"Can I interest you in a headless dog?"
The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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8:08am on Friday, 5th June, 2026:
Weird
Seen in Hereford Cathedral:
"Can I interest you in a headless dog?"
8:15am on Thursday, 4th June, 2026:
Anecdote
It seems I purchased some more antique playing cards off eBay.
These were for cheap, because it's a two-pack set and one of the packs is missing the 8 of Hearts. I didn't care, because the other one wasn't.
The seller made some grandiose claims about it. "This is a rare antique German playing card set of two packs. 1895-1896. Made by Schnieder and Co.. This pattern was designed exclusively for the imperial court in Berlin. Made in Altenberg. Issued for the last German emperor, Wilhelmina II. The stamp on the ace is deutsches reich and stressa 90 indicating vintage origin."
The stamp on the ace was used from 1923-1929; there's no tax value indicated because this was a period of crazily high inflation. Wilhelm II (not Wilhemina) abdicated in 1918 and fled to the Netherlands.
The 7 of Hearts helpfully informs me "Vereinigte Stralsunder Spielkarten Fabrik Act Ges. Abteilung Altenburg. Vorm Schneider & Co. in Altenburg, S-A". In English, that would be "United Stralsund Playing Card Factory, Inc. Altenburg Department, formerly Schneider & Co. in Altenburg, Saxony-Anhalt". Schneider was a department of VSS AG from 1892-1931, and this is their standard pattern (used from 1892-1931), it's not exclusive to the German Court.
Other than that, the description was correct.
I didn't buy them for the history, though. I bought them because they were pretty.
8:26am on Wednesday, 3rd June, 2026:
Anecdote
Several months ago, my wife booked tickets to an exhibition at a Buckingham Palace outbuilding showing clothes worn by the late queen. The date she selected for our expedition was yesterday, Tuesday. Naturally, that was the same date that was later chosen by the RMT for a tube strike.
As for why the tube drivers went on strike, well from what I can gather it seems that they were given the option of voluntarily doing the same number of hours of work per week, but over four days instead of five. They liked the idea of the four days, but their preference was to work the same number of hours that they would normally work over four days, yet be paid the same as for five days. They went on strike to demand this. The fact that the proposed arrangement was entirely voluntary was irrelevant. The spirit of the 1970s lives on.
Anyway, because of this, our usual route to Buckingham Palace was unavailable. Fortunately, the Lizzie Line and Jubilee Line were both still open, so we took the former to Bond Street and the latter from there to Green Park, which is but a short walk from the palace. I'm not a fan of the Lizzie Line, because you always have to traipse a long distance at the stations. Still, it was better than yomping from Liverpool Street to the palace on foot. I doubt we'd have found a free taxi during a tube strike.
The exhibition itself was of only marginal interest to me, because why would I be interested in the late queen's clothes? My wife liked it, though.
That said, I did used to think that HM wore some truly dreadful hats during her reign, and so was delighted to find a wall full of them. Here are a few of the horrors she was obliged to sport.
There were some other ghastly ones elsewhere in the exhibition. Maybe I'll post about those another day.
I carried an umbrella with me the whole time and it didn't rain until we were back home. Of course, there would have been a perpetual downpour if I hadn't brought it along. That's how it works.
The day was only spoilt by a lad on the train who shouted into his phone rather than spoke into it, and did so for the entire 30 minutes it took to reach Chelmsford (where, praise the heavens, he disembarked). At least 10% of his side of the dialogue was the word "fucking". A nice drop in phone signal coverage would have been a release, but he was shouting so loud that the person he was calling, Lola, could probably have heard him anyway.
It did rain when we got home, so heavily that when I went round to the back of the car with the garage door still open, the splashes got me even though I was under cover.
8:44am on Tuesday, 2nd June, 2026:
Anecdote
On the way back from the wedding last week, we diverted via Hereford to have a look around the cathedral. It's there that the largest intact mappa mundi on vellum is kept (presumably there are larger ones that are either not intact or not on vellum).
Here's the section with the British Isles on it, alongside the English translation.
You can see Colchester there. We must have been a big player on the world stage at some point, then.
The cathedral also has a chained library.
I guess this meant that if you wanted to steal a book, you had to do so a page at a time.
Both the chained library and the mappa mundi were smaller than I thought they'd be, but they were impressive.
The £7.50 entrance fee to see them both was larger than I thought it would be, and was unimpressive.
Oh, and in other news, someone has been sending out emails in my name to people on my contacts list. They're easy to spot as not coming from me, but be alert in case they get better.
8:17am on Monday, 1st June, 2026:
Weird
8:38am on Sunday, 31st May, 2026:
Anecdote
Here's what the roads looked like in the area we were staying for the wedding last week:
Those tall hedges are ubiquitous. They stop you from pulling over, so if there's anything coming the other way, you're stuffed. Also, you don't get to see any of the beautiful scenery.
I expect they're handy in winter as they'll protect the roads from snow, assuming they have some foliage on them.
On the way back, we went via Hereford so we could see the cathedral. We might not have done so had we known we'd have been on roads like this for fifteen miles.
8:41am on Saturday, 30th May, 2026:
Weird
The place we stayed at in Herefordshire for the wedding earlier this week was called "The Shed".
We were led there from the driveways by the property owner, which is fortunate because this sign on the adjacent building came into view first:
There was no smell coming from it. Perhaps they use it to store political pamphlets or AI-generated texts.
6:19am on Friday, 29th May, 2026:
Anecdote
I appear to have misread my watch. I thought I'd overslept and was getting up at a quarter to nine, but actually I'd underslept and it was a quarter to six.
