A Church!

 Yesterday, for the first time in months, I found a church standing open to all, with only minimal precautions, and no one on hand to harry the incautious or shepherd us round a prescribed route. It gave me a quite unexpectedly intense surge of pleasure, making me realise how much I'd missed the simple pleasure of walking into a church and having a good look around – something we took for granted in those dear dead days before Lockdown. 
I was with my Derbyshire cousin, taking a day trip to lovely Lichfield, and we thought we'd go and have a look at the nearby canalside village of Alrewas (a name that reads like an anagram).  And there it was – the open church, with only hand sanitiser and a cordoned-off chancel to mark the strange times we live in. It was, in a sense, the perfect building to remind us of the suspended delights of church crawling – small-scale, unpretentious, but full of interest, with a couple of Norman doorways, an Early English chancel, 14th-century nave, west tower and south aisle, and, from the 16h century, clerestory windows and a fine carved wooden roof. Also a 17th-century pulpit, a bit of 15th-century wall painting, and a beautifully coloured east window in Morris style (by Henry Holiday). A typically, gloriously English miscellany. But the chief delight was not in the detail but in the sheer joy of paying an impromptu, unimpeded, unshepherded visit to an English parish church. May this be a harbinger of freedom to come, and a return – at last – to normal human life.

Veg Talk

 Radio listeners with long memories might recall, with a frisson of horror, the Radio 4 programme of the above name, in which two cheery cockney types would, er, 'celebrate fruit and veg'. This was the programme that launched the insufferable Gregg Wallace on the world – hence the frisson. Now, of course, he is everywhere, and still finding ways to become yet more insufferable, bless him. But he does still like his vegetables and is happy to 'celebrate' them (Come, muse, and sing the parsnip...).
  All this by way of preamble to more talk of fruit and vegetables, triggered by Patrick Kurp's post which picked up on yesterday's Aubergine Mystery. Patrick's memories of the limited bill of fare we grew up with chimes with my own, but with differences distinctive to this side of the Atlantic. I could make an alphabet of foodstuffs that never came my way or were regarded as impossibly exotic – well, I could start one anyway, as 'A' alone has avocados (then known as avocado pears), artichokes, asparagus and of course aubergine. 'B', incredibly, would feature broccoli: in my boyhood the only greens on offer were cabbage, spring greens and spinach, all of which would be boiled to within an inch of their life. Broccoli florets were available as a frozen luxury veg, but otherwise never seen (though happily my dad grew purple-sprouting broccoli in the garden). Courgettes (zucchini) were unheard of, and cheeses were, as in Patrick's case, severely limited, with anything continental deemed wildly adventurous and available only in delicatessens. Parmesan came in dried powder form, shaken from a little drum which smelt rather like vomit – but I loved it, even in that debased form. Fresh herbs were not to be had, with the sole exceptions of parsley and mint. Olive oil was something you bought in tiny bottles from the chemist, not for culinary use, and black olives were never seen. Peppers came only in green and were sliced, rather daringly, onto salads. Yoghurt was a mysterious health food, of interest only to sandal-wearing cranks (until the Ski brand came along). Pasta meant either macaroni (for macaroni cheese or macaroni pudding) or spaghetti, which came full length, wrapped in dark blue paper, and would be stewed for a good long time before serving. 'Spaghetti bolognese' was basically mince on top of soggy spaghetti, rather than under mashed potato (cottage/shepherd's pie). Similarly 'curry' was mince, with a dash of curry powder, on top of overcooked white rice – but with the 'authentic' touch of a few sultanas and maybe some sliced apple. Rice itself was regarded with deep misgiving by my parents' generation, who deemed it uniquely difficult to cook, and best served in very small portions. Pizza was something you might come across in the few vaguely authentic Italian restaurants to be found in those days when eating out was, for most, a rare event. I didn't discover what real pizza was until my first visit to Italy, when I was 19. 
  Was anything in the food line better then? I suppose we ate more fresh produce and much less in the way of processed food – and every high street had a fishmonger, so fresh fish could be easily had – but the range of choice everywhere was seriously restricted. Today's supermarket shelves offer a range of possibilities beyond the wildest dreams of my younger days – a veritable cornucopia. This abundance and range graphically demonstrate the fact that (mostly) free markets work to the huge benefit of consumers. Centrally controlled markets, on the other hand, create scarcity and restrict choice. Imagine what those supermarkets would be like if we'd nationalised food – we'd be shuffling along in an endless queue in the hope of getting the last sawdust sausage and a handful of turnip tops...
  By the way, aubergines mysteriously reappeared today. 

