Boundaries

At the recent lecture about killing bacteria at the Royal Institute, I was somewhat alarmed by a diagram of a cell wall, rather like the one included left. The alarm arising from the fact that the cell wall was a complicated affair which needed constant maintenance, 24 by 7, to keep it in working order, maintenance which could easily be disturbed by chemicals pumped out by passing bacteria. But no working order and the cell died. With thanks to Sinauer Associates (see reference 2) for the illustration, the cell wall of something getting impulsed by a neuron.

An alarm which plays into yesterday's musings about vaulting in churches. Into today's musings about boundary zones more generally.

Back in the ice age when we used to live in caves, our living space was just a hole in the rock. For some reason which I don't quite understand, in a cave one does not think of the ceiling of the cave as being a boundary between the inner space one is in and somewhere else.

Then we moved onto huts with thatched roofs, with the thatch placed directly on the rafters, visible from both above and below. With all kinds of grot accumulating in and dropping down from the thatch over the years. Maybe it was all this grot which got on the lady of the house's nerves and she prodded her man into putting something between her and her thatch. She needed a stronger separation of the inner space and the outer space, without the constant reminder of stuff dripping in from that outer space. Perhaps that is the change from the cave, the boundary zone has become man made and fragile, rather than many feet of rock.

But we want to try and recreate the illusion of the cave, perhaps a Freudian would say the womb, and create an inner space from which or in which the outer space more or less vanishes. So we craft the inner space with ceilings and perhaps with elaborate plaster decoration. On can see the same progression when the ceiling of one room is the floor of another, rather than the roof. One starts off with simple floor boards on top of rafters, with both boards and rafter visible from below. Maybe one can see up through the cracks between the boards. Maybe the boards creak and maybe one is all too aware of people, perhaps unknowns, perhaps from a quite different household, tramping around above. A first step is to paint the underside of the boards white. But this is not enough and one is soon nailing lathes onto the bottom of the rafters and plastering the thing over. Cocoon restored.

The same forces are perhaps at work in the churches we talked about yesterday, churches which go to a lot of trouble to hide or at least to soften their roofs as seen from below. But there are some large buildings which go to rather less trouble, and I am thinking here of the large sheds from which we buy our DIY stuff and the large sheds called railway stations (and, indeed, of the large Parisian churches from the nineteenth century which are rather like railway stations in their construction). Here we really can see the thatch, as it were; the skin between us and the world outside is only millimetres, if that, thick. Is it the facts that these spaces are so large and that the ceilings are so far away, that we do not mind? Plus the softening afforded by the more or less complicated steel work supporting the skin of the roof, the steel equivalent of all the wooden trickery of the roof of the great Hall at Hampton Court Palace. I associate here to the steel work holding up the ceiling of the Ottawa railway station (see reference 3). Looking at the picture again, perhaps the eye is taken away from the ceiling by the large windows around the side.

Which opens up a whole new ball game. Why are we happy with socking great windows when we go to such bother to disguise our roofs? Does is come down from the fact that rain comes down, in the main, rather than across?

Clearly time for breakfast.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/bugs.html.

Reference 2: http://www.sinauer.com/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/station-spotting.html.

They do it too

It's not just us Brits who are convinced that any product of the artistic mind is good enough, the Yanks do it too.

This important work from Keith A. Smith (someone who takes himself sufficiently seriously to both time and date his works, for all the world like my PC) is so important that it was thought worth a full page advertisement from the Silverstein Gallery in New York in the current issue of the NYRB.

The core of this particular creation is, we are told, a piece of mylar extracted from a copier, ironed onto a piece of brown paper, stitched onto a piece of green cloth. A 2:30pm, 21 November 1971 version of the sort of stuff old ladies used to do in craft groups in senior centres around the world. Perhaps Smith is a senior. Perhaps even in a Brownsville senior centre (gmaps 40.662887, -73.909268), perhaps the one in Mother Gaston Boulevard, whoever Mother Gaston might have been.

I was unable to find out what you would have to pay to have this particular work on your very own wall.

Alternatively one sometimes comes across such work in car booters and oxfam shops where one might pay as much as £1 or so.

PS: I have just found that gmaps, if you click on a subway station, tells you the train times. No idea who put them there or how accurate they are.

More chain

Following the snap at reference 1, I caught what is probably the same gang, a bit further up Longmead Road (up as in upstream) yesterday. Two lorry loads of advanced carers for trees.

But I should say, in fairness, that going back along Longmead Road today, I find that they do indeed appear to have been into caring rather than felling. That is to say, while quite a number of trees have been given a short back and sides, what is euphemistically called crown thinning, and some smaller trees have been taken down, I didn't notice any large holes in the canopy or large stumps in the ground. So while I don't see why this work was necessary, it could have been worse.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/in-flagrante.html.

More Devon churches

Following the visit to Exeter Cathedral, the report of which ended at reference 1, there were more church visits, including one lifetime first.

St. Eustachius, Tavistock. Notable on this occasion for its fine array of cylindrical barrel (or perhaps waggon) vaults, picked out with a sparse rectangular array of dark brown beams, probably not structural. A sort of roof of which one sees a good deal in Devon. East end snapped above.

St. Andrew's, Ashburton. More barrel vaults, mostly stripped down to the rafters, thus demonstrating that the barrel vault is just an eye pleasing bit of decoration nailed onto the rafters of the same sort of close boarded, pitched roof as you might find in a house. Or the close boarded hipped roof of our house here in Epsom, with the close boarding serving in our case, both to provide a bit of thermal insulation and to keep out the various detritus & live stock which might otherwise drift in under the tiles from the outside world. There were also some flat roofs to the aisles, similarly close boarded, with the visible rafters enlivened by large, carved and painted bosses where they crossed. And outside, a fine wellingtonia, a fine cedar and a handsome yew avenue to the front door. Not to mention what looked like a north facing, first floor artist's studio overlooking the church yard. A recent conversion by the looks of it and a neat encapsulation of Ashburton past and present.

The lifetime first, St. Mary the Virgin, Holne. Still more vaults, but more notable for its ancient screen between the nave and the chancel and its ancient pulpit, this last carved from a section of the trunk of an oak tree. Maybe a five foot section. Most unusual, the ticket said, to have a pulpit carved from a single piece of timber in this way. The screen was decorated with ancient paintings, somehow surviving the Puritan onslaught of the seventeenth century. Probably the screen and pulpit which catapult the church to its grade one listing.

Notable also for the community shop and tea room across the way. Where by community, I mean put up and run by voluntary effort. And certainly not for profit.

I associate now to the hammer bean roofs of East Anglia and to the roof of the Great Hall at Hampton Court Palace. Here, instead of barrel or any other kind of vaulting, the complexity of the interior roof joinery takes the eye and brain away from the close boarding above. The result is an interior space, cut off from the outside world and its possibly inclement weather.

Buckfast Abbey, Buckfast. A rather different kettle of fish altogether, almost a new build. At least, built by monks from France, via Ireland, at around the start of the twentieth century, just about a thousand years after the first, Saxon, foundation. This first foundation being, at one point, supported by around 10,000 acres, almost enough to keep a decent baron going, mostly gobbled up by a hungry Henry VIII. An impressive building, with the inside now clear of scaffolding, although a little cold, despite the large, annular chandelier copied from the 12th century original at Aachen, known as the Barbarossa chandelier or the Barbarossaleuchter to its locals. Fine gardens outside, handsome cafeteria and a range of other buildings supporting conferences and other activities. Not least the manufacture of the famous Buckfast Tonic Wine; good stuff for keeping one going through a night of prayers.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/exeter-cathedral-4.html.

