Trade Remedies Authority

Intrigued to read this morning about an important new non-departmental body called the 'Trade Remedy Authority, seemingly once part of the Department for International Trade. A department with a web presence, but one which seems to live inside the gov.uk umbrella of reference 1, rather than having its own web site.

Presently involved in a big spat about steel - and what if anything needs to be done to protect this once large & important industry from intruding foreigners - and a small spat about trout from Turkey. On which last subject they offer an 80 page document called 'Statement of Essential Facts: Case TS0002: Transition review of countervailing measures applying to certain rainbow trout originating in Turkey', from which the snap above is taken. 

It seems that trout farming only occupies a small place in our world of fish, but a place which is threatened by subsidised trout fillets coming from Turkey. Hard for a lay-person to get to grips with this sort of thing, but I think that UK trout farmers are lobbying for tariff protection to be continued. I did not notice anything about chilled vs. frozen, the subject of a different spat about sausages to Northern Ireland, noticed a couple of weeks ago at reference 2.

Lots of tricky details which people like Johnson hate and people like Cummings love.

PS: the authority was advertising for one or more part time, non-executive directors - the same title and the same salary as the late Hancock's good friend at Health - but the window for application has now closed. Another missed opportunity.

Reference 1: https://www.gov.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/puzzled-of-epsom.html. 

Sheep shoulder day

About ten days ago it was Sheep Shoulder Day, the first such since the overcooking at Easter, noticed at reference 1. Overcooking which prompted review of both the not very satisfactory record and our trusty Radiation Cook Book. And failing to find BH's elderly temperature conversion chart I had to ask Bing, with the results included above. To which one needs to deduct an allowance for fan ovens which seem to run hotter than regular ovens at the same nominal temperature. And, as it happens, I don't think I have ever strayed into mark 8 or 9. I wonder now what they are for.

With Shoulder Day being a Sunday, proceedings actually started on the Friday with collection of the shoulder from the butcher in the morning and purchase of nearly new potatoes (plus some other stuff) from the Waitrose in the afternoon. The cherries from Waitrose have been good this year and did not survive 24 hours. The potatoes, centre front, did make it.

The shoulder weighed in Sunday morning at 6lbs 10oz. We settled for the Radiation low temperature method, which translated to into the pre-heated oven at 10:00 at 160C, heading for oven off at 13:15 and forks down at 13:30. Approximately 30 minutes to the pound.

This important matter settled, off round Jubilee Way. This on a mild, overcast morning which looked set for rain. As it turned out it didn't. But the spin was enlivened by a Pontiac Transam at some lights on the Ewell by-pass. Top down, driver with earring, companion with hood. Light grey paint, discrete chrome trim and looking immaculate - despite its 43 years. And it nipped away when the lights changed at a good pace, with a murmur which suggested power without being loud and vulgar. It wasn't convenient to snap it there and then, but Bing obliged with that above afterwards. Not as good as mine, but it does give the idea. Maybe something for early-onset?

Some benches had finally appeared outside the previously comatose Queen Adelaide. Maybe there is life there yet. And both palm trees above and lilies below were in full flower at the Ruxley Lane junction. With the palm trees in puffs of white, rather more showy than the lilies, at least in the light of that day. While the best I could do on numbers was No.33 below and No.51 above. I seem to see quite a lot of No.33, not all the same vehicle by any means, which makes it odd that No.34 fails to appear at all. Is there something special about either number?

Back to find the shoulder done to a turn. We got it right this time.

With the potatoes aforementioned, plus the usual cabbage and carrots. BH does mint jelly and other condiments of that sort, but I pass. Plus a spot of Pomerol, also from Waitrose. A tipple which seems to be reliable.

While Polly and her friends had a good tuck-in to give them strength for the sermon to follow, already noticed at reference 2.

The scene at the end of part one. Polly fusses about her weight and so left here fat. But she and her friends had had more than enough to send them off into a short snooze.

Which was followed by the blackberry and apple, visible behind the bottle, which proved a good complement to the meat. The last of the 2020 blackberries, so something of a gap this year. Last year the old year more or less made it to the new year.

Later, I walked some bricks. And then won at Scrabble, on a modest combined score of just over 500.

Day two and day three cold. Day two was cold, so the cold meat was supplemented with a mixed (left over) vegetable soup. While on day three, the crows were much quicker off the mark with the left over fat. With a magpie turning out when they had finished to hoover up the crumbs.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/04/easter-celebrations.html. 

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/series-3-episode-xii.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/05/ruxley-lane-anti-clockwise.html. The Ruxley Lane lilies last year.

More washers

A small collection of washers gathered on this morning's Ewell Village anti-clockwise. Apart from the stray at reference 1, the last one before that was last year at reference 2. Since most of the time since then I have been on the cycle, rather than on foot, perhaps washers are harder to spot from a bicycle.

The blue splodge top left is my first attempt with the editing tool attached to the Microsoft Photos applications. Perhaps something to have a play with.

And the biro decorated in blue to its right is still going strong after what must be more than twenty years. Who would have thought a cheap promotional biro would have such a long shelf life? I might add, that this decoration was based on work by a group of students at our very own University of Creation, here at Epsom.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/pub-glut.html. 

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/tree-show.html.

Planning

The Epsom Civic Society is a society with a slightly old-fashioned feel about it which exists to keep an eye on matters of heritage, development and planning in Epsom. Matters which, for a small, old town perched between London and its green belt, are likely to give rise to controversy. While we are members, I can't say I pay much attention, beyond thinking that they always seem to find something to object to in whatever proposal is being floated.

Two bits of background. First, East Street, which runs north east from town centre towards Ewell, contains rather a lot of middle size blocks, residential and commercial, mostly built in the last fifty years ago and mostly without much visual merit. Second, the uppers floors of a lot of commercial property in town centre, possibly let out as flats, are in a poor decorative condition and look pretty shabby from the road. Not much visual merit there either. So two chunks of townscape where we have not done terribly well.

