Changing the guard

Back to the Blenheim for lunch earlier in the week to find that they had run out of Sauvignon Blanc and that there had been another change of table waiting staff.

So we had to make do with an Australian Chardonnay instead. Which served well enough, I am pleased to be able to say. According to the web site (reference 1): 'An all-time popular varietal, [yellow tail] Chardonnay has a rich creamy finish while being silky smooth and easy to drink. Flavour: rich and vibrant, with fresh peach and melon flavours and a hint of vanilla. Enjoy: with roast chicken or a picnic in the park'. A web site which does not come with arty snaps of mist drifting across the fields of grapes but does come with some entertaining family snaps.

Snaps for which the underlying html must be slightly tricky as the snaps visibly wobble against the yellow background as you click the zoom button in Microsoft Edge. In any event, a Sicilian family who have clearly done very well in the fifty years or so since they started making wine.

While our waiter without face mask had morphed into a waitress with. And we had to ask for the sheet on which to log our presence. Signs of relaxation.

Stuck with waggyburger (also known as Wagyu) for him and fish and chips for her. Entirely satisfactory.

During the proceedings we were able to inspect the shiny new dustcart attending to the dustbins. A foreign dustcart from the people at reference 2, from which we deduce that the Dutch are muscling in to the once proud UK waste management industry. A dustcart to meet every possible need, with electrical and hybrid options.

Towards the end of the proceedings we were presented with a vegetable marrow by an acquaintance of long standing, not seen to talk to for some years now. As it happened, BH had a couple of portions of some tomato flavoured beef mince in the freezer, so a day or so later, the marrow was sliced lengthwise and baked with a mince stuffing. Very good it was too, and as a young marrow, eaten with the skin on. Probably served with cabbage, although I can no longer remember what sort of cabbage.

Glasses by Leightons. People who offer serious eye doctors as part of the service. From whom I learned that the Italians have a stranglehold on the spectacle frame business if not the spectacle lens business.

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

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

Reference 3: https://www.leightons.co.uk/.

Jam

The blackberry jelly, which surfaced at reference 1, is now scheduled for some time next week. In the meantime, BH thought she would get her hand in with a handful of damsons which fell off a neighbour's tree onto our back garden path. Perhaps to be taken with a spot of good cheddar, that is to say Lincolnshire Poacher?

A long time since I felled the damson tree at the bottom of our garden, on the mutually contradictory grounds that it had got too big to get at the damsons to pick and that there was a fairly low limit to the amount of damsons which one could consume. Still sending up suckers.

More recently, I have picked damsons round and about in Epsom, for example along Mill Road, off Upper High Street. See reference 2.

PS: following the rare blip in Google's blog search noticed earlier this morning at reference 3, gmail has been playing up today, with maybe a couple of dozen emails having gone missing from the social and promotions tabs when I logged on this morning. Some of them came back quite quickly, the rest of them a few hours later. This despite my having taken recovery action with some of the important ones, action which might have disturbed their (that is to say, Google's) recovery action. I was forcefully reminded of how one comes to rely on email boxes behaving themselves: I, for example, use my primary tab as a place to keep reminders about things that I have bought or things that I need to attend to at some point. Reminders which I really do want to stay put. While having to change my email address is quite unthinkable. It is just plugged into so much stuff. Not least the people from whom I buy my Lincolnshire Poacher.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/blackberry-jam.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=damson.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/tls.html.

TLS

The Murdoch headquarters in London

This by way of follow up of the advertisement of purchase of a TLS at reference 1.

Overall, very disappointing. Apart from the irritating change of format, very little to interest me. 

The change of format looks to me to be an effort to be more popular in appearance. To be more like the Times and the rest of the gang in the Murdoch portfolio. That is to say, as far as I can make out, the TLS has always been and remains part of the the Times group, unlike, for example, the TES which Wikipedia says was sold off at some point. The TLS itself is rather coy about ownership, but one of the contact addresses given on their website is the News UK (reference 4) headquarters in London Bridge Street snapped above. So perhaps the only road goes downhill.

One small item of interest was in a letter, from which I learn that Beethoven's Kreuzter Sonata was originally dedicated to one George Bridgetower, probably of mixed Bajan (that is to say, a person from Barbados) and German parentage. A child prodigy who as an adult could actually play the difficult violin part of this sonata, but who fell out with Beethoven and lost the dedication. As usual, Wikipedia in on the case at reference 5.

A larger item of interest was a piece by Mary Beard, of whom I usually disapprove on the grounds that she is far too fond of being on television for an academic, about the book by Fergus Millar noticed at reference 6. Her complaint seems to be that the focus of the book on the bureaucratic side of a Roman's emperors's life is far too narrow. Furthermore, Millar was mistaken in deliberately refusing to look at other work on modern dictatorships or that on any of the many other examples of one man rule from around the world.

She may be right, but as it happens I was recently prompted by something, I forget what, to buy the DVD of the 1960 Taylor-Burton film 'Cleopatra', on which the IMDB take is to be found at reference 7. Very long at five or six hours - no idea how this was managed in a cinema - but we managed in three or four sittings. And not as bad as some of the snooty reviews we came across would have one believe. And it was all the better for being made in the relatively coy early 1960's, so no need for lashings of unnecessary sex and violence. The four stars - Harrison, Taylor, Burton and McDowall all knew their stuff, at least most of the time.

The present relevance being that Julius Caesar is often portrayed as the good guy while Augustus is often portrayed as the bad guy, very unattractive by comparison. But this was not how it seemed to the people of the time: Caesar was an arrogant showman who wanted to be king, while Augustus knew how to get along with people. How to pretend to be a servant of Senate and people, of the res publica, while actually being a hereditary, absolute monarch. And he reigned for a long time, even managing to die in his bed, a trick not always managed, be one ever so absolute.

