Martin Fone's Blog, page 169

Parsimony Of The Week

In those seemingly far-off days when we could travel at will, exceeding baggage allowances and having to pay the heavy additional fees was always a worry. Sometimes to avoid going over the limit, bags had to be hastily reorganised on the airport floor or extra layers of clothing donned, making some passengers look like Michelin men.

Four travellers arrived at the airport in Kunming in China’s Yunnan Province, having bought a box of oranges for 50 yuan, weighing 30 kilogrammes. At the check in they were informed that they were going to be charged shipping fees of 300 yuan if they checked the oranges in.

After a brief discussion, the doughty travellers decided that there was nothing for it but to eat the whole boxload of oranges there and then. It took them around half an hour to polish them off and then they boarded their plane.

Sadly, as well as being put off oranges for some time, they all suffered from mouth ulcers for eating so many citrus fruits in one go. Sometimes penny pinching doesn’t pay.

Robbery Of The Week (5)

Scaling new heights of criminal ineptitude, Leobardo Hernandez from Pomona in California ran off to evade the police after allegedly stealing a car. His luck seemed to be in when he ran into an apartment block and found one of the doors to a flat unlocked and the residents out.

To make it look as though he lived there and avoid detection, he decided to make himself at home, having a shave, helping himself to a change of clothes and even cooked himself a meal. It was his choice of meal that caused his undoing.

Leobardo decided to make some tortillas but the frying pan got too hot and a fire broke out, resulting in an emergency call to the Fire Brigade. He had to give himself up and now faces charges of burglary, possession of a stolen vehicle and other offences.

Mind you, his stupidity may have been topped by an unnamed Serbian man who robbed a petrol station in Bratislava at 4am. Showing remarkable presence of mind, a Czech lady distracted him by offering him a blowjob and detained him long enough to have his collar felt.

Cantering Through Cant (17)

In or to merry a pin, according to the indefatigable Francis Grose in his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, is to be “almost drunk”. It is an allusion, he says, to a type of tankard used mainly in the north, which had silver pegs or pins set at equal distances from top to bottom. Everyone drinking from this communal cup was to swallow a measure equal to the amount between two pins. “If he drinks more or less”, he reports, “he was to continue drinking until he ended at a pin; by this means persons unaccustomed to measure their draughts were obliged to drink the whole tankard. Hence, when a person was a little elevated with drink, he was said to have drunk to a merry pin”.

I like a good scam and this one involves lotteries and insurance. In defining pigeons as “sharpers”, Grose recounts this form of egregious sharp practice. The so-called pigeons would wait ready mounted at London’s Guildhall while the first two or three numbers of the lottery were being drawn, which they receive from an associate on a card. They then ride at full speed to some distant insurance office, where another of the gang, usually a decent looking woman, is waiting and to whom they give the numbers. She then insures the numbers for a considerable sum. A case of “biting the biter”, Grose wryly notes. In the days before telegraphy, speed and inside knowledge could be the keys to a fortune.

The name given to these fraudsters comes from the verb to pigeon which meant “to cheat”, as well they did.  

Smuggled From Cornwall Gin

I love my trips to Cornwall and to the nirvana of gin drinkers, the Constantine Stores, the headquarters of Drinkfinder UK. I could spend hours, and hundreds of pounds, browsing their shelves packed with tempting and unusual gins. When in Cornwall I like to come away with some gins spawned by the ginaissance that are distinctive to the county and on my last trip, in October 2020, I picked up a bottle of Smuggled From Cornwall Gin (SFC), intrigued by the prospect of sampling a drink which was the product of a collaboration between Cornwall’s oldest cider maker, Haye Farm, and the county’s first plough-to-bottle distillery, Colwith Farm Distillery.

Both are to be found either side of the Fowey River, Haye on the northern bank by Penpol Creek and Colwith on the southern. There are over fifty varieties of apple grown at Haye Farm, some unique to the farm, and they are handpicked and straw-pressed and then allowed to ferment naturally in whisky, rum and port barrels, techniques unchanged since brewing started there in the 13th century. The resultant Haye Farm Cider is of the very highest quality and it is this which is used to distil into the SFC gin.  

The gin is distilled across the river at Colwith Farm Distilley, part of Colwith Farm which has been in the hands of the Dustow family since Stafford moved there in 1904. It is from the farm that the crops are grown which are then transformed by Steve and Sophie into their range of premium spirits, vodka, rum and, of course, gin. They produce two gins, Fowey River Gin which is their original gin and is cider apple distilled, and SFC with production starting in 2016.

