Martin Fone's Blog, page 233
March 24, 2019
Error Of The Week (3)
For some unaccountable reason, I have been thinking about the erstwhile British Prime Minister, David Cameron. No, I’m not talking about Brexit but that famous occasion when even his most ardent supporters might have had an inkling that he wasn’t up to the job.
I’m talking about the time in June 2012 when he and his wife drove off in separate cars, leaving behind his eldest daughter, Nancy, in the Plough Inn at Cadsden in Buckinghamshire. As the poor girl was only eight at the time, she probably wouldn’t have been as pleased at an enforced stay in the pub as a teenager would have. Fifteen minutes later an embarrassed Mrs Cameron returned to pick her up.
Parental amnesia, tempting as it may be in theory, is rare in practice and, indeed, it is hard to imagine how it could happen but it does. The scheduled Saudi Airlines flight SV832 from Jeddah to Kuala Lumpur, had to make an unscheduled return to King Abdul Aziz airport. The reason?
One of the passengers suddenly remembered that she had left her baby in the airport lounge and was kicking up a fuss, wanting the plane to turn round. The captain radioed Air Traffic Control, received the OK to return, woman and child were reunited, and the flight took off again.
As for the rest of the passengers, not only were they an hour behind schedule, they had to put up with a bawling baby for the duration of the flight.
The legacy of Cameron lives on in many ways.
March 23, 2019
Trousers Of The Week
After the grim events in Christchurch, here is a bit of good news that has come out of New Zealand’s North Island this month.
A German yachtsman, Arne Murke, was sailing along with his brother to Brazil to deliver the yacht, Wahoo, to its new owners. While in Tolaga Bay off the east coast, a sudden gust of wind caught the boom, hitting Arne on the head and knocking him into the water. Unable to get to the lifebelt that his brother had thrown into the drink, the currents were carrying him out to sea.
This is where his trousers came in. Showing incredible presence of mind, he took them off, tied knots at the end of the legs, inflated them and tied them round his chest. Et voilà, an impromptu life jacket.
Although it took a rescue helicopter 3.5 hours to find him, Arne’s trousers had saved him. “Without the jeans I wouldn’t be here today, They were really the thing that saved me”, he told reporters.
That’s why I never leave home without them.
March 22, 2019
What Is The Origin Of (223)?…
Jerry-built
We are contemplating some building works at Blogger Towers. One of our prime concerns is that the structure will not be jerry-built by which we mean built hastily out of shoddy materials. I had always assumed that the first part of this phrase was a pejorative reference to the standard pf German workmanship. After all, Jerries was a sobriquet for the Germans, dating from the First World War.
But I’m wrong. The adjective was in existence well before 1914.
Inevitably with many an etymological exploration, there are a number of competing theories and I will try to sort out the wheat from the chaff. Perhaps a strong contender, not least because it is touted by no more august a source than the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), is that it is a reference to the walls of Jericho. They were so weak that one blast of Joshua’s trumpets sent them tumbling down (Joshua 6:20). Appealing as this may be, I don’t think it is the source.
Another contender is the word gerry, which was a Romany word used to describe excrement. There are better contenders than that. Another suggestion is that it is a direct reference to a firm of builders, notorious for the poor quality of their constructions, Jerry Brothers of Liverpool. Again, appealing as this may be, no one has found incontrovertible evidence that a firm of this name existed in the building trade.
Perhaps more credence can be given to the suggestion that jerry-built shares the same origin as the term jerry-mast, a term used by sailors and ship builders to describe makeshift wooden masts. It owed its derivation to the French word for a day, jour. At least it has the virtue of suggesting the temporary nature of something.
Jerry is a popular abbreviation of Jeremy and was used from the 18th century to describe something that was bad or defective. Samuel Foote’s comedy, The Mayor of Garret, dating from 1764, had a character called Jerry Sneak, who was described as a sneaking sort of fellow, a hen-pecked husband. A jerry shop was a derogatory 19th century term for a public house of some disrepute. Jerry gave rise to a wonderful word, jerrycummumble, defined in Francis Grose’s Classical Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue in 1811 as “to shake, towzle or tumble about.” Perhaps here lies the link between jerry and instability.
