Another year's reading and exploring with Hugh: mark 2023, part 2

Welcome to Part 2!

Have I not been reading lately? Hardly. Just not keeping up with posts.

Henry VIII and his Queens. Not bad, informative, but not exactly the most inspiring of books. Despite its shortness (which means that it hasn't the space to go into depth) the prose tended towards the leaden rather than silver.

Illustrated Daughters of Britannia. The author is the daughter of one of the subjects of this book, which allows for a promise (not completely fulfilled) of more "inside" information. Overall, there is much information on living in a British legation overseas between the 17th and 20th centuries (inclusive). There is a surprising amount of detail here, but it is not always easy to find or go back to -- I feel the kindest appropriate adjective to apply to the organization of the material is "opaque". The South African liaison Officer post at Kew was a semi-diplomatic post (heavily subsidised by Foreign Affairs) back in the day. Reading this book I can only be pleased that I was based at Kew and not the Embassy! The formality would have been stifling, and sometimes was (as when the Powers That Be woke up and realised they had a body in the suburbs and not underfoot). The pictures are superb, but the text is let down by an eccentric and wearisome typeface.

Am I inspired by this book? Only to give thanks that my encounter with diplomatic life was mercifully short.

Insane Mode. Interesting, and an easy read. That we need electrically-driven transport is surely obvious, as is the need for renewable energy -- and one finds Elon Musk moving and shaking both fields. A Tesla (or similar; Other Brands Are Available) car is surely desirable in a first-world environment. I can see a self-driving car being a Good Thing if the roads are all top quality. But here, where most roads have gravel or earth surfaces, and blacktop is all too often unmaintained and potholed, unmarked or with the paint long since worn away? I hae ma doots. Also how an autonomous car copes with an unlicenced driver in an unroadworthy vehicle approaching fast on the wrong side of the road; quite common here. It is not totally surprising that there appears to be only one Tesla car in South Africa. Nice idea, though.

>3 hfglen: An eccentric and wearisome typeface

Is there any note on the copyright page as to what this delightful design element might be named?

>5 jillmwo: Not a peep, but here's a scan of a random block of text in bold and normal.



Do you recognise it?

>6 hfglen: I turned the question over to my husband (who has a better handle on such things than I) and he says the closest thing he can match that font to would be Aldhabi. The thing that makes it less readable is that most of the lower-case letters (with the exception of the lower case h or l, etc.) appear to be "squished" down. That would affect the spacing displayed between the lines (known as the leading). You also mentioned there being a number of paragraphs. Placing the various text blocks of shorter lines might also have an impact on the legibility of the text.

We agree that the font is an odd choice; in our conversation, we assumed that this was to give the feel of an older style of book, one extending further back in time as the narrative extends to the 17th century.

>7 jillmwo: Interesting. The body of the lower-case letters is indeed squished down, but the risers look as if they're stretched like a giraffe's neck, which also impacts the readability. Daft choice, any way up. Many thanks for the consultation.

Happy new thread, Hugh.
There are tools on the web that supposedly can identify fonts, but I think the best thing for that one is to allow it to languish in obscurity.

Happy New Thread!

>9 haydninvienna: Ha!

Congrats on the new thread!

Happy new thread! I look forward to more of your photos and tales of your adventures in reading and in life!

>12 Sakerfalcon: Your wish is my command! (Though it took a while.)



Martial Eagles in a dead tree, Kruger National Park, May 2022.

>13 hfglen:
Very nice.

>13 hfglen: I can see how they got their names. Martial indeed.

>13 hfglen: Now that's 5 star service!

I wouldn't mess with those eagles!

>13 hfglen: If two martial eagles gather, do we consider that a platoon?

>17 jillmwo: That sounds good! I'll ask the bird expert when she returns from hospital.

As pgmcc said a couple of days ago in his thread, there is always an elephant.



Did you see the next elephant hidden in the bush?

Maybe we should consider 2023 the Year of the Elephant here in the Pub. (And I was barely able to find the second elephant but it is there!)

>19 hfglen:
Always!

> 19 An elephant in the hand is worth .... I'm sure there's a better joke to be made from this!

>19 hfglen: Wonderful.

>17 jillmwo: Or a corps, perhaps?

Human Universe by the ever-youthful Professor Brian Cox, who is well known to listeners to The Infinite Monkey Cage. Very interesting, and almost up to date (published only nine years ago), despite this being a very fast-moving field.
Are we alone in the universe? Depends to some extent on what you mean by "we". There may be life even as close as elsewhere in our home solar system, though if there is, one may expect it to be unicells like bacteria or archaea, rather even than cells with nuclei. Intelligent life? Much less likely, and much further away. Intelligence that we can contact? Almost certainly not.
Prof. Cox is just as informed and entertaining in print as he is on BBC4, and this is a very worthwhile read.

>25 hfglen:
He is a good communicator of scientific knowledge and reasoning.

Fakirs, Feluccas and Femmes Fatales. This copy found in the library; in a bookshop I'd half expect to find it among the travel guides, as the publisher is known for guide-books rather than any kind of more general reading. But here we have a series of articles (is this really their first public airing?) by a man who has to go to numerous generally unsavoury places to advise on the finances of the construction, refurbishing and maintenance of ports and their infrastructure. Good heavens, it seems that there are many places with governments as corrupt as our own!