Flowers

There were two nice beds of spring bulbs in Millbank Gardens behind the Tate Britain yesterday, one tulips, one daffodils. Perhaps a little past their best, or perhaps the overcast sky did them no favours.

We also came across this more or less perfect camelia flower. The snap does give some idea.

Anonymous

Last Christmas the NYRB ran a review by one James Gleick of a book by one Gabrielle Coleman about a rather unpleasant phenomenon called anonymous. Gleick is a Harvard man who writes about information and information technology, sufficiently cool to have a very short web site address (reference 1). A web site which, as it happens, carries the same illustration as the review. Coleman is rather different, holding the Wolfe Chair in Scientific and Technological Literacy at McGill University. She trained as a cultural anthropologist and researches, writes, and teaches on computer hackers and digital activism. She can be found at reference 2.

Gleick leaves me with the impression that, like many anthropologists, social workers and the like before her, Coleman has rather gone native and in her efforts to understand the unpleasant phenomenon, she has almost become part of it. To think that she is a possibly tenured professor in the illustrious institution at which my mother took her degree. See reference 3.

He also leaves me with the impression that the members of anonymous - although this is perhaps rather a grand term for the people involved - are dead beats and drop outs. People with more or less IT skills but who, for one reason or another, choose not to participate in society proper - although I suppose it is quite likely that there are some people who like to do stuff like this when they are off-duty from their day job. I once read that a proportion of graffiti people are suits during the day who need to seek thrills during the night. Thrills which they chose not to get from substances, although I dare say there is some overlap here.

Anonymous is a broad church in which members get together in online chat rooms. The sample of chat included in the review does not inspire confidence in their judgement or morals. A quick peek at google suggests that the outfit also comes with a wikipedia article, facebook and twitter accounts, not to mention acres of hard core liberal, probably Islington resident analysis & commentary from organs such as the Guardian.

One activity is crude & unpleasant online attacks on people to whom they take a dislike for one reason or another. Perhaps because they are black or because they are outspoken women. Or perhaps just for a laugh. At least sometimes the joke is on them, as they sometimes attack people who turn out to be virtual people who were only manufactured by some other lot, just for a laugh.

Another activity is sometimes crude but sometimes effective attacks on organisations to which they take a dislike, some of which you or I might dislike too, like the Scientologists. This is sometimes claimed to be the good deed part of their scene. And indeed, one good result or side-effect is that people operating out on the web might start to take their security more seriously than they might otherwise - although there is still plenty to do on that front if the recent mishap at Sony is anything to go by.

Hopefully, most of the people who get into this sort of thing grow up and move on before they do too much damage, damage which they might come to be ashamed of in later life.

For me, two serious points emerge from all this.

First, immaturity, secrecy and anonymity are not good for truth and justice. Or even for efficiency. I dare say there are plenty of mistakes and blunders in our own security worlds which would not have happened out in the open. We do need to have secrets but there is a price to be paid for them. And picking up a thread from 'Absence of war' (see reference 4), we do need to have organisation and bureaucracy to manage the production of truth and justice. Anarchy and ad-lib is not enough.

Second, more or less illegal methods of protest can only be justified as a last resort. Which is not where these people are at. So what we have left are the costs of control which fall on all of us; their laughs are paid for by higher prices and higher taxes.

Reference 1: http://around.com/.

Reference 2: http://gabriellacoleman.org/.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/mcgill.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/the-absence-of-war.html.

Tasteful ornament

This ornament from the garden of the Baron and Baroness Sweerts de Landas caught my eye, having been involved recently in the purchase of a more vulgar version, possibly from ebay. Probably made of some resin bonded stone dust, or even of common or garden plastic, rather than the genuine stone of this model. Or at least, I assume that it is genuine stone - one can't be too sure these days.

On the assumption that it is old stone, perhaps from some posh persons' version of ebay, this pond clearly not being its original home. Maybe once an ornament in the garden of a south German stately home, just across the mountains from the Italy where such things were invented? Picked up in the nineteenth century in the course of some English lordlings grand tour of Europe?

On the other hand, looking at the angles at the corners of its base, I smell a rat. Maybe it was knocked out quite recently, using a Black & Decker rather than a chisel. Not possible to get them to market at a sensible price unless you cut a few corners. Joke.

I associate now to a postcard I once came across from a young lady getting some work experience in an Italian stone mason's yard. They used Black & Deckers to whack out the cupids and I remember her recording her amazement at the speed at which the Italian masons worked.

Another old friend

I had the luck to catch a rare visit of a locomotive to Epsom Station yesterday, probably something to do with the fact that the station was closed for the day. Lots of people hanging around outside, waiting for the buses that had been laid on instead.

Whatever it was that was happening was clearly Epsom and southwards as Ewell West to the north was up and running. I even saw a train there.

I had never heard of the owner of the locomotive before, Colas Rail. But their web site (http://www.colasrail.co.uk/) suggests that they have moved into the space once at least part-occupied by British Rail.

An old friend

The stuff I know as dog vomit fungus, last noticed at reference 1, some five or six years ago. Perhaps it is reasonably rare in urban environments.

Once again, my telephone demonstrates its relative weakness with low light intensities, more or less failing to capture the delicate yellow of the fungus. Fungus which appeared overnight, which makes one wonder whether it really is the vomit of a fox rather than some fungal growth.

So off to google to find a rather thin wikipedia article. From where I move to a rather better article from the Missouri Department of Conservation (reference 2). I think I am now satisfied that the dog vomit fungus is not of vulpine origin and not even a fungus proper. Rather a lowly slime mould, slime moulds being, as I recall, one of the earliest forms of life on earth. But a mould with an amazing rate of growth. If I had more time I would inspect the thing at 3 hour intervals to see what happens. Better still, I would set up one of those fancy cameras which would take a picture every so many minutes and then watch the resulting time lapse video (if that is the right name) from the comfort of my own sofa.

Proper name fuligo septica, with prefix Protozoa-Myxomycota-Myxomycetes-Physarale-Physaraceae, so a distant cousin of the lowly amoeba. According to Missouri, sometimes eaten by Mexicans.

PS: later on, got to thinking about all the spores from this mould floating around in the air. Will one make a mistake and get going on me one day? What happens if one lands inside my lungs, all warm and damp as per the instruction book?

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

Refrence 2: http://mdc.mo.gov/discover-nature/field-guide/dog-vomit-slime-mold-scrambled-egg-slime-mold.

The absence of war

Continuing the election theme, off to the Rose Theatre at Kingston (upon Thames) last week to see 'The absence of war', a comedy based on Neil Kinnock's failure to win his general election, a comedy with claims to making serious points. I have a feeling that I once went to see one of the companion pieces, 'Murmuring Judges', but I can remember nothing about it. Maybe it would come back if I went again - which on the outing reported here, I probably would if it came on again.

An ensemble piece, which I like. Reece Dinsdale as George Jones might have got the most lines, but everybody else got a turn too. And no complaints about the casting.

Clever staging. We were presented with a blank screen on entry which was slickly converted into the various places the play visited by wheeling office furniture in and out, plus helpful hints on a couple of TV monitors and projection onto the blank screen.

I liked the first half better than the second, the low point of this last being for me the keynote speech in which Jones lost his way. The point of which could have been made a bit less painfully. Jones also seemed oddly reluctant to use his on-stage smoking privileges; he had a lighted fag in his hand from time to time, but he never took a puff. BH thinks that that was the point but I am not so sure.

Framing the piece with two successive parliamentary visits to the Cenotaph for Remembrance Sunday seemed a little forced to me - plus none of them seemed to know how to execute the required slight bow of respect after placing their wreath. While it may be true that we need a good war to get us to pull together - certainly true enough that many people of my parents' age were nostalgic about that pulling together after the event - I don't see the relevance of that truth here, and younger people for whom both wars are more or less ancient history, the Cenotaph will not carry much charge at all.

