Trolley 553

As it turned out, there was one more trolley from the old year, another food hall trolley from the Kokoro passage. I don't think that it had been there very long as it was not very wet. Returned to M&S.

On the way in I was rather struck by the main entrance to Wetherspoon's. Apart from the barrier being a bit scruffy, it all seemed a bit mean to me. The anti-smoking people have won the war - do they have to be mean at the margins as well? I wondered what proportion of the anti-smoking people had once been smokers. FIL, for example, was pretty fierce on the whole subject - having smoked as a young man, through the war, but then packed it in to leave room in the family budget for buying and running a small car. And then there is the old saying about converts being more Catholic than the Pope. People born into the faith can afford to be a bit more relaxed about it all.

While this last snap is a record of the last game of Scrabble of the year. Which I might say I won, despite BH getting more than her fair share of the blanks and the big letters. I was luckier with the triple words and triple letters.

Nearly all of the words are OK, at least according to our more-than-a-century old OED, except, perhaps 'kist', to the right, flagged up as Scottish or Northern dialect. A word, as it happens, that BH remembers from the stories she has read about the highlands and islands. So marginal, but allowed. A reminder that it is often hard to make rules about things which are nice and tidy everywhere, without any odd corners where they seem to break down.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/trolley-552.html.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Nansen

[The local sportfisher Gøte Nilsen from Tromsø caught this giant halibut on his rod just outside Ringvassøy in the middle of May 2013. The halibut measured 241 cm and weighed in at 183 kg ! Congratulations !! Now we go for the 200 + !!!]

I have now finished re-reading Nansen's book about crossing the Greenland ice cap a little to the south of the Arctic Circle in 1888, say at 65°N on the right hand map below. Including Nansen, a party of six. Two sleeping bags. No dogs, just the one pony, eaten very early on. So everything was carried or pulled, with the occasional break when sailing the sledges was possible. An easy read of around 450 pages, with a map at the front and a good scattering of line drawings, some of them taken from photographs, some from sketches.

Greenland is a bit like a smaller version of the Antarctic, being a bowl formed of a ring of mountains, with the bowl being full of ice and with the ice rising to a height of 9,500 feet. So twice the height of Ben Nevis, which I dare say is cold enough in the winter.

So the crossing fell into four parts: getting across the sea ice from the open sea to the right spot on the east coast, going up the eastern mountains from the ice, crossing in the inland sea of ice and, lastly, going down the western mountains to the western settlements. All four of which parts presented plenty of problems. The crossing of the inland sea might have been cold, hard work - but it was also monotonous and is dealt with in around 50 of the 450 pages. With the last 50 or so pages covering their winter wait for the boat home at a place called Godthaab.

The overall impression is that by modern standards the whole affair - with the crossing proper taking around two months - was terribly amateurish and could easily have ended in disaster. As it was there seemed to be plenty of dunkings in what must have been ice cold water. So a tribute to the physical and moral strength of all those involved.

It being early days for expeditions of this sort, they were short of both fat and fuel. The former resulted in a craving for fat, which resulted in turn in the guzzling of much butter when available. As I recall, twenty years later, Scott's pemmican included plenty of fat.

Quite struck by the numbers of birds and other animals which were slaughtered. Some in order to stay alive, some just for sport - and then there were the rather gruesome (and wasteful) activities of the sealers. Worse in some ways that what goes on in a modern abattoir, not having been sanitised a bit by the factory process. 

While the lack of fuel - and the customs of the place and time - meant that a lot of the meat that they were able to catch or shoot at the start and at the end of the transit - whether bird, fish, seal or four legged - was eaten (if not devoured) more or less raw. Quite a lot of the time eating the guts and all. But they did draw the line at raw bird meat which was still warm: better to let it cool down a bit before starting.

Nansen and his team seemed to work very long days, quite often through the night when the going was good enough. Perhaps even fit, youngish men could only keep this up for a couple of months.

Towards the end, I was reminded of the tricky business of catching halibut weighing a hundred pounds or more from a fragile, unstable and leaky kayak. Hence the snap included above.

Plenty of entertaining and interesting material about the lifestyle of the Eskimos (or Greenlandic Inuit as we call them now). With there being some settlements on the east coast and rather more on the west coast. With the Norwegians being rather struck, for example, by the state of undress which prevailed inside the east coast huts. Seemingly very cheerful people most of the time, despite their harsh lives.

I think reference 7 is the next stop, for a different take on it all.

PS: and thinking of disasters, the impression given is that plenty of Eskimos either drowned at sea or starved on land. Also that there must have been plenty of serious skiing accidents in the Norway of the time - not least in the course of the popular downhill races and jumping competitions.

References

Reference 1: The First Crossing of Greenland - Fridtjof Nansen - 1895.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/dubai.html.

Reference 3: http://psmv4.blogspot.com/2018/12/everest.html. A mention.

Reference 4: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2018/08/slacking.html. A fisheries management project seemingly named for Nansen.

Reference 5: http://psmv2.blogspot.com/2013/05/the-return-of-tarzan.html. Fresh flesh footnote. My memory of this incident seems to be defective, at least a confusion of several incidents.

Reference 6: http://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2007/03/first-fruits-and-bus-stops.html. A more substantive post.

Reference 7: Nansen - Roland Huntford - 1997. Ex Surrey Libraries, probably the prompt for reference 6, rather than reference 1.

Reference 8: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenland_ice_sheet.

Reference 9: Elevation and elevation change of Greenland and Antarctica derived from CryoSat-2 - V. Helm, A. Humbert, and H. Miller - 2014. The source of the two elevation maps above. The product of a European Space Agency (ESA) Earth Explorer Mission that launched on April 8th, 2010.

Reference 10: https://www.bedmod.co.uk/. The Bedford Modern School, from which my copy of reference 1 originally came, still exists and comes with all the modern trappings. Things like mission statements and values.

Festive sprout

As it turned out, our most elaborate meal of the holiday period took place in the middle of the day on Christmas Eve.

The first job of the day was the construction of the secondary Christmas tree, the primary tree, a baby blue from Sainsbury's, having already been installed in the extension. After repotting, as the Sainsbury's potter had been rather careless about potting what was otherwise a rather handsome tree. In its pot maybe three feet high and on its stand - day job a bedside locker - maybe five, which is about right these days. 

