Sunday trivia

[English writer and novelist Agatha Christie (1890-1976) seated at a desk with a typewriter and two stacked towers of hardback books in a library room at her home, Winterbrook House near Wallingford, Oxfordshire in 1950. On a bookshelf behind sits a six volume 'Survey of Persian Art' edited by Arthur Pope. Agatha Christie has written a number of crime novels and stories featuring the fictional detectives Hercule Poirot and Miss Jane Marple. (Photo by Jack Esten/Popperfoto via Getty Images)]

A chance encounter on Amazon Prime led BH to her biography of Agatha Christie, last noticed at reference 1. Which led me to wonder where the picture there came from, with all its imposing books - six of which turn out to be a very substantial survey of Persian Art from Oxford.

Google Images reveals that the Guardian is fond of this particular picture, with a larger version to be found at reference 2. A version attributed to Popperfoto of reference 3, now taken into the Getty family. From where I fairly quickly get to reference 4, which offers two versions of what might be the original photographs, with the one above dated 1st January 1950, so only a few months younger than I.

Jack Esten is visible and I learn that he was a 'Photographer for the Daily Herald; war photographer serving during second world war; took pictures worldwide; active 1940s-1950s' - but I think it is going to take serious effort to dig deeper and find the occasion for the very posed picture included above. Presumably some article or projected article about Christie in some newspaper with which he was connected. I suppose one could peer at the Daily Herald for the first few weeks or months of 1950. But I pass on that one.

Second up, we had potmenders, which cropped up in a Scottish croft in a BH Beckwith pick-me-up from Raynes Park platform library. What were they? Were they anything to do with pots and pans - or were they something completely different?

In fairly short order, I find that they were indeed used for mending pots and pans, something that people were still doing well into the 1940s. A time when pots and pans - and other containers of that sort - were not what they are now and did develop holes. Perhaps the result of too much fire or heat underneath. A time when mending pots and pans was a service offered by travelling tinkers, along with clothes pegs.

And if you did not care for tinkers, there were plenty of gadgets that you could buy in hardware stores. Essentially a pair of metal washers joined by bolt or rivet. A bit clumsy, but it worked. Got you a bit more life out of the offending pot.

Neither I nor BH remember any such things from our childhood, but it seems quite likely that our parents would have known about them. Certainly FIL, who very much approved of make-do-and-mend and who worked in a hardware store before he joined the RAMC at the start of the second war.

And last, I have been prompted by all this to take another look at Georgette Heyer's take on the Battle of Waterloo, still to be found on my Kindle. Last noticed at reference 5.

PS 1: over breakfast, I have read in the Epsom Comet of ready meals from people called ParsleyBox (of reference 6) which do not need to be kept in fridge or freezer. In the same sector of the market as Wiltshire Farm Foods, with whom FIL had a fleeting connection. I dare say they would be quite like the sort of thing you are offered in the economy section of aeroplanes - but it would still be interesting to know how they do it.

Not quite enough above, although as BH observed, rather like canned food, with plastic replacing the tinned steel. With the once distinct textures and flavors tending to soften and blend together, rather in the way that my soups degrade overnight. Do they offer tours of their kitchen?

PS 2: after lunch I checked the Longmans, the Shorter Oxford, the Oxford and Webster's dictionaries. None of them admitted to potmender, pot-mender or pot mender. Nor did Chamber's encyclopaedia. Plenty of pot words on offer, even pot-m words like pot mender and pot marjoram, but not these ones. Which I found a little surprising.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/10/agatha.html.

Reference 2: https://www.theguardian.com/crosswords/crossword-blog/2018/nov/12/agatha-christies-curtain-and-its-crossword. Agatha Christie's Curtain and its crossword: Billed as Poirot’s last case, Agatha Christie’s Curtain depends on a crossword for its plot – how does it fare? - Alan Connor, Guardian - 2018.

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

Reference 4: https://www.gettyimages.co.uk/search/2/image?family=editorial&phrase=agatha%20christie.

Reference 5: https://psmv2.blogspot.com/2015/01/georgette-heyer.html.

Reference 6: https://www.parsleybox.com/.