Well, looky what I got today
And I’m pretty sure Uncle B gave it to me, too.
No, no…penicillin won’t be required — it’s a counterfeit £1 coin. The one on the left; there’s no writing along the edge. I was about to pass it to a shopkeeper when I noticed.
The pound coin has been counterfeited pretty much from the get-go. A pound is worth a buck sixty or so at the moment, so I guess the economics work out for somebody.
Upwards of one in thirty-six pound coins is a fake, despite banks and post offices pouring incoming coins through automated systems that detect fakes by weight. So somebody’s seriously pumping bad coin into the system.
Tips for detecting fakes are hilariously impractical: make sure the date on the front matches up with the design on the back, the two are properly aligned and the motto around the edge is correct for that year. Like I’m going to glance at my handful of change and exclaim, “my god, it’s got a Scottish Lion on the back, but the motto around the edge is ‘DECUS ET TUTAMEN +’ instead of ‘NEMO ME IMPUNE LACESSIT +’! Plus, the date is 1998! And the Queen’s head is rotated 20° relative to the design on the back! BAH! Obvious forgery!”
Well, actually, these are Brits we’re talking. Maybe not so impractical. The geek gene runs powerfully through these people.
Mine is a weird one. The design on the back is correct for the date on the front and the two sides are in correct alignment, but the forger hasn’t attempted the edge motto at all. Also, the casting is a little soft and the color is a little brown. But, honestly, if they’d made ANY attempt at the motto, I would never have noticed.
It’s a crime to pass a counterfeit along once you’ve noticed; I’m supposed to get it to the Royal Mint somehow. So I’m out a buck sixty.
July 20, 2011 — 9:25 pm
Comments: 19
Ghosteses
On Saturday, we went to a fête in a little church just outside Rye. At 500 years old, it’s one of the youngest Churches of Romney Marsh, but it’s more or less what it was when it was built — no electricity or running water, just a brick box in the middle of nowhere with a steeple.
These guys were the entertainment. They research local (Kent and Sussex) church music of the Georgian period, and then they perform it. Really well. In appropriate costume.
I’ve been to my fair share of Civil War re-enactments (I dated a gunsmith in High School), but this was altogether different. They were in the right place, doing the right things, totally looking perfect. It was eerie to witness, I tell you.
I held off posting this because I was hoping to find a recording of one particular song they did. It was a Primitive Methodist thing, which is like proto-evangelicals. It was a jaunty, happy, cheerful tune.
No, seriously, the melody was super upbeat.
And the lyrics were all smashing you up with iron bars and dragging you to the lake of fire where your eyeballs melt and run down your face in God’s thirsty scarlet vengeance of SCARY DOOM. I can’t find a recording, but I’m pretty sure this is the hymn.
All I could think of was Brave Sir Robin.
July 6, 2011 — 9:54 pm
Comments: 21
Science: both creepy and wonderful
Y’all know I love a good murder. Well, here’s a weird one. Today in Winchester Crown Court, Italian Danilo Restivo was sentenced to never-ever getting out of prison, which is pretty unusual for here. Let’s see if I can’t unpack this and tell it right way around.
Danilo Restivo has a hair fetish. As a result of various Crime Watch type programs, 28 women in Italy and an unspecified number in England positively identified Restivo as the man who had come up behind them in a public place and hacked the bottom few inches of their hair off. Apparently without ever being nabbed for it.
In 2002, while Restivo was living in Bournemouth, he murdered his neighbor across the hall, 48 year old Heather Barnetts. He bludgeoned, stabbed and mutilated the hell out of her. In her right hand, he put a lock of somebody else’s hair. In her left hand, he put a lock of her own hair. When her children, 11 and 14, came home from school and found her body, he came across the hall to comfort them. Nice touch.
It took them eight years to accumulate enough evidence to arrest him. Shortly before he was charged, it occurred to Italian authorities that a friend of Restivo’s had disappeared seventeen years ago on the way to meet him at a church in Potenza.
Yep, sure enough, there was sixteen-year-old Elisa Claps’ mummified body in the loft of the church (that’s sixteen years alive, seventeen dessicating in the attic). Exactly like Barnett — bludgeoned and mutilated, pants at half mast, bra cut away, somebody else’s hair in her hand. He’s headed to Italy to stand trial for that one.
A strange enough murder case on its own, but here’s what made it post-worthy:
Five years after Ms Barnett’s death, in 2007, a scientific breakthrough gave the inquiry hope.
Dr Stuart Black, of the University of Reading, undertook chemical and isotope analysis of the hair strands, which represented nine months’ growth.
