Martin Fone's Blog, page 310
December 18, 2016
Christmas Tip Of The Week (2)
The acronym of the year has to be JAM, the just about managing. The irony of its origin is presumably lost on those who bandy it around; the White Queen’s admonition to Alice in Lewis Carroll’s Through the Looking Glass that you can have jam tomorrow and jam yesterday but not today, in turn a reference to the usage of iam and nunc in Latin.
Still, many are on fixed budgets and Christmas is a time when we feel the pinch and so the question on everyone’s lips is how cheaply can you cook a Christmas meal. Well, according to blogger, Miguel Barclay, I learned this week, the answer is 92.1p. The trick is to dispense with turkey and replace it with a chicken leg, priced at 50p – a pack of 4 costs £2. For the stuffing mix, use 10ml of cranberry sauce (3,2p), stale bread and half an onion (5p). Next up is pigs in blankets which will set you back 13.5p – 6p for 30g of dried stuffing mix and 7p for a rasher of streaky bacon.
For the vegetables you will have to make do with 200g of spuds for 9.4p and 30g of sprouts at 6p, topped off with one teaspoon full of gravy granules at 5p.
Barclay, whose blog is onepoundmeals on Instagram, claims to be serving it up for his family. Think I will give it a miss.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Miguel Barclay, onepoundmeals, origin of jam tomorrow, the sub one pound Christmas dinner, the White Queen, Through The Looking Glass
December 17, 2016
Bank Notes Of The Week
Love ‘em or hate ‘em – and some vegans have objected to the use of animal fat in their production – the new £5 plastic note jobbies are here to stay.
A micro-engineer from Birmingham, Graham Short, has made a modification to the design, however, I learned this week, by engraving a 5mm portrait of Jane Austen in the transparent part of four of the notes – serial numbers AM 32 885551 to 4, if you are interested – and including a different quote from her oeuvre on each note. They have an insurance value of £50,000, so are worth looking out for.
Doubtless to piss vegans off further, Short has spent them in a café in Caerphilly, a pork pie shop in Melton Mowbray, a bakery in Kelso and is due to get rid of the last one in Northern Ireland. If you find one, and at least the one spent in Melton Mowbray is in circulation, you are urged to contact the Tony Huggins-Haig gallery in Kelso who have sponsored the caper.
Ever ones to pour a bucket of cold water on a jape like this, the Bank of England warn that it is an offence under the Currency and Banknotes Act of 1928 to deface a note of the realm.
Bah humbug, I say, Happy hunting!
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: fivers engraved with picture of Jane Austen, Graham Short, the new British £5 note, Tony Huggins-Haig Gallery, vegans object to £5 note
December 16, 2016
What Is The Origin Of (108)?…
The last straw
Rather like the wafer thin mint was to Mr Creosote in the Meaning of Life, the straw in this expression is the thing that makes a situation unbearable or catastrophic. The full version of the phrase is “the last straw that breaks the camel’s back”. Camels have long been used as beasts of burden in foreign parts and each animal logically has its maximum weight limit, something doubtless established by trial and error. A bit beyond the maximum payload and the camel won’t be able to carry it too far.
Given that camels are not common or garden domestic animals in England, the obvious question is when and why did this phrase enter the English language. The Oxford Dictionary of Quotations, without offering any evidence, suggests that it was a proverb that dated back to the 17th century. It was certainly in use in the early 19th century and was used with its current meaning as this quotation from the Edinburgh Advertiser from May 1816 shows, “if it were only 3d a head, or 4d and 5d, upon the lower orders, yet straw upon straw was laid until the last straw broke the camel’s back”.
Thirteen years later in the same newspaper we have a variant which couples a feather with a horse’s back, the horse, of course, being a much more familiar type of domestic animal here. “that agitation was only the cause of Emancipation in the same sense in which it is true that the last feather breaks the horse’s back”. Inevitably the two strands were conflated in an American publication, the Southport American, in October 1843, “the feather which breaks the camel’s back having been added to Sir Walter’s burthen..” Feathers, straw, camels and horses – we are rather clutching at straws – a phrase we use to signify trying to extricate ourselves from a desperate situation – if we try and make any sense out of this melange.
