Castle Aching

[Hroth]

55 minutes ago, Northroader said:

 

Then again, this sort of vehicle would be needed

 

for this sort of pie:

 

I've always thought that stargazy pies are a bit morbid!

 

Getting back on track (HoHo), there are a number of threads discussing the work of Mike Sharman who died recently.  One of the items posted was a link to a youtube video of his broad/standard gauge layout, which is well worth watching.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pquYCNKQy70

 

Look out for the segment starting 6 minutes in where Mike discusses his model of a Hackworth locomotive that is a sister to Derwent!

 

 

[Edwardian]

4 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Which, in a roundabout way, brings us back to The PM, who got in one of his muddles (= made things up) about red-tape restricting pork pie globalisation.

 

Today cannot have been a great day for our PM, compared, by Learned Counsel, to a dishonest estate agent.

 

Still, could be worse, at least he's not the Prime Minister of Canada ...

 

 

[Nearholmer]

AVS

 

That I can well understand.

 

In times of yore (the mid-70s), I often used to cycle Crowborough to Rolvenden, spend a day bashing away at a loco, then cycle back. Sometimes, I even used to do both Saturday and Sunday. Scenic, but blasted hilly, c25 miles and c1400ft of uphill, in each direction, plus another 200ft to go to Tenterden for lunch, I just checked.

 

I was then a bit younger than your "handle" suggests you are now, so fairly fit, but it was still a major cause of my short period of motorcycling, before I reverted to pedalling when I moved to a less inclined location.

 

K

Edited September 19, 2019 by Nearholmer

[brack]

8 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

compared, by Learned Counsel, to a dishonest estate agent.

Steady on, now nobody likes a dishonest estate agent, but to insult a profession of dishonest conmen, just trying to make a dishonest living off humble folk in need of a home in such a way is surely beyond the pale...

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, brack said:

Steady on, now nobody likes a dishonest estate agent, but to insult a profession of dishonest conmen, just trying to make a dishonest living off humble folk in need of a home in such a way is surely beyond the pale...

 

Fair enough. Let's not mock the homeless and confused .... 

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

6 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Is it just me or are current affairs now firmly in deeply surreal territory?

 

Today I learnt that “We have now shared in written form a series of confidential technical non-papers" [emphasis added]

 

I wondered what, technically, a "non-paper" might be.  I think I've found an historical precedent  ....

 

 

 

 

 

However "peas in our time" did lead indirectly to the Woolton pie which in a way shows that there may have been a grain of truth in it.

[nick_bastable]

37 minutes ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

 

However "peas in our time" did lead indirectly to the Woolton pie which in a way shows that there may have been a grain of truth in it.

at least Chamberlain bought enough time to rearm and prepare unlike the present mob 

 

With the way its going  having been refused a Yorkshire passport and a Irish one I may have to go nuclear and apply for asylum in France   well I can see it from here at least 100 days/nights a year  and having worked for a French company for may years their work life balance is very good

 

Mean while in the real world the kids around the world are actively trying to improve and change important matters  I would hope Ms E is on board  I applauded  them all

 

Nick

Edited September 20, 2019 by nick_bastable
rant

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

10 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

a miniature (failed) Jurassic Park, or Pond with "iridescent fossils originating in the mid to late Oxfordian age of the Late Jurassic. 

 

 

 

Some academic attire can be so colourful.

[Hroth]

6 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Today cannot have been a great day for our PM, compared, by Learned Counsel, to a dishonest estate agent.

 

Surely a tautology, the calling runs close to that of "used car salesman" as a source of terminological inexactitude.

 

6 hours ago, Edwardian said:

Fair enough. Let's not mock the homeless and confused .... 

 

Steady on!

Perhaps we should retreat to Star Wars as a mode of expression... 

 

4 hours ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

However "peas in our time" did lead indirectly to the Woolton pie which in a way shows that there may have been a grain of truth in it. 

