Category Archives: amusements

amusements, memes

Ten Things: April

This year our Ten Things series, on the tenth of each month, is concentrating on things which are wackier than usual, if not by much. From odd road names to Christmas carols by way of saints and scientists. So here goes with April; and for Easter I thought we should have …

Ten 16th Century English Composers

  1. William Byrd (born c.1540) (right)
  2. Thomas Tallis (born c.1505)
  3. Christopher Tye (born 1505)
  4. Orlando Gibbons (born 1585)
  5. Thomas Weelkes (born 1576)
  6. John Wilbye (born 1574)
  7. Peter Philips (born 1560)
  8. Thomas Tomkins (born 1572)
  9. John Shepperd (born 1515)
  10. John Dowland (born 1563)

If you’re interested to know more, all have Wikipedia entries.

amusements

Auction Amusements

I thought we should have a little diversion from these interesting times we’re living in. And it is a while since we had a selection of the idiosyncrasies which turn up at out local auction house. So here’s a collection from the last three sales. As always it is not just the odd which amuses but the strange things which get up together as a lot.

A quantity of mixed items including an espresso Magimix, an indoor fountain, a Siemens espresso maker designed by FA Porsche, a Veuve Clicquot wine cooler, a Vice Versa knife box, wooden tray, plastic champagne glasses in stand, a Moulinex Blender 2, an aquarium, BaByliss hair dryer.

A mixed lot including aluminium pots and pans, Oriol zoom binoculars 30 x 60, a gas mask, an Aqua Vac, Precision LED magnifying glass, watering can, aluminium bowls, camping gas bottle, a mixer, umbrellas, painters’ tools and a fishing rod; many appear to be unused in boxes.

A mixed lot including a picture of a Rolls Royce made up from watch parts, a wooden framed barometer, a painted ostrich egg, a set of steak knives and forks on a tray, a small quantity of CDs, a small quantity of foreign coins, a resin figurine of a bird etc.


Antique taxidermy: a kestrel with bird prey, under glass dome on wooden base


A mid-18th century English delft flower brick, delicately painted in blue with a figure on a bridge between buildings

A fruit box containing an extensive number of cigarette lighters including Ronson and Zippo, an old mahogany box containing Victorian brass and steel geometry equipment, a colourful pottery pot decorated with eels and squid and two glass pint pots.

A box of pipes including briar, some unused, one in a carry box, a carton of old briar pipes one unused by Falcon, foreign coins, an original box of cowry shell counters for games, a button-hook and shoe-horn with silver handles, a dagger paper-knife and a collection of old cut-throat razors in a velvet pouch, old scissors, wrist watches, a scout dagger, etc.

A wooden box containing a collection of call girl telephone cards and a child’s crocheted matinee jacket, socks and slippers and a silver-plated and mother-of-pearl baby rattle.

I feel sure there’s a rather sordid story within this juxtaposition.

A carton including a number of Beryl Cook calendars, a quantity of legal documents, a postcard book Vues d’Ypres, a quantity of unused gilt metal buttons some of them Naval others with enamelled Scales of Justice, an original Tiddlywinks box and contents, a silver-plated copper coffee pot, an old Williams Deacon’s Bank savings box, office stamps, a pipe, 19th century corkscrew, etc.

A mixed lot including a Polaroid camera, a Seasmoke Rigid drill, a Sony Handycam, a kitchen wall-light, an Xtreme torch, a folding desk lamp, carbon-monoxide alarm, a brass dog doorstop, a frog telephone.

A quantity of glassware including two glass ceiling shades, sherry and wine glasses, a box of vintage tools including spanners and saws, two aluminium cooking pots, a sundial, etc.

A life size model of Elvis Presley seated on a stool playing his guitar.

Apart from wondering why one would want a life-size model of Elvis, how does a stool play a guitar?


Two vintage My Pet Monster stuffed toys – one the pet monster and also the monster’s pet, by Amtoy, and a small quantity of records


A glazed cabinet of stuffed and mounted birds including kingfisher, snipe, golden oriels, and flycatchers

A small mixed lot, including a soda syphon, Chinese-style lamp base, a garniture of Art Deco vases, some silver plate, a model car and a tail coat etc.


