Castle Aching

[RedGemAlchemist]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Dragged headfirst through the open window of a stretch limo, never to be seen again....

[drmditch]

Re: - The Jack Aubrey novels.

I hope you are nor expressing approval of the mid to late 18thC Royal Navy (Ref N.A.M. Rodger's 'The Wooden World' and others of his works.

)

My the second decade of the 19thC this was seen dangerously democratic!

Good Heavens - a 'gentleman' could end up being commanded by an officer from the 'lower orders'  - merely because that officer was a better seaman and sea officer!

 

There is a splendid letter from a concerned mother expressing precisely this sentiment!

 

The only problem that as the RN grew more socially correct and hidebound it became less and less effective as a fighting navy!

(See 'The Rules of the Game' by Andrew Norman - which has been referenced on this thread before.)

The treatment of Tom Pullings in the O'Brian novels deals with precisely this issue.

 

Re:- Collective nouns for young women

My OED (published 1964) states:

bevy, n. Company (prop of ladies, roes, quails, larks). [orig. unkn.]

 

I hope this does not imply any equivalence.

 

Re:- Rocket (L&M 1829)

I have glad you have got your model working. I hope you do not run over any politicians with it.

I trust that after a month or so it will be relegated to ballast and construction trains?

The original was of course obsolete after six months, so what will you do with yours after that?

 

It might look good on a section of the Lambley Fell railway!

 

Re: Real and current 'current' problems.

I seem unable to solve a problem with a diode switching matrix.

It is very annoying and has cost me weeks.

I have one other test to make - then it may be time to revert to a mechanical lever frame!

I may be appealing for help on RM Web by tomorrow!

 

 

[Donw]

1 hour ago, drmditch said:

 

Re: Real and current 'current' problems.

I seem unable to solve a problem with a diode switching matrix.

It is very annoying and has cost me weeks.

I have one other test to make - then it may be time to revert to a mechanical lever frame!

I may be appealing for help on RM Web by tomorrow!

 

 

 

Is a problem with the logic or possibly a faulty diode. Getting one reversed can cause a few problems. I look forward to tomorrow's puzzle of the day.

 

Don

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, drmditch said:

 

By the second decade of the 19thC this was seen dangerously democratic!

 

 

Yes, the easy-going cameraderie between ranks that O'Brien shows in his Anson novels would have been frowned on in the Victorian Navy.

 

The Nineteenth Century saw distance put between the races, too; Who Do You Think You Are? is not a TV programme I've often seen (but I rarely watch TV), but do watch the Alistair McGowan one if you get the chance.  He discovers that he is part Indian as a result of an East India Company officer marrying a local.  The point was made that John Company in the Eighteenth Century positively encouraged inter-marriage with the local population. That would have been unthinkable under the Raj.

 

Before we get too uppity about Nineteenth Century Evangelicals versus my Squire Western vision of the Eighteenth Century, reflect that the latter encouraged chattel slavery while the latter saw it abolished. 

[Compound2632]

Jack Aubery's illegitimate son ends up as a Papal Nuncio - he's the offspring of young Aubery's attempt to smuggle a black girl on board the ship in which he was serving as a Midshipman, so is himself black. I must get round to doing some digging to see whether O'Brien had any basis in fact for Mgr Mputa's career.

[monkeysarefun]

In a Royal Navy in the 18th Century vein  - 

 

Royal Marines Lt Ralph Clark left England in 1787 as part of the first fleet, accompanying the first shiploads of british tourists to downunder.  Sections of his journal are preserved in the Sydney Uni library and his emotions as he is leaving his wife and young child for the long voyage are quite heart-rending as are the entries about how his hopes for a brief last encounter as the ships sail from the UK are continually dashed.

 

http://setis.library.usyd.edu.au/ozlit/pdf/clajour.pdf

 

Although continually banging on about his wife and how degraded and unworthy the convict women are in comparison it didn't stop him from having a child with a young convict woman 4 years into his posting - though he does at least name the child after his wife ..

 

Story didn't end well (spoiler alert) 

 

He returns to the UK and reunites with his wife and son, before leaving for the West Indies a year or so later. His son is  serving on the same ship.

 

During his absence his wife dies giving birth to a stillborn and meanwhile  Clark, unaware of this is killed in action.  Then his son dies of Yellow Fever about the same time. The end.

