One day, the details of this case will emerge and people will see today as nothing more than an expensive sideshow…

Hmm… Sideshow eh? Well, she should know.

Remember, you heard it here first.

In order to try to get my head around Sebald’s writing, I am currently working my way through a rather academic book entitled W.G. Sebald—a Handbook (review to follow). I am enjoying the book very much—particularly those sections which I can understand. This is not mock-modesty on my behalf, as it turns out that a couple of the sections of the book are written in German, without any English translation.

As I was flicking uncomprehendingly through these German sections yesterday, a short Sebaldian paragraph leapt out of the page at me:

Auf den Pennines. 1910. W. und der Freund Eccles. Das Drachenflugexperiment. W. schaut dem Drachen nach, der immer mehr an Höhe gewinnt.

It was, of course, the word Pennines—the hills in which I now live—that caught my attention. I knew that Sebald had lived in Manchester for a number of years, and he mentions the Pennines once or twice in his writing, but I was intrigued to understand what the above paragraph meant.

Thanks to Google Translate, I have an answer. The above paragraph apparently translates as follows:

On the Pennines. 1910. W. and his friend Eccles. The kite-flying experiment. W. looks at the dragon that is gaining in height.

Ah, yes, but who is ‘W’? The obvious, although incorrect, answer is that it is W.G. Sebald himself. We know this is incorrect for three reasons:

1. W.G. Sebald was not alive in 1910. It could be argued that 1910 refers to 7:10pm, but it clearly does not;
2. W.G. Sebald’s full name was Winfried Georg Maximilian Sebald. For personal reasons, he tended not to use the names Winfried Georg—one reason being that his first name sounded like a girl’s name to his English friends. He much preferred to be called Max. Therefore, if Sebald were writing about himself in the third person, using only an initial, he would probably have put either ‘M’ or ‘S’;
3. an English footnote to the German chapter makes it perfectly clear that the ‘W’ in question is none other than the philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein.

What’s that you say? Ludwig Wittgenstein flying a kite in the Pennines?!

Anyone who has read Sebald will suspect that there is probably more than an ounce of truth to this story. And so it turns out. A bit more Googling soon revealed the following in John Dobson’s online ‘Scrapbook’:

Wittgenstein Flies a Kite

It is not generally known that the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein (1889 — 1951) was an early researcher into the aerodynamics of flight. His first research post was at the University of Manchester (then known as Owens College) in the summer of 1908, when he moved to a kite-flying station at Glossop (near Manchester). In return for “constructing, sending up, and recovering the instrument-bearing kites” used for meteorological observation, he would get to use the equipment there for his own kite research. Apparently he was inexperienced, for he wrote home from Glossop that he first observed and then learned how to make a kite.

The work at the station was arduous and continuous. Sometimes there would be eight or ten ascents a day until as late as nine or ten at night. The kites would be sent up as high as 5,000 feet (naturally this demanded a train of kites). Sometimes the kites would escape or come down and then a correspondingly long distance would have to be traversed over rough pathless heather moors to recover them. The winch system used for that instrument-carrying kite system may well have been Cody’s man-carrying kite system, and Cody likewise became interested in solving the problem of heavier-than-air flight through such inventions.

The photograph show[s] Wittgenstein (on the right) with his close friend and mentor William Eccles and the instrument-bearing kite on the moors above Glossop in the summer of 1908.

The story of this period of Wittgenstein’s life is well researched and well told in Wittgenstein Flies a Kite by Susan Sterrett (Pi Press, New York: 2006), though the book is mainly concerned with his more successful and ground-breaking research into the philosophy of language.

Furthermore, there is even a website entitled In the Footsteps of Wittgenstein, which recently celebrated Wittgenstein’s pioneering aviation work with a mass kite-flying over the Glossop hills.

We only get a few measly decades on this planet. How am I ever going to cram all this fascinating information in?

Did he think he was at Old Trafford or something?

Well done Manchester City!

Your heart just has to go out to all those dejected United fans on their way back home to London right now.

(Nah! Mine neither.)

Donald 'Duck' Dunn
(1941–2012)

George Osborne was dragged deeper into the furore over the Murdoch empire’s links to government as it emerged that he entertained Rebekah Brooks for a weekend at his country residence as Rupert Murdoch was planning to take over BSkyB. […]

News of the weekend gathering will also increase pressure for Osborne to appear in person at the Leveson inquiry […] So far Osborne has been asked only to give written evidence, although his aides said he would now be happy to appear if asked.

