Martin Fone's Blog, page 30

Killing Germs

Looking at the bewildering array of disinfectants and cleaning products on a supermarket shelf, it is a wonder that we ever make the right choice. What is it that leads us to the choice we make? Is it brand familiarity or loyalty, the colour and design of the packaging, the price point, or are we seduced by the manufacturers’ claims about the efficacy of their product. In these increasingly mycophobic times, are we to take comfort that our product of choice will kill 99.9% of bacteria?  

Being a glass half empty sort of guy, I worry about the 0.1% of known germs that my disinfectant of choice cannot destroy. If they are impervious to the force of the liquid, do they present a more potent threat to my health and welfare than those germs that meekly curl up and die. And that is before we even consider the germs that populate the Rumsfeldian sector of unknown unknowns. And are we right in our assumption that the disinfectant that we choose will be equally effective against any type of germ or, at the risk of mixing metaphors, are there horses for courses?

If this is not bewildering enough, there is the sheer scale of the numbers of bacteria to consider. Lurking within the human body, for example, there are estimated to be as many as ten trillion bacteria. To help come to terms with the mindboggling numbers involved, scientists express them by way of logarithms, specifically to the base of ten. In simple terms, the number of zeros in a standard number will give its log, so the log of 10 is 1, the log of 100 2 and so on.

The potency of a disinfectant is measured by what is known as its microbicidal effect or log reduction or log kill. One with a log kill of 1 will kill 90% of organisms against which it has been tested while one with a log kill of 2 will destroy 99.9% and one registering a log kill of 3 will eliminate 99.99%. As the log kill increases, the number of organisms remaining is reduced ten-fold. In a world where there are millions of microbes, the difference between 99%, 99.9% and 99.99% are considerable.

The next point to consider is that buried deep within the testing data are details of the specific bacteria or pathogens that the disinfectant has been tested against. Whilst the disinfectant might have shown an efficacy rate of 99.9% against a particular pathogen, it is by no means certain that it would be just as effective against another set of pathogens. For example, while bleach is effective against some bacterial spores, bleach-based solutions generally do not have as wide a range of efficacy against the types of pathogens that a high-level quaternary ammonium solution may have.   

It really is a case of horses for courses. Some are more effective against viruses such as influenza and colds, other provide protection against bacteria found in and around food preparation areas, while high-level disinfectants have a very wide range of efficacy against antibiotic-resistant organisms. Noticeably absent from the marketing blurb is the word “all”. To achieve this level of sterilization requires a level of efficacy way beyond the reach of a disinfectant.

Neither will a manufacturer be able to claim that their product is 100% effective against the range of bacteria against which it has been tested. A quirk of the EN (European Standards) testing system is that the end of the test, even if the results show that there are no organisms are present, the standard requires the assumption that there is at least one present. Multiplying that up by the dilution factor, you can only be sure that there are less than ten organisms present, producing a result of 99.99%.

High Seas Murder

A review of High Seas Murder by Peter Drax – 241127

I found the fifth novel by Peter Drax, originally published in 1939 and reissued by Dean Street Press, a bit hard going at the start, a little too much nautical background for a unreconstructed landlubber like myself. Of course, it all helps to provide the context for the story and allows Drax, the nom de plume of Eric Addis, to display his knowledge but it was a little dry. Once the story got going, though, it was enjoyable fare.

Drax takes us to the fishing port of Gilboro where one of its premier fishermen, Carl Swanson, is assembling a crew to take the John Goodwin out on its maiden voyage. Despite the hazardous conditions and the premonitions of doom, Swanson is a man driven to maximise his haul to justify his outlay on the vessel while the other principal members of his crew each have their own reasons for wanting to make the perilous voyage. Larry Hicks wants to earn enough to settle down and marry Jessie, Carl Todd to own a chicken, and Tubby Stevens to play the zither.

The voyage is predictably disastrous, with the vessel far from seaworthy and two hauls are lost as well as some of the equipment and a couple of the crew. Providentially, though, there appears an opportunity to redeem the situation when they come across the stricken Ivanhoe, captained by a fellow adventurer, McTaggart. The Ivanhoe’s crew have abandoned ship, offering Swanson and his crew the opportunity to board the ship, pump its holds free of sweater, and bring it back to port to claim a sizeable reward for the salvage as the vessel was a derelict, more than enough to make all their dreams come true.

