On 'Stringvestites'

I recently wrote- rambled would be more like it- about nonce words, because of something I heard watching ‘Are You Being Served’. Well, Mrs Hickory and I like a bit of old-fashioned British comedy, so we returned last night to Mr Humphries and co., and there was he was in a sailor costume, explaining how he had had to fight off the attentions of a number of people including a ‘*stringvestite’. My linguistic antennae twitched.

From the context it appeared to mean a working-class homosexual who doesn’t look like one. Those who remember that particular piece of ill-conceived clothing, or were forced to wore one, as was my case, are unlikely ever to forget it, but I don't remember any association with homosexuality. The Urban Dictionary's definition doesn't seem quite right, but of course it's probably a much more recent use of the term.

*Google knows almost nothing else about the word, but I have found some comment on its use in the series. There is probably no subject that someone is not prepared to make an idiot of himself over in the Guardian, and there is certainly no subject in or out of this world that doesn't have dedicated Internet forums. Here Matthew Parris is quoted at length, speaking more intelligently (scroll down to the end). Neither sheds much light on John Inman's use of the word, but their reactions to it are interesting in themselves. I don't call Stuart Jeffries an idiot, by the way, or Mathhew Parris intelligent, because I agree with one or disagree with he other. Matthew Parris gives a personal interpretation of the character of Mr Humphries, and some similar characters and performers, from his memories of being a secret homosexual in the 70's. He doesn't claim that everyone should share his experience or accept his arguments, he just explains how it was for him. The Guardian writer, on the other hand, appears simply to tell his readers what they want to hear. He might be right, and Matthew Parris wrong, but he hasn't helped us to understand anything.

When a footnote becomes longer than the entire post, some editing may be required. Stopping is also a good idea.

Quote of the Day (Now This is What I Call a Rationalist Funeral)

From a Guardian comment thread here:

"I want a physicist to speak at my funeral to comfort my family by reading and commenting on the Lesson from the Book of Entropy- He is not Gone; he has merely become less ordered."

Surely it's not Christmas again?

I like Christmas. I always have. Wherever I have been and whoever I have celebrated it with I have always found an atmosphere of genuine goodwill, happiness and the desire for peace. My good fortune, no doubt. Others will have less happy experiences to tell of, but for me Christmas brings the expectation of human warmth in the depth of winter, and as such I look forward to it and enjoy it like a child.

So whether you will be celebrating the birth of Christ, just having a day off with your family around you, or quaffing Scotch and muttering 'bah, humbug' to yourself and random passer-by, I wish you the very best, and I hope you will enjoy these days as I intend to.

To help the enjoyment along I offer a selection of songs about Him who will be born this night. First a confused attempt to reconcile faith with alcoholism, resulting in a sore head and increased existential angst.



Then, on a happier note, we have Bobby Bare with the definitive Christian football waltz (a limited genre, but a fine one nonetheless) requesting that Jesus 'drop kick him through the goalposts of life



And finally, Terry Allen picks up a divine hitchhiker late one night. As they say in Hollywood, it doesn't turn out as planned... The line at 3:18 is a classic that still makes me laugh out loud.




Hope you enjoyed that. Once again to all who have taken time to read any of my ramblings, and especially to those who have commented on them, all the best for a very Happy Christmas.

On Molybdomancy

Molybdomancy is something mediaeval Norwegians did when they weren’t looking for islets to bean each other with axes on (see Holmganga). It consists, as the name will suggest to classically educated readers, of divining the future through lead*. Molten lead, in this case, poured into water, and the shadow of the resulting solid shape observed by candlelight. These can then be interpreted according to the standard symbolisms, the inspiration of the diviner and, no doubt, the influence of strong liquor.

I don’t know what they call it in Scandinavia, as the Wiki article doesn’t say, and Mrs Hickory hasn’t achieved that level of competence in Old Norse yet, but I assume they have their own, Germanic, word for it.

