Martin Fone's Blog, page 64

Cracker Jokes – 2023 (1)

1. What do snowmen eat for Christmas? Ice cookies

2. What do you call a child who doesn’t believe in Santa? A rebel without a Claus

3. How much did Santa pay for his sleigh? Nothing, it was on the house

4. Who is never hungry at Christmas? The turkey — he’s always stuffed

5. Which of Santa’s friends is the most chilled? Jack Frost

6. What was Santa’s favourite subject in school? Chemis-tree

7. What’s as big as a Christmas tree but lighter than a feather? A shadow

8. How do you get Christmas trees ready for a night out? They get spruced up

9. Why did Santa go to the doctor? Because of his ‘bad elf’

10. Which one of Santa’s elves has the best dance moves? Dancer

The Smiler With The Knife

A review of The Smiler with the Knife by Nicholas Blake – 231203

While taxonomically this is the fifth in Nicholas Blake’s Nigel Strangeways series, it really is his wife’s, Georgia’s story, and although published in 1939, it is a tale that is profoundly relevant today. Taking its title from a quotation from Chaucer’s The Knight’s tale – after all, Nicholas Blake is the pseudonym of the erudite poet, Cecil Day-Lewis – it tells of a Fascist plot to take over Britain. The relevance today is that the mastermind is a populist conservative who attempts to harness the frustrations of the working classes, think red wall, over a woeful government and who appeals to their deeply ingrained sense of patriotism and injustice.    

Blake’s choice of Georgia to play the central role is a masterstroke. As a famous explorer in her own right she has the public profile needed to infiltrate the ranks of the shadowy secret society, The English Banner. She has grit, determination, is unphased by the presence of danger, and her mission satisfies her psychological need for adventure. It is unusual to see such a strong female character. Nigel, a more self-effacing character, and his uncle, Sir John, head of C Branch at Scotland Yard, on the other hand, are content to pull the strings in the background.

This is a thriller rather than a conventional murder mystery although there more than enough bodies to satisfy the most bloodthirsty of readers. Blake cleverly evokes a dark, menacing atmosphere that makes each death more powerful and moving, enhancing the sense of danger that Georgia faces. Structurally, each chapter stands on its own, providing a new puzzle to solve or a new set of clues to assimilate. There are some novelties, including a dramatic escape from a store in the guise of a Father Christmas, and a clock-golf course that is more than just a game.

Georgia is not on her own and soon discovers that a leading cricketer, Peter Braithwaite, is someone whom she can trust. His demise is both tragic and emotionally charged. The eminence grise, Chilton Canteloe, is a finely drawn character and the more we learn about him, the more we realise how his persona and charms could potentially win over the British public. But it is not just a charm offensive, with arms stockpiled in strategic points throughout the country. An earthquake in Nottingham is caused by the sabotage of one of them.

The story starts innocuously enough with the Strangeways receiving a demand from the local council to put their hedges in order. While making a start they find a locket hidden there. Curious, Nigel determines to find out its significance and embarks upon a trail that leads to a neighbour who acts suspiciously, a local ghost, and a Fascist plot. The hedge makes a reappearance at the end of the story. Despite Georgia’s derring-do on behalf of her country the Council are still insistent that the damn hedge be sorted out. There’s gratitude for you.

I have one cavil about what is otherwise another fine addition to the canon of Nicholas Blake. In the first chapter he rather gives the game away but such is the power of his writing and the intense atmosphere that he has created that the reader quickly forgets that the ultimate safety of the leading protagonist is assured. I wonder why he did it. Perhaps it is a reflection of the fraught times in which he wrote and he needed to reassure his readers that those fighting the evils of Fascism will ultimately prevail.

Any one blasé about the perilous times we live in now would do well to read this book. Perhaps it should be part of the National Schools Curriculum. Now, there’s a thought.

Sporting Event Of The Week (33)

This one sneaked under my radar screen for a while but Britain’s successes are so few and far between these days that it is worth shouting out from the rooftops that we won the inaugural SpoGomi World Cup in Japan last month.

Leaving aside the travel arrangements that brought teams from 21 countries to Japan to compete, there is a noble environmental purpose to the competition. Teams of three scoured the streets of Shibuya and Omotesando for 90 minutes over two sessions, looking for waste and then sorting pout what they found into their appropriate categories.

The British team, called “The North Will Rise Again”, showed they were well used to litter strewn streets and bagged 57.27 kilograms of rubbish, beating hosts, Japan, into second place. Victorious team captain, Sarah Parry, commented without a hint of irony, “we’ve taken so much away about how much we need to clean up our oceans and reduce litter”.

