Street names

Street names can be fascinating. I grew up in Tatnam Road (Poole), and lived at various times in Gravits Lane (Bognor Regis) and Windwhistle Way (Alderbury, near Salisbury). However, although it might seem that I am fated to live in streets with strange names, I ruined it all by spending the past 30 years in New Street (Barlestone, Leics) which is about as un-strange a name as could be imagined!

There are certainly some very odd addresses that one can have. I don’t think I would like to live in Barbers Piles (Poole) or Slaughterhouse Lane (Milford Haven). On the other hand, London’s Shoot-Up Hill sounds OK, and there’s Sheffield’s Letsbe Avenue which sounds like a good address for a police station!

One very odd street name is “Of Alley”, which is close to London’s Charing Cross Station at the west end of the Strand. To be accurate, what you can see is a small nameplate on a wall that reads “York Place formerly Of Alley”. The name is a mystery until you know the full story.

The streets in this area were developed in the 1670s by the second Duke of Buckingham, whose father had acquired York House and its estate in 1624. The second duke named the streets after his full name and title: George Villiers, Duke of Buckingham. Villiers Street and Buckingham Street are still there (the photo is of Buckingham Street). George Street is now York Buildings and Duke Street is now John Adam Street (part of). That leaves “of” from the name. It’s a short word so it only deserves a short alley, which is what it got.

I once had a friend who collected strange street names and had a whole book of them. There are certainly a lot of them about – and I suspect that it is not just the United Kingdom where they can be found.

Just for good measure, I came across the perfect address for me in Alabama – John Welford Road, a dirt track near the border with Mississippi!

© John Welford

Wind turbines

Do you love ‘em or hate ‘em? Wind turbines, that is.

The two pictured here are within a reasonable distance of our home in Leicestershire. They are “private” turbines in that they have been erected by a local farmer in a bid to generate electricity for his own purposes and sell any excess to the National Grid. They are also, as you can see, two-bladed turbines and not the massive three-bladed ones that are seen more often in the UK countryside.

People seem to get very worked up about having wind turbines in their area, calling them eyesores that ruin the landscape.

Personally, I do not share that response. I look upon turbines as being majestic edifices that add to the scene rather than detract from it. I would far rather have a cluster of turbines on top of a hill than a nuclear power station any day!

I am also mindful of the fact that turbines are generating much-needed clean energy and avoiding the need to dig yet more coal and other fossil fuels out of the ground and release masses of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere when it is burned. 

The largest turbines, such as those found in huge wind farms out at sea, provide enough energy from a single complete turn to power an average family home for a day.

They have been blamed for being a danger to birds, and there is some truth in this. However, work has been done to minimise the problem – one ingenious solution has been to paint one complete sail black, and this has been shown to have a noticeable effect in reducing the casualty rate. 

This area of Leicestershire was once thick with coalmines with their winding gear and slagheaps adorning the view in all directions. From a purely scenic perspective, I’ll take the wind turbines in preference any day!

© John Welford

The Zafimaniry people of Madagascar

The Zafimaniry people live in around 100 villages scattered throughout the forested highlands of south-east Madagascar. They are agriculturalists who are also known for their fine woodwork and intricate carving.

There are probably fewer than 20,000 Zafimaniry alive today, speaking their own language and Malagasy. They hold animist, spirit-based beliefs.

Zafimaniry houses are built from wood, bamboo and vegetable fibres. When a young couple set up home together they build a simple house that is in keeping with the newness of their relationship, but over time they will add extensions to the house until it becomes a solid, permanent building. This is partly to accommodate a growing family but is also symbolic of their strengthening relationship.

© John Welford

The day when things went wrong, then right

I have never been a great believer in Karma or Providence or Guardian Angels. But I do remember a day when a potentially very awkward situation turned out OK due to a string of fortunate coincidences.

Things Fall Apart

The three of us – my wife Sue, 4-year-old son David, and me – had been visiting my mother at Poole for a weekend and we set off in mid-afternoon on the Sunday to drive home to Leicestershire. We had not had the car very long, having bought it second-hand a few weeks before – this was its first journey of any great distance since we had had it.

Shortly after starting off from Poole I thought that the exhaust sounded a bit noisier than it should have done and I made a mental note to get it checked when we got home. The noise got worse the further we went.

