stuff 'n other stuff

As I’ve said elsewhere, I’ve been spending a little time with the English Civil Wars to teach myself some social network analysis. While I was researching something else entirely I came across such an example of the term Ranter being used in a sorry tale of sex and vicarages in the late 1640’s.

Towards the end of the civil wars, an itinerant preacher called Thomas Webb (or Webbe) appeared in Langley Burrell in the depths of rural England. Langley Burrell was without a priest, as the previous incumbent had been purged by Parliament.

Webb took to the community and the community took to him such that they invited him to become their pastor. What the community did not know was that Webb had previously been on trial for heresy and for advancing the idea that there should be no ecclesiatical or governmental authority between a person and their god. How radical he was we don’t know. During the civil wars there was an outbreak of radical sects all usually lumped together as Ranters. They encompassed everything from groups who believed people should worship naked to people who simply believed they should be free to form their own church – not unlike the house church movement today.

Shortly after Thomas Webb became the pastor of Langley Burrell, his wife died. Thomas then went on to have an affair with Mary White, the wife of Henry White, the lord of the manor in whose gift the living of the parish was. We don’t know what the relative ages of all three were as the parish records have disappeared, but we do know that Webb was in his mid twenties when all this happened.

So far so normal. Probably this was not the first time nor the last time such a thing had happened, especially in an age where men of property quite often had wives significantly younger than themselves. Certainly none of the sources we have suggest that Henry White attempted to remove Thomas Webb – something he could have done quite easily by bringing charges of immoral behaviour against him. In fact he seems to have acquieseced in the matter allowing Webb to move into his house.

Thomas also married again, this time to a local girl, and when his wife reproached him for his affair with Mary White he encouraged other men of the parish to seduce his wife – essentially putting her in a position where she could not bring a charge of adultery (a capital charge at the time) without having to admit her own misdemeanours.

Thomas is also said to have engaged in a homosexual affair with one John Organ, who is described as a man-wife, suggesting perhaps that the relationship was more than just casual. Thomas Webb later encouraged John Organ to go off and become an itinerant preacher – which is not as strange as it seems in the context of the time – it was one of the few vaguely respectable options open in the late 1640’s to people of unconventional views and no ready skills.

The story of Thomas Webb and Mary White would ordinarilly have simply remained a sorry tale of sexual misbehaviour in a small isolated community.

We only know of the story because Webb was brought court again for his radical views but never prosecuted – instead his own parishoners appear to have had enough of him and drove him out, only for him to reappear four or five years later in London to be charged with adultery, and the court case made reference to his time at Langley Burrell and his radical views.

Edward Stokes, one of the investigating magistrates wrote a polemic denouncing Webb and his radical views. By this time in the early 1650’s the radical phase of the Civil Wars was over and there was a determined effort by the new Puritan government to establish a ‘new normal’ which included the purging of more radical groups.

But there is another question – did the Ranters exist as a defined sect, or were they a made up catch all used to blacken people of unconventional views or inclinations.

One problem is that one of our major sources about the Ranters was a polemical work by Thomas Edwards, written in part to decry some of the extreme activities of pro-Leveller factions in the Army. It is truly a work tabloid sensationalism and like tabloid journalism there may be a germ of truth in the story, but much is either made up or exaggerated

Certainly Thomas Webbe appears to have had some connection with Abiezer Coppe, another known extreme preacher who also advocated free love or at least open and equal relationships between men and women.

Undoubtedly Webbe was a charismatic individual who exploited his role for his own gratification. He may, like Coppe, have had radical ideas about how society works, he may have been more than a little mad. He may well also have held pro-Leveller beliefs.

Coppe and Webbe were real people. They almost certainly had shockingly radical beliefs for their time. However we cannot say if they ware part of a wider movement or simply individuals who were used to blacken by implication other less colourful radicals

I’ve written before about fox sighting in the Canberra suburbs, but this morning’s was a beauty, near Inkster Street a young dog fox legging it across Sulwood Drive and off into the Mount Taylor nature reserve.

The interesting thing is that the fox was coming from an area of suburban housing suggesting that it had been foraging in the suburbs, either bin diving, looking for people with chooks in their back yard, or indeed cat and dog food left out.

It fits very well with my hypothesis that the reserves between the suburbs are providing a refuge for not only kangaroos but also foxes, and unlike foxes out in the country these foxes have become quite urbanised, in the same was you see in the UK and Ireland …

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Ella Maillart, about whom I’ve written in the past was one the giants of pre world war two travel, travelling across Xianjaing with Peter Fleming and driving with Annemarie Schwarzenbach from Switzerland to Afghanistan on the eve of world war two.

Schwarzenbach captured the journey in her lyrical impressionistic book ’All the Ways are Open’, Maillart in her rather more factual ‘Cruel Way’.

Maillart’s book has been out of print for a number of years, although still findable through AbeBooks, and Schwarzenbach’s account was republished in 2011.

