sweasel.com

Uncle B says that’s not the one we went to. It has some extremely cool things, though.

I think we might make a field trip.

damn, there’s some neat stuff in there!
pity it would need to come by ship and rail and then buckboard.

That clacking is indeed eerie. I lived on the beachfront in Felixstowe and right on the water in Orford. We didn’t get the winds you guys do, but it’d blow enough to rattle things around.

Oh, darn. I was really taken by the Pair of Lions with Football, especially at the low price of only £750 (+ VAT) (+ shipping to Florida). But they’ve already been sold!

I’m mostly kidding, but I do rather like them. I could envision them either side of my driveway. Getting them past the HOA Architecture Review Board might have been tricky, though.

@Uncle Al – if you lived in Dallas you could paint them up in Cowboy uniforms to get past the HOA.

Oh, Football, right, right. No that wouldn’t work.

I was admiring some of the old furniture

Interesting video of the tile factory at the link. Easy to see how this modernized process must have been done with horse power since ancient times.

The modern me wonders if a couple dabs of sealant on the batten and a couple more on the top of the underlying tile would stop the clacking, prevent blow-offs, and perhaps be bit more waterproof. No a solid bead of sealant, just a couple dabs, so that the roof would still vent humidity.

Also wondering if there would be any advantage to glazing the top side of these tiles. You could get any color you wanted though.

Oh no, the Queen has the ‘rona. And Charles has it AGAIN.

Hope they get the best in effective medical care and recover quickly. Keyword being “effective”, as a large part of the covid care in US hospitals seems designed to kill you instead.

Here’s a pretty example of the Baader–Meinhof phenomenon
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frequency_illusion

I am currently reading a book called ‘The Map That Changed The World’. It is about the first geologic map of England and yes, it is more interesting than it sounds.

From that book I have just learned about “Stonesfield Slate” which is/was used for roofing houses.

It comes from a quarry area in the small town of Stonesfield, Oxfordshire, England, which has been called the “best Middle Jurassic terrestrial reptile site in the world.” Stonesfield is also the place of origin for what would be the first formally described dinosaur.

These fossils are found in the slate. Originally the slate was of more value than the fossils until the fossil-fad got big in the 1840’s, and today it is again the slate and the way it is made that interests us. (Okay, okay, interests ME)

I can’t quote directly from the book as Kindle won’t let me copy text but here is an explanation of how it is quarried shamelessly stolen from a website which I won’t link because Akismet.

Quarrymen split the Stonesfield slate in a rather nifty manner. Instead of using hammer and chisel, the men relied on cold weather. They would pull the limestone out of the ground (20 to 70 feet deep) in a rough block called a “pendle” and let it sit in a field and absorb water. To ensure moisture retention, the quarrymen would pile dirt atop the blocks and/or douse the stone in water. Over several cold winters, water would penetrate the bedding planes and split the stone into usable pieces. In some cases the split piece would be round and be dubbed a potlid. Builders highly prized the thin slabs of Stonesfield slate, using them in colleges at Oxford.

AHHHHH!!! With global worming we won’t have cold weather to make Stonesfield Slate tiles!

But we won’t care, because we’re gonna be under water according to our ‘science’ people, whom I trust even though I can’t kick them very far.

How much is the “VAT”? Why is there a value added tax on salvage from a torn down house. How can value be added to something from a wreck?

I’m not sure the British govt understands the meaning of “value added”. Is there a “value subtracted” rebate as well?