Martin Fone's Blog, page 306
January 25, 2017
I Predict A Riot – Part Nineteen
The Egg Nog riot of 1826
These days egg nog is a fairly innocuous drink, the sort of thing you would give an elderly relative at Christmas, consisting of eggs, milk, cream, sugar and associated spices. It is and was particularly popular on the other side of the pond and in the late 18th and 19th centuries the Americans added alcohol to give the beverage an extra kick. George Washington’s recipe included rum, sherry, brandy and whiskey.
Opened in 1802 and revitalised after the military’s failings became apparent after the War of 1812, West Point was the main military academy for the American army. Colonel Sylvanus Thayer was the top dog and ruled the place with a rod of iron. One of the things he was particularly hot on was enforcing a ban on the consumption of alcohol. As the Christmas festivities of 1826 approached, he reiterated his prohibition on hooch.
Not unsurprisingly this did not go down well with the cadets who decided that they would not let Thayer spoil their Christmas festivities. Close to the academy were a number of establishments where alcohol could be purchased – Thayer’s ban didn’t extend beyond the boundaries of West Point – and three cadets crossed the Hudson river by boat to procure some three or four gallons of whiskey from Martin’s Tavern. They had an alarum when a guard spotted them but they slipped him 35 cents – an odd amount it has to be said – and he turned a blind eye. The hooch was stashed for the forthcoming party on Christmas Eve 1826.
During the early hours of the morning, the two officers deputed by Thayer to keep an eye on things, Thornton and Hitchcock, heard rowdy sounds and went to investigate. Hitchcock found a party in full swing with six or seven cadets visibly inebriated. On ordering the miscreants to go to bed Hitchcock stumbled on another party. The cadets there put up more of a resistance, with one shouting “Get your dirks and bayonets..and pistols if you have them. Before the night is over, Hitchcock will be dead”. Yet another and larger party was discovered and as Hitchcock entered the room one of the party, Jefferson Davis, a future president of the Confederacy, shouted, “put away the grog, boys. Captain Hitchcock’s coming”.
Things began to get out of hand. Thornton was knocked down by a cadet who hit him with a piece of wood and Hitchcock had a bullet fired at him. This convinced the latter that some reinforcements were needed and he called out, “bring the ‘com here”. This led to an unfortunate misunderstanding which merely exacerbated the situation. Hitchcock probably meant that the Commandant should be summoned the cadets took it to mean that the artillery were to be called into action. To defend themselves, they took up arms, smashed crockery and windows, ripped out banisters and broke items of furniture. The artillery never came and eventually the effects of the alcohol wore off and when William Worth, the Commandant, finally turned up his authority was enough to calm the situation down.
Some 90 of the 260 cadets were involved in the riot but Thayer, perhaps surprisingly, only chose to expel 19 of them, Jefferson Davis escaping the ignominy as did Robert E Lee – heard of him? The riot did have one lasting legacy. When the barracks were reconstructed in the 1840s it featured short hallways which meant that cadets had to leave the building to reach another floor, thus facilitating crowd control and restricting movement. And although alcohol can be consumed on the premises nowadays, it is only available in limited amounts.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: egg nog, egg nog riot of 1826, Jefferson Davis, Robert E Lee, Sylvanus Thaler, West Point Academy
January 24, 2017
On My Doorstep – Part Fifteen
Frimley Green Windmill
I was driving out of Frimley Green down the Guildford Road a few weeks ago and my attention was drawn to a road sign on the left-hand side indicating Windmill Lane. I made a mental note to myself that I needed to look it up when I got home and to see whether it was just the fanciful end-product of a town planner’s imagination or whether there really was a windmill in the vicinity.
Well, there was a windmill and what is more, it still exists, albeit in a modified state. These days we rather associate windmills with Holland but they were a common feature of the English landscape well into the 19th century. It is thought that they were introduced into the country after the Crusades in the 12th century. Within a couple of centuries of their introduction there were some 4,000 or so dotted around the countryside. Their popularity was due to the fact that they were cheaper to construct and more convenient than water mills which required to be situated by running water. The windmill was used to generate the power to grind grain into flour which was then deployed to make the staff of life, bread. As bread production became industrialised and centralised, windmills fell into disuse.
