Four Generals and an Admiral

Some years ago we lived in High Wycombe. Ever since, my sons and I have - with more or less consistency and enthusiasm - supported, or at least taken occasional interest in, the local football team, Wycombe Wanderers.

Gareth Ainsworth's seven years as manager of the club makes him the longest serving manager in the professional leagues in England. He works fantastically well with the players, using a group of long serving senior players, who he calls his "four generals", to create and maintain squad unity. Vital given that, having very little cash, the club has each year had to bed in a group of loan players.

The latest loan player is a 19 year old striker Admiral Muskwe, a Zimbabwean International from Leicester. I've never heard of anyone called Admiral although I often given that moniker to my friend Tony, in honour of his service in the Royal Navy (although not quite at that rank).

Apparently there was a burst of popularity for this name in the USA for a few years around 1900, perhaps due to the Spanish-American War, but close to zero since then. Admiral as a baby's name was ranked number 11,433 in 2017 according to babycenter.com, although number 394 in 1898. I found a site listing the 50 most popular baby names in Africa but no Admiral. Sadly, I have no further info. If you know of anyone called Admiral, please let me (and my hundreds of readers) know.

Other names which boomed in popularity after the Spanish-American War included Maine, Manila and Havana (all girls). Could have been worse, for example Guam.

I've not heard of anyone being named St Austell. Except for the Saint, of course.

Anyway, the boy played really well in today's 4-1 victory in the FA Cup. Here he is, speaking during the period last May when football was inactive.

What else did these designers and engineers build?

Gustav Eiffel, in addition to building a small tower somewhere, built various bridges for the French railways, notable the Garabit viaduct in the Massif Central region of France. He later became involved in the financial scandal of the Panama Canal.

George Ferris - George Washington Gale Ferris Jr - built a little wheel

for the World's Columbian Exposition in Chicago in 1893. He also designed and inspected railroad bridges, trestles, and tunnels, none of which were famous or spawned hundreds of imitations.

In addition to building steamships, railways, dockyards, bridges

and tunnels, Isambard Kingdom Brunel designed and built a pre-fabricated hospital for use in the field in the Crimean War.

As well as taking a bath and shouting "Eureka", Archimedes designed a screw, to pump water uphill.

Leonardo da Vinci is known for well, doing everything.

Most remarkably, he died at the age of 67, when the average lifespan at the time was around 35. I guess he was just too busy to die.

George Stephenson built the first public inter-city railway line between Liverpool and Manchester in 1830. His chosen rail gauge became a modern standard. Later in life he built deep coal mines using a technique called tubbing. And made a pile of money.

Elon Musk is most recently well known for space rockets which can land on their backsides but he made his fortune as founder of PayPal, when it was bought by eBay.

Charles Babbage is credited with the invention of the mechanical computer. He was also a writer; in his On the Economy of Machinery and Manufactures of 1832 he exposed the restrictive practices of book publishers and called them a cartel.

Thomas Alva Edison is known for development of the phonograph, the motion picture camera, and the electric light bulb, but he also collaborated with Henry Ford and David Firestone on the Edison Botanic Research Corporation, which was created to find a domestic source for organic rubber.

Clever people.

Seven pieces

Progress report on my Starry Night jigsaw puzzle. Today I fitted in seven pieces. Other than the first day making the borders, this is a daily record. Doesn't sound impressive? Believe me, this puzzle is a nightmare. No pun intended.

So far I have completed 194 of the 1,000 pieces. So 806 to go. At seven a day that would take 

days, meaning I would finish the puzzle on 2 May. However, there are many days when I don't do any pieces; I look at the jigsaw and give myself the choice of three options:

1. Persist until the end
2. Pack the puzzle up and tell MiceElf (who gave me the  puzzle) that I finished it and forgot to take a photo
3. Invite my friend Tony to bring his dog Lily round for a cup of tea, which will undoubtedly result in Lily leaping onto the coffee table and scattering the pieces all over the room (as happened once before)

Of course, maths would tell you that, for each piece added, the time taken to position the next piece would be increasingly less (because there is one space less to fill). So maybe before May!

So far, I have continued to pursue option 1. In my Cursing Van Gogh post in October 2020, I announced that "this puzzle is going to take me until Christmas to complete". I didn't say which Christmas.

7 Pieces is an album by American jazz composer and arranger Jimmy Giuffre in 1959. I couldn't find a recording of this album but here's Jimmy on tenor sax a year earlier:

I just love those harmonies.

There is a series of two books, the series called Seven Pieces, by Helena Field. It is described as a "A Reverse Harem Fantasy ". I can't imagine what that means. 

You should hear this

This from the Washington Post site today. It's excerpts from a telephone call from President Trump to Georgia Secretary of State Brad Raffensperger and Raffensperger's general  counsel Ryan Germany. You can read more details on the site at:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/trump-raffensperger-call-georgia-vote/2021/01/03/d45acb92-4dc4-11eb-bda4-615aaefd0555_story.html. There's a paywall but you can get a short-term free access - for five articles, I think.

