JOST A MON

Yongy Bongy Bo in India

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Sun, 13 May 2012 11:29:00 +0000

Yesterday, 12 May, was the bicentenary of the birth of Edward Lear, humorist and artist. I happened rather idly to search for some of his limericks (my son's studying the form at school these days) and learned this fact. I'm not a particular fan of Lear's limericks - the fact that his last lines usually ended the same as his first always felt like a bit of a cop-out - but I was pleased to find out that he had travelled extensively in India, and (in keeping with my current fetish for random art) painted wonderful landscapes of the places he visited.

One of Lear's closest friends was Evelyn Baring, who became the Personal Secretary to the Viceroy, Lord Northbrook with whom also he was closely acquainted. Northbrook invited him to India in 1872 to tour the country and sketch it. Lear was eventually happy to do so, especially since his expenses would be covered by the government. But his initial plans went awry when he was unable to procure a berth to the subcontinent; enraged, he spent time in Corfu and Alexandria and delayed his trip to India till the following year.

He arrived in Bombay on 22 November 1873. He was to spend considerable time criss-crossing the country, sketching and painting furiously. He would visit parts as far apart as the Western Ghats and Kurseong, the deep South and up North. While he was generally a humorous traveller, willing to try any mode of transport, the exigencies of voyaging in India often reduced him to exhaustion ('O! Hateful Indian travel!') but a day spent painting would soon restore his mood.

He travelled on trains, ekkas (two-wheel horse-driven carts) and on dhoolies (covered litters) and jampans (a sedan chair also carried by men), and tonjons (another sedan-chair). He wrote:

The ekka trial was severe, - bumping, - leg cramping and end injuring, - yet better than I expected. At Bahadoorbad we changed to Dhoolies, - the first time of trial, and they are much more pleasant than I expected: - yet, after a time, the row of men, and the shaky movement bothers... The movement of a Jampan is much like that of a Dhooly, - but you have much more room. Only, when the men change the pole from one shoulder t'other, it seems as if they were about to pitch you over into space... Coolies undulating. Much discomfort at first.

He noted the enormous diversity of India - climatic and geographic, cultural and architectural, zoological and botanic. He felt the bitter cold in the hills in the winter, and the severe heat in the plains. In Malabar, he wrote that the 'heat was always great here, stuffy, puffy, muffy.' Amazed by the torrents of the rainy season, his servant asked him, 'Please sir, how many hundred Monsoons are there in India?' In the cold he had had to stand for hours drawing; the rains prevented him from painting at all.

But he ate heartily. 'We lunched in the broad shade of a great Neem tree, exactly like a fine Ash. Excellent leg of mutton, guinea-fowl's eggs, and cheese, besides sherry and water.' He did complain about the spiciness of the food: 'Heavenly potatoes have these people! the best of any out of old England. But the amount of pepper put into the food is hideous, and I have prohibited it henceforth.' He managed to find alcohol in every outpost of his travels, and drank so copiously that he himself was amazed: 'Good evans! if any of my old friends could know how much Beer and Brandy and Sherry this child conshumes, would they recognise me?'

While he was happy to meet Northbrook and Evelyn Barings, he evidently disliked the pompousness of Viceregal life. Likewise, in Calcutta, socialising with the high society was a strain. 'I believe Viceregal life will bore me to death... No rest in Hustlefussabad.' He loved the solitude of the dak bungalows where he preferred to stay during his travels. 'Happiness and quiet appear to me to exist nowhere in India save in Dak Bungalows: - there they certainly do.' In the Himalayas, he wrote: 'the fact of being thus in this house, and well fed, and so comfortable, - in such a locality - a sort of nowhere - on the borders of India and Thibet, - and of being totally unmolested, and with not even bolt on the doors, - seems a semicircle, and is well worth the contemplation of pipkins, pumpkins, poodles and pearly philosophers.'

Lear's Nonsense verses were immensely popular in India. Of course, this is not to say the local population knew any of them. Rather, the colonial kids - living in their bubbles - knew them and even studied them at school. His interaction with Indians appears to have been somewhat limited. He learned a few Hindi and Tamil words. He could ask the way ('Rusta ke hai?') and he was happy to eat 'Bhat' and curry, and in Madras, could say 'Please endewennum?' He expressed regret that he hadn't bothered to learn the 'Lingo' before arriving in India.

He noted the pompous, officious English of the natives: 'Positively, and without the slightest exaggeration, this Railway nuisance of want of punctuality is becoming insufferably unbearable!' He was surprised that the foreign language was spoke widely in India, even in mofussil towns. And he wondered if there was any point in Indian children being taught in a purely English medium to a purely English syllabus. 'Hear upper class read Henry V, and they were examined in Ivanhoe. Is there, or is there not time thrown away in this sort of learning?'

He spent 14 months in India and upon return to England even considered returning. But Northbrook resigned as Viceroy in 1876, and that put paid to any such thoughts Lear had had.

Lear's Macaw (Houghton Library)

Mountain pass, Lucknow.

Watercolour of Benares.

Kanchenjunga from Darjeeling (National Museum, Cardiff).

View of Gwalior.

Taj Mahal. (Houghton Library/Harvard University)

References

Vidya Dehejia, Allen Staley, Impossible Picturesqueness: Edward Lear's Indian Watercolours, 1873-1875. Columbia University Press, 1989.

Maddy's Ramblings blog, Edward Lear at 'The Summer Isle of Eden', September 2010.

Toot That Flute

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Wed, 09 May 2012 08:26:00 +0000

The boy's been learning the fife for several months now. It's a bit of an uphill/downhill situation with him. Uphill struggle to get him to practise, and then it all goes downhill during the holidays when he doesn't even look at the instrument. No, no, I jest. He has learned the B, A, G notes rather well, and even if he has a bit of a problem distinguishing a quaver from a semitone (is there a difference? I don't know), he does manage quite well to follow the score.

It is the usual condescension towards the recorder that prompted us to put him up for flute. Who plays recorder seriously? was the question topmost on the lips of the mums in school. The flute, on the other hand, that's an instrument of poise, elegance and character.

Because of a bit of miscommunication with the boy's flute teacher before he started, we got into a three month rental of a flute, which, when she saw it, turned out to be the wrong instrument for learning, and 'anyway, it is not very good.' She said that the fife is the beginner's instrument and is cheap, and - were we to purchase it from a little shop in East Croydon - would get a teaching book with it.

The intention was for the boy to have weekly 1/2 hour-long lessons at school, and practise at home about 10 minutes a day. The result was a bit more uneven - some days went without practise, and other days he'd manfully struggle for half an hour at a time.

His little fingers had trouble covering the hole, and for months he wasn't even able to consistently produce the correct sounds. Embouchure, we were told, it's all in the embouchure.

When he got a bit better, he was asked to write a line or two of music to practise. His first composition was a bit confused - as I said, he had little idea about the beats and lengths of each note. Having just that day learned about 'slurs', he liberally applied them to his piece. He forgot to give it a title, and when prompted by the teacher, announced that it would be named 'The Lonely World of Emma'. It did sound a bit melancholy. We are still not sure where the title came from, and he is cagey about his inspiration.

Recently, he has moved onto the D and E notes, and these are giving him particular trouble. Playing the fife is about dexterity in the finger movement and their correct positioning atop the holes, and he is flummoxed by the switch from E to G, say, where the big fingers of the right hand are lifted from the instrument and only the left hand is used.

Now the teacher wants him to progress to the apprentice flute. £125 for this. We were a bit stumped by the cost. How long would he continue on this instrument before moving on to the next level? If it was a matter of months, perhaps we could rent the thing. But if he could use it for a year or two, we'd need to buy it. In the event, it turned out that renting it for a few months cost as much as buying it outright, so I trudged over in the rain and cold and dreariness to Croydon a few days ago and procured it.

Immediately the boy wanted to play it. This flute doesn't appear to have any holes, only keys. He was unable to elicit any sounds from it. He'll have to retrain his embouchure and all that starting next week. Meanwhile, he has several days' worth of work on the fife left.

On Friday were the woodwind finals of the BBC Young Musician of the Year 2012 series. To our surprise, a recorder featured in the competition category finals. So much for it not being a serious instrument. Take that, supercilious mums on the school run. There was also a flute, a clarinet, a bassoon and a saxophone. Seeing the recorder (played by the youngest competitor - Charlotte Barbour-Condini - all of fifteen years old), the boy sniffed with disgust. He was in support of Luke O'Toole, the flautist. 'I am a fan of Luke,' he admitted to his mother before he went to bed.

When Charlotte played, he kept sniffing. 'When is Charlotte going to stop?' he asked. 'The recorder is boring.'

'Be nice,' I said.

'Oh yeah, it is a fine thing,' he said. 'My teacher teaches the recorder. I wish I could learn the recorder.'

A couple of minutes later, he said, 'Boring. How long can we just keep listening to music?'

Then he said, 'Why are her eyes closed?'

He stayed up till Luke's turn to play the flute.

'I am very good at the flute,' he said.

Then he went to bed. This morning, almost the first thing he wanted to know was whether Luke had won.

I checked the programme on BBC iPlayer. When he saw Charlotte Barbour-Condini being interviewed just before the winner was announced, he said, 'Charlotte, Charlotte, Charlotte, stupid Charlotte.'

'Hey,' I said.

'Actually, she is nice. Did Luke win?'

Luke did not win. Charlotte won. What an achievement! She was smiling through her tears.

'Look,' said the boy. 'She is grinning from ear to ear.'

A Fight

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Sat, 05 May 2012 15:48:00 +0000

There's a lovely site called Oldmos.ru where people have been posting old photographs of Moscow - their families, cityscapes, histories, memories. An occasional browse through it reveals hidden depths, heart-tugging tales, a sense of wonder. I came across this photograph of a bunch of kids fighting in the snow.

Children fighting in the snow. c. 1912.

At first glance it might appear violent, sadistic even. But a commentator reveals that all these kids are family - brothers and cousins. They are posing for the camera. What do they know of their eventual fate?

