I have to dispute this idea the British Summer is short. Summer to me means any temperature above 20C (ie no coat or jacket required) and we've been getting that regularly since the middle of April and it's likely to continue to October. Unbearable temperatures (25C+) frequently occur through June to September. The Summer is long.
Goodness, Karl - I think I've finally met someone who is less tolerant of the heat than me.
For me "vile" means I start sweating significantly just from being outside. If I'm outside for 10 minutes and have beads of sweat on my forehead, it's vile. That's about 33°C for me.
"Hot" means I can't do normal activity without breaking into a sweat - walking to the shops, for example. Perhaps 25 °C.
"Pleasant" is cool enough that I'm not breaking a sweat doing normal things, but not cold enough to require a jacket. Probably 12-15 °C and up.
At the other end of the spectrum, I don't pay much attention to needing a coat, but there's another threshold where gloves become necessary for even a short time spent outside, and one past that where despite hat and gloves, your face still hurts. Some of our more northerly shipmates probably have extra gradations of cold past that, but if it gets to face-hurtingly cold (somewhere around -25°C), I start to avoid the outside again.
One of the things I like about British weather is that we don't get extremes. It gets a bit too hot occasionally, while not the silly numbers some places reach, but it's seldom very cold.
One of the things I like about British weather is that we don't get extremes. It gets a bit too hot occasionally, while not the silly numbers some places reach, but it's seldom very cold.
I lived in southern New Hampshire for twenty-one years. I remember two occasions when the temperature hit 104° and two others when it hit
So does someone need to go collect and clean up all that stuff? In "Salvage I" (movie and series), a salvage-yard owner (Andy Griffith) figured out how to go up and collect space junk. I think he might have even gone to the moon.
I'm after a poem for someone else; here's the description: "It's about someone mourning the death of a man who was great at fixing machines and grieving that people aren't there to raise up and fix their loved one."
So, does a photon moving out at the edge of the universe create spacetime? All it takes is faint radiation?
No. Moving off the edge of the universe doesn't make sense.
There are two basic possible topologies for the universe - closed (think the surface of a balloon as its being inflated - go far enough, and you're round the other side) or unbounded/infinite. We don't know for certain which one we have - there are suggestions that infinite is the best fit to the data, but you can make closed models fit too.
So, does a photon moving out at the edge of the universe create spacetime? All it takes is faint radiation?
No. Moving off the edge of the universe doesn't make sense.
There are two basic possible topologies for the universe - closed (think the surface of a balloon as its being inflated - go far enough, and you're round the other side) or unbounded/infinite. We don't know for certain which one we have - there are suggestions that infinite is the best fit to the data, but you can make closed models fit too.
Perish the thought! No, no, no, no, no. Even I am not suggesting that anything can go out beyond the surface. I suppose I'm bet-a-buck asking whether the expansion of energy creates, expands (expanding) space-time? Or is that meaningless too?
I think I might be the one who named this thread "When Google Fails You," but my question isn't so much based on Google failing me as on wanting to expand what Google has to offer, by soliciting info from people with more local or specialized knowledge.
I'm in the process of researching a novel set around the 1610 colony established near where I live in Newfoundland (the Cupids colony, for anyone who's a colonial geek and cares). It was established by John Guy and settled by people mostly from Bristol. I am off to England (London and Bristol, but with a rail pass for day trips) later this month to do some research, mostly into what these settlers' lives might have been like back in England before they got to Newfoundland.
My question: does anyone know of any really good places (museums, living history sites, etc) to visit for insight into the lives of ordinary working-class English people in the 17th century? Particularly people in cities -- I've done my fair share of touring stately homes (mostly interested in the kitchens and servants' quarters because those tend to be the kinds of people I write about) but I know less about where to find recreated homes, shops, etc., that might reflect the lives of artisans, labourers and servants in the cities of that time.
Any tips anyone has to offer will be enthusiastically explored!
Ok, this question is pants. But not made up on the fly. Which brings me to the following: When I buy jeans, I normally get the ones with zip flies. Occasionally, when they're on sale, I've also bought jeans with button flies, which, as I'm beginning to think now, fly in the face of reason.
