Martin Fone's Blog, page 195
May 9, 2020
Covid-19 Tales (4)
Swedish authorities have apparently adopted a lighter touch to physical distancing than some other countries but even they have had to draw the line on plans to celebrate the annual spring festival, Valborg, in Lund. Up to 30,000 normally attend, mostly youngsters.
To get the message across, officials have spread a tonne of chicken manure over the turf in the Stadspark.
Looking on the bright side, the grass should be wonderful this summer.
May 8, 2020
What Is The Origin Of (281)?…
Ultracrepidarian
One of the many problems with social media is that it gives people a platform to spout forth on matters that they know nothing or very little about. Some might argue that this is the perfect qualification to be a modern-day politician. I get increasingly tired of bumping into these people when I trawl through those sites I grace with my attention. Now that the character limit has been doubled on Twitter, I am almost tempted to respond to them by calling them ultracrepidarian. Adjectivally, the word means expressing opinions outside of the scope of their knowledge or expertise and, naturally, as a noun it means someone who does this.
In his Naturalis Historia, Pliny the Elder tells the story of the painter, Apelles. Once he had completed a painting, Apelles would put it on public display and listen to the comments that the onlookers made. On one occasion a shoemaker found fault with Apelles’ representation of a sandal, there being, in his opinion, one loop less than there should have been. His critic then went further, criticising the representation of the subject’s leg. Apelles saw red and, according to Pliny, cried out, “ne supra crepidam sutor iudicaret”, which can be translated as a cobbler shouldn’t judge beyond his shoe.
A variant of Pliny’s phrase was “ne sutor ultra crepidam”, abbreviated down to ultra crepidam, ultra meaning beyond and crepida, crepidam being its accusative form, a sandal, consisting principally of a sole with straps. It was from this formulation that the term ultracrepidarian was developed and credit for that, if credit is due, goes to the essayist, William Hazlitt.
The object of Hazlitt’s wrath was William Gifford who edited The Quarterly Review from 1809 until 1825, a literary and political review which lasted until 1967. One of its early contributors was Sir Walter Scott. Hazlitt wrote for its rival publication, The Edinburgh Review. Trouble brewed in 1819 when The Quarterly Review published a review of Hazlitt’s published lectures in which he was condemned as ignorant and his writing as unintelligible. In response, Hazlitt published a pamphlet entitled A Letter to William Gifford Esq.
In what has been called “one of the finest works of invective in the language” and what was an apologia for his life and work, Hazlitt let rip. “Like a conceited mechanic in a village ale-house, you would set down every one who differs from you as an ignorant blockhead; and very fairly infer that any one who is beneath yourself must be nothing. You have been well called an Ultra-Crepidarian critic”. The coining of the word was a mot juste, his readers almost certainly realising that Gifford, of lowly birth, had once been apprenticed to a shoemaker. There was a certain class to invective in those days.
The attack shook Hazlitt and from thenceforth he found it difficult to get his works published and struggled financially. His animus towards Gifford’s organ persisted, writing in The Spirit of the Age in 1825 about the Quarterly Review; “There we meet the slime of hypocrisy, the varnish of courts, the cant of pedantry, the cobwebs of the law, the iron hand of power. Its object is as mischievous as the means by which it is pursued are odious”.
One of Hazlitt’s legacies to us is this wonderful word, which should be washed down with some bleach and rescued from obscurity.
May 6, 2020
Book Corner – May 2020 (1)
Providence Lost – Paul Lay
I’m often told that what can often make or break a work of nonfiction is the timing of its publication and its resonance with the zeitgeist. Is there a contemporary hook that the marketing arm of the publishing house can play on? If that really is the case, then the timing of Paul Lay’s exemplary investigation into Cromwell’s Commonwealth may be apposite. After all, the troubles that have recently beset the House of Windsor have led some to wonder what life would be like without a monarchy and the long Brexit saga shows what can happen when what, to some, might have seemed a spiffing idea is poorly thought out.
