Another radio broadcast treat today with an airing of Series 3, Episode 14 from 1967 of the BBC production of Round the Horne featuring its main participants, Kenneth Horne, Betty Marsden, Hugh Paddick, Kenneth Williams and Bill Pertwee.
The script by Barry Took and Marty Feldman is a work of comic genius with superb dialogue, rich and deep characters and of course expert delivery by the very talented performers.
Amongst the regulars are Dame Celia Molestrangler (played by Betty Marsden) and the ageing juvenile Binky Huckaback (Hugh Paddick).
Their very hammy, plummy tones and over-acting characters appear as the rather vague and intense Fiona and Charles.
Here is a short sketch entitled "Where no Hippos Fly"
Fiona "Oh Charles, Charles. I'm frightened"
Charles " Steady Old Girl. They can smell fear"
F- Are you, are you sorry you brought me out here?"
C- "To the Bush?"
F- "Yes"
C "I know the Bush is no place for a woman but we've been happy here haven't we?"
F "Happy Charles?- Who knows what happiness is? It's giving and taking and having and holding and loving and needing and wanting and feeling"
C- "Yes Fiona. It's all of those things..........and yet ....none of them"
F- "And yet all of them"
C "And yet none of them"
F "AND YET ALL OF THEM"
C "Oh alright................some of them"
F "Charles. Are we safe here in the Bush?"
C "Quite safe"
F "But look, look over there. There's another of those creatures"
C "Oh, he's an ugly brute. Look at that snout on him. Those little red eyes. Oh, I think he's seen us"
F "Oh Charles"
C "Don't worry. I'll take care of him. Stand your ground.... I think he's going to charge us.
Good evening Constable, just leaving the Park. Come along Fiona"
Yes, I know. We joke about it a lot. It is an easy target.
No, there is no evidence that the computer screens in the office flicker, nor our telephone system emit strange sounds but I do get genuinely excited when a Russian Registered Ship comes into sight in the waters of the mighty Humber Estuary on whose bank our workplace stands.
They pass by, either upstream or on the return journey out to the ocean with surprising regularity making their way to the Port of Goole or even down the Trent to the Wharfside Industry sites.
Just the other morning I startled my work colleagues by jumping up and exclaiming "SHHHHHHHHHIIIIIIIIIIIIII.......PPPPPPP!!"
Their initial reaction at my outburst was one of shock or at least until I had reached that fourth letter and even then amongst the buzz of PC's, copier and and unruly fluorescent strip light they could have easily been mistaken in hearing that word as a very rude one.
My mobile phone is always to hand when a vessel comes into line of sight in our large window opening onto the river.
It is a glorious outlook with the Humber Suspension Bridge in the background and the expanse of rather murky water in and around it.
Accessing one or more of the Ship Finding Apps gives an instant feedback on the identity, type, destination and recent destination history of any craft.
Our visitor this time was the Mekhanik Kottsov.
It is amongst the larger types of shipping using the deep water navigation channels of the Humber, a right proper and classic ship shape and profile. Prominent bows, a sweeping line of superstructure in matt black and ox blood red, two deck cranes and a large four storey upper bedecked with a multitude of antennae and satellite arrays.
It is one of those vessels with a concertina folding deck over deep storage holds suitable for many types of general and bulk cargo.
I felt a bit of an impulse to wave but at a distance of a couple of hundred metres and at an offset angle to its plotted course it will have been as futile as that time I saluted the orbiting International Space Station from my back garden.
I did have a flashback to that movie "Empire of The Sun" when the schoolboy character played by Christian Bale uses his torch upon seeing a signalling Japanese Warship in Shanghai Bay. Although of course nothing of his doing the Cruiser opens fire as part of the invasion of that part of the eastern theatre of World War 2.
The exciting thing about spotting a ship is finding out where it is headed.
The Mekhanik Kottsov was en route to Arkhangelsk, way up in the Arctic which would take about a week from its current position.
A busy schedule also showed previous ports of call in Honfleur and Rochefort, France and Frei in Denmark.
As of this very moment it is at coordinates 61.49989 North and 4.35741 East and making 11 knots which is skirting the rocky islands just to the west of Floro in Norway.
The volume of shipping does reduce significantly on the indicative mapping as the Arctic Waters are approached. The run will be very well known to those who served in the Royal Navy Convoys and Merchant Navy ships taking vital supplies to that part of the far North of Russia in wartime.
As I returned to my desk and comfortable office chair in the somewhat overheated but cosy office I shivered slightly at the thought of the Kottsov Crew and their voyage in that icy and hostile environment. I hope they have a good kettle and ample supply of tea bags.
(evidently the homeward journey was a safe one as Mekhanik Kottsov has just passed by my office window again- monday 23rd March en-route for ports up the Humber. I waved but ..........................
I wrote this in 2013 and what better time than Shrove Tuesday or commonly known as Pancake Day to give it another airing................................enjoy, as they say
Noshtalgia- The term has been around a while but there seems to have been a very recent upsurge in reminiscences of, and even more than that, a hankering for the food of our younger, formative years.
It comes down to a comfort thing.
We feel under siege from recession, the credit crisis, Brexit, Just Eat TV campaigns and an uncertainty about what it is that actually makes up our Supermarket purchases.
I was, in my early years, assured by the media, Tomorrows World, James Burke and the like in particular that my following decades in employment would be characterised by abundant leisure time due to technological advancements and smart working and that other empty promise of a paperless office.
This premonition of the future also included the likelihood of not only one job for life but being able to retire at, what seemed to me then, a ripe old age of 55 years. I could also look forward to a life expectancy much enhanced by developments in health and nutrition and live on a big, fat, inexhaustible pension fund. I did take on board and believe this model for my senior years. It sustained me when I felt sad at work.
Of course, I also looked forward to, but did not fully expect to, live on the Moon and commute to Earth in my own spaceship. I was after all, like many of my generation, expecting to get that Jet Pack we were all promised. The journey to and from work will have been spectacular if you just timed it to avoid rush hour.
Amongst all of this speculation and wish-listing there remains a constant. This is the food that we ate when we were younger and it is this craving for a stable, untarnished and wholesome thing in our current lives that has led to the Noshtalgia movement.
It is a movement.
