Tweets for August 2020

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

Sat Aug 01 18:51 Buford Threlkeld, here NOT playing the nose flute (he's not a nose whistler in the sense that he can whistle through his nose, which is a thing & I guess is due to some deformity in the septum)
Sat Aug 01 18:53 Comment: Whistler's Jug Band's version of the Low Down Blues includes what does sound very like a nose flute solo I used to play the recorder with my nose, but it doesn't really work & is a filthy & reprehensible habit
Sat Aug 01 21:03 Crowded no 30 from Euston, everyone in masks except Windians, who wear at ca 50%, despite the gloomy stats for them. Belief in predestination/wish to put one over on those not of African heritage/result of mixed messaging from HMG aka creative ambiguity (
Sat Aug 01 22:59 Historia de Barcelona, 2/8: #otd * 1439: Bendición de la primera piedra del antiguo puerto (269+193) * 1492: Expulsión de los judíos impenitentes (134) * 1597: Derribado por la ciudad el teatro de madera de los actores y del Hospital de la Santa Cruz…
Sun Aug 02 05:26 Shed rendered with 12" vinyl near Well Street Common: Raw House, Waking Dooley, and God Damn Funky by The Reel Puffin' Daddy (pictured; Caution-Dogs In-Garden). You can buy it for 2.99 online.
Sun Aug 02 05:37 Bad photo in wind at Mayo Farm, Brazenhill Lane, Haughton, Stafford of a flag ("Si Señor" (sic.)) featuring the Wolves's Mexican international star Raúl Jiménez (not the better-known Spanish Raúl González). Raúl is going to Man United or Juventus, but will the flag stay?
Sun Aug 02 05:42 What a difference an alcohol-induced slur makes. Did Doris Day record that song? What were her links with the real estate business in the West Midlands?
Sun Aug 02 05:44 Comment: I've got a short story somewhere about the Dinah Washington version, which plays (out) in a ditch following a car crash
Sun Aug 02 06:33 It would be interesting to base one country's policy responses on another country's data, rather like cycling to Budapest using a street map of Paris
Sun Aug 02 07:39 Cover of the 1958 edition of Kubín's Kladské povídky - Czech folk tales. The pseudo-folky style has an ideological load amid the repression & economic mismanagement of the neo-Stalinist years, but I still quite like it
Sun Aug 02 13:55 "Ik ga naar grootmoeder koekjes in 's-Hertogenbosch." It's curious that some satnavs (& thus strangers) use the official form & not the universal & ancient "Den Bosch." Before satnav, cyclists would get lost &, by asking locals, discover their error
Sun Aug 02 22:58 Historia de Barcelona, 3/8: #otd * 1568: Llega noticia de la muerte del primogénito de Felipe II (29+26) * 1640: Juran el obispo por virrey, tras morirse dos en siete semanas, pero ya nadie le toma en serio (148) * 1848: Fiesta de santo Domingo de…
Mon Aug 03 05:25 The number of clay pipes that turn up in the Thames leads one to wonder whether fish smoke too, ante mortem
Mon Aug 03 05:26 RT @TitaniaMcGrath: What better way to commemorate the emancipation of slaves than by pointing out that the Black Power symbol resembles a…
Mon Aug 03 05:39 The original burning bush (burns without being burnt) from Exodus is on Daubeney Road or thereabouts, Clapton. Now all I require is Desmond Dekker to lead his Israelites across the Red Sea (the Lea Navigation) into Canaan (the only law is Danelaw).
Mon Aug 03 05:41 Comment: The advantage of this burning bush is that a latter-day Moses can take it with him for timely updates from the Lord. I must speak to the South Asian (?) family living in the house about this whole business, which if they handle it right might generate useful ancillary income.
Mon Aug 03 05:46 The war memorial at Haughton, Staffs., with the ubiquitous epitaph by John Maxwell Edmonds, WWI codebreaker and doggerelist from Stroud: "Went the day well? We died and never knew; / But well or ill, England, we died for you" #DoggerelOfTheDay
Mon Aug 03 10:27 Given that they appear not to have any customer service, is there a way of getting redress for failures in Ikea's online service that doesn't involve the small claims court?
Mon Aug 03 15:18 I guess Twitter had a security problem with people downloading other people's data, so now their last remaining programmer has flicked the switch so that no one can download anything
Mon Aug 03 19:15 What fool would demolish this?
Mon Aug 03 19:21 Waiting all my life for someone to make this error, & then you blink & the Daily Star slips it in
Mon Aug 03 21:28 Czech clockwork
Mon Aug 03 21:29 Cats vs dogs
Mon Aug 03 23:01 Historia de Barcelona, 4/8: #otd * 1567: Derrumbada parte de la muralla de las Atarazanas para dejar salir una super-galera (32) * 1632: Llega noticia de la muerte del infante Carlos; la administración municipal no reacciona (112) * 1754: La iglesia…
Tue Aug 04 06:31 If West Midlands Trains can't apply letter case consistently in a simple, ubiquitous message, why would anyone expect them to be able to run a train franchise? (Fwiw, Jan Chaudhry-van der Velde, just kicked out at WMT and previously at Merseyrail, sounds like a native speaker.)
Tue Aug 04 06:34 This, on Mackintosh Lane, Homerton, is not a bloody gangland killing, but two lads who have washed a carpet for mum out on the pavement & now don't know how to dry it. "It's not worth the money."
Tue Aug 04 06:37 "Without local stores there is no community!" I suppose the least you can say about Tesco etc is that they don't destroy community by facilitating AirBnB via KeyNest etc. This on Chatsworth Road, Clapton.
Tue Aug 04 06:41 "It was all a dream," in neon, at The Kenton gastropub on Kenton Road, near Well Street Common.
