A slightly risqué one (no change there then!) this week …
Monthly Archives: May 2013
Words: Gambeson, Habergeon, Hauberk
Gambeson
A quilted and padded, or stuffed leather or cloth, garment worn under chain mail in the Middle Ages and later as a doublet by men and women. A military tunic, worn especially in the 14th century, made of leather or thick cloth, sometimes padded; it covered the trunk and thighs, and was originally worn under the habergeon, to prevent chafing or bruises, but was sometimes used as a defence without other body-armour.
Habergeon
A sleeveless coat or jacket of mail or scale armour, originally smaller and lighter than a hauberk. A short, sleeveless coat of mail.
Hauberk
A long tunic made of chain mail. A piece of defensive armour (originally intended for the defence of the neck and shoulders but already in 12th and 13th centuries developed into a long coat of mail) or military tunic, usually of ring or chain mail, which adapted itself readily to the motions of the body.
Over time Habergeon and Hauberk seem to have become more or less interchangeable.
Random Huggers Day
In addition to everything else Saturday 18 May is Random Huggers Day.
We all like a hug when we’re feeling down and giving people a hug is very special; it is a simple way of expressing love, care and friendship. And it can save lives.
Random Huggers Day was established in 2003 to spread some warmth, love, fun and all the wonderful energy that is in a hug; to spread that special feeling around the world.
There is no charity or corporation involved; Random Huggers Day is just about one human being giving another human being a gift, for nothing!
You can sign up to be a Random Hugger, or just go along to an event in a city near you. You’ll find details oner at .
International Museum Day
This year’s International Museum Day is on Saturday 18 May. Every year since 1977 International Museum Day, which is on Saturday 18 May this year, is organised worldwide to make people more aware of how museums contribute to enriching, and developing, our societies!
I remember being taken to museums when I was young and like most children I found just looking at objects boring. But later you come to realise that each of those objects is a piece of history and tells a wonderful story: of a hero, a king, the life of a farmer or slave, of an animal and its environment, of a different way of looking at life.
So one of the best, and most important things, about museums is how they link different cultures together: by displaying objects from different countries and cultures; and by making museums available for travelling tourists to learn about other places and people.
There’s some more information on the International Council of Museums website at http://icom.museum/activities/international-museum-day/ or checkout you local museum to see what they’re doing.
You might have missed …
Another selection of links to stories you may have missed, in no order at all …
It all starts with Walter de la Mare and becomes a discussion of how the strange and weird become memorable; how ghosts are more real than reality.
Apparently there is nothing which will actually convince you to change your lifestyle, so don’t bother telling me!
Report on a visit to the Lyme Regis Fossil Festival.
How high can a human throw something? Would it be possible to throw a golf ball into space? What If? investigates.
Sex educator Emily Nagoski on how to be a sex educator for beginners. We all need to know this — parents especially.
In which Diamond Geezer reworks and updates the English class system. I’m not sure it’s quite right, but the general drift is good.
The Guardian seems to think they can tell us all what rules of grammar we need to know. Kettle — pot — black?
Are boobs better without bras? From a male perspective, definitely. Anatomically, well it seems it’s a possible maybe.
Archaeologists have been working on mapping the medieval Suffolk town of Dunwich which was lost to the North Sea. I thought we knew most of the map, but I guess it’s about seeing what is still there.
Birds are descended from dinosaurs, right? Well actually they probably are dinosaurs. XKCD shows how a T. rex is closer to your average sparrow than it is to a Stegosaurus.
Chicken in a basket takes on a whole new complexion!
Now here’s another interesting take on Mervyn Peake’s Gormenghast trilogy. They’re 60 or so years old, but can maybe serve as an allegory for the modern world.
We’re all descended from Charlemagne. Well all Europeans are. At least statistically. Allegedly. Carl Zimmer investigates.
Finally it seems those brutish Neanderthals were somewhat more advanced than most of us realise. And of course Europeans are all around 4% Neanderthal. So just be careful who you insult!