It may even be subversive and prove to be divisive in society. It may all boil down to those who "home-cook" and those who "take-away". A bit of an Animal Farm or Lord of the Flies definition in a modern context.
This is not a theory to be easily dismissed.
It is a fact , in our current lifestyles and comparative well-offness that, for the first time in a couple of centuries the wealthy people are thin and the poorer of us are fat. This is based on diet mainly. The wealthy can afford to buy fresh and nourishing foods and ironically work off any excess calories at a gym or through a healthy lifestyle generally whilst budgetary constraints on the rest of the population dictate the purchase of cheap, filling, starchy, stodgy and glutinous meals which sit heavy and discourage any energetic activity. Another irony is that a poor diet creates health problems and does not do a lot for our body shapes, self esteem and confidence. This in turn can put a strain on the National Health Service and in our own lives and relationships.
Noshtalgia recalls a time when none of these problems were present in our lives, or perhaps not even consciously known or perceived of as a catalyst to depression and, that hard to describe feeling of 'not being right in myself'' as is often overheard in a conversation.
We are now trying hard to be happy through food.
The viewing ratings for TV cookery and related programmes are very buoyant, similarly the sale of recipe and cook books.
However, there is a knowledge gap and kitchen skills shortage to be made up on our part because a good proportion of us were deprived of Domestic Science in our education as this perceived 'soft' option was expelled in favour of more languages and the sciences.
Between those halcyon childhood days of cooking with our Mothers and now actually having our own kitchens there has been a starvation of practical learning.
Ask yourself these questions.
1) How long to boil an egg for a perfect dipping yolk?
2) What are the ingredients for a perfect pancake batter?
3) How do you make a sponge cake?
4) What is the correct oven setting to roast a chicken?
5) How long do carrots take to cook?
In my age group I would expect a 40% correct answer rate. In the over 50's this would be 75% to full marks. Any age groups below mine- well, big fat zero, zilch, or 'where is the flyer from the High Street Take-away?'
I do not undermine those in the age ranges below me because they show good promise and intention to learn how to cook but have been spoilt by fast food and their own parents, themselves victims of the school curriculum and convenience food.
The current parent groups below 45 years old have been the most to suffer from the snapping of the apron strings in the home kitchen and the demise of Home Economics lessons. They have also had, arguably, a more difficult time in reaching that stable stage in life of home ,hearth, employment and incomes which allows cooking to be more of a pastime than a chore.
Let's just admit it now. School Cookery lessons were not a great technical challenge. My own experiences in the Cookery Room amounted to monotonous, regular manufacture of rock-hard Rock Cakes, the forerunner of what we know today as a Pizza and most ambitiously a plate of Spaghetti Bolognese. Actual production of gourmet meals was not the intention of structured education in the kitchen. It was intended to make us confident to use a whisk, saucepan, ladle, hob and oven and to handle and fashion basic fare out of staple foods. I also learned that a big angry and noisy dog, behind a garden gate on the way home from cookery, can be placated by a serving of Italian pasta in sauce thrown into its view and play for a few hours with a heavy, speckled lump of part cooked dough based fare that could easily be confused, by said hound, with a pig's trotter.
The learning process is being kick-started by the Noshtalgia movement and that can only be a good thing.
We can begin with a few basic meals.
Roast that chicken, slow-cook a beef or lamb joint, boil a ham, grill a steak, warm up some beans, poach an egg, griddle a piece of fish, steam some vegetables, stir fry any leftovers, barbecue, broil, stew and ambitiously, perhaps once confit in duck fat. Microwave or Boil in the Bag absolutely nothing.
Gradually confidence will grow and from there the world is your oyster (other sea-foods are available- check with your local fishmonger).
We will no longer be afraid of foreign sounding terminology, we will embrace both gas and electric hobs, fan and convector ovens and champion sitting around and eating at a table, talking and enjoying the company of family, friends and strangers. We will feel better in ourselves and more able to cope with the rigours, demands and stresses of modern life.
I see that the concerns in recent days over a Global Pandemic of the Coronavirus have served to ramp up demand for and drive up the price of Gold.
This precious metal has such a hold over humankind bringing out the very worst in our behaviour in order to obtain it and yet in the hands of the Philanthropic and Benevolent amongst us it has the power to do so much good.
It's value is of course in its natural scarcity or otherwise a difficulty in its discovery and extraction from Mother Earth.
In a few locations it can be found scattered about and relatively easily gathered.
This was the situation in the Central Valley area of California in the Spring of 1848. The Gold Rush and hysteria surrounding it can be put down to the actions of just one local resident, a Sam Brannan.
After quite an entrepreneurial start to his life as well as prominence in his Mormon faith the enterprising Mr Brannan (1819 -1889) was to be found in that year running a General Store in Sutters Fort, now part of the City of Sacremento.
He had been able to monopolise not only the supply and sale of the essential items of equipment for those seeking to find their fortunes in Gold but had also craftily bought up or optioned large tracts of the land on which prospecting had the best opportunities to find the bright yellow treasure.
Many of the first wave of prospectors who came to dig the soil or pan the rivers only had Brannan as the outlet for picks, shovels, pans and all of the other required paraphenalia not to mention basic goods for sustenance and survival in what could be a harsh and unforgiving environment.
These were not wealthy or privileged individuals but more a collection of those who were desperate and down on their heels who could only graft and hope for that big discovery of a large nugget or untapped seam of gold.
Brannan was quite amenable to being paid for his stock and supplies in flakes or fragments of gold that had been the result of the extreme labour and hardship of others. Slowly and surely he accumulated a nice collection of the stuff and that gave him his most genius idea to date.
In an act of shameless fake news and self publicity Brannan took his pieces of gold to San Francisco and ran through its streets screaming aloud that there was gold to be had in them there hills or using words to that effect.
Where before the prospecting may have been a bit of a minority occupation the actions of Brannan really caught the imagination of the population and before long some 75% of the male population of California had descended on the Central Valley area in a bid to find their fortunes.
Surprise, Surprise Brannan happened to have the only General Store for miles around to cater for the mass rush and he duly cornered the market and fleeced the tens and hundreds of thousands of new prospectors and their families of their hard earned cash.
It was only a matter of months before Brannan assumed the position of one of the first millionaires in the area.
