Hedgehog Names Index: S

This is an (intermittently) on-going experimental project. No links are provided. If you want to follow any of them up, use the BLOG SEARCH box above↑

In order to find all references it is probably best to use surname only in the search.

Oliver Sacks
Marquis de Sade
Lord Sainsbury of Turville
Shapurji Saklatvala
Marquess of Salisbury

Samuel Salt
Pete Sampras
Paul Samuelson
Michael Sandel
Sathnam Sanghera

Ziauddin Sardar
Siegfried Sassoon
Vernon Scannell
Schiller
Simone Schnall

Sir Michael Scholar
Joseph Schumpeter
Schwarzkopf
Albert Schweitzer
Baroness Scotland

Scott
Will Self
Samuel Selvon
Semmel
Antonia Senior

Louise Shackleton
Shakespeare
Brian Sharman
George Bernard Shaw
Callie Shell

Baroness Shephard
Jane Shilling
Takashi Shimokawara
Harold Shipman
Sharon Shoesmith

Arnold Silcock
Robert Kilroy Silk
Victor Silvester
FR Simms
Ernest Simon

Henry Gustav Simon
John Simon
Margaret Simon
Nina Simone
Paul Simons

Simon Singh
Sir Roger Singleton
Frank Skinner
Gary Slapper
Wayne Sleep

Adam Smith
Giles Smith
Iain Duncan Smith
Jacqui Smith

Dame Janet Smith

John Smith
Louis Smith
Percy Smith
Reverend Sydney Smith
Zadie Smith

General Smuts
Lucy Snowe
Dano Sonnex
Queen Soraya
Trevor Sorbie

George Soros
Sonia Sotomayor
Muriel Spark
Caroline Spelman
Des Spence

Wendy Spencer
David Spiegelhalter
Bernard Spilsbury
Bob Stanley
Sir Alan Steer

Jonathan Steffen
Sir Paul Stephenson
Adlai Stevenson
Robert Louis Stevenson
Graham Stewart

Rory Stewart
IF Stone
Marie Stopes
Jack Straw
William Styron

John Suffolk
Sir Alan Sugar
Percy Sugden
Chesley Sullenberger
Sir Arthur Sullivan

Richard Sullivan
Swinburne
Nigel Sykes
Rachel Sylvester
Victor Sylvester

N=95

Throwing caution to the ash-blowing winds

According to a report in Monday’s Times there will, by the end of this month, be new rules for flying in the vicinity of volcanic ash. Essentially pilots will be left to decide for themselves where it is safe to go, having heed to the Met Office forecasts, the type of plane they are flying & presumably new information about the tolerance to dust of their engines.

And so in barely 3 months we have been able to move from a super-precautionary approach (AVOID!) to one in which we prefer to rely on the judgement of individual experts in each case. We have learned that the precautionary approach is not the same as one which is risk free, for we have heard of, or have experienced ourselves, all the problems, ranging from inconvenient to life changing, of a disruption to air travel. We have also learned that, contrary to the assertions of some of the more noisy campaigners, although some flying may be the indulgence of rich pampered populations, it is also vital to our whole way of life.

Related post

Keep going despite the campaign

Spring cleaning

I was searching for a photo which might illustrate my piece about pothering yesterday.

The nearest I could find was this, from Spaarnestad Photo in the Netherlands. It shows "Huisvrouw met mattenklopper".

Mattenklopper - a much nicer word than carpet beater. A check on the translation of the word klopper (I wouldn’t like to start using it & being inadvertently indecent) inspired me to look for a Dutch translation of pother. Good heavens, there it is – or rather they are.

Which led in turn to the glorious word opschudding of which I shall be making very good use.

It has become a mission to reduce the amount of stress being suffered by the very simple expedient of calling it something else – preferably colourful enough to make you laugh & snap out of it.

So, get in a pother, have a tizz, or have kittens or kick the cat (OK, not that one). Or have conniptions. Get in a flap, or even a flapdoodle. Be a bit mardy if you must. Go in for some opschudding.