An antique set of bagpipes with lignum vitae pipes, contained in a pine box


A scratch-built wooden model of ‘HMS Victory’, fully rigged and with furled canvas


A reproduction horse armour chanfron with armorial escutcheon, mounted on a board

No I didn’t know what a chanfron was either! I knew about horse armour, but not what the individual pieces were called.

And we end with two rather steampunk items …


A modern German skeleton clock by Franz Hermle, under conical glass cover on wood base


An elaborate Victorian writing slope in burr walnut and cut brass, fitted with a stationery cabinet and glass inkwells

Be good, and stay safe!

amusements, quotes

Monthly Quotes

So time for something slightly more light-hearted than most of what’s happening currently: our monthly round-up of recently encountered quotes, some thought-provoking, others amusing.

A cover up? Certainly not! It is responsible discretion exercised in the national interest to prevent unnecessary disclosure of eminently justifiable procedures in which untimely revelation could severely impair public confidence.
[@YesSirHumphrey on Twitter]

Thrice-called banns might be a public torment, for example, for those cursed with unfortunate names. Was it this which persuaded Miss Pleasant Love to marry by licence in Nottinghamshire in 1710, Avis Urine to seek a licence in Sudbury in 1712? It is noticeable that in the index of names to the volume of Suffolk licences from which the last example was taken two of the largest entries relate to the families of Prick and Balls. It is also noticeable that they were conspicuously successful in avoiding each other in the matrimonial market.
[RB Outhwaite, “Age at Marriage in England from the Late Seventeenth to the Nineteenth Century”; Transactions of the Royal Historical Society; Vol. 23 (1973), pp 55-70]

I myself have never been able to find out precisely what feminism is. I only know that people call me a feminist whenever I express sentiments that differentiate me from a doormat, or a prostitute.
[Rebecca West, 1913]

Women are people, and people are more interesting than clichés.
[Helen Lewis; Guardian; 15 January 2020]

Don’t be in a hurry to condemn because he doesn’t do what you do or think as you think or as fast. There was a time when you didn’t know what you know today.
[Malcolm X]

Never let a serious crisis go to waste: it’s an opportunity to do things you think you could not do before.
[Rahm Emanuel, President Barak Obama’s Chief of Staff]

At first glance, hand washing is an act of self care. Frequent hand washing protects us individually from contracting the virus. But it is also an act of community care; we help protect others when we help protect ourselves. So too with the recommendation to stay home when sick. Although there is definitely a level of privilege in being able to take time off work, it is clearly important to take care of our communities by preventing the spread of illness.
[Gesshin Claire Greenwood on Medium]

Interdependence is a fundamental law of nature. Even tiny insects survive by mutual cooperation based on innate recognition of their interconnectedness. It is because our own human existence is so dependent on the help of others that our need for love lies at the very foundation of our existence. Therefore we need a genuine sense of responsibility and a sincere concern for the welfare of others.
[Dalai Lama quoted by Gesshin Claire Greenwood on Medium]

It’s only quarantine if it comes from the Quarré region of France. Otherwise it’s just sparkling house arrest.
[h/t Alden Tullis O’Brien on Facebook]

Splay the legs as wide as possible, and then make sure they’re fixed in position with the wing nut.
[Instructions for setting up an easel quoted by @19syllables on Twitter]

amusements, memes

Ten Things: March

This year our Ten Things series, on the tenth of each month, is concentrating on things which are wackier than usual, if not by much. From odd road names to Christmas carols by way of saints and scientists. So here goes with March …

