Donkey mobile libraries in Zimbabwe

In some parts of the world the need for information services in remote rural areas is met by using traditional modes of transport in unusual ways. This is certainly the case in Zimbabwe, where the role of libraries is essential in supporting education in schools and also for initiatives that bring economic and social benefits to people of all ages.

Mobile libraries offer information services in rural areas, but the typical “bookmobile” is limited in terms of the places it can reach if the road network is simply not up to the job. This is true of vast regions of the developing world and not just Zimbabwe.

In Zimbabwe the problem is being addressed by the use of donkey-drawn libraries – simply a cart, pulled by a donkey, that offers books and other information resources and which can go just about anywhere.

The initiative is just one element of the work of the Rural Libraries and Resources Development Programme (RLRDP), which is a community based not-for-profit non-governmental organization formed in 1990 with the objective of establishing and developing community libraries and information services to empower the rural population.

According to Obadiah T. Moyo, the Secretary General of RLRDP, the organization has assisted in the establishment of “300 rural community libraries, 10 donkey-drawn mobile libraries and 130 book delivery bicycles. They provide an extension outreach service in areas where proper roads are not available. About 105 rural libraries have access to computers.”

Donkey-drawn mobile libraries were first conceptualized and developed by RLRDP in the Nkayi district of Zimbabwe in 1995. It is a very important initiative that has attracted world attention, and was recognized and commended by the World Summit on the Information Society (2003 and 2005), which has made clear that access to information leads to sustainable development.

The RLRDP also promotes community libraries by providing relevant reading materials, sponsoring debates in communities about issues and problems affecting daily life, providing the means and mechanisms for continuing education for everyone in the community, and pooling resources to benefit the wider spectrum of the community through networking activities. All these tasks have proved successful as they reinforce a sense of collective responsibility for the community libraries that have been established.

© John Welford

Does homeopathy really work?

Many people put their faith on homeopathy to cure their ills, but that is all it is – faith. Homeopathic remedies are pseudo-medicines that can have no physical effect on the human body whatsoever.

Does homeopathy really work?

There are really two questions here, one being whether homeopathic medicines and treatments produce clinical benefits for patients, but the other being whether patients feel better after having been treated by such medicines and treatments. This may sound like two ways of saying the same thing, but it is not. I am quite prepared to give a “No” answer to the first question but a “Yes” answer to the second.

What is homeopathy?

If we examine the clinical claims of homeopathy, they do indeed sound extraordinary. Working on the “hair of the dog” principle (that to cure a hangover you need to drink a small quantity of what it was that made you drunk in the first place), homeopathic medicines consist of highly diluted doses of the substance that may have caused your disease.

The principle is known by homeopaths as “like cures like”. In itself, this sounds highly unlikely, but the degree of dilution is so extreme that it becomes very hard to believe that the substance in question can have any effect on the body at all. Indeed, some of the claims of dilution would require a single molecule of a substance to be surrounded by more atoms than exist in the entire Universe!

On the face of it, this sounds to be nothing short of absurd. How could a treatment prepared on this basis (if it were indeed possible to create such a medicine, which is clearly not the case) have any effect at all? But that is not the whole story. What turns a dilution into a homeopathic remedy is another principle of homeopathy, namely that “water remembers”. The fact that the water you ingest has been in contact with the active substance is what gives rise to the cure. This is an enormous claim, especially when you consider that water gets around a lot, and the water that comprises my cup of coffee has been drunk and excreted countless times before, and been in contact with any number of substances, both benign and not. Just which of those millions of memories is supposed to effect my cure?

It gets even more ridiculous than that!

We must not forget “succussion” either. A homeopathic medicine only acquires its power if it undergoes a process that involves the vessel containing the remedy being struck ten times against “a hard but elastic object”. This practice goes back to the founder of homeopathy, the 18^th century German doctor Samuel Hahnemann, and is still at the heart of homeopathy today. Without the ten strikes, the remedy does not work.

So, if you ask yourself how homeopathy can work, in purely clinical terms, the answer must surely be that it cannot. Nothing is being done to the body that can possibly have any effect on it whatsoever.

If it works, what is going on?

Countless people claim to have had their illnesses cured by homeopathy, and it would be perverse to claim that they must all be either lying or deceiving themselves. I am quite prepared to accept what they say. However, I do not believe that it is the physical nature of the treatment that is doing the trick as much as the psychological effect of actually being treated.

