Friday, May 17th .....

My friends, Brian and Frances, in Cambridge put me on to an excellent website called TROVE.  It’s the National Library of Australia’s on-line catalogue of its archives.  For example, it has digitised newspapers from 1803 to 1954.  The amount of ‘stuff’ is unbelievable.

I tried a search for Hilary Lofting, Marilyn’s grandfather, and had, literally, thousands of ‘hits’.  Many were repeats but I found his death notice in the Sydney Morning Herald and other regional newspapers, and a notice that he had been granted a weekly pension of 15/- from the Commonwealth Literary Fund.  Most interesting was a snippet from the Burnie Advocate (!) 0n 23^rd July 1932.

WIFE OF AUTHOR ON

PENSION WINS

                -------

£1,000 in N.S.W Lottery

                --------

   SYDNEY, Friday – When at the drawing of the State Lottery to-day it was announced that No. 28664 had drawn second prize of £1000, a woman sitting in the audience screamed with delight.  She was the owner of the ticket.   She was Mrs Hilary Lofting, wife of a well-known journalist and author, who yesterday was granted a pension of 15/- per week from the Commonwealth Literary Fund.

 

Marilyn’s grandmother was also an author, writing under the name Margaret Fane. She was best known for co-authoring The Happy Vagabond with Hilary Lofting but wrote many short stories, especially in The Australian Journal.  In the Sydney Morning Herald of January 12^th, 1929, I found this little poem:

A Sulky Cat

Once I found a catterpillar (sic)

Sitting on a leaf

I brought it in before the fire

And fed it bits of beef

Gently rubbed behind its ears

And stroked its pretty fur

And still, I’m sure, I don’t know why

The creature wouldn’t purr.

                      Margaret Fane

 

Friday, May 10th .....

We watched a nice little story on the 7.30 Report tonight, about a project to re-enact a romantic transportation system from the early days in the Huon Valley south of Hobart. In those days, before roads, small sailing vessels called 'passage boats' travelled up and down the waterways collecting and delivering produce to the wharf at Kermandie, and on to Hobart.

The boats were designed and built locally, of local timbers like Huon Pine, King Billy or Celerytop. They could cope with the shallow and narrow inlets, as well as the rough weather which was likely at any time of the year, and could carry a couple of tonnes of cargo, apples and other produce, honey and timber.

There are quite a lot of these boats still sailing around Hobart. The timber is almost indestructible, and the workmanship was first class. Although they were originally sailing boats, many were fitted with engines as they became available. The restored boat in the program was the Olive May. She sailed to tiny jetties in places like Heriots Point and Franklin, collecting potatoes, apples, timber, wine and cider. Getting into the spirit of the the project, many of the producers brought their goods to the jetties in old vehicles or even horse and cart.

The Olive May is expected to arrive in Hobart tonight and the cargo will be sold at Watermans Dock tomorrow. I wish I could be there.

Photographs #4

Scenes from Cambridge

Photographs #3

Scenes from Stratford

Photographs #2

This sets show a scene from Aberdeen Culzean Castle and my super dish from the Italian Restaurant

Photographs #1

I'm trying a different way of putting photographs in the blog. This set are from Scotland and we'll see how they go.

Thursday, May 9th .....

One of the things I noticed while I was away, staying in different places, is how common dripping teapots are. It surprises me that people just accept that even expensive teapots drip and that stained tablecloths are just something you have to live with.  Surely it’s a problem that has a solution.  After all, scientists seem to be able to get grants for the most pointless research and solving the dripping teapot spout issue would have to be up there with curing the common cold. I decided I would do some research.

On a website about Transport Cafes in UK I found that dripping teapots is an endemic problem in these establishments which pour thousands (if not millions) of cups a day.  The article told the story of a British Engineering Company in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia.  This company decided to solve the problem by buying the best teapot in the world from Harrods so the head of the company flew to London to do the deal. You guessed it … it dripped too.  To try to explain what the problem is, I found a report on some research done at the University of Lyon in France.

"Surface wettability is an unexpected key factor in controlling flow separation and dripping, the latter being completely suppressed in the limit of superhydrophobic substrates," the report explains. "This unforeseen coupling is rationalised in terms of a novel hydro-capillary adhesion framework, which couples inertial flows to surface wettability effects. This description of flow separation successfully captures the observed dependence on the various experimental parameters – wettability, flow velocity, solid surface edge curvature. As a further illustration of this coupling, a real-time control of dripping is demonstrated using electro-wetting for contact angle actuation."

I hope that helps

What about other brew-time dilemmas? In 2003 the Royal Society of Chemistry released guidance on how to make the perfect cup of tea, and in 1998 researchers from the University of Bristol published a scientific formula for dunking a biscuit.

PS Simplifying the jargon in the French report, the problem is that the flow of tea from the spout has to be fast.  If it slows down, a drip occurs.  Allowing tannin to build up will help and having a slick surface is a good thing.  Or use teabags.