If you don’t hear from us for a while…
We got a robo-call about an hour ago, GLaDOS letting us know we’re in the flood plain. Here’s the map. They’re updating continually, but we are currently in a red zone.
Property flooding is expected for this evening’s high tide, as a result of today’s North Sea surge combining with high water springs.
What happens is, when there’s a high tide and a surge, the narrowness of the Channel squeezes the water onto the land. Violently. I wasn’t much worried at first, but Uncle B has been gleefully telling me stories of whole towns wiped away overnight and, errrrm. Well. We’re packing a couple of bags and cat/chicken carriers, just in case.
I don’t think it’ll be tsunami fast; if there’s a problem, we’ll have time. High tide’s in six hours.
See you on the other side!
UPDATE: well, it’s 45 minutes to high tide, and nothin’. I think we’ll live. Have a good weekend, everyone!
January 13, 2017 — 5:50 pm
Comments: 19
WooWHOOOOOO!!!!
See, that’s the stupid thing about weather satellite maps — when you got weather, you can’t see the map. We’re in there somewhere, anyway. AND IT’S SNOW!
Yeah, I know many of you in the States are sick of it, but we haven’t had snowfall in several years, so I am real excited. It won’t be much, but I’m happy to see it.
I think 4″ is the heaviest snowfall I’ve ever seen here. As you might imagine, even small amounts look awesome lying all over our Tudor farmhouse (but the chickens won’t come out until it’s gone).
This one’s coming along with 60 mile an hour winds and the lights are flickering, so I figured I’d better get something up quick.
Regional question: when snow not only falls but accumulates, we called that sticking. Brits call it laying. Or possibly lying. What is it where you are?
January 12, 2017 — 8:26 pm
Comments: 20
Nice hat.
An altar covering in a little parish church in Herefordshire may originally have been a dress worn by Elizabeth I. This is important because no other dress of hers exists.
Or, it probably does, but one hasn’t turned up yet. Clothes (particularly fancy ones) were so expensive in Tudor times that they were frequently re-purposed. And Cromwell sold off all the royal togs in the early 17th C, so before that date we’ve got this one dress (maybe) and Henry VIII’s hat.
Someone researching something totally else ran across the thing and realized it was made of cloth of silver. In Tudor times, only the monarch and immediate fambly could wear cloth of silver. Other stuff was embroidered on it afterwards (one embroidered bear exactly matches one that appeared in a picture book in 1594).
My tame historians are very excited about this.
The best article I found was this one in the Telegraph, but their articles sometimes get stuck behind the paywall. If that happens, here it is in the Mail (the article is old; I think this has drifted to the top of the news because the dress is about to go on display at Hampton Court after extensive refurb).
January 9, 2017 — 9:23 pm
Comments: 12
The Last of the Maharajahs
Nope. Not another Andy Edwards post. This is by the lady who sculpted the Fine Lady’s horse — Denise Dutton — and she’s done some nice civic sculpture herself.
The subject is interesting. It’s Duleep (or Dalip) Singh (1838–1893), the last Maharajah of the Sikh Empire. He came to the throne when he was five (or seven; the internets differ), after his father and brothers were killed during the first Anglo-Sikh War. He wasn’t there long before the British annexed the Punjab and sent him to live in England.
He Anglicized. He met Queen Victoria (who sounded smitten with him — bit of a horndog, our Vicky). He converted to Christianity. He was given an allowance and a series of castles to live in and took to typical English gentleman stuff, like hunting and horses and spending way more money than he could afford.
Toward the end of his life, he started to stew about his lost throne, reconverted to Sikhism and threw in his lot with some shady Irish and Russkies hoping for revolution, but it didn’t come to anything. Not for Duleep, anyway.
A short summary of an interesting life. Worth poking around Google or one of them library thingummies.
Good weekend, all!
January 6, 2017 — 9:55 pm
Comments: 5
Yes, yes, YES!!!
Perhaps you thought it odd that I didn’t identify the sculptor of the Fine Lady in yesterday’s post. Perhaps you didn’t.
