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Germany, Hamburg, Harbour City, Magellan Terraces, a square covering about 5,000 square metres, similar to an amphitheatre & providing a fine view of the Traditional-Ship Harbour in the Harbour City. This square is an inviting place to linger & is also used for cultural events.
For almost one & a half century, since 1866, the Harbour at the “Sandtorwall” was used as a port for ships with all kinds of imports from around the world. With the increasing size of cargo ships & later the container giants, the ware house area was not able to handle the freighters any longer. The whole area started than to be changed, maintaining the historic structure & buildings, into today’s harbour city, housing offices, apartments, gastronomy, shops etc., the re-modulation of the harbour city will still go on for many years, including the never ending story of the philharmonic concert hall.
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There is a superhighway between the brain and GI system that holds great sway over humans
"There is a muscle that encircles the gut like a lasso when we are sitting… creating a kink in the tube," Giulia Enders explains in Gut: The Inside Story of Our Body's Most Underrated Organ. She calls the mechanism "an extra insurance policy, in addition to our old friends, the sphincters" (you have two sphincters – keep reading) and cites studies showing that squatters, with their unkinked guts, are less susceptible to haemorrhoids and constipation.Enders, a 25-year-old student at the Institute for Microbiology in Frankfurt, inside an underground public lavatory in central London. "Is there a toilet in this toilet?" she asks when she arrives. There is not, a barista tells her. The Victorian urinals, abandoned in the 1960s, have been converted into cafe with booths and stools, and no room for anything else.After a dash to a pub loo above ground, Enders talks with infectious energy about the wonder of the gut. She has been delighted to discover how many people share her fascination with a subject that can suffer for being taboo. "Even today in the taxi, I told the driver what I was doing and within about two minutes he was telling me about his constipation," she says in perfect English, which she owes to a year of study in the US. "And it's not just him. It's ladies with chic hair at big gala dinners, too. Everyone wants to talk about it."Enders first got noticed after a self-assured turn at a science slam in Berlin three years ago. Her 10-minute lecture went viral on YouTube, and now, weeks after completing her final exams as a doctoral student, she is a publishing sensation. Her book, called Darm Mit Charme ("Charming Bowels") in Germany, has sold more than 1.3 million copies since it came out last year. Rights have been sold to dozens of countries.
Her way into the gut is a lightness that some reviewers have found too childish or lacking in scientific rigour to be taken seriously. But there is something compelling and refreshing about her curiosity and popular approach. "When I read the research, I think, why don't people know about this – why am I reading about it in some paper or specialist magazine? It's ridiculous because everyone has to deal with it on a daily basis." After she explains the inspiration for her fixation (the suicide of an acquaintance who had had severe halitosis, and her own teenage skin condition, which turned out to have been caused by a wheat intolerance) Enders starts at the end of the digestive tract with what she calls the "masterly performance" that is defecation. "There is so much about the anus that we don't know," she says, reaching for a gluten-free chocolate chip cookie. "The first surprise is the sophistication of our sphincters… you know about the outer one because you can control it, but the inner one nobody knows about."
This inner opening is beyond our conscious control, releasing waste material into a sort of anal vestibule where, in Enders words, "a small taster" hits sensor cells that tell the body what it's dealing with and how to respond using the outer sphincter. This opening, and our mouths, are the recognisable and controllable ends of a system that, stretched out, would be almost as long as a bus. But it's the bits in between, and their link with the rest of our bodies, including our brains and emotions, that really interest Enders.
"Medical diagrams show the small intestine as a sausage thing chaotically going through our belly," she says. "But it is an extraordinary work of architecture that moves so harmonically when you see it during surgery. It's clean and smooth, like soft fabric, and moves like this." She performs a wavy, pulsating motion with her hands. Enders believes that if we could think differently about the gut, we might more readily understand its role beyond basic digestion – and be kinder to it. The great extent to which the gut can influence health and mood is a growing field in medicine. We speak of it all the time, whether we describe "gut feelings", "butterflies in our stomachs", or "pooing our pants" in fear, but popular understanding of this gut-brain axis remains low.
A primal connection exists between our brain and our gut. We often talk about a “gut feeling” when we meet someone for the first time. We’re told to “trust our gut instinct” when making a difficult decision or that it’s “gut check time” when faced with a situation that tests our nerve and determination. This mind-gut connection is not just metaphorical. Our brain and gut are connected by an extensive network of neurons and a highway of chemicals and hormones that constantly provide feedback about how hungry we are, whether or not we’re experiencing stress, or if we’ve ingested a disease-causing microbe. This information superhighway is called the brain-gut axis and it provides constant updates on the state of affairs at your two ends. That sinking feeling in the pit of your stomach after looking at your postholiday credit card bill is a vivid example of the brain-gut connection at work. You’re stressed and your gut knows it—immediately.
The enteric nervous system is often referred to as our body’s second brain. There are hundreds of million of neurons connecting the brain to the enteric nervous system, the part of the nervous system that is tasked with controlling the gastrointestinal system. This vast web of connections monitors the entire digestive tract from the esophagus to the anus. The enteric nervous system is so extensive that it can operate as an independent entity without input from our central nervous system, although they are in regular communication. While our “second” brain cannot compose a symphony or paint a masterpiece the way the brain in our skull can, it does perform an important role in managing the workings of our inner tube. The network of neurons in the gut is as plentiful and complex as the network of neurons in our spinal cord, which may seem overly complex just to keep track of digestion. Why is our gut the only organ in our body that needs its own “brain”? Is it just to manage the process of digestion? Or could it be that one job of our second brain is to listen in on the trillions of microbes residing in the gut?
Operations of the enteric nervous system are overseen by the brain and central nervous system. The central nervous system is in communication with the gut via the sympathetic and parasympathetic branches of the autonomic nervous system, the involuntary arm of the nervous system that controls heart rate, breathing, and digestion. The autonomic nervous system is tasked with the job of regulating the speed at which food transits through the gut, the secretion of acid in our stomach, and the production of mucus on the intestinal lining. The hypothalamic-pituitary-adrenal axis, or HPA axis, is another mechanism by which the brain can communicate with the gut to help control digestion through the action of hormones.
This circuitry of neurons, hormones, and chemical neurotransmitters not only sends messages to the brain about the status of our gut, it allows for the brain to directly impact the gut environment. The rate at which food is being moved and how much mucus is lining the gut—both of which can be controlled by the central nervous system—have a direct impact on the environmental conditions the microbiota experiences.
Like any ecosystem inhabited by competing species, the environment within the gut dictates which inhabitants thrive. Just as creatures adapted to a moist rain forest would struggle in the desert, microbes relying on the mucus layer will struggle in a gut where mucus is exceedingly sparse and thin. Bulk up the mucus, and the mucus-adapted microbes can stage a comeback. The nervous system, through its ability to affect gut transit time and mucus secretion, can help dictate which microbes inhabit the gut. In this case, even if the decisions are not conscious, it’s mind over microbes.
What about the microbial side? When the microbiota adjusts to a change in diet or to a stress-induced decrease in gut transit time, is the brain made aware of this modification? Does the brain-gut axis run in one direction only, with all signals going from brain to gut, or are some signals going the other way? Is that voice in your head that is asking for a snack coming from your mind or is it emanating from the insatiable masses in your bowels? Recent evidence indicates that not only is our brain “aware” of our gut microbes, but these bacteria can influence our perception of the world and alter our behavior. It is becoming clear that the influence of our microbiota reaches far beyond the gut to affect an aspect of our biology few would have predicted—our mind.
For example, the gut microbiota influences the body’s level of the potent neurotransmitter serotonin, which regulates feelings of happiness. Some of the most prescribed drugs in the U.S. for treating anxiety and depression, like Prozac, Zoloft, and Paxil, work by modulating levels of serotonin. And serotonin is likely just one of a numerous biochemical messengers dictating our mood and behavior that the microbiota impacts.
Most of us can relate to the experience of having butterflies in our stomach, or to a visceral gut-wrenching feeling, and how often are we told not to ignore our “gut-instinct” or “gut-feeling” when making a decision.
Even from our simple slang, it’s clear just how symbolically connected the gut is to our emotions. Now, there’s tangible proof to support these popular metaphors.
We all have a microbiome, and they are as unique as our neural pathways
Research has shown that the body is actually composed of more bacteria than cells. We are more bug than human! Collectively, these trillions of bacteria are called the microbiome. Most of those bacteria reside in our gut, sometimes referred to as the gut microbiota, and they play multiple roles in our overall health.
The gut is no longer seen as an entity with the sole purpose of helping with all aspects of digestion. It’s also being considered as a key player in regulating inflammation and immunity.
A healthy gut consists of different iterations of bacteria for different people, and this diversity maintains wellness. A shift away from “normal” gut microbiota diversity is called dysbiosis, and dysbiosis may contribute to disease. In light of this, the microbiome has become the focus of much research attention as a new way of understanding autoimmune, gastrointestinal, and even brain disorders.
The benefit of a healthy gut is illustrated most effectively during early development. Research has indicated just how sensitive a fetus is to any changes in a mother’s microbiotic makeup, so much so that it can alter the way a baby’s brain develops. If a baby is born via cesarean section, it misses an opportunity to ingest the mother’s bacteria as it travels down the vaginal canal. Studies show that those born via c-section have to work to regain the same diversity in their microbiome as those born vaginally. Throughout our lives, our microbiome continues to be a vulnerable entity, and as we are exposed to stress, toxins, chemicals, certain diets, and even exercise, our microbiome fluctuates for better or worse.
The gut as second brain
Our gut microbiota play a vital role in our physical and psychological health via its own neural network: the enteric nervous system (ENS), a complex system of about 100 million nerves found in the lining of the gut.
The ENS is sometimes called the “second brain,” and it actually arises from the same tissues as our central nervous system (CNS) during fetal development. Therefore, it has many structural and chemical parallels to the brain.
Our ENS doesn’t wax philosophical or make executive decisions like the gray shiny mound in our skulls. Yet, in a miraculously orchestrated symphony of hormones, neurotransmitters, and electrical impulses through a pathway of nerves, both “brains” communicate back and forth. These pathways include and involve endocrine, immune, and neural pathways.
At this point in time, even though the research is inchoate and complex, it is clear that the brain and gut are so intimately connected that it sometimes seems like one system, not two.
Our emotions play a big role in functional gastrointestinal disorders
Given how closely the gut and brain interact, it has become clear that emotional and psychosocial factors can trigger symptoms in the gut. This is especially true in cases when the gut is acting up and there’s no obvious physical cause.
The functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGIDs) are a group of more than 20 chronic and hard to treat medical conditions of the gastrointestinal tract that constitute a large proportion of the presenting problems seen in clinical gastroenterology.
While FGID’s were once thought to be partly “in one’s head,” a more precise conceptualization of these difficulties posits that psychosocial factors influence the actual physiology of the gut, as well as the modulation of symptoms. In other words, psychological factors can literally impact upon physical factors, like the movement and contractions of the GI tract, causing, inflammation, pain, and other bowel symptoms.
Mental health impacts gut wellness
In light of this new understanding, it might be impossible to heal FGID’s without considering the impact of stress and emotion. Studies have shown that patients who tried psychologically based approaches had greater improvement in their symptoms compared with patients who received conventional medical treatment.
Along those lines, a new pilot study from Harvard University affiliates Benson-Henry Institute for Mind Body Medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center found that meditation could have a significant impact for those with irritable bowel syndrome and inflammatory bowel disease. Forty-eight patients with either IBS or IBD took a 9-week session that included meditation training, and the results showed reduced pain, improved symptoms, stress reduction, and the change in expression of genes that contribute to inflammation.
Poor gut health can lead to neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders
Vice-versa, poor gut health has been implicated in neurological and neuropsychiatric disorders. Disturbances in gut health have been linked to multiple sclerosis, autistic spectrum disorders, and Parkinson’s disease. This is potentially related to pro-inflammatory states elicited by gut dysbiosis-microbial imbalance on or inside the body. Additional connections between age-related gut changes and Alzheimer’s disease have also been made.
Further, there is now research that is dubbing depression as an inflammatory disorder mediated by poor gut health. In fact, multiple animal studies have shown that manipulating the gut microbiota in some way can produce behaviors related to anxiety and depression. (Maes, Kubera, Leunis, Berk, J. Affective Disorders, 2012 and Berk, Williams, Jacka, BMC Med, 2013).
Our brain’s health, which will be discussed in more depth in a later blog post, is dependent on many lifestyle choices that mediate gut health; including most notably diet (i.e., reduction of excess sugar and refined carbohydrates) and pre and probiotic intake.
The brain-gut connection has treatment implications
We are now faced with the possibility of both prevention and treatment of neurological/neuropsychiatric difficulties via proper gut health. On the flip side, stress-reduction and other psychological treatments can help prevent and treat gastrointestinal disorders. This discovery can potentially lead to reduced morbidity, impairment, and chronic dependency on health care resources.
The most empowering aspect to the gut-brain connection is the understanding that many of our daily lifestyle choices play a role in mediating our overall wellness. This whole-body approach to healthcare and wellness continues to show its value in our longevity, well-being, and quality of life: that both physical and mental health go hand-in-hand.
Cavendish Mews is a smart set of flats in Mayfair where flapper and modern woman, the Honourable Lettice Chetwynd has set up home after coming of age and gaining her allowance. To supplement her already generous allowance, and to break away from dependence upon her family, Lettice has established herself as a society interior designer, so her flat is decorated with a mixture of elegant antique Georgian pieces and modern Art Deco furnishings, using it as a showroom for what she can offer to her well heeled clients.