Unfortunately circumstances later on in his life conspired against him and he died in poverty and relative anonymity. His role in the 1848 Gold Rush is however remembered in the naming of streets and institutions on his home patch.
It's a good story, a great story of vanity, moral decline, debauchery, sin and final retribution which even some 130 years after its publication contains some very relevant messages and sentiments.
I am referring to The Picture of Dorian Grey by Oscar Wilde.
There has been a good dramatisation of it re-broadcast on the radio this week and I have found myself compelled out of morbid fascination and anxiety to listen to it and absorb the wonderful quotes that Wilde throws into the general dialogue in his usual throwaway manner.
Some are very familiar having been immersed into popular language and culture and others less so although are still very thought provoking and soul searching. Here is a small collection of quotes in no particular order or preference.
Experience is merely the name men give to their mistakes
Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing
The only way to get rid of temptation is to yield to it
There is only one thing in the world worse than being talked about and that is not being talked about
Behind every exquisite thing that existed there was something tragic
Some things are more precious because they don't last long
Laughter is not at all a bad beginning for a relationship and it is by far the best ending for one
Whenever a man does a thoroughly stupid thing it is always from the noblest motives
The basis of optimism is sheer terror
All art is quite useless
One can always be kind to people about whom one cares nothing
Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face, it cannot be concealed
It is the stupid and the ugly who have the best of it in this world
Women love us for our defects. if we have enough of them they will forgive us everything...
You know more than you think you know, just as you know less than you want to know
The soul is a terrible reality. It can be bought and sold and bartered away
Never marry a woman with straw coloured hair because they are so sentimental
I never approve or disapprove of anything now. It is an absurd attitude to take towards life
People die of common sense.
Genius lasts longer than beauty
We live in an age that reads too much to be wise and that thinks too much to be beautiful
It is a sad truth but we have lost the faculty of giving lovely names to things
One should never do anything that one cannot talk about after dinner
Never trust a woman who wears mauve
A man cannot be too careful in the choice of his enemies. I have not got one who is a fool.
I like men who have a future and women who have a past
If the caveman had known how to laugh, history would have been different
Young people nowadays imagine that money is everything
One of the many daytime BBC digital radio re-runs that I find myself laughing out aloud at is "I'm Sorry I haven't a Clue" which is a very long running improvisational comedy show which over its many decades has featured the very best in comedic and entertainment talent.
A regular feature in the show is the offering by the participants of definitions of words towards the Uxbridge English Dictionary.
For any student of the English Language this must be most confusing as although the donor word is a bona fide one the meaning as described is only intended to elicit laughter or gasps of shock and awe.
Here is a bit of a compilation of definitions either broadcast since its launch in 1972 or just held in a remarkable database produced by Kevin Hale, undoubtedly the greatest fan and authority on the subject.
Amazingly we are up to the 13th letter of the alphabet, "M" which is a very rich source indeed of mirth and entertainment. Again, some may be offended by the following, some of which come from a different era of political and other correctness.
Missive- Afrikaans for very big
Mystery- a bit like a Man
Minsk- a rather camp Russian walk
Mississippi- the wife of Mr Sippi
Muzzletof- an Injunction on a member of the upper classes
Measles- what artists put their canvas on for a self portrait
Miasma- a very personal health complaint
Mastiff- a bit of a to-do during a Church Service
Mish Mash- Sean Connery is late for Church
Maisonette- a very small Chief Constable
Meritritious- followed by "and a Happy New Year"
Moustache- I've really gotta go
Morass- heard from the Director of a Strip-show
Margate- the mother of all scandals
Mytosis- whats on the end of my footsis
Marmite- although Father is always a bit reluctant
Mushrooms- what Lawrence Llewellyn Bowen does
Miniscule- where toddlers go to in Liverpool
Mucus- bad language from cats
Midwifery- half way through breaking wind
Malady- a bit like a male duck
Migraine- a proud farmer out in a field of wheat
Manifold- origami
Maritime- wedding day for a sailor
Martini- a small supermarket
Mosquito- the process of leaving a place after prayers
Melancholy- a rather fat sheep dog
Meander- she and I
Merciful- Liverpool is at risk of flooding
Mendacity- urban renewal
Microfiche- a sardine
Mutate- an art gallery for cows
Marsupial- a favourite family recipe using congers
Morbid- what an auctioneer says when the going is slow
Macadam- the first Scotsman in creation
Motorist- repetitive strain injury for drivers
Mischief- Head Girl
Macaroni- the inventor of the pasta wireless
Merseyside- the killing of a scouser
Mobster- an criminalised crustacean
Mumps- heaps of unwanted mothers
Moreover- a very fat dog
Multiple- too many glasses of wine
Myth- a female moth
Manoevre- an easy to use vacuum cleaner for men
Microbe- a very small clothes cupboard
Mascot- where Catholic babies sleep
Mountaineer- very specialist Taxidermy
Megawatt- asking for clarification of something in a noisy room
That is a good thing as my daily work invariably involves walking through a fine woven web be it arrayed in an empty house, getting a face full of gossamer like thread and dead insects in a roof-space or being the first in line to mount a rescue operation for an eight legged arachnid that has become stuck in the cavern of a bath-tub.
Of course a typical UK spider is not really anything to really be afraid of although in recent years I have noticed a trend of the things being a big larger and a whole lot more aggressive when confronted by a human being.
I have a strict policy of preserving the life of a spider in a one to one scenario which is to the dismay of my family and friends who often call upon me to help out when the situation arises.
This can be, as previously mentioned, fashioning an escape route from a bathroom incarceration (my work clipboard and paper pad are a good method) , the careful removal of a spider form a living room by means of trapping it in a glass tumbler with a drinks coaster as a temporary lid or simply by taking any web or creatures that I may have walked through outside to allow them to scuttle away into the garden vegetation.
For all of this show of bravado I am still a little bit scared of this type of invertebrate and for many of the same reasons of those who have a proper phobia. These include their hairy bodies, pattern of movement, lifeless eyes and that irrational fear that they might crawl into your ears whilst you are asleep and lay their eggs in your head.
If you upscale a typical British spider to the size of tropical species and add in the ability to cause death or paralysis by a bite then the fears also increase exponentially.
