Oddities

  • Bristol Post balls – man concealed by sound

    One of the joys of the illiteracy of the Bristol Post – the city’s newspaper of warped record – is the unintentional humour the manifestations of that lack of skill inspire.

    Such an instance occurred yesterday when the Post reported, with a local angle of course, on the reopening of the inquest into the victims of the Birmingham pub bombing by the IRA on 21st November 1974.

    One of the survivors – Frank Thomas – now happens to live in Bristol and the Post’s reported duly managed to get rumble and rubble confused, as shown in the following screenshot of the article’s first paragraph.

    text in image reads For 20 minutes Frank Thomas lay hidden under rumble while emergency services struggled to rescue bodies from a Birmingham pub

    Should any passing Post hack wish to avoid future confusion, the definitions of rumble and rubble are helpfully transcribed below from Cambridge Dictionaries Online.

    Rumble (n.) – a low continuous sound.

    Rubble (n.) the piles of broken stone and bricks, etc. that are left when a building falls down or is destroyed.

  • Three ravens

    Although they are more likely to be seen in upland areas of south-west England, Wales, the north Pennines and Lake District and much of Scotland, sightings of ravens are not unknown in the low-lying city of Bristol.

    image of common raven
    Common raven (corvus corax). Photo courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    Your ‘umble scribe has seen single ravens around Temple Meads railway station, as well as in such inner-city districts as Easton. More often than not, I have heard the raven’s distinctive call before seeing it with the naked eye.

    The largest number I’ve ever spotted at one time was a few weeks ago, when I sighted three ravens circling over Barton Hill, being mobbed by aggressive members of the area’s resident gull population.

    Mythology and legend

    Ravens have long featured in European mythology. In Irish mythology, the goddess Morrígan alighted on the hero Cú Chulainn‘s shoulder in the form of a raven after his death. In Welsh mythology ravens were associated with the Welsh god Bran the Blessed, whose name translates to “raven.” According to the Mabinogion, Bran’s head was buried in the White Hill of London as a talisman against invasion.

    In Norse mythology, Huginn (from the Old Norse for “thought”) and Muninn (Old Norse for “memory” or “mind”) are a pair of ravens that fly all over the world, Midgard and bring the god Odin information.

    In England a legend developed that the country would not fall to a foreign invader as long as there were ravens at the Tower of London (invasions are averted by the simple expedient of clipping the wings of the resident ravens. Ed.). Although this is often thought to be an ancient belief, Geoffrey Parnell, the official Tower of London historian, believes that, like so many other legends of the British Isles, this is actually a romantic Victorian invention.

    In culture

    In western culture ravens have long been considered to be birds of ill omen and death, partly due to the negative symbolism of their all-black plumage and the eating of carrion.

    As in traditional mythology and folklore, the common raven features frequently in more modern writings such as the works of William Shakespeare, and, perhaps most famously, in the poem “The Raven” by Edgar Allan Poe. Ravens have also appeared in the works of Charles Dickens, J. R. R. Tolkien and Stephen King, amongst others.

    Ravens have also featured in song. “The Three Ravens” is an English folk ballad, printed in the song book Melismata compiled by the appositely named Thomas Ravenscroft and published in 1611, but it is perhaps older than that.

    The music and lyrics are set out below. The latter are in their original 17th century orthography, with the refrains in italics.

    The ballad takes the form of 3 ravens conversing about where and what they should eat. One tells of a newly slain knight, but they find he is guarded by his loyal hawks and hounds. Furthermore, a “fallow doe”, an obvious metaphor for the knight’s pregnant (“as great with young as she might go”) lover or mistress comes to his body, kisses his wounds, bears him away and buries him, leaving the ravens without a meal.

    image of musical score for The Three Ravens ballad
    Music for The Three Ravens