Although Sir Thomas More used the metaphor of a drowning man desperately clutching on to anything that might save him – “a man in peril of drowning catchest whatsoever cometh next to hand..be it ever so simple a stick (A Dialogue of Comfort Against Tribulation – 1534)” – it was John Prime in his Fruitful and Brief Discourse of 1583 who introduced straw – “we do not as men redie to be drowned, catch at every straw”. Samuel Richardson in Clarissa (1748) notes that it is an old proverb, “a drowning man will catch at a straw, the proverb well says” and it is a graphic illustration of desperate futility. The straw – reeds – might float or might be something that you can cling on to but it is unlikely either to bear your weight or impede the current from carrying you off.
One of the senses of the rather generic verb to catch in medieval times and later was of obtaining or achieving or capturing. This sense was superseded around the mid 18th and early 19th century by more specific verbs such as grasp, grab and clutch. Clutch was used in the New York Mirror in 1832, “as drowning men clutch at straws” whereas today we are more likely to grasp at them. Whichever verb or participle you choose to use, the sense is the same.
Straw, because of our agricultural heritage, appears in a number of other idioms which we will leave to explore to another time.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Mr Creosote, origin of clutching at straws, origin of last straw, Samuel Richardson, Sir Thomas More, the last feather breaks the horse's back, The meaning of life
December 15, 2016
Quacks Pretend To Cure Other Men’s Disorders But Rarely Find A Cure For Their Own – Part Forty Seven
Carter’s Little Liver Pills
It is that time of year, I suppose, when you give your body a bit of a bashing. If you had felt that your liver was a bit sluggish at the end of the 19th and early 20th century, you may well have reached out for a bottle of Carter’s Little Liver Pills which were phenomenally successfully on both sides of the pond.
Made by Carter’s Products of New York City from around 1868 from a concoction formulated by Samuel J Carter of Eerie, Pennsylvania, they were heavily promoted by adverts which boasted some extremely fine artwork. One such advert, printed in the Illustrated London News from 16th July 1887 features a splendid black crow holding in its beak a banner bearing the Carter logo. Other proclaimed that the pills “positively cured” torpid liver and that they “relieve distress from Dyspepsia, Indigestion and Too Hearty Eating”. “They regulate the bowels and prevent constipation”, it goes on – no wonder as the active ingredient was bisacodyl which is a form of laxative. They are “purely vegetable and do not gripe or purge but by their gentle action please all who use them” A phial contained 40 pills and sold for 1 shilling and a penny halfpenny.
In 1929 Henry Hamilton Hoyt Snr took over his father-in-law’s business and expanded the range of products they offered. Amongst the new products was Arrid deodorant available from 1935, Nair hair remover (1940) and Rise shaving cream (1949). During the Second World War they manufactured many health-related products including foot powder for the military. But despite this, the company could not dispel the suggestion that the Liver Pills weren’t much cop.
Over time in the States increasing legislative attention was paid to advertising that was a little economical with the actualite. The Wheeler-Lea Act of 1938 made illegal “unfair or deceptive acts or practices in commerce” guaranteeing protection to consumers and allowing them to initiate suits against malefactors rather than having to wait until competitors did so. Nonetheless it took 16 years, some 11,000 pages of testimony and 750 exhibits before the Federal Trade Commission was able to persuade the Supreme Court to force Carter’s to remove the word Liver from their packaging. Even then, other than some adverse publicity, no penalty was exacted on the firm and all they did was repackage the pills as Carter’s Little Pills in 1959.
In the 1980s the pills continued to be marketed in the now familiar red and black labelled cylinder, although plastic was now used instead of metal, and the claims for the product were somewhat toned down – relieving sluggishness, that bloating feeling, headaches and drowsiness, but only if those symptoms were accompanied by constipation. It is still available today, although it is now known as Carter’s Laxative and the active ingredient is still bisacodyl with inactive ingredients including acacia, carnauba, gelatin, lac, magnesium stearate, polyvinyl acetate, talc, white wax and others.
Questionable as a medicine as it may have been, the Liver Pills made a mark culturally. It spawned a popular saying in the mid 20th century, “he/she has more (insert noun as appropriate) than Carter has Little Liver Pills” and as late as 2000 Senator Robert Byrd is quoted as saying “West Virginia has always had four friends, God Almighty, Sears Roebuck, Carter’s Liver Pills and Robert C Byrd”.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: bisacodyl, Carter's Laxative, Carter's Little Liver Pills, Carter's Liver Pills, Robert C Byrd, Samuel J Carter, The Wheeler-Lea Act of 1938
December 14, 2016
On My Doorstep – Part Fourteen
The Frimley flood of 1926
Close by the site where Tomlinscote School now stands there is a small pond – about 0.6 kilometres in perimeter with a surface area of 1.8 hectares called Tomlin’s Pond – which attracts a motley collection of ducks and geese, the latter quite a nuisance in an area that is now the epitome of English suburbia. In earlier times it seems to have been a more substantial feature of the area. It was a large stretch of water, quite deep, with an island covered in thick rhododendrons which made a pleasing reflection in the water when the sun shone.