There is almost no limit to the means by which man, in his desperation, has sort to peer into the future. From the flight of birds to the entrails of sacrificial victims, from the cryptic responses of aging women in temples to random selections of words from leather bound books, from teabags to playing cards to apple peelings, from the patterns of moss on tree trunks to the tracks of ants across the fields and of clouds across the sky, there are probably no patterns that have not been used at one time. The need to believe that we can control aspects of the world that are manifestly beyond our control is part of our humanity. The failure of all these methods to predict anything successfully doesn’t stop whole cultures believing in them.

I assume that when modern Norsemen sit around the fire at Christmas and cast lead in water they are having a bit of fun, but you wonder how many bad decisions their ancestors took because of the way the light fell on a lump of lead. On the other hand it’s probably as good a way of taking them as any other.

*The word μόλυβδος has an interesting history, made even more interesting by its obscurity. I leave this little taster for those who enjoy these things.

 Greek mólybdos as a Loanword from Lydian

H. Craig Melchert

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Beekes (1999: 7-8) has established that the oldest form of the Greek word for ‘lead’ is Mycenaean mo-ri-wo-do (for attestations of the word see Aura Jorro 1985: 1:457-458). Beekes reads the Mycenaean as /moliwdos/, but one must also consider /molivdos/, as suggested by Chantraine (1968: 710 and 1972: 205-206).¹ As per Beekes (1999: 10), all later variants of the word in Greek can be derived from the shape attested in Mycenaean.

The earliest Greek form /moliw/vdos/ precludes any connections of the word with Latin plumbum or Basque berun ‘lead’ (thus with Beekes 1999: 10-11). Beekes, who argues for Asia Minor as the source of the Greek word, cites in passing Lydian mariwda- after Furnée, but merely as an example of the sequence -wd- in a language of Asia Minor. He can do nothing further with the Lydian word attested as a divine name.

Hólmganga

From the Language Log again

(apw palin oikwi glossees)

·  Dan Lufkin said,

April 22, 2012 @ 11:46 am

I was flummoxed when I read on my Kindle William Miller's excellent book Losing It, a meditation on getting old and the Icelandic sagas (the concept works out better than you would think), to see that Brennu-Njál was rendered as "Njdl" and Hávamál as "Hdvamdl". Not only that, every ð became a "5″.

I reported this outrage to the author, who checked and told me that (as I'd expected) the fault lay with Amazon's OCR processing. I suggested challenging the editor to a hólmganga. Alas, we have no word in English for an axe fight with both contestants standing on a islet in a stream. I haven't heard yet how that came out.

You could question the need, in modern English, for a single word to refer to this concept. Nevertheless, it tells us a great deal about Old Norse culture that they had such a specific name for the standard way of resolving dispute. I suppose you could translate it roughly as ‘binding arbitration’, but the cultural baggage would have to be explained as well, or important nuances would be lost.
Mrs Hickory is studying Old Norse, in order to read the Sagas, and although she didn't remember this word, she confirms that they are largely concerned with plotting how to smite those who get in your way and display the pile of bones where interested parties can best see them and learn from them.
Politics at its most dramatic and poetic.

Update: I cut and pasted the comment from Dan Lufkin, and then wrote the atribution to Language Log above it. For some reason it came out in Greek letters, so in brackets below it I wrote the same attribution in Greek but with Roman letters. When I posted, however, the first line came out in the Roman alphabet, making the phrase in brackets pointless. Oh well, I thought; stet). Then I happened to look at the blog in Chrome, and the first line was suddenly in Greel characters. In short, if you read this in Chrome, Safari or IE you'll see Greek, if you use Firfox you'll see Roman. Why, I have no idea. That's t'internet for you.

Mediaeval Market

I probably write about this every year, but it’s fun and provides good photos. There is an organization of market stallholders who dress up in gingham and funny hats and sandals and go around the country passing themselves off as mediaeval artisans. The result is a lot of fun for everyone, and presumably they make a living of some kind.