I somehow prefer zip flies, as they're considerably easier to do up, in my opinion. Admittedly, you have to be careful that certain delicate parts of a gentleman's anatomy do not get caught up; though this could happen, to a lesser extent, with a button fly too, I reckon.
My query for you advanced button fliers, which has bugged me for a while, and which I haven't been able to solve yet, is the following: Which way do you do up your buttons?
Now, with a zip it's easy: Button up on belt area first, then zip. However, what do you do with all-buttons? Some of them can be very difficult to (be)hold, depending on the make, or at least my poor liddle fingers tell me so: those buttons barely get through the corresponding hole. So, how do you go about it, then, in general? First the belt, i.e. top button, then the remaining ones, possibly from bottom to top? Or do you start with the bottom button, and work your way up all to the top? Or you do up the belt button, and then start at the top, and button down towards the bottom button?
A bottomless pit to which I do not know the answer. All your ideas are very welcome! - Thank you!
I think I might be the one who named this thread "When Google Fails You," but my question isn't so much based on Google failing me as on wanting to expand what Google has to offer, by soliciting info from people with more local or specialized knowledge.
I'm in the process of researching a novel set around the 1610 colony established near where I live in Newfoundland (the Cupids colony, for anyone who's a colonial geek and cares). It was established by John Guy and settled by people mostly from Bristol. I am off to England (London and Bristol, but with a rail pass for day trips) later this month to do some research, mostly into what these settlers' lives might have been like back in England before they got to Newfoundland.
My question: does anyone know of any really good places (museums, living history sites, etc) to visit for insight into the lives of ordinary working-class English people in the 17th century? Particularly people in cities -- I've done my fair share of touring stately homes (mostly interested in the kitchens and servants' quarters because those tend to be the kinds of people I write about) but I know less about where to find recreated homes, shops, etc., that might reflect the lives of artisans, labourers and servants in the cities of that time.
Any tips anyone has to offer will be enthusiastically explored!
I am not really the shipmate to suggest this but St Fagans has building from just across the Bristol Channel that would have been around at the time. It is decades since I have been but iirc there are pretty regular shipmeets there.
Not sure whether doing an @Leo will bring him as a Bristol-based shipmate.
I used to have button up jeans. I recommend buttoning the lowest one first and working up to the belt button, because I used to frequently button the belt button and forget about the others! I don’t know how I made this omission - I never forgot to zip up the zip on zip jeans - but somehow I forgot the buttons were there and needed buttoning!
I am not really the shipmate to suggest this but St Fagans has building from just across the Bristol Channel that would have been around at the time. It is decades since I have been but iirc there are pretty regular shipmeets there.
I used to have button up jeans. I recommend buttoning the lowest one first and working up to the belt button, because I used to frequently button the belt button and forget about the others! I don’t know how I made this omission - I never forgot to zip up the zip on zip jeans - but somehow I forgot the buttons were there and needed buttoning!
Yes, indeed. As well, I don't have the manual dexterity to do the top button and then work from the bottom up (especially after being refreshed). I've always found from the bottom up all the way the most efficient method.
Trudy - My first thought would be to contact the Museum of London. You're interested in Bristol, but the staff at the MoL might prove very helpful in pointing you in different directions, regional and thematic, and have connections with regional museums that would be fruitful for you to pursue. In my experience, once you display a keen interest in someone's locality, they are quickly generous to a fault. "Well, if you're interested in that, you should see this! Oh, and ask Katie about 17thC wool carding!" Etc.
Is there something like a Newfoundland Historical Society? They might have records, diaries, etc. of what the settlers' lives were like before arriving, and how they then adjusted. A genealogical group might, too.
I was going to say the Museum of London too. There are two sites, the Museum of Docklands, down near Canary Wharf, and the Museum of London at the Barbican. Both tend to have recreations of streets as part of the displays, but I wanted to check the dates of the recreated streets which are part of the permanent exhibitions. The streets in the Museum of Docklands are dated around 1840-1850 (great for atmosphere for Jack the Ripper). There are permanent sections for the 17th Century at both museums, one looking at the expansion of trade through the docks, the other looking at the plague and fire.