The windmill at Frimley Green was a rather late development. The first record of the mill dates to 1784 when it was said to have been owned by a Mr Terry. Ownership passed to Thomas Lilley in 1792, although the donkey work was done by George Marshall who is named as the miller for that period. In 1801 there was another change of ownership with William Collins taking up the mantle and John Banks doing the milling. There was a further change of ownership in 1803 when the mill passed into the hands of the Royal Military College at Sandhurst, presumably to provide the officers and trainees with the wherewithal for their daily bread. It remained under army control until at least 1832 but probably they owned it for longer. By 1870, however, it was disused and gradually fell into a state of dereliction.
Structurally, it consisted of a round, brick built tower consisting of four storeys which tapered to the point where the sails would have been affixed. The photograph of it dating to 1906 shows the remains of two sails although I suspect that it had a more conventional arrangement of four or five. To the naked eye, they seem to be Spring or Patent sails. As these were not invented until 1807 they are obviously not the original sails which were probably open lattice sails covered with cloth.
A staple of Channel 4’s TV output are shows featuring naïve couples who buy a derelict building and convert it into modern living accommodation on unfeasibly tight budgets. It is not a modern phenomenon. In 1914 the remains of the Frimley Green windmill were incorporated into a residential property by Frank Abbot. It is a rather splendid L-shaped building with brown and red bricks and a conical roof atop the tower.
At least the tower, which is now Grade II listed, was spared from the ravages of time and neglect.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Frank Abbot, Frimley Green Windmill, introduction of windmills into England, Spring or Patent Sails, Windmill Cottage Frimley Green, Windmill Lane Frimley Green
January 23, 2017
Gin o’Clock – Part Twenty One
I have been chronicling my exploration of the ginaissance over the last couple of years and during that time have learned a lot about the history of my favourite spirit and the botanicals that give it its varied taste, ranging from the ultra-sweet to the spicy and all points in between. As there are over 200 gins available, there is no risk of me running out of new experiences for a while, particularly if I want to protect my liver. Everything in moderation, including moderation, as Oscar Wilde once said.
When I was younger, in the 1970s, and the beer and wine available in pubs and supermarkets were almost universally dreadful, there was a spell when every man and his dog was brewing their own. Shops like Boot’s would have row upon row of all the impedimenta you would require to brew a hooch of your choice in the privacy of your home – demi-johns, siphons, thermometers and the all-important home-brew ingredients, usually in round tins, if I recall. Wherever you went, airing cupboards were full of liquid fermenting away and occasionally friends and colleagues would sheepishly confess to an unexpected explosion which deposited the contents of the demi-john on the floor and surrounding walls. That was fine but the words that always filled me with dread were, “I have just bottled my fresh batch of nettle and bramble wine. Why don’t you come over and sample some?”
In the age of JAMs we need to look after every penny and for a while, I have been mulling over the idea of making my own gin. This is what retirement does for you. The kick up the demi-john that made me translate idle fancy to practical reality was a thoughtful present given to me at Christmas, a gin making kit. It came with a glass jar with artificial stopper, a sieve, a funnel, some labels and chalk and 100 grams of juniper berries. The instructions were somewhat rudimentary but one of the joys of the internet is that you can easily find more extensive and coherent recipes at the press of a few keys.
Of course, the starting point is the creation of the base spirit which adds a greater degree of complexity to the whole process and elongates the timescales. As a beginner, I decided that the sensible course was to miss out this step and concentrate on masceration, by buying a commercial vodka – triple distilled French grain vodka, available at all reputable branches of Asda. It being early January when I conducted this experiment, there were no flowers in the garden or the hedgerows for me to pluck and the weather was unconducive to foraging in the garden for roots, I took the easy way out by buying a pack of botanical gin blend from the admirably efficient Drinkstuff website. The pack consisted of coriander, angelica, orange peel, cassia and cubeb peppers.
