Vizzer, I didn't know clematis was poisonous.  Then I was surprised to learn that the pits of some fruits can be poisonous - I'd heard that bitter almonds in excess could be poisonous

LadyinRetirement wrote:

... when I wore gloves I have not broken quarantine.  I was rather scared when the protests (not all the protesters) turned violent last night so maybe some virtual port will.help my nerves.

I know we've done this before,  but 'I can make a stand against anything - but temptations,' so 'any port in a storm?'
I've got some real port stashed away - and I know where - and am prepared to open it!
But if you're going to thin it with lemon I'll keep it - blending a fine wine, imho it borders on heresy - a crime against nature!
If you're thinking of porter then say so, dear lady, my blood pressure doesn't like me thinking of t'other.

I was thinking of port wine, Nielsen but as I am on a blood pressure tablet myself I don't want to drive your BP up.  When I was younger I would sometimes drink bitter beer (not necessarily porter) and lemonade.  I couldn't drink beer nowadays either diluted or non-diluted because it contains gluten.  Gluten-free beers are available but they are expensive - more expensive than is worthwhile in my humble opinion.

A few port wines are available in this bar - isn't that right Priscilla, not quite so many as there once was - and I have a few here, unfortunately I think wine in general taste better when in company.
On occasion, though, I have felt that just to insure that I don't quite forget the taste, I have opened a bottle and have thus managed to calibrate my taste buds.

Wine of course, as everyone knows, goes off very quickly.     So even if I'm on my own and just 'calibrating' the taste buds, I usually finish the whole bottle just to be sure it doesn't deteriorate.   It's the same with those thrifty recipes for using up 'left-over' wine. Does such a thing exist? I've never seen any in my house.

Thank you Mm, that somehow lightened a burden on me, I've almost felt like a binge-drinker and almost hidden my bottle, as you almost say, one doesn't want to just throw away what someone else have toiled hard to make as good as their abilities enables them to.

Any gin in a lane

Six years today since Rik Mayall died.

Rik's political satire from 1992, now it's real:

Yes Trike, indeed great satire...and what a voice...and yes national identity...after 18 seconds he says England...and after 110 seconds he says  Britons...Britain:England? and Great Britain: England and Scotland?...
Kind regards, Paul.

This is about booze so I hope it's pertinent to this thread even if I'm not imbibing.  I seem to remember there was some discussion of the prohibition era on a thread here but can't find the thread now.  I listened to a podcast last night which mentioned something about the USA government sanctioning putting a poison into industrial alcohol to make things harder for the people making illicit booze (and there were already dangerous substances in industrial alcohol but the moonshiners had chemists working to extract them).  I can't remember if that was mentioned when prohobition was discussed before.  It's shocking that a government would play so recklessly with peoples' lives.

Alcohol is poison (in the strict sense of the word) so by adding poison to poison would seem to suggest that the prohibitionists didn't really believe that alcohol was a poison in the first place thus undermining the whole prohibition message.

Fully agree that when a bottle of wine is opened it really should be consumed that day. We had a bottle of Saint-Mont at the weekend, a blend of rare grapes, (Arrufiac, Gros Manseng and Petit Courbu) from Gascony producing a very delicate white wine. This evening Mrs V is promising a red - probably a Rioja or a Côtes du Rhône. You need to keep your sulfite levels topped up you know.

Is LiR trying to put me off meths?

It's a lovely colour, and cheaper than Sipsmiths

Oh joy! I read somewhere om line yesterday that Megan might run for office. A Royal in the White House and his  president wife would not have to curtsey to Kate in due course. And security issue resolved plus good live in property up to their standards... or is it?  I reckon in eight years she might set up an Inter Galactic  Confederation and go for Top Dog in that  too. Go for it, Megan!  

With lock down easing - ever so eased around here for some time as many about us have barbeques and partying on all night there ought be a gathering to promote the slogan "All Lives Matter." Can't see it getting much of a following - too woolly……. or is that patronising sheep?

Yes Priscilla: "All Lives Matter" (of cours mine in priority   )...

