Destination X Series 2 Delayed

A thought hit me this morning. I remember that after the first series of Destination X the BBC announced that they would be commissioning a second series. Good stuff. SO I wondered whether it would be on this summer at around the same time that it was broadcast last year.

No no no no. Apparently there have been some significant hold ups behind the scenes. My sources did not give any hint about what these might be. With the upshot that the show won’t be back until some time in 2027.

It’s disappointing. I’m willing to accept that the delays, whatever they might be, are unavoidable, but leaving it so long between series really doesn’t help/ Anticipation for the series, any series, will only last for so long. Oh well.

One Zone to rule them all

Well, I have to say that I did rather enjoy yesterday evening’s quiz. If I sound surprised, well, it doesn’t reflect very well on me, but it’s because I really wasn’t expecting to. The setter only does a quiz once or twice a year. The setter seems to be strictly a social quizzer. Now, there’s no natural law which says that if you are not a good quizzer you cannot make a good quiz. In practice, though, I would say that you’re less likely to make a good quiz.

Put the rotten fruit down and hear me out on this.

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, let me state the purpose of making a quiz for the rugby club. It’s to give everyone playing in it or listening to it a good evening’s entertainment. If you do that, people will come again and come regularly, and provide the pub/club with a steady income on an otherwise slack week night. Everybody wins.

Well, doing this does require following some basic principles and not falling into some of the basic errors a question master can fall. Now, the best thing you can do to provide this entertainment is a wide variety of questions, of a variety of difficulties. Something for everyone.

Okay, so last night’s QM gave us themed rounds in 3 of the 8 rounds last night. The themes were Germany, China and, well, I forget what the other one was. Now for a themed round to work, you really have to have a feel for the level of the questions that you ask, because the nature of the beast is that you can end up asking questions that are far more difficult than you really want to be asking if you don’t want to turn off a lot of the players. Which I think our setter did last night. But hang on, Dave. Didn’t you say that you actually enjoyed it? Well, yes, because I liked being given the chance to show off knowing the answers to some of the really difficult stuff. Look, I’m not proud of this, but it’s true.

Not all of the questions were hard though. He asked the old chestnut about how many time zones there are in China. Well, I doubt there’s many people reading this who don’t know that it’s just the one. What he didn’t ask (which is just as well because I didn’t know the answer) was when the one time zone was instituted and why? Well I would have guessed the why, but the when was in 1949. Prior to that there were 5 time zones in China. Why the change? Well, as I would have guesed, it was about Chairman Mao’s desire to impose and maintain political, economic and cultural control over the country. There you go.

By the hairs on my chinny chin chin

I grew a beard during lockdown and my nearest and dearest rather liked it so I’ve kept it ever since. It’s a pure, snowy white, which is fine by me. But on odd occasions when I let my facial hair grow when I was younger, it was ginger. My hair, when I had any, was light brown, but the beard and ‘tache were ginger. Okay, that’s fine, again, no problem with that. We’ll have no gingerism on my blog, thank you very much.

Yesterday I was watching a TV show on one of the History Channels about the attempt to build a recreation of a traditional Viking longship big enough to cross the Atlantic with. Sadly, when I visited Oslo in 2025, the Viking Ship museum on the Bygdoy Peninsula was closed for renovation and redevelopment. One interesting feature in the show was about a buried ship – possibly viking – under part of a pub in Meols on the Wirral. Apparently, it was first seen when the Railway pub was being constructed in the late 1930s and the builders were told to rebury it and hush it up so as not to delay the building of the pub. One of the men made a sketch of the boat and its location which came to light again in the 1990s. Now, featured on the show about the ocean going Viking ship, we saw archaeologists, having used ground penetrating radar to pinpoint the boat’ use an auger to bring up wood samples from it. That was as far as the show showed us.

Well, I googled it today, and found out that this actually happened in 2023 and the wood samples turned out to be just brushwood. I’ve been unable to find out what progress, if any, has been made since.

Which may lead you to ask what has any of this got to do with my once-red facial hair? Not that much, if truth be told. It goes back to 1984, and the top deck of a 20 hour ferry from Rhodes to Piraeus (calling at many islands in between). In 1982 I’d island-hopped from Piraeus down to Crete and back and in 1984 I island hopped down to Crete, then across to Rhodes. What it’s like to do such things now more than 40 years later I have no idea, but back then backpackers used to camp out on the upper decks and I’ll be honest, it was pretty much a party scene. I loved these ferry trips. Well, it was on the last one of all, the ferry back to Piraeus from Rhodes that I got talking to a Danish guy. I hadn’t shaved for 2 weeks, and while it wasn’t enough to give me the full Brian Blessed, it was enough for you to see that my facial hair was ginger. I don’t recall what it was that prompted my Danish friend to make this observation, but he said “You have red hair! You are a viking!” Then he grabbed me round the shoulders, handed me a bottle of Amstel and insisted we serenaded a couple of girls with “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen” from the Danny Kaye movie Hans Christian Anderson. I didn’t know that this was a particular viking favourite but what the hell, go with the flow.

I’ll be honest, there’s any number of places my once-red facial hair could have come from. My father had the same – light brown hair and ginger facial hair, and I’m told that his father was the same. So it’s a decent chance I get it from my Scottish ancestors, but what the hell, who knows. There’s Irish in the mix with me, and also French Huguenot on my mother’s side and Gawd knows what else that I don’t have an inkling about. Viking? Who knows, but I won’t be burying a boat in the back garden any time soon.

