Aye, Phil, I’ll do just that!

I came across an old professor of mine in the Graun’s Birthday announcements today. Professor William Stewart by name, and I well remember one of the few face-to-face meetings that I had with him.

It was at the start of the summer term in the third year of my four-year degree course in Dundee. I had been called in to explain why I had walked out of a pre-Easter ‘class’ exam without answering any of the questions. The short answer was that I couldn’t, so I told him that, but added (truthfully) that it was because I had spent the entire term training for and playing rugby.

Such is the arrogance of youth that I also told him he shouldn’t berate me for it, but that he should celebrate the fact that someone from his Department was the University’s only first choice player in that year’s Scottish Universities Rugby XV. With an eloquent flourish I then demanded that he judge me on my junior honours exams in the summer and not on a meaningless class exam!

Quietly, he lowered his glasses down the bridge of his nose, tilted his head forward to look over them, smiled malevolently and whispered threateningly in his soft Islay lilt: “Aye, Phil, I’ll do just that!”

That had more effect than any ‘hairdrier’ kind of bollocking could have ever had and my goodness did I work hard to make up for what was effectively a missed term. He has since been dubbed a knight, so “thank you” Sir William Duncan Patterson Stewart DSc, FRS, FRSE (and former Government Chief Scientific Advisor), your understated menace had the desired effect.

Aye, Phil, I'll do just that!
Aye, Phil, I’ll do just that!

Postscript: a former colleague and I once disagreed over a detail on a poster that he had created for our library to highlight the fisheries research work of D’Arcy Wentworth Thompson, a leading scientist of the Victorian school and, like Sir William, a knighted professor. I argued that he should be entitled ‘Professor Sir D’Arcy …” whereas my colleague had labelled him “Sir Professor D’Arcy …”. We asked our Librarian to arbitrate, each confident of inviolability, at which point she quietly put us both in our place by referring to Debrett’s and announcing that he should be referenced by his senior honour only, so, Sir D’Arcy it should be. That’s my kind of pedantry, but clearly not the Graun’s; it announced the birthday of ‘Prof Sir William Stewart’ – see pic, above.

Only in Arbroath …

We travelled to Arbroath today so that ‘Tall Child’ could get his annual fix of the Red Arrows aerobatic display team. Once there we took time out before the main event to top up our caffeine levels and indulge in some homebakes in a local café … but Arbroath, I ask you, marmalade on a fruit scone! Really?

The reason we travelled to Arbroath
The reason we travelled to Arbroath

Quotes that made me laugh #6

I have just re-read ‘Travels with Epicurus” in which the author, a 73-year-old Daniel Klein, travels to the Greek islands in his attempt to find the secret of growing old gracefully. Now, I’m not admitting to any self-interest as I think it may be more fun to grow old disgracefully rather than with grace alone (although if ‘Grace’ was of a like mind then that could be fun!).

Actually, I re-read only the first half because that was all I could cope with – I struggled with the second half on my original reading as it majored on philosophical bollocks and pretension at the expense of observation (and that, book club lovers, is my attempt at literary deconstruction). As an example of his pretension we find:

“Here in the Vlihos taverna, with people seated around me, I pull Heidegger’s ‘Introduction to Metaphysics’ out of my shoulder bag …”

Now, as someone whose knowledge of Heidegger stems entirely from Bruce’s Philosophers Song (“Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar who could think you under the table …“) I’m in no position to tilt at Klein’s philosophical windmills other than to note in passing that ‘deconstruction’ (Jacques Derrida’s school of literary criticism) as attempted above, actually drew on the work of Heidegger among others. See, I too can scribe pretentiously, but maybe I should stick with a Tom Sharpe quote that made me laugh:

“His had been an intellectual decision founded on his conviction that if a little knowledge was a dangerous thing, a lot was lethal.“

Bring back the birch!

A hard bike ride yesterday saw me bail out and return defeated. I’d done about 10 miles of short, sharp hills; the sort where the road just shoots straight upwards without any pretence of contouring and you get no respite as the downhill bits pass by in a flash.

