Liverpool pathway

The DT is crowing about having put a spoke in the wheels of the people who are promoting the use of the Liverpool Pathway. Which annoys firstly because it is scarcely something to be crowing about (to take a leaf out of their own book) and secondly because they do not seem to be able to see that the overall effect of their interventions in the matter is likely to be more miserable deaths than there might otherwise have been.

On the same subject the Guardian was going pompous about how the business of dying must never be reduced to a tick box exercise. They don't seem to understand that tick boxes are the best way known to man (or for that matter woman) of reducing things which are difficult to processes which can be managed and which can deliver reasonable results, at least more often than not. Tick boxes rule the developed world, not least in the private sector, so well known for being so good at everything.

All along much the same lines as people who get pompous about how something or other which is very important has been reduced to a matter of money. That we have given something which ought to be kind & cuddly over to the accountants & bean counters. People who don't seem to understand that very few important public decisions are public money neutral, public money which does not grow on trees and is unlikely so to do any time soon.

It's that hardy again

Still at it despite the post of 5th July, having taken a copy of 'Two on a Tower' out of the library, completely overlooking the fact that I already had a copy on the Kindle, which perhaps confirms that I am not a proper convert to the Kindle world. Perhaps a little too old for such a big change, a thought which leads to my wondering how many older converts the Christians got during the mega growth period of the second and third centuries. Or was it all younger misfits of one sort or another?

In any event, this is a nicely produced Penguin Classic in traditional black clothes and complete with map, chronology, introduction, notes and glossary, a glossary which, inter alia, tells me what probate is. All in all, it would be an excellent edition to use for a school set book and, jumping ahead, I think the novel would be quite good for that purpose too.

A novel from roughly the middle of Hardy's novel writing career. A marriage between persons of different classes & stations. A marriage between persons of different ages. A big part for a young man of mixed birth trying to better himself. A walk on part for a young lady trying to do the same. Plenty of comic yokels to provide relief, not altogether light relief, in much the same way as Shakespeare's yokels do. Plenty of melodramatic ups and downs - a word which my Kindle tells me is derived from France where it meant musical drama, from the Greek melos, meaning music or some such. The last such up and down being the appearance of what appears to be a love child of the almost second husband, passed off on the actual second husband (deceased). Plenty of gentle humour about all kinds of odds and ends.

But some new things, for example the interest in matters astronomical. One get the feeling that Hardy did his homework here. A very phallic tower. Also the first mention in a novel that I have come across which discusses the way in which people of a scientific bent are often not too clever at some aspects of interpersonal relations.

According to the late preface included at the end of the book, Hardy got a lot of stick for getting a bishop mixed up in all this. Lack of reverence for the cloth. Which goes to show how much things have gone on since then, with a former (French if you please) oil man with a paltry 20 years ordination under his belt as Arch Bish..

As noted above, maybe good for a set book. Lots of accessible issues which are still issues today, issues which one might reasonably discuss in a class. I must try and find a teacher of English who might know about such things: is my take on what might be suitable meat for a bunch of adolescents the right take?

Designers

For some time now I have been irritated by the handles which stick out of the side of the steering columns of cars. Handles which are intended to control all kinds of functions and which I can very rarely instruct to do what I want with the windscreen wipers. I always seen to end up with the back windscreen being sprayed with soapy water. A problem which arises from trying to compress too much function into the wrong sort of control device.

I find the same sort of problem with other peoples' bath taps. At one time a bath had two large taps and a plug. When you wanted water in the bath you turned one or both of the taps and when you had finished you pulled out the plug. So far so good. Then the first well intentioned change was to have taps with the sort of handles that you find in hospitals, things that a surgeon can turn on and off with his elbows while scrubbing up, with the point here being that you can turn them on and off with you feet without needing to heave yourself up into within reach. Maybe they did not catch on because a tap which can be turned on or off by a 90 degree turn requires a much fancier washer than one which requires a 720 degree turn or more. But this was not the end of the world. Much more serious was the second change which modified the central control unit of the bath tap assembly to control the shower, the bath, the water temperature, the water pressure & style and the plug hole, a change which can often result in one getting a cold shower when the plan was to have a hot bath. And then you can't get the water out of the bath once you have extricated yourself. Once again, too much function in the wrong sort of control device.

And now I have stumbled across other peoples' front door locks. This particular one having a handle and a key hole on one side and a handle and a knob on the other. The lock assembly is controlled by cunning manipulation of all three and among the functions offered is dead lock which should mean that from the outside you can effect entry neither by unlocking the door nor by means of a piece of flexible plastic; the sort of thing you want when retiring inside for the night. I have retired from this particular fray, leaving the manipulations to BH. Quite enough manipulation for one family.

Another offender is the little box with buttons on it which control the central heating.

Which leads to the question, who designs these dreadful contraptions? Are they the work of otherwise respectable engineers whose love of ingenuity outstrips their common sense? Are they the work of graduates of the University of Creation (Epsom campus) (http://www.ucreative.ac.uk/) who know nothing about anything except the vagaries of fashion?

