The Young Charles Darwin

Picture the bearded figure from the standard paintings.  He begins to study the Galapagos tortoises, perhaps noticing that some varieties have a saddle-like shape to their shells, whereas others on different islands don’t.  Alternatively of course, he just decides that it would be good fun to sneak up on them and have a ride:

The inhabitants believe that these animals are absolutely deaf; certainly they do not overhear a person walking close behind them. I was always amused, when overtaking one of these great monsters as it was quietly pacing along, to see how suddenly, the instant I passed, it would draw in its head and legs, and uttering a deep hiss fall to the ground with a heavy sound, as if struck dead. I frequently got on their backs, and then, upon giving a few raps on the hinder part of the shell, they would rise up and walk away;—but I found it very difficult to keep my balance.

The general approach seemed to be to eat most of the potential specimens, to the extent that ’staying out of Charles Darwin’s way’ was probably a pretty good survival strategy.  Take the armadillo for instance:

we were obliged to be content with a frugal meal on an armadillo which we had shot by the way. The flesh of this animal has, indeed, an agreeable taste, resembling fowl, but is very fat

Or the puma

I was suddenly struck with horror at thinking that I was eating one of the favourite dishes of the country, namely, a half-formed calf, long before its proper time of birth. It turned out to be Puma; the meat is very white, and remarkably like veal in taste

The tortoises didn’t get away with just being ridden either:

While staying in this upper region, we lived entirely upon tortoise-meat. The breastplate roasted (as the Gauchos do carne con cuero), with the flesh attached to it, is very good; and the young tortoises make excellent soup; but otherwise the meat to my taste is very indifferent.

Oh, and just in case you’re thinking that he stuck to merely eating animals unimportant to his records, I refer you to the Lesser Rhea

When at the Rio Negro, in Northern Patagonia, I repeatedly heard the Gauchos talking of a very rare bird which they called Avestruz Petise.

He found one eventually, after eating most of it:

The bird was cooked and eaten before my memory returned. Fortunately the head, neck, legs, wings, many of the larger feathers, and a large part of the skin, had been preserved.

Preserved for his sandwiches in the morning presumably.

Darwin's Notebook

What isn’t mentioned is the pre-edited title of his most famous work was ‘The Origin of Species and 1001 Ways to Cook Them‘, or ‘Our tasty ancestors, an evolutionary journey into yummyness‘ .

Cooking tips aside, it’s an interesting exhibit, although the placement of the live iguana as an example of animals which didn’t live on the Galapagos, seemed a bit unnecessary.  I’ll let the Horned Frog slide though (I like frogs).

It covers the famous voyage of the Beagle, examples from his notebooks, including the first sketch of the familiar tree structure of animal classification.  It then shows a reproduction of his study, complete with wheeled chair to save getting up and various animal skeletons to show similarities in bone structure and development.  It finishes with a brief look at some of the controversies which surrounded his theory which, ironically, seems to be more challenged these days than it was at the time!

Give it a look, but remember to take some lunch with you, you might come out feeling peckish and I think they’d object if you tried to eat the iguana.

Mary: Do you know if you’re going to go away on business next week, John?
John: Well, I may. But why do you want to know?
Mary: I tell you in a moment but first tell me when you’re going and how long you’ll be away.

On his return, he’s obviously implicated the Harrises as sheltering our trainee spies. Action is swift:

Helen: Have you heard about the burglary, Mary?
Mary: The burglary?
Helen: Yes. You know the Harrises don’t you? Well, their house was burgled last night and lots of valuable things were stolen.
…
Helen: Somebody noticed a big car standing outside the Harrises’ house.
Mary: There’s nothing suspicious about that.
Helen: Ah, but you see, it was in the middle of the night and the car had its lights turned off.

But now a scapegoat is needed. Fortunately, to blame the whole thing on those pesky kids, all wired on decadent Jazz records, is the work of a moment:

Mr B: Have you heard anything new about that burglary? Have the police found any clues?
Mrs B: Didn’t you know John? The thieves have been caught and nearly all the stolen things recovered.
Mr B: Really? Sounds almost too good to be true. For once the police have done a good job.
Mrs B: Yes, and you know: It was all done by teenagers.
Mr B: I see. So there’s a gang of teenage thieves operating in our part of the town is there? I suppose we’ll have to keep my cigarettes and Jane’s jazz records locked up.

Tom and Jan, needless to say are never mentioned again.