 

Thank You for that fact, Mr. Green

It’s ironic that I ended up spending nearly 40 years teaching in Wales because I suppose it was almost a case of taking coals to Newcastle. In the 1970s many of my teachers in Elthorne High School in Hanwell, Ealing were originally from Wales. Some of them I remember very fondly, like the late Gwilym Morris who saw me safely through my Maths O Level and some of them not at all fondly but I shan’t mention their names in order to protect the guilty. Most though were somewhere in between these two poles. Such a teacher was Mr. Green.

Mr. Green was one of those teachers who you absolutely loved to have covering your class, but he wasn’t to my mind quite as good when you had him as a regular teacher. When you had him covering your class he could and would go off on a tangent and would tell you about some really interesting things. When he was teaching a regular Physics class he tended to go by the book and that was nowhere near as interesting.

I remember him starting off one such cover class by explaining that the romans used to clean their teeth with urine. Quite a barnstormer of a fact to begin a History class with, that one. This led him onto the use of urine in dyeing and then the use of mercury by hatmakers which explained, he said, why Lewis Carroll included a Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland”.

I think I’ve explained before just how the book captivated me at an impressionable age, so I shan’t go on all about that again now. I’ve just said that Lewis Carroll included a Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland” but that is not strictly speaking true. Lewis Carroll included a mad hatter (check out the lack of capitals) in “Alice in Wonderland”. For Carroll himself never uses the epithet The Mad Hatter in the narrative. He calls him the Hatter and leaves you to make your own mind up about his sanity or otherwise.

Here’s something you may already be aware of, in which case, apologies. The first person to illustrate any version of “Alice in Wonderland” was (drumroll please ) Lewis Carroll. He wrote the stories he had made up on an 1862 boat trip with the Liddell girls and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth in manuscript form calling it “Alice’s Adventures Underground”. He showed it to a friend called George Macdonald who had children and sought advice on publishing it. They were all very enthusiastic but advised Carroll that it might be a good idea to get a professional artist to illustrate them.

Carroll gave the manuscript to Alice Liddell in November 1864 as a Christmas present. It’s now one of the treasures of the British Library. So how did Carroll draw the Hatter? Well, the answer is that he didn’t. “Alice’s Adventures Underground” is considerably shorter than “Alice in Wonderland” and the Hatter was added to the story later for the published version. So the first person to illustrate the Hatter was actually (Sir) John Tenniel and it’s his conception of the Hatter that is probably what comes to mind whenever you hear the phrase “The Mad Hatter”. I’m not an expert but it seems to me that everyone who illustrates the Alice books now is faced with a difficult choice when it comes to the Hatter – to either take inspiration from Tenniel, or to react against Tenniel and go for something drastically different.

Personally although when it comes to a whole set of illustrations I’m very much in the Tenniel camp, I do also like the way that Mervyn Peake depicted the character too.

Well, I can’t finish with a song so I’ll have to finish with a question. Most people know that the price ticket inside Tenniel’s Hatter’s topper says 10/6. But what else does it say? Highlight below this line to check your answer.

In this style.

I Can't Believe It's Not The Traitors (and I have no problem with that)

The great Richard Osman once said that the best way to pitch a TV show to commissioning executives is to say that it is like something else that they know. And in terms of reality/game shows, what is the huge success that other channels would like a slice of? The Traitors of course. We’ve already seen BBC’s Destination X last year, which only had a slight hint of The Traitors, and Channel Four’s disappointing “The Inheritance” last Autumn, which I found to be somewhat mean spirited. “Nobody’s Fool”, or - I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Traitors - sees ITV having a go, and to be honest, a rather more convincing go than either of the other two shows.

It works like this. In the first episode we were introduced to the ten contestants enteringa huge English country house (as opposed to a huge Scottish baronial castle). The main point of the game is that every day each contestant goes on their own to a quiz pod. They are asked a number of questions. Each question correctly answered earns money for the prize pot. They may not reveal anything about what happened in the quiz pot, nor do they have to tell the truth about how they did in it. The contestants then face a round table style vote. Each one is asked how much money they contributed, but they do not have to tell the truth. Their task is to work out which of them contributed least to the prize pot, and then vote them out. If they get it right, then happy days. If they get it wrong, then the prize money is halved. The idea is to be the last one left who will get the prize pot. The show has not yet explained how the end game is going to work.

There are challenges between time in the quiz pod and the votes as well. For example, sorting out a ton of tennis balls to find out those with the letters needed to spell a nine letter word. These don’t contribute money but are meant to help the contestants work out who might actually be the weakest players. Three episodes are available on the ITV player at the moment and we’ve already seen plenty of plotting, making and breaking of alliances and shock reveals – supposedly prim and proper , 178 IQ Melissa revealing that she is a dominatrix being perhaps the most surprising.