First job was to cut out a base, with a bit of old window sill proving suitable. Drill hole for six inch nail, drill starter hole in base of sprout tree, push tree onto nail (without disturbing the decorative sprouts) and job done. Done that is apart from wrapping the base, which would have been much easier done before adding the tree, but I was a bit nervous about taking it off.

Second job was the sage and onion stuffing, following the usual recipe. Variation in that to make up the weight, I put some of the crust of the white loaf used for the crumbs through the food mixer. Another variation in that the sage in the garden was not fit for picking and so we made do with two of the pots of rooted sage sold in Waitrose at this time of year. But without, on this occasion, trying to carry on with the plants, which didn't really work the one time that we tried it. For which see reference 1.

However, despite the later warning at reference 1, I did make what I thought was the mistake of adding a couple of tablespoons of cooking oil to the mix. Mistake in that it changed the texture of the cooked stuffing, make it soft & smooth, rather than a little crunchy outside and a little crumbly inside. But it all went fast enough for all that.

The chicken BH had bought (frozen, some weeks if not months previously) came with black feet and some complicated cooking instructions, one of which was to put a small amount of water in the bottom of the roasting dish. I was a bit dubious about this, as when I once tried something of the sort in one of my early attempts at bread making, the oven refused to come to heat. All the heat went into boiling the water off at 100°C, nowhere near hot enough for bread. However the chicken turned out fine. Rather good in fact, so black feet must be a good sign. 

As far as I can make out, no connection at all with the fowling arrangements of the Blackfeet of reference 3.

The small sausages being added to the mix as a concession to the younger members of the party.

Christmas pudding declined, so we settled for a Panettone from Wilko, probably bought on the occasion noticed at reference 2. Wilko had several pallet loads of them in the area in front of the queues for the tills, very reasonably priced, so I gave it a go. Perfectly satisfactory, and would have been even better had they gone for a bit less vanilla flavouring. Possibly a bit less vanilla, but I assume that there would not be too much of that in the Wilko offering.

Small pots of yellow custard for the younger members, taken both with and without sprinkle, with whom they are great favourite. Plenty of vanilla in the custard too.

All followed by a variety of children's games, including a good dose of role play and a fine rendition, with actions, of the song about a partridge in a pear tree.

At the end of the day, just three dead soldiers and one left standing. Fleurie already noticed on several occasions, Rochemorin at reference 1. This one, for some warehousing reason known only to Waitrose, a year older than that one. Perfectly satisfactory for all that.

The chicken was more or less done on its first outing, so having done fairly well on this occasion, we decided to pause the celebrations on Christmas Day proper and have chicken soup. Of which notice in due course.

PS: a few days later the festive sprout was dismantled, with the stand going into the roof against the next occasion. BH was concerned about the (very real) possibility of accidents with an exposed spike, so I cut out a blob of wood to protect it, probably from one of the few remaining bits of timber from our late lamented garden shed. In the course of which I was reminded that it is quite tricky to do a neat job with small pieces of this sort. But at least I got the hole right, with it fitting tight and snug over the nail.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/chicken-up.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/trolley-550.html.

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

A Maigret medley

This being the result of the second reading of the story at reference 1 in the course of December, 2022. A story which had probably been read twice before in the course of the first readings around 2017. 154 pages, 9 chapters, just over 17 pages to the chapter, on average. In which it is much like an Agatha Christie story; the sort of thing one could read right through in an afternoon or in the course of a train journey. Except that I take rather longer, my French not being that clever, despite Simenon keeping his French fairly simple.

The diagram reproduced above is the sort of thing I sometimes produce (in Microsoft’s Powerpoint) when I am in danger of losing my grip on a murder mystery, which happens quite often these days.

The story is framed by Maigret being out of area, just visiting his friend Chabot, the examining magistrate of a small town. Top left, in green. So Maigret has no authority and no powers, but he is nevertheless allowed to poke around a bit. He is the famous detective from Paris and everyone knows who he is. 

Then we have the three murder victims in pale blue right, in descending order of occurrence.

The action of the story centres on the Vernoux family, a family which became rich in fairly short order by dealing in livestock, land and farms. Part of the town’s small top tier. A family which is tainted in various ways. Red bars for marriage, short vertical bars for immediate paternity, dashed for more remote and longer horizontal bars for siblings.

Black edges for those who die before the story gets going.

Themes

I noticed a number of themes which crop up quite a lot in Maigret stories.

Maigret being out of area is a device used in a number of the Maigret stories. To some extent, looking in from the outside, rather than being on the inside.

Middle aged men approaching retirement wondering what the future holds. Nostalgia for what has gone before. Perhaps for the smell of one’s office or the curious habits of one’s office clock. Simenon, around 50 when he wrote this story, seems a bit young for this one – but maybe he knows his audience.

That said, I think Simenon misses the point slightly when he comments on old men who need to keep up appearances vis à vis others, who go to a lot of bother to be well turned out. I think they do it to convince themselves that they are still up be and running, not just to convince others.

Lots of people are not terribly happy in, terribly pleased with their lives. But some of them build little corners where they can be happy for an hour or so each day, or perhaps each week. Perhaps an hour in your regular pub on the way home. Perhaps you have a shed in the back garden where you can potter. Perhaps you play golf.

The process of waking up. The various modules of consciousness coming back online. The games one plays with one’s eyes. Perhaps towards the end of a train journey, perhaps in a hotel room, perhaps in a hospital perhaps at home. Reference 3, for example, has quite a lot on this. While reference 4, one of the small number of Simenon’s other work that I have read, has even more.

Other things that seem to matter

I think Simenon, himself a successful, self-made man, was rather amused by the way that the old county families were being replaced by the new men, perhaps rough men who have made it good by dint of talent and hard work. Some of whom might exude power but who are also rather unpleasant – to say the least of it. Old county families which are broke and settle for marrying into the rich new families – which they might more or less openly despise.

