Monthly Archives: August 2011

August 25, 2011 · 5:49 pm

China’s ‘Liberation’ of Tibet: Rules of the Game

This is a really good article in the New York Review of Books on the recent ‘celebration’ of the 60th Anniversary of the Liberation of Tibet by the People’s Republic of China.

Its written by Robbie Barnett, a friend of mine who is a lecturer in Tibetan from the States.

His political stance is well know, but few will not be shocked by what he recalls from the same ceremony in 2005: “what had not been visible on the television screen: hundreds of armed troops followed by armored personnel carriers, riot control vehicles, water-cannon trucks, barbed-wire laying machines, vehicles with gun turrets and other forms of military hardware.”

The footage of the ceremony is also well worth watching, but probably not the full 149 minutes of it! He draws attention to the selective nature of the ‘crowds’ of Tibetans that were there to take part in the event; broadcast live on Chinese TV.

http://www.nybooks.com/blogs/nyrblog/2011/aug/22/chinas-liberation-tibet-rules-game/ 

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August 25, 2011 · 5:35 pm

Team Otter 2011

I am super proud of my chum Zem and her friends at Team Otter 2011 who have just swum all the way to France!

Together they swan 30miles in 15hrs 6mins.  Each ‘Otter’ swimming 3hrs each in one hour bursts. I struggle to swim in a warm pool for more than 20 mins, so what three hours much be like in freezing water, full of old tin cans and jelly fish can only be imagined.

This is the route they swam: 

The best bit about it all is that they were doing this madness for a couple of really good charities, WaterAid and Allsorts. So dig deep into those purses and wallets, and give them all a wet fish style slap on the back.

WaterAid is a long standing international charity that helps the world’s poorest people have safe water and sanitation. Once they’ve achieved this basic human right, their health, education and livelihoods all improve.

Allsorts is an innovative Gloucestershire charity that works with disabled children and their families to provide often disregarded young people, their parents, carers and siblings with support.  This includes toys and equipment, plus a wide range of exciting and unusual activities, serving Gloucestershire’s unique Of Course We Can programme.

You can read all about their crazy project, endurance training, and see all kinds of aquatic athletics on their blog: http://teamotter2011.wordpress.com/

 

 

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August 23, 2011 · 3:27 pm

Tomorrow’s tangle to ye winds resign

I like reading all sorts of nonsense. This week I have been battling with Omar Khayyám’s Rubáiyát. 

If you have no idea what I am talking about, go now, take my car, and buy a copy. (But please bring the car back…) Its wonderful. (The poem, not the car.)

Omar Khayyám was born in 1048 in Born in Nishapur. He moved to Samarkand and then to Bukhara and became established as the leading light among mathematicians and astronomers of the Islamic medieval period. He did all sorts of clever things with circles and calendars, most of which I dont understand, but also wrote a small compendium of Persian poetry before he died in 1131. (By the way his tomb in Iran is horrible… dont even bother google searching it… its painful!) His poetry now is far more famous than this mathematical gymnastics owing not in a small part to an eccentric Englishman, Edward FitzGerald (1809–1883).

Illustration to FitzGerald's translation "Earth could not answer nor the Seas that mourn"

FitzGerald rather loosely translated the Rubáiyát for Victorian audiences. He was evidently a bit of a loony, albeit of the best possible variety… his Epitaph reads, “I am all for the short and merry life!” Anyhow, his translations formed a significant part of the Victorian obsession with all things Oriental and romantic (think Burton, Morris etc etc) and although not exactly accurate, they were hauntingly beautiful. The line in full reads,

Perplexed no more with human or divine,
Tomorrow’s tangle to ye winds resign,
And lose your fingers in the tresses of
The cypress-slender minister of wine.

So, what made me think of this… well, a few months ago I was visiting Bristol and came across a rusting iron arch, with an inscription over it. It captured my imagination, and I took a quick snap on my camera… It troubled me months trying to work out where the inscription was from… and at the weekend, it all clicked. Luckily I did not ‘resign my tangle to the winds,’ and so failed to follow the instructions on the arch, but may adopt Khayyám’s suggestion more closely tomorrow.

