Dawkins to edit New Statesman

To take charge of the special Christmas issue of a great British weekly, New Statseman, what better idea than to call upon the world's most celebrated atheistic scientist, Richard Dawkins. As a talented writer with a lot of distinguished friends, the former Oxford professor is certainly an ideal man for such a task. I'm convinced that he'll instill in the minds of readers a totally rejuvenated spirit of Christmas, which will surely be no worse than the old one, and probably a lot better.

This special issue, which will be coming out next week, is sure to become a collector's item. I've ordered a single issue directly from the New Statseman website [access]. It's preferable to wait until next week before doing so, otherwise the subscription department is likely to send you this week's issue.

POST SCRIPTUM:  The new version of the Blogger editor seems to be half-broken. It has been awfully clunky for weeks, and I have a hard job in posting things correctly. It's weird to discover that my present Macintosh setup, with all the latest bells and whistles installed, is far less user-friendly than it was six months ago, not only as far as my blog is concerned, but even for such an everyday operation as scrolling manually through a file. Bizarre...

Light for Lotus

This evening, a simple sad candle is burning alongside my fireplace. And its pale light fills my mind with precious memories... of a dear dog.

I'm thinking of the splendid chocolate-colored Brach hound Lotus, who left us today. She was my friend, who manifested her affection whenever I visited Tineke and Serge. I shared constantly with Lotus the sweet tragedy of her existence in the midst of a paradise with all the magnificent scents of Choranche flowers and the aroma of wild Vercors beasts. Many times, Lotus would have loved to escape from her home domain in order to hunt all kinds of magic phantoms on the archaic slopes of the Bourne, where mammoths once roamed. Unfortunately, at a practical level, this was unthinkable. If Lotus had been allowed to roam around in total liberty in the Cirque de Choranche, it's almost certain that Tineke and Serge would have never seen her again, because she had the genes of a hunting hound, and there were no limits to where these genes might have led Lotus. So, a modus vivendi had to be established pragmatically. Lotus was more-or-less free to follow her nose around the splendid domain, with its countless specimens of vegetation. But, to keep her at home, limits had to be imposed gently upon Lotus, by means of walls or a light leash. The dog found this quite acceptable. She was an overjoyed inmate of Rochemuse, always resplendent, friendly and visibly happy. Lotus realized that she was in wonderful hands. Competent and loving hands. The hands of an artist, Tineke. Those of a master craftsman, Serge.

As of today, Lotus is liberated! In pursuit of the olfactive messages received by her soft sensitive snout, she can bound towards the stars...

Darwin documentary

Yesterday evening on TV, like millions of viewers, I could have watched the election of Miss France. Instead, I was attracted by an Australian-produced documentary fiction on the Arte channel: Darwin's Lost Paradise, written and directed by Hannes Schuler and Katharina von Flotow for Chapman Pictures of Petersham (Sydney).

This movie, which came out in 2009, describes the four-year voyage of Charles Darwin on the small 240-ton brig Beagle, under the command of Robert FitzRoy. Technically and pedagogically, the movie is perfect, and I agree entirely with this review in Télérama:

The French journalist Emmanuelle Skyvington criticizes the dramatic style of this otherwise splendid production: "The fictional parts, cruelly lacking in force, are limited to illustrations of what was seen by Darwin (mute from the beginning to the end of the movie) and the specimens he encountered." I would go further than my daughter and claim that most 19th-century fictional documentaries produced by Germany, Britain, the USA and Australia are inevitably technically audacious but absolutely lousy from the point of view of casting, acting and dramatic content. That's to say, in a nutshell, they're rarely realistic. For some strange reason that I've never understood, only the French seem to excel in producing extraordinary 19th-century movie stuff, with actors that behave like real human beings. Recently, for example, I've seen some marvelous presentations of short stories by Guy de Maupassant, often in rural settings.

In the special case of the Darwin movie, the problem is that the director and writer are so respectful of their hero, Darwin, that they're simply afraid to transform him into a real person. So, he remains perpetually insipid, like the motionless subject of an oil portrait. The unfortunate fellow doesn't even have the right to make facial expressions, or express himself in any visible way whatsoever. So, he's utterly devoid of emotions. We're told that he was extremely seasick at the beginning of the voyage, but it would have been unthinkable for the German creative team to show our hero with a green face (not that I particularly wanted to see such an image) feeding the fishes over the side of the Beagle. All Darwin's allowed to do, from one end of the movie to the other, is to admire nature, collect specimens, stroll around a little, attend church services aboard the ship, and write. I was reminded of the old-fashioned images of Catholic saints, who are expected to appear as perfect creatures in an artificial world. Ah, my poor Saint Darwin!

