Tag Archives: UK

Sink the Bismarck!

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I was surprised recently to find Sink the Bismarck! on YouTube, gratis, no commercials even. Did the copyright lapse? So over the last few days I’ve been watching it as time allows. I think I rented it on VHS in Japan nearly 30 years ago, but I’m not sure; might have seen it later.

Considering that the ships are obviously models, this is a movie that’s improved — to modern eyes, used to better effects — by being on a small screen. Much of the story involves talking, and occasionally the exposition pops through (especially at the beginning), but on the whole it’s fast-moving and, in its way, suspenseful. The main actors all do well, especially the leads.

Also, it’s reasonably accurate in terms of its history, though since the movie came out in 1960, it wasn’t up to speed on the fact that British intelligence had cracked German codes, or that the men on the Bismarck scuttled her at the very end. No matter, it’s been a good diversion from the pace of work and the woes of the nation.

Look Right (Or Else)

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Some years ago, I scanned one of the pictures I took in London in December 1994, a streetscape. I forget where exactly. Something inspired me to scan it in black and white, which captures the December gloom all the better.

Noir London

Not that London’s a particularly gloomy place, in December or any other time. But old movies on long-ago Saturday afternoons conditioned me to think of old London in foggy black and white, and I caught something of that in the image. Maybe not London in 1994, but 1934.

Looking at the image again, I noticed LOOK RIGHT painted on the edge of the road. Sound advice, I’m sure. When did that message start being painted to warn visitors whose first instinct is to look the wrong way?

A 1991 NYT article mentions the paintings in the context of pedestrian deaths in London, but it only says, “this city has always been tough on foreign pedestrians, who can often be observed at street corners wearing the slightly startled look of deer edging alongside a freeway. It was for them, mostly, that London officials years ago began painting reminders along curbs suggesting that pedestrians ‘look left’ or ‘look right’ before venturing into the street.”

Perhaps for the influx of U.S. soldiers during WWII. That would be my guess. Of course, the hazard is present for Britons visiting our side of the Atlantic as well. After all, Winston Churchill almost bought the farm in New York in 1931 because he failed to look the right (correct) way crossing a street.

Handy Map of London

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I have in my possession a Handy Map of London. This is supposedly a German version of similar vintage; mine is in English, but it looks just the same. Mine is dated 1986, so I’m certain I picked it up in 1988.

It isn’t my favorite map of London — that would be that marvel of aesthetic mapmaking, the Bensons MapGuide.

Still, the multi-page, folding Handy Map, published by John Bartholomew & Son Ltd. of Edinburgh, was indeed handy. That company, long since a unit of Harper Collins, is one of the storied Scottish mapmakers, as detailed here.

Interesting material in the Wiki description, though without citation: “John Bartholomew Junior was credited with having pioneered the use of hypsometric tints or layer colouring on maps in which low ground is shown in shades of green and higher ground in shades of brown, then eventually purple and finally white.

“It is his son John George who is attributed with being the first to bring the name ‘Antarctica’ into popular use as the name for the Southern Continent, and for the adoption of red or pink as the colour for the British Empire.”

By gar, someone invented those conventions. But they’re such strong conventions that you hardly think of a time when maps didn’t feature them.

The Handy Map folds out to reveal ten separate maps, nine of which are parts of Greater London, and all of which are color- and number-coded. Want to look for a particular place? The map makes that pretty easy. Even more so than Benson, I have to say.

The tenth map is a view of all of Greater London. As you’d imagine, it can’t be overly detailed, but it is good for orientation. I was looking at it the other day (for now the Handy Map is in the downstairs bathroom) and noticed an oddity on the Greater London map.

Toward the eastern edge of the map, just north of the Thames near a place called Purfleet, is a pink, long oval shape (like a race track) simply marked DANGER AREA.

What? It took me a few days to remember to check it out on Google Maps. In 1986, a danger area. In 2020, it’s the RSPB Rainham Marshes, also known as the Rainham Marshes Nature Reserve.
That would be, according to Google: “Bird-rich former marshland firing range with accessible boardwalks and a modern visitor centre.”