Two of the kids are the sons of the chief of prisons in the Department of the Interior. The fellow with the broom is George Ksavelevich Velichko. He will become a railwayman, and will live out his life in Irkutsk. He will die in 1986, leaving behind five children and 17 grandchildren. The fellow with the snowball is Samuel Ksavelevich Velichko. He will leave for India in 1921, then to Bari in Italy. He will become a cargo man, a newsman, and then will marry and become a proprietor of a cafe. He will reestablish connections with his relatives who remained in the USSR in 1990 through the Red Cross.

The chap with his hands apart is Viktor Viktorovich Velichko, son of an architect. He will graduate from Saratov University and become a chemist. He will perish in 1944, before being able to set up a family. The fellow with the log is Pavel Kirillovich Velichko, son of an army man. He will graduate from the MIIT, and become a father of three sons, and serve in the armed forces during World War II. He will drown in the Oka river in 1963.

The chap on the ground is Johan-Anton Stanislavovich Velichko. He will emigrate in 1919 to Poland, and serve in the border guard. He will be captured by the Red Army in 1939. Two years later, he will be executed in Tver. His great-grandson will post the picture and reveal the story.

Roman à Clef

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Wed, 02 May 2012 13:50:00 +0000

The late Michael Dibdin, author of black tales of grit and grime set in various Italian cities, liked to lend an atmospheric aura around his detective Aurelio Zen. With a name like that, it should be obvious that the investigator was a multifaceted talent. In And Then You Die, he takes a moment from undercover copping in Rome to enjoy his usual repast.

'So where were you?

'At the end of the earth, Ernesto. It's a long story, and I've got an appointment at the office in fifteen minutes. Meanwhile I'm ready for some real food.'

'Right away, dottore! The usual?'

'The usual.'

Ernesto took one of the filled rolls from the glass cabinet, set it on a plate, then added two more thick slices from the roast and set it down in front of Zen along with a small carafe of white wine and a knife and a fork.

'I carved it extra fatty,' he said with a conspiratorial wink. 'You're looking a bit peaky, dottore. We'll have to feed you up.'

Zen cut a chunk of the pale, perfumed meat and started to chew. Apart from wine, Ernesto only served one thing: porchetta, choice young piglets from farmers personally known to him, stuffed wtih fennel and herbs, slowly roasted to moist perfection on a spit and served cold with chewy fresh bread. The crackling was a crisp layer of rich delights, the fat a creamy, unctuous decadence, the flesh tender and aromatic. Even the generic Castelli Romani wine, which couldn't have been given away free as a household cleanser in Venice, tasted blandly acceptable to Zen today.

Vine

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Sun, 22 Apr 2012 10:39:00 +0000

A little over a year ago, Amazon UK invited me to join their Vine programme. They said it was because people found my occasional review at the website useful. It is possible that is the reason: I have 128 reviews and 254 out of 352 readers liked them. (The remaining 98 are just nasty folks.) For some of the giants of the Amazon review scene, these would be pitiable numbers. Luckily I do not aim for giant-hood. I'm quite content being a pygmy.

There are benefits to Vine membership. Occasionally a nice item does drop into my sweaty palm. One recent example is the as-yet unreleased exploration of London by David Gentleman. I got London, You're Beautiful: An Artist's Year yesterday and I spent a couple of hours going over its pages. It is quite lovely. Here's what I submitted in review:

David Gentleman has lived on the same street in North London for more than fifty years and in the same house for slightly less, and yet for much of his life his artistic eye has been cast elsewhere. Last year he decided to take a look at his hometown with a fresh perspective, that of a flaneur, and he provides a look at much of the capital's gems as seen from street level. With deft brush-strokes and quick pencil work and a lovely palette of watercolours, he has depicted large parts of the city with love and keen observation. From January to December, he explores the moods of London. Some boroughs he revisits - you will see Camden and Hampstead over and over again. Other parts are captured in the moment of their finery. The City, especially, gains much from his interpretation - take a look at the sequence of angular buildings on Great Victoria Street and Poultry. He visits the theatre and street markets, he observes London from the heights of its hills, and he sees the new vertical city (the Heron Tower, Gherkin, Canary Wharf, Shard) in a new light. Interspersed throughout is his quiet commentary, witty and gentle. I suspect a coffee table format in large size would have been much more striking for some of the more elaborate pieces in the book, but many of his sketches are like miniatures, sharp and concentrated, and so revelatory in small size. This is a book to sample and savour.

See? I liked it.

It's not just books that arrive on my doorstep from Amazon. I have also received a pair of headphones. The electronic items usually are in big demand. There are people who are very likely sitting up in front of their computers at 8pm every third Thursday of a month, constantly refreshing their Vine pages, just to see what freebie electronic goodies are available. (Once, at 9pm on a Vine day, I happened to look at the website: there had been a fancy super zoom digital camera on offer. I'm sure the last of those had vanished at 8:00:04.)

As long as you review at 80% of the items you have ordered, you can choose two more every third Thursday, and another two the following week. Having started in March last year, I should have had nearly fifty items in my possession by now. I chose 18 items.

Choosy and ungreedy, that's me.

Gina Figueroa

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Sun, 15 Apr 2012 07:45:00 +0000

Ambling along Mexico City's Lincoln Park, the boy and I fell into a little art gallery. We had been fighting viciously, as only superheroes and villains can, and weren't looking where we were going. A little old woman who had been slumbering in solitude snorted awake and smiled at us.

'Hola,' said the boy.

'Buenas tardes,' said the woman.

She gestured at the visitor book. I looked at it. There hadn't been visitors for a day or two at least.

I scrawled a pseudonym.

'Come on, acha,' said the boy. 'Let us fight.'

'In a moment, please,' I said. 'Let us look at these paintings.'

He sighed and shuffled behind me.

There were several works hanging on the walls, but I only liked these.

Mixoacan, by Gina F.

Man on the sea, by Gina F.

Camouflage, by Gina F.

The boy looked at the last one and yawned. I tried to explain why the painting was titled 'Camouflage'. He mentioned an orange dinosaur that, if it stood against an orange background, would be camouflaged.

'Where would a dinosaur find an orange background?' I said.

'All the leaves at that time were orange,' he said.

'All the leaves?' I said.

'Okay, not all the leaves. But a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot of the leaves were orange.'

'So when it is not near those orange leaves, everybody could see it? Orange is a bright colour,' I said.

'Okay, so it did not have camouflage,' said the boy. 'I don't know. I wasn't there. It was a long time ago. Can we fight now?'

Leftwing Mexican

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Wed, 11 Apr 2012 13:48:00 +0000

I've mentioned the excellent The Uncomfortable Dead by Subcomandante Marcos and Paco Ignacio Taibo II elsewhere, and it reminds me that one is not always faced with haute cuisine. There are times in fiction - just as in life - when the food is down-market, rustic, and possibly not all that great. Furthermore, the following just needs saying because, well, the gourmet detective is becoming such a cliché now, eh?

Although, actually, I think the Italian cook is only in the book because in mystery novels the detective usually winds up having culinary adventures. The other day, for example, I found Vittorio Francesco Augusto Luiggi (August Forbidden in our broken calendar) trying out a recipe that he said El Sup had given him. It was called Marcos's Special and he did it up just the way they told him: mince and fry one ration of beef; add a small can of Mexican salsa and cheese; mix thoroughly and serve hot.

When August Forbidden finished his concoction, I told him, "It looks like dog barf."

Then he tasted it himself and added, "It tastes the same as it looks."

But August is one of those people who believes the Zapatistas are never wrong, so he claimed the problem was that the salsa brand he used was Herdez and "El Sup actually told me it had to be La Costeña."

In any case, begging the pardon of Pepe Carvalho and Manuel Vázquez Montalbán, the fare in this novel is not going to be all that good. And now that I have discussed eating, give me a second so I can go to the john.

Bricks and Bats

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Fri, 30 Mar 2012 22:24:00 +0000

I'm feeling a bit dashed, I have to say. For the second time my Blackberry has powered down completely - both times because of my idiocy - and I have lost my high score on BrickBreaker. The first high score was nearly 500,000. The second was over 2,000,000. I mean, come on, these aren't small scores. I struggled for nearly a year at 33,600. I couldn't believe my eyes when I looked at the top scorers' list once: there were people with 11 million or so to their name. E l e v e n million, I say. I had no idea how they could score so much.

Then I realised that it was only the first two cycles of the game that were difficult. Once the second cycle - seriously demented - was accomplished, all subsequent ones were tepid affairs. Boring even. As someone said, the game became geriatric. One scored and scored into the hundreds of thousands and millions, and one was curtailed only by carpal tunnel syndrome or the Blackberry's scroll-mouse failing.

I got the Blackberry about 2 years ago, spanking new and responsive like a Mig-21. It took me months of effort to break through the second cycle. As my score climbed into the lakhs, I had to set myself different goals: score without using any of the magic properties, or accumulate lives, or use only the laser. Then I forgot to recharge the Blackberry one day and it lost the game history and I had to start anew.

It didn't take long for me to recover that high score. This was at a time that the Blackberry's track mouse was still rigid enough that it didn't wobble at the lightest touch. I was also young enough that my reflexes were like a panther. As my score moved up to the million level, however, I noticed that I was making silly errors, the mouse was wobbling far too much, and I was losing lives prodigiously.

Two weeks ago, I went over the 2 million mark. I had 250 lives. I was spending lives as fast as I was gaining them. Frankly, it was getting a bit boring. I thought of switching to the word game 'Word Mole'. I did, in fact, begin to play it more often than BrickBreaker.

Hubris, I tell you. One night, the Blackberry's battery drained completely and I lost the game once again. I don't think I'll ever recover. My reflexes are shot. So is the Blackberry's trackball.

It is over.

Cooking in the New Europe

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Wed, 28 Mar 2012 12:35:00 +0000

The Guardian ran a series of reports on the New Europe last year. Correspondents spent a few days with a typical family in Germany, for example, or Spain, and wrote up their experiences. No experience was complete without food, as in this instance by Kira Cochrane:

We start with a small dish (tapa) known as fideua, which consists of short noodles, fried by Martiño (he's a keen cook and takes a regular class on a Saturday morning). These are then boiled in a fish broth, and baked in the oven, where they pop up like fresh blades of grass. To follow is a delicious black-ink paella, and then the traditional Catalonian dessert brought by Eva – almonds, hazelnuts, sultanas and dried figs. Miguel's best friend, Leo, a German writer and teacher, arrives as midnight approaches, and the group keep Spanish hours, drinking sweet wine and whisky into the night, and arguing over politics, in anticipation of a relaxed nine o'clock start the next morning.