The show is presented by Danny Dyer and Emily Atack. Mr. Dyer is probably something of an acquired taste. But you do know what you are going to get with him. He’s certainly intelligent enough to know what this is and to give you what you expect. But in a show like this, although the host is not the most important element of the show, the host can make a difference. Would the Traitors be quite as good without Claudia, for example? I like Alan Cummings the actor, but I don’t think he’s as good a host in the US version of the Traitors. I felt that the Liz Hurley character was one of the worst things about The Inheritance, but that’s just my personal opinion and feel free to disagree. So Danny Dyer, scion of royalty, doesn’t give us quite the full on gawd blimey, apples and pears diabolical liberty my old china, but just enough. Having said that, I don’t know that there’s anything he does that Emily Atack couldn’t do on her own. She asks the questions in the pod, and does just as much as Mr. Dyer does. But then she’s not (at the moment) such a ‘name’ so the presenting tag team it is.

Cards on the table. When I review new shows, I watch one and then if it hasn’t grabbed me I will rarely watch another edition of it. I have watched all three editions of “Nobody’s Fool “ currently on the ITV Player. Yes, it speaks almost exclusively in the vocabulary and syntax of “The Traitors”. You might say it does so openly, or, if it’s not your cup of tea you might say it does so blatantly.  I really don’t mind though. If you can’t have the real thing, this is a perfectly acceptable like for like alternative. Yeah, the quiz elements aren’t necessarily that great, but they are only a small part of the show. But I like it. I shall watch the next episodes as they become available, and I sincerely hope that when we get to the end game it will stick the landing.

Bit of acid 's what that needs.

Do you know what the Romans kept in an acetabulum? I would imagine that you do. The question, how is diluted acetic acid better known? - is a real old hardy perennial in quiz terms and so that acet at the start of the word has probably given you the answer – vinegar.

I mention this because yesterday it was just me at home with my grandson Ollie at lunchtime and I suggested we head down to Aberavon Beach and had some fish and chips for lunch, and a walk on the beach, which is what we did.

Okay, another quiz question. What is the derivation of the word vinegar? Anwer – it comes from vin aigre which s French for sour wine. Mmm, sounds good, doesn’t it? I think that I’m the only member of my family who doesn’t like vinegar. You know, more than once I’ve wondered – who was it who first looked at a portion of sliced, fried potatoes and thought to themselves – , it’s good, but you know what would make it better? A liberal dousing in acid.

But then I’m a fussy sod, anyway. At least most places don’t automatically assume you want vinegar and ask you in the first place. I remember 10 years ago I made what would turn out to be my first sketching trip to Ieper in Belgium. In the shadow of the magnificent (rebuilt) medieval Cloth Hall. I bought a portion of chips. I didn’t look at them as I began eating and the moment I put the first chip into my mouth, I thought – what the hell is that?!- I looked down. The chips were slathered in mayonnaise. And the stupid thing is I don’t even dislike mayonnaise. But chips? I couldn’t finish them.

Tomato ketchup? Tastes too sweet. Curry sauce? Okay, fair point.

Helsinki

I mentioned in my last post that I’ve never been to an Olympic event, even though my mother, who couldn’t be less interested in sport if she tried, got to see the men’s 100m final in London 1948. (Harrison Dillard. He was, I think, the world record holder for the 110 hurdles at the time, but failed to win selection for his best event. So he entered the 100 and won gold. 4 years later he won the 110 hurdles and may well be the only man to do this career double). By my reckoning I’ve been to every European city that has hosted the Summer Games apart from Munich and one other, the city I’m planning to visit in September.

I’m sure that you’ve worked it out that this would be Helsinki. I was in Tallinn in March and I did consider taking the ferry to Helsinki. But I was only in Tallinn for a few days and it would have taken a huge chunk out of the day and I had no idea how long it would have taken to get into the centre of the city once the ferry docked. But I do want to visit Finland. I’ve enjoyed the other Nordic countries I’ve visited – Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Norway. Oslo was, to be fair, a little bit bland, I felt, but then the Viking ship museum was (and I believe still is) closed for refurbishment and it was one of the things I most wanted to see.

So, what distinction does Helsinki hold amongst Olympic cities? Well, this is a little contentious. I’m sure that it is the smallest capital city (in terms of population) to host an Olympic Summer Games but I have seen some sources saying that at the time of the 1920 Games Antwerp had a smaller population than Helsinki had in 1952. Well, whatever the case, former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch – a man admittedly given to hyperbole (if the price was right, allegedly)- said that the 1952 Helsinki Games was the best and the best moment was Emil Zatopek entering the stadium at the end of the marathon with the crow all on its feet chanting Za-To-Pek! Yes, it’s on the list for when I invent my time machine.

Fair's (World's) Fair

I moved to Port Talbot in 1986.  In a space of a few weeks I became a dad, sat my finals, got married, moved to Port Talbot and started my PGCE training to be a teacher. The last three all happened in the space of 5 days. Sadly, I was a few years too late to see the Miami Beach funfair on Aberavon Beach.

I’ve seen many photographs of it, even drawn it and my wife Mary remembers it vividly. Now one of the notable features of the funfair was a large structure made of a lattice of metal poles, and spaced on regular intervals across it were a lot of unevenly sized coloured balls, on which was placed the sign Miami Beach. Now, I haven’t been able to prove conclusively that this was the Atomic Structure from the Festival of Britain, but my goodness it was a dead ringer for it.

Okay, so let’s recap. In my last post I mentioned that the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games were staged as part of the 1904 World’s Fair. Well, that got me thinking about world fairs, or expos, in general. Now you know that the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park will be one of my very first destinations when I build my time machine, and this is generally regarded as the first World’s Fair/Expo.

