June 2020 – Page 7 – Brian Micklethwait's New Blog

China Monty

Last night, as already mentioned earlier today, I went to Sainsburys in Wilton Road. On my way there, I passed the Royal Trinity Hospice charity shop, also in Wilton Road, where I photoed thus, through the its annoyingly shiny shop window:

On the left, a very reflection-ridden photo of a generic beefeater jug, and a Field Marshal Bernard Law Montgomery jug. On the right, a better close-up of the Monty jug. Well, I think they’re jugs. I couldn’t see if there were handles on the back. But they sure look like they’re one of these and one of these.

And if that’s right, then they are both products of that exact same pottery enterprise, Royal Doulton, that used to be at that China Works place I’ve just recently been out photoing.

When I photoed these jugs last night, I did not know this.

Somewhat more seriously, I think it worth asking why public statues are not more realistic, in this exact sort of highly colourful way. Why, to put it another way, were these guys (on of them being Monty again) were not done in a similar way to the way that the above items of pottery were done?

Is it that statues please people by being very obviously statues, and not actual people? Too realistic, and statues would freak people out. I’m more sure that this is an interesting question than I am about the answer. Maybe it’s just that people have got used to statues being monochrome, and they expect them to go on being that way. Maybe they tried doing them in colour, but people complained that they looked too much like china jugs, rather than like proper statues.

But as the technology of this kind of thing gets better, and as colourful architecture becomes more of a regular thing, will public statues suddenly become colourful also, again?

The e-scooter story gets more interesting – in Sainsburys

Last night I went shopping, and was out for about an hour. In that time, I observed three more e-scooters in action. Three. In the space of an hour.

First, on the left below, was the usual. A guy on an e-scooter, scooting past me so quickly I hardly saw him. This time, I did have a camera with me, and managed the photo you see. Thank goodness for zoom:

On the right, it gets a bit more interesting. We are now in my local supermarket of choice, Sainsburys. I spotted a lady pushing what I could clearly see (from the wires) was an e-scooter with an e-. I asked her, as super-politely as I could manage given the circumstances, if I could photo her e-scooter. “I’m writing an article about e-scooters.” “Not you, just the scooter.” She agree very readily, so there is her e-scooter.

Then it got really interesting. I spotted a guy, not just pushing his e-scooter around, but using it to carry his basket of purchases. Same request from me. Photo please, not you, just the e-scooter, please say if you don’t want this, ingratiate ingratiate. But, surprising answer, beyond the Yes Fine Photo Away bit, I mean. Turned out this was the same guy and the same e-scooter as in this earlier posting here. “You photoed me before!” Oh, wow, that was you.

So again with the photoing, not of him but of the e-scooter, this time with his shopping basket aboard:

You can see a bit of my basket on the right there. The real point, however, is how very fortuitously convenient it is to plonk your basket on an e-scooter like that. Nobody planned this. When they were designing e-scooters, nobody said, what about supermarket shopping? It just happens to work well. You’ll be seeing a lot more of this in the future. There will probably even be design tweaking, to include a shopping basket of this sort in the design of the entire e-scooter, just like is happening with food delivery motor-scooters.

I asked E-scooter Man if he’d had any grief about bringing his e-scooter into Sainsburys. Funny you should ask, he said. No grief from Sainsburys, but, the nearby Tesco wouldn’t let him do this. So he said, fine, I’ve been shopping at Tesco’s all my life, but if you don’t want this, I’ll take my business elsewhere. No problem, your gaff your rules, but I’m off. Whether these contrasting decisions reflected a big Tesco-v-Sainsburys commercial divergence, is some sort of class thing, or merely reflects that Sainsburys has bigger aisles, I do not know. My guess is, local staff made it up, but Tesco will give it further thought. Prediction: the design of shops will also be affected.

