What Do You Call a Second Hand Horse?
Riding horses and ponies are probably unique amongst common animals in that they are sold from one owner to another for the same purpose. After all you generally don’t sell your dog or cat to anybody else, unless it’s a puppy or kitten, you’ve bred.
You get some horses and especially ponies, that have passed from family to family upwards of ten or a dozen times.
I was looking for some more information on coloured horses for the previous post using Google and after typing coloured horses, Google gave a few suggestions. One was “coloured horses for sale pre-loved”. I suppose it’s an equivalent to pre-owned for cars.
My First Time on Stage
Surprisingly, a few weeks from my 65th birthday, I went on a theatrical stage for the first time last night.
On Stage at the Hackney Empire
It was a fundraising event for the Hackney Empire. The picture doesn’t really do justice to the interior of the theatre.
In Search of Small Waists
The BBC’s web site today is verging into dangerous territory this morning, with a serious article called the re-re-re-rise of the corset. The article is in their magazine, so comments are not allowed, so we will not see the opinions of both fetishists and feminists.
The article does say that sales are on the rise.
But sales figures suggest ordinary people are turning to one of the greatest symbols of the Victorian era. Corsets are making a comeback.
Rigby & Peller, the Queen’s brassiere-maker, says sales of traditional corsets in May were 45% up on 2011.
Ebay has reported a 185% rise in the number of corsets being sold over the last three months, with 1,900 listed over the period. It says most corsets are bought in the UK (40%), the US (34%) and Australia (8.6%).
Many women aspire to Marilyn Monroe’s hourglass figureMarks & Spencer says it sells one item from its new corset-inspired Waist Sculpt lingerie line every three minutes.
The article then goes on to discuss why, which includes a comment by Liberty Sweet of the Folly Mixtures.
On a personal level, I always believed that C’s small waist was one of her physical characteristics, that attracted me to her. I could have probably made my hands touch round her waist, when we got married in 1968.
She never actually wore a corset, but she did wear a basque at times, especially after she had her brush with breast cancer, as she felt a proper fitting basque, gave her more support after the operation. In one instance, having a basque in her holiday suitcase, actually saved the day at a New Year’s Eve ball in Venice.
Waitrose Comes to Highbury Corner
It’s not open yet, but a new little Waitrose is slated to open on July 24th at Highbury Corner.
I took this picture today and it shows they have a lot of work to do before the 24th of July.
The Site for the New little Waitrose at Highbury Corner
That means I won’t have so far to go as it’s just four stops on a 277 or 30 bus. Especially on days like yesterday, when I went all the way to the Angel for just six items. The stop to return home incidentally is just outside.
It’ll be interesting where they go next, as they have the large branches at Jones Brothers on the Holloway Road and Eastfield at Stratford.
Pointless Celebrities
They have a program on BBC1 with this name at the moment.
It probably sums the program up too!
Was Tumbledown One of the Last Bayonet Charges?
The Times today has a detailed account of the Battle of Mount Tumbledown in the Falklands War. It is told by four soldiers from the Scots Guards, who took part in the battle. This paragraph tells how they went in.
The Battalion went in wearing berets, because their helmets were too clumsy; rucksacks were left behind; they had no body armour. They carried SLR rifles, with bayonets fixed, 80 rounds of ammunition, a sleeping bag, grenades and first-aid kit. Communication was through “open” radio. “I talked to my company commanders as easily as I’m talking to you,” Scott says. Their only password in the dark was “Jimmy,” the idea being that, since the Argentinians could not pronounce their Js, they would be easily identified.
Would soldiers do that today? Certainly, a lot of armies wouldn’t!
I once used to live next to a Colonel in the British Army. He would have loved the bit about the passwords. As he once said to me. “In case of war, burn all the rulebooks!” The more I read about the Falklands War, the more it was a war where convention went out the window.