More Quotes
Another round-up of quotes I’ve met which were amusing, interesting or thought-provoking.
The intelligent man finds almost everything ridiculous, the sensible man hardly anything.
[Johann Wolfgang von Goethe]
Any event in this world — any human being for that matter — that seems to wear even the faintest cast or warp of strangeness, is apt to leave a disproportionately sharp impression on one’s senses … Life’s mere ordinary day-to-day — its thoughts, talk, doings — wither and die out of the mind like leaves from a tree. Year after year a similar crop recurs, and that goes too. It is mere debris, it perishes. But these other anomalies survive, even through the cold of age.
[Walter de la Mare, quoted at www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22380449]
The belief that the world is composed only of physical things operating according to universal laws is metaphysical speculation, not a falsifiable theory.
[John Gray, quoted at www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22380449]
The distinction between what’s natural and what’s not isn’t as straightforward as it seems. The very idea of a law-governed cosmos may be a relic of monotheism, with natural laws serving the role that divine commands once did. Many religions don’t distinguish between nature and the supernatural. For animists and polytheists, the natural world is full of spirits.
[John Gray (again), quoted at www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-22380449]
Today’s scientists have substituted mathematics for experiments, and they wander off through equation after equation, and eventually build a structure which has no relation to reality.
[Nikola Tesla]
The strongest leaders lead not from their anger and frustration and fear, but from their vision of the world as it could be … See a world you want to move toward, and take just one step forward today. Take one more step tomorrow. And one more after that …
[Emily Nagoski at www.thedirtynormal.com/2013/05/08/be-the-sex-educator/]
Those who are easily shocked should be shocked more often.
[Mae West]
O villain, villain, smiling, damned villain!
My tables, — meet it is I set it down,
That one may smile, and smile, and be a villain;
[Hamlet, I,v]
When a measure becomes a target, it ceases to be a good measure.
[Goodhart’s Law]
Every generation imagines itself to be more intelligent than the one that went before it, and wiser than the one that comes after it.
[George Orwell]
Though Evelyn [Waugh] described his own grasp of Latin and Greek as ‘superficial’, he did not think the hours devoted to learning them were wasted because one learnt ‘that words have basic inalienable meanings, departure from which is either conscious metaphor or inexcusable vulgarity … The old fashioned test of an English sentence — will it translate? — still stands after we have lost the trick of translation’. Anyone denied this apprenticeship — ‘most Americans and most women’ — would always be at a disadvantage.
[Michael Barber; Brief Lives: Evelyn Waugh]
You can never plan the future by the past.
[Edmund Burke]
Only those who attempt the absurd will achieve the impossible.
[MC Escher, 1898-1972]
Weekly Photograph
Actually this week we’re actually going to have more than one photo. One morning last week we went for a little tour round some of our local old churches, mainly because I had promised to take a few record shots of them for the local family history society. It was a blustery, intermittently sunny, morning which kept threatening rain — and I think we all felt more like a duvet day than going out taking photographs. But we gritted out teeth and carried on.
One of the churches on the list was St Mary the Virgin, Perivale. I quite see why it was championed by Sir John Betjeman. It is a tiny gem, right on my doorstep, and I’ve never been to it before.
The church itself has long been decommissioned, although I think not de-consecrated. It is now leased and tended by its Friends organisation and used for small concerts etc.
Most of this I knew, so we didn’t really expect to get access beyond being able to walk down the cycleway that runs alongside.
As we arrived, the sun came out; there were several people tending the churchyard and the church itself was open. Not wishing to impose too much on everyone’s good will we had only a brief look inside and a longer stroll round the graveyard.
Except for those horrible red chairs the church interior reminded me very much of the small churches of the Romney Marsh, especially Fairfield; and also of Greenstead-juxta-Ongar in Essex. Although not really that similar to either architecturally it was the intimacy which was the key. Apart from the tiny chancel the inside is not especially ornate; it would be too much if it were.
