Dante three

A week ago to the last of the three concerts given, as part of this year's concert season at the Dorking Halls, by the Dante String Quartet.

Haydn Op.76 No.5, Schumann Op.41 No.2 and Beethoven Op.59 No.3. Haydn and Beethoven very much what we have come to expect, a little disappointed in the previously little if not un-known Schumann.

Yet again, missed the transition between the third and fourth movements of the Beethoven, not having picked up the lack of pause from the programme before the event. Notwithstanding, a vigorous and effective performance of a very fine work.

A movement of a Stanford quartet by way of an encore. That is to say Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, an Irish composer from the second half of the nineteenth century. A chap of whom the quartet are making an intense study. A contemporary and rival of Arthur Sullivan, for whom see references 4 and 5. Unkindly lampooned as 'Brahms and water' - but, perhaps, a neglected genius?

We took tea and cake from the café in Dorking Halls, thinking that the alternative Burford Bridge Hotel was unlikely to do better. Tea and cake fine, except that I managed to smash one of their cups on the way from bar to chair. The young man, a namesake if not a relative of our own Mr. Bridger of reference 6, was very good about it and cleared up without fuss.

PS: the Quartet advertised an upcoming performance of all three Razumovsky quartets at an upcoming concert at the Menuhin Hall, a place we visit from time to time.  With the performance being combined with a solo performance of the life of the composer by an actor. We thought that, unusual format apart, this was a bit too much in one sitting.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/dante-two.html.

Reference 2: http://dorkingconcertgoers.org.uk/. What will they be bringing us next season?

Reference 3: 'The Dante Quartet (including alumnus and current YMS teacher Oscar Perks) present a new concert drama about the life of Beethoven, written by Clare Norburn. Half concert, half play, the work follows actor David Timson as Beethoven on his personal journey through his troubled life, his battle with deafness and his development as a composer. This concert focuses on the three Razumovsky Quartets Op 59, which are performed in their entirety within the drama' - Menuhin Hall - 11th June.

Reference 4: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/09/sullivan.html.

Reference 5: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/09/nymph.html.

Reference 6: https://stamfordresidents.org/. Bridger is not a common name, so I would not be surprised if the Epsom one did turn out to be some kind of a relative of the Dorking one. The Residents' Association being the controlling group on our local council, the people going in for a protracted and expensive repaving of our market square.

Reference 7: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/02/trivia.html. All about the market square.

Week twelve

Flowers coming on, and going again, in the proper way. No progress at all as far as getting vertical is concerned - and it does not look as if there is going to be any.

Maybe the base of the inflorescence was damaged at the time it first fell over and no longer has the strength to feed both florets and repair work to the stem.

Group search key: tfd.

Hampton

Just over a week ago now, a late February picnic at Hampton Court, just over three weeks since the last visit noticed at reference 1.

A bright and sunny day and there were sculls - that is to say rowing boats rowed with two oars to the rower - out on the Thames. One for the ladies and one for the gentlemen. Each with their motorised floating minder, rather than the minders of my childhood cycling along the towpath with scarves, tweeds and megaphones.

Maids of Honour cakes were still missing from the Tilt Yard café, but one of the people working there (from mainland Europe) took the time to explain that all the cakes were now being sourced from a cake factory, with none being made on the premises, and Maids of Honour had been dropped. Maybe they do not keep well. Maybe they were too expensive. But I rather liked them and am sorry that they have gone, I suspect for good. Those snapped above were the best that Google turned up, with most of his offerings being fancier versions.

Out in the gardens, lots of crocuses and some daffodils. Winter aconites more or less finished. But it was plenty warm enough to sit in the south & sun facing bench provided under the north wall, just to the west of the north end of the north canal. A canal which, on this occasion, included a heron, although we did not spot any fish.

Picnic done, we moved into the new garden on the eastern side of the north canal, a garden once known as the apprentices' garden and slightly awkward of access, so not much used. A garden which can be seen behind the fence behind the heritage hut in the snap above. A hut which looked to have been newly built on a heritage undercarriage; the sort of thing which can be bought at the better flower shows.

