Hypnerotomachia

I don’t recall when or how I first heard about the mysterious book Hypnerotomachia Poliphili. Certainly by the mid-to-late ’90s I’d read a bit about it, not imagining that within a few years I’d come to own not one but two copies of the thing. The year 1999 marked the 500th anniversary of the book’s publication, with new editions forthcoming to mark the occasion.

First I got my hands on a 2-volume set issued by Adelphi Edizioni of Milan in 1998, in which vol. 1 (pictured above) contained a facsimile of the book, and vol. 2 (which I no longer have) a translation into modern Italian, introductory essays, and hundreds more pages of additional commentary. My rudimentary knowledge of Italian fell a long way short of my being able to read the text, so I was delighted when, the following year, Joscelyn Godwin’s complete English translation was issued by Thames & Hudson “in the same size and format as the original” (handier editions followed).

Finally able – in principle – to read the book, I then failed to reach the end of it. The narrator’s progress through a his dream-world, a kind of pagan paradise strewn with magnificent buildings and colossal ruins, gets to be numbingly repetetive when its fantastical architecture is described in virtually fetishistic detail. Even so, I’ve kept hold of these volumes: they look good on a shelf and maybe I’ll have a second go at traversing the text one of these years.

Fruit

In the very rainy autumn of 2009 I tried my hand at some still-life photography in a makeshift studio set up in my garage. The monochrome shot above of a bowl of fruit is one of the better results of those efforts. I took the picture using Adox CHS 25 film in a Mamiya C330S TLR camera, and developed the film at home using Tanol. I like how this combination gave the apples and pears the appearance of a metallic sheen. Sadly, the hand-made stoneware bowl I used in this picture broke soon afterwards.

One other fruity black-and-white film photo follows below: on finding a freakish ‘conjoined’ pair of plums in a punnet from the local supermarket in late 2013, I thought I’d make a pictorial record of its existence. I used a Nikon F80 loaded with Kentmere 100 film, which I developed using XTOL.

SM7

I’ve mentioned before how an Olympia SM5 typewriter properly started my enthusiasm for these machines. The SM5, when it was new, was a mid-range unit: solidly-built, with plenty of features, but perhaps lacking a certain finesse. I had to wait a long time before getting my hands on one of the flagship Olympia portable models. Not until the dying days of 2022 did I ‘win’ an ebay auction for a 1961 SM7 (shown above). It cost me £50, plus the price of petrol for a trip to Bath and back to collect it.

On getting it home it typed beautifully – the feel was significantly better than the SM5s I’d used. Alas, I’d only been typing for a few minutes when something went awry and the drawband became unseated, rendering my new toy unusable. Disinclined to attempt to fix it there & then I put the machine to one side to wait for the right kind of rainy day to come along. Many rainy days came and went until a very wet Wednesday in late September, when, with the aid of a few simple tools and a pair of very helpful YouTube videos, I removed the carriage, straightened out the drawband, put some tension into the mainspring and then put everything back together again, re-attaching the loose end of the drawband to the end of the carriage as I did so. It’s been typing very well ever since.

While the default colour-scheme for the SM7 was an off-white with green details, they were also made in pale blue, like mine, and in a salmon pink. I thought installing a blue ribbon in it would be a nice touch. It’s wearing its sixty three years very lightly but is not without a few issues. The paper support doesn’t spring out smartly when the button is pressed: some encouragment is needed. Pressing the TAB key induces only a sluggish response from the carriage. And the carriage lock doesn’t work properly. I may yet attempt some further tinkering: for now though I’m just happy to be in a position to use it.

Reflection

Belatedly forming an appreciation for the music of the folk/rock/jazz/blues quintet Pentangle during the pandemic, I obtained a 2-CD compilation of theirs and imagined that would be that. Last year though, I happened to find a fairly early pressing of their second album Sweet Child in a local used record shop and impulsively bought it for a tenner. That would have been a better bargain if both of the two discs in it were original: LP#1 in the copy I’d picked up had been swapped in from a later (worse-sounding) re-press.

The other month I found an early-’70s copy of their fifth album Reflection in another nearby emporium. While the gatefold sleeve (shown above) wasn’t in the best of shape, the disc within sounded very good. And it only cost me a few pounds. Now here I am hoping I might find albums nos. 1, 3 & 4 too. Perhaps I’ll eventually let the CD compilation go. Meanwhile I’ve been watching some of the wealth of fascinating footage of the group to be found on YouTube. This performance, for example, filmed for Belgian television in 1972, includes three of the songs from Reflection.

