Martin Fone's Blog, page 120

Cruise Of The Week

Covering an area of at least 500,000 square miles and with vertices at Miami, San Jose in Puerto Rico, and Bermuda, the Bermuda Triangle continues to fascinate. At least 75 aeroplanes and hundreds of ships are reported to have mysteriously disappeared in the area leading to theories that there are undersea pyramids in the area, hexagonal clouds, and even alien bases.

If you have a yearning to see the area for yourselves – spoiler alert, it is just a patch of water in the western part of the North Atlantic Ocean – then Virginia-based Ancient Mysteries Cruise would be delighted to hear from you. They are advertising a cruise which will set sail in March 2023 from New York City on the Norwegian Prima liner towards Bermuda through the Triangle. They offer an experience of a lifetime, “a fascinating journey on a glass-bottom boat in the Bermuda Triangle”, yours for £1,450 per cabin.

Worried about disappearing? The company offer a money-back guarantee in the event you disappear into the wide blue beyond or are taken hostage by aliens.

Now, where do I sign up?

Fish Of The Week (3)

When is a bee a fish? When it comes to interpreting California’s 1970 Endangered Species Act, it would seem.

Four types of bumble bee in the state are on the endangered list but it took a decision of three judges at the Appeal Court in Sacramento to bring them within the ambit of the Act and to afford them the protection of the law. The problem arose from the law’s definition of a fish, initially defined as an invertebrate and then extended to “a wild fish, mollusc, crustacean, invertebrate, amphibian, or part, spawn, or ovum of any of those animals”.

Bees in general, and bumble bees in particular, are land-based invertebrates and while the man on the San Francisco trolleybus might well consider a creature that lives out of the water not to be a fish, the judges took an extremely liberal interpretation of the term. They held that for the purposes of the Act the definition of a fish included invertebrates, aquatic or terrestrial, a ruling that was good enough to secure victory for the conservationist.

At least there are some judges with a bit of backbone.

Thirty Of The Gang

A penny was a coin of relatively low value and, unsurprisingly, was used to describe something of little worth. Penny death traps were glass paraffin lamps which were made in Germany, which we have seen before, was far from the seal of quality that we associate with that country’s products these days. They were very fragile, easily upset, causing fires, which, in turn, caused many deaths.

One such accident occurred in October 1897, involving sixty-seven-year-old retired nurse, Catherine House in Marylebone. She was in bed, reading a newspaper with the aid of a “penny paraffin oil lamp perched on the edge of a bedside table”. She suffered an attack of severe pain which caused her to sit up suddenly, knocking over the table and setting herself and the bed on fire. The coroner, at her inquest, observed that “the lamp was merely a small glass bottle with a piece of tin at the top…he noticed that the lamp was marked “Mother’s Safety Lamp”. Well all he could say with regard to that was that it was the most dreadful thing to use”.

Accidents such as House’s led to a campaign to ban their importation, not before time.

A penny loaf was used by thieves to describe someone who would prefer to eat the cheapest of foods rather than lead a life of crime. A penny puzzle was a sausage because you never knew quite what was in it, while a penny pick was a cigar, as was a penny starver, which was the cheapest type of cigar, generally sold three for two pennies. In a similar vein, a penny toff was the lowest form of toff, often one associated of putting on airs above their station.

More Victorian slang anon.

G’Vine Nouaison Gin

One of the delights of the ginaissance is the realisation that there are gin distillers operating outside of the UK and that their products are as good as if not better than those produced here. I first came across G’Vine a few years ago when I bought a bottle of their Floraison gin, a little apprehensively, I must say, as the base spirit of their gins are made from grape spirit, which can leave a rather acerbic taste that botanicals, no matter how carefully selected, struggle to overcome.

