Somerset villages

Driving from Cornwall to Kent recently, I noted a couple of interesting place names. Both are Somerset villages.

Queen Camel is a strange name. ancestry.co,uk gives us this which, IMO, verges on gibberish:

Camel Name Meaning

English and French: from the word denoting the animal, Norman French came(i)l, Latin camelus, classical Greek kamelos. The surname may have arisen from a nickname denoting a clumsy or ill-tempered person. It may also be a habitational name for someone who lived at a house with a sign depicting a camel. English: from an assimilated pronunciation of Campbell. English: possibly a habitational name from Queen Camel and West Camel in Somerset, Camel(le) in Domesday Book (1086), possibly a Celtic name from canto- ‘border’, ‘district’ and mel ‘bare hill’. Probably an Americanized spelling of Kamel.

King Henry III's wife Eleanor of Provence apparently owned land in the area in the 13th century and perhaps she's the Queen in the name. If so, why not Queen's Camel? Or Camel Queen?

John Leland, a renowned 16th century English historian, apparently believed that the village was the site of King Arthur's final battle. Wasn't Arthur a legend? Could this be the origin of fake news? However, it appears that the village is in the electoral ward of Camelot. Who knew? I passed quickly by, in case I met any ill-tempered people. Or camels.

Compton Paucefoot is even more odd. The only thing I found about Pauncefoot was Wikipedia telling us of "a Norman knight called Pauncefote ('Fat-bellied')" but there's nothing I could discover to corroborate that. There is also a Bentley Pauncefoot in Worcestershire so maybe quite a few fat-bellied knights roamed the English countryside in medieval times. A Compton is thought to refer to a farmstead in a narrow valley and it seems there are lots of those in this part of the world: Compton Martin, Compton Dundon, Compton Dando and Compton Bishop are all in Somerset.

I grew up reading about and following the exploits of the great Middlesex and England cricketer Denis Compton. Anyone as old as me will remember his exuberant, dashing and fleet-footed batting. He was the Mikhail Baryshnikov of cricket. He scored 5,807 runs (18 centuries) in 78 Test matches for England at an average of 50.1. In all first class matches he scored 38,942 runs (123 centuries) at an average of 51.0. Anyone with a knowledge of cricket will know that these are outstanding figures. He was also a very serviceable left arm spinner, available as an option when the regular bowlers were struggling to take wickets. As was common in the 1930s and 1940s, many full-time cricketers played cricket in the summer and football in the winter. Compton did so and won a League title and FA Cup winners medal with Arsenal. Argentina has a reasonable cricket team so maybe you'll see Lionel Messi turning out for them in between belting in goals for his new club.

Compton was a Player. That seems an odd thing to say but, until 1962, there were two categories of cricketer in England. The Players were the professionals and their names were shown on the scorecards with their initials following their surname, e.g  Compton D.C.S. The Gentlemen were amateurs and their initials preceded their surname, as in M.J.K. Smith (himself a double international for England at cricket and rugby union).

Denis had a brother, Leslie, who also played for Middlesex (although not for England) at cricket and Arsenal at football - with two caps for England. As I recall, he was what is known these days as a "no nonsense" centre half. Meaning basically "you might get the ball past me; you might get yourself past me, but certainly not both".

Those were the days.

Speaking of strange place names, any guesses at the origins of Cuckoo-Down-Lane, a footpath in Whitstable in Kent? I walked along it and saw no cuckoos, down or otherwise.

Rucks, mauls and scrums

For the last three Saturdays I have been watching rugby. It's a sport which I really don't enjoy or understand, for reasons which will become apparent. I've been entertaining my dear friend Tony, who is a rugby fan when it concerns England or the British and Irish Lions; club rugby, not so much. Unlike me and football, where the club game is everything and England a mere sideshow.

I should clarify: rugby union, as opposed to rugby league. The latter is a game played by Northerners with supporters in cloth caps

the former played by Southern Softies in front of cravat-wearing observers. More on rugby league in due course. For the moment, I shall mean rugby union when I discuss 'rugby'. Played with a strange shaped ball, just to annoy the players when it bounces.