All this is pure speculation and there is no certainty as to what the true origin is. What is more certain is that probably the first recorded instance of the use of jerry-built relates to housing and Liverpool. The Liverpool Mercury in 1832 wrote a satirical piece about a meeting held to discuss housing which was attended by “members of the Blue Bell Club, the Jerry-Building Society.”
The term appeared in print, again in the Liverpool Mercury, on 11th August 1863, specifically in reference to some Welsh builders who were erecting shoddy housing in the city; “…they will find out that most of the houses applying are built by the Welsh jerry builders.” It became sufficiently ensconced in the English language to warrant a definition in the Lansdale Glossary of 1869; “slightly or unsubstantially built.”
At the turn of the 20th century, the phrase was being used in a figurative sense as this extract from the Daily Chronicle of August 1901 shows; “in an age of jerry-built books it is refreshing to come across a volume that has taken forty years to compile.”
The phrase has nothing to do with Germans then and almost certainly owed its origin to jerry as something shoddy and temporary. I rest my case, even it is rather jerry-built.
March 21, 2019
Gin O’Clock – Part Sixty One
Continuing my exploration of Aldi’s take on the ginaissance, the next gin I put in my trolley was Mason’s G12 Gin. Retailing at £24.99 it is at the premium end of the gins on the supermarket’s shelves but the price is still attractive enough to warrant me taking a punt on it.
In 2013 Karl and Cathy Mason established what was then, and may be now for all I know, the first gin distillery in North Yorkshire in the beautiful town of Bedale. Their established brands are Mason’s Yorkshire Dry Gin and two variants, one flavoured with tea and the other with lavender. I tasted the former on New Year’s Eve when I was, shall we say, one over the eight and so I need to a more sober, considered view of their main product.
G12 is a more recent addition to their range and, as far as I can deduce, it is not tied exclusively to Aldi. It takes its name from the fact that it is the product of the twelfth recipe that the distillers tried. They are, after all, a very prosaic lot up in Yorkshire. The blurb suggests that they consider it to be a contemporary gin rather than one from a traditional gin stable. I started to shudder at this point but providing it was juniper led, that would be fine.
Aesthetically, the bottle sticks out like a sore thumb on the shelf, with its vibrant green colour. Think lime and you will get the picture. The white lettering on the front of the bottle tells me that it is a “botanically rich dry gin with bursts of citrus fruit and hints of fresh Mediterranean herbs.” The Mason’s logo is towards the bottom and the Yorkshire rose is embossed in the glass towards the neck.
The stopper, artificial cork, fits tightly to the neck of the bottle and makes a satisfying plopping noise when it is removed. I do like a good plop. The aroma released is complex and pleasing, with the piny smell of juniper to the fore before the more effervescent lime comes into play. There is a distinct freshness to the smell which presumably comes from the herbs.
To the taste the first hit is from the juniper and that stays in the mouth before it is joined by zesty citrus notes and a little sharpness. Then the citrus elements seem to subside and a more refreshing, herbal taste can be detected. The aftertaste is warm and peppery and lingers. With a mixer the gin seemed to louche and for me it was not as smooth or balanced as I had expected. It seems to operate in distinct phases rather than being one complete complex taste. But, pleasingly for a contemporary style gin, it has a solid and detectable juniper base.
I did try to detect precisely what was in the mix and my best guess is; juniper, coriander, basil, lemon and lime peels, cinnamon and black pepper. There may be more botanicals in the mix, the distillers are rather coy on that point, but they do admit to sweet basil.
For me, this is a gin for a warm summer evening. It is pleasant, refreshing and at the right time and place could be moreish. A cold February day in England, when I first sampled it, is probably not the ideal time to try it.
Until the next time, cheers!
