Floating down to Camelot

Earlier this year, I inherited responsibilities relating to the purchase of adult stock. Instead of just considering hamster fairies and snot monsters, the usual subject matter of my book-purchasing decisions, I have had to learn all about crime and sagas, the two most popular genres. (Crime generates FAR more issues, but there are far more crime books around. In terms of issues per item, sagas are ahead.)

Sagas interest me. Supposedly they're "family sagas," a name that suggests lengthy epics following the same family over generations. Most of them aren't like that, but they are instantly recognisable at a glance. At 20 paces in twilight with your eyes half closed, you could tell a saga and never be wrong.

( On sagas and downtrodden women in shawls )

Shopping for apples today, I saw a shelf label that read "Smitten apples." None of the nearby apples declared themselves smitten on their sticky labels. Could I identify them by behaviour? Were any apples sighing sadly for the nearby pears? Were they saying to a Granny Smith that she was the apple of their eye? Every apple sat resolutely still, none of them showing any sign of pining. The apples nearest to the sign were pre-packed in fours, but the package itself refused to admit what sort of apples they were. I decided to buy them anyway. I heard no sighs as I picked up a pack of 4. No little fruity voices wailed, "Boris! NO!" as I snatched them away from the fruity multitude.

Maybe theirs was a silent love. Or maybe they were smitten with each other, those four nameless apples that shared a pack. If so, it was a doomed love, since my recipe called for 3 apples. I took one and chopped it. No-one wailed. 2 more followed it into the grave of the mixing bowl. Now only one remains, the last of its kind, surrounded by enormous Braeburns and tiny clementines, with a colossal Bramley looming nearby like a bouncer outside a nightclub. I am watching the bowl closely for drama, but nothing has happened thus far.

It reminds me of the time I packed my fridge with what the Co-op was advertising as "territorial cheeses," and sat back and waited for war to result. That never happened, either. It was most disappointing.

Never has there been a place more committed to its branding than Venice. There must be more winged lions in the city than there are tourists, and that's saying something. Many of them are sensible, noble-looking proud beasts. Naturally, these I spurned, and instead photographed their more comical cousins.

( Many winged lions, plus a few assorted other comical Venetian animals )

The stated justification for the Round Table is that no knight takes precendence. However, most medieval depictions of said table show King Arthur sitting at it. This is a clear contradiction of the stated aim, since precedence will be defined by proximity to Arthur. Yes, you could randomise this, perhaps by holding a daily raffle (proceeds to go to distressed damsels), but you could do this just as easily with a plain old rectangular board. I think the most likely solution is that King Arthur sat in the middle, either in a hole cut in the exact centre, or sitting on an elevated platform that dangles from the rafters. No knight should suffer the ignominy of having the king's back turned to him, so the King would have to rotate. It would be easy to devise a mechanism for this, like a turnspit or a donkey-powered well, powered by dogs or small servant boys (but probably not hamsters.)

However, other problems present themselves. Some sources put the number of Knights of the Round Table as high as 150. That is a VERY large table, and likely to need a veritable forest of legs beneath it. However, medieval carpenters who can build cathedral roofs can cope with such a table. But what about the poor king, stuck in the centre of a circle large enough to hold 150 round its circumference? Think of the noise, and the constant shouting of "what? What?"

And then there's the problem of serving. Service a la Russe hadn't come along yet, so all dishes need to be put on the table at once. With a rectangular board, you can fill up from both sides. High Table, sitting on only one side, can be served from the opposite side, and regular people can ask the person opposite to pass them the buttered parsnips. With the guests sitting around the rim of a vast circle, only a tiny part of that table can be used for serving food, and the rest is wasted, and impossible to clean without clambering on it. The King, stuck in the middle, would need food parcels thrown at him - a skill, perhaps, practiced by pages in the tilting yard?

