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Bayan time (20): busy week

August 22, 2013, 9:29 am
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Detail from The 'Sham performance
Busy week musically: on Tuesday I played two spots at Matthews Hall for the Topsham Town Fayre Musical Extravaganza (as backing for the singer-guitarist John 'Wafty' Waft, and with The 'Sham, a band put together from regular TOPJAM members) - see the Exeter Express & Echo gallery - and the previous Sunday I was part of a small group providing music for a street picnic in Topsham.

It's a very good feeling. I've been playing bayan for around two-and-a-half years now, and feel I've overcome the performance anxiety that still dogged me a year ago; I can tell it's there at some level (I get very warm, and feel a little hyper after playing), but it doesn't seem to get as far as my fingers. It also feels good to be developing a distinct style and area of specialisation; Ben Beeson, who directed The Mysteries earlier this year, said I was good at "comping" - impromptu and appropriate accompaniment - and I'm enjoying developing this skill as well as solo playing. The 'Sham was an interesting line-up of acoustic guitars, bass, vocals, keyboard, accordion, cello and congas, playing original material by Dan Durdin.

The bayan's compressed right-hand scale enables very rich chord and melody playing, and I've increasingly found that for band work, it's easier to just play the right hand. This is partly because other people are doing bass and bass chords far more audibly, and partly because it's rather difficult to mike up the bass keyboard, which moves with the bellows. I went through a stage of angst, feeling it was an unskilled cop-out to play this way, but I was very encouraged by a spot of Googling and looking at YouTube - it finds plenty of other backing players, far better than me, doing exactly the same (watch the accordionist in Värttinä's Nahkaruoska - below -  who is not using his left hand at all). A static microphone on a stand picks up the right hand pretty well, though I'm investigating the idea of getting a dedicated accordion microphone, a three-element bar microphone that sticks with Velcro next to the grille. They do cost at least £80, however. Decisions ...

I admit, by the way, that it really tickles me being the bald-ish tattooed accordionist at the side of the band. I've never - in life in general - wanted to be at the front of things, but being distinctive and essential in the near background is very satisfying.


Check out the accordionist playing right hand only - clearly I'm not doing it wrong.

- Ray
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Sidmouth to Beer - 'lite' version - #2

August 25, 2013, 5:54 am
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View Donkey Sanctuary to Beer in a larger map

Continued from Sidmouth to Beer - 'lite' version - #1.

So I'd just looked at Berry Cliff and the undercliff below it. At this point, as you continue eastward, the South West Coast Path joins a woodland track through quite complicated terrain: a blade of land with steep hillside on the left; sea cliff on the right; and the top comprising weird hummocky woodland whose nature appears to be partly down to geology, and partly to long-bygone lime quarrying. You can see in this old image from the Branscombe Project what it was like before the tree cover.

I didn't take many photos of the woods. I don't know if anyone else finds woodland difficult to photograph; the sheer depth is difficult to convey. I've found stereopairs often do the trick.

Crossed-eye stereopair - click to enlarge
After about three-quarters of mile, the woodland starts to thin out, with views to the left down into Branscombe, and ahead to the Hooken Undercliff, and you descend steeply to Branscombe Mouth. Here's there's a shop, parking, toilets, and a cafe called the Sea Shanty with a pretty little rock garden. The cafe is surprisingly old: check out the Branscombe Project's postcard collection, which has interesting pictures of the building in 1910 in its original incarnation as a lookout and walled coal yard. It was converted into a beach café in the late 1920s by a local pebble merchant Clem Ford (before Branscombe Beach become a National Trust site, its pebbles were extracted for silica and grinding mills). Another document - Working The Stones Of Branscombe: From Flint-Knappers To Pebble-Pickers, by John Torrance - is a brilliant account of how the locale's varied geology was exploited historically, in ways still reflected in its landscape and buildings.

View across Branscombe valley
Looking across Branscombe Mouth
Distant view over 'plats' to the Hooken Undercliff
Branscombe Mouth and the Sea Shanty
Branscombe Mouth
 From Branscombe Mouth, a short climb takes you up to the small holiday park built on the site of 'plats' (sloping cliffside fields) then along a rambling undercliff path below chalk cliffs. It skirts a couple of fallen blocks, including a large one called Martin's Rock, before hitting a stiff climb through the Hooken Undercliff, site of a 1790 landslip (for history, see the previous Hooken Undercliff and beyond). This is my favourite location on the East Devon coast; on a hot day such as this, its microclimate - the consequence of this densely-vegetated gorge being trapped between cliffs and seaward pinnacles - gave a jungle-like humidity, and it smelled of the profusion of white and purple buddleia.

Buddleia
Martin's Rock

Looking ahead to the Under Hooken landslip
Looking back to Martin's Rock
Climbing out of the 'jungle' ...
... and finally the full vista from Beer Head
I've mentioned before Arthur Clayden's The history of Devonshire scenery; an essay in geographical evolution (Internet Archive ID historyofdevonsh00clayrich), but this time I was really geeky and took a print of this this 1906 view, in order to take a comparison photo from as close to the same viewpoint I could find. Even 200+ years after the landslip, the land was still open pasture, and you can just see one of the plats in the near distance. This pattern of modern overgrowth is a repeated one; it's undoubtedly good for wildlife conservation, but it seems a pity that it hides and makes inaccessible many striking landscapes.


Once at Beer Head, it's an easy descent to Beer village. On the way, there are good views of the western end of the Axmouth-Lyme Undercliff, and even beyond to Golden Cap in Dorset. That's for another day ...

From Beer Head, looking across to Axmouth and the Lyme Undercliff
Lyme Undercliff (Culverhole Point) and Golden Cap beyond
Descending to Beer
- Ray
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Dark Night of the Soul

August 29, 2013, 2:54 pm
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Ola Gjeilo, Dark Night of the Soul, Phoenix Chorus

A musicalrecommendation: Ola Gjeilo (just found via his piece The Ground on Classic FM). He's a Norwegian-born composer of a rather lyrical repertoire - piano, choral, symphonic, neoclassical, crossover - with considerable inspiration in cinematic music. It's not the kind of weird stuff I usually like, but it's nevertheless quietly powerful. Check out his official site olagjeilo.com for more background.

