Aristotle all dressed up

It's hard to credit that Raphael of Urbino has been dead for 500 years, because we can imagine meeting him swapping pigments with Michelangelo of Firenze and Leonardo of Vinci as they waited for the Pope to see them. The fact that Raphael died at the age of 37 from infection and bloodletting? Not so much.

One of Raphael's most notable and most copied works is his School of Athens which was commissioned by Pope Julius and executed on a wall in the Vatican between 1509 and 1511. It's BIG (5m x 7.7m) and detailed. The conceit was to represent the greatest thinkers of the Classical world as a reminder the papal court to do better. It was a massive cos-play for Raphael and his pals: discarding their doublets and cod-pieces and striking a pose wrapped in sheets or chitons. At the time, it would have been a hoot, because viewers could make facetious comments about their mate Michelangelo as . . . Heraclitus [bloborecent]. Those classically educated viewers would also have made a much better fist of recognising the iconography of the Ancients. My Mum got to be pretty good on the iconography of saints having spent her retirement years cruising between cathedrals and museums. Doing the who's who (both the philosophers and the models) on The School of Athens been an on-going puzzle for art-historians to wrestle over ever since. Here's one attempt - hint Geocentrist Ptolemy is holding the globe?

But, despite the skirts, they're all . . . men.

In our times there exists a self-appointed coven of crones Na Cailleacha who are venerable and arty and like to hang out together. I've mentioned cailleach as a slightly scary, respectful term for a generally undervalued segment of society. Tremble also at Sprakkar - an Icelandic equivalent. From Spring 2024, this collective decided that it would be grand jape to make a tableau vivant of The School of Athens with only women in the cos-play. Nice touches: replacing Euclid's chalk-board with a black laptop [above R]. Of course they strove to be consciously diverse and inclusive within the women space. Face it, they'd have been hard put to find 40 white Irish female philosophers, all available for a specific weekday morning in March, to populate their School of Hibernia.

And, contra Raphael and Julius II, an identification key has been included for posterity. They borrowed the Museum Building from TCD because of the steps and pilasters and put on a spiffy lunch so that everyone involved could mingle and network afterwards. Getting Mary Robinson, Ireland's first F Uachtarán, and Linda Doyle, TCD's first F Provost, to fill the robes of Plato and Aristotle was a coup. Some of the models have appeared in the Blob before. I haven't gotten round to writing up Dau.II's saxophone teacher / cailleach . . . yet. The fluffy white representations of Artemis/Diana/Medb and Athena/Minerva/Brigid/ standing on the newel posts at the rear are the work of Helen "Cailleach" Comerford who died suddenly a couple of weeks later
 
Here's a couple of minutes of RTE launching the project.

Kent KaBOOM!

 I was born in Dover in 1954; because my mother was born there in 1920 and went home to deliver her sproggs. I never had any sense that Dover was my home-place, not least because the family up-stakes 3 months later when my naval father was posted elsewhere. 

12 years later there was a window-rattling explosion 6 km off the coast of Folkstone, the town next door.  Marine salvers had been contracted to remove the wreck of Polish registered liberty ship SS Kielce [L]. The Kielce had been carrying a cargo of munitions from Southampton to Bremerhaven in March 1946 when, in crap weather, at night, she collided with the steamer Lombardy and sank without loss of life. Resting on the seabed in 30m of water, the wreck wasn't a hazard to shipping; although I bet there were pissed off trawlermen when their gear snagged on on the sticky-out metal bits. 

So the Folkestone Salvage Company thought it was be a good idea to carry out some controlled underwater explosions to reduce the wreck to smaller lumps to facilitate its removal. The third such detonation ignited part of the original cargo - still fizzy after 20 years in saltwater. What's left of the wreck is now 6m below grade in its very own crater. Ordnance experts afterwards estimated at a 2-kilotonne explosion. At least the Kielce had been carrying, like, bullets and incendiary bombs rather some fancy chemical weapons of mass destruction. Needless to say, nobody was in a gung-ho hurry to finish the salvage job; nor yet authorize a further attempt. Accordingly Kielce lies conveniently close to shore and ordinary folks go wreck-diving there on the reg'lar. Thus Callum Beveridge: dived this site a few years ago before being aware of its history. Must be the only wreck I've ever dived where the top of the wreck is deeper than the surrounding seabed. It sits in a 6m depression and the seabed is littered with bent and twisted munitions inc .50 cal browning rounds.

You may be sure that the Kielce experience informed the continuing decision to Do Nothing about the wreck of SS Richard Montgomery off the other side of the county. In 1966, folk were allowed to have a go without being completely fettered by authorizations, risk-asssessments and mighty insurance premiums. Having a go meant not warning people away from the windows of the seafront B&Bs and hotels. Having a go meant allowing Philip Kaye a cross-channel swimmer to be in the water 3km from the wreck site when the balloon went up. Shocked, shocked 'e woz: "I got a pain in my head and the sensation of being beaten with dozens of sticks, I never saw the explosion, but the tremors were terrific. I had a pins-and-needles effect for several minutes."

