Cock Ale: A Good Idea Gone SO Wrong

Like so many things in this life, this idea began with a bucket. An empty bucket, mind you. It was in this perfectly innocent bucket that Old Ken would begin an experiment, an erstwhile wedding gift, and ultimately an environmental disaster. But one thing at a time.

A little backstory is necessary here: as you know if you are one of the maybe five people in the world who ever looks at this little trifle of a blog, yours truly was named for a debonair, swashbuckling bon vivant of a seventeenth century experimental philosopher—the man, the legend: Sir Kenelm Digby. As you may also recall, Sir Kenelm liked to cook. And, in a life with ample time devoted to the pleasures of the flesh, he amassed an impressive cookbook. Now, among the amazing recipes enclosed therein is one I have always wanted to try to make. Note, please, that I did not say "try" as in imbibe, because the recipe itself is for cock ale.

Cock ale: that means ale with cock in it. So, having a wedding to attend and needing to find a gift, Old Ken thought: "What better time could there be to try out this delicious recipe?" But, first, I needed some ingredients.

A trip down to the CostCutter supplied me with the cheap ale I would need.Somewhat more difficult to come by in South East London was a fresh cock. But, a shop in Chinatown in Soho provided this chicken (which I was willing to guess would be good enough). Please feel free, I should note parenthetically, to send along any bird flu jokes you might have heard. I have only a punchline and no joke, so please help me out.

Back to business, though. Now, I hear you saying: "Fair enough, Old Ken. But how do I get from ale and a chicken to cock ale?" Well, see, that's where the bucket comes in.
What you need to do now is put the cock in the bucket and then pour the ale on top of it. And I mean all of that delicious, succulent ale—don't be stingy! Finally, feel free to add a few cloves and cinnamon sticks. For the flavor, of course.



From here, you'll need to have access to a roof (preferably a flat one) and about two months' time to let the concoction brew.



Depending on your palate, it is at this point that cock ale either begins to get extremely tasty or threatens not only environing humanoid life but the rats, raccoons and cockroaches it might have attracted. For, even as you begin to move the bucket down from the roof, you may notice some highly pungent smells emanating from beneath the air-tight seal.



Once you have removed the tin foil, you may be surprised to see just how much the flesh of the chicken has decomposed. Indeed, it looks something like a chicken soup. Well, it would except for the thick layer of maggots floating on the putrid surface. The next task is to "pluck out the cock and throw him away," so Sir Kenelm tells us.



Done and done.



The next stage is a little tricky because you want to pour off the cock ale into the kind of bottle from which you will be drinking it on hot summer days but without spilling the precious contents down the side. Careful!



Finally, once you have transferred the fruits of your labor into proper receptacles, you can retrieve your cloves and cinnamon sticks from the bottom of the bucket. I see no problem with reusing them in other dishes (ideally, lightly flavored cakes, custards or biscuits where the musky savour of cock ale would really add that je-ne-sais-quoi).



When all is said and done, just hold the cock ale up to the light (well, make sure you're upwind from it) and admire its variegated colors and textures. Ideally, the maggots will not still be wriggling. Once you have finished with that, find a large dumpster and put all the cock ale in it. Then, remove your clothes and burn them.

PROOF!

Let us imagine that you were to find yourself in South London on a murky autumnal day. Haggard, mean-spirited people pass you on the street; scowling office workers grimace as they smoke in shirt sleeves in front of municipal buildings. But then, there on the ground before you lies a treasure, almost hidden below the scattered leaves, Tesco bags and discarded drink containers. It reads as follows:

"Wendnesday

We had a fun time at the beach and made fantastic sand castles. Then went to WOLWORTS and bourght 3 vidios."



Flipping this piece of sheer evidentiary gold over, we find:

"Thursday

Toaday I went to have a hair-cut then we went and had some fun at Panda's Palace."

Now, I'm not sure about you, but once Old Ken had finished weeping at the plangent pathos of this poetry, I set to work trying to interpret it. The narrator poses quite a challenge to the reader, emphasizing the plasticity of the English language, bending spellings to fit the mood. The initial syllable of Wednesday becomes the slightly more phonetic "Wendnesday," while the silent, penultimate syllable follows orthography - - as if to simultaneously break and follow the rules, thereby demonstrating their utter arbitrariness. While the discount chain "Wolworths" has lost its "h" and an emended "cemetery rule" governs the spelling of the word "video" (that is, apparently only 'i's are buried therein), the completed act of buying is subject to a fascinating remix. Part transposition of a famous, cold Russian beet soup, part imposition of the first-person plural possessive adjective "our" into the term of competed purchase itself, "bourght," I imagine, would rhyme with port or court.