The psychology of “mind over matter” takes many different forms. Many fascinating studies have been performed over the years into the “placebo effect”, namely how a patient’s condition is improved when they believe that they are being treated with real medicine when it is in fact only a harmless sugar pill (or equivalent) that they are being given. It has also been shown, for example, that when the same pills are packed in plain boxes and in colourful ones with brand names all over them, the latter produce better results.

Proper clinical trials, carried out with all necessary precautions by independent scientific institutes, have shown consistently that homeopathic remedies perform no better than placebos, but that is not the same as saying that they entirely useless, because placebos often work remarkably well in any case.

Don’t discount placebos

Medical practitioners have always known that a patient with a positive attitude towards their condition will often do better than someone who is pessimistic, whatever treatment is offered. Doctors know that the time spent talking with a patient and discussing their illness is frequently more effective than any medicine that is prescribed. They also know that when a patient insists on leaving with a prescription in their hands, it is usually better to give in to their demand, because if someone really believes that a medicine is what they need, then even a box of sugar pills will be better than nothing.

One problem with the health system, at least in the United Kingdom, is that regular medical practitioners cannot give as much time to their patients as they would like, with seven minutes being the average time of a consultation. However, people working in alternative medicine, such as homeopaths, are free to give as much time as they want to discussing a patient’s needs, going into their family background, social circumstances, medical history, and much more besides. All this focused attention on the patient is far more effective, psychologically, than any pill that is prescribed.

Another factor, hinted at above, is the self-belief of the patient. Very often, a patient goes to a homeopath after having been, as they see it, let down by conventional medicine. The homeopath is not seen as the last hope, but as a beacon of hope. The patient wants the treatment to work; they are, after all, paying good money for this consultation, and most people do not throw good money after bad by spending it on causes that are lost from the start. Many first visits to a homeopath come after a recommendation by a friend who reports good results; this again is likely to inspire hope and a positive attitude.

Can homeopathy always be trusted?

Homeopathy does not always work, and I would personally be very reluctant to trust a serious condition to homeopathic treatment. Although “miracle cures” are sometimes reported, it must be remembered that “miracles” do sometimes happen and, by definition, the cause of a miracle cannot be determined with certainty. I am referring here to the statistical evidence of the 1% of terminal cancer patients who are still alive five years after 99% have died; there is no single factor that distinguishes the survivors from the deceased.

We should not be swayed by the claims for potentially miraculous cures due to homeopathy, because there is no way of knowing that it was the homeopathy that did the trick. We must beware of falling into the logical trap of “post hoc ergo propter hoc”, meaning that because A happened after B, then B must be the cause of A.

It is disturbing to read of patients being persuaded by homeopathic practitioners to abandon conventional treatments for such conditions as advanced heart disease and cancer, and dying much sooner than they should have done. Having faith in a treatment can only take you so far, and, in such circumstances, I would prefer on balance to favour science against irrational belief.

That said, and for the reasons advanced above, I do think that homeopathy and other alternative therapies have a role to play, and that they can produce positive outcomes in certain circumstances, but by no means all. The psychological aspects of medicine are of considerable importance, because the human being is not just a machine.

It all seems to be summed up very well by the words of the famous song by Oliver and Young: “It ain’t what you do, it’s the way that you do it; that’s what gets results”.

© John Welford

Severely distressed jeans

Just how distressed do you want your jeans to be?

A zoo in Japan has started producing jeans that not merely distressed but screaming for help!

What they do is wrap pieces of denim around tyres and other toys in the enclosures belonging to animals such as tigers and bears. The pieces are then ripped by the teeth and claws of the animals and removed from the enclosure before being reduced entirely to shreds.

When the pieces are sewn together they comprise jeans that have been individually “styled” by a fierce animal, and this look has proved to be surprisingly sought-after.

It was reported that the zoo had sold a pair of “tiger-destroyed jeans” for $US 1,200 in an Internet auction and were hoping to get similar amounts for the “bear-destroyed” garments that were being assembled at the time.

Would you spend that sort of money on a pair of jeans that gave the impression that you had survived an encounter with a tiger in the jungle? Presumably you would need to make up a good story to tell your friends!

© John Welford

Disliked foods

A survey was conducted a few years ago by Birds Eye (and reported in the London Times) on the foods that British people most dislike to find on their plate. It was based on answers given by 1,000 people, all being adult men and women.

Here is the list, in reverse order, with my personal reactions – with which you may or may not agree!

10^th place

Mushrooms. What? Mushrooms? Unbelievable! 15% said that they would not want to eat them, but that would not have been my reply – I can never get enough, raw or cooked! Maybe the 15% fear the reputation of fungi as being poisonous but, as Terry Pratchett said, all fungi are edible.