Take now that unruly young people in Brussels Saturday evening...

https://www.brusselstimes.com/all-news/belgium-all-news/117900/police-break-up-crowds-of-hundreds-in-ixelles-and-anderlecht/

Virologist Professor Marc Van Ranst, for many the face of the fight against the coronavirus in Belgium, was severely critical of the crowds.“This is unwise and undermines support for the corona measures,” he said of the gatherings.“This is not supposed to be happening at this stage of the epidemic. The virus is not gone away. In the past week, there were an average of 90 new cases per day. And those are the cases we have detected, there will undoubtedly be more. Those numbers are higher than in all of China. In Beijing, these numbers are leading to very tough measures. We want to avoid that here.”The suggestion of allowing bars to stay open later that 01.00 would not resolve the issue, he said.“This is the agreement we reached with the industry,” he said. “You could wait until 02.00 or 03.00, but then there would still be these after parties. It is mainly young people who want to party further. I understand that, but this is not the time.”The police could play more of a preventive role, he suggested.“They could close down that square,” he said. “That might just move the problem elsewhere, but together with the Place de la Bourse, these are two places where young people are known to gather at night. Doing absolutely nothing doesn’t seem to me to be an option.”

If it was from me, the police had to use the water canon and tear gas, before!!! they gathered.
But if I say that in the public of the street I can perhaps be lynched in an anti-racial gathering...?

But at least there was a reaction from the police for the future...
reaction

and yes also this:
https://www.brusselstimes.com/brussels/118216/sex-work-allowed-again-in-saint-josse-from-tuesday/
But in the case of Covid contamination you will always have the app of the contacts...?

Kind regards from Paul.

Time lapse footage of the "simmer dim" in Shetland, when it doesn't get dark:

brenogler wrote:

Is LiR trying to put me off meths?

It's a lovely colour, and cheaper than Sipsmiths

Brenogler, I wouldn't dare.  The freedom we enjoy nowadays (okay NOBODY has complete freedom I know) was hard won by our ancestors.  You drink what you want to drink.

Unless I'm responding to another comment I'm hesitant to post on this thread these days because somebody once told me it's supposed to be a bar.  While I'm here I notice there has been allusion to a certain virus.  I hadn't realised children's author, Michael Rosen, had survived it (apologies if this has already been mentioned elsewhere)  https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/jun/12/michael-rosen-returns-to-twitter-after-long-battle-with-coronavirus

LiR wrote:

I'm hesitant to post on this thread these days because somebody once told me it's supposed to be a bar.

This bar is in competition with the Poltimore Arms in North Devon for being a "strange place", supposedly a "bar". The Poltimore Arms is run by an "eccentric" chap who lives there with a ginger cat called Hitler. Hitler is actually a lovely moggy (see picture). The management of Poltimore Arms (Steve) is no respecter of rank, wealth or importance in clients. Everyone gets treated the same - the philosophy indeed as  followed by the management here.




https://www.devonlive.com/whats-on/food-drink/life-inside-uks-strangest-pub-4076884



Famously he calls his customers rude names, but they love him for it (even celebrities like Prince Harry, Damien Hirst and Formula 1 racing drivers who have been known to drop by).

Steve's rule is: "When you come in the pub, everyone is the same - I don't care who you are.

Prince Harry used to come here before he got married when he went shooting.  Damien Hirst and his ex-wife Maia were regulars at one point, and we have everyone from farmers to Formula 1 stars and billionaires.

But when they walk in that door they will all be treated the same - with disrespect and disdain.  And they love it, they love the fact I will ridicule them and talk to them like a piece of crap because no one else does."



PS Good Lord, our Poltimore Arms has even made the Daily Mail. How embarrassing.


https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-8021353/Is-Britains-grumpiest-landlord-Pub-owner-makes-customers-pull-pints.html

From the Mail article:

And all visitors are greeted by the resident ginger cat named Hitler, after Steve requested the 'nastiest' feline they had at a rescue centre.


PPS This place needs a resident moggy like Hitler. I think we already have a dead ferret somewhere. (Inside the pub itself there are several rooms adorned with bizarre decor including multiple pianos and a dead ferret stuck to the wall.)

But does he have a trebuchet? No mention of pickled gannets, either. Amateurs like that give us misanthropes a bad reputation. If he were doing it for real, he'd refuse to serve anyone.

Thank you Gil,

It's been quite a while since last the trebuchets were aired*, but they're here in the cellars ready to use - when assembled - clean, bright and slightly oiled.

When last they were out I heard some 'Air on a G-string', which necessitated some hosing down afterwards.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

I'm hesitant to post on this thread these days because somebody once told me it's supposed to be a bar.  

 
Lady in retirement,

"supposed to be a "bar"". NO, NO, I think in English it is a "pub" and overhere is it a "café", where one normally drinks beer, but you can also have coffee, if you want to stay sober and if you are not too nervous...

