Honk, honk!

A friend who runs a European opera company was putting on a Rameau opera in a Balkan city, he wanted a series of talks or even workshop to accompany it. I offered to speak about string technology from the 16th to the 18th century, I even offered to do some workshops, making linen or horse or human hair strings for the earlier period, then gut strings out of lambs intestines and loading them with lead or plaiting them to illustrate the development, then finally ending with the great innovation after the loosely wound-on string of the tightly wound on string. We could have explored the different tonal qualities of gold, silver and brass, all of course annealed to different levels, I must admit I am somewhat weak on the use of alloys, as my main interest is those strings made by family industries around Freising rather than Northern Italy.

It wouldn't have just been about cleaning and stretching intestines but making gold and silver wire and the whole art of 'winding on', as well as explaining catgut is caterpillar gut or silk, not moggy. [Factoid: their intestines are irregular and therefore unsuitable for strings of any real length, it is a carnivore thing, I have a paper by Robert Spencer on it somewhere.] I would have read up on bandora stings at the court of Philip II, which is a very interesting subject in itself,

Despite my enormous knowledge of the subject and our friendship he didn't think it would draw great crowds, especially in translation, hence I share a little with you now. 

If you are still with me, it is just a way of saying there are some things we men can get obsessed about. Most chaps know a great deal about cars and nothing about the stringing of bowed and plucked instruments before the middle classical period, I am afraid I am different. I am not quite as bad as a friend of mine who whenever a barber asks, 'See last nights match? replies, 'Gosh yes, Argentina got a terrible trouncing in the third chukka didn't they'. He gets a peaceful, prayerful haircut.

Well cars: the Pope seems to have a thing about them. There were reports of him checking out the Vatican car parks to see which official was driving what, now a friend says some Roman priests are a bit disgruntled over the Pope's remarks to the assembly of young people in which he castigated priests with new cars, they see it as playing to the gallery and into the hands of that insidious Italian anti-clericalism. I am told that scratching priests cars has become a bit of a game in some parts of Italy, probably with a small 'F', for Francesco and if you want to embarrass any cleric you just ask him about his car, now it can never be old or tatty or dirty enough.

I knew a priest who is dead now, pray for him, he drove a rather ordinary car around the parish and a very splendid large shiny one whenever he was out of the parish he changed it every year and used to claim he had been lent it by a parishioner. It turned out he was a bit of crook and might well have gone to prison had he not died.

I can only imagine what the dread around the City State when that little newly restored little white Fiat, which is going to be cosseted by the Vatican mechanics, honks its way around the Palazzi on surprise visits or inspections or transferring His Holiness from his apartment in the Casa Sta Marta to his appointments in the unslept in but still used for work Apostolic Apartments. One or two members of the Curia have been arguing for a fleet of eco-friendly electric golf buggies for everyone to use to get from office to office for ages.

A classic refurbished Fiat is a plaything for a wealthy man who has everything else, the kind of man who still has his shoes repaired in Argentina, few priests I know wear shoes that are worth repairing these are for princes not for poor shepherds who smell of the flock, their cars are necessity not a luxury.

Big question: is the Pope going to car share?