happy memories
to be sitting in the rain
making sand castles

Some of the special British details she describes I recognize – afternoon tea, double-decker buses, and so on. Others are more confusing to a colonial. One of the “special British moments” Eggs [Victoria Eggs, a London-based designer] tries to capture is a childhood memory of sitting on the beach in the rain. “We would go on holidays to the seaside, and it would be raining but that didn’t stop us building sand castles and sitting having ice-creams and fish and chips,” she tells me. She remembers “being wrapped in a towel which, if you were in another country, you’d be lying on. We had it wrapped around us in the drizzling rain, eating fish and chips”.

In all honesty, I don’t know what she’s talking about. But it also does sound like the most British thing I ever heard in my life: happy to be sitting in the rain making sand castles. Not only happy. This is one of her happiest memories. Nostalgia compensates for the discomfort, I guess.

From the article, God save us all: Britain is about to get the king it deserves, subtitled, Viewed from Canada, the coronation is especially absurd – and the contradictions of Charles III perfectly suit the moment, by Stephen Marche in The Guardian.

Notice the lower case k in king.

That is all you need to know what this article is about if you don’t want to take the time to read it.

King … with the lower case k.

That and these other sentences.

… it also does sound like the most British thing I ever heard in my life: happy to be sitting in the rain making sand castles.

Not only happy.

This is one of her happiest memories.

Nostalgia compensates for the discomfort, I guess.

I live in a resort town and when I can, I go for a walk on the beach of Atlantic Ocean on my lunch break.

In the early months of the year, even in South Carolina, the beach is the NOT the best place to be even though a bad hour on the beach beats most places.

Still, no matter the weather, the wind, the temperature of the ocean water, there those vacationers are.

They are there.

They are on vacation.

They have paid a lot of money for this.

And they are going to enjoy it, no matter what anyone else says.

As the Activities Director at my Resort once told me, “They are freezing to death, but they will never admit it.”

So there are the Brits.

Stuck with Brexit and no one understands it.

And stuck with Charles.

But, doggone it, they paid for it.

They are going to enjoy it somehow.

I have to love

Just right!

But there was a sadder note in the article when Mr. Marche quoted Jonathan Coe.

For Coe, the lack of enthusiasm for Charles has an obvious source. There is “no enthusiasm for anything”, he says, “The nation is demoralized.”

Boy do I hear that.

Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.

There is “no enthusiasm for anything.

This nation is demoralized.

I guess I’ll watch the coronation.

betacism shift
voiced labiodental
fricative sound change

Clementine Churchill said of her husband, Winston, that he was the last man to believe in the divine right of Kings or that kings derived their authority from God and could not therefore be held accountable for their actions by any earthly authority such as a parliament.

With that in mind, I do plan to watch the coronation of King Charles III at 5 AM this coming Saturday.

Though an American, I find the history fascinating.

It IS the first British coronation of my lifetime and may be the only one of my lifetime.

So far those once-in-a-lifetime things for me have come up a bit short.

Thinking here of Haley’s Comet.

When I was kid, growing up in Grand Rapids, Michigan, the Public Museum had a display on Haley’s Comet with the text that the comet would return in 1986.

For me, that would be in 20 years and I looked forward to the comet lighting up the skies and freaking out the world.

And when the comet showed up in 1986, I don’t recall that I ever saw it.

So I plan to watch this coronation.

And I wonder what might have happened had we not had the Declaration of Independence or George Washington back in 1776.

You may have caught that the Stone of Scone was moved from Scotland to Westminster Abbey last week.

In Scotland, any future King sat on this same stone block to be crowned.

At least until 1296 when Edward I (AKA Edward Longshanks or Hammer of the Scots) made Scotland part of Great Britain and took the stone back to London where a shelf was added to King Edward’s Coronation Chair (still being used today) and the stone was put on the shelf so that Kings of England were also crowned Kings of Scotland.

Notice there was no voting on this and some Scots have yet to get used to the idea.

In 1950 some goofy college kids broke into the Abbey made off with the Stone and tried to get it back to Scotland.

Then in 1996, the Stone went back to Scotland with the understanding it would be returned when (and if – who knew QEII would be around for almost 30 years) needed to England and now it has been returned.

The Scots got their stone but their are still not independent of Great Britain.

It should be noted that in 1914 when some suffrages tried to blow up the Coronation Chair, the Stone got cracked in half (but no one told the Scots until those college kids grabbed it and it came apart as the pulled it off it’s shelf. Which kind of freaked them out at the time.)