The bottle is dumpy and bell shaped. made from clear glass with a white ribbon-like label which goes around the middle of the bottle about two-thirds of its circumference. The label uses a distinctive black font and displays a map of Cornwall, the legend “Cornish Gin”, gin in a turquoise shade, and the flag of Cornwall, the top right quadrant slightly askew as if it has sniffed the bottle, and then the name of the gin. The labelling on the right-hand side of the bottle tells me in turquoise print that it is “a true distilled gin which draws upon its unique history, heritage and provenance” and, in black, tells me that its ABV is a very acceptable 42%. On the left-hand side as well as “800 years of history distilled into every bottle” it informs me that their “master distiller uses botanicals found on both Haye and Colwith farms to create a classic juniper-led Cornish dry gin with hints of citrus and spice”.

The description is not wrong. On removing the synthetic stopper, the aroma that greeted me was one of intense juniper with hints of citrus and spice. In the glass the clear spirit revealed that it was firmly and proudly juniper-led, although it did allow some other flavours, particularly apple, a dash of lemon and a hint of spice to make an appearance. The aftertaste was peppery and spicy.

 I found it to be a well-balanced, crisp drink and the apple, which I was concerned would overwhelm the taste, was, if anything, quite subdued and undercooked, allowing the juniper to take centre stage. Frustratingly, the distillers seem to be coy about revealing precisely what botanicals have gone into the mix, but whatever they are, if you like a traditional dry gin style with a little bit of a twist, you will not be disappointed. I’m glad I smuggled this gin over the Tamar river.     

Until the next time, cheers!

Let Him Lie

Let Him Lie – Ianthe Jerrold

Ianthe Jerrold is another writer I have never read, but thanks to the wonderful Dean Street Press and their impressive efforts to bring long forgotten detective fiction to a modern readership, this 1940 novel, initially published under the nom de plume of Geraldine Bridgman, came to my attention. It was a rattling good read and had some interesting points to note.

Firstly, the police, principally in the form of Superintendent Finister, whilst present, are almost consigned to the margins as the story is told through the viewpoint of Jeannie Halliday, an artist-cum-sleuth, who has moved down to an idyllic country cottage in a Gloucestershire to be near her childhood chum, Agnes. Not a typical flamboyant sleuth or one who has an astonishing wealth of scientific knowledge or technical expertise, Jeannie’s main strength is her empathy, which soon elicits confidences, wanted or not, from the other characters in the story. This characteristic allows Jerrold to use her as the fulcrum around which the plot revolves and drip feed clues to her readers.

Secondly, and this is a point of pure interest to me, is that this is the first book I have read that features a major character who shares my unusual surname. William Fone, in truth, is a rather eccentric character, a poet and an antiquarian with a penchant for the history of Ancient Britain, whom the rest of the village regard with a mixture of disdain and amusement. He is bitterly opposed to Robert Molyneux’s plans to open up Grim’s Grave, an ancient burial site, an act which he believes will unleash a curse. Fone sends a threatening letter to Molyneux.

There are two deaths, one of a white kitten and Molyneux himself, shot whilst up a ladder harvesting fruit in his orchard. Are they linked? Although he has the most obvious motive for Molyneux’s demise, is the disabled Fone really the culprit? His home offered a panoramic view of the area and Fone claims to have seen the moment Molyneux was shot. He provides vital information which seems to indicate the direction of the shot but have those who choose to interpret what he has to say forgotten an elementary law of physics concerning the relativity of sound and light?

Jerrold has assembled a varied collection of possible suspects, most of whom have alibis as watertight as a colander. Although most are straight from central casting, she imbues them with enough interest to make the reader want to find out more about them and try to piece where they fit into the picture. Agnes, who is married to Molyneux, turns out to have changed from the girl that Jeanie knew and idolised, growing more loathsome as the story progresses.

The resolution of the plot is quite cleverly worked out and as the tension builds up to a climax, Jeanie’s life is put in danger. By the time the culprit is revealed, I had worked out their identity, more by a process of elimination than any positive sense that they were the ones whodunit. The motive for the murder was more the surprise for me, but once I saw the impetus behind the murder of Molyneux, it all began to make sense.

Jerrold’s characterisation of the foreigner, Mr Agatos, was sensitively handled and, for the feminist reader, the role of the woman in a marriage is given a fair airing, providing the book more of a politically correct feel to the book than is found in many a book from the era.  

I found the book, although by no means a classic, an entertaining way to while away a few hours with.