However, McTaggart has remained on board and his presence makes a considerable difference to the amount they could claim as the vessel would not be considered to be a derelict. Swanson and McTaggart are birds of the same feather, inevitably quarrel and in their last dispute McTaggart reels from a blow, falling down on to a deck below and then is weighted down and pitched overboard.

Swanson and his crew, now able to claim the ship as a derelict, bring it to port to a hero’s welcome and confidently anticipate their respective shares of a sizeable pie. The lawyer acting for the ship owners, Mr Fleming, and the rather dour and unimaginative investigating officer, Inspector Pollitt, a man who deals in facts, believe there is something fishy about their story and start to dig around. The discovery of McTaggart’s body, the inability of the crew to keep quiet and hold to a credible story, and the workings of a conscience bring the affair to its inevitable conclusion.

As with Drax’s other novels, there is no sense of mystery as to whodunit or even why. What we have is something akin to a Sophoclean tragedy where a path to a disaster has been laid out along which slowly and surely the principal character wanders down, albeit seemingly making a set of separate and independent choices. Unknown to them, like a fly, they are trapped in a spider’s web and the more they struggle against their preordained fate, the worse they make it for themselves.

It is a novel full of grimness and gloom, one in which aspirations, hopes and dreams are shattered, portraying a world in which merely to exist is a struggle and where a good gossip is the principal source of entertainment. Without a gifted sleuth to amaze us, this is as far removed from a cosy murder mystery as you can get, the only redeeming feature being that Tubby gets his zither back. Drax’s is an interesting take on the murder mystery genre and those who have followed the series will know what to expect. For those who are new to his work, you are in for a choppy ride before reaching the safety of harbour.

Scratching Fanny – The Investigation

The hysteria generated by the Cock Lane ghost, the increasingly lurid reports in the press, and Kent’s protestations of innocence stirred the Lord Mayor of London, Samuel Fluyder, into action. He established a commission to investigate the affair, its members including Bishop John Douglas, Dr George Macaulay, and a Captain Wilkinson who had previously attended a Parsons’ séance armed with a pistol with which to shoot the spectre and a stick to aid his escape. Sensibly, the ghost did not appear on that occasion.

Also involved in the investigation was Samuel Johnson who provided a detailed account of the séance they attended on February 1st. Once Parsons’ daughter, Elizabeth, had been put to bed, the commissioners crowded round but failed to hear anything unusual. In frustration they challenged the ghost, whom they assumed was in the room, to make good an earlier promise to knock on Fanny’s coffin in a nearby church vault. The ghost refused to comply leaving Johnson and his confrères to conclude “that the child has some art of making or counterfeiting a particular noise, and that there is no agency of any higher cause”.

Nevertheless, the noises started up again, only stopping when Elizabeth was told to place her hands outside of her bed, leading the investigators to threaten her and Parsons with incarceration in Newgate Prison if no more noises were heard by February 21st. When Elizabeth was spotted by her maids concealing a piece of wood about six inches long by 4 wide under her clothing, the truth came out.

Elizabeth had acted under duress in an audacious attempt by Parson’s to seek revenge on Kent by framing him for Fanny’s murder, the wainscoting of an adjoining room having been removed by a carpenter to allow her to make the noises using a block of wood. On February 25, 1762, a pamphlet entitled The Mystery Revealed; Containing a series of Transactions and Authentic Testimonials respecting the supposed Cock Lane Ghost, which have been concealed from the Public and attributed to Oliver Goldsmith, declared Kent innocent.

Parsons was arrested and stood trial on July 10, 1762, in front of Lord Chief Justice William Murray, charged with conspiring “to take away his [Kent’s] life by charging him with the murder of Frances Lynes by giving her poison whereof she died”. It took the jury just fifteen minutes to conclude that Parsons and the others on trial, including his wife, also called Elizabeth, were guilty and he was sentenced to two years’ imprisonment and three visits to the stocks. So deranged was Parsons’ appearance at the pillory that instead of pelting him with rotten vegetables or worse, they had a whip round for him.    

