Monthly Archives: April 2012


Stephen Irvine, 26 April 2012 Having spent many a recent night sleepless and cowering in fear under my blanket, the slightest hint of a snore or any kind of disturbance answered ten-fold with elbow, fist or knee by my beloved lady-friend, I realised this weekend that it was high time I started to fight back. Tired of being a trembling chicken but not really having the […]

A Storm in a Tea Cup


Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 21 April – 27 April 2012   According to the BBC’s QI, a swarm of gnats is called a “ghost”. In addition, the word ‘lemur’ means ‘ghost’. It was coined by the Swedish botanist Carl Linnaeus (1707-78) from the Latin, Lemures: ‘the shades of the departed’. The Perthshire village of Dull is attempting to forge civic links with the Oregan town of Boring. […]



What is London’s tallest column? My first thought was Nelson’s Column – it is certainly the most prominent of London’s vertiginous monuments. Nope – at just over 169 ft tall, it doesn’t even come close. Okay, then – what its plainer, thicker cousin further along the Mall. The Duke of York’s Column? Getting colder – this plain lump of a monument is just over 137 ft tall […]

Better to preserve the memory of this dreadful visitation


The envelope landed on the floor with a distinct slap. Postmarked with a ‘London Elects’ logo, my wodge of election material for this year’s Mayoral and Assembly elections had arrived. London has taken the sensible and environmentally sound approach of consolidating candidate mailshots into a single pamphlet. Each of the seven candidates gets two sides to spell out their message and doorsteps throughout the capital are […]

A right turn for European politics?



If something happens very infrequently you may here it referred to as being ‘once in a blue moon’. In Lancashire, ‘appen tha’ll say ‘once in a Preston Guild’. The Preston Guild is celebrated enough to become part of the language but celebrated so infrequently to become a byword for rare events. So what is the Preston Guild? And why is celebrated only once every twenty years? […]

Once in a Preston Guild


The Church of the Holy Trinity in Long Melford, Suffolk, is one of the most celebrated ecclesiastical buildings in the country, dominating its host village and its 3,675 residents. It is a perfect example of the gothic perpendicular style and, in proportions, would be better suited to a cathedral or minster. Its establishment, size and splendour is a surviving testament to a single product – wool. […]

Sheep and the dimensions of the iPad



Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 14 April – 20 April 2012  John Adams, the second President of the United States, had a dog called Satan. Luxury clothing retailer Aquascutum has just gone into administration. Its name is a portmanteau of the Latin words ‘aqua’ and ‘scutum’ and translates as ‘water shield’, and was adopted after its founder discovered a process for waterproofing wool. The Eiffel Tower was […]


Stephen Irvine, 19 April 2012 After the morning’s sun had teased me from my chamber this week, the afternoon skies suddenly blackened like a bruise on the fragile skin of the atmosphere, the violence visited there inflicted by the fist of God almighty himself, his omnipotence terrifyingly displayed in the suddenness of the darkening. With hail now drumming on my cranium I had to abandon the […]

Beware the Four Horsemen



Royal sobriquets are often colourful, grandiose or emotive – Ivan the Terrible, Bloody Mary, Good Queen Bess, the Sun King or Suleiman the Magnificent. Some are obscure – William the Silent, the Universal Spider (for Louis XI of France) or John Soft-Sword. But few are as dull as Henry VII – the accountant king. It is true that the founder of the Tudor dynasty earned some […]

Henry the Accountant – was there more to Henry VII?


It had a cast lifted from a Gilbert and Sullivan opera and a plot that would shame a penny dreadful. It is a quintessentially Victorian story, featuring a shadowy, manipulative and evil Chinese mandarin, incompetent natives, an aristocrat dispensing magnanimous British justice and his frail, delicate English wife. And all set against the explosive and exotic backdrop of the Opium Wars and the booming new Crown […]

Lord Bowring and the Great Bakery Incident



Who was Britain’s greatest ever foe? The contest, run by the National Army Museum, lends itself to controversy and debate. And that is exactly what the museum encouraged by hosting a day long event with presentations on behlf of five leading contendors followed by questions, discussion and a secret ballot.     The list was narrowed down from a long list of twenty to the top five by a […]

Britain’s fiercest of foes


It was the dawn of a new age for Britain’s steam-powered trains. After years of neglect and underinvestment, the railways would be revitalised and the country would regain its position stoking the furnace of innovation and enterprise. Thousands of brand new steam engines were ordered to haul Britain back into pole position. Over the next 12 years, 2,500 engines were produced in workshops across the country […]

Steaming into post-war Britain



According to Harry Nilsson, one is the loneliest number that you’ll ever do. How would he explain the increasing numbers of people who choose to live alone? Perhaps it is because, as he goes on to sing, two can be as bad as one. What started as a European and then western phenomena has now become a global demographic trend. Percentage of households with one occupant […]

Is one the loneliest number?


Vaguely Interesting Snippets | 6 April – 13 April 2012  Maundy Thursday commemorates the day of the Last Supper of Jesus Christ with the Apostles. Many people assert that the word “Maundy” comes from the command or “mandatum” by Christ at the Last Supper, to love one another. Others theorize that the English name “Maundy Thursday” arose from “maundsor baskets” or “maundy purses” of alms which […]



Stephen Irvine, 12 April 2012 The rain traced hurriedly down the grubby glass, a perpetual race between drops of all sizes as the contestants cut swathes through the grime, a display of randomness and disorder at once captivating and beautiful to the mind of the socially undernourished. This is the modern way it seems – I’m often to be found attempting to enjoy the child-like simplicity […]

Anyone Fancy a Brew?


It was a dark, cloud-crushed Bank Holiday Monday. A menacing, black thunderhead clung to the horizon, trailing gloomy layers of rain-heavy cloud. Then it started to rain. Soon thick bouncing blobs of water filled the sky as if someone had sliced open those oppressive, pregnant clouds. Small streams began to form in the gutters, water rushed over the paths and into rapidly overfilling drains. I was […]

Water, water everywhere – but not enough to drink?



It was a vast civil engineering programme that diverted the resources of the nation. At fifteen sites across the country, from Durham in the north to Chichester in the south, Norwich in the east to Hereford in the west, thousands of men laboured to create marvels that would amaze their contemporaries. Their creations would become instant landmarks, the centre of civic pride in their local areas and […]

Statements in stone – England’s Norman cathedrals


In its uniquely twisted ideology, the National Socialist Party of Germany (NASDP or Nazi) presented itself as the natural champion of traditional morality. It rewarded and honoured mothers who had strengthened the fatherland by bearing prodigious broods. It supported wholesome exercise and outdoor activities through its ‘Kraft durch Freude’ (Strength through Joy) leisure organization. Indeed, the Nazi’s original 25-point programme made their position clear: “21.      The […]

March of the Nazi’s Olympic prostitutes