What with the foul and beastly vice and further spookiness at South Mimms, I admit to lying awake at night, tossing and turning, fretful that nothing of comparable import ever seemed to happen at North Mimms. One likes to think of the Mimms (Mimmses?) as equal in their attractions, albeit those attractions are largely historical. Balanced Mimms are so much easier to comprehend, within my head, than lopsided Mimms. I am going to have to consult a reference work to decide on the proper plural.

To my delight, I have discovered an event at North Mimms to serve as a counterweight to all that shenanigans at South Mimms. The Age Of Wonder : How The Romantic Generation Discovered The Beauty And Terror Of Science by Richard Holmes is itself a wonder of a book. Nige has a postage on it which you would do well to read. In his chapter on ballooning, Holmes tells us of the foppish Vincent Lunardi (1759-1806), a young Italian who made the first manned balloon ascent in Britain, rising from Moorfields in London on 15 September 1784. He took his cat with him. After drifting across London and over Hertfordshire, eating chicken, drinking champagne, and accidentally breaking one of his aerial oars, Lunardi noticed that the cat was numb with cold. He brought the balloon down (by paddling the oars, he claimed, which Holmes points out is impossible), and delivered the shivering cat into the hands of a no doubt nonplussed peasant girl in a field, before reascending and continuing his historic flight. And where was this field? Why, in North Mimms!

I have not yet managed to ascertain the name of the cat, more’s the pity. If any reader knows it, perhaps they would be kind enough to let me know in the Comments. You can see the cat for yourself in this portrait of Lunardi published by Edward Hodges of Cornhill just six weeks after his act of feline mercy in North Mimms.

Yesterday, an idea for an opera. Today, an idea for a ballet, courtesy of the magnificent headline

Swan ‘falls in love’ with a tractor

I do think they could have omitted those pesky inverted commas. The ballet would have to have a role for animal behaviourist Daniela Fiutak, who could communicate her insight “The swan presumably had contact with machines during puberty. He sees the tractor as a sexual partner” through the medium of interpretive dance.

… the decade being the 1970s, my source again Francis Wheen’s Strange Days Indeed: The Golden Age Of Paranoia (2009). It is a book of many delights, not least the account of the evening of 5th  April 1976 at 5 Lord North Street, the London home of Harold Wilson. Earlier that day, Wilson resigned as prime minister, and now he has invited two BBC journalists, Barrie Penrose and Roger Courtior, to join him for a quiet drink – and to persuade them to investigate the many plots against him, variously ascribed to the KGB, the CIA, MI5, or the Post Office, perhaps all of them. At one point, Wilson says:

I see myself as the big fat spider in the corner of the room. Sometimes I speak when I’m asleep. You should both listen. Occasionally when we meet I might tell you to go to the Charing Cross Road and kick a blind man standing on the corner. That blind man may tell you something, lead you somewhere.

The implications of this would seem to me to be quite colossal. [If a man could influence inanimate objects by the power of thought,] then surely it becomes more than possible that we all either have within our minds or can be in direct touch with powers so massive as to dwarf our mightiest machines and maybe ultimately to make our whole materialist technology obsolete? In medieval times, the Establishment, faced by such a threat to its orthodox beliefs, would quickly have burnt Uri Geller at the stake. In our more sophisticated modern world The Times simply maintains a dignified silence.

Hamish Scott of London SW10, reading perhaps just a teensy bit too much into the conjuring tricks of Uri Geller, in a letter to The Times in 1973, quoted in Francis Wheen’s Strange Days Indeed : The Golden Age Of Paranoia (2009). A more sensible response to Mr Geller was uttered by Tara Palmer-Tomkinson, no less, who secured herself a wee corner in history when, on television early in this century, she uttered the immortal words “These are Uri’s underpants. Burn them.” A contemporaneous report can be found here.

Chapter One of The Saga Of Halfred The Sigskald : A Northern Tale Of The Tenth Century by Felix Dahn, translated by Sophie F E Veitch (1886)

Nigh upon fifty winters ago, there was growing up in the North a boy named Halfred. In Iceland, on the Hamund Fjord, stood the splendid hall of his father, Hamund.

At that time, so the heathen people believe, elves and goblins still moved about freely among the Northern nations. And many say that an elf, who had been friendly to the powerful Hamund, drew near to the shield cradle of the boy Halfred, and for his first food laid wild honey upon his lips, and said—

Victory shall be thine in harping / Victory shall be thine in singing / Sigskald shall all nations name thee

But this is a mere idle tale of the heathen people.

And Halfred grew, and was strong and beautiful. He sat often alone on the cliffs, and listened how the wind played in rifts in the crags, and he would fain have tuned his harp to the same strain, and because he could not do it he was filled with fury.

And when this fury swept over his forehead the veins in his temples swelled, and there came a red darkness before his eyes. And then his arm sometimes did that whereof his head knew nothing.

When his father died Halfred took the seat of honour in the hall. But he took no heed to preserve or improve his inheritance. He gave himself up to harp playing and feats of arms. He devised a new strain in singing, “Halfred’s strain,” which greatly charmed all who heard it, and in which none could imitate him. And in hatchet throwing, not one of the men of Iceland could equal him. He dashed his hammer through three shields, and at two ships’ lengths he would not miss with its sharp edge a finger broad arrow shaft.