Ten Entries from Ambrose Bierce’s The Devil’s Dictionary

  1. Chop. A piece of leather skilfully attached to a bone and administered to the patients at restaurants. (right)
  2. Dentist. A prestidigitator who, putting metal into your mouth, pulls gold from your pocket.
  3. Cannon. An instrument employed in the rectification of national boundaries.
  4. Noise. A stench in the ear. Undomesticated music. The chief product and authenticating sign of civilization.
  5. Cat. A soft, indestructible automaton provided by nature to be kicked when things go wrong in the domestic circle.
  6. Envelope. The coffin of a document; the scabbard of a bill; the husk of a remittance; the bed-gown of a love-letter.
  7. Hand. A singular instrument worn at the end of the human arm and commonly thrust into somebody’s pocket.
  8. History. An account mostly false, of events mostly unimportant, which are brought about by rulers mostly knaves, and soldiers mostly fools.
  9. Opera. A play representing life in another world, whose inhabitants have no speech but song, no motions but gestures and no postures but attitudes.
  10. Adage. Boned wisdom for weak teeth.
amusements, memes

March

We’re beginning every month this year with a haiku (or a longer poem made of haiku) relevant to the month.

Spring & Joy

Smiling seeds sprout fast
Giggling ground welcomes their roots
Spring, burst out laughing!

[Demetrios Trifiatis]

All the poems can be found online at http://www.haikupoemsandpoets.com.

amusements, quotes

Quotes

Here goes with this months colletion of interesting and/or amusing quotes …

Mathematical Glossolalia

As though time could have a hobby
we speak in eigenvalues, the harmonious
oscillations in the green flash before sunset.

We interpret raised to the power to mean
you were taken in by numbers
as a young babe & your childhood

can be classified irrational. Euclid,
Euler, the empty set’s a nest atop a piling.
If two words diverge on the open seas &

the dot product is without derivative, the intercept
can be found only by Venn diagrams on the tongue.
Swallowed by wave functions, turning back, theorems

to explain the circumference of illusion, good heavens,
the sailboat’s isosceles never goes slack.

[Jennifer Gresham; Scientific American; 02/2020]

Yestreen I wed a lady fair,
An ye wad believe me,
On her cunt there growes nae hair,
That’s the thing that grieves me.
It vexed me sair, it plagued me sair,
It put me in a passion,
To think that I haed wad a wife,
Whase cunt was oot o fashion.
[Robert Burns (1759-96)]

Is there one maxim which ought to be acted upon throughout one’s whole life? Surely it is the maxim of loving kindness: Do not do to others what you would not want them to do to you.
[Confucius]

Naturism is … a philosophical belief in a natural, naked lifestyle, characterised by respect for oneself, for others, and for the natural environment.
…
Naturists believe that nudity is an enjoyable, natural and moral state which brings benefits to themselves and to society at large.
[From “Is Naturism the solution to low body confidence?” at https://buzz.bournemouth.ac.uk/2020/01/is-naturism-the-solution-to-low-body-confidence/]

Physiology is just functional anatomy. Biochemistry is the anatomy of biomolecules. Genetics is the anatomy of DNA. Physics is the anatomy of the universe. All science is – anatomy.
[Prof. Alice Roberts on Twitter]

We couldn’t overlook the stupidity of an entire nation democratically voting to deprive itself of all its human rights for possibly generations to come. We thought about making 17.4 million individual awards but that wouldn’t work as voting is anonymous and many of the people who voted for Brexit have since died – in some cases as a consequence of their vote already, so those ones should really get special mentions.
[Stu Pidkunz, Chairman of Darwin Awards on giving the UK a DA for Brexit]

And nightly now beneath their shade
are buggeries, rapes, and incests made.
Unto this all-sin-sheltering grove
whores of the bulk and the alcove,
great ladies, chambermaids, and drudges,
the ragpicker, and heiress trudges.
Carmen, divines, great lords, and tailors,
‘prentices, poets, pimps, and jailers,
footmen, fine fops do here arrive,
and here promiscuously they swive.
[John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, on St James’s Park, London; 1673. Quoted in Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain]

He [John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester] is also suspected of being the author of Sodom, almost certainly the rudest play ever written, about a debauched king who encourages his sex-crazed subjects to indulge themselves in as much sodomy as they like. Just to give you a flavour of its lewdness, the dramatis personae includes: King Bolloximian and Queen Cuntigratia; Prince Prickett, Princess Swivia and General Buggeranthus; Pockenello (a pimp, catamite and the king’s favourite), Borastus (the buggermaster-general), Pene, Tooly and Lady Officina (pimps and she-pimp of honour); Fuckadilla, Cunticula and Clitoris (maids of honour); Flux (physician-in-ordinary to the king) and Virtuoso (dildo-maker to the court).
[Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain. Sodom was published in 1684.]

