Martin Fone's Blog, page 208

Polling Station Of The Week

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Pembrokeshire County Council were struggling for a venue to use as a polling station for the good citizens of Landdewi Velfrey. The village hall was undergoing some repairs and would not be ready to accommodate the stream of upwards of two hundred voters keen to make their mark in the unseasonal 2019 General Election.

After some due deliberation, Council officials decided that the restaurant area in the local chippy, The Hank Marvin, named after the rhyming slang for starving and standing alongside the A40, would serve the cod-stituents very well.

Although the venue was open at 7am, early voters were not able to get a bag of chips as a reward. Joint owner, Duane Philpin, refused to change his opening hours, insisting that midday was early enough to light the fryer.

As the incumbent MP held his seat, the voters of Llanddewi Velfrey were unable to add cooking oil to the troubled waters of British politics.

The Streets Of London – Part Ninety Nine

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St Andrew Street, EC1

St Andrew Street is the south-eastern spur of Holborn Circus
and leads at its southern end into Shoe Lane. Between St Andrew Street and the
eastern spur of the Circus, which is the continuation of Holborn, is to be
found the largest of the parish churches designed by Christopher Wren, St
Andrew’s Holborn.

Quite when there was first a church on the site is lost in
the mists of time but there is a mention of an “old wooden church” in
the records of Westminster Abbey, dating to 951 CE. There are some doubts about
the veracity of the record as it is supposedly signed by King Edgar, who didn’t
ascend to the throne until 959. There may have been a slip of the clerical pen
or it may be a forgery but it is probably safe to assume there was a church
there, and had been so for many a year.

In 1348 an armourer who had made his fortune by the name of
John Thavie bequeathed his estate to the church for “the support of the fabric
forever”. Astonishingly, the proceeds from the fund still pay for the
upkeep of the church almost seven centuries later. During the 15th
century the wooden church was replaced by one built out of stone. In some ways
the church was a lucky one, surviving a lightning strike to the steeple in
1563, and escaping destruction during the Great Fire of 1666 when the wind
suddenly changed direction.

While surveying the devastated city, Wren thought that St
Andrew’s was in such poor condition, even if unscathed, that it needed
rebuilding. He saved the mediaeval tower, refacing it with marble, and rebuilt
the church from its foundations. Externally and internally it is typically
neoclassical in design, a hallmark of Wren’s work, but it is an oddity in that
it is a Wren church whose original had not been consumed by the flames of the
Great Fire. The church was not so lucky during the Second World War, its
interior being extensively damaged during the Blitz. It was restored
painstakingly to Wren’s original design.

In 1826 the surgeon, William Marsden, found a homeless girl
suffering from hypothermia, sitting on the church steps. He tried to get her
admitted to some of the hospitals in the area but she was turned away because
she couldn’t pay for her treatment. The girl died in Marsden’s arms and this
experience encouraged him to found, in 1828, the Free Hospital, whose aim was
to provide free healthcare to those who couldn’t afford it. It gained its Royal
moniker in 1837 in recognition of its work in treating cholera patients.

The registers in the church throw light on attempts to
secularise marriage during Cromwell’s interregnum. One entry reads, “An
agreement and intent of marriage between John Law and Ffrances Riley, both
servants to the Lady Brooke, of this parish, was published three several
markett-days in Newgate Markett”. Under a statute
passed in August 1653, the betrothed couple could chose between having their banns
read in church on three successive Sundays or proclaimed by a bellman in an
open market on three successive market days. Law and Riley clearly chose the
latter method.  

The organ in the church is said to have been played
by Handel and if you step inside, do not miss a pair of blue=clad figures, a
boy and a girl, flanking the entrance to the west tower. These represent pupils
who attended charity shoes, their distinctive uniforms being blue because it
was the cheapest dye. Their stockings were often dyed with saffron because it
was thought it deterred rats from biting them. The statues originally stood
over the entrance to St Andrew’s Parochial School which was founded in 1696 and
moved to Hatton Garden in 1721. The statues were put in the church after it was
restored following its wartime damage.