Nouaison is its sister gin, and its name is the French term for the blossoming of the vine flower, the mature petals of which are one of the fourteen botanicals which make up this punchy, zesty gin. Coming from the Cognac region of France it is unsurprising that the grape is at the heart of the gin, the tradition of using grape-based spirits for juniper-flavoured spirits dating back in France to the 13th century. You never stop learning when you drink gin. The grapes used here are Ugni Blanc. Amongst the other botanicals used in the distillation process are sandalwood, bergamot, prune, java pepper, and the fragrant, perfumed roots of the vetiver.

In 2017 G’Vine took the bold step of revamping Nouaison, upping the botanical components from the original eleven and increasing the ABV from 43.9% to 45%. It seems to have paid off. While Floraison is a lighter, more floral affair, Nouaison is the bold, brassy, larger than life sister. There is no getting away from the grapes, the aroma is initially of grape, then citrus, before earthier, peppery tones make their selves known. It is quite a heavy come-on.

The bottle, too, is solid and uncompromising, a statement of bold intent. Squat, dumpy, made of dark glass, it has broad shoulders, a thick, small neck, and a dark cap with a synthetic stopper. The labelling is clear and understated, cream and gold lettering against the sort of grey background that you see used in restaurants with a touch of pretension. On the rear, the label tells me that their choice of base spirit and botanicals “delivers a smooth yet complex and intensely aromatic gin”.

In the mouth it is warm, a touch peppery complimenting the woodier tones of the juniper and then spicy with ginger and nutmeg to the fore. A long, woody aftertaste is a vivid and welcome reminder of the power and charm of this crystal-clear spirit. It is smooth, a little oily, and unexpectedly warming. It is strong enough to survive even the most inappropriate choice of tonic almost unscathed and works well as a component in a cocktail, the market to which their advertising campaign seems to be directing it.

It is a gin unapologetically designed to appeal to the traditionalist and there is nothing wrong with that.

Until the next time, cheers!

Knock, Murderer, Knock

A review of Knock, Murderer, Knock by Harriet Rutland

Harriet Rutland is another new author to me, the pen name of Olive Shimwell, whose three crime fiction novels have been rescued from obscurity by Dean Street Press. This is her first, originally published in 1938, and whilst not a classic, is enjoyable and raises some interesting aspects. Rutland has an engaging style and writes with humour and is particularly adept at satirising English snobbery and the garrulousness and petty vindictiveness of the old. The title comes from Shakespeare’s Scottish play, as the acting fraternity say, and heralds the denouement but the opening quotation from Pickwick Papers sets the scene for a story set in a Hydro in Devon, Presteignton, whose guests in the main are old, wealthy, ailing, with plenty of time on their hands, and waiting for the grim reaper.

The murderer’s choice of weapon is intriguing, a steel knitting needle thrust into the medulla through the gap between the top and bottom sections of the skull. The gap only reveals itself when the head is bent forward, and the method of despatch requires great precision and strength. However, it is perfectly in tune with the setting as most of the residents of the Hydro are old women. Just to ensure that the list of potential suspects is not limited to the females at the hotel, Rutland includes a Colonel who knits!

One of the hallmarks of Golden Age detective novels is that the victim or victims are generally obnoxious characters, over whom the writer spends little sympathy and whose demise generally leaves the reader unmoved. Here, though, Rutland goes somewhat against the grain and this is perhaps one of the reasons why I did not find the novel as satisfying as I had hoped. The first victim, Miss Blake, is standard murder victim fare, a beautiful young woman who stands out a mile in the Hydro, goes out of her way to upset the female guests and flutter her eyelashes at the men, wanders around in her swimming costume, cavorts with the young Sir Humphrey Chervil, and is generally up to no good. Sir Humphrey is the last to see her alive, is found with her jewels and is arrested by the local investigating policeman, Palk.

The other two victims are more troubling. The young girl who is having a fling with her father’s chauffeur and the third, a cheeky young boy, are really just fodder for the plot and Rutland is not really concerned about the consequences of their murders, such as the impact on their families, instead using them to hurry along the plot, which at this point was in danger of stalling. That they were murdered in exactly the same way as Miss Blake suggests that Palk had made a grave mistake in arresting Sir Humphrey.