On the Frimley side of the lake – it is hard to envisage now – was a high waterfall which replenished the lake throughout the year. In periods following heavy rain the waterfall would be in full flow and the sound of the water rushing down the stone blocks was a familiar backdrop to the soundtrack of daily life in the area. Just above the waterfall was a large penstock or sluice which was used to control the flow of water at times.
After some heavy rainfall in 1926 the penstock gave way with disastrous consequences, whether it just was overwhelmed by the weight of water or was helped on its way by mischievous boys is unclear. Frimley folklore fingers Harry Finch and his brother but whether there is any truth in the story I haven’t been able to determine. Anyway, with a great roar the water poured out.
The water poured through the undergrowth until it met the pond in the grounds of Alphington. That pond could not play host to such a prodigious amount of water for long and soon the excess escaped into the ditches along Field Lane, linked up with another stream near the Grove. It continued its journey under the road past the back of the old Hospital and into the garden of the White Hart public house. By the pub was a deep well-known as “the Dip Hole” which boasted a plentiful supply of that relatively rare commodity, pure clean water, and was used by travellers on their way to and from London to water their nags. The well put up feeble resistance to the spate and the water made its way down the High Street which was flooded by several feet and was made impassable.
On it went flooding some of the cottages along the way whose ground floor rooms were lower than the street and into Station Road. The laws of physics – water can’t travel uphill – stemmed the torrent somewhere just before the railway station. Workmen were soon on the scene lifting manholes trying to coax the aberrant waters underground but it was a long and at times frustrating task. Villagers flocked to watch the fun, perching precariously on any ground dry enough and high enough to offer a grandstand view. It took sometime before village life returned to normal.
Perhaps surprisingly, the waterfall was also repaired and it continued to be an attractive feature of the area until the lure of property developers waving wads of cash to persuade farmers to sell their land for housing sealed its demise.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Frimley flood of 1926, Harry Finch and his brother, penstock, The Dip Hole, The White Hart in Frimley, Tomlin's Pond, Tomlinscote, waterfall in Tomlin's Pond
December 13, 2016
A Better Life – Part Three
Fruitlands
This utopian agrarian commune was established in Harvard, Massachusetts by Amos Bronson Alcott and Charles Allen in 1843. If the former’s name sounds vaguely familiar, you are right – he was the father of Louisa May who lived there as a little woman. Alcott came up with the idea in 1841, travelled to England to drum up support, persuading Lane to cross the pond and stump up $1,800 to buy the 90-acre Wyman farm.
Alcott and Lane were what was known as Transcendalists who did not see God as the figure portrayed in the Bible but as a sort of world spirit. Spiritual regeneration was linked to physical health, they believed, and that “outward abstinence was a sign of inward fullness”. By working as a community they thought that individuals would improve and thought that the innocence of children would have a rejuvenating effect on the older members of the commune. They sought to separate themselves from the wider world by refraining from trade, renouncing personal property and eschewing hired labour.
Each day at the commune started with a purging cold-water shower. Meals were simple and vegan, mainly consisting of fruit and water. Many vegetables such as potatoes, carrots and beets were avoided because by growing downwards they displayed a lower nature. Their clothes were made of linen and their shoes were canvas. Cotton was forbidden because it was the product of slave labour and animal products such as wool and leather were verboten. Animals, being of lower intelligence than humans, were not to be exploited for their meat or their labour.
It is difficult to reconstruct exactly how many residents or “consecrated cranks” as they became known lived on the commune. There were no formal admission requirements and it seems that members came and went. The best account of the group is to be found in Louisa M Alcott’s Transcendental Wild Oats and, probably, at its peak it numbered no more than fourteen.
Whilst the commune had many lofty ideals, they contained the seeds that were to prove the rapid undoing of the group. When they took possession of Wyman’s they were already a month behind the usual planting schedule. Their refusal to exploit dumb animals meant that ploughing and preparing the land was more onerous. Eschewing root vegetables which are generally easier to grow compounded their problems as did the fact that only about 10 acres of the site were arable and there were only ten old apple trees when they arrived. Nonetheless by July they had planted 8 acres of grains, one of vegetables and one of melons.
