Author: dkendall

Percy was the first cat of my acquaintance in my Sussex coast infancy, an elderly black-and-white gent. He departed for Cathalla early on in my life, to be briefly replaced by another moggie, who rapidly deserted us for a neighbour (moggie by the way is a familiar form of Margaret, which somehow became a word for cat). Then there was another black-and-white Percy, who was with us until I left home, sharing the hearth rug semi-amicably with a cocker spaniel called Simon.

There were no cats at university but I did share a flat in London with a friend’s Kobe (the name by which Stalin was known among his friends…I am unsure of why the cat was called so).

And then in Lund in 1973, we had a cat. I was rather doubtful about taking it for a walk in the City Park without a lead. In fact, it followed us and it went much better than I expected until it caught sight of a tree that had to be climbed. So there we were with a cat frozen with terror some good way up, visions of having to call the fire brigade and how big a hole that would make in our then meagre income. Luckily, a man came along, considerably braver than this vertigo-ridden clerk, and clambered up and retrieved it. The cat was around until it discovered sex whereupon it disappeared, hopefully to a friendly neighbour and not some worse fate (we were too slow to emasculate it…this verb making an odd couple with the adjective effeminate, which works in the opposite way – making more and not less feminine).

Later there were two cats that I remember very well, Rasmus and Sam. Rasmus we had for many years until he became ill, which is not a good memory. I can’t quite remember how Sam came into the family. He was elegant and grey and we had to find him a new home rather quickly as we had at least one very allergic child.

After this, there were only borrowed or temporary cats. My sharpest memory is of a friend’s expensive golden-haired pedigree cat, impracticably refined to the point where he (or she perhaps) allowed hisher self to be used as a stepping stone when the cohabiting pet rabbit wanted to get from the floor to the bed. When I went to feed this cat, I had my friend’s flat key in my hand. In the lift, there was a crack between the edge of the lift floor and the lift shaft and lo and behold, in the twinkling of an eye, the keys dropped down the crack into the lift shaft. My friend was going to be away for some time and the scenario of her coming home to a flat where I’d been poking cat food through the letter box for two weeks was not altogether pleasant. I went home and fetched a wire coat hanger, which I unbent so that it was a long piece of metal with a hook on the end. Then back to the lift shaft, regretting that I hadn’t also brought a torch with me and not believing that this would be successful. I lay down on the hall floor, knowing that the lift couldn’t start moving as long as I kept the door open but still fearful. Then I started poking around in the dark shaft with my coat hanger. And miraculously after a couple of attempts, I managed to hook the keys. I don’t know what kind of bonus system is appropriate for a guardian angel, but I thought mine performed excellently that day.

After all these experiences, I was shielded from further cats by having allergic children. I’ve never had a pet since then, rather suffering from cat fatigue (in fact more generally furry animal fatigue after four children and at least a thousand zoo visits). I don’t suffer from loneliness either so haven’t felt a need for a pet.  I’ve made do with Tibbs, an imaginary cat, who is something of a family joke.

And this morning, while reading a chapter of my bedtime and wake-up book on old customs in England, I find that there is a St Tibb’s Day. Unlike other saints days, it’s not a fixed nor even variably recurrent day. It’s an imaginary day so that, if you say, for example, that you will pay someone on St Tibb’s Day, it means that they will never get their money. How it got the name St Tibb’s Day I’m not sure (I must check this in the big Oxford dictionary). From the net, I find, however, that it does have a fixed day in Cornwall on 23 December. There it was apparently not done to drink alcohol during advent, only at Christmas. To avoid prolonging the agony of abstinence, 23 December was declared to be a special day, St Tibb’s Day and alcohol was permitted from this day. Popular etymology has St Tibb’s Day related to tipsy. I have to find out more about this although I shall resist it trying to jostle for top place on my list of mysteries of the world to penetrate.

