Martin Fone's Blog, page 133

Onion Of The Week (2)

Do you hate peeling onions? Are you fed up of an onion releasing synpropanethial-S-oxide, an irrititant which affects the glands in your eyes and makes them water? If so, the Sunion may just be what you are looking for.

After being developed over the last thirty years, the Sunion, available from Waitrose from this week, is described as a brown, tearless, and sweet onion. Unlike other onions where volatile compounds cause the tears to flow and produce that pungent smell, and get increasingly more volatile over time, those self-same compounds do the opposite in the Sunion, reducing to create a sweet, mild onion that gets sweeter and milder by the day.

The only tears to flow will be when you see the price. They retail at over three times the price of Waitrose’s essential onions, but you will save on tissues.

That’s shallot, you might say.

Game Of The Week

I am a bit out of touch with digital games, but Pokemon Go, a sort of augmented game played on mobiles involving people frantically searching the environs on the hunt for various Pokemon characters that they “just had to” collect.

In April 2017, two police officers. Lozano and Mitchell, from the Los Angeles Police Department were intently on the chase for Snorlax, when, rather inconveniently, a message came over their radio that there was a robbery happening at the local Macy’s store.

As the opportunity to snare a Snorlax does not come very often, they chose to continue their pursuit which was successful. They then had reports of a Togetic, which they pursued and captured. It was only then that they turned their attention to the robbery, which are, after all, ten a cent in Los Angeles.

Their employers took a dim view of their devotion to pursuing Pokemon characters rather than villains and after putting them on several disciplinary charges, eventually fired them, after their appeal failed.

So, they now have their cards, just not Pokemon ones.

Ten Of The Gang

Crime was often a necessity for members of the lower orders simply to keep the wolf from the door. Black-bagging was a crime that was at its height during the expansion of the railways in the 19th century and the construction of palatial railway termini. Dynamite was used to clear obstructions and was packed in black bags. If the dynamite failed to go off, it would lie dormant in the black bag and some enterprising thieves would carry it off, no doubt to sell it on or attempt to crack a safe with.

So endemic was black-bagging that the authorities would offer rewards for information that would lead to the arrest of the culprits. This in turn led some to wonder whether such excessive rewards would merely tempt others to try their hand at the crime.

The fruits of a successful robbery were not always wisely spent. Blewed his red ‘un is a an almost incomprehensible case in point. Red ‘un was a variant of redding which was a thieves’ word for a watch. Blew as a verb meant “to dissipate” but it had a very specific connotation when it came to money. You only blew your money if you spent it on drink and so our phrase is shorthand for informing us that someone had spent the proceeds from a stolen watch on drink.

I wonder if the thief had earned enough money to block a quiet pub, a phrase used to denote someone staying a long time in a tavern with the implication that they were a sot.

Wild Wingletang Gin

One of my greatest regrets is that I have not been to the Isles of Scilly. Still, there is plenty of time to rectify this omission. St Agnes is on the far south-westerly edge of the collection of islands off the tip of Cornwall and measures just a mile or so across. Its closest neighbour is Gugh to which it is joined by a sandy tombolo, known as the “Bar”, which is exposed at low tide. Small it may be, but St Agnes has a lot going for it, including a lighthouse, rocky outcrops on its westerly side, sheltered coves and stunning beaches and, to the south, a bracken-strewn heath.

The heath is known as Wingletang Downs, named after the “whins” of gorse and “tangs” of kelp that are found there. To complete the etymological research, down comes from an old English word meaning hill. It is these downs that have given their name to another fine gin to come out of the stable of the island’s enterprising Westward Farm. The ginaissance has spawned many a weird and wonderful name, usually the product of a crazed marketeer’s imagination, but at least Wild Wingletang Gin owes its origin to a genuine geographic feature.

The distillery is on the farm which has been in the hands of the Hicks family for generations. I have written elsewhere about the set up so I will focus on what intrigued me about this particular gin and persuaded me to lift it from the groaning shelves of Drinkfinder’s gorgeous little shop in Constantine, gorse. What Aiden Hicks and his family are trying to evoke with the gin is the aroma of gorse on a sunny day on the island. Although it flowers from November to June it is normally at its best in March and April, when it is handpicked. The gorse blossom is then distilled as a single botanical in a vacuum at a low temperature to ensure that none of the plant’s distinctive flavours are lost.

So, what exactly does the blossom of a largish, evergreen shrub bring to the party, and why is it not more commonly used as a botanical? Although gorse bushes are a common feature of British heathland, their bright yellow flowers are about 15mm and are protected by leaves which take the form of stiff green spikes. It can be a prickly business collecting them. Gorse or Ulex europaeus has been traditionally used in winemaking, the distilling in Irish whiskey, and the brewing of beers, particularly valued for the coconut-like aroma that is particularly evident when the blossom is picked on a sunny day. Some gin distillers are beginning to explore its virtues, such as in the Botanist Islay Dry and Merywen Gin.