For nearly a year Lettice had been patiently awaiting the return of her then beau, Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, after being sent to Durban by his mother, Lady Zinnia in an effort to destroy their relationship which she wanted to end so that she could marry Selwyn off to his cousin, Pamela Fox-Chavers. Having been made aware by Lady Zinnia in October that during the course of the year, whilst Lettice had been biding her time, waiting for Selwyn’s eventual return, he had become engaged to the daughter of a Kenyan diamond mine owner whilst in Durban. Fleeing Lady Zinnia’s Park Lane mansion, Lettice returned to Cavendish Mews and milled over her options over a week as she reeled from the news. Then, after that week, she knew exactly what to do to resolve the unpleasant issues raised by Lady Zinnia’s unwelcome news about her son. Taking extra care in her dress, she took herself off to the neighbouring upper-class London suburb of Belgravia and paid a call upon Sir John Nettleford-Hughes.
Lettice is now engaged to Sir John Nettleford Hughes. Old enough to be her father, wealthy Sir John, according to London society gossip enjoys dalliances with a string of pretty chorus girls of Lettice’s age and younger. As an eligible man in a aftermath of the Great War when such men are a rare commodity, with a vast family estate in Bedfordshire, houses in Mayfair, Belgravia and Pimlico and Fontengil Park in Wiltshire, quite close to the Glynes estate belonging to her parents, Lettice’s mother, Lady Sadie, invited him as a potential suitor to her 1922 Hunt Ball, which she used as a marriage market for Lettice. Although she did not become engaged to him then, Lettice did reacquaint herself with Sir John at an amusing Friday to Monday long weekend party held by mutual friends Sir John and Lady Gladys Caxton at their Scottish country estate in 1924. To her surprise, Lettice found Sir John’s company rather enjoyable. She then ran into him again later that year at the Portland Gallery’s autumn show in Soho, where she found him yet again to be a pleasant and attentive companion for much of the evening. Sir John also made a proposition to her that night: he offered her his hand in marriage should she ever need it. More like a business arrangement than a marriage proposal, Sir John offered Lettice the opportunity to enjoy the benefits of his large fortune, be chatelain of all his estates and continue to have her interior design business, under the conditions that she agree to provide him with an heir, and that he be allowed to discreetly carry on his affairs in spite of their marriage vows. He even suggested that Lettice might be afforded the opportunity to have her own extra marital liaisons if she were discreet about them. When Lettice’s understanding with Selwyn Spencely, son of the Duke of Walmsford, fell apart, Lettice agreed to Sir John’s proposal. Then, during the General Strike* that almost brought the nation to a standstill, Selwyn and Lettice were reintroduced, and she found out that Selwyn wasn’t engaged to another woman at all, as she was led to believe by Lady Zinnia, and it had all been a fabrication, leaving her in a quandary over what to do: break her engagement with Sir John and marry the man she truly loves and has never stopped loving, or remain engaged to Sir John, preserving his honour and the good name of her own family.
Now however, standing on the sweeping front steps of Portland stone as she looks up at the impressive Regency façade of Sir John’s Belgravia townhouse and knocks at the black painted front door with the polished brass knocker, she knows what she must do.
Sir John’s gentle faced butler in his stiffly starched collar and black barathea suit, answers the door.
“Miss Chetwynd!” Grindley says, allowing his ever calm façade to drop for just a moment as his eye widen to see Lettice standing outside on his master’s front steps.
“How do you do Grindley. Is His Lordship at home?” Lettice asks a little uncertainty.
“Certainly His Lordship is in residence, Miss Chetwynd,” the butler says kindly as he steps aside, ushering her from the cold and dark, empty street outside into the warmly illuminated marble hallway within. “Please do come inside.”
“Is he in the upstairs drawing room, Grindley?” Lettice asks.
“He is, Miss Chetwynd.” Grindley affirms with a deferential bow. “I’ll let His Lordship know that you’re here.”
“Oh please don’t bother, Grindley,” Lettice replies hurriedly. “I can show myself up. You’re sure you have a hundred and one other more important things to do than escort me upstairs.” She insists. “I know the way.”
And before the butler can object, Lettice slips lithely past him and hurries towards the sweeping carpeted spiral staircase to the upper floors of the townhouse.
The clip of Lettice’s louis heels echo throughout the lofty entrance hall as she scuttles across the marble floor. She passes by the uncomfortable Regency hall chair on which she sat, awaiting Grindley to announce her to Sir John the first time she visited the house. The hallway is illuminated by the grand electrified crystal chandelier suspended from a dome three storeys above. She stops momentarily as she reaches the bottom of the staircase and places her hand on the black painted metal railing and glances back, her heartbeat thumping in her ears. Grindley stands where she left him, a lone figure in the entranceway, with a look on his face she can’t quite read – perhaps a mixture of astonishment, perplexity, concern and maybe even fear. However even as she breathes heavily where she stands, Lettice knows that she hasn’t a moment to lose, as she needs to follow her instincts whilst she has the wherewithal to do so, and already she can feel her courage fading with every fluttering heartbeat.
Lettice looks nervously up the stairs, before gulping and hurrying up them. As she passes the ornately framed portraits of Sir John’s ancestors, she is reminded of how she felt seeing their imperious stares looking down upon her from their gilded homes the first time she passed them. “Interloper!” they seemed to silently say that time, and since getting to know Sir John and his ancestors subsequently, Lettice has no more warmed to them than they seem to have toward her. “Coquette” they state disapprovingly this time, their looks accusational and critical as she Takes the stairs hurriedly, on occasion two at a time. “Bolter!” Do they know what she has planned this time, she wonders as she tries not to catch their steely gazes.
“Good evening, John.” Lettice says breezily as she opens the door of the first floor drawing room, swinging it widely open and walking into the warmly illuminated room where Sir John sits in his favourite wingback armchair, dressed in a smart velvet smoking jacket. The room hasn’t changed since Lettice set foot in it a year ago, to accept Sir John’s businesslike proposal of marriage. The room is still a symbol of restrained elegant and uncluttered lines from the Regency era. A selection of newspapers are spread out neatly on the surface of the central round Regency swan table next to a beautiful blue and white Chinese vase of blue irises and leather volumes from his library stand on the table next to his chair, along with a decanter of port. Arthur Burrows’* round vowels and gentle modulation drifts from the large mahogany wireless announcing the first news bulletin of the evening, featuring a story about a cinema disaster in Dromcollogher in County Limerick** with many lives lost.
“Why good evening, my dear Lettice.” Sir John replies, grasping his silver topped walking stick as he awkwardly rises from his at a comfortable seat. “What a pleasant surprise, my dear. Please, do take a seat.” He indicates with an elegant sweep of his hand to the sofa. He glances at the mantle and notes that the time is just after seven o’clock in the evening, his face crumpling in concern.
Before Lettice can answer, there is a surring slap of footsteps outside, as out of breath and red faced, Grindley enters the drawing room. “I do beg your pardon, Your Lordship.” he huffs. “I did try to stop her, but Miss Chetwynd did insist on entering your presence unannounced.”
“And quite right she is too, Grindley.” Sir John says with a smile, the response causing Grindley’s face to suddenly drain of colour and his eyes widen in surprise. “My fiancée knows her own mind, and will have things her way, as she sees fit.”
Not quite sure how to respond at first, the butler simply stands there like a caricature statue of a butler, before managing to reply in a strangulated voice, “Very good, Your Lordship.”
“Besides, as my fiancée and your future mistress,” Sir John goes on. “Miss Chetwynd has no need for an introduction in her own home.” He turns his attentions back to Lettice. “Because it is her home every bit as much as it is mine as well. And anything I have, I will share equally with my wife.”
“I do beg your pardon, Miss Chetwynd.” Grindley manages to say before bowing low before his employer’s future wife.
“Oh no, please don’t apologise, Grindley.” Lettice assures the male servant. “I can be a little tempestuous and rash sometimes.”
“Very good, Miss Chetwynd.” Grindley replies with another less deep bow.
“I was not long settled down with my friend here,” He holds out the thick volume in his left hand to allow Lettice to read the spine. “To listen to the news from Marconi House***
“Tennyson,” Lettice reads aloud from the spine, before chuckling in a disappointed way. “In should have known.”
“I’m having a glass of port. Would you like one, or perhaps you’d prefer something stronger?” Sir John asks. “Perhaps a gin and tonic?”
“No. No thank you, John.” Lettice replies nervously. “I can’t stop for long. I have other places to visit.”
Sir John’s face, bright and animated at her arrival suddenly takes on a disappointed look.
“But thank you for the thought, though.” Lettice goes on.
“Well at least have a seat, Lettice my dear.” His thoughts suddenly alight on his manservant standing there, awaiting instructions from his employer. “Err… that will be all, thank you Grindley.”
“Very good, Your Lordship.” he replies with another deep bow.
Once the doors to the drawing room are closed again, and they can no longer hear the butler’s footsteps echoing in the hallway outside, Lettice goes on, “I had to come and see you, and I had to do it whilst I still had the courage to tell it to you.”
“Tell me what, Lettice?” Sir John queries. “This sounds somewhat troubling.” He discards his book of Tennyson and deposits it on top of the pile sitting to his left. “Am I going to need something a little stronger than brandy to cope with what you have to say?”
“Oh!” Lettice sighs as she lowers herself onto the elegant Regency Stripe upholstery of the sofa. “I really don’t know, John. In don’t even know quite how to say it, myself.”
“If it is a bitter pill to swallow, might I suggest that it is said quickly, and with minimal preamble.”
Lettice sighs heavily this time, her shoulders rising and then falling again. She looks John squarely in the face. He isn’t handsome in the way Selwyn is: striking yes, in that way mature men past their prime sometimes were, and clearly very comfortable with the power that privilege and money bestows, but not handsome. She thinks for a moment. What is she about to give up? A comfortable existence as Lady Nettleford-Hughes. She doesn’t need Sir John’s money. She has enough of her own, and with more commissions for her services as an interior designer, she will soon have more. A relationship based on mutual respect. But what respect ca a man have for his wife when he prefers the company of chorus girls younger than her? Will that fascination wane over time? She doubts it. Selwyn respects Lettice enough to have come back to her. A fondness from Sir John, versus true love from Selwyn.
“I’m breaking off our engagement, John.” Lettice blurts out.
“Ahh.” Sir John replies from his seat, his eyes rolling to the ornate plaster ceiling above as he nods sagely.
“Ahh? Ahhh?” Lettice exclaims with exasperation. “Is that all you have to say, John?”
“Well, what else is there to say, Lettice my dear? You have come to a decision, and that decision must be honoured. We both agreed from the outset, that should you have a change in circumstances that also changed your answer to me, that you were able to apply your prerogative and end the engagement.”
“What do you know of my circumstances, or their alterations, John?” Lettice queries, looking at him with suspicious eyes.
“It may surprise you, Lettice my dear, but rather a good deal, and evidently far more than you give me credit for.”
“Well, you don’t seem very surprised, or upset.” Lettice huffs.
“Ahh, I may know a great deal about your circumstances, Lettice my dear. However it appears that you in return, after nearly a year of engagement, know nothing about me and my inner workings and emotions.”
“Very well then, John. You don’t appear to be surprised or upset to me.”
“Well, in response you your first presumption, you are right. I’m not surprised. However, as to the second, I am very much upset, but this too shall pass.”
“That’s a very civilised response, John.”
“As you also know, my dear Lettice, I come from a family for whom any signs of emotion were a weakness to be smothered and quashed. I have learned to hide my feelings beneath countless layers of bored indifference and civility, but do not presume I am not upset by your announcement, albeit not an unexpected one. I am, extremely upset.”
“How is it that you were expecting this turn of events, dear John?”
“If I am being brutally frank, which you know I am apt to do on select occasions, I actually suspected this would have happened when the idea of our engagement had lost its sheen and became tarnished with time. I’d made the proposition to you, now that I consider it in hindside, perhaps a little out of kindness, or perhaps chivalry, or dare I even say this aloud, out of pity for you, because I knew that Zinnia would never allow you and Spencely to marry.”
Lettice cannot help but laugh a shocked and staccato guffaw which lacks mirth.
“I can’t say I’ve ever been the subject of someone’s pity before, or at least not as far as I know.”
Ignoring her remark, Sir John goes on, “And then about a month ago, I knew almost certainly that it would only be a matter of time before things came to a head.”
“Does this have anything to do with my ardent dislike for your Gaiety Girl****, Miss Young?”
“Paula?” Sir John asks, looking earnestly at Lettice. “Good god no! Anyway, as I have told you on countless occasions before now, I’m about through with Paula and her predatorial attitudes and cloying clinginess.”
“But not just yet.”
“No, Lettice.” he replies a little peevishly as his eyes widen and a flame of irritation flares amidst the cool blue of eyes. “I did say I’m about through with Paula. I’m not quite done, yet.”
“Then how was it that you know with certainty that I would end the engagement?”
“It came from the most unlikely of places, actually,” Sir John says, picking up his crystal goblet and taking a sip of brandy. “It occurred as a result of a business visit to Lord Pendergast.”
“Lord Pendergast?” Lettice asks in surprise.
“Yes, after the success of the Radiolympia*****, we’re looking to patent a new design of glass valves for wirelesses.” He indicates to the large mahogany radiogram where Arthur Burrows well-modulated and clear tones talk now about the lighter subject of Gene Tunney becoming the new world heavyweight boxing champion after a fight in Philadelphia with Jack Dempsey******.
“No, I meant how does Lord Pendergast know anything about me, or that I was likely to end our engagement?”
“Oh!” Sir John chortles sadly as he returns his now empty goblet to the polished surface of his side table, next to the bulbous decanter. “It wasn’t Lord Pendergast who told me of your change in circumstance, but rather Lady Pendergast. I believe she was working with you at that volunteer kitchen******* in Leicester Square Railway Station during the General Strike********.”
