Weaner Wednesdays

I mentioned near the beginning of reference 1 that we are dedicating Wednesdays to weaning ourselves off stuff. Our own little bit to save the planet. So no meat, fish, alcohol (or any other recreational substance, caffeine and drinking chocolate excepted) or credit card. Eggs and dairy under review - and no doubt other things will crop up in the margins. 

Generally speaking, we eat three times a day: light meals early morning and late afternoon, a main meal in the middle of the day. The first of these rarely involves meat or fish, the last of these occasionally involves tinned fish, cured meat of something of that sort. Say sardines or saucisson sec. So easy enough to avoid meat and fish on a Wednesday. But the main meal usually does involve meat or fish, so change is needed.

There have now been three such Wednesdays. On the first occasion, cottage pie made with quorn pretend mince. On the second, cottage pie made with peas and lentils as the active ingredients. On the third, potato pie. A baked dish we have quite often, involving potatoes, onions, cheese and eggs. A relative of the Spanish omelette (aka tortilla).

Looking ahead, restaurants are apt to involve all the forbidden items, so they need to be avoided. Easter always falls on a Sunday, so not a problem. But what about Christmas? Birthdays probably not a problem. Maybe the civil servant's answer - or the priest's answer - would be to atone for one lapsed Wednesday with two nearby, substitute days.

While we are still thinking about eggs and dairy. Maybe we will go for a gradualist approach, leaving milk in tea and coffee until the end, perhaps exempting it altogether. My guess is that BH would find no milk in drinks more tiresome than I would. And then, what's the point of being pedantic about such a small thing?

Or do we take the drill sergeant's view: patrolling the margins is important, it's what keeps the whole edifice in good order. The view taken somewhere in Švejk, where the good soldier is torn off a strip by the sergeant when he turns out on parade with one of the buttons of his tunic not properly buttoned up.

PS 1: on a rather different note, I have just been told about the Marine Corps University Press, never having previously heard of either the university or its press. To be found at reference 4.

PS 2: a little later: I have just remembered that 'weaner' is also the name for a sort of pig, presumably a pig which has just been weaned off its mother, rather than food in general. So rather inappropriate in this context.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/embassy.html.

Reference 2: The Good Soldier Švejk - Jaroslav Hašek - 1921/3.

Reference 3: https://pescetarian.kitchen/christmas-nut-roast-recipe/. The source of the snap above.

Reference 4: https://www.usmcu.edu/MCUPress/.

Reference 5: https://www.usmcu.edu/#/?currentVideo=30622. Apparently for the video of the day, although I have yet to find it. Videos yes, video of the day, no.

Chums

[Baroness Michelle Mone and her husband Douglas Barrowman. An internal HSBC report traces money transferred by PPE Medpro to accounts that benefited the pair © Tim P. Whitby/Getty Images]

This prompted by the report at reference 1. It seems that the Barrowmans, while perhaps not that hot when it comes to making surgical gowns under contract, are very smart movers when it comes to shuffling money around funny little accounts in the Isle of Man. To the point where HSBC felt the need to take a look.

And we used to be so smug and proud about the way that we run our country. Dodgy goings on in the Ukraine or Guatemala maybe, but this was the United Kingdom where we do things properly. Certainly not a kelptocracy, nor even a chumocracy. Certainly not into taking money for making chums into Lords and Ladies with full voting rights. With special mates' rates for the fancy dress that goes with them.

PS: I wondered whether the snap above was taken at some black-tie charity event for the great and the good. All in aid of save the donkey or save the children you know. But then, perhaps not: when you look at a larger version of the snap, the background, such as it is, it very dull. Might even be a church hall. Slumming it. Not so very glitzy at all.

References

Reference 1: HSBC froze accounts linked to Tory peer Michelle Mone during corruption probe Bank flagged ‘discrepancies’ in explanations provided by Mone and husband Douglas Barrowman - Anna Gross, Stephen Morris, Jim Pickard, Financial Times - 2022

Reference 2: https://ppemedpro.com/. Not a website to write home about. Very low key.

Reference 3: https://timwhitbyphotography.photoshelter.com/index. Seemingly, mainly into fancy snaps of people.

A proper programme

Back to the Wigmore a week or so ago for a proper programme, that is to say Haydn (Op.50 No.4) followed by Beethoven (Op.59 No.2). No exotics from the late 19th century. Given to us by the Elias Quartet whom we have heard a fair bit over the years, including a stint at Dorking. See reference 2.

A wet start. Admired the frame house on Ridgeway and wondered when they will get around to rendering the exterior block work. One might have thought one gets a better bond if the blocks are not too dry, in fact like they probably are now.

Found ourselves at the station along with a small herd of lads out with their skateboards, maybe heading for what used to be an important herding ground for same, in the margins of the Festival Hall. Not been past there for a while, so no idea whether it is still important.

Waterloo trains disturbed by engineering works overrunning. But that, as it turned out for us, as a very late running train turned up and took us to Waterloo without stopping, at something closer to InterCity than suburban speed, passing through unusual platforms, all of which meant that we got to London rather earlier than expected.

Lots of men on the lines at Waterloo. Plus a class 66 locomotive, running without wagons, trucks or carriages - locomotives not being an everyday sight in the land of the third rail. But lots of interesting snippets from reference 1. For example, the EWS freight service is actually a US owned operation. The class 66 locomotives, a successful class, were built by General Motors in Ontario before being shipped over here. Whatever happened to the British Rail locomotive building operation?

Admired the fairly low-key Christmas decorations at the top of Regent Street. Low-key they might have been, but I was slightly surprised by the serious looking steel cables used to hold them up, maybe 5mm in diameter, warranting serious looking eye bolts to tie them into the walls of the shops.

Got to All-Bar-One at around 10:45, well before they serve alcohol on a Sunday. In any event quiet and the service was fast. I dare say, in common with many such places, they take more money on food these days than booze: I don't think that we have ever eaten at this particular one, but we did once eat at their Wimbledon branch. Perfectly satisfactory, as I recall.

Rather to our surprise, the Haydn did not work as well for us as we have come to expect. Maybe there was something different about this particular one that we were not used to. But the Beethoven was fine. With the encore being a Gaelic lullaby. Very folksy. Perhaps the very same piece as I had heard just about three years previously and noticed at reference 3.

To Ponti's of reference 4 for lunch yet again. They are clearly in favour with us, and with a lot of other people, as they were busy on this occasion. Same menu yet again: bread basket to start, spicy pizza for him, salad for her. The reliable 'Fiano di Avelino I Favati' to drink, as noticed properly at reference 5.