On the other hand, he seems to actively dislike trade unionists, agitators and other people from the lower middle classes who stir up trouble. To be rather afraid of the way that small towns can get into the grip of vigilantes who have got some public order or public safety issue between their teeth. And, as it happens, the town where this story is set – Fontenay-le-Comte in the Vendée – is the town where he spent a year in the early part of the occupation, before retreating deeper into the countryside. He had made a lot of money from a German film company and maybe flaunting that money at the big house – where he rented a large ground floor apartment – and entertaining all and sundry – including German officers – made him the enemies which saw him out of France in the summer of 1945. Not helped by his younger brother being a proper collaborator who escaped by joining the Foreign Legion.

I also wonder whether there was more of this sort of thing when people were poorer, spent more time gossiping on doorsteps and in cafés and had no televisions to distract them.

In something in the same way, Maigret is afraid of what happens when a small town is out for blood and picks on the wrong person, perhaps unpopular for other reasons, particularly when it is a person without the protection of friends, acquaintances and connections, something of a loner. When public opinion, energised by said agitators, pushes magistrates into arresting and possibly charging the wrong person. Or when a small town policeman roughs up the wrong person. With the fear of what might happen to Louise, the slummy mistress, being the ‘peur’ of the title. And what he feared came to pass: she was banged up and rather roughly handled – with even worse sequellae.

Vocabulary

Page 190. Jamais de pétard? In the context of talking about the town drunk, doesn’t get into rows? or perhaps doesn’t ever kick off? Neither Littré nor Linguee offered this particular meaning, sticking more or less to firecrackers. While Larousse did – quite often better for Simenon populisms than the other two.

Page 245. Vigilantes on the streets. Chaps with gourdins. A word for a short, thick stick: a cosh, club, bludgeon. Derivation uncertain with there also being dégourdir, engourdir and gourd. Gourd seeming to be paralysed, immobilised, stuck. While a gourde is a gourd, the sort of thing sometimes used to hold liquids. Mixed up with perclus, said to come from the non-existent Latin perclusus.

Page 249. Aux yeux très cernés. From cerne, a ring. Also ‘yeux battus’, not ‘hit’ as literally, rather tired and red ringed.

Page 205. Qui ne paie pas de mine. A bit run down. Doesn’t look like much from the outside. Larousse best on this one, Littré longest.

Page 216. Des piétinements. Steps, jostling, trampling. Stamping up and down. Seemingly more something which one hears rather than sees. A word for which we don’t have a good English equivalent.

Page 261. Veulerie. Noun from the adjective veule. Feeble, weak, usually of people. Also animals and plants. A weak stem, a weak trunk. Nothing to do with vouloir, to want.

Page 263. Goguenard. Adjective qualifying a bit of fun, usually a bit malicious. At someone else’s expense.

Conclusions

A decent yarn. No trouble sticking it to the end, twice over.

PS: a rather unsavoury detail from reference 2. It seems that around the time of writing, perhaps a few years previously, the rabbit test was the pregnancy test of choice. This involved injecting the rabbit with a sample from the lady in question, then, a few days later, dissecting the rabbit to inspect the state of its entrails. All rather Roman – but apparently fairly reliable.

References

Reference 1: Maigret à peur – Georges Simenon – 1953. Volume XVII of the collected works.

Reference 2: Maigret se trompe – Georges Simenon – 1953. Volume XVII of the collected works.

Reference 3: Maigret et le Clochard – Georges Simenon – 1962. Volume XXII of the collected works.

Reference 4: Les Anneaux de Bicêtre – Georges Simenon – 1963.

Trolley 552

Possibly the last trolley of 2022, from the top of the Kokoro passage, from the M&S food hall. One of a number of same in the passage, but I left the others. Altogether too wet - although not as wet as it might look in the snap above. A steady drizzle rather than serious rain - but windy enough to make one think twice about deploying the umbrella.

This one returned to a spot next to the stacks by the Ashley Centre entrance where it could dry out before going back into the line. Plenty of people in M&S, for once doing both food and clothes, so maybe there was a sale on in the latter department. Maybe there were all sorts of discounted Christmas biscuits and so forth in the former department.

Cold and wet enough for me to have cracked out my red skiing jacket from Animal of references 2 and 3, the first time this year, various young men running around with shorts on notwithstanding. A jacket which is only worn occasionally but is clearly well over ten years old, so I have probably had my money's worth, despite never having strapped on a ski in my life.

PS 1: the first trolley of the year was noticed at reference 4. So between 90 and 100 in the year as a whole. So a toss up whether I reach a 1,000 trolleys or 80 years of age first, this allowing for a modest decline in the collection rate as time goes on.

PS 2: a bit rum that at the time that public sector pay is being held down well below the level of inflation, deserving junior civil servants are getting a modest top up in the form of vouchers that can be spent on things like sausage rolls from Greggs. Maybe rum, but something which Labour will need to tread a bit carefully on as it used these vouchers when it was last on watch. Maybe the answer is to give deserving nurses vouchers which they can redeem in the shops which have popped up in the public areas at the bottom of most big hospitals. Probably including Greggs. See reference 5.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/trolley-551.html.

Reference 2: https://www.animal.co.uk/.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2009/01/deep-in-grip-of-winter.html.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/01/trolley-459.html.

Reference 5: Ministers accused of Whitehall pay ploy: Labour says £30mn reward vouchers have been used to get round civil service salary freeze - George Parker, Financial Times - 2022.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Lentil soup

In the past, lentil soup made with orange lentils, onions, butter and a bacon hock used to be traditional fare on Christmas Eve. A tradition which fell away, to the point where we don't have lentil soup of this sort very often at all, although there has been a revival of another sort of lentil soup recently, most recently noticed at reference 1.

This year we decided to opt for a version of the traditional soup, replacing the bacon hock which I did not have time to source - once upon a time more or less all the grocers which sold loose bacon sold them for next to nothing - including here both Sainsbury's and Woolworths - with a saucisson sec from Bastides via Waitrose.

Starting off with 8oz of orange lentils to 2 litres of water about 100 minutes before the off. At some point, a modest amount of grated, left over potato. Fairly late in the day, adding some carrots and celery. One wants a bit of texture left in the carrots.

Separately gently frying some onions in butter. Adding them and the coarsely chopped sausage maybe 5 minutes from the off.

