Trolley 357

As luck would have it, having failed to find a trolley elsewhere, there were a couple of Waitrose trolleys at the entrance to the Network Rail operation just noticed. As it has turned out, the very last trolleys of the old year.

A touch muddy, so I took a couple of paper napkins from the coffee dispenser in the entrance to Waitrose to brush them off before returning them to the stack adjacent. I don't suppose anyone is going to notice.

Rewarded by the sight of a full on, bright green moustache, the sort of moustache which needs grooming action first thing every morning. Sported, I think, by a German gentleman.

Network Rail action

No trolleys down East Street yesterday morning and somebody had cleared out the Ashmore passage, so I though to take a look up Station Approach. Nothing there either, but I did come across the famous Epsom landslip, previously only glimpsed from Platform 4. Plenty of machinery and some workers, by the sound of them from Poland.

We think we have been hearing the thumping of steel sheet piles being driven, so perhaps that is what the machine centre back does.

Network Rail is clearly spending a lot of money on this one. With the bonus of a bit of real excitement for all the residents of the McCarthy & Stone complex left. The one with the carriage entrance which won't take an ambulance, opposite my dentist and occasional walnut store. See reference 1.

Perhaps the carriage entrance was actually designed with Network Rail in mind, rather than the National Health Service.

PS: there are interesting Moiré effects on the roofs of said McCarthy & Stone on the original of this snap on my laptop. Effects which seem to have been largely erased by passage through the Google cloud.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/nonik.html.

Cod story

There is a set of short pieces about a cruise in the Netherlands and to parts further north in Simenon's 10m yacht 'Ostrogoth' tacked onto the end of the four Maigret stories which make up most of volume III of the collected works (reference 1).

One of these pieces tells us about the February cod fishing season in Svolvaer in the Lofeten Islands in the north of Norway.

It seems that this small town was visited by around 7,000 fishing boats, a lot of them sailing boats, and 28,000 fishermen. They fished from 0600 to 1800, by the town bell, by line, with the boats packed pretty close over the cod, catching perhaps 45 million cod fish in the course of the season. But the waters were rather treacherous, the men tired and the boats quite possibly overloaded, and some 30-40 fishermen were killed each year. An average of one or two a day.

One of these waters was called the Maelstrom, from which our modern word is derived.

The piece also tells us about North Cape, later of Second World War Arctic convey notoriety, illustrated by Google's Street View, looking north, above. Presumably rather colder than it looks. It seems that some people make a fuss about the fact that what is called the North Cape is actually on an island, just off the north coast of Norway, and cannot properly be called a cape at all, never mind the northernmost cape of Norway. This honour should go to Kinnarodden, a little to the east. Also visible in Street View. All of which leaves me a bit confused, as North Cape is not even the northernmost point of its island. A confusion not resolved by the otherwise helpful two-page map of Norway in my heritage Times Atlas. Produced in 1968 by those fine map makers John Bartholomew & Son from Edinburgh. With the former now gobbled up by Murdoch, the latter by Collins. Sold to me, probably for a tenner or so, at what must have been one of the last car boot sales I went to, noticed at reference 2. No interest at all in such this year.

PS 1: I believe the occupants of the Ostrogoth were Simenon, Tigy his wife, his dog and Boule the maid who did everything. Including sleeping with the master. Also that Tigy divorced Simenon when she eventually found out, catching them together. But these stories are a bit coy on the domestic arrangements.

PS 2: further information about all this to be found at the three references 3. From which I learn that the Ostrogoth remained at Bergen when the Simenons went to the far north. My reading must have been a little careless. Or perhaps the transition from one boat to another was rather glossed over.

Reference 1: Escales nordiques - Georges Simenon - 1931. Volume III of the collected works.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/05/bank-holiday.html.

Reference 3a: http://www.trussel.com/maig/figaro1e.htm.

Reference 3b: http://www.trussel.com/maig/figaro2e.htm.

Reference 3c: http://www.trussel.com/maig/figaro3e.htm.

Four legged friends

About six years ago, no doubt prompted by a spot of freezing, I was moved to make a small house for the various pipes outside our back door, nicely snapped at reference 1.

Then yesterday, I was still in the process of waking up when BH came to tell me that someone else's black dustbin had fallen over and foxes had scattered bits of green and black plastic all over our front drive. This was followed by an update a few minutes later to the effect that it was not someone else's dustbin at all, rather that a fox had been poking around underneath said small house.

Inspection

At which point I got up, and in reasonably short order was on the case. Full panoply of bench, tool box, electric drill and so forth deployed on the drive. Inspection cover off the small house. Much mess. Several of the dustbin bags used to hold the insulating pellets (quite expensive as I recall, £10 a bag or something from a post box and packaging shop in East Street) had been eaten open. Pellets everywhere. Some seed husks from the bird feeder on the back patio.

And as I cleared it all up something black and furry shot out, across the drive and somehow into the fence opposite. Never to be seen again. Rather large for a mouse but rather small for a rat. Presumably a fox had smelt same and had been poking around at the openings at each end of the house - openings which served to provide ventilation and drainage and which had not been interfered with for years.

Note the wire loop on one of the planks making up the inspection cover. An aide memoire about which plank was which.

Remedial action

In this snap of remedial shutters for the openings, the overground, external mains water input can also be seen, lightly wrapped. We suspect something which arrived with the sixties building works, something which would not have been there originally. Even so, the water input runs back to the road only a few inches below the surface, so not too clever if it gets really cold. And to the left of the water input, one can just see a corner of the left hand opening.

The remedial shutters took a couple of hours to put together. Followed by a swift coat of Cuprinol, followed by a pause to dry. Plus tea and biscuits. Followed by fitting. Quite enough to stop interference by a fox, probably not quite enough to stop a small mouse, but we shall see.

New bags of pellets put together, very loosely filled so that the bags could be fitted around the pipes. Inspection cover replaced. All done by around 1530.

PS: the shutters are handed and I managed to get the left hand and right hand shutters right first time, without needing to reverse their assembly, half way through.

Reference 1: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/10/its-that-diy-time-again.html.

