Martin Fone's Blog, page 247
October 6, 2018
Slap Of The Week
I suppose if you suffer an unfortunate accident, it must be comforting to know that science has benefited from your ordeal.
Kyle Mulinder was minding his own business paddling around the waters off Kaikoura on the South Island of New Zealand. His contemplation of the beauty and peace of his surroundings was rudely interrupted when a seal rose out of the water and slapped poor Kyle around the face with an octopus that it had in its mouth.
Scientists from the National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research reckon that the seal mistook the kayaker for a rock. It has confirmed their suspicions, though, that seals search for a hard object upon which to dash their prey.
Clearly a case of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and better than being slapped around the face with a dead fish.
Alas, the octopus was eaten.
https://videos.dailymail.co.uk/video/mol/2018/09/26/4844809961745594376/1024x576_MP4_4844809961745594376.mp4
October 5, 2018
What Is The Origin Of (200)?…
Have no truck with
Those of you who have persevered with my two hundred etymological searches into idioms and phrases with which we pepper our wonderful English language will know that I have (or perhaps brook) no truck with fanciful or unlikely theories. When we say we have no truck with something, we mean that we no longer have any dealings with or time for something.
These days truck appears with a negative but when it first made its appearance in the Middle Ages it had no negative limiter. Coming from the French word, troque, it was used to describe a form of business transaction which involved the exchange of goods without the transfer of money; in other words, bartering. The Vintner’s Company Charter in the Patent Roll of Edward III, dating to 1364, describes the securing of some wine “by truke, or by exchange.”
By the 17th century, the meaning of truck had broadened from the narrow constraints of trade to a more general sense of having dealings with, associating with or communicating with someone. It appears to have only been conjoined with a negative from the 19th century. The Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society noted, in 1834, that “theoretically an officer should have no truck with thieves.” Sage advice, for sure, but the theoretically suggests that this was not always possible.
Henry Cockton in his novel The Steward, published in 1850, suggests that the expression was used by the lower sorts; “Do what yow like, replied aunt Ann. It makes no odds to me; I’ll ha’ nothing to do with him! – I’ll have no truck with a tocksicated man.” The phrase crossed the pond to appear in Mark Twain’s 1885 masterpiece, the True Adventures of Huckleberry Finn – “it was just like I thought. He didn’t hold no truck with me” – and aficionados of Sherlock Holmes may recall its use in the Sign of the Four (1890); “But I tell you now that if it is anything against the safety of the fort I will have no truck with it, so you can drive home your knife and welcome.”
Trucking shops were a feature of 19th century life for itinerant workers such as navvies. They were often working in areas away from towns and villages and so their obliging employers set up shops from which they could buy the necessities of life, often exchanging tokens or vouchers supplied by their ever obliging employers. William Cobbett in his Rural Rides, published in 1825, observed that “in the iron country… the truck or tommy system generally prevails.”
Of course, it wasn’t for philanthropic reasons that the trucking system was established. The unscrupulous companies sought to further exploit their impoverished workers by ripping them off with extortionate prices. It was only with the passing of the Truck Act in 1887 that this egregious practice came to an end.
Truck also appears to have been countryside slang for an association, courtship or dalliance with a member of the fairer sex. Notes and Queries commented in 1866 that in Suffolk “a man who has left off courting a girl, says that he has no more truck along o’har.”
And now to brook.
Brook comes from the Old High German word, bruhhan, via the Middle English brouken, and meant to use. When it is used in the context of truck it acts as an intensifier and means to tolerate. So brooking no truck means to have absolutely no association with something.
Glad we’ve cleared that up.
October 4, 2018
Gin O’Clock – Part Forty Nine
Regular topers will know that occasionally the ingestion of an alcoholic beverage can prompt moments of introspection and philosophical reflection. If we followed the latest advices of the health police and eschewed all alcohol – apparently, even the teensy-weeniest amount can be injurious to your health – these moments would be lost to us.
