Raised Beds

The first two men to walk on the Moon, Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin, spent their rest periods on the Apollo lunar module floor and reported being too cold to sleep comfortably so from Apollo 12 until the last Apollo lunar mission, hammocks designed to attach to the interior of the lunar module ascent stage were provided. They helped reduce the cooling effects of contact with the cabin floor as well as a softer support. They enabled astronauts from the last missions to spend complete nights of sleep on the Moon. An old solution to a modern problem.

lunar module hammock

The hammock's story begins in ancient times. The earliest recorded evidence of hammocks dates back over a thousand years to the Mayan civilisation in Central America. Mayans, known for their advanced knowledge of architecture and textiles, crafted hammocks from plant fibres such as sisal and agave. These early hammocks provided a comfortable sleep surface, allowing people to escape from the damp ground and avoid contact with crawling creatures.

The spread of hammocks across the world can be attributed to European explorers and sailors. During their voyages in the 15th and 16th centuries, Christopher Columbus and his crew encountered the Taino people of the Caribbean, who introduced them to the ingenious invention of hammocks. The sailors quickly adopted hammocks as sleeping quarters on ships due to their space-saving nature and ability to provide stability in turbulent waters

weaving traditional Yucatan hammocks

The word "hammock" itself, from Spanish hamaca, is derived from the Taino word "hamaca," meaning "fish net." This reflects the strong influence of the Taino people on the development and naming of this unique form of bedding.

It may be significant that in the first official mention of hammocks in the Royal Navy of 1597 they are not referred to under that name, but as 'hanging cabbons or beddes'. The medieval canvas hammock may have been an English invention which was not known on the continent when Columbus made his voyage. In the course of the seventeenth century its use spread to the navies of Western Europe, and eventually it was given the same name as the Caribbean hammock of netting which came to Europe when Columbus returned.

Aboard ship, hammocks were regularly employed for sailors sleeping on the gun decks of warships, where limited space prevented the installation of permanent bunks. Since a slung hammock moves in concert with the motion of the vessel, the occupant is not at a risk of being thrown onto the deck (which may be 5 or 6 feet below) during swells or rough seas. Likewise, a hammock provides more comfortable sleep than a bunk or a berth while at sea since the sleeper always stays well balanced, irrespective of the motion of the vessel.

a sailor's hammock

A narrow mattress was also issued which protected the user from cold from below. In addition naval hammocks could be rolled tightly and stowed in an out of the way place or in nets along the gunwale as additional protection during battle (as was the case during the age of sail). Many sailors became so accustomed to this way of sleeping that they brought their hammocks ashore with them on leave. The naval use of hammocks continued into the 20th century. During World War II, troopships sometimes employed hammocks for both naval ratings and soldiers in order to increase available space and troop carrying capacity. Many leisure sailors even today prefer hammocks over bunks because of better comfort in sleep while on the high seas.

Travel or camping hammocks are popular among leave no trace and ultra-light campers and hikers for their reduced impact on the environment and their lightness and lack of bulk compared to tents. The way they are hung is critical for comfort. The optimal angle of the attaching lines to the post / wall / tree is usually about 30 degrees. Hammocks can be attached to the anchor points using a variety of suspension systems, including ropes and webbing straps.

Some of the above information is from Simply Hammocks, Richmond, N Yorkshire.

a hammock among pines

Below is a poem by American poet James Wright. The poem was first published in The Paris Review in 1961.I had never heard of him or it until looking for an appropriate poem for this article. I love the title. 

I was very surprised to read that some critics regard the poem's final line as one of the greatest lines in modern poetry.

Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota

Over my head, I see the bronze butterfly,
Asleep on the black trunk,
Blowing like a leaf in green shadow.
Down the ravine behind the empty house,
The cowbells follow one another
Into the distances of the afternoon.
To my right,
In a field of sunlight between two pines,
The droppings of last year’s horses
Blaze up into golden stones.
I lean back, as the evening darkens and comes on.
A chicken hawk floats over, looking for home.
I have wasted my life.

   

                                           James Wright

James Wright's, “Lying in a Hammock at William Duffy’s Farm in Pine Island, Minnesota” is from Above the River: The Complete Poems and Selected Prose. Copyright 1990 by James Wright. Reprinted by permission of Wesleyan University Press.

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Work

One of the first things I noticed when going through possible angles of approach to this topic is the sheer amount of nouns and verbs linked to Work. Although oddly enough, in the thesauruses and dictionaries I was checking very few mentioned a very real and defined version of Work. And as I vaguely remember questions about this in exams years ago it was a good chance to work out if I could still understand any of them now.

I’m talking about how to measure work. In the International System of Units (SI) then one joule is equal to the amount of work or energy done when a force of one newton displaces a body through a distance of one metre in the direction of that force. For example: lifting an apple one metre takes 1 joule of work or energy.

It is also the energy dissipated as heat when an electric current of one ampere passes through a resistance of one ohm for one second. It is named after the English physicist James Prescott Joule (1818–1889).