Yet as with many things, it’s not necessarily quite as simple and clear cut as that. For the 1851 Great Exhibition was drawing on a tradition of shows of industry and technology going back into the 18^th century, although maybe none of them were on the same scale as the Great Exhibition. OK, all well and good. What I didn’t know was that on the official list kept by the world sanctioning body, the Bureau International des expositions, London also held the third world’s fair in 1862. The second? Paris.

That’s important, because the 1862 Exhibition was designed partly to outshine the 1855 Paris exhibition. It was originally planned for 1861, but hey, delays in construction are by no means just a 21^st and 20^th century phenomenon. The Exhibition took place in South Kensington on the site now occupied by the South Kensington museums. Was it a huge success? Well, not financially. It made its costs back and a small profit of £790 or so I read. The government of the time had no wish to take over the exhibition hall when the exhibition closed and so it was dismantled and the materials were sold and later used in the construction of Alexandra Palace. There you go. Compare that with the profit made by the 1851 Exhibition, which made a profit of about £186,000, the equivalent of over £20 million in today’s money. The good old Festival of Britain made a loss of about £7.5 million, despite having over 10 million visitors, but then it was never really expected to make a profit.

Do you remember the Millennium Experience? No, me neither. That’s a little unfair. The reason I don’t remember it is because I never went to it. Well, when you factor in that I have five kids who were all aged between 14 and 6 in 2000, not to mention the cost of getting to London and back, I really couldn’t afford it on just one teacher’s salary. Well, couldn’t or wouldn’t, anyway. But I idly googled to find out just how much money it lost, and it’s been really difficult to arrive at a concrete figure. Several hundred million pounds seems a conservative estimate. Okay, maybe this too was never designed to make a profit. But it was certainly designed to attract up to 12 million visitors. Which maybe wasn’t that unrealistic when you consider that the Festival of Britain attracted in total 10.25 million visitors to all attractions and events across the country, and 8 million visitors to the main exhibition on the South Bank in London in just the 4 months it was open. But give a dog a bad name, I suppose.

My brother did actually go to the Millennium Experience and he seemed to enjoy it, as I recall. Come to that, my Mum was 11 years old and was taken to the South Bank for the Festival of Britain, and 3 years earlier, despite her having no interest in sport whatsoever, she was taken by my Grandpa to Wembley to see the Olympic 100m final. The closest I have ever got to attending an Olympic event was when the 2008 torch relay ran past my house. Which actually was quite an event. The only thing I remember that parallelled it was in 2002. The late Queen Elizabeth II was making her Golden Jubilee tour of the constituent parts of her United Kingdom. On the day she visited Port Talbot, when I left for work in the school in the morning, there was nothing to show that Her Majesty would be driven down it later on. By the time I returned home in the afternoon council workers had flung bunting across the street and placed union jacks in strategic front gardens.  (I refuse to answer whether the one placed in mine is still in my garage on the grounds that I might incriminate myself).

Her Majesty and the late Duke of Edinburgh arrived at Port Talbot Parkway station on the Royal Train and got into the limousine that would carry them the couple of miles to Margam Park, which meant driving right past my house. It was a very regal occasion, only marred by the fact that a local character, who had a reputation as what my grandmother might have called a ‘lady of the evening’ leapt out in front of the royal limousine and flashed them. That’s Port Talbot for you, folks.

St. Louis Blues

Here’s an easy one for you. Where was the city outside of Europe to host the Modern Olympic Games? St. Louis of course. It’s interesting to note that the only other US city to host the summer Olympic Games is Los Angeles – who will take their third turn next. But St. Louis, Missouri got there first. OK then, try this one – why did St. Louis host the games in 1904? Well, to tie in with the 1904 World’s Fair. If you  remember the Judy Garland film “Meet Me in St. Louis “ (Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, meet me at the fair) – well, that was set at the same world’s fair. This was following what had happened with the 1900 Olympics which coincided with an international exposition in Paris – indeed it is said that some of the winners never knew that they were actually Olympic champions, so little prominence being given to it at the time.

Alright then, try this one. Who were Etienne Desmarteau and Tom Kiely? Answer, the only two non US athletes to win track and field gold medals in St. Louis. Etienne Desmarteau was a fire officer from Montreal. The Montreal fire department refused him leave to participate but he resigned and went anyway. He won the weight throwing event and returned home to a hero’s welcome. The police department hired him, but sadly he passed away in 1905, possibly from typhoid fever.

As for Tom Kiely, well, he won his gold in the all-round athletics competition. This was a predecessor to the decathlon. All on the same day the competitors took part in a 100 yard run, shot put, high jump, 880 yard walk, hammer throw, pole vault,120yd hurdles, 56 pound weight throw, long jump and 1 mile race. He is listed as representing Great Britain but he really was not. Tom Kiely was an Irish Athlete. Ireland not having gained its independence at this time did not have their own Olympic Association. Despite all this, Kiely accepted no help or sponsorship from the British Olympic team and made it perfectly clear to everyone that he was representing Ireland and only Ireland. Good on him.

If the 1904 Olympics is remembered for anything though, it’s probably the antics of Fred Lorz. Lorz dropped out of the marathon, then hitched a lift to outside the stadium. He ran in, accepting the plaudits of the crowd, until the real winner, Thomas Hicks entered the stadium and his prank came to light. The American Athletics Union took a dim view at first, banning him for life. They did reinstate him after accepting that he meant no harm, and he went on to win the Boston Marathon in 1905.