But there are other ways to denote precedence at the dining table. Take the whole "above the salt" thing. Clearly it would be out of the question to have a single, elaborate Salt on the table. Thus we see the origin of the small salt shaker that we see now on every cafe table - or maybe even tiny sachets, that survived into the present century only in Salt 'n' Shake crisps. And what about boars' heads and such like, and the honour of carving such things? If Knight A has a boar's head put in front of him, and Knight B only has some boiled cabbage, then Knight A is clearly more favoured! Instead of this divisive practice, we would need a vast array of small plates of mixed food stuffs, none of them an obvious centrepiece. Did the dining needs of Camelot lead to the invention of tapas?

Or did the Round Table itself rotate along with the King, thus bringing boar's head to each knight in turn? Was the Round Table the origin of the Lazy Susan?

Having spent the last hour listening to the radio while making a huuuuge vat of stew (which, happily, only required a two thirds of the bottle of wine I had bought for it, which meant that it was my solemn DUTY to drink the rest of it, because to do otherwise would have been to waste it, and waste is BAD and makes little fluffy bunnies cry), I am reminded of the fact that I have meant for a while to post about how much I enjoy Simon Mayo's All Request Friday on Radio 2, which runs from 5 till 7.

Normally I dislike phone-ins, which usually seem to consist either of inanity, or of opinionated bigots who don't actually know a single thing about the subject they're phoning in about, but are still prepared to announce on national radio that it is a DISGRACE. But All Request Friday consists of people phoning in - or texting or emailing - to prattle about the exciting things they've got planned for the weekend, and then to request some favourite song. Yes, it's inanity, but they're all so excited. Because all the songs are someone's all-time favourite, they're usually songs I am quite happy to listen to. Better still, half the people who phone in give the impression of being ever so slightly drunk, having started early on their anniversary weekend/birthday/family reunion.

And then there are the little children. I normally cringe with embarrassment when a small child turns up on a phone in, but Simon Mayo had a really nice way of talking to them - kind of slightly teasing, but encouraging them at the same time. With most of the tiny children, I'm laughing out loud pretty much from the start.

And the best thing of all? The number of times something like this happens.

Lisping 6 year old: "I'm excited because tomorrow I'm going to ride my favourite pony, Twinkle Toes, while dressed as a fairy." (not an actual quote)
Mayo: "And what song can we play for you?"
Lisping 6 year old: Highway to Hell by Ay Thee Dee Thee (actual quote)

According to the receipt, today I bought a SAU&ON SANDWICH

I had already eaten it before I noticed the truly evil nature of my lunch.

Today's entirely-unimportant-in-the-scheme-of-things rant subject is automatic doors. More specifically, it's lazy automatic doors that perform their duty but slowly and too late. So there you are, brisk shopper, striding purposefully towards the door. (I always stride purposefully, even if my brain hasn't yet clarified what the purpose actually is. For example, on Thursday I strode purposely into M&S with the purpose of filling a bag with tomato and basil soup and nothing else. Fifteen minutes later, I strode purposefully out again, with a bag full of two pairs of trousers, two bras, 9 tins of soup and a packet of tomatoes, with the purpose of getting out again quick before I ended up buying a kitchen sink.) So, striding purposefully, you near the automatic door, confident that it will part before you and let you through without any check in your gait.

Then, with a few steps to go, you have this horrible realisation that it is not opening. It's doubtless standing there, idling, cigarette in hand, chatting about the pretty girls who have passed through its embrace. Your step falters, but you don't actually stop outright, because automatic doors always open, don't they, and SURELY this one will do so, too. Glass looms large in your vision, and you know that you're going to have to do a full-on emergency stop to save your nose from being squashed. Then, just at the last minute, the door realises you're there, throws away its cigarette, and sloooowly, idly, drifts the doors open with bored ungraciousness, and you can resume your purposeful striding and hope that nobody has noticed that, A, you have almost walked into a door, or, B, you have almost tripped over your own feet as you fought the conflicting urges of "must stop now!" and "carry on; it's bound to be okay."