The process was remarkably simple. I weighed out 25 grams of juniper berries and 17.5 grams of the botanical blend and poured them into the 500 ml glass jar. A note of caution – juniper berries are tricky customers and if you are not too careful or attempt the exercise with the early morning DTs, you can find you spend some time chasing the varmints around the kitchen floor. I then added some vodka up to the start of the neck of the jar. Some of the botanicals sank to the bottom while the majority floated near the top and I could discern bubbles appearing in the spirit. Only time will tell whether this is anything to worry about.
I then put the jar in a dark, cool place, our utility room, where it will do its magic for 24 hours. Then the fun part will start, sampling and adjusting to taste. If I survive the experience, I will report on how I got on next time. Cheers.
Filed under: Gin Tagged: Drinkstuff, ginaissance, making your own gin, masceration, moderation in everything especially moderation, Oscar Wilde, triple distilled French grain vodka
Placard Of The Week
Mary Poppins is alive and well.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Best anti-Trump placard, Mary Poppins, supercalifragilisticexpialidocious
January 22, 2017
Toilet Of The Week (8)
I’ve never been but I’m told that going to the toilet can be a disconcerting experience in the land of the Rising Sun. The problem is that their carseys are fairly hi-tech jobbies mixing features you would normally associate with a bidet, for example, with those of a bog-standard bog. Press the wrong button and instead of flushing your deposit down the drain you could find water and hot air being blown up your nether regions.
The ingénue tourist’s difficulties are compounded by the fact that the pictograms used to illustrate each of the functions are not consistent across all toilet manufacturers. But that is about to change as the Japanese prepare for an influx of foreigners for the 2019 Rugby World Cup and the 2020 Olympics.
All nine manufacturers, I read this week, have agreed to standardise the pictograms on the buttons. There will be eight in all – flushing (big and small), opening and closing the lid, activating the back and front cleansing and drying functions and triggering the on and off switches.
Progress of sorts but the Orient will lose some of its mystery, I feel.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: 2019 Rugby World Cup, 2020 Tokyo Olympics, Japanese standardising toilet pictograms
January 21, 2017
Fruits Of The Week
Psst, want to live longer? Well, the secret to extending your time on this mortal coil may be to add some chillis to your diet, I read this week.
The study, conducted by scientists from Larner College of Medicine at the University of Vermont, details of which are published in the ever popular PLoS One journal, claims that consuming red hot chilli peppers can extend your life by 13%, corroborating the findings of earlier research conducted in China.
The reasons are not known for certain and require more research (natch). The likely answer is that the capsaicin in the spice fights high cholesterol and helps metabolise fat breakdown, reducing the likelihood of obesity and stopping tumours. There was a discernible reduction in the number of strokes and heart attacks amongst the chilli-munchers. After all, if your system can survive the shock of the blast of heat, then it should be inured against pretty much anything.
At least our hopes of longevity are down to chillis and not courgettes which, I’m reliably informed, have done a bit of a disappearing act from the shelves of the UK’s supermarkets. It’s all to do with Europe (natch). There has been a cold snap in Spain and unusually high amounts of rain, not just on the plain, which has knackered the production of the courgette.
It may be some weeks before supplies get back to normal and, inevitably, prices will rocket. First Marmite, now courgettes; the end is nigh, I tell you.
Filed under: News, Science Tagged: capsaicin, eating chillis can extend your life, Larner College of Medicine, Plos One Journal, scarcity of courgettes
January 20, 2017
What Is The Origin Of (112)?…
Off his own bat
Writing this post in early January the opportunity to hear the sound of leather striking willow seems a distant prospect. The game of cricket is a wonderful sport and the elongated form – I have no truck for the modern variant of T20 – is a perfect way to while away a day, in convivial company with a glass of something in your hand. You may even be lucky to have the sun shining.
For those living in countries which were unfortunate enough not to experience the (ahem) civilising influences of the British Empire, cricket can seem a bit of a mystery. It has a set of rules which can seem arcane – leg before wicket is a form of dismissal which provokes controversy amongst even the most seasoned practitioners – and a bizarre glossary of terms.