There is speculation that Hicks’ two predecessors, 1896 winner Spiridon Louis and Michel Theato may also have taken short cuts in their respective marathon wins. Both were local boys. In 1896 the Marathon, the very last event of the Games, was the host nation’s last chance to win a gold. As it was the Greek competitor who was originally placed 3^rd was disgraced when the Hungarian runner who came fourth reported that he had seen him getting into a horse drawn carriage. Did Louis do the same? Well, History says no, but until I build my time machine, we’ll never be 100%. Then in 1900 it is speculated that baker’s roundsman Michael Theto used his knowledge of Paris’ back streets to take a win for the home team – although to be fair he was actually supposedly born in Luxembourg. 

 

Confession Time

Forgive me, Dearly Beloved, for I have sinned. I committed a really rookie error when I put together my quiz for Thursday evening just gone in the rugby club.

I made the 8 rounds last weekend. Then I thought, oh, I’ll do the handout later on. And I forgot all about it. So when I remembered early on Thursday morning I quickly downloaded a handout round from a well known free quiz site. And I didn’t check it. I printed it out and photocopied it.

It was only at halftime that I really stopped to look at it. And there was something bothering me. It was an anagrams round, all the phrases being anagrams of film stars past and present. One of them was NIL NACHOS JACK. The answer given was Jack Nicholson. But there is only one A in Jack Nicholson! So I took the mic and explained to the teams that it had all happened because I had done what you should never do – downloaded a free handout and not checked it.

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last to do it in the club. However, it does make it difficult for me to take the moral high ground when anyone else does it. It’s a shame too, because one of the teams who have certainly never won my quiz before – and may never have win anyone else’s either – won, which was the cause of much celebration by all.

Word Games - or do I mean Game Words?

 Here’s a question for you. What connects :-

An Old English word meaning to drag

A Welsh phrase meaning little battle

A 17^th century English slang word for brandy or strong liquor

A Sanskrit word for four divisions of the military

A Dutch word meaning to claw frantically

Well, I’m sure you might well have figured out the connection now, but just in case you haven’t, the words are :-

Dragan (draughts) -

Bach cammaun (backgammon) – which may alternatively come from Middle English baec gamen (back game

Bingo

Chaturanga (Chess)

Schrabbelen (Scrabble)

I’ll tell you what prompted me to ask. Two of my colleagues and I were taking a ten minute break for a cuppa (coffee in my case) away from the phonelines. Kim happened to mention that she used o play Backgammon. Now, I did briefly play Backgammon, back many years ago when I was in the 6^th form. This was before the world wide web was even a twinkle in Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s eye, and I’ll be honest it never occurred to me at the time to find out how such a splendidly unusual word came to be. But on Friday afternoon it was a matter of whipping out the phone, and googling it.

You could possibly make a handout quiz – or at least part of a handout quiz, based on derivation of names of games. Here’s a couple more

Which game takes its name from a 19^th century slang word for an inexperienced British army officer?

Which game probably takes its name from a French phrase with a similar meaning to upsy-daisy?

Which game has a name that is a combination of an Old English word meaning to dance, and an old French word meaning to score or notch?

Which game takes its name from a French word for a stick with a curved end?

Which card game’s name ultimately derives from a German word meaning to knock?

Which game takes its name from a masquerade costume of a mask and cape?

Which game takes its name from the name of a Russian form of whist?

Answers

Highlight the lines below and they should be revealed

Snooker

Hoopla

Hopscotch

Billiards

Dominoes

Poker

Bridge

So Much for Nelson - now let's take on John Bull

I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned my love of Lewis Caroll’s Alice books, not the least part of which is my huge admiration for John Tenniel’s original illustrations for them. Tenniel was remarkable in many ways. His father was a fencing teacher, and in the course of instructing John once he caught him in the eye. John concealed the fact that he had been permanently injured and lost his sight in the eye over a period of time. To be able to draw as well as he did for as long as he did with only one eye is remarkable.

I also appreciate his political cartoons for Punch, although more for the incredible skill and facility of his drawing than through any sympathy with his politics. Tenniel was invited to become joint cartoonist for Punch in 1850, and he continued to produce what would amount to over 2000 cartoons for the magazine until his retirement over 50 years later in 1902. In terms of his political views, well, Tenniel was a man who was very much in sympathy with the urban, middle class readership of Punch and while he could be a trenchant critic of politicians and governments and their policies at home, his take on international relations could be pretty imperialistic.

I mention this because you may have read posts earlier this year when I discussed my collection of chocolate tins that Queen Victoria sent to troops serving in South Africa during the Boer War. Now, I think I’ve also mentioned how I love drawing before. Because of arthritis I’ve allowed two or three weeks to go by without producing any sketches, but I had a week’s leave from work this last week and so I took up my pens again. I made a copy of a Tenniel cartoon about the pollution of the Thames – here:-

I then thought to myself, I wonder what Tenniel made of the Boer War? Well, I say that I wondered, but really and truly I had a pretty good idea what I’d find. John Tenniel, by this time Sir John Tenniel, was, like the magazine’s readership, solidly in favour of the unjust war. Here’s my copies of a few of his cartoons from the weeks leading up to the start of the war and the first few weeks.

