Martin Fone's Blog, page 274
December 17, 2017
Christmas Jumper Of The Week
Clip art is a wonderful thing but you need to exercise a degree of caution over what you download as this cautionary tale I stumbled across this week shows.
Hyde Park Junior School in Plymouth in Devon decided to join the lamentable trend of encouraging the little darlings to turn up suitably attired in support of Save the Children’s Christmas Jumper Friday. A special newsletter was produced, encouraging the children to “jazz up your uniform” by wearing a Christmas jumper. Unfortunately the illustration of a jumper which accompanied the notice showed two pairs of reindeer indulging in their own form of Christmas joy.
Ho, ho, red faces all round, methinks. Just shows you can’t be too careful.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Christmas jumpers, clip art, Hurst Park Junior School, jumper shows copulating reindeer, Save The Children's Christmas Jumper Friday
December 16, 2017
Trend Of The Week (4)
I was marooned in Shropshire last weekend as over 12 inches of snow fell on the county in what some of the more excitable parts of the media described as a winter snow bomb. Leaving the inconvenience to one side, it was all rather pretty.
But there is a definite trend these days to what can only be described as sex up the weather. Weather is a fact of life and if we do need to know what is in store for us, we want it delivered in a matter-of-fact manner. But these days we have to suffer forecasters who seem to think that they are providers of entertainment, gurning madly, gesticulating wildly and attempting to inject humour into their delivery.
This lamentable trend seems to be contagious. Even the RAC have got into the act. They described last Monday as if it was some kind of hip-hop act, Black Ice Monday, forecasting that there would be 11,000 breakdowns on our roads. The cynic in me felt that this was a PR campaign to explain away, ahead of time, why benighted members would have to wait even longer on the roadside than normal to get their car fixed. Yes, it was icy and, yes, it was a Monday but Black Ice Monday, get out of here. Of course, like economists, they were never called back to explain whether their prediction was in any way accurate.
The gold standard for me in forecasting is the Shipping forecast. I know Rockall about it but in its simplicity and hypnotic rhythms, it is a thing of beauty – quite the best thing on radio. We need to get back to this before we are overrun by weather entertainers.
Filed under: News Tagged: beauty of shipping forecast, Black Ice Monday, marooned in Shropshire snow, Rockall, shipping forecast, winter snow bomb
December 15, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (158)?…
As safe as houses
For the risk averse amongst us we look for an investment opportunity which is as safe as houses by which we mean secure and unlikely to cost us our principal. With interest rates so low and house prices buoyant, at least in certain parts of the country, property has an irresistible attraction. But what goes up can come down and some sages fear that an investment involving houses won’t necessarily always be as secure as we delude ourselves into thinking. Whether that comes to pass or not, as safe as houses describes figuratively something that is absolutely secure with safe having the sense of being free from danger.
There are a couple of things of interest about our phrase. The first is that it is another example of the formulation of as adjective as noun that peppers our language. We have come across a number in our etymological explorations. The second is much more interesting – the change in the meaning of the word safe.
There was a curious expression, as safe as bellows, which may give us the key with which to unlock the mystery. In London Life and the London Poor, written by Henry Mayhew in 1851, he reports, “if you was caught up and brought afore the Lord Mayor, he’d give you fourteen days on it, as safe as bellows.” Surely safe in this expression means without doubt, certainly or for sure. That this is the case is reinforced by Francis Grose’s explorations into English dialect in the 1780s when he unearthed an expression from Cumberland, “he is safe enough for being hanged.” Joseph Wright’s The English Dialect Dictionary, published in 1898, unearthed a Lincolnshire expression, “it is safe to thunder.” In each case it is an expression of certainty, something that is bound to happen.
That we are on the right track is confirmed by a passage from James Friswell’s earlier usage of the phrase in his novel, Out and About, published in 1860, “No uncertainty here, guv’nor, answered one of the captors. You’re booked, as safe as houses.” This sense of our phrase is echoed in a passage from Thomas Hardy’s Far From the Madding Crowd, published in 1874. There he wrote, “He must come without fail, and wear his best clothes. The clothes will floor us as safe as houses! said Coggan.” This echoes In John Conroy Hutcheson’s Penang Pirate from 1886 we find “Why, you’d be a dead man ‘fore morning, safe as houses.” And J S Winter, in her 1894 novel entitled Red Coats, wrote “You know the Colonel is as safe as houses to come round after church parade.”