Spogomi, a word created from the abbreviation for sport and the Japanese word for rubbish, was “invented” in 2008 and is so popular in Japan that 230 contests have already been held there this year. The next World Championship is scheduled for 2025.

After this success, the “sport” might just catch on in the UK. Our streets and public spaces need it to.

Hand In Glove

A review of Hand In Glove by Ngaio Marsh – 231202

Although I am not Ngaio Marsh’s greatest fan, you can generally rely upon her for an unusual and imaginative form of murder and in Hand in Glove, the twenty-second in her Inspector Alleyn series, originally published in 1962, she does not disappoint. The body of Harold Cartell is found at the bottom of a sewage trench, having been pushed in and then having a large pipe rolled on top of him. Not a nice way to go.

As is the way with these things, Cartell, a prim lawyer, seems to have gone out of his way to upset people. He is sharing a house with the snobbish Percival Pyke Period, who is so precious about his family history. They share a house and get on each other’s nerves, not helped by Cartell’s badly behaved dog with a penchant for nipping people, Pixie. He makes a comment at lunch directed towards Pyke Period which clearly upsets the other, the import of which only becomes clear as the story develops.

Cartell is a trustee of Andrew Bantling’s and the two have a blazing row as he refuses to finance Bantling’s plans to open an art gallery. Also in the mix are Lady Bantling, Andrew’s mother and Cartell’s second wife, now married to the improbably named Bimbo Dodds, a man with his own history. At a disastrous lunch, the group are appalled by the behaviour of Mary Ralston aka Moppett, whom Harold’s spinster sister, Connie, has taken under her wing and her latest beau, the undesirable Leonard Leiss. Leiss is suspected of stealing Pyke Period’s antique cigarette case, which is later found with Cartell’s body, and Harold demands that the unsuitable relationship be ended. To make matters worse, Moppett and Leiss use Harold’s and Pyke Period’s names as guarantors in an attempt to purloin a car from a local trader.

Into all this has walked Nicola Maitland-Mayne, a young girl who has taken a temporary position as a typist to Pyke Period, and who immediately forms an attachment to Andrew Bantling and, more germane to the plot, is a friend of Superintendent Alleyn and his wife, Agatha Troy. Her involvement in the shenanigans causes Alleyn some disquiet.

Following the treasure hunt at one of Lady Bantling’s legendary parties that evening, Harold’s body is discovered. The question is which of his “enemies” was sufficiently riled to do him in. Alleyn, assisted by the faithful Fox, sift through the evidence to reconstruct what went on. They realise the import of some gloves that have gone missing which were used to move a plank and lever the pipe into the ditch. Whose hands were in them and why did Pyke Period send a letter of condolence over Cartell’s death before his body was discovered?

Given the mileage that was made over the strength needed to commit the murder, the identity of the culprit is slightly surprising. In truth, the plot is a bit thin, but is more than made up by the quality of Marsh’s characterisations. There are some wonderful characters to be found within these pages and the book reads as much a social comedy as a murder mystery. Strained relations, tensions abound but are they really enough to drive someone to commit murder most foul?

On the plus side, Nicola gets her man and Andrew’s painting gets the imprimatur of Agatha Troy. What more could he ask for?

Fools For A Gooseberry

Egton Bridge, about six miles or so south-west of Whitby, is home to the village’s Old Gooseberry Society, whose show in 2022 was a mix of the new and the familiar. Hosted for the first time in the grounds of Egton Manor, Graeme Watson won his eleventh Champion Grower title. In doing so, he scored his first ever perfect sixty, achieving top marks in each of the six categories, the heaviest berry in the four colours (red, yellow, green, and white), the heaviest twins (two berries on one stalk), and heaviest dozen.

The world of gooseberry growing can be fiercely competitive. In 2021 the reigning champion and President of the Goostrey Gooseberry Society, Terry Price, announced that he was unable to compete in the Cheshire village’s annual show after his prize bushes had died. Laboratory analysis revealed that they had been sprayed by a chemical not readily available over the counter, leading to allegations that it was foul play on the part of a rival.

Another challenge is the weather. For a fruit that thrives in moist, mild conditions this year’s long sustained period of dry weather and high temperatures has meant that even the most experienced growers have struggled to sustain the quality and size of their berries, with weights down from 2021.

A tad old-fashioned perhaps, the gooseberry is a wonderfully tasty and versatile fruit, with a thin, edible skin and a juicy interior packed with seeds that give that added crunch to the bite. Ready to pick from early summer onwards, the slightly hairy berries offer two flavour profiles. The early season ones are green and underripe, perfect for pies, crumbles, or jams, while those picked later are sweeter and juicy, ideal for eating fresh.