Lettice suddenly remembers the older lady with her white hair set modishly in smart marcelled waves********* dressed in a soft pink day dress beneath a cotton pinny apron********** who despite her diminutive stature had a booming voice perfect for commanding her fellow volunteers and showed a remarkable adeptness and efficiency in her tea making skills.
Breaking into her thoughts, Sir John goes on. “Lady Pendergast remarked to me in the drawing room upon my visit to their home, as I waited for Lord Pendergast to arrive usher me to his study, that you had been chatting with ‘that lovely son of the Duke of Walmsford’. She said you had quite an interlude.”
“Lady Pendergast had no right to speak out of turn.” Lettice mutters irritably.
“Oh I don’t think she was speaking out of turn, my dear, and there was no malice intended in her telling me what she did, which in itself was quite innocuous.” Sir John goes on. “She was just being polite to one of her husband’s business associates whom she doesn’t know terribly well.”
“And what else did Lady Pendergast have to say, John?”
“Nothing, and she didn’t need to. I merely needed to make contact with his club*********** to establish that he was back in London after his enforced sojourn to Durban.”
“I’m sorry John.” Lettice lowers her gaze to her lap.
“It’s a pity really,” Sir John opines ruefully. “I really do feel that given time, we would have made an excellent pair, you and I, with a great deal of mutual respect for one another.”
“If circumstances were different.” Lettice intervenes. “But they aren’t, and I can’t apologise to you for loving someone else. You of all people know how complicated the affairs of the heart are.”
“So, you are saying you love young Spencely, Lettice my dear?”
“I am, John, and I don’t think I’ve ever stopped loving Selwyn since we first met in 1922. You must understand the attractions of love, John, and its pull. I know you do.”
“Of course I do, but I find it all rather tiresome.”
“Tiresome? Do you find Miss Young, or even Mademoiselle Flanton tiresome, John?”
“Paula only has one love, Lettice my dear, and that is herself.” Sir John opines. “There is no more room for anyone else in her shrivelled and desiccated heart, although her excellent skills as an actress hide that,” He chortles with amusement, which surprises Lettice. “At least at first, they do. No wonder she has been such a sensation on the West End stage.”
“Then what do you find tiresome, John?”
“Love of course! In my day, we didn’t need love to get married – no grand sweeping gestures of romance, or expectations of devotion from sunup to sundown. I blame all those ridiculously romantic moving pictures all you Bright Young Things************ watch at the Kinema************* We just needed respect for one another, which I really thought we had between us, Lettice, a modicum of patience and a little discretion.”
“Well, I’m afraid that I fell in love with Selwyn when I first met him at Mater’s 1922 Hunt Ball, John, and I don’t think I’ve ever felt any differently to that, even when Lady Zinnia tore him away from me.”
“Well, they do say that absence makes the heart grow fonder.”
“And it’s true, or at least it is true for me John.”
“And does young Spencely feel the same way about you, as you do about him, Lettice?” Sir John asks seriously.
“Oh, he does, John!” Lettice enthuses. “It may be a sweeping romantic gesture you detest, but he has even told me so, numerous times since we reacquainted ourselves that day at the in Leicester Square.”
“You paint me uncharitably, Lettice. It isn’t becoming of you.” Sir John chides. “I never said I detested romantic gestures. I should be a lonely man if I didn’t apply them to my paramours**************.” He chuckles with a sudden tiredness in his voice. “I just don’t see the necessity for them in marriages.”
“I’m sorry John. That was rather catty*************** of me.” Lettice says contritely. “Forgive me?”
“Of course, Lettice.”
“You know, should really hate me, John,” Lettice says. “Loathe me.”
“But why should I do that, Lettice, when I do not hate or loathe you at all?”
“You should be in a pique, want to scratch my eyes out, or dig out my cold and uncaring heart from my chest.”
“There is no point, Lettice my dear, when it appears that you are doing a perfectly capable job of loathing and torching yourself without any assistance from me.”
“You’re so maddeningly calm, John.”
“Well, you know how I hate amateur dramatics,” He looks earnestly at her. “And melodrama.” he adds a little peevishly. “I don’t see the point of either. You have had your say, exercised your right as the engaged female in the party to use your prerogative to terminate the engagement.”
“You make it sound, so… so…” Lettice struggles for the word before stating, “So clinical, so businesslike.”
“Well, as you have rightly sighted as your reasoning for ending our understanding, it wasn’t a grand, sweeping gesture or love. It was a business agreement. Agreements are frequently broken, especially in business. What’s done is done. Let it be thus.”
He pauses for a moment.
“I don’t hate you, or loathe you, Lettice. I never could. I have too much admiration for you, Lettice. Even now, in this moment, I cannot help but do so, because you are exercising your own right to happiness and self-determination, which is something that has always made you appealing to me.”
“You make me sound like a piece of ripe fruit, John.” Lettice chuckles in an attempt to lift their spirits.
“You are a woman who knows her own mind.” Sir John clarifies. He pauses and then adds, “But what about Spencely and his diamond mine heiress? Has he ended it with her?”
“No, John,” Lettice replies simply with a heavy sigh that is half sadness and half relief. “Because there was no Kitty Avendale in the first place, a diamond mine heiress or otherwise.”
“What’s that?”
“It is all some fabrication, concocted by Lady Zinnia.”
“But you saw newspaper articles. You showed me one.”
“It was created by Lady Zinnia, as were all the others that she showed me – convincingly I’ll admit – but fabricated nonetheless.”
“Really?”
“And I have also discovered that my youngest brother Lionel is involved in some way, although I am still trying to determine exactly how.”
“How do you know all this, Lettice?” Sir John asks in awe.
“It was Gerald’s idea, really. He suggested some time ago that we hire a Pinkerton**************** to investigate this supposed engagement, what we ourselves couldn’t, and where we couldn’t.”
Sir John’s eyes grow wide. “A Pinkerton?”
“He’s actually uncovered quite a bit thus far, but we are still waiting on more evidence on the details of this fabrication of Lady Zinnia’s.”
“I’ve always admired you for your pluck as well, Lettice my dear.”
“Oh, and Selwyn recently found out why Lady Zinnia has taken against me so.” Lettice adds, almost as an afterthought.
“I presume it is because as far as Zinnia is conconcerned, you come from too parochial and unremarkable a lineage. At least that is what you have implied to me.”
“Well, I thought that too,” Lettice agrees. “But it turns out that she has taken against me because of my father’s refusal.”
“Refusal? Refusal of what?”
Lettice’s cheeks colour with embarrassment as she replies, “Her advances. He was married to Mater at the time she… propositioned him. He refused her, of course.”
Sir John does not remark on how very different Lettice’s father, the Viscount, is to most men of his acquaintance.
“And so now she is being spiteful, just to be contrary., because her pride was hurt by my father twenty or so years ago.”
“Well, you may remember me saying to you, that Zinnia was a vain woman when she was younger, Lettice my dear.”
“And she certainly has a long memory.”
“So, what are you and young Spencely going to do then, Lettice? You have the desire to be married, but if Zinnia is set against your union, you now know to what depths she will sink to prevent it from happening.”
“Where there is a will, there is a way, dear John. We are waiting for more evidence linking Lady Zinnia to that sham of a marriage claim. If he can uncover irrefutable, incriminating and compelling evidence of this, then Selwyn and I will have her over a barrel, and be able to marry.”
Sir John sighs with satisfaction. “I’ve always admired your pluck as well my dear.”
“I’m sorry John. My mind is made up. I can’t settle for fondness when I can have love. You said I know my own mind, and this is something I know for certain.”
“It’s a pity for all of us, really. You have a wonderful way with the servants that I certainly don’t have. Not to mention darling Clemmie.”
“Thinking of whom,” Lettice says, standing up from the sofa. “That is who I will go and see tomorrow. She deserves to know the truth.”
“Then let her hear that from me, Lettice.”
“But shouldn’t it?”
“No.” Sir John cuts her off, holding up one of his elegant hands to stop her from speaking any more. “It will be far better coming from me, as her beloved brother. Let her vent her pain and take her frustrations out on me. I’m her elder brother, and I know how to best manage her raging. You will doubtless only gain her ire.”
Lettice doesn’t speak straight away.
“I’m very sorry to have caused her pain, and you too of course. I really love Clemance and I treasure her friendship. I didn’t want her to be caught in the crosshairs.”
“I’ll manage that, Lettice.” Sir John insists.
“Do…” Lettice begins gingerly. “Do you ever think she will want to be friends with me again?”
Sir John does not answer immediately as he considers his response thoughtfully.
“Give her time, Lettice. Time is a healer of wounds.”
“And you, John? I should be sorry to forgo your friendship, and I do think we are friends, or could be so.”
Again, a heavy silence envelops them as Sir John considers his response before speaking it.
“Lettice, that might be considered as eating your cake and having it at the same time*****************. You must allow me time as well.” He sighs heavily. “Since I have had some time on my own to contemplate this eventuality, I have also had time to consider what I might do.”
“What are you going to do, John?”
“I’m not needed here for business at the moment, and the Season is drawing to a close for the year. Poor Clemmie hasn’t been frightfully happy ever since she arrived here in London. She has tried to fit in, and your presence has certainly helped make her re-assimilation easier and happier, but the adjustment has been very hard for her. She’s been away from England too long, and she misses her old Parisian friends and speaking French regularly with people other than her maid. There is also the fact that those nearest and dearest to her are buried in the Cimetière du Père-Lachaise***************** in Paris. This news about you, I cannot deny, will be a blow to her. Therefore, I thought I might take some rooms in a fashionable Paris district and take Clemmie back to the city she loves for a while.”
“How long is a while?” Lettice asks hesitantly.
“We’ll see.” Sir John says enigmatically. “We’ll see.”
“The Picasso,” Lettice says. “I’ll organise to have it returned to you.”
“No, no, Lettice.” Sir John replies. “You keep it. You know I have no eye for those daubs you like so well. Better it stay with someone who will appreciate it.”
“Are you sure, John?” Lettice queries.
“Quite, Lettice.”
“That is so generous of you, John. I… I don’t know what to say, except thank you!” Lettice replies in astonishment.
“Keep it with my blessings, Lettice. And if you happen to think of your old friend every now and then when you look at, I’d be grateful.”
“Of course, John.”
The pair fall silent again, the air filled with unspoken words, regrets and a future destined not to come to fruition.
Lettice gathers her snakeskin handbag and stumpy umbrella from the sofa. “Well, if there is nothing else, I really should be leaving, John. I’ve disrupted your evening more than enough with my presence.”
“Yes.” Sir John replies absentmindedly, gathering himself up out of his seat with the aid of his cane. “Yes, Tennyson awaits me.”
Lettice can see a sudden sallowness in his face, almost as if he has aged a decade since she arrived at his townhouse. His shoulders are less proud and his stance more slumped and reliant upon his cane for support. His blue eyes sparkle dully.
“Goodbye John.”
“Goodbye Lettice, and good luck.”
Lettice turns and walks with slightly shaking footsteps across the thick carpet towards the door. As she depresses the handle of the right-hand door, she pauses and looks back.
“If you are going back to Paris for a while, you might like to have dinner with Mademoiselle Flanton. I know you are not the greatest fan of love, but it appears as obvious as the nose on your face, to me, that you and Mademoiselle Flanton have rekindled a flame that has never truly been extinguished either. Perhaps Paris is where you belong, with her. Don’t miss out on your second chance. They seldom come around.”
And without saying another word, Lettice opens the door, walks out and closes it behind her.
*Arthur Richard Burrows (1882–1947) was a pioneering British journalist and wireless enthusiast who famously became the very first voice of the BBC. Often referred to as the founding father of broadcast journalism in the United Kingdom, he was responsible for many of the nation's milestone media "firsts".
**The Dromcollogher Cinema Disaster was widely reported across British and Irish newspapers and on radio in early September 1926. A tragic fire at a temporary cinema housed in a barn loft in Dromcollogher, County Limerick, resulted in the deaths of forty-eight people, shocking the public and prompting intense discussions on rural safety.
***The BBC’s first radio station 2LO was originally broadcast from the 2LO transmitter studio on the seventh floor of Marconi House, a building at 335 the Strand. Arthur Burrows spoke the historic opening line: "This is 2LO, Marconi House, London calling," before reading the news at the start of the 2LO broadcast, which commenced at seven in the evening.
****Gaiety Girls were the chorus girls in Edwardian musical comedies, beginning in the 1890s at the Gaiety Theatre, London, in the shows produced by George Edwardes.
*****The first National Radio Exhibition—popularly known as Radiolympia—opened its doors on the 4th of September 1926 at the Empire Hall in Olympia, London, establishing a massive annual tradition that would define British home entertainment for decades. The 1926 show marked the exact moment radio moved away from being a messy, technical experiment for hobbyists into a user-friendly appliance for the mainstream living room. Prior to 1926, home radios required cumbersome, messy acid batteries (accumulators) that had to be taken to local garages to be recharged. Therefore, the star technology of the first exhibition was the debut of mains-powered (AC) radio receivers. The most prominent was the Gambrell Baby Grand, which allowed consumers to plug their wireless set directly into the domestic wall socket for the first time.
******On September the 26th, 1926, Gene Tunney defeated Jack Dempsey in Philadelphia to become the heavyweight boxing champion of the world, a massive sporting result heavily covered by London morning papers.
*******During the 1926 General Strike, the volunteer canteens — often staffed by "titled ladies" to feed volunteers maintaining essential services — were largely organized and supported by the upper classes, society women, and the government\'s emergency volunteer network. Women from high society and the aristocracy, including Lady Louis Mountbatten, Lady Quilter, Lady Mary Ashley Cooper, and Lady Carmichael-Anstruther, participated in and helped manage these canteens. Canteens, such as those overseen by a "Mrs. Loeffler" at Scotland House and similar efforts in Hyde Park, provided food and refreshments to the thousands of middle-class volunteers, such as special constables, who broke the strike. These canteens were part of a coordinated effort by the Conservative government to maintain essential services and counter the strike\'s effectiveness. The focus of these efforts was to support the volunteer workforce—such as the "special constables"—to keep services running, as opposed to the soup kitchens operated in mining communities by workers\' wives to support the miners.