So at least in English dialect and the vernacular in the 19th century we may conclude that as safe as houses was a variant of other curious phrases such as as sure as eggs is eggs, conveying a sense of certainty rather than security. My only hesitation is that there is an element of ambiguity in the phrase’s first appearance in print in the melodrama, Timour the Tartar, printed in 1851 but performed in the 1840s, “I’ll give my word, that Timour’s life/ shall be safe as houses.” It could be read as certain but equally it could mean safe.
In his Slang Dictionary of 1859, John Hotten suggested that the failure of railway investments and the collapse of savings institutions around that time made property an attractive form of investment and that this was the origin of the phrase, security rather than certainty. It doesn’t explain the use of safe in dialect but it may be that there were two variants of the phrase and when the old usage of safe fell into obscurity, the meaning we are accustomed to gained precedence. But is far from certain.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: as safe as bellows, Far From The Madding Crowd, Francis Grose, origin of as safe as houses, safe meaning certain, Thomas Hardy, Timour the Tarar
December 14, 2017
Gin o’Clock – Part Thirty Two
Scanning the array of gins at the Constantine Store, my attention was drawn to a broad, vaguely rectangular-shaped bottle which tapers slightly to the bottom. The labelling had an art deco feel about it deploying blues and gold to reflect the sea and sand of the Cornish coast. What particularly piqued my interest was that it described itself as “handcrafted Trevethan Cornish Gin infused with tradition since 1929.” The top of the bottle is broad, larger than you would find with a normal gin, and boasts a cork. It is a very attractively packaged gin with a hint of quirkiness and rustic charm.
Having made my purchase I couldn’t wait to get it home and give it a try. Fortunately, my expectations were not dashed. Taking the cork out of the stopper my nose was met with a lovely mix of juniper and citrus and the freshness of herbs and spices. I tasted it neat and the first sensation was that of the citrus quickly followed by the juniper base and then a slight bitterness as the liquid washed around my mouth. The addition of a tonic seemed to tone down the bitterness and accentuate the citrus effects and brought the juniper to the fore. It was a thoroughly impressive, well balances, somewhat bold gin and sits proudly towards the top of the list of my favourites.
There are ten botanicals in play – juniper, coriander, cassia, angelica, cardamom, orange peel, lemon peel, vanilla and to add a touch of Cornwall, elder flower and gorse flowers which are picked from the hedgerows of a dairy farm in Trenelgos. The botanicals are macerated with the base spirit for 18 hours before being put into a 300 litre still. The resultant spirit has an ABV of 85% which is then reduced to 70% before being laid to rest in a stainless steel container for up to 48 hours. Natural spring water is added to reduce the spirit to a still punchy 43% ABV and then bottled and labelled by hand. My bottle came from batch number 047.
Naturally there is a story to this gin – isn’t there always? Norman Trevethan was a chauffeur to Earl and Lady St Germans in the 1920s and drove them between Cornwall, where they lived, and London where they were part of the society set. The Trevethans had been distilling gin for some time and by 1929 Norman created a recipe for a perfect Cornish gin. As gin went out of fashion and later generations were not so keen to continue family traditions, the recipe, which was never written down, was laid to rest. Norman’s grandson, Rob Cuffe, along with his friend, John Hall, decided to resuscitate the family tradition.
The only person left alive who had tasted Norman’s hooch was Rob’s mother and she gamely assisted the duo in recreating her father’s pride and glory. By 2015 the spirit was sufficiently close to Norman’s daughter’s recollection of its taste and this encouraged the duo to surf the ginaissance by producing it commercially. The rest is history, as they say.
Of course, whether the current Trevethan actually recreates Norman’s recipe, as the bottle tries to suggest, is a matter of some conjecture. What is certain, though, is that it is a wonderful gin. When my bottle runs out, my dilemma will be whether to try out the mail ordering system of Drinkfinder.co.uk or to have another trip to Cornwall. Decisions, decisions.
