This post is more just photos to remind me of a rather lovely week a few years back. This is primarily because I’ve forgotten what the six of us thought about this meal, although I don’t remember anything bad about it.
My soup and fish & chips.
I have no idea what Liam ordered for his starter, but it was followed by steak and probably some sticky toffee pudding arrangement knowing him.
I didn’t bother taking photos of what anyone else had, other than this one….
Just photos on this post, this is Portree Harbour and we ended up at a garden centre, as that’s what most people do on a stag week…. To be fair though, it was at the end of the walk and I think that this was the cat that scratched Scott. We liked that cat.
The official map of Portree was more amusing that it might have appeared at first sight…
These photos are from Liam’s stag week a few years ago, the time allowed by the coronavirus means that this is the first time I’ve uploaded most of these. Fairy Glen is named for no other reason than it has a mystical feel to it and it’s a peaceful site, topped off by Castle Ewan. This is just a rock formation and has never been a castle, but it does look like that from afar and we’re visible in the photos after climbing to the top of it.
There are some spirals on the ground with coins and stones in the centre of them, although it seems that the local tourist authorities aren’t keen on this recent innovation. The whole surroundings are though quite magical, there’s a touch of the Hobbit about the landscapes.
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…..
Barrow Man
The dictionary defines this as “a man under sentence of transportation; alluding to the convicts at Woolwich, who are principally employed in wheeling barrows full of brick or dirt”. Another dictionary from the period defines this, as well as a wheelbarrow man, as being anyone sentenced to work maintaining the roads. I’m not sure why the definition seems limited to Woolwich, although there were prison ships, or hulks, that were moored there during the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century, so I imagine it’s that.
The surname Barrowman during the middle of the nineteenth century was nearly entirely limited to London and Essex (with the one exception being the Newcastle area), which might also explain the limited usage of the phrase outside of the capital.
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…..
Barker
The dictionary defines this word as “the shopman of a bow-wow shop, or dealer in second hand clothes, particularly about Monmouth Street, who walks before his master’s door, and deafens every passenger with his cries of ‘clothes, coats or gowns – what d’ye want gemmen? what d’ye buy?”.
The bow-wow shop is, according to the dictionary, a shop where the servant bites and the master barks, an interesting thought….
Monmouth Street in the eighteenth century was known for its clothes shops, later being lost and becoming Shaftesbury Avenue when that street was expanded. In a bid to bring back the name, Great St. Andrew Street was renamed as Monmouth Street in the 1930s.
This 11 metre high column (or in Italian, the Colonna della Giustizia) is located at Piazza Santa Trinita and it has a much longer history than I realised at the time. It’s a Roman column that was at the Baths of Caracalla in Rome, but which was given by Pope Pius IV to Cosimo I de’ Medici. This gift perhaps makes more sense when taking into account the Pope’s name before he took on the role, which was Giovanni Angelo Medici.
The move from Rome to Florence sounds a bloody nuisance, they could only move it a few hundred metres a day and it took well over a year to get the column to the city. I wonder whether a more practical present could have been offered than a 50-ton column, perhaps a flock of sheep or something. Or maybe just a book. When the column finally arrived in Florence in 1563, they were able to get it standing on the pedestal in just a few hours, although then they had to work out what they were going to put on top.
For just over a decade there was a wooden statue plonked on the top, although to be fair, it’s so high they could have got away with nearly anything. In 1580, a statue of Justice designed by Ammannati was installed, comprised of three fragments of Roman sculptures. Shortly after the statue was installed some boys were accused of stealing from a jewellers nearby and were banned from the Ponte Vecchio where the shop was located. The boys denied the theft, although they weren’t believed, but the thefts continued. A long time after, the stones were discovered on the scales of the statue on the top of the column, they had been stolen by magpies who liked the bright colours.
It’s an impressive column, but it’s perhaps a shame that they can’t reduce the traffic which goes by it. Although not on a main road, there were numerous vehicles driving down and the column deserves some more peaceful surroundings.
Nashville is where The Seeing Eye guide dog organisation started from in January 1929, the first in the United States. Dorothy Harrison Eustis was a Swiss resident, although had been born in America, who had bred German shepherd dogs for police use and it was discovered that they could help the German war veterans who had lose eyesight during the First World War. In 1927, The Saturday Evening Post wrote an article about her work, which led Nashville resident Morris Frank to write to her and between them they were able to establish The Seeing Eye.
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…..
Banyan Day
The dictionary defines this as “a sea term for those days on which no meat is allowed to the sailors. The term is borrowed from the Banyans in the East Indies, a cast that eat nothing that had life”. I’ve never heard of this phrase, but it was in common usage in the nineteenth century, and no doubt in the eighteenth century, and was sometimes used not just in naval terms but also for anyone not eating meat on a certain day. And apparently it’s still a phrase used today on ships, but it just refers to a general picnic.
An alternative usage of the phrase developed when sailors referred to meals being a Banyan Day when they were eating leftovers, as there was no meat left. That, in turn, led to the phrase being used to mean straitened times.
Wooooo – of no relevance to anyone or anything, but the changes to the Accor Limitless loyalty scheme means that I’ve reached platinum status for the first time. They made those changes due to the Coronavirus restricting people’s opportunity to travel, although I can imagine it’ll be some time before they get the IT to actually reflect the new status.
There’s not much change from being gold, other than it means access to a free suite night upgrade once per year, but every little helps.
As a footnote, it transpired it just took one day for their IT to update. Very impressed.
