Angus George Dalgleish (born May 1950) FRCP FRCPath FMedSci is a professor of oncology at St George's, University of London, best known for his contributions to HIV/AIDS research.
Which means he is from round the corner, like.
A former head of MI6 has said he believes the coronavirus pandemic "started as an accident" when the virus escaped from a laboratory in China. Sir Richard, who was the head of MI6 between 1999 and 2004, cited startling new peer-reviewed research produced by Professor Angus Dalgleish, of St George's Hospital at the University of London, and the Norwegian virologist Birger Sorensen.
Fill your boots over by yer.
This one will run and run.
Thursday, June 04, 2020
Wednesday, June 03, 2020
Early in the Mornin'
Being temperamentally unsuited to socially distanced queuing, I have got in the habit during lock-down, of popping to the Co-op at the bottom of the road at 7 am, as soon as it opens, in the morning if I need any bog-standard groceries or supplies.
Yesterday, after scrambling down there in a bit of a rush, I put all my purchases through the automatic scanning till only to discover that I hadn't brought any cash or cards. I turned to the manageress at the manual till over to my right and said "I haven't got any money." She smiled broadly as I explained I had just forgotten it, that I would run back home, get the wherewithal, and be back in five minutes.
She gave me a "no problem at all" gesture and off I hared. As was walking back with my shopping later, after everything had been sorted out, it struck me that if I had been a black man in Minneapolis I could have ended up in the same circumstances with a knee on my windpipe.
What led to the police arresting and then killing George Floyd remember was a call from the staff at the Cup Foods grocery store on Chicago Ave in Minneapolis, who suspected he had tried to use a counterfeit bill to purchase cigarettes.
On the odd occasion that someone at a checkout puts a note I proffer under an ultra violet counterfeit money detector, I look on with as much interest as he or she does. It would never occur to me that, even if it did turn out to be moody, I would have to do anything but dig in my pocket for a different one.
Yesterday, after scrambling down there in a bit of a rush, I put all my purchases through the automatic scanning till only to discover that I hadn't brought any cash or cards. I turned to the manageress at the manual till over to my right and said "I haven't got any money." She smiled broadly as I explained I had just forgotten it, that I would run back home, get the wherewithal, and be back in five minutes.
She gave me a "no problem at all" gesture and off I hared. As was walking back with my shopping later, after everything had been sorted out, it struck me that if I had been a black man in Minneapolis I could have ended up in the same circumstances with a knee on my windpipe.
What led to the police arresting and then killing George Floyd remember was a call from the staff at the Cup Foods grocery store on Chicago Ave in Minneapolis, who suspected he had tried to use a counterfeit bill to purchase cigarettes.
On the odd occasion that someone at a checkout puts a note I proffer under an ultra violet counterfeit money detector, I look on with as much interest as he or she does. It would never occur to me that, even if it did turn out to be moody, I would have to do anything but dig in my pocket for a different one.
Tuesday, June 02, 2020
A Czech Dreambook
Ludvík Vaculík
People who are not capable of having more than one opinion do not think, they just go straight ahead. I fear that what people regard as thinking is often no more than the ordering of new knowledge and perceptions in such a way as not to disturb those that are already filed. Hardening the stone. People can’t stand it when you fail to live up to their image of you. Their inability to accept you is interpreted as a defect in your character, not theirs.
Monday, June 01, 2020
Second Wave
I haven't seen the footage of a policeman, Derek Chauvin, kneeling on George Floyd’s neck for more than eight minutes, during which Floyd can be heard saying “I can’t breathe”. Ben told me he tried to watch it but he had stop because it was too disturbing. Even after Floyd's pulse stopped, even when he was presumably dead, Chauvin wouldn’t remove his knee I'm told.
I remember the days when the only Minneapolis association in my head was Prince and Paisley Park.
What do we think are the chances of a Covid-19 second wave in the USA?
I remember the days when the only Minneapolis association in my head was Prince and Paisley Park.
What do we think are the chances of a Covid-19 second wave in the USA?
Sunday, May 31, 2020
The Whole Thing is Rigged
 |
| Last night at 20:30 about 100 miles east of Dundee. |
I realise it reflects badly on me but I find this irresistibly funny.
Saturday, May 30, 2020
M4 Cement
I was on the M4 yesterday for the first time since out abortive to trip to Cardiff mid March for the cancelled Wales Scotland Six Nations rugby.
Initially nervous that the Old Bill might stop me at a checkpoint and ask me why I was away from home, it ultimately dawned on me that being on my way to a legitimate business appointment at the Avon and Somerset Police Headquarters might tick the necessary boxes.
As ever I came across Radio 4 series on my journey that I want to pursue.
Experimenting his morning. "Alexa open the BBC" invokes the skill and asks you to request a programme or channel.
"A Charles Paris Mystery" seems to work, as does Just William Pursuing Happiness by Richmal Crompton, but "Pandemic 1918" earned me only a stark "I can't do that." Shades of HAL in 2001, which could probably have been phrased better.
Initially nervous that the Old Bill might stop me at a checkpoint and ask me why I was away from home, it ultimately dawned on me that being on my way to a legitimate business appointment at the Avon and Somerset Police Headquarters might tick the necessary boxes.
As ever I came across Radio 4 series on my journey that I want to pursue.
Experimenting his morning. "Alexa open the BBC" invokes the skill and asks you to request a programme or channel.
"A Charles Paris Mystery" seems to work, as does Just William Pursuing Happiness by Richmal Crompton, but "Pandemic 1918" earned me only a stark "I can't do that." Shades of HAL in 2001, which could probably have been phrased better.
Friday, May 29, 2020
Pork Scratchings of the world: Issued as a public service
Country | Name |
Americas | |
| Brazil | Torresmo |
| Colombia | Chicharrones, Chicharrón Toteado (exploded pork crackling), Chicharrón Cocho |
| Canada | Scrunchions |
| Quebec | Oreilles de Christ (Christ Ears) |
| Mexico | Chicharrón or Chicharra |
| United States | Pork Rinds, Cracklings |
Asia | |
| Philippines | Chicharon |
| Thailand | Khaep mu |
| Vietnam | Pork Rinds |
Europe | |
| Bulgaria | Iprazhki |
| Serbia | čvarci, Duvan čvarci |
| Czech Republic | škvarky |
| Poland | Skwarki |
| France | Grattons |
| Spain | Cortezas de Cerdo, Chicharrones, Torreznos, Cotnes |
| Portugal | Torresmos, Couratos |
| The Netherlands & Belgium | Knabbelspek (nibbling bacon) |
| Denmark | Flæskesvær |
| Austria & Germany | Grammeln or Grieben, Schweinekrusten (pig crusts) |
| Romania | Jumări |
| United Kingdom | Pork Scratchings, Pork Crackling, Pork Crunch |
Thursday, May 28, 2020
UA93
Torygraph today
Got this on my watch-list now.
Mark Bingham: tragic 9/11 hero who changed attitudes to gay men
American businessman loved rugby and touched lives of many before fateful September 11 plane journeyThe extraordinary story of how the passengers and crew on flight UA93, knowing that three other planes had already been used as guided missiles, decided they going to fight back against the hijackers is one of the most extraordinary things I have ever heard.
Got this on my watch-list now.
Wednesday, May 27, 2020
Tuesday, May 26, 2020
Sidesaddle
It has however encouraged me to book an online Bikram class that Shona is running at Wimbledon Hot Yoga tomorrow. I think it is via Zoom. It will be interesting to see how it goes from noon until one.
Monday, May 25, 2020
I want to break freee
Only 36 Decameron stories left. We should be finished by the end of June.
Is it time to start putting meat on the bones of the demob party? How does July 4th sound?
Is it time to start putting meat on the bones of the demob party? How does July 4th sound?
Sunday, May 24, 2020
Second and Third Rays of Light
After Peter and I went for his weekly shop in Waitrose this morning, we bought a couple of coffees at the COFX coffee shop opposite. He sat on the bench outside while I yelled at him from the socially prescribed two metre gap.
Later after I had installed Zoom on his PC and checked it was working (hat tip, Helen and John), we walked along to the pedestrianized Thames river bank to the Crabtree "we're excited to be reopening our doors this Friday, 22nd May as Fulham and Hammersmith deli, takeaway and delivery shop." A coffee for him and a lager for me.
Playlist song "The Tide is Turning"
Later after I had installed Zoom on his PC and checked it was working (hat tip, Helen and John), we walked along to the pedestrianized Thames river bank to the Crabtree "we're excited to be reopening our doors this Friday, 22nd May as Fulham and Hammersmith deli, takeaway and delivery shop." A coffee for him and a lager for me.
Playlist song "The Tide is Turning"
First Ray of Light
I heard on the jungle telegraph that the Charles Holden was serving take away beers from 2 until 6. A bunch of us went along and had a couple of lagers in Wandle Park just behind it. We're going again on Bank Holiday Monday.
Now this is not the end. It is not even the beginning of the end. but it is, perhaps, the end of the beginning.
Friday, May 22, 2020
Thou art weighed in the balances, and art found wanting.
BBC
A call has been made for the Welsh Government to be investigated by the Equality and Human Rights Commission over fears older people's rights could have been breached.
The Older People's Commissioner for Wales says comprehensive testing for Covid-19 in care homes was "too slow".
She has questioned whether the "right to life" had been breached and raised the issue with the EHRC.
The health minister said he "didn't recognise" a breach and said the policy was based on scientific advice.
Since lockdown began, 27% of the coronavirus deaths in Wales have been care home residents, according to the Office for National Statistics. This figure does not include those care home residents who died after being transferred to hospital.When everyone thought my father was dying with Covid-19 in a home in Wales he couldn't get a test, and that is a 100% take-it-to-the-bank fact. He seems to have recovered thank God. The lady in the video below is in Roath Park, Coupla hundred yards from mum and dad's.
Thursday, May 21, 2020
$100m
Why Joe Rogan's exclusive Spotify deal matters
Joe Rogan has signed an exclusive deal with Spotify, which will see his podcast, The Joe Rogan Experience, disappear from all other platforms.
The multi-year deal is believed to be worth $100m (£82 million), according to the Wall Street Journal.
Rogan's podcast, which is one of the most popular in the world, will arrive on the streaming giant on 1 September.
It will then be housed there exclusively by the end of the year, and removed from all other platforms.
"It will remain free, and it will be the exact same show," said Rogan. "It's just a licensing deal, so Spotify won't have any creative control over the show.
"They want me to just continue doing it the way I'm doing it right now.
"I'm excited to have the support of the largest audio platform in the world and I hope you folks are there when we make the switch!"I remember that Ben and I were both equally surprised that the other regularly watched The Joe Rogan Experience.
Wednesday, May 20, 2020
Let's get lost
Say what you like about Peter Hitchens, AN ENCOUNTER WITH MY PAST is as honest and evocative thing as I have read this year.
It is so elegiac in fact that I hope he is OK.
It is so elegiac in fact that I hope he is OK.
Tuesday, May 19, 2020
Be ye never so high
BBC
Callum Hudson-Odoi: Chelsea and England winger arrested and bailedI've known Callum since he was in the same class as Ben at Primary school and have written about him here since 2015. I feel really uncomfortable even posting the link above, but I suppose it is part of the story. Innocent until proven guilty etc.
