All posts by Keith

I’m a controversialist and catalyst, quietly enabling others to develop by providing different ideas and views of the world. Born in London in the early 1950s and initially trained as a research chemist I retired as a senior project manager after 35 years in the IT industry. Retirement is about community give-back and finding some equilibrium. Founder and Honorary Secretary of the Anthony Powell Society. Chairman of my GP's patient group.

amusements, arts, personal, pleasures

100 Days of Haiku, Episode 2

14 July 2019 Keith

As promised, a weekly update on my progress through my 100 Days of Haiku challenge.

My target is to write at least one haiku each day. In week one I churned out 16, although not all were good. This week, week two, I’ve written 28 – again not all good – and I have a few ideas on the stocks. Here is a selection, one a day, from this week.

Monday 8 July
Always branded bad:
erotic, pornography,
essential for life.

Tuesday 9 July
Sunny windowsill;
solar-charging cat dozing.
Night out spent mousing.

Wednesday 10 July
Dryad of wormwood,
halucinogenical.
Fay green absinthe.

Thursday 11 July
Awakening to
pigeon’s morning serenade.
Warm snugly lover.

Friday 12 July
Foot pain go away
though treatment more painful.
Attractive masseuse.

Saturday 13 July
Cool evening breeze
wafts away humid summer
sunshine and warmth.

Sunday 14 July
Catnip stuffed fish.
Hallucinogen causes
spaced out pussy.

So let’s keep a tally of how many we write each week:

Week	Haiku
1	16
2	28

We’ll have another instalment next week.

personal, ramblings

Ten Things, July

10 July 2019 Keith

This year our Ten Things series is focusing on each month in turn. The Ten Things may include facts about the month, momentous events that happened, personal things, and any other idiocy I feel like – just because I can. So here are …

Ten Things about July

Start of UK school holidays
The month was renamed by Roman Senate in honour of Julius Caesar
Annual Swan Upping to count the Queen’s swans on the River Thames
St Swithin’s Day
Whitstable Oyster Festival
Fence Month: the closed season for deer in England
In 1799 a French soldier discovers Rosetta Stone
Bikini first showcased in Paris in 1946 (right)
First Moon walk in 1969
Birth of Dr John Dee, Elizabethan scientist and magician

amusements, arts, memes, personal, pleasures, thoughts

100 Days of Haiku

7 July 2019 Keith 2 Comments

As I have nothing else to do (joke!), and wanting to add something to my woeful practice of mindfulness, I have set myself a little challenge:

To write at least one haiku a day for 100 consecutive days.

What are haiku? Haiku is a Japanese verse in three lines with 5, 7 and 5 syllables respectively. Traditionally haiku are mood poems and don’t use any metaphors or similes; however beginners, like me, are usually start with just the restriction of the number of lines and syllables. There are many online collections of haiku, for example here, including those of the Japanese master Matsuo Basho.

I started this challenge last Monday, so I’m now seven days in and it is time to record the first results. In total I have written 16 haiku in the seven days – some good, many not so good. Here is one from each day showing a variety of ideas and subjects.

Monday 1 July
Cicadas singing
Long through sultry summer nights.
Thunder before dawn.

Tuesday 2 July
Sunshine streaming in
windows open wide for air.
Why such depression?

Wednesday 3 July
Hickory dickory dog,
rough enough through cough, lough and chough.
Cork works porky quark.

Thursday 4 July
Useful man, Paddy:
Build, fix, repair, recycle.
Moonshine of the bog.

Friday 5 July
Wispy cirrus cloud
Against Dutchman trouser blue.
Metal bird glides by.

Saturday 6 July
Sticky, sticky day
Energy drained away.
Starry, starry night.

Sunday 7 July
Seven round a table;
Friends’ dinner party makes mirth.
Mountainous paella.

Well no-one said that haiku had to make sense – at least not modern haiku; the traditional style seems more rigid!

I’m not going to post an offering every day, as some proponents of 100 day challenges do, but I shall attempt to post at least weekly updates. And I’m logging all the output, whether posted here or not, so who knows what might happen at the end.

environment, personal, ramblings

Leisure

4 July 2019 Keith

Another of the short poems we read at my mother’s funeral was this. Again it captures my mother’s quiet delight in the natural world.