As we drove through Newbury (this was before the by-pass was built) there was a terrible clonking noise followed that of something scraping along the road. Part of the exhaust had decided to part company with the rest of the car.

Coincidence 1

This was that were on a journey of more than 100 miles, mostly on fast roads in open countryside, and the disaster befell us when we were going slowly through a town as we approached a roundabout.

Coincidence 2

We stopped – it seemed the best idea! – and asked a passer-by if there was anywhere that might be open on a Sunday afternoon that could help us to sort out the car. This person happened to know that there was a Kwik-Fit establishment just down the road to the right from the roundabout we were approaching. For the uninitiated, Kwik-Fit specialise in fitting and repairing exhaust systems.

We therefore gently limped round the roundabout and set off towards Kwik-Fit, hoping that they were still open at this time on a Sunday afternoon. Then things got even worse as the unsupported part of the exhaust fell down and dug into the road surface, acting as a very effective brake. We were now completely stuck and unable to move either forwards or backwards.

Coincidence 3

This was not only that we were now on a side road as opposed to the main route through Newbury, but that just at the point where we ground to a halt there was a house where some guys were doing a big restoration job. One of them noticed our plight and just happened to have a pair of heavy-duty bolt-cutters in his hand. He was soon able to cut the brackets that held the offending part of the exhaust in place, so we could carry on to Kwik-Fit.

Coincidence 4

Kwik-Fit was still open and would be for another hour!

However, the story now took another step backwards because they did not have the part we needed in stock. It would have to come from another depot. Normally this would have meant waiting until the following day, but the guy on the desk noticed that we had a young child on board and got on the phone to persuade a colleague to bring the part straight away. Another colleague agreed to wait until the part arrived and stay on after his normal finishing time in order to fit it.

This meant that we would have to wait for up to an hour, and possibly longer, before we could get on our way. So what could we do to keep a wide-awake 4-year-old happy during that time?

Coincidence 5

Just over the road from Kwik-Fit was a children’s indoor play centre (slides, ball-pools and the like). It would not normally have been open at this time but today it was playing host to a private party. The party organiser was perfectly happy to let one more kid join in the fun, so that was what happened. When it was time to leave, not surprisingly he didn’t want to!

More than coincidence?

Needless to say, we were extremely grateful to everyone who helped us out on what could have been a very awkward occasion indeed. It just goes to show that, by lending a helping hand and going out of your way, you can form part of a chain of fortunate happenings for somebody who has a problem. 

No – I’m not going any further than saying that everything just fell into place on that day. I know that some people might have seen the hand of Providence at play, but I think that’s just silly. There have been plenty of other times in my life when the right thing has not happened at the right time!

© John Welford

California's supervolcano

It is well known that a massive potential supervolcano lurks beneath Yellowstone Park in Wyoming, but it is less generally appreciated that another huge pocket of magma sits under the Long Valley caldera in eastern California. 

The caldera is 32 kilometres across, one kilometre deep, and is the site of a supervolcano eruption that happened 760,000 years ago, with smaller eruptions occurring up to 100,000 years ago. The site has been dormant since then, but geologists have noted that, since the 1970s, the central dome in the caldera has been rising, albeit slowly. So is the monster waking up? 

The chances of a massive eruption any time soon are extremely remote. That is because work has been done to estimate both the size of the magma chamber beneath the caldera, and the nature of the magma that it contains. 

It is estimated that the chamber contains up to 1000 cubic kilometres of magma, but the good news is that only a relatively small percentage of it is molten enough to pose any sort of danger. The general consensus is that magma that is less than 50% molten will not erupt, and the figure for the Long Valley caldera is 27%. A supervolcano eruption, which would cause devastation over a vast area and lead to the deaths of millions of people, is therefore highly unlikely, but a smaller volcanic eruption at some time cannot be ruled out entirely. 

However, there is also the possibility that the Long Valley magma chamber is actually moving in the opposite direction, as an example of a supervolcano that is dying as the magma cools down. Eventually it will all crystallize into a granite batholith and may one day – millions of years into the future – emerge into the open as the overlying rock is eroded away.
The real problem for the wider region is the Yellowstone supervolcano. Not only is its magma chamber ten times larger than that underneath Long Valley, but the magma does not appear to be cooling down. However, it could be thousands of years before anything really dramatic happens.