There is an interesting piece at the end of the Millar book, 'From Pompey to Constantine', about this very matter. About how the Latins of Rome were oddly out of step with most of the rest of the Roman world, mostly Greek flavoured, where kings were normal and respected.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/an-italian-flavoured-sunday.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=tls.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/lost.html. Hitherto, the blog search button top left has been very reliable, producing, for example, posts which meet the search criteria more or less immediately after they have been posted. But this morning, I fail to work out why this item appears in the search at reference 2 above. No TLS that I can find.

Reference 4: https://www.news.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Bridgetower.

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/reprieved.html.

Reference 7: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0056937/.

Teamwork

Figure 1

An outing prompted by the piece at reference 1 in a newsletter from an outfit called Neuwrite West, with the main course being the paper at reference 2.

With this last being concerned with how global graph theoretical properties of the networks derived from fMRI scans of human brains interact with the performance of the owners of those brains on mainly cognitive tasks, while inside the scanner. Near 500 owners, drawn from the Human Connectome Project of reference 5. A paper which I have spent some time with – although not enough to be able to say that I have read it.

With the graph theoretical properties in question being about the extent to which the nodes of the graph can be usefully considered as a collection of communities, about the strength of the connections within those communities and the strength of the connections between them. The existence of local hubs serving connections within communities and connector hubs serving connections between communities. All of which might be encapsulated in the term ‘modularity’. With the wiring cost, for which the total length of all the connections is a proxy, being an important consideration: all that wiring is expensive to build and expensive to service. 

Large computer programs, for what it is worth, are very modular: modularity is the only way to keep complexity under control. Deep modularity too, rather than the one level of modularity under consideration here.

The conclusion of the paper appears to be, that in common with many other complex systems, particularly living ones or the dead ones built by humans, modularity in brains is both present and important. Quite apart from what it is exactly that the individual modules are doing and how well they are doing it. Furthermore, failures in performance can be reliably predicted from failures in modularity. One supposes that such failures in modularity might easily be the product of local damage to the brain, damage to an important connector hub, the sort of damage caused by, for example, strokes, although the present paper does not go into that.

The scanning

The scans used in this work were taken from the Human Connectome Project of references 5, 6 and 7 – with plenty more material waiting to be found out there. 

I think the idea was that each subject was in the scanner for a couple of sessions of a couple of hours each. For some of this time they were doing tasks, tasks based on the batteries of psychological tests developed over the years, adapted from use inside the rather confined space available inside a noisy scanner. While keeping the head still, I think by use of a bite bar. 

Tasks which were organised, for present purposes into four categories: working memory, relational, language & maths, social reasoning. Details of this sort of thing are to be found at reference 8. Four categories which involve rather different parts of the brain.

Scans are done a slice at a time with perhaps 50 slices making up a three dimensional image of a head. It might take 2 or three seconds to build such an image. They are grouped into blocks, with the whole of a block being given to one of the four tasks. It may well be that more than one block is given to any one task, which would reduce the amount of information going into any one analysis, but would also provide a check of replicability. 

Quite a lot of work has to be done on the raw data before it can be used, work which might be called pre-processing, for example to make allowance for the fact that the data which goes into the image of a head has been collected over a small number of seconds, while one wants to think of it as having been collected at a point in time, a point in a time series. I do not know where the boundary between the scanner and the computer used by the authors of the present paper, reference 2, lies. On the other hand, I don’t think that matters for present purposes.

A box model

 

Figure 2 - click to enlarge for legibility

A good part of the argument rests on a demonstration of a relatively simple model predicting task performance from a small number of statistics derived from the 264 node network derived in turn from the series of scans made while the task was going on. This is suggested by the three green boxes bottom right in the figure above.

While the line of five big blue boxes top right is intended to be suggestive of the huge amount of computation that has to be done to get to those statistics from the scans of an individual engaged in some task. Computation which does not have any regard for exactly what it is that the brain is doing, although to be fair, arriving at the 264 nodes used in this work did have regard to the anatomy of the brain, if not its functions. This arrival is described by Power and his colleagues at reference 3.

The two group of red boxes are intended to be suggestive of the move from the voxels left – perhaps one or two millimetre cubes – carrying a signal through time, through a slice of time, to the nodes right connected by weighted edges, with the weights of those edges being a measure of the correlation in time of the signals at the two endpoints, with the two endpoints of each edge being suggested by the two arrows – a common enough device among IT people. And with those nodes being organised into communities – that is to say, the one level of modularity mentioned above. So the right hand red structure is quite different conceptually from the left hand red structure from which it is derived: a move from a series of images in time to a weighted graph.

The set of nodes with lots of edges is sometimes called the rich club, the club from which local hubs are drawn. While the set of nodes with connections to lots of communities is sometimes called the diverse club, the club from which connector hubs are drawn. Typically, few if any nodes are in both clubs.

Nodes have positions derived from those of the voxels from which they are derived. Positions which can be projected from three dimensional space onto a cortical plane and which are often used in graphics.

These nodes are arranged in a functional network, a network which will vary with both subject and function, in this case task. I have not yet learned anything about this variation, beyond its existence.

Note also that these 264 nodes are standing for around 20 billion neurons, 100 billion if one includes the rather dense cerebellum at the back. So each node is capable of doing an awful lot of work. There is an awful lot going on under the hood.