(OK – he did go on to say that some of them are not edible more than once!)

9^th place

Salami – 20%. I can’t really comment on salami, because I can’t remember ever having eaten it. However, it is made from meat, and I don’t eat meat, so it’s unlikely that I’ll ever be tempted.

8^th place

(It’s actually 7^th equal) Brussels sprouts – 24%. This is surprising, because they are something that many children dislike but adults acquire a taste for later in life. Perhaps the 24% didn’t bother trying. Anyway, it’s certainly one of my favourite vegetables and one that I would choose in preference to many others.

7^th place

Avocados – 24%. They don’t come my way very often, and I can’t say that they delight me when they do. On the other hand they don’t disgust me either – they don’t taste strongly enough to be either loved or hated, in my opinion.

6^th place

Goats cheese – 27%. I do sometimes choose goats cheese in restaurants because it offers an interesting change from more conventional cheeses. It certainly wouldn’t be on my list of dislikes.

5^th place

Blue cheese – 38%. I can understand why this is on the list, because some blue cheeses are not very pleasant – Danish blue comes to mind. However, my favourite cheese of all time is Stilton, which is always a delight to me. OK – it’s local to where I live in Leicestershire, but then so are Melton Mowbray pork pies and I wouldn’t give them house room!

4^th place

(Or 3^rd equal to be precise) Black pudding – 39%. I wonder how many people dislike it before they know that it is made from pig’s blood and how many do so afterwards? It’s not something I would eat – for the same reason that I wouldn’t eat salami.

3^rd place

Olives – 39%. I can’t agree with these being so high on the list – I absolutely love olives, especially black ones. When choosing a pizza I will always go for one that has olives on it, or I’ll ask for them to be added. A pizza without olives just isn’t a pizza in my opinion!

2^nd place

Chicken liver – 41%. I am really surprised that this is nearly at the top of the list, because I wouldn’t have thought that all that many people would have had the opportunity to eat it. It’s not a dislike for me because I’ve never eaten it and almost certainly never will.

1^st place

Anchovies – 44%. Oh yes – these get my vote every time! I’m very fond of fish (I’m that kind of vegetarian!) but anchovies are just nasty little lumps of salt masquerading as fish, and I’ve always hated the taste of salt.

Some other findings

So what do you do when your dinner party host presents you with a plate containing one or more of the offending foods? Apparently 21% of people will surreptitiously feed pieces to the waiting dog, and 9% of women admitted to slipping unwanted items into their handbag when the host wasn’t looking!

© John Welford

The Dewey Decimal Classification

The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) is virtually universal in the UK public library system, as well as being used in most academic libraries. In the United States it is challenged by the Library of Congress system (LC), but is still very widely used. It is therefore a good idea to know how it works and therefore how best to find one’s way round a library that is classified accordingly.

The principle devised by Melvil Dewey in 1876 was that all knowledge could be divided into ten parts, each of which could also be divided into ten, and so on. An infinite number of subdivisions of knowledge was therefore possible, and so any book in a library could be assigned a classification number that placed it within a subject category. Books on the same subject would be given the same number and so be placed together on the shelves.

Dewey’s original ten classes were as follows:

000 Generalities

100 Philosophy

200 Religion

300 Social Sciences

400 Language

500 Pure Science

600 Applied Science

700 The Arts

800 Literature

900 History

To take one of the above divisions and show its further subdivisions:

300 Social sciences (general)

310 Statistics

320 Politics

330 Economics

340 Law

350 Public Administration

360 Social Services

370 Education

380 Commerce

390 Customs and Etiquette

Each of these has a potential ten further subdivisions, after which a decimal point can be added and another digit placed after it, then as many digits as might be thought necessary to specify the subject in sufficient detail, each extra digit giving the possibility of a division into ten related categories.

One advantage of the Dewey system is that it indicates at the outset whether the document in question is general in nature or highly specific, simply from the length of the number on the label; the longer the string of numbers, the more detailed the contents. All Dewey numbers must contain a minimum of three digits, but if the third digit is a zero you know that it belongs to one of the first hundred divisions, and is therefore general in scope. Likewise, a book with just “700” on the spine would be a very generalised volume on the “The Arts” that could not be given a more specific classification.

There are clearly many disadvantages with the Dewey system, one obvious one being the highly artificial nature of the original division, and the assumption that knowledge can be conveniently sliced into divisions of ten, no more and no less. The problem of the original scheme is clear from the outset. Why, for example, should “Philosophy” be given the same status as “Pure Science”? Why should “Language” be placed so far from “Literature”?