There are lots of suspects, almost too many, and Rutland takes her time in introducing them to us and then allowing them to detail their thoughts and suspicions about Miss Blake’s murders as they are interviewed in turn by Palk. Although the suspects are many, including a female writer of detective fiction whose plot line presaged the unusual method the murderer used to kill their victim, the motivation for killing these three very different victims is suggestive of a very particular world view and makes identifying the culprit relatively easy.

Palk is making little headway in his investigations, when a new character, Mr Winkley, enters the story in the guise of an amateur sleuth. To Palk’s annoyance he stages a reconstruction of the first murder. Eventually, Winkley reveals that he is from Scotland Yard, there at the doctor’s behest and the three join forces to bring the culprit out into the open. Winkley reveals exactly who Sir Humphrey and Miss Blake were and what their game was at the Hydro and by further reconstructions, involving the Doctor visiting his secretary’s room late at night, thereby unlocking their feelings for each other, he brings the culprit out into the open to make their fatal knock on the door.

The book was good fun, but the pacing was patchy and the two extra murders and the entry of Winkley were necessary to stop the story grinding to a halt. I will definitely read her other two books.

The Franchise Affair

A review of The Franchise Affair by Josephine Tey

It has taken me a long time to discover Josephine Tey, but I am determined to make up for lost time. Originally published in 1948, and nominatively the third in her Inspector Grant series, although her policeman only makes a fleeting appearance and makes a pig’s ear of the case, this is a clever, sophisticated, psychological thriller, a tale of how a series of unsettling events can turn cosy, comfortable lives upside down. I devoured it.

Robert Blair, a bachelor, a lawyer, lives a comfortable life with its daily rhythms and rituals. It is a little too easy and comfortable and he is beginning to realise that he is beginning to get a little bored with it all. The shot out of the blue that disrupts his life is a request from Marion Sharpe for help. She lives with her mother in a rambling old house, The Franchise, and has been astounded when the police have turned up on their doorstep with a fifteen-year-old girl, Betty Kane, accusing them of kidnapping the girl, holding her captive and beating her. She managed to escape in just her underclothing, sporting bruises.

The girl has almost total recall of the driveway and the inside of the house, which is surrounded by high walls and a solid gate, leaving Grant with no option but to arrest them. They are sent for trial. The press has a field day in stoking up animosity against the Sharpes. Betty is a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-the-mouth sort of girl and her tale is shocking and scandalous, but would these two women, distinctly odd as they might be, really carry out such a crime.    

Tey’s strengths are her ability to develop tension – this is a taut, psychological thriller – and to paint her characters vividly and with conviction. Her depiction of the two women is masterful. One can understand and sympathise with the plight in which they find themselves with, seemingly, no way out, and yet their eccentricity is so vividly described that it is also easy to see why they are the subject to what is little more than a terror campaign from the locals. Their house is besieged, windows are broken, and eventually the house is set on fire. The only people to show them a modicum of sympathy are Blair and two garage hands.

For Blair the Franchise Affair is a voyage of awakening. Initially, he is reluctant to help as the Sharpe’s case is not his firm’s normal cup of tea, but restless and bored with his existence he is drawn into what becomes an exciting and satisfying case, taking him well out of his comfort zone and giving him a reason to live. The fact that he falls for Marion obviously helps, but he is quick to try and prove the women’s innocence.

It seems a fruitless case, with all lines of enquiry drawing a blank. Just before the trial, though, there is a chink of hope as Marion spots something in Kane’s statement that cannot be true. Further analysis of Kane’s statement supporting her accusations show that her vivid power of recall is rather akin to that of a fortune teller, weaving obvious deductions into a convincing tale. A double decker bus and the emergence of a stranger from Denmark lead to the discovery of a travelling salesman and a whole different side to Kane emerges.

