Which takes priority - the law or morality?

Can a crime ever be justified? Can an illegal act ever be a morally correct one? That is a question that can arise in many circumstances, and here are a few that might be worth pondering.

The gentleman thief

There have been many accounts written about highwaymen of old who behaved with every courtesy towards their victims as they robbed them. Women were not  harmed or abused in any way and the victims were only robbed of money and goods that they were unlikely to miss for long, being extremely wealthy in the first place. This was supposed to be the case with Dick Turpin, although an error by one particular author (the 19^th century novelist William Harrison Ainsworth) confused Turpin with another highwayman from an earlier time.

However, the point was that it was possible to be both a thief and a gentleman – but was the act of theft, however considerately carried out, justifiable in any way from a moral perspective? Most people would probably say No.

Robin Hood

Stories about Robin Hood – which may have a modicum of truth about them, but are almost certainly fictional in most respects – tell of a leader of a gang of outlaws who “robbed the rich to give to the poor”. That is in itself a moral dilemma – is the crime justifiable if the criminal is not the chief beneficiary? Is it more justifiable if the victim can easily afford the loss?

What about if the victim had taken the money from the poor in the first place? That is the theme of many of the Robin Hood stories – the wicked Sherriff of Nottingham taxing poor people to the hilt on the orders of even more wicked Prince John, then Robin Hood waylaying the bullion carts and returning the cash to the peasants. Where does the moral judgment fall under these circumstances?

(An added factor in this story, which is rarely discussed, is that the reason for the heavy taxation was the need to raise money to pay the "king's ransom" - John's brother, King Richard, could only be freed from his captivity in Austria if a huge sum of money was paid, and that was where the bullion raided by Robin Hood and his companions was destined to go. The irony is that the outlaws claimed to be fighting on behalf of King Richard, whose release they were unwittingly causing to be delayed!)

The same dilemma presents itself in the TV comedy drama Hustle – a team of con-artists devise complicated scams to deprive rich people of their cash, but only when those people have obtained their wealth by dubious means in the first place. The hustlers always make sure that people who have been swindled by their “marks” are paid back every penny they have lost, although we must also assume that this is how our heroes make their living, so their motives are mixed.

Is it immoral to right a wrong if you have to break the law in order to do so?

Grenfell Tower

On 14^th June 2017 a 24-storey residential tower block in North Kensington, London, was gutted by fire. 80 people were killed and more than 250 people were made homeless. The block was occupied by people at the lower end of the social scale, but the block was managed by an agency of the wealthiest borough in the whole of the United Kingdom, namely Kensington and Chelsea.

Within the borough there are many examples of properties, some worth millions of pounds, that are owned by extremely wealthy people – many of them based abroad – who treat their property portfolio purely as an investment. They do not live in their Kensington apartments, neither do they rent them out.

In other words, many families who lived in Grenfell Tower had to be accommodated in single hotel rooms on a bed-and-breakfast basis while – only a mile or so away – any number of perfectly serviceable flats lay completely empty.

Some people have suggested that these empty flats should have been requisitioned and handed over to former residents of Grenfell Tower. That would be illegal, because it would violate the ownership rights of the Russian oligarchs and others whose names are on the title deeds, but would it be the right thing to do from a moral perspective?

On the face of it, requisitioning these properties would sound like the obvious thing to do. Here you have people who have lost everything they have, through absolutely no fault of their own, being forced into grossly inadequate accommodation. They could be rehoused on a temporary basis very easily if the council was prepared to break the law. I find it hard to see that there is any moral dilemma here at all – taking over the oligarchs’ flats sounds like a no-brainer of an idea – but it simply didn’t happen, because the wealthy councilors of Kensington, whose penny-pinching policies contributed to the fire disaster in the first place, were scared stiff of being sued by the even wealthier chums of Vladimir Putin, whose purchases of London properties are often a thinly-veiled way of laundering the proceeds of their own crimes.

What chance does morality have when it is countered by big money? Very little!

What do you think? Is there not a good case for acting contrary to the law of the land when to do so would be morally correct? Or is it better to always play safe and stick to the rules?

© John Welford

What is a night watchman in cricket?

A night watchman is a lower-order batsman who comes to the crease instead of a higher-order batsman should a wicket fall close to the end of a day’s play during a three, four or five day cricket match.

It is common practice for a batting side to bat in approximate order of quality in terms of the players’ ability to score runs. The opening batsmen tend to be specialists who are good at fending off the bowling side’s opening fast bowlers, while the batsmen at positions three to six are expected to score the bulk of the runs. At the end of the list come the side’s bowlers who are not in the team because of their batting skills and are not expected to make large individual scores. Night watchmen tend to come from their ranks.

