Six Things, Volume 79
Six Things, Volume 79
Maps | Datchet | Internet cafes | Soundscape | Birds | What came first?
Thing 1 – Maps
Regular readers might know I like a map. A map can be a purveyor of information, a thing of beauty, an invitation to explore the world and much more. Maps tell stories, even if the story the mapmaker wants you to hear isn’t necessarily the whole truth.
But if I like a map, in a dabbling, ooh-look-at-this-interesting-map-for-a-few-minutes kind of way, that is absolutely nothing compared to how much David Rumsey likes maps. His extraordinary collection (over 200,000 and counting, with more than 134,000 of them now digitised) is one of the best free resources on the internet. At least, I can only imagine it is – I haven’t actually been through all the internet to check.
Even the most random of clicking at davidrumsey.com will almost certainly yield something interesting, such as this rare 1930 map of Paris by Arthur Zaidenberg (click on it for more detail).
Whether you want a map of the population density of Los Angeles in 1966, the Geographical Publishing Company’s Presidential Wall Atlas from 1933 or Joseph Dalton Hooker’s chart of the South Polar Sea from 1839, you will find it here. And a very great deal more.
A nice feature is that you can search for text on maps. Predictable saddo that I am, I immediately looked for instances of ‘cricket’.
And then, even more predictably, ‘bird’.
Each of those instances leads to a map, and therefore to a world of exploration and wonder. Now that I know there’s a ‘Bird Island’ east of Curaçao, I am of course desperate to go there.
And while we’re on maps, here’s a bonus thing – Thing 1a, if you like – in the form of XKCD’s Guide To Figuring Out The Age Of An Undated World Map (again, click to read it in full).
Thing 2 – Datchet
Brains are odd.
Take mine, for instance. It sometimes does a strange thing to me. When I’m on a train, and the train’s pulling in to a station – it doesn’t matter which station – my brain dredges up from somewhere deep the following line:
“Getting off at Datchet won’t help you! Getting off anywhere won’t help you!”
Aficionados of surreal comedy dramas of the late 1980s will instantly recognise it as a line from Bruce Robinson’s How To Get Ahead In Advertising. It’s from this scene, in which Richard E Grant’s character Bagley has a startling revelation.
Even though I haven’t seen the film for over 30 years, bits of it are seared into my brain. (We had a copy of it on VHS – rented from a Blockbuster which closed down the very next day – and for a while it was on hard rotation, along with This Is Spinal Tap and the first four seasons of Cheers, taped from the telly, adverts and all, and you just try and tell the kids today etc etc.)
Anyway.
A couple of nights ago, as my train pulled in to Balham, up popped the line again. Before sharing this minor revelation with a late-night social media audience, I just wanted to check I’d got the line right. So I Googled it. The search revealed two things:
Yes, I had got it right
There exists, magnificently, a Railway Movie Database, which does exactly what you think it does. It’s the work of Jonathan Horswell, train driver and (self evidently) train enthusiast.
Here’s the entry for How To Get Ahead In Advertising, from which we learn that while Datchet might have been vital to the script for its rhythm and comedy value, the station itself doesn’t feature in the film.
Learning of the existence of this resource, I naturally started trying to think of ‘films memorably featuring trains’. Here are a few (no doubt you’ll have your own):
The Railway Children (I mean, obviously)
Thing 3 – Internet cafes
When I first visited an Internet Cafe in Edinburgh in 2000 I don’t suppose I thought about how long the phenomenon would last. They were new and groovy and a gateway to the Exciting World of the Internet™ for those of us who already felt the sly tug of addiction.
Email! In a cafe! GOOGLING STUFF WHILE SIPPING A FLAT WHITE!
They have, of course, largely gone now. And while their disappearance induces a very faint pang, there are still a few clinging on. Here’s a nice piece about them.
Thing 4 – Soundscape
Back in the early days of Six Things, 74 volumes ago (eek), I wrote a bit about the concept of soundscapes. It’s an idea that holds particular fascination, possibly because the soundscape of a place is all too often ignored. So it was good to come across this piece about the word, the phenomenon and the man who helped popularise it, composer and environmentalist R Murray Schafer.
Related to the idea is this: Sound of Silence, ‘an exhibition of collected silence recorded face to face with 100 guests over two and a half years’. A nice idea, nicely executed, it’s the work of Steve Chapman.
Thing 5 – Birds
This year’s Bird Photographer of the Year contains, as always, some superb images. The winner, When Worlds Collide by Patricia Homonylo, is a remarkably powerful reminder of the dangerous combination of light pollution and tall buildings, which costs many migrating birds their lives each year. Read more on the website of FLAP (Fatal Light Awareness Programme).
If photographs of collected dead birds aren’t your thing, don’t worry – there are loads of cutesie ones too.
Dawn’s Whispers by Hermis Haridas – featuring that most excellent bird, the Hoopoe – is a particular favourite.
I also really enjoyed the winner of the video category, Into A World Of Ice by Malkolm Boothroyd (I watched it with the sound turned down because of my preternatural aversion to meaningless music on nature videos. You may or may not choose to do the same.)
Thing 6 – What Came First
What Came First? is a quick and fun game from Google Arts at which I am pretty terrible.
Brief Encounter needs to be in any list of films that feature trains!
oh when birds collide 😫😭