Martin Fone's Blog, page 179

Names of the Week (7)

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In an update on an earlier story, 51% of the 7,000 residents of the Quebec town of Asbestos have now voted for Val-des-Sources to be their community’s name, a decision endorsed by the Council.

That’s that settled, then.

Book Corner – October 2020 (3)

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Castle Skull – John Dickson Carr

Every now and again I come across a book in the wonderful British Library Crime Classics series that is truly bonkers. Carr’s Castle Skull, subtitled A Rhineland Mystery and published in 1921, certainly falls into that category, mixing crime with gothic horror by the bucket load. Rather too overwritten for my taste, it nonetheless is an entertaining read.

Following classic crime fiction conventions, the story is narrated by Jeff Marle, the rather innocent American sidekick to one of Carr’s detective creations, the Frenchman, Inspector Bencolin. However, as Marle is never privy to all of Bencolin’s thoughts, the importance of some of the clues are not realised. This allows Carr to flog some of the red herrings for all they are worth.  

Carr ratchets up the tension on the detective stakes by introducing Bencolin’s arch-rival, the German detective, von Arnheim. Both are invited to Castle Skull, so named because from afar the castle looks like a skull, to solve the mystery. While on the surface both co-operate, they feed each other red herrings in the hope that they can solve the crime. This device adds another layer of intrigue to the story, although you can pretty easily guess who will come out on top.

As for the crime, it is truly bizarre. Castle Skull, the Gothic horror castle to outdo all Gothic horror castles, was owned by a famous stage magician, Maleger. The magician, though, died some 17 years before the action of the book in mysterious circumstances. He was travelling alone in a railway carriage, from which he disappeared, his body being found in the river below. Did he jump or was he pushed?

The castle is bequeathed to a rich financier, Jerome D’aunay, and a rather vain actor, Myron Alison. Alison dies in spectacular fashion, having been shot, doused in petrol and before expiring he was seen running around the battlements on fire. D’aunay invites Bencolin to solve the crime, von Arnheim is brought in by the local Rhineland police. There is the usual motley crew of suspects, staying in the house directly across the river from the castle – Alison’s sister, Agatha, a rather annoying concert violinist, Emile Levasseur, a couple of the younger set who may or may not be in love, Sally Reine and Sir Marshall Dunstan, and D’Aunay and his wife, Isobel. One or more must have killed Alison but who and why?  

I will not spoil the storyline, save to say that not everything is at it seems. And in the spirit of Holmes, Maigret et al, natural justice rather the strict interpretation of the letters of the law is allowed to prevail. To say that the plot is melodramatic is an understatement, it is almost as if it is a pastiche of all the elements of a good horror story rolled into one. There is something of Edgar Allan Poe about it. Despite his flowery prose, Carr does succeed in conveying the atmosphere engendered by the castle and the tension and atmosphere does build up to a fitting crescendo as the tale progresses.

Marle makes for an effective narrator and his portrayals of the various characters add to the reader’s understanding. But he doesn’t aid the reader in terms of the unravelling of the crime and, frankly, I was a little taken aback by the denouement. I didn’t feel hard done by but there were too many rabbits being pulled out of hats for my liking.

It made for an entertaining, undemanding read. There is much worse rubbish on the television, after all.

Statue Of The Week (3)

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If the hallmark of a great statue is its verisimilitude, then Timothy Schmalz has hit the jackpot. He created a sculpture of a man wrapped in a blanket lying on a bench. It is on temporary display until December 1st outside St Barnabas Episcopal Church in Bay Village in Ohio.

Within twenty minutes of the piece being installed, the local police department had received a call from a person reporting a vagrant taking a nap outside the church.

The pastor, Alex Martin, said that he hoped that the resident had made the phone call “out of a place of love and compassion for a fellow human being” rather than out of annoyance. Who knows?

The piece is supposed to remind residents how serious homelessness is. That may have backfired.

And the person depicted? According to Schmalz, it is Jesus.