E-scooter Man agreed with my claim that bikes are useless for urban shopping, because you have to leave them outside, and sooner or later, they’ll get stolen. “I’m not leaving my bike out there.” Everywhere I go in London I see bikes parked outside, and a regular percentage of them are severely damaged, especially the wheels. Sometimes entire bits are missing. And of course if it’s all been nicked, you don’t see that, but it still happened. But, when you stop riding your e-scooter you can take it with you. Above all, if necessary, you can carry it with you. If, in mid-shop, they tell you to stop pushing it around, you can simply fold it up and carry it. Are they going to even forbid you to do that? Surely not. You need never be separated from from your e-scooter. Which means it could still be mugged from you, but is far, far less likely to simply be stolen or maliciously wrecked in your absence.

New category here. E-scooters.

Two cats and a squirrel above the China Works Tower front door

I posted earlier in the week about the China Works Tower. By the time I visited it, I had already read this:

Here, a group of carved figures examine an impressive collection of pots and vases — striking relief created by master craftsman George Tinworth in around 1878. Look a little closer, and what is thought to be leading female artist of her time Hannah Bolton Barlow can be spied seated with her pet cat under her stool.

So, I was ready with my camera for this detail of the building in particular.

Here’s the entire relief on top of the original entrance:

And here I am, looking a little closer like they said, at Hannah Bolton Barlow and her cat:

Who the bloke in the hat might be, I do not know, or all the others.

But also, look at that big vase to the left of her as we look. That’s definitely a lion, and on the narrow bit at the top, I believe I see a squirrel.

It’s like these pottery people had seen The Internet coming, and knew just how to get noticed by it.

Inflatable e-scooter

Those e-scooter emails from google really hit the jackpot yesterday evening, with news of this gloriously idiotic contrivance:

Yes, it’s an inflatable e-scooter. And by that I mean, not only can you inflate it. You have to inflate it. Madness, I tell you.

Here’s what must surely be a deeply embarrassed model driving it:

When she was little she dreamed of being a supermodel, striding out onto a catwalk and quickly parlaying that into being a movie star. But now look at what she’s doing. It’s like Idiot Toys never stopped and this was the subject of yesterday’s posting there. (And I for one wish it never had stopped.)

I’d be very happy to be proved wrong about this, but as of now, here’s my take on this contraption. The whole point of e-scooters is how convenient they are and how small they are. So, you do not want them occupying as much road space as a small motorbike, and you need to be able to unfold them and fold them up in a single figure number of seconds. This thing has to be inflated. How the hell long does that take? Then when you’ve finished, you have to uninflate it. How long does that take? No. This is altogether too much faffing about, and it defeats about eighty percent of the point of having an e-scooter.

A small platform the size of a small skateboard, with tiny wheels at each end and a stick with handles at the top at the front end, that folds up and down. All pushed along the road by an electric motor that weighs nothing and occupies no space at all. That’s what an e-scooter is. The e-scooter has already been designed! It already works! One of the many things that an e-scooter is not is a giant airbag on wheels.

Candace Owens – alarm clock for black America

My thanks to Scott Adams for telling me about this video speech to camera by Candace Owens. (When I watched this video at the Scott Adams twitter feed, the top of her head was sliced off, sometimes even including her eyes. Not recommended.)

The heart of what Candace Owens says about the dramas now unfolding in America is that black Americans are the only ethnic group in American who make martyrs and heroes out of their worst people, i.e. petty and not-so-petty criminals who come to bad ends. George Floyd is now all over T-shirts, but he was actually, first, a petty criminal, and then a not-so-petty criminal, as Owens explains. By martyrising and glorifying wickedness and failure, you set yourself up for a life of wickedness and failure. And mostly: just failure.

What Candace Owens says seems to me, and to Scott Adams, very persuasive. I hope it will prove persuasive to those whom it is most particularly aimed at, which is black Americans. But what Owens says is partly aimed at old non-black guys like me and Scott Adams, because what she says is also universally appealing wisdom. Wise people don’t do this! Owens has certainly done nothing to stop me hearing this speech of hers.

A twitter commenter says that Owens will become America’s first female black President. But Owens is surely in the meantime attempting something smaller and more immediate than that, and in the longer run potentially bigger and better than that.

The “alarm clock” reference comes towards the end of the video.