Oh yes that one, the poultry and Mesopotamia...

Dear... you made my evening (je maakte mijn avond goed/ you made my evening "well"? or without "well") or better morning...here at the other side of the English Channel...

Kind regards from your friend Paul.

I wonder if the "host" threw a wobbly.  Normanhurst and Binky have had some problems signing in though one of them at least is back with us now, so welcome back if it's who I think it is.  Sticking with a G in your Res Hist name I see. Also you are weaving a mesh making us puzzle out your ID.

Well, if you check on the story of Lugulbanda, mesh forms an important element in the conflict between Enmerkar, lugal of Uruk, and the city of Aratta.

I've only heard very truncated versions of the story.  A mesh tree features in the tale.  But who needs fantasy novels when we have the ancient myths?

One of the things Uruk is called on to supply Aratta is corn (in return for Aratta's submission) but it must be supplied in nets. Lugulbanda (or Enmerkar in other recensions) damps the corn so that it sprouts and sticks together and does not fall out of the nets. Beer. anyone?

I obviously need a more detailed version of the story.

I've been looking online for versions of the "George" story.  I've said before in my experience at least a lot of English translations of myths from other languages are written in a dull sort of language.  Then a few months ago we were discussing on the board how things were lost in translation from primary sources (as in the medieval Latin, French, German, Spanish etc. etc. ones) and how much of our individual personalities we might bring to a translation even if we had the knowledge to read the primary sources in their original versions ourselves.

One article mentioned that the fact that the "George" story contained a flood story troubled some bible scholars at the time of the discovery (I guess that should really be rediscovery) of the story of "George".   Then I think stories of a flood in ancient times are not uncommon - I'm no expert on the history of the Australian peoples termed "aboriginal" but I seem to have some recollection of there being a flood in their folklore.  (I know I could look that up online - don't all shout at once!!!).

Glad to see ID back - nice to see some of the good old good ones coming back (old as in former visitors not as in antique visitors).  Not that I'm against good new good ones joining the board; it's nice to get some new contributors also.  I mentioned something about lookalikes a little while ago - of course Private Eye is much better at spotting them than I am (I don't buy Private Eye so I can only link to the lookalike pair; not the whole magazine).  I thought it was quite funny www.private-eye.co.uk/lookalikes

You  have to scroll down a bit to see the picture - it's POTUS and a forerunner of homo erectus.

There was a decent account of the "flood" tablet in the BBC "History of the world in 100 objects". Think the podcast is still available. Graves mentions the Greek version, the "Deucalion" flood legend in "I Claudius". iirc there is zero evidence for the Noah version in Jewish scripture prior to the captivity in Babylon, where it was prevalent

It's good to see you back, Gil, and ID too - when I don't know who holds precedence I use the alpabetic one.

At times there's been so little action within my spheres of interest, that the trebuchets almost gleamed, the woodwork and lethers were oiled, the screws and bolds were polished along with the knobs.

Is it okay to call Gilgamesh by his original name then or is it still George?  Is the girl Siruti well and I hope the "monsters" are okay.  I used some of the History of the World in 100 objects podcasts as dictations to practise my shorthand back in the day but I don't think I used the one about the flood tablet.  The podcast about the mechanical galleon (which I saw in real life at the British Museum) was one I used.

Edited to put "monsters" in quotation marks.  It's okay for G------- to call his offspring "monsters", jokingly I'm sure, but it's not really for me to do so.

OK, who's going to buy tickets?

Follows exactly the same route as the first one (????!!!!! Southampton to the bottom of the Atlantic ????!!!!)

Titanic II

Triceratops there are always superstitious ones...but there are also a lot, who want to challenge the fate (my translation of the Dutch: "het lot uitdagen"). I always went under the ladders...but first looked what happened above...making a reasoned calculation...

Kind regards from Paul.