Some of the answers, perhaps, can be found in Lay’s narrative. When I was at school, the period between the execution of Charles I and the restoration of his son eleven years later was treated as an unfortunate episode, one to be rushed over quickly, when Puritanism ruled the roost and all forms of fun were outlawed. Lay’s excellent and thought-provoking book suggests that the reality was a bit more nuanced than that.
England was a hotbed of ideas, innovation and mercantile expansion. Cromwell was on a roll, his seemingly unstoppable wave of success down to God’s will or as the Puritans termed it at the time, providence. Providence was also an island in the Caribbean on which idealistic Puritans tried to settle in 1629 but ultimately failed in their goal to establish a viable colony there because of their unwillingness to trade with the Papist Spanish. That certainty in their beliefs and unwillingness to compromise ultimately proved fatal flaws in the Puritan make up.
Cromwell’s annus horribilis was 1655. Fired with the desire to do God’s will and relying on unduly optimistic reports of the wealth to be found in the Caribbean, Cromwell was persuaded to launch an expedition against Hispaniola. It proved a disaster, although they did capture Jamaica which was viewed at the time as not worth the effort. The consequence of the failure was that it dealt Cromwell a telling psychological blow. For the first time, he began to doubt whether God was on his side.
1655 also saw Cromwell suppress an ineffective Royalist rebellion and, spurred on by John Lambert, he decided to clamp down on security and sin in an attempt to incur God’s favour once more. The country was split up into military districts and war was declared on fornication, drunkenness, and gambling, with predictable results. Initially, the Major Generals went about their task with gusto, Worsley, whose fervour led him to an early grave, closing down 200 unlicensed alehouses in the small Lancashire town of Altham within the space of three months. Naturally, the locals were pissed, in the American sense, and the wave of antagonism that the clampdown provoked saw the end of the experiment and, as Lay points out, the experiment of military rule has not been repeated, so far, at least, since.
The elephant in the room, though, was what was going to happen when Cromwell died. It is all very well abolishing the monarchy but what was it to be replaced with? Was Cromwell going to accept the title of King? Was the Protectorate going to be hereditary? If not, who was his successor to be? Cromwell, seemingly, evaded making a definitive decision and when he did fall of this mortal coil, his eldest son, Richard, totally unsuited for the role, assumed the Protectorate. At least he had the good sense to realise he wasn’t up to the job, relinquishing the post in May 1659, but by then the fissure between the military and the parliamentarians was so wide that it was relatively easy for the Royalists to effect a return and restore the monarchy.
In this fascinating book, Lay points out that Cromwell was not as grim as he was painted. He liked music, dance and surrounded himself with lascivious works of art. My main take from this book is that if you are going to make a significant change to the polity and constitution of a country, you need a watertight plan for delivering an alternative. A salutary lesson but one that has come rather too late for us in the 21st century.
May 5, 2020
Covid-19 Good News Story Of The Week (4)
A Swedish couple have come up with an innovative idea that may reveal the future of dining in a post Covid-19 world.
Linda Karlsson and Rasmus Persson are opening next Sunday, May 10th, a one-table, one-person restaurant, Bord főr En, in the middle of a field in the county of Värmland. The menu will consist of three courses of vegetarian fare, a Swedish-style hash brown as a starter, sweet corn croquettes and serpent root ash as a main and a blueberry, iced buttermilk and viola sugar concoction as a dessert, all washed down with a carefully selected range of drinks, non-alcoholic, of course.
There will be no table service and your food will be delivered to you by a basket attached to a rope running from their kitchen window. There will be no social interaction, the guest, who can choose whether to dine in the morning or for lunch or dinner, will be given instructions on how to proceed from the local bus stop. Despite there only being one diner a day, the couple will wait six hours before sanitising the furniture and all the dishes will be washed twice.
And the cost of this experience? Whatever you can afford, the couple say. They are not in it to make any money, just to provide the ideal dining experience without distraction, just you and your food.
I wish them well. It is just a pity there is no meat.
