Blogging about Blogg

In Cromer recently I visited the RNLI Henry Blogg Museum.

Well worth a visit. A tribute to the RNLI and the people who make it all happen, in particular one Henry Blogg. A bust of him, outside the North Lodge council offices in Cromer, records:-

Henry Blogg G.C. B.E.M. Coxswain of Cromer Life-Boats 1909-1947

Winner of the R.N.L.I. Gold Medal for conspicuous gallantry 3 times

of its Silver Medal 4 times

With the help of his gallant crew rescued 873 lives during 53 years of service-

“One of the bravest men who ever lived”

I found I was having to swallow more than usual and my eyes were prickling as I went round the exhibits. It wasn’t so much from the enormity of the courage the crew showed but the quiet determination to do what was necessary and then get on with life. It can’t have been easy for many of them, in the coastal town over the years.

One tribute indicates the recognition that, but for Messers Blogg and crew, a whole family could have been wiped out or worse.

On the 2 November 1938 Lifeboat The HF Bailey was launced to go to the aid of the SS Cantabria of Santander, Spain. The vessel, an unarmed merchant ship in the ownership of the Republican Spanish government, had been shelled by the Nadir, a Falangist warship. The Cantabria was adrift and listing about 9 miles NE of Cromer Lighthouse. Most of the crew had been recovered from boats by the Nadir but the captain, his wife, two children and a crew member had preferred to take their chances with the sinking Cantabria rather than the bunch of fascists who were standing off. Up pops Henry Blogg and his crew and before you can say hasta luego the remaining souls were rescued from the bad guys or a watery grave. The welcome in port was warm and although, I have no evidence to hand, I suspect many main braces were spliced or whatever. Shelling an unarmed merchant vessel probably didn’t go down too well in the fishing port of Cromer, unlike the Cantabria.

Captain Manuel Argüelles and wife Trinidad Chertudi made a new life for themselves in Mexico.

When the Henry Blogg Museum was opened in April 2006 Ramon Begone Argüelles, the son of Captain Manuel Argüelles, returned to Cromer from Mexico with his sister to pay tribute.

So! Here’s another modest proposal Mr Broon -

The lifeboat persons and service should be funded directly and adequately from taxation. Compensatory savings to fund this can be derived from the Trident 'Defense' System which will, henceforth, be subject to funding by voluntary collections.

Should there be a bob or two left over then I’m sure we can fund a few other things.

“Conquer English to Make China Stronger!”....

My oh my!

What you Engrish teachers get up to. I can never resist the temptation to pull the professional leg of the goodladywife, if you understand my meaning.

The following from the New Yorker via Arts and Letters Daily

Accompanied by his photographer and his personal assistant, Li Yang stepped into a Beijing classroom and shouted, “Hello, everyone!” The students applauded. Li, the founder, head teacher, and editor-in-chief of Li Yang Crazy English, wore a dove-gray turtleneck and a black car coat. His hair was set off by a faint silver streak. It was January, and Day Five of China’s first official English-language intensive-training camp for volunteers to the 2008 Summer Olympics, and Li was making the rounds...

To his fans, Li is less a language teacher than a testament to the promise of self-transformation. In the two decades since he began teaching, at age nineteen, he has appeared before millions of Chinese adults and children. He routinely teaches in arenas, to classes of ten thousand people or more. Some fans travel for days to see him. The most ardent spring for a “diamond degree” ticket, which includes bonus small-group sessions with Li. The list price for those seats is two hundred and fifty dollars a day—more than a full month’s wages for the average Chinese worker. His students throng him for autographs. On occasion, they send love letters.

There is another widespread view of Li’s work that is not so flattering. “The jury is still out on whether he actually helps people learn English,” Bob Adamson, an English-language specialist at the Hong Kong Institute of Education, said. The linguist Kingsley Bolton, an authority on English study in China, calls Li’s approach “huckster nationalism.” The most serious charge—one that in recent months has threatened to undo everything Li has built—holds that the frenzied crowds, and his exhortations, tap a malignant strain of populism that China has not permitted since the Cultural Revolution.

“I have seen this kind of agitation,” Wang Shuo, one of China’s most influential novelists, wrote in an essay on Li. “It’s a kind of old witchcraft: Summon a big crowd of people, get them excited with words, and create a sense of power strong enough to topple mountains and overturn the seas.”

Wang went on, “I believe that Li Yang loves the country. But act this way and your patriotism, I fear, will become the same shit as racism.”

I do like to be beside the seaside.

A trip to Cromer. I was attempting to blow the cobwebs of the post kipper episode away. A pleasant amble past the beach huts and a return to the town. It has a certain air above its station. The hotel in front of the pier is the Hotel de Paris. It is claimed that Stephen Fry was a waiter there and Winston Churchill didn’t think much of it, Cromer that is. The Monte Carlo of East Anglia? To paraphrase – no one would call Monte Carlo the Cromer of the Riviera, very enjoyable nonetheless.