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August 22, 2011 · 4:30 pm

Hurry Burry Chicken Curry

OK, so I can’t cook. I know I can’t. But I try occasionally… (my Calvados belly pork was actually quite good… and I do a good line in things on toast.)

My approach has always been, well, slightly more agricultural and experimental than cookbook orientated, and recipes are for wimps. So I was well pleased to discover a fellow ginger who actually knows what she is doing, and speaks my language. She is called Esther Walker, lives in London, and is married to some chap called Giles Coren (OK, so I have heard of him… I am not that bad!) Her recipes are instinctive, dont require the entire contents of Waitrose to put together, and most importantly, taste great. Her blog also makes me giggle. So… all good things!

Road Sign in Darjeeling

I tried her Chicken Curry last week… I used a big tin of coconut milk (the only one in the shop…), about twice the spices, and too much salt… but it was good. Real good!

Get Involved: This from her blog…:

So here we go, the River Cottage Bites chicken curry, for about 4 people

8 chicken drumsticks (or thighs)
1 can chopped tomatoes
1 can coconut milk (I use those small turqouise ones from Waitrose)
1tsp coriander seeds
1tsp fennel seeds
1 tsp fenugreek seeds
1 tsp ground turmeric
2 tsp ground cumin
1 fresh chilli, seeds in or there’s no point
1 2cm square of fresh ginger
1 small onion
salt

1 Grind together the seeds, the turmeric and the cumin and toast gently in a dry pan until the kitchen smells like the set of Slumdog Millionaire. It seems like a shiteload, but just tip it all in.

2 In a food processor, whizz up the ginger, onion and chilli to make a paste. Add some oil to the pan that the spices are cooking in and then tip in this paste. While that’s cooking gently for about 10 mins, bloop into the processor the chopped tomatoes and coconut milk and whizz. Leave it there for a bit.

3 Skin the chicken and brown in a pan for about 4 minutes each side. Arrange in a baking dish

4 When the paste/spice mix has had about 10 mins, add in the tomato/coconut mixture and wibble this around until it’s all bubbling. Then taste – it will be bland as hell, but spicy, so add salt bit by bit until it starts to taste like something nice. In the end I added – no joke – about four big pinches of salt, but it’s best to start small.

5 Pour this mixture over the chicken and bake in a 180C oven, uncovered, for 1 hour.

Do also check out her blog, Recipe Rifle, there are lots of other tasty things on there…

Esther Walker ... A rare domesticated ginger

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August 18, 2011 · 5:54 pm

Anna Hazare arrest: A million mutinies erupt across India

Unbiased opinion and analysis of the developing situation in India right now is difficult to come by.

This article from the Times of India is the best that I have read, and captures the sense of affront to Democracy that is sweeping the world’s largest democracy.

Follow this link here for the full article. All excerpts below are copyright Times of India.

“NEW DELHI: No one really, certainly not the government, had anticipated the extent of countrywide support for Anna Hazare and his crusade against corruption. Within hours of the news of his arrest breaking on the networks, spontaneous protests broke out from Baroda to Bhubaneswar, Kanpur to Kochi, leaving the government gasping at the national demonstration of democratic dissent.” 

“Far away from the fast-moving developments in Delhi, people from all walks of life took to the streets spontaneously, in rain and shine, not just in the metros but even in smaller towns. Everywhere, the protesters denounced the government (no one was willing to accept that the police action was possible without the nod of government bigwigs) and chanted slogans demanding a stronger Lokpal Bill.”

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August 18, 2011 · 5:40 pm

Stillness

Stillness in Oxford Last Night. (apart from the bus in the bottom right corner....)

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August 17, 2011 · 5:42 pm

My Only Friend Through Teenage Nights…

I don’t much like the Economist… its not that their analysis is flawed, nor that its not informative, its world class in these respects, but the smug tones in which it is written. Too often I read “The Economist believes” in such and such, or “The Economist welcomes” the move by the Bank of England or wherever…  as if the magazine is somehow a revered font of all knowledge to be paid tribute and courted. These really are minor quibbles in comparison to the wealth of information and good writing between its pages, but it irks me none the less.