Belcea

The trophy board

The last outing to town before the festivities was a trip to the Wigmore Hall to hear a couple of Beethoven quartets, Op.18 No.6 and Op.132 - the one with a Lydian movement celebrated by Huxley in 'Point Counter Point' - from the Belcea Quartet. Last heard about six months ago on the occasion noticed at reference 2.

It had been a flooded back patio day, noticed at reference 3, it was a wet evening and the land slip was work in progress - so I accepted a lift to Ewell West, where I arrived in time to admire the trophy board in the luxurious cycle shed there. The cycle racks themselves were well under half full, with perhaps twenty occupants.

My carriage was near empty - apart from one irritating phone user. A wait at Worcester Park, which turned out to be no more than that, and so onto a quiet Vauxhall. By the time I got to Victoria though, my tube was crowded, mostly with people wearing work clothes, but including one quite tall person wearing a low cut, full length, pleated, scarlet crepe dress, with a matching top, mid thigh length. Fully accessorised and fully warpainted. Not what I would call pretty. I speculated about gender and if forced to chose, I think I would have gone for transvestite. But I was not at all sure.

The cash machine in Cavendish Square was broken and was being minded by an indigent in blankets. While by the building materials and dustbins which occupy the southwestern corner of the square proper, we had a trolley, but clearly the property of another indigent, so not scorable.

Decided against the Cock & Lion on this occasion, and the queue at the bar at the Wigmore was very slow, so I settled for the help-yourself warf water.

The programme

Hall pretty full, and I could see just one free seat in front of me. I had been bumped from our usual aisle seats by a legal gentleman and his wife, while to my right I had a young lady dressed up in a smart, short sleeved dress, unusual in a young lady at the Wigmore. Put gently down by the wife left, when she turned the conversation to the concerts held in and around the Temple Church. Very convenient for us Waterloo people I announced. Even more convenient when you live there, she responded. Presumably a legal eagle rather than a legal pigeon. She was a bit vague about how you acquired an apartment at the Temple, beyond making it all sound a bit nods & winks. And she was not impressed by the idea that the Temple with its staircases and name boards had the feel of a Cambridge college, so perhaps they were Oxford people.

Another older gentleman behind me, sharing his musical knowledge - about on a par with mine - that is to say quite limited - with his lady friend. He told her that he found the programme notes, on this occasion from one Richard Wigmore of reference 5, more or less incomprehensible, and I could agree with him about that. Not, I hasten to add, that Wigmore is any worse in this regard than any of the other writers used for the purpose. He went on to muse about whether he would want to say goodbye to his friends if and when he knew he was going to die in a few days. The story seemed to be that perhaps there were half a dozen or so to whom he would like to say goodbye, the lady friend included. Although he also said that it was hard to know how one would react until it happened. Quite so. For myself, I think I might withdraw into myself, not to be very interested any more in other people at all, apart from my carers, but perhaps going through the motions for the sake of form. All a bit morbid for a concert.

The Belceas all played from computers, although I saw no sign of control and little sign of their looking at the music. Does the computer turn the pages for you these days? 18.6 good and 132 even better.

A quick Cock & Lion in the interval, where there was the odd party dress to be seen, this being the last Friday evening before the holiday kicked in.

Out into Oxford Street after the second half, to find more shoppers than party goers. Chucked off the tube at Victoria and, for what seemed like the first time for a long time, I managed to get from the tube platform to the train platform without going via Cardinal Place, which seems a long way at the end of the evening. At the end of my evening, anyway.

The holes in the shelf

A train turned up in a few minutes, and the second half of the journey was enlivened by an older gentleman  - perhaps some kind of salesman or businessman coming up to retirement - having a long conversation with what I think may have been the Kensington branch of Carluccio's about a substantial lunch booking for the following day, Saturday, which had been cancelled by Carluccio's. I supposed that the chap had made a late booking with a waitress on the spot, earlier in the day, who had failed to properly check the scene for the day following. But he had then set all the wheels in motion at his end. He was particularly cross given that he had spent a fair bit of money on their Christmas goodies in the course of making the booking. Given that the mistake had been made, seemingly by Carluccio's, I thought (to myself, naturally. Much better not to get involved!) that it was up to them to make some alternative arrangement. I dare say there was some substantially more expensive place nearby that would have taken the booking - with Carluccio's taking the excess. Unfortunately, at Ewell East the older gentleman said that he was too tired to talk about it any more, and further discussion was postponed until the morning, so I will never know. But let's hope there was a satisfactory resolution in the calm light of morning.

I also spent some time counting the number of holes to the row in the overhead shelf. More about that in due course.

Home to a spot of white. After which I found the section in my Arden Lear about how the text had come to be derived from the various conflicting sources quite incomprehensible. That said, one side effect of the media studies binge noticed at reference 6, is that I now know more about Lear than I think I ever knew before. Not least that, according to Grigg, it is a stage version of what we would now call a road movie. What difference all this will this make to my next visit to Lear on a stage remains to be seen.

PS 1: just for form, turned up 'Point Counter Point' again this afternoon.

PS 2: snap of the programme taken in electric light, with the programme propped up vertically under the light. The upside of this was that there was no selfie-shadow on the resultant snap, the downside was that there was not enough light getting into the telephone and definition was, in consequence, poor. Certainly by the time it had gone through the many layers of processing between my telephone and the Google cloud.

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

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/07/art-fair.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/third-report.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/05/belcea-30.html. The last time we/I had heard the quartet.

Reference 5: http://wigmoresworld.co.uk/. A personal website which does not seem to be humming. Perhaps I was pressing the wrong buttons.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/media-studies.html.

The white that got away

On Boxing Day we got around to trying out the wine noticed at reference 1, that is to say bought from Secret Cellar of Tunbridge Wells, lost in a hotel and subsequently retrieved.

I had bought it on the strength of it being in what I thought was the white wine part of the shop, it being in what I thought was the sort of tall thin bottle used for white wine, it having an impressive label and it being at about the right price. In the event it turned out to be red wine, entirely appropriate to the roast lamb with which it was served and entirely satisfactory. That is, after the first half mouthful which was a little odd - but then, with me, the first half mouthful usually is.

