Exploding Head Syndrome

Every now and again, while wandering around on the internet, you come across the answer to a question you hadn't thought to ask. This happened to me the other day, when I stumbled on this passage:

As strange as the name sounds, exploding head syndrome is actually a rare and relatively undocumented sleep phenomenon. While sleeping or dozing, a person with the condition hears a terrifically loud sound in their head, such as a bomb exploding, a clash of cymbals or a gun going off.

My first thought was, "Oh, so that's a real thing, not just some weird and random peculiarity of my own." My second was, "And it has a really cool name: Exploding Head Syndrome. I have Exploding Head Syndrome."

The article explains the what, but not the why, probably because no-one knows what causes it or what the mechanisms involved are. There are many comments by readers on that page, most saying that they have experienced it, but never knew what it was, just like me. However, many were also frightened by it and thought it might be some dire harbinger of serious illness. For some reason (and for the life of me, I can't think why) it never crossed my mind that it might be a symptom of something serious. It didn't hurt, I didn't have any after-effects from it, and otherwise I felt fine: it was just my head going bang for some mysterious reason of its own.

In fact, it never really frightened me that much, though of course it does jolt you awake suddenly when it happens. Mine seem to happen when I'm just on the point of going to sleep, so perhaps it's clearer to me that it's not a real sound, but something inside my head. My sounds also vary a fair bit and are rather inventive, so it often makes me smile. For example, I get the standard bangs and crashes, but also a sound like a grand piano falling on the floor from a great height, and another that sounds very like the Mac alert sound 'Sosumi', but at a deeper pitch. I quite like the fact that I have my own alert sounds, even if they do wake me up.

Teaching the intangible

I've been really enjoying Monty Don's new series, Mastercrafts, about people learning rural crafts. Part of my enjoyment can be explained by my inordinate fondness for Monty Don, but mostly it's because I love watching people skilled in their craft do their work.

The programme uses the familiar 'they have only 6 weeks to compete to be the best at X' format, which seems to be obligatory for any kind of reality show these days, but it isn't too obnoxious. Winning isn't the only goal for those participating, and they can all progress further with the skills they have learned when the show is over.

What fascinates me is the difficulty of actually teaching many of the crucial skills for these traditional crafts. In the programme on thatching, for example, they were told that a vital part of building a durable, watertight roof is to make sure that the bundles of longstraw (called 'yealms') are properly blended in with one another and the rows offset, so that there are no gaps or channels for the rain to enlarge. That sounds straightforward enough, but to a novice — certainly to me, watching the programme — there appears to be no obvious visible difference between a good and bad piece of thatch. It seems to be something that you learn very gradually by developing a 'feel' for the subtleties of the materials and the ways in which they interact.

Another example in the same programme was the technique for bending hazel rods, sharpened at each end, into 'staples' with which to pin the yealms to the roof. The tutors demonstrated how to bend and twist the rods in the middle, with a flick of the wrist to cause the middle to bend rather than break. However, it was clear from how difficult the participants found this process that there was a definite 'knack' to it, that was very difficult to teach directly. The tutors could model the necessary process and give them guidance about what they should pay attention to, but in the end, they had to learn the precise action required themselves.

I think that many traditional crafts require these kinds of skills that are difficult to teach quickly, which is probably why apprenticeships were traditionally so long. However, as someone who also teaches as part of my living, I can recognise similarities with some of the skills required to be a good scientist. For example, grammatical rules are fairly straightforward to teach, but trying to guide students in how to properly structure their writing, write clear, logical, flowing sentences and so forth is quite difficult to do. You can give tips, point out good and bad examples, and suggest ways in which they can improve, but in the end, they need to develop their own 'feel' for what makes a good piece of scientific writing.

Listen yourself warm

I've had a request from James. He enjoyed my snowy photo from a couple of weeks ago, but it's making him feel cold. He's had enough of the winter and wondered if I could post some 'summery music' to warm things up a bit. Well James, your wish is my command. It's a great idea, and I've had a blast putting together a summery/warm playlist this morning.

Rather than risk the authorities taking me away for posting tracks without permission, I thought a Spotify playlist might be the safest bet, so I hope that the majority of you have access to Spotify. If not, you should be able to hunt down the tracks elsewhere. I present — with great pleasure — the Summer Heat playlist.