Accident Of The Week (3)

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I’m not sure that Alvin and the Chipmunks’ seminal 1961 ditty, All I want for Christmas is my two front teeth, will feature on the Christmas playlist of Glaswegian mother of three, Angela McGill, this year.

She was tucking into a mince pie bought from Aldi when she came upon a hard bit. Thinking that it was a piece of pastry she swallowed, only to realise, to her horror, that the lump was a plate to which two of her dentures were attached. By this time, it was half-way down her throat and so she went to her local hospital.

 After an x-ray La McGill was informed that any surgical procedure to extract the dentures would cause more harm than good. She was told to let nature take its course and allow the dentures to pass through her system and flush them down the toilet.

She is now awaiting a new set, which, she hopes, she will have by Christmas.

Let’s hope so!

Art Critic Of The Week (3)

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Our friend Maurizio Cattelan, he of the golden carsey which was half-inched from Blenheim Palace, has been in the news again. One of his latest masterpieces, a banana stuck to a wall with duct tape and entitled Comedian, has been bought by a French collector for a cool $120,000. Some people have more cents than sense.

It was on display at the Art Basel show in Miami Beach when a fellow artist, David Datuna, walked up to it, took it off the wall and took a bite from it. The epitome of an esurient artist, he declared the banana to be “very good”. 

Datuna was whisked away for questioning but the gallery was not too concerned. The value of the piece of work was in the certificate of authenticity and, as you might expect, the banana was meant to be replaced every few days. They do go off, after all.

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I’m not too sure that Datuna will be turning his attention to the winner of this year’s Turnip Prize, a pair of knickers with a burnt hole in the front, entitled, rather wittily I feel, “Bush Fire Down Under”. The prize is awarded to a piece of crap art produced with the least amount of effort possible. Had it had Cattelan’s stamp of authenticity, I’m sure it would have been worth at least $100,000.

Sometimes modern art baffles me.

What Is The Origin Of (261)?…

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According to Cocker

It is rare in my etymological researches to be have nailed
the origin of a phrase but I am pretty confident I have done so with this phrase
I stumbled upon when reading one of R Austin Freeman’s Thorndyke detective
stories, Pontifex, Son and Thorndyke from 1931. It means something that is done
properly and in accordance with established rules and methodologies. But who
was Cocker?

Edward Cocker, that’s who, who lived between 1631-75.,His
Cocker’s Arithmetick, published posthumously in 1677, was to become the bane of
the lives of many a schoolboy (and the odd lass) for centuries to come. So
successful was the book to become that there were 112 editions of it, reaching
its 20th edition by 1700 and its 52nd edition in 1748.
Freeman would almost certainly have sampled its delights as a boy.

The delicious irony, of course, is that Cocker, although a
master at a grammar school in Southwark, was better known for his penmanship
and his mastery of the art of engraving in his time rather than his
mathematical prowess. He appears several times in the diaries of Samuel Pepys,
particularly as the only man the diarist knows who has the skill to engrave
some tables on his new slide rule. On August 10, 1664 the diarist noted, “so
I find out Cocker, the famous writing-master…well pleased with his company and
better with his judgement upon my Rule, I left him and home”.   

We can only deduce that Crocker perfected his skills in
drumming mathematical techniques into the unwilling skulls of his pupils whilst
teaching. Part of his Arithmetick phenomenal success was due to the extremely
practical approach to teaching the subject, concentrating specifically on the
techniques and skills that tradespeople, builders and the like would need to go
about their daily lives. The playwright, Arthur Murphy, gave it an early
namecheck in The Apprentice in 1756 in this exchange between a despairing father,
Wingate, and his reckless son, Dick; “Wingate: Let me see no more
Play-Books. Dick: Cocker’s Arithmetick, Sir? Wingate: Ay, Cocker’s Arithmetick –
study Figures, and they’ll carry you through the World”.  

