It could probably do better than me

For some, chocolate triggers Ooh-ah; for me savoury stuff. Mrs BB’s no-name stew, is irrelevant here but acts as a sop for those uninterested in translating poetry.

Sam Leith, in the Guardian, writes about Google’s program for doing just that. It’s obvious to say it won’t work, he says, and cites the Google guy responsible (“evidently a software engineer with a hinterland”) who quotes Robert Frost: “Poetry is what gets lost in translation”. But, says Leith, it’s more useful to think about the ways it won’t work – or might.

Leith ignores wilfully difficult stuff and concentrates on what Auberon Waugh says “rhymes, scans and makes sense”. He defines what poets do quite cleverly (sorry, I haven’t the space) and concludes it’s a craft with multiple, but not infinite, possibilities which is where Google can help. Notably in rhyming since it’s simple to input a rhyming dictionary. Metre is harder but conventional prosody is largely binary - stressed and unstressed syllables - and binary is how Google treats them: “blank verse with iambic foot obeys the regular expression (01) while one with dactylic foot looks like (100).”

He concludes it isn’t impossible to imagine a computer being taught to write accurate doggerel. Oh heck, I’m running out of space but how about this. Faced with: “A police spokesman said three people had been arrested and the material was being examined”, Google supplied:
An officer stated that three were arrested
And that the equipment is currently tested
- said to be amphibrachic tetrameter. You may disagree.

WANT TO HELP? Do you have knowledge or experience of homesickness as a debilitating ailment in an adult? A new novel is at the planning stage and this will be a major theme. Your contribution will be acknowledged.

Can cars be pretty?

Marja-Leena responded spiritedly to an act of casual cruelty I committed on her blog by accusing me of an obsession with cars. Heh-heh; my Blog Labels list “car” 28 times and “art” 88 (88 – count them!) times. Not solid evidence, however, since I devise and fill in the labels myself. OK, M-L I accept the charge: I’m a spanner-twirling oaf with sump oil under my finger nails and I fall asleep going broom-broom.
But why not a post combining both cars and art? That’s if aesthetics is acceptable as a $5 synonym for art. In my opinion the prettiest car ever made was a Ford. And it emerged when good old Henry J. Jr was in charge. True you won’t see many of them around Detroit these days but once, if you had deep pockets, you could buy the road version. I’m talking about the GT40, of course, built to win at Le Mans, which it duly did. Isn’t this seductive?
Back in the seventies I got fed up of utilitarian cars and decided to buy one I liked to the look of. The GT40 was beyond me so I made do with the Volkswagen Scirocco Mk 1, designed by the Italian stylist Giorgetto Giugiario; subsequent models, alas, took on a bloated Teutonic look. Here is mine parked in Dompierre-le-Bouton (in France but, of course, you guessed) and I’ve chosen the angle deliberately. Many designs fail in their treatment of the rear end, but not this one.
Finally, the handsomest car I’ve owned – an early Audi Coupé, on the Col de l’Iseran, overlooking the French ski resort Val d’Isère. Where’s the snow? It’s summer.

The way to field a complaint

Friday, Saturday, Sunday evenings the BBs tope; other nights we drink vaguely healthful Horlicks and peppermint tea. Recently the Horlicks powder was grey rather than beige and tasted of poorly conceived potato soup. Horlicks sent us a pre-paid envelope. Here are extracts from their reply:

“Our Quality Control Lab states the returned sample was found with a burned and damaged foil seal. The most likely cause is it was burnt during the heat induction stage of packing (at our supplier)… causing a burnt plastic/chemical smell. Precautions have been introduced to avoid such incidences.

“Tests (to check that powder meets strict specifications) include sensory (sic!) where trained analysts taste and comment on odour and appearance. Unfortunately this jar was not detected.

“We do carry out trending of complaints… if these come from the same date code, further investigations are carried out… In this case we set up a cross-functional team who identified the root cause. Improvements identified are now in place.”

This seems a model response. The technical fault is described, the failed checking process acknowledged, and the solution (kicking the supplier’s ass) indicated. It presumes intelligence in the customer. However I shall stick to peppermint tea.

