More brothers

Having thought about the Barclay Brothers (aka Twins) earlier this morning, I then moved to the US and onto the Hunt Brothers and the Koch Brothers, with these brothers' money turning out to come from oil rather than from property.

The once-rich Hunts were famous for attempting to corner the market in silver, getting on for forty years ago now, a speculation which went badly wrong.

While the still-rich Kochs are famous for their contributions to various right wing (aka libertarian) causes.

I then started to wonder about the collapse of the photographic film business with the advent of digital photography, and what that might do to the price of silver. The answer seems to be not much, with Bing revealing that both supply and demand are thriving, as are the possibilities for getting one fingers burnt in speculation. All of which are illustrated in the snap left. With a bit of gold included by way of comparison.

Footnote

Just to report that the nuisance calls to my mobile phone noticed ten days ago at reference 1 have stopped. Nothing since I sent the email to the gentleman who claimed that it was not me guv. Coincidence or what?

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/ambulance-chaser.html.

It is bad to cooperate with Europe?

I found the intemperate front page of the Saturday Telegraph rather depressing yesterday, more or less making a virtue of our crashing out of the European Union with a big bang and without any kind of a deal. Followed by extensive coverage inside of pro-Brexit demonstrations and of pro-Brexit candidates for the top job in the Tory party. Don't these people understand that with the country split down the middle, that the time has come for compromise? First past the post and winner take all is not the way to manage matters as serious as this one.

A bit of Bing this morning turns up reference 1, which tells me of the history of the newspaper. Which includes being bought up by the Barclay Twins, themselves described at reference 2.

Of relatively humble beginnings, the twins started out in west London as painters and decorators, moving up into the lower end of the hotel business, through the odd bankruptcy. A curious relationship with the Crown Agents, whom I had thought were all about helping out in what had been our empire, rather than financing the growth of property speculators in London. Steady climb up through the ranks to their present eminence on a large rock off the coast of Sark.

Oiled the wheels with a spot of philanthropy, for which they were knighted in 2000. According to Wikipedia, to the tune of around £40m, around 2% of their net worth.

Wikipedia is a bit coy on their politics, but I would imagine well to the right - and deep into the sort of financial shenanigans noticed at reference 4. Perhaps what they really hate about the EU is the possibility, probability even, that all their less salubrious dealings will be dragged into the tax-paying light of day.

Wealth extraction is private and should be kept private! The people from whom the wealth is extracted don't need to know anything about it.

PS: ironic that I should be moved to this post, immediately after one about the value of cooperation. I dare say the twins would be OK with cooperation in general terms, but certainly not in so far as it concerned the tax authorities or our neighbours in Europe.

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Daily_Telegraph.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_and_Frederick_Barclay.

Reference 3: https://www.crownagents.com/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/01/city-boys-episode-2.html.

Is it good to cooperate?

Figure 1: the ten commandments

Over the past couple of millennia or so, many people have given quality time to deriving our morals from first principles, to plucking our morals out of the void. While many other people settle for them being handed down on tablets from on high.

For my part, I have just given some time to the anthropologically flavoured reference 1, previously noticed at reference 2, which tries to ground morality in the cooperation which makes societies work, makes them effective and successful, boiling this down to the seven basic behaviours listed left in figure 2 below. Validated by a trawl through the large anthropological database to be found at reference 3.

Figure 2: the behaviours

I like the way that all kinds of morals can be grounded in our being social animals, with the attendant needs to manage conflict and to promote cooperation, with an early driver being our long and more or less helpless childhoods. Another was hunting and gathering, which work better as team activities. While more recently, something less than 15,000 years ago, we invented farming, which clearly works better when there are property rights. With language being a splendid enabler: animals are not without morals, but having language is better.

But I think the authors try too hard to ground these morals in genes, which I find unnecessary, and try too hard to do everything, which I think is unhelpful. For example, the need for hygiene generally and the need to be careful about what we eat and drink, from which needs morals are drawn, do not have much to do with cooperation. On the other hand, it is interesting to see the extent to which these seven behaviours can be seen elsewhere in the animal kingdom, among animals which certainly do not have language and perhaps among animals which we might not think of as being conscious in the way that we are.

Some might argue that the business of not eating bacon is not a matter of morals; one’s relations with food do not count as morals, it is our relations with other people that do. To which one could respond with another example. So while some sexual morality can be derived from the need to live at peace with one another, I did not notice anything about the need to avoid inbreeding, often achieved in the past by totem groups and exogamy – groups which were cemented by all kinds of ritual practises, adherence to which becomes a matter for morals by extension, by transitivity. And exogamy which was echoed in parts of Italy until quite recently by it being considered more or less respectable to kidnap your bride from a neighbouring village. Indeed, not very manly not to.

From where I associate to the Spain of Napoleon’s time, where robber bands and guerrilla bands had leaders who had to be prepared to defend their leadership position with their knives, more or less at any time of day or night. And from there to an anecdote drawn from West Africa, where the king was allowed lots of wives; but, when he was no longer up to it, when he no longer commanded their respect, they went in deputation to the elders who made the necessary arrangement for his (fatal) removal. And from there to a story we were told one evening when I was a Wolf Cub, about how the lead wolf in a pack had to be prepared to defend his position – and to be prepared to leave the pack when his time was up, assuming he had survived. Behaviour which is very much to the fore today’s Tory party, which has, it should be said, made progress to the extent of allowing women, which wolves do not.

