Nightmare on Whitchurch Street

Springs springs springs have been giving me work since November. We usually get spongy patches in Winter in the four ~1 hectare fields between us and the river. If the angle of the sunlight is right, the surface water positively sparkles through the boggy grass. But this is the first year I've heard spring water burbling out of a stone dyke between one field and a lower one. Not much we can do: I'm not about to install mole-drains at vast expense in a possibly vain attempt to keep the water flowing away beneath the surface. Just keep tractors and stock off those fields and wait for a dry Summer.

otoh We've put quite a bit of time and treasure into diverting and damping the energy of flowing water bubbling up in the lane to our home-place. It's a finite problem: there are, or have been, 6-8 predictable places where water forces itself up through the stones and gravel of the lane. Years ago we hired John the Digger to trench through half of these springs when they were dry and bury a couple of lengths of perforated plastic land-drain pipe. The pipe was turned sharp right below the last spring and debouched into the drain which runs beside the lane. 

Up above the house [where I care less about the road surface] there are two small places where the lane surface is positively punky. It makes squidgy sounds under your boot and the subsurface yellow clay leaks up through the stones. Nothing as dramatic as the collapse of a laden catering trolley through the pavement [second para] because running water had scooped out all the sand under the floor. Over the years, I've been dumping apple-to-plum sized stones into the sludge and it's gradually firming up. 

On the night of 21/22 December 2025 the Llangollen Canal at Whitchurch collapsed in dramatic fashion [L] completely draining a section of the canal and beaching 3 or 4 house boats several meters below grade. The canal is super picturesque and its Pontcysyllte and Chirk aqueducts have been declared a World Heritage Site by UNESCO.  It was navvied more than 200 years ago but its original coal and iron transport purpose ended between WWI and WWII. Now it's for leisure, pleasure and recreation and some people live on their boats year-round. Neil Jones has been documenting the response to the breach with daily reports.

In that section the canal skirts round a bit of a hill keeping level (as canals must do!) with an embankment on one side several metres higher than the meadow below. You might expect that 'canal breach' involved the collapse of the embankment like a dam bursting. But it actually looks like the bottom of the canal gave out first through waterwolf and the embankment collapsed downwards rather the burst outwards. The owners and maintainers of the canal [that would be the CRT] have installed coffer dam pilings along some stretches of the canal but the canal bottom was originally clay "puddled" to make it water-proof.  In the 19thC labour was cheap and materials available, so regular maintenance was part of the business plan. The CRT spends ~£50million a year to raise ~£180million  which is used to, like, keep water in the canals and repair gates that keep water in the locks. Whence the money? "More than half of our income now comes from property, investments, utilities, donations and other funding". The CRT CEO annual salary is £200,000; but 4,500 volunteers contribute ~100,000 work days a year.

There was a rather sweet comment to the collapsed in dramatic fashion YT video: 

@Roo-s_Slow_Living Oh my goodness, how awful. I live just a few miles away from where this is and if anyone needs temporary accommodation I have a little caravan with double bed and a heater and would be more than happy to help x

 

Thirteen Years a-growing

My correspondent G, always on message, reminded me that today is the 13th anniversary of The Birth of The Blob. I was late to the bloggin' game and by the time I started hammering the over-sharing keyboard, the shortform soundbytes of Twitter was where the commentariat was at. Twitter has also passed into the twilight, replaced by even shorter, often word-free comms on TikTok and Insta. At least with word-based blogs the signal-to-noise ratio is on the side of the planet. Compared to a 700 word Blob, a fat graphic meme might consume 1,000x times as much electricity on a server farm.

Then again, there may be too many words. A recent count came to more than 2½ million words of Blob-blather. Only some of it considered or sensible or, indeed considered sensible. As my circumstances have changed, so has the content. Much less a funny thing happened on the way to the chemistry lab and more counting sheep and sawing logs: both of which reputed to induce sleep. I have tried to drag the worthy but forgotten to the fore giving Margaret Dayhoff parity of esteem with Margaret Thatcher for example. Chekkitout? Use the search box in the top left corner to play "I can't believe there's no [insert word here]". abacus, bibendum, charabanc, decameron, eagle, fadiman, genghis, halmahera, iodine, jerusalem, krypton,  . . . got them all covered.