But as you see from the photos the setting is a delight. It is surrounded by trees and Ealing Golf Course. And again, although small, the churchyard is a lovely peaceful oasis, just a couple of hundred yards off the busy A40.
Everything was fresh and green, the sun was shining and the birds were singing. You could easily have been in the middle of nowhere. What more could one ask?!
Book Review
Michael Barber
Brief Lives: Evelyn Waugh
(Hesperus; 2013)
When Michael Barber first told me he had a biography of Evelyn Waugh being published, my first reaction was “Why?”. Why do we need another biography of Waugh?
But then when I got a copy I realised this isn’t really a biography but more a dozen or so quick sketches of the man, for what Hesperus are doing is creating a series of “short, authoritative biographies of the greatest figures in literary history; written by experts in their fields to appeal to general readers and academics alike”.
Given that this is the aim, then Barber and Hesperus have largely succeeded. This is a short work which is well and amusingly written, while remaining interesting, light, accessible and, I found, quite hard to put down.
Yes, the book lacks detail — but what does one really expect in 120 pages? However, although I am no expert on Waugh, it did seem to encapsulate the essence of the man and his life: idiosyncratic, snob, arriviste, poseur, spendthrift, drunk, intransigent bore and grumpy old man (even when quite young); but also both an excellent novelist (I’ll except Brideshead Revisited which never worked for me) and often highly amusing.
As a bonus, at least for me, Anthony Powell gets quite a few mentions. Powell and Waugh, although in some ways rival writers, were friends and admired each others’ work — both publicly and privately — often writing to say how much they had enjoyed the other’s latest volume. Waugh always wanted to live to see Powell complete Dance, but sadly he died halfway through. Wouldn’t it have been interesting to have heard his views on the second half of Dance? How the war trilogy compared with his Sword of Honour? And what would he have made of the denouements of Temporary Kings and Hearing Secret Harmonies?
As Anthony Powell so often did I shall conclude this review with two gripes. While understanding that publishers need to keep costs down, such awful cheap paper is horrid to handle and isn’t going to stand the rigours of time; I would happy to pay an extra 50p to £1 on the price of a book if it meant more aesthetically pleasing paper.
Finally I deplore the lack of an index. I know this is a short work, but any non-fiction book without an index becomes unusable as a reference source. And that, to my mind, is inexcusable in an environment where we must do everything we can to encourage the use of books as a resource. Again I have to lay the blame on cost-cutting publishers, rather than the authors, most of whom I suspect would (privately, at least) agree.
An excellent introduction to the man and a highly enjoyable and interesting read.
Overall rating: ★★★★☆
Be Nice To Nettles Week
15 to 26 May is Be Nice To Nettles Week, which looks nearer two weeks to me, but who’s counting?!
What?! Shouldn’t those nasty stinging nettles be destroyed? Well no, and in fact this is a relatively modern conception. In fact the humble nettle has played, and continues to play, an important role in the natural world: they are favourite place for ladybirds (which eat aphids) to lay their eggs, they are a favourite food plant for some of our more brightly-coloured butterflies and the young shoots can even be used in our kitchen much as you would use spinach — so our forebears actually cherished the nettle as an early Spring green vegetable.
So yes, we should continue to cherish the nettle as a valuable part of our ecology by leaving a patch of rough ground for them to grow in.
AS always there is more on Be Nice To Nettles Week oin their website at www.nettles.org.uk/.
Walk to Work Week
This year’s Walk to Work Week runs from 13 to 17 May.
It is generally agreed that in modern society we don’t walk enough (guilty as charged!) because walking is a great way to maintain fitness and helps keep the heart healthy. For those who work outside the home, walking to work also saves on petrol and bus fares, and is better for our planet. OK, walking to work isn’t feasible for everyone so as an alternative why not have a lunchtime stroll in the park or along the river?
You can always use walking to work as a way to raise money for your favourite charity, or just to be like Charles Dickens and Wordsworth who went on walks to get inspiration!
Find more information at www.walkingworks.org.uk.