Non-hydrating Water

After long study, the finest minds of Europe have decreed that water is quite powerless against dehydration. It is only a matter of time before they declare that breathing is of no proven benefit to health. Or that the Euro has been a resounding success - no, hang on, they've already declared that one...

Looking at Things the Kim Jong Il Way

I'm not quite sure why, but I find this pictorial blog very funny. Ever since Team America demonstrated his comedy potential, it's been hard to keep a straight face whenever the Dear Leader hoves into view (despite the fact that he is one of the world's prime murderous bastards). Back in the days when Kim Il Sung was the Dear Leader and I was a librarian, I used to enjoy the North Korean propaganda magazines that were sent, I believe, to every library in the land. Badly printed, written in often impenetrable 'English' and illustrated with grey photos of the Dear Leader amid rapturously smiling citizens, they looked forward confidently to the day when the rest of the world would come round to the North Korean way of creating an Earthly Paradise. Funny that never happened.

The Toast Sandwich

The rediscovery of the toast sandwich - a slice of toast between two slices of bread - put me in mind of Woody Allen's chronicle of the Earl of Sandwich's painstaking discovery of the sandwich (written back in the days when he could be quite funny). I take up the story with the Earl's university days...

1736: Enters Cambridge University, at his parents' behest, to
pursue studies in rhetoric and metaphysics, but displays little
enthusiasm for either. In constant revolt against everything academic,
he is charged with stealing loaves of bread and performing unnatural
experiments with them. Accusations of heresy result in his expulsion.
1738: Disowned, he sets out for the Scandinavian countries, where
he spends three years in intensive research on cheese. He is much
taken with the many varieties of sardines he encounters and writes in
his notebook, "I am convinced that there is an enduring reality,
beyond anything man has yet attained, in the juxtaposition of
foodstuffs. Simplify, simplify." Upon his return to England, he meets
Nell Smallbore, a greengrocer's daughter, and they marry. She is to
teach him all he will ever know about lettuce.
1741: Living in the country on a small inheritance, he works day
and night, often skimping on meals to save money for food. His first
completed work — a slice of bread, a slice of bread on top of that, and a
slice of turkey on top of both — fails miserably. Bitterly disappointed,
he returns to his studio and begins again.
1745: After four years of frenzied labor, he is convinced he is on
the threshold of success. He exhibits before his peers two slices of
turkey with a slice of bread in the middle. His work is rejected by all
but David Hume, who senses the imminence of something great and
encourages him. Heartened by the philosopher's friendship, he
returns to work with renewed vigor.
1747: Destitute, he can no longer afford to work in roast beef or
turkey and switches to ham, which is cheaper.
1750: In the spring, he exhibits and demonstrates three consecu-
tive slices of ham stacked on one another; this arouses some interest,
mostly in intellectual circles, but the general public remains
unmoved. Three slices of bread on top of one another add to his
reputation, and while a mature style is not yet evident, he is sent for
by Voltaire.
1751: Journeys to France, where the dramatist-philosopher has
achieved some interesting results with bread and mayonnaise. The
two men become friendly and begin a correspondence that is to end
abruptly when Voltaire runs out of stamps.
1758: His growing acceptance by opinion-makers wins him a
commission by the Queen to fix "something special" for a luncheon
with the Spanish ambassador. He works day and night, tearing up
hundreds of blueprints, but finally—at 4:17 A.M., April 27, 1758 — he
creates a work consisting of several strips of ham enclosed, top and
bottom, by two slices of rye bread. In a burst of inspiration, he
garnishes the work with mustard. It is an immediate sensation, and
he is commissioned to prepare all Saturday luncheons for the
remainder of the year.
1760: He follows one success with another, creating "sandwiches,"
as they are called in his honor, out of roast beef, chicken, tongue, and
nearly every conceivable cold cut. Not content to repeat tried
formulas, he seeks out new ideas and devises the combination
sandwich, for which he receives the Order of the Garter.
1769: Living on a country estate, he is visited by the greatest men
of his century; Haydn, Kant, Rousseau and Ben Franklin stop at his
home, some enjoying his remarkable creations at table, others
ordering to go.
1778: Though aging physically he still strives for new forms and
writes in his diary, "I work long into the cold nights and am toasting
everything now in an effort to keep warm." Later that year, his open
hot roast-beef sandwich creates a scandal with its frankness.
1783: To celebrate his sixty-fifth birthday, he invents the
hamburger and tours the great capitals of the world personally,
making burgers at concert halls before large and appreciative
audiences. In Germany, Goethe suggests serving them on buns — an
idea that delights the Earl, and of the author of Faust he says, "This
Goethe, he is some fellow." The remark delights Goethe, although the
following year they break intellectually over the concept of rare,
medium and well done.
1790: At a retrospective exhibition of his works in London, he is
suddenly taken ill with chest pains and is thought to be dying, but
recovers sufficiently to supervise the construction of a hero sandwich
by a group of talented followers. Its unveiling in Italy causes a riot,
and it remains misunderstood by all but a few critics.
1792: He develops a genu varum, which he fails to treat in time,
and succumbs in his sleep. He is laid to rest in Westminster Abbey,
and thousands mourn his passing.
At his funeral, the great German poet Holderlin sums up his
achievements with undisguised reverence: "He freed mankind from
the hot lunch. We owe him so much."