Tue Aug 04 06:42 "Dissolve the illusion," at Millfields, Clapton.
Tue Aug 04 06:50 To be fair, if I'd just mastered waving I wouldn't want to go to sleep either.
Tue Aug 04 07:13 I have always vaguely thought that the peg o' my heart was a literary figure like the apple of my eye and more vaguely still imagined a clothes peg clipped onto a coronary organ. But I guess it's a Peggy
Tue Aug 04 23:00 Historia de Barcelona, 5/8: #otd * 1391: Primer día de la revuelta antijudía (35+6) * 1410: Terremoto y epidemia de la peste (18+6) * 1477: Torneo para celebrar el matrimonio de Juana, hija de Juan II, con Fernando I de Nápoles (29) * 1835: Se quema la…
Wed Aug 05 04:34 Comment: @Neojean28979377 @AndrewHammel1 Was damals links war, ist jetzt rechts
Wed Aug 05 05:06 I will worry less about bricklayers of barrel drains now I know that they often used specially shaped culvert bricks.
Wed Aug 05 23:02 Historia de Barcelona, 6/8: #otd * 1391: Segundo día de la revuelta antijudía (22) * 1424: Alfonso V celebra fiestas en el Born (21) * 1477: Coronada reina de Nápoles la infanta Juana, hija de Juan II (26) * 1714: Ejecuciones masivas de rebeldes (155) *…
Thu Aug 06 18:52 Comment: @Transblawg Is "corridors of power" Chinese English?
Thu Aug 06 18:54 Of course, the movement that delineates Babe's enchanting wave also serves to pat Alsatians
Thu Aug 06 19:51 "Master bedroom" was always silly & peaked a decade ago, but perhaps the guys in Minis should now also ditch or rethink "executive home" - executive in your job title now means you're a 1st percentile dogsbody condemned to sleeping next to a/c outlets
Thu Aug 06 20:59 Mr Forsyth is epigrammatising a London selection: Justice bade the world adieu And journeyed south from Waterloo. It's good to see some support for Woking.
Thu Aug 06 23:38 Historia de Barcelona, 7/8: #otd * 1391: Tercer día de la revuelta antijudía (288) * 1559: Rogativas públicas para el viaje de Felipe II desde Bruselas (21) * 1848: Fiesta de san Alberto de Sicilia (20) * ☼ 05:51-20:02, 14:11 horas; ☾ luna menguante,…
Fri Aug 07 14:44 Up a wobbly ladder in an old apple tree at Mrs Bea Miller's of Arbury for the first time in a couple of years. A Hesperidean utopia of flying insects, rustling leaves, and bright red trophies, with the possibility of a broken arm at every twitch
Fri Aug 07 14:45 Comment: Late summer-term jobs at the local fruit farm were less other-worldly - proper pruning & punishing piece-rates - but still the chorus of women & ladders up & as it were snakes below.
Fri Aug 07 14:46 Comment: But I can't think of any chiliasts, apocalyptics or visionaries who use apple-picking metaphors (Isaac Newton - what a joke) & contemporary millenials are curiously averse to experience of this alternative world that actually lies within our grasp, lazy sods
Fri Aug 07 15:56 RT @TaxFoundation: How high are beer taxes in Europe?
Fri Aug 07 20:01 My new favourite toy
Fri Aug 07 20:22 Comment: @ibexsalad Santander 1893. Poor sods.
Fri Aug 07 20:31 "All 4 socialists ate the flesh of animals very similar to their [pets]. So how could Trotsky say he loved a dog, with whom he believed he had a genuine friendship? How could Luxemburg object to a cat living in a human prison? How could Berkman attack a man for killing a bird?"
Fri Aug 07 20:42 Comment: Graphic version of Rosa & Mimi:
Fri Aug 07 21:37 Continental drift is still underway
Fri Aug 07 21:41 Comment: Also, Eric Thompson doing "I am king" in "Dougal & the blue cat"
Fri Aug 07 23:44 Historia de Barcelona, 8/8: #otd * 1488: Los Reyes Católicos juran los fueros (18+3) * 1899: Indemnizaciones para los herederos de los propietarios desalojados de la Ribera en 1715 (202) * 1918: Pla: La mar * ☼ 05:52-20:01, 14:09 horas; ☾ luna…
Sat Aug 08 04:57 Dead cat strategy - what are they hiding?
Sat Aug 08 10:21 Graham nails the housing shortage A friction between grandparents was that one was a Thatcherite Tory councillor in Finchley, but I'm sure that the embrace of mafia & abandonment of public interest by modern govt would shock him as much as anyone
Sat Aug 08 19:31 Babe has already being trying to bite dolls & contemporaries, so prepared for the nose amputation, but the backwards headbutt caught my nose by surprise. All improvements on corvine poke-out-their-eyes tactics. Further biomechanical novelty: standing unaided for up to a minute
Sun Aug 09 00:13 Historia de Barcelona, 9/8: #otd * 1909: Más violencia, temor de una nueva huelga general (63) * 1919: Pla: He fet el servei militar a Girona, al regiment d’Àsia número 55 d’infanteria de guarnició en aquesta ciutat * 1939: La Vanguardia: el Segundo…
Sun Aug 09 06:15 However, Mars & Venus are being left untouched. I hope we can build a new planet or repaint an existing one to give inspiration & succour to the transgender movement.
Sun Aug 09 06:29 As one perambulates the streets of Cambridge, one houses that look, well, different. At 83 Lovell Rd, that's because Mrs Hu (sp.?) has generously & ingeniously tried to solve the housing crisis by packing three one bed flats into a 2-up, 2-down semi. Must investigate this genre.
