40. Ancestors

Well, I’ve won.  The owner of the café that I told you about last week has retired, and Julian the Butcher tells me that the place is now being run by her son.  I think I might pop in for a cup of tea in a minute and see how it is served.

********

It’s been the school’s half term holiday this week and Caroline took her nephews to Covent Garden.  Timo has only recently stopped wearing nappies and has discovered the simplicity, convenience and ease of the ‘Wild Wee’.  This involves just “doing it” wherever he might happen to be – as long as it is outside.

The three of them gathered, along with about a hundred other little children and their adult companions, to watch a street entertainer.  They all stood in a horseshoe about three deep around Bernie the Balloon Man.  Timo was enthralled but suddenly got the urge.  Down came his shorts and underpants and he assumed the pose.

One hundred people stopped watching Bernie and looked instead at Timo.  Bernie released his half inflated balloon.

“I can’t compete with that,” he said.  “There’s heckling and there’s heckling.”

********

I received an e-mail from ‘Genes Reunited’ recently and I was offered the opportunity to use better ways and techniques to trace the Wiltons some hundreds of years into the past.

Why the Wiltons?  What about the Spears, Westens and Wiggs that have contributed to my genes in the last 100 years and which families contributed to the Spears’, Westen’s and the Wigg’s genes?  That is one reason why I have never been gripped by this “tracing of ancestors” business.

My suspicions first became aroused in the 60s when virtually every one I met whose origins were north of Manchester told me proudly that they were descended from George Stephenson who built the first public railway line in the world to use steam locomotives.  At first I thought, “So what?” and then I began to think that all northerners had pretentions of grandeur and they had to throw in this invented ‘fact’ to try to brighten up their drab, dreary, black and white lives (Yes, I’d read ‘The Road to Wigan Pier) but now I think that they are all probably right and they could all be descended from him but I still think, “So what?”

I was born in 1947 but let’s say that it was 1950.  A generation is, for the sake of this argument, 20 years.  In reality it is longer than that now but until fairly recently, when life expectancy was much less, it was shorter.

This means that my parents were born in 1930 and their parents in 1910.  In reality my parents were born in 1922 and 1923 and my grandparents in 1887, 1891, 1900 and 1904.

My children should have been born in 1970 but did in fact arrive in 1976, 1978 and 1980. (I was busy.)  My first grandchild, instead of honouring the world with his presence in 1990, delayed his entry until 2008.  (I have no idea what my daughter was up to)!

 

	William’s and Annie’s Ancestors	Birth Year	World Population (approx)
William and Annie – my grandchildren		1990	6,200,000,000
My children (Parents)	2	1970
ME (Grandparents)	4	1950	2,410,000,000
Great Gpts	8	1930
Great G Gpts	16	1910	1,610,000,000
Great G G Gpts	32	1890
Great G G G G Gpts	64	1870
Great G G G G G Gpts	128	1850
Great G G G G G G Gpts	256	1830	900,000,000
Great G G G G G G G Gpts	512	1810
Great G G G G G G G G Gpts	1,024	1790
Great G G G G G G G G G Gpts	2,048	1770
Great G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	4,096	1750	660,000,000
Great G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	8,192	1730
Great G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	16,384	1710
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	32,768	1690
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	65,536	1670	550,000,000
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	131,072	1650
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	262,144	1630
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	524,288	1610
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	1,048,576	1590	500,000,000
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	2,097,152	1570
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	4,194,304	1550
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	8,388,608	1530
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	16,777,216	1510	480,000,000
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	33,554,432	1490
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	67,108,864	1470
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	134,217,728	1450
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	268,435,456	1430	450,000,000
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	536,870,912	1410
Great G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G G Gpts	1,073,741,824	1390	430,000,000
Like Poo Bah, I can trace my ancestors to here: “back to a protoplasmal primordial atomic globule.”  Its name was Sydney.		10000 BC	1,000,000

 

 

 George Stephenson was born in 1781 and as you may see from the table I have compiled above, he should have 2000 direct descendants living today.  He hasn’t, however.

He had two children: a son who died in 1859 aged 56, who although married, had no children and a girl who died in infancy in 1805.  George Stephenson had siblings and so perhaps his ‘descendants’ around today come from them.

