Although anyone sensible would likely have a blog that concentrates on just one thing, it’s quite handy to be able to write about any drivel. On that vein I’ll shift over to food & drink issues, and this is a rather lovely little product from Pret. It contains orange, but to that is added turmeric, ginger and cayenne. It does give quite a kick, it’s an inventive product from Pret…..
As an another irrelevant aside, I just noticed this on Google Ngram, which is how frequently the words ‘pub’ and ‘inn’ have been used in literature over the last two centuries.
It’s no surprise to me that the word ‘inn’ used to be used much more frequently when the word ‘pub’, but I’m puzzled how it is now used more frequently in writing once again.
Just as a random post, but I quite liked this story in the Scarborough News about the longest railway bench in the world. Despite having been to Scarborough on numerous occasions, I hadn’t managed to notice this 139 metre long bench which dates to around 1883.
It’s rather lovely that it has been preserved, although I note that Network Rail have replaced all the nuts and bolts, as well as an undetermined amount of wood. There’s something about Trigger’s broom here that there’s going to be nothing old left other than the original iron supports, but it’s still a very worthwhile project given how so many railway stations and structures have been allowed to crumble.
NB, as I’ve haven’t been to see this bench, the main photo above is at the start of my very brave second coast to coast walk a few years ago I did with Liam (I was the bravest). Might as well advertise that again here, here are the links 🙂 Coast to Coast Two [ Day 0 | Day 1 | Day 2 | Day 3 | Day 4 | Day 5 | Day 6 | Day 6+1 ]
And another random post….
The branding from easyGroup is nearly always quite vibrant and they haven’t held back at their London offices in Kensington. I like that their branding is so recognisable, quite an achievement. As an irrelevant aside, I try and avoid anything from easyGroup since they started getting involved with practices such as those mentioned at https://www.pinsentmasons.com/out-law/news/hard-cheese-for-stelios-in-easypizza-case. But each to their own….
I like this web-site, you can type in a word and it mentions when it was first used in the House of Commons.
http://parli-n-grams.puntofisso.net/hansard.php
It currently still only has data from 1919 onwards, but it’s still intriguing. In the above image, apparently the first time that the word Thatcherism was used was in 1978.
This is a handy free web-site, run by UCL and located at https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/, which has records of how much slave owners were recompensed for their slaves, as well as names of businesses which gained from the process. Some of the sums of money were enormous that were paid out, Benjamin Caractacus Patey, who once lived in Norwich, got the equivalent of around £250,000 for the loss of his slaves. Companies such as Greene King are listed and there are maps of some of the slave estates.
It’s an interesting genealogical tool, although at the moment, it’s primarily of interest for finding out more about the slave owners than the slaves themselves. The project co-ordinators are though working on this for the next iteration of the project. It’s all been nicely put together as well.
Business Traveller is one of the magazines I always try and read, even though it’s all a bit expensive for me (the things they mention, not the magazine, I can read that for free).
Anyway, it strikes me that this level of decadence must be outside a fair number of the magazine readers’ wallets. I’m not sure that even my friend Richard is this decadent. And, how would anyone dare wear one of these? I’d be permanently worried that it’d be stolen or ripped off my wrist. I worry enough about my McCain’s backpack, let alone something of this value. And do people just keep them as investments? Who knows…. And there’s another watch in the magazine which is so expensive they won’t say how much it costs.
On a different matter, in the same magazine, BA have won the best short-haul airline and the best loyalty scheme, so that’s very well deserved from my favourite airline…. Although all this reading about international travel has reminded me that I’m not expecting to go overseas for another 54 days. Not that I’m counting.
And more in my riveting random drivel series of posts…. But, for 39p, this was a surprisingly good treat from Sainsbury’s, I haven’t heard of this one before. Sufficiently sweet and pineapplely (I would have been disappointed if there wasn’t much pineapple flavour) this was rather lovely.
There’s no shortage of banks in Romford and I was moderately surprised just how many people were waiting in the queue for them all. This is the queue at the HSBC and who said that customers are mostly switching to on-line banking?
Well, you learn something new every day…. I’m not sure how useful this knowledge is in my day to day life though.