They were here at the weekend, just as the summer arrived (it’s been 95º for the last week, and I don’t think it’ll cool down again until October. These things look better in the sun. In fact, everything looks better in the sun.)*

Most of the traders make and sell things which you really could imagine seeing on a market stall in the 14thC. There was a smith, with arms like iron bands, who had a charcoal-fired forge and an anvil, and made horseshoes and other things which you might need at a moment’s notice. He really made them, and you could really use them. (Unlike the ‘Fair Trade’ tent set up in the square a couple of weeks ago where nearly all the stalls were filled with over-priced junk, since the product on sale was self-satisfaction rather than anything material, the craftsmen at the Mediaeval Market are genuine tradesmen, offering well-made articles at a sensible price to people who actually want them. It’s one of the reasons the right-winger in me enjoys it; it’s free trade as it used to be.)

It’s not often you see a tent full of birds of prey in shop window in the high street. Is there some law that forbids a man to keep hawks unless he wears a leathern dress and is surrounded by bunting of chivalric design? Well, I don’t know, but I do like to see an eagle owl lazily turning its head to frighten the life out of some child who hasn’t understood what he’s messing with. (If you’ve never seen one, they’re over three-four feet tall and they take an indiscriminating approach to anything smaller than themselves. They just call it all lunch. We see them on the farm occasionally).

A popular exhibit is the mediaeval instruments of torture. Pain is big, especially other people’s pain. I suspect many of them are invented, but they look good, unless you are a potential customer, of course.

There are stands selling imaginative wooden games and puzzles made of rope. And an area with activities and games made to look Victorian, if not exactly mediaeval.

Smelly food in tents is another thing that apparently characterized the middle ages. In any case we like smelly food here. Our sausages are supposed to be detectable from hundreds of yards away when you burn them a bit, and our cheese only needs to be taken out of the fridge to get the attention of passers-by. So a lot of people like to eat smelly burnt stuff in tents at this time of year, because it’s fun, and easy, and cheap.

There was a lot of food. Cheeses and cured meats and sausages made the way they have been made for centuries, and very good they are. We have the fridge stocked with stuff. Homemade cakes and breads, sweet and savoury pastries, and chewy sweets of many colours. A sort of Arab tea tent with a hookah and long tubes for filtering coffee, which was atmospheric and fun. There were stalls selling leatherwork, woodwork, glasswork, needlework and novelty soap (there is always novelty soap, everywhere). There was a fair amount of snake-oil on sale. I imagine the situation allowed them to make claims for their leaves and things which they could not otherwise do.

It’s a travelling circus of a particular kind. One day it will be no more, just because whoever is getting the thing going will run out of energy and no one else will feel inclined to carry on. Or someone will have a better idea, or the public will stop finding it fun, or some ambitious politician will get his place on the list by making a fuss about the quality control of the cured meats and the hygiene of leather overalls. While it lasts it is worth remembering how much fun it is, and what it consists of.

*I should have kept my mouth shut. My morning run was rudely interrupted by hail.

Passive Voice Day

It is reported at the Language Log that today, 27 April, has been declared The Day of the Passive Voice by Shaun’s blog, an idea considered by your humble blogging hedgehog to be finely wrought. Readers and the general public are encouraged to celebrate the versatility and creative potential of the passive voice by incorporating it into their writings on this day, especially given the way in which it is so frequently denigrated, falsely and ignorantly, by people who have been told that if it is excluded from their work, it will be enlivened and better understood by their readers.

That the passive voice is greatly misunderstood, and often misidentified, by its critics, is exemplified beautifully by the comments to the original article at Shaun’s blog in most of which a tremendous confusion about how the passive voice is constructed and what it is understood to mean can be easily observed by anyone who is not blinded by the deluge of nonsense spouted by self-appointed stylists.

The articles, and the challenge contained within them, and this post, are commended to the interest and ingenuity of such readers as might be inspired by them.

On Prettiness

This post is the top Google entry for the search string "what's the difference between beauty and prettiness"

I'm glad to have solved that little probloem on behalf of the world.