The Lost Game Of Piladex

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Fashions in games wax and wane and, frankly, with the benefit of hindsight, you wonder what all the fuss was about. A classic example is Piladex which was as much a household name in its heyday, the 1890s and the early 20th century, as Scrabble is today. It even benefited from royal patronage, Princess, later to become Queen, Alexandra bought it for her household in 1898.

Retailing at just one shilling, Piladex came in a red box with an illustration of people of all ages enjoying what it had to offer. The lid announced that it was “a new game for winter or summer” and assured any would-be purchaser that it was “amusing” and “exciting”. It could even be played indoors or outside. So, what was it all about?

The clue was given in the game’s subtitle – Hand Ball. Although the box was accompanied by a set of rules which filled two columns of tightly packed print, it was simplicity itself and therein probably lay some of its charm. As few as two could play, but there was no upper restriction. To ensure fairness, it was probably advisable to have an even number of players in each team.

Members of one team would stand opposite their opponents, the two sets of foes divided by a net, in reality a piece of string strung tightly across two sticks, which was placed in the middle of a table or on a lawn. The Piladex, which had to be inflated, was little more than a balloon, banana shaped, and the object of the exercise was to hit the balloon over the net in such a way as to force your opponents to either miss it or in returning it, fail to clear the net. The first team to force their opponents to fail to clear the net ten times were the winners. In essence, it was an early form of volleyball or table tennis.

Participants were promised “the jolliest fun” as doubtless it did. What probably cemented its appeal to Victorians was that it was a boisterous, energetic game which both sexes could play, and was not restricted to any particular age group. For those with an amorous eye there was even the possibility of coming into physical contact with your heart throb, accidentally, of course.

The game was the brainchild of Harry Owen Roberts, who wanted something that would burn up some energy amongst the youngsters at a club he attended at a Gloucester church. It proved popular and Roberts, encouraged, patented it in 1890 and started to sell it via mail order, making the sets on his kitchen table with his brother. Piladex caught the attention of Thomas Ordish of London, who offered to wholesale the game for him. The rub was that Harry and his brother, John, still had to make the games. There was nothing for it but to create their own company, Glevum Games, which they did in 1894 and it went on to employ 700 people in their hometown of Gloucester.

Despite having a patent on the game, Harry found that an American manufacturer was selling his game as Pillow Dex and doing rather nicely out of it. Harry never saw a penny from the American sales but his invention enabled him to extend the range of games his company manufactured. Eventually, though, Piladex’s bubble burst and the game sank into obscurity. Glevum Games was eventually sold in 1954 to Chad Valley Toys and the factory closed for good in 1956.

What a shame.   

Curse Of The Week

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Fans of classic detective fiction will know that the likes of Sherlock Holmes, Maigret and Father Brown regularly leave the culprits whose dastardly deeds they have covered to suffer the consequences of natural justice rather than throw them into the strong arms of the law. The weight of a guilty conscience can be more unbearable than a slap on the wrist or a stretch inside.

A Canadian woman, back in 2005, decided to help herself to some souvenirs from Pompeii that are not available in tourist shops, namely two white mosaic tiles, two pieces of an amphora and a piece of ceramic. It may have seemed a good if irresponsible wheeze at the time, but the woman, who goes by the name of Nicole, has had fifteen years to rue her spot of opportunism.

Since her trip to Pompeii, Nicole has been dogged by bad luck, suffering a double mastectomy after two separate diagnoses of breast cancer and financial difficulties. After some reflection, Nicole has put her run of bad luck to a curse that has followed her since her bout of Pompeian larceny.

In a desperate attempt to break the spell, she has sent the objects packing back to the Archaeological Park of Pompeii with a letter of profuse apology.

I wonder if it will do the trick.

Sweet Of The Week

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I never got on with liquorice as a child. Perhaps it was as well, f this story from the New England Journal of Medicine is anything to go by.