There are some aspects of rugby which can be thrilling. The sight of the backs flinging the ball to each other in a fast sequence which ends up with the winger flying past his (or her; I'm told the fairer sex plays this brutal game) opponent is a sight to behold. However, only a couple of times in the latest three matches did that happen and most of the game is spent with the forwards pushing and shoving each other in a 16-person melee

which is variously described as a ruck, maul or scrum.Basically a war fought with swords, pikes and fists rather than the elegance of the fly half who uses drones and the swiftness of the wingers who use tanks. The scrum half, by the way, is a spy who uses intelligence, cunning and deception.

When the referee awards a scrum, as a result of some misdemeanour that is opaque to the average viewer, our eight forwards bend over and form a kind of fusion of a phalanx and a flying wedge (imagine a Christmas tree on its side),

the opposition does the same and the two groups, still bent over, huff and puff, grapple with and push against each other.

The ball is then inserted in the middle and the two armies compete to backheel it to their fleet-footed compatriots, who then attempt to play proper, running rugby.

The scrum is therefore a formal piece of action; when the two packs (as the forwards are often called) do their shoving against each other during a period of open play, the action is called a ruck. If the ball is one the floor. Or a maul. If the ball is held in one of the forward's hands. And if at least one of our mauling team is bound to at least one opposing mauler. Got it? Are you beginning to see why I find rugby baffling? In each of these three situations there are myriad laws, the breaking of which will lead to a penalty, free kick or another scrum. I told you it would get easier but I lied.

Rugby league solves the scrum problem by basically not having any. Except in rare circumstances, with which I shall not bore you. A situation which, in rugby union, would result in a scrum, results in a simple backheel without an opponent involved. It makes for a much more free-flowing game which is easier for the casual viewer - me - to comprehend.

One thing I do like about rugby is the refereeing. Firstly, they stand no nonsense from the players. In televised international games they have microphones, which means we can hear what they say to the players. Turns out they never stop talking

but it's apparently helpful for the players to know, for instance, that a maul has been formed. They are clear with the players about their reasons for making decisions. It's possible that football referees are too but we don't know because the referees are not miked up. Sadly.

The football season started yesterday. Ipswich Town

(check out the shirt sponsor) were first to earn the "same old, same old" tag as they couldn't keep a clean sheet and only drew at home.

Friday: the Premier League is back on TV; the long summer drought is over.

Fauda

Fauda is a Hebrew transliteration of an Arabic word meaning chaos. It is the title of an Israeli-produced thriller TV series streamed on Netflix. There are three seasons and I recently binge watched them. Written by Lior Raz and Avi Issacharoff, who had been undercover operators in the Israel Defence Force, it chronicles the undercover counter-terrorist activities of a Mista'arvim unit, led by Doron, the lead character played by Raz. Season 1 focuses on actions against Hamas in the West Bank, season 2 portrays ISIS infiltration of Hamas and thus the IDF and Hamas having a common enemy and season 3 takes place in Gaza. It's gritty, hard and often violent.

I enjoyed the series very much but in my mind I questioned how authentic it is in portraying everyday life and in particular the relative depictions of Israelis and Palestinians. Obviously I have no first hand knowledge on which to draw.

When starting a new TV series or watching a movie for the first time I avoid reviews; not so much for spoilers but to make up my own mind about it. Once finished I will often read those reviews, to see how the thoughts and opinions of others chime with mine but sometimes to figure out what went on in a particular scene or perhaps the ending. (I watched a movie Captive State last night and after nearly two hours I genuinely had no idea what had happened or whether I had assessed the ending correctly. It's such a flawed, rambling film that I can't recommend it.)

Many of the reviews of Fauda focussed on whether, as an Israeli-made programme, it gave a biased, even racist, view of events. There was no consensus and, as you might expect, a huge gap in interpretations. As far as I could see, I (as a totally independent observer) could not detect any bias. It follows the activities of Israeli soldiers and therefore shows Palestinians (at least as represented by Hamas) as the enemy, but that's inevitable in an Israeli production. The reasons for Palestinian hatred of the Jews/Zionists [their terminology] are clearly portrayed. The show certainly doesn't shy away from disastrous mistakes by the soldiers. Luna Mansour, one of the leading Palestinian actors in the show said of criticism she had received for taking part "Marwa and Samir [her character’s husband, who is portrayed by Amir Khoury] are so unique. They don’t care about revenge, they don’t care about bombs, terrorism, Israelis, Palestinians. All they care about is having each other, having a chance to live their life, having the chance to raise their baby together.”

