a competitive athlete passed this way
It was beautiful here today. Sunny, blue sky, high puffy clouds. Shirtsleeves weather. The nicest you could ask an October day to be. For all I know, though, this might be the last Summery day of 2014 — they’re predicting shit ‘n’ chips, starting tomorrow.
So we went to Sissinghurst for the afternoon. Stopped on the way and bought sammiches and hung out in the garden for a while. De-lightful.
On the way back to the car, under a horse chestnut tree — these horse chestnuts! But these are not as they fall from the tree. Nay, nay! These have been removed from the spiny outer casing, examined for flaws and tossed aside as unworthy.
Yes, that means the competitive Conker Season is upon us! This is when Brits (children, mostly) take horse chestnuts, drill a hole through them, thread a string through the hole and whale away at each other until somebody’s conker falls to bits. There’s more to it. Of course there is.
Like cheating.
The kudos of having a high-ranked winning conker is not limited to the playground and there have been many traditional ways of (illegally) hardening conkers before battling. Hardening methods include soaking or boiling the conkers in vinegar or salt water; soaking in parafin; partially baking them for about a half hour in the oven to case-harden them; coating them with clear nail-varnish; filling them with glue or simply storing them in the dark for a year (the shrivelled ones often seem to get the better of the young shiny ones). My favourite however is that described by two-times World Conker Champion Charlie Bray who says, “There are many underhanded ways of making your conker harder. The best is to pass it through a pig. The conker will harden by soaking in its stomach juices. Then you search through the pig’s waste to find the conker.” Yuk!
And grievous bodily harm.
“There’s no defence at all. When you’re playing, it’s natural to flinch when this thing is being swung at you, especially if it comes very close to your knuckles. The best thing to do is look away and think of England or something else.”
Make no mistake, it’s a deadly serious business. Good weekend, folks!
October 3, 2014 — 8:40 pm
Comments: 14
At last – your chance to own Vicky’s knickers!
A pair of Queen Victoria’s ample silk boxer shorts is going to auction. No reserve! They expect them to go for £1,000 to £2,000, but hoping for the best. The last pair to go on sale went for £10,000.
Also, some stockings and a chemise. Circa 1890.
Victoria was five feet nothin’. Those bloomers are 52″ around. And her chemise? Got a 66″ bustline.
Her Majesty’s smalls from his era have come on the market fairly often, reason being she willed most of them to her favorite servants. How would you put that, exactly? “Dear parlour maid. In recognition of your many years of faithful service, please accept this our third best pair of used panties.”
I dunno. Rich people are weird.
October 2, 2014 — 10:22 pm
Comments: 15
They’re just trolling us now…
Despite everything going on in the world today, the second most read article at the BBC News website when I checked the news this morning was this one: Tom and Jerry cartoons carry racism warning. It’s from Amazon’s streaming service (formerly LoveFilm) and the warning on Volume 2 is:
“Tom and Jerry shorts may depict some ethnic and racial prejudices that were once commonplace in American society. Such depictions were wrong then and are wrong today.”
Emphasis mine, because of the staggering presumption of “wrong then.”
The problem, not surprising, is the character the Wikipedia article refers to as “Mammy two shoes” — presumably because she looks like the classic 19th C mammy character, and all you usually ever see are her legs.
I’m going to cry foul on anyone who calls her “the maid character” though. I’m sure I’ve seen every Tom and Jerry ever, and I recall *no* evidence she was not in her own home and mistress thereof. Thomas is clearly her cat, she’s dressed in the sort slobbing-around-the-house clothes I seriously doubt she’d wear to work. I think she makes herself a sandwich in one episode.
So this is racist because…she’s fat like Mammy? Because she talks like an American black person? Because she’s wearing slobbing-around-the-house clothes? Really, I think we have a right to insist class warriors tell us specifically what parts of this character are offensive. Because I think the answer would be far more racist than the question.
Oh, insult to injury — and I honestly don’t know if they’re flat-out trolling — this from the Telegraph today.
How the hell did we get to the point that a cartoon Siamese cat with chopsticks is some kind of deadly racist stereotype?
October 1, 2014 — 7:05 pm
Comments: 18