At one point we had a lady with her granddaughter at the next table, a lady from Oxford. Which provided an opportunity to brush up our own Oxford connections. Principally, BH's father who was born in Oxford - despite his father being in the Navy - and my maternal grandfather who certainly lived in Oxford before he legged it to Canada, a few years before the first world war. I think he did a stint as a chorister at one of the colleges and that his musical skills gave him the entrée in Canada, at a time when people had to make their own entertainment, at least most of the time.

Lunched up, decided that home was the next step, rather than shopping.

A little surprised to find an advertisement for Moorfields Private Hospital, which turns out to be a division of the regular Eye Hospital, to be found at reference 6. The place you get to by following the broad white line painted on the pavement from the nearest tube station, that is to say Old Street. Or perhaps it should be used to get to.

I dare say the management line is that the private operation pulls in some of the money needed to provide a proper service at the public operation. The Tories might say that people should be allowed to buy a better class of service than can reasonably be provided by a universal public service, if that is what they want to spend their money on. And I dare say that most hospitals have private wards these days: the hospital at Epsom certainly does. Not enthusiastic about it, not least because I have no idea of the extent to which the private service is subsidized by the staff training element of the public service, but I don't suppose any of this is going to change any time soon, even if Labour get back in a couple of years' time. They will have more important things to worry about.

And while we are on subsidies, how many of the huge number of highly paid IT security consultants out there, were trained at government expense in places like GCHQ? Maybe this is a reasonable way to build the skills needed to run a modern economy? Given the time of day, all much too complicated.

A bit flashier than the version that I remember from the days of Southwest Trains. Maybe I will get around to tracing notice of same.

A quick stop at the Raynes Park Platform Library, where we picked up a couple of copies of 'The Lady', mainly, I suppose, read by the domestic servants of people who would like to think of themselves as lords and ladies, if only in spirit. The extensive small ads offer an aperçu of the sort of jobs on offer these days. The pay, conditions and perks don't look bad: I suppose the catch is that for a significant proportion of your day you are a servant, you have to be servile. And I imagine a significant proportion of the employers are pretty grim, in one way or another. Civil servant is one thing, domestic servant quite another. In any event, the two magazines have provided entertainment at breakfast.

But maybe it was a bad sample. The snap above doesn't suggest service at all.

PS: a bit later. I find one indicator board on my first search (key=platform+waterloo) of psmv4, at reference 8. Which proves that I first saw the indicator board in its present format just about two years ago. Yet another memory failure. While a second search turned up reference 9, just about five years ago, and a bit closer to the original. 

In doing this, I was expecting a picture of the board, so a fairly crude search followed by a fast eyeball scan down the result was much quicker than trying to be clever with the search key. Except that did not turn up the first notice, at reference 10, which had an unhelpful title and did not carry a picture, but is reachable from reference 9. We get there in the end.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Rail_Class_66.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=elias.

Reference 3: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/10/elias.html.

Reference 4: http://www.pontis.co.uk/.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/d956.html.

Reference 6: https://www.moorfields.nhs.uk/.

Reference 7: https://lady.co.uk/.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/10/tree-show.html.

Reference 9: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/09/spot-difference.html.

Reference 10: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/02/swanage.html.

Drear

Some of the Wellingtonia in the grounds of what used to be the St. Ebba's Hospital on the Epsom end of Hook Road. Previously scored.

Snapped for the cold, drear, wintry ambience, an ambience which has not survived snapping at all well. The first really wintry run around Jubilee Way of the season. Which while cold and drear, was not unpleasant: good to be up and running, out in the open, while one is still reasonably fresh in the first half of the morning. It helps, of course, to be properly dressed. 

But not so properly dressed that I didn't think about the need to get some more serious gloves before it gets really cold. Circulation in the hands not what it used to be.

Piano 64

This piano was captured in the Clore Ballroom opposite the Long Bar at the Festival Hall, a place we stop at from time to time for a winter picnic. A piano which seemed very long in the flesh.

I had a bit of trouble getting the cover off the keyboard and I was afraid that a trusty might interfere, but I was OK. I wonder now whether the trusty would have responded to my line about collecting pianos, very much in the way of a trainspotter. Matter of luck I suppose, with some being more officious than others.

I had thought that I had come across a Bösendorfer piano before, but search of the archive fails to turn one up, with or with the umlaut.

Reading all about what is clearly a very respectable brand at reference 3, I learn that it is now owned by Yamaha. Which made me think that I had come across this before, but search of the archive suggests that what I had come across before was a large Chinese piano manufacturer buying up European manufacturers for marketing purposes. See reference 4. So maybe this really is the first Bösendorfer.

But, at the time of capture, we were much more interested in whether the Clore Ballroom ever had been used for balls, in the pre-war sense of the word, with ball gowns, penguin suits and a band. The story from Bing this morning seems to be that there certainly is dancing there, maybe even 'strictly ballroom', but no ball gowns and penguin suits that I could see. Perhaps they get no nearer the damp of the river than the ballroom of the Dorchester Hotel in Park Lane. Perhaps for some suitably opulent charity flavoured bash.

This last snap, taken from reference 2, might come in handy next time I try to decipher the reflected view of the interior of the Wigmore Steinway you get on the underside of the propped open lid. A trick I have yet to manage. In the hope and expectation that the interiors of the two brands look much the same.

PS: I am reminded that Simenon uses the word officieuse quite often, a word which is related but which has a quite different meaning from our officious. 

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/10/piano-63.html.

Reference 2: https://www.boesendorfer.com/en/. They seem to have got the spelling wrong.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/B%C3%B6sendorfer.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/07/piano-60.html.

Group search key: pianosk.

Sleepy sickness

A hare which started with my re-reading the book at reference 1, after getting on for twenty years, jumping from there to reference 2 and from there to reference 3, this last a paper dating back to 1930. The author then being Professor of Psychiatry and Neurology at the Clinic for Psychiatry and Nervous Diseases in the General Hospital in Vienna. A paper, presumably written in English as the author was good at languages, read before the College of Physicians and Surgeons at Columbia University, New York, on the 3rd December, 1929. A paper arranged in two columns, with no headings or sub-headings, with just one crude diagram, no tables and no references. Not even a number, never mind a statistic in sight. Wouldn’t do these days at all.

