Jigs

A difficult week in some ways but much heartened by the thought that in times past there was an ordinance to the effect that there should be :-

No lewd jigs at the end of plays

Dear god, lewd jigs, ah!
I'm very grateful to Lucie Skeaping who explored the often forgotten world of the Elizabethan stage jig -and put such thoughts into my mind.
The jig is, I am told, a popular form of bawdy musical comedy from the 16th and 17th century.
Amen, sisters.

Black and White

I have mentioned , in a previous post, the prodigious talent of Jane Bown
The Grauniad has an interactive site/tribute to her work set out by decade.
Either it has been a bit unstable today, or my Firefox is on the Fritz.
However, I look forward to exploring it in the future and I hope it is going to be around for some time!

Who are you?

Come on, jump to it, no snoozing at the back or there will be more difficult questions later.
Interesting Horizon last night. The Secret You:- BBC Two, 09:00pm Tuesday 20th October 2009.

Professor Marcus du Sautoy goes in search of answers to one of science's greatest mysteries: how do we know who we are?

Smart boy wanted and Sir Marcus de Saveloy of Hackney is one of the smarter sausages being a mathematician of some not inconsiderable talent and the ability to explain it all.

Well the answer seems to be that we normally (including chimps and orang-utans) become aware that we are individuals before the age of 2. We can recognise ourselves in the mirror and remove a sticker that has been placed on our face taking it directly from our face. Our brains appear to respond very specifically to a picture of a person in the same way that they respond to the name of that person in text!

Our brains light up with electrical activity when we are awake. They can be stimulated by magnetic fields producing electrical activity at a particular point and the whole brain starts behaving like a communications network, which of course it is, with billions of nodes able to get in on the act. When we are asleep The message is delivered but there is usually no one home! However, it appears to be possible to stimulate the brains of individuals in a vegetative state by suggesting they think about, say, playing tennis. The pattern produced appears to be the same as that in conscious volunteers asked to think about the same activity.

The experiment which seem to knock de Saveloy's very pretty little socks off was quite a simple one for this day and age. Your man was wired up and put in the brain scanning machine with the wherewithal to choose between right and left by pressing buttons. His brain was scanned before the choice and then the choice was made. The investigator claimed to be able to predict the choice, left or right, up to 6 seconds before de Saveloy consciously made it!

We may know who we are in one sense but am I the union between my, not insubstantial, corporeal self and the billions of networking neurons producing electro-chemical activity in my brain?

Save energy - recycle thoughts

A post to the effect that previously only Toffs (yes we are in the age of Toffs) could afford to buy books and now only Toffs can afford to read them. Nice one Quentin! But I might take issue with you over this one. Mrs Brown packed a few volumes in and I, a poor and lowly thing, have managed to squeeze a few tomes for nurture.
You may know already, but if you do not, ambulance persons use the term Tof. It may not be proper or correct, however, it identifies the condition where an older person falls over and sustains a fracture to the top of the femur. As an older person who recently sustained a fall in the sobriety of the early afternoon I was reassured, on a number of counts, I was not a Tof.

In addition!





So that is what Dave Mackay looks like.

One of the books you should read is:-
David J.C. MacKay. Sustainable Energy – without the hot air.
UIT Cambridge, 2008. ISBN 978-0-9544529-3-3.
Available free online from www.withouthotair.com.

So it won't cost you anything but the time! You can't afford not to!

Memento homo

So a day of memories.
The Royal Mail, of which much has been discussed, promptly delivered my middle class, middle aged pornographic purchasing mag. Which to be precise!

Sweet memories!

There on the 'Support your local dealer' literature was a picture of Steve, or Mr Hatt to you.
Dear god I have such fond memories. My first Salmon Trout, first sight of a red herring, fish smoked and plain, banter in the Saturday Queue, watching what Terry Kelly (or Tariq Ali)
was buying for the dinner party, finding a Gurnard, buying it, and seeing the look of appreciation in Steve's eyes .... If you are within 75 miles make a detour and just look in the window! You will be rewarded and much good will come to the fruit of your loins.

I had to travel to Thetford. I thought to compensate for this I would play Planxty. Doesn't everyone have a website now. I remember going to a show in the official Edinburgh Festival where they were the backing band. Cracking stuff. Problem was we were the only members of the audience clapping along to the tunes, stamping, and letting out whoops at the appropriate moments.

Strange that but it led me to think that the woman is dead now and no one thought to tell me, but why should they?

Once upon a time in the North.

So; here we are again, happy as can be, all good friends and jolly good company!
Up to a point Lord MacCopper.
Interesting set of articles from Open Democracy, Ooor Kingdom!

We see things very differently below Adrian's Wal, but we do so at our peril.
We do so especially if we are an English Toff about to govern a united kingdom (?) with a government of English Toffs.

Boots

The Post - Tough as Old Boots had me thinking.
One of our Ambling Group is a dedicated walker and clocks up hundreds of miles a year.
He usually gets through a pair after each long walk and, because he keeps careful records of his walking, he is able to link a mileage to each pair of boots. As much for a laugh as anything else he divides the cost of the boots by his mileage . I suspect he hovers around 10p a mile. Interesting! I've no idea what he does with the old boots but I guess they get put in the bin rather than the midden! The post mentions the fact that boots (along with cats) are sometimes found concealed within old houses.

We stayed in a B&B recently that had a child's shoe in the wall.

The Angel's Game

Recently acquired the above through the usual channels. Nudge, nudge, wink, wink, know what I mean!
I enjoyed it greatly, not as much as the 'Shadow of the Wind', but whatever!
I stumbled out of the community lunch, not drunk but with a good excuse. I noticed the Library Van, the one with the big 'Dish' on the roof, was parked outside.
Paranoia!
They know I am not going to return it tomorrow, when it is due, and when some poor borrower is expecting it to be returned.

I will pay my fine, gladly, so herself, who has had her nose stuck in it, can enjoy it!

Life has been a bit hard all round so...

Also got round to reading A Confederacy of Dunces.

Still Room?

We have been on holiday in the land of the Wal, Adrian's Wal.
We have also been plagued by notices which have caused us to stop and think deeply; not necessarily something you want to do while resting your brain on holiday.
This, for instance can not be true for all time and for all capacities.



Maybe the estate has a man who comes round at the appointed time and unscrews the notice putting up another bearing the legend...

That's enough now! No more shoving, you could not get another sardine in there sideways.

Other signs which caught our eye indicated Severe Dips.
What, pray, are these mordant mixtures ready to assail us on the roads?
Barbaric Barbecue,
Caustic Cream Cheese,
Grave Guacamole,
Harsh Hummus,
Tight-lipped Taramasalata,
Taxing Tzatziki.
We never found any of them. Perhaps they were the Hidden Dips which seemed to abound or not as the case may be!

Doors were often identified as Alarmed. I know I can be a sight but I would never, knowingly, frighten a lump of wood! Some doors were Alarmed at Night; poor things obviously scared of the dark!

The sign which gave us most concern advised Caution, Sheep!
I'm telling you we drove very carefully past those beasts, not wanting to provoke a savage attack on our tires or even having our windscreen wipers broken off!

We had a grand time. He built a lot of Wal old Adrian, and roads and ruins and had hypercosts.
Interesting to note even the Romans had dodgy builders and inflation.