RSPB? The Royal Society for the Protection of Birds. The organization bought the land from the UK Ministry of Defence in 2000, opening it to the public in 2006. So danger area no more, unless you’re attacked by cetti’s warblers, little egrets or peregrine falcons. More about the marshes is here.

More about the organization is here.

“The RSPB was formed to counter the barbarous trade in plumes for women’s hats, a fashion responsible for the destruction of many thousands of egrets, birds of paradise and other species whose plumes had become fashionable in the late Victorian era,” its web site says.

“The organisation started life as the Society for the Protection of Birds (SPB), founded by Emily Williamson at her home in Manchester in 1889. The group quickly gained popularity and in 1891 it merged with the Fur, Fin and Feather Folk, to form a larger and stronger SPB, based in London.

“In its earliest days, the society consisted entirely of women and membership cost twopence. The rules of the society were:

“That members shall discourage the wanton destruction of birds and interest themselves generally in their protection

“That lady-members shall refrain from wearing the feathers of any bird not killed for purposes of food, the ostrich only excepted.”

Interesting that ostrich feathers were OK. If I felt like it, I could investigate why that was, but I have a hunch that ostrich farming was entirely too valuable before WWI to discourage, especially in South Africa. These days, leather is the main thing, with feathers just a sideline.

A Stormy Monday Afternoon, But Not Too Stormy

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Not something you particularly want to hear.

That’s the local siren that goes off during severe weather, with wind and cicadas in the background, sounding at about 3:45 this afternoon. I don’t actually know its official meaning, but my interpretation is, watch out for tornadoes, bub. So I did, at least through the north-facing windows of my home office, with occasional peeks southward.

We got a fair amount of rain and some lightning for the rest of the afternoon, though I’ve seen worse. As of early evening, we’ve been visited by no tornadoes or even damaging winds. In fact, by 6 the sun was out again. Just another passing summer storm, though we haven’t seen many this year.

Years ago I knew an Englishman, a Mancunian if I remember right, who was living temporarily in Nashville. One of the things that impressed him about America — frightened him, sometimes — was the violent thunderstorms, he said.

That gave me pause. It was hard to imagine not having much experience with that kind of weather. Guess the UK doesn’t get quite as many thunderstorms as North America, especially in the north part of the country, though of course sometimes the British Isles do get thumped by winds (such as in 1987, the reason we couldn’t visit Kew Gardens the next year). Massive thunderstorms were definitely a part of growing up in South Texas, especially come spring, and living in both Tennessee and Illinois.

A Summer Thursday

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Tomorrow is Juneteenth, which I’ve thought should be a holiday for years. I still do. Odds are it might be in some soon year.

Summer pic: a trumpeter swan family, who can be found at a pond near where I live.

Dame Vera Lynn has died at 103. I didn’t know she was still alive. I might not have known about her before I first saw this, many years ago, but I certainly did afterward.

Thursday and Everything’s Tickety-Boo

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Well, not really. We’re well enough here in our little spot, but the world’s never all tickety-boo. I only bring it up because I learned that word a few weeks ago. How did I get to be my advanced age without knowing it? Sure, I’m not British, but that’s never stopped me from learning some Briticisms.

Besides, it isn’t exactly new.

At least I know it now. Looking into the word, origin uncertain, and the song (by Johnny Mercer and Saul Chaplin), naturally led me to read a bit about Danny Kaye. Per Wiki: “Kaye was cremated and his ashes were interred in the foundation of a bench in Kensico Cemetery in Valhalla, New York. His grave is adorned with a bench that contains friezes of a baseball and bat, an aircraft, a piano, a flower pot, musical notes, and a chef’s toque.”

Those reflect his talents. A multi-talented fellow, he was. Wait, there’s a town called Valhalla in New York? Guess so. Hope there’s a really boss mead hall in town. These are a few other clips of the talented Mr. Kaye.