Lucia di Lammermoor

Your blogging hedgehog likes the Opera.  I'm not a buff, not having had the opportunity to watch much over the years, but I go when I have the chance and I always  enjoy it. I listen to the live performances from the Met and watch on the TV on the rare occasions there is any. Recordings almost invariably lack something, and compilations of arias are like watching highlights of old cricket matches. Not the same thing. The Three Tenors are not for me. Opera is a spectacle, a show, and admiring the technical ability of Plácido Domingo as he sings a nice song out of context is a cold, abstract pleasure, lightyears away from watching him perform Siegmund at Covent Garden.

We don't even have a proper theatre here, so the cultural offerings are minimal. There is an old cinema which is often used as a theatre, a stage was added years ago, but it's small, the sound quality is poor and there is no orchestra pit. A reduced orchestra sits literally under the stage. There is an outdoor space which is good for performers with powerful voices or microphones, music and opera, say, though not theatre as such, and in any case it's rarely used. And a new theatre is allegedly being built, but I'll believe it when I see it.

This is just my reaction to a performance I experienced. It's 'what I did last night', not a review for the New York Times. And it's as I wrote it, not adapted for consumption by the reader.

Lucia di Lammermoor. The whole thing is coloured for tragedy, except the chorus which a couple of times thinks it has something to celebrate. The production was cheap but with some imagination. The directing was poor, lots of walking very slowly across the stage for no apparent reason, people standing in the wrong place and moving in the wrong ways. And some of the acting was terrible.

Dolores Lahuerta was Lucia and she was very good indeed. She seemed a bit shrill in the first act and I wondered how she would handle Il Dolce Suono, but, although she cheated a bit on the highest, most difficult part, (and I'm not going to blame her for not being Joan Sutherland) she gave a brilliant performance in which she took control of the stage, the cast and the entire theatre and sang lke a woman mad with love. It's not easy to do that. Not easy at all. It was wondeful to listen to and to watch. I didn't want it to end. For nearly 15 minutes (I think) she had the entire theatre scared to breathe in case it provoked her. Terrific stuff it was.

The brother Enrico had a poor voice and was a terrible actor, almost embarassed about being on the stage. Not a tyrannical figure at all. The lover Edgardo had a nice voice but was a wimpy type, not one to dedicate his life and death to a woman, and not someone a woman like Lucia would die for.

The first scene of act three between Enrico and Edgardo should be dripping with tension and menace. They are two brave and powerful men who hate each other and don't kill each other only because they each have an idea of honour that stops them short for different reasons. Instead they looked like a couple of nerds playing at being hard. The whole show failed because of that.

And Edgardo's final death scene, coming after Lucia's, is likely to be anti-climactic and struck me as too long, but with this chap playing the role it almost became ridiculous. A pity, really. Presumably Donizetti knew what he was doing and placed it here for a reason.

The orchestra, a local one,  was good, and I liked the conductor. The choir was also local, experienced and competent. The flautist, a young blonde woman, who was on the rostrum for the mad scene also did a good job. So a varied evening, cuarte's eggish, but when it's all you've got you learn to enjoy it.

Should I Be Worried?

I was told long ago by an aging gypsy woman that when there appeared in the sky at dusk a giant halibut
blowing smoke rings, it meant my time had come. Now I wish I hadn't laughed at her...

What Squirrels Think About

I caught this one in a wood by a lake this morning, clearly wondering whether the Indian Test team even cares about being made to look ridiculous once again. Not a question we can easily answer. The number 1 team in Test cricket until last week has spent the summer looking as though it's trying to win a bet against itself. Or as though they were just waiting to go home. Remember this series was 1 against 2 for the top spot, and the whole thing has been, well, a bit dull, really, and just a bit odd.

Reptile Necropsy in the Pursuit of Knowledge

Update: I have relented and will allow readers, whose thirst for knowledge is as strong as their stomach, to witness the results of my herpetological researches. The oesophagus, trachea, heart, and large intestine are all clearly visible, as are the ribs and to a lesser extent the higher vertebrae.