The spinach beet in the apprentices' garden. We got the impression that there was less vegetable gardening going on now than had been the case a few years ago. We vaguely recalled meeting ladies on gardening courses tending them.

Some of the splendid trees in the same garden. With the juniper in front showing none of the interior die back of our own much smaller specimen.

Out to inspect the long water where the gulls failed to perform on this occasion. As did the aeroplanes, with none coming into land at Heathrow while we were there, just a few taking off and heading out east.

A quick visit to the Cumberland Gallery to have another look at the picture noticed at reference 2 - a picture which we were unable to find. Fortunately a trusty was able to translate my rather incoherent description into a location, in a quite different part of the palace. And no sir, it had not been moved recently, being far too big to move about. So, as it turned out, it was not in the expected place and it was far bigger than I was expecting. Rather a bad memory, for a picture I thought I had taken some notice of.

On this occasion, it was interesting to see that Snyders was much more successful in capturing the appearance of some fruit - say the grapes - than others - say the asparagus.

All in all, a first class visit.

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/01/cold.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/01/texture-nets.html.

Group search key: hcb.

Ferries

The last post concerned a large floating care home, built in St. Nazaire in France, our own once proud ship building industry no longer being good for that sort of thing. Then today I find (from a handsome plaque on a bulkhead) that it is no good for Solent ferries either, with the catamaran which carried us from Ryde to Portsmouth this morning having been built for Wightlink by FBMA Marine in Cebu in the Phillippines.

A company which appears to have had links with Babcock of reference 1 but which has now been taken over by the Austal of reference 2.

First thought was that it was a very long way to move a ferry, which would presumably not make the passage under its own steam. Second thought was that there must be a huge market for ferries around the many islands off south east Asia, so putting a ferry builder in Cebu makes sense after all.

I failed to find out what FBMA stands for, but I did learn that the company: '...[was originally] an amalgamation of shipbuilding companies on the Isle of Wight, England with history back to 1899...'. Did they move out for the cheap labour or to be near a big market? Presumably they did have a long-standing relationship with Wightlink, a relationship which survived the move.

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

Reference 2: https://www.austal.com/.

Group search key: gha.

Floating care homes

At Ryde for the last few days, inter alia, for a spot of FCH spotting. Sadly, despite spending quality time on the usually productive beaches, we drew a blank.

Frustrating, as the giant MSC Bellissima must have slipped past us on Friday on its way to Southampton for its star studded naming ceremony yesterday. As it turns out, disturbed by high winds and Sophia Loren was forced to retreat from the stand erected for the purpose. According to the 'Daily Echo': '...The naming ceremony of the new cruise ship had to be abandoned part way through after high winds began to shake the huge marquee which had been erected on the quayside for 2,000 invited guests. Italian movie legend Sophia Loren, the ship's 'godmother' was due to have been on stage to press the button which would have launched a bottle of champagne crashing against the ships bows, but proceedings had to be moved back onto the ship for safety reasons...'. While at reference 1 I read that: '...MSC Bellissima offers a stunning array of features to rival those of her sister ship, MSC Meraviglia. Innovative MSC for Me technology connects you to your fellow guests, the crew and the ship itself. Furthermore, guests will experience the world’s first digital cruise assistant, Zoe, a voice-enabled Artificial Intelligence device fitted in every cabin. The two-deck inside promenade features a spectacular 80-metre-long LED dome, and you can enjoy two exclusive new shows from Cirque du Soleil at Sea...',

We are told that the giant can carry around 4,500 pensioners, plus a full complement of waiters, doctors, therapists, nurses, dancing girls, life rafts and what have you. While the prospect of being on such a thing fills me with horror.

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

Group search key: gha.

Counting ancestors

I have been puzzling in reference 1 about why Elizabeth II probably has no DNA from William the Conqueror, despite the latter being a reasonably well-attested ancestor of the former.

The Reich story seems to be that the number of people from whom we can take genes goes up linearly as we go back in time, while the number of people from whom we can claim ancestry goes up geometrically, so the former is always going to get small relative to the latter, making it improbable that anyone has genes from anyone in particular from a long time ago.