Sometimes, it’s like I don’t even know you.
Well, anyhoo, the truth is, I had some difficulty working it out. Banbury’s page on the Lady identifies the modeler of the horse as Denise Dutton, a well-known horse-sculptin’ lady, and the designer of the monument as Artcycle. That link is the only reference to Artcycle I found on quick inspection, and it’s a phonebook type listing. Has them down as Monumental Masons.
But if you reverse image search a picture of the Lady, you find Cornovii Edwards, which is described on its website with this bit of cheerful gibberish:
Cornovii Edwards is a family name of the most ancient provenance in the world of revered artists and masters of the bronze casting tradition. It is our privilege to serve and protect time honoured skills and continue the endeavour to guard our prosperity, the most valuable riches of that being our people’s craft, identity and our links to one another.
The Cornovii were an ancient Celtic tribe. Near as I can figure it, Cornovii Edwards is actually Andrew (‘Andy’) Edwards, and there’s not a lot of biographical information for him online. Which is weird, because he’s filled some impressive commissions.
Like, the recently unveiled sculpture of the Beatles in Liverpool. And this sculpture of Frederick Douglass for the University of Maryland that was presented to Obama. Verrrry high level stuff for a young guy.
In the comment thread on the previous post, Fletcher posted a link to this article on the tenth anniversary of the unveiling of the Fine Lady, which includes a neato YouTube on the Making Of, including still images of Andy modeling.
Browse the Cornovii Edwards website for more examples of the excellent house style.
The thing in the picture? That’s a little confusing, too. It’s the Staffordshire Saxon (another neato Making Of video here), a nine foot tall monument made to commemorate the finding of the Staffordshire Hoard.
Yeah, I know what you’re thinking: that thing is a leeetle bigger than nine feet. It’s a P’shop. They’re raising money to make a version of the statue over 100 feet high, to be erected on the spot where the hoard was buried. They’re calling it the Anglo of the North (play on Angel of the North, that fugly old thing).
ONE HUNDRED FOOT BRONZE ANGLO SAXON WARRIOR, YA’LL!!!
Why have I never heard of this before? And why is this guy so hard to follow online? Dude needs better PR.
January 5, 2017 — 8:24 pm
Comments: 10
Lookit this fine lady
Ride a cock-horse to Banbury Cross,
To see a fine lady upon a white horse;
Rings on her fingers and bells on her toes,
And she shall have music wherever she goes.
There were three Banbury crosses, all destroyed by the Puritans. So I’ve read. Banburians put up another one in Victorian times, in honour of Princess Victoria (the old lady’s first child).
But this Fine Lady, believe it or not, is a modern commission. 2008. And she’s a very fine bit of civic sculpture, at that. It’s bronze, but I don’t know by what process makes it look whitish instead of the usual brown/green.
Yes, she has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes. If you go poking around Google, you can find closeups of several details. It’s full of pagan-y, hippie symbolism:
Spring Flowers: The Fine Lady wears a crown of thirteen (the ancient months of the year) spring flowers, alternating daffodils and wild roses. Hidden among the flowers you can spot two butterflies and a moth.
The bells on her feet are interpreted as both musical bells and by seven bluebells, (representing the days of the week) on her toes and she drops petals from her raised left hand.
The raised left arm not only balances the raised right leg of the horse, it represents the creative side of the brain while the right arm holds the reins showing motor control.
The frog represents metamorphosis, the cycle of nature and community.
The other symbol to look for is the Sun, which has been a symbol of Banbury since the sixteenth century.
But the whole thing is so beautifully modeled, I do not care. I bitch lots about ugly public sculpture; it’s nice to see something so well done.
January 4, 2017 — 9:55 pm
Comments: 14
Bank of England Governor declares new tallow fiver “delicious!”
“Try it with the mac and cheese!” Mark Carney enthused.
Eh. Just kidding. He says, “shit, bruh, we didn’t know there was animal shit in this shit.” They’re looking for a way to make these awful plastic fivers without animal products, somehow.
