Martin Fone's Blog, page 125

Sweet Of The Week (2)

What do the tomato, Jaffa cakes, and flapjacks have in common? They have all had their status for tax purposes decided by the courts.

A tax tribunal recently decided that the 36 varieties of flapjacks produced by Glanbia Milk would not be eaten for afternoon tea, were designed to be consumed on the go, were not baked, contained significant amounts of protein, were not aerated, and had a dense, chewy consistency akin to a fruit or energy bar. Compared to a “standard” flapjack, Judges Christopher Staker and Caroline Small opined, Glanbia’s version had fewer calories, about ten times less sugar, and very low levels of fat and the man on the Clapham omnibus, or their modern equivalent, perhaps a youth on an e-scooter, would immediately recognise them as a bar.

The implications for Glanbia are profound. Had the Tax tribunal found in their favour and ruled that their flapjacks were cakes, they would have been VAT-exempt. Instead, as sweets they would be subject to VAT at the going rate.

Curiously, though, flapjacks appear in the HM Revenue and Custom’s own guidance as a zero-rated food alongside bread, cakes, and marshmallow teacakes. Glanbia’s mistake, it seems, in developing their modern take on the flapjack was to move too far from the platonic ideal of a cake which involves the mixing together and baking of flour, eggs, sugar, and butter. To add further confusion, in America flapjacks are pancakes, a different kettle of fish entirely.

It all makes work for the lawyers.

Twenty-Three Of The Gang

Got a clock was a piece of slang describing the act of carrying a handbag. It owed its origin to a terrorist incident, ascribed to the Fenians, according to James Ware in his Passing English of a Victorian Era. London’s first serious explosion by dynamite, he notes, occurred at Victoria terminus on February 26, 1884, caused by a device in a bag which was denoted when the hammer of an American clock struck the trigger of a pistol whose charge fired the explosion. No one was injured but it forced its way into the vocabulary of the time.

We are familiar with the term Grandfather clock, a high eight-day clock. It gained its attractive name in 1868 from an American song, popular at the time, My Grandfather’s Clock.

Half-a-foot o’ port described a glass of that beverage, served at Short’s, just opposite Somerset House, in a distinctive glass, the size and shape of a champagne flute. Alternatively, you could try half-go, three pennyworth of spirits, for mixing with hot or cold water. Either way, too much could make you half-a-brewer, drunk, or at best, half-rats, partially intoxicated.  

Perhaps, though, it would be preferable to placing half-a-yennork, a half-crown, on half a ton of bones done up in horsehair, a sporting term for a thin, ill-conditioned young horse, perhaps the nag of choice for a half-hour gentleman, someone whose breeding was only superficial, similar to a halfpenny-howling-swell, a pretender.

More colourful phrases next time.

Death In A White Tie

A review of Death in a White Tie by Ngaio Marsh

It is over a year since I read Ngaio Marsh’s Artists in Crime. Although I enjoyed that book, I had found some of her earlier novels a bit of a struggle. Absence may make the heart go stronger as I thoroughly enjoyed her seventh book in her Inspector Alleyn series, originally published in 1938, set in the world of London’s high society and the world of debutantes.

Quite often in so-called Golden Age detective fiction, the victim of the murder is so unpleasant a character that no one sheds a tear at their demise, reckoning instead that they got their just desserts. Here, though, Marsh’s victim, Lord Robert Gospell, Bunchy to his friends, was a thoroughly good egg, tremendous company, garrulous, witty, sympathetic, alive to the nerves of the girls being introduced to society. His death, knocked on the head with a cigarette case and then suffocated in the back of a taxi, is felt by his close circle of friends, especially Inspector Alleyn who vows to work tirelessly to bring his killer to justice, as, of course, he does.

There is something de nos jours about the high and the mighty being interviewed about a crime and their whereabouts by the police, even if the officer is one of their peers. They may live in a gilded cage, their every want met by a hidden army of servants – only the butlers are worthy of a mention – but they are subject to the constraints and rigours of the law, just like the reader.    

