Martin Fone's Blog, page 26

Pingo Ponds

One of the most striking, if profoundly disturbing sights, I have witnessed was a large piece of a glacier breaking off and falling into Alaska’s Glacier Bay, a visible manifestation of the impact of the warming of the Earth’s temperature. The current phase of climate change may preponderantly be down to man’s actions, but over the long history of the planet there have been natural climate cycles where temperatures have risen and fallen, each leaving their mark on the terrain.

Around 20,000 years ago as the glaciers retreated, in permafrost regions, where ground temperatures remained below 0⁰C, water flowing underground froze. Forced by artesian pressure to the surface, the created small, relatively low hillocks known as pingos, a term coined by Arctic botanist, Alf Erling Porsild, from the Inuvialuit word for a conical hill, pinguq, for his 1938 paper in which he described the mounds he had discovered in the western Arctic coast of Canada and Alaska.

Nevertheless, the first to describe a pingo was John Franklin in 1825, which he had seen on Ellice Island in the Mackenzie Delta in the Canadian North-west Territories, an area which contains around a quarter of the world’s identified pingos, some 1,350. Closer to home, pingos, looking like giant molehills, can still be seen in the London Wetlands Centre in Barnes.

The surviving pingos are relatively rare because when the rise in the earth’s temperature would start to melt the solid ice within the pingo, causing the hillock eventually to collapse, forming a shallow crater. With nowhere else to go, the meltwater filled the resultant hollow, creating a pond, known as a relic pingo or pingo pond or kettle pond.

A feature of Norfolk, as seen on maps of the county dating from the 18th century, is the number of Commons there were. Very few survive today, mostly ploughed up as the demand for fertile agricultural land increased. One notable exception, though, was the self-dubbed Pingo Pond capital of the UK, Thompson Common in Breckland, six kilometres south of Watton, now managed by the Norfolk Wildlife Trust.

The extraordinary concentration of pingo ponds on the Common rendered the land too difficult to convert for farming purposes and although some on the periphery were filled in, the majority remain in their natural state. The shallow ponds offer an excellent habitat for some particularly rare species and, as a word of warning, a great breeding ground for mosquitoes. There is even Great Eastern Pingo Trail which is a circular walk of just under eight miles, which, as an added bonus, also offers the opportunity to see some long horned cattle.

While collapsed pingos have enabled Thompson Common to turn a geological phenomenon into a nature conservation project as well as a tourist attraction, they presented the engineers building both Blackwall Tunnels unanticipated problems. Most of the route for the first, completed in 1897 and then the longest underwater tunnel in the world, went through pretty level bedrock with variations of no greater than five metres, but geological surveys revealed a deep depression at Blackwall that went through the London clay at least sixty metres into the chalk.

The basin was filled with sand and gravel and it is thought that it was a collapsed underground pingo. Finding a solution to excavate through that was one of the reasons why it took six years to complete the project. The second tunnel, built in the 1960s, hit similar problems. There is evidence of collapsed underground pingos in other parts of London, such as Battersea and Canning Town.

Portrait Of A Murderer

A review of Portrait of a Murderer by Anne Meredith – 250106

Anne Meredith was one of the noms de plume of Lucy Malleson, a prolific author best known as Anthony Gilbert. Originally published in 1933 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, Portrait of a Murderer is a clever inverted murder mystery story which explores the psychology of a murderer. It is cleverly titled as not only is it a study of a murderer but a painting of the moment that the murder is committed is the culprit’s lasting testament to their crime.

Adrian Gray is the pater familias of an extended family whom he invites each December to his house, King’s Poplar, to spend Christmas with him. Once of old land owning stock, the Gray family is now a pale shadow of its former self. In fact, Adrian is teetering on the edge of bankruptcy, following a series of unwise investments made following advice from his son-in-law, Eustace. Married to Adrian’s daughter, Olivia, Eustace is a Jew and is a stereotype of the characteristics associated with that race at the time, a portrayal that the modern reader might find distasteful. Germane to the plot, though, is that Eustace is desperate for £10,000 to shore up his investment business.

Richard, Adrian’s eldest son, is an aspiring politician who has over-extended himself in a desire to impress the powers that be and buy his way into a peerage. Hildebrand, known as Brand, is the black sheep of the family, trapped in a loveless marriage with a brood of children, at least one of whom is not his, forced to work in a dead end job and required to sublimate his ambitions to return to Paris to be an artist. He is desperate for money and he to joins the queue to tap up his father for funds.