March 20, 2019
Book Corner – March 2019 (3)
Joy in the Morning – P G Wodehouse
I find Wodehouse, and particularly his tales of Wooster and Jeeves, to be the literary equivalent of my comfort blanket. No matter how many times I read them, I find I discover something new. It’s a delight to be whisked away from your daily grind to a world of dense toffs and clever, perceptive servants. Of course, this world barely ever existed and is an anachronism by modern standards but it is worth just suspending belief to enjoy the wonders of Wodehouse at his best.
And I concur with many of Wodehouse’s critics that this is perhaps his finest work, certainly his best Jeeves and Wooster story. It had a difficult birth, Wodehouse working on it in Le Touquet when he was rudely interned by the occupying Nazis. His wife, Ethel, had the foresight to pack up the fledgling manuscript when she left France to join him in Berlin and was completed up in the Harz mountains in Degenershausen.
Joy in the Morning, which takes its title from a line in the thirtieth Psalm, was initially published in New York in August 1946. As Wodehouse was under a bit of a cloud in Blighty and paper was in short supply, the book didn’t reach his British audience until June 1947. The scarce paper was not wasted in bringing this wonderful novel to the reading public. Some American editions are entitled Jeeves in the Morning, missing the point entirely in that lovably infuriating Yankee way.
Those familiar with Wodehouse will know what to expect. It is a classic comedy of errors, using shovel loads of coincidence to keep a frenzied plot going. Bertie Wooster is persuaded to visit Steeple Bumpleigh, home of his formidable and tyrannical aunt, Agatha and her hubby, Lord Worplesdon. Worse too, Wooster’s former fiancée, Lady Florence Craye, is in attendance. Will Bertie get himself hooked again?
The book is a frenzied tour de force, love triangles, envious suitors, vengeful suitors, a house fire, a fancy-dress ball, a country cottage burnt to the ground, a miscreant boy, a policeman, a friend of Bertie’s, who is out to get him, a prospective merger of two shipping companies and much, much more. There is even a gag that runs through the book about a fretful porpentine which manifests itself when Bertie finds a hedgehog in his bed, as you do. The countryside is a dangerous place.
The momentum of the book is such that it is very difficult to put down as you are drawn to see what happens next. You are quickly absorbed by the beauty and vibrancy of the writing and the inventiveness of the Wodehousian simile. To give you a taste; “she came leaping towards me, like Lady Macbeth coming to get first-hand news from the guest-room” and he span round “with a sort of guilty bound like an adagio dancer surprised while watering the cat’s milk.”
Through all of this mayhem, Wodehouse can take a step and poke fun at himself and his dodgy war record. Talking to Boko Fittleworth, yes, the names of Wodehouse’s characters are eccentrically bizarre, Wooster says, “I doubt if you can ever trust an author not to make an ass of himself.”
It’s a glorious romp, guaranteed to put a smile on your face and help you forget about the modern world. What is there not to like?
March 19, 2019
TV Critic Of The Week
I tip my metaphorical hat to Tony McGibney because I wish I had thought of this.
In a recent episode of the ITV detective programme, Endeavour, a body was found in a vat of chocolate. The pathologist put the time of death at between 9 pm and midnight. The After Eight mix, obviously.
March 18, 2019
There Ain’t ‘Alf Some Clever Bastards – Part Ninety One
William Austin Burt (1792 – 1858)
Such is the ubiquity of Global Positioning System (GPS) devices that it is almost a sign of eccentricity to be seen struggling with a map and peering at a compass. Of course, GPS is a recent innovation but two hundred years ago when there were still vast tracts of land to be explored and surveyed, at least from the invading white man’s perspective, a magnetic compass was invaluable to navigate around terra incognita.
One of the problems with a magnetic compass, or at least so I’m told, is that they are susceptible to interference from iron-bearing minerals, a serious problem in the States. A better, more accurate compass was needed and this is where the latest inductee into our illustrious Hall of Fame, William Burt, comes in.