Gulag-on-Sea

I was a teenage Essex-boy. One of the stranger event of my teen-life was being the chap in a mixed-doubles tennis tournament at Frinton-on-Sea. I could not reliably hoick a tennis-ball over the net, let alone place it to win points and we lost both our games. The tennis club was nice, though, and I spent the rest of the afternoon in their swimming pool. Clacton-on-Sea, 12km SW along the Essex coast elected Nigel Farage to represent them in Parliament. I guess I have Baggage-on-Sea? Nevertheless the post title is quite the cheap shot; because it's about a Good Thing that turned a bit sour when WWII hotted up and stopped being something that was happening over there.

Amazingly there is only a single copy of this book in the Irish Public Library System. But you may be able to buy it.  Four thousand lives : the rescue of German Jewish men to Britain, 1939. [2019] by Clare Ungerson. 

I don't think that the Brits were collectively less anti-semitic than anyone else. Just read pretty much any English novel from the 1920s or 30s for casual racial stereotyping (hair, nose, lips . . . too prudish to mention der schmuck down there). But there was a sharp intake of breath at the implementation of Kristallnacht 9th-10th November 1938, which apart from breaking windows in synagogues and shops saw the arrest of thousands of German Jewish men. A cabal of rich and powerful English Jews were particularly appalled; they raised a bunch of money and called in a bunch of political favours to rescue Jewish men from KZs on the Kontinent. Not women! The SS and SA left the women zu Hause on Kristallnacht to look after the children and do the cooking: so normal, so fucked up.

Meanwhile in London, the self-appointed Central British Fund for German Jewry secured permission to lease an abandonned WWI military barracks outside the Cinque Port of Sandwich in Kent, SE England. They got no money from the British government and the lager-sprung men from Germany and Austria were only given transit visas for Britain on their way to Palestine, Shanghai [a free port], the USA or South America. It was an amazing venture which had 10 months to fill the Kitchener Camp in Kent with 3,500 'handy' youngish men snatched from a rapacious and corrupt, but painstakingly bureaucratic system of Großdeutschland. No women, no children, no olds, no indigents, no homosexuals need apply. Although, in the heel of the hunt, as the jaws of opportunity snapped shut, another 500 dependents of the Kitchener men were able to reach safety in England - there was a demand for 'domestic servants' as the UK moved to an active war footing. 

You probably know something of the Kindertransporte [Bloboprev] which working independently and in parallel trained & shipped about 10,000 Jewish kids to Britain. I was born 15 km due S of, and went to school 15 km due W of, Sandwich, and had never heard of these events. Makes you wonder about all the pub-quiz essential facts [Tegucigalpa is the Capital of Honduras etc] they crammed into my head instead. 

After 3rd September 1939, the men in Kitchener were security vetted and almost all of them were classed "friendly alien" although their well-heeled Jewish sponsors colluded with the British government to keep them confined behind the wire. The former were concerned that a flood of 'foreign' Jews looking for work might trigger a pogrom suppressed anti-semitic feeling, which would adversely affect their own privilege. About half the able-bodied internees volunteered to join the Pioneer Corps of the British Army and  a few companies were shipped to France to build aerodromes and tank-traps for the BEF.   But when the Phoney War morphed uncontrollably into a military debacle, Dunkirk and the surrender of Paris the only explanation was spies, saboteurs and a Fifth Column. This paranoid conspiracy theory resulted in a complete change of status for the guests of Sandwich, which was clearly an early example of victim blaming. Those in British uniform were allowed to keep their khaki and pay but stationed far from possible invasion beaches on the S and E coasts. Those who had failed the army medical, or were too old, or too young to enlist or were in possession of a US immigrant visa and just waiting for a ticket . . . were reclassified from "friendly" to "enemy alien" and sent to internment camps, many of them on the Isle of Man. Kitchener Camp was abandonned except for a roomful of suitcases which the men were told would be held in safe keeping until their internment destination was established.

Never happened! The left-luggage door was bust open by British soldiers who ransacked the luggage looking for items of value. Photographs of, and letters from, central European parents and siblings, wives and children (almost all of whom were destining for Auschwitz and the Endlösung) were scattered, scuffed, soiled and eventually trashed. Q. Was ist das englische Wort für Schande? A. Shame!