On first encounter, I especially like Dark Night of the Soul, Gjeilo's wistfully ecstatic arrangement for choir, string quartet and piano (in a style somewhat akin to Thomas Newman) of the poem Dark Night by Juan de Yepes y Álvarez (1541-1591). This Spanish friar and mystic, better known as St John of the Cross, was heavily involved in religious politics during the Counter-Reformation, and in 1577 was arrested and imprisoned by his opponents; during his incarceration he wrote the poem La noche oscura del alma.

It's rather baffling to analyse. As explained in the Wikipedia article, Dark Night of the Soul, the author later wrote a theological treatise explaining its meaning: a narration in allegorical form of the journey of the soul from its bodily home to its union with God (the treatise is here at the Catholic Treasury) and subsequent critique largely takes this at face value. But I wonder at the psychology behind it. Was John sublimating? Was even he himself falling into the Christian tradition of explaining away overtly erotic texts as allegory (as in the explanation of the Song of Songs as "Christ's declaration of his love for the church")? Go figure - it's pretty well impossible to psychoanalyse a 16th century mystic. But not being religious, I can't understand the intellectual gymnastics required to construe this as anything but a brilliantly intense love poem written from a female viewpoint.
La noche oscura del alma (Dark night of the soul)

One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

On that glad night
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything
with no other light or guide
than the One that burned in my heart.

This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.

O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the Beloved into his Lover.

Upon my flowering breast,
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased;
I went out from myself,
leaving my cares forgotten among the lilies.

- St John of the Cross, trans. Kieran Kavanaugh and Otilio Rodriguez (1991)
- Ray
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Diamonds

August 31, 2013, 6:36 pm
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Another musical recommendation, in case Ola Gjeilo was too normal. I just ran into Steam Powered Giraffe: a brilliant performance art group popular on the steampunk convention circuit. Their persona is a group of robots, allegedly built in the late 1800s, who perform sketches, improvisation, and music. Check out their official website www.steampoweredgiraffe.com and YouTube channel.

I just love the above embedded video, one of their handful of singles. It's a cover of Rihanna's Diamonds, which I rate highly anyway, but with an added edge. It's a powerfully-sung version of Diamonds by David Michael Bennett as "The Spine", one of the robot characters who's the 'straight man' in the act. The outro reveals it as The Spine's reverie, which I'm sure many of us can relate to: of expressing his inner lyrical ecstatic self, before he's brought back to reality and his mundane companions, and left only with the regretful thought that "I am a diamond". Ignore the slightly comic presentation and robot giraffe: this is a superb cover, and I think I like it more than the Rihanna original.

- Ray
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Nelson gets a facelift

September 1, 2013, 4:41 pm
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New sign

Old sign #1
Old sign #2

I can be a little unobservant at times. Because it's so high above street level, I hadn't taken a close look at the new sign for The Nelson (formerly the Lord Nelson Inn) in Topsham; and nor had I noticed that the old ones are in the courtyard behind.

It's interesting to compare influences and styles. The old sign #1 is distinctly a piece of naive art; the old sign #2 is a rather stylised but more realistic portrait; and the new sign, reflecting the formal name change to The Nelson, is a very polished photorealistic depiction (anecdotally, I gather it was done by a Dutch graphics firm).

Old sign #2 / 1800 Heinrich Füger portrait (detail)
The old sign #2 (above) is closely based on Heinrich Füger's 1800 portrait, currently in the National Museum of the Royal Navy, Portsmouth.

Old sign #1 / Beechey portrait (detail)
The old sign #1 (above) looks to have based the uniform on one of the William Beechey portraits, with the face similar to that of the Heinrich Füger.

New sign / 1799 Abbott portrait (detail)
The new sign (above) is quite closely modelled on the 1799 Lemuel Francis Abbott portrait, currently in the Greenwich Hospital Collection (see Wikipedia). It slightly embellishes Nelson's uniform with the red sash from the Beechey depictions.

- Ray
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Silver!

September 3, 2013, 7:34 am
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A pertinent poem found in the Internet Archive:
SILVER WEDDING

The silver moon is in the sky,
The stars their silver light are shedding,
Where silver meadows silent lie,
That silver feet are softly treading.

A silver bridge the water spans,
Where silver fountains pure are flowing,
And fairy boats o'er silver sands
With silver oars are lightly rowing.

And silver voices, sweet and clear,
In silver tones are gayly singing;
While merry guests, afar and near,
Their costly silver gifts are bringing.

With empty hands but swelling heart,
A wreath of silver thoughts entwining,
I bring a gift of lowly art,
From my poetic silver mining.

    ——————————

In merry England's days of old,
When maids were fair and knights were bold,
A crusty old bachelor sat, one day,
Grumbling alone, and was heard to say
That never yet was there known a fight
By lord or vassal, yeoman or knight,
On any occasion, wrong or right,
But a woman was in the rout.
A gallant wit at once replied,
" The statement need not be denied ;
Nothing else is worth fighting about."

And now, in our degenerate time,
When lovers' battles are fought in rhyme,
When the iron armor worn of yore
Gives place to a baby's pinafore,
When the flashing sword that cut to the quick
Is changed for a dandy's walking-stick,
And chivalry stern, which wielded the lance,
Is dwindled down to such fine romance,
That every girl who is courted at all
Is courted under a " waterfall,"
While nameless animals build their lair
Within the folds of her shining hair;—
And heroes brave and stalwart men,
Who once were knighted the sons of Mars,
Are now but knights of Apollo's pen,
Who idle gaze at falling stars,
And vainly seek, with feeble will,
To rule the world with a gray goose quill.
E'en now that the sword is changed for the pen,
We hear it said by sensible men,
Not that woman, as maiden or wife,
Is the innocent cause of every strife,
But that woman is still the poet's dream,
And marriage is still the author's theme,
And whoever thinks to write a book,
On which the public will deign to look,—
A book to be anything but a miscarriage,—
Begins it with love and ends it with marriage ;
For not only youth and beauty incline
To worship together at Cupid's shrine,
But men and matrons are heard to sing
The praise of the matrimonial ring ;
And those who, seeking hymeneal bowers,
Are married at twenty with music and flowers,
Pleased with their chains, if both are alive,
Are married with SILVER at forty-five.
And so, it happens, to-night we are threading
The winding maze of a Silver Wedding.