I retreated at that point because, without actually knowing the route, I thought I might get halfway around and then hit the wall, so the better part of valour was discretion and I turned back. I recce’d the full route as I drove home and realised that I’d actually done the hardest part and could probably have managed the remaining 30+ miles, so I’ll be back. Memo to self: recce routes in advance!

Despite failing with the ride it was a joy to pedal through the birch woodlands along the River Gairn – it was only when the woodland gave way to moorland that the climbs took their toll (I really do need to lose a few kilos).

A profusion of lichens explained why the silver bark of the birches looked anything but lustrous even in the sun. In truth their trunks were more like O’Rafferty’s Motor Car (in a good way – forty shades of green) and testament to the air quality of the Cairngorm National Park. It’s consoling to know that you’re breathing clean air when you’re gasping up a hill wishing you had lower gears.

And guess what? The trees don’t just provide a beguiling view. It seems they can give post-ride comfort for your average knackered cyclist in the form of Molton Brown’s Bracing Silver Birch Thermal Muscle Soak! Pricey (£19 from John Lewis for 300g!) but described as:

“A beautiful fragrance that leaves the body feeling clean and refreshed. A dedicated muscle therapy which will instantly enliven and uplift. The fresh, woody aroma of silverbirch, cedarwood, cumin and bergamot will lift the spirits and sooth the muscles”.

Sounds like bollocks to me but it gets five-star reviews all round on the John Lewis website with the following endorsement for bike riders:

“Bought as a gift for a keen cyclist. He found it very relaxing and it has a great fragrance”.

So, setting aside my usual disdain for (i) advertising copywriters, and (ii) male grooming products, consider it added to my Christmas prezzie suggestion list.

.… all of which serves as an excuse to post a pic that I took in the nearby Cambus o’ May birch woodland last autumn. It has a rather ethereal quality I think (and the sharp-eyed may recognise it as the photo from which this blog’s header image was derived).

Woodland
Cambus o’ May woodland, Deeside, Aberdeenshire

I don’t wonder you love boating Mr Allnut

I don’t think I could ever return south to live, but I do miss the English canal network. I can empathise with this quote from an Italian enthusiast in one of the ‘anorak’ magazines that I sometimes buy.

Francesca Morini: “I usually start walking along the canal carrying the weight of my slightly dull existence on my shoulders and end up with a head full of dreams”.

Narrow locks on the south Stratford canal
Narrow locks on the south Stratford canal, taken on a trip to the RSC at Stratford upon Avon, May 2012

For those who don’t know, the title of this post comes from the following exchange between Katharine Hepburn and Humphrey Bogart in The African Queen:

Charlie Allnut: You know what would have happened if we would have come up against one of them rocks?

Rose Sayer: But we didn’t. I must say I’m filled with admiration for your skill, Mr. Allnut. Do you suppose I’ll try practice steering a bit that someday I might try? I can hardly wait… Now that I’ve had a taste of it. I don’t wonder you love boating, Mr. Allnut.

It’s all Bealachs

Sammy Cahn’s lyrics to a well-known Sinatra song let us know that love and marriage go together like a horse and carriage. Well. that’s as may be, but what really goes well together is a ride out on a road bike and decent cafe stop for coffee and cake. Unfortunately, for the modestly overweight recreational cyclist they sometime go together too well, especially if one is planning to lose a few kilos in preparation for an assault on the Bealach na Bà (Pass of the Cattle) in Wester Ross. I’m hoping to ride it later in the summer, but avoiding either of the sportives that include it in their routes.

The statistics are impressive for a hill climb in the UK, a 626 metre ascent over 9.1 kilometres with an average gradient of 7% and a maximum of 20% (did I say lose “a few” kilos; make that many!). The route is about 45 miles in all, so maybe it is best to ‘do’ the hill early on. I’m hoping to get some hill-climbing miles in my legs by training on our own local climb on the Cairn o’ Mount road near Banchory. The Cairn route from the Banchory side is slightly longer than the Bealach na Bà, and some think that it is just as testing, so I will see how it goes and whether I need to invest in a more forgiving set of gear ratios!

