Category Archives: amusements

amusements

Auction Oddities

Our irregular selection of oddities and curiosities from the catalogues of our local auction rooms.

An old petrol can, oil can, a wooden beer tankard, and other items relating to Castrol incl. postcards, a key ring, and salt and pepper pots.

A silk opera hat.

Old artefacts, incl. magnifying glasses, penknives, record needles, a hip flask, a razor, a netsuke, etc.

An ornate Victorian EPNS butter dish frame, with cow finial, and some mixed cutlery.

It was the ‘cow finial’ that amused me.

A good George VI silver helmet milk jug and sugar bowl … in fitted case.

What is a helmet milk jug? Is the ‘milk jug and sugar bowl’ one piece of silver or two?

A glass display box, containing woodland birds including chaffinches.

An interesting mixed lot including carved nutcrackers in the form of an elk with glass eyes, a charming miniature picnic basket, composite doll, Royal Doulton vase, wooden handled corkscrew, papier-mâché Easter egg, clock, etc.

Somehow ‘nutcrackers’, ‘elk’ and ‘glass eyes’ don’t seem to go together!

A pair of Royal Doulton penguins on orange bases marked ‘Best Wishes’, a brightly coloured folksy figurine of Richard II, Cutty Sark ship in bottle, busts of Verdi and Moliere, Keats’ death mask, camera Kodak, Volle 620, royal commemorative ware, pewter ware, horse brasses, old razor, etc.

Penguins standing on oranges. The odd ideas some people have.

Two shelves containing Copeland porcelain soup plates, a quantity of Melba bone china Melba Rose tableware, mirrors, decorative plates, brassware, cast iron doorstop, dog pyjama vase, figurine of a brown bear … tribal carvings, etc.

WTF is a pyjama vase?

At this point I think the Welsh got the better of them …

Two Lladro humorous figures of chldrren (sic) in aeroplanes.

A large Royal Crown Derby figure of a Beefeater, holding a pike, mark in red, ‘Made exclusively for James Leather Ltd, London W1′.

I know what it means, but it does conjure up some strange imagery!

An early 20th century oak chimneypiece with elaborate carved decoration flanked by Corinthian columns, painted white.

A rocking donkey on a pine frame in brown woollen coat, and a small rocking elephant seat.

Why does the pine frame need a woollen coat?

amusements, arts

Still Crazy After All These Years

From time to time I go back and look at old Osbert Lancaster pocket cartoons. Lancaster was nothing if not prolific. He effectively invented the pocket cartoon in 1939 when he started drawing for the Daily Express (then a quality newspaper) for whom he drew some 10,000 cartoons — one a day, 6 days a week — over a period of 40 years. This was in addition to writing and/or illustrating many books and working as a stage designer.

Every few years from the early 1940s to the 1970s Lancaster published a selection of 60 or so recent cartoons in small pocket-sized volume. I’m lucky to have been able to collect most of them as they are still available at reasonable prices on the second-hand market.

Lancaster drew a pocket cartoon for the Daily Express every day, and as with Matt (currently in the Daily Telegraph) or the late lamented Calman (in The Times), each pocket cartoon had to be topical. Many insert a rapier to the heart of some current news story; indeed some are so sharp and pithy that you couldn’t publish them in these politically correct times. But what always surprises me is how topical many of Lancaster’s 50 year old cartoons remain. Here is a good example from Lancaster’s collection Tableaux Vivants published in 1955. Sadly the early volumes do not give the specific dates of each cartoon (the later volumes do), but this must have been originally published in the Daily Express some time in 1954 or 1955.

Could one publish this today. Yes, despite some howls of protest, it’s sufficiently anonymous and subtle one probably could. But whether one could get away with calling an Indian lady cartoon character Mrs Rajagojollibarmi I somewhat doubt. And although Lancaster was himself from the upper classes and built his cartoons around the fictional Earl of Littlehampton (Willie) and his wife Maudie Littlehampton, there are many cartoons of the lower orders as well.