According to Philip Augur’s “The Death of Gentlemanly Capitalism”; the 1987 Big Bang in the City of London, is estimated to have created 750 millionaires after the senior partners of the old jobbing and broking firms sold out to banks and other larger firms.

By 2000, the historic merchant banks, later (would be) investment banks, were very largely no longer UK owned. Those that hadn’t collapsed had been taken over by US investment banks, and a few by European banks, Dresdner Bank, Deutsche Bank, French and Swiss banks.

The Times (Jan 19, 2000, quoted by Augur) tells us reassuringly “The demise of the UK investment banks is  a natural part of the process of international specialization that results from globalisation”´. Augur calls into question this process and the phenomenon referred to as Wimbledonisation. In other words, the financial activities of the City of London take place in the UK, are staffed by many Brits but the controlling boards of directors are elsewhere in continental Europe and the US.

This perhaps goes some way towards providing an explanation for my feelings of puzzlement about the lacklustre response to Brexit on the part of City of London. Surely, it was against the interests of important sections of the UK finance sector who greatly benefited from the UK’s role as intermediary between the US (and the rest of the world) and the EC?

Roch Dunin-Wasowicz (What explains the City of London’s ineffectiveness at shaping the Brexit regulations) finds a partial explanation in the lack of professional lobbying in the UK compared with the US, influence having been traditionally exercised by cosy meetings between representatives of the Bank of England, the Treasury and city banking institutions. The Big Bang radically changed this picture, traditional relationships (and some institutions) were broken up, products became more complicated and  influence more difficult to focus and exert.

The focus on the effects of the Big Bang seems key to me for understanding where and what the City is now.  It opened up the Stock Exchange to outside and foreign organisations. The US investment banks welcomed the new opportunities and moved in on a large scale. But having gained this position, would they be so bothered if the City of London’s position post-Brexit declined in favour of Wall St?

Traditionally, US financial organisations  were attracted to the City of London by its light touch regulation, often self-regulation compared with the tougher regulatory environment in the US . I’m not sure how important that still is but the question of regulation seems important for understanding opposition from sections of the UK finance sector to the EU’s drive to harmonise its financial markets, so that the rules applicable in London might be closer to those of Paris or Zurich or other European financial centres (and  the City would then perhaps lose in international attractiveness for those in search of light-touch regulation).

I’m curious about what we mean when use the term UK finance capital given the weight of foreign ownership of financial institutions in the City of London. Lazily I’ve thought that the smart money in the UK is no longer being invested in large-scale manufacturing industry which is now very often foreign owned but is invested in the finance sector. But where does this leave us when major institutions in many of the City’s sectors of activity are foreign-owned? Does UK finance capital boil down to wealthy individuals with holdings in hedge funds?

This leads on to the relationship of government to the finance sector in the UK.

I used to think that there was far more effort devoted to the interests of the finance sector than to manufacturing capital. To me the post-war history of the government’s relationship to industry seems hard to comprehend, weakly focused, even chaotic, leading up to the final slaughter during the Thatcher period with the company names familiar when I was young now long gone.

However, the more I read about the development of the relationship between the finance sector and the UK government the more it seems to me to resemble what happened to UK manufacturing. The then Conservative government’s focus on the Big Bang seems narrow – a dogmatic belief in the power of the market to enhance efficiency with the government only setting the external framework but not interfering closely  in the process. And they were right in their way, the most efficient survived and the weakest went to the wall. Did it matter that the weakest just happened to be UK-owned financial institutions?

Augur criticises the government for not preparing the institutions better for the Big Bang, for not introducing outside ownership more gradually. The way it was set up, it would inexorably eventually lead to the demise of the UK owned institutions.

As someone who lives at some considerable distance from the levers of power and the accompanying perks and privileges, it wouldn’t bother me too much if the leading banks in the city were US rather than UK owned but one might think that the above behaviour was rather odd for a UK government purportedly working on behalf of UK interests. It’s more like what happened in manufacturing industry than it might appear at first sight.

