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.
words

Word: Marmorean

Marmorean / Marmoreal
Resembling marble, or a marble statue, as in smoothness, whiteness, hardness colouring etc.
The word derives, as one might expect, from the classical Latin marmoreus (like marble).
The OED records the first English usage as 1656.

personal, ramblings

Christmas Solitude

Yesterday, like most of the last 20 or more, we spent on our own. We have no immediate family — no parents left and we’re both only children. Our very elderly neighbour, who Noreen often pops in to see, is unfortunately in hospital. All our other friends were (rightly) engrossed in the bosoms of their families.
This was good as it meant we could do exactly as we pleased, so we made it up as we went along … starting with getting up late and fiddling about for the rest of the morning while drinking tea.
A light lunch of smoked salmon sandwiches and a large gin & tonic (for me), Bacardi & coke (for Noreen).
After lunch we sat and opened presents — mostly books and booze. In fact enough booze to float a battleship. This was accompanied by playing “hunt the kibble” amongst the discarded wrapping paper with the two youngest cats. Then we spent a merry hour organising the discarded paper for recycling.
For many years we’ve had Christmas Dinner in the evening, and so it was this year. Roast crown of turkey.** Garlic roast potatoes; roast Jerusalem artichokes; steamed sprouts. Sausage, sage & onion stuffing. Shallot sauce. Washed down with the obligatory bottle of Bollinger. Naturally enough the cats assisted with the turkey!
We never have Christmas Pudding these days as Noreen isn’t keen and we’d just as soon have a good stuff of the main course. However I have bought a couple of individual Christmas Puds this year as I quite like it; I shall enjoy them over the coming days — I’ve even been known to eat Christmas Pud for breakfast. In fact Christmas Pudding was a bit of a family tradition when I was a kid. My mother used to make her own, and always made several: one for Christmas, one for New Year, one for my birthday in January, one for my father’s birthday in March and sometimes one for Easter!
After Christmas Dinner we sat about doing very little and sampling some of the new spirits and liqueurs until it was time to clear up and head for bed.
So yes, we had a day doing exactly as we wanted, ie. eat, drink and be idle. Not a minute of television was watched, nor radio listened to. And the phone didn’t even ring.
Isn’t that how holidays should be? Relaxing.

** Turkey Crown. If you like turkey (we do, but not every year) this is a good wheeze which takes about 5 minutes with a good knife and some kitchen scissors. Buy the size of bird you usually would; this saves you from weeks of eating up turkey. We buy a whole small-ish bird from our good butcher who specialises in free-range, humanely reared meat. (I then butcher the bird: remove the legs; then the wings; now cut horizontally through the ribcage and remove the spine. (If you need a video of how to do this, have a hunt on YouTube; different butchers have slightly different methods.) This leaves you with just the breast (crown), on the bone, which will be about half the weight of the bird and so cook faster; roast according to your favourite method. Bag the legs, wings, spine and put them in the freezer for use during the year.

ramblings

Advent 24

An Advent Calendar
Old London in Paintings and Photographs
Whitehall from Trafalgar Square; 1839; Daguerreotype by M de St Croix

This image is, for me, especially interesting. It is one of the earliest daguerreotype photographs of England, taken when Frenchman M de St Croix was in London demonstrating Louis Daguerre’s pioneering photographic process during September and December 1839. The statue in the foreground is Le Sueur’s statue of Charles I on horseback which stands at the top of Whitehall on the south edge of Trafalgar Square — on the spot what was originally occupied by the original Charing Cross in memory of Queen Eleanor. And it is from this spot, called Charing Cross, that all distances are traditionally measured. I the dim distance is Inigo Jones’ Banqueting House; practically everything else shown in the image has subsequently disappeared. Like all daguerreotypes the original image was reversed, but is shown here in the correct orientation, as we would view the scene today.
Image © National Media Museum

ramblings

Advent 23

An Advent Calendar
Old London in Paintings and Photographs
Weavers Houses, Florida Street, Bethnal Green; ca. 1896

Note: this image is not mine and may be copyright the original photographer/artist;
please click on the image for further information

ramblings

Advent 21

An Advent Calendar
Old London in Paintings and Photographs
Temple Bar shortly before its removal in 1877

Note: this image is not mine and may be copyright the original photographer/artist;
please click on the image for further information

quotes

Quotes

This month’s collection of quotes interesting, thought-provoking and amusing.
To escape from the world means that one’s mind is not concerned with the opinions of the world.
[Dogen]
It is well known that a vital ingredient of success is not knowing that what you’re attempting can’t be done.
[Terry Pratchett]
One does try not to be an Old Git, but they don’t make it easy.
[Alan Bennett]
We are all expected to do unethical things as a matter of course. Resistance isn’t just shouting; it requires quiet, time-consuming adamance.
[Prof. Constantine Sandis]
It’s a universal law — intolerance is the first sign of an inadequate education. An ill-educated person behaves with arrogant impatience, whereas truly profound education breeds humility.
[Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn]
The internet has filled the world with nonsense news stories designed to confirm people’s existing prejudices and led every hate-filled dimwit conspiracy theorist to feel as if they are part of a movement rather just a lonely troll in a basement.
[Ian Dunt at http://eroticreviewmagazine.com/articles/the-new-authoritarianism/]
Note to self: No matter what, no matter how hard or painful or awkward or scary the situation, all you can really do is show up as yourself. So be the SELFIEST SELF you can be. The most you. The truest you. You will figure it out, you magnificent mess, you.
He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.
[George Orwell, 1984]
A hairy cunt is fucked much better than one which is smooth; it holds in the steam and wants cock.
[Graffiti at Pompeii, ca. AD 79]
If we pluck and trim our doorways like good spiders; the flies come strolling in.
[Aristophanes (446-386BC), on the subject of pubic hair]
Tobacco kills 52,000 people a year from lung cancer, and there’s no telling how many lives have been ruined through drinking. But to my knowledge, no one has ever died of a blow job.
[Florynce Kennedy, 1916-2000]
Women and cats will do as they please, and men and dogs should relax and get used to the idea.
[Robert A Heinlein]
At 16, my dress sense was in the first full flower of its baroque glory … Bad taste is a destiny. It took me about 50 years to learn that I should dress as plainly as possible, and even then I had a tendency towards lime-green shirts.
[Clive James]
We live in a time in which the very nature of reality seems to be crumbling. But reality is fine. Reality won’t change according to how we choose to describe it. It’s just that our way of engaging with it may be shifting radically … I think this crazy-pants stuff that’s going on right now points to something even weirder … We no longer have any faith at all in the political system. Or in religion. Or in much of anything. Maybe there is a huge mass of people out there who don’t believe it even matters who gets elected president. And maybe, at the root of it, this is because we don’t know if we, ourselves, are as real as we thought we were.
[Brad Warner at http://hardcorezen.info/multiple-worlds-fake-news-rick-and-morty-trump-and-reality/5062]
The mind is so wonderstruck at the self-evident and self-sufficient fitness of things as they are including what would ordinarily be thought the very worst, that it cannot find any word strong enough to express the perfection and beauty of the experience … Often, the pleasure of the experience is confused with the experience and the insight lost in the ecstasy, so that in trying to retain the secondary effects of the experience the individual misses its point — that the immediate now is complete even when it is not ecstatic.
[Alan Watts]
Evolution is not “survival of the fittest” but “survival of the good enough”.
[Dr Bethany Brookshire]
He who knows only his own side of the case (argument) knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion.
[John Stuart Mill]