Which reminds me of a related beef about the design of kitchen implements, for example potato peelers and tin openers. Once again, the design has lost touch with the function and me, the customer, is left with a contraption which is either impossible to use, impossible to clean or both. Perhaps there is a hierarchy. The three star graduates of creation get to design the ridiculous clothes which appear in fashion shows. The two star graduates get to design kitchen implements. Any other kind of graduates and the failures get to stack shelves or flip burgers.

Post

Foreshore fishermen often have winches at the top of the foreshore to haul their boats up the shingle and there were some rusting specimens of same at Budleigh. But there were also some more rustic versions, things you could probably knock up yourself, without having to give up hard earned cash to the blacksmith or the nautical ironmonger.

A capstan rather than a winch, with the hauling rope winding around the central pole. Slots in the central pole to take miniature capstan bars. Not sure why the pole is as tall as it is, as the winding seemed to take place down below. So that one could rig retaining guys from the top on days when the haul was particularly hard?

PS: I learn from the book from Topsham (vide infra) that the word miniature is derived from minium, the late Latin for the red lead paint used to colour initial letters in the books which eventually evolved into illuminated books with miniatures in the initial letters. Medieval coffee table books as it were, rather than practical prayer books and with that commissioned by the Duc de Berry being the starting point for the book from Topsham. A derivation which is more or less confirmed by OED, via the word 'rubricate', to make red. There is also an elaborate & informative discussion of the whole business at http://metmuseum.org/.

Fine dining in East Devon

Started out at the chipper in Budleigh Salterton. A busy place with the cod & chips very fresh and nicely presented. Benches available nearby with a fine, summer evening's view of Lyme Bay. Only marred by the cod being a bit damp and mushy to my taste: I like it a bit drier and firmer.

Second stop the Fox Tor Café in Princetown, a place we visit from time to time. Biker and hiker ambience, complete with bunks out the back and also complete with washing machine instructions which had been washed, a process which had made a right mess of the inside of the machine. About on a par with my having once cooked a whole of lot expensive woollen sweaters by turning the washing machine on when they were still wrapped around the drum for the purposes of removal. Service friendly. Rock cakes good if not of the freshest. My pasty a bit dry and overcooked - perhaps reflecting the surprisingly veggie. orientation of the menu; one might have thought that the exercise people would be more into meat.

Then to the Salutation Inn, having returned to Topsham to inspect the 'Invincible' (not much progress visible to my untutored eye, beyond a drape advertising the Otter Brewery) and the second hand bookshop (still there and I was able to make an interesting purchase, of which more in due course. Management desk equipped with the largest Apple screen I have ever seen in such a place). The Salutation Inn really is a fine dining place and were able to offer us the finest egg sandwiches we had ever seen. Light on the crisps which was good, and a touch heavy on the mayo. which was not so good. But overall effect very good and the staff quite happy to serve a sandwich rather than lunch. Perhaps they have learnt the hard way not to be sniffy about any kind of revenue. See http://www.salutationtopsham.co.uk/. Maybe we will get to stay or to fine dine one day.

Lastly to the rather different Salterton Arms back at Budleigh, a pub which serves food, mainly in a pleasant upstairs dining room, while managing to retain a proper pub atmosphere around the bar downstairs, complete with decorative bar maid and with most of the drinkers sounding as if they lived there, that is to say in Budleigh, rather than being holiday makers such as ourselves. Warm beer looked OK even though we were on the wine. It was also OK for us to take the remains of our wine away with us - a necessary proceeding in these days of drinking lite. A rather odd soup - described as leek and potato and which I like when it is made by BH, but tasting here rather of tin - followed by a rather good lasagne - described as beef, belly pork and bacon. Not altogether clear where or how the thing had been made but it was served in little white boats so I suspect the pub keeper's wife of knocking out batches of boats for the freezer. Not the sort of thing you can cook to order, nor, to my eye, the sort of thing you could buy in, ready boated.

In the round, a very satisfactory establishment, with the only pity being my present inability to make proper use of it. Doesn't appear to run to a web site; clearly too busy with the lasagne for that sort of thing.

Matters hardy

A recapitulation of my recent wanderings in the Hardy world, quite a lot of which have already appeared here and which can be found by searching for the hardy word.

It all started some months ago with DVDs of  ‘Wessex Tales’ and ‘Jude the Obscure’, BBC adaptations both.

Moved onto a collected edition on the Kindle from Amazon for £1.99 or some such and read ‘Wessex Tales’ and ‘Jude the Obscure’. The first for the first time. I rather liked them.

Onto a biography from the library by Claire Tomalin. Interesting, but irritated on the first reading by the sense that Tomalin liked neither Hardy nor his wives, irritation from thinking that one ought to like someone that one is going to spend serious time with. A sense which faded on a second reading.