A quick and entertaining read, though there are hardly any places he describes that I'd actually want to go to. Worth picking up if you see a copy.

50 buildings you should know would be a coffee-table book if the pages were bigger and the layout more annoying. As it is, each building gets one or two double-page spreads, mostly of illustrations but with some (minimal) text. The buildings are arranged chronologically, from the Great Pyramid to the National Stadium in Beijing. Once again, some entries leave me wondering whether the architect has given even a millisecond's thought to what I would have thought was the most important starting question: What's It For?. So for example, we have The Glass House in New Canaan, MA, which is said to be a dwelling-place. Now surely that implies shelter, protection from the elements and a modicum of privacy? Not for this architect. Apart from a brick cylinder housing the electrics and the bathroom (come to think of it, I wonder what pressure had to be exerted to get that last concession?), all the walls are glass throughout except for the thinnest of steel supports. And the roof is flat; in my experience that is exactly equivalent to saying "the roof leaks". It must be hell to live in, but has no doubt collected every prize going.

I am reminded of the Flanders & Swann sketch of many years ago, detailing the interior decor of the ultra-fashionable "7B Scarsdale Villas", the payoff line being that though the place is "madly gay / It wouldn't do for every day. / We actually live in 7A / -- The. House. Next. Door!" Quite.

You raise a good point. What purpose does the structure serve when initially built? (And living in a glass house defeats any notion of privacy formulated by human beings.)

You remind me of a church still standing on Sixth Avenue in New York City. It had been a fashionable Episcopal church during the 19th century but had fallen upon hard times. During the '70's or '80's, it was de-sanctified and subsequently sold, to be transformed into the notorious nightclub, the Limelight (drugs, sex, and rock and roll). Eventually the police got it closed down as the Limelight but certainly as of 25 years ago, the church structure was standing there. I have seen many transformations of old churches put to new use -- turned into residential homes or what-have-you -- but even then these are usually still identifiable as being originally designed to serve that specific communal use.

>28 hfglen: Architects are often more interested in aesthetics than function. There was a building complex in Canberra called Cameron Offices, designed by a locally famous architect called Harry Seidler. It won a ton of awards but leaked like a sieve, to the point where some parts were unusable because of water getting into the power sockets. There were public protests trying to prevent its demolition, and (IIRC) a lawsuit by Seidler. It got demolished though, and I doubt that anyone now regrets it.

I also seem to recall that many of Frank Lloyd Wright’s buildings, beautiful though they were, were impractical in various ways. Fallingwater in particular was under-designed structurally and suffered from the humidity of it location.

>30 haydninvienna: Indeed. I'd also read somewhere that Falling Water had recently been the subject of a major and very expensive rebuild. And I can sympathise with the inhabitants of Cameron Offices. When the building I worked in, in Pretoria, was designed, the oh-so-clever architect decided that louvre windows throughout were The Thing, although it was no doubt explained to him that the intended contents were irreplaceable and could not under any circumstances be allowed to get wet. The water stains on the inside walls still bear witness to the notice he took of that. Twenty years later the building was "gifted" with seriously under-engineered aircon (for example, one temperature sensor per wing, though each wing faces both north and south, and the exhaust for each wing immediately under the intake). Mercifully, the pumps burned out in a very few years, and the windows now open and close properly, and have plastic frames.

In 1898 the good citizens of Durban bought a gazebo from an ironfounder's catalogue (presumably a Glasgow firm) as a monument to the 400th anniversary of Vasco da Gama's visit. It was erected outside Point Station (at the end of the first working railway line in Africa south of the Sahara), which no longer exists -- it was not far from the site of the last picture in the previous thread.



The surviving parts are now on the property of the Royal Natal Yacht Club, a couple of km from its original home. There used to be a public clock on top, and the round gaps in the canopy originally held portrait busts.

Secret Days: code-breaking in Bletchley Park. DNF, as it wasn't in the least what one might reasonably expect, especially coming from a respected historian. I had expected a study of how they did it; what I found was 200 pages of personal reminiscences that quickly became boring. The only point of passing interest and new information I found was that a man who later became, briefly, an unmemorable teacher at the school I went to had been at Bletchley Park for, well, long enough to find a wife there.

>32 hfglen: Handsome gazebo!

What a great idea! A page or two each on a surprising number of inventions that have some or another link with South Africa. Sometimes the link is tenuous, as with the Tesla electric car (Elon Musk grew up in Pretoria), but other times far more direct, like dolosse and Pratley Putty. The first protects harbours from storms all around the world; the second is the first epoxy adhesive to have gone to the moon, and has so many earthbound uses that it is freely available from hardware stores around here. One is amazed that there are enough items to fill quite a hefty book.

The author, Mike Bruton retired recently as Director of SAIAB (South African Institute of Aquatic Biology), and is a speaker who can fill auditoria effortlessly, even when the topic is obscure. The expectation that the book will be entertainingly written is well fulfilled, and the numerous pictures are a very attractive bonus.