Well-meaning men would give a copy of the book to children.
Samuel Johnson, whilst visiting the Isle of Skye in September 1773, recorded in
a letter that a little girl he had met “engaged me so much that I made her a
present of Cocker’s Arithmetick”. Her reaction to this gift is unrecorded.
And James Boswell recorded in his Life of Samuel Johnson that the great man,
when asked why he travelled with a copy of Cocker’s, pontificated thus; “when
you have read through a book of entertainment, you know it, and it can do no
more for you; but a book of science is inexhaustible”.      

Inevitably, Cocker’s name, and by inference his methodology,
became the yardstick of mathematical accuracy. The Town and Country Magazine of
March 1785, reporting on a failed attempt to raise the stakes in a card game,
noted that “she never played for above sixpences, and added, that her
husband had calculated, according to Cocker, that an alderman might be ruined
in a month, if his wife cut in for shillings”.  

It was also used in newspaper articles to confirm the
veracity of a calculation. The Morning Post on October 25, 1816 reported that “the
Dividend payable at the Bank upon 23l. 8s. is (according to Cocker) 23s. 22d.
per annum”. By the time of Tom Brown at Oxford, written by Thomas Hughes
and published in 1861, it had become a general bit of slang, used to denote
what should happen; “According to Cocker. Who is Cocker? Oh, I don’t know; some
old fellow who wrote the rules of arithmetic, I believe; it’s only a bit of
slang”. In the negative, as Freeman used it, it meant something was not
quite right; “there was no sign of the driver, and no one minding the horse;
and as this was not quite according to Cocker, it naturally attracted his
attention”.

The phrase has almost disappeared from sight these days. Now
that can’t be according to Cocker.

Gin O’Clock – Part Eighty Seven

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There are more than enough gins produced in this country,
thanks to the ginaissance, to be going on without having to consider ones
produced from farther afield. But I’m not one to shut my eyes to what is on
offer globally, particularly if it fits my taste requirements almost to a tee.
It doesn’t do to be a little Englander.

Always one willing to judge a book by its cover, my eye was
immediately drawn to the wonderfully elegant bottle housing Puerto de Indias
Pure Black Edition Gin. It is tall and black, using brass embossing to fine
effect at the front, representing the Tower of Gold, one of the symbols of the
city of Seville and around which its trading activities were concentrated. The
glass at the rear and below the bottom section of the bottle are embossed
within the glass itself. It is stunningly simple in design but highly effective
and, if nothing else, is a welcome aesthetic addition to my gin shelf. The
labelling is disappointingly uninformative, save for that it is “Sevillian
Premium Gin”.  

The name of Puerto de Indias takes as its reference Seville’s
monopoly status in trading relationships between Spain and its territories in
the Americas, the gateway through which gold, other valuable minerals, and unusual
fruits and vegetables came into Spain and the rest of Europe. The distillery is
located in Carmona and is one of the oldest and most traditional distilleries
in Andalusia.

There are, currently, three gins on the market under the
Puerto de Indias brand, which was launched in the latter months of 2013; the
Black Edition, which we will go into more detail in a minute, a strawberry-flavoured
gin and the Classic, which, at an ABV of 37.5%, promises a more traditional flavour,
whatever that may mean. The Black Edition, the latest of their gins, was launched
in March 2016.         

It takes as its inspiration, so says the inevitable
marketing blurb that seems to go hand-in-glove with gins these days, springtime
in Andalusia. So, we are warned to expect the gentle aromas of orange blossom
and citrus, mingled with strains of jasmine and vanilla. It is supposed to
conjure up a picture of the province at that time of year. However, we are
advised, it is not a flavoured gin and is aimed to appeal to the serious gin
and tonic lover. I tend to take this sort of drivel with a sip of gin.