Filed under: Gin Tagged: Constantine Stores, drinkfinder.co.uk, ginaissance, Norman Trevethan, Rob Cuffe, Trenelgos, Trevethan Cornish Gin
December 13, 2017
Book Corner – December 2017 (1)
A House for Mr Biswas – V S Naipaul
The tragedies of Sophocles explore the conundrum of whether man has free will or whether their destiny is pre-determined by the gods or fate, if you will. Even where characters seemingly make their own choices, exercising free will, their very choices merely serve to bring about the will of the gods. It struck me as I was reading Naipaul’s fourth novel, published in 1961 and set amongst the Indian Hindu community of Trinidad, that there was something Sophoclean about the tragedy of Mohun Biswas.
On that the day he was born, the local Hindu pundit announced that Biswas will be something of a curse to his family and to himself. As we see as the story unfolds, this prophecy comes to pass time after time, sometimes with tragi-comic consequences and sometimes with devastating effects. Whatever Biswas seems to do, whether consciously or subconsciously, leads to the confirmation of the fate that the gods have ordained for him.
Through this tortuous journey through the vicissitudes of fate, what keeps Biswas going is his Thatcherite aspiration to own his own property, to be the king of his own domain. We know at the start of the book that he achieved his aim, albeit his enjoyment is somewhat marred by the large debt hanging around his neck and his untimely death. The book which runs on for nearly 600 pages tells the tale of how Biswas got to the position to realise his ambitions, modest as they may be.
The book is divided into a series of chapters, focusing on the houses in which Biswas lives at various stages of his life. They are all unsatisfactory, overcrowded, ill-maintained, full of bickering relatives and the decision to move to each of one is Biswas’ attempt to solve a problem. Each so-called solution to a problem turns out to be misguided, just compounding the problem. It is only at the end that he summons up the courage, to saddle his immediate family with enormous debt, that he can achieve his ambition, albeit fleetingly. Biswas overlooks the patent deficiencies of his house, happy to call it a home of his own.
Structurally, the book follows Biswas’ life but is episodic. The major set pieces describe a day or so of his life while other passages move the story on by years. Despite the despair and ill luck, the book has moments of high comedy and makes sharp observations on the way of life of Trinidadian Indians who feel they are a cut above the indigenous population. Many of the people who flit in and out of the narrative are roguish, untrustworthy, on the make. Biswas, one of life’s naïve characters, falls for their wiles, driven by his desire to improve his station in life.
It is hard to describe Biswas as a sympathetic character. He is selfish and argumentative and engages in subterfuge. Sometimes he wins, often he comes off second best. His principal antagonists are his mother-in-law, Mrs Tulsi, and her brother-in-law, Seth ,and life in the Tulsi household is a series of shifting, impermanent alliances and feuds. Biswas finds solace in the works of Marcus Aurelius and Epictetus – the irony, of course, is that if he had adopted a more stoic frame of mind, then life would have been more bearable.
The other source of comfort is in possessions. Each move is accompanied by a detailed list of possessions Biswas can truly call his own and through the book it grows. Battered and ill-made they may be, but they are his. The book is a journey of someone who, despite all the setbacks, is trying to make his mark on the world. Very funny at times, with beautiful turns of phrase and many thought-provoking asides, tedious at others and a tad overlong, it is a tale worth persevering with.
Filed under: Books, Culture Tagged: A House for Mr Biwas, free will of Sophoclean characters, Hindu pundit, Indian Hindu community of Trinidad, Marcus Aurelius, Mohun Biswas, Mrs Tulsi, Sophocles, V S Naipaul
December 12, 2017
Christmas Crackers (4)
For those seeking their fix of up-to-the minute Christmas cracker jokes, here are ten of the best for 2017:
Why was Theresa May sacked as nativity manager? She couldn’t run a stable government.
Why don’t Southern Rail train guards share advent calendars? They want to open the doors themselves.
What’s the difference between Ryanair and Santa? Santa flies at least once a year.
Kim Jong Un will play Santa this year in the South’s annual pantomime. He said he fancied a Korea change.
Why did Donald Trump continuously decorate the Christmas tree? Because people kept saying ‘moron’ to him.
Why was the planned Ryanair TV documentary scrapped? They were unable to air a pilot.
Which TV Christmas special is being filmed in Brussels this year? Deal Or No Deal.
Theresa May has asked Santa for a home makeover this year. First thing on the list was a new Cabinet.
