Martin Fone's Blog, page 42

It’s The Way I Tell ‘Em (37)

More of the best one liners (allegedly) from the Edinburgh Fringe 2024:

The conspiracy theory about the moon being made of cheese was started by the hallouminati. – Olaf Falafel

I’m an extremely emotionally needy non-binary person: my pronouns are ‘there there’. – Sarah Keyworth

I’ve got a girlfriend who never stops whining. I wish I’d never bought her that vineyard – Roger Swift

Gay people are very bad at maths. We don’t naturally multiply. – Lou Wall

Growing up rich is a hereditary condition. It affects 1% of people – Olga Koch

Scrotum Humanum Revisited

The misidentification of a fossilized femur in Richard Brookes’ book, A New and Accurate System of Natural History (1763), as a human scrotum was to have enormous repercussions in the world of paleontology.

The French philosopher and naturalist, Jean-Baptiste Robinet, included an illustration of the fossil in his Considerations philosophiques de la gradiation nturelle des forms (1768) which was clearly drawn from that in Brookes’ book but went further by claiming to be able to identify the musculature in each “testicle pouch” and that the central cavity resembled a urethra. He discounted the idea that the fossil was the petrified bone of a once-living creature, advancing the theory that it was a stand-alone entity created by mineral germs which happened to resemble a male anatomical part. Robinet’s theory was not widely accepted.

In 1824 William Buckland described “an enormous fossil…reptile” in Notice on the Megalosaurus or great Fossil Lizard of Stonesfield, which had been discovered in the slate near the Oxfordshire village. He thought it was “an amphibious animal”, not unsurprisingly as previously discovered fossilized specimens unearthed, including Mary Anning’s Ichthyosaurus and Plesiosaurus and Georges Cuvier’s giant monitor lizard found in Masstricht, were clearly water-dwelling. What Buckland called a Megalosaurus, “great lizard”, is known today as a six-meter long land-dwelling carnivore, a femur from which was Brookes’ Scrotum humanum.

In 1827 Gideon Mantell gave the remains the type species of Megalosaurus bucklandii in recognition of Buckland’s part in bringing it to the attention of the scientific community and Richard Owen in 1842 used Megalosaurus as one of the genera that defined the group Dinosauria. By this time the more perceptive minds began to realise that these creatures were a distinct form of animal rather than just a type of big lizard.

However, this thought posed a significant taxonomical dilemma. Under the Linnaean system the first name given to a specimen has taxonomic priority over later names and, inescapably, not only was Scrotum humanum a valid binomen but it was also the first generic and specific name applied to a non-avian dinosaur. In other words, Scrotum humanum had priority over Megalosaurus bucklandii and future generations of paleontologists were stuck with the uncomfortable fact.

The question of what to do about it rumbled on well into the late twentieth century, even though Brookes had known perfectly well that the Cornish femur was not a petrified scrotum and that the rubric to the illustration was erroneous. However, as the term Scrotum humanum had not been used in scientific literature since 1899, under the rules of the International Code of Zoological Nomenclature (ICZN) it could be termed a nomen oblatum or forgotten name and its priority dropped, a decision described at the time as “perhaps fortunate”.

In 1985, though, the ICZN dropped the nomen oblatum clause and a paleologist by the name of William Serjeant had to make a formal application for the name to be suppressed so that it would not take priority over a name deemed to be more appropriate.

As to the original fossil that caused all the fuss, it disappeared without trace, possibly shortly after Post had written about it. It is unlikely that Brookes and certainly not Robinet had ever seen it.

The Sharpest Tongue (2)

There is, of course, a downside to being sharp tongued and every ready with the perfect put-down, as the fate of Zoilus reveals. He was a scholar living in the 4th century BC from the Thracian town of Amphipolis. According to the Roman historian, Vitruvius, poor Zoilus met with a grisly fate, either stoned in Chios or thrown alive on to a funeral pyre at Smyrna. Either way, Vitruvius opined, his fate was well-merited.

So what was Zoilus’ crime? He had the audacity to criticise the poems of Homer, particularly in respect of their fabulous elements, but in the opinion of his peers he went more than a step too far. Although none of his works survive, Zoilus’ hallmark was harsh and malignant criticism, putting him beyond the pale, earning him the title of Homeromastix, scourge of Homer.