But turn, my muse, and lift the veil
Where secrets of the past were said ;
Move backward on the track of time
Where five-and-twenty years have sped,
And bring a glimpse of life's fair morn
Of which this festive eve is born.

On TRURO'S shore, whose silver sand
Rolls back Atlantic's restless tide,
A boy and girl walk hand in hand,
A youth and maid sit side by side.
As fragrance of the dewy morn,
Or flowers blooming at their feet,
The joys that in their hearts are born
Of their communion low and sweet.
Life's hopes are budding in their path ;
Life's star is rising in their sky ;
Fair promise all their future hath,—
One love, one home, one destiny.
A sacred service makes them one,
And life's long marriage is begun.
Methinks I see them as they stand
Before the altar, hand in hand,—
A manly youth with forehead high,
Of noble form and eagle eye ;
A blushing maiden young and fair,
Sweet orange blossoms in her hair.
Kind friends, no favor is denied;
I give you leave to kiss the bride.

The muse must now venture a secret to tell,—
'Twas everywhere whispered this pair married well ;
For whatever joys he could wish for in life,
He found ready made at the hands of his wife ;
And she, it is said, was more envied than he,
As happy as fortunate woman could be ;
For hers was the one prize so eagerly sought
By managing dames at a summer resort,
And one that the stoniest heart can bewitch ;
You've guessed her good fortune,—she married RICH.

But not these scenes alone our thought shall claim ;
For downward in the course of passing years,
Through scenes too sweet to last, too dear to name,
A richer field of riper joys appears,—
Joys of which no school-boy ever dreamed,
Which no maiden's fancy ever brought to view,
Better than to our youthful hopes they seemed,
Holier far and of a deeper hue ;
For joy grows sweeter amid falling tears,
And love grows stronger as 'tis tried by pain ;
And hope is brighter when 'tis set in fears,
And life is dearer when it seems to wane.
And from the anxious fears and toil and strife,
And all the changing scenes of middle life,—
From earnest efforts that success has crowned ;
From sympathy in disappointment found ;
From hopes that in the tiny cradle lie ;
From joys that by the silent grave do die ;
There comes a deeper love, uniting heart to heart,
That neither good nor ill, nor life nor death can part.

Such, my dear friends, is the union you have known,
Through all the changing scenes of five-and-twenty years,
Such may it be when as many more have flown,
Rich with still brighter joys and dimmed with fewer tears.
And when, if life be spared while these years shall pass away,
You shall clasp your hands again on your Golden Wedding day,
May it be with filial trust in Him who rules on high,
That life shall ever live, and that love can never die.

- A Poem read at the Silver Wedding of Matthias Rich and Sarah A Knowles Rich, Nov. 19th 1866, by Rev. RA Ballou,  Boston, Innes & Niles, 1867 (Internet Archive ID poemreadatsilver00bostiala).
Today, Clare and I have been married 25 years. It's quite a surprise, considering that we married quite late and that I'm not the easiest of people to get on with - and especially pleasant when a year ago there was a high probability that I wouldn't last the year.

Clare is the best thing in my life, and has furthermore been central to making me the person able to achieve the many almost-best things in my life.

We're just celebrating with a meal, and maybe going out for the day later in the week. But clearly this is doing it all wrong, in comparison with the celebrations that are findable in the Internet Archive, which involved commisioned poems, self-published pamphlets with biographical accounts, and so on. A surprising number of works are inspired by the theme, too. A few of interest:
- Ray
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Honeybee

September 5, 2013, 6:31 am
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Another song from the aforementioned steampunk musical troupe Steam Powered Giraffe: Honeybee, a lovely piece of close harmony, of the kind whose seeming laidback effortlessness covers very tight musicianship.

By coincidence, I just had a pleasant e-mail from Garson O'Toole, author of Quote Investigator, who has kindly credited my research (and that of Bonnie Taylor-Blake) in tracing the roots of the meme to the effect that "If the Bee Disappeared Off the Face of the Earth, Man Would Only Have Four Years Left To Live" (Albert Einstein? Charles Darwin? Maurice Maeterlinck? E. O. Wilson? Apocryphal?). Despite such debunkings, the story trundles on ...
Albert Einstein famously said mankind would become extinct without them. "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, man would have only four years to live," he predicted.
- Why we need a Plan Bee, Julie Carpenter, Express, The (London, England) - Wednesday, May 1, 2013 
... and even when authors acknowledge the lack of attribution, they still perpetuate the meme by repeating it in detail, with a minimal wrapping of provisionality. For example:
The importance of bees to the environment is clear. Often attributed to Einstein, there is some debate about who actually said: "If the bee disappeared off the surface of the globe, then man would only have four years of life left. No more bees, no more pollination, no more plants, no more animals, no more man."
- Battle against pesticide-makers to save honeybees from a sticky end, Oliver Moody, Times, The (London, England) - Thursday, February 28, 2013
It seems a good scary soundbite never dies.

Anyhow, check out Quote Investigator. It's a long-running site, going back to 2010, with well-researched articles on quotes attributed to several hundred authors. Its resource recommendations are also worth checking out. I especially second Wikiquote; it still doesn't seem generally known that it differs from Wikipedia in actively encouraging original research, and that its default position is that included quotes must have demonstrable citation ("Wikiquote is a free online compendium of sourced quotations"). In this, it differs from the vast majority of online quotation sites.

- Ray
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Foulston's "Hindoo" chapel, Devonport

September 10, 2013, 3:08 pm
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Ker Street, from Devonshire & Cornwall illustrated (1832)

Further to Seeking details: Devonport "Hindoo" Calvinist Chapel, I took myself to the Devon and Exeter Institution today to look at a primary source, John Foulston's self-published The public buildings erected in the West of England as designed by John Foulston F.R.I.B.A. (pub. J Williams, 1838).

I noticed previously that Foulston's chapel, demolished in 1902 and formerly part of his Ker Street development for the town centre of the newly-incorporated Devonport, always seems to get fragmentary glimpses as part of larger panoramas of the site. Foulston's own book gives rather more information about what it actually looked like.

