Those ancient Peruvians were proper cautions. According to National Geographic, some of them worshipped a spider god. Hmm. As I so often ask myself, what would Atahualpa do?

More evidence – as if it were needed! – of the overlooked rise in Aztec fundamentalism. According to the Guardian, newly released Ministry of Defence files include a document showing that a person was “contacted by aliens” descended from “legendary feathered serpents from ancient Peru“. People, be on your guard!

 

The peculiar forces of devastation induced by modern city life have only entered the world lately; and no existing terms of language known to me are enough to describe the forms of filth, and modes of ruin, that varied themselves along the course of Croxsted Lane. The fields on each side of it are now mostly dug up for building, or cut through into gaunt corners and nooks of blind ground by the wild crossings and concurrencies of three railroads. Half a dozen handfuls of new cottages, with Doric doors, are dropped about here and there among the gashed ground: the lane itself, now entirely grassless, is a deep-rutted, heavy-hillocked cart-road, diverging gatelessly into various brick-fields or pieces of  waste; and bordered on each side by heaps of – Hades only knows what! – mixed dust of every unclean thing that can crumble in drought, and mildew of every unclean thing that can rot or rust in damp: ashes and rags, beer-bottles and old shoes, battered pans, smashed crockery, shreds of nameless clothes, door-sweepings, floor-sweepings, kitchen garbage, back-garden sewage, old iron, rotten timber jagged with out-torn nails, cigar-ends, pipe-bowls, cinders, bones, and ordure, indescribable; and, variously kneaded into, sticking to, or fluttering foully here and there over all these, – remnants broadcast, of every manner of newspaper, advertisement or big-lettered bill, festering and flaunting out their last publicity in the pits of stinking dust and mortal slime.

John Ruskin, from Fiction : Fair And Foul, 1880

 

“If there is one thing more hateful than another, it is being told what to admire and having objects pointed out to one with a stick.” – Francis Kilvert

Dear Mr. Key, writes Mick Wiggins from across the pond, Just like a recent listener’s account of the Hooting Yard narrative voice taking over the helm whilst sightseeing, I similarly experienced the same while visiting the Maritime Museum in Astoria, Oregon, just this last weekend.  The museum, located at the mouth of the once mighty Columbia River, open to Cape Disappointment and just down the way from Dismal Nitch, was a very good museum, with many arcane and wonderous accounts of the famous “Graveyard of the Pacific”.  Of course it was when I found myself studying a fantastic display of pudding fenders that the Hooting Yard Effect commandeered my own internal voice, and it really was a value-added treat. It is too bad you cannot capitalize on this effect, but perhaps you should look in to it. At any rate, thank you for the many hours of listening pleasure.

I have replied to Mr Wiggins asking him to tell us more about pudding fenders, so watch this space.

It is imperative that I draw your attention to the latest post on the splendid blog According To The Ninth, “the world as seen through the clarifying lens of the 9th Edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1875-1889)”.  As you can gather from the illustration, the topic is fiendish experiments upon the brains of birds. Well, upon the brains of pigeons, to be specific. You may chuckle, or you may vomit, but you will almost certainly learn something you did not know before.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Following yesterday’s note about three-letter place names, I feel I must enthuse about, and recommend, the latest addition to the groaning bookshelves at Haemoglobin Towers. I have only just started to read McKie’s Gazetteer : A Local History Of Britain, and am smitten (as I knew I would be). David McKie’s book is not a comprehensive guide, but a series of essays about places that have caught his interest for one reason or another. The piece on Aberdeen, for example, is largely devoted to a potted biography of Alexander Cruden, the self-styled “Alexander The Corrector”, compiler of one of the most demented works of scholarship ever fashioned, the Complete Concordance To The Holy Scriptures.

I clapped my hands in glee to discover that Jaywick had not escaped McKie’s attention. Though he does not mention the day the cows came visiting, he is a fount of information on that ill-starred seaside resort, including the fact that it was founded by a man whose nickname was Foff.

If you need any further persuading to buy this excellent book, bear in mind that David McKie used to write the Smallweed and McElsewhere columns in the Guardian, where, more than once, he made mention of Hooting Yard. Clearly a very sensible man.

The splendid Diamond Geezer has a useful list of three-letter UK place names:

Alt, Ash, Ayr, Bix, Bow, Box, Cwm, Dun, Elm, Ely, Esh, Eye, Foy, Ham, Hay, Hoe, Hoo, Hoy, Ide, Kea, Kew, Kyo, Lea, Lee, Lew, Lye, Moy, Old, Ord, Ore, Raw, Rhu, Rye, Uig, Usk, Urr, Van, Wem, Wix, Wye. 

If ever there was a society I wanted to join, it would be the Slovenian Association For The Recognition Of Sauté Potatoes With Onions As A Main Dish. Over at Mustard Plaster, Miss Hathorn helpfully provides the words to the official anthem.

Further to the thrilling item about the Dobsonmeter, the admirable Richard Carter has begun posting excerpts from an 1882 book entitled Popular Scientific Recreations, Profusely Illustrated at the Friends Of Charles Darwin site. He begins with that most useful of innovations, the dog-powered sewing machine. More outlandish “recreations” are promised, so do make sure you keep an eye on the site in the coming weeks and months, indeed years.

Gosh! “Walsall is in the grip of a pet abandonment crisis”. The Crunch of Credit strikes again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Today is the 291^st birthday of Horace Walpole, as fine a letter-writer as ever lived. Walpole coined a number of words in his time, some of which are in general usage (serendipity) and others which damned well ought to be (bewolfenbuddlement).

“The whole secret of life is to be interested in one thing profoundly and in a thousand things well.”

According to today’s Guardian, back in 1964 an Israeli newspaper reported that the music of the Beatles included “yeah-yeah-yeah howls which are capable of striking dead a real beetle”. I am sure Yoko takes a very dim view of gratuitous cruelty to insects, and I look forward to the full-page advertisements she will surely be taking out in the world’s major newspapers to express her, and her bespectacled husband’s, devotion to our creepy-crawly friends.