I have vague memoroies of Time Team digs at James Fort one of the first settler sites dating from 1606 (the link is to the episode on Youtube and I winced at the introduction to this one) or there's the dig at St Mary's City, Maryland investigating site originating in 1634, and remember artefacts of day to day living turning up, but not much more.
There's also the Shakespeare's Globe exhibition which is all about the theatre and actors, but is about London at the right time (and you get to tour the Globe theatre and Sam Wanamaker playhouse as part of that visit and can visualise or experience being a groundling). Or the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich has an exhibition called the Atlantic, Trade, Slavery and Empire that covers the same period and the old Royal Naval College buildings have areas you can access that are worth seeing (Painted Hall, Royal Naval Chapel). Or there's Kentwell Hall, which recreates Tudor England, which is a bit earlier than your dates, but not much - for schools the days run on a specific date.
Just some musings of mine in case they are helpful.
To make a blinding statement of the obvious, a century is a long time. In your situation, I think I would fix on an event and look for evidence of life around that time. The Fire of London is probably the most significant event in the capital. Outside the capital, there's the civil war and the associated religious upheavals. There may, of course, be local events that created significant upheaval in Bristol or wherever else you're looking. The other question is what the working class at the time constituted, given that the version I tend to think of was a creation of the industrial revolution. Generally, I suppose that they would be servants, labourers or artisans and, if recorded anywhere, appear as secondary effects of middle class and upper class households, and/or major events.
First thought that came to mind was this which is excellent. There are also historic docks in Gloucester (with museum), plus the Cathedral, etc.
In Bristol itself the local museum has several sites offering different takes on local life, plus there are local archives. I’m not sure if the Merchants’ Hall is open to the public but you might want to look at that too.
As far as Ukraine is concerned, the article only tells part of the story, and not the more interesting part linguistically. The fact that Church Slavonic and most of its descendants function without articles means that closer observation is needed in order to work out whether the use of an article in English is appropriate. Ukraine in Russian has a definite linguistic structure: u-kraina, i.e. on the edge. My conclusion has always therefore been that the use of the definite article in English mirrors this. This also explains, to my mind, why Ukranians so dislike the use of the article: it makes the country's existence contingent on Russia. This is historically wrong, in that Kiev was the first seat of power in that area of the world, and now in the world of independence at least intended to be untrue. Putin's antics are in part an attempt to recreate the dependency that existed at least in the days of the Russian empire, and thus to put the article back.
Kind of related to this, in terms of things being named with different grammatical conventions, I realised recently that American rivers are named with ‘River’ after the name of the river (eg, The Mississippi River) while rivers in the UK have ‘River’ before (eg, The River Thames). I noticed because it is a difference between the UK NIV Bible and the American one - The River Jordan versus The Jordan River.
Trudy, St. Fagans is excellent - and free. If you particularly want to find out about Bristol, there is an excellent little museum adjoining Wesley's preaching rooms,mobviously dealing with the story of Methodism, but also discussing slavery and social issues.
If you want to find out more about settlers in America, the American Museum at Claverton Manor near Bath is well worth a visit.
I looked around the internets a bit, and a reason why country names are sometimes used with an article, is because the word was seen as a description of a natural-geographical term first. "The Argentine fields", "The Ukraine area", "The Gambia river".
In the case of Ukraine, the usage has political aspects, since calling it "The Ukraine area" was done by the USSR to prevent it being seen as a country. I understand that this is why modern Ukrainians object to the article.
In the case of Ukraine, the usage has political aspects, since calling it "The Ukraine area" was done by the USSR to prevent it being seen as a country. I understand that this is why modern Ukrainians object to the article.
It started with the post-Mongol Russian empire, and continued seamlessly into the Moscow-centric USSR. This was centred on Moscow rather than Kiev, which led to the need to assert the dependent status of Ukraine.
I still find it difficult not to say "the Ukraine", being a Russian speaker, but there we are.
