Outside the box

Last week we broke new ground, listened outside the box by attending one of the sessions at the Wigmore Hall put on to celebrate the Polish composer Mieczysław Weinberg. Also part of the celebrations of the centenary of the Poles regaining their independence after centuries of subordination to one or other neighbouring power. A composer who died in exile in what had become Russia, having been roughly handled there in Stalin's time, as is explained at reference 1. Sonata No.2 for solo violin, Op.95; sonata for two violins; Op.69; and, Jewish Songs, Op.17. So in reverse order of composition, starting in 1944.

Victorian pile?

But the day started in Worcester Park, in a rather odd road called 'The Avenue', a road last visited in the course of a heritage outing in 2012, as is explained at reference 2, a post recording a piano captured on this second visit. A road which might well once have been lined with great brick piles like the survivors snapped above, now mostly demolished in favour of blocks of flats. Who were the people who could afford to build and run such places? Did the maids have to carry coals up from the cellar to the servants' rooms at the top?

Commemorative tablet

We only got as far as the church hall of the church of St. Mary the Virgin on this occasion - a useful multi-purpose community space - but we did find the commemorative tablet on the outside of the east end, telling us that the place had been opened by my Lord Bishop of Winchester in 1894, presumably before the Bishop of Guildford was invented? Does the latter, as a new creation, rate all the 'my lord bishop' business?

Not a pile

Church hall left, church right

Not sure what the more humble building, more or less opposite the church was for. A workshop for mending the carriages of the gentry up the road? Unfortunately, the Google cameramen have been down the road since demolition started, so that easy route to the original building is blocked.

Back to Worcester Park station to use the car park there, to find that the ticket machines only work during the week and that the ticket office was closed as the early morning clerk was doing the handover to the late morning clerk. Eventually we got through to the late morning clerk, who turned out to be a black cab driver when she was not a ticket clerk, helpful and informative. Both car and person tickets bought.

Gable end holes

On the way in, intrigued by whole appeared to be rows of holes let into the gable end of this building, possibly somewhere near Clapham Junction, certainly on the western side of the train. Was it some sort of urban pigeon loft? Must try and mark it down for closer inspection.

The programme

Broke our journey at the bar at the Langham Hotel at the top of Regent Street. A handy and comfortable place for such a purpose. Service good, to the extent of going off somewhere else to find some Sancerre not to hand at the bar itself - where the barman seemed to be busy most of the time that we were there making cocktails. Rather different clientele, including ladies that lunch, than I remember from visits during the week, when it is mainly business people.

Downstairs, they were running some heats for a competition for front of house hotel staff (nothing particularly to do with this particular hotel), with prizes for the winners, called scholars, including things like a visit to a famous hotel school at Lausanne (of reference 5) and working Buckingham House during a state banquet. The chap who seemed to be in charge seemed very happy to take the time to tell us about all this, perhaps by way of a demonstration of his front of house skills. BH got the idea that we could easily have slipped into being guinea pigs for the contestants had we shown much more interest.

Out to find some sort of middle east flavoured demonstration going on across the road. The doorman did try to explain, but I did not catch his explanation. And so onto the Beckstein Room at the Wigmore Hall, where we were able to finish our picnic, started on the train (not something I usually like to do, perhaps the train was running late) along with various other pensioner couples.

The Weinberg turned out to be rather good, with the songs, sung by one Ilona Domnich from St. Petersburg, having a tremendous impact. Impact perhaps derived from the singer being Russian and the songs being songs from the Great Patriotic War, facts which only got to me after the event, continuing the prefer to watch the action than read the words.

The cruise

The chap sitting in front of us was taking in the whole day, and he thought this second session was better, more interesting than the first, so perhaps we had made the right choice. In any event, whole days of this sort of thing have never been our thing. Not for us the tasteful musical cruises and weekends put on by the likes of Kirker Music Holidays, for which see reference 4. Regular advertisers in Wigmore Hall programmes, so there must be a good bit of customer overlap, if not these particular customers.

Decided that the way ahead was to take fish and chips at the Wetherspoon's at Raynes Park. Rather wet by the time that we got there and there were a couple of well-established beggars in the tunnel, but Wetherspoon's was up and running, with not too much evidence of Saturday afternoon excesses (apart from the state of the toilets - unusual for a Wetherspoon's, usually fairly careful about such matters). Fish and chips entirely satisfactory and very satisfactorily priced. Either Mr. Wetherspoon tapped into some huge unmet demand for cheap food - or he pushed a lot of other providers out of business. Or perhaps it is a bit of both. Whatever the case, he has set the standard for the cheaper end of pub food, with his menus - and his menu cards - being copied up and down the land.

Still wet on exit.

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

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/piano-32.html.

Reference 3: http://www.jewhistory.ort.spb.ru/eng/main/sprav.php?id=1199. Bing not much use on this occasion, but Google turned up this short note about the writer of the poems of the songs, Schmuel Galkin. In Yiddish.

Reference 4: https://www.kirkerholidays.com/cultural-tours-and-music-holidays.

Reference 5: https://www.ehl.edu/.

In the dark

An advertisement from the Wigmore Hall reached me this afternoon for a Beethoven string quartet to be played, from memory, in the dark. Presumably not total darkness as the performers would need to be able to see something of their instruments?

Puzzled as to why it is so cheap, the Sacconi being a busy enough quartet to judge by reference 1, and a quartet which appeared on the Dorking Concertgoers programme in both 2011 and 2018, with notice of the former being found at reference 3.

