A Veteran Cactus

Once again my Christmas Cactus is living up its name, covered in bright pink flowers. I've had it for so long that I can'tremeber how I came by it. I think I may have inherited it from mother, in which case I've had it for nearly thirty years.

An Unexpected Surprise

The phrase in the title was voiced by a television announcer recently. I find it entertaining to invent circumstances in which vacuous forms of words might have some meaning. In this case we need to start from 'expected surprise'. People, especially children on the eve of their birthdays, often expect to receive a present, the precise nature of which they do not know in advance. One of my friends was quite surprised to receive a belly button brush as a birthday present. What surprised him was not the receipt of a present, but the nature of the present. The donor of the present was known to act strangely, so a surprise of some sort was not unexpected, though the belly button brush was.

Thus an unexpected surprise would be like being given a belly button brush when it is not one's birthday. I can't remember what event inspired the televison person into paradox, but I'm sure I'd have remembered had it involved a belly button brush.

Very Late Tomatoes

A while ago I thought I'd eaten the last of this year's homegrown tomatoes, but today I noticed that a couple of fruit I'd kept just in case they might confound my pessimism by ripening had actually ripened, so I ate them, just six days before Christmas day!!

My Neglected Cheque Book

I recently wrote a cheque to be enclosed in a Christmas card, and noticed that the last time I wrote a check it was to the same person, for enclosure in last year's Christmas card. At one time I got through a checque book in a few months. Now it seems likely that the present book will last for the rest of my life!

Persistent Blooms

Last month I boasted about the unseasoable profusion of flowers in the garden. After a fairly sharp frost last night there are fewer flowers now, but still far more than usual at this tine of year. The fuchsia still retains all its leaves and most of its flowers, and the campnula and Mexican daisy seem unaffected. A cyclamen is just coming into flower and the winter jasmine is splendid.

Home Grown Tomatoes

I'm still eating tomatoes grown by myself in the garden, and haven't needed to buy any tomatoes since early August. The plants expired a while ago but I've been eating fruit that I gathered unripe before disposing of the plants. I think this may be the first time my crop has lasted into December, though very few fruit are left now.

Revive Convalesent Homes

In the 1950's one of my aunts had an operation. When she no longer needed full medical attention she moved to a convalescent home where patients completed their recovery supervised by nurses. When I hear about hospial beds occupied by patients who no longer need hospital care but have nowhere else to go I wonder why convalescent homes are not revived.

A Cook's Nostalgia

Among the minor irritants of modern life is the occasional need to free joints of meat from the snare of elasticated string

In bygone days joints were secured by metal skewers. It was very easy to pull them out and, once removed, they could be retained, making handy tools that could be poked into otherwise inaccessible places. For a while the skewers were replaced by ordinary string, less easily removed than a skewer but still fairly manageable, but today's elasticated string poses greater challenges. It resists the carving knife, and when attacked with scissors de-elasticates itself, showering the neighbourhood with gravy droplets.

I mourn the passing of metal skewers!

A Redundant Institution.

Today I received four magazines, all delivered by Royal Mail. Three of them should have arrived at least three days ago. Most of the material that used to be sent by post can now be sent by email. Magazines can often be read over the Internet, and several companies will deliver any material objects that resist digitisation.

Perhaps we no longer need a post office

Frustrated by Almost Impenetrable Wrappings.

Many goods are sold, either completely encased in plastic, or in some combination of cardboard and plastic. In either case I need scissors to get at the goods, and even so equipped I ofen have quite a struggle.

In my fury I often wish that company directors were required to give public demonstrations of their recommended technique for penetrating those frustrating wrappings.

Pears Rehabiitated

Pears are very frustrating fruit, changing from inedible hardness to repulsive mushiness so quickly that one usually misses the intermediate state of delicious edibility. Sainsbury's offers 'ripe and ready' pears nestling coyly in protective wrapping. I had long been suspicious of those, but one day gave in to temptation and was very pleasantly surprised. I don't know what magic they invoke but the recommended pears are indeed delicious, and remain in that state for several days. The simple pleasure of eating a ripe pear has been restored to me.

