Dry Martinis prevent ageing

We read with great interest in the Daily Telegraph, that Dry Martinis can prevent ageing and disease. In 1999, a group of students at the University of Western Ontario in Canada led by Colleen Trevithick decided to test Bond's preference in a series of experiments on gin and vodka martinis.

They studied the martinis' ability to deactivate hydrogen peroxide - a substance used to bleach hair or disinfect scrapes, and a potent source of the free radicals linked to ageing and disease.

While the detailed chemistry is not fully understood, martinis were much more effective than their basic ingredients - such as gin or vermouth - at deactivating hydrogen peroxide, and about twice as effective when shaken.

Could this be the reason for James Bond's ever youthful apperance and amazing vitality?

"Dry Martinis all round please! Shaken not stirred."

The Cricket match from a non cricketer

Fred did an absolutely brilliant imitation of a hungry pregnant women with a football stuffed up his jumper. Bill did an excellent job of being cricket hooligan cheering loudly at every opportunity. and the weather did a great job of being cold. Joshua was the youngest player, and Dad (Grampa) umpired the match in long trousers. Apparently we didn't win, but a good time was has by all.

Finucane diaries

Here are some more even older diaries from the 1890's. They are by Jane Frances Finucane, and they were written when she lived in Fiji, which was still reputed to have cannibals. Her daughter Ruve Finucane, who I knew, had just been born. She was Grandpa's aunt and Jane would be his maternal grandmother. That would make her the great-great-granny of the children of the 8 brothers.

The diary is written in long hand, so it is quite difficult to read. I forsee some great-great-grandchild typing them out as an exercise on a boring wet holiday afternoon. As usual, click the link to read or download a chapter. Be patient, some are quite big! The last chapter contains Jane and her husband, Morgan Ignatius Finucane's, death notices from newspapers. They are easy to read and they gave both of them many column inches! Morgan was quite a chap and joined the labour party when it got going after WWI.

Chapter 1. Photos and general information from the 1895 diary.
Chapter 2. Notes from 1984 to 30 January 1985
Chapter 3. 31 January 1985 to 10 March 1985
Chapter 4. 11 March 1985 to 14 April 1985
Chapter 5. 15 April 1985 to 22 April 1985 + 31 August and 30 October. Last proper diary entry on 22 April 1985.
Chapter 6. Other items contained in the back of the diary including report of the death of Mrs Finucane from The Evening News of May 24th 1932 and report of the death of Dr M I Finucane at Hurst House from Westminster and Pimlico News, June 8, 1934.

Once again, all these documents have been scanned for the computer by Brenda at Corbett Keeling. Thanks Brenda!

Since this post, Trevor has typed out the diaries and you can see that version by clicking here.

Comment on original post - and he was as good as his word.
Fascinating. In fact so fascinating that I will have a shot at word processing it. Thanks George, Brenda et al
Posted by: Trevor John | May 21, 2008 at 05:37 PM

Old photos from George

I have recently got all my old photo negatives put on my computer. It's taken quite a while. There were five albums that might be of interest to the 8 brothers part of the family. Here they are. Just click on a picture to see the album. The second last one contains the notorious evidence of Tom drinking a bottle of wine out of one glass at Bistro Le Praz. I have not always been able to identify all the small nephews and nieces. If you can help me, please leave a comment!

March 1997: Bunjee jumping (39)
We went bunjee jumping, near where the London Eye is now, for Trevor's 14th birthday treat. Ruth came and so Alice and some of their friends.

February 1997 Skiing Meribel (22)
Keeling family skiing in Meribel. Granny, Grampa, Philippe, Rob, Alice, Lizzie, Ruth, Trevor and Alexander feature.

1996 September Jacobs (12)
Grampa, Ruth and Trevor pictured at Jacobs. I'm nor really sure of the date of this. It might even be 1997.

January 1995 Skiing in Meribel (22)
We were skiing in Meribel. Granny, Grampa, Simon, Harry, Ruth and Trevor are pictured. We had a foi gras lunch at Bistro La Praz. At the end of it Tom wanted just one more glass of wine. The proprietor said he did not do glasses of wine, only bottles. A friendly argument ensued. Eventually the prop got out quite a large glass, opened a bottle and poured the whole bottle into it. Honour was satisfied on all sides and Tom drank it. The event is pictured here. Trevor was obviously quite amused.

April 1989 Easter at Jacobs (8)
Granny, Grampa, Trevor, Jackie, Kate, Tom, Simon, Harry, David, Camilla, David, Ruth and Trevor feature.

a fabulous weekend at jacobs

Here is a picture of Mum resting on a work break in between doing her fabulous jobs of running Hotel Jacobs.

Unfortunately I haven't worked out how to do the picture thing correctly, and my cameras are still giving me aggravation in getting pictures out, so your roving reporter Rob can only let you have this one.

