Martin Fone's Blog, page 216
September 17, 2019
Toilet Of The Week (24)
I reported a few weeks back plans to install a gold toilet
at Blenheim Palace (https://windowthroughtime.wordpress.com/2019/05/12/toilet-of-the-week-21/).
Well, blow me down, guv, the thing has only been half-inched.
Edward
Spencer-Churchill, in charge of the carsey, had pooh-poohed suggestions that it
might be stolen, claiming it “wouldn’t be the easiest thing to nick”
because “it’s plumber in and..a potential thief will have no idea who last
used the toilet or what they ate”.
But the thieving classes are made of sterner stuff than languid aristos. They made a quick visit, ripped the toilet out, causing extensive damage and flooding, and scarpered. The artist, Italian Maurizio Catellan, who had visited the Palace last week and is notorious prankster, has panned suggestions he was involved.
The local police are trying to sniff it out and have already arrested a 66-year-old man. I can’t help thinking the Blenheim security staff have been caught with their trousers down. Red faces all round.
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September 16, 2019
The Streets Of London – Part Ninety Four
St John’s Square, EC1M
On the southern corner of Clerkenwell Road and St John’s Square to the west of St John Street stands a rather splendid building known as Penny Bank Chambers and to emphasise the point, above the entrance is a row of terracotta pennies with the bank’s name embossed on them. The Penny Bank was a Yorkshire creation, founded in 1859 in Halifax by Colonel Edward Akroyd, with the laudable aim of encouraging the working classes to save. They sought to do this by being sited on the main thoroughfares of towns and cities, opening in the evenings and accepting deposits of less than a shilling, hence the name.
Princess Christian of Schleswig Holstein, no less, laid the foundation stone to this particular building in May 1879 and it opened for business a year later. For her troubles, the princess received a commemorative trowel, inlaid with silver pennies and a figure of working man with a bank book. I’m sure she treasured it. There was an even more philanthropic idea behind the Clerkenwell branch.
The development of the Clerkenwell Road in 1879 saw the demolition of many of the slums in the area, creating a housing crisis. The upper floors of the Bank were to provide tenements for artisans “of regular employment”. Families of up to ten would occupy a living space comprising of up to three rooms and the expectation was that they would deposit any spare cash they had with the bank. Laudable as the idea may have been the scheme lasted barely ten years but it left its mark on the area and the internal design of the building. The National Penny Bank itself was wound up in 1914, although the Yorkshire element became the Yorkshire Bank.
Stepping into St John’s Square, you cannot fail to notice a large arch. This is pretty much all that remains of the priory of St John, the English headquarters of the Order of the Hospital of St John of Jerusalem, established in the area in around 1144, from which the square derives its name. Modern Clerkenwell Road bisects St John’s Square and from John Rocque’s map of London, produced in 1746, the Square was that area to the north of what is now Clerkenwell Road, the rest being noted as St John’s Court. The earliest reference to the Square appears in a deed from 1712.
A priory so close to London had its drawbacks. It was often in financial straits because it had to entertain the occasional visiting royal, associated courtiers, the Grand Prior, and a motley crew of pensioners. In 1381 it was set on fire by Watt Tyler’s revolting peasants and rebuilding was not completed until 1504, although the priory was usable enough to host the Royal Council in 1485 in which Richard III decided against marrying his niece, Elizabeth of York. The 1504 reconstruction included the grand south gate, although what we see today was almost completely rebuilt by the Victorians. The Elizabethan historian, William Camden, described as “a palace” with “a very fair church, and a tower-steeple raised to a great height, with so fine workmanship that it was a singular beauty and ornament to the city”.
Despite its splendour, the priory fell foul of Henry VIII’s reformation, although it was one of the last monastic houses to be dissolved, in March 1540. It was then used to store the monarch’s tents and part of his wardrobe (he was a big man, after all) and royal builders had their master’s permission to loot it for building materials. On her accession the Catholic Mary allowed the Hospitallers to return to their erstwhile site but her death and the return to Protestantism meant that they were quickly expelled and the property repossessed.
Over time, the area was populated by the more genteel sorts but from the 18th century tradesmen moved in. There was a distillery, established by Israel Wilkes, the father of the radical politician, John, and, on the western side of the Square, a printing works, established in 1750 by John Emonson and, as Gilbert & Rivington’s, was still in business in the early 20th century.
With some careful observation and a vivid imagination, though, you can still imagine what the Priory might have looked like, even today.