When infusing the blossom into a spirit, there is a decision to be made; whether to remove the calyx, the hairy, yellow cover which encloses the petals. It can introduce a slightly bitter flavour to the mix. It is also advisable not to go too overboard with it, as the plant contains an alkaloid which can increase blood pressure and is poisonous in large quantities.    

The bottle-shape, characteristics and labelling are identical to that which they use on their other gins, save for the fact that the gin’s name and the wax at the top of the bottle are green coloured. It does mean that if you are not familiar with the colour coding, you need to inspect the bottle carefully before making your choice. My bottle told me it was from batch number 754 and that the distiller to whom my grateful thanks goes was Mike.

Clearly, the folks at Westward Farm know what they are doing as the gorse, as well as adding a faint aroma of coconut, introduces a nuttiness to the spirit which blends well with the spiciness from the more traditional botanicals to produce an interesting variation to their Scilly Gin. It is well worth searching out.

Until the next time, cheers!

The Case Of The 100% Alibis

A review of The Case of the 100% Alibis by Christopher Bush

A feature of Bush’s books, at least the ones that I have read so far, is that he includes a prologue which includes a few clues which, at first blush, seem to have nothing to do with the story that you proceed to read, but their relevance and importance becomes clear in this 1934 novel, the eleventh in his Ludovic Travers series and reissued by Dean Street Press. What relevance do Mrs Hubbard’s prize-winning recipe and news of Captain Moile’s first attempt at a solo flight across the Atlantic have to a case of water-tight alibis? The title of the book may be clunky, but it describes what lies within the covers.  

Three telephone calls frame the mystery, made just before or immediately after the murder of Frederick Lewton. The first two are made by Lewton, the first to a friend, Beece, in what is described as a normal voice, the second five minutes later to his doctor, Rule, in which the victim is described as being scared stiff, and the third, three minutes later, by his servant, Robert Trench, informing the police that when he had returned to the house, he had discovered that his employer had been stabbed to death.

Matters are further complicated by the fact that all the credible suspects have solid alibis, having been seen in public away from the scene of the crime at the time of the murder. Superintendent George Wharton, who happens to be in Seaborough with his wife Jane, a sounding board and purveyor of wisdom and insight a la Bobby Owen’s Olive, takes the lead in attempting to solve the mystery. Despite the endeavours of “The General”, one of the Yard’s big five, his sleuthing merely serves to enforce the strength of the suspects’’ alibis.

Ludovic Travers arrives midway through the book, again he just happens to be in the area, and offers to lend a hand. Even he seems to get nowhere and the murder of a man who seems not to have been liked seems destined to be one of those unsolved mysteries. However, Travers has a plan that will unravel some of the alibis, on the pretence of wanting to write a detective novel about a perfect murder along the lines of the Lewton case. Surprisingly, this rather obvious and underhand tactic bears fruit.

I have read enough books involving alibis which are highly dependent upon the time to know the reliability and accuracy of timepieces is crucial. However, Bush has constructed an extremely clever and watertight plot that all the relevant clocks were telling the same time at the crucial period. It is only the planning of the novel that gives Travers a scintilla of a clue as to how it was pulled off.

As the investigations proceed, we learn that Lewton is involved in a blackmail plot, allowing the reader to understand the motivation behind doing away with a character other than simply because of his unpleasantness. The identity of the culprit at the end is a tad surprising, but Bush cleverly allows a bit of uncertainty to remain, the reader suspecting that the named murderer may have taken one for the team.

It is a convoluted story, thoroughly enjoyable, and one about which is difficult to go into too much detail without giving the game away. However, the clues mentioned in the prologue make sense in the end and help to unravel a first-class and entertaining alibi mystery, the sub-genre at which Bush excels.

The Castleford Conundrum

A review of The Castleford Conundrum by J J Connington

Published in 1932, this is the eighth in Connington’s impressive series featuring Sir Clinton Driffield. We have met the Castlefords before, they played a bit part in the 1928 novel, Mystery at Lyndham Sands, where the daughter, Hillary, made an impression on Driffield’s Watson, “Squire” Wendover. Here, though, they take centre stage in a tale which, in other hands, would have had a bit of a Victorian, sub-Trollopian, melodramatic feel about it.

