Epiphany

It’s the Feast of the Epiphany today, so a little more poetry. Then that’s it for this year, promise.

This is the Journey of the Magi by T. S. Eliot. Eliot converted to Christianity in 1927 and published this poem three years later. It’s a description of that arduous journey from the point of view of one of the Magi; we don’t know which one. According to legend the wise men were astrologers and zoroastrians, which was the principle religion in the Levant before Mohamed arrived. Bathasar, Caspar and Melchior represent the three peoples of the world: Africa, Asia and Europe respectively.

“A cold coming we had of it,
Just the worst time of the year
For a journey, and such a long journey:
The was deep and the weather sharp,
The very dead of winter.”
And the camels galled, sore-footed, refractory,
Lying down in the melting snow.
There were times we regretted
The summer palaces on slopes, the terraces,
And the silken girls bringing sherbet.
Then the camel men cursing and grumbling
And running away, and wanting their liquor and women,
And the night-fires gong out, and the lack of shelters,
And the cities hostile and the towns unfriendly
And the villages dirty, and charging high prices.:
A hard time we had of it.
At the end we preferred to travel all night,
Sleeping in snatches,
With the voices singing in our ears, saying
That this was all folly.

Then at dawn we came down to a temperate valley,
Wet, below the snow line, smelling of vegetation;
With a running stream and a water-mill beating the darkness,
And three trees on the low sky,
And an old white horse galloped away in the meadow.
Then we came to a tavern with vine-leaves over the lintel,
Six hands at an open door dicing for pieces of silver,
And feet kicking the empty wine-skins.
But there was no information, and so we continued
And arrived at evening, not a moment too soon
Finding the place; it was (you may say) satisfactory.

All this was a long time ago, I remember,
And I would do it again, but set down
This set down
This: were we lead all that way for
Birth or Death? There was a Birth, certainly,
We had evidence and no doubt. I have seen birth and death,
But had thought they were different; this Birth was
Hard and bitter agony for us, like Death, our death.
We returned to our places, these Kingdoms,
But no longer at ease here, in the old dispensation,
With an alien people clutching their gods.
I should be glad of another death.

- T. S. Eliot

Christmas

The bells of waiting Advent ring,
The Tortoise stove is lit again
And lamp-oil light across the night
Has caught the streaks of winter rain
In many a stained-glass window sheen
From Crimson Lake to Hookers Green.

Christmas is one of John Betjeman’s most openly religious poems, and one of my favourites. Published in A Few Late Chrysanthemums, in 1954, it combines a heart-warming Victorian Christmas ideal with a very reluctant religiosity.

It’s often said about Betjeman’s poetry that it allows people to identify with feelings they’ve never known or felt, like a kind of twee horoscope. More than that, I think he actively loved what we all like to think we love, too, and he had the skill and background to put it into words for us all to enjoy.

He inaugurated the Nooks and Corners column in Private Eye, which continues to this day. When I was in Manchester, a small row of houses in East Didsbury was torn down after being featured there, which was very sad. He campaigned vigorously against the post-war fetish of tearing down Victorian buildings, often using his popular status to succeed where others failed.

He contributed to the Shell travel guides, so I suppose he must have visited the North of England, but I don’t think he lived there at all. However, anyone born North of the Watford gap should smile at the first lines of the slightly macabre A Shropshire Lad. “The gas was on in the institute / The flare was up in the gym” – though who, born after 1950, say, knows what they mean?

He’s perhaps best known for his admonition of town planners: “Come friendly bombs and fall on Slough / It isn’t fit for humans now / There isn’t grass to graze a cow / Swarm over, death!”

Betjeman’s poetry is best read aloud: he has an innate understanding of cadence, and is often very funny. Try it!

The holly in the windy hedge
And round the Manor House the yew
Will soon be stripped to deck the ledge,
The altar, font and arch and pew,
So that the villagers can say
‘The church looks nice’ on Christmas Day.

Provincial Public Houses blaze,
Corporation tramcars clang,
On lighted tenements I gaze,
Where paper decorations hang,
And bunting in the red Town Hall
Says ‘Merry Christmas to you all’.

And London shops on Christmas Eve
Are strung with silver bells and flowers
As hurrying clerks the City leave
To pigeon-haunted classic towers,
And marbled clouds go scudding by
The many-steepled London sky.

And girls in slacks remember Dad,
And oafish louts remember Mum,
And sleepless children’s hearts are glad.
And Christmas-morning bells say ‘Come!’
Even to shining ones who dwell
Safe in the Dorchester Hotel.