There are plenty of other drawbacks, such as the problem of needing to update the scheme at fairly frequent intervals. There are also a number of other complications, such as the use of “auxiliary tables” to add such things as country subdivisions in a systematic way to a wide range of subjects.

However, from the point of view of the library user, the DDC soon becomes second nature, and finding items on shelves is a fairly straightforward process. The books (or videos, CDs or whatever) are shelved in a single numerical sequence from 000 to 999. In a large library, these may be split between a number of rooms or floors, or even separate libraries. For example, in a university library all the 340s might be housed in a special library devoted to law, possible housed next to the Law Department.

The library user can use a catalogue (these days it will usually be an online or computerised catalogue, whereas formerly it would have been a card catalogue) to look up the author and title of the item they want and note down the Dewey number. They can then go to the shelves and walk along until they find the number and the item they want.

For example, a book on 19^th century British poetry might have the number 821.809 (800 is Literature, 820 is Literature in English, 821 specifies poetry, 821.8 indicates the period, and 821.809 shows the country). The searcher must therefore find each digit in turn, narrowing the search to 800, then going past the 810s but not as far as the 830s, then making sure to limit the search to 821, and so on.

It is quite likely that a large library will have a lot of items with the same number, so the use of the first three letters of the author’s name is common on library labels. For example, the book “A history of English” by Barbara Fennell might have the label 420.9 FEN to make it easy to find among all the other books with the same Dewey number.

Many library users are not looking for a particular book but wish to browse along the shelves and choose something that takes the eye. The Dewey system makes this very easy. If they simply want, for example, to browse for something on “American history” they can just note the number “973” and go to that point on the shelves. They know that anything that starts with those three digits will be on American history, and so will anything that has more digits following on, such as 973.1, 973.2, etc for subdivisions by period of history.

Despite the many problems that the Dewey system presents to modern librarians, it works for most practical purposes. The contrast between the organization of a library and the disorganization of the World Wide Web, for example, is striking. The contrast can be seen most clearly, and to Dewey’s advantage, when a general item is being sought. Web search engines only work when the subject being sought is of a specific nature, such that the more keywords you enter the more likely you are to get something that fits the bill. With generalities they are far less satisfactory. Just try entering “Law” as a search term in Google and see where it gets you! Dewey wins hands down on these occasions!

© John Welford

René Descartes' bad apples analogy

The French philosopher René Descartes (1596-1650) set himself the task of determining how certainty could be established. How could a person be certain that their knowledge was set upon firm foundations? His method was to doubt everything that could be doubted, with the idea that anything that remained, and which could therefore not be doubted, must be certain.

Descartes’ method of doubt

One aspect of this process of doubting was Descartes’s conviction that all his beliefs must be jettisoned at the same time, as opposed to considering each belief in turn as to whether or not it was open to doubt. The process of looking at beliefs one at a time must only be done at the stage of deciding whether or not they could be re-admitted to a person’s belief portfolio because they were undoubted.

The analogy that Descartes used to illustrate his thinking was that of a basket full of apples, some of which might be rotten. It was outlined in his “Replies and Objections” that formed part of the second edition of “Meditations on First Philosophy” (first published in 1642).

As is well known, the rot from one bad apple can easily spread to its neighbours and it is therefore important to get rid of the bad ones in order to preserve the health of the rest. If you suspect that not all the apples are sound, the best move is not to look at each apple in turn but to empty out the whole lot in one go and only return the good ones to the basket. Descartes was of the view that beliefs could be treated just like apples; some of them might be “rotten” and thus capable of infecting other beliefs, but the only way of discovering them was to throw out the whole lot, good and bad, and only replace the sound ones in the “basket” of beliefs that are certain.

Is this really such a good idea?

However, is this analogy a reasonable one? For one thing, does it make sense to compare beliefs, which can be about anything, whether serious or trivial, with apples that are identical to each other? For example, how can “I believe that my cat has fleas” be treated in the same manner as “I believe that God made all the little green apples”, when it comes to doubting their certainty?

Also, what could be meant by one belief “infecting” another? It would seem that Descartes was thinking about beliefs that are dependent on other beliefs; for example “I believe that God will be my judge” is entirely dependent on “I believe that God exists”. If the latter is thrown into doubt, then the former cannot be held to be certain because it would have lost its foundation. As Descartes would see things, these two beliefs cannot therefore be considered separately.