 

We're encouraged to consume less animal protein nowadays, so Woolton Pie should once more find its place on the Nations dining tables.  https://the1940sexperiment.com/2016/03/13/the-original-lord-woolton-pie-recipe-no-151/

 

 

1 hour ago, Malcolm 0-6-0 said:

Some academic attire can be so colourful.

 

In many ways it reminds me of Spoonerisms.

[Edwardian]

5 hours ago, nick_bastable said:

... having worked for a French company for may years their work life balance is very good

 

 

 

International law firms have something of a macho Anglo-American work culture.  I remember that we Associates often congratulated ourselves, roundabout Tuesday, for having already done "a French week".

 

1 hour ago, Hroth said:

 

Steady on!

Perhaps we should retreat to Star Wars as a mode of expression... 

 

 

If there is anyone out there who does not believe our latest PM is a joke, I apologise unreservedly to them. 

 

It's just that satirical analogy can only take one so far; in Stars Wars the Empire was in control. 

 

But you're right, I should stay away from overt references.

 

 

5 hours ago, nick_bastable said:

at least Chamberlain bought enough time to rearm and prepare unlike the present mob 

 

 

 

Au contraire, I see evidence that the PM is making his preparations .... 

 

 

But, seriously, there is no place here for overt political content, so here's a completely unconnected picture that just happens to be of a hapless buffoon who managed somehow to destroy democracy ..... 

 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Edwardian
spelling!

[TheQ]

8 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Today cannot have been a great day for our PM, compared, by Learned Counsel, to a dishonest estate agent.

 

Still, could be worse, at least he's not the Prime Minister of Canada ...

 

 

It wouldn't have been so bad if he had the intelligence to know, Arabs (as in Alladin) are for the most part are heavily tanned whites.. PS does that mean strictly come dancing should be banned because they all wear tan make up?

Edited September 20, 2019 by TheQ

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, TheQ said:

PS does that mean strictly come dancing should be banned because they all wear tan make up?

 

If only 'twere so.....

 

 

[Compound2632]

Derby official of the day, seeing as how dubious theatricals and attitudes to women's suffrage have been alluded to:

 

 

Railway Centenary Pageant, Liverpool, 1930. Other photos of the event depict Egyptian slaves, "red indians", highwaymen, and Sir Josiah Stamp - was the theme the perils of pre-railway travel?

 

NRM DY 16758, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.

Edited September 20, 2019 by Compound2632
Correcting inability to write coherently this morning.

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

But, seriously, there is no place here for overt political content, so here's a completely unconnected picture that just happens to be of a hapless buffoon who managed somehow to destroy democracy ..... 

 

Jar Jar Gove, its a pity he's NOT a Phantom Menace......

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

12 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

Derby official of the day, seeing as how dubious theatricals and attitudes to women's suffrage have been alluded to:

 

 

Railway Centenary Pageant, Liverpool, 1930. Other photos of the event depict Egyptian slaves, "red indians", highwaymen, and Sir Josiah Stamp - was the theme the perils of pre-railway travel?

 

NRM DY 16758, released under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0) licence by the National Railway Museum.

 

Our ticket inspectors have been accused of that sort of behaviour  

[Donw]

6 hours ago, nick_bastable said:

 

Mean while in the real world the kids around the world are actively trying to improve and change important matters  I would hope Ms E is on board  I applauded  them all

 

Nick

 

While there are kids arguing for control of climate change the picture gained from a local footpath is quite different. The amount of litter is much greater during term times as it is a main route to and from school. The kids show little concern for either their local enviroment, wastage of food and packaging or their own health. I cannot believe these kids will grow up ready to adopt the sort of lifestyle which will be needed to restrict climate change.

 

Don

[Nearholmer]

I remain, as ever, baffled by Star Wars analogies but, by golly gosh did that Derby Official make me laugh.