Weekend Jinks

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Tue, 20 Mar 2012 17:50:00 +0000

It was quite sunny, so I took the boy to the park, where

I was an ogre stomping behind the boy, immune to the arrows he shot at me,
he laid traps for the ogre by leaving sticks lying around, and when I got trapped, he rode his bike around the park as fast as he could,
he was Hanuman and took flying leaps into my arms,
we had running races to nearby trees, and although I ran much faster than him, I never won because as I approached the finish, it felt like I was running through treacle.

*******

There was a time when he would try to befriend other kids in the park, but now he ignores them completely. I think he is losing his gregariousness, which is sad, really.

*******

We ran into one of his classmates, Bart, at the local supermarket. He has often complained about Bart, and yet he invited that fellow home. Then as Bart went away, the boy turned to me and said, "I can't believe I invited a bully home!"

*******

We are not sure that Bart is really a bully. I'm sure the kids fight each other often, but they also play together. When the wife went to see the boy's swimming lesson the other day, he was so happy to see her that he frequently despatched Bart over to her with various messages. Bart was quite happy to oblige.

Potter in the Park

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Mon, 12 Mar 2012 16:10:00 +0000

The boy went to the park the other day dressed in a Hogwarts cloak and a Harry Potter pair of glasses.

He hadn't been able to find his wand. Instead, he wielded a twig to great effect.

He ran around screaming 'Leviosa' and 'Reducto'. Had he known 'Episkey', he might have used it too.

A couple of older girls were sitting on a tree. They smiled at him. Encouraged, he began to ham it up. He posed like Snape before a duel. He scowled devilishly. He ran at me, fell, dropped his twig, ran back to the girls. They had lost interest in him by then.

'Smelly armus!' he shouted. They looked at him, startled.

'I mean - expelliarmus!' he shouted again, a bit less loudly.

'I mean - I've forgotten my wand,' he added in a whisper.

'That is not funny, Harry Potter,' said one of the girls severely.

He came back to where I standing, looking somewhat abashed

Burns Night

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Fri, 09 Mar 2012 19:00:00 +0000

A little while ago, RBS invited a bunch of its favourite clients over to its capacious headquarters on Bishopsgate to thank them for their business over the preceding year and to celebrate Burns' Night. You know, Robbie Burns, the only poet the Scots ever had. And because RBS's imagination ran fecund, the night was filled to the brim with every other manner of Scottishness. Which, when you think about it, is just four things. Haggis. Whisky. Tartan. Oats.

I jest, I jest. I'm as big a fan of Scotland as anyone who has ever visited Edinburgh only. At least I understood why RBS would organise festivities in honour of Burns. Unlike that one particularly thick client who sidled up to the global head of sales and said, 'This is just an excuse for a binge, isn't it? What's the connection between RBS and Burns?'

The sales head was incredulous. After gaping for a second or two, she replied, 'Er, the last letter in RBS?'

The RBS sales men were all in kilts. I asked one of them if he got to choose his tartan. No, he said. The colours were handed out at random. 'Damn,' he added. 'It itches like you won't believe.'

Several drinks later, he revealed that he had a new-found appreciation for women. 'It is impossible to pee standing up in this thing!' he said. One of his colleagues accused him of copping out. 'Don't tell me you actually sat on the toilet,' he said, his voice rising in indignation.

From all this you can infer that the atmosphere was fairly laddish. There were quite a few women around, and their hearts would probably have sunk into their heels when the entertainment for the evening was announced. This comprised two Scottish rugby players who would address the guests and answer any questions they might have about the soon-to-start Six Nations rugby championships. I'm no rugby fan myself, and I found myself blanching at the thought of sitting through technical talk and blokey chummery.

But that was in the future. First, we had the bagpiper. That was a seriously sweaty man. Despite the blast of air conditioning, the effort of playing the pipes caused him to perspire in streams. I fervently hoped he went to freshen up, for a little while later he appeared in our midst and began to address the haggis, which was placed on a large trencher before him by a minion. He thrust himself about and strained and perorated in Scots.

We couldn't understand a thing except when he took the opportunity to belittle the Italians and French. Scotland, he claimed, had in the haggis a far nobler food than anything those pusillanimous Europeans ever managed.

Fair fa' your honest, sonsie face,
Great chieftain o' the pudding-race!
Aboon them a' ye tak your place,
Painch, tripe, or thairm :
Weel are ye wordy o'a grace
As lang's my arm.

The groaning trencher there ye fill,
Your hurdies like a distant hill,
Your pin wad help to mend a mill
In time o'need,
While thro' your pores the dews distil
Like amber bead.

His knife see rustic Labour dight,
An' cut you up wi' ready sleight,
Trenching your gushing entrails bright,
Like ony ditch;
And then, O what a glorious sight,
Warm-reekin', rich!

Then, horn for horn, they stretch an' strive:
Deil tak the hindmost! on they drive,
Till a' their weel-swall'd kytes belyve
Are bent like drums;
Then auld Guidman, maist like to rive,
Bethankit! hums.

Is there that owre his French ragout
Or olio that wad staw a sow,
Or fricassee wad make her spew
Wi' perfect sconner,
Looks down wi' sneering, scornfu' view
On sic a dinner?

Poor devil! see him owre his trash,
As feckless as wither'd rash,
His spindle shank, a guid whip-lash;
His nieve a nit;
Thro' bloody flood or field to dash,
O how unfit!

But mark the Rustic, haggis-fed,
The trembling earth resounds his tread.
Clap in his walie nieve a blade,
He'll mak it whissle;
An' legs an' arms, an' heads will sned,
Like taps o' thrissle.

Ye Pow'rs, wha mak mankind your care,
And dish them out their bill o' fare,
Auld Scotland wants nae skinking ware
That jaups in luggies;
But, if ye wish her gratefu' prayer
Gie her a haggis!

(Listen to a recitation here.)

And then he shoved his hands into the haggis and crumbled it and tossed it about and breathed all over it. And later it was taken table to table and some people were brave enough to try it.

I shall say no more of the haggis, save that in small quantities, it is quite flavourful.

The rugby fellows who jogged up to our midst had both played for Scotland in the last few years. The first fellow was a jokey man. I don't remember his name, so let's call him Derek. He talked about the general lack of intelligence amongst rugby players. He told stories about his sporting life. He had us in genteel splits.

He talked about Jonah Lomu, the great Kiwi player. On one occasion, he was to be the man marking Jonah. This was not a task for the faint-hearted. He asked his coach for advice.

'How do I stop him when he is charging with the ball?' he said.

The coach said, 'You should grab him from behind and bring him down.'

'But, Coach, what if I'm to his side and he hands me off on my face?' he said.

'Well then you should get under his arm and knock the ball away,' said the coach.

'But, Coach, what if I'm in front of him and he is heading my way?' said Derek.

'Well, in that case, all I can suggest is that you grab some shit and chuck it in his eyes to blind him,' replied the coach.

'But, Coach,' moaned Derek. 'Where am I going to find shit on the playing field?'

'Just reach behind you, son,' said the coach.

Jonah Lomu was that fearsome, said Derek. Then he introduced the second rugby player, Kenny Logan.

'Kenny,' he said, 'played against Jonah as well. But there are notable differences between the two. Jonah is 6 foot 7 tall. Kenny is only 5 foot 10. Jonah's weight is 125 kilogrammes. Kenny weighs 90. Jonah can run a hundred metres in 10.6 seconds. Kenny can't.'

Kenny managed to get a riposte in later. Derek was once Scotland captain, he said. He liked to get his players into a huddle and inspire them with some lavish exhortations. 'Boys,' he would say. 'We are fighters. We are raiders. We do not know the meaning of defeat. We shall rise from the flames like a pheasant.'

'Er,' Kenny would say to Derek. 'That should be "phoenix".'

'Whatever,' Derek would reply. 'I knew it was some word beginning with an 'f'.'

After this, it was downhill. The talk turned technical. The future of the English rugby team was debated, and judgments cast on various players and coaches. Half a bloody boring hour later, finally, we were told we could start the whisky tasting. I tried one, but by then I had lost the will to continue. So I went home.

Sexism in Reading and Writing and Reviewing

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Wed, 07 Mar 2012 19:00:00 +0000

For a while now, there has been discussion about underrepresentation of women in various walks of life. Science and mathematics come to mind, politics, industry, the list is probably as long as the number of careers open to a human being on this planet. More recently, people have begun to raise concerns about the gross shortfall in the number of review of books written by women, or indeed, the lack of women reviewers in the various 'quality' media. For many, it boils down to a question of whether people prefer to read authors of their own gender. The question can be further nuanced - are there particular genres that appeal more to one sex than the other? Going by this recent piece in the Guardian books blog, it appears that their own reviews of nonfiction are predominantly by men, whereas fiction reviews are mainly by women. They provide statistics for major publications as well, for instance, the London Review of Books, the Times Literary Supplement, and the New York Review of Books. In all these, males outnumber females, both among reviewers and authorship of books reviewed.

Being at loose end, I decided to take a look at my own gender biases. I have a list of books that I've read since I was eleven or so, and I can, with a little effort, classify the authors into males and females. It turns out that I have read 2997 books by 1,641 distinct authors. Amazing. I didn't think there were that many authors on the planet. Of these, 557 were authored (or edited) by women, 2440 by men. (There were also several multi-author books, which I have ignored in the counts.) The cry goes around village - Fëanor is gender-biased! Lynch the fellow! A closer look reveals the following table of top authors:

Agatha Christie        75
P. G. Wodehouse        72
F. W. Dixon + C. Keene 42
Isaac Asimov           39
Enid Blyton            28
Georgette Heyer        26
..................     ..
Alistair Maclean       25
Piers Anthony          25
Arthur C. Clarke       18
Jack Higgins           17
Edgar Wallace          16
Arthur Conan Doyle     15

I did say that these are counts starting from my callow youth. (Okay, I admit it - the Heyers are mostly recent.) But in this top six, there are three women, two men, and one syndicate. In the next six, there are only men. If I remove these two lots, then a more representative picture should appear. When I say 'more representative', I mean 'more suitable for politically correct discourse'. Ha ha.