J P Joule

James Prescott Joule was born in Salford, he was the son of a renowned local brewer and grew up fascinated by all things scientific. He became particularly interested in electricity and was fortunate enough to be tutored by John Dalton, one of the leading chemists of the day. This expert tutelage, combined with Joule's personal obsession as well as access to some specialised beer-making equipment would ultimately lead to one of the most ground-breaking (and at the time, controversial) discoveries in the history of science: that heat is a form of energy.

In 1841 he discovered what became known as Joule's First Law. This defined the relationship between the amount of heat produced and the current flowing through a conductor. At this time things seemed to be going well, he was still an amateur scientist but had been accepted as a member of the London Electrical Society. He decided to look into the wider question of how much work can be extracted from a given source and soon found that the scientific establishment was strongly opposed to his ideas.

In 1843 Joule presented his results to a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, in Cambridge, but contemporary anecdotes claim that he was met by a stony silence. Undeterred, he continued his experiments. In 1844, believing he had compelling evidence, he submitted his paper to the most prestigious scientific group of all, the Royal Society… who refused to publish his work.

One reason was that Joule said he could measure temperatures to within 1/200 of a degree Fahrenheit, something that was simply unthinkable with the majority of scientific equipment available at the time. However, Joule had two advantages. One was his background as a brewer, which meant he had ways to measure much more precisely, as the finely tuned measurement of temperatures is critical to the brewing process. The other was John Benjamin Dancer, an exceptionally talented instrument-maker who created custom equipment for him.

instrument made by J B Dancer

In 1847 Joule once again presented his ideas, this time to the British Association at Oxford, which was attended by both Faraday and Kelvin. Eventually his ideas would become the cornerstone of one of the most fundamental scientific laws ever discovered, the First Law of Thermodynamics. In 1850, he was made a fellow of the Royal Society, in 1852 he was awarded the Royal Medal, and in 1872 he was named President of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, the same group that had rejected his ideas back in 1843.

Mario Petrucci is a poet, educator and broadcaster. He was born in Lambeth, London and trained as a physicist at Selwyn College in the University of Cambridge and later completed a PhD in vacuum crystal growth at University College London. He is also an ecologist, having a BA in Environmental Science from Middlesex University. Petrucci was the first poet to be resident at the Imperial War Museum and with BBC Radio 3.

Orders of Magnitude

One hundred thousand trillion joules
to turn an ice cap into mush
One hundred thousand billion joules
to erase a major Eastern city
A hundred thousand million joules
to run a car to death
One hundred million of the same
for Fire Brigades to reach the kitten
Ten million just to keep
December from cold feet
A hundred thousand joules for a mug
of tea – A hundred joules
for a second’s worth of War and Peace
Ten to raise a hand – to lift
an average apple to the lips
A single joule to shout the command
Half a joule to pull the trigger
Just one tenth to push the button
Almost zero to have the thought.

Mario Petrucci, from Flowers of Sulphur, Enitharmon, 2007

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Brand Loyalty

The first thing I thought about when I saw the topic was Brand Loyalty was football clubs. However, I had covered this back in April ’22 in a blog about Essence. Here is the relevant section:

‘Originally they (football clubs) were formed to give an expression of a community. They had players, coaches, back room staff and supporters (not fans). There was a place in the structure for anyone in the community to express themselves. Different communities had different values or reasons for starting a club. For instance Arsenal was founded by munitions workers and Birmingham City by a group of cricketers from a local church.

But look at them and many other clubs now. They are international brands with fans who consume their games on television. So will they, if at all, retain their links with their origins, their essence? They must not forget where they have come from, not lose sight of the fact that the strength of a club lies in its connection with their communities and become franchises.’

It became even worse when I read this week that the match between Villarreal and FC Barcelona originally scheduled to be played at the Estadio de la Cerámica in Villarreal will be played at Miami’s Hard Rock Stadium.

It’s too depressing to be thinking about. So let’s have some thoughts on what is Brand Loyalty and more particularly where and when did it start.

I’m taking the next bit with a huge pinch of salt but some historians claim that Ancient Egyptians (we’re talking about 2,500 BCE) used beer and bread tokens as an early reward system for labour. Workers received these tokens as payment, which could be exchanged for food and drink. This represented one of humanity’s first structured loyalty and reward systems, establishing the foundation for incentivizing work and building worker loyalty.

The introduction of copper tokens as rewards for purchasing goods is probably the first proper recorded loyalty programme. In 1793 an American merchant handed out copper coins or tokens to revisiting customers. These tokens were then used to redeem against future purchases in the store. Many companies would then go on to copy this idea in their own stores. Whilst businesses realised the importance of repeat purchases, the cost of copper tokens became increasingly prohibitive.

The second important development in the evolution of Loyalty Programmes is the development of paper-based tickets or stamps. Trading Stamps as they were popularly called were small paper coupons with gummed backing, cut into perforated squares which could be collected by sticking them in a ‘Savers Book’. The most famous were the American Grand Union Tea Company who introduced tickets in 1872 and later in 1892 Sperry and Hutchinson (S&H) who introduced the famous S&H stamps. However, it was not until the early 1960’s that such stamps made their way to the UK with the introduction of Green Shield stamps and I do remember collecting them in a book.

