arts, pleasures, ramblings, topographical

Fast Break in Somerset

We’ve just come back from a flying overnight visit to Frome in Somerset.

The trip was to attend a lecture (put on by the Frome Society for Local Study as part of the Frome Festival) by biographer Hilary Spurling on Anthony Powell and his house The Chantry, which is just outside Frome.

Hilary, who knew the Powell well, is currently working on his official biography and her lecture delved around in some of her preliminary thoughts about Powell’s relationship with the early 19th century house he occupied for the second half of his life. That was a relationship, she suggested, which was one factor in making Powell’s magnum opus A Dance to the Music of Time the novel it is; without the country solitude Powell would likely not have been able to write Dance in the way he did. This made for a hugely interesting lecture, although as Hilary commented these were early thoughts and she had been reluctant to expose them to public view so early in her writing process. (This also explains why there will not be a text made available.) If they are a sample of the depth and perceptiveness of her finished biography it will be just brilliant.

Following the lecture Noreen and I went, with Anthony Powell Society Chairman Paul Nutley, to La Bisalta, Frome’s most superb Italian restaurant for a delicious late dinner. This is a small family-run restaurant in a converted house on the edge of the town centre — and actually a restaurant Powell knew but under its previous owners. Despite arriving, unannounced, after 9pm we were warmly welcomed and magnificently fed and watered; so magnificently that none of us could manage a pudding! I had a really delicious hot Antipasto Caldo, which came to the table literally sizzling on the plate, followed by a wonderfully rich Tagliolini with porcini mushrooms in a cream sauce, washed down with some well-chilled Peroni. Paul and Noreen both had duck breast as a main course, which they reported to be equally excellent. We staggered off to our respective dormitories not much before 11.30! ★★★★★

Room 1

Noreen and I were staying in the Archangel. According to Paul, who knows Frome well, this was until a few years ago a very scruffy back-street pub. But it has now been heavily refurbished as a small, contemporary hotel, bar and restaurant. The style is a fusion of the old rustic (stripped stone walls) with the contemporary (stainless steel, dark woodwork, bare pipework, strange-shaped sinks and sumptuous sofas which it is impossible to climb out of). Our room (above) was a strange fusion of Goth with dark purple paintwork and soft furnishings, mostly bare (old) plaster walls, and a huge photographic mural of Fra Angelico’s Angel of the Annunciation. The bathroom was the size of most people’s sitting room with a steel bath the size of the Titanic! The bed was heavenly soft, especially after what had been a tiring day. Breakfast was excellent, everyone was extremely friendly and although not cheap it wasn’t unreasonably expensive either at £125 for a double room including breakfast. The owners deserve to make a success of what has clearly been a huge investment. ★★★★★

The return train journey from London Paddington to Westbury was painless and on time despite getting drowned by a torrential rain-shower boarding the train on the return journey. Paul kindly conveyed us to and from the station. ★★★★★ again.

We were away from home for just 27 hours, but it felt more as if we had been gone the best part of a week! An all-round super trip despite not having any real time to explore Frome itself.

amusements, words

BRenglish

Continuing our occasional series on the now prevalent appalling use of the English language.

In the last couple of days we’ve taken the train on a journey down to Somerset and back (more of which anon) and have been subjected to the vagaries of the English language as perpetrated by train company staff (I was going to say BR, but of course it no longer exists!).

There is the now ubiquitous Train Manager (I think they mean Guard or Ticket Inspector) speak:

We will be arriving into [station]

Our next station stop is [station].

And there is Buffet Steward-ese:

We will be serving teas, coffees and hot chocolates, hot and cold snacks, … and an on-board chef.

But yesterday I heard for the first time a new one from a Train Manager:

If you require any further information please ask from myself [name].

Maybe we need to get Jamie Oliver to sort out Train Company English rather than School Dinners?

personal, pleasures

Reasons to be Grateful: 34

Experiment, week 34. Another week, another selection in my continuing experiment in documenting five things which have made me happy or for which I’m grateful this week.

