Zen and the art of nothing in particular

1. Some bicycle pumps are of a design that permits the head to unscrew from the cylinder, causing them to leak air from the tube when you try to pump it up. Do not confuse this with a failure of the puncture patch in the tube, for you will get all oily changing the rear tube unnecessarily. But if you do change the tube, do make sure the puncture patch in the other tube you've been holding as a spare really has held, or you will find you are unable to pump that up at all, even after you've worked out why the pump isn't working either: then you will have to change the tube back again.

On the other hand, you will be able to reduce the time and sweary effort spent changing a tube to something more respectably efficient than hitherto.

2. Your seething discontent at the mysteriously complicated business that detains people ahead of you at the Post Office counter can be countered by the realisation that a mis-copied postcode on your parcel can cause the counter staff some tine-consuming detective work.

It's coming...

As I cycled home the other night (not last night, what with the rain, a failing pump and a flat tyre, and don't get me started), the robins and blackbirds along the tree-lined back streets were singing their little hearts out. It couldn't just have been the confusion of the street lights (they're a constant, after all). So it must be spring on the way.

Reading too much into it

A damp, grey day today, and a bit of a hangover from last night's party (it seems three glasses of wine need four glasses of water or more to compensate, if I'm not to keep on waking up in the night feeling wretched).

Just the day for staying in and catching up on my backlog of reading: not just the Saturday Guardian, which has returned from the Christmas break to its usual elephantiasis and so takes up the whole weekend, and sometimes more. I've bought it, so I've got to make some effort, but "1000 novels everyone must read"?! I haven't even looked at that yet. No, today I am tackling an accumulation of magazines from various organisations I've been involved with: for example, both this year's and last year's annual reports from my old college.

It's not as though I feel a great sense of connection (it was 40 years ago, after all, and I've never been good about maintaining friendships), but here they are. There's plenty of news of interesting new academic work, and glossy photos of the daily life of the place, but I've reached the age where one scours the obituaries (no, I'm not there, but since you ask, this year there is an apology for misreporting someone as dead last year). What a catalogue of success, adventure, service, commitment - and what did I do with my opportunities?

It's enough to drive one to the biscuit tin.

On wings of song...

My thanks to Ms Scarlet for awakening me to the delights of Mrs Miller's singing. I'm surprised I hadn't heard of her before, because I'd have expected her to have quite a market in the UK of the 1960s. In classical music, we had delighted in Gerard Hoffnung's concerts, were well acquainted with PDQ Bach and Florence Foster Jenkins, and in the more popular field Jonathan and Darlene Edwards were not unknown. And after all, any sort of evidence of American over-ambition has rarely been without a welcome here.

But this incomparable diva was indeed unknown to me: my first thought was of our own dear Mrs Mills:


but a moment's listening took me inevitably to the unforgettable:

Hooray!

There was still light in the sky when I left work today. Only five months to go till the days start drawing in again.

Dolce far niente

I don't know what's come over me. My get up and go has got up and gone. As a fine bright Saturday clouded over and I realised I hadn't checked some opening times, my plans for a weekend outing just disappeared, and nothing sprang to mind to take its place.

Instead, I stayed in to work out ways to use up the red wine the book club had opened but not finished (red onion, tomato and red wine soup for the freezer and a sort of boeuf bourguignon, if you'd like to know).

And if you like, you can see a video of the sort of thing I got up to for half an hour behind the bike sheds with a filthy scrubber.

I see from Mrs Pouncer's recent comment that there may be some misperception about my cooking for my book club (by the way, Mrs P, where is that speech?).

We're all neighbours on the same estate and all get along like a house on fire (you understand of course that I'm breaking the first rule of Book Club, which is not to talk about...), but not only is each meeting an opportunity to check out other people's layout, furnishings and decor, it's also a hotbed of competitive snackmanship.

If one host has salt and vinegar crisps, the next has M&S parsnip chips in honey. Nuts'n'raisins are countered with salted almonds. Plain chocolate cake? The riposte is a cream-filled chocolate cake with Smarties on top, or butterfly fairy cakes with a strawberry/mascarpone topping. Pork scratchings? Forget it.