Samurai William. Much heavier going than the previous. The subject of this biography, William Adams, was the first Englishman to live in Japan for any length of time. Remarkably, he became fluent in the language and was friendly with the Shogun for many years. Sadly, the writing is often leaden and the illustrations few, far between and badly reproduced.

Dear old Durban. Inspired by Barbara Maude-Stone's collection of old picture postcards of Durban (roughly before the Second World War), Yvonne Miller has organised her reminiscences of growing up in a prosperous Durban family living on the Berea in about the 1920s and early '30s. This book is the result, complete with illustrations derived from the postcards. I have often wondered what it would have been like to grow up in Kloof, the suburb next to where I now live, when I was a kid (1950s and '60s); this book and some imagination may be the nearest I will ever get to finding out.

Note that Franco Frescura's book Durban: once upon a time includes most of the text of this one, and adds his often acerbic commentary, and pictures from his own collection of postcards and related ephemera. It may just be easier to find this, as it was published more recently by a known architectural publisher. The first book was privately published 25 years ago, and seems to be as rare as hens' teeth.

If you're interested in life in a subtropical holiday-town a hundred years ago, read both if possible. It won't take long and will be entertaining.

Durban Curry. Recipes from (mostly) the Indian community in Durban and neighbouring coastal areas; this is said to be the largest Indian community outside the Subcontinent. In the 160-odd years since the first Indians arrived here curries have of necessity been adapted to local needs and ingredients, and have continued to evolve along a different path from their home environment. But things are more complicated than that: for example, as recounted in the Cookbookers group, I made a "Zulu Chicken" recipe collected from an Indian family for this book: not a whiff of chilli, even in the printed recipe; just loads of fragrant goodness. On the other hand, too many macho white (ahem) men think they can make a "traditional Durban" curry, with results that are somewhere between chili con carne and a particularly vicious after-pub vindaloo. That recipe you will not find here. But the ones you will find are most definitely worth seeking out and making.

If anyone thinks the editor's name sounds familiar: it is, to local foodies. Her husband is John Platter of South African Wine Guide fame.

It feels like ages since I last posted in this thread, let alone a picture. So here goes, with one from the archive.



It's a small waterfall in Bain's Kloof, and marked on Google Maps as Bobbejaans Waterfall -- well, there are baboons in the area. It's about 80-100 km from Cape Town (depending on where in Cape Town you start from) or about 1550 km from home. So clearly it wasn't taken recently: in fact, the picture is almost 50 years old.

Oh, that's lovely. (And I appreciate the heads up on the presence of baboons. As I recall, they're not an overly friendly primate?)

>39 hfglen: Another wonderful photo. What's 50 years in the big picture anyway?

>40 jillmwo: Two answers:
1. They're a b@#$%y menace, and they bite. And the bites ALWAYS go septic.
2. They're far too friendly, especially if they think there's a chance of stealing food. And the bar-stewards are far too clever to be put off at all easily.

>41 clamairy: Thank you! You encourage me to see what else I can find amid the dust and cobwebs.

>39 hfglen: The color saturation on this is impressive, especially since the technology is older.

>39 hfglen: That photo is amazingly well preserved for the age. Also looks like it would make for a lovely place to hike if it weren't for the baboons.

>39 hfglen: That's stunning!

>40 jillmwo: >44 libraryperilous: >45 Narilka: >46 Sakerfalcon: Thank you, all! I wish I knew why some pictures fade badly, while others using the same emulsion and stored together with the fading ones, don't.

Cape Town flavours and traditions. Tourist souvenir book. Pretty pictures (but yes, the Cape is by nature scenic just wherever you look) and some self-proclaimedly traditional recipes. Some are. Most, however, are arty-farty offerings designed more to impress than to be eaten. I'm relieved that this is a library book, and I don't have to find house room for it.

>48 hfglen: IIRC, in Imagine a City, Mark Vanhoenacker nominated Cape Town as his all-time favourite city.

The Cape of Good Cooks If nothing else, this one has solved a problem brought on by a hyperactive forgettery. Almost a quarter of a century ago a favourite aunt and uncle took us to lunch in a very austere, barn-like structure near Stellenbosch that served brilliant Italian food.. But I had forgotten the name. It's La Masseria (written up in this book), which has moved since we went there and Google Maps tells me has now changed hands and is no longer Italian (which is a pity, but we're all getting older). This book contains 15 write-ups of mostly top-class wine estates with restaurants; three free-standing restaurants and an annual event find their way into this list. Each has contributed a couple of recipes; the dominant protein is lamb (expensive!), but I'm curious to try one of the chicken recipes. (MrsLee may like the idea of another: the sauce involves 6 fresh red chillies and 6 ditto green, to be divided among six diners. There are lots of gorgeous pictures of wine personalities and scenery. It would be good to think that this book might inspire Pete to come and explore -- I think he'd enjoy it!

>49 haydninvienna: The place has a lot going for it, and I can see Mark Vanhoenacker's point. But I still love Durban, with all its faults.

>50 hfglen: I would have to put all the chilies on my plate, because my family is sadly lacking in the spicy hot gene.