  1. Fast Internet. We had our internet upgraded this week from the about 4meg we used to get from Be to about 70meg via an FTTC feed from BT. (For reasons I won’t go into here our phones are tied to BT, so BT turned out to be the best overall option.) Surprisingly at the end of this we should not be paying more over a year for all our telecomms than before. BT have (so far) done what they said they would and done it pretty efficiently, whereas Be have been all over the floor getting my account closed down.

  2. Rubbish going to the Tip. One day earlier in the week our friend Tom took two car loads of toot — largely outpourings from the loft — to our local tip (above) for us. And they reckon to recycle over 95% of everything they take in; and they take everything. We’ve a lot more to go, but it’s a another big dent in the job!
  3. Boursin in Salad. I can’t remember which evening it was that we had smoked chicken salad, which is always good. But as I was preparing it I remembered we had half a Boursin (cream cheese with garlic & herbs) in the fridge which had been open a couple of days. So I added this to the salad. It was messy to break up and it softened with the vinegar and olive oil dressing; it was quite rich, but my did it taste good!
  4. Cherries. Thanks to Noreen’s shopping exploits I’ve had several lots of cherries this week. Yum!
  5. Germs that Go Away when Told. Last night at bedtime I was feeling decidedly “Meh”, depressed and cold-y with a cracking headache. I don’t want this so I dropped myself into an almost self-hypnotic state of invincibility and told the “germs” (or whatever they were) to bugger off before morning. This doesn’t always work for me, but this time it did. Much to my astonishment and delight.
links

You may have missed …

More diversions into the weird world of things you may have missed — with the exception of what may or may not be Higgs’s bloody boring boson!

First off, here’s something really unexpected and absolutely excellent: an early printed book that contains rare evidence of medieval spectacles!

Apparently Wordsworth was right: daffodils do cheer us up! Which is more than his verse does! 🙁

But then again I think I could have saved a lot of money and told the researchers that two glasses of wine a day improves quality of life for middle-aged.

While still on colours, here’s an interesting piece of how we gave colours names which is allied to how we see them and what it did to our brains. And don’t miss part two.

Here’s a different type of seeing: some amazingly detailed weather records from the Lake District in the first half of the 19th century by John Fletcher Miller.

And finally … so you thought you/your man had an amazingly weird appendage? Not compared with the Echidna!

words

Word : Quetzal

Quetzal

1. An extremely beautiful bird (Pharomachrus mocino, the Resplendent Quetzal) of Central America; the male is remarkable for its long tail and wing coverts of resplendent golden-green. These largely solitary birds feed on fruits, berries, insects and small vertebrates.

2. The name of a silver Guatemalan coin, initially equivalent to one US dollar, and comprising 100 centavos.

The name “quetzal” is from Nahuatl quetzalli, “large brilliant tail feather” , from the root quetz = “stand up” used to refer to an upstanding plume of feathers.

personal, ramblings

Five Questions #1

A couple of days ago I posed five questions. Five seemingly simple questions which turn out to be quite hard when you actually have to answer them and which make you think about both who you are and what you stand for.

And I promised that I would answer them, one at a time, over the coming weeks.

What’s more, being nearer to a control freak than I care to be, I’ll answer them in sequence.

So here are some thoughts on Question 1.

How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?

Well this turns out to be a bit like “how long is a piece of string?” or perhaps mre accurately “think of a number, double it etc.”

Let’s start with the easy bit first. Chronologically I’m 61½ years old. But …

In outlook I’m probably more like a grumpy old git of 80+.

Intellectually I’d say I’m where I should have been at about 40, had I actually woken up in time, instead of about 20 years too late. In terms of intellectual thinking I’ve probably made much more progress in the last 5 years than I did between 24 and 44. That’s partly because it wasn’t until my mid-40s that I started to rise above the awful pessimism exuded by my father.

Mentally — socially — in terms of where I see myself, I doubt I’ve ever got much past 25 and certainly not past 30. But then I bet if most people were honest they’d say that inside they’re stuck somewhere in their 20s.