I liked the people who minded Jones & Pryce. The policy wonks, the diary secretary, the squabbling strategists and the people who have clean shirts, deodorant and hankies on hand in case of need by their principals. As someone who was once faintly associated with private offices and special advisers, I found all that part of the play good fun.

But I also thought that they were unfairly knocked. Politics is like that and political leaders are packaged products. It is no good trying to do it from the heart, to wing it from the heart, because it will not convince, it will not win hearts and minds. And anyway, we don't want passion and we don't want people who can't remember their briefs. We want wheelers and dealers in charge, people who may not be very attractive at close quarters but who can work the system and get things done, at least so long as they don't stray too far off the beaten track.

I associate to a report from a mining town in Siberia in the seventies of the last century. At that time the workforce was a mixture of middle class idealists doing it for love and working class miners doing it for the special bonuses paid for working in such a dump. And according to the report, the idealists were a pain. Give me the people doing it for the money any time.

But I do allow that the packaging does seem to have resulted in a brand of politics in which real issues hardly get a look in as far as the public and the voters are concerned; it is all 'sound and fury, signifying nothing'. Which is part of why we have representative democracy: we don't need voters to choose the policies, that is best left to the professionals. But we do need them to chose the team - and we just hope that the qualities needed to be the winning team have something to do with the qualities needed to be a good government.

Mug shot

In the course of the looking up mentioned at the head of the previous post, I came across this family snap of the Sweerts de Landas family, drawn from, of all places, some organ of the Dumfries and Galloway media (reference 1). Good quality, high resolution picture, better than your average pick me up from google.

With the addition of the chap in the blue cardy, Richard Scott 10th Duke of Buccleuch (or more properly, Duke of Buccleuch and Queensberry, KBE DL FSA FRSE). I think it is the lady with the elephant pendant who is the tulip buff (on which more in due course).

PS: don't know what FSA means. Presumably not that the duke works for the food standards agency. FRSE is fellow of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Reference 1: http://www.dgwgo.com/regional-news/luxury-thornhill-hotel-opens-doors-world/.

Translation

Machine translation came to mind again, near six months after the last time recorded (see reference 1). The occasion of which was a visit to the Surrey home of the Baron and Baroness Sweerts de Landas and looking them up afterwards I came across the page from wikipedia illustrated left, kindly translated by google.

I would imagine that translating this kind of scrappy text is quite hard for a computer, but google make a reasonable fist of it, with the result being comprehensible if not very good English. And if one has to make a choice, comprehensibility will usually be more important than elegance.

The first error is the word genus, where the computer, for some reason, has picked on the taxonomic use of the word family rather than the more usual one. Which I find rather odd.

The second is the phrase 'director of postal Rotterdam' for which we might use 'postmaster for Rotterdam' or 'director general of the Rotterdam postal service'. Less bothered by this error as I think it is more a matter of choice and resources, whether one bothers to look up the right expression in the target language. No general rule is going to give you the right answer. That said, I have no idea whether we still have postmasters. Once important and respected people on the local scene, perhaps now swept away in some now forgotten reorganisation. Do you ask the computer to give you the term that was correct at the time or the term which would be correct now? Can you expect it to do anything much if the organisation of the Netherlands Postal Service bears no resemblance to that of our own? Or to that of the US Postal Service if your target audience is more US than UK flavoured?

The third is occurring the navy, rather than joining, enlisting or being commissioned into the navy. Perhaps the Dutch words for these things have an occurring flavour which ours do not. On postal grounds, I allow 'lieutenant-at-sea'; that is to say it is quite possible that omitting the at sea bit would be confusing in the context of the Dutch navy.

But 'rear-nacht' for rear admiral is odd, given that google gets vice admiral right.

The 'took some time commanded' for 'for some time commanded' is presumably the literal rendering of the Dutch.

But the closing 'in 1900 Paul Kruger at the invitation of Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands moved to the Netherlands to look at the course of events in South Africa await. To Baron Swerts was as commander of the Protected cruiser Gelderland instructed to sail on the presidential to the Netherlands. For the execution of this contract he received from the Dutch government a vindication of special appreciation and satisfaction' is a bit of a mess, although to be fair to google, if you mouse over it in the right way, you are invited to contribute a better translation of the Dutch which it supplies for you.

Which I in fact did for the some time commanded above, although when it came to it, I was not sure that the English supplied had not lost something from the Dutch which I was missing. Was the substitution of 'for' for 'took' good enough? Was the Tromp was the flagship of the Java fleet? The suggestion just vanished into the ether so I now wonder whether there will there be any repercussions, or does the suggestion just vanish into the statistical maw of the google translation service.

The 'await' bit is, I suppose, a relic of Dutch word order, which I imagine, like German, likes to put the verb at the end.

I wonder if they poke around in this sort of thing in schools, as an alternative to teaching people to speak and read foreign languages, something that we English are said to be bad at these days. Not like the days when bored army colonels posted out to somewhere in the wilds of India used to become world masters of ancient Indian languages and to correspond with Sir Richard Burton on the subject.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/och.html.

Standard of public life

There was a large headline in yesterday's Metro which ran 'Commuter trains like Wild West', the words it seems of a knight of the realm, one Sir Peter Hendy, a senior servant from Transport for London. The short piece which followed, occupying rather less space than the headline, included further examples of the knight's intemperate style, complete with expletives.

I then find this morning that yesterday's Guardian carried the same story, albeit with ratio of headline to copy reversed. So presumably the knight has not been misrepresented.

First, from what I know of commuter trains, and having used them for getting on for thirty years or so, they are not the wild west. They are sometimes crowded, which one must expect as long as there are rush hours, but I nearly always got a seat and they nearly always ran on time. OK, so there were things which I moaned about, but in the round the service (mainly Southwest trains) was OK.

Second, I do not care for senior public servants speaking out in this crude way. They are not affordables from sink estate running on about how 'they', whoever they might be, should do something about it. And one might have thought one could expect a rather better example from a graduate of Latymer Upper School and the University of Leeds.

A politicised event

Yesterday to the QEH to hear the Jerusalem Quartet do Mozart's K.387 (aka 'Spring'), Janácek's 'Intimate Letters' and Schubert's 'Death and the Maiden'.

It being a Friday there was some free event in the antechamber, a free event which overran, which made getting started even worse than usual. Then a rather officious steward made us deposit our jackets in the cloakroom before he would let us into the auditorium, to find, having done this, that the stewards on the other door were not interested in jackets at all. All rather annoying. Particularly as the same officious steward went on to admit a couple to the front stalls during the proceedings, something which would never have been allowed in the olden days.

We understood that something was needed as concerts of this quartet had been disturbed in the past and as I recall one had been disturbed shortly before the first time we heard them at reference 1. But whatever was done should be sensible - and in any event we doubted if one would be able to stop shouters, short of vetting the entire audience. As it turned out, we did have some shouters who rather disrupted the Mozart at one point. They were smothered after, I would think, less than a minute and the quartet played on through the noise. But it was all a bit unsettling, both for them and for us in the audience. The business left me a bit uneasy: Israel is making a bad fist of managing its Palestinian problem and it is hard to know how far protest might reasonably go. But I think where I get to this morning is that there is plenty of public awareness of the issue and crude disruption of this sort is inappropriate and probably unproductive. Peaceful protest outside would have been more effective. Perhaps the problem the disrupters had was that they did not have the manpower to mount a conventional, decent protest, just enough to shout.