Tickety-boo or not, it’s Thursday, which has the advantage of having all of Friday and Saturday to look forward to. I wondered earlier today: how many songs have Thursday in the title? I couldn’t think of any, but that’s just me. There are some.

Interesting selection, including some bugs in bright — make that psychedelic — amber.

The list also includes songs by a band called Thursday. Didn’t know them. “A significant player in the early 21st century’s post-hardcore scene, Thursday formed in 1997 in New Brunswick, New Jersey,” Allmusic says. “Thursday’s frequent gigging and furious passion fueled a grassroots response, and by 2002 the band was on the main stage of the Warped Tour and enjoying MTV support for the single ‘Understanding in a Car Crash.’ ”

Good for them. One more thing for this spring Thursday during the pandemic. We ordered pizza for pickup today, supporting a local chain. Been a good while since we had any. The scene at pickup.

With any luck, scenes of this sort will be fixed in amber before too long.

Nori

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Usually I do my own scanning, but in this case, I figured — what’s the point? A fellow named John Lodder posted this image on Flickr under a Creative Commons 2.0 license, meaning I need to give him credit and link to the original site — which I just did. It’s a close-up of nori.We always have nori around the house. It’s used for wrapping edibles, especially to make homemade sushi, which we do fairly often. Not as artful as prepared sushi, but a lot cheaper and just about as good. More finely shredded nori is a garnish.

Nori is seaweed pressed into sheets. That much I’ve long known. I decided to look into it a little further, and discovered something I never knew, which always makes my day: the story of the reinvention of nori and, indirectly, sushi.

Seaweed has been harvested and processed into nori in Japan for centuries, but right after WWII, the industry was in dire straits.

“Despite becoming a staple food of the Japanese, the basic biology of edible seaweed species remained almost completely unknown until [the late 1940s], when pioneering British scientist Kathleen Drew-Baker saved the country’s nori farming industry,” Gastropod says.

“In 1948, a series of typhoons combined with increased pollution in coastal waters had led to a complete collapse in Japanese nori production. And because almost nothing was known about its life cycle, no one could figure out how to grow new plants from scratch to repopulate the depleted seaweed beds. The country’s nori industry ground to a halt, and many farmers lost their livelihoods.

“Meanwhile, back in Manchester, Dr. Drew-Baker was studying laver, the Welsh equivalent to nori. In 1949, she published a paper in Nature outlining her discovery that a tiny algae known as Conchocelis was actually a baby nori or laver, rather than an entirely separate species, as had previously been thought.

“After reading her research, Japanese scientists quickly developed methods to artificially seed these tiny spores onto strings, and they rebuilt the entire nori industry along the lines under which it still operates today. Although she’s almost unknown in the UK, Dr. Drew-Baker is known as the ‘Mother of the Sea’ in Japan, and a special ‘Drew’ festival is still held in her honor in Osaka every April 14.”

I’m not so sure about that last line. I might have missed such a festival when I lived there — Osaka’s a large place — but other sources, such as a longer University of Manchester article about about Dr. Drew-Baker and nori, tell me the festival is in Uto, Kumamoto.

There’s a memorial to her in Uto, seemingly at a place called Konose Sumiyoshi shrine, which could be confused with Sumiyoshi Taisha (Grand Shrine) in Osaka — within walking distance of where I used to live.

One more thing about nori, at least around here. Our dog likes it. Loves it. One of her favorite things to eat. That has some practical uses, too: any pills the vet prescribes go down a lot easier when wrapped in wet nori.

Thursday Tidbits, Including Doggerel

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Usually it’s bad to brag about your ignorance, but there are exceptions. I didn’t know this until recently and I’m not sorry. It’s an example of the ridiculousness I miss by not paying attention to social media memes. That is, by not being one of the callow youth who use social media as the thin straw through which they obtain all their information, a practice that surely stunts their brains.

Speaking of callow youth, when I was a child I thought the prestigious journalism award was the Pulit Surprise. When I typed that out, I laughed at the thought of it. Then again, it might be a surprise to some of the recipients.