Two of the other things I love so much about Lancaster’s cartoons are his ability to pick brilliant names and his attention to detail. For example he invents, inter alia, a chauffeur called Saddlesoap, a waiter (at a gentleman’s club) called Mousehole, an accountant called Whipsnade and peers (many agéd) called Stonehenge, Basingstoke and, of course, Littlehampton. He was also an inveterate observer of people, and had an esepcially keen eye for the heights (and depths) of ladies fashion. So he gets the details deliciously right every time. Here are just two examples:

Delightful!

amusements, beliefs, current affairs, quotes, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week’s selection of quotes.

You should make a point of trying every experience once, excepting incest and folk dancing.
[Arnold Bax]

Good judgement comes from experience, and often experience comes from bad judgement.
[Rita Mae Brown]

I do not feel obliged to believe that the same God who has endowed us with sense, reason, and intellect has intended us to forgo their use.
[Galileo Galilei]

If you believe in the existence of fairies at the bottom of the garden you are deemed fit for the bin. If you believe in parthenogenesis, ascension, transubstantiation and all the rest of it, you are deemed fit to govern the country.
[Jonathan Meades]

Christianity: one woman’s lie about an affair that got seriously fucking out of hand.
[Monica at Monicks Unleashed, http://monicks.net/]

The Dalai Lama, when asked what surprised him most about humanity, answered:
“Man … Because he sacrifices his health in order to make money. Then he sacrifices money to recuperate his health. And then he is so anxious about the future that he does not enjoy the present; the result being that he does not live in the present or the future; he lives as if he is never going to die, and then dies having never really lived.”
[https://neilperkin.typepad.com/only_dead_fish/2011/03/something-to-remember.html]

I’d call you a c**t but you lack the warmth and depth.
[Amy Sedaris]

By nature a woman is an angel, but if her wings get broken she learns how to fly on a broom.
[unknown]

amusements, current affairs, history, topographical

Bales of Straw – Only in England!

Between about 18th and 30th April, if you are in central London, it may be worth visiting Tower Bridge for an unusual sight.

The details are in the Port of London Authority Notice (PDF file). Basically work is to be done on a couple of arches of Tower Bridge by men on ropes dangling from the the arches which will on some days be closed to navigation. At other times the arches may still be open to navigation but with reduced headroom when the byelaw requires that the Bridge Master hang a bale of straw “large enough to be conspicuous” from the centre of the arch by day (and a white light by night).

And of course one must not forget that Tower Bridge is officially registered as a ship.

Surely only in this country do we have such arcane, and legally enacted, requirements!

Hat-tip: Ian Visits

amusements, beliefs, music, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

A better selection of quotes this week, which reflects a more varied weeks reading.

Invisible Pink Unicorns are beings of great spiritual power. We know this because they are capable of being invisible and pink at the same time. Like all religions, the Faith of the Invisible Pink Unicorns is based upon both logic and faith. We have faith that they are pink; we logically know that they are invisible because we can’t see them.
[Steve Eley]

When you run into something interesting, drop everything else and study it.
[Psychologist BF Skinner]

We all are born mad. Some remain so.
[Samuel Beckett]

Physicists. Just because you’re not smart enough to know what the fuck they’re talking about doesn’t mean God exists.
[]

I contend that we are both atheists. I just believe in one fewer god than you do. When you understand why you dismiss all the other possible gods, you will understand why I dismiss yours.
[Stephen Roberts]

Children are naïve – they trust everyone. School is bad enough, but, if you put a child anywhere in the vicinity of a church, you’re asking for trouble.
[Frank Zappa]

Bad facts make bad law, and people who write bad laws are in my opinion more dangerous than songwriters who celebrate sexuality.
[Frank Zappa; Statement to the Senate Hearing on “Porn Rock”; 1985]

I do not know what I may appear to the world; but to myself I seem to have been only like a boy, playing on the sea shore, and diverting myself in now and then finding a smoother pebble or a prettier shell than the ordinary, whilst the great ocean of truth lay all undiscovered before me.
[Isaac Newton]

You can’t always write a chord ugly enough to say what you want to say, so sometimes you have to rely on a giraffe filled with whipped cream.
[Frank Zappa]

Just as long as that giraffe is made of choux pastry and dipped in chocolate! Might be best if it doesn’t mate with a pink unicorn too. 🙂

amusements, science

Prime or Not?