 

I’ve spent far too long combing the London Transport photo archives, and they throw up some curious things (e.g. milking a cow in the ticket hall at Embankment station, to show ‘townies’ where milk comes from), but “the cave persons and dinosaur(?)” is waaay better.

[Edwardian]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

I remain, as ever, baffled by Star Wars analogies 

 

 

 

"In Star Wars much wisdom there is"

 

Or possibly not. 

 

The original trilogy will remain, for my generation, the Star Wars, though I suspect that Rogue One, a sort of spin-off from the main 9-film saga, will prove to be the best Star Wars film ever made. 

 

What we, as children, were presented with was High Adventure.  The films have little to do with science fiction, but are really examples of a revivified Space Opera genre. 

 

The original trilogy gives us the archetypal young hero - an orphaned ingénue unknowingly marked by Destiny as the Chosen One - the wise and powerful old surrogate father-figure who has to die (though magically reappears at a time of crisis) in order for the Young Hero to find the resolve and belief he needs, and the really scary villain, who represents the forces of Absolute Evil, whose triumph will engulf the fictional world in darkness. Then we have a smattering of characters equivalent to Shakespearian low-life buffoons to relieve the tension from time to time and jolly things along. After being plucked from obscurity, the Hero's journey must take him through suffering, temptation, self-knowledge/transformation and sacrifice before he fulfills his Destiny, vanquishing Evil and saving us all. 

 

You'd be forgiven for thinking that I was describing Tolkien's Lord of the Rings - in Sci-Fi terms It's also pretty much Frank Herbert's Dune, but there used to question the role of the Hero/Saviour - and that is because George Lucas's Star Wars story is a conscious application of US academic Joseph Campbell's "monomyth" theory.  Summarised simply, this is the assertion that all mythic narratives are variations of a single great story. Campbell was Professor of Literature at Sarah Lawrence College (Yonkers, New York), who worked in comparative mythology and comparative religion, and his theory was developed in response to what he saw as common patterns to most myths of diverse origin and culture. The term "monomyth", by the way, was borrowed by Campbell from James Joyce.     

 

This perceived commonality of the essence of myths is explained by Campbell by the idea, which he derived from Adolf Bastian's concept of the 'psychic unity of mankind', that, in modern parlance, we are all hard-wired in the same way to try to understand and explain the ineffable through metaphor.

 

The monomyth theory is somewhat out of fashion. In a world where our "gaze" is criticised where it is too western; there is a natural lack of sympathy with a theory that assumes that culture is generic, rather than diverse, particularly where its so-called generic qualities may be derived from western examples or a western perspective on other cultures. Another criticism made of the monomyth theory is that, by the time one has stripped away the culturally specific elements of a myth, what Bastian called Völkergedanken  ("folk ideas") to the expose the core components of the universal myth, one is left with categories so vague as to be meaningless.

 

George Lucas, the progenitor of the Star Wars films and universe,  is on record as an adherent of the monomyth theory.  As he tells it, when he read Campbell for the first time, he was startled to discover that his first draft of Star Wars already contained many of the monomyth motifs. Lucas seems to have taken this as a validation of the theory.  I suppose a less kind interpretation was that the Star Wars story was hopelessly unoriginal. Lucas decided to make a virtue out of coincidence, however, by revising the Star Wars story so that it more closely followed the monomyth or "Hero's Journey".    

 

Certainly, modern consciousness of the monomyth theory has made it a self-fulfilling prophesy, because Hollywood cannot and will not make a blockbuster without following its pattern. See all Super Hero films, for instance. 

 

However, Stars Wars for me will always be the redemptive scattering of star dust over the dull life of an unhappy child and I bloody love those films!

 

 

 

 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Edwardian
spelling!

[Northroader]

I think what Kevin means is that Star Wars didn’t get the imagery right.

[Edwardian]

32 minutes ago, Northroader said:

I think what Kevin means is that Star Wars didn’t get the imagery right.