1. Ma'Africa - Mahotella Queens and Ulali (from 1 Giant Leap). This had to be the first choice, as it warmed me up very effectively on a snowy walk recently. It's a great, bouncy, sunny track, which will put a spring in your step.
2. Night Scented Stock - Kate Bush (from Never For Ever). It's a short, sweet gem of a song, and other than the title, it isn't obviously summery. But somehow I always think of a hot, midsummer night in a secret, moonlit garden when I listen to this. YMMV.
3. Psychedelic Shack - The Temptations (from Psychedlic Shack). Party music! You will be dancing by the end of it (or at least jigging in your seat) and that will warm you up.
4. Firefly - Michael Franti (from Songs from the Front Porch). I find Michael Franti's voice wonderfully warm, and the atmosphere of this song just says warm summer night to me.
5. Plastic Factory - Captain Beefheart and his Magic Band (from Safe As Milk). What would a playlist be without Beefheart? This is another that might not scream summer to everyone, but for me it makes me think of driving off on holiday, windows down, yelling the line "Factory's no place for me, Boss Man leave me be!" at the top of my voice while drumming on the steering wheel. It also has a lovely, dirty, stomping quality to it that somehow says summer freedom to me.
6. Marieta - Ibrahim Ferrer (from Buena Vista Social Club presents Ibrahim Ferrer). A deliciously lively, infectiously upbeat track. In contrast to Plastic Factory, if listening to this doesn't immediately conjure up images of hot, Cuban nights, dancing your flip-flops off in a sweaty, smoky club, you have a faulty imagination. I particularly love the bit near the end where it all kicks off.
7. Mustt Mustt - Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan (from Mustt Mustt). I could have chosen any of the Sufi master's music, but even though this is one of the most well known of his works, I really love it. Nusrat's voice a source of warmth of its own, and that's reason enough to include it.
8. Nocturn - Kate Bush (from Aerial). The song is actually about skinny dipping in the sea on a midsummer night, so it's very appropriate. Plus, it's a great song, and her voice has the same warmth inducing properties as Nusrat's.
9. Summerfield Avenue - Chris Wood (from Trespasser). This makes me remember playing in the garden in the summer when I was a kid and splashing about it the paddling pool.
10. Sankofa - Hypnotic Brass Ensemble (from Hypnotic Brass Ensemble). Brass — I have decided — is inherently summery, and this is just the right music for sitting in the sun and drinking a beer or two.
11. Sweet Home Alabama - Lynyrd Skynyrd (from A Retrospective). More, 'going away on holiday in a carefree mood' music. Also, classic track.
12. One Day Like This - Elbow (from The Seldom Seen Kid). This is one of those songs which is in danger of over-exposure, because it seems to be used as background music to just about every TV programme. However, it's a lovely song — uplifting, life-affirming and sunny.
13. Bonus track! Sexual Healing - Kate Bush (B side of King of the Mountain). I had absolutely no idea that Kate had covered Sexual Healing until I found it by chance on Spotify. It's hard to compete with the Marvin Gaye original, but this is pretty special. I'm including it because a) it's Valentine's Day and b) if this doesn't warm you up, nothing will!

Enjoy.

On the ball

Last week, our beloved, elderly Dyson vacuum cleaner finally packed up. We've had it about 12 years, so it has done well, but has been getting gradually more decrepit. We had the power supply replaced a couple of years ago, but the problem this time was a burnt-out motor. It could be fixed, but with such an old unit, it wasn't really cost effective.

We're lucky to have an excellent, independently owned vacuum shop fairly near us (Midland Vac), which has a great range of Dyson units, so we visited at the weekend to try to decide on a model. After a lot of indecision, literal weighing up, and pushing units speculatively around the shop floor like a Freddie Mercury tribute act¹, we settled on the Dyson DC24. It's one of the models which uses a ball rather than wheels, and it's really tiny. Compared to our old clunker, it feels incredibly light, which makes you much more inclined to lug it upstairs to do the vacuuming.

We worried slightly that it might be too small, but as soon as we tried it out — and saw the proper colour and texture of our carpet for the first time in ages — we realised that it's a very capable machine. They have improved the cyclone mechanism a lot in the years since our old model was made, and even though the new one has a smaller motor, it develops much greater suction. It's also great fun. The ball makes it very manoeuvrable, and you can sweep and glide around the furniture, making "neeyoww" noises like a racing motorbike going into a corner. Well, you can if you like — the noises are optional.

