Walking. Gossip. Travel.

Category: Random Posts

  • 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.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-Three

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-Three

    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…..

    Cat’s Foot

    The dictionary defines this as “to live under the cat’s foot, to be under the domination of a wife, hen-pecked”. Slightly intriguing that the ‘hen-pecked’ phrase has survived, whereas ‘cat’s foot’ seems to have been lost, particularly as there’s something quite quaint about the latter option. Georgette Heyer used the phrase in her books, but otherwise it’s now becoming archaic. Incidentally, the book defines ‘cat’ as “a prostitute” or “a cross old woman”.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-Two

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-Two

    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…..

    Carouse

    This word remains in usage in some areas, although I’m not sure that I’ve heard it used recently. The dictionary defines it as “to drink freely or deep”, making the drinking of alcohol sound quite philosophical. The more current definition of the word is though more ‘drinks loudly’, but perhaps that’s an inevitable result of drinking freely.

    The word origin is from German, the phrase ‘gar aus trinken’ means to drink heavily, which got corrupted into English as ‘garaus’, and then ‘carouse’.

    And here’s the word usage over the last two centuries. Given how the country has continued to drink freely, it’s a little surprising to see the word be used less frequently.

  • Window Cleaning

    Window Cleaning

    Since I live a little high up and there’s a contract for the window cleaning of the site that I have no involvement with, it’s always a surprise exactly when the windows get cleaned.

    But every time this seemingly random event does happen, I get moderately startled as it sounds like a sea eagle has come clattering into the window….. But, it’s a relief to see that instead of a mangled bird, I do instead have clean windows.

    Anyway, this isn’t the most exciting content ever, I will admit.

  • M&S and Their Beer Selection

    M&S and Their Beer Selection

    Since I’ve started shopping at M&S, which is new to me and entirely because I can’t be bothered to battle around Morrison’s, I thought I’d investigate their beer selection a few weeks ago. It was pretty unimpressive, nearly entirely IPAs and there was just one darker beer. I walked by last week and there were several darker beers, all of which seemed to be popular given by the gaps in the shelf. It’s probably just a different season of beers, but it almost looked like they changed the beer buyer at M&S Head Office.

    Anyway, not normally one for buying beer for home, I thought I’d encourage M&S slightly (and slightly is the word here, as I doubt my purchase volume will be noticeable, unlike my purchase of their reduced priced Easter Eggs…..) and buy this Salted Caramel Porter from Meantime Brewing.

    It’s excellent in its intent, although its delivery isn’t particularly good as they seem to have forgotten to put any salted caramel flavour in. The Untappd reviews aren’t marvellous either, mainly based around the lack of flavour, but it’s a smooth porter nonetheless. And I like what they’re trying to do.

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-One

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty-One

    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…..

    Captain Lieutenant

    Quite a long definition, the dictionary notes that this is defined as “meat between veal and beef, the flesh of an old calf; a military simile, drawn from the officer of that denomination, who has only the pay of lieutenant, with the rank of captain; but so is not entirely one or the other, but between both”.

    It seems a rather long phrase to describe meat, a bit clunky for a butcher to have to write out on their display or for a customer to ask for. And on that basis, I also can’t find much evidence that this phrase was much used, but there’s something very precise about the term that I like. It’s perhaps a shame that Morrison’s to this day doesn’t use the phrase in their market street butchers…..

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Sixty

    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…..

    Canterbury Story

    Defined as “a long round-about tale”, this has an obvious source which is from the long, tedious and winding stories of the fourteenth-century Canterbury Tales. I’ve just denigrated what is perhaps one of the most important medieval books, but they are a bit long…. There’s a possibility that it didn’t derive from Chaucer’s book, but instead from pilgrims on their way to Canterbury on a pilgrimage when they told elaborate and excessively long stories. But, that’s an excusable thing to do to pass the time.

  • What’s My Line and Colonel Sanders

    What’s My Line and Colonel Sanders

    I’ve been watching some of the old US episodes of What’s My Line, and this is certainly my favourite so far…. Filmed in 1963, Sanders became much better known just a couple of years later.

     

  • Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Fifty-Nine

    Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue – Day Fifty-Nine

    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…..

    Cannikin

    This word is described by the dictionary as a “small can”, and in the criminal fraternity, it means the plague. The word comes from the sixteenth century Dutch word ‘kanneken’ which now means cannon, but I think had a different meaning back then that was something like ‘can’ or ‘bucket’.

    The above image shows in red the capitalised version of Cannikin, the blue its lower case. And, there was a surge in usage of the word in the early 1970s. This was because Project Cannikin was a large underground nuclear weapons test, given the fluffy name of Cannikin, but it was something much more explosive than a small can, quite literally. Rather than it being a little can, the test involved 400 tonnes of equipment and a shaft that was nearly 2,000 metres deep. The test was controversial because there were fears of earthquakes and tsunamis, and the concern generated by this is what led to the creation of the Greenpeace pressure group.

  • Random Posts – Fernweh

    Random Posts – Fernweh

    Yes. Very much so….