A Floriferous November

Even in this, the last week of November, there is still an abundance of flowers in the garden. As well as the Winter Jasmine which usually flowers around this time of year, Fuchsias and Mexican daisies are covered in flowers, and blue campanulas and zonal pelargoniums still provide a modest display.

An Honest Interest Rate

Discussion of interest rates almost always concerns the supposed impact on a variety of economic factors, but I've never heard such a discussion mention the importance of repaying our debts.

When prices are rising, as they usually are, the value of money is falling, so to repay a debt requires the payment of more money than was originally borrowed. Interest charged for a loan should include some payment for the convenience of having the loan. Full compensation to the lender would also require something to compensate for the income tax often charged on interest. There is therefore a case for interest rates being substantially higher than the rate of inflation. In practice they are almost always considerably lower.

Silent Friends

There are some old friends I haven't heard from for several years. I'm not sure how to react. They may of course be dead. On the other hand they may just be disinclined to keep in touch. In case that is so I'm reluctant to bother them with frequent messages, as that would be rather like stalking.

I've decided to continue to send my annual letter at the end of the year, but not to send any other communication unless I hear from them first. I recommend that policy to others.

Another Non-word from the BBC

On tonight's news a reporter said that a new King of the Zulus had been 'coronated'. In case any readers of this blog are not native speakers of English I point out that the relevant verb is to crown,so the King was crowned. The process of crowning is called a coronation

Busy

I have been neglecting my web site for the last couple of years, but am now trying to bring it up to date. So far there has been little change to the pages on the site, though I have corrected a misdirection that sent people to an out of date version of the Index page However several pages are being extensively revised off line, so there should be more to see in a few weeks time. Meanwhile the principal symptom of my activity may be less activity in this blog. For that I apologise

Conflicting Freedoms

We usually commend both freedom of thought and freedom of speech, without realising they often conflict.

Thought is usually most effectively conducted in silence. Speech, on the other hand cannot be silent and commands the attention of anyone in hearing range, whether they are interested or not. Those speaking to someone else usually expect the one addressed to respond with a comment on the same subject, without considering the possibility that that individual might at the time have been thinking about something quite different and prefer that the train of thought be allowed to proceed without interruption.

When demonstrators repeatedly shout slogans of just a few words that seems to me a sort of assault on the minds of anyone else in hearing, makibg it very hard for anyone nearby to follow any significant train of thought.

Jabbed yet again

This time it was for flue. I'm not quite sure when I started having flue jabs, but suspect it may have been in 2003. Once I started I haven't missed a year, suggesting that the last jab may have been my 20th. When the total gets to 25 it will be a bit like a silver wedding. Shall I have a party?

In Praise of Clothes

As we debate the cost of fuel and fear death by hypothermia, I recall my youth when people usually had just one room heated by a coal fire. In the Winter we lived almost exclusively in one room, the back room dowstairs, chosen because the fire there also heated the hot water tank. It contained a dining table and chairs, and a couple of easy chairs for the parents. I used the dining room table for my homework and often lay on the floor when reading. The front room contained a settee and two matching arm chairs. That room was used mainly in the Summer though on special occasions when we were entertainingg a second fire would be lit there.

We survived because we wore lots of clothes. Indoors I used to wear a vest, a shirt and a jacket. In cold weather I also wore a pullover. Nowadays many people wear just a a short sleeved shirt or t-shirt on their upper halves.

At school the classroom was heated by a coke stove with a leaky chimney so there was always a sulphurous odour in the room. In cold weather we were sometimes told to wear our overcoats in the classroom. I remember overhearing a conversation between two members of staff. Apparently the legal minimum temperature for a classroom was 60 degrees Fahrenweit - about 15 C - but on the day in question it was only 43 F - about 6 C - that was one of the days we wore our overcoats!!

Misleading Plurals and Neuter Pronouns

It has become customary to use 'they', 'them', and 'their' to refer to singular subjects when one is relucatnat or unable to refer the subject to a particular gender. That irritates me. Having graduated in Logic and taught Mathematics, I consider the distinction between singular and plural extremely important - much more important that the distinction between male, female and non-binary.