May 4, 2020
You’re Having A Laugh – Part Forty
Jacques Benoit and the snail telegraph, 1851
You’ve heard of snail mail, but what about snail telegraphy? This was the brainwave of Frenchman, Jacques Benoit, an amateur occultist and mesmerist. In 1850 the new electric telegraph seemed to be ushering in a new dawn for communications, but the newly laid cross-Channel line was blighted with problems. The wire casings soon decomposed in water and the salt rendered the all-important wires unusable. Something better was needed.
Benoit was fascinated by something called sympathetic communication, where two organisms with a common bond could communicate with each other, irrespective of distance. He had discovered, or at least so he claimed, that when snails touched each other and then were separated, they developed a telepathic bond such that when one was stimulated, the other responded. Snails, he decided, were going to be the cutting edge of international communications.
There was one little problem, Benoit hadn’t got two centimes to rub together. Fortunately, he bumped into the manager of a Parisian gymnasium, Monsieur Triat, who was enthused by Benoit’s tale, particularly when he revealed that he had been collaborating with a Monsieur Biat-Chretien, based in the States, communicating by snail telegraph, of course. Triat agreed to fund Benoit’s work on perfecting the telegraph, providing him with an apartment and an allowance. Benoit set to work but after a while he seemed distracted and Triat got the distinct impression that his money was funding the inventor’s lifestyle rather than the telegraph. Not surprisingly, after a year or so he demanded to see the machine.
On October 2, 1851 Benoit invited Triat and a journalist, Allix from La Presse, to the grand unveiling of what was called the pasilalinic-sympathetic compass. From a large wooden frame was suspended a large disc with twenty-four holes, each containing a zinc dish lined with a cloth soaked in a copper sulphate solution. Each dish was allocated a letter of the alphabet and inside, glued into place, was a live snail. At the other end of the room was a similar contraption and to transmit a message, the operator would tap the shell of the snail representing the requisite letter and its colleague, sitting in the other compass, would, by sympathetic reaction, react, enabling the recipient of the message to deduce the letter. It would have been a slow process, but we are talking about snails.
The guests immediately objected to the fact that the instruments were in the same room, but Benoit brushed aside their objections, setting their minds at rest that this was how he communicated with his associate in the States. Benoit was positioned at the receiving station but every now and again felt it necessary, on some flimsy pretext or other, to see what Triat was doing. At this point the centime dropped and Triat realised that he had been the victim of a hoax and he demanded a second trial in conditions over which he had complete control. Benoit had no option but to agree.
Allix, though, whether he was part of the plot or not is unclear, wrote a glowing review which appeared in Le Presse on October 27th. “Snails which have once been put in contact, are always in sympathetic communication. When separated, there disengages itself from them a species of fluid of which the earth is the conductor, which develops and unrolls, so to speak, like the almost invisible thread of the spider, [but] the thread of the escargotic fluid is invisible as completely and the pulsation along it as rapid as the electric fluid”.
When the day for the second trial dawned, Benoit was nowhere to be seen. A few months later he was seen wandering around Paris, destitute and deranged, dying two years later. With him went the dream of snail telegraphy, too.
[image error]
If you enjoyed this, check out Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
May 3, 2020
Bet Of The Week
Unfortunately, my post on how to win at spoof, aka paper, scissors, stone, a few years ago came too late to help Canadian, Edmund Hooper. Usually the game is played to determine who is going to pick up the restaurant or bar bill, enough to put a sizeable hole in your personal finances but one that pales into insignificance in comparison with Hooper’s wager.
He lost a best-of-three game to Michel Primeau in Quebec in January 2011. The amount at stake was a whopping $517,000, which meant Hooper had to remortgage his home and, doubtless, have a tricky conversation or two with his family.
Deciding to have one more spin of the wheel, Hooper decided to challenge the legality of his wager in the courts. Under Quebec law, any bet has to be based on an activity “requiring only skill or bodily exertion on the part of the parties” and not simple chance and it cannot be for an excessive amount.
The judge in the court of first instance held in 2017, Chantal Chatelain, ruled that the game of spoof could “in certain precise circumstances, call upon the skill of the parties, particularly in the speed of execution, the sense of observation or the putting in place of a strategic sequence” but that the sum wagered was too excessive.
