This is a slightly edited version of a post that appeared on my old blog on May 10th, 2008

The people we know influence our lives, often in subtle ways. I was thinking about this the other day when I had my hair cut. As I sat in the barber’s chair, staring at myself in the mirror, a phrase came to my mind: “In the army they have only two styles, short and very short.” Memories of Harold came flooding back.

I think I mentioned that my father died when I was very young so that I have only one memory of him: being taken to see him in hospital where he later died. I was brought up by my mother alone, and my only sibling was an elder sister. When she married him, Harold was the first adult man to come into my life and I quickly seized on him as my model in all things manly.

He was rather older than my sister and I think he must have been in his late 30s by the time I first knew him. He was a tall man and quite imposing, with ginger hair and bushy eyebrows. He was Australian but if that conjures up a picture of a happy-go-lucky fellow with sun-bleached hair and a surfboard under his arm, put it out of your mind. Harold couldn’t have been more different.

Harold was a survival of another age. He always wore a jacket and tie, even in summer. It was only after some years of marriage and nagging by my mother that he eventually consented to take off his jacket in hot weather. Until then, his inevitable reply to her invitations to shed his outer garment, would be “A gentleman always wears a jacket.”

Being a gentleman was the guiding principle of his life. My mother once asked him to call me for lunch. He came all the way upstairs to find me and tell me, quietly, that my mother wished me to come down for lunch.

“I didn’t mean you to go upstairs,” said my mother. “You could have called out.”

Harold looked at her reflectively and replied “A gentleman never raises his voice.”

I always anticipated the arrival of my sister and Harold to stay with us with some alarm. This was because almost the first thing Harold would do would be to fetch my Meccano set, a Christmas present suggested by him, and go through it element by element, criticizing any lapse of order, any missing component, any half-built item tossed back into the box without being properly disassembled. It felt like a test and one that I always failed.

Another cause of consternation was shoes. Harold was obsessive about polishing shoes. Mine never came up to his expectations and I suffered his criticism accordingly. He once polished my shoes for me, not as a favour but to show how it should be done.

I didn’t like my hair to be too short whereas, according to Harold, a gentleman kept his hair trimmed short, as indeed he did. That was when he pronounced the dictum about army haircuts though I do not know why he thought that the traditions of military coiffure would have any persuasive effect on me.

You might wonder why my mother never defended me from these knocks to my pride and self-esteem. I have often wondered about this too because she was always fierce in her defence of her children and never afraid to stand up to authority, no matter in what figure it presented itself. I think she rather admired Harold and perhaps thought he would be a good influence on a growing lad. Despite the embarrassments that I suffered at his hands, I admired him too and strove to be as much like him as I could.

I remember that my mother did stand up for me on one occasion. Harold loved Classical music. He didn’t just listen to it; he listened to it. When there was a concert on radio, he would sit listening in utter concentration and we all had to stay completely quiet. At any noise, a blush of anger would spread across his face. One day, my childish games pushed him over the brink and he yelled at me to be quiet. My mother stepped forward and in no uncertain tones reminded him that this house was my home, it was where I lived and that he, as an outsider, had no business telling me how to behave in it. The row over, we all fell silent once more and Harold continued giving his attention to the music.

Apart from such minor spats, we all got on together well enough, spending our holidays together, either at home in Brighton or in their home, wherever they happened to be living at the time. I did learn a lot from him, not only about polishing shoes and how to behave at table (“A gentleman always tips his soup plate away from him.”) but about science and current affairs and, in a word, life. The day I overheard him telling my mother that I had now reached the stage where I could hold a conversation and have interesting things to say, I felt extremely proud.

The only time he ever said anything even vaguely affectionate to me was one summer when I was a teenager and we were preparing to return home after spending the school holiday with them. We found ourselves in his car together, driving back from some errand. “It’s a pity you are leaving now,” he said to me. “I am going to strip down the car engine and overhaul it. You could have been very useful to me.” It may seem an anodyne enough remark but, knowing Harold as I did, I appreciated it for its true worth and, as you see, have always remembered it.

When I left university and went out to work, I consciously tried to be as much like Harold as I could, wearing the same sort of clothes and shoes and behaving with the same grave demeanour. Gradually, however, I began to falter, to relax my standards and, eventually, to realize how absurd it was, for me at least, to behave in that stilted, archaic way.

Yet even today, I catch myself thinking of him from time to time, perhaps wondering what he would make of the modern railway train I am travelling in or the little digital camera that I have that performs tricks unimaginable in the film cameras he used. Would he be intrigued by modern life or contemptuous of it? Probably both.

Yes, we are influenced in so many, sometimes subtle, ways by the people we know, whose lives intertwine with ours. What would Harold make of the man I am today? I don’t doubt that he would have much to criticize but it doesn’t matter. My concern now is with those whom I influence in my turn, hoping to do them some good or, at least, no very great harm.

Continuing my meditations on the names of the days of the week in English and French, which I began in my post Saturday and samedi, it occurred to me to wonder why we have weeks of seven days at all.

It seems that the seven-day week was probably settled by the Babylonians about 4,000 years ago. They might have chosen this rather awkward prime number seven for the length of the week for two reasons. The first is that the number seven was sacred to them – a vague memory of which perhaps still persists today when people think of the number seven as “lucky”. The second reason has to do with astronomy.

The Babylonians were accomplished mathematicians and also avid sky-watchers who virtually invented the science of astronomy. Their calendar defined the year as twelve synodic (lunar) months, making it about 354 days long. To reconcile it with the solar year used in agriculture, they added extra days as necessary.

