I'll stick with beans on toast

I’ve just finished ‘The Course of Empire,’ the first volume of Bernard DeVoto’s three volume History of America. It begins with the Spanish Conquest, followed in turn by the French penetration of the North American rivers and, getting in just in time, the English settlements on the Eastern seaboards bound in by the Allegheny and Appalachian Mountains.

 

 It’s an exhaustive and exhausting account, illuminated by evocative descriptions of landscape, and barely believable stories of individual explorers, mountain men and trappers. The impact on European ‘great power’ politics is also finely explained. The failure of C18th French bureaucracy to capitalise on what their explorers had handed them on a plate is also a lesson for our own risk averse bureaucracies.

 

The book’s one great drawback is the sheer amount of detail, a dense forest of facts with little space to breathe and worse, very poor maps. 

This is a crucial weakness because the joy of the book is the ‘Pin-the-Tail on the Donkey’ madness as early explorers tried to make sense of rivers and mountains in the ‘wrong’ place. Their over-riding aim was to discover river access to the West Coast as convenient as the Mississippi, the St Lawrence and other rivers on the Eastern Seaboard. So over-riding was the desire, wishful thinking influenced map after map of ‘the unexplored’— in particular rivers and mountains—for over a hundred years. This is both funny and potentially gripping but here the writing is over dense and the poor maps make it impossible to see the places referred to.

Eyes and mind tend to glaze with names of rivers, obscure individuals and tribes crammed within paragraphs—mentioned but inadequately developed. It’s hard to focus if interest diminishes with details not fully explained.

But what anecdotes! And what a story. When interest flares the book is hard to put down.

John Colter for example. One summer night in 1805 Blackfeet attacked him and his partner, Potts as they slept. They killed Potts but stripped Colter naked and told him to start running, giving him a sporting start before loosing their fleetest runners to catch and kill him. He ran barefoot over the cactus that had torn through the leather soles of previous explorers; he ran until blood gushed from his nostrils; he ran six miles in all until he reached the river. He dived into it and hid beneath one of several clumps of driftwood whilst frustrated Blackfeet howled and scanned the river for signs of life. That night he swam downstream until safe, striking land in the early hours of the morning, where he walked another seven days barefoot, naked and unarmed until he reached safety.

There are accounts of tribal cultures, the Takulli for example whose widows had to carry their husbands’ ashes on their backs for three years before being allowed to remarry. In describing the various Indian tribes, De Voto depends heavily on the accounts of these early explorers and his own early C20th perceptions; thus terms like fickle, child-like, savage and treacherous abound, along with recognition of their valour and skill in surviving the harshest terrains.

Perhaps the saddest parts of the book are the descriptions of a virgin wilderness, pristine rivers, and the vast herds of buffalo stretching to the horizon and more numerous than ants. They proved easy hunting but the Sioux and other tribes were masters of the utilitarian.  In late winter they would panic herds on to frozen rivers where the ice was weak and splintered under the weight. For weeks buffalo carcasses floated downstream under the ice, surfacing every so often where squaws would drag them to land. By then, the meat was badly decomposed, sometimes almost liquified—luckily a delicacy for the aficionado. I’ll stick with beans on toast.

Caravaggio

 

Two weeks ago, we parked our car in Newport and took a train and tube to the National Gallery to see the Caravaggio Exhibition. Because my wife is a member of the National Gallery we were able to enjoy a members only preview of the Exhibition—all two pictures of it: Head of John the Baptist and the newly discovered/attributed The Martyrdom of St Ursula. Being a grasping, hard-hearted soul, my first impression was ‘Just two pictures? We’ve paid carpark charges, train fares and the cost of a Tube ticket.’ Fortunately that first impression didn’t last very long.

We entered a dark room which heightened the effect of the two illuminated paintings. Because access was limited to members, there were relatively few there and you could press your nose to the picture, if you were weird. Not being that weird I took two photos (but no selfie)  and two more to be sure. Then, I thought, I’d better get my money’s worth. (I’m a philistine. My wife’s the art lover.)

I studied first one picture and began noticing things. I studied the other. And this is the beauty of being limited to just two paintings as opposed to wandering around amidst hundreds, seeing and not seeing, like a goldfish or butterfly.

Okay, so I’ve seen each picture twice. Was that it? Why were my wife and friend spending ages before each painting, and then returning time and again? FOMO struck, forcing me to follow their example. 