The only thing I'd say is that I am no nearer understanding the extent to which Hamas is representative of the views of "ordinary" Palestinians; if anything, I'd say the impression given is that it is. My overall impression is, as the title suggests, of chaos; of an interminable conflict that makes the everyday lives of Palestinians in particular depressing at best, almost unlivable at worst.

I'm satisfied that I haven't been co-opted by this Israeli series into taking a pro-Israeli view of conflict in the Middle East. It's a well produced and well acted show that grips the viewer. The English version has subtitles for the Arabic dialogue and dubbing for the Hebrew. As with most dubbing, it's not great but there's nothing to be done about that. There is a fourth season planned and I don't think it's reached its sell by date yet, so I look forward to that. I recommend it.

As it happens I recently watched the movie Oslo, a film version of a stage play in which a Norwegian diplomat and her husband, who works for a humanitarian organisation, bring together representatives of the Israeli government and Palestinian officials in secret, in an attempt to broker a peace deal. It is based on the real life story leading to the Oslo Accords of 1993. As someone who was aware of the process at the time, it evoked memories and so was an enjoyable revisit. If you didn't know it was originally a stage play, you would guess it early on, as the characters stand still and make speeches to each other in a rather stiff manner. Having said that, it's a worthwhile two hour watch with plenty of drama. And Ruth Wilson.

Clustering

My Word of the Week is ... clustering. This came up in an article I read, actually from a year ago, about the economic benefits of clustering as an argument for encouraging office workers to return to the office rather than continuing to work from home. Ed Glaeser is the chairman of the Harvard economics department and he has written extensively about clustering, mostly to do with technological development and entrepreneurship of organisations, for instance in Silicon Valley.There is a lot of research on clustering in this context but I'd say the application of the theory to the benefits of interactive working, brainstorming and mutual motivation in offices are unproven, although in some situations seemingly obvious. And perhaps need to be measured against any benefits of working from home.

I read a definition of clustering:

The task of dividing the population or data points into a number of groups such that data points in the same groups are more similar to other data points in the same group than those in other groups.

OK. Mm. [thinking about that]

When I entered the last few of my teenage years, I wanted to be a mathematician. Looking back, I can surmise that I thought working with abstract concepts and numbers was more my thing than working with people. At the time, I believed that the cleverest people in the world were mathematicians - Pythagoras, Newton, Einstein, Turing - and I wanted to be one of them. Turned out I either wasn't clever enough or I came to think that data points were not as cool as I thought. It didn't stop me, by serendipitous opportunity, becoming a computer programmer.

Much has been written on the supposed connections between mathematics and music, so I suppose it was natural that I should gravitate to the latter, and more so that I would come to appreciate and admire the music of Schönberg and Webern and their development of dodecaphonic music, based on the twelve-tone technique, in the early twentieth century. Serialism takes the twelve notes of the chromatic scale in an order particular to the composition and makes versions of this sequence - inverted, reversed, transposed, etc. - the basis of the piece. The fact that the twelve notes are theoretically equal makes the harmonic outcome of the work different from earlier music, where notes such as the first, fourth and fifth of the major or minor scale are predominant.

If you are a fan of Mozart, Abba or Miles Davis, you may not enjoy listening to serialist music.

One of the most significant books I read about congruence between maths and music is Hermann Hesse's The Glass Bead Game. It's a futuristic book which suggests that education prioritising the two subjects, studying them alongside each other, provides a perfect synthesis of arts and science. Check it out!

Anyway, I'm not going back to the office cluster anytime soon. Let's check out some Webern:

It's actually rather soothing.

Masks and Biomes

14 months ago, when wearing a mask became compulsory on public transport in England, enforceable under law, I was dead against such legal compulsion on a libertarian basis: "let people make their own judgements on their own safety". I was wrong. I imagined that the primary purpose of wearing a mask was to protect the wearer; it swiftly became clear to me that it was for the protection of others and I changed my view.