The Babylonians were meticulous at record-keeping and this in itself enabled them to make a number of discoveries. For example, they discovered the Saros cycle of the moon. This lasts for about 18 years, 11 days and 8 hours during which lunar events recur almost exactly. Thus they were able to predict lunar and solar eclipses long before they actually happened.

The Babylonians knew that while the stars remained in fixed positions, there were certain celestial objects that moved. These included occasional visitors such as comets and meteors but the most important ones were the sun, the moon and the five known planets, Mars, Mercury, Jupiter, Venus and Saturn, or to give them their Babylonian names (in the same order), Shamash, Sin, Nergal, Nabû, Marduk, Ishtar and Ninurta. What would be more natural for these gifted astronomers than to name the seven days of the week after these seven celestial bodies which they associated with their gods?

The Greeks and the Romans took over this ancient week of seven days, substituting their own day names. The Romans named the celestial objects after their own gods and goddesses. The sun and the moon were seen as deities in their own right while the planets were designated as Mars, the god of war; Mercury, the messenger of the gods but also the god of commerce; Jupiter or Jove, in ancient times the god of the sky and thunder but to the Romans the chief of the gods with a propensity for casting down thunderbolts on people who angered him; Venus, the goddess of love and beauty; and Saturn, the god of sowing and agriculture in whose honour the festival called Saturnalia was held every year on December 17th.

The Romans took their calendar with them to the lands that they conquered and occupied. This included Britain but, whereas France and other old colonies of Rome continued using (and modifying) the Latin language and the Roman day names, in Britain, invading Scandinavian and Germanic tribes replaced the Romans and took over as the ruling class. Their language and culture became dominant. This of course affected, among other things, the names of the days of the week. Exactly how it affected them we shall see in due course. The seven-day week, however, was retained and is with us still.

In our perambulation today, we took a turn around Myddelton Square. It is said to be the biggest residential square in the district known as Clerkenwell. It was laid out by William Chadwell Mylne and built in the 1820s to 1840s in Georgian style of yellow brick – a style and finish typical of this area.

The houses are quite large with a tall ground floor and the usual basement – the realm of the servants – accessible through its own sunken open area. They were obviously conceived as commodious dwellings for well-to-do families but most have now been subdivided into flats.

As I mentioned in my post Good Friday, the square has a central park or garden within which resides the local parish church of St Mark.

Historic plaque in Myddelton Square

Today, we noticed a detail that had hitherto escaped my attention. It is a rather plain incised plaque bearing the following inscription:

43-53 MYDDELTON SQUARE
DESTROYED BY ENEMY ACTION
ON 11th JANUARY 1941
REBUILT 1947-1948 BY
THE NEW RIVER COMPANY

The New River Company, you will recall, was formed by Hugh Myddelton to acquire land and construct the New River that terminates near here. They leased leased to builders developing housing in the area.

The contrast old old and new brickwork

This photo shows clearly that the whole of the end of the row was destroyed and nicely rebuilt to the original plan. The rebuilt houses have lighter coloured bricks. They may possibly come to blend in as they age and accumulate dirt from the atmosphere.

The door of St Mark’s Church

The church, and the church shop, have been closed since lockdown was imposed. On passing the doorway today, we spied this installation: chair with a vase of flowers and a potted shrub decorated with Easter eggs.

Not being religious, I don’t know whether there is any particular Christian significance intended to attach to these items but I was amused by the no doubt unconscious pagan symbolism: eggs and hares were symbols of Eostre, the Germanic goddess of fertility, from whose name our word Easter ultimately derives.

A kindly gift from Myddelton’s

And yes! Today we did go for coffee at Myddelton’s Deli. In conversation with the shopkeeper, Tigger jokingly mentioned that she had not received an Easter egg this year, whereupon he kindly made her a present of one! I think that once the pandemic is over, we should maintain our new friendship with the owners by continuing to shop at Myddelton’s.

Pentonville Road

Our exercise walk today took us along a section of Pentonville Road. The name will probably be familiar to non-Londoners, if at all, because of the name of Pentonville Prison, though this instituion is some way away along the Caledonian Road.

Pentonville Road was built in the 1750s as part of the New Road joining Euston to the City Road. The section from Kings Cross to City Road was renamed Pentonville in 1857 after the local landowner, Henry Penton. Various other landmarks in the district bear the name Penton or Pentonville.

The road, which at its inception crossed open fields, was built as a by-pass for stage coaches. It was originally a turnpike, that is, users had to pay a fee at the toll booth.

Many stage coach passengers no doubt disembarked at the Angel Inn, to take refreshment or spend the night before continuing into the city.

The district is still called The Angel, after the famous inn, though this no longer exists. The pub bearing that name is a modern upstart, residing next door to the site of the original, now occupied by a pretty building housing offices and a branch of the Co-operative Bank. It was built as a hotel and once provided premises for a Lyons Corner House whose customers were served by the famous “Nippies”. You can just see the dome of that building at the end of the road.

We played our usual game of “Dodge the careless passer-by” and for fun I took note of how many people wore masks. More did so than previously though it was a somewhat motley collection. Some wore proper medical-looking masks and a few seemed to be those masks which some cyclists wear in city streets. A couple went by, one with and one without, a mask. Two women passed us wearing ordinary scarves across their faces like bandits from a bad crime film. Not that I am criticising any of them. In the current state of bewilderment in which we find ourselves, we each do what we think best.