A 54-year-old construction worker from Massachusetts was so enamoured with black liquorice that he would at least a bag of the stuff each day. Unfortunately, while he was having his lunch, in a fast-food outlet natch, he collapsed and eventually died in hospital.

The cause of death, specialists concluded, was down to the presence of the compound glycyrrhizin in the sweet which causes potassium levels to plummet, lead to abnormal heart rhythms, high blood pressure, and congestive heart failure. Even eating as little as two ounces of black liquorice a day for at least two weeks, if you are over 40-years of age, can leave you with irregular rhythms or arrythmia.

The man had recently switched from red to black liquorice, the former being less injurious to your health.

A warning to us all.

Cantering Through Cant (4)

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The judicial system in the 18th century was not as strait-laced as it is today. Francis Grose, in his A Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue (1785) reveals this curious little insight into life at the King’s Bench. The brace tavern, he defines, as “a room in the South East corner of the King’s Bench, where for the convenience of prisoners residing thereabouts, beer purchased at the tap-house was retailed at a halfpenny per pot advance. It was kept by two brothers of the name Partridge, and thence called the Brace”.

Grose provides a synonym for freckles, bran-faced. He notes “he was christened by a baker, he carries the bran in his face”. Brandy-faced, though, is “red-faced, as if from drinking brandy”.

Gin O’Clock (110)

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Do you like lemon? Until the ginaissance got fully underway, a slice of lemon was the most popular form of garnish to dress a gin and tonic with. Nowadays, if you order a “fancy” G&T in a bar, it is likely to be presented to you with a wider range of garnish, especially co-ordinated, at least so they say, to compliment the flavours of the gin of you choice. Call me a philistine, but it is an unnecessary addition to the drink and can distract from the underlying taste of the gin. I prefer mine just with a decent tonic and a bit of ice, not too much as that dilutes the gin too.

If you are looking for a hit of lemon in your gin without having to go to the trouble of slicing the fruit up, then Malfy Gin con limone may just be right up your strada. The clue, of course, is in the name. Welcome to lemon overload. I have reviewed their grapefruit offering already but the lemon gin is the original and, still, the Vergnano family’s signature offering. The use two types of lemon, Sicilian and ones grown on the Amalfi Coast. The latter are renowned for their aromatic qualities and have more oil glands than other varieties. To reduce the high oil content in the spirit and to eliminate the possibility of louching, after distillation the spirit is chill filtered.

Malfy continue the local theme with a base spirit made from Italian wheat and junipers grown in Tuscany. Grapefruit and orange are also included in the mix. Distilled at Torino Distillati distillery it has an ABV of 41%, strong enough to make its presence known but not too strong that it spoils an evening’s drinking.

The bottle is striking in an understated sort of way. With a squat and cylindrical body leading to a short neck and a wide wooden top with a pale blue artificial stopper, it uses the circular shape of lemons to good effect in its design. The labelling is a mix of lemon yellow for the edging and the name of the gin with a vibrantly pale blue background. The colour combination is aesthetically pleasing. At the rear of the bottle there is a description of the product in white, but the typeface is too small for my rheumy eyes to decipher with ease. Alas, other than lemon there is no indication what has gone into the mix.

So, what is it like?

On removing the stopper, the sensation was overwhelmingly one of lemon, but more subtler aromas started to make their presence known, a more bitter orangey smell and just a hint of the juniper. In the mouth the crystal-clear spirit was incredibly lemony, a crispy, zesty sensation as though the rind had been freshly squeezed just for your drink. The lemon, though, does not get it all its own way. There are hints of juniper and liquorice to give it a more rounded gin taste and while the aftertaste is predominantly one of lemon, there is detectable some elements of spice and pepper.

It can only be described as a heavily lemon-led gin, but, interestingly, once I moved from tasting it neat to adding a tonic, the lemon dial seemed to go down a notch or two and the other elements were given more room to breathe. It made for a refreshing and interesting drink, a contemporary, flavoured gin that, if you like lemon, will be hard to top. Perhaps it is the quintessential summer gin.

