web analytics

I can’t stop saying Spong

spong

A “Spong mincer” sounds like a particularly unpleasant homosexual. Or a serial killer with a fetish for one very particular body part.

I bought a Spong over the weekend, and it is neither. It’s a mincer, but unlike the one I have already (and the Spong in the picture), it doesn’t clamp to a table edge, it just stands on the surface. Much easier to set up, then clean.

I like to take leftover pork roast or the ass-end of a ham and grind them into ham salad.

Spong was a brand to be reckoned with. Have a look at an eBay search. Mine is a Fifties model in green enamel. But the old black ones with gold accents are really beautiful.

James Osborn Spong was born in 1839. Yes, yes…it’s one of those remarkable Victorian stories. He founded Spong and Co. at the age of 16, and made heaps of domestic shit. The company wasn’t 100% completely wound up until 1985 and the retirement of the last Spong (a great-grandson).

Oddly enough, there isn’t a Wikipedia entry for Spong. Damned Americans. Though ‘pedia informed me that Spong is a surname in multiple Germanic-speaking cultures. In England, it is an archaic term for a narrow strip of land.

The place I found out more about Spong is my gift to you this day: Grace’s Guide to British Industrial History.

Grace’s Guide is the leading source of historical information on industry and manufacturing in Britain. This web publication contains 118,799 pages of information and 172,070 images on early companies, their products and the people who designed and built them.

If you like to read about industrial history — and, let’s face it, who doesn’t? — you’re welcome.

August 3, 2016 — 7:04 pm
Comments: 23

I got to see Jack’s rage-face

jackeye

Jack got into a cat fight the other night. This is unprecedented as a) Jack’s generally a cheerful, easygoing little chap and b) at the moment, there aren’t any other cats in the neighborhood.

Not counting Charlotte. They fight, or rather ‘fight’ — he gets too close, she hisses and wallops him one. Fight over.

But this was a proper screaming cat set-to. Charlotte was in the house, so we knew it was an intruder of some kind — from the horrible shrieking, possibly a fox. Or a werefox. Or a cat being skinned alive slowly. By a werefox.

But no, it was the typical cat thing: Jack and the stranger were ten feet apart, shouting at each other. The other guy was a big ginger and white fluffy boy. Twice Jack’s size. Don’t know if he’s new in the neighborhood or has come a long distance. He ran off into the hedge and I didn’t think more of it.

Hours passed, though, and we didn’t see Jack. This is highly unusual, so we went looking. Found him under a bush, staring into the gap in the hedge where the stranger fled.

I bent down to speak to him and he flipped his shit, shrieking and hissing and drooling so hard his chin was dripping. I honest to god thought he had rabies or a mortal injury or something.

Then I realized I had shone a flashlight in his eyes, blinding him. He had probably been on a knife edge, waiting for the intruder by the gap for hours, then suddenly blinded. I turned the flashlight onto my face and talked him down, got him into the house. Once he composed himself, he’s been super sweet and needy ever since.

Jack naturally has the crazy-eye — his eyes are slightly asymmetrical, out of focus. Makes him look unsettling. But holy shit I’ve never seen a cat as scary as Jack’s rage-face. For a terrible minute, I was frightened what he might do.

It’s always the little ‘uns.

August 2, 2016 — 6:49 pm
Comments: 16

Huh.

chickenglasses

Huh. Well, tompfrompv wasn’t kidding with the link: chicken glasses were a thing. You can tell from the tone of the article at right that they were always a subject of fun.

They sold millions of them, though, under several patents. One of them had rose-tinted lenses on a hinge, so when the chicken looked down, the lenses swung away and her vision was normal, but when she raised her head the tinted ones fell into place. A complex solution to a simple problem.

Not pecking each other’s eyes out. Jesus. I never heard of such a thing.

Feather pecking and cannibalism. Chickens go a little coocoo at the sight of blood and can peck at a wounded chook, sometimes unto death. These days, you either separate the injured bird until it’s all better again, or you spray an antiseptic on the wound that also hides the color.

As for feather pecking, that’s an odd one. They taught me in Chikken School that feather pecking is never a hostile act, it’s a displacement activity. If a chicken can’t scratch and forage, it’ll peck at the feathers of other chickens instead.

But that’s a problem of big factory flocks in overcrowded barns, and that’s a phenomenon that began in the Fifties. Back when these things were invented — the patent in the article is from 1903 — all chickens were more or less free range. So I dunno.

They fight feather pecking with beak trimming these days. Beaks aren’t quite like toenails; they do have a blood supply and feeling. Some of the methods used in the past to trim beaks were pretty ghastly. These days, at least in Britain, trained chikken technicians swiftly run a laser across the end of their beaks when the birds are quite tiny. This kills the blood vessels, painlessly they think, and the tip of the beak just falls off later. Losing the pointy end is enough to discourage bad beak behavior.

Brits are so soft about animals, I’m happy to say, I really did feel much better about commercial chicken practices after learning more. Even the big cage operations aren’t as awful as you might think from that YouTube your cousin linked you to on FaceBook.

And to expand on my announcement below, Jenny has indeed laid her first egg. And then angrily attacked it. It frightened her. I think it’s a case of this weird object just came out of my bottom and it hurt. None of the little girls like being handled, but she let me pick her up and stroke her for a while after this most upsetting experience.

And then she did it again today. Two days, two eggs. I guess we know who the superstar is going to be.

August 1, 2016 — 8:27 pm
Comments: 11