Burt is best known for developing and patenting the typographer, the first typewriter to hit the United States, but from 1833 he was working as a Deputy Surveyor, charged with surveying the then wide-open spaces of Michigan and Wisconsin. The latter state is particularly rich in iron ore deposits and Burt found that they were affecting the accuracy and consistency of his compass readings.
Burt started to exercise his little grey cells to come up with an instrument that did not rely on magnetism. His solution was a solar compass, made of brass with an attachment that allowed surveyors to determine true north by observing the sun. It consisted of an arc for setting the land’s latitude, another for establishing the declination of the sun and a third for setting the time of day. All three arcs were placed on an upper plate which was kept stationary when in use. The instrument’s sights were placed on the lower plate which could be clamped in any position to the upper plate.
Having created a working model in 1835, Burt submitted his design to the scrutiny of the Franklin Institute in Philadelphia. They awarded him a medal and twenty dollars in gold. On February 25th 1836 Burt received a patent for his compass but continued to enhance its design over the next fifteen years. It was displayed at the Great Exhibition in London in 1851 and was awarded a prize.
Amongst his accomplishments as a surveyor were the discovery of the Marquette iron ore range in 1844 and establishing the northern portion of the border between Michigan and Wisconsin in 1847. The solar compass had more than proved its worth and for a century or more became the standard piece of kit adopted by the General Land Office to be used in mineral-rich areas.
But trouble was looming.
With his patent soon to expire, Burt went to Washington in 1850 to renew it. But the Land Committee, recognising how useful the compass was in surveying the immense tracts of the western United States, persuaded him not to renew the patent but rather petition Congress for compensation equivalent to the sum he may have otherwise generated from a reinvigorated patent.
Burt followed their advice. After all, the Congress was full of honourable men. What could possibly go wrong?
So Burt took the committee’s advice, foregoing the chance to renew his patent. Whilst a payment of $300 was mooted it never materialised in Burt’s lifetime or afterwards, for that matter. Now that the patent had expired, it left the way open for other instrument makers to supply what were known as Burt’s solar compasses to surveyors.
For inventing the solar compass and foolishly letting your patent expire, William Burt, you are a worthy inductee into our Hall of Fame.
If you enjoyed, why not try Fifty Clever Bastards by Martin Fone
http://www.martinfone.com/other-works/
March 17, 2019
Answer Of The Week (2)
In a week of answers, or possibly not, it is good to have nailed one question which has been bugging me for years; which way should you hang a toilet roll on a holder? If you have graduated from a simple nail on the wall, do you have the paper hanging to the front, making it easier to find the end and reducing the transference of germs, or do you let it hang down from the back, making it harder to unravel accidentally and, perhaps, giving a neater appearance?
A First World problem if there ever was one but one which gives me a degree of personal angst. I have this obsession, you see, with toilet rolls hanging down at the front and if I see one that is hanging from the back, I am compelled to put it right.
Fortunately, this week I found evidence that puts this argument to bed. You might even say I am able to wipe the floor with my opponents.
We owe the perforated toilet paper to one Seth Wheeler of the Albany Perforated Wrapping Paper Company, which he patented in 1871. In 1891 he repatented his invention, but this time in roll form “to save waste,” according to his patent application.
In his 1891 application he shows a number of rolls of his toilet paper, hanging from roll holders. They are all hanging down from the front.
What was good enough for Seth is good enough for me.
I’m glad I’ve got to the bottom of something which has been bugging me for years.
March 16, 2019
Sporting Event Of The Week (21)
Shrove Tuesday is a day favoured by tossers but in the Derbyshire town of Ashbourne, they have a different way of celebrating the day before Lent. The Royal Shrovetide Football Match, the royal tag was earned when the future Edward VIII started the game in 1928, involves two teams, the Up’ards and the Down’ards, names based on which side of the Henmore Brook they hail from.
Although proceedings kick off on Shrove Tuesday when the ball is “turned up” from a plinth at Shaw Croft. Play often continues until Ash Wednesday, as it did this year. The object of the exercise is for the Up’ards to try and work their way towards Sturston Mill while the Down’ards’ goal is at Clifton Mill, three miles away.