Bunchy’s death occurs as the final guests are leaving the eagerly anticipated ball given by Sir Herbert and Lady Evelyn Carrados, for Evelyn’s daughter, Bridget. Even Alleyn’s mother, Lady Alleyn, is going as she is tasked with bringing out her niece, Sarah. Bunchy, though, is on a special mission. There is a blackmailer operating, targeting society ladies and their victims include Evelyn Carrados and the marvellously named Mrs Halcut-Hackett and Alleyn has asked his friend to keep his eyes open. He does his job too well, sees a bag of money change hands, and while he is ringing up Alleyn at the yard with the information he has obtained, he is interrupted, the call is curtailed, and shortly afterwards Bunchy’s body is found at the Yard, dead in the back of a cab.

In truth, it is not difficult to work out who the pantomime villain is, but the murderer and the motivation is trickier. There are intriguing subplots, the relationship between Bridget and Bunchy’s wayward nephew, a gambling den in Leatherhead of all places, the curious behaviour of the husbands of the blackmailed women, the art enthusiast who is also a doctor, the enigmatic secretary to Evelyn, Miss Harris, who clearly knows more than she lets on, and not least, the continuing relationship between Alleyn and the artist, Agatha Troy, which could have been derailed by the unpleasantness at her home in the previous book, but is going from strength to strength.  

Marsh is in her element, writing in a vivid and engaging style, not without humour, and taking the time to set the scene and paint her characters. Much of the book is episodic, full of little scenes as if it was a play – an effect enhanced by the lengthy dramatis personae at the front of the book – testament to Marsh’s theatrical background.

Alleyn solves the case in 48-hours and brings all the suspects and protagonists to the Yard for a meeting in which he drip feeds the solution, adding to the drama by bringing in person after person as he reveals to Evelyn and Sir Herbert Carrados the identity of the blackmailer and Bunchy’s murderer.

It is a great read and has reignited by enthusiasm to follow Alleyn’s exploits further. I can see why it is considered to be one of Marsh’s better books and, if you just want to sample one of her books, this may just be it.

The Horn

A review of The Horn by Brian Flynn

Expect the unexpected. If there are writers of so-called Golden Age detective fiction that this warning can be fairly applied to, then Gladys Mitchell and Brian Flynn fit the bill. The Horn, the fifteenth in Flynn’s Anthony Bathurst series, originally published in 1934 and now reissued by Dean Street Press, is a case in point. It starts out as a fairly conventional novel but, somewhat bizarrely, plunges the reader into the murky world of the Marquis de Sade.

As with The Triple Bite, Flynn pays homage to Conan Doyle, using themes from the Hound of the Baskervilles, strange goings on on the moor and the eery sound of a hunting horn, and The Speckled Band, where a soon-to-be bride, in this case Juliet Kenriston, is terrorised, by nocturnal visitations of something furry. At the outset Bathurst plays the role of a consulting amateur detective, who is visited by a worried Julian Skene seeking his assistance in unravelling the mystery as to what is happening to the Kenristons.

Ewart Kenriston, a rather aloof, unworldly academic with a passion for marionettes, has two children, both of whom are shortly to be married. Mark, his son, left the dining room on the eve of his nuptials and was never seen again, presumed dead. The sound of a hunting horn was heard that night. Now Juliet, the daughter, shortly to be married to Skene, is being terrorised and the horn has been heard once more. Suitably intrigued, Bathurst, with the assistance of Chief Inspector MacMorran of the Yard agrees to investigate.

Once Bathurst ensconces himself in the local pub, whose landlord has lost his hunting horn, the campaign of terror against Juliet intensifies. She receives a small parcel containing the buttons of Mark’s suit and the contents of his pockets, confirming fears that he has been murdered. There are suspicious characters lurking around the pub and one of the rooms, in which Bathurst was initially entertained, is now out of bounds. Why is that? The locals enjoy a good bonfire and the name of locally trained winner of the Cambridgeshire horse race helps Bathurst see the winning post.