Astonishingly, they were not wrong. Quite simply, this is
one of the finest gins I have ever tasted and has bulldozed its way into my
favourite handful of gins I have tasted. It is one to be savoured and kept for
those special occasions when you want to rise above the humdrum.

Removing the screwcap, a cork stopper would have really
finished this product off, my nostrils were greeted by the reassuring smell of pine,
courtesy of the juniper, and jasmine but there was also a distinctly floral overtone.
None were so overpowering as to hinder the others from getting a look in. In
the glass the spirit was crystal clear and in the mouth was a perfectly
balanced mix of spiciness, floral notes and citrus from the region’s oranges
and lemons. It made for a very smooth drink with enough astringency in the
aftertaste to remind you that you were drinking not only a gin but a high-class
gin.

It shows that you do not have to have to go too far off the
piste in terms of botanicals to produce a distinctive and thoroughly enjoyable
gin. Often less is more and simplicity is to be preferred over unnecessary
complexity. I’m sold.

Until the next time, cheers!

Book Corner – December 2019 (2)

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While She Sleeps – Ethel Lina White

I am a fan of Ethel Lina’s White’s work but even her most
fervent advocate would be hard pushed to convince me that this novel, published
in 1940, is one of her finest. That said, it has some interesting features and
makes for an engaging and entertaining read. Instead of an atmospheric thriller
which is her normal fare it struck me as light-hearted in tone and a parody of
some of the excesses of the gothic genre.

The protagonist is the rather self-satisfied Miss Loveapple
who prides herself on her good luck and the fact that she owns three properties
in the south of England, including one in Madeira Crescent in London. The book’s
opening sets the scene and informs the reader that she is likely to be
murdered. “Miss Loveapple awoke with a smile. She had slept well; her digestion was
good – her conscience clear; and she had not an enemy in the world. There was
nothing to warn her that, within the next hour she would be selected as a
victim to be murdered”. The tension in the book is whether she survives with her life intact.

It is Loveapple’s decision to let her London house out, she is
obsessively careful with her pennies, leads to her receiving visits from three
men all wearing gloves, her paranoid maid, Elsie, had warned her about men
wearing gloves, and being selected as the victim of a murder which a minor
criminal, nicknamed Ace, intends to use to frame his arch-rival. She goes to
Switzerland on holiday and makes elaborate plans to return to Madeira Place on the
evening of September 13th, the date set for her murder.

During the course of her adventures Loveapple encounters a motley crew
of eccentric characters, not all of whom have her best interests at heart. A
shady couple, who have been tracking her since she left Victoria station,
mistake her for a Lady’s maid and think she is carrying her ladyship’s jewels
plan to rob her. They make several attempts to effect the jewel snatch and
there are moments of comedy as circumstances thwart them more often than not.
Every decision that Loveapple takes during the ill-fated holiday either takes
her closer to her intended fate or thwarts her conspirators.

The plot, such as it, depends on a series of coincidences or chance
turns of events. Although not an engaging character, the reader is taken along with
it all by the power of Lina White’s writing and descriptive talents, she is at
her best when skewering the Brits’ social mores and behaviour when abroad and
describing the stunning scenery in the Swiss Alps, and even the most jaundiced
of her readers could not help wondering whether Loveapple would make it alive
at the end of the story. I will not spoil your anticipation.

A curious feature of the book is that the London elements of the story, it is there where the real danger to Loveapple’s well-being are, only surface intermittently as the story progresses. It almost becomes a sub-plot as Lina White enjoys herself satirising the English en vacances. This makes the book somewhat unbalanced, in my opinion, and makes for a vaguely unsatisfactory ending.      

An enjoyable enough read , to be sure, but if you were thinking of exploring Lina White’s work, this is not the one to start with.