Oh and emotionally? Well I can easily be a 6 year old! I’ve just learned not to have tantrums in public: it frightens the muppets.

In some ways that’s quite scary in that I could chameleon myself to be almost any age I choose. In other ways it’s good because it means I don’t so easily get stuck in a rut.

So now, who else is going to own up?

history, photography, pleasures

Gallery : The Everyday

2 Comments

So Wednesday has come round again, which means it’s time for Tara’s weekly Gallery. This week we’re being challenged to photograph The Everyday — things we tend to not photograph because they’re not special they’re just ordinary and always there.

OK, so I’m going to cheat slightly …

Victorian Postbox
Click the image for larger versions on Flickr

… but only slightly, as this is a special pillar box. It’s an early Victorian model and there aren’t many of them still around. This one is in Eton High Street and must date from around 1855-1860.

The pillar box (and the wall-mounted post box) is something we tend to ignore; they’re common and we use them regularly. Yet they are an enduring piece of British life as well as being a very good and functional piece of design. It is surprising how old some of them are, but then they are mostly made of highly durable cast iron and are well painted. It is also interesting how ornate some of the Victorian pillar boxes are: the hexagonal ones (which are more common than this “Greek column” design) are especially good, their top being in the shape of a (flattened) crown. Some, like this one, are actually listed buildings!

You can always get a first guess at the age of any pillar box because every one carries the insignia of the monarch at the time it was erected. On this one you can just see the end of the VR, for Queen Victoria, at the top left. Notice too the very small vertical aperture.

The pillar box, although originally suggested by Rowland Hill (he of the Penny Post), was actually introduced by Anthony Trollope (yes, the novelist) whose day job from 1841 to 1867 was as a Post Office Surveyor (first in Ireland and, from 1851, in Eastern England); he lived for many years in my home town (Waltham Cross). The early boxes were of various colours, with green being the initial standard (there are still a few green ones around; there’s one in Rochester, Kent) with red being adopted from around 1874.

There’s more on the the history of the Pillar Box on Wikipedia. An everyday object with some fascinating history.

quotes

Quotes : Deep Thought

Our regular selection of quotes which have amused us or made us think. And this week we concentrate on the latter with some interesting perspectives.

People who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.
[Isaac Asimov]

One should as a rule respect public opinion in so far as is necessary to avoid starvation and to keep out of prison, but anything that goes beyond this is voluntary submission to an unnecessary tyranny, and is likely to interfere with happiness in all kinds of ways.
[Bertrand Russell]

Everything has changed save our way of thinking, and thus we drift toward unparalleled catastrophe.
[Albert Einstein]

The history of liberty is the history of resistance. The history of liberty is a history of the limitation of governmental power, not the increase of it.
[Woodrow Wilson]

Affection and a calm mind are important to us. A calm mind is good for our physical health, but it also enables us to use our intelligence properly and to see things more realistically. Affection too is important because it counters anger, hatred and suspicion that can prevent our minds from functioning clearly.
[Dalai Lama]

The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one’s real and one’s declared aims, one turns as it were instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish spurting out ink.
[George Orwell, Politics and the English Language, 1946]

personal

Who said it would be easy?

Now for something somewhat different …

I’ve come across five questions which it seems it is worth us all asking ourselves. Five apparently simple looking questions but which turn out to be quite hard when you actually have to answer them and which make you think about both who you are and what you stand for.

The five questions are:

  1. How old would you be if you didn’t know how old you are?
  2. If you had the opportunity to get one message across to a large group of people, what would your message be?
  3. What would you do differently if you knew nobody would judge you?
  4. When is it time to stop calculating risk and rewards and just do what you know is right?
  5. Do you ask enough questions? Or do you settle for what you know?

Yes, they’re tricky aren’t they! No-one said it would be easy. So I’m going to try to answer each of them, one at a time, over the coming weeks.

It’ll be interesting to see what I come up with, because I don’t know the answers either.

Round one in a few days. Watch this space …

And remember: Questions don’t have to make sense, but answers do.