Tweets for August 2023

Bio: Kazoo Academy & Barrel Organ Disco/Yorkshire Almanac/translator Romance & Germanic languages & Russian/old-style jazz trombone & vocals/brass bands/allotmenteer

Tue Aug 01 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 1 August 2023: Then: 1813: Bay leaves, not white roses, for the 51st Foot on Minden (later also Yorkshire) Day, as they drive the French back over the Pyrenees. 1833: At Kelfield (East Riding), Hannah Beedham fails to fulfil her…
Wed Aug 02 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 2 August 2023: Then: Sorry, nothing yet for today. Make a suggestion! Now: Weather for tonight: heavy rain, temperature 14°C (57°F), wind south easterly 9mph, visibility moderate, pressure 992mb, humidity 89%, UV risk 0/11, pollution…
Wed Aug 02 10:05 Listen to the rhythm of the falling rain, / Telling us what silly fools we've been - though the current rhythm is that of a distant company of drum-rollers
Wed Aug 02 10:07 Comment: With the organ & on the advice of Vic v/d R I used to cover Rob de Nijs's cover of the Cascades, Ritme van de Regen, his first hit, but I think most elderly Dutch people's image of the early 60s was too Americanised for it to mean much to them
Wed Aug 02 10:10 The not hugely comforting notion that infants don't say please & thanks for reasons biological - no need because absolute security provided by parents, & as soon as they do start being polite their parents will realise they are socialised & kick them out
Wed Aug 02 20:05 RT @ianduhig: Svmer aint icumen in Lhude sing fuccu Ich groweþ sad An barkynge mad O Inglysshe svmer u Mak me blu, Sing fuccu
Wed Aug 02 20:53 Native Hipsters - Mr Magic, from There Goes Concorde Again. Björk is one of Nanette's tribute acts
Wed Aug 02 21:17 More infant snaps
Thu Aug 03 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 3 August 2023: Then: 1846: Aged one month, Frances Jane Campbell becomes the latest Leeds victim of the opiate epidemic. 1873: The Fisk Jubilee Singers reduce a crowded Hull street to tears with extemporary performances of spirituals.…
Thu Aug 03 12:27 Comment: @MikeyCycling You lucky man - gorgeous!
Thu Aug 03 19:14 Explained to the infant that a roaming gender tribe were not her beloved Otley Runners
Thu Aug 03 20:13 Tasteful of the Torygraph not to circle the single high heel
Thu Aug 03 20:33 How can a municipal library not have the Oliver Postgate/Peter Firmin Noggin the Nog books?
Thu Aug 03 21:59 A great episode in a series that is often the evening work backdrop when my tiny brain can't take any more WFMU
Thu Aug 03 22:03 Comment: @jonburkeUK @GeorgeMonbiot I recall the historical position to be that the RCP was always owned by the Conservative Party via MI5
Fri Aug 04 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 4 August 2023: Then: 1661: The tenant of St. Robert's cave (Knaresborough) tells John Ray about the time the holy man refused to visit King John. Now: Weather for tonight: thundery showers, temperature 14°C (57°F), wind north westerly…
Fri Aug 04 09:33 Cf the (often touching) Russian popular over-estimation of the British discovered in my series on Russian football songs
Fri Aug 04 09:48 A correspondent wonders whether my Dr Henry Arthur Allbutt, the revolutionary family planner, was family of a Leeds contemporary, the great Dr Clifford Allbutt. Anyone know?