Subsequent investigations turned up reference 2, in German, and reference 3 in English. Made from Pinot Noir, called Spätburgunder, which looks to mean late Burgundy and with the full ticket being '2013 Weingut Hanewald-Schwerdt Kalkofen Spätburgunder, Pfalz, Germany'. Perhaps the German version of Burgundy, a bit late being a bit further north. Somewhere I turned up talk of an important limestone reef, unique to the region, now lost.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/snow-queen.html.

Reference 2: https://www.hanewald-schwerdt.de/#!/.

Reference 3: https://www.wine-searcher.com/find/hanewald+schwert+kalkofen+spatburgunder+pfalz+germany/2013/-/-/u#t2.

Minority broadcasting

Having recently posted on the subject of language preservation at reference 1, I thought that the book at reference 2, recently discarded by Surrey Libraries, might add a bit of spice to my rather theoretical thoughts.

A bit of spice derived from long experience of public service radio broadcasting to people with subcontinental backgrounds or families, that is to say from what is now Bangladesh, India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

A book which turned out to be very much a personal memoir, a long way from a coherent history of the subject. Such a long way that I have failed, at about a fifth of my way through the 300 odd pages.

A world which was very preoccupied with ratings - things like pennies or pounds spent per listening hour - and which seemed to be awash with (diversity) awards ceremonies in expensive hotels.

It did not help that I do not listen to the radio at all myself; national, regional, local or any other sort. I just about read our not very good (free) local paper and I take what I imagine is an average, that is to say not very much, interest in local affairs. Nor did it help that I am a white, middle class pensioner of advancing years and my background is white middle class - English apart from a diversion to Canada in the first half of the 20th century - and I have no minority interests of my own.

Nevertheless, I have learned what a difficult and expensive business it is to provide good quality radio broadcasting to minority and local communities. I have been reminded of the choice a presenter might have to make between presenting to the minority that he or she knows and joining main-stream broadcasting, where the big careers are. I have been reminded what a labyrinthine, civil-service like organisation the BBC is. Do they really need all that management structure, all those buildings? I wondered whether catering to these particular needs might not be better catered for by commercial providers.

Next thought was that commercial providers might well be fine for popular music and popular films, perhaps from Bollywood (Mumbai, once Bombay) or Lollywood (Lahore). But they might not be fine for the rather more tricky business of news, local, national and subcontinental. Just think of the tensions between Hindus and Moslems in parts of India. Or of the troubles in Kashmir. Or of the troubles in Sri Lanka. Just think of all the rubbish and worse swilling around the likes of Facebook. Do we want commercial or religious providers to be the main source of information to the corresponding communities in this country? Do we want to leave it to amateurs and volunteers to plug the gaps?

And while we want these communities to know about what is going on back east, we don't want to bring troubles from back east to this country. Not least because many of the people in these communities came, or their parents came, to get away from these very troubles.

All in all, a tricky business. And maybe I will do better with my next find on this subject.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/why-are-languages-worth-preserving.html.

Reference 2: Asian Aunti-ji: Life with the BBS Asian Network  - Mike Curtis - 2015.

No live fish

More than a week ago now to Kingston, to admire the festive sights and polish off the festive shopping. A visit on which, as it turned out, we tweeted no fewer than two pianos, already noticed.

Had trouble with the barrier at the Rose car park, but we made it in the end. BH went on to score four kerbs up on the way to the reasonably clear level green nine, where we parked.

First stop, the fish in the Hogsmill. But, for the first time that I can remember, the water was turbid after all the rain and we saw no fish, either on the police station side of the road or the other.

Onto to the café inside the Rose Theatre, where we found two very cute children on an outing of some sort with mum and her parents. We also learned about something called the Kingston Pound of reference 1. A relatively new venture the point of which seems to be to promote Kingston and to promote the sourcing of goods and services from Kingston, rather than bringing them in from the outside. It looks to be a modest operation so far, indeed not clear to me that it is very alive at all. But see also references 2 and 3. Whereas cynical me had thought that these local currencies were all about evading VAT.

One that got away

From there we got ourselves into a sort of passage behind church railings, which turned out not to be a passage at all. With the added disappointment for me of a trolley which I was unable to score. We retraced our steps to go into All Saints' the proper way, a pleasant enough space, dedicated to a variety of activities and functions, but not terribly holy - but what else can they do? I don't suppose they get many customers of the proper sort.

Place for prayer

And while there did not seem to be a proper altar any more, there was a small space reserved for quiet contemplation and prayer, complete with lit sanctuary lamp.

Out through another door, into the Christmas shed land. Lots of brown wood sheds, a little more variegated than those at Polesden Lacey, noticed at reference 4, and mainly selling various kinds of hot food. On which we passed, it being too soon after elevenses and not time for lunch.

There were also a few real market stalls, although the fish stall was just a relic of the three that there used to be. On the up side, we were able to buy our first Californian walnuts for some years. About a kilo, which have turned out very well. Still a few left.

Onto John Lewis, where the decorations were reasonably low key, majoring on pieces of gold foil strung on long strings and reasonably effective. Spotting the haberdashery department across the well, I thought to ask about pack thread last noticed at reference 5, with current holdings not be enough for more than another one or two duffel coats. The lady there had never heard of the stuff and certainly could not offer anything on the traditional, sturdy wooden reel. The best she could do was a sort of textured button thread, which would probably have done, but I baulked at the £4.50 or so she wanted for it. So I made a rather feeble excuse about needing to consult BH and scuttled off.

We are not amused

The gallery

Onto Bentall's, a shopping centre now divided between Bentall's proper and a large range of other shops, arranged on several floors around a central atrium. Complete with lifts and escalators which double as décor. A rather more useful place than I had remembered. I also remembered that we bought our front room carpet from a franchise within Bentall's proper - with the only trace of this purchase that I can turn up being reference 6, despite the carpet having been bought during bloglife. And we came across what looked like a rather expensive art gallery, one of many branches of the people at reference 7. Zoom on the label failed on this occasion, but I have now found out that the work snapped is 'Breath of Ages' by one Simon Kenny of reference 8, a chap from Ireland who appears to have developed a successful formula. As an original painting £3,500; if it had been a print maybe £1,000. Budding artists might like to know that the good people at Whitewall do consider unsolicited submissions.

