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Odds And Ends And Anything You Fancy

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I think I spotted slave @Eulalia 's great-something grandmother at 1:13 digging a hole
could be! She's certainly putting her back into it, energetically digging herself into a hole! I'm not sure if she's wearing shorts or a skirt, but quite avant-garde even for a youngster in that era. I do love those ladies' hats, not so much the dresses. I'm rather alarmed from about 1:50 by an ominous cloud of black smoke, nobody seems to be taking any notice - has someone forgotten to turn down the flame under the coq au vin?
 
Barb desperate to get a tattoo?


Oh, I posted this road sign the other day and Barb probably didn't realize she was in the wrong town.
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This is the instruction film that @Barbaria1 missed in High School. Otherwise, she could have been one of the "popular" kids.

Or, as she later learned, dress for success:
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I seem to be the butt of a few jokes here today :confused:
 
My advice would be to stay away from that wild stuff, and just stick to a calm channel crossing.
Puts me in mind of my trip on the C10 bus from Milton Keynes this afternoon. Each time the bus hit a large puddle it was like a WWII motor torpedo boat and the crashing and banging on the North Bedfordshire country roads not much better. (PS it rained all day here.)
 
My first Spitfire,for nearly 2 years...!!
Airfix 1/72 Spitfire IXc....would anyone like to guess which airforce ?? ;)

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I meant to get back to this post sooner. Just want to say it's nice to meet a fellow modeler (and here of all places). I've built a few myself over the years. Love the Spit, btw, and I respect anyone who does good work like that in 1/72. The smallest I could handle was 1/48.
Attaching a pic of one I built a few years back.

FW 190D-9 JG 4 Luftwaffe. 1/48 scale
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Last night I found myself watching "Bloody Tales of the Tower" on the National Geographic channel.
Amongst other tales was the botched execution of the Duke of Monmouth, when the executioner, Jack Ketch, took 5 axe blows to sever the Duke's head and even then had to finish with a knife.
The programme had a replica of the axe used (which is still held in the Tower) but of interest the blade was noted to be offset with respect to the shaft and only ground on one side. This made it difficult when tested on a roll of matting to aim the cut with accuracy, the presenter missed the "neck marks" on the roll and would have struck the back of the Dukes head as JK did.
The axe it was said was more like the type used by a shipwright or house carpenter to trim the side of a timber rather than to cut through a log or an executioner to sever a head. So wrong tool or lack of skill or both?
Mind you Jack had botched the execution of Lord Russell a few years earlier see:
 

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I meant to get back to this post sooner. Just want to say it's nice to meet a fellow modeler (and here of all places). I've built a few myself over the years. Love the Spit, btw, and I respect anyone who does good work like that in 1/72. The smallest I could handle was 1/48.
Attaching a pic of one I built a few years back.

FW 190D-9 JG 4 Luftwaffe. 1/48 scale
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@wulf Nice "Dora"....I've built a whole shelf-full of those beauties.(Plus other Luftwaffe types)
(I'll inbox you.....)
 
Last night I found myself watching "Bloody Tales of the Tower" on the National Geographic channel.
Amongst other tales was the botched execution of the Duke of Monmouth, when the executioner, Jack Ketch, took 5 axe blows to sever the Duke's head and even then had to finish with a knife.
The programme had a replica of the axe used (which is still held in the Tower) but of interest the blade was noted to be offset with respect to the shaft and only ground on one side. This made it difficult when tested on a roll of matting to aim the cut with accuracy, the presenter missed the "neck marks" on the roll and would have struck the back of the Dukes head as JK did.
The axe it was said was more like the type used by a shipwright or house carpenter to trim the side of a timber rather than to cut through a log or an executioner to sever a head. So wrong tool or lack of skill or both?
Mind you Jack had botched the execution of Lord Russell a few years earlier see:
Beheading with the axe was always dicey. Anyone who has ever tried to chop a log knows its hard to hit accurately with a much smaller modern axe, and the execution axe was heavier not very well balanced, so, even if the blade was sharp enough, it was still hard do the job right. It took two strokes for Mary, Queen of Scots and the executioner had to finish the job with a knife to get the head completely off.
The axe was nearly always used in Britain, but, with a few exceptions, most other parts of Europe used the sword. When done properly, the sword was cleaner. But, the executioner had to have more practice and skill and the prisoner had to be somewhat co-operative. Still, movies and art work - including stuff on this site - always seem to want show the axe.
As for Jack Ketch, it may not have been entirely his fault and he may not have been the worst executioner of all time; but forever after, the term "Jack Ketch" became a common nickname for a executioner in Britain.
 
The movement to remove memorials of people with views not appreciated today has spread to the Windy Pennines and a person I had never heard of.

Samuel Marsden was born near my home, went to Australia where he was a vicar and magistrate. Known as the "Flogging Parson" this extract from Wiki is not for the squeamish:

"The day was windy and I protest, that although I was at least fifteen yards to the leeward, from the sufferers, the blood, skin, and flesh blew in my face", as floggers "shook it off from their cats" (referring to the cat-of-nine-tails scourging lash). He continued "The next prisoner who was tied up was Paddy Galvin, a young lad about twenty years of age; he was also sentenced to receive three hundred lashes. The first hundred were given on his shoulders, and he was cut to the bone between the shoulder-blades, which were both bare. The doctor then directed the next hundred to be inflicted lower down, which reduced his flesh to such a jelly that the doctor ordered him to have the remaining hundred on the calves of his legs ...."

He was also the originator of the New South Wales "Female Register" which classed all women in the colony (excepting some widows) as either "married" or "concubine". Only marriages within the Church of England were recognised as legitimate on this list; women who married in Roman Catholic or Jewish ceremonies were automatically classed as concubines. The document eventually circulated within influential circles in London, and is believed to have influenced contemporary views of the Australian colony as a land of sexual immorality, some of which survived into 20th century historiography.


He is memorialised in Yorkshire because of his sheep-breeding which produced such good wool that the area prospered. Now people are starting to ask, "Should we still honour this sort of person?"

 
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