Martin Fone's Blog, page 271
January 26, 2018
What Is The Origin Of (164)?…
Posh
Here in Britain we use the word, as a noun, to signify, perhaps pejoratively, someone who is socially superior, one of our betters, perhaps a relic of the class system that bedevils our society. As ever, Ian Dury exemplifies its usage in Billericay Dickie, “Oh golly, oh gosh/ come and lie on the couch/ with a nice bit of posh/ from Burnham-on-Crouch.” But where does posh come from?
What is clear in my etymological researches is that there often contending theories to sift through before determining which is the likeliest. This is certainly the case with posh. Of all the suggested origins, some of which I will mention here, the most likely is that it comes from the streets of London via the Romanies. In Romani, their language, posh means a half and from around 1830 in the argot of thieves, posh meant a coin of small denomination, such as a halfpenny. The thought that we might be on the right track is given additional credence by an entry in Slang and Its Analogues, volume five, edited by Farmer and Henley and published in 1902. There it defines posh as a term used by thieves for “money: generic, but specifically a half penny or other small coin.”
Searches of the literature of the time unearth a mention in James Payn’s The Eavesdropper: An Unparalleled Experience of 1888; “They used such funny terms as brads and dibbs and mopusses and posh…at last it was borne in upon me that they were talking about money.” In 1892 Montagu Williams reported in his Down east and Up West a conversation with a street singer who revealed his modus operandi for parting listeners from their cash. “That sort of patter I was just speaking of is the thing to get the posh, they’ll tell you.” In a time when money sorted the haves from the have-nots, it is easy to imagine that the sense could be extended to those who were socially superior.
Then we have a contribution from one of my favourite books, The Diary of A Nobody by George and Weedon Grossmith, also published in 1892, where one of the characters called Murray Posh is described as “quite a swell”. The success of The Diary may have kick-started the use of push in wider circles than the criminal and lower orders but it was not the word’s origin.
But the sense did quickly gravitate to one who was superior in their dress, another mark of someone’s superiority. In 1914 in The British Army from Within, E Charles Vivian wrote, “the cavalryman, far more than the infantryman, makes a point of wearing posh clothing on every possible occasion – posh being a term used to designate superior clothing, or articles of attire other than those issued by and strictly conforming to the regulations.” This may well be the sense in which it is used in a typically unfunny tag line in an issue of Punch from September 1918 where an officer from the RAF says, “Oh, yes, Mater, we had a posh time of it down there.”
An alternative theory is promoted by supporters of Walt Whitman who in his 1855 collection of poems, Leaves of Grass, who wrote, “cold dash of waves at the ferry-wharf,/ posh and ice in the river…half-frozen mud in the streets.” But this is a completely different usage of the word and echoes the Yorkshire dialect word posh which means mud or slush. And where does it leave the oft-cited origin for posh, the acronym of Port Out, Starboard home, reflecting the preferred cabin arrangements for travelling to and from India by ship to avoid the worst of the sun? Well, P&O deny ever using it and the story dates only as far back as 1955.
As often is the way, the thieves have it.
January 25, 2018
Gin o’Clock – Part Thirty Four
One of the pleasures of members of the family knowing about my explorations of the ginaissance is that they seek out unusual gins for me to try from places that they visit. One such was a bottle of Ibz Premium Gin, which is only available for direct sale in the Balearic island of Ibiza. Such is the power and the reach of the internet, though, I’m sure it can be ordered online from some of the more enterprising wholesalers around. It is produced by Familia Mari Mayans who are to be found at Sant Antoni de Portmany.
The Familia have been producing liqueurs and spirits for around 130 years and gin for around 50. However, they decided in 2010 to make a premium gin to take advantage of the surge in interest in gin. They began experimenting with various combinations of plants, fruits and aromatic herbs before, in 2012, hitting on their preferred recipe and launching the hooch on to the market. The base spirit is a pure grain alcohol to which the juniper berries are added in a copper still. Next come the botanicals, sourced from the island to give it a distinctive Mediterranean flavour, namely thyme leaves, fresh rosemary and citrus peels.
The gin comes in a distinctive, cylindrical bottle with an artificial cork stopper. Slightly irritatingly, the neck of the bottle is narrowed which makes pouring the gin a longer process than it might otherwise be the case but probably makes it ideal for optics. There are no labels on the bottle. Instead, a design has been etched into the glass with acid using green and black inks, giving the bottle a greenish hue, and features thyme and rosemary.
