January 2020 tweets

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

Wed Jan 01 00:54 Historia de Barcelona, 1/1: * ~0370: Nuestro santo obispo Paciano vs el dios cornudo de la fiestas del año nuevo (152+842/i) * 1366: Empiezan a llegar los franceses para ayudar a Pedro del Punyalet (47+9) * 1833: Predicción de la Primera Guerra Carlista…
Wed Jan 01 07:13 Aha, the (electric) Liverpool Overhead Railway (1893-1956)
Wed Jan 01 07:27 Holly Cottage, Gnosall & the Marine Engine House at Walthamstow Reservoirs/Wetlands, London: different brick bonds, but the same technique for taking up the slack at the end of the course (is it called a half-soldier?) &, highlighting the corner, making a virtue of a necessity
Wed Jan 01 07:39 Our name is writ under water: rubbish on the lake bed of Victoria Park, London
Wed Jan 01 07:40 Comment: Sorry, it's a pool next to Angela Burdett-Coutts' fountain
Wed Jan 01 07:43 Comment: @thedustyteapot My dad was from Merseyside, & workers finding original ways to get out of the rain were a staple of his stories. A beautiful photo, suggesting a city very different from the place I used to play in the 80s. So now you're awake: who's the best source for Liverpool Welsh stuff?
Wed Jan 01 07:47 MM is posting German-related ephemera
Wed Jan 01 08:42 Light in St Thomas', Clapton Common. The tower is an attractive trig point for those navigating the Lea and its Essex bank, and I've often walked past on Yiddish-listening missions but never actually been inside
Wed Jan 01 08:43 Comment: @tombcn And a happy & prosperous 2020 to you too!
Wed Jan 01 08:55 Comment: @tombcn It wouldn't hurt as much if they could actually spell the name of their profession. Must be a Nigerian scam
Wed Jan 01 09:38 Comment: @lordbonkers Apparently people still talk of catching the milk train
Wed Jan 01 09:43 Gotta love the libretto for La Bohème: Che cosa faccio? Scrivo. E come vivo? Vivo.
Wed Jan 01 15:03 Comment: @Transblawg Ah! the fall!
Wed Jan 01 20:29 Hellfire
Wed Jan 01 20:33 Said hallo a few times to an old Turk near Tesco without any response, but this pm he saw me and, like a child gabbling its first poem, said, "Are-you-alright-boss-happy-new-year." Why did the gong go to the Chinese woman who walks around Hackney telling black people they're fat?
Wed Jan 01 23:03 National Library of Spain list of authors whose work just became public domain ... in Spain, where 80 years copyright still applies ex 1879 law. Antonio Machado has been PD in the rest of Europe for ten years
Thu Jan 02 00:50 Historia de Barcelona, 2/1: * 1602: Los Conselleres quieren ser marqueses de Flix (19) * 1808: Establécese la Escuela de Mecánica (11) * 1848: Ser abogado está de moda (236+9) * 1919: Pla: Fa fred * 1929: Se constituye la empresa Hispano-Olivetti (186) *…
Thu Jan 02 09:07 Haughton illuminations: sod the dog, beware of the wife
Thu Jan 02 09:36 Pubs with pool tables vs pubs with baby changing tables (aka restaurants) is a false dichotomy: prop one end of a pool table up on bricks, babe on top, let the sewage drain into the pockets, everyone happy. (Is it "baby-changing table" or "baby changing-table"?)
Thu Jan 02 11:32 Best National Cycle Network sign is on Route 55 between Gnosall and Haughton in Staffordshire @sustrans
Thu Jan 02 20:25 Comment: @tombcn How do you know which is the boy & which the girl?
Thu Jan 02 23:11 At last, real politics
Thu Jan 02 23:23 Good sheet music print-on-demand provider in London? Gent's clarinettist wife wants to play along with my arrangements for his organs
Fri Jan 03 00:52 Historia de Barcelona, 3/1: * 1844: Empieza construcción del Museo de Antigüedades de Barcelona (16/i) * 1848: Las rifas semanales (430) * 1904: Primer número de la revista infantil En Patufet (186/i) * 1919: Pla: Calella, hivern * ☼ 08:15-17:35, 09:19…
Fri Jan 03 08:11 But did they find the head of Carlo Acefalo?
Fri Jan 03 08:14 Catch-22 tribute. Someone told me at college to use "gender" instead of "sex", which either no longer existed or was no longer relevant
Fri Jan 03 09:19 Comment: @SusFoodTrust @BBCFarmingToday @ORFC What happened to the Swedes (I think) who were going to launch a mobile abattoir service, driving from farm to farm?