His bad reputation resurfaced after the Renaissance, Cervantes calling Zoilus a slanderer in the preface to his Don Quixote. There was a proverb, “every poet has his Zoilus” and zoilist became an English term, first deployed in 1594 by Thomas Nashe but now sadly obsolete, used to describe an overly-critical and judgmental nitpicker.

For those of us who indulge in literary criticism, it always pay to restrain our inner Zoilus.

The Spirit Murder Mystery

A review of The Spirit Murder Mystery by Robin Forsythe – 240809

One of the joys of the cryptic crossword is pitting one’s wits against the setter who seeks to use the various and different definitions of English words to confuse and misdirect. The incomplete note found in the pocket of the murdered Clarry Martin which includes the words “the spirit taps” and “soap box broken” in the context of Forsythe’s heavily spiritualist laden tale with Gothic overtones seems to point in one direction but its true meaning leads to a completely different resolution.

The fifth and last in Robin Forsythe’s Algernon Vereker series, originally published in 1936 and reissued by Dean Street Press, is a light but entertaining murder mystery. Unlike the other books in the series a murder has not already been committed as the book opens, Forsythe concentrating his efforts on introducing John Thurlow and his niece, Eileen, both of whom have an interest in spiritualism. It is remarkable how many books of the era touch in some way on spiritualism, perhaps an obtuse nod in the direction of Conan Doyle or merely a reflection that murder and the supernatural often go hand in hand.

Eileen is a sensitive rather than a medium and one evening as the two hold a séance they are aware of ghostly music, an organ playing a piece from Haydn. They do not have a wireless or a record player and the church is a mile or so away and the organist was not practicing that evening. Later that evening John disappears, although the doors and windows were locked, his body found several days later along with that of Clarry Martin on Cobbler’s Common. Martin had been shot, there was also evidence that his limbs had been bound, but his wound while not fatal would have prevented him from smashing John’s head in with a blunt instrument, ruling out one theory that the two men had got into a fight over the right to the charms of the village’s belle, Dawn Garford.

As chance would have it, Vereker is staying in the village, Yarham, and the mystery of what happened to the men gets his detective juices flowing. Summoning his sidekick, Manuel Ricardo, he gets to work and he has the opportunity to renew his friendly rivalry with Inspector Heather of the Yard wagering a barrel of beer against a tin of Player’s cigarettes that he will be the one to come up with the solution to the crime.

Heather, rightly, is convinced that the spiritualist aspects to the case are all hokum but the ethereal music, which Vereker and Ricardo hear without the aid of a medium, is real enough and points to the answer as to how Thurlow was able to disappear. It is a tale involving secret tunnels and entrances, illegal stills, a missing cap, a barleycorn and chalk on the soles of shoes, a women with size three feet, and two people being in the wrong place at the wrong time. The active investigation closes with a thrilling car chase in which the vehicles reaching the heady heights of 70mph and ends in predictable disaster, robbing Heather of the opportunity to fit his darbies on a suspect.

The two deaths are not straightforward cases of murder as Martin, while trussed up, succumbed to gas poisoning, and Thurlow’s death could be construed as a case of self defence. Nevertheless, Heather does get the chance to arrest the other key suspect, a man with form in the racket, even though it costs him the wager.

Interestingly, Vereker, whilst entirely absorbed by the intellectual aspects of a case, is less interested in the practicalities of the outcome and decides to sit out the denouement. He is a complex and fascinating sleuth and while this story is far from a classic, it is entertaining enough and makes for a satisfying conclusion to a series that aficionados of the genre should not let pass them by.

Vini Vidivici

The Conquered Lorikeet is a dead parrot, specimens of which have been found in archaeological layers on the Marquesa, Cook, and Society islands of Polynesia. It is thought that they died out no later than 1200 AD with the majority of specimens found dating to around 1000 AD.

In 1987 David Steadman and Marie Zarriello wrote its species description, giving it the binomial name of Vini vidivici. It is clearly a play on Julius Caesar’s famous observation after visiting Britain. It mirrors the fate of the bird which is thought to have been driven to extinction following the arrival of man to the islands.

This droll binomen was helped by the generic name of this form of parrot, vini, which is not of Latin origin but instead is the Tahitian name for a local bird.