Regarding the sausage, I was slightly alarmed by the discoloured voids revealed when cutting the thing up. Was it OK to eat? In the end, I pressed on and in the event the discolouring and voids both got lost in the cooking and we did not come down with botulism - or even with regular food poisoning.

We did most of it at the first sitting, most of what was left at a second sitting later the same day and I polished off the very modest remainder for breakfast the following morning.

A fairly watery lentil soup, certainly by traditional standards. But this did have various advantages. It is not so likely to stick to the bottom of the saucepan. The liquor works better on the bread taken with the soup. The soup is not as heavy, a consideration given the amount we take at a sitting. And last but not least, BH prefers her soups and stews to be on the wet side. We shall see next time - maybe giving myself time to source a bacon hock.

I didn't think to keep the labels from this sausage, but as I bought two at the same time, the second lot of labels will probably do. And as it happens I did still have the receipt, tending to keep them for a fortnight or so. Now safely filed away in a special place and all I have to do now is to remember the special place.

So should the second sausage not be up to scratch, I might get myself down to the Waitrose customer service point. Product No.17, bar code number '3 - 275560 124115 - >' and batch number '22270A'.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/dahl.html.

Reference 2: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=lentil+soup+bacon. Checking, I find that something else was quite often substituted for the the bacon, never mind the bacon hock. At least in the period covered by this first volume of the blog. 

Every house must have one

This afternoon, wanting to know what its proper name was and being too idle to go downstairs to take a look, I had occasion to look up the Boston Cook Book, that is to say reference 1.

This took me to Wikipedia which included the snap above. Ever curious, I wondered what on earth it was and asked Google Image Search. This turned up the very same snap, but also a snap of something similar involving oil and called perfection.

Another few clicks and I got to the next snap. Which while not identical to the first is pretty close. I suppose that in a large country where the coverage of town gas was not that great, an oil fired domestic cooker had its points. Not least, most of the convenience of gas. No messing around with some great iron range with its fire, ash and dirt. Quite possibly, as far as the heating element went, rather like the (wicked) Aladdin paraffin fires of our day, noticed at reference 2. The tops of which were quite hot enough to cook on, and while I was not sure whether we ever did, BH thinks that I thought we ought to give it a go and warmed up some lentil soup on one, in our flat roofed extension out back, here at Epsom, which can get quite cold.

One wonders when these Perfection cookers were popular and how expensive they were.

It would be rather fun now to have one in working order which one could show off when one had people round. It would also be proof against the gas and electricity cuts which might lie ahead. But I think I would need more space and more money before it really seemed like a good idea.

PS: this cook book used to share the honours with the Radiation Cook Book in my mother's kitchen. We also have both of them - neither of them her copies - and while they are both regularly used, there is plenty of competition from books by celebrities and books with lots of coloured pictures. Our copy of the Boston Cook Book dates from 1931, when it was part of a print run which took the total to 1,536,000 copies.

References

Reference 1: Boston Cooking School Cook Book - Fannie Farmer - 1896.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2019/06/derby-action.html.

Chasing a reference

This post being an account of trying to chase down a reference in a paper about dreaming. A paper which is now around 13 years old. A chasing down which soaked up rather more time than I was expecting.

Figure 1: The text

Figure 2: The reference

Figure 3: The abstract

The model

We want to say something about the extent to which dreams are derived from real life. To what extent can any particular fragment of dream be said to be derived from something which actually happened in real life? 

Most dreams are built of images and words which are derived from memory of one sort or another, memories which are derived, in the main, from senses internal, peripheral and external. So the raw material of dreams is drawn from real life, even if the bricks of raw material are assembled in a new way. But can we say when the bricks have been put back together properly?

Without getting into the detail of dreams, it turns out to be possible to analyse both them and the real life events from which they may have been derived in terms of a number of features or properties. In the present paper these properties are: characters, objects, actions, themes, emotions, and location. Then we can ask to what extent the properties of a dream fragment match those of a real life event or episode. Which gives us a way into our problem: is this or that dream fragment about, derived in a straightforward way from, this or that real life event?

These properties are not properly defined, but some support is provided by the exclusions – things which were not deemed to match – of table 2. And I have taken characters to be the people involved, objects to be other things of importance, actions to be the important actions, themes to be very short summaries of what the fragment or episode as a while is about, perhaps just a few words, emotions to be the dominant emotions that came with the fragment or episode and locations to be the particular places. So not just some London square, but Trafalgar Square. As it happens, the present paper puts of a lot of weight on location.

Time is not one of the properties used for matching. Which attracts some comment. First, the time of the dream is necessarily different from the time of the material from memory which is driving it. Second, the time of the dream could be a season or a festival, without specifying the particular date or year. So the dream could be a New Year’s Eve party, and the driving event could be the party of 1989-90. Third, my own dreams do not seem to involve time at all: no seasons, festivals, days of the week, months of the year or years. Not even time of day. Never mind the state of the moon – this despite my having tracked the state of the moon since the state of the plague, that is to say the beginning of 2020. Yesterday, for example, by late afternoon there was a fine crescent moon to the south.

In what follows I use the distinction between episodic and semantic memory – without much caring for this particular binary distinction, but it will serve for the present. Wikipedia provides a simple definition of these two sorts of memory at reference 6 which I gloss as follows: an episodic memory of pork soup is a record of some particular occasion in my life, an occasion which has a time and a place and which involved pork soup in some way or other. For example, that noticed at reference 5. The semantic memory of pork soup on the other hand is what can be said about pork soup in general. With each pork soup episode creating the opportunity for the brain to create a new episodic memory and to dust off, to update the semantic memory. Perhaps, for example, the pork involved gradually slides from being tenderloin to be being any kind of coarsely chopped pork meat. Or the volume of soup made on any one occasion gradually drifts up from two litres to three.

The story

In the course of reading Hobson’s short book on dreams at reference 1, I jumped to his later paper at reference 2. Where I read that only 20% of dreams draw on events in the dreamer’s life history – for which see Figure 1 above. Some time later, I remembered about this, and wanting to use it, thought that I better check it, eventually getting my own copy of the paper at his reference 58 above, my reference 3 below.

Off to a bad start, in that searching this paper for the string ‘20%’ fails to find anything.