September 15, 2019
Sporting Event Of The Week (25)
There is
something fascinating about a competition that pits man against machine.
Intuitively, I always anticipate that the machine will prevail but occasionally
it doesn’t.
Take this
competition held on the exterior of the Westin Hotel in Warsaw. One of the
world’s best speed climbers, Marcin Dzienski – did you know that speed climbing
was making its Olympic debut in Tokyo next year? Me, neither – took on an illuminated
lift to see who would ascend the 23-metre wall the quickest.
Well, in
a closely fought contest Marcin prevailed, taking just 12.12 seconds to get to
the top. All those years of climbing his grandad’s apple trees seem to have
paid off.
If I have the option, though, I will still take the lift. Speed isn’t everything, you know.
Click the
link to watch him go https://youtu.be/7GBd4goawYk
September 14, 2019
Tea Of The Week
I’m
partial to a cup of tea but I think I will give the latest offer from The
Rubens at The Palace, a hotel near Buckingham Palace, a miss.
They are
offering a pot of tea made from the rare Ceylon Golden Tips for the princely
sum of £500. Cakes, sandwiches etc will set you back a further £45.
So what
do you get for your money?
The tea
is grown in the highlands of Sri Lanka. Only the very tips of the plant are
picked and then it is dried in the sun on a velvet cloth which turns the buds
from silver to a golden colour.
If you order a pot, a flunkey will select the leaves using gold tweezers and weigh them before your very eyes. They are then infused in natural mineral water and the tea is poured from a silver tea pot. I’m told that it has a smooth, light, mellow texture and is slightly fruity. I will never know.
I’m gratified to learn that the leaves can be infused up to three times, the taste changing each time, so you will not feel that you have been totally ripped off. I suppose it beats hanging tea bags on the line to give them a second chance.
September 13, 2019
What Is The Origin Of (248)?…
All Lombard Street to a China orange
I love coming across phrases that have long since gone into obscurity, existing only to puzzle those modern-day readers who stumble across them. Take all Lombard Street to a china orange, which appeared in the headline in an edition of the Spectator in 2005, reporting on the last major bank to move out of the street, Barclays, as it happens. It means, in a figurative sense, something that is almost certain to happen.
Oranges, when the first found their way to Blighty during the sixteenth century, were phenomenally expensive but by the time Charles II had regained the English throne, were not only commonplace but very cheap. Girls would sell them in the theatres, as well as other wares, the most (in)famous orange seller at the time being Nell Gwynne. Figuratively, therefore, an orange was a relative cheap, everyday item of little value. A China orange was a particularly sweet variety which originated, surprisingly enough, from China.
The other part of the jigsaw is Lombard Street which, in London, was the heart of the city’s financial district where, until relatively recently, many of the major banks had their headquarters as well as Lloyd’s Coffee house which became the famous and internationally respected insurance market. It was named after the Lombard bankers who set up operation there. Paris has its own Rue des Lombards which, in mediaeval times, was the centre of its banking sector but, these days, is better known for the quality of its jazz clubs. In a figurative sense, therefore, Lombard Street could be seen to represent fabulous wealth, enormous riches.
Putting the two together we have someone who is proposing to bet a staggering amount, all that Lombard Street could scrape together, against an item of trifling value. In other words, it is an expression of their absolute confidence that whatever it is they are proposing is going to happen, even if it is not certain that it will.
Over time, there have been several variants of our phrase, all retaining the same figurative sense. In 1752 there is recorded what I am sure is an attempt at a pun, “I will lay all Lombard Street to an egg-shell”. The reckless gambling character in Arthur Murphy’s farce, The Citizen from 1763, remarks, “Reach Epsom in an hour, and forty-three minutes, all Lombard street to an egg-shell, we do”. It is probable that it was a phrase associated with the racetrack.
The Irish poet, Thomas Moore, is rather helpful in giving us some other variants. In his Tom Crib’s Memorial to Congress from 1819, he includes the following couplet; “All Lombard-street to nine-pence on it,/ Bobby’s the boy would clean them out!” Whether Moore’s faith in Bobby’s poetic acumen is warranted is lost in history but in a footnote to the reference to Lombard Street, he notes, “more usually Lombard-street to a China orange. There are several other of these fanciful forms of betting – Chelsea College to a sentry-box, Pompey’s Pillar to a stick of sealing-wax, etc etc”.