Aubergine Mystery

 Here's a mystery. Suddenly all the aubergines have disappeared from the supermarket shelves, leaving not even an aubergine-allocated space behind. I tried four shops today and not a single eggplant to be found. 
I know there was a bit of a panic earlier in the year when a mighty snowstorm, Storm Filomena, hit the polytunnels of Spain (must be that global warming) and supplies of unseasonal veg were disrupted. But I have  heard of no such event since then, nor of any aubergine blight or crop failure. 
What is going on? Is this, I wonder, the price we pay for Brexit? If I'd only known it was going to come to this, I would of course never have voted for it. It's clearly time to get behind the exciting 'rejoin the EU' movement and reclaim our rightful aubergines. 

Gyroid Beauty

 Having remarked yesterday that butterflies are 'few and far between', I must add that this was certainly not true of the Brimstones that were flying at one of my favourite local butterfly spots this morning. They were out in unusually high numbers, both the sulphur-yellow males and the paler, greenish-white females, all flying with every appearance of gusto, despite the lingering chill in the air. They were a joy to see (as were the few Orange Tips and the more frequent Peacocks), but I was hoping for a sight of two other spring species: the Green Hairstreak and the Grizzled Skipper. If there were Skippers, they quite eluded my search of their usual patch, but, to my delight, I was soon spotting Green Hairstreaks, several of which obligingly landed and gave me a close-up sight of their beautiful, iridescent green underwings. 
  In the course of researching my forthcoming (hopefully, some time, in some form) long essay/ short book on butterflies, I discovered that scientists have been taking a particular interest in the emerald sheen of the Green Hairstreak's underwings. This is, it seems, a demonstration in nature of a structure that originated as a purely theoretical entity – the gyroid. Defined as an 'infinitely connected triply periodic minimal surface', this is a kind of three-dimensional honeycomb structure, unique in having triple junctions and no lines of reflectional symmetry. The gyroid could, we are told, have important 'real-world' applications in computer electronics and anti-forgery logos. So, as it flutters about the sunny hedgerows, the little Green Hairstreak is, all unwittingly, at the cutting edge of science. 

This and That

 This is the day generally regarded as William Shakespeare's birthday, and celebrated as such – but not on Google (no Shakespearean doodle), nor on Wikipedia, which in this matter shows itself a stickler for fact and gives only the baptismal date (the 26th). 
Anyway, it's another bright, sunny, very nearly warm day here in the Southeast. The day before yesterday I saw my first swallow (overflying at speed – they never stay around here), and the day before that I spotted one of our local peregrines, flying elegantly past one of the urban cliffs (i.e. tower blocks) that are now their habitat. Butterflies continue to be few and far between, though there are orange tips, holly blues and speckled woods flying now, as well as the peacocks and brimstones. 

But enough of nature notes. Here is a sentence from Oscar Wilde's The Importance of Being Earnest (Algernon speaking): 'The amount of women in London who flirt with their own husbands is perfectly scandalous.' Yes – 'the amount of women'! It is something of a shock to come across such looseness of language in a writer otherwise so impeccably stylish – see also Henry James and Vladimir Nabokov. No doubt I'll recover. Incidentally, unlike many plays, The Importance reads very well on the page. I'm reading it in a 1924 Methuen edition, the eighteenth since its first publication in 1899. It took ten years – the years of Wilde's disgrace, presumably – for Methuen to republish it in a standard edition, but it seems to have really taken off during the Great War, with five editions, four of them in 'cheap form', being brought out during the war years, and two more in 1919. It must have made for perfect escapist reading, like a dispatch from a lost world.

It's always a pleasure to discover a new word, especially if it denotes something for which no word seemed to exist. Admittedly the word in this case is not English but Japanese, but I was still pleased to find it, as it describes the blurry effect of out-of-focus areas of a photograph – one of the things that most attracts me about old photos by the likes of Julia Margaret Cameron.  The word is 'bokeh' and there is a very long, technical entry devoted to it on Wikipedia. Much of that I don't understand, but I look forward to using (or misusing) the word some time – 'I say, look at that bokeh!' 

'The eyes like quinine...'

