Storm and Silence

Once again I'm in the thick of a NigeCorp workstorm - very tiresome, especially as it gets in the way of blogging, or indeed thinking, in any worthwhile sense. However, the storm did cease, briefly and impressively, at 11 o'clock this morning, as the office fell quiet, and all London outside it, as quiet as London ever gets. There is something uniquely deep and intense about a city silence, though it is nowhere near complete; there are always stray sounds and the inescapable background hum of traffic and aviation - but it has a terrific presence. It's a silence that doesn't just happen - it truly falls. If there can be such a thing, it's a resonant silence. And it's a fine thing that this Remembrance silence is still observed, in the midst of all the busyness of the world.

Brown and Country?

Heaven knows I loathe the excrescence Brown and all his works, but this neverending letter saga has me almost feeling sorry for him. Of course, as a non-human lifeform (a fact I spotted very early on in his leadership) he is massively maladroit when it comes to normal everyday human activities, such as smiling, kissing ladies' cheeks and bowing the head at Remembrance services - but what was he thinking of when he scrawled this 'letter' and allowed it to go out? What kind of state is he in? Is it any fit state to be out and about, let alone running the country? It is really (to be charitable) desperately sad, and I rather wish I'd never heard about it in the first place (we only did because The Sun chose to milk a grieving mother's rage). But never mind this particular letter - what does he think he's doing writing to soldiers' families? It's most definintely not him or any government they're fighting for - it is firstly their comrades in arms, and, more broadly, 'Queen and Country'. Not Brown and Country. The only official letters sent out should be from senior officers and (in a non-personalised form) the Queen. Meanwhile, we should continue to be duly thankful that casualties in this war are on such a small scale that a prime minister can even contemplate sending out individual letters. But, please, no more.

Hedy Stuff

This blog cannot let today go by without pausing to salute the geat Hedy Lamarr, born on this date in 1914. Described by Max Reinhardt as 'the most beautiful woman in Europe' (you can see his point), she gained early notoriety in a famous slice of arty porn, Ecstasy, prancing about in the altogether, skinny-dipping and assuming an orgasmic facial expression - achieved, she claimed, by the director pricking her in the bottom with a needle. Hmm... Her first marriage, to a fascistically inclined Austrian arms magnate, was not a howling success, but, in his determination to keep her out of mischief, he would take his young wife with him to technical meetings - where, with her sharp mathematical mind, she picked up a lot of useful information about military technology. This would come in handy later in her life, when she had fled her husband and headed for Hollywood, movies, more husbands and lovers - and the invention, in collaboration with the avant-garde composer George Antheil, of a Secret Communications System, which they patented in 1942. Apparently this was an invention far ahead of its time, having to rely on the primitive technololgy of a piano roll, but it was, according to those who know about such things, an early version of frequency hopping, and a precursor of spread spectrum communications technology, which, according to Wikipedia, is 'a key to modern wireless technology'. So there you are - what a dame! Brains and beauty too... Happy birthday, Hedy, wherever you are.

One More for Remembrance

Here's a brilliantly perceptive, and moving, essay by Robert Macfarlane on Edward Thomas and the South Country - it went out last week on Radio 3. The second of the series, but the fourth item here: Haunting.

A Neglected Classic?

The Radio 4 programme Open Book has been in search of neglected classics, asking various writers to make their nominations, then throwing the list open to a public vote. Now they have a winner. Yes, The Snow Goose, the sentimental novella by Paul Gallico which was a huge hit with readers (and even some critics) in its day, has remained in print and extremely popular (especially in Britain) ever since, is widely read in schools, was made into a very successful TV movie, and even inspired an album by prog rock band Camel (true - it was called Music Inspired by The Snow Goose, a most unprogrocklike title). In what sense, then, is The Snow Goose a 'neglected classic'? It sticks out like a sore thumb from what is otherwise a rather interesting list - if only Rasselas had won! Or Esther Waters, or The Polyglots, or The Quest for Corvo, or... well, anything but The Snow Goose really.

Winter Bees

I've noticed in the past couple of years that bumblebees seem to be flying long after the end of summer and before the coming of spring. Now a research study (reported in today's Telegraph, but unavailable on their notoriously useless website) has found that many of our bumblebees are indeed giving up on hibernation and staying active through the winter months. Naturally the scientsts' first thought is that this is down to 'climate change' (as they like to call the Slight British Warming), but they acknowledge that other factors must be at work, since it is only in Britain that this overwintering is occurring. Perhaps our native bumbles are interbreeding with hardier foreign species, introduced to help with pollination in polytunnels - or, more likely, since winter flying is predominantly an urban/suburban phenomenon, it's down to our helpful planting of exotic winter-flowering shrubs (especially bee-friendly Mahonia) in our gardens. So, once again - as with, for example, the Large Blue and Heath Fritillary - man's activity proves to be a benign influence on nature.

One for Remembrance

A Private
by Edward Thomas

This ploughman dead in battle slept out of doors
Many a frozen night, and merrily
Answered staid drinkers, good bedmen, and all bores:
"At Mrs Greenland's Hawthorn Bush," said he,
"I slept." None knew which bush. Above the town,
Beyond `The Drover', a hundred spot the down
In Wiltshire. And where now at last he sleeps
More sound in France -that, too, he secret keeps.