But forget stress, it’s not good for you.

Link
English - Spaarnestad Photo

Related post
Tactile paving

Domestic violence

Housework truly did use to involve real violence. All that beating.

Even Hoover had to promise in 1926 that its labour saving vacuum cleaner would Beat, as it Sweeps, as it Cleans – presumably because no decent housewife would otherwise believe that her carpets were truly clean.

Though if you could afford a Hoover in those days you probably employed servants to do the beating for you. No need to exert yourself.

Links
Upright vacuum cleaners
'It Beats...as it Sweeps...as it Cleans ... video
Pensioner cleans up with the Britain's oldest vacuum cleaner.

Related post
Exercise v Exertion

Let's pother again

It must have been thinking about my mother & her mother which suddenly brought to mind a word that I probably haven’t used for – half a century.

Pother (rhymes with bother); origin obscure, but may have something to do with dust.

That was certainly one of its meanings. When the time for spring cleaning came round you gave a room a good pothering – chasing out every last mote from each cranny, crack or corner. For the rest of the year you had to learn to dust properly, so as not to raise a pother, since that only spread the dust around.

You might however give a cushion a good pothering – tossing it up & beating it with your opened palms to simultaneously remove the dust & plump it up nicely. Or you could pother a rug hanging over the washing line – give it a good going over with the carpet beater.

It had figurative meanings too. You could make, or get into a pother. Make an unnecessary fuss about something, or get into a state of irrational anger or anxiety. Stop pothering, or What are you making such a pother about? were the usual reactions.

It’s possible that only, or mainly, women got into a pother. And so the OED has two useful quotes for feminists. The first, from Vita Sackville-West’s’ All Passion Spent: What a pother, she thought, women make about marriage.

The second from Susan Faludi’s Backlash: Young women, magazine writers informed, no longer wanted to be bothered with ‘all that feminist pother’.

The OED also allows the form potheration meaning confusion, turmoil, trouble; its close cousin, BOTHERATION! was my mother’s emprecation of choice. When really vexed, this expanded to Oh DRAT AND BOTHERATION!

I am sure it would do the nation’s health an awful lot of good if we forgot about being stressed & just started getting in to pothers again.

Links
Vita Sackville West
Backlash, by Susan Faludi

Related post
Mardy gowks

Beating the odds

My mother was a very small baby, born prematurely to a teenage mother & a father not much older who was working in a cotton mill after having fought through the First World War. I was told that she weighed just 3 lbs.

The midwife saved her life. She was wrapped – quite literally – in cotton wool & her first crib was a shoe box placed by the side of the kitchen range for constant warmth – in exactly the same way that people were used to caring for orphan lambs.

She was fed from a doll’s feeding bottle, the milk initially dripped on to her lips. This bottle was made from thick glass, about the size of a ladies finger but curved like a banana. It had a tiny bright red rubber teat. I can describe it in such detail because my grandmother kept it & I played with it as a child.

I always simply assumed that the milk came from a cow, simply because when I was told the story I believed that all milk did, (or at least there was no way that a woman could be milked in the same way.)

Photos of my mother during her teens show a very skinny girl with painfully thin legs; although times were a bit tough, especially in the early thirties when the family had to move to find work during the depression, I am sure that this was not down to poor nutrition - my grandmother was a superb manager & cook. Also at 5 feet 4 ¼ inches she was the tallest member of the family.

My mother won the annual scholarship awarded to a girl from the village school so she got a secondary education at the grammar school which she left after obtaining her School Certificate.

She was fit enough to become a physical training instructor in the ATS (exercise for women was much more Eileen Fowler or League of Health & Beauty than aerobics in those days), though her main job during the war was as a telephonist.

After marriage & childbirth her body developed in the way we all took for granted was normal for a mother in those days – it gradually thickened out. At forty, having reached what in those days was a size 16 she began to take a more disciplined line about eating – cutting down the carbohydrates – but never went on a diet as such & could never be called fat.

