Philobiblon

Spent a couple of hours leafletting for the Greens this afternoon and learnt several things:

* Many people must never come home drunk, because if they did their front steps would surely kill them.

* A row of houses with raised ground floors – eight or ten steps up – don’t look like that big a deal, until you start climbing them one by one.

* Many people have astonishingly small letterboxes, and flaps with bulldog-strength springs, so it is a miracle posties don’t lose their fingers in them.

* I did see a real example of a flat from hell – an astonishingly filthy kitchen – no window glass at all (all of the other windows in the flat were boarded up). I did put a leaflet through the door, but have to admit to fleeing when someone approached it…

What was this all for? A talk by Paul Ingram, a defence analyst, former Green Party councillor and co-leader of Oxford City Council, speaking on “The Need for Green Politics Today” on Sunday, 29 January 4.30-5.30pm at Holly Lodge Community Centre, 30 Makepeace Avenue N6 6HL. Just in case you happen to be in the area …

In Our Time this morning is on the subject of 17th-century print. I’ve been half-listening, in between the morning chores, but I do plan to get back to it, since it is downloadable as an MP3 file, at least for a week, or you can listen on the website.

Time to work out how to load MP3s on to my phone …

A piece in the Guardian today suggesting young women are angry about the apparent disappearance of “political feminism”. Great!

I am sitting on a platform at the ICA with Naomi Wolf, and a young woman speaks up from the audience. “Where has our women’s movement gone?” she asks. I am struck by her impatience and the anger that is voiced by other young women in the room. I hear them speak about feeling under attack by our Nuts-and-Loaded culture, which suggests to young women that their only chance of fulfilment and empowerment is through pandering to the so-called ironic fantasies of chortling men.

It is partly a mea culpa by the author, Natasha Walter, although it does make me want to point out the difficulty of getting anything overtly, or even covertly, “feminst” in the mainstream meda – I know because I was there, and I tried. And nearly all of the decisionmakers are males; the few exceptions are woman who have often had to, or felt they had to, be more male than the blokes to get to their positions. Mention the word “feminist” in a news meeting and you’ll get either rolled eyes and comments about “bra-burning”, or, in more politically correct areas, people clearly thinking similarly.

But then a story proving that youth can sort things out for themselves – a New Jersey schoolboy has won the right to wear skirts to school.

At first, Michael Coviello only wanted to bend the uniform code at Hasbrouck Heights High School by donning shorts, which he had started wearing because of a knee injury.
But he was told that district policy prohibited shorts in winter.
He sought a meeting with Joseph Luongo, the school superintendent, and argued that it was unfair that girls were allowed to expose their legs and he was not. The superintendent suggested that if he felt that way, he should dress like a girl. Michael, 17, a drummer in the school band and a member of the golf team, called his bluff and went shopping.

Well indeed; why shouldn’t boys wear skirts?

Probably a long shot, but I’m on the trail of Dame Helen Branch (or possibly Helena/Helenae) who died – in her nineties – on 10 April 1594 and was buried in St Mary Abchurch in London.

A pamphlet was published containing a poem celebrating her virtues. (Infuriatingly short on detail, as such things usually are.) It is titled A Commemoration of the life and death of the Right worshipfull and vertuous Lady Dame Helen Branch, late wife to the Right Worshipfull Knight Sir John Branch, sometime Lord Maior of the famous Cittie of London, &c. and can even be found on the web here.

It is curious that the poem seems to be widely attributed; to Joshua Sylvester, and to John Phillip[s], also here.

Yet the original pamphlet, which I was holding in my hands today, has a closing signature “W. Har.” – and it is hard to see how you can get either of those names from that. The ODNB says it was written by a William Herbart or Herbert, but not the most famous one of those?! Another source says it was a Sir William Harvey.

Her second husband, Sir John Branch, a draper, was mayor 1580-81.

Her first husband had been a John Mynors, who may have been (if he was a fair bit older than her) the John Mynors who in Lincolns Inn in the Trinity Term of 1494 was, with William Fyllyff and Richard Eryington, fined “for not keeping or preparing the moots for two days as they ought, when divers Benchers were prepared to hear the moots”. (These were formal disputations.) He may have some connection with a composer, William Bryd.

Her father was William Nicolson, her mother Joan.

In the back of the pamphlet is what looks to me like contemporary handwriting recording what seems to have been the epitaph on her tomb, mostly in Latin, but with a bit of English. There’s mentioned in that a Robin? Nicolson, also “JOHANNIS DIINORS” and “CVIBERTI BVCKLE”.

I’d be eternally grateful to anyone who can shed any more light on her life; if I get time tomorrow I’ll probably try to transcibe the handwritten bits in the pamphlet (although working from handwritten Latin IS a challenge.) I’d also welcome any suggestions for other directions of research; I’ve got a few threads, but they are pretty thin.

One of those moments that produce disquiet: I was taking Champ out for a walk this morning, wrestling with the rather difficult external security door of the flats.

Two Community Support Officers were walking past. When they saw me they immediately changed direction and walked through the door I had opened into the (secured) lobby of the flats. (They didn’t speak to me, or make any attempt to speak to me, although we were virtually face-to-face.)

I didn’t challenge them at the time; it was one of those things that happen in an instant, but having thought about it I don’t think they have the right to walk straight into private property without permission. Shouldn’t they need, like presumably the police, a search warrant?

Living in central London, I see huge numbers of these CSOs – they seem to spend their time strolling the streets doing nothing in particular, and it can surely only be a matter of time before there is some scandal over criminal behaviour by them. We all know there are plenty of crooked police; there will surely be burglars (or worse) who think a CSO uniform would come in right handy.

And of course there are the civil liberties implications …

A bit of research shows: “A constable has no general right of entry into private property except to prevent a breach of the peace and to prevent the commission of an offence which he believes to be imminent or likely to be committed.”

I’m not a lawyer, but it seems to me that the lobby of a block of flats is private property, albeit communal private property. The more I think about this, actually, I think I’m going to query this … I’ll report what I find (if of course I can find someone responsible.)

UPDATE: 26/1 Well I did get a response on my voicemail this morning, and it seems that they do have permission from the council housing department to enter the block, and there is a purpose for it; someone has complained that youths are smoking cannabis in the stairwells. In which case it is fair enough, although I still found their manner a little odd.