Fielding positions include mid on which is an abbreviation of middle wicket on, silly mid on where silly has the archaic definition of defenceless – it is a dangerous position – slips who wait for a slip from the bat and a third man, so called because when over arm bowling was introduced the position supplemented the existing positions of slip and point. The position of gully is so named because it fills in the gap between slip and point. A bowler achieves a maiden over when they have sent down six balls which have not been scored from and so from the batting side’s perspective is unproductive as, perhaps, maidens were seen in days of yore.
In essence, the principal objective of the team fielding is to dismiss ten of the opposition’s eleven batsmen as quickly as possible and of the team batting to score as many runs as they can before the fielding team achieve their goal. There are a number of ways in which the batting team can score runs, through a variety of extras such as byes and leg byes, wides and no balls, but the majority of the runs are compiled by the batsmen standing at the crease – so called because in the early days of the game a furrow or crease was cut into the ground to show him where to stand – and hitting the ball with their bat.
Our phrase today is used figuratively to convey the sense that someone has done something through their own efforts. It owes its origins, though, to the noble game of cricket and was used to refer to runs, or notches as they were quaintly termed in the 18th century, accumulated through the batsman’s own endeavours. The first citation is to be found in Henry Waghorn’s Cricket Scores of 1742, “the bets on the Slendon man’s head that he got 40 notches off his own bat were lost”. No match fixing there, then. It was not used figuratively until 1845 when the Reverend Sydney Smith wrote in Fragments on Irish Affairs, “but [I] suppose he had no revenues but what he got off his own bat”.
One of the mysteries of cricket is how it was invented in a country where the weather can be so variable. In the old days when pitches were uncovered and ground maintenance had not reached today’s peak, a prolonged bout of rain could make the pitch very treacherous for batting. The term used to describe such a pitch was a sticky wicket which was used in July 1882 in Bell’s Life In London to describe the Australian tourists’ predicament. “the ground.. was suffering from the effects of recent rain, and once more the Australians found themselves on a sticky wicket.” The phrase is now used figuratively to describe any sort of difficult predicament.
Summer won’t be too far away.
Filed under: Cricket, Culture, History, Sport Tagged: Cricket, meaning of cricket terms, origin of cricket terms, origin of off his own bat, origin of sticky wicket
January 19, 2017
A Better Life – Part Four
The Pseudo-anarchist commune of Home, Washington
At first blush, there is something particularly counter-intuitive about an anarchist commune. The popular conception of anarchism is that there are no rules but it actually is a philosophy which advocates self-governed societies based on voluntary institutions and which views the state as undesirable, unnecessary and positively harmful.
In the summer of 1895 three men, George Allen, Oliver Verity and B O’Dell, set out in a rowing boat to find an isolated spot upon which to build a commune based on anarchic principles. They hit on 26 acres of land at Von Geldern Cove on the Puget Sound in Washington which they bought for $7 an acre, doing odd jobs to raise the money. By the following year their families had joined them and they had built some cabins.
In 1898 they had established the Mutual Home Association whose Articles proclaimed that it would “assist its members in obtaining and building homes for themselves and to aid in establishing better social and moral conditions”. Membership was open to anyone who agreed to support its anarchist ideals and pay the requisite amount to secure their plot of land, although the freehold was held by the Association. In reality, there was not much to sign up to. As the writer, Elbert Hubbard, who visited the commune noted, “there is not a church, preacher, prostitute, saloon, doctor, constable, lawyer or justice of peace. There is entire freedom”.
Quickly the word spread about the commune and soon it became home to a motley collection of anarchists, communists, free thinkers, nudists (who would ultimately be their undoing) and those who wanted to pursue unusual diets. It also collected its fair share of ne’er-do-wells. To accommodate this influx the site increased almost ten-fold to 217 acres.