MAD BUT GOOD In Cervantes’ 760-page Don Quixote you lose your place. Dialogue is unseparated from the rest, causing endless paragraphs. Otherwise it’s good stuff:

Sancho: “How will you do for victuals when I am gone?”
The Don: “Never let that trouble thy head. For though I had all the dainties that can feast a luxurious palate, I would feed upon nothing but the herbs and fruits which this wilderness will afford me; for the singularity of my present task consists in fasting, and half-starving myself, and in the performance of other austerities.”

A golden era? More like leaden

Bloggers guilty of cynicism, practical jokes, inaccuracy, boasting, intellectual snobbery, phillistinism and ostentation should at least reveal their age, often the reason for these defects. As a regular practitioner of such vices I sought indemnity by including my age in my profile. Blogger has now removed this facility and I feel honour-bound to prove I am of a great age.

● My primary school was lit with gas mantles.
● Corporal punishment (by hand, ruler, cane and curtain-rod) was administered to pupils’ faces, the back of their necks, the front and back of their hands, their backsides and their thighs at my primary and grammar schools.
● Our milk was delivered daily, ladled from a large bucket into my mother’s jug.
● Waste metal was collected by a man with a horse-drawn cart.
● Once a man appeared in our street (eight houses on either side), took off his cap and, without amplification asked us to vote against Sunday cinemas.
● Dead cats abounded in the gutters of the main road.
● Cashiers at Lingards, a one-floor department store in Bradford, sat in a central cage on a raised platform. Cash spent at counters travelled to the cashiers on wire-supported containers.
● Barges used the Leeds-to-Liverpool canal commercially. We swam in it.
● Ever hungry, I could never come to terms with canned snoek.
● My preferred bought-in treat was chips with “a cake” – two discs of potato on either side of a thin slice of fish, deep-fried.
● My father bought large quantities of eggs, illegally, from farmers. My mother preserved them in a gloop based on isinglass.

I feel no nostalgia for any of this.

Often it's a very long 21 miles

Turmoil in French politics and Ryanair's cruel eccentricities will keep Lucy from tomorrow’s gala at The Blogger’s Retreat – an event I was excluded from due to a prior engagement. As readers of Works Well know, Mrs BB and I spend much time in France and this is a reminder of how crossing the Channel can be perilous.

Once, pre-Eurotunnel, after a fortnight’s touring we arrived at Calais to see lines of British cars stretching over the hill to the north-east, no doubt terminating at the Belgian border. We found a semi-official teenager guarding the ferry terminal entrance against queue-jumpers. I got out of the car, chatted to him in a left-wing way (Bonne chance pour la greve!, and all that) then asked if it was OK to join the proceeedings at that point. A million envious eyes watched me but he made an unequivocal and all-embracing gesture and I was in like Flynn.

My relationship with Mrs BB changed. Previously she’d believed my French was a party trick, showing off, deplorable ostentation. Thereafter, at least in this matter, she regarded me as an adult.

We boarded the first ferry and I’m sorry to say the Brits failed to show stereotypical virtues – orderly queueing, phlegm in adversity, the Dunkirk spirit. Violent arguments broke out; groups combined to force cars away from the ramps. Many were middle-class and I fear I photographed their travails (See above: Boulogne before we reached Calais). Fair to say Works Well is part of a coterie of francophiles. But to the others a reminder: if you go there simply for the sun and the wine while ignoring the people, don’t grumble if they occasionally rise up and bite you.

HOT TIP Blogger's new image uploader is Rhone Glacier slow. Go to Settings, then Basic, scroll down down to Select Post Editor, select Old Editor. Voila!

Dreaming all the while of Hobe Sound

Oh joy! All the way from Hobe Sound, Florida (An address, I suspect, more glamorous than the place itself.) comes my XXXL Super Soft Henley nightshirt, coloured Forest Green and made in India. Discovered by The Crow who from now on can fulfil all my clothing needs.

