Chillis and the Voice of Doom

In what my elder daughter referred to as “the often times” there was just one TV channel and the BBC filled up gaps between programmes with film of a rotating potter’s wheel and a speeded-up train journey covering London to Brighton in sixty seconds. This post may well fulfil the same function, for I am presently otherwise engaged.

The chillis have nothing to do with technology and merely serve as a reminder that my lack of faith in received religion should not be allowed to extend to horticulture. They came from a single plant sown by Mrs BB and which, despite my deepest foreboding, went forth and multiplied. They will be dried and/or frozen. The purple plastic bag has Internet links since it came from Purdy’s, a shop I believe to be located in Vancouver, BC. No prizes for making the connection.

AS I STARE into the monitor, involved in the aforementioned other work, a crisp didactic female voice says: “You have reached your destination.” I deserve this since I’ve dribbled on rather too much about mortality in recent posts. But this is not condemnation from a surrogate Grand Seigneur. It is my satnav, triggered by computer activity, possibly the optical mouse. I reflect briefly on the persistence of horticulture, and resume.

TO MY FOUR COUNSELLORS The rewrite is two-ninths complete and may be up to fifty percent at the end of the day. This is gratifying though judgement will be what counts. I thank you all but end on a note of authorial caution: rewriting is sixteen times easier than writing.

Another act of self-expiation

Speech came first; alphabets provided the toolbox – the technology – by which speech became visible. And a rare old hash we made of it. We’re all aware of English negligence (enough, cough, bough, through, for starters) but the French are just as bad. Take feuille (leaf); could there be a more complicated way of spelling a syllable and a half. As for Finnish – why all the umlauts? Since the double dots modify vowels why not pick more precise vowels in the first place?

Two cheers at least for German, then. I know just enough to recognise Germans worked harder at relating the alphabet to speech and in maintaining consistency thereafter. I particularly like the iron-clad rule that ie spells ee, and ei spells aye and it curled my teeth in America to hear Steinberg rendered wilfully as Steenberg. Yes I know Germans use (possibly invented) umlauts but somehow they don’t seem as prodigal as the Finns.

Learn the basic pronunciatory rules in German and you’re more or less home and dry.

Seid umschlungen, Millionen
Diese Küss für ganze Welt.
(Be embraced (oh ye) millions,
This kiss for the whole world)

It’s a crime to offer it unsung, and without the tenors pushed so far up the scale they’re almost trebles, but I do so knowing that a few days’ familiarity will be enough for the average Yorkshireman (Is there any other kind?) to communicate those words.

Why am I doing this? In self-expiation. The few Brits attracted to other languages tend to get swoony about French. And I’m more guilty than most. Pax vobiscum. Oh, what a smartyboots.

It's not voyeurism it's maths

Womens’ shoes have not figured enough in Works Well. They’re important because my standards in pulchritude were established in fifties’ films when women stars were heavily made up, had hairstyles apparently achieved with a planishing hammer, wore sheathlike dresses even in the kitchen and walked around on stilettos. I’d always vaguely assumed this was standard footwear everywhere and it was only in, say, the eighties I realised this was no longer the case.

It’s no doubt crass but I secretly admire stiletto-clad feet. Possibly it’s a fetish. Certainly it’s unforgivable that women are still required to cripple themselves in order to pander to male preferences and in public I’m world president of the Anti-Stiletto League. But in secret…

I conclude the appeal lies in the shoe’s geometry. In profile the stiletto can be rendered as a triangle with a right-angle between the heel and the sole. The angle that matters is the one above the right-angle and it’s a case of the smaller the better; as the heel is lengthened this angle shrinks. Interestingly, though, there is a limit. The shoes shown are pretty near that limit since the tops of the feet are virtually in line with the front of the calf.

In the ballet dancer’s feet, conveniently x-rayed, the angle (in this case relating to a non-existent shoe) has diminished to zero. Leg and foot share the same vertical plane. What started out as an audaciously sexy re-arrangement of nature now becomes an anatomical deformity. There’s no percentage in losing the concept of the foot altogether. I’m glad about this.

Perhaps it was the drink as well

Champagne, Stella Artois lager, Adnam’s and Fuller’s ale failed to dispel our conviction that there was too much to say and too little time, when Plutarch and I met yesterday at The Blogger’s Retreat. Blogonames cropped up and were rearranged in the pantheon. I mentioned I was considering resuming a dormant novel and to husband my waning resources Works Well should be closed down. “Write both,” said Plutarch succinctly. Outside it was pouring and he lent me his umbrella, explaining that his wide-brimmed leather gaucho’s hat offered sufficient protection.

And then an epiphany. On the rush-hour-jammed tube to Paddington I found myself pressed against a small man standing up and contriving to read a paperback. I was pierced with homesickness for life in London. The greatest city in the world and you pay the price in discomfort, as this man was quietly proving. It’s worth it. But London is for youth, not old age.

TECHNOLOGY IN YOUTH Trolley buses, painted blue and cream and adorned with the city’s coat of arms (Motto: Labor omnia vincit), carried me to the centre of Bradford years ago. When the driver floored the “accelerator” relays clacked open and shut, powering the motor. If you pressed your ear against the metal post supporting the overhead cables you could detect a faint whirring as the bus – as yet unseen – approached.

