Birkdale Palace

I spent the first 10 years of my life in Birkdale on the Lancashire coast and on the way between our house and the sea was the Palace Hotel - pictured above. This postcard is undated but it looks pretty similar to the one in my memory - if you go to the wikipedia link above you'll see that it was originally a 20 acre site which after the original owners got into financial difficulties (here's a link to the liquidation report of 1882) then reduced to 5 - and a railway station built alongside! As you can see from the photo it was a huge building probably a white elephant from its inception. It - the hotel - was eventually demolished in 1969 amidst stories of from the demolishers of mysterious rows, screams and clattering of stilettos across the marble foyer. The noises were explained away as the deserted hotel being a rendez-vous for local courting couples but the fin-de-siecle atmosphere lent credibility to the stories. At one stage it was used as a film set and actors such as Boris Karloff and Norman Wisdom stayed and filmed there (now there's a wonderful combination!). You'll see various other legends on the wikipedia page including that the hotel was built the wrong way around - the front should have faced the sea and the architect is supposed to have committed suicide by jumping from the hotel! Wikipedia suggests that the Fisherman's rest was created after the Palace was demolished - but I don't think that is true.
I have copies of a couple of articles by Peter Elsen which have formed part of the source for this from the Southport Visiter of 2004. The Visiter's webpages have a historical section but it is presently broken so I can't see if the original articles are on line... but here is a copy and paste of most of the articles - without the pictures which accompanied it.
The Fisherman's Rest a pub - is the only surviving fragment of the Palace Hotel no doubt inhabited by the less rich - and associated with the Mexico Disaster of 1886 in which the Southport lifeboat overturned and 14 of the crew died - as well as 13 deaths from the St Anne's lifeboat. The Fisherman's Rest was used as a temporary morgue for the bodies of the Southport men.
I remember both buildings well - mainly as a way point on the way to Birkdale sands as I don't think I ever went in either building. At least one of my relations was lost in the lifeboat disaster - I'm afraid I can't remember who as a lot of the names in the story are familiar!

Teaser Tuesday - 25 April

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

The nose was immense, a shapeless heap of fleshy protuberances. Hair unlike human hair sprouted upon it and upon his cheeks together with fungus-like stains and excrescences.

No, not as threatened in a comment I just made on last week's teaser, fantasy but a very real observance, Iris Murdoch contemplates ageing in Bruno's Dream. This is a re-read - I've read most of her works but not returned to them for quite a few years. I've decided to sample a few - unfortunately with this one I can remember the ending...
How many of Murdoch's books feature ex-nuns? - must be a few or are they just the ones I remember!!

Easter morning

DSCF8392, a photo by rajmarshall on Flickr.

No pictures of eggs this morning - though they were there as they were last year. These cats though were next door to the egg ring and as one was fascinated in me and the other couldn't care less, I thought I'd take a picture.

IT and folk-dancing

As Arnold Bax (or was it Thomas Beecham) so nearly said, you should try everything once apart from IT and folk-dancing and here is a chance to combine the two:
Merge sorting as demonstrated in a folk dance. I recommend a watch of their other sort algorithms too! Apologies to those who have already seen these videos on my facebook/twitter feeds but in the remote possibility that there is anyone who doesn't read either of those I thought you should be educated here!

Mutterings - 24 April

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Squid :: Ink
2. Wife :: Partner
3. Promising :: Application
4. Tingle :: Factor
5. Off balance :: Out of kilter
6. Nice :: Rue des Anglais
7. Honor :: Blackman (Roll)
8. Emphatic :: Stress
9. Siren :: Temptress
10. Plated :: Metal (Restaurant)

A shadow on the screen

I thought at first this was the graphics card going - if you look in the top left hand corner of the screen shot you'll see a rectangular shadow on the screen, but it doesn't appear all the time and its appearance tends to coincide with my starting a particular application (amarok - which I use to play music). It - the shadow - doesn't vanish when I close amarok and doesn't appear every time. Though, if it were hardware, I doubt if I could get a screenshot of the problem! I wonder if it is trying to talk to kwin (the kde window manager) which I'm not running? This screenshot with a huge clear space for admiring the background is me running ubuntu using fluxbox as a window manager. This problem has only occurred in the past week or so and I've not much longer been using the closed source nvidia driver, maybe that's the issue?

