SPOILER: Normans win
Friday was the 950th anniversary of the Battle of Hastings, which was actually in Battle. (Maybe. No artefacts have ever turned up in the field next to Battle Abbey, where It supposedly took place).
And what was Battle called before the Battle? Senlac. It was called the Battle of Senlac Hill for a while. True story.
Is it my imagination, or have the Saxons chubbed up a bit in the last 950 years? Eh.
There were, of course, all sorts of celebrations ’round our area, all of which we successfully avoided. Uncle B and I once went looking for fish and chips in Battle on October the 14th without remembering our history and wondered why the town was stuffed full of Normans and Saxons and whether we’d slipped through a time gate or some shit. Once is enough.
I noticed in some of the FaceBook pictures there were ladies in chain mail on the battle field. Weasel does not approve. This is the re-enactment equivalent of breaking the fourth wall.
First person who says Boadicea, I shall gut thee with mine trusty seax. She was a one-off and that was a thousand years earlier.
Yes, there was plenty of handwringing about whether the Conquest was a good thing. These people can sure hold a grudge. A good old Anglo-Saxon value, that.
October 17, 2016 — 7:49 pm
Comments: 18
Almost news
This story keeps coming over my threshold, and it’s not even a story yet (but it’s probably worth following). The Cochno Stone was discovered by Rev James Harvey on his property in West Dunbartonshire, Scotland in 1887. It’s got 90 perfectly preserved cup-and-ring carvings, making it the best example of its kind anywhere.
The ‘anywhere’ is significant because they’ve found these things all over Europe and as far afield as Mexico, Brazil and India. Nobody knows what they mean. They might be star charts, or deeds to property or symbols of immortality. They tend to turn up carved into stones near burials or scenic spots.
I have a feeling if we saw the tool they’re made with, we’d understand the appeal of the shape. The significance might be nothing more than leaving a permanent mark on an ancient stone.
Anyway, after fifty years of the light of day, the Cochno Stone was showing significant vandalism. So in the Sixties, they buried it again. It’s been sitting there between a private garden and a housing estate covered in several feet of earth, troubling the dreams of archaeologists. There has been significant lobbying to dig it up again.
To be fair, we have the technology to do a cracking 3D model and surface study. I hope it happens. The local Council has said it’s willing. It’s just not set to happen…yet.
Here’s a good article from Ancient Origins, if you don’t mind a source with a little oogida-boogida. And here’s one from the Scotsman, if you’re an uptight conservative-pants.
I’ll keep you posted.
September 28, 2016 — 5:46 pm
Comments: 6
lol no
To be fair, that’s a 24-pack, so it’s really only £8.28 ($12.40) per four-ounce jar. Yes, I really had been shopping for pimientos. I crave the weirdest things from the past, in this case pimiento cheese.
Not craving it that hard.
This is a strange story to grow out of DNA analysis. Half of modern men in Western Europe are descended from a single man who lived 4,000 years ago.
I’m having trouble understanding that. Something like 10% of men inside the borders of Genghis Khan’s old empire are descended from him. But he only lived about 750 years ago and we have tons of documented evidence that he murdered the men and screwed the women on an unimaginable scale.
So how can half the male population be descended from one ancestor? I’m thinking he must have murdered, screwed AND had some natural catastrophe wipe out most everyone else. Also, this paragraph from the link:
He was part of a new order which emerged in Europe following the Stone Age, sweeping away the previous egalitarian Neolithic period and replacing it with hierarchical societies which were ruled by a powerful elite.
Egalitarian, huh. Hard science or hippie bullshit? You decide!
Finally, to get you in the mood for the weekend, enjoy this stroll down the romantic streets of Paris. Y’all have a good weekend, y’hear?
September 16, 2016 — 8:23 pm
Comments: 19
Googly-eyed skellingtons
From one of the churchyards this weekend. It’s hard to make out the inscription for all the lichens on the stone, but I think the date is 1744.
It’s disappointing, though — they don’t have nearly as many boneyards here as in the States, and the burials aren’t nearly as old. That’s because it’s a small, overcrowded island and they developed a tradition of stacking graves or digging people up after a few years.
