Symbolic Forest

It does come around fast, doesn’t it? Here it is, a beautiful day outside, a clear blue sky, and here I am sat inside updating the blog. Still, it’s almost too hot and sunny to go out. What I could really do with: a laptop, a wireless card, and a deckchair, so I could sit in the shady bit at the bottom of the garden, surfing the web with a nice big G&T. I can’t sit in the sunshine, I burn too easily.

I’m actually going away for the weekend. Well, I haven’t gone away yet, but I’ve booked an exotic hotel for the night, in the hope of getting to bed before dawn. I’m off out for the day tomorrow, you see, and I thought I may as well spend £50 on a headstart.

Geek news: I’ve been having fun setting up MRTG on the home computer network. NB: if you do not know what this means, do not worry – that is probably a Good Thing. The main thing it means to me is: lots of pointless graphs to look at.

All that information is completely useless, and unnecessary to have, but when you’re a geek that’s not the point. It will be useful if I ever bother to get it set up properly at work.

Plans of going away for the weekend reminded me that I don’t have many good luggage bags. I could really do with a nice multi-purpose over-the-shoulder bag that I can stuff with luggage when I’m setting off, and then use as a day bag when I’m off doing touristy things. If I could also use it as a makeshift gadget bag when I’m out with the camera, that would be an extra too. Something like a record bag would be good, but they’re an awkward shape for anything apart from 12″ singles – good for carrying about an A-Z, a couple of books and a notepad, but I couldn’t fit much camera kit in one. A proper photographic gadget bag would be expensive – and they’re mostly either rucksacks, or a bit ugly-looking – and a magical chest with lots of little feet would definitely be overkill. So, any better suggestions gratefully received. And now, I’m off away to pack.

Keyword noise: geek, graphs, holiday, luggage, monitoring, MRTG, SNMP, networking, travel.

In the news recently: the government is making moves to reuse old burial plots, to deal with the problem of overcrowded graveyards. People are, naturally, a bit shocked at the idea of disturbing one’s eternal rest, especially given the synchronicity between this news and the reburial of Gladys Hammond.

However – and I bet you could tell I was about to say this – the idea that the grave represents your eternal rest is a relatively new one, dating from the late 18th century. It’s in the late 18th and early 19th centuries that all the world’s great cemetaries were opened – Old Calton Hill in Edinburgh, designed around David Hume’s mausoleum; Highgate; Kensal Green; Père Lachaise; the Glasgow Necropolis. Prior to that, the grave was normally a temporary place of rest, unless you were an important person.^* After noone around could remember you, up came your skeleton, to go into the local charnel house.^** In The Name Of The Rose, set in the 14th century, a charnel house (of sorts) plays an important part in the plot.^*** The most famous example, nowadays, is probably the ossuary near the Czech town of Kutná Hora.

All this seemed to change in the 18th and 19th centuries, when people started to think of the grave as the eternal resting place. Possibly this was connected with the rise of rationalism – people started to care a lot more about the treatment of the body after death, when previously they’d been confident that the treatment of the soul was more important. It led, in turn, to the modern funeral industry, described by Jessica Mitford in *The American Way Of Death*^**** and Evelyn Waugh in *The Loved One*. The body has become the overriding focus of funeral rituals, and we forget that only a couple of hundred years ago, exhuming the skeleton and reusing the grave was the normal way of life and death.

* If you were important enough to be a saint, of course, bits of your body could end up all over the place.

** Somewhere I have a book of traditional English folk-tales, in which the parish charnel house often plays an important part – persuading someone to go inside at the dead of night, with someone in there already pretending to be a ghost, and that sort of thing.

*** Spoiler: it’s also a secret passageway (highlight to reveal).

**** Originally published in the 1960s, but with a sequel written in the 1990s.

Keyword noise: burial, charnel house, cremation, death, Evelyn Waugh, funerals, Gladys Hammond, graveyards, history, invented tradition, Jessica Mitford, Kutná Hora, Sedlec, ossuary, ritual, The American Way Of Death, The Loved One, tradition.

There’s been an awful lot in the news recently about John Prescott and Dorneywood, the grace-and-favour country house he’s just given up. Which set me wondering: why do we have to have state-owned mansions for ministers anyway?

It’s not as if it’s an ancient tradition. Chequers, the Prime Minister’s country estate, has belonged to the government since the First World War. Dorneywood was given to the government in the last 1940s, and Chevening, normally the official residence of the Foreign Secretary,^* has only been used by the government since 1980. The whole idea – giving ministers stately homes to play with, so they can look suitably upper-class when they want to,^** is very much a modern one.

