Category Archives: ramblings

Amusements of the Year, 2016

31 December 2016 Keith

2016 has thrown up so many things which are worthy of a good chortle, and that’s leaving aside all the political stupidities. Let’s follow the scheme of the last couple of years.

Product of the Year
Three contenders for this year’s accolade:
Little Rooster Vaginal Alarm Clock
Camel Balls
Deep-fried Curry-filled Doughnuts which are buried deeply in http://londonist.com/2015/08/w-a-cafe-quirky-japanese-savouries-and-patisserie-in-ealing

Best Unintended Consequence
The prize this year goes to the Scandinavian stationery company Locum for their excellent logo:

Auction Item of the Year (from our local auction house)
This year’s three winners are:
Third: A Brookes Champion Standard B17 reproduction penny farthing
Second: A vintage Agricastrol hand delivery pump for oil in original green cabinet

First: An unusual Edward VIII commemorative toilet roll holder, circa 1936, with an unopened pack of Tri-Sol medicated toilet paper (price 6d)

Poseur of the Year
This award has to go to politician Ed Balls for “Strictly has released my inner Beyoncé“.

Name of the Year
This year’s winner is Dr Wendy Chan She Ping Delfos, a Dietician quoted in Daily Telegraph back on 23 September.

Organisation Name of the Year
The medal goes to the 1920s American firm of architects Corbett Harrison MacMurray Hood Fouilhoux & Crane.

Best Neologism
The prize here has to go to whoever perpetrated gentrification of the mind.

Best Oxymoron
This year’s prize to the National Liberal Club for Afternoon tea is served between 3.30pm and 5.30pm in the (non smoking) Smoking Room

Best Paint Shade
It’s been a difficult year for interior designers, after all they have to comne up with new names for the plethora of paint shades available. Manufacturers Crown and Dulux share the award for the following shades:
Fairy Dust (Crown)
Lavender Cupcake (Crown)
Potting Shed (Crown)
Secret Escape (Crown)
Botanical Extract (Crown)
Chatterbox (Crown)
Scrumptious (Crown)
Berry Smoothie (Dulux)
Wellbeing (Dulux)
Purple Pout (Dulux)
Muddy Puddle (Dulux)
Muddy Puddle (Dulux)

Best Book Title
This is always a popular category and this year we have two winners:
How to Live with a Calculating Cat by Eric Gurney
A Manual for Cleaning Women by Lucia Berlin

Best Academic Paper Title
There was really only one contender this year: Perilous patches and pitstaches: Imagined versus lived experiences of women’s body hair growth.

Best Research Topic
The two awards in this category go to:
‘Unperformable’ music — an ontological approach
101 uses for the sacred foreskin

Most Unusual Sport
Following on from last year’s Elephant Polo, this year we have Tuk-Tuk Polo, which avoids the problems of elephants going on the rampage.

Most Crass Media Statement
Oh dear, there are just so many of these from which to choose, but the jury finally agreed that the award goes to the Guardian headline:

Without journalism, there is no America

Outstanding News Headlines
Three medals are awarded this year to:
Large Hadron Collider: Weasel causes shutdown (actually the unfortunate animal turned out to be a Beech Marten.
Passengers evacuated at Purley station after train crashes into pheasant
Hitler’s wife’s knickers sold at auction

Best Marketing Bollocks

NOT FOR RELEASE, PUBLICATION OR DISTRIBUTION, IN WHOLE OR IN PART, DIRECTLY OR INDIRECTLY, IN OR INTO OR FROM THE UNITED STATES, AUSTRALIA, CANADA, JAPAN OR ANY OTHER JURISDICTION WHERE IT IS UNLAWFUL TO RELEASE, PUBLISH OR DISTRIBUTE THIS ANNOUNCEMENT.
[From a government email about sale of Lloyds shares; 28 January 2016]

Hand picked by artisan farmers
[The Real Olive Company tub of Organic Kalamata Olives]

From the sweeping 100ft balcony through to the iconic bed and integrated open fire, The May Fair’s signature Penthouse Suite is a 200-square metre exercise in light, space and opulent style.
[Quoted by Londonist]

And finally we come to …
Do what?
Where we celebrate the intelligibly unintelligible. This year the winner is:

The philosophy of tiddlers is that we maximise the possibilities for re-use by slicing information up into the smallest semantically meaningful units with rich modelling of relationships between them. Then we use aggregation and composition to weave the fragments together to present narrative stories.
TiddlyWiki aspires to provide an algebra for tiddlers, a concise way of expressing and exploring the relationships between items of information.
[From Philosophy of Tiddlers]

Let me know your favourite amusements of the year — and don’t forget to start collecting for 2017!