Spending a few moments on Res His in "the wee small hours of the morning" because I was tired when I came in from the French conversation group yesterday though I'm planning to go back to bed shortly.  Co-incidentally I had been thinking about the superstition of not going under a ladder.  The story used to be that it was considered unlucky to break the triangle (between the ladder, the wall and the ground) because a triangle represented the Blessed Trinity.  I remember we discussed it at school and thought well one could be unlucky if one went under the ladder and somebody up the ladder above had a pot of paint and the paint fell on one.  When I was a child there were more old-fashioned buildings in my hometown than now and I can remember a ladder being placed which more or less covered the whole of the pavement.  One could have been unlucky avoiding the ladder and stepping into the road if a car came along at an inopportune moment.

With the triangle, I wonder if that is why some of the more superstitious people on YouTube - the ones who claim that all or most pop stars are in the "Illuminati" because they throw up pyramid signs sometimes - are thinking of the triangle when they mention the pyramid.  It's not unlikely that the pop stars throw up the pyramid shape for mischief because they know there are some people who will talk about it and it's a sort of publicity.

Travelling on the Titanic will probably be above my budget.  When I used to travel by train for work (and even now when I occasionally visit somewhere else by train) I have seen old-fashioned trains pass through the station.  I think they are for special trips for people.

Nielsen wrote:

It's good to see you back, Gil, and ID too - when I don't know who holds precedence I use the alpabetic one.

At times there's been so little action within my spheres of interest, that the trebuchets almost gleamed, the woodwork and lethers were oiled, the screws and bolds were polished along with the knobs.

Well, to be honest Nielsen the "action" has been fairly quiet on the board for some time; maybe people have been or holiday (or having trouble logging in) though things are picking up now.  Are you interested in military history (thinking of the mention of trebuchets?)?  I must admit I don't know a great deal about military tactics of the past (or the present).

Tim's posts about the pipeline made me (as I've mentioned previously) think of some "salt" bridges (bridges where brine was pumped from one end of town to the other).  I looked on the local history site (i.e. local to where I live) to see if there were any pictures of the said bridges but no luck.  I'd never thought of a special pipeline having to be built to supply and keep supplied the allied incursion into mainland Europe but of course it's a self-evident fact that the vehicles and planes could not bank on finding fuel on the go (and even tanker lorries would have to be topped up sometimes).

Actually, the "chant" (channel tankers) were far more important - "Pluto" really didn't come out of his kennel in time to help much. Nice card model at "Coastal Forces in Paper" website (can't post links yet.)

I'm sure the chants and Pluto both played a part.

I have found that there is someone who does roofing who lives down my road - tried to ring this a.m. no luck so I popped down and put a note through the door.  The worst that can happen is that the man might say no.  I've also been looking at absorbent materials online and had a look at some that are more usually used in clothing than roofing (bearing in mind I'm thinking of running, temporary repairs).  Anyway, the cookies on the computer decided that bearing in mind what I had been looking at to flash up an advert for "Tena Ladies"*!!  Mind you one of the combination of tablets I take every morning is a diuretic (the one to keep  my blood pressure down - I don't know if it's meant to be diuretic or that is a side effect of the pill).

* Tena Ladies are a sort of incontinence underwear for women.  I think I mentioned the time when I was "temping" when one of my work colleagues really didn't like me.  I was in my early 40s then and not taking any pills with an unfortunate side effect.  This lady also had an interest in a care/nursing home and one day she was unusually nice to me and asked would I like to read a couple of magazines.  I thought it would be something like Woman's Own or Woman's Weekly.  No, they were copies of "Incontinence News" - passive aggressive much?

From Twitter:

My grandfather saw the Titanic.
He told everybody that it was gonna sink and they ignored him,
but he just kept telling everyone over and over again that it was gonna sink.
He was eventually told to shut up, but he wouldn't,



and in the end he had to be removed from the cinema.

We know you're back Trike.  That is funny _ I have a silly sense of humour sometimes.  Anyway, somebody came to look at the roof and says he can do it not next Monday but the Monday afterwards.  He's given me a "pensioner" price.

Edit to say that "That" means the twitter entry that Trike has quoted.

Excuses, just entered the board, busy with research for Historum about the SS Burgundian state, a dream from Himmler and our Belgian Léon Degrelle (le beau Léon)
https://historum.com/threads/ww2-german-plans-for-annexations-in-northern-france.172207/

Kind regards from Paul.