The common people of London, giving way to their natural inclination, are proud, arrogant and uncivil to foreigners, especially the French, against whom, they entertain a great prejudice and cherish a profound hatred, treating such as come among them with contempt and insult. The nobility, though also proud, have not so usually the defects of the lower orders, displaying a certain degree of politeness and courtesy towards strangers; and this is still more the case with those gentlemen who have been out of the kingdom, and travelled, they having taken a lesson in politeness from the manners of other nations.
[Lorenzo Magalotti, Florentine nobleman, c1667. Quoted in Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain]

When it comes to addressing important people, modern practice is useful in so far as forms have not greatly changed. You should address the king as ‘Your majesty’ and a duke or an archbishop as ‘Your grace’. Speaking to lesser lords and bishops or their wives, you can simply say ‘Your lordship’ or ‘Your ladyship’, and to clergymen ‘Your reverence’. If a man is a knight or a baronet, then call him ‘Sir John’ or whatever his first name is. His wife is ‘Your ladyship’, ‘Dame Alice’ or ‘Lady Smith’. Gentlemen are referred to as ‘Mister’ or ‘Master’ (both written ‘Mr’). The term ‘Esquire’ is used after a gentleman’s name to indicate that he has a coat of arms – note that it is not used for non-armigerous gentlemen. Nor do you call a tradesman or ordinary farmer ‘Mr’ – at this time he does not have a pre-title, only his name. Wives, sisters and daughters of gentlemen are addressed as ‘Mistress’ (written ‘Mrs’ or ‘Mtress’), whether they are married or not, and letters should be directed to them as ‘Mrs Smith’, even if they are under the age of ten. I would strongly recommend that you do not address an unmarried woman in the 1660s as ‘Miss’: this is the way people refer to noblemen’s concubines.
[Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain]

Justice is a relative concept in all ages. If it is fairness you want from your legal system, I suggest you visit a period of history that prioritises the person over property, reality over religion, science over superstition, equity over influence and fairness over the process of the law. In finding such a time, I wish you luck.
[Ian Mortimer, The Time Traveller’s Guide to Restoration Britain]

I don’t care what anybody says about me as long as it isn’t true.
[Truman Capote]

Boris Johnson – speaking literal gibberish in between staring at the ceiling. It’s like watching a penguin on acid trying to catch invisible fish in its mouth.
[@Otto_English on Twitter]

The whole problem with the world is that fools and fanatics are so certain of themselves, yet wiser people so full of doubts.
[Bertrand Russell]

So, we must keep talking about sex. We must keep educating children about sex, and not just about what happens when a sperm gets its hands on an egg. We must talk about consent, pleasure, masturbation, pornography, love, relationships and our own bodies. Because the only way we will dispel shame is to drag sex out in the open and have a good long look at it. History has shown us how damaging shaming sexual practices, in all their myriad forms, can be. Let’s learn the lesson.
[Kate Lister; A Curious History of Sex]