Finally, the English title of this movie annoys me greatly. Darwin never lost any kind of paradise. On the contrary, he revealed to us the magic mysteries and beauties of science. And his ingenious explanations concerning the marvels of the living world made it clear to us that we inhabit a glorious world where there are no gods.

Ancestors are daggy

I learned that excellent adjective quite recently, from a young cousin in Australia. Something is said to be daggy when it exhibits an indigestible mixture of several negative or frankly nasty features. It's generally scruffy, dirty, broken, something that would best be discarded as rubbish. Although I like the fresh Down Under twang of this word (like bogan, an equally pejorative epithet), it goes without saying that the title of this blog post is not intended to cast aspersions of any kind upon the fine folk who were my forebears. No, I've decided to invent (facetiously) a totally new meaning of the adjective "daggy"...

Let me explain. The only serious way of understanding the phenomenon of ancestors is to represent them by means of illustrations of the kind that mathematicians refer to as DAGs: directed acyclic graphs. Unless you do this, you're liable to remain forever confused by the sheer quantitative proportions of the vast hordes of procreators who have been responsible, ever since life has existed on the planet Earth, for copulating, conscientiously and copiously, in ways that have led to your present existence.

Genealogists have often used tree diagrams to represent ancestors, and half the community feel that the roots should be down at the bottom and the leaves at the top, whereas the other half find that it would be preferable if such diagrams could reveal their content in a chronological top-to-bottom direction. Obviously, the best way of ending this dispute is to lay your family-history charts out in a horizontal fashion, because nobody would ever dream of putting old folk to the right and living individuals to the left.

In fact, the ancestral scene has always been a jungle, rather than a tidy forest. And the only aspect of the situation of which we can be relatively certain is that there are far more human beings on the planet today than when all the diligent copulating got off to a start, long ago.

Some folk have the pleasure of emerging from ancestral contexts in which so much irregular screwing of all kinds was taking place constantly that it can become quite a difficult task to distinguish between the various roots and leaves, and to determine where certain rooting leaves off, while elsewhere certain leaves take root… if you see what I mean. [If I weren't sure that you've heard it already, I would throw in here the joke about the rare Tasmanian marsupial that eats, roots, shoots and leaves.] I warned you that the situation is daggy.

Here's a typical example of a graph of the directed acyclic kind:

Clearly, it's a graph, since the diagram is composed of labeled vertices (nodes) linked by lines. It's a directed graph because all the lines carry arrow heads to indicate their respective directions. And it's acyclic, above all, in the sense that, no matter where you start, you'll never find yourself going around in circles. To put it bluntly, there's no way in the world that a young lady might give birth to a child who turns out to be the girl's father. Not even in the Holy Bible, where supernatural birth is a common phenomenon, would you find such a far-fetched tale as that (unless it has escaped me). Now, this kind of DAG provides an elegant way of indicating how humans might procreate. Admittedly, at times, the relationships are not particularly Christian. But who cares?

— Fred and Kate gave birth to a son, John.

— Kate appealed to a different father, Ken, to produce a daughter, Alice.

— These naughty kids, John and Alice, promptly got together to give birth to Bill… who probably ran into various terrible health problems later on.

— Meanwhile, Alice was seduced by John's dad, Fred, who bore her a son, Tom.

— Alice, a spirited young woman, also had a daughter, Mary, whose father is unknown.

As I said, the overall situation is mathematically "daggy" in the sense that no unthinkable acts have ever taken place. There are no vicious circles. No closed loops. No offspring has ever ended up becoming the genitor of his or her own father or mother. So, the overall situation is perfectly human, all too human.

Many observers who see how genealogical researchers behave are inclined to cry out in disbelief that their activities are crazy. For example, I'm proud of the fact that I can document—more or less clearly and plausibly—the 29 generations that take me back to William the Conqueror. [My "pride", of course, is perfectly irrational and superficial, on a par with saying that I'm proud to be Australian, say, simply because my ancestors happened to be led to that land, for various random reasons.] Certain observers are shocked by my evocation of the Conqueror, and they hit out with bad arithmetic: "William, your alleged royal ancestor is merely one of N individuals who played a role in your procreation, and the value of N is approximately 2 to the power 29, that's to say 536 870 912." The problem, here, is that this number no doubt exceeds the total number of inhabitants who were looking around for a bit of procreative Franco-British rock 'n' roll back at the time of the Conqueror. So, there's something basically wrong with the use of binary trees when calculating the volume of your ancestors. What's wrong, as I've been saying, is that you have to use DAGs, not binary trees, to represent your ancestral jungle.