Apart from avoiding the natural habitats of the most dangerous spiders which may not be too difficult in keeping to normal tourist type travel destinations there is still a possibility of those most spider-phobic amongst us will suffer an adverse reaction to even the teeny-weeniest of the creatures in their own homes.
In response to this London Zoo run what they call a Friendly Spider Programme.
For an adult fee of £150 they provide a 5 hour intensive session run by the Head of Invertebrate Conservation but also employing the services of a hypnotherapist from a respected Clinic.
There are individual sessions to analyse the specific fears of the those attending the course, an opportunity to ask the questions that have not been adequately answered in the past therefore contributing to anxiety and stress and after a comfort break with beverages and biscuits there is the crucial matter of a Group Hypnosis.
The organisers and specialists behind the course must have confidence in the hypnosis in particular as immediately after the Group session there is a visit to the London Zoo Invertebrate collection for a face to face meeting with British House Spiders It is emphasised that this visit is optional as it gives an opportunity to practice catching British house spiders, hopefully in the calm manner expected as well as a chance to meet a Mexican Red-Knee which is indicated as being friendly.
The awarding of a Certificate to those completing the course is to be expected but is that bit of paper worth it?
After all, can you use it to scoop up and carry a spider to safety from a corner of the living room or from the depths of an acrylic or metal bath?
I waited in line at the Tesco Express to hand over my loose coins.
It was one of those combined mini-supermarkets and petrol filling stations.
For the sake of just putting £6.50 of diesel into my car to get me home I found myself well down the queue for the checkouts behind, well, strangely, only a male customer base.
It was most unusual.
There was no female in sight.
It was unlikely that there was a football or rugby match at the Stadium just down the road. Perhaps there had been a fire at the local pub and everyone had been evacuated. I tried to get a glimpse onto the forecourt in case a bus was waiting to take a male voice choir to a concert.
There were no obvious reasons for this hiccup in demographics.
I decided to pay more attention to those between me and the checkout.
There were no burgeoning baskets of goods as was the normal case on a work day evening.
Everyone in the queue was however holding the same few items.
Bar none these included a bunch of flowers, a box of chocolates and a pink envelope.
Behind me other men were entering the shop but did not make for the display of health magazines, motoring requisites or the chiller cabinet full of beers and wine. They simply loitered around the entrance at a large shelving array of floral displays, confectionery and cards looking a bit furtive and shifty.
I could appreciate the thought process, after all, I shared the male gene. There had to be enough of a gesture to show affection but under a budget of say, £10.
This resulted in a bit of agile mental arithmetic over a combination of gifts. Some of the men picked up one of everything but then had second thoughts and re-arranged the display. Others just selected one thing and then set off around the shop in search of other imaginative items to show that they had given considerable thought to the gift buying process.
They usually returned empty handed and looking even more frustrated and desperate. I shuffled along a little bit like a convict shackled to other offenders as transactions were completed.
The slow movement of the line allowed a bit of free thought amongst my fellow men. Logically, a bottle of wine seemed a good purchase to go with the flowers, chocs and cliched sentiment of a mass produced greetings card.
Yet more defections from the straggling line which took on, increasingly, a more fluid form like an agitated crowd. In a bit of an abstract chain of thought others decided upon a selection of fresh fruit, whipped cream and ready meals of a curried and exotic nature.
It was certainly a disgraceful display of ineptitude in all things romantic from those assembled. I was no better in that I had nothing to show for my participation in that Tesco Express apart from a VAT receipt for fuel.
I decided that in future I would try to avoid any small supermarket on the eve of Valentines Day.
At some point in the not too distant future we will reach Peak Meat.
No, it is not a trek to an obscure mountain top as part of a challenge but it is a term to describe that point in time when it will no longer be sustainable to produce animal products for human consumption.
It may not actually be too far away given the numbers of current carnivorous individuals making the voluntary decision to reduce their meat eating.
This can be based on ethical, health, animal welfare,environmental and cost of living grounds. That list is not exhaustive and I stress, not in any order of priority or preference.
With this in mind I have been contemplating a recipe for a meat dish that I would choose to be my last.
This particular delicacy was mentioned in passing by our Tesco home shopping delivery driver. I cannot recall how we got on the subject but he was doing the job to supplement his student grant before returning to his home area of Oldham, Lancashire in the North West of England.
I had never heard of Rag Pudding but then again there are so many regional specialities that even after browsing multiple volumes of cook books many will remain tightly bound to their towns, villages or even streets of origin.
Rag Pudding is a local variant in Oldham and Manchester consisting of a steak and kidney pudding but the Rag derivation refers to the cooking method of steaming the ingredients in a cloth.
This in itself may have been a spin-off from the days of Textile Mills in the North West with offcuts of cotton and other materials being readily available to the hungry workforce.
Do not be fooled by the word Pudding. This recipe is for strong willed meat eaters only and the pudding refers only to the outer casing for the filling in a suet based pastry.
You are at a distinct advantage if you are on good terms with your local butcher as this will help to secure the required amount of quality stewing beef and the offal requirement of lamb or ox kidney, good beef stock, beef dripping, lard and oil.
There is some greenery in there being bay leaves, thyme and sage.
With the ingredients to hand the actual making of the puddings is quite straight forward.
After trimming and dicing the beef it is then seasoned in flour and seared in pan of scalding dripping to seal in the goodness. Then place the browned beef with stock in a large pan and skim off any residue as it simmers. Meanwhile saute some onions and then add to the meat.
It would be best here to go off and do something interesting or essential as the mixture takes about three and a half hours to become tender.
On returning to the kitchen the kidneys have to be chopped and the chewy core removed before browning in fat and adding to the big pot. The contents will need a bit of thickening after adding in the herbs and this is best achieved with a basic flour and water mix.
Now that everything is nicely cooked the mixture can be left to cool.
The fun part is the messy assembly of the suet pastry. Anything to do with dough gives an opportunity to release aggression and stress not to mention that the process gets rid of all of the dirt and grime under your finger nails in a very magical way.
A rolling pin is used to create pastry squares about 15cm each side. Into the centre place a dollop of the filling before wetting the edges and folding them over and lightly pressing to seal in place.