However, the concept of doubting absolutely everything at the same time is one that must lead to difficulties. For example, how can a doubt be expressed if not by using language? But surely, in order to use language, one must believe that the words one uses have particularly meanings. That being so, to doubt everything would imply that one doubts the very mechanism that one uses to do the doubting, which is clearly absurd. It has to be concluded that Descartes’s scheme is open to serious objections.

The bad apple analogy is therefore an example of how important it is to compare like with like when illustrating an argument, in philosophy or anywhere else. Such analogies can often sound compelling when first heard, but if there is too wide a divergence between the item under discussion and the object to which it is being likened, then the argument is likely to fall. In this case, it is unwise to assume that complicated things such as beliefs can be treated in the same way as apples in a basket.

© John Welford

The challenge to de-clutter

Do you follow the old Russian proverb that says “Keep a thing for seven years and it’s bound to come in handy”? Or are you just too lazy to get rid of things that will never be of any use at all? Maybe you need some tips on “de-cluttering”!

Could you limit yourself to 100 things?

That was the aim set for himself in 2007 by Dave Bruno, an American who put forward the “100 Thing Challenge”. He reckoned that he could live a perfectly fulfilled life by only owning 100 personal items, and his challenge was to cut his possessions to that number within a year and not increase it in following years.

Personally I would find that impossible – I own far more than a hundred books to start with, and I certainly don’t propose to get rid of any of them! The prospect of living in a book-less home is not one that fills me with any sort of desire, but I appreciate that some people do manage to exist without books.

I would also be interested to know what you count as a personal item. Dave Bruno did not include household items such as furniture, crockery or cutlery, on the grounds that these belonged to the family as a whole and not to him personally, but he did include the tools in the shed that he had acquired for his own use, even though other family members might use them from time to time.

Also, if you set yourself this challenge you would have to be sensible about what counts as an “item”. For example, your set of paintbrushes that you use for your art hobby would have to count as a single item, otherwise you would very soon exceed your limit if each brush counted against your total.

I think you would have to agree your parameters before you started this exercise, should you be tempted to do so. Even so, it would be a tough assignment for most people.

But why would you want to do this anyway?

The aim is to lead a clutter-free life in which you are not surrounded by things that you simply do not need and never will. Of course, you wouldn’t want to do this if your life is enhanced by collecting things, such as antiques or (in my case) books, but you might still want to de-clutter from items that are not part of your deliberate collection and simply get in the way.

Even without setting a specific target, which is what Dave Bruno did, you can still achieve a great deal by going about the exercise in a systematic way. So what you need is a plan!

A plan for de-cluttering

One way of going about this is to tackle one room at a time and simply clear it of all its contents. This can be done on a fine day when everything can be taken outside the house and the room in question left bare of everything except the basic furniture. There is a psychological reason for doing this, which is that once an item is outside the house you need to make a conscious decision to take it back inside. This is very different from the situation of “leaving things where they are” because you can’t be bothered to face up to the possibility of ditching them!

You can then divide everything you have taken outside into three piles, labelled “keep”, “dump” and “donate” (which might also mean “sell”). The latter two piles will clearly be differentiated by whether you consider the items to be completely useless or potentially useful to somebody other than you. You might also want to split your “keep” pile between items that are going to go back where they came from and those that have been in the wrong place and should be moved to a different room.

You will probably want to adopt a rule of thumb to help you decide what to keep and what to dump or donate/sell. You might consider that, unlike the old Russians mentioned above, non-use for a year is enough to make the difference.

Having made your decisions you should take action to make sure that the discarded items do not come back into the house. They can either go straight to the dump or be put into carefully labelled boxes which are then sealed and stored outside the house until they can go to their final destinations. Only the “keeps” must be given continued house room!

Later action

Although the suggested plan is a “one off”, conducted one room at a time, it is also necessary to change your future habits, in two specific ways.

One is to make regular surveys of your belongings and decide if your “use within a year” rule has been broken. You should also move items that have got into the wrong rooms since your previous de-clutter.

The other thing, once you have adopted a good habit in this respect, is not to let things get back to how they were. You might also want to make a rule to the effect of “one thing in, one thing out” – this will make you think twice before splashing out on some new gizmo or falling victim to an impulse purchase.

Could you do it?

I am merely putting forward these thoughts as a possible scenario should you want to live a less cluttered life, and I have to confess to not having gone down this route myself – yet! As I said above, I do love my books and I therefore love the degree of clutter that they bring. I am also reluctant to discard items that have sentimental value or which bring back memories of happy times in the past and people who are no longer part of my life.