Palo Cortado

Last night I sipped a couple of glasses of Gonzalez Byass ‘Leonor’ Palo Cortado sherry. It was my first taste of this style of sherry, which is reputedly “a wine with some of the richness of Oloroso and some of the crispness of Amontillado”. While marked Seco (‘dry’) it wasn’t without sweetness – or some illusion of it – with hints of dried & candied fruit among its flavours. Compared to the old Amontillado I tried earlier in the year, this is a less intense, easier-going drink, nearer the middle of the road (in a good way) with the mellowness of age not having altogether effaced the freshness of a younger wine.

Pizza Pie

Above is a recipe for ‘pizza pie’ scanned from a leaflet that would have been packaged with a ‘girdle’ (i.e. a griddle) sold in the UK something like 50-60 years ago. The griddle had been given to my mother back in the late ’60s or early ’70s. She passed the leaflet on to me after I’d started cooking with a bakestone, on the off-chance the recipes might be of some use. The one recipe I tried (for Cheese Scones) wasn’t a great success, so I haven’t attempted any of the others, some of which in any case are none too appetising.

On the front of the leaflet: “Gateware Cast Aluminium Girdles … Guaranteed for 10 Years … Make delicious Scones, Potato Cakes, Oatcakes the Traditional Way”. On the back: “The largest range of Cast Aluminum Cooking Utensils in the World … Gateware Products Limited … Contractors to: The Government, Shipping Lines, Local Authorities, Hospitals, Education Authorities”.

Clearly this pre-dated the general encroachment of pizza into British culture: it’s as if the writer of the recipe had heard about it without ever actually having eaten any. My first experiences of the stuff were scarcely any more authentic: the first generation of frozen pizzas to make it to our household in the early-to-mid ’80s were small, bready things topped with grated cheddar along with something vaguely tomatoey. By the time of my first visit to a Pizza Express in London ca. ‘87 (which, compared to what I’d been used to, felt like the epitome of sophistication!), I’d gained a much better appreciation of what pizza could be.

Virago

On recent visits to Broadleaf Books in Abergavenny I could not help but notice their plentiful stock of used Virago “Modern Classics” paperbacks all arranged together in their distinctive dark green livery. Last time I was there I decided to buy some of them, picking out a couple of the slenderer volumes: The Shutter of Snow by Emily Holmes Coleman and Grace Paley’s The Little Disturbances of Man. They have joined eight other books already on my shelves bearing the Virago/VMC imprint.

There have been others that have come and gone in the past. The first one I bought, ca. 1990, was Jane Bowles' Two Serious Ladies. I was curious to try it having been much impressed by Paul Bowles' The Sheltering Sky. It may have been quite a while before my second Virago, as, for too many years, male authors heavily outnumbered female ones in the fiction section of my library. This was oddly specific sexism on my part as there was always a more equal gender balance in the non-fiction and poetry I read. More recently I had copies of Sylvia Townsend Warner’s Summer Will Show and The Corner that Held Them. And, in addition to the four books of hers shown above, I owned Barbara Comyns' novels Who Was Changed and Who Was Dead and The Skin Chairs. If shelf-space weren’t at such a premium, I would have held on to them all.

The copy of Comyns' debut novel Sisters by a River in the picture has ‘Virago Modern Classics’ on the cover but a Penguin logo on its spine. The same author’s Our Spoons Came from Woolworths and The Vet’s Daughter are both from printings post-dating the dark-green colour-scheme. At the bottom of the stack is an ’80s VMC hardback original in the shape of Jennifer Dawson’s The Upstairs People, which I sought out after her first book The Ha-Ha had hit the spot for me. The other two hardbacks are both short-story collections by Daphne du Maurier (The Birds and Don’t Look Now) and are from the decorative VMC ‘Designer Collection’ launched in 2008.

Paddy

Having recently posted a cat picture, I thought I’d better post a dog picture too. Above is a photo of Paddy the Labrador taken at a rare quiet moment at the end of the lost year of 2011. I call it a ‘lost’ year as it was a blur of exhaustion, mainly on account of the highly-strung animal in question making his chaotic way through puppyhood. He would have been about fourteen months old when I took the picture.