Firstly, here's a detail from Plate 80:

Town Hall, commemorative column, Mount Zion Chapel,
Civil and Military Library, Ker St, Devonport
Courtesy of The Devon and Exeter Institution - not for re-use

Foulston commented in the preface on the general design concept:

Notwithstanding the grandeur and exquisite proportions of the Grecian orders, the author has never been insensible to the distinguishing beauties of the other original styles; and it occurred to him that if a series of edifices, exhibiting the various features of the architectural world, were erected in conjunction, and skilfully grouped, a happy result might be obtained.

Under this impression, he was induced to try an experiment, (not before attempted) for producing a picturesque effect, by combining, in one view, the Grecian, Egyptian, and a variety of the Oriental, as will be seen in Plate No. 81 [sic], the view of Ker-Street, Devonport.
The main section on the chapel, pages 63ff, describes it in detail. In contrast to the florid exterior, the interior sounds horribly cramped and uncomfortable (perhaps a deliberate exercise in Calvinist austerity):
This Chapel was erected by subscription for Calvinistic Worship. The exterior, exhibiting a variety of Oriental Architecture, is seen in juxta-position with others of Greek and Egyptian character; the Author's intention being to experimentalize on the effect which might be produced by such an assemblage. If the critic be opposed to the strangeness of the  attempt, he may still be willing to acknowledge, that the general effect of the combination is picturesque.

DESCRIPTION OF PLATES

Plate 95—Fig. 1, Plans of the Area, and Fig. 2, Plan of the Galleries, by which it may be seen that the object of the designer was to meet the wishes of his employers, in sacrificing, as much as possible, the individual comforts of the sitters to the numerical extent of the sittings. The Pews in the Chapel were not allowed to be more than 2ft. 4in. wide, nor more than 18in. for each person. The Aisles were limited to a width of 4ft. 6in., and probably in no Chapel has less space been occupied by the Staircases to the Galleries.

The Recess in which the Pulpit and Reading Desk are situated, was formed with a view to its answering the purpose of a sounding board; and it is further serviceable in allowing the preacher to avoid too close an approach to the front seats, at the end of the Galleries.

Plate 95, Fig.1, ground plan
Courtesy of The Devon and Exeter Institution - not for re-use
Plate 95, Fig. 2, gallery
Courtesy of The Devon and Exeter Institution - not for re-use
Plate 96—Front and return Elevations of Buildings.
Plate 96 (detail) - front elevation
Courtesy of The Devon and Exeter Institution - not for re-use
Plate 96 (detail) - elevation of frontage
Courtesy of The Devon and Exeter Institution - not for re-use
Plate 97—Head of Central Window
Plate 97 - head of central window
Courtesy of The Devon and Exeter Institution - not for re-use
Plate 98—Head of Side Windows
Plate 98 - head of side windows
Courtesy of The Devon and Exeter Institution - not for re-use
Pardon the distortion and variable colour; I had to take the photos under not-so-bright conditions, and the large pages couldn't be flattened.

I'll write more about Foulston's The public buildings erected in the West of England in a later post or two; it makes for rather quirky reading. While it's a record of Foulston's undoubted flair - one highlight is his description of how the Devonport Column was erected without the use of scaffolding - it does turn egotistical on occasion, and even whiny, as in the last section on his unexecuted plan for Bristol Gaol. Here Foulston tells how he resolved not to go in for any more design competitions after failing to win with his gaol design, and the account has a distinct edge of schadenfreude where he tells of the "fearful circumstances" that befell the winning entry (the New Gaol, attacked by rioters in 1831 and set on fire) as, he argues, a consequence of not following his own design principles.

Thanks to the Devon and Exeter Institution for guest access to its library; as stated, all images are reproduced courtesy of the Institution.

- Ray
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A Christmas Carol: a rationale

September 12, 2013, 3:19 pm
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I'd normally save this topic until Christmas, but it seems too good to waste. Last Sunday's Independent carried an interesting news story:
A Brazilian man recovering from a stroke has turned into a philanthropist after damage to parts of his brain changed his personality in a way previously unheard of by doctors.

The 49-year-old senior manager of a large corporation found that he could not stop giving away money and spending cash liberally on sweets, food and drinks for children he met in the street. His wife told doctors her husband’s generosity had led to significant family distress and almost bankrupted them.

The man, referred to as Mr A, suffered a stroke triggered by high blood pressure. This led to bleeding in his subcortical region, an area immediately below the cerebral cortex, associated with higher-level thinking and decision-making.

...

Mr A told doctors he was aware of his behaviour and no longer wanted to work because he had “seen death close up (and) wanted to enjoy life which is too short”.

- Businessman suffers stroke, then can’t stop giving his money away, Janet Tappin Coelho, Rio de Janeiro, The Independent, Sunday 08 September 2013
That would be a nice rationale for Ebenezer Scrooge's personality change, following an overnight epiphany about life and death, in A Christmas Carol. I'm not the first to think of this (though this is the first example I've heard of with symptoms matching the Dickens story): a stroke is one of the possibilities covered by Lisa Sanders, MD, in her December 17, 2006 New York Times article, Diagnosing with Dickens, though she ultimately settles on Lewy body dementia.

- Ray
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Heritage Open Days

September 13, 2013, 11:12 am
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Just a quick reminder about this weekend: as part of the National Trust's annual Heritage Open Days events, a number of Devon venues will be open free of charge: historical locations not normally open to the public or which usually charge for admission, as well as special tours of public places whose history isn't well known.See the Devon History Society website - Heritage Open Days, Sep 2013 - for a Devon-specific listing of locations open on Saturday and/or Sunday.

Heritage Open Days is a nationwide scheme. If you're looking further afield, see www.heritageopendays.org.ukwhere there's anevent search engine.

- Ray
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The mysterious superfruit

September 16, 2013, 10:14 pm
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Department of bizarre advertising. I'm sure I'm not the only one to wonder what's the faintly obscene-looking object in the omnipresent banner ad on Facebook for "This Superfruit Melts Fat". It leads to a characteristically naff ad for bowel cleanse / slimming products, which makes no mention of this object.