Now, Tenniel often used three allegorical figures to depict Britain – and for Tenniel Britain really meant England. When Tenniel wanted to depict Britain as a sympathetic figure, a figure of compassion and peace, he would use the figure of Britannia, like the figure from the 50p piece/old pre decimal one penny. When he wished to stress Britain’s might and power, he used the figure of the British Lion. When he used neither of these, he used the figure of John Bull.

Here’s a question for you. What nationality was the man who created the figure John Bull? Yes, that’s right. Scottish. In 1712, John Bull was created by Scottish satirist John Arbuthnot, in a pamphlet satirising the Whigs and their policies in the War of the Spanish Succession. In the succeeding decades Bull pretty much morphed into the archetypal representation of the free-born, corpulent, small c – conservative Englishman, hence his depiction even into late Victorian times as a, for want of a better word, corpulent English country squire from the 19^th century.

BRITANNIA CONSOLATRIX
BRITANNIA - :- ‘I will take care of you! Your man has gone to do his duty – and I will do mine!’

So, as for these cartoons, this one depicts a scene where a troopship in the distance is setting sail for South Africa, and Britannia is consoling a wife and children, whose husband, presumably, is on board the ship. The title is “Britannia Consolatrix” and the caption beneath reads:- ‘I will take care of you! Your man has gone to do his duty – and I will do mine!’ There’s a lot I don’t like about this. Firstly, the idea that it was anyone’s duty to go and fight in South Africa. Even judging by 19^th century standards this was an unjust and unnecessary war.

Then there’s the idea that Britain, represented by the allegorical figure Britannia, would do its duty, and take care of the casualties of war and their families. Now, I will admit that it was in 1901 that pensions were paid to war widows of NCOs and other ranks for the first time. But this had not been on the table in 1899 when the cartoon was made. Nor was it very generous when it was made, and it was subject to strict conditions regarding conduct and being of good character. Should a war widow remarry, for example, she would receive a very small sum and the pension would cease.

Even in the 21^st century we see British army veterans having to accept help from charities because of the injuries, mental and physical, that they received in the name of our country which are not catered for by the Ministry of Defence. So you can imagine just how little real help was available to veterans of the Boer War on their return to Britain.

 

“JOHN BULL (TO BOER) – “AS YOU WILL FIGHT, YOU SHALL HAVE IT.
THIS TIME IT’S A FIGHT TO A FINISH.”

This one appeared in October 1899, the year and month that the war broke out. The picture shows John Bull squaring up to a Boer farmer ( the word Boer itself means farmer).

The title is “Plain English” while beneath this there is the caption :-

“JOHN BULL (TO BOER) – “AS YOU WILL FIGHT, YOU SHALL HAVE IT. THIS TIME IT’S A FIGHT TO A FINISH.”

This needs some explanation. It’s probably best that I start with a slight digression. When I write of the Boer War as an unjust and unnecessary war, this is what I really feel about it. Which does not mean that I’m trying to paint the two Boer Republics as admirable nations. Their attitudes towards black native African nations was appalling, for example. But it is not as if the British were motivated to fight in order to ameliorate conditions for native Africans. No, they were motivated by Imperialistic shortsightedness and led on by the greed of men like Cecil Rhodes. Just my opinion and as always, feel free to disagree. 

So, as a background to the cartoon, Great Britain annexed the two Boer republics, The Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State, in the 1870s. Despite repeated attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution, Boer representatives were rebuffed time after time, and this led to rebellion and the first Boer War in December 1880. Superior tactics, and a British army that was poorly led and equipped , along with Prime Minister William Gladstone’s sensible refusal to allow the war to escalate into a more costly and wasteful conflict led to the war concluding in March of 1881 and a treaty which led to the reestablishment and independence of the two Boer Republics. So that’s what Tenniel means when he says ‘THIS time’.

Had gold not been discovered in the Transvaal, then the conditions that led to the Second Boer War may never have arisen. In the 1890s, the Uitlanders – a Boer term for foreigners, that is, prospectors and gold miners lured by the gold rush,- chafed at what they saw as the exorbitant taxes they had to pay, bearing in mind that they were ineligible to vote until they had lived there for 14 years. The Boer governments were willing to enter into negotiation with the British government which took up the Uitlanders’ cause and proved willing to move on this. However, the inflexibility of the British convinced them that war was inevitable, even though Transvaal premier Paul Kruger would say that declaring war on the British Empire was like defending yourself against a lion with a pocket knife. So strictly speaking Tenniel was not incorrect to suggest that the Boer republics started the fight – they declared war – but they really were given no choice, despite knowing that their chances of success were limited. 

Should Nelson Come off his Pedestal?

You know, I don’t see my mother and stepfather more than a couple of times a year, They live in Worthing and with the best will in the world their days of long drives or train rides and staying in hotels are a thing of the past. So to use a phrase, Mohammed must go to the mountain. When I do, I have this mischievous streak that makes me introduce the topic of removing Edward Hodges Baily’s statue of Admiral Nelson from the top of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square in London.

This is partly because I rather enjoy their reaction to it. The argument in favour goes – Horatio Nelson may not have owned saves, in fact he didn’t, but he was certainly in favour of continuing the slave trade and wrote in letters that he was considering speaking out against William Wilberforce in the House of Lords. Well, Trafalgar put paid to that and we’ll never know for sure if he would or not. But Nelson’s connections with the slave trade were brought into discussion in the furore following the pulling down of the statue of slave trader Edward Colson in Bristol in 2020 and there were articles in several of the dailies with people arguing for and against pulling Nelson off his pedestal.