To the nose it has a distinctive aroma of juniper and citrus and the taste does not disappoint, with citrus and spice to the fore and a glorious spicy aftertaste. At 38% ABV it as the lower end of the gin strength spectrum but with a splash of your favourite tonic, makes for a distinctive and refreshing drink. A definite hit!
Our next gin is Two Birds Countryside London Dry Gin, which is made in batches of 100 bottles from a 25 litre handmade copper pot still in the Leicestershire town of Market Harborough. It is not to be confused with Two Birds Artisan Spirits of Michigan. This is a classic London gin with the traditional set of botanicals – juniper, citrus fruit., coriander and orris root – to which is added an unnamed countryside botanic. To the nose it has a very distinctive and pronounced juniper aroma but to the taste it is more subtle than some of the more straightforward London gins. The aftertaste is quite spicy, not unpleasantly so, but lingers with you for a while.
The bottle is a dumpy, cylindrical shape with a screwcap. Rather like the bottle of Ibz, the information contained on the bottle is etched into it using blue principally as a background and white for the lettering. You won’t be surprised to learn that there are two birds on the lettering, one atop the W and one perched on the bottom of the S. The ABV is 40% and whether drunk neat or with a mixer, its quality shines through. It is a well-balanced gin where everything within it plays its part well. If your taste inclines towards the more traditional type of gin, this is highly recommended.
January 24, 2018
Book Corner – January 2018 (3)
The Diary of a Provincial Lady – E M Delafield
It is interesting to reflect upon how you got to a particular book. This is not a book I would ordinarily have selected, despite being a fan of humorous writing. I had come across Delafield – her maiden name was de la Pasture and knowing this gives a clue to the gentle, subtle humour that the reader has in store – in a couple of collections of detective fiction. Her short stories were among the better ones in the collections and I was encouraged by the potted bio to seek out her best known work, The Diary of Provincial Lady. Et voila.
The Penguin Modern Classics edition contains four of the five Provincial books – they are all short, barely over 120 pages each and each can be read over an evening or two – omitting the last one in which the heroine visits Russia. There is a debate, too boring to repeat, as to whether it properly belongs to the series. I will restrict my comments to the first of the series which is the better known one of the five and first appeared in 1930, initially as weekly instalments in the magazine, Time and Tide.
The heroine, the anonymous Provincial Lady (PL), lives in Devon with a taciturn and somewhat chauvinist husband, Robert, two children, Robin and Victoria, a French governess, a cook and a servant. Recruiting and maintaining staff is a theme running through the book. As the title suggests, the book takes the form of a diary in which PL breathlessly and concisely records the minutiae of her day. Life is a trial, forever having to navigate through life’s minor crises whilst at the same time struggling to keep up external appearances with the bank and various tradesmen breathing down her neck. Her great aunt’s diamond ring goes in and out of the pawn shop with depressing regularity. As PL writes, “Feel that life is wholly unendurable, and decide madly to get a new hat.”
Delafield’s prose consists of pithy, simple, unpretentious sentences which glide from the page – the occasional asides and rhetorical questions about her life are wonderful. But there is something deeper and more subtle at work. She has a wonderful ear for dialogue and an eye for the rhythms and petty feuds and jealousies of English rural life. It has a very satirical edge to it, not as overblown or camp as E F Benson’s Mapp and Lucia, but very knowing and indicative of a keen observer of life. But whilst the pomposities of village life are being sent up, there is no hint of malice and the reader departs uplifted and at peace with the world.
There are some wonderful characters. Lady Boxe drives around the village in her Bentley and makes PL feel socially inferior. PL’s friend, Rose, offers her a route to escape to London but once there, there a whole new set of social codes and conventions to observe and flout. The children say the most outrageous and inopportune things, often puncturing the impression PL is trying to create. And then there are the bulbs. The book opens, in November 1929, with PL planting bulbs, only to be told by Lady Boxe, who nearly sits on them, that it is too late to plant them. In any case, the insensitive Lady B remarks, Dutch ones are best. PL responds by saying that she supports products from the Empire only for her retort to be ruined by her daughter asking whether they are the ones they got from Woolworth. Bulbs then become a running gag throughout the book.