We need neuter pronouns. We already have 'it' and 'its' but they are usually assumed to refer to inanimate subjects. I suggest 'e' 'em' and 'es' for the naminative, accusative, and genetive of the neuter third persoanl pronoun. The personal pronouns can now be declined as:

he him his

she her hers

e em es

they them their

Quintuply Jabbed

Yesterday I had my fifth covid vaccination. I had think carefully before committing myself to 'fifth', and originally posted a message claiming only to have been jabbed four times. Then I spotted a blog I posted in May of this year recording a fourth blog then. I defintely had three jabs last year, then there's the jab of May this year and the one yesterday and 3+1+1 = 5.

Why Do People Kill Flowers?

I enjoy seeing flowers on plants in the garden, or even on plants indoors in pots, but it depresses me when people gather flowers. Sometimes people kill flowers and take the corpses with them when going out for a meal, but the worst massacres are inspired by funerals.

It was a small consolation to learn that flowers killed in honour of the late Queen will be composted and the compost used to nourish plants in parks, but if the object was to make compost people could have donated grass cuttings, the products of dead headings and weedings, and vegetable peelings from the kitchen instead of slaughtering very pretty plants.

Another Reminder of my Antiquity.

As a young man I took it for granted that those in authority nwould be older then me. When John Major was appointed as Prime minister in 1990 I realised that he was the first British Prime Minister younger than me. I believe that in David Cameron's coalition Government of 2010, every minister was younger than me, but until this week there was still one authority figure I couold look up to. At least I was youger then the Queen. After her death I can't think of anyone important who is not younger then me.

Multi-headed Sharks

Each morning I scan listings of television programmes to select escapist material to be saved for later watching. I recently noticed something about a double headed shark attack. A few days later there was a promise of a three headed shark attack, then a five headed shark.

2, 3, 5 are successive fibonacci numbers so I braced myself for an 8 headed shark, followed by a 13 headed shark. Would we ever get to the 1597 headed shark, or perhaps even the infinitely headed shark?. Alas, no. The progresion seems to have stopped at a six headed shark and six is not a fibonacci number. However let us not lose hope. Six is a perfect number. The next two perfect numbers are 28 and 496 so we may still hope for a 496 headed shark. Would it have 496 digestive tracts with outlets to match?

Abolish the Water Closet

After heavy rain water mixed with sewage has been discharged into rivers and into the sea. Subsequent discussion has ignored the part played by the water closet. Sewage is a mixture of human bye-products with a large quantity of water. The odious mixture is made in the water closet. Without those monstrous engines of pollution and disease there would be no sewage.

At one time human effluvia were valuable commodities. The solid and semi-solid material was used as fertiliser. People collected it and sold it to functionaries called 'night soil collectors' who paid for it and re-sold it to grateful farmers. The nitrogenous liquid we produce was used in the tanning business.

Water closets should be replaced by some device to convert our products into dry, sterile briquettes we could sell to the successors of the night soil collectors.

A Depleted River

When I went shopping yesterday I looked at the River Welland, expecting to observe the effect of the quite heavy rain that fell the previous night. I had to look quite hard to see any water at all. The trickle of water in the bottom of the channel was mainly concealed by the dense vegetation that has grown up during the drought.

Home Produce in season

I've just started to harvest home grown tomatoes and lettuce, always very satisfying

Cooling Down

Feeling uncomfortably hot I called on the latent heat of evaporation of water. I took off my shirt and wet my skin with a flannel soaked in cold water. I did not dry myself and did not replace my shirt, just letting the water evaporate. I cooled down in a few seconds. Once body heat had dried me, I applied the flannel again.

Why didn't the media recommend this simple treatment?

The Incautious Multitude

I still wear a face mask when shopping but on recent shopping expeditions I noticed that very few others have worn them. During the lockdown I never had a cold and realised that promiscuous gregariousness spreads many other diseases as well as covid19. A permanent lockdown would be impractical but wearing a face mask in crowded places is no burden. Do some people want to spread infection?