 

On a bright note, he did get an Island in Sydney Harbour named after him.

 

As to Pre-Raphaelites, from this thread I take it thats a Brit term for shielas having a swim without their cossies on. We don't have any thing like that here, though we did have Norman Lindsay who definitely did love knocking out  pictures of good sorts getting their  funbags out.

 

 

 

This is him here showing what life in Australia is all about.

 

 

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

13 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

In a Royal Navy in the 18th Century vein  - 

 

Royal Marines Lt Ralph Clark left England in 1787 as part of the first fleet, accompanying the first shiploads of british tourists to downunder.  Sections of his journal are preserved in the Sydney Uni library and his emotions as he is leaving his wife and young child for the long voyage are quite heart-rending as are the entries about how his hopes for a brief last encounter as the ships sail from the UK are continually dashed.

 

 

Fascinating stuff, though the pedant in me insists that there were no Royal Marines in 1787.  If memory serves, the marines became a Royal regiment around the turn of that century, and, thus, gained blue facings.  Prior to that they wore white. 

[Compound2632]

Lindsay also wrote that rather strange children's book The Magic Pudding.

 

Pre-Raphaelite women, being drawn from chilly north European medieval romance, tend to be fully clothed; the rival school of Leighton and Alma-Tadema went for warm Mediterranean classical subjects and consequent nudity. But by the end of the nineteenth century there were artists such as Waterhouse and Rea who were happy to combine influences from both schools.

[monkeysarefun]

2 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

 

Fascinating stuff, though the pedant in me insists that there were no Royal Marines in 1787.  If memory serves, the marines became a Royal regiment around the turn of that century, and, thus, gained blue facings.  Prior to that they wore white. 

 

Everyday is a school day on this thread!   Following your post I checked it out and find that there was a detachment called the New South Wales Marines raised in 1786, comprised of volunteers  specifically for the purpose of accompanying the first fleet convicts here, this is what Ralph Clark  joined in order to get his promotion to 1st Lt. 

Cut and paste from Wiki:

 

Volunteers for the NSW Marine Corps were required to have had a satisfactory prior record of service in the British Marines, to be at least 5 ft 6 in (1.68 m) tall and under forty years of age.

Recruits were offered a two-guinea incentive payment if they volunteered for the Corps. A further inducement was that although enlistment as a British Marine was traditionally for life, members of the New South Wales Marine Corps could seek an honourable discharge after three years of colonial service With an eye to the likelihood of delays in setting out, the three-year term would commence on arrival of the Fleet in New South Wales rather than the dates of enlistment in England. Marines who chose this option had no automatic right of return to military service after discharge, but in practice few were refused re-entry when their service expired.

 

They were relieved by the infamous Rum Corps in 1789...

[monkeysarefun]

6 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Lindsay also wrote that rather strange children's book The Magic Pudding.

 

 

 

AND also an accomplished model maker.

 

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

17 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Have you ever read the Patrick O'Brien Aubrey & Maturin novels?

 

Jack Aubrey is an easy-going Eighteenth Century type who hasn't quite caught up with early Nineteenth Century mores.  Notions of "respectability" on the part of an ascendant Middle Class together with religious Evangelism were the drivers of social distancing from the "Lower Orders" (compare O'Brien's depiction of Anson and his crew in the early Eighteenth Century), exaggerated notions of "propriety" (see Jane Austen's novels), and strict Christian morality (that led to the inhumane hypocrisy that Dickens and Wilkie Collins so loathed).

 

Now, in the main, these early Nineteenth Century trends were not inherently bad things, and no doubt our society benefited from the comfort and charity a religious revival brings and of the civilising effect of manners, but, like everything else, there was a negative side, too.  Our social and political assessments and commentaries are still hopelessly binary.  We still want to say that so-and-so was either good or bad, when it's generally going to be both.

 

With social meeja's race to the bottom to call out and excoriate crimes of expression, both real and imagined, and its platform for "virtue-signalling" prigs the world over, I feel increasingly like Jack Aubrey at times.

 

These days tolerance, consideration and respect for others, and courtesy still go a long way, and I prefer them to badging myself with "isms", but, alas, they are insufficient to guarantee safety.

