The Power of Eel

As a child I was very fond of Arthur Ransome's books about polite 30s children exploring and sailing, even though I barely knew one end of a boat from the other.

I've been re-reading them lately. There's a later entry, Secret Water, which takes place on the salt-marshes in Essex, and has a climactic scene where they chant and dance around a 'human sacrifice' to the Great Eel.

I wonder if Robert Holmes read it as a kid, and it unconsciously influenced another story set in a marsh and involving a giant water creature. Incidentally the swamp scenes in Power of Kroll were filmed only 25 miles away from Hamford Water where the book is set.

Bilbo's treasure

Bilbo asked Dáin for as many coins as one strong pony could carry, and they were half gold and half silver by volume - one chest of coins of each type.

(Shrewd move, much better deal than an equal number of coins of each type, gold being 1.84 times denser than silver. Though it occurs to me now that if one chest was on each side of the pony, the load would have been very unbalanced).

Ponies can carry 20% of their own weight.

Pony weight range 130-350kg, so let's say a strong one weighs 300kg and could carry 60kg.

So Bilbo brought home 60kg of coins, divided 1.84/2.84 and 1/2.84 between gold and silver respectively. That's 38.4kg of gold and 21.6kg of silver.

Now, our sole monetary standard in Middle-earth in the Third Age is that a clapped-out pony (again with the ponies) costs 4 silver pennies.

Tolkien had a lot of time for the Anglo-Saxons and was doubtless thinking of their silver pennies, weighing 1/240 of a troy pound (373g) = 1.55g.

So Bilbo's 21.6kg of silver was 13,935 silver pennies.

Let's say a clapped-out, but still driveable car costs £1000, so 1 silver penny ≈ £250, so the silver was worth £3.5 million.

For most of history gold was worth ≈ 10 times as much as silver.

The 38.4kg of gold would be 24,774 pennyweights (although Tolkien probably imagined it in the chunky 4g gold pieces current in the silver penny era, ie ≈ 9600 gold pieces, that doesn't affect our calculation) each worth £2500, total value £62 million.

So, Bilbo brought back to Bag End the equivalent of £65 million. Enough to buy quite a few fancy waistcoats.

Joe Orton and SF

To go with Orton's Doctor Who links, I found another genre connection lurking in the Diary where I'd previously failed to spot it.

On July 18th 1967 he does a photoshoot for Queen magazine - a group of celebrity 'goodies' to be contrasted with another group of baddies. With him amongst the goodies is Lucy 'Survivors' Fleming.

She was also in the Avengers ep Invasion of the Earthmen. We know Orton and Halliwell were watching The Avengers in 1966, because Kenneth Williams mentions it. Sadly though, Invasion of the Earthmen didn't complete production till after Orton was dead.

Little Women/Good Wives

I've just learnt that Good Wives is a purely British way of referring to vol 2 of Little Women. I wonder though what accounts for the textual differences between GW and vol 2 of the two-volume version?

So for example, in the opening scene of the one-volume Little Women, Jo examines the heels of her boots in a gentlemanly manner while urging her sisters to spend their money as they wish, whereas in the two-volume version, it's the heels of her shoes.

Susie Brann's Harpoon voice

Listening to the 1962 Carleton Hobbs adaptation of Thor Bridge, I find one Beryl Calder playing Grace Dunbar, with a voice that's uncannily similar to the posh 30s one Susie Brann deploys in The Harpoon. I wonder if that's where the latter modelled it from?

Miss Blennerhassett

Miss Blennerhassett in the Penrith tearoom in Withnail & I. I'm wondering if her unusual name was suggested by a nine days' wonder in 1933, the libel case Blennerhassett v Novelty Sales Services Ltd and another. I came across it in an interesting book about libel cases - Hatred, Ridicule or Contempt, by Joseph Dean (1953) - and this blog has saved me the trouble of typing it all out for you. There's a picture of the advert complained of, too.

Survivors: You drink what they drink

The official pre- and post-apocalypse healthy drinking programme:

whisky (2 - you leave the second glass undrunk while you lie in bed for 5 days)

bottle of tonic water (don't look in the mirror)

champagne (warm)

Black & White whisky (straight out of the bottle)

Black & White whisky (straight out of the bottle - while you have your broken legs fixed)

vodka and tonic with ice

Glenfiddich (straight out of the bottle)

Elderflower wine ('last summer...')

Hey clarse brandy (for aristocrat use only)

Brandy or maybe a liqueur - can't tell, Charmian has her hand over the label

Glenfiddich

Some 70s beer which I would have recognised back in the day

Glenfiddich (out of the bottle)

'Scottish' whisky (in paper cups - have another)

Aristocrat-grade brandy again

Champagne (Moet - out of a bucket of water which I suppose might cool it a little bit, but probly not enough :anne:)

'Grape' wine (you'll be amused by its presumption) - about half a bottle I think, possibly more, there's a demijohn full of it as well

More grape wine, just 1 glass this time it looks like

Wine again - probably the grape wine from before (toast: 'Civilisation' 'All of us')

Not just brandy but cognac, Rémy Martin ('for a special occasion, for a bigger world, better days')

Brandy or maybe a liqueur ('FINE' on the label)

Cheap-looking pre-plague branded red wine, giving me a headache just looking at the label

More of the above

What looks like Charles' 'grape' wine again (sipped while you stand urbanely in front of a fireplace, like you probably used to pre-plague)

The same again I think (at least one glass each, and then 'is there any more wine, Pet?' 'Is there?')

Another glass of 'grape' wine (just casually in the kitchen as if it's no big deal; you've got engineering to think about)

More glasses of 'grape' wine out of a pottery jug in the white house ?Friday evening, while drunkenly singing the rude versions of hymns

Old reliable grape wine, in the white house kitchen

Grape wine out of a bottle while staggering through the woods with hymn books

Communion wine (off-screen)

Fascist home-made wine with lunch (a white wine for a change - and a whole bottle for you and partner)

Gale beer (in rather small glasses)

Bathtub gin (out of a jam jar)

Beer, elderflower wine and bathtub gin (toast: 'The future' - the gin btw by mistake for wine, getting you so drunk you have to stop playing the guitar and be propositioned by Pet)

Medicinal spirits furnished by Pet (Bell's whisky I think, can't be sure though)

What looks like home-made red wine

Something that Hubert nicked that tastes like gin

Sherry, judging by the glasses and the refill - have another

Wine for those that like it, but mostly beer, at least 5 pints, and another offered (in a proper pub as if the plague never happened. Toast: Iechyd da!)

Whisky (a dram before lunch)

Red wine (I presume with dinner, because lunch was fish)

Red wine (by candlelight, which is at last a choice again)