However, despite their relatively greater skill as run scorers, the fact remains that every specialist batsman is vulnerable at the start of his innings. A new batsman, once he has arrived at the crease and taken his guard, has to adjust to a number of factors, such as the condition of the light, the state and pace of the pitch, and how the bowlers are performing in terms of their pace and how they are moving or spinning the ball (depending on the type of bowler they are). It pays to be careful before beginning the task of scoring runs, because it is all too easy to be caught unawares before a batsman has got his timing right; the process of getting used to the conditions is called “playing oneself in”. However, should the bowler produce a really good delivery that does something unexpected before the batsman knows what to expect, the result could be disastrous from the batsman’s point of view.

A look at the scorecard for virtually any cricket match will show that it is not uncommon for at least one top batsman to make a low score, having been dismissed during the “playing in” period. In the circumstance mentioned above, when a wicket falls late in the day, a new batsman will have to go through two such periods, one during the last few overs before the close and, should he survive, another at the start of the following day. Given the added risk of dismissal at such times, it would be preferable, from the team’s point of view, for a run scorer to be protected from having to make two starts to his innings.

Hence there is a need for night watchmen. If a lower-order batsman is thought to be capable of protecting his wicket for the last few overs of the day, it is worth promoting him up the order even if he falls cheaply when play resumes the following day. The batsman who would have appeared the previous day can then start his innings at a reasonable hour of the day, only have to play himself in once, and have every chance of making a decent score. The night watchman’s wicket is therefore a sacrifice worth making.

It sometimes happens that the night watchman only has to face a small number of deliveries, or even none at all. This is possible if the other batsman on the field, who is presumably one of the better batsmen in the side, is able to “farm” the bowling by scoring a single run at the end of every over and therefore being the recipient of the bowling at the start of the next one. The night watchman’s job is therefore to back up his playing partner by running up the pitch when required and not getting himself (or the other batsman) run out!

The choice of who acts as night watchman is an important one. His main function is to defend, so he must be able to do that, and not every lower-batsman can do so reliably. However, if there is a player in the team who is almost impossible to get out if they are minded to stay put, then they are quite likely to get the job. A good defender will be very watchful and quick to react if the unexpected happens. He will have a natural awareness of which balls are safe to leave and which must be met with a dead bat. He will not be tempted to make rash strokes at balls that seem to offer scoring opportunities.

However, should he succeed in his role and still be batting when the next day’s play begins, the night watchman’s job is to put up or shut up, or, in other words, either to score some quick runs or get out and make way for the batsman who was being protected on the previous day. The worst thing that a night watchman can do is continue to defend and thus block up an end that could be occupied by someone who is a lot better at making scoring shots. It does sometimes happen that a night watchman makes a decent score, but this is usually when he gets lucky and hits some shots that beat the fielders before making the mistake that costs him his wicket. The more usual outcome is that the player gets bowled or offers a catch soon after he starts batting in a way that does not match his talents.

Sometimes the tactic of using a night watchman goes wrong and the lower-order batsman does not survive until the end of the day’s play. The captain of the batting side then has the problem of deciding who should take his place; should it be the original batsman or a second night watchman? The circumstances of the match will probably decide the issue, but it is a tricky one to make. That said, cricket is a game that is all about balancing risks and opportunities, and it is impossible to get such decisions right every time.

At least the concept of the night watchman gives a cricketing side an extra option when a particular situation presents itself. Whether the taking of that option proves to be wise or otherwise is often decided by the cricketing gods who seem to have a huge influence on this fascinating sport.

© John Welford

Toeing the line: two possible explanations

The instruction to “toe the line” is given when somebody is threatening to “step out of line” and behave in a way that breaks the rules. But where does the phrase originate? There are British and American accounts that offer an explanation, but - as one might expect – the American one can be discounted as complete nonsense!

The American version

According to the US Navy, toeing the line has to do with an old shipboard tradition. This refers to the lines on board a ship’s wooden deck that marked where one plank abutted another. In order to make the cracks between the planks watertight they would be packed with “oakum” (old rope that had been picked apart and the fibres beaten into a solid dense mass) then sealed with tar and pitch. The deck would thus appear to have a number of dead straight dark lines on it.

The custom on board ship was for groups of sailors to parade on deck and assemble in a particular area. The front rank would have their toes just touching one of the dark lines. Also, a naval punishment was for the miscreant to stand motionless for a long period of time with their toes just touching a line – in other words, toeing the line.