However Maillart’s book has been recently republished by the University of Chicago press both as a paperback and as an e-book – and for the interested Inside Story, the Australian political and literary weekly has a long review of the new edition …

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I’ve previously written about Aboriginal contacts with what is now Indonesia and the Kilwa coins problem as well as about African contacts with Sri Lanka – the two are related – essentially we can show that there were East African trading links with Sri Lanka well before the Kilwa state in East Africa, and this could provide a path for the Kilwa coins to reach Indonesia by way of trade.

Over the weekend I happened across an article from the Jakarta Post on how Chinese coins had been used in the Indonesian archipeleago for several hundred years in the abasence of any local currency.

It seems more than possible that any Kilwa coins that ended up in Java or whereever could just have joined the pool of circulating coins as small change, just as VoC duits joined the pool of currency.

This isn’t quite as wild an idea as it sounds. The Australian 5, 10 and 20c coins are still the same size and weight as their British antecedents, the sixpence, shilling and florin. Before New Zealand downsized their coinage, it wasn’t at all uncommon to get NZ coins in your change along with the occasional pre-downsizing British or Irish 5p or 10p coin, and even more rarely coins from Fiji or Malaysia which were the same size and weight. Everyone was happy to accept the coins despite their different origins and face values, especially given the coins low purchasing power.

Since NZ downsized their coinage non Australian coins have all but disappeared out of the circulating pool of currency, and we no longer get exotica in our small change.

The other thing about coins is that they are long lived. When I was a child before the currency went decimal, it wasn’t that unusual to get worn and battered Queen Victoria pennies and half pennies in your change – in a society where coins were not used in daily transactions one could imagine them staying in circulation for a couple of hundred years.

Putting this all together one could build a scenario where plausibly Kilwa coins could have entered the pool of circulating currency in Java, and ended up mixing with considerably newere VoC duits. The puzzle is of course why no Chinese coins in the mix if they come from a single shipwreck …

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Came across this Bradford University undergraduate thesis that looked at the archaeological evidence for cats being present on Viking settlement sites in the North Atlantic settlement area centred around Orkney and Shetland.

Unfortunately, the thesis doesn’t add much to my earlier handwaving, except to conclude that cats were present at some of the sites.

As the settlers were farming, and consequently growing barley and oats, this isn’t surprising as I’m sure that the crops would have attracted rodents. Unfortunately there’s no evidence as to the cats being deliberate imports, local ferals who were already there, or wildcats that knew a good thing when they saw it.

The trouble with Orkney is that it already quite clearly had a reasonable Pictish population who may well have acquired domestic cats from further south. Examinations of sites in the Faeroes and Iceland might provide better evidence, as while there is some evidence that Irish monks got to both places before the Vikings they did not establish any substantial settlements.

Mind you, the monks did like their cats, so it wouldn’t be totally unambiguous.

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Way back in April I wrote about calorie restriction, and the Michael Mosely feast and fast diet.

Well I didn’t do it, well not the way suggested. But I got a result – losing 6kg in six months. At 77kg I’m still a little higher than my target weight which is probably around 75kg for a man of my age and build.

This isn’t a problem, I’m still losing weight albeit at a slower rate than before.

How did I do it – simple really

• we’re social beings. It’s no use doing this unless your life partner is going to support you as the changes will affect both of you, even if you know they secretly buy orange mousse desserts and hide them in the overflow fridge in the garage
• exercise moderately three times a week. We have one of these crosstrainer exericsers we orignally bought for building strength for cross country skiiing and I do twenty minutes on that plus 20 pushups and 20 trunk curls, to the vast amusement of the cat
• drink less alcohol. I’m not being puritancal but we now have between three and four alcohol free days a week and some nights just have a single glass of wine. However if we want to have a weekend evening watching tv, having a barbecue, or whatever with the accompaniment of a decent bottle of red we have no inhibitions
• Eat a sensible breakfast. Meusli, with additional nuts, yoghurt, dried fruit and a half banana, along with orange juice and coffee. No toast, jam, vegemite. At the weekends it can be toast jam and fruit.
• Eat a sensible lunch. A single fairly parsimonious sandwich, some miso soup to give you the feeling you’ve perhaps had more that you’ve really had, an apple and some other fruit. Again weekends can be a bit more generous.
• Eat vegetarian for dinner a couple of nights a week. Unless you really cram it in, the energy density of a vegetarian meal is going to be less
• Have an asian soup like a pho for dinner one night a week
• No dessert or in between meal nibbling, and definitely no soft drinks
• Don’t be fanatical – accept the fact that sometimes life works against you, but make sure you go back to your regime after that occasional blowout
• record your progress on a spreadsheet. You’ll be amazed how much reinforcement that downward curve gives you.

And it works. It might not work for everyone but it worked for me, and it doesn’t need an expensive diet book or a regime that really buggers up normal life …

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I’ve been quiet recently. Not quite true, there’s posts and updates elsewhere, but it’s true to say that I’ve not been writing a lot. In part it’s because we’re just recovering from two long weekends in a row and a sustained spate of spring gardening.

