'Wasn't even the best drummer in The Beatles'

The quote about Ringo not even being the best drummer in The Beatles is widely attributed to John Lennon, and almost as widely corrected to in fact being a Jasper Carrott joke from 1983.

But I've just heard it today in Radio Active, the 80s Radio 4 comedy, series 1 episode 5, first broadcast October 6th 1981.

So JC might have borrowed the joke from them; or perhaps he wrote it himself prior to that date, let them steal it and then refrained from using it himself for another 2 years; or perhaps they both heard it from an an earlier, as yet unknown source (Pete Best?)

'"Ulster 71" Paintings'

If you've any familiarity with GB stamps you'll recognise these as the first decimal commemoratives. I'd turn the page in Collect British Stamps after poring over the first decimal definitives, and come across these with their muted colours and vaguely foreboding name.

About 35 years later it's occurred to me to look up what 'Ulster 71' actually was. I'd assumed it was some kind of innocuous art show, but it was actually the 50th anniversary celebrations of Northern Ireland, unfortunately organised just as it was all kicking off over there. Described by one search result as 'Ulster's ill-timed jubilee'.

It seems these are 3 paintings by Northern Irish artists. Sadly, the Northern Irish government didn't like these stamps when they previewed them, and asked for them to be scrapped and replaced by one with a picture of the Ulster 71 Exhibition, or 'a factory', but it was too late.

First use of the pound sign

Anyone who, like me, has spent a cross half hour looking for the first historical use of the pound sign (£ - the stylised L used to represent pounds sterling/GBP) will find the best answer on the Royal Mint Museum site.

The earliest example they know about is from January 1661, and it was apparently in common use by the time the Bank of England was founded in 1694.

Women and bagpipes

This thing about how women found playing the bagpipes supposedly had their fingers cut off.

Isn't it based on a misunderstanding of [William Laird Manson, The Highland Bagpipe, 1901, p.165] the story about the girl who learnt some of the secret tricks of the Mac Crimmon pipers, and told them to her sweetheart?

The point being that in that story at least, they cut her fingers off for giving away their secrets, not for transgressing gender norms.

Fine films my sagas would make

I spent some time a month or so ago assembling a detailed Dodgson timeline from the various bios - it all leads up to Saturday, June 27th 1863, which along with the next 2 days was ripped out of his diaries.

Having had lots of face time with Alice and her sisters since March 1863, CD had become more and more confident, and in the days preceding Sat Jun 27 he mentions that he'd asked Mrs Liddell (her mum natch) to 'send the children over as usual'.

None of the Liddells are mentioned again until Dec 2 1863! My reading has always been that he'd worked himself up to the point of considering proposing to Alice as soon as she was old enough - something that wasn't all that unusual in the Victorian era, creepy as it sounds now.

Dodgson was or wasn't a child molester in the same way that eggs are and aren't bad for you according to the most recent edition of the Daily Mail. If you try and approach him solely through that question you won't understand him at all.

I've always thought that Dodgson v Mrs Liddell would make a fantastic film. It'd have the Oxbridge tradition factor that made The Masters so popular, the draw of a man and woman facing off in a power struggle, and the added titillation factor of the 'Filthy Peedo Controversy.' And then you can fast forward to 10 years later in 1875, when the Liddells vainly hoped that Alice might marry Prince Leopold, then studying at Christ Church.

And throw in Cakeless, the satire of the whole thing written by the luckless student John Howe Jenkins, who paints a very telling picture indeed of 'Kraftsohn' objecting to the marriage of 'Ecilia' to 'a Prince, the youngest of his race.' - and was sent down for his pains.

In fact JHJ could probably be the narrator. This film writes itself!!

(Apologies for the roughness. I need to post this to a forum and I want it up on my own blog first in case of tiresome disputes)

(This interesting post may tell us what happened to JHJ after he got sent down. (I love the interlocutor's theory that Dodgson wrote Cakeless himself - but even if it was true, this story is complicated enough already.))

I should also add that Mrs Liddell - Lorina Liddell we should really call her - seems to have been aware of the draw her adorable children constituted. I happened to read a review of a new Dodgson bio in the FT last weekend that has her and the Dean going out to dinner leaving John Ruskin to play with them, and having unavoidably come back early, LL commenting 'How sorry you must be to see us, Mr Ruskin!'

I'm noticing a surprising number of readers for this post (in fact it's quite surprising when any of my posts get a hit) - so I'll take it upon myself to recommend further reading of the various Lewis Carroll biographies.

• If you're only going to read one: pick one of these three quite factual treatments: Derek Hudson is a solid treatment and probably the most 'popular' of all the ones I'll mention here, but rather old now. Michael Bakewell has a more modern perspective. Ann Clarke is in the same territory as Derek Hudson, but pays more attention to how Alice and Mrs Liddell might have perceived events, and as such might well appeal more to readers of this post.
• If you're ready to read widely: as well as the above bios, Donald Thomas and Morton N Cohen allow themselves to speculate more freely. If it came to a choice between those two I'd keep the MNC book, because it's more exhaustive, and also because MNC keeps Lewis Carroll centre stage when DT prefers to switch to covering late 20th century moral panics.

Sylvie and Bruno

He thought he saw a Banker's Clerk
Descending from the bus:
He looked again, and found it was
A Hippopotamus.
'If this should stay to dine,' he said,
'There won't be much for us!'

If you're still reading this blog then you're probably familiar with that verse, or one of the others from the same poem, and you may well know that it's by Lewis Carroll. But it's quite possible you've never heard of Sylvie and Bruno/Sylvie and Bruno Concluded which it comes from.

I've become completely fascinated by this book, which is the Carry On Dick of Lewis Carroll's works - if COD hadn't just been a pile of crap, but additionally no-one had ever heard of it except hardcore Carry On fans.

Michael Bakewell's bio describes it as 'like a wrecked treasure ship', and herewith the best net remarks on it I've found so far - http://mural.uv.es/anma/failure.html.

Big thinking...

I've put the Big Thinker to work generating an index of the Naive Avengersthon posts for your convenience.