Philobiblon

On 17 April 1467, John Russell, a future Chancellor of England, bought in Bruges a printed copy of Cicero’s De Officilis, printed by Fust in Mainz the previous year. This was “one of the first records” of an Englishman purchasing a printed book. (William Caxton was the Governor of the English Nation in Bruges at the time.)

Of such small steps are intellectual leaps – such as into the Renaissance – made.

(From A.S.G. Edwards, “Continental Influences on London Printing and Reading in the Fifteenth and Early Sixteenth Centuries,” London and Europe in the Later Middle Ages, Julia Boffey and Pamela King (eds), 1995, Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies Queen Mary and Westfield College University of London, pp. 230.

One of the topics discussed at yesterday’s Camden Greens AGM (on which hopefully more soon) was the world’s second problem commodity, water. Topically, it turns out, since the England and Wales are facing their worst drought in 75 years.

One the first problem commodity – fossil fuels – there is also more bad news today, with a report saying there is “only a small chance of greenhouse gas emissions being kept below ‘dangerous’ levels.

Yet it might not, quite, be too late:

On the other question asked at the 2005 conference – what are the options for avoiding dangerous concentrations of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere – the report says that technological options to reduce emissions do exist.
It concludes that the biggest obstacles to the take up of technologies such as renewables and “clean coal” lie in vested interests, cultural barriers to change and simple lack of awareness.

So I’m going to try to do my bit. I signed up to be a Green candidate for the Regent’s Park ward in the Camden Borough elections in May. At least I’ll be able to say I tried.

Having been tagged by The Unheard Word I will do my best …
Four jobs I’ve had:
1. Packing at the Aeroplane Jelly factory. (I was 15; it was very educational.)
2. Cleaning the Cococabana Night Club in Wagga Wagga
3. Handing out pig recipes while dressed in a Miss Piggy apron in the main street of Dubbo (a cattlemen’s town)
4. Burr chipping (cutting down thistles and other spikey plants) in 45 degree heat about three hours out of Longreach. (I was a jillaroo – briefly. I quit before I killed myself falling off a horse or a motorbike.)

Four movies I can watch over and over:
Sorry, I see about one movie a year – none of the above?

Four places I’ve lived:
1.A traditional Thai house over a canal (mosquitoes not as bad as you might expect) in an extensive garden slap bang in the middle of Bangkok. (Thanks Anne, for passing it on when you left.)
2. A stinking hot guesthouse room in which it was barely possible to turn around, also in Bangkok. The owner pulled the fuses between 2am and 6am, so the fans went off. (I lived there very! briefly)
3.On a farm out of Tamworth (NSW, Australia) with a piggery that I ran several days a week. Luckily the piggery was downwind of the house.
4.In a Sixties ex-council London flat with nicotine and tar dripping down the walls. (My current dwelling, now fully done up.)

Four TV shows I enjoy:
Sorry, haven’t got a TV

Four places I’ve vacationed holidayed:
1. North Korea
2. Czechoslovakia (as it was then) soon after the Velvet Revolution (not game to go back because it can’t possibly be so good)
3. Sri Lanka – close to paradise
4. Siem Reap (better known as Angkor Wat, Cambodia – before the tourists; magical)

Four of my favorite dishes:
1. Macaroni cheese with bacon (childhood comfort dish)
2. Tom yung gung (Thai seafood soup with lemongrass)
3. Pasta carbonara (as served by a little Mum-and-Son restaurant in Bari
4. Chicken with chilli and cashew nuts (also a Thai dish)

Four sites I visit daily:
1. Arts and Letters Daily (Used to read it in Bangkok when it was an intellectual lifeline)
2. The Guardian
3. Early Modern Notes (Sharon was my blogging mentor)
4. Women’s eNews

Four places I would rather be right now:
1. Well, on balance here in London, just down the road from the British Museum and the British Library, although I wouldn’t mind a week or month in …
2. Nice
3. Libya
4. Iran (these last two the places I’d like to go next for serious travelling)

I won’t tag anyone else for this, but hey, go on, it is kind of fun. It brought back memories of things I hadn’t thought of in a long while; in the case of the incredibly sticky carpet of the Cococobana, that is a good thing. So why not give it a go …

Miss Williams Wynn is today have a good gossip about the postumously born son of the Duc de Berri (who was assassinated in 1820; also known as Berry). Usually doubts are about fatherhood, but this one is a doubt about motherhood – was he actually the son of the duke’s English mistress?

Before that, she had a lovely tale about a quality imposter, who made himself a bishop. Although he ended on the galleys in the end …

Today’s splash in the Observer says Women demand tougher laws to curb abortions. What, I thought?

Then you read on. No, no one is “demanding” anything – they are responding to a survey. And this is an online survey – how representative is that really likely to be? And no information is provided on the detail of the questions.

One person from the Family Planning Association is quoted; otherwise you get the Catholic Church, a “pro-life” alliance, and David Cameron.

What the survey actually seemed to have addressed, when you read the detail, is a reduction from a 24 week limit to 20 or 22 weeks, not “tougher laws”.

The survey by MORI shows that 47 per cent of women believe the legal limit for an abortion should be cut from its present 24 weeks, and another 10 per cent want the practice outlawed altogether. Among the population overall, reducing the upper limit was the preferred option backed by the largest proportion of respondents, 42 per cent, made up of a 36-47 per cent split among men and women.
Only one person in three agreed that ‘the current time limit is about right’, with slightly fewer women (31 per cent) than men (35 per cent) saying that. Just 2 per cent of women and 5 per cent of men think the last possible date after which a woman can end a pregnancy should be increased from 24 weeks.

(Not that anyone I know of is campaigning for an increase.) As for the issue of a reduction of a couple of weeks, this seems to be based on emotional campaigns – one fact in the matter: doctors, who are best placed to judge the medical issues, have voted against any reduction.

What IS happening at the Observer? When did it become anti-abortion?

As I’ve written before, we have to keep fighting this issue.

But after all of that negativity, a nice little piece in The Sunday Times (not something I say often) from Aleka Lieven, an 18-year-old A-Level student, on the necessity of feminism (and her compatriots’ false ideas about it). Her evidence is strong:

“We cannot always assume we are going to enjoy exactly the same opportunities as the boys at our brother school, St Paul’s. …
Recently a banker came to give us some career advice. He meant well but it was so sexist. He said City jobs were fine for women, but warned us off the trading floor. It was “too macho and far too aggressive” for the likes of us. Similarly, he added, stay away from corporate finance because of the long hours. Can you imagine him saying that to sixth-form boys? And when is anyone ever going to say to a young man: “This is a good career because you can go part-time after you have children?”

I was trying not to get too into dog blogging, but who could resist a special email request?

It has been cold this week, but Champ has worked out the purpose of a blanket …

While greyhounds have a reputation as fussy easters, Champ will eat anything, particularly if humans eat it too. So it’s worth lots of effort to get the yoghurt at the bottom of the container …

Champ is, however, in the doghouse this week, since he’s decided he doesn’t like being left on his own. The doorframe is suffering (from clawing), as is a bookcase (from teeth), although at least he picked a £10 Homebase MDF one. I’m hoping it is a phase ….

So as not to be speciest, thought I’d also share this pic from Regent’s Park, of what I think are heron’s nests. (At least there seemed to be a heron sitting in one.) Nothing new about multi-storey dwellings …