Yesterday my brother-in-law killed a snake that had stuck its head out of the undergrowth at the wrong moment. I had known it was there but kept quiet because it hadn't done me any harm, nor was it likely too since, although it was about three feet long, theye are not poisonous and only bite when cornered. I had no intention of cornering it and Mrs Hickory was happy that her rabbit would run away from it, so we left it alone. Unfortunately they eat partridge eggs which is a death sentence around here.

Thus the snake had a brief encounter with a stout walking stick and joined the its kin, and some rats and mice, on a pile some distance from the house that will be quickly reduced by the insects, and quite possibly by other rats.

Later the conversation turned to the subject of ribs, and touched on the matter of whether a snake's ribs are bone in the normal sense or cartilaginous like fish, or gelatinous, or whether they had ribs at all. Fish-like, was my contribution, and a lot of them, but, under the pressure of debate, I announced my intention to open the late reptile and settle the question.

This was considered a bit eccentric for that time of night, and I was persuaded to forget the idea. Today, however, armed with a Stanley knife, latex gloves and some sticks for handling, I was able to ascertain that this snake, at least, had ribs very much like those of a sole; cartilaginous, flexible, attached directly to the spine rather than articulated, and though I didn't count them, there were a lot. The internal organs are interesting, too, being mostly flat and elongated. Much as you would expect, I suppose. The photos are not suitable for a blog of this nature, but I might put them on Facebook.

On the Need to be Right

One of things that strikes this Englishman when he returns to his homeland from time to time is how keen my compatriots are to be take sides on any matter, and how much they desire their position to be not only right but virtuous.

The biggest of these in terms of actual importance is probably global warming. It follows the pattern of the minor religions. There are powerful interests on both sides, and very dodgy science going on. Some of the things that are said and done just don’t look like science. Everyone believes, almost no one has a clue what they’re talking about. Everyone must have an opinion, there are angels and demons, and everyone knows whether they are one or the other.

Diet was long ago turned into a religion. Practices and beliefs are expressed in the language of theology. There are virtues and vices, ‘being good’ and sinning. There are heretics who must be condemned, doctrines and dogmas to suit every taste. No one cares about the truth. You will hear self-proclaimed experts declare that some nutrient-free chewy stuff sold in small, tasteless lumps is ‘good for you’, whereas anything with fat or sugar is ‘evil’. Those who suffer by eating the ‘good’ stuff expect to wake up the next morning looking like (insert slim attractive young woman of your choice), without regard to the way the metabolism actually works. It’s like grace, a prize for performing sacrifice and having the right intention.

Cycling is also like this, as I was told in an exchange on another blog (or was it this one) recently, and have now realized is perfectly true. People who ride bikes think that they are worthier human beings, deserving of abasement from the common masses. It isn’t even a matter of riding a bike, which I do regularly without expecting it to take me to heaven; it’s a state of mind. The irritating people who accused me of failing to recognise their worth were surprised when I said I also rode. They couldn’t accept that it was possible to ride a bike without being a total prat.

There is a desperate need to be right, and to condemn, those who won’t believe. There is a grim joylessness about the whole thing. I also passed, while out walking, a group of hikers who were kitted out with thick boots, rucksacks and long sticks for a route I knew was no more than three miles over flat country. Ok, so there’s nothing wrong with being prepared, but it was clear from the snippets of conversation I overheard that they were walking that path not in search of beauty or wonder, or for the pleasure of exercise in the open air, but because they were jolly well allowed to. They were not having fun at all, they had forgotten that it used to be fun, if it ever was, they were doing their duty. They were trying to pay attention to a dull sermon. They were abstaining from meat on Good Friday. Just look at the bloody flowers, FFS.

