Finding a slice of the cheese market.

Almost exactly eight years’ ago, I reported on a Guardian editorial (April 20, 2013) that explored the possibility of building a British, cheese-based economy. On churning over the matter, I lauded the idea as a good one. I wrote the following:
“There is so much already in place (in Britain); the land, the rainfall, the herds, the people, and cheese districts like Stilton and Cheddar. What is more, our grazing pastures and herds of cattle cannot be salted off abroad. This is in contrast to the manufacturing sector where moneymaking enterprises are routinely carted to faraway places. Another plus is that agri-businesses can be distributed throughout Blighty in ways that compartmentalised sectors like finance cannot. Just think of young people flocking to courses in stock husbandry, dairy culture, nutrition, cheese cuisine, marketing, branding, advertising – OK. We got those already, but this would be marketing with a twist – a cheesy twist, you might say. And just think of the spin-offs; the mountains of crackers and biscuits, the olives and bottles of wine, the cheese tastings and fondue parties – we might even knock the Swiss off their mountain perch. So, how about milking this idea for all it is worth, leaders? My mouth is watering already!”
Well, what goes around comes around and a few days ago, the same newspaper reported that the cheese business is booming, yes, booming, thanks to a number of factors, the lockdown included. And with it, the attendant rise in cheese futures' investment. At production level, well done to those of you who found a slice of the cheese market. The remainder of us will go on maturing for a while, yet. https://www.theguardian.com/money/2021/apr/28/cheese-futures-could-we-all-make-millions-by-investing-in-cheddar

The rise and rise of the hybrid word

In recent times, I have been compiling my own register of hybrid words, chief among usage being “frexhaustion” (frustration + exhaustion) and “vexhaustion” (just guess). Previously, I created “mizzly” (miserable + drizzly) to describe that sort of day. And “melding” (melting + blending) is a very useful word when describing oil paints on canvas, with particular reference to the sunsets of JMW Turner. However, I involuntarily clench my jaws and grind my teeth to the sound of “glampers”, redolent of a hormonal disorder, and “staycationers” which brings to mind a chain of questionable stationers. And “chillaxing” so beloved of politicians a decade ago, conjures an image of an ice monster gone mad with an axe! I have tried consoling myself with the knowledge that many words we use colloquially today began life as hybrids, e.g., “brunch” (breakfast + lunch), “glitzy” (glamorous + ritzy) and “twittering” (talking + wittering). But somehow, it all feels horribly wrong. Melding, brunch and twittering are made of two words spliced together to describe similar activities or things. The resulting hybrid is all the stronger for it. On the other hands, “glamper” and “staycationer” are oxymorons, the adjective/noun pairs in contradiction with each other. These hybrids have a ring of bitter irony, of someone torn between being very clever or very funny, and not really succeeding in either aim. It remains to be seen whether such words die the death they deserve, or if they creep into our dictionaries, like lice into woodwork. If the latter happens, it wont be long before a good book becomes a “gook”, going “clubbing” is synonymous with beginning the cleaning and scrubbing, and a poor tourist is reborn as a “poorist”. Truly, we need a force of word police.

More Precious Than Gold

 

As a creature of the Seventies’, I have always had a thing for the colour purple. Even in the middle of the finest summer, I loved getting out of toxic sunlight and into the dark heart of a boutique, pulsating strobe lighting and rock music by turns, and finding that perfect purple handbag, preferably made of suede and alive with fringing. Or a jacket of aubergine wet-look plastic. Or a pair of purple wedgies to match either accessory – ah! What’s not to love? In the longer term, it came as a surprise to learn that purple dye, as we know it, came not from the imagination of a hyper-aware hippy, but from the laboratory of one William Henry Perkin. In the mid-nineteenth century, he was trying to synthesize the malaria drug, quinine, normally extractable from the bark of the exotic cinchona tree, in a glass flask. But the experiment failed and the only result was a black solid. Perkin tried to clean out his flask with alcohol, and it was the resulting solution that gave the world mauveine, or synthetic mauve. With it, a whole new Victorian cult of purple was born. The fashion for purple has waxed and waned ever since. It became very  popular in the 1970s, being regarded by the 'new agers' of the time because of its associations with higher consciousness. 

Throughout the ages, purple has always been a special colour, associated with magic, mystery and royalty. In antiquity, writers like Democritus (c. 460 - 370 BC) believed that the colour resulted from the harmony of the four elements the ancients believed the world was made from; earth, air, fire and water. By Roman times, the wearing of purple had become a royal prerogative, a colour reserved for the highest officers in the state in the form of a purple and gold robe. By the time of Diocletian (244 - 311 AD), it had come to be exclusively associated with the Emperor. For anyone else to wear it was tantamount to treason. Until the Middle Ages, purple had connotations of magic. In William Shakespeare's play, A Midsummer Night's Dream, Oberon describes the flower as 'purple with love's wound'. One reason for the cult of purple may have been the expense involved in its manufacture.

Tyrian purple had been manufactured from the shells of sea-molluscs by the Phonecians, from about 1500 to 300 BC. For many centuries, the closest the common people got to the wearing of purple was from a blue dye, approximating to indigo, obtained from the woad plant. But unlike magnificent Tyrian purple, it faded easily. Modern optical physics was born in 1704 when Sir Isaac Newton published his book, Opticks. As early as 1665, Newton had 'bent' light rays from the sun by passing them through a glass prism, and producing the spectrum of colours that we call the rainbow; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet. At one end of the spectrum  violet light waves approximate to 400 nanometres in length. At the other end, red light waves approximate to 760 nanometres, with the remaining colours in between. Violet waves are shorter and high-frequency, while red waves are longer and low-frequency. What we call ultra-violet is a wave higher in frequency than the violet we can see, and therefore not visible to our eyes. It is this high-frequency quality at the violet end of the spectrum that gives us the abundance of 'blues' in nature - and turquoise, ultramarine, mauve, mulberry - in contrast to relatively few reds and yellows.

Until William Henry Perkin's time, other purple dyes had been available but these were unstable and unsuited to mass manufacture. Following Perkin's discovery, the Victorians went purple crazy. In Bleak House by Charles Dickens, Mr Guppy wears a pair of mauve kid gloves as he proposes to Esther Summerson. Today, I am in possession of purple sheets, towels, blouses, t-shirts, skirts, undies and yes, a purple handbag. Wherever and whatever, long may purple last.