The start of the problems for the commune came in 1901 after President McKinley was assassinated by the self-professed anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, in Buffalo, New York State. The locals realising that they had a bunch of anarchists on their doorstep started to get uppity. The community came under increasing scrutiny and articles critical of their beliefs and lifestyle appeared in the newspaper based in nearby Tacoma. One article so inflamed passions that a group of vigilantes styling themselves as the Loyal League and formed from veterans of the Grand Army of the Republic planned to invade the colony by steamboat and put it to the torch. Their plans came to naught when the steamboat captain refused to take them.
In 1902 the community fell foul of the Comstock Law which was designed to suppress the trade in and circulation of obscene literature and articles of immoral use when an article advocating free love was published in a local anarchist newspaper. As a result, the post office was closed down.
Inevitably, there were frictions in the commune, the tipping point being the practice of nude bathing. Those who were in favour were labelled “nudes” by The Agitator, Home’s newspaper, and those against were “prudes”. The editor, Jay Fox, who wrote a series of articles in defence of the pastime had his collar felt for his troubles and spent two months in chokey.
The Association limped on until 1919 when its government was arraigned in court for being impotent – too much skinny dipping in the cold water, perhaps? – and it was dissolved. Still, it had lasted 26 years which by utopian standards was good going.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: anarchism, assassination of President McKinley, Comstock Law, Elbert Hubbard, George H Allen, Jay Fox, Leon Czolgosz, nudes and prudes, Puget Sound, The Agitator, The Pseudo-anarchist commune of Home Washington
January 18, 2017
Book Corner – January 2017 (2)
Timekeepers: How the World became obsessed with time – Simon Garfield
One of my traits, perhaps annoying to some, is that I constantly look at my watch. I am not admiring it as a thing of beauty – it serves more of a Benthamite utilitarian purpose – but because I find it comforting to know the time. It’s a habit I am finding difficult to kick even though, in my retired state, I am no longer a slave to time. Indeed, for much of what I do these days, knowing what the exact time is is pretty much irrelevant. Wouldn’t it be great to be free of the constraints that time imposes on us and how the hell did we allow time to rule our lives anyway? These are the questions Garfield seeks to address in his engaging, anecdotal and occasionally irritating review of the subject.
Take the watch. Pick up any magazine or so-called serious Sunday newspaper and you will find sophisticated adverts for watches of all shapes and sizes, pretty much all unremittingly ugly in my view, which will set you back thousands and which you will never really own if you buy a Patek Philippe, at least according to their strap line. But why do we buy and wear watches when our mobile technology gives us the time as conveniently and just as, if not more, accurately? Is it redundant technology which has now become just a fashion statement? The luxury watch industry is worth many millions and it shows no sign of flagging. A true mystery.
The limitations of technology imposed time constraints on our listening habits. Because the grooves on a record had to be wound so tight that the needle skipped if the length of the song was longer than 3 minutes, this was the maximum that a song could last until the advent of the 33 rpm disc. Then came along the CD. It was originally going to have a diameter of 11.5 centimetres but the Sony vice chairman at the time, Norio Ohga, insisted it be 12 cm to allow his favourite piece of music, Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, to be accommodated on one disc. And so the standard with a limit of around 74 minutes of music was set.
If you want a target to point the finger of blame at for our enslavement to time then the railways would do. Prior to their development, time was governed by the church clock and was particular to the local area. Railways required timetables to alert the aspiring passenger when they might catch a train and, if they were lucky, when they might arrive at their destination. This in turn, required harmonisation and standardisation of time. Once the genie was out of the bottle, we have struggled to control it ever since.
Throughout the book you come across facts that are astounding or observations which make you realise you never knew that. Take for instance, the display of clocks. They invariably show the time as ten past ten because that setting makes the clock face appear to smile. And comedian Dave Allen’s great joke about time – “you clock in to the clock. You clock out to the clock. You come home to the clock. You eat to the clock, you drink to the clock, you go to bed to the clock.. You do that for 40 years of your life, you retire and what do they fucking give you? A clock” – is always worth a retell.