Thanks for all the wonderful suggestions of historic sites and museums, folks -- some were already on my list to visit but others I hadn't known about or thought of, so I am adding them to the list!
The local historians here know a fair bit about what the 1610 settlers did when they got here, but very little about who they were and what kind of lives they came from back in England. My three main characters (fictional people set against the background of these real events) all grow up in the household of a stonemason, so if anyone knows of a great resource related to 17th century masonry, that'd be great too!
I knew Shipmates would be a trove of useful suggestions.
@Trudy - a place that's worth a visit for its eclecticism is the John Soane Museum in Lincoln's Inn Fields. There are rooms there full of stonework and sculptures and ...
Salisbury Cathedral has a stonemasons' workshop open to the public and Bradford-upon-Avon Museum is collecting stone mason tools. Bradford-upon-Avon is definitely worth visiting as a place too.
While checking for the stone masonry work at Hampton Court Palace, there is an announcement that the Tudor Kitchens are open again, which have re-enactments. When I was a member of the Historic Royal Palaces there were a number of member only visits to stone mason works, but I am not sure if those are still happening.
Ooh, the kitchen re-enactor at one of our local colony sites just recommended that I visit the Tudor Kitchens at Hampton Court, so knowing that's open, it's definitely on my list.
Will also check out Salisbury Cathedral -- I wish I'd known about their two-day stone carving workshops far enough in advance to sign up for one, because I'd love to have tried that (though perhaps not for two whole days ... maybe a few hours?).
I used to have button up jeans. I recommend buttoning the lowest one first and working up to the belt button, because I used to frequently button the belt button and forget about the others! I don’t know how I made this omission - I never forgot to zip up the zip on zip jeans - but somehow I forgot the buttons were there and needed buttoning!
Yes, indeed. As well, I don't have the manual dexterity to do the top button and then work from the bottom up (especially after being refreshed). I've always found from the bottom up all the way the most efficient method.
Many thanks to fineline and Pangolin Guerre for their precious help in the The Quest for The Holy Button Fly.
I am pleased to see I'm not the only one to find said invention somewhat fiddly. Thank you!
Old-fashioned US sailors' trousers had a rectangular flap in front that folded down. It was held in position by no fewer than 13 buttons on the sides and across the top. I can't remember how I buttoned them when I wore them. They were more pleasant than the metal buttons on denim trousers, though, being plastic buttons on fairly soft wool material.
Kind of related to this, in terms of things being named with different grammatical conventions, I realised recently that American rivers are named with ‘River’ after the name of the river (eg, The Mississippi River) while rivers in the UK have ‘River’ before (eg, The River Thames). I noticed because it is a difference between the UK NIV Bible and the American one - The River Jordan versus The Jordan River.
Old-fashioned US sailors' trousers had a rectangular flap in front that folded down. It was held in position by no fewer than 13 buttons on the sides and across the top. I can't remember how I buttoned them when I wore them. They were more pleasant than the metal buttons on denim trousers, though, being plastic buttons on fairly soft wool material.
Example #754 of why I love The Ship. Information like this helps me in no way whatsoever, but I feel better just knowing it.
Right, this is to pick the brains of those who know Edinburgh. The weekend on the 20th to 22nd I am going up to Edinburgh to see the Lost Words Exhibition at the Royal Edinburgh Botanic Gardens. There is also a provisional booking with my Godfamily for late Friday afternoon and I wondered if anyone can recommend somewhere for afternoon tea that is fairly accessible (my Godfamily have a range of disabilities and walking far is not a good idea).
What locality would be within walking distance for them? I am best acquainted with Newington, Marchmont and to an extent Bruntsfield, Morningside and the Old Town.
(THE place, Falko’s Konditorei, sadly closed a few months ago).
They will have a car, and I suspect fairly good at navigating. However I the father's walking is likely to be restricted to several hundred yards. So area not as important as closeness to parking.
As you probably know, parking in Edinburgh - especially this time of year - is Not Easy. A place a friend has driven me to though is The Secret Herb Garden. If you interested in plants at all, it’s a charming place.