The authors were also keen on game theory, the non zero sum variety, which could, it seems, be used to model the social behaviour of hunter gatherers. However, in this paper, the authors restrict themselves to telling us that game theory tells us this and that, without going into it properly, which they have no doubt done elsewhere. This also I find unnecessary, although it may well appeal to game theorists.

For my part, for didactic and enforcement purposes, I believe in keeping morals nice and simple; which convenience can trump the original needs that they subserve. It is easier, for example, to have a rule that says that beef is bad rather than a rule which says that beef is bad in certain circumstances, or is only allowed in special circumstances. Going further, we teach a child that this or that behaviour is good or bad, and that is sometimes enough. Not always appropriate – or even possible –  to clutter the child up with reasons and arguments. Just do it – or don’t do it, as the case may be. Complexity is for grown ups. A slightly different example is given by speed limits: the speed limit is to be obeyed at all times, the facts that the road is empty and that it is the small hours of the morning notwithstanding.

Morals may also play to our penchant for rituals, lists, classifications and binary judgements, a penchant which I think goes further than just serving to bind the group together.

Putting this another way, our systems of morals have logics and needs of their own, which may result in their not being entirely consistent with the objectives we started out with. But they might, nevertheless, be the best that can be done.

An alternative approach is to be found at the psychologically flavoured reference 5, which tries to ground morality in the five topics listed below. Validated by 35,000 people filling out a moral foundations questionnaire through reference 6.

Figure 3: the pairs

Five pairs which substantially overlap with, but which lack the simple grounding of the seven behaviours in group wealth, health and happiness.

With purity being the odd one out here, with purity being a widely valued property – even down to some people not caring to mix certain kinds of foods or certain kinds of raw materials – perhaps derived from the generalisation of rules about hygiene, including here rules about food. I quote from reference 2: ‘concerns about bodily and spiritual purity [being] ubiquitous in anthropological accounts of morality’ – where spiritual purity seems to be about being free from bad thoughts, a simple extension from food being free of bad stuff.

Nevertheless, I thought that the seven behaviours identified by reference 1 were probably fairly universal, certainly when our societies were a lot simpler than most of them are now, and were a good place to start. But bearing in mind that the working up of those basic behaviours into the morals of real societies can come in lots of varieties, some of which will work better than others, rather as some implementations of the SQL standard are better than others.

I leave it to others to judge whether the authors ‘have shown how morality-as-cooperation, through the use of game theory, exhibits a theoretical precision and explanatory scope that supersedes that of previous cooperative accounts of morality’. Which strikes me as rather a strong claim.

I close with the thought that maybe some of this stuff could usefully be taught in schools, to give children and young adults a solid grounding in the civic virtues; an entirely satisfactory substitute for learning the precepts of holy books by rote. Although here, in the once Christian world, one might go on to compare and contrast with our own ten commandments.

References

Reference 1: Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies - Oliver Scott Curry, Daniel Austin Mullins, Harvey Whitehouse – 2019.

Reference 2: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/more-seven.html.

Reference 3: https://ehrafworldcultures.yale.edu/ehrafe/. Inter alia, a database of anthropological records. Public access to the catalogues but membership required for access to the records themselves. A distinguishing feature seems to be that the database has been indexed down to the level of the paragraph, rather than stopping at the document, making it possible to do very tricky searches.

Figure 4: the database

Reference 4: http://www.wennergren.org/. The funder for this paper; included as an example of the way things are done in the US – with my impression being that this sort of organisation is more prominent there than it is here. Academic monuments to the rich as an alternative to bits of figurative statuary in Westminster Abbey. Or at greater length: ‘The Wenner-Gren Foundation is celebrating its 75th anniversary in 2016. It was founded in 1941 with an endowment of approximately US$2 million in Servel and Electrolux stock, funds that Axel Wenner-Gren and his lawyers were sheltering from the US Internal Revenue Service. Over the foundation’s 75-year history, nothing has been added to the endowment, but it has grown to approximately US$165 million. Wenner-Gren has never been a large foundation in the sense of Rockefeller or Mellon, but it has had a disproportionate impact on the field of anthropology. The foundation and the field have in essence grown up together. Wenner-Gren preceded the other major US funder of anthropology, the National Science Foundation, by almost two decades and, through its grants, fellowships, sponsored symposia, and publications, has always been there for anthropology…’.

Reference 5: Mapping the moral domain - Graham, J., B. A. Nosek, J. Haidt, R. Iyer, S. Koleva, and P. H. Ditto. 2011.

Reference 6: https://www.yourmorals.org/index.php. A rather odd outfit.

Counting

More counting in the margins of a talk at the Royal Institution last night, to be reported substantively in due course.

Usual drill, with me sat in the right hand part of the middle block, maybe two thirds of the way up. The idea being to count the people in the left hand block. A block which is a trapezium in shape, with thin edge at the bottom. The two sides clearly marked by stairways, the back clearly marked by the back wall. So easy enough for the brain to know whether any given person qualifies or not.

Also usual drill, in that I counted the numbers in the dozen or so rows a few times, working up, until I judged that I knew them well enough.

Then, still working up, I compute the cumulative count, saying to myself, for example, '41 plus 11 makes 52', where 41 was the cumulative count so far and 11 was the count for the next row. Articulating the sum in this way seemed to hold the current cumulative count in working memory for long enough for me to recover the count for the next row, pretty much lodged in memory somewhere by the first part of the operation, and to do the necessary sum. At least partly a question of getting into the rhythm of it.

It did require concentration for the minute or so it took to complete the count, but it did seem to work, rapidly converging on a stable count of 74 or 75. Only slightly confused by the arrival of a few late comers, it getting quite near to the time for the off.