What did Bruce Forsyth say when the Christmas pheasant repeated on him? ‘Good game, good game’.
Why did Jeremy Corbyn ask people not to eat sprouts on Christmas Day? He wants to give peas a chance.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: best one-liners, Christmas cracker jokes
December 11, 2017
The Streets Of London – Part Sixty Eight
Steelyard Passage, EC4
What is now known as Steelyard Passage is a covered passageway running underneath Cannon Street station, linking Cousin Lane to the west with All Hallows Lane to the east. Handy as it is for getting from A to B in one’s rush to get to one of the many eateries in the area, what I hadn’t appreciated was that it was an area steeped in history. The Steelyard, derived from the Middle Low German word, stalhof, was the centre of the Hanseatic League’s trading operations in London.
What made the area particularly attractive to the German merchants was that it was situated on the northern bank of the Thames by the outflow of the Walbrook river. So ensconced were the Hanseatics there that they were able to build their own walled community which contained warehouses by the river, weighing and counting houses, residential blocks and chapel. They even had their own laws and, naturally, conversed in their native tongue. Traces of the trading house which was the largest trading complex in mediaeval London were uncovered in 1988 when maintenance work was being carried out on the station.
Records suggest the presence of a German trading post on the banks of the Thames as far back as 1282. In 1303 Edward I regularised the position of the Hanseatics by issuing a Carta Mercatoria which gave them tax and customs concessions. The heyday for the trading post was probably in the 15th century when the site was extended and the German merchants made a play for the English cloth making trade. This often led to friction between the two sets of merchants, often ending in violence. This culminated in the destruction of the Steelyard in 1469. Edward IV allowed the merchants from Cologne to stay in the city, which in turn caused dissension with the other members of the league, resulting in Cologne’s expulsion.
England and the Hanseatic League then went to war but following the peace treaty of Utrecht, the Hanseatic League bought outright their land on the banks of the Thames. Part of their obligations was to maintain one of the city’s great gates, Bishopsgate. The community’s fortunes flourished in the 16th century and a number of the members – they were stationed in London for a few years and then returned home – sat for portraits by the likes of Hans Holbein the Younger and Cornelis Ketel. John Stow in 1598 described their imposing edifices facing on to Thames Street; “large, built of stone, with three arched gates towards the street, the middlemost whereof is far bigger than the others and is seldom opened; the other two bemured up; the same is now called the old hall.”
Impressively built as the trading area was by contemporary standards, it could not escape the flames of the Great Fire of 1666. Samuel Pepys who had once been drawn to visit the Steelyard, attracted by its fashionable “Rhenish winehouse”, sat in a barge on the Thames watching the flames of the fire licking the Steelyard’s walls. The warehouses were rebuilt and they concentrated on trading in steel but from that point the fortunes of the Hanseatics in London waned. With typical tenacity they soldiered on but in 1852 the remaining members of the League, Lubeck, Bremen and Hamburg, sold their London outpost to the South eastern Railway. The site was demolished and Cannon Street railway station was built, opening to the public in 1866.
Sadly, nothing remains of the Steelyard but the Banker pub occupies the spot where the weigh house once stood with what is left of the once mighty Walbrook trickling down a pipe affixed to one of its walls.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Bremen, Cannon Street satation, Carta Mercatoria, Hamburg, Hans Holbein the Younger, Hanseatic community in London, Hanseatic League, Lubeck, Samuel Pepys, stalhof, Steelyard Passage EC4, the Banker pub, Treaty of Utrecht, Walbrook river
December 10, 2017
Statue Of The Week
In the South Australian city of Adelaide there has been a bit of a stushie surrounding a new statue erected at Blackfriars Priory School, I read this week.
The statue shows the Peruvian born saint, Martin de Porres, offering a bread roll to a boy kneeling by his side. What may have looked fine in two-dimensional form caused an uproar when the three-dimensional statue was unveiled. Instead of an image of saintly kindness and devotion, to those with a certain disposition it seemed to depict the tradition of a priapic priest offering himself to a bewildered boy.
The statue has now been fitted with a burqa until the authorities decide what to do with the statue.