Monday, May 18, 2020
Oops, I did it again
The United Kingdom is almost unique in the world in that it has no statute of limitations for any criminal offence tried above magistrate level. Perhaps my father should have thought of that before he embarked on a career of kidnapping stuffed wolves and advertising his crimes in the local press.
Come think about it, I might actually be named after Nick the wolf. You must judge if I have lived up to it.
Sunday, May 17, 2020
Radio TImes
I wake up just before six every morning and listen to the news. When I turned on Radio 4 today I got the last few seconds of a profile of Rosena Allin-Khan, Labour MP for Tooting and all round good egg (see Icons passim). We can all catch up with it at https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000j7h5.
Saturday, May 16, 2020
It it's too long, you don't belong
I thought I would listen to Slavoj Žižek - On G.W.F. Hegel as I was pottering about this morning. Gradually it dawned that 9:08:49 meant that it was nine hours eight minutes and 49 seconds long as opposed the the nine minutes and nine seconds I had assumed.
As we speak I am listening to the The Mastertapes Guide to Writing the Perfect Song on Radio 4 Extra. They promoted it after the six o'clock news this morning. It started at nine and it goes on until noon. Three hours!
For all of Generation Snowflake's shortcomings it appears that lack of attention span is not one of them.
As we speak I am listening to the The Mastertapes Guide to Writing the Perfect Song on Radio 4 Extra. They promoted it after the six o'clock news this morning. It started at nine and it goes on until noon. Three hours!
For all of Generation Snowflake's shortcomings it appears that lack of attention span is not one of them.
Friday, May 15, 2020
Thursday, May 14, 2020
You alright or what?
Peter Falk told the Matthew Rhys as the last murderer in the last ever episode of Columbo to play the character with his native Cardiff accent rather than as a generic cockney. My cup runneth over.
Wednesday, May 13, 2020
Image rights
I popped it into Google's image search (https://images.google.com/) which instantly identified it as a papaya. I have ever used the product before and I was very impressed.
I passed the message back to Steve. "I knew you would know. Thanks. What do I do with it??" he replied.
I haven't got the heart to tell him I didn't know. Fingers crossed he doesn't read these spindrift pages.
Tuesday, May 12, 2020
Living high on the hog
Merton Council's plastic, glass, cans and cartons collection happens every fortnight.
In my recycling box this morning, there is one empty white wine bottle, one empty Heinz baked beans can, and one empty Co-op tin of tomatoes.
That is what you get from 14 days of lock-down hedonistic self indulgence!
In my recycling box this morning, there is one empty white wine bottle, one empty Heinz baked beans can, and one empty Co-op tin of tomatoes.
That is what you get from 14 days of lock-down hedonistic self indulgence!
Monday, May 11, 2020
There was only one catch
— realmattlucas (@RealMattLucas) May 10, 2020
Meanwhile, my dad is in a home, the doctor won't prescribe him antibiotics and has told the home to get him tested for COVID-19. The home can't get any COVID-19 test kits; not the doctor's issue apparently.
Never mind Matt Lucas, I hope for his sake I don't run into Matt Hancock any time soon.
Sunday, May 10, 2020
Dreaming of Wembley
Dad's really not well. It is a crumb, but I am glad that the memory I recorded here yesterday was watching Wales beat England at rugby with him twenty one years ago.
Saturday, May 09, 2020
Twenty one
Dad was with me twenty one years ago when Wales (playing at home in Wembley while the National Stadium was being redeveloped for the World Cup) beat England to rob them of a Grand Slam. Scott Gibbs' last minute try was the key though Neil Jenkins still had to convert it.
My brother reports, that years before:
I played against Gibbs in the Carpet Bowl cup final at the Taff's Well ground.
He kicked their first pen from the half way line then took no more attempts and they missed every other kick at goal.
Mike Young swallowed his tongue in a tackle and Christian Bishop's mum (a nurse) used two spoons to pull it out of his throat.
We won the cup and Mike insisted in being released from the hospital so he could have a drink and pics with the trophy.
Simpler, better times.
Friday, May 08, 2020
A Bridge Too Far
For VE day seventy five years on let me refer you to chapter 13 of Adventures In The Screen Trade: A Personal View of Hollywood by William Goldman.
Not, I will grant you, an obvious choice, but it is about his work writing the screenplay for "A Bridge Too Far." He is sincerely humbled by what people did at Arnhem, and the modesty and decorum of the veterans he interviewed. He thinks that they are better, braver people than him and the regard and respect he accords them when contrasted with his withering contempt for his Hollywood peers tells us all we need to know.
Not, I will grant you, an obvious choice, but it is about his work writing the screenplay for "A Bridge Too Far." He is sincerely humbled by what people did at Arnhem, and the modesty and decorum of the veterans he interviewed. He thinks that they are better, braver people than him and the regard and respect he accords them when contrasted with his withering contempt for his Hollywood peers tells us all we need to know.
Thursday, May 07, 2020
“The game is afoot.”
At my brother John's recommendation, I have picked up the Audible Audiobook Sherlock Holmes: The Definitive Collection read by , Stephen Fry for one credit as opposed to the £69.99 list price.
That is 71 hrs and 57 mins of meaty goodness advertised as "updated to include Chapter Name Information, so you can easily find your favourite story or novel."
I like to put audible books on the Everywhere Alexa group at home so I can listen to them as I move round the house on day-to-day tasks. I can't work out how to ask for a specific story doing that.
Here's the chapter listing from the Audble website. All very interesting but there are no individual story titles.
Part 1
Chapter 1: Opening Credits and Introduction to A Study in Scarlet
Chapters 2-15: A Study in Scarlet
Chapter 16: Introduction to The Sign of Four
Chapters 17-21: The Sign of Four, Part 1
Part 2
Chapters 1-7: The Sign of Four, Part 2
Chapter 8: Introduction to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 9-21: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Part 1
Part 3
Chapter 1: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Part 2
Chapter 2: Introduction to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 3-14: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Chapter 15: Introduction to The Hound of the Baskervilles
Chapters 16-21: The Hound of the Baskervilles, Part 1
Part 4
Chapters 1-9: The Hound of the Baskervilles, Part 2
Chapter 10: Introduction to The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 11-21: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Part 1
Part 5
Chapters 1-2: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Part 2
Chapter 3: Introduction to The Valley of Fear
Chapters 4-18: The Valley of Fear
Chapter 19: Introduction to His Last Bow
Chapters 20-21: His Last Bow, Part 1
Part 6
Chapters 1-7: His Last Bow, Part 2
Chapter 8: Introduction to The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 9-20: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and Closing Credits
I found a more detailed listing from the US version, but I have also read that it is about 9 hours shorter than Blighty's, so caution is advised.
Part One:
Chapter 1: Foreword to A Study in Scarlet
Chapters 2-15: A Study in Scarlet
Chapters 16-28: The Sign of Four
Part Two:
Chapter 1: Foreword to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 2-4: A Scandal in Bohemia
Chapter 5: The Adventure of The Red-Headed League
Chapter 6: A Case of Identity
Chapter 7: The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Chapter 8: The Five Orange Pips
Chapter 9: The Man with the Twisted Lip
Chapter 10: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
Chapter 11: The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Chapter 12: The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
Chapter 13: The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
Chapter 14: The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
Chapter 15: The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
Part Three:
Chapter 1: Foreword to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Chapter 2: Silver Blaze
Chapter 3: The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
Chapter 4: The Adventure of the Yellow Face
Chapter 5: The Adventure of the The Stock-Broker's Clerk
Chapter 6: The Adventure of “The Gloria Scott”
Chapter 7: The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual
Chapter 8: The Adventure of the Reigate Squire
Chapter 9: The Adventure of the Crooked Man
Chapter 10: The Adventure of the Resident Patient
Chapter 11: The Adventure of the Greek Interpretor
Chapter 12: The Adventure of the Naval Treaty
Chapter 13: The Final Problem
Part Four:
Foreword to The Hound of the Baskervilles
Chapters 2-16: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Chapter 17: Foreword to The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Chapter 18: The Adventure of the Empty House
Chapter 19: The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
Chapter 20: The Adventure of the Dancing Men
Chapter 21: The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
Chapter 22: The Adventure of the Priory School
Part Five:
Chapter 1: The Adventure of Black Peter (Continuation of The Return of Sherlock Holmes stories)
Chapter 2: The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton
Chapter 3: The Adventure of the Six Napoleons
Chapter 4: The Adventure of the Three Students
Chapter 5: The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
Chapter 6: The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
Chapter 7: The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
Chapter 8: The Adventure of the Second Stain
Foreword to The Valley of Fear
Chapters 10-16: The Valley of Fear Part 1
Part Six:
Chapters 1-7: The Valley of Fear Part 2
Chapter 8: The Valley of Fear Epilogue
Chapter 9: Foreword to His Last Bow
Chapter 10: Preface to His Last Bow
Chapter 11: The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge–The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles
Chapter 12: The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge–The Tiger of San Pedro
Chapter 13: The Adventure of the Red Circle
Chapter 14: The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
Chapter 15: The Adventure of the Dying Detective
Chapter 16: The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
Chapter 17: The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
Chapter 18: His Last Bow
........ to be continued ........
That is 71 hrs and 57 mins of meaty goodness advertised as "updated to include Chapter Name Information, so you can easily find your favourite story or novel."
I like to put audible books on the Everywhere Alexa group at home so I can listen to them as I move round the house on day-to-day tasks. I can't work out how to ask for a specific story doing that.
Here's the chapter listing from the Audble website. All very interesting but there are no individual story titles.
Part 1
Chapter 1: Opening Credits and Introduction to A Study in Scarlet
Chapters 2-15: A Study in Scarlet
Chapter 16: Introduction to The Sign of Four
Chapters 17-21: The Sign of Four, Part 1
Part 2
Chapters 1-7: The Sign of Four, Part 2
Chapter 8: Introduction to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 9-21: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Part 1
Part 3
Chapter 1: The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Part 2
Chapter 2: Introduction to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 3-14: The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Chapter 15: Introduction to The Hound of the Baskervilles
Chapters 16-21: The Hound of the Baskervilles, Part 1
Part 4
Chapters 1-9: The Hound of the Baskervilles, Part 2
Chapter 10: Introduction to The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 11-21: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Part 1
Part 5
Chapters 1-2: The Return of Sherlock Holmes, Part 2
Chapter 3: Introduction to The Valley of Fear
Chapters 4-18: The Valley of Fear
Chapter 19: Introduction to His Last Bow
Chapters 20-21: His Last Bow, Part 1
Part 6
Chapters 1-7: His Last Bow, Part 2
Chapter 8: Introduction to The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 9-20: The Casebook of Sherlock Holmes and Closing Credits
I found a more detailed listing from the US version, but I have also read that it is about 9 hours shorter than Blighty's, so caution is advised.