With the point of all this being that this relatively simple model – that is to say the three green boxes – built from a small number of Perceptrons (see reference 11), arranged in a small number of layers – so qualifying as ‘deep’ – can predict something about task performance from the distillation of those scans into a very small number of statistics about the modularity of the derived network of nodes. 

Some comments

I am not qualified to comment on whether the conclusions of this paper are warranted, although I do find them both plausible and interesting. And I associate to the weight put by Tononi & Koch in the pairing of, the tension between integration and differentiation which figures large in their paper at reference 10.

And digging into the paper and following the various Bing (or Google) trails turned up plenty of interest. The claim, for example, that good ways to modularise networks are intimately linked with minimum length descriptions of paths through those networks, with this last having been a important area of research for getting on for a century. A claim which is expounded in an accessible way at reference 4.

I was also reminded of an observation by FIL in connection with a pamphlet about the institutional treatment – that is to say in mental hospitals – of mental disorder in the UK: a very good summary for those who were already well informed. Not so much use for those who were not. In this case, I was at first completely baffled by the introduction to something or other but rather impressed with it after I had done my homework.

But the takeaway for today is teamwork. That the breath of knowledge needed to produce work of this sort is unlikely to be available in one head. One needs lots of cooks to make this particular broth – and the cooks are going to have to learn how to get on with each other if they want to make serious progress. They will also need to know how to sell themselves to the people that hold the purse strings. But in any event, the role for one-man-bands has shrunk and continues to shrink.

So to properly understand this work and its implications, never mind do the work in the first place, one needs to know about:

Graph theory, with particular reference to the clustering of nodes of large networks into communities. Noting in passing, that for present purposes, a complete graph in which every node is equally connected to every other node is as uninformative as a null graph in which there are nodes but no connections. As so often, one wants something in-between.

Statistics. This paper is, for example, thick with Pearson’s correlation coefficients.

Systems. It probably helps to be familiar with systems theory in general. The theory of behaviour of large and complex systems. Not to say dynamical systems.

Brain scanning. How fMRI scans work – bearing in mind that for perhaps as much as £500,000 you are getting a lot of machinery. What are the problems and limitations? In which connection I was pleased to come across the undated reference 9.

How you map the brain scan of one person onto a standard atlas so that you can work with scans of more than one person at a time, or with scans from the same person at different times.

How you reduce perhaps hundreds of thousands of fMRI voxels into something a bit more tractable, in this case 264 nodes (a number suspiciously close to two raised to the power of eight, itself two raised to the power of three. Which would be a very numerological number, otherwise 256).

The human connectome project, HCP (references 5, 6 and 7).

Psychological testing (reference 8).

Maybe, in time, things will settle down. The framework within which we talk about all this will be settled and well-documented. There will be consensus about what works and what does not and we will be able to take much more on trust. But I don’t think we have got to that point quite yet.

One also worries about quality control. Given the range of skills going into this work and that doing stuff is much more fun than checking the work of others, is the quality control there? Mindful here of having, in the past, heard of reports of the woeful standard of statistics in some psychological work.

References

Reference 1a: A brief history of our language for the brain: Vocabulary, dictionary, and poetry – Ellie Beam – 2020.

Reference 1b: http://www.neuwritewest.org/blog/a-brief-history-of-our-language-for-the-brain. The location of reference 1a and the source of the snap above.

Reference 2: A mechanistic model of connector hubs, modularity, and cognition - Bertolero, M.A., Yeo, B.T.T., Bassett, D.S. & D’Esposito, M.D. – 2018.

Reference 3: Functional Network Organization of the Human Brain - Power, J. D. et al. – 2011.

Reference 4: The map equation – M. Rosvall, D. Axelsson and C. T. Bergstrom – 2009. 

Reference 5: http://www.humanconnectomeproject.org/. 

Reference 6: WU-Minn HCP 1200 Subjects Data Release Reference Manual – Human Connectome Project – 2017.

Reference 7: The WU-Minn Human Connectome Project: An overview - David C.Van Essen and others – 2013. ‘The Human Connectome Project consortium led by Washington University, University of Minnesota, and Oxford University is undertaking a systematic effort to map macroscopic human brain circuits and their relationship to behavior in a large population of healthy adults’. 

Reference 8: NIH Toolbox brochure – Northwestern University and collaborators – 2017.

Reference 9a: Glossary of MRI [and fMRI] Terms – American College of Radiology – 2010?

Reference 9b: https://www.acr.org/-/media/ACR/Files/Radiology-Safety/MR-Safety/MRGlossary.pdf?la=en. The location of reference 9a.

Reference 10: Consciousness: here, there and everywhere - Tononi & Koch – 2015. 

Reference 11: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Perceptron. 

A watering event

Fatsia of Wikipedia

The brick compost bin is near full, with all the autumn leaves to come. So emptying during the autumn is clearly indicated, with the idea being to bank it up behind the fence behind the new daffodil bed, perhaps providing some nutrients for the under-performing now-not-so-new bed. A fence which started out as a now elderly picket fence, but which, earlier this year, was reinforced with the steel mesh panels originally bought to stop small people falling into our small ponds. The idea is that, the (new small) box bush plan having been defeated by the combination of drought and caterpillar, ivy will grow up both pickets and steel, holding the whole lot together.

The compost bin is under trees and it takes a lot of rain for it to get really wet. So I thought it might speed up rotting down if I added some water to the mix. To which end I varied the up-legs of this morning's brick walk to give the compost 20 gallons. Hopefully a reasonable contribution to the rotting down of what might be as much as a cubic metre of mostly green garden waste.