I found as I was contemplating a glass of The London No 1 Gin that my thoughts passed to the psychological impact of the colour of a drink. Not to put too fine a point on it; should a drink ever be blue in colour? Call me an old traditionalist, but to me a blue drink is a bit off-putting and, well, beyond the pale.
But the rather grandiosely named London No 1 Gin is a turquoise blue. When I picked up a bottle at the Alicante airport duty-free shop I had assumed that the blue of the bottle, a rather delightful aquamarine, it has to be admitted, was the colour of the glass a la Bombay Sapphire. But when I opened the artificial cork stopper and poured the gin out, I was surprised to find that it was the hooch that bore the colour and not the glass of the bottle.
This put the gin on the back foot as far as I was concerned but, fortunately, there was more than enough about it to redeem it in my estimation.
Although it is distributed by the Spanish company, Gonzales Byass, the drink is actually distilled, as the name suggests, in London. The base spirit is made from grain sourced from Suffolk and Norfolk. The recipe uses twelve botanicals – juniper, angelica root, coriander, almond, bergamot, liquorice, cinnamon, citrus peel, savory, cassia bark and orris root. Perhaps the most intriguing element is the bergamot, which has a distinctive spicy, floral smell. Just think of Earl Grey tea. After distillation, the mix is rested for three weeks before being bottled at an impressive fighting weight of 47%.
To the nose, the first sensation is one of flowers but as you breathe in the heavier juniper and spicy notes with a hint of liquorice come to the fore. In the mouth it is a subtle blend of sweeter floral notes and spices with juniper and citrus coming to the fore as you savour it. The aftertaste is intense, spicy with the liquorice coming to the fore again. It is a lovely, well balanced drink, a classic gin with a contemporary twist.
Let’s get back to the colour.
It is achieved by infusing with gardenia flowers in the maceration process. Whether it is necessary is another question but undoubtedly it gives it a unique twist, which is needed in the crowded market place prompted by the ginaissance. As the laconic labelling states, in what I take as a rather ironic twist, in red lettering, it is the No 1 Original Blue Gin and let’s hope it stays that way.
The bottle is a lovely bell shape and the stopper makes a wonderful, inviting sound as you remove it. What is lacking in information on the bottle’s label is more than made up by a little brochure attached to the neck which extols the hooch’s virtues in three languages.
Despite my misgivings, it is a lovely drink. I will just have to close my eyes when I raise my glass.
Until the next time, cheers!
October 3, 2018
Book Corner – October 2018 (1)
Blood on the Tracks – edited by Martin Edwards
They keep on coming, and why not? For the aficionado of crime fiction, especially one with a taste for veering off the beaten track and discovering writers that time has forgotten, these British Library Crime Classics, edited by the excellent Martin Edwards, are too good to miss.
There is something attractive to the crime writer about the railways. Up to and during the so-called Golden Age of crime writing, the railways were the principal form of transportation. You were never sure who you were going to share a compartment with and the layout of the carriages offered the writer unmissable opportunities to construct a closed room style mystery. A comprehensive knowledge of the train timetable allowed a felon the opportunity to lay his victim on the track with the minimum time for them to be discovered before the wheels of the locomotive go over them. All these elements and more are to be found in this anthology
The collection starts off with an Arthur Conan Doyle story, The Man with the Watches. It doesn’t feature Sherlock Holmes – he appears in a Doylian parody, The Adventures of the First Class Carriage by Ronald Knox – but is a thoroughly enjoyable tale to open up with a clever plot and an intriguing solution.
The anthology then builds up a head of steam with the L T Meade and Robert Eustace’s Mystery of Felwyn Tunnel which centres on the mysterious deaths of signalmen on a Welsh line. It is an entertaining read and the solution is ingenious. I particularly enjoyed Matthias McDonnell Bodkin’s How He Cut His Stick which features a female ‘tec, Dora Myrl, who solves the mystery of how a strapping bank clerk was relieved of £5,000 on a moving train. The underground is the scene of a dastardly crime in the next story, The Mysterious Death on the Underground Railway by Baroness Orczy, and it is perhaps the pick of the crop.
