More of the Same

 

Jeff–Saturday

With that title for this post I could write about so many things. Some good, some bad, some encouraging, some utterly disheartening. But the point is, I DON’T HAVE TIME! 

And I won’t intrude upon your precious time with my whining over all I have to do in the coming week to properly carry out my duties at Iceland Noir (my favorite mystery conference).  Nor shall I mention the articles I’ve promise to write in advance of the November 20^th re-release of my entire fourteen-book Chief Inspector Andreas Kaldis series –other than to say the books are in brand new covers and are the perfect size for peripatetic fans of classic paperback mystery-thrillers.

Oh yes, then there’s that book tour to organize around the February 3^rd debut of A Study in Secrets, the first volume in my new Redacted Man series.

So, what’s a fellow to do in such circumstances?

In my case, I try my best to make my readership smile…or possibly giggle a bit…perhaps even laugh.  To do that I need the right material. But where to find it?  To my everlasting joy I found the answer in my inbox in the form of a second epistle from a former high school chum who a few weeks ago forwarded me a stream of his favorite cartoons; ones that many of our readers liked. 

It was as if the heavens saw my dire straits and ordained sending me that second batch at the very moment I needed it most.

Thank you, dear JC.

[Editorial Note: Uhh, in order to avoid any unfounded speculation on my source, his first name is John.] 

––Jeff

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

  

     

 

 

 

 

 

 

 ––Jeff

The Power Of Babel

 

One of my favourite books is Douglas Adams, Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy. In that book he mentions a device, or more correctly a species of fish, that has the ability to read your brain waves and translate anything said to you in any language that your brain understands. 

The author comes to the conclusion that a) the fish provides evidence of the non-existence of God and b) that breaking down all barriers of communication between peoples, it should lead to a more peaceful universe. 

But in reality everybody knew when they are being insulted and so it had rather the reverse effect of causing more war than every before. 

Douglas Adams described the Babel fish as a small, yellow, leech-like creature that is "probably the oddest thing in the Universe."

View from my editing balcony

                                         

                                                         From the BBC programme of THGTTG

"When inserted into a person’s ear, it feeds on brainwave energy from those nearby—not from its host. It absorbs unconscious mental frequencies and then excretes a telepathic matrix into the host’s brain, allowing them to understand any spoken language instantly." I think Douglas put it better than I did.

Ironically, by removing all communication barriers, "the Babel fish has caused more and bloodier wars than anything else in history."

                                                

                                             The international language of Crime Fiction

The Tower of Babel (Genesis? ) symbolizes humanity’s ambition and divine intervention. After the Great Flood, people united under one language and tried to build a tower to reach heaven. God, seeing their pride and defiance, broke up their language and scattered them across the earth... hence our  linguistic diversity. 

One of my patients is a Professor of something- Ancient Greek, but with a passion for how language evolves and where we pick it up from. Old Scots for example has many words stolen from German, and that are in common use in German today. Scot to Scot understands it, Scot to German understands it but Scot to Englishman would get a quizzical look.

Also low land Scots sound like Germans when in full flow.  

Unlike those who live in the north- here's a clip of the Hebridean baker- and a very recognisable Lewis accent. Donald Trump's mother would have spoken like this. ( The link does take you there eventually...to the baker I mean, not Mrs Trump)

The Hebridean Baker - Spiced Tea Loaf Recipe | TikTok

Anyway, the point of all this is that I have been informed by people in the know,  that technology is not far away from being "the Babel fish". 

Obviously phones have the ability to auto translate and then to speak on auto translate. We had a Ukrainian refugee with us who used to work in a big hospital in Kiev. He had to leave when the Russians invaded because he was an ethnic Russian/ Ukrainian rather than a Ukrainian Ukrainian. He fled with his wife and two young children with what they could cram into 4 suitcases.

He came to us because my colleague is Russian, from Moscow. Vadim and Pavel could converse but not in quite the same language. They used something that was more like fractured Polish. Pavel did entire consultations with patients using the phone to translate, but that is obviously a prescriptive conversation with lots of hand signals thrown in. 

I’m not sure how a chip in the ear would manage. 

My experience with dictation of the novel is hilarious. I obviously speak with no accent whatsoever ( everybody else does obvs) , but every time I said the name of my character "Sean McTiernan" …. The dictation system would write "make tea and Anne". 

And then it would go off in the huff every time the Airbus A380 flew overhead on its way to Dubai. 

I’m sure things since then have been improved since my second book but I’m not sure by how much. 

And in any case, I’m sure that the dictated book differs from the words in the typed book. The typed book differs from the version written by hand. 

The best version is always written by fountain pen in a beautiful notebook.

With blood red ink.  

                                                 

                                                         Lots of crime in the hotel bookcase

Brits are unbelievably bad at learning other languages. If we go abroad and try to speak their tongue, chances are they will reply in perfect English. 

I’m sure I’ve related the story of being at the Neuschwanstein castle, waiting in the ticket queue. I had my school German all ready for "two tickets for both castles, please." The young German man handing out the tickets asked me in perfect English if I was from Glasgow. Without a moment's hesitation.

 I picked up from him, a slight Australian twang in his English and he picked up the Glaswegian in my German. He had lived with a Glaswegian flatmate whilst studying English in Australia. 

                                             

At the moment I’m far from home in a sunny climate with a big deadline. 