I could blame the fact that I stride too fast for door technology to cope with. After all, when out walking, I've had random strangers berate me for walking too fast. (It's quite odd. If I'd been tailgating them on narrow paths, I'd understand, but it's people in cottage gardens that I pass, or people yards away on open hillsides who feel the need to tell me off for daring to having different tastes in country walking than they have.) But then there's the other sort of automatic door: the automatic door who is young, new on the job, and very very keen. Approach within ten paces, and the door will leap open, and stand there quivering with the joy of obedience, waiting for you to pat it on their head and tell it that it's been a very good boy. Stand and dither over tomatoes on the fruit and veg section near the door, and it's goes into a positive frenzy of opening and shutting, causing you to look anxiously around for the security guards in case they think you're trying to do a runner with a basket of veg.

Then there are those doors that have a very rigid mind and can only cope with one order at a time. Person A approaches it, and the door parts to let them through. The door then slowly drifts shut again, just as Person B is approaching it. However, the door is concentrating on its "Close now!" order with all its might, and needs to complete this order before it raises its head to look out for new customers. This doesn't normally end well for Person B. The door in our local shop sometimes gets like this. I haven't quite got squashed yet, but it's been a close-run thing.

Actually, come to think it is, it all comes down to magic. When approaching doors, I have a habit of putting my hands together and parting them in a magical way while saying "whoosh" under my breath, so I can pretend that I'm commanding them open with my awesome magic power. However, I only do this accompanied by Pellinor, since there's a limit to how silly I'm prepared to appear in public. However, thinking back, all the problems I've had with lazy or stupid or over-reactive doors have happened when I've been alone and have therefore failed to do the magic hand movements... Hmm... I think the clues are all coming together here, and forcing me to come up with only one conclusion...

I had to work on Tuesday evening, so emailed Pellinor during the day to tell him that there was a ready meal (stew and dumplings) waiting for him in the fridge. After I got home, he bent to put something in the fridge, then gasped, saying, "Oh! It IS there!" It turned out that, despite the fact that the fridge only had about 8 other things in, he had entirely failed to find the stew and had ended up eating a pasta bake from the freezer, on the grounds that when I'd said "fridge" I must have meant "freezer," and when I'd said "stew and dumplings" I obviously meant "creamy chicken pasta bake."

I went out for dinner last night with people from work, and was due to leave just before Pellinor was due home.

( I wasn't taking any chances... )

I was somewhat disturbed today to see a shop called "Pre-Loved Baby Shop."

Actually, this whole rebranding of "second-hand" as "pre-loved" bothers me. I can see why people do it, since they think it makes an item sound more desirable. But it always makes me want to come up with stories about every item, to explain why the previous owner gave it away, even though they had once loved it dearly. Most stories end up fairly heartrending and full of drama. Some are quite legthy. At least when something's labelled "second-hand", my over-active imagination is content that no difficult parting was involved. I can accept that the owner found it in the back of a wardrobe and thought, "Yuck! I can't believe I used to like pink!" or that it was an unwanted present.

It's like uncollected dry cleaning shops. While I can understand that someone might part with a much-loved item of clothing because they've lost weight or grown out of it, why would you go to the effort of taking a suit to the dry-cleaner, then not bother picking it up again just a few days later? Yes, people forget, but these places do phone to remind you. No diet is that drastic. You're unlikely to suddenly wake up the day after taking it in, and shout, "Pink? What was I thinking? I will never wear pink again!" All the stories I come up with are tragic. Most involve death. At the very least, they involve heartbreak.

The BBC History magazine often includes an advert for Aquila, an educational children's magazine. I find the image quite disturbing. Why are they interrogating each other like this? Why are they so desperate to know the answers to these questions that they have resorted to violence? For months and months and months, these duellists have been locked in conflict, forever hurling their demands at each other. Who will crack first? It bothers me every time.