Hardy an interesting chap. Physically small and initially thought weak – though strong enough to walk or cycle long distances well into old age – and from a modest background – a similar standing in social terms to that of my father, also a child of someone in business in a modest way in a country village – who married (rather late at thirty or so) someone of rather higher standing – something which clearly mattered in those days – and who became very famous. Writers, I think, being more famous in those days of circulating libraries and no television than would be likely now, the large flash in the pan of Harry Potter aside. Then, like many before him, marrying his young secretary as an old widower. Rather keen on gentry in his old age, having been excluded in his young age, and contemporaries noticed his enthusiasm for taking tea with them.

At this point someone pointed out that Hardy was rather obsessed with hangings. An observation which did indeed seem to be true. There was some of it in his life and a lot of it in his novels. Given which, perhaps not so inappropriate after all that at death his heart was cut out of his body by his GP for burial in his birth village, while his ashes went onto burial at Westminster Abbey (not enough room for a body), otherwise an extraordinary proceeding, less than a hundred years ago. He also had the rather morbid, if striking, thought that it was just as well one did not know the day of the week on which one was to die, as otherwise that day would be rather marked for ever more.

Then pulled the article about his reputed syphillis down from the TLS archive, in which the retired Doctor Frizzell made what I thought was a convincing case for Hardy having contracted a benign form of the disease as a young man, something which was common at the time, to have passed on a malignant version to his wife, who learned the truth somewhere along the way and eventually died of it. Thus accounting for her removal to the attic and for the outpouring of poems about her after her death, rather to the dismay of  his second wife. A theory not mentioned by Tomalin and which appears to have been put aside by others: is this because it is not believed or because people want neither to know nor to believe?

Went to see his house in Tooting (illustrated). A substantial town house with blue plaque in what is now a rather mixed area, on a road running between Tooting Bec tube station and Wandsworth Common. A road which included a church which, rather surprisingly, was open and included decent public toilets. Very public spirited of them. I learn also that Lloyd George used to have a house in the area.

Went to see his house in Dorchester. An odd looking place outside and very ordinary inside. Very struck by the smallness of the attic to which his first wife more or less confined herself for the last ten years or so. Interesting to be able to see a copy of the sort of magazine which published his novels in serial form, with the one that I picked up having a couple of chapters of ‘The Mayor of Casterbridge’ printed very small and with a half page illustration, occupying maybe a couple of pages in all, in amongst all the other stuff. Was able to get a Wentworth jigsaw (see 17th June) of the place as a souvenir. Why had Wentworth seen fit to do such a thing? Was one of the directors a fan?

Which leads onto the thought that Hardy attracts the same sort of attention as Jane Austen or Conan Doyle. With people, like us, making the pilgrimage to his house. Perhaps dressing up in the costumes of his day. Having readings in upstairs rooms in public houses. In a way that D. H. Lawrence and Conrad do not. Is part of the answer the fact that we know so much about Hardy’s tangled if respectable life? We can really get into it.

Interesting also that I have started to take an interest in authors, perhaps more interest in the authors than in their books. Something I used to be rather sniffy about in the past when I used to think that the books were the thing and one had no business poking around in the lives of their writers.

Happening to be in Cambridge while all this was going on, took the opportunity to wander around the colleges and to actually go into St. John’s, which was open for a fee. And as a failed scholarship boy, albeit a long time ago, I still felt something of the exclusion which Hardy and his creation Jude felt in vaguely similar situations. Which leads me to wonder as I type whether my own father had feelings of the same sort, having had to settle for a Cambridge dentist, despite his academic & intellectual leanings. Something I had never thought of before.

Also took in the original of the portrait of Hardy reproduced in the Tomalin book which hangs in the Fitzwilliam.

And now, having finished the second pass of Tomalin, I am winding up the whole business with a further, rather desultory reading of Jude. And a rather quicker, at least so far, reading of ‘Cakes and Ale’, thought by some to be a rather cruel take on Hardy. It is certainly a take on his kind. For once, a book bought for the Kindle, in the interests of speed. A few seconds and one has the thing, rather than waiting the 48 hours or so it might take in the post.

Maybe I will give his poetry a go, said by some authorities, including the author, to be more important than his novels. With poetry being something which I rarely have a go at.

Qat

I had thought that the tide was at last flowing in favour of decriminalising recreational drugs, with the great and the good regularly popping up in the media to explain why management rather than incarceration was the answer, so I was rather depressed to read over the morning half-rye that we are to add qat, a mild narcotic, to the list of things which are illegal.

I suppose the driver is that most of the other prots. in the world have made it illegal and we do not want to become the hub for a multi-billion pound traffic in leaves which might be mistaken for spinach and which might attract shady - if not worse - types from the former Soviet Union. Which is understandable, but I am sure we could come up with a better answer than a criminal sanction on personal consumption.

Sadly, the stuff does not keep so there is not much point in rushing out and buying up a supply. But then again, maybe it freezes OK. I shall check with the booklet that came with our freezer.