Trip to London

Off to London on the train to visit the Tate Modern.

I haven't been to London for a while and I was wondering if I should bring gifts for the people there. In the end I decided against it.

Once you start giving gifts to some of them, they might all want one. With a population of 8 million that could become prohibitively expensive. Even if the gifts only cost 25 pence each, that's still two million quid.

Quite frankly, I just haven't got that sort of money. Even if I had, I don't think I'd spend it on giving cheap geegaws to the entire population of a large city.

And there'd be problems with distribution; it would take me ages to give out all those gifts on my own and you'd have to factor in transport costs too.
Plus, a lot of people in London are quite rich and probably wouldn't appreciate me giving them cheap gifts - that could produce the sort of embarrassing situations that I'd prefer to avoid.

Sooo ... after careful consideration, I thought I'd give it a miss.

If you are from London, I hope you will understand my reasons and find it in your heart to forgive me.

Anyway, on with the show -


On the way up, we passed Didcot Power station. Built by the Druids over 4,000 years ago, it is still in use today and supplies top quality electricity to homes and gardens throughout Britain.


Paddington station.
Boudicca, Queen of the Iceni, is reputed to be buried under one of the platforms. But - be warned - the station authorities won't react kindly if you try digging there.


There are a lot of buses in London, most of them red. The old Routemaster buses have nearly all gone, though I did see a couple of them chugging about.


I think this is Aldgate, a very old bit of London. Is the statue a Griffin?


St. Paul's Cathedral. Designed by Sir Christopher Wren after the Great Fire of London (1666). You can climb right up to the top of the Dome, but it costs seven pounds to get in.
Notice that the lower part of the building is just a drawing. What a swiz!


The famous Tower Bridge down the river. It was a misty, murky day.


The strangely shaped building is "The Gherkin", designed by Norman Foster. It's quite new. Maybe in a hundred years time there'll be lots of buildings like that.


The Tate Modern is a former power station, now turned into a free art gallery. You can get there from St. Paul's via the Millennium Bridge.


As befits an art gallery, the Tate Modern is full of art.
To be honest, I reckon I could do better than most of it, even with my good hand tied behind my back. Some of it's OK though. I liked these floating things.


This was a room full of letters, etc. all with the writing crossed out.


Along the South Bank to Waterloo Bridge. This is the London Eye with Big Ben and the Houses of Parliament behind.
The London Eye isn't an eye at all, but a big wheel with capsules for people to go in and see over London.


This is Neal's Yard, near Covent Garden.

In this yard in 1962, a man called Neal discovered that people would pay up to twenty quid for a small jar of marigold ointment.

And so the famous Neal's Yard Remedies were born.


There was a bead shop in Neal's Yard. Here are some of their beads.


That's all, folks!

Don't Play Guitar and Drive

...and now for your entertainment, Mr Alex Matthews, Driving into Bristol...






Driving into Bristol

Holiday cover

So...






And this is Flip und Flop
















That's all, folks!


Don't give up the day job, boys.

Wish you were here

Having a lovely time. Wish you were here. Staying at the Hotel Dunbloggin'. The food is awful and there's not enough of it. Several shark attacks on bathers this morning, but otherwise the day has been uneventful. Back to Blogshire soon.
SB4444

Oh no! It's the Anglo-saxons!

A.D.1012. This year came Alderman Edric, and all the oldest counsellors of England, clergy and laity, to London before Easter, which was then on the ides of April; and there they abode, over Easter, until all the tribute was paid, which was 48,000 pounds.

Then on the Saturday was the army much stirred against the bishop; because he would not promise them any fee, and forbade that any man should give anything for him.

They were also much drunken; for there was wine brought them from the south. Then took they the bishop, and led him to their hustings, on the eve of the Sunday after Easter, which was the thirteenth before the calends of May;

and there they then shamefully killed him.

They overwhelmed him with bones and horns of oxen; and one of them smote him with an axe-iron on the head; so that he sunk downwards with the blow; and his holy blood fell on the earth, whilst his sacred soul was sent to the realm of God.