Of course overhere you have cafés and... cafés...there are some with a bad name, but if you are afraid to try them all to select, you can always ask it to  the "somebodies", perhaps more than one, because it is as in historywriting you have to read several critiques before you can try to make an estimation...I suppose in my humble opinion...

Kind regards from Paul.

Nielsen wrote:

Thank you Gil,

It's been quite a while since last the trebuchets were aired*, but they're here in the cellars ready to use - when assembled - clean, bright and slightly oiled.

When last they were out I heard some 'Air on a G-string', which necessitated some hosing down afterwards.

Think you misheard that one - aiui the problem was HAIR on a g-string.

(otoh could have been HARE on a G-string - probably jugged)

Deleted post.

Paul and other fellow Res Historians, I do have some coffee in my house but as I am prone high blood pressure I have to be careful not to have too much.  It's not so much that I've ever been warned off it but one year when I had my annual check up for blood pressure it had gone a little higher than normal even with taking a tablet in the morning.  I stopped drinking coffee between that test and the second check up a week or so later and my blood pressure registered as being normal on the second test.  Since then I've been careful with coffee.  I keep some usually in case I have visitors but of course that hasn't applied in the last few months.

14th of July today. Cue for a song:

'La Chant du Depart' was actually the official national anthem of the First French Empire under Napoléon I (1804-1815) having replaced 'La Marseillaise' which had been adopted as the National Revolutionary anthem in 1795. 'La Marseillaise' was banned outright with the restoration of Louis XVIII and Charles X (when the national anthem was the old royalist anthem, 'Vive le Roi'), although it was re-instated, very briefly, with the July Revolution of 1830. Napoleon III considered 'La Marseillaise' to have dangerously seditious words and so he made the patriotic song, 'Partant pour la Syrie' the French national anthem (which had been written in 1807 inspired by Napoléon I's campaign in Egypt and Syria).



But 'La Marseillaise' was by then recognised as the anthem of the international revolutionary movement and as such it was adopted by the Paris Commune in 1871, albeit with new lyrics under the title "La Marseillaise de la Commune". It was however to be eight more years before the 'La Marseillaise', now once again with the original 1792 words, was finally restored as the official national anthem by the Third French Republic in 1879.

The words of the Marseillaise were famously written by Claude Joseph Rouget de Lisle in 1792, but the melody itself was originally composed by the Italian violinist, Giovanni Battista Viotti, over a decade earlier in 1781 when Viotti was employed in the ducal household of Alfonso dal Pozzo della Cisterna of Piedmont and he called the tune simply 'Tema e variazioni in Do maggiore' - theme and variations in D major, for violin and orchestra.



Poor Viotti rarely gets the credit for composing the rousing tune that eventually became the French national anthem.

I'm sure if it could be played in 'Rick's Café Américain' in Casablanca, it should be suitable for the Tumbleweed Suite on the day of the Fête Nationale (although actually of course playing, or even just whistling, the tune of the Marseillaise was illegal and punishable by imprisonment or worse, in Vichy-controlled Casablanca).

Variations in the Viotti  piece I thought stunning - and fair competition for some jazz variations greatly admired.... of course, what do I know. Not a fat lot, really. Monk meets Viotti would be interesting.

Priscilla wrote:

Variations in the Viotti  piece I thought stunning - and fair competition for some jazz variations greatly admired.... of course, what do I know. Not a fat lot, really. Monk meets Viotti would be interesting.

Indeed, it was most interesting.

This is the tune I usually associate with the First Empire:

MM and Triceratops, 

you mentioned:



I know that I am a Boeotian in music and have perhaps for people as yours not at all a hear for music, but I was always struck by some small piece in the former music and that of the Internationale...



Listen once in the first on 27 seconds to: "et du Nord au Midi"...
And in the Internationale on 1 minute 1 second  to: "c'est la lutte finale"...

You with your excellent "musical hearing"...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Internationale
Can it be that our Gantois Pierre De Geyter copied something of the "Chant du Départ" in his music of the "Internationale"?
Or is it coincidence or just my bad musical hearing that hears something that it wants to hear?

Kind regards to both from Paul.

PS: MM, I forgot to say that I find that Napoleon III stuff of "Partant pour la Syrie"  a bit boring...perhaps because of my Boeotian ear for music...? If you compare with the Marseillaise, the Chant du départ and the Internationale...?

Kind regards, Paul.