Of Adrian’s other daughters, Isobel has returned home after the failure of marriage while Amy has acted as her father’s housekeeper, struggling to make ends meet on a pitiful allowance. Only Ruth and her lawyer husband, Miles, are content with their lot and as the story plays out this is telling.

The atmosphere on Christmas Eve is strained as several of the house guests steel their nerves to approach Adrian. He, true to form and beset with money worries of his own, aggressively knocks back their requests. The following morning Adrian’s body is found in his study, his head having been bashed in. On the desk is his cheque book, the latest entries on the counterfoils being one made out to Brand for £2,000 followed by another to Eustace for £10,000, and an agreement signed by Brand renouncing any future claim on his father’s generosity.

In essence, the book falls into four parts, the set up followed by the murderer’s account of how they came to murder the old man and their attempts to bother cover up their crime and to divert suspicion to another party. The third part shows how the murderer’s plans seem to succeed, putting someone who is innocent of this crime at least into the frame to the extent that they are standing trial for murder and the fourth shows how the murderer’s plan unravels and the truth comes out.

A couple of chance remarks about a silk handkerchief and a previous misdemeanour, together with a confession from a former servant that she saw someone in Adrian’s library around 2am, the time when Adrian was thought to have been killed, which blows wide open one of the suspect’s carefully laid alibi, leads the disinterested Miles to the inevitable conclusion. His dilemma is whether to save the morally repugnant but innocent victim of the murderer’s plot in favour of someone who deserves a break and is to be pitied. Miles, of course, does the right thing but allows the culprit to face their own form of reckoning.

After a slow start, it is a powerful read. Inverted murders, of course, lose one of the key ingredients of a murder story, the whodunit element, but Meredith more than makes up for it by providing the reader with a compelling insight into the mind of her killer and a very convincing rationale for their actions. I enjoyed it.

Mountain Of The Week

Here is something to throw into the gender debate: a mountain in New Zealand is now legally recognised as a person and has been granted all the rights and responsibilities of a human by the government.

As part of an agreement between the New Zealand government and the indigenous Maori tribes, Taranaki Maunga, a 8,261 foot mountain long regarded as an ancestor of the Maoris, has been given the legal identity of Te Kahui Tupua, which the law views as “a living and indivisible whole”. It includes Taranaki and its surrounding peaks and land, “incorporating all their physical and metaphysical elements”.

Four members of the Maori tribes and four others appointed by the country’s conservation minister will act as “the face and the voice” of the mountain. The enhanced legal rights give the tribes more power to uphold the mountain’s health and wellbeing in an era where it has become a popular spot for tourism, hiking and snow sports. However, it will still remain accessible to the public.

Curmudgeons Of The Week (3)

Sticking to your principles and standing your ground may give you some momentary satisfaction, but beware the sense of remorse that may overwhelm you afterwards. Take the case of Huang Ping, an elderly Chinese man living in Jinxi, a town south-west of Shanghai.

The authorities are building a two-lane highway that was intended to go through his property and to encourage him to move, offered him a compensation package worth around £180,000. However, Huang Ping dug his heels in, refused the offer, and decided to stay put.

In what can only be described as an ingenious retaliatory move, Ping’s house is now completely surrounded by an elevated expressway which is due to be opened in the Spring. He and his eleven-year-old grandson spend much of their time while the work is going on in the town centre, only returning in the evening when the workers have downed tools. However, when the road opens the noise will be constant, making it difficult for them to live in peace.

Asked if he regretted his decision, Ping said “If I could turn back time, I would agree to the demolition conditions they offered. Now it feels like I lost a big bet,”

Principles are costly things.

The Female Detective

A review of The Female Detective by Andrew Forrester – 250103

As a voracious reader of detective fiction, I am always interested in the origins of the genre. Andrew Forrester’s oddity, The Female Detective, originally published in 1864 and reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics series, is a collection of seven stories of varying length and quality in the form of a casebook. It also introduces to the first professional female detective in British fiction, Mrs Gladden. To my shame I was unaware of her until I picked up the book.

In truth, she is somewhat verbose in the style of the times, rather conceited, a tad naïve, and anxious to impress upon her reader the structure and rigour of her approach to solving a crime. Whilst she follows the methodologies deployed by her male counterparts, meticulously examining the scene of the crime, following up clues, and hunting down criminals, she recognizes that her sex gives her some distinct advantages. As a female detective she can often enter situations where her own role is not suspected, something men would find hard to do, and is often seen as a confident, a trait that the likes of her successors such as Miss Marple and Miss Silver use to great effect. However, there is no great Sherlockian deductive powers on display, just common sense and hard work.