 

What Orwell, and the rest of us, failed to predict is that, via Social Media, we would each become the other's Big Brother, constantly hunting out thought crimes and meeting out reputational death.

 

 

 

Absolutely the way I feel - bloody well put.

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

And further to my post - nothing irritates me more than this current habit of 3rd rate public figures, representatives of whatever the current minority group du jour is, and other idiots referring to someone's behaviour or comments as "inappropriate" if they voice an honest opinion.

 

Usually this occurs when some poor bastard has been pushed to the absolute limit by idiotic behaviour in others and quite truthfully responds with words to the effect of "these people would be considered intellectually challenged even if they had a brain".

 

Politeness is essential however this passive aggresive virtue signalling behaviour is the absolute antithesis of it.

 

And with that I'll return to our current discussion and offer my thoughts re public administration 

 

 

 

 

[RedGemAlchemist]

8 hours ago, Compound2632 said:

Lindsay also wrote that rather strange children's book The Magic Pudding.

The 2000 animated film adaptation of which is even stranger.

[Talltim]

On 10/03/2020 at 06:27, St Enodoc said:

A. My wife went to Indonesia.

 

B. Jakarta?

 

A. No, she flew like everyone else.

 

I thank you.

 

What did you do at the weekend?

We went to Poole

In Dorset?

Yes, it’s very nice.

[Hroth]

10 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

As to Pre-Raphaelites, from this thread I take it thats a Brit term for shielas having a swim without their cossies on. We don't have any thing like that here, though we did have Norman Lindsay who definitely did love knocking out  pictures of good sorts getting their  funbags out.

 

Crumbs....

They make the henparty look positively benign!

I've not encountered Norman Lindsay before, he certainly went in for some eyepoppers as a quick search with Google reveals!  The Baccanalian ones especially so, though there's a chap in the background of one who looks like the archetypal "Jolly Swagman" and in another (the one with two leopards) the intertwinings and expressions are positively amazing...

 

And now a bucket of cold water - it seems that the health minister has tested positive for covid-19 (I keep thinking of it as Corvid-19) after spending some time in No 10, thus possibly infecting the whole Government...

 

Shopping list for today:

Food (tinned and frozen)

New large freezer to keep the excess frozen stuff in

Loo rolls (sort of the equivalent of the cuddly toy in The Generation Game?)

 

Just in case, you understand...  or even , perhaps .

 

 

 

[TT-Pete]

38 minutes ago, Talltim said:

What did you do at the weekend?

We went to Poole

In Dorset?

Yes, it’s very nice.

 

Hmm. By comparison to say, Scunthorpe.

[Edwardian]

It is, sadly, a binary world.  Sad for those of us who seem doomed to see both sides.  Freedom of speech is so often a mask for bigotry, so one can see how the Woke in effect refuse to accept any "ifs" or "buts"; you're either 100% on message or you cannot be heard; enter no-platforming, and ugly word for a silly thing. If, if so, in what circumstances, people with obnoxious views should be silenced is a matter for debate. 

 

What concerns me is that we are in a culture where anyone not perceived as displaying sufficient ideological purity is considered fair game, and the "take-down" is brutal.  If you try to take a nuanced view, or if you haven't kept up with the correct nomenclature, or you simply inadvertently say or type the wrong word.  Examples, from both sides of our political spectrum, that show how complicated and fractious public debate is are (a) a conservative politician some months ago said "coloured people" instead of "people of colour" and (b)  the suspension of Trevor Phillips from the Labour Party (he does not understand Islamaphobia, according to the Grauniad). I also recall the trouble Woke-Luvvy Benedict Cucumberpatch got into for saying "coloured" when the correct word to use was "black". 

 

It's important to avoid offence, but I think that we are being very hasty to judge and quick to condemn before labeling statements or people as ".... ist" , which is a really serious and damaging judgment about anyone, and I do fear that the punishment is not fitting the crime, if any, in many cases.

 

Kevin made reference to West Indian accents. I particularly enjoy hearing the rich Jamaican timbre of Neil Nunes on R4.  For me in has that same warm deep quality spoken by Welshmen like Richard Burton and Anthony Hopkins. 

 

Marine, yes, fascinating to learn that a NSW corps was raised. it's easy to forget that, though we had a Marine regiment, very frequently in the Eighteenth Century, Regiments of Foot would be embarked to serve as marines.  I believe this happened as late as the Glorious First of June 1793 or 4, IIRC?