I remember one of the first maths lessons that I had at grammar school.  Miss Wimpenny (who is still to return the ring she confiscated from my girlfriend that I gave as a birthday present six years later), told us an old tale to demonstrate the rapidity of progression in a simple geometric series:

As a reward for some great service he had carried out, a peasant was asked if he would like to have 1000 tons of rice.

The peasant wasn’t as daft as he looked (Have you noticed, they never are?), and said, “No thank you,” and asked instead that the king imagine a chess board with 64 squares and put one grain on square 1, two on square 2, four on square 3, eight on square 4 and so on.  The king, thinking that he’d got off lightly, agreed to it and consequently and subsequently bankrupted the nation.

It’s the same thing with ancestors.  Six hundred years ago, my grandchildren have around twice as many ancestors as the estimated world population.  How does that work?   Is it a lot of close cousins breeding or is it the way I hope it isn’t?  If you know, please tell me.  It’s really bothering me.

Anyway, only one of the 1,000,000,000 ancestors that William and Annie have from 600 years ago can be traced back through the male line to them.  I bet that they, you and I share the same ancestor at some point.  We are probably all related to Charlemagne, Galileo and da Vinci. 

But by the same logic, unfortunately, we are more likely to have Attila the Hun as an ancestor too.

 

 

 

 

39. Tea and spuds

I did something on Monday that I know I will come to regret, as the ramifications will affect me for the foreseeable future - but I’d do it again.

On the days that Caroline is at work it is my custom and habit at around 1 pm to walk the 60 yards or so to a rather good café/restaurant around the corner.  I usually order a cheese and tomato or a ham roll, plus a coca cola for my lunch.

I am usually the only man in there.  Ladies of Winchmore Hill who lunch, don’t really have anywhere to go but there.  As I went in I could see that most tables were occupied with a number of women eating their salads and toasted panino.

Monday was cold and feeling both chilly and adventurous, I asked for a cup of tea instead of coke.  The proprietoress was a little miffed at this because she had seen me come in and she had already opened a bottle of coke.

If you have read Chocolate pastry which I posted on Saturday, August 7^th, you will know that I tend to get a bee in my bonnet about the making of tea.  You may remember the distress I suffered at the way Adrienne, a French girl, made my tea but that anguish is as nothing when compared with the suffering, pain and grief that I experienced this week.

On to my table, the ‘lady’ (I won’t name her) placed a cup of hot water, a tea bag still in its paper wrapping on the saucer, a jug of milk and a spoon.

“What’s this?” I asked.

“Your tea.”

“No its not!  Tea is made with boiling water.  This isn’t tea.”

“It was boiling.”

“Yes, it may have been once but it certainly isn’t now.”

“That’s how my customers like it,” she said, defiantly.

“Do they?” I asked, incredulously.  “Do they really?”

“Yes.”

“I don’t believe you,” I said.

“Ooooh,” said the ten or so Winchmore Hill Ladies, who were listening, enthralled.

I was suddenly aware that the place had gone quiet.

“Are you calling me a liar?” the owner asked.

“Aaaaah,” said the Winchmore Hill Ladies, leaning forwards in their seats.

‘Well, yes.  I suppose that I am,” I said, realising that I was way past the point of no return.

So that means that I’ve got to find somewhere else to eat in future.  Was it worth it?  Yes, of course it was.  The Crusade must go on!

********

I bought some shares ten weeks ago.  I have never bought shares before and there are a couple of reasons for this.  First of all I never had the money to speculate with and secondly, I know nothing whatsoever about business and it all seemed too risky to me anyway.

A friend of mine, who works for a small publicly-owned company, told me that things at work were looking up and were actually quite exciting.

“Ten months ago,” he told me, “the shares in the company were priced at 13p each.”  Now they were at 35p, with the prospect of an imminent sharp rise, he thought. 

“Should I buy some?” I asked.

“Oh God no,” he said,  “I’d feel awful if they plummeted back down and you’d never forgive me.”

“Don’t be silly.  Of course I would,” I said.  “It would be like playing a game of poker.  When I start to play poker I always assume that I will lose everything and so if I don’t, even if I’ve lost, I’m still a winner.”