Of particular interest to me for the difference that being in the dark would make. My present feeling being that seeing the performers is an important part of the action, providing plenty of visual cues to supplement the aural ones, and that audience presence is probably important in some less obvious way - less obvious to me, anyway. So being in the dark, would knock out the former and much weaken the second. So where would that leave one?

I recall an anecdote from my father, who attended many concerts in his younger days, about how they once did an experiment. Perhaps the people from the 'Gramophone' magazine, which has been going since 1923. Get a whole lot of classical music lovers into a concert hall. Put some screens on the stage. Divide the concert into chunks, with a quartet behind the screen doing some chunks and state of the art sound reproduction equipment (this experiment probably dating from somewhere in the range 1930-1960) doing the remainder. His punch line was that the audience, on average, could not tell the difference. I have not attempted to track down any such experiment, but, in common I dare say with many other concert goers, I am confident that I would know the difference - but without caring or having the opportunity to test that confidence!

But it is all academic. Returns only - and I doubt whether I will go to the bother of trying to get one.

Reference 1: http://sacconi.com/.

Reference 2: http://dorkingconcertgoers.org.uk/.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=sacconi.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/search?q=Op.131. A reasonably well known (to us) quartet with at least two outings in the three and a half years covered by this volume of the blog.

Trolley 321

A shiny, new M&S food trolley, captured in the Ashmore passage. On this occasion, unlike the last, all the other small trolleys in their stack were the very slightly larger 'M&S Food Hall' variety, with handle lock.

Trolley 320

A Waitrose trolley, captured in the Ashmore passage. The handle lock appeared to contain some sort of a metal token, but I never got to find out as the Waitrose small trolley stack was empty when I got there. Big trolley stack healthy enough - but I do not remember when I last captured one of those. If ever.

Watering India

A couple of weeks ago, the NYRB included a piece by one Christopher de Bellaigue, written about three books about the water of India, in particular about the River Ganges. With NYRB having prompted notice of India about a year ago at reference 1, and with notice of a book about the Partition about a year ago at reference 2. With my own dim memory of a visit to (H.M.S.) Ganges getting on for ten years ago now, not seeming to have made it to any of the posts arising from our visit to Ipswich, in search of my birthplace, in late September, 2010. I remember Ganges, long closed, being a rather shabby looking place from what used to be the main gate, with the famous mast present but oddly diminished.

Ordnance Survey and gmaps between them run the place down to Shotley Gate, across the water from both Harwich and Felixstowe. With the main gate showing up in Street View at the bottom of Caledonian Road, off the bend in the B.1456. A view which I remember, so I am reasonably sure that we did run the place down in 2010. Also the place called Holbrook School, a place with a naval flavour, attended by both the naval uncle and various acquaintances. Possibly prompted in part by a chap at TB telling us about his glory days as the Ganges Button Boy. No mention of him in the blog either, with nearly all the buttons being the computer sort. But there was reference 4.

However, I digress from watering India. In amongst a lot of stuff in the Bellaigue piece about the doings of Hindu gods and goddesses in and around the Ganges, there were some facts and figures which impressed me.

Water has always been important on the subcontinent, which meant that the British took a keen interest in the weather during their time there. In the comings, goings and occasional failure of the monsoons.

Notwithstanding, between two and three million people died in a famine in Bengal in 1942, triggered by the conjunction of the Japanese invading the rice fields of Burma and a cyclone, but greatly aggravated by Churchill ruling that any food going had to go to the army. A story that I would like to get to the bottom of.

The British started the subcontinental taste for large waterworks, for the fight against the vagaries of the rain, a fight  now expressed as hundred of dams in the foothills of the Himalayas, with the Ganges Canal system connecting two arms of the Ganges, the idea being to facilitate irrigation of the region, the Doab, between the two arms. The two arms rising in the Himalayas and curving round to run south east, more or less in the centre of the map above. A Canal System first built in the middle of the nineteenth century and still going strong now.

Which took me to the Times Atlas, which includes a fine two page spread of the physical geography of the northern half of the subcontinent and which served to remind me how the Indus basin to the west and the rather larger Ganges basin to the east were the two agriculturally rich parts of India worth conquering by the Mughals. The first of which is now Pakistan and the second of which is mainly India, but with the deltas going to what is now Bangladesh. And as Bellaigue puts it, the partition of India cut across the hydrological facts on the ground, very much as the partition of Berlin (to which I shall return shortly) cut across the railway facts on the ground. Leading to all kinds of problems.

Something else to get to the bottom of would be the water agreements between India and Bangladesh on the use of the water which starts in the first but ends in the second, bottom right on the map above. Do such agreements exist? Are they fair and sensible? Do India and Bangladesh do better with their rivers than the US and Mexico do with the Colorado?

Bellaigue also tells us that the groundwater of India is being sucked dry by thousands of tube wells (often paid for by well intentioned charities), and that the country is probably heading for a water crisis - while the powers that be - in particular the rather unsavoury President Modi and his rampant Hindus - chase other hares.

PS 1: Bing was not very good at finding physical geography maps of the Indian subcontinent. But I thought that included above would be better than snapping the relevant pages in the Times Atlas. Fine volume from 1968 though it is.

PS 2: later: there is plenty of material on the 1943 Bengal Famine out there. Starting with the Wikipedia article, I fairly soon found my way to a copy of the Government of India's Woodhead Report of 1945, picking up various other articles on the way. Further notice in due course.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/a-better-number.html. With the book about India being the last of those mentioned here.

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/01/partition.html.

Reference 3: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/09/. The relevant posts start on September 27th.

Reference 4: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=Lithuanian+Evangelical+Lutheran+Church.

A gift of tongues

This being by way of proper notice of reference 1, first noticed at reference 2.