So now it appears that I have read 406 books by women, 2192 by men. Hmm. Right, how else can I massage these data? Maybe I read more books by male authors when I was young and pimply, and, with maturity, have switched to a more nuanced appreciation for writing? I'll split the data into (my) decades.

years           F       M       ratio
tens            71      545     12%
twenties        101     673     13%
thirties        172     707     20%
forties         69      258     21%

At least the trajectory is in the right direction. On the flip side, the authors whose books I read most in each decade are all men. Still not doing great! One final piece of analysis, I guess, would be to distinguish between fiction and non-fiction. But I'm bored now, so I'll stop here.

Seismic Town, Antigua

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Mon, 05 Mar 2012 22:15:00 +0000

If you find yourself in Antigua Guatemala and a bunch of kids yell, "Maximon, Maximon!" and run away from you, do not be embarrassed. Most likely it's because you are dark-skinned, wearing a jaunty hat, smoking a cigarette, and sporting a large moustache. In the highlands of Guatemala, Maximon is part-God, part-Devil, reviled by most people and worshipped by others. It is no insult to be likened to him, I think, but the wife, long-time wannabe Antigueno and fanatic collector of Mayan stories, disagrees.

"This is a colonial town", she says, "which really means that it was born in savagery. Pedro Alvarado founded Antigua to be the capital of Spanish Central America, but before doing so, he ravaged the Mayans and sacked their towns. The Mayans were so terrified by Alvarado that they decided he must be a god. The clerics in Alvarado's entourage awed them with their tales of Biblical fire and brimstone, so they associated him with Judas and came up with the mustachioed, cigarette-smoking deity they called Maximon."

Antigua is one of the treasures of the colonial period, a gracious and relaxed town reminiscent of Spain, complete with baroque cathedrals, haciendas, and manicured parks and lawns. Today it is deemed a World Heritage site, and nobody is prouder of this fact than the locals. In a strange twist of irony, most of them are descendants of the very same Mayans who were enslaved by Alvarado.

This attribution of divine powers to Alvarado, however, did not suffice to save the city he founded. Surrounded by active volcanoes, each one of which spits fire and ash into the sky daily, inflaming the clouds and blotting out the stars, Antigua is a seismic calamity zone. Temblors levelled it century after century till the Spaniards, in despair, abandoned it. Antigua gradually lost its shimmer and was reduced to ruin.

More recently, though, its architectural and historical value has been recognised, and renovations have begun. This has been a long venture, disrupted by Guatemala's bloody civil war. The country has only recently gotten out of thirty-six years of strife which wrecked the economy and destroyed countless lives. These days, tourism is on the rebound here and Antigua is poised to take full advantage of it. The wife tells me that the country was plunged into war when the US intervened to remove a democratically elected leader in 1960. The Americans were worried by his socialist leanings. "The Americans are a big source of tourist revenue nowadays. Now, if only they can get the Spaniards to return!" she says, grinning impishly.

Semana Santa

The week culminating in Easter is a time of joyous celebration in most Catholic countries. This is probably the best time to visit Central America as well. In Antigua, the interplay of pagan customs and Christian belief makes for some lovely tableaux. In every village across the region, people make preparations for the procession of the Cross. Thousands gather to re-enact the last week of Christ's life. Palm fronds decorate the streets, and, daily, the Cross from Antigua's La Merced Church is carried through the town and the local villages. Armour-clad Roman soldiers charge through the streets on Good Friday demanding the execution of Jesus. On Easter Sunday, the procession of the Resurrection winds up the festivities. Men seeking penance carry large floats called andas bearing life-size statues of Jesus. These weigh almost 8000 pounds, so the penitents take turns shouldering the burden. It's a march accompanied by a solemn drum, and as a sign of one's devotion, one must become part of a brotherhood.

Traffic grinds to a crawl around Antigua days before the Holy Week. I am amazed to see elaborate designs on the roads reminiscent of rangoli. These are called alfombras (carpets). They are signs of devotion and faith, and stencils for the designs are made in December of the previous year. The villagers use vegetables, fruits, tinted sand, flowers and flour to create these patterns directly on the cobblestoned roads in front of their houses. The alfombras begin to appear just in time to mark out the route of the next day's procession.

It is said that to lead a truly Christian life, one must study. The locals here are mostly illiterate, so these andas and alfombras become vessels of God's word. Through the attention to detail and the beauty of the presentations, the message of the Divine enters the hearts of the viewers.

Jaded moments

Guatemala has deposits of some of the finest jades in the world, and from pre-Columbian times the Mayans have created exquisite works of art with them. Antiguenos realise that these classical handicrafts and skills are worth preserving, and encourage visitors not to leave without acquiring their very own jade souvenir. Showrooms abound in town with local artists busy in workshops at the back, creating reproductions of Mayan sculpture and some lovely original works.

Jorge, a local gemologist, proudly shows me around his store. He hands me a remarkable green-black carving, flecked with gold, whorls and streaks and dots. "This is among the rarest of jades", he says. There are three faces of Mayan gods embedded in the stone, each - like Brahma's - looking in a different direction. It's a spectacular piece of craftsmanship. I heft it in my hand. The stone is cold and heavy. The detail is impressive: sleepy eyes, frowning brows, aquiline noses. Jorge's eyes light up with pleasure. "We call this jade Galactic Gold - see how it resembles a starry sky?" he says.

The ancient Mayans had a unique conception of beauty. They shaped their babies' heads with wooden boards to give them long foreheads, slanting backwards. They dangled little balls in front of the infants' faces to make them cross-eyed. Of course, nobody looks that way anymore. But preserved to this day in the jade - with high regal foreheads and squinty eyes - are their Gods, more beautiful by far than any mortal.

So far and yet so close

"No other Indians in Antigua, eh?", I say to the wife. She laughs. "You've been looking in the wrong places", she says, pointing at a row of trucks parked in the street in front of us. I am puzzled. Then I see the magic words embossed on the tyres, and I laugh too.

"Modi Continental", the words read. "Made in India".

(Written for and rejected by Outlook, 2001. "The Travel Diary pipeline is full", quoth Mr Vinod Mehta. Reblogged to air it out. Last outing: 22/03/2007.)

Like a Beacon

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Sat, 25 Feb 2012 12:50:00 +0000

London Underground has long been known for promoting the arts in its premises. Besides the musical buskers licensed to yodel and squawk, poetry has been published and put up in unused advertising space within the trains. Often these are defaced and replaced by various eco-terrorists (pace the peculiar Sing a song of Esso), but more often than that, we get such pieces as the following, by Grace Nichols:

LIKE A BEACON

In London
every now and then
I get this craving
for my mother's food
I leave art galleries
in search of plaintains
saltfish/sweet potatoes

I need this link

I need this touch
of home
swinging in my bag
like a beacon
against the cold

Arty

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Thu, 09 Feb 2012 20:40:00 +0000

I have been singularly remiss in posting and the reason's plain to see
I am obsessing about the Russian avant-garde and it has taken over me 
I'd like to point you all to another blog of mine 
Because clearly when I can't manage one 
Two will work out fine.

Three, if you include Tumblr. Hot damn.

Long years ago - well, maybe four - there was a TV programme by Marcel Theroux that addressed the phenomenon of Russian oligarchs buying up every piece of their country's art that they could lay their hands on. This was no different from rich Chinese and Indians piling on to artistic treasures of their own countries, but given that Chinese and Indian art is not quite mainstream in the West, and only what happens in the West is worth documenting, much fanfare was made of the Oligarts, as Theroux put it. At the time, I did watch the programme. It was a fascinating insight into a period of Russian creativity before it got stomped on by Communism. There were names - like Zinaida Serebriakova - who were coming back into vogue, decades after their oeuvre had been forgotten. I watched avidly and then as with many other ephemeral interests, I forgot all about it.

Until recently, when suddenly the bug bit me again. I'm not sure exactly what it was that caused the infection, but it came on creepingly and it came on strong. So the past few weeks have found me busily scouring the web for images and translating text from Russian and French, educating myself a bit about the art of the Russian (and Soviet) imperium. So far I have covered Zinaida Serebriakova, Vera Rockline and started on Pavel Shmarov, all of whom were contemporaries, exiles in Paris from the 1920s onwards. The Russian avant-garde included such famous folks as Kandinski and Chagall, but so much is known of them, and much less about Kustodiev and Vassilief and all those others. Nor do I want to restrict myself to ethnic Russians - the avant-garde was much more inclusive, and there were other nationalities from the Russian empire that participated. And there's no reason to stick to the avant-garde either. So I'll go over them all slowly - one hopes. As with all my interests, this too can fade at a blink.

Meanwhile, it's not that I have been ignoring life in general. There was an expedition to Asia House for a display of art by George Chinnery. There was copious consumption of all things Scottish at Burns night. There were several episodes of Lost Kingdoms of Africa, too. I'm reading, too, far less than I once used to. There are several books to note. And there's always the boy's escapades in the world of mathematics. Much to talk about and so little time. Soon!

The Shampoo Sheikh

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Thu, 12 Jan 2012 21:36:00 +0000

[I wrote this article on Space Bar's invitation in August 2008 and it appeared on Blogbharti. A little while ago, Blogbharti ceased to exist, my computer crashed, and I thought I'd lost this piece. Luckily, the Wayback Machine had snapped it up all those months ago, and I was able to retrieve it. So here you go, for archival purposes only: this is how it appeared on Blogbharti.]

[ This is Essay No. 31 in our Spotlight Series. Click here for the archives.]

