We will get there in the end!

We will get there in the end, despite the doubts and difficulties of many of our leaders. Along with the growing number of other countries, states and provinces which have already made the move. This being a snip from an email from Dignity in Dying this morning.

I associate to all the doubts and difficulties the medical professions at the time of the creation of the National Health Service back in the 1940's, now a national treasure, albeit one in a rather poor state of repair.

References

Reference 1: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/assisted-dying/international-examples/. A page which does not include the countries which are actively thinking about it, but which have not yet got there, for example Ireland.

Ton Jones one

Having read the fat epistolary novel from the eighteenth century called 'Clarissa' a couple of years ago, and having bought another fat novel called 'Tom Jones' at about the same time, as noticed at reference 1, I have now got around to reading it. Or at least, to starting to read it.

A good reading copy from Everyman's Library, printed and bound in Germany. 835 pages of text plus 35 pages of introductory material. This last being pitched about right for the likes of me. No contents pages - perhaps that was not the custom at the time of writing - but arranged in a large number of short chapters arranged in eighteen books, spread across two volumes, 408 and 427 pages respectively. I assume that it was first published in the same two volumes. So the same sort of length as Clarissa, but in a two decker format, rather than the three decker format which I believe the likes of George Eliot worked to, more than a century later.

The introduction explains that the careers of the present author, Henry Fielding, overlapped with that of Samuel Richardson and the two were great rivals, with Fielding publishing a spoof of the latter's 'Pamela', although it also seems that Fielding built on Richardson more than he perhaps cared to admit in print. Tom Jones came out a year or two after Clarissa and both did very well.

A proper novel rather than an epistolary novel, coming with plenty of explanatory, signposting material from the author in the text. I dare say a good number of what were then topical digressions. A much more obviously self-conscious production altogether than either Clarissa or a novel of today: the first chapter of the last book, for example, is called 'A farewell to the reader'.

By way of example of a short digression, we have some observations on newspapers, which had to fill up the same amount of space irrespective of whether there was any news to put in it or not. With some other authors filling up their novels in much the same way, allocating so many pages to the month, month after month. Fielding promises that he will not do this, that he will only hold forth when there is something to hold forth about. 

I suppose a modern novelist might use this kind of material but would work it into the text, in disguise, as it were. Which can sometimes make a novel a bit heavy going; a trap I thought Aldous Huxley fell into quite often, forgetting whether he was writing a novel or an essay.

My first impression is that this is going to be a more accessible read than Clarissa. Also a lot funnier. But only 40 pages in, so early days!

References

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

Ladderland

A few days ago we decided that we needed a garden ladder, something that was a bit steadier and a bit taller than the various step ladders that we have in the garage, including one rather old and possibly dangerous wooden one.

Perusal of BH's gardening magazine suggested that a spread leg, adjustable tripod was the thing. But perusal of web sites for both garden centres and builders merchants suggested that while plenty of such ladders were available mail order, few if any places were into carrying stocks for inspection. Inspection that we were rather keen on, given that ladders of this sort appear to come in at around £400. Which is a lot, but hopefully cheaper and easier than getting in an occasional gardener. Which is not so easy now that so many of the Poles and so forth have gone home.

Eventually we ran down the Honeys, near Guildford, no relation of the baking Honeys of Horrabridge, who claim at reference 1 to be the largest supplier of arborists' equipment in the tree care industry. And they did have a tripod which we could inspect, although any actual purchase would be mail order.

So this morning, off we went. Some difficulty getting through the junction by the railway bridge at Oxshott, but little difficulty getting through the massive junction works where the A3 meets the M25. And, just as BH thought that her navigation had gone wrong, there we were at the arborists' emporium. Including all kinds of fancy gear for rope work, as snapped above

The ladder on show was most impressive. In particular, it was hugely more solid underfoot than any of our steps. So we were sold, and hopefully a new ladder should turn up in a few days. One less excuse for me not to prune our various shrubs swept away.

We opted to return on the scenic route to Dorking, which was indeed very scenic. We passed near quite a number of what appeared from the road to be Wellingtonia, but I was either too slow, or access was by private road or there did not seem to be any access at all. So none scored. The best we could do was revisit the two Wellingtonia scored in the course of a heritage visit to Dorking last year, as noticed at reference 2.