The Case Of The Burnt Bohemian

A review of The Case of the Burnt Bohemian by Christopher Bush – 240806

Aficionados of Christopher Bush will recognize his ability to take a couple of seemingly random and unconnected events and weaving a complex and intriguing mystery out of them. This, the forty-second in his Ludovic Travers series, originally published in 1953 and reissued by Dean Street Press, is an excellent example.

Travers, in his guise as Chairman and owner of the Broad Street Detective Agency, is rung up by a psychiatrist, Dr Arthur Chale, who believes that his life is in danger. He does not make the appointment but a background check establishes that Chale and his cousin, Morse, were involved in a blackmail case in Brumford before the Second World War, Chale being cleared but Morse, after escaping on bail, was thought to have been shot in France after double-crossing the Nazis.

In his role as consultant to the Yard, Travers is summoned by George Wharton to view the remains of an artist by the name of Sindle who was stabbed to death in his Chelsea flat and then the body was burnt to conceal its identity. As Travers remarked at the time, if the body was that of Sindle and it was found in his flat, why the need to conceal its identity? From such little acorns a mighty mystery grows and it comes as no surprise to discover the first of several links between the two events, namely that Chale provided the flat for Sindle.

There is another murder victim, Chale’s secretary, Wolde, killed for knowing too much and to add further spice to the mystery, an eccentric woman who blames Chale for the death of her daughter.

The intricacies of the plot is too complex to summarise succinctly and most of the pleasure to be derived from reading the book is to find that Bush has pushed you in one direction only to bring you to a crashing stop and have to refocus, regroup and start again. For Wharton and Travers it is a case where a discovery or revelation forces them to re-evaluate their preconceptions ad assumptions of the case. They really only get on to the trail after two major false starts. Even when they do get on to the right track, they miss some obvious clues which, in hindsight, would have speeded up the identification of the culprit.

It is a case involving dental plates and Travers’ observation of a child’s trick with orange peel to alter the jaw profile leads him to an understanding of why there were too many teeth found in the melted remains at the flat and why the victim and murderer seemed to have the same dental characteristics. There is a reprise of an artefact used to establish and break an alibi, a variation of which Bush used in the Case of the Flying Donkey, and a couple of curiosities, such as the use of a telephone box to report a fire when there was a phone in the reception and the delay in handing over a sketch of Sindle, which had they been given greater attention would have led to the killer more quickly.

Bush has got over his phase of moaning about the high taxation rates levied by the now former Labour government but he upholds his conservative sentiments in his portrayal of Sindle who, in a letter purporting to come from him and confessing to the murder of Wolde, reveals that he suffered from what he called “sexual perversions” from which Chale had cured him, a controversial thesis at the best of times. Did the fact that a fellow resident claimed to have seen Sindle with a pansy-looking man mean he was backsliding, an unfortunate choice of participle by Bush?

The relationship between Wharton and Travers is always a highlight, with the Old General quick to blame Travers when assumptions prove false and to take credit for a suggestion from his consultant that bears fruit. This is classic Bush, a good solid murder mystery that takes some sorting out. Great stuff.

Scapegrace Premium Black Gin

Scapegrace Distillery is based in Canterbury in New Zealand and produces the country’s top-selling premium gin, which I came across and reviewed some four years ago. The country’s national colour, at least in sporting terms, is black and the temptation to produce a gin that reflects the fact proved too irresistible for the distillers. Scapegrace Premium Black Gin is the result and I was pleased to see it sitting on the shelves as part of Waitrose’s augmented selection of gins and at a discounted price to boot. The temptation for me to buy a bottle proved to be equally irresistible.

The sceptics might be tempted to think that producing a black gin is perhaps a marketing gimmick too far but while there might be a kernel of truth there the effect is the result of the precision of the distiller’s craft in harnessing the right botanicals at the right temperature in the right order to produce the required effect. The key botanicals are aronia berries from China, saffron from India, pineapple from Australia, butterfly pea from Malaysia, and kumera or sweet potato from New Zealand. It is said to be the world’s first naturally black gin.

However, if you order it at a bar and it is brought to you in a glass with the tonic already mixed, then you are going to be slightly disappointed. Once the gin mixes with the tonic there is a pH reaction between the two elements and the result is a drink that has shades of red, purple, and pink. It adds to the fun of the drink but I wonder how many have ordered a black gin only to find what has been served up is more like a darkish pink gin. A wheat based grain spirit is used for the base and the gin is distilled using waters sourced from the Southern Alps of New Zealand with an ABV of 41.6%.

