Martin Fone's Blog, page 81

Lost Word Of The Day (51)

Summer is here, whether you use the meteorological or astronomical seasonal calendar, and the hedgerows near Blogger Towers are full of long trailing brambles. I am hoping that August will see them provide us foragers with a bumper crop of blackberries.

If I were around in the 18th century I might have been moved to observe that the bushes were particularly veprecose, an adjective, now sadly fallen out of fashion, meaning full of brambles. Its origin is the Latin noun, vepres, which meant bramble bush.

If you are careful, veprecosity is good.

Airport Blues

It is the time of year when the thoughts of many Britons, or at least those who can still afford it, turn to a summer getaway. Getting through an airport is always a profoundly depressing experience, made worse by the fear that your flight might actually be cancelled.

RIFT, tax specialists, analysed the number of flights and cancellations at each of the ten busiest UK airports to see which offered the most efficient service to the 221.8 million passengers who used them in 2022. Business must have been slack.

Unsurprisingly, Heathrow was the busiest airport with 61.6 million passengers using it, 28% of the flying public. Top of the list for cancellations, though, was Glasgow with a cancellation rate of 2.5%, equating to just under 1.500 flights. Heathrow was second worst with a cancellation rate of 1.7% (6,391 flights) while Gatwick and Edinburgh were not far behind with rates of 1.6%.

The airport with the lowest cancellation rate was Birmingham with 0.6% (just under 400 flights), while Stansted and Belfast International were not too far behind with rates of 0.7% and 0.8% respectively.

While these facts are worth knowing and might inform any decision about where to fly from, cancellations in practice are not spread randomly throughout the year but tend to occur in concentrated periods of time.

If you are flying this summer, good luck!

Ebba Tidal Gin

Many small distilleries spawned by the ginaissance are finding life a bit of a struggle what with the double whammy of increased production costs and the reduction in consumers’ disposable incomes as a result of the current economic woes. Still, it is refreshing to find one that is determined to stick to their principles and maintain their high standards, producing spirits of exceptional quality which are beautifully packaged and as environmentally friendly as possible.

I first came across Lisa Angelsjo and Ben Roberts of Mounts Bay Distillery when I picked up a bottle of their Ebba Cornish Dry Gin on one of my regular jaunts to Cornwall. What caught my eye was the beautiful minimalist bottle and I was delighted to find that the quality of the product inside matched the aesthetic charm of the exterior. Although their main focus is on distilling rums, they have another gin in their repertoire, Ebba Tidal Gin, which I was keen to try.

The bottle is equally as distinctive, slightly squatter and with a broader shoulder and shorter neck than the one they use for their Dry Gin. It maintains their trademark minimalist look, a dark bluey colour redolent of the images of the Cornish sea with a square creamy label at the front, giving its name in orange print and the description “Cornish Dry Gin Ocean Botanics” and the size of the bottle (700ml) and strength (40% ABV) in black lettering. Its corresponding label at the rear tells me that it is a classic London Dry Gin inspired by the deep blue sea. The top is wooden with a cork stopper secured by an orange strip bearing the distillery’s name and the image of St Michael’s Mount. And that’s it, minimalist design perfection.

Sadly, the bottle itself is glass rather than ceramic. The ceramic bottle, initially inspired by Australia and sourced from Japan, has proven to be too fragile for the dubious standards of care exercised by transportation companies and too many have been damaged either in transit to the distillery or, more tragically, when full, to make it economic to expand on their usage.

One of the benefits of being based just outside the village of Germoe in west Cornwall and near Praa Sands is its close proximity to the shoreline from which Lisa and Ben harvest seaweeds, three varieties of which are used in Tidal to give it a slightly saline feel that gives the spirit its maritime feel. The other botanicals used are juniper, coriander, lemon peel, and lime peel to give it its classic London Dry base and hibiscus and sea berries to add a touch of floral fruitiness to the mix.

On opening the bottle there is no mistaking the juniper and in the glass the slightly tinged spirit, which works well with a premium tonic, is a deliciously complex drink with the juniper ebbing and flowing in the mouth, temporarily receding to give way to the citric and softer flavour before crashing back with full force. It seemed to me to be a more confident spirit than their Cornish Dry with the juniper less subdued. If you are a fan of juniper and London Dry with a distinctive twist, you will not be disappointed.

I was also intrigued by the origin of the name Ebba. There is a convoluted story (as ever) with the choice but, as well as being a popular Swedish girl’s name, paying homage to Lisa’s homeland, it is designed to conjure up the image of the ebb and flow of the sea.

If I ever get into drinking rums, I know where to start.