I was surprised, though I don’t know why, to learn that the act of drinking water has also become a religion. There are those who say you must drink a certain amount of water a day, and those who say you mustn’t. In the furtherance of her creed, a medical practitioner was quoted as saying that ‘dehydration is a myth.’ (Someone on my blogroll had a link to the article, but I can’t remember who, sorry.) Try doing strenuous exercise for a few hours under a hot sun and you will soon discover what it means to suffer for your faith. Or getting very, very drunk. It’s perfectly true that an hour’s aerobics isn’t going to dehydrate you dangerously, but there’s no harm in drinking water afterwards, especially if it contains a little salt and sugar. And of course it makes no sense to decree that we ingest a fixed amount per diem, since the rate at which we lose and take up fluid varies enormously from person to person, and activity to activity.

The point is that no one seems to care much about the facts. Belief is everything. I’ve known people who think that lottery numbers are more (or less) likely to come up again if they have been drawn recently, and I’ve also known people (possibly apostatising former believers) who are so convinced they understand the laws of probability better than the ignorant masses that they won’t accept there is a way of increasing your expected winning however many diagrams you draw.

The English are not alone in any of this, I’m sure, but there is a much larger proportion of the population there than here who feel a need to be on the right, wholesome and morally superior side of anything, however trivial it may be, and however little they understand it. Perhaps it’s centuries of arguing with the neighbours about the height of their hedge.

Meerkats off Duty

El Retiro

In Madrid. It doesn't really count and we're going north by train, but it's the start of the journey, so an excuse to post a couple of photos.
The Retiro is a park on the centre of Madrid, where people go to do- well, just about everything you can imagine, and a lot you can't until you see it. So, skaters doing slalom and bowls played by men with half a ball.
As I have probably said before, the Retiro is Madrid at play.

Alarcos

Sunday will be Pentecost (or Whitsun as it's known in the land of my birth). It marks 50 days after the resurrection and is liturgically significant for a reason I can't now remember. I'm not aware that England does anything special for the occasion, although I have dim and possibly false recollections of rainy Bank Holidays and traditional games that had to be rediscovered every so often because they had fallen out of use.

Over here it's a big event in some places, because it's often when the local Virgins are commemorated. The biggest of them all is the Rocio, down in Huelva, where tens of thousands of people congregate in honour of Our Lady of that ilk. The iconic image is of gypsy caravans and long coloured dresses that swirl as they dance, and every year there are new stories and events which go down, quite literally, in legend and song.

My little city has the Virgen de Alarcos, which follows a similar pattern if not quite on the same dramatic scale. Alarcos is, or was, a mediaeval walled city guarded by a castle on a hill a few miles out of town. In the 11th C there was some continued unpleasantness with the Arabs to the south, and the Knights of the Order of Calatrava were send to guard it. One day in 1095 the Arab army turned up unannounced, overran the place and put the entire city to the sword. It was never settled again.

You can almost see the Arabs in the distance

It's been excavated and partly restored over the last 20 years. I've been up there many times. Standing on the walls, looking out over the plain, you can imagine what it was like, day after day, watching, wondering, beginning to feel safer as the days went by. Then, one day, a movement in the distance, the flash of sun on steel, dull sounds carrying in the still air, and you turn to your fellow guard and exchange a look that says something like, "You know, when I joined the army it looked like a good career. Steady job, living wage, roof over your head, food on your plate, the chance to travel, set up for life, we were. Respect, women, bit of pillage here and there, and a bit of land from the King when you retired."

When you looked back at the plain it wasn't there. It was a mass of armed men, thousands of them, moving quickly in formation with swords in their hands and murder in their eyes. You exchange another glance which just says, "Oh, fuck", and you wait.

In true mediaeval fashion the statue of Our Lady was rescued from the church and carried to safety. It is she who will be placed on a cart and taken back to her old home this weekend, accompanied along the old road by a lot of people, hundreds, and possibly thousands. Once there they will hear Mass, then set about getting completely whammed.

These events are similar in many places around the south of Spain, taking an image to a shrine out of town and setting up camp there for the weekend with the flagon and the camp stove; and the tradition involves, of course, a lot of food and drink, usually fairly simple stuff, the traditional country food. This means that when you wake up on the grass late on Monday morning wondering what you did last night, you have the added pleasure of knowing that breakfast will consist of cheap red wine and fried chorizo. Colour is added by the stalls selling food and drink, headscarves and light dresses, olives, guerkins and pickled aubergines, and the air is thick with recycled fat and the cheerful banter of aubergine salesmen discussing who has the right to the prime pitch by the band.

