In cities, do social meetings abound? and what are their purposes and character? Are they most religious, political, or festive? If religious, have they more the character of Passion Week at Rome, or of a camp-meeting in Ohio? If political, do the people meet on wide plains to worship the Sun of the Celestial Empire, as in China; or in town-halls, to remonstrate with their representatives, as in England; or in secret places, to spring mines under the thrones of their rulers, as in Spain? If festive, are they most like an Italian carnival, where everybody laughs; or an Egyptian holiday, when all eyes are solemnly fixed on the whirling Dervishes? Are women there? In what proportions, and under what law of liberty? What are the public amusements?…In country towns, how is the imitation of the metropolis carried on? Do the provincials emulate most in show, in science, or in the fine arts? In the villages, w hat are the popular amusements? Do the people meet to drink or to read, to discuss, or play games, or dance? What are the public houses like? Do the people eat fruit and tell stories? or drink ale and talk politics or call for tea and saunter about? or coffee and play dominoes? or lemonade and laugh at Punch? Do they crowd within four walls, or gather under the elm, or spread themselves abroad over the cricket-field or the yellow sands?… In the manners of all classes, from the highest to the lowest, are forms of manners enforced in action, or dismissed in words? Is there barbarous freedom in the lower, while there is formality in the higher ranks, as in newly settled countries? or have all grown up together to that period of refined civilization when ease has superseded alike the freedom of the Australian peasantry, and the etiquette of the court of Ava? What are the manners of professional men of the society, from the eminent lawyer or physician of the metropolis down to the village barber?

from Harriet Martineau, How To Observe : Morals And Manners (1838)

Items removed from the house included baby carriages, a doll carriage, rusted bicycles, old food, potato peelers, a collection of guns, glass chandeliers, bowling balls, camera equipment, the folding top of a horse-drawn carriage, a sawhorse, three dressmaking dummies, painted portraits, pinup girl photos, plaster busts, Mrs Collyer’s hope chests, rusty bed springs, the kerosene stove, a child’s chair (the brothers were lifelong bachelors and childless), more than 25,000 books (including thousands about medicine and engineering and more than 2,500 on law), human organs pickled in jars, eight live cats, the chassis of the old Model T with which Langley had been tinkering, tapestries, hundreds of yards of unused silks and fabric, clocks, 14 pianos (both grand and upright), a clavichord, two organs, banjos, violins, bugles, accordions, a gramophone and records, and countless bundles of newspapers and magazines, some of them decades old.

from the Wikipedia article on the Collyer brothers, brought to my attention by R., to whom many thanks.

Now here’s a quandary. Hooting Yard strains every sinew to pretend that certain “celebrities” do not actually exist. We simply ignore them. They are banished from our mental purview, dumped into a gigantic imaginary dustbin, the lid of which is clanged shut.

Badgers, on the other hand, we consider splendid creatures, always worthy of a few lines here and there. We don’t go overboard, we don’t babble on and on and on about badgers, but we take note of their doings, and bring you interesting badger news when appropriate.

What to do then, when a non-existent “celebrity” and badgers collide? It is with a heavy sigh that I bring you this four-month old headline which has only just been transmitted to the Hooting Yard news hub substation…

Gordon Ramsay’s Dwarf Porn Double Found Dead in a Badger Den in Wales

A badger

Courtesy once again of Mike Jennings, here is the first known illustration of the Goliath bird-eating spider, made by Maria Sibylla Merian (1647-1717). She has a ship named after her, but not (as far as I know) a spider.

Perhaps this lighthouse is on the tip of Porridge Island! That sea monster has probably had a sniff of the greasy doings…

Exciting sea-monster-attacks-lighthouse film still from Chilling Scenes Of Dreadful Villainy

If you are wondering what to have for lunch today, and you happen to find yourself in Arizona, might I suggest you try that most delicious-sounding of snacks, Greasy Doings? It is just one of many regional specialities detailed on the Porcineograph, which Ptak Science Books rightly calls a “semi-magnificent map”. Click on its semi-magnificence for a larger version.