Appropriately, the Germans call gooseberries “Stachelbeeren”, thorn berries, as the bush, while a prolific producer of fruits, does not yield them easily, protecting them with fearsome thorns. In France gooseberries are “grosellies à maquereau”, mackerel currants, as they were served as an accompaniment to oily fish. Like grosellie, some suggest, the English word “gooseberry” shares a common root, the Frankish “krûsil” meaning crisp berry, which manifested as “groses” or “grosier” in Middle English.

 There is a simpler explanation, according to the editors of the Oxford English Dictionary. “The grounds on which plants and fruits have received names associating them with animals”, they write, “are so commonly inexplicable that the want of appropriateness in the meaning affords no sufficient ground for assuming that the word is an etymological corruption”.

Gooseberry was one of the many names given to the devil, perhaps indicating why the unwanted third accompanying a romantic couple is said to be playing gooseberry, while a gooseberry bush was a euphemism for pubic hair. That is why so many babies were born under one, presumably. Regionally, gooseberries were known by a variety of names, including carberry, dewberry, fayberry, feaberry, honey-blob, wineberry and goosegog.

Until the 16th century gooseberries were small, sour, and unappetising, mostly found in the wild, but the introduction of a pale green variety by Henry VIII into his garden and the discovery by chefs that they were perfect accompaniments to fatty and oily foods saw them grow in popularity. By the 17th century gooseberries were widely cultivated, especially in the Midlands, northern England, and Scotland where the climate proved ideal for producing more flavoursome fruits. Growers began to experiment, producing sweeter, smoother, brighter, tastier fruits, which were more appealing to the British palate.

The Box Office Murders

A review of The Box Office Murders by Freeman Wills Crofts – 231202

The fifth in Freeman Wills Crofts’ Inspector French series, The Box Office Murders, also known as The Purple Sickle Murders, was originally published in 1929. As Crofts’ stories go, this is quite an accessible book and relatively uncomplicated, perhaps reflecting the fact that this is the last book he wrote while working as a railway engineer and had not the spare time to concoct dastardly mind-twisting plots.

Thurza Darke approaches Inspector French with concerns about the death of her friend, Eileen Tucker. Both worked in box offices in London cinemas and both had been lured into a get rich quick betting syndicate by a woman they met on a train. After some initial successes, both begin wracking up debts and fall into the clutches of a gang who force to act on their behalf. Any resistance or suspicion that they are acting as informants means a death sentence. One of the gang members has a distinctive purple sickle tattoo.

Intrigued, and recognising another murder that falls into the same pattern, a box office operator, French decides to investigate, using Darke as one of his principal informants. Predictably, Darke’s involvement leads to her own death and French is genuinely moved when he sees her body. Vowing to avenge these senseless deaths, he redoubles his efforts to bring the gang to justice. Thanks to a suggestion from his wife, he finds another box office operator, Molly Moran, to help. However, her role in the investigation piques her curiosity and despite the Inspector’s warnings to be careful, puts herself into unnecessary danger. It is rare for there to be much emotional engagement in a Crofts’ novel, but there is genuine sympathy for the plight and fate of these naïve women.

From a structural perspective, there is little mystery as we know the identities of the gang members and the murders, two of which have occurred before the book begins, are of little individual interest, save to emphasise the brutality of the gang and suggest that they are involved in much more than luring gullible and vulnerable young women into gambling debts. What interests Crofts/French is the scheme that the gang are operating, essentially one involving the counterfeiting of half-crown coins, some of which are passed off into circulation through the dispensing of change at cinema box offices.

The mechanics of how the coins are produced and then put through a process to give them the appearance of wear are described in detail. Even the officials from the Royal Mint are duped by the results. It is clear to see that the possibilities opened up by a gang using this process were what interested Wills in developing this story and while there might be a little too much technical detail for some, the particulars of the counterfeiting need to be understood to explain why such an elaborate scheme was developed to put them into circulation. The profit for the gang was in the fact that the face value o the coinage was considerably higher than the cost of manufacture.

Much of the book is solid police procedural and Crofts is pedantically obsessed by detail. French does not just take a train from A to B but will take a specifically timed train calling at. A chase through the streets of London involves the naming of every street down which he travels, allowing the reader to follow the progress using an A to Z. Initially, these stylistic features can be irksome but after a while I put it down to just how it is.

The denouement is exciting as French tries both to rescue Molly and apprehend the gang, whose escape is delayed by the need to move their bespoke machinery. On the whole, I enjoyed the book, particularly as Crofts exhibited an emotional range that I had not seen before.