Nowadays the Loyalty card has become synonymous with the UK consumer, apparently 85% of UK households own at least one card whilst 29% of people carry five or more loyalty cards. But loyalty programmes continues to evolve. Technology advances have enabled merchants to shift their means of customer loyalty from paper stamps and plastic cards to mobile apps and other digital forms to send personalised notifications and special offers that enhance customer loyalty. But also allows merchants to gather valuable data for targeted marketing, ultimately maximising profits.

The first verse in the poem below is taken from the poem I used in the Essence blog. That was entitled ‘Writing off the Blues’

Not again

I’ve always said that
I’d never pay a penny
cent yuan dirham
to some multinational
who’s filed us under
Investment Opportunity

Stuff the Premier brands
the overseas money
stadiums named for profit
selling the shirts
selling the souls

If the Blues were taken
then I’d go non league
maybe Forest Green Rovers

Well now it’s done
dollars moving the ground
buying the players
buying the fans

Keep right on to
the end of the road
they know what they’re buying
as my nerves are wrecked
in an away match at Blackburn

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Tea set

I’m looking at my tea set now trying to get ideas for this blog. As it consists of a Birmingham City mug and a small flowery plate ready for a honey sandwich then this is not going to get me very far.

my tea set 

So what is a tea set:

Teapot – The main vessel for brewing and serving tea.
Teacups – Small cups designed for sipping tea, usually match the teapot in the set.
Saucers – Small plates placed beneath teacups to catch any drips and often used for placing small snacks.
Tea Tray – A tray used to collect excess water and spills, especially in traditional Chinese tea ceremonies.
Tea Strainer – A tool to filter tea leaves or herbs while pouring tea into cups.
Tea Infuser – A small device for holding loose tea leaves during steeping.
Creamer - A small pitcher for serving milk or cream with tea.
Sugar Bowl – A container for holding sugar cubes or loose sugar for sweetening tea.
Tea Caddy – A container for storing and preserving loose tea leaves.
Tea Spoon – A small spoon for stirring tea or adding sugar.
Tea Cosy – A fabric cover placed over the teapot to keep the tea warm.
Trivet – A heat-resistant pad or stand to protect surfaces from the hot teapot.
Lid Rest – A small tray or holder to place the teapot lid while serving.
Tongs – Utensil for handling sugar cubes or tea leaves.
Tea Towel – A cloth used for drying teacups or wiping spills.

That is according to Alix Attaway, writing in British Market (and other sources are very similar) who goes on to say that to create a more comprehensive tea service, consider investing in extra serving pieces like a sandwich plate or a cake stand. I came across one suggestion of having a tea timer as well.

a fancy tea

Choosing a tea set that complements the kind of tea you will be serving is also crucial. Say, for example, you might choose a tea set with a more robust design, like a stoneware set with a striking colour or pattern, if you like strong, powerful teas, or you could select a tea set with a more delicate design, such a fine China set with a floral pattern if you are serving delicate, floral teas.

Let’s just go back to that list of what makes a tea set. The first thing that leaps out at me is the requirement for Small cups designed for sipping tea. Oh no no no. When I want a cup of tea I want something that eases my thirst and lasts more than a microsecond.
I don’t need a saucer, I have table mats for that as I have that mug.
I do have a tea tray but it’s only for taking tea from the kitchen to the front room.
I did go through a phase of teapots, strainers and infusers and the joy of a tea cosy (I still have three of them) but all that fuss. It’s Yorkshire Gold teabags now and milk straight from the bottle and sugar from the packet.
I’d never heard of a trivet before and why would I when I have mats with images of trains or a nice garden.
I have no idea why or what a Lid Rest is used for.

trivet

I know this is a slight diversion but when I was looking for info on this subject I came across some fascinating facts regarding the etiquette of having tea with a tea set as above. For instance, under no circumstances must you stir tea in a circular motion. The correct way to stir is to place the spoon at a 12 o’clock position in the cup and softly fold the liquid back and forth 2-3 times to the 6 o’clock position, and never ever leave the tea spoon in the cup. When your tea spoon isn’t being used, pop it back on the saucer, to the right of the cup.

There are poems about tea sets but I can’t find a satisfactory one so here’s this effort done in a rush this afternoon in a rather nice café in Lancaster.

Game, Set and Match

It didn’t start well
I’d poured milk in first
used a tea spoon
for the sugar
used the wrong knife
buttering a scone
and rhymed it with gone
I’d finished a cup
and reached for the pot
mentioned tea bags
and of course Yorkshire Gold
she pointed out that
I’d stirred the tea in circles
and to be fair she was smiling
we both knew that
we weren’t a match
but it was fun while it lasted.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Butterflies

Williamson Park in Lancaster is a wonderful place to visit with its 54 acres of parkland, woodland walks and sublime views to Morecambe Bay and the Lake District mountains. The Ashton Memorial is beautiful. Unfortunately the cafe at the top is closed for the time being but there are food outlets. Luckily the problems do not extend to the building next to it.