Plus two gallons on each of the new yew bushes, planted to replace the (old large) box chopped down last year. See, for example, reference 4.

Plus two gallons on the spotted laurel, not doing too well underneath the ash tree, despite its robust performance in planters outside public houses.

Plus two gallons on the fatsia next to the spotted laurel. Not doing very well this year at all. Not nearly as well as the offering from Wikipedia at reference 5.

One gallon for every brick.

Not the kind of watering I usually go in for. The idea being that plants in the my part of the garden have to manage without that kind of attention, which most of them, to be fair, do.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/new-wheeze.html. Panels bought.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/02/new-purpose.html. Panels installed.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/pondemonium-revisited.html. Panels flooded.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/caterpillar-control-episode-2.html.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fatsia.

Third blackberries

The 2020 harvest continued this afternoon at the junction of Horton Lane and Christchurch Road.

Lots of ripe berries, mostly quite large. I even ate some of them, a first this year. And there will be lots more of them in a few days. Tub filled, lidded and awaiting the attentions of the tray freezer. All in the space of about twenty minutes. Even had time for a spot of brick carrying after.

On the other side of  the hedge, that is to say to the right in this snap, an aural tweet of a bird. A bird with steady bursts of chirps, perhaps 15 or 20 to the burst. Very distinctive. He or she kept it up for a while and while I could see the odd bit of movement through the hedge, I never got to see, never mind tweet, the bird in question; very frustrating.

While down the path, we had chain saw action at the pile of logs noticed at reference 1. But it was not one of the chain saw volunteers, just a young man chopping some logs down so that he could load them into his trailer. Tow car just visible above. Then away home with them to chop them into domestic sized chunks, which he said he was going to sell door to door. While I had thought he was one of the charcoal merchants last noticed at reference 2, prepping some timber for the charcoal boiler. I thought it best not to ask to see his title to forage.

And then, just a few minutes ago, a possible tweet of a bat on the other side of the leylandii outside our back extension. Just about the right time for a bit of aerial grazing before the fliers shut down for the night.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/horton-lane-clockwise.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-black-error.html.

Bureaucratic regulations

A once common sight

I was struck by a piece in the FT yesterday (reference 1) about oil seed rape, the stuff which we use to make a lot of our cooking oil and a lot of our margarine.

It seems that the EU has been progressively banning the use of things called neonicotinoid pesticides because of the damage they do to honey bees - the decline of which is a source of major concern: no honey bees and all kinds of food crops will be in trouble. See references 3 and 4.

On the other hand, no neonicotinoid pesticides means lots of cabbage stem flea beetles in the oil seed rape causing a great deal of damage there (reference 2). To the extent that the crop in the UK is not much more than half what it used to be. And to make up the difference we are importing the stuff from places like the Ukraine who are not (yet) bothered about bees and are continuing to use the pesticides.

What will the Johnson response to all this be? Do he love honey bees more than he hates meddling regulations from foreigners from Brussels? What will all the cronies he has been promoting to the higher reaches think about it all? What would have the Corbyn response have been?

I suppose the lefty eco response has to be that we just have to eat less. To make do with less rape seed oil. Which fits in well with concerns about obesity.

PS: my guess is that eating and drinking are two of the things that people are doing more of in lockdown. At least the people that can afford it. We are all getting fatter! And having more babies. At least that is free - at least at the beginning.

Reference 1: Rapeseed decline raises post-Brexit fears for UK farmers: EU pesticide ban points to potential flashpoint in trade talks over food import standards - Judith Evans - 2020. FT, 28th July.

Reference 2: https://ahdb.org.uk/knowledge-library/cabbage-stem-flea-beetle.

Reference 3: https://phys.org/news/2020-07-decline-bees-pollinators-threatens-crop.html.

Reference 4: Crop production in the USA is frequently limited by a lack of pollinators - J. R. Reilly and others - 2020. RSPSB.

Second blackberries

Original snap

Zoomed in, near the top

Out early and full of beans today, so on the way back from Jubilee Way, called in at the entrance to Hook Road Arena for a second pick this morning. The place which I had intended to pick yesterday. Yesterday's first pick being noticed at reference 1.

Lots of berries. Very big and ripe at the first stand, rather smaller at the second. Presumably a different variety. Now trayed up and in the freezer.

Plants mixed in, at the margins, with convolvulus, dog rose and nettles. Plus quite a lot of the blue flowers which can be seen top middle in the second snap above. Identification will a job for this evening. In the meantime, impressed by how well zoom does, in this case by a factor of 10, according to Microsoft Photos.

I still regret not buying the Oxford handbook to the blackberry family, that is to say the rubus genus (or possibly sub-genus), listing, as I recall, a couple of hundred varieties of blackberry. But the shop in question wanted a realistic price, perhaps £20 rather than a charity shop price, so I desisted, despite it being a proper botanists' book, full of careful line drawings of said couple of hundred varieties.

A quick search of the OUP site and that of Abebooks reveals nothing. Ebay does much better with a variety of learned blackberry books, mostly, for some reason, in German. But nothing like the book I have in mind, a book with pale blue dust jacket, dark blue hard cover, about six inches by four and getting on for two inches thick. Very curious.

As well as blackberries, the arena was also host to some swallows, swooping over the expanse of perhaps recently mown grass. Not that they ever let it get very long; more recreation ground than meadow. The first swallows I have seen for a while.

PS: the blackberry references in Wikipedia were not very helpful. But they did include reference 2, all about my birthday, it seems the last day on which it is proper to pick blackberries. Something to do with a bit of Irish wisdom to the effect that 'On Michaelmas Day the devil puts his foot on blackberries'. Perhaps blackberries are in season on the other island a good deal later in the year than they are on this one.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/first-blackberries.html.