Those bits of cloth, cut offs, torn up sheets or muslin material come into play to encase the puds so that they can be steamed for a further hour. The dish does not appear to require anything and like a Cornish Pasty is definitely a self contained meal on its own. Nevertheless, some seasonal veg and a dash of gravy would go down well.
It is quite a laborious task given that some 5 hours will have elapsed from start to tasty finish but that gives plenty of time to think about a world without meat.
This story was mentioned a couple of days ago on a radio broadcast and it caught my interest. This piece has been reproduced from a long and informative article by Atlas Obscura in Slate in 2015.
Warnings over the perils of artificial
intelligence arms races have made headlines of
late, but debates over the possibilities of AI have been raging since the 1770s.
At the dawn of that
decade, an inventor by the name of Wolfgang von Kempelen debuted his
latest creation in Vienna: A chess-playing automaton made
for Habsburg Archduchess Maria Theresa. Known initially as the Automaton Chess
Player and later as the Mechanical Turk—or just the Turk—the machine consisted
of a mechanical man dressed in robes and a turban who sat at a wooden
cabinet that was overlaid with a chessboard. The Turk was designed to play
chess against any opponent game enough to challenge him.
At the Viennese court in 1770,
Von Kempelen began his demonstration of The Turk’s workings by opening the
doors and drawers of the cabinet and shining a candle inside each section.
Inside were cogs, gears, and other clockwork. After closing the cabinet, von
Kempelen invited a volunteer to serve as the Turk’s opponent.
Gameplay began with the Turk moving
his head from side to side to survey the board before appearing to decide
on the first move. His left arm then jerked forward, the fingers
splayed, and he picked up a chess piece, moving it to another square before
setting it down.
So far, this was relatively
standard stuff—at the time, automata in the form of mechanical animals and
expressive humanoids had delighted many a royal and commoner. One of the most
prominent automata makers, Jacques de Vaucanson, had not only created the Digesting
Duck—which wiggled its beak, quacked, and pooped out pellets it had
been fed—but also the Flute Player, an automaton that could, in the words of
Tom Standage in The Turk, “mimic
almost all of the subtleties of a human flute player’s breathing and musical
expression.”
Compared to these masterful
simulacra, the Turk, with his expressionless face made of carved wood and jerky
arm movements, initially seemed an inferior product. But then came the rest of
the chess game. The Turk was good. Really good. And it wasn’t just
adept at executing a repetitive task. The Turk responded skillfully
to the unpredictable behavior of humans.
This machine seemed to be operating
autonomously, guided by its own sense of rationality and reason. If the human
opponent attempted to cheat, as Napoleon
did when facing off against the machine in 1809, the Turk would
move the chess piece back to its previous position, and, after repeated
cheating attempts, would swipe his arm across the board, scattering pieces to
the ground.
Of course, there had to be a
trick to all of this. But the nature of the deception was, for many decades,
elusive. Following the 1770 demonstration, which astonished Maria Theresa and
her attendants, von Kempelen, an engineer rather than an entertainer, was
content to let the Turk rest. The automaton sat in a neglected state until
after Maria Theresa’s death, when her son and royal successor, Joseph II, remembered
the Turk and asked von Kempelen to revive it.
In 1783, von Kempelen took
the Turk on tour to Paris, where he once again astonished onlookers—including a
certain chess-loving American by the name of Benjamin Franklin.
Tours of England and Germany
followed over the next year. During this time, people began to publish their
speculative accounts of the Turk’s workings. Some, such as British author
Philip Thicknesse, were indignant at the notion that the Turk was a purely
mechanical creation whose gameplay was free from human influence. “That an
AUTOMATON can be made to move the Chessmen properly, as a pugnacious player, in
consequence of the preceding move of a stranger, who undertakes to play against
it, is UTTERLY IMPOSSIBLE,” wrote Thicknesse in a critical
pamphlet he passion-published in 1784. (The immoderate word
capitalisation is all his.)
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He wrote in his pamphlet that the
cabinet must be concealing “a child of ten, twelve, or fourteen years of
age”—presumably one whose chess talents were prodigious.
The notion that someone was
hiding in the cabinet was espoused frequently over
the decades, with variations on the size of the hypothetical person as well as
their positioning. The cabinet measured four feet long, two-and-a-half feet
deep, and three feet high—dimensions that encouraged people to speculate
that short-statured people and children were the most likely candidates
for the role of hidden Turk operator. Some believed that the concealed person
stayed in the cabinet the whole time, using strings, pulleys, and magnets to
execute the chess moves, while others thought the operator crawled up into
the body of the Turk in order to control him.
Then there was the complication
of the pre-demonstration routine in which von Kempelen would open the cabinet
doors and drawers and shine a candle inside, seemingly precluding the presence
of a human. But this, too, was cited as a mere trick—in 1789, Freiherr zu
Racknitz proposed that the concealed operator hid in the back of the cabinet’s
bottom drawer during the pre-game display, then moved to the main portion.
The most outlandish tale of a
hidden operator comes from Jean Eugène Robert-Houdin, a French magician who
encountered the Turk in 1844—long after its heyday. In his 1859 memoirs,
Robert-Houdin passed on the Turk’s origin story—a clearly apocryphal tale
that he nonetheless described in
great detail. According to Robert-Houdin, von Kempelen was in Russia
during the 1790s when he met a doctor named Osloff. The doctor was
sheltering a fugitive Polish soldier, Worousky, whose legs had been blasted
away by a cannonball. This soldier happened to be a gifted chess player. So von
Kempelen did what anyone would do in the situation: spent three months building
a fradulent humanoid automaton chess player machine equipped with a cabinet
large enough to house Worousky, thereby smuggling him out of Russia
to safety by touring the automaton through major cities.
A foolproof plan
if ever there was one.
Such outlandish stories, while
entertaining, added unnecessary complications. The truth was simpler: the
Turk did operate via a concealed operator, who controlled each movement from
inside the cabinet by candlelight, pulling levers to operate the Turk’s arm and
keeping track of the moves on their own board. Von Kempelen, and his
Turk-touring successor, Johann Maelzel, picked up new chess players on
their travels, gave them a quick how-to orientation, then bundled them into the
cabinet.
