Fake 199

A fake in the form of a letter from the Liberal Democrats on the occasion of tomorrow's council elections.

A letter which was delivered in a small, hand addressed envelope. A testament to the strength of their local membership: if everybody in Epsom and Ewell got one, that amounts to a lot of envelope stuffing and a lot of writing.

The letter itself, two sided, was  mainly printed by computer in fake handwriting, which I find rather irritating. At least I think it is; the letters are very well aligned if it is not. Presumably it is only a matter of time before the nerds introduce a bit of random jitter both into the form and the positions of the letters, making it even harder to distinguish the computer's efforts from that of a person. Maybe even a few blots by way of a finishing touch?

The salutation 'Dear Friend', is also a bit fake, although a form used by people like evangelical preachers - and some regular parsons. But it is not nearly as bad as the 'Dear Linda' or 'Dear James' employed by some of the utilities - particularly from the ones which are nominally sent by the chief executive.

I suppose the fake personal touch, the fake friendliness is all part of the fake message - sadly common to all the candidates - which claims that this candidate is going to get so much more out of the same pint pot than all the other candidates. I believe that a few years ago the electors of New York finally worked out that if they wanted all the many potholes in their roads to be fixed, they had to pay higher local taxes, but neither our politicians nor our voters have got to that point here. Maybe one day.

PS: I was amused when I clicked on an advertisement in yesterday's Financial Times to find that the Judge Business School at Cambridge is offering courses for ladies which are '... crafted for senior women leaders ready to lead authentically, strategically and with real-world influence...'. See reference 2.

After puzzling a little about what authentic leadership might mean - honesty about caring a great deal about the bottom line? - I associated to the Business School's former life as Addenbrooke's Hospital (old site), where a chunk of the ground floor was given over to out-patients, arranged as a large rectangular waiting room with rows of chairs, a bit like a school hall or cafeteria, with individual consulting rooms arranged along both sides. A bit like the chapels on either side of the nave in Westminster Cathedral. I got to know the former as a child and the latter as an adult.

Bing turns up the snap included above, with, as I recall, out-patients being off-snap to the right. Note also the interesting street light left. I believe I have noticed them before, but have yet to trace the post.

There is also a very vague memory of my father, on occasion, taking a dental clinic behind one of the second floor windows.

I have not attempted to probe that one, but memory also says that what was out-patients is now a branch of Brown's, a memory which is confirmed by Street View, at least back in 2024.

PS: after breakfast: search of the archives, using various lines of attack, failed to turn up the street lights and Gemini did not recall my asking him, although he did know all about them, as did Bing, from whom I learn that they are known as 'Richardson candles' and to be found, for example, at reference 3. I don't think that I ever knew them by this name, so I am now not so sure that I have noticed them before at all. But the usual small prize is offered to any reader who turns it up.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/fake-198.html.

Reference 2: https://www.jbs.cam.ac.uk/executive-education/leadership/cambridge-and-financial-times-women-in-leadership-programme/?utm_source=ft&utm_medium=digital&utm_campaign=q126.

Reference 3: https://capturingcambridge.org/centre/trinity-street/richardson-candles/.

Group search key:f akesk.

Trees and so forth

A fine hawthorn in full flower on West Hill. With ivy starting to get a grip down below: action needed!

Busy Sunday market in town, a combination of farmer's market and collectibles. Farmers were represented by one stall selling fancy meat in small shrink wrap packets. But there was a selection of eatables, including no less that two stalls selling fancy chilli. Plenty of collectibles, quite a number of which we either still own or have owned. I could, for example, have had our two gallon galvanised steel watering can for £37.

The Screwfix whitebeam, with the flowers starting to visibly ripen.

A heritage Morris Minor in Blenheim Road, not far from the stranded recovery vehicle left from First Line Recovery, now in administration. What used to be called the receiver? Gemini's answer was not quite, but near enough for the likes of me. The start of his reply is snapped below.

He does not think to mention the role of 'liquidator', which features in reference 1 - the snap there also suggests difficulty with the Inland Revenue over unpaid tax - although he does mention liquidation once.

Last time I looked, there were still plenty of First Line vehicles parked elsewhere in Blenheim Road and, as it happened, a bit later on this circuit, I came across a First Line van parked in Manor Green Road, complete with driver. Unfortunately he was on the phone so it was not convenient to ask him what exactly was going on.