Now, I can see why ministers might need somewhere to go and relax, to entertain visitors. Do they really need their own mansions, though? The German federal government owns a big hotel just outside Bonn for that reason.^*** The Scottish First Minister lives in a National Trust for Scotland place,^**** a Georgian townhouse in central Edinburgh. Why does the British government need a whole portfolio of country houses for its ministers to live in?

* but, at the time of writing, the official residence of Jack Straw; he got to stay on there when he was demoted.

** see also: playing croquet.

*** Pointless boast: I played in a concert there once. It’s a lovely place, if a bit ornate for my taste.

**** note that the National Trust for Scotland is completely unrelated to the English, Welsh and Northern Irish one.

Keyword noise: Bute House, Chequers, Chevening, country house, Dorneywood, government, history, invented tradition, John Prescott, minister, Petersberg, tradition.

As I mentioned on Friday, I’ve been rereading How To Travel With A Salmon, a book of comic essays, mostly, by Umberto Eco. I first read it when I was an impressionable, pretentious teenager,^* and hadn’t looked at it for about ten years.

I hate to admit it, really, but reading it back now, the first thing that came to mind was: if it was written today, people would be saying how much like a blog it is. Lots of short essays, each only a couple of pages in length. And the style of writing is, in fact, exactly the style of writing that I’m often trying to aim for myself. Witty, dry, sarcastic, intelligent and good-humoured. Reading it now, I realise just how many jokes I didn’t get as a teenager. It’s been a secret influence on this place for a long time, without me realising it.

Of course, the book is far better than anything that’s been written here. But then again, he’s a much better writer than me, and this isn’t being sold in the shops. It’s always good to have something you can aspire to. It’s also not a blog, despite what I said above: the essays were written over the course of about fifteen years or so, mostly in the 1980s. It’s a book, though, that now I’ve remembered I have I’m going to read again, because there’s a lot for any writer to learn from.

* I can remember where I bought it, in fact – at Blackwells in Oxford, on a school trip to the university’s open day.

Keyword noise: books, essays, How To Travel With A Salmon, literature, review, Umberto Eco.

The great thing about a three-day weekend is that it means you can fit two days’ social events into the weekend, and still have a day over to relax and recover before getting back into the office. And, of course, to try and make sure you have plenty of blog posts in draft ready for the following week.

In the meantime, it’s been a while since we’ve had Search Request Round-Up. So, here are some of the better ones:

did nostradamus predict bird flu – no.
have you tried turning it off and on again – ohhh, yes. Many, many times.
takin over the asylum dvd – I have no idea if it’s been released or not, but it definitely should be, and I’d buy it if I found a copy.
not to be loose or hump shunted is a phrase you see painted on the sides of railway wagons. In essence, it means “careful – don’t bash it about”.
rachel whiteread cubes what will happen to the – I’d assume they’ll all be melted down, because they do look recyclable. Unless, of course, anyone has a spare derelict power station to re-erect it in.
has suzie dent got a boyfriend? – I really have no idea. Try asking Des Lynam.
how do you make chocolate cornflake cake? – I can’t remember the details, but essentially you just mix cornflakes and melted chocolate, and try to resist eating the mixture before it sets.
pasquale’s italian edinburgh – I don’t think we ever did work out if Pasquale’s chippy on Clerk St – the one all the students bought their deep-fried confectionary from in my day – is still there or not.
photograph of drunk people on glasgow underground – I know I, for one, have been drunk on the Glasgow Subway, so they can’t be in that short supply
local paper cleckheaton – I assume it’s covered by the Huddersfield Daily Examiner. Don’t believe everything you read in the papers, though.

And that’s enough of that for a bit.

Keyword noise: internet, search requests.

If this week seems to have gone quickly, it’s because I haven’t been blogging very much. My social life is getting the better of me.

Talking of blogging, one of the branch managers at work has apparently started too. I’m intrigued, but not enough to want to read it. The next thing you know, the Managing Director will be getting a Livejournal.

Update on last month’s post about Christian science fiction: whilst searching for something else, I discovered the book I was thinking of when I wrote it. It’s Operation Titan by Dilwyn Horvat. I’ve tried searching for more information about Horvat, but not very much has turned up. I’m not even sure whether Dilwyn is a male or female name.^**

The book I was searching for, incidentally, was How To Travel With A Salmon by Umberto Eco, because I wanted to reread his essay “How To Recognise A Porn Movie”. It’s a long, long story,^* but it’s tangentially linked to this post from last August, one of the first things I wrote here. I’ll post more about it soon, I’m sure.