By Fëanor
———-

During the height of the Regency, it was the very thing to betake oneself to Brighton, there to enjoy the sea, dance with the best people, flirt with dashing Army officers, be introduced to the Princes Royal, and play genteel parlour games [Picture credit: The Republic of Pemberly]. And when all the whirling and swirling was done and one was exhausted, the place to go to recover and refresh was Mahomed’s.

To miss going to Mahomed’s is like going to town and forgetting to take a peep at St Paul’s… ¹

Inside an imposing building on King’s Road in Brighton, a man in Mughal court dress welcomed the gentry. He offered a luxurious establishment at the height of ton, and a series of medicated vapour baths. The specialty of the house was a massage with medicated oils. Customers sweated their poisons out in a hot aromatic bath, and then moved into a tent with flannel sleeves. Here, an unseen masseur would pummel them invigoratingly, with his arms through the cloth walls. This last, the man said, was the Indian art of the Shampoo, and it would cure all ills.

[The Baths are] daily thronged, not only with the ailing but the hale … their powerful efficacy … have brought foreigners to him from all quarters of the world …

What was this Shampoo? And how did this word become English? The tale is a curious one, intercontinental in its reach, transcending origins, race and class.

It begins in 1759 in Patna where was born a scion of the Nabobs of Murshidabad. A noble lineage is one thing; the reality of life is another. The Nabobs were a shadow of their former selves after the disaster at Plassey, and Din Mohammed’s father, having set aside all pride, was a minor soldier in the East India Company’s Bengal Army. When Din was eleven years old, his father was killed, his elder brother took on the parental commission, and despite his mother’s vigilance - she knew Din was already smitten by the glamour of soldiery - he ran away from home to become a camp follower. Soon, he was in the service of a Captain Baker, under whose watchful eye he bloomed into a well-read man, widely travelled and keenly observant.

There is scarcely any disease to which the human frame is liable which may not be relieved by the use of these baths.

In 1784, Baker returned to Ireland, taking Din with him. Din perfected his English in Cork, and, after Baker died two years later, married a young Irishwoman, Mary Daly. They spent the next 25 years in Ireland, where Din’s charm and intelligence endeared him to the Irish upper class [Picture credit:Brighton Ourstory].

A popular genre of books at the time was the epistolary travelogue, and Din jumped into the business with panache. The Irish gentry² paid 2 shillings 6 pence for “The Travels of Dean Mahomet, A Native of Patna in Bengal, Through Several Parts of India, While in the Service of The Honourable The East India Company Written by Himself, In a series of Letters to a Friend.” It was a charming read, in turns poetically descriptive and hair-raisingly adventurous. Interspersed in true intellectual style with quotations from Seneca and Goldsmith, among others, he wrote of the Company’s conquest of India, the gracious Mughals and the elegance of the Company’s Calcutta; he waxed eloquently on the riches of Dacca, and the terrors of being hunted by peasants, wrathful at Din’s tax-collection, baying for his blood.

This unlikely tome turned out to be the first book in English written by an Indian, and it brought to its readers a particular sensibility - an appreciation for victorious England and her East India Company, but also an unapologetic love for the grandeur of India that Din missed so sorely.

You will here behold a generous soil crowned with plenty; the garden beautifully diversified by the gayest flowers diffusing their fragrance into the bosom of the air; and the very bowels of the earth enriched with inestimable mines of gold and diamonds. ³

In 1807, Din and his family moved to London, where he opened an Indian restaurant. The Hindustanee Coffee House in the Portman Estate [Picture credit: BBC News] was the first ever in a series of Indianised British eateries that has continued to this day. While his intention had been to attract the Indian gentry, they tended to look down upon his establishment as one fit only for ignorant Londoners. The British loved it.

Here the gentry may enjoy the Hooakha, with real Chilm tobacco, and Indian dishes in the highest perfection, and allowed by the greatest epicures to be unequalled to any curries ever made in England.⁴

Simultaneously, in the service of a Basil Cochrane, he was providing a full body massage service at steam baths opened in Portman Square. Din could easily counter imitators, stating that his was the only genuine massage; only an Indian native could provide a treatment superior to all others; only he, equipped with the correct medicinal herbs, could cure illnesses. In a time of burgeoning excess and a thirst for the exotic, Din was able to provide each in luxuriant quantities.

But setting a trend to be followed by most curry houses after him, Din’s outgoings overwhelmed his income, and he declared bankruptcy in 1812. He let it be known that he was ready for employ as a butler or a valet, with no objection to town or country, and this advertisement brought him to Brighton’s bath houses.
Brighton was the Nonesuch town of the Regency, its wealth and fashion attracting the finest artists and bon viveurs in the land. The Prince Regent’s fanciful Royal Pavilion was then being constructed. The demand for Oriental chic and exotica continued unabated. Din began to purvey esoteric Indian medicines, aromatic herbs and oils, treatments, and promoted steam baths and Shampooing.

shampoo (v.)
1762, “to massage,” from Anglo-Indian shampoo, from Hindi champo, imperative of champna “to press, knead the muscles” ⁴

The last two became immensely popular; the Prince of Wales invited Din to supervise the construction of an aromatic steam bath in the Pavilion. Din so impressed the Prince that he was anointed Royal Shampoo Surgeon. The gentry poured into his establishment, allowing him to expand, build the elegant Mahomed’s Baths [Picture credit:Victorian Turkish Baths] overlooking the sea, and create new branches in London.

Meanwhile, Din worked on his magnum opus, “Shampooing, or, Benefits Resulting from the Use of the Indian Medicated Vapour Bath,” a book of testimonials from satisfied clients, dealing with the putative medical benefits of massages, aromatic oil therapy and sea-water baths, claiming to cure rheumatism, fix problems of the muscles, and restore ailing joints. His book was a bestseller, going into further editions in 1826 and 1838, adumbrated with fulsome praise from a fawning clientele.

The greatest blessing that we know,
In health is said to be;
That blessing, under God I owe,
Oh Mahomed! to thee;
My lips the gratitude shall show,
That in my heart doth glow,
For ah! I feel too well assured,
(Let all deride, and laugh who will,)
That had I never try’d thy skill,
I never had been cured!!’ ⁶

The royal warrant by George IV was the final imprimatur on his social eminence, but his financial situation was precarious, dependent as he was on his sleeping partner, Thomas Brown, for funding. Brown died in 1841, and Din was unable to raise the capital required to win the auction of his baths. He offered to manage the property on behalf of the higher bidder, but unfortunately, his services were no longer required, and he had to relocate to a small property on Black Lion Street. He tried to compete with his old establishment, continuing to advertise his services till 1845. He became more and more impecunious in the ensuing years, and in 1851, this extraordinary Renaissance man died.

References:

Victorian Turkish Baths, Malcolm Shifrin.
Sake Dean Mahomet: Traveller and Shampooing Surgeon, Niaz Zaman.
The Travels of Dean Mahomet, Michael Fisher.
An Indian with a triple first, William Dalrymple, The Spectator, Jan 3, 1998
shampoo. (n.d.). Online Etymology Dictionary. Retrieved May 14, 2008, from Dictionary.com: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/shampoo
Shampooing, Sake Dean Mahomed..

Movie Quiz - Answers

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Sat, 07 Jan 2012 20:46:00 +0000

All right, all right, hold your horses. I know that all 8 of you that attempted this quiz are desperate to see the solutions. So here you go.

1. Am positive a lamb leg will make things loads better: Shawshank Redemption
2. Jesus’s Granddad: Godfather
3. Mother Theresa, Hitler and John Merrick: The good. The bad, the ugly
4. Jarvis Cocker isn’t real: Pulp Fiction
5. Batman sees no moon or stars: Dark Knight
6. Nice guys: Goodfellas
7. A white Spanish house: Casablanca
8. Join for a barney: Fight Club
9. They stole Noah’s sat nav: Raiders of the Lost Ark
10. Not this lot in the lineup again! The Usual Suspects
11. Rectangular numbers: The Matrix
12. I can’t hear the baaas: Silence of the Lambs
13. This helps a community member walk: Citizen Kane
14. Keep Malibu and Santa Monica secret: LA Confidential
15. Canines playing in the water supply: Reservoir Dogs
16. Return to tomorrow: Back to the Future
17. Wet karaoke: Singing in the Rain
18. Bannister was an environmentalist: The Green Mile
19. Contender, Are you ready? Gladiator
20. Blindfolded and handcuffed underwater and got out, wow: The Great Escape
21. Expiring isn’t easy: Die Hard
22. Lottery win for poor Lassie: Slumdog Millionaire
23. A regal roar: Lion King
24. An expensive offspring: Million Dollar Baby
25. Blown away my dear: Gone With the Wind
26. There’s the 2184214 to Paddington: Trainspotting
27. It will have cost this toy boy at least £9k a year: The Graduate
28. Cloughie’s story: Life of Brian
29. Get me out of this womb or else! Bourne Ultimatum
30. I’m looking for one that leaves it all to me: Good Will Hunting
31. The story of Harry S.? The Truman Show
32. Filthy gyrating: Dirty Dancing
33. An expensive digit: Goldfinger
34. Don’t show him red…..too late: Raging Bull
35. I do, I do, I do, I do…..so sad: Four Weddings and a Funeral
36. The Queen’s one who needs treatment: The English Patient
37. There’s at least a couple decent chaps: A Few Good Men
38. Satan’s lawyer: Devil's Advocate
39. Don’t even have a hint: Clueless
40. Mind if I butt in young lady: Girl, Interrupted
41. Insomnia in Washington: Sleepless in Seattle
42. It’s the end of the world: Armageddon
43. The King's Wife rules over dry lands: Priscilla, Queen of the Desert
44. Indian junior keeps it beating to stay alive: Braveheart
45. He may be a predator but he's such a nice man: Deer Hunter
46. They just upped and left: The Departed
47. Tee it high and she will bloom, but she's no English rose: Driving Miss Daisy
48. 23.5 miles to bring Frank and us together: The French Connection
49. Rented bacon: Hamlet
50. Painful storage: The Hurt Locker
51. Knight of the Crop Landings: Lord of the Rings
52. He's here all year long - winter spring summer or fall: A Man for all Seasons
53. On the cusp of tomorrow the Indian's foe arrives: Midnight Cowboy
54. The wife doesn't believe it was arson: Mrs Doubtfire
55. Stateless for geriatric dudes: No Country For Old Men
56. Swiss elevators rock from side to side: Schindler's List
57. Amorous Bard: Shakespeare in Love
58. Friendly Party Animal connects over WiFi: The Social Network
59. A Creepy crawly male friend ....... as well: Spiderman 2
60. It's a contracted affection ... even fondness: Terms of Endearment
61. A prostitute's target meets the bootmaker: Tom Jones
62. Read the book on Ali G's home turf: West Side Story
63. Addition for those that enjoy the sun on the back: Some Like It Hot
64. Route to Hades: Road to Perdition
65. Uncle's son is related to Mr Jones ... : My Cousin Vinny
66. Insurrection for coconut candy: Mutiny on the Bounty
67. William II brings a regal finality north of Hadrian's Wall: The Last King of Scotland

Gourmets in Mannheim

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Tue, 03 Jan 2012 10:33:00 +0000

Just when I was beginning to despair of fine food in literature from Northern Europe, I come across Bernhard Schlink's Self's Deception, in which an ex-Nazi public prosecutor-turned-private-eye likes to devour delicacies in the midst of antagonising his girlfriend and making enemies of various other folks. Gerhard Self lives in Mannheim, and he wants to have a spot of breakfast.