I read the explanatory blurb more closely: 

‘This almost monochromatic composition shows Caravaggio’s ability to reduce a story to its essentials. We are confronted with the horror of the severed head, the brutish power of the executioner, the old woman’s sorrow, and the complex revulsion of Salome who, at her mother’s bidding, had requested St John’s head on a platter.’ 

Head of John the Baptist

I saw all this and more, in particular the incredible brushwork on St John’s hair, and face, especially around the lips, as well as his use of light for dramatic effect.  

 

The Martyrdom of St Ursula

The painting  and subject were commissioned by Caravaggio’s patron Marcantonio Doria, whose stepdaughter was about to become a nun using the name ‘Sister Ursula.’ Inspiration or warning perhaps. Who knows? The Martyrdom of St Ursula, Caravaggio’s last documented painting, depicts a scene from the legend of a Christian princess whose 11,000 virgin followers were massacred in Cologne by the Huns. Struck by her beauty, the Hun leader promised to spare her in exchange for ‘marriage’ which may be a euphemism. 

Whilst other artists may have painted a grand tableau maximising the 11000 virgins, Caravaggio focused on a small, dark, intimate space and somehow draws you into the drama as one of the spectators. The blurb highlights the importance of the hands, the guilty hand of the murderer, the outstretched hand of the bystander unable to stop the arrow, and Ursula’s hands framing the wound. Caravaggio paints himself in the picture--- the startled, open-mouthed soldier looking over Ursula’s shoulder. 

Little did he know he’d be dead, just a few weeks after finishing the painting.

Two near contemporary biographies, one by Giovanni Baglione (1556- 1643)

the other by Giovanni Pietro Bellori (1613-1696) Both tell the same graphic story of his death.

The story of Caravaggio is well known, the bad boy of art who murdered a rival and fled Rome to be feted, despite the charge hanging over him, as one the foremost painters of his day. What’s startling is that apart from a very brief apprenticeship to a fresco painter, he had no formal training whatever and was entirely self-taught. 

His final months were dominated by tragedy. Caught in a tavern brawl he was hideously scarred on the face before being tossed between hope and despair. Believing he’d been pardoned by the Pope, he sailed back to Rome with his paintings and possessions. On landing he was mistakenly arrested and separated from his possessions, the boat sailing on without him. On being freed, the desperate Caravaggio rushed after the boat in the heat of an Italian summer and was struck down by a raging fever. While enthusiastic crowds waited for him in Rome, he died miserable and alone on a deserted Italian beach.

I realised again how lucky I was to enjoy what was an intimate preview after reading this account in London’s Evening Standard. Well worth reading, especially for the tributes from cinema greats like Martin Scorsese. 

Across the Universe

Voyager 1 has now spent 50 years in space, is 50 billion miles away, and we are still in touch – just – but not for much longer. Soon, it will be exploring deep space alone, and continue to do so aeons after we are extinct. Long after the pyramids have crumbled into sand, our planet an empty wilderness, Voyager 1 and its 1970s’ computers, will be exploring strange galaxies with its smorgasbord of hope: the sounds of a humpback whale, a human kiss, thunderstorm, Beethoven and Bach and an Indian Raga. It might also have included the Beatles’ ‘Here Comes the Sun’ but for EMI’s refusal to release copyright. It wanted more money. Never mind, Voyager does at least have a message from Jimmy Carter. 

The question is, and putting human culture to one side, can it ever convey to a future alien the full glory and mystery of our planet? Will an alien intelligence ever know why an owl bobs its head in a gentle dance, or appreciate the fact that because its eyes are fixed in place, it has to continually shift its visual perspective to determine the distance and position of its prey?

 Robert McFarlane waxes lyrical over an owl’s eyes, ‘their size and sheer liquid darkness…wells of ink, shafts of oil: two boreholes drilling right down into the night.’ The owl absorbs every vestige of light for hunting in darkness, their eyes packed with light and motion-sensitive “rod cells.” Possessing so many rod cells mean less space for reactive “cone” cells, so owls see largely in monochrome.

Their ears are equally powerful, turning darkness into an open book, able to pick up the ‘the scutter of a vole through grass at a hundred yards.’

Their hearing is made more acute by the position of their ears, which are set asymmetrically on their head. This enables them to more accurately pinpoint their prey. Their ears are also linked to the eyes: ‘part of the hearing nerve that goes to the brain branches off to the owl’s optical centre as well.’ In that sense, owls ‘hear seeingly.’ (Jennifer Ackerman) 

Such sensitivity has its drawbacks. The owl cannot hunt in sustained or heavy rain, the cannon-like roar or rain on grass drowning out the sound of anything else. Out of sight, a platoon of voles could do the Can-Can and the owl would be none the wiser. 

