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)

Survivors closing remarks

At the end of series 1 I was in two minds about whether to carry on watching because I didn't think the show would be much good without Abby. But Charles stepped into the gap - he was equally interesting because he had more flaws and inner conflicts. I actually began fancying him in series 3, up till then only Greg had held my attention in that way.

Jenny develops quite well. I do like the ways she's become hardened without ceasing to be herself. In 1.3 she can't bring herself to use the gun outside the supermarket, during series 2 John reports that 'Jenny fell over' when she fired a gun, but by series 3 she's unhesitatingly opening fire at Col Clifford's men and telling Charles 'shoot it in the eyes' when they find the trapped pig.

Put it this way, if I'd wandered up to one of the settlements and joined them, I'd take care not to let Jenny see that I found Greg attractive. I don't want to get shot in the eyes.

Series 2 was good, I liked the Whitecross ensemble but they didn't make enough of Ruth, and it trailed off a bit towards the end before reviving with Over The Hills and then the astonishing appearance of the balloon.

Series 3 I found very disappointing and badly connected. There were one or two good episodes in there, and the conclusion was - adequate. I have been much worse pleased with the final episodes of things.

What did impress me was that they managed to keep me with them even though the theme had changed. In series 1 it was mainly about the breakdown, the aftermath, scavenging and foraging. And when I got to the end of series 1 I said that that was what interested me and I'd been less engaged by the self-sufficiency theme which is beginning to emerge.

But I did get engaged by that theme in series 2. By the time we got to the end I wanted to stay with Whitecross and see them make it succeed. And I didn't really want to buy into the emerging theme about reconnecting communities and restarting technological civilisation and preventing malign forces from seizing control of it.

Yet again though they managed to engage me - though with less success this time, series 3 was much less cohesive than the other two, some of the episodes had very little connection to the main arc at all.

I only started watching this because I was trying to deal with the start of the coronavirus crisis. I'm glad I did, it's been a transformative experience which has helped me to face up to my fears. Thank you, survivors.