Other observers throw up their hands in despair and say: "It's impossible to explain the situation. Back at that time, clearly, everybody was related to everybody else." In France, for example, people like to claim that every living French citizen is a descendant of Charlemagne… which is ridiculous. For all we know (and we shall never know such things, of course), my global circle of forebears at the time of the Conqueror may have been limited to little more than a handful of rural villages in Normandy. I hasten to add that, in making such a suggestion, I'm forgetting, of course, that ancestors in all kinds of remote places no doubt got into the act of procreating me, further down the line. There were lots of Irish copulators, for example, and I have no reason to believe that they were necessarily hanging around in Normandy at the time of the Conqueror. But, if we were to know the numbers, the entire team, maybe scattered throughout several regions of the planet, might have been relatively modest. In any case, it's absurd to imagine that a host of medieval folk—more than the current population of the USA—were copulating furiously, day and night, in a sense that would ultimately lead to my peephole opening on a September day in 1940. My crowd of ancestors must not be likened to the armies of Joshua at Jericho, or the host of angels on Judgment Day.

Let me finish with an anecdote. I was pleased, a few weeks ago, to have made contact with a prominent American scientist named Skevington, and I immediately tried to persuade him to obtain his Y-chromosome data, to see whether we might be related. I was amused by his immediate reaction. He evoked the notorious but very real phenomenon of so-called non-paternity events: that's to say, cases where a child's genuine father is not the guy whose name appears in the records. Often, we hear amazing figures concerning the proportion of male babies who grow up (and maybe spend their lives) without ever becoming aware of the true identity of their biological father. Now, while it's probably high, the figure is not as high as it's often made out to be. For example, it's silly to suggest that 10% of English-speaking males have a mistaken idea of the identity of their fathers.

Click the banner to access a scientific article on this question entitled Founders, Drift and Infidelity: The Relationship between Y Chromosome Diversity and Patrilineal Surnames by Turi King and Mark Jobling.

At times, it helps if you're blonde

It goes without saying that, for young American women, there's no stigma attached to being blonde. Here's a delightful specimen, whom I believe I've presented already, several years ago:

The color of a woman's hair is of no significance whatsoever. But, in certain cases, it helps...

Paris tea business

These people certainly know how to market tea through the Internet.

Along with the four packets I ordered, they've sent me three samples of related products. The post-free delivery was rapid, and they included two attractive catalogues.

They have an excellent website. I notice that their orders are processed in a dull warehouse in a small street in the neighborhood where my daughter lives.

As for their headquarters, it's a typical wholesale boutique in the Marais neighborhood, not far from the place where I lived for some twenty years. So, the business is almost certainly run by a well-established Franco-Chinese family. In any case, they've got their act together perfectly.

FitzWolf

In a blog post of 9 August 2010 entitled Sophia's future companion at Gamone [display], I explained that the elegant name Fitzroy, which I would give to my young Border Collie a year ago, was in fact the surname of one of my ancient ancestors: a bastard son of King John.

The term Fitz means "son of", and roy is Old French for "king". The bastard Fitz who was my ancestor—often specified as Richard Fitzjohn Chilham—is mentioned briefly in this delightful book:

Well, I often get around to imagining my dog as a descendant, not of a king, but of a wolf. So, I often call him either FitzLoup (in French) or simply FitzWolf. These reveries started recently in my imagination when I thought about an amazing story told by Richard Dawkins in The Ancestor's Tale [pages 29-31] and then repeated in The Greatest Show on Earth [pages 73-76].

It's the story of an experiment carried out by the Soviet scientist Dmitri Belyaev [1917-1985] using a beautiful domestic animal, the Russian Silver Fox, bred for the fur trade.

[First parenthetical remark. What a horrible idea: killing such a glorious animal just to be able to transform its skin and fur into a coat.]

[Second parenthetical remark. The geneticist Belyaev was a man whom we might admire a priori, since he was sacked because he disagreed with the quackery of the Stalinist agronomist Trofim Lysenko.]

Belyaev's experiment was aimed at studying the concept of tameness in successive generations of his foxes. The basic experimental procedure consisted of offering food to fox cubs and trying to fondle them. According to their reactions, the young animals were classed in three categories:

(1) The wildest cubs would either flee or act aggressively, maybe by biting the experimenter's hand.

(2) Certain cubs would accept the food and the experimenter's caresses, but grudgingly, as it were, with no apparent enthusiasm.

(3) The tamest category of cubs would, not only accept the food, but exhibit a positive reaction to the experimenter's caresses, by wagging their tails and crouching down in front of him.

Only fox cubs in this third category would be used for breeding the next generation. And so on…

Not surprisingly, this breeding strategy produced cubs that were tamer and tamer. But the experiments resulted in consequences—we might say side effects—of a totally unexpected kind. The new generations of tame foxes started to look somewhat different to their relatively wilder genetic cousins. In a nutshell, the tame foxes started to look like Border Collies! Truly, it was magic… but simply genetic magic! While the silver foxes were being bred uniquely for tameness, their genes "threw in for free"—as it were—a whole host of genetically-connected features that were apparently linked rigorously with tameness.