On the third day, I was in the mood to go out for breakfast. Since the Café Gmeiner has been replaced by a restaurant serving foie gras in Jurançon gelée and monkfish slices in mustard seed and similar fripperies, I go instead to the Café Fieberg in the Seckenheimer Straße. The waitress there is a boisterous but kind soul who has taken me under her wing and has made sure that the kitchen knows how I like my eggs - fried eggs flipped over just before being served.

She brought pepper and nutmeg. 'Another pot of coffee?'

Zinaida Serebryakova

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Mon, 02 Jan 2012 18:11:00 +0000

The name of Zinaida Serebryakova (née Lanceray, also spelt Lansere) (1884 - 1967) is widely known among lovers of art world-wide. Her works are found in many countries, most often in the collections of Russian emigres of the first wave. Still, in the Ukraine, her fame is insufficient, and true glory is still in the future.

At the dressing table. Self-portrait. 1909.

The explanation for this lacuna lies in the tragedy of the history of the twentieth century, when 'aristocratic' art was aggressively replaced by the 'proletarian', with the ensuing triumph of the so-called 'socialist realism' over the Miriskusniki. The example of Serebryakova confirms this harsh rule. After her departure to Paris, numerous fans and collectors undoubtedly recalled the creator of the paintings 'At the dressing table', 'Bath house', 'Harvest', 'Bleaching the cloth', all lovely representations of women. Still, until her solo exhibition in 1965 in her homeland, her works were for several decades hidden in private collections, her name mentioned only in an undertone.

The efforts of the artist's children and the Leningrad-based art expert V P Knyazev resulted in the Commemorative Exhibitions in 1965, held in Moscow, Leningrad and Kiev. These presented to the Russian and Ukrainian art world a true picture of Serebryakova's life and accomplishments.

In 1965, the eighty year-old artist fulfilled a long-held dream - she travelled from Paris to Moscow for the opening of her exhibition, held for the first time in the USSR. That was when her name resounded in full force throughout the motherland. In Paris, she had often thought back fondly to her native Kharkov, but even though she was able to make it to Moscow, her childhood places remained an unfulfilled memory. She had less than two years more to live. But we have the fortune of being able to look to the focus of her memories where were born the best of her paintings.

Fields at Neskuchnoye. 1916.

The Lansere family estate 'Neskuchnoye' (Fun) lay 30 miles from Kharkov; three miles beyond this was the village named 'Merry'. Both these placenames express precisely the nature of the historic region at a time when there were noisy fairs, thunderously loud weddings, gambols and promenades. In the early years of the 20th century, villagers from these estates would head off to Kharkov for trade and return after dusk. In those days, against the background of peasant huts stood the Lansere family estate, all columns and orchards, situated near the swift flowing rivulet 'Muromka', and the family chapel where the artist's father, the famous Russian sculptor E. A. Lansere lay buried. He had succumbed to consumption aged forty, when Zinaida was not even two years old.

Zinaida owed her own artistic development to her maternal uncle, Alexandre Benois, and her elder brother, Eugene Lansere, both outstanding figures of Russian art, founders of the Benois-Lansere school from which emerged an entire galaxy of famous artists and architects. Both the estate and the chapel are attributed to a Lansere, although exactly which from that talented family was responsible is still unclear.

Winter Landscape. Village Neskuchnoye. 1910.

In 1886, Zinaida's widowed mother took her six children to her paternal home in St Petersburg. The atmosphere in the Benois family was special, dominated by the worship of classical art and spiritual interest. Zinaida's grandfather, Nikolai Leontyevich Benois, was a living encyclopedia of art. His tales of his travels in Italy, of antiquity and the Renaissance, and frequent visits to the theatre and the Hermitage as well as exposure to the books in her family's extensive library revealed a world of beauty to Zinaida. All members of her family were constantly engaged in creative work; Zinaida as well began to passionately engage with art.

During Zinaida's youth appeared the creative movement known as 'World of Art' (1898) (Mir Iskusstva), pioneered by her uncle Alexandre Benois and his friends, L. Bakst, K. Somov, S. P. Diaghilev and others. The associated exhibitions became an automatic part of her life. In 1911, the association was newly restored and Zinaida herself became a member, to promote the revival of the traditional artistic heritage. During that decade, there was much emphasis on the classical heritage, and many related magazines were published, such as 'Old Times' and 'Apollo.' A great investigation of the legacy of the past was being undertaken, seeking to find aesthetic, artistic and moral values from which contemporary culture could draw inspiration. Many of the articles bewailed the wait for artistic greatness in Russia as it revived itself spiritually. The humanist ideals of the new art were being defined, and the heroic image of the world was sought in the celebration of beauty, goodness and joy. These were the sentiments that surrounded the budding artist.

While her talent had been kindled in her family homestead, it was in St Petersburg that Zinaida's artistic identity was fully formed. Immersed in the cauldron of contemporary Russia, she personally knew many prominent litterateurs and artists from home and Europe. If only she had taken up the pen along with the brush! We would then have had literary portraits of those greats: A. Benois, E. Lansere, K. Somov, Anna Akhmatova, Y. Annenkov, Sergei Prokofiev. It was in 1917 that Zinaida's friend, the critic S. Ernst began writing the first monograph on her work.

From that time on, Zinaida's life would become a chiaroscuro of bright moments and dark bitterness.

Since 1898, scarcely a summer had passed without Zinaida repairing to her ancestral home to spend time with her extended Benois-Lansere clan, happily tearing herself away from gloomy St Petersburg. Not far from the Lansere estate, on the other bank of the Muromka, was the cottage of the Serebryakovs.

Boris Serebryakov. 1908.

Boris Anatolyevich Serebryakov was a cousin of Zinaida's, his mother being her father's sister. Zinaida and Boris had been brought up together since childhood. Now they fell in love with each other, and the family approved. The difficulty was that the Russian Church disapproved of marriages of close relatives. Additionally, while Zinaida was Catholic, Boris was Orthodox. After many appeals to the spiritual authorities in Belgorod and Kharkov, the couple finally got married on September 9, 1905. Zinaida engaged herself enthusiastically in painting while Boris studied to become a railway engineer, and both made the most optimistic plans for the future.

Boris was a thoughtful, progressive and resolute man. During the first Russian revolution, he was present at meetings in St. Petersburg, supporting the farmers' demand to own land. Even as a student at the St Petersburg Institute for Railway Engineering, he dreamed of working in Siberia. This drive to the far lands and new activity so filled with risk was shared with Zinaida. In the midst of the Russo-Japanese war, Boris chose to work in Manchuria, and to the dismay of his loved ones, ended up in Liaoyang when the Russian army suffered a crushing defeat there.

After their wedding, the couple visited Paris. During the trip, each had their own special plans. Zinaida visited the Académie de la Grande Chaumière, where she painted from nature, while Boris joined the École Nationale des Ponts et Chaussées as a surveyor.

Autumn Greenery. 1908.

After a year of new experiences, the couple returned home. Zinaida was hard at work in her ancestral home - creating studies, portraits and landscapes. Boris, as a skillful and devoted esquire, planted apple orchards, kept a keen eye on his land and crops, and became an enthusiastic photographer. Both husband and wife were like-minded, deeply in love and yet realistic in their vocations, be they artistic or technical. Boris and Zinaida were in temperament very different people, but these differences supplemented and unified them. And when they were apart, which happened often, Zinaida's mood was ruined and she lost her focus on her work. From August 1914, Boris was Head Surveyor in the construction of the railroad from Irkutsk to Bodaibo; later, up to 1919, he was involved in the Ufa-Orenburg line. Still, the happy couple had four children, two sons and two daughters, all of whom subsequently linked their lives to the creative arts, becoming architects, artists, interior decorators.

Farmers. 1914.

Sorrow erupted during the Civil War. On the way to Kharkov in a military carriage, Boris contracted typhus and died of heart failure. The war and her own personal tragedy forced Zinaida to leave Russia for the land of her early ancestors, France. In a letter to a friend, Zinaida, usually so reticent in matters of the emotions, wrote on February 28, 1922: 'I have always thought that to be loved and to be in love - that is happiness. I was always in a trance, unnoticing of life around me, and I was happy, although even then I knew sorrow and tears ... It is so sad to realize that that life is over, that that time has run out, and nothing more than loneliness, old age and misery lie ahead, while my heart is still so full of tenderness and feeling.' And in 1952, Zinaida wrote from Paris to her daughter Tatyana in Moscow: 'You won't believe that more than a quarter century has gone by without him!' All these years she lived continually thinking of her husband, silently seeking his advice on matters of importance. Four paintings of Boris by Zinaida remain in the collections of Tatyana and Eugene Serebryakov, in the Tretyakov Art Gallery, and in the Novosibirsk Picture Gallery.

Harvest. 1915.

But let us return to oeuvre of this wonderful painter.

