In Kraków for a short break we had been making our way to the Oskar Schindler factory which sits alongside the Museum of Contemporary Art.
We chanced upon this painted doorway which certainly catches attention. I knew as soon as I saw it that it would pass the test for inclusion in my photo collection of Closed Openings.
No descriptive words for this one.
Just look at it. Observe. Anything come to mind?
Walking a beach today, we came across a group of stones balanced on top of each other. Not a natural formation and clearly someone had found the time to engage in creative effort. How much time? How much effort?
No doubt it was a meditation of sorts. Picking the right stones and shells to lend structure and support.
The stack looked as if it would topple over at the slightest touch but no…it resisted the incoming waves that washed and frothed around.
I stepped into the foam to get a close-up picture. I thought of other times; childhood, when armed with buckets and spades we sculpted with sand. This seemed the product of maturer effort - a rock castle and moat.
Later we watched as a small flock of turnstones flew down, plumage the colour of the foreshore, and got busy living up to their appellation, flicking over pebbles in search of food. Did the stack look out of place to the birds? Upset their larder?
Not a bit of it, they took it in their glide.
A small stone stack, kinder to the environment than litter or graffiti.
It may have been the light from a sunny day at the beach because a glint of something caught my eye and made me pay attention. Glass. I stooped to look closer and picked up a bottle.
Had it been just discarded or washed up? It looked as if it had been buried, brown caked-on sand around its neck, still stoppered.
I could feel the embossment on the body and dusting it down could read the details:
REGISTERED. WJ. BRIGGS. BELFAST and signed WJ.Briggs. But what did it contain?
Holding it up to the light I peered inside hoping to find a roll of paper - a message in a bottle maybe. No such luck, it was quite empty. No hint of or even a trace of whatever liquid it once contained. One thing was sure, it was a glass bottle, dulled by abrasion but clearly vintage.
This would-be beachcomber wanted to learn as much as possible about it.
Questions surfaced. Why was the bottle here? How come? What was nearby? Who left it, an adult or a child? Does the Briggs company still exist? Where was it?
Standing on a shoreline answers to those questions would not be immediately forthcoming and so I took a picture - the one above and returned the bottle to its finding place, tucked in safely so that it wouldn’t cause injury to a child or animal. I’ve used online reverse image searches before and figured that using that technique when I got home might satisfy some of my curiosities. Sharing the picture later, a close family member with a specialist interest in old glass and object biographies berated my decision, “Oh you should have brought it home for me!!!” followed not long after with we’ll have to go back and get it. Well, we could do. More on that later.
The reverse image search, turned up loads of stuff. Who knew? Bottles like this one are indeed vintage. Some even attract good prices on online sales sites. My find appeared to be in better condition than several others I viewed. Helpfully some of the online vendors had done their own research and provided supporting details for their sale items. The Briggs family it transpires were manufacturers of aerated waters and were based in Belfast’s Pine Street from the mid-1880s to the early 1900s. The business appears to have developed through the family line and changed name in the 1970s. My bottle appears to date back to around 1910.
That’s something. How has it managed to survive intact for over 100 years? I think of the history through which it has endured; the bubbled memories of lifetimes though which it has remained hidden.
How has it surfaced? Lara Maiklem in her wonderful book, A Field Guide to Larking (Bloomsbury, 2021) explains in a section titled, The Best Time To Beachlark, that high winds and rough seas can cause movements of sand and drag up hidden objects from the sea floor. We have had plenty of storms and rough seas over the past year so that indeed could be the reason the bottle has found a new hiding place.
Could I recover it? I think so. You see poor substitute as it was for the vintage bottle the photo has at least a modern attribute. Geotagging. When I took the picture on my phone I hadn’t realised it added other data such as latitude and longtitude. So when I click on the information button that accompanies the photo it pulls up a map of where the image was taken.
Spot on! Yes, that’s exactly the place. So next time there I’ll go beachlarking, phone in hand and hope that it’s still there. I would hate to see it on an online auction site.
And I’m also thinking that I’ll bring my own well-stoppered bottle with a note inside to cast on an outgoing tide.
A railway line runs close to the rear of our home. Local and express trains including the hourly ones serving the Belfast/Dublin route hurtle past every fifteen minutes and apart from the occasional sustained warning blast of an air horn we don’t pay them much attention. Visitors to our home are taken aback: “Does that noise not bother you?” It doesn’t. It is simply part of the soundscape of where we live; something we are used to.