Sun Aug 09 11:32 Comment: @ibexsalad @jjmerelo Most unlikely - Malta hasn't forgotten the Siege & the Battle of Lepanto
Sun Aug 09 13:15 Mrs Gennery Taylor's Easymade Wine and Country Drinks (1957) is the only wine writing I have ever enjoyed. Part I begins: "Soon after I married I decided to make some wine."
Sun Aug 09 13:18 A study suggests that depression is cured by the phrase "It's all paid for."
Sun Aug 09 14:44 I thought I'd noted somewhere, but can't find, that the Anchor & Hope, Clapton is from Hebrews 6:19: Which hope we have as an anchor of the soul, both sure and stedfast. Two C17th engravings, first showing hope holding anchor & giving succour to the soul
Sun Aug 09 15:00 Beaumont & Fletcher, Bonduca (i.e. Boudica; ca 1613), also applicable to infant humans: They lie Just like a brace of bear-whelps, close, and crafty, Sucking their fingers for their food.
Sun Aug 09 15:53 RT @beleno: Wonderfully surreal and Betty Boop
Sun Aug 09 17:23 Comment: @ibexsalad What else could it be used for?
Sun Aug 09 19:59 Who has given up waiting under the bridge for the billy goats gruff & is now ambushing annoying TV doggies? Pauper troll. It gets only ca 200 ghits
Sun Aug 09 20:10 Cambridge without the rich kiddies is basically small English and Polish girls rubbing sand in each other's hair. Not as savage as I remember it, possible because I am calmer.
Sun Aug 09 20:59 RT @PolemicTMM: If turning the pressure down saves water during droughts, shouldn't they increase the pressure during floods?
Sun Aug 09 21:10 I honestly didn't know that the Kasbah apartments in Hengelo, which I know quite well, are by the same guy, Piet Blom, who did the Rotterdam cube houses, nor that Fred had managed to get a museum started
Sun Aug 09 22:13 "father-in-law" is an anagram of "near halfwit"
Mon Aug 10 00:12 Historia de Barcelona, 10/8: #otd * 1218: Fundación por Pedro Nolasco de la Orden de la Merced en presencia de Jaime I y el obispo Berenguer de Palou (506+23) * 1475: Peste (21) * 1629: Entra el gran estratega militar Ambrogio Spinola, destrozado…
Mon Aug 10 09:34 Ronnie, doing his best to attract sponsors to snooker. I haven't read his novels (or, still, Les Dawson's post-apocalyptic scifi thriller)
Mon Aug 10 11:04 For a certain architect, in the 1970s the European ideal was Beethoven (not Mozart or Wagner) and French wine (not Spanish or English) in a simple house in (Roman) Provence.
Mon Aug 10 11:09 PHE and Twitter can fantasise as much as they like, but people I meet on the streets think that pink indicates a girl and blue a boy, that these entities are obvious and distinct, & that if I'm so perverse as to dress her in blue then I need to use ear rings to indicate the truth
Mon Aug 10 11:10 Comment: @ibexsalad
Mon Aug 10 11:14 I guess some smart bugger figured he'd animate this image or some such in 3D & hey presto! the fairground carousel!
Mon Aug 10 11:17 Comment: Also, why hasn't Peppa Penis been banned?
Mon Aug 10 15:38 Excerpt from some translation spam, which probably originated via the ProZ database. I'm tempted to believe that all these entities are a satirical hallucination.
Mon Aug 10 20:37 Comment: @Transblawg Bankers tended to think of legal persons as entities and natural persons as nonentities.
Mon Aug 10 20:41 Not marble, nor the gilded monuments Of princes, shall outlive this pow'rful rhyme, But you shall shine more bright in these contents Than unswept stone besmeared with sluttish time.
Tue Aug 11 00:15 Historia de Barcelona, 11/8: #otd * 1848: El nuevo culto de Santa Filomena (77+38) * 1936: Interrogatorio al general rebelde Fernández Burriel durante el consejo de guerra (340) * 1945: Reacciones barcelonesas ante las bombas sobre Hiroshima y Nagasaki…
Tue Aug 11 13:42 Comment: @gabrielmilland You'll probably need some wind.
Tue Aug 11 14:03 Gran was a great admirer of Cortot, but I'm pretty sure she wouldn't have seen him live & wonder what she'd have made of his face
Tue Aug 11 20:24 Comment: @StuartHumphryes @lordbonkers You can tell it's old because no one's fat.
Tue Aug 11 20:35 Babe kind of likes the Common Toad & we daren't tell her about the cat she missed
Wed Aug 12 00:15 Historia de Barcelona, 12/8: #otd * 1506: Primera entrada en la ciudad de Germana de Foix, segunda esposa de Fernando II (32) * 1640: Robo de correos para descubrir las intenciones de Felipe IV (389/i) * 1848: Santa Clara y la vergüenza (115) * 1936:…
Wed Aug 12 06:57 Babe standing on bed, demanding morning feed is very much stout Cortez with eagle eyes, but unable to remain silent
Wed Aug 12 07:02 Is the 2035 ban on petrol, diesel & hybrid already being priced into house prices on main roads? No emissions/noise, tho people will still obvs drive like twats if permitted
Wed Aug 12 07:08 Is a tall person standing on the shoulders of a short person shorter than the same short person standing on the shoulders of the tall person? More compression?
Wed Aug 12 09:44 Ella Wheeler Wilcox: Laugh, & the world laughs with you; Weep, & you weep alone; Various: When you're smilin x2 The whole world smiles with you When you're laughin x2 The sun comes shinin through But when you're cryin, you bring on the rain So stop your sighin, be happy again
Wed Aug 12 09:44 Comment:
Wed Aug 12 09:48 Comment: Even the biggest fan of EWW has to admit that the original was better than her "reply to Rudyard Kipling's "He travels the fastest who travels alone." Who travels alone with his eyes on the heights, Tho' he laughs in the day time oft weeps in the nights." #DoggerelOfTheDay
Wed Aug 12 10:04 Right now I'd build a wall in the English Channel for a tub of overpriced junk food
Wed Aug 12 20:36 Many flats built in London in the last 20 years seem to be very good at admitting and retaining heat in winter, & very bad at keeping out & losing heat in summer, to the point that they're uninhabitable. Seems like a big flaw. Were regulators & developers climate change deniers?
