James Agate tells the story of a generous but punctilious host, one of whose guests arrived thirty minutes late for a luncheon party. Full of contrition she (of course) explained that she had stopped to buy a chandelier.
Her host replied that he once knew someone who had bought a chandelier after lunch. For my part I have found it inadvisable to go shopping after lunch. Even going blogging is not easy. Twice I planned to walk south of the river to take some photographs but one drink led to another and now I will rely on other people’s photography.
London, a big and cosmopolitan city, has its fair share of people with curious obsessions; the Irish Peers’ Association, for example and The Stretcher Railing Society. There are parallels with life today. Now there are shortages of PPE, ventilators etc. At the outbreak of war the government thought there wouldn’t be enough stretchers to carry casualties. They made too many but at the end of the war the stretchers found a new purpose as railings. It’s splendid that they should be preserved as a small memorial of the Blitz and without this laudable Society they would be destroyed.
As a descendant of Admiral don José Mendoza y Rios, an inspiration for Patrick O’Brian’s Stephen Maturin, I have a diluted strain of mathematical curiosity and yesterday I found a perfect number.
There are 2,120 comments posted here; subtract the ones posted by me, 530, there are 1,590. Yesterday’s post was the 1,590th; “prime”, as Jack Aubrey might say. Other bloggers may reap a bigger harvest but none a richer one that fertilises this website with wit and wisdom, much better than my wittering. The first comment made almost five years ago exemplifies this.
I checked your website to see if you had written more since my last visit and you have. I particularly liked the telephone one – v reminiscent of my childhood. At one time, when my father was head of the Atomic Energy Authority and Eden was Prime Minister we had a scrambler telephone in rural Essex – very exciting at the time. This replaced Government messengers on green motorcycles with sidecars, who wore goggles and gauntlets – even better as there was something to see (and hear).“
Fascinating about the stretch railings! It’s the sort of thing Norman would have adored; I wonder if he knew about them. Thanks for your mention of them, and I love the prime number you found, as well.
What an excellent story. I would never have guessed it and it makes me feel much more charitable towards what I had usually thought of as rather ugly and cheap railings. (well I suppose they certainly were cheap; as re-purposed)
The post also explains part of your liking for Jack Aubrey which I concur with, though not having a similar family interest.