You’ve got to pity tourists who thought Christmas in London would be a good idea. I’ve just done a zip around the major museum/gallery websites and they are all closed 24-26 December, there’s no public transport at all on Christmas Day – really folks, the world hasn’t stopped, it just seems like it.

If I can start early enough in the morning it seems one of the few things to do tomorrow is walk down to Hyde Park for the Serpentine Swimming Club annual race. Although it is so ridiculously warm for this time of year, it won’t have quite the usual thrill of danger.

No, you’re right, I don’t really do Christmas – but merry Saturnalia to all!

… has been renamed Champ. This is actually short for “Champagne”, but when he needs his street-cred I won’t mention that.

I just couldn’t quite see myself yelling “Prince” across Regent’s Park, should we ever get to that stage of recall. Everyone would be expecting to see a King Charles spaniel or similar.

He had his first real off-lead run this morning, in an estate garden about half the size of a football pitch, and it went pretty well. He does know what a whistle or “come here” means, and usually obeys it, unless something else more interesting is going on around.

It is interesting comparing him with Beanie, who being a Staffie was very smell-focused. Greyhounds are classed as “sight-hounds”, and that’s just what he keeps doing; looking around with great intensity and focusing particularly on movement. And he’s certainly be off after it given the chance.

Digging through his paperwork, I find that his racing name was Alfa Focus, and would you believe it, the web yields the first part of his racing record, from Ireland! (I’m pretty sure it is the right dog, since the whelping date matches.)

So I can call him Champ, since he did win three races in Ireland, as a one-year-old, on this record. Although since according to this site his prizes were a grand total of 51 euros, so perhaps they weren’t very big races.

And here’s his pedigree, back to his great-grandparents (better than I can do!)

And I’m struggling to interpret them, but the British Racing Board results suggest he also won or came second in races at Romford, Nottingham and Peterborough. So he’s had an adventurous life – more adventurous than some people have.

But I think he might be ready for the quiet life now, and to fit in with Philobiblon …

Miss Williams Wynn is back on the subject of Napoleon, having met two relevant officers at public balls, apparently in Hastings – then rather more fashionable than now, I suspect.

She’s also writing on a young officer on the ship taking Napoleon to exile who was related to (I think she means) Sir Wm Sydney Smith, who refused to speak to Napoleon because of the way he perceived his relative had been treated by the emperor.

He was frigate captain at the start of the French Revolutionary War and in 1795 was captured on the coast of France during a cutting-out expedition and imprisoned in Paris until early 1798, largely because the French thought he was also engaged in espionage: at this he was also accomplished, aided by his fluent French.

Her other posts on Napoleon can be found here and here.

Complaints about Christmas are nothing new. The puritan Humphrey Howell in an almanac during the Interregnum complained that the feast derived from the pagan Saturnalia was blasphemous towards Christ in its origin and its conduct “for when in all the year is he more dishonoured. What less pleasing to him than swearing, drunkenness and all manner of villainy.”

Even more of a Scrooge was another almanac compiler, who argued that the time spent on religious festivals should properly be devoted to work, since God had ordained six days of week for that and “here is no room left for holy days”. (p. 152-153)

And I was commenting last night about lawyer jokes. Well the only – that I know of anyway – female almanac compiler of the 17th century, Sarah Jinner, wrote that they:

Have lined their gowns, and made them pistol-proof,
And Magna Carta clad in coat of buff.
And with a bolder confidence can take
A larger fee for Reformation sake” (p. 109)

She also has some comments on useful antiaphrodisiacs – rue “made a man no better than a eunuch”, while for women she prescribed a powder made from “a red bull’s pizzle”. (p. 122)

Pretty bad, but not as bad as Sir Christopher Wren, who claimed to have cured his wife’s thrush “by hanging a bag of live boglice around her neck”. (Anyone know what boglice are?)

And an interesting tie to a recent post of mine on marriage, which attracted some considerable heat on Blogcritics; Nicholas Culpepper on marriage – “We all know that marriage is a civil thing, therefore ought more properly to belong to the civil magistrate than the clergyman; but the clergy get money by it, that’s the key of the business.” (p. 155)

From Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs 1500-1800, Bernard Capp, Faber and Faber, London and Boston, 1979.

While astrologers in general and the almanac writers are now little regarded, the book makes an interesting case that they were important in spreading at least elementary knowledge of science and mathematics to the masses. They spread knowledge of the shape and size of the solar system, of the nature of eclipses and other natural phenomena, and assisted in the replacement of Roman numbers by Arabic. Their lists of weights and measures, ready reckoners and tables of simple interest aided in economic development.

Eugenia is a frustrated woman. Even atom of her body aches to be free of her aged husband, to throw herself, with his money, into the gay life of youth that is hers by right of her birthdate. He, however, is destined to die soon, on a set date, the date that he turns four-score years of age, for that is the decree of an absolute monarch, Duke Evander of Epire. Women get only three score, and those of no further use can be bumped off even earlier, should their relatives so request.

That’s the scenario that guides A New Way to Please You, written by Thomas Middleton and William Rowley in about 1618. Then, a scholarly essay in the programme indicates, there were all sorts of issues around conflict over the Common Law; indeed its original subtitle was The Old Law. Now, while that’s all history, the central clash of the play – between young and old – is still fresh, and ensures that this modern dress production seldom seems anachronistic.

The Royal Shakespeare Company production is part of Gunpowder season, marking the anniversary of that monumental plot. Yet this is a play that today is less about politics on the big stage than the personal politics within families. Eugenia – gloriously played by Miranda Colchester in the midst of a typically fine ensemble cast – made her pact with her bank balance in marrying the old man, but thinks she’s paid an adequate price. READ MORE.