So how do we calibrate the current situation where mask wearing is recommended indoors and on public transport but no longer mandatory? I imagine that it might be legally possible for a supermarket to only allow entrance to those with face masks but that's obviously not going to happen. I couldn't find any stats from supermarkets to tell me what percentage of customers are still wearing masks but my own observation is that something like 80% of adults (including me, and the staff) are wearing masks in my local Asda. Cornwall has an older population than some places but this includes summer visitors.

It makes sense to me that crowded indoor venues with minimal ventilation and low ceilings are likely to be places where the still ubiquitous coronavirus can spread quickly. So Mask=On.

Two days ago my friend Tony and I made our first visit to the Eden Project for three to four years. A joyous move towards a new normality? Maybe. Much of the eating, drinking and walking is outdoors, but should I wear a face mask in Eden's iconic Domes? Are they "indoors"? The Mediterranean Biome is 35 metres high with ventilation "used to control heat, airflow and humidity". The Rainforest Biome is 55 metres high, with that same ventilation. In terms of potential for virus spreading, how does that compare with an outdoor venue or, on the other hand, a supermarket or cinema (homex.com tells me "retail ceiling heights start at twelve feet and up")? We are not given this presumably quite significant information. Tony and I estimated somewhere between 15% and 25% of adults were wearing masks in the domes, which means that if I were to wear a mask it would be to protect the remainder, which seems public spirited, even though they are not protecting me, which doesn't.

The UK Government's recently-updated Ventilation of indoor spaces to stop the spread of coronavirus (COVID-19) guidance is of no use whatsoever, giving generalisations such as "Avoid spending time with people you do not live with in spaces with a limited flow of fresh air, such as rooms without ventilation or windows that are never opened." Do the domes have an acceptable flow of fresh air? I don't know.

The  Eden Project FAQs say "We strongly recommend that you continue to wear a face covering in appropriate areas, as indicated by signage on site." The signs around the site have basically the same "we advise you to wear masks indoors" warning as do supermarkets. The same FAQ page is headed by an image showing a family apparently leaving the biomes with no masks.

I spent my time in the biomes dithering between =On and =Off. Mask=On where it got crowded, =Off particularly in the Rainforest Biome where it was hot and muggy. I really don't know where I am on this. I just know that I'm sufficiently uncertain about this venue that I won't be going there again any time soon.

Bring back compulsion! 😒

News in Brief

It's a crazy world. We know that. Maybe even crazier for an old guy like me who finds some aspects of modern life baffling. I spotted a few weird/mildly interesting things in today's news. Some of them barely need a comment from me but comments from readers are always welcome, occasionally amusing and generally stimulating and thoughtful.

The owner of an American bulldog (that's a breed, not a nationality) accused the government of "dog racism" after Lola, her dog, was seized by police because she "looked like a dangerous dog".

A professor from Yale University claims that construction of Machu Picchu started in 1420 rather than in 1440 as the Spanish had claimed. A spokesperson for the Spanish Government suggested that maybe Professor Burger might have better spent the last 20 years of his life sailing the world and looking for the Loch Ness Monster and the lost continent of Atlantis.

[Comments in italics are editorial]

Dr Zoe Muller of the University of Bristol studied the herd behaviour of giraffes and concluded that their social groups include older animals acting as "grandmothers", helping to bring up the young. Presumably as the parents go out to work. Dr Muller found that female giraffes live for about 10 years after they are no longer capable of giving birth, leading her to suggest "there must be some evolutionary advantage". Otherwise they'd die straight after their last child, Zoe? An old, female giraffe at Bristol Zoo claimed compensation on the basis that it had been "a dig at my age".

A 12 year old Japanese girl won a silver medal for the women's park skateboarding event. Mr Wiki tells us (I'm still giving him my £5 a month) "park skateboarding encompasses a variety of sub-styles adopted by those who ride skateboards in purpose-built skate parks. Most skate parks combine halfpipes and quarterpipes with various other "vert" skateboarding features as well as "street" obstacles such as stairs, ledges, and rails." Whatever all those words mean. Plans for a Junior Olympics have now been put in the same place as for a Senior Olympics: in the bin. Quite right, don't want any ageism.