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.

Wolves in sheep’s clothing?

I remember Edinburgh in the 70’s. (OK that’s the 1970’s.) We had a little environmental thing going, not too deep green, just hugging whales and trying to preserve the bits of the planet that we hadn’t messed up with our fag ends and whisky bottles. There was one guy who was kinked out of his mind on wolves! I’m not sure he hadn’t been frolicking with the beasts in the wilds of somewhere, howling at the moon. He seemed fairly harmless. We let him have his exhibition and I’ve lost the posters. I’ve felt ever since that wolves have had a bad press. That image, thinner than was fashionable, rangy, lolling tongue and sardonic smile (if you’ll pardon the anthropomorphism) has stayed with me.

If we believe the FT Magazine 15/3/08 and the review by Donald Morrison, wolf worship is about to sweep the west, prior to the Beijing Olympics!

Wollf Totem by Jiang Rong, translated by Howard Goldblatt, is an award winning piece of Chinese fiction, a tale-within-a-tale of wolves and nomadic herders set in Inner Mongolia.

All good stuff with a poke in the eye for the old Han!

You Chinese have the courage of sheep, who survive by foraging grass.

We Mongols are meat eating wolves, and you could use a bit of wolf courage.

Nice one.

So! All you PLA chaps out there in Tibet, set to and show a bit of woofly courage. No holding back now! Box the trouble making vandals and antisocial elements about the ears until they know what’s what.

Be careful though! The Dalai Lama’s clique might tag your tanks while you're at it!

Legacy Polishing

An office somewhere in Los Angeles. Two men in grey suits are discussing casting a film.

So. I see Tom Hanks as the best bet for Martin. He is the man! A session with the voice coach, what’s her name, Roisin, Rose Roslyn? Anyway, give him the ginger rinse and the curlers and he is the man!

What about Jerry?

Gerry you mean, well, it’s got to be Tommy.

Hell no! That Texan; never cut it in the Bogside.

Who gives a f**k about the Bogside we’re thinking about Boston.What’s Senator Ted gonna say if we have some shit kicking britisher that no one can understant. This is a huge part, emotionally, intellectually, philosophically and fiscally.

OK!

You know we are just playing around the big one.

Yea I know!

So. You show me yours and I’ll show you mine?

I’d go for Gandolfino. He’s big, he’s irrational, he scares the sh*t out of everyone and ….

He’s a godamn f**k**g catholic. Are you trying to get me tarred and feathered?

Ian’s mellowed. His wife is a Baroness for god’s sake, they’re practically Ulster Royalty. You never heard the Act of Emaciation?

I don’t think so. I know you want Javier Bardem for Thatcher, that’s gotta be real inspired with the hair an’ all, and Meryl Streep for Blair, she’s got the cojones. Do you see any kind of kinky action here?

We are getting away from it. This could be big and I could live with that but you have to go with me for this one.

Hit me!

I think Forest Whitaker is the peach!

Yeah, and the title?

The Abominable No Man!

Socialismo o Muerte

Legacy polishing can be undignified, especially when it is carried on by others on your behalf. Dogs fighting over your bones before you have had the decency to die. I may have mentioned previously that an acquaintance of mine was feeling a bit poorly, suffering, no doubt, from the after effects of rhetorical diseases. Well, he has decided to retire, after a fashion.

I suggested that:

I'm not sure how the rest of them will remember.

The articles, ranging from pre-mortem panegyrics to biographies of a mass murderer and secret admirer of Franco, have been rolling out. Some good jokes though!

In Open Democracy 19 - 02 – 2008 (First published Aug 2006)

Fidel Castro's legacy: Cuban conversations

Fred Halliday recounts a Cuban anecdote from the 90s

about Fidel Castro finding himself in a cage with Bill Clinton and Boris Yeltsin, where they are all being threatened by a ravenous lion. Clinton and Yeltsin bravely tussle with the beast, but retire seriously mauled. Fidel tells them to leave it to him. He approaches the lion and whispers something in its ear: the animal pauses, frowns, and rolls over dead. Bill and Boris take a break from licking their wounds to query comandante about the magic words. Fidel replies: "well, I said what I always say – Socialismo o Muerte" ("socialism or death").

As a follow on from that Richard Gott in an article:

Fidel remembered: a view of the Cuban revolution

on the 20 - 02 – 2008 in Open Democracy, recounts:

A few years ago, I returned to Havana to write a history of Cuba, which was published in 2005. On its final page, I wrote the following words about Castro:

"He remains a figure from all our yesterdays, grey-bearded but eternally youthful like an ageing rock star. He does not run the country, but he presides over a government that is his creation. He has changed his slogan from ‘socialism or death', suitable for the violent 20th century, to ‘a better world is possible', appropriate for the more pacifistic revolutionaries of a new era. When he dies, there will be little change in Cuba. While few people have been looking, the change has already taken place."

