More trivia

First, we have the clock snapped above, a round of decorated fibreboard with a small clock assembly stuck on the back, made in China. The hands on this clock are more or less invisible, making the clock close to useless for what one might have thought was its intended purpose. Leading one to wonder who was in overall charge of this clock, if anyone? Was there any connection between the creation of decorated fibreboard and the business of clocking? Was it a visually impaired graduate of an art college?

I have similar wonders about the fish slices to be found on the kitchenware shelves of supermarkets. Fish slices with leading edges so blunt that they are close to useless for what one might have thought was their intended purpose, that is to say the frying of eggs for breakfast sandwiches.

Then in the matter of Hollis of reference 1, I have now taken a look at the 'Vision of Piers the Plowman', more particularly the introduction thereto where I read something about alliterative verse, and from there to reference 2; a business which caught my eye as I am aware of using alliteration in my own prose. More or less squashed, it seems, by the more or less contemporary Chaucer who brought on modern metre and rhyming. However, interesting though this may be, I can't see me reading much of either Langland or Chaucer.

Then in the matter of bugles of reference 3, I have now found the Brading archive at reference 4, where a lot of work has been done to put a lot of local records online, including meetings of the town council from the eighteenth century on. And these last have been digitised so that they can be searched. But, so far, no bugles - but lots of fines for things like cattle being a nuisance on the High Street.

I have also found online copies of the first edition of the Oxford English Dictionary, at least the first two volumes, references 5 and 6, which serve the present need. I dare say there is more. Not very good photographic copies, the first of them at least from somewhere in India. There is, I believe, a Digital Library of India, but I have yet to track down an entry point that works for me.

Bugle rates quite a fair sized entry, unfortunately spread across two pages.

Perhaps originally a buffalo or wild ox, then a young bull. Nothing about horns. But there is a link to the musical bugle, in that that was originally called a bugle horn, being made from the horn of a bugle, for a long time much cheaper than the brass or copper used now. Which horny story provides evidence against rather than evidence for the Gemini horn-free line. Not conclusive, but evidence against.

Lastly, I was interested to read at reference 7 of the troubles with Babboe cargo bikes, noticed here at reference 8. It seems that the £6,000 price tag did not include a sufficiently sturdy frame, or the management infrastructure need to deal with frame error effectively. And one wonders whether Accell's debt problem, mentioned by the Financial Times, had anything to do with the inflated priced paid for Accell by KKR. With KKR, according to Wikipedia, being big in the shady world of the leveraged buyout. If you like noisy videos of lady gush, click 'view our story' at reference 9.

PS: some days later: I have just been offered reference 10 by someone's computer. Possibly just the thing for the serious student of alliterative metre in middle English narrative poetry.

References

Reference 1: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/fossetts-memory.html.

Reference 2: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alliterative_verse.

Reference 3: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2024/07/a-loin.html.

Reference 4: https://www.bradingcommunityarchive.com/.

Reference 5: https://archive.org/details/in.ernet.dli.2015.99992/page/n39/mode/2up. A & B.

Reference 6: https://archive.org/details/oed02arch/page/n5/mode/2up. C.

Reference 7: KKR-owned Accell seeks to restore trust in Babboe cargo bikes: Group hopes successful recall and replacement of unsafe models will lead to brand’s survival - Olaf Storbeck, Financial Times - 2024.

Reference 8: https://psmv5.blogspot.com/2023/10/trolley-592.html.

Reference 9: https://www.kkr.com/. 

Reference 10: Piers Plowman and the Durable Alliterative Tradition - Eric Weiskott - 2016.

Reference 11: https://ericweiskott.com/. The author of reference 10. Perhaps from 'some very rarefied part of academia', to quote from a recent post concerning Dryden.