Fri Jan 03 09:20 Guy already started WWI ffs
Fri Jan 03 11:14 December tweets in one place with, as usual, a bunch of Hackney pictures
Sat Jan 04 00:51 Historia de Barcelona, 4/1: * 1454: Revaluación oficial del cruzado y del florín aragonés (26+15) * 1458: Juan II huye de la peste (29) * 1698: Tras el Tratado de Ryswich, las tropas españolas reemplazan a las francesas entre alegría popular (185/i) *…
Sat Jan 04 09:12 North Circular? Freelancers don't drink, of course, & particularly bottles labelled 15%
Sat Jan 04 09:14 Don't shop around
Sat Jan 04 09:57 Unable to locate the traditional Irish lament, "Me granny was on the bottom deck of the Titanic"
Sat Jan 04 10:38 Trees + shadows in Victoria Park
Sat Jan 04 10:41 Comment: More shadows. Amazing how the rather spectacular flats on Hedger's Grove disappear in morning sun - you can just about see their windows
Sat Jan 04 19:50 Notion that one day Australia will be inhabitable
Sat Jan 04 19:56 Monkey still openly celebrating the publicly-funded obliteration of the gent whose servants took such remarkable care of KR's late family
Sun Jan 05 00:50 Historia de Barcelona, 5/1: * 1387: Muere Pedro IV de Aragón en el palacio (20+24) * 1848: Llegada y cabalgata de los Reyes Magos (460/i) * 1919: Pla: Diumenge * 1978: El ejército y els Joglars (118) * ☼ 08:15-17:37, 09:21 horas; ☾ luna menguante,…
Sun Jan 05 07:32 But if we didn't drink, we wouldn't have the money in the first place: teetotal societies without oil are generally poverty-stricken (& miserable)
Sun Jan 05 08:30 Acting on European folktale tradition (ring-in-a-fish etc), it was I who threw the gold ring into the cabbage field and am now condemned to marry the finder
Sun Jan 05 08:32 Comment: Wendy Doniger The Ring of Truth covers this kind of stuff
Sun Jan 05 21:43 When are you opening a place in Hackney @samsmithsbeer ?
Sun Jan 05 21:58 Sainsbury's sell "British brussels sprouts", which seems to be legit
Mon Jan 06 00:46 Historia de Barcelona, 6/1: * 1569: Lucha de fieras cobardes (22/i) * 1640: Salses se rinde a los españoles (421+27) * 1703: Un terremoto protesta contra la situación política (40+53) * 1823: Ntra. Sra. de Monserrat vs. la fiebre amarilla (19+22) * 1848:…
Mon Jan 06 09:28 Jordi Bilbeny knows what the red Phrygian caps mean
Mon Jan 06 09:50 There's virtually no research into the use of steam/humidifiers in bronchiolitis (& drops unlikely to reach the lower respiratory tract), & so e.g. the NHS & Spanish authorities don't recommend their use, but West Suffolk NHS Trust are prepared to stick their neck out
Mon Jan 06 09:55 People had 50 years to demonstrate their commitment to the EEC/EU by learning German but they couldn't be ar$ed
Mon Jan 06 14:07 Comment: And there's a missing comma
Tue Jan 07 00:47 Historia de Barcelona, 7/1: * 1466: El Consejo de Ciento guarda la fiesta de S. Sebastián por causa de las epidemias (48) * 1637: Nevada (0) * 1789: Gran nevada (38) * 1848: Purificación de Ntra. Sra., degeneración del pesebrisme (885) * 1919: Pla:…
Tue Jan 07 07:58 A1 Steam Repairs on Harrowgate Road, Victoria Park used to repair and clean boilers, but not for example on steam locomotives
Tue Jan 07 09:49 Bureaucratised park running: "You can and you will!" Not if I don't freaking want to, matey, however much you shout & wave tambourines at me (willen, kunnen, doen). Councils that most moan about privatisation seem to be the first to rent out their parks to submilitary monkeys
Tue Jan 07 09:50 Comment: @tombcn For some people being PM is enough
Tue Jan 07 09:51 How far is your bishop from a Nando's?
Tue Jan 07 09:53 Comment: @tombcn I keep whinging on about constitutional reform in the UK & hope people don't ask what the consequences might be
Tue Jan 07 09:55 Dog whose name I can't remember hunting a squirrel, or doing an impression of a parent trying to put down an infant
Tue Jan 07 10:19 Comment: @_Juarma_ El envío para Londres ya llegó! Gracias!
Tue Jan 07 13:01 Comment: @tombcn @jimkennedy Ah, if only!
