Tom Roper's Weblog

Doncaster, Newbury and Kelso

225 Doncaster: Lou du Moulin Mas
245 Newbury: Parsons Legacy
315 Newbury: Hand Inn Hand
355 Kelso: Malek
430 Kelso: Mephisto

Smoking and the British Library

Today I visited London and used the Northern line, the underground line that I associate so much with my first days in London when, fresh from university, i lived in Golders Green. In those days it was possible to smoke on the tube.
If I recall correctly, the second and penultimate carriages were the designated smoking carriages; I was an enthusiastic smoker in those days, and the most significant memories of my first few years in London are from the smoking carriages of the Northern line.
Later in the day I went to the British Library and though I should be used to what a library can do, I'm still amazed. I wanted to listen to some 78 rpm records made for Linguaphone of classical Greek pronunciation by W H D Rouse, headmaster of my school, correspondent and collaborator with Ezra Pound and innovator in classics teaching (see Stray, Chris The Living Word: W.H.D.Rouse and the Crisis of Classics in Edwardian England Bristol Classical Press 1998 1853992623)
They had one of them, and had transcribed it to CD for me. Rouse uses a version of the tonal accent, and in the background one can hear boys at play.These recordings must have been made in the school. They didn't have a copy of the other, though they had the accompanying booklet, so I'm still on the tracks of      Linguaphone Passages from the Greek Classics  (pp. 10. Linguaphone Institute: [London, 1935?])

Once more on the differences between Gorman and the blog people

When I read some of those who've taken offence at Gorman's article, I do wonder a little. There's a man who seems to hate sherry drinkers, and I rather like manzanilla. Some call him elitist because he condemns errors of grammar and style and suggests that bloggers are incapable of developing and sustaining complex arguments themselves, or of following difficult texts written by others. It is fair to berate many blogs for those faults, but if Gorman were to return to the land of his birth and look at the daily newspapers, he would find just as much to excite and anger him, not only in the mass circulation papers but also in what I can no longer call the broadsheets.
The charge of elitism is spurious, besides, because if there is any profession less elitist than librarians. I should like to know what it is. Let's be clear: Gorman's error is that he writes off a form because of defects in the content of some versions.
It seems to me perfectly possible to run one's own blog and to read other blogs with pleasure and interest without sacrificing the ability to discriminate between the shoddy and the well-made or between falsehood and truth.
I was pleased to see that T Scott Plutchak has entered the lists and made these points far more clearly.

East of Bishopstone

GeoURL works again. It still hasn't heard of Seaford  and quaintly locates me "east of Bishopstone", which has a ring to it. See my neighbours.

Michael Gorman on blogs

I've been following l'affaire Gorman with some interest and amusement. Gorman is right about the trivial and ephemeral nature of many blogs. He used that dangerous and often double-edged weapon, irony. But has anyone else spotted an apt remark on the comments page on his site at: Michael Gorman.
One Jessamyn West, of Rutland Free Library says: "Lovely website, have you considered a blog?" Collapse of stout librarian.

Bearded pigs blog

Bruce the Almighty tells me that the Bearded Pigs now have a blog

New Brighton library in Guardian

Jonathan Glancey on the new Brighton library in the Gurdian. He likes it; I look forward to seeing it at the CILIP Sussex Branch AGM on 4 April

Upcoming.org

Having discovered upcoming.org, I thought I'd experiment with it using the Leslie Morton memorial conference as an example. It seems to work well, although it seemed to want to locate the Royal Society of Medicine in East Sussex. But the test of it will be if other participants use it. So if you're going, have a look and add something. You have to register, but I can see this sort of tool being extremely worthwhile in future.

New Leslie Morton obituary

As we prepare for Thursday and Friday's events to commemorate the life of Leslie Morton, the BMJ publishes an obituary to add to those already listed here.

Sussex Beacon Half Marathon

It's not my practice to overload this blog with references to my running which would be a tedious waste of bandwidth, but I do record races I have taken part in. So see the marathon training blog for an account of today's Sussex Beacon Half Marathon.