Think of it now ...

A stroke - aphasia

2009-06-30T12:35:00.000-07:00

A stroke 5 days - my in hospital, a speech is bad ...

Testing from the archives

2009-06-21T15:06:00.000-07:00

This was a test, trying to get up and running with a PC and linking my word processor, as it should allow, to enable blogging into a much better arrangement. I would do more if but for time ...

The Labour Party Conference

2006-09-29T15:02:00.000-07:00

I was astonished by the favourable press given to Tony Blair for his conference speech, as though this glib performance didn’t encapsulate all that we hate and distrust about him. It was precisely because of his slick performances before the Iraq war that the House of Commons was misled. I think I speak for a lot of people in saying that I was not impressed; more than that, I simply don’t want to hear from him ever again. What planet are the British press actually on?

Hiveminder Blog

2006-08-15T00:05:00.000-07:00

Hiveminder Blog

Get rid of Tony Blair

2006-07-16T13:47:00.000-07:00

Oh god how I hate Tony Blair and how much I wish he would go, or be removed by his party. There are those who hope he could be tried for war crimes over Iraq or that he will be drawn into criminal proceedings around the sale of honours, but it is hard to see either of those happening. If he was totally deranged and committed a blatant crime that is one thing. Otherwise so far as honours are concerned it is all tied up in the “nod and a wink” ways of the establishment. Indeed the system is, as he seemed to acknowledge today, fundamentally corrupt in any event, allowing sitting PMs to appoint to the Lords party supporters who do not necessarily have any merit, and would never stand any chance of being elected. It stinks, it makes me incredibly angry, and it makes the “cash for questions” sleaze of the Tories pre 1997 look small beer.

Ann Coulter

2006-06-23T14:56:00.000-07:00

Ann Coulter

I was bemused to see Ann Coulter interviewed on BBC Newsnight earlier this week, and her seemingly childish delight at being outrageous. I was not impressed. But when she started attacking Charles Darwin I knew she was just another fruitcake.

Solar water heating

2006-06-03T14:16:00.000-07:00

I have been experimenting with a birthday present which is a portable water heater – well in fact a portable shower. It holds about 20 litres of water in a bag arrangement which can be laid out in the sun and when it gets hot enough hung up and the water drained through a sprinkler on the end of a tube. Primitive enough but it does work, and I like the low-tech nature of it. I confess I have not actually showered using it but I have made general use of the water in the kitchen.

London Natural History Society

2006-05-29T15:37:00.000-07:00

I edit the newsletter of the London Natural History Society, and this weekend has been one when I have spent a lot of time going through emails and photographs then carefully working on layouts. At the end of the day the newsletter is not a triumph of design but it is I hope competent and readable, and I am always astonished at the dedication of membes who send in informative reports. And, I should add, some fantastic photographs. Brilliant!

If you are in the London area and you love birds, or plants, or insects, or the natural world in general, you really should be a member. Get in touch with me and I can tell you more.

(no longer in the role, but happy to hear from you)

graemelyall@gmail.com

Writely so

2006-02-27T03:09:00.000-08:00

Oh my what a cool service, www.writely.com is an absolute must if you are someone who needs to write and edit documents from a variety of sites. This web based word processor is well featured and stores your work online. Brilliant. What's more you can use it to blog.

Making your own ink

2006-02-02T13:51:00.000-08:00

Making your own ink

My first foray into this fascinating world involved collecting Elderberries in the autumn – not a large volume, but enough to part fill a smallish stainless steel pan. I put in the minimum water I felt necessary and with the aid of a wooden spoon gently heated and then boiled the resulting mixture. After a while I strained it and then reduced the resulting liquid by further heating it. After it had cooled I added a little Gum Arabic. The result is not entirely satisfactory, a bluish black ink of not very great density. But it was a very satisfactory first step and I think I may be hooked …

The London Library

2005-11-23T14:30:00.000-08:00

The London Library

The London Library is perhaps the largest private subscription library in the world. If you love books it is a fabulous place to spend time. Most of the space is occupied by stacks, apart from the issue hall and the reading room. The books are crammed into what is not a particularly large building, and so you find yourself deep in this matrix, this three dimensional array of books which surround you on every side, as well as below your feet and above your head. It is even more striking where the floors are made of metal grids. As you look down you can see not only the next floor down, but more floors beyond that. And the passageways are wonderfully narrow so that it is impossible to avoid being diverted by books which you have to slide past to get to those you are seeking. Wonderful, quite wonderful, and worth every penny.