Wellingtonia apart, we thought we should mark the occasion by taking a light lunch at the Denbies wine estate, now doubling up as a pit stop (in the way of a National Trust establishment), a hotel, an art gallery and more besides.

Art which included the item snapped above, which could have been ours for £3,500. The ticket did not say whether it was a unique art work, a limited edition or what. In any event, we passed.

BH took tea and tuna sandwich, I took tea and double sausage roll. These last involving a lot of flake, a great many calories and some meat. Served warm in a rather large pressed cardboard container, which we were assured was recyclable, if not actually recycled. Perfectly acceptable, but maybe on the next occasion we will raise our game to the Snooty Fox Café of Shalford and reference 4, a Surrey take on the greasy spoon, say the Market Restaurant of Whitecross Street, noticed from time to time in these pages. 

I passed on Snooty on this occasion being taken by surprise and being a fair way from home. I wonder now how many of their patrons used to read Lord Snooty in the dorm after lights out, when they were very young?

PS: an advertisement for the Honeys turned up in my gmail email seconds after I posted this. Very on the ball these people at Google - even if this particular horse had already bolted.

References

Reference 1: https://honeybros.com/.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/09/wellingtonia-93.html.

Reference 3: https://www.denbies.co.uk/.

Reference 4: https://thesnootyfox.uk/.

Pot luck

Back in May I noticed at reference 1 the irritating but useful library book at reference 2. My phone made easy. Well it did help a bit, but I was only using the book intermittently and I thought that after at least one renewal that I ought to return it to the library and buy something of my own to fill the gap - being old enough for this sort of material to work better in book form than on a screen.

So off to Amazon and see what their search function turned up, a crude technique which usually works out OK. On this occasion, it turned up reference 3, which I selected because it was keyed to my particular phone, rather than to Android in general in the way of the library book, and which turns out to be one of those books printed off by Amazon themselves - which seems to mean good quality paper, good quality binding but a very variable standard of book production, often poor. In this case, the standard of book production - by which I mean more the appearance and feel of the book and its pages, rather than its content or value - important, nevertheless, to me - was indeed poor. For example, the typeface is far too large, although possibly intended to be suitable for the fading eyesight of an older readership. The index, while present, does not work: the book seems to have been paginated at print time, leaving the page numbers in the index behind. The standard of proof reading is poor and there are are lots of typos.

More important, one day in, the book seems to be more of a conversion guide for someone who has had a Samsung telephone before, rather than a reasonably self-contained guide for the older beginner. All kinds of basic stuff does not seem to be covered at all. We are not told, for example, how the all-important home screen is organised, although there are various scattered tips about how one might change it. One of which, to be fair, was useful. Almost paid for the book in one go.

And the use of in-text icons helps a lot. It is usually easy to move from page to screen.

On the other hand, there is lots of stuff in which I have no present interest at all. Like stuff about making contactless payments, about something called tethering and about editing videos. But I dare say there are readers out there who want it. I might, one day!

Last but not least, I am introduced to Bixby, the Samsung intelligent companion, a relative of Cortana (Microsoft) and Siri (Apple). I can now get Bixby to tell me what a picture that I have just taken is about. For example, it can tell me that the picture is a kitchen with white fronted kitchen units. Which is clever, but not yet useful. And she has an irritating voice.

We shall see how I get on in the days and weeks to come.

PS 1: the author, one Glen D. Banks, does not appear on the Internet at all; at least, I could not find him this morning (Tuesday). Does he exist at all? Is he a convenient fiction dreamed up by Amazon or Samsung?

PS 2: I should have been in less of a hurry and bothered to use the 'read sample' feature which had been provided by Amazon at the point of purchase. Can't think now why I didn't. 

