Tate, where we savoured the big turbine hall before searching out the box. The image included left gives some idea of the work as seen, but if you don't like it, asking google for 'copper box tate modern' comes up with plenty more. What it does do is show the bit which annoyed me, the use of common-or-garden countersunk screws to fix the various parts of the box together. I would have been much more impressed by invisible joining and invisible joins, which would, I think, have been possible with application of a little metallurgical know-how and of a little burnishing. And if I had been doing it, I think also that I might have included some kind of finishing trim around the top, perhaps in the form of a lid out of which one had cut a seven-eighths size square hole. And assuming that the box was indeed copper, maybe a centimetre thick, we wondered what the scrap value might be.
They might also have done a better job of installing it. As it was, it was just one work among a number, but it would have looked better given a bit more pride of place. Perhaps a room of its own or a big plinth. Or both. But, I suppose to be fair to the Tate, you have to strike a balance between letting everything in and making a big production of the things you do let in.
Thinking of rooms, I should say that I was struck once again at what a good job they have done on the rooms, with the big ones being nicely large, airy, white, well lit and not too full - either of people or of things.
Quite a lot of school parties, some very diverse, and one of which was able to respond cheerfully when poked about where they came from, which turned out to be East Ham.
Lunch at the Albion at reference 2, at the bottom of one of the rather handsome towers at reference 1. Rather unusual menu, but the wine & soup were OK and the fish pie for two that BH & I shared was very good. A mixed fish confection in a white parsley sauce, topped with thinly sliced hard boiled egg and with mashed potato baked on top of that. It might even have been assembled on the premises, even to the point of making the fish confection, given that there was a lot of fish on the menu. I would only fault their including a couple of mussels which I thought out of place. Followed by a substantial slice of fruit cake taken with an entirely satisfactory pudding wine. All in all, a satisfactory first try at what appears to be a small chain.
A quick peek at the memorial to the unknown artist behind the Tate Modern, in or somewhere handy to the appropriately named Holland Street, but we completely failed to grasp the significance of its moving about, moving about which seemed to be restricted to the head when we were there. Read all about it at reference 3.
Over the wobbling bridge to inspect St. Paul's from rather closer quarters. Very impressive it is too from 50 years or so. From there we wandered down to Blackfriars Station, probably down Carter Street, passing sundry old and interesting buildings on the way, including, for example, one which looked as if it might once have been a convent and was now a Youth Hostel of the YHA variety. Not something that I have stayed in for a very long time. We failed to enter either El Vino's or the Blackfriar, both licensed sites of great historic importance, choosing instead to duck into the railway station from where we entrained for Epsom. Scenic views of some of the less salubrious parts of south London.
Reference 1: http://www.neobankside.com/. And despite browsing the very ritzy brochure at http://www.identity-design.co.uk/neo-bankside/, I still don't know what NEO stands for but I do know that you need to have £2m or more to spend if you want to live in one of the flats - in which it seems to be a house rule that you cannot have curtains, so only really suitable for pretty people.
Reference 2: http://albiongrill.co.uk/.
Reference 3: http://mickhartley.typepad.com/blog/2009/09/non-plaudite-modo-pecuniam-jacite.html.
Friday, 13 February 2015
Coincidence?
Action clocked, I resumed pondering about the knotty question raised in the latest issue of the NYRB of whether it is right to charge corporations with criminal offences. They are already like persons in that they can be liable to pay tax, so why not go the whole hog and make them liable to face a jury of their peers? Or at least of humans.
It seems that, unlike us Europeans who like to charge the man rather than the corporation, the US authorities think about charging the corporation quite often, with a lot of the article in question being about the way that corporations so-charged seem to get away with token punishment, carrying on with whatever it was more or less regardless. Punishment usually being monetary as it is hard to put a corporation in prison - although one can think of suitable analogs to sitting in the stocks or standing in pillory. Perhaps a good & entertaining trashing in prime time television advertisements, paid for by the delinquent corporation?
Arguments include whether it is fair to charge the man for doing something that his corporation has instructed him to do. An argument which we do not allow here in the case of lorry drivers (or cruise ship captains for that matter): it is up to the lorry driver to be lawful, not his employer. Also the extent to which it is fair to punish innocent share holders and employees for the sins of management. To which I might respond that shareholders are the owners and do have responsibilities. And if we kick them, they might well kick their board, possibly out. The catch being that shareholders are often a fairly passive lot and are content to go along with whatever their board says.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/decision-time.html.
Dreamtime
First off we had something like the odd object illustrated left, which started out as a sort of sandwich with the copious filling applied to both outside and inside. In shape not unlike the rather bizarre hamburgers which you get in pubs these days, the ones with a long wooden skewer holding all the layers together, the ones which you cannot eat with any decorum with either hands or tools. From where I associated to the sort of sample trenches that archaeologists dig across sites of interest, with the slices of bread doing service for trenches. I remember thinking that I must not confuse or conflate the part, that is to say the trench, with the whole, that is to say the site.