The British version

The relates to a strange feature of the House of Commons (the lower of the two Houses of Parliament). The Members sit facing each other, with the government benches to the right of the Speaker’s chair and the Opposition benches to the left. For most of the length of the chamber there is only an open floor that separates the two sides, so a Member of Parliament could – if so inclined – walk across the chamber and physically assault someone with whom he or she disagreed.

In past times, it was not unknown for Members to carry swords with them, so steps were taken to ensure that swordfights could not break out across the floor of the chamber. What Parliament’s managers did was to paint two red lines along the length of the floor, one in front of each front bench. It was reckoned that if you did not cross the line, your sword could not reach a sword wielded by someone who was standing behind the opposite line.

You can think what you like about the logic behind the assumption that somebody who was angry enough to draw their sword in the House of Commons would be restrained by a red line on the floor, but that is what was done.

The authority of the Speaker has always been paramount in the House, so if he called on someone to “toe the line”, thus keeping the whole of the foot behind it, they would do so without question.

Nobody these days carries a sword with them, but the red lines are still there on the floor. (As it happens, the coat hooks in the Members’ cloakroom have an extra loop that is there for the express purpose of allowing Members to hang their swords on them before proceeding to the chamber!) It is still customary for Members to stand behind the line when addressing the House, so it does have a function to perform even now.

So there you have it – I’ll go for the British version of the phrase’s origin every time!

© John Welford

Threatened by your menu?

The English language can be a dangerous weapon when it gets into the wrong hands! This is nowhere more evident than in the world of catering, where restaurant menus that make perfect sense in their native language are translated for the benefit of their English-speaking customers.

Many years ago a work colleague told me that she had been alarmed at being offered “Cheese threatened by ham”. 

I have been on the lookout for similar mistranslations ever since, and here are a few that seem to be in a similar vein (although not seen by me personally):

• Fried chicken babies, fungus cream and grill cattle bowels
• Chicken Gordon blue, pork shops, eggs scrambling
• Buttered saucepans and fried hormones
• Fried milk, children sandwiches, roast cattle and boiled sheep
• Steamed fillet of new zeal and orange roughy
• Chopped cow with a wire through it
• Dreaded veal cutlet with potatoes in dream
• Pork with fresh garbage

Then there was the Chinese takeaway I drove past in Worcestershire that declared that it offered China Meals to Take Away – you could see what they meant, but it just didn’t sound quite right!

© John Welford

The rise and fall of Received Pronunciation

For many years, especially during the late 19^th century and the 20^th century up to about 1980 or so, there was a “right” way and a “wrong” way to speak English. At least, this was what many “educated” people believed, particularly those living in south-east England. The “Received Pronunciation” of English was exported to the Empire via civil servants who had been to the best English schools, and it was reinforced when the BBC began broadcasting to the nation and the Empire, recruiting announcers and others whose voices fitted a standard that became known as “BBC English”.

Received Pronunciation (or RP) is therefore English without an appreciable regional accent and which abides by certain stylistic rules. It is therefore a standardised form of English. But how did it come about?

It was very largely a social phenomenon, in that people who had been educated to a certain level tended to consider themselves superior to those who had not. This generally meant a split along class lines, with the upper and middle classes forming the educated echelon and the working class being the semi-literate underclass whose communication was almost exclusively with others of their own class who spoke in the same way that they did. They also tended not to travel much, so they had no need to adapt their speech to suit the needs of anyone from outside their region.

The Education Act of 1870 threw open many of the great schools of the country, such as Eton, Harrow and Winchester, to the general public, which is why they are still known as “public schools”, although the term is confusing to American readers because it does not equate to “free”. Indeed, it was only the better-off members of the middle class who could afford the fees. However, for those who were able to attend these schools, and the “preparatory” schools that prepared boys (and it was mostly boys, not girls) for the exams that would gain them entry to the senior schools, a cultural clash took place between the sons of the aristocracy and the “nouveau riche” social climbers of the middle class.

Before this change, it was quite normal for upper class people to speak with regional accents. Gladstone and Peel, for example, despite their Eton/Harrow and Oxford University educations, never lost their Northern English accents. However, from about 1890 onwards it became a stigma to have a regional accent, and schoolmasters who had themselves been through the new educational mill passed on their prejudices to their middle class pupils.

The social climbers also appreciated the advantage of copying the manners and accents of those above them in the social hierarchy, and so Received Pronunciation was born. It spread via the Army and the colonial service throughout the Empire and therefore became a symbol of authority for those who used it. You were unlikely to gain advancement, whether British or “native”, if your accent did not match that of those with the power to make or break you in career terms.