I wonder if that means they’ll recall all the haram bills already in circulation.
Okay, now. Ding dong, Fidel is dead! Not only is that spectacular news for the free world, but it means Deborah won herself some dick! See you all back here tomorrow, 6WBT for DEAD POOL ROUND 91!
Are you ready for Friday? I’m ready for Friday.
December 1, 2016 — 8:32 pm
Comments: 11
Meet our new plastic fiver
This thing is our new plastic five pound note. They’ve started appearing over the last month or so. For a little while, there was a gold rush of currency collectors buying up notes with AA serial numbers for stupid money on eBay, but that seems to have passed. Then there were all the people stress-testing them to see if they’d go through the dryer or catch fire.
Now the thrill is gone, and shopkeepers are finding that plastic notes, once folded, never again lie flat in the cash register. Two of them together in the pocket slip around in the most unpleasant way. I start every month drawing £50 in cash in £5 notes for mad money, so I’m getting a big, irritating dose of it.
We have been assured that plastic banknotes have been used in Australia and Hong Kong for ages without any problems so quit your bitching already.
So everybody did. Until today. Today it leaks out that animal fat is used in their manufacture, and the vegans and vegetarians are having a hissy. I can understand a conscientious bunny-hugger of a vegan being upset, but honestly, vegetarians — just don’t put them in your stupid mouth.
Phun phacts: y’all probably know that every color copier and image manipulation program has a built in currency detector to prevent counterfeiting. We were warned about this when our office got our very first color copier in the Eighties (back when they cost a quarter million dollars and were the size of chest freezers). If you try to make a copy of a bill, you get a blank page or a scary warning message. If you persist, you eventually get a visit from the Feds.
We had a routine copier service at work the other day and I got to chatting with the technician. Apparently this is still true. He said you get three tries to copy a banknote and then your copier seizes and has to have a service in person.
I mention this because I right-click-and-copied the image from this article, tried to paste it into Photoshop, and got a scary warning and no image. I’d do it again to show you the scary warning, but I’m skeert. In the end, I did a screen grab and then cropped it down to the note, and we’re just waiting for the knock at the door.
Don’t try this at home.
You’re going to try this, aren’t you?
November 29, 2016 — 7:13 pm
Comments: 22
Oh, somebody left me a shrew today
I’m hoping it wasn’t Uncle B.
Cat and mouse from the 14th Century chapel in St. Mary Magdalene Church, Newark, Nottinghamshire. Pinched from FaceBook. I feel like a villain not giving credit more explicitly, but I try to keep People FaceBook and Weasel FaceBook separate.
Yeah, Weasel has more friends than I do. Thanks for asking.
Anyhoo, I inherited an old computer from work today. They were going to throw it away, so I thought I could put it up in my leetle art room.
Anybody remember how to speak XP?
November 15, 2016 — 8:59 pm
Comments: 17
I shall call him…Channy
Engineers working for Scottish Power found this submarine in the North Channel off the coast of Scotland, and they weren’t even looking for it. It’s near a place called Stranraer (Elmer Fudd couldn’t hitchhike to here if his life depended on it).
It’s either UB-85 or its sister boat UB-82 – apparently, with the paintjob worn off, it would be impossible to tell the difference. Both were WWI wrecks. Everyone’s hoping it’s UB-85, because that one was scuttled by a sea monster. Okay, scuttled by the British Navy after the German crew surrendered, but it had been unable to dive because of sea monster damage.
The German captain described it thusly: “large eyes, set in a horny sort of skull. It had a small head, but with teeth that could be seen glistening in the moonlight”.
All the officers emptied their sidearms into it and it swam away, but it had damaged the forward deck plating so they couldn’t submerge. They had to float around waiting for the inevitable. The Royal Navy scooped up the crew and sank the u-boat, apparently without examining it first. I don’t suppose there’s anything left to see now.
I had a poke around, but the story just came out today and that’s all there is to it so far.
October 19, 2016 — 8:55 pm
Comments: 6