Boots on the ground

Tomorrow, St Patrick's Day, we will have been in our current home for 24 years. On that day in 1997, more or less a year after we'd bought the property at auction, we threw a bit of a party for the builders and their families and slept that night on a mattress in the bedroom. It had been a massive undertaking for The Beloved, who'd acted as main contractor and made the electrician, the plumber, the well-diggers, the plasterer, the builder, the carpenter, ESB, telecoms, the septic-tank guy all do her bidding: not necessarily in that order and sort of on time. As well as minding two small children. At the end of the project, we had a warm dry home but we'd run out of money and run out of oomph and it took about a decade to recover our mojo for anything more than care and maintenance. 

For example, we only ever went up the hill to explore the dry heathland, the scree, the bogs and the wee streams when/if we had visitors. As work wound down for me recently, I got out and about more and last year I was elected, as the only candidate, Heritage Liaison Officer for our commonage. I got interested in different aspects of what I called The Holistic Landscape of the townland. My Heritage Report included a number of suggestions about how there could be more, and more constructive, interaction between people and the hill. The 'problem' is that only two of our neighbours [both getting on in years] actually, from choice, run sheep on the hill; and on some weekends there are more hill-walkers on the hill than, like, sheep. That is what it is but with the shiny eyes of a convert, I like the idea of getting the children of our community up and doing on the hill and getting to know it as well as their grandparents did.

On the map, our Common is a roughly equilateral triangle with the Eastern boundary matching the County border and running more or less due North. Probably because it is the County border and land-holdings tend to stay within a single county, that Eastern boundary is tracked by a stone-faced earthen ditch for almost its entire length. But North of the last ruined steading [Mackey's], the walls on the ground rather abruptly cease although, on the Ordnance Survey map, the county border continues on with the same -.-.-.-.-. determination. On the Western boundary between Knockroe and the next community Rathanna, on the map, there is also a resolute . . . . . line running straight across the landscape. I suggested in my report that it would make a neat project for the local National School to beat the bounds between the two commonages. It would be partly a classroom exercise in cartography: latitude, longitude; grid-reference; triangulation and distance; rhumb-lines; true vs magnetic North; angles and bearings. And partly a yomp across the face of the hills, preferably with a borrowed theodolite and/or a borrowed surveyor  / cartographer.

That might never happen, or not in my lifetime. Last Sunday, before the rain got going in earnest, I powered up the hill to see why the Wexford border makes a little jink in its line between Slievegar Slg and Cloroge More Cl.M . Elucidating this small mystery received a massive leg up from the 1:25,000 map produced by Barry Dalby of EastWest Mapping. The detail on the map is down to the pixel, accurately delineating every wall and field boundary in the settled parts of the map. But there are also several straight lines across the rather featureless heathland landscape of the commonages. These must have been picked out from the satellite pictures: the human eye is super adept at discerning patterns out of random jumble. Two such line segments appear on Barry's map tracking the two North trending segments of the County Line. Civil boundaries don't register on these EastWest maps, whose purpose is recreational rather than political.

On the ground, these lines are revealed as longish sections of bank and ditch long since decayed almost to invisibility - except that that bank is drier and the ditch is greener. Between these man-made features the county border, trending NW, follows the line of a barely visible stream which gathers water to become the Aughnabriskey. That small river again becomes the county border just uphill from our fields; the stream and border being coterminous for about 400 m before parting company. I am possibly the only person alive who can point with confidence to the rock [L!] nearest to the triple-point where Knockroe, Rathanna and Cloroge More meet. That is the starting point for the Great Line of Demarcation of the National School Project.