When the BBC began broadcasting in 1921, its recruits came from the same educated middle class that had been either to public schools or the new tranche of “grammar schools” that in many ways sought to imitate the public schools. There were strenuous efforts to standardise broadcast speech, including a committee that decided how certain words were to be pronounced on the BBC. The early BBC form of RP sounds to a modern ear to be almost comical, with its “far back” renditions of words and phrases. If you can imagine “rolling stones” pronounced as “railing stains” you will get a good idea!

However, RP has had a much worse press in more recent years. It is now regarded by many as symptomatic of elitism and snobbery, and it is noticeable how few “far back” voices you will hear today, even among people who have no regional accent. A good example is Her Majesty the Queen, of whom many recordings exist of broadcasts made when she was much younger, such as during the 1950s. Half a century later, although she is still clearly an aristocrat in her speech, there are none of the knife-sharp edges to her vowels that typified RP.

The decline of RP has also had much to do with social attitudes towards people from the regions beyond the south-east of England. It is no longer acceptable for talented people to be denied careers in broadcasting just because of the way they speak, thus many newsreaders and reporters heard today have regional accents from throughout the United Kingdom and beyond.

It is no longer the case that “getting on” depends on conforming to a given pattern of behaviour, whether in speech or anything else. Received Pronunciation has, fortunately, become a thing of the past in our more accepting society.

© John Welford

The POSH myth debunked

The word “posh” can be defined as “elegant” or “luxurious” or it can be used to describe someone who is either “upper class” or behaves as though they are. But where does the word come from?

For many years people believed that it was an acronym, with the letters standing for Port Out Starboard Home. This in turn was supposed to derive from the custom of the Peninsular and Oriental Steamship Company (P&O) of issuing tickets to some of their customers that allowed them to have cabins on the port side of the ship (left-hand side in layman’s terms) on the voyage from Britain to India (or beyond) and on the starboard (right-hand side) on the return trip.

The advantage of this would have been that the cabins would be on the shady side of the ship in both directions, and this was preferable during the hottest parts of the voyage beyond the Suez Canal. The company would be able to charge extra for guaranteeing this privilege, so people who could afford “POSH” tickets would therefore be “posh” people!

This is a very neat explanation of how the word came into general use, but there is a fatal flaw with it – it simply isn’t true! The P&O Company have always denied that tickets were issued on this basis and nobody has ever produced a ticket that has POSH printed on it.

This is therefore yet another example of a popular myth that has gained currency because enough people have believed it to be true and have gleefully passed it on to others.

So where did the word come from? Nobody can be absolutely certain, but a possibility is that it derives from 19^th century London street slang for money. The word “posh” occurs in Romany patois, meaning “half”, which was applied to a halfpenny. It may well have gained extra “value” down the years and come to be applied to money in general and not just small sums of it.

Naturally enough, people with lots of money tended to be of a higher social class than those with less of it, so the application of “posh” to the holders of plenty of “posh” is one that is not difficult to imagine.

Maybe well-to-do and aristocratic people sailing off to run the British Empire did ask to have cabins on the shady side of the ship, but if they did that is not what made them “posh”!

© John Welford

The origin of the term Mickey Finn

With any luck, nobody has ever slipped you a “Mickey Finn”. This is what can happen to victims who find that the bar drink they are consuming is having much more effect on them than it should have. Contaminating someone’s drink is a familiar move by unscrupulous people whose motive is robbery or possibly “date rape”.

But where does the name come from? Was there ever a real Mickey Finn? Indeed there was!

Michael Finn, generally known as Mickey, ran the Palm Garden Restaurant and Lone Star Saloon in downtown Chicago around the turn of the 19^th/20^th centuries.

However, Finn was more interested in fleecing his customers for what he could get than he was in merely selling them food and drink. He acted like a latter-day Fagin in that he trained a gang of crooks in the arts of pocket-picking and petty theft, and one of his favourite tricks was to lace a customer’s drink with chloral hydrate (more familiarly known as knock-out drops) and then dump the motionless victim somewhere in the city after relieving them of all their valuables.

Tracing the crimes back to Mickey Finn was not difficult, and his two establishments were shut down in 1903. He must either have had very good lawyers or friends in high places – possibly both – because he did not go to jail. Even more amazingly, a local bar owner gave him a job working behind the bar, and he was happy to sell his supposedly secret recipe to anyone who was willing to pay his price.

Packets of “Mickey Finn” powder were therefore widely circulated and the name stuck. The practice of contaminating drinks is still prevalent and has been used to commit a huge number of crimes down the years, both of robbery and sexual assault.