I also remember a sense of seeing the features which made the thing up, without seeing an integrated image of the thing as a whole. It was as if the part of the brain which integrates the visual features - like points, corners, lines and surfaces -which have been built up from retinal output into the image which we are conscious of seeing, had been turned off or by-passed. Perhaps it was just booting up, along with the rest of me.
Then we had something more substantial, or at least more remembered, prompted partly by being with someone from my university days and partly by visiting St. Luke's of Old Street the day before. Perhaps profound thoughts about parts & wholes were an appropriate point of re-entry to the self-important world of the student.
I was some kind of superior student, floating around in the uncertain ranks between mere undergraduates and proper teaching staff. I was involved in some kind of seminar, for which I had prepared three pages of typescript about something to do with the restoration, mistakenly taking St. Luke's to be a Fire of London rebuild, when actually it was a Queen Anne new build. The typescript was also a mistake as word processors were not to be invented until some time after I was at university.
I thought that it would be a good idea to have someone who disagreed with my views on the restoration to talk at the seminar, using my paper as a starting point. Then I thought that I ought to get someone, not me but who agreed with me, to chair it. Then I thought that the thing should be organised more on the lines of a debate, with a speaker for, a speaker against and a chairman. At which point I start to worry about how on earth I am going to persuade three middle ranking teachers to part with so much of their valuable time on such a venture and shortly after that I think I must have woken up.
Later on, having fallen asleep again while pondering about the seminar, I must have drifted onto the roundabouts of the previous post, as I woke up for the second time with them very much on my mind. No more idea about where they come from than I have about the opening sandwich. Perhaps it will come to me on the upcoming Ewell Village Clockwise.
PS; the illustration was the occasion for the first outing for a while of the brush noticed, inter alia, at http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/pocket-brush.html.
Wicksteed
Even so, I was pleased to find this morning that Wicksteed are still alive and well and still offering a full range of playground equipment and a showcase park. Perhaps if had we visited the place when we lived nearer Kettering than we do now, I might have got a bigger picture of a retro-roundabout than the otherwise very suitable one which google offer now.
See next post, the one to come, for relevance.
Thursday, 12 February 2015
Winter in Ottawa
Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/winter-in-epsom-2.html.
Wednesday, 11 February 2015
The ladies of Spain
A couple of weeks or so ago, I mentioned the gentlemen - or at least the hildalgos - of Spain doing each other in with knives.
Then yesterday, I heard a knife story about a lady of Spain. It seems that her husband really got on her nerves with his scratching behind his ears while watching the Spanish version of 'Big Brother'. This made her so mad that she was ramping up to stick a kitchen knife in him. But just before take-off she paused and phoned the police. Come quick she says, come quick before I do something terrible to my husband. So the police did come quick and they calmed the situation down, with their solution including some soothing cream for application to the backsides of ears.
My interest in this case is the notion that you can be mad enough about someone to be on the verge of sticking a knife into them, but in control enough to pause and phone the police.
How real was the madness? Has the idea of being mad simply been used as an excuse to get the police in to put the husband to shame? Was she really mad about him watching 'Big Brother' (you can take a peek on YouTube to see the sort of things they get up to), with the ear scratching business just being a screen?
There was the additional factor that the lady in question was a cook, with cooks and chefs being well known temperamentals.
I remember the one time I got mad enough at someone to think of using the Irish spade (the sort of long-shafted spade without a handle but with a blade shaped like the spades on playing cards) I was holding on him. But it did not occur to me to phone the police, not that that would have been easy at a time well before before the invention of mobile phones. Maybe the significant difference was my lack of experience of both anger and anger management - whereas my Spanish lady knew all about both. Knew how to canalise her anger, to use her anger as a management tool, whereas I just get angry, hot and bothered, which is much less effective.
I associate to a split in personality, but the sort where one of the splits is aware of the other. One has two personalities running along in the one brain, with one of them being able to stand back and admire (or not) the other. Another trick which I can't manage.
PS: I also associate to Mr, Karenin's way of cracking his fingers which so got on the nerves of his wife Anna,
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/a-country-of-contrasts.html.
Then yesterday, I heard a knife story about a lady of Spain. It seems that her husband really got on her nerves with his scratching behind his ears while watching the Spanish version of 'Big Brother'. This made her so mad that she was ramping up to stick a kitchen knife in him. But just before take-off she paused and phoned the police. Come quick she says, come quick before I do something terrible to my husband. So the police did come quick and they calmed the situation down, with their solution including some soothing cream for application to the backsides of ears.
My interest in this case is the notion that you can be mad enough about someone to be on the verge of sticking a knife into them, but in control enough to pause and phone the police.
How real was the madness? Has the idea of being mad simply been used as an excuse to get the police in to put the husband to shame? Was she really mad about him watching 'Big Brother' (you can take a peek on YouTube to see the sort of things they get up to), with the ear scratching business just being a screen?
