books, people, personal, pleasures, quotes, topographical

Tube Strike Poetry

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It’s an ill wind … at least today’s tube strike in London means Noreen is at home (albeit working) on her birthday. Mind, she is currently out taking Harry the Cat the the V E T again. And it’s wet here which is unusual for Noreen’s birthday.

On the subject of the tube strike I just have to repost this from the BBC News website. I love the Liverpool poets, especially Roger McGough.

Poet Roger McGough has written two poems in response to Sunday and Monday’s London Tube strike to mark National Poetry Day.

Millions face disruption during the 24-hour strike, which is in protest at plans to cut ticket office staffing.

The theme for Thursday’s poetry day is home, and McGough suggests his lines may help commuters see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The Liverpudlian poet presents the BBC Radio 4 programme Poetry Please.

He was also a member of The Scaffold, which topped the charts in 1968 with Lily the Pink, and was an uncredited writer of some of the humorous dialogue on the Beatles’ Yellow Submarine film.

Along with Adrian Henri and Brian Patten, McGough was one of the Mersey Poets and they published two best-selling volumes of verse during the 60s and 70s, having started out giving readings in Liverpool’s clubs and cafes.

Here are his two poems:

A Striking Soliloquy

tu be

or not

tu be

Tube strike Haiku

trains that are side-lined

idling in rusty sidings

fear the knacker’s yard

* * *

tunnels empty now

can see the light at both ends

birds risk a short cut

* * *

rails sleeping, dream of

a parallel universe

a new perspective

* * *

platforms yawn and stretch

enjoying the holiday

mice minding the gap

I must look at the Liverpool poets again; haven’t read them for ages. They’re brilliant!

amusements, medical, science

Ig Noble Awards

This year’s Ig Noble Awards for wacky and improbable science discoveries were announced a few days ago. The awards are always fun and often thought-provoking. Here are this year’s highlights. [As usual my comments in italic.]

Physics: Researchers in New Zealand found that wearing your socks over your shoes improves your ability to walk on ice.
[In what way is this not self-evident?]

Management: A mathematical study in Italy found that in some business situations, it is better to promote randomly than the choose the most qualified candidates.
[And you thought the corporate world worked on the basis of who was prepared to sleep with whom.]

Engineering: A team from the UK and Mexico found the perfect way to collect whale snot: despatch petri-dishes attached underneath a remote controlled helicopter to hover above the whale when it blows.
[Ingenious, no?]

Public Health: A study of bearded scientists working in microbial labs found that they carry along a hoard of microbes in their facial hair and may literally be taking their work home with them at the end of the day.
[Again how was this not self-evident?]

Chemistry: A team including BP were awarded an Ig Nobel for their studies over the summer of how oil, natural gas, and water interact.
[Yeah, the Gulf of Mexico makes a great summer field trip for the graduate students.]

And finally …

Biology: A UK team discovered that fruit bats engage in oral sex to prolong their sexual encounters.
[And you worried about human sexuality!.]

You can find the complete list here.

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, photography, science, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

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Here, in random order, is this week’s rather rich helping of amusing and insightful quotes.

The first two are from Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert; right on the money as always:

A CEO has something called a “vision.” That is a view of the future that is not supported by evidence.
[Scott Adams at The Scott Adams Blog]

The primary function of a CEO is hurting other people, specifically the stockholders and employees of competing companies. He wants to take their market share, their wealth, and their happiness. And a CEO isn’t too affectionate with his vendors and employees either.
[Scott Adams at The Scott Adams Blog]

I can think of many who won’t like the next, but again it is so true:

Morality is doing what is right regardless of what you are told.
Religion is doing what you are told regardless of what is right.
[Found on Tumblr]

And this was from a video clip of an interview with a couple of gays; it cracked me up!

Love at first innuendo.
[Dan Savage]

This one is for Katy …

Eat cake. Change lives.
[Macmillan Cancer Support advertisement]

I couldn’t resist this wonderful critical put-down on a paragraph of absolute scientific mumbo-jumbo:

That paragraph reads like he authors were cobbling together a braille sentence using the random distribution of acne on someone’s back.
[Jesse Bering at www.scientificamerican.com/blog/, 22/09/2010]

If only I’d been told this next many years ago!

The only disability in life is a bad attitude
[Quoted by Kittypinkstars at Flickr]

How the other half live:

Glamour model Katie Price has been found guilty of not being in proper control of her pink horsebox after veering into another lane in Sussex.
[BBC News]

Needless to say it was the very idea of a pink horsebox which got me! And so finally an interesting “off the wall” take which again contains a huge element of truth:

I have heard many times that atheists know more about religion than religious people. Atheism is an effect of that knowledge, not a lack of knowledge. I gave a Bible to my daughter. That’s how you make atheists.
[Dave Silverman, president of American Atheists]

That’s all for this week.

amusements, books, history, music, topographical

The Millipede Brothers

It always surprises me what the brain does and the associations it makes.