Nature speaks to us with her eons of accumulated wisdom: If you want a tame fox, then what we have to offer you is a dog-like fox! Nature might have added: Take it or leave it! Me, I say enthusiastically that I'll take it, because my marvelous tame wolf is Fitzroy… whose fur warms me for a delightful instant when he jumps up onto my knees in front of the fireplace.

Often, I'm overwhelmed when I observe at close range the intense human-like gaze of Fitzroy, which has infinitely more profundity and meaning than the dumb expression of less-introspective animals.

Fitzroy is surely just a few magic chemicals away from being capable of discussing Dawkins with me… but that minor metamorphosis is likely to necessitate a few million years, to say the least, with all the risks of the long road. Frankly, Fitzroy and I tend to agree (not to mention the tacit approval of Sophia) that, for the moment, it's best we stay put.

The Leopard

Il Gattopardo by Giuseppe di Lampedusa (translated into English as The Leopard) is one of the finest novels I've ever read. And the film by Luchino Visconti (which I watched for the Nth time on television the other evening) is a masterpiece that has not aged one iota since it was made in 1963. Maybe I'm basically a sentimental and romantically-inclined old fellow. Be that as it may, the scene where Burt Lancaster waltzes with Claudia Cardinale moves me today to the same extent as when I first saw this movie, just after my arrival in France.

[Click the video to watch it in YouTube, and increase the sound.]

Gamone cake

I started making this cake long ago at Gamone, and I'm still at it, particularly when the weather starts to cool down and I like to be reminded of summer fruit such as apples and figs.

The figs have emerged in fact from my deep freezer, while the apples come from a crate, sitting outside, that's more or less reserved for the donkeys. The cake is one of those upside-down things. That's to say, I lay out the fruit on the bottom of a cake dish and pour the cake mixture (eggs, butter, sugar and flour) on top.

Sophia's pears

Every morning, one of the first things I do is to set off up the road with the dogs for Sophia's morning "business", which always takes place ritually at the same spot, on a track running down from the road. After that, we often continue up along the road for a while, just to stretch our legs. Inevitably, the dogs discover wild pears that have fallen into the grass alongside the road. Sophia likes to bring back such a pear as a kind of trophy, and then she looks for the right spot to start eating it.

Eating, for Sophia, has always been a solemn affair… on a par with cuddles for Fitzroy, or ripping up cushions.

Talking of Fitzroy, who often forgets to eat unless I remind him, his tastes can be curious. When I clean the ashes from the fireplace, Fitzroy hangs around waiting for a chunk of charcoal, which he chews until it crumbles into dust. He's also capable of devouring damp Kleenex tissues. From my earliest days here at Gamone, I instigated the pleasant wilderness practice of peeing out in the open, under the heavens, where there's nobody around (apart from God) who might possibly be offended. I now find myself reluctant to pursue this fine old tradition, for the simple reason that Fitzroy is there in a bound, ready to lap it all up, apparently with relish. I wouldn't want to poison my dear dog.

Teapots in my life

Here's an assortment of teapots that I've had for ages:

My favorite is the glazed stoneware object on the right, created by the potter Maurice Crignon. The little metal teapot with red hearts came down to my daughter as a memento of her aunt Catherine Vincent, and Emmanuelle then gave it to me. It remains my daughter's favorite teapot whenever she visits Gamone, because she can make herself a single cup of tea for breakfast, knowing that I prefer coffee. Manufactured in what used to be known as Yugoslavia, this lovely little object is unfortunately so light and round-shaped that it has a tendency to roll over if you touch it abruptly… which is not reassuring behavior for a teapot. And the thin metal radiates heat rather than keeping it in the brew.

Here are my two high-tech cast-iron made-in-China teapots:

They incorporate the excellent idea of a built-in tea strainer, whereas my older teapots require the use of a small spherical tea-container that is not very user-friendly. The big green teapot on the left is a family-size device, whereas the lovely little beige teapot (which I've just purchased, through the Internet) is perfect for me on my own, and particularly esthetic.

If you happened to read yesterday's blog post entitled Internet shopping [display], you'll understand immediately how I've succeeded in obtaining top-quality leaves of Chinese jasmine tea.

Ghosts again

This distinguished Italian priest is named Gabriele Amorth, and for many years, he was the Vatican's chief exorcist.

He has become notorious for declaring that the Harry Potter books, in encouraging children to believe in black magic and wizardy, can lead to evil. He has also stated that yoga is a Satanic activity. Apparently it has never occurred to this silly old bugger that he too might be a practicioner of black magic and wizardy. He probably thinks of his exorcist activities as a branch of modern science.