The book is a collection of essays and the joins do show at times. The sections on the slow food movement and Charlie boy’s Poundbury estate seem somewhat out of kilter with the general thesis, although they arguably show an inclination to turn the clock back. On the whole it is an engaging read and there are far worse ways of spending a few hours.
Filed under: Books, Culture Tagged: Dave Allen, diameter of CD, Jeremy Bentham, Patek Philippe, Poundbury estate, Simon Garfield, Timekeepers: How the world became obsessed with time, why are clocks set at ten past ten
January 17, 2017
There Ain’t ‘Alf Some Clever Bastards – Part Sixty Four
Dietrich Nikolaus Winkel (1777 – 1826)
For a musician time is important. You can dispense with melody or harmony but if rhythm goes out of the window then you are left with an unholy racket. That is why you see a conductor flailing their arms in front of a concert orchestra or a drummer preparing a solid foundation upon which the other players can build in a rock or jazz ensemble. When a musician is practising they will often deploy a metronome, a handy device which you can set to register so many beats per minute by way of audible clicks or ticks. Being mechanical it is unerring. Composers mark their scores with metronome settings to give the musos a clue as to the tempo at which to play the piece.
Of course, some bright spark must have come up with the idea of a musical metronome and this is where the latest inductee of our illustrious Hall of Fame, Lippstadt born Dietrich Winkel, comes in. He was not the first to develop a metronome – this honour goes to the Andalusian polymath, Abbas ibn Firnas (810 – 897 CE) who is said to have devised “some sort of metronome”. In 1696 Frenchman, Etienne Loulie, created the first mechanical metronome, using an adjustable pendulum. The problem with Loulie’s invention was that it did not make a sound and did not have a device – the technical term is an escapement – to keep the pendulum in motion. For a musician it was not much use.
Winkel who by 1812 had now settled in Amsterdam began experimenting with pendulums. His breakthrough came when he realised that by weighting a pendulum on both sides of a pivot it could beat a regular rhythm which was audible. It could be adapted to suit various tempi and was housed in the now familiar pyramid casing. Winkel donated his “musical chronometer” to the Hollansch Instituut van Wetenschappen on 27th November 1814. It was described and commended in the Journal of the Netherland Academy of Sciences the following year.
If Winkel thought by developing this machine he was on to a winner, he was gravely mistaken. He made the fatal mistake that earns him a place in our Hall of Fame of failing to patent his musical metronome. This opened the way for Johann Nepomuk Maetzel to initially try to buy the rights and title to Winkel’s metronome. When Winkel refused, Maelzel simply copied his machine, added a scale and applied, successfully, for a patent. He produced around 200 of his metronomes and sent them out to friends, composers and manufacturers of musical instruments for their comments and suggestions for modifications. One recipient was Ludwig van Beethoven who was much taken by the device and added metronome settings in his later scores.
Winkel sued Maetzel and won but by then the damage had been done. Although the courts acknowledged our hero as the true inventor of the metronome,, Maetzel had cornered the market. Even to this day the metronome is known as the Maetzel Metronome and the notation MM is used in score to denote the tempo at which a piece is to be played.
Winkel did achieve some fame of sorts by inventing the componium which was an automatic organ with two barrels which revolved automatically. The barrels took turns at playing a variation of a piece whilst the other randomly, by way of something resembling a roulette wheel, selected the next variation to play. The variations were almost limitless and it could play variations, “not only during years and ages, but during so immense a series of ages that though figures might be brought to express them, common language could not”. It wowed the crowds when it was displayed at an exposition in Paris in 1824.
Dietrich, for inventing the musical metronome and not getting the recognition you deserved, you are a worthy inductee into our Hall of Fame.
If you enjoyed this, why not try Fifty Clever Bastards by Martin Fone which is now available on Amazon in Kindle format and paperback. For details follow the link https://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=fifty+clever+bastards
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Abbas ibn Firnas, Dietrich Winkel, Etienne Loulie, Fifty Clever Bastards, Johann Nepomuk Maetzel, Ludwig van Beethoven, Martin Fone, metronome