Though the machine ultimately
relied on human behavior and a bit of old-fashioned magic, its convincingly
mechanical nature was cause for both wonder and concern. Arriving
smack-bang in the middle of the industrial revolution, the Turk raised unsettling
questions about the nature of automation and the possibility of creating
machines that could think. The fact that the Turk appeared to operate on
clockwork mechanisms, complete with whirring sounds, contradicted the idea that
chess was, in the words of Robert Willis in 1821,
“the province of intellect alone.” If a machine could play a human game at the
mercy of the human whims of its opponent, what else could it do?
This was one of the big questions
rattling around the young mind of Charles Babbage when he first saw the
Turk play when it toured England under Maelzel in 1819. Three years later,
Babbage began working on the Difference
Engine, a machine designed to calculate and tabulate mathematical
functions automatically. It was an early step on the path toward artificial
intelligence.
“Unlike the new machines of the
industrial revolution, which replaced human physical activity, this fragment of
the Difference Engine, like the Turk, raised the possibility that machines
might eventually be capable of replacing mental activity too,” writes Tom
Standage in The Turk.
In the 1820s and
‘30s, Maelzel took the machine for one last hurrah around the
northeast United States, during which Edgar Allan Poe developed a fondness for
it and wrote his own
treatise on the human-assisted operations he assumed were
in place during gameplay. But the thrill of the Turk was fading. By the 1850s,
with Maelzel having perished during a Turk tour of Cuba, the machine sat forgotten in
the Chinese Museum in Philadelphia. It was there that, in 1854, it succumbed to
a fire.
Though the Turk could be called a
fraud, to regard the machine as a mere trick or swindle is to dismiss
the profound and disruptive questions it introduced. The Turk may not have
been intelligent, but it pointed toward an all-too-easily imaginable
future of machines that can think for themselves—an ethical conundrum with
which even the world’s AI experts are still
struggling.
With hindsight any thoughts on the purchase of a house in 1930's England will have been a cause of some anxiety.
The Great Depression had just crossed the Atlantic from the United States and was beginning to affect the economies and incomes of citizens across England and in Europe. There was already the emergence of fascism and even as early as the start of that decade there was speculation that the world was heading for a war. In all pretty unstable times.
However, those attending a house auction in the Lincolnshire town of Louth on 23rd July 1930 may already have committed to the prospect of acquiring "Fir Close", a Grand Mansion in just over an acre of mature grounds and a Trout stream.
The fact that the sale was being conducted in a town hostelry, the historic Masons' Arms may have given an opportunity to take in some liquid courage or even a luncheon before the advertised punctual 3pm commencement of proceedings.
Fir Close, a large red brick and tile pile in the Victorian Gothic Style. It is likely to have been built around 1870 or slightly later as it first appears on the 1889 Ordnance Survey and in the modern era did not attain Listed Status on the criteria of architectural and local significance.
Who it was built for is not clear but money and social standing will have been factors in its commission.
In that respect it was quite a generic design with hand made facing bricks, slate/tile roof, parapets, fancy chimney pots, gables and bays, arched and hooded detail to doors and multi-paned windows.
The Auctioneers in 1930 did not make a lot of the heritage aspect of the house, rather concentrating on emphasising the conservatory, double garage, gardens, tennis lawn and angling rights from the banks of the River Lud.
Other marketing features included the modern electric plant and a 5 HP Petter Junior Petrol Engine in a Battery House.
These attributes were intended to excite the interest of the monied classes, nouveau riche and upwardly mobile Professionals. The town of Louth was after all just three and a half hours by steam locomotive from Kings Cross Station in London.
As for the location- Westgate was on the verge of the town and promoted as the best residential part of Louth.
The residence itself comprised a spacious entrance hall with oak parquetry surround, cloakroom with WC, a fine dining room with polished floor and Bathstone mantel, a lofty drawing room with a radiator, Billiard Room, a Breakfast Room with a Yorkist Stove, what is described as a convenient kitchen, scullery, pantry and on the upper floor a total of six bedrooms of which two had radiators and served by a modern up to date bathroom.
The extensive grounds in addition to the garaging had a wash-house, wood and coal houses, workshop, tool house, petrol store, the heated conservatory, a summer house, aviary and brick built dog kennel.
All in all a suitable specification for a gentleman or genteel lady.
According to the pencilled notes on a copy of the sales particulars by the Auctioneer or a Clerk the bidding at 3pm started off at £1000.
The incremental increases of £100 per bid suggest reasonable activity but it is not possible to say if this was down to multiple interested parties or just two vying to secure the house.
The whole event will have concluded within a few minutes and with the winning bid being indicated as £1980. In today's money that is the equivalent of just over £90000.
I cannot make out the name of the successful party but it looks like Cresswell or Fresswell. The sale was for the bricks and mortar only but if you wanted to take home any of the antique and modern furniture then there was an opportunity some 2 weeks later when the contents were to be auctioned on the premises.
As for Fir Close today- well it is a well established Care Home for the Elderly and earning its keep where other mansions have fallen into disrepair and obsolescence which drastically affects their survival even today.
In the year of the Moon landing in 1969 my six year old self began to get excited about all of the benefits that would accrue for myself and the Human Race from this momentous event.
What could be expected from that era of optimism?
What technology would be at our fingertips?
Importantly, when would I take delivery of that Jet Pack?
In my childhood day dreams I anticipated that my future house would have to accommodate a flying car and a robot butler.
Yes, we did have some spin-offs from the Space Race although some high-tec cooking foil and increased computing power seem like a bit of a cop-out!
Every time I log on to my home lap-top I am bombarded with news releases of the latest exploits of private space flight companies. The recent launch of an expansive string of satellites may have been a major innovation but I was a bit under-whelmed by the whole media hype and rather self centred stance of those involved.
There have been a number of unmanned launches of craft to the Moon by the new kids on the lunar block of China, India and Israel. This does give a big boost to national pride but strikes fear into me as a covert attempt to lay claim to the mineral and other resources of our sole satellite.
You cannot imagine the angst that I went through with the plot-line of the TV series Space 1999 where the scenario is the blasting out of Earth orbit of the Moon .
Currently the emphasis in the deep-space business community is of getting to the Planet Mars to set up a colony of humans.
I will not be putting my name on any list of applicants for such an expedition.
The job description, if it is truthful will have to state that it is a suicide mission for the first pioneers, a one way trip. The prospect of a long space flight followed by having to eke out an entirely synthetic existence may excite a few amongst us but not me.
