Faces, hedges and metal-cutting

FULL FACIAL Visitors to Chez Bonden get a whole bathroom (English not American meaning) to themselves but males were previously required to shave standing over the loo since that’s where the mirror is. Now, thanks to this addition to the facilities, they may use their razor over the sink. This double-sided mirror brought back childhood memories about how strange my magnified face looked in a similar device at my grandparents’ house. Some people have even stronger feelings and fear seeing their face larger than life. Not just vanity (warts as big as golf-balls, etc) but genuine fear.

A QUESTION OF TEETH The hedge-cutting saga a week or so ago (High price for hating soccer) continues. To create a straight face of greenery it was necessary to cut back on branches that had virtually become trunks. My lopper, a word I have only just become cognisant of, lacked power and forced the acquisition of a pruning saw. Such saws, unlike those used on timber, have irregular tooth patterns. I would welcome an explanation as to why this is supposed to help.

OLD SNIPS BETTER I used tin-snips for cutting sheet metal during my RAF national service. A simple tool, resembling a looser, truncated pair of scissors, it worked well. Needing to cut sheet metal recently I bought what I fondly imagined to be a modern, state-of-the-art version. Despite its visual pretensions its performance was way down on the 1956 tin-snips; it haggled the metal. But it could have been me. Taking small bites I know about but is there an established technique?

Welcome to an alien world

I pondered treating this subject in verse because of the wonder.

This a 200 bhp Kawasaki ZX14 bike engine. Not a cutaway drawing but a photograph of an engine where metal has been removed to expose the innards. Cutaways have had a powerful, almost mystical, effect on me ever since childhood. Sounds pretentiously goofy, but just reflect.

Dismantling a mechanical device does not really reveal its secrets. One ends up with parts; the relationships between them are lost. But cutting down like this takes you into places where a human being has no right to be. Inside the cylinder head where temperatures may exceed 600 deg C. Down into the crankcase where the shaft rotates a hundred times a second. And a ringside view of how the shaft's rotation is converted into an up-and-down action to open and close the valves.

OK, none of these things will happen because of the surgery inflicted on this engine. But they're only an imaginary step away. Roller bearings, for instance, even out loads and reduce friction, preventing the engine from destroying itself. On their own they are simple, unexceptional metal cylinders. On a cutaway engine, however, I may see and touch them, set in their cages, their function obvious.

This little world is compact, purposeful, precise and shorn of unnecessary detail. Engines themselves are commonplace but their function is a series of interlinked actions that to a lay person are - or should be - minor miracles. And the cutaway allows us to look into this world as it is. It's not magic, it's real!

Near-perfect solution to old problem

THE PROBLEM Sausages curl when fried. This makes it difficult to hold them in position in order that heat may be applied to all four “sides” to ensure even cooking.

THE SOLUTION A stainless-steel fork with six 3 mm thick tines; the tines are inserted longitudinally along the sausages. Because the sausage sides remain parallel the sausages may be rotated in three 90 deg. phases, holding their lengthwise shape throughout.

CONCLUSION The prototype works in principle; its application reveals an unexpected benefit; a modified prototype will improve the operation.

OBSERVATIONS (1) No extra perforation of the sausage skin (leading to flavour leaks) is necessary. The skin of a link sausage already has two holes at either end.
(2) Two wooden spoons or spatulas effect the rotation; one to turn the sausage, the other to hold its neighbour stationary.
(3) Fork width was based on the diameter of the frying pan; the five tine gaps were based on a 30 mm theoretical width of a cooked sausage. The latter dimension proved too conservative. Increasing it to 36 mm will allow freer sausage rotation.
(4) Inserting a metal tine along a sausage aids evenness of cooking.
(5) There’s an aesthetic, as well as a gustatory, pleasure to eating an evenly fried sausage.

Lingua not so franca

Passion problems
The first half, soiled with constant fingering,
Announces my pervasive ignorance.
The cleaner other half lies languishing,
Unsuitable for checking resonance.

The rift recurs again in oral guise,
Changing the conjoined name linguistically.
Collins-Robert must bend to Gallic ways:
With nasal in and disappearing t

A fat-backed key to France’s pawky voice,
But, oh, if leafing through were all it meant
To gain the knack that is my passion’s choice
And spawn a feel for inner argument.

I dwell on struggles, some still unresolved,
With memory and empathy at fault.
How many times was épanouir pursued,
Til “bloom” lay safe within my memory vault?

Ne… pas negates the verb, an early gain,
But sliding back is ever imminent.
Ne… que negates, but on a different plane,
Confers an “only” to what’s pertinent.

There’s even more from this negated source:
Noting the ne which jumps out forcefully,
One loses que amid the unfair course
Of tumbling smaller words in colloquy

More pain as sound and meaning start to fight,
When méfier stands in for mépriser
“Suspect” and “scorn” take futile flight
With understanding comically astray.

The work is hard and vague but, then why not?
It’s nothing less than cracking culture’s code.
It’s maths, and Joyce, a Heisenberg subplot,
A pool to swim, a purpose self-bestowed.