Figure 1

Figure 2

A wartime economy book, on very cheap paper. Notwithstanding, nicely bound and otherwise nicely produced. Furthermore, someone has taken a bit of trouble with the dedication inside. My guess being that it was a gift for a teacher who was leaving.

Figure 3

 A book about languages designed for the lay reader; just about 300 pages of text arranged in twelve chapters, written by someone who, inter alia, lectured on Chaucer. To plug the gap between the magazine article intended for the general public and the heavy tomes intended for the professional linguists. From the same stable as ‘Mathematics for the Million’ and ‘Science for the Citizen’, at least one of which featured in my boyhood. All books from a time when we in the west were striving for the improvement of mankind, for the education of all.

While I am neither a beginner nor an expert, I found the book a useful and interesting canter through the study of languages. And I think it would be fair to say from someone with a particular interest in the phonological end of the business; the business of shaping words out of the sort of sounds that our vocal tract can manage. In which connection, I should perhaps add that the human vocal tract is almost as special as the human brain; not many other animals have anything like it; probably just some monkeys and some birds.

Someone also who, despite having written this book well over half a century ago, has an approach to grammar which strikes me as entirely modern, a belief that grammar is an attempt to corral living and breathing languages into a formal framework which is never going to be a very good fit. An approach which includes comments about how our western understanding of grammar – including here word order, parts of speech, inflections of nouns, inflections of verbs, the use of particles, suffixes and prefixes – is perhaps influenced too much by the grammar of stylised, self-conscious authors like Cicero. Whose written word might be a long way from the spoken word of ordinary citizens, soldiers and subjects. And we need to be reminded that some languages, perhaps not in the Indo-European group of languages, do things very differently indeed.

Along the way she points to some interesting uses of negative and double negative particles in both English and French, defying grammarians or logicians to make sense of them. One example being: ‘he don’t like me no more’. Another being: ‘it’s a beautiful day, isn’t it’.

She starts the book with the function of language in communication, in the course of which she talks about the magic that can be done with names, particularly proper names, thought to be tightly bound up with whatever it is that is so named. To the point that one needs to be very careful with one’s use of certain names, for example those of kings and gods. She points up the connection from there to the way that bits of peoples’ bodies – for example nail clippings – or images of faces – for example portrait photographs - can be bound in the same way. Magical relics which persist to this day. See for example, reference 11.

Figure 4

She goes onto the business, mentioned above, of making sounds. Presenting an organisation of same from which I associate to the all-important periodic table of chemists. A table in which neighbours are related in an organised way, from where we get to the international phonetic alphabet; sadly not standardised to quite the same standard as the orderly scheme of the elements of the chemists. But, bearing in mind that many syllables are of the form consonant-vowel-consonant, where consonants are often short and vowels are often long, and that there are usually rather more consonants than vowels, the figure above gives something of the organisation of consonants, with the vocal tract being something in the way of the wind instrument of music, with the sound in question being generated from different positions, from the lips left through to the back of the throat right. With babies finding it easier to decipher and reproduce the former, more visible sounds. While down the left hand side we have other ways of classifying consonants.

The idea being that any one language must have chosen and arranged consonants on such a chart in such a way that there are enough of them to give one a reasonable repertoire of syllables and that they are far enough apart, one from another, that they can be reliably produced and consumed.

Another idea being that diagrams of this sort are good at predicting the way the words are apt to shift over time, with constituent sounds slipping from one position in the table, to another nearby position.

She points up the connections between language and technology. Cuneiform, for example, is well adapted to being punched out in the soft clay of its day. Spelling can be in the grip of printers like Gutenburg and Caxton. While I can point up the impact of communication by text message, by busy people on the move, on language. Mandarins – that is to say highly trained and polished civil servants – and their antique language skills are out and the likes of Dominic Cummings are in. To name just one person who is supposed to be behind the news, not in the news.

She appears to be sceptical about attempts to hold the line, attempts to stop the continual evolution of language. About, for example, the attempts of the French to maintain the supposed Gallic purity of their language in the face of Anglo-Saxon incursions. Or about teachers in English grammar schools attempting to maintain correct usage, what ever that might be.

Generally very good on the way that languages change, leaving all kinds of relics of past times in place, with lots of entertaining examples. So loyal and legal come from the one root in the same way as royal and regal. Words in English starting with ‘sk’ – words like sky, skull and skill – are generally imports from the time of the Vikings – although some of them have been palatised (see reference 6…) to ‘sh’, as is shield. And with a lot of English spelling being more of these relics. On the way that languages evolve over even longer periods of time. On the family connections between languages – taking care to remind us that some apparent similarities are no more than coincidences.

She has quite a lot of say about what comparative linguistics can teach us about history. So where a group of languages share a word for something, that word is evidence that the group had a common ancestor or precursor, that word is apt to be old and may say something about the place from which that precursor came. For example, the precursor for a group of languages sharing a word for polar bears is unlikely to have come from the tropics. Or the precursor for a group of languages sharing words for ploughing is likely come from a people practising agriculture rather than hunting and gathering. Speculations which have been complemented by the work of Reich with old DNA (reference 8), with various notices at reference 9.

There is some talk of the way that intellectuals, writers and other creative types push at the boundaries of languages, for one reason or another. Perhaps to get new mileage out of old words, perhaps to try and express new things in a new way. Quite a lot of space is given to Joyce’s experiments with language, already noticed at reference 2.

