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  • Bristol’s Roman Road

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities

    There’s a Roman road that runs across Durdham Down in the Clifton area of Bristol.

    However, it’s not the one near the top of Blackboy Hill with the modern name plate and the posh BS9 postcode. That ‘Roman’ road is an imposter, albeit a short but straight one.

    There is a real Roman road that crosses Durdham Down, but it’s much harder to spot on the ground since it consists of just the agger, the raised bank upon which the road was laid and its two accompanying side ditches. Your ‘umble scribe actually had to lie on the ground to spot it, as the lumps and bumps on the ground can be measured in mere centimetres. The sharp-eyed may be able to discern the differences between the agger and side ditches in the photograph below.

    Agger and ditches of Roman Road on Durdham Down

    It’s somewhat easier to spot on a Lidar scan of the area. It can be seen in the 2 faint parallel lines depicting the ditches on either side of the agger, which are enclosed by the red ellipse in the photo below.

    Plot of Roman road across Durdham Down on Lidar scan enclosed by red ellipse

    This section of Roman highway is a scheduled monument. Its official listing reads as follows.

    The monument includes part of the Roman road which originally ran from Bath to Sea Mills, situated on a wide plateau known as Durdham Down. The road survives as a length of flat-topped bank measuring approximately 100m long, 10m wide and 0.6m high with a visible although largely buried ditch on the south side.

    The Sea Mills mentioned above is a modern-ish suburb of Bristol. It was, however, also home to the Romans who established a settlement called Portus Abonae there. From Portus Abonae, travellers on the road would have had to take to water to continue their onward

    In between the surviving section on the Downs and Portus Abonae, part of the original Roman road’s alignment is still in use today, its course being followed by the current Mariner’s Drive/Mariner’s Lane.

    Mariner's Drive/Lane following line of Roman Road

    The map below shows how this Roman Road, known as the Via Julia, fitted into the general system of roads in Rome’s province of Britannia.

    Major Roman roads in Britannia
    Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

  • Food and language

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Oddities, Social Media

    Along with water, food is one of the essentials of life.

    Another of life’s essentials is language; it’s vital for communication and communal living in a social species such as ourselves.

    One of the elements of language is the adage, generally defined as something which people often say and which expresses a general truth about some aspect of life.

    In English one well-known adage is there’s many a true word spoken in jest, a propos of which the screenshot below turned up today in my social media feed.

    Conversation reads - Is British food really that bad? If made correctly; yes.

  • Distracted boyfriend: fascist edition

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Oddities, Politics, Social Media, Tech

    According to Wikipedia, “Distracted boyfriend is an Internet meme based on a 2015 stock photograph by Spanish photographer Antonio Guillem. Social media users started using the image as a meme at the start of 2017, and it went viral in August 2017 as a way to depict different forms of disloyalty. The meme has inspired various spin-offs and received critical acclaim.”

    Copyright on original: Antonio Guillem.
    Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.

    The latest depiction of such portrayal has taken more than one step to the right, depicting as it does Kremlin crook Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin as the object of distraction, Adolf Hitler as the long-suffering girlfriend and one Donald John Trump, unauthorised keeper of classified documents, convicted business fraudster, convicted sexual predator, suspected Capitol insurrectionist in chief and disgraced forty-fifth president of the United States of America.

    Donald Trump, holding hands with Adolf Hitler, distracted by Vladimir Vladimirovich Putin
    Phwoar!

  • Dire outlook for Tories

    Steve WoodsPolitics, Social Media

    Yesterday saw Jeremy Hunt, a man who does very poor Chancellor of the Exchequer impression (preceding which he had pretended to be Secretary of State for Health, managing to incur the ire of hospital doctors while in office. Ed.), present his budget to parliament.

    Many folk have remarked on social media recently on the similarity between Mr Hunt and Rowan Atkinson’s Mr Bean sitcom character, so here’s a handy image to see if their affirmations are correct.

    Private Eye style lookalike featuring Mr Bean and Jeremy Hunt

    Sticking with the same two characters, your ‘umble scribe decided to have some fun yesterday on Mastodon with a poll asking who would make the better finance minister. The unsurprising results are shown below.

    Poll asks who would make a better chancellor - Mr Bean or Jeremy Hunt. Result Mr Bean 100%, Jeremy Hunt 0%

    And that’s not the end of the bad news for the Blue Team. Another poll in which I participated asked who readers would like to be the next prime minister, giving the options of incumbent Rishi Sunak, Labour leader ‘Sir’ Keir Starmer, the late lamented Groucho Marx, and Larry the Downing Street mouser.