2026: it's all ahead of us

I was up betimes and out about m'chores. Sheep fed, self fed, fuel stacked, fire laid, sofa weighted, sunrise saluted, all good:

Now I'm back at the keyboard, ready for a hard day's bloggin'. There is one mince-pie left, it has my name on it . . . for later. Dau.I and Dau.II spent the night with their Besties up in Greystones at least partly so they could catch the sunrise on the beach. Here's one for pilgrims - and we're all pilgrims whether we realise it or not 

Good luck. I fear we are living in interesting times but I'm with Dr Pangloss « Tout est au mieux dans le meilleur des mondes possibles ». And try not to forget The Dispossessed:

While we seek mirth and beauty and music light and gay,
There are frail forms fainting at the door;
Though their voices are silent, their pleading looks will say
Oh! Hard times come again no more. 

2025? It's a wrap!

 Three years ago, I quoted Minnie Haskins' 1908 advice for moving forward at Turn-of-Year. We had a perfick Christmas: lorra food, some healthy; a moderate amount of ethanol; a brisk yomp up the hill; only one item of shouting at family [sorry]. I had to cede space on the sofa but they didn't send me to the tunnel. I was given a weighty-blanket: which is supposed to help with anxiety, insomnia or the spectrum. It is colour coordinated with the sofa and I reclaimed my place with added gravitas after Dau.Book and Dau.Cook returned to the fray in Das Kapital. I have to learn how to operate the blanket because it can be quite a struggle to throw it off if the door-bell or the telephone rings. D.B and D.C were across the water earlier in December hangin' with the niblings and found themselves at a concert in Bristol Cathedral.

Dau.II [not wearing her toque there!] was interested to see an easel in the narthex = porch = vestibule = entryway of the cathedral but was delirah at the message written there. Turns out that the sentiments are not original to the Dean and Chapter but were probably borrowed from The Church of St John the Evangelist in North Vancouver, BC, CA. "When we at St. John's say that All Are Welcome, we really, really do mean it.  The words of welcome in the sign are part whimsical, part spritely, part purposeful but all of it sincere. ". You can find the full text at the StJohn link above incl.: " , , , You are welcome here if you are just browsing, just woken up or just out of prison. We don't mind if you're more Christian than Saint Paul or more Anglican than the Archbishop of Canterbury, haven't been to church since you were a child, follow a different faith, or have no faith. . ." 

That's a rather different christian message than the brutal caedite eos pushed by Arnaud Almaric in 1209. There are far too many Almaric wannabees in today's polarized world who are punching down on folks who are having an even crappier time. Not going to preach at you. But my new year resolution is to be kinder [and less shouty].

All the best for '26! 

Mind & body

I'm not the brightest and persist in checking if things are HOT by touching them. Sometimes, anticipating merely warm I apply a finger and get surprised >!yarroo!< by how hot it is. It takes < ½sec to get the signal up-processed-down. But although I feel the pain, there is often no obvious damage to the skin. It's a bit like a small child who falls over, gets up and carries on unless s/he sees blood, in which case waaaaiiiill. Is it that my 'mind' is deciding nothing to see feel here don't bother with the blister?

I was recently reading two books by Irish neurologist Suzanne O'Sullivan: The Sleeping Beauties: And Other Stories of Mystery Illness [2021 Guardian] by Borrowbox earbook and The Age of Diagnosis: Sickness, Health and Why Medicine Has Gone Too Far [2025 Guardian] as a regular page-turner. Dr O'Sullivan is the new Oliver Sacks [whom prev] - an expert on the working of the brain who can tell a tale. Neither author writes much about the bump-and-grind [concussion, MS, epilepsy, dementia, stroke] of their clinical work but has picked and anonymized the oddities among the oddities encountered in their practice. 

My memory of Sacks is that telling the weird [The man who mistook his wife for a hat etc.] in some detail was sufficient to secure an advance from a publisher. O'Sullivan is more polemical and political and none the worse for that. 