Starting in 1899, Serebryakova spent nearly every spring and summer at her ancestral homestead. The labour of young peasant girls in the fields grabbed her attention. Her interest became concrete in 1906 after her return from Paris. Although 1915 (the year she painted her famous work 'Farmers in the fields') was still long in the future, studies and portraits of peasant men and women filled up her albums.

The seventh exhibition of Russian artists in Moscow in 1910, brought fame to Zinaida. In the Tretyakov Art Gallery were exhibited her self-portrait 'At the dressing table' as well as the gouache 'Autumn Greenery', which had been finished at her estate. The perfection of technique, the freshness of colour, and the cleanliness of the tones - these for the first time drew attention to her landscapes. Human figures and buildings were included in the artistic composition as an element of spatial organisation. In the landscape 'Autumn Greenery' (which could also be called 'Windmills') they attract attention and become the centre of the image. Zinaida was very fond of this angle. Windmills reminded her of her beloved Don Quixote, serving as a symbol of life itself, which is driven by the wind just like the mill's wings, never stopping for a moment, grinding like grains the fates of men. (However, even her windmills hardly proved eternal. The last ones disappeared at the end of the 1930s.)

Zinaida's 'Harvest' became a classic. It is impossible not to admire the mastery of her composition, the purity and sonority of her palette.

The bather. 1911.

On the Muromka, she painted her sister Ekaterina for 'The bather'. Here in the valley was a small yet important field of hemp: from its seeds, her peasants pressed oil, and from its fibre they wove cloth. Here Zinaida accumulated her observations for the painting 'Bleaching the cloth' (1917). In the Muromka in 1914, a peasant girl named Polya Molchanova drowned; she had served as a model for the portrait 'Polya' and also in an étude for the 'Harvest'. (The Muromka no longer exists - it has dried up, covered with grass. It is just about possible to discern traces of its overgrown bed.)

Her finest works, such as 'At the dressing table', 'Bath house', 'Harvest', 'Bleaching the cloth', were all done at her estate. With pencil and brush, she recreated the unique Serebryakov landscape of Kharkov. During the Revolution and the ensuing Civil War, the house and studio of the artist were burned by gangs of anarchists (to the great grief of the local peasants, who had held the family Lansere in high regard). During World War II, invaders destroyed the family chapel as well. The graves of Zinaida's family didn't survive either. Today only the Serebryakov landscapes remain to give an idea of how the village once looked.

Bath house, 1913.

The October Revolution found Zinaida in Kharkov. She worked at the newly established Archaeological Museum at the Kharkov University. In the autumn of 1920, she received offers to transfer to the Petrograd Department of Museums, or to take up a professorship at the Academy of Art. Not only did she receive papers to return to Petrograd, but also passes for free travel for her entire family. By December 1920, Zinaida was already in Petrograd. She decided not to participate in the museum or teaching activities, preferring to work in a studio.

Undeniably, Zinaida could have become a master of Soviet art. But being modest and shy, and critically attached to her own oeuvre, in the 1920s, Serebryakova did not take up tasks such as the design of campaign posters or the decoration of public buildings or revolutionary celebrations. During these years, she was busy painting portraits, landscapes of Tsarskoye Selo, and interiors of palaces. To her great joy, Zinaida was given permission to be behind the scenes during performances at the Mariinisky Theatre. Her interaction with the dancers over three years is reflected in her amazing series of ballet portraits and compositions.

In the early post-Revolutionary years, a lively culture of exhibitions began in the country. Zinaida participated in several exhibitions in Petrograd. In 1924, she promoted a large exhibition of Russian fine art in America, which was set up for the purpose of financial support to painters. Of Zinaida's fourteen paintings, two were sold immediately. Burdened with taking care of her family (four children and her mother) she used the money to travel abroad with a view to promoting further exhibitions and to obtain commissions. In early September 1924, Serebryakova went to Paris.

Bleaching the Cloth. 1917.

As fate would have it, Zinaida was to spend the major part of her life in France. For many years, she didn't have a studio, and her earnings were miserly. Many of her creative ideas could not be implemented owing to lack of funds. She led a closed life in Paris, socialising only with Russians. Brighter periods in her life were associated with Zinaida's travels with her daughter to Brittany, to the south of France or Switzerland. In 1926, she began a series of portraits of local Breton fishermen and farmers. In 1928 and 1932, she was able to work in Morocco. In the 1920s and 1930s, she was celebrated in Paris among the advocates of realist art. Of her was said that Serebryakova is an outstanding master of European values. However, her voice as a painter in the realist mode was drowning in the contemporary vogue for abstract art and modernist masterpieces.

Portrait of E.I. Finogenova. 1920.

In the middle of the 1930s, Zinaida attempted to return to the USSR. But protracted commissions in Belgium delayed her, following which World War II intervened. After the war, she was invited back to Russia by the Soviet Academy of Arts, urged by her children and notable artists such as D. A. Shmarinov and S. V. Gerasimov. However, old age and illness prevented her from travelling. Then, the Soviets decided to hold a large commemorative exhibition of Zinaida's art. And so she managed to return to her motherland for the last time.

Time flies and takes away the generation that was captured in Serebryakova's études and portraits. Until recently, many of those painted by Zinaida in Kharkov during the Civil War and who worked at the Archaeological museum of the university. In those days when her husband suddenly succumbed to the typhus, leaving her to take care of her four children and mother, those friends had rallied around her in her sorrow. Among them were G. I. Teslenko and E. I. Finogenova, whose visages were immortalised by the artist's brush. Among the many portraits of beautiful Kharkov women, there are two of Lena Nikolskaya who in 1920 was a researcher at the Archaeological museum. The first impression when comparing portrait with photograph is that Serebryakova embellished her model: enlarged pupils, elongated eyebrows, exaggerated tone. But such is the method of the artist. Delicately having observed the subject's personality, she sharpens them to bring them to the aesthetically appropriate limits. And so Serebryakova's portraits of women are considered the embodiment of a harmonic beginning, of the primordial female essence.

[Loosely translated from Zinaida Serebryakova, based on notes from a book by V. D. Berlin (2004).]

Christmas 3

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Sun, 01 Jan 2012 20:34:00 +0000

Clearly the muscle memory involved in cycling has little to do with ice-skating. The boy, you understand, is an expert cyclist. So is his father. Ice-skating, we found, is another thing entirely.

We took the boy the other day to the Tower of London where part of the moat has been converted to an open-air skating rink. For the princely sum of £12.50 each, we managed to get an hour's worth of skating practice. The boy fell more times than he stayed up. Throughout, he remained cheerful. Inordinately wet, but cheerful.

This is nothing like the rink in Kuwait, moaned the wife. Why is there so much water on the ice? She had been dragged into the cold water when the boy fell for the fifth time. While she was back on her feet in a fraction of a second, he was content to flap about like a beached walrus. Then he flailed his legs and caused nearby learners to shy away and fall as well.

'Stand up!' I roared.

'I am trying!' he roared back.

He flailed some more and amputated the feet of some skatersby.

Presently we were following the rest of the learners who, like lemmings, were moving in the same direction. Anticlockwise we shuffled, good Borg that we were. The experts whizzed about expertly around us, executing stylish flourishes and curtsies. Occasionally the wife would nip away ('I learned to skate,' she said, 'in Kuwait.' She likes to talk in rhymes.) When she got back to join us, the boy would screech, 'Amma!' and fall again.

In the last ten minutes of the allotted hour, the boy managed to make small shuffling steps on the ice. 'Success!' he announced.

Now it was my turn to shine. I shimmered off into the centre of the rink to practice my balance. A mother and daughter pair, holding hands and keeping each other aloft, suddenly materialised in front of me. I couldn't brake in time. 'Excuse me!' I yelled. They reared up like startled rhinos. Aghast, they watched me looming ever closer, my arms askance, my feet proceeding in different directions. A desperate manoeuvre caused me to spin 180 degrees. My left foot shot up and my right hand scraped painfully against the ice. A second before I was going to plough the rink with my nose, I righted myself, scarcely an inch away from the mother's face. It was a dance move Flawless would have approved.

'Wow,' the mother breathed.

'Minty,' I thought.

'Impressive,' she said, clutching at her equally frightened daughter.

Self-deprecating as ever, I staggered off.

Christmas 2

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Thu, 29 Dec 2011 11:44:00 +0000

Santa brought a Playstation Move for the boy. While he had expected a Wii or an Xbox Kinect (having written a small note to Santa requesting either device), the fellow was quite pleased. He spent six hours whacking demons and skeletons on a medieval quest to obtain a jewel. Every time he was stymied, he'd yell at me. "It's because you're not telling me what to do!"

"Shield, shield!" I would shout. "Arrows! Shield, shield!"

"Don't shout at me!" the boy would yell back.

"Don't shout at the boy," the wife would say.

"I'm telling him what to do," I would say.

"Let him figure it out," the wife would say.

Flying crosses would fly at Deadmund and he would sag and grunt with every impact.

"I'm running out of life," the boy would say. "Help me, acha!"

"Shield, shield!" I would shout. "Arrows! Shield, shield!"

"Don't shout at me!" the boy would yell back.

"Don't shout at the boy," the wife would say.

Et cetera ad eternam.

Another Random Tootle

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Wed, 28 Dec 2011 12:50:00 +0000

And again, instead of going to the gym, I go on a random walk around my part of London. I walk briskly, honest. I cover about 3 miles in 45 minutes, burn 320 calories, and see some sights and witness some events and overhear some chats. And read some petitions and speak some French.

The initial and fastest leg is from Bank over Southwark Bridge to Borough High Street. I nip past Borough Market, observing the long queues at Neal’s Yard Dairy (a fine British cheesemonger). Desperate Christmas shoppers throng the place. Some of my colleagues have recently received boxes of Neal’s Yard cheeses from their brokers and I am delighted to see that such specialties as Appleby’s Cheshire and Sparkenhoe Red Leicester have pride of place on Neal’s Yard’s shelves. I haven’t had either cheese but I intend to as soon as I have this cholesterol thing beat, and shall report at length. 2012, here I come.