The danger is, of course, that we tend to over-provide: olives and stale Cheesy Wotsits tend to pall as a breakfast after a couple of days. This time, I got the quantities about right: and now that I've learnt not to over-cook them. I seem to have been given a commission for mini-pizzas for someone's birthday do (very simple, pizza base dough, finely-chopped and sweated shallots on a little tomato purée with an olive on top - no cheese, so I could almost be very Waitrose and call them mini-pissaladières, if that didn't sound unfortunate).

Drink is another matter. It's amazing how so many people bring a bottle and then drink tea. One always makes a profit - and many a bottle makes a tour from meeting to meeting.

What's that? Books? Well, those of us who've read the book do find a few words to say about it. But what with all the gossip on the estate - not to mention chocolate cake - somehow the evening flies by on a wave of convivial gluttony.

A propos de rien

This being a rather pointless time of year, at work as at home (the highpoint of my news is that I have made a chocolate cake for the book club meeting tonight), I have little to offer but some thoughts on that age-old question: why did the chicken cross the road?

News of the World: SHAME OF STREETWALKING CHICKEN
Financial Times: KFC: SUPPLY CHAIN LOSSES 'NOT A PROBLEM'
Guardian: CHIC CHICK FINDS STREET CRED
Daily Mail: GIPSY CHICKEN: HOMEOWNERS' FEARS
Sunday Express (page 10): DIANA: MI5 AND 'SUICIDE CHICKEN' RIDDLE
Hello!: ON THE SUNNY SIDE OF THE STREET: OUR EXCLUSIVE TOUR OF CHICKEN'S NEW PENTHOUSE ROOST
Heat: JEMIMA PUDDLEDUCK TELLS ALL: HOW CHICKEN'S WANDERING DESTROYED OUR LOVE
Sun: CLUCK OFF!

Twelfth Night

By custom, the Christmas decorations come down tonight or, at a pinch, tomorrow. My Christmas cards look quite cheery en masse - otherwise I don't do much myself since I'm (a) not here over Christmas (b) a bit of a misery at times. But by way of farewell to the season, here's a view of one thing to do over Christmas in London.

The Geffrye Museum in Hackney is set in a row of seventeenth century almshouses, and as you follow the long interior corridor along one side of the square, you pass a succession of rooms, decorated and furnished as they would have been in a succession of periods from around 1600 to the 1990s, as well as the tiny chapel for the original seventeenth-century residents. Each room set has an anteroom with information about different aspects of domestic life and interior decoration, in both display cabinets and panels and a lively choice of recordings of memoirs, histories and literary accounts from all sorts of sources.

There's also a space for temporary exhibitions and information onsome interesting community and educational work. The current show is about how male and female attitudes to interior design and setting up home were, and were seen to be, different: but I was a little disappointed that, in all the fascinating detail of photographs and memoirs and advertising brochures, there wasn't a single mention of Mr. Pooter painting the bath red.

The shop's worth seeing as well, if you're interested in homes and gardens. There are also some comfortable sitting spaces with plenty of books (for adults and children) to read, and a café that, on the day I visited, had people queueing to get in.

One reason for its popularity (apart from the fact that the museum's free) is that it's quite a tradition to go and see how they've dressed the rooms as they would have been decorated for Christmas at the relevant times:

I've heard of paying through the nose, but....

[EDITED: Turns out it's illegal (although the advertisers didn't want to admit to it)]

The artifice of eternity*

Well, I've done my patriotic duty, which is to say, I've more likely done my duty by international trade, since what I've bought in the sales turns out to have been made variously in Estonia, Sri Lanka and no doubt China, and any profits likely to be returned to the US and Japan as well as the UK.