Part One:
Chapter 1: Foreword to A Study in Scarlet
Chapters 2-15: A Study in Scarlet
Chapters 16-28: The Sign of Four
Part Two:
Chapter 1: Foreword to The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
Chapters 2-4: A Scandal in Bohemia
Chapter 5: The Adventure of The Red-Headed League
Chapter 6: A Case of Identity
Chapter 7: The Boscombe Valley Mystery
Chapter 8: The Five Orange Pips
Chapter 9: The Man with the Twisted Lip
Chapter 10: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle
Chapter 11: The Adventure of the Speckled Band
Chapter 12: The Adventure of the Engineer’s Thumb
Chapter 13: The Adventure of the Noble Bachelor
Chapter 14: The Adventure of the Beryl Coronet
Chapter 15: The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
Part Three:
Chapter 1: Foreword to The Memoirs of Sherlock Holmes
Chapter 2: Silver Blaze
Chapter 3: The Adventure of the Cardboard Box
Chapter 4: The Adventure of the Yellow Face
Chapter 5: The Adventure of the The Stock-Broker's Clerk
Chapter 6: The Adventure of “The Gloria Scott”
Chapter 7: The Adventure of the Musgrave Ritual
Chapter 8: The Adventure of the Reigate Squire
Chapter 9: The Adventure of the Crooked Man
Chapter 10: The Adventure of the Resident Patient
Chapter 11: The Adventure of the Greek Interpretor
Chapter 12: The Adventure of the Naval Treaty
Chapter 13: The Final Problem
Part Four:
Foreword to The Hound of the Baskervilles
Chapters 2-16: The Hound of the Baskervilles
Chapter 17: Foreword to The Return of Sherlock Holmes
Chapter 18: The Adventure of the Empty House
Chapter 19: The Adventure of the Norwood Builder
Chapter 20: The Adventure of the Dancing Men
Chapter 21: The Adventure of the Solitary Cyclist
Chapter 22: The Adventure of the Priory School
Part Five:
Chapter 1: The Adventure of Black Peter (Continuation of The Return of Sherlock Holmes stories)
Chapter 2: The Adventure of Charles Augustus Milverton
Chapter 3: The Adventure of the Six Napoleons
Chapter 4: The Adventure of the Three Students
Chapter 5: The Adventure of the Golden Pince-Nez
Chapter 6: The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter
Chapter 7: The Adventure of the Abbey Grange
Chapter 8: The Adventure of the Second Stain
Foreword to The Valley of Fear
Chapters 10-16: The Valley of Fear Part 1
Part Six:
Chapters 1-7: The Valley of Fear Part 2
Chapter 8: The Valley of Fear Epilogue
Chapter 9: Foreword to His Last Bow
Chapter 10: Preface to His Last Bow
Chapter 11: The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge–The Singular Experience of Mr. John Scott Eccles
Chapter 12: The Adventure of Wisteria Lodge–The Tiger of San Pedro
Chapter 13: The Adventure of the Red Circle
Chapter 14: The Adventure of the Bruce-Partington Plans
Chapter 15: The Adventure of the Dying Detective
Chapter 16: The Disappearance of Lady Frances Carfax
Chapter 17: The Adventure of the Devil’s Foot
Chapter 18: His Last Bow
........ to be continued ........
Wednesday, May 06, 2020
Ripples
Ripples from National Theatre Wales on Vimeo.
By Tracy Harris
Directed by Matthew Holmquist
For full details of cast and crew go to https://www.nationaltheatrewales.org/ntw_shows/ripples/
For a while it looked like audiences wouldn’t get to experience Tracy Harris’s powerful new play Ripples. On the day before the first performance the run at Royal Welsh College of Music & Drama was cancelled due to the situation regarding Covid-19. The production was Sherman Theatre’s collaboration with Royal Welsh College for it’s NEW: 2020 new writing festival.
However, a month on from that disappointment, the play will finally be seen in the first of our Network Play Readings. The original cast of final year RWCMD acting students will perform a revised, virtual version of the play directed by Matthew Holmquist, from their own spaces where they wait out lockdown.
Network is our digital programme of work providing opportunities for artists and audiences to create and experience theatre during the time that we are kept apart. For more information visit https://www.nationaltheatrewales.org/ntw-projects/network/
I think it is a mistake disabling embedding.
Tuesday, May 05, 2020
Voyage autour de ma chambre
Xavier de Maistre
His Voyage autour de ma chambre (1794), is a parody set in the tradition of the grand travel narrative, is an autobiographical account of how a young official, imprisoned in his room for six weeks, looks at the furniture, engravings, etc., as if they were scenes from a voyage in a strange land. He praises this voyage because it does not cost anything, and for this reason it is strongly recommended to the poor, the infirm, and the lazy. His room is a long square, and the perimeter is thirty-six paces. "When I travel through my room," he writes, "I rarely follow a straight line: I go from the table towards a picture hanging in a corner; from there, I set out obliquely towards the door; but even though, when I begin, it really is my intention to go there, if I happen to meet my armchair en route, I don’t think twice about it, and settle down in it without further ado." Later, proceeding North, he encounters his bed, and in this way he lightheartedly continues his "Voyage".This work speaks to me just at the moment.
Monday, May 04, 2020
Hash Browne: Lock-Down Diaries III
I made hash browns from scratch yesterday because rather than despite it being so time consuming. This is not a good sign.
I carefully grated the potatoes and onions ("How can you mend a broken heart" by Al Green was playing so I was already crying.)
Then I dumped the mixture into a colander and squeezed the liquid out by hand for five or ten minutes, before adding egg and seasoning, then batch frying.
Only another twenty three and a half hours of displacement activity to find after that and I was home free.
I carefully grated the potatoes and onions ("How can you mend a broken heart" by Al Green was playing so I was already crying.)
Then I dumped the mixture into a colander and squeezed the liquid out by hand for five or ten minutes, before adding egg and seasoning, then batch frying.
Only another twenty three and a half hours of displacement activity to find after that and I was home free.
Sunday, May 03, 2020
Mrs Chicken
Mrs Chicken’s Hen House is open from 10 a.m. until dusk Monday to Saturday. Could anything be more romantic than being open until until dusk?
THE HEN HOUSE OS A NON PROFIT ORGANISATION SET UP NY TWP PEOPLE WITH CONNECTIONS IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY WHO WANT TO HELP THE COMMUNITY DURING THESE STRANGE TIMES.
Price list
This can be a great place to live sometimes.
THE HEN HOUSE OS A NON PROFIT ORGANISATION SET UP NY TWP PEOPLE WITH CONNECTIONS IN THE FOOD INDUSTRY WHO WANT TO HELP THE COMMUNITY DURING THESE STRANGE TIMES.
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This can be a great place to live sometimes.
Saturday, May 02, 2020
Herkimer's Handbook of Indispensable Information.
It seems that I like to share an O. Henry story with you every fifteen years or so (see Icons passim). This one is a little tribute to Dad who introduced me to it and brought me up to appreciate both Herkimer's Handbook of Indispensable Information and Homer K. M. (C.P. Snow's Two Cultures in the five-dollar word version) without me even realising that was what he was doing.
Here we go. It is actually called - no sniggering at the back - The Handbook of Hymen, and it is in the public domain. You've all got time to read it in lockdown and lockdown is really what it is about.
'Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can't tell me why our college professors shouldn't be transferred to the meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the main office what kind of weather to expect. But there's the other side of the proposition. I am going on to tell you how the weather furnished me and Idaho Green with an elegant education.
We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was in the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army through a peace conference.
Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and stops to eat three cans of greengages, and leave us a newspaper of modern date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the weather, and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom of the deck was "warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes."
That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong in the east. Me and Idaho moved camp into an old empty cabin higher up the mountain, thinking it was only a November flurry. But after falling three foot on a level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we was snowed in. We got in plenty of firewood before it got deep, and we had grub enough for two months, so we let the elements rage and cut up all they thought proper.
If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter just shut two men up in a eighteen- by twenty-foot cabin for a month. Human nature won't stand it.
When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green laughed at each other's jokes and praised the stuff we turned out of a skillet and called bread. At the end of three weeks Idaho makes this kind of a edict to me. Says he:
"I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of a balloon on the bottom of a tin pan, but I have an idea it would be music of the spears compared to this attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that emanates out of your organs of conversation. The kind of half- masticated noises that you emit every day puts me in mind of a cow's cud, only she's lady enough to keep hers to herself, and you ain't."
"Mr. Green," says I, "you having been a friend of mine once, I have some hesitations in confessing to you that if I had my choice for society between you and a common yellow, three-legged cur pup, one of the inmates of this here cabin would be wagging a tail just at present."
This way we goes on for two or three days, and then we quits speaking to one another. We divides up the cooking implements, and Idaho cooks his grub on one side of the fireplace, and me on the other. The snow is up to the windows, and we have to keep a fire all day.
You see me and Idaho never had any education beyond reading and doing "if John had three apples and James five" on a slate. We never felt any special need for a university degree, though we had acquired a species of intrinsic intelligence in knocking around the world that we could use in emergencies. But, snowbound in that cabin in the Bitter Roots, we felt for the first time that if we had studied Homer or Greek and fractions and the higher branches of information, we'd have had some resources in the line of meditation and private thought. I've seen them Eastern college fellows working in camps all through the West, and I never noticed but what education was less of a drawback to 'em than you would think. Why, once over on Snake River, when Andrew McWilliams' saddle horse got the botts, he sent a buckboard ten miles for one of these strangers that claimed to be a botanist. But that horse died.
One morning Idaho was poking around with a stick on top of a little shelf that was too high to reach. Two books fell down to the floor. I started toward 'em, but caught Idaho's eye. He speaks for the first time in a week.
"Don't burn your fingers," says he. "In spite of the fact that you're only fit to be the companion of a sleeping mud-turtle, I'll give you a square deal. And that's more than your parents did when they turned you loose in the world with the sociability of a rattle-snake and the bedside manner of a frozen turnip. I'll play you a game of seven-up, the winner to pick up his choice of the book, the loser to take the other."
We played; and Idaho won. He picked up his book; and I took mine. Then each of us got on his side of the house and went to reading.
I never was as glad to see a ten-ounce nugget as I was that book. And Idaho took at his like a kid looks at a stick of candy.
Mine was a little book about five by six inches called "Herkimer's Handbook of Indispensable Information." I may be wrong, but I think that was the greatest book that ever was written. I've got it to-day; and I can stump you or any man fifty times in five minutes with the information in it. Talk about Solomon or the New York Tribune! Herkimer had cases on both of 'em. That man must have put in fifty years and travelled a million miles to find out all that stuff. There was the population of all cities in it, and the way to tell a girl's age, and the number of teeth a camel has. It told you the longest tunnel in the world, the number of the stars, how long it takes for chicken pox to break out, what a lady's neck ought to measure, the veto powers of Governors, the dates of the Roman aqueducts, how many pounds of rice going without three beers a day would buy, the average annual temperature of Augusta, Maine, the quantity of seed required to plant an acre of carrots in drills, antidotes for poisons, the number of hairs on a blond lady's head, how to preserve eggs, the height of all the mountains in the world, and the dates of all wars and battles, and how to restore drowned persons, and sunstroke, and the number of tacks in a pound, and how to make dynamite and flowers and beds, and what to do before the doctor comes—and a hundred times as many things besides. If there was anything Herkimer didn't know I didn't miss it out of the book.
I sat and read that book for four hours. All the wonders of education was compressed in it. I forgot the snow, and I forgot that me and old Idaho was on the outs. He was sitting still on a stool reading away with a kind of partly soft and partly mysterious look shining through his tan-bark whiskers.
