ACTS OF GOD & BY THE WAY

The London Tornado of 1091 is reckoned by modern assessment of the reports as possibly a T8 tornado (roughly equal to an F4 tornado) which occurred in London, England. Britain's earliest reported tornado, it occurred on 17 October 1091, killing two. The wooden London Bridge was demolished, and the church of St. Mary-le-Bow in the city of London was badly damaged; four rafters 26 feet (7.9 m) long were driven into the ground with such force that only 4 feet (1.2 m) protruded above the surface. Other churches in the area were demolished, as were over 600 (mostly wooden) houses.

The London Beer Flood occurred on 17 October 1814 in the parish of St. Giles, London, England. At the Meux and Company Brewery, on Tottenham Court Road, a huge vat containing over 135,000 imperial gallons (610,000 L) of beer ruptured, causing other vats in the same building to succumb in a domino effect. As a result, more than 323,000 imperial gallons (1,470,000 L) of beer burst out and gushed into the streets. The wave of beer destroyed two homes and crumbled the wall of the Tavistock Arms Pub, trapping teenaged employee Eleanor Cooper under the rubble.

A street scene in St. Giles the year before the flood.

The brewery was located among the poor houses and tenements of the St Giles Rookery, where whole families lived in basement rooms that quickly filled with beer. Eight people drowned in the flood (some drowned, some died from injuries, and one succumbed to alcohol poisoning).

The brewery was eventually taken to court over the accident, but the disaster was ruled to be an Act of God by the judge and jury, leaving no one responsible. The company found it difficult to cope with the financial implications of the disaster, with a significant loss of sales made worse because they had already paid duty on the beer. They made a successful application to Parliament reclaiming the duty, which allowed them to continue trading.

The brewery was demolished in 1922, and today, the Dominon Theatre occupies a part of the site of the former brewery.


BY THE WAY:

I have been studying how I may describe

This blog that I write in a single word:

And because that word is so elusive

And I am here, blogging on my own,

I cannot do it; yet I’ll hammer it out.

Thinking should provide me with a word or if not one, perhaps a simple sentence will encapsulate an overall idea. Johann Wolfgang von Goethe proposed, “Thinking… is no more and no less an organ of perception than the eye or ear. Just as the eye perceives colours and the ear sounds, so thinking perceives ideas.”

And so my thinking led my eye to settle on a cork. It is a plain cork from a wine bottle. I know it comes from a wine bottle, but any casual observer could deduce its origin from the wine coloured stain at one end and the feint smell of wine that emanates from it. On the cork only the name of the wine is printed. Nothing else. No chateau or indication that the wine was bottled in any particular way or place. I should clarify that although I know the printed words are the name of the wine, to the first time reader, the cork is silent on anything site or appellation specific. Indeed, the cork is silent on just about everything, save that the printed words are in French, which, evidentially, can only indicate that the language used by the printer for this particular piece or job, was French. One cannot infer much else. One can assume the cork was extracted from a container of wine, but what sort of container is mere speculation. Beyond knowing that the wine was red in colour, unless one is such a connoisseur that the faint sent of the wine is enough, knowing what sort of wine is again speculation. As to the cork itself, or the printer, one can know nothing.

The printed phrase, however, declaims a statement that can resonate into a myriad of discourse. I like to think this could be applied to the blog. That phrase is

L’AIR DE RIEN

THE AIR OF NOTHING

To write and speak of performance writing or words performing, in my view, these words, produce an infinity of ideas, or speculations. As Edmond Rostand’s Cyrano de Bergerac, speaks, in Act 1 scene 1.IV of the play, about the various ways of describing his nose, so one can speak of ‘l’air de rien’. I confess (a performative word, already announcing guilt) to shying away from any arrogance this may import to the blog, but I speak of the performance of the words, not of the content of the text, although they may go hand in hand. I am not suggesting that going on line and opening the blog is the equivalent of uncorking a bottle of ‘53 Mouton Rothschild, I can only hope that the various events contained in the texts have sufficient resonance for the reader to speculate that the links I postulate between these events are valid and have some credibility. Each entry may have the air of nothing, but perhaps they do resonate with something of an idea. This cork, this object, is the source of the simple description of the blog – the air of nothing.

And what of the wine ‘L’air de rien’. I had hoped to bring back a bottle, alas new airline regulations prevented its inclusion in my luggage; however there will be a next time. (A constative followed by a performative)