Does this convey his bigness?

When old dormice like us need to buy each other presents it’s a long-term, covert operation. Neither is inclined to wait months for something we want and bang goes another choice. The trick is to listen carefully to murmured exchanges during that somnolent Sunday-newpaper part of the week and then spirit away what’s been learned. That’s why I’m now reading “American Prometheus” a biography of Robert Oppenheimer, who masterminded Los Alamos then fell foul of the anti-Red witch hunts in the fifties. (Note: The protruding bookmark was a gift from Plutarch.)

Oppenheimer was a clever man – marvellous on intuitive leaps into obscure regions of physics. His cleverness is measured by those he worked with and who thought well of him. Since his golden period was when physics was turned on its head by quantum mechanics, his address book contained all the big names: Niels Bohr, Heisenberg, Dirac, Rutherford, Pauli, usw.

I’m well aware not everyone out there is turned on by physics so I need an analogy. Say you’re a committed Christian; imagine a time-warped contact with someone who had rubbed shoulders with the twelve disciples. Something on that scale. That’s all on Oppie, for the moment anyway.

MUG SHOT Lucy has just celebrated her acquisition of a new tea mug from a craft shop in Josselin, a Breton town I dimly recall – but for what? Beautifully photographed, checked out for lip contact, tis a thing to be desired. My mug, another gift from Mrs BB, may be my most treasured possession. Acquired over a decade ago from John Lewis, it is bone china, has a William Morris pattern and is of austerely correct design. Fits my lip perfectly.

Bibliophile, 74-plus

My socks, like novels of the avant garde,
Weigh on me now: I lack the power to stretch
Beyond that hindering swag of lard
Towards the problematic briarpatch.
I opt for looseness so my corded neck
Is unrestrained, a turtle’s periscope
That scans the route on a familiar trek
Through re-read books down a declining slope.
I fear tight clothes and tighter argument,
Prefer to wallow in the warmer mud
And so avoid the future’s accident:
The ketchup rather than the oozing blood.

This year I measured time along Swann’s Way
But knew the end and occupied the day.

Engine room chez Bonden

Working kitchens can be a thumbprint – even an EKG – of their users. A recent pictorial post by Lucy got tantalisingly close to revealing hers. Urged to cast aside the seventh veil she excused herself for various reasons, including one concerning an excess of bottles which I am compelled to sympathise with.

Anyway, in re. motes and beams, I am stripping away the Bondens’ seventh veil. Our kitchen is L-shaped, hence the two halves. This is of course Mrs BB’s territory but I enter it regularly to wash up, to perform certain unsavoury tasks beneath her notice and to provide dialogue when change is mooted.

1. Neff glass hob. Powerful, quick to react, speedily cleaned. Very expensive boon and benison.
2. Extractor fan cover. Changing filter paper is an “unsavoury task”.
3. Food processor. In teacosy-like snood.
4. Knife holster. All wood; large enough to accommodate sharpening steel.
5. Window blind. Awkward to remove; permanently at this level; decoration only.
6. Basil plant in pot. Just to brush past it is a delight.
7. “Monsieur Ariston” dishwasher. Used only by guests after dinner parties.
8. Foil and film dispensers. Literally indispensable.
9. Krups coffee percolator. Latest in long trudge towards perfection.
10. Spice rack. Compact and practical; not bought at novelties shop.
11. Microwave. Aged Panasonic; given the marque it should last for ever.
12. Cupboard. Converted from piddling nine-slot wine rack.
13. Brabantia touch-top garbage bin. Once you’ve touched you’ll never pedal.
14. Neff twin oven. Hyper-expensive; does everything; superb engineering detail.

Keeping faith with screw-caps

I have a horror of deathbed conversions, of being bullied by pain, fear or fatigue into embracing a received religion. I hope when that particular needle’s eye arrives I shall remain faithful to St Pragmatus, patron saint of the believable world.