Wed Aug 12 20:47 Comment: Similar "unusable" reports on offices due to massive increase in heat generation arising from extra (use of) IT hardware to enable people to work from home some of the time. How does that balance against energy/cost savings from reduced travel?
Wed Aug 12 20:49 Comment: Sugar Mountain clearly doesn't believe that home working is the future
Wed Aug 12 21:20 RT @Historylecturer: @jdmccafferty @17thCenturyLady @CatholicRS @DrFrancisYoung @ColemanDennehy @BridMcGrath @cheapsellotape @LiamRuairc No…
Wed Aug 12 22:01 Neil Young & Curtis Mayfield often sound quite similar - tone of voice, wispy rubato
Wed Aug 12 22:04 Organ-grinder & other grinders by Antonio Ruíz (1892-1964). He also worked as a movie set designer etc in Hollywood (Universal) & Mexico, but I don't know for which films
Thu Aug 13 00:20 Historia de Barcelona, 13/8: #otd * 1522: Desembarca Adriano VI, ex ayo de Carlos I (33) * 1810: La política lingüística de los franceses (163) * 1836: Proclámase por segunda vez la constitucion de 1812 (10) * 1873: Sale para Francia el vapor Internet…
Thu Aug 13 06:00 Nutcase
Thu Aug 13 06:01 Some "words" work fine: current favourite "ada" enters Old MacDonald's Farm with plenty of hissing, so also an approximation to "rivet"
Thu Aug 13 06:05 #OTD in Barcelona in 1873: The steamboat Internet leaves for Toulon. Someone explain this one for me, please.
Thu Aug 13 06:21 Dreams.. Romaunt of the Rose A: Many men seyn that in sweveninges / Ther nis but fables and lesinges Robin Hood & Guy of Gisborne: 'Sweauens are swift, master,' quoth Iohn, 'As the wind that blowes ore a hill Bet the root's the same as the Dutch zweven, hover - dreams as floating
Thu Aug 13 09:23 Comment: The French beginning is much better than Chaucer: Maintes gens dient que en songes N'a se fables non et mençonges; Mais l'en puet tiex songes songier Qui ne sunt mie mençongier;
Thu Aug 13 09:45 Comment: A.S. Kline often seems to lean on Chaucer: Many men say that in our dreams There are but lies and idle themes; And yet a man can dream such dreams As are not lies, rather, it seems,
Thu Aug 13 09:53 George MacDonald Fraser's great memoir, Quartered Safe Out Here, on the salience of Mandalay (but also Rangoon) in the national psyche
Thu Aug 13 11:05 Comment: @ibexsalad Sea pig, eat pig.
Thu Aug 13 19:23 Ain't that a pretty thing - even if it doesn't like you
Thu Aug 13 19:36 Comment: @Hackneycyclist Say hello to Fietsenmakerij Jeroen if you're across town in Oud Oost - marvellous guy, worked for years in Barcelona, & before that played tenor sax with a deranged free improvisation orchestra
Thu Aug 13 20:24 "I got hairy legs that turn blonde in the sun." But no one's going to get cross with me for betting on Biden this time.
Fri Aug 14 00:53 Historia de Barcelona, 14/8: #otd * 1321: Decapitación para los banqueros insolventes (785) * 1373: El Consejo de Ciento se instala en el nuevo salon de la casa de la ciudad (19) * 1630: Llega noticia del inicio del proceso de beatificación de Olegario…
Fri Aug 14 06:03 #OTD in Barcelona in 1321: Bankers unable to repay their clients to be declared bankrupt with a year's grace for them to fulfil & then beheaded if unsuccessful. Basel III, dadada, but still seems a good model to me.
Fri Aug 14 06:30 Compare & contrast Sumner Redstone obits:
Fri Aug 14 12:36 Did children start using "chinny reckon" when "Jimmy Hill" had ceased to mean anything, or did the latter gratefully slot into the place of the former?
Fri Aug 14 14:59 Els spammers més desvergonyits que he conegut: Masia Can Ametller
Fri Aug 14 15:01 Comment: @ibexsalad I've got a load of them. If only they worked then I could recover all the interactive animation I did in the 90s, & then I still wouldn't be able to get software to actually see & use the animation
Fri Aug 14 15:38 Comment: @ibexsalad I've still got the voice of a character I created in my head - like a dead friend who starts talking to you at 4 in the morning
Fri Aug 14 15:46 Short thread featuring nitty-gritty of relationships between local state & landowners/employers & workers in Francoist Spain - particularly till the late 50s. Older people would mention this kind of thing, but it tends not to penetrate to the (economic) history sloganising
Fri Aug 14 16:05 RT @WilliamABooth: A nice lockdown story: last week, an elderly woman drove into the neck of our drive and rang the bell. I'd been in and o…
Fri Aug 14 19:52 Cambridge is a miserable hole with covid & without college & tech, so a chorus of Congratulations with a gorgeous granny for a wedding party at county hall brought a tear to several eyes. Babe more impressed by that than by view of Gog & Magog & King's chapel from castle mound
Fri Aug 14 19:53 Welsh land matters! Evict the Saxon invader!