I think it is fairly accepted that the 'Internationale' at least has "echoes" of the the 'Chant du Départ' particularly in the opening bars. Remember also that the original words of the 'Internationale' as written in French by Eugène Pottier in 1876 were originally intended to be sung to the tune of "La Marseillaise" (he'd been a member of the 1871 revolutionary Paris Commune which had adopted 'La Marseillaise' as their anthem), before De Geyter set the French lyrics to the new melody of the 'Internationale'.

By the way the 'Chant du Départ' is still played/sung as a French military march. Here's the 'Chant du Départ' being sung by cadets of the Ecole de Maistrance at Brest (the main training school for future non-commissioned officers in the French Navy) at a parade in 2012.



Also Valéry Giscard d'Estaing used the 'Chant du Départ' as his campaign song for the presidential election of 1974.

Yes Paul, I thoroughly agree, "Partant pour la Syrie' sounds almost like a Victorian sentimental palour song, rather than a rousing national anthem.

MM, when I go on to YouTube to try and find something to act as an unseen dictation for my shorthand I keep getting recommendations for Marin Marais pieces.  I'm not complaining because they are pleasing to the ear (my ears at least).

This is probably the most re-used piece of the lot. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Frq7rjEGzs or you may prefer this version (if you have time) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbC1wRk20vA

And which, inevitably, also featured in the great 1992 film about the life of Marin Marais, 'Tous les matins du monde', in which the young Marais was played by Guillaume Depardieu and the older Marais by Guillaume's father, Gérard Depardieu. In the film the young Marais' viola da gamba performance of Folies d'Espagne was actually played by Jordi Savall (as in the first youtube posted above by GG).

Guillaume Depardieu "plays" the 'Improvisation sur les Folies d'Espagne' by Marin Marais.


Gérard Depardieu "conducts" the 'Marche pour la cérémonie des Turcs' by Jean-Baptiste Lully.


Note the long conducting staff used by Marais/Depardieu senior, which was then usual rather than a modern-style short conductor's baton. Incidentally Jean-Baptiste Lully, whose music he is conducting, died from a wound inflicted by his conductor's staff. During a performance of his 'Te Deum' to celebrate Louis XIV's recovery from surgery he accidentally struck his foot with the staff. The wound became infected but he refused to have his leg amputated so he could still dance, but the gangrene spread through his body and ultimately caused his death.

MM, thanks for the Depardieu films and the note about the conducting staff. What one learns here each day on these boards...

I hope that you will pardon me for this complete deviation, the only common factor is music...

But after all overhere is it a pub (café), where all subjects can be brought up. From my life long experience in cafés, I have heard and seen more stupid ones and yes excentric ones...I spare you the details...

That said from your youtube session I wandered (tiens, that's also a German word) off into all kind of voices and found now for the first time:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guadalupe_Pineda



https://lyricstranslate.com/en/los-ejes-de-mi-carreta-axles-my-wagon.html

Kind regards from Paul.

Thinking about what I said to LiR in the "mask" thread from Priscilla...

 https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/W._Heath_Robinson
LiR, thank you very much for this background information. It is for such persons among others, that I like the English people that much. I would say even the British one...

"like" is perhaps too general a term. 
In fact I had more in mind the term, and I said it to my colleagues too in the time...my perception of the British was in my opinion their characteristic of being able to "relativeren" (put everything in perspetive?), I saw it also a bit among the French and in my French speaking compatriots.

Perhaps, I guess, because they traditionally had a broader view on the world from their colonial times and by their worldwide spread of their language and culture, that culture already embedded in that many other cultures that worldview was already continuously put in question and as such put their own culture and reality in perspective???

One would expect then from the Dutch and the Spanish the same?
But it seems that after the Golden 17th century Dutch age, after 1648 that international feeling and perspectives became rather dull and there became a mentality, the Dutch have a term for it, but it escapes me now...Perhaps?:"navelstreng staren" (I don't even find the Dutch term on internet) (navelstring staring). Looking to their cosy immediate circle and country...
And their language and culture have never had that splendor as the English and French one, because of the territorial dimension...

For the Spanish I can't judge because I never had that much contact during my life...

For the Dutch speaking Flemish part of Belgium some say, certainly in the past, denigrating: a "onder de toren" mentality. Meant under the "kerktoren" (church tower) mentality, only looking to the immediate policies of the surrounding region...
In my opinion it is only changed in the last fifty years.

Paul.

deleted

Thank you Paul, as long as it's not a wheatbeer - weissbier - the aftertaste - imo a sickening sweetness - leaves me with a wish to have no more for the night, and that's not a good feeling.