Disruption apart, the quartet were on fine form and sounded very good indeed from row G. Real ensemble playing, with this programme giving everybody a go, with the first violin not completely dominating the proceedings. To the point where I thought that, at one or two places, the first violin was too self-effacing. I also think I am getting to like raked seating, I am getting to like the better view than that afforded by the Wigmore Hall.

Furthermore, the Schubert has regained its place in my personal hall of fame, following its rather unsatisfactory outing at reference 2. So I was pleased about that - although the knowledgeable sounding chap next to us found it a trifle fast. A party of senior medical folk behind us, possibly associated with St. Peter's at Chertsey (the place with which there was once talk of our Epsom hospital merging. Perhaps part of the same parcel which has our police coming from Staines) and one of whom seemed to be sucking very smelly boiled sweets through the entire proceedings. But at least she, I assume she for some reason, was not rattling sweet papers.

Quartet's seating unusual with first and second violin on cheap seats, then cello on a high piano stool, then viola on a low piano stool. We liked their rather formal, dark suits, not being keen on the relaxed style for evening concerts. No idea whether they are political or what, if anything apart from coming from Israel and the name of their quartet, draws the protesters.

No encore - which would have been, to my mind anyway, inappropriate - and we just managed to get the 2154 out of Waterloo. On the way, having not bought the programme on the grounds that it would be one of those portmanteau affairs complained about previously, we picked one up on the way out to find that it was not. A picking up which was unusual in that concert goers, having stumped up their fiver, are usually careful to take their programmes out with them. But nothing fantastic on the train in the way of Friday evening party outfits on this occasion.

Google can still muster plenty of lurid images to go with the Schubert, one of which was offered at reference 3, just about a year ago. Some of the less lurid look to have been taken from the 1992 production of the much played Dorfman play of the same name at the Duke of York's. A production which, as it happened, we attended.

PS: I feel sure that we have heard this quartet on more than one occasion, but the record fails on this occasion.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2012/11/schubert.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/dante-at-dorking.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/search?q=grien.

In flagrante

Chain saw action caught in flagrante at the northern end of the Longmead Road, but at a distance at which the telephone struggled a bit. Not at all clear to me why the action was necessary.

On this occasion, council contractors rather than the chain saw volunteers, 14th West Horton or any other branch - and there was plenty of litter about to which their attention might more usefully have been directed, but I suppose that that is not as much fun as clambering around in trees with noisy equipment.

There was also a leak (or a dump) of some white stuff, maybe paint, into one of the drains from the industrial estate which flow into this branch of the Hogsmill. But nothing much to be done about that, except wait for some rain to flush it along.

Trolley 32

Retrieved from outside Maplins in Derby Square, having turned up an awkwardly placed one from Sainsbury's in East Street. This one from M&S.

Got a front wheel stuck in a drain cover while trying to cross over to the Ashley Centre side of the High Street, which resulted in some ineffectual shoving and shaking on my part, followed by rescue by a young man, perhaps from the University of Creation, who lifted the offending wheel out of the cover. Much easier when you are on the right side of the trolley.

Passed two more trolleys in the market place, one from M&S and one from Sainsbury's but declined both, being near the end of the daily round.

Oddities

The Chimneys saga, started at reference 1, continues.

The first oddity is the French phrase 'ventre à terre', which I think was used of horses but now means at full speed more generally. I associate to old fashioned pictures of race horses with legs sticking out front and back and I am grateful to Richard Gardner for the late nineteenth century illustration of the sort of thing I mean. I had thought that by then painters knew better, but maybe this painter was just painting what his customers expected.

Apart from the fact that horses do not move in this way, there is also the fact that cats do move in this way, 'ventre à terre', they do it across our lawns here at Epsom, but it is a very slow, hunting movement. Cats in this posture presumably hope that it will make them less visible to the crow or pigeon or whatever it is they think would do for their lunch. Unsuccessfully, in the case of our lawns; maybe it works better in the long grass of their ancestral homes.

In Chimneys, the phrase is used of Lord Caterham, rushing to the scene of something or other, although I cannot put my finger on the place in question. With the Lord Caterham of the television adaptation being far too old to do any rushing at all.

Moving on, said adaptation is odd in that it is the first television adaptation of a murder mystery which I recall seeing in which the adapter has taken liberties with the perpetrator. So in the adaptation, the perpetrator is cuckolded Lord Caterham, rather than the governess, who has been suppressed.

The original story by Agatha, makes full use of the false identity device. The male lead, Antony Cade, turns out to be the heir to a Balkan throne (the story having been written in the twenties when the sanguinary turmoils of the Balkans were still fresh in peoples' minds). The rich collector from the US turns out to be an agent of the FBI. The agent of the French Sûreté turns out to be a celebrated thief. The governess at Chimneys turns out to be both his accomplice and the morganatic widow of a former occupant of said Balkan throne. A device which Agatha perhaps borrowed from the bard, from whom she is fond of quoting. Think, for example, of the by the pricking of my thumbs. A device enriched by the various clues to its presence scattered though the text which one does not notice on a first reading, but which one does, on a good day, pick up on a second.

In the adaptation most of these falsies are dropped, along with the Balkan scaffolding to the story, this last replaced by an adultery and an Austrian count with an unlikely past. The two Lords Caterham are conflated into one. The butler is transposed to a housekeeper. The diamond theft is retained. A whole new sub-plot involving an aristo-bashing, rather proletarian national trusty and a badly treated maid. Last but not least, Miss. Marple is intruded into the story, yet another tribute to the strength of her brand. Another being the price her DVDs still command at Amazon.

I will return with further gems of the French idiom from the translation of this story in due course.

PS: the orginal contains some mildly anti-semitic stuff about an important financier. Nothing much by the standards of the day when the original was written, but properly dropped from the adaptation. I associate to Aldous Huxley, no less, stooping to such stuff occasionally, from much the same era as Agatha. But, once again, I cannot put my finger on that bit of the blog.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/de-but-en-blanc.html.

Two experiments

Experiment 1

I think I picked up the picture left from a mid western facebook correspondent in the US. A neat idea, but, not having the post to hand and being something of a dummy when it comes to facebook, I have no idea how she and her class get to know how far the message has traveled. Do they have a fun period first thing every morning when they plot where it has got to with red pins in a socking great wall map of the world?

A search for 'michelle teacher scotland bx93' in google this morning reveals that as well as to me the message also got to Woorree in Western Australia, gmaps -28.769710, 114.658184, this last number being the biggest gmaps reference number that I recall copying.

Experiment 2

This one picked up from a EC initiative called CEED and is called Project Morpheus, a new toy from the Sony games people, London branch seemingly. Perhaps computer games is one of the few things we Brits are still good at.

The idea is that you wear a headset, a bit like a fully visored motorcycle helmet, and the visor provides an immersive (I think that is the technical term) visual experience. I assume it does sound as well. So we have moved from silent, black and white films, through sound, through colour, through IMAX and now to full on, with the cinema people completely taking over your sight and sound portals. And interactive too.

One result of which is that they can be a lot more scary. People are really shaken if they are a hedgehog being eaten by a badger, in a way that they are not if they see the same thing on a conventional screen. The games people are having to tone down the experience a bit in consequence.

I think another part of the contraption is sensors attached to various parts of your body so that the computer knows where your body is and can adjust what you see accordingly.

I now wonder how they manage the fact that you are in your sitting room, perhaps on your sofa, while your headset tells you you are in outer space. What do they do to your head when your avatar crashes its head into a wall? I think the Microsoft people are working on a version on the Sony toy in which they integrate the virtual world into the real world, with virtual people sitting, perhaps, on your real sofa - and no doubt you can get to choose the person and their state of dress. I also think a crash conference in Tooting is called for, there being people there who are well up on this sort of thing.