“Well it’s up to you,” he said, “but please don’t spend more than you can afford to lose because things really could go horribly wrong.”

Over the next couple of days I told everyone about this company and the ridiculously underpriced shares.

Two weeks later my brother phoned me and he was jubilant and more excited than I’d ever heard him before.

“Have you heard the news?” he said.  “It was in the Business Report on the radio.  They’ve made a huge discovery in the North Sea.  Biggest since the sixties.”

“What’s the share price now,” I asked.

“74p,” he said.  We’ve more than doubled our money.  I’m going to buy a Mercedes.”

The following morning, my next-door neighbour, two friends, Julian the butcher over the road and a couple of his customers, contacted me by phone or in person to tell me how grateful they were.  I’d never been so popular.

Sadly, I couldn’t join in this euphoria, as I hadn’t actually bought any myself. I’m not going any further with this now but that just about sums up many aspects of my life – one missed opportunity after another!

Of course I did buy some the next day and even though I missed getting them at 35p, I did get them at 77.5p and now, ten weeks later on October 22^nd they are at 115.5p.

I’ve discovered a web site where I can watch constant, real time updates on the share price and I’m acquiring a whole new vocabulary.

I’ve learnt to despise the “Shorters” and to look out for the “spike” with the prospect of “topping up on the way down”.  When we have, “finished shaking out the doubters,” I intend to “buy on the rise“ and I vow to myself only ever to “buy on rumour, sell on fact” - or is it the other way round?

It’s like watching a very, very long, slow horse race. Sometimes my ‘horse’ is leading the field and sometimes, like this week when they have dropped 9.5p, it’s struggling.

I’m not selling yet though.  I’m in it for the long term.  I want a Mercedes too. 

I just wish they’d set the “spud date” and start “spudding” so we get some news.

38. Yonkey's Dears

I spoke to a smart-arse on the phone this morning.

I looked for a business that does picture framing.  I found one and saw that its address is 358 Green Lanes.  I phoned and found out that they would be able to do exactly what I need.

Green Lanes is a very long road.  It starts in Enfield on the outskirts of north London and runs due south, through Winchmore Hill where I live, to Newington Green in Islington some eight miles away.  It is one of the longest streets in London.

“Three five eight,” I said.  “Where is that exactly?”

“Right next to three five six,” the helpful young lady said.

********

Every morning when I get up my hair is sticking out in all directions.  Combing it doesn’t help and the only way that I can get it to look reasonable is to wash it and sometimes I haven’t got the time for that.

We were driving down Green Lanes a couple of hours ago when Caroline looked over at me and informed me that I looked like, “an escaped mental patient.”

She went on to tell me that the piece of official paper she’d acquired in January 2006 was not really a marriage certificate; it was more of a “Care Order”.

(I’m putting this in the public domain in case I need to provide evidence at a later date.)

********

A fortnight ago Caroline and I went to Jim and Helena’s.  Gareth and Georgia were there too.  We six had been friends in Cayman and this was the first time that we had seen them since our return in July.

Helena had been Caroline’s boss in the School’s Inspectorate when we first arrived there.  Jim had taught science at the leading private school on the island and Georgia taught music and managed very successfully to show Caribbean kids that there are musical forms other than reggae.  I don’t really know what Gareth did in Cayman except that I know that he was Very Important In Education and spent most of his time with cabinet ministers.

Jim and Helena are about to celebrate their 40^th wedding anniversary and on Saturday Helena gave us an invitation card to a function they are having to mark it. “Dress code?” I asked, secretly hoping that it was black tie.  That would have given me the opportunity to revisit ‘Toppers of Tooting’, where I had hired a morning suit in 1968 to attend a wedding at The Savoy.  I used to look pretty good in a dinner jacket forty years ago and I thought that Caroline might be impressed if she saw me in one now. 

“Smart with a flash of ruby,” said Helena.

“What’s a flash?” I asked.  “I’ve got to get this right.”

“Oh, I don’t know.  A tie or a hanky perhaps.”

“That sounds more like a dash than a flash,” I said.

“Twenty seven per cent,” said Gareth, “if you want to be precise.”

“Oh no, twenty seven per cent is a splash,” I told him, authoritatively.

I had better explain that it was well after midnight and they were all getting a little “tired” by then.