My mum’s and step-dad’s reactions? To paraphrase – this is nonsense, it all happened over 200 years ago – you can’t change the past. Well, I certainly don’t agree that’s it’s ridiculous, but okay, it was over 200 years ago and you cannot change the past (although when I invent my time machine, watch this space). But it isn’t about that. It’s about changing your relationship with the past, if anything. It’s about asking the questions whether, with all we know now, we feel that this is an individual we should still regard as a national hero? And engaging in debate. Surely, if Nelson was as worthy of the honour as they thought he was in the 1840s when the column was erected, then a bit of honest discussion isn’t going to change that. But if he wasn’t, well, then burying our collective heads in the sand and ignoring it because it was more than 200 years ago surely is not morally justifiable.

Despite the way that I present my opinions to Mum and Tony, I do try to keep an open mind. If you can prove to me that Nelson is a good symbol of qualities that I value and respect, then I promise I’d be one of the protestors standing in front of the column to guard it from the bulldozers. But then, that would involve being prepared to have a discussion about it in the first place. And that probably ain’t happening any time soon.

Chariots of the Shaggy Dogs

Here’s a nice mythology question for you. What links Tata, Utnapishtim, Bergelmir and Deucalion? I’m sure you know or can work it out. Especially if I widen it out from mythology and include Japhet, Shem and Ham. And Noah. Yes, they all survived floods. Tata in the Aztec flood myth, Utnapishtim in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, Bergelmir ( a giant) in the Norse flood myth and Deucalion in the Greek.

Now, probably ever since the discovery of the epic of Gilgamesh tablets by Austen Layard in the middle of the 19^th century and its translation over the following decades this has led to much speculation ever since on just why it is that catastrophic world-threatening floods proliferate in the mythology and/or religions of so many cultures, many of whom surely cannot have had any kind of contact with each other.  Some writers have used it to try to disprove the literal truth of the Old Testament, while some have used it to try to prove the literal truth of the Old Testament. Some have tried to prove that all the flood myths derive from a single catastrophic event in human history – the great thaw at the end of the (last) ice age for example.

An author I very much enjoy, so long as I’m allowed to digest his work along with a healthy dose of salt, is Graham Hancock. He suggests that the proliferation of flood myths may have their origin in the ending of the last Ice Age. Well, I’m certainly no expert, but it’s not totally impossible. However, being as that is far too sensible an idea, Graham Hancock beefed up the silliness by suggesting that the reason why it made such an impression on humanity was because it was responsible for the destruction of a great, technologically advanced civilisation, (based in Antarctica) the survivors of which spread their knowledge and skills throughout the world. Hence the growth of world civilizations in different parts of the world at the same time. As a piece of fiction it’s great. As a theory, it suffers from a huge drawback, namely that there is no real evidence of the lost civilisation. Ah, but that’s because of a conspiracy amongst historians and archaeologists to deliberately NOT search where such evidence might be found. Hancock doesn’t say this in those words, but that’s the gist.

Like I said, I exercise my right not to agree with his ideas, but I don’t half enjoy reading about them. His book about the supposed location of the Ark of the Covenant, called “The Sign and the Seal” is a particular favourite. I doubt very much that the conclusions he reaches are correct, but I enjoy the journey that takes us to those conclusions.

Which is more than I can say about the work of one of Mr. Hancock’s better-known predecessors, Swiss author Erich von Daniken. Which is really what prompted this post. You see, I can’t remember exactly where, but I heard his name mentioned the other day, and I googled him, and was astounded to find that he only passed away earlier this year. I haven’t really heard anything about him in years. Von Daniken wrote the hugely popular “Chariots of the Gods” which is, if you like, a seminal text in the field of pseudoscience which theorises that mythology is ‘evidence’ of technologically advanced aliens visiting Earth in pre-history. I read Chariots of the Gods. Once. Personally, I preferred the Goodies’ 1970s parody . Within their ‘Book of Criminal Records’ there was a short section entitled, if memory serves me right ‘Was God An English Astronaut?”, where a cartoon compared the front of a Gothic cathedral with a space rocket – and a peeled banana, just for good measure.

They were all a bit thick really

This whole Trojan thing from my last post is getting a bit out of hand. A little research reveals that not only can you have a trojan horse and a trojan mouse, but you can have trojan cows, trojan dogs and trojan animals in general. With the cows and dogs, a trojan cow would be one that is a carrier for a disease that while the cow itself shows no symptoms, it can infect a whole herd who will. The term trojan dog refers specifically to a stray that has been rehomed from mainland Europe, which bears a significantly high risk of carrying infections that are extremely rare in this country but much more common on mainland Europe. Cue a mental picture of politicians of a certain, more right-wing persuasion ranting about the evils of ‘ these bloody Trojans, coming over here, infecting our pets and stealing their winalot.”

It’s an altogether more negative use of the adjective Trojan, somewhat closer to the original horse itself. I’ll be honest, I’ve always had mixed feelings over the whole Trojan War myth. I mean, I’ve never been entirely clear whose side you’re meant to be on. Without wishing to be mean, the Trojans are, in some ways a bit thick. Hecuba, mother of Paris, dreams that she will give birth to a flaming torch. Whatever lights yer candle, pardon the pun. The dream is interpreted and Priam and Hecuba are told that the child she will give birth to will be responsible for the destruction of Troy. Priam, unable to bear the thought of killing the child gives him to a herdsman to dispatch. He can’t bear to do the deed and takes him and leaves him on a hillside. He comes back nine days later, the baby is still alive and well, having been suckled by a she bear. He takes the kid home to bring up, and what happens next is set in motion. Stupid.