© John Welford

Why we get the governments we deserve

Politicians in a democracy are always keen to get your vote, and they seem to have very few scruples about how they achieve this. Most of them do not actually go around handing out money in return for votes (although this is not unknown), but they are always very keen to be seen to be in agreement  with the general mood of the electorate.

However, this often leads them into a different form of dishonesty.

Recent polling in the United Kingdom has produced some interesting insights into what the electorate believes to be the state of affairs in several key areas. For example, when asked what proportion of the UK population is Muslim, the consensus view is that it is 24%. When asked what proportion are immigrants, the answer is 31%. Out of every £100 of public funds spent on welfare, the electorate believes that £24 is claimed fraudulently.

However, these figures are way off course in terms of what is actually the case. The UK Muslim population is 5% of the total, 13% of people in this country are relatively recent immigrants, and only £0.70 out of every £100 spent on welfare goes to fraudulent claimers. The situation in these, and many other areas, is nothing like as dire as people like to imagine – this is, of course, assuming that it is a bad thing that a high proportion of the population are Muslims, which is a highly contentious point in itself but many non-Muslims are deeply worried about this.

So what does the average politician do if he or she wants to garner as many votes as possible? It is hardly in their interest to start telling people that they are wrong in terms of their assessment of the state of the nation – that is not a vote-winning strategy! Instead they will go along with people’s biased views even when they know how off-beam they are.

Thus our political leaders act in a highly dishonest way and make speeches that agree with the prejudices of the electorate. The false facts thus gain a new sort of truth – if everyone believes the exaggerated figures, and governments take actions that are based on them, they have suddenly turned into reality. Forget the real facts – prejudice wins votes! The Nazis in Germany came to power using just this sort of twisted thinking – if everyone believed that the Jews were the enemies of the German people then it had to be true. Unfortunately, the same is happening with today’s “enemies”, be they Muslims, immigrants or benefit scroungers. 

When a majority of people believe something to be true, whether it is or not, democracy tends to make it so.

© John Welford

Left-handed? That doesn't mean an earlier grave!

Being left-handed, I had rather got used to the idea that I was fated to die nine years earlier than if I had been right-handed. This is a statistic that has being going the rounds for so long that it has become something of a “given” – you’re left-handed, you won’t live as long, get over it.

The reasons why this is the case have not always been made clear, but I gathered that it had something to do with our general clumsiness as left-handers, plus the fact that, in a right-handed world, we are statistically more likely to suffer fatal accidents when we try to use right-handed things in a left-handed way. At least, I think it was something along those lines.

However, those fears are now all in the past because it has been revealed that the “nine years less life” statistic is a load of tosh! There is absolutely nothing to worry about if you are left-handed because somebody simply misread the stats and came up with a bogus bit of modern folklore.

Our “saviour”, if that is the right word, is Professor Chris McManus of University College, London, who is the author of “Right Hand, Left Hand”, in which he debunks the “nine years” myth.

The problem arose because the original research (by Diane Halpern and Stanley Coren) did not take all the relevant factors into consideration. In the late 1980s they looked at 2,000 people who had died recently in southern California and then asked their relatives whether those people had been left- or right-handed. 

What they neglected to take on board was that, 70 or 80 years previously when many of those people would have been born, there was considerable pressure on children who were naturally left-handed to become right-handed, especially for handwriting. Their younger relatives would not have known that they were really left-handed. However, as the century progressed there was much less pressure to switch and more left-handers behaved in left-handed ways.

What this means statistically is that, given that some people die at younger ages than others, there would be a higher proportion of left-handers as against right-handers in the “died young” group, but not so in the “died old” group, although the actual numbers of natural left-handers may well have remained proportionately the same across the whole timeframe. 

The researchers calculated that the average difference in age of death as between left- and right-handers was nine years. This is a huge difference, and one that should have alerted them to look again at the figures and ask themselves if there could be a statistical reason for this. However, they did not, and the myth was born.

I shall therefore go on being happily left-handed and, if I die nine years before I’m supposed to, at least I’ll know that my caggy-handedness is not the reason why!

© John Welford

The Samurai way of life

The samurai were, during a long period of Japanese history, from 1185 to 1867, the elite military class to whom all others gave way, with even emperors at times being subservient to the shoguns who, as commanders of the samurai, held the real power in the land.