********The General Strike in Britain occurred between May the 3rd and May the 12th, 1926. It was a nine-day nationwide stoppage called by the Trades Union Congress (TUC) to support coal miners facing wage reductions and worsening conditions. Roughly one million, seven hundred thousand workers went on strike, primarily in transport and heavy industry.
*********Marcelling is a hair styling technique in which hot curling tongs are used to induce a curl into the hair. Its appearance was similar to that of a finger wave but it is created using a different method. Marcelled hair was a popular style for women\'s hair in the 1920s, often in conjunction with a bob cut. For those women who had longer hair, it was common to tie the hair at the nape of the neck and pin it above the ear with a stylish hair pin or flower. One famous wearer was American entertainer, Josephine Baker.
**********A pinny apron (short for "pinafore") is a sleeveless, apron-like garment designed to protect clothing while working. Popular in Britain and Australia, it typically features a bib front, a loose fit, and large pockets, often crossing over at the back rather than tying, making it easy to slip on for cooking, cleaning, or crafting.
***********A gentleman’s club is a private members' club originally created by and for British upper-class men in the Eighteenth Century. Originating in London’s West End—particularly around St James's Street and Pall Mall (often called "Clubland")—these clubs were established as exclusive, second homes for aristocratic, wealthy, or influential men. hey offered a private space to socialise, network, play cards, dine, and smoke away from the bustle of the city and family life. Traditional clubs are known for grand architecture, extensive libraries, formal dining rooms, and quiet, comfortable drawing chairs. Membership requires a formal nomination process by existing members. Historically, they enforced rigid dress codes (such as formal evening wear) and barred women from entering.
************The Bright Young Things, or Bright Young People, was a nickname given by the tabloid press to a group of Bohemian young aristocrats and socialites in 1920s London.
*************The word kinema is the original, archaic British spelling of cinema (a movie theatre or the art of motion pictures). he term comes directly from the Greek word kinēma, which means "movement" or "motion". It is the exact same root used in scientific words like kinetics (the study of motion). When motion pictures first gained popularity in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the French adopted the spelling cinéma. The British initially preferred to stick closer to the Greek root, using a "K". By the mid-to-late 1920s, British newspapers, signage, and trade magazines were using "kinema" and "cinema" interchangeably. Eventually, the "C" spelling became the global English standard.
**************A paramour is a secret, illicit romantic partner or lover, particularly one involved with a person who is already married to someone else. Unlike a standard relationship, the term almost always implies that the relationship is improper, forbidden, or secretive. A paramour has no legal marital standing; the relationship exists outside of wedlock or formal partnership. The word comes from the Old French phrase par amour, which translates literally to "by or through love."
***************Whilst “catty” fits perfectly into the sharp, conversational dialogue of the 1920s, the adjective actually originated slightly earlier. The Oxford English Dictionary traces the first written use of "catty" meaning "devious and spiteful" to 1886. It gradually replaced the older Victorian term "cattish". According to the OED, the associated noun "cattiness" made its very first appearance in print in 1920. The concept of "catty remarks" or "catty gossip" became incredibly popular in 1920s magazine stories, plays, and social commentary.
****************A “Pinkerton” is a private detective, and refers to the Pinkerton Detective Agency, founded by Allan Pinkerton, known for its historical role in labour disputes and spying. For decades after Allan Pinkerton's death, his name became a slang term for any private investigator, regardless of whether they worked for the Pinkerton Agency or not. Today, the agency (now simply called Pinkerton) focuses on risk management, intelligence, and security services.
*****************Although we know the phrase as “to have your cake and eat it too”, this well known English phrase was not always spoken thus. "A man cannot have his cake and eat his cake." was the first time it was recorded. The phrase appears in a letter from Thomas Howard, the Duke of Norfolk, to King Henry VIII's chief minister, Thomas Cromwell in 1546. The phrase gained widespread popularity when it was included in playwright John Heywood's famous 1546 glossary, A Dialogue Conteinyng the Nomber in Effect of All the Prouerbes in the Englishe Tongue. In this version, the wording was slightly different: "Wolde ye bothe eate your cake, and haue your cake?" The original 16th-century phrasing—"eat your cake and have it"—made the logical meaning of the proverb much clearer, and was still in common use up until the Second World War. It explicitly highlighted the physical impossibility of the sequence: once you consume the cake, it is gone, so you can no longer possess it. Over the centuries, English speakers gradually flipped the order of the words to the modern "have your cake and eat it too," which often confuses people today because having a cake is usually the natural prerequisite to eating it.
*****************Cimetière du Père-Lachaise is the largest and most famous cemetery in Paris, spanning one hundred and ten acres in the city's 20th arrondissement. Established by Napoleon Bonaparte in 1804, it is widely considered the world's first garden cemetery and stands as the most visited burial ground on Earth, drawing millions of visitors annually. It was designed by architect Alexandre-Théodore Brongniart as a vast English park, featuring winding cobblestone paths, thousands of mature trees, and ornate, house-like stone mausoleums. This layout completely revolutionised funerary architecture, directly inspiring the design of Victorian-era cemeteries across Britain and North America.
This upper-class Belgravia drawing room may look real to you, but it is not all that it seems, for it is in fact made up entirely of miniatures from my 1;12 miniatures collection, including some particularly special pieces.
Fun things to look for in this tableau include:
Lettice’s pretty dyed green straw cloche adorned with satin roses, green ribbons and peacock feathers is an artisan miniature. 1:12 size miniature hats made to such exacting standards of quality and realism such as these are often far more expensive than real hats are. When you think that it would sit comfortably on the tip of your index finger, yet it could cost in excess of $150.00 or £100.00, it is an extravagance. American artists seem to have the monopoly on this skill and some of the hats that I have seen or acquired over the years are remarkable. The maker of this hat is unknown, but it is part of a larger collection I bought from an American miniature collector Marilyn Bickel.
Lettice’s crocodile skin handbag comes from Doreen Jeffries’ Small Wonders Miniatures in England.
Lettice’s furled green umbrella is a 1:12 artisan pieces made of silk, with a wooden lacquered handle. It comes from specialist artisan miniature makers in England. Sir John’s silver knobbed walking stick is also a 1:12 artisan miniature. The top is sterling silver. It was made by the Little Green Workshop in England who specialise in high end, high quality miniatures.
Sir John’s smart and select drawing room has been furnished for the most part by the high-end miniature manufacturers Bespaq and J.B.M. The gilt swan decorated tables and pedestal come from Bespaq, whilst the Regency stripe low backed sofa and wingback arm chair come from J.B.M.
The beautiful gold and bronze decorated black chinoiserie screen in the background is a very special 1:12 miniature screen created especially for me, and there is no other like it anywhere else in the world. It was handmade and decorated over a twelve month period for me as a Christmas gift last year by miniature artisan Tim Sidford as a thanks for the handmade Christmas baubles I make him every year. Tim’s miniature works are truly amazing! You can see some of his handmade decorated interiors using upcycled Playmobil, found objects and 1:12 miniatures here: www.flickr.com/photos/timsidford/albums/72157624010136051/
The blue and white Chinese vase, like the ones on the pedestals in the background are 1:12 artisan miniatures. The vase on the table, which has been hand decorated was acquired from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop in the United Kingdom, whilst the two in the background came from an online specialist on eBay. The blue irises in the vase are all made of polymer clay that is moulded on wires to allow them to be shaped at will and put into individually formed floral arrangements. Very realistic looking, they are made by a 1:12 miniature specialist in Germany.
The pile of books in the table next to Sir John’s armchair, and the newspaper broadsheets in the central table are 1:12 size miniatures made by the British miniature artisan Ken Blythe. Most of the books I own that he has made may be opened to reveal authentic printed interiors. In some cases, you can even read the words, depending upon the size of the print, as is the case with the headlines on the newspapers! I have quite a large representation of Ken Blythe’s work in my collection, but so little of his real artistry is seen because the books that he specialised in making are usually closed, sitting on shelves or closed on desks and table surfaces. In this case, the books on the table are non-opening, however what might amaze you is that all Ken Blythe’s books and magazines are authentically replicated 1:12 scale miniatures of real volumes. To create something so authentic to the original in such detail and so clearly, really does make this a miniature artisan piece. Ken Blythe’s work is highly sought after by miniaturists around the world today and command high prices at auction for such tiny pieces, particularly now that he is no longer alive. I was fortunate enough to acquire pieces from Ken Blythe prior to his death about four years ago, as well as through his estate via his daughter and son-in-law. His legacy will live on with me and in my photography which I hope will please his daughter.
The carafe and glass on the table next to Sir John’s chair are made of real glass, and also came from Kathleen Knight’s Doll’s House in the United Kingdom.
The tall Dutch style chest of drawers to the far left of the photo was one of the first pieces of miniature furniture I ever bought for myself. I chose it as payment for several figures I made from Fimo clay for a local high street toy shop when I was eight years old. All these years later, I definitely think I got the better end of the deal!
The two Regency silhouettes hanging on the wall came from Kathleen Knight’s Dolls House Shop.
The Georgian rug on the floor has been woven by Pike, Pike and Company in the United Kingdom. The striped wallpaper is beautiful hand impressed paper given to me by a friend, which inspired the whole “Cavendish Mews – Lettice Chetwynd” series.
Kingdom Animalia
Superphylum Ecdysozoa
Phylum Arthropoda
Subphylum Hexapoda
Class Insecta
Subclass Pterygota
Infraclass Palaeoptera (ancient winged insects)
Order Odonata (Damselflies & Dragonflies)
Suborder Anisoptera (Dragonflies)
Family Libellulidae (Common Skimmers)
Genus Erythemis
Species simplicicollis (Eastern Pondhawk) - ♂
August 9, 2020; Leon County; Tallahassee, Florida.
There were many dozens of male pondhawks at the local pond Sunday. I only saw a couple of females, and they where seeking refuge towards the center of the pond. The males were busy harassing each other along the pond's fringes.
Canon M6 Mark II; MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro; 101 images @ 100um increments; WeMacro rail; Used a DIY "light tunnel" fabricated from a roll of sheet metal and LED strip lights placed in the interior in a tight spiral (a proof of concept prototype); Canon DPP4 used to convert raw images to TIF; Zerene Stacker using slabbing method (10 images each with 3 overlap) with Pmax; exposure and color balanced w/ PS..
I knew nothing about the practical use of LED strip lights before this project. I've since discovered the concept of "pulse width modulation," or PWM. There's plenty of info on the net about it. What I observed was ghost imaging at high magnifications (>5X) and at shutter speeds of less than 1/400s. The "light tunnel" produces a lot of light, but I still had to use an ISO of 1000 at TV 1/400s and Av 5.6 at those high magnifications. The ghosting effect decreases to negligibility at lower magnifications of less than 2X and I was able to adjust exposure parameters such as reducing ISO and Tv. I did not notice any typical banding effects. I had installed a dimmer mechanism on the LED circuit, but will remove it to see if it affects anything.
I like the light that the "light tunnel" produces. Very soft and diffused.
200809_Pondhawk_Head_05
Kingdom Animalia
Superphylum Ecdysozoa
Phylum Arthropoda
Subphylum Hexapoda
Class Insecta
Subclass Pterygota
Infraclass Palaeoptera (ancient winged insects)
Order Odonata (Damselflies & Dragonflies)
Suborder Anisoptera (Dragonflies)
Family Libellulidae (Common Skimmers)
Genus Erythemis
Species simplicicollis (Eastern Pondhawk) - ♂
August 9, 2020; Leon County; Tallahassee, Florida.
There were many dozens of male pondhawks at the local pond Sunday. I only saw a couple of females, and they where seeking refuge towards the center of the pond. The males were busy harassing each other along the pond's fringes.
Canon M6 Mark II; MP-E 65mm f/2.8 1-5x Macro; 101 images @ 100um increments; WeMacro rail; Used a DIY "light tunnel" fabricated from a roll of sheet metal and LED strip lights placed in the interior in a tight spiral (a proof of concept prototype); Canon DPP4 used to convert raw images to TIF; Zerene Stacker using slabbing method (10 images each with 3 overlap) with Pmax; exposure and color balanced w/ PS..
I knew nothing about the practical use of LED strip lights before this project. I've since discovered the concept of "pulse width modulation," or PWM. There's plenty of info on the net about it. What I observed was ghost imaging at high magnifications (>5X) and at shutter speeds of less than 1/400s. The "light tunnel" produces a lot of light, but I still had to use an ISO of 1000 at TV 1/400s and Av 5.6 at those high magnifications. The ghosting effect decreases to negligibility at lower magnifications of less than 2X and I was able to adjust exposure parameters such as reducing ISO and Tv. I did not notice any typical banding effects. I had installed a dimmer mechanism on the LED circuit, but will remove it to see if it affects anything.
I like the light that the "light tunnel" produces. Very soft and diffused.
200809_Pondhawk_Head_04
Testing out the fadeable cathode wrangled by Mr J Barkby. This device is the first step in trying to construct a more complex tool.
Site Drawing ~ Slowness ~ Repetition
Drawing becomes a way of staying with a surface long enough for it to become spatial.
Layer follows layer.
Mark encounters mark.
Repetition does not reproduce the same thing; it allows difference to accumulate.
Drawing ~ Layer ~ Interval ~ Architecture
The architectural does not begin with construction.
It begins with attention to surfaces, thresholds, distances and the movements between them.
The drawing becomes a spatial body before it becomes a representation of space.