So this morning, I was turning the pages of the Society's summer newsletter.

The first thing I find is that they were privileged to attend the unveiling of the statue noticed at reference 1. But, for me, something else without visual or much other merit.

Then turning to planning, I find they have objected to changes in the planning rules, something called PDR (Class MA), to be available from the 1st August next. Lots of estate agents turned up by Bing are eager to tell me all about it, with PDR meaning permitted development right. As far as I can make out, the intention of the government is to make it easier to repurpose commercial property in towns for residential use, which strikes me as an admirable intention, given that many town centres are now far too big for purpose, at a time when we need a lot more housing. Again as far as I can make out, the Society's objection is to the steady chipping away of a council's discretionary powers in these matters - powers, for example, to make sure that we get decent housing, rather than slums-in-waiting, luxury flats for city types or unsightly blocks. Discretionary powers which appear to have been exercised through something called Article 4 directions, as explained at reference 3.

Digging a bit deeper I get to the consultation document to which the Society objected. This is to be found at reference 4. While the resultant statutory instrument, published in short order after the end of the consultation period, is to be found at reference 5. Only fit for lawyers and planners.

So all terribly complicated and I suppose that without the efforts of the estate agents and of societies like this one, it would be hard to have a clue about what was going on. I suppose the days when you could trust councils to do a decent job without encumbering them with so many rules and regulations are long gone - if indeed the good old days ever existed - but it is a pity, given that conversion of commercial to residential seems like a good idea, that this society always seems to me to be saying no. It all too often smells of not-in-my-back-yard.

PS: in the snap of East Street above, the buildings on the right are still there, as are some of those on the left. The without-much-visual-merit redevelopment was mostly beyond the two cars middle left. The oddly roofed building next to the leftmost car is what used to be the 'Plough and Harrow', quite a decent public house in its day. Now some kind of foodery for young people.

Reference 1: https://epsomcivicsociety.org.uk/.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/casual-dining-in-epsom.html.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Article_4_direction.

Reference 4: Draft NPPF for consultation (publishing.service.gov.uk).

Reference 5: The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development etc.) (England) (Amendment) Order 2021 No. 428 (legislation.gov.uk).

Revivals

I spent part of yesterday afternoon, that is to say Monday afternoon, on the paper at reference 1 about Israeli by Ghil‘ad Zuckermann, an academic who was born in Israel but who has spent quality time in quality institutions elsewhere and is now Professor of Linguistics and Chair of Endangered Languages at the University of Adelaide – with a special interest in Aboriginal languages.

Turned up because I wanted to read about a phenomenon called calque (of reference 8), one instance of which being the fact that the French for honeymoon is obtained by a literal translation of the English – or vice versa. A phrase with a conventional meaning, rather than a meaning which can be deduced from the words themselves, but a convention which has been found convenient in both languages. Is seems that there is plenty of this in Israeli, Zuckermann’s preferred term for the version of Hebrew now spoken in Israel.

What with it being rather technical and my being rather hampered by no prior knowledge of Hebrew, I eventually gave up. But an interesting paper nonetheless.

He points out that Israeli is a very successful revival, probably the most successful in the world. Most people in Israel use it in their everyday lives. But his conclusion is that it is misleading to claim that Israeli, the language spoken in Israel today, is a straightforward, direct descendant of the Hebrew last spoken around two thousand years ago. Israeli is a hybrid built from both written Hebrew and spoken Yiddish, plus a whole lot of stuff from German, Polish, Russian – and English. The first three of these last reflecting the origins of many of the early Jewish settlers in what is now Israel, the fourth the pervasiveness of English. Bound to be a big source when trying to put an ancient language back on its feet. So while a lot of the form of Israeli is Hebrew, a lot of what Zuckermann calls the pattern is from elsewhere. Hence, for example, the many calques.

Going further, I think that Zuckermann does not care for the way the guardians of the language – the people of references 4 and 5 – are trying to corral a living language into an ancient mould. People whom he says are sometimes satisfied with a Hebrew form, without looking very carefully at the pattern. People who are sometimes dismissive of the language and traditions of the central European diaspora. Or, indeed, those of North Africa and the Middle East; those of the Muslim rather than the Christian world. While I associated to what I understand to be the rather similar activities, responding to the onslaught of English and American on French as it should be, of l’Académie française, to be found at reference 6.

But he starts by pointing out that Hebrew was not spoken for everyday purposes for getting on for 2,000 years. At which point I thought that English has changed rather a lot in half that time, with the English of late first millennium Saxons being more or less unintelligible to anyone other than a specialist in such matters. Just try reading ‘Beowulf’ in the original if you are not sure about this.

With the snap above being the first page of an early manuscript version of Beowulf held by the British museum.

He then points out that many of the early evangelists for the revival of Hebrew, from say the late nineteenth century, were Yiddish speakers. Likely speakers of Russian, Polish or German too. So it would be surprising if those languages did not creep in, in one way or another.

In which connection, he proposes the Congruence Principle, according to which if a feature exists in more than one contributing language, it is more likely to persist in the emerging language. This goes with the Founder Principle which asserts that, in the context of Israeli, Yiddish is a primary contributor to Israeli because it was the mother tongue of the vast majority of revivalists and first pioneers in Eretz Yisrael at the crucial time when Israeli was coming to be. They shaped the language, and those that came after, in large part, fell into line.

He then goes through a long list of features of Israeli which bear on this thesis. 

One of the items on this list was that while Hebrew was a synthetic language with lots of declensions and conjugations, Israeli was much more analytic language with lots of articles and particles, in the way of many European languages. 

Another is that while Hebrew had the copula (of reference 7, often in English some form of the verb ‘to be’), it was not widely used. While it is much more used in Israeli, following Yiddish and much European usage.