It does not take a genius to work out that the impending marriages of the Kenriston siblings holds the key to the mystery, as does their father’s will. The plot then plunges into the world of esoterica, when Juliet receives a letter containing three dates in the calendar and a piece of doggerel which mentions a reversed apron. A handkerchief bearing a motif in honour of Donatien is found near a secluded the hut, the importance of both becomes clearer as the plot moves to its dramatic conclusion.

In a world before the internet it is handy to have an expert with an extensive knowledge of genealogy and heraldry at their fingertips and an extensive library in which to conduct your researches. Bathurst realises that Donatien was the first name of the infamous Marquis and it is not long before he discovers that one of the suspects is a distant relation.

The theme of sadism runs through the book. At the outset Bathurst and MacMorran discuss philosophically the aspects of murder, concluding that it is not an expression of sadism. Murder, though, is brutal and while Mark’s murder is more prolonged than most in detective fiction it would not rate high of the Marquis’ Richter scale of sadistic practices. Nevertheless, the theme gives a gothic, somewhat bizarre, twist to a tale that is essentially about greed.

Skene is attacked and held captive in the sinister hut, Juliet is lured there, and the building is set on fire. Has Bathurst made an error it letting events run too far? Flynn cleverly builds up the tension, with a not inconsiderable twist at the end.

It is a clever, witty, atmospheric, horror tale, thoroughly enjoyable, but probably not the easiest entry point for someone wanting to dip their toes into Flynn’s work. The moral of the story is always take a cab to visit a consulting sleuth.

The Clock Strikes Twelve

A review of The Clock Strikes Twelve by Patricia Wentworth

It has taken a while, but I am beginning to warm to Patricia Wentworth and her Miss Silver series, of which The Clock Strikes Twelve, originally published in 1944, is the seventh. It can be called a typical country house murder mystery in that James Paradine dies in his pile and the only probable suspects are those who attended the dinner on New Year’s Eve, 1941.

Wentworth makes the decision, rightly, to spend much of the first half of the book developing the characters of the various relatives who were seated around the dinner table and exploring their complex relationships. It would not be a Wentworth book without a love match that is going off the rails, a marriage between Phyllida, James Paradine’s adopted niece, and Errol Wray, who works for the family firm, that hit the rocks almost as soon as it had begun. However, rather than being an unnecessary distraction, the dynamics of the relationship are central to the plot and gives some sense to what happened on that fateful New Year’s Eve.

Wray’s arrival at the dinner after a year’s separation from his wife causes feathers to fly and the atmosphere is further poisoned when Paradine announces that someone at the dinner table has betrayed the family interests, that he knows who that person is, and that he will be in his study until twelve o’clock to give that person time to confess, and to make amends. The cat firmly put among the pigeons, some of the guests leave as soon as it is socially acceptable to do so, leaving the others to wonder what James meant and what the problem was.

During the course of the evening, there were several comings and goings to Paradine’s study, even visits by some who had seemingly made an early exit, and, inevitably, Paradine is found dead just after midnight, having taken a tumble over a low parapet. Was he pushed or was it an accident?

The police investigations clearly suggest that James was murdered and with good reason they believe that the main beneficiary of James’ will is their prime suspect. He agrees to call in the services of Miss Silver who just happens to be in the area. Oddly, the police seem grateful for her assistance. It emerges that there were two incidents that may have provoked James’ ire – some secret plans that he was working on had disappeared, albeit temporarily, and the replacement of his pride and joy, some diamonds, with jewels made of paste.         

Much of the investigation takes the form of examining the stories and alibis of the guests, some of whom see fit to change their stories as time goes on. These sections of a book can be tedious but Wentworth, as always, has a light touch and a fine sense of pace, dwelling on each aspect sufficiently for the reader to get the gist of what is going on, but not long enough for them to lose the will to live. There are enough twists and turns and red herrings to satisfy the most demanding of Wentworth’s readers, even if the plot is not that complex and the culprit is relatively easy to spot.   