As mentioned yesterday, we’re watching more movies than before. Toward the end of March, I discovered an bunch of pre-WWII Universal horror pics on demand, and we watched those first. In order: Frankenstein, Dracula, The Mummy, The Wolf Man and The Invisible Man. All first times for Ann, but not me, except I couldn’t remember whether I’d seen The Invisible Man, though I read the book years ago.

Ann said she enjoyed all of them, but The Invisible Man most. The main character wasn’t just a murderous psycho, he was also positively playful while committing less-harmful pranks, she noted, which humanized him a bit.

Since then, our viewing has been less thematic. Along with the aforementioned Groundhog Day, we’ve watched Intolerable Cruelty (a lesser Coen Bros. effort, but not bad), The Terminator, Space Jam and The Death of Stalin.

We also watched an oddity called John Mulaney and the Sack Lunch Bunch, which is as long as a short movie, but more like a TV special, which I believe it was. As a pseudo-kids show, it had many entertaining moments, and on the whole was slightly demented, like Mulaney’s comedy.

Some silly verse I wrote last year. My entire output of verse of any kind for the year. I’d forgotten about it until the other day.

Blake was a flake, and
Shelley ended up in a lake.
Byron was mad, bad and a cheater, while
Coleridge was a lotus-eater.
Wordsworth really liked his abbey, and
Keats’ odes were none too shabby.
In doggerel about poets Romantic,
Best not to wax too pedantic.

See also “The Krystal Cabinet.”

British Air ’88

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In early April 1988, I visited London for a week, which included laughs in the basement of a pub and time at the British Museum and the Imperial War Museum and a lot more. A good trip.

To make the trip a reality, some time earlier I called a travel agent. The agent who also booked tickets for my company, whose office (I think) was somewhere on Michigan Ave. For me, the ticket buyer, her services cost nothing. Hard to imagine now. I’d call her even for ordinary domestic tickets. The last time was to book passage to Japan in 1990.

I told her where and when I wanted to go, fully expecting to pass through New York to get to London. That’s what you did to get across the Atlantic. Get to New York first, as surely as Lindbergh did.

I reconstruct the conversation:

Agent: We have a flight leaving at x, arriving at Heathrow at y.
Me: Leaving New York?
Agent: No, it’s direct from Chicago.
Me (a touch astonished): Really?
Agent: Oh, yes. So is the return.

A pleasant surprise. I bought a package: RT air tickets, a week’s accommodation at a middling hotel — but very well located near Paddington Station — and a week’s pass on the Underground. Good value.

British Air was the carrier. That too was a first for me. In fact, still the only time I’ve flown that airline. Flew across on a charter in ’83 and on the upstart Virgin in ’94.

A souvenir of the flight. A menu.
BA menu 1988British Air menu 1988I don’t remember what I had, and I’m not going to bellyache about how much better flying was then compared with more recent times. On the whole, that might be true, but I suspect the differences are exaggerated. Jumbo jets have always been pressurized cattle cars. You put up with it, enjoy the view if you can, and get where you’re going in hours. Worth a little discomfort. Now that air travel is mostly gone, maybe it will better appreciated when it comes back.

The Location of Wales

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I have two desks in my office, both of which have drawers that are full of the debris of a home office. That includes a drawer with a lot of business cards in it. Sometimes I throw some of them out, since they date back to the early 2000s, an eon ago in the business world.

Jobs change, titles change, phone numbers change, email addresses change: all the ingredients of bum information in data bases. In some theoretical sense, my drawer of cards is an ancient analog database, but really it’s just a pile of cards. Including one with this back:

Unusual to find a map on a business card. It came with some material from the Chicago office of an organization promoting business development in Wales. It’s graphically interesting and it conveys some possibly useful information, namely that Wales isn’t that far from London or Dublin or various well-known European cities. Then again, it’s Western Europe. Nothing is that far apart in modern terms anyway.

Maybe the main reason the organization included a map is that they were tired of people saying, “Wales, huh? Don’t you guys have a Prince? Now, let’s see — I’m not sure where that is.”