Our paternal family has close connection with the railway. Granda Christy was a driver on a steam locomotive for the London, Midland and Scottish Railway (LMS) which also operated in Northern Ireland. A story is told of him stopping his engine on the Antrim Coast as he felt that the sound coming back to him from up ahead was not quite right. His intuitive experience was correct, boulders had fallen unto the track. Catastrophe avoided. A close call.
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| Christy TRACEY with his steam locomotive. Photo source unknown. |
Exterior sounds are one type of resonance and those inside another. When travelling by train, I love that rhythmic, clickety-clack of the wheels and that steely, acidic squeal of the rails. I often find myself internally reciting one of my all-time favourite poems, the wonderful, Night Mail by W.H. Auden which was composed to accompany a film documentary of the same name. Consider this opening verse
This is the night mail crossing the borderBringing the cheque and the postal orderLetters from the rich, letters from the poorThe shop at the corner, the girl next door
Say it with that clickety-clack and you get that lovely onomatopoeic sound of the train wheels. Why not stop reading this now and go look it up?
Go on, there’ll be another train of thought in a minute …
Back to where we live. We have a train station nearby and two level crossings, one for pedestrians only and another for people and vehicles. Protecting the traveller clearly figures in the minds of railway managers as there are several safety notices on display. And at the station you are instructed to stand well behind the platforms vivid yellow line.
All those warnings. Best not to get too close.
Those warnings were nowhere in evidence late last year when our travels took us to Vietnam. Among many cities we visited Hanoi and near our hotel was the aptly named Train Street. Apparently it is the place to visit to experience the regular and close encounter of a huge passenger train. Thousands of people turn up. The odd barrier, no yellow lines and few if any warning lights. Instead tiny businesses of bars, restaurants and shops ply their trade within inches of the passing trains. Merchants can be seen walking across the tracks, serving their customers and sometimes pulling back tables and chairs that maybe, just maybe are a little too close. While the train is still far enough away people place bottle caps on the tracks. These are recovered flattened to wafer thin after the train has passed over them.
This short video captures the sense of proximity and let’s face it, danger.
Train Street. Quite an experience. A thousand miles away from our day-to-day living.
There are times when I feel that I have to clear out some of my books. It’s not that I no longer appreciate those that I have decided to re-home, it’s more about making more space to let in the new.
My latest dispersal included several books not on display but stored away in cupboards. It has been years since I opened them and I decided that they needed a more conscientious custodian. Use them or diffuse them! is my new guiding mantra.
Mind you, flicking through some that I had earmarked for donation, I found myself rereading. Interest renewed I decided to keep them. They live to light another day.
I wondered how much I had invested in the books and did a quick online search to check availability and current values. Even some of my pristine hard covers were only just a few £ pounds and there were loads for sale. So having decided to send the books on their way to new owners, it would be relatively simple and cheap to buy them again if I found I was missing them.
Selections made and packed into carrier bags it was off to the charity bookshop.
I had recently been to a newly opened store and spent some time discussing books and authors with the very knowledgeable vendor there. He welcomed the donation and thought many of the books would appeal to his customers. He also asked if I would complete a donation form describing the various books I was leaving. Of course: Miscellaneous titles, business and marketing, popular psychology, philosophy, leadership and some novels. That categorisation of the books was instructive, as many had been bought during my working life and now seemed less relevant in these retirement years. I was delighted that a future good home was assured and said that I would return in a couple of weeks with more books. Back home I resumed the task of clearing.
It’s a pleasure to handle books and I lost myself in the flow of thinning out their spaces. I packed up some heavyweight volumes in terms of both their poundage and content. I was sure that my new bookseller chum would be just as impressed as last time. But why had I packed so many? Clearly this new-found, guilt-free enthusiasm for parting with books had got the better of me. In my rush, I picked the wrong type of carrier bags; you know the ones with handles that dig deep?
I stopped a few times carrying the books to the charity shop only to arrive and find it closed. The times of business sign on the door confirmed that it should have been open but no - Books bite back!
What to do? Bring them home? Obviously not as that would mean stop/starting again, swapping loads and massaging fingers. Decision tome!
