All Things Must; Man Is The Only Creature That Wills (1)

 

For those of us of a mischievous nature our will represents the last opportunity for a bit of sport. For those of you who like the thought of reaching out from beyond the grave but are struggling to think of something to insert into your will, this is the first of an occasional series of unusual and, I hope, amusing bequests from history.

Of course, the fact that our will is being read dashes any hopes we may have had of achieving immortality. However, we might be able to achieve a vicarious form of immortality through the arrangements we effect by way of our will. Take the case of the famous social philosopher, Jeremy Bentham (1748 – 1832) who is widely regarded as the founder of utilitarianism. He left his preserved, clothed body to posterity. No one is quite sure what he was trying to achieve with this gift but ever since his death in 1832 his clothed skeleton, topped off with a waxen model of his head, has been preserved in a wood and glass cabinet, known as the Auto-Icon.

It wasn’t Bentham’s intention to have a wax head atop of his skeleton and for years he carried around with him a pair of glass eyes that he wanted to be affixed to his preserved face. Unfortunately, the process of preserving his body distorted his face to such an extent that a wax replica had to be used. Apparently, his head was stored between his legs but, not surprisingly, presented such a source of temptation to would-be pranksters that it was locked away. The Auto-Icon is currently stored in the university he founded, University College, London, and is occasionally moved so that he can attend meetings.

An alternative way to achieve a sort of immortality is to follow the example of Juan Potomachi who popped his clogs in 1955. He left a grant of $50,000 in his will to the Teatro Dramatico on the condition that they used his skull in future productions of Shakespeare’s tragedy, Hamlet!

Our final attempt at immortality is that of an American hat maker, S Sanborn, who died in 1871, leaving his body to science and bequeathing it to Oliver Wendell Holmes, the then professor of anatomy at Harvard, and to one of his colleagues. In his will Sanborn stipulated that two drums were to be made out of his skin and given to a friend who on the 17^th June of every year had to go to Bunker Hill and at dawn pound out the tune, Yankee Doodle Dandy, in commemoration of the American rebels’ victory in 1775. The rest of Sanborn’s body was to be composted as fertiliser and used to grow an American elm.

Food for thought! To be continued…

 

 

 

 

 

Afrique, Je T’Aime

 

Beautiful Africa – Rokia Traore

It may be a churlish thing to say but one positive thing to come out of the troubles besetting Mali is the explosion of music from its established stars. Rokia Traore’s latest album, Beautiful Africa, is an eloquent plea for the preservation of her country’s historic culture of tolerance. The title track sees the chanteuse in fine form lamenting in French and Bambara the effects of war and conflict on her homeland and ends, in English, with an impassioned plea, “Lord, give us wisdom, give us foresight”.

Traore’s vocal style is distinctive, moving from cool and soothing to an impassioned style almost at the flick of a switch. She has Nina Simonesque qualities at times. Her backing is spare and atmospheric with drums, n’goni – a stringed instrument like a lyre – guitar and bass adding sound patterns that complement her vocals. The way that her guitar weaves intricate patterns with Mamah Diabate’s n’goni creates a magical sound. This is a slightly funkier and rockier set than her last release of five years ago, Tchamanthche, but none the worse for that. The precision of the vocals and the instrumentation draw the listener in and demands their full attention. It is late night reflective music to relax to.

As well as the title track the stand-out tracks for me are N’Teri which moves from a sparse n’goni-dominated opening to a full throttle electric finale featuring beatbox and distorted guitars and the more soulful and reflective Melancolie. The album was recorded in the UK – Bristol, in fact – and is produced by John Parish who has worked with PJ Harvey and Eels amongst others.

It was worth the five-year wait for this album. Highly recommended.

 

In Graham We Trust – Part Forty Five

 

Forty six down, season finished, fifty five points secured. 16^th place

TMS 3 Portsmouth 2

The Meadow saw an entertaining encounter between TMS and already relegated Portsmouth to round off the season.

TMS showing one change – McAllister in for McGinn – took an early lead, Goldson powering in a header from a Taylor corner in the 5^th minute. Jacobson, rapidly becoming their dead ball specialist, scored direct from a free kick (again) in the 32^nd minute, the shot taking a wicked deflection off the wall. Asante with a fine turn and a low shot made the game comfortable at 3-0 in the 52^nd minute and a comfortable win seemed to be on the cards.