Aprille shouers

Mish-mash bish-bash

• Strange Meeting yest. GdauII was on the train to Waterford. Accordingly I got into a dhoti so that a ChaiWallah could meet the train at B.town, half way thru the trip. Kids don't want chai; they want a packet of crisps, a couple of flapjacks and money. Well maybe not, but that's what this one got.
  
• ♩ ♬ ♫ ♪
  
• Wayfaring à capella stranger
• Wild Mountain thyme time 
• Ēriks Ešenvalds - O Salutaris Hostia
  
• Glen Hansard Bird of Sorrow
  
• Dictionary of Obscure Sorrows - neologisms a tad more profound than Liff or Sniglets 
• William Drake’s 17thC commonplace book rebound
  
• Rubber duck took 8 years to get from Dublin to Orkney 
• Letting the R. Nar flow unfettered
• UCL has an anechoic chamber - wha'? wha'? 
• Forward planning science teacher, Rochester NY Eclipse Division
• Herbert Fingarette philosopher on death and being 97
• Today. I'm a volunteer steward / marshal / provost / guide / sign-post for The Blackstairs Cycle Challenge. The Blob sez my last such session was 5 years ago. This time I'm bringing a pump, spanners, a HiViz jacket, string, duck-tape . . .
  

New for Old

Roy the Plumber came as promised on Wednesday: third time lucky because Mon and Tuesday were giving stormy weather and he prioritized indoor jobs elsewhere. The forecast for Weds was not manifestly better, but he came anyway at 08:50hrs with all the kit to replace a) the submersible pump b) the old topside pressure cylinder c) the grit-filter d) most of the brass fittings e) the 28 years submersed electric cable. We were allowed to keep the ¾" = 20mm water pipe (L laid out on the grass, taped to a new ½" = 12mm polypropylene rope). 

Roy set to the outdoor work first, which was an astute move because, within minutes of finishing that half of the game, the drizzle drifted in from the North. But not before I was able to rummage up an old tarpaulin to cover the matériel which had been spilled across the grass out of the back of the plumber's van. It you think my desk-drawers  or my tool-shed is a mess, you should check out the vans of anyone of our five sequential plumbers. There is some organization in the hape because they always seem to be able to find whatever unexpected tool or fitting that the job requires. First thing obvs is to haul up the old pump and pipework. When the bore hole was clear of clobber, it was possible / necessary to plumb the depths. 

When it was drilled in 1996, water started to flow from the orifice at about 15m, but the drillers kept going down and down because "the flow isn't sufficient". They finally stopped at 34m or 113ft in old money. The drill sections came in 10ft lengths; except for the first which had 3ft of working bit on the business end. Drillers adopt a "I've started so I'll finish" protocol: if they've gone through the faff of hauling the rig up to install a new section, then they go down the full length of that pipe. Wells are thus . . . 73ft or 113ft or 173ft  . . . deep. The bore-hole cost, old money, £4.00 a foot.

In 2024, the well is 99½ ft deep. In 1996, the pump was suspended 76½ ft down. For reasons not entirely clear, 5 ft = 150 cm was trimmed off the pipe on Weds, so the pump is now suspended 28 ft = 8½ m above the sediment. Which, after nearly 30 years is a geological ~4 m thick. We're all guessing that sedimentation is not linear: most of the grit / sand /sludge was washed out of the rock-fissures in the late 1990s and things have reached a steady state by now. Interestingly whenever were have the cover off to look into the bore-hole [as R] you can see the water surface glinting an arm's length down. As in 2019 when we had the water tested for free.

The electrical cable is not taped to the rope. Which was interesting because heretofore I've thought that the rope was a bit redundant: y' could surely lower the pump down (and haul it up using the power cable and/or the water pipe. That was until I got to play with the old pump and the new one [guess which is which? L]. Those lads are heavy: at least 15 kg. It is entirely possible that the connexions would rip out under the weight. If not immediately then over time. Like with sinking the drill bit, getting the pump up and down is work and you want to have as much as possible of the workings topside where they can be diagnosed, fixed or replaced - capacitor for example.

We're back to 21stC normal now. Water comes gushing at the turn of several available taps, both t'ilets fill their cisterns without a thought.So little heed have been paying to the inestimably wonderful resource - and for all my life - that I thoughtlessly flushed the t'ilet twice before I re[s]trained myself. I was alone in the house of 8 of those tap-waterless days, so I was able to lower the standards on generating dishes and pans for washing. And putting socks over the faucets to stop me being thoughtless. Still-and-all, I doubt I've acquired Giardia, Schistosoma,  Onchocerca or Fasciola from drinking crystal clear rain water from a bucket. Which is not the case in Somalia hmmm.

Our bucket economy

25 years ago Lilliput Press published Lives Less Ordinary 32 Irish Portraits by Peter Morgan and Judy Kravis (1999). It's still in print but you can get 2nd hand copies for £5 or thereabouts. It's an amazing record of alternative folk living their own peculiar dream in the later 20thC. I've mentioned the book before especially wrt the chapter about Judith Hoad who lived in a remote cottage without indoor plumbing.