Near the end of chapter 10, that is to say very near the end of the book, we are reminded of the cynical observation about the chief function of language being to conceal thought, an observation which Bing attributes to Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, Prince de Benevento - also known simply as (that duplicitous survivor) Talleyrand: ‘La parole a été donné à l’homme pour déguiser sa pensée’. A thought which I think Simenon – I have recently been reading his cahiers of the early 1960’s would recognise. With his take being that trying to express what one thinks in words is often a bad thing, with the mere attempt at expression corrupting and fixing what should be unexpressed and fluid. With ‘flou’ being an important word in the world of detection by Maigret. So, to my mind, a cynical observation, but one which serves to remind us of the limits of language.

All in all, an excellent introductory text, which has stood the test of time well. Although the reason that I bought the book, the idea that the word ‘I’ is a relatively late arrival in the evolution of language, not needed in the first instance, and noticed at reference 10, gets just a fairly weak statement, no more than a sentence, in the introductory chapter 1 (on page 11).

PS 1: only yesterday I read (elsewhere) that ‘Prussia’ and ‘Russia’ came from the same root. From the time when the Elector of Brandenburg was – or perhaps the Teutonic Knights were – pushing into the border lands in the east, towards what are now the Baltic states, Belarus, Russia and the Ukraine. Did either Hitler or Stalin know this?

PS 2: while just now I have read some language which might have come from the texting generation. In the form of a flyer about protesting plans to move hospital services about in north Surrey, in which there is loose talk of ‘health bosses’ as if they were the enemy. With the bosses in question, in all probability, being men and women who have given their working lives to public service, to the health service, and who are doing their best to get a quart out of a pint pot. They deserve a bit more respect.

References

Reference 1: The gift of tongues - Schlauch – 1943.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/ebay.html. 

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

Reference 4: http://www.internationalphoneticalphabet.org/.

Reference 5: https://www.internationalphoneticassociation.org/.

Reference 6: English phonetics and phonology glossary: a little encyclopaedia of phonetics - Peter Roach – 2009. A freely accessible, handy guide, turned up by Bing in the course of my travels.

Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charles_Maurice_de_Talleyrand-Périgord.

Reference 8: Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past - David Reich – 2018.

Reference 9: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=reich.

Reference 10: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/some-contrasts-between-old-and-new.html.

Reference 11: https://shewhomustnotbenamed93.blogspot.com/. Found among the rather odd collection of material that Bing turns up for this expression. Some unpleasantly pornographic.

Trolley 319

Another lock-free trolley from the M&S food hall, captured in the Ashmore Passage.

In the course of returning it, I noticed that they have more or less finished replanting trees in market square, with the contractor being called Civic Trees (reference 1), which I now know to be a division of Glendale Services (reference 2); a division which offers a full range of tree relocation services. Other divisions offer public grounds management services and public woodlands managements services. Perhaps they are the people who do not do a very good job on the hedge running along the western side of Court Recreation Ground. The place where the house for the chap who used to look after it has been sold off to a veterinarian practise.

Reference 1: https://www.civictrees.co.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.glendale-services.co.uk/.

More fungus

The largest members of a cluster of fungi, behind the green cable box, on Clayhill Green, at the very top of West Hill. The mainly mild, damp weather must be bringing them out.

Fungus

A fine fungus spotted yesterday morning on a spur on a cut-back stump, possibly the tree noticed at reference 1. All white and frothy; much flashier in real life than it appears here.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/08/tree-down.html.

Trolley 318

Captured at the start of East Street, just past the hoarding at the junction with Hook Road. A Sainsbury's trolley with front wheel lock, not deployed. A wheel lock which did, nevertheless, make it a bit of a pain to wheel back to Kiln Lane, the adapted wheel jumping around on the bumpy pavement even more than the regular wheels. Designed for the smooth surface to be found at Kiln Lane, rather than the regular roads.

The grass in this snap has grown well this year, the spot on which the trolley was standing having been used to park cars until earlier in the year, which meant that it was a bit of a muddy mess. Which all goes to show that one can get grass back quite quickly if the conditions are right.

Once again, I noticed the sign saying 'Fresh Kitchen' on the windows above the large, and usually quiet, first floor café at Sainsbury's. This morning I am moved to look it up, to find from the foodie/makeover website at reference 1 that: 'Sainsbury’s has taken a radical step with the opening of its new freshly-made sandwich bar format, Fresh Kitchen. Nellie Nichols went along to see how the new concept measures up against the very best ... If you had told me all those years ago I would be coming today to visit the new Sainsbury’s concept of freshly-made-on-site sandwiches, I wouldn’t have believed a word of it, but, to be honest, I’ve recently thought it was only a matter of time before one of the retailers tried their hand at it. After all, can it be that difficult to prepare an extensive range of handmade delicious, fresh sandwiches in an on-site kitchen delivered straight onto the shelves? ... I’m met by order, functionality and a good modern everyday design it’s hard not to like ... So far, so good ...'. A post which dates from 2011, so why has it taken so long to hit the Tier One store at Kiln Lane? Should I go and sample their bacon sandwiches, given that foodies are fully on-board with sarnies and pies these days? Which I suppose is all part of television journalists being required to put on regional accents.

Reference 1: https://nellienichols.com/sainsbury’s-fresh-kitchen/.

Trolley 317

Captured underneath the yew tree outside Café Rouge in the High Street, across the market square from M&S. Another lock-free, small size trolley from their food hall.

I can also report that that West Street was closed to east bound traffic. No holes in the road, but plenty of gas action on the northern side of the street and plenty of vans parked in the east bound lane.

And that they have started to replace the trees in the market square, the ones ripped out to make way for the resurfacing with shiny new bricks. Or perhaps setts. The new trees are quite big, with a big root ball and the upper parts carefully wrapped for transit in sack cloth; not the sort of thing that one could easily plant in one's own garden at all. Far too big to manage without machinery. But the right time of year to be planting trees.

Perhaps they are on course to take the 44 weeks noticed at reference 1.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/trivia.html.

Beethoven failed

Last Friday was intended to be a mainly St. Luke's day, with the main item on the programme being Beethoven's Op.20 septet, a work I have heard a fair number of times, sometimes paired with Schubert's Octet, and which has generally worked well.

Bullingdons

City Road

I had a call to take at noon, so left a little early and parked up at Old Street to take some fizzy water at the Wetherspoon's there while I waited for my call. And admired the old photograph of a public house in the City Road, hanging on a wall near me. I think the 'Windsor Castle', rather than the 'Eagle' of pop goes the weasel, still there last time I looked, albeit a place for casual dining rather than serious boozing.

The programme

Then off to St. Luke's churchyard to take my bread and cheese, while a chap probably living in social housing smoked his fag exercised his dog, off its lead, probably a terrier of some kind. Why do some people feel the need for this sort of protection? Why do they choose to make pets of such dogs - which are often ugly and sometimes dangerous? But then, I don't really understand wanting a dog at all. Don't mind other peoples', but have no desire to have one of my own.

On into the church itself to find no less than ten microphones, not counting a pair of large coloured ones for the mistress of ceremonies - who was not Fiona. Her stand-in was not nearly as florid, didn't put her heart and soul into the (not very good) script.

Some children were present and there was some fidgeting. One child was holding a large elephant and I wondered whether a need for elephants was consistent with a love for Tippett.

Of the four horns deployed for the Tippett horn sonata, two were highly polished, one was shabby and one was in-between. A variety of mute arrangements. I wondered whether all horns are the same, without coming to any conclusion: they all looked the same, state of polish apart. It was the shabby horn which made it to the septet following.

Maria Teresa of  Naples & Sicily

I was not greatly taken with the horn sonata. And for some reason, the light, the magic had gone from the septet, to the point where I was nodding a bit in the middle. Was it the fact that my usual routine with the bacon sandwich had been disturbed? Which seems more likely than any failing on the part of the musicians. But I was interested to read in the programme that the septet was regarded as easy listening for the masses, and Beethoven subsequently came to be rather annoyed by its popularity and the continual requests for something like the septet - from which he had long moved on. And I understand that the empress dedicatee - the first of eighteen children and snapped above - was with the masses on this one. With colours of the picture varying a good deal from image to image, with this one being the most highly pixelated that I could find. Don't suppose I shall ever get to see the original, not least because I can't find out where it is, just an unconfirmed suggestion that is in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, our twin town, as it happens. But I did find out that she was also the dedicatee of a mass by Haydn.

Metaphor

Out the bank to the Bullingdon stand by the Finsbury Leisure Centre, to be greeted by a sight which might be a metaphor for the future state of public services - in particular the National Health Services  - if the Tories get another mandate, which seems all too likely. Decaying infrastructure, no money to cover running costs (and so no bicycles on the stand) and with private contractors taking great bites out of the action (orange bicycles starting to appear on the scene).

Off to the Royal Festival Hall, from where I went to the Hayward Gallery, to see the newly opened Bridget Riley exhibition. Reasonably busy, but I did get straight in. I shall be reporting on the exhibition properly in due course, but a few observations in the meantime.

A sample of Riley, not necessarily from this exhibition

Riley, following the august footsteps of the likes of Dürer and Breughal, makes extensive use of assistants, thus considerably increasing her output and profitability. Not unreasonably, given the nature of her work, she delegates a lot of the actual manufacture of the finished article to her assistants, preferring to concentrate on concept, design and experiment.

Some of her pictures, particular the black & whites and the coloured stripes (these last mostly like that included above), moved about as you looked at them. It seems that there was something about them, entirely deliberate on Riley's part, that meant that the brain did not form a stable image to present to consciousness. While others moved about in an odd way if you swayed about a bit while standing in front of them. I presently ponder on why this might be so. See reference 1 for previous ponderings.

Some of her more recent pictures involve dots, which I did not find so interesting, although I did associate to Hirst, who does, I believe, do dots as well as dead animals and carved up people. But I rather doubt if his dots as are principled and informed as her dots. That said, I seem to recall that the colours he uses are taken from the restricted palette used, for some reason, by the manufacturers of prescription pills. Deeply significant?

I shall be back for more.

PS 1: presently puzzled as to why I cannot find the second post of reference 1. It clearly exists, but does not seem to appear in the listings you get right. Maybe I will get to the bottom of it later in the day.

PS 2: the answer turns out to be that I got myself locked onto July 2017 rather than June 2017. See reference 2. I suppose that, written down, the two dates are close enough and I was too careless to check everything that could possibly have gone wrong - and perhaps preferring exotic solutions which are false to simple solutions which are true. A charge sometimes levelled by Lewis against Morse. I dare say also by Jones against Barnaby, although I cannot presently recall an instance of this last.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=bridget+riley.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/06/on-scenes.html.

Tweet

To mark the frost noticed yesterday, I hung the bird feeder up outside the kitchen window. I did not expect any action yesterday, it usually taking the birds a while to find it - or perhaps to be attracted to it - but they have turned up this morning, with some blue tits in the lead. Possibly also having a go at the apples to the right of the yew to the right.

Coincidentally, this morning has also seen the arrival of the redwings, not confined to but looking to be feeding on the yew berries. Seemingly three weeks or so earlier than last year. See reference 1.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/11/candidate-tweet.html.

Customs completed

A couple of days after the customs events noticed at reference 1, a postcard arrived which explained that a parcel could not be delivered until I paid some taxes, this despite the fact that they had been paid a few days previously. Not quite as slick as Amazon.

I then went back into their website and after presentation of long reference number, I was invited to nominate a day on which we would be in so that the parcel could be delivered. Today was the day and the parcel was duly popped through our letter box. No nonsense about our signing anything, despite the fact that we were in the back garden and the garage door was wide open.

The parcel itself, three or four ounces of jiffy bag, including contents, was covered in three complicated sticky labels printed by a computer. Rounded out by a round sticker from the Royal Mail with some handwritten delivery instructions. Nice to get the human touch.

PS: another (green) job for Snip & Sketch. I think the drill is that the ballpoint tool used here obliterates whatever is underneath, while the highlighter tool does just that, at around 33.3% transparency, just like real highlighter. If I keep at it, I will really get to know the thing and find all kinds of uses for it.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/a-portent.html.

Frost

Out the back at 0700 (new time), a cold frosty morning with mist. By 0800, a cold frosty morning with sun and blue sky. With the shadow from the top of the roof neatly covering the garden bench by the ponds. Some bird action, some crows in the distance, but no tweets.

Probably not the first frost since that noticed getting on for a month ago at reference 1, but the first that I have particularly noticed.

PS 1: no tweets this morning, but yesterday evening, around 2200, I thought I heard an owl, possibly flying along the stream running along the bottom of the gardens of the houses across the road.

PS 2: three quarters of an hour later: shadow swung around to the right, and garden bench now in full sun. Fat black cat lurking. Clearly need to work out how to use this shadow as a sun dial.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/frost.html.

Batch 535

Today was the day of the 535th batch of bread since the great bread game started more than ten years ago now, with the present tempo being around one batch of two loaves a week, each loaf weighing something more than two pounds cooked.

This batch being snapped during the second knead, with the whole operation taking from 0730 to 1530, say around eight hours. With slower rises, it can go up to around ten - so not very convenient for those who have to go to work.

As it happened, this bread was really good at 1800, just cool with good crust, crumb and flavour. And sometimes, it is even better in the morning.

Musical Lear

That is to say, Schubert's last three piano sonatas; D.958, D.959 and D.960. Bit unsure whether we were up for three big sonatas in one sitting, but on the basis that there two intervals, and so two opportunities for breaking out early, decided to give it a go. The occasion being Imogen Cooper's 70th birthday concert. I think it might have been her saying that this musical version of Lear seemed right for the occasion.

I had thought that we had done such a thing before, but search of the record suggests not. Three big Beethoven sonatas or three Schubert sonatas - but not these three.

Once again, arrived Epsom station to find young people busy around all the ticket machines, but two ticket clerks sitting behind their windows doing nothing much. The window we used was curiously speckled, as if someone had taken a shotgun to it, but the clerk assured us that this was not the case, rather that there was something wrong with this particular piece of glass, presumably some kind of fancy laminate to protect the clerks against attack.

A slightly earlier start than usual, which may have accounted for the Vauxhall tube concourse area being very crowded - but at least it was a crowd that was moving, and we got onto a train fast enough. But one doesn't like to think what it might get like if the down escalator were to break down and we were all reduced to walking. Oxford Circus also busy, with a great throng of people trying to get down the tube entrance outside Niketown, slowing us down as we tried to head north up Regent Street. But we made it and, given that it was dark, that Cavendish Square would have shut and that there was only one bench outside the square, we decided to take our picnic on the (empty) tables and chairs provided outside the Finery of Great Castle Street, a house I have probably used, but probably not more than one or two times. On the other hand, I have paid my dues with the owner, Greene King, so our picnic was not that out of order. And, as it turned out, the one bench on the square was occupied.

Further refreshment in the Beckstein Room, where we were sat next to a couple of much the same age as ourselves, with an even more organised picnic than ours, complete with very dinky little individual coffee pots, more or less designed for the job. BH tells me they are all the rage with those taking coffee out of places like Starbucks.

More or less full when we got into the hall; middle to pensionable age, arty looking lot. Radio 3 present but Fiona from St. Luke's was absent and we had a rather less florid replacement. Furthermore, much less intrusion into the concert generally.

In the event, we stayed the distance, with Cooper doing very well, after what I thought was a rather loud start. She played without music and the form seemed to be that, naturally enough, when the fingering was tricky she looked down at the keyboard, while when the timing was tricky she looked up at the ceiling and concentrated on that. I wondered whether it was partly an age thing: playing from memory meant that one could concentrate on playing, without the additional overhead of watching the music on the page. And while I am not in the same league, I am finding that with advancing years my four-finger-two thumb-typing is getting less reliable and it does sometimes work better if I look down at the keys rather than up at the screen. I never was much good at copy typing where there are three things to look at - but luckily there is not much call for that.

In the margins, we heard a funny story, perhaps a little out of date, it being a few days ago now. It seems that it was 2092 and this lady had just come back from Brussels. She had been going along the Rue de la Loi, where the big European Commission buildings are to be found, when she saw this little crowd of tourists. In the middle there was an older man in Eton suit and top hat, a funny looking chap, kneeling on a fancy stool, attended by a flunkey in fancy dress, posting an important looking letter through a complicated letter box. She thought she saw him doing the Masonic Triple Knock on the door. She asked what was going on and she was told it was the ceremony of the extension. No-one could remember what it was about, but it happened on the first day of each month, weather permitting, November, December and January, each year. A bit of nonsense to liven up the festive season, to pull in a few more tourists in the slack season.

Otherwise, the audience was very enthusiastic at the end, as indeed we were, if a bit wrung out. Cooper too. The director presented the bouquet and visitors backstage were banned - although presumably those with proper invitations were allowed.

Just missed a train to Epsom at Vauxhall so tried for Motspur Park instead. Maybe one could take a beverage there without incurring the long flight of stairs that you get at Earlsfield. In the event, one did get a footbridge, so we sat it out in this rather forlorn station. We looked at the long shut hatch with nostalgia for the days when one would have been able to buy fags and papers from such a hatch. When the station probably had waiting room, toilets and planters with flowers. Whereas on this occasion, everything was shut up and the roof was leaking, fortunately not where we were wanting to sit.

But a splendid outing otherwise.

PS: the concert was repeated on the radio on the Thursday evening following and while the sound from our not very new television was a lot better than one might have expected, the magic was missing and we abandoned ship after half an hour. Magic which had not been dimmed on the day by my having done some homework on D.958 before the concert proper, so repetition was probably not the problem.

Malden Rushett

The bit of map reproduced at reference 1 prompted me to wonder, once again, where the name 'Malden Rushett' came from.

It seems that back at the time of the Conquest, Malden was quite a big parish (or perhaps manor in those days), stretching down from Old Malden (top middle right) to what was then Lower Malden and is now Malden Rushett (bottom left middle). A wooded area and the few people living down at Malden Rushett had to go up to the church at Old Malden to get themselves born, married and buried. Whereas now they can go to Chessington.

The Rushett bit derives from the fact that there were lots of rushes, so perhaps Lower Malden was indeed lower than Old Malden, despite the general drift being down to the Thames to the north, possibly connected in a marshy way to the two ponds of Epsom Common, bottom middle, where there are indeed lots of rushes.

Some time later, the railway came along and New Malden was invented a little to the north of Old Malden. A place now worth big type on the map.

Some time later, a farm near what is now Malden Rushett came to be called Rushett Farm.

And finally, Lower Malden and Rushett Farm were conflated at the cross roads to become Malden Rushett - quite a community now, serviced by the nearby petrol station and public house - while Lower Malden faded away and disappeared from most maps. Rushett Farm survives.

PS: with thanks to the Ordnance Survey for the use of their map.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/09/convenience-map.html.

Windy hope

The Guardian ran a piece on Friday about a report (reference 1, open access) published by the International Energy Authority (reference 2) about using offshore windmills to generate electricity. The story seems to be that there is an awful lot of usable coastline and an awful lot of electricity waiting to be generated - at a reasonable price too. A chunk of solution to the global warming problem which is accessible to engineers now - unlike fusion which is still some way off commercial action. On which some old news is to be found at reference 4.

The report has now been downloaded to Epsom and I have started to turn the pages.

Good for all the countries and islands making up the British Isles as they all have lots of coastline to the square mile. And in the round, it seems to be northern Europe and China who are presently in the lead.

However, Table 1 suggests that while the UK may be big in terms of installed capacity, it does not seem to be big in terms of engineering and construction, which is mainly driven from elsewhere. We might get off the Saudi hook, just to get onto someone else's!

Then, while it is our wind in something like the same way that it is the Saudis' oil, I imagine that it costs a lot less to get their oil out of the ground than it costs to get our wind into the wire. That is to say, the capital costs of wind are quite high, tipping the balance towards he who extracts, away from he who owns the land - or the sea in this case. All very complicated.

A more speculative use for all this power is the manufacture of hydrogen from seawater, a clean alternative to natural gas.

Transmission - moving all this electricity from the windmills to the users - will present challenges.

Offshore oil technology is relevant.

Roughly speaking, it seems the bigger the better. Which favours the big battalions.

In sum, it all looks good so far. We just need governments, business and industry to pull together!

PS: but I have not yet got to the bit where they say that someone has done all the sums and taking all this energy out of the system is not going to disturb the climate in some other, unpleasant way...

Reference 1: Offshore Wind Outlook 2019 - International Energy Authority - 2019.

Reference 2: https://www.iea.org/.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacity_factor. A technical term which appears quite a lot in the executive summary. It seems to be about the proportion of nominal capacity actually achieved over time; a measure affected by engineering, weather and economics. Base load nuclear good at around 90%, wind about average at 50%.

Reference 4: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/08/big-doughnuts.html.

Piano 32

Piano 32 is from the space between the church hall and the church of St. Mary the Virgin, of Cuddington, Worcester Park. The church looked rather grand from the outside, but was firmly locked today, which was a pity as it appears to have been worth a visit back in 2012, noticed at reference 1. Another time.

An electrical piano called a 'Digital Ensemble', which blog search suggests is a first. First of kind. Bing turns up the names 'Korg' and 'Havian', but while I am reasonably satisfied that they are applicable, I have failed to find the instrument on the UK site (reference 3), having to turn to the US site (reference 4). The Korg company looks to be more in the business of servicing popular musicians, composers and bands, rather than producing traditional pianos, even electrified ones, so I am left with no idea how this one rates.

PS: they also appear to sell the tuning gadgets noticed in the course of a concert at Uplyme village hall and subsequently noticed at reference 5.

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=nahum.

Reference 2: http://www.cuddingtonparish.org.uk/.

Reference 3: https://www.korg.com/uk/.

Reference 4: https://www.korg.com/us/products/digitalpianos/havian_30/.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/honiton.html.

Black power

Satruday past to Guildford to see 'Two Trains Running' at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, by the river there. A play about a small group of black people in a run down part of Pittsburgh - then a dying steel town - by August Wilson. See references 1, 2 and 3.