The bus stop I used stood close to the open door of a carpenter’s workshop where an unguarded circular saw was frequently at work. I can hear the rising scream now as the noise changed steplessly from C in alt to G# above. In those days I had perfect pitch, now I resort to perfect lies.

Not yet finished with George Frideric

As the final rippling interplay of the Amen chorus dies away, you are left reflecting on the words. Most come from Isaiah and they’re a mixed bag. Some are sublime…

He was despised, despised of men; a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief.

…especially the deliberately understated “acquainted”. On the other hand, bathos may be only a crotchet or two away…

How beautiful are the feet of them that preach the gospel of peace.

…raising a number of anatomical questions. I was familiar with both the above but this was the first time I was aware of the implications of…

Every valley shall be exalted, and every mountain and hill shall be made low: and the crooked shall be made straight, and the rough places plain...

… so paradise will look like Lincolnshire superimposed with a New York street grid pattern. Climbers not welcome. If Yahweh doesn’t like gradients or curves (Motorcyclists, too, it seems will not be welcome) why did he create them?

Traffic, maths and Handel

FAST + SLOW = BANG! We were bedevilled by road safety signs during our trip to the Peak District but excess didn’t end there. On a ten-mile stretch south of Leek there are three dozen speed cameras. One small village was monitored by three pairs. This has the desired effect and traffic adheres to the limits.

Yet local drivers will have sussed it all out. Such cameras cost £50,000 and no local authority could afford that investment so many must be empty boxes. Use the road regularly and you get to know which are which – and speed accordingly. Crashes between speeding locals and slow-moving foreigners have no doubt become a spectator sport.

HAND-HOLD GUIDE No prizes for guessing why I responded to this from the Oppenheimer biography; “Weinberg… observed that mathematical formulas were like temporary hand-holds for a rock-climber. Each hand-hold more or less dictates the position of the next hand-hold… ‘A record of that is a record of a particular climb. It gives you very little of the shape of the rock’.”

LIFT UP YOUR EARS Saw a different version of Messiah at the weekend: Harry Christophers and the Sixteen - a handful of period instruments and a tiny (18 members) choir, albeit all professional, singing with passion, clarity and power. For those unfamiliar with live performances of this work there is a British tradition of standing up during the Hallelujah chorus, the reason being too tedious to recount. Mrs BB and I are dubious about this but, moved by the performance, we joined in - to be rewarded by a significant improvement in the sound quality. Who can understand or prescribe the so-called science of acoustics?

... and now the nuts and bolts

Those familiar with this blog may think the helicopter (previous post) was more of an indulgence for me than for Mrs BB. Not true! She likes taking to the air and even enjoyed a float-plane flight over the mountains of New Zealand. But helicopters are techie and techie is my thing.

The financial side, however, is appalling. Our R44 Raven II (manufactured by the hopelessly mundane Robinson Helicopter Co) cost about £300,000 and demands an insurance premium of – wait for it! - £10,000. Inspections, servicing and hangerage push the flying bill to £200/hour. But it’s fast - 97 knots or, say, a ground speed of 120 mph. At one point Anthony, our pilot, needed to increase our cruising altitude of 1000 ft by half that again. Done in a veritable eye-blink.

But no hovering. It’s too expensive in fuel, I believe, and that’s why we missed our daughter’s village. Nostalgists who respond to quarter-inch plate would have been disappointed by the R44’s fragility. The doors flap like leaves and the joystick (or whatever it’s called) is a mere 10 mm aluminium tube. Weight-saving is apparent wherever you look.

Such a lightweight craft is sensitive to natural forces. We flew through a col in the Malverns where hillwalkers were able to look down on us. The approach was tranquil but the wind beyond the col buffeted our port side. Instrumentation is almost minimal; the top screen above the panel is a humdrum satnav, not much different from the one that guided our car to the Drum and Monkey. Nevertheless, I fear it’s the only way to travel.

Away from Channel gales

Forty-nine years ago Mrs BB and I emerged into a gale from the church of St Mary and St Eanswythe on Folkestone’s cliff tops (there’s a Turner painting that includes it) and stumbled into our married life. Today’s celebration was more tranquil and more uplifting. I’d arranged things secretly and Mrs BB, bemused by an hour’s drive into Worcestershire, swears she thought we were going to buy a sapling. In fact she spent the drive wondering how to dissuade me from this since we already have too many trees in our garden.The rendezvous was The Drum and Monkey near Upton-on-Severn where we later had lunch. Since the pub didn’t open until midday bemusement continued as we sat in the car making forced conversation.All was explained when a small helicopter (belonging to the egregious Richard Hammond of “Top Gear” as it happened) landed in an adjacent field and Anthony Stockman, our pilot, beckoned us over.

We failed to see the tiny fifteen-house village in Gloucestershire where our younger daughter lives. Nor did we spot the equally tiny village of Sellack which accommodates one of our favourite gastropubs. The area’s rural beauty is a constant diversion.But it’s not all beauty. We found Chez Bonden by first identifying Tesco, deservedly diminished from the air. Then up Golden Valley (location of the C. S. Lewis bio-film, Shadowlands) flanked by the Brecon Beacons,

a circular tour of Hay-on-Wye (above), down the Wye to skirt Hereford, pop over a gap in the Malverns and back to the D&M. With time to reflect on the randomness by which couples are brought together.