Honourable mentions should also go to the Victor Whitchurch’s Affair of the Corridor Express in which a schoolboy is kidnapped from under the nose of his schoolteacher chaperone and R Austin Freeman’s The Case of Oscar Brodski – I am warming to him – which is an interesting and early example of an inverted crime story, where we see how the crime was committed (and by whom) in the first part and then see how the investigators, inevitably Dr Thorndyke and his trusty companion, Jervis, uncover the truth of what went on.
It is at this point that our journey through the anthology starts to slow down and almost hit the buffers. There is Ernest Bramah’s The Knight’s Cross Signal Problem in which his blind ‘tec, Max Carrados, solves a case of gross negligence, but many of the later stories have only a passing association with either the railway or crime or both. Roy Vickers’ The Eighth Lamp is more of a tale of the supernatural, the delightful The Man with no Face by Dorothy L Sayers features Lord Peter Wimsey but has very little to do with railways and F Tennyson Jesse’s The Railway Carriage, whilst set in a railway carriage, barely touches the subject of crime. The only relevance of Michael Gilbert’s The Coulman Handicap has to the framing idea of the anthology is that the characters are travelling on an underground train.
That said, there are some gems to be found in the rear carriages of the book, notably Sapper’s Mystery of the Slip-Coach – a broken egg holds the key to the mystery – and Freeman Willis Croft’s clever tale of the perils of changing your plans and losing your nerve, The Level Crossing.
As always, there is something for everyone here and as a collection it is one to savour either on a sun lounger or curled up in front of the fire.
October 2, 2018
A La Mode – Part Eleven
Bliaut
For some unaccountable reason the middle ages has a romantic image. In truth, it must have been a brutal time in which to live but the popular image is of some damsel in distress with long tresses gazing out of the tower of a castle waiting for a knight on his trusty steed to snatch her away. If you look beyond the hair, invariably the maiden will be wearing a loose frock with long, elaborate sleeves. The bliaut, for that was what the garment was called, was all the rage, particularly in the 12th century.
One of the earliest pictorial representations of a woman wearing a loose garment with long sleeves, the principal characteristics of the bliaut, appears in the Bayeaux Tapestry. As the 12th century progressed, the shape of the look developed to one which emphasised the slimness of the waist, through the cut of the garment and the adoption of a garment and increasingly more eccentric and decorative sleeves.
Indeed, the sleeves were the most distinctive feature of the bliaut, usually fitted above the elbow and then widening dramatically below. Sometimes the sleeves would have elongated cuffs and often the lowest part would be square. Sleeves were often longer than the wearer’s arms and would dangle alongside the dress. They might be useful for secreting food or a weapon but often they were so impractical that the wearer would tie them back so at least they could use their arms without the unnecessary, albeit decorative, obstruction.
Beside the sleeves, other classic features of the bliaut include a tight fit around the torso. Depictions sometimes show a wrinkling effect which was almost certainly caused by the use of side lacing. Often a girdle was worn, sometimes wrapped twice around the body, with the ends hanging down at the front. The neck line could be round, V shaped or keyhole and was often highly decorated with embroidery or with woven braids of applied silk bands in contrasting colours. The choice of material for your bliaut would have been limited but if you were looking to make a splash of colour, then it would be made of fine wool or, if you could afford it, silk.
Early depictions of the bliaut show it as a one piece garment but from around 1130 to 1160 statues show a distinct change in style and the emergence of what was known as the bliaut girone. It consisted of two pieces, a fitted bodice (the cors) and a pleated skirt with a low waistband and vertical pleats (the girone). A girdle (ceinture) wrapped around the middle of the torso to emphasise the womb finished the costume off.
Because of its decorative and rather impractical nature, the bliaut was for more formal wear and often was to be seen in the courts of Europe. It is said to have originated in France and then spread across Europe. Marie de France, in a poem entitled Lanval dating to around 1160, wrote of “tightly laced dresses of dark purple” and the bliaut girone can be clearly seen in the seals of such eminences as Eleanor of Aquitaine and Agnes de Champagne.
