I Miss Lockdown

I miss lockdown.

For a whole year there were only three of us (folk whose interweb was so bad we couldn't work from home) in a four-storey office block.

We had a floor each, with our own kitchen, loos and shower and on sunny days (of which there were a lot that year), PB, our Norwich chief partner (on the right above) would use the office entertainment account to lay on picnics for us. After all, we certainly couldn't entertain anyone else.

Any of the work from home brigade who tested negative for Covid (to a maximum of three to keep to the guidelines the government ignored on a daily basis) could come along to these socially-distanced picnics on the balcony overlooking the river; that's Luke and Adrian joining us in the picture above.

l-r: PB's son, Lucy the labrador, (Teal is lurking under PB's chair, on the lookout for any opportunity to steal people's food), PB, Old Dive, Jill and Adrian.

PB and me being seafoodies, every picnic involved a combination of oysters, lobster or crab, salmon and mussels, plus lots of antipasti and fresh bread and cakes from the bakery on the corner. Oh, and plenty of beer, wine and hand-sanitizer.

 

In the evenings, PB had his drum kit set up in Reception and I had an amp and guitar; Rob the Structural Engineer would bring along his bass and we'd have long, socially-distanced jam sessions. 

Just as well the surrounding office buildings were deserted as Jill said she could hear us a few hundred yards away on Station Bridge.

Somebody better kick-start the next pandemic soon because I'm getting picnic withdrawal symptoms.

Wednesday Window - Make Up Your Mind

 Decorated Gothic today … Three examples of which sit together in the photo above,

There were three phases of Gothic window design in Plantagenet England, coming after the Romanesque Saxo-Norman style: first up was Early English Gothic (a very simple lancet arch) and last up was Perpendicular Gothic (huge, and not particularly subtle), which I'll probably post at some time.

In between came the most decorative of the three, the (duh) "Decorated" Gothic style (pictured above).

Looks like the client for Howden Church above couldn't decide which pattern to use so had one of each made up. It's not uncommon to find this as stonemasons liked to show off and Decorated Gothic gave them plenty of opportunity.

Decorated Gothic involved lots of ogees, trefoils and quatrefoils in organic, plant-like swirly patterns, like the drawing above.

The Victorians tried to revive it with Victorian Gothick but got it wrong is just about every way, as the Victorians were wont to do with everything. It would cause me physical pain to post some of their atrocities but I'll probably do it anyway.

Toodle pip!

WTF Monday - How Governments Think

Continuing Wednesday's Comments-Fest: Asteroids and Aardvarks

Hokay, so …

Aardvarks - forty-five of 'em.

While I should have been working, I made a 3D aardvark on my pooter (2x1x1m plus tail and snout and weighing 50kg) and made forty-five of 'em snuggle up together. Speedway, you're gonna get me in so much trouble if I have to explain that one away.

It ended up an irregular sphere (with tails and snouts sticking out) around six metres in diameter (just over nineteen-and-a-half feet for those of you in the Colonies).

I checked the diameter against the average volume of forty-five aardvarks using 

Dia = ∛of6x(Volume/∏) … Mmmm … Pie,

and it turns out the asteroid that just missed us on Wednesday was five point five six metres in diameter (eighteen feet, three inches or thereabouts).

Not exactly an extinction level event but it might make a mess if it landed on an aardvark.

WTF Monday on a Wednesday - Aardvarks

 How many football pitches, Olympic-sized swimming pools, double-decker buses, Eiffel Towers and elephants are there in an area the size of Wales? Looks like NASA has come up with a new standard unit of measurement.

Wednesday Window

The return of Wednesday Window (whether you like it or not).

Here be the remains of Panxworth St.Peter's church tower, somewhat the worse for wear.

How Not to Name A Castle

I was tooling around in my local history this lunchtime and I came across the Beccles castle that once reared its battlements close to where Castle Hill and Castle Fish'n'Chips now stand.

I looked up the Listing for it and discovered its name …

Er … so pismire / pismere usually refers to ants and the stink of their formic acid, but it also has the meaning of a mire of piss, such as a farmyard slurry pit.