The excellent Google Images, which Felix Grant recommended to me a while back, identifies the thing: it's just a picture of an abnormally formed hen's egg, posted originally on a Canadian poultry forum in 2009 (Weird looking egg, 11th April 2009) and later, in higher resolution, by the hen's owner on her blog My Mountain Garden Gleanings (Weird Eggs, January 27th 2011).

How this egg image came to be ripped off for a slimming ad I can't really imagine. Perhaps it's a teaser to make people click on the ad out of curiosity? Perhaps it's a "stupidity filter" to select for punters who don't get alarm bells ringing about a weird advert whose picture has no relation to the product sold. But then you'd have to be pretty stupid not to spot the ridiculous non-sequitur in the advertising text:
You may have heard of the enormously popular Ketone Extract in the news. It's a completely organic fruit found deep in the Congo rainforest of Africa.
What? There's a fruit called Ketone Extract?

- Ray
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At Osborne House

September 27, 2013, 10:12 am
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Osborne House - eastern entrance
After many years of visiting the Isle of Wight, Clare and I finally visited Osborne House - Victoria and Albert's rural retreat. I've personally resisted it for years - I'm not a Royalist, and I don't like stately homes - but as I wasn't feeling so great (getting over a respiratory bug) it looked a more leisurely option than our usual coast walks. So ...

Osborne House is run by English Heritage, which has "a management contract to run [it] as a historic tourist attraction". You're reminded of this the instant you get in the door, by people trying to sell you English Heritage membership even before you get to the main ticket desk. Entrance is via a crass setup that funnels you through the crowded gift shop; you buy tickets (£13.40 per adult), and then they try again to sell you English Heritage membership, along with a guide book costing around a fiver. Once inside the very spacious grounds, a short walk (or a paid-for horse carriage ride) takes you to the house. They have a free baggage storage setup up a ramp to the right of the entrance.


My heart sank on finding that Osborne House has a no-photo policy indoors. We were told this was due to all the contents belonging to the Royal Collection - but it comes across as a restriction whose chief intent is to steer visitors toward buying postcards, guides, and commercial images. I appreciate that such income is necessary to help pay for the upkeep, but given the generally steep pricing for entrance and extras, it comes across as petty and anal (I'd have been perfectly happy to pay a reasonable permission fee with an agreement not use images commercially). Furthermore - I've discussed this with Felix Grant - as a fairly compulsive photographer, I've found photography has become a "way of seeing", of remembering, note-taking, and "fixing" experiences. Consequently I can't remember, or else can't find online, half of the stuff that interested or amused us as we walked around the house, such as the unintentionally hilarious "Sleeping Junkie" statue, of a sleeping spinner whose distaff looks like an oversized hypodermic syringe.


The visit is well-organised as a self-guided round trip that winds round the house, down to the basement, up to the top, then back down via the central stairwell. There are information boards and a few audiovisual displays, plus minders in each room, but the house isn't terribly well annotated. With a bit of creative management, it could be brought into the 21st century - for instance, with WiFi-accessible descriptions - but perhaps that's not the clientele they're aiming for.

Cherub strangling duck
Generally, the place left me completely cold: Osborne House is largely a monument to what happens when vast wealth hits zero aesthetic sense. The majority of rooms contain a Full English / Continental Breakfast of mismatched decor and neoclassical clutter. Where there is some coherence, it's just overdone. I wish I could show you a close-up of the gruesome Horn Room, where visitors were expected to wait on chairs made of antlers and animal legs. Or the Durbar Room, whose better coordination of theme - designed by Bhai Ram Singh and Lockwood Kipling, based on traditional Sikh decoration - is weakened by its weight of cake-icing ornament on every surface.

The William Dyce painting on the main staircase - the 1847 Neptune Resigning to Britannia the Empire of the Sea - is a weird piece of propaganda that chiefly left us wondering at the anatomy of the nymphs or tritons, who (unlike conventional merfolk) seem to have separate prehensile fishtails on the end of each foot.


But on the plus side, there are moments of human interest and calm in all this overblown clutter. Chiefly, we were awed by the portraiture of Rudolf Swoboda: a whole corridor is devoted to the works of this artist, who toured India and produced a large output - many in 8"x5" miniatures - of sensitive and photorealistic portraits of Indians from all walks of life. You can see many of them in the Royal Collection e-gallery. The Osborne collection includes a couple of portraits of Abdul Karim (aka "The Munshi") - if they're accurate, it's easy to see why Queen Victoria found him charismatic.


Finally, we took a walk round the grounds. Externally, I can't fault Osborne. Albert was a fine architect technically, and I like the Victorian Italianate stye. In pictures, the house often looks an austere grey, so grim that some comments have likened it to an American penitentiary - but in the flesh, it's a warm pale honey colour, perfectly complemented by the yellow-gravelled paths and a formal garden with a tightly-coordinated register of plant colours. A little over a kilometre's stroll takes you down through parkland to Osborne's private beach, recently opened to the public. There wasn't a great deal to see there - the "Swiss Cottage" was under renovation - but it was a pleasant spot to chill out on a very warm autumn afternoon.


On balance, I recommend Osborne House; but you'll get more out of it if you're actually interested in the Victorian royal family. You also need to be a bit thick-skinned about its ways of getting money out of you: beware, for instance, of the Osborne Cream Tea (around £25 for two). I appreciate they have to fund the place, but they could make it less overt. Going slightly off-season is a good idea too; I gather from reviews that it can become monstrously crowded in the height of the tourist season.

See the official site: Osborne House.

Addendum: out of interest, check out Government House, Melbourne, Australia, which, as a tribute to Victoria, was constructed in 1876 as a copy of Osborne House.

- Ray

Sorry about the hiatus in posts: nothing sinister, just a very busy week including a band performance last Sunday at Topsham Quay, then a scheduled break in the Isle of Wight - all pretty hard work while convalescing from a respiratory bug (sub-flu, but still nasty) that's going the rounds.

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Crossing to Cowes

September 29, 2013, 8:46 am
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If you've visited Osborne House on foot and are going back to Newport, it makes a pleasant round trip to take the five-minute bus trip to East Cowes, take the chain ferry - the Cowes Floating Bridge - across the mouth of the Medina to Cowes, and get the return bus from there.