The time of the epidemic of encephalitis lethargica, mixed up with the roughly contemporary pandemic of Spanish influenza. An epidemic which perhaps touched a million people and killed half of them. What is now thought the be just the most recent and most serious such outbreak, with now-suspected outbreaks going back to the sixteenth century. A disease which, according to reference 6, remains poorly understood to this day. With the lack of new material being good for potential victims, bad for science. Victims which have previously been noticed here, at reference 5.

The present author being among the first to properly identify and describe the disease, a disease which involved severe disturbances to sleep patterns and which led him to take an interest in finding out from where in the brain sleep was controlled. One result being the present paper.

He starts by surveying various theories accounting for sleep, the regular alternation between waking and sleeping exhibited by all mammals. Even mammals without most if not all of their cerebrums. With natural sleep being easily interrupted, which is not the case, for example, with anaesthetics.

Some theories proposed the more or less mechanical blockage of nerve signals, with one suggesting that the dendrites of neurons were withdrawn during sleep, more or less shutting down their synapses with other neurons and so shutting down neural activity. Sleep was the result of the higher levels of the brain no longer being stimulated. A theory seemingly corroborated by old and new experiments on sensory deprivation, with, as I recall, a common reaction to entry to the deprivation chamber being to fall asleep, and to stay asleep for hours. 

Other theories had a more chemical flavour, perhaps involving a steady increase of substance X in the waking state, an increase which eventually triggered a reaction in the form of sleep which made space for the level of X to come down. We are told of an experiment in which ‘the blood serum of dogs which had overexercised for several days, and were not allowed to sleep, produced prompt sleep when injected into healthy dogs which had had sufficient sleep. That proved that fatigue produces substances in the blood which may provoke sleep’. But as the author points out, such a substance X does not of itself explain how it is that we can fall asleep when we are not tired or the ease with which we can usually be woken up.

And for periodicity, we are reminded of the many systems in our body – one of which being the ovulation cycle of younger women and another being the beating of the heart – which require some kind of a clock. The machinery is there.

But, quibbles aside, the chemical theories looked to be on the right track. The next question was from where was this chemistry being run? With many thinking that it was not localised, that there was not a sleep control centre. Which was where the matter stood when the epidemic of encephalitis lethargica came along in the middle of the first world war.

With the author being the first, or at least one of the first, to recognise that the part of the brain which was being damaged, with one of the symptoms being massive disturbance of sleep patterns, was the upper brain stem. Another symptom was disturbance  of motor activity, disturbances which were rather like those observed in those suffering from Parkinson’s. Plus disturbances of the muscles which controlled the eyes.

One of the disturbances of sleep was its disconnection from motor inhibition. Patients’ arms and legs might be awake when their brains were asleep, and vice-versa.

The author points to other diseases, which affect the same part of the brain and which also affect sleep.

He goes on to suggest that  ‘… this experimental fact suggests that normal cerebral sleep might be considered as an inhibitory action brought about by the center of sleep regulation upon the cerebrum and thalamus…’. A centre which, as it happens, is very near the centres which control the bodily functions which need to be modulated for sleep. Which does not seem so far from Hobson’s position, as set out in reference 1, 70 years later.

A centre which might well respond to excess substance X (above) by firing up some inhibitory neurons, but which might also allow those neurons to be stopped when someone went to wake the subject up. Thus allowing for reversibility in a way that substance X alone does not.

He closes by suggesting that further work to further localise the sleep centre may open the door to more sophisticated treatments for sleep disorders than were available at the time of writing.

More on sensory deprivation

Von Economo mentions the case of a patient of one Adolph von Strümpell - a neurologist active a little over a hundred years ago - who had lost all tactile sensation and who fell asleep when his ears were blocked and he shut his eyes. The best I was able to turn up was reference 12 where we have:

‘… Consider the patient described by Adolph von Strümpell (1853–1925): totally anaesthetic, completely deaf and blind in one eye, he sleeps and is unconscious whenever the one good eye is shut….’.

Which may well not be the same patient, but the force of the example is the same: shut down all sensory input and the subject will sleep. But Von Economo was not satisfied with this. It was not the whole story and he wanted more.

I failed to trace the study on sensory deprivation that I remember reading years ago. But what I remember is an isolation room, with little or no light and little or no sound. There was a bed, on which the occupant was presumed to spend most of his or her time. Bodily needs were dealt with as unobtrusively as possible. The idea was that volunteers stayed in this room for several weeks. Part of the interest was seeing how their sense of time and date behaved over time – with one volunteer not playing the game at all and making a pendulum out of a bent paper clip or something. But one could hardly watch a pendulum for days on end and I forget how that translated into successful time keeping. The bit that is relevant here, is that a good proportion of the volunteers went to sleep shortly after entry and stayed asleep for hours, eventually returning to more normal sleeping patterns. Further support for the idea that when all external stimulation is withdrawn, the subject relaxes to the point of falling asleep.

I do not see a problem with all this; it does not bear on the remainder of Von Economo’s argument.

Then coming at isolation from the body clock point of view, a number of intrepid researchers have lived for months in caves and suchlike where there is no natural light. But body clocks were the subject of this work and I do not recall the sleep angles, if any.

Plenty of work seems to have been done with isolating flotation chambers, where the subject floats in a warm salt bath, presumably a bit like a warm, dark version of floating in the Dead Sea. But spells in these chambers are (necessarily) of much shorter duration, an hour or two, perhaps as long as a day, rather than weeks at a time. Some of this work has been performance art and more of it has been to see whether it helps with addictive behaviours. Sometimes called ‘Restricted Environmental Stimulation Therapy’ or REST. See, for example, references 7 and 8. And there plenty of alternative therapies based on same: they even make it to ‘Midsomer Murders’. But the format does seems to be hours rather than the weeks that I remember.

Most people seem to find these chambers very relaxing – rather than claustrophobic – and it seems to me quite likely – without ever having tried such a thing – that one would go to sleep – but this is not what seems to be happening.

I wonder now whether going into a deprivation chamber with the idea of staying there for a good while, perhaps for weeks, is a different proposition than just going in for an hour or so. Given that it is all very relaxing, you can just yourself go. Plenty of time for other stuff later on, should one feel the urge. For now just go with the flow. 

All in all, while sensory deprivation is a long way from being a sufficient explanation of normal sleeping, there does seem to me to be a connection worth exploring. Maybe I have just failed to find the reports from the explorers.