Fri Aug 14 20:00 Comment: No one told me about the modulation
Fri Aug 14 20:04 Comment: @YourWullie @lordbonkers They restaged the shot recently
Fri Aug 14 20:09 Comment: @YourWullie @lordbonkers In Ulster everything is planned by something or other. There is one particular roadblock that I have stored in my head and I would like to reconstruct, but Google can't help with that ... yet.
Fri Aug 14 20:57 Overcome by emotion
Fri Aug 14 20:58 Pun fun
Fri Aug 14 21:58 Comment: @JohnJBaucher Issa tragedy innit
Fri Aug 14 22:05 I know plenty of Spaniards who would fail A-level Spanish, ditto Brits who would struggle to pass foreign English exams
Sat Aug 15 00:56 Historia de Barcelona, 15/8: #otd * 1452: Menú al monasterio de Santa Ana para la fiesta de la Asunción (33) * 1848: Inauguración del Mercado de Santa Caterina (19) * 1890: Un inquilino da las llaves a un clan de gitanos para vengarse del propietario…
Sat Aug 15 14:22 Iñaki's Fuenfría
Sat Aug 15 17:11 RT @_F_B_G_: Ah, the archetypal fish and chips!
Sun Aug 16 00:59 Historia de Barcelona, 16/8: #otd * 1291: Llega Jaime II de Sicilia para ocupar el trono de Aragón (13) * 1572: Nuestra Señora de Montserrat salva a cuatro pescadores de los moros (173) * 1589: La constitución de la cofradía de san Roque da principio a…
Sun Aug 16 13:15 RT @PolemicTMM: UK stamp tax holiday + delayed demand = mini buying boom But, would it be better to wait until after the rush, pay more s…
Sun Aug 16 13:20 Failed pasty barm
Sun Aug 16 13:22 RT @psychcomm:
Sun Aug 16 15:47 Surplus to the Milton marsh mafia's requirements. The ditch along Fen Road is in very poor repair, but still far better than a lot of the field & other drains along the Cam - lack of interest or eco rewilding? Consequence will obviously be worse flooding.
Sun Aug 16 15:50 Small steamboat at Horningsea
Sun Aug 16 18:45 Genghis says sorry, & he's getting his hair fixed
Sun Aug 16 22:04 Historia de Barcelona, 17/8: #otd * 1510: Noticia de la toma de Tripoli (8+219) * 1918: Pla: Dia mort, nuvolós, amb una gran pesadesa a l’aire i un cel de xafogor * 1919: Pla: Calella-Canadell * ☼ 06:01-19:49, 13:47 horas; ☾ luna menguante, iluminación…
Mon Aug 17 06:01 RightMove: "A specious family home"
Mon Aug 17 06:14 Comment: @russellwyatt @CrimeLdn Haha, go back to bed Russell! Tbf, Pompey English is quite different from surrounding dialects & still has a bit of an old school East End ring to it, allegedly because Londoners were drawn to the naval dockyard during its Victorian/Edwardian Golden Age.
Mon Aug 17 06:36 English as she is spoke at Moda Barbers, Milton, Cambridge: Pensioner Haircut, Student Haircut, Student Skin Fade, Clipper haircut, Haircut, Scissor Haircut, Skin Fade, Face Waxing, Shape Up, Shave With Machine. Free extra wash with the Wash, Haircut & Shave option. Hypnotic.
Mon Aug 17 22:04 Historia de Barcelona, 18/8: #otd * 1847: Es nombrado agente de seguridad pública el delincuente crónico Gerónimo Tarrés (161+127) * 1848: Fiesta de santa Elena emperatriz (23) * 1919: Pla: Havent dinat veig Hermós que enllesteix un palangre a l’ombra…
Tue Aug 18 07:47 RT @DrFrancisYoung: A grassed-over pile of broken tiles marks the site of a building within the Roman fort of Epiacum (Whitley Castle); and…
Tue Aug 18 07:48 #otd in Barcelona in 1847: from recidivist to copper
Tue Aug 18 07:49 X humps for Y yards is a very old joke.
Tue Aug 18 07:51 Cow-bell, Melbourne Place or thereabouts, the Kite, Cambridge
Tue Aug 18 13:47 Plastic flowers adding to the funereal ambience at Premier Inn, Cambridge
Tue Aug 18 13:51 I guess these are members of a non-binary household, but why a killer whale, & what are the other two? Is there some film I've missed?
Tue Aug 18 13:53 "Discover a whole new world of wardrobes" strikes me as pretty kinky
Tue Aug 18 14:29 RT @msjanebond007: @lordbonkers woke up this morning fell out of my bed a crazy al-go-rithm was bugging my head it was supposed to be easy…
Tue Aug 18 14:32 RT @PacmanTV: "Wake up you bastard" 😂 Wood green is a mad place
Tue Aug 18 14:41 There is a Spanish video game adaptation of The Name of the Rose called La Abadía del Crimen, The Abbey of Crime
Tue Aug 18 18:49 Comment: @ibexsalad They hate the Daily Mail...
Tue Aug 18 18:52 Comment: @ibexsalad DM more popular & Murdoch vs Rothermere. But the sly digs are more fun when you don't know that.
Tue Aug 18 19:06 Babe in pram at Green Dragon doing TM routine - touch outstretched toes. Curious old lady: "What a clever little boy!" "She's a girl." "All the cleverer, then!" "She can also wave & pat dogs." [Demonstrates]. "Millions will wave back!" I'll bet they waved to Marie Antoinette.
Tue Aug 18 22:07 Historia de Barcelona, 19/8: #otd * 1527: Carlos I da una fiesta con 10 carruajes inmovilizados (39+11) * 1632: Traen a Santa Madrona a la catedral en rogativa por agua (42) * 1918: Pla: A la tarda, el costum de la joventut indígena del Canadell és anar…
Wed Aug 19 09:44 And what about the C20th local authority housing vernacular, currently disappearing or suffering monstrous mutilation?