This morning, there was a dollop of poo inside an empty milk bottle I put out last night. Inside the milk bottle! There was a small smear inside the rim, but the bulk of it was neatly deposited in the bottom, implying skill and accuracy in the aiming. There is no spillage or smearing on the outside of the bottle, or on the ground around it. The two adjacent milk bottles were undisturbed, implying skill and finesse when it comes to balancing the bottom over the target without jostling any of the surroundings.

I am not wise in the ways of poo, so cannot express an opinion on who the guilty party might be, but it's a fairly sizeable dollop, suggesting something with a an internal storage capacity more like that of a cat than that of a vole. One would imagine that the height of the bottom above the ground is equal or greater to the height of a milk bottle, unless it's someone small enough to slither up the side of a bottle, or the possessor of a trampoline.

Our front doorstep is a dead end, and is sheltered by a large bush, so it's not likely to attract passing trade. Some animal has made a special trip to our doorstep and has gone to considerable effort to supply us with a neat bottled sample. Did it mistake us for a vet? Has it recently been given a lecture on the evils of fouling pavements? Why else would it carefully deposit said dollop inside a milk bottle, despite the challenges involved?

This has always worried me. Thirty years ago, Balin and the others go to Moria, a place known to be riddled with dangers, to settle it. For a few years, encouraging messages are sent back to Erebor. We later learn that the entire lot of them were wiped out five years later. By the time of The Lord of the Rings, therefore, there have been no messages for 25 years.

Now, I accept that this is world without Skype and social media. This (below) is not a possibility.

( More on dwarves )

I read an article today that most young people find books boring. The evidence for this was that when those riots happened in 2011, sometimes the only unlooted shop in a street was the bookshop.

To be honest, I am highly unlikely to riot. If the people I was with suddenly said, "Hey! Let's riot!" I'd be the one hovering anxiously at the back, saying, "er... I really don't think we're supposed to be doing this." In a zombie apocalypse, I'd be the one who stood for hours at the counter of the corpse-strewn shop, waiting for a shop assistant to appear so I could pay for my gun before taking it out of the packet. Even if the apocalypse escalated, and I finally accepted that looting was necessary, I'd turn to my fellow looters, and say, "Are you the queue?" or, "I'm sorry. Were you here before me?" and, "No, after you," they would say, and, "No, no, I couldn't possibly. After you," I would say in return, and when the zombies came to rip our brains out, it would be a blessed relief, since at least it would get us out of the Impasse of Politeness. (Band name?)

But, anyway... Let's suspend disbelief for a while, and assume that I was rioting and indulging in a mad looting spree. I don't think a book shop would be my first port of call. A book shop is a place for browsing and leisurely reading of blurbs. "Raah!" say the rioters. (I don't know if rioters really do say "raah!" but let's assume that they do, like dinosaurs.) "Raah! Raah! Riot! Riot! Riot! Oh... I've not heard of that author, but the cover looks good. Interesting blurb, too. Let's read the first page... Hmm, not sure about the writing style. Maybe not... Ooh, 3-for-2 on that table!" (Because I refuse to believe that looters aren't drawn by special offers. Looting something that's one a 3 for 2 offer is clearly better than looting something that's sold at full price.)

I mean, wouldn't it be so vexing to return home from your night of rioting, only to find that you've accidentally picked up only the final book in a trilogy, or a book that turns out to have nothing but one star reviews on Amazon? It would entirely ruin any emotional high that the rioting had left. It would be even worse than looting a designer dress only to find that it didn't quite fit you. No, best go for the tablet or the flat-screen TV: something you can grab quickly without pausing in your raaahing, and something that you can probably flog for a decent amount of cash if it turns out that you can't use it. I don't think that dodgy traders who hang out in seedy pubs are ever likely to say, "psst! Wanna buy a genuine original of last year's Booker winner? £5.99, it'll cost you in the shops, but it's yours for £3.99, no questions asked."