The longest of the stories is the first, Tenant for Life, which I will focus on as it exhibits some interesting features, some of which feature in the detective literature that was to follow over the next century and a half and some which are peculiar to the age and strike the modern reader as peculiar if not abhorrent.

Taking a Sunday jaunt out with the Flempses, Mrs Gladden is taken to a milestone and learns the story of Little Fourpenny Number Two. To the modern reader the idea that a mother could in even the most straitened of circumstances sell her baby and, equally, that there are people willing to form the other part of the transaction is more than a little disquieting. Nevertheless, baby trafficking is at the nub of the tale. Initially, Jan Flemps bought a baby for fourpence but it died in infancy. By the milestone he bought a second but was then approached by a woman who offered him thirty pounds for the baby which he accepted.

The second curious aspect of the tale is that it involves a quirk of inheritance law. The Shedleighs need to produce a child to stop the estate getting into the hands of Sir Nathaniel. His wife dies in childbirth and the baby is still born. Shedleigh’s sister, Miss Catherine, rushes out and purchases a child from Flemps which she substitutes for the dead baby, claiming it to be the rightful heir. Of course, the coincidence of there being someone with a newborn available for sale at this moment of crisis stretches credulity.

Perhaps more interesting for the development of the genre is the position that Mrs Gladden finds herself in. She starts the investigation into the origins of the child and the fate of the Shedleigh estate with the intention that the truth will out and justice will prevail. However, she develops sympathy for the philanthropy of the Shedleighs and a profound distaste for the wastrel that is Sir Nathaniel. She bitterly regrets revealing the truth and only a fortuitous attack of a hereditary disease prevents a dreadful outcome. The theme of a detective finding themselves with a tricky moral dilemma, having to choose between pursuing justice to the bitter end or turning a blind eye to unpalatable consequences has a long road to run.

While often much ado about very little, the stories in the casebook shed a fascinating light on the future direction of crime fiction and that in itself is to be valued.

The Man Who Gave Away Stonehenge

On September 21, 1915 Cecil Chubb bought Stonehenge and an accompanying triangle of land of about thirty acres for the princely sum of £6,600. Just over three years later, on October 26, 1918 he gave it away to the nation, handing it over to Sir Alfred Mond, he first Commissioner of Works. Why the change of heart?

Under the terms of the Ancient Monuments Act of 1913, the government was entitled to purchase historic monuments compulsorily. With the First World War coming to an end and with the focus of the government and its army of civil servants becoming free to concentrate on other matters, Chubb could probably see that Stonehenge, whose importance was already recognised, was likely to be a prime target for a purchase. Rather than an asset, it was turning into a liability and rather than engage in an unseemly argument over valuation, he chose to cut his losses and hand the monument over for nothing.

Chubb did, though, make some stipulations, including insisting that an entrance fee of no more than one shilling was to be charged to visit the monument. The question of who had right of access to the area around the stones was left rather vague and was not clarified until 1921 when, as recorded in the minutes of the Amesbury Parish Council on April 12, 1921, “the Council relinquishes all claims on the right of way now enclosed,
on condition that all householders and their families, (or all
inhabitants) of the parishes, comprising the Rural District of Amesbury,
and the householders and their families (or inhabitants) of the Parish of
Netheravon, be granted free admission to Stonehenge at all times. Subject
to the usual rules and regulations made by the Board for the proper
management of Stonehenge as an Ancient Monument.”

The entrance fee was not changed until the 1970s when a rise was considered necessary to manage visitor numbers and to reduce the effect of crowds on the site and the local infrastructure. Today, admission prices start at £25.40 for adults, although members of English Heritage can visit for free.

In recognition of his generosity to the nation, Chubb was honoured with a title in 1919, becoming Sir Cecil Chubb, First Baronet of Stonehenge. Fittingly, for his coat of arms he chose a silver lion’s leg grasping two branches of mistletoe, a plant held sacred by the Druids, and the motto, “saxa condita”, which means “founded on the stones”.

Chubb died in 1934 and the baronetcy passed on to his son, Sir John. When he died in 1957 leaving no heir, the baronetcy ceased to exist. There is a plaque on the house where Cecil was born and grew up in Shrewton, about four miles from Stonehenge. Otherwise, the man who bought and then gave away Stonehenge has slipped into obscurity.