Her eldest daughter - me - weighed in at a healthy 7lbs, despite being born during the privations of WWII to a mother who smoked.

Links
Eileen Fowler News The Guardian
The Fitness League History — The Fitness League
BBC - Radio 4 - Woman's Hour -The Women's League of Health

Related posts
William Morris Agriculture

The human constitution

No way to say goodbye

One reason for spending time with RTÉ rather than BBC radio these days is the eclectic mix of programming - not separated off into differnet 'demographics' for different stations 7 a mix of music & speech.

Music of all kinds form all eras - some I have not heard since my grandparents were alive.

Best of all, in some ways, the Irish seem to have an especial liking for Leonard Cohen, one of his songs might pop up almost anywhere, which can be the nicest way to hear them, unexpectedly.

Just last week I heard one I haven't heard for ages; I have the LP, though nothingto play it on.

Hey, That's No Way To Say Goodbye
from Songs Of Leonard Cohen


I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes, many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but now it's come to distances and both of us must try,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I'm not looking for another as I wander in my time,
walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme
you know my love goes with you as your love stays with me,
it's just the way it changes, like the shoreline and the sea,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

I loved you in the morning, our kisses deep and warm,
your hair upon the pillow like a sleepy golden storm,
yes many loved before us, I know that we are not new,
in city and in forest they smiled like me and you,
but let's not talk of love or chains and things we can't untie,
your eyes are soft with sorrow,
Hey, that's no way to say goodbye.

Written by Leonard Cohen, Stranger Music Inc. (BMI).

Who's a bonny baby?

I was really struggling to get to grips with the birthweight statistics because they are all given in grammes.

I know that 2.2 lbs = 1 kg & that a kilogram equals a thousand grammes, of course I can do the conversions but that takes up thinking time which could more profitably be devoted to considering all the implications & asking the right questions.

If I worked in obstetrics or a related area I am sure I would by now be at my ease with the metric scale. But I don’t & all my ‘knowing’ is rooted in the experiences of my childhood & young womanhood.

I know what a 7lb baby looks like – or one that weighs 6lb. I know what it’s like to carry a 10lb baby on my hip. I haven’t got a clue what a 3600 gramme baby looks like.

Clearly I am not alone, since The Times readers & the BBC radio More or Less team expect their readers & listeners to have the same way of knowing what makes a bonny baby as I do.

Related posts

A yard & a half
Why did I put my purse in the tea caddy?

Hedgehog names index: Q, R

This is an (intermittently) on-going experimental project. No links are provided. If you want to follow any of them up, use the BLOG SEARCH box above↑

In order to find all references it is probably best to use surname only in the search.

The Queen
Quetelet
Sheila Quigley
Marc Quinn
John Quinn

N=5

Simon Rae
Cecil Rajendra
Robert E Rakel
Sir Walter Raleigh
James Ramsey

Ian Rankin
Alison Ravatz
ET Raymond
Harry Redknapp
Jim Reeves

President Regan
Melanie Reid
Uwe E Reinhardt
Ruth Rendell
David Reynolds

David Rhind
Condoleezza Rice
Barry Richards
Jonathan Richards
PW Richards

Viv Richards
Peter Riddell
Anne Ridler
EV Rieu
Bridget Riley

Joachim Ringelnatz
J Riviere
William Roach
Andy Roberts
Harry Roberts

Michael Roberts
Sir William Roberts
Marian Robinson
Nick Robinson
Peter Robinson

Paul Roche
Rochefoucauld
Rolling Stones
Wayne Rooney
Eleanor Roosevelt

Phyllis Rose
Michael Rosen
Sir Martin Roseveare
Jim Ross
Christina Rossetti

Thomas Rowlandson
Lita Roza
Donald Rumsfeld
Damon Runyon
Tim Rushby-Smith

John Ruskin
Earl Russell
Lord Russell
William Russell

N=54

Baby BMI

I was startled to hear on the radio someone report the birth of a baby weighing over 8lbs – on the 82nd percentile. That means something like 1 baby in every 5 these days is more than 8lbs?