Miss Silver is more of an intuitive sleuth, a reader of people’s characters and motivations, rather than a deductive investigator. Like her knitting, the pieces all begin to hang together, and she is able to reveal what has gone on, the identity of the culprit and their motives in a set piece in front of all the suspects. The named culprit takes matters into their own hands, but the book, cleverly, ends on a note of ambiguity. There is another culprit who could easily have killed Paradine. Were they pipped to the post by the other person, or did they really do it?

I found it a thoroughly enjoyable read, and one which renewed my faith in Camberley’s finest author.

The Watering Can, A Refill

A design more recognisable to modern eyes as a watering can, a term first used by Timothy Kemble in his diary in 1692, emerged around the same time. Initially it was jug-shaped with a large hole at the top for receiving water and a handle running from the top to middle of the pot’s back. Instead of holes at the bottom, it had a funnel leading to a perforated spout. This spout, known today a “rose”, a word derived from the French noun arroseur meaning sprinkler, made strong thumbs redundant and reduced the opportunity for mishaps.

By the time Louis Liger D’Auxerre was waxing lyrical about the watering-pot in his The Compleat Florist (1706), its jug-shape had become a canister with a cone on top. “Nothing”, he declared, “is more useful in a Garden than a Watering-Pot, so that a Gardner cannot be without it. It imitates the Rain falling from the Heavens; when being bended down, it spouts forth Water thro’ a thousand holes, in a sort of Head that’s made to it. By this means, it succours the Plants in the most beneficial manner”.

As technology improved, earthenware gave way to copper and from around 1850, iron, brass, and zinc were increasingly deployed. However, the intrinsic design remained the same, that is until John Haws enters our story.

A civil servant posted to Mauritius, Clapton-born Haws, by his own admission an unsuccessful gardener, started to grow vanilla plants as a hobby. He was exasperated by the current design of watering can, as the single large handle arching from front to back made it awkward to balance and manoeuvre, especially when trying to reach those plants on the upper shelves in a greenhouse. In 1884 he decided to see whether he could improve upon the design.

On his return to England, he found that the country was bitten by the gardening bug. Glass was now more widely available and cheaper, making greenhouses more affordable, sparking an interest in growing exotic and delicate plants which were then transferred to ornamental gardens and borders. These delicate plants required regular watering by hand. Seizing the moment, Haws applied for a patent for his new design for a watering can, claiming that “this new invention forms a watering pot that is much easier to carry and tip, and at the same time being much cleaner, and more adapted for use than any other put before the public”.

The Patent Office agreed, awarding Haws his patent in 1886. His design incorporated two significant features, doubling the number of handles so that there was a “carrying” handle at the top and a “tipping” handle at the back, making it easier to manoeuvre and allowing a more even flow of water on to the roots of the plants, and placing the funnel at the bottom of the can to make it easier to reach the higher shelves.

Setting up a factory in Clapton, his take on the watering can soon found favour with leading gardeners, establishing the reputation of Haws for goods of the highest quality. He was awarded the Royal Horticultural Society medal, to be presented at the first ever Chelsea Flower Show in 1913, but, sadly, he died before he could receive it.

Arthur moved the business to Bishops Stortford and maintained his uncle’s attention to detail, even employing a worker whose sole task was to punch every hole into each rose, spaced and tapered to perfection. No wonder the company is still trading and has maintained its reputation for making watering cans of the highest quality.

While Haws is recognised as the father of the modern-day watering can, his design template, which is still used today, was but one step in the development of this most useful of gardeners’ tools.

If you enjoyed this, check out More Curious Questions, available now.

