Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Caley Jim]

52 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

I move a motion as follows:

 

”The CA PC welcomes the proposed reduction in speed limit, but feels strongly that it doesn’t go far enough. We urge the Highway Authority to impose a 40mph limit, heavily enforced, in view of the danger to cyclists attempting to cross, let alone ride along, this road, and to pedestrians using the numerous footpaths that cross it.”

Does that not risk someone thrashing their horse in order to try and get up to 40MPH?

 

Jim

[Ian Simpson]

25 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Given the lack of internal combustion engine vehicles in CA, I think we need not be too prescriptive...

But they'll be here soon enough - and then we'll be sorry we didn't keep the Red Flag laws.

Edited August 11, 2021 by Ian Simpson

[Regularity]

I would have thought that keeping the red flag flying was not seen as very acceptable during the early motoring era…

Edited August 11, 2021 by Regularity

[Edwardian]

10 minutes ago, Regularity said:

I would have that keeping the red flag flying was not seen as very acceptable during the early motoring era…

 

I suspect, Brother Regularity, that the idea behind the road safety version was not, in fact, to soak up the blood of your martyred dead, but, rather, to avoid bloodshed!

[Regularity]

7 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

to soak up the blood of your martyred dead, but, rather, to avoid bloodshed

Possibly to soak up the blood of the poor soul walking in front of the car, if the driver’s foot pushes too hard on the accelerator…

[Nearholmer]

By 1905, Mr Toad’s archetypes were tearing about the place with abandon, so there ought to be at least one motorcar, probably at the side of the road, with a flat tyre, or run out of petrol, or suffering one of the many other ailments that afflicted such vehicles, at CA.

 

No AA or RAC badge outside The Dodo yet, though. It should display the winge’d wheel of The Cyclists’ Touring Club, as on this indecisively-named establishment.
 

 

Here is the 1905 membership badge, a thing to look out for in case you need to be able to recognise a cyclist when not astride his or her machine.

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Nearholmer]

Here we see Edwardian, with the help of two collaborators, about to launch his rich maiden aunt, who has never been on a bicycle before, but has recently made a favourable codicil to her will, down a very steep hill, towards a sharp bend at the edge of a precipice. Allegedly.

 

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Hroth]

1 hour ago, Nearholmer said:

Here we see Edwardian, with the help of two collaborators, about to launch his rich maiden aunt, who has never been on a bicycle before, but has recently made a favourable codicil to her will, down a very steep hill, towards a sharp bend at the edge of a precipice. Allegedly.

 

 

 

But, my dear Aunt, its a safety bicycle!

 

They could have allayed her fears by providing a tricycle.  The result may have been the same, but at least she would have set off with more initial confidence...

 

(the thing to do is to cook the brakes by assembling them the wrong way round so the blocks pop out of their holders when the Rich Maiden Aunt hauls on the levers.)

 

Most effective! Or so I've been told....

 

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by Hroth

[Nearholmer]

The picture is actually from a "A wheel within a wheel", which was written by Frances Willard, who learned to cycle aged 53, and wrote-up the experience as a way of putting across her brand of early feminism. I dont know who the chap in a topper is, but I think the lady is Mrs Willard, pretending to still not to know how to ride, for the benefit of insensitive photographic technology.

 

PS: its just struck me that her book might be seen as a precursor of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", in that it is a philosophy conveyed through ruminating on a mechanical experience.

 

 

 

 

Edited August 11, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Edwardian]

13 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

The picture is actually from a "A wheel within a wheel", which was written by Frances Willard, who learned to cycle aged 53, and wrote-up the experience as a way of putting across her brand of early feminism. I dont know who the chap in a topper is, but I think the lady is Mrs Willard, pretending to still not to know how to ride, for the benefit of insensitive photographic technology.

 

PS: its just struck me that her book might be seen as a precursor of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance", in that it is a philosophy conveyed through ruminating on a mechanical experience.

 

 

 

 

 

It's a pity Frances Willard did not explore liberation via the internal combustion engine; A Vroom of One's Own? 

 

Oh for a rich maiden aunt!!!!

 

[Flying Pig]

3 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

Here we see Edwardian, with the help of two collaborators, about to launch his rich maiden aunt, who has never been on a bicycle before, but has recently made a favourable codicil to her will, down a very steep hill, towards a sharp bend at the edge of a precipice. Allegedly.

 

Harold Lloyd is innocent - he really can't see anything without his spectacles.

[Northroader]

Didn’t they ride side saddle back then?

[rocor]

17 hours ago, Edwardian said:

 

Given the lack of internal combustion engine vehicles in CA, I think we need not be too prescriptive.

 

This man, on the other hand, put cream in his carbonara .....

 

 

Putting cream in your carabina is also not good when your opponent can shoot back.

 

[Hroth]

18 hours ago, Flying Pig said:

 

Harold Lloyd is innocent - he really can't see anything without his spectacles.

 

On the other hand, the bloke in the bowler is obviously a groom with issues, the sort of bloke who will do anything provided a sov or two changes hands...