I knew there was a second-hand bookstore nearby where I could drop them off and although I have bought many a bargain there I was still wedded to that notion of goodwill gifting of the books. I thought of another charity shop that specialised in book sales. I had often gone there too and my donation would have the added benefit of supporting their good cause. It wasn’t far away either.
The staff member at this next bookshop was pleased to receive the carrier bags asking, as the first recipient did, whether I wanted them back. No thanks.
Have I missed the books? No, not yet.
I have though been tempted to call back into each of the shops to see if any are on their shelves and to check for how much they are selling them. My bookshelves aren’t empty however. Those freed-up spaces didn’t stay clear for long and new book tenants jostle for attention. They sit next to old inhabitants, familiar titles. Although many of these are in various states of wear and tear I couldn’t bear to part with them. Books are a bit like friends - the older, the nicer. Looking around I see instantly that some of them were pre-loved and picked up in charity bookshops. Other readers must have had their own clear-outs.
Thanks to those previous owners whose charity ends at home.
Preparing for our trip to the Czech Republic I purchased a copy of Vaclav Havel's Power of the Powerless with an introduction by Professor Timothy Snyder. I've made this contract with myself that wherever I go abroad I'll delve into appropriate literature from the country, get a book, bring it with me and read it when there. A cultural backcloth to the visit. In situ reading.
Close to our hotel in Prague we spotted this memorial to the Velvet Revolution and returned to picture it with the book.
Power of the Powerless is a challenging although instructive read.
Here’s something I learned last week. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is being used to produce wine.
Really? What about the vintner? I always thought that their practised, artful skill is what wine making was all about it. Technology and machinery in the vineyard by all means but in the alchemy of turning grape to wine surely not.
There’s a first time for everything and so it was back to school for a lesson on and taste of AI-curated wine. School in this case was a wine appreciation class where a dozen of us meet each week in a local social club. Our tutor - we’ve come to look upon him as a benefactor - selects several wines he thinks we’ll like and we spend a couple of hours tasting our way through them and comparing notes and picking favourites. In a recent class many of us also sampled for the first time “orange” wine and that might be the subject of a future post.
But back to that AI curation.
CTZN - Luminous Drift is a wine blend from South Eastern Australia, apparently bottled in London. That probably means it is a “tanker” wine, imported in large containers and bottled on arrival to reduce transportation costs. AI has no doubt been deployed there to maximise efficiencies.
At 11% volume, Luminous Drift is subject to a lower duty rate than other more powerful wines. This makes it more marketable as rates for all alcohol products sold in the UK are now linked to strength. That lower volume is attractive to many people , like me, who favour lighter styles for health reasons.
Do you know what? The wine was very well-received by our group. Fresh, bright and elegant with a nice acidity that would pair well with some pasta dishes or goat’s cheese. A summer-sipper many of us felt. And most would gladly have it again.
I wonder if producing this class pleasing result is how AI played its part. It seems that curation relies on algorithms harvesting data; pressing our preferences for various grapes and styles and fermenting our likes and dislikes to finally bottle something that appeals to the widest possible number of people. The outworking of those data points results in a wine blend of 52% Pinot Grigio, 23% Sauvignon Blanc and 16% Riesling. Of course, there is a Human dimension. That final 9% is the Vintner’s craft working to achieve a balanced finish.
Serious students do homework and so a trip to the off-sales was prescribed.
Back home with the bottle I noticed a QR code on the label. Now that was clever. Scanning the code with my phone camera a robot character called SOM - short for sommelier - appeared on screen. Som’s task is to guide the purchaser through a virtual wine tasting. It would be great to screen share that with a group of friends while also sharing the contents of a bottle. CTZN also offers a couple of reds in its hard drive, so more than enough for a virtual home tasting. Maybe not for our class though.
Som was a fun character but not as yet a replacement for our wine tutor, the benefactor who each week goes shopping for wines he thinks will delight us.
As well as wine knowledge, his human algorithms factor in history, geography, experience of and anecdotes from visiting the wine lands.
Emotional and actual intelligence. Worth bottling.
PS: Please be a good CTZN and drink responsibly
Sense? Pencil shavings.
Trees. Fallen by the wayside.
Sawdust. Pooled like blood.
In Kraków for a short break we had been making our way to the Oskar Schindler factory which sits alongside the Museum of Contemporary Art....
