The Befouled Weakly News
13 December 2009 Good morning. My goodness, doesn’t time fly when you are enjoying yourself? I was at a school on Friday morning and, at one stage, I needed to know the date. The teacher I asked replied that it was 11 December and then added, “Only two weeks until Christmas.” Two weeks!!!?? I guess I better start thinking about it. Not much this week – a variety of weather experiences to amuse us ranging from bright, clear, blue skies with freezing temperatures to very thick (and still very cold) fog. What happened to those glorious summer days (both of them).
The subtitle of the book is “The Seventeenth Century and the Dawn of the Global World” and that is indeed exactly what it is about. The central feature of the book is that Brooke takes some of the objects in a handful of Vermeer’s paintings as starting points or “doorways” through to a greater understanding of the development of global trade. In the painting of the title, an officer in an over-sized beaver hat sits flirting with a young woman. There are various objects in the painting Brooke could have used as his “doorways” but he settles on the beaver hat to trace the development of the French explorations in the St Lawrence and Adirondack area establishing trading arrangements with the Indians. The demand for fashionable beaver hats in Europe had led to the extinction of the European beaver (no, I didn’t know there were such animals either) hence the demand for new sources of beaver pelts from North America. He uses a Chinese dish in another painting to explore the development of the porcelain trade and a silver coin in another painting to examine the trade in silver from South America, the Philippines, China and Europe. In one chapter which had a particular resonance for me he uses a black servant boy as the doorway to explore the migration and movement of people throughout the world in the development of global trade. Really good book – if you’re still looking for a good Christmas gift for someone (or even for yourself) Amazon can probably still deliver it in time. Also, I recently finished The Ghost Map (The Story of London’s Most Terrifying Epidemic – and How It Changed Science, Cities, and the Modern World) by Steven Johnson. Dad passed on to me when I waxed enthusiastically over his description. It’s the story of the cholera epidemic in 1854 and how a local physician investigated and promoted a “bizarre” theory about the disease being water-borne in contrast to the more popular theory that cholera was somehow transmitted through the air (if it smells bad, it must be bad). Again, a fascinating read. And finally, to conclude my book report this week, some weeks ago I finished The Tent, The Bucket and Me by Emma Kennedy which is one of the funniest books I’ve read in a very long time. (When Penny was reading it I got very cross as she chuckled aloud in bed. It wasn’t the chuckling aloud, so much, that annoyed me – it was the fact that the chuckling precipitated a veritable shuddering of the bed which was most disconcerting to those of us trying to lay peacefully and read our own book). The book is about the young Emma Kennedy’s camping adventures with her parents and those of us who enjoyed similar camping adventures with our family cannot help but be reminded of the Oak Creek Canyon Massacre. Every camping expedition they attempted went wrong in some catastrophic manner or other. Very funny and, again, heartily recommended and a word of warning - do not read this book whilst drinking a glass of milk (or probably any other liquid) - it will come out your nose. Last week you will remember I shared a clipping concerning a man who has been banned from a Leicestershire library for his “pungent” body odour. Imagine my surprise to run across the following this week – this problem is clearly more widespread than I had thought.
Looks like sales of deodorant in the UK must be a seriously depressed market. Love to you all, Greg BROWN, DARLING AND A DOG (For those of a non-British constituency, you need to know that Alastair Darling is the current Chancellor of the Exchequer, i.e., the equivalent of Treasury Secretary and Gordon Brown, of course, is the current Prime Minister. Feel free to alter the names of the two main protagonists in the anecdote below – it works perfectly well with any politicians you would care to name such as Bush & Cheney or Obama and Clinton or even McCain and Palin. Have fun and enjoy altering it to reflect your own current prejudices!) Gordon Brown called Alastair Darling into his office one day and said, 'Alastair, I have a great idea!? We are going to go all out to win back Middle England '. 'Good idea PM, how will we go about it?' said Darling. 'Well' said Brown 'we'll get ourselves two of those long Barbour coats, some proper wellies, a stick and a flat cap. Oh and a Labrador . Then we'll really look the part. We'll go to a nice old country pub, in Much Something or other and we'll show we really enjoy the countryside, .......... Oh! and remember not to mention the Hunting With Dogs Act' 'Right PM' said Darling. So a few days later, all kitted out and with the requisite Labrador at heel, they set off from London . Eventually they arrived at just the place they were looking for and found a lovely country pub and, with the dog, went in and up to the bar. 'Good evening Landlord, two pints of you best ale, from the wood please' said Brown 'Good evening, Prime Minister' said the landlord, 'two pints of best it is, coming up' Brown and Darling stood leaning on the bar contemplating new taxes, nodding now and again to those who came in for a drink, whilst the dog lay quietly at their feet. As they drank their beer they chatted about how heart-rending it was that pensioners were being imprisoned for not paying the council tax. All of a sudden the door from the adjacent bar opened and in came a grizzled old shepherd, complete with crook. He walked up to the Labrador lifted its tail and looked underneath, shrugged his shoulders and walked back to the other bar. A few moments later, in came a wizened farmer who followed the same procedure, to the bewilderment of Brown and Darling. People of all ages and gender followed suit over the next hour. Eventually, unable to stand it any longer, Darling called the landlord over. 'Tell me' said Darling, 'Why did all those people come in and look under the dog's tail like that??? Is it an old country custom?’ 'Good Lord no,' said the landlord. 'It's just that someone has told them that there was a Labrador in this bar with two arseholes' A student comes to a young professor's office hours. She glances down the hall, closes his door, and kneels pleadingly. "I have to pass this class," she pleads. The professor looks at his grade book and shakes his head. "You've missed most lectures, you haven't done the homework, and the one paper you wrote was terrible -- it shows you don't know the material." "But you don't understand!" she says. "If I don't pass your class, I can't graduate." "The final is 50 percent of your grade," the professor says. "If you get 95 percent, you would end up with a D, which is passing." "I would do anything to pass the final," she says. She leans closer to him, flips back her hair, gazes meaningfully into his eyes. "I mean..." she whispers, 'I would do anything!" "Anything?" he says, returning her intense gaze. "Do you really mean . . . anything?" "Absolutely!" she says, finally smiling broadly. His voice turns to a whisper: "Would you . . . study?" Three Irishmen, Paddy, Sean and Shamus, were stumbling home from the pub late one night and found themselves on the road which led past the old graveyard. "Come have a look over here," says Paddy, "it's Michael O'Grady's grave, God bless his soul. He lived to the ripe old age of 87." "That's nothing", says Sean, "here's one named Patrick O'Toole, it says here that he was 95 when he died." Just then, Shamus yells out, "Good God, here's a fella that got to be 145 years old!" "What was his name?" asks Paddy. Shamus stumbles around a bit, awkwardly lights a match to see what else is written on the stone marker, and exclaims, "Miles, from Dublin."
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Just finished reading Vermeer’s Hat by Timothy Brooke which Penny was reading and I know we mentioned to several of you when we were visiting in the autumn. For those of you who are not familiar with it let me recommend it to you heartily.