Wed Aug 19 09:52 20 years ago I cycled daily from the Kite in central Cambridge to the Science Park on Green End Rd & Milton Rd, clipping white vans & dreaming of better. Now locals say this bridge at Ditton Meadows & the offroad route Cambridge Central-North (10 mins?) will be done in 2021
Wed Aug 19 12:09 Comment: @Captain_Bionic I used my intelligence once years ago & haven't been home since
Wed Aug 19 13:57 This is all admirable, but I'm pretty sure the Netherlands still has a higher motorisation rate (cars/inhabitant) than the UK & a higher domestic-km-by-car/inhabitant rate than the UK. It's by no means the promised land.
Wed Aug 19 14:08 Estate agent says people are offering 30K over the going rate in order to save 10K stamp duty. Duh.
Wed Aug 19 14:12 Comment: @Hackneycyclist Are they simply making longer journeys by car e.g. to out of town shopping centres rather than 300 m down the road to Lidl as in Hackney? I worked in the eastern Netherlands & then Randstad for 10 years & the cycling experience is far better, but the car is dominant
Wed Aug 19 19:56 Comment: @petersymon @evacide You bought the dream
Wed Aug 19 19:57 Belly Buster, Acomb, York is not part of the Eat Out to Help Out Scheme - a grave omission
Wed Aug 19 20:03 Comment: @lordbonkers I'm not being partisan, but is there anything that could make you tire of all this?
Wed Aug 19 20:14 Gloucesterphobia is a situational phobia triggered by an irrational and intense fear of being trapped in the Eastgate Shopping Centre
Wed Aug 19 22:41 Historia de Barcelona, 20/8: #otd * 1845: Instálase el Banco de Barcelona (6) * 1919: Pla: Canadell * ☼ 06:04-19:44, 13:40 horas; ☾ luna menguante, iluminación 49,38%, antigüedad 22 días * ✞ Bernardo de Claraval, Burcardo de Worms, Filiberto de…
Thu Aug 20 19:17 Comment: @charlottelevene It's mildly notorious amongst people who reject modernity. Now I read that they've removed the Beatrix Potter clock, which was surely the best thing about it. The old Eastgate Market Hall looked like the markets that have been cunningly renovated/recreated in Barcelona.
Thu Aug 20 19:20 Comment: @ibexsalad Your crime? A friend got banned for life after they found a spliff when she tried to cross at Peace Arch, so now they sail.
Thu Aug 20 22:40 Historia de Barcelona, 21/8: #otd * 1847: Empieza la composición del nuevo Libro Verde de Barcelona (15) * 1921: Muere el pastelero Agustí Massana, naciendo ocho años después la escuela que lleva su nombre (103) * 1936: Empieza el derribo de la cárcel de…
Fri Aug 21 10:55 Tattoo Agent 108 in Cambridge is where politicians learn their craft: "Tattoo and piercing: specialising in reworks and coverups"
Fri Aug 21 10:56 Swan tiller on the Cam
Fri Aug 21 19:03 Stanley Johnson is up at no. 8 on click-thrus to the blog from Google
Fri Aug 21 19:16 The mysterious movement known as BUM strikes again, along with All Lives Matter & ACAB = 1312 & various dumbass taggers, at Victoria Avenue Bridge, Cambridge
Fri Aug 21 19:21 Twilight of the Gokarts on Riverside at Stourbridge Common
Fri Aug 21 19:57 Comment: @petersymon Right nr of syllables but sounds wrong I have a misleading image of Park & Go-Karte
Fri Aug 21 22:37 Historia de Barcelona, 22/8: #otd * 1918: Pla: Ahir féu un mal dia * 1919: Pla: Canadell * 1968: El avión del Papa queda bajo el control del aeropuerto de Barcelona durante treinta minutos (92) * ☼ 06:06-19:41, 13:34 horas; ☾ luna menguante,…
Sat Aug 22 06:44 Tomorrow never comes
Sat Aug 22 07:02 Galina Vishnevskaya singing Tchaikovsky in 1964
Sat Aug 22 09:08 If the National Trust is in breach of trust, then the DM should be supporting judicial action & failing that nationalisation
Sat Aug 22 09:11 Comment: I supported restitution of all National Trust properties to Shirley Bassey, representing both the pre-Saxon inhabitants of these islands & West Indian slaves, but now I see she is half-Nigerian & a descendant of those who sold their compatriots into slavery, so I get everything
Sat Aug 22 09:12 Why can't Handy Andy marry Mrs Mackerel & solve all our problems?
Sat Aug 22 15:21 Comment: @Rik_L_ @ukcag @RobertJenrick @RishiSunak @mhclg @WYFRS England is not corrupt, so the maintenance of waking watches for months/years is completely unrelated to the fact that they are often provided via agents who have other commercial relationships with building managers. Definitely no kickbacks there.
Sat Aug 22 15:25 I would never put a green olive on a pizza
Sat Aug 22 15:27 Comment: @MancCommunities I think you need a police investigation of the nitty gritty across the country and a judicial review of HMG absolving itself of blame for blatantly defective regulation
Sat Aug 22 15:28 Comment: See also
Sat Aug 22 19:56 Squashed figs look like squashed rats but smell better & attract different scavengers #FigNews
Sat Aug 22 19:58 Leviathan
Sat Aug 22 20:03 You can take Hull out of Europe, but you can't necessarily take Europe out of Hull
Sat Aug 22 21:24 Comment: @DrLRoach @DrFrancisYoung What name would you give to the (Bronze Age) Wessex Culture?