They also serve

I R retire and feel quite a bit like Mr Chips when somebody wants to friend me on LinkedIn and I can't put a face on them. In my second year teaching remedial math, I had a class with a handful of youngwans who all had medium length blonde hair and it took me the whole term to reliably get their names right. My name is Patriarch. But some stand out because they were funny, or clumsy, or made a good fist of their research project. That second year, teaching lab sections for 1st year biology, we came to the microbiology part which requires Petri dishes and Bunsen burners. Who's got a lighter?, I asked and nobody came forward, so I had to find a work around (and a lighter). In my day, many students smoked, so lighters were always available. A couple of days later, I was stopped in the concourse by Gary: "I put a box of matches in the top drawer in the biology lab, in case they're needed in future". Gary & I shared a building and sometimes a laboratory over the next tuthree years. He won his class's Community Service Award one year "for services with The Order of Malta". It turned out that, as a tween, he'd started going to weekend GAA games with a relative who was a fully trained first-aider of Malta and liked the uniform being useful [like the matches, above]. After his degree he got a job, but also enrolled in an evening MSc with which I had some peripheral involvement. Gary was the GoTo guy for all the foreign nationals for whom English was a second language and Ireland was a cultural jangle jungle.

Gary didn't lick caring about/for others off the stones. There was his 1st-aidy relly who had presented a role-model and a chance to try first-aiding as a way of life. And I presume his Irish Mammy, had somethhing to say in his raising. As Linus Pauling quipped "The best way to get a good idea is to have a lot of ideas". If you try lots of things [not incest or morris dancing!] you're more likely to get a good fit for your true self. Actually, I don't believe your true self appears >!shazzam!< fully formed at birth like Athene from the head of Zeus [R]. It emerges by the buffetting and buffing of experience with people, things and situations. As the chips are knocked off your shoulders, you fit better and become happier. But I'm not a blank slatist either: genetics plays its part in shaping what's possible.

The Boy lives on the outskirts of the second most expensive place to live in England. It has a university, an excellent rail link to London, nice parks, a lovely river and it drips with 2,000 years of history. The city also has people without homes. Julian House, a regional charity, started out as a homeless hostel and has grown into a multi-tasking power-house for helping the dispossessed. Charities need money to provide their services and fund-raising is vital for lubricating the wheels of change. Julian House has been associated with the Bath Half Marathon for 20 years, for example: fit people run and their pals pay not to run. Several years ago, Julian House started a Spring sleep-out in one of the city's lovely parks and invited people to experience rooflessness for one night. Everyone agrees and acknowledges that being without a roof is not the same as being without a home. And also that one night is a jape, compared to the relentlessness of finding a safe dry place to kip every freakin' night of the year.

When she'd just turned 5, Gdau.I did the Big Sleep-out with her Da; and they've been religious about returning every subsequent year: the year it rained all night, the year he got shouty, the year they went with Gdau.I's pals . . . this year the park is covid-closed, but the gig goes on! And this year Gdau.II was big enough and sassy enough to join the party - even if it was just the three of them in the back garden. Not unexpectedly, the youngest slept best despite the temperature dipping below freezing. It's always darkest before the dawn, but every day the sun rises:

It's early yet but the G.daus are probably on a college trajectory. I'm pretty sure they will grow up match-girls, like Gary.

Osborne Week

I think I'm done with Osbornes

• Ozzy Osbourne trying to be an Ordinary Man
• Osborne Brothers do Kentucky - miss the hound-dog chasin' 'coon
• Brothers Osborne [no relation] It ain't my fault
• Arthur Osborne, Adam's father, was a seeker of the truth following Ramana Maharshi [R]
• Joan Osborne Broken Hearted
• George Osborne pastygate  - yachtgate - Déisegate
• John "Look Back in Anger" Osborne also played Kinnear the beardy crime-boss in Get Carter
• Get Carter was shot in 1970 in Newcastle et al.
• We lived In Newcastle 1983-1990 and were tickled that, in the final scene, Michael Caine ran a round-trip of 60 miles brandishing a shot-gun . . . and nobody called the police.
• The Osbornes Crazy Horses  noooooo! the 70s are history!

The week: Monday Tamil Nadu; Tuesday Fort Lauderdale; Wednesday Elbow; Thursday Isle of Wight; Friday Walthamstow; Saturday Rathanna.