Durban in a word. Some 30-ish essays by as many different writers, on what Durban means to them. As may be expected in such a collection, the writing varies, from fact to coherent fiction to stream-of-consciousness. The two things the descriptive writers all mention are our summer weather (January to March are hot and unbelievably humid) and the year-round greenness (most of our trees are vividly evergreen, and they are many). I liked the evidently keen gardener who commented that when planting out the latest tiny, tender, delicate gem from the nursery down the road, one needs to arm oneself with a machete as well as a trowel. In our climate, the seedling will start within minutes to make a takeover bid for the house roof! The best bits are fun to read, but the rest make me pleased that I can give it back to the library.

Hiking Trails in and around Johannesburg and the Magaliesberg. Presumably there is a reason why a library in Durban has this? Interesting because the trails are on land next door to (or at least near) places the Tree Society used to visit back in the day. The book seems well put together, with decent-looking maps and some good pictures. One would need to take it on one of the hikes for a proper "test-drive" before commenting further.

ETA why o why did the link to the book appear correctly next to the drafting window, but not in the posted message until after adding this comment?

Every day is an opening night. If you grew up in Johannesburg in the '60s to '80s, you couldn't breathe without encountering Des and Dawn Lindberg. They were that much part of life. This autobiography, written as a series of dialogues between a clearly devoted pair, shows just how much more there was (sadly, Dawn died of Covid pneumonia when this book was almost ready for the printers) to them than just Unicorns, spiders and Dragons (for kiddies), Die Gezoem van die Bye (Afrikaans version of Big Rock Candy Mountain, which Des turned into political satire) and 16 Rietfonteins. By getting on with it and asking politicians awkward questions, they played a much bigger part than one might expect of a pair of folksingers in pushing the boundaries of the ridiculous apartheid laws of the time, knocking holes in them and seeing to it that theatre was integrated long before other spheres of life. If you haven't lived in Johannesburg, this is a warm, feel-good book much to be recommended; if you did for any length of time, you get the bonus of knowing or at least knowing of, most of the people they mention. Unless the rest of the year produces a succession of spectacularly brilliant books, this is a dead cert for one of my top five of the year.

>53 hfglen: The best bits are fun to read, but the rest make me pleased that I can give it back to the library.

Bit of an ouch there.

Another one from the archives this week.



A Sociable Weaver nest somewhere between Olifantshoek and Upington (giving you about 100 miles of lonely road to choose from), Northern Cape, 1985. It's all one nest, inhabited by more than a few pairs of birds -- a veritable wildlife apartment block!

Happy Mother's Day to all GD moms!

>57 hfglen:
You continue to educate me.

>57 hfglen: Thank you for the photo and the explanation, since I had no idea what I was looking at.

>59 pgmcc: >60 Karlstar: Thank you, gentlemen. Maybe I should explain that the birds enter at the bottom of the nest, which is unusual. Apparently they do this to confuse snakes, which might otherwise have a field day at such a nest.

>57 hfglen: & >61 hfglen: Interesting!

>57 hfglen: How cool is that! Thank you.

>57 hfglen: >61 hfglen: The work-arounds that Nature develops are absolutely amazing. The birds come up with what appears to be a brilliant survival tactic and honestly, who'd have thought that the snakes wouldn't be able to work it out...

>57 hfglen:, >61 hfglen: Fascinating!

>62 MrsLee: >63 clamairy: >64 jillmwo: >65 Sakerfalcon: Thank you, all!

The Last Hurrah. For the concept of belonging to a wider body in South Africa, it (the Royal Visit of 1947) mostly was, although at least some of us had more than a whiff of this good thing in our schooldays. The book is an in-depth account (and no less readable for that) of the tour, illustrated with many contemporary pictures, some of which I was familiar with from the digital copies of the Transnet Heritage Library collection to be seen on the internet. What I did not know was the existence of relatively many colour pictures of the tour, still in good condition after almost 3/4 of a century. As indicated above, the book is a well researched and written account of an event that still reverberated faintly "when I wur a lad". That said, there is still a surprisingly large number of folk around (at least here in Durban) who remember seeing the King, Queen and Princesses here at that time.

I think we need to remove a spammer.

Time for another picture. This is another 50-year-old, but the scene is not vastly different even today.



It's the Old Harbour at Hermanus, one of the most often-photographed tourist sights in the Western Cape.

>70 hfglen:
It struck me as Portuguese. I think it was the shape of the boats.

>71 pgmcc: Inneresting. Would the relatively bright, harsh sunshine contribute? Hermanus is about 34.4°S, Faro in the Algarve 37°N, so the angle of the sun should be similar, if 6 months apart.

>70 hfglen: I feel like that photo could have been taken 200 years ago. It seems timeless.

>72 hfglen:
I think it is the combination of the sun, shape and colouring of the boats, and sandy nature of the area.

A book I'm (re-)reading, Back Roads of the Cape, makes the point that the impressiveness of the true southernmost point in Africa is more subtle than the much more widely advertised Cape Point, which is also not (despite advertising) the meeting point of the Atlantic and Indian Oceans.



Judge for yourselves. This view is looking due south into the Southern Ocean, and the rocks slope very shallowly and dangerously into the sea for a long way.