    QUICK POLL Who would you prefer to be the next UK Prime Minister? 0% Rishi Sunak 19% Groucho Marx 13% Kier Starmer 68% Lary The Cat

    Larry the CatYes, that’s right Larry the Cat, the Downing Street moggy, beat both professional politicians, as did the runner-up, a Marxist, albeit one from the Groucho wing of the movement.

    Groucho MarxWe are cursed to live in the proverbial interesting times.

    Even though Larry resigned from his post under the premiership of disgraced former party-time alleged prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson (posts passim), as did lots of other staffers, he soon returned to his old stomping ground during the lettuce shelf life length premiership of the disastrous free marketeer Mary Elizabeth Truss, the free marketeer the markets rejected.

  • Michelle Donelan does a libel

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Media, Politics, Social Media

    Official mugshot of libellous minister Michelle DonelanNews has come to light today that Michelle Donelan, the dishonourable member for Chippenham, currently doing a nice sideline in incompetence as the Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology, has retracted libellous allegations made in October 2023 against Professor Kate Sang of Heriot-Watt University in Edinburgh – an academic recently appointed to a UKRI advisory group – accusing Prof. Sang of expressing sympathy for proscribed terrorist organisation Hamas. Donelan also made similar defamatory allegations about another academic, Dr Kamna Patel of University College London.

    Donelan has now withdrawn her allegations and apologised for the remarks she initially made via social media, as well as agreeing to pay Prof. Sang undisclosed damages and legal cost have been funded by the taxpayer, in the same manner disgraced former party-time Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson had his legal fees funded by the public purse when he was finally pulled up after constantly lying to the House of Commons.

    The use of public funds to redress the damage done by a government minister’s private bigotry has not gone down well in some circles, to put it mildly. Those objecting include the Liberal Democrats’ deputy leader Daisy Cooper, who has has referred to the largesse of the public purse in relieving Donelan’s financial embarrassment as nothing short of a national scandal as her actions were clearly outside of her ministerial brief.

    However, not all the media presented the audiences with the full facts. Here the BBC has Donelan forking out herself for the damages and legal costs. It was not alone in doing so, with The Guardian, Daily Mail and Daily Telegraph all implying Donelan is paying the agreed sum out of her own pocket.

    Headline reads Cabinet minister pays damages over Hamas claim

    Wikipedia helpfully mentions in its article on the minister that before entering politics, Donelan’s career was in marketing, meaning that she has previous form in peddling stuff that is patently untrue or closely related thereto (along with advertising, public relations and broadcasting, marketing is one of the so-called bullshit industries. Ed.).

    Calls are now being made for her resignation, but as per usual an anonymous Number 10 source has stated that Rishi Sunak had full confidence in Donelan, calling her “an excellent minister”. The last time I looked, excellent ministers do not commit libel.

  • Commemorative Carcassonne culinary cock-up

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities, Social Media

    Aerial view of medieval CarcassonneThe French city of Carcassonne in the département of Aude is best known – and rightly so – for its medieval citadel, which actually has a history dating back to the Gallo-Roman period and is on the UNESCO list of World Heritage Sites.

    However, in recent days Carcassonne has become equally well known – in the Francophone world at least – for the poor quality of the local council’s spelling and its subsequent mockery on social media and in the mainstream print and broadcast media, as Midi Libre reports.

    Like any French town or city, some of Carcassonne’s street names commemorate prominent local and/or national figures.

    Pierre Curie. Image courtesy of Wikimedia CommonsOne of those luminaries so honoured in Carcassonne is the physicist Pierre Curie (1859-1906) In 1903, Pierre was awarded the Nobel Prize for Physics along with his wife, Marie Skłodowska–Curie and another French scientist, Henri Becquerel, the man who discovered radioactity, all of them being jointly honoured in that year for their contributions to science and knowledge.

    As stated by Midi Libre, the cause for the outbreak of mainstream media and social media mockery, not to mention the presence of red faces at the local mairie, can be summarised in one single sentence.

    Cette semaine, deux panneaux ont été installés sur l’avenue Pierre Curie, dans la cité audoise, sauf que le célèbre physicien a été rebaptisé… “Pierre Curry” et a donc été orthographié comme la célèbre épice indienne.

    Which is rendered in English as the following:

    This week, two road signs were installed on Avenue Pierre Curie, in the city in Aude, except that the famous physicist was renamed… “Pierre Curry” and was thus spelled like the famous Indian spice.