Don't know why working up should work better than working down. But I do know that counting this number of people placed randomly, rather than in orderly rows, would be more or less impossible, at least for me. Maybe one needs to be autistic to be able to do that, the sort of person that goes in for counting the pebbles on the beach.

Group search key: jka.

Symphony

For once in a while, last Sunday to an afternoon symphony concert, given by the Philharmonia Orchestra.

There had been a frost earlier, but a fine spring day by 1300 when we set off. Pleased to find that there were no derelicts outside the station, not so pleased that the crew had not turned up for our train, so we were reduced to the Victoria side and a change at Clapham Junction. But as a consolation prize we got the sight of a lady sunbathing on the balcony of her flat in Sutton.

And there were some fine mobile cranes at Vauxhall. Sadly I failed to get a snap.

Out at Waterloo to sample the grub in the weekend food market next to the Festival Hall, my second street food in three days. On this occasion something described as a paella, with a £6 portion being plenty for the two of us. Perhaps best described as substantial fare; perhaps the Spanish equivalent of fish and chips.

Free programme

Into the Festival Hall to find free programmes and the proper price for Monkey Shoulder, unlike the occasion noticed at reference 1. In fact, near double. Hall itself reasonably full, more than three quarters downstairs. Couldn't see upstairs.

Mozart in the first half: the overture from Figaro (K.492) and a piano concerto (K.453). Schubert's great (D.944) in the second half.

I thought that the overture was a mistake, detracting from the concerto somehow. But I suppose whoever built the programme needed to pad out the first half somehow. Concerto new to us but good. Symphony not so new, also good. I suppose it is fair to say that I have adjusted to chamber music and it takes me a while to get into orchestral music, where there is so much more going on, both visually and aurally.

The conductor started life as an oboe player, which meant that he had a special relationship with the lead oboe for the symphony, who had a big part.

Popular music types

We learned that the conductor's platform, noticed at reference 2, was dedicated to one Jimmy Cunningham. The ice cream girl had not got a clue about him, but then neither had Bing nor Google. He didn't make it to a directory of popular music people either.

Clearly something going on when we came out, with three police cars and some visible police men at the bottom of the stairs, in Belvedere Road.

Passed on Fishcotheque once again, making our way down to the Bar Kitchen at the back of the Old Vic. To find it shut with a notice pinned to the window about the Old Vic management company repossessing the place. I clearly hadn't read my laptop carefully enough, not getting through all the TripAdvisor type chat to the fact that it had closed. A pity as we rather liked the place. See, for example, reference 3. Another reminder of how fast time flies for the older person!

So we tried the Fire Station instead. A bit noisy, but lively and the service was good.

Pre-stressed table

Burger for me and salad for her good. Chips bad and very thin choice of dessert. Bring on the stewed fruit! Bring on the orange jelly with tinned peach lumps! Wine fine, a new-to-us Sauvignon Blanc from the crime ridden islands a few hundred miles to the east of Australia. Also prison ridden, as their rate of incarceration is high by our standards, if low by those of the US.

Note the tastefully pre-stressed table. We couldn't decide whether it was actually new or whether it was an old table top, cunningly sanded down.

Royal lion

Having a few minutes to wait for our train, took a stroll along the balcony at Waterloo to check out the Paperchase there, catching the lion above on the way. The young man on duty explained that the large articulated lorry we had seen in the loading bay next to the Fire Station would be unloading stuff into their stock room down there, from where he would go and fetch it, as needed. And, just in case I was wondering, there was a lift.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/artemis.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/philharmonia.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/06/woyzeck.html.

Reference 4: https://www.saintclair.co.nz/saint-clair-varieties/sauvignon-blanc/. Readers will want to know that 'Saint Clair Vicar’s Choice Sauvignon Blanc is sourced from various sub-regions throughout Marlborough including the classic Rapaura area, lower Wairau and the Brancott Valley. The Vicar’s Choice Sauvignon Blanc contains typical Marlborough flavours of gooseberry, passionfruit and grapefruit leaping from the glass'.

Puddings

For some reason this morning, while not thinking about getting up, I was thinking about desserts. Which Larousse told me was something sugary, a pastry or fruit, served at the end of a meal. A word which is derived from the verb desservir, the first meaning of which is to make something ready, perhaps to make a chapel ready for divine worship. And the second meaning of which is to clear away a table at the end of a meal. After which, by implication, it will be ready for the serving of dessert.

Much the same story in Littré.

The word dessert does not seem to figure in 'La Cuisine Familiale', but they do have chapters for cheeses, entremets, pastries, sorbets and compotes. This last being the nearest the French seem to come to the stewed fruit once common in this country. No sign of rice puddings, milk puddings or jellies.

From entremets, I associate to the little nothings that some pretentious restaurants in this country serve between slightly more substantial courses.

From where I move onto the various English words in this department: dessert, pudding, sweet. Sometimes with the qualifier 'course'. The word dessert does not seem to figure in 'Food in England' either, although this work does recognise a very large number of  (steamed or suet) puddings and has a chapter headed 'pies, puddings, pastries and cakes'. There is also the chapter headed 'fruits, herbs, seeds and flowers' which includes more desserts, as does the chapter headed 'eggs'.

Clearly the sort of thing about which one might write a short, tastefully produced book for sale at Christmas or in National Trust gift ships. Perhaps by way of preparation for writing such a work, I should consult my copy of reference 1, presently largely unread.

Reference 1: The Origin of Table Manners - Claude Lévi-Strauss - 1968.

