books, natural history, thoughts

On Wild-Life and Adolescence

I’ve just finished reading My Natural History by Simon Barnes.  Barnes is the award-winning Chief Sports Writer for the Times as well as a great wildlife enthusiast and ornithologist who has travelled the world in search of both sport and wildlife.  He is erudite, as befits one who is so hugely well read, and a fan of Anthony Powell’s Dance, often working Powellian references into his sports writing.

My Natural History is written in Barnes’s light, forthright and eminently readable style.  In 23 short chapters it tells the stories of significant moments in Barnes’s fifty-odd years in all of which he finds a wildlife connexion – many indeed being centred around wildlife.  The tales vary from great achievements (mostly of the wildwood; always understated), through great loves to the occasional disturbing poignancy.  It is short, light, bedtime reading, and no worse for that for it could easily be sub-titled “How to be a Success without any Effort while Remaining Interesting and Human”.

As a example of his insight be writes this apropos his (no, anyone’s) adolescence: 

Does that [an idealistic, youthful vision] sound frightfully adolescent?  Well, so it bloody well should.  We were bloody adolescents.  Why do we sneer at adolescence?  Why, when we look back in maturity at the wild notions and the demented hopes and the illogical beliefs and the ephemeral soul-deep passions of our adolescence, do we feel it our duty to sneer?  Or apologise?  Why do we not instead believe that adolescence is not a cursed but a blessed period of life: a white-water ride down the river of time.  These rapids are not a place to spend a lifetime, but they are an essential transitional process if you wish to be an adult with any kind of life, any kind of passion, any kind of meaning.  True, the stuff we came up with was half-baked: but then neither it nor we had been in the oven for terribly long.  We were celebrating our newness, our rawness, celebrating the irrefragable fact that life was all before us: for us to change, for us to be changed irretrievably by.

books, current affairs, people, science, thoughts

Martin Gardner, RIP

Martin Gardner, scientific skeptic and maths puzzler has died at the age of 95.  Although maybe best known, at least in scientific circles, for his “Mathematical Games” column in Scientific American, for me he will be remembered for his The Annotated Alice which has gone through several editions and numerous reprints; it remains one of my all-time favourite books.

There are short obits here and here.

And you can find all his books available on Amazon.

amusements, science

Picture Imps

Another zany moment from the “Feedback” column of this week’s issue of New Scientist:

[Feedback reader X] tells us that her mother says her new camera works much better “because it has many more pixies than her old one”. Meanwhile, X’s daughter is apparently excited at the discovery that “there are millions of haemogoblins capering round the circulatory system, delivering parcels of oxygen”.

As for X herself, she says she gets along fine in life so long as she’s got her elf (try saying that with a cockney accent). She wonders if other Feedback readers have noticed the presence of similar “differently real” companions in their lives.

amusements, quotes

More Auction Oddities

1 Comment

Another in our occasional series of highlights from our local auction-room catalogues.  [My comments in italic.]

A portrait of two young children, one wearing a plumed hat, with a cat, English School, probably 19th century …
I think we should be told why the cat is sitting on the hat and not the child’s lap.  Or is it dead and just being used instead of a feather in the child’s hat?

A Victorian Sri Lankan colonial overmantel mirror in rare zebra wood, the shield-shaped central plate beneath a fruit carved cornice, flanked by turned columns and leaf shaped mirrors above small display shelves.
It sounds a complete dog’s breakfast; I just can’t picture it.

An antique style silver collar.
That’s all!  A collar for what?  A coat?  A dog?  A vicar?  Mme Whiplash? – oh, sorry, no, she’s the vicar.

A varied interesting lot containing military buttons, badges and dog tags, and a soldier’s service and pay book (1943), autograph book, the works of William Shakespeare, a pair of wooden barleytwist candlesticks, a bejewelled trinket box in the form of a tortoise, picture frames, mixed coinage, brassware, etc.
You just know as soon as you see “a varied interesting lot” it is going to be a collection of toot, but this one was especially, and probably literally, priceless.