On the other hand, I do tend to hang on to things that really could go, and approaching the problem systematically could be of value. However, I have a feeling that my “keep” pile would be a lot bigger than the other two!

What about you?

© John Welford

The crinoline in women's fashion

Throughout the history of women’s fashion, comfort and convenience have often played second fiddle to appearance, and the crinoline is an excellent example of this phenomenon.

The word comes from the French “crin”, meaning horsehair, and “lin”, which means linen. Crinoline was therefore the stiff fabric that was first used for the purpose of giving a garment “body” and pushing it outwards in a way that emphasised a woman’s curves, especially when combined with a corset that constricted the waist.

However, the word crinoline is generally used to mean the structure, made from whalebone or metal, that formed a framework over which the outer skirts were arranged. Especially during the 19^th century, these fashion aids were taken to excess and caused all sorts of problems for their wearers.

The origins of the crinoline can be seen in the 16^th century farthingale and 18^th century panniers (“baskets”), the latter of which pushed the dress out sideways. This fashion was preferred by the aristocrats of the French “ancient regime” that disappeared with the French Revolution, to be followed by the much simpler (and more comfortable) “Empire line” in France and “Regency line” in England that were typical of the “Jane Austen” years of the early 19^th century.

However, the growing prosperity of the Victorian era meant that more women were freed from the need to earn a living and could spend money on fashion and time on parading in it. As every age rebels against the one that preceded it, the trend towards an exaggerated hourglass figure, as against the “up and down” of the Empire line, was probably inevitable, especially as practicality was no longer essential.

As mentioned above, crinoline was originally the material from which petticoats were made, and the term was soon applied to the petticoats themselves. During the mid-19^th century it was quite common for six or more layers of petticoat to be worn, which were heavy, uncomfortable and impractical, especially in hot weather. Hoops of whalebone or cane were used to strengthen the petticoats.

However, the crinoline really took flight when the metal cage crinoline was patented by an American, W S Thomson. This consisted of a series of circular hoops, increasing in diameter from the waist downwards, which were held together with vertical fabric strips. Women would only need to wear a single petticoat, to hide the outline of the hoops, over which the dress would be worn. The great advantage was increased comfort, especially as women could move their legs with greater freedom in a sort of tent.

One difference with this fashion trend was that it was copied by women in several strata of society, including working women. This therefore led to women in the upper strata, who did not work, being anxious to set themselves above the “hoi polloi” by wearing crinolines that were totally impractical by virtue of their size, supporting  vast dresses that would clearly be beyond the budgets of women lower down the social scale.

When a woman wore a dress that swelled to six or more feet in diameter, problems were bound to arise. Not many doorways were that wide, and getting in and out of carriages was a real problem. Embarrassment was inevitable if a woman was to fall over (quite possible if a strong gust of wind blew inside the “tent”) and it became clear to everyone present that the owner of the crinoline possessed a pair of legs, which was a fact that the Victorians liked to ignore. Even sitting down was a problem if not planned carefully because, if one side of a hoop was sat upon, the opposite side would rise straight upwards, taking the dress with it right over the wearer’s face.

Even with the less extreme crinolines worn by women lower down the social scale, there were risks to be wary of, such as the danger of bumping into furniture and knocking ornaments off tables. This was a particular hazard in Victorian drawing rooms given that generation’s delight in cramming their rooms full of “occasional tables” and “what-nots” on which expensive china objects would be displayed.

A greater danger was posed by open fires. With a dress that was several feet from one’s body, it was quite possible for an edge to come into contact with a hot coal without one being aware of it, with disastrous consequences. Charles Dickens describes an incident of this nature in “Great Expectations” when Miss Havisham meets her end as the result of such an accident.

The impracticalities and dangers of the full crinoline began to be recognised as the century progressed, and the smaller “crinolette” came into use during the 1860s, this being a smaller cage that extended to the ground at the rear. This in turn gave way to the “bustle” that produced a hump at the back of the skirt.

The crinoline, as such, is justly regarded these days with mixed feelings of horror and mockery, but it has not completely died out. A form of the crinoline, albeit made of plastic and thus of relatively light weight, is a common feature of the traditional wedding dress, and the most extravagant of these would not be possible without a considerable amount of unseen engineering. Fortunately for most women, they only get married once and are thus spared the inconveniences suffered by their Victorian ancestors.

© John Welford

The early history of cricket

The possible origin of cricket

How did cricket begin? One thought is that English shepherds with nothing better to do used their crooks (long sticks with a bent-over handle at one end) to hit lumps of wool or stones to see how far they would go. One shepherd would toss a “ball” towards another who held his crook upside down and the latter would give it a bash. The “bowler” or his mates might then try to see if they could catch the wool or stone before it hit the ground.