Another is that Israeli, unlike Hebrew, is what Zuckermann calls a habere language (from the Latin for ‘to have’) in that the thing had or possessed is marked as an accusative, a direct object, as in the English ‘I hit him’, with English pronouns, unlike most nouns, having an accusative case. While Yiddish has ‘to have’ and allows both forms.

But the list was too much for me and I was struggling by the time that I got to what Zuckermann calls verbal templates and others call Binyanim, snapped above. Notwithstanding, his argument did seem rather convincing.

I was left wondering whether there are scholars out there doing the same thing for the Gaelic and Celtic languages of these islands – thinking particularly of the efforts of the Irish to preserve and promote their Gaelic, which is different from Hebrew and Israeli in that it was widely spoken in parts of Ireland until relatively recently. The written record may not be as long, but there is an oral tradition which was lost from Hebrew – and which is being created anew in Israeli.

Another difference is that Israeli is now the dominant language in Israel, whereas my understanding is that in Ireland, everyone does Gaelic at school, rather as many of us here in England used to do Latin, but few people use it for everyday purposes.

References

Reference 1: Hybridity Versus Revivability: Multiple Causation, Forms and Patterns – Ghil‘ad Zuckermann – 2009.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ghil'ad_Zuckermann. 

Reference 3: https://hebrew4christians.com/Grammar/Unit_Ten/Introduction/introduction.html. The source of the opening snap above, turned up as I needed help with what Zuckermann called verbal templates.

Reference 4: https://hebrew-academy.org.il/. In Hebrew.

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

Reference 6: https://www.academie-francaise.fr/. 

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Copula_(linguistics). 

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calque. 

Trolley 423

Having been dispatched to town this morning to get a haircut, I thought a spot of relaxing trolley hunting would be the thing while I waited the ten minutes or so before it was my turn in the chair. To find a rather wet M&S food hall trolley in the passage to the station, once the Ashmore Passage, now the Kokoro Passage, presumably for the people at reference 2. While next door, what used to be the Café Rouge, a place we used to use from time to time, looks set to be home to an outlet of the famous Cappadocia chain. At least so the sign tells us. Presumably a branch of the place in Kingston which we have used from time to time. I rather liked it, but BH found it a bit noisy. Notwithstanding, I dare say we will try this place when it is up and running.

With Cappadocia being a region in the north east of Turkey, a more or less independent kingdom at the time of Alexander the Great, say 300BC. Christian until about the time that the Turks arrived, that is to say at roughly the same time as the Normans arrived here in England to take part in the Battle of Hastings. Lots of history and now lots of tourists.

Trolley returned to its stack in the Ashley Centre entrance to M&S. At which point, unusually, I recovered a pound coin from the handle lock for my trouble. 

PS: OneDrive playing up again. Had to resort to manual intervention to get this snap to Google.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/trolley-422.html.

Reference 2: https://kokorouk.com/menu/.

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

Not all knowing

On gmaps, on the second roundabout mentioned at reference 1, there is something called the 'Young Street Commemorative Pillar, with a picture.

Curious, I asked Bing who could provide a picture but otherwise only came up with stuff about things like Nelson's Column and the Monument. Google was not any better. While BH explained that it was all to do with the nearby bridge over the Mole, replacing a Bailey Bridge, itself replacing a ford or something primitive like that. 

Digging deeper, Google turns up a John Young from Dorking, who was proprietor of the Duke's Head in Leatherhead at the end of the nineteenth century. Perhaps his son was mayor at the time the new bridge went through?

While copying the picture from Google included above, zoom recovers some of the inscription, something to do with some Canadian Army engineers, with Young being the name of their commander.

Then turning to the Scottish map service, I get the bit of map above, with the present stretch of the A246 running from Park Corner centre left to the end of the Leatherhead by-pass centre middle is entirely missing, together with its bridge over the Mole. Now called Young Street.

Maybe digging will continue later today. Maybe BH will be commissioned to make inquiries when she visits the Leatherhead Institute (of reference 2) tomorrow.

Unusual for both Bing and Google to let me down in this way.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/wellingtonia-32.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/goods-which-are-past-their-sell-by-date.html.

The House of the Dead

This being notice of my first attempt at Dostoevsky since having a serious attempt at ‘The Idiot’ a couple years ago. An attempt which ground to a halt despite the obvious merit.

Dostoevsky was arrested in 1849 for political offences which seem trivial now, indeed not offences at all, but were then capital offences, carried as far as a mock execution in a public square in St. Petersburg, commuted in the nick of time to four years in Siberia, to be followed by five years service in a Siberian regiment. He died, aged 59, in 1881. Amongst other problems, he gambled and he had epilepsy.

This novel draws on this Siberian experience, but is framed as extracts from extensive jottings made by a ten year man which fell posthumously into the author’s hands. An easy read, and although it does start with arrival and finishes with departure, it is not a narrative; rather, largely made up of set pieces like being in the prison hospital and the Christmas show put on by the convicts.

The author's observations concerning the character and behaviour of the prisoners are striking, with their peculiar circumstance making for peculiar demeanour and behaviour. There is a great deal of theft, verbal abuse and bad temper, although it rarely gets out of hand. Maybe it was what got them through the days.

The conditions in the prisons of Siberia in the 19th century were fairly horrific, perhaps particularly for a noble. Irons were worn the whole time and were only stuck off at release. Punishment could be brutal. The barracks in which they were confined for much of the time were crowded and filthy. But at the same time, there was a humanity at work. The convicts could put on a Christmas show. There was booze. Even the odd mistress. And there was a fair bit of interchange between the prison and the town. Indeed, a fair number of the prisoners made a good living out of the town, plying some trade or another.

I associate to a story from a military policeman, active in the 1960’s, who explained to us that however hard you tried to isolate prisoners inside a prison, the guards and the prisoners were all people. There would be stuff going on, there would be stuff going backwards and forwards. This in the context of Spandau, to which he had hoped to be posted.