Revelation Of The Week (5)

One of the iconic moments of early BBC radio history was an outside broadcast on May 19, 1924, featuring cellist Beatrice Harrison sitting in her Surrey garden playing a duet with a singing nightingale. Through the crackly airwaves listeners were thrilled to hear a nightingale joining in with her rendition of the Londonderry Air. So iconic a moment was it that it elicited thousands of letters and was repeated annually until 1942. Live radio had arrived.

Illusions, though, are there to be shattered. In a Radio 3 programme to be aired today, April 17th, on Radio 3 called Private Passions, Professor Tim Birkhead, billed as a world expert on birds, reveals that the nightingale was not a real one but none other than a musical hall siffleur, Maude Gould, who went by the stage name of Madame Saberon.

Recording equipment at the time was heavy and cumbersome and a nightingale, even one so entranced by Harrison’s playing, would be too unpredictable for a scheduled live programme and so a back-up plan was hatched to have Gould on stand-by.

Birkhead’s sonic analysis suggests that the sound patterns of the song of the nightingale in the broadcast and those of a “real” nightingale are slightly different, evidence enough to convince him that it was faked. The Beeb have held their hands up and admitted the deception.

If you want to hear the recording, follow the link below:

https://fb.watch/coXwfmDYov/

Sporting Event Of The Week (30)

Last Sunday heralded a welcome return of the UK Wife Carrying Championships to The Nower, a nature reserve just outside the Surrey town of Dorking. Run over a course 380 metres in length and with obstacles to overcome such as hay bails and water hazards, the winners have the honour of representing the UK in the World Wife Carrying Championships which will be held in Finland in July. On top of that they receive a barrel of local ale and £250 towards their travel expenses. The competitors finishing in last place did not go home empty handed, receiving a pot noodle and some dog food. All competitors get a medal and a mini-cask of Pilgrim Ale.

Established in 2008, the competition’s rules are strict. The carrier can be either male or female and they do not need to be married to the person they are carrying who must have given their consent, be aged over 17, and weigh over 49kgs. Competitors who tip the scales under the minimum weight requirement have to carry a rucksack filled with cans of baked beans and other objects to get them up to the required weight.

There is no particular technique demanded but the most recognized carrying styles are the piggyback which is popular, but slow, the shoulder-ride precarious, possibly high-risk, but could be quite fast, the ‘Fireman’s Carry’ – where the ‘wife’ is carried across or over the shoulders – uncomfortable for both carrier and ‘wife’, and the fastest position, the Estonian carry – where the ‘wife’ hangs upside-down on the carrier’s back, with their legs over the carrier’s shoulders and the wife’s head in the ‘danger zone,’ next to the carrier’s bum. Possibly the least fast – but the funniest – is the reverse Estonian, or Dorking Hold, pioneered in Dorking in 2013, which is a kind of Wife Carrying ’69’ position. This will guarantee you fame – and infamy.

This year’s winners were 35-year-old Alex Bone carrying Millie Burnham. Best of luck to the couple in Finland in July.

Twenty-Two Of The Gang

One of the problems of basing a bit of slang on a contemporary figure who earned notoriety for some reason is that once that person has had their fifteen minutes of fame, the reference loses its immediacy and the clever allusion falls into disuse. A case in point is gambetter, a word used to denote bamboozling or humbugging, as in “Don’t gambetter me”. James Ware, in his Passing English of a Victorian Era, informs the puzzled reader that it is a reference to a French politician, Gambetta, who was at the peak of his popularity between 1870 and 1876. It was then that other politicians began tot have doubts about his honesty and sincerity, his name becoming from 1879 a byword for double-dealing.

Perhaps in the same vein is Go to Hanover, popular with Jacobites as an imprecation, the equivalent of “go to hell”. For Jacobites the idea of life under Hanoverian rule was a vision of hell. Go to Hell or Connaught was a term used by Protestants in Ireland, the equivalent of “Be off with you”. Its originates from a law passed by Parliament in 1653-4, driving away all the people of Ireland who owned land from Ulster, Munster, and Leinster.

