Once Works Well was pure technology. Now it seeks merely to divert.
Pansy subjects - Verse! Opera! Domestic trivia! - are now commonplace.
The 300-word limit for posts is retained. The ego is enlarged

Monday 4 April 2011

The year of the spoon


These secondhand serving spoons were a gift from my father about fifty years ago. They are silver and when struck ring out with a distinctive light “ping”. Two are plain, one carries a set of initials, the fourth a date – 1818. Despite their age and potential value we have used them for what they were intended and they travelled to the USA and back when we lived there. I Googled the dated spoon’s birth year:

Born: Karl Marx, William George Fargo (co-founder Wells Fargo), Amelia Jenks Bloomer (feminist reformer; must have been tough with that name), Emily Brontë (in Thornton, three miles away from, and 117 years before, I was born), Lucy Stone (suffragist and feminist), Richard J. Gatling (inventor of eponymous gun), James Prescott Joule (experimental physicist; gave name to unit of energy)
Published: Frankenstein, Endymion, Northanger Abbey (posth.).
Written: Hammerklavier sonata.
Events: Thomas Bowdler becomes infamous, George IV orders boots for left and right feet, Bernardo O'Higgins establishes Chile's independence from Spain, Australia Day celebrated.

MACHINE BETTER Everyone complains about dealing with machines, recorded voices, etc, rather than humans. But there are advantages. Throughout Hereford’s film festival we needed change for parking meters. Even counter operators at the Tesco filling station frowned when I repeatedly bought a paper with a £20 note. But the automated check-outs at the supermarket proper didn’t grumble.

THE LOVE PROBLEM 47,971 words (ie, almost half way). Jana’s student, Didi (a woman), goes solo. Her other student, Matthieu (a fella), struggles.

9 comments:

Julia said...

Beautiful spoons, and the same pattern as our family's. They wear well don't they? Only the forks have a slanting edge to their tines where knives gradually shaved them away.

In the US at least, that pattern is reproduced under the name Old English Tipt.

Fedorovna said...

No embarassment for Amelia J. She invented them...

Lucy said...

Damn, Fedorovna beat me to it! Said undies were indeed considered a force for liberation, not quite sure why, presumably what they had before in some way worsened the lot of women...

Nice spoons. Tom has been emptying the compost bin and found one of our missing teaspoons in it.

Hattie said...

Now those spoons are possessions worth having.

herhimnbryn said...

Beautiful spoons. I wonder what tables they have sat on over the years? I have a couple of tablespoons that are similar ( found blackened with age in a charity shop. They now shine and are used almost daily).

Bloomers.....I suspect they were viewed with suspicion when introduced and then later with relief!

Roderick Robinson said...

Julia: They are, as you say, beautiful - definitively spoonlike. What I have been unable to communicate is their tangible nature; a sort of ringing flexibility.

Fed: I'm ashamed I didn't know that. But I did know about the joule; that is my addition about the unit of energy. Too nerdy?

Lucy: Within a week or so of arriving in the USA a workmate invited me for a meal and I insisted on washing up. The workmate's pal turned up, had a meal, washed up his stuff and used the garbage disposal unit. From which he extracted a teaspoon I had carelessly allowed to slip into the grinding maw. And which now looked like a croquet hoop.

Hatties: And, more particularly, using.

HHB: What tables indeed. The great thing about these spoons is that they are in constant use and don't need polishing. Once out of the RAF I swore I'd never polish metal again. Fortunately it's a task Mrs BB doesn't mind.

Rouchswalwe said...

Oh! Didi was my Mama's nickname as a girl!

Roderick Robinson said...

RW (zS): That link pleases me. However, in TLP it's an abbreviation and stands for the magnificent (though never used) first name: Dieudonné. I'm assuming I won't have to translate.

Rouchswalwe said...

Hmm. Geschenkt von Gott? My French skills are at the level to be just enough for danger ...