Recently, North Korea have been busy puffing out their chests and threatening the wider world with destruction. No change there, then. King Jon-un, son of Kim Jong-il, has even less tact than his father,...
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This post is just portraits with 17th Century vibes. The moodiness and bleak affect of them always makes me feel happy somehow. If you don’t like the sound of that, move along. First...
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Here’s installment number three in my labour of love: the slow and steady trawl through the Dictionary of the Vulgar Tongue by the prolific Captain Grose. Grose was an English antiquary, draughtsman, and lexicographer and authored...
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The Octobass is a huge musical instrument. It’s shaped like a cello but it’s almost twice the size and, consequently, the tone is twice as deep. The lowest string is tuned a full...
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Here’s a nice bit of archaeology to start your day, and it’s fairly sinister, too. A portal called “Pluto’s Gate” — Ploutonion in Greek, Plutonium in Latin — has been found by a group...
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So we’re back with part two of my depth charge in to Captain Francis Grose‘s amazing publication from 1811, The Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue. Today we tackle the C words. If you missed the...
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The Dictionary Of The Vulgar Tongue was written in 1811 by Captain Francis Grose. He endeavored to capture all of the common expressions of the day, used by the lower echelons of society. Vulgar in this sense...
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The etymology of the word “beard” is more interesting than you might have expected. The modern English word “beard“ may have started off as “barthaz,” in Western Germanic language, which went on to...
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Recently, I found some photos of a Russian monastery on the lake island of Valaam, near St Petersburg. They are amazing. The monastery is known as the Valaam Monastery, and the lake is called Ladoga....
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Currys, we love them over here on our rainy little island. According to Gallup, one in four of us eat curry at least once a week. They’ve been part of us for quite...
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