Aside: Suedfeld points out in reference 8 that while solitary confinement in prisons minimises personal contact, it does not reduce the totality of external stimulation as much as one might at first think. Most prisons, for example, are very noisy places. Suedfeld also points to the bad press that sensory deprivation got in the 1960’s and 1970’s, being thoroughly mixed up with the brainwashing scare on the one hand and the sort of interrogation techniques then being deployed in Northern Ireland on the other. See references 10 and 11. I have not been able to find a free copy of the latter.

Other matters

According to Wikipedia at reference 4, the German neurologist Felix Stern, important between the wars in the world of lethargica, thought, without any proper evidence, that lethargica was in some way related to polio. It now turns out that the former might be caused by something called an enterovirus, which poliomyelitis (aka polio)  certainly is. So there is a connection of sorts. With an enterovirus being one that usually gets in through the guts but which can also live in the lungs. While other theories are built on disturbances of the immune system.

Von Economo mentions sleeping plants in a couple of places, in support of the argument. On investigation, this appears to be the plants which open and shut their leaves and flowers with the coming and going of the sun. One might be interested in how exactly plants do this, but I don’t think it has much to do with the sleeping arrangements of higher animals.

Slightly frivolously, I am reminded of the fact that if one has 100 fortune tellers, is it reasonably likely that one of them will turn out to have got it right, without any of them having had any special powers. Something to do with the law of large numbers.

I was interested to read at reference 8 of the difficulties of coming up with good ways to classify the outcome of treatments to get people to stop smoking. Even such a simple sounding outcome comes with all kinds of statistical classification baggage.

I have taken the occasional peek at reference 9 to keep me on the straight and narrow – remaining of the view that there are ideas there which are still of value. The idea, for example, that some kind of censorship is going on when material is being propelled towards consciousness.

Conclusions

Old paper are sometimes not so wide of the mark – and sometimes they can even be useful reading today.

That said, Von Economo was backing the very top of the brain stem as his sleep centre, just below the third ventricle in the figure above. While I think Hobson is backing a slightly lower region, in and around the pons.

References

Reference 1: Dreaming: An introduction to the science of sleep – J. Allan Hobson – 2002.

Reference 2: REM sleep and dreaming: towards a theory of protoconsciousness – J. Allan Hobson – 2009.

Reference 3: Sleep as a problem of localization – Von Economo, C. – 1930.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Encephalitis_lethargica.

Reference 5: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/awakenings.html. An earlier outing for encephalitis lethargica, and the film about same based on a book by Oliver Sacks. A mention of body clocks coming unstuck.

Reference 6: Encephalitis lethargica: 100 years after the epidemic - Leslie A Hoffman, Joel A Vilensky – 2017. From the Indiana University School of Medicine, Fort Wayne, Indiana, USA. Open access.

Reference 7: Sensory Deprivation – Till Bödeker – 2020. A performance artist interested in sensory deprivation – one who has given us a first person account of what sensory deprivation is like.

Reference 8: Restricted Environmental Stimulation and Smoking Cessation: A 15-Year Progress Report - Peter Suedfeld – 1990. An eminent Hungarian-Canadian professor of psychology.

Reference 9: The interpretation of dreams – Sigmund Freud – 1899/1954.

Reference 10: Public psychology and the Cold War brainwashing scare – Dr. Charlie Williams – 2020.

Reference 11: The Ulster depth interrogation techniques and their relation to sensory deprivation research – Shallice T. – 1972.

Reference 12: The evolution of consciousness. Together with a diagram illustrating certain homologies in the nervous system. By W.H.B. Stoddart MD MRCP. Brain 1903; 26: 432–439. With The structure of consciousness by Michael Polanyi. Brain 1965; 88: 799–810 – Alastair Compston – 2017.

Reference 13: https://www.earthslab.com/anatomy/third-ventricle/. The source of the opening snap.

Sausage skins

A short piece in Friday's Evening Standard about sausage skins caught my eye over breakfast today. It seems that a German company called Saria want to buy a Scottish sausage skin maker called Devro at a valuation of £667 million. A rounded version of the (Biblical) magic number 666.6666... which is a bit odd. Does Saria include a clique of numerologists on its senior management team? More seriously, how can sausage skin manufacture be such a big business. Surely it is a misprint?

Investigation suggests not. Reference 1 reports an annual turnover of £250 million. A large factory in China. A world leader in the business of sausage casings - quite possibly the manufacturer of the cases of the Bastides saucisson sec that we ate yesterday, on which more in due course. Quite possibly the manufacturer of the casings of the sausages I buy from Poland. Headquartered in a village called Moodiesburn on the outskirts of Glasgow - this last being a place where I imagine they consume a lot of sausage of one sort or another.

While reference 3 confirms that the company is indeed likely to be sold for £667 million or 316.1p a share - a substantial lift from the 175.0p or so that it had been running at before: Saria must want to do this very badly. In any event, not a misprint. But at least I now know slightly more about the sausage casing industry than I did this time yesterday.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Devro.

Reference 2: https://www.devro.com/.

Reference 3: https://www.devro.com/investors/recommended-offer-for-devro/.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/02/steam-rising.html. An earlier excursion with Bastides.

Reference 5: https://saria.com/. The rather glossy website of the buyer. With one of the many facets of the business being snapped above.

Trumpettes

[Trump is a winner,’ says Toni Holt Kramer. ‘Losing is against his entire personality, and it is unacceptable in his own mind… We will be better than we ever were when he gets back in the White House’ © Giovanni Mourin]

I read at reference 1 that the Trumpettes are a sort of chorus line of rich old ladies who think that Mr. President Trump is wonderful and that he will make America great again when he is re-elected in 2024. Toni seems to be their leader and is presently best known for the size of the diamond she flashes: perhaps it looks more impressive in real life than it does in the snap above. 50 carats or so, worth maybe $25 million.

Not so much, I suppose, if you measure your net worth in billions. But I do wonder about housekeeping. Where do you put it at night? Do you have to have attendant goons if - heaven forbid - you need to visit a public place? Do you have imitations to wear at less important functions? If I pinched it and chopped it up so that it could not be traced, what would the bits be worth?

PS: I notice that they refer to the US as America, pushing the claims of Canada to the north and Latin America to the south aside. But I suppose, to be fair, that I do it too.

References

Reference 1: In the court of Mar-a-Lago, ‘King’ Trump still reigns supreme: How friends, frenemies and superfans at the private club drive the former president - Jemima Kelly, Financial Times - 2022.