First of all we had Family and Community day, unofficially known as Fish and Chip day, and then Labour day last Monday. By chance they fell on subsequent weekends this year so I took the opportunity to take some days off in between to get on with the garden, which was rapidly turning into a verdant jungle

Unlike last year, when the start of spring was unseasonably cold, in fact it snowed on what was officially the last day of winter, this year it has been warmer and wetter than usual with the result that the weeds have taken off without the decency to wait until I was ready to deal with them

However, I got a load of bark delivered and we’ve managed to get control of around half the weeds and put down bark as a weed suppression mulch and the front is looking half decent, even though bits of the back are still a jungle.

I totally failed to get any seed potatoes – the unexpectedly warm  early start caught me out, and I’m only now putting in our spring an summer veg and starting off seeds, but hopefully if it stays warm and wet things will catch up. (I’ve also managed to find some seed potatoes for sale online from Tasmania so hopefully they’ll be fine).

The apricot and fig trees are already setting fruit which probably means we’ll have our annual invasion by possums – a native animal the size of a cat that while vegetarian is aggressive and has a reputation for decimate fruit trees.

They also go for parsley – last year J had some parsley in pots and we came out one morning to find it all neatly clipped off at about 5mm by possums.

The cat is scared of possums – you always know when they’re about as he comes in and cuddles up to you for protection – I think he’s had a couple of confrontations and come off worst but no obvious injuries …

Following on from my post on Vikings and cats I remembered a post of mine from 2008 about a genetic analysis of mice in the UK which showed that mice from Scotland Ireland and Wales have a more Scandanavian genome than those in the UK.

The hypothesis is that that in these areas it not until Viking times that grain farming was large scale enough to support a large mouse population that crowded out any earlier populations of mice.

The hypothesis is of course that the mice came with Viking settlers, who were perhaps more expert at farming grain in wet marginal climates than the more pastorally focused Pictish, Irish and Welsh populations.

If that was the case we would expect to see cats not far behind, and if the Viking settlers were expert grain farmers there’s a reasonable expectation that they would have brought cats with them – not as pets but as animal that were just around to do useful things.

Getting cats to travel in a knorr or a longboat might have been interesting though.

It would be possible to test this by doing a genetic analysis of the cat populations of Iceland and the Faeroes, where the Vikings were the first settlers to farm on any large scale …

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About three weeks ago, my watch strap broke. It was a fairly expensive watch, and I caught it in time so there was no need for any wailing.

The only problem is that being a moderately upmarket watch I probably should take it to a proper watch shop to get the pins put back in the strap. And of course, I havn’t had the time

That was problem one. Problem two was that my other decent watch had run out of battery. I could have worn the cheap fluoro yellow plastic watch I bought for biking, but that was distinctly lacking in style.

So I bought myself a cheap reasonable looking watch on ebay for seven bucks – after all watches all much the same today – a little bit of digital circuitry and a case, and you can find the same chips in a 100 dollar watch that you do in a $10 watch.

All you are paying for is style and brand name, not, as old mechanical watch days increased accuracy or added features.

The only problem about buying a watch from ebay is it took three weeks to arrive from Hong Kong. During that time I was without a watch.

Now everyone will say, you have your phone, your computer(s) and your car – all tell you the time more accurately than a thing on your wrist. Why, realistically do you need a watch?

And that’s true. It’s also true that wearing a wristwatch is habit. The first week I found myself feeling lopsided and looking at my wrist. After then I kind of broke the habit.

What broke me was the convenience. I thought my ebay watch would end up just sitting there, but no – it’s simply more convenient to have a watch on your wrist – saves diving in a pocket or a bag to find your phone, especially in a crowded bus.

So I guess I now understand why Samsung and Apple are racing to bring wristwatch style devices to market – looking at a thing on your wrist is simply simpler …

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After last week’s arty excursion to Goulburn, we thought we’d go to the Turner exhibition at the NGA.

It’s billed as the ‘making of a master’ and it’s exactly that – a collection of paintings that trace the development of his style from a fairly boring conventional painter of landscapes into a dramatic proto impressionist creating sea and skyscapes from wild twists and swirls of colour.

Don’t expect any big ticket pictures – the budget obviously didn’t run to that, but the collection of lesser known paintings and excerpts from his sketch books do build the story nicely and it’s definitely interesting to see his sketchbooks and cartoons (and the experiments that reappeared in other better known paintings).

NGA winter and summer exhibitions are always a bit of a scrum. We went at 3pm on a Saturday afternoon and it wasn’t too bad – although there was the usual mix of people with frightening haircuts and the inevitable coterie of ignorant men dragged along by their fat wives to ‘something cultural’.

That said, we did see everything we wanted to without too much backtracking and wiggling, and as it was towards the end of the exhibition’s run it was not ridiculously overcrowded.

My major annoyance was having to sign up with TicketTek to book tickets and pay their excessive booking fee, knowing full well we’ll probably get spammed into the bargain. Other than that the mechanics of the visit passed off without incident.

We’re NGA members, so after the exhibition we retreated to the members lounge for a cup of tea and a cake, and I was pleased to discover that tey now provide wifi for members – something to remember if I’m ever in search of a bolthole to write up some notes …

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