Given my age and the growing relevance of Shakespeare’s most seductive, most sibilant line (If it be now, ‘tis not to come…) such considerations are important. Romanticism and fantasy are always at my elbow and require constant suppression. Briefly they got the upper hand at my birthday dinner last Saturday. I’d ordered a sauvignon blanc for starters and since the best stuff is brewed in New Zealand it came with a screw-cap which the restaurant owner proceeded to unscrew at the table.

I mock-complained. I told him that screw-caps are OK at home but in public one yearns for corkscrew panache. Complete nonsense, of course. Over the last ten years I’ve probably opened a dozen bottles of wine that have been corked (ie, undrinkable). None had a screw-cap. Yet because this was a jolly, sweaty social occasion I found it necessary to hark back mendaciously to one of those imaginary golden eras.

Corks are harvested from tree bark by curly-haired Mediterranean types who I’ve always suspected beat their wives. Corks can communicate a fungus to the wine resulting in a mouldy smell and taste. Screw-caps prevent this but they’re technoid. I’m ashamed I betrayed my intellect and resorted to jokiness even though jokiness was in the air. But I also worry about finding myself in a poor way, looking up and hearing a dark-suited man reading selections from The Song of Solomon. Beautiful but irrelevant. Will my belief in particle physics and the cell hold out?

Technology the spur

Mrs BB’s birthday card to me had two people staring at the heavens and was captioned: “Do you think there’s somewhere up there where they don’t play football?” She knows my antipathies. Mind you I expect to be – and am - attacked for my sports interests, especially F1. The cars are noisy and just go round and round, I’m told. I say if the technology is of no interest forget it.

Raikkonen won the Belgian Grand Prix yesterday because of technology. Despite having a Ferrari that was only intermittently faster than Fisichella’s Force India he picked his moment, pressed the Kers button and went into the lead. Kers converts and stores waste energy produced by applying the brakes and is available for 6 – 7 seconds a lap.

Fisichella didn’t have Kers. Why not? Because of the laws of physics. Kers weighs about 30 kg, a huge addition to the overall weight of a racing car. Not everyone has been able to balance that equation. It’s far easier to watch a Guatamalan kick a ball about and, occasionally, kick a Ghanaian. No technology in that.

PROOF POSITIVE Lucy, faced with some fence painting, suggested I should do a comparison test on Cuprinol and its competitors. This photograph of our shed is one reason why I am the kettle and the pot.

MUM’S LIST Other phrases used by my mum keep on returning. “Giving backword” means reneging on something previously agreed. I use it without explanation; most people find it self-explanatory.

When times were just a wee bit harder

Vocabulary, domestic methodology and items employed by my mother between 1939 and 1950. Not necessarily unique to West Riding of Yorkshire