But what we do have is 29 students, half male, half female, writing down their waking and dreaming doings for a period of 14 days. This was normal life in the real world, not dream laboratory doings. So we lose the control and the records available in a laboratory, but we also get out of that artificial world into the real world – which is better for present purposes. Inter alia, this generated 299 dream reports of which 194 contained candidate memories from life, 364 candidates in all.

Figure 4: Table 1

Candidates which were progressively whittled away by applying stricter and stricter criteria for what counts as a memory entry derived from episodic memory.

Whittling away was supported by experiential features: ‘… Each of the 297 remaining memory entries were scored as similar to a waking event on one or more of the following experiential features: characters, objects, actions, themes, emotions, and location. The 297 memory entries included a total of 973 scored features, with the frequency of occurrence for each feature shown in [his, not my] Figure 1…’.

My guess is that the Hobson 20% of reference 2 is derived by taking line E in the table above, with both reports and entries coming in at something less than 20%. In which location is the big driver: a dream memory entry is not deemed to be based on episodic memory unless, inter alia, it happens in the same location in both places. I think that this requirement is too strong. And furthermore that it is not well glossed by the words used at Figure 1 above.

While line J suggests that very few dream fragments reproduce a real life episode in all its essentials. The authors suggest that this is consistent with poor or no access to episodic memory, particularly during REM sleep. Which I am content with: my own dream diary – now covering getting on for six months and including getting on for 200 entries – does include any such dream or dream fragment. Drawing on a real life episode, very possibly; reproducing one in all its essentials, probably not. For a first report from this diary see reference 8.

By way of example, a recent dream of my own involved something very like pork soup, the soup which was the subject of the report at reference 5. I believe the fact that I had made pork soup in the recent past, put that soup near the top of the heap when it came to the sleeping brain selecting stuff to add into a dream. To that extent, that bit of my dream is the result of a recent episode in my life. But pork soup apart, it does not make much other use of that episode, for example the occasion, the cooker or the saucepan involved. The bit of dream might be no more than a vague image of soup in a saucepan linked with a label saying ‘pork soup’. 

So my bit of dream need not involve any memory of the recent pork soup episode at all. Perhaps, instead, the making of the soup reinforced the semantic memory of same and put it near the top of the heap from which the dreaming brain takes its ingredients. 

Or even this may be too strong and the soup’s appearance in the dream and its recent appearance on our table may simply be a coincidence – coincidences which are going to happen from time to time, but presumably only in a small percentage of dream features. And maybe one notices these coincidences, making more of them than one should. In which, I, in common with plenty of other people, find it far more satisfactory to have a cause rather than a random event. We like the idea that the fact of the soup being on the table put that same soup into the dream. We are comfortable with that notion and stick with it.

I should add that it took me a while to register that this paper was as much about where in memory the dream came from, as about where those memories came from in real life. Many sleep and memory researchers, in particular these ones, are interested in the way that sleeping in general and dreaming in particular interact with memory consolidation, and in that context the difference between episodic and semantic memory is important. 

But I think that Hobson should, nevertheless, have been a bit more careful with his 20%.

Other matters

The dreams that Hobson reports in his book (reference 1) are quite different from my dreams, which may be an artefact of their recording, but it may also reflect differences between us. In any event, I suspect that dreams vary a good deal between people, between different kinds of people and across time. It may also be that that this variation does not change the present fact much, that few dreams are based on episodic memories, although they may be prompted by real life events. Against which background, I note that the present sample is a rather small sample of rather special young people. It would be interesting to know whether anything like this experiment has been repeated with larger or at least different samples.

I am reminded of the Suedfeld paper at reference 7, already noticed at reference 4. Defining exactly what we mean by stopping smoking – if we stop short of completely stopping with no relapses at all – is more complicated than one might think. As is defining exactly what we mean by a dream not drawing on episodes in real life.

Conclusions

While one might argue about the 20% figure given above, it does seem to be the case that few of the bricks of which dreams are made are simply chunks of real life. They are processed real life, extracts from real life – rather as saucisson sec is processed pig, not connecting in a simple, visual way to a live pig.

But I also think that Hobson might usefully have been a bit more careful in using this figure. He might, for example, have provided a bit more background.

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. A paper written when Hobson was in his mid seventies, a little older than I am now.

Reference 3: Dreaming and episodic memory: a functional dissociation – Fosse, M. J., Fosse, R., Hobson, J. A. & Stickgold, R. J. – 2003.

Reference 4: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/sleepy-sickness.html. A previous spin-off from Hobson’s book.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/pork-soup-redux.html. 

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Semantic_memory. 

Reference 7: Restricted Environmental Stimulation and Smoking Cessation: A 15-Year Progress Report - Peter Suedfeld – 1990.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/10/dream-diary-first-report.html. 

Bulgari

One of the features of the Financial Times Online is advertisements from Bulgari, often showcasing fancy looking women wearing fancy looking jewellery - jewellery which on closer inspection looks quite unsuitable for ordinary people: quite apart from the price, which one assumes is monumental, most of it would look rather silly at anything other than a very fancy bash, full of masters of the universe with their trophy wives. And then some weeks ago we had an advertisement for a show at the Saatchi Gallery featuring something called Serpenti Metamorphosis. We booked ourselves a slot for the Monday before Christmas.

This despite my only previous experience of the Saatchi Gallery being a large converted garage (or some such) in north London containing lots of arty photographs of very unpleasant looking abdominal hernias. We got the impression from the passer-by that we asked the way that locals just assumed that anyone going there was some kind or perv or pedo. All rather distasteful.

But in a garage no longer, rather in some large chunk of what used to be the Duke of York's Headquarters, for which see reference 3. I had thought that it used to be the barracks for a couple of battalions of Foot Guards or something smart like that, but I now know that having started life as a school for the children of army widows about two hundred years ago, it became a sort of general purpose administration building for the army, a sort of army equivalent of Government Offices, Great George Street, known to cognoscenti as GOGGS.

Whole site sold off to a developer in 2000 for getting on for £100 million and now home to a variety of retail and hospitality operations - and the Saatchi Gallery, which you get into by passing through the central pillars in the snap above. Maybe it is a listed building, far too awkward and expensive for any regular occupation, so Saatchi have got it cheap.

