And your little dog, too!
A lady who makes things out of wheat sheaves sold us this. She said it was a ‘kitchen witch’ — a good luck symbol.
Turns out, she weren’t lying:
In England
Although largely unknown in modern England, the Kitchen Witch was known in England during Tudor times.
The will of John Crudgington, from Newton, Worfield, Shropshire in England, dated 1599, divides his belongings amongst his wife and three children, “except the cubbard in the halle the witche in the kytchyn which I gyve and bequeathe to Roger my sonne.”
So it’s period for the house. I’ll let you know if I stop dropping cans of soup on my toe or cutting myself.
Nota bene: yes! New Dead Pool today, 6WBT. Sorry about Mugabe, y’all. I mean, not sorry, obviously.
September 5, 2019 — 8:23 pm
Comments: 12
Steam tractor
Her name is Titaness, since you probably can’t read it spelled out in gold leaf on the side. I don’t know if she took her turn plowing. Seems like a machine like this would mash down more soil than it tore up.
And with that, I’m off for a book and a gin. I think I have a little bug; I’ve been dragging tail for a few days.
September 4, 2019 — 9:05 pm
Comments: 7
Spotted in the wild…
What’s an agricultural show without a spotted dick stand? I ask you?
I don’t think people were eating them on the spot. I mean, that would be weird.
September 3, 2019 — 7:20 pm
Comments: 12
I’m in love
When did these happen? Comfy seat, armrests, accelerator pedal and two control arms. It’s even got a beer holder! Now I just need to get a big enough lawn for it.
We went to an agricultural show this weekend. Weird thing happened. It was a pretty breezy day, but nothing out of the ordinary. We were talking to the lady at the Woodland Trust booth when an intense blast of wind swept across the field. Uncle B grabbed one leg of the marquee and she grabbed the other while I flung my body across her table of pamphlets. It lasted about thirty seconds, and then was gone.
The exhibitors spent the next ten minutes picking up their stuff from each other, where it had all blown. Didn’t happen again.
Happy Labor Day, everyone! Known here as Monday.
September 2, 2019 — 8:36 pm
Comments: 8
And that’s the end of that…
The circus. It’s the last thing on our social calendar every Summer, and every year we’re not sure if they’ll come.
It’s a little circus and barely squeaks by year to year. They don’t publicize their appearance near us until just before it happens, maybe because they’re not sure they’ll make it this far. And then one day the big top blooms out of the mown field like a gaudy mushroom.
It’s pretty good. They source their acts from Eastern Europe, for the most part, where circus is still a thing. They have a Mongolian acrobat I’m particularly fond of who always does several acts for them. And all the performers have to put on a jacket and sell popcorn and programs during intermission.
There may be a few little events after this, but the circus is always the end for us. I am so not ready for Winter.
August 29, 2019 — 8:20 pm
Comments: 5
Speaking, as we were, of favorite tombstones
Well, this one’s a whole tomb, but it is a favorite. It’s “Mad Jack” Fuller’s pyramid. He’s supposedly in there in fancy dress, including tophat and bottle of wine.
I read an article today that his pyramid is in need of restoration. It’s frustrating, but none of the articles I’ve read say exactly what’s wrong with it. (Pff! It’s not even 200 years old. The ones in Egypt are a bzillion years older).
And worryingly, all the articles I’ve read mention that he was opposed to the abolition of slavery. I hope he doesn’t get caught in the “judging people in the past by 2019 standards” trap, because he was a great English eccentric and philanthropist.
We visited his tomb when this was a brand new baby blog, way back in 2007. That’s when I took that picture. And here’s the post with more on Mad Jack.
The pyramid looked fine to me. A little lichen-y. I’m guessing they just want to open it up and steal his bottle of wine.
August 27, 2019 — 8:02 pm
Comments: 17
It comes to an end…
Last day of the long weekend, last of the Summer fêtes. Still, I bought a neat leather satchel at the junk stall and got to revisit one of my favorite tombstones.
It’s totally normal to have a favorite tombstone, right?
August 26, 2019 — 9:05 pm
Comments: 9
Pong!
We came home Saturday afternoon to the strangest smell. I thought it smelled like a solvent. I was kind of right. It was beer.
A mini-keg of beer blew out at the bottom seam and leaked five liters of brewski into the library carpet, every drop of it by the time we got home. (Naturally, we keep the booze in the library. Don’t you?).
It was cool, it was dark. It was in date. Nothing was stacked on top of it. It was from a large commercial brewer. It was, appropriately enough, Old Speckled Hen. Honestly, I’m stymied.
Uncle B sent a huffy “what gives?” to the brewery (he’s very good at those) but we haven’t had a reply yet.
I bought it for my birthday. I had this vision that I would get up on my birthday morning, sit in my favorite chair and be pleasantly sozzled all day long. But I couldn’t figure out how to fit it in the fridge, and I’m not really a daytime drinker anyway. It sounded good in my head, but it never happened.
And now it never shall. Happy Monday!
August 19, 2019 — 8:53 pm
Comments: 7
But can it pull a plough?
There were several of these tear-assing around the last country show. What they have to do with things rural I do not know, but the plough horse didn’t seem bothered.
I hate to think what it costs to run one of these in a country where gasoline is somewhere north of eight bucks a gallon.
Reminder: new Dead Pool tomorrow. I am still stunned at the brazenness of the Jeffrey Epstein murder.
I say ‘murder’ with confidence, because you can’t break bones in your neck with a jail cell hanging. Dude was manually strangled.
It takes a drop of approximately the height of the hangee to snap the neck. It’s more complicated than that – Albert Pierrepoint, long-serving British executioner, had a complex formula for working out the height of the drop, depending on the height and weight of the subject. Too short a drop, and the convict strangled slowly. Too long a drop, and his head popped off like a Barbie doll. Both very embarrassing for the hangman.
Anyway. You get the point. Somebody went into that cell and killed the man, and I’m sure we’ll never get to the bottom of it. Stand by for a bajillion speculative paperback exposés for, like, the rest of our lives.
But we don’t care about that. We care about Dead Pool Round 124. See you here!
August 15, 2019 — 8:58 pm
Comments: 9
Brother, can you spare a groat?
At a country show this weekend, we fell in with a group of very enthusiastic metal detectorists. They had some astonishing finds — although, if you read the labels, it was over quite an extended time period. I think one has a long wait between astonishing finds.
Many of them were probably votive offerings – small objects thrown into water for religious reasons. We…don’t really know much about this. My favorite of these — I was an idiot and didn’t get a picture — was a tiny head of a…well, I thought it was a wolf at first. But it either had three horns, or two standy-up ears and a single horn growing out of the center of its forehead. So! Either a wolf unicorn or, much more likely, the debbil.
I wonder who was trying to conjure that boi out of the brackish water and why?
Inset: a very good Henry VII silver groat. I love groats. Probably because I love saying ‘groat’. They were worth four pence and fell out of use in the Nineteenth C.
Uncle B bought me a metal detector when we first moved here. Then I discovered most of the land around is protected conservation land, no detectoring allowed. So I scanned our garden and found a few rusty nails. No groat for me!
August 13, 2019 — 9:02 pm
Comments: 12