The problem with training over the Cairn o’ Mount (apart from the obvious one of it comprising a long, steep hill) is that the downhill return leads you into Banchory and its coffee shops; less than helpful to a chap’s weight loss regimen. One in particular caters well for the cyclist: Tease even has its own Strava group to keep tabs on its members’ biking efforts. I’m not a member or a Strava-naut and although the coffee and cakes are a tad expensive they are rather fine.

I have yet to visit Tease this year, but have something of a confession to make. On a recent visit to the family’s matriarch in Kendal I was determined (and I mean absolutely determined) not to visit nearby Grasmere. I really don’t like the Lake District honey-pot towns of which Grasmere is one, but two things keeps drawing me back (by car, not bike). The first is the ludicrously-named Faeryland tea shack by the waterside, set in an implausibly-beautiful location and, at its best, capable of producing one of the finest cups of tea in old Albion; the second is the opportunity to stock up on gingerbread at Sarah Nelson’s Grasmere Gingerbread shop.

Well, my determination to give it a miss failed and the lure of tea and gingerbread won. On this occasion the tea wasn’t so good, but despite the best of intentions to lose a few kilos I took consolation in a couple of packs of gingerbread and, do you know what, it’s gone already; shared of course with friends and colleagues (well, some of it was)!

Quotes that made me laugh #5

Not a quote, really, but Katherine Ryan retelling the funniest joke she’s ever heard:

Remember when your parents would say, “I’ll give you something to cry about” and you thought they were going to hit you but really, they were destroying the housing market?

And a perceptive description of Boris Johnson from Hadley Freeman in the Guardian:

Johnson is so calculating he has an abacus for a heart.

Quotes that made me laugh #4

In a diatribe seemingly aimed at a former technical director at British Cycling, Marina Hyde writing in the Guardian appears to conflate the concept of the aggregate effects of marginal gains (in sporting performance) with the bullying and harassment of a number of female and disabled cyclists. I think she is wrong to do so because a bully is a bully and that is quite distinct from the marginal gains philosophy. One is not prerequisite to the other.

Despite her apparent confusion on the issue she does come up with a cracking quote (perhaps her ‘confusion’ was a deliberate ploy to enable her to frame the quote nicely):

“The real sadness, in the meantime, is that we have yet to see a long think-piece in which someone quantifies the ‘marginal gains’ of working for an obvious a**ehole”.

Experience from a period early in my career when I was managed by a complete sphincter tells me, in fact, there are no such gains in those circumstances.

Brown Ale brownies or Dog brownies?

It seems that I was wrong to suggest that the winning entrant to our recent ‘Geordie Traybake of the Month’ competition (Newcastle Brown Ale brownies) had been illegally aided by his partner’s suggestion that his oven temperature was too high (275°C instead of 275°F – see posts passim). Seemingly, no such help was given as at that time our victorious baker was highly stressed and, as his partner casually put it: “… not really receptive to any suggestions!” (what a great line; I think we know what it means😄).

After the event the ‘leftover’ winning brownies were clearly coveted by the victor’s partner who returned them to their home only to lose them to the low cunning of their family dog who, apparently, tucked into them clingfilm and all. Her observation that it was an interesting experience as it passed through their pet’s system did, however, make me think. Just imagine if separate portions of dog food and clingfilm could be consumed and gastrically engineered in such a way that, on passing through its innards, the clingfilm enveloped any waste to be pooped out pre-wrapped for disposal in a doggy bin. Classic!

Finally, it should not have been a surprise for their pet to think the brownies were hers and hers alone. The English northeast vernacular for a pint of Newcastle Brown Ale (the essential ingredient in these brownies) is a ‘bottle of dog’. So, really, they were not Newcastle Brown Ale brownies at all, but dog brownies. Clever of the mutt to realise that!