We note that 2 raised to the power of 20 is around 1,000,000. So, neglecting royal inbreeding, any royal has about 1,000,000 ancestors of the twentieth generation, which takes us maybe half way back to the time of William the Conqueror. So given that the fictional population of the United Kingdom, the United Kingdom not having been invented at that time, everyone has as much a share in the present monarch as anyone else.

In what follows we neglect the facts that some genes are only passed down the male line and that some genes are only passed down the female line. We also neglect the fact that most of the genes of most of us are all the same, and many of those are the same as those of the potato. But we can, nevertheless, still say that all our genes have come to us from someone, even if the result is likely to be just the same as it would have been had they had come to us from someone else.

So suppose now we each have just one copy of one chromosome and sex has not yet been invented. Then everyone in any one person’s line of descent has the same genes, barring mutation - which might be considerable if we were able to breed as fast as bacteria.

Suppose we now invent sex.

Suppose we still have just one copy of one chromosome and each new person, each child, simply takes their chromosome at random from either their mother or their father. Then all children will have either their mother’s chromosome or their father’s. But grandchildren will have four grandparents to chose their chromosome from, great-grandchildren eight great-grandparents and so on. In this scenario, Elizabeth II has just the one genetic ancestor and it is indeed most unlikely that that ancestor is William the Conqueror – or, indeed, anyone else in particular.

Suppose now that we all have one copy of each of ten chromosomes and that each new person picks their chromosomes at random from their mother and their father. These ten chromosomes are all different, so, for example, the person’s ninth chromosome must be the ninth chromosome from either their mother or their father. In this scenario Elizabeth II has at most ten genetic ancestors and it remains most unlikely that any of those ancestors are going to be William the Conqueror. Allowing a hundred chromosomes would not much change things.

We now move a bit closer to the real world and build new chromosomes by mix n’match, rather than by just choosing one or the other. Thinking of these chromosomes as long strings of beads, we build our new chromosomes by splicing together segments of beads taken from each of the two parental chromosomes in turn. This is done in some random way, but in such a way that the n-th bead of the new chromosome is the n-th bead from one of the two parental chromosomes corresponding. With this random alternation resulting, say, in an average of 50 such segments to each new chromosome. If each person has ten chromosomes, it is almost certain that all those chromosomes will contain a good mixture of genetic material from both parents. So the question is, do we now have enough mixing for everyone to have at least some genetic material from all their ancestors?

Note that we are assuming that every chromosome of a given type has the same number of beads and that corresponding beads from different chromosomes of that given type are usually more or less the same. The fun lies in the small differences.

At the limit, the answer to the question is no. We are presently thought to have around 20,000 protein coding genes, but even if we allow a total of fifty thousand beads, we still only have room for at most fifty thousand ancestors – against the suggested half way total of a million – so where are they all going, given the splendid mixing of the paragraph before last?

The answer is that our chromosomes are finite and they cannot be chopped into infinitely small pieces. If the pieces get small enough they just vanish, just as William the Conqueror has probably vanished from the Royal genome.

And so Reich seems to be right, even if I do still fail to understand his explanation.

PS: cautionary note: real chromosomes do not work quite in the way suggested above. For a better story the interested reader can start with reference 2.

References

Reference 1: Who We Are and How We Got Here: Ancient DNA and the new science of the human past - David Reich – 2018.

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

Closure

I see from today's DT that we continue to fail to close down the disaster in Derry in Northern Ireland, a disaster which took place getting on for fifty years ago now. We also fail to close down the more recent disaster at the Hillsborough Stadium at Sheffield, a disaster which, as it happens, claimed a lot more lives.

What is it about us that makes us drag these things out, go looking for people to crucify so long after the event?

Odd, in the case of Derry, that it should be happening on the watch of the party of the armed forces and of law and order - a party which might think would have been apt to block any further attempts at crucifixion. Indeed, I thought that they had. Let's hope that it is not as grubby as some complicated ramification of trying to make deals with the likes of the DUP. Or as a bunch of lawyers smelling fat briefs.

Perhaps, if governments cannot get a grip on these things, we should have, as do at least some countries, a statute of limitations. A statute which would block any further legal action about disasters or anything else after some appropriate passage of time, say twenty years in this case.