Tim Myatt was well pleased therefore (two can play this game!) when they launched Intelligent Life. It’s a quarterly publication, thicker and more, well, ‘lifestyle,’ than its weekly sibling. Here is a link to its website.

So, why am I telling you about this? I was snatched by an article about Test Match Special… the BBC’s utterly bonkers, bewildering, unashamedly Public School, but sublimely brilliant live cricket commentary. I have been an avid fan for all my adult life; listening to the likes of Aggers, Blowers, Jonners and the boys (usually retired ex-cricketers… and boys is a far from accurate description…) discussing pork pies, the number 42  bus, the ‘turn of the pitch,’ the slope at Lords, and other meandering waffle while the rain hammers down on the English summer.

'Blowers' and 'Sir Geoffrey' enjoy a glass after a hard day rambling.

I was even lucky enough to have the success of my DPhil viva announced on air, and on the website for the text commentary. As chance would have it, the morning after my viva the rain abated, and England were flaying a bedraggled Sri Lankan attack all over a sunny day five at Lords. During the morning preamble Tom Fordyce, the online text commentator, suggested that Kevin Pietersen could “Perhaps draw inspiration from the story of Francis Younghusband. As a young man, Youngers was the classic soldier of the Empire – crossing Gobi desert, fighting in the Boer War and part of the first British expedition to the Dalai Lama’s court in Tibet. Fast forward a few years and he had changed his name to Svabhava, “follower of The Gleam”, become a prophet of free love and penned a book entitled “Life On The Stars: an Exposition of the View That On Some Planets Of Some Stars Exist Beings Higher Than Ourselves, And On One A World Leader, The Supreme Embodiment Of The Spiritual Leader, Which Animates the Whole.””

This sparked a who days debate about Younghusband and his possible skills as a batsman, the ethics of empire, the Mission to Tibet, and the suggestion that we could not “rule out him inventing an early version of T20, played with a burning ball of fire.” I emailed in, and got a special mention of my thesis and my viva. I think I must be one of the only doctoral candidates to have their viva results announced by the BBC on live commentary… you can follow this link or find me here on the archived website: http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/9506208.stm

Francis Younghusband. With trademark Walrus tash.

So, back to Intelligent Life. It seems that our friends across the pond can now access the TMS commentary, and find it as entertaining as me… David Thomson the author of the article, succumbs to waves of nostalgia as the semi-sporting ramblings are transmitted across the Atlantic. The article is here.

You too can follow it on Five Live Sports Extra, 198 Longwave, or on the BBC’s Website. The final test against India kicks off tomorrow. I can’t wait!

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August 17, 2011 · 2:51 pm

A Titanic Dinner

A good friend of mine, Paddy Belton, decided to host a quiet dinner party last weekend. Having been ripped off by some bandits over renting a small Edwardian pile in Hamstead (complete with imaginary sauna and swimming pool) it was kindly hosted by friends in Blackheath of the good ship RMS Carpathia.

RMS Titanic slips Belfast

The menu followed exactly the ten course offerings of the First Class Dining Room on the White Star Line’s flagship for the fateful night of the 14th of April 1912. The menu is reproduced below. Highlights included Roast Squab (think baby widgeon) the much anticipated Asparagus course, and enough booze… well to sink a ship. The tragic events of the night (1513 people died if you need reminding) have become the stuff of legend, and accounts and myth surrounds the ship. Little wonder however that so many of the first class passengers did not survive… I could hardly move!