Formerly an Edwardian palm house, the Butterfly House is now a home to Koi carp, terrapins and caterpillars. I prefer to visit in the winter when you can step from cold to very, very warm in a few steps. From Lancashire to the deepest tropics in its trees, twisting vines and waterfalls.

Butterfly House, Williamson Park in Lancaster

And Butterflies. A slow walk amongst some of the world’s most wonderful butterfly species, including the blue morpho, emerald swallowtails and camouflaged owl butterflies. It’s impossible not to take a seat and absorb the special atmosphere. You can view it all from above by way of the twisting staircases to the balconies.

At times you can see butterfly pupae emerging in their glass display case. Learn about the diet and lifecycle of a butterfly from the information boards or talk or listen to one of zoo keepers telling the life story of a butterfly.

I can remember stories about hot houses and conservatories but not actually Butterfly Houses and it seems that the first version of the butterfly house was demonstrated in Guernsey in 1976, when people were invited by businessman David Lowe to walk through a humid greenhouse filled with plants and exotic creatures.

Inside Williamson Park Butterfly House

This idea was taken to the next level by lepidopterist (the term for a person who studies butterflies and moths) Clive Ferrel in 1980, when he set up the London Butterfly House, the first ever entertainment-focused installation which ran from 1981 to 2007. Ferrel went on to establish butterfly farming facilities in places like Costa Rica and Malaysia throughout the mid-1980s, which, according to a study in Conservation and Society, is what really got the attractions off the ground.

From what I can see there are now seventeen Butterfly Houses in the UK.

Nowadays, butterfly houses appear worldwide—from Missouri to Austria and even the Singapore airport—often attached to museums and botanical gardens. Some make their home old buildings; the Schmetterlinghaus in Vienna is part of a 200-year-old group of structures and gardens. While larger, newer facilities has space for even more butterflies; Stockholm’s Fjarilshuset, for instance, holds more than 700 kinds of butterflies in a 3,000-square-foot greenhouse.

Caligo Eurilochus (the owl butterfly from above)

Much to my surprise there are people who suffer from a fear of butterflies. Nicole Kidman isn’t scared of snakes. The Oscar-winning actress is one who has a deep fear of butterflies and moths, a condition known as lepidopterophobia.

She has said that as a child growing up in Australia, she would go to great spans to avoid them. ‘Sometimes when I would come home from school, the biggest butterfly or moth you’d ever seen would be just sitting on our front gate.’ She would climb over the fence, crawl around to the side of the house – anything to avoid having to go through the front gate.

There doesn’t seem to be one separate list of Butterfly Houses in the UK. You can find a list embedded in wiki under Butterfly Houses.

Incidentally, I do think a better name for butterflies is flutterbies.

Butterfly House, Lancaster

On the balcony it was even hotter,
sweat trickling
to the rhythm of piped water
oozing into humid air,
down and around
Oleander and Amorylis,
the Morpho Peleides
and the school trip
watching motionless
as vivid tattoos
on the arm of the Keeper
rose and fell
telling the six month story
of her butterflies,
slowly drawing them in,
an artist,
leaving the Owl till last,
Caligo Eurilochus,
the size of a book.
Seven year olds hid behind hats
while behind the Citrus Tree
I edged down the spiral staircase
absurdly pleased at the show
but also wanting a few minutes alone
in this nave of green stained glass
and its spectral flock.

Until I saw the terrapins,
two grey creatures
shuffling down a channel.
Forty years of crawling
up a red brick channel.

I sat on a bench after the children left,
not moving much, thought flitting.
Rock stars, Keats, Dylan,
Einstein, time, age,
too quick to settle
on the wings of a notebook,
so I left it closed,
a pupae hanging down,
ready to emerge in the café outside.

First published in ‘away’, circa 2010

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Wormholes

So I’m a bit late for a date, about 20,000 years too late. No problem. Just slip into your local wormhole and you can be there in seconds. Obviously sheer fiction, both for the wormhole and the date.

The ability to ever actually use wormholes as interstellar superhighways seems extremely remote. Yet physics does not close the door completely on the existence of these bridges through space-time says Adam Hadhazy in an article in Live Science published February 22, 2012. He quotes Stephen Hsu, a professor of theoretical physics at the University of Oregon. ‘The whole thing is very hypothetical at this point. No one thinks we’re going to find a wormhole anytime soon’. But what is a wormhole?

theoretical wormhole

Put simply it is a tube through the four dimensions of space-time, potentially connecting two regions vast distances apart. Think of two dots on a sheet of paper that is then folded so the dots overlap. That overlap is your wormhole, and it could theoretically allow for the transfer of matter from dot A to dot B instantaneously, instead of traveling the normal, long way across the sheet.