When I was in college in the early 1982, Canada got out of their obligation to the Crown when the Canada Act, also called Constitution Act of 1982, Canada’s constitution approved by the British Parliament on March 25, 1982, and proclaimed by Queen Elizabeth II, making Canada wholly independent.

I was in a class on US History through the Documents of 1776 and the Professor noted that had it not been for these documents, the US might just be getting their Independence as well in 1982.

In 1997, when Great Britain’s 99 year lease on Hong Kong ran out, I happened to be watching the then Prince Charles lower the Union Jack and paddle on out of Hong Kong.

By chance I was watching with someone from Taiwan.

She was with a group of people from a publishing house in Taiwan touring the place where I worked and she stopped to watch.

As the flag came down I asked her how it felt?

How did it feel to see the British finally leave this part of China and give it back to the Chinese.

She looked at the TV and she looked at me and she looked back at the TV and said, “It’s about time!”

We are American Citizen’s, thankfully, not British Subjects.

Still, I plan to watch,

And next weekend I plan to bake a Coronation Quiche.

It seems a simple recipe but it calls for broad beans, otherwise known as fava beans.

Which I have been researching which led to this haiku.

I was the checking the beans for this recipe on the website, https://hodmedods.co.uk/, which seems to a GB version of Whole Foods and the site went into a long discussion of the Coronation Quiche recipe, its ingredients in general and fava beans specifically.

At the very end of the story was this great line.

A good question was asked on Twitter: are fava beans similar to faba beans?

They’re the same thing!

The letter b does a funny thing of turning into a v sometimes.

It’s called betacism apparently.

Betacism?

Really?

Was that even a word?

Betacism!

It is!

It means from (phonology) sound change in which [b] (the voiced bilabial plosive) shifts to [v] (the voiced labiodental fricative). Betacism is a fairly common phenomenon: it has taken place in Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, and some Portuguese dialects, among others.

You know betacism when you hear it.

The voiced bilabial plosive [b] shifts to [v] the voiced labiodental fricative,

And that 2nd line.

Betacism is a fairly common phenomenon: it has taken place in Greek, Hebrew, Spanish, and some Portuguese dialects, among others.

I loved it as it says that Betacism is a fairly common phenomenon but every online entry I have clicked on for betacism, these sites use the same examples from the Latin and Hebrew.

I don’t think it is that common but it has that great name.

Which leads me to think, WHO STUDIES THIS STUFF?

Betacists?

And notice it is the SOUND CHANGE, so I guess this won’t show up in texts but only when the text is read out loud.

Fava?

Faba?

Oh BEANS!

God Save the King!

• Here is the recipe for The Coronation Big Lunch right from the Palace. BTW I plan on using my standard pie crust.

Filling

• 125ml milk
• 175ml double cream
• 2 medium eggs
• 1 tablespoon chopped fresh tarragon, 
• Salt and pepper
• 100g grated cheddar cheese,
• 180g cooked spinach, lightly chopped
• 60g cooked broad beans or soya beans

Method

1. To make the pastry…
   1. Sieve the flour and salt into a bowl; add the fats and rub the mixture together using your finger tips until you get a sandy, breadcrumb like texture.
   2. Add the milk a little at a time and bring the ingredients together into a dough.
   3. Cover and allow to rest in the fridge for 30-45 minutes
2. Lightly flour the work surface and roll out the pastry to a circle a little larger than the top of the tin and approximately 5mm thick.
3. Line the tin with the pastry, taking care not to have any holes or the mixture could leak. Cover and rest for a further 30 minutes in the fridge.
4. Preheat the oven to 190°C.
5. Line the pastry case with greaseproof paper, add baking beans and bake blind for 15 minutes, before removing the greaseproof paper and baking beans.
6. Reduce the oven temperature to 160°C.
7. Beat together the milk, cream, eggs, herbs and seasoning.
8. Scatter 1/2 of the grated cheese in the blind-baked base, top with the chopped spinach and beans and herbs, then pour over the liquid mixture.
9. If required gently give the mixture a delicate stir to ensure the filling is evenly dispersed but be careful not to damage the pastry case.
10. Sprinkle over the remaining cheese. Place into the oven and bake for 20-25 minutes until set and lightly golden.

brought the sense of change
or irresponsibility
reckless as they were

I was going to write that if you read the books and essays of the 100 years ago, your know the phrase, “The Lost Generation” but as so few folks read books and essays of 100 years ago I am going to write that I came across an interesting comment on the people of the lost generation.

I came across a series of books published by George Plimpton’s Paris Review titled, Writers at Work.