Where there is a will, there are relatives, as they say, and the plot revolves around the estate of Winifred Castleford. She is painted as a rather selfish, self-obsessed woman, who is easily manipulated. Philip Castleford is her second husband, and the implication is that the struggling artist, some of whose fingers were callously maimed, married her for her money. Hillary is Philip’s daughter, who is treated with some disdain by her stepmother and Constance Lindfield, who keeps house and is Winifred’s half-sister.

The source of Winifred’s money is from her first husband, and his two brothers, Laurence and Kenneth Glencaple, bitterly resent that it would go out of the family if anything happened to Winifred. They persuade her to change her will in their favour. Kenneth’s young son, Francis, has been bought a small gun by Constance, which he delights in shooting at targets, including a dead cat strung up. To complete the cast list, there is Dick Stevenage, a local man, who seems to be having an affair with each of the principal women in the story.

The Glencaples persuade Winifred to alter her will, effectively cutting out Phillip and Hillary, and leaving the majority of the money to them and Constance. Winifred is then found dead in a deserted summer house and it looks as though she was hit by a bullet that matched those that Francis was firing so liberally around the estate.

Inspector Westerham leads the investigation and it transpires that whilst Winifred destroyed her first will and had made arrangements with her solicitor to write a new one in the favour of her half-sister and the Glencaples. However, she had never got round to signing it, unbeknownst to Constance and the Glencaples. As she had died intestate, the money would go in its entirety to Philip. Circumstantial evidence also points to Philip’s guilt, and fearing the worst, Hillary turns to Wendover for assistance. Driffield arrives on the scene about two-thirds of the way through the story.

In what is a well-structured mystery, Driffield soon gets to grips with the problem. Given Wendover’s emotional attachment to the case, Driffield keeps Wendover out of the loop, much to the “Squire’s” annoyance, and as the investigations progress, it looks increasingly black for Philip. However, the resolution rests on the establishment of blood groups, a surprisingly modern and forensic approach to detection, and in a classic scene in which all the interested parties aka suspects are in one room, Driffield proceeds to unmask the culprit. As is only right and proper in the circumstances, the culprit goes away and shoots themselves.

It is a well written story and although none of the principal characters have much going for them, they are believable and realistic. The fly in the ointment, for me, is the premise of the plot. Would anyone really destroy a will and not sign its replacement and would there not be a copy of the original will held at the solicitor’s office which would remain in place until the new will was signed? That aside, it is a great read, and the pace picks up noticeably once Driffield comes on to the scene. Conington never fails to deliver.

Crossword Across

Increasingly these days I skim through the pages of news and turn to the puzzle page to pit my wits against those of the crossword compiler, a sign of these troubled times perhaps. As Stephen Sondheim said, “the nice thing about doing a crossword is you know there is a solution”. A spell of studied concentration transforms an initial sense of bewilderment into a glow of satisfaction when the last squares are filled in to complete the puzzle, proof positive that the little grey cells are still in working order.

A fascination with word patterns is not a modern trait. In countries as far apart as Italy, England, France, Syria, Portugal, and Sweden archaeologists have found examples of Sator squares, dating from the second century AD, scratched on walls and tablets. A five-line palindrome using the words sator, arepo, tenet, opera, and rotas, it can be read in four directions from either the top left or bottom right corners, both vertically and horizontally.

Intriguingly, sator and rotas in the first and fifth lines are identical albeit inverted, as are arepo and opera in the second and fourth line, while tenet in the third line is itself a palindrome. Translated, the square’s meaning is anodyne, literally “the sower, Arepo, holds or works the wheels with care”, so was its popularity in the Roman world due simply to the cleverness of its design or was there a deeper meaning to it?

Unscrambling the square, its components create the shape of a cross containing the opening words of the Lord’s Prayer, Pater noster, the vertical and horizontal intersecting at the letter N. This arrangement leaves four letters unused, two as and two os, representing alpha and omega in Christian iconography. The design can be completed by placing an a and an o in the left and right upper quadrants respectively, reversing the arrangement for the lower two quadrants.

Was it a form of code which early Christians used to make themselves known to other believers, in the same way that the sign of a fish was used? This theory has rather been blown apart by the discovery of two Sator squares in the ruins of Pompeii, destroyed in 79AD, pointing to a much earlier origin, although early Christians may have adapted the existing design for their own uses.

Some suggest that it was Egyptian, Jewish, or Greek in origin or had some ritualistic connotations, palindromes being associated in some religious and folk traditions with magical properties. As late as the 19th century the manual of a Dutch doctor in Pennsylvania suggested a patient should eat a piece of bread smeared with butter into which the Sator square had been inscribed as a cure for rabies. I doubt it worked.