Size, proportion and positioning is everything with statuary, I feel.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Blackfriars Priory School in Adelaide, burqa, Saint Martin de Porres, statue of priapic priest causes uproar
December 9, 2017
Performance Artist Of The Week
The courthouse of the Belgian coastal town of Ostend was the venue for an unusual piece of performance art, I read this week. The rules of what constitutes art are not set in stone but Mikes Poppe was, using a 10 foot long shackle to chain himself by the ankle to a four ton block of Carrara marble. |In the piece entitled De Profondis the stone represented the inescapable burden of history – of course it did, silly me – and the idea was that Poppe would chisel his way to freedom.
Unfortunately, 19 days after, despite constantly chipping away and eating and sleeping on the job, Poppe still hadn’t freed himself from the shackles of history and Joanna Davos, the curator of the courthouse, decided that enough was enough. In another piece of performance art a workman was sent for who, angle grinder in hand, cut the artist out.
Poppe claimed he had misjudged the strength of the marble – you don’t say? Still, undaunted, he claimed that his moment in the spotlight was a success. After all, you just can’t escape the burden of history. I could have told him that and saved him all the trouble. Artists, eh?
Filed under: Art, Humour, News Tagged: Carrara marble, De Profondis, escape artist fails to escape, Joanna Davos, Mikes Poppe, Ostend
December 8, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (157)?…
At sixes and sevens
This curious phrase is used to signify that things are in a state of confusion or disorder. It can also be used to indicate that two parties are in dispute or having a disagreement. So how did this phrase evolve and why sixes and sevens?
A variant of our phrase first appeared in Geoffrey Chaucer’s Troilus and Criseyde which was written in 1374. There we find “Lat nat this wrechched wo thyn herte gnawe, But manly set the world on sexe and seuene” which translates into modern English as “Let not this wretched woe gnaw at your heart, But manly set the world on six and seven.” One of the interesting aspects of this phrase is that you can trace its mutation over the centuries from Chaucer’s on six and seven to at six and seven before settling upon the familiar at sixes and sevens.
By the time Shakespeare penned Richard II in around 1595 at six and seven was the normal formulation – its first citation dates to around 1535. The Duke of York remarks in Act 2 Scene 2 remarks, “I should to Plashy too, But time will not permit. All is uneven, And everything is left at six and seven.” Some seventy-five years later the numerals began to appear in the now familiar plural form. In 1670 the bashful G.H “faithfully Englished” Leti’s Il cardinalismo di Santa Chiesa and there we find “they leave things at sixes and sevens.” And our phrase appears in Francis Grose’s invaluable Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, published in 1785 complete with a definition; “Left at sixes and sevens, in confusion, commonly said of a room where the furniture, etc. is scattered about, or of a business left unsettled.”
As for the significance of the numerals in our phrases, the authoritative sources are (ahem) at sixes and sevens. The Chaucer citation rules out the theory that it relates to a dispute between two London Livery Companies, the Merchant Taylors and the Skinners, over precedence. In 1484 the Lord Mayor, Sir Robert Billesden, ruled that the two companies should alternate between sixth and seventh place on an annual basis, a practice that remains today. Shame, because it is a nice story.
The Chaucer citation could well provide a clue because the sense it conveys is one of reckless behaviour akin to a risky throw of the dice. Dice were commonly used in gambling games in the Middle Ages, particularly in to us the rather obscure and complicated game of Hazard. The numbers on the faces of a die were based on Old French numbers, ace, deuce, trey, quatre, cinq and sice. The riskiest and most reckless bet in Hazard was to go for the high numbers, five and six. We have noted how over the centuries the English have been a bit tin-eared with foreign words and phrases and are past masters of the mondegreen. We are asked to believe that cinq and sice was corrupted and mangled into six and seven, losing along the way its association with gambling. This seems to be good enough for the Oxford English Dictionary but I’m troubled by it.
It may be that we have to say that the real association with six and seven has been lost in the mists of history. But I leave you with a couple of thoughts. The sum of six and seven is thirteen, a notoriously ill-starred number. May this be the origin? Alternatively, it may be a bit of a joke. Most dice have six faces and so to have a die with a seven is the sign of a disorderly gambling establishment. Perhaps it is no more than that.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: dispute between Merchant Taylors and Skinners, Francis Grose's Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue, mondegreen, origin of at sixes and sevens, Richard II, Sir Robert Billesden, the game of hazard, Troilus and Criseyde