Leisure
By WH Davies

What is this life if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

No time to stand beneath the boughs
And stare as long as sheep or cows.

No time to see, when woods we pass,
Where squirrels hide their nuts in grass.

No time to see, in broad daylight,
Streams full of stars like skies at night.

No time to turn at Beauty’s glance,
And watch her feet, how they can dance.

No time to wait till her mouth can
Enrich that smile her eyes began.

A poor life this if, full of care,
We have no time to stand and stare.

WH Davies (1871-1940) spent a significant part of his life as a tramp in both the UK and USA, but became one of the most popular poets of his time.

personal, ramblings

Nice Mice

2 July 2019 Keith

For no obvious reason I was recalling, the other evening, one of the short poems we read at my mother’s funeral back in June 2015.

As some here will know she was a great nature lover, and unbeknown to anyone some while before she died she had been feeding a small mouse which lived under the bath in the en suite of her care home room. Everyone at the care home loved my mother; however Rosie, the care home’s lovely manager, when she found out about the mouse went fairly ballistic – quite understandably. So when we read this poem at the funeral, Rosie absolutely cracked up.

Here’s the poem …

Mice
By Rose Fyleman

I think mice are rather nice;
Their tails are long, their faces small;
They haven’t any chins at all.
Their ears are pink, their teeth are white,
They run about the house at night;
They nibble things they shouldn’t touch,
and no one seems to like them much,
but I think mice are nice!

Rose Fyleman (1877-1957) is most famous for her poem There are Fairies at the Bottom of Our Garden.

amusements

Counters

1 July 2019 Keith

Each month this year we’re bringing you a post under the general title “Things that Count in [Number]” where [Number] will be the month. And naturally each month’s post will contain the [Number] of items (so just one for January, up to 12 for December).

For our purposes the definition of counting includes things which either come in groups of [Number] (eg. four suits in a pack of playing cards) or things which count in [Number] (eg. decimal coinage counting in tens).

Things which Count in Seven …

Deadly sins
Swans a-swimming
Colours of the rainbow
Wonders of the world
Chakras
Petals on a lotus flower
Dwarfs

environment, food+drink, links, medical, natural history, science

Monthly Links

30 June 2019 Keith

Another month comes to a close so it is time for links to items you may have missed, but which I didn’t and collected for you!

Science, Technology & Natural World

Some elements amongst the physics community are determined that an even bigger particle collider than the current LHC at CERN is an utter waste of money.

Oh dear! It seems that at the end of WW2 the Allies managed to lose a few cubes of uranium from Germany’s failed nuclear programme.

We know that plants’ growth shows a high degree of symmetry, but how many of use realised it was quite this complicated?

Scientists reckon that plants can hear bees buzzing – and they then make their nectar sweeter.

Talking of hearing … it turns out bats can tune their sonar very effectively by constantly wiggling their ears.

When is a cuttlefish like a human? When it has arms. Apparently all creatures’ arms/limbs are built from the same set of genes, regardless of how many there are.

Health & Medicine

This month’s medical column is all about girlie parts, but the boys will want to be educated too …

Women are now asking if it is possible to have a better period (depending on their value of “better”)

According to a couple of old articles in the sacred Cosmopolitan there are nine different types of boobs and seven different types of labia. The good news is that they are all perfectly normal and nothing to be ashamed of.

The story of one survivor who is campaigning against the brutality of FGM.

Environment

It is suggested that urban trees live fast and die young compared with those in rural forests

Social Sciences, Business, Law

The current incumbent seems to get embroiled on controversy, but what really is the role of the Speaker of the House of Commons?

Language

Not everyone agrees that language is a living, evolving entity, so here are 19 of the most contentious linguistic disagreements.

History, Archaeology & Anthropology

I never knew that some of the Lewis Chessmen were missing, but it seems that one of the missing few has recently resurfaced.

High quality viniculture is turning out to be a lot older than expected.

Historians across the ages cannot agree, but it seems that Druids are fairly skilled at metamorphosis – either that or the historians are making it all up as they go along!