Nielsen wrote:

Thank you Paul, as long as it's not a wheatbeer - weissbier - the aftertaste - imo a sickening sweetness - leaves me with a wish to have no more for the night, and that's not a good feeling.

 
Nielsen, no, no, no "weissbier"...real "gerstenat" (barley)...



Paul.

Beers generally are off limits for me since I had the gluten intolerance diagnosed (the main grains I have to avoid are wheat, beer and rye).  There are gluten-free beers but they tend to be expensive.  Vinegar is okay because the gluten is neutralised (or removed? - I don't know the science of the matter) in production.  The first time I went to France (with the school) was to a town in the Vosges (well just outside it) and there were a lot of posters advertising Stella Artois (which in the mid-1960s wasn't that well known in Britain; it wasn't to me anyway).   I thought perhaps Stella Artois was a film star (to my teenaged self the lady in the poster bore a slight resemblance to Marlene Dietrich).

What one learns each day on BBC World
https://www.bbc.com/worklife/article/20200731-the-saboteurs-you-can-hire-to-end-your-relationship

https://www.theguardian.com/books/2020/apr/26/whats-left-of-me-is-yours-by-stephanie-scott-review-breakup-thriller


 
Paul.

It may only be early evening here and  I drink little these days but am in need of a port - one of quality.

Rather than  mess up an excellent post by Temp in  the control thread, I have a point to make about Virgil's Aeneid.. If Augustus - the sly toad, put Virgil up to this as part of his spin programme, he may well have also been planning a line of painful education for the generations  yet to be born. Down with him I say! Of all the hours I  s[ent on that stuff all i ca recall of Book Twelve is the opening. 'O Turne...' Oh yes, Oh Hell Of course  it then got worse.

I always remember poor old Dido being completely messed up by Aeneas and ending up lamenting away for what seemed like three books. Didn't he say Jupiter made him dump her, the big wimp, because he had to go and found Rome? What a pathetic excuse.

"Order, duty and history." Whereas Antony (to Cleo):

 Come,
Let’s have one other gaudy night. Call to me
All my sad captains. Fill our bowls once more.
Let’s mock the midnight bell.

That's more like it.

It's been a long time since there were any gaudy nights around here - but then the midnight bell doesn't get mocked anywhere nowadays, more's the pity. Oh well - have a really big bowl of port, Priscilla, on Antony - why not?  

Augustus would have a small glass of Evian water - ice, no lemon - and he'd be observing social distancing, plus some. Wouldn't fancy being in his bubble.

deleted - wrong thread

Good to see VF popping in - not that he is likely to come in here. I recall the day he got engaged and went into the BBC bar and opened bubbly. Gosh that was an age ago. Not sure we even have smiley bubbles here.  Not much hell raisin' about here now either - not that VF was into that. How time takes its awful toll. The BBC bar was often outrageous but also fun.

I still laugh about BTTDP one weekend taking the new showy heraldic plaque from his bosses' desk and very carefully changing the Latin Tag to something truly rude and awful - she never noticed and was even heard quoting it thinking it meant something else.  I think he changed jobs at about that time.

I still laugh about BTTDP one weekend taking the new showy heraldic plaque from his bosses' desk and very carefully changing the Latin Tag to something truly rude and awful - she never noticed and was even heard quoting it thinking it meant something else.  I think he changed jobs at about that time.

My absolute favourite thread though was along the lines of “I’m related to the oldest ever Brewster”!

VF wrote:

My absolute favourite thread though was along the lines of “I’m related to the oldest ever Brewster”!

VF
That was one of those things you wouldn't miss for the sheer entertainment value of it.
Irony wasn't just part of it - it was all, and the poor sole just got walked all over ...

Yet I hope his/hers medication has been adjusted since then.

Nielsen wrote:

VF wrote:

My absolute favourite thread though was along the lines of “I’m related to the oldest ever Brewster”!

VF
That was one of those things you wouldn't miss for the sheer entertainment value of it.
Irony wasn't just part of it - it was all, and the poor sole just got walked all over ...

Yet I hope his/hers medication has been adjusted since then.

Niels,

it is well documented that I am one of the I suppose thousands  of offspring from the Holy Saint Riquier. In that time you could be a Catholic priest and have offspring. (nowadays too but it is still forbiden by the Catholic pope)

I only found this in English and you have to subsribe
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780227679319.001.0001/acref-9780227679319-e-2529

And for MM only in French:



Kind regards, Paul.