Festive legumes

In years gone by, it was our custom to take lentil soup on Christmas Eve, for a few years cooked on the coal burning stove which used to live in the back extension. This year we have gone for a double barrelled affair, taking green pea soup a few days ago and orange lentil soup today. The other significant change was buying a smoked hock from Ben the Butcher. A special order, so a far cry from the days when one could buy them from the bacon counter at Woolworths, more or less a giveaway, and when one could have an Eisbein with sauerkraut and mash at Schmidt's of Charlotte Street.

Soaked the hock in water overnight, scraped the skin (as instructed in the Radiation cook book for some reason) and rinsed it again in cold water. The idea being to leach out some of the salt (and other curing chemicals) - otherwise the soup can turn out too salty. Weighed in at 3lbs 9oz. Go for 90 minutes boiling.

Dug the extra large saucepan out of the cupboard and covered the hock with water. A tablespoon of sugar, some peppercorns and a few cloves. It was boiling at 07:45 at which point I turned it down to simmer. Skimmed the not very plentiful white foam off the water from time to time. Turned the heat off at 09:05 and left the hock in the hot water. Took it out at 10:30.

Headed out to Sainsbury's for the white bread to go with it, a rather wet ride as it turned out. Passed a trolley by the Screwfix underpass. Picked up a new-to-me long format white pudding from the Manor Green Road butcher on the way home.

In parallel, cooked the peas. We had an old packet, full of instructions about soaking overnight and boiling off toxins, years past their sell-by date. Chucked them in favour of the new packet which was much more friendly. No need to soak and no talk of toxins. Settled on 10oz. Washed them in cold water, which was noticeably dirty when I poured it away. Put them on to boil at 11:30 in about three pints of water, half liquor from the hock, half fresh water. Boiled with the lid off for about 10 minutes, skimming more white foam off. Set to simmer at 11:45.

Cooked up some butter, finely chopped garlic and coarsely chopped onion.

Cleaned and diced about half the meat from the hock. Rather closer to genuine ham cut from the bone than the stuff you can easily buy these days.

The soup was spot on time and very good, despite being a little thinner than I was aiming for. Taken with the factory white from Sainsbury's. Which was right for the soup, but very raw and lightweight compared to my own wholemeal - but then it was very cheap at £1.45 for a large bloomer.

Polished off the balance later the same day. Rather nearer its real life green in this snap. It really was green pea soup.

Then today it was the turn of the orange lentils. The last occasion appears to have been just about a year ago (reference 2), when I used 8oz of lentils and reported the soup as being good but thin.

So this year, I went for 12oz. Rinsed in cold water, with the rinsing water turning quite opaque and milky. With a good number of the black specks which look rather like dead flies floating on the surface. Added them to about 4 pints of water, say two thirds hock liquor. Which in the interval had acquired some fat floating on top, but not enough to skin over. I didn't bother fishing it out. Boiled the lentils for 10 minutes then took them off the heat around 11:15.

Back on the heat about 12:30.

Garlic and onions started in a separate pan about 13:00.

Cross-sliced carrots, a little slivered white cabbage and even less celery added to the lentils at 13:20.

Cleaned and dice most of the remaining ham.

Served with white bread - the second half of the loaf from Sainsbury's, held over in the freezer. Plus a few more dead flies turned up. All perfectly fit for today's purpose and it all went down well.

What was left of the hock; enough for a little snacking. Note that by this time it was clear that there were indeed two bones, that is to say leg below the knee, the socket of which is visible right.

Festive sweetmeats for dessert: stollen goujons, dried figs from Greece and chocolates from France. This despite the figs coming from a Turkish convenience store at Clapham Junction and the chocolates coming with Swiss flavoured packaging. The figs were a little damp to my taste, but that may have been the result of taking them after the rather sugary goujons. Bad menu planning rather than bad figs.

The whole being rounded off by a snifter of Calvados from Waitrose. Followed by snooze, followed by a spot of gardening, that is to say leaf collection.

The left-over third of the soup will probably be taken over the next 24 hours.

Verdict: using a hock is a bit of a flap-doodle but it was worth it. It helps if you like, as we do, leguminous soups.

PS: later: small saucepan right done, just the bowl left to go. A heritage bowl from the once famous French company Sovirel (the abbreviated form of 'La Société des verreries industrielles réunies du Loing'), all mixed up with the patents for Pyrex travelling across the Atlantic to the US. Once the latest in kitchen ware, now collectible. One of their factories, snapped above, now more or less derelict. See reference 3.