Another obscure reference is the name that was given to St Alban’s church in Holborn, the Go-between. It earned this name, according to Ware, from a court case in which a woman was questioned as to her religion. She was neither Protestant nor Catholic but went to St Alban’s which was very high, a go-between. The name stuck, at least for a while.  

Technological innovations are also reflected in slang. To get up steam meaning to become energetic owed its origin to the steam locomotive. Even George Eliot, who generally eschewed anything approaching slang, used it in 1846 in her Life, vol 1, p150: “I do not know whether I can get up any steam again on the subject of Quinet – but I will try”. I know the feeling.

The Man In The Queue

A review of The Man in the Queue by Josephine Tey

Josephine Tey, the pen name of Elizabeth Mackintosh, is a new author to me and after finishing her debut crime novel, published in 1929 which also went under the alternative title of Killer in the Crowd, I wondered why it had taken me so long to find her. This is an impressive piece of writing, the tone set at the outset with a wonderfully evocative set piece, a crowd queuing to gain entrance to see the final performance of a musical comedy, Didn’t You Know. Tey has a fine sense of place and time, her descriptions of London and the Highlands are compelling, and she understands the dynamics of a crowd as they wait patiently before their heady sense of anticipation gets the better of them as they reach the head of the queue and push to secure their entrance.

This is no ordinary queue, though. Someone in it is stabbed in the back with a distinctive dagger, the weight of the crowd propelling him forward for some minutes before he collapses. No one seems to know who he is, he has no means of identification on his person, and those nearest to him were too absorbed in their own thoughts to have a clear sense of what went on, although it seems that he had an argument with someone and that two people left the scene in a hurry.

The unenviable task of determining who the victim was, never mind who killed him and why, falls to Tey’s go-to detective, the suave, gentleman detective, Inspector Adam Grant. For many a modern reader the brilliance of the set up and the quality of the puzzle is somewhat diminished by a notorious paragraph in the second chapter, where Grant propounds the curious and, frankly, outrageous theory that no Englishman would ever stab someone in the back, a trait he assigns to someone of Latin or part Latin temperament. He uses a term that is both racist and xenophobic as a codename for the suspect, used persistently through the book even when the suspect’s identity is known. It leaves a nasty taste in the mouth, but I find that, regrettable as it is, you have to recognise that those attitudes were reflective of the times that the book was written and the modern reader either has to put the book down or hold their nose.

After much effort Grant identifies the victim as Sorrell, a bookmaker, and his prime suspect as Lamont, his assistant. He tracks down Lamont to a bolthole in the Highlands and after a frantic chase over the boggy moors and then by boat, finally gets his man, who knocks himself unconscious as he desperately tries to get to the shore. Grant is so certain that Lamont is his man – he is part Italian and has a scar on his left hand which was caused in the act of stabbing, he had all Sorrell’s money, and he had quarrelled with the victim in the queue – but when he tells his story, professing his innocence, Grant is perplexed. Something is not quite right.

The resolution of the mystery shows that Grant was completely on the wrong track with his half-baked racist theory, a source of satisfaction for this reader, but Tey hardly plays fair with the reader. Some of the clues are there and the more acute reader would recognise that there is more than meets the eye to Tey’s development of the character of the female lead in the show, Ray Marcable, a stage name which plays on the word remarkable, but they would have to possess second sight to know the backstory that pieces all the clues together.

In fact, there is no detection in the resolution of the case, the culprit just walking in and confessing, giving the sense that it was almost an afterthought, which just sits there, at odds with the rest of the book. The occasional interruption in the flow of the narrative by a narrator, unnamed and barely heard otherwise, also points to some imperfections in the structure of the book. Perhaps Tey recognised these deficiencies as she did not write another murder mystery for several years.

These are minor quibbles, though. Tey writes with considerable verve and lucidity and with not a little humour, to produce a thrilling and entertaining novel. I shall look forward to renewing my acquaintance with Grant.