St. Faith

Last week, another visit to Westminster Abbey to see if I could find the revestry snapped below, from the book noticed at reference 1. Oddly, a revestry with an altar to St. Faith, despite a revestry being a vestry or sacristy, a place where a priest prepares for action rather than a place where a priest acts. Perhaps this particular revestry had been repurposed for private prayer.

Revestry

A grey and overcast day. But I was pleased to see, on arrival at Epsom Station, that the nest of rubbish outside the entrance, noticed a few posts ago, had been swept away overnight. On the other hand, trains to Waterloo were disturbed and I elected to travel to Victoria, which I found much changed since my last visit, with what had been a hole having become a large pink building.

Bullingdons

Making my way to the Bullingdon stand at Ashley Place, I was nearly run down, not for the first time, by a silent car, presumably of the electrical persuasion. Not yet adjusted to their presence on our streets. The run to Storey's Gate was much encumbered with traffic lights and probably took about the same time as it would have to walk. Furthermore, the stand there was full, so I had to make my way back to Abbey Orchard Street, passed not many minutes previously.

55 Broadway

Another hole there gave a fine view of 55 Broadway, a very handsome building from this angle. A view which will soon be blocked by something of probably less architectural merit - but of rather more renting merit - with old buildings being expensive to run.

More police than usual outside the Abbey entrance by the west door, probably something to do with one or other of the Brexit flavoured demonstrations. Quite a lot of people about, but it only took me about 5 minutes to get in, my bag decorated once again with a bright yellow wrist band.

A showed a trusty in the north aisle a picture of the revestry (on my telephone) which flummoxed her until I zoomed into the words 'St. Faith'. At which point she was considerate enough to lead me there herself, rather than trying directions, which was probably just as well, the way in being a rather obscure door at the back of the south transept. A door into what turned out to be a very impressive, albeit small, space, dedicated to private prayer, and I was the only one there in the course of my stay, perhaps of fifteen minutes. An admirable place for a bit of quiet, in an otherwise rather busy and not particularly godly space - with the only noise being that of an occasional guide on the other side of the other (locked) door telling some story about it. Including wall paintings behind the altar and a red sanctuary light hanging from the ceiling. The picture above does the place scant justice but I did not think it proper to try for another.

Location map for door

On my next visit, I shall try to find the other side of this other door, which opens into the passage connecting the cloisters to the chapter house. To judge from the presence of the guides, quite possibly a significant door, but not, I think, the Saxon door mentioned on the abbey website. Apart from anything else, not a very big door.

Out to wander around a bit, to be struck on this occasion by new views of the arcading in and around the crossings. All very impressive. And as I get more used to the place, I am getting less and less bothered by all the other people milling around.

High altar and its surroundings draped for Lent - unlike Buckfast Abbey where I think they just drape the altar itself. Drapes made especially for the job, probably hand made by abbey ladies.

West door incscription

A curious inscription by the west door, which I had not noticed before. According to a page on the Abbey web site - turned up by Google rather than Bing - we have it that: 'The most recent cleaning and restoration of the west front was completed in 1993 and H.R.H. The Duke of Edinburgh unveiled an inscription at the base of the north west tower. The words have their origin in a grace (prayer) said after meals dating from the reign of Elizabeth I'. It is not clear from this, but I would think that the inscription dates from 1993 or so, rather than from hundreds of years ago. Better than some of the modern work exhibited inside the abbey - not to mention that at Ely Cathedral.

Pulled a Bullingdon at Storey's Gate to pedal up to Moor Street, just a short walk from Shorts Gardens and the cheese shop where I stocked up on Poacher. I queried its being paler than usual and was treated to a talk about the time of year, the type of grass and the phase of the moon. On return home, I discovered that BH knew all about this sort of thing, the result of listening on a reasonably regular basis to 'The Archers'.

The Brighton branch

Onto Choccywoccydoodah just along the street, a new-to-me chocolate emporium selling all kinds of chocolate goods, served up by a bevy of pretty young things. They also had a new-to-me variety of striped tissue paper for wrapping things up in.

To Waterloo, where things were still bad, so I settled for lunch at Clapham Junctions, with the first place I found that I liked the look of being a street food stand in St. John's Road.

Street food

With the stand in question having been snapped while closed by the StreetView camera in August 2016. Now selling mainly slices of pizza, but I made what turned out to be the mistake of taking a slice of vegetarian pizza and a fat sausage roll. This last was soft and pink inside, I thought near raw, and I was unable to eat it, but the pizza was OK. I couldn't be bothered to complain, but if I am ever there again I might mention it. As it turned out, no ill effects, none that I noticed that is.

Wound up the proceedings with a train home via Sutton. Not stopping off at Sutton, as has been known to happen in the now distant past, to visit a rather disreputable establishment, more or less opposite the station, now refurbished or repurposed.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/better-late-than-never.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Saint_Faith. On my next visit, I shall have to look more closely at the paintings around the altar to see whether they bear on her martyrdom by being toasted alive.

Reference 3: https://www.choccywoccydoodah.com/.

Conclave

Following the post at reference 2 in February, the papal conclave described by Rolfe at reference 1 comes to mind this morning.

Perhaps our speaker should be empowered to declare a parliamentary conclave, whereby all the MP's, the lords and the ladies are locked, incommunicado, into the Palace of Westminster until they come up with a Brexit motion which commands a stable majority in both houses. To help them along, everyone is given a copy of the relevant chapter of reference 1, where all the shenanigans of the cardinals in conclave are set out.

When the speaker is satisfied that the incarcerated parliamentarians have done the deed, he orders the joyous ringing of Big Ben so that the rest of us can relax and potter on down to the boozer. Or whatever. While the parliamentarians get to tuck into a mountain of take-away pizza.