Not sure how the residents of Pimlico would have taken that idea.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passport_to_Pimlico

ps - Would they have used a piece by Binchois, or perhaps Dufay, as their national anthem?

Passport to Pimlico was shown on TV in my younger days.  I seem to recall enjoying it.

Now, I'm puzzled.  I had to put the clock on my mobile phone back manually but when I switched on my computer it had updated automatically - is that due to the dreaded "cookies"?

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Passport to Pimlico was shown on TV in my younger days.  I seem to recall enjoying it.

Now, I'm puzzled.  I had to put the clock on my mobile phone back manually but when I switched on my computer it had updated automatically - is that due to the dreaded "cookies"?

The three films that came out together - Whisky Galore, Kind Hearts and Coronets, and Passport to Pimlico went a long way to establishing the "Ealing Comedy" brand.

The hour change is normally an option in the operating system btw. We used to have a problem 4 times a year at a company I worked at - the switchboard software (which provided the master time for all the office clocks) used to transition a week early in both cases.

I hadn't appreciated G that those 3 films all came out in the same year (1949). The 1940s were certainly a golden age for British cinema. A couple of years later came The Lavender Hill Mob which was compulsory viewing in our house if ever it was on when we were growing up. This was due to the fact that my dad was in it as an extra and it was always fun trying to spot him among the stalls at the Hendon Police College open day featured in a chase scene towards the end of the film.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Nielsen wrote:

It's good to see you back, Gil, and ID too - when I don't know who holds precedence I use the alpabetic one.

At times there's been so little action within my spheres of interest, that the trebuchets almost gleamed, the woodwork and lethers were oiled, the screws and bolds were polished along with the knobs.

...  Are you interested in military history (thinking of the mention of trebuchets?)?  I must admit I don't know a great deal about military tactics of the past (or the present). ...

Lady,

Apologies for not replying earlier to this re trebuchets, this goes waay back to the old pubs on the BBC boards, which occasionally were attempted invaded by outsider trolls who'd attempt to introduce seriousness into severe silliness.

It is still fondly remembered, at least by me, how Caro bravely stood as forward fire control observer when we were invaded by allotment gardeners of all things, who wanted to interrupt us.

Ah, in memory of that battle where serious fire were inflicted on advancing mole hills, et cetera. 
Let me have a cold one, as you know Absinthe make the hearts grow fonder, and as time passes the stories grow better.

Though I'm not sure that the hearts of these two in Degas's painting L'absinthe are growing fonder:



.... nevertheless I'll have a tot too to keep them company.

As I recall the trébuchet was also good for lobbing pickled gannets over the bar too.

LadyinRetirement wrote:

Nielsen wrote:

It's good to see you back, Gil, and ID too - when I don't know who holds precedence I use the alpabetic one.

At times there's been so little action within my spheres of interest, that the trebuchets almost gleamed, the woodwork and lethers were oiled, the screws and bolds were polished along with the knobs.

Well, to be honest Nielsen the "action" has been fairly quiet on the board for some time; maybe people have been or holiday (or having trouble logging in) though things are picking up now.  Are you interested in military history (thinking of the mention of trebuchets?)?  I must admit I don't know a great deal about military tactics of the past (or the present).

Tim's posts about the pipeline made me (as I've mentioned previously) think of some "salt" bridges (bridges where brine was pumped from one end of town to the other).  I looked on the local history site (i.e. local to where I live) to see if there were any pictures of the said bridges but no luck.  I'd never thought of a special pipeline having to be built to supply and keep supplied the allied incursion into mainland Europe but of course it's a self-evident fact that the vehicles and planes could not bank on finding fuel on the go (and even tanker lorries would have to be topped up sometimes).

Lady,

"Tim's posts about the pipeline made me (as I've mentioned previously) think of some "salt" bridges (bridges where brine was pumped from one end of town to the other).  I looked on the local history site (i.e. local to where I live) to see if there were any pictures of the said bridges but no luck."