I did wonder why the bin men hadn't woken me up when they came by at seven.
Oh well, being retired, I can catch up during the day (which is what many of my students used to do).
8:13am on Thursday, 28th May, 2026:
Anecdote
The wedding went really well yesterday. The location, in the Black Hills, was amazing.
Here's a photo of a Black Hill.
The ceremony was outdoors, under that oak tree you can just about see in the middle, where the white ribbons can just about be seen. It was next to a field full of sheep, there was a waterfall, they had their own pizza ovens; apart from being at the end of a single-track road where we had to back up 50 metres to allow a minibus to get past, it was perfect.
The road our AirBnB is on is being closed at 9:30, so I'm rather hoping we'll be on our away home before then.
7:33am on Wednesday, 27th May, 2026:
Anecdote
We're in the border country between England and Wales today, for the marriange of my niece. She's Welsh, her husband-to-be is English, so it's the natural choice.
The Airbnb place we booked is remote, down single-track lanes and past a village called "Longtown" that has so few houses it can only have been named sarcastically. However, the place we're staying at itself is great!
We're not the only occupants, though.
Fortunately, that's the nest of a house martin, not the vanguard of a colony of wasps.
8:00am on Tuesday, 26th May, 2026:
Weird
Seen in a garden centre:
I was hoping to see some carniverous plants, but no. They were insect-attracting plants, but they didn't do a number on them one they'd arrived.
Leave it all to the spiders, why don't you, plants.
9:13am on Monday, 25th May, 2026:
Anecdote
I bought some more playing cards after a short foray into eBay.
These are patience cards, measuring 5cm by 3cm. They're number 104, manufactured by J. Muller & Son in Switzerland. They were sold as a twin pack, in their original individual boxes and original overall box. This is what attracted me to bid for them. None of the cards themselves were shown, just the packaging, so I figured few people would bid for them. As it happened, I was the only person to bid for them, so that was a win.
Muller are more widely known for their Swiss Costumes design, which was widely imitated across Europe. They didn't produce many other designs, so this one is somewhat unusual. The gilt edging, flimsy paper boxes, high-quality printing and the artwork are very reminiscent of Dondorf productions, but the joker is specific to Muller; it isn't an outsourced rebrand.
I don't know when these were manufactured. The World Web Playing Card Museum doesn't mention them. I know from what it says on the side of the box that they were manufactured in Schaffhausen, where the company moved in 1873. Manufacturing moved to larger premises at Neuhausen-on-Rhine Falls in 1898. So, that would date them 1873 to 1898, which is plausible. If I'd had to guess, I'd have gone with maybe the 1920s, though.
Whatever, they're lovely little cards, however old they are.
8:19am on Sunday, 24th May, 2026:
Outburst
There are some flavours I really don't like that other people inexplicably do. I might be able to tolerate a very mild amount of coconut or cinnamon, but I can't stand anything contaminated with marzipan or alcohol.
Dill is right up there with the latter. No, I don't want a burger that has had the dill pickle taken out: I want a burger that hasn't ever been in contact with dill pickle.
This explains my horror upon seeing the following in our local Co-Op:
People are going to buy those? Willingly? And eat them?!
Thank goodness they're a limited edition. That's wasted shelf space if you ask me.
Asparagus-flavour crisps, yes, I'd certainly go for those!
8:33am on Saturday, 23rd May, 2026:
Rant
When a word in English ends in a vowel sound and is followed by another word that begins with one, it interrupts the flow of a sentence. Therefore, a filler sound is inserted between them to make them easier to say. The first vowel sound may be modified, too.
For example, if you say "the cat" then there's no problem. The "the" sounds the same as it would in "the dog", it's like a "thuh". However, if you were to say "the other cat" then the usual solution is to insert a "y" sound and change the "thuh" to "thi". This makes it sound like "thiyother cat".
That's how it's been for centuries, at least where I come from. However, back in the 1980s I noticed that some Londoners didn't do this. They kept the "the" sound as "thuh" and put a glottal stop in as the filler. It would be like "the'other cat". I was told once that this came from the speech patterns of immigrants from the Caribbean, but I don't know if that's true or not.
Anyway, recently the continuity announcer on our local TV channel TV has started to refer to the news programmes in our region as being in "the 'east" rather than "thi yeast". Worse, the presenters have started to do this, too, when they never did it before. I don't know whether it's as a result of some directive or just the spread of a speech affectation. It annoys me, anyway.
I'll have to listen out to hear whether they pronounce something like "solo opening" as "solowopening" or "solo'opening".
I'd blame social media,. but that would just ba a different kind of trend-following.
8:14am on Friday, 22nd May, 2026:
Anecdote
The fruit trees in our garden are infested with some kind of moth. The caterpillars are abundant, and my wife hates them. She cut off a swathe of leaves they'd made their homes and put them in the brown wheelie bin we use for garden waste recycling.
Of course, they were still alive.
There were hundreds of them. Overnight, they crawled out and covered the bin with webs of silk.
That pale brown isn't the plastic fading from sunlight, it's the mass of webs.
I gave them a dose of fly spray. It turns out that they really don't like it, so most of them are now dead. However, my wife stopped me before I did the final side of the bin, in case I killed any bees that might have been nearby. As a result, the caterpillars may have been able to reach the ground along the single-line vertical web they'd built. I guess we'll find out next year if our roses are covered in the little blighters.
Do your job, birds!
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Copyright © 2026 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).