Some time later someone was telling a story and mentioned a couple that had been living “yonks away” from them.

“No!  A yonk is a unit of time, not distance,” I interrupted.

That has got me thinking about common, everyday units.  I have compiled a table of conversions between everyday, colloquial units and standard units.  See if you agree:

TIME	Usage Example	Actual time
Flash: The shortest practical measurement of time.	As in: In a FLASH, the terrible truth hit him.	0.012 seconds
Shake: A fairly short time.	As in: In two SHAKES, it was done. (Never singular)	5 minutes
Mo: About thirty seconds in the future.	As in: “I’ll be with you in just a MO.”	30 minutes
Tick: Similar to the mo but shorter.	As in: “I’ll be there in a couple of TICKS.”	1 minute
Sec: Roughly four mos.	As in: “All right!  Give me a SEC!  Don’t rush me.”	2 minutes
Jiffy: Analogous with the sec.	As in: “Just a JIFFY.  I’ll be with you soon.”	2 minutes
Yonk:  ***  See below A long time of indeterminate and variable length.	As in: 1) England haven’t won the World Cup for YONKS. 2) “I haven’t seen Jenny for YONKS. 3) “Have you gone off me?  We haven’t had sex for YONKS.”	44 years 6 months 2 days
AREA	Usage Example	Actual area
Flash: The smallest discernible area.	As in: As she sat down, he caught a FLASH of her lime green panties.	Less than 1cm²
Dash: A noticeable amount.	As in: Dress code – smart with a DASH of ruby.	Between a flash and a splash.
Splash: About the size of a dinner plate.	As in: She finished off her ensemble with a SPLASH of pink	150cm²
VOLUME or AMOUNT	Usage  Example	Actual amount
Glug: In a restaurant, wine to test.	As in: The amount of wine poured while the wine bottle makes one “glug”.	Not enough.
Dollop: A small rounded mound.	As in: “Ice cream?  Just give me a DOLLOP please.”	Half a pint.
Drop: Enough to make something wet.	As in: “Would you like a beer, John?”  “Aye, I’ll have a DROP.”	6 pints
Shedload: A lot – usually money.	As in: Caroline says she saved SHEDLOADS of money in the sales.	£450 (spent)
WEIGHT	Usage Example	Actual weight
Ton: Really heavy.	As in: “Blimey!  This bag weighs a TON.”	10 lbs
Lump: The human body (male)	As in: “You’re on my side.  Move over, you big LUMP.”	172 lbs 4 oz

The yonk is my favourite measurement of time and its lack of precision means that it is never used in the singular.  You never hear anyone say, “There’s no rush.  They won’t be here for a yonk” and things that happened in the past always occurred, ”yonks ago.”  

Someone told me that it is not “a long time of indeterminate and variable length” but it is in fact 5 months and 13 days.  His reasoning is that we have the: Day, Weekend, Week, Fortnight and the Month, but nothing to mark the period between a month and a year.  Therefore that is the yonk.

He’s wrong of course.  I like this explanation: 

Year, mONth, weeK.  It is neat but too contrived. 

However, I think that a much more realistic explanation is that it started as a Spoonerism: Donkey’s Years becoming Yonkey’s Dears. 

I am sure that I never heard the word while I was at school but it was in common usage in the mid-sixties while I was at Durham.

Nelson’s column or the Canary Wharf tower are often used as measures of heights o depths.

Fairly large things are often measured in terms of the length of a double decker bus or football pitch or the area of one.  Recently, very large areas have had Wales as the area unit. I saw once that Grand Cayman has an area of 1½ Washington DCs.  That’s a new unit to me.

We used to have our own unit of time when my three children were very young.  On the long car journey up the A12 to visit their grandparents, we were constantly being assailed by the question, “Are we nearly there yet?”

The journey lasted about three hours or the length of nine ‘Play Schools’ - a 20-minute children’s TV programme that they used to watch.

So if we had just gone through Ipswich I would tell them that we still had two Play Schools to go. “Half a Play School,” told them that we were nearly there and we would be about another 10 minutes.

Right, I’m off to bed now and I’ve invented a unit of tiredness to go after ‘knackered’.  I’m past being knackered.  I’m  jogger tired.