Hair Today, Gone Tomorrow.

Briony has been getting some pictures of Malaysia and New Zealand out to take into school.  We haven't seen them for years.  Why don't I wear my hair like this any more?

Expect another extraordinary picture tomorrow, and a special guest banana.

Another Marc, not me.

I've been watching Atlantic Convoys on Channel 4 (Sundays, 8pm, available on 4OD).  It's a brilliant telling of the battle to keep Britain supplied during World War II, bringing home the dangers faced by merchant seamen in their struggle to bring essential supplies across the Atlantic, principally from packs of U-boats.  One of the great things about the programme's format is that they use lots of talking heads to recount their experiences and explain the history and naval strategy.

One of these talking heads is Dr Marc Milner, a Canadian Naval historian.  Now I'm sure what he was saying was very interesting and relevant but I couldn't help but be excited that he was called Marc (in England, there aren't that many of us).  I was also wholly distracted by his amazing beard. The luxuriance and shape of his grey naval beard is awe-inspiring.  I have seldom seen a richer, fuller beard.  It put me in mind of another abundant beard, possibly the most copious naval beard of all - that of Captain Haddock from the Tintin cartoons.  If Captain Haddock's beard were grey, he would look like Dr Marc Milner.
  

                              

He Strode Like A Colossus.

It would appear that I'm being annoyed by popular idioms this week.  I've just watched the first part of the BBC series, The Love of Money.  In it, the narrator describes Richard Fuld, the former CEO of Lehman Brothers, as having "strode like a colossus on Wall Street" before the collapse of his bank.  I know the origin of this phrase.  In  Julius Caesar, Shakespeare wrote:

Why, man, he doth bestride the narrow world
Like a Colossus, and we petty men
Walk under his huge legs and peep about
To find ourselves dishonourable graves.
Men at some time are masters of their fates:
The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves, that we are underlings.

Shakespeare writes that The Colossus is bestride the narrow world.  That's logical, the picture on the right depicts The Colossus of Rhodes  (one of the seven wonders of the ancient world) standing bestride the entrance to the harbour at Rhodes.

What the Colossus of Rhodes did not do, is stride.  The Colossus of Rhodes did not stride because it is a statue and cannot walk.  You can "stand as a still as a colossus"; you cannot "stride like a colossus".  You can have "stood, impassive, immobile as a colossus"; you cannot have "strode like a colossus".

Rant over, I'm going to go down the stairs like a dalek, and cook dinner like a hovercraft now.

How Strong Is Emile Heskey?

In commentary on the England  - Croatia match this evening, Clive Tyldesley stated that the magnificent Emile Heskey "...is as strong as an ox".  That sounds strong, I thought, but it doesn't really quantify Emile Heskey's strength.  Obviously Clive Tyldesley knows how strong an ox is, which is lovely for him.  That didn't really help me though.  Am I, an urban-dwelling 21st Century sports fan, supposed to know what this means?  Is knowledge of the strength of an ox something that most of the audience possess?

In order to discover how strong Emile Heskey is, I consulted the 1958 Encyclopedia Britannica.  I got sidetracked by owls for quite a while but once I got back to the task in hand I learned that Ox is, when used correctly, the Saxon name for male domestic cattle.  It is often used, less correctly, to include all bovine animals including oxen, bison and buffaloes.  I don't know if Clive Tyldesley was using the word ox correctly or incorrectly, and I don't know how strong any of these animals are either, so this was not helpful.  

I decided to try a more contemporary approach and asked the internet how strong an ox is.  Yahoo Answers yielded these responses:


"id say weaker than an ox stronger than a turkey larger than a microwave lives in the ocean"


"cool question, dunno pretty strong i imagine."


"ermmmm about as strong as.......erm an ox? haha this is what u think about in ur spare time? just take it as its strong"


This was voted to be the best answer:


"Strong enough to kill you i hope"

I found this more entertaining than the 1958 Encyclopedia Britannica, though less informative.  Clearly researching the strength of an ox was going to get me nowhere.  I know as little about how strong Emile Heskey is than when I started.  What I have learned is that the soft plumage of the owl is the key to their hunting success (it makes their flight almost silent) and that people on the internet are really weird and can't punctuate.

If you know how strong an ox is, please let me know via the comments section.

Don't Scare The Horses.

This is the Horsey Horseless. Powered by the then-new internal combustion engine, it's a striking design from the early days of motoring. You're probably wondering why it's called the Horsey Horseless, after all, it appears to have a horse attached to the front of it.

You may be surprised to learn that it is not a horse. It's a wooden representation of a horse and was placed there to render the vehicle less terrifying to real horses. The inventor (Uriah Smith of Battle Creek, Michigan) seems to have worked out something really fundamental here. Obviously a horse would be calmed by seeing the front half of one of its own species affixed to the front of a motor vehicle; Which of us - encountering the severed top half of a human on the bonnet of a Volkswagen Passat - wouldn't be soothed?

The horses head does not merely calm horses. It is hollow, and serves a dual purpose as the vehicle's petrol tank. An excellent use of available space and a great safety feature, drastically reducing the risk of explosions when reversing.

I can't imagine why it never caught on.

Summer In York

Today was a fairly typical summer day. Here's some footage that I shot this afternoon.

Things to do with empty bottles.

The recycling bin goes out again on Thursday. Or perhaps we should do something like this instead.