Either way, would you name your castle after it?

Me neither … eww.

Why on Earth Can't Builders Work Without Crappy Pop Radio?

Hokay … so we're outside the Castle keep right now, which is not really my territory, but Gabi's whizzy new glass atrium is too tall for the old staircase wall to the Bigod Tower (what has been for ages a dismal and dark corridor through to the main rotunda of the panopticon will soon become a tall and airy space with a glass roof supported on glass beams (yes, really), revealing the whole of the east wall of the keep for the first time in centuries).

Except it butts up against the Castle wall, so it's down to me to sort that one out. On the top detail, you can see the glass beams and glass roof sloping up to the Bigod Tower walls, but they're not high enough to support it at the intermediate level.

So, as the Bigod Tower is built of stone ashlar on a brick and flint-rubble base, I used the same construction to extend it upwards. I then had to come up with a semi-random coursing for setting out the stone ashlar blocks - fortunately they won't be coloured like that; the drawing was just for the stonemasons to put the right pieces in the right places.

This is the bit we're talking about; I've highlighted it in yellow. Just to the north of the new glass bridge.

So anyhoo … the stonemasons have cut the stone blocks, peeled back the lead from the Victorian stair roof (we'll be re-cladding that and putting a glass roof on it so people will look up in wonder at the keep wall and fall down the stairs) and installed their annoying pop radio. Sheesh! Next time I'm there I'll bring a shoulder-mounted ghetto-blaster and hit 'em with Beethoven's Fifth.

The wall is slowly going up, ready for the big yellow crane to lift massive megaton sheets of glass up from the moat, over the castle and down into the atrium with absolute precision … I'll be sure to be there for that one! Let's just hope their tinny little radio isn't playing Nick Lowe's "I Love The Sound Of Breaking Glass".

Home Improvements for the Historically Misinformed

Got a nice, damned-near thousand-year-old Saxo-Norman door, but want to cheer it up a bit?

BUNTING!

Works for me.

Meanwhile, in Book News …

I can imagine Petrea announcing the publication of Camelot and Vine like this had it been published in 1781. This from the Norwich Paper of that date.

The past is such a wonderful place to live.

New Collection of Prologues and Epilogues.

  This Day is Published, Price only 1 shilling.
(Embellished with an elegant Representation of Mr KING, speaking the Prologue to the New Comedy, called Dissipation, now performing at the Theatre-Royal in Drury-lane.) The New and Complete English Spouter; or, an Universal Key to Theatrical Knowledge,-- Containing a complete Collection of all the favourite and most esteemed Prologues and Epilogues, which have been written by the distinguished Wits, to accompany approved Tragedies, Comedies, Operas, Farces, Pantomimes, and other species of Theatrical Entertainment worthy of Notice; and spoken by the most celebrated Performers, at the Theatres Royal, Drury-lane, Covent-garden, Haymarket, and on other Stages (public and private) in different Parts of the Kingdom.

   Including a great Variety of Prologues and Epilogues composed on Purpose, and spoken occasionally at several respectable Sporting Clubs, and other Societies of Thespians, by Gentlemen in the Characters of Bucks, Bloods, Choice Spirits, Bravos, Fribbles, etc. Together with that celebrated Piece, called the Picture of a Playhouse; or Bucks have at ye All; and other valuable Pieces, not to be found in any other Collection. The whole interspersed with many Originals, and brought down to the present year, 1781. By Mr PALMER.
London: Printed for Alex. HOGG, No. 16 Paternoster-row, and sold by all other Booksellers in England. N.B. Be careful to ask for "The New English Spouter, by Mr PALMER;" this being the only Work of the Kind, which contains all the new Prologues and Epilogues. 

I love the word "fribbles" and shall drop it into conversations.

You can actually get this book - and its revised and enlarged reprints - but at the moment only on crappy "print on demand," so I'll wait for an original to pop up on Abe.

In the meantime, I highly recommend re-reading Camelot and Vine but in the style of "Bucks, Bloods, Choice Spirits, Bravos, Fribbles, etc."