Tey keeps the tension going until the end and while the motivation behind the vendetta of the girl against the Sharpes, other than to get her out of a hole, is woolly, the tale shows how appearance and front, aided by a media campaign, can subvert popular opinion, a lesson that is as, if not more, relevant today. Even once the trial is over, Tey has not done with her reader, leaving another, perhaps even more dramatic, twist to the story right to the end.

A fantastic book.

Is The Tomato Poisonous?

The first British reference to a tomato appeared in Henry Lyte’s A nieuwe Herball (1578), a direct translation of a Dutch work, and it is unlikely that he actually grew one. John Gerard certainly did, planting seeds from Spain, Italy, and “other hot countries” in his garden in Holborn, he reported in his Herball (1597). Two varieties, one red and the other yellow, of what he called Pomum Aureum and Poma Amoris, golden apples and love apples, are documented as growing in his garden in 1599.

Intriguingly, according to Elisabeth Whittle in Australian Garden History, (October 2016), Gerard may have been pipped to the post as Britain’s first tomato grower by Sir Edward Stradling, whose plants were raised in the grounds of his home, St Donat’s Castle in the Vale of Glamorgan. So unusual and famous were Sir Edward’s tomatoes that they were immortalised in a poem written by Dr Thomas Leyshon, who listed among the castle’s delights “golden apples” which “grow in the garden”. Leyshon’s poem, written before 1590, suggests that Sir Edward was growing tomatoes at least in the 1580s, probably well before Gerard.

Gerard, though, was much more influential in the botanical world and although he described the tomato in his Herball as having a “bright shining redde colour” and that they were eaten in Spain and other hot countries with salt, pepper, and oil, he was scathing as to their nutritional merits. They “yeelde very little nourishment to the bodie”. Indeed, he considered that “the whole plant” was “of ranke and stinking savour”.

Gerard’s damning indictment coupled with its association with the mandrake, itself a poisonous plant, was enough to establish the canard that the tomato too was toxic. Tomatoes as a food may have been good enough for foreigners, who, according to John Parkinson, the royal botanist in Charles I’s court, ate them to “coole and quench the heate and thirst of the hot stomaches”, but for the British they were just exotic plants grown purely for ornamental purposes, an attitude that persisted well until the 19th century.

In the intervening period tomatoes were known as “poison apples”. Their leaves do contain toxic alkaloids, including tomatine and solanine, but not in sufficient quantities to be deadly. An adult would have to eat about a pound of tomato leaves to become nauseous and their pungent smell would probably discourage all but the foolhardiest from gorging on them.

What tomatoes were served on posed a greater danger. The wealthy and aristocrats of Europe used pewter plates, which were high in lead content. The tomato is so high in acidity that it would leach lead from the plate, and many a diner would suffer from lead poisoning as a result, sometimes with fatal consequences. These poisonings further damaged the tomatoes reputation, no one thinking to make the connection between plate and poison.

It took some extraordinary steps by enthusiasts to rehabilitate the tomato’s reputation. In 1820 in Salem, New Jersey Robert Gibbon Johnson drew a crowd of curious onlookers by proclaiming that he was going to eat a tomato before their very eyes. Those expecting to him collapse frothing at the mouth were disappointed. He ate the tomato with no ill effects. Slowly, public confidence in the safety of the tomato grew.

New forms of storage such as the tin can, the emergence of a railway system, and the development of plate glass enabling large-scale commercial growers to operate all helped the tomatoes to establish a foothold in the British diet. By the 1880s such was the demand for tomatoes, which were commanding very lucrative prices at Covent Garden, that many commercial growers set up operations in Worthing. “Sunny Worthing’s” climate proved ideal for growing what became its most famous export, the tomato, and the independent nurseries employed thousands. By 1899 Worthing was known as a “town of hot-houses”, but sixty years later most of the nurseries had closed. British growers still produce about 20% of the tomatoes that we consume.

