Meanest dad in the world
QUESTION Is it true that after the war Evelyn Waugh ate bananas (which were scarce at the time) in front of his children to spite them? EVELYN WAUGH (1903-66) was one of the 20th century’s finest novelists, but could be a cruel man.
He wrote of his children: ‘I have my two eldest children here, a boy and girl; two girls languish at Pixton; a fifth leaps in the womb. I abhor their company because I can only regard children as defective adults. I hate their physical ineptitude, find their jokes flat and monotonous.’
Of his son Auberon ( 1939- 2001), he added: ‘Bron is clumsy and dishevelled, sly, without intellectual, aesthetic or spiritual interest.’ In 1954, he wrote: ‘Of children as of procreation — the pleasure momentary, the posture ridiculous, the expense damnable.’
Auberon, a brilliant journalist in his own right, tells the banana story in his autobiography Will This Do? (1991): ‘On one occasion, just after the war, the first consignment of bananas reached Britain. neither I, my sister Teresa, nor my sister Margaret had ever eaten a banana throughout the war, when they were unprocurable, but we had heard all about them as the most delicious taste in the world.
‘When this consignment arrived, the socialist government decided every child in the country should be allowed one banana. An army of civil servants issued a library of special banana coupons, and the great day arrived when my mother came home with three bananas. All three were put on my father’s plate, and before the anguished eyes of his children, he poured on cream, which was almost unprocurable, and sugar, which was heavily rationed, and ate all three.’
He added: ‘From that moment I never treated anything he had to say on faith or morals very seriously.’
John Wood, Northampton.
QUESTION Why does Paraguay have a Liverpool FC in
its Premier League? EX-LIVERPOOL striker luis Suarez tells the story of the club in his autobiography Crossing the line — My Story.
‘ There is a team in Uruguay called liverpool FC. They play in Montevideo. The club was founded in 1919 at a seminary [this is incorrect, the club was founded in 1908 and joined the league in 1915] and the students named it after the English port because the boats carrying coal that used to arrive in the city had come from liverpool.’
liverpool are currently top of the second division in Uruguay. In the 2005 to 2006 season, they changed their away kit to all-red in tribute to their English namesakes.
They aren’t the only team to have an English connection. The Albion football club was formed in 1891 by students of Montevideo’s English High School. The club joined the Primera division at its inception in 1900 and its name is derived for the old Greek word for Britain.
Montevideo Wanderers FC, usually known simply as Wanderers, was founded in 1902 by a breakaway group of Albion players, led by the brothers Enrique and Juan Sardeson. They had travelled from Montevideo to England to see their parents in the 1890s.
During that time, Wolverhampton Wanderers won the FA Cup. The new club was named after the Wolves team, and because it had no home ground.
Geoff Wheatman, Bedworth, Warks.
QUESTION What do cruise ships do with their food and general waste each day?
A 3,000-PASSEnGEr cruise ship is akin to a mini floating city. It produces more than 450,000 gallons of grey water, 4,000 gallons of oily bilge water and as much as 19 tonnes of solid waste every day.
The International Convention for the Prevention of Pollution f rom Ships (MARPOL) i s the main convention covering pollution of t he marine environment by ships from operational or accidental causes. It sets strict standards for all commercial vessels to prevent ship-generated pollution. The MARPOL Convention addresses pollution from ships by oil; by noxious liquid substances carried in bulk; harmful substances carried by sea in packaged form; sewage; garbage; and the prevention of air pollution from ships.
While cruise liners generally follow these guidelines, there have been many examples of the rules being flouted. In 2006, Celebrity Cruises’ Mercury was fined $100,000 by Washington state in the U.S. for dumping 500,000 gallons of untreated wastewater into Puget Sound. In 2014, workers for the Swiss-Italian cruise operator MSC Cruises were captured throwing black rubbish bags over the side during the night.
While many companies exhibit best practice, it is not universally the case, and environmental groups are increasingly worried about the impact of the growing cruise industry.
Corry Roggenback, Brussels. WE’VE recently returned from a cruise on the P&O liner ventura, during which I was given the rare opportunity to take a behind-the-scenes tour of the ship, where this question was explained fully.
Essentially, these ships recycle as much as possible with the relevant materials being hand- sorted into the following categories: glass and plastic bottles, which are separately ground down into small granules; tins, which are crushed; and paper, which is shredded.
It is all stored on-board for offloading either at home port or the next convenient port- of- call. Waste food is ground into small particles and jettisoned, via large pipes under the ship, into the sea — much to the delight of the fish and any seagulls which might be in the area.
Waste water is treated by bioreactor units, which use a process of aeration to break down sewage into a harmless fluid as clean, if not cleaner, than that achieved on mainland sewage plants. This is either discharged into the sea or stored in tanks to be discharged when the ship is in port.
All safely flammable material which is not included above is incinerated. All discharges at sea and incineration can be carried out only while the ship is at least 12 miles from land.
Seawater used to cool the engines is f i nally boiled to f orm steam, then evaporated and pumped into storage tanks for use on-board. This water is as fit for drinking as bottled water supplied on the ship. This system is able to make 90 tonnes of water per hour to supplement fresh water pumped on-board at various ports. Excess seawater is discharged back into the sea.
C.L. Stubbs, Sandown, Isle of Wight.