Sat Aug 22 21:35 RT @PulpLibrarian: I hate the imprecision of Cathedral City cheddar. Every city has a cathedral BECAUSE THAT'S THE DEFINITION OF A CITY!!!…
Sat Aug 22 22:37 Historia de Barcelona, 23/8: #otd * 1539: Entra el nuevo virrey, Francisco de Borja (33/i) * 1918: Pla: Escenes d’un primer amor * 1919: Pla: Marxo a Barcelona * 1921: Empieza a funcionar la imprenta Braille de la Caja (310) * 1966: Expedida la matrícula…
Sun Aug 23 16:11 Comment: Memory is treacherous. No. 1 is paradise - or maybe it was next door. When I came back from work the bike went in through the garden entrance, but nights out tended to get blurry & so I can't actually remember what the front door looked like.
Sun Aug 23 16:14 Comment: No. 2 was Unit 334 at the Science Park, which I suspect has been demolished & rebuilt since Synomics was bought by Accelrys was bought by Dassault. The neighbours did nasty things to animals, so security, but we were good, but I can't remember at what exactly.
Sun Aug 23 16:17 Comment: No. 3 is Piss Alley on the way to Queens' Lane & the drunken postgrad cave which a Scottish historian made my second home. A pool table, a ghetto blaster, perhaps even a fridge, and exotic dancing.
Sun Aug 23 19:53 People now recognise & greet Babe along the Cam, but today she extended her domain down Bridge Street, yelling & waving her arms to clear a path through an awestruck crowd. Probably the most effective piece of street theatre here since the entry of the gypsies in around 1515
Sun Aug 23 23:10 Historia de Barcelona, 24/8: #otd * 1627: Traen el cuerpo de Santa Madrona a la catedral para aliviar la sequía (70+19) * 1918: Pla: Defectes de Calella * 1919: Pla: Arribem a l’estació de Barcelona a quarts de nou del matí * 1920: Muere Manuel Girona en…
Mon Aug 24 21:02 The emailerator for fairies or mice at Riverside/Priory, Cambridge. Zoom in on the rear shot & you will notice an echo in window of the house behind.
Mon Aug 24 21:02 Comment:
Mon Aug 24 21:06 Comment: The world of graffiti is fast-moving and subtle. BLM -> BUM -> UP YOUR BUM in a matter of days.
Mon Aug 24 21:08 But for a fur coat & a bottle of sherry
Mon Aug 24 21:12 The St Radegund is no more, presumably because £2.50 ALE sounded better than it looked on paper
Mon Aug 24 21:16 Riding a wheelchair is a form of gender expression at the Fitzwilliam, which is forgiven because of its collection of Staffordshire pottery - the most marvellous stuff I've seen for a long time, to the extent that I could see anything through my mask-misted gegs
Mon Aug 24 21:17 Comment: Bonus arse
Mon Aug 24 21:31 A scandal of failed regulation which looks like bankrupting hundreds of thousands & which the entire political mainstream seems for understandable reasons to want to ignore
Mon Aug 24 21:33 When does Twitter's failure to reinstate data downloads become a GDPR issue?
Mon Aug 24 23:07 Historia de Barcelona, 25/8: #otd * 1564: Entra el nuevo virrey, Diego Hurtado de Mendoza y de la Cerda (15) * 1918: Pla: A la tarda, amb el meu germà, varem el «N.a S.a del Carmen», hissem el tros de vela de martell que porta i amb el garbí petit…
Tue Aug 25 09:08 Upminster live. I have discovered in the dungeon various bottles from Stift Göttweig near Fürth but I fear they will not fit under the pram when we return to London tomorrow
Tue Aug 25 09:20 I didn't know that W95 was Eno
Tue Aug 25 09:21 Comment: @Transblawg Maybe it's another Stift, but it definitely said Fürth
Tue Aug 25 09:40 Comment: @Transblawg How rude! I'm on a box of Tesco tempranillo, I'm afraid. There will only ever be one Fürth for me
Tue Aug 25 10:04 I can remember Neil Kinnock
Tue Aug 25 19:09 Comment: @Transblawg @NatWest_Help If you send them your email address, they'll have confirmation that it works & they'll then sell it on to Barclays
Tue Aug 25 20:21 Comment: @Transblawg Can't have been me, since I wasn't Irish then.
Tue Aug 25 23:03 Historia de Barcelona, 26/8: #otd * 1415: Fernando I sale para Perpiñán para reunirse con el emperador Segismundo sobre el futuro del antipapa Benedicto (27) * 1638: Entra el duque de Mónaco con 26 galeras (115+33) * 1839: Instálase la escuela pública de…
Wed Aug 26 20:18 Charlie II seeing the cuntrye has got to be the origin of A Soldier I Will Be
Wed Aug 26 20:57 Apparently the ladies' has gone 17th century: elaborate courtly dance to avoid proximity, & a reliance on hand sanitiser to the exclusion of soap and water
Wed Aug 26 21:01 Felt like an extra terrestrial in Well Street Tesco after a few weeks away: even the white middle class seems to have abandoned masks
Wed Aug 26 21:20 75 likes in 2 hours: the LibDems are back
Wed Aug 26 23:04 Historia de Barcelona, 27/8: #otd * 1466: Sale una embajada para Sicilia para notificar Renato de Anjou que ha sido elegido conde de Barcelona durante la guerra contra Juan II (31) * 1848: Fiesta de san José de Calasanz (28) * 1936: Una señorita entrega…
Thu Aug 27 10:03 Comment: @ibexsalad Exception that proves the fool
Thu Aug 27 12:33 Comment: The new Hackney Covid-19 case stats are the highest since mid-April. Are people not wearing masks her because of stupidity or ignorance? In contrast, masks are almost universal in the Cambridge central & Milton Tesco superstores.
Thu Aug 27 12:37 Why have they cut off Ray Brown & who was the guy before him?
Thu Aug 27 21:59 Trevor-ending story. Apparently there was a short film in 2008.