current affairs, ramblings

Brexit means …

29 December 2016 Keith

Brexit means what precisely? Or rather Brexit tells us what?
Forget “Brexit means Brexit”, that is no more than pure esoteric-mumbo-jumbo gold.
A few days before Christmas, Mark Easton, the BBC’s Home Affairs Editor, asked What did the Brexit vote reveal about the UK?
The answer was basically that it is a result of our dysfunctional political system and a cry for a return to proper democracy. Here are some key extracts:

The vote for Brexit was a thunderous rumble of national indignation, an outpouring of frustrated fury that shook the foundations of the British state. We misinterpret its meaning at our peril.
… … …
This was much more than a simple referendum about membership of the European Union. Neither Brussels bureaucrats nor Polish plumbers were really the motivation for a popular revolt unparalleled in almost five centuries.
This was an act of extraordinary defiance against a system that does not and will not listen to people’s concerns and anxieties … Our governance, our democracy, does not function properly. It is failing the people of this country. That is the message of Brexit.
… … …
Our politics is still routinely discussed in terms of left and right, workers and bosses, socialism and capitalism.
But look[ing] at the Brexit vote … these historic distinctions simply did not apply … The working class tended to vote Leave and yet most Labour supporters voted Remain. The professional middle-class tended to vote Remain but most Conservatives voted Leave.
… … …
I was very struck by the attitude of people I met in Port Talbot … What I [heard] were people who did not think anyone was listening to them. They felt powerless and ignored.
… Everything in Port Talbot depends on the steelworks and its future is decided by people whose names they do not know in a boardroom in Mumbai. Globalisation has robbed the people … of their voice …
There was a time when people up and down the land believed they had some kind of control over their destiny. But … Trade unionism has been neutered, local government is a shadow of its former self and political activism is … simply shouting into the wind. National elections are all but meaningless …
… … …
Decisions made in Westminster and Brussels resonate down to the supermarket shelves of Gloucestershire and local people do not feel they have had any say in the matter.
The Brexit campaign was centred on the idea of taking back control … a slogan that went far beyond the demand for control of our borders.
… … …
[T]he European Union was one obvious villain … It gives no impression of listening … national politicians are not listening either … Brexit was a cry of pain from a country that no longer believes that traditional democracy offers the answer.
… … …
[T]he challenge of Brexit [is] how to give people their voice … making that happen will require profound courage and imagination from our national political leaders because it necessarily means they give up some of their own power.
… … …
What the British people want … is a democracy honest enough to reveal the trade-offs and the complexities of contemporary politics, responsive enough to reflect nuanced opinions, and convincing enough that people believe they are genuinely connected to the decisions that affect their lives.
When we cut our ties with EU power, we must also reform Britain’s archaic power structures.

I think Easton may well be right. And as so often I couldn’t have expressed it better, hence the extracts.
To quote Robert Kubica, Everything is possible but everything will be difficult.
Interesting times we live in, innit!

ramblings

Living with Mammals

28 December 2016 Keith

For a couple of months every spring/summer the People’s Trust for Endangered Species runs a survey Living with Mammals which asks us to record the mammals we see in our back gardens. I’ve been taking part in this for some years and just before Christmas I received the 2016 Living with Mammals survey update. For those of you who are more ecologically minded here are a few snippets from this brief report.

The value of biodiversity and the wildlife in our towns and cities is recognised today more than ever.
… … …
A hundred years ago, red squirrel numbers were already declining, while their grey counterparts, introduced in the last quarter of the 19th century, hadn’t yet become established.
… … …
Since their introduction from North America, grey squirrels have replaced red squirrels across much of their range. Both red and grey squirrels eat acorns, but greys are better able to digest them and, in deciduous woodland, this gives them a competitive advantage.
… … …
Hedgehogs [have] shown a decline of a quarter in the population since the survey began in 2003.
… … …
Ensuring gardens are accessible, forming a network of ‘hedgehog highways’; growing plants that benefit insects; providing nesting sites, such as a woodpile or access under a shed; and removing hazards, such as netting, are easy to do and might be turning a corner for hedgehog conservation.

Photograph © Sam Hobson
The proportion of sites recording foxes each year has fallen slightly and worries that fox numbers are a worsening problem are misplaced. Foxes have few specific habitat requirements; they are adaptable and savvy enough to make use of the food and shelter provided by the built environment and provide a service clearing up much of waste we leave around … foxes, like all wildlife, want a quiet life and while they can be bold, they are rarely unruly.

This reinforces the point that gardens, especially suburban gardens, are an invaluable haven for wildlife and the ever encroaching fashion for paving, decking and manicured grass does the wildlife few favours. [One exception: decking provides a super condominium for rats and mice.]

personal, ramblings

Christmas Solitude

26 December 2016 Keith

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

24 December 2016 Keith

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