Portsmouth had other ideas, however, and the introduction of Webster changed the game round. The normally reliable Weale let a shot escape his grasp and Harris was the quickest to react on the hour mark. A fine run down the wing by Webster and a cross enabled Agyemang to score in the 77^th minute to set up a rousing finale.

TMS held on to secure their second win in four days. Results went in their favour and so they ended the season in the heady heights of 16^th. An entertaining end to what was a hard campaign.

A Question Of Taste

 

It is hard but occasionally it is necessary to feel sorry for those creative types in advertising agencies. After all, they have to entice those who don’t care to buy stuff they don’t need.

You can easily imagine that ideas in their espresso and Charlie fuelled hothouses can seem the funniest thing known to man. However, when they emerge into the cold-light of day, they go down like a lead balloon.

One of the latest major advertising gaffes is that devised for Korean car manufacturer, Hyundai, by those creative types at Innocean. Their mission was to promote the environment-friendly emissions of a new model which, apparently, are 100% water. What better way, you can imagine the argument going, than to film a scene where a chap tries to commit suicide by exposing himself to the fumes of the car, only to fail because of the non-noxious qualities of the emissions.

And so it came to pass.

Cue outrage particularly from the loved ones who had lost relatives to this particularly unpleasant method of doing yourself in.

Of course, it is all a matter of taste but surely someone somewhere should have had the wit to see what was coming. On the bright side, Hyundai might become the car of choice for the Samaritans!

 

What Is The Origin Of (16)?…

 

Up to snuff

This curious phrase is used to indicate that someone or something is up to the required standard, although originally it seems to have indicated that someone was in the know and on the ball.

The use of snuff, powdered tobacco, which was inhaled through the nose was all the rage in the 17^th century and beyond. Owing to its cost snuff only the rich could afford to indulge in this fashionable habit. So someone who was up to snuff was rich, smart and sophisticated enough to enjoy and appreciate the fine tobaccos used in snuff manufacture.

The phrase’s first recorded use appears in John Poole’s parody of Shakespeare’s Hamlet which was published in 1811 under the title, Hamelt Travestie. He wrote the lines, “He knows well enough The game we’re after: Zooks, he’s up to snuff” and “He is up to snuff, i.e. he is the knowing one”, clearly using the phrase in its original context of someone in the know.

Grose , in his dictionary published in 1823, lists the phrase, “up to snuff and a pinch above it” and defines it as meaning flash, ostentatious or, perhaps, sophisticated. It seems that the later meaning of being up to a required standard entered common usage at the turn of the 20^th century.

 

Let the cat out of the bag

This phrase means to disclose a secret.

There are two competing claims for the origin of this phrase. The first relates to the shady dealings of market traders in the 16^th century. Often they were guilty of trying to deceive their would-be customers by passing off one thing as another. Around the 1530s there was a tradition of selling livestock unseen or hidden in a sack. This underhanded trick was presumably so prevalent that it spawned a couple of phrases, the one we are considering and “pig in a poke”. Cats were often substituted for piglets and so to let the cat out of the bag was to disclose the salesman’s deception, literally.

The other theory is that the cat referred to was the cat o’ nine tails, the fearsome implement of punishment used to castigate recalcitrant sailors. It was commonly used and the custom of using it pre-dates the first appearance of the phrase, letting the cat out of the bag, in print. The whip had three strands of cord from which the rope lashes were made and each cord was made from three strands of string. The cat aspect no doubt relates to the scratches that the knotted end made on the victim’s back which resembled the scratches made by the claws of a cat. It may be that the cat o’nine tails when not deployed was kept in a bag but it is hard to see how the use of the phrase to indicate the disclosure of a secret could have come from this practice.

There are versions of the phrase in Dutch – ‘Een kat in de zak kopen’ – and German – – ‘Die Katze im Sack kaufen’ – which both are used in the context of buying false goods ie a cat in a bag.

The first published use of the phrase appears in the London Magazine of 1760 – “We could have wished that the author… had not let the cat out of the bag” and there are several other recorded usages in the 1760s and 1770s where the phrase is put in quotation marks, suggesting that it was newly coined around that time.

Our feline friends were commonly kept by our ancestors to try to make some headway in controlling the mouse and rat populations and cats appear in a number of English proverbs. The weight of evidence suggests that the phrase owes its origin to the shady practices of the Tudor market traders.