The most gothick thing EVAR
The winged skull is just a taster. Click for the whole tomb.
It’s the grave of John Cheney, who died on the 20th of September, 1601. And presumably his wife and daughter, who are mentioned. I think the slate inscription stone must have shattered as they pulled it out to stuff more people in the ‘ole. Brrr!
This is on the wall left of the altar in a little village church in Sussex. More on that later.
We started Saturday at an airfield, because we heard a rumor the two Lancasters were going to fly over on their way to an airshow.
Of the over seven thousand Lancaser bombers built in WWII, these two are the last in the air, and they’ve been kept airworthy by cannibalizing some of the others. One of them usually lives in Canada, so…last chance.
We waited and waited and it didn’t happen. So we headed to this church, miles away, and suddenly the planes flew across our path, low and spooky. No time to stop and take pictures. Wish we’d gotten closer. Glad we didn’t miss it.
August 18, 2014 — 9:58 pm
Comments: 20
spectators
You know that itching, burning, apocalyptic feeling? Yeah, me too.
Not our leaders, though. It’s not just Obama — Call Me Dave is on vacation, too. And it’s just grand to see snaps of him on the beach in the middle of this unholy shitstorm.
I get the feeling these guys think if they act like this is no big deal, it won’t be. Because if they act like it’s a big deal, it will be obvious how badly they’ve misjudged the ‘Arab Spring’ from the beginning. And that would be too, too embarrassing.
As part of a radio feature about WWI the other day, the BBC reeled off all world’s current war zones. With the exception of Ukraine and the Koreas, every single one of them was a case of Islamists versus the world.
They got around having to admit this explicitly by blaming ISIS in one place, Israel and Hamas in another, unnamed Islamists in another, Boko Haram in another, “separatists” in another, “militants” in another. Without ever acknowledging what all those fights have in common.
Odin help us all.
August 11, 2014 — 9:39 pm
Comments: 27
Gosh, it’s hard work being a nimmigrant
I’m selling my mama’s farm. Yeah, I don’t really want to talk about it. I got an offer I could, but really shouldn’t, refuse. She’ll come back to haunt me for this, I swear.
Anyway, the lawyer wants the papers notarized and FedEx’ed back. Easy, right? Pff! No.
I cruised by my bank — bank managers are usually notaries, right? — pff! No. The teller didn’t even know what a notary is. The local solicitors knew, but didn’t have one on staff.
Turns out there are only, like, 900 notaries* in all of Britain. The nearest one was miles and miles away. By appointment only.
He was nice enough. Semi-retired corporate lawyer. He explained why they’re so scarce — to start with, they’re usually lawyers, and then they get three years of specialist training in things like Roman law (!).
I told him my grandfather was a notary and the bar wasn’t so high in the States. In the old days at least, all you had to do was get five people to swear you were a pretty good guy.
Anyway, he made me swear on the Bible! Twice! Then he stamped everything and sewed my deed together with green ribbon and charged me £80 — which is, like, $120. Phew.
But at least shipping it back with be a breeze, right? Pff! No!
*That isn’t including the Worshipful Company of Scriveners of the City of London, which are lawyers who speak multiple languages for some reason.
August 7, 2014 — 9:45 pm
Comments: 30
‘Member these?
Last of the nice days today, so we snuck in another field trip (Sissinghurst, old favorite). We stopped at a convenience store on the way to buy some sammiches, and Uncle B bought me a packet of these (see picture). And I’m, like, “whoa, dude…do you recognize these? They’re candy cigarettes!” Rebranded “candy sticks” for a different age.
Uncle B could do that one better. In his day, they sold Junior Smoking Kits — chocolate cigars, chocolate pipes, chocolate matches, chocolate ashtray and candy cigarettes. I managed to find a picture on this guy’s blog, from his visit to the Museum of Childhood in Edinburgh.
Mind, blown.
By the way, all you gotta do is have your picture taken with Spiderman at the circus one time…
p.s. Yes! It came with a Spiderman tattoo! I shall be the envy of the office tomorrow…
August 5, 2014 — 9:08 pm
Comments: 21
Messing about in boats
Yesterday, the RNLI Dungeness had an Open Day (that’s the Royal National Lifeboat Institution to you). Per Wikipedia, the RNLI has 444 lifeboats at 236 stations. Since 1824, they’ve saved 140,000 lives at the cost of 600.
They’re entirely funded by private money (legacies, donations and merchandise), which I think is unutterably awesome, so we try to turn out when they have a fundraiser and spend some money. I bought a hat and Uncle B bought a burger and we put some money in the thing.
It was a lovely sunny, breezy day, and I didn’t go watch the maneuvers. I plunked myself down on the warm shingle with the complete works of Kipling (I’m up to 2% now!) and listened to them sing sea shanties in the boathouse. That there’s some powerful local atmosphere.
Uncle B did go watch the maneuvers and, even though he only brought a little handheld camera, he got some great action shots of the boats. Black and white doesn’t do ’em justice. He’s a better photographer than I am, and that pisses me off no end.
If you squint at the background, those are the white cliffs of…Folkestone, actually. But the white cliffs of Dover look just the same and they’re the next headland along the coast to the Northeast.
Fun fact: the RNLI was originally called the National Institution for the Preservation of Life from Shipwreck. Or NIPLS.