The Knight of the Plastic Window

The 'home improvement' company called Anglian - plastic windows and so very much more - occasionally telephone me at home. It's surprising how often they happen to be in the area and on the lookout for homes in which to fit their plastic windows at a special reduced rate. Surprising, too, how often I fill in consumer surveys then clean forget all about having done so. If I allow the conversation to proceed, they will ask how many windows I would, in an ideal world, have replaced with plastic - one? Two? Three? Four? 'Sir/madam,' I reply, 'in an ideal world I would at this moment be reclining in the sun on a bed of wild thyme surrounded by nectaring blue butterflies...' Actually I don't of course - I've usually hung up with a polite 'Thank you' before they've so much as shown their hand. But now I understand Anglian's persistence. Anglian Home Improvements are 'on a home improvement crusade'. I saw one of their vans this morning (in the area again! What are the chances?) and there it was, proudly emblazoned on the side: 'Anglian Home Improvements. On a home improvement crusade.' This mission statement was illustrated by a large image of a vaguely medieval-looking warrior type on a warlike prancing steed. Needless to say, no Christian iconography was to be seen - no red cross on a white ground here, but a vague inverted V, white on blue. This blue knight is on a decidedly cross-free crusade. In an ideal world, indeed, it would be better called a 'fenestrade'. And so very much more.

Suppose...

Suppose that, back in 1948, you had to tell someone involved in the London Olympics that, the next time our capital city hosted the Games - comfortably within a lifetime - surface-to-air missiles would be deployed in the interest of Olympic security. If you managed to convince them that this was true (and it would be hard), they would surely conclude that, in the intervening 64 years, the Olympics in particular and the world in general had gone stark, staring mad. And they would be right.

Formative

You'll find me over on the Dabbler writing about a formative volume from my childhood...

A Knox and The Housman

I'm reading The Knox Brothers, Penelope Fitzgerald's affectionate biography of her father and his three brothers, all of them extraordinarily gifted men. It's a brilliant piece of work that brings its subjects vividly alive - beautifully written, of course, but also hugely entertaining. This passage, about her classicist uncle Dilwyn (Dilly) and A.E. Housman, who encountered each other at Cambridge, had me laughing out loud...

'Housman, too, could be allowed to understand English metre. The three-stress rhythm of Is My Team Ploughing affected Dilly so much that he bit right through the amber mouthpiece of his pipe, which was heard by those in the rooms below him to crash to the ground...
His Fellowship dissertation had been on the prose rhythms of Thucydides; his argument was said to be unacceptable but so clever that nobody could contradict it. Then he returned to Greek poetry. Mr Ian Cunningham, a recent editor of Herodas [Dilwyn's speciality], writes:
'He discovered, more or less simultaneously with one of the greatest, if not the greatest, modern classical scholars, U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, what is now known as the Wilamowitz-Knoxian bridge. This is a highly technical point of Greek metre. A bridge is a point in the verse where word-end is forbidden. This one relates to the iambic trimeter of the early period...'
To be remembered by a few because of a rule about a word that doesn't end in lines of poetry that scarcely anyone reads - if Dilly ever desired immortality, it would be of this kind. In Housman's words, all exact knowledge 'pushes back the frontiers of the dark' and consoles mankind for his discovery that 'he does not come from the high lineage he fancied nor will inherit the vast estate he looked for'.

I might be returning to this subject - The Knox Brothers, that is - not the Wilamowitz-Knoxian bridge.