Behold my buried treasure! While preparing for the demolition of a derelict shed, I found a corner of something concrete in the ground nearby. Hoping very much it wasn’t more concrete slab to need demolishing, I dug (with trowel, shown above for scale) and behold! it was a concrete trough, which last saw the light of day…sometime between 10 and 80 years ago. Having extricated it (with aforementioned trowel, spade, and crowbar) I plan to transfer it to the front garden and use it as a combination planter and miniature retaining wall.
Interesting Times
Edward II died in 1327 in a Most Unpleasant Way – or did he? The history books state that he died at Berkeley Castle on the 21st of September. His son started spreading the news two days later, having received a letter from Thomas de Berkeley (baron of Berkeley Castle) which, in Parliament three years later, the said Thomas de Berkeley denied ever sending. Whether Edward II died or not, then or not, there or not, a red hot poker was almost certainly not involved.
Weirdly, the English only got a King Edward II because Edward I’s older sons – John, Henry, and Alphonso – predeceased him. Edward was the youngest of his parents’ fourteen children, born just before Alphonso’s death at the age of 10. Subsequent generations having omitted the name (possibly due to frequently not having 14 children to find names for), England remains without a King Alphonso I.
Nature’s Freaks, Fancies, and Fascinations
The capybara is the world’s largest rodent; the beaver the second largest. Except, that is, for the mountain beaver, which is about 2% the size of your average beaver. Mountain beavers don’t chew trees. They don’t make dams. They don’t have a big thwacky tail. And if that doesn’t sound very beavery to you, it may be because mountain beavers aren’t actually beavers – they’re more closely related to squirrels. And they don’t even live solely in the mountains.
And Now For Someone Completely Different
“In a 2011 article for the Wall Street Journal, a fashion reporter condemned women for tottering tipsily down the street on high heels, then offered this strange solution: ‘I’m almost always in heels between 3 and 4 inches high – except when I have to walk more than a block.’ She changes into flats that she carries around in her purse when she has to walk more than a block.
If you cannot walk more than a block in your shoes, they are not shoes; they are pretty sculptures that you happen to have attached to your feet. You could hang them from your wrists for all the good they are doing you in terms of locomotion. Better to put them on a shelf and admire them from afar.”
Linda Przybyszewski, The Lost Art of Dress
Latest Library Loot
A Blunt Instrument is by Georgette Heyer, an author better known for her Regency romances. Superintendent Hannasyde and his sergeant are afflicted not only with a cultish constable who is always quoting the more admonitory parts of the Bible, but with a timeline of evidence which suggests the only possible solution is that Ernest Fletcher was never murdered at all. But he was…
Anatolia Sevoyants is 58 and about to quietly lie down and die when the blacksmith shows up and proposes. She says yes as the simplest way out of an awkward situation. After all, she’ll be dead in a day or two anyway – won’t she? Three Apples Fell From The Sky, by Armenian author Narine Abgaryan (translated by Lisa C Hayden), is a delightful tale of life and love surviving through the trials and tragedies of life.
Amigurumi are generally cute. Some cuter than others. The delightful creatures in Amigurumi Treasures 2 by Erinna Lee are among the cutest little objets on the planet. The bear dressed up as a bunny – and with a tiny bunny toy of her own – is perhaps the cutest, but I don’t know. The competition is pretty fierce.
By My Own Hand Or None
For Your Consideration
Have you ever found buried treasure? If so, what was it? If not, why not?