Reference 2: https://trumpette.com/. Not to be confused with these people, who appear to do baby shoes and socks by mail order.

Reference 3: https://giovannimourin.com/. Manages to look all of discrete, diverse, expensive and good. But there is also cock-fighting and flesh if you poke around a bit.

A visit to Tooting

I had occasion to visit Tooting a week or so ago, an opportunity to revisit old haunts.

Started off by going to London Bridge and pulling a Bullingdon there for a run down to Clapham Common. A cold day, with low flying sun, so it was just as well I had remembered to pack my sunglasses.

Arrived at the Common, where I knew there was a stand but had some trouble locating it. Luckily, there was a bench full of cheerful indigents who could point me in the right direction.

The Common does not seem to come with many benches, so I settled for a log on which to take my sardine sandwiches, it being one of those days when I resented paying pounds for a commercial snack that I did not particularly want or like. Lunch being accompanied by some hopeful crows and a squirrel. Hope which went unrequited.

A pizza joint in what appears to be a former public convenience - with a sense of humour. Not sure where the public is supposed to be convenienced now.

Down the hole to Clapham Common tube, to what must be one of the very few two-sided platforms on the network. Rather dangerous and I dare say they have more than their fair share of accidents. There were also escalators which I did not remember. Maybe replacements rather than entirely new? From where I associated to stories about the very long working hours that escalators have to put in and the importance of their not going wrong very often.

Self winding clock company still present at Tooting Broadway. Must do even better than the escalators. See references 3 and 4 for earlier thoughts about the matter.

Out at Tooting Broadway, to find a branch of the very same Kokora as we have in Epsom. On past the once famous Slag & Handbag, now rebadged and rather shabby looking. A very serious wet fish shop with large numbers of fish displayed on what seemed like a huge amount of chopped ice. Exotica further inside.

Maciek still up and running, although I thought the format had changed slightly. Something the rather surly counter-hand (female) denied. Kabanos did not look that great, so I took some darker sausage, maybe seven inches long and getting on for an inch in diameter. They turned out to be rather good, a sort of garlic sausage, higher grade. They also had what looked like a flat cake, about twelve by nine inches, maybe two inches thick. Apparently it was white bread, but I did not think to ask whether she sold it by the slice or whether one had to buy the whole thing, which would have been far too much, both in money and in bread.

Mixed Blessings still there. I did not used to care much for their bread, but they did sell ginger cakes, Bulla by name, of reference 1, which I rather liked. But there was something of a queue, so I passed.

Antelope still there, but shut this Friday lunchtime. A place where I have taken the odd fancy cigar out back. Rather a rough old place as I recall: not the 'Foresters Arms' they talk of at reference 2, rather Jack Beard's. A place with an interesting history, not least the birth of ladies' boxing.

The little wine bar near the top of Vant Road also still there, but renamed and shut. A place which had not been impressed by our making an exhibition of our knowledge of jazz.

But the Tooting Mitre, famous as a bus terminus, was both present and open, if renamed. Once home to famous pub quizzes, hosted by a semi-professional question master and well supported by young medicos and others from St. George's hospital up the road. Well supported enough that the questions were slightly tilted in a medical direction. Our team included one former footballer who could do sport, I think from West Ham in the days when footballers had E-types rather than Ferraris, and another chap with a fine memory for pop music from the recent past - so even without medicos we did not do too badly, scoring the occasional frozen turkey, or whatever.

I was looking for the place called Amen Corner, but found this corner instead. A monument to a well dug by some Tooting worthies for the greater good of the poor folk without access to clean water. But if I had pushed on a bit, I would have found it. As I did on the occasion noticed at reference 5.

Business done and strolling back towards Wetherpoon's, I was impressed by the message of a Bible basher about seeking refuge from sin. I felt that whoever wrote the script knew all about the temptations of the flesh and what one needed to do to escape their clutches - with my sticking to the old-fashioned view that temptations of the flesh are not always something to be applauded and indulged. While Catholics, with their confessions and Jesuits, have made a very serious study of the matter. Another baby not to be chucked away with the bathwater.

Stopped by at the famous Bingo hall, once a picture palace, now a listed building. A place we once visited in the course of a heritage weekend.

A place where I was free to wander about, despite explaining to the chap manning the front desk that I was not there to gamble. 

Front of house, where this snap was taken, was given over to slots. Not empty, but not exactly busy.

I decided that Wetherpoon's, despite my long association with the place, was too crowded and shabby, and settled for the quieter but more genteel Castle up the road. A place owned by those well-known scions of the far right, the Youngs. At least one person I know, a serious drinker, will not use the places on that account.

A bit of a business with a disabled person at the bus stop, in a wheelchair, with carer, who failed to get on before the bus pulled away. She was getting into a bit of a state. I thought the driver was being a bit off, but eventually I worked out that the problem was that the wheelchair space was shared with prams, which at this particular time were filling it all up. They were not going to give way and the driver probably knew from experience that it was not worth making a row with the mothers. It took BH to remind me later of the far away days when pushchairs were folded up and stuffed under the stairs, behind the conductor's station, and babies were sat on laps. Fat chance of that on this occasion. Maybe the carer should have thought about time of day and primary schools closing times. Or just called up a cab.

No Wellingtonia to be seen at Streatham Cemetary, presumably bought for what was then the borough at a time when there was still farmland in what is now Earlsfield. As one supposes was the case when the nearby Springfield Hospital was built.

Traffic all bunged up at Earlsfield, for no apparent reason. Took a Jameson regular at the Halfway House, declining something called Jameson Orange, apparently favoured by those who go in for cocktails. To my mind, always a sign of weakness when a seemingly well-established brand feels the need for this sort of thing.

Scored a two (at the aeroplane game) on arrival on the platform, then a few ones. Then there was a delay and I sat down to a rather narrow field of view which only yielded more ones. At which point it was announced that the southbound third rail, the one carrying the power, was out in the Earlsfield area. Down the stairs then up the stairs to catch a train to Clapham Junction - where I crossed from platform 9 to platform 10 just as an Epsom train was pulling in. So not as bad as I had feared.

Greeted by the police helicopter at Epsom but, for once, no taxis. And while I waited, I noticed that the various lights around Epsom Station are very poorly synchronised. They don't seem to have got the idea at all.

Home to read in the Metro about the selfish young man noticed at reference 6. And not to read the Star, picked up in the bingo hall. Complete garbage. Not even any entertaining pictures.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bulla_cake.