Eco-friendly Christmas Decoration Of The Week

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I’ve been away for three weeks and in that time my neighbours have installed their external Christmas decorations. They seem to get earlier each year. At a time when we are urged to consider our global footprint, it seems rather counter-intuitive to waste so much juice on these extravagant displays.

Perhaps they should take a leaf out of the book of the Tennessee Aquarium in Chattanooga. If you have an electric eel swimming aimlessly around in the aquarium, why not put the energy it generates to some use.

Somewhat ingeniously, Joey Turnipseed, the Aquarium’s audio-visual production specialist, has attached sensors to the tank in which their electric eel, who goes by the name of Miguel Wattson, swims in. They harness its natural electrical discharge to a set of speakers which then use the charge to power a selection of Yuletide ditties and power the flashing set of Christmas lights.

The only draw back is that when the creature is foraging for food, it only emits around 10 volts of electricity and so the lights are somewhat dim. However, there can be a power surge when the eel wants to stun its prey by unleashing 800 volts of electricity.

Still, they are doing their bit for the planet, so more power to their elbow.

You’re Having A Laugh – Part Thirty One

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The Society for Indecency to Naked Animals

Perhaps it is because I am not a pet owner but I am
constantly astonished by how much the British spend on pets. The Pet Food
Manufacturing Association claim, and they should know if anyone does, that
there are nine million dogs and 8 million cats in the country and Mintel
calculated in 2015 that we spend an astonishing £18 billion on our four-footed
friends. Even more baffling to me is that, according to Groomarts, British cat
and dog owners spend almost £200 a year on clothes for their pets and that 22%
of the respondents to their survey admitted to spending up to £20 a month on
outfits. And there was me thinking that nature had provided them with a
perfectly adequate means of protecting them and keeping them warm, their fur.

It is undeniable, though, that when you are out in the
countryside with your family, you may see animals being animals and for those
of a sensitive or prudish disposition, being confronted by a priapic bull in
flagrante delicto is a bit of a shock and takes some explaining to the
children. Wouldn’t it be great if animals were required clothing to hide their
private parts and avoid upsetting those of us of a gentle disposition?

That was the idea behind The Society for Indecency to Naked
Animals (SINA), rather inaptly named as what they were trying to do was to
stamp out what they perceived to be the affront to common decency of animals going
around as nature intended them. Their mission was to clothe all animals
standing over four inches tall and over six inches long. The organisation
developed a number of catchy slogans, including “A Nude Horse is a Rude
Horse”.

In 1959 articles began to appear in the press about their aims and objectives and they seemed to have struck a chord with the nation. SINA’s President, one G. Clifford Prout, claimed that they already had 50,000 members and were receiving around 400 new applications to join a week. It didn’t cost anything to join, all you had to do was to promise to out neighbours who insisted in parading their animals unclothed.

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Prout began to appear on TV, wowing audiences by demonstrating a
range of Bermuda shorts for horses, slips for cows and trousers for kangaroos.
Stunts were organised including street parades to get the general public used
to the idea of animals wearing clothing and bundles of clothes were airdropped
into fields so that farmers could slip them on to their herds. Demonstrators
even picketed the White House, exhorting the then First Lady, Jackie Kennedy,
to clothe her horses.

SINA seemed to have hit the jackpot when Prout was invited to
appear on the influential Walter Kronkite television news programme on CBS on
August 21, 1962. It proved to be SINA’s equivalent of Icarus flying too close
to the son because some of the studio crew recognised Prout as the comedian,
Buck Henry. Although the interview went out on air, it soon transpired that
SINA was nothing more than a giant hoax. Kronkite was reportedly furious that
he had been conned. Time magazine ran an exposé of the hoax in 1963.

The brains behind the hoax was serial hoaxer, Alan Abel, who
played the role of the organisation’s executive vice=president, Bruce Spencer.
Henry was Abel’s able accomplice, willing to front the operation. Abel claimed
to have got the idea after driving past a couple of cows mating and wondered
how far such a ludicrous idea, which would appeal to the American moral brigade,
would run.