I then wonder whether this sort of thing is not dangerous. Is tinkering with people's consciousness, muddling up fact with fiction in this intimate way, going to cause some kind of brain damage? I have the same worry with all the visual illusions cognitive types play with.

PS: google does not seem to know anything about CEED with http://ceedinstitute.org/ not being the right thing at all. Whereas it does know all about CEEDs which is at http://ceeds-project.eu/. Too dumb to make proper allowance for the 's' - and does not know as much about my searching habits this morning as it sometimes seems to.

Balls it is

Following the race noticed at reference 1, the people who brought Jungle Island to Horton Lane have put on a new attraction, clocked on yesterday's Horton Clockwise. See illustration left and reference 2.

However, while we did follow up the pig racing with a personal visit and we did visit jungle island, we will probably not visit this enhanced driving range, having found on my last visit, perhaps 10 or more years ago now, that I had great trouble hitting the ball, with only about one in ten going anywhere much at all and one about one out of the fifty or so altogether going a respectable distance. I could not show the attraction proper respect.

And while we are on the subject of balls, I don't much care for Mr Balls either. Strikes against him as far as I am concerned include his complete absence of any humility about the financial meltdown during his last watch on HMS Treasury (a ship of state which one might think was in the business of trying to stop such things, with 18 inch turrets at the ready) and the fact that his wife is also in the shadow cabinet. Not sure which of these two items I find the more obnoxious, but certainly either he or his wife should step down. There should be an update of Cromwell's self denying ordinance - Cromwell being the chap whose statue stands in a prominent position outside our Houses of Parliament.

PS: perhaps SNP will refuse to work with renegades and insist on Mrs Balls' scalp after the election, her having been born north of the border. Problem solved.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a-missed-opportunity.html.

Reference 2: http://hortonparkgolf.com/.

For the record

Trainers getting rough again, just about six months after I bought them in September last year (see reference 1). On this occasion it was the netting on the top of the shoe which went first, the sort of netting which I remember, on another occasion, destroying with some cigar ash while sitting outside the Bedford in Balham one sunny summer's afternoon. Reference 2 would suggest that the place has moved on since I used to know it.

Ordered some more trainers from Cotswolds on Saturday afternoon. On Sunday afternoon I was advised,by both text and email, that they would be delivered between 1416 and 1516 on the Monday. We were impressed by the precision with which their computer computed the delivery time and in the event they turned up about 1430. Packaging unchanged from last time.

Impressed also that the price still holds at £80 and pleased to be able to get the same model and colour as last time. Some brands do keep their popular numbers going, whatever Houellebecq might have written on the subject in 'La carte et le territoire'.

The only change I have noticed is that on this occasion and on the last, the new trainers need breaking in when it had been an unusual but welcome feature that you could buy and go. Either my feet or their manufacturing standards are slipping. But I fully expect the new trainers to be fine in a few days, in less than a week.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/trainers.html.

Reference 2: http://www.thebedford.co.uk/.

Viva Epsom Autos!

While reversing out of our holiday cottage at Ashburton, the wind caught the gate and the gate caught the near side wing mirror, ripping it out of its home, leaving the mirror hanging down by its wires. Inspection revealed that two very small plastic lugs had been broken off. Thought revealed that this meant one had to replace the whole assembly, hundreds of pounds...

Off to the nearby buy-everything-shed (aka Tuckers Country Store at reference 1) to buy a roll of duct tape, with which we taped everything back together. With additional help from our handy picnic knife. Secure if a little unsightly. Get home in one piece.

The following Monday we pay a visit to Epsom Autos on West Hill, where the mechanic peers thoughtfully at the broken assembly. After a bit we say why not just bolt the thing back on again? Fine says the mechanic. While you wait or come back in a while? We come back in a while with the result illustrated, it very neat, hardly visible to the quick glance and us very happy not to have had to shell out megabucks to the local Ford dealer. Note the traces of the top class adhesion of Tuckers' duct tape.

The only catch being, as with tooth implants, that if we bash the thing again, it might take a chunk of door with it, rather than snapping off a couple of plastic lugs. I associate also to the bull dancers of Mary Renault who arrange for their leather belts to be held by a thread which will snap when the belt is caught by by the horn of the danced on (and possibly cross) bull. Better than being tossed in the air or worse.

Then this morning a quick reality check. It looks as if a new assembly would have cost of the order of £100 from a reputable outfit, probably rather more if you want one the right colour. Alternatively, they are to be had from ebay for much less - although one would need to take care to get exactly the right model, this last being the bit that proper spares outfits are good at. There is even a clip on YouTube which purports to show you how to fix the thing on. But all in all, I think Epsom Autos was the right solution for us.

Reference 1: http://edwintucker.co.uk/stores/ashburton/#.VTcv0yFViko.

Tree visits

We chose Hembury Woods for our last outing from Ashburton from our Landranger map, on which it was marked as a nearby chunk of National Trust woodland, with a car park, bordering yet another bit of the River Dart. Landranger maps being, to my mind, the best of their kind in the world. Just the thing for the discerning holiday maker. Better and much more easily obtained than their French or US equivalents (these being the parts of the world that I know about). My theory is that we are just the right sized country for this scale of public service map - an inch and a bit to the mile - to work. A point to bear in mind if the Scots decide to leg it. Will the independent Scots lose their loss making, peat bog covering Landrangers?

One attraction, although we did not know it at the time, was the fact (culled this morning from the National Trust web site) that 'perched at the top of Hembury Woods with far reaching views over Dartmoor, the iron-age Hembury Hill Fort gives you a real sense of what it would have been like to live in a protected palisade'.

Found the car park without too much trouble, it turning out to be a very low tech affair, not even sporting one of those stone pillars doubling as a money box for those people (unlike ourselves) who are not paid up trusties.

Headed north east, down through the woods to the Dart, running approximately southeast at this point. Head up the river, then head back up west to the hill fort. There are some large beech trees, but a lot of the woodland is quite young, and remnants of dry stone walls tell us that much of the land was pasture until fairly recently. There are also quite a lot of signs of chain saw activity, with the managers of these woods having the same bee in their bonnet about mixed environments as the managers of our Epsom woods. So many people who are not content to leave well alone. I associated to a recent Simon Jenkins piece in which he suggested that there ought to be room for a party manifesto which promised to do nothing. Just to let things alone and stop the avalanche of legislation and regulation, for a while at least. Make all MPs promise to shoot grouse all year, rather than busying themselves in public affairs. I suppose letting them get into a lather about foxes is a step in the right direction.

And thinking of our dire balance of payments, we were not best pleased to find that the National Trust buy their padlocks from Brazil, from the outfit who sail under the brand name 'Papaiz'. Can they not find some heritage padlock maker, perhaps a company which has been hammering out padlocks in the depths of the Forest of Dean since the time of Henry VIII?

And so to the hill fort, graced with the sign illustrated and the site chosen for our picnic. For once I went along with the chain saw action, the motte and a ring around it having been cleared, which gave one a much better sense of what it might have been like. It was also the highest point for miles around with splendid views more or less all around.

At reference 1, I had been thinking of the Romans pushing into the wilds of Scotland. On this occasion I thought of the Normans pushing into the wilds of Devon, with this fort being some 5 to 10 miles northwest of the rather more substantial and roughly contemporary castle at Totnes. With one thought being that 5 to 10 miles was quite a long way to march and a small garrison perched on this hill above the river would not survive an organised attack by the surrounding & disaffected Saxons - who would not take prisoners. Were these Saxons on the edge of the Saxon world rather weakened by an admixture of surviving Celts, Celts who were there first and did not much care for either Saxons or Normans? Were the Saxons weakened by the loss of many of their leading men at Hastings? Was this small number of heavily armed and well trained Normans more than a match for any number of rabbling Saxons? A bit like us, rather later, at Rorke's Drift.

