The Perfect Square

In the Oxford English Dictionary, the square is described as an equilateral rectangle, that is, a plane figure with four equal sides and four right angles. The square is an irreducible figure, one of the few in nature. There are no subdivisions in a square, only other, smaller squares. A figure is either a square, or it is not. QED.
The word square has entered our language to describe an entity or person that is solid, reliable, dependable, unmistakeable, e.g., a square meal, or a fair and square deal. But it has darker connotations. If a subject embraces definite, usually conservative, political views, or adheres to a certain mode of life, resisting all forces of change, we often describe him as square. Depending on your point of view, being square may or may not be a good thing. The square, born of Euclidean geometry, is almost always a human construct and almost never occurs in the natural world. Instead, we see it in architecture, in town planning, and it is used exclusively to construct the Platonic world of the chessboard. It is often used to represent the ideal, the unattainable, it being no accident that the mortarboard of the academic is square.

Wookey Cottage

Wookey Cottage is a small house with many windows, and gives the impression that many very little, very busy people live there. But you never see anyone, not even a Wookey man painting the bright pink walls, green window sashes and red door. There is an air of mystery about the place. The entrance is cowled and there is a spyglass in the door - could be the reason for your feeling of being watched?
In fact, there is a dweller, a retired man who worked as a railway clerk. He does not respond to your knocking on the door, so you take a trip round the scraggy little garden. There is a gnome with outstretched arm perpetually fishing in the pond that doesn't have any fish, and a dovecote without any doves - and a rose bower full of withered rose bushes. You stop to inspect a marble statue that is half-buried in the grass and a familiar shape darts out of the bushes and startles you. Now the reason for the lack of doves and fish becomes clear. It is the neighbour's cat. But there is still no sign of Wookey man.

Hall Stories

Many years ago, most people kept their telephones in the hall. Growing up in a telephone-free household, I pondered this, many a long hour. The only way to get a telephone account was to go to the one public company that offered them – far fewer people actually had one – and join a waiting list. At least one wisecrack has said that since public employees are considered of a lazy twist – note, I say considered – they didn’t want to move any further than the entrance to the house when putting in the telephone wiring. But I never bought any of it, having a theory of my own.
In most suburban houses, when few houses had central heating or decent seating, halls were chilly, comfortless places, devoid of privacy or intimacy – all the more reason to put the telephone there. For the majority of households, the making and/or taking of a call was such a momentous and/or expensive event, that the telephone had to be up front for all to see. The lack of seating combined with the presence of a winter mistral whistling through the eaves discouraged call maker/taker from talking too long, to the economic advantage of all parties.
Of course, it’s different now with teenagers paying for their own romantic follies through the medium of mobile accounts. It also means that they can conduct frowned-upon relationships in secret. There is downside to everything, it seems. Now, I ponder on whether the old or new way is the better – what do you think?

The Gothic Grange

The Gothic Grange. Gothic man does not want to be seen entering and leaving his house. Indeed, it is anybody’s guess where the front door actually is, since one is required to go round the outside of the house, searching the undergrowth for the sight of a doorknob on an ivy-covered wooden door. On this trip, the doorknob seeker is likely to be terrified by the sight of a sinister face staring through the diamond-pane of the ground-floored window. Gothic man would like us to believe that it is his Great Uncle Gus, locked up and grown mad over the years. But it is actually a mildewed, old portrait thrown in as a job lot when he bought the house.
Gothic man himself presents an alarming appearance. He wears shaggy beard, shaggy jumper, baggy trousers and shabby slippers. You will find out why as you enter the house; it is freezing. It also smells of mould. Gothic man would like you to think he inherited his pile, but he only bought it because it was going cheap when the previous owner couldn’t keep up with the mortgage payments. The moth-eaten old trophy on the wall as you ascend the staircase was bought in a junkshop. The first room on the landing off the staircase has a pair of lancet windows, like those you see in an old church or castle. It is here that Gothic man keeps his computing equipment – he is actually a programmer, though he tells everyone that he is a poet.
Gothic man tried to keep a cat, but the comfort-loving beast deserted him for a centrally heated house at the other end of the road. The only evidence of livestock is a bat-shaped mobile hanging in the window. It comes into its own at night, when Gothic man turns on a red-shaded light. The bedroom boasts a turret. Here, Gothic man will tell you, a young maiden threw herself to her death, many years earlier, the night before her father was to give her in marriage to an undesirable suitor. But really, the only thing that ever fell from that window, pale and fluttering, was a pair of Gothic man’s own underpants that he was trying to dry after the clothes’ drier in the basement had broken down.