I had thought to try ‘Poor Folk’ next, Dostoevsky’s first novel, written before he went to Siberia. I felt sure that I had a copy, another of the red Everyman editions that came down to me from my father, but search at home has failed to reveal it. Not on the Kindle. And as already noticed at reference 6, a search in Epsom has failed to turn one up.

So something to keep an eye out for.

References

Reference 1: The House of the Dead – Dostoevsky – 1862. 

Reference 2: Poor Folk – Dostoevsky – 1846.

Reference 3: The Idiot – Dostoevsky – 1868-9.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verkhoyansk. A place in Siberia with rather extreme weather. Up to 40°C in the summer, down to -65°C in the winter – which is rather longer than the summer.

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

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/trolley-422.html. 

Reference 7: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/editorial-images. The owners of the picture above. Lightly edited caption: ‘A reproduction of a photograph of prisoners in the museum of the Prison Castle in Tobolsk, Russia. The Prison Castle, a strict regime prison … was built during 1838-1855. The architectural ensemble consisted of several cell blocks, a hospital for prisoners, an administrative building, and other premises ... Fyodor Dostoyevsky, a famous Russian writer, spent about 10 days in one of the prisons in Tobolsk while he was transferred to Omsk for penal servitude. This prison was closed in 1989 [and was] opened to tourists. It accommodates the city archive, a museum, a hostel, a libraty, etc. Tourists can stay in a hostel which used to be a block of sweat-boxes, that is to say punishments cells. Photo by Alexander Aksakov/Getty Images’.

Wellingtonia 32

Scored on the way back from the visit noticed at reference 1. I failed to make a note at the time, but it seems likely that it was on the roundabout at the junction of the A246 and the B2122, that is to say between Bockett's Farm and Great Bookham. With the road just visible bottom left in the snap above.

Confirming detail. Pretty confident about the identification.

With a tall tree being visible in the middle of the roundabout in this aerial shot taken from Ordnance Survey. 

Gmaps offers a lot more zoom, but no more resolution.

And I have been reminded that getting on and off roundabouts on busy roads can be a tricky - not to say dangerous - business. Not to say feet wetting on this occasion, given the long wet grass.

PS: checking, I now find that there is not a separate roundabout right outside Bockett's Farm, as I had thought first thing this morning. So the foregoing is almost certainly wrong, and the roundabout in question is now almost certainly the Givons Grove roundabout at the junction of the A24 and the A246, a little to the east of the other one. Particularly since I now remember leaving the car in the Esso petrol station there while I took the snaps above. Complete with tall tree in the middle. So error, but at least I had not attempted to score the tree at reference 3 twice. Moral: make a proper note at the time, like a policeman with his notebook.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/back-to-p-lacey.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/wellingtonia-31.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/wellingtonia-30.html.

Group search key: wgc.

Back to P. Lacey

About a week ago, back to Polesden Lacey. Our second visit in as many weeks after an absence of a year. For some reason, as noted at reference 1, we deemed Wisley to be a safer bet last year, making several visits.

For the first time ever, we went seriously off-piste, possibly into what Ordnance Survey call Preserve Copse, tempted in by the sight of a very tall conifer which turned out not to be a Wellingtonia. But big and tall enough that I could not get a clear shot.

If I am bored later today, the snap above should serve for identification.

Another large conifer, not a Wellingtonia, but with the red trunk of a redwood, unlike the first tree.

All a bit fuzzy, but the dead leaves look to be of the same format at the first tree.

And in a glade, a cluster of pyramid orchids, said to be common enough, but last seen by me on the Longmead industrial estate a couple of years ago. At least I think it is the same thing, despite being a good deal paler. Perhaps sun-bleached. See reference 2.

Coppiced or cut down in its youth. Will we be able to find it again? 

We then came across Ember Camping, never before heard of, but a trusty told us they had been around for a while. Perhaps accounted for all the hearty types wandering around nearer the house, not the usual sort of stately home visitor at all. There was also a small supply of Ember wheelbarrows at the car park, presumably in the case that you preferred to leave your car there. Or that that was where you and your tents had been dropped off.

Quite a lot of large copper beeches dotted about. So Mrs Greville - the owner of the place in its glory years - must have been into trees, even if she was not into Wellingtonias.

Peonies over, roses rather battered, but the delphiniums doing quite well. Delphiniums which I remembered from the week before as having been far from flowering. Maybe memory playing tricks again.

Quite a lot of families with young children and some elaborate picnics. One involving a purpose built, four wheeled picnic carriage for carrying all the equipment about. Including lightweight gazebo, picnic table and picnic chairs. No doubt some picnic too. A carriage intended to be pulled like a trailer, rather than pushed like a pram.

A visit to the second hand book shop yielded the book above, nearly new for £2. A seemingly once well known collection of illustrated legal anecdotes. All quite short, snacks rather than meals. A little dated and probably more fun for a lawyer with a grip on all the legal jargon, but not bad for all that. A suitable Christmas present for a legal friend. While the dedication at the front tells me that it was first a memento of a luncheon which followed a board meeting of Lawyers Management Services Ltd. Possibly the precursor of the people at reference 3.

In which, yesterday, I was stumped by the word 'stumer'. My Webster's then told me that this is a bit of British slang meaning a forged or otherwise bad cheque. And on the opposite page I came across the studding-sail halyard bend, which looks a bit like a round turn with two half hitches. Webster's running to a modest number of illustrations, rather in the way of Larousse.

Then, checking with OED, much the same story, but the word was also, it seems, used of fake coins and bank notes, sometimes generalised to faking more generally. A word of unknown origin, current around the end of the nineteenth century. So our esteemed Leader of Her Majesty's Loyal Opposition is nearly named for a dud cheque. I wonder if he knows?

PS: Monday midday: the snap of my attempt at a studding-sail halyard bend has now made it to OneDrive central. The knot seems secure enough, it does the job of a round turn and two half hitches, it resists pulling from the top, but I found it a good deal more fiddly to tie. Perhaps there was some advantage, not apparent to a land-lubber such as myself. Perhaps sailing ships were rife with all kinds of obscure customs & practises which did no harm, but were fairly pointless just the same. Readers are encourage to tie one for themselves, using this snap rather than the much more helpful diagram in Webster's. Or indeed the similar one turned up by Bing when you need to be reminded what a studding-sail is.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/p-lacey.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/mystery-flower.html.