And as for their legs, those dancing voles should think again.

Other creatures enjoy equally mysterious powers. Sea turtles communicate with their siblings whilst still in their eggs, synchronising their hatching as one. When grown, they navigate the Earth’s oceans by tracing geomagnetic fields as easily as we are guided by satnavs, pregnant females returning to the exact spot where they themselves had been born.

But should a far future civilisation from a far distant galaxy ever decipher Voyager 1 our wonderful planet will have been reduced to a few random sounds and a message from Jimmy Carter: ‘This record represents our hope and our determination and our goodwill in a vast and awesome universe…...’ 

Speaking of which:

 

The Beatles response to missing out on outliving mankind. 

The joys of AI

I recently downloaded two AI programs and tested them, to reassure myself as a writer and to compare their abilities. Claude first.

I asked it to write Winnie the Pooh in the style of Micky Spillane:

‘I pulled my battered stuffing out of the honey pot and brushed away the sticky crumbs. This was a dark trail that started with a missing slob of a bear and his pinched honey stash. I’d smelt this kind of case in the Hundred Acre Woods before—it reeked of desperation and the cheap, floral perfume of a twisted doe. Keeping my grip tight on my trusty pot, I prepared myself to confront the twisted stuffing-filled underbelly that lurked beneath the sickly-sweet surface.’

Then, Winnie the Pooh and Tigger in the style of Charles Dickens:

‘Twas the bst of times in the Hundred Acre Wood when the jovial, striped creature came bouncing into our presence, disturbing what little peace a plump, aimless bear might find amid the melancholy trees. With vigour unchecked and exuberance unmatched, this orange nuisance did pest the tranquil soul relentlessly, until composure lay scattered like the honey pots and their viscous remains.’

Could it manage a Micky Spillane version of Miss Piggy and Kermit?

'The smoke-filled swamp joint went silent as the curvy pig in the low-cut sequins sashayed in. I tried keeping my focus on the piano keys, but it was no use. Her beady eyes locked on to me like aorp looking for a fly to snatch. I could smell trouble coming off her like fumes from a water treatment plant. Pulling my collar tight, I braced for impact.’ Still not too sure what an aorp is.

Or Wind in the Willows in the style of Raymond Chandler?

'It was a dark night along the river bank when the trouble started. A weasel in a worn coat tried to peddle some hot merchandise to a badger and his muscle. Across from the way, a toad with a shady past nursed his third pint, eyeing the scene like he was gonna make a play. I gripped my trusty walking stick tight. This wasn’t gonna end well for someone if it went sideways.'

Next I tried ChatAI with comparable requests.

Miss Piggy and Kermit in the style of Raymond Chandler.

‘In the dimly lit alley of obscurity, where the city’s shadows lingered like unwelcome secrets, I found her, Miss Piggy, a dame with a figure that could make a bishop kick a hole in a stained glass window. She had a voice like screeching tires on rainy night  and a glare that could make a grown man tremble like a leaf in a hurricane.

Beside her stood Kermit, a frog with eyes that had seen too much for his own good. He had the look of a man who had danced with danger one too many times and knew that the next waltz could be his last. His words were as smooth as whisky on a cold night, but there was steel beneath the surface, ready to strike if the need arose. 

They were an odd pair, Miss Piggy and Kermit, two souls adrift in a sea of troubles,  clinging to each other like shipwreck survivors in a storm. As they stood before me, their faces a mask of stoic determination, I knew that their story was far from over in this city of broken dreams.’

And Miss Piggy and Kermit in the style of Charles Dickens.

 

‘In the heart of a bustling metropolis where the streets teemed with a cacophony of voices and the air was thick with scent of industry, there resided a peculiar duo—Miss Piggy and Kermit the Frog. Miss Piggy, with her rosy cheeks and resplendent demeanour, cut a striking figure amidst the crowds, her eyes sparkling with a mixture of ambition and longing. Kermit, a humble frog of gentle disposition, stood by her side like a steadfast companion ever ready to lend his support.

Miss Piggy, with her dreams as grand as the mansions of the wealthy elite, aspired to rise above her humble beginnings and make a name for herself in the glittering world of show business. Her heart beat with the rhythms of the city, its pulse echoing the promise of fame and fortune that beckoned from afar. 

Kermit, a creature of simpler tastes and kind-hearted nature, found solace in the companionship of Miss Piggy, her larger-than-life personality a beacon of light in the darkest corners of the city.’