After the weekend was over the internet connection went down. Mum then achieved Master status by phoning PlusNet, (the ISP), and fixed it herself. Well done Mum.

Happy birthday to me

Thanks for the champagne Mum, and messages from David, Rob, Harry, Tom and family, Trevor  and calls from Trevor and Ruth. Very nice to have a chat with you Trev! Hope to see some of you at Jacobs the weekend after next.  I have drunk the champagne with Krista and Alexander :-) Alexander and I take the night train to Upper Bavaria, where he comes from. We are visiting some of his relatives. It will be challenging. They speak Bavarian there, which is more different form high German than Glaswegian is from Oxford English. So I won't understand a word.

In 1955:
James Dean died in a car accident
Guinness Book of Records was first published
West Germany became a sovereign state
The world population was 2.7 billion

Thank you for Simply Books

I am now in my third year of depending on Simply Books to do my Accounts. I can thoroughly recommend it, and hope to produce a draft set of accounts for the Revenue in April, rather than slogging through them to beat the January deadline.

I don't keep accounts in the way David intended, but I do it my way. But it definitely cuts out loads of bookkeeping errors that would otherwise get into my accounts.

Many thanks David.

Poppy - a star in the making

If you ever get the chance to see Poppy in one of her plays just do it, you will be in for a treat.

Her latest effort was an impro bit, in the genre of Clive Anderson's 'Whose line is it any way', where she and three other actors, got up and mixed a bit of a script with questions from the audience.

i don't think it would be giving too much of the plot away to say that it's about a group of actors discussing the play that they've just performed, in the green room of the theatre. The audience don't get to see the play, but just to ask questions to the cast after the performance.

Apparently the next performance is in Bristol, and if you do happen to be in the area, do give it a go.

The other good thing, was that the tickets were only £6 per hit, which in London is a real snip for live theatre.

jude learns to ride a bike

I am proud to announce that Jude has learnt to ride a bike shortly after his fifth birthday.

He got the bike from his parents as a birthday present, from Alice and Ryan.

Devils lake and hill

Ruth Trevor Emma

Ruth, Trevor and Emma, Trev's girlfriend, are visiting me in Berlin. They rented bicycles and we rode out to Teufelsberg and Teufelssee, which are in Grunewald, a huge forest on the edge of Berlin. Teufel is German for devil, so that's where the devils lake / hill comes from. It was a lovely day and there they are on top of the hill with Berlin behind them. The hill is about 80m high and was made after WWII from 12 million cubic meters of rubble, or about 400,000 buildings. That was some of the remains of Berlin after the war. You can read more about it on Wikipedia. After admiring the view, the kites, radio controlled gliders and trainee paragliders, we went down the hill at high speed, chased

George Emma Trevor

by dogs, to Teufelssee. Teufelssee is a lake with an old waterworks beside it which used to supply a large part of Berlin with drinking water. At last, I understood what waterworks means. This is something that has confused me since nanny introduced us to the term as children. And there's a picture of Trevor, Emma and me. I am not reading them a sermon and god is not looking over my shoulder, it's just a trick of the camera and the light. You can click either of the pictures to see a bigger view.

It's great fun having Ruth, Trev and Emma here, they are going back to England on Monday.

collar bone

Dear everyone

I went to the doctor today Wednesday 26 March and I have to go back in 4 weeks time to see if it has got any better. Very boring!

Lots of Love |Granny,Mum,Mother in-lawXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXOOOOOOOOOOOO
Comments
 Alice
Though it may be boring for you, the few people I have told are all incredibly impressed that my granny broke her collarbone skiing! I hope it heals quickly and I look forward to seeing you the weekend after next.
xx
Posted by: Alice | March 31, 2008 at 10:37 AM

Trevors birthday

Trevor started his birthday celebrations on Friday afternoon at the Egg rolling race on Primrose hill. It is silly but fun. Gavin and I went there to join in. There are various competitions, including egg rolling, egg and spoon 3 legged relay race, egg decorating and egg golf. Ruth made some lovely decorated eggs.

The Keeling team, won the 3 legged relay race. Ruth and Trevor were in it, luckily I was in another team, I was rubbish. Alice, Ryan, Jude and Lizzie were all there too and in good form. We retired to the pub afterwards with lots of their friends. Happy birthday dear Trevor was sung lustily several times.