And then there are some wonderful aphorisms, one of my favourites being, “Am struck by paradoxical thought that youth is by no means the happiest time of life, but that most of the rest of life is tinged by regret for its passing, and wonder what old age will feel like, in this respect. (Shall no doubt discover very shortly.)”
A wonderful book which deserves to be rediscovered.
January 22, 2018
You’re Having A Laugh – Part Seven
The Great Bottle Hoax of 1749
This is a series which explores human gullibility and credulity, a subject which has fascinated many for centuries. A group of aristos with nothing better to do than consider such points met in 1749. The Duke of Portland opined that if the most impossible thing was advertised, “there would be fools enough in London to fill a play house and pay handsomely for the privilege of being there.” The Earl of Chesterfield, after scratching his peruke for a while, thought that someone jumping out of a quart bottle would test the public’s credulity. And so the wager was struck.
An advert was placed in the London newspapers in the first week of January promising that on 16th January at the New Theatre in Haymarket promising an exhibition by a performer who had already appeared before most of the crowned heads of Europe. The conjurer, as he was described, would take a walking cane from a member of the audience and play every instrument known to man upon it. Then he would take a common wine bottle which, after due examination by members of the audience, he would place on a table, jump into it and sing a selection of songs. Entry to this astonishing evening’s entertainment would set you back five pounds.
London was agog and it was the talk of the town. All the tickets were snapped up. No one wanted to miss this extraordinary display. But when the audience had assembled, there was no sign of movement backstage. No entertainment had been provided to keep the punters amused before the show began and the audience became restless, starting to boo, stamping their feet and pounding their canes. Eventually someone appeared on the stage and announced that if the performance didn’t start within the next quarter of an hour, the audience would get their money back.
Order of sorts was restored but as the quarter-hour elapsed there was still no sign that a performance was about to begin. Someone in one of the boxes grabbed a lighted candle and tossed it on to the stage. This was the signal for a riot and soon seats were torn up and the frenzied audience proceeded to demolish everything within sight. The theatre was set alight and the more subdued members of the audience fought to make their exit stage left, leaving much of their portable apparel such as wigs, hats and cloaks behind. A big bonfire was built outside the theatre and the stage curtains were made into an impromptu flag. Even the cash receipts were taken.
The wags about town had a field day decrying the gullibility of the public. Some placed adverts promoting feats even more ludicrous and impossible as the man in the bottle, some offering to rip out their own eyeballs or to jump down their own throats. Another offered to shoot himself with two pistols, once through the abdomen and then through the brain. He promised that this tour de force would end “with staggering convulsions, grinning, etc., in a manner never before publicly attempted.”
A story did the rounds that the conjurer had been prevailed upon by a certain gentleman to do a private performance. Once in the bottle, the gentleman put a cork into it and made off with him, hence his non-appearance. The hoax which sparked a riot eventually ran out of steam and the great British public diverted its attention to other affairs. It was some years before the perpetrators of the hoax were revealed.
January 21, 2018
Sign Of The Week (3)
I cannot make my mind up whether this is a testament to the withdrawal of public conveniences or the reduction of rural bus services or just an example of human grossness but Slimbridge has been hit with a bit of a problem, I read this week.
The Gloucestershire village is served by a number of buses (6, 61 and 346 in particular) but recently had an unexpected and unwelcome rash of visits from the number two. The bus shelters had been used as a toilet and the cleaner was naturally pissed off to have to clear up the mess.
The Parish Council sat to deliberate and, according to Chairman Phil Garrett, considered a belt and braces approach to the problem. I would have thought it was the absence of belts and braces that had contributed to the mess. Anyhow, they eschewed the installation of CCTV on the grounds of cost and decided to erect this rather natty and unusual sign, the design for which was unanimously acclaimed at their Annual General Meeting last year. They were attracted to the design because at A5 size, it was more discreet and articulated the message well.
It seems to have done the trick. There have been no reported incidents since the signage was installed three months ago.
Life in the countryside, eh?
January 20, 2018
Pisser Of The Week
We have all had a Specsaver moment but perhaps not as extreme as that experienced by James Dowly.