I used a Nikon F80 loaded with Adox CMS 20 document film/microfilm, which I later developed myself in dilute Rodinal. Shooting with a wide aperture as I did here somewhat defeated the purpose of using a very fine-grained film, with much of the frame given over to lens blur – but I like how this shot turned out.

When my wife died in 2013 I had to decide whether I could cope on my own with a full-time job, a high-maintenance dog and two cats. With the aid of doggy daycare I thought I could do it, and I may have been able to make it work over the longer term had it not been for Paddy’s chronic gastro-intestinal problems. With ever more frequent and lengthy bouts of illness the dog became a second full-time job that I could not indefinitely sustain. Via my vet I handed him over, with the heaviest of hearts, to a local Labrador rescue charity in the Autumn of 2019.

Coupe-Choux

Coupe-choux is a French term for a straight razor that literally means ‘cabbage cutter’. With their being called ‘cut-throat’ razors in English, it’s not hard to see why people might be hesitant to use them: one could say they have something of an image problem. My oldest razor, shown above, is a French-made cabbage cutter. While I consider it to be the oldest, that isn’t an assertion I can prove, as old razors are often difficult to date with any accuracy – but some of its characteristics tend to suggest an origin in the first half of the nineteenth century.

Most notably, it has no tail. When dealing with English razors, an absent or very rudimentary ‘stub’ tail would be consistent with a date of manufacture in the late 18th or very early 19th centuries. In France, however, tailless razors were still apparently made and sold throughout the 19th century, where they were known as rasoirs de perruquier. While perruquier means ‘wigmaker’, it was also used as a synonym for ‘barber’, so these would typically have been intended for shaving others, rather than for shaving oneself.

The variable width of the blade (a ‘wedge’, a little over ¾" at its widest), the convex ‘smiling’ curvature of its edge, and the relatively indistinct transition between the blade and the tang would, based on what I’ve read, collectively argue for an earlier 19th-century origin moreso than a later one. Stamped on the tang is the text MARTIN A MARSEILLE and a symbol comprising a cross and a circle. The likelihood is that Martin was a retailer, rather than the manufacturer. The scales are made of horn, with a white ‘spacer’ separating them which I’d guess is a chip of bone.

I spent something in the region of £40 acquiring it via ebay, with a little more outlay needed to get it sent off for honing into shave readiness. It’s a great pleasure to still be able to use an an item that is likely to be over 150 years old, and quite possibly 200 years old. It still shaves very well indeed.

Bilal

An artist whose music I’ve come to appreciate over the last six months is the singer & songwriter Bilal Oliver. When getting slightly better acquainted with neo-soul, his was a name I often saw mentioned. Having sampled a few of his tracks on YouTube I ordered a copy of A Love Surreal (2013), & loved it. Soon after I acquired In Another Life (2015), which I liked nearly as much. Both are idiosyncratic and inventive albums, some creative distance away from the neo-soul epicentre. Favourite tracks: ‘Right at the Core’ from the former record; ‘Satellites’ from the latter.

I was excited to learn of the release recently of two new albums of his: Live at Glasshaus and Adjust Brightness. I gather the singer is backed on the former by a band including Robert Glasper and Questlove; and that many of the songs on it were originally written for his never officially-released second album Love for Sale (2001-03). Inconveniently for me, it was only issued as a limited US-only double LP, with import copies arriving in the UK priced at a prohibitive £70. Adjust Brightness as far as I know has had no physical release at all – at least not yet. I could hear it all on-line but that doesn’t align with my weird, old-fashioned listening habits. I hope there are eventually CD releases of both.

To anyone with 98½ minutes to spare, I can heartily recommend A Tribute To Curtis Mayfield: a fitting orchestral tribute to the great man featuring the WDR Big Band; the WDR Funkhausorchester; a quartet of guest musicians on guitar, bass, drums and additional percussion; and with Bilal and Ledisi providing the vocals. It’s a beautiful thing!

Pitchfork Cheddar

Among the nine hundred and fifty truckles of cheese stolen in London last week there was a quantity of Pitchfork Cheddar made by the Trethowan brothers in Somerset. Pictured above is a wedge of Pitchfork I bought on Saturday – from a legitimate, established stockist I should stress, lest anyone infer any connection with the theft.

How does a relatively expensive farmhouse cheddar made with raw milk compare with a cheaper factory-made one? To me it’s not a radical dissimilarity but something analogous to the difference between a blocky, pixelated image and a fully high-definition one, with the extra money buying nuance and subtlety. It has been characterised as ‘nutty’ and ‘slightly earthy’ which may be so. I’d be more inclined to just describe it as quite like regular cheddar – only better.