2005-11-23T12:34:00.000-08:00

Nipping press

One of the "tools of the trade", a small nipping press which I use in bookbinding. Although relatively small the press is made from solid cast iron and is very heavy indeed. It is able to produce an intense pressure usually for a fairly short period, for example during casing-in.

Flora Poetica

2005-11-22T03:04:00.000-08:00

Flora Poetica

I am greatly enjoying this anthology of poetry about flowers collected by Sarah Maguire. Here are are a couple of examples which I hope you might also enjoy. Leave me a note if you want more details of the book from which I have taken them.

The Woodspurge

The wind flapped loose, the wind was still,
Shaken out dead from tree and hill:
I had walked on at the wind's will--
I sat now, for the wind was still.

Between my knees my forehead was--
My lips, drawn in, said not Alas!
My hair was over in the grass,
My naked ears heard the day pass.

My eyes, wide open, had the run
Of some ten weeds to fix upon;
Among those few, out of the sun,
The woodspurge flowered, three cups in one.

From perfect grief there need not be
Wisdom or even memory:
One thing then learnt remains to me--
The woodspurge has a cup of three.

Dante Gabriel Rossetti
1870

And here is another:

Sundew

A little marsh-plant, yellow green,
And pricked at lip with tender red.
Tread close, and either way you tread
Some faint black water jets between
Lest you should bruise the curious head.

A live thing maybe; who shall know?
The summer knows and suffers it;
For the cool moss is thick and sweet
Each side, and saves the blossom so
That it lives out the long June heat.

The deep scent of the heather burns
About it; breathless though it be,
Bow down and worship; more than we
Is the least flower whose life returns,
Least weed renascent in the sea.

We are vexed and cumbered in earth's sight
With wants, with many memories;
These see their mother what she is,
Glad-growing, till August leave more bright
The apple-coloured cranberries.

Wind blows and bleaches the strong grass,
Blown all one way to shelter it
From trample of strayed kine, with feet
Felt heavier than the moorhen was,
Strayed up past patches of wild wheat.

You call it sundew: how it grows,
If with its colour it have breath,
If life taste sweet to it, if death
Pain its soft petal, no man knows:
Man has no sight or sense that saith.

My sundew, grown of gentle days,
In these green miles the spring begun
Thy growth ere April had half done
With the soft secret of her ways
Or June made ready for the sun.

O red-lipped mouth of marsh-flower,
I have a secret halved with thee.
The name that is love's name to me
Thou knowest, and the face of her
Who is my festival to see.

The hard sun, as thy petals knew,
Coloured the heavy moss-water:
Thou wert not worth green midsummer
Nor fit to live to August blue,
O sundew, not remembering her.

Algernon Charles Swinburne
1866

2005-11-20T15:10:00.000-08:00

Dryopteris affinis

Photographed in a wood on the banks of the river Tyne near Hexham, beautiful fronds of a fern belonging to the difficult Dryopteris affinis complex.

Allan Octavian Hume

2005-11-20T13:11:00.000-08:00

Allan Octavian Hume

A O Hume 1829-1912

Hume was born near London and became a notable Indian civil servant and ornithologist. He was the son of Joseph Hume the radical MP. Hume joined the Bengal civil service in 1849. He received the CB for services during the so-called Indian Mutiny, 1860. He retired in 1882 and worked for an Indian parliamentary system through the Indian National Congress which was established with his help. He collaborated in a standard work on Indian game birds.

These bare facts hardly begin to give a sense of a remarkable man who was hugely productive during his life and who was right about almost everything on which he took a view. He was particularly right in seeing that Indian people should govern their own affairs, a view which was very advanced at that time.