Fri Aug 04 20:19 1/4 Magical encounter with itinerant Steve & his spotless guitar under the skate park concrete ("It only stops raining when I sit here"). Infant fidgeting, so he did a half-remembered Afrikaans song from school long ago - Sarie Marais
Fri Aug 04 20:20 Comment: 2/4 Feigning unfazedment, I replied with a Zulu children's dance-song about the eternal struggle between elephant & mouse
Fri Aug 04 20:20 Comment: 3/4 Whereupon, eyelids unbatted, he segued to a Yiddish song which appeared to be a version of Fisherlid (lyrics Aliza Greenblat), reflecting his loss of faith in Yahweh & women (er hat kein fisch gefangen - he's caught no fish)
Fri Aug 04 20:21 Comment: 4/4 Whereupon the heavens opened & the infant set her face towards home. All rather wet, so perhaps a Battle of the Bums
Sat Aug 05 07:17 Yorkshire Almanac: 5 August 2023: Then: 1661: John Ray encounters a pregnancy test device under Ripon cathedral. 1661: John Ray visits Copgrove (Harrogate), the pauper's spa. 1685: John Thompson, an ex-excommunicant, is left in his shroud in Leeds parish…
Sat Aug 05 17:19 Still not fully recovered from the hummingbird hawkmoth yesterday in the gerania - used to see them quite regularly around Barcelona
Sat Aug 05 21:07 Mother-in-law arrived without tablets of stone but parted the waters, so maybe life has meaning & we will not all drown
Sun Aug 06 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 6 August 2023: Then: 1861: H.H. Asquith (8) writes to his mother condemning Fulneck and its Moravian school. Now: Weather for tonight: partly cloudy, temperature 11°C (52°F), wind north westerly 14mph, visibility good, pressure 1014mb,…
Sun Aug 06 21:41 Comment: (Corrected some high-speed nonsense in the first entry.) In the Ripon Cathedral quire this afternoon, but still to locate an entry for the almanac dealing with the marvellous mechanical hand used by the organist to conduct when no choirmaster was present
Mon Aug 07 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 7 August 2023: Then: 1611: Jonas Poole's London whaler sinks in Forlandsundet (Spitsbergen), but Thomas Marmaduke is initially reluctant to take the survivors on board the Hopewell of Hull. Now: Weather for tonight: mist, temperature…
Mon Aug 07 20:15 Thanks to Booker T I now know that my only discernable keyboard technique - born of playing without a sustain pedal - is called crawling
Mon Aug 07 20:42 thread
Tue Aug 08 07:17 Yorkshire Almanac: 8 August 2023: Then: 1514: Sir Thomas Wortley's death inaugurates the memorial he has built for himself at Wharncliffe. 1863: The police are invited to Woodhouse Moor (Leeds) for an illegal cricket match designed to test the byelaws…
Wed Aug 09 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 9 August 2023: Then: 1661: John Ray encounters kelp-makers on the coast between Scarborough and Whitby. 1805: Joseph Locke, who made the railways pay, is born under indifferent auspices at Attercliffe (Sheffield). 1845: Young George…
Wed Aug 09 08:18 X of O, unconvinced by the municipal flood defence scheme, claims to be blocking drains upstream in I so that the water stays there
Wed Aug 09 08:29 Slightly emotional gent: I have been singing with choirs in public since 1947, and today, in R cathedral, is the last time I will do so. Shouldered infant, already showing signs of the respiratory which has felled her: COME ON! Gent, amidst general laughter: I'll remember that.
Wed Aug 09 11:44 The infant sees a worm flee across a patch of freshly mown grass & dig itself in, observing that it pulls its body down in fits & starts rather than gradually, & hypothesizing that this is to reduce the chance of discovery by birds
Wed Aug 09 18:41 Part of the Mother Shipton was plagiarised from George Cavendish's Wolsey biography in 1641 - - but when was the High Bridge prophecy invented?
Wed Aug 09 20:59 "The sounds as of a dog in his dying anguish are from Ted Lewis' clarinet"
Wed Aug 09 22:27 Comment: People seem to think it was invented - perhaps by the company running the cave - after the failure of the world to end in 1991, which prophecy was invented after we failed to die in 1881
Thu Aug 10 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 10 August 2023: Then: 1766: John Wesley crowd-counts 20,000 at Daw Green, Dewsbury. 1870: Ben Hardacre's ode to the laying, this day, of the foundation stone of Bradford Town Hall. Now: Weather for tonight: mist, temperature 15°C…
Thu Aug 10 19:52 Comment: @DrJACameron Renting the digger before burning the thing down suggests a certain faith in outcomes. Sometimes one wonders whether all of British politics and government is now merely a function of various interests in the property sector.