Reference 2: https://pubheritage.camra.org.uk/pubs/2172.

Reference 3: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/01/cheese.html.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/08/clock.html.

Reference 5: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2011/05/prayer-time.html.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/selfish.html.

A view from across the water

This being the result of a pick-me-up at the Raynes Park Platform Library, the November number of 'LE MONDE diplomatique'.

I don't claim to have read the article at reference 1 with any care, but the map snapped above did catch my eye. It seems that at the end of the 18th century, the Black Sea was a Turkish rather than a Russian lake, with the all the land around being part of the Ottoman Empire, albeit thought by us in Europe to be decadent and in decay, with, as it turned out, rather more than a hundred years to go, clocking up a total of around 600 years, depending on your start point. Making Turkey yet another country with a glorious past to live down.

With the northern border of the Empire at that time being given by the green line, taking in large chunks of what is now either the Ukraine or Russia. On which story, claims by either of these last for everlasting ownership going back into the mists of time, going back to founding saints, are twaddle.

I also learn that 'septentrional' is from the Latin, originally meaning seven plough oxen, their name for what we call the big and little bears, or the big and little ploughs, circling the Pole Star.

PS 1: the article is visible at reference 2, but you only get a taster. You have to pay if you want the whole story, with the map. Hence the DIY snap above.

PS 2: I am reminded of the impressive continuity of Russia through the ages: a country always keen to grab at lands all around, particularly to the south and east, and a country usually run as an autocratic police state. With intermissions of messy collective government around the time of the Revolution and around the time of Brezhnev, half a century later.

PS 3: Russia was also keen on getting a warm water port, not frozen up for a large chunk of the year. But the best they could manage was something on the Black Sea, on which the Turks had a chokehold at the Dardanelles, later to be famous for the disaster of the botched Gallipoli landings, one of the times when we were on the same side as the Russians. Not a proper port like London, Liverpool or Glasgow, with open access to the oceans of the world, at all.

References

Reference 1: Quand la Russie perdait la guerre de Crimée: Largement oubliée dans les pays qui, tels la France et le Royaume-Uni, l’ont gagnée, la guerre de Crimée (1853-1856) fait l’objet d’un souvenir vibrant en Russie, qui l’a pourtant perdue… - Marie-Pierre Rey, Le Monde diplomatique - 2022.

Reference 2: https://www.monde-diplomatique.fr/. A monthly, perhaps a cross between the week-end version of the Financial Times and the Economist. In newspaper rather than magazine format.

Time waster or worse?

A curious email was sitting at the top of my mail box when I took a look this morning, part of which is snapped above, suggesting that I had used my credit card to spend some money with Wyndham Destinations of South Carolina. Another was sitting in my promotions box, apparently inviting me and my partner to a sales session there for timeshare. There is usually a carrot attached to such things but I couldn't find it. On the other hand, there was a lot of small print suggesting hard sell.

The company exists (reference 1) and does indeed appear to be a timeshare operation, albeit one that I have never heard of until now.

The resort exists, to the extent of having an Irish bar. So it must be OK. And it does appear to have a very fine beach if the snaps offered by gmaps are anything to go by,

Next stop my bank account, where they do not exist, at least not yet. I try talking to the HSBC chatbot - which has involved a helpful real person in the past - but which was a complete waste of time this morning.

At the time in question, late yesterday evening, I was trying to buy tickets from ENO and their computer was behaving very oddly, but I put that down to sloppy IT rather than anything worse. And I have now printed off the tickets. So hopefully no connection.

Maybe I just get rid of the emails and forget about it.

PS 1: in need of a bit of light reading the other day, I plucked a random volume of Agatha off its shelf. 'Crooked House' I managed well enough, with the poor, rather flat quality of the words obscured by the story which seemed to carry one along well enough, words notwithstanding. But the second of the two stories, 'Passenger to Frankfurt', I gave up on. The story was just too preposterous. An unsuccessful take on a James Bond novel. The book claims that the story was written in 1930, but Wikipedia says 1970, when Agatha was 80: so maybe Simenon had the right idea, packing it in when he was 70.

PS 2: there is talk, in the story which I gave up on, of orators who can hold their audience spell bound while not actually saying much at all. The power of personality was the thing, not what was said. Hitler being said to be an example of same. Professional speakers at management training courses and corporate hug-ins being another, of which I have some first-hand experience. You are entertained at the time, but wonder afterwards about the value-add. Can writers pull off the same sort of trick with the written word rather than the spoken word?

References

Reference 1: https://www.wyndhamdestinations.com/.

Beethoven and others

Ten days ago now to the Wigmore Hall to hear the Calidore String Quartet give us Beethoven Op.18.6 and Smetana No.1 in E minor. With a bonus in the form of the first movement of Beethoven's Op.18.4, a piece I used to get quite excited more than a decade or so ago and first noticed at reference 1. Now worn off a bit. Calidore new to us. Smetana probably new to us.

A cold, day start to the day, if not actually wet.

A trolley at Epsom station, in the event picked up the next day, as noticed at reference 3.

Cold at up top at Vauxhall, warm down below. Tube crowded by the time we got to Oxford Circus and there seemed to be plenty of people milling about up top.

All Bar One was quiet at 12:30 and the service was prompt. Chocolate beans were on, presumably some version of Smarties which were different enough not to attract invoices for use of concept & recipe from Nestlé. Or perhaps they are a cut price version made and sold by Nestlé to the trade? I reminisced about how I couldn't afford Smarties very often when I was young, with my usual fodder being Spangles or Refreshers, three and two old pennies respectively, as I recall. In the range of my primary school pocket money of perhaps six old pennies a week. I remain quite fond of sherbet flavoured sweets to this day and we (nearly) always use lemon sherbets for travelling in the car.

The twin towers of flowers flanking the stage looked a little tired, which was very unusual. As was the Yamaha piano at the back of the stage. One can only assume that some exotic performer had a special need for one. BH wondered about the Beckstein Hall under construction not many yards from the Wigmore Hall, formerly the Beckstein Hall. I did not think it likely that the Wigmore would jump ship from Steinway, whose showroom was also not many yards away. Reference 4 is silent on the point, but who knows?

Four rather old-speak music stands with computers, not like the special models we had on the last visit. Seating V1, V2, C, Va. Seats piano stool, piano stool, piano stool, tubular steel (with a back). Radio 3 lady unobtrusive, unlike at St. Luke's where they are intrusive, despite these last not being broadcast live. And, to be fair, they have not been as bad of late as they have been in the past.