No Polish shop that we could find to inquire about kabanosi.

The mouth of the Hogsmill

Still no fish in the Hogsmill, although there were a lot of swans.

Having failed to find the expected noodlarium in the vicinity of the swans, we took fish and chips at the Ram, handy for the car park. Pleasant staff and pleasant ambience, but food not as good and certainly not as good value as Wetherspoon's.

I managed one kerb on the way down from green nine.

Reference 1: https://kingstonpound.org/.

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

Reference 3: https://www.boomcu.com/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/grotto.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/11/duffel-coat.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/08/shopping-in-kingston.html.

Reference 7: https://www.whitewallgalleries.com/.

Reference 8: https://simonkenny.artweb.com/.

Group search key: kna

Big day

Just about six months since their replacements were bought in mid June, having finally broken in those replacements, I have consigned my old trainers to the black dustbin, that is to say the landfill dustbin.

Eco-credentials preserved by the removal of the laces and their ceremonial adding to the plastic bag of same which is kept in the study. A legacy from FIL.

Checking the date of purchase of the replacements in gmail, I am reminded that the Cotswolds people of reference 2 send out plenty of advertising emails and that I am considered a fair target for them. And I learn from Wikipedia that they started in a garage in Wiltshire in 1974 - about the time that I was entering the civil service - and were reduced to applying for a company voluntary arrangement (CVA) earlier this year. Yet another good formula - with friendly and knowledgeable sounding staff - rather in the way of the late Oddbins - which expanded too far? But they are still trading, so maybe they are on the mend.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/trainers.html. For the record, the first word of this post, 'Last', should be replaced by the phrase 'Just about'. More sloppy proof reading.

Reference 2: https://www.cotswoldoutdoor.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.gov.uk/company-voluntary-arrangements.'If your limited company is insolvent, it can use a Company Voluntary Arrangement (CVA) to pay creditors over a fixed period. If creditors agree, your limited company can continue trading'.

Trolley 356

A Sainsbury's trolley captured outside the Post Office shed around the back. In the eaves of which I once tweeted some nesting great tits.

Picked up another, tucked in next to the firewater tank of reference 2 and then returned the pair to the stack. Where one was taken in charge before I could properly return it.

On the way back to the Screwfix tunnel I fell in with a lady who had been befriended by a pretty marmalade cat, not hers. She turned out to know all about both cats and African grey parrots, perhaps more accurately Congo grey parrots, with these last being of uncertain temper to her mind.

I mentioned by understanding the marmalade cats were all male, and she explained that she had thought that this was the case but had been disabused. And checking this afternoon, the story seems to be that females can be orange, but are not a common as orange males. The important bit of reference 3 goes: 'Well, it’s not that orange female cats are rare, it is simply that an orange cat is more likely to be a male. For a female cat to be orange, she must inherit two orange genes — one from her mother (orange, calico, or tortoiseshell) and one from her father (who must be orange). A male cat needs only one orange gene, which he gets from his mother (orange, calico, or tortoiseshell). This is because the gene that codes for orange fur is on the X chromosome, and like humans, females have two Xs and males are XY. Genes on the X chromosome are said to be sex-linked'. Clearly time to turn out my copy of reference 4 again, a paper which originally turned up when I was poking Turing's reaction diffusion model about. A poking which has yet to surface here.

Another factlet with which to amaze the world. Possibly the clients of TB, which does indeed appear to be open again, having been shut Christmas Day, as reported earlier.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/tweet_17.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/04/fire.html.

Reference 3: https://paws-and-effect.com/are-orange-female-cats-really-that-rare/.

Reference 4: How the Leopard Gets Its Spots: a single pattern-formation mechanism could underlie the wide variety of animal coat markings found in nature. Results from the mathematical model open lines of inquiry for the biologist - James D. Murray - 1988.

Trolley 355

Three trolleys more captured from the cache in the Ashmore passage, snapped in the last post. These ones from the M&S foodhall, where they were running slightly light. I didn't bother trying to tell anyone where they all where as this does not seem to result in any action.

Fake 94

Another first in that I have been able to score a fake twice on the same building, around the front a branch of the Hamptons estate agency.

This second fake being a trompe l'oeil window, behind the back fence unless you stretch a bit. Quite nicely executed. If I think of it I will pop into the agency and see if they know anything of its history.

Once again, something that I must have walked past hundreds of times.

The first fake having been scored at reference 1.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/11/fake-48.html.

Trolley 354

The Boxing Day rush resulted in a fine crop of trolleys in the Ashmore passage (where the Ashmore signs are in the process of being painted out. A process started by a Chinese couple between two ages, one with a bucket of paint, on some steps, on Christmas Day).

In fact, the finest collection I recall seeing.

The three Waitrose trolleys - one front right, two back right - captured and returned to their stack in the Ashley Centre. Restrained the impulse to stock up on their Calvados. What will Majestic charge me for their rather good own brand stuff if I am not buying a box of wine at the same time?

Why are languages worth preserving?

The world of languages

This post being prompted by the article at reference 1 in the magazine Sapiens. There is also the article at reference 2. And I have also turned up my own, faintly related posts at references 4 and 5.

There are presently lots of live languages in the world, some spoken by quite small numbers and in danger of dying out.

There are lots of people who want to slow this process down, to do something about it. They might do this for a variety of reasons.

The speakers of a small language might want to preserve their language, preserve their heritage for their children. In many such cases, there is little or no built or manufactured heritage and cultural heritage, of which spoken language is an important part, is all they have.

People who have their own language and who are able to use it, seem to do better than those who do not. They are less likely to become alcoholic outcasts in what was their own country. But remember that, to the extent that people are encouraged to speak a small language at the expense of their speaking some more widely used language, they are cutting themselves off from the rest of the world. One might argue that the countries of Europe prospered because the arrival of printing and standardised languages swept away many of the old barriers to communication, commerce and progress.