The Morris Minor was known to Carcheck, although there was no MOT history; perhaps that has been transferred to chargeable. But I do now know that it dates from 1967, so not in bad condition considering, although there was some filler to be seen at the other end.

By the time of my second circuit in the afternoon, the market was starting to run down - with these amateurs putting in rather longer hours than the professionals - but the beer garden outside the Marquis and the terrace outside Wetherspoon's were both doing a good trade. 

I bagged a brace of large M&S trolleys, one from 2021 the other from 2025. 2021 being old for an M&S trolley.

The hoardings outside the new Big Yellow storage facility in East Street have come down, revealing the large concrete blocks which seem to be the way which such things are held up these days. No more post holes to be dug. 

But it looks as if they have missed their advertised 'early 2026' opening, with the snap bottom left generated by some drawing package rather than by a telephone. Lifted from reference 2.

The rose at No.1 Victoria Place was looking well this sunny afternoon. Looking well in Street View too, where the image is dated to just a year ago.

And at the Hook Road end of Longmead some red candles, as we used to call horse chestnut flowers when I was young. I remember there being some rather good ones in the vicinity of the Jesus Green Lido. This last now looking a bit tired; at least it was when we last went past, a few years ago now. A 100 yard pool with lawns, terraces and such which used to heave on summer afternoons. Maybe the young of today have got soft with all their foreign holidays.

PS: Marquis and Wetherspoon's not busy at all outside on the following day, that is to say Monday afternoon, when it was dull, overcast and cool. Maybe they were doing better inside.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/02/the-first-circuit.html.

Reference 2: https://www.bigyellow.co.uk/epsom-self-storage-units.

Group search key: 20260503.

Cork oak acorns

The age at which cork oak trees start yielding acorns came up during the composition of reference 1 yesterday (Monday) and I took the answer of 15 to 25 years provided by Gemini. Waking this morning, I got to thinking about how one might check this particular fact.

From trawling the Internet to find out about this, I moved onto conducting one's own experiment. Establishing the truth of the matter directly, rather than relying on someone else.

One starts by buying a plot of land, in an area known for growing cork oaks, large enough to support 1,000 trees. Fence it in to keep out deer and other pests.

Plant 2,000 acorns, spread evenly across the plot. One would need to have consulted a cork farmer about spacing, but the idea would be that there would be enough seedlings to be able, over time, to thin them down to 1,000 mature trees, also spread reasonably evenly across the plot. Trees whose identity and age one was sure about.

After maybe ten years one would start an annual inspection. An inspection which would take the form of sampling the ground underneath each tree and counting the number of acorns on the ground in the sample area. One's cork farmer would be able to advise on the appropriate time of year at which to do this.

In this way, over time, one would obtain a good indicator for the number of mature acorns produced by each tree, each year, and one could hire a statistician to turn them into a distribution of the age at which cork oaks started to produce acorns, with an early task for him being to determine the start point. One acorn would not be enough to make a start, but how many would be enough?

He might then define the range as running from the lower to the upper quartile. But this would all depend on what the distribution looked like.

If you were very rich and very patient, you might then think about replicating the experiment on a number of plots, taking in a variety of climate and soil conditions. And your heirs might be heir to a really good answer to the question.

In the meantime, I shall think about how one might do something in rather quicker time.

I leave dealing with the circularity involved in using the identity of 1,000 cork trees to establish the identity of the 1,001st cork tree as an exercise for the reader.

PS 1: the snap of acorns above was turned up by Bing from reference 2, with the root of reference 2 being reference 3. A family owned, Canadian cork company, established there after fleeing Czechoslovakia at about the time of my my birth. They look to have started out producing corks of various sizes for brewers, but I would not be surprised to find that they now own cork plantations.

PS 2: MSN brought me news of Greene King this morning, a modest East Anglian brewer when I was young, now a conglomerate. - which I now know has been owned since 2019 by a chap who lives in Hong Kong.

'... Greene King runs approximately 2,600 pubs across Britain, of which 840 are directly managed, with the remainder operating under franchise or tenancy arrangements.

Established by Benjamin Greene in Bury St Edmunds in 1799, Greene King was once listed on the London Stock Exchange before being taken private by Hong Kong billionaire Li Ka-Shing's CK Asset Holdings in a £2.7bn deal in 2019...'.

It is now looking to sell off around 150 of them. Interesting that only a third of the estate is managed directly. And I have learned that 'Old Speckled Hen' is a member of the family. I suppose I mostly stuck with their IPA.