Off to a good start in that it seemed pleasantly warm after the cold spell. Off to a bad start in that I forget my telephone, not realising until we were in Meadway, too far along the road to retrace my steps, although I would probably have made our train if I had resorted to the old Boy Scout trick of 25 paces walking, 25 paces running and so on.

The bearded indigent had moved from just outside the doors to just inside. He was still there when we got back some six or seven hours later. As far as I am aware he is not noisy or messy, just a touch untidy.

Train full by the time we got to Victoria. From where we managed to find our way to bus stop R without difficulty, from where we got a bus to what is now called Duke of York's Square. The bus stop being outside what I think I used at one time to be known as the Thistle Hotel, but is now the Clermont of reference 4. One of those grand hotels which used to be associated with all the big London railway stations. I remember the slightly faded, once very grand public areas of the ground floor, and very faded bedrooms that I could afford up on the fourth or fifth floor. Perhaps the Clermont people have done a refurb.

And so into the Saatchi gallery, where there was a good supply of very smooth front of house greeters, mostly young, mostly female. It turned out that we didn't need to have bothered booking at all, but one never knows. The booking was, in any case, a bit slack, not resulting in any kind of receipt or ticket. But then it was free and perhaps its purpose was to get our email address so that they could send us mail shots - not that any have arrived yet. Perhaps some cunning system detected my lack of proper Bulgari customer credentials.

The exhibition consisted of a room of moderate size containing Bulgari exhibits, enclosing a cubic experience. The two large walls were occupied by computer generated moving art, while the other two walls, the floor and the ceiling were mirrors. On entry things were so arranged that it seemed as if the floor was in free-fall, which took a few seconds to wear off. You got about fifteen minutes, which was about right. And I dare say one could have gone around again if one was so minded as they were not very busy.

A lot of the Bulgari exhibits were models and mock-ups rather than the real thing. But there was still a fair amount of real, mostly, as I recall, snake themed. Some very large stones, presumably valuable. As noted above, not clear, apart from high-end models who often wear ridiculous clothes anyway, who would wear the stuff, lovingly made though it was.

An interesting experience. A quick peek in some of the other rooms where some of the other stuff was quite good - worth a return visit at some point - and then out to lunch. Passing a modest number of Chelsea Pensioners on the way, mostly wearing high caps, one wearing a top hat and frock coat. Perhaps he was a Marshal of Pensioners.

Outside to try our luck at Vardo's, where we were told we could have a table provided we were not going to take more than 90 minutes about it. Lots of busy young staff, lots of ladies lunching, although the proportion of men present did increase as our lunch wore on. To be found at reference 5, part of the Caravan family of reference 6, with our not having coming across either brand before. But restaurants which come across as places trying to attract bright young things with money to spend. We rather liked this one.

The snap above gives an idea of the sort of thing on offer, including lots of things that we had never heard of. No telephone so I couldn't ask Cortana. In any event, we started with croquettes, the sort of thing you might get in a frozen box from Aldi or Iceland, except that the filling was a bit more exotic than you might expect from those places. To follow, I took a carafe of something white plus chicken with spiced up beans (a bit like miniature butter beans), while BH took a chunk of good looking cod with various trimmings, including a generous dollop of some bright yellow goo. The same bright yellow goo which came with the croquettes. Fortunately for me, on the side. All topped up with some toasted sourdough, which the waiter told us was the nearest they could do to white bread. To give him his due, he was rather amusing about it.

It took them a while to work out that they did not sell Calvados, despite boasting a cocktail operation, but they could do Jameson.

Two curious looking gentlemen hanging around outside. We wondered whether they were selling extras for the smart young things inside.

While the communal washbasin was an elaborate - and probably expensive - construction of aged timber with some kind of a metal liner. Several taps. About the size and shape of a coffin. All very artisanale. In fact, the whole place looked rather expensive and we wondered who had put up the money to build it. Is there really that much money in mid-range eateries?

All good fun. Although I dare say next time we turn up it will be full: no room at the inn for suburban pensioners on a day out.

Out to investigate Partridge's, a grocer which I think used to operate out of rather grand premises in Sloane Street, not far from Sloane Square. Good for a Polish boiling ring, something that one does not come across very often these days, having once been readily available in places like Woolworth's, back in the days when this last had a substantial grocery operation. Good for a bottle of Hambledon bubbly, that is to say made in the village where we stayed for a few months in the mid 1970's, in the upstairs of the east wing of a small country house. Our landlord there was a major general (father a full general, son a brigadier in Afghanistan last I heard) who went to dinner, maybe even played bridge, with the chap that started the bubbly vineyard. I think he might have been a military gent. too. Baguette adequate rather than good. But lots of other stuff to try, next time we are in the vicinity. See reference 8. Forgot the sauerkraut to go with the ring, but BH was able to sort that out in the course of her next visit to Kiln Lane.

After which we strolled down the Kings Road, admiring the various pubs, some famous, and various shops which had once been famous pubs. As far as the Fire Station where we picked up a No.319 to Clapham Junction. A bus which took us down Beaufort Street and which must have taken us past the house on the right where my elder brother once had a ground floor, front room. Back in the days when bedsits were all the thing.

Into Battersea Food & Wine of Falcon Road where I was pleased to find the last Turkish flat bread. Not quite as fresh as it might have been, and rather more salty than usual, but still pretty good. And making a pretty good fried egg sandwich the following morning. Plus some Turkish Delight. An excellent shop: there is always something one can take, even if it is not what one went in for. The source, for example, of the Kosovan sausage of reference 7.

The haul.

PS: I learn this afternoon that Bulgari also run hotels, including one in London. You can browse the very fancy website for free, but this viewer was well out of his wallet's comfort zone. I did not investigate whether the room rate included breakfast or whether you were allowed to smoke on the balcony.

References

Reference 1: https://www.bulgari.com/en-gb/.

Reference 2: https://www.saatchigallery.com/exhibition/serpenti_metamorphosis_by_refik_anadol.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duke_of_York%27s_Headquarters.

Reference 4: https://www.theclermont.co.uk/victoria.

Reference 5: https://vardorestaurant.co.uk/.

Reference 6: https://www.caravanrestaurants.co.uk/.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/04/kosova-suxhuk.html.