"Idaho," says I, "what kind of a book is yours?"
Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered moderate, without any slander or malignity.
"Why," says he, "this here seems to be a volume by Homer K. M."
"Homer K. M. what?" I asks.
"Why, just Homer K. M.," says he.
"You're a liar," says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me up a tree. "No man is going 'round signing books with his initials. If it's Homer K. M. Spoopendyke, or Homer K. M. McSweeney, or Homer K. M. Jones, why don't you say so like a man instead of biting off the end of it like a calf chewing off the tail of a shirt on a clothes- line?"
"I put it to you straight, Sandy," says Idaho, quiet. "It's a poem book," says he, "by Homer K. M. I couldn't get colour out of it at first, but there's a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn't have missed this book for a pair of red blankets."
"You're welcome to it," says I. "What I want is a disinterested statement of facts for the mind to work on, and that's what I seem to find in the book I've drawn."
"What you've got," says Idaho, "is statistics, the lowest grade of information that exists. They'll poison your mind. Give me old K. M.'s system of surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. His regular toast is 'nothing doing,' and he seems to have a grouch, but he keeps it so well lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an invitation to split a quart. But it's poetry," says Idaho, "and I have sensations of scorn for that truck of yours that tries to convey sense in feet and inches. When it comes to explaining the instinct of philosophy through the art of nature, old K. M. has got your man beat by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest measurement, and average annual rainfall."
So that's the way me and Idaho had it. Day and night all the excitement we got was studying our books. That snowstorm sure fixed us with a fine lot of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, if you had stepped up to me suddenly and said: "Sanderson Pratt, what would it cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty-eight tin at nine dollars and fifty cents per box?" I'd have told you as quick as light could travel the length of a spade handle at the rate of one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles per second. How many can do it? You wake up 'most any man you know in the middle of the night, and ask him quick to tell you the number of bones in the human skeleton exclusive of the teeth, or what percentage of the vote of the Nebraska Legislature overrules a veto. Will he tell you? Try him and see.
About what benefit Idaho got out of his poetry book I didn't exactly know. Idaho boosted the wine-agent every time he opened his mouth; but I wasn't so sure.
This Homer K. M., from what leaked out of his libretto through Idaho, seemed to me to be a kind of a dog who looked at life like it was a tin can tied to his tail. After running himself half to death, he sits down, hangs his tongue out, and looks at the can and says:
"Oh, well, since we can't shake the growler, let's get it filled at the corner, and all have a drink on me."
Besides that, it seems he was a Persian; and I never hear of Persia producing anything worth mentioning unless it was Turkish rugs and Maltese cats.
That spring me and Idaho struck pay ore. It was a habit of ours to sell out quick and keep moving. We unloaded our grubstaker for eight thousand dollars apiece; and then we drifted down to this little town of Rosa, on the Salmon river, to rest up, and get some human grub, and have our whiskers harvested.
Rosa was no mining-camp. It laid in the valley, and was as free of uproar and pestilence as one of them rural towns in the country. There was a three-mile trolley line champing its bit in the environs; and me and Idaho spent a week riding on one of the cars, dropping off at nights at the Sunset View Hotel. Being now well read as well as travelled, we was soon pro re nata with the best society in Rosa, and was invited out to the most dressed-up and high-toned entertainments. It was at a piano recital and quail-eating contest in the city hall, for the benefit of the fire company, that me and Idaho first met Mrs. De Ormond Sampson, the queen of Rosa society.
Mrs. Sampson was a widow, and owned the only two-story house in town. It was painted yellow, and whichever way you looked from you could see it as plain as egg on the chin of an O'Grady on a Friday. Twenty-two men in Rosa besides me and Idaho was trying to stake a claim on that yellow house.
There was a dance after the song books and quail bones had been raked out of the Hall. Twenty-three of the bunch galloped over to Mrs. Sampson and asked for a dance. I side-stepped the two-step, and asked permission to escort her home. That's where I made a hit.
On the way home says she:
"Ain't the stars lovely and bright to-night, Mr. Pratt?"
"For the chance they've got," says I, "they're humping themselves in a mighty creditable way. That big one you see is sixty-six million miles distant. It took thirty-six years for its light to reach us. With an eighteen-foot telescope you can see forty-three millions of 'em, including them of the thirteenth magnitude, which, if one was to go out now, you would keep on seeing it for twenty-seven hundred years."
"My!" says Mrs. Sampson. "I never knew that before. How warm it is! I'm as damp as I can be from dancing so much."
"That's easy to account for," says I, "when you happen to know that you've got two million sweat-glands working all at once. If every one of your perspiratory ducts, which are a quarter of an inch long, was placed end to end, they would reach a distance of seven miles."
"Lawsy!" says Mrs. Sampson. "It sounds like an irrigation ditch you was describing, Mr. Pratt. How do you get all this knowledge of information?"
"From observation, Mrs. Sampson," I tells her. "I keep my eyes open when I go about the world."
"Mr. Pratt," says she, "I always did admire a man of education. There are so few scholars among the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that it is a real pleasure to converse with a gentleman of culture. I'd be gratified to have you call at my house whenever you feel so inclined."
And that was the way I got the goodwill of the lady in the yellow house. Every Tuesday and Friday evening I used to go there and tell her about the wonders of the universe as discovered, tabulated, and compiled from nature by Herkimer. Idaho and the other gay Lutherans of the town got every minute of the rest of the week that they could.
I never imagined that Idaho was trying to work on Mrs. Sampson with old K. M.'s rules of courtship till one afternoon when I was on my way over to take her a basket of wild hog-plums. I met the lady coming down the lane that led to her house. Her eyes was snapping, and her hat made a dangerous dip over one eye.
"Mr. Pratt," she opens up, "this Mr. Green is a friend of yours, I believe."
"For nine years," says I.
"Cut him out," says she. "He's no gentleman!"
"Why ma'am," says I, "he's a plain incumbent of the mountains, with asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma'am, I've found him impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years of Idaho's society, Mrs. Sampson," I winds up, "I should hate to impute him, and I should hate to see him imputed."
"It's right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "to take up the curmudgeons in your friend's behalf; but it don't alter the fact that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle the ignominy of any lady."
"Why, now, now, now!" says I. "Old Idaho do that! I could believe it of myself, sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snow-bound in the mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry, which may have corrupted his demeanour."
"It has," says Mrs. Sampson. "Ever since I knew him he has been reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her poetry."
"Then Idaho has struck a new book," says I, "for the one he had was by a man who writes under the nom de plume of K. M."
"He'd better have stuck to it," says Mrs. Sampson, "whatever it was. And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and on 'em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a lady when you see her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a moment that I'd skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but I'm not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising Cain in any such style as that. And of course he'd bring his book of verses along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics alone! Or let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn't kick unless it was on account of there being too much bread along. And what do you think of your gentleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?"
"Well, 'm," says I, "it may be that Idaho's invitation was a kind of poetry, and meant no harm. Maybe it belonged to the class of rhymes they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they don't say. I'd be glad on Idaho's account if you'd overlook it," says I, "and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like this, Mrs. Sampson," I goes on, "we should let our thoughts dwell accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet."
"Oh, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "it's such a comfort to hear you say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a Ruby's poetry!"
"Let us sit on this log at the roadside," says I, "and forget the inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of ascertained facts and legalised measures that beauty is to be found. In this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson," says I, "is statistics more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old. At the depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three thousand years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth, near Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet eight inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut, compress it above the wound. A man's leg contains thirty bones. The Tower of London was burned in 1841."
"Go on, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson. "Them ideas is so original and soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be."
But it wasn't till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to me out of Herkimer.
One night I was waked up by folks hollering "Fire!" all around. I jumped up and dressed and went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene. When I see it was Mrs. Sampson's house, I gave forth a kind of yell, and I was there in two minutes.
The whole lower story of the yellow house was in flames, and every masculine, feminine, and canine in Rosa was there, screeching and barking and getting in the way of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to get away from six firemen who were holding him. They was telling him the whole place was on fire down-stairs, and no man could go in it and come out alive.
"Where's Mrs. Sampson?" I asks.
"She hasn't been seen," says one of the firemen. "She sleeps up-stairs. We've tried to get in, but we can't, and our company hasn't got any ladders yet."
I runs around to the light of the big blaze, and pulls the Handbook out of my inside pocket. I kind of laughed when I felt it in my hands—I reckon I was some daffy with the sensation of excitement.
"Herky, old boy," I says to it, as I flipped over the pages, "you ain't ever lied to me yet, and you ain't ever throwed me down at a scratch yet. Tell me what, old boy, tell me what!" says I.
I turned to "What to do in Case of Accidents," on page 117. I run my finger down the page, and struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never overlooked anything! It said:
Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas.—There is nothing better than flaxseed. Place a few seed in the outer corner of the eye.
I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was running by.
"Here," says I, giving him some money, "run to the drug store and bring a dollar's worth of flaxseed. Hurry, and you'll get another one for yourself. Now," I sings out to the crowd, "we'll have Mrs. Sampson!" And I throws away my coat and hat.
Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. It's sure death, they say, to go in the house, for the floors was beginning to fall through.
"How in blazes," I sings out, kind of laughing yet, but not feeling like it, "do you expect me to put flaxseed in a eye without the eye?"
I jabbed each elbow in a fireman's face, kicked the bark off of one citizen's shin, and tripped the other one with a side hold. And then I busted into the house. If I die first I'll write you a letter and tell you if it's any worse down there than the inside of that yellow house was; but don't believe it yet. I was a heap more cooked than the hurry-up orders of broiled chicken that you get in restaurants. The fire and smoke had me down on the floor twice, and was about to shame Herkimer, but the firemen helped me with their little stream of water, and I got to Mrs. Sampson's room. She'd lost conscientiousness from the smoke, so I wrapped her in the bed clothes and got her on my shoulder. Well, the floors wasn't as bad as they said, or I never could have done it—not by no means.
I carried her out fifty yards from the house and laid her on the grass. Then, of course, every one of them other twenty-two plaintiff's to the lady's hand crowded around with tin dippers of water ready to save her. And up runs the boy with the flaxseed.
I unwrapped the covers from Mrs. Sampson's head. She opened her eyes and says:
"Is that you, Mr. Pratt?"
"S-s-sh," says I. "Don't talk till you've had the remedy."
I runs my arm around her neck and raises her head, gentle, and breaks the bag of flaxseed with the other hand; and as easy as I could I bends over and slips three or four of the seeds in the outer corner of her eye.
Up gallops the village doc by this time, and snorts around, and grabs at Mrs. Sampson's pulse, and wants to know what I mean by any such sandblasted nonsense.
"Well, old Jalap and Jerusalem oakseed," says I, "I'm no regular practitioner, but I'll show you my authority, anyway."
They fetched my coat, and I gets out the Handbook.
"Look on page 117," says I, "at the remedy for suffocation by smoke or gas. Flaxseed in the outer corner of the eye, it says. I don't know whether it works as a smoke consumer or whether it hikes the compound gastro-hippopotamus nerve into action, but Herkimer says it, and he was called to the case first. If you want to make it a consultation, there's no objection."
Old doc takes the book and looks at it by means of his specs and a fireman's lantern.