Back home I turn up my copy of Chibnall (1986), where there are no words spent on this fort, but Totnes gets a few mentions. It seems that Totnes was there as much to protect against raids from Ireland (to where many Saxons repaired in a huff after Hastings. What trace did they leave on the gene pool there?) and Brittany, as to hold down the grumpy population of South Devon. I also read that a lot of the Norman soldiers would have been paid, and might have served a lord many years in the hope of a bit of a farm at some point, rather as Roman legionaries were settled on the land when they had done (and survived) their 25 years with the colours. Quite a stretch given the life expectancy in those times, but not unlike, perhaps, the forty years that civil servants used to have to put in before they got their gold watches & pensions. But pay which would have to be found from somewhere, and one where to find would be to conquer new lands and levy a geld, following the viking precedent. Which was fair enough, given that the Normans were not that far from being vikings themselves.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/britannia.html.

Tree buffs

Home to read in the April 16th edition of our free Guardian that I am not the only person in Epsom to fuss about the state & health of our trees.

Then from the Spring 2010 edition of Insight, a magazine published by our council, I learn that 'Mike is one the Borough’s volunteer Tree Wardens and Chairman of the Tree Advisory Board (TAB), an active volunteer group that works in partnership with the Council to help safeguard trees within the Borough'. See reference 1 for the horse's mouth.

Maybe I should get in touch with these people to find out whether they take as dim a view of the activities of the chain saw volunteers as I do . Maybe there is hope yet, a pressure group which is at least five years old and which might have some impact on our council when it comes to ponder about our trees.

Am I ready for a bout of volunteering? I shall cast my mind back to my days with volunteering on British Standards groups and weigh things up.

Reference 1: http://www.epsom-ewell.gov.uk/NR/rdonlyres/DEEADDEF-9478-4D83-A86B-3FF2665D66C0/0/InsightSpring10finala.pdf. Where on earth do they get these elaborate file names from? It doesn't really matter very much, but it would look a bit more professional (to me at least) if their IT people could come up with something a bit more compact.

Drogo 4

The substantive entry for our visit to Castle Drogo last week.

A mock castle built mainly out of granite blocks for a very successful grocer called Drew in the first decades of the last century. So successful that he was able to have his name incorporated in the name of the nearby village, Drewsteignton. Drew's town on the Teign, with his castle overlooking the Teign gorge. The castle is a rather conspicuous & ugly affair, which leaked more or less from the word go, and which the then owners managed to foist on the National Trust in the seventies. National Trust now locked into massive expense to keep the pile in the state intended by its architect, Edwin Lutyens. A state which includes covering the asphalt roof with stone blocks so that the castle would look more authentic from the air - but which makes it very difficult to mend the asphalt. Didn't anyone think to tell Lutyens that castles usually had pitched wooden roofs inside the crenellations?

To my mind all rather silly. It would have been more sensible to cut the whole thing down to a single storey pavilion which could have housed the more interesting contents, the visitor centre and the all important toilets and café. Much less of a blot on the landscape.

Silliness which is compounded for me by huge outlay on tapestry maintenance. I dare say the tapestry is old and important, but why? A tapestry is not like a painting, crucially dependent on the touch of the master himself and for what they have spent on patching up this bit of old junk (I use the word not altogether in jest), I dare say they could have had a first class modern replica, which would actually give you some idea of what tapestries looked liked in their prime, maybe even some idea of why people (such as Louis XIV) spent such huge amounts of money on them. For a similar case of silliness, see reference 1.

Further compounded by trying to liven up the stone rooms with contemporary art works, some of which seemed to be inspired by the detritus series from Dame Trace. See reference 4.

But I did learn a fun new phrase from another husband, 'dwell time'. I had been telling people how long they had spent in a room as they came out (making the times up, of course. For example, 1 minute 23 seconds), and this chap told me that the technical term for how long people spent in a room was dwell time. And that properties like this one would dearly like to have good estimates of dwell time so that they could better allocate their resources. A companion phrase to 'foot fall'. The only downer was that someone in the same party mistook me for a trusty and the best that I could think to say was that I was not old enough. Which was not even true, as one lady trusty had done 27 years in this one building and so must have been younger than I am now when she started. On this day she was rather cold and could have done with one of those Hampton Court Palace greatcoats. See reference 1 again for more information on this point.

Outside, the gardens were very fine. I note in particular the circular croquet lawn, encased in yew, the square formal garden and the various avenues. I dare say the roses in the square formal garden will look very well indeed in the summer. There were also some plants which looked like some sort of mutant bluebell, these being now under investigation.

Outside also we had a spanking new visitor centre, rather like that at Anglesey Abbey (see reference 2). The thing worked well enough but I was disappointed that heritage did not run to properly jointed rafters in the roof and we had to make do with ugly steel plates strapping the things together, for all the world like something you might buy from Persimmon. See illustration above and reference 3.

Maybe the National Trust has the excuse that it is a federal organisation and the HQ has little control over what the south western region might get up to. Maybe the National Trust should not merge with English Heritage (a merger which seems to be on the cards). Maybe we should take a leaf out of Hameron's book and insist on market forces coming into play, with National Trusts 1, 2 and 3 slugging it out.

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

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2013/10/two-birds-with-one-stone.html.

Reference 3: http://www.persimmonhomes.com/.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/03/detritus-3.html.

Drogo 3

Castle Drogo is presently encased in a giant, white plastic sheet covered scaffold. The sort of thing which would never have been allowed had it not had the heritage label hung around it. A giant blot on the landscape, visible for miles around. Probably visible from the moon, although not visible in google earth, who must have been round before these works got under way.

There was a catch though. The heritocrats ruled that the scaffold could not be tied to the building underneath as this might damage the heritage stonework, thus adding considerably to someone else's expense. This despite the fact that a lot of said stonework was being dismantled for repairs. The National Trust were lucky in that when the plastic sheet blew off in the winter it did not take much, if any, of the scaffold with it - although, even so, the bill for putting it back again was of the order of £50,000.

I was intrigued by the ties holding the scaffold down, three of which can be seen in the snap above. One can only suppose that the wire straps terminate in large concrete blocks which have been buried in the pavement so as not to be unsightly.

Drogo 2

Having pondered about vaulting in the course of the visit noticed at reference 1, we came across this rather different sort of vaulting at Castle Drogo, a work by Edwin Lutyens, the chap responsible, amongst other things, for chunks of New Delhi in India and the Cenotaph in Whitehall.

Telephone defeated once again, not really capturing either the strange texture of the stone (which rather reminded me of the rather cheaper breeze blocks (see reference 2) used in such structures as school halls and gymnasiums) or the strange quality of the light. I guess it was defeated by having the hanging lamp in an otherwise low light scene.

My guess would be that the sturdy looking stone ribs in the middle of the picture do not have anything much to do with holding up the vault above. I wonder even whether Lutyens, in this replica knights-in-armour sort of castle, sank so low as to use concrete for such purposes.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/exeter-cathedral-4.html.

Reference 2: http://www.ebay.co.uk/bhp/breeze-blocks.

Drogo 1

Following the not altogether satisfactory fifties joinery at reference 1, we came across this rather more sturdy example of twenties joinery at Castle Drogo. Probably drunk proof.

One of the features of the castle is a service staircase hidden inside the shaft of the main staircase, this last being a grand stone affair. I would not have thought that this was it, being a bit grand for mere servants, drunk or sober.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/fifties-joinery.html.