The science of wormholes dates back to 1916 and followed on from the consequences of Einstein’s theory of gravity, general relativity when Ludwig Flamm at the University of Vienna realised that the equations behind a black hole have an equal but opposite solution, a ‘white hole’, which cannot be entered from the outside, although things can escape from them. Flamm noticed that the two solutions could be mathematically connected by space-time conduit, and that the black hole entrance and white hole exit could be in different parts of the same universe, even different universes.

Ludwig Flamm

Einstein himself explored these ideas further in 1935, along with the physicist Nathan Rosen, and the two achieved a solution known as an Einstein-Rosen bridge which could pave the way to the possibility of moving colossal distances. However, research by Nobel Prize winner Sir Roger Penrose shows that the boundary beyond which gravity’s inexorable pull allows nothing, not even light, to escape.

So, wormholes have been bandied about by scientists for over a century now. They have also been bandied about by novelists and film makers. Perhaps the oldest reference to these cosmic portals can be found in The Meteor Girl, a 1931 book by the American science fiction writer Jack Williamson.

They also figure in a wide range of science fiction films, from Interstellar and the Marvel cinematic universe to various TV series, such as Babylon 5, Farscape, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and the longest running sci-fi series of all, Doctor Who and to mark the 25th anniversary of Stargate SG-1, the National Science Museum Science Director Roger Highfield talked to physicist Alexey Milekhin and Stargate advisor, Mika McKinnon.

Mika McKinnon said ‘You get more interesting stories when you have rules that you have to work within – it’s not fun if you can always just magic your way out of a situation and there’s no tension. We were incredibly consistent, not only using real wormhole science but a specific type. Every time we had a new episode, I would go and check if there were any new relevant physics papers. I had about 700 papers by the time we finished.’

Going back to my date there is also the slight problem that time goes more slowly for the traveller in the wormhole so I will have aged mere seconds whilst she would have been 20,000 years older and I’m not sure if the flowers would have lasted.

As for the poem then the following seems so appropriate for these times. It is by Michael Swann, and won the Poetry Society’s Members' Poems Competition in 2008.

A Sort of Ark

I’ve had enough of it,
with everything here
being evicted, poisoned,
cut down,
trapped, netted,
wiped out.
We’re off,
the lot of us,
through a wormhole
to somewhere better.

Well,
not strictly
a wormhole –
I’ve nothing against worms,
some of my best friends are worms,
but you can’t get a whale
through a wormhole.

And the great whales are coming,
believe me,
along with the Siberian tiger,
the red squirrel
the white rhino,
a moth
that no-one has ever heard of,
a marsupial antelope,
a very ugly kind of parrot,
that wonderful tree with buttresses
from Tasmania,
and all the others.
Before it’s too late.

All of us,
scooting off through the whalehole
next Tuesday,

Will you come?

                               Michael Swann

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Giving Up

Last week I was browsing through the shelves of the Library when my eyes alighted on an Agatha Christie that I’d never heard of, never mind read. I was so excited.

That night I left aside the book I had been reading and started on 'The Big 4'. I lasted two chapters before realising that it was not very good, not a Christie type at all. I looked it up and found that it was written in 1927 and described by Christie in 1942 as "that rotten book". I gave up on it.

In the UK alone it’s reckoned there are 200,000 books published every year. It would be impossible to read all of them, so everyone must have a filter that works for them be it genre, recommendation, prize winners, fiction or non-fiction etc.

I’m guessing that most people who read these Dead Good Blogs have a background of reading and from an early age, in my case from 'The Famous Five’ to this year’s ‘Orbital’ that I loved. This builds up experience and a feel for what I consider will be a good read and so given that and the point about the number of books being published, I feel justified in giving up on books that don’t feel right, from sometimes the first sentence. Not everyone agrees with that and sees it as a sort of moral duty to finish all books they start.

As the topic is Giving Up, it seems appropriate to follow on from the above and give some examples of what books I gave given up on. Before I do that I would like to air a bugbear of mine. I don’t even start books with a Prologue. There, I’ve said it, so on with the fiction books in some sort of my own chronological order.

One of the first such books is Proust’s ‘In Search of Lost Time’. I vaguely remember getting through some of the first volume but ground to a halt in total boredom. Then, of course, I needed to be seen with a copy of James Joyce’s ‘Ulysses’ casually resting on the table in that sort of cafe. I did slightly better with Anthony Powell’s ‘A Dance to the Music of Time’ and got through the first two volumes before realising I wasn’t that bothered.

Another sort of book that disappointed is the follow on novel from books that have a special place in my heart. Top of that list would be A. S. Byatt’s ‘The Children’s Book’ which although not the immediate book after ‘Possession’ was the first I saw after reading that totally wonderful novel which had/has everything I want in a story and is in my all time top 10 of books whereas ‘The Children’s Book’ I thought was going to be too long, dull and pretentious to get beyond the first few chapters.

A more recent book in a similar vein of being disappointed to the point of giving up on it, which is not the same as not really enjoying it, is the fifth book in Kate Atkinson’s series featuring Jackson Brodie. The first four are quite brilliant and the sixth is fine but ‘Big Sky’ has a start which is baffling and irritating and more than enough for me.