Besides, books are surprisingly heavy - a fact I am all too painfully aware of, having moved 500 shelves of the things last week, twice. They are also mischievous things, and when you try to carry them in big piles, they like to jump off. So as you were running raaahing from the looted shop, a pile of slippery paperbacks in your arms, you'd keep on losing them. Even if you were a responsible rioter, and had paused in your frenzy to bring along your Bag For Life, you'd be hard pressed to carry more than 20 books out at a time. If you wanted more, you'd have to pop next door to the supermarket to loot a shopping trolley, and, frankly, by the time you've reached the stage of giving careful thought to storage solutions, I suspect that the urge to go "raaah!" would have long since left you, and you'd decide to go home for a nice cup of tea instead.

"Decimus's letters to Cicero reveal a polite if terse man of action with a keen sense of honour, a nose for betrayal and a thirst for vengeance."

What does a nose for betrayal look like? Pinnocchio like, do you think, that zooms out on command and stabs your victim in the back?

"...neither combatant was able to deliver a telling blow before King Henry brought the duel to an end with the cry 'Ho! Ho! Ho!' (meaning stop.)

This is huge. For generations, we have been told that Father Christmas is a jolly old man who cheerily chortles "Ho! Ho! Ho!" in rotund merriment. But now the truth is revealed! He only ever meant to take a short trip to the corner shop, but those wild rogue reindeer went dashing off across the sky, faster than the speed of sound. "Ho! Ho! Ho!" he shouts (meaning stop) but do they heed him? No! He keeps trying to escape - sneaking off down chimneys and offering gifts to potential rescuers - but those evil reindeer always find him, lured in by the offering of carrots, and the "rescuers" are dazzled by the presents, and never see the true desperation that lies behind the "Ho! Ho! Ho!"

"He built the Colosseum, conquered the Isle of Wight and established the Flavian dynasty..."

I do like this implication that the conquest of the Isle of Wight is the second most important achievement of Vespasian's career. Presumably the ferries were off that day, but he managed to get there anyway.

Sometimes I get ridiculously bothered by tiny, trivial things in books and movies. I spent many seasons of Buffy intensely bothered by her habit of wearing huge hooped ear-rings while engaging in hand-to-hand combat with monsters. All I could see in such fight scenes was the ear-rings. I couldn't spare any attention on the quips and one-liners; all I could do was cringe at the thought of what would happen if a monster grabbed one, and berate her out loud for wearing them.

In the movies of The Hobbit, it turns out that the Entirely Trivial Thing That Bothers Me Unduly is Thorin's hair. Such long, thick hair, worn loose when sleeping rough, worn loose when fighting, worn loose when traversing wind-tossed mountains. Think about the tangles! Think about the daily routine of combing them out! No wonder he's grumpy. Think about all the times he can't see a thing because the wind on said wind-tossed mountain has blown his hair into his eyes. Think of the stirring speeches ruined because the wind blows a hank of hair into his mouth at a pivotal moment! Think about the fights lost because the bad guys just grab hold of his head-full of convenient handles, and pull! And think about the worst case scenario: the decapitated head held up one-handed by a triumphant enemy, gripping the convenient handle offered by the hair!

I spend most of the films desperate to rush after him on a pony, offering him hair clips.

Overheard the other day:

Person A: "Isn't To Kill a Mockingbird's opening this weekend?"

Person B: "What?"

Person A: To Kill a Mockingbird. You know. The Hunger Games?

Person B: Oh! [in sudden realisation. Then there was a pause. Then the doubt crept in.] Isn't To Kill a Mockingbird some old movie?

Person A: No! ["how silly you are!" said the tone.] It's the last Hunger Games movie, of course.


I am now fondly imagining The Hunger Games 3: To Kill a Mockingbird in which Atticus Finch must his client from a racially-motivated accusation by taking on all comers in an arena of DEATH, from which only one person can emerge alive.

