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Christmas: Illustrated London News
"What I Saw in the Fire" - Albert CrowquillMy very best wishes of the season to all readers of JSBlog.I was interested to find that the Internet Archive has full sets of The Illustrated London News for...
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Bracing start
The variability of a maritime climate! In contrast to the picture-postcard Topsham dawn of 1st January 2013 (see Bright start) 2014 had a blustery start with the river brown with sediment, the Exe...
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Spring tide
If you're in the UK, you'll be aware of the storm and flood warnings for the south-west over the last few days. For whatever reason, Topsham got off lightly; the weather was dry and calm overnight, so...
View ArticleGrammatical iconoclasm
Some pleasant bits of grammatical iconoclasm I just ran into:Firstly, on Language Log - The English passive: an apology - the linguistics professor Geoffrey K Pullum has posted a link to his new paper,...
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"Old Jervie"
John Ptak's blog Ptak Science Books category - "History of Blank, Missing and Empty Things" - is proving surprisingly applicable. A post by Dave Burnes in the Gosport Memories Facebook group reminded...
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The making of Gosport Park
View Larger MapI'm always fascinated by the landscape stories that it's possible to unearth using readily available sources. Yesterday a question was raised in the Gosport Memories group in Facebook...
View ArticleTE Brown and Manx Dialect
Mark Liberman's Language Log post More bee science (which comments on a news story's mistaken description of worker bees as drones) reminded me of a scrap of verse I remember from way back.What's the...
View ArticleFor Felix
This morning I had news of the death of Felix Grant, my colleague and friend of some 25 years. It wasn't radically unexpected - he told me about his health problems on our last meeting - but that makes...
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Morning on the estuary
The weather lately has been variable: a lot of overcast days and rain, but with stunningly vivid mornings and evenings. I took these this morning at 9, before the sun had come round sufficiently to...
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Wonders of the Isle of Wight: growth of a meme
Another image from the pleasant booklet, c.1910, Isle of Wight: Forty-one camera studies of the nooks & crannies, bays & chines of the garden isle, produced by the Photochrom Company of London...
View ArticleA Glass of Water: the horrors of Clapham Junction
I just posted to the A Wren-like Note weblog one of Maxwell Gray's first story sales, A Glass of Water, which originally appeared in One and All, a weekly periodical sold in railway stations, around...
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"It was a dark and stormy night"
The UnderwayA combination of spring tide, low pressure, and strong onshore wind brought unusually high river level this evening, with waves breaking over the Underway below Topsham church, and flooding...
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The morning after
Follow-up to "It was a dark and stormy night": I went out for a walk 8.30-9ish. There wasn't anything spectacular in the way of aftermath from last night's storm, but the wind and river were still...
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Goat Walk damage
Further to the previous two posts: we took a walk this afternoon to have a look at the state of the Goat Walk, the concreted riverside path at the southern tip of Topsham. This morning with the tide up...
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Bright and Miss Follett: a Topsham courtship
Richard Bright (from Medical Portrait Gallery)Browsing for history of the Goat Walk yesterday, I ran into a Topsham connection I never knew: the courtship of Richard Bright and Eliza Follett.Richard...
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Updates
An update to the recent post about a now-demolished Hampshire mansion: a correspondent has kindly sent me a good-quality photo. See the addendum to Crofton House, Titchfield.There's also an update to...
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Mystery Devon images
This is purely a feeder for a post at the Devon History Society website, but I thought it would be of interest to local readers. Philip Willis sent the DHS some interesting images from a set of glass...
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Ibong Adarna: Google Mistranslate
from Project Gutenberg Tagalog editionIbong Adarna is the title of a massively popular epic fantasy in the mythology and culture of the Philippines; it originally went under the snappy title of Corrido...
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To Riversmeet: "Your care about your banks infers a fear"
View Larger MapIt's always interesting to visit new places, and sometimes they're only a stone's throw from familiar ones. Yesterday was a clear and bright afternoon, and I wandered out to take another...
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The Three Old Maids of Lee
This is Old Maid's Cottage, Lee, near Ilfracombe - subject of a large number of historical postcards - which turned up as one of the Mystery Devon images locations in a recent Devon History Society...
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