Speechless
At 2 am on the morning of the 4th of July, Sussex police were called to a building site in the town of Barnham where a crane had been stolen. Presumably, the reporter watched it drive off.
A few yards up the road, Police heading to the scene found 43 year old Alfie Smith had used the crane to punch a hole in a Co-Op Market in hopes of stealing the ATM.
Which is kind of like the old saying about the dog who chases cars – what would he have done if he had managed it? Driven off at, like, 20 miles an hour in the hot crane? Used the crane to smash the ATM on the pavement in the hopes it would rain £20 notes?
Put it in the van and vamoose in hopes of opening it later? Oh, yes – there was a van. It got away. And a 37-year-old unnamed accomplice who was also arrested at the scene.
I’m going to go out on a limb and speculate that alcohol was involved.
Remember Dead Pool tomorrow. Bring out your dead!
July 6, 2023 — 6:26 pm
Comments: 6
The most English thing ever
Growing flowers in wellington boots. Spotted at a village fete over the weekend.
Not much else of interest. Oh, except I met the sister of the cow I met last year at this show. My friend from last year is almost all growed up and ready to be a milk cow.
p.s. my village won the boules contest last night. w00t!
p.p.s. going to go sit in the garden and wait for Chicken Bed Time.
June 27, 2023 — 8:24 pm
Comments: 5
This was unexpected
I forgot about this – I ran across this pic flicking through my photos just now. I took it on my birthday this year, when we dined at my favorite fish and chips restaurant.
You might wonder what an altarpiece is doing in a fish and chips shop. I did, so I asked. The owner saw a crew demolishing a church and spotted it. He asked for it, they gave it to him. Cornwall, I think it was.
I believe it’s granite, late 19th C. It props up a bookshelf now; probably some kind of sacrilege.
Speaking of sacrilege – I’m about to make a quiche Lorraine from scratch for the first time. Thoughts and prayers, please.
June 22, 2023 — 6:27 pm
Comments: 9
Party like it’s 1311…
Hawkhurst fete last Saturday. It was started by this guy, Edward II, in 1311, who gave the land to the Abbots of Battle for a yearly fair. Same field. So that’s cool.
Have I ever described what the typical village fete is like? They’re of a pattern.
You take a cricket ground or other communal field and all around the edges are tents selling stuff. Food (cupcakes, fudge, honey, burgers), crafts, tat, art. Local charities. Fairground games.
In the middle is a display area, usually roped off with bales of hay to sit on. The entertainments vary depending on the size of the site. Hawks or horses or antique tractors. A brass band.
The little village ones usually have a fun dog show, with categories like The Waggiest Tail and the Fastest Sausage Eater.
Hawkhurst fete is on the small side, but it forever has a warm spot in my heart. In 2021, it was the first local fete to get permission after the long months of lockdown. I couldn’t believe it – people were hugging and shaking hands and not masking and standing close to each other. It was like a dream.
I have to tell you, it got really weird here. Man, I wish I’d kept a diary.
June 19, 2023 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 13
PWRR is not the sound tigers make
Last weekend it was a military show, and this was the military band that went with it. PWRR is the Princess of Wales’s Royal Regiment nicknamed The Tigers. Yes, Wales’s. I know it sounds awful. The band was very good, though they didn’t seem all that fierce.
This is where my black and white blog does everyone wrong. They still have those jaunty red coats our boys so loved to pick out in the woods. This just looks a muddle.
Pretty ordinary show, but these themed events are often repetitious. That’s part of the appeal in a way.
Okay. Right. Dead Pool tomorrow. You know what to do.
June 15, 2023 — 7:36 pm
Comments: 3
Guess
A complete door from a padded cell, dating from 1910. It came from Kent County Lunatic Asylum, founded in 1833, at Oakwood Hospital. The cell was used to keep patients in seclusion who were at risk of harming themselves or others.
The use of padded cells and straitjackets declined following the introduction of psychotropic drugs in the 1960s. However, those in Oakwood remained in place until the hospital’s closure in 1994, as it was cheaper than removing them.
Speaking of loonies, Carl wins the dick with Silvio Berlusconi. And he won it the old fashioned way – he picked Berlusconi two months ago. Y’all know what that means!
June 13, 2023 — 7:32 pm
Comments: 1
Victorian munificence
This is the Maidstone Museum. Sadly, it doesn’t look like this any more. Somebody’s stuck a modern glass facade on it. Imagine vandalizing these fine Dutch gables.