The Sator square’s design prompted logologists in the 19th century to develop squares of ever-increasing size. A six-square was first published in 1859, a 7-square in 1877, followed by eight and nine-squares in 1884 and 1897 respectively. Larger squares proved more problematic, a 10-square only possible if reduplicated words and phrases were used and an eleven-square deemed impossible unless words from several languages were allowed. The perfect 12-square remains the logologist’s Holy Grail.

With increased leisure time, at least for some, word puzzles gained popularity in Victorian times, elementary in form and based on the Sator template so that letters read alike vertically and horizontally. The phrase “cross word puzzle” was first used in the American magazine, Our Young Folks, in 1862 while another, St Nicholas, printed connected word square puzzles from 1873. In Italy Giuseppe Airoldi designed a four-by-four grid with horizontal and vertical clues which he called “Per passare il tempo” (to pass the time). It was published in Il Secolo Illustrato della Domenico on September 14, 1890.

Crossword Down follows next week, but in the meantime, why not check out More Curious Questions by following the link below:

Statue Of The Week (6)

A famous, if controversial, statue had its chips in the early hours of New Year’s Day. The four-metre-tall statue, a representation of the Spunta potato, a staple crop grown in the village of Xylophagou in Cyprus, was chopped down by vandals.

Nicknamed the “big potato” it has been a popular backdrop for selfies, although its shape has drawn some unwarranted comments on social media. Its creator, community leader George Tasou, stood guard over the statue until the early hours but then delegated guard duties to another.

Whether they were asleep on the job is not clear, but at around 3.30am it was found on the ground having been cut from its stand, causing damage estimated at £4,000.

It remains to be seen whether another statue will sprout in its place.

Covid-19 Tales (25)

Perhaps having been on the run for two decades makes you a little blasé but, even so, taking the most basic of precautions still pays dividends. Under current Covid-19 rules in Poland masks are mandatory in all shops, offenders facing the risk of arrest and prosecution.

A 45-year-old man entered a shop in the Bielany district of Warsaw without a mask on. The police were called, and he was arrested. They were surprised, and delighted, to find that he was a convicted murderer who had absconded from prison twenty years ago. He was carted off to prison to serve the rest of his twenty-five-year stretch.

Clearly, wearing a mask protects you as well as others.

Beating The Back To Work Blues Once More

The Reformation sowed the seeds for the decline of the Plough Monday celebrations. In 1538, Henry VIII banned the lighting of plough lights in churches and Edward VI outlawed the “conjuring of ploughs”. As well as running counter to Protestant zeal, the minatory undertones to the procession may have contributed to its fall from favour.

The plough was not just for show, as a farmer who refused to put his hand in his pocket in 1810 found out. At the Derby Assizes he claimed that the indignant Plough Monday processors dragged their plough over his lawn, and drive, causing damage to the value of £20. He was not the only one down the years to receive that treatment.   

Others paid up reluctantly like a curmudgeonly correspondent to the Nottingham Review, whose letter, published on January 14, 1823, complained that the Plough Bullocks went around “the peaceable inhabitants of the neighbourhood” and demanded money “with as little ceremony as the tax-gatherer”.

The transition from a predominantly agrarian based to an industrial economy further accelerated the ceremony’s fall from grace, although there are records of Plough Monday celebrations, usually confined to displays by “Molly Dancers”, well into the 1930s. It took the folk revival movement in the 1960s and 70s to bring about a renaissance of the tradition.

While the men worked the land, the womenfolk, especially those who were unmarried, toiled at the spinning wheel, making cloth. Indeed, so synonymous was this work with single ladies that it spawned the term spinster. They returned to work on the day after the start of the Epiphany, January 7th, or St Distaff’s Day as it was known.

Search through the list of canonised saints and you will not find one bearing the name of Distaff. However, a distaff was an important tool used in the first process in making cloth, the spinning of wool or flax into thread. It was used to hold the wool or flax so that the spinner could easily reach it or keep it out of the way as they span into thread, often tucked into the waistband to leave both hands free or worn like a ring on the finger. The cod canonisation of this tool gave especial importance to the day.

To the men, still idle, though, St Distaff’s Day provided an opportunity for further japes and fun. The lyric poet and cleric, Robert Herrick, included in his Hesperides (1648) a short poem entitled Saint Distaff’s Day or the Morrow After Twelfth Day in which he described the reception that the returning spinners could face; “If the maides a spinning-goe/ burn the flax and fire the tow:/ scorch their plackets, but beware/ that ye singe no maiden-haire”.

Clearly, St Distaff’s Day was a day for mischief making. It is tempting to think that the womenfolk, frantically trying to save their precious flax from being consumed by the flames, would throw a few well-aimed buckets of water over their attackers to dampen their spirits.

Perhaps we should take a leaf from our forefathers’ book and see the return to work as a cause for celebration rather than gloomy acceptance. It might just catch on!