Reference 1: Hadrian the Seventh - Frederick Rolfe - 1904.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/a-special-sort-of-hand-eye-coordination.html.

Bon Accord Care

Today's Guardian advertises the £100,000 a year job of managing director of something called Bon Accord Care, seemingly something to do with the provision of adult social care in Aberdeen. Do the Scottish Nationals share a penchant with our Tories for privatisation of core public services on the quiet?

Puzzled, I turned to Bing, who turns up reference 1. Where I learn that Bon Accord Care is actually two limited companies, Bon Accord Care Ltd and Bon Accord Support Services Ltd, which have been trading since 2013 - with trading meaning the supply of 'care at home, housing support, residential care homes, rehabilitation, reablement, occupational therapy, SVQs [Scottish Vocational Qualifications] through Learning and Development, community equipment, telecare, day care, responder, respite and community meals'.

Companies which are wholly owned by Aberdeen City Council, which employ getting on for 1,000 people and which are managed by a board containing people with both private and public sector backgrounds. Including, for example, the HR director of Imperial Tobacco.

So not really privatisation at all, although it would presumably be relatively straightforward to sell these companies off, should the city fathers veer to the right. And presumably the 1,000 staff are on private sector terms and conditions, maybe zero hours terms and conditions, rather than on local government terms and conditions. Nevertheless, maybe a good balance to try for, combining public sector decency and rectitude with private sector oomph and enterprise.

It would be interesting to know whether this model is widely used in the UK for the delivery of local services and it will be interesting to keep an eye on how these companies get on.

Reference 1: http://bonaccordcare.org/.

More seven

Clearly a good month for the rule of seven, with another one popping up from the University of Oxford this morning.

Probably time that I produced a consolidated spreadsheet of them all, pivot tables and all.

Probably time also that I checked that the difference between the frequency of seven events and that of, say, four, events is as significant as I think it is. Is looking out for sevens biasing my perception of their relative frequency? Is the 'p' value of the sevens actually good enough? The 'p' value which something I read in the last few days - so either the Guardian or the Economist - suggests we are taking rather too seriously.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/01/a-new-puzzle.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/the-rule-of-seven.html.

Reference 3: Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies - Oliver Scott Curry, Daniel Austin Mullins, Harvey Whitehouse - 2019.

March winterreise

The programme

Last Thursday to the Wigmore Hall to hear an unusual arrangement of the Winterreise, almost as unusual as that offered by Bostridge and others around three years ago and noticed at reference 1. Unusual being the replacement of the piano by an accordion (Joseph Petric) and a wind quintet (Pentaèdre). On the other hand we did have a tenor (Christoph Prégardien) doing the singer rather than a bass, a baritone or, even, a mezzo-soprano.

Just before the off, the Wigmore sent me an email suggesting that I tune in to the live streaming, this proving that the ticketing part of their operation was not fully integrated with the advertising part.

We were entertained on the way to the station by the sight of a small child hurtling down West Hill on his scooter, on the other side from us, with Mum and a pushchair trying hard to catch up. Small child stopped, very properly at the junction, but Mum did look a touch flustered just the same. I am sure we would have been even more so.

Rather a squalid nest of cardboard (from brown boxes), newspapers and litter outside the entrance to the station, presumably the leavings of the homeless person who had taken up residence, but was not there on this occasion. Perhaps someone, somehow, had wangled him a bed somewhere.

Offered a seat by a young man on the tube from Vauxhall to Oxford Circus. Accepted on this occasion.

While someone had taken our seat in the northwestern corner of Cavendish Square so we had to take our picnic on the perimeter wall of the garden in the middle.

Took a spot of white downstairs, then made our way into the hall, about three quarters full by the time the performance started. Flowers in three kinds of red, backed up by white and foliage. Very smart. Higher grade music stands. Kit for streaming hanging off the wall brackets, presumably installed for the purpose.

The accordion dress was smart casual, the quintet dress was smart while the tenor was very smartly turned out in a black frockcoat. He was also rather a big man, with dominating presence and voice.

The band according to bing

The translation of the piano accompaniment to the six instruments was very clever and achieved some striking effects. We learned, for example, that trills were possible on an accordion. It also struck us that this last was a big heavy thing to be working for an hour or so, even allowing for breaks. And I rather liked the slightly fairground effect, which seemed to me to accord with the Bostridge line that there was an element of irony, of self consciousness about all these maudlin poems and songs about lost love & life.

But the six instruments were also a bit distracting, possibly because they were new, and it was a good thing that Prégardien did have such a big presence and voice.

Usual form in that I watched and listened, while BH read and listened. But I still vote for the wheeze we saw quite recently (where?) of projecting (some of?) the words onto the back of the hall, not too loud, but in the line of sight so that one doesn't have to swivel to see them.

Much kissing all round at the end.

PS: a pentaèdre is a polyhedron with five faces, for example an Egyptian pyramid. not to be confused with a pentangle, also the name of a 1970's folk group, a band whom we once heard in the QEH, this being before accessibility had been invented, a time when popular music only rarely made it to the Southbank.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/05/winterreises-old-and-new.html.

Reference 2: https://josephpetric.com/.

Reference 3: http://pentaedre.com/en/. From Canada. Not the same line-up here as we had in London.

Reference 4: https://www.pregardien.com/en/.

Tesla comes to town

Back in October 2018, maybe 80 trolleys ago, I spotted a Tesla in Dover Street, more or less opposite the Clarence, and noticed at reference 1.