Another episode in the story of how smashing the big brewers' grip on the pub business, killing off their old-style tenanted houses, is panning out. Think also Wetherspoon, Stonegate, Mitchell & Butler.

Four day old news according to reference 4. See also reference 5 and 6.

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/05/more-tulips.html.

Reference 2: https://jelinek.com/blog/what-is-a-cork-tree.

Reference 3: https://jelinek.com/.

Reference 4: https://www.cityam.com/greene-king-selling-150-pubs-over-unprecedented-costs-boss-says/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CK_Asset_Holdings.

Reference 6: https://www.ckah.com/.

More tulips

Back to Wisley a week or so ago, hoping to catch the tail end of their tulip festival. A visit which was advertised at reference 1, more than a month after the previous visit, noticed at reference 2. Once again, surprised how long ago that was.

Arrived in time to get into Car Park No.1, with the snap above being one of a couple of sighting shots, intended as a fall-back should BH forget where we had parked. Not sure that it would have been of much help in that eventuality, but there are some interesting badges bottom right.

This had meant an early start - early start, that is, for us - with our arrival on the A3 being marked by there being some kind of a hawk overhead. While the lights we were with us when we left the A3, getting through the waterworks associated with Wisley Acres without significant delay. Into the café for tea, decaff and scones by 10:35.

Our first sit in the sun was taken on a bench by the big lily pond, where the massive display of tulips was just starting to go over. But still pretty impressive.

And BH is rather fond of the curiously pruned shrubs on the other side.

And then some more, in a rather different planting, seemingly on the other side of the pond from where we were sitting.

Trying to locate this bed, I turned up a shiny new map of Wisley from their website, powered by Hypamaps, a rather dynamic affair from which the still above is taken.

In the snap above, the lily pond is below the left hand spot, while my money is on the yellow tulips being in the vicinity of the right hand spot. But I am not very confident about it. Nor am I sure that I would not have got on better with the old style map, which I have yet to relocate.

Part of the idea may be that you use your telephone as you walk around the gardens, to tell you what you are looking at, a supplement to the labels which are stuck in the ground and hung off trees and shrubs. Maybe in the not too distant future, you will be able to point your telephone at a plant and it will tell you what it is, not by Google Images analysing the plant for what it is, but by the telephone knowing where you are and consulting the Wisley database, perhaps correlating the telephone image with the map to get your location down to the nearest plant, rather than to the nearest few metres, which is the best that the telephone masts can do. But you can see all this for yourself at references 3 and 4.

Not the same as counting petals and so forth for yourself at all.

Followed by yet another style of planting, this one a little patchy for some reason. But good, all the same.

From the tulips to the herbaceous beds, the ones topped out by the decapitated horse. This morning, I failed to recall the name of the sculptor of the arch which preceded the head - and which I had liked much better. Gemini was able to help out on the clue:

'Can you tell me the name of the sculptor who does large arches made from a sort of perforated limestone. There is one in Hyde Park and there used to be one in Wisley Gardens, at the top of the hill now occupied by a horse's head'

With the answer being Henry Moore. Along the way he was able to tell me all about the Hyde Park version. And, as a result of a supplementary, I now know rather more about the distinction between Kensington Gardens (to the west of West Carriage Road) and Hyde Park (to the east). And that between the Long Water and the Serpentine. Maybe I would have got there in the end, left to myself.

And I learn from reference 5 that:

'... Not satisfied with these two parks, Henry commandeered the land which now makes up Hyde Park, Kensington Gardens and The Regent’s Park, seizing it from Catholic monks and turning it into another vast hunting park...'. 

Just like our own Nonsuch Park.

I rather liked this one.

After a while, we came across two large patches of grass, thickly planted with blue camassias, then coming into full flower. With the edge of one of the patches being snapped above. They must be fashionable just presently, as we seem to come across them quite frequently - having been unknown to us before we came across them in Devon four years ago, as noticed at reference 6. Our own very modest pot which followed, is just coming into full flower too.

Settled for lunch in the cafeteria which is part of the science block, also home to the library and various other attractions.

Lentils were off, so we settled for a respectable pea soup, served in an arty, lop-sided bowl, supplemented by a sandwich of some kind, the bottom half of which is snapped above. It turned out to be vegetarian - I suppose there were enough clues and I should have known - and better than I had thought likely. BH got rather more pesto than she had bargained for from the top half. With the result that her contribution was that I should have cut the sandwich in half vertically, rather than just taking it apart.