I'm feeling quite tired today  ....
Comments
 Alice
The Easter egg roll was great fun, it was great to see you, George, Ruth and Trevor. Barry Egg White rocked (see picture!). Will definitely do it again next year - Go Team Keeling!!
Posted by: Alice | March 24, 2008 at 08:33 PM

Apropos Barbar and diaries

I have just read a brief history of EMI Records, entitled 'A Voice to Remember'. This booklet was supplied as part of a record set that I bought years ago. I picked it out recently as a result of needing to dry a lot of my LP covers which had got wet in the barn during recent storms. On the inside cover the narrative starts 'The first gramophone arrived in London under the arm of an American lawyer called William Barry Owen. Sent by the machine's sponsors to seek capital for launching the gramophone in Europe, Owen encountered difficulty and reluctace before he met Trevor Williams, a Lincoln's Inn solicitor aged thirty-eight'....Williams was unmistakenly interested....Trevor Williams - against the advice of colleagues in the City - put together a small syndicate among his family and friends. And so in April 1898 The Gramophone Company was formed. A year later an artist called Francis Barraud came to the new offices with his painting of a little dog peering into a gramophone and this image was adopted as the company's logo.

In 1931 The Gramophone Company merged with Columbia records to form a new grouping called Electric & Musical Industries Ltd or EMI. At this time the company invested in new recording studios at premises they had recently bought in Abbey Road, St.John's Wood. In the booklet there are some letters written by TW and photos of him with his colleagues. One shows them all standing in their suits, coats and top hats, with TW wrapped up in a bearskin coat, driving hat and goggles 'as betokened his mode of transport that morning' and his motoring enthusiasm.

For any of the younger readers of this fine blog, Trevor Williams was Barbar's Dad.

Tales of a 50th birthday

Thank you all for your kind messages of support for my birthday!

The usual questions about what feels different on being 50 were of course asked by various jokers in Rattlesden. Not much, but I do find I totter a bit more on having a drink or two. Perhaps the key to this is to develop a Grandpa shuffle keeping the feet in contact with the ground at all times.

I braved up to having a party in our local pub, Camilla providing a mini banquet. Poppy cleverly engineered some free time after a successful show in London at the weekend and joined us. Thirty or so local friends came and everyone had a bit more to drink than usual - so my totter went unnoticed under the circumstances.

I'm not sure how many of you know, perhaps everyone given the grapevine, but I've not been well the last three months. But I had a good day yesterday and I think I'm over the worst and looking forward to being back to normal.

Lots of love of love, David.
Comments
glad to hear that your passing of age wasn't too painful. lots of love xxx
Posted by: Ruth | March 21, 2008 at 12:42 PM

Onwards and upwards!
Posted by: Tom | March 20, 2008 at 01:10 PM

Barbar's diaries - I remember, I remember

Barbar (Barbara Gibbs) was Granny's mother. She was born November 15th 1900 and finished writing a diary in 1980. She died about 1982. I remember the funeral service. Carolyn and I took Ruth along in a push chair and Ruth bawled the church down. I haven't read all these diaries yet, they rested in a drawer of mine for years. But I have read some now. I cried at the death of Arthur (Barbar's husband). I gasped at her first first encounter with a 'wireless' in 1923. I laughed when I read that "Simon, called Henry, ... looks like a holy relic being carried across the lawn." And more, I won't spoil it.

Many thanks to Brenda, who works at Corbett Keeling for Simon and Jim. Brenda scanned all 240 pages in.  Click here to download.

Comments
Christine Wallace
I have just been looking at parts of Barbara's diary because names popped up.
I thought you might be interested to know that Buffy Williams-Ellis has an excellent website under her married name Baer - see "elizabethbaertextiles.com". Her family still know her as Buff. If you haven't already contacted her I'm sure she would be very interested. Her uncle was Clough Williams-Ellis (on page 27).
Posted by: Christine Wallace | August 01, 2011 at 05:27 PM

 George
1. Does anybody know who has the Orpen portrait (Chapter 7, p76.)? It's probably in the Hudson family somewhere. [I heard that it is at Bill and Cherry Palmer's house. GK 2017]
2) For that matter, does anybody know the Hudson's family contacts. Cousins should be told about the availability of the diary.
3) In Chapter 7 I read about the founding of HMV. Barbar says her father and Mr Eldridge R Johnson started it. (http://www.hmv.co.uk "HMV's very first store was officially opened in July 1921 by the celebrated British composer, Sir Edward Elgar on London's Oxford Street.") I boasted about this at school to a chap called Ponsonby. He was older than I was and immediately said that HIS great grandfather had started HMV. I felt crushed.
Posted by: George | March 17, 2008 at 01:31 PM

Why is the moon so high?