References

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

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/lentil-soup.html.

Reference 3: https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Verrerie_Saint-Martin.

Trolleys 601 and 602

The first trolleys of the new century were captured yesterday in the margins of buying a sprout tree against a possible table decoration, as noticed last year at reference 2.

A total of five trolleys, two of which had been fastened together by their coin lock chains, top left in the snap above, something I have not seen for many months. The remaining three involved three sizes, two stores and two trips - so it seemed reasonable to score them as two trolleys.

Then in the Ashley centre there was a stray trolley from the late lamented Wilko, next to a rather lamentable attempt at a Christmas tree. The Wilko shop in the High Street, on the other side of the market place, has been partially stripped out and is firmly shut, so there was nowhere obvious to return the trolley to. I don't suppose whoever is looking after the Wilko assets in Epsom wants it now, even supposing one knew who that was. Not scored.

PS: after breakfast: I am pleased to be able to report that after searching a number of other possible places, such as the garage and the cupboard under the stairs, the tree stand has now been found, hanging from a purlin in the roof space. All wrapped and ready to go for its second round.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/trolley-600.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/12/festive-sprout.html.

Group search key: trolleysk.

Polesden

A week or so ago we paid our Christmas visit to Polesden Lacey, this year a few days before the event, rather than the few days after of last Christmas, noticed at reference 1.

The journey started with a minor blockage around Christ Church, with near half the road being blocked with parked cars. Presumably something or other going on in the church, with a proportion of the attendance content to park in the road, rather than find somewhere more convenient to other road users and walk.

While the journey ended being slowed down by a lorry delivering a whole lot of the interlocking steel mats used to cover up the field used as an overflow car park. Mats which I thought I had noticed before, but cannot today track down. In any event, plenty of people had turned up to enjoy the festive fun by 11:00.

First stop was the cafeteria for coffee etc, where I took tea and a cheese scone. Neither looking nor tasting anything like those noticed at reference 2, but acceptable nonetheless. Probably better than the sweet scones which were also on offer, and which I find go stale a lot faster than cheese scones. For some reason, the cafeteria made me think of care homes. Maybe this was what the residents lounge would look like at elevenses time.

This may have been something to do with the Christmas trail offered (for a fee) to children. But I did not get as far as reading the information board which might have explained all.

Some mushrooms on the sheltered path on the way to the big house.

All the fun of the fair. Plus extensive renewal of the external walls. Trust talk on information boards of going back to Mrs. Greville's original colours and finish. No expense spared.

And so on into the house, where we found that the principal rooms had been professionally decorated by one Charlotte Lloyd Webber of reference 4, once the daughter-in-law of the famous Lloyd Webber. A fellow visitor, who suspected that I was not an enthusiast, explained that this sort of thing was an excellent way of providing work for resting theatrical scene dressers, regular work being a bit thin on the ground at the moment. I still wondered about the expense: it may not have been my bag, but a lot of work had gone into it.

A repurposed billiard table.

Not for the first time, I wondered about actually looking at the books, some of which might have been interesting, for example those snapped above. The trusty gave me the official line about accumulating grease from sweaty visitor paws, but she was also quite sympathetic. She offered to fetch someone who would be allowed to open a book for me and I think she would have turned a blind eye had I discretely taken a peek, but I did not like to put her to the test. She was only a volunteer after all. But silly for all that. Maybe the Trust should run book lovers' days, when some at least of the books can be looked at. They could even charge extra to keep the riff-raff away: I would turn out. I don't any of them are actually valuable, just old and sometimes impressive, as here.

How long is it since gentlemen of leisure actually read their way through books of this sort? Or books of sermons? I associated to the dozen of or so very fat volumes of Churchill stuff edited, as I recall, by one Martin Gilbert of reference 5, and knocked down to me for a tenner. Hard to see anyone pouring so much time into Churchill now. But I suppose he was as important to the British people who lived through the second world war as Nelson and Wellington were to the British people who lived through the Napoleonic wars. Which reminds me that I still think the less of the French for making such a cult of such a blood-thirsty tyrant. Star general though he may have been, at least most of the time.

Some bulbs starting to show outside.

And plenty of cyclamen. I suppose that they have already flowered. Ours have.