"bridges where brine was pumped from one end of the town to the other"

It did me think at bridges along and above the streets in Moscow...I thought end the Seventies that it were central  haeting pipes while there came here and there steam out...
I wanted to find a photo of it...using all kind of terms on Google...very fast changing research terms...at the end Google didn't want to work anymore for me and stopped...it is not the first time...once Google asked me if I was a robot and I had to confirm that I was not...
But that is a search robot as Google in my opinion...if there is a lot of interest by many on a research term you come on top...but not common search terms don't appear in the first thousand pages...perhaps can Gil (GG) say something about it...at least I found something with "Moscow heating pipes"...
And because I saw the same pipes in Berlin after the fall of the Berlin Wall, I thought it were also heating pipes, but no...it were water pipes (hmm "water pipes" that's perhaps an odd word to describe them  )
https://www.bbc.com/news/av/magazine-24773752/berlin-s-pink-pipes-what-are-they

But again to the Moscow pipes...I am nearly sure to have seen them...above the streets...with "lijnwaad" (they translate with "linen") around it soaked in chalk...
Something like that, but these are seemingly more modern ones:


https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/District_heating


Kind regards from Paul.

I see the Chancellor is to announce a new 50 pence coin to mark Brexit. I wonder what it'll look like ... there are already quite a few suggestions doing the rounds:

       

      

The Brexit idiocy continues, I suppose the new coins are to go with the new blue passports?  Bread and circuses while the government tears the UK asunder over nothing but a party civil war.

It could get worse ...

In this thread - alone here? - the text on the coin or note might as well be, "Shit happens".

I'll get me coat, and do something else today.

Meles meles wrote:

It could get worse ...

Ah, Jacobean Grease-Smogg. The over bred and over privileged pencil that so believes in Brexit that he moved his firm to Dublin, like all the other rich supporters that voted for it......with their feet. What a farce.

Post deleted as an irreverent and irrelevant political comment.
Sorry.

Nielsen wrote:

Post deleted as an irreverent and irrelevant political comment.
Sorry.

Finest kind. Don't want reverent ones.

Meles meles wrote:

I see the Chancellor is to announce a new 50 pence coin to mark Brexit. I wonder what it'll look like ... there are already quite a few suggestions doing the rounds:

       

      

I was looking at the 20p coin trying to work out what I was missing but then realised that the joke is that the Hammond 50p would be worth 20p. That suggestion, however, isn't as clever as it might seem because 20p in 1982 would actually now be worth about 69p - i.e. 38% more than 50p in 2018. 

The Ring-of-Hands coin next to it is certainly memorable (now with 8 hands rather than 9). I seem to remember someone at that time (in the 70s) saying that each of the 9 hands corresponded specifically to a member state of the then EEC. For example the small hand on the right might have indicated Luxembourg (the smallest member state) or else indicated one of the female heads of state (Queen Juliana of the Netherlands or Queen Margrethe of Denmark or Queen Elizabeth of Great Britain & Northern Ireland) - does anyone know?

"It's an Irish flag.....it's got green in it"

Sorry, I can't come up with anything as amusing as the above posts.  Just posting out of interest that when I took in the milk this morning I had a message that the milk company are going back to using glass bottles for a pint of milk.  They reckon it is 1p cheaper per bottle to use glass and a glass bottle can be used 25 times, so now instead of putting my bottles in the recycle bin I will have to wash them out for collection.  I don't mind; it's what we used to do years ago anyway.

As for the 50p and 20p pieces.  I remember reading something to the effect (this was years ago - in the 1970s) that the shape of the 50p coin had possibly been influenced by the Wankel machine (sorry that's the name of the man who invented it).  From looking at Wikipedia the rotary part of that engine seems to be three sided rather than multi-sided though.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wankel_engine

The theory at the time was that the shape made it possible to use a wrench to remove the coin from the hand of a {insert name of group supposedly miserly}'s hand.