Welcome Clouds

In my childhood the occasional very hot day was welcomed with joy - at least joy on the part of my parents; I had some revervations. The parents revelled in the large numbers hot weather scored on the Fahrenheit scale and welcomed the opportunity to acquire sunburn - in those days considered a badge of honour proving that one had survived a challenging encounter with the elements. With no refrigerator milk went sour and butter melted, but we bore those afflictions with fortitude. Father converted the sour milk into cheese by straining it through one of his socks which he suspended from the tap over the kitchen sink.

Today I was very pleased that the day started cloudy, and went shopping earlier than usual to avoid the heat. The television shows maps coloured according to the expected levels of high temperatures, ranging from the merely worrying to a possible emergency. We no longer boast about sunburn!

Slowing Down

When I started to backup files on my primary PC I noticed that this was my first backup since January. I'm becoming very slack; yet another sign of my antiquitiy!

Wittgenstein's Tractatus

I bought a copy of Wittgemnstein's Tractatus Logico Philosophicus more than 60 years ago. From time to time I have dipped into it, puzzling over a few remarks here and there, but I'd never read the complete work until now. A few days ago I started from the beginning and, reading a few pages each day, I finished yesterday.

As the title suggests the Tractatus is primarily concerned with philosophical logic. In it Wittgenstein affirms that all logical truths are truth functional tautologies, so no apparatus of proof is necessary, since the truth of a tautology is in all cases obvious. That thesis is false as are a number of Wittgenstein's remarks about Mathematics.

Among philosophical works the Tractatus is unusual in containing so many statements which are clearly false.

My edition has the German original and an English translation on opposite pages, and would be useful to an English speaker wishing to learn the vocabulary to discuss philosophical logic in German, or to a German speaker wishing to discuss such matters in English. Someone looking for an introduction to the subject matter would be wise to look elsewhere.

Imperial Measure.

Noticing suggestions that we should in some way rehabilitate Imperial Measure, I tried to see how much I could recall about it. After writing this I shall check, but first I want to see what I can remember.

I remember spending a lot of time at the primary school performing complicated calculations with imperial measures. There were definitely sixteen ounces in a pound, 112 pounds in a hundred weight and 20 hundredweights in a ton. There were also stones and quarters. A stone were a multiple of 7 pounds - I'm strongly inclined to think there were 14 pounds in a stone, but am not quite sure. My memory of the quarter is much vaguer. If it was a quarter of a hundredweight it might have been two stones.

There was also the bushel, but that may have been a measure of volume. There was also more than one ounce I think there were Troy ounces and Avoirdupois ounces - I have an idea that gold may have been weighed in smaller ounces than boiled sweets.

Ounces too were subdivided; there were drams, which may or may not have been the same as drachms, and there were also grains. I think that one of the ounces may have been divided into 480 grains. While I was preparing this reminiscence a comment in an Internet forum reminded me of the scruple, which I believe was intermediate beteen a dram and an ounce. Perhaps a quarter of an ounce, perhaps an eighth.

When I was 10 years old, in my last year at the primary school, we were given horrid calculations on the lines of:

"Multiply 7 hundredweight five stones eleven pounds thirteen ounces by 37". We had no calculators in those days. I doubt if any of us ever had to perform such an absurd calculation later in our lives

Lengths had 12 inches in a foot, three feet in a yard, 22 yards in a chain, 10 chains in a furlong and 8 furlongs in a mile. Areas were usualy square inches. feet or miles. I don't recall encountering square chains or square furlings, but an acre, 4840 square yards = 10 square chains = one tenth of a square furlong = 1/640 of a square mile

Then there were volumes. The obvious measure of volume is the cube of the unit of length. Although cubic feet were used from time to time, the common measures of volume were pints and gallons.

Few, if any, enthusiasts for the Imperial system could convert gallons into cubic inches. The most knowledgable could do not better than stall by asking which of the three gallons one had in mind, replacing one question they couldn't answer by three, all of which still baffled them.