Above is Van Gogh's famous, and still startling, portrait of Dr Gachet, the homoeopath and amateur painter who was Vincent's friend and protector during the final months of his life. In his collection of ekphrastic poems, 'Impressions' (published in the volume Between Here and Now), R.S. Thomas responds to the portrait...

Not part of the Health Service;
no-one to pass his failures
on to. The eyes like quinine
have the same medicative

power. With one hand
on cheek, the other
on the equivocal
foxglove he listens

to life as it describes
its symptoms, a doctor
becoming patient himself
of art's diagnosis.

Elsewhere in 'Impressions', Dr Gachet appears again, in Thomas's response to a Cézanne painting, Dr Gachet's House. Cézanne got to know Dr Gachet when he was staying in Auvers-sur-Oise in 1872 (18 years before Van Gogh's portrait). Though Cézanne dismissed Vincent's paintings as 'the work of a madman', Van Gogh admired those of Cézanne's pictures that he knew, including this one.
Here is R.S. Thomas...

Wanting to find out
if it was on the edge
of something? But the surroundings
blurred; only the way to it

clear, as it was meant
to be for the earless painter
coming with his mind in pieces
to mend it by the light of those eyes.

A Curious Survival

 Going through some papers just now, I came across a photocopy of something my paternal grandfather (whom I never knew; he died in 1936) wrote – an account of a journey from Liverpool to Montreal in 1892 on the steamship Sardinian. Handwritten and illustrated with little pen-and-ink sketches, it's very nicely produced, in the style of its time. The attitudes too are very much of their time, and the early pages, in particular, make for amusing reading.
  When the ship drops anchor off Moville in County Donegal, my grandfather and a few others take a rowing boat to the shore, where they are 'besieged by a crowd of jaunting-car drivers, whose remarks were very witty, chiefly consisting of absurd brag about one's own particular car, and biting sarcasm as to their rivals' vehicles'. As they walk around the town, the party find 'the whole crew of Jehus following us about with great persistency and never-ending jabber'. Eventually they strike a deal with one driver to take them to 'Greencastle, an old ruin of very dubious character' (which is all my grandfather has to say about Greencastle). Later, at the post office, 'a most amusing incident occurred'. This was a lengthy dialogue in which a woman complained, in 'an extremely rapid flow of genuine Irish', that a Post Office vehicle had run over one of her ducks and the Post Office should pay her compensation. I guess you had to be there...
  A great deal of singing and music-making goes on – weather and mal de mer permitting – as the journey proceeds, and of course there are church services. At one point my grandfather reports that 'steerage passengers have been encroaching on our part of deck today, and have been repulsed, looking very savage'. He sympathises though: 'Poor beggars. I feel very sorry for them. How on earth they exist in that hole of a steerage, I can't imagine. The smell is unbearable down there, and none of them appear to have had a wash since last Christmas.' At least they get their own church service, in the fo'c'sle, and later they have a dance 'to a bad fiddle accompaniment'. 
  My grandfather notes various of his fellow passengers, including Colonel Haggard, a brother of Rider Haggard, and his wife, who sounds like a formidable lady: 'She came on board with a large deerhound and a small pug. She is a fine tall lady. This lady, I understand, spends a good deal of time in the Rockies, wearing for the purpose a Norfolk jacket and breeches, being, of course, quite isolated from civilisation.' Well, quite. After several days of heavy weather, the boat comes in sight of land, passing Belle Isle and coming close to a flotilla of icebergs. My grandfather does not get to visit Quebec, as the ship docks at Lévis, on the opposite shore. At journey's end, he finds Montreal 'a very fine city' with 'very clean white buildings and streets'. Churches, priests and nuns abound. 'Many of the sidewalks are paved with wood, and the greater number of the streets are planted with tall trees, which look very fresh & green. Some of the houses are covered with creepers and flowers in the main streets of the city.' All of which sounds very different from the Montreal that I visited a few years ago. 
  My grandfather's account comes to an abrupt and anticlimactic end, describing a 'Japanese gentleman' on board, a Mr Arthur Hart. 'The Jap lady is his wife, Mrs ArthurHart. He speaks very good English, although he might be taken for pure Japanese.' Finis. Well, this document is a product of its time, but I am glad it has survived. 
  Nine years later, the Sardinian was the ship that carried Marconi to St John's, Newfoundland, to set up his radio station there. She ended her days ignominiously as a coal hulk, before being scrapped at Bilbao in 1938.