It is unlikely that Mickey Finn was the first person to use this method, but it is his name that will always be attached to it.

© John Welford

The historic city of Meknes, Morocco

The historic city of Meknes in Morocco was declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 1996.

Meknes is a well-preserved example of a 17^th century capital city in the region of the Maghreb (north-west Africa). It was originally founded as a military settlement in the 11^th century but Moulay Ismail (1672-1727), the founder of the Alawite dynasty, made Meknes his capital city and carried out many reconstructions and additions.

However, the main reason for visiting Meknes is to admire the imperial city that Moulay Ismail built in the Hispano-Moorish style. The extensive area is surrounded by high walls that are pierced by monumental gates. Within the walls are the palace, with its large stables, a military academy, water storage cisterns and vast granaries.

Near the gates can be found a number of “fondouks” or inns that specialised in particular crafts or trades, such as the Fondouk Hanna that dealt solely in henna and the Fondouk Lihoudi where Jeewish craftsmen worked.

The architecture is notable for the harmonious blending of Islamic and European styles.

© John Welford

Sporting terms used more widely in English

Even people who have absolutely no interest in watching or playing sport may use sporting terms in their general everyday speech and writing without realising it. It is also the case that some of these usages cross cultural divides even when the sports in question do not.

Baseball

Baseball is a sport that belongs mainly to the continent of North America. Although it is played elsewhere, it does not occupy anything like as central a place in the cultural realm of, say, the United Kingdom as it does the United States.

When you start a new enterprise, such as in business, you are always pleased to reach “”first base”, and if you succeed at the first attempt you may achieve a “home run”. However, somebody may throw you a “curveball” at some stage.

The term “struck out” is often used to mean a situation in which someone has failed, but this is a bit ambiguous, because the word “strike” means to hit something, and a strike in baseball means precisely the opposite.

Cricket

To a speaker of English in the cricket-playing world, the language is full of “cricketisms”, although only a few of them have become regulars in non-cricketing countries such as the United States.

At the outset, there is the expression “it’s not cricket”, meaning that something is not fair or there is sharp practice going on. This shows the Englishman’s enduring conviction that cricket is a game for gentlemen who would never dream of cheating!

If you cannot solve a problem you may be “stumped”, possibly because the problem was something of a “googly” being delivered on a “sticky wicket”. However, if you do find a solution you may be able to “hit it for six”.

Golf

The words borrowed from golf seem to bear a similar pattern to those from cricket, as you can be “stymied”, “bunkered” or “hit into the long grass” in real life just as often as on the golf course. However, it is always satisfying to score a “hole in one” in any field of life, and to reward yourself with a drink at the “19^th hole”.

Tennis

A tennis racket can be “highly strung”, as can its owner!

It is not often realised that the word “penthouse” comes from tennis, it being the structure with a sloping roof that runs round three sides of the court in “real tennis”, the game that bears more resemblance to modern squash than to lawn tennis.

And I suppose that the phrase “you cannot be serious” would be heard far less frequently had John McEnroe not used it to such great effect when playing at Wimbledon in 1981.

Football

Most of the familiar “sporting” words that are relevant to all codes of football cannot be said to owe their origin to the game, as they derive from ordinary language and have been assimilated into the sport, such as “goal”, “try”, “tackle” and “kick off”. However, some words and phrases do appear to have moved the other way, such as “scrum”, “kicked into touch” and “taken a dive”.

General

The above has only been a cursory glance at a few word and phrase derivations from a small number of sports, although there are also some that apply across a whole range of sporting endeavour. There are “referees” and “umpires” for all sorts of non-sporting activities. We all want to compete on a “level playing field”, from the “starting pistol/gun” to the “chequered flag”.

Thank you for taking a little “time out” to read this piece!

© John Welford

Slavery - down but not yet out

 

William Wilberforce (1759-1833) was successful in his campaign to abolish the slave trade within the British Empire in 1807, and slavery itself in 1833, but, strange to tell, that did not make slavery illegal in Great Britain itself.

Slavery has finally been made illegal

The “Somerset Case” of 1772 effectively ended slavery in Britain in practical terms, because Lord Mansfield ruled in a civil case that a slave could not be bought or sold; in other words slavery was not a condition that could be subject to an enforceable contract. A slave could therefore seek his or her freedom in the courts and their owner would not have a defence in contract law.

However, that did not make the institution of slavery illegal because it had not been so declared by Parliament. That did not happen until 2010, with the Coroners and Justice Act (Section 71) that made it a criminal offence to hold a person in “slavery or servitude”. The punishment for so doing was set at up to 14 years’ imprisonment.