[Nearholmer]

9 hours ago, Northroader said:

Didn’t they ride side saddle back then?

How about side-by-side saddle?

 

My youngest and nephew didn’t really master the technique, but they did just about get it moving.

 

 

[uax6]

Is your daughter cheating? It looks like she has her feet on the coasting stirrups...

 

I bet the steering is wonderfully woolly on it, requiring much concentration..

 

Andy G 

Edited August 12, 2021 by uax6

[Annie]

2 hours ago, Nearholmer said:

How about side-by-side saddle?

 

My youngest and nephew didn’t really master the technique, but they did just about get it moving.

 

 

Cool, I always wanted one of those.

[Northroader]

You’re wearing my old school cap.. all together “School by the river, the hill, and the dale, dear to our hearts, etc., etc.”

[Edwardian]

In the news .... David Smith, the Berlin Embassy Spy.

 

As pictures are released of his flat revealing how carefully Smith hid his sympathies with the Russian Federation, baffled British intelligence officers ask 'how could we possibly have known?'

 

 

[woodenhead]

2 hours ago, Edwardian said:

In the news .... David Smith, the Berlin Embassy Spy.

 

As pictures are released of his flat revealing how carefully Smith hid his sympathies with the Russian Federation, baffled British intelligence officers ask 'how could we possibly have known?'

 

 

Officials at the embassy were heard to say "We just thought he had a joke background applied to his Teams meetings"

 

[Edwardian]

In the news .... Amazon's decision to relocate filming of its Second Age of Middle Earth epic TV series from New Zealand to the UK ...

 

I suppose eventually someone would spot the similarity between Gondolin and Welwyn Garden City

 

 

 

So, altogether now: It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, Tolkien's coming home, it's coming home ..... 

 

[monkeysarefun]

3 hours ago, Edwardian said:

suppose eventually someone would spot the similarity between Gondolin and Welwyn Garden City

 

Its a wonder what those movie folk can do with some paint and some 4 by 2.

 

For instance "Wolverine"  is partly set in one of those snowy North American Klondike style mining towns with big peaks with snow and pine trees and stuff.

 

So they chose a town down the road from here -, Picton just outside Sydney Australia as fulfilling all those requirements, maybe it was in Hugh Jackmans contract that he got to go home for lunch or something.

 

Anyway, a couple of days filming fake snow on the main street and cars and trucks parked on the wrong side of the road and the result went from this....

 

 

Via this...

 

To this

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

[Northroader]

13 hours ago, Edwardian said:

In the news .... Amazon's decision to relocate filming of its Second Age of Middle Earth epic TV series from New Zealand to the UK ...

 

I suppose eventually someone would spot the similarity between Gondolin and Welwyn Garden City

 

 

 

So, altogether now: It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, Tolkien's coming home, it's coming home ..... 

 

 

 

Indoor scenes are in Yates Wine Lodge, Harlow New Town.

[Hroth]

13 hours ago, Edwardian said:

In the news .... Amazon's decision to relocate filming of its Second Age of Middle Earth epic TV series from New Zealand to the UK ...

 

I suppose eventually someone would spot the similarity between Gondolin and Welwyn Garden City

 

 

 

So, altogether now: It's coming home, it's coming home, it's coming, Tolkien's coming home, it's coming home ..... 

 

 

 

21 minutes ago, Northroader said:

 

Indoor scenes are in Yates Wine Lodge, Harlow New Town.

 

On some sort of related grounds...

 

There's a thread in Wheeltappers, but I implore you, if you have any regard for the works of Terry Pratchett, not to watch "The Watch" currently being shown on Thursdays on BBC2 (and all episodes available on iPlayer). By coincidence, it has characters featured in AM City Watch stories...

 

 

Edited August 14, 2021 by Hroth

[Edwardian]

Quite a fun segment on the Today programme this morning, interviewing John Garth, the author of this book

 

 

Which is the best thing I've read on Tolkien and Middle Earth in years.

 

One thing that came out was that Jackson's choice of landscapes in NZ wasn't always a good fit with the landscapes as Tolkien described them.  It's long been clear that Rivendell has a very specific Swiss inspiration and that the Shire was inspired by the rural Warwickshire of JRRT's childhood.

 

I think that if you grow up somewhere else in the world, you will relate ME to the landscapes you know and love. For me, though, as a native of England and a Son of Mercia,  much of ME evokes England, and, when living in the Americas for a number of years, reading Tolkien was how I dealt with my longing for England, home and beauty.     

 

6 minutes ago, Hroth said:

 

 

On some sort of related grounds...

 

There's a thread in Wheeltappers, but I implore you, if you have any regard for the works of Terry Pratchett, not to watch "The Watch" currently being shown on Thursdays on BBC2 (and all episodes available on iPlayer). By coincidence, it has characters featured after AM City Watch stories...

 

 

 

You have to accept that it's not Pratchett and not the Disc as you know it, but an alternative version elsewhere in the multiverse.  If you can do that, you can judge the piece on its merits. If you view it as an adaptation of the books, or set in the same world, you'll never be able to accept it.