Edited March 11, 2020 by Edwardian

[jwealleans]

Quote

I particularly enjoy hearing the rich Jamaican timbre of Neil Nunes on R4.

 

Funny, that - I find him very hard to listen to as I have to strain to pick out words.   I don't know whether it's the pitch of his voice or something else, but he's hard work. 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

Crumbs....

They make the henparty look positively benign!

I've not encountered Norman Lindsay before, he certainly went in for some eyepoppers as a quick search with Google reveals!  The Baccanalian ones especially so, though there's a chap in the background of one who looks like the archetypal "Jolly Swagman" and in another (the one with two leopards) the intertwinings and expressions are positively amazing...

 

And now a bucket of cold water - it seems that the health minister has tested positive for covid-19 (I keep thinking of it as Corvid-19) after spending some time in No 10, thus possibly infecting the whole Government...

 

Shopping list for today:

Food (tinned and frozen)

New large freezer to keep the excess frozen stuff in

Loo rolls (sort of the equivalent of the cuddly toy in The Generation Game?)

 

Just in case, you understand...  or even , perhaps .

 

 

 

 

The dreadful irony with Norman Lindsay's paintings is that at the time he was active Australia in general was a place of almost puritanical attitudes towards anything that might be seen as pleasurable. Those of us who had the misfortune to experience the Australian Sunday look back and shudder. If you were out of milk then you might catch the local milk bar open for a couple of hours. No other shops opened so if you'd run out of bread well that was your misfortune. The pubs all shut, as distinct from closing at 6.00 pm on every other day of the week. If you went anywhere it was best to take a packed lunch as the likelihood of finding some place open to buy something to eat was passing minuscule. And if you did it might be a dried up sausage roll left over from Saturday. 

 

Public transport was scarce and waits between trains on the suburban lines were around an hour. The various churches were open naturally, however in fitting revenge for the stultifying Sunday their adherents had inflicted on us, their attendances were collapsing. Any proposals for sporting events on Sunday were met with the standard mantra that enjoying oneself was the work of the devil so that was out. The 70s saw massive changes as politicians suddenly acquired the bravery to stand up to militant Methodists and Presbyterians of which we poor Australians seem to have had more than our fair share. 

 

In the late 19th century the rise of militant Christianity in Australia gave rise to the pejorative term "wowser" to describe the pioneers of the stultifying Sunday. Wowsers in general hated drink, horse racing, sport - in fact anything that allowed the working classes some degree of relaxation that didn't involve hanging about a church on Sunday. We were really a very puritanical society which is probably why artists like Lindsay achieved the following they did. Looking at a Lindsay voluptuary is to see pure rambunctiousness struggling to escape the puritanical straight jacket that infested Australian society.

 

Looking back at when I was child and then a teenager in the 40s, 50s and early 60s is to remember a time utterly alien to the present and I feel no regrets for its passing. 

 

[Compound2632]

6 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

The dreadful irony with Norman Lindsay's paintings is that at the time he was active Australia in general was a place of almost puritanical attitudes towards anything that might be seen as pleasurable.

 

 

There's a film about that, Sirens, starring Hugh Grant. The film does have a character called Sheela - who is, I think, a composite of various of Lindsay's models. It also references Waterhouse... 

 

Lindsay did have some unpleasantly right-wing sympathies that were far from unusual at the time. 

[Edwardian]

28 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

The dreadful irony with Norman Lindsay's paintings is that at the time he was active Australia in general was a place of almost puritanical attitudes towards anything that might be seen as pleasurable. Those of us who had the misfortune to experience the Australian Sunday look back and shudder. If you were out of milk then you might catch the local milk bar open for a couple of hours. No other shops opened so if you'd run out of bread well that was your misfortune. The pubs all shut, as distinct from closing at 6.00 pm on every other day of the week. If you went anywhere it was best to take a packed lunch as the likelihood of finding some place open to buy something to eat was passing minuscule. And if you did it might be a dried up sausage roll left over from Saturday. 