I think people either love Dyson products, or they think they are overpriced and over-engineered. I'm in the former camp, and I also like the fact that they are readily repairable, and tend to last a long time. I also get unreasonably excited whenever I find an Airblade in a bathroom. No matter how many times I use one, I still think that it's tantamount to magic.

¹ No mini skirts or pink earrings, though. ↑

The Imagined Village - Empire and Love

Mr. Bsag recently saw The Imagined Village play in Birmingham. I was intensely jealous, because I couldn't join him due to a work commitment. However, he brought me back their latest album — Empire and Love — which I'm really enjoying. The Imagined Village are a kind of folk/world music collective, involving several talented musicians including Chris Wood, Eliza Carthy and Martin Carthy, along with parts of Chris Wood's 'Best Band in the World' (Barney Morse-Brown and Andy Gangadeen).

Here they tackle a wide range of songs, some traditional and some modern, but they manage to give each a unique and fresh feel, combining traditional English acoustic instruments with Indian sitars, tabla and dhol. I've listened to the album a lot recently, and I love all the tracks, but I'm particularly fond of 'Space Girl' (sung by Eliza Carthy) — a cautionary tale set to 1950s sci-fi sounds, and 'My Son John', sung by Martin Carthy. The latter is a traditional song about a young man losing his legs to a cannon ball, but they have very cleverly updated it to weave in references to Iraq and Afghanistan, and John getting a set of carbon fibre 'blades' to replace his legs. This works very well and reinforces the sad point that young men continue to lose life or limb while fighting other peoples' wars.

Chris Wood sings 'Scarborough Fair', rescuing it from folk cliché, and also leads on the lovely track 'Sweet Jane', accompanied by Indian instruments. However, the standout track for me is a cover of Slade's 'Cum on Feel the Noize'. A folk version of Cum on Feel the Noize? It seems like (and for all I know was) the outcome of a somewhat drunken bet to see who could come up with the most unlikely song to cover in a folk style. However, much like Apple products, it somehow Just Works™.

Martin Carthy sings the lead vocals, and the whole song is taken at a much slower tempo than usual. This makes it sound like a sad, regretful lament, rather than the roaring party track that Slade recorded. I was so struck by this complete change in tone that I started imagining the music video that might accompany it.

Scene: Interior. Night. We are in a very gloomy, down-at-heel, shabby pub: the kind of place where people go to drink and try to forget their troubles.

We focus on Martin Carthy, dressed and made up to look like someone down on his luck, oppressed by his life. He is staring into his pint disconsolately, then looks up and starts to sing:

You think I've got an evil mind I'll tell you honey
I don't know why
Don't know why

He could be addressing us, the viewer, or alternatively complaining to someone who isn't there. The pub is the kind where people tend to have conversations with invisible interlocutors, so it's not clear which it is. At any rate, his voice is querulous and indignant. He can't understand why he has been so misunderstood.

He sings a brief, quiet version of the chorus, in the manner of someone who knows he will never get wild, wild, wild again, or — for that matter — ever feel the noize.

Then the camera pulls out to reveal the other band members occupying the pub. All are seated at separate tables, nursing their drinks and not looking at one another. As the next chorus begins, they join in, quietly:

So come on feel the noise
Girls grab your boys
We'll get wild, wild, wild
We'll wild, wild, wild
Come on feel the noise
Girls rock your boys
We get wild, wild, wild
Til dawn

Every 'wild' is sung slowly on a sad, descending intonation, like a sigh or a dying breath.

Later, the barman picks up his sitar from behind the bar¹. There's an instrumental bridge, and everyone has that unfocussed look of people remembering their past glories and knowing that they have gone, never to return. No one smiles.

FIN.

Seriously, it's a cracking track, and has reversed my hatred of the Slade song, which is no small feat.

¹ Did I mention that there's a sitar? Well there is, and it rocks. \oo/ \oo/ ↑

Really beautiful walk to work today!

Give me heart and soul and error

I was watching an excellent Arena documentary the other day about Brian Eno. Eno is a fascinating person, and would most likely be at the top of the list if I ever got asked who I would invite to a dream dinner party. He is one of those rare and precious people who think quite deeply about both art and science, and manage to combine elements of both in new and interesting ways in their work.