Moving on to non-fiction and I put my hand up to say that I have never been able to finish Stephen Hawking’s ‘A Brief History of Time’. And heaven know I’ve tried enough times and I’ll probably have another go.

Another author who also writes about physics and I really admire is Carlo Rovelli whose ‘Seven Brief Lessons on Physics’ was published in 2014 and has sold well over a million copies. I haven’t actually given up on reading this book as he is such an entertaining writer, more that the book has given up on me. Because he is so good in explaining the Lessons I think I have understood them until later I realise I haven’t and start again.

I’m going to stop there with those few examples as I have just realised that there are many more areas of Bookland that I could cover, such as Travel, History, Biographies etc that I could be here all week.

So onto the poem. I have a sort of Given Up file of poems and this is in it. It is based on Larkin's poem which in itself is a Giving Up sort of poem and so is this:

Is this the Year
(along the lines of Philip Larkin)

What have they done your Mom and Dad
They didn’t mean to but they did
They’ve filled your head with what they had
And what they got for just a quid.

But what they’ve got’s about to turn
And what you’ll get’s a tipping year
You know from Gore you know from Stern
Yet still you screw the atmosphere.

The child is parent to your age
Your parent is the child you’ll stay
So stuff the rest and take your wage
Your kids will hate you anyway.

Terry Q.

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Laughter

Alvy: You add fake laughter with a machine? Do you have any idea how immoral that is?
Max: We tape in front of a studio audience.
Alvy: But nobody laughs because the jokes aren't funny.
Max: Yes, that's why this machine is dynamite.

Alvy watches the editor add laughter, chuckles and applause to awful jokes under Max’s direction

Alvy: (to Editor) Do you have booing on that?

Alvy and Max, scene from Annie Hall

That was Woody Allen as Alvy and Tony Roberts as Max from the film Annie Hall and sums up the split between the studios and actors such as David Niven who said in a 1955 interview, “The laugh track is the single greatest affront to public intelligence I know of, and it will never be foisted on any audience of a show I have some say about”.

There were some radio shows in the 30s and 40s that used canned laughter but not many, for instance, when Bing Crosby began pre-recording his show – which allowed his engineers to add or subtract the laughs in post-production.

And then came Charley Douglass who didn’t like the laughter he was hearing. The sound engineer, who was working at CBS in the early days of television, hated that the studio audiences on the US TV channel’s shows laughed at the wrong moments, didn’t laugh at the right moments, or laughed too loudly or for too long and began amping up or tamping down laughter recordings according to the effect he wanted, rather than relying on audiences’ natural reactions. 

Charley Douglass

He soon made a machine full of taped laugh tracks (according to historians, recorded mainly during dialogue-free sequences in a programme, The Red Skelton Show) that would evolve to become the industry standard after Douglass’s laugh-track debut in 1950 on The Hank McCune Show.

Douglas’s machine, known in the industry as the ‘laff box’ – was tightly secured with padlocks, stood more than two feet tall, and operated like an organ. Douglass used a keyboard similar to that of a typewriter to select the corresponding style, gender and age of the laugh as well as a pedal to time the length of the reaction. Inside the machine was a wide array of recorded chuckles, general laughs and belly laughs.

the Laff Box

Rather than being simple recordings of a laughing audience, Douglass's laughs were carefully generated and mixed, giving some laughs detailed identities such as "the guy who gets the joke early" and "housewife giggles" and "the one who didn't get the joke but is laughing anyway" all blended and layered to create the illusion of a real audience responding to the show in question. A man's deep laugh would be switched for a new woman's laugh, or a high-pitched woman's giggle would be replaced with a man's snicker.

In the UK all of the BBC’s comedies, such as Are You Being Served? had laugh tracks. But in the 1980s, the laugh track’s hold on UK comedies began to falter, following The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy’s abandonment of the device. The political satire show Spitting Image filmed its first episode with a studio audience at the insistence of broadcaster ITV, then ditched it too.

Spitting Image

So canned laughter is pretty well defunct now and thank heavens for that.

As for laughter in terms of poetry there are many poets that can make me smile but very few who can make me laugh, and especially, make me laugh every time I read the poem. Off the top of my head I’d say Dorothy Parker and Billy Collins as examples.

This is one I wrote years ago but given that it hopes to raise a laugh and relates to the current season so I can only use it once a year here it is:

Allergy (Written in a Country Churchyard)

The pollen tells the tale of parting day
The flowing nose winds slowly to a sneeze
The tissue upward prods its weary way
And leaves are worlds of darkness in a wheeze.

First published in Purple Patch 2004ish

Terry Q.

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My Bedside Table

I’ve never thought about my bedside table before. It’s a hideous shade of orange and I’ve no idea how I acquired the thing but it was years ago. There is nothing inside the cupboard and only the instructions for the alarm in the shelf bit. The alarm is on the top.