So just to prove that I live in a respectable area, I am pleased to be able to report that one has turned up in Manor Green Road. On charge this morning. I thought it was a Model S, but cannot now say for sure: they all look the same to me and saying '75' bottom right doesn't help at all.

Number plated by the company itself, so perhaps you have to buy them direct, rather than through some intermediary. According to their web site, £4,000 down will secure you a place in the queue, with the earliest delivery being May. £76,000 or so to complete the purchase.

PS: Wednesday: the glyph bottom left turns out to be 'Model S', although I would not have cared to have had to bet on what can be seen by zooming in on the (6Mb of) original snap. Perhaps the trouble is that it is shiny and Cortana can't break out the chrome from the shine. 'Model' just about legible, but the 'S' looks more like a 'Q'.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/10/tusks-baby.html.

Reference 2: https://www.tesla.com/en_GB/. Looks as if they have gone to the bother of shooting the video clips in GB.

Trolley 246

A Waitrose trolley, captured by the new taxi rank, in front of the TK Maxx front windows. Returned to Waitrose, with neither token nor coin changing hands.

Tweet

An unexpected consequence of our Queen refusing to abdicate in favour of her son when she reached retiring age, is that now, when having a monarch to crack the whip might have been useful, we have a monarch who is too old to take much of an interest in anything, let alone politics.

Would Queen Victoria, in her prime, have summoned Prime Minister May and demanded that she relinquish the seals of her office?

The rule of seven

From time to time I notice the magic power of the number seven, cropping up in all kinds of contexts where one might think people would have trained themselves to avoid this evidence of their superstitious and magical past.

So I was pleased yesterday to come across this example from the US, from the 1970's.

I read that: '...For the purposes of this paper, we will maintain the distinction between self-concept and inferred self-concept, and focus on the former. Seven features can be identified as critical to the construct definition. Self-concept may be described as: organized, multifaceted, hierarchical, stable, developmental, evaluative, differentiable. Each of these features is considered below...'.

Self-concept being something that can be extracted from subjects on the basis of their filling out a short questionnaire about what they think about themselves.

Another byway being explored as a consequence of reading about awakenings and encephalitis lethargica, as noticed at reference 2.

And I continue to be impressed by the way that the computer readable text of this elderly article can be delivered to my laptop, as a pdf, within seconds of my first learning about it, without payment.

Reference 1: Self concept: Validation of construct interpretations - Shavelson R, Hubner J, Stanton G – 1976.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/awakenings.html.

Invisibility

We have not yet shaken off the belief that because I am not looking at you, you can't see me.

Nemtsov

This week's number of the NYRB carried a review of a book about the murder of one Boris Nemtsov, a Russian physicist turned politician. For some reason, despite the steady stream of such stuff, I found this particular review particularly depressing. That an otherwise civilised country, producing its fair share of talents in more peaceful departments of arts and science, for example novelists and musicians, not to mention physicists and mathematicians, should still go in for executing people for political offences, something we have more or less abandoned here in the west for some hundreds of years. It sticks in my mind that that the last time such a thing happened in this country was in the reign of good queen Anne, although I cannot now track it down.

Should we take comfort from these murders being disguised as the work of gangsters rather than that of the law courts; as a sign of progress?

Sticker price 40USD, with Amazon offering a copy at £25 or so and ebay one at £50. I hesitate, both with my money and my time. Slightly put off by the very long title, another habit we lost in this country in the eighteenth century.

PS: SPSS, in this context, stands for Soviet and post-Soviet politics and society. But the acronym is better known to me as the statistical package for social scientists, around since at least the time of my débuts in computing in the early 1970's. I may have even used it once or twice. Now part of the IBM family. See reference 2.

Reference 1: The February 2015 Assassination of Boris Nemtsov and the Flawed Trial of His Alleged Killers: An Exploration of Russia's "Crime of the 21st Century" - John B. Dunlop - 2018.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SPSS.

Trolley 245

The one trolley left in the passage yesterday had become three, two M&S and one Wilko, all chained together. I had neither coin nor token so could not separate them and so had to leave them.

However, down East Street, I made a rare incursion into the private car park of the block of flats known as Eleanor House, to capture two of the three Sainsbury's trolleys there. I think I have looked at the one behind the tree before and found it wanting.

A bonus was a short length of threaded rod, jammed into the handle assembly of the trolley nearest the telephone. Now jammed into my bucket of such things in the garage, probably destined to support a plant in the garden.

Note also the pretty white flowers, probably anemone blanda, common names Balkan anemone, Grecian windflower or winter windflower, is a species of flowering plant in the family Ranunculaceae, native to southeastern Europe, Turkey, Lebanon, and Syria. Flowers which I had seen the other day at the junction of Kiln Lane and Middle Lane. Perhaps I ought to get some to see if they do better than the winter aconites in my new daffodil bed.

The RHS site talks of '...propagate by division of tubers in summer when they are dormant...', so perhaps I need to try to remember to come back to the idea in a few months time.

Office Outlet

The news earlier in the week that Office Outlet was in trouble had passed me (but not BH) by, but it has clearly not passed the East Street shop by, a shop which I use for my copying, printer cartridges, printer paper and various office sundries. A pain, not least because I don't know of any other print shop within walking distance. Will I have to take to going to London for such purposes?

That said, I thought that it was a bit odd when Office Outlet split off from Staples, with the former taking the shops and the shop trade and with the latter taking the online trade - with Office Outlet subsequently moving into online anyway.

At least some of the people working there have been there for a while, so even more of a pain for them.