The House Of Disappearance

A review of The House of Disappearance by Jefferson Farjeon – 250103

Sometimes you pick up a book that is so bonkers that you wonder whether it is worth persevering with. Farjeon’s The House of Disappearance, originally published in 1928, definitely falls into that category, but, while no classic, it does contain enough to keep the reader engaged.

The story starts off conventionally enough with four uniformed police constables and an Inspector Biggs arriving at Greystones, the residence of John Elderly, demanding to see him. They discover that the library door is locked, that inside there is evidence of a struggle and that the master of the house has disappeared. Shortly afterwards, the butler, answering a bell rung from the library, also disappears, the cars have been tampered with and the telephone line has been severed.

As Biggs starts his investigations, the penny begins to drop that he and his minions are not who they seem to be and that their presence at Greystones is for altogether different reasons. There are more disappearances including a house guest, a member of parliament by the name of Sir Julius Hughes, and a rather unworldly professor, Grinson. There are a couple of murders and a bewildering array of characters, many with double identities, troop across the stage. At times it is quite an unsettling and challenging process to get your head around what is really happening.

Eventually, the reader realizes that there are very few good guys in the story and that their hopes of some resolution to the goings-on at Greystones rests in the hands of Elderly’s niece, Angela Vernon, and her friend, Peter Armstrong. Peter is full of public school spirit and bravado, ready to throw himself into a situation regardless of personal danger, while Angela is no shrinking violet herself, wanting to be treated equally and bear her share of the responsibility of the investigations. Her personal peril spurs on the knight in shining armour aspect of Peter’s character and, inevitably, the romantic bond between the two grows stronger.

As the dust settles, more good guys emerge, including an itinerant workman who turns out to be a real detective, Jessop, Elderly’s secretary, Miss Ayrton, despite her dark past, and two child-like servants, Freddie and Lizzie. There even emerges a reason for all the kerfuffle. Elderly, who runs a sort of rehabilitation centre for old lags, has secreted £100,000 in cash about the premises – the hiding place is both ingenious and stereotypical – and a gang is anxious to get their hands on the loot.

Their attempts are thwarted and just as a sense of justice seems to prevail, Farjeon throws in another curve ball as Elderly is not who the reader has been led to believe he was but rather a bit character who has been a shadowy presence throughout the story. This revelation puts a different complexion on who should inherit the money and Angela rather nobly vows to have noting to do with it.

Ridiculous and implausible as the plot is, Farjeon carries it all off with some aplomb. It is a fast-paced thriller which carries the reader along, full of twists and turns, never dropping its relentless pace. The consequence is that it is a tremendous read, ideal fodder for an undemanding few hours of sheer indulgence and offers a foray into a world where all the reader can do is suspend their critical faculties. Occasionally, it is good to let the mind have some time off!

Coal Posts (3)

Although coal posts were constructed from cast iron, a material chosen for its robustness and durability, there were still bumps and scrapes and the polluted air meant that the white paint soon discoloured. James Browton, a builder and general contractor from Watford, was given the contract for repairing and repainting all the boundary markers from 1863 until his death in 1870 when the contract passed to Dudley Browton. An 1887 tender from James Dudley Brownton to clean, repair, and paint once in oil paint and number consecutively 257 boundary marks for a year for £185 suggests that coal post maintenance was very much a Browton family affair.

By 1890 there were around 265 coal posts marking the boundary of which, according to a fascinating website, there are still 211 extant (or there were in 2011) with Elmbridge being a particular hot spot with twenty-three publicly accessible surviving, most of which are Grade II listed.

The monies raised from the coal duty went towards very specific purposes such as the creation of a unified sewerage system for London and the construction of the Thames embankments. Other major landmarks such as Cannon Street and Holborn Viaduct were financed from the City of London’s share of the duties. In the 1870s the funds were used to eliminate toll charges on bridges over the Thames at Kew, Kingston upon Thames, Hampton Court, Walton upon Thames, and Staines and across the Lea at Chingford and Tottenham Mills.

However, by the 1880s there was increasing public and political pressure to reduce or eliminate taxes on specific everyday items such as coal. The coal tax was seen as disproportionately affecting the poor as they relied on the fuel for heating and cooking. There was also a concern that the duty was being used for the aggrandizement of the centre of the metropolis at the expense of its growing suburbs. Coupled with a move to simplify and streamline the tax collection process, it was clear that the days of the coal tax were numbered.