Beethoven 18.6 good, although I did not know it as well as I had thought. Smetana OK, but not particularly attracted, Did not sit very well with the Beethoven to my mind. While Beethoven 18.4.1 reminded me of my previous infatuation.

For a change, we ate in the cafeteria on the fourth floor of John Lewis, 'the place to eat'. Curry and rice fine, although there could have been a bit more of it. Fish and chip adequate, if not as good as that served at Wetherspoon's for about the same money. They also sold pies, so the cafeteria is moving into the mainstream from its slightly more exotic starting point. They used, for example, to do rather a good puy lentil stew. But perhaps I do them down: they had green lentils at least not much more than a year ago, as noticed at reference 5. I might say in passing that the dressing gown bought from Selfridge's on that occasion has served and is serving well.

Given that my HP Elitebook is getting a bit tired and won't take Windows 11 as it stands, I inspected the laptops and was a bit startled by the prices. Maybe it is back to Tier 1 for another second hand one.

Did various other floors of interest to BH but we got out without spending too much. We also inspected the bear-themed Christmas decorations. I was pleased that John Lewis, perhaps out of respect for the cost-of-living crisis engulfing many people, had opted for quiet rather than flashy decorations.

While we thought that his circular arrangement was not a punt for the conference room market, rather Santa's grotto in a state of undress.

Thought about a stroll down through Berkeley Square, perhaps taking in coffee, cake and brandy at one of the places for that sort of thing in Piccadilly, or perhaps even a stroll through Green Park, but opted instead for the tube, nicely making the connection at Vauxhall for a train to Epsom at around 16:00. Thus missing out, on this occasion, on the Raynes Park Platform Library.

PS: I had thought that Smarties were from Rowntree's, one the triumvirate of Quaker confectioners dominating the business in the UK. Which have been the case when I was small, but Rowntree's was taken over by Nestlé in 1988 and while the name is still used for branding some lines, the old company no longer exists. And the stink of chocolate from the Yorkie Bar factory no longer hangs over the stretch of the Norwich ring road which goes past the Catholic Cathedral.

References

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2009/02/franklin-frets.html.

Reference 2: https://www.calidorestringquartet.com/.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/passed-on-way-to-station-on-monday.html.

Reference 4: https://www.bechstein.com/en/the-world-of-bechstein/news/bechstein-returns-to-londons-wigmore-street/.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2021/09/brahms-and-dressing-gowns.html.

Mould

I read at reference 1 that, following a tragic death in social housing, Michael Gove, is withholding any further funding from the landlord, Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH), one of the many housing associations now providing the social housing once provided by our local councils. The local councils which the Tories cut out of the loop. This particular association is a mutual.

I wondered the extent to which RBH is facing an impossible task, with far too much to do with the rents allowed and the money provided. Are the Tories, yet again, bashing an organisation which is performing badly because it does not have the necessary resources? I don't suppose that private landlords are making a better fist of it. Would we have done better to have let the Council Housing Departments of old get on with it?

I thought to take a look at the accounts, but I have not been able to find any, not like the National Trust where they are only a few clicks away - but then, that is a much bigger operation where a fancier website is to be expected. While at reference 2, I was only able to turn up accessible summaries, such as that to be found at reference 3, from where the snap above is taken. An account which does not balance in the way favoured by accountants...

PS 1: I continue to fret about the way that Microsoft provide public access to the few files that I want to make public, according to rules which I find quite impenetrable and quite incomprehensible, this despite near fifty years in IT. Hopefully I have not opened the stable door.

PS 2: and I am reminded of the days when BH and I used to live in a bedsit in north London where we provided our own heating with an Aladdin paraffin stove which, inter alia, pumped a good deal of water into the room, resulting in large amounts of black mould in and on the wallpaper behind the wardrobe. Perhaps it is just as well that we were only there for nine months or so. The sort of stove involved is snapped at reference 4. Must have been a standard item, as I have a memory of coming across a store room full of them somewhere in the OPCS empire back in the 1970's. Perhaps at the time of the three day week.

References

Reference 1: Gove cuts housing association’s £1mn funding after Awaab Ishak death: Housing minister withholds money after inquest finds mould problem contributed to toddler’s fate - George Hammond, Financial Times - 2022.

Reference 2: https://www.rbh.org.uk/. Rochdale Boroughwide Housing. 

Reference 3: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AvPvDT7vzzpQh-s7pfKkFDSqAly2GQ?e=FXsr7p. An accessible report on their activity.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/derby-action.html.

Cherry picker

Our road was visited by a flashy new cherry picker yesterday morning, a cherry picker that one towed to the site but which then had a degree of self-propulsion. A coffin shaped & sized battery which I was told cost £700. And not only was it the first time that such a thing had appeared in our road, I had never heard of the Niftylift company before.

The snap above was turned up by Bing and looks about right. Presumably the weight of the battery helps with stability. Just the thing for pruning one's hedges and trees, provided, that is, that one can get it through the garage and into the back garden.

From reference 2, I learn that the 120 snapped above does come in the 120T self-propelled version. On the other hand its driver talked of 17m reach, so perhaps we are talking the 170. But I think not: what I saw was not a chunky as that appears to be.

From reference 3, I learn that Niftylift is a UK manufacturing operation presently based in Milton Keynes. We really do still make things!

A company which appears to be still owned by the founder and his family, with the latter represented by a vehicle called FRB Developments Ltd. But there are shares, which could presumably be sold on, perhaps when the founder moves on.

References

Reference 1: https://www.niftylift.com/uk.

Reference 2: https://www.niftylift.com/application/files/2716/5211/5520/Range_Booklet_EU_IS-54.pdf.

Reference 3: https://www.niftylift.com/uk/about-us/company-profile/history.

No.36 (provisional)

After more than a year of diligent search, including a turn around the Sainsbury's Kiln Lane car park this very morning, No.36 has finally turned up. Turned up on a foreign plate in a rather good retread of the 'Ipcress File' which we started this evening on ITV Brand X, courtesy of our shiny, nearly-new smart TV. A west Berlin scene, towards the end of episode 1. 

With part of rather good being the slightly odd feeling of watching a costume drama that one first watched when it was just a thriller, more or less set in the present. The book was written in 1962, made into the film that I remember in 1965 - although I am not sure that I first it then - and adapted for television earlier this year, when it was set in 1963, a year after the book was originally written. This being the version of present interest.