A bright clear day, so aeroplanes going down to Heathrow should have been visible just below the northern horizon, but I failed to spot anything. Maybe next time I will bring the monocular and may do better.

Drew a blank at the nearby fish shop too, it being Monday and it being shut.

Home to the mushrooms already noticed at reference 6.

PS: checking for Churchill, I find that memory is not that defective. See reference 7. Although, to get at which, I was reduced to the geekery of view page source.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/01/festive-polesden.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/11/cheesy.html.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/fake-168.html.

Reference 4: https://clweventdesign.com/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_Gilbert.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/mushrooms.html.

Reference 7: https://pumpkinstrokemarrow.blogspot.com/2010/11/churchill-1.html.

Erewhon

This being notice of my first reading of Samuel Butler’s Erewhon (reference 1), introduced by Wikipedia at reference 2. 

Erewhon, the book first noticed at reference 3 and bought for next to nothing – that is to say £2.65 including postage – from Awesome Books of reference 4, via Abebooks (now owned by Amazon). A perfectly decent Penguin paperback first published in 1970, so quite possibly quite old. Hard to see how it can be worth anyone’s while to punt books out at this sort of price.

Not to be confused with the Californian foodie operation at reference 5 below and snapped above.

We get a scholarly introduction, the 1872 title page, the very short original preface, the rather more substantial prefaces of 1872 and 1901, 29 chapters, an appendix and some notes; 270 pages in all. The first six chapters are a regular travel adventure story, the narrator’s story of getting over the mountains to Erewhon from his colonial sheep farm, the last two the perilous escape from Erewhon with his lady love and what happened next. The intervening 21 chapters being the account of life in and customs of Erewhon. I only realised rather late in the day that ‘Erewhon’ is a three syllable anagram of ‘nowhere’.

Erewhon being a place not so very different from nineteenth century England, but stretched a bit here and there to make Butler’s points. A sort of satirical essay in story form.

A book which, unlike Walden Two, does not offer a recipe for the good life, rather has spirited pops at various Victorian customs and beliefs. A lot of which are still relevant today, for example his amusing ideas for the proper management of memorial sculptures in public spaces. Perhaps he saw the London of his day being rather plagued with the stuff, rather as I see London now.

A few samples

Chapter 10. The curious ideas of the Erewhonians about crime and punishment. With being physically ill being a serious crime, sometimes resulting in imprisonment. While theft or fraud was a less serious matter, often treated by the family straightener, who would usually prescribe a course of physical punishment, rather in the way that with us the family doctor might prescribe a course of treatment.

Page 166. Some sensible remarks about the limitations of translations and of language generally.

Page 169. Magic potions for those of the unborn (extraterrestrial arrivals) who rather foolishly decide to be born here. I am reminded of the widespread use of magic potions in fiction and drama: Shakespeare, Gilbert (of Gilbert and Sullivan) and, more recently, Asterix. Learned papers about the use of potions as a narrative device? 

Page 185. What looks like a pop at the teaching of Latin, at Oxbridge and at lawyers more generally.

Page 189. A tongue-in-cheek derivation of the word ‘idiot’, a derivation for which OED gives no support: an old word, originally from the Latin and before that the Greek, which had two clusters of meanings. The first about being uneducated and the second about being stupid. This derivation being followed by various two-edged remarks about the value of progress.

Chapters 23 and 24. Various thoughts on consciousness, machines and the future. All quite sound considering that they were written 150 years ago.

Chapters 26 and 27. The brush of the long-suffering Erewhonians with respect for animal then vegetable life. Only that which is thoroughly spoiled may be eaten. An entertaining tale of how such nonsense can get enshrined in law and of the consequential goings on at the margins. Think prohibition.

The book closes with a scheme for capturing large numbers of Erewhonians and transporting them to the sugar fields of Queensland where they would labour while being converted into the truth faith of our Lord. Thus killing two birds with one stone.

Grundy

Mrs Grundy figures large in Erewhon, albeit in the anagram forms of Ydgrun, Ydgrunites and Ydgrunism. More or less the state religion.

According to Wikipedia: ‘Mrs Grundy is a figurative name for an extremely conventional or priggish person, a personification of the tyranny of conventional propriety. A tendency to be overly fearful of what others might think is sometimes referred to as grundyism.