I also spent a few minutes imagining other similar-titled films and books that can be conflated. There's Scarlet!, the story of a young woman shamed for adultery, who is rescued from her punishment by a visiting Englishman, who looks like a foppish fool, but is actually a master of daring rescues. Then I started chasing titles where the last word of one is the first word of the other, and conflating them. (Apocalypse Now That's What I Call Music!, the compilation album to play after the end of the world.) But at that point, I got distracted by something else, so that's all, which is probably a Very Good Thing.

Since the weather forecast didn't augur well for a long walk, I decided to take advantage of a few promised rain-free hours by walking to Newport and back. It didn't go entirely to plan, since the river had burst its banks in the high spring tide, drowning my intended path under several feet of water. Even my revised route was only passable with a detour through a pub, and it was clear even that route had been a lake in a recent past. Then I almost got felled by a ferocious gale as I rounded the corner of the quay. But, anyway, I made it, and made it back just before the rain started again.

My route took me right past the vet, so I popped in to pick up a prescription. "Hang on!" thought I. "Aren't I wearing my "Schrodinger's Cat is Dead" t-shirt? Is that a tactful thing to wear in a vet's waiting room?" I had visions of bereaved cat owners bursting into tears at the sight, or the receptionist backing off fearfully, afraid that I was campaigning on behalf of a Mr Schrodinger, who blamed veterinary incompetence for his loss, and was seeking revenge. Then I glanced down and noticed that my t-shirt actually read "Schrodinger's Cat is Not Dead." Yes, I was wearing it backwards, complete with the label standing perkily up, blatantly visible at my throat. This at least seemed like a more hopeful message, but what if said bereaved cat owners saw it as gloating: Schrodinger's cat is not dead?

Although it was boiling hot, I zipped my coat up as I neared the vet, and entered it all wrapped up, with all cat-related messages safely hidden. I then spent the next few miles amusing myself with mentally working through all the various t-shirts we possess, emblazoned with geeky pop culture quotes, and coming up with the worst possible situation to wear them in. An airline pilot wearing "We're all doomed!" A surgeon wearing "Stick them with the pointy end." Pretty much anyone in customer service wearing "Hello! My name is Inigo Montoya. You killed my father. Prepare to die." But I would like to see a weather forecaster wear "Winter is coming."

How to go from crushing disappointment to elation in one minute:

I scroll down to a new screen of books. "Clash of the Dinosaurs: Watch Dinosaurs Do Ballet!" I read. I stop. I double-take. "Ah!" I realise, with crushing disappointment, "it says 'battle.'"

I scroll down to the next screen... and it's a book called "The Rise of Humans," showing a nice hairy Early Man crouching in long grass - (a particularly long clump of grass is tactfully standing tall and proud between his legs) - while clutching a flint and eyeing a very tiny sabre-toothed tiger which is possibly soon to be crushed by half a distant elephant. Yay! It's that Holy Grail of the modern world: a children's Stone Age book!

I'd rather have a book about ballet-dancing dinosaurs, though.

This picture managed to escape from this morning's post. In real life, the missing letter was completely invisible until you looked closely. Annoyingly, the edit is a lot clearer on the photo. It still amused me, though.

I appear not to have posted for a while, and am not really posting today, since we're about to head off to the Mainland for a night away in Wiltshire. However, I feel the urge to share my delight at this picture of Philip the Fair and his family. Here they all are, expressing outrage at the sex scandal that has just engulfed the royal family. See how they express their outrage in interpretative hand jive! The guys on the left have learnt the steps particularly well. (Stick out the right leg, and raise the left arm in synchronised outrage, NOW!) People in orange presumably have different steps, but the guy on the right has just got it all wrong. ("I'm sorry! I've never danced it in this position before!") (He's merely the king's brother, while all the others are the king's offspring, so presumably skill at the Hand Jive of Outrage is hereditary.) But it's the lions I love most. THE LIONS! :-D (Although I'm struck with sudden Doubt, since at least one of the appears to have a cloven hoof. Maybe they're sheep. Golden sheep? Do medieval kings sit on surprised golden sheep?)