"Well, Mr. Pratt," says he, "you evidently got on the wrong line in reading your diagnosis. The recipe for suffocation says: 'Get the patient into fresh air as quickly as possible, and place in a reclining position.' The flaxseed remedy is for 'Dust and Cinders in the Eye,' on the line above. But, after all——"
"See here," interrupts Mrs. Sampson, "I reckon I've got something to say in this consultation. That flaxseed done me more good than anything I ever tried." And then she raises up her head and lays it back on my arm again, and says: "Put some in the other eye, Sandy dear."
And so if you was to stop off at Rosa to-morrow, or any other day, you'd see a fine new yellow house with Mrs. Pratt, that was Mrs. Sampson, embellishing and adorning it. And if you was to step inside you'd see on the marble-top centre table in the parlour "Herkimer's Handbook of Indispensable Information," all rebound in red morocco, and ready to be consulted on any subject pertaining to human happiness and wisdom.
Here we go. It is actually called - no sniggering at the back - The Handbook of Hymen, and it is in the public domain. You've all got time to read it in lockdown and lockdown is really what it is about.
'Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can't tell me why our college professors shouldn't be transferred to the meteorological department. They have been learned to read; and they could very easily glance at the morning papers and then wire in to the main office what kind of weather to expect. But there's the other side of the proposition. I am going on to tell you how the weather furnished me and Idaho Green with an elegant education.
We was up in the Bitter Root Mountains over the Montana line prospecting for gold. A chin-whiskered man in Walla-Walla, carrying a line of hope as excess baggage, had grubstaked us; and there we was in the foothills pecking away, with enough grub on hand to last an army through a peace conference.
Along one day comes a mail-rider over the mountains from Carlos, and stops to eat three cans of greengages, and leave us a newspaper of modern date. This paper prints a system of premonitions of the weather, and the card it dealt Bitter Root Mountains from the bottom of the deck was "warmer and fair, with light westerly breezes."
That evening it began to snow, with the wind strong in the east. Me and Idaho moved camp into an old empty cabin higher up the mountain, thinking it was only a November flurry. But after falling three foot on a level it went to work in earnest; and we knew we was snowed in. We got in plenty of firewood before it got deep, and we had grub enough for two months, so we let the elements rage and cut up all they thought proper.
If you want to instigate the art of manslaughter just shut two men up in a eighteen- by twenty-foot cabin for a month. Human nature won't stand it.
When the first snowflakes fell me and Idaho Green laughed at each other's jokes and praised the stuff we turned out of a skillet and called bread. At the end of three weeks Idaho makes this kind of a edict to me. Says he:
"I never exactly heard sour milk dropping out of a balloon on the bottom of a tin pan, but I have an idea it would be music of the spears compared to this attenuated stream of asphyxiated thought that emanates out of your organs of conversation. The kind of half- masticated noises that you emit every day puts me in mind of a cow's cud, only she's lady enough to keep hers to herself, and you ain't."
"Mr. Green," says I, "you having been a friend of mine once, I have some hesitations in confessing to you that if I had my choice for society between you and a common yellow, three-legged cur pup, one of the inmates of this here cabin would be wagging a tail just at present."
This way we goes on for two or three days, and then we quits speaking to one another. We divides up the cooking implements, and Idaho cooks his grub on one side of the fireplace, and me on the other. The snow is up to the windows, and we have to keep a fire all day.
You see me and Idaho never had any education beyond reading and doing "if John had three apples and James five" on a slate. We never felt any special need for a university degree, though we had acquired a species of intrinsic intelligence in knocking around the world that we could use in emergencies. But, snowbound in that cabin in the Bitter Roots, we felt for the first time that if we had studied Homer or Greek and fractions and the higher branches of information, we'd have had some resources in the line of meditation and private thought. I've seen them Eastern college fellows working in camps all through the West, and I never noticed but what education was less of a drawback to 'em than you would think. Why, once over on Snake River, when Andrew McWilliams' saddle horse got the botts, he sent a buckboard ten miles for one of these strangers that claimed to be a botanist. But that horse died.
One morning Idaho was poking around with a stick on top of a little shelf that was too high to reach. Two books fell down to the floor. I started toward 'em, but caught Idaho's eye. He speaks for the first time in a week.
"Don't burn your fingers," says he. "In spite of the fact that you're only fit to be the companion of a sleeping mud-turtle, I'll give you a square deal. And that's more than your parents did when they turned you loose in the world with the sociability of a rattle-snake and the bedside manner of a frozen turnip. I'll play you a game of seven-up, the winner to pick up his choice of the book, the loser to take the other."
We played; and Idaho won. He picked up his book; and I took mine. Then each of us got on his side of the house and went to reading.
I never was as glad to see a ten-ounce nugget as I was that book. And Idaho took at his like a kid looks at a stick of candy.
Mine was a little book about five by six inches called "Herkimer's Handbook of Indispensable Information." I may be wrong, but I think that was the greatest book that ever was written. I've got it to-day; and I can stump you or any man fifty times in five minutes with the information in it. Talk about Solomon or the New York Tribune! Herkimer had cases on both of 'em. That man must have put in fifty years and travelled a million miles to find out all that stuff. There was the population of all cities in it, and the way to tell a girl's age, and the number of teeth a camel has. It told you the longest tunnel in the world, the number of the stars, how long it takes for chicken pox to break out, what a lady's neck ought to measure, the veto powers of Governors, the dates of the Roman aqueducts, how many pounds of rice going without three beers a day would buy, the average annual temperature of Augusta, Maine, the quantity of seed required to plant an acre of carrots in drills, antidotes for poisons, the number of hairs on a blond lady's head, how to preserve eggs, the height of all the mountains in the world, and the dates of all wars and battles, and how to restore drowned persons, and sunstroke, and the number of tacks in a pound, and how to make dynamite and flowers and beds, and what to do before the doctor comes—and a hundred times as many things besides. If there was anything Herkimer didn't know I didn't miss it out of the book.
I sat and read that book for four hours. All the wonders of education was compressed in it. I forgot the snow, and I forgot that me and old Idaho was on the outs. He was sitting still on a stool reading away with a kind of partly soft and partly mysterious look shining through his tan-bark whiskers.
"Idaho," says I, "what kind of a book is yours?"
Idaho must have forgot, too, for he answered moderate, without any slander or malignity.
"Why," says he, "this here seems to be a volume by Homer K. M."
"Homer K. M. what?" I asks.
"Why, just Homer K. M.," says he.
"You're a liar," says I, a little riled that Idaho should try to put me up a tree. "No man is going 'round signing books with his initials. If it's Homer K. M. Spoopendyke, or Homer K. M. McSweeney, or Homer K. M. Jones, why don't you say so like a man instead of biting off the end of it like a calf chewing off the tail of a shirt on a clothes- line?"
"I put it to you straight, Sandy," says Idaho, quiet. "It's a poem book," says he, "by Homer K. M. I couldn't get colour out of it at first, but there's a vein if you follow it up. I wouldn't have missed this book for a pair of red blankets."
"You're welcome to it," says I. "What I want is a disinterested statement of facts for the mind to work on, and that's what I seem to find in the book I've drawn."
"What you've got," says Idaho, "is statistics, the lowest grade of information that exists. They'll poison your mind. Give me old K. M.'s system of surmises. He seems to be a kind of a wine agent. His regular toast is 'nothing doing,' and he seems to have a grouch, but he keeps it so well lubricated with booze that his worst kicks sound like an invitation to split a quart. But it's poetry," says Idaho, "and I have sensations of scorn for that truck of yours that tries to convey sense in feet and inches. When it comes to explaining the instinct of philosophy through the art of nature, old K. M. has got your man beat by drills, rows, paragraphs, chest measurement, and average annual rainfall."
So that's the way me and Idaho had it. Day and night all the excitement we got was studying our books. That snowstorm sure fixed us with a fine lot of attainments apiece. By the time the snow melted, if you had stepped up to me suddenly and said: "Sanderson Pratt, what would it cost per square foot to lay a roof with twenty by twenty-eight tin at nine dollars and fifty cents per box?" I'd have told you as quick as light could travel the length of a spade handle at the rate of one hundred and ninety-two thousand miles per second. How many can do it? You wake up 'most any man you know in the middle of the night, and ask him quick to tell you the number of bones in the human skeleton exclusive of the teeth, or what percentage of the vote of the Nebraska Legislature overrules a veto. Will he tell you? Try him and see.
About what benefit Idaho got out of his poetry book I didn't exactly know. Idaho boosted the wine-agent every time he opened his mouth; but I wasn't so sure.
This Homer K. M., from what leaked out of his libretto through Idaho, seemed to me to be a kind of a dog who looked at life like it was a tin can tied to his tail. After running himself half to death, he sits down, hangs his tongue out, and looks at the can and says:
"Oh, well, since we can't shake the growler, let's get it filled at the corner, and all have a drink on me."
Besides that, it seems he was a Persian; and I never hear of Persia producing anything worth mentioning unless it was Turkish rugs and Maltese cats.
That spring me and Idaho struck pay ore. It was a habit of ours to sell out quick and keep moving. We unloaded our grubstaker for eight thousand dollars apiece; and then we drifted down to this little town of Rosa, on the Salmon river, to rest up, and get some human grub, and have our whiskers harvested.
Rosa was no mining-camp. It laid in the valley, and was as free of uproar and pestilence as one of them rural towns in the country. There was a three-mile trolley line champing its bit in the environs; and me and Idaho spent a week riding on one of the cars, dropping off at nights at the Sunset View Hotel. Being now well read as well as travelled, we was soon pro re nata with the best society in Rosa, and was invited out to the most dressed-up and high-toned entertainments. It was at a piano recital and quail-eating contest in the city hall, for the benefit of the fire company, that me and Idaho first met Mrs. De Ormond Sampson, the queen of Rosa society.
Mrs. Sampson was a widow, and owned the only two-story house in town. It was painted yellow, and whichever way you looked from you could see it as plain as egg on the chin of an O'Grady on a Friday. Twenty-two men in Rosa besides me and Idaho was trying to stake a claim on that yellow house.
There was a dance after the song books and quail bones had been raked out of the Hall. Twenty-three of the bunch galloped over to Mrs. Sampson and asked for a dance. I side-stepped the two-step, and asked permission to escort her home. That's where I made a hit.
On the way home says she:
"Ain't the stars lovely and bright to-night, Mr. Pratt?"
"For the chance they've got," says I, "they're humping themselves in a mighty creditable way. That big one you see is sixty-six million miles distant. It took thirty-six years for its light to reach us. With an eighteen-foot telescope you can see forty-three millions of 'em, including them of the thirteenth magnitude, which, if one was to go out now, you would keep on seeing it for twenty-seven hundred years."
"My!" says Mrs. Sampson. "I never knew that before. How warm it is! I'm as damp as I can be from dancing so much."
"That's easy to account for," says I, "when you happen to know that you've got two million sweat-glands working all at once. If every one of your perspiratory ducts, which are a quarter of an inch long, was placed end to end, they would reach a distance of seven miles."
"Lawsy!" says Mrs. Sampson. "It sounds like an irrigation ditch you was describing, Mr. Pratt. How do you get all this knowledge of information?"
"From observation, Mrs. Sampson," I tells her. "I keep my eyes open when I go about the world."