The corpse in the morning was carried to London; and the bishops, Ednoth and Elfhun, and the citizens, received him with all honour, and buried him in St. Paul's minster;

where God now showeth this holy martyr's miracles.

When the tribute was paid, and the peace-oaths were sworn, then dispersed the army as widely as it was bef0re collected.

Then submitted to the king five and forty of the ships of the enemy;
and promised him, that they would defend this land, and he should feed and clothe them.

Ends










Errm... not really funny, is it?

AWOL

I don't know where he's gone.
He was here this morning.








Here's something from b3ta to keep you amused.

Bees and Peas

When I looked out this morning,
What do you think I saw?
Six dried peas and one dead bee,
A-hanging round my front door.

Who was the hand that put them there?
What did they do it for?
Surely putting peas and bees
Must contravene some law?

Now, bees and peas can spread disease,
So keep your locks secure,
And beware those things that rhyme with cheese,
A-laying on the floor.

Photos of My Cat

Every day I receive literally hundreds and hundreds of letters from fans and well-wishers from around the world.

Because there are so many, I'm afraid that I'm unable to reply to everyone personally; but pleased be assured that I try to read as many of your messages as I can.

Some people request items: locks of my hair, for example. Or toe nail clippings or parts of my internal organs. I always try to comply with their wishes if I'm able to.

But by far and away the greatest number of requests I get are for pictures of my cat.

"Please show us," they say, "we've never seen a cat before and are curious to find out what it looks like."

Well, especially for all you people in Internet-shire, here are some photos of Spungeena, my violent, bad-tempered, censorious and (to be honest) not very interesting cat.

Enjoy.


Pensive


Animated

Theatrical

Amusing

Slightly Scottish

"Find me a Venezuelan"


Pompous

Overbearing



OtherWorldly


Majestic

Calvinistic

Marginalised




Robotic


Unrepentant



Contemplative


Trombone-like


Rubicund



Byeee!
More cat photos tomorrow!

Manhole Covers of the World. Number 1

Manhole Covers of the World.
Number One in quite a long series

Based on an original idea by someone whose name I can't remember


I didn't know whether to believe that the English word "crap" really came into existence because the man who invented the flush toilet was called Thomas Crapper.

But these manhole covers prove that there was a firm called Crapper and Co. who were sanitation engineers, so I guess that it's true.

Aren't they lovely? If these ain't works of art, I'll eat my hat.

Do the Americans use the word 'crap' in the same way as the UK?

They say "Cut the crap" , but talk about "Shooting crap", which brings up unsavoury images.

The Yanks are renown for using guns to sort out their problems, but it's not appropriate for sanitation issues.

Anglo-Saxon Chronicle 979

Right then, let's see what's happening in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle.

It's either that or some photos of my cat, OK?

To recap, The Chronicle was an account of Anglo-Saxon history, written down from about 600 AD onward. There were copies in various parts of the country - Winchester maybe, Canterbury, somewhere in the Midlands and Peterborough.
They all said the same things, but regional variations in dialect started to emerge. The Peterborough Chronicle went on until about 12 hundred and something. There are some copies still in existence in the British Museum, Oxford, etc.

...and now, let's see what those those crazy guys are up to...

A.D. 979. In this year was Ethelred consecrated king, on the Sunday fortnight after Easter, at Kingston. And there were at his consecration two archbishops, and ten diocesan bishops. This same year was seen a bloody welkin oft-times in the likeness of fire; and that was most apparent at midnight,and so in misty beams was shown; but when it began to dawn, then it glided away.

A.D. 980. In this year was Ethelgar consecrated bishop, on the sixth day before the nones of May, to the bishopric of Selsey; and in the same year was Southampton plundered by a pirate-army, and most of the population slain or imprisoned. And the same year was the Isle of Thanet overrun, and the county of Chester was plundered by the pirate-army of the North. In this year Alderman Alfere fetched the body of the holy King Edward at Wareham, and carried him with great solemnity to Shaftsbury.



That's it, folks.