Thatcher’s politics are not mine but I’ve always thought her overrated by those who praise her (attempting to look at the world through their eyes). They liked her rolling back the post-war nationalisations and reducing the power of the trade unions and cutting back the welfare state but this demolition was achieved at an enormous social expense and cost to the victims without an attempt at a coherent strategy for a capitalist future in the UK. Similarly in the finance sector, individuals became wealthy but there was again no coherent strategy for UK finance capital beyond the narrow belief in the healing power of the market.

I’m only at the beginning of my reading about the City and the UK financial sector; I need to read critiques of Augur’s work and more up-to-date analyses. However, some lines of investigation attract my interest, for instance what does UK finance capital consist of? Does the decline of the power of the UK as a country reflect a reduction in the wealth of the leading layers, a destruction of capital, or has the capital simply moved elsewhere  (and if so where). And the relationship of the finance sector and the UK government. Is the unstable nature of the Conservative Party conjunctural or does it reflect growing difficulty on the part of the establishment to articulate a coherent strategy in a situation where the owners of capital become further and further removed from directly useful economic activity and the daily concerns and needs of the majority of the population.  

Gothenburg’s archipelago is smaller than Stockholm’s where the boat passes the spacious summer homes of the nineteenth century rich on its first hour of travel, still a long way from the scattered islets and sea views of the outer archipelago.

Marstrand offers both. Its official population is about 1,300 (with strong seasonal variations in actual footfall). It’s built on two sides of a narrow waterway separating two islands, linked by a cable ferry. The historic parts of the small town are on the far island, refreshingly free of cars and dominated by its old fortress, Carlsten.

In the nineteenth century, it was a popular spa town with all the accompanying medical and social rigmarole of taking salt water baths and after bath genteel hobnobbing. Apart from some fine houses, I didn’t see many traces of this period but learnt about it from a fine little book written by Ingmar Stenroth called just “Marstrand”. (2015). Strindberg, Selma Lagerlöf, Frederika Bremer and Topelius all wrote about their visits here and Albert Engström, Carl Larsson and Zorn painted. King Oscar II (1872-1907) was fond of the place too, which drew those attracted by closeness to the monarch (Strindberg perhaps in spite of rather than because of).

I didn’t find much about the decline of the spa era but it seems to have passed by the time of the First World War.

It’s been a very fine weekend but the closed museum reminds us that we are out of season and covid’s viral shadow is with us here. However, Carlsten Fort is open for visits. It’s large and stems from the period when Sweden’s breakthrough to the West Coast and conquest of Bohuslän from Denmark-Norway was still tenuous. It was captured a couple of times before the Danes lost hope of restoration. For a substantial portion of its life it was used as an unpleasant prison for long-term hard labouring prisoners. The prison period and the spa period seem to have overlapped and some of the prisoners such as the crossdresser Lasse-Maja acquired star status before being eventually pardoned. Confused pictures in my mind of prisoners equipped with chains and rifle-carrying guards stopping to tell garrulous tales to fine folk on their way to or from a brine bath or massage battering. More reading about Marstrand will hopefully tidy this up…

Further back in the late eighteenth century, Marstrand had free port status (porto franco) for a period of about twenty years (1775-94 ca). Here there was religious freedom in the otherwise strictly Lutheran Sweden and an early synagogue was built. It was also a refuge for criminals, provided apparently that they reported their misdeeds to the free town’s authorities (I’m not sure how this worked alongside the fort but it was presumably not a prison then). The town attracted the economically serious and the less serious and folk whose joie de vivre chafed those struggling under the burden of morality. It was hard to guard the border with “normal” Sweden and the citizens of the free town successfully petitioned to have its special status abolished.

Any description of the town would be incomplete without mentioning the herring, which at intervals throughout history have visited the town in great numbers, bringing wealth in the form of abundant fish food and oil extracted from fish cadaver presumably not at the same time as the worthies were fawning around the monarch.

