Fed by Birds

This 1734 map of St James's Park in London shows a strange, small territory - that of Duck Island. Charles II created the post of "Governor of Duck Island" as a sinecure for one of his favourites, and it was revived by Queen Caroline the year before this map was made, and given to the poet Stephen Duck, presumably because of his name. If you're a queen, you can do that kind of thing. (Then again, he'd earlier been her hired hermit in the crazy Merlin's Cave in Richmond, so maybe he had a talent for that sort of work.) Duck Island itself was described as on the one side a wilderness and a desert, and on the other "like a paradise in miniature". It later had a strange little Swiss cottage built on it.

Map from the British Library Crace Collection, which has quite a few nice maps of London parks:

Posted by at 11:44 AM | Permalink

Went to the Curzon Soho on Sunday for a screening of The Moon and the Sledgehammer, a 1972 documentary about a wonderfully strange family living in the Sussex woods. Full of the buzzings and rustlings of the forest, along with the sons tinkering with steam engines, the father playing the organ and musing - "Now you never want to take apart a magneto with a monkey in the vicinity. You can't rely on a monkey." In the Q&A afterwards the director Philip Trevelyan explained that Mr Page had worked as both an engineer and a circus clown, so these are obviously the words of experience.

Totally captivating view of a way of life that's gone - it doesn't close its eyes to the more unsettling aspects of the Pages' life, but always treats them with respect and listens to what they have to say - sensibly, since it's well worth listening to. It's just been released on DVD.

Posted by at 2:28 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

This 1945 King Penguin about "art as practised by artists of the people for the enjoyment of the people" has an essay by Noel Carrington (who I think was the brother of Dora) about the survival of folk art on coaches, in fairgrounds and on musical instruments. Even then he was lamenting its disappearance under the influence of mainstream culture: "I noted with regret that the lettering on a little train roundabout in which my children had embarked was in the sober sanserif type designed by Eric Gill." I like the illustrations by Clarke Hutton:

Posted by at 11:29 AM | Permalink

Saturday afternoon viewing: My Man Godfrey. One of those tough but highly moral Depression-era comedies, it's got the best opening I've seen for a long time - as the unemployed try to keep body and soul together on the city dump, some thick rich types turn up in search of a "forgotten man" for their scavenger hunt. These heiresses could teach Paris Hilton and co a thing or two, but they're no match for butler William Powell. All seems frighteningly familiar - short-selling even plays a vital role in the plot.

Posted by at 5:40 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'm afraid I've forgotten who pointed me towards this, but it's fascinating: an article on a delusion that as far as I know has now disappeared - that the sufferer is made of glass.

"Possibly the first case of a man believing his whole body to be made of glass was the French king, Charles IV, who allegedly refused to allow people to touch him, and wore reinforced clothing to protect himself."

One poor man was supposedly cured of his obsession by a severe thrashing from the doctor.

Glass figures from the British Museum

Posted by at 4:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (4)

Looking at Vernon Hill's extraordinary calendar for 1910, I can't help noticing that February is a pretty bad month. I don't know what "the hateful Fill-Dyke" is exactly, but it sounds awful [update: looks like he took it from an old rhyme]:

At least it's not November, which looks even worse:

Posted by at 6:15 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

I'd forgotten until reading Boynton reminisicing about gaining her Tree Badge, about all the essential wisdom that I picked up by being a Brownie (Pixie division). Not so much on the badge front - Art and Pet Keeping - but it did teach you how to dance round a papier maché toadstool with insouciance - a highly transferable skill - and most importantly, what to keep in your pockets. Forget all that paraphernalia you're lugging around with you - this, we were told, is all you need to get you out of any situation:

Clean hankie (to be used as a tourniquet if necessary);
Piece of string (to capture animals, tie shelters together etc);
Safety pin (for wardrobe malfunctions);
Pencil and paper;
10p for a phone call (adjust for inflation).

Presumably you'd want to add a machete in jungle terrain, but this wasn't mentioned.

In the absence of regular pocket inspections I'd let this go a bit but we'd all be better off in these testing times if we remembered our Brownie training. Although thinking about it I must have built up a frightening backlog of Good Deed for the Days which I'm not sure I'll ever be able to get through.

Posted by at 8:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Londoners aren't going anywhere today, being basically unused to this sort of thing.

But walking around, it's good to see everyone is putting their time to good use:

Even this blog's IT department (who is far too busy to do any IT these days) managed to find a window in his schedule:

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Magnetic Movie from Semiconductor on Vimeo.

This art/science film about magnetic forces seems to divide proper scientists on the subject of its educational value, but presuming you're not the sort of person who sees a magnetic field depicted as a big green bubble and wonders why you've never noticed it doing that before, I think it does a pretty good job of suggesting the wild nature of the invisible forces around us.

Posted by at 1:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)