Alas, we will never know what was contained in the frustratingly vague et ceteras but one thing is clear, namely that the waging of all of Lombard Street to a China orange was the most commonly used or understood of these variants. Moore duly used our phrase in his Pancratia of 1812, a history of pugilism, describing a fight between Tom Crib and Molineux in which in the 9th round, “Lombard-street to a China orange: Molineux was dead beat…”
Another variant that did the rounds substituted a Brummagem sixpence for the China orange. Birmingham was known in the early nineteenth centre as a centre of counterfeiting and so a tanner from that city had a fair chance of being duff and so worthless.
The Americans have their own variant. In the 1880s the phrases bet dollars to buttons and bet dollars to dumplings gained currency but were trumped in the 1890s by dollars to doughnuts, a doughnut selling for around 5 cents at the time. For a nation that seems to pride itself in having the biggest and best of everything, the comparators seem rather paltry in comparison with the British term, but at least it has the attraction of alliteration. Of course, inflation has outstripped the phrase but it is still used today.
Will I use the phrase now I have discovered it? I bet all Lombard Street to a China orange I will.
September 11, 2019
Book Corner – September 2019 (2)
School for Love – Olivia Manning
Olivia Manning again. Published in 1951, this book is based once more in the Levant, this time Jerusalem in 1945. The title is a loose paraphrase of a couplet from William Blake’s slightly odd poem about learning to recognise and experience a divine love that transcends race, The Little Black Boy; “and we are put on earth a little space/ that we may learn to bear the beams of love”. In essence, this book is about the coming of age of an orphaned boy, Felix Latimer, and his understanding of the ways of the world.
Felix was molly-coddled by his mother but when she died in Baghdad, his father had already been killed in action, he is packed off to Jerusalem to stay with an adopted aunt, Miss Bohun. We are put on our guard about Miss Bohum early on in the book when Felix recollects his mother’s unwillingness to have anything to do with her; “whenever his father had suggested a trip to Jerusalem, his mother had said: “Oh no, dear one, not there. We’d have to see Ethel Bohun. I couldn’t bear it””.
And a remarkable and unlovable creature she is. Having turned her home into a boarding house, she is a member of the Ever Readies, a Christian sect awaiting the second coming of Christ, she even leaves a bedroom spare in which to host the Host. A miser, taking more than her fair due from her guests, Miss Bohun makes herself out to be motivated by kindness and self-sacrificing, to boot. Highly sensitive, Miss Bohun is quick to see slights and plots against her in the most trivial incidents and when her dander is up, can be merciless in forcing her guests and employees out of the house.
We see Miss Bohun, and all the other characters, through the eyes of Felix, although the narrative is written in the third person, and his natural inclination, partly through naivete and partly because he is grateful for her charity, is to take her side. The boy’s perspective begins to change with the arrival of the more sophisticated Miss Ellis, at least to his eyes, who soon recognises what Miss Bohun is up to.
Her arrival adds tension to the household and by taking Felix under her wing, Mrs Ellis opens his eyes to the possibilities that things are not always quite what they seem at first sight. He begins to see that the world is not as certain as he once thought and that all the characters he encounters, even his saintly mother, have their flaws. The scales fall from his eyes and he sees Miss Bohun for what she is; “for a moment, seeing her sitting there calmly and running at will through the gamut of her tones of command, exasperation, self-pity and disapproval, he was suddenly certain of her falsity. His faith in her as a human being had gone and he could believe her to be capable of anything…”
The one constant rock in Felix’s small world is Miss Bohun’s Siamese cat, Faro, on whom he lavishes his love and believes that the feline in its own way reciprocates the feeling. Felix also feels pity for Mr Jewel, a somewhat mysterious character who is harshly treated by Miss Bohun until his circumstances change.
The book ends with Felix departing for England. It is not a book to read if you are looking for exquisite plotting or rip-roaring action. This is much more a well-written, occasionally amusing, sometimes witty, study into the human character and the rites of passage of a young man stranded in a strange land and devoid of the love and affection he once knew and craves.
September 10, 2019
Gin’s The Tonic
It’s been an odd week what with one politician resigning to spend less time with his family and the government failing to win a vote in Parliament despite six attempts but at least we have got gin to fall back on.
Unfortunately, though, not as much as we thought we had.
A collision on the M6 in Cheshire led to a lorry spilling its load of 32,000 litres of 80% proof gin onto the carriageway. As well as causing traffic jams lasting up to eleven hours the spirit had to be soaked up with sand because it was highly flammable.
What a waste.