I came across this on the intertubes earlier. It may amuse those of a more scientific bent …

Several people are asked to prove that all odd integers greater than 2 are prime.

  • Post-graduate mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is not prime. Ha! A counterexample.
  • Undergraduate mathematician: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime… so by induction, all subsequent odd integers are prime.
  • Statistician: Let’s verify this on several randomly selected odd numbers, say, 23, 47, and 83.
  • Computer scientist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, segmentation fault?
  • Computer programmer: 3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime, 3 is prime…
  • Physicist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is an experimental error, 11 is prime…
  • Mechanical engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is approximately prime, 11 is prime…
  • Civil engineer: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime…
  • Biologist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is… still awaiting results…
  • Psychologist: 3 is prime, 5 is prime, 7 is prime, 9 is prime but suppresses it, 11 is prime…
  • Economist: 2 is prime, 4 is prime, 6 is prime…
  • Politician: Shouldn’t the goal really be to create a greater society where all numbers are prime?
  • Sarah Palin: What’s a prime?


I especially like the Physicist and Mechanical Engineer ones.

amusements

Auction Eccentrica

Another in our irregular series of eccentric lots from our local auction house.

I’ve been thinking about what it is that makes some of these things so amusing and concluded that it is a mixture of
(a) the strange objects which are put up for sale,
(b) the almost inexplicably incongruous combinations which get put together to make up a lot, and
(c) those which appear totally unintelligible.

Anyway here’s this month’s selection:

A Royal Navy cocked hat by Rowe & Co, and another.

An extensive collection of matchboxes including a complete box of Sotheby’s Special Reserve Matches and two boxes containing ‘The Nostalgia Postcard’.

A mahogany canteen of Pedigree Plate cutlery for eight, including carving set, fish eaters, etc., with detachable legs.
[What do the detachable legs refer to? The ‘canteen’? The ‘fish eaters’? Or the ‘etc.’?]

An automated singing bird in gilt cage.

An interesting mixed lot […] including Gladstone bag, barleytwist candlesticks, British Cafe dominoes, a quantity of Torquay ware, Doulton footwarmer, old jeweller’s drill, old tins, oriental ware, wooden trough, corner brackets, etc.

A tribal drum, carved mask, oriental wooden plaque, ceramic sculpture, boomerang, linen including batik? panel, etc.

A large framed religious tapestry marked Ellen Simpson, aged 15 years, 1858; and a stone elephant.
[A excellent example of the strange combination of incongruous stuff]

A wonderful lot containing an adjustable hearth pot stand, brass motor for spit, old tins, early copper moulds, can opener in the form of a bull’s head, folding spectacles in case, carpet bowls, leather and metal hip flask, cast iron meat mincer, old leather and wooden children’s clogs.
[You just know anything beginning “A wonderful” or “An interesting mixed lot” is going to throw up something which boggles the mind.]

An old ship’s rudder, mahogany pipe stand, three brass candlesticks, small Doulton Lambeth vase, fawn pottery with blue and white raised decoration, novelty pop-up cigarette box, three crucifixes, pewter plate, oriental ware, children’s mugs, cat figurine, etc.

A good late 19th century German cuckoo clock, in carved walnut case, wreathed in vines and with bird surmount, the movement by gong striking and with two pipes, by GHS.

An old cavalryman’s lance in bamboo with steel point and end, branded mark ‘XIIIIX’, with red and white wool pennant attached

Five and a half Victorian architectural cast iron panels.

An antique Indian window frame with shutter door, now fitted with a mirror, and a decorative metal framed box.

A collection of CDs, boxed Lego Technic unopened, a cycle hat, a carton including new gadgets including Braun shavers, cycle light, earphones, flints, new plumbing parts, electric fret saw, a shredder, telephone hand sets, tool boxes, a solar wireless alarm system, a case of screws, Draper appliances (unused), a workbench, a duvet, sleeping bag, teddy bears, an electrical extension reel (boxed), etc.

Six old red painted fire buckets.