Reference 3: https://corporate.lms.com/.

Week sixteen

Contrary to expectations at the end of May, the florets did make it to the very top of the inflorescence. As they did on BH's lupins, at least those which did not succumb to some combination of white fly, slugs and snails. Forget to check the foxgloves of reference 2 when we were there, but inspection of the original snaps suggests that their florets also make it to open all the way to the top.

Presumably there is some kind of chemical feedback mechanism which tells the bit of the plant responsible for pumping the grub up the inflorescence when to stop.

And talking of slugs, both the vigorous sunflowers in the corner at the back of the garage (7 of them) and the feeble sunflowers in the shade by the micro-ponds (3 of them) are now under serious slug or snail attack, and one of the latter was decapitated overnight Friday-Saturday. Replaced by the last spare, the one in the original yellow bucket, snapped at reference 3, also not thriving. Possibly because of a small worm, possibly eating the roots. Hopefully it will do better in its new home.

And while this engraving by Monica Poole is suggestive more than photographic, it does suggest opening all the way to the top. This snap turned up by Google Images and we will know later today whether my telephone can to better with the real thing.

As it turned out, not later that day, nearly a week later. Also, as it turned out, print No.1. A much better job than the earlier snap, despite the wrinkles in the paper, despite the curious damage done by image processing to some of the delicate hatching. Particularly that top right on this laptop, not so visible here. So this digital does not beat the hand press, possibly an Albion, that my print came off. Great heavy thing with lots of iron.

And while we are at it, a rather different version of foxgloves from Poole's friend and colleague, George Mackley. Where the background hatching on my laptop has been badly damaged by digitisation. That said, enough survives for it to be unclear whether the florets will open all the way up or not. Not enough information. Not a typical Mackley engraving either, and, unusually, a run of only 15. Perhaps he was not too happy with it.

I thought it best, for present purposes, not to crop these two images to a more arty shape. One less layer of image processing.

PS: weeks thirteen thru fifteen missing from the record.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/05/week-twelve.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/wellingtonia-31.html. For foxgloves.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/03/midwifery.html.

Group search key: tfe.

Fake 111 continued

Chancing across the report about fake reviews on Amazon at reference 1, a correspondent has drawn my attention to reference 2, from which I got to reference 3 and 4. With Kape being a rather tricky looking operation based in the Isle of Man, out of harm's way. It is not obvious to me that they are not in the business of helping people with something to hide keeping that something hidden.

But it does seem that someone has unearthed a large cache of records of people being paid to put nice products reviews on Amazon: '... open ElasticSearch database ... a treasure trove of direct messages between Amazon vendors and customers willing to provide fake reviews in exchange for free products. In total, 13,124,962 of these records ... potentially implicating more than 200,000 people in unethical activities ...'. ElasticSearch is probably the service offered at reference 6. 

I had never previously heard of any of this.

Although, as it happens, the FT published another piece on the business of reviews on Amazon yesterday. See reference 5.

To my mind there are various things that could be done about all this. More or less impossible to root out all abuse, but one can bear down on it. And I use 'Amazon' as a proxy for all large scale carriers of reviews.

All Amazon reviewers and all Amazon suppliers have to provide an email address and to service that address, responding in a reasonable way to reasonable emails. 

All Amazon reviews should include a declaration to the effect that the reviewer has paid a regular price for the service or product being reviewed and has not been rewarded in any other way. Reviewers who get given product to review have to find some other way to publish.

No Amazon reviewer is allowed to post more than one review a day.

Serial offenders will be black listed. With offenses including false declarations.

Consumers should not use reviews by people that they do not know or on websites that they do not know. So in the olden days, one used to trust product reviews in reputable magazines like 'Which'. Less sure about specialist magazines about things like cars or canal boats, where things are much more murky, with their journalists getting all kinds of gifts, perks and services from suppliers. One such used to inhabit TB - and he had lots of yarns about it all.

Moans about poor service, say poor wrapping, damaged goods or slow response, can be dealt with, more or less privately, by Amazon, as I believe they are now. If you are a supplier and you clock up too many complaints of this sort, they will mark you down.

That apart, for myself, I do not read these reviews and I do not make any use of them.

PS: the first advertisement for ElasticSearch has already arrived in my email box.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/fake-111.html.

Reference 2: https://www.safetydetectives.com/blog/amazon-reviews-leak-report/.

Reference 3: https://www.safetydetectives.com/. From where I took the snap above. But what is the box labelled '£GBP' for? GBP being an abbreviation which I usually read as Great British pounds. Aka pounds sterling - for which Wikipedia offers various explanations, none of them anything to do with the similarly spelt place in Scotland. Is something tricky going on here too?

Reference 4: https://www.kape.com/. The people who run the safety detectives.

Reference 5: UK competition watchdog to probe Google and Amazon over fake reviews: Competition and Markets Authority says tech groups may not be doing enough to protect consumers - Kate Beioley/FT - 2021. 25th June 2021.

Reference 6: https://www.elastic.co/elasticsearch/service.

Trolley 422

A stroll into Epsom this afternoon with various items on my to-do list. 

Now over the past few days, I have been seeing more and more trolleys in and around Epsom town centre, and this afternoon I thought that a spot of trolley activity was in order. So this one was recovered from outside ASK and returned to the stack at the entrance to the M&S food hall in the Ashley Centre, three months after trolley 421 was returned to the front entrance for disinfection. 

All bar one of the trolleys in the relevant stack today had handle locks fitted, which this one did not. Was it an interloper from the Ashtead store?