Reference 8: https://www.partridges.co.uk/.

Reference 9: https://hambledonvineyard.co.uk/. Later: military gent. indeed.

Hash

Last Sunday, both being somewhat convalescent after some bug or other - we thought not Covid - a lower key lunch was indicated, and we opted for corned beef hash.

A dish which I used to cook quite often as a child as an accompaniment to our evening meal, the assumption at that time being that we had all eaten properly in the middle of the day at our various schools and canteens. Cooked in an aluminum frying pan with lard, neither pan nor lard being acceptable these days, and covered with an enamel plate in lieu of a lid for the last half hour or so. Which resulted in a savoury brown crust at the bottom, provided, that is, that one had managed not to burn it.

A dish which BH used to cook reasonably regularly say thirty years ago, but only recently revived. I took charge on this occasion, which meant larger lumps of potato and a little water rather than rather more milk. The complete recipe being to boil potatoes in egg sized lumps for about ten minutes. Gently fry some onions in oil. Stir up potatoes, onions and a 12oz tin of corned beef. Add a little water. Put in glass dish with lid, put dish in oven at 160°C for about an hour. Serve with brussels sprouts if available, otherwise something green.

Plus, on this occasion, it being a Sunday near Christmas, a drop of Waitrose's Fleurie.

Dessert taking the form of a small amount of left over orange jelly, dried figs from Grape Tree and walnuts from Waitrose. It being a while since I have noticed walnuts in their shells in main line shops. These ones were quite dark and dirty looking, with no red diamonds, so not the ones you get from California. But they tasted fine just the same.

I went on to lose at Scrabble by an embarrassingly large margin when my penalty points for not going out are taken into account. Note that, according to OED the s* word is an Old English word, with the first use listed being from 1328, but now described as being no longer in decent use. The ruling here in Epsom was that this did not rule it out for the purposes of Scrabble and on this occasion it served to unblock an otherwise rather blocked game. While belling is perfectly respectable, if not in common usage. Although to be fair, I had been thinking of belling the cat and had forgotten about the dog hunting usage.

References

Reference 1: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=corned+beef. Just two mentions of hash here, both from more than ten years ago. Maybe I will checking the interval.

Reference 2: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2021/07/shanklin.html. Later: one of the few recorded hashes since 2012. As it happens, in Brading, in the Isle of Wight.

Dubai

I read yesterday of a boom in expensive housing in Dubai, in particular in a swanky area called the Emirates Hills, that is to say the orange blob in the map below. The Google camera van does not seem to be allowed inside these hills, perhaps that is part of what you are paying for, but it was allowed to cruise the periphery, giving me the image above. A sea of houses, all looking much the same, set in a network of big roads and softened with lots of green - this last presumably the work of expensively desalinated water. Presumably not carbon neutral at all.

I was reminded of the big housing estates you get in parts of the US, with their long walks to the nearest bars or shops. But why on earth would a rich foreigner want to live in a housing estate like the one above? Would the fact that the Dubai authorities are not too inquisitive about exactly where you got your money from be enough?

PS: if its too hot in the Persian Gulf - although maybe not too bad at this time of year, just north of the Tropic of Cancer - you can always go to Greenland. Presumably colder at the moment than it was at the time of Nansen's historic - and, as I recall, fairly near fatal - crossing.

References

Reference 1: New generation of rich spur boom in Dubai’s luxurious homes market: Demand soars since pandemic, with owners inundated with requests to sell homes with swimming pools and terraces - Simeon Kerr, Financial Times - 2022.

Reference 2: https://www.rsgs.org/Blog/fridtjof-nansen-the-first-crossing-of-greenland.

Reference 3: The First Crossing of Greenland - Fridtjof Nansen - 1895. Being a school prize for BH's maternal grandfather, in Bedford, that same year.

Mali

[Collection of James J. and Laura Ross. Equestrian: 12th–14th century: Middle Niger civilization. Dimensions: (Approx.) H.26 3/4 × D.7 × L.18 in. (68 × 17.8 × 45.7 cm). So around a couple of feet high. Something which would need a proper shelf]

I am presently working my way through the account of the interaction between western Africa, Europe and the Americas to be found at reference 1. And this afternoon I chanced across the image, lifted from the Met, above. The Met which I now know to be a very large establishment on the south eastern corner of Central Park. A place which I failed to reach in the course of my rather small number of visits to New York.

I had already learned that there were big gold mines in this part of Africa, part of the fuel for the Empire of Mali of reference 3. Helped along with salt and copper. Not an isolated corner of darkest Africa at all, but with, inter alia, strong links to places like Mamluk Egypt and Mecca beyond.

But I did wonder what sort of a civilisation would want statuettes of the sort snapped above. Or more precisely, the rulers of what sort of a civilisation. With enough surplus value and enough surplus time to take an interest in luxury goods of this particular, bibelot sort.

Maybe a rather racist thought as, at roughly the same time, the warrior kings of western Europe were quite happy to pour huge amounts of money into cathedrals, reliquaries and expensive illustrated books. Not to mention tombs and mausoleums. Perhaps also into jewellery. So why should the warrior kings of western Africa not go in for modest equestrian statues?

References

Reference 1: Born in Blackness: Africa, African and the making of the modern world: 1471 to the Second World War – Howard W. French – 2022.

Reference 2: https://www.metmuseum.org/.

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

Reference 4: https://www.nytimes.com/1973/08/22/archives/wedding-held-for-mrs-ross.html. These Ross's look to have been monied and successful legal people from Washington/New York.

Spanish customs

At reference 1, I mentioned the probability of various antiquated working practises still alive and kicking at Royal Mail. Prompted by a city working correspondent, we now move from the fringes of the public sector, to the full-on private sector, as exemplified by British Land (developer), Sir Robert McAlpine (builder) and JLL (tenant to be). I had to look JLL up, but it seems that they are a high end real estate operation, headquartered in Chicago.

Our correspondent has been taking an interest in the large hole in the ground to be seen from his window, with the street running behind the cranes from lower left to middle right being Eldon Street and the hole in the ground being the 1-2 Broadgate development - involving the demolition of a block put up just 35 years ago. Which seems terribly wasteful, but presumably the heritage people did not get into a lather about such a young building. No ancient inscriptions, no ancient corpses or anything else left of interest.