Until the next time, cheers!

Book Corner – October 2020 (2)

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The Painted Veil – W. Somerset Maugham

It just shows how far Somerset Maugham has slipped from public consciousness that in the discussion about plague literature that this year’s Covid-19 pandemic sparked off, The Painted Veil received nary a mention. Published in book form in 1925 after being serialised in America in Cosmopolitan and in Britain in Nash’s Magazine, it is set, in part, in a Chinese colony stricken by cholera.

As a book it had a bit of a troubled start. The two protagonists are named Lane but their surname was changed to Fane when a Hong Kong-based couple named Lane successfully sued the publishers to the tune of £250. The colony was originally Hong Kong but had to be changed to the fictional Tching-Yen after an Assistant Colonial Secretary by the name of A G M Fletcher threatened legal action. You can see his point as the Assistant Colonial Secretary in the story, Charles Townsend, acts like a cad. Over the years the surname Lane has survived the course, but later editions of the book reverted to Hong Kong, as indeed my edition did.

The novel’s title comes from the opening line of a sonnet by Shelley, “lift not the painted veil which those who live/ call life” and is apposite. It is a tale of love, betrayal, revenge and, ultimately, redemption – all human life is contained within its pages. None of the characters are particularly likeable, they are all deeply flawed, but a book populated with anti-heroes is none the worse for that.

Kitty is a flighty young lady, who, at the age of 25, is in danger of being left on the shelf. She feels her looks are going and, influenced by her younger sister’s betrothal, accepts the rather odd proposal from the rather aloof Walter Fane, a bacteriologist who works in Hong Kong. The proposal gives a sense of the way the relationship is likely to go; “Kitty – I think I like you very much. You must give me time to get used to you. Walter – then it’s yes? Kitty – I suppose so”.

Kitty realises that she does not and cannot ever love Walter and with time on her hands stuck out in Hong Kong has an affair with the married and dashing Charles Townsend. Walter was under no misapprehension that his wife loved him, but he expected her to be loyal or, at least, not to deceive him. As he says himself, “I never expected you to love me, I didn’t see any reason that you should, I never thought myself very loveable. … What most husbands expected as a right I was prepared to receive as a favour”.

It was this deception that hurt him and when Walter found out he gives her an ultimatum, either Charles has to divorce and marry her tout suite or she has to accompany Walter to the cholera-infested Tching-Yen, almost certainly a death sentence. Walter knows what kind of man Charles is and when her beau betrays her, Kitty feels she has no alternative but to accompany her husband.

Certain that Walter is using the cholera outbreak as a way of killing her, Kitty leads a listless sort of existence until she visits and works in a convent and finds a path, of sorts, to a form of redemption. Tragedy strikes, but not perhaps the one that the reader expected, enabling Kitty to find peace.

The writing, as you come to expect from Maugham, is beautiful with exquisitely formed phrases and sharply observed characterisation. The narrative is written from Kitty’s perspective and Maugham gets under her skin and feels her soul, making her into a more sympathetic character. Walter’s character, too, is finely drawn and it is possible to feel some sympathy for someone who is the archetypical cold fish.

If you haven’t had enough of plagues by now, this book is well worth a read.

Onion Of The Week

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You wouldn’t know it but social media giant, Facebook, is getting a little picky about images that are posted on their site.

The Gaze Seed Company from St John’s in Newfoundland posted an advert on Facebook featuring an alluring picture of some whole onions piled up in a wicker basket with a few sliced onions in the foreground to promote their offering of Walla Walla sweet onion seeds.

Something about the image caught the attention of the censorship department of Facebook and the manager of Gaze Seeds, Jackson McLean, was sent a note declining the advert on the grounds that they were “overtly sexual”.

After an appeal the ban was overturned, but clearly a rogue algorithm doesn’t know its Walla Wallas from its willies.