The waterworks outside the strip club noticed at reference 1 have been finished for some time now, but instead there was something watery going on at the other end of town, the West Street end, and quite a lot of water was coming out of a hole there. A board said that Thames Water was on the case.

Ripe cherries and giant tomatoes from Waitrose. The former were good but I thought the latter were a bit dear at around 70p each. However, an essential ingredient for tomorrow's stew, on which more in due course.

Rymans did not have the right sized pencil case, but Smiths did.

Waterstones had three fat Dostoevskis in Penguin Classics, but not the thin one I was looking for. While Oxfam over the road had no Dostoevskis at all, in a fiction section which seemed much reduced since I last looked at it. Maybe I will settle for Project Gutenberg. Or maybe a Kindle job from Amazon for 99p? For which see the end of reference 2.

Passed on CeX on this occasion.

And no-one wanted to convert my two fifty pound notes into five twenty pound notes, the former being slightly too big both for my wallet and for most of my modest purchasing needs. HSBC, which is my bank, closes at 14:00 on the days that it is open. Metrobank was open but would only process the notes through an account, which I don't have. The Post Office wouldn't take them. A building society thought about it, to the extent of peeking in the cash box to see how many twenties there were, but then said I had to be a customer.  Halifax, where I am a customer, was shut and shuttered. But I dare say I would have failed there anyway for lack of identification, customer numbers and so on and so forth. Perhaps fifty pounds notes are the notes of choice for people who are a bit coy about where they got them from - with the result that respectable places have procedures & protocols.

So a busy afternoon after the busy morning, already noticed.

Reference 1: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/trolley-421.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/the-hunt-for-two-seas.html.

Return to the Coopers

Last week saw our return to the Coopers, once the local for the people of Stamford Green, sometimes a haunt of youth, presently a casual dining establishment, although drinking is also allowed. A place we have eaten at on several occasions, perhaps most recently that noticed at reference 1, around four years ago.

Started the day with a spin around Jubilee Way. Overcast and muggy. But a slight breeze, so neither hot nor wet. Overtaken by a carpet lorry in East Street: rather too close and rather too fast for comfort. Overtaken by one of those posh, unmarked and anonymised coaches at the lights for the first turning into Ewell Village. Dark glass windows. The sort of thing used by important football teams and important executives for their outings. And much improved by having registration plate No.33, a near miss for the No.34 I have been looking out for for weeks. But not so anonymised that there was not a small label below the door saying that it was operated by Bruton's Coaches of Morden. Who are now tracked down.

Back at the Coopers, settled for eating in, in what used to be the saloon bar. A place where a veteran once told me about his time in Sheffield in the run up to D-day, most of which was spent in swimming up and down the municipal swimming pool in uniform, if not in full battle dress. I forget whether he ever actually made it to Normandy. But it was probably more than twenty years ago now.

Presentation of the food rather better than the Blenheim. Much more lady friendly. And my beefburger came with far fewer additives, which was good, although I did come across what tasted like a dollop of Branston's at one point. Which I shall ask them to omit on a future occasion. Also that I prefer my burgers to be slightly less cooked, with this one being a little dry. 

Plus, while they had a large bottle of Bells being used to collect coin for charity, they couldn't actually sell me a Bells. I had to settle for a Jameson. To think that Bells was the big brand in saloon bars of my youth. Preferred by saloon bar cognoscenti to the better selling Teachers. Haven't seen that one for a while either. Notwithstanding, Bing rapidly turns up their web site (reference 5), so I shall have to take to asking for it in bars which make something of a parade of their single malts.

But otherwise entirely satisfactory, complete with entertainment provided by a nearby table, very full of all the cruises they had done over years.

Home past a hopeful team member minding the entrance to the Cricketers, to enter a ballot for Wigmore Hall tickets, the results of which were reported in the previous post. Scrabble off; can't remember why. It is not as if the afternoon would have been very far advanced by the time we got home,  with the time stamp on the picture above being just after 13:00.

PS: I have just remembered about the micro-brewery operated at the back of the Coopers. I should perhaps have allowed myself a half, for old-times sake. Maybe next time.

Reference 1: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/05/hay-fever.html.

Reference 2: http://jollycoopers.co.uk/home-1/.

Reference 3: http://www.brutonscoaches.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://www.brutons-executive-coaches.co.uk/. Slightly more informative, and including a snap of the sort of coach in question. Reproduced above.

Reference 5: https://www.teacherswhisky.com/.

Busy morning

As at 11:28, the 616th batch of bread has just started its second rise, having completed its first rise in short order, that is to say about two and a half hours. Instead of the four hours it used to take. Five hours in March 2015. Not clear to me that it is all down to the warmer weather, although BH argues that the airing cupboard taken over for the first rise is cooler when the central heating is on and the boiler is struggling to keep the hot water hot.

The bird feeder has been taken down and dusted off for the summer. Fiddly busy getting all the bits and bobs out of it. I suspect spider action.

Applied slug pellets to one of the sunflowers, looking rather the worse for wear. BH alleges that this particular sunflower is used by slugs and snails to get onto her lilies behind, now coming into flower. Third sunflower from the left in the snap at reference 1.

While in the background, the Wigmore Hall has confirmed that we have two tickets for an upcoming concert. The last such was around 15 months ago, noticed at reference 2. I had to remind myself what we had been to hear. I am also reminded that we had been relegated from row I to row L - while on the newly booked occasion we will be as far back as row M. But I suppose their excuse will be social distancing.

PS: the snap above is of the second warning of this sort that I have had. I suppose I had better do something about it, tedious though it is. Not just HSBC (of reference 3) that is getting paranoid about security.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/sunflowers.html.

Reference 2: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/03/penultimate-outing.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/trial-by-call-centre.html.

Goods which are past their sell by date

I have read that sales of books are doing well; that people are buying more books in print form than ever. Which may be so, but the prices of second hand books strike me as being very low: quite often I am able to buy a second hand book for little more than the cost of its postage from somewhere up north. And one has trouble giving away boxes of second hand books, despite their having been terribly valuable and important at some point in one's life. While it is quite possible that, contrariwise, the price of antique and collectible books is holding up well.