Edited to add: in subsequent tastings I have discerned the advertised nuttiness in the shape of an intriguingly bittersweet hazelnut-like note emerging from the mix of flavours.

Thinking on Paper

Above is the back of the card band wrapped around a new Leuchtturm1917 A5 ruled notebook in mint green. As well as the band, the book encloses a leaflet with some information about the Leuchtturm range; a sheet with half a dozen stickers on it for “labelling the title and spine of your […] book when you want to archive it” and “a “thank you very much for purchasing” card. I’ve been using Leuchtturm notebooks for the last decade and end up getting a new one every year or so. I like the quality of the paper & the binding; and I appreciate the high page-count; I’m less keen, however, on the narrow ruling they use.

One application where ISO-216 strikes me as unsatisfactory is that of notebook sizes. I find A4 unwieldy for use around the home; while A5, though not a bad size, is smaller than I prefer. Leuchtturm of course offer an intermediate range in B5 size which I should try – so far I haven’t, as these are less widely-available in the UK than their A4 and A5 lines. The old British Quarto sizes are ideal for me, and I’ve had some luck obtaining thick, wider-ruled vintage 7” x 9" books, though there one is at the mercy of what may or may not turn up on eBay every once in a long while. I’ve tried Stamford notebooks which are lovely, if expensive. They do a ‘Crown Quarto’ size which is just right for me. Their ruling, moreover, is wider and more to my liking than Leuchtturm’s. Their page-counts, on the other hand, are less generous. If Stamford offered a double-thickness ruled Crown Quarto book I’d gladly pay a premium for it.

When I’m working I prefer the extra room afforded by an A4 notebook. The Collins Ideal 6448 A4 book has been my choice for that purpose in recent years. It has good-enough quality paper, wide ruling and a generous 384 pages. It takes me nearly a year to fill one. It’s true (to an extent) for me that “writing by hand is thinking on paper”. Making handwritten notes has worked as an aide-mémoire since my school days. And I’ve scribbled my way to the solution of many a workplace puzzle. In my case, the benefits of writing by hand tend to be short-to-medium term – as a sort of extension of my thought-space. Trying to search back through my work notebooks for older information is often an unfruitful exercise in frustration: in such cases the searchability of electronic text wins out almost every time.

Il Coniglio d'Oro

I’ve long been an admirer of the Italian artist Luigi Serafini’s Codex Seraphinianus, so when I first learned, ca. 2015, of another book he’d illustrated called Il Coniglio d’Oro (‘The Golden Rabbit’) I was intrigued. At that time, however, money was short and it didn’t seem like a justifiable purchase. I’d forgotten all about it until a few weeks ago, when a search at Amazon turned it up – still available, and indeed discounted: I ordered a copy.

It’s a curious book, billed as a piccolo trattato di antropocunicologia (‘little anthropolapine treatise’). Serafini’s illustrations are once again a delight: variously bizarre, whimsical, and unsettling. Here are a few details: 1, 2, 3. With Serafini getting top billing on the cover, I wonder if perhaps the illustrations came first and the text was then commissioned to accompany them. Written by Daniela Trasatti, it begins (after a prologue) with some information about the natural history of rabbits and then a broad-brush survey of the appearances made by rabbits in human cultural history. Rabbit-related symbols and traditions are outlined; characters like Peter Rabbit, Bugs Bunny and Miffy are discussed.

Might this be a gift for the Italian-speaking rabbit enthusiast in one’s life? That would depend very much on the nature of their enthusiasm, with the latter parts of the book given over to a survey of the rabbit in culinary history, followed by twenty-one rabbit-based recipes. It’s all at once an art-book, an essay, and a cookbook. Unsure where the volume should go on my shelves I’ve placed it here for the time being.

Owl-Cat

Here’s a shot of my former cat Zazu (1998-2008) in an owl-like pose. It was taken only a few months before he died. I used my then-new Nikon D80, fitted with a 50mm prime lens. The lighting wasn’t ideal, hence the blown-out background, but I never quite captured the same pose as well again. This was one of a couple of shots of Zazu that were picked up by others and featured in ‘LOLcat’ form on the I Can Has Cheezburger? blog.