A large plated ‘well and tree’ meat dish, two waiters and a syphon stand.
Are the waiters holding up the syphon stand or vice versa?  Are we sure it’s a syphon stand and not a village pump for extracting the meat juices from the well?

A stuffed kingfisher mounted in a circular frame with domed glass.
Why?

2 crocodile skins, 65 ins and 36 ins long.
Start a new fashion: crocodile skin bedroom rugs.

A 19th century Arab Nimcha sword, the multi-fullered straight blade with steel hilt and angular knuckle guard with tracers of damascening, the grip of rhinoceros horn, 38 ins, remains of scabbard.
It was the “remains of scabbard” that finished me; as if this pile of dust makes everything kosher.

An interesting collection of Carlton Ware comprising a farmyard condiment set of farmhouse mustard with cover, barn pepperette and hayrick salt shaker, on circular stand …
This is the piece de resistance!  I almost went to the sale just to look at this hideous sounding cruet.

books, current affairs, quotes

Interesting Times we Live in!

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Either there is a civil strife in heaven,
Or else the world too saucy with the gods
Incenses them to send destruction.

[…]

… There is one within,
Besides the things that we have heard and seen,
Recounts most horrid sights seen by the watch.
A lioness hath whelped in the streets;
And graves have yawn’d, and yielded up their dead;
Fierce fiery warriors fight upon the clouds,
In ranks and squadrons and right form of war,
Which drizzled blood upon the Capitol;
The noise of battle hurtled in the air,
Horses did neigh and dying men did groan,
And ghosts did shriek and squeal about the streets.

[…]

A common slave – you know him well by sight –
Held up his left hand, which did flame and burn
Like twenty torches join’d, and yet his hand
Not sensible of fire remain’d unscorch’d.
Besides – I ha’ not since put up my sword –
Against the Capitol I met a lion,
Who glaz’d upon me and went surly by
Without annoying me. […]
And yesterday the bird of night did sit
Even at noonday upon the marketplace,
Howling and shrieking. When these prodigies
Do so conjointly meet, let not men say
“These are their reasons; they are natural”:
For I believe they are portentous things

[William Shakespeare, Julius Caesar]

amusements

Auction Oddities

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The description of lots in auction catalogues (especially for provincial auctions) always fascinates – nay boggles the mind – as the brevity leads to some very strange outcomes. Here are some of the (recent) best from one of our local auction houses. [My comments in italic.]

A contemporary acrylic on canvas, spring daisies on storks.
The ornithologists have clearly missed this important undiscovered species of large bird.

A large pair of buffalo horns (approx 2m wide) mounted with original hide head piece.
What else would you mount buffalo horns on?  I suppose possibly an Viking helmet?

A 20th century Eccles Minors Safety lamp in brass and white metal, bearing makers label.
Morris Minors, is that?

Wilfred Williams Ball, British school 1853-1917, a mounted and framed watercolour of a Ford alongside a bridge.
I want to know what model of Ford before I bid for this; ‘cos I really hate the Mondeo.

A ladies’ 1950s 9ct gold cased Tudor cocktail watch, having an integral 9ct gold horseshoe link bracelet with ladder clasp
Clearly I’ve missed something in history; I wasn’t aware that the Tudors had watches or cocktails, let alone 20th century reproductions of them.

A Japanese Meiji carved ivory figure of a Geisha holding a fan and parasol wearing a kimono.
Where can I buy a kimono for my parasol?

A Queen Anne style humpback wing armchair, with out-swept arms raised on deep shouldered cabriole legs.
There’s some strange anatomy going on here.  Shoulders with legs?  Cabriole legs at that!

A pair of reconstituted Corinthian columns.
Presumably one buys them in a packet from the supermarket and reconstitutes them with asses milk.