All of which could be glossed by saying that young people want to read fiction in print form, but in so far as they read non-fiction at all, they do that on a computer. While collecting fancy print books as a hobby or to show off is doing just fine: even footballers' wives, rock stars and personalities do it. There is also the consideration that non-fiction dates very quickly these days - both in terms of content and in terms of the presentation of that content - which means that online is much more practical than offline. Just think of all the tricks that Wikipedia entries get up to these days, tricks which don't work on the printed page at all.

Something of the sort may be going on with music on vinyl, with most recorded music these days being consumed directly from the Internet. Not to say live music in these days of social distancing and more or less closed music venues.

Against which background, I was thinking of getting rid of maybe nine inches of more or less brand new, boxed sets of Baroque choral music, music which I sometimes thought I would get around to, but have not actually got around to in thirty or more years. I could make better use of the shelf space. So BH turns up the advertisement above.

Shortly after that, quite by chance, she learns of a music group which meets at the Leatherhead Institute of reference 1, itself a bit of a relic of past times, but still doing well, still going strong. One of the things that the music group does is listen to, and presumably discuss, recorded music, rather like a reading group. Inquiry reveals that they would be happy to take the choral music.

And we are more than happy to have found a good home for it. Taking it to the tip, or leaving our children to take it to the tip - or drop it in a skip - at some point in the future, not nearly such good outcomes.

PS: I sometimes find that Wikipedia gets a bit carried away with clever presentation - so clever that it intrudes rather than helps. But I dare say that will settle down.

Reference 1: https://leatherheadinstitute.uk/.

Trial by call centre

My old fob (aka Digipass 270) from HSBC having given up on me after a spot of bother with numbers, the man at the call centre arranged for me to be sent a new one. Plus an activation code under separate cover. Plus an instruction to call him back when I got them. On no account to attempt activation by myself!

This has now been done. An hour's trial by call centre. Nothing particularly wrong with the system and the operator was polite, helpful and patient. Nevertheless it was all very tedious and tiring - not least because I managed to get quite a few more numbers wrong on the way.

Maybe one day some bank will come up with the bright idea of charging for current account services and them providing real people with whom one can talk to face to face. Maybe, even, without an appointment. Perhaps somewhere in London, not so far from us here in Epsom. Like they used to in the good old days, when you paid so much a cheque, so much a transaction.

To be fair, there are people who you can talk to in this way, but I no longer know what you can usefully talk to them about. Beyond being fairly sure they are not empowered to be helpful with problems with online banking, with all such power resting with the call centres. Maybe there is some smart alec at HSBC who would say that customers can't have it both ways, that they are either online or offline. And perhaps remind us that in the days when banks were cuddly, there was no online. You were at the mercy of your bank manager - a breed which was apt to be difficult and stuffy with impecunious young customers - and a breed which I believe is now more or less extinct.

Goodness knows how people who are older and more doddery than I am manage.

PS: the snap is of a lady on the Onespan payroll. Readers are invited to try to find out who she is.

Reference 1: https://www.onespan.com/resources/digipass-270/datasheet. 'Ultra portable strong authentication'. My second one in as many years. BH does rather better, but then she hardly ever uses hers.

The second monument

I have noticed the arrival of that monument of unread literature, ‘Clarissa’, several times now. And I am happy to report that after two and a half months, I am now a little more than half way through. Clarissa has tried to escape to Hampstead and Lovelace continues to weave his evil plots, seemingly as much for the pleasure of plotting as anything. Although, thinking as I type (as often seems to be the way), he probably gets even more pleasure from writing letters to his friend Belford about said plotting. The worth of a good plot is much magnified by a good audience.

A plotting which I might say is better rendered on the printed page from Penguin than on the Kindle from Amazon. The Kindle certainly has its points, but sophisticated page layout is not one of them, and the funny layouts favoured by seventeenth and eighteenth century writers and printers, not to mention the likes of James Joyce, do not do well there.

But progress may be interrupted. A week or so ago I read the article built around Spenser’s ‘Faerie Queene’ at reference 2, snapped above.

Read to be intrigued – and moved to purchase quite reasonably from eBay. Intrigued in part by Spenser having been a middle ranking civil servant in the colonial administration of Ireland at the time of the Tudor attempt at pacification and with that experience being said to be reflected in Book V, the legend of Artegall, or of Justice.

Not get very far yet, but for someone who does not read much poetry, I find this poetry easy to read and the language much less obscure than one might have thought from reading Spenser’s contemporary, one William Shakespeare. But I have yet to spot any allusion to Ireland.

PS: the picture above is of the Redcrosse knight defeating the dragon Errour. An illustration provided by William Kent for the 1751 edition. I suppose Red Cross in the sense of crusader, rather than the people who provide bandages and wheelchairs. These last, once from a small house in our own East Street.

References

Reference 1: Clarissa; or, The History of a Young Lady: Comprehending the Most Important Concerns of Private Life. And Particularly Shewing, the Distresses that May Attend the Misconduct Both of Parents and Children, In Relation to Marriage – Samuel Richardson – 1748.

Reference 2: The Triumph of Mutabilitie: Edmund Spenser’s long, daunting The Faerie Queen combines political allegory with some of the most flickering, ambiguous poetry in English - Catherine Nicholson/NYRB - 2021. Issue of 1st July.

Reference 3: The Faerie Queene – Edmund Spenser – 1590. My edition that in two volumes, of 1909 from OUP, via Parker's of Oxford, via eBay of San Jose, at the southern end of the Bay of San Fransisco. The sort of book which had to be cut by its first reader, in this case with a paper knife which was not sharp enough to do the job neatly. And the little blue sticker inside the front cover has no apostrophe.

Reference 4: http://www.oxfordhistory.org.uk/broad/buildings/south/26,27.html. Parker’s was once a long established book shop in Oxford. Now swallowed up by Blackwell’s.