My first para begins to address the Mind/Body problem famously addressed by Rená Descartes in his 1637 Discours de la Méthode . Descartes' soundbyte was Je pense, donc je suis or more impressively in Latin cogito ergo sum: he was sure only that his mind was credible and accepted that his body and its sensations might be illusory. So there's a lot to be done teasing out Who is in charge anyway? Can we think ourselves well? Are we defined by our disability? Does this really hurt?  O'Sullivan takes a different duality to task in both of her books: that no sick person exists in isolation. We are all embedded the seven circles of our social life: our family, our village, our county, our class, our country, our united states, our species. [Don't hold me to seven, I'm just making this up as a I go along.] All of these layers will influence our unconsidered certainties and sense of self. For e.g. I don't question the fact that my knees work and it took a conscious act of empathy [never my strongest suit] to walk at the pace of Pat the Salt's zimmer frame. I am better than some but still Other [transitive verb] folks who have facial hardware, better tans or drive white Hiace vans.

Here's one story from The Sleeping Beauties. Dr O'Sullivan was bizarred out to discover that there were ~170 cases of catatonia among teenage refugees in Sweden. In Sweden? why in Sweden and not Switzerland or other West European democracies. So she made some enquiries and contacts and went to visit some of these cases of resignation syndrome. Not to oversimplify a complex and disparate set of tragedies but the normal way of processing applications, and re-applications and appeals and re-appeals for asylum in Sweden involves the entire family. Not least because the kids are far better speaking Swedish than their Yazidi [or whatever] parents. The kids have been in school for several years as the mill of immigration rules grinds on. The Swedish system decides that Turkey is safe enough for such people and in parallel decides that this paperless family is probably Turkish and so asylum is refused. The kids go home, go to bed and go coma. Except it's not coma as neurologists normally see it; the data details [muscle tone, BP, pulse, MRI] are unique to teenage refugees in Sweden. They are none the less Real and super distressing for all concerned. There is little that a neurologist can do except order more tests. Physiotherapists are essential for ameliorating the symptoms [jaysus, not the bedsores - these kids have enough to suffer etc] but cannot manifest a cure. The cure is for Sweden to stamp the papers obestämd uppehållstillstånd = indefinite leave to remain. But De Man might have saved a lot of trouble by not including [fragile, impressionable] children in asylum hearings, judgments and appeals. And of course that has very uncomfortable geopolitical implications [aka floodgates] for the Swedish taxpayer and those whom they elect.

I like the cut of O'Sullivan's jib. You can get a sick note from work if you have an ADHD diagnosis and a prescription. But you can't if you just feel crap today. I dunno about hangovers being sick-notable. If we trusted employees to do their best and treated them like responsible adults then feeling crap would be good enough. Medicalizing the extremes tails of the normal range of human affect / health / happiness lays off all the solutions on MegaPharm to the glee of shareholders. Doctor's lists are long: the new normal is that each patient is allowed 7.5 minutes: just time to write a script but not enough to listen.

Good health requires good food; a warm winter home; a sense of community; maybe a bit of nookie. The dispossessed may have none of these essentials. But they have a medical card.  Maybe making The Minister responsible for supplying these needs is too wide a social circle to be relatable? People want to be heard as much as they want a square meal. See also Maslow's hierarchy of needs.

Invisible handle extension

Boo-hoo, my favorite aluminum pot-belly saucepan is finally declared beyond the capability of ShonXrepair inc. When we found it in a Gt Boston yard-sale 45 years ago, it had already done a generation of service for an American family. Probably cast and assembled ~1950 at the height of Boomer material space-age prosperity. I guess the base was originally flat, so it would work efficiently on a 1950 vintage General Electric stove. Since then the saucepan's bottom has acquired a convex sag; but then so has mine. Worked fine with our gas hob.

In recent years, I Sugru'd up a crack in the wooden handle, first in blue and then green but now the internal bolt [steel] has rusted out - and I can't get the anti-grav hover mechanism to kick in. My old partner will have to join me in retirement. Eeee, they don't make 'em like they used to.

In other news, Dau.I the Book and Dau.II the Cook came down for Christmas. I was tasked to source a nice piece of organic bacon collar for the carnivorous half of the family. Obvs I went to Rathgarogue Organic Pork [whc Prev for eggs]. Cookie baked that on Christmas Eve to give oven-room for a chicken the following day. VegHalf had musharooms Wellington. A colourful variety of vegetable sides filled the corners. After dinner we sacked out to watch The Birdcage [1996] an American remake of the wonderful La Cage au Folles [1978] which we saw in a multiplex in Albany NY in Oct 1980. We were much younger then than our girls are now. Counting our blessings - it's been a crap Christmas for too many people across the county, the country and the world.