J M Barrie And Quality Street

Kirriemuir’s most famous son, J M Barrie, is best known now for Peter Pan or The Boy who would not grow up (1904), but in the 1930s his play, Quality Street (1901) was just as familiar. Set in the Napoleonic era, it told the story of a respectable spinster, Miss Phoebe Throssel, who poses as her own flirtatious niece, Miss Livvy, to win the hand of a former suitor, Captain Valentine Brown, who had just returned from the war. Premiered at The Valentine Theatre in Toledo, Ohio on October 11, 1901, it transferred to London’s Vaudeville Theatre on September 17, 1902, where it was a huge hit, running for 459 performances. It enjoyed many revivals and tours, especially in the period leading up to the Second World War.

Harold Mackintosh’s vision was that his new product should evoke a sense of nostalgia for the old days by deploying sentimental and romantic imagery. He also wanted to impress on both shopkeepers and the public that it was a quality product. The two ideas conjoined neatly in Barrie’s successful play, its title giving the sense of quality and its two leading protagonists providing the sentimental romanticism.

Launched in 1936 as Quality Street, the tin design featured two characters, Major Quality and Miss Sweetly, loosely based on Barrie’s Captain Brown and Miss Throssel. When the advertising campaign made its debut on the front page of the Daily Mail on May 2, 1936, their parts were played by Tony and Iris Coles, the children of the campaign’s manager, Sydney.

Quality Street went on to become a phenomenal success, partly due to the quality of the product but also because Harold had cleverly found a way to bring the taste of chocolate to the masses. In the 1930s chocolate was still an exotic and expensive treat and had not supplanted toffee and boiled sweets as the go-to form of confectionary for many. By adding a small number of chocolate-based sweets with chocolate coated toffees and fruit creams, Mackintosh made Quality Street more affordable than a box of chocolates would have been while giving many their first taste of a proper chocolate.

There were eighteen different flavours in the original tin, and over the years many have come and gone, the announcement of each year’s selection generating much comment and excitement. While the transience of the likes of Gooseberry Cream, Apricot Delight, and Fig Fancy might not have been mourned, the Green Triangle, one of the original flavours, is still enjoyed to this day. The flavour that made the biggest immediate impact, though, was the caramel swirl, so much so that it became product in its own right, packaged in a tube, named Rolo, and launched in 1937.

In the Quality Street circles I move in, there is always a surfeit of fruit creams left at the bottom after the initial feeding frenzy has subsided. It is not just a consequence of taste but an illustration of an uneven flavour distribution, as Stephen Hull demonstrated on November 29, 2020, when he revealed the results of his audit of an unopened box. He found that out of the 85 sweets there were just four each of purples, green triangles, and orange chocolate crunch, but eleven each of toffee pennies and orange cremes.

My secret is out. By going for the Toffee Pennies, I am playing the numbers game!

Putting The Quality Street Into Quality Street

Entranced by a tin of Quality Street, as a child I felt like a pirate who had just laid his hands on a hoard of treasure as I scrabbled through its brightly wrapped contents to find my favourite. Resisting the siren call of The Purple One and The Green Triangle, I would dive for The Toffee Penny.

The soldier and the lady might have disappeared, casualties of a rebranding exercise in 2000 shortly after it was acquired by Nestlé, the tin given way to more sustainable packaging, and the size of a tub shrunk by 50% since 2009, but Quality Street remains one of Britain’s festive favourites. More than 480 tonnes of liquid chocolate and 350 tonnes of toffee are used every week to produce Quality Street sweets, around twelve million of which are made every day at the peak of the season.

Seeking an unique product which customers could buy on their Saturday afternoons off and which would last the week, Violet Mackintosh, who ran a pastry shop in Halifax with her husband, John, came up with a new sweet in 1890. Softer and chewier, it combined traditional brittle English butterscotch with the new-fangled soft caramel which had just been introduced from America. Marketed as Mackintosh’s Celebrated Toffee, it came in a variety of flavours and sold as a mixed bag. Each flavour had its own distinctive wrapper, pink for coconut, orange for egg and cream, green for mint, blue for malt, red for original toffee, and yellow for “Harrogate”.

Made by Violet in a brass pan over the kitchen fire, the toffee proved such a success that by 1892 the Mackintosh’s were wholesaling it to other confectioners in Halifax. Seeking to expand the business, John set about planning a marketing campaign with military precision, using newspaper advertisements and travelling salesmen. “Six years were taken up in establishing business in the north of England and the Midlands”, he later explained. “Our method was to work a county at a time and do it thoroughly. No town was missed, but each was worked methodically”.