All being well West Riding version of deo volente
Bodice White flannelette waistcoat worn over vest and under shirt by children with weak chests
Boggle (n.) Solid excretion from nostril
Bread dipped in egg French toast; main constituent dried egg powder.
Broddling Excursions, using rotating finger, typ. into ear or nostril
Browned on Euphemism for burnt
Cabbage water Served in a cup with Oxo cube; stratagem to force nutrition into cabbage-hating youth
Cake Two discs of potato holding very thin layer of fish, deep-fried. From fish and chip shop.
Canadian supper cake Wartime recipe where liquid paraffin replaced lard/butter, etc.
Candles Liquid excretion from nostril
Chavvelled Ragged, worn
Conk Core (of apple)
Crack beetles on mi belly Over-eaten
Cut, The Canal, specif. the Leeds-to-Liverpool
Diddle Stand on one leg then the other because of bladder pressure
Drawing Dangerous way of encouraging coal fire to “take”. Sheet of newspaper held over fire-place to encourage rush of incoming air under grate; newspaper almost always ignites
Firelighter Sheet of newspaper rolled into long tube and folded into interlocking triangular pattern to “start” fire. Far harder than it looks
Fix-fax Skeins of white tegument (cartilege?) in cheap cuts of meat
Ganzy Jersey; pullover (corr. of Guernsey)
Gill Half a pint (typ. beer, milk); elsewhere in UK one-third of a pint
Gollocky Left-handed
Hogging cap Flat cap with body stitched to “neb”
Kaylegged Tired
La-di-dah Middle-class, upper-class, from "down south"
Lost its nature Useless (typ. elastic)
Muckments General rubbish
Nattercan One who importunes irritatingly
Narrow-gutted Mean-spirited, ungenerous,
Nip-curn Mean (lit. nip-currant, ie, someone who nips currants in half to make them go further in a teacake)
On the prod Restless; household pet’s way of asking for food
Ovoids Egg-shaped lumps of compressed coal-dust; used during coal shortages
Panel patients Pre-NHS, presumably poverty-stricken, patients treated virtually free (ie, 2s 6d or half-a-crown a go) by family doctor
Progging Gathering wood for bonfire
Proper going-on Reorganised and supposedly improved way of tackling life.
Reckon Judge to be, eg, I reckon nowt to that
Ruttling Vibration of saliva in back of throat during sleep; often a prelude to snoring
Scraps (Bits?) Small particles of deep-fried batter scattered (free) on portion of fish and chips
Scruffs Young people, of terrifying reputation, from nearby slum
Seg Small three-point nail for protecting shoe heels
Septic Seemingly outdated phenomenon; in the immediate post-war years (possibly due to malnutrition) minor cuts and abrasions often became infected and were said to “have gone septic”
Spitting Ejection of flaming fragments from fire-place; the result of rain getting into stored coal.
Thoil Bring oneself to do something, eg, I can’t thoil to pay that much
Trolley Abbr. trolley-bus
Window-bottom Window ledge

PS (latest from my brother) Mither Dither with a different initial letter.
(Latest from me) Doiting Losing one's wits

Happy birthday, Yorkshire lass

Janet Baker
Born August 21 1933

Stark contrast with the manly role of knight,
The faintly pantomimic joke of dame
Arrived, the way things do, as a polite
If regal tick against the box of fame.
Singer and monarch shared the irony
Of heavy faces and of reticence
And thus the honour’s ambiguity
Tended towards the side of temperance.
A world away from deep-set souvenirs
Of Dido, Dorabella, Orfeo,
The Mahler songs and Handel’s baroque airs:
Intemperate outcome of a voice aglow.
The titled name a grace note lacking grace,
The music permanent in time and space.

New invention not needed

You can boil, fry, scramble or poach them. I like poached best but the process sets me on edge and it makes sense to turn to Mrs BB, the household’s ace poacher. I’d prefer to do it myself, but without hassle.

Yes, there’s a pan thing with detachable saucers but the result is not a poached egg. Baked, perhaps, or steamed. Time for technological ratiocination. I concluded I needed a bun tin with a separable bottom. Paying for this at Cooks Galley in Abergavenny I mentioned the reason. “Haven’t you heard of this?” they said. This was was a floppy plastic simulation of the outer petals of a water lily: Eddington’s Poach Perfect, £5.95 a pair. Does what it says it does. Hope I haven’t rediscovered the wheel.

LET’S HEAR IT FOR LIFE Physics gets a regular work-out on our minority appeal TV channels, biology less so. That’s why I grabbed the three-part series, The Cell, with both hands (Plutarch has already posted on the first installment). The disadvantage with physics is that, at particle level, it’s theory and maths; biology is the visible world. Installment two took us up to the thrill of the double helix, but setting everything beautifully in context.

Together with poignant support for Newton’s tribute to Descartes: “If I have seen further it’s because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.” Cell division was visible microscopically in 1875 but not understood. Nevertheless the viewer recorded, in pen and ink, the migration of stick-like things to either end of the cell. Now we know these sticks are chromosomes and video cameras record the moving process – exactly like those nineteenth-century drawings showed. The eye of the scientist and the eye of the artist: both wonderful