There are even longer queues at local pubs. What’s with people drinking at 3pm, I ask you?

At 67 Borough High Street, I see a lovely red building on which appears the following legend: W H & H Le May Hop Factors. Surely that’s worth a brief investigation? Yes, it is.

[Sketch by Amy Walters.]

I find that the Le Mays were a famous supplier of hops to brewers and the like. (The Le Mays were a well-to-do family. One of them, Lt Algernon Le May, aged 34, perished in the Great War – his name appears on a nearby war memorial.) The hop trade was a major part of Southwark till nearly the 1970s. For centuries, Borough High Street and Old London Bridge were the only means of ingress into London from the south. The area, therefore, was dotted with inns and taverns. Recall Harry Bailey who led the pilgrims in Chaucer’s tale? He was a proprietor of a local tavern, and very rich to boot. Hop factors were warehousers and intermediaries between the growers and the breweries.

Southwark is rich in listed properties, many pre-dating the 19th century. This building though is rather modest inside. 19th century developers liked to apply a bit of embellishment to the exterior to aggrandise their creations.

Not fifty metres away at 77 Borough High Street is George Inn, one of the last extant hostelries in Southwark. This was built in the 17th century. These inns catered to horse-drawn traffic, and were situated on long plots with a narrow frontage onto the main street. These survive mainly in name only. I don’t go inside George Inn Yard to inspect the inn itself. I’ll leave that for another time I shirk off gym. It’s a National Trust property, which helps as I am a member. But here’s a picture of its lovely galleried front.

[The George Inn by Nick Garrod, on Flickr]

A little further along and a quick left onto Talbot Yard reveals a non-descript office building on which appears a plaque. Here stood Chaucer’s Tabard Inn, from where the pilgrims set off on their grand trip to Canterbury. Just like the George, it had burned down in the 17th century and was reconstructed; unlike the George, it didn’t survive the Industrial revolution, and exists only in literary memory. Luckily, we have engravings of it from the 180o’s when it looked a bit like this:

[The Tabard Inn, c. 1850. Wikimedia Commons]

I retrace my steps to Borough High Street and shift left on Newcomen Street. I hope there might be a plaque or some memorial or the other to the only Newcomen I’ve heard of, who invented the steam-powered pump and inspired James Watt’s steam engine. But he was a Devon man, and I am not sure if he had much to do in London.

Like many of the side-streets in Southwark, this street too used to be coaching inn yard (once called Axe Yard). In the 17th century, it came to be owned by two charities. One building bears the name of one of the charities – John Marshall’s. The street, however, is named after the other – Mrs Newcomen’s. She owned three messuages – ha! I learn a new word – one of which was in Axe Yard, and she bequeathed them upon her death in 1675 for "the clothing of poor boys and girls with a suit of linen and woollen once a year, whereof two-thirds . . . [were to] be out of the Borough side, and the other third . . . out of the Clink Liberty . . . and for . . . teaching them to read and write and cast accounts, and for . . . putting forth boys apprentice at 5l a piece, at their age of 14 years." (Quote from here.)

As I continue along Newcomen street – not the prettiest street in Southwark, admittedly – I note signs everywhere of King’s College and Guy’s Hospital. Every time I look up, I see the immense Shard. It looms over the entire borough. Guy’s Hospital is so much more to human scale. There is a courtyard with an arch. It is another memorial to the fallen soldiers of the Great War.

[John Keats at Guy’s Hospital, by Mike Paterson]

Beyond is a colonnade separating two inner courtyards. In one of them stands Lord Nuffield, a benefactor of the hospital, and in the other is a seated John Keats, a bronze-work by Stuart Williamson inaugurated in 2007. The great poet had trained as a surgeon in the hospital, and quit, undone by the gruesomeness. As far as I can tell, the only bit of medicine that ever appeared in his poetry are these lines from Ode to Fanny:

Physician Nature! Let my spirit blood! 
O ease my heart of verse and let me rest; 
Throw me upon thy Tripod, till the flood 
Of stifling numbers ebbs from my full breast.

Across St Thomas’s street is the Old Operating Theatre and Herb Garret. It is closed, unfortunately, till the New Year. As I head away from it, a lovely girl steps out in front of me, followed by a young man who tells her, 'I have an entire archipelago of mistresses.'

Say what? Before I can react, they disappear into a side street. Scratching my head, I continue along St Thomas’s Street till I get to Crucifix Lane. I see a sign for the Fashion and Textile Museum. There’s no time to take a gander at that; I turn towards the Shard. Construction all around has wrecked views and entrances and my neck hurts from craning. I see BVAG petitioning against the demolition of Southwark’s heritage (London Bridge is the first city-centre railway terminus, it thunders, it should not be treated so shoddily; prevent the demolition of prime Victorian-age train sheds), and I see an interesting art gallery. It is called the Underdog Art Company, exhibits graphic art and has live music shows, and I’m afraid I have no time for that either.

[Silk Screen Print by Tony Lee at Underground Art Co. Image by Shuby, on Flickr.]

I am accosted by a couple of young women. ‘Excuse me, sir,’ says one. ‘The Underground?’ She has a strong French accent, and waggles her fingers down. West African, I surmise, so in my best French I respond, ‘Suivez la rue 300 mètres et tournez à droite.’ They grin at me happily. ‘D’accord!’ says the other woman, and giggling at my accent (I hope) they head away.

The rest of my walk is even brisker than ever – onto Barnham Street to Tooley Street, left onto Tower Bridge Road and over that fruitcake bridge back to the City. I don’t stop anywhere, just burn my soles on Tower Hill and Tower Street and Eastcheap and King William Street, all the way back to Bank.

Christmas 1

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Mon, 26 Dec 2011 11:32:00 +0000

I took the boy to the office on Friday. He was excited, although not quite as much as some of my colleagues. They'd heard of his wisecracks and were looking forward to meeting him in person.

'How do we keep him entertained?' asked Frei.

'Shall we show him the table football?' said Pitt.

'No,' said Parker. 'That will give him the wrong impression of what goes on in the office.'

'You mean the right impression,' said Pitt, and everybody fell about laughing.

The boy was on his best behaviour. He shook hands very cordially with everybody and only confused the names of two people. He looked at my Bloomberg console and noticed that the Euro was falling in value against the dollar. He walked around the office and came back to sit at my desk.

'You can use this screen and I'll use this one,' he said generously to me.

We fought each other briefly for possession of the mouse.

Frei made a bet with the boy. 'Look,' he said, pointing at the intraday tick chart of Euro-dollar. 'One Euro is 1.3067 dollars. I'm going for lunch in fifteen minutes. Do you think this chart will be down or up at that time?'

'Down,' said the boy.

'Given how we've been doing so far, I wouldn't be surprised if the boy wins,' said Frei to me confidentially and laughed like a hyena.

Meanwhile, the boy had noticed the football table. It was surrounded by four eager men playing desperately for victory. He waited patiently for them to finish, but they kept switching sides, playing game after game.

Adebayor noticed that the boy was looking at bit forlorn. He went into the football room and muttered something to the men. They looked at the boy sheepishly. They trooped out. 'We got carried away,' said one.

'That's okay,' said the boy.

'I told them that your son was about to cry,' said Adebayor smugly. 'It always works.'

We went in and whacked the ball a few times. It rolled into the goals at random. The boy giggled happily.

When Frei was about to leave for lunch, we took a look at the currency chart again. The Euro chart had been dropping jaggedly all that time, but as we watched, it suddenly spiked up.

'Oh dear,' said Frei. '1.3077. I'm afraid you lost, mate.'

'That's okay,' said the boy.

We also went for lunch soon thereafter.

Movie Quiz

noreply@blogger.com (Fëanor) — Thu, 22 Dec 2011 19:43:00 +0000

All right, all you cryptic clue lovers. Here's a Christmas quiz: each is a clue to an English film. Send me answers - if you like - at j o s t a m o n at h o t m a i l . c o m:

Am positive a lamb leg will make things loads better.
Jesus’s Granddad.
Mother Theresa, Hitler and John Merrick.
Jarvis Cocker isn’t real.
Batman sees no moon or stars.
Nice guys.
A white Spanish house.
Join for a barney.
They stole Noah’s sat nav.
Not this lot in the lineup again!
Rectangular numbers.
I can’t hear the baaas.
This helps a community member walk.
Keep Malibu and Santa Monica secret.
Canines playing in the water supply.
Return to tomorrow.
Wet karaoke.
Bannister was an environmentalist.
Contender, Are you ready?
Blindfolded and handcuffed underwater and got out, wow.
Expiring isn’t easy.
Lottery win for poor Lassie.
A regal roar.
An expensive offspring.
Blown away my dear.
There’s the 2184214 to Paddington.
It will have cost this toy boy at least £9k a year
Cloughie’s story.
Get me out of this womb or else!
I’m looking for one that leaves it all to me.
The story of Harry S.?
Filthy gyrating.
An expensive digit.
Don’t show him red…..too late.
I do, I do, I do, I do…..so sad.
The Queen’s one who needs treatment.
There’s at least a couple decent chaps.
Satan’s lawyer.
Don’t even have a hint.
Mind if I butt in young lady.
Insomnia in Washington.
It’s the end of the world.
The Kings Wife rules over dry lands.
Indian junior keeps it beating to stay alive.
He may be a predator but he's such a nice man.
They just upped and left.
Tee it high and she will bloom, but she's no English rose.
23.5 miles to bring Frank and us together.
Rented bacon.
Painful storage.
Knight of the Crop Landings.
He's here all year long - winter spring summer or fall.
On the cusp of tomorrow the Indian's foe arrives.
The wife doesn't believe it was arson.
Stateless for geriatric dudes.
Swiss elevators rock from side to side.
Amorous Bard.
Friendly Party Animal connects over WiFi.
A Creepy crawly male friend ....... as well.
It a contracted affection ... even fondness.
A prostitutes target meets the bootmaker.
Read the book on Ali G's home turf.
Addition for those that enjoy the sun on the back.
Route to Hades.
Uncle's son is related to Mr Jones ....
Insurrection for coconut candy.
William II brings a regal finality north of Hadrians Wall.