I've had a look for who this King Edward is. He isn't Edward I of England, who was 300 years later. He seems to be Edward the Elder (King of Wessex?), who was a son of king Alfred. According to the Internet, he was more of a warrior than holy man, but maybe he was both. He had a "formidable sister" called Aethelflaed, who was married to the king of Mercia and then took over running the kingdom when her husband died.

Poiruts

One thing about living is Bristol is that everybody talks loike poiruts.

It's sometimes difficult to tell who is a pirate and who isn't. Fortunately, pirates have a lot of give-away signs such as wooden legs, parrots, hooks instead of hands, etc.

I decided to write a bit about pirates, to make up for my cartoon misdeeds of the last few days. But my opinion of pirates has changed - they were not nice people.

Take Black Bart, Barti Ddu, from the Welsh village of Casnewydd, Pembs. What I knew about him was that he was the most successful pirate ever. He only got caught in the end because he had so much treasure that his ships couldn't move.


But I'd thought he was a fairly cuddly sort of bloke - ships would surrender to him because they knew he abhorred cruelty and would treat them right.
He also wrote Bart's Articles, a code of behaviour for pirate crews and was the first pirate captain to have an Equal Opportunities policy and create diabled access to all parts of the ship (I'm making a bit of this up).

He loved music and had a classic ensemble on board his ship and a band of African drummers.
He'd get them all to play on deck when he went into battle.
So he was a pretty groovy kind of pirate; he'd go to Womad if he was alive now.


Well, those were his good bits. What I didn't know was that he was very involved in the slave trade and, the worst thing of all, there was an episode when he took hostage some ships full of slaves and demanded money for their release. When one captain wouldn't pay, Black Bart set fire to the ship with all the slaves still chained up on board. What a nasty man.I've gone right off him.

And Blackbeard, another Cymro but, unlike Bart, he was a total psycho.

He used to put fireworks in his huge black beard when he went into battle.
I don't know what it was with pirates, but they felt obliged to put on a bit of a show.

He was very cruel and did lots of bad things, but wasn't much of a success, piratically speaking.

There were also a couple of women pirate captains mentioned on Wikipedia that I hadn't heard of before.

They didn't mention Grace O'Malley (Gronya Wail in phonetic Irish), the Pirate Queen from the West of Ireland. She went to England and met Elizabeth I, but only on condition that she was treated like a visiting head of state, which she was.


Anyway, dear readers, please don't become pirates. It's not worth it and it's not big or clever.

Hands on a train

On a train today, I'd forgotten about the school holidays and it was really crowded. In fact, the only place I could see that wasn't actually (God forbid!) sitting next to somebody were four seats and a table with only one person occupying it. Unfortunately, the occupant was a large, shaven-headed, heavily tattooed male who was sprawling over it like he wasn't really too keen on having company.

As I approached, wondering if I dared sit down by him, I spotted two empty seats just behind him. From this position I was daringly able to take a photo of his hands. I don't know what I'd have said if he'd caught me - "Sorry, I didn't realise they were your hands" or something.

His neck was quite interesting too, with at least two flags on it, one of them Scottish, I think.

I don't know if it was connected, but bad luck befell me on the journey home. You know how they always tell you to "Mind the gap", well, I didn't and my leg plunged into the nether world that exists betwixt train and platform. Ouch! I'm hobbling about like someone with a bad leg now and might have to have a day off work.

Smoking

Please help keep this site going by smoking more cigarettes.

For every pound you spend on ciggies, one penny is donated to us.


Don't believe the scare stories you hear about cigarettes.
Most scientific research indicates that heavy smoking
is actually quite good for you.



Smoke A Fagfrom the b3ta website.

Dough-faced ploughboys

The rough, dough-faced ploughboy coughed and hiccoughed his way through Scarborough.

This is supposed to be seven different pronunciations of -ough. It is, I suppose, but it's cheating a bit. Who would really write hiccup as hiccough? Not me.

I asked several people at random in the street how they would spell hiccup and most of them told me to go away. One woman said that she wasn't from round here.

Numbers Trick

I've had the Britblog Humour Page people onto me,, telling me I haven't been funny enough.

Look, I'm trying, alroight!

I've got a lot of hungry mouths to feed (I'm getting an aquarium soon) and doing this blog is my only way of making a living.