Wed Jan 08 00:48 Historia de Barcelona, 8/1: * 1025: Berenguer Ramón I reconoce los derechos locales de Barcelona (16) * 1561: Funerales de Jaime Cassador, obispo de Barcelona (13) * ☼ 08:15-17:39, 09:24 horas; ☾ luna menguante, iluminación 49,38%, antigüedad 22 días *…
Wed Jan 08 20:54 Labour Party Stalinists are coming after the Trotskyites
Thu Jan 09 00:46 Historia de Barcelona, 9/1: * 1495: Cese una epidemia de peste (13) * 1875: Regocijos al llegar el nuevo rey, Alfonso XII (337+43/i) * 1919: Pla: Al matí, marxem a Barcelona gairebé tota la família: la meva mare, les meves germanes, el meu germà i la…
Thu Jan 09 07:31 Comment: @carriedaye DMed you
Thu Jan 09 07:56 Notion that babies moan most when they're recovering from illness, like Trotsky (Lenin?)'s suggestion that revolutions generally happen during an economic upswing
Thu Jan 09 10:26 I think this lady with go-cart is the only surviving resident of Marian Court. Last year there was still someone in a niqab who got into battles with various people, and ages back some Spanish advertised their new address with a piece of graffiti
Thu Jan 09 12:04 Comment: @Captain_Bionic dear god, what overcame you?!
Thu Jan 09 18:29 Young black woman who I've never seen before walks along behind me at W Street crossing & says quietly & without menace, "I know you know who I am, but I don't mind."
Fri Jan 10 00:45 Historia de Barcelona, 10/1: * 1401: A pesar de oposición municipal a todo lo académico, Martín I funda una facultad de medicina (0+424) * 1848: La matanza del cerdo, entre el 1 y el 20 de enero (1080/i) * 1899: Los soldados regresan demacrados desde…
Fri Jan 10 08:26 Comment: @tombcn Perhaps Cummings is Wentworth, and Farage Cromwell
Fri Jan 10 09:53 You're meant to encourage the infant to beat and kick the toy animals in her mobile, right?
Sat Jan 11 00:45 Historia de Barcelona, 11/1: * 1284: El Consejo de Ciento obtiene de Pedro el Grande el Recognoverunt proceres, consolidando su poder (24+17) * 1849: Disolución via real decreto de una empresa metalúrgica fraudulente (634) * 1919: Pla: Ara que com aquell…
Sat Jan 11 07:00 Comment: @Nick_Pettigrew Yup.
Sat Jan 11 07:02 Maimonides, probably on bronchiolitis, ca 1170: “I conclude that this disorder starts with a common cold, especially in the rainy season, and that the patient is forced to gasp for breath day and night." (Rosner F. Moses Maimonides’ Treatise on asthma. Thorax 1981; 36:245-251)
Sat Jan 11 09:30 Look at the Liderino's lettering! The tiny script at the end of LH leaf of the L's curlimecue says Nov 2017 Hackney
Sat Jan 11 09:33 Middle-aged black nutter attacking cars on Brooksby's Walk, apparently because he dropped a small bit of plastic into the path of one. Shapes up to a van with what strikes me as an archaic phrase: "Come on, you're not man enough!"
Sat Jan 11 11:15 Sultan Caboose < freight train crew car < decktop cookhouse?
Sun Jan 12 00:45 Historia de Barcelona, 12/1: * 1554: Consejo de Ciento: ¿qué hacer para Felipe II? (19/i) * ~1872: Llega el general estadounidense Sherman, con muchos ojos puestos en Cuba (31+517) * 1919: Pla: Em donen d’alta a l’Ateneu Barcelonès –soci transeünt: 7,50…
Sun Jan 12 10:59 Not about Ann W at all
Sun Jan 12 11:02 Couldn't even build a Thousand-Year Dike, or something
Sun Jan 12 11:05 Babe has accumulated so much neck muscle that has progressed from kicking thieving squirrels to doing meerkat-type headbutts. Almost broke my nose.
Sun Jan 12 11:11 Comment: Squirrel hunting song
Sun Jan 12 12:20 Comment: @MikeyFox More difficult for security to work out whether someone's shoplifted an item?
Sun Jan 12 16:25 Windian cashier on Meghan: She just pretended to be black cos it's fashionable, and now we're going to get blamed for killing off the Royal Family.