In my youth everybody knew that a normal full term baby weighed in at 7 lbs. One of the less attractive attributes of my mother & her friends – indeed of all the other women in the town - was the eager way in which they awaited the birth of a newly wed's first child – usually, or at least often, within a year of the wedding. Then the ‘Well, they say it’s a honeymoon baby, but it’s barely 8 months & it weighed 7 lbs!’

News of an eight pound baby made everybody’s eyes water.

I had noticed that babies born to readers of The Times – at least those whose birth is announced in the expanded version of the column which now comes complete with photo of the new arrival & too much information (what the mother was doing when her waters broke, for heavens sake) – often weigh in at closer to 9 lbs, but these are the most affluent & well nourished section of the population. The mothers are also much older, taller & heavier than those of my mother’s generation.

I found figures for 2005 in Table 5 of Birthweight and gestational age by ethnic group.

Looking just at the category White British (the sort that my mother's generation would have been thinking of) I was slightly relieved to see that the average for a full term baby is still under 7 ½ lbs, but still almost one baby in eight weighs in at a wince-inducing 8.8lbs.

We are used to hearing that low birthweight is a Bad Thing, but does anybody even try to calculate the BMI for a baby & make pronouncements as to what is the healthy number? Is there any evidence that White British babies are getting longer as well as heavier? Are the heaviest babies born to the tallest women? Does obesity start in the womb? I think we should be told.

Related post
More long legs

Baby long legs

Weights & measures

Swings & roundabouts on drugs

I had been wondering for some time why the chain chemists were competing so fiercely for business in the area of repeat NHS prescriptions – they will collect, at no charge, your prescription from the surgery for you thus saving you some of the time & effort involved. Sometimes they even offer incentives such as extra loyalty points if you sign up with them.

Of course they get paid a dispensing fee, but no more than if you deliver the prescription to the store yourself; they may gain loyalty & extra sales at the margin if people transact other business with the; and I am sure they wish to do the best they can by their customers. But can that be all?

The answer I think was hinted at in a recent column by Dr Mark Porter in The Times: he mentioned how GPs are dissuaded these days from handing out prescriptions more than a month’s supply at a time for drugs such as antidepressants & others. So a dispensing chemist may now expect to earn say, 6 dispensing fees for the same quantity of drugs where previously there had been only one.

Ps & Qs on the buses

In this part of the world – around the whole of south Manchester – it is normal to greet the bus driver when you get on, & to say thank you when you get off. I sometimes wonder if the bus driver entirely welcomes this, especially at a stop where a whole stream of passengers dismounts saying much the same thing, but then passengers do not normally expect a response in such circumstances.

Not long after I had first moved back up north & was still rather revelling in the warmth of the bus driver’s Hello love at 7am I had to go back down to London for work. Arrived at Euston around 10.30am, got on to the Number 68, & without thinking said a cheery Hello.

I still treasure the memory of the driver’s look of alarm.

Sad news

Two pieces of sad news to take a bit of the shine off the day.

Allan Robb of Radio 5 Live has died aged only 49. He was always so laid back & saw the funny side, while being a really sharp interviewer. I do not remember ever hearing any mention of the multiple sclerosis which has killed him.

Dame Beryl Bainbridge has also died – a brave & funny woman who was never one to let the ******** get her down. It is a disgrace that she never won a Booker – unless, unlike the Nobel, it can be awarded posthumously.

There are a very few authors who, when they leave the world, cause their readers to feel a quite selfish sense of sorrow: in part purely related to the fact that there will be no more books - Erica Wagner, Times 3 July 2010

Links
Allan Robb
Beryl Bainbridge

Related post

Politesse

Mick Jagger: Black & White Minstrel

The right-on version for the Baby Boom generation.

Varieties of pop

Switzerland is hardly famed for sparkling pop, read a side heading in The Times.

Well no, but then which country is, I wondered, with ginger beer in mind. Surely pop fame is always very local, according to taste.