Driving by the Mere in Ellesmere in Shropshire with his father, James spotted an object floating face down in the water. Without any more ado, our hero stopped the car and jumped into the freezing water, I read this week.
Imagine his surprise, then, when having waded out to what he thought was a baby, he found that it was a plastic doll, wearing a pink and black striped cardigan and a white Babygro. In his defence James claimed that from a distance the object looked “very lifelike.”
As is the modern way, the whole incident was captured on camera.
Better to be safe than sorry, I suppose, but book that eye test as quickly as you can is my recommendation.
January 19, 2018
What Is The Origin Of (163)?…
Fight like Kilkenny cats
A little while ago someone, in describing a spat, described the adversaries as fighting like Kilkenny cats. I have never been to Kilkenny in the south-east of the Republic of Ireland and so cannot verify how aggressive the moggies there are. The sense of its figurative usage is pretty clear, describing a couple of particularly tenacious opponents who are diametrically opposed in their views and will never agree. Think Brexiteers and Remainers. But why cats from Kilkenny?
A clue to understanding the genesis of the phrase is to be found in a limerick attributed to that most prolific of poets, Anon. There are a number of variants but this version gives the general sense; “there once were two cats of Kilkenny/ each thought there was one cat too many/ so they fought and they hit/ and they scratched and they bit/ ‘til (excepting their nails/ and the tips of their tails/ instead of two cats there weren’t any!” It must have been some scrap. Although limericks are strongly associated with Ireland, there is no clue as to why these ferocious cats came from Kilkenny, other than the felicitous rhyming of their town of origin with many.
Etymologists like to ascribe the origin of a word or phrase to some historical event or person and there are three theories, each of which appeared in the pages of Notes and Queries during the middle of the 19th century, relating to Kilkenny cats. The first, appearing in an edition from 1850, refers to the factional disputes between the English and Irish contingents in Kilkenny during the period between the 14th and 17th centuries. There was much to fall out over – after all, the English were the occupiers and the native Irish the oppressed. Following Henry VIII’s schism with Rome, there were religious differences. And to cap it all, there was no clarity in statute as to the respective roles and rights of each community. The result was three centuries of bickering which ended up putting the town in Queer Street. It is said that our phrase is an allegorical representation of this tempestuous and ultimately ruinous relationship.
A second attempt was made to explain the origin appeared in an edition of Notes and Queries from 1864. According to this explanation, a group of German soldiers were stationed in Kilkenny at the turn of the 19th century and to relieve the monotony of garrison life, they used to arrange fights between a couple of moggies that were tied together by their tails. One day an officer, alerted by the noise, went to see what was going on and in an attempt to hide the evidence one soldier cut off both tails to allow the cats to escape. Holding the tails, he explained that the fight was so fierce that the elongated pieces of fur, bone and cartilage in his hand were all that was left.
A third version tells of a battle in the 18th century between two bands of cats, a thousand strong each side. The fighting was so vicious that all the cats were killed on both sides. This sounds very much like a particularised version of the first explanation. All have elements of a shaggy dog story (or should it be shaggy cat?) about them. The disputes between Irishtown and Englishtown, as the two disputatious communities were called, may have a scintilla of truth about them but I have a sneaking suspicion that Kilkenny may just have easily have been selected because of its rhyming qualities. As with many of these enquiries, no one really knows.
January 18, 2018
Motivated By Curiosity And A Desire For The Truth – Part Thirty Two
Do your ears grow as you get older?
Ears are wonderful things. As well as opening up the world of sound for those blessed with the sense of hearing – that is another story – they provide us with something to which we can attach our spectacles. In Chinese physiognomy large ears are a sign of longevity. As I grow ever older I get this unshakeable feeling that the size of my ears is increasing. The consensus seems to be that old men have big ears and so for those of us with an enquiring mind this prompts the question: Do ears really grow larger with age and, if so, is it a phenomenon restricted to men?
The starting point for our investigation into the lughole is a paper published in the British Medical Journal (BMJ) in 1995, entitled Why do old men have big ears? In this fascinating monograph a general practitioner from Bromley in Kent, James Heathcote, recounts a survey he and three of his doctor colleagues conducted into the size of men’s ears in 1993. The doctors measured the ear sizes of 206 men of aged 30 and over and analysed the results. They calculated that ears grew at an average of 0.22 millimetres a year or, to put it another way, around a centimetre every 50 years. Frustratingly, the worthy medics didn’t hazard a guess as to why this may happen.