With this in mind, while I was in Poland over Christmas I picked up ‘English for Everyone’ by Janina Smólska and Jan Rusiecki, published in 1966, presumably in the middle of the Soviet domination of the country.  It has a number of conversations, in English, intended to show sentence structure presumably, but it’s often difficult to read them without introducing a rather sinister subtext into the proceedings.

Things start innocently enough,

John and Mary have a house in London.
Haven’t they got a small garden as well?                 Yes, they have
Mary has a piano in her room.
Hasn’t Mary got a desk in her room, too?               Yes, she has

But things soon start sounding suspicious when Jan arrives on the scene..

Mrs. B:  Tom!  Who locked the door to Jan’s room?
Tom: Locked? It’s never locked.
Mrs B: Exactly. It’s never locked and yet I can’t get in. What have you done with the key Tom?

Tom is eventually forced to turn out his pockets and the key is found, but why was the door locked and why was Tom trying to cover for Jan?
The plot thickens later in the book.

Mrs B: Where have you been, Tom? Why are you so late?
Tom: I was at Dicks, We played chess, and then we had supper, and…
Mrs B. But it’s ten o’clock! Why did you stay at Dick’s so long?

Tom comes up with various excuses, but reading between the lines it’s clear there’s more going on than meets the eye.
Next, he’s clearly been ransacking the house for something, but is forced to concoct a ridiculous excuse when caught in the act:

Mr B: I say, Mary!
Mrs B: What is it, John?
Mr B: Look.
Mrs B: Good heavens! What’s happened? Who’s done all this?
Mr B: Yes. The flower vase is overturned and the water is splashed all over my desk. And my papers are scattered all over the floor.
…
Mr B: But that isn’t the worst, Mary. There was an important letter on my desk. I left it there which morning. And now it’s missing.

Tom claims the wind must have blown the letter out of the window, but we know better.

Apparently, the authorities have begun to get suspicious by now however, as surveillance starts on the house:

Tom: I say Jan, don’t you think that new neighbour of ours is very queer?
Jan: What neighbour? We have the Greens on one side and the Joneses on the other. There’s no other house nearby.
Tom: I mean that funny yellow house which has been standing empty for such a long time. The one on the other side of the Greens. Well, someone has moved into it at last.
Jan: Yes?
Tom: I saw a luggage van in front of it as I was coming home from Dick’s one day last week. It was quite dark, almost ten o’clock. Now, doesn’t that look suspicious to you, Jan?
Jan: Suspicious? Why?
Tom: People usually move during the day don’t they? And then, you know, no one has had a good look at that man yet. I saw him only for a moment as he was taking some of his things out of the van/ He wears dark glasses and has a beard which I’m sure must be false.
Jan: Good heavens!
Tom: And he is never at home you know.
Jan: How do you know that?
Tom: Well, perhaps he is at home, but doesn’t want to let anyone in. As I was going past the other day, the milkman was just taking up the milk. He probably wanted to collect his money, so he rang the bell but nobody answered it. And today it was the same with the postman.
Jan: The man simply leaves early for work, that’s all.
Tom: And why does he keep the blinds pulled down in all the windows that look onto the street? Tell me that if you can?

I’ll transcribe some more tomorrow, when we’ll discover whether or not John is in on the conspiracy or simply trying to catch Tom in the act…

The second half is probably the stronger of the two, and features a strong contribution by the internet’s instrument of choice, the cowbell, in a performance reminiscent of Morecambe and Wise at their best.  Watching Bill putting the excellent BBC Concert orchestra through their paces in a nail-biting cop-drama too is strangly mesmerising.  If he’s performing anywhere near you it’s well worth catching.

My Macbook Pro, which when it’s not having a endless variety of things go wrong with it (a story for another day) is currently refusing to connect to a local BT Openzone hotspot.  I am so used to things ‘just working’ with the Mac, on the software side at least, that this failure has me stimied.  I can boot into Windows on the same machine and it will connect fine, I can even browse the highly exciting but unhelpful BT Openzone advertising pages, but I cannot persuade it to let me logon to the Hotspot.

Firefox informs me that the site seems valid, but it just cannot establish a connection.  Am I being snubbed by Openzone?  Are OS X and the hotspot just operatings on such a different wavelength that they have nothing in common?  Should I introduce topic cards to get the conversation started?

I am at a loss.

Oh well, it’s nearly lunchtime and I have tickets to see Bill Bailey in command of an orchestra at the Albert Hall this evening, so that should be entertaining at least.  I wonder if he’ll have his synth connected to their chairs, so that when he presses a key a small electric shock triggers them to play a note?