Having diversity in language is an important resource for those studying how languages work. Studying all the different ways in which communication can be done. It is also, for example, useful to those trying to trace the movements of peoples through history.

And there are a lot of people who value diversity for its own sake.

But there are costs.

The fostering of small languages is expensive. One has to pay people to write them down and one has to pay people to learn how to teach them. One has to find time and place for people to be taught.

Support of a small language to the extent of making it an official language, with all the machinery which goes with an official language, is very expensive. I believe that the Chinese of old mitigated this problem by allowing several version of spoken Chinese, but just one written version. That is to say, they all wrote the same.

And I have known some people from Ireland who resented the amount of time that they had to devote to Gaelic during their school days. Time which might have been better spent on mathematics, on history or whatever. And some people from the UK who resented the amount of time they had to devote to Latin. Although speaking for myself, I am quite glad to have been exposed to it – and it only cost me around 1,000 hours of my valuable time.

Statistics

Good quality, free statistics about all this are hard to come by. But from reference 9, which seems to have gone to some bother to stop one copying their material, I learn that there are at least 7,000 live languages, with 23 of them having more than 50 million users, accounting for a little more than 4 billion of us, out of a total of more than 7 billion. So there is a long tail and a lot of people shut out of the mainstream of the world – given that at the present state of the art, all the stuff produced in one of those 23 languages cannot be projected to the other 22, never mind the other 7,000. And I dare say that the 23 languages account for a much larger proportion of the broadcast, printed or otherwise published word than the proportion of the world’s population which they represent.

On the other hand, I am surprised that the 23 big languages only cover something over half the population of the world. So what, for example, has this count done about the many millions of people who speak both an indigenous language and the language of their state?

Nevertheless, we do look to have a problem: far too many people are shut out of said mainstream.

Part of this absence of good statistics may be the statistical intractability of the subject. One might think that the family of languages in the world is a bit like the family of animals in the world – which it is, up to a point. Unfortunately the notion of species – a group of animals which may freely interbreed, producing viable and fertile offspring – does not read across to language. Saying that two people speak the same language if they can make each other understood does not really cut it and the boundaries between languages are much more tricky than the boundaries between animals. When exactly, for example, is one of the Italian regional languages considered to have been swallowed up by the language of the state? Neither does the notion of assigning any one animal to at most one species read across, as, as already noted, there are plenty of people with more than one language.

Then there is the cost of cataloguing languages which are not spoken by large numbers of people, a task which requires both technical knowledge and time, perhaps in a not very hospitable part of the world. Missionaries have done a lot of the work which has been done.

Miscellanea

English speaking Canadians, given both their history with the French and with their many indigenous peoples are rather sensitised to all this. A sensitivity which is reflected, inter alia, in the luxury of their metropolitan museums devoted to indigenous peoples, their culture and their works. See, for example, reference 8.

One might mourn the passing of the study of Old English from the carricula of English universities – but there are neither the students who want to do such studies nor the monies to pay for them.
The speaking of Hebrew in Israel is about the only example of a country successfully deciding to renew a more or less extinct, old language.

Unesco are keen on indigenous languages, to the extent of proclaiming a decade for them. But, on the whole, they don’t have to pay.

The block diagram

The world of blocks

Some of this is summarised in the block diagram above. A territorial nation state which has one, occasionally more, official languages. We might have the complication of a territorial nation state or province belonging to a federation – which might or might not enforce its own official language or languages. We might have the complication of a territorial nation state having two widely spoken languages, but with their being very mixed up on the ground, making apartheid impractical. I believe that this happens in parts of India – a very multilingual union – and no doubt elsewhere.

The official languages which must, inter alia, appear in schools, on road signs and on government forms.

For present purposes, a person belongs to exactly one territorial nation state and, with few exceptions, will speak one or more languages. Many people will have parents, children and siblings, and there will be a strong correlation between the languages spoken by related people.

And there will be relations between languages. These languages make up that family. This language is very close to that language. This language is the parent of that language. And some languages will have no speakers.

Conclusions

I think all this leaves me neither for not against. Languages have always changed, in something of the same way as animals have evolved; languages will always come and go. Some of this will reflect conquistas, military or commercial.

But if there is enough interest in studying, promoting and preserving some particular language, fine. Provided that the people who want to do this are reasonable in the call they make on central resources. Bilingualism, not to say multilingualism, is expensive and has an opportunity cost. And each case, or group of cases, should be treated on its merits.

PS 1: there may be a copyright connection between the big graphic included above and the ‘South China Morning Post’. Or with Alberto Lucas, or both. And if you count carefully, the graphic does indeed contain 23 languages.

Heritage studies

PS 2: having talked of mourning the passing of Old English, I chanced upon the back cover of the book about Roman emperors last noticed at reference 10. Listing a lot more books, a lot more subjects, in which interest is probably passing. Who still bothers with such stuff? From where I associate to festivals of nostalgia for the buildings of old and for the handicrafts of old, promoted by the likes of the National Trust.

References

Reference 1: Why are languages worth preserving? - Anastasia Riehl – 2019.

Reference 2: How to Resurrect Dying Languages: community activists are using creative methods to revive endangered languages and reawaken dormant ones – Anna Luisa Daigneault – 2019.

Reference 3: https://www.sapiens.org/. ‘SAPIENS is a digital magazine about the human world. It’s about how we communicate with each other, why we behave kindly and badly, where and when we evolved in the past, and how we live and continue to evolve today. It’s about the relationship between our laws and ethics, the cities we build, and the environment we depend on. It’s about why sex, sports, and violence consume and intrigue us, what life was like in centuries past, where we might be headed in centuries to come, and much more. In January 2016, we launched SAPIENS with a mission to bring anthropology [to the people] ... SAPIENS aims to transform how the public understands anthropology…’. See also the parent, the Wenner-Gren Foundation.

Reference 4: http://psmv2.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/aryans.html. A family tree of the Aryan family of languages.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/a-gift-of-tongues.html. An introduction to the study of language.