Even more fatal to the group’s fortunes were the structural constraints in which it operated. The men preferred to spend their time teaching and philosophising rather than breaking their backs in the sun. Alcott and Lane wielded almost unlimited power and there was an oppressive and joyless atmosphere about the place. Even Alcott’s wife was moved to write, “I am prone to indulge in an occasional hilarity but seem drowned down into still quiet and peaceless order..and am almost suffocated in the atmosphere of restriction and form”.
Despite the introduction of an ox and cow the commune could not grow enough food to sustain themselves and after just seven months it disbanded. Alcott took it personally and didn’t eat for several days. Ralph Waldo Emerson helped them buy a home for them in Concord. Joseph Palmer, one of the consecrated cranks, took the farm on, using it as a refuge for former reformers and it is now a museum.
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Amos Bronson Alcott, Charles Lane, consecrated cranks, Fruitlands Transcendental Centre, Jospeh Palmer, Little Women, Louisa M Alcott, reasons for Fruitland's failure, regimen of Fruitlands, Transcendental Wild Oats
December 12, 2016
The Streets Of London – Part Fifty One
The Palestra, SE1
The Palestra is a hideous modern building, now the headquarters of Transport of London, situated opposite Southwark tube station where the Blackfriars Bridge road intersects with The Cut. Apart from tut-tutting at the hideous carbuncle I paid the building no more heed and went into the boozer opposite, the Ring – the plum porter was excellent. It was only when I looked at the bric-a-brac on the pub’s walls, all with a distinctly pugilistic feel to them, that I realised I had stumbled upon a bit of London history of which I had previously been unaware.
The land now occupied by the Palestra previously housed the Surrey Chapel, built in 1782, which was round so, according to the Reverend Rowland Hill, not to be confused with the stamp man of the same name, “the devil had nowhere to hide”. It operated as a nonconformist chapel and also hosted musical event and meetings of various philanthropic and charitable organisations. The trustees and congregation didn’t renew the lease in 1859 and for a number of years it was then used by the Primitive Methodists until in 1881 when it was partially demolished and renovated for commercial purposes.
The next character in our story is a professional boxer, Dick Burge, who was English Lightweight Champion between 1891 and 1897 and reportedly one of the finest fighters of the decade. In 1901 he married Bella – an entertainer in a double act with Marie Lloyd’s sister – but retirement from the ring ad meant that Burge was on his uppers. He became involved in a complex fraud – the sum quoted was around £15m in today’s terms – and was sentenced to 10 years in chokey, a month after he had married. His sentence was reduced in its eighth year when Burge rescued a warder from a prison riot.
On his release, Bella, who had stood by her man, and Dick decided to open a boxing club and no ordinary one – “our place would be no place for nobs..our patrons belong to the cloth cap and muffler brigade”. The premises they chose to host the bouts was the Surrey Chapel – as a round building it was ideal for the 14 foot ring. Bella organised an army of down and outs to clear the site in return for a decent feed and on 14th May 1910 the first bouts were held. The soup kitchen continued to build up awareness of the venue and by 1912 it was established as London’s premier fighting venue, hosting shows four or five times a week. Many of the big names including Len Johnson, Jack Drummond, Alf Mancini, Jack Hood and Ted “Kid” Lewis fought there.
In 1918 Dick died but Bella continued with the venue and made a great success of it. Marie Lloyd was one of the regulars ringside. In 1939 it closed for renovations but its end came the following year when a direct hit from a German bomb reduced the place to rubble. The Palestra reflects this part of London’s sporting history in its name – a palestra in Ancient Greece was a training ground where sports such as wrestling and athletics were practised. The Ring, of course, directly refers to the Burge’s venue. Ironically, nearby there is a club where city slickers – the modern day Nobs – can don the gloves and work off their aggression.
It is amazing what you can learn by sitting in a London pub.
Filed under: Culture, History, Sport Tagged: Bella Burge, Dick Burge, Marie Lloyd, plum porter, Rowland Hill, Surrey Chapel, The Palestra, The Ring, The Ring pub in Borough
December 11, 2016
Candle Of The Week
Hygge is part of the zeitgeist, it seems. For many what helps to contribute to that warm glow and feeling of well-being is a nice scented candle, always an easy and safe option to buy as a present in the run up to Christmas.