Happy Ending Of The Week

It is always gratifying to read in the august pages of the Proceedings of the Royal Society B of a piece of research with a happy ending. A team of evolutionary biologists, led by Dr Matilda Brindle from University College, London, have traced the origins of masturbation to ancient primates from around forty million years ago.

While from an evolutionary perspective masturbation might seem costly, distracting, wasteful, and risky, the team sought to delve into the history of the habit by pulling together hundreds of publications, questionnaire responses and personal notes about masturbating primates from primatologists and zoo keepers. Mapping the information gleaned on to primate evolutionary trees, they were able to see how masturbation reached back through time.

Masturbation appeared common across primates of all sexes and ages, male masturbation boosting the chances of impregnating a mate by increasing their arousal before sex, meaning they inseminate their partner faster and before being interrupted by a larger rival. It also help males to shed old sperm, leaving them with fresher, more competitive sperm for sex, and, after sex, helps flush the genital tract, reducing the risk of an infection taking hold.

As for female masturbation, doing it before sex affords female primates some influence over which male gets them pregnant: by making the vagina less acidic, it becomes more hospitable to the chosen mate’s sperm.

Tissues were available when the results were revealed.

The Moving Finger

A review of The Moving Finger by Agatha Christie – 230611

Getting trolled on social media is the 21st century equivalent of receiving a poison pen letter, although the keyboard warrior is usually not savvy or bothered enough to conceal their identity. In the days when there was a regular postal service and several deliveries a day, an anonymous letter making wild allegations about the recipient could provoke fear, paranoia, and suspicion. When the inhabitants of a whole village start receiving anonymous letter, some openly acknowledging the fact, others more reluctantly, then the community becomes a tinder box where anything can happen.

The theme of The Moving Finger, taxonomically the third in Christie’s Miss Marple series although the amateur sleuth only appears towards the end and originally published in 1942, is a plague of poison letters that has hit the village of Lymstock, where brother and sister, Jerry and Joanna Burton, have decided to settle to aid Jerry’s convalescence from injuries sustained in a plane crash. Soon they too receive a poison pen letter alleging that they are lovers rather than brother and sister.

The anxiety caused by the fear of exposure and social ruin seemingly is too much for Mrs Symmington, the solicitor’s wife, whose body is found adjacent to a glass containing potassium cyanide, a letter alleging that her husband is not the father of her second son, and a note saying “I can’t go on”. The circumstances around her death are convincing enough for the coroner to pass a verdict of suicide. The poison letter writer, having drawn blood, is hunted by the Yard, assuming them to be a middle-aged woman. As a form of mental exercise and therapy, Jerry decides to carry out his own investigations.

There is a very different feel about this Christie novel not least because the story is narrated by Jerry and Miss Marple is rather ancillary to the whole proceedings. Narrators are not always reliable in the hands of dear Agatha, but Jerry does not have an axe to bear and as a relative newcomer to the village does not have many of the vestigial prejudices that others might have brought to the plot. His sleuthing is rather relaxed, relying upon and interpreting local gossip and as a result the plot rather meanders to its conclusion which, on the one hand, is surprising but on the other completely logical when all the clues and hints sprinkled in the text are considered as a whole.

Jerry is by no means a perfect character and to modern eyes his treatment of Megan Symmington, portrayed as a rather simple and trusting girl trapped in difficult domestic circumstances, is a little disconcerting to modern eyes. It is Megan, however, who plays a major part in unmasking the culprit, playing to perfection a risky part devised for her by Miss Marple.  

In the end it is a plain story of someone trapped in a marriage who is desperate to find an escape route. The poison letters, as Miss Marple suspects, were a device to divert attention from the culprit rather than a clue that would lead the police to them. Once the culprit is unmasked and is led away to face the music, the village returns to its former idyllic state with many of the principal characters finding their own forms of happiness as a result of relationships and discoveries forged by murder most foul.

This is very much a character-driven novel rather than one that is reliant upon the intricacies of its plot. It makes for a refreshing change and an undemanding and enjoyable read.

The Tunnel Mystery

A review of The Tunnel Mystery by J C Lenehan

The Tunnel Mystery, originally published in 1929, was Lenehan’s second crime novel. Lenehan is a new author to me and so when I picked the book up, I was not sure what I was going to get. I need not have worried as it is a rather good mix of complex murder mystery with some thrills and spills mixed in along the way. The language is a little stilted at times as the writer tries to throw off the shackles of a verbose Victorian legacy and the investigation relies on a mixture of the old school, such as interrogating railway officials who have a photographic recall of passengers getting on and off at their station and retain tickets for future reference, and the new including the use of a transatlantic phone call. This is very much a novel of transition.