After lunch, I left BH by the new lake, which has settled down nicely, and went off in search of the cork tree, which we did not get around to on the last occasion, taking in some of the fine Wellingtonisa by the lake, previously scored, on the way.

I found the cork oak in the Jubilee Arboretum with the help of a passing gardener, complete with label confirming that it was indeed a cork oak, Quercus suber. Very much like the one on Clay Hill Green, shape apart, as last noticed at reference 7. Except that here, the small red buds did appear to be on the move.

No acorns on the ground, and I don't remember any from Clay Hill Green. Maybe you don't get acorns on young trees?

Gemini's take on that one was that cork oaks do not produce acorns until they are between 15 and 25 years old. Bing/Copilot offers: 'Cork oak trees typically begin producing acorns between 20 and 30 years of age, with peak production occurring around 50 to 80 years' and a cursory inspection of his search results did not turn up anything better. While reference 13 does not include the cork oak in the handy table 6.1 of same at all. So the Gemini figure looks reasonable, but it is not yet corroborated.

Luckily, it is enough for present purposes to be reminded that young oak trees do not produce acorns.

Meanwhile, BH was taking the sun by the lake, with a buzzard taking a few swings, very low overhead, to provide a bit of interest. With a bit more from some long fish in the lake, perhaps a couple of feet long, some more or less stationary, some swimming about, rather lazily. I thought that they were pike, although I did not get a good enough look at the mouth and jaw to be sure. I was much more sure about the pair of pikes we once saw at the rather larger lake at Painshill, just the other side of the M25/A3 junction, as noticed after the event at reference 8.

By this time, we had enough sun and decided it was time for off, taking in some serious looking sweet pea planting (Lathyrus odoratus) in the trials area on the way. Something to be visited again in a few weeks time.

There was a No.339 in the car park. Given my trouble with No.39, I had thought about relaxing the rules to allow one to pick '33' and '39' out of a number such as this, but then thought better of troubling the rules committee. So no progress.

PS 1: home to read the story at reference 9, which, inter alia, advertises the Magnolia Gardens of Charleston, a truly wonderful place in the spring, when the magnolias are in flower. So I turn them up at reference 10 to find that the place started out as a plantation of the slave era and is now, as well as being a magnolia garden, something of a memorial to those times. Which I think would rather put me off visiting: visiting gardens in this country, originally laid out and planted with money derived from sugar plantations in the West Indies is one thing; visiting gardens which were plantations seems to be quite another. But I suppose I am being a bit silly; I am just not used to having such issues pushed under my nose.

Aside: I believe plantations in the West Indies are to be found in the ever so genteel novels of Jane Austen, but I do not recall any moral outrage on her part, even though the movement for abolition was of her time. Gemini explains that lots of ink has been spilt on this very topic and that her record is probably pretty good for her class, her time and given her avoidance of public controversy. He offers reference 11, a product of reference 12. Which I have nothing against - except an aversion to getting my information from a talking head, particularly an unknown talking head. I still relate much better to the written word. Better still, to a properly made book.

PS 2: from the comfort of my study, there is something rather unsavoury about enclosing a parcel of land, hiring a park keeper to keep it well stocked with suitable animals - and then hunting them down. I think I prefer doing the killing in the privacy of a slaughter house, leaving the countryside to look quiet and peaceful. I dare say rich and powerful people have always done it, not to mention the Roman circuses, but still and all. Facilitating if not rearing, then hunting foxes being a special case. 

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/fake-197.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/pitcher-plant.html.

Reference 3: https://www.rhs.org.uk/gardens/wisley/map.

Reference 4: https://hypamaps.com/.

Reference 5: https://www.royalparks.org.uk/about-us/history-royal-parks.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2022/05/a-house-and-garden.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/bud-check.html.

Reference 8: https://psmv4.blogspot.com/2020/09/painshill.html.

Reference 9: A hedonist - John Galsworthy - 1920. From 'Caravan'.

Reference 10: https://www.magnoliaplantation.com/.

Reference 11: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/vhuBU9HOllo.

Reference 12: https://www.historyextra.com/.

Reference 13: Trees: Their natural history - Peter A. Thomas - 2014.

Title

Halifax has pulled out of the title deed storage business, so a few days ago around 4lbs 11oz of title deeds arrived at our front door. 35 by 25 by 5 centimetres, something more than 4,000 cubic centimetres. So a million such parcels - supposing that to be how many Halifax were holding - would occupy 4,000 cubic metres - 10 by 10 by 40 metres - amounting to a fair sized shed - and weigh in at something more than 2,000 metric tonnes, with a metric tonne not being much different to one of our tons.