But it seems that the British investigation only tells half a story, having concentrated exclusively on the male sex. For an understanding of what happens with the ears of the fairer sex. A paper, reprinted in the BMJ in 1996 entitled Correlation of Ear Length with Age in Japan details the findings of some physicians working in care homes in Japan (surprise, surprise) where they measured the ears and height of some 400 adult patients of both sexes. What they found was that there is a significant correlation between the length of your ear and age, confirming Heathcote’s findings, and that there is an even greater correlation when adjusted for height – across both sexes.
An Italian study in 1999, conducted by VF Ferrario and others, measured the ears of groups of males and females in age categories 12 to 15, 19 to 30 and 31 to 56. What they discovered was that ear dimensions were significantly larger in males than females and that there was a significant effect on the size of lugholes with age with larger ears to be found amongst the aging population.
A more exhaustive study was conducted in around 2006 was conducted by a team of Germans from the Freie Universitat Berlin, led by Carsten Niemitz, based upon some original original research carried out in 1959 by Montacer-Kuhssary. The team found some 1448 photographs of ears of people of all ages ranging from new-born children to adolescents to adults and old codgers up to the age of 92. Each of the photographs was subjected to fifteen different sets of measurements. What the team found that “in all parameters where post adult growth was observed, female ears showed a lesser increase than those of men.” Moreover the extent to which older men have bigger ears than younger males is greater than the extent to which older women’s lugholes are bigger than younger females’. But the fact is that women’s ears grow with age as well. Perhaps the reason why we don’t notice this phenomenon is because they often wear their hair in styles which cover the ears.
They also found that noses grow with age but not at the rate of ears – perhaps the Pinocchio effect of those shaggy dog stories the elderly are so fond of telling. There is no certainty as to why ears grow. It may be due to the loss of elasticity in the skin and the effect of gravity. Who knows?
Glad to have uncovered the truth on that one, though.
If you enjoyed this, why not try Fifty Curious Questions by Martin Fone which is now available via www.martinfone.com
January 17, 2018
Book Corner – January 2018 (2)
The Dawn Watch – Maya Jasanoff
Where to start with Joseph Conrad? He is one of my favourite novelists and I have great admiration for the vigour of his writing style, something even more remarkable when you consider that English was his third language, learned when he was in his twenties. His writing career began when he responded to a competition in Tit-bits magazine.
Born in 1857 Conrad, or to give him his birth name Józef Teodor Konrad Korzeniowski, had a hell of a life. His parents and close family were involved in the Polish struggles for independence, his father was under surveillance and in Joseph’s formative years the family were sent east into exile. When he was orphaned as a teenager, he was assisted by his uncle to head west and realise his dream of going to sea. Settling in England – the British merchant navy was pre-eminent at the time – Conrad eventually became a captain but often had to settle for lower positions. His experiences included long passages on clipper ships to Australia, poodling around Singapore and its environs on a tramp steamer and enduring for a time a mind-bogglingly awful trip up the Congo at a time when the Belgians were raping and pillaging the country.
These experiences provided Conrad with enough source material to furnish his literary career. These days Conrad is under a bit of a cloud, thanks in part to a brutal critique of Conrad by Chinua Achebe in 1975 who called him a bloody racist and the Heart of Darkness the most despicable book. For those who seek it out Conrad is also guilty of reflecting the anti-semitic views of the time and with very few exceptions his books are about white males. Does this for the modern reader put him beyond the pale?
Jasanoff, in her magnificent melange of biography, literary criticism, history and travel writing, seeks to re-establish Conrad’s prominence in the literary world, by positioning him as a remarkably prescient author, grappling with the many of the issues that trouble us today – immigration, terrorism, amoral capitalism, imperial decline and rapid and disorientating technological change. Taking four of Conrad’s masterpieces to illustrate her central thesis, she points out how we have Russians interfering in the democratic processes of a state (The Secret Agent),an individual yearning for the gentler days of sail now superseded by steam (Lord Jim), the transience of empire through the realisation that the British Empire is soon to be replaced by American financial might (Nostromo) and that capitalism in its raw state can be more brutal than what it has supposed to have civilised (the Heart of Darkness).