We used to refer to them as "Eagles" from the propensity of persons from Galleywood (the terminus was at a pub called the Eagle) to proffer them for 7p and 9p fares. They also tended to do the same with £5 notes, particularly on the early morning and immediately post-lunch service (afternoon shift workers at Marconi's or Hoffman's), in the knowledge that the crew were on their first run of the day, and, since the company did not issue a "float" of change it might well be more trouble than it was worth for the conductor to have to issue "unpaid fare vouchers". They stopped that when a number of us insisted on taking them into the cash office at the bus station to get their change, or, in one memorable case, I was doing the trip on overtime and so had 4 or 5 £5 bags of 10p coin and 2 or 3 of 5p. The look on the face of a "nerk" who was presented with one of these with 1 coin removed and a couple of half p substituted is still capable of bringing a smile to my lips.

Vizzer wrote:

Quote :

I was looking at the 20p coin trying to work out what I was missing but then realised that the joke is that the Hammond 50p would be worth 20p. That suggestion, however, isn't as clever as it might seem because 20p in 1982 would actually now be worth about 69p - i.e. 38% more than 50p in 2018. 

Vizzer,

I had already an exchange with LiR about the devaluation of the British pound and even it's relative devaluation against the Belgian Franc.

I said it to LiR that when I worked on the car ferry Ostend Dover, I had a vague rememberance that end the Fifties the Pound was then the phenomenal worth of 140 Belgian Francs, while it yesterday was something like some 45 Belgian Francs. But the Euro is also devaluated against the Dollar since the Euro introduction I thought, but now see that if I have found it well on the introduction in 1999 the Euro (40 Belgian Francs on the introduction) was nearly the same worth to the Dollar as now, namely 1.14...so if I understand it well the Pound is nearly one third to the Belgian Franc as the time of my Ostend-Dover trips..???
I had for LiR a site with the historical exchange rates over the years...have to seek it back in my messages...

Kind regards from Paul.

Ah yes - when we travelled over to Ostend (usually on the Koningen Fabiola), the Belgian franc was at 140 to the pound and the French one was about 1400. Much confusion when the New Franc was introduced - 100 old to one new - because the French continued for years quoting prices in the old currency. Even when the pound slipped into the 130s, most shops still accepted sterling at the 140 rate.

Green George wrote:

Ah yes - when we travelled over to Ostend (usually on the Koningen Fabiola), the Belgian franc was at 140 to the pound and the French one was about 1400. Much confusion when the New Franc was introduced - 100 old to one new - because the French continued for years quoting prices in the old currency. Even when the pound slipped into the 130s, most shops still accepted sterling at the 140 rate.

Gil,

those were the times! When Great Britain in our eyes was still great. I am not sure if one can make it great again, not sure if even Trump can make "America" (the US) great again...the times are changed...we live in an interconnected "world"...but we can always ask Nigel Farage to blame it on the EU...

Yes indeed 140 Belgian francs in the time of the Koningin Fabiola...
I was as a "commis" "moustique" in the restaurant on the Artevelde...
"Ten behoeve van het steeds toenemend autoverkeer werd reeds in 1948 een speciaal hiervoor bestemd schip te water gelaten, de Prinses Josephine-Charlotte, de eerste « car-ferry » van de Oostende-Dover-verbinding. Dit schip, met een capaciteit van 100 auto’s en 700 reizigers, maakte zijn eerste overvaart op 3 juni 1949. Een tweede vaartuig van hetzelfde type, de Artevelde, kwam in 1958 in dienst, een derde carferry, de Koningin Fabiola, in 1962, een vierde, de Koning Boudewijn, in 1965, en ten slotte de Prinses Astrid in 1968."
"Een tweede vaartuig van hetzelfde type, de Artevelde, kwam in 1958 in dienst"
a second ship of the same type came into service in 1958, the Artevelde

and I only a month on the boats...many times "zeeziek" (seasick) and with all those meals under the nose...and these carferries weren't as stable as the nowadays Stena line, dipping their nose in the water in the length, but at the same time turning from larboard to starboard and vice versa and in stormy weather even worser and that was too much for me...nowadays all kind of electronic devices to compensate the movements...
and long shifts and not in my case too much money ...so I immediately changed to work in the bricklayers branch in the school vacation...and there stable ground (had no fear of heights, fresh air and nearly three times more earnings...

One impertinent question Gil and don't answer if you find it too much personal...came you many times to Belgium in those times?

Kind regards from Paul.

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