Reference 2: https://www.historic-uk.com/CultureUK/Michaelmas/.

An Italian flavoured Sunday

Lasagne was planned, so on Saturday down to town to see what Waitrose had to offer.

First stop, Grape Tree, to find that the figs from Demos (of reference 1) have gone missing and I settled for some wet figs, at about the same price on a three for two offer. Tasted OK in small quantities, but an odd aftertaste after a while. Maybe it was the preservative which had been added during the rehydration process - the very small print explaining that wet figs are made by wetting dry figs. Need to find another source for dry figs.

Second stop, Waitrose, to find that cherries only came in very small boxes at £2 a box, with the shelves for cherries not being the only ones which were a bit bare, this being late afternoon. Had three of them. Large, very dark and a little overripe to my taste - I was even moved to put them in the refrigerator overnight, not something I usually both with with fruit and vegetables. But OK, and all done by close Sunday.

To find also that the TLS has changed its format. Possibly some months ago. as I don't buy it very often these days. First impressions not good, but further report will follow in due course.

On the table

In the shed

A bottle of  2015 Barolo to go with the lasagne. From Terre del Barolo of reference 2, of Castiglione Falleto, a small place maybe 30 miles south of Turin, as much to the east of the fag end of the alps. Possibly part of some kind of cooperative, in any event a thriving operation if Street View is anything to go by, with a large new shed under construction to the right of the one shown here. I was amused to see bottom left that they do musical evenings, just like a stately home or a vineyard over here. Think Denbies of reference 3.

The lasagne went down very well, possibly finishing it in one sitting. The first sip of Barolo was a little bitter, but after that it went down very well. This may have been my restaurant wine tasting problem - which means this is a task which I delegate - or it may have been due to my having had a spot of sauvignon blanc by way of apéritif. But all's well that ends well.

I even won at Scrabble.

PS 1: the last bottle of Barolo, from Waitrose but a different brand, was taken some months ago, at the end of last September. It went down well too, on that occasional with a traditional English dish. But it did still involve mince plus carbohydrate. Noticed at reference 4.

PS 2: both the vineyards referenced below have chosen to have swathes of mist featured on their home page. Perhaps the wine marketing people know something I don't.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/warf-day.html.

Reference 2: https://terredelbarolo.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.denbies.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/shin.html.

Blackberry jam

Talking about matters blackberry after the post at reference 1, BH reminded me that there was indeed something called bramble jelly. I guess I had rather blocked it out in favour of crab apple jelly, of which we used to make a good deal when I was young, having a reliable crab apple tree in our front garden, and of which I was rather fond. In the season we did maybe a small, 12oz pot a day. But ask Bing about it and he comes up with all kinds of stuff. It seems that all the big supermarkets sell it, all the big jam brands make it. Not to mention the artisan brands. And the fancy chefs.

Furthermore, according to reference 2, you don't need anything extra in the way of an E-number to make the jelly set. I had thought that maybe some pectin would be needed - either in the form of cooking apples or in that of something you buy from a health food store - as you do for strawberry jam. But, no, according to reference 2, just blackberries and sugar. Maybe we shall give it a try: I imagine it would be quite strong, but maybe it would be good on hot, buttered (white) toast - or even with cheese and biscuits in the way of manchego with quince jelly, as served in the better tapas joints, maybe somewhere like Tapas Brindisa in Borough.

On the other hand, while Amazon offers lots of pots of jam, ebay makes me the rather dear offer snapped above. I shall need to consult on what on earth the stuff might be for. The wonders of search engines! The clue for both Amazon and ebay being 'bramble jelly'.

PS: later: I now have the answer. A raw material for people who make quilts, with quilting being a big hobby in the US.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/first-blackberries.html.

Reference 2: https://www.cuisinefiend.com/416/bramble-jelly.

First blackberries

Following advertisement in the post at reference 1, the first blackberries of the season were collected this morning, near but not at the place advertised.

The place. Arena to the right

The left hand hedge has grown a bit in the eight years since Google went by.

The start of the first stand

The berries still on bushes in this snap look pretty red. But there were plenty of black ones too.

The end of the second stand

 

Berries rather smaller on the second stand, but there were still plenty of them. The whole pick took around half an hour.  Spread out to near three baking trays for the purposes of freezing - but that is in the BH department.

The end of the 2019 harvest

As it happened, BH thought it appropriate to finish off the 2019 harvest, by way of stewed apple and blackberry to follow today's potato pie. A very good pie as it happens, with very little left for grazing between meals. But not a very good snap; something wrong with the lighting.

Stewed apple and blackberry probably accounts for the vast majority of our blackberries, either by themselves or with a crumble topping. Too strong to eat neat, except perhaps in the form of jam, which we don't do. Have never done as far as I can remember. Maybe there would be a problem getting the stuff to set.

The first time, as I recall, that one season's blackberries lasted until the next season's started coming in. Usually about a month's interval between the two.

PS: I don't recall picking a lot of blackberries as a child. Maybe we had enough garden produce not to need hedgerow produce. But I do recall stories of my father's family picking blackberries in the lanes of Hemingford Grey and of BH's family doing the same in the grounds of what was the Exminster branch of the Exe Vale group of mental hospitals.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/car-booter.html.

Naturally thinking

This to notice an accidental visit to the new lavender farm operated by Naturally Thinking at what used to be Oak Tree Nurseries. The people at reference 2, headquartered in Croydon. We had been intending to visit Mayfield Lavender Farm, the next one along.