There were lots of great bits in the documentary, including a flick through one or two of the hundreds of notebooks he has filled throughout his life. He said that he writes things down so that he can think about them properly (not necessarily to remember them later), and he had notes on everything from mundane reminders of dental appointments to elaborate pictorial representations of the events of a day.

But what really caught my attention was when he was talking about how he dislikes over-precise music. Music has become rather standardised and polished. For example, drummers now routinely record to a click track, so while their drumming sounds very precise, it doesn't necessarily sound 'right', and has a tendency to be have a bit of a cold, antiseptic feel. He said that he preferred a bit of surprise and variability in music — something that doesn't sound exactly the same every time it is performed.

For probably the first and only time in my life, I thought, "Brian, I was thinking just the same thing myself this morning." I had been listening to a band called Sym who play a variety of unusual instruments like the Swedish nyckelharpas (no, I've never heard of it before either) and the hurdy-gurdy. I love anything with a hurdy-gurdy in it, and I was wondering idly why I'm so fond of the sound it produces. It gradually dawned on me that I love it precisely because it never quite sounds the same twice. It's a gloriously 'dirty' sound, with scrapes and squeaks and buzzes and multiple harmonics, and I doubt that even skilled hurdy-gurdy players can play it with absolute consistency. All of these faults just make it sound more real and alive, and that makes it a joy to listen to.

You can take the same approach with electronic instruments by adding back the variability in various ways (like Eno's keyboard which plays a different sampled sound on each key), so the warm and fuzzy feel isn't necessarily restricted to acoustic, analogue instruments. But that feels a bit like cheating, somehow.

Crochet frenzy

For some reason that I still don't quite understand I got a yearning (or a yarning, hah!) to learn a practical craft over Christmas. I spend far too much time in front of a computer (mostly for work, but it spreads into the rest of my life) and while I love messing about on it, and I just wanted something creative to do with my hands that might help me relax away from the screen. Then I happened upon the Babette Blanket and it was love at first sight. It's a crochet pattern, and I haven't crocheted since I was about 6 years old (I think my Granny taught me), so I had to learn it again.

Learning something (anything) is one of my favourite things, so I bought a great beginner's book on Crochet, Stitch 'n Bitch Crochet: The Happy Hooker¹, a couple of hooks and some yarn, and started practicing. It's quite tough trying to pick up a manual skill from written instructions and pictures, so there was a certain amount of unravelling and redoing before I understood how the stitches worked, how they look together and — the hardest part of crochet for me — where the heck you put your hook next.

I think it's safe to say that I'm addicted. I find the process both relaxing and absorbing at the same time, and you can produce something practical at the end of it. I can knit (very simple patterns, anyway), but I find that having a hook in one hand and the yarn in the other is much easier than trying to juggle two long needles and the yarn with only two hands.

I made a hat (a bobbleless, beanie type hat) in an afternoon, which astounded me. It was even the shape of a hat and fitted my head, which was inconceivable. I had some yarn left over in the same colours (soft grey and dark green, Rowan Cashsoft yarn I got half price in a sale), so I made a really long, narrow scarf. Both are lovely to wear — warm and very soft because of the cashmere in the yarn. I didn't quite keep the number of stitches straight for the scarf, so one end has a bit of a slope to it, but I'm going to maintain that it just gives it a wonky, handmade charm.

Next, I'm going to tackle the Babette blanket. I went with cheaper yarn than they specify in the pattern, and fewer colours, otherwise it would cost a fortune, but I'm having a wonderful time putting the colours combinations together. It's also a great project for little chunks of time, because each square (of which you need to produce billions) is quite quick to crochet, so you can finish one in 15 minutes or so in front of the TV of an evening. There are different sizes, and so many different colour combinations that I don't think I'll get bored with it.

In a few moments searching around on the web for more patterns (yes, I know, get away from the computer...), I stumbled across a blog called Attic24, and was blown away by the gorgeous colour combinations. Lucy has an incredible colour sense, and I feel really inspired to let rip with loads of wonderful shades. I can see that I'm going to be haunting the knitting shop a fair bit from now on, but first, I have a blanket to finish...