I may be criticised for being negative and narrow minded but just take a minute to think about the current situation on our home planet.
We are entering a period of climate crisis, political, social and demographic upheaval, issues over the security of food, water and resources.
We should be seeking to implement actions to alleviate the worst excesses of the inevitable and not entering into flights of fancy in readiness for failing our own planet.
I am sorry to hear about the passing of Kirk Douglas at the great age of 103 years old.
He leaves behind a fantastic legacy of acting and philanthropy which goes far beyond his filmography alone.
What he has taken with him is, of course, that dimple in his chin.
He has referred to it not as a dimple but simply a hole but nevertheless it and him will be greatly missed.
It was quite a facial feature giving extra ruggedness to an already craggy and characterful visage. Not everyone could have carried it so well and indeed in any lesser talent it may have been more of a hindrance making it difficult to secure an audition, a call back or any sort of sustainable career on the big screen or under the footlights.
I have been trying to find out how Kirk Douglas got the dimple.
Early years photos and indeed into his teens show no sign of the distinctive feature and so it must have been the consequence of an accident , botched surgery or even an intentional bit of self mutilation in the interests of uniqueness.
Don't think that I haven't thought about the benefits to myself of having a similar trait.
There have been opportunities in my life where, for example, being thrown over the handlebars of my bicycle, tripping and hitting an obstruction, falling onto a spiked railing, stabbing myself accidentally with a pencil or many other injury provoking incidents, could have resulted in my own version of the famous Kirk Douglas feature.
However, if you build in a level of cowardice, self preservation and not a little fear of blood or pain it is clear that having my own chin dimple has always been a non starter. I'm not too upset about that.
You know when footballers, during pre-match or post match press conferences say that they and the team have worked hard on the training pitch I cannot help but think, given their antics and shenanigans whilst in play, that they must practice all of the foul play aspects of the professional game in addition to game plays, set pieces and all things tactical.
Some top flight teams specialise in off -the ball intimidation and harassment and I often find myself concentrating on what goes on just off the sweep of the TV cameras.
After all, I feel that I am able to give comment on such things because I too have been a victim of the Culture of the Professional Foul..
It was back when I was a schoolboy and playing for the first eleven team.
As part of some celebration of another centenary of the ancient Grammar School that I attended a football match was arranged with the Old Boys or former alumni of that historic educational establishment. Former pupils had included one of the Gunpowder Plot protagonists, eminent persons from science and academia and as I have found out only recently the CEO of the industrial conglomerate and Cycling Team Sponsors, INEOS.
On the day of the game, on a cold spring saturday morning, I was entrusted to man-mark a Mr Lord who had turned out for the Old Boy opponents. The name meant nothing to me.
He gave me the impression upon first meeting of being a quiet and reserved guy, small and slim. I had him earmarked as an accountant, perhaps a solicitor or at a push some sort of medical operative.
The match began and indeed so did a subsequent first half of what turned out to be a 90 minute nightmare. For me I meant rather than the reserved and unimposing Mr Lord.
Those seconds before the Referees' whistle represented the few moments in the proceeding one and a half hours of action in which I was upright and on my own two feet.
The concept and theory of Man-Marking. I thought before the match, was pretty straight forward. Stay close, follow by tracking back and forth over the pitch, intercept any passes intended for the opposition player and where possible bring my team mates into the game by a well placed pass.
I tried to guess his age as a means to reassure myself that my youthful vigour and fitness would win through. If, for example he had left school and attended university followed by, say, twenty years of being in full employment he would be about 40 to 45 years old. That to me, a lad of just 16 years of age was an inconceivable age indeed. I expected Mr Lord or anyone of that age bracket to be struggling with stiff limbs, a constricted respiratory system particularly if he enjoyed a smoke and a drink, creaking joints and a failing eyesight.
In fact I could have been describing myself as my adversary had no apparent afflictions, maladies or life threatening conditions whatsoever.
He turned out to be quite a canny and skilful footballer. His control of the ball on a heavy and bumpy school playing field was exemplary, equal only to the adept way in which he tipped me off balance with a slight coming together of our elbows or tap on my leg causing me to fall polaxed to the ground whenever the match ball came close.
The movement that disorientated and disrupted my role in the game was most subtle and evidently invisible to the overseeing eye of the referee. There was no malice or violence in his actions towards me, rather, I came to realise he had an unique understanding and application of the physics of balance, the effects of gravity and an almost mystic and magic control of a leather football, the prevailing wind and the combination of mud and grass under his fleeting feet.
In spite of my best efforts to thwart that man of senior years he was the star-larker of the Old Boys. It was rout. A massacre. An embarrassment. If ever there was a mismatch of men and boys it took place on that Spring morning.
At the end of the game,one of mud spattered exhaustion for me, I noticed a group of onlookers made up from younger members of the Grammar School hovering around my nemesis. They had, in their hands, pens and those small album type books in which autographs and mementos are collected.
Turns out, and I should have suspected from my travails, the nimble Mr Lord had been a Professional Footballer for some 298 appearances for Hull City and had only been in retirement for a handful of years before being brought in as a ringer by the scheming and overly-competitive selection committee of the Old Boys organisation.
Malcolm Lord is still apparently going strong in his 70's. Being an Old Boy of the Grammar now myself I would welcome an opportunity to play alongside this great talent.
I have come to the conclusion that in the early part of the 21st Century there is no longer any place for what is referred to as "trial and error". It used to be part and parcel of growing up.
Against all current thinking my childhood was in an era when it was acceptable to have a go at something and fail, admit getting it wrong (or at least if it didn't kill you) and having another go using exactly the same manner or through an altogether different approach or method.
Through history you can depend on the fact that the greatest philosophies, inventions, discoveries and epoch defining events were largely attained following a long and arduous process of trial and error. The initiators of many of the achievements of the Human Race will have bombed out either in style or abject misery and not a little tragedy before our civilisation was able to benefit from ultimate success as others picked up the quest and carried it on.
I grew up in the period before the nanny-state, the ridiculous extremes of Health and Safety and the virtual eradication of most debilitating viruses and infections.