Mrs Grundy originated as an unseen character in Thomas Morton's 1798 five-act comedy 'Speed the Plough'. References to Mrs Grundy were eventually so well established in the public imagination that in Samuel Butler's 1872 novel Erewhon, the goddess Ydgrun, an anagram for Grundy, dictates social norms. As a figure of speech, ‘Mrs Grundy’ can be found throughout the English-speaking world…’.

She also pops up on page 189 of reference 7.

While there appears to be no connection to either the rhyme about Solomon Grundy or the Grundy family of the long running radio series ‘The Archer’, where the Grundys are a rather rough farming family. If they had lived in a town, Past Master Blair might have said they that came from a bog-standard estate.

Bard 

In the tale of travel and adventure with which the book opens, the narrator calls his luggage his swag, which he carefully rolls up in a blanket each morning, tying the two ends of the roll together, and wearing the resultant ring slung diagonally across one shoulder or the other. 

Until I read the opening chapters of this book, I had not known about swag being one’s portable possessions in general, the sort of thing an itinerant worker would carry about, either in a bag or, more likely, rolled up in a blanket. Rather the bag that an itinerant thief in rural Australia used to carry his pickings.

But Google’s Bard, noticed in these pages from time to time, seems to know all about it:

But did I cheat by giving him a clue about blankets? And wealthy Americans carrying the valuables in a blanket? Creative thinking here?

Probing suggests that Bard is more or less making it up – and while when poked he turns up some references, they are fairly wide of the mark. But I am reminded of the older custom of carrying similar stuff wrapped up into a bundle off the end of a stick.

OED gives more than two columns to the word, both as noun and verb, possibly of Scandinavian origin, with the present meaning coming quite late, possibly derived from the swaying senses of the word, so a swaying bag hung off the end of a pole over a shoulder. Most of the examples given are from the 19th century, with just a few going back to the 16th century. But blankets in Australia get a mention at the very end of the entry (bottom right in the snap above). We also have the swags of interior furnishers.

Flesh

Many years ago now, I owned and read a copy of Butler’s ‘The way of all flesh’, long since retired. Another assault on what Butler saw as Victorian hypocrisy, written in the years after Erewhon, but only published posthumously. As I recalled, an interesting enough read after a stodgy start, but I had forgotten most of the plot, as set out at reference 9. I did not remember much more than the son of an overbearing and pompous father who, after various vicissitudes, married a girl of lower class – perhaps a housemaid – and lived happily ever afterwards. I learn today that morganatic is not really the right word here, it being usually reserved for aristos who take a wrong turn. 

Conclusions

An entertaining and instructive read. I shall no doubt have another go, hopefully in the not too distant future.

References

Reference 1: Erewhon: or, Over the Range – Samuel Butler – 1872. 

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Erewhon.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/walden-two.html. 

Reference 4: https://www.awesomebooks.com/. 

Reference 5: https://www.erewhonmarket.com/. ‘Erewhon is proud to be a Certified Organic Retailer and Certified B Corp. Since the late 1960s, Erewhon has been uncompromising in the commitment to provide foods and products that change the lives of our customers. We are more than your local grocery store; we are a community of people who are united in our love for pure products that protect the health of people and our planet’. Maybe the use of the name is a gesture towards other worldly, not to say saintly, aspirations.

Reference 6: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mrs_Grundy. Including a walk-on part for Erewhon.

Reference 7: Author, author – David Lodge – 2004. A freebie from the Raynes Park platform library, on which I shall be reporting in due course.

Reference 8: The way of all flesh – Samuel Butler – 1902.

Reference 9: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_of_All_Flesh. 

Additional information

B Lab certification is a third-party standard requiring companies to meet social sustainability and environmental performance standards, meet accountability standards. A form of certification which, according to Wikipedia, has attracted its own share of controversy.

Silent consciousness

I was recently reminded by Academia, not for the first time, of the paper by Bernard Baars at reference 1, chap better known to me for his global workspace theory of consciousness. A paper which I now find makes a plea for a fourth sort of consciousness – silent consciousness – to be added to the other three sorts, that is to say, waking consciousness, dreaming and deep sleep. 

Consciousness which might be defined as consciousness without content, or at least without readily reportable content, like lions or tigers, the achievement of which is sought in many contemplative practises, for example in those of the Buddhists. A sort of consciousness which was very much in the book noticed back at reference 2, although I do not appear to have sparked on it at the time: perhaps I was diverted by its focus on dreaming. But a practise, a phenomenon, which ought indeed to be of interest to those trying to fathom out consciousness. Even if, so far at least, it does not seem to diagram very well. 

