Commonplace Book pages, Richard York

So what's a commonplace book?
Just a book kept by anyone - people in Tudor times were not the only ones - where you put anything you like: sayings you heard or read, perhaps a pressed flower if you like, a song, a picture... a sort of scrap book of things which appealed to you at the time.
So this is mine. It will have bits added to it from time to time.
I hope you like them too.

	Just one of the joys of a massed re-enactors' event after official hours! In this case, Kirby Hall, English Heritage "History in Action" August 2001. Sadly, while it does show a medieval soldier riding World War II bike, you can't properly see the goggles which completed the ensemble.
December 2006: We had the privilege of working in London's V&A museum, in front of this huge altar piece from Spain, depicting St. George being put to death in a variety of utterly horrible ways, but still surviving and killing his dragon. We liked the rather Dutch Old Master-ish atmosphere of this whole scene, taken during setting-up.

SO I promised myself I'd be strictly non-political on my website... Hmmm. But I can't resist passing on some information from the Observer Food Supplement of 25 Jan 2004: Aparently Tesco profits by Ł1,000,000 every week from its banana trade. Of every pound spent on the fruit, just 1 penny goes to the growers. of course Fair Trade bananas are available - please see my page on bananas and history being boring!
A wee platitude - but not a bad one... Half of LIFE is "if" - How much more useful if it's "what if?" rather than "if only!"
I hadn't realised that the swallow, which flies each year from Southern Africa to Britain, among other places, weighs less than a 50p coin. On the way it crosses the Sahara desert, where it's nearly boiled by day and frozen by night.
.	"DELIVERS A STUNNING PERFORMANCE ... I went to see Cronenbourg's film A History of Violence.... A wonderfully sinister, jet black Chrysler ...[was] perfect for this sombre, violent, reflective movie" From Chrysler's own ad for its 300C model, Nov 2005. Let the car reflect your personality. Hmmm?? So next time you see a Chrysler 300C heading for you, reflect on the personality of the person driving it, if that's how they sell it.
More positive: I found this view by being on top of the Wrynose Pass, in the Lake District, on a day of interesting weather. It's impossible to give the impression of just how big it all was in a photo, but I hope the mood of the landscape gets to you like it did me! If you like it enough to want to see it bigger, click on it, but be warned, it'll take ages to download unless you have broadband!
"There's no getting away from it: if you buy something you support the system that produces it" Hugh Fearnley Whittingstall

Quote, at the beginning of America's attacks on Afghanistan, by a Morrocan car mechanic:
"In the Koran, men of war will find words of war. Men of peace will find words of peace. We are all brothers under one God."
...and in many books of faith, I think, including the Bible.

Moles are attacking a dam in a Northamptonshire country park. This is NOT an April Fool wind-up, be serious!
They are digging mole-runs into the dam, and weakening it. Rangers believe that moles are sensitive to sounds. SO their answer is to bury those really annoying Christmas cards with electric jingles in the mole runs. The moles will, if all goes to plan, dislike the jingles so much they will leave the area. (Perhaps moles have more sense than I thought...)
The rangers are appealing to people to send them their Christmas cards-with-jingles, so they can bury them.
... Or is it just a campaign by the rangers to get rid of all those truly maddening cards?

April 2002: I'm currently enormously enoying reading Christopher Hibbert's "Queen Victoria, A personal History." (I confess I haven't even sought permission to copy this bit, but, dear publisher if you read this, please regard it as free advertising! - and yes, I do recommend it.)
Victoria's Grandfather was a friend of Archbishop Harcourt. At the age of 90 this gentleman fell off a bridge into pond and later died, but not before, to quote Hibbert, resignedly observing to his chaplain, "Well, Dixon, I think we have frightened the frogs."

May 2002:
During a pub lunch out at The Romer Arms, Nuneham, Northants, I was reading a poster on the wall. It's an advertisement for a Village Celebration in Honour of HRH Prince of Wales' marriage, in July 1863.
The whole thing's a delight, but at the bottom it advertises:
"An efficient Band will be in attendance."

August 2003... we returned from a very much needed holiday in the Limousin region of France, home of the famous Limousin cattle. Truly lucky visitors may even catch sight of the rare stretch Limousin: stretchlimo

The Delights of SIGNS

Christmas 2003 In our local Beatties store I saw a sign telling you to shop with confidence, because:
"We exchange unsuitable gifts after Christmas"
It's perhaps a special in-store custom. "Now," they think, "what would be a really unsuitable gift for the manager?" before they all sit round on the 27th of December with their oddly shaped parcels for each other...

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