Our family tree

Reference 1 is a review article about the evolution of apes to humans, more specifically about ongoing research into the many large apes of the Miocene epoch, say from 10mya (million years ago) to 2mya, by which time early forms of humans had arrived. Large apes which are only known from a rather fragmentary fossil record.

With my reading encouraged by at least four factors. First, we need to push back against what seems to be a rising tide of creationists across the Christian and Muslim worlds. Second, the way we humans came to be, starting off from good simian stock is of interest in its own right. Third, the classifications which emerge from evolutionary analysis are going to interest a former statistician with a finger in the pies of classification of both occupation and disease. Fourth, I am presently engaged with reference 5, which builds a evolutionary classification of the world’s languages. An overdetermined activity, as the shrinks would say.

The story of the present review seems to be that it is not enough to look at those of our relatives which are still about, the orangutans, the gorillas, the chimpanzees and the bonobos. We need to look at all the now extinct apes running around the world during the Miocene epoch, millions of years before we humans turned up; a world introduced at reference 3. I have learned that there were quite a lot of them on the north coast of the Mediterranean Sea, as well as being scattered across much of Africa and a swathe of south eastern Asia.

Part of the story being that humans did not evolve from any of these extant relatives and the hunt is on for the ‘Pan-Homo LCA’, that is to say the last common ancestor of humans, chimpanzees and bonobos, with the ‘Pan’ bit being these last two. An ancestor, from the figure above, which lived about 5mya. The blue-magenta junction.

Another part being that a critical step on our evolutionary path was learning to walk on two feet, from which so much else was able to follow. But we are some way off knowing exactly how and why this happened. As things stand, there are many ways in which this particular cake might have been baked.

And another being that there has been a shift in climate since the Miocene, meaning that there is less jungle and more woodland and savannah. Less of the soft, sugary fruit favoured by some simians. Furthermore, the climate is less stable. So animals which wanted to thrive needed to adapt, needed to be able to adapt.

While, for me, a dental curiosity was something called the canine honing complex, an arrangement of canines and premolars which allowed the upper canines to be sharpened by rubbing against a suitable hollow between the lower canine and the first pre-molar. It seems that early apes had much larger upper canines than we do, almost tusks, evidence of a much higher level of aggression, incompatible with the evolution of co-operative humans. Those more curious than me on this point can consult reference 4.

I think the take away for me is that this is all very difficult. It will take a lot more fossil hunting field work, particularly in that large part of Africa which has not yet been looked at properly for these purposes, a lot of which is not readily accessible, and then a lot more work back in the laboratories and institutes, before we get to a good understanding of the evolution of early man from the apes. Work of the kind which is evidenced at reference 6.

PS: the first version of the snap above, a png lifted from Wikipedia, took on an unhelpful black background when one clicked to enlarge. Hopefully, this jpg version from Microsoft's 'Snip & Sketch' tool will not do this.

References

Reference 1: Fossil apes and human evolution - Sergio Almécija, Ashley S. Hammond, Nathan E. Thompson, Kelsey D. Pugh, Salvador Moyà-Solà, David M. Alba – 2021.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chimpanzee%E2%80%93human_last_common_ancestor. The source of the figure above. The orangutans had already gone their own way by time it starts, 10mya.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Miocene. 

Reference 4: Modularity of the anthropoid dentition: Implications for the evolution of the hominin canine honing complex – Lucas K. Delezene – 2015.

Reference 5: A guide to the world's languages. Vol. 1: Classification – Merritt Ruhlen – 1987.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ardipithecus_ramidus. One of the pieces of the complicated jigsaw.

Wellingtonia 31

We thought the Spa Hotel on the western fringe of Tunbridge Wells (and convenient for the golf club) would be a likely place to find a Wellingtonia. So off we went, having been first amused to read that the new Jumbo jets for POTUS, presently the subject of a serious row about the cost of their refurbishment, had been originally intended for a now defunct Russian airline called Transaero and had spent quality time sitting in some Californian desert.

Greeted by a No.35 on arrival at Mount Ephraim. But still no No.34.

Spa Hotel up and running and happy to provide refreshments. Very quiet for a Sunday morning, usually the time when all the guests from the weddings of the day before are milling about the lounge area. Usually some interesting dressing to be seen.

Out to inspect the gardens around the back, in very fine form, with plenty of flowers, ponds and mature trees. But no Wellingtonia.

However, all was not lost, as we came across the specimen snapped above shortly after exit. Couldn't actually touch it, without invading someone's front garden, but we thought it reasonable to score it. We were not that far away.

Further set-back when we found that the Tunbridge branch of the family had managed some quite decent looking foxgloves, whereas my efforts had come to precisely nothing. Foxglove envy. Consolation prize in the form of the Wellingtonia tip already noticed at reference 2.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/wellingtonia-30.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/06/broadwater.html.

Group search key: wgc.

Articles of religion

 

Members of the Church of England, in particular the clergy therein, have been required for most of the last four hundred years or so to sign up to the 39 articles of religion first set down in 1562, that is to say at the beginning of the reign of Queen Elizabeth I.

Having occasion to take a look this morning, I found that the first article started in the way one would expect: 'there is but one living and true God, everlasting, without body, parts or passions; of infinite power, wisdom and goodness; the Maker and Preserver of all things visible and invisible...'.

Then picking out one out from the middle, article 22 puts various obnoxious Romish Doctrines in their proper place, that is to say in the outer darkness. Things like purgatory and the worship of relics (there spelt 'Reliques').

But I was amused to find that article 38 asserted the right of all good Christians to have property, despite what Anabaptists might say about it. A right only qualified by a duty to be appropriately charitable. A right which set us up right for the capitalism which came after.

While the last article, article 39, forbad swearing, except upon reasonable request by a magistrate, duly appointed. Thus reminding me of the connection between taking the oath in a court of law and common-or-garden swearing in a public house.