Sun Jan 12 16:38 Emergency vehicles in famous paintings
Sun Jan 12 19:45 However curious the ideas people had about Roger Scruton, none were as curious as the man himself. Unusually for a critic, he wrote himself, & his bizarre pocket-opera Violet contains some excellent doggerel
Sun Jan 12 21:17 Babe's obsession with light is verging on Zoroastrianism
Sun Jan 12 21:23 Shame flute, but not as the caption says for bad musicians. The concept was to publicly humiliate normal miscreants by reducing them to musicians - cf the neck violin/shrew's fiddle
Sun Jan 12 21:23 Comment: @WFMU Actually used to punish normal miscreants by reducing them to musicians - see also the shrew's fiddle
Mon Jan 13 00:43 Historia de Barcelona, 13/1: * 1566: Inauguración de la iglesia de los Angeles (19) * 1945: 5 centímetros de nieve (19) * 1991: Los Boixos Nois matan a un francés de las Brigadas Blanquiazules; la vida posterior de un asesino (183+25) * ☼ 08:14-17:45,…
Mon Jan 13 07:49 Guard: We've calculated that the dog, which we think is a Jack Russell, is between the 9th and 11th floors. Moi: Do you mean you think it's on the 10th? Guard: Yes.
Mon Jan 13 08:42 Sussex was already a hopeless mess, with rival governments in East and West and a colony of aggressive vegans on the coast, but the flight of Harry & Meghan means that hope now must lie with a Norman invader
Mon Jan 13 09:05 singing in yoghurt/chanter en yaourt
Tue Jan 14 00:43 Historia de Barcelona, 14/1: * 1466: La suerte del mossen Sort: decapitado con 70 años por la malversación de caudales públicos (22+31) * 1640: Vuelve el diputado militar, Francisco de Tamarite, tras la toma de Salses (24) * 1907: Inauguración del…
Tue Jan 14 12:04 Comment: @LowEbbs Are they being accessed by humans who can't afford Harley Street?
Tue Jan 14 12:28 We've got breasty for tetona, but attendees at baby cinema underline the lack in English of a simple noun equivalent to the Spanish tetorra
Tue Jan 14 12:33 Woman 1: Ours yesterday started doing a kind of shrieking laugh. Woman 2: Ours started that 6 weeks ago and on Monday started doing a melodious humanoid giggle. If looks could kill.
Tue Jan 14 12:34 Stanley at Tesco this morning was looking very rock 'n' roll in voluminous blue and white floral pyjamas with a white plastic sunhat pulled down over his eyes.
Tue Jan 14 12:38 Clown show
Tue Jan 14 17:48 Comment: @jmguardia @elpaisinenglish "Attorney General" is a better SEO keyword?
Tue Jan 14 17:49 Beautiful cartography, tho a lot of blue space
Tue Jan 14 17:56 Joking with a Nigerian man about his absurdly large SUV: "You know Hackney council want to ban cars from most of the borough?" "I will take my car and I will go to Nigeria!"
Tue Jan 14 22:02 Still waiting for a response from @DioceseOfYork re my proposal to market breath-freshening confectionery branded Mintster
Tue Jan 14 22:05 This could reunite the English
Tue Jan 14 22:11 Superb Spanish nurse doing baby jabs at Lower Clapton Group Practice today. I usually try to figure out from their English accent where they're from in Spain & then ask at the end. Didn't get a chance this time, but I reckon provincial Castile
Wed Jan 15 00:45 Historia de Barcelona, 15/1: * 1258: Jaime I perdona la multa impuesta a la ciudad por la lapidación de Bernat Marquet; la reorganización del barrio de la Ribera (102+340) * 1475: Con la Concordia de Segovia, la Corona de Aragón se une voluntariamente a…
Wed Jan 15 07:58 Dreamt a French friend had 2 fridges, 1 for each gender, then ~Californian friend arrived & demanded he instal 98 more fridges & let each product choose, then Académie Française fire engine arrived & started beating her, then Trump bombed the crap out of them all. Curious times.
Wed Jan 15 08:15 A case for less trees
Wed Jan 15 08:21 10th meeting of writers in Andalusian, not Andalusian writers
Wed Jan 15 17:46 Much more of this. In 1985 there was a flophouse in Deramore Street, Rusholme tenanted by a young junkie with even younger ones in attendance. One morning I was behind one of them in the corner shop & noticed that she didn't pay. "I fuck her for groceries," said the man proudly.
Wed Jan 15 23:58 Did workers in pre-automation marmalade factories have low rates of respiratory infection?
Thu Jan 16 00:47 Historia de Barcelona, 16/1: * 1716: Decreto de Nueva Planta de Cataluña (1206+1577) * 1848: Antonio, abogado de los asnos (103) * 1892: Ejecutado el infanticidio Isidro Mompart y Prats (1165/i) * 1912: El mar causa destrozos en las fábricas de la…
Fri Jan 17 00:47 Historia de Barcelona, 17/1: * 1503: Regocijos públicos por la entrada de Felipe I de Castilla (19) * 1641: Pau Claris declara una república catalana (0+274) * 1833: Instálase el colegio de abogados de Barcelona (0) * 1842: Fiesta de San Antonio Abad,…
Fri Jan 17 06:55 Drake's fish bar, Knaresborough: "Fried jam buttie, tastes like donut, £1.50"
Fri Jan 17 06:57 Liberal/conservative baby speech test. Babe at 14 weeks participates happily in conversation. Do you a) encourage that because she will persevere & develop, b) suppress it because she will relax and persist in talking gibberish?