Osborne's Rathanna

Did you notice a theme in The Blob this last week? Computers - Unions - Tires - Irish - Elastin.
What's that spell?
CUTIE! 
Wrong! the real connexion those 5 tales is a loose association with Clan Osborne. 

When bought the farrrrm-let in 1996 the nearest pub in the County was about 6km away opposite the church where all the Shannon's of the Bomb are buried. It was called Osborne's and had been a home-from-home for the last of the Shannons, a bachelor farmer who had died in 1994 aged 70. The goss was that Old Ray had won a television in a raffle and donated the instrument to Osborne's because a) there was better reception from the Mt Leinster mast b) he was more likely to be in Osborne's than his own kitchen c) who wants to watch RTE on their own? I went down into Miss Osborne's bar once, to buy some milk. It was cool and dark but she had no fridge and advised me to get the milk into my fridge asap because it was July and the milk had been under her counter a couple of days already. Then she got sick, and closed the bar and was in a nursing home and finally she died, much lamented because she was kind.

Several years later, Osborne's came to a new life under Eric [L,R], Miss Osborne's nephew and Catherine [L,L]. They gave the front a lick of paint and cleaned the inside up while retaining most of the original features. The dark bar became a cosy place to have a drink. We've all been in Oirish Pubs, whether in Manhattan or Manila, which are tricked out with stuff that rings about as false as the python I met in an Irish bar in suburban Madrid. New Osborne's is authentico and I like it a lot. In the Before Times we'd try to catch a snifter there before crossing the village street for a sub-titled film.

I hope that they weather the Coronarama because they have a lot to offer the community and visitors.

Osborne's Judgement

Trades Unions were an important force for achieving whatever amount of social justice which we now include in our list of "attributes of a civilized society". Capitalism, red in tooth and claw, allows workers to choose among employers to obtain the best pay and conditions. Indeed it allows workers to withhold their labour and not work for anyone at all. The market will decide how much an hour of your time is worth. It sounds well in theory but the case is altered in actuality. If the valley has but one coal-mine; the town one cotton mill; the village a single shop; then it is Hobson's Choice for a youngster seeking employment. No job, no money; no money, no bicycle; no bike, no real commute options Mr Tebbit. Trades Unions were an antidote to the gross imbalance of power in transactions between capital and labour. If workers got together, their collective actions could negotiate better pay and conditions for them all. The elephant in the negotiation room was a strike, or the threat of strike. No labour, noproduct; no product, no profit.

In the late 19thC, The Man discovered the political will to allow Trades Unions. If withholding labour was illegal, then the labourers were slaves. The consensus among the Christian middle classes on Victorian England was that Slavery was A Bad Thing. The political history of the 19thC is anchored on stepwise extensions of the franchise. And with each extension more workers got to vote for the people who made the laws in Westminster. And it ceased to be satisfactory to have a poor choice between Liberal [slightly left a bit like Democrats in USA today] and Conservative [rightist, conservative, like US Republicans] candidates. Through collective action, mediated by Trades Unions, the working class was able to scrabble together the finances to run candidates for a new Labour party. In the 1900 General Election the Labour Representation Committee (LRC) got Keir Hardie elected to parliament in Merthyr Tydfil and Richard Bell in Derby. 

The following year saw a disastrous set back for trade unionism. Workers for the Taff Vale Railway came out on strike. The Company sued their Union for damages to profits and the courts allowed the company to sequester £23,000 from the war chest of the Amalgamated Society of Railway Servants ASRS. Up until that ruling, TUs had been thought of an "unincorporated entities" or Trusts and so not actionable. Part of the thinking was that the Union looked after the widows and orphans of their members and their funds should be preserved to succour the innocent victims of fatal workplace accidents. The Trades Disputes Act of 1906 a) legalised the right to strike b) prevented actions being taken against the unions if they called a strike. Taff Vale created a sense of righteous indignation which gave a big political boost to the fledgling Labour Party which returned 29 MPs in 1906, and 40 in 1910.