Nice switch that from socialism or death to a better world is possible.

I’m not sure what the next stage is, probably – ah well mustn’t grumble.

The Dalai Lama Gang!

We can all be unreliable witnesses.

I was listening, with half an ear, to a recording of an interview with Mr Shrub conducted by Matt Frei on the 14 February 2008. I heard Mr Shrub refer to the

Dalai Lama Gang!

Such images:

The 14^th reincarnation wearing a wife beater, displaying lots of tatts, a hairnet over his bald pate, mean and menacing, giving hand signals, surrounded by hard guys from the hood but still managing to look like a startled owl!

Yo! Panchan baby gimme some skin?

Bitchin! Lets go tag those PLA Tanks, mother f*****g butt kissers. Why they wear such big hats?

I thought I had better check this out. The transcript is here

and the relevant section records the leader of the free world, a certain Mr Shrub:

There's a lot of issues that I suspect people are gonna, you know, opine, about during the Olympics. I mean, you got the Dali Lama crowd….

Ah well! It was a nice thought while it lasted.

Pointless Incessant Barking.

Blogging. Why do we bother? Is it Pointless Incessant Barking?

It could be. We have a dog in our village which barks when his owners are out. It is left in the garden, presumably to deter burglars, but at the passing of a sparrow or a ‘Wee, sleekit, cow’rin’, tim’rous beastie’ it sets forth on this marathon. Pain in the ass? Of course! The dog, known in our house without affection as Big Dog, has problems. In addition to its owners, it probably has several personality disorders and we should tactfully move on.

Again John Naughton provides his rational for blogging in the way that he does, without comments.

It is a pleasure and a revelation to me. It is a place to be and it is amazing. You don’t have to read it. I can create a world where there is one with everything for me and as long as the blogspot persists I will have my space!

Maybe with the growing light there will be more images, ojala!

Wild Things

My, literary, thirst for wilderness and wild things continues unabated.
Again, the workers at SCC Libraries have provided me with:–

Robert Macfarlane. The Wild Places.

all for the price of a few electrons!

I am, enjoyably, working my way through it and what do I find but a reference to Sandy Mc Rory (page 138). He has appeared here briefly before .

I must admit it was so long ago and the occurrence so unlikely that I had begun to doubt my own recollection. Good to be shocked in this way!

Sandy lived in a ’bothy’ in Strathchailleach just to the north of Sandwood Bay.

I remember the name now and the translation; but that's another story!

The Wislon Doctrine

Two men stand in the Tower of London.
They are placed either side of one of the many instruments of torture in the room.
One, the smaller of the two, is clearly, cravenly, nervous constantly taking his glasses off and polishing them on his tie. His hand moves to his collar frequently, emphasising his scrawny neck. This gives the impression of a turkey hearing the sound of carols. Let's call him the Man of Straw(MoS). The other exudes a weary air. Clearly he is burdened, his large frame seems to bear a great, invisible, weight. Let's call him the Preoccupied Man (PM).

MoS twitters:

Did we have to carry out my three monthly performance assessment here PM?

PM intones

Jack, I thought it might concentrate the mind, a little.We must have Dick Cheney here if he ever makes it across the pond. I know some of my friends from an earlier time are looking forward to having him arrested after he swims across!

Now to business, what’s all this I hear about bugging. You know the doctrine, no bugging the boys and girls. At least not without giving us the copyright on the juicier bits, only joking Jack!

But you told me to do it PM, you said, right there in cabinet. I think I have the high ground here PM and witnesses.

Well Jack thanks to a little help from some of my, er, colleagues I have a recording here of the exact phrase.

PM presses what looks like a mobile phone with iPlod printed on the side.
A jumble of voices then comes PM’s unmistakeable and stentorian voice.

Well bugger the Muslim MPs!

Rabbi Burns

Rabbi Burns has much to teach us!

Fair fa’ your honest, sonsie face
Great puddin o’ the chieftain race!
A boon them a’ ye tak your place….

That reversal includes many.

Still, mustn’t grumble. Well fed and watered on Burn’s night, drouthy neibours meeting drouthy neibours, it is a pleasure to read his words and the images that spring to mind.

It is impenetrable language for many, and his reputation has slipped over the years, sadly. Is that because he was demonstrably human or just poor?

Holy Willie crafts a rare argument for ‘virtue’ which we would all do weel to bear in mind….