Fri Jan 17 07:06 A Brighton beach bandstand is all very well for an organ-grinder with a decent memory, but what does a band do when the north wind blows and all their music ends up in the English Channel?
Fri Jan 17 07:06 Comment: @carriedaye Cousin, what happened?!
Fri Jan 17 07:41 Llevo 15 días intentando darme de baja de @jazztel_es. En su propaganda: "comunícanoslo con 2 días de preaviso"
Fri Jan 17 23:03 2 special brothers speak pre-war Franconian German (father German POW) + snatches of Transylvanian Hungarian (mother escaped Romania in 38 & snatched father from shipment from postwar camp in Yshire to Scotland): one worries Brexit is old school nationalism, other relaxed...
Sat Jan 18 00:45 Historia de Barcelona, 18/1: * 1665: Gran nevada (0) * 1764: Fundación de la Conferencia Physycomatemática Experimental (21+360) * 1912: La lluvia causa grandes destrozos en el barrio de Pekín (38) * 1919: Pla: M’agrada –a la tarda– de divagar pels…
Sat Jan 18 22:15 Just met a woman who was born on the day George V died and the Edward VIII-Wallis Simpson fiasco commenced - Jan 20 1936
Sun Jan 19 00:49 Historia de Barcelona, 19/1: * 1479: Muere Juan II de Aragón, padre de Fernando II, víctima de una orgía litúrgico-musical en Nochebuena (14+130) * 1492: La carta de Fernando el Católico sobre la toma de Granada inicia diez días de fiestas (30+214) *…
Sun Jan 19 11:18 Into St John's just before morning service & a cloud of smiling, well-dressed ladies descends. Pram pusher: "I'm sorry, I can't stay, she'll wake up." Cloud: "It's all right, I'll hold her." "You get her first, but then I'll hold her." And people say they can't get babysitters.
Sun Jan 19 22:18 Babe spoke to me at considerable length and with considerable fluency in what Google Translate tells me is toothless Finnish
Sun Jan 19 22:18 Great footie photo
Sun Jan 19 23:06 It's a lexicological disappointment that none of the East London Bengalis live in bungalows
Mon Jan 20 00:49 Historia de Barcelona, 20/1: * 1401: La taula de canvi, la primera tabla de cambios en Europa (80+48) * 1492: Fiesta con confits en la casa del infante Enrique para celebrar la toma de Granada (33+5) * 1640: Vuelve el conseller en cap tras la toma de…
Mon Jan 20 08:11 Exorcism of siblings is best viewed from afar
Mon Jan 20 08:57 Comment: @tombcn The one where I fell asleep while filling in a multiple choice aptitude test, woke up & got to the end and discovered that I'd missed a row. Computer concluded that I was a paranoid schizophrenic, but got the job anyway because the test had only been used to make HR feel valued
Mon Jan 20 09:45 Interviews
Tue Jan 21 00:46 Historia de Barcelona, 21/1: * 1362: Peste negra (74) * 1464: Desembarca Pedro de Avis para luchar por parte de la oligarquía contra Juan II (25) * 1937: La Consejería de Abastos anuncia la Oficina del Huevo (262) * ☼ 08:10-17:54, 09:43 horas; ☾ luna…
Tue Jan 21 09:22 Town with two criers (though no more) Tales of events where a racket is heard outside: "Who the f invited the crier?"
Tue Jan 21 09:23 How the Working Men's Club got done up
Tue Jan 21 11:29 Comment: @davidfirn @alanbeattie I still don't understand why the franchise isn't allotted by e.g. a combination of auction & public vote. If the Windsors believe they are popular & provide value they'd be welcome to put themselves forward along with the Kardashians and the richest clan in Shanghai
Tue Jan 21 21:06 Comment: @Transblawg "voluntary, unpaid position"
Tue Jan 21 21:54 It's almost as if every generation LP activists needs to be reminded to reread their notes on superstructure (reciprocity with base) from week 2 of their BA in Vulgar Marxism
Tue Jan 21 22:03 OK, so tourism is unsustainable & dull, but increasingly tending to the Jo R view. On selling the pub she was taken on her first ever holiday, to an island on the north coast. She woke the next day without her church bells & crowd noise, burst into tears, & had to be taken home
Tue Jan 21 23:44 Dog with mouth closed topologically a sphere, mouth open = donut
Wed Jan 22 00:42 Historia de Barcelona, 22/1: * 1628: Mucha lluvia y nieve (13) * 1899: Inscripciones felinas para un certamen en els Quatre Gats (269/i) * 1919: Pla: A primera hora del matí, quan vaig a la Universitat, trobo de vegades, senyoretes amb mantellina,…
Wed Jan 22 10:30 Comment: JR saw the film version of Betty Mahmoody's Not Without My Daughter just as I started going out with her daughter. One day she asked, with a tear in her eye, "He hasn't asked you to go to England with him, has he?"