PS 3: part of this morning's fix from Medscape, reference 4, tells me that 'Human Rights Watch, the nonprofit that for decades has called attention to the victims of war, famine, and political repression around the world, is taking aim at US hospitals for pushing millions of American patients into debt. / In a new report ... the group calls for stronger government action to protect Americans from aggressive billing and debt collection by nonprofit hospitals, which Human Rights Watch said are systematically undermining patients' human rights ... about 100 million people ... have some form of healthcare debt ... About a third of US adults with healthcare debt owed money for hospitalization, KFF's polling found. Close to half of those owed at least $5,000. About a quarter owed $10,000 or more.'. Hopefully voters here in the UK will work out that the US way of doing health is not a very good way, whatever their Tory leaders might think about it.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/05/samsung-day-eight.html.

Reference 2: Android Phones and Tablets for dummies - Dan Gookin - 2018.

Reference 3: Samsung: Galaxy A54: User guide - Glen D. Banks - 2022.

Reference 4: International Rights Group Calls Out US for Allowing Hospitals to Push Millions Into Debt - Noam N. Levey, Medscape - 2023.

Adult social care on the page

[concerning an institution somewhere in the troubled zone between health care and social care]

Having some contact with the business of adult social care, the piece from Medscape at reference 1 caught my eye. A short piece about MPs not being happy with the government response (reference 4) to their report (reference 3) on the implementation of the adult social care white paper (reference 2). Say 230 pages in all.

I don't suppose many of those working in adult social care will work their way through this lot and I certainly have not. But the story seems to be that while the white paper sets out some good proposals and all kinds of admirable aspirations, the framework, money and drive needed to turn these proposals and aspirations into a decently paid workforce providing decent care are not there. A story which aligns well enough with my contact with one small part of the adult social care system: not enough money and ineffective management, with the second following on in a predictable way from the first.

But who knows? Who is actually going to wade through all this stuff and produce a story which is short enough for the rest of us to read? With the wader not being part of the system which produced all the stuff in question in the first place. One might think that this was a proper job for responsible journalists: so will the Financial Times or the Guardian get around to it? Or do we just trust our leaders to get on with the job while we get on with our own lives?

All of which I find a bit depressing. Hard to see that anything much is actually going to move on the ground any time soon. But there is lots of expensively crafted paper work. 

Maybe I am being too harsh: there is more here than Prime Minister May managed before she was told to drop the whole subject. Maybe we really are slowly getting to grips with this thorny subject. I hope so.

Other matters

One of the objectives in the white paper, very near the beginning, is to so arrange things that 'people can access outstanding quality and tailored care and support'. Which struck me as irritating twaddle. Whoever, whatever is going to pay for outstanding, even supposing we knew what that was, in this long neglected sector, at a time when a lot of real incomes are going down rather than up and public finances are in such a dire state? 

The word 'market' occurs 64 times in the white paper, reflecting the continuing faith of our government in private provision for profit. While 'digital' at 48 beats 'training' at 42 by a short head. While 'fairness', picked out by Bard as one of four key themes, runs up a paltry 3. 'Collaboration' does a bit better at 11. Perhaps the writers of these documents should be encouraged to include frequency counts for the 20 most frequently used substantive words in an appendix.

I had fed Google's Bard the title of the white paper, that is to say the text of reference 2, less the bit about pages. It knew well enough what I wanted to know about and I thought it made a fair stab of summarising for me what the white paper was all about, even if it did strike a rather optimistic tone and even if the four key themes it extracted from the white paper were not to be found there, at least not so labelled. Themes yes, but different ones. So not a summary that one could just copy and paste into one's own summary, but as a way into a rather forbidding document, not bad at all.

It was happy to provide the frequency counts suggested above, as snapped above. I checked four of the numbers against the counts provided by Microsoft's Edge's 'Find on page' feature and found they were wildly out, although they were in the right order. So Bard's intuitions (as it were) were not bad and it knew that it should present the frequencies in a little table, but it couldn't do the actual sums - that is to say, much the same as the problem reported near the end of reference 5.

Maybe Google need to strengthen the small print at the bottom of the snap to something more like 'Bard does make stuff up and sometimes gets it very wrong...'. Just saying 'inaccurate' is a bit feeble, economical with the truth even. But perhaps they are more worried about the 'offensive' side of things, which follows and which I have yet to come across.

PS 1: regarding the top of the snap above, I don't know how the BBC knows who I am.