Humpty Dumpty

Humpty a giant egg sitting on a wall? No. ripleys.com tells us "According to a number of military historians, Humpty Dumpty was the name of a cannon used by the Royalists during the English Civil War.

The conflict raged from 1642 to 1649, and in June of 1648, Humpty Dumpty was stationed on the walls of Colchester. It was one of several cannons erected to try and keep Parliament’s army from taking the city. The next month, however, the Parliamentary forces heavily damaged the walls beneath Humpty Dumpty with their own artillery. You can guess where this is going: Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, and broke into pieces."

The image of Humpty as an egg derives from Lewis Carroll's Through the Looking-Glass.

Nursery rhymes often cause dispute amongst historians as to their origins and meanings. Take this:

Mary Mary quite contrary,
How does your garden grow?
With silver bells and cockle shells
And pretty maids all in a row 

Some will tell you that Mary referred to Mary Tudor, silver bells to thumb screws, cockle shells to a genital torture device and the pretty maids were in fact lining up to be executed by the Halifax Gibbet (a guillotine). Perfect for your toddlers.

Others that the silver bells stood for Catholic Cathedral bells, the cockle shells stood for the pilgrimage to Spain and the pretty maids in a row stood for a row of nuns. Not much more suitable.

Why did our mothers teach us to recite this garbage?

I'm particularly averse to:

It’s raining, it’s pouring
The old man is snoring
He went to bed and he bumped his head
And couldn’t get up in the morning

Scary and depressing. Is this how kids see their grandpas?

Here's another particularly upsetting one:

Rock-a-bye, baby,
In the tree top.
When the wind blows,
The cradle will rock.
When the bough breaks,
The cradle will fall,
And down will come baby,
Cradle and all

Are they trying to tell us life is hard, and may well be short? I'm not even going to mention Jack and Jill. Or Miss Muffet. Or Solomon Grundy, a tale for pandemic times. Ugh.

But I'll end with a chuckle. This version of a rhyme is common:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor doggie a bone,
When she got there
The cupboard was bare
So the poor little doggie had none

This less so, but much more fun:

Old Mother Hubbard
Went to the cupboard
To get her poor daughter a dress.
But when she got there
The cupboard was bare
And so was her daughter, I guess!

Am I Benjamin Button, reverting to childhood?

When the year ends in one

Remember Chas & Dave? You'd have to be of a certain age. Purveyors of a musical style called rockney - cockney rock. You can imagine. In the late 70s and early 80s. According to Mr W Pedia "their major breakthrough being "Gertcha" in 1979, which peaked at No. 20 in the UK Singles Chart". So not rock royalty.

Anyway, they are perhaps best known for their football music. As supporters of Tottenham Hotspur, they were the backing musicians on When the Year Ends in One, a single featuring the Spurs football team, celebrating their success in winning the 1991 FA Cup, which reached number 44 in the charts:

It was nineteen hundred and one when Tot'nam first got there
They were in the final, it was a grand affair
Sheffield United scored a goal but finished runners up
Cameron, Smith and Brown scored three as Spurs took home the Cup

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

Then in nineteen twenty one again was Tot'nam's year
Jinkin' Jimmy Dimmock scored the winner 'ere
Wolver'ampton Wanderers never scored at all
Spurs 'ad won the Cup again by playin' good football

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

In the sixty one Cup Final, first time on Wembley turf
Damn near proved to ev'ryone they were the best team on Earth
They won the Wembley final, and they were the first to do
the Double, 'cos they ended up League Champions too

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

Now it's nineteen ninety one but let us not forget
ten years ago, who won the Cup in eighty one, you bet
It was Tot'nam 'otspur, when Ossie's dream come true
Now it's nineteen ninety one the Spurs know what to do

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

Altogether now,

It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
They first won the Cup when the century begun
It's lucky for Spurs when the year ends in one
So this is the year for Spurs

Now there are some flaws in this notion. Tottenham also won the Cup in 1962, 1967 and 1982. And they didn't win it in a number of "ending in one" years, including most recently 2001 and 2011. But nothing will stop their fans living in hope every ten years. So I invite all my readers to sing along with Chas & Dave at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Ddjdlqf7vo&ab_channel=sunderlandspur

Art it's not, but it's a jolly song.

UPDATE: I tried embedding the video; hope it works:

Spurs start their campaign to win the 2021 FA Cup on 10 January, away to the lowest ranked team left in the tournament - Marine, a Merseyside club that currently plays in the Northern Premier League Division One North West. I think that's six leagues below Tottenham. Will it be the year ending in one, or January ending in the biggest shock of all time?

I feel a Zoom singalong comin' on...