Sword of State

Following the dream reported in the post before last, I moved on to ponder the use of the sword of state in the coronation of our Queen. The thought being that it seemed slightly odd for a young queen to be given a large sword to hold in the middle of her coronation, flanked as she was by a bevy of demurely dressed, not to say virginal, maids of honour. A large sword, the proper function of which was sometimes to lop a head or a limb but more commonly to penetrate an abdomen where it might sever a major blood vessel causing more or less immediate death or so badly damage a vital organ that the owner expired shortly after. In sum a very large knife, the sort of thing so deplored on the streets of London.

Also odd that such an instrument should be lavishly decorated - although that aspect of things is carried forward onto the lavishly decorated guns favoured by some gun nuts.

But checking Roy Strong's work on the subject, I find I have not got things quite right. While kings such as William I and Richard I might well have been crowned while holding a large naked sword, this has not been the recent custom, properly reflecting the fact that modern kings and queens, unlike the two just mentioned, are not expected to fight with their troops. Their troops are not even expected to do much fighting. They no longer, when holding court, administer summary justice. And so, at the coronation of the present Queen, it looks as if a sword of state was carried, in its scabbard but point up, by one of her lords standing by, rather than by the Queen herself. It is suggested at reference 1 that this particular sword was made in 1678 and was used in coronations from, at the latest, that of George IV. While wikipedia talks of three swords of state. And Roy Strong talks of this sword symbolising the temporal power of the monarch.

So all in all, not so bad. An old ceremony, updated a bit to reflect modern circumstances. Just a bit of pomp and circumstance, not to be taken too seriously.

PS: while in the 'Game of Thrones', the good Lord Stark does his own dirty work, somewhere near the beginning of series one, while when his turn comes at the end of that series, the bad King Joffrey get an executioner to do the deed. No idea how carefully Martin checked his story against the record.

Reference 1: http://royalexhibitions.co.uk/crown-jewels-2/swords/sword-of-state/.

Gastronomic affairs

First in holiday has to be Ella, the young lady baker of West Street, first noticed last year, at reference 1. Good that she was still up and running - to the extent, she told me, of getting to the shop at 0300 on baking days to set the dough.

We bought white tin loaves, a wholmeal tin loaf and cakes. White tin loaf as good as we remembered. Wholemeal loaf must have involved some rye as its flavour was a mild version of pumpernickel. First cake was a sort of lemon tart, with the lemon bit being very good and something between the lemon of a lemon meringue pie and lemon curd. Second cake was a sort of plum tart with an almond topping, the overall effect being not unlike that at reference 2.

Second has to be the soft water. One gets good quality tea without having to fuss about rinsing out the kettle every time one uses it.

Third is the butcher. Didn't notice any pork pies on this occasion and I was not even completely convinced it was the same one as last time, being on the wrong side of the street as far as my memory was concerned. But he did do steak and kidney pies which were satisfactory if not great - it being tricky to reheat such a pie without drying it out. But his pork chops and beef mince were very good.

We also took some remaindered frying steak from the Spar, steak which we made into rather a fine stew.

Last item of note was the old-style but shrinking provision merchant in Duke Street, in Tavistock, rather than Ashburton. And google confirms this morning that what was Creber's (and what is still on streetview at approximately 50.551185, -4.143081) had indeed closed, to reopen in a different format under new management. We bought some cheddar cheese which included rind and looked OK, called 'Quickes Traditional Mature', but which I have not yet quite got the taste of. I dare say I will have before long. New management also included a patisserie across the street (they don't seem to do bakers or pubs in Tavistock (are the Dukes of Bedford, who own much of the town, teetotallers?), although there is a very good fish & chip ship in the same street) which sold us some nice looking chocolates. Nicely wrapped up for us too, with the shop assistant being very concerned that we should keep them out of the sun. A gift, so we will not know how they turned out for at least another year.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/04/ashburton-highlights.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/09/annes-tart.html.

It gets worse

Just woken up from a Norwich flavoured dream, although as with the night before, the association seems to bear but little on the remembered content.

I was on a shopping expedition, a few errands at least, in town centre. One of which involved checking the status of an order for some fish soup from the food department of the local department store. I try to find the food department to find myself among a bevy of young ladies modelling swim wear. There are also some animated wooden models of large animals, the sort of models made out of shapes cut out of plywood and slotted together (see reference 1 for small versions of the sort of thing I mean). Give up on the food department and exit to the street, worrying about the soup.

Find myself in the old town. All ups, downs, odd stream beds and old brick buildings. (Note that there are stream beds and old brick buildings in Ashburton, but there was no association to that town, despite our recent visit). Buy a second hand, hard back book for about a pound.

Discover that my wallet has almost fallen out of my pocket, the wrong one as it happens. Fish it out to find that it is an old wallet, chucked away long ago, now containing various bits of old rubbish, the sort of thing one finds in old tobacco tins at car boot sales. Discover my current wallet at the bottom of the right pocket, a bit battered and empty. No credit cards, no cash. Furthermore, I have forgotten to bring my telephone with me so I can't phone help for help, or even ask Cortana.

Find my way onto a bus and explain my predicament. The bus driver does not want to share his map (I am having trouble remembering where I live, having not been there very long) but he is willing to wait while I rummage through the large number of coins that have turned up to find enough English. He won't take all the euro stuff. Eventually a fellow passenger helps me out with a couple of pound coins which he claims, to help my feelings, to have found among my change. Bus sets off.

I still have very little idea where I want to be, beyond it being top right. Costessey top left and I want top right. Somewhere to the right of the newish estate, between Newmarket Road and the Eaton Golf Course, where I used to live (dream geography getting very mixed up here). In a house which I have visited in dreams before, although not recently. A modern, detached house, more or less the standard three bedroom sort but somewhat altered from new, sitting in the middle of its square garden, rather, that is, than near the front of the usual long garden.

Bus drops me off at a park, still very much in town. Hilly streets full of rushing water, far too much to attempt to walk in or cross. Emergency services rushing about. Lots of volunteers being helpful. Clip boards. I get a lady volunteer to show me her not very good map which stops short of where I think I want to be. Starting to get worried now about house, home & family, although I also vaguely remember that we chose a house on something of a hillock on something of a slope, with flood risk in mind. (I remember now that FIL was very flood conscious when he and his bought houses. Don't now know why).

Head off to the north east. Deserted streets. Lots of water. I head up a street with a large red/brown brick building without windows on my left. Perhaps a disused cinema. Blocked by water and I have to retrace my steps.

Wake up.

PS: I have just remembered once sitting in a pub somewhere in Norwich, on a hill. There was so much water in the drain under the road that it was pushing the round man hole cover, one of those heavy cast iron affairs, out of its seating, making a short fat fountain underneath. But what provoked such a watery dream on this occasion? There has been very little rain for the last week or so and certainly no rivers in flood.

Reference 1: https://www.ancientwisdom.biz/w3dpuzz.

An unusual dream

A dream in two parts.

The first part associated to TB, although nothing in the dream was much like either the place or its customers. It seems that I had suddenly decided, on the basis of inspecting a score, that I could play the piano and that I had offered to put on a show, in a large high room in a pub, complete with a stage. All rather shabby. Some of those iron pillars you get in big old London pubs. As the time approached, I thought I had better have a go on a piano, to find that I could not play a note. Manage to get my brother along to do the business for me.

He makes a manic start, arms and body flying about, on a rather shabby upright, tucked in beside the stage. Does a couple of pieces, then decides that he has had enough and I have to go on after all.

I have difficulty getting onto the stage, in part because I am worried about messing up my fancy clothes. But I end up clambering all over what seems more like the outside of a tumble down building than the stage of any pub that I know.