It’s just a possibility, with no proof one way or the other!

However, there is also evidence that the idea came from children who liked hitting things with sticks, and it was several centuries before adults realised that they could make a proper game out of it.

Cricket first appears in writing in 1598 in a court case relating to schoolboys playing “creckett” (which does not sound a million miles away from “crook it” - see above). In 1611 there was a case in Sussex in which two men were prosecuted for playing the game on a Sunday, so it had clearly progressed from being a children’s pastime by this date.

Cricket matches

By the end of the 17^th century the game had been formalised to the extent that matches were being played for high-stake wagers, and this was to be a familiar feature of cricket in the years to come.

It is known that a proper match was played at Sevenoaks in Kent in 1734. The bats were curved, the wicket consisted of two uprights and a single bail, the bowling was underarm and the “score” was literally that – notches scored on a piece of wood.

Cricket clubs were formed by landed gentry who sometimes took part in matches themselves but who mainly created teams from their estate workers, for whom this was a welcome form of recreation. The team owners would bet huge sums of money on the outcome of matches, and they were not above adopting underhand methods to get the result they wanted. There were frequent disputes about what was allowed on the field (and what was “not cricket”), so the need arose for an agreed rulebook.

The Marylebone Cricket Club

The laws of cricket were first codified and written down in 1744, being amended in 1774. The men who created the laws formed themselves into the Marylebone Cricket Club in 1787, Marylebone being a district of London near Regent’s Park. They started playing in Dorset Square on land that had been acquired by one of their members, Thomas Lord.

When the lease on Dorset Square expired in 1810, Thomas Lord found two other suitable sites for a cricket ground, a little to the north in St John’s Wood, but one of them was requisitioned by the government in 1813 as part of the route of the Regent’s Canal. The other site, however, continued in use and has always been known as Lord’s Cricket Ground and “the home of cricket”.

Somewhat confusingly, Lord’s is today not only the headquarters of Marylebone Cricket Club but also the Middlesex County side. However, the initials MCC refer to the original Marylebone club that is still the guardian of the laws of cricket.

Mention should also be made of a club that was formed in the mid-18th century on the Hampshire downs at Hambledon, north of Portsmouth. This club acquired a reputation for honesty and fair play and it was the custodian of the traditions and reputation of the game prior to the founding of the MCC. Matches are still played on the same pitch today, more than 250 years later.

© John Welford

Comparing American football with soccer

Leaving aside the fact that, to a Brit, soccer and football are one and the same, it still has to be said that there really is no comparison. The two sports have hardly anything in common with each other. Indeed, of the three codes of football played in England, Wales and Scotland, Rugby League comes closest to the American code. What Americans call soccer is miles away!

The first thing to be said is that soccer is a sport that is worth watching, whereas American football is not. If you go to a soccer match you are likely to be entertained to a thrilling spectacle of skill, drama and action, played with little interruption. The benighted souls who think that American football is worth watching will spend half their time waiting for something to happen, and the other half wondering where the ball is. American football is notorious for its interruptions, with a typical game lasting up to an hour longer than the playing time, whereas stoppages in soccer are unlikely to last longer than three or four minutes per half.

The second main difference is that “football”, in the American sense, is a complete misnomer. Contact between foot and ball is extremely rare. Mind you, referring to a “touchdown” is another nonsense. At least in rugby the ball is actually touched down before a score is counted.

However, back to the feet. It is the most natural thing in the world, if a round ball comes in your direction, to kick it. The second most natural thing is to kick it in a particular direction, and to express joy if the ball ends up where you wanted it to go, for you to achieve your goal, if you like. If you play with a friend, they can try to stop the ball hitting the wall or going between the two coats you have dropped on the ground. If more friends turn up, with more coats, you can set up another goal, and those friends can try to kick the ball the other way. Hey, chaps, we’ve just invented footie (sorry, “soccer”).

What I am trying to say is that soccer is a totally natural game that can be played anywhere, any time with the minimum of equipment. Kids play football in the back alleys of Lancashire towns, in the favelas of San Paulo and the townships of Jo’Burg. Indeed, that is where some of the world’s greatest players started out, honing their natural skills with training and hard work.

Surely nobody could claim that there is anything natural about American football. It is a total invention, codified to a virtual standstill as players troop on and off the field with monotonous regularity, “plays” last a matter of seconds, and officials use tapes to check how far the ball has gone.