Cheap post

Two letters which came to us yesterday via a company called Asendia (reference 1).

I had thought that it was all to do with exploiting cracks in the agreements between post offices for cross charging - cracks which meant that one could make money by routing mail through odd places like Hanoi - but maybe Asendia is just about handling your mail for you. You send them a file by email or whatever, and they turn it into letters in envelopes in the post. They have the printers and other machinery needed to do this sort of thing for less than it would cost you.

There might also be an angle in sending parcels of letters between Asendia hubs and only breaking the parcels down into individual letters when they near their destination.

Sucking good money out of the poor old Post Office? Death by a thousand cuts?

Reference 1: https://www.asendia.com/.

Week fifteen (b)

Nearly done. And time to remove the supporting pole which does not seem to be needed anymore.

Group search key: tfd.

Week fifteen (a)

Given about 150ml of water this week, a good part of which drained out of the bottom of the pot, since the catastrophe, with hole.

Group search key: tfd.

Trolley 244

It being a busy Saturday morning, I decided against pushing all three trolleys, from the passage, back to M&S across the market square, and settled for two of them, scored as one.

Snap snipped to remove a finger from bottom left.

Testing the lights

The traffic light testing, mentioned at the beginning of reference 1, continues, almost a week later. With this view being taken down the hill, rather than up the hill.

To be fair, I should add that on this occasion, there was a dumper truck parked in the side road visible to the left. No-one in it though.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/artemis.html.

Compost bin

Emptying time again, seemingly after a two year gap. See reference 1.

Made a start on day one, with the back of the wooden front covered with an impressive array of green slugs and small wood louse. Removal involving, as before, the spike of the trusty knife, described as army surplus, illustrated at reference 1. Front reasonably fragile with lots of rot in what had been some treated timber from the roof of our garden shed. Black staining the result of years of roofing felt sitting on top. Or had they economised on treatment on the grounds that being covered by the felt, the roof timber did not need to be treated?

Back of front

Failed to get the front off again in one piece at the start of day two, so propped up for repairs later. Note the yellow fish box right, given top billing at reference 2.

Reject compost

Compost generally in good condition, well rotted down. Lots of roots from neighbouring trees and bushes. Various half rotted books, mainly in French, rejected. Various bones, a left over from our more seriously meat eating days, rejected. The odd cork, curiously rot resistant, rejected as BH has a marked aversion to them in her flower beds. Oddly, although the compost was mainly rather damp and dark brown, there was a scattering of light, dry patches, rather as if something had been nesting there - although it was hard to see how any four legged animal could have made it down to the depths without leaving traces on the surface.

Barrow

One of the dozen or so barrows of compost removed, not sieved but scattered as it was across various favoured spots in the back garden.

A favoured spot

The ivy will soon grow back over the compost - which just slows it down a but. It then seemed a good opportunity for the proper burial of a couple more long un-read books. Better than being dumped in a family skip after our demise, their likely fate otherwise.

Art books

I selected a couple of art books from my father's collection, probably more or less un-looked at for more than half a century now. Leonardo and Donatello. Printed in the middle of the second world war, a reminder that even that war was not that total - and I remember reading that the Germans were a good less total than we were: Hitler did not forget that at the time he came to power Germany had a strong left wing, a big working class contingent which needed to be appeased. Paper tiger though it had proved to be. I imagine the clipping, from a magazine called 'Illustrated - July 29 1944', perhaps the sort of thing used in a dentist's waiting room, that is to say my father's or his brother in law's waiting room, had been saved for the picture of a cat playing with a near dead mouse on the other side - but one can never be too sure about these things. Two of the dozen or so such books on the shelf, published by the Phaidon mentioned in connection with Las Vegas at reference 3. For the magazine, see reference 4.

Cortana seems to have decided to focus on the coarse, grey cloth of the binding, leaving the printed word a bit fuzzy. I had expected better.

Visible mend

The patched front. Luckily I still had some of the very same tarred shed timber left in the garage. Note the end of the balancing beam left, to be redeployed in time for Monday's small visitor.

Job done

At the end of day two, job done for another year. Perhaps just the one year on this occasion, as I did not get right to the back. And whenever that next occasion is, the front panel is going to need replacing. The thin tongue and grooved planks are already in a bad way and the connecting battens of two by two are not in much better case, despite appearances.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=chb.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/02/gutting-fish-in-dublin.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/fortean-times.html.

Reference 4: http://www.vintagebritishstyle.com/illustrated.htm.

Artemis

Last week to the Queen Elizabeth Hall (QEH) on the south bank to hear the new-to-us Artemis Quartet. For those sufficiently impressed to want to hear them, the programme is being repeated in Hamburg tomorrow and the Britten Quartet will be repeated in Montreal next month. See reference 1.

Programme

Barber, Molto Adagio from Op.11. Probably a first. Britten, String Quartet No.2, Op.36. Last heard about five days ago and noticed at reference 4; first heard about five years ago and noticed at reference 5. Schubert, D.810, aka Death and the Maiden. Last heard about two years ago and noticed at reference 6. One of our favourite works, but as with several of our favourites, this one is not 100% reliable. Doesn't always work the magic.

The repeat

A cool, cloudy day and we were interested to find that one of the contractors employed by the council to mend our roads was testing the temporary traffic lights on this Sunday afternoon, just to make sure that all was well in time for the morning rush hour.

Testing the lights

Not a contractor or a contractor's vehicle to be seen, but impressive lines of cars in both directions.

Outside the station, three near derelicts, two young, one older. Some tinnies to be seen.