Although I was keen to see the gin in all its blackness and experience the change in colour, I was a little concerned that the juniper would be overwhelmed in the search for distilling pyrotechnics. I was mildly reassured when I opened the stopper as I could detect the aroma of spicy juniper in the background once I had got past the really fruity and zesty opening hit with pineapple and lemon predominant.

In truth when in the glass neat it has more of an inky dark purply black colour which lightens to a lighter purply pink with the addition of tonic. It is quite peppery and oily with a very fruity, floral and herbaceous feel about it with a luxuriously oily and smooth feel to it leading on to a dark berry and junipery aftertaste. It reminded me of a more sophisticated and complex version of Brockmans gin.      

It was a little too fruity for my taste, the principal elements of what I look for from a gin relegated too far into the background and for all the inventiveness and ingenuity that went into creating a drink that changes colour, it will remain for me a curiosity rather than a go to gin.

The bottle itself is dark, tall, angular, with a short neck and artificial stopper. Rather than labelling the distillers make good use of embossing to put their message across. From batch no 975 my bottle is number 300 of 500. The label at the top tells me that “black is not sad”, but, equally, it might be a step too far.

Until the next time, cheers!   

Scrotum Humanum

Dinosaurs seem to have an enduring fascination for children these days, although I do not recall them being big during my childhood over sixty years ago. There is something compelling about these large creatures tramping around the prehistoric Earth but perhaps equally fascinating is the thought that at some point those of a scientific mind must have begun to recognise that our planet had been populated by creatures which had long since been driven into extinction. Scrotum humanum or the human scrotum had a significant part to play in this dawning realization.

Coming cross fossilized bones was not a modern phenomenon. In the absence of any deeper scientific understanding, the ancient Greeks attributed bones that were unearthed to heroes, such as King Pelops’ lost “shoulder blade” and the skeleton of Orestes, described by Herodotus as being over ten feet tall, although they are now thought to have been the remains of Pleistocene mammals, such as mammoths and mastodons. Extinct terrestrial and maritime creatures are likely to have fuelled the widely held stories of dragons, leviathans, and other mythical creatures.

What is considered to be the first fossil was unearthed in the Taynton Limestone formation in Cornwall and was described by the naturalist and historian, Robert Plot, in his book Natural History of Oxford-shire (1677). He correctly identified it as part of a femur and wrote about it at length, describing it as being larger than the femur of a horse or ox, including an illustration. He rejected suggestions that it could have grown to that size as a result of the crystallization of mineral salts while it was in the ground or that it was the remains of an elephant brought over during the Roman occupation.

Instead, he thought that the bone belonged to a giant human being, analogous to the Titans of Greek mythology, devoting several pages of his book to their history. To support his theory he drew comparisons with several contemporary tall humans, including a Dutch woman “seven feet and a half high, with her limbs proportionable”, whom he had seen in Oxford.

Richard Brookes, a naturalist, set out to apply the newly developed Linnaean taxonomical system to stones, fossils, and minerals that had been found in England. Included in the fifth volume of his A New and Accurate System of Natural History (1763) was a description of Plot’s fossilized femur which added little to the original account. Brookes also included an illustration that aped that which appeared in Plot’s book with two differences. Firstly, it was inverted and, secondly, it was accompanied by the words Scrotum Humanum.    

While Brookes clearly believed, like Plot, that the fossil “exactly resemble the lowermost part of the thigh-bone of a man”, he had mentioned just before mentioning the Cornish fossil how “other stones have been found exactly representing the private parts of a man”. The illustrations accompanying the text were only identified by the page number of their description making it possible for the editor to take the inverted femur to be that of a fossil resembling a male private part and labelled accordingly. On the other hand, it might just have been a joke.

Either way, as we shall see, the mistaken labelling of the Cornish fossil in Brookes’ magnum opus was to have enormous repercussions in the world of paleontology.

The Sharpest Tongue

I don’t know about you, but while I go out of my way to avoid insulting anyone, I do feel that when the occasion arises, I do feel we have lost some of the inventiveness and charm in the insults we fling around. In attempt to broaden the range of my vocabulary I have taken a look at some insults from around the world and from yesteryear.