Wed Jan 22 11:24 Why aren't storms called after politicians? "Storm Nandy leaves two dead & six Scottish villages cut off"
Wed Jan 22 13:07 Comment: @Transblawg A great chance to build my offensive repertoire
Wed Jan 22 13:10 Yorkshire waitress: They were trying to run an American-style diner here, but when we took it over 18 months ago we scaled it all down to make it cheaper, because people here are tight
Wed Jan 22 23:26 Terry Jones was simply too modest to point out that he was the Messiah
Wed Jan 22 23:29 Advertiser wishes to marry young, cultivated lady of good family in order to win a bet
Thu Jan 23 00:41 Historia de Barcelona, 23/1: * 1641: Tras una semana de república catalana y antes de llegar el ejército de Felipe IV, Pau Claris se corrige y proclama Luis XIII Conde de Barcelona, pasando Cataluña a soberania francesa (0+97) * 1775: Se abre la Escuela…
Thu Jan 23 09:40 The one in the basement of the British Library is also a head-spinner
Thu Jan 23 09:48 Buttigieg, Chicken Daddy
Thu Jan 23 09:58 What sounds like great news re the Whitechapel bell foundry. Since the old East End no longer exists, I hope that this will lead to the area between Aldgate & Mile End on the Lea (Shadwell, Stepney, Ratcliff etc) being rebaptised "Bell End"
Thu Jan 23 13:42 .@Pontifex must be considering canonisation for Terry Jones, given the number of "I was helped by this stranger who I absolutely didn't recognise, honest to God" stories about Brian's mum
Fri Jan 24 00:41 Historia de Barcelona, 24/1: * 1336: Muere en Barcelona Alfonso IV de Aragón (13/i) * 1809: Decreto proteccionista a favor de los fabricantes barceloneses (189) * 1848: Víspera de la conversión de San Pablo (23) * 1919: Pla: En passar aquest matí per…
Fri Jan 24 07:58 Comment: @tombcn On the busy circuits they should employ a Chinese lucky cat
Fri Jan 24 08:06 Comment: @DarrenJohnson66 They wear gorblimey trousers with the studs sewn down the back.
Fri Jan 24 11:18 Probably makes me sound like a smug, entitled hipster, but I wish @Tesco would extend their Seville orange season a bit. I only managed to process one batch & 10 pounds ain't going to last till next January.
Fri Jan 24 11:41 One for the bilingual pun archives
Fri Jan 24 16:45 Pram-pusher approaches pagoda, where young black man is demonstrating to old white man the MMA moves with which he laid low a crowd of assailants. PP: Make way for the Empress of All the Chinas! WM: Is that why the pram's yellow? BM: Have you seen them? Like they're on spice.
Fri Jan 24 16:50 Still the best sentimental granny song Di por qué frente al ropero, donde hay tantos retratos, di por qué lloras a ratos Dime abuelita, ¿por qué? What a shame
Fri Jan 24 16:54 It's almost as if printers set out to offend people who can read music
Fri Jan 24 16:58 Comment: @tombcn Possibly a genuine sighting: afaik the real one hasn't yet investigated Montserrat
Fri Jan 24 21:12 Britten + Milligan would have been a quite extraordinary disaster, no?
Fri Jan 24 21:34 I just can't unsee "St. John the Rapist," and now wonder whether it was really his head that Salome demanded on a plate
Sat Jan 25 00:41 Historia de Barcelona, 25/1: * 1464: El anti-rey Pedro jura los fueros (15) * 1848: San Pablo y sus gitanos, chuchería y dentistas, niños epilépticos y barbas (448) * 1919: Pla: Ateneu, de quatre a set de la tarda * 1937: Batalla del Huevo (135+95) *…
Sat Jan 25 09:09 Original of Mathew Stevenson's (Restoration) Upon Yorkshire Ale Pox take your Yorkshire Ale, It did so firk my tail That I had like beshit me [...] And know'st thy wily wort, Is wont to make us squort Over a thousand hedges
Sat Jan 25 09:11 Comment: Bio Sounds worth investigating...
Sat Jan 25 09:14 Exhibitionist burger at the People's Park Tavern, Victoria Park
Sat Jan 25 09:18 London College of Fashion, Mare Street: "i am confident / i am disciplined / i am motivated / i am fully present / i am enough / i am happy with who i am". But can you fix the hole in my jeans crotch, eh?
