The everyday blog of Richard Bartle.
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9:43am on Saturday, 21st December, 2024:
Anecdote
My wife was assaulted by a cactus yesterday.
The cactus was in the window to try to give it some light, but over time the sun appears to have perished its (plastic) plant pot. When she picked the pot up to examine the cactus, the pot disintegrated, whereupon the cactus made a break for it and attacked her.
The vicious assailant was swiftly recaptured and after a brief period in custody was sentenced to incarceration in our green waste recycling bin.
9:36am on Friday, 20th December, 2024:
Outburst
Here's a photograph I took in Colchester on Monday:
Reminder: in the UK we drive on the left and parking is forbidden on double-yellow lines.
That blue Peugeot crossed the road and parked outside a shop. The driver got out and walked into the shop. The two cars beyond it are waiting for traffic to clear so they can get past. On the opposite side of the street, next to the bus lane, is a multi-storey car park.
This self-important, indignant kind of "I was only going to be five minutes" attitude normalises blatent, low-level law-breaking. Once that becomes normalised, laws higher up get the same treatment until they, too, become normalised. Rules that need to be in place are ignored as being just a little bit naughty.
Yes, some laws are stupid and impossible not to break on a daily basis. Obstructing the highway with inconsiderate parking isn't one of them.
I looked on the Essex Police web site to see if I could upload my photo somewhere, but they don't seem to have a section for low-level crimes.
It was the sheer gall of the driver that incensed me.
10:19am on Thursday, 19th December, 2024:
Anecdote
I bought some more playing cards.
These are from the same seller as the ones I bought earlier in the month, and are also samples. Pleasantly, the person who had given them to the seller said they were manufactured by van Genechten, which is what I'd guessed they were. That's nice.
These cards aren't in the same pristine condition as the other ones, but they're still pretty good given their likely age (which I guess is the same, 1870s).
Other than having different numbers (these are 2132 rather than 2196), the new cards are much the same. However, they have an extra colour to them: peach. It's mainly used on hands, faces and flooring, but also appears elsewhere (on the King of Spades' ermine, for example).
The 2132 cards have less ornate backs, but that didn't help me track them down. I did find a record of some peach-faced van Genechten cards from 1880, but these are turned (so all the upper pips are in the left corner) whereas my samples aren't.
This new set of samples is much smaller than the earlier one. I only have:
2 Jacks of Hearts
2 Jacks of Clubs
2 Kings of Clubs
10 Jacks o Spades
2 Queens of Spades
1 King of Spades
I don't know what it is with the surfeit of Jacks of Spades. Either the people for whom the samples are intended really like or really dislike Jacks of Spades; I don't know which.
It's OK, there aren't any more of these for sale, so you're spared further ramblings for the moment.
11:26am on Wednesday, 18th December, 2024:
Weird
My wife has a can of fizzy drink on Saturdays, but she only drinks half of it. She drinks the rest on the following Sunday. To stop the drink from going flat in the meantime (and to prevent insects from flying in), I bought her some silicone caps to put on them. They don't do much for the flatness, but they do stop my wife from swallowing wandering wasps.
We went out for lunch this Sunday, so the cap stayed on the drink until Monday. This is something that has happened before, there's nothing unusual about it. However, it's the first time it's happened when my wife has been drinking Tango Mango (or maybe it's Mango Tango). Here's what greeted us on Monday morning:
It looks as if the seal from the cap was very good, preventing gases from getting in or out. The gas in the can seems to have been reabsorbed into the Tango, such that it created a lower-than-atmospheric pressure inside the can. This resulting in a compressing effect from the outside, leaving us with a strange, hexagonal can.
The Tango was still pretty well flat when my wife drank it, though.
9:14am on Tuesday, 17th December, 2024:
Weird
Eating food that's looking at you is distracting.
It's also disturbing when two halves of what should be the same egg yolk are different colours. Still, I ate it, it tasted nice, and I'm still alive.
4:39pm on Monday, 16th December, 2024:
Anecdote
After having my tooth extracted, my dentist (or rather the expensive dental surgeon he got to do the extraction) asked if I wanted it replaced by an implant. I said yes, so he sent me to a private company to get my jaw 3D-scanned. It cost £325. They do 20 of these a day, so I put it to the receptionist that it was quite lucrative. She told me that I had the Rolls Royce scan and most people only pay half as much "because they have their dental work done in Turkey".
Anyway, as a result of the scan the dentist found that in addition to the implant I wanted, I needed two implants in the top right of my jaw (necessatating the raising of my sinus membrane), two extractions and the removal of my bridge to be replaced by another bridge built on an implant. Total cost: £14,000.