Delvig, Delvig!

Now here's something Good Friday-ish, from Dmitri Shostakovich's bleakest Symphony - No 14 - it really is a song cycle on a series of poems around the theme of death, comes this setting of a poem by Küchelbecker.

Küchelbecker was a Russian poet who saw exile under one corrupt Russian regime, Shostakovich experienced constant harrassment from another corrupt - now Soviet regime. I'm sure there was some empathetic feeling in these words:

O Delvig, Delvig! What is the reward
for lofty deeds and poetry?
For talent what comfort is there
among villains and fools?

A cynical, old composer, but he, in the end draws something of a consolation in this setting.

Simon's cat

An early Easter present has appeared in the (fairly flat) shape of a new Simon's cat video:

Teaser Tuesday - 19 April

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Coming to a clump of larches, she cried, 'Look! What did I tell you? The sun!' The golden hair of the larches shone out against a milky blue sky.

This is Bruce Chatwin's On the Black Hill which I've returned to after diverting onto more pressing reading. my last teaser from the book was here. No tumultuous events just a gentle tale of rural inhabitants.

Mutterings - 17 April

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Director :: Film
2. Operation :: Painful
3. 30 minutes :: Theatre
4. Bald :: Patch
5. Calls :: Over
6. Distant :: Remote
7. Lightweight :: Insubstantial
8. Difficult :: Case
9. Half dozen :: Eggs
10. Boss :: Manager

Letting down holy socks

Here's an unseasonal thought:

..you have to accept the uncomfortable gifts that Advent offers: not gold, frankincense and myrrh, but waiting, despair, judgement. The saintly road is not so much about striving to pull up holy socks as letting them slide down. Not that you sag in holiness, be we are asked to adopt a discipline of surrender. ... The Church is for the most part in the fast lane, being driven harder than it can faithfully go. It is hyperactive with false hope.

from David Wood's 'Dark Prayer', letters written to the Community of the Three Hours

Teaser Tuesday - 12 April

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

My turn to choose our book group's monthly book has come around again and rather than make a guess, possibly getting something no-one (including me!) likes I've gone for safety and a re-read - though I think it is a far from unchallenging book. Here's the teaser:

At one end of the promenade the notes of the brassband bounce like audible midges. At the far end, from the Kursaal's thé dansant salon, comes the subdued whine of a string quartet. Young women, slightly tipsy, and therefore, Bella assumes, probably American, come out of Damilano's wearing beach pyjamas and hats shaped like cones.

I thought I'd better include an extra sentence with something happening in it rather than just mood setting (but what similes!). 1930's Italy, the stillness before the storm - you just know unpleasant things and casual cruelties are about to be recalled. I last read it, shortly after publication back in October 2009.

Ian at 60

A few days late - Janis Ian is 60 this month, here she is on the Old Grey Whistle Test (of blessed memory)

at seveneen - recalling teenage cruelties, indulgent maybe but beautifully crafted.

Mutterings - 10 April

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Analytical :: Chemistry (many years ago, my dad used to get this magazine
2. Production :: Line
3. Softball :: American
4. Uniform :: Constant
5. Intangible :: Smoke
6. Grill :: Barbeque
7. Second base :: Throw
8. Citizen :: Smith (I don't think I've ever seen the series, I was really getting there via Winston Smith)
9. Celery :: Salt
10. Opera :: Seria

More thoughts on the diploma

A few months back (well June 2010), I blogged about my proposed programme for my attempt at the ABRSM piano diploma. I've thought a bit more and decided the Ravel Sonatine was a bit ambitious - well at least to do it in the next 12 months, so it has been dropped and the Debussy Sarabande from 'Pour le Piano' added instead, I briefly had some Fauré in with it as a Gallic pair of pieces but, at the moment, I've decided there's too much danger of hitting the time limit! So here's today's view of the programme:

• Scarlatti Sonatas in C K308 and K309
• Debussy Sarabande (Pour le Piano)
• Messiaen Vingt Regards No 2 - Regard de l'étoile
• Mompou Musica Callada XIII
• Brahms Op 116 No 2 A minor
• Chopin Mazurka C# minor Op 50 No 3
• Beethoven Bagatelle b minor Op 126

Here's Christopher Taylor playing the Messiaen Regard de l'étoile
and here is Richter with two versions of the Beethoven Bagatelle:
Ferocious playing - especially in the earlier performance, I don't think I'll quite manage that energy!
You'll see, if you compare with the previous blog post that I've swapped around the Brahms and Chopin as, I think, the bare octaves at the end of the Chopin will anticipate nicely the start of the Beethoven!
Just a matter of getting the notes under the fingers!

Teaser Tuesday - 5 April

Teaser Tuesday
The rules are:

• Grab your current read.
• Let the book fall open to a random page.
• Share with us two (2) 'teaser' sentences from that page, somewhere between lines 7 and 12.
• You also need to share the title and author of the book that you’re getting your 'teaser' from .. that way people can have some great book recommendations if they like the teaser you've given!

Last 100 pages now of last week's book, intentionally choosing a different style!

Do wonder if my brother liked boys as well as girls too, or if my vice is mine alone. Wonder if he died celibate. Think of those troopers, lying together, cowering, alive; cold, dead.

had to include that extra sentence! Or I could have chosen:

Meronym looked back anxin' diresome. Weren't no sign of our chasers yet so she swung down to the ground an' peered at the pain.

The switches in styles between sections makes a difficult read - David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas - let's see if it is rewarding!

Music and Silence

In his Musica Callada, the Catalan composer Federico Mompou prefaces book 2 with the following comment:

It is difficult to translate and express the true sense of "Musica Callada" in a language other than Spanish. St John of the Cross the great mystic poet writes/sings in one of his most beautiful poems: "La Musica Callada, la Soledad Sonora"seeking to express a music which at the same time is the voice of silence. Music keeeps its own "Callada" voice, i.e. "that which is silent" whilst in its solitude making music.

(my translation from the French)
Here's no 26 from the set of 28 pieces:

reboot? - this is linux!

Just had a scary few minutes, this morning I was unable to logon the home mailserver (running mandriva 2010.1) across the local network - the process connected, opened up a terminal window and just hung, never getting to a prompt! Sunday lunch over, I tried opening up a term when sitting at the machine with the problems and there too, no xterm! Fortunately I was already logged in and had root (admin) access. Looking back in the logs I saw a crash in ssh (which I use to get onto the mailserver from other machines) - in ssh-block-Allow. I could understand ssh problems causing a problem with remote access - but why was local access a problem? Even a Control - C failed to interrupt whatever was running - and I could check that nothing was hogging the CPU.
I looked through any recent updates to the machine and saw nothing likely, googling only gave me my tweet for help(!) so I hurriedly connected the backup drive, did a machine backup - I was glad I already had root access and then tried a reboot. This failed to work - wouldn't shutdown with a message:

could not log bootup - already in use

so a magic key shutdown (using the sysRq key) was resorted to.
A few deep breaths later and the system rebooted and I logged in - then I realised the consequence of the ssh crash - one of the system scripts which run when you open up a terminal checks whether the machine is running ssh and, if so, asks you to unlock the key - for passwordless logins - if ssh is confused - as it evidently was - maybe that script was hanging there.
So I guess killing and restarting sshd would have avoided the reboot as to why ssh was broken that's another issue!
At least the server had been up for a month so it wasn't too unstable!

Mutterings - 3 March

This week's free word associations from Unconscious mutterings are:

1. Limited :: company
2. Zombie :: flesh-eating
3. Energy :: drink
4. Proof :: 20% (alcohol!)
5. Hassle :: annoyance
6. Peep :: peer
7. Jogger :: Mick (not quite a deliberate mis-read)
8. Hunt :: Jeremy (a cabinet minister, m'lud)
9. Career :: plans (ho!)
10. Plants :: bedding

(but I believe it's April!)