The results revealed the owner was a UK resident who had visited eastern Spain, between Valencia and Almeria, or the Marseille to Perpignan area of southern France, for up to six days, some 11 weeks before the hair was cut.
They then went to the urban area of Tampa, Florida, US, for eight days some two to two-and-a-half weeks before the hair was cut, and had changed their diet twice in the previous months.
Despite all that, they never identified the owner of the strand of hair in Ms Barnett’s right hand, but — holy shit, did you know they could get that level of detail from a strand of hair now? I know they’ve identified the country of origin from the bones in several stone age burials around here, also from isotopes, but jeeeeeezus that’s specific.
I’d love to know what isotopes are unique to urban Tampa, and how they get in your hair.
June 30, 2011 — 9:56 pm
Comments: 6
One last time, with feeling
You’ll have to excuse me for tonight, folks. This fascinating pile of wombat shit is the makings of my third and final visa application, form SET(M). AKA the Indefinite Leave to Remain.
It wasn’t actually due for another couple of weeks, but the civil service has scheduled a strike for June 30, which includes the UK Border Agency. Judging by past strikes, the UKBA won’t cut me any slack if my visa runs out while they’re on strike. Because everyone knows there’s a strike and should plan around it. Also because fuck you, American Weasel.
Thing I do not want to be when I grow up: illegal alien.
So here I am filling out forms and writing a check for £972 (that’s $1,555.20 in people money). Actually, poor old Uncle B had to write the check as I can’t move that much moola that fast.
In theory — assuming I haven’t filled out something in blue ink instead of black — this is it for me. When this comes back, I’m done. Finito. Fully paid up.
But when I’m eligible for citizenship in November, I’m going to go for it. What the hell — my people are from just up the road, originally, until my umpty great grandfather got a hankering to trade in tobacco. Or became a Quaker. Or poached a deer. We’re unclear on the point.
And if I take the oath I can vote.
Also commit felonies and not get deported.
June 22, 2011 — 10:13 pm
Comments: 28
Happy Solstice!
Okay, the Solstice is tomorrow, but I post late so you’d miss it. Ten o’clock here, and still light enough to walk around the garden.
Tomorrow is the only day of the year they close Stonehenge, so the silly hippies can dance around it and pretend they know what our ancestors did there. Which is more than usually silly because a) we have no idea what the Stonehenge people were up to and b) Stonehenge is fake.
Okay, maybe not fake fake, but it was significantly reassembled in our time. The circle saw reconstruction projects in 1901, 1919, 1920, 1958, 1959 and 1964, with stones being winched into place and set in cement. And if you can’t trust a site called www.ufos-aliens.co.uk (with ads for London hotels and an online casino embedded in the text), who can you trust?
Well, really. Constable painted the above in 1835, and massive umpty-ton stones don’t just right themselves, do they?
So, now that I think about it, it’s perfect: tomorrow, people will perform a ritual they hope is something like the original around a ring of stones archeologists hope is something like the original.
June 20, 2011 — 9:27 pm
Comments: 24
Another neat thing money can do
I forgot to tell you. We read in the paper the Red Arrows were going to put on a display over Rye last Saturday. Which is weird, since Rye is a little medieval hill town kind of in the middle of nowhere, but it’s one of our favorite places in all the land. So, had to go.
The Red Arrows are the Royal Air Force Aerobatic Team and they are AWE. SOME. I saw them at an air show in Rhode Island a few years ago and came away sockless.
Nine jets. Impressive. And they do things like put on a show for you with six or seven jets and while you’re gaping at that, the rest sneak around behind you and come screaming in right over your head.
Yeah. The sheep loved that.
Funny thing, though. Much of the land around Rye was reclaimed from the sea in Tudor times. It’s flat as a table. Perfect for an air show. But they kept flying formations up and around this one hill near the town, where half the spectators at any one time couldn’t see.
Turns out, some rich bugger up on Point Hill bought and paid for the display as an anniversary gift. At the very end, two jets turned on the red smoke and traced a big heart in the sky over his house. Rumor has it he paid £35,000 for it. Rumor, sadly, didn’t tell us who he was. (Not that we’d know him, but we’d kind of like to, if you know what I mean).
Love and money. What a splendid combination.
Good weekend, all!
June 17, 2011 — 9:52 pm
Comments: 25
Can I interest you in a codpiece?
Earlier this week, I spotted something interesting in an auction house window and asked if I could phone in a bid. I was directed to this website.
It’s an auction aggregator, and it’s much cooler than it sounds. Well, I’ve been enjoying the hell out of it.