The NHS isn't going to pay for any of that as none of it is essential.
Because it's not essential, I therefore said I'd managed without any teeth at the back at the top for 40 years so could hold out a while longer. The teeth that need pulling can wait until they actually hurt, as it turns out they've needed pulling for a couple of decades but haven't actually caused any problems. The tooth under the bridge that's decaying does need sorting, but he's going to try to do it by drilling through the bridge and attacking the root that way, rather than taking the bridge off straight away; he'll only do that if the attempted through-bridge fix doesn't work.
I don't know how much this will cost, but I do know it will be a considerable amount less than £14,000.
9:28am on Sunday, 15th December, 2024:
Weird
If you're planning to become famous, wear your hair like this so that pigeons can't sit on your statue's head.
12:53pm on Saturday, 14th December, 2024:
Weird
I came across this pub when I was in the beautiful village of Nerja in October.
So Irish rugby, but British football.
I particularly like the apostrophe in Leeds.
11:36am on Friday, 13th December, 2024:
Anecdote
7:28am on Thursday, 12th December, 2024:
Weird
This is Essex University's passive-aggressive way of telling students to take what drugs they want to take before they come to the student union nightclub.
6:30am on Wednesday, 11th December, 2024:
Weird
Well this is an honest sign.
In most tower blocks, they a're indeed the same.
8:59am on Tuesday, 10th December, 2024:
Anecdote
Some years ago, in an effort to boost the department's profile, a number of posters were put up (behind glass) to showcase our research. Despite being very out of date, they haven't been taken down. This is the one on corridor 4BB, where my office is:
The fresh-faced PhD student there graduated and became a member of staff. She was promoted to senior lecturer and then professor, running the university's Institute for Analytics and Data Science. She then became Head of School, before rising to Executive Dean of the Faculty of Science and Health. She's now our acting Vice Chancellor.
We might need to update the poster.
11:10am on Monday, 9th December, 2024:
Anecdote
I bought some more antique playing cards.
These are ... different. The number in the top-right corner is because they're samples (so presumably weren't subject to tax). They're in amazing condition, because they've never been played with. I don't have a full pack, but I do have:
8 Jacks of Hearts
2 Jacks of Clubs
5 Jacks of Diamonds
31 Jacks of Spades
11 Queens of Spades
3 Kings of Spades
I have no idea who manufactured these and only a vague idea when.
I was hoping to identify them from the patterns on the back, as one on Kings are different to the others so I have two to look for; I didn't have any luck, though. The closest I could find were Reynolds patterns, but they clearly weren't the same patterns.
Looking at the faces, the nearest match is the cut used by Antoine van Genechten, a Belgian manufacturer. Again, there are differences, but the expressions are similar (especially on the Kings).
The colouring of clothes varied between manufacturers and within manufacturers, so they're not much to go on. The most striking difference to the norm for these cards is the King's lower-left corner: there's a white triangle there that would normally be red, or at least red-striped. I don't know what's going on there.
The cards are square-cornered, full-length and unturned. This would normally date them as pre-1870, but there are complications. Single-figure court cards had largely been phased out by 1870 in the UK, but the Belgian manufacturers kept making them into the 1900s (usually under the "great mogul" brand used by many manufacturers on the grounds that it was popular and a trademark claim on the name had failed). Unturned cards (where there are pips top-right on some cards, such as the Queen of Spades) came out earlier in Belgium, but UK manufacturers had made the switch-over by 1870. Round corners came in in the late 1870s. Backs with fancy patterns on them came in in the 1840s and were widespread by the 1860s.
Overall, then, these are probably around 1870-1880, but could be as early as 1850 or as late as 1900. I'm very pleased with them!
That said, quite what I'm going to do with 31 Jacks of Spades I've yet to decide.
Referenced by 2132.
8:58am on Sunday, 8th December, 2024:
Weird
My belief that the Royal Automobile Club can fix roadside problems with my car has taken a knock.
9:35am on Saturday, 7th December, 2024:
Weird
I saw these in a shop yesterday. Other than the fact they cost about £18 more than what I'd have considered expensive, they have an odd colour scheme.
Rudolf the red-nosed Santa?
I know that pre-Coca Cola, Father Christmas had many coats in different colours, but if you only have red and white to work with then I'd have thought that red for the clothes would have sold more ornaments than red for the nose.
That said, my wife wanted a purple robin, so my understanding of marketing principles may be out of date.
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Copyright © 2024 Richard Bartle (richard@mud.co.uk).