Diamonds in the sky
I don't normally enthuse about adverts, but this current Sony 4K "Ice Bubbles" one, showing soap bubbles freezing in cold air, is very pretty, though I'm not sure quite what to make of it.The making-of...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Professor Boys' Rainbow Cup and other marvels
More on bubbles... A recent post at Ptak Science Books - Bubble Aeronautics - put me in mind of a book from childhood: RM Abraham's Easy-to-do entertainments and diversions: With cards, string, coins,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Soap film photographs #1
Further to the previous post - Professor Boys' Rainbow Cup and other marvels - this evening I made a trial attempt at photographing soap films. This was just using the usual Canon Ixus pocket camera,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Banish embarrassing moypish!
karrimor.com, retrieved 22/12/2014Department of inexplicable errors: the mysterious "moypish" that Karrimor X lite Windproof Running Tights protect you from.Spotted by 'Hypo' on Yahoo! Answers, this...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The Statue in the Block
A nice piece of Christmas Eve Gothic from Maxwell Gray's 1893 The Last Sentence. In this episode from the novel, the protagonist - the respected barrister Cecil Marlowe - isn't much enjoying a jolly...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Clik here to view.
Getting well in Bournemouth
Horace Dobell's 1886 The Medical Aspects of Bournemouth and its Surroundings must win some kind of prize for a location account whose illustrations make the reader least likely to want togo there. They...
View ArticleClik here to view.
River light
Pardon the rather hackneyed scenery shots ... but the last couple of days have seen the bright, crisp, and calm high-pressure weather that brings out the Exe at Topsham at its most photogenic.I'd have...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The thankful old lady of Topsham
While skimming topographical references, I ran into Elizabeth Jane Brabazon's Exmouth & its Environs, an 1866 travel account which takes a side-excursion to Topsham that wasn't entirely to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
An Isle of Wight New Year
I've posted this previously at A Wren-like Note, but I very much like Maxwell Gray's atmospheric description of a New Year party in an Isle of Wight village in the 1860s. Best wishes for the New Year...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Ordnance Survey Maps - Six-inch England and Wales, 1842-1952
Cross-posted, with a bit of editing, from the Devon History Society: this extremely good resource is worth checking out if you're interested in historical / geographical research for the UK: the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Besley's Views in Devonshire #1
I just ran into another nice collection of topographical prints: Henry Besley's Exeter-published Views in Devonshire (c. 1861). This came about through seeing an interesting print in an antique shop -...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Besley's Views in Devonshire #2
Further to Besley's Views in Devonshire #1, here's the second batch of topographic images from Henry Besley's print album Views in Devonshire (c. 1861). These start in Plymouth, then head north to the...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Shell Cove - development?
I don't normally gripe about planning issues, but this one has historical / topographical interest. The January 9th Exeter Express & Echo carried the story Storm-hit Dawlish line 'threatened' by...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Major General Chermside's misadventures in Shaldon
Some time in the 1870s, Major General Henry Lowther Chermside, CB, retired to Shaldon, the Devon estuary-side village opposite Teignmouth; he didn't enjoy the experience. The result was these two...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Labrador Bay and its Tea Gardens
Major General Chermside's reference to "Big luscious strawberries and cream ... sold at Labradore [sic]" reminded me to pick up a loose thread from a walk in August 2013 (see Ice cold in Shaldon) and...
View ArticleClik here to view.
The South Devon Coast: #1 of 3
Expanding on a source from the previous post: The South Devon Coast (Charles G Harper, London: Chapman & Hall, 1907) is a pleasant travelogue illustrated with around 70 line drawings by the author,...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Branscombe: "curious rather than beautiful" petrifactions
The South Devon Coast by Charles G Harper mentions an interesting phenomenon I'd not heard of previously: the formation of petrified moss in the outflow of cliff springs near Branscombe. This led to an...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Stiffening fingers (more on John Petty)
If you want to read the literary profile equivalent of listening to Leonard Cohen songs, I just found another article on the depressing life of the Black Country writer John Petty (1919-1973). This one...
View ArticleClik here to view.
Petty and Barker on stately homes
Further to the previous revisit to the outcast Black Country writer John Petty, I found a good example of his Angry Old Working-Class Man style: his extremely hostile review of the Duke of Bedford's...
View Article