Proceedings started with dealing with the Wellingtonia of Epsom College, noticed at reference 1.

Sky View

Street View

I then proceeded steadily east along the A2022 and stopped at the first lavender farm on the right which, as noted above, turned out to be the wrong one. But the right one, because being newly opened, there were very few people, while the other place was uncomfortably busy - with its west most field being visible top right in the first of the two snaps above. Oak Tree Nurseries is the middle of the snap and down.

It was reasonably quiet, welcoming, free and operated by the people at reference 2. It was all a bit of a  mystery because it was a big place not taking in very much money, at least not on the day we visited and by the look of things not for a while. Was it really a speculation that permission to build an estate there would be forthcoming one day? Were they going to do deals with mental health and other rehabilitation service to provide a bit of occupational therapy out in the lavender fields?

In any event an interesting visit to an interesting place. We shall no doubt be back next year to see how they are getting on. Maybe, even, to pick some lavender.

One of the lavender fields

Several fields were given over to lavender, most of it fairly or very young. With this field having a fir plantation down one side, perhaps something to do with their Christmas Tree business, although these trees looked rather large for domestic consumption - but a sign did say that they supplied the official Banstead High Street trees.

Derelict plums

Derelict apples

At one point we came across a near derelict orchard, including both plum trees and apple trees. There was talk on posters of restoration, but in my very limited experience, restoration of trees which are as far gone as these were is not worth the candle. Much quicker to grub them up and start over.

The view down into the City of London

We were reminded that we were on down land by the view down into the City of London from the corner of one of the lavender fields. Note also the bales thoughtfully provided for the use of picnic'ers.

Flints

Next we came across a pile of flints, presumably the product of stone picking therapy in years gone by.

Heritage machinery

One of the various bits of obsolete farm machinery scattered about the place. What would a scrap man - of which there are quite a few in our bit of Surrey - give them for it all?

Derelict nursery one

Derelict nursery two

To pay our way, we bought some honey, but decided against snacking at their caravan, opting instead to head home for lunch there, pork soup, as I recall, more or less ready to go. We were amused to see that the caravan was licensed at weekends.

Nearly new

The last item of interest was a much newer bit of farm machinery, which looked as if it was used to plant out young plants. I might have spent a happy hour, perhaps with a glass of something, working out how it all worked, but I didn't. Lunch called.

Called in Oaks Park more or less opposite on the way out, a place with a cafeteria which we might have used, but all much too crowded. Stuck with the soup. A place tucked in between the B278 and the golf course, with gardens, woods and open space which we have visited from time to time, and which we would probably visit more often if it was not so far away. Probably lots of young families from Purley and Croydon at weekends.

PS: I think I had made the pork soup the day before, with enough being left to be warmed up for this day. Usual sort of thing: four or five ounces of pearl barley to start with, an entire pork tenderloin, plus onion, celery and cabbage. A few thinly sliced carrots tossed in near the end. A few mushrooms tossed in at the end. Perfectly acceptable lunch despite the heat. Possibly the first pork soup since February, noticed at reference 4.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/wellingtonia-13.html.

Reference 2: https://naturallythinking.com/.

Reference 3: https://naturallythinking.com/oak-tree-farm-lavender-is-now-open.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/02/pork-soup.html.

Series 3, Episode III

Brick report

Despite the winding down reported at reference 1, the carrying of brick continues. With this afternoon's shift taking me to 2,832 bricks, 376,656 horizontal metres and 8,496 vertical metres. Settling down to one shift of 16 bricks in the afternoon, after Scrabble.

The nearest mountain is Malaku at 8,485 metres, with the next one being Lhotse at 8,516.

Polly at it again, still without oxygen

Polly looking quite perky considering the travails reported into books like 'Into Thin Air', last noticed at reference 3. But she did get a bit giddy when she tried turning around. Long way down.

Mahalangur Himal

With the chunk of Himalayas concerned being called the Mahalangur Himal. But given that the first half of the snap above runs left to right and the bottom half runs right to left, I completely fail to decipher it. Maybe tomorrow.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/winding-down.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mahalangur_Himal. The source of the snap above.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/everest.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/series-3-episode-ii.html.

Group search key: wwwy.

Begonia & Ogre

Some weeks ago, perhaps months ago, BH thought to replace a plant of ours called a Christmas cactus, a plant which had adorned our television room for many years, having been translated, it seems, from the parental-in-law home in Devon. A type of plant which we once had occasion to discuss in a café in Savoy. The proprietress there was very patient with these strange foreigners, dropped out of nowhere, especially considering that she was eager to give her attention to a (blue collar) gentleman visitor waiting in the kitchen. It is also possible that she was actually interested in the way that these cacti were not the same in Savoy as they were in Surrey and I recall some talk about whether they flowered once or twice a year. In any event, she sent us off down the road to a place which could do us a raclette, the fish and chips of the area in question. The first time that we had had it, so we were very impressed. Quite forgot that it was just a fancy version of cheese on toast.

Anyway, many years later, many flowerings later, our cactus was retired in favour of the begonia snapped above. It has done very well. Rather impressive.

Clock above, which has been noticed before, corner of watercolour right, by one Archie Sanderson. The clock came from a kitchen shop in our Upper High Street, gone some years, and was a product of the people at reference 4, but I cannot, this afternoon, find the previous notice. Very frustrating. Nor can I find any trace at all of this Sanderson - this despite being convinced I had no trouble at all last time I looked.

From all of which I now move on. In a post earlier today (reference 1), I referenced a book, L'Ogre, which I read nearly a decade ago at noticed at reference 2.