>75 hfglen: That is an amazing image. It stirs the imagination regardless of its accuracy or precision. I love it. A man-made concept made concrete; well, stone and cement with a brass plaque, and a couple of Ocean nameplates of material I am unable to determine with the data currently available.

>75 hfglen: I like that photo a lot!

>75 hfglen: A very interesting photo. What does define where 2 oceans meet, if not at a strait or island chain barrier?

>75 hfglen: I have the same question as Karlstar in #78. What does qualify as the defining geographical point of two oceans meeting?

>75 hfglen: The color of that water! Lovely.

>76 pgmcc: The ocean nameplates are concrete, similar to street nameplates built into kerbing in the Western Cape. The geology is recent sand underlain by Table Mountain Sandstone. Dreadful stuff for growing plants in, as it's as near nutrient-free as makes no difference.

>78 Karlstar: >79 jillmwo: In this case it's where the warm Mozambique current (Indian Ocean) meets a branch of the cold Benguela Current (Atlantic; the main current goes up the west coast well into Angolan waters, and is the reason why the Namib Desert is so dry).

>76 pgmcc: >77 Narilka: >80 MrsLee: Thank you all!

>75 hfglen: Another wonderful shot. The green hue is gorgeous.

Thank you, Clam!

For some months I have (intermittently) been helping a lady with meanings/derivations of names for a book she's writing on the plants of the Limpopo Valley. Today's message is that she's finished the book and wants to send me a complimentary copy. I think I'm spoiled!

Picture time again!



This is a Black-bellied Bustard seen in the Kruger National Park in November 2013. It's one of our larger birds, but still less than half the size of the related Kori Bustard, our largest flying bird. Not exactly common, the one in the picture has a red-list status of Near Threatened.

Oh wow! That's a smart fellow! Great photo, you captured the detail of the plumage.

>75 hfglen: Great perspective in that photo!

>84 hfglen: So that's what a bustard looks like! Thanks, again.

>85 Sakerfalcon: >86 libraryperilous: >87 Karlstar: Thank you, all!

I think I'm spoilt. For some time I've been answering queries from a lady called Retha van der Walt, who is part of a safari company in the Limpopo Valley, and who has been revising her book on the Wild Flowers of the Limpopo Valley. A week or so ago she let me know that the new edition is out, and lo! on Thursday morning bright and early the courier arrived bearing a complimentary copy for me!



She has listed some 400 species with minimal text (but enough for identification), a distribution map and at least one (often two or three) colour photos of key characters. The photos are, as often as not, breathtakingly gorgeous -- in many cases, even if the plant detail isn't. For many species, there is also a pen-and-ink line drawing of a leaf as well. In short, all you really need to make the book useful. Now I'm looking forward in hope that one day I'll be able to go to Mapungubwe in flowering season and use the book to identify the plants I see!

ETA: The western part of Mapungubwe National Park includes a boardwalk through a patch of forest that is the very best place to see Kipling's "great grey-green greasy Limpopo River all set about with fever trees". Sadly, Mrs Van der Walt only deals with plants-smaller-than-me in her book, and you need a different volume for the trees.

Authors love the people who support them during revisions. Good for you. I have always loved the rhythm and alliteration of that phrase of "great grey-green greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever trees". Perhaps you can find a way to support the author of the *other* volume -- the one having to do with trees.

>89 hfglen: Nice!

>90 jillmwo: That would be my good friend Braam van Wyk, who is an LT member but not in the GD. He and I correspond by e-mail whenever necessary (he lives in Pretoria).

More from the archives.



Berlin Falls, near Graskop, Mpumalanga, 1983. Sadly, the province has seen fit to introduce extortionate "admission fees" to all the sights in this area, and they and the towns are overrun with self-proclaimed "guides" and "souvenir sellers" that won't take no for an answer.

>93 hfglen: Excellent photo as ever, Hugh. We are all too familiar with adhesive and persistent "guides" and "souvenir sellers".

>92 hfglen: Is it time for your buddy, Braam, to make revisions? This could be a lead-in, allowing you a stream of free copies of useful botanic reference guides...

>93 hfglen: Great photo!

>95 jillmwo: He gave me his latest when it came out.

>89 hfglen: A lovely way to say thanks!

>84 hfglen: & >93 hfglen: Awesome photos.
>89 hfglen: That is great. Did she give you credit for all your help in the text as well?

>98 clamairy: Yes she did!

I love serendipitous connections in my reading. Have just seen in The Origin of Everyday Things that one of the inventors of "artificial silk" aka rayon was a certain Comte de Chardonnay. No doubt pgmcc's and haydninvienna's eyebrows hsve risen exactly as mine did when I read that. Sadly, I can find no connection between the inventor (a student of Louis Pasteur, by the way) and the well-known wine-grape variety.