As the arms suggest a US XXXL is a mite bigger than a British XXXL and covers the body weight range 251 – 310 lb (18 – 22.14 stones). To Rouchswalwe’s chagrin the Henley’s neckline plunges deeply enough to make undoing the cleavage buttons unnecessary. And before anyone concludes Yorkshire people go to bed in their socks this was purely a photographic session, thanks to Occasional Speeder. Mrs BB is broadly favourable and says I’m welcome to her bed thus clothed.

The PJs were unearthed at La Redoute, the mail-order company, by OS some days after The Crow’s email about Wittmann Textiles. My thanks to everyone whose spirited responses temporarily boosted declining interest in Works Well.

WORKS WELL’S WORLD Looked at your blog’s statistics recently? There’s a facility for eliminating the owner’s own hits, so who were the 36 others flitting untraceably through WW yesterday when only one comment was logged in? Odder still is a list of five of my posts, the oldest dating back July 29, 2008. These appear to be random and four record very modest numbers of pageviews, well below the average of 12 for all posts since WW was born. A world map reveals WW’s limited (but very select) audience with a tiny blob just south of Alaska; brief reflection identifies this as Vancouver, home of Marja-Leena , a very early WW link.

Don't turn light on, I'm working

I am most open to ideas at 5 am, lying abed, darkness outside, body comfortable. I once did six lines of a sonnet this way. Mrs BB bought me a mini-torch to aid scribbling notes rather than relying on memory. But a sonnet is containable; these days there is the more sprawling task of plotting a new novel. Here’s how it’s gone:

● Main character. Woman, who…? flies planes.
● Author ignorant about gayness (Don’t rule that out. Later, then.) hence a male accountant… culling employees from subsidiaries of a large company. Who may need to use a plane.
● Character theme. W. uses word “love” too freely, M. not at all. Thus American vs. British dichotomy. But turned on its head. At the end of (Successful? Unsuccessful?) affair Brit is guilty of destructive passion and American shows humanitarian restraint.
● Neutral territory, surely. France?
● Accountancy no longer appeals in France. Man helps monoglot Brits buy houses so probably was more successful once. Mid-forties.
● Woman an instructor rather than charter pilot. Age? Why in France? Gay episode in – great flying country – Arizona? Do gay episodes happen?
● Marital status/children of both. On back-burner. Same with parents
● Foreground plot. Iraq war. Local French discrimination against American. Chap’s burden? Back-burner.
● Idea from book I’m reading: woman is ugly. (It’s a plot device. I’m not in favour!)
TO BE DONE
Location (Probably south – better flying weather), acquaintances, families, contrary character traits, etc, etc.
STARTS WITH
Very long chapter (70 pp at least) flying house-buying customers. Removes much pre-history, frees up use of present tense. Flight adds changing interest.
BIG QUESTION
Dare I do chap in first-person? Would writing about woman suffer?

She thinks a mouse is food

To the right is Missy, a mixed if temporary blessing. She is lodging with us for a couple of days and I shall be taking walks with my trouser pocket packed with a Tesco shopping bag. The bag will, I hope and pray, remain empty. Unlike Lucy and Mol (most of Brittany) and HHB and Blue Dog (all of Western Australia) Missy and I cannot call on millions of acres as our personal fiefdom and should Missy sow then I must reap.

Missy has brought one benefit. Several neighbours were recently burgled and we are now activating our alarm for short absences as well as long. When Missy is left behind a burglar alarm becomes unnecessary. No unauthorised ragamuffin could bear the piercing shriek of Missy’s barks.

Both Mrs BB and Occasional Speeder (Missy’s owner) have noticed Missy appears to have taken a shine to me, proof of her low intelligence. As further proof I sat her in front of the Ilyama and she was obedient but listless. I get the feeling she was comfortable with DOS but couldn’t get her head round Windows. A speech bubble rising from her head would probably say: “Where’s the C-prompt?”

This isn’t her only limitation. In an hour or so I shall watch the recorded highlights of qualifying for the South Korean Grand Prix. I expect little reaction from Missy. Or for that matter from Mrs BB.