The House Husband

Today was the deathday of Pompeo Girolamo Batoni (or Battoni, depending on where you research it), a Tuscan painter born in 1708. He painted a lot of tourist pictures during the Grand Tour days. The ones with the person sitting (or standing rather nobly) in front of historical ruins. Like tourist photographs of today. I know because I researched him today.

Coincidentally, there is an exhibition of his work at the National Gallery at the moment, so I may pop along next Wednesday. Here’s one of his portraits:

by Pompeo Batoni

And talking about things I’ve researched; I came across the digital version of a rather interesting statue this week that lives at the Science Museum. I’m reminded of it because the gout has made a bit of a reappearance today. I shared this with Nicktor as I know he’s the only person who would sympathise.

Anyway, this statue…it shows how vindictive people can be when they DON’T suffer from gout. I downloaded an image of it from work. Just have a close look at it.

The family who suffers together...laughs together

Now, apart from it being a wonderful piece of sculpture, just take a good look at the wife’s face. She is clearly enjoying his discomfort. She is looking directly at us, as if to say “Gout? Ha! Just let me show him” just before she squeezes the foot she holds in her hand.

Now look at him. He is in agony. An unfair and unjust agony brought on merely because he likes a drink and a haunch of venison with his port and brandy. But he is howling in agony BEFORE she has squeezed his foot. She is merely holding it. Oh, gout, how lethal is your sting!

Never mind the kid. He’s obviously looking at his father, asking when he can start drinking, like all sons to their fathers.

The sculpture was made by Meissen in Germany, one of the first companies to produce porcelain. I think it’s quite lovely but the subject is somewhat not!

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On Breakfast this morning I heard something quite awful. It was announced that Fuller’s Brewery will NOT be selling London Pride at the 2012 games in London because Heineken have the exclusive beer selling rights for the entire games. Now, quite apart from the fact that Heineken is tasteless and possibly second last on a long list of nice beers (Foster’s, clearly being last) and ignoring the fact that it is a Dutch beer and not British, I have to ask why? Why is it exclusive? Why do the Olympic committee assume everyone likes tasteless fizzy water? Can there be no choice? Why not half and half?

At the cricket you get both (or either) lager and real beer. It’s not that difficult.

However, that’s not really what bothers me most. Heineken is Dutch. It isn’t the Amsterdam Olympics. It’s the London Olympics. London Pride is a London thing (according to the posters) and a jolly good beer. WHY? I really think it’s rather sad that obviously money is more important than flavour. I wonder what they served at the Sydney Olympics. Budweiser, perhaps. Or Kingfisher.

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Oh, and I found out about the weird totem pole in Farnham Park. The one I talked about here. It is one part of a pair of sculptures by local artist, Ruth Wheeler, park volunteers and a bunch of local kids from three schools. The trunks are from a tree which was cut down in 2009 (it was in danger of falling over and killing someone). Ruth has carved feathers into the wood and the inside has been purposely scorched to give a contrast to the light timber. The holes are naturally formed by woodpeckers bashing their beaks into it when it was alive. There is another sculpture (I assume looking the same if not similar) near the main entrance to the park.

A pity it doesn’t have some sort of pagan significance.

Yesterday the BBC news was all about the new Olympic stadium. It was exactly two years before the opening ceremony so they were looking at how it’s all going. Everyone is cheerful that it is all on schedule. There were lots of different people talking about the mounting excitement. There was a list of dates to remember – when you could sign up to volunteer, when you could enter the ballot for tickets, etc.

There was also a piece on female boxing, which will make an appearance for the first time in London. It’s beyond me why anyone would box let alone women. Still, each to his (or her) own. This thought struck me on the train home this afternoon. not the boxing, but the new events they introduce at the Olympics. I have one for them. I call it First Off The Train or FOTT for short.

The rules of FOTT are simple. It’s all about the strategy. How long to prolong the sitting down before standing in order to be first at the door in the carriage nearest the exit at the station. It’s a question of total points for various stages in the competition.

Some people are really pathetic; they really have no idea. Take this guy today. A total amateur. The train departed Aldershot and this guy immediately stands by the door, his finger already poised above the door open button. It’s six minutes between Aldershot and Farnham! Now, naturally, he’d get points for being the first off the train, say 3 points, but nothing for getting up so early.

Making the scoring as simple as possible, extra points would be awarded for the length of time before the station. So, on a six minute run, there’d be no points for six minutes, 1 for five minutes, 2 for four and so on.

The woman in the silver position performed much better. She waited until the on-board announcement before standing. This is generally about two minutes before arrival. She was closely followed by a steady stream of others. For this perfect positioning, she’d be awarded 4 points for waiting the extra four minutes. Receiving 2 more points for second place, she’d, in fact, win gold with 6 points in total.

Another 4 would go to the third person, giving him or her a total of 5 points and silver. And the loser who stood up for six minutes, tapping nervously away at the door release button would only receive bronze.

I figure some people are really, really weird.

I was in town today to have lunch with Mirinda, which I shared with one of her colleagues, and to take a penultimate load of stuff from Florin Court to the new flat. Interestingly, the cab cost exactly the same even though it was a busy, traffic laden trip on a Wednesday. Amazing. Love the London cabs, I do.