The job of looking after all this stuff appeared to have been contracted out to Iron Mountain, people whom I knew of from my spell in in records management. See reference 1.

Contents

I think I had been expecting a single ancient document, tied up in red ribbon, decorated with various seals and signatures. And there was some of that in among the great old bundle of stuff, stuff which perhaps in aggregate traces back our title to our house into the mists of time. The earliest date I came across was 1783 and I also came across two Mr. Chases, the estate we live in being known as the Chase Estate. So I now suppose that they once owned the land. Speculators of old?

Organised into three bundles. In ascending order of size: our title to the house (front), the people from whom we bought the house (back) and, in the middle, a fat miscellany of papers about the people before them.

One wonders how much one would have to pay a solicitor's clerk to wade through all this stuff and produce an intelligible summary. Would the answer be to scan it all in - which would cost a bit in itself - and then hand the job over to AI? Who in the meantime has learned how to read ancient legal manuscript. Then the last lap couldn't be that much worse than Acrobat knocking out helpful summaries of long documents to save one the bother of reading them.

Some details

In no particular order.

The most recent document was an imposing affair, tied up with white string and stamped with a large red seal, called a Charge Certificate from the Land Registry, dating from the time of our arrival in 1988. This contained a few fairly straightforward entries in the Land Registry - plus an imposing conveyance from 1931, tied up with green ribbon, written out in black italic manuscript, complete with ornamentation which would not have disgraced something that you might have found in a monastery library of old.

Another green ribboned conveyance from 1946. In among which I find a clause which restrains us from digging gravel, chalk and so on from the back garden and from the making of bricks. Who could enforce such restraint now?

Various papers related to the Eagle Star Insurance Company from the early 1980s.

A declaration about something or other from a former next door neighbour. Typescript with lots of initialled, manuscript corrections.

A fat bundle of paper from 1935, tied together with an imposing brass paper fastener, called (in fancy italic) an abstract of title. This appears to be a typed history of the ownership of the property, starting in 1783 and possibly conveying the land to the Chase brothers in 1905.

A conveyance of 1935 which appears to be from the builder, a Mr Uden, to the occupier, a doctor at the West Park Asylum, now a housing estate, for a consideration of just over £1,000. At that time our house was called 'Lissadell', a name I do not think I have come across before. But Wikipedia is ahead of me at reference 2. An Irish doctor from Sligo perhaps? The Atlas Assurance Company was involved in this transaction - but Wikipedia only manages a very short entry for them.

Various searches. These mostly seemed to be solicitors asking the local authority what it knew about the property. But one, from 1935, involved the Land Registry.

A 1935 or 1946 supplemental to the abstract of title. Another brass paper fastener, not quite so imposing as the last. A document in neat but modern manuscript. No attempt at fancy italic. What appears to be another copy of the abstract of title, with the same two dates.

The last bundle of papers appears to concern the people from whom we bought the house. Starting with a rental agreement from the 1960s between them and the then owner. Fifteen guineas a week. The last fat document was another abstract of title, this one dating from 1960, at about which time the then owner appears to have died in occupation.

I am reminded that processing all this paper was how solicitors made their money in the olden days. Their golden goose, as it were.

Destination

My understanding is that title deeds of this sort have now been rendered obsolete by the Land Registry, notwithstanding which Halifax tell me that they are important and should be kept in a safe place. So I have tied them up with laces left over from retired trainers and shall find a suitable hiding place for them - leaving skipping them to our heirs.

PS 1: I remembered, later in the day, about a former correspondent who had visited the house quite often, and who, although British by birth, was something of an Irish Nationalist - and was also a lover of the poetry of Yeats. He would no doubt have been amused to have learned of the house's onetime name.

PS 2: while I am both amused and appalled by the personality cult growing around POTUS; the sort of cult which has rather a bad track record, very bad even. Maybe the chap in North Korea is thinking that imitation is the the sincerest form of flattery - or maybe he has his own Korean proverb to the same effect. The snap above being lifted from reference 5.

References

Reference 1: https://www.ironmountain.com/en-gb.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lissadell_House.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atlas_Assurance_Company.

Reference 4: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/a-good-result.html. The last outing from my trusty brand of trainers. Which I believe are made in Vietnam.