amusements, words

100 Day Word Challenge: Summary

It’s interesting to go back and look at my 100 day word challenge …

Over the 100 days, grouped as 20 sets of five words, I chose one word in each group as a favourite. Some of these were chosen because of their meaning, while others were chosen because I just like the word itself. Here are those favourites, in alphabetical order:
alopecoid: of, or resembling, a fox
belomancy: divination by means of arrows
bloomery: the first forge in an iron-works through which the metal passes after having been melted from the ore, and in which it is made into blooms
chiru: Tibetan antelope with a thick, reddish-brown woolly coat, and (in the male) very long straight horns
circumjacent: bordering on every side, surrounding
hieromonach: a monk who also serves as a priest
hwyl: emotional state capable of arousing intense eloquence
limaciform: having the form of a slug
pegomancy: divination by the examination of springs or fountains
plenicorn: of a ruminant: having horns that are solid rather than hollow
polemarch: Ancient Greek military commander or an official with certain civil or ritual duties
pourpointerie: quilted material with studs at the seams, worn in the Middle Ages as armour
prasinous: a leek-green colour
quinticlave: upright brass-wind instrument like a keyed bugle
scop: an Old English poet or minstrel
squarrose: having scales sticking out at right angles
tonitruone: musical instrument that imitates sound of thunder
vervecine: of or pertaining to a sheep
yellowplush: a footman, esp. one who wears breeches made of yellow plush; an underling, a lackey
yelt: a young sow

Of these 20 I think my very favourite might be yellowplush; it’s just so “off the wall” but brilliantly descriptive while being slightly, but politely, derogatory. And it always reminds me of Sir John Tenniel’s brilliant illustration of the Frog and Fish Footmen, from Alice in Wonderland (below).

Needless to say there are others I particularly like; here are another dozen:
cabasset: light iron helmet
cicisbeo: the male companion of a married woman
ecdysiast: a striptease performer
ketjak: traditional Balinese dance accompanied by male chorus
labiomancy: lip reading
megachiropteran: of, like, or pertaining to fruit bats
orf: an infectious disease of sheep and goats caused by a pox virus
pongee: A soft, usually unbleached kind of Chinese silk fabric, woven from uneven threads of raw silk
pubarche: the first appearance of pubic hair
yatzy: A dice game popular in Scandinavian countries
zenana: system of segregating women away from men in harems
zenzizenzizenzic: the square of a square of a square number; the eighth power of a number

I’ve also taken a look at the subject matter covered by the words. I am slightly surprisedd at the top three categories:
Pertaining to Animals: 16 words
Pertaining to People: 14
Pertaining to Science: 12
The people and science categories don’t surprise me so much, but I would not have expected the animals to come out on top. I would probably have that things historical would be much higher than languishing in the bottom half.

What else can we learn? Quite by chance I managed to pick at least one word beginning with each letter of the alphabet. Some initial letters were more popular than others: of the 100 words, 13 begin with S, 11 with P and 8 with C; all the rest tag along behind. Slightly unexpectedly both D and E occur as initial letters only once; less unexpectedly they’re joined by K and W. I suppose that given the dependency of English on Latin and Greek that the proponderance of S, P and C isn’t hugely surprising.

Anyway, there we are. 100 words which I didn’t know – and along the way I must have passed over at least 10 times that number I did know. How many of them will I remember and use? If only a couple stick it will have been worth doing.

amusements, memes

Ten Things: February

This year our Ten Things series, on the tenth of each month, is concentrating on things which are wackier than usual, if not by much. From odd road names to Christmas carols by way of saints and scientists. So here goes with February, and especially for Lent …

Ten English Saints

  1. Thomas Beckett (right)
  2. Margaret Clitherow
  3. Edmund Campion
  4. John Fisher
  5. Gilbert of Sempringham
  6. Alcuin of York
  7. Venerable Bede
  8. Edward the Confessor
  9. Hilda of Whitby
  10. Margery Kempe
amusements, words

100 Day Challenge: Words #20 (Final)

Yes, we made it! Here’s the final episode (days 96 to 100), of my 100 day challenge to find words I don’t know. I’ve been scraping words from https://randomword.com/ and each day picking one that I find interesting and which is also in the OED.

Day Date Word Meaning
96 Tuesday 4 February unguiculate having claws
97 Wednesday 5 February hwyl ** emotional state capable of arousing intense eloquence
98 Thursday 6 February cacolet a military litter for the sick or wounded carried by mules
99 Friday 7 February ketjak traditional Balinese dance accompanied by male chorus
100 Saturday 8 February oneiric of, like, or pertaining to dreams

** My favourite of the words presented.

So that’s it for this 100 day challenge. I’ll try to write a summary in the next few days. And look out for another challenge – I’ve got some ideas lined up but we’ll maybe have a break first.