Another massive difference between the codes is that, although the American version is extremely popular in the States, and to some extent in Canada, nobody else is remotely interested in it. The rest of the World plays soccer.

Every four years the World Cup features teams from literally every land surface on the planet (OK, I forgot about Antarctica, sorry!) and an American national team has appeared on several occasions, although with only limited success.

By playing sports internationally, we learn to appreciate and respect each other. If your national sports are only played within your borders, you cut yourself off from the rest of the world, and lose respect as a result. It is noticeable that the US women’s soccer squad has been much more successful internationally, presumably because women are not diverted into playing American football. There’s surely a lesson to be learned there.

There have been moves to export American sports to the rest of the world, but with only limited success. The rest of us prefer racing drivers to turn in more than one direction, we think cricket is far superior to baseball, and that the American version of football is not a patch on the other codes. We would love you to join us on the playing field, because we want to get to know you better. But this won’t happen if you still insist on playing to different rules!

© John Welford

Common land in England and Wales

There are still surprisingly large areas of land in England and Wales, both in cities and rural areas, that are classed as common land in that certain rights to its use have been laid down as being for the benefit of the people in general and not for the private profit of an individual.

Common Land under the Feudal System

Under the system of land ownership that was given institutional force after the Norman Conquest, lords of the manor owned the land in and around village communities. The best land was cultivated or pastured by “villeins” who lived off what they could grow and raise. They paid a proportion of their produce to the lord as rent. The worst land was not assigned to anyone in particular and, although owned by the lord, was regarded as “common”.

Under a succession of laws, the rights of the people to this land were laid down as falling under six headings:

• Common pasture. Anyone was free to graze their animals here.
• Turbary. The right to extract turf or peat for use as fuel.
• Estovers. The right to take wood for fuel or for mending fences.
• Piscary. The right to take fish from streams or ponds.
• Pannage. The right to allow pigs to graze for acorns and/or beech mast.
• “Common in the soil”. The right to take stones (e.g. for building walls) and coal or other minerals.

The exercise of these rights was governed by the lord’s court, which dealt with any abuses that might occur. 

The common land was therefore preserved and managed for the good of the whole community. Indeed, for some members of the community the common was essential. Those peasants who came below villeins in the pecking order had no land of their own to cultivate and relied entirely on the common for grazing land and the food, such as berries and nuts, that was available in season.

Common Land during the Agricultural Revolution

Developments in agricultural techniques from the 18^th century onwards meant that it became possible to cultivate land that had been regarded as waste in earlier times. Acts of Parliament were passed to enclose increasingly large areas of common land and transfer the rights to it from the villagers to the manorial lords.

This caused considerable distress in many areas, leading to widespread rural depopulation as the people moved away from a countryside that could no longer support them to the growing cities where manufacturing industry made increasing demands for factory workers. For those who depended entirely on the common land this was a disaster, and those who could not move to the cities, for reasons of age or infirmity, either went into workhouses or starved to death.

It looked at one time as though all the common land would disappear, but in the 1860s and 1870s Acts were passed to restrict further enclosures and preserve the remaining commons.

Common Land Today

The Commons Registration Act of 1965 provided for a register of all existing common land and set out the rights and duties attaching to it.

Among the lands covered by the 1965 Act are vast areas in such places as Dartmoor and the New Forest, where ponies and other animals are free to roam and graze as they have done for centuries. The right of pannage (locally known as Mast) is a vital element of the New Forest ecosystem, as it prevents oak saplings growing unchecked and also saves ponies from eating the acorns, which are poisonous to them but not to pigs.

Common land today is often owned by National Parks or local authorities in trust for the public, or by private trusts established under laws that guarantee public access.

Many smaller areas of common land also exist in the form of village greens and other public open spaces. The Commons Act of 2006 made it easier for local people to register village greens as common land.

Stelling Minnis Common

This is an example of an extensive area of common land in a Kent village, the very name of which (the “Minnis” element) derives from the Saxon word for “common pasture”. Registered under a 1925 Act of Parliament, the Common is managed today by a charitable trust that upholds the bylaws governing the Common. Interestingly enough, these bylaws include prohibitions of several traditional common rights, notably pasturing, turbary and piscary. Grazing rights are limited to “commoners” who are permitted to keep only a certain number of animals on the common.

The common, covering 50 hectares (123 acres) to the north of the village, is therefore preserved as a wildlife haven and for the quiet enjoyment of villagers and visitors. It is especially noted for the wild orchids that grow there and the variety of butterflies, other insects, invertebrates, reptiles, birds and mammals it supports.

© John Welford