The case has just gone before the Court of Appeal which has upheld Chatelain’s decision. At least that bet paid off!
May 2, 2020
House Of The Week
With the nation busily clearing out clutter from their rooms and lofts, we will all be living a minimalist lifestyle for years to come.
If you are thinking of downsizing, as you do not need now to accommodate your stock of a lifetime’s worth of accumulated impedimenta, or you are thinking of taking your first tentative step on to the ploperty ladder, a German company, KOOP, have come up with an affordable, if compact, solution to the affordable housing.
Priced at £40,000, meaning that you don’t have to be flushed with cash, and boasting a footprint of between 60 and 75 square metres, into which are fitted a bedroom, bathroom and kitchen-cum-diner, it is coated externally with Kebony, a softwood treated to give it the properties of a tropical hardwood. This means that it is basically maintenance-free and can cope with whatever the climate chooses to throw at it. It’s also mobile so you can move it wherever you want or use it as a holiday home.
The treatment of Kebony involves heating it with furfuryl alcohol, an agricultural by-product of processing waste biomass, principally animal dung.
Not a dump then nor something to be sniffed at.
May 1, 2020
What Is The Origin Of (280)?…
According to government statistics, the cut flower and ornamental plant market was worth £1.3 billion in the UK alone in 2018, with around 90% of the blooms being imported, mainly from the Netherlands. I tend to make my choice of flowers around colour, availability and price, giving little thought to the message that my choice of bloom may be conveying. For the Victorians, though, a bunch of flowers was more than something decorative; it was a statement of mood and intention, almost the equivalent of the modern emoji.
Our story begins with the colourful and intrepid wife of the English ambassador to Constantinople, Lady Mary Wortley Montagu. A prolific letter writer, Montagu wrote about her experiences in the Ottoman capital in 1717 and 1718, describing in great detail how the women incarcerated in the Sultan’s harem communicated with the outside world through flowers as a form of code, selam as it was known in Turkish. Her accounts of the exotic world of the Ottoman court found a ready audience in England when they were published and the idea of using flowers as a form of clandestine billet-doux took root.
It wasn’t until the 19th century, though, that the hidden messages conveyed by flowers were consolidated into encyclopaedic form, one of the earliest, Le langage des Fleurs, compiled by Louise Cortambert under her nom de plume of Madame Charlotte de la Tour, appearing in 1819. A best seller and highly influential both in Europe and America, it spawned a cottage industry of its own. Between 1828 and 1923, there were more than 98 different flower dictionaries published in the United States and the pages of august journals such as Harper’s and The Atlantic regularly included articles on the particular meanings associated with certain flowers.
Not to be outdone, in Britain our particular home-grown favourites were Flower Lore: The Teachings of Flowers, Historical, Legendary, Poetical and Symbolic, penned by a Miss Carruthers from Inverness and seeing the light of day in 1879 and The Language of Flowers, a beautifully illustrated volume produced by Kate Greenaway in 1884 and still in print. So ingrained was the symbolism of flowers into the psyche of the 19th century mind that writers such as Jane Austen and Charlotte Bronte and artists like Dante Gabriel Rossetti took it as read that their audience could detect the subtle nuances of the messages conveyed by their choice of flowers in the scenes they were painting.
Coded messages were particularly important in courtship. Conventions at the time made it very difficult for a couple to find precious moments alone. A chap would give his beloved a nosegay or posy assembled from a carefully chosen selection of flowers and herbs, usually to convey a specific message.
Naturally, it was important to get the combination just right. Bluebells were associated with kindness, peonies bashfulness, rosemary with remembrance, and tulips passion. Roses, poppies, and lilies could convey a wide range of passions based on the colour selected. A mix of geraniums conveyed an anxious enquiry as to whether the recipient was going to attend the next dance. If it prompted a spray of mixed carnations in response, it meant she wasn’t.