Slowness ~ Repetition ~ Spatial Becoming
This is another work where the present practice is already there — but differently.
Indexical Patterning/Painting : Affective Relational Intensities (Micropolitics of slowness and repetition)
Layered Drawings : Architectural Screens/Modulations of Translucency
Space Between People
How the virtual changes physical architecture
Stephan Doesinger
This book shows how the virtual has completely changed the physical world around us. If architecture is the construction of space between people, what happens when that space exists in a virtual world? That question is the starting point for this collection of revolutionary projects by a new generation of designers. The book begins by examining the important issues that have emerged as technology reshapes our idea of place and proceeds to present the four winning projects from the first architecture competition held within the explosively popular Internet community known as Second Life. Chosen for their inventiveness and aesthetic excellence, these structures - a cloud that can be inhabited; a meta-museum; an interactive sound scape; and a snow palace of discarded objects - illustrate the mindbending possibilities of digital design. In the books final section, media artists share their real-time experiences conceptualizing and creating projects for the virtual world.
Non Spaces/Digital Still Image : Fire escape Winchester School of Art
Meshworks/Norwich, moving analogue source : Midway/Dante
Beginning as one always does in the middle, in mediis rebus, one experiences a sense of disorientation, a sort of cartographic anxiety or spatial perplexity that appears to be part of our fundamental being-in-the-world. It is an experience not unlike that of Dante, in the opening lines of his Commedia:
Midway along the journey of our life,
I woke to find myself in a dark wood,
for I had wandered off from the straight path.
( Dante 1984 : 67)
Introduction : Spatiality .
Robert T. Tally Jr.
the New Critical Idiom, Routledge 2013
Art as Spatial Practice.
Space folds : Containing "Spatialities around historicality and sociality"
"All that is solid melts into air"
Karl Marx, Friedrich Engels,
(Poetic observation concerning the constant revolutionizing of social conditions)
Perceptions now gathering at the end of the millennium. Spatiality, Robert T. Tally Jr. 2013
Sensuality, Drawing and Astronomical Space.
Architectural Translucency (Tracing Layers)
DSC_8860 Pavilion : Borderlands
Andreas Horlitz : Simulacrum. 2006
Brian Clarke : Lamina. 2005
During the full moon on March 19th 2011 the moon was only 221,565 miles (356,575 kilometers) away. The closest it’s been in almost 20 years. It appeared 14 percent bigger and 30% brighter than usual.
A "Super Moon".
How to shoot the moon:
1. Use a good solid Tripod, keep the center column down. Over the distance from you to the moon, any vibration is going to affect your image.
2. Use a long lens, mine is 400mm on a 1.6x crop body = 640mm
3. ISO 100. Although this is at night, the moon is very bright, use your lowest ISO to get the cleanest image.
4. Use RAW, jpg disposes of detail before you've had a chance to optimize it.
5. Set your lens to its sharpest aperature, mine is F8. Check your lens MTF (Modulation Transfer Function [resolution]) at photozone. For example see Test Report - Analysis
6. Set your shutter speed to one stop below getting the blinking overexposed warning. This is 'expose to the right'. In camera, this will look over exposed, but once we post process it, you will get the maximum detail - this is important! see "Expose to the Right"
7. Live View to focus critically at 10x magnification. You would imagine at this distance the lens would be at infinity, but you'll be be surprised.
8. Use the self timer with mirror lockup. You want the camera to be as still as possible at the point of exposure.
9. Post processing
The expose to the right technique maximises detail, but requires you fix the exposure level in Post Processing, do it manually or try the Auto fix.
Increase the contrast via curves adjustment, to darken the 'seas', and brighten the craters.
Tone if desired.
Crop.
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
grey with shades of slate-green and and raspberry-red ...
Grau und Weiß mit Schiefergrün und Rosa ...
bbb low-cost housing, kvistgård, elsinore, denmark.
architects: tegnestuen vandkunsten, 2004-2008.
before closing everything down for the summer, I thought I'd take a break from my palermo photos and show you a few snapshots from the completed first stage of the bbb housing project I have worked on for tegnestuen vandkunsten.
many of you commented on the prototype I uploaded last year, here is a chance to see the finished project. people started moving in about half a year ago if I remember correctly. the photos are from yesterday...
as I have written earlier, it is a courtyard project in which the houses are gathered nine by nine in clusters around a small, communal garden or square. the clusters are all identical but they are placed freely on a sloping site which centres naturally on a little lake.
I can't help feeling that the low-cost tag is not entirely fair. we did the original competition with a high degree of prefabrication in mind but the impact of repeated units is softened considerably by the quality of the site and the scale of the buildings...but most importantly, we never felt we were made to compromise for budget reasons. it remains a central tenet and experience of vandkunsten that key qualities of housing are independent of budget. that may be a provocative statement to all those struggling with budget restraints in social housing, but just think about how often the wrong decisions are forced on a project by thick-headed bureaucrats and ignorant clients rather than a lack of money.
what made me really happy yesterday was the way people are making the place their own. what I saw was only the beginning and as such both careful and hesitant, but it showed an impressive understanding of our intentions. I only fear there are too many restrictions on what residents are allowed to do. we love rules in denmark but the real sustainability of this project does not lie in the sturdiness of its materials but in the fundamental adaptability of its scale and method of construction. I hope changes will be allowed over time.
I also can't wait to see what people will make of their communal squares. they were finished simply with a lawn and a couple of young apple trees but the possibilities for making unique and personal spaces out of them are many and the process of doing so should generate a real sense of community...not that it seems to be lacking. from our client we have heard stories of how people are helping each other moving in - always a challenge, but particularly so in a project where you have to do part of the finishing work yourself.
when you arrive at a place as a stranger, the sense of community often proves itself as a kind of natural surveillance. this place is full of kids (as we had hoped) and people were discreetly keeping an eye on me and my camera as I toured the place, a sign of the individual responsibility they feel. you cannot force that on anyone but you can support it in the design: here, in the way all kitchens open onto the communal garden; in the way the covered access becomes a niche in that space while at the same time framing a view of the private garden and the landscape beyond.
all modest means, describing a modulation of social spaces from public to private.
our own discussion at home right now is whether we should move there ourselves. it would be so much better for our daughter but it would add 40 kilometers to our daily commute - both ways - a problem as old a suburbia itself.
MODULATION OF THE BALANCE IN THE MATRIX / THE FINAL / CHRISTELLE GEISER & AEON VON ZARK / NAKED EYE PROJECT BIENNE / ALTERED STATE SERIE / THE WEIRD DREAM / PORTRAIT.
iSwarm is a swarm of luminous “sea creatures” that interact with passers-by. Subtle and hardly visible by day, iSwarm comes alive at night. As daylight fades, the cells of iSwarm illuminate the waters of Marina Bay with fluorescent light reminiscent of natural phenomena such as bioluminescent algae or the Aurora Borealis. iSwarm reacts to groups of visitors by detecting human presence and greeting them with subtle modulation of its light patterns.
Camera Info:
Canon 5D Mk3 | Canon EF14 f/2.8L ii | ISO - Bracketing 100-400 | f 8.0 | focal length 14mm | 5 image | 7 exposures each tile - Magic Lantern
| HDR / DRI
| Nodal Ninja 4 Pano Head
There is no sky here
only a surface pretending to extend
no extension
only a persistence of interruption
that imitates distance
you call it horizon
because the eye requires a boundary
to continue failing
but the line has already withdrawn
before being perceived
and what remains
is not space
but the memory of a direction
that never belonged to movement
-
a form insists
not as object
not as presence
but as a refusal to collapse into recognition
it elongates
not forward
not backward
but outside of sequence
trajectory without departure
arrival without event
you think it crosses
but crossing implies separation
here
nothing was ever divided
only layered
only displaced
only rehearsed as if it could be stabilized
-
identify the rule
gravity
origin
continuity
time
do not break it
do not invert it
do not even oppose it
simply proceed
as if it were no longer required
and observe
how the structure continues
without needing the law that once defined it
how the fall never occurs
yet descent remains
how direction persists
without vector
how the system continues
without center
-
the landscape does not exist
it is a residual interface
between two failures of perception
what you see
is not terrain
but a delay
what you feel
is not scale
but compression misinterpreted as depth
and what moves above it
does not move
it displaces the necessity
of movement itself
-
this is not an object
it is a correction
applied too late
a recalibration
of something that never stabilized
it narrows
not to become precise
but to escape the obligation
of having ever been wide
it sharpens
not to cut
but to refuse diffusion
-
identity attempts to attach
fails
attempts again
fails differently
each failure produces
a more accurate illusion
until the illusion
no longer requires belief
only repetition
-
time is introduced
not as duration
but as a formatting error
a misalignment
between sequence and occurrence
events do not follow
they accumulate
in the absence of order
and what you call before
is merely
a less dense configuration of after
-
the form continues
not because it exists
but because stopping
would imply conclusion
and conclusion implies structure
and structure implies agreement
which has already been withdrawn
-
there is no meaning here
only operation
no message
only modulation
no presence
only insistence
and yet
it holds
not as truth
not as illusion
but as something
that no longer requires either.
[…] Den ganzen Nachmittag verbrachte ich in der Buchhandlung. Dort gab es nicht etwa Bücher. Seit fast einem halben Jahrhundert wurden keine mehr gedruckt. Und ich hatte mich so sehr darauf gefreut nach den Mikrofilmen, aus denen die Bibliothek des „Prometheus“ bestand. Pustekuchen. Keiner konnte mehr in Regalen stöbern, schwere Bände in der Hand wiegen, ihr Volumen richtig auskosten, das den Umfang des Lesevergnügens voraussagte. Die Buchhandlung erinnerte an ein elektronisches Labor. Bücher waren kleine Kristalle mit gespeichertem Inhalt. Lesen konnte man sie mit Hilfe eines Optons. Der sah einem Buch sogar ähnlich, allerdings mit nur einer einzigen Seite zwischen den Einbanddeckeln. Berührte man dieses eine Blatt, so erschienen hintereinander die Textseiten in ihrer Reihenfolge. Aber es wurde – wie mir der Roboterverkäufer sagte - von den Optonen wenig Gebrauch gemacht. Das Publikum zog die Lektonen vor – sie lasen laut vor, und man konnte sie auf eine beliebige Stimmart, Tempo und Modulation einstellen. […]
aus „Rückkehr von den Sternen“ (1961) von Stanislaw Lem
www.youtube.com/watch?v=KmzFDEu2RoA
________________________
[…]The whole afternoon I spent in the bookstore. There were no books at all. For almost half a century, none have been printed. Using the microfilms from which the library of "Prometheus" existed, I was looking forward to real books. Fiddlesticks. No one could rummage on shelves, weigh heavy volumes in his hand, properly appreciate their volume, which predicted the extent of the reading pleasure. The bookstore seemed to be an electronic laboratory. Books were small crystals with stored contents. One could read them with the help of an opton. It even looked like a book, but with only one page between the covers. When one touched this one page, the pages of the text appeared in sequence. But, as the robotic seller told me, the optons were little used. The people prefer to use lectons - they read aloud, and they could be adjusted to any kind of voice, tempo, and modulation.[…]
from „Return from the Stars“ (1961) by Stanislaw Lem
Jerusalem, Israel: Covered carelessly with an adhesive sheet of plastic, this poster was marred by a number of channel-shaped, air pockets, running randomly over its surface, but which provided the image with visually interesting modulations of the reflections of the warm, street lighting.
Taken at "I Light Marina Bay" Light Festival
iSwarm is a swarm of luminous “sea creatures” that interact with passers-by. Subtle and hardly visible by day, iSwarm comes alive at night. As daylight fades, the cells of iSwarm illuminate the waters of Marina Bay with fluorescent light reminiscent of natural phenomena such as bioluminescent algae or the Aurora Borealis. iSwarm reacts to groups of visitors by detecting human presence and greeting them with subtle modulation of its light patterns.
Germany, Hamburg, Harbour City, Magellan Terraces, a square covering about 5,000 square metres, similar to an amphitheatre & providing a fine view of the Traditional-Ship Harbour in the Harbour City. This square is an inviting place to linger & is also used for cultural events.
For almost one & a half century, since 1866, the Harbour at the “Sandtorwall” was used as a port for ships with all kinds of imports from around the world. With the increasing size of cargo ships & later the container giants, the ware house area was not able to handle the freighters any longer. The whole area started than to be changed, maintaining the historic structure & buildings, into today’s harbour city, housing offices, apartments, gastronomy, shops etc., the re-modulation of the harbour city will still go on for many years, including the never ending story of the philharmonic concert hall.
👉 One World one Dream,
...Danke, Xièxie 谢谢, Thanks, Gracias, Merci, Grazie, Obrigado, Arigatô, Dhanyavad, Chokrane to you & over
10 million visits in my photostream with countless motivating comments
From the Future Ventures’ 🚀 Space Collection. Photos by technoarchaeologist Curious Marc, who is getting my heroic Apollo artifacts working again! Stay tuned, so to speak.
This unit takes the phase-modulated signal and FM TV signal, combines them, modulates them, and amplifies them before sending them to the main amplifier. It also has the receiver circuitry. It also has interesting ranging circuitry: NASA sent a pseudo-random ranging sequence to the spacecraft and this box amplified and returned the signal. On the ground, they measured how long the signal took (by correlating the returned signal with the sent signal), which gave them an accurate distance to the spacecraft. Since this box includes amplification, it can be used without the main amplifier, and they could do that on Apollo if the main amplifier failed.