This may sound like a pure technicality, especially as there have long been laws in Great Britain covering such matters as false imprisonment and forced labour, but slave masters have been active in the black economy for many years and the lack of a specific law aimed at them had made it difficult to secure prosecutions. Fortunately, that is no longer the case.

It may be hard to believe, but there are still people around who seek to enslave others in this country. A recent case involved a traveller family who picked up “down and outs” and forced them to work for the family business for food and nothing else. Although the laws against false imprisonment and forced labour would have applied in this case, the specific recognition that this constituted slavery was important because it “called a spade a spade” and enabled the proper punishment to be applied.

Slavery is still a real problem in many places

Unfortunately, slavery is still endemic in many countries in the world. It has been estimated that there are more than 27 million slaves in the world today, which is more than were seized from Africa during the 400 years of the slave trade.

© John Welford

Roquefort: the cheese of kings and popes

Roquefort cheese holds a special place in French cuisine, a status that goes back many centuries.

The story of how it was created dates from more than two thousand years ago. A young shepherd who lived near the limestone caves of Roquefort-sur-Soulzon, near modern Toulouse in south-west France, was having his lunch of bread and sheep’s milk cheese when a pretty young girl passed by in the distance. Distracted, he left his lunch in the cave where he was taking his break and started to follow her, forgetting all about the bread and cheese.

It was several months before he went back to the same cave, but when he did so he found that his cheese now had blue veins running through it. Instead of throwing it away he had a nibble at it and liked what he tasted. Roquefort cheese had been discovered!

Whether the particular story is true or not, it does contain an element of truth in that this is how Roquefort cheese is made. The basic cheese, made from unpasteurized sheep’s milk, has spores of the mould Penicillium roqueforti added to it and it is then left to mature for three months in a cave, where the damp air encourages the mould to develop and produce blue veins.

The resulting cheese is semi-hard and crumbly, with a distinctive tangy taste. There is nothing unique about blue-veined cheeses, but what sets Roquefort apart is the fact that it is made from sheep’s milk and is veined by a specific local mould.

It is known that Roquefort has a very long history, having been mentioned by Pliny the Elder in the 1^st century AD. Charlemagne, the Holy Roman Emperor in the early 9^th century, is known to have been particularly fond of it.

In 1411 King Charles VI decreed that only the citizens of Roquefort had the right to mature the cheese, thus ensuring that no copies could be made elsewhere. This status was confirmed in 1926 when Roquefort cheese was given its “appellation d’origine”, making it the first cheese to be so honoured.

Such is the status of Roquefort cheese that a true French gourmet will only eat it when it is accompanied by a similarly honoured wine, such as Chateauneuf-du-Pape.

The French refer to Roquefort as “the cheese of kings and popes”, but personally, when it comes to blue cheeses I prefer to stick my own local delicacy, namely Stilton!

© John Welford

Ringing the changes: the art of church bell-ringing

There is something very English about the ringing of church bells. Time was when every parish church, whether urban or rural, had a peal of bells in its tower that would be rung to summon the faithful to worship and on special occasions, such as a national celebration.

Unfortunately, many peals have fallen into disuse and the art of bell-ringing is not as widespread as it once was. However, where full peals remain, the business of “ringing the changes” is still maintained, and some belfries practice and perform on a regular basis.

A peal consist anything from three bells to twelve or more, although eight seems to be a regular and convenient number in larger churches. The bells vary in size and weight and are therefore of different pitches. The “tune” that they play is arranged by the order in which the bells are rung, although “tune” is hardly the appropriate word.

The bells hang on a wooden frame so that they are free to swing in a complete circle by means of a rope that is attached to a wheel at the side of the bell and which then goes through a hole in the floor of the belfry to the ringers’ gallery below. The bell has a clapper inside it that strikes the side of the bell when the bell is swung. Each bell rests in the upright position, and the action of pulling on the rope causes the bell to “fall” and resume its position by momentum. A “stay” prevents the bell from continuing to roll over. When the ringer gives another pull on the rope it will roll back in the opposite direction.

The ringers stand in a circle or semi-circle and time their rope-pulling so that each bell rings at precisely the right time in conjunction with the others. The art of bell-ringing is to pull the rope at exactly the right time and with the right force, so that the bell will always complete a full circle. A bell must never be allowed to fall back to the “down” position during a peal. To become an accomplished ringer takes a great deal of practice, dedication and not a little strength!