The website of Richard Dawkins proposes a BBC documentary on paranormal phenomena (ghosts, telepathy, clairvoyance and apparitions). It's quite an old show, since it was aired for the first time on British TV in 1987. But ghosts don't age, and the Virgin Mary remains just as strikingly beautiful today, in her frequent apparitions, as when she first appeared on the world scene two millennia ago.

The academic psychologist Nicholas Humphrey deals with four major happenings of a paranormal nature:

— On a wet Thursday evening, on 21 August 1879, a dozen or so lucky parishioners in the Irish village of Knock were amazed to receive the unexpected visit of a distinguished delegation of heavenly creatures: the Holy Mother of Christ (arrayed in white robes, like any self-respecting virgin, with a golden crown on her pretty head), Joseph (the carpenter father of Jesus) and John (the scruffy hermit who survived in the wilderness on a diet of locusts and honey, while baptizing visitors at an industrial cadence). In fact, for this exceptional visit to an Irish village, John the Baptist had tidied himself up, and attired himself in the white robes of a bishop. To honor their guests, the parishioners stood in the pouring rain for two hours, and got thoroughly soaked. As for the heavenly visitors, who had neither raincoats nor umbrellas, they didn't get wet at all.

— In 1977 and 1978, in a council house in the dull northern London suburb of Enfield, a single mother and her four children experienced terrifying poltergeist activity. Furniture moved spontaneously, and a girl levitated above her bed.

— In 1980, Rendlesham Forest in Suffolk was the scene of sightings of unexplained lights and the alleged landing of a craft or multiple craft of unknown origin. It was no doubt the most spectacular and celebrated UFO event in Britain.

— Finally, in 1985, the moving statue of the Virgin Mary at Ballinspittle in Co Cork (Ireland) drew throngs of pilgrims.

You'll need an hour and nineteen minutes to watch this video [access], which is quite amusing and instructive at times.

POST SCRIPTUM: And what do young people think about the declarations of the mad exorcist in Rome? Here's Harry himself on religion:

Internet shopping

Towards the end of my blog post of 12 June 2011 entitled Basic beverages [display], I mentioned my discovery of a shop in Valence named Pivard that sells many varieties of high-quality coffee grains, roasted in their big factory on the southern outskirts of the city. Since then, I've often found myself driving all the way to Valence and back simply to purchase fresh coffee. Now, when I take into account the time it takes for such a trip, and its cost in terms of gasoline, I realize that this excursion to Valence is somewhat absurd. So, I decided to look into the possibility of purchasing high-quality coffee grains through the Internet. I soon discovered that this solution was perfectly feasible, and that the prices were similar to what I had been paying in the shop at Valence. Besides, since proximity (within France) was no longer an issue, I could choose the vendor who seemed to offer the most interesting range of products. I soon discovered that, in Strasbourg (Alsace), an ancient establishment named Reck proposes three varieties of Ethiopian Arabica for which I've acquired a taste: Yirgacheffe, Sidamo and Harrar.

Sure, it would be nicer if I were to drop in personally and buy my coffee grains at the old Reck shop in the Rue de la Mésange, five minutes away from the great cathedral of Strasbourg. But being able to purchase such products through the Internet is indeed a convenient luxury.

I've always been fascinated by the atmosphere and aromas of ancient shops that sell tea and coffee. Thanks to my KitchenAid burr grinder, I can reproduce at least the aroma of freshly-ground coffee in my kitchen at Gamone. And the true pleasure, of course, is in the drinking.

Death of the soprano Montserrat Figueras

I shall never forget a balmy August 1986 evening in Venice, when Christine and I took the vaporetto across the Giudecca Canal for a concert of Baroque music in the Church of San Giorgio Maggiore.

The principal performers were the viola da gamba maestro Jordi Savall and his soprano wife Montserrat Figueras.

At that hour of day, the hordes of tourists had abandoned the islands of the Lagoon, and the concert audience was quite small. I had the impression that it was almost a private recital. Thanks to a rare amalgam of excellence—music,  artists and place—that concert in Venice was magic.

At the end of the evening, on the vaporetto back to the Piazza San Marco, we found ourselves standing alongside an unexpected pair of passengers, returning to their hotel: Savall and Figueras.

Donkey fur, donkey thoughts

The state of the donkeys' fur is like a natural barometer indicating that winter is not far away.

In the following photo, Moshé's ears are pointing back down towards Fitzroy, sensing the dog's movements, and the donkey seems to be saying to himself: "If that bloody dog tries to bite my hind legs one more time, I'll screw him."

Maybe Fitzroy sensed that Moshé might even be getting ready to transform his thoughts into action.

In any case, the dog reckoned it was no longer a good idea to hang around in the vicinity of the donkey.