So my first thought was that it’s not a table although, apparently, the bedside table is practically synonymous with a nightstand, a multi-purpose mini-cabinet, as opposed to just a surface. The history of nightstands go back to the medieval era in Europe. Known as a commode, the earliest forms were not small tables but compact cabinets with doors and storage space. These original commodes were used to house chamber pots or washbasins, essential items in an era before indoor plumbing.

an 18th century bedside table

Because chamber pots carried certain odours with them, the finer elements of society needed some way to store them. Furniture designers at the time devised the commode as a small side table to place the chamber pot in at night. The original purpose of the nightstand, then, was purely functional. So that cupboard in my bedside table is where the chamber pot would have stood.

Even before the chamber pot became obsolete, the design of the commode had begun to change. The 18th and 19th century upper classes, from France to the United Kingdom to the United States, ordered pieces that furthered disguised the nightstand’s purpose with elegant forms and beautiful features.

The 20th century marked a period of development in design. The advent of electricity changed the function of bedside tables once more, with spaces designed to accommodate lamps and, later, alarm clocks. The Art Deco movement of the 1920s and 1930s led geometric forms and exotic materials defining the designs of the era. Further developments in the 1940s onwards have led to the position now where they serve as a spot for books, lamps, alarm clocks and, surprisingly to me, house charging docks for digital devices.

a pair of 1920s Art Deco bedside tables

I was going to expand a bit on the above but I came across the following by Jenny Smith, the senior editor of Povison:

‘Incorporating Feng Shui principles into your bedroom can significantly impact your overall well-being, and the bed table plays a crucial role in this ancient practice. According to Feng Shui, the nightstand, commonly known as a bed table, should be positioned on either side of the bed for balance and harmony. Ensure both nightstands are of equal size and height to promote equality and create a sense of unity in your sleep space.

The items you place on your nightstand can influence the Feng Shui of your bedroom. Avoid electronic devices, especially near your head, as they can disrupt the natural energy flow and potentially interfere with your sleep. Sharp objects, such as scissors or knives, are discouraged due to their association with cutting energy. Instead, opt for soothing items like a book, a small potted plant, or calming crystals to enhance positive energy and promote a serene atmosphere.

Feng Shui places emphasis on balance and symmetry, extending to the height of your nightstand. Ideally, the nightstand should be level with the height of your mattress. This creates a harmonious visual line, promoting a sense of equilibrium in the bedroom.

a Feng Shui nightstand

Understanding what constitutes bad Feng Shui in the bedroom is vital for cultivating a harmonious and restful environment. Avoid placing the bed in direct alignment with the bedroom door, as it is believed to result in disturbed sleep and energy imbalance. Additionally, steer clear of clutter under the bed, as it can disrupt the energy flow and create stagnation. Mirrors facing the bed are also discouraged, as they are thought to bounce energy and impact the quality of your sleep.’

Make of that what you will.

I’ve only got one poem that mentions a bedside table:

4 am
sheets
cold tea
on a bedside table
silence

Terry Quinn

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But

The first thought that popped into my head when I saw this week’s topic ‘But’ was ‘Not for Me’. I’ve always had a soft spot for the songs from what is termed The Great American Songbook, which is not a physical book but songs written by professional songwriters for Broadway shows and Hollywood musicals between roughly 1920 to 1950.

'But Not for Me' was written by George and Ira Gershwin and was one of several hit songs to come from the score of the 1930 original Broadway musical Girl Crazy. The show featured Ginger Rogers in her first leading role, but the limelight was apparently stolen by Ethel Merman in her Broadway debut. Girl Crazy is notable for having produced the most hit songs by the Gershwins in one Broadway show. These include:

Embraceable You
I Got Rhythm
Bidin’ my Time

Also of note is the opening night pit orchestra which included Benny Goodman, Gene Krupa, Glenn Miller and Jimmy Dorsey. It was conducted on the opening night by George Gershwin himself.

George Gershwin conducting 

I’ll not go over the story of the musical as it’s barmy but it basically follows a spoiled rich boy Danny Churchill sent to manage his family's ranch where he turns the place into a dude ranch, importing showgirls from Broadway and hiring Kate Forthergill (Merman's role) as entertainer. It’s a success and Danny falls in love with the local postmistress, Molly Gray (Rogers' role). Three subsequent film adaptations adjusted the plot. The most notable, Girl Crazy (1943 film), starred Mickey Rooney and Judy Garland.

Note: I Have No Idea What The Following Means.

This is from a website by Jed Scott Music where he analyses music. This is his interpretation of ‘But Not for Me’

Form: ABAB’

Standard Key: E-flat Major.

It’s a gem of a song, and a welcome change from the AABA song form – in this case still 32-bars, but ABAB’. The second B section has a brilliant compositional moment where the melody extends – in the first B it leaps upwards to the tonic, but in the second it leaps a step higher, before climbing back down to the low tonic over the next four measures. Unexpected, beautiful, and typical of Gershwin’s clever compositional approach.