Hence the “Alas, poor Yorick!” scene.
Our local church hasn’t kept good records of burials. The last time a neighbor died, a man with a pointy stick went out with the widow and they poked the stick in the ground looking for a big enough spot free of other coffins.
I’m not even kidding. shudder
August 31, 2016 — 10:31 pm
Comments: 18
Comes the time of the flower festivals
This weekend: flower festivals! A flower festival can happen any time in the Summer, but they tend to cluster at the end. Probably it’s a good time to harvest flowers. What do I know from flowers?
To recap, a flower festival is a church thing, a way to show off parish churches and raise money toward their upkeep (most churches that have flower festivals are beautiful ancient treasures and enormously expensive to take proper care of).
The church picks a theme, parishioners arrange flowers to suit the theme and set them up in displays all over the church (including sacred spaces like the baptismal font and the high altar). It’s wonderfully weird and I love it.
There’s a program that explains the displays, and tea and cakes. Maybe some bric-a-brac and book stalls outside. A nearby pub may host a barbecue.
At this particular one, little girls in starched pinafores circulated through the crowd with baskets of posies and sachets of lavender, a pound apiece. They and their mothers had sewn the lavender into little calico bags and tied up the posies with ribbons.
I shit you not. I bought one of each. The lavender is incredibly pungent.
Also this weekend, thousands of young lefties and brown people of foreign extraction turned out on the streets of London for the Notting Hill Carnival, a festival of the fine Afro-Caribbean traditions of vandalism and violence. Over 400 were arrested and five were stabbed.
I have chosen my side. I am on Team Flower Festival.
Her Maj turned 90 this year, and the theme of this flower festival was things that are also 90 this year. Can you guess what this flower arrangement represents? There’s a big ol’ hint on the side. Correct answer in the comments.
August 30, 2016 — 9:15 pm
Comments: 7
And then the fat lady sang
Welp, that’s it. We went to the circus tonight. It always turns up for the long weekend and we think of it as the end of Summer.
It’s not. There are plenty of Summery things going on right through September, which is sometimes the nicest month of the warm season. But the circus is the beginning of the end.
This one has been going on for five generations (the two guys in the picture are the World’s Two Unfunniest Clowns, and nephews of the current ringmaster). Used to be more family members in the acts, but they now hire them from circus-y places like Eastern Europe and China
There is a sense of genuine suspense during many performances, because it’s a small troupe and a bit down-at-heel and you get the impression something could go wrong. But it never has and everyone is very cordial. The acts also take tickets and dole out food; it’s that kind of little circus.
So here we go, the slide into Fall…
August 25, 2016 — 9:40 pm
Comments: 6
Mutton racing
Lamb racing: not a serious sport. These beasties were well accustomed to humans and not keen on running anywhere. They had to be chased by hooting farm children, and even then they kept stopping for skritchies and treats from the crowd. I think they did a best 3 out of 4 and no lamb won twice. This was from Sunday again.
On a sinister note, they’ve been pulling bodies out of the sea on a beach up the coast from us today. They’re up to five now, including two found by walkers after dusk, washed up on the beach. And Twitter tells me there’s a helicopter out looking for another.
There were thousands of people on the beaches today and the news is treating these as ordinary swimming accidents, but nobody knows anything. They have no identities, no backstory. They don’t even know if any of these people were together. Five is a real lot for one day around here, with little wind and calm seas.
It seldom gets above 80° here, but I think it was nearer 90° this afternoon. Eh. I’m off to take a cool bath.
August 24, 2016 — 10:13 pm
Comments: 14
Alpaca bag
We went to a tractor festival on Sunday. We almost didn’t. I’m going to level with you here: I’m not all that into tractors.
These people, these people are into their tractors. This isn’t even the first tractor fest we’ve been to this Summer (though the other, you’ll recall, was a traction engine thing. This was, like, John Deeres). This was a three ring tractor festival. Glad we went; it was one of the best country fairs we’ve been to.
In addition to my alpaca friends here, there were three-banded armadillos, a skink, a wallaby and A WHOLE TENT OF CHIKKENS! There was a pair of buff Orpingtons there that probably weighed more than my whole flock.
