Yes, it was
Spotted on a Sussex road. It was the color of Pepto-Bismol.
June 20, 2023 — 6:59 pm
Comments: 11
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
Dead Pool Round 166: Sussex Day edition
Carl takes another dick with Silvio Berlusconi. And, unusually for Carl, he picked Berlusconi months ago. I can only assume the old man went sick and then rallied for a while.
I know he was a thug and a boor, but the world seems darker without old Silvio and his cheerful bunga-bunga.
It is hot – or what passes for hot in Sussex – so I won’t linger. Let’s get right to it.
Oh, wait – happy Sussex Day! (A holiday only 17 years old, but every ancient custom began somewhere).
0. Rule Zero (AKA Steve’s Rule): your pick has to be living when picked. Also, nobody whose execution date is circled on the calendar. Also, please don’t kill anybody. Plus (Pupster’s Rule) no picking someone who’s only famous for being the oldest person alive.
1. Pick a celebrity. Any celebrity — though I reserve the right to nix picks I never heard of (I don’t generally follow the Dead Pool threads carefully, so if you’re unsure of your pick, call it to my attention).
2. We start from scratch every time. No matter who you had last time, or who you may have called between rounds, you have to turn up on this very thread and stake your claim.
3. Poaching and other dirty tricks positively encouraged.
4. Your first choice sticks. Don’t just blurt something out, m’kay? Also, make sure you have a correct spelling of your choice somewhere in your comment. These threads get longish and I use search to figure out if we have a winner.
5. It’s up to you to search the thread and make sure your choice is unique. I’m waayyyy too lazy to catch the dupes. Popular picks go fast.
6. The pool stays open until somebody on the list dies. Feel free to jump in any time. Noobs, strangers, drive-bys and one-comment-wonders — all are welcome.
7. If you want your fabulous prize, you have to entrust me with a mailing address. If you’ve won before, send me your address again. I don’t keep good records.
8. The new DeadPool will begin 6pm WBT (Weasel’s Blog Time) the Friday after the last round is concluded.
The winner, if the winner chooses to entrust me with a mailing address, will receive an Official Certificate of Dick Winning and a small original drawing on paper suffused with elephant shit particles. Because I’m fresh out of fairy shit particles.
June 16, 2023 — 6:00 pm
Comments: 51
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
I hope this isn’t an omen
Poor little dead stoat. Not a mark on it (or the cat) so it wasn’t the cat. It was in a flower bed that my chickens peck around in so okay, I guess. But sad anyway.
Just got this in email:
Dear Weasel Times,
I hope this email finds you well. As the editor of Whatfinger News, I’m writing to inquire about potential advertising opportunities with your publication.
If you could share your advertising rates and the contact information of the person who handles advertising inquiries, we’d greatly appreciate it. Please feel free to reply to this email with your response.
Thank you for your consideration.
Best regards,
Sgt Patrick O’Reilly
Editor, Whatfinger Newsew [sic]
If the intent was to get me to look up Whatfinger News and then post about it, it succeeded. Odd site.
According to a post on Quora, “It’s a news aggregation site, similar to Drudge. However, it specializes in taking sources from the extreme left and extreme right on the same stories, giving the reader a chance to see how both extremes spin the news of the day.”
That’s an interesting idea. I’d like a site like that, but – unless I’m missing something – that ain’t Whatfinger. It looks like a straight up populist wingnut link site, but uglier.
I was going to say Free Republic with a fonts problem, but erm…check out what Free Republic looks like these days. Eesh.
June 14, 2023 — 5:08 pm
Comments: 9
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
You probably think you know what this is
No, it’s actually two chooks behind my front door. My last little hen has decided she has to lay an emergency egg behind door, and Mo – gentleman cockerel that he is – is giving her a privacy screen.
She’s done this twice. Chickens is nuts.
Today I had to take a bunch of pictures of me using a credit card machine, so I could explain to a flock of old ladies how to ring up their artwork sales. Credit card machine in one hand, cellphone in the other. Erm. Click to take picture with end of nose? That’ll do.
I guess weasels is nuts also.
June 12, 2023 — 7:32 pm
Comments: 5
Yes, it’s who you think it is
You know the legend, but here it is from the plinth. You can’t be any more authoritative than a plinth:
The Legend of Lady Godiva
The earliest account of the legend is the Chronic of Roger of Wendover (c. 1057), which tells of Lady Godiva pleading with her husband, Leofric, Earl of Mercia, to repeal the heavy taxes on the people of Coventry. Growing tired of her pleas he eventually agreed to remove all taxes, if she rode through the town naked.
Lady Godiva’s horror at this request was overcome by her sympathy for the people of Coventry and their plight. Ordering all the people to stay indoors, and to keep the windows and doors barred, she rode through the silent streets of Coventry with only her long hair to cover her nudity.
One man, named Tom, dared to sneak a glance as she rode by. But, before he could gaze upon her, he was struck blind. This is thought to be the origin of the term ‘Peeping Tom’.
Having completed her ordeal, Leofric was true to his word and abolished the heavy taxes.
Although a legend, it has been recorded that in the reign of Edward I, no tolls were paid in Coventry except by those on horseback.
I always thought “I want the whole town to see my wife naked” was a weird flex.
Nobody had Pat Robertson or the Iron Sheik. I’d give good money to watch those two take the journey together.
Have a good weekend!
June 9, 2023 — 7:38 pm
Comments: 3
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