At Bertram’s Hotel

A review of At Bertram’s Hotel by Agatha Christie – 241123

It is a veritable time warp, an establishment that takes a pride in recreating and maintaining the standards of Edwardian England where muffins and perfect seed cake can be had, served by suitably obsequious staff, attracting a certain sector of English society, especially old ladies, and lots of American tourists. Bertram’s Hotel in central London seems the perfect place for Miss Marple to spend a couple of weeks and is the setting for her eleventh adventure in novel form, originally published in 1965.

Of course, the hotel is not all that it seems and through her sharp observational powers, unerring knack of being at the right place at the right time – the book is full of coincidences that defy belief – and acute sense of hearing Miss Marple is able to help Chief Inspector Davy aka Father to lift the lid on what is really going under the surface.

The book is unusual by Miss Marple standards in that there is only one murder and that of a character who has only a bit part in the narrative although his presence is central to the plot, Gorman, the hotel’s commissionaire who was shot whilst shielding a young heiress, Elvira Blake. The plight of Elvira, abandoned by her mother whom we and she discover to be Bess Sedgwick, desperately in love with the handsome but roguish ex-racing driver, Ladislaus Malinowski, and unable to access her fortune until she reaches her age of majority, and her attempts to trace her past and gain some control of her future form one of the major subplots of the novel.

The other subplot is the police’s attempts to bring down a sophisticated criminal network responsible for the increase in the number of sophisticated and audacious robberies, particularly of mail trains. Fans of Christopher Bush will realise that it takes a certain skill to take two or more seemingly disparate themes and weave them into a convincing and satisfying whole and while Christie has her many plus points, she fails to integrate the two seamlessly. At times, it reads as two different stories rammed into one.

It takes an absent minded cleric, Canon Pennyfather, who confuses the dates of a conference and returns to hotel room at an unexpected and inconvenient moment and both Elvira and Miss Marple overhearing a supposedly confidential conversation for the parts to fall into place. Even so, there is very little evidence for the police to make a case with and it seems to me inconceivable that the brains of a criminal operation would immediately confess all at the first time they are challenged and then make a melodramatic bid for freedom that ends disastrously.

Even the handling of the murder of Gorman feels unsatisfactory, with Davy having, probably, the right answer but with a devil of a job to make any charges stick. Too much goes on offstage and important developments are dropped into the story fully formed rather than teased out from a multiplicity of clues. As a crime novel it is little more than average at best but it has Christie’s characteristic verve, making it an easy read and some of her characters, particularly Canon Pennyfather, are enjoyable.

The moral of the story is that if you are having a confidential conversation in a room with high-backed chairs, make sure you know who is sitting in them.

Social Media Slang

For someone now in their seventies the language of social media seems to come from another world altogether. I have long since given up trying to keep up with the latest idioms but, occasionally, I do see something that interests me from a linguistic perspective, shedding light on the development of our language.

Take pookie, for instance, a term that has floated around in the TikTok-sphere since way back to 2020. It is a term of endearment and was originally used in the vocative as in “you are looking amazing, pookie”. By 2024, though, it had become an adjective, used to describe in complimentary terms an individual. Although this is by any standards a rapid evolution of grammatical form, it does raise the question as to how many words in the English language made the transition from vocative to adjective.

And then there is yapping, now a popular participle used to describe the actions of someone who talks incessantly. I recall the term used as slang in my youth and etymologically it has a long pedigree, used as a noun at the start of the 17th century to describe the barking of a small dog and then in the 1660s as a verb. The first recorded instance of its use to denote idle chatter was in 1886.

That it is now back in vogue sheds a fascinating light on the circularity of language and how words drift in and out of fashion.

Surprising Slogan Of The Week

I was bought a pair of slippers for Christmas and upon unwrapping them, I was somewhat dismayed to find on the packaging the descriptor “unexpected comfort”. What were Hush Puppies thinking? Do they sell slippers that are akin to slipping your feet on to a plan of wood with nails sticking up?

I need not have worried. They are very comfortable and warm but that has surely got to be one of the strangest product descriptions around. Anyone any more to add to the collection?