After his return to England Hume became interested in Botany and established the South London Botanical Institute which continues to promote the study of plants to the present day.

Voluntary and Community Sector

2005-10-13T02:31:00.000-07:00

I work part time for a major funder, based in the north east of England.

I am also available for two days a week to help voluntary groups or charities in the region to develop their work. My background is as a volunteer, project worker, senior manager and trustee in a variety of charities over a 30 year period. These included advice services and organisations working with carers and older people.

I am available on a consultancy basis to help with:

fundraising (I have substantial experience of raising funds through grant applications, donations, trading activities, etc)

carrying out of evaluations

helping prepare business plans

I do charge for this service but my fees are reasonable and may be negotiable. Please contact me if you would like to discuss your needs: graeme.lyall@ntlworld.com or you can telephone me on 0191 565 1667. I will be glad to visit free of charge and discuss possibilities, without obligation.

2005-02-06T02:28:00.000-08:00

Phylitis scolopendrium

This luscious fern grows throughout Britain. Its strap like fronds can grow to a considerable length in ideal conditions but often it survives in less ideal places such as this, growing in the mortar between bricks. Despite the difficulties this example is fresh and healthy-looking with well developed sori forming those distinctive stripes on the underside of the fronds.

2005-02-05T03:32:00.000-08:00

Polypod found very near St Paul's Cathedral
in the heart of London

I am grateful to the secretary of the London Natural History Society for alerting me to the existence of this fern growing so close to St Paul's Cathedral - I had personally never seen it growing anywhere else in the London area.

2005-02-01T15:11:00.000-08:00

Rendle

According to the (British) Dictionary of National Biography, Alfred Barton Rendle (1865-1938), botanist, was born in Lewisham, London, on 19 January 1865, the eldest child and only son of John Samuel Rendle, secretary to a London building society, and his wife, Jane Wilson, daughter of John Barton, of Rotherfield, Sussex.

Rendle was president of the South London Botanical Institute, a position he held from 1911 until his death. He had become keeper of Botany at the British Museum (Natural History) in 1906 and edited the Journal of Botany from 1924 until near the end of his life.

2005-02-01T15:07:00.000-08:00

Henry Groves
Henry Groves, 1855-1912, botanist

2005-02-01T13:40:00.000-08:00

W H Beeby

This is a portrait of W H Beeby, a remarkable botanist who although based near London did a vast amount of work on the botany of the most northerly group of islands in the UK - Shetland. It was said that in the end it was the exertion of these trips which killed him.

From The Journal of Botany, part of an obituary of Beeby by Edward S Marshall:

WILLIAM HADDEN BEEBY. (1849-1910.)

THE only son of William John and Elizabeth Beeby, the subject of this memoir was born on June 9th, 1849. Leaving school very young, for some years he worked with an uncle; then he served under the Union Discount Company of London, and afterwards became cashier in the Bank of Tarapaca and London, retiring last June. For about two years before his death on Jan. 4th, 1910 he suffered from angina pectoris, caused by overstraining his heart while botanizing in Shetland; and the end came suddenly, being due to aneurism of the aorta. His remains were cremated at Woking, four days later. In 1892 he married Miss Florence Emma Hardcastle, of London, who, with their only son, now fifteen years old, survives him.

Beeby was at one time a first-class performer on the flute, and only gave up playing through a bad accident to his hand, caused by barbed wire. A Fellow of the Royal Microscopical Society, he was politely amused, when on a flying visit to us at Witley, by my wife's enquiry whether he understood the working of a compound microscope which she had recently given to me! Mr. Arthur Bennett writes:—" He was the most careful British botanist that I ever knew. He spared no pains and time to get at the truth; even ordinary plants were examined with the microscope." This opinion I can most cordially endorse. Having known almost all our leading botanists during the last quarter of a century— several of them much more intimately than I knew him — I can say that he taught me more than any other of the many friends who have kindly helped me towards a knowledge of our critical plants. Before he became so much tied by official duties he was an ardent sportsman, he always keenly appreciated wild life, and in his prime thought nothing of wading knee-deep in lakes or marshes for many hours A somewhat shy, reserved man (though this tendency was not conspicuous in. his correspondence), he was mainly known to other workers by his published papers; indeed, he once told me that he much preferred solitary expeditions.