The Germans seem to have a thing about simpletons or idiots without whom the human gene pool would be improved. Their word for it is evolutionbremse or evolutionary brake. Alternatively, there is Teletubbyzurückwinker, someone who waves back at the Teletubbies ie someone who is not very bright, or Gehirnverweigerer, someone who does not use their brain very often, or an Einzeller, a single-cell organism. You can also add to the mix Arsch mit ohren, an arse with ears, a complete ignoramus.

In the workplace we all have come across at some time an Erbsenzähler, literally a pea counter, someone who obsesses over small details, and an ameisentätowierer, an ant tattooist, one who is overly pedantic. Almost as bad is the Dünnbrettbohrer, a driller of thin planks who does the minimum and takes the easy way out.

Another characteristic some irksome is talkativeness. The Germans have a word, Heißluftgebläse, to describe someone who talks a lot about nothing, a hot air gun.

More anon.

Thirteen Guests

A review of Thirteen Guests by J Jefferson Farjeon – 240804

A hangover from the Last Supper, having thirteen around a table has been long regarded as unlucky and woe betide you if you are the thirteenth guest. Christie used the idea in her 1933 Poirot novel Lord Edgware Dies and it resurfaces in Jefferson Farjeon’s Thirteen Guests, the first in his series (of two) featuring Inspector Kendall. Originally published in 1938, it has been reissued as part of the British Library Crime Classics.

The setting is a country house weekend hosted by Lord Aveling, which allows Farjeon to introduce a motley collection of characters including a journalist, Bultin, a self-made millionaire and his wife and daughter, the Rowes, a movie star, Zena Wilding, Harold Taverley, a cricketer who is in love with Aveling’s daughter, an artist, Leicester Pratt, and a femme fatale, Mrs Leveridge. The thirteenth guest, John Foss, arrives by accident, having injured himself in trying to get off a moving train at the station, and is taken under her wing by Mrs Leveridge. After receiving medical attention, Foss is allowed to stay the weekend by Lord Aveling and is positioned in an ante-room downstairs which proves to be an ideal vantage point to observe and hear the goings on amongst the guests during an eventful and fatal weekend.

With Foss unexpectedly present, the thirteenth guest to arrive is Mr Chater with his wife, invited as a favour to a politician, Sir James Earnshaw. No one seems to like Chater who is in the habit of snooping around and it is no surprise to learn that he is a blackmailer and that he has a particular hold over Earnshaw and an interest in Ms Wilding. Given his position in the list of arrivals it is equally no surprise that he ends up dead.

Just to add further complexity to the plot line we have a mysterious character who is watching arrivals at the station and approaches both Ms Wilding and Mr Chater, a butler, Thomas Newson, who is insanely jealous of anyone who pays any attention to his fiancée, the maid Bessie Hill, and a Chinese cook who just happens to have a bottle of poison. What could possibly go wrong?

Out of all this Farjeon cooks up five mysteries, some more involved than others, namely who ruined Pratt’s portrait of Lord Aveling’s daughter, who killed the family dog, Haig, was the death of the mystery man who was lurking around the station, later identified as Mark Turner, accidental or murder, was the death of Mr Chater, who had fallen from his horse and seemingly broken his neck, albeit on soft ground, deliberate or an accident and why did Mrs Chater disappear shortly afterwards.

It takes so long for Farjeon to introduce his characters, some of whom, like the novelist Edith Fermoy-Jones, are fun but other than numerically are inessential to the story, and to set his complex plot into motion that it makes the unravelling of the mysteries seem rushed. Much of Kendall’s investigations are done off stage including digging into the pasts of Turner, Chater and Earnshaw and how the latter two intertwine, which always seems to me a little unfair on the reader who might want to pit their wits against the culprit. Mrs Chater’s fate, amusing as it was, is almost dismissed in a sentence or two.

It is also one of those stories where there are two solutions offered, at least for the death of Chater, one which satisfies Kendall and the second the more likelier. Foss from his vantage point spotted something to do with a blue jar and Taverley successfully fends off a dangerous bouncer. All the characters get their just desserts, although I did feel sorry for Newson, paying the price for a moment of madness, one of several acts of chivalry that pepper the story.

For all its imperfections Farjeon has served up an entertaining murder mystery and I will look to read more of his work with Seven Dead, the other Kendall story, high on the list.