Reference 6: https://www.sil.org/. These people are very big in the world of small languages. They are also God people from the southern part of the US: ‘SIL’s service with ethnolinguistic minority communities is motivated by the belief that all people are created in the image of God, and that languages and cultures are part of the richness of God's creation’.

Reference 7: https://www.sil.org/resources/publications/ethnologue. Offers comprehensive but expensive catalogues of the more than 7,000 languages, spoken and signed across the world.

Reference 8: https://www.historymuseum.ca/.

Reference 9: https://www.visualcapitalist.com/a-world-of-languages/.

Reference 10: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/reprieved.html.

Sage

At this time of year it is a family tradition to make stuffing, mainly from white breadcrumbs, onion and sage, but with some other ingredients which are properly kept secret. A secret of the craft. With the current tradition being to stuff a pie dish rather than to stuff a bird.

Sometimes, we have adequate supplies of fresh sage in the garden. Sometimes, we have been reduced to dried sage, which lacks the pungency, the immediacy of the fresh. More recently, Waitrose have taken to selling small sage plants, forced in bit of peat, rather in the way of punnets of cress, which have served well.

But this year, Sainsbury's are offering fresh sage leaves in packets. With a guaranteed number of leaves in each packet. Which must be the first time that we have bought the stuff by the leaf.

PS: much later: one of the two packets has now been opened and contained approximately double the number of leaves advertised. Perhaps the Sainsbury's quality people have some rule about how many millimetres long a leaf has to be before it counts as one of the 16.

The video games of South Korea and beyond

Some weeks ago, on the way to the post at reference 1, I signed up for the MIT technology review. A signing up which did not require me to put my hand in my pocket straightaway, but which did get me a certain amount of free access and a fair number of emails. The material on offer does, so far, look to be of good quality. One of the freebies, reference 2, is the trigger for the present post.

It seems that around the end of the last century a company called Blizzard invented a online video game called StarCraft, a game which took South Korea, then emerging from an all-Asian financial disaster, by storm. A game which a large chunk of the youth – presumably mainly male youth – took to playing, often in places called ‘PC bangs’, where one bought access for around one $US an hour. A game which is now a nostalgia fest for the middle aged, with newer games having taken its place with the young.

While seeming cheap or free to play, there were plenty of opportunities to spend money and plenty of young people racked up considerable debts. With some of this being very like gambling. And apart from money, plenty of young people were spending what seemed (to old people) like an unhealthy proportion of their day on these games. Indeed, the whole phenomenon is not unlike that of online gambling. I note in passing that Bet365 of reference 3 has made a very large amount of money from this last, quite a lot of which is paid over as tax and quite a lot of which is given over to charity – thus confusing the morality argument.

And in South Korea at least, these games have become serious sports, with tournaments, teams, players – both professional and amateur – and spectators. A serious industry involving lots of money, not unlike that which has grown up around other sports, such as football.

At the same time, lots of people are worrying about the potential of these games to do damage. The South Korean parliament has debates about them and sometimes makes laws about them. Agitation which has come to the point where WHO has now included – rather controversially – addiction to online gaming in its 11th revision to its catalogue of disorders. What it carefully calls ‘gaming disorder’. Interesting from a medical point of view in that, along with gambling, it is a behavioural addiction rather than a substance based addiction. Furthermore there seems to be a connection with the attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). For all of which see reference 4.

So do these games cause the problems or are they a healthy response from the youth of today to the world in which they find themselves? Are they a bigger problem than mobile phones and social media generally? And what about the webtoons referenced below? Does the online gaming industry needed to be regulated, in part to restrain the greed of the people who have floated to the top? All fascinating stuff and having been alerted to it, I shall keep my eye out for it.

PS: amused by the fact that the business model of the MIT technology review, view now pay later, is not so very different from those of the online gaming companies! Or indeed of lots of other companies, busily extracting money from us all.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/global-warming.html.

Reference 2: Arguments over whether game addiction is real have led to feuds between government departments and a national debate over policy - Max S. Kim – 2019.

Reference 3: https://www.bet365.com/#/HO/.

Reference 4: https://www.who.int/features/qa/gaming-disorder/en/.

Reference 5: https://play.euw.leagueoflegends.com/en_GB. A more recent game. StarCraft a bit dated now.

Reference 6: https://www.epicgames.com/fortnite/en-US/battle-pass/chapter-2. Another more recent game. There is a ladies’ league, with a successful team therein, from Gen G and Bumble, snapped above.

Reference 7: https://www.webtoons.com/en/. ‘We started a whole new way to create stories and opened it up to anyone with a story to tell. We’re home to thousands of creator-owned content with amazing, diverse visions from all over the world. Get in on the latest original romance, comedy, action, fantasy, horror, and more from big names and big names to be - made just for WEBTOON. We’re available anywhere, anytime, and always for free’. A sort of specialised version of YouTube?

Commerical news

Quick tour of town centre at around noon this morning to see what use businesses there are making of their last year of the Open Christmas Directive, that is to say Council Directive 2008/56/EC. What has the blond bomber in store for us on that front?

Wetherspoon's open. Marquis open, possibly only for those taking lunch. Café Rouge looked open. McDonald's, rather to my surprise, shut. ASK shut. Everywhere else shut, including the gates to the Ashley Centre.

Convenience store at the beginning of East Street, opposite the Rifleman, open.

Newly reopened restaurant in what had been the Elvis tribute restaurant in what had been the Plough & Harrow in East Street, open, with what appeared to be a couple of staff taking lunch before they got underway. Possibly the owners.

Screwfix shut. On what might have been a boom day for them, with all those DIY types getting into trouble with their Christmas presents to themselves - of which trouble I believe there is a great deal. Good day for emergency plumbers, electricians and such like.

Convenience store in Pound Lane, open.

The New Model Blenheim did not make it, although there were people there and it looked finished from the outside. The front door in the new porch struck me as rather flimsy; lets hope the second line of defence is something more substantial. And, oddly, no sign saying when it will be open. And no signs of life either in the Greene King official pub finder.

