The Lockdown Diaries

[DCI Harry Batt]

I'm presenting in a conference in Syria

Ummm...what's that all about then?

[DCI Harry Batt]

I wonder about the flour thing. Have more people in the UK gone all out for baking at home? Though it does seem much more a supply than a demand thing.

[ad hoc]

Ummm...what's that all about then?

Conference (virtual obv) for teachers. Organised by a bloke I know in Damascus

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Balders, what are the lessons that the small children of britain are being taught about Scott of the Antarctic?

[Eggchaser]

Presumably how well British exceptionalism fares in a crisis. Plus, there's a hero sacrificing himself for the common good.

[Jimski]

As good a firm as I work for, it definitely won't be sent round mine. Appraisals are to be held no later than the end of June, cash is king, here's your list of aged debtors to chase, here's your list of aged Work In Progress (bill everyone you can), keep those targets in mind.

I'm not complaining, that's just how it is, lockdown or no lockdown.

Our departmental head actually had a meeting where he went through that list and emphasised every point within it. They've been pretty good about everything, encouraging kids to say hello on Zoom during meetings, etc.

[Logan Mountstuart]

Can you imagine the British government ever sending out anything like that?

[DCI Harry Batt]

Conference (virtual obv) for teachers. Organised by a bloke I know in Damascus

Right. Probably for another thread.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

Presumably how well British exceptionalism fares in a crisis. Plus, there's a hero sacrificing himself for the common good.

When I was about seven or eight, there was a tv show about scott on, and I remember my dad explaining to me that the norwegians wanted to go to the south pole, and they knew a lot about snow, so obviously they brought dogs and sleds, and wrapped up warm. Scott was english and thought that what worked in england would work in antarctica so he brought horses , which he evidently planned to feed by allowing them graze on the lush antarctic pastures. The horses all died obviously, and They eventually got to the south pole by the sheer power of madness, to find that the norwegians had left them a nice note, and they died on the walk home, and one of them killed himself while pretending to go for a pee. Because they died in their failed attempt they were raised up as heroes and martyrs, whereas an Irish lunatic, shackleton had tried the same thing a couple of years earlier, and the whole thing ended in disaster, but because he failed in his duty to kill any of his expedition, he was considered a disgrace to edwardians. Then a quick verse or two of "Mad dogs and englishmen."

[Balderdasha]

Balders, what are the lessons that the small children of britain are being taught about Scott of the Antarctic?

The official information we're being given is the factual stuff (the ponies died, then the dogs died, then the men died, and they weren't even the first group to get to the South Pole), but then there's a whole lot of gumf about "He was very brave. He never gave up. It was better to have tried and failed than never tried at all".

We are supplementing the official stuff with a lot more information about Roald Amundsen (He was better prepared. He paid attention to what Inuits did in the Arctic and dressed in furry skins instead of heavy woollen clothes i.e. he was not arrogant enough to assume he knew better than locals. He deliberately brought 54 dogs, both for transport and because he planned to eat some of them later in the journey).

Because they are children, they like the weirdest or most gruesome details. My daughter is fascinated that they could eat whole slabs of butter because they needed so much energy, and that fresh meat can help ward off scurvy in the absence of citrus fruit. My son is curious that the bodies may have frozen instead of turning into a skeleton. My daughter wondered whether their footsteps would still be visible (like on the moon) so we've been discussing the differences in weather / atmospheres (Antarctica may be a desert where it rarely snows, but there's wind to blow the existing snow about, and it does occasionally snow).

Daughter is baffled by why Scott is the famous one given that he failed. I concur, but have told her it's because people like grizzly stories. Though Amundsen himself disappeared on a rescue mission age 55, so he had a pretty fascinating life too.

[Fussbudget]

Daughter is baffled by why Scott is the famous one given that he failed. I concur, but have told her it's because people like grizzly stories.

I think this is also a British (or maybe English-speaking world)-only thing, I'm sure I heard more about Amundsen than Scott at school and the latter was only ever mentioned in relation to the former. Actually I've just realised I don't even know Scott's first name.

[The Awesome Berbaslug!!!]

It's Captain. Every fool knows that.

[ursus arctos]

I was just going to say that.

It is a British/Anglophone thing, though primarily British (and Commonwealth), as there were enough people of Norwegian heritage in the US to make sure that Amundsen gets his due. There is a monument to Amundsen in Golden Gate Park in San Francisco.

[S. aureus]

I think Scott is his first name, of the Antarctic being his surname.
I also don't know Scott's actual first name (presumably not Walter), but do know Amundsen's.

[slackster]

I do know Scott’s first (and the curious middle) name.

But only because it came up in a pub quiz last year and none of our team of 6 had a scooby at the time. Like all useless info, I now have it at my fingertips for the next time it comes up.

[San Bernardhinault]

I wonder about the flour thing. Have more people in the UK gone all out for baking at home? Though it does seem much more a supply than a demand thing.

From what I've read, that's part of it - everyone's trying to distract their kids, and baking cakes and biscuits takes a couple of hours out of the day. Plus there's the sourdough-hipster-nerds, but I don't know if there are lots of those or they're just all over the media.

The other thing is that a lot of food was packaged and ready for restaurants and food-service, rather than home use. With large chunks of the population not eating in canteens (school and work) all the food was in the wrong sized bags to go onto supermarket shelves. I've no idea why this is flour-specific, mind you, but that's one of the explanations I read.

[Balderdasha]

Robert Falcon Scott.

