I have been mulling over the relationship between information and the truth, but failed to put hands to keyboard before the present happenstance, that is to say chancing upon a book which I have owned for a long time, and read at some point, reference 1.
A book which opens with a quotation from one Jean Rostand: 'Le seule chose qu'on peut embellir sans qu'elle en périsse, c'est la vérité'. Which might be loosely translated as 'truth is the one thing that you can mess about with without killing it off', this in connection with a historical romance about Helen of Troy. Which, while in no way a reflection on the book itself, struck me as wrong. The truth is fragile and can easily be damaged by widely disseminated untruths.
Checking, I find that Chauveau went onto to write a lot of books, perhaps a score or more, and now appears to be a fully paid up member of the French literary establishment, possibly despite or perhaps because of a spicy past. She is, for example, pictured fag in hand on the back of my book, unthinkable now. A picture taken, as it happens, many years before the one above, which, with the help of Bing, I culled from reference 3.
While Jean Rostaud, from references 4, was clearly an interesting chap. Also photographed there fag in hand, or more accurately, pipe in hand. Mainly a scientist, so perhaps in thinking about truth, one ought to distinguish scientific truth, which one might argue has a more or less permanent, objective existence, from other kinds of truth, more subject to the vagaries of the banks and shoals of time. For which see Macbeth, Act I, Scene 7.
It was a vegetarian Wednesday, so all this while I waited for the gong for my vegetarian sausages from Sainsbury's. In a green wrapper, branded 'cauldron' and described as Lincolnshire sausages. Mostly made of soya beans, wheat and barley and I thought that they were rather unpleasant. Much better off with lentils or more regular beans.
There was also some tofu from Yorkshire, which looked very unappetising raw, rather better cooked. But which would have been better still cut into small pieces and lost in a savoury stew. Perhaps something involving curry powder. Perhaps in the form of a ready-meal, something which we do not do, or at least so rarely that I can't remember when it last happened. I do now remember that we used to have bean curd, which I think is much the same as tofu, fried in little flat bricks, served with some kind of salad and brown sauce in Chinese restaurants, shown in a round frying pan rather than on a rectangular serving dish in the snap above. Arranged in a tasteful brick pile. A long time ago now.
Luckily there were some rather good potatoes and cabbage to go with all the beanery.
In the margins, I have learned something about the cultivation of soya. I had thought it something which needed a lot of heat and a lot of water - somewhere like the Amazon basin in Brazil - while in fact, while it may well have started out in south east Asia, it is now grown all over the place, even in Ontario. While I only managed chick peas on my last allotment. For which see references 7 and 8.
References
Reference 1: Mémoires d'Hélène - Sophie Chauveau - 1988.
Reference 2: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sophie_Chauveau.
Reference 3: https://musee-magnin.fr/agenda/evenement/dimanche-16-juin-2019-un-auteur-au-musee-rencontre-avec-sophie-chauveau.
Reference 4a: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Rostand.
Reference 4b: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Rostand.
Reference 5: https://www.cauldronfoods.co.uk/. The source of the sausage.
Reference 6: https://tofoo.co.uk/. The story of the tofoo.
Reference 7: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soybean.
Reference 8: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=mouse+chick+wilson.
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