* which, to explain, would take several pages of context, description, links to discussions elsewhere, links to political campaigning sites, links to sites you probably shouldn’t read at the office, and lots more explanation, and probably, diagrams.

** Update, August 26^th 2020: Internet searches have become rather more sophisticated in the last 14 years, so nowadays it will tell you that Dilwyn Horvat is a Welsh male Christian SF author whose only books are Operation Titan and its sequel Assault on Omega 4. I vaguely remember that the sequel is not set on the moon Titan like the first book; instead it’s in a grimdark post-apocalyptic Oxford.

Keyword noise: blogging, books, Christian science fiction, Christianity, Dilwyn Horvat, literature, management, Operation Titan, science fiction, SF, Umberto Eco, How To Travel With A Salmon.

Was over in the Republic of Hull at the weekend, and popped in a pub in the city centre, called Ye Olde White Harte.^* It’s a very old pub indeed, full of tiny rooms, alleged ghosts and dark wood panelling, and it’s been on the site for around five hundred years or so. Back in the seventeeth century the Siege Of Hull, one of the opening skirmishes of the Civil War, kicked off in the upstairs room of the pub.^**

I was in the pub to go to a meeting, in the aforesaid upstairs room, with swords on the wall and portraits of men in seventeeth-century styles. Just as you could imagine it being back in the civil war, in fact. We sat around having our meeting, just like the seventeenth-century city leaders plotting to change the government whilst downing jars of ale. But, of course, there was a little sign on the wall next to the swords: “found during the Victorian restoration”.

Like many buildings of its age, not much of the Olde White Harte is genuine. It might be a genuine sixteenth-century pub, but much of the interior will have been redone in the 19th century, if not since, to look like the modern ideal of a genuine sixteenth-century pub. For one thing, bars were only invented in the 19th century, in railway station refreshment rooms. I have no idea what it would have actually looked like when first built, but almost certainly not how it does today.

* I don’t see why they can’t call it the Old White Hart, but apparently it’s tradition or something.

** Well, they didn’t exactly start a bar-room fight with the King, but it was where the city leaders decided to bar the gates to the royal army.

Keyword noise: architecture, buildings, civil war, English Civil War, Hull, pubs, restoration, Victorian, White Harte, Yorkshire.

Update on Wednesday’s post: the piano atop Ben Nevis may have been identified. Or maybe not. Maybe large keyboard instruments have been carried to the top of Ben Nevis several times; nobody has any idea, to be honest. Which is probably as it should be.

Meanwhile, in the news – and in just about every news outlet you care to name – a BDSM-related “sex cult” has been uncovered in Darlington.^* To be honest, after reading round it all I feel slightly sorry for the chap who runs the place. He seems to have been quite open about what he was doing, leading his girlfriend around on a leash in public and all, and seems to have been a bit surprised that the press have got a bit excited over it all. Personally, I don’t think he’s doing anything wrong. Gor isn’t my kink, but if that’s what people want to do, then let them.

* As I said, this story is everywhere at the moment, but I’m linking to The Guardian‘s version because it has the best headline.

Keyword noise: bdsm, Ben Nevis, Darlington, Gor, piano, Scotland, sex cult.

…is a phrase I never really understood.

It’s a sudden flashback I had today, to old sitcoms, particularly Croft-Perry sitcoms like Allo Allo and Hi-de-Hi. They didn’t end with your standard telly credits. They ended with “You have been watching…”, and everybody would suddenly come out of character, break the fourth wall and wave at the camera.

Presumably it’s a stage thing adapted for the telly. Even when young, though, I found it rather disruptive. I didn’t want to be shown these people were actors. I wanted to suspend my disbelief all week until the next episode. Moreover, I wasn’t always sure what the names of all the characters were. I wanted to read the credits and find out!

Keyword noise: Allo Allo, comedy, fourth wall, end credits, Hi-de-Hi, sitcom, television.

In the news today: a piano has been found on top of Ben Nevis. Whether this is really news, and whether noone knew about it before now, is rather debatable,^* but at least the mountain’s owners will be pleased with all the publicity.

Maybe the Ben Nevis litter-pickers should turn their attention to Snowdonia instead. There’s a rumour that some evil prankster dumped an ugly café near the summit of Snowdon in the distant past, but noone has ever managed to find it since.

* This originally linked to a couple of items on the internet indicating that the piano had probably been known about by walkers and climbers well before it made it into the papers, but both seem to have now disappeared.

Keyword noise: Ben Nevis, piano, publicity, Scotland, Yr Wyddfa, Snowdon, Eryri, Snowdonia.