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  • London – British Museum (Postwick Grove, Norwich)

    London – British Museum (Postwick Grove, Norwich)

    I usually visit the British Museum three or four times a year, something which is a little difficult to do with the current virus situation, primarily because it’s shut. However, they’ve placed hundreds of thousands of images on their web-site, so this will have to do me for the moment. The images can be used non-commercially, as long as the British Museum is credited. So, this is their credit.

    I like this print which is in the collections of the British Museum as it’s painted at Postwick Grove. I’d never heard of this place until we walked through it on Saturday, but it’s a once quiet area of the city where painters would come and be inspired by the peace and countryside. These painters would have also walked the similar route to the one we did on our 22-mile walk (more on that soon), although they didn’t have to cross the Norwich Southern Bypass.

    The print was produced by John Sell Cotman and there’s no precise production date, just sometime between the dates of 1813 and 1838. Handily the museum knows that it’s from before 1838 as Cotman included it in a book which he produced in that year, the ‘Liber Studiorum – A Series of Sketches and Studies’ published by HG Bohn. The print isn’t on display in the museum and was acquired by them in 1902 from James Reeve, a long-time custodian of the Norwich Castle Museum.

    This is what the artists would have seen at Postwick Grove, with the railway line to Reedham and Great Yarmouth to the top of the image, but it’s missing the huge dual carriageway which now ploughs vertically through the area. The addition of the Norwich Park and Ride parking area hasn’t done much for the peace and quiet either, but there is still an element of tranquility left.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-Five

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-Five

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    Caudge-Pawed

    Definitions don’t get much shorter than this, it simply means “left-handed”. There seems nearly no mention of this phrase in the printed record and I was hoping to work out how this quirky term had evolved. That plan failed, as all I can see is that it was in use between the sixteenth and nineteenth centuries.

    I did discover though, whilst trying to see if this derived from cats paw somehow, that cats are left or right-handed. This, I have decided, is more interesting to me than what I had set out to find. So, I have no idea how this phrase evolved, but I will now watch cats to see whether they are left-handed or right-handed.

  • Co-op Mini Melton Mowbray Pork Pies

    Co-op Mini Melton Mowbray Pork Pies

    I’m not intending to write a food blog, but I felt the need to comment on these. I accept there are many more important things in the world to write about than the snack component of a Co-op meal deal, but notwithstanding that, these really are a complete waste of time. How can you possibly manage to have a product that is high in fat, high in saturates and quite high in salt to taste completely bland? There was no discernible taste to the pork, let alone a pleasant peppery or vibrant aftertaste.

    But what puzzled me is how on earth this rubbish managed to win a bronze award at the British Pie Awards. Then it becomes clearer when I visit their web-site. I had assumed that Bronze would be third-placed. However, this would be wrong. In the 2019 awards, there is a section on pork pies and there is one gold winner, thirteen silver winners and twenty-five bronze winners. How many awards do they need to give out?

    I can’t check the 2017 awards, when according to the label these pies stormed into bronze place, as the link on the British Pie Awards web-site is broken for that year. So, what the Co-op are saying about their pies is that three years ago, the pies managed to come in the top forty in the country. And, to be honest, I think they were lucky to manage that.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-Four

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-Four

    The Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue was first published at the end of the eighteenth century, and given that the Coronavirus crisis is giving too much time to read books, I thought I’d pick a daily word from it until I got bored…..

    Cathedral

    Simple definition to this one, “cathedral” means in this context something which is “old-fashioned, such as a cathedral-bedstead”. The word itself derives from Greek, with the Latin word “cathedra” meaning seat, which became the seat of the Bishop, which is the Cathedral. But, in this context, I can’t see that this phrase was ever much used, all references to cathedral bedsteads simply lead to on-line versions of this dictionary.

    But, I’ve taken a real liking to using this word. If I want to criticise something (or more likely someone) as being old-fashioned, I can refer to them as having cathedral thinking. They’ll think I mean elegant or authoritative, but I’ll actually just mean out-of-date. Marvellous.

  • New York – National 9/11 Memorial (Engine of New York City Fire Department Ladder Company 3)

    New York – National 9/11 Memorial (Engine of New York City Fire Department Ladder Company 3)

    These photos are from 2015, so as another advance warning, their quality is pretty low. The fire truck belonged to New York City Fire Department Ladder Company 3 and it arrived at the North Tower of the World Trade Center on 11 September 2001.

    The fire truck had two crews on as they were changing shift when the call came through and it parked on West Street whilst the fire-fighters went to investigate the unfolding disaster.