The Ditch by the Wall on the Left was full of Bones

We often go up there on the Monday (which is a local holiday, for obvious reasons), either on foot or by bike, and contemplate the wreckage as it slowly stirs into life and becomes human again for the last few hours of the fiesta. In case we don't get there this year, I offer this post in advance. It's always the same.

Mediaeval Market

There is a bunch of eccentric types who tour the country dressed in generic mediaeval dress, recreating the feel of a market of the time. A certain latitude is allowed in terms of clothing, stall architecture and the products on sale- they have to make a living, after all- but the basic requirement is that everything should look archaic, and above all, be fun. And it is. I've seen it in a couple of bigger cities, and there are hundreds of stalls and associated activities. Here it's on a smaller scale, but it's great fun.

They come one weekend a year and the last couple of years it's been advertised as an 'Alfonsí' Market, in honour of Alfonso X, who founded the place after the nearby settlement was wiped out by the Arabs in the 13th C.

There are falconers exhibiting their birds, stonemasons who carve your face into marble, farriers making horseshoes out of boyscouts, jugglers, people doing strange things, belly dancers led around on chains by soldiers, meat and cheese products from all around the country, soaps, sweets, scents and snacks made from ancient recipes and sold in funny shapes so you know they're real, little cars made of wood that bite your ankles, the work of artisans in leather, glass, gold, silver, tempered steel, aromatic woods, and a bit of new age herbology thrown in. Good humour and archaic speech are everywhere, little vignettes and characters from past times go by as you discuss the flavour of the cheese with a chap whose gown smells of sheep and who's blacked out his front teeth.

You can get your face painted on wooden boards recovered from long-wrecked boats, your name written ornately in a variety of Levantine scripts, you can take tea in the style of a number of different civilizations that once walked the town, and expand your waistline in many imaginative ways that you won't find on the shelves at the supermarket. The smell of burning fat, scorched meat and marijuana hang in the air (they're a Bohemian bunch, on the whole, as you might imagine).

Yesterday morning there was heavy rain, but in the afternoon it was sunny and hot, and today has been the same. As a result, I have a selection of home-cured foodstuffs awaiting my pleasure. And the photos, where you can see clearly what I have to rather poorly triedto describe.

Hickory on High

We are everywhere. We are huge. And there is nowhere to hide.

A hedgehog-shaped flock of starlings taken by Neil Bland at Leighton Moss nature reserve in Silverdale.

No Coffin Should be Without One

From John Hawks, quoting this paper (emphasis mine):

Only one other ancient burial site is known for Beringia: Ushki Lake 1, in Kamchatka, Russia (34–37) (Fig. 1). Ushki Lake 1, Level 7 (Ushki L7) (~13,000 cal yr B.P.) contained an adult burial associated with bone beads in a rock-lined ochre-filled pit separated from the house structures. Ushki Lake 1, Level 6 (Ushki L6) (~12,000 cal yr B.P.) is roughly contemporaneous with USRS Component 3 and contains two unburned burials of children within two separate houses (35, 36). One child burial contained ochre, a pendant, a mat of lemming incisors, and numerous microblades and wedge-shaped cores (the second burial is undescribed) (35). Thus, the USRS burial context is more like Ushki L6 than L7.

I have informed Mrs Hickory that, before she spends the insurance money, I wish her to lay me to rest on the finest mat of lemming incisors that Siberia can produce.

And talking of John Hawks, this post will be particularly interesting to fellow glossogony buffs.

Even Educated Piggy-Banks do it

This advert has appeared on a roundabout on the edge of town. Momio is an investment company of some sort, and the slogan says 'let your savings reproduce'. I forbear to pass judgement on the idea, leaving it to the reader to decide whether the average person would be more or less likely to give them money after seeing this hoarding.