Like many here I have been extremely bored recently by the charade the Labour Pain Party have been going through to elect a new leader – well at least it didn’t provide the expected result for once, which is perhaps one advantage of a transferable vote system – and the follow-on shenanigans.

My boredom has however been in part alleviated by the fact that I can’t help but think of the two main protagonists as The Millipede Brothers.  A somewhat amusing, if slightly droll, piece of mental gymnastics.

But of course The Millipede Brothers do sound rather like an act from some Victorian Circus. Perhaps they were a star turn promoted by Barnum and Bailey. Or more likely they were part of Pablo Fanque’s Fair, featuring Mr Kite, a poster for which so inspired John Lennon and the Beatles to produce Sgt Peppers.

I wasn’t even sure Pablo Fanque was real – he was! Fanque, born plain William Darby in Norwich as early as 1796, was not just a circus performer but, more importantly, Britain’s first black circus impresario.

Pablo Fanque, began as a famous circus performer in his youth but became the proprietor of his own circus company. His earliest known appearance in the sawdust ring was in Norwich on 26 December 1821, as ‘Young Darby’, with William Batty’s company. His circus acts included horsemanship, rope walking, leaping and rope vaulting. In 1841, aged forty-five and living in Oxford, he left William Batty to begin business on his own account, with just two horses. The towns of Lancashire, Yorkshire and adjacent counties became Fanque’s favourite venues and it was his visit to Rochdale on 14 February 1843 which produced the poster (above) that inspired John Lennon’s lyric For the Benefit of Mr Kite. Fanque died in Stockport in 1871 and is buried in Woodhouse Cemetery, Leeds next to his first wife Susannah Darby.

Much more interesting than Labour Party politics!

amusements

Auction Amusements

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Is it the recession, have they improved, or is it me getting inured to their style, but our local auctioneers seem to have produced far fewer odd and amusing catalogue descriptions recently. But here is the best from their next sale. [My comments in italic.]

A watercolour of an officer retrieving his fallen helmet, with his horse, after Edouard Detaille.
[Why is he using his horse to pick it up? And why is he waiting for ED to do so first?]

A blue lined leather box containing six silver buttons
[And the point is?]

A pair of antique continental silver-gilt scissors, as a youth in short skirt standing on two hoops, his raised arms forming the blades
[I feel sure we should tell either Benny Hill or Frankie Howerd]

A fine late Victorian cased set of fish eaters for twelve, with matching servers, with engraved plated blades to the knobbly ivory handles, Virginia walnut case.
[I know what fish knives are, but WTF are fish eaters?  Presumably they devour the fish for you?]  

An old Elswick, Barton-on-Humber butcher’s bike.

Three army ammunition boxes and a belt of ammunition shells.
[It’s the belt that worries me!]

A box containing 4 wool-kit rugs

A charming wooden model of an antique shop and contents – working chandelier, till, wall clock, grandfather clock, radio, camera, warming pan, sewing machine, etc.
[The model warming pan works?  How?]

A pair of Buffalo horns and three wild west prints and another.

A chemist’s scales, in brass on mahogany box fitted with a drawer, with weights, etc., a postal scales and five spring balances.

A pair of Continental porcelain groups of frolicking cherubs, a figure of a Golden Oriole, 3 other birds, and 2 vases with Sevres marks

A Victorian display of exotic birds on a mossy branch under glass dome on a mahogany base retaining trade label of Ashdown and Son

An art deco Shorter wall pocket, scale moulded
[WTF?]

Two boxes of old wooden pegs, old cutlery, old buckets, a quantity of garden tools, and a box including a paraffin can, a satsuma vase, shoe lasts, an old iron, sewing implements in an old tobacco tin, etc.
[An interesting collection of old toot]

personal

Fabrications

Anyone who wants this lot (sight unseen, of course) is invited to submit bids on a £10 note.  (I was going to say a £20 note, but we need to clear the hoards of stuff sooner rather than later.)  🙂

beliefs, food+drink, quotes, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

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I’ll spare everyone another picture of Rye or the Romney Marsh today and instead I offer this week’s crop of amusing and/or thought-provoking quotes.

Plan B and Arcade Fire get Q nods
[BBC News website headline]

We have reason to believe that man first walked upright to free his hands for masturbation.
[Lily Tomlin]

Love does not consist in gazing at each other, but in looking outward together in the same direction.
[Antoine de Saint-Exupery]

Balnea, vina, Venus corrumpunt corpora nostra; sed vitam faciunt balnea, vina, Venus.
Baths, wine and sex spoil our bodies; but baths, wine and sex make up life.
[Epitaph of Tiberius Claudius Secundus]

Inside every old person is a younger person wondering what the fuck happened.
[unknown]

Come, bring hither quick a flagon of wine, that I may soak my brain and get an ingenious idea.
[Aristophanes, The Knights]

Leadership is a form of mental illness.
[Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert]

Oh and I thought I’d spare you more from the Dalai Lama on Compassion – that’s all he seems to talk about at the moment, although I do see why as that is largely, at rock bottom, what Buddhism is all about.

books, history, people, photography, topographical

Edith Nesbit Grave


Edith Nesbit Grave, originally uploaded by kcm76.