¹ Ignore the slightly naff title: it's a good book, written in a very clear, informative and witty way. It also has some great patterns for a variety of things that you can't imagine your Granny wearing. ↑

Should have listened to Edna

Walking songs

The recent snow has made cycling to work impossible. Some brave (or foolish) souls have been cycling along the main roads, but my route goes through parks and other open spaces where it's certain that very little gritting will have been done. I'm also a total coward when it comes to riding in icy conditions. I have a Weeble¹ like ability to stay upright — despite slipping — when on foot, but I crash to the ground on a bike at the first wobble on ice.

Usually when I can't ride to work for whatever reason, I take the train, but I decided (for reasons of economy and fitness) to try walking at least one way to work this past week. The plan was to walk the 4.8 miles to work² in the morning, and then catch the train back again. It isn't a huge distance, and it ended up taking me an hour and 10 minutes at a brisk pace, even negotiating the snowy pavements. I had to get up earlier, but it was really pleasant getting into a good walking rhythm, watching dawn break, and having the route mostly to myself for the first part at least.

On Friday afternoon, there were signalling problems at Birmingham New Street, and consequently much of the local network was thrown into disarray. Mr. Bsag called me to say that there were cancellations noted for at least the next hour, so I decided that I might as well walk home too.

I had been quite cold in the office during the day, and the chill persisted despite the exercise, so half way home I felt rather weary. I was listening to my iPhone on shuffle, and just at that moment, the track Ma' Africa by Ulali and the Mahotella Queens (from the album '1 Giant Leap') came on. As soon as it started, I felt instantly warmed, thinking about hot, African landscapes, and within a few minutes I was almost bounding up the hill, a spring in my step, admiring the way that the setting sun was washing the snow with pink and smoky grey.

If the snow continues, I can see I'll have to put Ma' Africa on repeat, particularly when travelling home.

¹ Thank you low centre of gravity! ↑

² A different route to the one I cycle, which is longer, but more cycle-friendly. ↑

Almost wild

One of the things I really like about cats is that they retain a lot of the independence and behavioural traits of their wild ancestors. I realise that this is often cited by people who don't like cats as one of the things they dislike most about them, but it would be a dull world if we all liked the same things. Having a couple of cats in the house seems as wondrous to me as having a couple of small leopards wandering around in my living room.

I was reminded of this very strongly a few nights ago, when — in the middle of the night — Bella strolled up the bed to drape herself along my torso ¹. As I was lying on my back, she was actually higher than my head, and I could see her looking down at me in the dark, with her nose a few centimetres from my chin. She was purring loudly, and half-closed her eyes in evident bliss. There's nothing quite as relaxing and cosy on a cold winter night as having a warm, purring cat sleeping on your chest, so I closed my eyes too. After a minute or two, I felt her paw gently pat my cheek, claws retracted, but still faintly perceptible on my skin.

It was a classic domestic cat move: 'I could rip your throat out, but I won't because you're quite comfy and you give me food. And you can be quite amusing sometimes.' Despite being in a rather vulnerable position, her restraint actually made me trust her more than ever, and revel in the delicate path that cats tread between wildness and domesticity.

The truth, of course, is that cats own their humans rather than the reverse (and there is evidence that they domesticated themselves), but I think that it does humans no harm at all to be put in our place by another species every now and again.

¹ She usually sleeps at the bottom of the bed, gradually shifting over the course of the night to sleep on my feet. ↑

The campaign against pink

I was reading The Guardian a while before Christmas, and came across an interesting article about a campaign called Pink Stinks, started by two sisters (Emma and Abi Moore). They were sick of the lack of choice of clothes (everything pink and sparkly) and toys for girls, and the fact that toys which should be gender neutral (like globes) were being marketed towards girls by being manufactured in pink. The kinds of toys and activities marketed towards girls also seemed designed to restrict them to 'feminine' roles. Those of you who have read this blog for a while will know my hatred of pink gadgets marketed at women, so this campaign struck a chord with me.

The article had a wonderful advert for Lego from the 1970s, which features a smiling girl (wearing a blue t-shirt and jeans, as it happens), proudly holding out a wonderful, wild Lego construction. What I like about the picture (apart from the lack of pink) is that it is genuinely gender-neutral — you could substitute a picture of a boy, and it would have exactly the same message. I also like the fact that the Lego construction doesn't look like anything in the real world, but is the joyous result of seeing what happens when you put loads of Lego bricks together, quite unlike the restrictive Lego sets you get now which have lots of shaped, specific pieces so that you can only make a house, or whatever it is.