 

Public transport was scarce and waits between trains on the suburban lines were around an hour. The various churches were open naturally, however in fitting revenge for the stultifying Sunday their adherents had inflicted on us, their attendances were collapsing. Any proposals for sporting events on Sunday were met with the standard mantra that enjoying oneself was the work of the devil so that was out. The 70s saw massive changes as politicians suddenly acquired the bravery to stand up to militant Methodists and Presbyterians of which we poor Australians seem to have had more than our fair share. 

 

In the late 19th century the rise of militant Christianity in Australia gave rise to the pejorative term "wowser" to describe the pioneers of the stultifying Sunday. Wowsers in general hated drink, horse racing, sport - in fact anything that allowed the working classes some degree of relaxation that didn't involve hanging about a church on Sunday. We were really a very puritanical society which is probably why artists like Lindsay achieved the following they did. Looking at a Lindsay voluptuary is to see pure rambunctiousness struggling to escape the puritanical straight jacket that infested Australian society.

 

Looking back at when I was child and then a teenager in the 40s, 50s and early 60s is to remember a time utterly alien to the present and I feel no regrets for its passing. 

 

 

Thank you for that; I have long since thought of a variety of insufferable people as "wowsers", essentially anyone you sees it as their mission to take anything interesting or fun out of life.

 

So, for me, it has included everyone from the 'blue light' admiral in O'Brien's world and Bishop Proudie in Trollope's, to the ghastly civil servants who draw up plans to eradicate legal peculiarities, or "rationalise" ancient county boundaries, all out of a misplaced sense of neatness.

 

I was, however, hitherto ignorant as to the origin of the term.

[Nearholmer]

Small-town English Sundays and Bank Holidays weren't all that different from the Australian ones up to the early '80s, by the sound of it.

 

The small town I grew-up in was exceedingly, deathly quiet on Sundays and BHs, except for two BHs when there were annual fetes, which nigh-on everybody attended ........ The half-mile long queue to get into the August BH cottage hospital fundraiser, for instance, was part of the 'outing', with everyone saying 'hello' to friends/relations/bitter enemies that they'd forgotten over the preceding months.

 

Personally, I'm slightly in favour of a return to Sunday boredom and quietude, not for religious reasons, but because I think everyone actually needs a weekly break from frenetic-ness, including all the people who have to work on Sundays to enable the rest to pretend that it is a 'normal day'. I blame a certain Lady PM, and her passion to 'liberalise' Sunday trading laws, which I always thought odd for a person of religious conviction.

 

May all depend upon where you live, because I notice that away from big urban/suburban areas there still is at least some sense of peace on Sundays.

 

Kevin (Wowser-in-waiting, by the looks of it)

[Annie]

It was our Tory government of the time that brought in Sunday trading and immediately killed off the one day in the week that many low paid shop workers had for some peace and quiet and time to themselves.  Since the same government had butchered the labour laws it meant that if these workers couldn't work on a Sunday for any number of good reasons they would swiftly find themselves without a job.

I liked the New Zealand quiet Sunday.  Not for any religious reasons, but simply because it was peaceful and it was the one day in the week when all the madness of modern society had to come to a stop.

[monkeysarefun]

8 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

The pubs all shut, as distinct from closing at 6.00 pm on every other day of the week

 

I'm too little to remember the 50's and 60's but I do seem to recall a weird quirk in the Sunday pub trading laws in the early '70's whereby if you were a traveller (ie someone who is on a long trip  as opposed to the UK term for a gypsy) you could pull into a pub as long  as you were more than a set distance from your home - say 20 miles for arguments sake , sign a book and get plastered.

 

This led to convoys of cars driving out to particular pubs in towns on the outskirts of cities, everyone getting ratfaced and then driving back home again.

 

This in conjunction with the supercar arms race that Ford Holden and Chrysler were having at the time, meaning anyone could buy a 350+ HP V8 with drum brakes and leaf springs off the showroom floor, led to a natural culling of certain sections of society.

 

Tasmania seemed to be the last stronghold of restricted trading, I remember being there in the early 90's and feeling very nostalgic when  I discovered all the shops shut at 12pm on Saturday and you couldn't buy anything until Monday, including petrol.

 

 

Edited March 11, 2020 by monkeysarefun

[Compound2632]

52 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

and feeling very nostalgic when  I discovered all the shops shut at 12pm on Saturday and you couldn't buy anything until Monday, including petrol.

 

... as you walked home on Sunday afternoon from the place where the car had given up.