Thu Aug 27 23:02 Historia de Barcelona, 28/8: #otd * 1481: Acabada la Guerra de Sucesión Castellana, muere Alfonso de Portugal (52+7) * 1824: Se empieza a construir el Paseo de Gracia (17) * 1848: Fiesta de san Agustín (21) * 1850: Reforma universitaria (209) * 1918:…
Fri Aug 28 06:19 Comment: Ah, but it's those white guys in Stamford Hill/Stokie...
Fri Aug 28 06:38 Some Hispanicisms do not convince: Alexander Dargomyzhsky (1813-69( "The Sierra Nevada was wrapped in mist" (Сиерра-Невада была обмотана туманов). A quick lyric search draws a blank. Distance? Some early Spanish Spanish music ain't that great either
Fri Aug 28 07:44 Rush hour at Homerton station yesterday, outraged resident from bedroom window to station guard pretending to enforce yellow lines/distancing @ £10.75/hr: "TURN OFF YOUR MEGAPHONE, THERE'S NO ONE ON THE PLATFORM, YOU PILLOCK!" Rush hour today: no guard.
Fri Aug 28 13:31 Three hipster kids playing pirates in the park: - You kill all the people, and I'll take all their money. - No, we'll make them into slaves.
Fri Aug 28 13:37 I find that one provincial solicitor doesn't have email, let alone a website. What happened to those email/fax interfaces?
Fri Aug 28 21:57 Versions of "Sholem Aleichem’s lullaby": "Sleep my child, my consolation, my beauty, sleep my little son." Daddy's in the States...
Fri Aug 28 21:58 The Coens' latest is set in Upminster
Fri Aug 28 22:04 Southend Steve has also noticed that the acorns (amongst others) are very early Quote from elsewhere: I was going to tell you a joke about Ecclesiastes, but there's a time for everything.
Fri Aug 28 22:58 Historia de Barcelona, 29/8: #otd * 1381: Llega Leonor, esposa de Pedro IV (17) * ☼ 06:13-19:30, 13:16 horas; ☾ luna menguante, iluminación 49,38%, antigüedad 22 días * ✞ Martirio de Juan Bautista, María de la Cruz Jugan, Sabina * Tiempo: 00-06:…
Sat Aug 29 06:49 Dekker & Wilkins, Jests to make you merry (1607): The flower sparagus, that grows out of every man's dung, and condemned of every man
Sat Aug 29 12:42 Comment: @petersymon Priceless publicity
Sat Aug 29 19:35 Wtf has happened to Djeco pull-along toys like Mila the cat? The plastic moulding is still done in China from French design, but somewhere along the chain someone has decided to make them waggle when they walk ... by letting loose a lunatic with a chisel on the axle holes
Sat Aug 29 22:54 Historia de Barcelona, 30/8: #otd * 1636: Los frailes franciscos y capuchinos también ayudan mejorar las defensas del puerto, obra que no se acaba (142) * 1808: Son desahuciadas por los franceses las monjas de Junqueras para hacer un hospital militar…
Sun Aug 30 09:13 My Bengali friend from the marshes wonders whether white British kids do worse at school than Bangladeshis because the white middle class can't afford to have children, because white kids are over-confident & lazy, or because they feel guilty about being white & learn Jafaican
Sun Aug 30 09:16 Comment: "And to think the Pakistanis thought they could rule us!" The pathetic plot of From Russia With Love supports #2: the main problem with James Bond is not sexism or racism but the fact that the shambling incompetence of the protagonist & his retinue is always rewarded.
Sun Aug 30 09:22 #OTD in Barcelona includes a poem for St Rosa of Lima, whose feast is today: ¿Cuál es de las flores La flor mas hermosa? La rosa. A flor tan sencilla Le da mas valor Su olor. Y tan bellas prendas Defiende ladina La espina. etc #DoggerelOfTheDay
Sun Aug 30 15:53 They'll love this in England - a perfect fit with tackling obesity by saving Nando's & getting fatties onto electric mopeds
Sun Aug 30 18:53 Beer out of smaller bottes is tastier, so to save the planet manufacturers should be forced to add cabbage to it
Sun Aug 30 20:41 What to do about church music. For all the gimmickry in Sheffield & elsewhere, the church will never again be a mass movement, & won't be able to pay for repairs, so I'd nationalise buildings & institution & do something along the lines of what Mr Allies suggests
Sun Aug 30 21:16 Comment: @petersymon Haha!
Sun Aug 30 21:30 Quite a lot of authors mention Scheiner's Rosa Ursina on solar flares & sunspots, but the lack of decent translations even of the title tags makes you wonder how much of it anyone has read since 1630.
Sun Aug 30 21:34 Comment: And how fluent was Scheiner's Latin anyway, even if he was a Jesuit?
Sun Aug 30 22:54 Historia de Barcelona, 31/8: #otd * 1844: Instálase la empresa del ferrocarril de Barcelona a Mataró, primero en España (13) * 1848: Fiesta de San Ramón Nonato (21) * 1925: Se ilumina por primera vez el faro moderno de Montjuic (0+31) * ☼ 06:15-19:27,…
Mon Aug 31 07:32 RT @AndrewHammel1: I, for one, think this is a brilliant rejoinder (I also hate Brussels sprouts).
Mon Aug 31 07:42 Pavement parking gives me the moral right to walk on the road, which usually has a far better surface, so I oppose a ban
Mon Aug 31 22:49 Historia de Barcelona, 1/9: #otd * 1479: Fernando el Católico es jurado conde de Barcelona (10) * 1715: Comienzan a derribarse 665 (?) casas de la Ribera para poder construir la Ciudadela (9+719) * 1798: Bastante completa impresión de la ciudad (3540) *…