What do you expect Osborne’s aides to say: “He’s shitting bricks”?

Anyway, I digress. Compare and contrast:

Rebekah Brooks

Sideshow Bob from out of The Simpsons

… which I guess makes Murdoch Krusty the Clown.

Being a sceptic with a C, I decided to check up on the story. I am pleased to report that it appears to be true:

True story: I have used SHITO as an acronym for years: See How It Turns Out. (Extremely hot, in this case.)

• My Amazon.co.uk review of Shito
  
• Buy Shito from Amazon.co.uk

Postscript, 13-May-2012: Nite Owl emails:

BBC: ‘Sonic weapon’ deployed in London during Olympics
The Ministry of Defence has confirmed a device which can be used as a “sonic weapon” will be deployed in London during the Olympics.

So now, should you ever forget the web-address for Gruts, go to the homepage, find the QR code in the sidebar, and scan it into your smartphone to be taken automagically to the Gruts homepage.

Isn’t modern technology wonderful?

During the proceedings, one of Jen’s brothers was telling us all about how he and his wife have show-towels in their bathrooms to impress visitors to the house. These towels aren’t for actual use, he explained; they’re just there for show.

The problem was, Jen’s brother, like all her siblings, has a West Yorkshire accent. I have become pretty familiar with the accent over the years, but it still presents me with difficulties from time to time—as on this occasion. When Jen’s brother said show-towels, I could have sworn blind that he actually said short owls. In the West Yorkshire dialect, the two phrases are homophones.

This simple misunderstanding got me thinking: wouldn’t it be utterly awesome to keep a couple of owls in your bathroom, just to impress visitors? Well, I say just to impress visitors, but they would presumably keep any mice in check at the same time. Much better than a bloody cat at any rate. I’m thinking little owls or short-eared owls, obviously—nothing too fancy.

Thinking about it some more, having a pair of owls in your bathroom could help avoid potential embarrassment when you do have guests. If either of you needs to go to the loo, you could simply say, “I’m just off to feed the owls”—a really handy euphemism, I’m sure you’ll agree.

Jen is always complaining that she never knows what to buy me for Christmas. Problem solved!

(And, yes, the lead singer does look remarkably like a standard lamp.)

“That’ll be £5.35, please.”
“Sorry, I’ve only got a tenner… Oh, hold on, I think I’ve got the 35p!”
“That’s 45p.”
“Two A-levels in mathematics, don’t you know?”

BBC: Wind farms affect local weather
Wind farms can affect weather in their immediate locality, raising night-time temperatures on the ground, researchers working in Texas have shown.

They used satellite data to show that land around newly constructed wind farms warmed more than next-door areas.

The result – published in the journal Nature Climate Change – confirms an earlier, smaller study from 2010.

BBC: Catholic pupils ‘invited to sign anti-gay marriage petition’
Education Secretary Michael Gove is to examine claims the Catholic Education Service (CES) broke impartiality rules on the topic of gay marriage…

“Schools have a responsibility under law to ensure children are insulated from political activity and campaigning in the classroom,” said a Department for Education spokesperson. “While faith schools, rightly, have the freedom to teach about sexual relations and marriage in the context of their own religion, that should not extend to political campaigning.”

Rightly? Would it be equally right for so-called faith schools to have the freedom to teach the biological sciences, say, ‘in the context of their own religion’?

Darwin meets Bowie: what’s not to like? Apart from Phil Collins on drums, I mean.

A music store in Camden Market last Saturday.

… but I always insist on filing the Good Captain under ‘B’.

Arthur, Prince of Wales (1486–1502)

Had Henry VIII‘s elder brother, Arthur, Prince of Wales, not died before their father, Henry VII, he would have become King Arthur.

But, seeing as how the Tudors believed that the King Arthur of legend had been a genuine King of England, the new Arthur would presumably have been crowned Arthur II (not to be confused with Arthur 2, an indescribably bad film starring the late Dudley Moore).

This would mean that, for modern scholars, there would have been a King Arthur II, but not a King Arthur I. Which would have been pretty confusing, if you think about it. Which I have been doing—because I tend to worry about these sorts of things.

Perhaps it’s just as well that Arthur, Prince of Wales popped his clogs when he did.

I’m just saying, that’s all.

BBC: US choice Jim Yong Kim is new World Bank chief

We then discussed which meat or fish we would add to make it into food. My money’s on sardines, but it’s just a hunch.