Death In The Stocks

A review of Death in the Stocks by Georgette Heyer

I had always associated Georgette Heyer with romantic historical fiction but she also wrote detective fiction. Originally published in 1935 and also going by the alternative title of Merely Murder, Death in the Stocks is the first in her four novel Inspector Hannasyde series. The truth be told, though, it is not Hannasyde who solves the murder mystery but one of the murder victim’s family, Giles Carrington.

The principal murder victim is Arnold Vereker, whose body is found dressed in evening dress, stabbed in the back and placed in the stocks on the village green at Ashleigh Green. Arnold is a rich man, but is not particularly well-liked. His half-sister, Antonia, a breeder of bulldogs, had received a letter from him stating that he disapproved of her engagement to Rudolph Mesurier, whom he has found him embezzling the company’s money, and she rushes down to the village to confront him, only to find that he is not there and then, curiously, decides to spend the night in his house.

Her brother, Kenneth, also strong reasons for murdering Arnold. An impecunious artist and heir to Arnold’s fortune, Arnold’s death would solve his financial woes and set him up to marry Violet Williams. Rudolph, whose reputation would be besmirched, if Arnold’s discoveries led to a prosecution, also had motive enough to murder. Kenneth, lacking a convincing alibi, is the prime suspect.

The case takes a surprising turn when Roger, Arnold’s long lost brother, suddenly turns up shortly after Arnold’s murder, again impecunious. He has precedence over Kenneth to the estate and immediately invites suspicion as his story as to when he arrived back in England after a sojourn in South America proves to be false. Was he the murderer or had his reappearance put a spoke in Kenneth’s plans?

The inevitable murder of Roger seems to give the case and motivation greater clarity but Cunningham, holding a brief for his relatives while co-operating with Hannasyde’s investigations, believes that the case is not as black and white as the Inspector of the Yard believes. Any seasoned reader of the genre would share his views because, well, murder mystery stories are like that, aren’t they, and in any case there have been enough clues placed in the text, some more subtly than others, that indicate an altogether different culprit who has eyes on Arnold’s fortune via a different route.

While the plot might not be the strongest that I have ever come across, one of the book’s considerable charms is the strength of Heyer’s characterization and the remarkable insouciance of the Vereker family who, in a period of existential crisis, make light of the situation and treat the investigations as a bit of a joke, an opportunity to play games with the police. Their attitude completely flummoxes Hannasyde to the extent that he almost makes the biggest mistake of his career.

There is much humour in the Vereker family repartee withlarge parts of the book reading like a social comedy with a bit of murder tacked to give the story focus. Giles is the only sensible member of the family and it is his persistence that prevents what would have been an egregious miscarriage of justice from occurring.

I found it a light and easy read and will look forward to following Hannasyde’s career further. I just hope he finds some suspects that he can feel at home with.

Cracker Jokes – 2024 (2)

Some cracker jokes with a topical theme:

What gifts will Sir Keir get this Christmas? None, he’s had enough!Why are pensioners bulk buying Brussels sprouts this Christmas? It’s the only way they’ll keep the gas flowing this yearWhy is Rachel Reeves in the Nativity this year? She’s collecting inn-heritance tax.Why is Santa worried about being stalked? He’s surrounded by baby reindeer.Who’s Santas favourite member of Oasis? Noel.Why does Father Christmas find going down chimneys easier this year? He’s on Ho Ho hozempic.Why aren’t there more jokes about receiving Oasis tickets for Christmas? Most people won’t get them.What do you call a Belgian reselling tickets at inflated prices? – a Brussels tout.What’s the Thames Water advent calendar like? It’s full of number 2s.Why did Gareth Southgate get into difficulty with the Christmas Club money? He was always late with his subs.

Merry Or Happy Christmas?

Here’s a conundrum that surfaces around this time of year: do you wish your nearest and dearest a Mery Christmas or a Happy Christmas?

From a pure linguistic perspective, “happy” is used to describe a person’s inner feeling while “merry” has a more behavioural connotation, describing a more active state. Compare and contrast someone being happy with someone involved in making merry and while you hope someone is feeling happy at Christmas, it is supposed to be a convivial occasion where people are merry. Hopes for a new year are where happiness as opposed to merriment are more appropriate.