Royal IC-130

An item I’d ordered from an ebay seller arrived in a sturdy wooden case with metal catches and a leather handle. The case gives the appearance of having been custom-made for its contents. It’s about the right size and shape to have contained a compact mid-20th Century typewriter, and, as it happens, the object within carries a “Royal” badge, Royal having been a major American typewriter manufacturer. Inside the case are several precisely-shaped and carefully-positioned pieces of foam rubber to cradle its contents, not a typewriter but a different kind of office machine: a calculator.

While the “Royal” badge is on the front of the machine, elsewhere it’s marked “Imperial Typewriter Company, Leicester, United Kingdom”. This isn’t altogether a contradiction, as, by the time this calculator was made (ca. 1972), both the Royal and Imperial brands had been absorbed by the same parent company: Litton Industries. Although there’s no mention of it anywhere on the device, the Royal IC-130 would have been manufactured in Japan, rather than the US or UK.

Its green VFD display dates back to a point in time when the problem of selectively un-illuminating individual digits hadn’t yet been solved. As a workaround, unused leading digit positions always contained a zero – which, as in some other calculators of similar vintage, was displayed half-height relative to the other numerals. The calculator is in sporadically working order. The switch setting the number of decimal places to be displayed is sometimes respected, sometimes not. And it may take a few attempts to goad a correct result from its elderly electronics.

Song Book

When I saw the LP copy shown above of Ella Fitzgerald Sings the George and Ira Gershwin Song Book (vol. 1), on sale for a few pounds the other week, I wasn’t sure if I should buy it. Why did I hesitate, when George Gershwin was the first composer of that style & of that era whose music I’d taken a shine to (after I’d acquired a two-CD ‘Best Of’ compilation of his music back in my late twenties)? And when I was already in possession of vinyl copies of Ella singing the Cole Porter, Rodgers & Hart, Duke Ellington, Irving Berlin, Harold Arlen, Jerome Kern and Johnny Mercer Song Book albums (though only vol.2 of the Ellington one)?

The Gershwin Song Book holds the distinction of being the most voluminous of the series, running to five LPs in total. I’d never encountered the complete set in the wild, and hardly ever any of its separately issued volumes. I had, however, heard the whole thing on a CD re-issue, and had been disconcerted to find I didn’t warm to it, for all my prior enthusiasm for the singer & the composer. It proved to be just a little too much Gershwin for my liking; with a few too many deep cuts mixed in with the big hits. A double LP selection would probably have been a better fit for me. Even so, I did buy the record in the picture.

First issued by Verve in 1959, my British-pressed mono copy has a “His Master’s Voice” label. When I played it, my reaction – alas – was no different than when I’d heard the songs on CD. I do very much like the sleeve-design though, and may yet keep it just for decorative purposes. It’s one of five paintings by the French artist Bernard Buffet that were used for the sleeves of the five discs on the original set.

Jin Jun Mei

A highlight of my last order of loose-leaf teas from What Cha is the Jin Jun Mei black tea from Fujian province in China. They describe it as “a smooth tea with a sweet malt loaf taste with floral rose hints in the background”. While the floral notes weren’t obvious to me, the maltiness and sweetness definitely were. It put me in mind of bara brith. I very much like it, but at a steep £16 for 50g, it’s never going to be an everyday drink.

The cup and the plate in the picture above were apparently made by Diana Worthy at Crich Pottery in Derbyshire. I bought them at the local charity shop a couple of weeks ago.

Three Candlesticks

Pictured above is a recently-acquired part-used box of paper & envelopes as originally supplied by Barnardo’s Quality Stationery. I’d guess this has to do with the Barnardo’s charity, but for all I know it may be an unrelated retailer’s name. Also on the lid of the box is a logo with the text ‘Three Candlesticks 1649’: this was one of the brands used by John Dickinson & Co. The logo doubles as the paper’s watermark.

According to this page, “The need for up-market writing sets, attractively boxed in faux leather cases, brought the Three Candlesticks range to market.” I’m not sure how far it dates back – not to 1649 – but it was certainly around a century ago, at which time it was described as “a tub-sized pure rag parchment wove paper”. The brand-name supposedly relates to a coin token found on the site of the company’s first London offices, which would likely have been issued by a tavern of that name.

This box & its contents probably date back at least a few decades. The paper is post quarto (9" x 7") in a cream colour. The envelopes are lined with brown tissue. I first bought some Three Candlesticks back in the ’90s, and am happy to know it’s still being made today. I already had some of the stuff hiding in a box with a different brand-name.

