The first important piece of news is there was a vast quantity of very poor quality cake left over from the morning tea held by the Darwin Defenders Association after their do in front of the building on Monday. This is just the tiniest fragment of it.
Just before lunch I went over to the kitchen on the north side of the building to talk to the afternoon volunteers, and the table in there, which seats about fifteen people easily, was coated in abandoned trays of chopped-up chunks of depressing muffins and danishes and slab cake. It would seem that the Darwin Defenders Association ordered much more cake than they needed. About 240 people were killed in the air attack on Darwin on 19 February 1942, which make no mistake is an awful thing, but the DDA and their ilk like to hint darkly that the real number was about a thousand (conspiracy, cover-up etc), so it's not terribly surprising that they overestimated their gross cake requirements. Then again, the difference between 240 and 1000 dead people sort of ceases to seem significant in the context of the approximately 80 million people worldwide who were killed in the Second World War, which is not a context that the DDA ever betray any awareness of, and that's possibly for the best since imagine how much cake they would order if they did!
The police are very vulnerable to these kinds of incidents and whenever they see a pile of leftover catering they start eating it and do not stop until it is all gone. So it is an unwritten part of the job of all regular staff that where a lot of food is piled up in one place, you must immediately decant some onto a catering platter and transport it to one of the other kitchens in the building. It's not good for the police to leave it lying there in one place where it's easy to smell, see and get at.
I took this small platter over to my office's kitchen and, because I was extremely hungry, on the way there I ate three pieces of the 'chocolate' 'cake'. My heart raced unpleasantly all afternoon. I hope this has been an enjoyable story for you to read about, I do not know whether or not it is unethical of me to regale you with it but the point is, there is no justification for revisionist bad history or packet mix chocolate cake.
That was Monday and some better things have happened since then; I spent the whole of today listening to one deeply beautiful and affecting piece of music over and over
I sat down to write this post wanting really to put down the words and ideas about this song that have been coursing through my head - but first I had to scrape away and parcel up the layer of irritation you've just waded through. And now I'm not going to write it down tonight, because I have to spend about half an hour getting my stuff together for tomorrow, and if I go to bed at eleven I might scrape in six hours' sleep before I need to get up and go again to the task of ever so slowly chipping away at the phenomenon I have just described to you.
Maybe tomorrow.
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2 comments:
Jane Austen could not have written Persuasion.
On March 27th of 1816 James Stanier Clarke suggested in a letter to Jane
Austen that she should write a book "illustrative of the history of the august
House of Cobourg". Jane Austen wrote back (perhaps significantly on April 1st
1816) to say that she would be "hung before she finished the first page". James
Stanier Clarke was working for Prince Leopold at the time they exchanged
letters.
Jane died on July 17th 1817
The book "Persuasion", ostensibly by Jane Austen was published posthumously
in December 1817.
On page 1 of Persuasion are the dates of birth of the three most significant male
members of the "august house of Cobourg", Prince Leopold (December 16th)
and his father Francis, Duke of Saxe-Coburg Saalfield (July 15th) and Prince
Leopold's son by Charlotte, Princess of Wakes (November 5th).
So that we are quite sure this is not chance the first two dates of birth of
Leopold and his father are the only two wedding dates given in chapter 1 of
Persuasion AND these are the only two dates on which Jane Austen wrote poems
commemorating a date: "Venta" written on St Swithins Day (15th July) and "To
the Memory of Mrs. Lefroy Who Died Dec. 16th, My Birthday".
The third and final date is November the 5th which is given as the date of birth
and death of Sir Walter's male heir, the absence of which underpins the entire
story of Persuasion: "a still-born son, Nov. 5th"
Prince Leopold's son and heir was stillborn on November 5th thus making his
the third date of the genealogy alluding to the "the august House of Coburg"
But this Coburg son was stillborn on 5th November 1817, four months after
Jane Austen died.
The chances against the letter suggesting the topic, the poems on dates, the
wedding dates and the birth dates of the three Coburg scions (July 15th,
December 16th and November 5th) including the very specific stillbirth of a son
being written on the first page of Persuasion by coincidence are infinitesimal.
Remember the book Persuasion was supposedly referring to a baronetage. The
baronetage had never at that time recorded still-births. Only still births of great
importance were recorded in peerages, such as those which altered the succession
of a hereditary title. The death of Prince Leopold's son was the single most
significant stillbirth in the whole of British monarchic history.
Ipso facto Jane Austen did not write Persuasion.
Most people on discovering the encoded dates could not have been written in
Jane Austen's lifetime argue that the dates were added later.
This is also incredibly unlikely. For proof, see the name of the doctor who
delivered the stillborn Coburg baby in what is known as "the triple obstetric
tragedy" (both mother and baby died and then the doctor himself committed
suicide) and then look at the name of the brother-in-law of Persuasion's hero.
The doctor was, by chance, the Austen's third cousin.
His suicide occurred on February 13th 1818, just after the publication of
"Persuasion".
The entire story of Persuasion and that of the other five novels are romans a clef
concerning the Prince Regent. Note they were published very specifically from
1811 (his ascendancy as Regent) to 1817 (the death of his only legitimate heir).
"Be it known then, that Sir Walter, like a good father, (having met with one or
two private disappointments in very unreasonable applications) prided himself
on remaining single for his dear daughter's sake." And neither did the Prince
Regent.
Jane Austen could not and did not write Persuasion.
© Mab
The Fairy Queen
Brilliant. I love it.
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