Quite some way, it would appear. Astonishingly, he was able to
keep the hoax running for a few more years via a newsletter sent to those who
were oblivious to the fall-out from the Kronkite show or the detailed expose in
Timemagazine.   

Quite what he would have thought of the current trend to clothe pets is anybody’s guess but I’m sure he would have had a chuckle.

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If you enjoyed this, try Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin
Fone

https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/

What Is The Origin Of (260)?…

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Cloak-and-dagger

There is a lot that
is mysterious and intriguing about the phrase cloak-and-dagger and that is appropriate
as it denotes the sense of subterfuge, deceit and acting underhand. The first
point of controversy is whether it should be hyphenated. The grammarians
amongst us would contend that it should as it is used adjectivally in front of
a noun. Alas, modern usage and the wilful disregard for the grammatical
niceties of our wonderful language means that it is often seen without hyphens.

The second area of controversy
is where it came from. Some authorities point to similar expressions, de cape et
d’épée, in French, and de capa
y espada, in Spanish, which described a form of drama, popular in the 18th
century, featuring characters who, unsurprisingly, wore cloaks draped around
the arm to act as an impromptu shield and a sword with which to fight. It may
have drawn its inspiration from a fencing move called Rapier and Cloak,
described in Alfred Hutton’s Old Sword-Play: The Systems of France in vogue
during the XVIth, XVIIth, and XVIIIth centuries, published in 1892.   

That the name of this
dramatic art form made its way into the English language when Henry Vassall-Fox
wrote his Some Account of the Life and Writings of Lope Felix de Vega Carpio in
1806, as Carpio was a pre-eminent playwright. Interestingly, though,
Vassall-Fox wrote, “the plays…acquired the name of Comedias de Capa y
Espada, Comedies of the Cloak and Sword, from the dresses in which they were
represented”. Note that it was a sword, not a dagger, a small point,
perhaps, but one that casts a scintilla of doubt as to whether it is the origin
of our phrase.

Cloaks and daggers
can be found in use in English print in the 18th century without any
direct reference to continental drama. In a letter printed in an edition of The
Derby Mercury from July 1769 entitled A Speech of a Nobel Earl to a Great
Personage, the correspondent gave a dire warning about attempts to dissolve the
Union of Great Britain, which, in these troubled times, we would do well to
heed; “and those that endeavour to dissolve it, carry a dagger under the
cloak of patriotism, to stab their country in the heart”. The sense of this
figurative usage is clear; cloaks and daggers denote underhandedness and
menace.

Cloaks and daggers
were used in a figurative sense in The Examiner on May 26th of the
same year, when it ruminated over the judgment in a court case, fulminating
that, “Sir Vicary Gibbs will insist that you do it as a blind, as a cheat
for the unwary, a cloak for some dagger that you are carrying about you”. A
similar usage is to be found in the Morning Post of September 1836; “carrying
a dagger against the Church, under the capacious cloak of economy”.

It was not until the
early 19th century that cloaks and daggers were associated here with
a form of melodramatic play. Bell’s Weekly Messenger of February 3, 1811
reviewed a play in which one of the protagonists, an assassin by the name of Montalvi,
“drops his cloak, mask and dagger”. Charles Dickens clearly had this
cliched stage device in mind when he wrote, in Barnaby Rudge, from 1841, “it
was given to him by a person then waiting at the door, the man replied. With a
cloak and dagger? Said Mr Chester. With nothing more threatening about him, it
appeared, than a leather apron and a dirty face”. With Dickens’ imprimatur,
the phrase took off.

It is difficult to know what to make of all of this. My sense is that cloaks and daggers were well established as a description of a form of menace before their usage as a stage device in Britain. However, it was probably Charles Dickens’ use of the phrase that firmly established it in popular speech.

But I may be wrong and that is the beauty of attempting to trace the origin of phrases.