The initial crime occurs in a compartment of a railway carriage. There is thunder and lightning crashing outside and as the train enters the Highpen tunnel in the Peak District, the light goes out and one of the passengers is shot dead. It is one of those impossible murder scenarios where no one in the carriage could have done it without alerting the suspicions of the others. How the murder was committed so perplexes Inspector Parker and Constable Brent of the local police that Detective Inspector Kilby from the Yard has to be drafted in to help. Brent is somewhat conflicted as his girlfriend was one of the passengers in the carriage.  

The murder victim was no ordinary passenger. David Hyde, a Hatton Garden diamond dealer, was returning to London having just concluded a major transaction, paying £20,000 for a diamond necklace. The necklace is nowhere to be found. The passenger sitting next to him turns out to be a notorious pickpocket, known to the police as Light-fingered Freddie, and he is the obvious suspect, although murder is not in his line of trade.

As the investigation unfolds, there is more to the story than initially meets the eye. There are allegations that Hyde robbed and tied up Sir Joshua, the man he is supposed to have bought the diamond from, and that he had sacked his assistant, Jack Davies, after he had discovered that he was in love with his daughter. Davies was in the area at the time of Hyde’s murder.

There is more than a touch of Freeman Wills Crofts as Lenehan assiduously pinpoints the position of each of the occupants of the carriage, speculates on the trajectory of the bullet, and spends an inordinate amount of time in looking at the movements of trains in the area and which of the many stations the murderer could have got on to the train and then made his escape from the area. Davies, realising that he might be a prime suspect, undertakes his own investigations, aided and abetted by Hyde’s daughter, and, inevitably, they get him into a pot of bother with the miscreants who are, as Kilby had suspected, an international gang of jewel thieves led by Abie the Mole. Were the book written some ten or twenty years later, the reader might have thought that there was an element of pastiche with the nicknames, but there is no reason to suppose that Lenehan was using them in this way.

The case leads to a thrilling denouement with Albie spotted at a dirt racing event at the White City – I assume we would now call this speedway – but he eludes Kilby’s attempts to apprehend him. There is then a car chase which ends in Albie’s car going over the cliff edge. The book ends on an enigmatic note.

It is another story where a physical trait gives the culprit away and for the seasoned reader of crime fiction the true identity of Albie comes as no surprise. A well thought out mystery with a logical explanation for the howdunit aspects of the murder, it is well worth seeking out, even if it belies its age.

Britain’s Forgotten Fruit

Nothing if not versatile, the fruit of the medlar (Mespilus germanica)could be skinned and served individually with cream, baked with apple, stewed with butter, or roasted over an open fire. It was an ideal ingredient for cakes and tarts and was often made into jams, marmalades, and jellies. Medlar jelly is still available commercially, rich red in colour “rather like dark sherry” and tasting like spiced apple. Game served with medlar sauce was described by one critic as “a dish for the most fastidious gourmet”.

In liquid form, although “they yield but little juice”, medlar fruits were turned into syrup, vinegar, wine, brandy, and cider. Alternatively, a refreshing drink could be made by pouring boiling water over crushed medlars and allowing it to cool. They were also valued for their medicinal properties. Nicholas Culpeper, in his Complete Herbal (1653), recommended them as an aid for women “when their courses flow too abundant” while a poultice made of dried medlars, beaten, and mixed with cloves, nutmeg, red coral, and the juice of red roses applied to the stomach relieved pains. They were also used to treat kidney conditions, bladder stones, and to improve the memory.

A member of the Rosaceae or rose family, deciduous and more like a shrub than a tree, the medlar flowers later than most other British fruit trees, usually in May or June. Its white-petalled flowers self-pollinate to produce, in October or November, flattened, reddish-brown, hairy fruits with a juicy, edible flesh. Their late arrival made medlars a welcome source of fresh fruit just at the time when the stocks of summer and autumnal fruits were disappearing. They even found their way onto the Christmas table; “no Christmas dessert”, a correspondent to the Gardeners’ Chronicle in 1942 declared, “is complete without a medlar – in good condition”.

Of Middle Eastern origin, medlars were introduced to Western Europe by the Romans, reaching Britain by at least the second century AD, as medlar “stones” found at Silchester reveal. Charlemagne was so enamoured with them that they were included in a list of fruit trees that were mandatory to be planted in all the gardens of his estate.

Initially in Britain, they were confined to monasteries and royal estates. Richard de Ware’s Westminster Abbey Customary, a list of rules and regulations for the governance of the monastery from 1270, imposed a duty on the monk-gardener to provide it with medlars while Henry VIII planted them in the gardens of Hampton Court, and saw them as a fitting diplomatic gift, bestowing his French counterpart with large quantities of them.

