Heritage things:

This year's English Heritage blue plaques to include the 1888 Matchgirls' Strike, the Ayahs' Home in Hackney, and a pioneer of humane psychiatric care, Dr John Conolly and the Hanwell Asylum.

Campaigners are celebrating a victory in the battle for public access to the countryside, after the government agreed to cancel a deadline to ( Read more... )

Over the years, my dearios, I have, it would seem, gained sufficient esteem over various fields with no particular association with one another that I have been asked to be on panels adjudicating awards. (Will concede that there was nothing there approximating e.g. the Nobel or the Booker.)

(I am still wondering what happened to the one that made, ( Read more... )

Houseplant of the week: blue candle cactus.
Huh: if your woodshed is currently lacking in something nasty... la patronne raccommande.
'Nicknamed the ‘booby cactus’': you have got to be kidding me. This rare and very strangely shaped cactus stands out from the rest, thanks to its “scientific experiment gone wrong” appearance and its long mouthful of ( Read more... )

Okay, I will concede that AITA reveals previously unplumbed Things In Woodsheds.... that I think might boggle even Aunt Ada Doom.
But honestly, this one. He asked me if him and his girlfriend could use my house to give birth at. I didn't even know what he was getting at at first but he explained to me that their apartment doesn't have a bathtub, is ( Read more... )

On another paw, we have historically-attested evidence that people in The Past did it, though not quite for the same reasons...
'Soaking', which is allegedly something that young Mormons do so that they can have sex but not actual sex that they'd have to admit to? (Okay, am not entirely up in the spiritual practices of the LDS.)
Anyway, what it is ( Read more... )

- I mean, it's already a horrible cruel windup if that's all it is: Girlfriend proposes to undertake a 'joke wedding' with boyfriend's bestie (who is gay, it transpires somewhere in the comments): However the marriage itself will be real. The wedding will be a joke and there are no feelings involved I trust that, and I’ve been asked to be best man ( Read more... )

I looked at this and was going: and this is a desirable selling point???
Homes for sale near a football stadium - in pictures
And they all look great, but the lovely pictures exclude crowds of footie fans...
Living in an adjacent area to one of these, our evening travel plans, in the days when, in yesteryears gone by when we went out on Saturday ( Read more... )

Meanwhile: on perhaps same old, same old themes:
Okay, I dissent a little from the 'forgotten' in the title here when one discovers in the text that there are several biographies of her and she was involved with a number of famous names and presumably figures in theirs, but 'erased' in the history of this particular tarot desk, yeah: Meet the ( Read more... )

Goodness knows one gets some very weird people rather tangentially connected to the world of academe following one via academia.edu, but today there was somebody in W Africa, who appears to be based at a real institution, but also to be touting a SECRET OCCULT ORGANISATION FOR WEALTH AND POWER WITHOUT NO HUMAN KILLINGS. Hmmmm.
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In more srs ( Read more... )

Some weeks ago I had a text from my GP practice saying there was a flu vaccination session for Ye Olds at a time that I didn't find terribly convenient, and I thought, well, they are probably going to do more of these -
- and then they didn't, which may have been down to issues around vaccine supplies I suppose.
And a little while later I looked ( Read more... )