August 4, 2014 — 9:23 pm
Comments: 20
I don’t know, I’ve never kippled
We’re determined to make the most of Summer this year. We didn’t get many days out last Summer, and this year we’ve been extremely lucky with the weather. So it was off to Bateman’s yesterday — Kipling’s last home.
There’s something sad about the house. And positively non-Euclidean — it’s somehow much smaller on the inside than the outside. But still, a good day out, and Uncle B found a much quicker route to get there, so we’ll probably go more often. Have to squeeze every entertainment penny out of the effing expensive National Trust membership.
They cleverly left copies of his books about, with “available to purchase in the gift shop” written inside the covers. So I tucked into Puck of Pook’s Hill while Uncle B wandered about on his own. I think that’s my favorite Kipling, but the man was hella prolific, and I got to wondering how many of his I haven’t read.
That’s when I discovered Delphi Classics. They’re an eBook publisher that specializes in “Complete Works of…” editions of out-of-copyright classic authors. Nicely formatted for a couple of bucks. Buy them through Amazon or right from the publisher.
I don’t know about you, but I’m crazy about owning an author’s complete works. Even in the days when that meant that nice mister Dickens took up five feet of shelf space. There’s something deeply satisfactory about having them all together in one clean set, not a hodge-podge of mongrel editions with half a dozen books left out. I have a feeling I’ll be visiting Delphi again.
They all come as one big Kindle file, but they have a table of contents, so that’s okay. I’m going chronologically by publication date, starting with the novels. I read The Light that Failed all afternoon, and I’m still at 1% of the collected works. See you in the Fall.
Oh, yeah — Dead Pool tomorrow! 6pm WBT! I’m going to set it up right now, so I *can’t* forget this time.
July 31, 2014 — 10:20 pm
Comments: 17
There goes another one…
And there goes Eastbourne Pier (photo nicked from the Mail).
It was one of three East Sussex Victorian pleasure piers designed by Eugenius Birch (1818-1884). The first was Brighton’s West Pier, completed in 1866. Burned down in two separate arson attacks in March and May, 2003.
The third was Hastings Pier, finished in 1872. Burned in 2010. Two were arrested for arson, but they never brought them up on charges.
Eastbourne Pier was finished the same year as West Pier. Bits of it have burned before, but this looks really, really devastating. There’s a big airshow in Eastbourne every August, and the pier is a favorite place to stand and watch the aereoplanes.
Nobody’s mentioned arson this time, but you can’t help but wonder. At any rate, it’s been awful seeing these three grand Victorian dames go up in flames.
July 30, 2014 — 9:29 pm
Comments: 11
Polly want a…hey, watch your mouth
The Summer fête season is in full swing now. I met this beautiful girl (probably. I was told it takes a DNA test to know gender for sure and they haven’t bothered) advertising a little father/son parrot rescue. He’s got a hand gesture to make her stand up and extend her wings, so I was able to take lots of good pictures. (Here this one is big and in color).
They said the main reason they have to rescue birds is that they outlive their owners. One of their parrots died last month at the age of eighty. Not sure how I’d feel about a pet that was likely to outlive me. I suppose it would be a good thing, provided they didn’t have to power to have me put down when I got feeble.
Took this before I dropped and broke my good old Nikon D40, obviously. Still pondering what to do about that.
July 29, 2014 — 9:28 pm
Comments: 25
Moar weather
This one missed us, somehow. It was a beautiful sunny day here. Uncle B called to tell me cars were floating sideways along Brighton Marine Parade.
I called up the Met Office Satellite page and here was a big, fat band of severe storms from the Brighton seafront all the way to the outskirts of London. That isn’t at all far West of us.
Funny thing — the time lapse satellite animation showed that thing just sitting there for hours, moving neither to the East nor West. It ultimately just melted away (though we’re having a bit of gentle rain now).
I think they said three weeks rain in a few hours. At one point, the water in the Underground was chest deep. Places in Brighton, hail fell like snow.
Pictures: the BBC, the Brighton Argus. I particularly liked the hen and chicks floating around someone’s laundryroom on a dinner plate.
Also, not entirely unrelated, I thought this was an interesting article from the BBC: what happens when lightning hits the sea.
July 28, 2014 — 8:51 pm
Comments: 9
Ride’s here!
I am so sorry to have blown the Dead Pool this week. We played hooky and snuck off to the Romney, Hythe and Dymchurch, which is a little line of 1/3 scale steam and diesel trains that runs along the coast.
It is a fine thing to do on a hot day, sitting in the open carriage watching the pretty English landscape roll by. We saw ducks and swans and several fine, fat pheasants. Some of the crops — the rapeseed — have been harvested already. Some — the hay — just coming in now. And the wheat and corn are yet to come. They were looking good.
We had an amusing conversation about National Trust properties with a drunken gay couple in the carriage behind us. A station master came by at St Mary’s Bay and quickly searched the carriages to “see if we had any owls.” Nope, no idea.
The English are prone to embarrassment and carefully avoid it in most social situations, but in certain narrow contexts, they give themselves a sort of permission to be foolish. I think this is why they like pantomime and dressing in costume so much.
They also give themselves leave to wave to, and from, trains. Especially heritage trains. The RH&DR runs past scores of back yards and in many of them, children stood and solemnly waved to us like visiting dignitaries. Cars at the RR crossings, too. You wave back. You haveta.
Afterwards, we stopped and bought some of the best fish and chips in the neighborhood. And long about then it dawned on me, Holy shit — I’m in England!
July 25, 2014 — 11:47 pm
Comments: 14