Sat Jan 25 10:01 One's elder & better
Sun Jan 26 00:39 Historia de Barcelona, 26/1: * 1460: Juan II de Aragón es obligado a reconocer a su hijo Carlos como gobernador de Cataluña (30) * 1641: La batalla de Montjuic, primera victoria para la Cataluña borbónico-francesa contra las fuerzas de Felipe IV (0) *…
Sun Jan 26 06:14 Re Scrabble, grateful yet surprised that quib is in but codge is out
Sun Jan 26 06:18 Strange fruit: more plastic or a witch lynching?
Sun Jan 26 06:21 Knaresborough Town Hall certainly makes some more adventurous and stirring artistic choices than Hackney
Sun Jan 26 06:50 Fonts of wisdom
Sun Jan 26 06:56 You've seen the Hëävÿ Mëtäl Ümläüt, now here's the Cänïnë Sälön (Ïnvërtëd) Ümläüt, from Scruffs in Knaresborough - check the small print
Sun Jan 26 07:15 Comment: Codge may not be in the OED, & there's apparently no modern back-formation from codger, but there's archaic & dialect use: a glass of gin, to do something clumsily (e.g. "don't codge and modge at that patch any longer" or "that's a codge-bodge!"), codge stone (course filler?)...
Sun Jan 26 08:28 Werewolf mouse
Sun Jan 26 16:59 Comment: @Transblawg In Spain you can buy plastic bags containing something smelly which you hang up in fruit trees to scare off birds
Sun Jan 26 21:13 Comment: @Transblawg I don't think people care - it's more about hanging bags in trees, a bit like Xmas. I have probably told you about the Dutch village which drove off an annoying starling invasion by hanging herring in the trees but then had to call in the army to get rid of the seagulls.
Sun Jan 26 21:20 Crawling technique & intent firmly established. A bit more arm strength & she'll be out into the world, talking incomprehensible nonsense to locals, who will reply in kind. An elderly Kurdish man thinks she is a saint & bought me an almond bun yesterday, so not all bad.
Sun Jan 26 21:23 Comment: @Transblawg Tweaking at the boundaries of my knowledge. Mao would have made short work of Yahweh's Egyptian plagues
Sun Jan 26 21:38 Comment: @Transblawg Will communist morality & supply chain collapse and people take to cannibalising the dead?
Mon Jan 27 00:39 Historia de Barcelona, 27/1: * 1641: Destrozado el ejército habsburgo en la Batalla de Montjuic (1093) * 1899: Nieva (25) * 1939: Dionisio Ridruejo: alivio y alegría al entrar los nacionales (325) * ☼ 08:06-18:01, 09:55 horas; ☾ luna menguante,…
Mon Jan 27 10:17 A Mexican, confronted with a Russian football scrap, says "tranquilovsky"
Mon Jan 27 17:35 Comment: @tombcn You'll have to give more clues now everyone's a rapist.
Mon Jan 27 17:52 How does Philip Pullman square this with his presidency of the Blake Society? Blake doesn't punctuate his poetry at all, e.g.: And then the Knave begins to snarl And the Hypocrite to howl And all his good Friends shew their private ends And the Eagle is known from the Owl
Mon Jan 27 18:37 Comment: But perhaps the Blake Society is a milliners' conspiracy
Mon Jan 27 21:35 This has got to be London's best church
Mon Jan 27 22:31 Malagasy divas
Mon Jan 27 22:32 Comment: Sorry, millinarian conspiracy - chiliastic hatters
Tue Jan 28 00:38 Historia de Barcelona, 28/1: * 1530: Alianza entre Carlos I y las repúblicas italianas (14) * 1534: Plantan naranjos en el Palacio de la Generalidad (16) * 1627: Gran nevada (10+7) * ~1629: Pasquín contra Barcelona con respuesta contra Madrid (220) * ☼…
Tue Jan 28 06:34 Pandi curry vs Islam discussion. Guy explains haram status because of pig sexuality
Tue Jan 28 06:49 Stop, at Bowling Green Yard, Knaresborough. Cottages & mill were sold to developer 3 years ago: mill to residential with "alterations to fenestration" etc
Tue Jan 28 07:18 Before the EEC/EU came twinning associations. Knaresborough twinned in 1969 with Bebra, a railway town near the old inner German border in Hesse. For the Brits this was mainly down to Albert Holch, a pork butcher (pies!) and councillor of German origin (but could he speak it?)
Tue Jan 28 07:27 Comment: @DrFrancisYoung Isn't between-the-lines the be-all & end-all of notarial fun?