Frequent view of Fitzroy

Several times a day, this is the view I have of Fitzroy:

That's to say, he's settled on the floor beneath a corner of my desk, and staring up at me while I work at my computer. From time to time, he gets tired of holding his head up, and he dozes for a quarter of an hour. When he's really bored, and wants to get out of the house, Fitzroy has developed an excellent technique aimed at letting me know that it's time to interrupt my use of the computer. As soon as I reach towards my mouse, Fitzroy simply raises his snout ever so slightly and bumps my wrist aside. When this happens, it becomes impossible to carry on using the computer, so I have to get up and bundle my dog down the stairs and out through the kitchen door.

Fitzroy has an even more eloquent way of letting me know that a break is necessary. He simply scrambles up onto my knees and places his head between me and the Macintosh. Clearly, there are limits to Fitzroy's patience with computing.

Celebrating November 22

Christine and I were legally divorced on 22 November 1977. Subsequently, the numbers representing that date, 221177, stuck in my mind to such an extent that I used them as a locking code on an elegant leather case that I purchased out in Bangkok, in 1982, when my children and I were visiting my aunt and uncle, Nancy and Peter.

 

[Click to enlarge slightly, then ESCAPE to return to blog.]

I've never really used this case in an everyday fashion, because it's a little too big for a briefcase, and far too small for a suitcase. In other words, it's one of those useless objects that gather dust.

Incidentally, let me point out (in case some of my readers might have overlooked the significance of November 22) that this is the feast day of Saint Cecilia, a 2nd-century martyr in Rome who is considered as the patroness of musicians. In Roman Catholic iconography, she is often depicted with a musical instrument in her hands.

Now, if you happen to have a friend named Cecilia (Cécile in French), I invite you to express your wishes for a joyful feast day by sending her the following delightful image of a saintly maiden.

Notice that two fingers of her right hand are outstretched, at the same time as a single finger of her left hand. This detail is important, since it refers to an observation concerning her incorruptible body, discovered long after her death. Her fingers were positioned in that way. Cecilia's followers said that clearly, by this posthumous gesture, the saint was indicating that she believed in the trinity.

WARNING: The theological sense of Saint Cecilia's finger message must not be confused with that of this saintly woman... whose body might well be somewhat more corruptible than that of Cecilia. While emerging from ritual matinal ablutions in the ocean, to cleanse her naked soul, this pious young lady uses her outstretched fingers—in much the same style as Cecilia—to affirm vigorously and unequivocally that she believes in one and only one god. Heathens refer to this body language as Fuck off!

Voices from the edge of the sea

Ever since my student days in Australia, I've been fascinated by Under Milk Wood, the celebrated play for voices by the Welsh author Dylan Thomas, who died in New York at the age of 39. The play reveals the acts and sentiments of a few dozen citizens of the mythical Welsh seaside village of Llareggub ("bugger all" spelt backwards), which is said to be based upon the real place, Laugharne, where Dylan Thomas spent the four final years of his life.

The title of this blog post—Voices from the edge of the sea—needs a short explanation. I've spent very little time in Wales (purely as a tourist), whereas I happen to be far more familiar with small seaside villages a little further to the south, in Brittany. And I like to imagine that the spirit of many Breton villages, looking out across the sea towards the British Isles, would be on a par with that of Llareggub, for the people in such places surely end up sharing the same kinds of visions and phantoms. For example, I can well imagine Milk Wood being located on the slopes above Plouézec, in the Côtes d'Armor.

Or, better still, above the tiny magical fishing port of Gwin Zégal:

Maybe my son François, who's a more experienced traveler than me, and a more expert witness, will tell me if he agrees with my amalgam of sites on the edge of that Celtic sea (once crossed in flimsy boats by ancient saints disseminating their faith) that separates Britain and Ireland from Brittany.

The Internet provides us with an excellent opportunity of appreciating this audio creation. Towards the end of the present blog post, I've included eight YouTube videos that present a BBC production of Under Milk Wood starring the Welsh actor Richard Burton. If you need the full text of the play, you can download it from this Gutenberg website. And here's a list (from Wikipedia) of the major characters in Under Milk Wood, which you can consult while listening to the play:

Captain Cat — The old blind sea captain who dreams of his deceased shipmates and lost lover Rosie Probert. He is one of the play's most important characters, as he often acts as a narrator. He observes and comments on the goings-on in the village from his window.

Rosie Probert — Captain Cat's deceased lover, who appears in his dreams.

Myfanwy Price — Sweetshop-keeper who dreams of marrying Mog Edwards.

Mr Mog Edwards — Draper, infatuated by Myfanwy Price. Their romance, however, is restricted strictly to the letters they write one another and their interactions in their dreams.

Jack Black — Cobbler, who dreams of scaring away young couples.

Evans the Death — Undertaker, who dreams of his childhood.