"Inst" means "in the current month" and "ult" means "in the previous month." I'm attempting to transcribe an C18th document which uses a word which clearly means "in the current century" but I don't know what the word is. It looks a bit like "mirys" or "moys."
For example "the fourth day of May Mirys and seventy-one."
Comments
Goodness, Karl - I think I've finally met someone who is less tolerant of the heat than me.
For me "vile" means I start sweating significantly just from being outside. If I'm outside for 10 minutes and have beads of sweat on my forehead, it's vile. That's about 33°C for me.
"Hot" means I can't do normal activity without breaking into a sweat - walking to the shops, for example. Perhaps 25 °C.
"Pleasant" is cool enough that I'm not breaking a sweat doing normal things, but not cold enough to require a jacket. Probably 12-15 °C and up.
At the other end of the spectrum, I don't pay much attention to needing a coat, but there's another threshold where gloves become necessary for even a short time spent outside, and one past that where despite hat and gloves, your face still hurts. Some of our more northerly shipmates probably have extra gradations of cold past that, but if it gets to face-hurtingly cold (somewhere around -25°C), I start to avoid the outside again.
I lived in southern New Hampshire for twenty-one years. I remember two occasions when the temperature hit 104° and two others when it hit
So does someone need to go collect and clean up all that stuff? In "Salvage I" (movie and series), a salvage-yard owner (Andy Griffith) figured out how to go up and collect space junk. I think he might have even gone to the moon.
(wink)
Does this ring any bells with any shipmates?
No. Moving off the edge of the universe doesn't make sense.
There are two basic possible topologies for the universe - closed (think the surface of a balloon as its being inflated - go far enough, and you're round the other side) or unbounded/infinite. We don't know for certain which one we have - there are suggestions that infinite is the best fit to the data, but you can make closed models fit too.
I'm in the process of researching a novel set around the 1610 colony established near where I live in Newfoundland (the Cupids colony, for anyone who's a colonial geek and cares). It was established by John Guy and settled by people mostly from Bristol. I am off to England (London and Bristol, but with a rail pass for day trips) later this month to do some research, mostly into what these settlers' lives might have been like back in England before they got to Newfoundland.
My question: does anyone know of any really good places (museums, living history sites, etc) to visit for insight into the lives of ordinary working-class English people in the 17th century? Particularly people in cities -- I've done my fair share of touring stately homes (mostly interested in the kitchens and servants' quarters because those tend to be the kinds of people I write about) but I know less about where to find recreated homes, shops, etc., that might reflect the lives of artisans, labourers and servants in the cities of that time.
Any tips anyone has to offer will be enthusiastically explored!
I somehow prefer zip flies, as they're considerably easier to do up, in my opinion. Admittedly, you have to be careful that certain delicate parts of a gentleman's anatomy do not get caught up; though this could happen, to a lesser extent, with a button fly too, I reckon.
My query for you advanced button fliers, which has bugged me for a while, and which I haven't been able to solve yet, is the following: Which way do you do up your buttons?
Now, with a zip it's easy: Button up on belt area first, then zip. However, what do you do with all-buttons? Some of them can be very difficult to (be)hold, depending on the make, or at least my poor liddle fingers tell me so: those buttons barely get through the corresponding hole. So, how do you go about it, then, in general? First the belt, i.e. top button, then the remaining ones, possibly from bottom to top? Or do you start with the bottom button, and work your way up all to the top? Or you do up the belt button, and then start at the top, and button down towards the bottom button?
A bottomless pit to which I do not know the answer. All your ideas are very welcome! - Thank you!
I am not really the shipmate to suggest this but St Fagans has building from just across the Bristol Channel that would have been around at the time. It is decades since I have been but iirc there are pretty regular shipmeets there.
Not sure whether doing an @Leo will bring him as a Bristol-based shipmate.
Oh, that looks very interesting, thanks!
Yes, indeed. As well, I don't have the manual dexterity to do the top button and then work from the bottom up (especially after being refreshed). I've always found from the bottom up all the way the most efficient method.