The creation of the London County Council in 1889 and, later, the Greater London Council led to changes in the way that infrastructure projects were funded, meaning that there was no need for specific taxes like the coal tax. Coal duties were formally abolished initially within the City of London in 1890 and by 1901 across the whole of the London area. Within three or four decades of their erection, the distinctive white metal posts and stone obelisks had become redundant and, over time, their purpose almost forgotten.

When In Rome

A review of When in Rome by Ngaio Marsh – 250101

Perhaps it is about time as it is the twenty-sixth novel in Marsh’s Roderick Alleyn series, but When in Rome, originally published in 1968, shows some interesting changes from her usual approach to detective fiction writing. Alleyn takes a much less prominent role in the murder investigation, content to leave the most of the running to the local Italian police, his faithful assistant, Bre’er Fox, only makes a brief appearance providing background information on a couple of Brits, and there is even a touch of romance.

The biggest difference is that Alleyn’s secondary role allows him the freedom to play judge and jury and while he comes up with a radically different solution to what happened to Sebastian Mailer, he decides to let the murderer go free. Hitherto, Alleyn has been a stickler for allowing the law to take its course, once the truth has been unravelled, irrespective of personal feelings.

Alleyn is in Rome acting undercover, trying to obtain information about a gang of drug smugglers led by the criminal master mind, Ziegfeldt. His principal target is Sebastian Mailer who operates as a tour guide offering a tour of the recherche parts of Rome and a high old time. The addition of the successful novelist, Barnaby Grant, whose Simon in Latium has recently become a best seller, gives Mailer’s tour extra cachet, enabling him to attract a collection of wealthy and disparate clients, always useful when murder is afoot.

The party consists of a Dutch couple who are hopelessly devoted to each other and bear an uncanny similarity to one another – it’s the ears – as well as an Etruscan statue, a retired Major, Sweet, Sophie Jason, who works at Grant’s publishers, Sonia, Lady Braceley, and her son, Kenneth Dorne with Alleyn making up the numbers. Alleyn is surprised that Grant is involved with such a shady character as Mailer and, for once, the reader is one up on him because they have already read about the incident where Grant has his manuscript stolen and Mailer recovers it for him. The price is that Grant adds his glamour to what is really a sordid enterprise.

The action hots up when the party visit the Basilica di San Tommaso. A card seller verbally assaults Mailer and then is seen lurking in the shadows before disappearing, as does Mailer. The seller’s body is found dumped in a sarcophagus while, several days later, the body of Mailer is found down a well, Alleyn having to endure a dangerous descent to identify him. Later Sweet, whose cover Fox has helped to blow, is killed in a traffic accident as he tries to evade both arrest and a vindictive gang member.

The investigations reveal that Mailer has a hold on each of the male members of the party, adding blackmail to his litany of crimes and providing motives for his murder. Inevitably, the drug running and the murders dovetail but Alleyn is punctilious in ensuring that he only engages himself in the task that he was sent to Rome to carry out, to get the inside gen on the drug cartel.

Nevertheless, the Italian police’s rather simplistic reconstruction of the events that led to the murders does not gel with the facts as Alleyn sees them. Shoe polish, a revealing photograph and a spoilt film lead him to a different conclusion, one that given his empathy for the culprit he does not pursue with his usual vigour. However, he does disclose his theory in a letter to his wife, Agatha Troy.

I found this one of Marsh’s more enjoyable novels, perhaps because she tried something different and it seemed to work.

Coffee Of The Week

If you cannot get enough of coffee, like me, here is something to consider – spreadable coffee.

Invented by a couple of Swiss hikers who were fed up with having to carry bulky equipment to get their caffeine fix, they came up with the idea of making a spreadable “dark roast” paste from arabica coffee beans. Thickened with xanthum gum to give it a glossy appearance and sweetened with organic sugar beet, it is similar in colour to Marmite and like the divisive spread can be spread on toast.

It has a strong taste, with dark chocolate notes, almost yeasty, like a dark, thick soy sauce. It also works well as a drink, if you squeeze  dollop into a mug of boiling water. A single tube of No Normal Coffee, enough to make twenty cups or to spread over 50 slices of toast will set you back £14.

Innovative, certainly, essential, unlikely. Will it catch on, who knows, but there are other brands of spreadable coffee extract available?