Grandpa phoned me this evening to find out why the moon is so high. He has noticed that he can't see it out of the sitting room window any more. He had already phoned Simon (busy) and David "Haven't got the faintest". I gave him a hand waving answer. But promised to deliver before I saw him this Friday. Michael and Joseph had just left back for London, Marco was still here with his friend Guiseppe. The weekend was winding down. So I typed "why is the moon higher in the sky" into Google. The third article down was this. Apparently the maximal elevation of the moon goes in an 18.6 year cycle. Chances of Grandpa reading this: 10%. So I will have to give a full report on Friday evening. It includes things like this:

δ = 23.5 sin θ + 5 sin(θ + 180°) = 23.5 sin θ - 5 sin θ = 18.5 sin θ

I'm sure he's up for it. :-)
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10 Albert Place

Anyone want to move nearer home? You've just missed an opportunity as they've completed on the above - at a cool 8.75 million!
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Shaken not stirred

I have sometimes got into serious discussions with Germans about whether dry martinis should be shaken or stirred. They insist that DMs should be stirred not shaken. 1) It doesn't even sound right 2) It's a cocktail shaker, not a cocktail stirrer 3) I always shake my dry martinis 4) James Bond has his shaken not stirred. We always part after such a discussion dazed and confused. At last I have discovered the reason for their error. I met a German cocktail barman the other night and we got round to discussing dry martinis. He told me that, in the early James Bond films, they were dubbing 'shaken not stirred' (geschüttelt nicht gerührt in German) and they couldn't make it synch with 007's lips. They realized that gerührt nicht geschüttelt would fit much better and, they thought, it's not a huge difference whether you shake or stir the thing. Little did they know what enormous cultural significance a dry martini has. Ever since, the poor Germans have been pathetically stirring their dry martinis.
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ski-ing with the very old

January 2008

Every day has been different. Sun, snow, rain, off-piste, on-piste, and onpiste offpiste. Philippe provides us with everything!

Jim, Emma, Issie, Polly, Joshua and Rosie enlivened our first few days dramatically.  We loved it, they loved it. We breakfasted, lunched and dined together.  Joshua made an excellent wine waiter, but surprise, surprise, Jim never organised a race. I think that Rosie would have  beaten her grandmother. We had the luxury of guides for them, Flo the first day, and six month pregnant Stephanie the second. I admired Stephanie’s coat so much that Philippe offered to get me one in Albertville. It is excellent. Long, totally waterproof and smart. It is great to wear out in the pouring English rain . Now they are gone and we start at ten and are home by four, except when I carelessly left my bag in the restaurant 2 lifts away in Val Thorens. It was a cold day and Mike and I waited like the two old birds we are at the top of the three carriage Funitel Bouquetin in the lee of the operators cabin and fortunately in the sun.

We are getting masses of off-piste ski-ing, Mike is finding it easier, and I am benefitting from learning how to side slip properly. But goodness me, I come back in the evening totally worn out!

A new restaurant has opened in St Martin, not only does it serve very good food, but the owners have built it over their farm, so that you look down from the dining-room on to the cows, sheep and goats in their winter quarters. There are up-to-date milking machines and a dairy where cheese is made. The farmer was very friendly but I couldn’t understand all that he said.

One Sunday we had to wait for the lifts to open before we could ski down to St.Martin for Mass. But what a treat awaited us! New snow, freshly groomed pistes, and the mountain to ourselves. We were down in ten minutes and in heaps of time having been worried as we waited that we might be late.

One evening I tricked Mike into going down the top of the Mauduit without me ; it was as I expected, Philippe said they were faster without me.

Once while ski-ing off-piste Philippe did a somersault over a rock, and on another occasion he was demonstrating a turn to Mike who then performed the turn immaculately, and was below Philippe who then proceeded to demonstrate again for my benefit. He caught his ski on a stone and fell on top of Mike! For me it was the biggest laugh ever. It was all over so quickly there was no time to worry about injuries.

The weather was all over the place, and once we had a complete day of rest with wind and snow outdoors and warmth and bed indoors. Very welcome.
Comment:
What a wonderful description of your hols. It is brilliant that you and Dad still have so much fun in the Alps. Keep going, you are an example to us all!
Posted by: Tom | February 13, 2008 at 09:23 AM

Tom's post

Mum and Dad were in Somerset yesterday to attend the funeral of Sue Petri. She died recently, aged 79. Sue was married to David Petri who was Dad's cousin and Dad had been David's best man. M & D had travelled here by train from Newbury where they had been staying with Cherry and Bill.

Arthur recently ran a 3500m race having been entered by his school with the chance to be selected for a Somerset running team. There were other children up to 21 months older than him. He finished 21st out of 45 and missed qualifying by two places. Next week he is off to France for a week, to stay with some French friends of ours during half term.

Edward was in a seven-a-side, inter-school rugby tournament last weekend. They got to the finals and at full time it was a draw. So they played sudden death and sadly lost that. He has also recently been awarded an academic scholarship in anticipation of his move to senior school in 2010.

Imogen is the fastest girl in her year. She took part in her year's cross-country race and finished third, behind a couple of very speedy boys. She has taken up the flute this term, in addition to the piano so it feels as though she has quite a lot on her plate.

Flora's first tooth fell out the other day. She does not need to compete in any races or serious sports yet. Sadly she dropped her tooth and it fell under the floorboards.