Tue Jan 28 07:37 Charles Firth's brilliant Oliver Cromwell bio (1900) finally making sense for me of Simon Jones Bala's Cromwellian Liberal theologically Independent campaign speeches in mid-C19th
Tue Jan 28 15:33 Babe looking forward to the next session with Gene Vincent's drummer, Mr S. Colourful
Tue Jan 28 22:15 RIP Peter Missler, a rather extraordinary gent, whose annotated edition of George Borrow's The Bible in Spain will give pleasure for many years to come
Wed Jan 29 00:36 Historia de Barcelona, 29/1: * 1640: Procesión general para dar gracias por la victoria de Salses (33) * 1680: Abre la Casa de Convalecencia en el Hospital de la Santa Cruz (9+308) * 1939: Pla publica su "lección terrible" (544+27) * ☼ 08:04-18:04,…
Wed Jan 29 15:51 Is off-white/cream & B4 & 100-120 gsm still a thing in music printing? Or is everything white on office A4?
Wed Jan 29 18:54 World of Marmite: unless he triggers domestic constitutional change then I don't think you can sensibly compare Farage with Cromwell
Wed Jan 29 18:55 Wonderful-looking houses - though the devil is usually on the inside
Wed Jan 29 19:01 Comment: Speaking as a radical progressive organ-grinder, one of the worst things about Britain (left/right, rich/poor) is its twee (neo-)traditionalism: being obliged to cherish leaky cold Victoriana or hapless modern travesties thereof. Begone, Charles Windsor
Wed Jan 29 20:49 But did she sing?
Wed Jan 29 20:50 Comment: @Transblawg What do you call eastern gweilo?
Wed Jan 29 21:06 Wandering round the surgery with babe, a middle-aged Turkish woman motions me to approach and says, sotto voce, indicating another Turkish woman with a nasty cough: "Dangerous! no talk! die!"
Wed Jan 29 21:07 Comment: @Transblawg For us Hackney codgers you're an Oriental
Wed Jan 29 21:43 Comment: @Transblawg Hahahaha
Wed Jan 29 21:47 Samuel Johnson: "In the last age, when my mother lived in London, there were two sets of people, those who gave the wall, and those who took it"
Thu Jan 30 00:34 Historia de Barcelona, 30/1: * 1466: El concejo de 32 manda fabricar una imagen del ángel custodio para proteger la ciudad de la peste; la leyenda de la Puerta del Angel (49+844) * 1563: Conducta disoluta del conseller en cap (35+22) * 1784: Una gallina…
Thu Jan 30 08:54 Comment: @ibexsalad Where's your yellow vest, man?
Thu Jan 30 09:48 Es muy sencillo: Jazztel, ladrones
Thu Jan 30 09:48 That'll shut them up
Thu Jan 30 09:58 Comment: @tombcn I find that if you tell dad jokes for long enough an infant always turns up. That's admittedly less exciting than the stork story
Thu Jan 30 16:47 Mothers: - Mine can roll over both ways! - You don't think that's because her tummy gives her a high centre of gravity?
Thu Jan 30 21:12 I wish Knaresborough would come out and claim that the prophetess Mother Shipton was the original of Punch / Pulcinella etc
Thu Jan 30 21:26 Bedtime loop is Burl Ives, Hush little baby
Fri Jan 31 00:32 Historia de Barcelona, 31/1: * 1628: Conmemoración de los 26 cristianos crucificados en Japón en 1597 (670+3/i) * 1785: Empieza construcción del edificio de la aduana (9) * 1809: Prohibido el paso de caballos y carruajes por la Rambla (128) * 1919: Pla:…
Fri Jan 31 08:56 Negligent of lawyers representing schoolteachers (f) discovered with pupils (m) not to suggest incitement by Joan Baez. The Trees They Do Grow High is one of the greatest English ballads, but I wonder if you could sing it now
Fri Jan 31 09:10 Do babies prefer routine or ritual?
Fri Jan 31 09:15 "Ooh, look, a dogfish!" "Watch out, he bites!"
Fri Jan 31 09:17 Comment: @tombcn But Tom, I have a vague suspicion that you're in favour of the Catalan Republic, which would have exactly the same consequences!
Fri Jan 31 10:28 First ever spam-mail from the New Statesman, keenly anticipating digital deregulation post-Brexit?
Fri Jan 31 11:39 A printer's glossary
Fri Jan 31 11:41 Comment: @etlawlor1 I've never been on that bit of that bank to inspect, but was there an island there before?
Fri Jan 31 15:48 Comment: @tombcn Like most things: if you'd done it at uni you'd probably loathe it
Fri Jan 31 22:19 And I saw when the Lamb opened one of the seals, and I heard, as it were the noise of thunder, one of the four beasts saying, Come and see: