Big tent

I was summoned by text a few days ago to make an appointment for a covid jab in the big tent up on Epsom Downs. Managed to copy the complicated URL supplied with the text on my mobile phone to Edge on my laptop and in short order made an appointment for today. Having found the bit of the instructions that said if you were special needs - in my case being apt to faint on contact with needles - to tell the people in the tent when you got there.

Up to the race course by car with BH as backup, I having thought it prudent not to walk and I am not sure that I would make it up the hill on a bicycle these days. Quite enough of a puff more than ten years ago when I last tried it, making it on that occasion all the way to the mound at Tattenham Corner.

The big tent actually turned out to be the main hall in the main grandstand, another place last visited more than ten years ago. One of the days when cheap racing was offered to local residents, a day when I remember getting some quite decent fish and chips for lunch. While for the Derby proper, we were nearly always out on the hill, with all the proper punters (and others).

A main hall all kitted out with receptionists, inoculation stations, inoculators, computers, chairs, support staff and signage. Not to mention supplies of vaccine, in little bottles rather than being ready syringed. And at around 1030 this morning it all seemed to be going very smoothly. 

Having declared my special need, I was handed over to an inoculator, I think in her day job a practise nurse at St. Stephen's in nearby Ashtead. It turned out that I was not the first special needs of the day, and yes they did have a bed that I could lie on in a cubicle. A young lady from St. John Ambulance was on hand, in support. There was also a doctor in the house, in case of very special need. And the inoculator certainly knew her stuff as I hardly felt the needle at all, and after a couple of minutes I thought it safe to stand. Nothing untoward at all. And so off to the holding area for the mandatory 15 minutes cooling off period before being allowed to leave.

All in all, a credit to our Health Service.

Back home, I thought it prudent to take things quietly for a bit and so turned up the book at reference 1, not looked at for many years. A book about the fur trade in what is now the north western quadrant of the US, say 1820-1840. The time of the mountain men who trapped and lived out in the Rockies, paddling down to civilisation with their hauls of furs from time to time. 

With there being an old map of the mountains printed inside the front cover and the page facing, from which I learned that the Chinook were a tribe, not a wind as I had thought, living on the land around Fort Vancouver on the Columbia River. Now just Vancouver, quite near what is now Portland, and nowhere near the foreign place up north. At some point morphing into the ubiquitous helicopter, last noticed at reference 6.

Properly inside, I first noticed that the book was dedicated to one Garrett Mattingly, a historian whom I came across more half a century ago as the author of an influential book about the Spanish Armada.

Then I learned that Provo, a city I had first come across in connection with the murderer who is the subject of the book at reference 3, was named for an eminence in this fur trade, one Etienne Provost, possibly a left-over from the days of the French in north America.

Then that the plains Indians, while speaking lots of different languages, used a sign language when meeting foreigners. Good enough for a spot of trading, dancing and socialising. Which unlikely story seems to be corroborated at reference 5.

Then that missionaries got the bit between their teeth at about this time, being very keen to bring the word of our Lord to the savages. Some of whom, it seems, were quite receptive. All of whom, it seems, were very keen on manufactured trade goods. Blankets, beads and mirrors. And iron, which it seems they could work well enough, but not make in the first place.

We shall see how far I get.

Reference 1: Across the wide Missouri - Bernard DeVoto - 1948. Illustrated with lots of paintings and sketches by Alfred Miller. Nicely produced by Eyre & Spottiswoode. Probably acquired at one of the book fairs they used to hold around here more than twenty years ago now.

Reference 2: https://thewalters.org/. The Baltimore home to much of the Miller oeuvre. The source of the reproduction above, first noticed in reference 1. A museum which seems to make images of lots of its stuff available for free download, albeit not of the same quality as that offered by the Getty museum of reference 4.

Reference 3: The Executioner's Song - Norman Mailer - 1979.

Reference 4: https://www.getty.edu/museum/. They offer a 'Still Life with Apples' at more than 8,000 by 6,000 pixels. I think for free, for private usage, although I did not get quite that far.

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

Reference 6: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/stop-press.html.

Reference 7: The Defeat of the Spanish Armada - Garrett Mattingly - 1959. With my current copy, quickly - found in its proper place, being a quality edition from that same1959, from Jonathan Cape, printed on paper made by John Dickinson & Co. A second hand replacement for the (fat) Penguin edition of my childhood.