We walked far around the islands, enjoying the calm comfort of our air bnb and the intense vibration-free quietness where even the motor saws had taken a rest from their otherwise usual assault on the Guinness Book of Records log splitting record.

Memorable days and fine to think about and keep our spirits up as we trudge on in these pestilent times.

Recently I’ve encountered “vardo”, a Romani word for a traditional decorated caravan. The word is stated as having been imported from “woerdon” in Ossetian, an East Iranian language.

I’ve been interested in Romani since I discovered how close quite a few of the words for numbers in Bengali are to their equivalents in Romani. Not so much was known about the passage of the Roma from east to west until the nineteenth century when scholars drew attention to the cultural, physical and linguistic affinities between the Roma in the West and groups of the Indian population. Before that, there was an incorrect assumption that they had originated in Egypt (hence “gypsy”).

It is still the case that much of that distant migration is poorly known and the Romani language has not attracted the same attention as Hebrew or Greek, despite its importance in the transmission of language from east to west.

I found a useful article by Dr Harish K. Thakur, associate professor at the Government College Sunni in Shimla in Himachal Pradesh, “Theories of Roma Origins and the Bengal Linkage”, where he sees groups moving (or being moved as slaves) from east to west not just in  a single movement from N.W. India but in movements over a period from various places in northern India, including Bengal.

It would be interesting to look at the origin (etymology) of the large number of words in Romani that were incorporated from many languages as they made their west with long stops on the way to see if these words could be grouped in any way, which would perhaps provide more information about their journey. You’d need to know more about the various dialects and variants of Romany and the structure of the language to do this but it seems a fascinating under-researched area.

And now for something completely different,…I used the word “throes” earlier today, probably the first time for ages that I’ve given that word an airing (or mouthing, perhaps). There is apparently a rare singular word “throe”, meaning pain or pang. According to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, hoth words have their origins in the Old English “thrawu” which relates to Old High German “drawa” meaning threat. According to the Collins English Dictionary, there is also Old Norse “thrä” meaning “desire”, and “thrauka” meaning endure. The Concise Oxford is less certain and tells us that “in the throes of” is perhaps related to OE “threa”, “thrawu” (defined as calamity), influenced by “throwian” suffer.

The larger “Shorter English Dictionary” tells us also that throes was used by Walter Scott (“The throes of a mortal and painful disorder”) and by C. Sangster (“Tumultuous throes, Of some vast grief”) and J.P. Stern Wright (“Winter’s last throes before spring sets in”).

I’ve also checked “mountebank”, a word I’ve seen before but never bothered to check. It is defined as a person who sells quack medicine in public places or more generally as a quack or charlatan. The origin is given as the Italian word “montambianco”, climber on a bench, which I found rather fine.

And in these pandemonic times, “fomites” and “fomitic” might be useful, being objects or materials likely to carry infection and deriving from Latin “fomentum” poultice or lotion according to the Concise Oxford, although “fomes”, tinder in Latin, is mentioned in Collins.

I’ve just finished reading Gunter Grass’s Tin Drum, which I took to Gdansk and back unread (even more optimistically I took Die Blechtrummel with me). I thought I’d read it years ago but now believe that pre-modern DK probably gave up after a few pages as otherwise I would have remembered some of the more striking episodes, I enjoyed it and was impressed.

I moved on to the late Torgny Lindgren’s Minnen as my next bedtime book. I’ve never read anything by him before and somehow never registered who he was (author and member of the Swedish Academy) during my 47 years in Sweden. So perhaps, thanks to Covid which has created plenty of time for reading, I am filling this lacuna. I’ve also learnt a new Swedish word from him “lägra”, meaning to have illicit sexual intercourse with someone, Esselte’s Swedish dictionary adding coyly in italics as an example of the depth of depravity “klockaren lägrade prästens piga” (the bellringer had sexual intercourse with the priest’s maid”).