The Floating Bridge has been running in various incarnations since 1859: see historical postcards. It's currently free for pedestrians, and the curving cabins have an interesting selection of local history displays, as well as poetry and artwork.



I quite liked this self-referential poem:


CONVICT SHIP

Manacled, I drag myself
Across this river
To and fro, To and fro

I haul my chains, groaning
Out of the murky depths
And groaning
Let them fall astern

What was my crime, and when
I cannot recall
But I do my penances
Year by year
In rain, in gale
In freezing February fog

What do you know of me?
I too can dream
One day I'll snap these chains
And steer away to tropic seas
To sun baked isle and
palm fringed shores
With a cargo of peacocks and
gold moidores.



We always seem to be paying flying visits to Cowes. On first glance, it doesn't have much: one folksy pedestrian main street, sandwiched between a very busy port on the Medina, and a lot of fairly uniform residental development on the hillside above. But a quick glance at the map suggests it would repay a bit of exploration: next time, maybe.


View Larger Map

Come to think of it, we've not explored any of the north side of the Isle of Wight. While it looks rather nice, if a little gentler than the Cretaceous cliff terrain of the south, the problem is that coast access isn't as comprehensive as the south; the northern coast is either interminable flat esplanade, complicated estuary, or on private woodland. From East Cowes south-eastward, there's no public access to the coast round the wooded Osborne Bay - coastline on the Norris, Osborne and Barton estates - and this section of the official Coastal Path has to bypass the coast in favour of a dismal trudge along the main A3021 road inland.

The Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 introduced right-of-access legislation for the English coast: but this act doesn't include islands, unless they're accessible by foot from the mainland, or get a special order given by the Secretary of State on the basis that the coastline is long enough to justify such a path. Last year, the Isle of Wight Ramblers association launched a campaign to develop a coastal trail ...
Isle of Wight Ramblers say that around half of the existing path on the Isle of Wight runs either inland or along public roads and that “more than ten miles of our northern coastline between Yarmouth and Ryde have no public access or footpath”.
- Isle of Wight Economy Missing Out On £35m Say Ramblers, On the Wight, 7th April 2012 
... and the Secretary of State made a consultation in preamble to such an order. However, despite support from the majority of respondents, the environment minister Richard Benyon decided not to make such an order on the grounds that the Isle of Wight "is not a priority for the coastal access programme". See CampaignerKate - Wight blacked out - for a summary of the story; Coastal access: order for the Isle of Wight under the Marine and Coastal Access Act 2009 for the full report; and the report and analysis from Isle of Wight Ramblers. It seems some voices carried more weight than others, and I've no doubt English Heritage was among them.

Update,  3rd Oct 2013: On The Wight reports that "the Minister has decided to review his decision to exclude the Isle of Wight from the English Coastal Path" - see A ray of hope for Isle of Wight Coastal Path plans.




A spot of terminological interest: the official names for the towns on the western and eastern sides of the mouth of the River Medina are "Cowes" and "East Cowes". Historically, however, they were "West Cowes" and "East Cowes". If you look at Old Maps, the map captions change post-1870 or so, and a look at the decline in print usage for "West Cowes" (see Google Ngram Viewer) bears this out. Nevertheless, "West Cowes" dies hard; in particular, the name is used by the Red Funnel ferries to distinguish clearly between the separate terminals for its Southampton ferries ("West Cowes" for the passenger-only service, and "East Cowes" for the car service).

The name Cowes is historically quite recent. It may derive ultimately from a descriptive name of sandbanks at the river mouth, but solidified after Henry VIII established a pair of forts - "cowes" or "cowforts" - on the west and east side. Prior to this, the settlements were called East and West Shamblord (aka Shamelhorde / Shamlord / Shamblers). According to an article in Nomina Germanica, Arkiv för Germansk Namnforskning, Volume 6, 1940, this name derived from "Old English sceamol'bench, stool' and ord'point'"; it's preserved now only as "Shamblers Copse", a wood to the south of (West) Cowes. 

- Ray
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The Dean down under

September 30, 2013, 5:58 am
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Poster from www.nfsa.gov.au
I previously mentioned the movie versions of Maxwell Gray's novel The Silence of Dean Maitland, but hadn't noticed the increasingly good documentation of Ken G Hall's 1934 film adapation, an Australian version filmed largely in Camden, New South Wales, and one of Australia's first movies with sound.

OZmovies in particular has an excellent microsite - The Silence of Dean Maitland - whose creator has put in a deal of research in compiling primary material relating to the film and its making: production details; Ken Hall's own account of its inception (in part arising from seeing an unintentionally hilarious am-dram production); the story of its problems with censors; and large gallery of images including posters, stills, and news clippings.


Australian Screen Online ("Australia’s audiovisual heritage online") also has a very good overview - The Silence of Dean Maitland - with three clips from the film. As the curator's commentary says, it retained a deal of the flavour of its melodramatic and silent movie origins. The "Fisher of women" scene, where Alma Lee hits on Maitland, is particularly weird; in the book, Alma Lee was a naive rustic 19-year-old coachman's daughter, but Charlotte Francis plays her as a slightly mad and totally obvious seductress with a clipped upper-crust English accent.

Alma gets her hooks into Maitland: The Silence of Dean Maitland (1934)
Alma: "Any luck?"
Maitland: "No. As a fisherman, I'm a good curate."
Alma: "I thought all ministers were fishers."
Maitland: "We are - of men."
Alma: <leaning close> "Men? Only?"
Not exactly subtle stuff ... The film was released in Britain by RKO in 1935.While not remotely explicit by modern standards, it almost certainly couldn’t have been made in the USA at that time, as the post-1930 Motion Picture Production Code - aka the Hays Code - stated that “Ministers of religion in their character as ministers of religion should not be used as comic characters or as villains”. Maitland isn't exactly a villain, more an ambitious but naive character in deep denial about the moral consequences of his actions; but the story doesn't present a clergyman in a good light.

We might have seen another Australian production of the story. In 1988, Kylie Minogue said she was considering doing "a mini-series set in the Fifties called The Silence of Dean Maitland. Dean is a priest and I play a young girl called Diane who has an affair with him. It is very heated." (Kylie: Showgirl- the unofficial biography, Bryony Sutherland, Lucy Ellis, Omnibus Press, 2002). That one never came to be.