For those who want to create a distinctive ambience and are fast food fanatics, I came across this week a scented candle that might just be up your strasse. Launched by KFC New Zealand, this limited edition candle, replete with the face of Colonel Sanders, emits the aroma of eleven herbs and spices used in the production of their chicken products. What’s not to like?
To get your hands on one, though, you have to enter a draw and suggest other products that the enterprising KFC may offer. The winning suggestion it seems was KFC stamps ..because the Colonel always delivers. Some wholesome food might have been better.
Filed under: Humour, News Tagged: Hygge, KFC limited edition candle with eleven herbs and spices, KFC New Zealand, scented candles
December 10, 2016
Christmas Tip Of The Week
You’ve probably been here. You’ve carefully selected your Christmas gifts for your loved ones and now the challenge is to wrap the wretched things up. If you are like me, all fingers and thumbs, it is an exercise that tries the patience of a saint – the sellotape folds up on itself, the piece of paper you have carefully cut is too short, ends come unstuck etc. If nothing else does, it’s enough to drive you to the Christmas Sherry.
Never fear, help is at hand, courtesy of this video posted on YouTube by BeatTheBush, which reveals a nifty way to accomplish the task. Can’t help thinking, though, that the solution to it all is to buy boxes.
I will be interested to see if it works.
Filed under: News, Science Tagged: BratThe Bush, how to wrap a Christmas present, the trials of wrapping a Christmas present, YouTube
December 9, 2016
What Is The Origin Of (107)?…
Never look a gift horse in the mouth
I have never got close and personal with a horse but I am told that you can learn a lot by inspecting the mouth of a nag, particularly about its age and general health. Horse traders routinely look at the mouth of horses they are thinking of purchasing before going ahead with the transaction. Our phrase – the variant is don’t rather than never – is used to warn someone not to be too sniffy or critical about something that is given to them for free.
The phrase has a long pedigree, perhaps not surprising as the giving of gifts was an important part of Ancient Greek life. Recipients were advised to praise a gift that anyone bestowed on them. As early as the fourth century CE a proverb involving the inspection of teeth was doing the rounds. John Chevenix Trench commented on the phrase in his book, Proverbs and Their Lessons, published in 1852, with this gloss, “I will not pretend to say how old it is: it is certainly older than St Jerome, a Latin father of the fourth century who, when some found fault with certain writings of his, replied ….that they were voluntary on his part” adding “noli..ut vulgare proverbium est, equi dentes inspicere donate”.
The interesting points of St Jerome’s usage are that it was clearly an idiom used commonly, if only by the common sorts, at the time, that we have a clear connection with the inspection of the gnashers of a horse that has been given as a gift and that it is used as a form of admonition. Given its classical origin it is not surprising to see a variant of the phrase crop up in other languages. In the 13th century the French used a proverb, “cheval donne ne doit-on en dens regarder” which translates as don’t look at the teeth of a horse which has been given to you, an almost exact match with St Jerome’s proverb.
The first example of its usage in print in England may have been in a collection of proverbs compiled by John Stanbridge, Vulgaria Stambrigi, published in 1510. There we find “a given hors may not be loked in the tethe”, an almost exact translation. Just over thirty years later there had been one significant change to the formula – we weren’t just looking at teeth but the mouth of the horse. In John Heywood’s A Dialogue of the Effectual Proverbs in the English Tongue Concerning Marriage, published in 1546 we find “no man ought to look a gueun hors in the mouth”. The transformation to the phrase we now know was completed a century later. Samuel Butler used it in a couplet in his poem Hudibras, published in 1663, “he ne’er considered it, as loath/ to look a gift-horse in the mouth”.
The other common phrase associated with the mouth of a horse, straight from a horse’s mouth, indicating something that has come direct from the source and, therefore, reliable, is much more modern, dating from the early 20th century and, probably, of American origin. The first reference in print seems to have been in the Syracuse Herald of May 1913, “I got a tip yesterday and if it wasn’t straight from the horse’s mouth it was jolly well the next thing to it”. This is where we came in – you can tell a lot about a horse from its mouth.
So now we know!
Filed under: Culture, History Tagged: Hudibras, John Chevenix Trench, origin of never look a gift horse in the mouth, origin of straight from the horse's mouth, Samuel Butler, St Jerome, Vulgaria Stambrigi