And, in my more serious moments, I have continued reading the Economist’s The City, A Guide to London’s Global Financial Centre. I’ve had it for a long time and almost thought it was too old to be of use. But then I realised it contained a great number of interesting statistics, some of which derived from regular measurements, thus providing an interesting well structured basis for comparison if I can find the up-to-date statistic, which might not be too difficult. I’ll save this for another posting.

The October 2020 bulletin of the UK Institute of Translation and Interpreting has an interesting article on Romansch, Switzerland’s fourth language by Emma Gledhill, a translator, who lives in a Romansh-speaking village.

She describes how there are at most 60,000 speakers of Romansch in the Graubunden canton of SE Switzerland, amounting to 0.5-0.85 of the Swiss population. It is a Romance language, which has had national language status since 1938. Almost all Romance speakers are bilingual, predominantly with German.

The Swiss geography with communities in valleys separated by mountains has led to there being five dialects of Romansch (Sursilvan, Surmiran, Puter, Vallader and Jauer), some of which have sub-dialects. Some children are taught with Romansch as the medium of instruction.

From Wikipedia, I read that there have been attempts to unify the dialects although use of this unified version has not caught on in speech and has caused conflicts when used as the medium of instruction in schools, some Romansch speakers/areas preferring their own variant of the language to the unified version.

According to Emma Gledhill, Romansch is a Rhaeto-Romance language along with the Ladin language of the Italian Dolomites and Friulian in north-east Italy. According to Wiki, this link is disputed, the academic dispute being known as the Questione ladina (this dispute had political associations as Italian irredentists claimed that the three languages were all dialects of Italian. I haven’t a date for this but it was presumably before the Second World War and could be way back and I don’t know what the latest developments are on Questione ladina or whether it’s a dead issue).

Wikipedia has a very informative article on Romansch, the features of the language and its links back to the Latin spoken in the period after the fall of the Western Roman Empire as well as a long book list for those wishing to delve deeper into the language. It is Romance language but with considerable numbers of imported German words and German has taken over in what used to be Romance-speaking areas.

Active efforts have been made to keep the language alive.

There is a daily paper in Romansch called  La Quotidiana founded in 1997 with support from the Romansh news agency Agentura da Novitads Rumantscha.  

The paper is protected by a paywall but here is a description in Romansch:

La Quotidiana (LQ) è la suletta gasetta dal di rumantscha. Ella cumpara da glindesdi enfin venderdi. La gasetta appartegna a la gruppa da medias Südostschweiz ed è confessiunalmain e politicamain neutrala. En La Quotidiana vegn oravant tut rapportà davart quai che curra e passa en la Svizra rumantscha ed en la politica grischuna. La politica naziunala ha pli pauca paisa e novitads internaziunalas èn plitost raras. Il dumber d’abunents confermà tenor la WEMF munta actualmain a 4341 (l’onn 2003: passa 5000).

If this feels a bit much, one can content oneself with “Bun di” (no prizes for working out what this means).

I was pretty sure that I’d once bought a Romansch dictionary when I was at a course near Berne years ago. But I can’t find a trace of it on my bookshelves so perhaps I only looked at the book (or possibly caressed it) and the intensity of desire to own it has been transformed in my memory into a purchase.

It could be somewhere as my library is getting to the point when I need a catalogue. But I feel that if I start to shelf mark my books, it will effectively take up the bit of my life not occupied by shifting books from place to place ( I haven’t really got into taking shelvies though). I have vague memories of being given some position of trust in the English literature section of my school library and getting carried away with the stamp I was given to put gold shelf mark numbers on books and making raids across subject boundaries, struggling with feelings of mauvais foi as I did so but incapable of controlling myself  (and too sneaky to attract the attention of any external controller). So with this history of shelf mark abuse and bibliomachismo, as well as the time factor, I’d better go easy on classification.

Romansch is anyway interesting (the only possible drawback being that I am collecting languages in the same way as some people acquire cats but I can live with this faiblesse).