Where the lines indicate the possibility of transition in either direction, giving us a fully connected graph. One can get to everywhere from anywhere. With the two red, secondary boxes being transitional states between the blue, primary circles. Maybe it would work better in three dimensions as a double tetrahedron, with arousal being the link between silent consciousness and nodding consciousness, but I did not have much success with that in Powerpoint.

I note in passing the formal difficulty with the phrase ‘no reportable content’, given that one can, after all, always report that one is conscious of the great white void, or perhaps something else of that sort, more or less equivalent to nothing. I associate to the logical paradoxes – for example the Russell set – which kept logicians busy in the first years of the twentieth century.

Baars offers a number of related matters in support, then offers a technique which might give an experimenter a way into all this.

The related matters

One Herbert Benson was on the scene fifty years ago, inspired by the same Maharishi Mahesh Yogi who got mixed up with the Beatles, and he published the best-selling self-help book about what he called the relaxation response at reference 3, as snapped above. Lots of other editions about. Amongst other things, he noted that achieving this relaxation response resulted in various physiological changes, such as reduced blood pressure, which in combination countered the stress reactions, particularly those of the HPA (Hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal) axis.

His technique is very briefly summarised at reference 4 – where I was amused by the advice not to do it after meals as it interferes with the digestion.

I wondered about the likely tendency to fall asleep while doing this sort of thing, which does not seem to fit very well with silent consciousness. But it made me wonder about there being consciousness without reportable content while asleep. Dreaming about being in such a state does present any difficulty; perhaps being silently conscious while asleep does.

The use of repetition, the use of mantras, as in the relaxation response and elsewhere, links to the auditory illusions studied by Warren and others around fifty years ago, but not, as far as I can make out, much studied since. Relatives of the visual illusions which have had much more attention. Summarised at reference 5, which is snapped in additional information below. The gist seems to be that if you hear a suitable word repeated over and over all kinds of odd things start to happen to your perception of that word. With the addition of a suitable amount of noise to the signal amplifying the effect. Part of which is the loss of its meaning, leaving just a raw lump of sound, and another is the involuntary slips to nearby words, slips which do not seem to be mentioned in the context of mantras, where they would be a hindrance rather than interesting.

My experiments with the ‘read aloud’ feature of Microsoft Word were interesting, but did not produce the desired effects. Part of the problem was the insertion of short pauses from time to time, as if the computer were taking a breath, pauses which rather broke the flow. Another was Word’s rather unnatural reading voice.

There was a link here to something called the Sensation Seeking Scale, described at reference 7. A questionnaire based psychological testing procedure which looks rather crude, at which it would be easy enough to cheat, but which appears to be widely used, so presumably it works, at least after a fashion. And on the evidence that I saw, being a sensation seeker did not seem to be correlated with a propensity to hear the wrong word among all the repetitions. And presumably not with a propensity to see all kinds of animals among the coloured dots above.

In any event, a reminder that the ability to experience silent consciousness might well need to be trained, but also might very well vary from person to person.

Other sorts of repetition may also be used, for example repeating a physical action, perhaps the repetitive shooting of arrows by a Zen archer. Hours and hours of it. Maybe something simpler would do, say just moving a full mug of tea from one side of the table in front of you to another – without making a mess. Which links to redundancy, which at the limit reduces to nothing, as in the visual ganzfeld of reference 6, which seems to be somehow mixed up with para-psychics and their experiments with ESP and telepathy. Baars reminds us that a lot of perception depends on change and contrast, and that an image which is stabilised on the retinas – a rather contrived proceeding, given the way that eyes usually flicker about – results in that image fading from consciousness.

Which means that gazing at a uniform unchanging scene can be used to help induce silent consciousness, with various artists having tried to create spaces of this sort with coloured sheets, which, while I have found them a bit confusing to be in, do not generate silent consciousness – although to be fair, I was not approaching these spaces with that in mind. All rather a long time ago now. Maybe a lying down facing a clear blue sky or sitting in a thick mist on top of a mountain would do better. Baars goes on to tell of a variant called near-threshold attending, where one attends to a stimulus near or dropping towards the threshold of perception.

[From one Andril Tokarchuk, who appears to specialise in images of dots of various sorts, but who is careful about his copyright]

Very different from this absence of contrast are images which contain no large scale structure, but lots of low level noise. For me at least, these work like clouds in the sky, prompting all sorts of images; not silent at all. Perhaps the trick would be to gradually turn down the contrast, to achieve the near threshold attending, just mentioned.