As for the Greeks, well, again, somehow most of them come across as the kind of people you wouldn’t want to play in a quiz team with. Let’s start with the greatest of them. Achilles. Now, he was made mostly invulnerable by being dipped in the River Styx as a baby. Only the heel by which she held him was not touched by the water. Well, I’m not being funny (you can say that again, says the reader) but – what would have been wrong if she had gone for a double dip? Or failing that, at least given his heel some proper protection? No wonder his shade was so angry in the Underworld.

Agamemnon. What a pillock! Lesson 1 in commanding an army. If your secret weapon is a virtually invincible Myrmidon with a short temper, don’t piss him off by stealing one of the girls he has taken as spoils of war. Oh, and when you get home, keep an eye on the missus if she suggests you should have a bath.

Even Odysseus, the supposedly smart one, was perfectly capable of acting like a complete div. (ah, these charming old world phrases). Having escaped from the attention of Polyphemus the cyclops and blinded him in the process, why the hell would you taunt him and reveal your real name when you’re sailing away. On the sea. Ruled by Poseidon, God of the Sea, and father of Polyphemus. It was like he didn’t even want to get home.

The Romans, so I’m told had a phrase – to tell the whole story from egg to apple – meaning to tell the whole story of something from start to finish. This refers to the Trojan War story. The egg is the egg from which the children of Leda and Zeus were hatched – Helen being one – while the apple is that eaten at the banquet following Odysseus’ return home and his defeat of his wife Penelope’s suitors. Well, if you go through the whole story from apple to egg there aren’t many characters who manage not to put a foot wrong somehow or other. I’m drawn to Penelope. After 10 years of Odysseus’ absence a group of dastards (once again, check the spelling) pressure her to accept Odysseus’ death and take one of them for a husband and new King. Penelope says she can not make a choice until she has finished making a death shroud for Odysseus’ Dad. (Not making this up.)She spends all day weaving it and all night unpicking it. Not sure when she sleeps, but you still gotta admit it’s smart. I can’t help thinking that if she’d gone to the war rather than Odysseus, they’d all have been home before the postcard.

Remembering the Wooden Mouse of Troy

In my post about the Gavin and Stacey quiz, I used the word phrase ‘gift horse’. It occurred to me to look into the derivation of the saying ‘don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I’ll be honest, the idea of a horse as a gift did make me think of the wooden one given to the good people of the city of Troy. But then that never quite made sense to me. I mean, don’t look a gift horse in the mouth - because you might get a Greek spear in your eye for your pains? Somehow that didn’t work. Nor does the idea that the Trojans should just have blindly accepted the gift without checking It out. That’s essentially what they did anyway and look how that worked out for them.

No, the saying really means, when you get given a horse – and I have to believe that the gifting of an equine was maybe more common in days of yore than it is today -  you should just accept it with gratitude and not yank its mouth open to have a look at the teeth. Apparently, that’s a good way of checking the age and condition of a horse. A real horse that is. With a wooden one you can just count the rings. The point of the saying is to be grateful when you receive a gift or a piece of good fortune and not insult the giver by checking it and looking for flaws and negatives.

So, when would you think that we have the first recorded use of the saying, or something very similar? Actually in the 4^th Century AD in St. Jerome’s Commentarium in Epistolam ad Ephesios (Commentary on the Letter to the Ephesians) and it went something like this – Noli equi dentes inspicere donati”. Ah, they don’t write them like that any more. Basically it means, don’t look at the teeth of a horse you’ve been given. Maybe not as big a hit as his Latin translation of The Bible, but sequels can be difficult to pull off at the best of times.

Speaking of the Trojan Horse, I wonder how well acquainted you are with the term – the Trojan Mouse? If you’ve never heard of it, well it can be used in different contexts, for example, a small-scale change in an organisation – maybe in policy, maybe in procedure, whatever – that is designed to have a large-scale effect. I first heard of it in terms of a tactic you can use to persuade someone in a higher position of authority than you are to do something you want them to. Basically it involves introducing an idea to said authority figure in such a way that they come to believe it’s their own idea, take ownership of it and see it through to fruition. I wouldn’t say that I’ve made a habit of doing this and I wouldn’t say it’s been a conspicuous success every time that I’ve tried. But I did have a notable success once.

I made a point of dropping it into the conversation with a former deputy headteacher of mine that a colleague in another school had just told me that their headteacher had just instituted a policy whereby when a member of staff reached 20 years with the school – or at least within the local authority – then a recommendation would automatically be sent to the powers that be that they should receive the discretionary £250 award for long service from the authority. The Monday afterwards at the weekly staff meeting, our Head announced to the staff that, as a sign of how much he valued his staff, he had come up with a policy whereby everyone reaching 20 years with the school would automatically be recommended to the Authority for the discretionary award for long service. How did I know that the deputy would mention the idea to the Head? Because the Deputy was in his 19^th year with the school

Oh, he wasn’t quite the first person to benefit. Who was? Well, come on, who do you think?!