My early years in the 1960's were lived in effect in a Petrie dish of afflictions such as rubella, whooping cough, tuberculosis, scarlet fever, smallpox and polio not to mention the side effects of what were pedalled as wonder drugs to assist mothers in pregnancy and just drugs for those feckless parents and guardians who indulged in those promiscuous and anything goes years.
We were intentionally exposed to mumps and measles which spread like wildfire through our contemporaries in order to build up our immunity and resistance. There were no widely available household substances that could kill up to 99% of all known germs in those days.
When able to get about under my own power and determination it was very much a matter of trial and error to see what tree was the safest to climb or fall out of, how fast you could pedal a tricycle down a hill without touching the brakes, how far you could swim out into the local river before getting into difficulties and what fruit scrumped from the gardens in the area was edible and what was poisonous.
I stuck my thumb into the electrical socket of the Christmas Tree lights just to see if I would get a jolting shock. I did.
I ran my electric toy train for about an hour to see if it would overheat and catch fire. It did.
I let go of my bike at speed with my little sister on it to see if she had natural balance and technique. She did not and fractured her skull in the process. Sorry our Susan.
I held on to a lighted match to see how short a burnt stub I could get. I learned that the smell of scorched flesh and hair is amongst one of the worst you can experience.
I dismantled a shotgun cartridge and left a trail of gunpowder along my bedroom window cill. It ignited and cut a long ugly swath through the woodwork and by this I came to know that a grey and seemingly innocuous powder has great explosive capabilities.
We were encouraged to try, try and try again. The moralistic story of Robert the Bruce and his observations of the endurance of the cave dwelling spider was one on which was placed great emphasis by our elders in the telling of it as a bedtime story, at school assembly or when being told off for not displaying what was called "backbone". Underdogs were held in high esteem even if with hindsight they were stupid and futile.
Failure but after a bit of an effort was typically character forming and applauded for all of that.
How things have now changed.
The culture of the 21st Century and particularly in childhood is sanitised, apparently risk free and with no margin whatsoever for trial and error. Our health and safety are taken as being assured even at the cost of the loss of any common sense approach to a potentially hazardous predicament in which we may find ourselves. There is a fear ,amongst those who would want to encourage adventure and an intrepid spirit, of being sued for negligence or malpractice. Risk assessment is a big wealthy industry and leaves no room for any free thought or inspired judgement.
As an unfortunate and downright heartbreaking consequence of this regime is that our children are not allowed to find value in play and discover for themselves the joys and tribulations of life.
It is sadly now very much a situation in reverse. Error and Trial.
I hope the following will help others with the same or a similar condition.
I have lived with Landlubberliness for all of my life but I have not allowed it to affect my enjoyment of all things Maritime.
It is a strange word, lost in the mists or rather the fogs of time in its etymology and very rarely heard today in conversation.
It is of course a rude and derogatory term and no doubt preceded by anyone using it with a fair few profanities on a nautical theme. On a very much "Us and Them" theme it will have resonated around any situation where seafarers came up against or wished to express their disdain for those preferring to keep a firm geological base under their feet.
In spite of being afflicted with being Landlubberly I find myself drawn to the ocean and in particular ships.
My office is on the banks of the mighty Humber Estuary in Yorkshire, UK. Amazingly that watercourse is responsible for taking away some 25% of the nations land drainage. The Trent, Derwent, Ouse and many others all discharge into the Humber and out into the North Sea.
I find myself rushing to the window overlooking the Estuary upon sighting of a stumpy Coaster making its way upstream or riding the tide out into the ocean. Armed with Vessel Finder or Ship Finder I am able to identify all of the relevant facts about its country of origin, cargo, destination and previous ports of call.
Living in a Maritime City, Kingston Upon Hull, I cannot avoid the heritage of a seafaring economy nor the very visible trade along the Eastern Seaboard of the UK that contributes to the local, regional and national economy.
My fascination with all things nautical goes back a long way.
I was born Landlubberly in the central Southern part of England and my family moved progressively northwards with my Father's employment. As with all UK areas we were never more than 70 miles from a coastline and indeed a seaside resort, although I use this term loosely to describe Overstrand, Cleethorpes and Withernsea (apologies to the residents of those places) was always within short distance whenever a glimpse of a beach and the sea was desired.
In my formative years I enjoyed reading the great seafaring stories of adventurers, explorers, famous ships, shipwrecks and mysteries. Christopher Columbus, Captain James Cook, The Marie Celeste, the fictional Captain Nemo and the factual Titanic were pored over at every opportunity. I even had a diary entry in 1980 for the sinking of MV Derbyshire during a typhoon in the Far East.
One particular fascination of mine was the Bermuda Triangle, that alluded to an area off the south east coast of the United States where ships and boats, as well as aircraft, disappeared with all manner of speculation as to the cause.
In my teenage years I had accumulated a small library of themed books on the subject and was very much enthused and petrified in equal proportion about alien influences, mythical monsters, conspiracy theories and freak weather conditions.
These were compounded in movies and ongoing media interest about continuing unexplained events in that vast ocean area.
One specific disappearance without a trace was of a large coal carrying ship and its crew of 32 , the S.S Cotopaxi in 1925 whilst making its way through the Triangle on route from Charleston in South Carolina to Havana, Cuba.
You may recall the use of the ship in Spielberg's Close Encounters when it was found in the landlocked Gobi Desert after a supposed extraterrestrial repatriation as part of making First Contact.
How such a large ship could simply vanish fuelled my interest in all things maritime and served to alleviate my Landlubberly symptoms.
Well, amazingly there has surfaced news just this month that a wreck off St Augustine, Florida is now thought to be SS Cotopaxi.
A series of investigative dives have found what appears to be irrefutable proof of the identity based on measurements, details of the engine and even retrieved parts which bear the makers mark of the originating shipyard back in 1918.
What is interesting is that the site of the wreck was known to locals but no one had ever cross referenced it with the last known distress signal from Cotopaxi with this location.
Whilst a mystery has been solved it does not diminish the legends and fables associated with the world's oceans and those who derive their livelihoods from it.
Of course, further and more investigation of the wreck of Cotopaxi could always reveal a flying saucer shaped hole in its hull, space-laser death-ray melt lines on the superstructure or the sticky residues of the asphyxiating tentacles of a giant octopus.