If a peal consists of three bells, there are six possible orders (or “changes”) in which they can be rung (1-2-3, 1-3-2, 2-1-3, 2-3-1, 3-1-2, 3-2-1). If another bell is added, the number of changes increases to 24, and each additional bell adds to that number in a geometrical progression. For a full peal of 12 bells, the number has increased to nearly 480 million! A change can only be rung in a certain time, because a bell can only swing at one speed, so it is possible to work out how long a particular set of changes will take. If the 12 bells perform all their changes, the ringers will only get a break after 30 years of continuous hard work!

Change ringing normally takes place on smaller peals and with more modest targets. Some of the more familiar change patterns have been given names, such as Grandsire Triple, Bob Major and Oxford Treble Bob, but what is possible depends entirely on the number of bells and the time available. It has been known for more than 20,000 changes to be rung, but to do that takes around twelve hours!

One problem with change ringing is that it is a very public art. A belfry is designed to make a noise, in that the bells are set some 30 feet (or more) above the ground in a space that is designed to broadcast the sound in all directions. Not everyone in a village wants to hear nothing but bells for hours at a time, so opportunities for ringing a long set of changes are limited in the modern world.

Another major problem is that a full peal of bells is expensive to maintain. Apart from the need to retune and occasionally replace a cracked bell, the bells themselves are very heavy. A tenor bell (the largest) can weigh as much as a small car. These lumps of metal swinging about put enormous strain on the frames in which they are held and the fabric of the belfries that contain them, and this has meant that some peals have had to be silenced and others can only be rung infrequently for fear of causing extensive and expensive damage.

That said, the sound of bells ringing out across the English countryside, when it happens, is a particularly evocative one that can be heard in very few other places.

© John Welford

Rejoice! The prime number record has been broken!

What is the highest possible prime number? This is a question to which it is generally held that there is no answer, because it doesn’t matter how large a number you can produce as a prime, there is no guarantee that there is not another one that is even larger. Indeed, the Greek mathematician Euclid predicted that the list of prime numbers is infinitely long.

For the uninitiated, a prime number is one that has no factors other than itself and 1. 2 is a prime number, as are 3 and 5 and 7, but any number that can be divided by any of those numbers – or any other prime number - cannot itself be prime.

Mathematicians down the centuries have discovered larger and larger prime numbers, and have been greatly aided in recent years by the availability of computers that can be programmed to find primes of staggering lengths that a human would never be able to work out for themselves.

The latest (as of January 2018) highest prime runs to (wait for it) 23 million digits. It was discovered by an electrical engineer in Tennessee who ran his computer for six days non-stop to confirm that his number was indeed prime, and his result was then confirmed independently by four other computers.

The number (should you be interested – presumably so that you can quote it at parties) is 2 to the power of 77,232,917 – minus 1. It would of course have to be “minus 1” because otherwise the number would be even and therefore not prime!

The number is a million digits longer than the previous record-holder, and it also has the distinction of being a “Mersenne Prime”. This is a prime number that is one less than a power of two – by which is meant the sequence that begins 4, 8, 16, 32, 64, 128 - these being 2 to the power of 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 and 7. The primes 3, 7, 31 and 127 are therefore Mersenne primes, but to date only 50 have been discovered.

The name comes from Marin Mersenne (1588-1648), a French monk who spent most of his life as a scholar in a number of fields, including mathematics. The research that led to the latest discovery was conducted as part of a project known as the Great Internet Mersenne Prime Search, or GIMPS.

The question that many people will surely be asking – myself included – is Why? Does this piece of knowledge have any practical purpose, or is it simply like the response given by Edmund Hillary when asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, namely “because it’s there”?

In the case of the Tennessee engineer, there was one practical benefit in the shape of a $3000 prize, plus the undoubted bragging rights, but surely that is as far as it goes?

If you feel that this is a quest worthy of pursuit, there is $150,000 on offer for the first person who can find a prime – not necessarily a Mersenne one – that is more than 100 million digits long.

Off you go!

© John Welford

Playing the handshake game

Have you ever played the handshake game?

This is a bit like the “six degrees of separation” notion – that everyone is connected to everyone else in the world because each person is acquainted or connected with a certain number of other people, who in turn have their set of acquaintances, etc, etc, and that by the time you get to the sixth set down the line you have reached just about every human being on the planet.

Well, that’s as maybe, and it must be extremely difficult to prove the point. However, the handshake game is a lot simpler and easier to verify.

The idea is to think of one person with whom you have shaken hands and then make an educated guess as to other people with whom that person will have shaken hands at some time prior to your encounter. You can then say “I shook the hand that shook the hand of …” and the more famous or exalted that person was, the better!