Turned out to be an article about pop music, so I had better check that it is not a recognised category, like hip hop.

Doesn’t seem to be, though the first result Google gave me attributed that quality to a Canadian group whose name I am certainly too old & staid to repeat on this blog.

But what’s this sparkling pop News and Other Resources ZDNet - a whole web site devoted to the topic. And so I learned that POP also stands for Post Office Protocol.

Never too old to learn.

Links
Fun Varieties of Soda Pop From Around the World Trifter

Lunik in The London Times (please register first)
Express Night Out CD Review Sparkling Pop Gems.
POP Basics - How Your Email Program Gets the Mail - About Email

Related post
Whats wrong with ginger beer?

Hedgehog names index: O

This is an (intermittently) on-going experimental project. No links are provided. If you want to follow any of them up, use the BLOG SEARCH box above↑



In order to find all references it is probably best to use surname only in the search.

WA O’Connor
Georgia O’Keefe
Jim O’Neill
Barack Obama
Michelle Obama

Laurence Oliphant
Jamie Oliver
Mary Oliver
Henry Orme
Paul Ormerod

George Orwell
Dr Ostrander

David Outterside

N=13

Not just a technical difference

Ireland is one country which still pays attention to the difference between GDP & GNP.

Irish GDP grew in the first quarter of this year for the first time since the last quarter of 2007.

The rise was a very respectable 2.7%, but this is largely attributed to healthy profits of multinational companies (up by €2 billion in a year). In terms of GNP (the income which stayed with Irish residents), the picture shows a continuing decline.

Link
Quarterly National Accounts Quarter 1 2010

Related post
Income or product

Ronnie Ronalde

Blow me down – Ronnie Ronalde is still alive, living in Australia & still performing at the age of 87.

You do not hear many people whistling these days, but in my childhood lots of men took pride in their ability to whistle a really good tune, no doubt under the influence of stars like Ronnie Ronalde. Of course, even if they did whistle in the street, nobody would know; they either couldn't hear, above the noise of the traffic, or would not be listening, isolated in their own i pod world.

Related post
Unexaggerations

Previously in favourite quotations (11)

I strive to be brief & become obscure - Horace

Great men are often tardy with their truths - Elizabeth Jennings

Thoughts are real. Even thoughts of unreal things - Erica Wagner

The fact that an opinion has been widely held is no evidence whatever that it isn’t utterly absurd. Indeed in view of the silliness of the majority of mankind a widespread belief is more likely to be foolish than sensible - Bertrand Russell

Start from apparently self-evident premises, argue with impeccable logic, reach an unacceptable conclusion, - & beat a hasty retreat - Isaiah Berlin on English empiricism.

Making small, almost justifiable smoothing adjustments to the numbers can easily become a slippery slope to a large deliberate fraud - Patrick Hosking

In 1855 Mr Thomas Blackwell of Crosse & Blackwell explained to a Select Committee that his firm had recently given up the habit of coppering pickles & fruits & artificially colouring sauces, despite consumers initially being disgruntled to discover that pickles were actually brown not green & that anchovies were not naturally a nice bright red - Kathryn Hughes

It is not the strongest of the species that survives, nor the most intelligent that survives. It is the one that is the most adaptable to change - Charles Darwin

A Hedgehog Names Index: N

This is an (intermittently) on-going experimental project. No links are provided. If you want to follow any of them up, use the BLOG SEARCH box above↑

In order to find all references it is probably best to use surname only in the search.

Nabokov
Rafael Nadal
VS Naipaul
Dadabhai Naoroji
General Napier

Napoleon Bonaparte
Martin Narey
Thomas Nashe
James Naughtie

Joseph Needham
W Neilson
Pablo Neruda
Mick Neville

Cardinal Newman
Isaac Newton

Peter Nieswand
Florence Nightingale
Richard Nixon

Daniel Noble
Monty Norman
Alfred North Whitehead
Lily Norwood
Henri Nouwen

David Nutt

N=24