    There were three rauens sat on a tree,
    Downe a downe, hay down, hay downe
    There were three rauens sat on a tree,
    With a downe
    There were three rauens sat on a tree,
    They were as blacke as they might be.
    With a downe derrie, derrie, derrie, downe, downe
    The one of them said to his mate,
    ‘Where shall we our breakefast take?’
    ‘Downe in yonder greene field,
    There lies a knight slain vnder his shield.
    ‘His hounds they lie downe at his feete,
    So well they can their master keepe.
    ‘His haukes they flie so eagerly,
    There’s no fowle dare him come nie.’
    Downe there comes a fallow doe,
    As great with yong as she might goe.
    She lift vp his bloudy hed,
    And kist his wounds that were so red.
    She got him vp vpon her backe,
    And carried him to earthen lake.
    She buried him before the prime,
    She was dead herselfe ere euen-song time.
    God send euery gentleman,
    Such haukes, such hounds, and such a leman.

    Your correspondent does not know what the three ravens circling Barton Hill found to eat, as dead knights are not exactly common in that part of the city. 😀

  • Windows 10 update interrupts weather forecast

    Microsoft has a reputation for forcing unwanted updates and upgrades on users.

    Its actions reached a new nadir when it made Windows 10 a recommended update for users of earlier versions – 7 and 8.* – of its operating system.

    Since this occurred there have been numerous reports of the new operating system installing itself without either user consent or much warning.

    One of the most public of these attempted upgrades happened 2 days ago live on air at TV station KCCI of Des Moines, Iowa, as per the following screenshot.

    screenshot of Windows 10 update interrupting live TV weather forecast

    That’s right! With impeccable bad timing, Windows 10 update barged unannounced into Metinka Slater’s heavy rain and thunderstorms update. However, the TV meteorologist managed deal professionally with the unwelcome intrusion into her work and switch quickly to an alternative video source to continue her broadcast, as shown by the following video.

  • Variation on a theme

    Eggs have long been associated with Easter since for Christians the Easter egg is a symbol of Christ’s empty tomb.

    The custom of the Easter egg originated in the early Christian community of Mesopotamia, which stained eggs red in memory of the blood of Christ, shed at his crucifixion.

    This practice still survives in Greece where hard-boiled eggs are dyed bright red to symbolise the spilt Blood of Christ and the promise of eternal life. They are also cracked together to celebrate the opening of the Tomb of Christ.

    In more recent times since those of the early Christians of Mesopotamia egg hunts have become a fixture of the Easter events calendar.

    However, here’s one event from recent years from Lakewood Springs in Illinois that sounded a little too intimate for comfort…

    image of board advertising anal egg hunt

    Happy Easter! 🙂

  • A salacious street name

    Last Thursday I was in Shrewsbury, county town of the county of my birth. Shrewsbury is steeped in a wealth of medieval history, including plenty of ancient street names, amongst them the intriguingly titled Grope Lane.

    Grope Lane sign
    Grope Lane street sign
    A look back down Grope Lane towards High Street
    A look back down Grope Lane towards High Street

    Grope Lane in Shrewsbury is a narrow alley connecting High Street and Fish Street in the heart of the old medieval town, as shown on the location map below.

    Location of Grope Lane in Shrewsbury
    Location of Grope Lane in Shrewsbury. Image courtesy of OpenStreetMap. Click on image for full-sized version

    As with many towns in the Middle Ages, Shrewsbury’s Fish Street (and nearby Butcher Row. Ed.) are named after the trades that occupied them. However, Grope Lane is also reputed to be linked to trade – this time the pleasures of the flesh.

    Wikipedia has an excellent page on this street name in its unsanitised version.

    Gropec*nt Lane, says Wikipedia, was a street name found in English towns and cities during the Middle Ages, believed to be a reference to the prostitution centred on those areas… Gropec*nt, the earliest known use of which is in about 1230, appears to have been derived as a compound of the words grope and c*nt (our medieval forebears were less sensitive and more earthy in their use of language than their modern descendants, as anyone who had read Chaucer in the original Middle English can testify. Ed.). Streets with that name were often in the busiest parts of medieval towns and cities.

    Towns and cities with active quays or ports often had an adjacent Grope(c*nt) Lane, as in the case of Bristol, although that street name recorded in the reign of Edward III (1312-1377), was subsequently changed to Hauliers Lane and has since been changed again (see below).