It’s a really great museum, though. I hit town very early for my appointment (they often cancel trains and I’m a nervous traveller) so I got to spend more than an hour here.
The core of it is this Elizabethan house, Chillington Manor, and you enter through a collection that is probably some of the original period furnishings. Elaborate sideboards and chip carved boxes and chairs. Brown furniture. The main dining hall has a motion sensor that disconcertingly plays a pavane when you go in. I walked through that room a bunch of times and I was mighty sick of crumhorn by the end.
It was one of these ancient houses that has been added to over and over again, so there are unexpected rooms and half-height floors and cubbyholes everywhere. I got lost multiple ties and still didn’t see it all.
It was an odd, muddled collection like an old-fashioned town museum, but with world class objects. Wikipedia says it better:
The Museum is recognised as having the largest mixed collections in the county and one of the most important in the south-east of England, outside London. Whilst its origins are typical of a regional museum created through Victorian munificence, the work of collectors, staff and benefactors over almost 150 years has created a comprehensive collection of worldwide significance.
There was a section on dinosaurs, an Egyptian wing (with mummy!), a large natural history collection (read: stuffed animals), one of the most important Japanese collections in the country that I somehow managed to miss completely, glass, ceramics, art, a Hall of Frocks and The Queen’s Own Royal West Kent Regiment Museum.
I could entertain you for weeks with what I saw but, you’ll be relieved to hear, conditions were dark and most of my pictures suffered from camera shake. I can only hope to bore you for a few days.
June 8, 2023 — 5:52 pm
Comments: 6
Well, that’s…something
If you can’t read it, it says “1868 – last publicly hanged woman in Britain.”
She wasn’t executed on that exact spot – this is on the path in the mall. The old Maidstone Gaol is about a thousand feet away. It’s been a jail for over 200 years; what’s left of it is currently a sex offenders unit. Reggie Kray married his girlfriend there in 1997.
Frances Kidder married the man who fathered her child and then found he already had a daughter. She was not pleased. Neighbors said she could be heard beating Louisa of a night.
One day, they were visiting relatives in New Romney and Frances and Louisa went for a walk. Frances came back alone and said Louisa fell in a ditch or something, whatever.
At her trial, her mother, father, husband and sister gave evidence how much Frances hated Louisa (which probably says something about how the family felt about Frances). She was hanged in front of the jail at noon on 2 April 1868. She was twenty-five. Her husband was already living with her sister by then and they both were in the crowd.
People, eh?
It was Maidstone day today. I went all by myself on the train like a big girl and had my fingerprints taken in aid of my citizenship application. It was all very pleasant, but I’m whacked. I’ll know if I succeeded in six months.
June 7, 2023 — 6:07 pm
Comments: 3
And then there was the Pearly Queen
Not exactly livestock. The pearlies are a charitable organization. Victorian street sweeper and colorful urchin Henry Croft was the first. He sewed pearl buttons to his clothes to raise attention to his fundraising for the local hospital.
When he died in 1930, he was followed by a procession of 400 pearly kings and queens. They raise money for lots of charitable organizations, traditionally hospitals.
I remembered pearlies in Mary Poppins, but on reflection, I think they’re just cockneys with ornamental buttons. They’re not quite buttony enough for royalty.
This lady seemed to enjoy having her picture taken, but she didn’t hit us up for any money.
May 30, 2023 — 7:03 pm
Comments: 2
Nouveau as all get out
Check this out. It’s Mr and Mrs Kipling’s invitation to George V’s coronation in 1911. It’s a cracking thing. From the May monthly newsletter of The Keep, which is the East Sussex record archive.
I wanted to link to a bigger version for you, but I haven’t yet found it in their Kipling papers. I haven’t looked very hard.
The Keep is in a place called Falmer (if you play Skyrim you’ll know why that tickles me) near Brighton.
it’s kind of miserable to visit in person. You have to get a reader’s ticket in advance and you have to know exactly what you want to see – no browsing the collection. Staff can be rude.
But it’s fun to browse online. At least, it is if you live in Sussex. They have quite a lot of their papers digitized and searchable. Periodically, I do a search of the name of our house + the name of our parish to see what turns up. There was a man of that name in this (very small) parish in the 1820s, so that’s probably our guy.
Nothing new has turned up for a while, though. I have a feeling the gub’ment scanning money has dried up.
May 10, 2023 — 7:52 pm
Comments: 6