 

Is it:

 

(a) The Death Star as conceived by Freemasons; or,

(b) A metaphor: "When one's gaze is fixed on the Stars, one can easily stumble into a ditch"?

[Hroth]

5 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Is it:

 

(a) The Death Star as conceived by Freemasons; or,

(b) A metaphor: "When one's gaze is fixed on the Stars, one can easily stumble into a ditch"?

 

(c) We could simplify that and call it a Saint

 

[Malcolm 0-6-0]

Well mono-myths they may be but the attack on the Death Star is a straight lift from the attack on the dams in the post war classic film The Dam Busters.

 

 

Edited September 20, 2019 by Malcolm 0-6-0

[Donw]

Star Wars never had much impact on us. It was released at a time when we were living a simple life in a rural area making a cottage habitable very much on a shoe string. However I can see echos in it other other things I have seen or read. The common thread or monomyth of the hero has to start with the Hero in a lowly position often in adverse circumstances so the reader/viewer can identify with the hero, he could have been me feeling. In our macho world the hero is normally a he , for girls the Cinderella type story marrying a prince is more common. With the monomyth the wrapping is very imortant it sets the scene, definies the enemies and enhances the us verses them feeling. Its context makes it personal. 

The one problem with 'Hero' stories is the assumption that having slain the dragon, saved the world or whatever its 'Happy Ever After' as though the rest of life would be a real breeze. (pause for hollow laugh). It strikes me that steering a good path through your whole life is the difficult thing and needs something extra 'Luck'.

 

Don

[Donw]

It may be good fun to ridicule Boris but for me having watched PMQs and Parliamentry debates the grim set of the faces on the opposition front bench opposite when they are criticised worries me more.  I do not look forward to any of them taking power.  This is not about policies it is about the people.

 

Don

[Edwardian]

14 minutes ago, Donw said:

Star Wars never had much impact on us. It was released at a time when we were living a simple life in a rural area making a cottage habitable very much on a shoe string. However I can see echos in it other other things I have seen or read. The common thread or monomyth of the hero has to start with the Hero in a lowly position often in adverse circumstances so the reader/viewer can identify with the hero, he could have been me feeling. In our macho world the hero is normally a he , for girls the Cinderella type story marrying a prince is more common. With the monomyth the wrapping is very imortant it sets the scene, definies the enemies and enhances the us verses them feeling. Its context makes it personal. 

The one problem with 'Hero' stories is the assumption that having slain the dragon, saved the world or whatever its 'Happy Ever After' as though the rest of life would be a real breeze. (pause for hollow laugh). It strikes me that steering a good path through your whole life is the difficult thing and needs something extra 'Luck'.

 

Don

 

This is what is so interesting about the popularity of Game of Thrones.  Multiple leading characters (killed off with unsettling frequency) in a conflict not anchored in any moral dualism.  Whether people like it simply because it's Tolkien with T1ts, I don't know, but it is a cynical world of moral relativism and I think that is what sets it apart  As such, I would bet that had it been a potential Hollywood film script, it would have been turned down flat. 

 

4 minutes ago, Donw said:

It may be good fun to ridicule Boris but for me having watched PMQs and Parliamentry debates the grim set of the faces on the opposition front bench opposite when they are criticised worries me more.  I do not look forward to any of them taking power.  This is not about policies it is about the people.

 

Don

 

Indeed; there are clearly many who fear no-deal exit as a catastrophe, but who consider that a Corbyn premiership would be an even greater one.  For me the choice between two extremes of populism, as now represented by the two main parties, seems to me to be no choice at all.   I think people would be well advised to abandon tribalism for rationality when making a choice.  But, hey, that's just me!

 

Meanwhile, the children at least have noticed that there are rather larger and more pressing issues that we need to focus on.  My son had something to say about that yesterday. They are both at school today (attendance is a legal requirement, besides, Greta Thunberg doesn't pay their school fees, I do). 

 

But, I'll stop now I've done a David Cameron (already said too much)!