Another snap from our recent break in Rye.

Children’s author Edith Nesbit is buried at St Mary-in-the-Marsh and the grave marked by this simple wooden marker. Actually this isn’t the original – that fell apart some years ago and was replaced by Edith Nesbit’s family. The remains of the original are in the church along with a memorial plaque.

St Mary-in-the-Marsh is a lovely little country church, almost in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by the fields of the Romney Marsh.  As well as the memorial to Edith Nesbit it contains a memorial plaque to Anne Roper, one of the earliest and still foremost historians of the Romney Marsh. The village itself, just a few miles inland from New Romney, is little more than a dozen houses, the church and a pub. It really is in the middle of the country and still filled with summer birdsong – a delightful place for a quiet half hour or so.

books, quotes

Why I like Dance

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As many of you know I’m a devotee of Anthony Powell‘s 12 volume novel sequence A Dance to the Music of Time (thanks, Jilly, for the total restructuring of my life almost 30 years ago!) and you may also recall that Audible have recently released a complete audiobook of Dance.

Recently therefore I have been listening, here and there, to the audiobooks and it was yesterday I spent some time on The Military Philosophers (book nine of the sequence) which covers the second half of WWII. As well as longer sections of beautiful prose it is full of entertaining little snippets, for example:

‘Hullo, Nicholas. I hope my dear old Finn is not still cross with me about Szymanski ?’
‘There may still be some disgruntlement, sir.’
‘Disgruntlement’, one was told, was a word that could be used of all ranks without loss of discipline.

Our billet was a VIP one, a requisitioned hotel presided over by a brisk little cock-sparrow of a captain, who evidently knew his job.
‘We had the hell of a party here the other night,’ he said. ‘A crowd of senior officers as drunk as monkeys, brigadiers rooting the palms out of the pots.’

Finn pushed back his chair. He spoke slowly.
‘Borrit told me when he was serving on the Gold Coast, one of the Africans said to him: “What is it white men write at their desks all day?”‘

‘ Look at this,’ he said.
He spoke indignantly. I leant forward to examine the exhibit, which was in Pennistone’s handwriting. Blackhead had written, in all, three and a half pages on the theory and practice of soap issues for military personnel, with especial reference to the Polish Women’s Corps. Turning from his spidery scrawl to Pennistone’s neat hand, two words only were inscribed. They stood out on the file:
Please amplify. D. Pennistone. Maj. GS.

Our billet was a VIP one, a requisitioned hotel presided over by a brisk little cock-sparrow of a captain […]
‘We had the hell of a party here the other night,’ he said. ‘A crowd of senior officers as drunk as monkeys, brigadiers rooting the palms out of the pots.’

Not long before the Victory Service […] Prasad’s Embassy gave a party on their National Day […] Gauthier de Graef, ethnically confused, had been anxious to know whether there were eunuchs in the ladies’ apartments above the rooms where we were being entertained.

‘Not all the fruits of Victory are appetising to the palate,’ said Pennistone. ‘An issue of gall and wormwood has been laid on.’

It is these small amusements, just as much as the excellent prose, which makes Powell so wonderful to read.

arts, books

Shakespeare's Globe

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Shakespeare’s Globe, originally uploaded by kcm76.

On Tuesday evening we took a group of Anthony Powell Society members and friends to see Shakespeare’s Merry Wives of Windsor at the Globe Theatre in Southwark. Fortunately we had seats under cover for it was a horrible wet evening – it tipped it down with rain throughout the first half and everyone standing in the Yard got well and truly soaked, as did some of the actors.

Notwithstanding the play was excellent, as one expected of the much acclaimed 2008 production by Christopher Luscombe. It was a most excellent romp and the cast gave every impression of thoroughly enjoying themselves too.

Not having been to the Globe before, I was surprised at how attractive a theatre space it is and it certainly works well for the dramatic sweeps of Shakespeare. I had been warned that the seating was just traditional wooden benches and to take a cushion. However I didn’t find the benches uncomfortable even without a cushion, although I did hire a back-rest which was for me more uncomfortable than not having one – the angles were all wrong for me and I discarded it in the interval.

The only thing which was slightly irritating were the students continually wandering in and out of the Yard – however authentically Elizabethan that may be. And a couple of roast chestnut sellers in the Yard would have made the experience complete!

The Globe is not a cheap evening out (what theatre is!) unless one chooses to stand in the Yard, but it is well worth going to as it does work pretty well for Shakespeare and is an experience worth having at least once. Despite not being a great theatre-goer I’m certainly glad I went.

The photo is a panorama of several shots I took during the interval from our seats.