"Mr. Pratt," says she, "I always did admire a man of education. There are so few scholars among the sap-headed plug-uglies of this town that it is a real pleasure to converse with a gentleman of culture. I'd be gratified to have you call at my house whenever you feel so inclined."
And that was the way I got the goodwill of the lady in the yellow house. Every Tuesday and Friday evening I used to go there and tell her about the wonders of the universe as discovered, tabulated, and compiled from nature by Herkimer. Idaho and the other gay Lutherans of the town got every minute of the rest of the week that they could.
I never imagined that Idaho was trying to work on Mrs. Sampson with old K. M.'s rules of courtship till one afternoon when I was on my way over to take her a basket of wild hog-plums. I met the lady coming down the lane that led to her house. Her eyes was snapping, and her hat made a dangerous dip over one eye.
"Mr. Pratt," she opens up, "this Mr. Green is a friend of yours, I believe."
"For nine years," says I.
"Cut him out," says she. "He's no gentleman!"
"Why ma'am," says I, "he's a plain incumbent of the mountains, with asperities and the usual failings of a spendthrift and a liar, but I never on the most momentous occasion had the heart to deny that he was a gentleman. It may be that in haberdashery and the sense of arrogance and display Idaho offends the eye, but inside, ma'am, I've found him impervious to the lower grades of crime and obesity. After nine years of Idaho's society, Mrs. Sampson," I winds up, "I should hate to impute him, and I should hate to see him imputed."
"It's right plausible of you, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "to take up the curmudgeons in your friend's behalf; but it don't alter the fact that he has made proposals to me sufficiently obnoxious to ruffle the ignominy of any lady."
"Why, now, now, now!" says I. "Old Idaho do that! I could believe it of myself, sooner. I never knew but one thing to deride in him; and a blizzard was responsible for that. Once while we was snow-bound in the mountains he became a prey to a kind of spurious and uneven poetry, which may have corrupted his demeanour."
"It has," says Mrs. Sampson. "Ever since I knew him he has been reciting to me a lot of irreligious rhymes by some person he calls Ruby Ott, and who is no better than she should be, if you judge by her poetry."
"Then Idaho has struck a new book," says I, "for the one he had was by a man who writes under the nom de plume of K. M."
"He'd better have stuck to it," says Mrs. Sampson, "whatever it was. And to-day he caps the vortex. I get a bunch of flowers from him, and on 'em is pinned a note. Now, Mr. Pratt, you know a lady when you see her; and you know how I stand in Rosa society. Do you think for a moment that I'd skip out to the woods with a man along with a jug of wine and a loaf of bread, and go singing and cavorting up and down under the trees with him? I take a little claret with my meals, but I'm not in the habit of packing a jug of it into the brush and raising Cain in any such style as that. And of course he'd bring his book of verses along, too. He said so. Let him go on his scandalous picnics alone! Or let him take his Ruby Ott with him. I reckon she wouldn't kick unless it was on account of there being too much bread along. And what do you think of your gentleman friend now, Mr. Pratt?"
"Well, 'm," says I, "it may be that Idaho's invitation was a kind of poetry, and meant no harm. Maybe it belonged to the class of rhymes they call figurative. They offend law and order, but they get sent through the mails on the grounds that they mean something that they don't say. I'd be glad on Idaho's account if you'd overlook it," says I, "and let us extricate our minds from the low regions of poetry to the higher planes of fact and fancy. On a beautiful afternoon like this, Mrs. Sampson," I goes on, "we should let our thoughts dwell accordingly. Though it is warm here, we should remember that at the equator the line of perpetual frost is at an altitude of fifteen thousand feet. Between the latitudes of forty degrees and forty-nine degrees it is from four thousand to nine thousand feet."
"Oh, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson, "it's such a comfort to hear you say them beautiful facts after getting such a jar from that minx of a Ruby's poetry!"
"Let us sit on this log at the roadside," says I, "and forget the inhumanity and ribaldry of the poets. It is in the glorious columns of ascertained facts and legalised measures that beauty is to be found. In this very log we sit upon, Mrs. Sampson," says I, "is statistics more wonderful than any poem. The rings show it was sixty years old. At the depth of two thousand feet it would become coal in three thousand years. The deepest coal mine in the world is at Killingworth, near Newcastle. A box four feet long, three feet wide, and two feet eight inches deep will hold one ton of coal. If an artery is cut, compress it above the wound. A man's leg contains thirty bones. The Tower of London was burned in 1841."
"Go on, Mr. Pratt," says Mrs. Sampson. "Them ideas is so original and soothing. I think statistics are just as lovely as they can be."
But it wasn't till two weeks later that I got all that was coming to me out of Herkimer.
One night I was waked up by folks hollering "Fire!" all around. I jumped up and dressed and went out of the hotel to enjoy the scene. When I see it was Mrs. Sampson's house, I gave forth a kind of yell, and I was there in two minutes.
The whole lower story of the yellow house was in flames, and every masculine, feminine, and canine in Rosa was there, screeching and barking and getting in the way of the firemen. I saw Idaho trying to get away from six firemen who were holding him. They was telling him the whole place was on fire down-stairs, and no man could go in it and come out alive.
"Where's Mrs. Sampson?" I asks.
"She hasn't been seen," says one of the firemen. "She sleeps up-stairs. We've tried to get in, but we can't, and our company hasn't got any ladders yet."
I runs around to the light of the big blaze, and pulls the Handbook out of my inside pocket. I kind of laughed when I felt it in my hands—I reckon I was some daffy with the sensation of excitement.
"Herky, old boy," I says to it, as I flipped over the pages, "you ain't ever lied to me yet, and you ain't ever throwed me down at a scratch yet. Tell me what, old boy, tell me what!" says I.
I turned to "What to do in Case of Accidents," on page 117. I run my finger down the page, and struck it. Good old Herkimer, he never overlooked anything! It said:
Suffocation from Inhaling Smoke or Gas.—There is nothing better than flaxseed. Place a few seed in the outer corner of the eye.
I shoved the Handbook back in my pocket, and grabbed a boy that was running by.
"Here," says I, giving him some money, "run to the drug store and bring a dollar's worth of flaxseed. Hurry, and you'll get another one for yourself. Now," I sings out to the crowd, "we'll have Mrs. Sampson!" And I throws away my coat and hat.
Four of the firemen and citizens grabs hold of me. It's sure death, they say, to go in the house, for the floors was beginning to fall through.
"How in blazes," I sings out, kind of laughing yet, but not feeling like it, "do you expect me to put flaxseed in a eye without the eye?"
I jabbed each elbow in a fireman's face, kicked the bark off of one citizen's shin, and tripped the other one with a side hold. And then I busted into the house. If I die first I'll write you a letter and tell you if it's any worse down there than the inside of that yellow house was; but don't believe it yet. I was a heap more cooked than the hurry-up orders of broiled chicken that you get in restaurants. The fire and smoke had me down on the floor twice, and was about to shame Herkimer, but the firemen helped me with their little stream of water, and I got to Mrs. Sampson's room. She'd lost conscientiousness from the smoke, so I wrapped her in the bed clothes and got her on my shoulder. Well, the floors wasn't as bad as they said, or I never could have done it—not by no means.
I carried her out fifty yards from the house and laid her on the grass. Then, of course, every one of them other twenty-two plaintiff's to the lady's hand crowded around with tin dippers of water ready to save her. And up runs the boy with the flaxseed.
I unwrapped the covers from Mrs. Sampson's head. She opened her eyes and says:
"Is that you, Mr. Pratt?"
"S-s-sh," says I. "Don't talk till you've had the remedy."
I runs my arm around her neck and raises her head, gentle, and breaks the bag of flaxseed with the other hand; and as easy as I could I bends over and slips three or four of the seeds in the outer corner of her eye.
Up gallops the village doc by this time, and snorts around, and grabs at Mrs. Sampson's pulse, and wants to know what I mean by any such sandblasted nonsense.
"Well, old Jalap and Jerusalem oakseed," says I, "I'm no regular practitioner, but I'll show you my authority, anyway."
They fetched my coat, and I gets out the Handbook.
"Look on page 117," says I, "at the remedy for suffocation by smoke or gas. Flaxseed in the outer corner of the eye, it says. I don't know whether it works as a smoke consumer or whether it hikes the compound gastro-hippopotamus nerve into action, but Herkimer says it, and he was called to the case first. If you want to make it a consultation, there's no objection."
Old doc takes the book and looks at it by means of his specs and a fireman's lantern.
"Well, Mr. Pratt," says he, "you evidently got on the wrong line in reading your diagnosis. The recipe for suffocation says: 'Get the patient into fresh air as quickly as possible, and place in a reclining position.' The flaxseed remedy is for 'Dust and Cinders in the Eye,' on the line above. But, after all——"
"See here," interrupts Mrs. Sampson, "I reckon I've got something to say in this consultation. That flaxseed done me more good than anything I ever tried." And then she raises up her head and lays it back on my arm again, and says: "Put some in the other eye, Sandy dear."
And so if you was to stop off at Rosa to-morrow, or any other day, you'd see a fine new yellow house with Mrs. Pratt, that was Mrs. Sampson, embellishing and adorning it. And if you was to step inside you'd see on the marble-top centre table in the parlour "Herkimer's Handbook of Indispensable Information," all rebound in red morocco, and ready to be consulted on any subject pertaining to human happiness and wisdom.
Friday, May 01, 2020
Donna Trump
Kevin said "Donna Trump" this morning, conflating a mutual friend and the 45th POTUS.
Freudian slip, eggcorn, malapropism, lapsis or simply a pun; who knows?
When you're right, you're right.
Freudian slip, eggcorn, malapropism, lapsis or simply a pun; who knows?
When you're right, you're right.
Thursday, April 30, 2020
Funeral
I have to deliver the eulogy and a poem at a funeral lunchtime.
The poem is called "Weep Not For Me." It is in ballad metre which comprises couplets of tetrameter (four feet) and trimeter (three feet).
The trouble is that the sixth couplet seems to consist of two tetrameters, which throws the rhythm off as there are two extra syllables in its second line.
Line twelve as written is
At least no one can accuse me of failing to prepare.
The poem is called "Weep Not For Me." It is in ballad metre which comprises couplets of tetrameter (four feet) and trimeter (three feet).
The trouble is that the sixth couplet seems to consist of two tetrameters, which throws the rhythm off as there are two extra syllables in its second line.
Line twelve as written is
In your memory I live onbut I will deliver
In mem'ry I live onto preserve the shape.
At least no one can accuse me of failing to prepare.
Wednesday, April 29, 2020
More Lock-Down Diaries
I lent Helen a book yesterday. It came up on a WhatsApp conversation and I had a copy on the shelves. They only live around the corner so I put it through the letterbox. It only struck me later how odd it was not to have have rung the door bell and handed it to an actual human being.
I don't like this new normal.
Peter told me the other day that he called a neighbor asking to borrow a little dehydrated stock because he had run out. He got the thumbs up and popped next door to find a single OXO cube on the door step.
I don't like this new normal.
I don't like this new normal.
Peter told me the other day that he called a neighbor asking to borrow a little dehydrated stock because he had run out. He got the thumbs up and popped next door to find a single OXO cube on the door step.