    Although the name was once common throughout England, changes in attitude resulted in its replacement by more innocuous versions such as Grape Lane. A variation of Gropec*nt was last recorded as a street name in 1561.

    In Shrewsbury a street called Grope Countelane existed as recently as 1561 and connected the town’s two principal marketplaces. At some unspecified date the street was renamed Grope Lane, which it has retained to the present day. In Thomas Phillips’ History and Antiquities of Shrewsbury (1799) the author is explicit in his understanding of the origin of the name as a place of “scandalous lewdness and venery”, but Archdeacon Hugh Owen’s Some account of the ancient and present state of Shrewsbury (1808) describes it as “called Grope, or the Dark Lane”. As a result of these differing accounts, some local tour guides attribute the name to “feeling one’s way along a dark and narrow thoroughfare”.

    Other towns and cities in England also had their own local Grope(c*nt) Lane including the following:

    • London (several examples);
    • Bristol (now called Nelson Street);
    • York;
    • Newcastle upon Tyne;
    • Worcester;
    • Hereford;
    • Oxford (now Magpie Lane);
    • Norwich (now Opie Street);
    • Banbury (now Parsons Street);
    • Glastonbury (now St Benedicts Court); and
    • Wells.
  • Vicious toilet

    Beware if you ever visit the gents at the Bull Hotel at Fairford in Gloucestershire; the vitreous china might attack you.

    Last Friday’s Wilts & Gloucestershire Standard reports that a customer who smashed the toilet to bits claims he was acting in self defence.

    toilet
    Wot you lookin’ at? Wanna fight?

    The unnamed Kempsford man claims he was about to be attacked and smashed the toilet to attract the attention of other patrons.

    However, the local constabulary were unimpressed by his assertions and he’s due to appear before Cheltenham Magistrates on 24th February.

    Hat tip: Dr Bob Irving.

  • Signal failure

    Where Bristol has the Bristol Post, formerly the Bristol Evening Post, as its newspaper of record (warped. Ed.), the Potteries has The Sentinel, formerly the Evening Sentinel.

    Both newspapers now belong to the Local World stable and share many common features: the content management system running their websites, difficulty in distinguishing editorial content from advertising, a cavalier attitude to the correct use of the English language and so on.

    Yesterday’s Sentinel carried a report of a railway signal failure in the Stafford area.

    The report was helpfully illustrated with a photograph as per the screenshot below.

    Shrewsbury's Severn Bridge junction and semaphore signals incorrectly captioned as Stafford by clueless Sentinel hacks

    The photograph is also helpfully captioned, as follows:

    DELAYS: Rail services have been hit by signalling problems at Stafford.

    It is evident for a number of reasons that the anonymous members of the Sentinel’s “Digital_team” who put together this report are no great users of the railway network.

    Firstly, the photograph shows semaphore signals. These are not used at Stafford, which lies on the West Coast Main Line, where semaphore signals were removed and replaced with colour light signals many decades ago.

    Secondly, the plate on the signal mast identifies the signals as part of the Severn Bridge Junction signal complex.

    Thirdly, what is the Abbey Church of St Peter & St. Paul in Shrewsbury doing in the background, lurking behind the largest sempaphore signal box in the country? 😉

  • Is Cabot Circus employing Smurfs?

    The modern mobile phone is a sophisticated and very useful item: mine is a miniature marvel – a Linux-based computer that fits comfortably in the hand, plays music, acts as a radio, takes video and still images and also allows me to make telephone calls.

    Venturing into central Bristol, one notices that nearly everyone one passes has one and entering the Cabot Circus shopping centre – that latter day monument to retail therapy – is no exception to this general observation.

    Having noticed a couple of years ago that visitors to Cabot Circus have their progress around that Temple of Mammon tracked by means of their mobile phone signal (posts passim), it has been my practice ever since to turn my mobile phone off before entering; and I don’t turn it back on until I’m well clear.

    Cabot Circus mobile phone recharging cabinetIt’s bad enough being tracked from shop to shop, but there’s another threat to the privacy and security of mobile phones and their users in Cabot Circus… but you’ll only discover it if you happen to use the mobile phone charging points (shown left) kindly provided by the centre’s management.