Which brings us to Osborne and his judgment. Walter Osborne was secretary for the Walthamstow branch of the ASRS and head porter at Clapham. He was, among other tasks. responsible for gathering subs for the union; but he was also a big supporter of the Liberal Party. The TUC and the LRC was squeezing the liberal middle and pragmatically requiring all MPs elected with LRC sponsorship to take the Labour whip. Osborne, in a secure job and established in his community, found socialism <frisson> dangerously subversive and personally repugnant. Accordingly he took the ASRS to court to prevent them from supporting Team Red as a matter of policy. The Courts found for Osborne: "There is nothing in the Trade Union Acts from which it can reasonably be inferred that trade unions as defined by Parliament were meant to have the power of collecting and administering funds for political purposes." which required further legislation to a) allow refusnik union members to avoid paying the Labour Party pledge; although the default might be opt-in and b) starting to pay MPs a £400 /year salary to ensure that they were not financially dependent on the LRC and its constituent unions. Contrast that with wages for workers at that time: agr. labourers £35/yr; coal miners £70/yr; typesetters £75/yr.

Taff Vale and Osborne were set-backs (meted out by old white men who'd never had to work [as it break your finger-nails work] for a living) to the rise and rise of the rights of the working class. Nevertheless, these judgments rowed against the tide of history because the law was changed in parliament by the Liberal party alone or in cahoots with Redmondites and/or Labour. The Liberal government  - that party secured a landslide in 1906 - put forward a raft of social justice reforms: free school meals; old age pensions; national health and unemployment insurance; labour exchanges. Osborne was key to clarifying what everyone wanted and what they could expect in the arena of labour relations. 

Osborne House

Osborne House [Edwardian Postcard R] is a big old mock-Italian mansion on the North coast of the Isle of Wight. It was designed by Prince Albert Saxe-Coburg & Gotha who was married to the British Queen Victoria with whom he had eight children. They spent a lot of time on holiday down there as far from the affairs of state as a head of state can be without leaving the country . . . unless you count Balmoral, another royal rural retreat in Scotland. Victoria loved living there and indeed died there, but her children had less grá for the place and her son-and-heir donated the estate to the nation as one of his first acts after coronation. It did [WWI] become a sanitorium and convalescent home for officers, but in the first instance it became a school.

In the 00s of the last century, someone had the cunning plan to use the stable-block and grounds as a prep school for those who aspired, like my father, to enroll in Britannia Royal Naval College in Dartmouth at the age of 14. The education didn't come cheap and the expectation was that chaps who went to Osborne would be good eggs, play a straight bat and not behave like cads, rotters and bounders. In 1908 George Archer-Shee started at Osborne aged 13. 

In August of the same year, another pupil, Terence Back, received a postal order for 5 shillings; because a chap need tuck. An agricultural labourer in those days was on 10/- a week. The same day, young Archer-Shee went to the village Post Office to purchase a postal order to buy a model train set. Somebody forged Back's signature, cashed his postal order and was given two half-crowns by the elderly post-mistress. The authorities at the school carried out an investigation when Back reported his postal order had been stolen from his locker. Called a hand-writing expert and the post-mistress and convinced themselves that young Archer-Shee was a forger and a thief and asked his parents to take him away. Could it be that, like L'affaire Dreyfus across the channel, the Archer-Shees were the wrong [R.C.] religion? And Irish? But you don't mess with the Archer-Shees! The family wanted a court martial or a proper trial and more importantly they wanted their good name. It took two years of dogged determination, and a lorra money, for the school and ultimately the Admiralty and the Government of the Day to eat humble pie and acquit young George. One of the key things that money can by is the Best Lawyer and the Archer-Shees instructed Sir Edw "Home Rule" Carson KC to act for their boy and their rep.