Mr Waldo — Rabbit catcher, barber, herbalist, cat doctor, quack, dreams of his mother and his many unhappy, failed marriages. He is a notorious alcoholic and general troublemaker, and is involved in an affair with Polly Garter.

Mrs Ogmore-Pritchard — Owner of a guesthouse, who dreams of nagging her two late husbands. She refuses to let anyone stay at the guesthouse because of her extreme penchant for neatness.

Mr Ogmore — Deceased, Linoleum salesman, late of Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard.

Mr Pritchard — Deceased, failed bookmaker, late of Mrs. Ogmore-Pritchard. He committed suicide "ironically" by ingesting disinfectant.

Gossamer Beynon — Schoolteacher (daughter of Butcher Beynon), dreams of a fox-like illicit love. During the day, she longs to be with Sinbad Sailors, but the two never interact.

Organ Morgan — Church organ player, has perturbed dreams of music and orchestras within the village. His obsession with music bothers his wife intensely.

Mrs Organ Morgan — Shop owner who dreams of silence, as she is disturbed during the day by Organ Morgan's constant organ-playing.

Mr and Mrs Floyd — Cocklers, an elderly couple, seemingly the only couple to sleep peacefully in the village. They are mentioned only during the dream sequence.

Utah Watkins — Farmer, dreams of counting sheep that resemble his wife.

Ocky Milkman — Milkman, dreams of pouring his milk into a river, 'regardless of expense'.

Mr Cherry Owen — Dreams of drinking, and yet is unable to as the tankard turns into a fish, which he drinks.

Mrs Cherry Owen — Cherry Owen's devoted wife, who cares for him and delights in rehashing his drunken antics.

Police Constable Attila Rees — The policeman, relieves himself into his helmet at night, knowing somehow he will regret this in the morning.

Mr Willy Nilly — Postman, dreams of delivering the post in his sleep, and physically knocks upon his wife as if knocking upon a door. In the morning they open the post together and read the town's news so he can relay it around the village.

Mrs Willy Nilly — Postman's wife who, because of her husband's knocking upon her, dreams of being spanked by her teacher for being late for school. She assists Willy Nilly in steaming open the mail.

Mary Ann Sailors — 83 years old, dreams of the Garden of Eden. During the day she announces her age ("I'm 83 years, 3 months and a day!") to the town.

Sinbad Sailors — Barman, dreams of Gossamer Beynon, who he cannot marry because of his grandmother's disapproval.

Mae Rose Cottage — Seventeen and never been kissed, she dreams of meeting her "Mr Right". She spends the day in the fields daydreaming, and unseen, draws lipstick circles around her nipples.

Bessie Bighead — Hired help, dreams of the one man that kissed her "because he was dared".

Butcher Beynon — The butcher, dreams of riding pigs and shooting wild giblets. During the day he enjoys teasing his wife about the questionable meat that he sells.

Mrs Butcher Beynon — Butcher Beynon's wife, dreams of her husband being persecuted for selling "owl's meat, dogs' eyes, manchop".

Reverend Eli Jenkins — Poet and preacher, who dreams of Eisteddfodau. Author of the White Book of Llareggub.

Mr Pugh — Schoolmaster, dreams of poisoning his domineering wife. He purchases a book named "Lives of the Great Poisoners" for ideas on how to kill Mrs Pugh; however, he does not do it.

Mrs Pugh — Nasty and undesirable wife of Mr Pugh.

Dai Bread — Bigamist baker who dreams of harems.

Mrs Dai Bread One — Dai Bread's first wife, traditional and plain.

Mrs Dai Bread Two — Dai Bread's second wife, a mysterious and sultry gypsy.

Polly Garter — Innocent young mother, who dreams of her many babies. During the day, she scrubs floors and sings of her lost love.

Nogood Boyo — Lazy young fisherman who dreams peevishly of 'nothing', though he later fantasizes about Mrs Dai Bread Two in a wet corset. He is known for causing shenanigans in the wash house.

Lord Cut Glass — Man of questionable sanity, who dreams of the 66 clocks that he keeps in his house.

Lily Smalls — Dreams of love and a fantasy life. She is the Beynons' maid, but longs for a more exciting life.

Gwennie — Child in Llareggub, who insists that her male schoolmates "kiss her where she says or give her a penny".

To listen to the entire play, you'll need to dispose of an hour and a quarter. It's truly worthwhile...