Ringtones

I was reminded of an obsolete form of ephemera last week when I opened up a second-hand CD I’d ordered via Discogs – a copy of Erykah Badu’s awkwardly-titled 2007 album New Amerykah: Part One (4th World War). Inside it was a slip of paper advertising mobile phone ringtones based on some of the album’s tracks, and, on the reverse of the slip (shown above), others based on songs from Badu’s back-catalogue. The kinds of music I was buying ca. 2007 didn’t often overlap with the market for ringtones, but I’d certainly seen (and immediately discarded) a few such slips by then.

2007 of course was the beginning of the smartphone era. CD sales had already been declining for a few years, illegal file-sharing was rife, and the advent of streaming services was on the horizon. Meanwhile, the vinyl revival was in its early stages: by 2017, instead of ringtone slips falling out of one’s new CDs, download code slips were falling out of one’s new LPs.

Mina's Matchbox

My eye was drawn to a copy of Mina’s Matchbox on a shelf at Chepstow Books and Gifts during my last visit there. It’s the latest novel by Yōko Ogawa to appear in English. My first taste of this author’s work was her collection of ingeniously-interlinked short stories Revenge, which still remains my favorite book of hers. I was less impressed by the last of Ogawa’s books I’d sampled – The Memory Police – which had given me the impression of a thought-experiment left to run on for too long. My naive impression had been of an enjoyable earlier work and a weaker later one, but of course translations don’t always appear in the same order as their originals, and I’ve just now realised that Revenge was published four years later than The Memory Police in Japan.

As for Mina’s Matchbox, I liked it. I found it charmingly sweet, but not cloyingly so; and relatively light without being insubstantial. In tone it resembled The Housekeeper and the Professor more than Ogawa’s other works in English.

In 1972, twelve year-old Tomoko leaves home to spend a year living with her aunt’s family, while her widowed mother completes a course in Tokyo. The aunt had married a wealthy businessman, and they were living in fine and somewhat eccentric style in a substantial country house with their fragile, asthmatic daughter (the titular Mina), the uncle’s German mother, their two servants, and a highly-unusual pet. Tomoko is warmly accepted by the family and she and Mina become very close. I’d half-expected some kind of intense drama to intrude before the end, but the story is lower-key than that, more a slice of (unconventional) life. It’s a well-paced, characterful and easy-to-read novel with enough depth to lend it some satisying emotional weight.

Reclamation

While the shot above isn’t an ideal composition, I’m fond of it anyway. It depicts the way leading off the Gloucester Road in Horfield, Bristol, toward the entrance of Reclaimers Reclamation who “specialize in bespoke handmade kitchens and furniture created from reclaimed timber and glass”. It was (and probably still is) an intriguing place to look around, though I never bought anything there. I recall being tempted by a pre-WWII Continental portable typewriter they had at one time, but the price was too steep for my liking.

The main problem with the photo, to my eye, is the poster on the right-hand side being partly out of frame. A wider-angle lens would have helped with that, but the camera I had with me that day was my Yashica Mat, with no option to change the focal length. Taking in more of the poster would have made the two statues further off-centre – having them roughly symmetrical seemed more desirable. Had I taken a step or two further back, it would have introduced more unwanted elements into the frame and I’d have probably ended up cropping the image.

The Yashica was loaded with Kodax Tri-X 400. I can’t remember if I developed it myself or not. If so, I would have used Kodak’s XTOL developer.

Six Scarves

It’s not quite the season for scarves yet, but that won’t be long in coming. I’ve accumulated rather more of the things than I need. As well as the six shown in the picture, another four are out of the frame. All but one of the six are second-hand, acquired at charity shops in recent years. Only the third one from the left was bought new: it’s a Joules scarf I’ve had for about sixeen years.

The defunct retailer Dunn & Co. supplied the leftmost one to its first buyer, while the second from left is a lambswool number originally sold by Johnstons of Elgin. The fourth scarf was made from Shetland wool by Lochcarron (“the world’s leading manufacturer of tartan”). Second from the right is my favourite of the set, the red and grey Barbour one. The blue scarf on the far right is Harris Tweed on one side and silk on the other, in a design by ‘Rarebird’. I bought it in spring when the weather was already warming up, so I’ve yet to give it an outing.