And is it true,
This most tremendous tale of all,
Seen in a stained-glass window’s hue,
A Baby in an ox’s stall ?
The Maker of the stars and sea
Become a Child on earth for me ?

And is it true? For if it is,
No loving fingers tying strings
Around those tissued fripperies,
The sweet and silly Christmas things,
Bath salts and inexpensive scent
And hideous tie so kindly meant,

No love that in a family dwells,
No carolling in frosty air,
Nor all the steeple-shaking bells
Can with this single Truth compare -
That God was man in Palestine
And lives today in Bread and Wine.

-John Betjeman

Merry Christmas, and a happy New Year!

Woolworths

It’s a common theme (at least in the UK) that people bemoan the passing of ‘institutions’ like Woolies, yet never went and bought anything when it was open.

We saw this over the last decade with small high-street shops going under whilst superstores and chain retailers survived, because they were able to use their colossal buying power to force suppliers to drop their prices.

Only recently have the public seen the error of their ways, and buying organic is now in vogue.

Woolworths was the first of the buy ‘em high, sell ‘em cheap retailers. The proprieter apparently had to put up signs to the effect that prices were fixed, and staff weren’t allowed to negotiate. Apparently customers were used to haggling over the price of their Fairy Liquid.

Similarly, since most goods were either 3d or 6d (thru’pence or sixpence, respectively), the registers (such as they were) were programmed to only accept multiples of 3d – if you wanted a penny chew, you either had to have three, or lose out on tu’pence.

It seems harsh, but businesses aren’t owed a market, and Woolworths lost its way a while back.

C++: Static variables in functions

In C++, you can have a static variable defined in a function – scoped to the block, and with no linkage, but with a lifetime that extends from the first instantiation to the end of the program, unlike an auto. You’re not allowed this in C# – why not?

Well first of all, is it a good idea?

Static is one of the most overused and poorly understood keywords in the programming language ecosystem. In C++ alone it has at least five meanings – as a modifier affecting duration and linkage, orthogonally. It gets worse, because it was then co-opted to mean ‘determined at compile time rather than at runtime’.

In C++ static locals are commonly used as reference counters – initialise the counter once and increment it each time the function’s called. This can be replicated in C# by moving the static variable to class scope, but that feels like it breaks encapsulation.

Does it? No, it doesn’t. In OO, functions were never meant to contain data, only to expose and mutate it. A class or a struct is a container of data, so the class level is exactly the right place for your static.

Further, their use is actively dangerous, for reasons that aren’t immediately obvious. Functions with static locals are implemented with a hidden static boolean variable representing the initialisation state of the variable in question, as well as some simple code to check the state and instantiate it once. Predictably, this code itself isn’t thread safe. This issue is discussed at length in this codeguru article.

So, static locals aren’t really a very good idea in an OO environment, and also lull the unknowing developer into a false sense of security. Sounds like a bad candidate for a language feature to me!

I’m learning to play the guitar

So what? Quite right!

Well, I’ve got sore fingers, and I can play some chords without that annoying buzzing sound. I’m making progress, and it feels good.

Truth be told, this guitar has been sitting in the corner of my room for years now – I made my (then) girlfriend buy one for my twentieth birthday when we were at University. I got it home, tuned it, and promptly put it back in the bag under my bed. The same thing happened to the PS2 she bought me for Christmas last year. We were engaged by then, and now we’re married, so I guess I must be doing something right.

But, I digress. The point isn’t about me playing the guitar – there’s a wider issue. It feels good to learn. Learning makes me a better person, sometimes a more interesting person, and it makes me better at my job.

What? That’s right. Learning anything makes me better at my job. Last year I took some courses in German. This year it’s the guitar. If you’re the sort of person that doesn’t want to give up learning stuff, you’re a more valluable employee, and you’ve always got something to talk about over a pint.

I want to write a technical book, but my narrative skills aren’t quite up to scratch. I know some stuff, and I keep thinking that if I could just find the right words I could share what I know with people, and we’d all be a little bit better off. I’d make some money into the bargain! A blog is a good way to practise writing, so here we are.

Take a course. Go to lectures at an art gallery. Learn an instrument. Give a talk. Read a new blog. Write a new blog. Read a book. Read another book.

Does your employer offer training? Could you learn to teach other people? Could you volunteer somewhere? Could you join a choir?