The audience, sitting in groups with their drinks, at tables scattered around in front of the stage, starts to get restive. Some rather rough looking women start to make unpleasant comments. I think it unlikely that I am going to get them back on board with the sort of show that I am likely to be able to manage.

Cut to the hinge between the two parts, with me trying to order drinks at a bar which towers high above me. But I think the bar had grown big, rather than me grown small. Barmen looking down at me from a great height.

The second part had me all worried about my sons wanting to start out as handymen, work of which they had no experience and for which they had no tools. Not clear why they wanted to strike out in this particular line of business - with handymen not even being very well regarded among craftsmen, barely counting as fellow craftsmen at all. I associate now to the time when I worked as one, with most of my fellows having been craftsmen, but who were by then more more or less retired. Or making excuses for being there. Perhaps filling in until something better turned up.

Should I let them have my tools, although I did not have two of anything much? Was it up to me to buy tools for them? Associating here now to a carpenter I once came across who was made very conspicuous by the newness of both his tools and his toolbox, an improper version of the sort of black wooden toolbox, about two feet long, one foot six high and six inches wide, carried by most building site carpenters at the time when I was trying it on. Was I responsible for the various messes they were likely to get themselves into?

Getting ever more worried, I think I woke up.

Twitches

Our week in Devon produced one life time first, in the form of a dipper on the River Tavy at Tavistock.

Following our sighting last year in Shanklin Gorge, there were a number of gray wagtails, one on the Tavy and several on the Dart. One of these last, at Hembury Woods, gave us a fine display of tail wagging. Another courtship ritual?

There were a number of chaffinches, mostly rather small. This year's crop? Males and females at Castle Drogo, males above the Dart at New Bridge (second visit) and at Holne (community tea room). One possible goldfinch above the Dart at New Bridge.

One something with the action of a swallow, but without the size or the tail and rather early. A martin perhaps?

Two fighting male pheasants on the road home from Pennywell Farm. So busy fighting that they did not look up, let alone move aside, for passing cars.

A modest number of buzzards and one kestrel.

Various tits, but nothing exotic which we would not see at home.

A reasonable haul.

PS: the Dart at Hembury also yielded a no fishing sign put up by some angling association. From which we deduce that there are fish in the Dart, even if we failed to see any.

Reference 1: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2014/07/twit-log.html.

Pennywell Farm

Following the missed opportunity noticed at reference 1 we decided that we should pay our own visit to Pennywell Farm, which turned out to be a fine place for a day out - with fine views over the Dart valley - with the catch being that, exposed to the wind as it is, it is probably a cold place in the winter.

Due to popular demand, the election race was being run on a daily basis, with this snap of the racers' reward taken just after the race. David Hameron won again, sufficiently convincingly that he saw no need to muck in the with other contenders. We did not manage to work out how the racers were incentivised. No hare to chase, as in greyhound races. A chap next to us thought that they went for their mothers, there being some larger pigs in a pen near the winning post, but I thought it more likely that they were going for the racers' reward.

Other sights included sheep, goats, pigs, horses, deer, alpacas, turkeys, ducks, chickens, hamsters and a hedgehog - with some feeding and handling options. Feeding the lambs was most entertaining and the chickens did occasional service as food litter pickers.

There was also a tortoise field and I was surprised how fast they could move when they put their minds to it, although it was not clear if they were really walking or skating along on their breast plates. Some of the smaller ones were into butting the largest one, butting taking the form of coming up from behind, withdrawing head and then ramming with the breast plate. Maybe some kind of courtship ritual, but there was no-one on hand to ask.

Staff otherwise helpful and enthusiastic. Plenty of things for children to climb on. Feeding arrangements for visitors satisfactory. And lots of hand washing opportunities - the place has clearly taken government guidance properly seriously. See references 2 and 3.

PS: one contender in the election race had been withdrawn with a pulled ham string.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/a-missed-opportunity.html.

Reference 2: https://www.gov.uk/government/news/illness-linked-to-petting-farms-phe-reminds-everyone-to-practise-good-hand-hygiene.

Reference 3: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10324545.

A fine show

A fine show snapped last night in the window of Yau's Chinese takeaway at the top of our road.

BH memory served well and she identified the flowers as clivias, otherwise known as kaffir lilys. A long time ago we were given one and it used to flower regularly - but I cannot now remember why it was retired.

More precisely, clivia miniata of the amaryllis family of the asparagus order. Yet another plant from South Africa (see reference 1 for another)!

First confused by this flower being a sort of asparagus, a confusion somewhat dissipated by the vague memory that it is normal to name a taxon by something called the type species within that taxon.

Second confused by kaffir lily also being the name of something called schizostylis coccinea or hesperantha coccinea, a rather different sort of asparagus, but also from South Africa. Perhaps the name is best avoided, as suggested by wikipedia, for being both offensive and confusing.

Reference 1: http://www.psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/04/botanical-walk.html.

A missed opportunity

Yesterday's Guardian carried a fine picture of a racing pig called David Hameron, racing with Ed Swiliband, Pork Clegg and Nigel Forage. We were mortified to learn that this important election event had happened just down the road at the Pennywell Farm at Buckfastleigh (see reference 1). We could, so easily, have been part of history in the making.

As it was, it was good to see provincials with a proper attitude towards politicians and their doings.

Oddly, I was unable to find the picture from the front page of the Guardian on their web site. In fact, I was unable to track the item down at all. Perhaps, bearing in mind the power of the MS snipping tool, they worry about copyright issues.

PS: I think the snipping tool has failed me just once in the half year or so since I discovered it. I think I wanted to capture something (a something innocuous enough, nothing to do with my banking affairs) on the HSBC web site and their IT people had been clever enough to block the snipping tool. It opened up OK and you could say new in the usual way but all you got was black.

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

Botanical walk

Earlier in the week to the beauty spot which is nearest our holiday cottage, New Bridge over the Dart. Approximately gmaps 50.523601, -3.819698.

Bad start in that having carefully packed the picnic bag we forgot to put it in the car, but luckily Molly Maid in the New Bridge car park was able to supply soup from sachets and hot dogs - our first junk food of the holiday. We were told afterwards that Mr. Molly Maid was a serious ice cream man, working this spot all through the year.

From the car park we walked south, upstream along the eastern bank of the river, getting slightly lost but making it to several signs advertising a second hand book shop (in aid of the Devon air ambulance) in the middle of the country. We thought that knocking them up Sunday lunchtime was not quite the thing, so we never got to see what their stock was like.

The only wild animal was a rat scurrying along the bottom of a stone wall, we saw no fishes despite there being plenty of bright, clear water to see them in and tweeted no birds, although there were clearly plenty about. In part because of all the young trees coming up in what had been, until not very long ago, riverside pasture. Riverside pasture which had provided food for us townies and work for the country folk, quite a lot of whom are now reduced to benefits, bottles or emigration. But there were plenty of spring flowers.

Lots of celandines looking well in the bright sun. Lots of primroses and sundry clumps of white wood anenomes, aka wind flowers. A few violets. A few unidentified white flowers growing in the tops of walls and such like places, illustrated. And on the way out a rather fetching pond covered in white flowers which we have now learned are aliens, aponogeton distachyos, also known as water hawthorn or water hyacinth. Perhaps their being aliens was why the Dartmoor trusty sitting in the car park knew nothing about them. Not the stuff of proper heritage at all.

Lots of moss, including lots on the trees, from which we deduced that it must be very wet for much of the time. And lots of ivy.

All in all, a fine place in the bright spring sunlight, what with steep valley, river, woods and everything springing into life.

PS: struck once again by how many of the striking plants that one comes across, particularly in gardens rather than in the wild, come from South Africa.