Unexpected Items In Blogging Area

A number of peculiar and puzzling things that I've collected in my wonky-wheeled trolley as I travel up and down the tempting displays in life's supermarket. I'm afraid to say that I'm the equivalent of the person who stops to read the ingredients and the consumer information on things they don't really want, blocking up the aisles and wasting everybody's time - much as I'm wasting yours right now.


Take Two Signs

The county boundary between Cambridgeshire and Suffolk performs some remarkable contortions, one of which is to divide the twin villages of Kennett and Kentford so that the former is in Cambridgeshire while the latter swears allegiance to Suffolk. This is odd, to say the least, since the two villages join up to form one settlement. They are so close to each other that the two village signs above are actually opposite sides of the same board!


Owt Of This Mortall Lyfe

Centuries ago it was common for the more wealthy parishioners to be buried in the body of the church and commemorated by brass plates attached to huge marble slabs set into the floor. Usually nowadays the brass plaques are missing, most often due to the attentions of metal thieves rather than Puritanical zeal. Somehow this one has survived for nearly 430 years. 


Wartime Refugees

It was not only children who were evacuated from London during the war years. The building above, which is in Cambridge's Trumpington Street, housed The London School Of Economics from 1939 to 1945 at the invitation of the master and fellows of Peterhouse College.


Changing Times

In my student days, back in the early 1970s, the words "student" and "haircut" seldom appeared together!


Bar-Room Stationery

...or beer mats as they are sometimes called. I used to have a splendid collection of these, advertising many brews and breweries that have long disappeared. Lots of people collected them, sneaking an odd little cardboard coaster into their pockets as they left the pub. I discovered that it was a much better tactic to go and ask if I could take a beer-mat for my collection. I was never refused and, often as not, I was given a stack of other mats which the pub no longer needed. The hobby faded as so many breweries closed down or were absorbed by the larger companies. Nowadays the increase in small specialist  breweries has made it interesting again. I wish I hadn't thrown all mine away.


A Mystery

High up on a wall in Cambridge, above a modern shop selling chocolate, is this ornate stone. It bears the crest of nearby Emmanuel College along with the words "The Chalice". But what was The Chalice? What's the connection with Emmanuel College? Why is it high up on the wall of this building? I don't know and can't find out.


Pet Hates

If there's one thing I can't stand it's the little resin animals with which people decorate their gardens at huge cost. But these two, spotted in Kentford, where we began today's ramble, are the exception to the rule. Ahhhh! 


Take care.