Archive for June 2012

The Imperial Banner

Thursday, 28 June 2012

I wrote about The Siege in glowing terms after I read it last year, so be prepared for a similar paean for The Imperial Banner, the second in the Agent of Rome series by Nick Brown. The year is 272AD, two years after the events of The Siege during the Palmyran rebellion, and the young Cassius Quintius Corbulo is again in Syria as an agent of the Imperial Security Service. The Grain Men (or frumentarii) took the name from their organisation’s original purpose of supplying legions with grain, but went [...]

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X is for Xenophon

Wednesday, 27 June 2012

This is my contribution to ABC Wednesday and for Round Ten I am focusing on people from the past, some famous, others less so. The soldier and philosopher, Xenophon, wrote seven books, the most famous of which is Anabasis which tells the story of one of the great Greek military adventures. The action took place in 480BC when Xenophon joined the 10,000 strong army of Greek mercenaries hired by Cyrus the Younger who planned to seize the throne of Persia from his brother, Artaxerxes II, after the death of their [...]

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Life in a Second

Tuesday, 26 June 2012

A friend of Mrs P sent her a link to the video below that shows one second clips from a two month holiday in Asia. What a brilliant idea and not unlike the Where the Hell is Matt? video featured on Going Gently yesterday.

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Flaming June

Monday, 25 June 2012

With a month to go to the start of London 2012, I can’t say I seen a great wave of Olympic fever, despite the best efforts of the media to whip up the hysteria. Or perhaps it’s my world weariness. Still I felt it incumbent on me to drum up my enthusiasm by taking time out yesterday to witness the Olympic torch on its 8,000 mile relay through the UK as it passed nearby in Stockport and Ashton. After all, the Olympics haven’t been held in the UK before in [...]

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Carmel

Sunday, 24 June 2012

I just love the serendipity of the connections that you make on the web that can take you back to things you forgotten. Like the band Carmel. It was Chrissy over at Mancunian Wave that reminded me, but only after we’d connected via her YouTube channel where I spotted a music video from the mid-1980s. The Carmel in question is Carmel McCourt who gave her name to the band she formed with Jim Parris and Gerry Darby when she was a student in Manchester.

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Turing Shrouded

Saturday, 23 June 2012

If you have Google set as your home page, you’ll be aware that today marks the centenary of the birth of Alan Turing, mathematician, code breaker, father of the modern computer and all-round tortured soul. For that reason I figured it was appropriate to finally get round to taking a photo of the statue in his memory to found in Sackville Gardens in Manchester, so off I popped this morning. If I’m honest, it’s not the best work I’ve ever seen, but it does commemorate Turing’s links to the city [...]

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Slow Carr Crash

Friday, 22 June 2012

The row over Jimmy Carr’s tax affairs is a timely reminder that far from us all being in the same boat, most of us are paddling like fury while towing luxury yachts on which are smug gits like him lounging around and sipping champagne. Carr tells us it’s all been a terrible misunderstanding. Apparently, he didn’t tell his agent that he wanted to avoid paying 80 percent tax. What he actually said was that he wanted to avoid playing 8 Out of Ten Cats. (That joke will be wasted on [...]

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Summer Solstice

Thursday, 21 June 2012

As you probably already know, it was the longest day of the year yesterday. Unless you’re in the southern hemisphere, of course, in which case it will have been the longest night. Notwithstanding, I’d been debating with myself for weeks whether to go on the solstice walk from Park Bridge up to Hartshead Pike after the not so great weather conditions last year. But the sun actually shone yesterday and the evening was pleasant, so we took the risk and off we went.

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W is for Edward Watkin

Wednesday, 20 June 2012

This is my contribution to ABC Wednesday and for Round Ten I am focusing on people from the past, some famous, others less so. When Gustav Eiffel unveiled his famous tower in 1889, Edward Watkin decided that London should go one better by building an even taller tower in Wembley. Watkin was an MP and chairman of the Metropolitan Railway and his vision was to create the tower as the centre piece of a pleasure park just 12 minutes from Baker Street station. He even invited Eiffel to design it, [...]

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