To recover from all of that, I went to the Byzantium exhibition at the Royal Academy. I have been to Istanbul, and managed to see a few traces of the Byzantine Empire there, but much of this was new to me. To think so much fragile art survives from as far back as the days of Constantine himself: there are paintings and micro-mosaics, intricately-carved ivories and even textiles. Though much of the exhibition concerns the religious art and its legacy, there are some intriguing domestic items and intricate personal jewellery that attracted a lot of envious eyes. There's a lot of material on the inheritors, most obviously the Russian Tsars, but also the Bulgar, Serb and Armenian churches (I hadn't realised quite how far the mediaeval Serbian empire extended: that explains a lot), as well as the interplay with the Catholic inheritance in Italy. Most moving of all is the final room of pieces from the St Catherine Monastery in Sinai, whose artworks were saved from religious and political change in Constantinople by - well, the Islamic conquest.

After which degree of enlightenment and elevation, I emerged to a question of etiquette. If some passer-by has chosen to leave their empty coffee-carton in your bike basket (this was outside Burlington Arcade, mind - they don't do rubbish there, so there's nothing like a refuse bin) - what do you do? Put it in the basket on the next bike along, I'm afraid.

*"The artifice of eternity" is a quote from Yeats's Sailing to Byzantium. I'm not (yet) owning up to being "A tattered coat upon a stick".

It's that time of year

The annual newspaper filler story (beg pardon, survey) of the year's most popular names for children is with us again.

Strange how these things come and go. There may never come a time again when "What did Horace say, Winnie?" might be a plausible catchphrase, but some - to my ears - old-fashioned names can make a startling reappearance. I shan't forget the slight froideur when my mother, on learning the name of her much-longed-for grand-daughter, burst into the old song "They call her Hard-hearted Hannah, the vamp from Savannah, GA" (she isn't, of course); and I'm wondering when (if ever) I can tell my great-niece that, though she's as cute as the winner of the Miss Cutest-Ever of the School of Cute could ever be, every time I hear her name, I can't help thinking of this:

RIP

How Christmas seems to have crept up on me this year. What with a cold (that'll teach me to congratulate myself on having avoided one so far) and being in charge of the incoming workflow at the office this last week (yes, I'm sure you're under pressure to publish before Christmas but so is everyone else and why couldn't you all have thought about it last week?), I've barely been in the mood to do at least some present-buying (my brother now has four grandchildren, would you believe). I've had absolutely no amusing observations or curious insights to offer, and managed to forget to take my camera into work so I can't show you, as I intended, a particularly crunch-defying set of Christmas lights on a house (maybe when I come back next week).

But at last I seem to be ready, and even have a spare moment to wish you all you wish yourself. Here's something to waken up that Christmas spirit (you'll need to allow a minute for all the opening credits):

I'm beginning to feel a lot like murder...

Three or four times in a single commercial break? Oh perleeese.

It was a bright cold day

It wasn't April and the clocks weren't striking thirteen, but the Taking Liberties exhibition at the British Library was calling.

Starting with one of the few surviving copies of Magna Carta and similar mediaeval documents, the exhibition shows the visitor milestones in both our constitutional history and the development of the liberties and rights we tend to take for granted today, grouped around the themes Rule of law, Four nations, Parliament and people, Human rights and Freedom from want.

All the obvious and familiar events are reflected, some in more detail than others. The seventeenth century is a particular interest of mine, and seems to be particularly strongly represented. It's a real thrill to see the originals (even if the handwriting's a bit hard to decipher) of the Scottish Covenant, the contemporary notes of the Putney Debates, the Agreement of the People (the constitution we should have had but didn't), Charles I's death warrant, the Habeas Corpus Act, the Bill of Rights of 1689 (as near as we ever got to a written constitution) and the Act of Union.


The long slow process of extension of the ballot, the great Reform Act, the Chartists, the suffragettes, they're all there. There's rather more of a strain to document the development of labour and welfare rights and the barest nod to the slavery issue (though not without pointing out that both Locke and the founders of the USA both took slavery for granted, since their idea of liberty and rights tended to focus on property - come to think of it, there's no mention of how both royalists and republicans in seventeenth-century England sent some of those they had defeated in battle into slavery in the West Indies).