The point of present interest is the two cranes. Why would one plant two tower cranes so close together?

Zooming in, we find that we have a whole new working practise in the making. When I had anything to do with tower cranes, more than fifty years ago now, the idea was that the crane driver clambered up the ladder which runs up the middle of the tower at the start of his shift, say 08:00, carrying his cold tea and sandwiches for his breaks. He then came down again at the end of his shift, say 18:00. On his days off he scored some double time by doing something called 'greasing the cables'. 

But the go-ahead workers at McAlpine's (once famous for the public house ditty about McAlpine's fusiliers and their well filled hods), have now organised things so that the tower cranes are put up in pairs, sharing a special cage between them. Now, when driver of crane No.1 wants to get up to his cab at the top, he gets the driver of crane No.2 to do the necessary with the special cage, clearly visible in the snap above. No more clambering up cold ladders on cold and frosty mornings.

Going further, with twenty four hour working, if they get the timing of their shifts right, no crane driver ever need climb again.

I understand that the drivers are negotiating with McAlpine's about the provision of a remote control unit in the cage itself, which would be much more convenient and efficient. We understand that McAlpine's are presently stalling with some waffle about health and safety, so we await developments with interest.

PS 1: The ladders, running in twenty feet stretches between platforms, are just about visible in the zoom above.

PS 2: in my Treasury days, one used to hear the locution 'Spanish practises'. With reference 4 explaining its applicability to Royal Mail. It also points out that people of Spanish extraction living in this country find the phrase rather offensive. But then, maybe there are Spanish locutions that British expatriates find offensive. If they bother to learn enough Spanish, that is.

PS 3: following notice of the dog food people about a fortnight ago now, at reference 6, I am still getting one or two advertisements a day in my gmail. Presumably all tuneable, as some people are still at it years after my last purchase - for example, Eden, the Christian books and bric-à-brac people - while others drop out relatively quickly. Presumably all visible from the Google HQ.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/shapps.html.

Reference 2: https://www.buildington.co.uk/buildings/1709/ec2-london/1-2-broadgate/one-broadgate.

Reference 3: https://www.us.jll.com/.

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

Reference 5: https://youtu.be/dWQKxsF5i5E. For a rather fancy rendering of McAlpine's fusiliers.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/boarding-houses.html.

Sandown fury

I learn from Microsoft News this morning that planning fury has erupted at Sandown on the Isle of Wight, just along from where we are accustomed to take our holidays at Brading. It seems that we do not have a monopoly on this sort of thing here in leafy Epsom.

It also seems that the sometime owners of a house, perched on a cliff at the southern end of Sandown, at some point installed a rather ugly viewing platform at the top of the cliff, connected by a short tunnel to its garden. A tunnel which must run under the cliff path. The current (second home) owners of the house, for the greater comfort of their guests, now want to extend that tunnel to the basement of their house. And they have been given permission so to do. Much sound and fury. Much talk of disturbing the fragile cliff.

It all seems a bit silly to me, more money than sense or taste, but dangerous or something to work oneself up into righteous anger about, no. 

A pity that the viewing platform was built in the first place - but then the fringes of seaside resorts are littered with strange and wonderful constructions. Some of them occupied by strange and wonderful people, perhaps weak on baths and personal hygiene, strong on hair and recreational substances. Not that the owners of this house look to be in this category.

The house marked (for some reason) as No.2. The rather crooked platform visible to the right.

Location map. Blob marks the spot, very handy to the railway station at Lake. The fine beach at Yaverland, often mentioned in these pages, upper right. Brading off the top of the map.

No Street View, which appears to have been defeated by the cliff path, although you do get the start of it.

References

Reference 1: Fury as Sandown couple allowed to build 25ft underground tunnel in crumbling Isle of Wight cliff - Elly Blake, Daily Mail - 2022.

Reference 2: https://www.willdax.com/. The photographer. Hopefully he has done alright out of his drone pic, the news having made it through to both the Telegraph and the Times.

Reference 3: https://www.solentnews.co.uk/news. The agency. Not much to be had for free from here!

Weaner Wednesdays

Weaner Wednesdays, last reported at reference 1, continue with just the odd lapse. So on one occasion, I forgot not to take bacon at a hotel buffet breakfast. With the penalty taking the form of the bacon being far too salty. And on another, quite late in the evening, I forgot not to flash my credit card at an online shop. With the penalty taking the rather mild form of the wine concerned failing to turn up in a complete box, the top half of the box being absent. So no use for packing with rock wool to add to the insulating pile around the cold water tank in our now colder roof. A project last mentioned in these pages at reference 2.

This Wednesday, it was the turn of macaroni cheese with garlic, but on a previous occasion BH went the whole hog (so as to speak) and did us a full-on nut roast. A catch, from her point of view, being the large amount of preparation involved, not least passing the nuts through a food mixer. But given that it was her first attempt at such a thing, not bad at all, with a good flavour. But more work is needed on the water content, with this roast being a little soft to my palette.

Bets hedged with a conventional crumble, quite possibly plum crumble made using those big, dark, foreign plums you get in supermarkets. Even when proper English plums should be in season.

PS 1: the white specks on the roast are sesame seeds, much smaller than the yellow sesame seeds we used to get on the flat loaves sold by Cypriot bakers in Green Lanes of Harringay. But the Wikipedia entry suggests that there are lots of different sorts.

PS 2: I don't think the baker right is the right one at all. Neither the right tone nor quite the right place, which I think was the next block or so to the left. The white building at the end of the line, on the other side of the North Circular was, in our time, called the Cock Tavern. I remember it as more Irish than biker or acid (as mentioned at reference 4), but then, I was never or very rarely there in the evening.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/11/weaning-wednesdays.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/10/loft-ladder.html.

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

Reference 4: https://www.closedpubs.co.uk/london/n13_palmersgreen_cockinn.html. '1974/75 used to go to The Cock Inn when it was a Biker pub coz you could buy acid there. It was a bit rough and the sinks were usually full of pee. You'd be pushed around and it was a heavy place. But you could buy good acid, so you'd come back'.