    On the face of it, these charging points – 3 in number – are a boon to visitors. After all, who hasn’t been in a situation where one’s battery is running low. It does seem benevolent of the managers of Cabot Circus to provide half an hour’s gratis battery top-up, doesn’t it?

    Now, you remember me saying about turning my phone off before entering? Good! With my device switched well and truly OFF I have now placed my phone in the recharging facility whilst paying a call of nature. Upon return a few minutes later, I have in each instance retrieved by phone from the locker – and found it to be switched ON!

    Needless to say out of consideration for my security and privacy, I shall not be using one of these charging points again.

    As regards using the mobile phone charging points, the Cabot Circus website states the following:

    Because we want our visitors to have a stress free [sic] shopping experience within our centre, Cabot Circus has now installed three ChargeBox phone charging stations, ideal for when your battery goes flat at the most inconvenient times.

    Easy to use in three simple steps, connect your phone, lock, take the key and relax. The ChargeBox stations allow you to charge your phones for free and enjoy 30 minutes extra shopping time!

    The ChargeBox stations at Cabot Circus are located:

    – Level 1 outside Costa
    – Upper Ground at the Information Desk
    – Ground floor toilet lobby

    Curiously, there’s nothing in the above text that I can see about the points’ ability to turn on a mobile phone that’s been switched off.

    However, let’s be generous and assume that specific piece of information was omitted by mistake. 🙂

    When I charge my turned-off phone elsewhere, either by using a USB cable connected to a PC/laptop or the adapter that came with it, it definitely stays off. That being so, I began thinking how could the lovely folk at Cabot Circus generously providing me with free electricity be turning my phone back on when I’d left it firmly switched off.

    A quick internet search reveals no logical or plausible benign explanation as to why a switched-off phone is turned on by the charging station.

    The only tools of which your correspondent is aware for doing such things to a mobile phone is the Smurf suite of tools used by the British State’s snoopers at GCHQ, as revealed by NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden. In this suite of tools, one called “Dreamy Smurf” can allegedly turn a phone on or off, whilst another called “Nosey Smurf” can activate a phone’s microphone to use it for audio surveillance. “Tracker Smurf” is a geo-location tool that Snowden says offers a more accurate method of locating a phone and its carrier than using triangulation. Another Smurf can operate a smartphone’s camera, while “Paranoid Smurf” does its best to hide the activities of the other Smurfs.

    One therefore has to wonder whether that the operators of Cabot Circus, by turning visitors’ phones on, are infringing their privacy and presenting a security threat to their mobile devices.

    Care to come clean, Cabot Circus, on whether you’re employing Smurfs or using something analagous?

  • An evening’s poaching in Bristol

    My late mother Gladys grew up living next door to the village poacher – a gentleman now long departed called Tom Cook – in her childhood home of Blo’ Norton in Norfolk.

    During my youth in Market Drayton, Shropshire, Derek Podmore – otherwise known as Poddy the Poacher – was another character one encountered who achieved a certain notoriety. At one stage this notoriety reached national level when he featured on the centre pages of the now defunct News of the World after breaking into the Duke of Bedford’s safari park at Woburn Abbey one night and shooting milord’s bison… for a bet.

    I was therefore very pleased to learn that Bristol Radical History Group (BRHG) is organising a talk on poaching by Steve Mills at 7.00 p.m. on Thursday 28th January at Hydra Books in Old Market Street, Bristol, BS2 0EZ (map).

    Entitled “Poaching in the South West: The Berkeley Case“, Steve’s talk will cover the contents of his recent BRHG pamphlet “Poaching in the South West“, which considers the poaching wars in rural areas in the 18th and 19th Centuries and the arms race conducted between the poaching gangs, landowners and gamekeepers. He will also look at the development of the “poaching” laws in the period and the famous Berkeley Case.

    William Hemsley's The young poacher 1874
    William Hemsley, The Young Poacher (1874). Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    More information on Steve Mills’ pamphlet here.

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