Over lunch, I was moved to turn it up, to find in it a dedication to Job, at least a quotation from Job, Chapter VII, verse 19. In the French this reads: 'Quand cesseras-tu de me regarder'. But in the proper, seventeenth Anglo-Saxon it reads: 'How long wilt thou not depart from me, nor let me alone till I swallow down my spittle?'. With the French capturing the spirit of the thing, but being far from the word. Digging further in the Authorised Version, I am reminded that the Book of Job is indeed a very rum book. A book which could provide meat and drink for many sermons and for many classes in schools - at which point I remember that few schools have time for this sort of thing these days. A book which I had thought I might have mentioned in the past, but if I have, I fail to find any such mentions this afternoon.

But perhaps I lack faith. On the search key 'Quand cesseras-tu de me regarder', Bing turns up all kinds of stuff. For example reference 3, which puts me right. Perhaps I need to check the original Hebrew?

I shall now retire to the perusal of the proper, Anglo-Saxon version. As authorised by his Majesty, King James I.

PS: a little later, I searched the blog archive about the clock and turned up reference 5. No idea how it escaped before: all the search keys which I thought I had used are there. Things like 'Sweden'. While reference 6 includes one Archibald Sanderson, 1900-1971, whose dates fit and whose paintings look about right. Not only that, they share elements with the woodcuts of my woodcutting uncle, an almost exact contemporary. So, all things considered, it seems quite likely that they knew each other. Again, no idea how he escaped earlier today.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/contemporary-fiction.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2012/11/logre.html.

Reference 3: https://saintebible.com/job/7-19.htm.

Reference 4: http://www.bengtekdesign.com/.

Reference 5: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/04/tuesdays-puzzle.html.

Reference 6: https://www.invaluable.com/artist/sanderson-archibald-0iyk9ow5jy/sold-at-auction-prices/.

Car booter

The car boot sale at Hook Road Arena was up and running at 1015 this morning, with slightly more cars appearing to be leaving than arriving. What can be seen here is the car park, with the car boot sale proper, off snap, around to the right. It would have been interesting to go and see how social distancing was panning out, but I couldn't muster the energy. Plus no change and no bicycle lock. Plus we have quite enough junk already.

Behind the telephone, in the hedge by the entrance, almost enough ripe blackberries to be worth picking, despite it being a roughly north facing hedge at that point. But no tub to put them in. However, if reference 1 is anything to go by, it must be time to start. Maybe in the hedges around the junctions of Christchurch Road and Horton Lane? Maybe I should take to carrying a tub just in case I am moved to make a start?

Earlier on the run, Café 1 in Epsom was open, a place we use occasionally, Wetherspoon's was open, another place we use occasionally, and the veggie market, looking quite extensive, was cranking up. Roads quiet, including, for once, Ewell by-pass. Not many cyclists about. Maybe most of them were fair weather types, put off by the possibility of rain.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/fourth-blackberries.html.

Reference 2: http://www.cafe1.co.uk/.

Contemporary fiction

The street where it happened

For once in a while, prompted by a recent article in the NYRB, I have read a bit of contemporary fiction. One of those smart yellow paperbacks from nrf Gallimard by one Leïla Slimani called 'Chanson Douce'. A big hit in France in 2016 and getting the Prix Goncourt in the same year. A prize which is a big deal in France and which I have found a reasonably reliable source of fiction. See for example reference 3.

This one the story of a young professional couple living in a small flat in Paris (in a real street, I am pleased to say, snapped above from gmaps) with two young children who decide to get a nanny. A nanny who lives in mean circumstances far out in the south eastern suburbs and who gradually works her way into their lives. With a tragic ending.

An entirely readable book, despite what might be thought of as its ladies' subject matter. An upstairs downstairs story, where downstairs is the nannies - often recent immigrants, often Muslims - and their world. We know the ending from the beginning, but there is still a well paced, growing sense of tragedy about it all. Of disaster in the air. With the only unsatisfactory part being the very end. The bubble bursts and we are left hanging in the air. Things are not properly tidied up.

The author, a youngish lady with some Moroccan background, is clearly a very smart cookie and is clearly very big on the French literary scene. Bing turns up lots of stuff: Facebook, Twitter, Wikipedia the works.

PS 1: I was amused to read at reference 3 of the French penchant for sanguinary stuff with knives - this being exactly how this story ends.

PS 2: I could not find the dotted i (ï) in the usually reliable Microsoft Character Map and was reduced to lifting one from Wikipedia. I thought at first that it was perhaps not a letter which appears in regular, US and western European names - but further investigation revealed that I had missed it because on my laptop screen it showed as the barred i (ῑ). There all along. And to think that my spectacles are nearly new. Perhaps Microsoft could provide a feature whereby all the versions of a nominated letter get listed in one place, rather than being scattered all over.

PS 3: why rue d'Hauteville? Because it is in or leads to what was the higher town, above the river? It does run north to south, a bit north of the river. Outside the city walls? Do they get book tourists there, in the way of the sets for popular television programmes and successful films? Not to mention the people who holiday in Dublin for Joyce or in Liège for Simenon. Something which, in happier days, I might have indulged in myself...

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Le%C3%AFla_Slimani.

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

Reference 3: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2012/11/logre.html.

Graphics

The Guardian used to be good for striking centrefold photographs. While we are now finding that the Financial Times is good for striking graphics.

The first is becoming an old favourite, having been around in something like this form for a while now. And which continues to tell us that we are not yet out of the woods. We may not have got back to the peak achieved by a number of the leading Western democracies back in April - with their state of the art health care systems and their state of the art governance - but we are heading in that direction, with the top of the graphic more or less stable but in a bad place and with the bottom of the graphic slowly but steadily getting worse. The only good news seems to be that the UK is dwindling to insignificance in the big picture.

