Tom Roper's Weblog

The Cambridgeshire

Oh, I wish I were at Newmarket on such a beautiful day. This must do

Newmarket 155: Steeler
Newmarket 225: Rosdhu Queen
Market Rasen 240: Bobowen
Newmarket 300: Elusive Kate
Newmarket 340: Click the Kite
Chester 440: Miss Cap Estel

Portez ce vieux whisky au juge blond qui fume

The young Melvil Dewey is supposed to have organised his mother's kitchen cupboards for her, showing the frame of mind that would make him the creator of the eneumerative classification scheme par excellence. For no very good reason, I decided to do the same with the drinks cupboard.  I present my findings below. Every bottle tells a story.

Apéritifs

Creme de Cassis (two bottles) for kir and kir royale. One is notable for being made a few miles from here, at the Breaky Bottom vineyard
Campari  (two bottles, naturally)
Fernet Branca
Gammel Dansk: Danish bitters, given to me by some veterinary library chums. 'Traditionally served at room temperature in small glasses for any occasion and at anytime throughout the day'. Am I alone in being a little alarmed at being told to drink it 'anytime throughout the day'?
Guignolet de Dijon: an apéritif made from wild cherries
Martini Rosso
Noilly Prat
Pedro Ximénez sherry
Pimms No 1 (two bottles)

Spirits

Bunnahabhain
Calvados (two bottles): apart from the trou normand, essential for faisan vallee d'Auge
Chivas Regal, a father's day present from my son, nearly empty
Cooking whisky
Gin: of course, I'm a librarian. This is Adnams Copper House
Quince vodka, of my own manufacture, two bottles from 2010, the last time I could find quinces in sufficient number
Vodka Limonnaya, nearly empty, bought in Moscow when the USSR was still the USSR
Wood's Old Navy rum

Digestifs

Crabbies ginger wine: my late mother had a prejudice against Stones. I think we inherited this bottle.
Creme de Menthe
Kirsch d'Alsace
Marsala
Orange Curacao: never opened
Oude Jenever
Poire William eau de vie
Port

Sundries

Angostura bitters (two bottles): we were one addicted to pink gins
A soda syphon
Two hip flasks, one tiny, one a decent size

Ayr Gold Cup

For today, in between reminiscing about the man I used to know who had been Picasso's bodyguard during his 1950 visit to England at an exhibition of photographs of the artist at play, and buying bread and meat, I made some selections, as follows:

210 Newmarket: Badr Al Badoor
235 Newbury: Master of War
245 Newmarket: Tamayuz Star
310 Newbury: Mister Music
330 Ayr: Maarek
355 Newmarket: Bernie the Bolt

 

What would a seaside town do with its only pub on the seafront?

If it's Seaford, why, knock it down to build flats, of course.

In which our hero borrows an e-book from the public library

I wish I could remember the first book I borrowed from Cambridge Children's Library, then at the rear of the Guildhall, opposite the Corn Exchange. I must have been four or five. I can remember the books I borrowed most frequently until I asked to be allowed to move on to the adult libray at eleven years old. The statutory age to be let loose with the D.H.Lawrences was fourteen. The books I read included most of the Tintin books, translations of the Aeneid and Odyssey, some Jennings stories, some books on birds whose titles I can't remember, some of John Verney's books, illustrated by Ardizzone, and so on; there must have been more, but the charging cards and pocket-tickets of the Browne issue system left no record.

More than fifty years later, I have just borrowed my first e-book from East Sussex public library. I decided to start reading the work of this David Foster Wallace chap, of whom the fashionable young people speak. Some of his novels were avaiable in hard copy, but I saw that one, the Pale King, was also available as an e-book. While I have been reading e-books for many years, since I first discovered Project Gutenberg in the mid-1990s, I have yet to borrow one from a library. So this is how it went:

1. I find the book in the East Sussex catalogue. I click on the link to the e-book and it takes me into a parallell world, the East Sussex Digital Library. There's a link to add it to my basket (how I hate the supermarket metaphor); I do so and am asked to sign in with my ticket number and PIN and there's a link to download it. Hurrah! That was easy.
2. I should have known. The link doesn't work. At the foot of the page is a link to the Overdrive app. I can't read the book with iBooks, or Stanza, which I already have. I have to use their proprietary software. Oh well, off to the App Store....
3. The Overdrive app installed, I return to download again. This time the link opens the app. Do I now have the text? No, that would be too easy. Now it wants my Adobe account. Have I got one? Blowed if I can remember. I try to register but it seems I do already have one, so I enter my e-mail and some possible passwords. One of them works.
4. Finaally, I have the text. I have twenty-one days to read it. There's nothing to say whether I can renew or not.

It was easier when you took your books up to the beehived young ladies behind the desk. I'm delighted to be able to borrow an e-book, but why make it so difficult? I can see that two levels of authentication are necessary, one to verify my membership of the library, and one for my Apple ID for iBooks. All the rest, Overdrive, Adobe and so on, seem to me utterly superfluous.

James Joyce and Samuel Beckett go racing

It's a big day at Leopardstown, the only racecourse to be mentioned, as far as I know, in the works of both James Joyce and Samuel Beckett. Can I do better than John Kirriemuir this time?

325 Haydock: Ortensia
345 Ascot: Field of Dreams
415 Ascot: Sun Central
440 Leopardstown: Emulous
545 Leopardstown: Snow Fairy

 

Poems from the Crypt

An evening of poetry at the Crypt Gallery on Wednesday 12 September, at 7:30 pm will take place as part of Seaford Live! 2012. Readers include:

• Peter Martin, reading from his collection, Ghost Music, poetry informed by the history of Seaford and the Cuckmere Valley
• Rachel Playforth, contributor to the Frogmore Papers. Rachel blogs at the spledidly named Toast in the Machine
  Robin Houghton,. Robin’s poems have been published in The Rialto, The North, Obsessed with Pipework, Iota, Agenda and others. Her poetry and musings blog is Poetgal.
• Ralph Taylor, reading from his late wife Pam Hughes's work, including her last collection, Shadows on the Downs

We also have Felicity Pogle, who has recently published a collection, and Patricia Adelman, who will read her own work and John Parry's. 

Other readers are welcome and there will be an open mic sessions as part of the evening. If you would like to read, contact me  [email protected] or 01323 873564.

Admission: £3, to include a glass of wine. 

The Crypt Gallery is at 23 Church Street, Seaford, BN25 1HE , just down the road from St Leonard’s Church. The building is less than three minutes walk from Seaford Railway Station and about five minutes walk from the sea front. Find it on Google Maps

 

Chester and Sandown

The first day of September, and as I go on my Saturday morning tour of butcher, baker and fishmonger, the members of the Seaford Bonfire Society are out in costume, a sure sign of autumn's approach. I feel confident about today's selections. I have the Racing Post iPad app on a month's free trial and these are the result of rigorous study of form, rather than my usual method, a quick skim of Spotlight's judgements, with the addition of memory and coincidence.

250 Sandown: Master of War
305 Chester: Verse of Love
325 Sandown: Lady's First
400 Sandown: Prussian