O Lord, Thou kens what zeal I bear,
When drinkers drink, an' swearers swear,
An' singin there, an' dancin here,
Wi' great and sma';
For I am keepit by Thy fear
Free frae them a'.

But yet, O Lord! confess I must,
At times I'm fash'd wi' fleshly lust:
An' sometimes, too, in wardly trust,
Vile self gets in;
But Thou remembers we are dust,
Defil'd wi' sin.

In addition to the thorn of lust how many of us could put our hands on our hearts and truly say we are not guilty of:

Travelling on the Sabbath;

Not reading the Bible on a Sunday;

Digging the garden on the Sabbath.

So then, guilty as charged.

May we all be preserved from canting hypocrites and enjoy sharing the earth with the

Wee sleekit, cow’rin, tim’rous beastie

And the

Panic in his breastie.

Still

Its comin’ yet, for a’that
That man to man, the warld o’er,
Shall brothers be for a’ that!

Sorry Lassies; it’s a sort of male bonding Laddie thing!
I Wish!

The Oak and the Ash and the Bonny Rowan Tree.

Ohh dear!
Rowan me old mucker. I think that you have bollixed this one right good and proper mate.

I’ve just met a girl named sharia!

Nuff said, us beardies 'ave to stick together in a manner of speakin.

Not that you want it, but a word to the wise man. When you are in a whole lot of shit stop digging.

Well timed though. Did anyone notice if old whatisponce dropped his interest doobies?

Did I write that?

At a certain age, or time of day, it is possible to be confused about what one has done or not done.

This is not what has happened to Robert Fisk of course but it does make for a ripping good yarn in the Independent!

"Saddam Hussein," the cover said in huge letters. "From Birth to Martyrdom." And then there was the author's name – in beautiful, calligraphic typeface and in gold in the top, right-hand corner. "By Robert Fisk."

Many thanks to Arts and Letters Daily for the link.

Things me mammy never told me

Gombeen-man

Chambers

a grasping usurer; a moneylender

Collins

a shopkeeper who practises usury

And here’s me thinking he was just a Crook.

Music Wars

Occasionally, I stumble at a word or phrase when I am reading. This is not always because of the twist in my brain responsible for dyslexia or some such. My mental hurpling can be caused by images or fancies. They are ignited in my mind’s eye and I can be taken by them for days, months or even years. The great Kurdish cook Pakora is celebrated in our house with gusto.

Rex the receiver has made an appearance previously on these pages and there are many more.

John Naughton, in Memex1.1, refers to an article by Tim Wu in Slate. This outlines the possibility that AT&T will shoot itself in the foot with a new strategy to pursue copyright infringement.

Detail aside, the following fired up the old synapses nicely:

And that's why the recording industry sued Napster and Grokster, not AT&T or Verizon, when the great music wars began in the early 2000s.

That phrase - the great music wars -burst into my mind.

A pitched battle begins between the Berlin Phil. and the LSO, Damn Busters’ March pounding in the background. The Phil start up with the Fifth, staccato and the plucky little Englanders pick up the strains and hurl them back over the World Service.

The Bolshoi Orchestra and the Bournemouth Symphony giving it large to a bunch of fancy pants from Paris with cardboard epaulets as the 1812 builds. The roaring of the massed cannons (or canons from the choir of Westminster Abbey) brings the cheese eating surrender monkeys to their knees!

The Chicago and Boston play Aaron Copland’s “Fanfare” as a camera pans across smoking battlefields of the Civil War, Nagasaki blasted by atomic devastation, Vietnamese and Cambodian villages ghost empty, no sign of animals, children or people.

The sounds are taken up by a small group in brown and white cotton moving across a mountain backdrop. A high voice straining and ululating in devotion as the camera takes in villages, the colour of mud, Pastures of Plenty in Afghanistan. The tabla is light but incessant as shells pound into the likeness of some carved image of the compassionate Buddha in a remote valley.

If you ventured north you would hear the crude clash of cymbals and blast of off key horns wielded by saffron robed, coxcombed, monks as they resisted the massed brass bands of the Peoples’ Liberation Army playing selections for the Beijing Opera, the Mikado and Andrew Lloyd Webber, marching faultlessly in goose step.

And so on…

BBC journalist reports live from Zimbabwe

Radio Pictures
A Series of Virtual Images for the Wireless.

John Simpson is seen in long shot on the streets of Harare wearing a burka.

The caption is a quote:

“I began to suspect that a number of people had recognised me. I put a baseball cap on with the letters Zanu -PF. It was as if I had become invisible.”