Is there something like a Newfoundland Historical Society? They might have records, diaries, etc. of what the settlers' lives were like before arriving, and how they then adjusted. A genealogical group might, too.
Good luck!
I have vague memoroies of Time Team digs at James Fort one of the first settler sites dating from 1606 (the link is to the episode on Youtube and I winced at the introduction to this one) or there's the dig at St Mary's City, Maryland investigating site originating in 1634, and remember artefacts of day to day living turning up, but not much more.
There's also the Shakespeare's Globe exhibition which is all about the theatre and actors, but is about London at the right time (and you get to tour the Globe theatre and Sam Wanamaker playhouse as part of that visit and can visualise or experience being a groundling). Or the National Maritime Museum at Greenwich has an exhibition called the Atlantic, Trade, Slavery and Empire that covers the same period and the old Royal Naval College buildings have areas you can access that are worth seeing (Painted Hall, Royal Naval Chapel). Or there's Kentwell Hall, which recreates Tudor England, which is a bit earlier than your dates, but not much - for schools the days run on a specific date.
To make a blinding statement of the obvious, a century is a long time. In your situation, I think I would fix on an event and look for evidence of life around that time. The Fire of London is probably the most significant event in the capital. Outside the capital, there's the civil war and the associated religious upheavals. There may, of course, be local events that created significant upheaval in Bristol or wherever else you're looking. The other question is what the working class at the time constituted, given that the version I tend to think of was a creation of the industrial revolution. Generally, I suppose that they would be servants, labourers or artisans and, if recorded anywhere, appear as secondary effects of middle class and upper class households, and/or major events.
In Bristol itself the local museum has several sites offering different takes on local life, plus there are local archives. I’m not sure if the Merchants’ Hall is open to the public but you might want to look at that too.
I never hear about the Canada or the Australe.
Not my expertise but an interesting discussion thanks to Google
If you want to find out more about settlers in America, the American Museum at Claverton Manor near Bath is well worth a visit.
Could it have something to do with continuity of usage? We used to talk of the Northern Territories and the Orient, the Raj and the Antipodes.
In the case of Ukraine, the usage has political aspects, since calling it "The Ukraine area" was done by the USSR to prevent it being seen as a country. I understand that this is why modern Ukrainians object to the article.
It started with the post-Mongol Russian empire, and continued seamlessly into the Moscow-centric USSR. This was centred on Moscow rather than Kiev, which led to the need to assert the dependent status of Ukraine.
I still find it difficult not to say "the Ukraine", being a Russian speaker, but there we are.
The local historians here know a fair bit about what the 1610 settlers did when they got here, but very little about who they were and what kind of lives they came from back in England. My three main characters (fictional people set against the background of these real events) all grow up in the household of a stonemason, so if anyone knows of a great resource related to 17th century masonry, that'd be great too!
I knew Shipmates would be a trove of useful suggestions.
This turned up going on a hunch but turned up a connection between Somerset and Wadham Hall Oxford that involves Stone Masons
Salisbury Cathedral has a stonemasons' workshop open to the public and Bradford-upon-Avon Museum is collecting stone mason tools. Bradford-upon-Avon is definitely worth visiting as a place too.
While checking for the stone masonry work at Hampton Court Palace, there is an announcement that the Tudor Kitchens are open again, which have re-enactments. When I was a member of the Historic Royal Palaces there were a number of member only visits to stone mason works, but I am not sure if those are still happening.
Will also check out Salisbury Cathedral -- I wish I'd known about their two-day stone carving workshops far enough in advance to sign up for one, because I'd love to have tried that (though perhaps not for two whole days ... maybe a few hours?).
Many thanks to fineline and Pangolin Guerre for their precious help in the The Quest for The Holy Button Fly.
I am pleased to see I'm not the only one to find said invention somewhat fiddly. Thank you!
Well bugger me!
Example #754 of why I love The Ship. Information like this helps me in no way whatsoever, but I feel better just knowing it.
Thanks
(THE place, Falko’s Konditorei, sadly closed a few months ago).
Thanks
For example "the fourth day of May Mirys and seventy-one."