With the present catch being that the Windows screen scrape function has let me down for once, the only consolation being that it has left me the time stamp.

For those that care about the rules, precedent was set and not challenged at reference 2. Except that on that occasion, using the same laptop, the screen scrape worked as intended. Perhaps the server end software has changed. Perhaps I will have another go tomorrow.

PS 1: tried again this Thursday morning with Microsoft's Snip & Sketch function. Where it looks as if the underlying picture is turned off before the function can kick in. However, the telephone provided a workaround of sorts, and the number is revealed as 'DF | Q 36', with my being pretty sure that the terminal '6' is not a '5'. So the provisional capture stands. But have the ITV people gone to the bother of stopping you taking a screen scrape or is the failure just some accident of image processing? And if the first, why would they bother?

PS 2: some days later. We have now finished this six-parter which, after a strong start, degenerated to a overly complicated and preposterous ending about which one no longer cared. I got the impression, without bothering to check, that the script writer, while building his script around 'The Ipcress File', had imported chunks of plot from other, later stories from the same series. Maybe I will get around to checking in Wikipedia for Len Deighton and all his works. Maybe even read reference 4.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/no35.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/02/no26-provisional.html.

Reference 3: https://www.itv.com/. My first impression being that it is easier to use on a smart PC than on a smart television.

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_IPCRESS_File.

Pondamonium

The water table around our micro ponds has risen enough that there was flooding after the heavy rain last night. Only the first or second time such a thing has happened since the drought of the summer. Maybe next time we will get connection of all three ponds.

A matter which does not appear to have been newsworthy since early 2019, as noticed at reference 1. The grids visible there have long since been relocated to be part of the fence at the back of the new daffodil bed, where I have learned that ivy is not that keen on climbing up galvanised grids.

Hopefully things are looking up for Thames Water as well.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/03/pondemonium-revisited.html.

A history of the Soviet Union in twenty dishes

[an important fountain in Moscow, the friendship of nations fountain, well known to the author. I believe the gilded ladies are sturdy collective farmers in traditional dress, representing the nations of the Union. Including, no doubt, the Ukraine]

‘Mastering the art of Soviet cooking’ is a book I came across by chance on a table in Epsom Library. A cooking flavoured memoir of the Soviet Union by a lady of Russian-Jewish-German stock who started growing up in Moscow and emigrated to the US when she was 11 in 1974 – so a lot of this memoir is stories from her wider family. A family which included a senior officer in naval intelligence, lucky enough to survive both war and purge, was on the fringes of the nomenklatura and was entitled to some privileges as a result – eatable ones being particularly important, given that food seems to have been a problem, certainly in Moscow, for more or less all of the time – starting with the Romanovs, on through Khrushchev with his weakness for maize and not ending until Putin turned up to sort out the mess created by Gorbachev – who might have been a star internationally, but was not a star at home. Not least because he tried to bear down on the consumption of vodka – grossly excessive though it was.

She started out trying to be a concert pianist and when that fell through she took to writing about food, very successfully, if the number of her books for sale on Abebooks is anything to go by. In the course of all this she went back to the Soviet Union, then Russia, a number of times over the years.

One of the opening recipes is for gelfite fish, a dish which I had heard of and which, for some reason, thought was a species of cold white fish fried in batter. I now know better. Take one large pike and bash it on a table for a while to loosen the skin. Remove the skin, in one piece. Fillet the fish. Mince up the fish with onions, carrots and various condiments. Some people like to add sugar, some don’t. Stuff the mince back into the fish skin and steam for some hours. Various other manipulations, perhaps involving an oven, after which the fish is served, entire and decorated. Eaten, I suppose, by the slice. Our own experience with pike, maybe forty years ago now, was not encouraging and we did not go on to explore the esox cuisine. 

I offer a few more titbits

Her father one of the team of around 120 people who worried about the maintenance of Lenin’s corpse in presentable condition. With the relevant institute holding a great stash of fresher material to work on - plus an excellent supply of near pure ethyl alcohol – that is to say the active ingredient of the stuff you drink. The whole relic business striking me as very Catholic, so perhaps also very Orthodox - and maybe the Bolsheviks were unable to shake off this bit of the past, despite having declared religion to be dead and buried? To be fair, we are also told that maybe two thirds of Russians now think that it is time to retire this corpse and bury it in the usual way.

Queuing for food and other necessities was a big part of metropolitan Soviet life. Young Pioneers made a business out of queuing for others. Romances were made in queues. So much so, that older Russians get quite nostalgic about them.

Some of the Bolsheviks were sent into Central Asia where they found there was no proletariat, just Islam and tribes. So as part of liberating Soviet women from their family duties, they had an onslaught on Islamic dress for women, with mass veil burnings and such. But the men fought back with much violence, rape and misery. After which the Bolsheviks went a bit quiet.

I read of an old Bolshevik who survived, despite being an Aremenian, perhaps because his younger brother was one of the founders of the MIG aircraft operation – where the M is for Mikoyan. The present Mikoyan was one of the first Soviet leaders to visit the US and spent three months in the United States in 1935, where he learned, inter alia, about its food industry. When he returned, he introduced a number of popular American consumer products to the Soviet Union, including hamburgers, ice cream, corn flakes, popcorn, tomato juice, grapefruit and corn on the cob. And so responsible for the Russian take on the hamburger called kotleti, a take which lost the bun. Also took a personal interest in the quality of ice cream sold in parks. Died in his bed at the grand old age of 82 in 1978.

Most of the staff of Stalin’s personal dacha outside Moscow – where he held elaborate feasts with fancy table furniture – got executed after he died – on Beria’s orders. However, his many evils & horrors notwithstanding, he appears to remain a hero to many Russians to this day.

A lucky find. My own copy is now on its way from somewhere in the Abebooks (that is to say Amazon) empire.

References

Reference 1: Mastering the art of Soviet cooking: a memoir of food and longing – Anya von Bremzen – 2013.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kuntsevo_Dacha. ‘… The building remains shrouded in secrecy: the grounds are fenced and closed to ordinary visitors. However, the dacha is still preserved in good condition, along with all of Stalin's personal belongings, including his study with the war-time desk and the sofa where he slept…’.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anya_von_Bremzen. 

Reference 4: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anastas_Mikoyan. Promoted the famous ‘Book of Tasty and Healthy Food’ which went through lots of editions and sold millions of copies. My own retread, in English, also on order from Amazon.