Apart from the star documents, a particularly thought-provoking feature of the exhibition is the interactive sampling of opinions on some current contentious debates in this general area, and the opportunity to compare one's own views with those of others. Interestingly, people tended to cluster into two fairly distinct groups on most topics; and I was surprised to find myself closer towards the "caution" and "control" axes than I would have imagined. You can join in online, if you like.

I came away with the thought that rights and liberties aren't necessarily the same thing, nor always (pace John Hancock and friends) self-evident truths.

How many cherries...

..does it take to make a Schwarzwälder Kirschtorte?

I was interested to learn from Rachel that the courts will be considering whether it's libellous to call someone "one cherry short" of one.

Clearly the profound legal implications - let alone the substantive merits - of such a case are well beyond my grasp, but if, as seems likely, it provides some gainful employment to libel lawyers (who in these times must be hard put to it to scratch a living), it will be well worth it.

This has nothing, of course, to do with any consideration (oh dear me no) of its potential entertainment value, as there is not the remotest possibility of this being the kind of case that seems to come along just at the right time to provide the kind of hilarity that enlivened a previous period of perceived gloom and doubt.

Twas on a Monday morning....

It was only the quietest popping sound, hardly audible above the clanks and swearing at every bump, but by the time I got to work it was clear I had a puncture. By the time I left work there was no way the tube was going to hold any air at all; but though I had a spare tube and tyre levers, I didn't have a spanner. Fortunately, I could take the bike all the way home on a boat, and I cheerfully thought I could deal with it there.

Oh dear. My ancient adjustables couldn't shift the nut at all; all they did was start to round off the angles on it.

So it was back to the old routine till I could get to a shop, and 'twas on a Tuesday evening that I beheld a proper old-fashioned bike spanner, the miniature dumbell kind, and I tested it on a companion model of bike in the shop. But would it fit when I got it home? Would it bogroll.

Another day of mumbling announcements and enforced inspection of strangers' armpits (dear Santa, for the Jubilee Line, please, some signals that work all the time), and 'twas on a Wednesday evening that I went to another shop and checked the precise specifications of a fearsome tool that looked like the kind of thing you see labelled up on Crimewatch.

And it fitted! Only a few more swearwords and I had the wheel off.

Oh. It must be the best part of forty years since I mended a puncture. Getting the tyre off - no problem; but wasn't there something about making sure you didn't get the new tube caught underneath the edge of the tyre, and oh dear, how is it that it seems to be rather too loose and large? But no, all the printed labelling matches up, so somehow this wriggling snake has to be squeezed in; and at last it seems to be filling up, and lo and behold, it's fixed, it's pumped up and solid. I have done it.

Twas on a Thursday morning that I faced the day with a new skill mastered. I am man: hear me roar (oh, all right then, I am bloke: hear me drone on about spanners).

Then I opened the curtains: bucketing down.

So 'twas not until today that I actually rode the damn thing again.

I'll tell you what though. It goes so much better with its driving train scrubbed. And don't we all?

Dank and dreary..

As must be obvious, I really haven't found much to write about recently. It's that time of year. And though there are plenty of things to see and do in London, as at any time of year, a couple of weekends of wretched weather have combined with the kind of bad posture while doing necessary odd jobs that seems to seize up my back muscles. So a brief sciatical totter to the City Farm café and back was the sum total of this weekend's outings.

The only consolation to Sunday afternoons at this time of year is drawing the curtains to cocoon with something toasted and a detective story, but otherwise:

No sun, no moon!
No morn, no noon!
No dawn, no dusk, no proper time of day,

No warmth, no cheerfulness, no healthful ease,
No comfortable feel in any member -
No shade, no shine, no butterflies, no bees,
No fruits, no flowers, no leaves, no birds! -
November!

Dear Mr Tourist..

I know there's a lot to learn about London, and especially the Tower and Tower Bridge, but if you're walking across the bridge approach road in the gloom of the evening rush hour, do you think you could actually take your nose out of the guide-book before stepping into the road in front of me? I wouldn't want you to get a bad impression of Britain, but I don't honestly feel inclined to apologise for swearing at you.....