We were sitting at dinner, a couple sat down at the table next to us. The man took a sip of the water and said to us 'The water is very good, it's Dutch.' To which we replied, 'yet it is very good water. Tastes lovely, clear and sparkling.'  The tap water here is undrinkable.

 Then Alan said to him 'You have just voted in a new Prime Minister. Is that a good or a bad thing?'

 The man thought for a moment and said 'I’ve have little knowledge of the situation. We are from Germany. Are you not Dutch?'

We said no. We were Scots.

'Ahh, but you sound so Dutch'!

So we had a laugh, agreed that the water was very good. They said they were here because their usual holiday, in the next bay to ours, was getting so expensive, they just couldn't afford it.

We said that everything you get here in the all inclusive deal was fabulous including the selection of red and white wine. The German gentleman pulled a wry smile and said ' That's good to know, as you Scots don’t like paying for anything.'

As this is true, we raised a glass to this. 

 

                                                       

                                                                          Harlan Coben is everywhere.

Something tells me I must get this book finished before I go to Iceland. I’m already bracing myself for the temperature differential. 

South Africa's extraordinary plants

Michael - Alternate Thursdays 

Southern Africa is renowned for its wildlife, the Big Five - lion, leopard, rhino, elephant and buffalo - not to mention a variety of antelope, zebra, wildebeest, cheetah, African hunting dogs, and, of course, hippo. And those are just the large mammals. Then there are all the birds and other fascinating creatures.

However, the region is also rich in extraordinary plants. Cape Fynbos, restricted to a relatively small area along the coast of the Western and Eastern Cape, is one of the world's six floral kingdoms (yes, one of only six) with nearly ten thousand species. These include the proteas that are symbolic of  South Africa (including the cricket teams). 

There are many different species, and many easily crosspollinate producing a suite of completely different varieties.

South Africa's national flower - King Protea

In the coastal forest areas, there are wonderful trees, tree ferns, and cycads.

Knysna forest, near where I live

Knysna forest walk

If you move away from the winter rainfall area into the arid regions of the Karoo, the Kalahari, and the Namib deserts, you meet a new team of fascinating plants.

One of the strangest is the Welwitschia of the Namib. This plant has a genus all to itself. It grows from the sand and never develops more than two leaves. The leaves appear as a scraggly mass of pieces because they are torn by the wind, but they come from just two nodes, and unlike other plants, the leaves continue to grow throughout the plant's life. It seems a pretty hopeless survival strategy, but the plants are believed to live for thousands of years in the least hospitable conditions imaginable.

Yes. Two leaves. Really.

In other areas you find a profusion of different succulent species, cleverly adapted to their environments. This is the Stapelia. A beautiful flower opens giving off a putrid scent reminiscent of rotting meat. There aren't many bees in the desert, but there are plenty of flies...

It seems to work...

Then there are the lithops. Not only are they fat and fleshy to store what moisture they can find, but they're  disguised as stones. In A Carrion Death, Kubu describes how he was taught to see what was hidden by his Bushman school friend who took him into the desert and showed him that in an apparently barren area of sand, there were plants like stones, trapdoor spiders, and other fascinating things camouflaged from his sight. After that he looked below the superficial and that stood him in good stead as a detective.

Stones or Lithops?

Lithops flowering

It seems that whenever something is unusual, people want it. They don't want it where it lives and where they can appreciate its fit with its environment, they want it in their homes. To look at. As a talking point. To own. I'm not sure why that is...

Policeman inspecting seized boxes of Conophytums
New York Times

So now there is a new target for the poaching and smuggling trade - southern African succulents. They are protected, but stolen from their desert homes, stacked in cardboard boxes and sent off to locations around the world. They are not endangered. Yet. Sadly, they grow slowly, so attractive specimens take many years to grow from seeds. It's much cheaper and quicker to dig them up and smuggle them away. 

Head further north and you arrive in the low country, the "bushveld", where you're likely to meet the Big Five. Now you can meet a profusion of interesting and beautiful trees and other strange plants such as the Impala lily.

Impala lily in flower

When it's in flower, it's remarkable. But not for snacking. Like all Pachipodia the plant is quite poisonous and the milky sap can affect the heart.

A large specimen of the baobab tree

On the other hand, the amazing baobab tree provides edible fruit and medicinal products. This one is almost ridiculously huge. They are even adapted to living with elephants. In the dry season, elephants often rip bark off trees and eat it. In most species of tree, the sap flows up from the roots under the bark and if the tree is "ring barked" - bark removed all the way around the truck - the tree dies. The baobab has sap flow through the pulpy interior of the trunk and can withstand considerable elephant damage.

This one is taking a lot of strain
Photo: Daily Maverick

Everywhere in the country you can find varieties of aloe - again offering medicinal properties and lovely sprays of flowers growing from the stem with its fleshy leaves.

Aloe arborescens

Back to the Cape, when the rains come to the west coast, carpets of different varieties of local daisies and other flowers suddenly appear as if by magic. The seeds have been waiting, perhaps the whole year, for the moisture to germinate and they do so all at once.

This is just scratching the surface. A day at Kirstenbosch National Botanical Garden is a much better introduction. Over 7,000 species are represented there, all indigenous to South Africa. In fact, Kirstenbosch was the first botanical garden in the world to have that mission. And if you pick the day well, there may be an open air concert to enjoy with a picnic in the evening...

No, South Africa isn't just about the Big Five. We haven't even mentioned the wine yet...