The RMS Carpathia, the ship that picked up survivors of the Titanic disaster, also suffered a disastrous fate. When the ship docked in New York thousands came to welcome her, and the Captain was given the Congressional Gold Medal. I think Roger and Chloe who offered their flat at the last minute deserve no lesser recognition after Paddy’s misfortune with the pirates… anyhow Carpathia was used to transfer American troops to Europe during the war, but was torpedoed in the Celtic Sea by U-Boat 55.  As Carpathia began to sink by the bow, Captain William Prothero gave the orders to abandon ship. All 57 passengers and 218 surviving crew members boarded the lifeboats… The Submarine surfaced and fired a third torpedo into the ship and was approaching the lifeboats when the terror of the seas, HMS Snowdrop (where do they get these names?), arrived on the scene and drove away the submarine with gunfire then picked up the survivors from the Carpathia.

Dining Room of the RMS Olympic

One interesting (if you find these things interesting) snippet of information, the original First Class Dining Room of the Titanic’s sister ship, the RMS Olympic, can still be found. (The photo of the room here is actually of the Olympic as I can’t find one of the Titanic.) After a long and eventful life on the seas as the largest passenger liner in the world, Olympic was requisitioned during World War I and served as a troop ship under the delightfully named Captain Herbert James Haddock. When Cunard merged with White Star Line she was decommissioned in 1935 and sold as scrap. Her fixtures and fittings were auctioned off before she was scrapped at T.W. Ward’s Yard in Inverkeihing, and I am reliably informed that most of the First Class Lounge, along with cutlery and crockery and part of the Grand Staircase, can be found in the White Swan Hotel in Alnwick. Confirmation of this, or volunteers for a loon trip ‘tup north are welcome!

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August 12, 2011 · 5:26 pm

Freedom of the City

Having joined the Guild of Mercer’s Scholars last year I was invited to attend a ceremony at the Chamberlain’s Court at  the Guildhall to be given the Freedom of the City of London. The whole thing was frankly ridiculous, but enormous fun, complete with men in gowns (just back from a “jolly good lunch”) silly hats, much swearing to (note not at) the Queen, and a swanky new certificate to show that I can not invest my time productively by driving sheep about and wearing a sword in public etc.

My Freedom comes in a long line: It is believed that the first Freedom was presented in 1237, and the medieval term ‘freeman’ meant someone who was not the property of a feudal lord, but enjoyed privileges such as the right to earn money and own land. So now all I need to do is earn money and own land… a good start.

I had to swear all manner of things including that, “I do solemnly swear that I will be good and true to our Sovereign Lady Queen Elizabeth the Second; that I will be obedient to the Mayor of this City; that I will maintain the Franchises and Customs thereof, and will keep this City harmless, in that which in me is; that I will also keep the Queen’s Peace in my own person; that I will know no Gatherings nor Conspiracies made against the Queen’s Peace, but I will warn the Mayor thereof, or hinder it to my power; and that all these points and articles I will well and truly keep, according to the Laws and Customs of this City, to my power.”

Last month I was ‘bound’ to my new apprentice. Jack is presumably waiting for his A-Level results at Peter Symonds College in Winchester, and we had a good chat about university entrance and what he wants to do next. He wants to read law at Exeter, about which I know very little, but it seems like a good idea to have a ‘master’ (i.e. me!) to ask all sorts of questions of and to tap up for dinner occasionally. I guess its a sort of medieval peer support network! With silly hats and certificates…

 

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August 12, 2011 · 12:21 pm

People are like stained glass windows…

I used to live in this building when I was an undergraduate at St Anne’s. My first year room was so small I could touch all four walls without moving my feet, and my wardrobe was in the girl next door’s room (which at least game me a chance to talk to her…) My final year room was one of those enormous Victorian parlour rooms with a fireplace, ceilings like a cathedral, and arcitraving a foot deep… any how, this glass formed the front door.

When I walk home from the Rose & Crown (or Rosencrantz and Guildenstern as Pete calls it) on North Parade I pass this window, and it remind me of the good time I had in there and the people I met. Many are still good friends now. Its not the most beautiful glass, and I have never worked out what they are all staring at, but it reminds my of the quote from Elizabeth Maher-Ross. “People are like stained glass windows. They sparkle and shine when the sun is out, but when the darkness sets in, their true beauty is revealed only if there is a light from within.” It makes me smile. But then again maybe thats the beer.


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