From Spaceaholic: "Apollo Command Module Unified S-Band Transponder (manufactured by Motorola, Inc., Military Electronics Division, Scottsdale, Ariz.). The Unified S-Band Transponder was the only method of exchanging voice communications, tracking, biomedical, and ranging, transmission of pulse code modulated (PCM) data and television, and reception of uplinked data from Mission Control once the Apollo Command Module was outside a range of 1500 nautical miles and line of sight from Manned Space Flight Network (MSFN) ground stations strung around the Earth (within that range, VHF was available). The term "Unified" is applicable because the communications system combined the functions of (signal) acquisition, telemetry, command, voice, television and tracking on one radio link. This design resulted in fewer antennas/electronics assemblies (and thus decreased complexity and weight) on both the spacecraft and the ground station segments of the MSFN. The Unified S-Band Equipment (USBE) onboard the Apollo Command Module, Lunar Module, Lunar Rover were absolutely critical to the successful execution of the Apollo program; and reliability was assured through the implementation of full redundant, heavily tested design.
The Electronic assembly hosts a redundant architecture consisting of two phase-locked transponders and one frequency modulated transmitter housed in single, gasket-sealed, machined aluminum case, 9.5 by 6 by 21 inches. The unit weighs 32 pounds, operated from 400 Hertz power, with RF output of 300 milliwatts, with a fixed transmit frequency of 2287.5 Megahertz (MHZ) / receive frequency 2106.4 MHZ.
The S-band transponder is a double-superheterodyne phase-lock loop receiver that accepted a phase-modulated radio frequency signal containing the updata and up-voice subcarriers, and a pseudo-random noise code when ranging was desired. This signal is supplied to the receiver via the triplexer integral to the S-band power amplifier equipment and presented to three separate detectors: the narrow- band loop phase detector, the narrow-band coherent amplitude detector, and the wide-band phase detector. In the wide-band phase detector, the intermediate frequency is detected, and the 70-kiloHertz up-data and kilohertz up-voice subcarriers are extracted, amplified, and routed to the up-data and up-voice discriminators in the premodulation processor.
When operating in a ranging mode, the pseudo-random noise ranging signal is detected, filtered, and routed to the S-band transmitter as a signal input to the phase modulator. In the loop- phase detector, the intermediate frequency signal is filtered and detected by comparing it with the loop reference frequency. The resulting dc output is used to control the frequency of the voltage-controlled oscillator. The output of the voltage controlled oscillator is used as the reference frequency for receiver circuits as well as for the transmitter. The coherent amplitude detector provided the automatic gain control for receiver sensitivity control. In addition, it detected the amplitude modulation of the carrier introduced by the high-gain antenna system. This detected output was returned to the antenna control system to point the high- gain antenna to the ground station. When the antenna pointed at the ground station, the amplitude modulation was minimized. An additional function of the detector was to select the auxiliary oscillator to provide a stable carrier for the transmitter, whenever the receiver lost lock. The S-band transponders could transmit a phase- modulated signal with the initial transmitter frequency obtained from one of two sources: the voltage controlled oscillator in the phase-locked disband receiver or the auxiliary oscillator in the transmitter. Selection of the excitation was controlled by a coherent amplitude detector.
The S-band equipment also contains a separate FM transmitter which permitted scientific, television, or playback data to be sent simultaneously to the ground while voice, real-time data, and ranging were being sent via the transponder."
The Lake Of Eurybios by Daniel Arrhakis (2024 / 2025)
Eurybius, one of the commanders of horned Lamian Centaurs ...
With the music : Ulthar: DEEP Ambient Sci-Fi Music by Ethereal Realms
"Lands Beyond the Stone Wall" Series
In the past i study Geology in University, i decided to create, through the help of Artificial Intelligence, some breathtaking landscapes resulting from the erosive action of water throughout geological cycles.
By changing certain parameters such as lithology, oxidation of minerals, different types of algae and the type of karstic modulation as well as local environmental conditions, these series of landscapes are the result of these attempts...
Free download under CC Attribution (CC BY 2.0). Please credit the artist and rawpixel.com
Hu Zhengyan (c. 1584-1674) was a Chinese traditional painter, calligrapher, seal carver and publisher during the transition of the Ming and Qing dynasties. He produced China’s first printed publication in color, and was famous for his incredible techniques achieving gradation and modulation of shades in woodblock prints.
Higher resolutions with no attribution required can be downloaded: rawpixel
90 Mins. of Techno selected and mixed live @ Music For The Soul Halloween Party
ENJOY ♥
▼ Follow DIRTYANGEL Iwish:
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▼ Tracklist:
[0:00]Violent - Rage For Order
[5:00]Basis Change - Cease
[9:00]Basis Change - Taygeta
[12:00]Marton Project - Planet Of Hope
[15:00]Anders Hellberg - Concomitant Modulation
[16:18]The Alchemical Theory - Esoteric
[22:56]One Release - Hela's Mjolnir
[27:00]T78 - Fisto
[31:07]ROBPM - Blue Mystic
[36:00]RobJanssen - Interface (T78 Remix)
[38:40]ROBPM - Take Control
[42:30]T78 - Nezquik
[46:00]Balthazar & JackRock - Rave Story
[49:00]MOTVS - Awakened
[53:48]Mac N Dan - Belmont Stomp
[56:00]MOTVS - Cannon In G#
[1:00:00]MOTVS - Boww Woww
[1:03:00]RobJanssen - Voodoo
[1:09:00]Dok & Martin - Feeling of Glory (T78 Remix)
[1:13:16]The-Prophecy - Jam Master
[1:16:20]Bruce Zalcer - Are We Dreaming
[1:22:53]T78 - Child of the Universe
#DIRTYANGEL #Techno
I have been doing calligraphy since the end of inktober.
This famous sentence is one I remember having to write when I took drafting in the 7th grade. It is probably the most famous pangram in the English language and perfect for this exercise.
Most of the calligraphy resources I have found online are doing something different, with different kinds of materials, so I have been having to guess my way through this. Here is a diagram where I tried to visually represent my strokes and their order.
I was not following any actual ductus here (most of those are not that consistent with each other anyway.) but just feeling my way through this alphabet (Edward Johnston's foundational hand, 1909.) based on what felt comfortable with the brush.
Maybe by posting here, someone who is familiar with lettering can make suggestions.
paper: hp printer paper multipurpose 20lbs.
ink: Dr. Martin's ("synchromatic transparent water color") light grey.
brush: Creative Inspirations watercol brush #4 round.
(notations made with .5 pentel mechanical pencil.)
Visiting Alford Museum I was delighted to find this genuine Dalek from the BBC Television Show "Dr Who", it was displayed among other materials from the 70s etc, hence a quick video to archive the scene.
I've followed the Dr Who series from my school days ( a long time ago) hence absolute joy to view this item.
The Daleks - (DAH-leks) are a fictional extraterrestrial race of mutants principally portrayed in the British science fiction television programme Doctor Who. The Daleks were conceived by science-fiction writer Terry Nation and first appeared in the 1963 Doctor Who serial The Daleks, in the shells designed by Raymond Cusick.
Drawing inspirations from the real-life example of the Nazis, the Daleks are merciless and pitiless cyborg aliens, demanding total conformity, bent on conquest of the universe and the extermination of what they see as inferior races.
Their catchphrase, "Exterminate!", is a well-recognised reference in British popular culture.
Within the programme's narrative, the Daleks were engineered by the scientist Davros during the final years of a thousand-year war between his people, the Kaleds, and their enemies the Thals.
With some Kaleds already badly mutated and damaged by nuclear war, Davros genetically modified the Kaleds and integrated them with a tank-like, robotic shell, removing their every emotion apart from hate. His creations soon came to view themselves as the supreme race in the universe, intent on purging the universe of all non-Dalek life. Collectively they are the greatest enemies of Doctor Who's protagonist, the Time Lord known as The Doctor.
Later in the programme's run, the Daleks acquired time travel technology and engaged the Time Lords in a brutal Time War affecting most of the universe, with battles taking place across all of history.
They are among the show's most popular villains and their various returns to the series over the years have typically been widely reported in the television press.
Creation
The Daleks were created by writer Terry Nation and designed by BBC designer Raymond Cusick.
They were introduced in December 1963 in the second Doctor Who serial, colloquially known as The Daleks.
They became an immediate and huge hit with viewers, featuring in many subsequent serials and two 1960s motion pictures.
They have become as synonymous with Doctor Who as the Doctor himself, and their behaviour and catchphrases are now part of British popular culture. "Hiding behind the sofa whenever the Daleks appear" has been cited as an element of British cultural identity;and a 2008 survey indicated that nine out of ten British children were able to identify a Dalek correctly.
In 1999 a Dalek photographed by Lord Snowdon appeared on a postage stamp celebrating British popular culture.
In 2010, readers of science-fiction magazine SFX voted the Dalek as the all-time greatest monster, beating competition including Japanese movie monster Godzilla and J. R. R. Tolkien's Gollum, of The Lord of the Rings.
Entry into popular culture
As early as one year after first appearing on Doctor Who, the Daleks had become popular enough to be recognized even by non-viewers. In December 1964 editorial cartoonist Leslie Gilbert Illingworth published a cartoon in the Daily Mail captioned "THE DEGAULLEK", caricaturing French President Charles de Gaulle arriving at a NATO meeting as a Dalek with de Gaulle's prominent nose.
The word "Dalek" has entered major dictionaries, including the Oxford English Dictionary, which defines "Dalek" as "a type of robot appearing in 'Dr. Who' [sic], a B.B.C. Television science-fiction programme; hence used allusively."
But English-speakers sometimes use the term metaphorically to describe people, usually authority figures, who act like robots unable to break from their programming. For example, John Birt, the Director-General of the BBC from 1992 to 2000, was publicly called a "croak-voiced Dalek" by playwright Dennis Potter in the MacTaggart Lecture at the 1993 Edinburgh Television Festival.
Physical characteristics
Externally, Daleks resemble human-sized pepper pots with a single mechanical eyestalk mounted on a rotating dome, a gun mount containing an energy weapon ("gunstick" or "death ray") resembling an egg whisk, and a telescopic manipulator arm usually tipped by an appendage resembling a sink plunger. Daleks have been known to use their plungers to interface with technology, crush a man's skull by suction,[measure the intelligence of a subject, and extract information from a man's mind.[
Dalek casings are made of a bonded polycarbide material dubbed "dalekanium" by a member of the human resistance in The Dalek Invasion of Earth and by the Cult of Skaro in "Daleks in Manhattan".
The lower half of a Dalek's shell is covered with hemispherical protrusions, or "Dalek bumps", which are shown in the episode "Dalek" to be spheres embedded in the casing.[11] Both the BBC-licensed Dalek Book (1964) and The Doctor Who Technical Manual (1983) describe these items as being part of a sensory array,[ whilst in the 2005 series episode "Dalek", they are integral to a Dalek's self-destruct mechanism.
Their armour has a forcefield that evaporates most bullets and resists most types of energy weapons. The forcefield seems to be concentrated around the Dalek's midsection (where the mutant is located), as normally ineffective firepower can be concentrated on the eyestalk to blind a Dalek. Daleks have a very limited visual field, with no peripheral sight at all, and are relatively easy to hide from in fairly exposed places. Their own energy weapons are capable of destroying them.
Their weapons fire a beam that has electrical tendencies, is capable of propagating through water, and may be a form of plasma or electrolaser.
The eyepiece is a Dalek's most vulnerable spot; impairing its vision often leads to a blind, panicked firing of its weapon while exclaiming "My vision is impaired; I cannot see!" Russell T Davies subverted the catchphrase in his 2008 episode "The Stolen Earth", in which a Dalek vaporises a paintball that has blocked its vision while proclaiming "My vision is not impaired!"
Kaled mutants are octopus-like; many are coloured green, such as this one from "Resurrection of the Daleks".
The creature inside the mechanical casing is soft and repulsive in appearance and vicious in temperament. The first-ever glimpse of a Dalek mutant, in The Daleks, was a claw peeking out from under a Thal cloak after it had been removed from its casing.
The mutants' actual appearance has varied, but often adheres to the Doctor's description of the species in Remembrance of the Daleks as "little green blobs in bonded polycarbide armour".
In Resurrection of the Daleks a Dalek creature, separated from its casing, attacks and severely injures a human soldier; in Remembrance of the Daleks, there are two Dalek factions (Imperial and Renegade) and the creatures inside have a different appearance in each case, one resembling the amorphous creature from Resurrection, the other the crab-like creature from the original Dalek serial.
As the creature inside is rarely seen on screen, a common misconception exists that Daleks are wholly mechanical robots.
In the new series Daleks are retconned to be mollusc-like in appearance, with small tentacles, one or two eyes, and an exposed brain.
Daleks' voices are electronic; when out of its casing the mutant is only able to squeak. Once the mutant is removed, the casing itself can be entered and operated by humanoids; for example, in The Daleks, Ian Chesterton (William Russell) enters a Dalek shell to masquerade as a guard as part of an escape plan.
In a dark basement, a white Dalek (see previous description) appears to levitate up a small staircase of approximately seven stairs. The body of the Dalek is white, with shiny gold vertical slats and gold balls on its lower half. There is an orange-yellow glow at the Dalek's base.
For many years it was assumed that, due to their design and gliding motion, Daleks were unable to climb stairs, and that this was a simple way of escaping them. A well-known cartoon from Punch pictured a group of Daleks at the foot of a flight of stairs with the caption, "Well, this certainly buggers our plan to conquer the Universe".
In a scene from the serial Destiny of the Daleks, the Doctor and companions escape from Dalek pursuers by climbing into a ceiling duct. The Fourth Doctor calls down, "If you're supposed to be the superior race of the universe, why don't you try climbing after us?"
The Daleks generally make up for their lack of mobility with overwhelming firepower; a joke among Doctor Who fans goes, "Real Daleks don't climb stairs; they level the building."