But don’t think the bliaut was restricted to the ladies. Fashionable chaps also succumbed to the mediaeval fashion craze but their garments were more loosely fitting, one piece with gores, triangular-shaped fabric pieces, inserted to the skirt to give extra fullness and vertical folds. They must have looked bobby dazzlers!
But every fashion item has its day and by the middle of the 13th century the bliaut’s had well and truly gone.
October 1, 2018
You’re Having A Laugh – Part Sixteen
The Subways are for Sleeping hoax of 1962
I am always deeply suspicious of those theatrical adverts that quote fulsome praise from some illustrious critic or other. They are generally quoted out of context or capable of ambiguous interpretation like “you will never see anything like this again”. But there are those amongst whose theatre-going habits are heavily influenced by the opinions of critics and they are fair game for the unscrupulous to exploit.
Take the musical, Subways are for Sleeping, which was running at the St James Theatre on Broadway in early 1962. It was struggling to attract audiences. But you wouldn’t have thought it if you perused the advert that appeared in the Herald Tribune on 4th January. Seven of the most prominent of New York’s theatre critics were enthusiastic about the merits of the show. Howard Taubman was quoted as saying it was “one of the few great musical comedies of the last thirty years”, Richard Watts claimed it was “a knockout from start to finish,” while Walter Kerr crowed, “What a show! What a hit!“. John Chapman was even more enthusiastic, hailing it “the best musical of the century” and Norman Nadel advised people to run to the theatre. You get the picture.
The ad was scheduled to be run in all the other leading newspapers and would have done but for an eagle-eyed editor. There were small pictures of each of the theatre critics to the left of their eulogistic tributes to the merits of the musical. But the picture of Richard Watts showed him to be a man of colour whereas the theatre critic was a WASP. On closer inspection none of the seven portraits were of the theatre critics that bore the name to which their comments were attributed.
The papers pulled the advert, except for the Herald-Tribune which had already gone to press. Although the advert did not have its intended its circulation, it did create enough of a stir to rescue the musical’s fortunes. It went on to run for 205 performances and the star, Phyllis Newman, won a Tony Award for her performance in it.
So who were the seven masquerading as critics?
Well, in a masterpiece of casting, producer, David Merrick, found seven New Yorkers who shared the same names as the critics. He treated them to a free performance of the show, after which he wined and dined them. After this rather splendid treatment, getting them to agree to be photographed and to have words of fulsome praise attributed to them was a piece of cake.
So Richard Watts, as pictured in the advert, did say it was “a knockout from start to finish”; it just wasn’t the Richard Watts, the famed theatre critic of the New York Post. And the other six, Howard Taubman, Walter Kerr, John Chapman, John McLain, Norman Nadel and Robert Coleman were as they said they were, just not the more illustrious critics with whom they shared their names. So to that extent the advert was truthful, possibly more so than some of the more conventional theatre adverts.
Clever, really.
Later Merrick, who went on to produce hits such as Oliver and Hello, Dolly!, admitted that he had wanted to pull off the stunt for a number of years but had been stymied by being unable to find someone who shared the same name as the New York Posts’ theatre critic, Brooks Atkinson. Atkinson retired in 1961, Taubman took his place and Merrick seized his chance.
September 30, 2018
Gig Of The Week (4)
Nick Mason’s Saucerful of Secrets Band – Symphony Hall, Birmingham
Wow, what a concert!
My brain is still scrambled. I set the control for the heart of the sun but at least I didn’t end up on the dark side of the moon. Our seats were up in the gods but our view was not obscured by clouds. The sound was superb.
The central conceit behind Mason’s band is to resurrect the early Floyd music, pre-Dark Side when it then all got a bit too pompous and up itself, such entertainment as there was coming from an extensive and over-blown light show. I much preferred their earlier stuff when the much-lamented Syd Barrett’s psychedelic musings and ramblings ruled the roost.
You can also see why Mason has a penchant for this era. By the time Floyd had become mega stars, the role of drummer in the band had been relegated to pretty much an also-ran. But the drums are much more of a feature of the early stuff, non more so than the urgent primal drumming of the central section of Saucerful of Secrets.