My acquaintance with him goes back to 1884, when he was in bachelor lodgings at 14, Ridinghouse Street. Although a great many letters passed between us we had not met for about twenty years; he had hoped to stay at our Somersetshire home next summer, but this was not to be. Himself scrupulously accurate, lie was impatient of vagueness, or slipshod statements, or pretension in others; and his strictures were sometimes too bluntly expressed. With the sweeping and shifting changes in nomenclature which many besides himself dislike, he was not in sympathy; for example, he considered that the Vienna legislation was largely ulra vires, and he specially objected to the insistence on Latin descriptions, which bore hardly on capable men like himself who had been unable to complete their classical studies.

Beeby made his mark earlier than most, and few mistakes could be laid to his charge. A propos of Taraxacum, on which he had promised the Editor a paper only the other day, he wrote to me : "What I know, I know " ; this remark was both true and characteristic. His unusually acute mind seemed instinctively to grasp the salient points of any critical form ; and this advantage was combined with that labor limae which is distasteful to most quick-witted people.

For many years Beeby was engaged in the preparation of a new Flora of Surrey, systematically visiting the less known and more unpromising parts of the county and making exhaustive lists of even the commonest plants ; for he was no mere rarity-hunter, though so successful in his discoveries. Finding that his leisure- time was insufficient for the editorial work, he offered to hand this over to me ; but other calls and my great distance from town forbade my undertaking the task, and at my suggestion it was entrusted to the capable hands of our friend Mr. C. E. Salmon.

So long ago as 1886 he paid his first visit to Shetland ; and in that ultima Thule he spent many summer holidays, with splendid results. His good knowledge of the Scandinavian Flora was of great service here ; and I think that his most valuable work was done in those islands. What may be called "comparative" topographical botany was one of his hobbies ; he was also much interested in the study of evolution.

Beeby's critical gatherings are to some extent represented in the National Herbarium ; the Surrey and Shetland collections will shortly (by his expressed wish) be placed in the Museum founded by Mr. A. 0. Hume, and will thus be accessible to students.

Possessing a remarkable knowledge of our plants in general, and an unrivalled acquaintance with some genera, Beeby does not seem to have paid much attention to Babas and Rosa, which he advised me, when almost a beginner, to let alone for a time. Had health and strength continued, he would beyond a doubt have further increased our knowledge of the British Flora, especially in its relation to that of Arctic and sub-Arctic Europe. So far as I am aware, he never visited Ireland.

2005-02-01T13:36:00.000-08:00

Myself

Historica Botanica

2005-01-29T02:42:00.000-08:00

Historica Botanica is the sort of thing which when you find it you wish you'd done yourself. Dan has created a wonderful blog exploring the lives of botanists esp from the 19th and 20th centuries. Not to be misssed.

Type

2004-06-10T09:10:00.000-07:00

I am increasingly interested in type forms, well I am returning to a subject in which I have long had an interest, but with a new desire not only to understand and appreciate these beautiful shapes but to create my own. Today I have borrowed a copy of Peterson's account of the Kelmscott Press, and a study of Eric Gill's typographical work. Good reading I hope!

Party time

2004-05-28T03:03:00.000-07:00

This Saturday will see the latest birthday party at our house when we a host a relatively small gathering (say a dozen children plus adults) for a friend's daughter who will be 5. The last occasion (our eldest son's birthday) was much larger, and quite chaotic but generally held to be a great success. There were no fatalities and hardly even a cross word spoken. Vast amounts of food were of course consumed and we had a large inflatable pool, complete with slide and water rings, toys, etc., set up in our library (minus the water of course) because the weather was foul. This was hugely popular with the children - but what a pity I didn't get it on video!