There are 9 or 10 books in the series and they are collections of interviews with some of the great, well known and great mostly unknown writers of the 20th Century.

Certainly I have my favorites and I quickly searched out the interview Dorothy Parker.

Hoping against hope for something good (Jim Harrison once wrote that in every interview he ever gave, he would just repeat the question and say, I AGREE, to get the interview over with IE Question: MR. Harrison, would you say that while Hemingway must be counted among the American Greats, today he is little read and has even less impact? – Mr. Harrison : “Yes I would say that while Hemingway must be counted among the American Greats, today he is little read and has even less impact!” Harrison said nothing made interviewers happier than responses like this – but I digress) and I was stunned to read this quote in the Dorothy Parker interview.

Gertrude Stein did us the most harm when she said, “You’re all a lost generation.” That got around to certain people and we all said, “Whee! We re lost.” Perhaps it suddenly brought to us the sense of change. Or irresponsibility. But don’t forget that, though the people in the twenties seemed like flops, they weren’t. Fitzgerald, the rest of them, reckless as they were, drinkers as they were, they worked damn hard and all the time.

Now to wikipedia, The Lost Generation was the social generational cohort in the Western world that was in early adulthood during World War I. The generation is generally defined as people born from 1883 to 1900. The term is also particularly used to refer to a group of American expatriate writers living in Paris during the 1920s. Gertrude Stein is credited with coining the term, and it was subsequently popularised by Ernest Hemingway, who used it in the epigraph for his 1926 novel The Sun Also Rises: “You are all a lost generation. Lost” in this context refers to the “disoriented, wandering, directionless” spirit of many of the war’s survivors in the early postwar period.

And I have ever been taught to regard the original statement by Ms. Stein the term as used by Mr. Hemingway as something sacred in American Literature.

See, these folks were lost.

See, these folks were hardened by their times.

See, though says Ms. Parker, we got a pass. We’re lost!

A sense of change.

A sense of irresponsibility.

See we’re boomers.

See we’re Gen X.

See we’re Gen Y.

See we’re Millennials.

See, it’s not our fault, WHEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE.

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I said to my wife
think might start taking a piece
of my childhood back

In reading the article, Yes, People Will Pay $27,500 for an Old ʻRockyʼ Tape. Hereʼs Why by David Streitfeld in the New York Times (April 18, 2023), I thought this passage stood out.

I said to my wife, ‘I think I might start collecting tapes,’” Mr. Carlson, 43, said. “I was taking a piece of my childhood back.”

Many others are, too. The stock market, real estate and cryptocurrencies did poorly in 2022, but the global luxury goods market grew 20 percent. People may have had less, but they spent more on fine arts and collectibles that serve no function except to provide pleasure.

The culture is bursting with new material — every day, thousands of new books are published and 100,000 new songs are released on Spotify — but the old stuff offers a sweeter emotional payoff for many. It could be tapes or posters or pictures or comics or coins or sports cards or memorabilia. It might be from their childhood or the childhood they never had, or it might merely express a longing to be anywhere but 2023.

I liked the lines, “People may have had less, but they spent more on fine arts and collectibles that serve no function except to provide pleasure.” and “It might be from their childhood or the childhood they never had, or it might merely express a longing to be anywhere but 2023.“

It might be from their childhood or the childhood they never had,

… or it might merely express a longing to be anywhere but 2023.

I work on an Island where one of the big attractions is bike riding.

I do NOT mean cycling.

While there are cyclists on the island with their … interesting … outfits and skinny little bicycles, I am talking about bikes and bike riding.

Bikes and bike riding from like when I was a kid.

Big fat tires.

Big fat seats.

Big fat seats on big fat seats I guess you could say.

No gears.

Back pedal braking.

No helmets.

I watch these people and I ask myself how could they spend all that effort and time and money to get to this island and then torture themselves on one of those bikes.

Then I understood.

The guy who flew in here on his private jet and stayed in his private place on the ocean, drove into town with his wife, parked outside a bike lot and said to his wife, “I am taking a piece of my childhood back”.

It might be from their childhood or the childhood they never had.

It might merely express a longing to be anywhere but 2023.

It would serve no function except to provide pleasure.

And the guy rented a bike.

A bike with big fat tires.

A bike without gears.

A bike with a pedal brake.

And the guy got on the bike, and put his big fat seat on the big fat seat and pedaled off.

He pedaled off without a helmet and felt the breeze in what was left of his hair.

It might merely be a longing to be anywhere but 2023.

It would serve no function except to provide pleasure.

He took a piece of his childhood back.

Put a price on that.