Thu Aug 10 19:57 The Barrel Organ Disco needs more disco
Thu Aug 10 20:42 Comment: The infant & friends built a train with some chairs, & she sat in one of them & used a boules case as a newspaper to read. Where on earth has she seen someone read a newspaper?
Fri Aug 11 02:49 Comment: @Samcornwell @lordbonkers Link is actually
Fri Aug 11 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 11 August 2023: Then: 1823: The Hull Packet publishes a selection of cross-column typographical serendipities. 1863: A painful scene at the burial of Adam Watson at Worsbrough Dale (Barnsley). 1875: The Whitby town crier's unique act…
Fri Aug 11 21:26 Comment: @petersymon Nice one!
Fri Aug 11 22:45 Sausage Roll (children rolled in a picnic blanket & eaten by a monster) is pretty sensible compared with previous infant-invented games like Nanny Spots and Crazy Billies
Sat Aug 12 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 12 August 2023: Then: 1439: Joan Cantcliffe, widow, buys a pension and a lifetime lease on a basement flat in the hall of the Mistry of Mercers (the Merchant Adventurers) York. 1866: William Allison (15) goes grouse shooting for the…
Sun Aug 13 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 13 August 2023: Then: 1788: Emigrating from Grenada to England, the parrots of William Butterworth of Leeds survive a Caribbean hurricane. 1821: The laments of Ann Barber, adulterous poisoner, on the scaffold at York Castle. Now:…
Mon Aug 14 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 14 August 2023: Then: 1673: A retired coal miner, unable to live from carding wool, decides to return to work at a pit at Royds Hall (Bradford). Now: Weather for tonight: light rain, temperature 14°C (58°F), wind southerly 7mph,…
Mon Aug 14 08:39 The infant has days-of-the-week pants from M&S, her favourite brand due to the penny-shop & dressing-up rack at their archive. Now I have the fear that when asked the day of the week she will pull down her trousers, & the greater fear that she will also do so when asked the time
Mon Aug 14 19:11 Holiday activities today included one infant-directed role play lasting five hours, so tomorrow's revenge is for her to perform Parsifal. Here's James Levine in Bayreuth in 1983
Tue Aug 15 07:17 Yorkshire Almanac: 15 August 2023: Then: 1677: John Thoresby writes from Leeds to his son Ralph in London recommending he keep a diary. 1781: The ineffably peripatetic John Wesley discovers a movable pulpit in Sheffield. 1805: The Sheffield Volunteer…
Wed Aug 16 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 16 August 2023: Then: 1842: Lancastrian Plug-Drawing rioters invade Skipton in an attempt to halt the mills. 1845: The York Herald is conned into posting the American actor Ira Aldridge's sensational account of his own death. Now:…
Wed Aug 16 10:21 An old Steve Cutts zombie short Discounting the big people in their loveless mansions on four wheels & the undead on their phones we don't meet huge numbers on our perambulations, but many now say hello & some stop us for a chat
Wed Aug 16 21:14 New interface OED unusable - at least 4 logins via local libraries - presumably trying to sell more individual subscriptions. But someone has donated an old CD & the dict file generated works well in GoldenDict-ng, which integrates eg with Wiktionary, so bunny happier
Thu Aug 17 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 17 August 2023: Then: 1561: William Strickland arrives at Flamborough and interviews witnesses of the northerly passage along the coast of Mary, Queen of Scots. 1618: Walking from London to Edinburgh, Ben Jonson drives a parson and an…
Thu Aug 17 07:58 Haven't seen this one - looks an incredible building
Thu Aug 17 19:24 Wonderful stuff, but Kenneth Williams' Betjeman quote at 11:35 isn't familiar
Thu Aug 17 20:50 - How much would you charge to teach her to read and write by the time she's four? - What price liberty?
Thu Aug 17 20:54 Comment: @stephenkb @LOS_Fisher @PickardJE @_MODwyer Guy who knocked down a gig cyclist with his car, no?