    The fire-fighters got to around the 35th floor of the building and were killed when the building collapsed. The fire-fighters from this truck included Captain Patrick (Paddy) J. Brown, Lt. Kevin W. Donnelly, Michael Carroll, James Raymond Coyle, Gerard Dewan, Jeffrey John Giordano, Joseph Maloney, John Kevin McAvoy, Timothy Patrick McSweeney, Joseph J. Ogren and Steven John Olson.

    The fire truck itself was crushed when the tower fell on it and when the site was being cleared, it was moved to JFK Airport where it remained for around a decade. It was moved to the National 9/11 Memorial in 2011, where it remains today.

    This is a short documentary clip about Patrick Brown which was made by his sister, with a recording of the call he made from within the building. His call was very calm, polite and professional, a remarkable undertaking given what he must have been seeing.

  • And a little thank you to Inter-Logic

    And a little thank you to Inter-Logic

    Due to a little technical issue on the blog last night where it sort of broke, I have to thank the excellent IT skills of Richard May from Inter-Logic for managing to ensure that hosting has continued safely and securely.

    Which is also handy as I gave Peterborough Cathedral permission to use one of my photos (very willingly, it’s one of my favourite cathedrals), so it would have been irritating for it to be broken when they were trying to copy it. Not to mention my riveting account of the second training walk for my LDWA 100 attempt next year which for reasons unknown has had nearly 2,000 readers in two days. It must be a quiet news week in the world.

    Anyone who wants any IT services, here’s Richard’s web-site. If anyone needs anything IT related sorting out, he can probably help. But mention me, as I’ll demand a commission from him.

  • New York – National 9/11 Memorial (Survivors’ Staircase)

    New York – National 9/11 Memorial (Survivors’ Staircase)

    These stairs, now moved into the National 9/11 Memorial Museum, were the steps that hundreds took to freedom as they escaped the damage done to the Twin Towers. They remained standing above ground after the site was cleared, another final stand, but they were nearly lost to the demolition process until their symbolic value was realised.

    A news report of the importance of the steps.

    On 18 July 2008, they shunted these stairs from their original location and lifted by crane their 65-ton weight into the site of the new museum.

    Visitors take an escalator which sits next to the 38 steps of the staircase when they arrive and leave the museum.

    There’s a video of their move here:

  • New York – Five Guys

    New York – Five Guys

    Just looking at this photo I took back in 2015 when I was in New York, I’m not entirely sure what I was thinking of when I thought that green coloured drink was a good idea…..

    I can’t even remember which Five Guys it was, but I’ve just wasted ten minutes trying to work it out. Probably the one at 316 W 34th Street, like it makes the slightest bit of bloody difference…..

  • New York – Metropolitan Museum of Art (Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze)

    New York – Metropolitan Museum of Art (Washington Crossing the Delaware by Emanuel Leutze)

    The Met has made many artworks in their collections freely available online, so I’ll use their rather more detailed image than the one I took in 2015. I’m not exactly Sister Wendy, so there’s not much I can add about the imagery, but it is beautiful. That early US flag from the Washington-led Continental Army as they crossed the Delaware near Trenton, an important part of their winning the Revolutionary War.

    I was only reminded of this artwork when I visited the quite marvellous Kunsthalle in Bremen, as they once had a similar and earlier painting by the same artist, Emanuel Leutze. Unfortunately, the artwork was so big that they couldn’t easily get it off the wall to protect it during the Second World War, so they had to risk it. A British military attack on the city destroyed some of the gallery building on 5 September 1942, which sadly included this painting.

    The destroyed artwork was painted in 1849, the one in the Met’s collection is from 1850 and it went on display in New York in October 1851. It was purchased by Marshall Owen Roberts (1814-1880) for $10,000, a ridiculous sum of money for the time, but he could afford it with the money he had made from his transportation businesses.

    The Met’s artwork remained in the collection of Robert’s estate, before it was sent for auction at Ortgies and Company, Fifth Avenue Art Galleries for sale on 20 January 1897. It was purchased by John S. Kennedy, who promptly gave it to the Met. And here it remains, one of their more inspirational paintings.

  • McDonald’s Town House

    McDonald’s Town House

    I liked this little video, the introduction of computers into McDonald’s, although I like the man with his order pad. And that Big Mac looks delicious, although I don’t know why the presenter plonked himself next to those other customers.

    That Town House part of the logo is for when McDonald’s needed to identify the difference between their drive-thru and urban restaurants. I’d have thought that this was more apparent from a lack of drive-thru lane than part of the logo, but there we go. The words lingered on older signage until just a few years ago, but I think that they’ve all gone now.