My latest Joy of Six includes a piece by Francis Young on Britain's Christmas hobby horse customs, and I have seen other references to the Mari Lwyd and hoodening over the holiday. All this has put me in mind of Leicester's nine o'clock horses. Roy Palmer writes about in his excellent Folklore of Leicestershire and Rutland in the context of the bogey man and other threats used by parents to keep their children in line: By far the most widely-used threat was that of the nine o'clock horses which would mangle children who were out late, or even staying up ...
This time we travel to the 1979 general election, being held when after a minority Labour government lost a vote of confidence.
The most bizarre revelation from the annual publication of previously classified governnment documents has to be this story in the Guardian that the former prime minister Tony Blair was keen on an idea to relocate the then Premier League football side Wimbledon FC to Belfast in the late 1990s. The paper says that the state papers include a note from 1997 described as "following up earlier informal discussions about the possibility of an English Premier League football club relocating to Belfast": It was described as something that would be a "significant breakthrough if Belfast had a football team playing in ...
Alan Sugar makes the case for the European Single Market in a video issued by the Department of Trade and Industry. As the market was launched on 1 January 1993, this presumably dates from a year or two before. In doing so, he reminds us that one of the great benefits of the European Union was the way it reduced the red tape involved in exporting. And the need to avoid that bureaucracy means that British business is likely to continue to meet EU standards even though we now have no say in drawing them up. As I wrote in ...
On holiday in Southwold years ago, I wondered why the town seemed oddly familiar. Then I realised it's because Peter Greenaway's film Drowning by Numbers was shot there. Greenaway had a vogue in the 1980s but seems rather forgotten today. I think that's a shame. Here he talks about Drowning by Numbers and about his approach to making films more generally.
Thu 28th
07:00
Balgay Park - leaf litter and surface water drainage at the Rose Garden #dundeewestend
Following concerns raised by residents about leaf litter and surface water drainage at the Rose Garden at Balgay Park, we highlighted this to our local environment manager and have now received the following update : "Concerning the drainage and run off issue towards the former Rose Garden, having met the Friends of Balgay here in recent months, we do have plans for our gardeners to attend to this area. Given the planned maintenance work we have, this should help improve the drainage issue. Similarly, our area gardeners are scheduled to carry out work in this area of the park through ...