It’s a blatant exercise in one-upmanship and name dropping, but harmless enough!

I offer as my “hand” that of David Owen, who was the UK’s Foreign Secretary from 1977 to 1979, and had been a health minster before then. He was first elected to the House of Commons in 1966, having qualified as a doctor in 1962. As Lord Owen, he is now an active member of the House of Lords.

I met David Owen in September 1977, when he had been Foreign Secretary for about seven months. I was on a short assignment in Moscow at the time, working in the Cultural Section of the British Embassy, and he passed through, shaking lots of hands including mine, when he visited the Embassy during a visit to Moscow to discuss matters with the government of what was then the Soviet Union. As I recall, his handshake was of the limp variety!

The question then arises of whose hands David Owen might have shaken prior to shaking mine? – handshakes that happened afterwards cannot count in this game! He would certainly have shaken the hands of the prime ministers that he served during his time in office, namely Harold Wilson and James Callaghan, and royalty including HM The Queen.

The fascination comes in speculating over which world leaders he might have met, and shaken hands with, during that seven months. Did he meet Leonid Brezhnev while he was in the Soviet Union, or were his contacts limited to officials in the Foreign Affairs Ministry in Moscow? The latter is more likely.

If he did shake hands with world leaders, they could have included US President Jimmy Carter, Israeli Prime Minister Yitshak Rabin or India’s Prime Minister Indira Gandhi. However, there is no way of being sure, and this is – after all – only a game that is not to be taken too seriously!

One might also speculate, given David Owen’s former medical profession and training, that the hand in question might have been in places that it is better not to think about too closely!

I read about the handshake game in the London Times, where an incident was recalled in which three youngish Members of Parliament had wondered about whose hands had shaken those of well-known people that they had met. One put forward a link to Mao Zedong and another was sure that he had shaken a hand that had shaken that of Joseph Stalin. However, the former athlete Sebastian Coe (who was at one time an MP) said that he had once met Jesse Owens, the black athlete who had embarrassed the Nazis at the 1936 Berlin Olympics by winning four gold medals and who was snubbed by Adolf Hitler. A non-handshake with Hitler was reckoned by the other two MPs to win hands down over their own contributions to the game!

(Although, for the sake of accuracy, it should be pointed out that Owens once said that Hitler did shake his hand in a more private environment and that it was his own President – F D Roosevelt – who refused to acknowledge his achievement personally)

© John Welford

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Phosphenes: the stars you see when you see stars

 

Have you ever seen “stars” after knocking your head, or even if you stood up too quickly? Those tiny points of light or other apparently visual sensations are known as “phosphenes”. Scientists are seeking to understand as much as they can about them, not least because such knowledge could help give a form of vision to blind people.

Here are a few facts about phosphenes:

·        A dictionary definition of a phosphene is: “A sensation of seeing light caused by pressure or electrical stimulation of the eye”.

·        The word comes from the Greek for “light” and “to show”. It can therefore be expressed as “light that shines forth”

·        Even people who have been blind from birth can see them

·        Phosphenes are generated by the visual cortex (at the rear of the brain) independently of stimulation from the optic nerve

·        Phosphenes can be experienced by rubbing your closed eyes, but can also be seen with the eyes open in a darkened room

·        Other causes of phosphenes include electrical stimulation, strobe lights, substances such as LSD, and migraine headaches

·        Phosphenes can be generated most readily when electrical pulses are applied at the same rate as brain waves (between 5 and 40 cycles per second)

·        Many different shapes and colors of phosphenes have been recorded, including impressions of spiders webs, bolts of lightning and geometric shapes

·        Visions and hallucinations, as recorded from earliest times, may have phosphenes as likely explanations

·        If phosphenes are regularly seen during eye movements, this can be a symptom of a detached retina

·        Phosphenes may well have influenced the work of artists such as Miro, Dali and Kandinsky

·        Children are able to see phosphenes more readily than adults; this ability tends to decline after adolescence

·        It is believed that phosphenes are experienced by animals other than humans; experiments with primates shows this almost certainly to be the case

·        The first detailed scientific account of phosphenes was published in 1819 by Johannes Purkinje, a physiologist from Bohemia

·        Research into phosphenes is looking at the links between visual stimulation and brain waves; there is a chance that linking a camera to the visual cortex could provide a means of allowing blind people to see

The experience of phosphenes is widespread, can have many causes, and can take many forms. By studying the phenomenon in depth scientists hope to learn more about how the brain works and to apply this knowledge to produce practical benefits.

©John Welford