From a historical perspective, merry in relation to Christmas seems to be older adjective, first surfacing in a letter from Bishop John Fisher to Thomas Cromwell in 1534. The carol We wish you a Merry Christmas also dates from the 16th century. A happy Christmas first surfaced in a letter from 1688 in which a canon of Durham cathedral, George Wheeler, wrote to the Dean of Worcester, George Hicks, wishing that he ”may enjoy a Happy Christmas and New Year”. In Frances Shaftoe’s journal for 1707 she wishes “you a Happy Christmas and New Year”.

Charles Dickens, the fons et origo of all matters Christmas, was very much in the Merry camp. In A Christmas Carol (1843), Scrooge wishes Bob Cratchit “a merry Christmas…with an earnestness that could not be mistaken, as he clapped him on the back. ‘A merrier Christmas, Bob, my good fellow, than I have given you, for many a year!’”

In the same year, the first ever Christmas card, sent by Sir Henry Cole, bore the legend “A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to You”, a formulation I prefer. The Royal family, however, seem to have a preference for happy.

I suppose it is a question of you pays your money and makes your choice. Either way, I hope you had a good one.    

Scratching Fanny

Cock Lane, in London’s West Smithfield area, was once full of brothels, hence its name, where Falstaff went to “buy a saddle” (Henry IV Part 2, (1597-8)), and the point where the Great Fire of London burnt itself out in 1666, marked by a small statue of a Golden Boy in an alcove at the corner with Giltspur Street. Almost a century later it was the location of a paranormal phenomenon that gripped Georgian Britain.

William Kent and his sister-in-law, Fanny Lynes, who by then were romantically involved, moved down from Norwich to London and took up lodgings in a house in Cock Lane owned by Richard Parsons. William resumed his former occupation as a moneylender, Parsons bring one of his clients.

While there the couple reported hearing curious knockings and scratching noises during the night, moving out when Parsons refused to repay the loan. Kent had to take him to court. In early January 1762, Fanny contracted smallpox and died, her death sparking off another series of disturbing noises in Parsons’ house, louder and more incessant than before and, curiously, centering around Parsons’ daughter, the eleven-year-old Elizabeth, who was prone to convulsions.

Claiming that the noises were being made by Fanny’s ghost, Parsons, with the aid of a Methodist minister, John Moore, organized a series of séances to contact her. Using a series of binary question to which the ghost answered in the affirmative with one knock and in the negative with tow, the interrogation revealed that Fanny had died from arsenical poisoning administered by William Kent, not smallpox. Parsons, via the medium of the ghost, was accusing Kent of murder.

Reports of the hauntings were carried in editions of the St James’s Chronicle and London Chronicle between 16th and 19th January 1762 and news of the Cock Lane ghost, by then dubbed “Scratching Fanny”, spread through London like wildfire. Large crowds would assemble in the street making it impassable, simply to see the haunted house, others succumbing to Parson’s invitation to step inside and “talk” to the ghost, for a fee. Often it would oblige.

With noises still being reported during the latter part of January, the ghost attracted the attention of the great and the good. Horace Walpole, 4th Earl of Orford, announced that along with Prince Edward, the Duke of York, Lady Northumberland, Lady Mary Coke, and Lord Hertford, he would be visiting the premises on January 30th. Despite the eminence of the party, not only had they to struggle through the throngs of onlookers but they were also disappointed, the ghost failing to make an appearance, the Public Advertiser drily observing that “the noise is now generally deferred till seven in the morning, it being necessary to vary the time, that the imposition may be better carried on”.

By then opinion had sharply divided between those who thought the whole thing was a hoax and those who believed that the premises were really haunted, a divergence that highlighted the difference of approach to matters supernatural between the established Anglican church and the Methodists.

While the Anglicans were generally sniffy about anything that smacked of superstition, the Methodists, whose founder, John Wesley, had been strongly influenced by a supposed haunting at his family home, regarded ghosts as an affirmation of the afterlife. In the court of public opinion “Scratching Fanny” was closely associated with Methodism, a point that William Hogarth made in an illustration published in The Times and in his print Credulity, Superstition, and Fanaticism (March 15, 1762).