Lifestyle & Personal Development

Somewhere, high on the Tibetan plateau, is a matriarchal culture where men are never in charge and where the women don’t know who is the father of their children.

Back in the western world, people are asking what it means to be genetically Jewish, but maybe not culturally so.

There is more accumulating evidence that a long working week really is bad for your health, and that a shorter working week isn’t necessarily less productive.

When might a big earthquake hit Tokyo, and how is Japan preparing itself?

Taxidermy is often seen as a rather unsavoury hobby, but a growing number of women are making their mark as taxidermists.

Brad Warner, our favourite Zen Master, takes a somewhat sideways look at the way all things are connected.

Food & Drink

The public health lobby are worried that too many people are getting home hygiene wrong.

And finally … Master of Wine, Caroline Gilby, looks at how long to keep an opened bottle of wine, and what you can do with it. (No, I know. What is this commodity “spare wine”?)

Disaster. Result.

26 June 2019 Keith

Well that was a very unexpected result from a bit of a disaster!

Sunday evening, about midnight. Noreen discovers the freezer is not working. I am summoned. I confirm the veracity of Noreen’s suspicion. No lights on the front panel at all; not a glimmer; and none of the buttons does anything. Socket checked: OK. Plug checked: OK. Fuse checked: OK but changed as a precaution. Obviously the kitchen ring main is OK, and there have been no power interruptions. Cable checked as far as possible: OK. How long has it been off? We don’t know; it could even be a day!

Bugger! Especially as the freezer is only 6 months old; an AEG bought from John Lewis. Unfortunately we’ve voided the warranty as we had to remove the moulded-on plug to wire it in. Fortunately it is packed solid. So leave the door shut and see what transpires.

Decision. Do not waste time on trying to get a repair; whether or not the warranty is valid it’ll take too long. Better to spend money and buy another new one as we can get next day delivery. Worry about the warranty later.

Not many people make free-standing, under-the-counter freezers these days; first choice Bosch don’t make them any longer. So at 1AM we’re ordering a new freezer from John Lewis (own brand this time); they’re trusted to do next day delivery. But we’re now in Monday so delivery will be Tuesday. Hmmm. Best we can do. We have neither time nor transport to try sourcing one locally in the morning.

Go to bed, hatching various plans for using the thawing contents.

Monday morning. John Lewis customer service confirm we’ve voided the warranty. Insurance company confirm loss of freezer food is covered on our insurance, but we have a £200 excess. Decide not worth contemplating a claim as contents unlikely to top £200. Still considering how to handle the freezer contents.

Monday lunchtime. Noreen extracts fish fingers from freezer for lunch (may as well use what we can). Reports everything still well frozen. Decide to leave freezer shut and wait until new one arrives tomorrow. Then we’ll consider what to use and what to bin.

Tuesday. New freezer delivered at lunchtime. We install it (without removing the moulded-on plug this time!) and leave it to settle, as instructed. Turn it on at about 5PM. By 8PM (after eating) the freezer’s getting well cold. Decide to unpack the old freezer. We divide contents into 4 categories:

Definitely going to be binned as not immediately useable: ice lollies; bags of stock; bags of fresh pasta; odd portions of curry; couple of small packs smoked salmon (damn we’d even fed the cats, so the fox can have the benefit!); half bag of peas; the same of cauliflower. We knew this was going to be a lot.
Thawing fast, needs using now: couple of boring nut roasts; bag of crumble topping. Is that all? – Not bad. Nut roasts go in the oven and will be OK cold for lunch tomorrow; large dish of fruit crumble also in the oven.
Thawing but useable tomorrow, put in fridge: 3 packs of bacon; pack of sausages; some pork slices; small bag lamb’s liver; some garlic butter. Make casserole? No, a better idea: terrine.
Still well frozen; keep frozen but use ASAP: all the meat in the centre of the freezer (small lamb joints; some bacon; turkey joints; a pheasant; couple of steaks; 2 large boxes fish fingers); pack of pastry; even a bag of ice cubes! And yes this stuff really was rock solid.