She is surely right in viewing Conrad’s Heart of Darkness as an attack on the hypocrisy of the so-called civilising mission of capitalism, boiling it down to merely taking the earth and its resources “from those who have a different complexion or slightly flatter noses than ourselves”, a theme picked up in the characterisation of the grasping American capitalist, Mr Holroyd, in Nostromo. To see Conrad’s depiction of the horror of the Congo as purely racist entirely misses the point of where Conrad was coming from. And I have immense sympathy for the reading of The Secret Agent as much about human relationships with Winnie Verloc as the glue that binds the book together as a discussion of terrorism.
There is much to digest in a book which is written in an engaging style.
Let us hope that Jasanoff succeeds in rehabilitating Conrad’s reputation. He was very much admired by contemporary writers and very influential, particularly amongst writers who were experimenting with narrative techniques. His return to public favour is long overdue.
January 15, 2018
Double Your Money – Part Twenty Seven
Sir Humphrey Mackworth (1657 – 1727)
Shropshire born Mackworth set out to revive the fortunes of the mining industry in the Neath region of South Wales. Soon the mines were bringing him in as much as £600 per annum but Mackworth wasn’t stopping there. He revived the disused copper-smelting works at nearby Melicrythan and was soon on the look-out for a way in which he could combine mineral extraction and production.
In 1690 rich mineral deposits were discovered in the Goreddan estate , the lease to which was held by Sir Carbery Pryce. Pryce’s death in 1694 gave Mackworth the opportunity to acquire rights to the site and utilise his works to smelt the copper and silver, the furnaces to be fuelled by the coal extracted from his mines. The only problem was that to set this all up required more capital than Mackworth could muster. He came up with an ingenious solution to the problem in hand.
Mackworth established a joint stock company called The Company of Mine Adventurers. He rented an office in London’s Lincoln’s Inn and, in order to give his venture the patina of respectability, invited the Duke of Leeds, Sir Thomas Osborne, to be its chairman. The publicity machine then went into overdrive, likening the deposits in the Cardiganshire countryside to the fabulous silver deposits in the Cerro Rico in Bolivia. All subscribers were assured of fabulous wealth. Some of the pamphlets even emphasised the philanthropic side of Mackworth’s venture – a fortieth of all profits would be set aside for the erection of a hospital and workhouse and would subsequently fund such good works as employing a clergyman to preach to the workforce (lucky them), to assist poor vicarages, fund missionaries to go out to the West Indies – you get the picture.
Mackworth devised an ingenious lottery stock scheme to raise capital. In essence, subscribers were not guaranteed to secure shares in the company – whether they did or not was decided by ballot – but their monies were held by the company, whether they were successful or not. In this way the company had more capital than the value of the shares issued. Thomas Baston, writing in 1705, describes Mackworth’s modus operandi down to a tee, even if he doesn’t name the malefactor directly. “The projectors would alight upon some fair project, such as getting silver out of the mountain of Wales. Afterwards, he procures a patent, opens books for subscriptions, promising prodigious and incredible advantages to all that will venture their money on this project…and in order to support the stock price they use “many other tricks and rogueries as publishing books and advertisements which are stuffed with monstrous absurdities and lies.”
The company received its Royal Charter in 1703 but, as you might expect, not everything was as it was cracked up to be. The extravagant claims surrounding the size and quality of the mineral deposits were not realised and the company soon began to hit financial difficulties. To maintain the façade of financial stability, Mackworth began to pay interest on bonds using borrowed money or out of capital. Shares were sold without authorisation and, worse still, Mackworth diverted company funds for his own use.
Although Mackworth had introduced some interesting innovations such as using wooden waggon ways to transport coal to Neath’s wharf, matters were not helped by his disputatious character. He got into a number of bitter disputes with a number of local coal proprietors, principally Sir Edward Mansel. The company, which was built on what was described as a honeycomb of fraud, finally collapsed and declared bankrupt in 1709, all of its investors losing their money. A committee of the House of Commons investigated the company in the following year and declared that Mackworth was “guilty of many notorious and scandalous frauds.”
The fall of the Whig administration that year saved Mackworth’s bacon and the irrepressible fraudster set up the Company of Mineral Manufacturers in 1713, which lasted six years.