High price for hating soccer

Since nature is incipient, so is gardening. But in different ways. Again I write with fire in my belly.

A decade ago our house was on the rim of the estate near where children played soccer. The house side would have been an inviting goal had not the developer planted a small hedge of spiny pyracanthus which hindered ball retrieval. This pleased me since I loathe soccer in all its manifestations. However, the hedge is now over 2 m tall and I add pyracanthus to my list of antipathies.

The hedge grows sideways as well as up and I must protect those who use the pavement (US: sidewalk). Pruning has become ever more demanding as my collection of dedicated tools shows. Once conventional shears, secateurs and impenetrable gloves were enough. Then the branches started getting thicker and I needed a more powerful snipper. To compensate for increasing height and thickness I bought shears with telescopic arms. My most recent acquisition, powered shears, works more quickly but is lamentably heavy to use. And to reach the most remote sprouts on top I need my neighbour’s cord-operated cutter with its fishing rod handle.

It was about 30 deg C yesterday when I attacked the hedge. As I sweated my thoughts were full of soccer, The Brothers Karamazov, spiny branches, Mrs Thatcher and all wine based on the gamay grape.

TWO QUERIES: (1) Why is kohl rabi, so similar in texture and application to turnip, so much better to eat? (2) Are some subjects beyond the scope of versifying? – a proposition I am worriedly trying to resolve.

It's not all lolling in the pool

Final despatches from Villa Bonden.

FLYPAPERS Deadly but disgusting. My daughter’s idea. Afterwards she mentioned she had taken photos of three papers full to capacity. Did I want to post them or would I run the risk of the blog attracting a warning as in the early days when I posted an ambiguous piece about handguns? So, no flies. Does the RSPCA have a policy on flypapers?
DSG GEARBOX One of the natural wonders of the area is the Circuit de Navacelles, a huge ragged cirque of rock with a terrifyingly winding and narrow road down to valley level. A perfect application for my car’s DSG gearbox – a six-speed auto with the option to switch to clutchless manual changes. The technique: hold third speed for the 75 m “straights” and flick into second for the hairpin bends. Needs practice, though.
NIGHT SKY At about 11 pm, during our evening ingestions of rosé, what we had previously thought to be a sun-reflecting satellite traversing the night sky was in fact a space station. A satellite would be too small to be seen, we were told by an expert.
BARBECUE My technique has always been to keep on spraying the charcoal with spirit-based fuel until the charcoal submits and agrees to light up. The preferred inflammable in France is a form of gel which works better. A first for me but no doubt it’s been around for decades.
SMOKE ALARM Started screeching and wouldn’t stop. Our son-in-law diagnosed the fault as a failing battery, something which doctors might have said to be “contra-indicated”. He was right though.

The US car - a key to culture

Recent transatlantic exchanges have induced an Americo-nostalgia for the car life we enjoyed there. Our VW station wagon was called a Variant in the UK and – possibly because Variant might be misread as Deviant - a Squareback in the US. It was used, among other things, for the 600-plus mile drive from Pittsburgh to stay with friends in Massachusetts.

Rather than take the narrow, dangerously curvaceous, elderly Pennsylvania Expressway we drove north to the Interstate which passed through comparatively wild scenery. Once Mrs BB spotted a bear; more gruesomely we came across a dead deer with a car, 150 yards away, in hardly any better condition than the deer.

The Squareback cost $5 to fill up which now seems unbelievable. We were guided by well-detailed state maps free from the oil companies. With its engine located virtually above the back wheels, the car was much steadier in snow than, say, a Chevy Impala.

The VW was a vital cultural tool. Some nights we drove perhaps 50 miles to a drive-in movie theatre where more than one feature was shown and I regret we never took advantage of The All-Night Spookathon - Free Doughnut at Dawn. Our two daughters would watch the first movie which had a general rating. Valiantly our elder daughter would try to remain awake for the more adult second movie (“Catch 22” comes to mind) but would flake out into a bed made up in the back with the rear seats folded away.

Sound from the movie came from a box wired to a post and hung on the inside of the car door. It was advisable to replace the box on its post before driving away.

Idle holiday thoughts

THE POOL
The pool was more or less a bagatelle
Despite its pumps and pipes and ad-hoc stock
A cheapjack blue within a rough stone shell
Shabby costume jewel of Languedoc.

Ten metres long, a mere half-dozen strokes
Of breathy crawl to carve a hand-strewn wake
Each length an overtaken drain evokes
The body’s needs, imagination’s brake.

But pools – all pools – enclose an inner space
That holds the swimmer like an ambered fly.
Seen from within the water’s silvered face
Casts back a diamond’s faceted reply.

A gesture from a bubble-beaded hand
Reaching to launch more bubbles from below
As active forms from this unlikely band
Of prism-managed light in cut glass show.

Between these metal plated surfaces
The inner pool takes gravity head on
Suspends the swimmer in near weightlessness
The hinted ecstasy of mass foregone.