- Ray
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Victory

October 5, 2013, 12:50 pm
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On 23rd September, we were passing through Portsmouth, and visited HMS Victory, Lord Nelson's flagship, which is preserved in dry dock in Portsmouth Dockyard. Clare had never been here before, and I hadn't been since around 1970, so it was a major experience for both of us.

As with the previously-mentioned Osborne House, the Victory is set up for self-guided tours that take you along a roped-off continuous route taking in all the decks, from poop deck (top stern 'bridge') to the hold. Unfortunately the uppermost levels were under renovation, but it was still a superb experience. It's not for the unfit or infirm, and it's bad enough if you're merely tall - there are steep steps, and the ceiling heights range from low to very low. We were a trifle worried about having our luggage with us, as this is a working dockyard with security issues. The Dockyard staff, however, were very helpful in recommending a couple of places where luggage can be left nearby, but there turned out to be no problems with our carrying it (we were travelling reasonably light).

When I was younger, I think I would probably have been chiefly interested in the naval aspects - the armaments, how the ship was steered, etc - but it proved oddly interesting to find the minutiae of infrastructure: how a large ship worked as a self-contained community. For instance, the toilets - the 'heads' - were far more sophisticated than I'd imagined; and the galley was a wonder. Brodie's Patent Galley was a surprisingly compact installation considering its capacity (with a suitably organised rota) to cook daily meals for hundreds of crew; there were 821 aboard the Victory. Its one central range is augmented with sub-stoves for individual cookery, and a large copper distiller for desalinating seawater for the surgeon's use.

Visiting is not cheap: it's £17 for an adult. But this covers a year's repeat visits, and - unlike the miserly Osborne House - there are no restrictions on photography. I can't recommend this visit too highly. Check out the official site hms-victory.com.

(Sincere thanks to Buddy for the loan of his tickets).








The head

Over the bows: a wonderful vista of historic and modern buildings




Brodie's Patent Galley
Brodie's Patent Galley



Out to modern Portsmouth: Number One Tower, Gunwharf Quays.
Clare and I call this the Death Star, because when we first saw it,
it was under construction, and rather recalled the half-constructed
new Death Star in Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi.
- Ray
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Thomas Randle elucidated

October 6, 2013, 6:26 am
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Further to Victory: for a long time I've had my doubts about one of the standard Topsham claims to fame, that one Thomas Randle (the spelling varies) was quartermaster aboard the HMS Victory at the Battle of Trafalgar. The story is perpetuated by a gravestone, whose general condition shows it's not 150+ years old, by St Margaret's Church. The National Maritime Museum's maritime memorials record - M4401 - explains that it's a replica of the original, which was broken by a mower.


THOMAS RANDLE
WHO WAS MANY YEARS
IN THE ROYAL NAVY
HAVING SERVED IN SEVERAL SHIPS
AND AS QUARTERMASTER
ON BOARD THE VICTORY
AT THE BATTLE OF TRAFALGAR
JAN. 2ND 1851
AGED 78

My doubts came from the discrepancy between the details on the stone, and those in the HMS Victory crew muster roll, available at the official HMS Victory site - here. The Quartermasters are listed, and Randle is not among them. There was a "Thomas Randall" aboard, but he was merely an able seaman.

This discrepancy is resolved by the document ADM 36/15900 in the National Archives (Admiralty: Royal Navy Ships' Musters (Series I). ADM 36. Ship: VICTORY), which contains Randall's full naval service record. It's online in the National Archives Trafalgar Ancestors section - Thomas Randall aged 41 born in Exeter, Devon, England - and here's the relevant section:
HMS Victory
Ship's pay book number: (SB409)
11 May 1803 to 19 May 1803
Rank/rating: Able Seaman
Comments: prest

20 May 1803 to 9 November 1803
Rank/rating: Quartermaster

10 November 1803 to 15 January 1806 (Was at Trafalgar)
Rank/rating: Able Seaman
So he was at Trafalgar, and was a quartermaster aboard the Victory - but not at the same time. For some reason, he'd been demoted to Able Seaman around two years before the battle. This conflation of detail was thoroughly entrenched by the mid-1800s.
DEATHS
January 16, at Topsham, in her 88th year, Mrs. Frances Randal, widow of Mr. Thomas Randal, Quartermaster of H.M.S. Victory at the battle of Trafalgar.
- Trewman's Exeter Flying Post, January 20, 1859
- Ray
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The art of Shanklin Chine

October 9, 2013, 9:03 am
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Shanklin Chine is a coastal ravine on the south-east coast of the Isle of Wight, prettily-landscaped as a visitor attraction, and only a few hundred yards from the town of Shanklin. We visited it about four years ago, but we were in a little of a hurry then, and I fancied a more leisurely look when we were back on the Island at the end of September.

This is the "Longfellow Fountain" by the Crab Inn in Shanklin Old Village. The inscription ...

O Traveller, stay thy weary feet;
Drink of this fountain, pure & sweet;
It flows for rich & poor the same.
Then go thy way remembering still,
The wayside well beneath the hill,
The cup of water in his name.

Longfellow

... is a poem credited to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow when he stayed at the Crab Inn in 1868 (below the poem is a little twin-flag logo, UK and USA). On investigation, this attribution appears a trifle shaky. The book The Poetical Works of Henry W. Longfellow (18??) carries this explanation:
INSCRIPTION ON THE SHANKLIN FOUNTAIN,
ISLE OF WIGHT.

The following quotation from a private letter, dated "Shanklin, Isle of Wight, 1st October 1879," is the authority for ascribing this inscription to the Poet:—

"just look at this group of thatched cottages! The one on the right is a library where we go for books. In the middle is the Crab Inn. Do you see what looks like a pile of stones to the right of it? That is a fountain for the use of the public. I read some verses painted there on a piece of tin, and said to myself: 'That must be from Longfellow.' I found afterward that they were written by him, by request, when he was here some years ago:
The author of this "private letter" is unidentified. The first citation to Longfellow appears in George Shaw's The tourist's picturesque guide to the Isle of Wight (1873). There doesn't seem to be any great reason to doubt it - nevertheless, there is no primary evidence from Longfellow himself that he wrote it.