Thanks in no small part to John Gerard, what is a firm fixture in the British diet had a long battle to gain acceptance. Just do not serve them on pewter plates!

Bottle Of The Week (2)

With Father’s Day just around the corner, an American import inspired indirectly by that country’s largest mining disaster, thoughts turn to a suitable gift for the paterfamilias. If he is a whisky drinker, you have just missed the opportunity to make a big splash.

Edinburgh-based auctioneers, Lyon & Turnbull, have just sold an 86-gallon bottle of 32-year-old Macallan single malt in an on-line auction for $1.4 million. The six-foot tall bottle, twice the width of an average man, holds the equivalent of 444 standard bottles, known as “The Intrepid”, has been certified by Guinness World Records as the largest whisky bottle in the world.

The biggest it may be, but it is not the most expensive bottle of whisky. That honour goes to a bottle distilled at Macallan in 1926 which fetched $1.9 million in 2019.

After splashing that amount on a whisky, perhaps he should add some Birkentree Birch Water, a new mixer designed to provide a smooth and refined texture to a single malt. For more details, follow the link below:

Landing Page

How the anonymous foreign buyer is going to pour a dram from his bottle is anyone’s guess. Still, if he spills a drop or two, there is more from where it came.

Names Of The Week (13)

For the pizza lover, the Welsh Italian Pizza Company seems to be just the ticket, offering authentic hand-made Neapolitan pizzas from their wood-fired pizza oven. Based in South Wales and providing a mobile catering service, “each of their pizza bases has been lovingly knocked back and kneaded by their own fair hands, using “00” flour to give a deliciously light and crispy bite”, their website bubbles. They even blend their own tomato sauce to ensure it is packed with flavour and full of fresh basil.

Sounds delicious but byte-sized trouble came when they exhibited at the BIG ICC Wales Wedding Fair. The company had the usual stand from which they exhibited their wares and a canopy on which their website address was adorned. Nothing unusual in that, you might say, but the trouble with website addresses is that they are a continuous string of letters with no word breaks. Bearing that in mind, an injudicious choice of web address can lead to misinterpretation.

Some attendees thought that www.welshitalianpizza.co.uk gave the impression that their pizzas were, well, shit, an impression not dispelled by their Twitter handle – @WelshItPizza.

The furore their name generated was probably not what they were looking for, but there is no such thing as bad publicity and, I am assured, their pizzas are topping.   

Twenty-Nine Of The Gang

Not the cheese, according to James Ware in his Passing English of a Victorian Era, meant not satisfactory. According to Dr Brewer, it came from the Persian and Hindu word for a thing cheez, but others thought it was a corruption of the French phrase, ce n’est pas la chose. The Irish preferred not up to rap, the rap and abbreviation of rapparee, good for nothing, the name given to worthless base metal coins that circulated in Ireland in the early to mid-18th century.

Not today, baker was said to a youth paying unwanted attention to a young lady, although originally it was said by housewives to bakers making their morning call when their wares were not required.

I have used oh my eye on occasions as a form of exclamation, but I had not realised that it was a corruption of the opening words of the prayer to St Martin, the patron saint of beggars, a mihi.

Another historical character whose name was adopted into slang was Ignatius Pollaky, a consulting detective in the mode of Conan Doyle’s Sherlock Holmes, based in Paddington Green, who spent decades, until he retired in 1880 at the height of his fame, unravelling swindles and tracking down foreign fugitives. His fame was such, partly fuelled by the enigmatic advertisements he had printed in the newspapers, that his name became a household word, often appearing in newspapers and in popular song and stories. Oh, Pollaky became a form of protest against overbearing and urgent enquiries.

The English have a reputation for being resistant to foreign languages or for mangling foreign phrases. Here are another couple of examples of this trait. Olive oil was a Music Hall variant of the French phrase au revoir and on for a tatur meant fascinated, entranced, used of a man at a bar making eyes at the barmaid, said to be a variant of tête à tête. Some things never change.