I associate to the work of Jackson Pollock. Not aware of it prompting all kinds of projections, but then I have yet to give it a proper try. But if not,, why not? Sampled above.

Baars writes at some length of the role of surprise in silent consciousness, which I found much less convincing. And his reading of the east Asian koans seems some way from that offered by Wikipedia at reference 8.

Lastly, there was a link to pleasure, with pleasure sometimes accompanying silent states, if not silent consciousness. Pleasure, and perhaps other states. I remember being able, as a child at least, being able to achieve a rather strange inner state, not exactly silent consciousness, but a state which was more apt to prompt fear or anxiety rather than pleasure. Sadly, a state which I can no longer reach. In any event, consciousness without any ordinary content, apart from emotional valence.

The technique

One of the features of silent consciousness is lack of awareness of at least some of the stimuli as there might be, in particular lapses of hearing. Baars suggests that this might be detected using the EEG machinery used in an experiment to do with the perception of short gaps in sound stimuli at reference 9. Which might be used to detect false positives – absence of perceived sound when sound was present – in the present context.

A ‘might’ which seems to make an assumption about exactly where on the pathway between the ear and consciousness the blocking of a sound takes place during silent consciousness.

On the other hand, EEG can also be used to identify gaps which are actually microsleeps – these last being the subject of much work, not least because of the danger they represent when driving cars or other machinery. A bad thing, rather than the on-balance-good-thing of reference 10.

He argues that this might be used to explore the relationship between silent consciousness and the relaxation response identified by Benson.

In the margins, I read of the ears’ remarkable sensitivity – in health anyway – to these gaps, say of the order of 50ms in length, a twentieth of a second. A sensitivity which one might take as a proxy for the ears’ capacity to detect change in time and synchrony – or diachrony – generally.

Other matters

In connection with repetition, I note that repetition of short prayers or phrases features in both Catholic and Muslim practise. And imagine that meditation, at least of a sort, features in Quaker practise.

The famous Blue Cliff Record of Zen Buddhism (reference 11), with its selection of 100 koans and dating from around 1,000 years ago, look interesting enough - but I fail to see the connection with silent consciousness. At least so far. But I can say was that one of the points of interest was the notion, possibly Buddhist, that one could not put something into words without damaging it, and so writing stuff down was dangerous. Which, putting a rather crude gloss on the matter, seems to fit rather well with current theory that perception is the product of stimuli coming in from below interacting with the words coming down from above.

My own working hypothesis (the LWS-R of reference 12) is that consciousness is the product of electrical activation of a layered data structure embedded in a small patch of neuron rich cortex. To be more precise, electrical activation of the shape nets and texture nets which define the contents of consciousness. The present paper makes it of interest to think about what happens here when there are no contents, at least no reportable contents. What do our nets degenerate to? What does the activation process degenerate to?

Put another way, I see consciousness as decomposable into two parts: a data part which is the contents of consciousness and a process part which bites on the data part. So what happens to the process part, when the data part degenerates or perhaps vanishes?

Searching for silent consciousness on the Internet mainly turns up this very paper. But it also turns up some philosophical stuff, for example references 13 and 14 – both no doubt relevant, but both too dense and too expensive for me.

Then just yesterday, in a train from Victoria, a man of middle years in a nearby seat was sharing his music with the rest of us. Music which might have been rapping. But whatever the case, it struck me that it might function as white noise, perhaps serving, oxymoronically, to produce silent consciousness. He might have been challenging me to challenge him, but luckily he got off at Clapham Junction so I did not have to think too hard about that one.

Conclusions

Interesting stuff, but all a bit of a mess at the moment. Maybe some clarity will come in the days to come.

PS: fulfilment works! A touch of festive red ordered from Waitrose early yesterday evening arrived from Coulsdon at around 08:30 this morning, a little more than twelve hours later. Right in the middle of what appeared yesterday to be the penultimate delivery slot available here at Epsom before the holiday. Plus, echoing Amazon practise, the delivery charge of £4 was more than offset by a special offer on the price of the merchandise.

References

Reference 1: A scientific approach to silent consciousness – Bernard J. Baars – 2013. 

Reference 2: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/2016/03/buddha-rules.html. 

Reference 3: The relaxation response – Herbert Benson – 1976.