And to round it off a piece of art from Gen Craft shown above. The actual request was a picture of Miss Piggy dressed in a low cut sequinned dress and Kermit in trench coat and fedora in a noir style bar. Not too sure about the low cut sequinned dress, or whether I have anything to fear in the writing field yet. A fun waste of  time? Oh yes. . . . The  Famous Five in the style of Dostoevsky, Biggles in the style of Nietzsche.    Endless possibilities if there’s nothing else better on TV. If anyone fancies trying my last two suggestions, please let me know the results 😀

 

Better than fermented socks

Distinctive is a suitably neutral term, I think, so let it be said. I have drunk several distinctive wines in my time. One, deep in the past but never forgotten, was an Israeli wine bought in Tescos. It tasted like fermented socks. I can even specify the colour: blue. Blue woollen socks. 

My most recent experience is a bottle I bought a fortnight ago.

Bells rang from the start, but I was seduced by the price. I mean:

 Apothic?

Untamed and Unbound?

Plush and Jammy?

Plush I associate with soft fabric or something upper class. In my limited dealings with the upper class I’ve never heard them extol the virtues of jammy wine. But it gets worse on the back of the bottle.

The wine was apparently inspired not by a reputable vintner but a clever little blackbird, and here the imagery becomes even more confused: plush and velvety – fabric then, but one that soars on the lips. *

It crossed my mind the ‘copy’ might have been produced by A I in which case a skilled copywriter has little to fear, at least for the moment. But why the name: Apothic?

On a related website, I learnt that Apothic Red Wine can be traced back to the ancient Greek and Roman practice of blending different wines together to create ‘a unique taste profile.’ Hardly Catullus but perhaps Californian.  The practice was known as apotheca and supposedly created more flavoursome and complex wines. Perhaps Scottish distilleries should take a leaf from the apothica book ie extol the virtues of  cheap ‘blended whiskies’ at the expense of the ‘single malt.’

The website was replete with virtue. Apothic, a subsidiary of Gallo wines, is committed to ‘responsible and sustainable measures’ – ‘environmental stewardship’- ‘bold leadership.’ But what did it taste like? 

Alcoholic Ribena, a perfect match for Sticky Toffee Pudding and Eccles cakes. It’s fair to say it didn’t soar on my lips. Spluttered perhaps. The ancient Greeks and Romans were also partial to diluting their wine with seawater.  Perhaps I shouldn’t be giving ideas to vintners in search of profit. 

* Soaring from the lips 

Here is one reviewer trying to restrain his enthusiasm. It must be said though, my wife quite liked it. Each to their own, as they say.

Hidcote and the ambiguity of man

The lane leading to the enchanted garden.

Hidcote Manor, in Gloucestershire, had been part of the Bradenstoke Priory estate, which in turn was based in Wiltshire. It reflects how wealthy the medieval church was and why Henry VIII dissolved the monasteries in 1539. In the C17th  Hidcote became a farmhouse and in 1907 was sold to Lawrence Johnston, son of the fabulously wealthy American socialite Gertrude Winthrop; for her, £7,200 was but a drop in the ocean. 

As a youth, Lawrence Johnston had drifted across Europe, somewhere along the way becoming a Catholic, falling in love with France, and Edith Wharton, and becoming at last a naturalised Englishman. He joined the Imperial Yeomanry to fight in the Boer War (no record though of him ever meeting my grandfather, Sergeant John Keyton). 

                                                                   Lawrence Johnston

After the war, he tried a spot of farming in Northumberland before settling in Hidcote with a domineering mother. There, he developed a grand passion for gardening, later scouring the world for new and exotic plants. His motto was always ‘Plant only the best form of plant’ and ‘Plant thickly’ on the principle, presumably, that nature hates a vacuum and would otherwise fill it with weeds. 

When World War I broke out in1914, he joined the Northumberland Fusiliers, was wounded, gassed and once mistakenly left for dead on the field. 

                                                     Johnston with his team of gardeners 

As soon as the war ended, he returned to his beloved Hidcote and spent so prodigiously his mother, who held the purse strings, left his inheritance in the hand of ‘trustees’ so in a sense he remained a dependent for life. 

We were there on a bright March day when only hellebore, daffodils and magnolia were in bloom. As the video at the end of this post will show, it is heaven on earth in Summer and Spring. We just glimpsed it's architecture

Did a giant crow take a bite  out of that house?