As dog is my witness, I shall take Buff Orpington as a username some day.
The food was exceptionally good for one of these events. Too good, in fact. By the time we decided to eat, our first (and second) choices had sold out. I had a very decent pad Thai and a cider (note to visitors: all cider in Britain is hard).
And thus the Summer fete season marches on. Next weekend is a big one; it’s a long weekend. After that, it all kind of peters out.
Ah, well. Gather ye tractorfests while ye may.
August 22, 2016 — 8:22 pm
Comments: 18
Where are you, Winston Churchill?
Went to an airshow Saturday. There were several in the South of England this weekend. They do this so the Red Arrows (for example) can fly down the coast and do one show after another in one big go.
The picture is (part of) the Battle of Britain Memorial Flight. The RAF has one Lancaster bomber, one Hurricane and one Spitfire they’re keeping in the air and they fly them together to the various shows. People love them.
I hit up Wikipedia to find out when the Battle of Britain officially started and ended (answer: depends if you ask the Brits or the Krauts). I learned that it has the distinction of being (the only?) battle to be named before it was fought. Winnie named it in his “finest hour” speech:
What General Weygand has called The Battle of France is over. The battle of Britain is about to begin. Upon this battle depends the survival of Christian civilisation. Upon it depends our own British life and the long continuity of our institutions and our Empire. The whole fury and might of the enemy must very soon be turned on us. Hitler knows that he will have to break us in this island or lose the war. If we can stand up to him, all Europe may be free and the life of the world may move forward into broad, sunlit uplands. But if we fail, then the whole world, including the United States, including all that we have known and cared for, will sink into the abyss of a new Dark Age made more sinister, and perhaps more protracted, by the lights of a perverted science. Let us therefore brace ourselves to our duties, and so bear ourselves that, if the British Empire and its Commonwealth last for a thousand years, men will still say, “This was their finest hour”.
Makes you nostalgic for a time when our leaders not only acknowledged a war for the survival of Christian civilization, but actually were on our side in it.
Anyway. Highlight of the day: watching a soldier teach a little boy to cock and fire a Glock, with his mother helping out. I could’ve wished for them all to show a little more barrel discipline, though — even if it was a dummy training weapon.
Low point: the little boy who ran up to his mother shouting, “Mummy, look! It’s one of those things cowboys wear to keep their guns in!” To his credit, he was super excited about it, but it was sad to see a ten-year-old boy who didn’t know the word holster.
Apologies to Uncle B for mangling his nice picture down to weasel blog size.
August 15, 2016 — 6:38 pm
Comments: 16
Mister, Kipling
Nice day. Field trip!
We went to Burwash, to Rudyard Kipling’s house, Bateman’s, the farthest away of our regular National Trust jaunts. We’ve been there many times before (in fact, we first signed up to the National Trust there). Big, big Kipling fans, us.
It’s a desperately cool Jacobean house but, even better, his daughter left the whole thing — furniture, knick-knacks and all — to the Trust. So it’s as near exactly the way it was in Kipling’s lifetime, including all the shit on the desk and his trash can full of first drafts. The latter was emptied twice a day by a housemaid, who burned the contents. He was very, very controlling of his work and image.
Today, unexpectedly, they had a Kipling historian who was lucky enough to look a bit like Kipling (probably not a coincidence, that) giving a one-man show in the garden, telling the story of Kipling’s life. It was very well done.
It was full of fun Kipling facts. Like, he was born nine months after his parents took an enjoyable holiday at Rudyard Lake, Staffordshire. Nudge-nudge, wink-wink.
He was a kind of a pre-movie movie star. Before he moved to the country, a local pub landlord organized tours past his house. He wrote three times to complain about it before he learned the landlord was selling his complaint letters for cash.
In fact, toward the end of his life, tradesmen stopped cashing his checks (cheques here) — the autograph on it was worth more than the amount written.
We hope to do more of this, now it’s warmed up a bit. But it’s still very cold at night, like in the low fifties. It’s been such a miserable, cold Summer, even one of our dimmer acquaintances was heard to say, “I know they say the earth is warming, but…”
August 9, 2016 — 8:26 pm
Comments: 13