I think even the Americans thought we would be unable to regain the islands. I’ve always felt that it put the wind up the Russians and they then realised that they would never be able to walk their way across Europe, when they would be fighting the strong and well-trained volunteer armies of Western Europe. I think even in 1980, a lot of experienced high-ranking officers in the Red Army had seen the horrors of the Second World War and felt they wouldn’t ask their soldiers to go through that again.
I hope we never have to fight another war like the Falklands.
Spain is not Uganda
This was texted by the Spanish Prime Minister to his Finance Minister during the negotiations on Spain’s financial bailout.
The BBC discusses it here. Here’s the first paragraph.
Spanish Prime Minister Rajoy sent a text to his finance minister in the midst of negotiations on the terms of a bailout for Spain’s banks. Urging him to hold out for a good deal, it said: “We’re the number four power in Europe. Spain is not Uganda.” The remark caused a storm of protest in Uganda and some ironic tweets pointing out Ugandan economic success. So how do the two countries compare?
I actually think, that many ideas from the so-called Third World can be applied successfully to countries like the UK, the US and Spain.
What Do You Call a Pair of Nokia 6310i’s?
Superb! Especially as they both are now working. Which is more than can be said for my Junkberry.
What Do You Call a Pair of Nokia 6310i’s?
With the Olympics in mind, I think I’ll go for gold at the moment.
Whatever happens, it’s bye-bye Junkberry.
Memories of Euro 2004
2004 is the only time since 1966, that I’ve been in a country that has won a major tournament. C and I were actually staying at a place called Sani at the top of the Haldikiki peninsular in Greece. It had just opened and I think C had got a very good deal through a travel magazine. It was very much worth it.
Everybody in the hotel, in addition to their own teams, were cheering on Greece and most were surprised when they won the tournament.
Perhaps one of the biggest memories of that holiday was a long walk down the coastal path for perhaps ten kilometres stopping at the various bars and hotels on the way. One turned out to be a holiday camp, that was very much a Teutonic version of Maplins from Hi de Hi! A bell would ring every twenty minutes or so for a strenuous keep fit session. Judging by the laughs from the bar we were in, the Germans found it funny too! We finally ended up in a fish restaurant on the beachside, before taking a bus home.
C was strangely uninhibited that holiday and did a lot of things she wouldn’t normally do. One was to sleep in very late in the morning, rather than get up early for her daily swim. She went down with breast cancer in October of that year from which she fully recovered. Perhaps her body was telling her something and trying to get her in the mood for the struggles to come. I will never know. The only other fsctor, was that she had just done a very harrowing child care case and perhaps she was wiping it out of her mind.
The Simon Gompertz Effect
Yesterday, the BBC published a well-researched article on its web site, by its Personal Finance Correspondent, Simon Gompertz, about peer-to-peer lending. I commented on it here.
It was the only article on the subject picked up by Google yesterday and featured on the BBC’s most read list of articles on its web site for most of the day.
As a member of Zopa, I follow their figures closely, which are easily accessible to any borrower or lender. The amount of money that lenders have demanded from the site has risen significantly.
At 09:00 on Saturday, the money demanded by prospective borrowers was £9.4million, whereas at the same time today the figure was £14million. Over the same period, the amount of money made available by lenders was £18.2million on Saturday and £12.1 today.
Doing a crude calculation means that £6.1million of lenders money has been allocated to borrowers and there are another £5million or so that could be lent. Zopa’s team of credit experts will be kept busy on Monday, checking all these new borrowers. And probably rustling up some more funds to lend.
Is this all the effect of one well-written article by Simon Gompertz on the BBC?
There’s another good article in the Observer today. I suspect that Zopa’s figures will be just as interesting tomorrow.
Update on 11th June 2012 at 08:00
Total demand is now £15.8million up and funds available are £11million. This works out as a swing of £13.6million over the weekend.
It did look at a few other weekends and typically, there is a swing between £2.5million and £4.5million.
Whatever the truth is, something extraordinary happened! And it is all good! Unless of course you’re a banker!