By the time of his death on January 27, 1920, John had transformed a backstreet business into an international company. Curiously, though, they had no chocolate making capability, a gap filled in 1932 when Harold, John and Violet’s son, acquired A.J.Caley & Son of Norwich for £132,000 for the rebranded John Mackintosh & Sons. Famous for Marcho, a chocolate product given to soldiers in the First World War, and Milk Tray, Caley’s opened up new opportunities.

One of the first products to be launched was Mackintosh’s Chocolate Toffee De Luxe, the original toffee coated in milk chocolate. By 1935 Harold was planning to launch a new product, a selection of toffees, chocolate, and confectionary treats in a tin. A chip off his father’s block, he planned the process with a key eye for detail, sending explicit instructions and detailed drawings to the design team of his vision of how the sweets and tin should look. The aim was to create a “sensory feast”.

Instead of having each sweet separated in a box, thereby increasing packaging costs, Harold chose to have them loose in a tin, each piece individually wrapped in coloured paper, and just like Mackintosh’s Celebrated Toffee, a separate colour and shape for each flavour. The process to achieve this involved using the world’s first twist-wrapping machine.

The tin served several purposes. It ensured that the delicious and enticing aroma of chocolate burst out as soon as it was opened and was practical, easy to store, and kept the contents as fresh as possible. Its look, according to Harold, had to have “the hallmark of quality written all over it – a design that is distinctive – a bright clean design that is in itself inviting”. Finally, it could be used as a cake or biscuit tin, keeping the name of Mackintosh to the fore for months and years to come.

Miss Pym Disposes

A review of Miss Pym Disposes by Josephine Tey – 231202

Sometimes you finish a book and the only reaction is wow, what have I just read? I have been a fan of Josephine Tey and Miss Pym Disposes, originally published in 1946, can only be described as an understated masterpiece. It is a wonderful, immersive and thought provoking story, set in a girls’ physical training school which Lucy Pym, a writer who has just published a best seller on psychology, visits to give a lecture.

The principal of the college is Miss Pym’s old school friend, Henrietta, whose invitation to lecture she has accepted. Miss Pym is so intrigued by the college and the characters of the students she meets there that almost imperceptibly she extends her stay there. Tey takes her time in unfolding her story, allowing the routines of college life to settle into the reader’s mind and for the psyche and character of each of the principal protagonists to be developed. We find that we are immersed in college life and are affected by the trials and tribulations that beset the girls as they prepare for their final exams, the Display, and for the allocation of posts in the outside world.

We know that something is going to happen, but for almost three-quarters of the book nothing out of the ordinary does. Perhaps because of that we are lulled into a false sense of security so that when the crisis occurs it occurs like a bolt out of the blue. And on the face of it, it is a relatively minor thing but in the febrile atmosphere of the college, is something that is to have catastrophic consequences.

As part of her role as Principal Henrietta has the ability to bestow positions at schools to her students. This year she has a particularly prestigious position to offer, at England’s top girls’ public school. To the shock and dismay of both her staff, Miss Pym, and the students she bestows it on a girl whom everyone deems to be unsuitable, passing over the more obvious talents of the year’s leading student. Henrietta stands her ground, refusing to amend her decision.

The girl in question meets with an accident in the gymnasium, sustaining injuries from which she subsequently dies. Miss Pym discovers some evidence that suggests that it was not an accident and her investigations coupled with her psychological observations of the students over the last few weeks leads to her to an uncomfortable conclusion that not only was their foul play but that she knows the identity of the culprit. She has a moral dilemma, disclosure of what she knows and has surmised could lead to the ruination of a promising student’s life, but should see justice done.

Her solution is to strike a Faustian pact with the girl she believes is the culprit and who readily confesses to her crime. However, in a further twist at the end, Miss Pym is left to wonder whether she had identified the right culprit after all.

In their different ways, both Henrietta and Miss Pym play God-like roles, Henrietta in determining the futures of her pupils and Miss Pym in deciding what form justice is to take. That they both make flawed judgments adds to the power of the book.

Tey’s tense and immersive writing is perfect for a story that seems so simple and mundane and yet is full of all that life is really like. Thoroughly recommended.

Topical Cracker Jokes (2023) (2)

What happened to Mark Zuckerberg’s novelty jumper when he had a cage fight with Elon Musk? He was left with nothing but Threads.

What’s the difference between The Polar Express and HS2? One’s a fantasy about a train and the other’s a film with Tom Hanks.

What did Robert Oppenheimer get Barbie for Christmas? Atomic Kenergy.

Why are the train drivers on the naughty list this year? Because they’ve already had three strikes!

How does Margot Robbie decorate her Nativity scene? With 3 wise Ken.