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Unfortunately, the spirit was not destined to make the latest abomination of flavoured gins, a Brussels sprouts flavoured gin, which has just been announced by Pickering’s and should be available in time for Christmas. 100 kilograms of sprouts have been used to make the spirit and I’m told that it has an unmistakably sprout aroma, a sweet, slightly nutty taste and a bit of a peppery kick. If it is a success, it may be repeated next Christmas.
Still, that’s Jo’s Christmas present to Boris sorted.
September 9, 2019
You’re Having A Laugh – Part Twenty Six
The Bunga Bunga hoax, 1910
It may be hard to believe these days but there was once a time when the British navy ruled the waves. The launch of HMS Dreadnought in 1906, then the fastest, best armed and strongest ship ever built, seemed to cement the country’s position. When the battleship visited London in 1909 it , was greeted by a million people and the nation was swept with Dreadnought fever. It was an opportunity too good for advertising copywriters to miss, prompting some excruciating punning. The 1910 advert for Oxo cubes invited its fans to “drink Oxo and dread nought” and a firm of tailors clearly cut its suits from the same cloth, exhorting its clientele to “dreadnought and wear British clothing”.
This epitome of patriotic pride was too good a target for a pricker of pomposity to miss and this is where the Bloomsbury Group, a collective of thinkers, writers and artists with pacifist inclinations, comes in. Half a dozen of them, including Virginia Woolf, her brother, Adrian Stephen, and the poet, William Horace de Vere Cole, were persuaded, possibly by some friends from another British ship, the Hawke, who were envious of the publicity the Dreadnought was attracting, to get on board the vessel, dressed as members of the Abyssinian royal family.
A theatrical costumier was hired to dress them up in flowing kaftans, turbans and sumptuous jewellery. Their faces were painted a darker colour and various false hairpieces were attached to their faces, even to the redoubtable Virginia. A telegram, on February 7, 1910, purportedly from Harding of the Foreign Office, was sent to the Commander-in-Chief informing him that Prince Makelen of Abyssinia and his entourage had arrived in Weymouth and were desirous of visiting the Dreadnought.
The party went to Paddington station where Cole, posing as Herbert Cholmondeley of the FO, demanded free travel to Weymouth. The obliging railway company provided a VIP coach. On arrival at their destination, the party was met with a red carpet and a brass band playing the national anthem of Zanzibar, they being unable to lay their hands on the score for the Abyssinian one. They boarded the Dreadnought and were shown around, Stephen Adrian acting as interpreter, whilst the hoaxers communicated amongst themselves in a made-up language of Latin, Swahili and gobbledygook, and the occasional exclamation of “Bunga, bunga!”
The group declined lunch, claiming that the food would not have been prepared to their exacting requirements although, in reality, they were concerned that their makeup and falsies would come off. As it was, one of the moustaches started peeling off but, astonishingly, none of the naval personnel seemed to notice. Writing about it to a friend the next day, Cole reported, “It was glorious! Shriekingly funny – I nearly howled when introducing the four princes to the admiral and then to the captain, for I made their names up in the train, but I forgot which was which, and introduced them under various names, but it did not matter! They were tremendously polite and nice – couldn’t have been nicer: one almost regretted the outrage on their hospitality.”
News of the hoax, though, soon leaked out to the press, questions were asked in Parliament, King Edward VII was outraged, particularly as a woman was a member of the party, and arrangements for state visits of naval vessels were tightened up, hardly difficult to do, I would have thought. But the legacy of the hoax and the humiliation of the top brass of the Dreadnought lived on.
In the music halls that year, a song about the incident proved popular; “when I went on board a Dreadnought ship/ I looked like a costermonger;/ They said I was an Abyssinian prince/ ‘Cos I shouted Bunga Bunga!”
But the navy struck back. Some members of the group were apprehended by some ratings from the ship and were subjected to a ritual caning, which, given the sexual proclivities of the group, they may well have enjoyed. And when the Dreadnought became the first, and only, ship to ram and sink a German submarine, in 1915, the crew received a congratulatory telegram from their superiors, containing just two words. Inevitably, they were Bunga, bunga.
If you enjoyed this, take a look at Fifty Scams and Hoaxes by Martin Fone
https://www.troubador.co.uk/bookshop/business/fifty-scams-and-hoaxes/
September 8, 2019
Picture Of The Week
With apologies to Daniel Maclise and, of course, Lord Nelson.
September 7, 2019
Cafe Of The Week
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On Windsor Street in Uxbridge. I think I will pass on the cream.