The second is new to me, bringing out for me both where it is that African Americans live and how many of them there are. With what looks like a worryingly good fit to a corresponding graphic for the current state of the coronavirus. Is it any wonder that there is a lot of anger?

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/a-day-out.html. The last outing for the first graphic, US only version.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/hmmm.html. The last outing for the first graphic.

Not the real thing

Detail

Zoom to the top

Not the real thing, but some reminder of the the real thing. The strange and wonderful inner world of the orchid. Not least the pair of strange, curled fronds sprouting from the front of the platform.

Wonderful not least because I think the flowers of some orchids at least have evolved to attract one particular sort of insect. Evolution which includes a flower formation & shape being adapted to the landing & entry of that particular insect. I think there is a famous purple passage about this in Proust's famous book. On which Bing turns up references 2 and 3.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/07/still-going.html. For a general view.

Reference 2: https://www.proust-ink.com/proustaz-c.

Reference 3: https://proustreading.blogspot.com/2008/03/m-de-charlus-julien-and-bee.html.

Reference 4: À la recherche du temps perdu - M. Proust - 1921. The opening scene of 'Sodome et Gomorrhe'. Page 601 of Vol.II of the Pléiade edition of same.

Go free Gove

One might object to the man for other reasons, not least the invention of the advisor called Cummings, but to my mind there is at least one thing in his favour.

Despite being a busy and very important Cabinet Minister - the Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster, so very historical as well, not to say historic - at least sometimes he gets out to buy his own sandwiches. Perhaps he likes to stretch his legs a bit of a morning, perhaps he likes to think he has the common touch. Whatever, I like it.

Two relevant titbits from my days at the Treasury, perhaps from more than twenty years ago now.

First, the then Chancellor, possibly Nigel Lawson, used to take his lunch in the staff canteen, along with everybody else, once or twice every week. A canteen which once used to sport a wine committee for the higher ranks and a bar - the Treasury Tap - for the lower ranks. All long since vanished.

Second, a colleague reporting from a secondment to some comparable outfit in Australia, told us that there was an important tea and bun eating ceremony every mid morning. And that everybody, including the permanent secretary, would queue at the caravans parked in the car park to buy same. It would have been thought ridiculous for the permanent secretary, be he or she ever so important, to get some flunkey to get his tea and bun for him.

Reference 1: https://www.gov.uk/government/ministers.

Somewhat disappointing

I suppose I should have known better, but I have been rather disappointed by my copy of Hypnerotomachia Poliphili which turned up today, following the advertisement at reference 1. 

I think it started out in the US, with the trail starting with the people at reference 5, somehow finding its way to somewhere called Schiedam in the Netherlands, from there to Castle Donnington (up North) and from there to Epsom.

In the absence of anything better, the fine WalMart at La Vergne

It appears to be a rather poor quality photographic reproduction of a 1592 original, possibly held in one of the libraries at Oxford University, probably printed on demand in La Vergne, Tennessee. Cheap hardback binding, quite good quality paper. Apparatus very close to zero. That is to say we are told there is a 2009 copyright held by Oxford Reprints. We then dive into the text, with the page numbers being those of the original, starting a few pages in and ending, oddly neatly, at page 100.

Not yet been able to find out anything about Oxford Reprints. Are they the Oxford University people who give permission for you to make retreads of their stuff? Or is the name just there to give lustre to an operation which has nothing to do with Oxford or the university there?

Then, just after page 100, we have a one page advertisement for another offering from Benediction Books by one Anita Mathias.

After that, apart from a few blank pages, perhaps for readers' scholarly notes (in old-style pencil, naturally), nothing. Except for a very small CPSIA notice. I go to their web site to get the not very helpful information about Tennessee above. 

I then ask Bing about Benediction Books, and in among a lot of stuff about the saint, I have reference 4, some kind of database about books. 

I have not really looked beyond the entry for Benediction Books, the relevant part of which is snapped above. The Gutenberg Project at reference 3 does rather better telling me, inter alia, that '... Hypnerotomachia Poliphili was partially translated into English in a London edition of 1592 by "R. D.", believed to be Robert Dallington, who gave it the title by which it is best known in English, The Strife of Love in a Dream ...'. Wikipedia, reference 7, knows all about the chap.

The book was not particularly cheap and I had expected just a few pages about where the book came from. Something about the abridgement suggested above. And I had expected the reproduction to be of rather better quality. What we have is fairly faint and will need to be read in a good light. Far less legible, for example, than the various offerings available online on the Internet. Somewhat less legible that the giant download noticed at reference 1, with the book's only advantage over this last being that it is in early English - that is to say 16th century English rather than 15th century Italian.

Perhaps what we have here is virtual publisher. Run by a small bunch of IT people who know next to nothing about the book trade beyond the mechanics of driving a modern printer and putting books into jiffy bags for distribution. Is it all Amazon, under the covers, as it were?

We will see how I get on - if at all.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/06/a-record.html.

Reference 2: Hypnerotomachia Poliphili: the Strife of Love in a Dream - Fransesco Colonna, translated by R.D. - 1592. 

Reference 3: http://self.gutenberg.org/articles/Hypnerotomachia_Poliphili. 

Reference 4: https://www.book-info.com/index.htm.

Reference 5: https://www.superbookdeals.com/. Of Maryland, US. Described as a subsidiary of the ecommerce people at reference 6.

Reference 6: https://www.farcornerinc.com/.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Dallington.