Fri Aug 18 07:17 Yorkshire Almanac: 18 August 2023: Then: 1730: Elizabeth Hawksworth endeavours to mount a horse behind her husband. Now: Weather for tonight: light cloud, temperature 13°C (56°F), wind easterly 9mph, visibility good, pressure 1020mb, humidity 89%, UV…
Sat Aug 19 07:17 Yorkshire Almanac: 19 August 2023: Then: 1641: Henry Best of Elmswell (Driffield) begins to harvest mixed grain, and gleaners wait in the wings. 1728: An elderly gamekeeper at Pilley recalls the extrajudicial execution of a Dodworth man on the orders of…
Sat Aug 19 10:21 Comment: @ibexsalad Spanish croissants are the best in the world - for their spelling
Sat Aug 19 10:36 Dacre, Son & Hartley appear to think it a good idea to process customer data for themselves and other entities without prior consent. Adds to a general sense that GDPR is no longer taken particularly seriously in the UK
Sat Aug 19 11:29 Comment: J: {Tendency in gov to view DPA 2018 as hindering business -> underresourced ICO} + {tendency of underresourced ICO to pursue glam cases (often for personal career ends)} = provincial estate agents can get away with murder as long as apologise each time a corpse is discovered
Sat Aug 19 19:56 The DalesBus initiative is great, but I don't really get the scarecrow festival. Kettlewell is all AirBnB etc, so who's making the scarecrows?
Sat Aug 19 20:01 Thanks for videoing me this afty @TKGondo Am I already famous?
Sun Aug 20 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 20 August 2023: Then: 1915: The final letter to his father of Private Charles Langrick, 1st/5th Bn., The Duke of Wellington’s (West Riding) Regiment. 1919: Two months after Versailles, the Daily News reports on a propaganda balloon…
Sun Aug 20 12:07 Infant unimpressed by the footie. Main quotes: "I only like it when they fall over" and "When are the ads on?"
Mon Aug 21 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 21 August 2023: Then: 1880: Johnnie W. recounts a wildflower expedition in the children's column of the Leeds Mercury. Now: Weather for tonight: clear sky, temperature 13°C (55°F), wind south westerly 6mph, visibility moderate,…
Mon Aug 21 18:49 Vigorous & strong ca. 10-yo boy with blank, non-connecting stare on leash to confused looking carer in HP playground. She lets him off, he scares the hell out of the infant. Carer: "He's autistic." Not the word I'd have used.
Mon Aug 21 20:08 Comment: @Rainmaker1973 There's a train, and it doesn't go through the tunnel!
Tue Aug 22 05:15 Comment: @LeedsTours I know a man who keeps a horse in one.
Tue Aug 22 07:17 Yorkshire Almanac: 22 August 2023: Then: 1138: An English army, aided by God, defeats the Scots in the Battle of the Standard near Northallerton. 1572: The head of Thomas Percy, Earl of Northumberland and leader of the Catholic Rising of the North, is…
Tue Aug 22 19:57 Ca 18,000 motor vehicles/day on Headingley Lane: "Ban pub crawls"
Tue Aug 22 20:27 Fraktur on children's birthday party invitations?