The Black Keys

While I can’t say that The Black Keys' music entirely passed me by, I paid scant attention to it until recently. I’d certainly heard ‘Lonely Boy’ around the time of its release; likewise their collaboration with RZA – ‘The Baddest Man Alive’. I was slightly familiar with their style and sound, and liked what I’d heard. It’s just that their mainstream breakthrough happened to coincide with a time when I wasn’t buying much music, and any subsequent curiosity of mine about them was never quite strong enough that I felt impelled to act upon it.

Last month in a Chepstow charity shop I saw a copy of El Camino on CD priced at 50p. My curiosity was still pretty weak, but the barrier imposed by the asking price was so low that it won out. I very much enjoyed the album, and at last got to hear ‘Lonely Boy’ in its original setting. No more than a couple of weeks later I spotted their previous album Brothers at another charity shop – also 50p. I liked that one even better, especially the likes of ‘Sinister Kid’ and ‘Unknown Brother’. I don’t listen to much rock’n’roll these days, but when I do this sort of thing fits the bill nicely.

At this point in my life the primary role for music is to help me wind down late in the evening before I go to bed. Secondarily, I like there to be music when I’m driving, and this is the setting into which The Black Keys' music will typically fit. Anything that doesn’t work in these contexts seldom gets a hearing, no matter how much I like it in the abstract. Many people will have upbeat music on hand for dancing, running or working out, which aren’t activities I partake in. Some will put on uplifting music to help them negotiate onerous household chores – I prefer angry silence. Others want something ambient playing while they read or write, whereas that seldom works for me.

Bara Planc

In the picture is the loaf of bara planc (bakestone bread) I made last weekend. It’s something I make fairly often. I follow a recipe I found in Annette Yates’s book Welsh Heritage Food & Cooking (Lorenz Books, 2011). My ingredients were:

• 1 sachet (or 1.5 tsp) ‘easy bake’ yeast.
• 500g plain white flour
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp sugar
• 15g butter
• about 150ml milk and 150ml water

When I say I follow the recipe, I do take some liberties. Rather than work the dough by hand I take a lazy approach and use a bread machine to do that for me. I put the yeast, flour, salt and sugar into the bread machine pan then cut the butter into small pieces and add that. Next I add the milk and water (the exact amount of fluid needed will depend on the flour – if working the dough by hand one could make adjustments, otherwise some trial and error is necessary – lately I’ve been using a little less than 290ml in total rather then 300ml). I sometimes use spelt flour rather than wheat flour, or a mixture of the two. My rather old bread machine has a ‘croissant’ program which takes 2h 20m to make a dough that works well for this bread.

At least half an hour before the dough is ready, I start warming up the bakestone on a medium heat. A cast iron pan can be used if there’s no bakestone or equivalent to hand – such a pan, being thinner, won’t need so long to get to the right sort of temperature. When the bread machine beeps I take the dough out of its pan and put it on the hot bakestone, slapping it into a more rounded shape if need be. After twenty minutes I turn it over and cook on the other side for twenty minutes more. Then it comes off the bakestone and cools on a wire rack. The result is a drum-shaped loaf scorched top & bottom with a soft, pale rim. Inside there’s a ‘seam’ across the middle. It tastes delicious when served very fresh just with butter, or dipped in some baked camembert.

Asylum

Above is another from the set of film-still slides I’ve mentioned a few times before (most recently here). This one comes from an obscurer source then the others I’ve highlighted so far: a 1949 production entitled Asylrecht (‘Asylum’), directed by Rudolf Warner Kipp. IMDB has a description of it, courtesy of the Harvard Film Archive:

Asylrecht is a curious production: medium-length, an unclassifiable cross between documentary and fiction, made on order of the British Film Section, premiered at the Venice Film Festival, shown for the first time in West Germany on the occasion of a refugee congress, and never regularly released except by way of non-commercial distribution for decades in various versions. Call it a crypto classic, like several other works of Rudolf Werner Kipp, a master of educational filmmaking who, in his finest achievements, did honor to his professed main inspiration: John Grierson.

Kipp filmed with real refugees in actual camps. While in many cases scenes were arranged with their participation, some of the most dramatic moments were shot using a hidden camera. The refugees whose plights we learn about here mainly try to leave the Soviet-occupied areas for the Trizone, but not everybody could enter…

Which suggests that the woman in the image wasn’t an actor. I’ve yet to find any footage from the film on-line.