While the driver of the recovery vehicle snapped above looked to be snoozing the day away behind the curtains, hoping for some fat salvage at some point. Almost a brand new vehicle, with just the odd scratch on the front bumper. See reference 1 for this company and reference 2 for the last one.

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

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/04/scavenger.html.

Breaking news

Lunch yesterday consisted of fried white pudding (sliced) with boiled vegetables. Followed by baked apples, with cores replaced by brick dates and probably some brown sugar as well.

Tea mainly consisted of the new Dundee cake.

The fruit turned out to have sunk somewhat, suggesting to BH that it should perhaps have been a desert spoon of milk at the end, rather than a table spoon. See reference 1.

The crumb was much darker than last time, rather darker than it appears in the snap included above. This may be the result of using raisins rather than the sultanas the recipe had called for. Perhaps with more experience, I would have known better, I would have known that it made a difference. Or it may be the result of longer cooking, with BH remembering my fussing about opening the oven to inspect from time to time last time, which I did not do this time. Maybe two and a half rather than nearly three hours?

And the crumb this time was not crumbly, in the way it was last time. More the texture of a supermarket cake rather than that of a cake shop cake. Was that the result of the extra soda-bic?

Current thinking is that I liked it better last time around, but we shall see. Still got a way to go with this one.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/dundee-cake.html. Assembly.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/07/sugar-fix-consumed.html. Last time around.

Back to the Falcon

Having reclaimed the Falcon on the Monday, noticed at reference 1, back there the following day for a second helping.

The Network Rail Journey Planner, having held up pretty well through the strike until that point, had a bad day on Tuesday. Perhaps the landslip near Epsom was the straw that broke that camel's back. In any event, the timetable it offered was some way from the facts on the ground, at least on the ground at Epsom. Notwithstanding, a train to Victoria turned up shortly after I did, and I was carried off to Clapham Junction in short order. A rather crowded train, lending credence to the theory that more people come to Epsom during the working day than go away.

St. John's Hill

Pneumatiques

To the point where I was a little early, so I took a stroll down St. John's Road, to find it far more London flavoured than Epsom. Part of the big town, rather than just another suburb. I had thought that there used to be market stalls, but nothing about street markets that Bing or Google could find. So perhaps there were just the odd few. But they did turn up a nice heritage shot of St. John's Hill, with the Falcon just about visible left, opposite Arding & Hobbs (as was) and a nice picture of the communications control room in Arding & Hobbs. I can just about remember shops which had such things, while Simenon talks of pneumatiques in Paris, so they must have had a town-wide, rather than a shop-wide system. See reference 2 for some heritage material thereon.

Old-style shop fitting, complete with brown metal

New-style shop fitting, faux warehouse

Punditry on same

I was intrigued by the new warehouse/market format which M&S had introduced into their Clapham Junction store, while leaving some of the old fascia in place at the margins. Note the curved glass - these days more or less extinct. Never mind the trickily curved glass used to reduce reflections from window displays in provincial department stores. Perhaps I need to take BH to Clapham to keep her on-message. Google offers lots more pictures if you ask for 'm&s clapham junction'

Spanish ham

And then one of those expensive ham shops, not the same as, but very similar to the one noticed at reference 3, more than a year ago now - and I had thought that it was this summer. Very few charity shops, so a street which was well and truly alive. The only weak point was that the branch of CEX did very little in the way of ITV3 DVDs: plenty of horror, violence, sex and 'Game of Thrones' but very little Marple or Poirot.

And so back into the Falcon, where I was pleased to be able to take a couple of seats at the side bar, tucked up against the partition separating it from the snug.

Cockroach?

Conversation started with consideration of whether the bar could truly be called continuous, given that while physically continuous, parts of it were colonised by restaurant gear and service was only available from the front part. We then wondered about the optical train inside a projector, the sort which projects your computer screen onto the wall - without getting very far. I reminisced about the chap I used to work with, whose name I could not call to mind, who smoked expensive cigarettes and whose father had been an exponent of the art of public house cut and engraved glass, quite a bit of which was to be seen around us. I forgot what came after that, except that towards the end of the evening a large bug - with a body maybe a bit more than half an inch long - crept across our part of the bar. Cortana, for once did not do very well, being outgunned by the not so brilliant effort from some other telephone, included above. I trapped whatever it was under an empty wine glass and presented it to one of the barmen, who clearly knew far too much about such things as he neatly slid a bit of card under the glass and carried the bug off for inspection by management. I would imagine that it is hard to get rid of such things altogether in a building which is well over a hundred years old, complete with lots of brown wood wainscoting and such like to hide behind and breed in.

A reasonable proportion of the people who had been there when I arrived were still there when we left. I thought that this was a good sign. And I was lucky with my train. And I managed to remember both to take my umbrella home and to take my warfarin when I got home. All those brain waves in one evening - the afternoon snooze had paid dividends.

PS 1: this afternoon I asked Bing about projector optical trains and get nowhere. Google, however, turns up a helpful Powerpoint from the SIM university in Singapore. See reference 4. Lots of good tutorial stuff about image processing generally - as well as explaining that the general scheme is that the computer puts the picture on a small screen inside the box which is then translated, more or less in the way of a fancy epidiascope, onto a large, remote screen.

Reference 5

Reference 6

PS 2: much later: the following morning, that is to say early Wednesday morning, I asked Bing about the curved glass shop windows which did not reflect. This was not much good, so I asked Google. Who could not turn up any good pictures, but it did turn up a couple of books, references 5 and 6, both probably lifted from some obscure library or other, which clearly knew about the stuff. Part of the Google project to digitise every book in the world; a project which I believe eventually collapsed amid copyright problems. With other search results suggest that getting rid of reflections from the sheets of glass in front of displays is now more a matter of cunning coatings, than of cunning curvings.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/12/pain-one.html.

Reference 2: http://www.douglas-self.com/MUSEUM/COMMS/pneumess/pneumess.htm.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/11/ham-and-cheese.html.

Reference 4: Fundamentals of Projection Technology - Alen Koebel - 2014.

Reference 5: Establishing and operating an apparel store - Zelma Bendure - 1946.