A pint was 20 fluid ounces, and the fluid ounce was the volume of an ounce of pure water, at some temperature and pressure that I never heard specified. Hence:

"A pint of clear water weighs a pound and a quarter"

Five fluid ounces also had a special name which I can't recall, though there was something called a gill. Eight pints made a gallon. We weren't taught any other imperial measures of volume, though I think bushels were rather larger than gallons, and minims rather smaller than fluid ounces.

Finally I recall mention of rod, pole and perch. I have an idea they might all be the same and be units of area, but we weren't taught about them at school, so I shan't be sure until I do my check.

Slowing Down

Yesterday I timed myself walking to the shops. It took me just over 19 minutes to walk from my house to the Market Hall, and I'd have struggled to do it at all had I not had my shopping trolley to lean on. When I was househunting in 2014 I could manage a sligtly longer walk in 9 minutes. Visitors should not expect me to provide a conducted tour of the town!

Quadruply Jabbed

Last Friday I joined the ranks of those who have been innoculated against covid-19 four times.

I'm not sure why anyone should be interested to learn that, but it is a snippett of news I can post here, thus reassuring anyone doubting my continued existence that I am still alive and moderately alert.

Solving the Irish Problem

When I first heard of the proposal to create a customs barrier between Northern Ireland and the rest of Britain it struck me as too ridiculus to contemplate. At that stage the Irish problem could have been dealt with very easily. Tbe British Government could have said that negotiating terms for Britain's departure from the EU was proving unexpectedly difficult, and as the referendum was only advisory so that its recommendations were not binding, the Government had changed its mind and Britain would stay in the EU after all.

However it is now too late for that. The government has agreed to accept the so called 'Protocol'. In a recent election in Northern Ireland, a majority of those elected are prepared to accept the Protocal, so we should all just wince and accept it too.

The remaining problem is the government of Northern Ireland. The province needs a new constitution in which it is not possible for a minority to immobilise the Assembly. I suggest that the speaker be elected by a simple majority of assembly members. The first and second ministers should be elected by assembly members using the single transferable vote. The person first elected would be first minister, and whoever was elected second would be second minister. The first and second ministers would then take it in turns to nominate other ministers. A party boycotting the election would simply not be represented in the Government

Old Favourites

As a child three gastronimic treats I specially enjoyed were fish and chips from the fish and chip shop - the only take away food available in the early to mid 1940s, Heinz baked beans, and Heinz tomato Soup. I still enjoy baked beans on toast occasionally, usually for breakfast these days, but a recent sample of fish and chips was very disappointing. The fish was edible but the chips were soggy and greasy. As I usually avoid fried food it was my first fish and chip meal for about a decade, and it may be my last. A few days ago I tried tomato soup, for the first time for at least 30 years. I found it edible, but not at all exciting. So old favourites now score about 1.5/3

Misconduct in the Mother of Parliaments

A member of Parliament has applied for the Stewardship of the Chiltern Hundreds after admitting to using his mobile phone to view what shocked colleagues have called 'pornography'.

At first I thought he should have been paying attention to the wise words spoken by his fellow members and should not have been viewing anything on his mobile phone, but I now learn that he was whiling away time while waiting to vote in a division. The supposed offence is therefore not failing to attend to parliamentary duties, but viewing material that some fellow MPs find disagreeable. I see no reason to object to his choice of distraction and so no reason for him to leave the Commons.

Those who complained were all women. Were they annoyed that he chose to look at pictures of other women instead of looking at them?

Early Blossom

Blossom on the pear tree was over last week and that on the apple tree has nearly all fallen now. Things were much the same last year, but a decade or so ago the apple blossom would have still been in bud at this time of year. I leave my readers to draw their own conlusions.

Climate Change

There are eleven radiators in my house. During last Winter four of them were not used at all, two were used only occasionally and one was on a low setting. That is yet another sign of a warmer climate.

Ill Timed Sleepiness

In recent months I've tended to be sleepy in the afternoons, often nodding off even while reading. I then resolve to go to bed a little earlier. However as bedtime approaches and I potter about on the computer I become wide awake and don't feel at all ready for bed. I wonder if this perverse misplacing of sleepiness and wakefulness is common.