As on the last occasion, much discussion about how to get to Guildford, but in the end we settled on the train, which worked out very well. Door to door, probably faster than attempting to drive, with the theatre turning out to be just a short walk along the river from the station.

A bright cool day and the road under the West Hill railway bridge was still closed, at least there were still signs up. But there were no workmen and cars were not paying too much attention to them as they wriggled through the holes in the road. We did not hear of any accidents, but it would have been easy enough for one to happen, say at chucking out time. Given that the road was more or less open, one might have thought that traffic lights should have been provided. Or perhaps they thought that we were mature enough to manage without lights? I associate now to the school of thought that says that we have become far too nannyish about road signing and we might do better with less of it. I seem to recall that one of the central London Boroughs even ran a trial.

Intrigued on the station by the large posters of the face of an older Helen Mirren playing Catherine the Great for HBO (Home Box Office) and Sky. Cortana told me that Mirren was rather older now at 74 than Catherine the Great was when she died at 67, although I suppose one should make allowances for our wearing rather better these days. In any event, not my favourite actress - notwithstanding which we will no doubt watch the series when the DVD's make it to the charity shops.

Entertained on the train by a youngish lady, perhaps Australian, displaying a great deal of attractive leg and telling her mobile phone all about her experiences of the night before, an experience which appeared to include a one night stand. Furthermore, a lady who appeared to be very into diet and diets. Maybe I am old, but I find it odd how people are perfectly comfortable with telling the world about such stuff - this despite the fact that we did not know her, are unlikely to come across her again and might just as well, for all practical purposes, not have been there at all.

Arrived at Guildford and found a bench overlooking the Wey, complete with railings and a very busy clump of ivy, that is to say busy with bees - or some flying insect very much of that sort. At least it seemed very busy at the time, with not so many to be found on the snap, even with zoom.

With the map snap revealing that the Wey flows roughly south to north at this point, and the High Street east to west. For some reason I had thought that the High Street ran south, down to the river. Also showing clearly the railway junction, north of Guildford, strikingly visible from the footbridge noticed at reference 4. We did not get into the large church with tower, southwest of the railway station, seemingly now some kind of arts centre.

Impressed by the strength of the slender concrete columns supporting the extension to the building above, presumably full of reinforcing bars. Puzzled by the chimney left, slightly too high from the point of view of appearances, but we were not sure what it was for - beyond being sure that it was for something: too big and expensive to be no more than a decorative feature. Perhaps a vent from a waste water pipe? Not so impressed by the arrangements for attaching the life belt to the railings. And then a new-to-us sort of plastic pallet. Various pubs and a playground on the way to a waterside area, complete with strip iron footbridge and lock which reminded us of Jesus Green at Cambridge - with its footbridge which I must have crossed, hundreds of times, on the way to the swimming pool, early in the morning, when a child. Parents did not drive one to such activities in those days! Plus a bollard which looked far too serious to have been installed for pleasure craft.

Guildford's answer to Jesus Green, with the strip iron footbridge just about visible, if you click to enlarge, by the lamppost.

The rather fierce looking outfall from some modest hydro power operation, not far from the theatre.

Decorative art for the smoking den attached to the upstairs bar in the theatre. The wine seemed cheap for a theatre bar, but the barman explained that care was needed: some things were priced down while some things were priced up.

The downstairs bar was decorated by a tablet in the floor which explained that somewhere below, in the concrete of the foundations, Vanessa Redgrave's footprint was to be found.

Downstairs reasonably full, with  sprinkling of black people. Just the one set, which we liked, for the whole show, around two and a bit hours excluding interval. But the show was a touring show, and we wondered how long it took to take it down and pack it up in the van.

I found the first half a bit heavy going as I found the language difficult - and a party of black girls whom I asked about this in the interval at first said that the language was fine, but when pressed a little admitted that they too found it a little fast for comfort. Fortunately I had much less trouble in the second half. And, language apart, the acting was strong. Interesting to us as a portrait of black life in a run-down bit of a run-down city; very much what my mother would have called a kitchen sink drama and a far cry from the doings of the middle and upper classes which used to occupy most of the dramatic time available. At least, that is my impression. A couple of snippets. First, we are now much clearer about the numbers game, which appears to be a form of low-tech lottery, very open to abuse by criminals; just the sort of thing organised crime might muscle into. Presumably there was little or no legal gambling in the US at that time and no betting shops. Second, there was a form of sale in the US whereby you paid so much for a bit of farm land - but the sale would become void if water were subsequently found on the land, perhaps down the bottom of a lucky well. We were not told whether the purchase price was refunded. I wonder if it would be possible to sell land in this way in this country?

Audience very enthusiastic at the end.

We made our way to the Britannia, a Shepherd Neame house, a place which might once have been a bikers house, but now does a very good thing out of casual-fine dining. We had an entirely acceptable sausage and mash, only marred by my forgetting to ask for the gravy in a jug. Plus lots of dogs, children and vaping.

Following the Bullingdon-like system for bicycle hire on the Stag Hill campus noticed at reference 4, the Bullingdon-in-the-box system operated at Guildford railway system. Not sure now whether the idea is to take one out when you get onto the train or when you get off the train. The former having the down side that that the train gets cluttered up with small bicycles. The latter that Guildford is a rather hilly place for the occasional cyclist.

No moon to be seen at 1900, although we felt sure that there had been moon in the recent past. However, intimidated by the snap above, I decided not to pursue my lunar education on return home.

PS: I am reminded that prohibiting gambling works no better than prohibiting drink or other recreational drugs. When we will learn?

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

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

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

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/dignity-in-dying.html.

Reference 5: https://www.yvonne-arnaud.co.uk/.