Reference 6: Popular Mechanics Magazine - H.H. Windsor - December 1913. A wonderful collection of stuff - both the articles themselves and their advertisement wrappings. Brought to my laptop by the power of Google.

Trolley 353

The trolleys in the Ashmore passage included, for a change, five trolleys from Waitrose. I didn't fancy pushing five with all the shoppers about, so I invested a pound coin to separate the top three from the bottom two.

Got them to Waitrose OK, but then failed to get them into the stack. I was poking around inside, trying to find out what the blockage was, when the Waitrose trolley jockey gently suggested that perhaps sir would like to try the other stack, the one with the regular rather than the large trolleys. Blockage cleared and pound coin recovered.

A mistake I make reasonably often. Perhaps the varying sizes across the various shops with trolleys make it easy to confuse large regular trolleys with small economy trolleys.

I thought two batches was enough. The rest left for another day or another collector.

Trolley 352

A lot of trolleys in the Ashmore passage this morning. So the three trolleys from the M&S food hall made up the first of the two batches I returned.

Pain one

Someone or something suggested that I attend a Christmas conference about pain, put on in what used to be the BBC headquarters in the Aldwych, aka Bush House, by the British Neuroscience Association, for which see references 1 and 2. Not sure that I was good for a whole day of this sort of thing, but at £30 or so including refreshments - including wine if I lasted that long - it seemed too good to miss. And last Monday was the day.

The Bullingdons

An overcast, cool morning and for some reason I was late starting, so accepted a lift to the station. Abandoned the lift in a queue on West Hill, to reach the station just about the same time as it did. Spurned the M&S food hall trolley next to the free cash machine (the only one of the three in the vicinity which is still free) and pushed on into the ticket hall to find that there had been a landslip somewhere on the town side of Epsom and that there were, in consequence no trains to Waterloo. Opted for a Victoria train, which would maybe get me there in time.

For about half the journey a chap across the aisle was making loud and irritating phone calls to colleagues about work.

Housing estate?

There seemed to be a very large housing estate going up outside Hackbridge Station, probably what looks like brownfield below the proposed Lidl in the snap from Google above. Much larger than anything I have ever seen under construction in Epsom, although we do have some large, former council estates in the borough, built well before our arrival. And we do have some brownfield, although nothing that I know of that is as big as this one.

Changed at Clapham Junction to get a train to Waterloo. Now running late. Took the last Bullingdon from the bottom of the ramp and headed off across Waterloo Bridge to find the various stands in the Aldwych were full and had to park up Kingsway. Access denied at what had been the front door to Bush House and so walked around to the back door, where I managed to trip over to a flat down on entry, attracting the attention of various concerned ladies. Luckily no damage done on this occasion. They had some trouble finding my delegate's badge and suggested that maybe I was really for colorectal, which I declined, and eventually found my badge myself. About ten minutes late by this time, but no trouble about sneaking into the back of the near full lecture theatre which had been contrived in what had, presumably, once been one of the grand rooms. The only bad news was that there was a woman, no longer young, clicking away into her laptop more or less the whole time. It might have been more considerate either to turn off the click (which I believe is an option) or to take her notes with paper and pencil.

The conference

The promised keynote speaker - Joanna Bourke - could not make it at the last minute, but a stand in did pretty well, considering. And I shall be noticing the content of the conference proper in due course. In the meantime, down to the entrance hall for a spot of lunch, in the form of vegetarian, but quite good sandwiches. The idea was that one was supposed to stand with one's sandwiches and mingle, but I was never much good at that sort of thing, and managed to find what seemed to be the only bench, where I was joined by some other oldies. Where we talked about the propensity of (single track) conference goers to take the same seat in the auditorium for each session.

Did my sandwiches and decided that the next move was to nip up to Covent Garden and buy some cheese for Christmas - Lincolnshire Poacher naturally. Grabbed a Bullingdon outside and nipped up Drury Lane to find the stands I usually use there full. So for the first time ever, parked the Bullingdon outside the shop in Short's Gardens while I bought my cheese. From a position by the door from where I could keep an eye on the Bullingdon. And so back to Bush House, with cheese, in under 20 minutes. I was very impressed with myself.

Did the first shift in the afternoon, from a rather better seat on the other side of the hall, but decided against going right through the day and abandoned ship at that point.

Back on the ramp with the last Bullingdon of the day

Back to Waterloo to find that strike and landslip still ruled, so took a train to Clapham Junction, where I thought to pay a visit to the famous Falcon while waiting for a suitable train to Epsom. The place with the longest continuous bar in the land. They also serve wine in proper wine glasses with thin stems and properly thin rims.

I think there is another ceiling of this sort in or around Balham

Brown wood and Escher

Island bar one, not that much changed over the years

Island bar two

The sign just visible in the second of the snaps above claims that M.C. Escher (1898-1972) was involved in the design of the bar counter, which went on to win a mention in the Guinness Book of Records as the longest bar in the country. While the Wikipedia entry for Escher suggests that what time he did not spend in the Netherlands was mainly spent in southern Europe. So how does one check such a claim? Why would such a person need to be involved anyway, publicity stunt apart?

I managed to restrain myself from telling the bar staff that I had been using the place since before they were born, which might just about have been true. Nevertheless, it remains a grand boozer. Not many such left these days.

Out to almost score a three from platform 15, with the third aeroplane only being visible by virtue of its headlights when the first aeroplane dropped below the horizon.

Imperial war museum version

Army surplus website version

Having held my tongue in the Falcon, I managed, on the train to Epsom, to tell a young lady with long finger nails, while she was undoing a tricky knot with the point of a biro, that what she needed was a proper army knife, complete with spike. She managed to be gracious about my intervention. The second snap, said to be of a knife from the 1950's is the very thing, if a little more unkempt than mine.

Home to reflect on how being flustered and late increases the risk of accident.

Reference 1: https://www.bna.org.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.bna.org.uk/mediacentre/news/bna-xmas-symposium-2019-1/. Works at the time of writing, but probably not for very long.

Reference 3: https://mcescher.com/.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/M._C._Escher.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Falcon,_Battersea.