Window on the World. Evidently I bought this at a fete or thrift shop or something somewhere, and until the other day didn't get around to reading it, which was no loss, as I can now confirm having struggled and skimmed through it. Evidently Edmund de Rothschild's parents (yes, of the banking family) sent him as a 21-year-old on an apparently open-ended world tour. He left UK at the beginning of November 1937, returning 19 months later. He saw South and East Africa, South America, New Zealand, Australia, South-east Asia and India, and the book is built up out of excerpts from his letters home and diaries. So far, so good, and one can admire him for roughing it to a quite alarming degree when he had to. However, he and his companions seem to have lived to the full the Victorian dream of slaughtering anything they saw that moved, and the endless accounts of hunting mainly for the pleasure of carnage would definitely not be acceptable today. There are more than a few but less than enough (but hey, it was published in 1949!) of his own pictures, and the writing style is eminently forgettable. Now I shall go and add this one to a box destined for the church fete.

>100 hfglen:
...no connection between the inventor (a student of Louis Pasteur, by the way) and the well-known wine-grape variety.
...unless you know better.

>101 hfglen: Your description may have back-fired as a recommendation. When you talk about the young man have to rough it to some alarming degree, my curiosity is aroused. What kind of hardships did he encounter? (Given my trust in you, it is still unlikely that I will seek this book out, but I might enjoy learning some of the gory details.)

>103 jillmwo: STTM to an absurd degree, being eaten alive by mosquitoes all through the tropics, being rained out as often as not ... while one understands that in 1938 4x4s were as rare as hens' teeth, nevertheless he and his companions seem to have had an endless succession of, er, unfortunate experiences with their vehicles on the dubious and sometimes imaginary roads that are still a feature of the tropics. Will that do for a start?

>104 hfglen: I probably should have stopped and considered the possibilities available. The problem with mosquitoes should almost go without saying and I am familiar with monsoon season in various parts of the world. There are comments made in various novels of the period that one could expect to dine out on the strengths of the stories one might tell about travels. Based on what you're saying even the richest men might have been viewed as boring fellow guests.

I have long wondered why there is such a large difference between the US and UK gallon measures. Last night, while reading a 1936 KWV production called The Wine Book of South Africa, I found out at least the immediate reason. An article by Prof. A.I. Perold* contains this almost-throwaway sentence:

In 1826, when the British Imperial Gallon was increased by practically 20 per cent., being altered from 3.7853 litres to 4.5436 litres (the former still is the U.S.A. gallon), the leaguer automatically became 127 gallons, the Aum 32 and the Half-Aum 16 gallons, which today still is the case.

Now, of course, one needs to discover why the Imperial powers-that-be took this unusual step.

* Prof. Perold did early oenological and viticultural research at Stellenbosch University, about 100 years ago. Apart from teaching cape growers to start making decent wine, he made the initial hybrid (between Pinot Noir and Cinsaut, which latter he called Hermitage) that has since become widely grown, vinified and loved under the name of Pinotage.

>101 hfglen: One wonders just how annoying a child must be to be sent on an open ended world tour by their parents? Leave, don't return, we will pay all expenses, just stay away. The ultimate remittance man. ;)

>107 MrsLee: Perhaps one should look at the date and do some counting on fingers; the trip wasn't totally open-ended. He tells us that he spoke to numerous Jewish organizations (being of that persuasion), and followed the news with rising anxiety when he could. He reports being followed by a Nazi agent in Bombay in about May 1939, and appears to have made it back to England only just in time before the war broke out.

>106 hfglen:
That is fascinating.

Have you any idea why the UK Billion, i.e. a million million, was modified by the US to be one thousand million? The US billion has apparently been adopted as the norm now. The same goes for a trillion, and to Infinity and Beyond!

>106 hfglen: From the all-knowing:

The gallon originated as the base of systems for measuring wine and beer in England. The sizes of gallon used in these two systems were different from each other: the first was based on the wine gallon (equal in size to the US gallon), and the second one either the ale gallon or the larger imperial gallon.

By the end of the 18th century, there were three definitions of the gallon in common use:

The corn gallon, or Winchester gallon, of about 268.8 cubic inches (≈ 4.405 L),
The wine gallon, or Queen Anne's gallon, which was 231 cubic inches (≈ 3.785 L), and
The ale gallon of 282 cubic inches (≈ 4.622 L).

The corn or dry gallon is used (along with the dry quart and pint) in the United States for grain and other dry commodities. It is one-eighth of the (Winchester) bushel, originally defined as a cylindrical measure of 18+1/2 inches in diameter and 8 inches in depth, which made the dry gallon 8 in × (9+1/4 in)2 × π ≈ 2150.42017 cubic inches. The bushel was later defined to be 2150.42 cubic inches exactly, thus making its gallon exactly 268.8025 in3 (4.40488377086 L); in previous centuries, there had been a corn gallon of between 271 and 272 cubic inches.

The wine, fluid, or liquid gallon has been the standard US gallon since the early 19th century. The wine gallon, which some sources relate to the volume occupied by eight medieval merchant pounds of wine, was at one time defined as the volume of a cylinder 6 inches deep and 7 inches in diameter, i.e. 6 in × (3+1/2 in)2 × π ≈ 230.907 06 cubic inches. It was redefined during the reign of Queen Anne in 1706 as 231 cubic inches exactly, the earlier definition with π approximated to 22/7.
...
Although the wine gallon had been used for centuries for import duty purposes, there was no legal standard of it in the Exchequer, while a smaller gallon (224 cu in) was actually in use, requiring this statute; the 231 cubic inch gallon remains the U.S. definition today.