Accompanying Mason on his first tour since the 1994 Division Bell tour are long time Floyd bassist, Guy Pratt, Gary Kemp, a surprisingly accomplished guitarist, Lee Harris on guitar and Dom Beken on keyboards. All the favourites were played – Arnold Layne, See Emily Play, the wonderful Bike – as well as Astronomy Domine, Interstellar Overdrive, Saucerful and Set The Controls, representing the more experimental side of the band. I particularly enjoyed a rare outing for Fearless and the Vegetable Man.
Two thoughts. Rather like jazz, psychedelic music sounds so much better live than on record. I wonder why? And what is the definition of a tribute band? Does having a member of the original group mean that the rather pejorative term doesn’t apply?
Whatever the answer, there is no doubt that the evening was a wonderful homage to a period when Floyd were rightly lauded as one of the more inventive and experimental bands of the time. If you can get to see them – they have just announced extra dates – do so or else you will wish you were here.
September 29, 2018
Ban Of The Week
Being an Ironman triathlete requires you to eat an enormous amount of tucker to sustain your energy levels, so I’m told. German software engineer, Jaroslav Bobrowski, is an enthusiast and his dietary regime is to fast for 20 hours and then to eat until his full.
His regular sushi restaurant, the Running Sushi, in Landshut in Bavaria offers an all-you-can eat deal for the modest outlay of €15.90 and Jaroslav often visits to fill his metaphorical boots.
But on his latest, and last, visit, I read this week, he proceeded to demolish almost one hundred plates of sushi.
Feeling that he should reward the gaff for its generosity and as a token of appreciation, Jaroslav, on checking out, offered a tip. Imagine his surprise when not only was his offer rebuffed but he was discretely told never to show his face in the place again. The reason given – he’s eating too much.
I have some sympathy for him.
After all, an offer is an offer. The restaurant presumably feared it might have had to change its name to Running out of Sushi.
September 28, 2018
What Is The Origin Of (199)?…
Honky-tonk
I first came across the phrase as an impressionable youngster courtesy of the Rolling Stones and one of their best numbers, Honky-Tonk Women. Although the lyrics are not works of art, I deduced enough to realise that it described a house of ill-repute, a dive where women of easy virtue hung out.
That I was somewhat on the right track is confirmed by this rather informative, if somewhat illiterate, definition from the Kansan Iola Register of 23rd June 1893; “when a particularly vicious and low-grade theatre opens up in an Oklahoma town they call it a honky-tonk. The name didn’t just come from anything; it just growed (sic).” That rather calls time on our etymological searches, if true. But what is fascinating is that whilst the term may have required some introduction to the folks of Kansas, it was in use in Oklahoma and judging from the gloss, had been in common usage for some time.
This enables us to deduce two things.
The first attribution in the Oxford English Dictionary (OED) to sometime in 1924 is wrong and, secondly, the phrase probably has nothing to do with the piano makers, William Tonk and Brothers of Chicago and New York who introduced a make of joanna from 1889 which was known as the Ernest A Tonk. It was a very popular model, particularly on Tin Pan Alley, and made its way out west, but probably too late in the day to give its name to the type of hostelry and the mode of music that were associated with honky-tonk.
In the late 19th century the West was wild and many a bar was a mix of music hall, dance hall, casino, bar and knocking shop. The better sorts in a town were keen to see the back of them and the council of Fort Worth, in particular, waged a long and ultimately unsuccessful campaign to close down a couple that had sprung up on Main Street. However, there were many who valued the attractions that they offered and they were not going to give them up without a fight. The Fort Worth Daily Gazette reported on 24th January 1889 that “a petition to the council is being circulated for signatures, asking that the Honky Tonk theatre on Main Street be reopened.” This may well be the first recorded usage of the term in print.
In order to give honky tonks the veneer of respectability, some proprietors called the attractions they had to offer “variety shows.” The Morning News of Dallas noted on 6th August 1890 that “myself and he set and talked awhile and he got up and said he wanted to go to the honk-a-tonk (variety show).”