I’d heard of Sorbian, a Slavic language spoken by a minority in what was then the GDR, while I was studying for my uncompleted PhD. But I didn’t know much about them nor exactly where they lived.

But now I’ve just been in Cottbus in Lower Lusatia (Niederlausitz), about 130 km south-east of Berlin and seen the dual language street names, which whetted my appetite to learn more.

My sole source so far is a detailed description on Wikipedia, which provides a number of additional sources that I shall investigate (almost all the information below is from that source).

The Sorbian speaking population live in Upper and Lower Lusatia, each region having its distinct Sorbian dialect, the lower Lusatian containing more imported words from German. Practically all, if not all, Sorbs speak German as well and there are now many people of Sorbian origin, especially in Lower Lusatia (the region around Cottbus), who no longer understand Sorbian. Among religious Sorbs, Lutherans predominate in Lower Lusatia and Roman Catholics in Upper Lusatia.

The pressure on the Sorbs to assimilate increased in the nineteenth century, especially after the foundation of the German Empire in 1871, reaching a peak in the Nazi period, which denied the existence of the Sorbs as a distinct Slavic people but regarded them as Sorbian-speaking Germans. According to Wikipedia, this substantially spared them from ethnic cleansing although expressions of Sorbian culture were still sharply discouraged, organisations closed down and individuals persecuted. Checking on another source about the Sorbian writer Mina Witkojc (1893 to 1975), she was prohibited from exercising her profession (berufsverbot) by the Nazis.

In the post-war period under the GDR, the Sorbs were able to re-establish the Domowina, a political and cultural organisation serving as an umbrella organisation for Sorbian associations.  However, there were points of conflict relating to resistance to collectivisation of agriculture and religious practices. Wikipedia mentions an open uprising at Blot but gives no details.

The development of open cast mining of lignite (brown coal) affected the area where the Sorbian speakers lived, leading, among other things, to the abandonment of villages.

The number of Sorbs is given as 145,000 in 1945 and 40,000 today indicating a substantial decline in the past seventy five years (although perhaps the 1945 figure should be treated with caution, given conditions in Germany at that time). I have also seen larger estimates of the number of Sorbs today up to 60,000-80,000 (presumably hard to estimate exactly as the overwhelming majority are German citizens so the numbers are an estimate of cultural and linguistic affiliation).

A long-standing demand of Sorbian organisations is for the Sorbs to be united in one administrative area, for example in one federal state. At present, they are divided between two federal states, Upper Lausatia in Saxony and Lower Lausatia in Brandenburg. This administrative division goes back at least to the Congress of Vienna (1815) when Lausatia was divided between Saxony and Prussia.

These calls have not been heeded by the German government after re-unification, regardless of the Sorbs status as a recognised national minority.

The Sorbs have also been historically known as Lusatians or Wends. I’m not sure of the exact definition of Wends but it does not seem to refer to a specific people but to be a general term referring to people of  Slavic origin living in close proximity to the German-speaking population.

The term Sorb seems to be related to the word Serb, the Serbs apparently being referred to in Sorbian as South Sorbs (I’ve not checked this).

Before the second World War, there was once a much more complicated patchwork of interspersed nationalities in Germany and Eastern Europe. However, despite the activities of the Nazi regime, there are still at least remnants of numerous groups left. I’d like to learn more about these, among others the Sorbs and the Kashubians in Poland.

There is some material available in English. Gerald Stone’s book from 2015 “Slav Outposts in Central European history” looks like a good starting point. Much more is available in German. Works by Mina Witkojc mentioned above, who has been translated from Lower Sorbian to German but also by Jan Skala, who was active in an organisation for national minorities in Germany before it was dissolved by the Nazis. There’s a book about him “Jan Skala – ein Sorbe in Deutschland” by Peter Kroh from 2009.