In 1824, Britain adopted a close approximation to the ale gallon known as the imperial gallon, and abolished all other gallons in favour of it. Inspired by the kilogram-litre relationship, the imperial gallon was based on the volume of 10 pounds of distilled water weighed in air with brass weights with the barometer standing at 30 inches of mercury and at a temperature of 62 °F (17 °C).

>106 hfglen: >110 haydninvienna: Fascinating, thank you both.

Good Heavens, is it that long since I last posted in my own thread?

No valid excuse, really. I've mostly been (re)reading my own books preparatory to a possible move. Seems odd to me to start by packing and rehousing books (so far only mine, I can't help noticing) with no clear idea of when or where we might go. And all enlightenment I get is WE MUST DOWNSIZE!!!!, which seems to mean "you must shed all your beloved books while the family do little other than carp".

The Little Book of Steam. I read Railwaysoc's copy while cataloguing it. In a book this size there is no space to be anywhere near exhaustive, but what there is, is good, accurate and well written. Lots of interesting pictures, many taken by the author, add to the book. The said author was a (steam) engine driver for British Railways -- that dates him! -- so the book relates almost exclusively to British practice.

I skimmed through Indian Railways : Glorious 150 Years while cataloguing it. Considering that the publisher is a Ministry of the Indian Government, it may not be overly surprising that the snatches I read seemed to be in a curious mixture of officialese and "curried English". Nevertheless the pictures hold the attention, and I suspect there's a good story hiding in there somewhere.

Re-read of Overdrafts and Overwork by one H. Altmann, though the book credits the "collaboration \of\ Eric Rosenthal". This Mr Altmann was one of the first staff members of what is now Nedbank, one of the "big four" banks in South Africa, and this slim volume (105 A5 pages) is his autobiography. Eric Rosenthal's contribution presumably included making the text readable (which it is) and some fact checking. Mr Altmann joined the bank's Johannesburg branch in 1895, and so he was near the centre of the action in the Anglo-Boer War of 1899 - 1902. Evidently the publisher did not expect good sales, as the colophon tells us that the edition I have (the only one?) was "limited" to 1000 numbered copies. A keeper, methinks.

>112 hfglen: We have no immediate plans to move, but I also feel the call to downsize. My first goal of retirement is to go ruthlessly through cupboards and closets. I will at least clean and reorganize some of my books. I am in no hurry to remove them at present. I have room for them all right now, so those hard decisions can wait until we actually do decide to move. I am trying to lighten my burden of family "treasures."

>112 hfglen: >116 MrsLee: The good thing about books, with the exception of the oversized ones, is that they can be packed compactly and don't require a lot of padding or odd sized boxes.

Good luck to both of you in your sorting and downsizing, it isn't easy.

So do I get to read still? Yes, oddly enough. Mostly re-reads of beloved / interesting / useful books in my own collection. Currently busy with works of Jose Burman, which although averaging about 50 years old, are still worth the effort. Also Graham Ross on Cape Mountain Passes -- the latter about 40 years younger than Mr Burman's So High the Road, so continuing the story usefully. Also some on the early days of Johannesburg, most recently one by the ever-engaging Eric Rosenthal, and a couple of newspaper and corporate histories, which have their place.

Yay! While SWMBO wasn't looking the church fete yielded two books I'm delighted to offer a home to.

The ABC of Wine Cookery is exactly the only Peter Pauper Press offering I've ever seen except for Aged Mother's copies of the Alice books. The production of this one is a close match for those, and none the worse for that. The book is dated 1957; although I was already in primary school then the recipes are old enough to be starting to develop an interesting patina of, if not unfashionability, then at least quaintness. Thank goodness they're American and so not tainted by the hangover of austerity, blandness and unadventurousness that British cooking suffered from for a long time after the end of WW2 rationing. If we move to Oudtshoorn as planned, I look forward to cooking often from this one: the nearest wine estate is only about 15 minutes' drive from the town, and within an hour there are about a dozen.

Black Powder War. I found the first of the Temeraire series in the library, enjoyed it but have (until today) failed to find any others. "The stars foretell" some enjoyable bedside reading in my future!

>119 hfglen:
Congratulations on the finds. Enjoy.

>119 hfglen: I hope you enjoy Black Powder War, I've read the first two but haven't gotten to that one yet, I've seen some mixed reviews for the rest of the books in that series, but I keep thinking I should get back to it.

Just been watching Only Connect season 19 episode 8. The question was the link between Animal Planet, Cote d'Or chocolates, Chang beer and the U.S. Republican Party. pgmcc, of course, would get the right answer in about half a nanosecond. For the rest of us, #thereisalwaysanelephant.

Edit: spelling

>122 hfglen: I'm not familiar with the chocolate and elephant connection.

>123 Karlstar: The corporate logo for Cote d'Or chocolates is an elephant. But I agree that its inclusion might be a challenging element of the clue. I got it only because of the Republican Party and Animal Planet.

I see my work here is done.

There is always an elephant...even when you cannot see it.