By the 17th century medlars were firmly established as part of the English landscape, as common a sight as apple and pear trees, their fruit grown for domestic and commercial consumption. However, their decline in the twentieth century has been little short of spectacular, to the point where today they are now only grown by a handful of specialists. It will be a fruitless search amongst the shelves of those arbiters of popular culinary tastes, the major supermarket chains, for their fruits.

Lost Word Of The Day (50)

Writing reviews can test the limits of one’s vocabulary. Here are some helpful suggestions culled mainly from the 17th century.

If the product is a little bland, insipid, and flat, then vappous is the perfect adjective to describe it. Almost the polar opposite and with less of a pejorative flavour is spiscious, meaning having a thick consistency. If you are disappointed with the size of the portion, then you might term your meal a prandicle, a small meal or perhaps a snack, and move off somewhere else to adimpleate, fill up, your stomach.

If the venue is sparsely patronised, then you might comment on its vacivity, a now long-lost noun meaning emptiness.

You never know, the recipients of the review might not realise they are being damned by faint praise.

Lost Word Of The Day (49)

Rain showers seem to be fewer but more intense. There is a dip underneath a bridge close to where I live which frequently fills up with water after rain or, more often, because of an ever-present water leak. As I approach the dip, I always worry about its vadosity.

A 17th century word derived from the Latin noun vadum meaning ford, it means being fordable or shallow enough to wade, or in a 21st century context, to drive or cycle through. The antiquarian schoolmaster, William Burton, used it in his A commentary on Antoninus – a signed first edition yours for £550 through Abe Books – “the word Ford, by reason of the vadosity of the River there, being added…”

The Body In The Library

A review of The Body in the Library by Agatha Christie – 230610

As Agatha Christie says in the introduction to her second Miss Marple novel, originally published in 1942, the discovery of a body in a library is one of the greatest clichés in detective fiction. Nevertheless, she set out to produce a variation on the theme where “the library in question must be a highly orthodox and conventional library” but “the body, on the other hand, must be a wildly improbable and highly sensational”.

An unknown young woman found dead in the library of a staid and respectable couple, the Bantrys, fits the bill. The young woman, wearing an evening dress and caked in makeup is not the sort of gal that the Bantrys would mix with and is more likely to be part of the racy crowd that Basil Blake, something in the film industry and recently moved into the sleepy backwaters of St Mary Mead, attracts. Fearing the repercussions of a scandal in the village and the possibility of fingers being pointed at husband and with the local police baffled, Dolly Bantry calls upon her friend, Jane Marple, for assistance.

In a convoluted plot there are two missing girls, one, Ruby Keene, a dancer at the Majestic, and Pamela Reeves, a Girl Guide. The police identify the woman in the library, who had been drugged and then strangled, as Ruby, but Miss Marple is not convinced as there is evidence of onychophagia which would be unlikely in a woman part of whose living depends upon her appearance. The body of a second young girl is found in the burnt-out wreckage of a car.

Jefferson Conway is staying at the Majestic with his heirs, son-in-law, Mark, and daughter-in-law, Adelaide, both of whom should have been financially secure but in truth are cash strapped. Distraught at Ruby’s death – he was planning to adopt her – Conway calls in a retired detective from the Yard, Clithering, to help bring the culprit to justice. Clithering and Miss Marple join forces.

There are a surprising number of characters in what is a light and sometimes amusing read and several potential suspects. However, the burnt-out car confirms Marple’s suspicions as to the identity of the murderer, but her challenge is to prove her theory. A third murder, murders seem to come in threes in Marple’s world, gives her the evidence she needs.  

It is one of those novels where the acumen of the sleuth and the blundering investigative skills of the local police are compared and contrasted. The police are too quick to jump to conclusions, to take as Gospel what the suspects tell them, and often ignore what is in front of their own eyes. Miss Marple, on the other hand, takes the stories of the suspects with a pinch of salt and is an alert observer of human behaviour, foibles, and tell-tale signs. Of course, her methods prevail and bring resolution to a case that left solely in the hands of the police would, as their abortive arrest indicates, have resulted in an embarrassing and grievous miscarriage of justice.

The frustration for the reader is that the narrative explores the byways of the police’s botched investigation when they know from the clues subtly placed in the text that there is another explanation which Miss Marple has already grasped. Nonetheless, it is an entertaining and light read, one for the beach. I also find Miss Marple a more engaging and empathetic character than Christie’s other sleuthing giant, Hercule Poirot.