The Billiard-Room Mystery

The Billiard-Room Mystery – Brian Flynn

Another reissue courtesy of those enterprising people at Dean Street Press and another writer I had not previously encountered. Published originally in 1927, it caused some controversy at the time because the ending is reminiscent of a better-known classic which had appeared a little while earlier. In Flynn’s defence, though, I think it handles it better and he had finished it sometime before, having a great deal of difficulty in finding a publisher. The two almost certainly came up with the same idea independently.

This is the first book to feature Flynn’s amateur sleuth, Anthony Bathurst – the series ran to fifty although hardly anyone these days would know – and he is portrayed as a man with the polish and breeding of a Wimsey and the intellectual acumen of a Holmes, possessing “uncanny gifts for deduction, inference and intuition. These powers allied to a masterly memory for detail and to an unusual athleticism of the body, separated him from the majority”. There’s nothing like building up your hero. Bathurst even comes with his own Watson, at least for this tale, in the form of the stolid and well-connected Bill Cunningham.

The book seems to be a fairly conventional murder mystery of its time, set in a country mansion, Considine Manor, where a disparate group of individuals assemble for Sir Charles Considine’s annual cricket week house party. The mix of conviviality and sport is interrupted when a maid finds a guest dead on the billiard table with a dagger in the back of his neck and, just for good measure, he appears to have been strangled with one of his own shoelaces. The deceased has committed a fatal dress faux-pas by wearing brown shoes with a dinner jacket, not the done thing, and it prompts suspicions that he was roused from his slumbers by a disturbance which he was investigating when he met his end.

Flynn also presents us with another puzzle. Lady Considine’s pearls are also missing. Are the two crimes linked? The jewellery theft is dealt with fairly cursorily and satisfactorily for the Considines but the murder causes Bathurst and the police team led by Inspector Baddeley more problems.

Kelly has fielded a large list of suspects and the book takes a leisurely course exploring their potential motives and alibis, whittling down the field. We see how the investigation is progressing through the eyes of Cunningham. Kelly clearly has fun with motives and is not averse to throwing in the odd red herring to throw us all off the scent.        

Towards the end of the book, though, the tone, pace and voice of the narrative takes a sudden and unexpected twist and all is revealed. Kelly handles the change of gear well and for this reader, at least, it was not quite what I had expected, although, when I thought about it over my evening cocoa aka a gin and tonic, I realised he had rather skilfully sown the seeds for those who were none too blind to see.

I like books that suddenly knock you for six with a violent change of direction, one that transformed what seemed to be a rather safe, conventional, almost hackneyed entertainment into something which was really rather good.

The Parliamentary Fart Of 1607

In 1601 Henry Ludlow became the Member of Parliament for Andover and then, in 1604, for the constituency of Ludgershall, near Salisbury. He had a bit of a reputation for irascibility and in December 1602 was accused of the attempted murder of Joel King, a former servant of his father’s who had had the audacity to elope with one of Ludlow’s sisters. There were allegedly two assaults on the miscreant, one in October when a group of Ludlow’s men beat King severely in some woods in Berkshire and then in December when King was ambushed had pins thrust down his throat and hung until he was almost dead. His attempts to mete out some form of justice and to protect his sister’s honour did not seem to harm his parliamentary career, proof positive, if there ever was one, that there has always been one rule for them and another for the rest of us.   

Ludlow, though, is most famous for a contribution, voluntary or otherwise, he made in Parliament on March 4, 1607. The members of parliament had assembled to hear a statement from the House of Lords read by Sir John Croke on the vexed subject of the naturalisation of the Scots. As Croke spoke Ludlow let fly a fart of such volume that it was heard (and possibly smelt) throughout the chamber. The assembly of right honourable gentlemen immediately collapsed into fits of laughter and once order had been restored, they felt it necessary to debate the procedural issues arising from farting in the chamber.

Alas, there was no Hansard to provide us with a verbatim account of proceedings, but, fortunately, Robert Bowyer noted what happened in his diary. He reported that the fart emanated from “the nether end of the House…whereat the Company laughing the Messenger was almost out of Countenance”. Bowyer considered there to be no malice of intent behind the breaking of wind drawing his readers’ attention to the fact that Ludlow’s father too had farted during a Committee meeting. His charitable conclusion was “so this seemeth Infirmity Naturall, not Malice”.    