His mind was now set upon building a dragon ship, strong and splendid, worthy of a Viking, wherein he might make voyages, to harry or levy toll upon island and mainland, or to play his harp in the halls of kings.

And through many an anxious night he considered how he should build his ship, and could devise no plan. Yet the image of the ship was always before his eyes, as it must be, with prow and stem, with board and bow; and instead of a dragon it must carry a silver swan on the prow.

And when, one morning, he came out of the hall, and looked out over the Fjord, towards the north, there, from the south-south-east, came floating into Hamund’s Bay a mighty ship, with swelling sails. Then Halfred and his house-churls seized their weapons, and hurried out either to drive away or welcome the sailors. Ever nearer drove the ship, but neither helmet nor spear flashed on board, and though they shouted through the trumpet all was still. Then Halfred and his followers sprang into the boat, and rowed to the great ship, and saw that it was altogether empty, and climbed on board. And this was the most splendid dragon ship that ever spread sail on the salt seas. But instead of a dragon it bore a silver swan upon the prow.

And moreover also, Halfred told me, the ship was in all things the same as the image he had seen in his night and day dreams; forty oars in iron rowlocks, the deck pavillioned with shields, the sails purple-striped, the prow carved with runes against breakers, and the ropes of sea-dogs’ skin. And the high-arched silver wings of the swan were ingeniously carved, and the wind rushed through them with a melodious sound.

And Halfred sprang up to the seat of honour on the upper-deck, upon which lay spread a purple royal mantle, and a silver harp, with a swan’s head, leaned against it.

And Halfred said—

Singing Swan shalt thou be called, my ship / Singing and victorious shalt thou sail

And many said the elf who had given him his name had sent the Singing Swan to him.

But that is an idle tale of the heathen people. For it has often happened that slightly anchored ships have broken away in storms, while the seamen were carousing ashore.

Solo Synchronized Swimming was a sport at the Olympic Games between 1984 and 1992. It is surprising that it took the organizers three Olympics to realize that a person swimming alone cannot be synchronized with anyone else.

From Discontinued Olympic Sports

Yesterday evening I went to an event irresistibly entitled Everything You Wanted To Know About Zombies But Were Afraid To Ask Daniel Defoe. Geographer Amy Cutler gave a talk in which she explored similarities between Defoe’s A Journal Of The Plague Year (1722) and modern zombie films. She provided a handout in which quotations from Defoe are presented in a sort of multiple choice format, and it is so splendid that I take the liberty of reproducing it here:

DISTEMPER HAS STRUCK LONDON. I WOULD (PLEASE MARK)

Run about the Streets Naked except a pair of Drawers about my Waste, crying Day and Night, with a Voice and Countenance full of horror, a swift pace, and no Body cou’d ever find me to stop, or rest, or take any Sustenance.

Make a strange Hubbub, quacking and tampering in Physick, and invite the People to come to me for INCOMPARABLE Remedies.

Go to the Pye-tavern (in Aldgate), and in the middle of all this Horror, behave with all the Revelling and roaring extravagances, and make impudent Mocks and Jeers.

Break into a Store-house or Ware-house and seize upon an abundance of High-crown’d Hats, as they were no Bodies Goods.

Grow stupid or melancholy, wander away into the Fields, and Woods (of Camberwell), and into secret uncouth Places out of the Compass of the Communication, almost any where to creep into a Bush, or Hedge, and DIE.

Make use of the most excessive Plenty of all sorts of Fruit, such as Apples, Pears, Plumbs, and the cheaper, because of the want of People; eat them to excess, and be brought to Fluxes, griping of the Guts, Surfeits, and the like, and dye of it.

Cure my Body of the Plague with the violent Motion of my Arms and Legs when I throw down my Nurse and run over her, run down Stairs and into the Street directly to the Thames, throw away my Shirt, swim quite over the River to the Falcon Stairs (Southwark); where landing, and finding no People there, run about the Streets there, naked as I am, for a good while, when it being by that time High-water, I take the River again, and swim back to the Still-yard, land, run up the streets again to my own House, knock at the Door, run up the Stairs, and into my Bed again.

Go about denouncing of Judgment upon the City in a frightful manner, sometimes quite naked, and with a Pan of burning Charcoal on my Head.

Make my Boat serve me for a House (in Bow), and row down the River to Woolwich, and lay in little or nothing but Biscuit Bread, and Ship Beer, and die alone in my Wherrie.

Be absolutely overcome with the Pressure upon my Spirits, that by degrees, my Head sunk into my Body, that the Crown of my Head was very little seen above the Bones of my Shoulders; and by Degrees, loseing both Voice and Sense, my Face looking forward, lay against my Collar-Bone, and cou’d not be kept up any otherwise, unless held up by the Hands of other People.

With as little Baggage as possible, travel on from Wapping to Hackney until I came into the great North Road on the top of Stamford-Hill, and make forwards to Epping-Forest, and pitch my tent with an old Soldier, a Biscuit Baker, and a lame Sailor, and live like Hermits in Holes and Caves.

Being tyed in my Bed, and finding no other Way to deliver myself, set the Bed on fire with my Candle, and Burn myself in my Bed.