1 September and this strange summer is drawing to a close. For me the most intensively Swedish summer ever, leaving me better informed about my surroundings and reducing my exile-related feelings of dislocation and not belonging. At the same time, a feeling of being cheated, that the summer with its peculiarities doesn’t quite count, that it wasn’t enough to compensate for the cold and dark to come.  But we have to accept that too and find satisfaction in playing a bad hand well, aware that there is no guarantee that tomorrow will be like today and that the only reasonable expectation is the unexpected.

A few years ago I bought Gunnar Eriksson’s biography of Rudbeck from Ekerö library, where it was being sold (in mint condition and horrendously cheap). It remained in mint condition in my library for some time but I’m glad to have it now that I live in Uppsala, where it’s hard to move a metre without stumbling over Rudbeck. I’ve now have my Rudbecks sorted out and know that I am reading the bio of Rudbeck the elder (1630 to 1702).

He was involved in so much – discovering the lympathic system (I was too squeamish to cope with this chapter) and later having an anatomical theatre built. And other matters, far removed from his professorship in medicine, in the manner of the intellectuals of his period; also his ongoing efforts to reform the university, presented by Eriksson as a battle to overcome the scholastic and Aristotelian remnants of the middle ages and to usher in a more empirical approach.  There is a wonderful episode which I must find out more about where Rudbeck announced a presentation on what was known about nothing, which was perceived (probably correctly) as a provocation (it might be a reasonable question today…). He was also involved in organising a water supply from the castle and housing. And then his magnum opus, Atlantica, where he combines sharp insights and methods anticipating the future with statements about Sweden as the lost continent of Atlantis and Swedish being the root tongue of all languages, which may have served well as an ideology supporting Sweden’s great power ambitions but which were otherwise an oddity. And the last tragic chapter when many of Rudbeck’s manuscripts, including the last part of Atlantica and a substantial part of his library were destroyed in the town fire. He lived long enough to work on plans for Uppsala’s reconstruction but died not long after

My intention was for the Rudbeck bio to be my bedtime reading but it proved far too weighty a work for this purpose. I need to read it carefully and to take notes. I’d like to work my way through the quotes from Rudbeck in seventeenth century Swedish, which, poised on the threshold of hopeful sleep, I skipped. And to know more about the history and organisation of the university and Rudbeck’s academic conflicts. The seventeenth century feels rather late for scholasticism (counting angels on pinheads and all that) and I’d like to know more about Gunnar Eriksson’s reasoning and also about Rudbeck’s relationship to Cartesianism. It’s going to be a laborious plod but I think worthwhile from the point of view of feeling at home in Uppsala.

While checking some facts, I came across a picture of the very fine door to the house where Descartes lived in the Old Town in Stockholm (it’s still there, I have to take a pic) on his tragic visit to Sweden. I’m very suspicious about French people, who move to Sweden. It seems so existentially irresponsible and careless (not to deny this northern country’s many redeeming features but France undoubtedly has some charms that Sweden lacks). And in Descartes case, it was fatal, as he came in October, didn’t get on well with Queen Kristina, who had invited him, and subsequently died of pneumonia so the whole thing was rather a disaster, “I went to Sweden, therefore I am not” as he mumbled to St Peter surprised to find him knocking on the gate of heaven at such an early time. So my bio has generated a visit to Gamla Stan in Stockholm as well as to Rudbeck’s tomb in Uppsala cathedral.

Circadian anarchy strikes again and I am keeping Stalinist hours, being awake far into the small hours and then sleeping until noon, although without having the place cluttered up by booze-sodden “chums” (an interesting word, said to originate from “chamberfellow” unlike “bloke”, which comes from Shelta,  according to the Concise Oxford Dictionary, with a startling absence of PC, perhaps explained by mine being the 2004 edition, “a secret language used by Irish and Welsh tinkers and Gypsies “), although “crony” coming from the Greek khronios (long-lasting) might have been a better word, keeping up the association with time, or, on second thoughts, maybe not  bearing in mind that friendship with Stalin was not exactly durable and, in any case, I don’t like megaphone words shrieking “look out, bad guys”, preferring to think for myself rather than being shoved here and there by signpost words. In any case, I much prefer the company of Marika Stjernstedt to Malenkov, Iron Lazar and Kobe.