But what of these Romantic destinations sketched with such intriguing outlines? "Panda's Palace" seems to be an attraction at Butlins Skegness - - one of three exciting Butlins UK resorts, which also include Bognor Regis and Minehead. In case you are interested in visiting, Butlins Skegness is near the town of Louth, which is, in turn, close to Alford, Horncastle, Spilsby and Wainfleet. Also nearby are Spilhorn, Castleby, Fordwain, Alfleet, Grimsby, Staines, Strood, Penge, and Steeple Bumsted.



But, like so many modern literary critics, I hear you impatiently asking: "But what does it mean?" Well, to a experimental philosopher like myself, it is less important to find "meaning" than to find proof. What is proof? Well, the Oxford English Dictionary defines proof as "that which makes good or proves a statement; evidence sufficient (or contributing) to establish a fact or produce belief in the certainty of something." I would submit that this poem proves that fun was critical to the self-conceptualization of the narrator's experience. For, on two consecutive days, the narrator describes him/herself as having had "fun," first at the beach making fantastic sand castles and then secondly at Panda's Palace.



Corroborating this evidence with the ludic experimentation with spelling noted above and it seems to this J. Hillis Miller that we have an air-tight case: some solid proof. And what better way is there to demonstrate that a claim has been proven than by stamping it with a "proof" stamp?

As the crimson ink of the stamp melds with the autograph script of the original poem, we can kick our heels back on a nearby table top, dip into a local wet bar or the ubiquitous pocket flask and reflect upon a job well done, a problem admirably solved, a point indisputably proven.

Spanish Castle Magic

"Where have you been, Old Ken?" Well, this question is one with which yours truly has been bombarded of late. Sadly, no easy answer lies ready at my disposal. Here and there I have been, learning about recent research on the growth of scientific knowledge in early modern Spain; mixing it up with social scientists in the home of the Liberty Bell; penning curious apercues about early modern iconoclasm; or reading strange scripts in a library designed by Sir Christopher Wren. So, the question where have I been is perhaps best answered in the negative, with an assertion of where I have not been: seated, as I am now, and ready to blog.

Well, perhaps at this point my travels might appear to have produced more of a drought than the fecund informational harvest for which you might pine. But, rest assured that I have managed to squirrel away quite a store of observations and insights, as is only right for a man from a place. So, without further ado, let me take the bull by the horns (an apt enough phrase for an Iberian adventure) and share some Spanish musing with you.



Having flown into Madrid, which we see in the first photograph above, I quickly made my way south east, accompanied by Senor Byron de la Panouse, a famous anthropologist who you will have met from an earlier excursion to Oxford. Our destination? Valencia, home of "the world's most delicious oranges," which are (if I recall correctly) not native to the region but an 18th-19th century import, first grown as decoration. In any case, Valencia (whose cathedral we see photographed above by night) has a well-preserved medieval quarter, complete with a cloth market in the Gothic style.



However, along the city's south-eastern flank - - indeed, in the dry bed of a now-diverted river which once ran between the ancient city and the sea - - is a brand new "City of Science and the Arts" designed by Spanish architect Santiago Calatrava.



Although the site is still under construction, Calatrava's buildings are, in the humble opinion of this tourist, something spectacular. For one, they fuse a number of formal elements that refer as much to Valencia's situation along the Mediterranean as to delights of science.

Consider, for example, this massive leviathan of a building, which rise from the brine in the photograph above, its gaping mouth open as if straining a gulp of water with the balleen-like windows. While whales of such size might be slightly out of sorts in the water of the nearby Mediterranean, the building's form certainly evokes the massive skeletons of watery mammals one sees in natural-history galleries such as the Jardin des Plantes of Paris. Vauchement chouette!



References to marine life continues on throughout the complex, as buildings seem to sprout gills, flippers, and herring-bone patterns in their construction.


In case you didn't get enough of that magic, here's a little close up.



Perhaps the most delightful pescatorial reference, though, is the very skin of the complex which is coated - - buildings, water-features, and benches alike - - with broken ceramic tile. As a result, the refracted sunlight produces amazing shimmering effects as its plays across these fish scale-like surfaces.



Always a fan of animals as you know Old Ken to be, you can just imagine my delight as we stumbled across the spectacular fauna of a street festival in the small town of Castello, which lies up the coast from Valencia.



I cannot report exactly what the plot of this little skit was, but a troupe of actors with really amazing costumes had commandeered a town square and treated us to a performance with a bee keeper (who seems to feature in neither of these photographs) attempting to reign in some wily bees. The gigantic, inflatable spider was a welcome, if slightly mysterious, addition. Spanish? Yes. Castle? Well, it was held in the town of Castello. Magic? And how!