Reference 4: https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/heart-and-soul-healing/201303/dr-herbert-benson-s-relaxation-response. 

Reference 5: An auditory analogue of the visual reversible figure – Warren, R. M., & Gregory, R. L. – 1958.

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

Reference 7: https://arc.psych.wisc.edu/self-report/sensation-seeking-scale-sss/.

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

Reference 9: Gap Detection measured with electrically evoked auditory event–related potentials and speech–perception abilities in children with auditory neuropathy spectrum disorder – He, S., Grose, J. H., Teagle, H. F., Woodard, J., Park, L. R., Hatch, D. R., et al. – 2013.

Reference 10: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/the-snoozing-of-penguins.html. 

Reference 11: The Blue Cliff Record - Ch'ung-hsien, K'o-ch'in, Thomas Cleary - 960-1276 C.E, 1998. 100 koans from the Chan school of Buddhism.

Reference 12: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/an-updated-introduction-to-lws-r.html. 

Reference 13: Silence, Attention, Body – Rosales, D.I – 2023.

Reference 14: Silence: The phenomenon and its ontological significance – Dauenhauer, Bernard P – 1980. 

Additional information

Reference 5.

Two extracts from the 11th koan from reference 11.

To town again

About ten days ago now, an expedition to the Wigmore Hall for a spot of violin and piano. Mozart K301, Poulenc's Violin Sonata and Schubert D934. Given to us by Messrs. Feldman and Kusnezov of references 1 and 2.

The trains to Waterloo and Sutton were absent, so a drive to Sutton was indicated. I remembered using one of those car parking companies there, but did not think to look them up. So got to Sutton to wonder what to do about Apcoa. Tried paying online, but HSBC fraud department were not having that. And anyway, Apcoa seemed to think that I wanted to buy a season ticket. Not helped by confusion with Alcoa. Eventually, BH noticed something on the sign about being able to pay later, so I gave up, but not before having given somebody all my banking details, which I was not best pleased about. And to make things worse, half an hour was not enough time to allow from Epsom and we missed the train we had been aiming for, cutting things a bit fine for our usual pit stop at All Bar One.

Get to Victoria, to find that the bus station outside the railway station was not accessible and/or not working, se we settled for the long walk from the pavement to the tube platform. But we were offered seats on the tube, more or less instantly. Opposite, an older chap who was smartly enough turned out, but who was behaving rather like a bag person. Bit of a pain on a crowded tube train.

Somehow, at Oxford Circus, we managed to miss out on the badly overheated passage which often carries fancy advertising in the round, which was good. Some quirk of the ventilation arrangements. On the other hand, it was coming on to rain when we emerged at street level.

Got to All Bar One and ordered, but had to leave before our order arrived. It happening that their being busy and our being late coincided. The first time we have ever done such a thing.

Some serious temporary works in Wigmore Street. Presumably one of those upgrades where you are allowed to rip out the insides provided you leave the outsides for the heritage people.

And so we made it to Wigmore Hall, pretty busy as these Sunday morning concerts usually are. Mozart as good as we have come to expect, but after that I drifted a bit. I remember liking the Poulenc more than I thought likely, but I think I must have nodded a bit, only coming round properly half way through the Schubert. Clearly exhausted by getting there.

For the first time in a while, to Ponti's of John Prince's Street, just by Oxford Circus. We passed on bread on this occasion, and I took Bruschetta al Pomodoro and pizza Quattro Stagioni. Bruschetta surprisingly good considering it is nothing more than cold chopped tomatoes on toast, plus a bit of seasoning. Don't suppose we could manage it as well at home for all that. And BH was pleased with her Salmone Arrosto.

As far as I can make out, the salmon has not been found anywhere near Italy for some time, with the best Bing can do being Atlantic salmon in the Loire to the west and the freshwater Danube salmon to the east. This last includes part of what is now Croatia, so perhaps this version of salmon sneaked into Italian cuisine when part of what is now Croatia, then Dalmatia, belonged to the Venetian Republic. See references 5 and 6.

The same white wine, named for Mount Etna, which we had got used to, last noticed at reference 6. That is to say just before we took a break from Ponti's of near six months. Part of that will be the summer break at the Wigmore but there must be more to it than that.