To compliment someone on their wit and send good wishes, an arrangement of lupins, hollyhocks, white heather, and ragged robin was just the thing. Beware delphiniums, though, they convey the sense of haughtiness, and hydrangea, heartlessness, and basil which was associated with hate. When all has gone wrong, a mix of oleander and birdsfoot trefoil might be just the ticket – beware my revenge.
The undeniable conclusion from all this is that the arrival of a bunch of flowers provoked a different reaction in the 19th century from today. Instead of looking frantically for a vase to put the things in, the Victorian would calmly sit down and thumb their flower dictionary, looking for a coded message within the blooms. It also meant that they had to be razor-sharp at identifying the types of flowers. It was a good job that botany was a popular subject at the time.
In 1910, fifteen American florists agreed to exchange orders by telegraph, forming the Florists’ Delivery Association (FDA). Flowers could be ordered in one town and be delivered on the other side of the country from local stock, thus ensuring that they were as fresh as a daisy. A note with the sender’s message was attached to the bouquet. The idea took off and other such ventures were formed, including here in Britain. Glaswegian Joe Dobson and Carl Englemann from Saffron Walden applied in 1920 to become foreign members of the FDA and a network of seventeen florists using telegraphs was established three years later and would ultimately morph into Interflora.
And the slogan, say it with flowers? This is attributed to Major Patrick O’Keefe, an advertising man from Boston, who, with Henry Penn, were knocking ideas around for a strap line for the Society of American Florists. Penn is supposed to have observed, “there is nothing that you can’t say with flowers – when you send flowers, it says everything”. O’Keefe cried, “that’s it”, and the rest is history. The slogan was never copyrighted and was widely used, a nod to the lost world of floriography.
April 30, 2020
Gin O’Clock – Part Ninety Eight
The ginaissance knows no international boundaries and one of the pleasures to be derived from sampling gin is to find ones that come from distant parts of the globe. This is a case in point with this week’s featured gin, Scapegrace Premium Dry Gin, which hails from New Zealand. It is made by the Rogue Society Distilling Company who are based in Canterbury, a company founded in 2014 by Mark Neal, Richard Bourke and Daniel McLaughlin. It soon became New Zealand’s top-selling premium gin, scooping up a few prizes along the way.
Plans to distribute their product internationally, and specifically with in the European Union, have not been plain sailing as they ran into trademark issues. A US brewer by the name of Rogue Brewers had got in there first and as trademark rules prohibit two products in the same category from having similar names, the Kiwi Rogues had no option but to change name. It is now known as Scapegrace by Rogue Distilling Co throughout the world, the trio taking the bold step of using an internationally accepted name in their established home market. Scapegrace, apparently, is 18th century slang for a rogue so the connection is not lost. You can improve your knowledge by drinking!
The bottle itself is stunning, taking its shape, solid, squat, square, from the old genever bottles. The glass is black with Rogue Society Premium Dry Gin embossed on both sides. The front has a big, round metal plate just below the neck and the back has the logo and some information about the gin, but alas, not the botanicals, in white lettering, in keeping with its Kiwi origin. The stopper is artificial, black in colour externally and internally.
In truth, it is not difficult to get hold of the botanicals in the mix, twelve in all, “nature’s wild apostles”, according to the bottle – juniper, orange peel, lemon peel, coriander seeds, cardamom pods, nutmeg, cloves, angelica root, liquorice root, orris root, cassia bark, and cinnamon sticks. The base spirit is a neutral grain and, the bottle tells me, the distillation takes place in “a whiskey still, 19th century, stumbled upon in a long abandoned shed”. What’s a missing hyphen between friends? The verbiage on the label gets almost poetic when it describes the water that goes in to the distillation process – “torn from the earth 80 years after it was hurled down on New Zealand’s Southern Alps” – seeping through sediment until finding its escapes into one of the world’s last natural aquifers.