It became a national political hot-potato and a cause célèbre internationally and eventually George Archer-Shee retrieved his good name and a truly mighty amount £7,240 for costs and compensation from the Admiralty. Given the then current rates of pay, that's enough to crew a WWI destroyer for a year excluding grog. George left Osborne and gone to a civilian school. At the outbreak of war, he returned home to join the colours, shipped out to France, and killed there on 31 October 1914 not yet old enough to vote. Three days before, Edward Carson's nephew had been killed serving in the same regiment. Less than two weeks later AEJ Collins, boy cricket star also died. The old Lie: Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori.

Osborne's Ligament

Did you ever look at your hand? I mean really look? Like Hugh MacDiarmid looked? It is a kludge, a bodge-up job developed from a generic mammalian pentadactyl limb. That same blueprint having been modified to make a horse's hoof and a bat's wing and the retractable claws of your cat. We can do so much with our hands: split wood; sew a seam, write copperplate, type Blob, change gears, open a jar of marmalade. 

Most of the work for these disparate tasks is carried out by muscles in the fore-arm which obey the puppet-master by pulling tendons which flex the finger joints. Nine of these tendons [two for each finger, one for the thumb] and a fat nerve bundle pass between the bones of the wrist and chunky slab of fibrous tissue called the flexor retinaculum which keeps thing tight. Sometimes, however, things get a little too tight because the tolerance is so fine. If your fingers flex a lot, then they get hot and the local lube cannot dissipate the heat quick enough and the parts start to swell which spirals the problem into a crisis of pain and pins-and-needles. So that's typists and chicken-boners and others who carry out repetitive tasks for too little money. Carpal tunnel syndrome, as the crisis is called, is also another cross to bear for those with rheumatoid arthritis RA where there are autoimmune lubrication fails. When Jim Kent, furiously writing the code to analyse the human genome, immersed his wrists in basins of iced water, he had a desperate but effective solution for meeting Blair and Clinton's We Two deadline.

Maybe 20% of adult humans experience "pain, numbness, and/or tingling in the median nerve distribution in the hands" and in maybe a third of those cases carpal tunnel syndrome is fingered. The the hand is intelligently designed, users will write "could do better" on the engineer-in-the-sky's end of term report card.

For some folks, the tingling in the hand and fingers is nothing to do with tightness in the carpal tunnel but further up the arm at the next bottle neck. At the elbow, the humerus has to flex against the ulna and radius to get the fingers on the keyboard, or carry out the many and varied tasks required of the human fore-arm: steering the car, hammering the nail, eating the pizza. The biceps and triceps are attached to the bones at knobs called epicondyles and the forces generated can be mighty. It is vital that the joint itself does fail and the bones are held together with bundles of connective tissue which are tough, minimally elastic and able to maintain tension. One of the engineering essentials was discovered long after the heyday of anatomical naming-of-parts from dissection of cadavers. It was first described in 1957 by an orthopedic surgeon called Geoffrey Vaughan Osborne, MB, ChB, MChOrth, PhD, FRCS, born in Wales, trained in Liverpool. In 1957, he described and number of cases of ulnar neuropathy - numbness and tingling in the little and ring fingers - almost all of which he decided were due to compression of the cubital tunnel at the elbow. The ligament / band / arcade which now bears his name forms the roof of the cubital tunnel.

You can get relief by elbow-focused massage or a bit of nip-and-tuck surgery. Osborne [to a surgeon every remedy looks like a scapel] preferred surgery. The interesting thing about Osborne's ligament is that this essential part of elbow engineering is missing in a substantial part of the population. Anatomical polymorphism may remind you of this isn't-variation-wonderful party trick. Touch the pad of your ring finger against the thumb and flex your wrist. For most people a prominent cord will appear in the middle of the flexed wrist running from the palm up the fore-arm. But for 5 - 25% of the population, [meeeeee!] no such cord will be seen because the palmaris longus is missing. Because it is therefore apparently inessential, the palmaris longus is often mined for tendon-replacement surgery. How neat is that?

James O'Brien is a freak of finger.