Here we have odd things that don’t fit into any other category, or are simply random jottings, or are very silly, often all three. Click the thumbnails to read more ramblings on the topics.
A Leaking Pipe; its prevention & cure.
June 2020: As if Covid 19 lockdown was not enough,
water began to come through my kitchen ceiling.
Crypto-sociological – a new word?
Early 2020. Have I thought of a new word? Unlikely!
Of Melox, Pulbis, and Cruckles.
September 2019. When I was a kid – it’d be around 1955-56 – my route to school took
me past an old shop on the Stratford Road, which sold Melox. But what was it?
Destroying the Planet.
Early September 2019. As is widely known (i.e. I can’t be bothered to look up any references,
and I don’t have a student assistant to do it for me), when you get old, you sleep less.
This I can definitely confirm, and have begun having a short walk early every morning.
A few days ago I went out on a beatutifully clear morning, only to see all these vapour trails!
COINS of BRITISH MONARCHS.
January 2019. Discovering that we knew nothing about King William IV, it seemed
a good idea to find out more about British Monarchs – starting with their coins.
CASH, SOLO and TOAD.
Useful mnemonics we learned at school, 60 years ago, enabled us to solve an engineering problem.
Listen to that shooting star!
Back in the 1960s, we thought we heard a shooting star. It now seems likely we actually did!
Jigsaw Puzzles.
We got a jigsaw puzzle as a Christmas present. Actually, I am awful at them – but resolved to do this one, by hook or by crook. It was a Gibsons 1,000 piece, called ‘The Air Show’. The following is based on an entry in my diary.
Modern “Art”.
Some comments on a nice Victorian painting, and a spoof on abstract “Art”.
Trivia.
A lot of people ‘switch off’ when you come out with a piece of fascinating info. But enthusiasts of TRIVIA (I know there are many of us) might find the items here interesting – I certainly did.
What History is in a Post Card?
This postcard is an interesting Prisoner of War band, dated 1915.
The Chemical Tree.
We got a Chemical Tree as a Christmas present. It grew very quickly, but the instructions were puzzling.
On Passwords & Things.
A
As we began to reorganise our two websites, we needed a lot of new passwords. They’re getting harder to make up…
See what happens when you go to a COIN FAIR?
Well – it’s obvious, really. You buy some tokens, not coins – and then have to research them.
Two coins of King Victor Emmanuel II.
A couple of Italian coins around the time of the Unification of Italy – 1860s.
What’s in a Postage Stamp?
An enjoyable few hours with coins of Napoleon III prompted us to look at our small accumulation of Imperial Russian postage stamps.
What’s in a Coin?
A casual visit to a coin, bank-note & antiquities fair got our imagination going.
Q: What price History? A: Very reasonable indeed!
The old Dymo machine restored.
1st May 2015. We had let our old Dymo get into a very neglected state; but it has been cleaned
& has given rise to various thoughts.
The Great 1mm Pencil Lead Mystery.
Why can’t we easily get 1mm leads for our propelling pencils any more? Including some pencils only a few years old? Also, how success was finally attained with the kind help of a sympathetic correspondent from Italy!
A Day in the Life of a Penny.
This coin, approximately 1,600 years old & yet of no especial value, set in motion a train of thought which I decided to record here. Also, it tells you how you can make very cheap but effective cuff-links…
Odd Quotes.Sometimes you read things is book that strike you as remarkable enough to pass on; so have started this sub-section to house them, and any other similar things that may turn up. The inclusion of an email I wrote is a pure conceit on my part.
The Rock Men Speak Forwards!
In the third and final Flash Gordon cinema serial (1940), Flash & Co. meet the Rock Men. They speak backwards, so we tried to make them speak forwards… Did we succeed? Just click the picture to find out!