I don't like this new normal.
Tuesday, April 28, 2020
Lock-Down Diaries
Kevin showed me a photo of a wall he had white washed in his garden.
I was very interested to see it.
I was very interested to see it.
Monday, April 27, 2020
1 Corinthians 13
I didn't think I would even be going to Jane's mum's funeral on Friday what with social distancing and lock-down restrictions. Not only am I going, I have been asked to do a reading. I am humbled.
Moving from something serious to something less so, my finest ever reading at a solemn occasion was 1 Corinthians 13 at Kevin's third wedding.
"It keeps no record of wrongs." Repeat to fade.
Moving from something serious to something less so, my finest ever reading at a solemn occasion was 1 Corinthians 13 at Kevin's third wedding.
If I speak in the tongues of men and of angels, but have not love, I am only a resounding gong or a clanging cymbal. If I have the gift of prophecy and can fathom all mysteries and all knowledge, and if I have a faith that can move mountains, but have not love, I am nothing. If I give all I possess to the poor, and surrender my body to the flames, but have not love, I gain nothing.
Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs. Love does not delight in evil, but rejoices with the truth. It always protects, always trusts, always hopes, always perseveres.
Love never fails. But where there are prophecies, they will cease; where there are tongues, they will be stilled; where there is knowledge, it will pass away. For we know in part and we prophesy in part, but when perfection comes, the imperfect disappears.
When I was a child, I thought like a child, I reasoned like a child. When I became a man, I put childish ways behind me. Now we see but a poor reflection as in a mirror; then we shall see face to face. Now I know in part; then I shall know fully, even as I am fully known.
And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud. It is not rude, it is not self-seeking, it is not easily angered, it keeps no record of wrongs." When I think about what I got up to the night before it is no wonder I delivered that particular verse with such feeling and sincerity.
"It keeps no record of wrongs." Repeat to fade.
Sunday, April 26, 2020
Saturday, April 25, 2020
What about me?
I have found out that there is a second 1 Giant Leap album What About Me? (2008). I can't seem to find it anywhere though. Any ideas?
Friday, April 24, 2020
Living In A Ghost Town.
The Stones' lock-down single, fresh off the press. "When you absolutely, positively got to kill every motherfecker in the room, accept no substitutes."
Thursday, April 23, 2020
Working from home
On your Windows 10 PC, open the Notifications section by clicking on the text message icon at the bottom right of the screen (it could also be empty if you have no notifications).
Click on Connect. If you don't see Connect click expand above the four boxes at the bottom of the section.
After clicking Connect, you should see your Firestick listed if both devices are on the same Wi-Fi network.
Click on the Firestick listed and it should connect. You should now see your PC screen mirrored on the TV that the Firestick is plugged into.
Projection Modes
Duplicate — This is the default projection mode and basically mirrors everything that’s happening on your PC. This is ideal if you want to share something on a larger screen but won’t need to use the PC. By default, Windows 10 also silences any notifications so they don’t pop up while your sharing something.
Extended — This enables using the Firestick and your TV as a second screen. It’s the better option if you’re looking to stream from a PC to a Firestick while using the former.
Second screen only — This mode lets you use the larger screen as the primary display.
Wednesday, April 22, 2020
Nation Close To Getting Video Conferencing Software To Work
The Onion
Social distancing is changing the way we communicate with one another. Today, hear how more Americans are making an effort to stay connected with loved ones and colleagues through sh1tty video conferencing software that just won’t fecking work.
Tuesday, April 21, 2020
Reithian values
Why doesn't the BBC explain anything any more?
The news on the Today Programme at six o'clock this morning was screaming about US oil prices turning negative for the first time in history, without throwing any light at all on what this extraordinary development might mean. The common sense interpretation would be that suppliers were paying customers to take the black stuff off their hands.
Luckily for you, when I did my MBA my final project was called "Delayed Cash and Carry Arbitrage Opportunities on the New York Mercantile Exchange." It was about oil futures.
A futures market is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts; that is, a contract to buy specific quantities of a commodity or financial instrument at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future. Futures markets are used for hedging, and cleared off against each other with money. No product changes hands.
The negative price was for NYMEX futures maturing in May for West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the benchmark for US oil.
We need to contrast futures markets with spot markets. A spot market is a public financial market in which financial instruments or commodities are traded for immediate delivery. As I write this, the WTI Crude Oil Spot Price is $28.36. A negative spot market price ain't gonna happen because suppliers will shut down production first.
The news on the Today Programme at six o'clock this morning was screaming about US oil prices turning negative for the first time in history, without throwing any light at all on what this extraordinary development might mean. The common sense interpretation would be that suppliers were paying customers to take the black stuff off their hands.
Luckily for you, when I did my MBA my final project was called "Delayed Cash and Carry Arbitrage Opportunities on the New York Mercantile Exchange." It was about oil futures.
A futures market is a central financial exchange where people can trade standardized futures contracts; that is, a contract to buy specific quantities of a commodity or financial instrument at a specified price with delivery set at a specified time in the future. Futures markets are used for hedging, and cleared off against each other with money. No product changes hands.
The negative price was for NYMEX futures maturing in May for West Texas Intermediate (WTI), the benchmark for US oil.
We need to contrast futures markets with spot markets. A spot market is a public financial market in which financial instruments or commodities are traded for immediate delivery. As I write this, the WTI Crude Oil Spot Price is $28.36. A negative spot market price ain't gonna happen because suppliers will shut down production first.
Myself: Happy?
Prodnose: Ecstatic ..... words can hardly express ........ thanks for sharing
Monday, April 20, 2020
Villanelle
Slowly the poison the whole blood stream fills.
The waste remains, the waste remains and kills.I had to look this quote up yesterday. It's from a villanelle by William Empson.
Form
The villanelle consists of five stanzas of three lines (tercets) followed by a single stanza of four lines (a quatrain) for a total of nineteen lines. It is structured by two repeating rhymes and two refrains: the first line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the second and fourth stanzas, and the third line of the first stanza serves as the last line of the third and fifth stanzas. The rhyme-and-refrain pattern of the villanelle can be schematized as 1b2 ab1 ab2 ab1 ab2 ab12 where letters ("a" and "b") indicate the two rhyme sounds and numerals (1 and 2) indicate Refrain 1 and Refrain 2, both of which rhyme with a.For all that the structure sounds more like a spreadsheet than a poem, Dylan Thomas' "Do Not Go Gentle into that Good Night" is a villanelle as well.
I'll be forced to attempt one of the blessed things now.
Sunday, April 19, 2020
The Old Man of the Mountain
We hit story III:8 in the Decameron today as we work thought it on lock down.
From what I can gather, idea of the Old Man of the Mountain comes from the Travels of Marco Polo, which was published in the early part of fourteenth century. (Bocaccio was writing around 1350.) Polo recounts a story he heard that the Old Man would drug his young followers with hashish, lead them to a "paradise", and then claim that only he had the means to allow for their return. This is what imbued the Assassins with their legendarily self-sacrificing loyalty.
Two things are pretty funny here. First that the character in the story is knocked out with powdered cannabis. Second that the Old Man of the Mountain used it to convince people they were in paradise, but the Abbot uses it to persuade someone he is in Purgatory. What could be more Catholic than that?
Ferondo, having swallowed a certain powder, is entombed for dead and being taken forth of the sepulchre by the abbot, who enjoyeth his wife the while, is put in prison and given to believe that he is in purgatory; after which, being raised up again, he reareth for his own a child begotten of the abbot on his wifeThe sleeping powder in it is described of having been obtained from the Old Man of the Mountain. The Old Man of the Mountain was the leader of the murderous sect of Assassins (in Syria and Persia as I recall). It is another example of the vast frame of reference a reader was expected to have.
From what I can gather, idea of the Old Man of the Mountain comes from the Travels of Marco Polo, which was published in the early part of fourteenth century. (Bocaccio was writing around 1350.) Polo recounts a story he heard that the Old Man would drug his young followers with hashish, lead them to a "paradise", and then claim that only he had the means to allow for their return. This is what imbued the Assassins with their legendarily self-sacrificing loyalty.
Two things are pretty funny here. First that the character in the story is knocked out with powdered cannabis. Second that the Old Man of the Mountain used it to convince people they were in paradise, but the Abbot uses it to persuade someone he is in Purgatory. What could be more Catholic than that?
Saturday, April 18, 2020
When I am grown to man's estate
I will try and talk to mum in Ty Enfys later today, or perhaps more accurately to yell at a picture of the top of her head over the sound of the television in her room.
Over the years it has gradually dawned on me that, back in the day, when I thought she was being daft she was pulling my leg. I remember her reacting to Elvis Costello's spazzy dancing in the video above by saying how inspiring it was that whatever wasting disease he had wasn't going to stop him trying to make it in the music business.
Dad also played a full part in my parents' psychological warfare against me. "If you're going to be a mediocrity be the best mediocrity you can!" was typical encouragement.
Friday, April 17, 2020
No lockdown end in sight
Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience. They may be more likely to go to Heaven yet at the same time likelier to make a Hell of earth. This very kindness stings with intolerable insult. To be "cured" against one's will and cured of states which we may not regard as disease is to be put on a level of those who have not yet reached the age of reason or those who never will; to be classed with infants, imbeciles, and domestic animals.C.S. Lewis
Thursday, April 16, 2020
The Plague
The townspeople of Oran are in the grip of a deadly plague, which condemns its victims to a swift and horrifying death. Fear, isolation and claustrophobia follow as they are forced into quarantine. Each person responds in their own way to the lethal disease: some resign themselves to fate, some seek blame, and a few, like Dr. Rieux, resist the terror. An immediate triumph when it was published in 1947, "The Plague" is in part an allegory of France's suffering under the Nazi occupation, and a story of bravery and determination against the precariousness of human existence.I am reading The Decameron (Icons passim) one story a day during lock down and polished off story 25 this morning. As a decision to shut us in for another three weeks is likely to be announced to day there is probably room on my Covid-19 reading list for this as well.
Wednesday, April 15, 2020
You gotta move
I have pretty much clicked into a lock down exercise routine of bike one day and kettle-bell the next.
As a rule I have been doing kettle-bell swings to move my anterior chain in the opposite direction to crouching over a bike.
Yesterday I thought I would try the Turkish Get-Up. I couldn't do it with the kettle-bell. I tried again without the kettle-bell and found I couldn't do it at all. The lesson is that you have to drill motor skills. I have done one unloaded each side this morning. Watch this space.
It reminds me of something that struck me riding a real bike around the streets as opposed to a static exercise device. I think that the balance and control work done navigating fine turns very slowly (on the way from the road to the recreation ground for instance) may be as important as putting the hammer down.
As a rule I have been doing kettle-bell swings to move my anterior chain in the opposite direction to crouching over a bike.
Yesterday I thought I would try the Turkish Get-Up. I couldn't do it with the kettle-bell. I tried again without the kettle-bell and found I couldn't do it at all. The lesson is that you have to drill motor skills. I have done one unloaded each side this morning. Watch this space.
It reminds me of something that struck me riding a real bike around the streets as opposed to a static exercise device. I think that the balance and control work done navigating fine turns very slowly (on the way from the road to the recreation ground for instance) may be as important as putting the hammer down.