On removing the stopper, I was relieved to be greeted by the unmistakable, but slightly subdued, aroma of juniper together with hints of citrus and spice. It was a nicely balanced aroma, not overpowered by the juniper but giving the hope that the principal constituent of a gin would have a significant part to play in the taste. In the mouth, this crystal-clear spirit is initially a tad disappointing. I was expecting an immediate hit of juniper, but it is more subtle than that, playing with us by presenting us with an opening burst of citrus and pepper, beautifully balanced. Now the juniper bursts on to the scene which, in combination with the spices, gives the spirit a warm, earthy feel to it before finishing off with a hint of liquorice and a warming sensation which lasts through to the aftertaste. Again, the aftertaste is not overstated, there long enough for you to take notice but not something which lingers with you for ages. To my mind it symbolises the spirit, well-balanced, smooth, but not over-powering.
Its almost shy, almost flirtatious, disposition poses a challenge for those who like a tonic to accompany their gin. So complex and delicate is the combination of botanicals that the introduction of a mixer which enters the scene with its hobnail boots on could ruin it. I don’t often drink my gins neat, but I found with this one that was the way to preserve and appreciate its subtle flavourings.
With an ABV of 42.2% it is an interesting twist on a juniper-led gin and made for a welcome change.
Until the next time, cheers!
April 29, 2020
Book Corner – April 2020 (5)
The Dead Shall Be Raised – George Bellairs
George Bellairs worked in a bank. To relieve the monotony, he wrote when he could and became a prolific, if somewhat underrated, producer of novels and short stories, often featuring his detective creation, Inspector Littlejohn of the Yard. Having only sampled his short stories, courtesy of Martin Edwards’ anthologies of crime stories from the so-called Golden Age, which I enjoyed, I was encouraged to sample one of his novels. The Dead Shall Be Raised was published in 1942, also going by the title of Murder Will Speak.
The first two chapters give us an insight into Bellairs’ style. The first is an atmospheric and slightly comic account of Littlejohn’s train journey in black-out England on Christmas Eve 1940 to the small Pennine town of Hatterworth where his wife is recuperating after their London home suffered a direct hit from a German bomber. The second features a description of a performance of Handel’s Messiah on Christmas Day evening, no slumping in front of the TV watching Strictly and Call the Midwife for them. Handel’s work gives the book its title. The humour is in Bellairs’ eye for detail, in his descriptions of his characters, the clothes they wear, the furniture they surround themselves with and comic juxtapositions, the local magistrate, arriving late for the performance, finds that he has to sit next to two of his regular clients, two incorrigible poachers.
The performance is interrupted by news that the Home Guard, whilst digging trenches on the moor, have unearthed a body, that of Enoch Sykes, popularly thought to have murdered his rival in love, Jeremy Trickett, and scarpered. Obviously, this could not now have been the case and the police, in New Tricks style, decide to reopen the case. Littlejohn is drafted in to help, not least because Superintendent Haworth has (conveniently) sprained his ankle. Any thoughts that Littlejohn had of a quiet Christmas disappear, but he doesn’t put up too much of a struggle about getting involved.
The plot is fairly straightforward, the investigation proceeds through the questioning, in a polite and gentlemanly way, of those still alive who had anything to do with the circumstances leading up to the deaths of Sykes and Trickett, and frankly it doesn’t take much effort to work out whodunnit. But to characterise it as a rather lightweight entertainment doesn’t do the book justice. It is laced with humour and full of insights into the human character.
It also showcases Littlejohn’s methods of detection. He is observant, knowledgeable of human nature and propensities to commit crime. He is rather like Simenon’s Maigret in that respect. Some of his methods wouldn’t pass muster these days but he nails the case with some ease. The trail towards what really happened on the moors of Hatterworth leads to three more deaths. What justice is natural rather than judicial.
I couldn’t help thinking that the moors around which the story is set were the scene of a real-life body search a couple of decades later, when the police were investigating the crimes of Myra Hyndley and Ian Brady, a case of real life imitating art. For those of a sensitive disposition, the novel is very politically incorrect, full of sexism and the odd racist remark. If you can get through that, you will have a pleasant, entertaining read on your hands.
I shall read and review Murder of a Quack, which is the second novel in the volume, another time.