[Balderdasha]

We are certainly baking more. In normal circumstances the kids would get dessert at lunch at school every day and we'd buy cakes from the bakery every Friday. Neither of those are options and I don't want the kids to feel deprived, so we now bake about 3-4 times a week. It's also a way to get them to consume a wider variety of fruit, veg and seeds (beetroot chocolate cake, carrot cake, courgette cheese and sweetcorn muffins, pineapple upside down cake, banana bread, pumpkin seed flapjacks, tahini and sesame rice crispies, fruit forest crumble, apple pie).

Also my husband is baking more bread at home as we can only get a Tesco delivery about every 10-14 days at the moment.

[Eggchaser]

Our departmental head actually had a meeting where he went through that list and emphasised every point within it. They've been pretty good about everything, encouraging kids to say hello on Zoom during meetings, etc.

Don't get me wrong, my firm have been excellent throughout lockdown, making up the 20% on furloughed pay etc, but at the end of the day, it's still a firm of solicitors.

My favourite bit about Scott is from Red Dwarf.

Kryten: I beg you to reconsider, Sir. Human history is resplendent with examples of such sacrifice. Remember Captain Oates: "I'm going out for a walk. I may be some time."

Rimmer : Yes, but the thing is, about Captain Oates; the thing you have to remember about Captain Oates; Captain Oates... Captain Oates was a prat. If that'd been me, I'd've stayed in the tent, whacked Scott over the head with a frozen husky, and then eaten him.

Lister : You would too, wouldn't you?

Rimmer : History, Lister, is written by the winners. How do we know that Oates went out for this legendary walk? From the only surviving document: Scott's diary. And he's hardly likely to have written down, "February the First, bludgeoned Oates to death while he slept, then scoffed him along with the last packet of instant mash." How's that going to look when he gets rescued, eh? No, much better to say, "Oates made the supreme sacrifice," while you're dabbing up his gravy with the last piece of crusty bread.

[ursus arctos]

A sunny and warm Saturday in front of what is expected to be several days of rain has meant that there are more people out than usual, including quite a few who seem unclear on the new rules (written and unwritten). The market was a bit of a mess, as there were too many people shopping for others who had no familiarity with the very idiosyncratic store, which really grinds to a halt if people are trying to pull wagons up and down narrow aisles.

The ten blocks of West End Avenue that have been closed to traffic at the end of our block seem to be working well, though, with everyone maintaining a respectful distance.

[ad hoc]

I'm a "sourdough hipster nerd". I baked bread (with yeast, not sourdough) a fair number of times before, but now it feels more like a hobby (and I've surprised myself with just how good and how much better in different ways, homemade sourdough bread proves* to be)

(*pun intended)

[Nocturnal Submission]

I suppose that I could look this up but I'll give the OTF hivemind first shot.

Was it Scott's expedition, or another, that lost members to vitamin A or vitamin D poisoning because they ate their huskies including their livers, which had lethal levels of A or D because of their diet of seal meat?

I'll be amazed if there isn't at least four or five factual errors in that single, badly-formed sentence.

[scratchmonkey]

NS, that would be the Mawson-Mertz expedition, although there have been some more modern claims that they actually died of general food deprivation.

The story of Shackleton's expedition where everything went wrong and he still didn't manage to lose a man is utterly amazing. Modern tech industry project management likes to talk about the Scott and Amundson expeditions in terms of what they did right and wrong in terms of planning; I like to include Shackleton because I feel that it's important to keep in mind what you can and should do when things go completely, utterly wrong.

[Nocturnal Submission]

NS, that would be the Mawson-Mertz expedition, although there have been some more modern claims that they actually died of general food deprivation.

Ah, very good. Wiki has this account (warning - not for dog lovers or the squeamish):

After a brief service, Mawson and Mertz turned back immediately. They had one week's provisions for two men and no dog food but plenty of fuel and a primus. They sledged for 27 hours continuously to obtain a spare tent cover they had left behind, for which they improvised a frame from skis and a theodolite. Their lack of provisions forced them to use their remaining sled dogs to feed the other dogs and themselves:

Their meat was stringy, tough and without a vestige of fat. For a change we sometimes chopped it up finely, mixed it with a little pemmican, and brought all to the boil in a large pot of water. We were exceedingly hungry, but there was nothing to satisfy our appetites. Only a few ounces were used of the stock of ordinary food, to which was added a portion of dog's meat, never large, for each animal yielded so very little, and the major part was fed to the surviving dogs. They crunched the bones and ate the skin, until nothing remained.

There was a quick deterioration in the men's physical condition during this journey. Both men suffered dizziness; nausea; abdominal pain; irrationality; mucosal fissuring; skin, hair, and nail loss; and the yellowing of eyes and skin. Later Mawson noticed a dramatic change in his travelling companion. Mertz seemed to lose the will to move and wished only to remain in his sleeping bag. He began to deteriorate rapidly with diarrhoea and madness. On one occasion Mertz refused to believe he was suffering from frostbite and bit off the tip of his own little finger. This was soon followed by violent raging—Mawson had to sit on his companion's chest and hold down his arms to prevent him from damaging their tent. Mertz suffered further seizures before falling into a coma and dying on 8 January 1913.

It was unknown at the time that Huskyliver contains extremely high levels of vitamin A. It was also not known that such levels of vitamin A could cause liver damage to humans. With six dogs between them (with a liver on average weighing 1 kg), it is thought that the pair ingested enough liver to bring on a condition known as Hypervitaminosis A. However, Mertz may have suffered more because he found the tough muscle tissue difficult to eat and therefore ate more of the liver than Mawson. While both men suffered, Mertz suffered more severely.

[diggedy derek]

Baking your own bread is one of the best ways to avoid the need to go to the shop every 3-4 days.