To Keep You Amused …

Just in case anyone is at a loose end over the holidays, once again we bring you one of the year’s great events: the King William’s College General Knowledge Paper 2021-22.

According to Wikipedia: Since 1904, the College has set an annual general knowledge test, known as the General Knowledge Paper (GKP). The pupils sit the test twice: once unseen on the day before the Christmas holidays, and again when they return to school in the New Year – after spending the holiday researching the answers. These days, however, pupil participation is voluntary.

The quiz is well known to be highly difficult, a common score being just two correct answers from the list of several hundred. The best scores are 40 to 50 for the unseen test and about 270 out of 360 for the second sitting.

The quiz is always introduced with the Latin motto Scire ubi aliquid invenire possis, ea demum maxima pars eruditionis est, “To know where you can find anything is, after all, the greatest part of erudition.”

You can find this year’s GKP on the King William’s College website at https://kwc.im/wp-content/uploads/2021/12/Questions-2021-22.pdf.

As usual I shall not be getting 100% as tonight’s bedtime reading.

Advent Calendar 24

#0000ff; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Images by Japanese Cult Street Photographer
Nobuyoshi Araki

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Note: These images are all hosted elsewhere on the internet;
you should follow the link to each for further information

Advent Calendar 23

#0000ff; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Images by Japanese Cult Street Photographer
Nobuyoshi Araki

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Note: These images are all hosted elsewhere on the internet;
you should follow the link to each for further information

Advent Calendar 22

#0000ff; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Images by Japanese Cult Street Photographer
Nobuyoshi Araki

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Note: These images are all hosted elsewhere on the internet;
you should follow the link to each for further information

Advent Calendar 21

#0000ff; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Images by Japanese Cult Street Photographer
Nobuyoshi Araki

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Note: These images are all hosted elsewhere on the internet;
you should follow the link to each for further information

Quotes Monthly

So here we go with the last of this year’s round ups of recently encountered quotes.


As long as the general population is passive, apathetic, diverted to consumerism or hatred of the vulnerable, then the powerful can do as they please, and those who survive will be left to contemplate the outcome.
[Noam Chomsky]


According to Frog, dogs must sit on logs and armadillos on pillows; and, while cats could once relax on mats, a recent rule change dictates they must now repose on gnats.
[Blurb for Kes Grey’s Oi Cat!]


The winter solstice time is no longer celebrated as it once was, with the understanding that this is a period of descent and rest, of going within our homes, within ourselves and taking in all that we have been through, all that has passed in this full year which is coming to a close … like nature and the animal kingdom around us, this time of hibernation is so necessary for our tired limbs, our burdened minds.
[Dee Laliberte, on Facebook]


Boring damned people. All over the earth. Propagating more boring damned people. What a horror show. The earth swarmed with them.
[Charles Bukowski]


In any case fashions of one generation, moral or physical, are scarcely at all assessable in terms of another.
[Anthony Powell, Hearing Secret Harmonies]


All fungi are edible, some fungi are only edible once.


Cultivating compassion is not a religious practice focused on ensuring we go to heaven or a good future life. It’s about living a good day-to-day life here and now. It’s about being a happy person. Warm-heartedness is a fundamental good human quality.
[Dalai Lama]


Lost opportunities, lost possibilities, feelings we can never get back. That’s part of what it means to be alive. But inside our heads – at least that’s where I imagine it – there’s a little room where we store those memories. A room like the stacks in this library. And to understand the workings of our own heart we have to keep on making new reference cards. We have to dust things off every once in a while, let in fresh air, change the water in the flower vases. In other words, you’ll live forever in your own private library.
[Haruki Murakami]


What is most serious for the health of our democracy is that [Boris Johnson’s] lies aren’t just made to the media but to Parliament, making it impossible for MPs to do their job of holding the Government to account. The Prime Minister is driving a coach and horses through the Ministerial Code with impunity because the person ultimately responsible for upholding the Ministerial Code is … the Prime Minister.
[Caroline Lucas MP, Metro, 15 December 2021; online at https://metro.co.uk/2021/12/15/boris-johnson-10-reasons-why-the-prime-minister-needs-to-resign-15777201/]


Understanding is a wellspring of life unto him that hath it: but the instruction of fools is folly.
[Proverbs 16:22]


Advent Calendar 20

#0000ff; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Images by Japanese Cult Street Photographer
Nobuyoshi Araki

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Note: These images are all hosted elsewhere on the internet;
you should follow the link to each for further information

Advent Calendar 19

#0000ff; text-align: center; margin-bottom: 24px;"> Images by Japanese Cult Street Photographer
Nobuyoshi Araki

Click the image for a larger view

Note: These images are all hosted elsewhere on the internet;
you should follow the link to each for further information

Eleanor Crosses

As regular readers will know I was brought up in Waltham Cross, Hertfordshire – an area of huge historical interest some of which I’ve blogged about before (see, inter alia, here, here and here).

Waltham Cross – the first stop for stage coaches from London going north to Cambridge and beyond – got it’s name from the Eleanor Cross which still stands in the centre of the town. As a kid one often doesn’t think a great deal about such historic artefacts. However my father was interested in the Crosses and it has rubbed off on me (along with much else of the local history) despite not having lived there for 45+ years.

Waltham_Cross
Waltham Cross
from a watercolour by W Bailey, 14 November 1889

The Eleanor Crosses were built between 1291 and about 1295 at the behest of King Edward I as memorials to this wife Eleanor of Castile, who died at Harby, Nottinghamshire in late November 1290. Her body was brought south to be buried in Westminster Abbey on 17 December 1290; a journey which took two weeks.

Wherever the procession stopped for the night, usually at a monastery, Edward had a memorial cross erected. There were 12 crosses in all, of which only Geddington and Hardingstone (both in Northamptonshire) plus Waltham survive.

(No, not including Charing Cross. The cross which stands outside Charing Cross Station in London is a Victorian recreation and is a couple of hundred yards from the site of the original cross.)

I have a fragile typescript of a talk on the Eleanor Crosses which my father (Bob Marshall, 1920-2006) gave to the Cheshunt WEA in the mid-1950s. I never managed to convince him that (despite its age) the talk should be published – which is one reason it has not been fully referenced. Nevertheless I’ve bitten the bullet, had the text transcribed, and make it available here as a PDF file:

RE Marshall; “The Eleanor Crosses: their history and their meaning”

In reading the text do bear in mind its age and that historical research will have moved on, so current knowledge may differ from what my father presents. However I feel the talk is worth preserving as part of my father’s legacy and as an introduction to the Eleanor Crosses.