I returned by way of the Norfolk coast and found this in a shop window in the main drag of Cley next the sea. The revenge of the flashing kipper.

Felled by Kipper. Was it a Red Herring?

A leisurely Sunday breakfast with a kipper was spoilt. It was a dodgy kipper! I keep telling the goodladywife not to go to that particular retailer. The only reason it exists, as Alan Coren firmly believed, is to keep the riffraff out of Waitrose. I apologised in the office advancing the, less than stirling darling, as the reason for a lackluster performance.

Unaccountably the question of red herrings came up. I said that I had seen one and since the Blessed Steve Hatt hat confirmed it was indeed such, I have no doubt that the beast exists. I went on to give, in that boring old fart (BoF) way some people find intensely irritating, what I believed to be the origin of the preserved herring's colour. This was immediately (and correctly, why trust a BoF) challenged by one of the younger members of the team. Google was appealed to but did not immediately reveal the origin of the colour. Instead, it gave the use that term has in signifying a diversion. The question was then raised about how it had come to signify this. No answer was immediately available from the electronic font of all wisdom. I was sent off with the challenge to find out what, why and how. This is always a good way to get rid of a BoF on a Friday afternoon when you have got lots to do.

I couldn't resist the challenge.

Reference from the web - "red herring" fish on Cley Smokehouse cached on Google

This is the longest process of all and probably the most traditional. The herring are left in a dry brine for three weeks and then smoked over oak for 2 weeks, leaving a golden red sheen on the fish hence the name red herring.

One of our kitchen bibles is Jane Grigson's Fish Book She describes on p191 the need to have a fish that was easy to store and transport, not in large barrels of salted fish, so a particularly efficient technique was evolved to smoke salted herring. The treatment produced a dryish red object - the red herring.

Why should it be the signifier for a diversion or diversionary tactic?

Another (crossword) bible in our house is Brewer's Dictionary of Phrase and Fable

An electronic version E. Cobham Brewer 1810–1897. Dictionary of Phrase and Fable. 1898.

gives:-

Drawing a red herring across the path. Trying to divert attention from the main question by some side-issue. A red herring drawn across a fox’s path destroys the scent and sets the dogs at fault.

I rest my case. Which is full of red herrings, of course! Why prior to 1898 would anyone want to set the dogs at fault? Did the Victorians have a burgeoning anti-hunt movement?

I need to lie down and fan myself with a kipper.

Life

A very enjoyable birthday which, even the morning after a little too much Cava, still leaves me with a feeling of gracias a la vida que me he dado tanto.

Going through the emails with a cup of coffee I spotted this from one of the New Scientist blogs

Life Defined
What is life? According to Sohan Jheeta, an astrobiologist from the Open University:-

"Life is a thermodynamically open chemical system with a semi-permeable boundary. It contains an information-based complex system with emergent properties, part of which drives a metabolism based on a proton gradient. The said gradient generates the necessary potential difference across the semi-permeable boundary. The information is heritable and coded in such a way as to allow variation and thus evolution."

On occasions, I roar about the house to refrains of:-

Life! couldn't you just live without it?

Apparently not! Got to keep that proton gradient based metabolism rollin' the potential across the old semi-permeable.

Post birthday best wishes to all our readers.

Two men in burkas

In the departure lounge at Harare Airport two men in burkas approach each other. The smaller, slightly rotund figure, extends a black hand from the garment. It shows the arm of a well tailored suit, the cuff of a very expensive shirt, fixed by a diamond cuff link.

John so nice to see you!

The second, larger figure, is slightly shambling and the white hand that he extends is large and clothed in the arm of a dusty jacket.

Robert! Fancy meeting you here. Where are you off to?

Well, John, I have just been offered a position in Asia by my sponsors. It involves some interventions on governance and control. It's good to know that, even at my age, I can still make positive a contribution. You must come and visit me if it is not too cold for you or perhaps we could meet up in Beijing?

A voice announces over the PA system

The next flight to depart from Harare International Airport is Cathay Pacific Flight 666 to Lhasa

John waves to the turning figure and calls after him:-

I rather prefer the climate in the Hague at this time of year and the tulips of course. I believe they have produced a new bulb. It's called justice! Perhaps you would like to drop in and see it?

Sentiment

Someone who describes a glass as half empty is defined as a pessimist.
If the glass is described as half full the person is defined as an optimist.
Extending the catechism of cliche (in the spirit of the man with the little horses)

Someone who describes the glass as only half full:-

Is greedy, probably worked for an investment bank, bought a car a yacht and an aeroplane with his last bonus and no doubt waters the workers beer in the pub that he bought before the collapse.