There was the additional factor that the lady in question was a cook, with cooks and chefs being well known temperamentals.
I remember the one time I got mad enough at someone to think of using the Irish spade (the sort of long-shafted spade without a handle but with a blade shaped like the spades on playing cards) I was holding on him. But it did not occur to me to phone the police, not that that would have been easy at a time well before before the invention of mobile phones. Maybe the significant difference was my lack of experience of both anger and anger management - whereas my Spanish lady knew all about both. Knew how to canalise her anger, to use her anger as a management tool, whereas I just get angry, hot and bothered, which is much less effective.
I associate to a split in personality, but the sort where one of the splits is aware of the other. One has two personalities running along in the one brain, with one of them being able to stand back and admire (or not) the other. Another trick which I can't manage.
PS: I also associate to Mr, Karenin's way of cracking his fingers which so got on the nerves of his wife Anna,
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/a-country-of-contrasts.html.
Dante at Dorking
On Sunday to the Dorking Halls to hear the Dante Quartet, another quartet with Cambridge connections, along with the Endellion. They also share links to Prussia Cove and 'Death and the Maiden'. See references 1 and 2 - the whole business has a long pedigree.
On this occasion in the Martineau Hall rather than the main hall, smaller but otherwise very similar in style and kitted out for the occasion with movable raking seats.
We had the Haydn string quartet Op.33 No. 1, the Kodály Op.10 and the Schubert D.810, aka 'Death and the Maiden'. Haydn good, Kodály new to us and good, Schubert odd. Part of the oddness may have been the acoustics of the hall, also new to us, which seemed to result in a rather coarse & grating sound. Or it may have been that we were sitting too close to the action, although this last, while usually making for a different sound, does not make for an odd one.
The second violin had introduced the Schubert as being gaudy, which I had taken to mean a bit loud, a bit over emotional, perhaps a little vulgar and certainly a bit OTT. Not a descriptor of this quartet that I had heard before, but what with one thing and another, this was certainly how it came across on this occasion. Certainly when compared with the Beethoven Op.59 No.1 of reference 3.
Will I ever recover my enthusiasm for this particular Schubert, of which I have been very fond for many years?
Another short bit of Kodály for an encore. Perhaps someone to investigate. Do I hear Spottify calling? Or will YouTube do the business?
PS: the first violin was born in England of Polish parents, making her way through the Yehudi Menuhin School, at a time when the man himself was still there, to Cambridge. She has also worked with the Radu Lupu whom we heard do the Mozart violin sonatas with Szymon Goldberg maybe forty years ago. So perhaps she is very much of our own generation.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/endellion.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/der-tod-und-das-madchen.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/tuition.html.
On this occasion in the Martineau Hall rather than the main hall, smaller but otherwise very similar in style and kitted out for the occasion with movable raking seats.
We had the Haydn string quartet Op.33 No. 1, the Kodály Op.10 and the Schubert D.810, aka 'Death and the Maiden'. Haydn good, Kodály new to us and good, Schubert odd. Part of the oddness may have been the acoustics of the hall, also new to us, which seemed to result in a rather coarse & grating sound. Or it may have been that we were sitting too close to the action, although this last, while usually making for a different sound, does not make for an odd one.
The second violin had introduced the Schubert as being gaudy, which I had taken to mean a bit loud, a bit over emotional, perhaps a little vulgar and certainly a bit OTT. Not a descriptor of this quartet that I had heard before, but what with one thing and another, this was certainly how it came across on this occasion. Certainly when compared with the Beethoven Op.59 No.1 of reference 3.
Will I ever recover my enthusiasm for this particular Schubert, of which I have been very fond for many years?
Another short bit of Kodály for an encore. Perhaps someone to investigate. Do I hear Spottify calling? Or will YouTube do the business?
PS: the first violin was born in England of Polish parents, making her way through the Yehudi Menuhin School, at a time when the man himself was still there, to Cambridge. She has also worked with the Radu Lupu whom we heard do the Mozart violin sonatas with Szymon Goldberg maybe forty years ago. So perhaps she is very much of our own generation.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/06/endellion.html.
Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/03/der-tod-und-das-madchen.html.
Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/tuition.html.
Tuesday, 10 February 2015
A real car
An owner who takes cleaning his car rather more seriously than I do, although my car is cunningly placed in this shot so as to look its best. Not too shameful.
Trolley 23
Decision time
It will be interesting to watch the progress of the grass as spring unfolds. How much of a scar will be visible this time next year?
A mixture of broken glass, melted metal (presumably from a battery), bits and pieces of engine, bits and pieces of tyre and earth. The glass was mostly the shattered sort you get from a car windscreen, but the debris struck me as being that from a motorbike. Do bike windscreens shatter in the same way as car windscreens?
The collected waste illustrated occasioned some head scratching at the nearby waste transfer site. Did it count as inert being what was left after a fire? The decision was that it was not and that it should go for land fill. Now on its way.
Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/a-puzzle.html.
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