Wed Aug 23 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 23 August 2023: Then: 1681: John Heywood's two-day ordination begins at John Hey's in Craven. 1933: John Betjeman witnesses the opening of the Leeds Civic Hall. Now: Weather for tonight: clear sky, temperature 14°C (57°F), wind south…
Wed Aug 23 22:33 It seems that Nanny Spots is potentially damaging, but mainly for fat children, & no serious epidemiology . The infant adores it & is prob 25th %ile, so probably fine, but won't repeat with today's 29 kg 3-year-old, which felt for me like being racked
Thu Aug 24 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 24 August 2023: Then: 1870: Fakesong by an army captain about the sights of the St. Bartholomew's Fair today at Reeth, Swaledale. 1921: The British-built United States Navy R.38 airship collapses, explodes, and crashes into the Humber…
Thu Aug 24 17:22 Comment: Infant not entirely convinced by the argument that, where his parents give him ice cream, we give her conversation
Fri Aug 25 07:17 Yorkshire Almanac: 25 August 2023: Then: 1662: Following Charles II's purge of Presbyterian ministers, Roundhead Captain John Hodgson of Coley Hall (Halifax) is again harassed as a suspected plotter. 1840: Teetotaller vegetarian Frederic Lees owns a…
Sat Aug 26 07:17 Yorkshire Almanac: 26 August 2023: Then: 1600: Powerful local Catholics invade the Hackness (Scarborough) home of Sir Thomas Hoby, Puritan commissioner and newcomer, demanding bed and board. 1693: On his death-bed Thomas Sharp, a Leeds nonconformist…
Sun Aug 27 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 27 August 2023: Then: 1673: John Holden ambushes and fatally mugs his wife at Lightcliffe, but witnesses are fearful, and the jury sees only manslaughter. Now: Weather for tonight: mist, temperature 9°C (49°F), wind north westerly…
Mon Aug 28 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 28 August 2023: Then: 1661: The York assizes hear of a fatal military brawl at a Malton inn, involving rouges (roundheads), Charles II's Indemnity Act and flatulence. Now: Weather for tonight: clear sky, temperature 10°C (51°F), wind…
Tue Aug 29 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 29 August 2023: Then: 1570: On arriving in Yorkshire, Archbishop Grindal begins his battle against bloody-minded folk-Catholicism. 1914: Don't sew for the troops, says a Rothwell councillor. Now: Weather for tonight: partly cloudy,…
Tue Aug 29 09:49 Various small girls. - Daddy, come and play piano for our Bum-Bum Disco. - Ah, and what might that involve? - You play dance music while we dance around and show each other our bums, and you mustn't look.
Tue Aug 29 10:08 Comment: Also
Tue Aug 29 10:19 A most-charming long-term St Leonard's resident, slumped in the door of his RV: - The problem here is that no one can afford the high rents caused by the 2nd homes & by the 1st home budgets of Down-From-Londons. - And what are you doing? - Converting this RV into an AirBnB.
Tue Aug 29 10:21 Comment: "DFLs are told by the Guardian that people here are friendly, & they maintain the illusion by talking to other DFLs. If I told my friends here about my AirBnBs, they'd spit in my face."
Tue Aug 29 12:37 Linguistic serendipities etc of the neurologist John Hughlings Jackson, inc "barrel-organisms"
Tue Aug 29 16:54 Comment: (Nothing to do with Notting Hill Carnival)
Tue Aug 29 17:16 I'm instinctively sympathetic (mum fear of E numbers, make all our own bread etc etc) but the lack of killer stats & explanation, & the evangelical, ultra-processed tone suggest an overwhelming urge to sell books - your own & your mates'
Wed Aug 30 07:17 Yorkshire Almanac: 30 August 2023: Then: 1766: 'I will haf tish man, he gifs my pipes room for to shpeak': organ-builder John Snetzler makes William Herschel, later discoverer of Uranus, organist at Halifax parish church. 1835: Alfred Austin, future poet…
Wed Aug 30 21:58 Comment: @Transblawg I don't get out much so didn't realise the Mail is full of him & Guardian children watch some series he does. Just give me the facts man
Wed Aug 30 22:07 Comment: @Transblawg I was wrong about Juli Zeh too - I must have been going thru an emotional spell
Wed Aug 30 22:20 Clifford Allbutt on gluttonous walkers
Wed Aug 30 22:27 Comment: @Transblawg haha!
Thu Aug 31 07:16 Yorkshire Almanac: 31 August 2023: Then: 1651: John Wilks (Thompson, Smith...), of Knaresborough gives a York court a glimpse of the life of a Catholic hedge priest. 1785: Rioters intervene in the ascent by balloon of Joseph Decker (Dicker, Deeker...) at…
Thu Aug 31 18:43 3t Land Rover SUV 2LG/2 LG speeding on Grove Lane this midday, driver holding his mobile up, perhaps to admire his reflection, perhaps believing this will mitigate when he kills. Should vanity plate-/SUV-owners, ciggy packet style, have to display "sociopath" on their vehicle?
Thu Aug 31 20:59 Ca 10-yo boy in a Santa dressing gown in Hyde Park playground the other day. Only 4 months to go.