In 1930, and now in his sixties with a gas damaged lung, he toured western China in his search for new and exotic plants. Accompanying him was George Forrest of Edinburgh Botanic Garden. It was an unhappy partnership. Johnston fell ill and Forrest developed an active dislike of him: 

‘Had I raked (the entire country) with a small tooth comb I couldn’t have found a worse companion than Johnston…Johnston is not a man, not even a bachelor, but a right good old spinster spoilt by being born male.’ 

It's an odd comment to make of a man who fought in two wars, was badly wounded and in his sixties embarked on a hazardous expedition to China, and yet, how do you define a man?

 

 

How do you define a man? I was struck by this on entering the men’s toilets in the Hidcote estate and encountered the unexpected. Instead of the tacky but  perhaps more traditional machine dispensing Durex with their lurid logos and names, I came across this.

Were they expecting a charabanc?

I have no idea whether these were also on offer in the women’s toilets but at the time I paused and wondered what Lawrence and Gertrude would have thought,  and whether such a thing would be permitted in the Garrick Club presently under siege?

But back to the indefatigable Lawrence. By the 1940s and with Lawrence Johnston well in his 70s, he began to think of his future and that of his garden. After much hemming and hawing the National Trust was persuaded to acquire it in 1948 and have kept it ever since. 

A longish video but well worth watching especially on a gloomy day. Around 19.40 -- 20.20 mins in you'll see the formidable Gertrude and imagine her views on present cultural mores 

Forget Cheese and Onion. The future is ethically made crisps.

 

Last week we stayed a night at the Bear Inn at Rodborough. Built in the late C17th it later became a popular coaching inn, and derived its name by the fact that bear baiting once took place in its grounds. 

The Inn has been greatly extended since the C18th but it still has a Dickensian vibe standing proud on Rodborough Common. 

 

This bear presently guarding the foyer seems content enough, albeit quiet. 

Inside, the inn is quirky with its corridors and unexpected rooms, but all was not well in the kingdom of Mike. There were no fires—hearths and unlit logs, but no fires. Worse the beer was cloudy. The first pint, a Stroud brew, was cloudy but drinkable. The second pint, pale ale, was also cloudy but tasted foul. This time, I did complain and the beer was replaced with a crystal clear Japanese lager. 

But this isn’t the point of this particular  blog. Sitting  in one of the rooms with a fireless fire, I found myself reading an empty crisp packet. My kindle had run out of charge, but the crisp packet proved more than a substitute. I wasn’t so much reading about a packet of crisps, but a mission statement delivered with evangelical zeal. On finishing it, I felt like standing up and bellowing Hosanna!

This was a far cry from the early days of the crisp industry and the cutthroat wars of the 1970s and 80s.

My first introduction to Smith’s Crisps was the factory scrapings sold in one penny conical bags at a nearby sweetshop. Grease with a crunch and not a hosanna in sight—nor any notion of the origins of Smith’s Crisps. 

Frank Smith, born in 1875 started his crisp business in the garage of the Crown Hotel in Cricklewood. His wife, Jessie did all the peeling, slicing and frying whilst young Frank went pottering around  London in his horse and cart selling them. Within a year he was employing twelve full time staff and in 1927 had opened a factory in Brentford. 

Mission statements had no place in Frank Smith’s world. His crowning act of genius was the little blue bag of salt in every packet of crisps. This encouraged pubs to stock them for they increased both thirst and beer sales. 

By the second half of the C20th, Smith’s had serious competition—most particularly, Golden Wonder and Walker’s Crisps. Other than their product, they had one thing in common, a pathological eagerness to sell their crisps anywhere and to everyone. Not for them the namby-pamby selling point of only selling their crisps to those worthy of eating them. The crisp wars had begun.

Golden Wonder’s chief claim to fame was their cheese and onion crisps in 1962. Unperturbed, Smith’s hit back at them with their claim to have introduced chicken flavoured crisps the year before. But now Walkers entered the fray with their smoky bacon crisps and chipsticks, followed by roast chicken, and beef and onion flavoured crisps. In every war, there is misinformation, truth suffers as do ethics. Walkers, I'm looking at you. (British Made Chips, look away. This may offend you). 

Smith’s ended up being absorbed by Walkers, and Golden Wonder went into administration in January 2006.

I finished off my ethically sourced crisps and left the still  fireless room. I’m sure British Made Crisps have a future. After all, in the UK we consume ten billion packets of crisps or a hundred packets per person a year. And ethically made crisps, must surely have a more pleasing taste?