References

Reference 1: Adult Social Care Strategy 'Lacks Clarity and Detail': MPs have expressed disappointment over the Government's "lack of clarity and detail" over how they intend to plug a funding gap in adult social care in England - Peter Russell, Medscape - 2023.

Reference 2: People at the Heart of Care: Adult Social Care Reform White Paper - Secretary of State for Health and Social Care - 2021. 104 pages.

Reference 3: Long-term funding of adult social care: Second Report of Session 2022–23 - Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee of the House of Commons - 2022. 89 pages.

Reference 4: The Government’s response to the Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Committee report 'Long-term funding of adult social care' - Minister for Social Care - 2023. 40 pages.

Reference 5: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/fake-161.html.

After Windrush

A week or so ago, more or less by chance, to Smith Square to see something photographic about the Windrush generation.

Warm by mid afternoon when I set off from Epsom Station. Bearded indigent was present by his door, dragging on a tin of something that may not have been alcoholic. While a rather different representative of the human race took the form of a young lady on the train, I imagine from somewhere in the far east, elaborately dressed in all-over cream. Face mask. Cardigan. A lot of gauze over an underskirt. A fancy looking cream handbag with gold effect trim. One supposed that she was dressed up for something important, but without going so far as to ask (which seemed a bit much), no idea what that something might have been.

Took a Bullingdon from the very top of the ramp at Waterloo. But the basket was bent and the back brake was extremely noisy, although working. Red flagged at Drury Lane. On the way picking up the piano noticed at reference 1. There was also a near stationary helicopter hovering over the Aldwych, near stationary because it seemed to keep drifting off position and then having to move back to it. Perhaps it was a learner driver. It was rather noisy; irritating if you were outside and underneath.

Plenty of cycles about. As is usual, some having road & traffic light manners, some not.

Fine new cobbles being installed in Shorts Gardens. How much are they costing? One supposes rather more than tarmacadam. The sign for the cheese shop can just about be seen under the hanging barrel. Click to enlarge.

Bought my cheese, pulled a second Bullingdon and coasted down to Smith Square. Almost came a cropper on an early right turn off Millbank into Great Peter Street (rather than Dean Stanley Street, which was next), as just at that point a previously unseen young lady cyclist was overtaking me on the right. I had to pull in and wait for a gap in the traffic. Needless to say, in days of old, being overtaken by a lady cyclist would not have been a possibility I had to think about. But at least there was a space in the stand at Smith Square.

Being a few minutes early, I admired the gardens around the church, then settled down at the top of some steps to wait. Transport House to the left, with people coming and going, Europe House to the right, not very busy at all. And a rather curious tree in front: what had happened in its life to give it this curious shape. Was the gardener keen to make a nature reserve for smaller animals out of all the ivy?

An architectural oddity, underneath the tree. Can't work out from gmaps what is going on here.

A neat mend. I suppose that someone or something bashed the corner off. Also that restoration contractors and the masons attached to places like Westminster Abbey could still be found to do such work.

Another oddity, out of sequence, opposite the Marquis.

Noise from a Chinook, low & loud, flying up-river.

Noise from the Marquis, full of the after work crowd. No doubt lots of people from the Home Office, where I ended up.

The event was not the exhibition I was expecting. Rather it was a launch party for the second Windrush flavoured exhibition of pictures put together by one Jim Glover. One could buy the two books or one could visit Clapham Library in Clapham High Street (reference 3), but in the meantime you got a few samples and a talk from Glover - and to be fair, he was good at it. And he must have a touch with people generally, to have been allowed in in the way he was. So exhibition one, a few years ago now, was black and white photographs of the Windrush generation themselves. Exhibition two, the current one, was colour photographs of the generation which came later. He seemed to be particularly interested in the way in which customs brought from the West Indies survived, were adapted or faded away in their new home.

The audience, perhaps thirty of us, mainly older white middle class; Guardian readers all I dare say. With a sprinkling of blacks ladies, a fair proportion of whom were prepared to get up and say a few words. One of the them explained that back in the 1950's a lot of Jamaicans were very patriotic, very keen to do their bit for Queen and country. Wine and bread sticks. The whole session was oddly moving and I hope to get to Clapham in the not too distant future.