Dalek mobility has improved over the history of the series: in their first appearance, The Daleks, they were capable of movement only on the conductive metal floors of their city; in The Dalek Invasion of Earth a Dalek emerges from the waters of the River Thames, indicating that they not only had become freely mobile, but are amphibious;Planet of the Daleks showed that they could ascend a vertical shaft by means of an external anti-gravity mat placed on the floor; Revelation of the Daleks showed Davros in his life-support chair and one of his Daleks hovering and Remembrance of the Daleks depicted them as capable of hovering up a flight of stairs.
Despite this, journalists covering the series frequently refer to the Daleks' supposed inability to climb stairs; characters escaping up a flight of stairs in the 2005 episode "Dalek" made the same joke, and were shocked when the Dalek began to hover up the stairs after uttering the phrase "ELEVATE", in a similar manner to their normal phrase "EXTERMINATE".
The new series depicts the Daleks as fully capable of flight, even space flight.
Prop details
The non-humanoid shape of the Dalek did much to enhance the creatures' sense of menace[citation needed]. A lack of familiar reference points differentiated them from the traditional "bug-eyed monster" of science fiction, which Doctor Who creator Sydney Newman had wanted the show to avoid.
The unsettling Dalek form, coupled with their alien voices, made many believe that the props were wholly mechanical and operated by remote control.
The Daleks were actually controlled from inside by short operators who had to manipulate their eyestalks, domes, and arms, as well as flashing the lights on their heads in sync with the actors supplying their voices. The Dalek cases were built in two pieces; an operator would step into the lower section, and then the top would be secured. The operators looked out between the cylindrical louvres just beneath the dome, which were lined with mesh to conceal their faces.
In addition to being hot and cramped the Dalek casings also muffled external sounds, making it difficult for operators to hear the director's commands or studio dialogue. John Scott Martin, a Dalek operator from the original series, said that Dalek operation was a challenge: "You had to have about six hands: one to do the eyestalk, one to do the lights, one for the gun, another for the smoke canister underneath, yet another for the sink plunger. If you were related to an octopus then it helped."
For Doctor Who's 21st-century revival the Dalek casings retain the same overall shape and dimensional proportions of previous Daleks, although many details have been re-designed to give the Dalek a heavier and more solid look.
Changes include a larger, more pointed base; a glowing eyepiece; an all-over metallic-brass finish (specified by Davies); thicker, nailed strips on the "neck" section; a housing for the eyestalk pivot; and significantly larger dome lights.
The new prop made its on-screen debut in the 2005 episode "Dalek". These Dalek casings use a short operator inside the housing while the 'head' and eyestalk are operated via remote control. A third person, Nicholas Briggs, supplies the voice in their various appearances.
In the 2010 season a new, larger model appeared in several colours representing different parts of the Dalek command hierarchy.
Movement
Terry Nation's original plan was for the Daleks to glide across the floor. Early versions of the Daleks rolled on nylon castors, propelled by the operator's feet. Although castors were adequate for the Daleks' debut serial, which was shot entirely at the BBC's Lime Grove Studios, for The Dalek Invasion of Earth Terry Nation wanted the Daleks to be filmed on the streets of London. To enable the Daleks to travel smoothly on location, designer Spencer Chapman built the new Dalek shells around miniature tricycles with sturdier wheels, which were hidden by enlarged fenders fitted below the original base.
The uneven flagstones of Central London caused the Daleks to rattle as they moved and it was not possible to remove this noise from the final soundtrack. A small parabolic dish was added to the rear of the prop's casing to explain why these Daleks, unlike the ones in their first serial, were not dependent on static electricity drawn up from the floors of the Dalek city for their motive power.
Later versions of the prop had more efficient wheels and were once again simply propelled by the seated operators' feet, but they remained so heavy that when going up ramps they often had to be pushed by stagehands out of camera shot. The difficulty of operating all the prop's parts at once contributed to the occasionally jerky Dalek movements.
This problem has largely been eradicated with the advent of the "new series" version, as its remotely controlled dome and eyestalk allow the operator to concentrate on the smooth movement of the Dalek and its arms.
Voices
The staccato delivery, harsh tone, and rising inflection of the Dalek voice were initially developed by voice actors Peter Hawkins and David Graham, who would vary the pitch and speed of the lines according to the emotion needed. Their voices were further processed electronically by Brian Hodgson at the BBC Radiophonic Workshop.
Although the exact sound-processing devices used have varied, the original 1963 effect used equalisation to boost the mid-range of the actor's voice, then subjected it to ring modulation with a 30 Hz sine wave. The distinctive harsh grating vocal timbre this produced has remained the pattern for all Dalek voices since (with the exception of those in the 1985 serial Revelation of the Daleks, for which director Graeme Harper deliberately used less distortion).
Besides Hawkins and Graham, notable voice actors for the Daleks have included Roy Skelton, who first voiced the Daleks in the 1967 story The Evil of the Daleks and went on to provide voices for five additional Dalek serials including Planet of the Daleks, and for the one-off anniversary special The Five Doctors. Michael Wisher, the actor who originated the role of Dalek creator Davros in Genesis of the Daleks, provided Dalek voices for that same story, as well as for Frontier in Space, Planet of the Daleks, and Death to the Daleks. Other Dalek voice actors include Royce Mills (three stories),Brian Miller (two stories), and Oliver Gilbert and Peter Messaline (one story).
John Leeson, who performed the voice of K9 in several Doctor Who stories, and Davros actors Terry Molloy and David Gooderson also contributed supporting voices for various Dalek serials.
Since 2005, the Dalek voice in the television series has been provided by Nicholas Briggs, speaking into a microphone connected to a voice modulator.
Briggs had previously provided Dalek and other alien voices for Big Finish Productions audio plays, and continues to do so. In a 2006 BBC Radio interview, Briggs said that when the BBC asked him to do the voice for the new television series, they instructed him to bring his own analogue ring modulator that he had used in the audio plays. The BBC's sound department had changed to a digital platform and could not adequately create the distinctive Dalek sound with their modern equipment. Briggs went as far as to bring the voice modulator to the actors' readings of the scripts.
Construction
Manufacturing the props was expensive. In scenes where many Daleks had to appear, some of them would be represented by wooden replicas (Destiny of the Daleks) or life-size photographic enlargements in the early black-and-white episodes (The Daleks, The Dalek Invasion of Earth, and The Power of the Daleks).
In stories involving armies of Daleks, the BBC effects team even turned to using commercially available toy Daleks, manufactured by Louis Marx & Co and Herts Plastic Moulders Ltd. Examples of this can be observed in the serials The Power of the Daleks, The Evil of the Daleks, and Planet of the Daleks.[48] Judicious editing techniques also gave the impression that there were more Daleks than were actually available, such as using a split screen in "The Parting of the Ways".
Four fully functioning props were commissioned for the first serial "The Daleks" in 1963, and were constructed from BBC plans by Shawcraft Engineering.
These became known in fan circles as "Mk I Daleks". Shawcraft were also commissioned to construct approximately 20 Daleks for the two Dalek movies in 1965 and 1966 (see below). Some of these movie props filtered back to the BBC and were seen in the televised serials, notably The Chase, which was aired before the first movie's debut. The remaining props not bought by the BBC were either donated to charity or given away as prizes in competitions.
The BBC's own Dalek props were reused many times, with components of the original Shawcraft "Mk I Daleks" surviving right through to their final classic series appearance in 1988.
But years of storage and repainting took their toll. By the time of the Sixth Doctor's Revelation of the Daleks new props were being manufactured out of fibreglass.
These models were lighter and more affordable to construct than their predecessors. These newer models were slightly bulkier in appearance around the mid-shoulder section, and also had a redesigned skirt section which was more vertical at the back. Other minor changes were made to the design due to these new construction methods, including altering the fender and incorporating the arm boxes, collars, and slats into a single fibreglass moulding.
These props were repainted in grey for the Seventh Doctor serial Remembrance of the Daleks and designated as "Renegade Daleks"; another redesign, painted in cream and gold, became the "Imperial Dalek" faction.
New Dalek props were built for the 21st century version of Doctor Who. The first, which appeared alone in the 2005 episode "Dalek", was built by modelmaker Mike Tucker.
Additional Dalek props based on Tucker's master were subsequently built out of fibreglass by Cardiff-based Specialist Models.
Development
Wishing to create an alien creature that did not look like a "man in a suit", Terry Nation stated in his script for the first Dalek serial that they should have no legs. He was also inspired by a performance by the Georgian National Ballet, in which dancers in long skirts appeared to glide across the stage.[56] For many of the shows, the Daleks were operated by retired ballet dancers wearing black socks while sitting inside the Dalek. Raymond Cusick (who died on 21 February 2013) was given the task of designing the Daleks when Ridley Scott, then a designer for the BBC, proved unavailable after having been initially assigned to their debut serial.
An account in Jeremy Bentham's Doctor Who—The Early Years (1986) says that after Nation wrote the script, Cusick was given only an hour to come up with the design for the Daleks, and was inspired in his initial sketches by a pepper shaker on a table. Cusick himself, however, states that he based it on a man seated in a chair, and only used the pepper shaker to demonstrate how it might move.
In 1964 Nation told a Daily Mirror reporter that the Dalek name came from a dictionary or encyclopaedia volume, the spine of which read "Dal – Lek" (or, according to another version, "Dal – Eks"). He later admitted that this book and the origin of the Dalek name was completely fictitious, and that anyone bothering to check out his story would have found him out.[61] The name had in reality simply rolled off his typewriter.
Later, Nation was pleasantly surprised to discover that in Serbo-Croatian the word "dalek" means "far", or "distant".
Nation grew up during World War II, and remembered the fear caused by German bombings. He consciously based the Daleks on the Nazis, conceiving the species as faceless, authoritarian figures dedicated to conquest and complete conformity. The allusion is most obvious in the Dalek stories penned by Nation, in particular The Dalek Invasion of Earth (1964) and Genesis of the Daleks (1975).
Prior to writing the first Dalek serial, Nation was chief scriptwriter for comedian Tony Hancock. The two had a falling out, and Nation either resigned or was fired.
When Hancock left the BBC, he worked on several series proposals, one of which was called From Plip to Plop, a comedic history of the world which would have ended with a nuclear apocalypse, the survivors being reduced to living in dustbin-like robot casings and eating radiation to stay alive. According to biographer Cliff Goodwin, when Hancock saw the Daleks, he allegedly shouted at the screen, "That bloody Nation—he's stolen my robots!"[69]
The naming of early Doctor Who stories is complex and sometimes controversial. The first Dalek serial is called, variously, The Survivors (the pre-production title), The Mutants (its official title at the time of production and broadcast, later taken by another unrelated story), Beyond the Sun (used on some production documentation), The Dead Planet (the on-screen title of the serial's first episode), or simply The Daleks.
The instant appeal of the Daleks caught the BBC off guard,and transformed Doctor Who from a Saturday tea-time children's educational programme to a must-watch national phenomenon. Children were alternately frightened and fascinated by the alien look of the monsters, and the Doctor Who production office was inundated by letters and calls asking about the creatures. Newspaper articles focused attention on the series and the Daleks, further enhancing their popularity.
Nation jointly owned the intellectual property rights to the Daleks with the BBC, and the money-making concept proved nearly impossible to sell to anyone else; he was dependent on the BBC wanting to produce stories featuring the creatures.
Several attempts to market the Daleks outside of the series were unsuccessful.Since Nation's death in 1997, his share of the rights is now administered by his former agent, Tim Hancock.
Early plans for what eventually became the 1996 Doctor Who television movie included radically redesigned Daleks whose cases unfolded like spiders' legs. The concept for these "Spider Daleks" was abandoned, but picked up again in several Doctor Who spin-offs.
When the new series was announced, many fans hoped the Daleks would return once more to the programme.
The Nation estate however demanded levels of creative control over the Daleks' appearances and scripts that were unacceptable to the BBC.[80] Eventually the Daleks were cleared to appear in the first series.
Fictional history
Main article: History of the Daleks
Dalek in-universe history has seen many retroactive changes, which have caused continuity problems. When the Daleks first appeared, they were presented as the descendants of the Dals, mutated after a brief nuclear war between the Dal and Thal races 500 years ago. This race of Daleks is destroyed when their power supply is wrecked.
However, when they reappear in The Dalek Invasion of Earth, they have conquered Earth in the 22nd century. Later stories saw them develop time travel and a space empire. In 1975, Terry Nation revised the Daleks' origins in Genesis of the Daleks, where the Dals were now called Kaleds (of which "Daleks" is an anagram), and the Dalek design was attributed to one man, the crippled Kaled chief scientist and evil genius, Davros.[84] Instead of a short nuclear exchange, the Kaled-Thal war was portrayed as a thousand-year-long war of attrition, fought with nuclear, biological and chemical weapons which caused widespread mutations among the Kaled race.
Davros experimented on living Kaled cells to find the ultimate mutated form of the Kaled species and placed the subjects in tank-like "travel machines" whose design was based on his own life-support chair.
Genesis of the Daleks marked a new era for the depiction of the species, with most of their previous history either forgotten or barely referred to again.Future stories in the original Doctor Who series, which followed a rough story arc,would also focus more on Davros, much to the dissatisfaction of some fans who felt that the Daleks should take centre stage rather than merely becoming minions of their creator.
Davros made his last televised appearance for 20 years in Remembrance of the Daleks, which depicted a civil war between two factions of Daleks. One faction, the "Imperial Daleks", were loyal to Davros, who had become their Emperor, whilst the other, the "Renegade Daleks", followed a black Supreme Dalek. By the end of the story, both factions have been wiped out and the Doctor has tricked them into destroying Skaro, though Davros escapes.
A single Dalek appeared in "Dalek", written by Robert Shearman, which was broadcast on BBC One on 30 April 2005. This Dalek appeared to be the sole Dalek survivor of the Time War which had destroyed both the Daleks and the Time Lords.