Ludlow’s fart captured the public’s imagination and gave rise to one of the 17th century’s most popular comic political poem, The Censure of the Parliament Fart”. It went: “Never was bestowed such an art/ Upon the tuning of a fart./ Downe came grave auntient Sir John Cooke/ And redd his message in his booke./ Fearie well, Quoth Sir William Morris, Soe:/ But Henry Ludlowes Tayle cry’d Noe./ Up starts one fuller of devotion/ The Eloquence; and said a very ill motion/ Not soe neither quoth Sir Henry Jenkin/ The Motion was good; but for the stincking/ Well quoth Sir Henry Poole it was a bold tricke/ To Fart in the nose of the bodie pollitique/ Indeed I confesse quoth Sir Edward Grevill/ The matter of it selfe was somewhat uncivill/ Thanke God quoth Sir Edward Hungerford/ That this Fart proved not a Turdd”

Although little more than an extended joke on the topic of farting, the poem’s strength was that its loose, improvisational structure easily lent itself to additions. Couplets were introduced after the parliaments of 1610 and 1614 and variants were circulated in the 1620s, after many of the Members of Parliament named had either died or left the House. The poem started with the core couplets detailing Ludlow’s behaviour and the reaction to it but there seemed to be no fixed order in which subsequent couplets appeared. Manuscript versions range from a poem of some forty lines to others boasting a gargantuan 225 lines. Some 113 politicians were namechecked in the lengthier versions.

Who was behind the poem? There is no definitive answer. Some attribute it to John Hoskyns, while others put it down to a collection of celebrated wits of the time that included Richard Martin, Hoskyns, Christopher Brooke, and one of John Donne’s friends, Edward Jones. There is evidence to suggest that there was musical accompaniment to the verses and that it was performed in taverns.

Ludlow left parliament in 1611 but he had left his mark on the institution for centuries to come.

Dog Collar Of The Week

I never cease to be amazed by the contraptions that pet owners buy to ensure the wellbeing of their pride and joy. For centuries dog owners have been content to ignore the state of mind of their pooch or use their eyes and nous to determine if something is amiss. For those seeking a bit more rigour in the process Artificial Intelligence and an app is ready to step into the breach.

A South Korean company, Petpuls Lab, has just launched an AI dog collar which marketing director, Andrew Gil, claims “gives a dog a voice so humans can understand”. The collar detects five emotions and through a smartphone app the owner can determine whether their pooch is happy, relaxed, anxious, angry, or sad.

Retailing at $99 the device has been tested, independently, by Seoul National University, who proclaimed that, rather like a Covid vaccine, it is 90% effective.

I wonder if it detects that feeling that you have been ripped off?

Candle Of The Week (2)

Would you spend $75 on a candle which emits an aroma replicating the smell emanating from Gwyneth Paltrow’s vagina? Very fragrant it must be as the “This Smells Like My Vagina” candle contains hints of geranium, citrusy bergamot, cedar absolutes, Damask rose, and ambrette seed.  

Well, a woman from Kilburn, Jody Thompson, did and, anxious to get a whiff of Ms Paltrow’s muff, actually lit the thing. “The candle exploded and emitted huge flames, with bits flying everywhere”, she reported. Leaving her little option but to throw it out of the front door.

Some vagina!

Cantering Through Cant (16)

There is always a degree of envy associated with those who get rich or become overnight sensations. The term that we use to describe these monied upstarts, the nouveau riche, has distinctly pejorative connotations. In Francis Grose’s time, at least according to his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, his contemporaries did not need to a French phrase. A mushroom, he reports, is used to describe “a person or family suddenly raised to riches and eminence; an allusion to that fungus that starts up in the night”.  

Alas, beggars are still with us. They were known as mumpers, defined by Grose as “originally, beggars of the genteel kind, but since used for beggars in general”. By extension, a mumpers’ hall is “an alehouse where beggars are harboured”.

I was scratching my muzzle, “beard”, wondering what a nab or nab cheat was. It’s a “hat” and a penthouse nab is “a large hat”. In its verb form to nab, on the other hand, means to seize or catch unawares. However, to nab the stoop is “to stand in the pillory” and to nab the rust is a term used by jockeys to describe a horse that becomes restive. To nab the snow is to steal some linen left out to bleach or dry while a nab’s girdle is a bridle.

For those of us who may blanche at the prospect of breaking forth into blasphemy, there is always nation. Grose records that it is “an abbreviation of damnation. Perhaps it was used by natty lads, a cant expression for “young thieves or pickpockets”. It was also used in an adverbial form, in Sussex, Kent and neighbouring counties, as a substitute for “very”. Thus, nation good means “very good” and nation long way “a very long way”.

Some more nation interesting gems from Grose’s dictionary anon.