A Worthy Plant

The Winter Jasmine started to flower in November and there are still some flowers on it, so it has been in flower for nearly five months. I recommend it to anyone desiring a floriferous garden!

Shopping in the Sunshine

Yesterday, for the first time this year, I shopped without an overcoat. I set out wearing a light overcoat and a scarf, but very soon consigned the scarf to my shopping trolley. After a minute or two I shed the overcoat too. One of the delights of having a shopping trolley is that I can remove surplus slothing without having to carry it.

Speeding up the Computer

My desktop computer has been running very slowly when accessing the Internet. Today I replaced the very well known browser I'd been using with Seamonkey, an open source package that combines browser, email, newsgroup access and htmel editor. For web searches it defaults to using Duck Duck Go. Web access is now much faster.

Does my Internal Clock Need Adisting?

For a while now I've tended to be sleepy in the afternoons, nodding off every so often. I then resolve to go to bed earlier, but in the late evening I feel wide awake, and not at all disposed to slumber. Perhaps my internal clock needs adjusting!

More signs of early Spring

In the garden the camellia has come into flower. There's only one flower so far, but it is very early. The daphne we bought a few years ago has flowered for the first time. That too seems rather early though as it's the first time for that plant there's no basis for comparison.

On my last two shopping expeditions I forsook my Winter overcoat for the light raincoat I use in Spring and Summer

Climate change has definitely arrived!!

March Weather in February

Windy changeable weather has come a month early, and not for the first time. I haven't checked but am sure I posted a similar message either last year or the year before. Spring flowers have also come early, and all together instead of in their traditional sequence. Apart from a precocious crocus that half opened last month and was then torn to shreds by the birds, snowdrops, crocusees, early miniature irises and dafoddils are all in bloom at the same time. There won't be much left to flower in April!

Return to Respectability

Today I had my hair cut for the first time since the Summer of 2020. Since then I'd just snipped off a little hair here or there when it seemed to be in the way, but now I've been beautified by the barber's art.

More confusion with units.

This evening's BBC news included a reference to an alleged power consumption of several 'megawatts per hour'. A megawatt is a unit of power and equals a million joules per second. A megawatt per hour would therefore be one million joules per second per hour and would measure a rate of increase in power. If sustained for a week such a rate of increase would produce a final power output of 168 megawatts.

Keeping My Messages out of the Gmail Spamtrap

This is intemnded primarily for readers who have gmail addresses, or who have friends with such addresses

Sometime last year there was a change to gmail's rules for spam, and since then many of the messages I have sent to gmail accounts have been classed as spam. Some alert corresponents have still detected them, but others have not. Once messages have lain in the spam folder for a month gmail deletes them.

I have investigated and have found how to prevent this happening

Open gmail. There are four buttons in the top right corner of the screen. The button that looks like a cogwheel leads to the settings menu.

Press it, then press the button to show all settings.

At the top of the settings menu are a string of options. select "Filters and blocked addresses"

click on 'create a new filter'

Enter the email address you wish to protect

Tick the box to exclude messages from the spam folder, click 'create filter'

All should be well thereafter.

Putting an email address in your contacts list may also work, though I haven't tried that. For extra security you could do that as well.

Optimism?

Today I dried the washing on the washing line in the garden. It may be over-optimistic, but I took that as a sign Spring is on the way.

Virtual Fireworks

A few days ago television news channels showed numerous firework displays watched by enthusiastic crowds, but large as those crowds were, the great majority of spectators must have watched on the television. It should be possible to program virtual displays at least as impressive as the polluting and expensive chemical extravaganzas, and people could adjust those to suit themselves and play them on their computers as often as they wished with no release of sulphur dioxide. I expect simulated crowds of any species required could also be provided.

Winter Flowers

I've counted seven species of plant in flower in the garden, and that doen't count a crocus still in bud, but showing yellow petals. The snowdrops, usually the first of the bulbs to flower here, have not got beyond a profusion of leaves. I shall try not bore my readers with daily updates on that crocus, but don't be surprised if you read more about it in the next week or so. Numerous birds were twittering this morning, so I hope they won't destroy the crocus. They seem to be attracted to yellow ones.