His definitive version is by Chet Baker (1956, from Chet Baker Sings)

Chet Baker sings

Also recommended are:

Ella Fitzgerald (1950, from Ella Sings Gershwin) this captures Ella at her least virtuosic and most intimate.
Billie Holiday (1958, from All Or Nothing At All) swinging version with great line-up of musicians.
Ella Fitzgerald (1959, from Ella Sings The Gershwin Songbook) This later version won the 1960 Grammy for Best Vocal Performance.
Sarah Vaughan (1958, from Lullaby of Birdland) here with beautiful orchestral accompaniment including a lovely section with harp and flutes.
Elaine Stritch (2002, from Elaine Stritch at Liberty) Stritch’s voice would never be described as beautiful, but I’m not sure anyone has gotten more of the drama out of this song.

And here is Chet Baker singing: But Not for Me

But Not for Me
(Music by George Gershwin, lyrics by Ira Gershwin)

They're writing songs of love, but not for me,
A lucky star's above, but not for me,
With love to lead the way,
I found more clouds of grey,
Than any Russian play could guarantee.

I was a fool to fall, and get that way,
Hi ho! Alas! And also Lack a day!
Although I can't dismiss,
The memory of her kiss,
I guess she's not for me.

It all began so well, but what an end,
This is the time a fella needs a friend,
When every happy plot,
Ends in a marriage knot,
And there's no knot for me.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Palm

I’m fairly sure that years ago when my friend A and her nursing colleagues had finished a long series of night shifts at a hospital in London they would celebrate by going to the Ritz Hotel for their breakfast. I’ve just had a look at the current prices for the Ritz breakfast and gave a slight gasp.

But that was not in the Palm Court restaurant for Afternoon Tea. That is in a different league. This is how it’s described:

This most charming English Afternoon Tea in Mayfair is served in the spectacular surroundings of The Palm Court. The Ritz London is the only hotel in the UK with a certified Tea Master, Giandomenico Scanu, who travels around the world to various tea plantations to source our excellent teas. Why not try our exclusive Ritz Royal Blend Tea? This is only available at The Ritz.

Music to match the occasion
The elegant ambience is complemented by a musical ensemble from our resident pianist – the final ingredient to ensure your Afternoon Tea at The Ritz is, quite simply, unforgettable.

The Ritz London has a dress code in different areas of the hotel as follows: Gentlemen are required to wear a jacket and tie (jeans and sportswear are not permitted for either ladies or gentlemen) for Afternoon Tea in The Palm Court. Kindly note that our Afternoon Tea dress code does not apply to children under 16.

Enjoy the perfect ending to your luxury Afternoon Tea experience, savouring our signature Ritz tableside service, which includes two generous slices of cake from the guéridon trolley. Our skilled Pastry Chefs change the cakes on the menu to perfectly complement the season’s flavours. Whether you crave an indulgent chocolate treat or a refreshing fruity delight, you can choose your favourite cake and enjoy it to the fullest.

Afternoon Tea prices start from £81 for adults and £59 for children.

So what is the Palm Court?

The Ritz's most widely known facility is the Palm Court, an opulently decorated cream-coloured Louis XVI setting. It is decorated with lavish furnishings, including gilded Louis XVI armchairs with oval backs, which the architects had designed based on research into French neo-classical furniture design of the 1760s and 1770s, which were made by Waring and Gillow. The room, with its, ‘panelled mirrors of bevelled glass in gilt bronze frames’ and ‘high coving ornamented with gilded trellis-work’, according to Montgomery-Massingberd and Watkin ‘epitomizes the elegantly frivolous comfort of Edwardian high life’.

There were originally large windows at either end of the Court, then known as the Winter Garden, and were replaced with twenty panels of mirrors after 1972. The fountain of the court, known as ‘La Source’, is made of Echaillon marble and is extravagantly sculpted. A nymph, gold in colour, is featured in a lair. A wrought-iron and glass roof of the Palm Court contains two gilded wrought-iron lanterns, and the ceiling contains lion skin motifs. The room is done in soft apricot and has remained so since 1906. César Ritz chose the colour to flatter the complexions of women after weeks of experimentation with various hues.

So that’s putting on the Ritz. Not my normal sort of place but just once I’d like to partake of its Palm Court luxury.

And then there is this.

Lincoln Tea Shop

“Bring the Earl Grey Tea Bag,
I want to put it in myself.”
Well, you wouldn’t get that
at the Palm Court Ritz
and definitely not in Preston, Lancs.

So I glanced,
easily distracted
from lines of Magna Carta
I couldn’t understand.

He wasn’t hard to find,
a pompous git in Barbours,
older than his voice,
pointing at a menu,
trying to impress
a woman in a green dress,
and much to my surprise,
succeeding.

Perhaps it’s the place,
a High church and hollow castle,
the eyes looking down
a Roman nose of a road,
its smile silted
behind trinkets of shops,
anxious to please,
knowing it’s better,
proving it
when the waitress
showed me
the workings
of a modern teapot.

First published in Poetic Hours, August 2005.

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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