Then on the concourse at Waterloo Station, we were amused by the pairing of a couple of ladies, seemingly travelling together on business for the Humanitarian Academy for Development (of Birmingham, see reference 2). One white European, probably English, was middle aged and a touch brassy: very tight trousers and high heels. The other, probably English too, but was rather younger and in what might be called (by analogy with military usage) No.2 Islamic dress for ladies.

Sudden shower of rain and hail on exit from the station, but that soon dried up. And had we not brought a picnic we might well have bought lunch from the street food operation below the Festival Hall. As it was, I nearly bought some kabanosi, as noticed at reference 3.

Onto the QEH, to find that nearly all the river side seat and tables had been colonised by people, not all young, who found it convenient to drive their laptops there. Just a few of the rather poor looking people there had been in the RFH. On the up side, there was no musical offering in the concourse area (which has been a regular source of annoyance in the past) and we did find a half filled table to share. The other half being a young mum with her young daughter, both dressed up to the nines, waiting to go and hear her young brother do something musical in the Purcell Room. But we never did find out exactly what that was, so perhaps it was a private event for yummy mummies. The young daughter passed her time doing mathematics exercises on her small laptop computer, perhaps cramming for this or that test for five year olds.

There was some difficulty about the programmes, but we eventually managed to track one down. One would have thought that such things were delivered days, if not weeks, in advance, so the problem must have been more local.

Auditorium about two thirds full. Two of those black things hanging from the ceiling that remind me of vacuum cleaners, first noticed at Milton Court at reference 7.

Two members of the quartet used computers, two used music, and I was struck by the lightness of touch with the foot used for turning the cello's computer page, and wondered about how easy it was to turn two pages at once. I think the other computer, I forget who, did it by hand. How long will it be before the pages get turned by themselves? The technology must be more or less ready. Gentlemen in frock coats, ladies in black trousers. All very smart and proper to my mind.

Some improper clapping during the first half, not something I remember happening for a long time. We liked the Barber and we liked the Britten much more on this occasion than the last, just a few days previously, despite having failed to take on board the musicology quoted at reference 4. Perhaps QEH was better suited to this particular music; perhaps we liked the banked seats; perhaps the quartet created more of a sense of occasion. Who knows? The young lad in front of us, perhaps mid teens, not very taken at all; rather fidgety and his mother had to take him in hand, or to be more precise, in arm.

What appeared to some fumbling by the bar staff - working for the South Bank concessionaire 'Company of Cooks' - resulting in my getting a double of 'Monkey Shoulder' for £5.20 which seemed very reasonable. After which the Schubert came off very well indeed. Even the fidget in front was taken up by it.

Waterloo Bridge

After some indecision, we decided to exit east, making our way up to Waterloo Bridge via a stairway which was a little the worse for wear. Nor did it contain the memorial plaque to the ladies of London who built the bridge; once seen in a passage somewhere and never found again: perhaps I need to make a systematic search of all four corners of the bridge.

Spotted the Green Room down below and decided to give it a go, having been refused the last couple of times for lack of booking. Near empty on this occasion, around 1700 on a Sunday afternoon, and so not a problem. And as it turned out, being near empty suited us rather well on this occasion.

Cheese on toast and green olives to start. Lancashire Hot Pot with red cabbage for me, salmon on a bed of spelt for her, together with some good looking kale. Everybody pleased with the result, although I should say I get a better Hot Pot at home. White wine satisfactory too, although the waitress had trouble getting the cork out with her ratchet contraption. I suggested the health and safety people had banned the straight pull on the grounds that one might damage one's elbow doing a lot of it, but she assured us that this was not the case.

The wine

We had bottle 12,093 of the 20,000 made, according to reference 8. Perhaps we should go back to note the number of the next bottle that they give us, assuming that is that they do things properly at the Green Room, and sell them in numerical order.

The ice cream

Let down, as so many of these places are, with their desserts and with the ice cream, which I don't usually take anyway, looking very odd. Why could we not have something like a jelly, stewed fruit or even tinned fruit. We had some tinned peaches at home the other day, after a reasonably heavy main course, and they were fine. And I seem to recall such stuff figuring on the dessert trolleys in the hotel dining rooms of my childhood, so entirely heritage-full and proper.

To round off the proceedings, we learned from the other waitress, a cheerful sort, about the peripatetic life of a narrow boat dweller in London. BH knew, but I did not, that if you baulk at paying the fancy mooring prices anywhere near where you might be working in central London, you have to move on every two weeks, to be a veritable traveller. I would have worried, at her age, about having a few drinks of an evening and then turning up at the wrong mooring, which might be a touch awkward late at night.

Once again, I thought I was only going to manage to find notice of a failed attempt to get into the Green Room rather than a successful attempt - but I persisted and eventually got the right combination of search terms to reach reference 9, about four years old. Would have been a bit faster had I bothered to read the clue at the end of reference 10: festina lente as we used to be told at school. Perhaps our only previous visit?

Reference 1: http://www.artemisquartet.com/.

Reference 2: http://had-int.org/.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/anxiety-dream.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/elias.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/12/last-evening-visit.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/12/belcea.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/06/brahms.html. One of those occasions when a favourite disappointed; own goal on this occasion.

Reference 8: http://bodegasfrontonio.com/vinos/los-botijos/botijo-blanco/. Label looks right.

Reference 9: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/11/big-charles-1.html. The successful visit.

Reference 10: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/11/wilde-one.html. The unsuccessful visit. And it took quite some time to recover from bashing my arm and shoulder. I was even reduced to doing the odd exercises while out on my constitutional. More or less OK now.