Rummaging around on the BBC iPlayer, I discovered a programme new to me, a studio discussion show called The Big Questions. Well, I’m not sure about the size of the questions, but some of the answers made me laugh.

Asked to name a single coherent objective of the Occupy movement, one of the guests replied “We’re against all the injustice in the world”. He sounded like a plaintive seven-year-old whining that life isn’t fair. Perhaps I’m being too harsh. For some unexplained reason he was wearing one of those silly masks, so for all I know perhaps he was an upset seven-year-old.

A bit later on a woman who appeared to be something to do with the Church of England opined that the government should be responsible for origami.

I think this show may be unmissable.

I am indebted to Mike Jennings for further useful illustrative material from The Universe or The Infinitely Great and the Infinitely Little by F A Pouchet M.D. (1882). In this picture, we see gnomes of German legend laying bare the skeleton of an ichthyosaurus. As Mr Jennings so rightly says, “the mind boggles… well, mine doesn’t boggle so much these days, but yours might”.

Courtesy of Mike Jennings, here is a picture of that Goliath bird-eating spider I was telling you about. Note, too, the hummingbird which is about to become its lunchtime snack.

Taken from The Universe or The Infinitely Great and the Infinitely Little by F A Pouchet M.D. (1882)

She heard her come back into the room, shut the double-door, turn out the gas, which died with a full sighing plop, heard her draw back the window-draperies with the now remembered and recognisable squeaking drag of the rings on their mahogany rod. The light struck Melanie’s lids again, but she could not open her eyes and meet Adelaide’s, who had unlocked the door to the hall and called, “Lizzie! The lavender shovel!”

There was a moment’s waiting, and then Lizzie’s heavy steps came up the stone stairs, along the passage and into the room. Now curiosity forced open Melanie’s eyes, and she saw Lizzie come past her couch, holding at arm’s length a black kitchen-shovel on which burned red embers.

Adelaide was standing by the fireplace, a small green bottle in her hand. Lizzie held out the shovel to her, and on the embers Adelaide dripped liquid from the bottle. There was a sizzling, and smoke rose from the shovel, heavy with the smell of lavender. Adelaide recorked the bottle, and replaced it behind the jar containing the bulrushes, while Lizzie walked about the room, holding the shovel before her, waving it slowly from side to side.

The embers were nearly grey when she again passed by the couch on her way out of the room.

from Marghanita Laski, The Victorian Chaise-Longue (1953)

I want a lavender shovel. A lavender shoveller would be handy too.

Sebald’s point, it seemed to me, was simple. That precision in writing fiction – especially in writing fiction – is an absolutely fundamental value. He summed up by saying that if you look carefully you can find problems in all writers, or almost all (Kafka being an exception; especially, he told us, if you look at the reports he wrote for the Workers’ Accident Insurance Institute!).

from Luke Williams’ essay “A Watch on Each Wrist: Twelve Seminars with W.G. Sebald”, discussed, with excerpts, here.

I think I have worked out why so much contemporary fiction is lifeless and insipid. There are not nearly enough big novels of tormented people…

Is it a badger? Is it a theremin? No, it’s the badgermin, quite possibly the finest badger-related electronic musical instrument ever devised.

You can see more of David Cranmer’s electrical instruments, mechanical sculptures, robots, etc., on his website.

I greatly admire those who devote time and energy to the study of extremely arcane, obscure, or specialised subjects. Such as Robert Killick-Kendrick, whose obituary appears in today’s Grauniad. Though he was “a man of many interests, which included guitar playing, choral singing, hiking and photographing the numerous butterflies that visited his garden”- and possibly sharing his wife’s major preoccupation (she is “an expert on sand flies”) – our hero is particularly to be acclaimed for this:

He also made a study of domestic animals’ bells, ranging from elephants in India to hunting dogs in southern France, which resulted in a scholarly, but sadly uncompleted book, illustrated mainly with his own photographs.

Incidentally, elsewhere in the Grauniad today, in the Weekend magazine, there is a photograph of what must surely be the most coveted Christmas gift of the year – of any year! – an Alain De Botton action figure. Curiously, there is no trace of the photo, nor indeed of the accompanying article, on the website.