A few snippets

The big Jamaican community was in south London, perhaps centred on Stockwell and Brixton. Although I remember big immigrant communities in both Gloucester and High Wycombe in the late 1960's. Going so far as to rent a bedroom in Gloucester for a few weeks off a very pleasant, older chap from the West Indies, not I think Jamaica, at about the same time.

Dominoes was a big game in their clubs and pubs.

We were told of the partner system, whereby a group of people would get together and pool regular savings, thereby enabling the occasional substantial loan to be made to a member. I think because they did not have the same access to building societies and banks as white people - but they did think owning their own home was important. Gave them a stake, I suppose, in their new land.

[Bing seems to know mostly about the Walt Disney and Enid Blyton versions. I prefer that from my own time]

We were told of stories about a clever spider, sometimes called Anansi, stories originating in west Africa. Stories which were related to the Brer Rabbit stories which I grew up with - to the point of developing the knack of reading them aloud. And I still have a copy of the book, first noticed at reference 6.

There was talk of sugar art and crochet - and as it happened a young lady was doing crochet across the aisle from me on the way home. I got to thinking about how it was that when weaving, you needed a free end, which you passed back and forth on a shuttle. While in knitting (with two needles) and crochet (with one), you managed without free ends at all, never mind warp and weft. There must be some topological difference (knot theory?) which I was not quite able to compute at the time and will have to get BH to demonstrate for me. And it further happens that only the other day we turned up her bag of knitting wool and, hopefully, the necessary needles.

PS: a snip from the Guardian: 'Jim Grover was group strategy director of Diageo plc for 16 years.  He is now semi-retired, combining life as a senior adviser to branded consumer goods businesses with being a photographer'.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/06/piano-72.html.

Reference 2: https://windrushfoundation.com/. The subject.

Reference 3: https://lambethwindrush.com/whats-on/. The exhibition.

Reference 4: http://www.jimgroverphotography.com/about. The photographer.

Reference 5: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-37471476. A rather different work.

Reference 6: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2008/04/e-number-pie.html. For the avoidance of doubt, the nannies in question are the nanny state, not the ones with perambulators.

Stag beetle

[Both types of stag beetle can fly, but the female beetles do so less often than the males - Michal Fuglevič, Alamy stock photo]

Yesterday evening we had a large, male stage beetle buzzing about a neighbouring garden for a while. Massive great thing and the claws (or perhaps horns) were clearly visible when the angle was right.

Search suggests that we had seen them before in 2010 and 2011 (reference 3) and then again in 2019 (reference 4). So quite a rarity, not that we go around looking for them.

A 'File Explorer' search of the archive turned up 28 results, but inspection revealed that most of these had matched 'stag' to words like 'stage' which was no use at all. A search which perhaps parsed to: 'give me all documents which, considered as a case-blind string of characters, contain both the sub-string 'stag' and the sub-string 'beetle', that is to say without regard to word boundaries. Not what was wanted on this occasion at all.

Noting in passing that the 'case blind' bit means that the chip doing the work has to do rather more than just test whether two characters are equal. On the upside, an upper case letter is separated from its lower case equivalent by a fixed offset in the list of Unicode characters. While on the downside, if we were French or otherwise foreign, there would be the whole question of accents to worry about.

Back with beetle, Bing search for Fuglevič turned up quite a lot of stuff, which did not appear to include a personal website but which did include reference 5. He appears to be something of a specialist in insect photography.

I suppose the snap above is a female something attending to its young. Or is it collecting its dinner?

I close by wondering why evolution went to the bother of having these large but short lived adults at all, which do not live much longer than the short time needed to breed. Surely one could have achieved the same result with much less effort? And why bother with the wing cases? One could see more point if they stuck around for a bit longer.

References

Reference 1: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stag_beetle. The short story.

Reference 2: https://www.nhm.ac.uk/discover/stag-beetles.html. Something more substantial, with some striking pictures. The source of the first snap above.

Reference 3: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/search?q=stag+beetle.

Reference 4: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/search?q=stag+beetle.

Reference 5: https://www.megapixel.cz/rozhovor-michal-fuglevic-jak-fotit-detail. The source of the second snap above.