Because of the numbers of players involved, there is little in the way of finesse or any opportunity to display dazzling footwork. It resembles a mass brawl and the ball makes little progress for hours on end. If a goal is scored before 5.30pm, another ball is released and play restarts in the town centre. A goal scored afterwards and before the 10.00pm curfew, ends play for the day.
Unsurprisingly, play finished goalless on the Tuesday but on Ash Wednesday a breakthrough was made, just before the 10pm scheduled finish, when Richard Smith raced through and tapped the ball three times on the stone plinths at Clifton Mill to secure a famous victory for the Down’ards.
The origins of the game have been lost in the mists of time, the records of the Royal Shrovetide Committee were destroyed in a fire in the 1890s, but the first match is thought to have taken place in around 1667. Legend has it that the original ball was the head of an unfortunate who had just been executed.
Sounds fun!
March 15, 2019
What Is The Origin Of (222)?…
Penny wise and pound foolish
How do you manage your personal affairs? Are you someone who can be described as penny wise and pound foolish? This phrase is used to describe someone who is extremely careful with smaller, inconsequential sums but prone to make extravagant purchases. The benefits gained from being thrifty are largely blown away.
The first recorded instance of this phrase dates to the 17th century and Robert Burton’s The Anatomy of Melancholy, published in 1621 and then subsequently expanded posthumously in 1651. Burton suffered from chronic depression and wrote his book, which is a treasury of quotations from Latin, Greek, French and Spanish authors, as a form of therapy for his condition. He imagined himself as a modern-day Democritus, who laughed at the follies of mankind. His thesis was that Democritus would find more than enough in contemporary life to keep a permanent smile on his face.
One trait Burton described thus; “rob Peter, and pay Paul; scrape unjust sums with one hand, purchase great manors by corruption, fraud, and cozenage, and liberally to distribute to the poor with the other, give a remnant to pious uses, etc.; penny wise, pound foolish”.
The phrase was used by Joseph Addison in the Spectator in 1712 as a metaphor for the perils of marriage; “I think a woman who will give up herself to a man in marriage, where there is the least room for such an apprehension, and trust her person to one whom she will not rely on for the common necessities of life, may very properly be accused (in the phrase of a homely proverb) of being “penny wise and pound foolish.” By Addison’s time it had attained the status of a proverb and may well have done by the time that Burton had put pen to paper. After all, it is a pertinent description of a common form of economic management.
There are, of course, two sides to every coin and others are quick to exhort us to take care of the pennies and the pounds will look after themselves. By this we are encouraged to concentrate on saving small amounts of money because in aggregate they will amount to a tidy sum. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the earliest examples of the use of this homily are to be found in the letters of exasperated parents to their offspring, encouraging them to tone down their spending habits. What is interesting is that they attribute the phrase to different sources.
First up is Lord Chesterfield who sent his son, Philip Dormer Stanhope, copious letters full of sage advice on how to conduct his life. In a letter dated 6th November 1747, he wrote, “I knew, once, a very covetous, sordid fellow, who used frequently to say, take care of the pence; for the pounds will take care of themselves.” In a letter dated 5th February 1750, he was back on the same theme; “Old Mr Lowndes, the famous Secretary of the Treasury, in the reigns of King William, Queen Anne and King George the First, used to say, take care of the pence, and the pounds will take care of themselves.” It is tempting, and probably correct, to think of Mr Lowndes and the covetous, sordid fellow as being one and the same.
However, Edward Synge, when writing to his daughter, Alicia, on 12th October 1750, attributed the saying to a different source. “A saying of Old Judge Daly’s is in every one’s Mouth. Take care of the pence, the pounds will take care of themselves.”
Who the originator was is anybody’s guess. It is likely to have been a popular idiom appropriated by Lowndes and Judge Day rather than being their one invention. For those in charge of corporate budgets, the phrase was reformulated by Andrew Carnegie to “watch the costs and the profits will take care of themselves.”
Of course, this sage advice is provided to you gratis!