The place has changed a deal since Longfellow was there. Shanklin Old Village is a characteristically commercialised English "olde village", a cluster of thatched houses of genuine antiquity adapted into a complex of pubs, tearooms and gift shops, all on a busy main road. But just a minute's walk takes you down a quiet pedestrianised lane to the top of the Chine, and you find you're in a different world.


Clare at Chine entrance
You can take a slight detour first to the adjacent park, Rylstone Gardens, where there's a good chance of seeing red squirrels. I saw one in the distance, and it wasn't the best day for views. But there was an interesting and unexpected feature in the now rather dented stainless steel commemorative Elvis plaque by the clifftop, installed by the Isle of Wight Rock and Roll Society in 1978.




It has short score quotations from four Elvis classics (below): 1 is "Hound Dog"; 3 is "Teddy Bear". Any thoughts on the others? Although I'm perfectly capable of reading the score, they're quite difficult to place without the rhythm backing.

click to enlarge


Back to the Chine. The rustic-styled entrance booth takes you instantly into the fresh and humid microclimate of this mini-ravine. It's virtually silent apart from birdsong and the sound of the stream.




After initial steps, the path levels out to a shallower descent with rustic bridges, benches and landscaped pools, with a choice of exits to beach level or via an aviary, tearoom and exhibition centre, up to the clifftop. It began to rain, but surprisingly little made it down to the chine floor level; we sat for a while in one of the little shelters, and just chilled out. It's very obviously a managed landscape, but I really don't care; Shanklin Chine is unique, a calm and lovely experience. "A very great Lion," as Keats put it. *






If you're visiting in the near future, the current Heritage Centre exhibition is Turner's Isle of Wight Landscapes and the Discovery of Shanklin Chine. I'm a great fan of historical Isle of Wight scenic artwork, and this exhibition follows JMW Turner’s journey around the island from his sketchbook of 1795. It also features scenes of the Chine and elsewhere in the Wight by other artists including Thomas Rowlandson, Richard Banks Harraden, Samuel Howitt, William Daniell, Charles Tomkins, and Lefevre James Cranstone. It's extremely well-selected and well-annotated, and thoroughly worth a visit.

Chine Cottage, and the Heritage Centre, from the seaward end of the Chine
A bonus to the visit: on the way out, going up the path back to Shanklin, Clare and I saw our first fully-fledged red squirrel. We've seen them before, but they were rather dark brown. This was the real thing, a brilliant marmalade-coloured squirrel. Unfortunately it zipped by and up into the treetops too fast to bring the camera to bear ... but it was there.

See the older post - Shanklin Chine - for more background on the Chine's history, as well as one of my favourite poems, Mimi Khalvati's The Chine, which means a lot to me as an uncannily accurate impression of how the chine powerfully evokes that 'double exposure' sensation of reconnecting with the landscape of remembered childhood.

See also the official website www.shanklinchine.co.uk.

- Ray

* Lions = an archaic expression for "Things of note, celebrity, or curiosity (in a town, etc.); sights worth seeing" (Oxford English Dictionary).
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Beer pump artwork

October 15, 2013, 10:03 am
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Beer pump labels are a fine little genre of miniature artwork. I was struck by a couple this week:

Firstly, there was Tolchards "Devon Coast" (a pleasant hoppy beer made by Red Rock Brewery of Bishopsteignton). With its ocean vista, and foreground shed and path disappearing down into a cove, it's a nice example of a picture that fits Jay Appleton's "prospect-refuge theory": the claim that human aesthetic experience of landscape is based on perceptions that are evolved for survival (e.g. places to hide, escape routes, places with a clear view).. See the previous posts Landscapes in mind and Prospect and refuge in a beer glass.

And then there's the depiction of Lord Nelson on the label for St Austell's "Admiral's Ale".

detail from St Austell Admiral's Ale label
This deserves credit as a very sharp caricature of the classic Lemuel "Francis" Abbott portrait (currentlyhanging in the Terracotta Room of number 10 Downing Street).


As in other depictions, the red sash is borrowed from a different portrait by William Beechey. See previously: Nelson gets a facelift.

- Ray
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Coming soon: A Wren-Like Note

October 17, 2013, 3:12 am
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A few of my contacts know already, and others may have guessed, that I've been working been for some time on a biography of the Newport-born author Mary Gleed Tuttiett (1846-1923), who wrote under the pseudonym Maxwell Gray.

The project is close to completion - I'm at the final proofing stage, finalising the cover image, and completing the index - so I expect it to be finished and in production within a week or two.

Meanwhile, the website is now live at www.maxwellgray.co.uk.

The title comes from one of Maxwell Gray's poems
There comes a time when all the woods are mute;
No longer sounds the blackbird's mellow flute,
Throstle and lark and linnet no more sing,
And men have long forgotten how in spring
The nightingale in golden splendour poured
Her magic song's accumulated hoard;
The wintry day hangs heavily; 'tis then
Pleasant to hear the small, hedge-haunting wren;
Good folk, when grander poets are not near,
These wren-like notes of mine may bring you cheer.
- Ray
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Mysterious superfruit #2

October 23, 2013, 4:15 am
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More on the peculiar phenomenon of marketing dubious health products with images that have nothing to do with the product.

The mysterious superfruit turned out to be a malformed hen's egg. Now it's this thing, that comes with the promise "Eat THIS, Never Diet Again ... Dr OZ:"The Holy Grail of weight loss".

The site links to an advert for extract of "Garcinia gambogia" - a fruit native to Indonesia that goes under various names such as Malabar tamarind. Its scientific name is Garcinia gummi-gutta, but slimming product vendors have latched on to the former scientific name Garcinia gambogia. There's little or no evidence of its claimed weight loss properties, and one trial had to be abandoned because of liver toxicity.
Garcinia gummi-gutta, however, looks like a small pumpkin (above left).

A Google Images search finds that the fruit in the advert link picture comes from an entirely different plant, the Finger Lime (Citrus australasica - depicted right). A thorny shrub native to Australia, it has lately acquired a reputation as a gourmet "lime caviar".

- Ray
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