Reference 5: US Department of Justice loses a quarter of its lawyers: Thousands have quit or been fired since Trump returned to office with an agenda focused on immigrants and enemies - Kaye Wiggins, Financial Times - 2026.

Diagrams bearing gifts

The title of this post arises from remembering about a one-time colleague who used to talk about non-information bearing diagrams. The post itself being a development of references 1 and 2.

The snap above being derived from a figure in the appendix of reference 3, reference 3 being a doctoral thesis which looks again at the myth described by Lévi-Strauss at reference 4. What exactly is the structure that Lévi-Strauss and his followers were so keen on?

The starting point

The starting point is an ideal population, quite unrealistic in various ways, but maybe informative in other ways.

We suppose that we have a closed, finite population containing an equal number of men and women.

Everyone is married monogamously, with all men marrying their mother's brother's daughter; MBD in the jargon of anthropologists, often contrasted with FZD, father's sister's daughter. Cross-cousin marriages.

Every marriage has exactly two children, one girl and one boy. There is no infant or child mortality, and all these children grow to adulthood, to marry and have children of their own.

In this world, everyone has exactly two parents, one sibling of the opposite sex and four cross cousins, two on each side, two of each sex. No parallel cousins at all.

Note that in this diagram, all the marriage links from women to men go from left to right. This is not the case in the FZD version, where they alternate as you go down the page. The two cases are different; there is more going on than a change of labels.

For present purposes, this ideal population has the important property that it can be mapped, through time, in a reasonably simple two-dimensional diagram or array, an example of which is snapped above. Each row represents one generation of the population, with successive generations going down the page. We suppose that people are tidy and that they all have both their children when they are twenty years of age, thus avoiding the generational drift of the real world.

Looking forward, I see no reason why the rectangular sheet above should not be joined back on itself to form a vertical cylinder, thus closing the population without any loose ends. Although the top of the cylinder does bring us up against the creation stories, previously noticed at reference 5.

The next step: clans

We next suppose that our population is divided into exogamous clans, with clan membership being inherited through the mother. So siblings are always in the same clan, husband and wife are always in different clans. Two such clans, the red and the blue, are marked on the snap above.

Slightly different, property such as land (perhaps in the form of hunting rights), is held by men but transmitted in the maternal line, from a man to his sister's son. Making the male blue diagonal a line of inheritance, keeping the property in the clan, if not the family. Plenty of societies have been studied where this particular relationship is important, perhaps as important as that between father and son.

One issue is the number of clans, often a power of two. But is that just human tidiness: what about seven, a number which crops up all over the place, in other contexts?

Another issue is whether it is possible to appropriate to express rules about marriage in terms of clan membership rather than biological descent?

Suppose then that we have seven clans: yellow, lime, apple, sky blue, royal blue, black and purple; in real life likely to have been named for plants or animals. With the rule being that a yellow lady must marry a lime man, a lime lady must marry an apple man and so on. Forgetting all about this kinship business, it being much easier just to track clan membership, which is always that of the mother.

[to be completed]

Tilings

The snaps above were constructed a little laboriously in Powerpoint, although things were made a little easier by using the 'select objects' feature. Furthermore, the lining up started to fray a bit as I went along. I did not turn up a suitable 'snap to grid' feature, such as one would expect in a mainline drawing package such as AUTOCAD or DRAWBASE - this last being the one that I am slightly familiar with.

What I wanted, after the event, was a single tile that I could paste all over the slide. The tile would indeed tile the slide. Such a tile is highlighted in blue in the snap above, a tile which includes the links but not the three people bottom right, two men and one woman.

With this snap illustrating a bit of tiling. If one had a big screen, one might stick four such tiles together to make a super tile.

Problems

In the real world, both men and women may have zero, one or more partners during the course of their life, rather than exactly one. More often in the case of men, more than one at a time. Some anthropologists talk of group marriages. Not to mention extra marital partnerships.

In the same way, a marriage might result in zero, one or more children, which might or might not be split evenly between the sexes.

Including all this on a two dimensional array, never mind one as neat and tidy as those above, is challenging - as can be seen in the second half of reference 2.

Variation in age of marriage and in birth intervals causes more problems in that generations re no longer neatly separated out. Generations works in the immediate vicinity of a nuclear family, as seen from inside that family, but goes downhill rapidly as one moves away from that.