>124 jillmwo: For me the guessing element was the beer, which I've never seen and had never heard of. The chocolates are to be found here, but at a painful price.

Pete will perhaps enjoy a headline on today's BBC Africa news:

Kenya bus crash kills elephant, passengers injured

Though I have to feel sorry for the elephant.

>127 hfglen:
I do feel sorry for the elephant.

Was the elephant driving?

>128 pgmcc: I didn't read the body (sorry -- not very -- about that), but I'd imagine it was crossing the road.

For comparison with Clam's North Fork article, here's one from the other end of the world:



Knysna Harbour, September 2017.

Gorgeous. I wonder if most places colonized by the Brits look similar. It's flat on my side of the Fork, but 2 miles North of me there are cliffs like that. (But not as many docks because it gets a lot rougher up there in a storm.)

>130 hfglen: beautiful!

Further to haydninvienna's latest NASA image:



This is a rather unusual representative of the Cape Proteas, Mimetes fimbriifolius or Tree Pagoda. Like many plants of the Cape Floral Kingdom, it has a very limited natural range -- in this case, only the southern Cape Peninsula, at Silvermine and Cape Point in the Table Mountain National Park.

Pretty!

... and a fairly natural piece of the Little Karoo



This is the Fossil Ridge tented camp, which only sleeps 4, in the GamkaBerg Nature Reserve between Calitzdorp and Oudtshoorn.

Chief money-spinners of the area are tourists (the Cango Caves are spectacular, more so since they removed the garish coloured lights of my teens), ostriches (feathers before 1914, meat and leather now) and wine (mostly sweet and fortified).

>133 hfglen: That's quite the specimen!

I love the plant and the tented camp is in a lovely setting.

>133 hfglen: That's beautiful!

>133 hfglen: What a lovely plant. How large is it?

>139 clamairy: The trees (or large shrubs) are about twice-man-high (4m); the flower heads are about 3 inches long.

Inspired by recent discussion in Karlstar's thread, I found a copy of The Forgotten Beasts of Eld at Internet Archive, and read it with enjoyment. For an early work this is (as was said) remarkably polished and complete. It is a great pity that the Durban library system apparently has only one of Ms McKillip's works accessible.

>141 hfglen: Glad you enjoyed it.

>141 hfglen: Ah! *thumbs up* to you. Although I did then have to stop and think about the Internet Archive and their provision of access to it. Regardless, I'm glad you enjoyed it. I have a very real attachment to it.

Happy Thanksgiving to USAnian Dragoneers!

>144 hfglen: Thank you! Hope your day was good.

Have just watched an episode of the Channel 4 documentary series Great Canal Journeys with Timothy West and Prunella Scales, this one on the Oxford Canal. What made it special was a cameo piece involving Philip Pullman, an insert about Kenneth Grahame of Wind in the Willows fame, and tea with the widow of L.T.C. Rolt, author of many railway and canal books.

>146 hfglen:
That is a good series. I have only watched parts of the programmes but I have enjoyed them.

I have Rolt's collection, Sleep No More: Railway, Canal and Other Stories of the Supernatural.

>147 pgmcc: A propos that series, are there canals in Ireland, too?

>148 hfglen:
A few. The Royal Canal passes through North Dublin while The Grand Canal is in South Dublin.

These canals head west. There are other canals and waterways to the west. I am no expert on their routes. I understand there are a number of canals that link the Erne and Shannon lakes and rivers to enable navigation between the two waterways.

Reread of Wankie by Ted Davison. If you thought it meant that, shame on you!

Ted Davison was the first warden of what is now called Hwange National Park in Zimbabwe, from its proclamation in 1928 to about 1965. So the obvious comparison is South African Eden, on the Kruger National Park. The first time I read this one, I loved it, but at that stage I hadn't read the Stevenson-Hamilton. This time round, the Rhodesian one suffered from the comparison.

The book is largely composed of stories about individual events that took place while on patrol, larded with observations on the behaviour of the animals that live there. But there is almost nothing about the development of the reserve, or how they started to attract tourists, or how the Park management interacted with the powers that be.

And the last picture of the year.



This is Lion's Head, overlooking Cape Town -- the hill on the right of Table Mountain as you come in from the north. On Tuesday the suburb of Bo-Kaap, just off to the right of the picture will explode with uncountable gaily dressed serenaders making their way to the city centre, loudly, tunefully and traditionally.

>151 hfglen: The Lion's Head is a good metaphor for the old year leaving and slouching away to the horizon.

May the New Year bring delightful surprises, much comfort and making of joyful memories. And prosperity. We could all use a little prosperity.

Lion’s Head looks very much like a mountain we saw in Iceland this past summer.

Happy New Year!

>151 hfglen: Not seeing anything in the shape of that outcropping that would suggest a lion's head, but maybe one has to see it in real life? At any rate, the best of the New Year to you!

>151 hfglen: Thanks for the picture. Happy New Year!

Happy new year, to you and Rene and Melissa and all the fur people.

Happy New Year.
Great picture.

>154 jillmwo: That's because you're seeing less than half of the picture. The ridge extends to Signal Hill, aka Lion's Rump. From the sea or somewhere like Bloubergstrand, you see a recumbent lion with his head up.