You don't know what it's like,, getting up every morning, trying to think of something amusing or entertaining.

Do you know this numbers trick? It's quite well known now, but is a good trick if you don't know it.

First, think of a number. Any number at all will do, but as the next bit involves multiplying it by nine, a smaller number might be better. (where this trick often goes wrong is when people don't multiply correctly).

So right, you've thought of a number and multiplied it by nine? You've checked your answer and it's definitely right? OK

Now add all the digits in the number together. I.e. if your number is 312, you add 3 + 1 + 2 = 6.

If your total is more than one digit, just add the digits again, till you have just one.

Now subtract five from that digit.

Turn the number you have now into its corresponding letter of the alphabet - a =1, b = 2, etc.

Now think of a country that starts with that name.
(Hint: nothing too obscure please)

Now, take the second letter of that country and think of an animal that begins with that letter.


Now, scroll down to see what country and animal I think you've got ...










It's ...












an elephant in Denmark?
Am I right, or am I right?+

Clockwork Mice

Oh well, no takers for my scissors challenge then. So much for all you so-called Internet people; you're just all talk really.

Good job we didn't have to rely on people like you during the war:
"Could you go and defend us from the Nazi war machine?"
"No, sorry, I'm too busy downloading i-Pods onto my megaDrive."

Fat lot of good that would have done.

So, I'm now releasing my collection of clockwork mice for Information Only - I won't embarrass you by asking if you could do better.



I first began collecting clockwork mice in the Nineties after getting a tip-off from an anonymous source that they would soon become scarce.

It was sound advice; in the closing years of the last century it became impossible to buy a clockwork mouse for love or money. Of course, you could go to London and pay hyper-inflated prices down some seedy back street. But for the ordinary working man, clockwork mice were now a thing of the past.

Why did it happen? Some say it was the fault of the Vibrating Hamster invading the mouse habitats. But surely there's enough room for both of them to live together?



A more sinister theory is that the Chinese goverment closed down many of its mouse factories because they suspected them of being infiltrated by the Falun Gong religious cult. Rumour has it that Falun Gong were planning to seize control of the factories and create their own giant clockwork mouse to wreak havoc on the Beijing government.

In 1989 one man with a carrier bag stood alone in front of the tanks in Tiananmen Square. How different history might have been if he'd had a giant clockwork mouse to back him up.

Note: This posting has been censored by Google. Not available in the Chinese Republic

Bampton

I recently bought a second hand copy of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, that I'm intending to bore you with at a later date. It was one pounds twenty, and seemed like a bargain.
The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle is one of the earliest texts written in Britain and is a record of events from about 600 AD till the twelfth or thirteenth century. In fact it starts from 50 BC and Caesar's invasion of Britain, but they weren't really here then and were just repeating gossip.

Anyway, the strange thing is that when I opened the book, the first paragraphs I read were these -

A.D.611. This year Cynegils succeeded to the government in Wessex, and held it one and thirty winters. Cynegils was the son of Ceol, Ceol of Cutha, Cutha of Cynric.

A.D. 614. This year Cynegils and Cwichelm fought at Bampton, and slew two thousand and forty-six of the Welsh.

Yup, that's Bampton, as mentioned in the post I wrote about Morris Dancing June 28th. Other than these two instances, it's a place I'd never heard of, yet it seems a hive of activity, not to mention genocide.



I looked it up on the map and it's a tiny place, just a few houses and not near anywhere substantial. It's about twenty miles west of Oxford and on the edge of the Cotswold hills, though this road map doesn't show that.

Anyway, I googled it, as one does, and found a good website
here that includes a history page.
They mention the Welsh massacre, although the figure has gone up to 2065. Who were those extra 19 Welshmen? Perhaps they weren't really Welsh, so weren't included in the corpse count by some of the more officious Anglo-Saxons.

There also seems to be some dispute as to whether there was even a road going to Bampton before the mid-nineteenth century; it was called "Bampton in the Bush" because it was cut off from the world.

Anyway, it seems a wondrous place, full of dead Welshmen and Morris dancers, and I intend to travel there soon.