A Dalek Emperor returned at the end of the 2005 series, having rebuilt the Dalek race with genetic material harvested from human subjects. It saw itself as a god, and the new Daleks were shown worshipping it. These Daleks and their fleet were destroyed in "The Parting of the Ways".
The 2006 season finale "Army of Ghosts"/"Doomsday" featured a squad of four Dalek survivors from the old Empire, known as the Cult of Skaro, led by a black Dalek known as "Sec", that had survived the Time War by escaping into the Void between dimensions. They emerged, along with the Genesis Ark, a Time Lord prison vessel containing millions of Daleks, at Canary Wharf due to the actions of the Torchwood Institute and Cybermen from a parallel world.
This resulted in a Cyberman-Dalek clash in London, which was resolved when the Tenth Doctor caused both groups to be sucked back into the Void. The Cult survived by utilising an "emergency temporal shift" to escape.
These four Daleks - Sec, Jast, Thay and Caan - returned in the two-part story "Daleks in Manhattan"/"Evolution of the Daleks", in which whilst stranded in 1930s New York, they set up a base in the partially built Empire State Building and attempt to rebuild the Dalek race. To this end, Dalek Sec merges with a human being to become a Human/Dalek hybrid. The Cult then set about creating "Human Daleks" by "formatting" the brains of a few thousand captured humans, with the intention of producing hybrids which remain fully human in appearance but with Dalek minds.[
Dalek Sec, however, starts to become so human that he changes the DNA to make the hybrids more human. This angers the rest of the Cult, resulting in mutiny and the death of Sec, Thay and Jast as well as the wiping out of all the hybrids. This leaves Dalek Caan as the last Dalek in existence. When the Doctor makes Caan realise that he is the last of his kind, Caan uses emergency temporal shift and escapes once more.
The Daleks returned in the 2008 season's two-part finale, "The Stolen Earth"/"Journey's End", accompanied once again by their creator Davros. The story reveals that Caan's temporal shift sent him into the Time War whence he rescued Davros, in the process gaining the ability to see the future at the cost of his own sanity. Davros has created a new race using his own body's cells.
The episode depicts a Dalek invasion of Earth, which with other planets is taken to the Medusa Cascade, led by a red Supreme Dalek, who has kept Caan and Davros imprisoned in "The Vault", a section of the Dalek flagship, the Crucible. Davros and the Daleks plan to destroy reality itself with a "reality bomb" for which they need the stolen planets. The plan fails due to the interference of Donna Noble, a companion of the Doctor, and Caan himself, who has been manipulating events to destroy the Daleks after realising the severity of the atrocities they have committed.
The Daleks returned in the 2010 episode "Victory of the Daleks", the third episode of the series; Daleks who escaped the destruction of Davros' empire fell back in time and, by chance, managed to retrieve the "Progenitor".
This is a tiny apparatus which contains 'original' Dalek DNA. The activation of the Progenitor results in the creation of a "new paradigm" of Daleks. The New Paradigm Daleks deem their creators inferior and exterminate them; their creators make no resistance to this, deeming themselves inferior as well. They are organised into different roles (drone, scientist, strategists, supreme and eternal), which are identifiable with colour-coded armour instead of the identification plates under the eyestalk used by their predecessors. They escape the Doctor at the end of the episode via time travel with the intent to rebuild their Empire.
The Daleks only appeared briefly in subsequent finales "The Pandorica Opens"/"The Big Bang" (2010) and The Wedding of River Song (2011) as Steven Moffat decided to "give them a rest" and stated "There's a problem with the Daleks. They are the most famous of the Doctor's adversaries and the most frequent, which means they are the most reliably defeatable enemies in the universe."
They next appear in "Asylum of the Daleks" (2012), where the Daleks are shown to have greatly increased numbers and have a Parliament; in addition to the traditional "modern" Daleks, several designs from both the original and new series appear. All record of the Doctor is removed from their collective consciousness at the end of the episode. The Daleks then appear in the 50th Anniversary special "The Day of the Doctor", where they are seen being defeated in the Time War. In "The Time of the Doctor", the Daleks are one of the races that travel to Trenzalore and besiege it for centuries to stop the Doctor from releasing the Time Lords.
Due to converting Tasha Lem into a Dalek puppet, they regain knowledge of the Doctor. In the end, they are the only enemy left, the others having retreated or been destroyed and nearly kill the near-death Doctor before the Time Lords intervene and grant him a new regeneration cycle. The Doctor then uses his regeneration energy to obliterate the Daleks on the planet.
The Twelfth Doctor's first encounter with the Daleks is in his second full episode, "Into the Dalek" (2014), where he encounters a damaged Dalek, which he names 'Rusty', aboard a human resistance ship. Left with the Doctor's love of the universe and his hatred of the Daleks, he spares its life; it assumes a mission to destroy other Daleks. In "The Magician's Apprentice"/"The Witch's Familiar" (2015), the Doctor is summoned to Skaro where he learns Davros is alive, but dying, and has rebuilt the Dalek Empire. He escapes Davros' clutches by enlivening the decrepit Daleks of Skaro's sewers, who tear the empire apart, leaving behind the Master (Michelle Gomez), who accompanied him to Skaro. In "The Pilot" (2017), the Doctor briefly visits a battle in the Dalek-Movellan war while trying to escape a time travelling enemy.
Dalek culture
Daleks have little, if any, individual personality, ostensibly no emotions other than hatred and anger,[11] and a strict command structure in which they are conditioned to obey superiors' orders without question.
Dalek speech is characterised by repeated phrases, and by orders given to themselves and to others.
Unlike the stereotypical emotionless robots often found in science fiction, Daleks are often angry; author Kim Newman has described the Daleks as behaving "like toddlers in perpetual hissy fits", gloating when in power and flying into rage when thwarted.
They tend to be excitable and will repeat the same word or phrase over and over again in heightened emotional states, most famously "Exterminate! Exterminate!"
Daleks are extremely aggressive, and seem driven by an instinct to attack. This instinct is so strong that Daleks have been depicted fighting the urge to kill or even attacking when unarmed.
The Fifth Doctor characterises this impulse by saying, "However you respond [to Daleks] is seen as an act of provocation."
The fundamental feature of Dalek culture and psychology is an unquestioned belief in the superiority of the Dalek race,and their default directive is to destroy all non-Dalek life-forms.[
Other species are either to be exterminated immediately or enslaved and then exterminated once they are no longer useful.
The Dalek obsession with their own superiority is illustrated by the schism between the Renegade and Imperial Daleks seen in Revelation of the Daleks and Remembrance of the Daleks: the two factions each consider the other to be a perversion despite the relatively minor differences between them.
This intolerance of any "contamination" within themselves is also shown in "Dalek", The Evil of the Daleks and in the Big Finish Productions audio play The Mutant Phase.
This superiority complex is the basis of the Daleks' ruthlessness and lack of compassion.[11][93] This is shown in extreme in "Victory of the Daleks", where the new, pure Daleks destroy their creators, impure Daleks, with the latters' consent. It is nearly impossible to negotiate or reason with a Dalek, a single-mindedness that makes them dangerous and not to be underestimated.
The Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) is later puzzled in the "Asylum of the Daleks" as to why the Daleks don't just kill the sequestered ones that have "gone wrong". Although the Asylum is subsequently obliterated, the Prime Minister of the Daleks explains that "it is offensive to us to destroy such divine hatred", and the Doctor is sickened at the revelation that hatred is actually considered beautiful by the Daleks.
Dalek society is depicted as one of extreme scientific and technological advancement; the Third Doctor states that "it was their inventive genius that made them one of the greatest powers in the universe."
However, their reliance on logic and machinery is also a strategic weakness which they recognise, and thus use more emotion-driven species as agents to compensate for these shortcomings.
Although the Daleks are not known for their regard for due process, they have taken at least two enemies back to Skaro for a "trial", rather than killing them immediately. The first was their creator, Davros, in Revelation of the Daleks,[39] and the second was the renegade Time Lord known as the Master in the 1996 television movie.[98] The reasons for the Master's trial, and why the Doctor would be asked to retrieve the Master's remains, have never been explained on screen.
The Doctor Who Annual 2006 implies that the trial may have been due to a treaty signed between the Time Lords and the Daleks. The framing device for the I, Davros audio plays is a Dalek trial to determine if Davros should be the Daleks' leader once more.
Spin-off novels contain several tongue-in-cheek mentions of Dalek poetry, and an anecdote about an opera based upon it, which was lost to posterity when the entire cast was exterminated on the opening night. Two stanzas are given in the novel The Also People by Ben Aaronovitch.
In an alternative timeline portrayed in the Big Finish Productions audio adventure The Time of the Daleks, the Daleks show a fondness for the works of Shakespeare.
A similar idea was satirised by comedian Frankie Boyle in the BBC comedy quiz programme Mock the Week; he gave the fictional Dalek poem "Daffodils; EXTERMINATE DAFFODILS!" as an "unlikely line to hear in Doctor Who".
Because the Doctor has defeated the Daleks so often, he has become their collective arch-enemy and they have standing orders to capture or exterminate him on sight. In later fiction, the Daleks know the Doctor as "Ka Faraq Gatri" ("Bringer of Darkness" or "Destroyer of Worlds"), and "The Oncoming Storm".
Both the Ninth Doctor (Christopher Eccleston) and Rose Tyler (Billie Piper) suggest that the Doctor is one of the few beings the Daleks fear. In "Doomsday", Rose notes that while the Daleks see the extermination of five million Cybermen as "pest control", "one Doctor" visibly un-nerves them (to the point they physically recoil).[13] To his indignant surprise, in "Asylum of the Daleks", the Eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith) learns that the Daleks have designated him as "The Predator".
As the Doctor escapes the Asylum (with companions Amy and Rory), a Dalek-converted-human (Oswin Oswald) prisoner provides critical assistance, which culminates in completely deleting the Doctor from the Dalek hive-consciousness (the PathWeb), thus wiping the slate entirely blank. However, this was reversed in "The Time of the Doctor", when the Daleks regained knowledge of the Doctor through the memory of an old acquaintance of the Doctor, Tasha Lem.
Measurements
A rel is a Dalek and Kaled unit of measurement. It was usually a measurement of time, with a duration of slightly more than one second, as mentioned in "Doomsday", "Evolution of the Daleks" and "Journey's End", counting down to the ignition of the reality bomb. (One earth minute most likely equals about 50 rels.) However, in some comic books it was also used as a unit of velocity. Finally, in some cases it was used as a unit of hydroelectric energy (not to be confused with a vep, the unit used to measure artificial sunlight).
The rel was first used in the non-canonical feature film Daleks – Invasion Earth: 2150 A.D., soon after appearing in early Doctor Who comic books.
Aircraft no 343-A-15 of 301st Hikotai, 343rd Kokutai, Kanoya airbase, Kyushu, April 1945. Flown by Lt. Naoshi Kanno (1921-1945).
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1/72 Hasegawa OoB build.
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After around 6 months of on and off work, this one can finally be called done. The photo does not make it justice since it does not show the color modulation on the fuselage but oh well. Painted using Tamiya acrylics and Alclad II varnishes. Rigging made using E Z Line.
Lmk if y'all want me to post more pictures of it once I have time to take better ones.
The 2018 Ampera Faraday is an all-electric hot-hatch, and the Sport version is its turbocharged sibling, featuring a slightly larger battery pack and upgraded electric wheel motors for faster pickup. Sporting Ampera's patented GearShift performance modulation package, the Faraday can perform in an extremely economical fashion, or in a more sporty fashion; it also has several vehicle emulation modes including performance, muscle, and comfort.
©2014 Christopher Elliott, All Rights Reserved
Produced by Asahi Optical Co. (later Pentax Corp.) from 2001 to 2006, body MSRP $1433 in 2001 ($1988 in 2017). The final professional-grade, flagship 35mm film SLR from Pentax, lighter and more compact than competing cameras, known for excellent handling. Considered to be one of the best Pentax film cameras ever made (along with the PZ-1P autofocus and LX manual focus models). First Pentax body of magnesium alloy, unique interface with analog dials, LCD display, slanted top panel. Automatic imprint of exposure information on the edge of the film. Databack with time/date imprinting. Purchased 3/9/17 from a camera dealer in Japan on Ebay.
Specs: 6 point autofocus; Power zoom; accepts all K-mount lenses (auto and manual focus) with full function; provides aperture-priority autoexposure with older M42 screw mount lenses (with adapter).
Electronically controlled metal vertical focal plane shutter, speeds 30 - 1/6000s; self timer; mirror lock-up; auto bracketing; multi-exposure; auto-winder 2.5 fps
Multi-segment (6) autoexposure, range 0 - 21 EV; also center-weighted and spot; ISO 6 - 6400; exposure modes P, Av, Tv, M, B; compensation +/-3 EV; exposure lock.
Program modes: Normal, Action, Depth of field and MTF (Modulation Transfer Function - camera sets the aperture to the value where the lens performs the best under the given light).
Built-in flash GN 12, 24mm coverage, Pentax through the lens (P-TTL) autoexposure with sync to 1/180s, high speed sync to 1/6000 sec, red-eye reduction. Both P-TTL and TTL sync with external Pentax flashes. Hot shoe and PC port.
Viewfinder 0.75x, 92%, exposure information indicators, pentaprism, diopter correction, exchangeable focusing screen, depth of field preview
Battery 2 x CR2; 19 customizable control functions. Size 136.5 x 95 x 64 mm, Weight 520 g
Accessories: Battery grip BG-10 (4AA batteries); AF360FGZ flash (P-TTL, wireless P-TTL, High-Speed sync, Contrast control); soft case CF-10
Kit lenses: SMC Pentax-FA 24-90mm F3.5-4.5 AL [IF] which I recently bought. Shown is a SMC Pentax-F 35-70mm F3.5-4.5 with Macro (1987), a small and light near-normal zoom.