You may be high
You may be low
You may be rich, child
You may be poor
But when the Lord get ready
You gotta move
Tuesday, April 14, 2020
I'm falling as fast as I can
Lock down is starting to get to me. I couldn't find one of my shoes this morning until I discovered it on top of the microwave. Yesterday when I slipped my keys into my pocket before going out to the Co-op I found my trousers were on back to front, and the day before that I absent-mindedly popped a little ball of Blu Tack I was rolling between my finger tips into my mouth.
As I post this 5 Hours of The Shipping Forecast on BBC Radio 4! has got 482,245 views on YouTube. Let's see if we can get that up to half a million.
Monday, April 13, 2020
Alexa play AC/DC everywhere
I always thought that AC/DC were long time streaming media refuseniks, but I discovered yesterday that loads of their catalogue is available on Amazon Prime Music.
If we all play it at the same time it may put pressure on the government to let us out again.
Like all applauding the NHS workers simultaneously, but in our case, without any redeeming features or empathy whatsoever.
If we all play it at the same time it may put pressure on the government to let us out again.
Like all applauding the NHS workers simultaneously, but in our case, without any redeeming features or empathy whatsoever.
AC/DC: Rock 'N' Roll Ain't Noise Pollution.
Myself: Rock 'N' Roll IS Noise Pollution That's kinda the point.
Sunday, April 12, 2020
Easter
20 Early on Sunday morning,[a] while it was still dark, Mary Magdalene came to the tomb and found that the stone had been rolled away from the entrance. She ran and found Simon Peter and the other disciple, the one whom Jesus loved. She said, “They have taken the Lord’s body out of the tomb, and we don’t know where they have put him!”Government Advice
Peter and the other disciple started out for the tomb. They were both running, but the other disciple outran Peter and reached the tomb first. He stooped and looked in and saw the linen wrappings lying there, but he didn’t go in. Then Simon Peter arrived and went inside. He also noticed the linen wrappings lying there, while the cloth that had covered Jesus’ head was folded up and lying apart from the other wrappings. Then the disciple who had reached the tomb first also went in, and he saw and believed -for until then they still hadn’t understood the Scriptures that said Jesus must rise from the dead. Then they went home.
Stay in tomb.
Only go outside to provide salvation, eternal life, or to do your heavenly father's work (but only if you cannot work from tomb).
Wash your hands (but not others' feet) as soon as you return.
Do not appear before others, even disciples or family.
Saturday, April 11, 2020
We've all got our problems darlin'
She is working at hospital all day today while he is at home with the kids.
When I went to the Co-op at the bottom of the road first thing this morning I found it had changed its opening time from 7 am to 8, and I had to go to the one by the tube station instead to buy some apples.
Difficult days but we are all taking our lumps in our own ways.
Friday, April 10, 2020
Good Friday
Good Friday; it's difficult to see what is "good" about it. According to the Bible, it is the day the son of God was flogged, ordered to carry the cross on which he would be crucified and then put to death.
This is where the BBC comes in handy.
It also says that the day is known as "the Holy and Great Friday" in the Greek liturgy, "Holy Friday" in Romance Languages and Karfreitag (Sorrowful Friday) in German.The Catholic Encyclopedia, first published in 1907, states that the term's origins are not clear. It says some sources see its origins in the term "God's Friday" or Gottes Freitag, while others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag. It notes that the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons and is referred to as such in modern Danish.
This is where the BBC comes in handy.
Some sources suggest that the day is "good" in that it is holy, or that the phrase is a corruption of "God's Friday".
However, according to Fiona MacPherson, senior editor at the Oxford English Dictionary, the adjective traditionally "designates a day on (or sometimes a season in) which religious observance is held". The OED states that "good" in this context refers to "a day or season observed as holy by the church", hence the greeting "good tide" at Christmas or on Shrove Tuesday. In addition to Good Friday, there is also a less well-known Good Wednesday, namely the Wednesday before Easter.
The earliest known use of "guode friday" is found in The South English Legendary, a text from around 1290, according to the dictionary. According to the Baltimore Catechism - the standard US Catholic school text from 1885 to the 1960s, Good Friday is good because Christ "showed His great love for man, and purchased for him every blessing".
It also says that the day is known as "the Holy and Great Friday" in the Greek liturgy, "Holy Friday" in Romance Languages and Karfreitag (Sorrowful Friday) in German.The Catholic Encyclopedia, first published in 1907, states that the term's origins are not clear. It says some sources see its origins in the term "God's Friday" or Gottes Freitag, while others maintain that it is from the German Gute Freitag. It notes that the day was called Long Friday by the Anglo-Saxons and is referred to as such in modern Danish.
Thursday, April 09, 2020
Flights of Angels Sing Thee to Thy Rest
Ben's maternal grandmother, as expected, has died.
It was peacefully at home and he had been around in the afternoon to mow her lawn, so he saw her (and she saw him) on the last day of her life.
Social distancing applies to funerals too.
It was peacefully at home and he had been around in the afternoon to mow her lawn, so he saw her (and she saw him) on the last day of her life.
Social distancing applies to funerals too.
Wednesday, April 08, 2020
Rewind
Official video for ‘Rewind’ by Bainbridge & Co. Shot over 2 days in Leeds on a budget of £80.Herewith the new single from Sid's band. He co-wrote it with the singer and plays bass and guitar on the track. (You will need to place your hands over the ears of your maiden aunt for some of the lyrics.)
I really like it. Also available on Spotify.
Tuesday, April 07, 2020
Wally Nightingale
I was talking to Peter on Sunday night about the legend of the Sex Pistols (and their stolen gear) getting their start at the Riverside Studios in the mid 70s.
He confirmed it and started talking about someone called Wally Nightingale.
I thought he had gone barmy, but no .......
See http://www.philjens.plus.com/pistols/pistols/pistols_wally.htm
He confirmed it and started talking about someone called Wally Nightingale.
I thought he had gone barmy, but no .......
See http://www.philjens.plus.com/pistols/pistols/pistols_wally.htm
Monday, April 06, 2020
Survivalist
The son and heir is now attempting to craft fishing hooks from his mother's old sewing needles.
I think he is predicting a long lock down.
I think he is predicting a long lock down.
Sunday, April 05, 2020
Always read the label
I have got a story about me being an idiot that might entertain you. When my brother John comes up for the weekend we have been known to kick Saturday off with a Nihari curry in the Lahore Karahi in Tooting. Yes there is such a thing as a breakfast curry, and last time John was here I gave him a Tooting-sourced box of two sachets of Laziza Nehari recipe and seasoning mix.
One day this week I got worried that I was going down with Covid-19. I had a terrible sore throat, I was sneezing and had a dry cough. Eventually though I tracked it back to the home made Nihari I had cooked. It had provoked my soft tissues beyond endurance. Hence the symptoms.
I was on a Skype call with John (and my mother) yesterday and warned him against the potency of the masala I had given him. Obviously I don't want him to go through what I did.
John disappeared from Skype off to his pantry or kitchen and came back with the two sachet box in his hand. He presented it to his PC's camera and pointed out that "Serves 14-16" was printed on it. Not "Serves 1-2."
My suffering was not unrelated to the fact I had taken in at least seven times as much spice as the average Nihari fancier, and the Nihari connoisseur, as a rule, is generally no slouch in this department.
One day this week I got worried that I was going down with Covid-19. I had a terrible sore throat, I was sneezing and had a dry cough. Eventually though I tracked it back to the home made Nihari I had cooked. It had provoked my soft tissues beyond endurance. Hence the symptoms.
I was on a Skype call with John (and my mother) yesterday and warned him against the potency of the masala I had given him. Obviously I don't want him to go through what I did.
John disappeared from Skype off to his pantry or kitchen and came back with the two sachet box in his hand. He presented it to his PC's camera and pointed out that "Serves 14-16" was printed on it. Not "Serves 1-2."
My suffering was not unrelated to the fact I had taken in at least seven times as much spice as the average Nihari fancier, and the Nihari connoisseur, as a rule, is generally no slouch in this department.
Saturday, April 04, 2020
It does not do to dwell on dreams and forget to live.
Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone, which was released as Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone in the US, is now free to stream on Audible. It’s the version narrated by Stephen Fry, and part of a series of initiatives launched by JK Rowling and friends to keep everyone entertained while they’re cooped up at home.
You can get it at https://stories.audible.com/pdp/B017V54W6O.
I remember buying the Fry audiobook on CD as it was unabridged and would last long enough to keep Rayburn amused on a trip driving to West Wales (a mission in which it succeeded) to see Vince and Michele.
The CD version came out in 1999. I am pretty sure neither Ben nor Isaac were born at the time of the trip, and they came into the world in 2000, so it could be coming up for 21 years ago.
You can get it at https://stories.audible.com/pdp/B017V54W6O.
I remember buying the Fry audiobook on CD as it was unabridged and would last long enough to keep Rayburn amused on a trip driving to West Wales (a mission in which it succeeded) to see Vince and Michele.
The CD version came out in 1999. I am pretty sure neither Ben nor Isaac were born at the time of the trip, and they came into the world in 2000, so it could be coming up for 21 years ago.
Friday, April 03, 2020
Eddie Large
Nearly seven years ago, a bunch of us went away to Somerset for the weekend (Icons passim) as a sort of stag do for Andy's upcoming wedding. (The wedding never happened but that is another story.)
I remembered the trip yesterday when I head that Eddie Large, the comedian had died aged 78 with coronavirus.
A lot of Andy's friends on the trip were musicians like him, and back in the day good players, once they got to around 17 or 18, could get gigs in big nightclubs supporting variety acts.
I don't know how it came up, but all these guys absolutely loved Eddie Large, describing him as one of the nicest, friendliest, most helpful people they had ever worked with.
I particularly recall a drummer (who'd been hit on the head with a cymbal by his disgruntled girl friend) telling me that Large had driven him to hospital in his own car telling him not to worry about bleeding all over the upholstery,
If they all remembered him as a sweetheart decades later that must have been what he was.
(I also heard a lot of anecdotes about other people's bad behaviour, but those must wait for another day.)
I remembered the trip yesterday when I head that Eddie Large, the comedian had died aged 78 with coronavirus.
A lot of Andy's friends on the trip were musicians like him, and back in the day good players, once they got to around 17 or 18, could get gigs in big nightclubs supporting variety acts.
I don't know how it came up, but all these guys absolutely loved Eddie Large, describing him as one of the nicest, friendliest, most helpful people they had ever worked with.
I particularly recall a drummer (who'd been hit on the head with a cymbal by his disgruntled girl friend) telling me that Large had driven him to hospital in his own car telling him not to worry about bleeding all over the upholstery,
If they all remembered him as a sweetheart decades later that must have been what he was.
(I also heard a lot of anecdotes about other people's bad behaviour, but those must wait for another day.)
Thursday, April 02, 2020
LockDown Licks
Ollie's cousin Guy Pratt is giving us free bass lessons online while we are all stuck at home and Kevin lent me a bass a little while back.
I have no excuse for not coming out of this Long Dark Night of the Soul funkier.
Wednesday, April 01, 2020
Can I Confess Something?
I know we are not so far into this lock down, but I have all but become Christopher Walken's Duane from Annie Hall. That said I reckon this may be among the funniest two minutes in movie history.
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