I’d never heard of Marika Stjernstedt until I found her “Riksäpplet” (1941) at the library with its snippets about Uppsala, written in an older Swedish style, which I’m very taken with. And became more enthusiastic when I read about her life (admittedly a life-long Catholic but she had an abundance of redeeming features, anti-fascist among them). I’ve now moved on to her “Fröken Liwin” (1925) about the travails of an unmarried mother and mother-daughter relationships. My copy retrieved from the library cellar has a wonderful redolent black binding predating the standard library bindings of my youth. It’s stamped IOGT on the front underlying the teetotal salubriousness of my nocturnal activities and has an ancient sticker “Regler för boklån från Logen-Erentuna-Lyckas studiecirkelbibliotek” informing that “person som lånat en bok kan ej låna en annan utan att först hava återlämnat den förra”. When I’ve finished Fröken Liwin, I shall go on with her autobiographical “Kring ett äktenskap”, which I assume is about her second marriage to Ludvig Nordström, most remembered otherwise for “Lort Sverige”.

Whether Marika S will help me sleep is another matter. She is at least suffused with a light red light rather than blue light, which will perhaps help.

The brief taste of almost normal life during our cycle trip has made it hard for me not to think of covid-19-related restrictions now that I’m back in my flat. I’m eager to travel, to Germany and the UK, but realise that, if I’m going to be pent up somewhere, then my flat is the most practical place to be. I am, however, finding it hard to concentrate; I’m making good progress with Guy Shrubsole’s “Who owns England?” with its fascinating exposé of land ownership in England. But my other books are less satisfactory. I’m working my way through Richard Robert’s book on the City, a few years old now but still very informative. I would like to grasp its contents but all the various institutions and organisations are whirling around in my head and I need to read it several times, once quickly and then a careful plod. And I’ve also got into David Harvey’s book on “Marx, capital and the madness of economic reason”. It looks like just the book to read if one wants an overview of Marx’s Capital as part of an attempt to understand finance capital without immediately tackling all three volumes and the two or three additional works on surplus value. But I find myself losing the thread and again realise I have to read it quickly to get an overview and then start again.

At least I am making progress with Bengali. It’s still going very slowly but I try and do a bit everyday and am recognising more and more of the letters.

To reduce the feeling of being jaded, I need to be physically active. This morning was satisfactory on that front as I got started early (woken by workfolk doing preparatory work on urbanising a strip of parkland that my flat overlooks, giving me ample opportunity for exercises in self-discipline to keep Nimby at bay).  I cycled to the old church at Vaksala, on my list for a long time with one failed visit when a funeral was taking place. This time I went early and got in (before the rush hours). It’s a fine old church, mostly Gothic but with the remains of an old window in the south wall indicating its Romanesque origins.

There are very few monuments but the interior is livened by the mediaeval wall paintings of the Arentuna school, which are now on view after being covered up. The major sight is the fifteenth century altarpiece made in Antwerp (a bit before the Walloons started to come). I couldn’t find much information in the church about how the altar piece came to Sweden but there is an excellent guide to the altarpiece itself (see my facebook page for pics). There is supposed to be a severed hand, a symbol of Antwerp, in a number of places, but I couldn’t find it, neither standing in front of the altarpiece nor at home looking at a pic with a magnifying class. There were, however, plenty of other grisly details as the centre of the altarpiece showed the crucifixion and the side panels a collection of religious figures, saints, bishops and martyrs, often with an attribute indicating the way they died (a cauldron for a saint boiled to death and various unpleasant sharp objects). The freestanding figures are exquisitely carved and there’s a lot to learn from all the associations; I was grateful for the brochure’s literature list, including a reference to a licentiate thesis from 1958 on the altarpiece, which I shall try to get hold of (covid volente…).