In the article, Emma and Abi said that they were amazed at the level of criticism they had received. People seem to think that girls are genetically pre-disposed to love pink, and that to say that there's something wrong with everything for girls being made in pink is somehow denying girls' human rights. Well, when I was a kid, girls liked lots of different colours. Some liked pink, it's true, but we all wore lots of different colours ¹. I also think that girls played with a greater variety of toys. I was a real tomboy (I'm sure that surprises no-one), and although I did have a few dolls, I also played with Lego, Meccano, my brother's toy cars and planes, and I made tree-houses and go-carts. I find it a bit creepy that some people seem to think that it's perfectly normal for little girls to be obsessed with only one colour.

Of course it's true that boys and girls are different and that there are some differences in what they like, but should we decide for them what kinds of things they should like, based on their gender alone? Should we restrict the kinds of activities and roles that girls (or boys, for that matter) are supposed to enjoy? Apart from anything else, it's fairly obvious that toy manufacturers are trying make more money by getting parents to buy the same tat twice over (if they have sons and daughters), by making them buy it in both pink and blue.

¹ In fact, it being the 1970s when I grew up, we wore some revolting colour combinations: mustard and purple, anyone? ↑

Simon’s Cat - Hot spot

I love the Simon's Cat cartoons. This one reminds me so much of both of ours, including the cunning ploy to distract the owner while mischief is made

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Trying out posting to ExpressionEngine from Posterous

So, I'm going to try out posting to ExpressionEngine using Posterous. It should work using the MetaWeblog API, but it looks as if you need to follow this tip on the ExpressionEngine forums to use an RSD file.

If you see anything at all on the blog, it will have worked!

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Post-Christmas pre-New Year round up

I meant to post just before Christmas to wish everyone a good holiday, I really did. It's just that I was so exhausted from a very busy period at work that I just flopped as soon as my holiday started, and did practically nothing. Doing nothing has done me the world of good though, and I feel much revived. So much so, that I took the big step of upgrading ExpressionEngine (which runs my blog) to the beta version of 2.0.

As it often is with these things, it didn't go quite as smoothly as I'd hoped. For some reason, one of the templates (which are kept in the database itself by default with ExpressionEngine) got truncated, so I had to delve into the backup of the database to find the original. Thank goodness for backups! I've also got a slightly odd installation because I have all the ExpressionEngine files in a subdirectory, but then fiddle with the URLs so that the directory doesn't appear in the permalinks. So I had to try to remember what the heck I had fiddled with last time to get it to work properly. Anyway, it all seems to be working now, and the new control panel is a great improvement. There are huge architectural changes under the bonnet (it now uses the CodeIgniter framework), but until I have time to delve around a bit more, the control panel is the only visible thing which has changed. I'm sorry if the feed has suddenly updated with lots of old articles. I've been converting all of the articles from their mixture of Markdown, HTML and Textile format to be HTML (partly because the Markdown plugin hasn't yet been updated for version 2.0). I've worked back to articles originally published in 2004, but haven't quite had the energy to do the final two years, since nobody probably looks at them now anyway.

As I said, apart from some intensive tinkering, I've done very little: a bit of baking, a lot of reading and a fair bit of film/TV viewing, and that's it. I did sit down and watch Hamlet on the TV — all 3+ hours of it. I've seen quite a few of Shakespeare's plays at one time or another at the theatre, but for some reason I've never seen Hamlet. I don't think I'll be posting any spoilers if I tell you that it's not the cheeriest of the Bard's productions. Almost everyone dies, or is miserable, or goes mad, or — for the most unfortunate characters — suffers all three.

The thing that surprised me most was that it was all so familiar, despite the fact that I've never seen it before. I don't just mean the "To be, or not to be" speech or the "Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow" one, or even, "Alas poor Yorick". So many of the incidental phrases have become an embedded part of the English language, that it almost feels as if Shakespeare is dealing in clichés, but of course it was Shakespeare who created the clichés. There was "to the manner born¹", "hoist with his own petard", "brevity is the soul of wit", and so on. It's pretty impressive that the words of one man, writing plays in the 16th Century, are still in such common usage in the 21st Century.

¹ I was convinced that this was "to the Manor born" until Wikipedia put me right. Penelope Keith has a lot to answer for. ↑

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