We have, so, indoor plumbing; although Old Ray, who died out of the house in 1994, managed without those amenities for 50 years. When we came with our modern ways and two small children we had a bore-hole drilled and sunk a submersible pump 100 ft =30m below grade. From that central heating was installed so we had hot&cold running water, not only in the house but also in two sheds - and a stand-pipe in the yard for watering walkers and sheep. On Sunday 7th Apr, the water stopped running. Even after I cleaned out the sclerotic pressure valve, the pump would switch off a couple of minutes after reset.

I called Roy the plumber and he came (in the drizzle) the next day for a scoping visit. He has promised to come today to sink the new submersible pump and connect it up.

We are not strangers to waterlessness because, like, the submersible pump runs on electricity and maintenance- or storm-scheduled power cuts stop all taps. It's all do-able for a few days so long as fore-thought has provided some back-up drinking water in bottles. It's disconcertingly convenient to have a 'lec'kettle that works next to a tap that don't. During our bucket week we instituted a parallel system for kettles on the wood-burning stove: 1) for drinking and cooking water 2) for washing and hottle bottles. But it's been well soggy this weather and we're getting hectolitres of clean clear rain water captured by 150 sq.m. of polytunnel roof -  I'd have no compunction about drinking that . . . ignoring the leaves. It is comical to imagine over-educated, over-aged me tottering down the steps from the tunnel with a bucket in each claw.

All good fun until, like a bucket-economy friend of ours in The West, who on the morning To The Compost trip, went all literal and tripped dropping >!kaPLOOSH!< the brimming family pee-bucket at the head of the stairs. Mercifully 'e didn't follow the bucket on down.

Roti and reading

Before Easter, I was alone at home [agane: nobody luvs meeee] tasked to make a hella gurt stack of Knockroti, in anticipation of the appearance of Dau.I and Dau.II from Dublin. You know how teenage boys can make short work of an 800g sliced pan & 250g of butter at RT°C, so long as a toaster is available? My family will give them a run for their money - and no toaster need apply: ignoring that universal advice of never eat anything longer than a child's leg or bigger than your own head. It's busy work but not mentally taxing, so it's a good time to ear-book a podcast or something from Borrowbox. My cupboard was bare on both these fronts so I downloaded more-or-less the first non-fiction book that was a) available now b) not a diet book written by an influencer.

As you see above, the Roti shift was productive. The rando borro boxxo was [surprisingly?] on message:

 . . . Failosophy: A Handbook For When Things Go Wrong by Elizabeth Day. I'd never 'eard of 'er - or her book. But it turns out that Day [b. 1978] is a British journalist and book-writer who was raised in Derry (where her Dad was a surgeon in Altnagelvin Hospital) and, in the 00s wrote for a rash of different papers in London. Then in 2018, she launched a podcast How to Fail with Elizabeth Day which turned out to be phenomenally successful. Failosophy is her publisher's second bite at that gravy train.

The conceit of the podcast is that Celeb is contacted in advance and invited to jot down three life-changing failures. If these notes meet some sort of threshold, research is done and Celeb invited in to be grilled about the life lessons.There is no requirement to sort between fale and pech fails. These two Dutch words apparently mean "I booted my driving test by mounting the pavement while reversing round a corner" = fale and "My father was killed when a block of frozen urine crashed through his Heathrow-adjacent greenhouse" = pech. You can imagine yourself learning from the former; from the latter, nt so much.

Lemn Sissay, Brenda Hale, Nigel Slater and Malcolm Gladwell are among those who have featured both on this podcast and The Blob. There is an arresting clip from the interview with Mo Gawdat, whose 21 y.o. son died under the knife during a routine bit of surgery. Asked if he was devastated by the loss, Gawdat answered [paraphrase!] "Sure, of course we're gutted, but I spend more time reflecting on the wonderful two decades during which Ali was the light of our lives". What matters is not the crappy hands which life deals you; it's how you play the cards you get.

Half April 2024

Bits and bobs

• Restorative book binding [Bbinding prev] 
• More?19thC ledger deconstructed, cleaned, re-bound
  
• Ugly tools? Toss 'em - not the lovely nipping press obvs
  
• Sears Modern Homes 1920s Amazon
• Squaring off a beam by adze
• Maker: sharp knives made by one pair of hands. 
  
• 12 cords of firewood delivered weighs 17.2 tonnes
• The Temple Bar jigsaw
• Château Hayes: Bourgeois architect revealed: commissioned by Marquis Archard de la Haye 1782
• Byker - Grade II listed ASBOs? We used to live half a mile North of Byker when it was still more-or-less maintained by the Council - when Councils still had money for maintenance. Byker prev (archives edition)
• The Russians / Narcs are coming. Need more sailors! The MV Matthew story completely passed me by in Sept last year
• Michael Sheen [Prev] in the red jersey. We've seen him
• speak through the earthquake, wind, and fire, for Qatar . . . now
• still, small voice of calm for Leo