Tiramisu for dessert, which had reverted to brick format from glass format, and which tasted a good deal better than the snap above would suggest. A change from the glass format noticed at reference 7. The first tiramisu we ever had, somewhere near the British Museum, was brown, very good and came in a shallow stainless steel dessert bowl. After that, as the dessert became popular, it was usually in brick format, then moving onto to glass format, which seems to be what you mostly get now. Perhaps the pendulum of foodie fashion is coming back across again.

Out to Oxford Circus where there was a Uighur flavoured demonstration. I was reminded how sad it was that the Han majority in China treated its minorities so badly - and how little the Saudis do to help their co-religionists, being presently in hug-a-han mode. Perhaps the Uighurs are the wrong sort of Muslims. Perhaps, despite their huge wealth, the Saudis worry too much about the forthcoming demise of their golden goose to have time for good works.

There was also a small choir at top of the steps down to the tube. Young adults and, I thought, rather good.

Signs of water penetration and flood control - in the form of sandbags of various shapes and sizes - on our way down to the platforms.

Out at Victoria to take a sit in Westminster Cathedral, where we decided not to stay for Vespers, which might have involved a choir, but which would have involved a further half hour wait. Good place for a time-out though: lots of quiet empty space. Much better as far as that goes than either Westminster Abbey or St. Pauls.

The best Christmas tree of the day was somewhere in the vicinity of the cathedral. Pity about the way that they wrapped the base up, slightly spoiling what was otherwise a good effort, much better than those that we had seen in and around Oxford Circus.

And so home to sort out my parking. It turned out that the problem was that our last encounter with Apcoa parking was in the dying days of my Microsoft telephone, which did not do apps - so there was no sign of them on my Samsung telephone. This has now been sorted out, the parking has been paid for and I now have no fewer than four parking apps on my telephone. Four more lots of people that I trust with my bank details.

PS 1: BH was driving, so I had time to notice a large bird flying across our path at Belmont, on the way to Sutton. Possibly a raptor, possibly a sparrow hawk. We also passed several Wellingtonia, few if any of which had been scored. Not possible to take them in on this occasion as I was not in the driving seat. Plus, by the time we were going home and had the time, it was nearly dark and I could not remember exactly where they were: perhaps to be sorted out when we sort out the one at Carshalton.

PS 2: later: a red letter day! For some reason this evening, I was moved to try YouTube on our smart, fairly new Samsung television. And after a certain amount of flapdoodle, including telling it that we were not into voice control quite yet, up came reference 8. So given that YouTube probably includes a lot more chamber music than we are ever likely to listen to, we now have somewhere to go when we tire of ITVX - despite having dumped our DVD player and most of our DVDs.

References

Reference 1: https://www.tobias-feldmann.com/.

Reference 2: https://www.boriskusnezow.com/en/. Pianist and collaborative artist, whatever one of those might be.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/03/more-privatisation.html.

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

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Huchen.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/04/the-marmens.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/04/sebastiani.html.

Reference 8: https://youtu.be/Y9Nyv51RSt8. A version of the Schubert involving a Fazioli piano. Pity I was not firing on all cylinders on the day.

Trolley de Triomphe

Following the capture of the 600th trolley last week, reported at reference 1, we thought a modest Trolley to Triomphe was in order. With thanks to the John Lewis Partnership for supplying to model trolley to top it out with.

Followed up with a pork feast from Ben the Butcher. About a kilo of the stuff, for once held over for a few days in the freezer. Cooked at 175°C for maybe 80 minutes. The first time we have tried this particular cut.

Drained off something more than a tablespoon of fat, so not very much at all, then washed the roasting tin out with some vegetable stock made with water, onion, carrot, celery, leek and potato peelings. Roux'd up in the usual way.

Served up with mash and chou pointu.

Gravy quite adequate but not great. Maybe the bones were not big enough or not cooked for long enough to yield the full porky flavour.

The scene a little later. Just about right for two adults and two children. Maybe next time I will try replacing the mash with rice and the gravy with a tomato sauce knocked up with butter, garlic, onion and tomato.

Proceeding rounded out with a baked jam sponge with Bird's Eye for the adults and carton custard for the children. Who neither care for jam nor hot custard. Very strange. Perhaps they are just flexing their muscles, as it were, exercising a bit of choice in an otherwise rather supervised world.

An entirely satisfactory, if teetotal, way to mark the occasion.

Stirred the modest amount of left over mash into the left over gravy, warmed it up and had it on brown bread for tea. Bit more to go for breakfast. A warming winter snack.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/12/trolley-600.html.

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