But its attractions soon waned and by 1900 newspapers were reporting rather wistfully that “the once popular institution is dying off.” In its reminiscences the Evening Gazette of Reno, in what was a syndicated article, on 3rd February 1900 gave the flavour of an evening which began “about nine o’clock, and continues in full blast until one, or thereabouts, as long as its patrons will patronise the bar…always at least one drama is presented, the entire company, vocalists, dancers and all, participating.”
The same article gave a fanciful origin for the name. A group were wandering in search of the source of some music they could hear. “From far out in the distance there finally came to their ears a “honk-a-tonk-a-tonk-a-tonk-a,” which they mistook for the bass viol. They turned toward the sound, to find alas! a flock of wild geese. So honkatonk was named.”
We can almost certainly discount this etymological root but whence it came is anybody’s guess. Honky as a pejorative term for whites didn’t emerge (at least in print) until the 1960s and Tonkin, the name given to the French colony of north Vietnam, is too far of a stretch to give its name to a type of bar in the Wild West of America.
The Iola Register was probably right.
September 27, 2018
Gin O’Clock – Part Forty Eight
One of the benefits of the ginaissance is that many outlets are getting in on the act of selling an increasingly widening range of my favourite spirit. Take the duty-free shop in Alicante airport. Eschewing a pair of castanets and a stuffed donkey that were the purchases of choice of British holidaymakers in days of yore, I headed to the spirits section and spent the last of my Euros on three gins that I had not tried before.
The first of these purchases was the intriguing G’Vine Floraisson – a bit of a mouthful in anybody’s language and probably the bastard offspring of some creative type in a marketing agency who thought the name perfectly blended the concept of gin and the vine. I’ll get back to you on that one.
The name aside, G’vine is from France, distilled in the Cognac region, and uses as its base a neutral grape spirit, made from Ugni Blanc grapes. In doing so the distillers tap into a tradition dating back to the 13th century when grapes were used in France and the Low Countries as the base for juniper spirits. It makes for a smoother base than the usual wheat based spirits.
The second differentiator in the drink is the use of the flowers from the vine as a botanical. The vine flowers for a few days in June before the grape berry forms and floraisson is the French word used to describe the flowering. The Floraisson gin uses flowers which have just formed whereas the other gin from the G’Vine stable, the Nouaison, uses more maturer blossoms. The flowers are hand-picked and macerated in the neutral grape spirit for a few days.
There are nine other botanicals used to create the gin – juniper, ginger root, liquorice, cassia bark, green cardamom, coriander, cubeb berries, nutmeg, and lime. Each botanical is macerated individually in separate liquor stills and then the floraisson infusion, the separate botanical mixes and the grape spirit are all blended together in a copper pot. Naturally, it has a name – Lily Fleur. The result is a clear spirit which weighs in at 40% ABV.
It seems a lot of trouble to go to and is a radical departure from the usual method of macerating all the botanicals in one mix. And, of course, the question is: is it all worth the effort?
While the spirit is crystal clear and smooth to the taste, the wine base gives it a sharpness that is not present with the more usual grain bases. It is certainly different but the astringent qualities of the base are not to my taste. To the nose it has a very floral aroma and the initial impression when one rolls the spirit in the mouth is of a very flowery concoction. I assume that this is the vine flower, which assumes a dominant position in the mix. It is only in the aftertaste that the, to me, more interesting flavours, principally juniper and ginger, come to the fore.
I didn’t find it unpalatable but I wouldn’t place it among my favourites, not least because it seems to have strayed some way from the tastes and sensations that one would associate with a gin. But there is clearly a place for a summery, floral-heavy gin and if that is your bag, it is worth a try.
The bottle is a dumpy with a light green coating towards the shoulder, a nod to the colouring of vineyards in the spring, apparently. The top is a hideously large, green screw cap. The lettering, on the other hand, is in a modern style and gives a rather stylish flourish to what otherwise would have been an unremarkable bottle.