In the case of the cylinders above, one can make an effort by joining up the two ends of the rectangle one gets on paper or on the screen with an offset. But apart from providing mathematical curiosity, I am not sure that it helps much - although there is the paper at reference 6 - which I believe is an attempt to deal with the fact that, certainly at one time, in Aboriginal Australia, men were commonly ten or more years older than their wives.

One might argue, and I believe Lévi-Strauss does argue, that such diagrams represent an ideal, towards which a society might drift. There might be a tendency or desire to do things that way, even if one falls rather short. And it certainly true that in a stable population, neither growing nor shrinking, the average number of surviving children needs to be close to two.

It might even be the case that people like the idea of such neat and tidy arrangements, not so much because they are useful but because they are pretty; attractive and interesting.

Conclusions

Another illustration of both the attraction and the limitations of two dimensional models.

Further material which might be developed to go along with that at reference 1. What does such a model tell us about what goes on on the ground?

From where I associate to an economist of my student days telling us that mathematical models provided a useful peg on which to hang a discussion of the real world: how well they described the real world was another matter.

PS: it so happens that, in parallel with this post, I have been reading a short story - reference 7 - by Galsworthy about the perils of decent people being stuck out in the wilderness, more or less by themselves, for too long. Mining people in this case, rather than anthropologists doing their field work. I dare say plenty of such stories came out of British India where we were very thin on the ground, once you got away from the big cities, but all I can think of at the moment is Galsworthy's contemporary, Conrad, at reference 8. Maybe Somerset Maugham?

Google adds some checkable bibliographical detail. And reminds me that old Jolyon Forsyte from the 'Forsyte Saga' gets a walk-on part.

While Gemini gets into quite a muddle, although he recovers well as I correct him. I thought his near closing sentence was rather good:

'... Galsworthy leaves the reader with the unsettling thought that Pippin’s death was an act of surrender rather than a mistake. He couldn't find the "words" to anchor himself to the world of the living, so the silence simply claimed him...'.

And he drags in the tors of Dartmoor yet again, which I once asked him about - and which he does not seem to be able to let go of. Perhaps this is his idea - not that unreasonable, if a little heavy handed - of making conversation.

Perhaps I will check this one properly and, inter alia, try to work out whether he has access to the text or whether he is relying on secondary sources. He is certainly doing a good deal more than making it all up.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/a-thought-experiment-on-forensic.html.

Reference 2: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/04/more-clans-and-marriages.html.

Reference 3: Structuralism and "The Story of Asdiwal": A Re-analysis of a Tsimshian Myth – Darcee L. McLaren – 1990. 

Reference 4: The story of Asdiwal – Lévi-Strauss – 1960. Being the (famous) Lévi-Strauss take on a myth from the far north west of British Columbia.

Reference 5: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/03/clans-and-marriages.html.

Reference 6: Aranda and Alyawarra kinship: A quantitative argument for a double helix model – Denham, W.W., C.K. McDaniel, J.R. Atkins – 1979. Which Denham, leaving aside Denham Grove, was previously noticed at reference 2.

Reference 7: The silence - John Galsworthy - 1901. In 'Caravan', previously noticed. See, for example, reference 9 below. A very good, if chance, buy!

Reference 8: Heart of darkness - Joseph Conrad  - 1899.

Reference 9: https://psmv6.blogspot.com/2026/01/galsworthy.html.

Group search key: aibadsk.

No dignity yet

Just over a week ago to Parliament Square for a demonstration to mark the undignified death of the bill to allow assisted dying, killed off by a handful of obstructive peers. Probably not hereditary peers but certainly not elected either.

It remains something of a puzzle to me why, in a country where more than 550,000 people die every year, we make such a performance about allowing the couple of thousand or so who might want to speed up what can sometimes be a very unpleasant business, to get on with it. Our governing classes, the great and the good, make a great parade about allowing us to live our lives how we choose - but for some reason that eludes me, get terribly exercised about allowing us to die how we choose. This despite the population at large having been massively in favour for a long time. But see references 1 and 2 below for a more careful take on it all.

Fame also eluded me, hidden somewhere in the vicinity of Lloyd George, first statue on the left, in the snap above.

But to  start at the beginning, I woke up quite early and thought why bother? Lost cause for now. But an hour later, fortified by the morning cuppa, I was good to go. A quick breakfast, gathered up my 'Dignity in Dying' sun hat and my Stockholm folding chair and took the (BH) offered lift to the station. To be greeted on the shiny new Arterio trains by a stream of irritating announcements. When will someone with authority get through to them and get them turned off, or at least calmed down?