If you think about the sorts of things likely to come up for auction in the UK (and a few sites on the Continent), you’ll get what I mean. That codpiece, for example, is from a sale of historic items from the Stone Age to the Medieval period.
You can browse through individual collections, or do a keyword search across the lot. (To work out the guide prices, today’s exchange rate is $1.62 = £1).
Okay, here’s the coolest part: you can participate in the auctions in real time. You have to register with the site to listen in. (Don’t worry, you won’t accidentally buy an 18th C Chippendale dining set — if you want to bid, you have to jump through extra hoops).
Then go to the Live Auction page and click on any of the listings with a Watch live.
They show you the image for each lot as they go through and you can listen in to the bidding (hit the speaker icon to get the audio going). If you registered to bid in that auction, there’s a bid button, too.
You can also browse recently closed auctions to see how the actual price stacks up to the estimate. Interesting. Looks to me like coins and other small, valuable collectibles are being snatched up well over the guide price. Bad economy and worries about inflation, I reckon.
I’ve not been to many real auctions, but I saw occasional crazy bargains happen when I did. I suppose aggregating sales might put an end to that, at least for desirable or specialist items. But it’s an awfully fun way to waste an afternoon.
June 10, 2011 — 7:01 pm
Comments: 26
Oh, man, have I ever moved to the right country
Ladies and gentlemen — over the counter codeine! And it doesn’t even have that filthy Tylenol in it.
It’s behind the counter and they give you a little lecture when you ask for it, but it’s the same drill with baby aspirin (yes, really).
There’s a little opioid-shaped hole in my brain. If a medication has “euphoria” listed as a possible side effect, that’s the side effect I’m going to get good and hard.
Happiest day of my life: the day I had my wisdom teeth out. Intravenous Valium and Demerol mix. You could pour me from hand to hand like a blissed-out slinky. I wanted to go back every day for the next month and have another tooth extracted.
I don’t know where they get that “3 days use” thing, though. In my experience, it only works the first time. Then you have to wait, like, a week or ten days before it works the same again.
Dammit.
May 23, 2011 — 10:12 pm
Comments: 28
It’s a fête worse than…oh, whatever
Hooray — the fête season is upon us! Uncle B and I are utter fête hags; we scour the local paper for them all Summer long (though some of the most memorable are those we ran across by accident driving down country lanes).
You might think the appeal of drifting around dark churches drinking weak tea and eating digestive biscuits looking at bad oil paintings flogged by rich old ladies might wear off after a while. You’d be wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong.
It’s the churches. Beautiful, tiny jewels of ancient architecture, lovingly tended by generation after generation of old ladies flogging bad oil paintings and weak tea. Every little village has its church, and they present a real strain on their communities, keeping the buidings clean and tended, whole and sound, and open to passers-by.
The thing in the picture? Can you make it out? This was behind the church, and it gave me a chill.
It’s a yew tree (on the right) and an oak (on the left) so ancient their trunks are entertwined and the two have completely permeated each other, a confusing jumble of oak leaves and yew branches sticking out in all directions.
Both the yew and the oak were hallowed here long before the coming of Christianity. The early church embraced local beliefs, choosing to co-opt instead of conflict (with an occasionally strange result). Many old churches have an elderly yew growing in the grounds. All the sources I’ve read agree that the yew was there before the church, the church was deliberately built on sacred ground.
This church is almost a thousand years old.
May 16, 2011 — 11:24 pm
Comments: 27
Tick another box, pls
Please pardon my ruinous neglect of the blog in the past few days; I’ve been cramming for an exam.
At my age. The shame.
Before I get my next (and final) visa, I had to pass a thing called the Life in the UK Test — a Brit trivia test that (by common consent) most Brits couldn’t pass.
It’s only 24 questions (and you only have to get 18 right), but it’s pulled (randomly, by computer, when you sit down to take the exam) from a pool of a thousand possible questions. I had to Hoover up a lot of material in a short time (because if I tried it over a longer time, I’d just freaking forget everything. I remember that much from school). Given that the test was invented under a Labour government, it’s a lot of women’s rights and ethnic issues and how to apply for benefits and what to do with all the reliably Labour-voting babies you’ll be popping out as a new citizen.
So I took the train to Maidstone all by myself today and sat for my exam. I got 24 ones I knew, blew through them in 4 minutes and got 100%. I think. They don’t actually give you a score, just pass/fail.
Anyhoo, now I drink! I’ve got a hell of a lot of statistics to forget…
May 10, 2011 — 9:47 pm
Comments: 37