PART 1/8

PART 2/8

PART 3/8

PART 4/8

PART 5/8

PART 6/8

PART 7/8

PART 8/8

Family-history breakthrough

Three decades ago, when I first became interested in genealogy, one of my basic motivations was to shed light, if possible, upon my strangely-spelled surname, Skyvington. I now know that, if the "y" in our name has always been pronounced as an "i", that's simply because it was in fact an "i" up until various parish clerks in Dorset started spelling our surname with an ungainly "y" during the first half of the 19th century. In the context of my direct ancestors, the first example of this anomaly is found in a marriage certificate of 1844, and this erroneous spelling was rapidly adopted within our family. Today, an observer might feel that the presence of a "y", pronounced as if it were an "i", looks old-fashioned and quaint in a superficial way… but I insist upon the fact that it is no more than a silly error, made relatively recently, by a careless clerk or clergyman. If it were easy to do so, I would be tempted get our name restored to its original spelling… but this would be a complicated and burdensome task, with few merits other than the pleasure of signing my name authentically (?) as William Skivington.

There's surely a fly in the ointment. The correct spelling of my surname is probably neither Skyvington nor Skivington, but rather Skevington. In my genealogical research focussed upon my patriarchal surname, I've succeeded in describing precisely no more than eleven generations.

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After all the years of work I've devoted to this subject, it looks like a meager harvest. But the truth of the matter is far from disappointing, in the sense that I now have a reasonably clear vision of the likely itinerary of my patriarchal ancestors from the Saxon village of Skeffington in Leicestershire down to Dorset. We know, above all, that the various spellings of our surname—including the official (but not necessarily authentic "Skeffington"—are derived from a Scandinavianized form of the Old English Sce(a)ftinga tûn: "the tûn (village) of Sceaft’s people". Incidentally, as I've pointed out already, this means that names such as Skeffington and Shaftesbury have identical etymologies.

While we have no information whatsoever concerning the Saxon chief named Sceaft, we know that his name might be translated into English as "shaft", as of an arrow or a spear. So, he may have been a celebrated warrior. (Websites concerning the village of Skeffington persist in disseminating the erroneous notion that the name of the Saxon chief and his village had something to do with sheep.)

Besides, the above chart suggests that I might use the given name George as a hint when searching among earlier archives.

It's a fact that, in the 17th century in England, George was not yet a commonplace Christian name, since it invoked a Middle-Eastern Catholic saint whose cult had been brought back by the Crusaders. Even though George was supposedly the patron saint of England, he was probably not a homely personage who might inspire rural folk who were searching for a name for their son. In any case, it's a fact that, in the course of my research, I've come upon relatively few individuals named George Skivington (apart from my direct ancestors) or George Skevington. So, this George name could well play the role of a flashing beacon pointing to the possibility of ancestral threads.

In any case, I've just stumbled upon the kind of situation that I've been seeking in the Mormon database known as the IGI [International Genealogical Index]. Two distinct sets of Mormon records describe a marriage that took place inn the Lincolnshire village of Great Gonerby on 18 August 1648. In one set of records, the groom is designated as William Skevington; in the other, as William Skivington. In other words, the expert Mormon researchers were apparently incapable of deciding whether the man's surname should be spelt with an "e" or an "i". Now, an observer might say that this was no more than a trivial incident concerning a poorly-written letter, which turns out to be unreadable. But, in view of the normal exactitude and rigor of Mormon transcribers, I see it as much more than that. We have a case in which there appeared to be total uncertainty concerning the question of whether the individual's name was Skevington or Skivington.

In these circumstances, I am wondering whether this couple, married in Lincolnshire in 1648, might have been the future parents of my ancestor George Skivington [1670-1711] down in Dorset.

Dogs to be merited

The other day, when Louis Arquer and I were talking with Roland Cottin, the former proprietor of the castle at Rochechinard, I happened to evoke my dogs.

 

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When I said that my second dog, Fitzroy, was a Border Collie, the regard of the former mayor of Rochechinard was suddenly illuminated as if I had informed him that I shared my abode at Gamone with an Arabian princess fit for the imprisoned prince Zizim. "Ah, I've always dreamed about owning a Border Collie!" In an instant, I was reminded that a privileged human like me has to merit, as it were, the presence of a dog such as Fitzroy (and my dear Sophia, too, of course, but in a slightly less technical sense).

The Welsh shepherd William who reared Fitzroy up in the French Alps had warned me that I would be acquiring a demanding dog, in constant need of affection, but I didn't really know, a year ago, what this might mean. Today, I'm happy to understand perfectly that Fitzroy is indeed a most demanding dog, who's happiest of all when he's just a meter or so so from my feet… as at the present moment, for example.

At a certain moment in the evening, Fitzroy seems to find it quite natural that he should exit the warm house in order to spend his night in solitude, out under the stars, in the vague company of the donkeys.

Truly, Fitzroy has become my personal guru. We have a highly physical relationship, based upon an abundance of cuddles, caresses and canine kisses. Silently (well, with a few occasional barks), my mentor Fitzroy has taught me to smile at life, and to seek constantly the energetic side of things. I would be happy to believe that I merit Fitzroy.