Two lots of railside laburnum, not quite the same as the arch at Hampton Court, but bright and cheerful in the early morning. Some hawthorn.

Out at Waterloo to walk across Westminster Bridge, it being a day of tube strikes, and while there probably were tubes running, no idea up top how many and it was a long way down. Plus, as it turned out, the Jubilee Gardens were looking very well, even if there were no starlings on this occasion.

Ukrainian flag at something close to half mast over the Inland Revenue (formerly HM Treasury) entrance to GOGGS in Parliament Street. Flagpole visible right in the snap above, lifted from Wikipedia at reference 3.

Demonstration a bit half mast too, despite the Dignity in Dying people putting a good face on it. Maybe a couple of hundred of us. The good news is that the issue is not going away and we will be back for another round. Maybe even persuade the Government to invoke the Parliament Act - invented in 1911 to bash obstructive Tory Lords into line. I might add that Dignity in Dying is much more a party matter than I had realised, with Labour and Liberals strongly for and Conservatives strongly against, free vote notwithstanding.

We had photography and speeches to keep us busy, with some of these last being quite moving. A stirring reminder, from the coal face as it were, of why we were there.

Apart from my Stockholm chair, quite a lot of sticks and wheelchairs were to be seen. Some fags and some dogs. Once again, rather more ladies than gents.

Having arrived at 09:00 on the dot, all done by noon. I got the impression that there was a booking system in operation, with the next demonstration starting up as ours wound down.

Along the way I was reminded of the demise of the fine cafeteria and cloakroom which used to be run in the basement of Central Hall, with the public now being restricted to a very inferior facility in a corner of the building. I dare say the old facilities are still there, but only for paying guests. No more public service, even from the Methodists - who seem to have vanished from reference 4, but who live on at reference 5.

Serious security at the entrance to St. James's Park.

But I am pleased to be able to report that the public house and the Bullingdon stand in Storey's Gate were still alive and well, both facilities having served from time to time in the past, even if the former now only opened at noon. Hardly a proper pub at all. But, hopefully, I will be back on the Bullingdons before too long; perhaps not on a strike day, which rather strains the system.

Strolled back over Westminster Bridge, not getting free of the crowds until I was more or less across, and on into Lower Marsh, below Waterloo Station, pinpointed on the snap above.

I had thought to take lunch at the noodlarium, last noticed just over a year ago at reference 6, but sadly, both it and its grander parent were closed down and boarded up. The street market of old was reduced to a few fast food stalls and it all seemed a bit run down.

Settled for the Duke of Sussex, last noticed in connection with Sir Thomas Buxton, but noticed and visited at reference 7, just over two years ago. House now part of the Stonegate empire, also noticed in these pages from time to time. 

Been made over since I was last there, now more for eating than drinking, but the layout of the public bar had been retained. On the other hand, the pool room, through the door left, had been turned into a dining room. The splendid hundred year old sanitary facilities had vanished and one now had to climb upstairs, most of which was flats rather than the hotel rooms of the Wellington, on the other side of the station.

Furthermore, some of the customers appeared to be off the booze, at least at lunchtime. I think I heard something about Guinness Zero,

Perfectly respectable burger, if a little dry, with sauce on the side, as requested. Taken with a spot of Proper Job, another bitter from the far west which has a serious presence in the Home Counties. See reference 9.

And so home to Epsom. Through train, so no RPPL.

Home to admire my ancient copy of the Buxton memoirs, getting on for two hundred  years old, as previously noticed and to which I shall return in dur course.

References

Reference 1: https://www.dignityindying.org.uk/.

Reference 2: https://www.ons.gov.uk/peoplepopulationandcommunity/birthsdeathsandmarriages/deaths/bulletins/deathregistrationsummarystatisticsenglandandwales/2024.

Reference 3: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Offices_Great_George_Street.

Reference 4: https://www.c-h-w.com/.

Reference 5: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Methodist_Central_Hall,_Westminster. Our churches clearly had lots of money for big capital projects in the second half of the nineteenth century - and one could no doubt write an interesting paper on where all that money goes now. Half to care homes and half to animal charities? I believe that the RSPB has plenty of money with which to buy land.

Reference 6: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2025/03/temple-of-law.html.

Reference 7: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/02/a-pub-crawl.html.

Reference 8: https://www.thechaptercollection.co.uk/duke-of-sussex-waterloo.

Reference 9: https://www.staustellbrewery.co.uk/our-beers/proper-job.