A samurai warrior would be recognizable from his dress, his weaponry, and his demeanor. When not armoured for battle, he wore a kimono and flowing, skirt-like trousers. His head was shaved on top, with his side and back hair gathered into a topknot. He was permitted to carry two swords at all times, one long and one short, carried at the waist. He was proud and haughty, and demanded to be shown respect by everyone else. He had the right to kill, on the spot, anyone who showed him disrespect, although this was not something that happened very often.

The samurai were warlords and chieftains, and the soldiers who fought for them. They were entitled to an annual gift of rice, but otherwise had to work the land when there was no fighting to be done. Their wives had an important role to play, especially during times of war, as they would have to run the household and even defend it against attack when the warrior husband was away. Many samurai women were trained warriors themselves, particularly in use of the naginata lance and the bow and arrow. Some samurai couples fought alongside each other in battle.

The samurai class, although elite, was also extremely numerous. At the end of the samurai era it was estimated that between 7% and 10% of the entire population of Japan were samurai, with more than a million (out of a population of 25 million) counting themselves as “high samurai”, who were allowed to ride a horse, with another half-million being “low samurai” who could carry two swords but were not allowed horses.

The samurai lived according a strict ethical warrior code known as “bushido”, as “bushi” is another name for Samurai. At the heart of bushido was complete loyalty towards the “daimyo” or lord, who may or may not have been the emperor, depending on the period of history in question. This loyalty meant that personal motivations had to take second place, with desire for material possessions being discouraged. Honor and pride were of supreme importance, as was obedience to the call to fight, whatever the odds.

The seven traditional virtues of bushido were: rectitude, courage, benevolence, respect, honesty, honour and glory, and loyalty. Others that have been included at various times are filial piety, wisdom, and care for the elderly.

Under the direction of bushido, during battle a samurai would seek out an opponent of similar rank and fight him with his long sword. On killing his enemy, the latter’s head would be severed and taken away as a token and proof of victory, with the heads of particularly high-ranking opponents being paraded in triumph on the warriors’ return.

Capture in battle was the supreme disgrace and, to meet this contingency, bushido prescribed a form of ritual suicide called “seppuku”. This involved use of the short sword to stab oneself in the abdomen (“hara-kiri”), with an assistant then decapitating the samurai from behind. Seppuku was also prescribed as self-punishment for other actions, such as acting dishonorably.

Bushido is believed to have its roots in Zen Buddhism and Shinto, the two main religions of Japan, as is evident from its emphasis on subservience and loyalty, and the ethical principles that it contains. However, it is also a warrior code, and it includes such principles as admiration of the sword and the need to perfect all the martial arts. The warrior must be morally pure as well as an efficient killing machine. By looking after his body and not indulging in excesses of any kind, he will be better able to do his duty.

The samurai warrior was also expected to be educated and to cultivate the arts. Many early samurai were also poets. The samurai warrior was a fearsome enemy but a respecter of women and gentlemanly in conduct.

There is therefore much in common with the Western concept of Chivalry, which was also concerned with the fostering of an elite warrior class that was pure in mind and body, and skilled in the use of words. The medieval concept of “courtly love”, by which the warrior-poet admired his beloved from afar but never touched her physically, could have come straight from the dictates of bushido.

There are even parallels with Islam, which was growing in the Middle East at roughly the same time as the samurai in Japan (from the 8th century CE). Islam means “submission” and it had military as well as religious origins.

Although the samurai were officially disbanded in 1876, the spirit of bushido has continued. The kamikaze (“divine wind”) pilots of World War II, who crashed their bomb-laden planes onto US ships, were latter-day samurai in that they set the honor of their emperor above all else and had no fear of death. It could even be said that the spirit of bushido is alive and well in modern Japan, in the form of the intense loyalty that employees have towards their companies, and the tendency not to argue with the instructions of people in authority. It is even the case that modern Japan has one of the world’s highest suicide rates at more than 30,000 a year, and deaths from seppuku are not unknown.

It is also interesting to note that the concepts of bushido have found favor outside Japan. The US Army’s “seven core values” are either identical to the seven virtues of bushido or have close parallels. The samurai way of life is alive and well, in America as well as Japan.

© John Welford