Wow! That’s a result! Around 50% of the contents of the freezer (and most of the expensive stuff) is saved. Amazing! We know one is always told a switched off freezer will be OK for 12-24 hours. But we really hadn’t expected to salvage anything much after almost 48 hours.

Yes, it would have been better to have the freezer fixed. But doing so would have taken time and probably lost the whole of the contents and cost for the repair. When added up would that have been greener that buying a new freezer? Maybe. Maybe not. But buying a new one was probably the more economic decision.

Oh, and that (large) terrine has just come out of the oven; now cooling and being pressed. Basically it is a variant of our Ennismore Terrine. It smells gorgeous!

Moral(s): Know when to leave well alone. Do quick risk analysis to enable quick decisions. And above all don’t panic!

amusements, ramblings

Auction Amusement

26 June 2019 Keith

Our local auction house haven’t recently turned up the usual outstaning collections of oddly composed lots or strange things being sold. However here are the highlights of the last three sales.

A quantity of Egyptian dried scarab beetles

Two person tent, a quantity of cricket bats, a Mandoline Pro in box, a toaster, a Daewoo deep fat fryer, and one by Russell & Hobbs, plus five sculpture puzzles including Darth Vader and an Egyptian

A pine tool-box, an African drum, a vintage three-legged milking stool

Metal milk crate containing 19 milk bottles Middle Edgarley Farm, Glastonbury and a vintage Burroughs adding machine

An Edison Bell Gem phonograph, London-made, No. 21090, a Piccolo zither, a small oak barometer of banjo form, and a combined timepiece and barometer of lancet form

A cut-glass claret jug with Continental silver-plated mount, and a pewter mug inscribed to H Churchill of the Madras Fire Service

Ten saddle stands

A vintage cast iron tram controller dead man’s lever stamped BTH Co Ltd, Rugby, England

A Bo Peep sheep stool with wool cover

An interesting 19th century pine cabin trunk the black front panel painted Pte W Bryers 7/9th Regt the inside lid pasted with a period paper ‘Presentation of Colors to the 9th Regimental of Foot’ 1848, also a paper cutting reporting the death of John Bryers by drowning in the Regents Canal following a contretemps in a local alehouse

A good quality artist’s easel with full adjustments by Winsor & Newton, and two antlers

Four shelves of mixed items including a Tiffany style ceiling light plus another, photo frames including silver-plated, a Victorian silk table screen, framed pictures, a chess set, a four-drawer jewellery box, a cased set of Apostle tea spoons, wicker baskets, a brass clock in the shape of an over-sized pocket watch, vintage advertising tins, display cases, a Cardiff City shield, Chinese scrolls, replica swords, work boots, a Thomas the Tank Engine toy etc.

A pair of silver-plated three-branch candelabra, a mantel clock, a doorstop alarm, a fold-away rucksack, a micro jet tool, cord strap, fly swats, a sensor night light, packs of card, a charger, putty, a briefcase, a hobby drill, a red bag, a portable brush holder etc.

A French bronze spelter figure of an Arab horseman, circa 1900, together with a copper and brass bugle, and four similar horns

An antique AEG Mignon typewriter, Model 4, with TCM London transfers

Three black vintage telephones, a pair of 19th century Lucas bicycle lights, two lanterns etc.

A vintage PerryBuoy lifebuoy, a Smith Maritime rev counter, two old metal pulleys, three pairs of binoculars

An American Todd Protectograph cheque writer, with label for Halsby & Co Ltd, list of patents to December 30th 1924

A Clarice Cliff Bizarre Gayday dwarf candlestick painted with flowers, and an Art Deco vase with runny decoration

A Lark tuba made in China model no. M4050

An to end with, good though this is …

A vintage taxidermy display of three ermine on simulated rocks, with paper label of W.C. Darbey, Naturalist, 12 Banbury Road, Oxford

… the pièce de résistance surely has to be …

Henry John Yeend King, an oils on panel triptych of a classical idyll typical of the Aesthetic Movement, signed, applied to a Victorian upright piano in figured walnut by Justin Browne of London, the lower panel by the pedals also painted with steps to a lily pool

More as and when the mood takes the auction house!

beliefs, nudism

Zen Mischief