A life of harmony...

His alarm clock bleeps at five-thirty every morning. He spends ten minutes in the shower, ten minutes shaving, five minutes blow-drying, five minutes getting dressed and thirty minutes having breakfast. At six-thirty am precisely, he leaves home. At six-thirty pm precisely, he returns home, climbing the steps of the elevated portico, the entrance to the classic mansion. Nothing spoils the harmony of this façade. Classic man will not even park his car in front of the house, least it spoils the symmetry.

Inside the acanthus-scented dwelling, the visitor can minuet to piped Handel and Bach, witnessing a plethora of perfect triangles, rectangles and circles inherent in the decoration. Indeed, there is a triangle propped over every doorway. Ask classic man if he is a mathematician, he smiles mysteriously and touches the side of his nose. Columns flank the entrance to every room, the ornamentation on top of which denotes the use of said room. The discerning visitor will be able to tell what the following mean: a statue of Venus and Adonis, a plaster cast of grapes and vine leaves, a bronze boar’s head, a gilt chamber pot…

The Never-Ending Soap Opera or, Imperial Lather..

Imperial Leather, which has been around in one form or another since 1768, has never been so much a soap as an experience. As soon as I became old enough to care about such things, I demanded Imperial Leather gift sets for birthdays and for Christmas. How I relished the sensation of removing the glossy, red packaging from the beige, chamfered block, running my fingertip over that red and gold label, lying in warm, bubbling water and breathing in that heady, glorious scent taking me to places I never was. As the years went by, I dallied in other aromas, but now and again, I wandered back down memory lane, looking for that inimitable red packaging in supermarket and drugstore.
Just recently, it came to my notice that PZ Cussons has ceased to make Imperial Leather soap in 200g bars – said soap now only comes in 125g tablets. Mystery solved – since early this year, I have only been able to find the smaller size of soap. What a rude awakening – the old adage comes into play: use it or lose it. IL lovers, take action now. Use your favourite soap. Demand ever more IL products, or else…

Confessions of an E-queen: rubber cheese and other delicacies

Over the years, I have heard a multitude of protests against the phenomenon of ‘rubber cheese’, presumably the produce that comes ready-sliced and packed in plastic boxes. The company of these Stilton-addicted epicureans always makes me uncomfortable because, you see, I love rubber cheese. I love it, Lidl’s Schmelzkase being a particular favourite. I just love the sensation of the creamy, tangy, tasty stuff, melting on toast slice and tongue. And now that my low tastes have come out of the larder, be warned, there follows a confessional dossier of other excruciating addictions.
From my earliest days I have craved tomato ketchup, have thrilled to the sight of globs of the red stuff glistening atop golden chips and crispy fish. A youthful craving for Tuc biscuits, those salty, fatty slivers of sawdust and e-numbers left me with skin akin to Freddy Kruger. But this pales in comparison to my love of Pot Noodles, sauces dried in bags and, indeed, absolutely anything that required reconstituting. I was fascinated, and still am, by the notion that food could have the moisture squeezed out of it, be kept in suspended animation in foil packets and then be brought back to life when the consumer requires. Even the re-hydration process is alluring; the sudden rush of hot water, the gentle fizzing and popping as wizened husks of vegetable matter spring into being as green pea, orange carrot and red pepper – bless the scientists!
Any epicurean waxing lyrical about the ‘natural’ and the ‘organic’ can go bury himself in a pile of manure. And my (lack of) tastes do not stop at savoury, oh no. I love the sweet, too, every Frankenstein’s monster of tooth-rotting confection that the taste-chemists can come up with, please send gift-wrapped to me…