    Street sign for Avenue Pierre Curry

    The erroneous signs were quickly removed yesterday (Saturday). The council has stated that signs with the correct spelling will be installed from this coming Monday.

    The mockery on social media took two forms: firstly, the culinary (it is not known whether Pierre and Marie invented the radioactive tandoori. Ed.), whilst Jo Zefka provides a typical post mocking the council’s poor orthographical skills.

    Screenshot of tweet by Joe Zefka

    Zefka asks:

    “Avenue Pierre Curry, physicien”.
    Demain, la “rue Arthur Rambo, poète” ?

    English version:

    “Avenue Pierre Curie, physicist”.
    Tomorrow, “rue Arthur Rambo, poet”?

    Your ‘umble scribe is pleased to note the speed with which Carcassonne town hall will be replacing the error-laden road signs. Here in the fair city and county of Bristol, the council – which is not known for its alacrity (except when pursuing council tax arrears .Ed.) – took all of four years to replace an erroneous road sign reading Morton Road (instead of Morton Street) in Lawrence Hill, perhaps because it lacked to comic cock-up quality of its Carcassonnais counterpart.

  • Situations vacant: woodland builders

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Oddities

    Reach plc local titles are an excellent source of exclusives, mainly due to the poor quality English of some of their employees.

    Today’s Bristol Live/Post has one such exclusive, which also doubles up a secret classified for for very specialist workers in the construction trade, namely woodland builders, as per the screenshot below.

    Biggest woodland in a generation to be built near Bristol

    Your ‘umble scribe is glad to see that the generation of greenery has been modernised. Building woodland sounds much more contemporary and organised than just letting the shrubbery sprout naturally. It will also ensure more employment for those in the construction trade, which is always the first to suffer and the last to recover in any economic downturn. 😀

  • MO Republican embraces her inner Nazi

    Steve WoodsLanguage, Politics, Social Media, Uncategorized

    Q: what links an anonymous-looking plot of land somewhere in Missouri with Bebelplatz (also known as Opernplatz) in the city of Berlin?

    A: The burning of books.

    On 10th May 1933 , Nazi supporters from the German Student Association gathered in Bebelplatz to burn books. They burned around 20,000 books, including works by Heinrich Mann, Erich Maria Remarque, Heinrich Heine, Karl Marx, Albert Einstein, Erich Kästner and many other authors.

    Nazis burn books in Bebelplatz on 10th May 1933
    Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

    On 6th February 2024, Valentina Gomez, a Republican Party candidate for Missouri’s Secretary of State (the state’s public officer whose duties include the oversight of elections, running the state library and the preservation of state archives. Ed.), posted a video of herself on the social media platform formerly known as Twitter showing herself using a flame-thrower to destroy 2 LGBTQ-inclusive books, as reported by NBC.

    Post reads When I’m Secretary of State, I will BURN all books that are grooming, indoctrinating, and sexualizing our children. MAGA. America First

    Gomez’s text accompanying the post tells one all that’s needed to know about her extreme right-wing views of the “Praise the Lord and pass the ammunition” variety. The books she destroyed were also taken from public libraries in the state, so she is also guilty of vandalism or destroying public property, but as the value of the books is under $750, she’ll probably escape censure under state law.

    To return to Bebelplatz, it now contains an artwork by the sculptor Micha Ullman entitled The Empty Library, which was unveiled in May 1995. The memorial is set into the square’s cobblestones and contains a collection of empty subterranean bookcases. A few metres away is a commemorative bronze plaque containing a quotation by the author Heinrich Heine, whose books were amongst those burned.

    The quotation reads:

    Das war ein Vorspiel nur, dort
    wo man Bücher verbrennt,
    verbrennt man am Ende auch Menschen.
    In English the quotation is equally chilling:
    That was but a prelude;
    where they burn books,
    they will ultimately burn people as well

    As to the Nazi link, LGBTQ Nation remarks:

    Whether or not Gomez understands the political and moral implications of book burning is unclear. The video could be a savvy and unsubtle reference, like Donald Trump’s use of terms including “vermin” and “poisoning the blood”, to Nazi ideology in an appeal to the most extreme of the MAGA base.

    America, history is trying to teach you a lesson. Don’t fall asleep in class or gaze out of the window.

  • And now, a message about the prime minister…

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Oddities, Politics, Social Media

    As seen yesterday on the fringes of Bristol’s Broadmead shopping ‘quarter’.

    Sticker reading Rishi Sunak is a pussy hole.

    As it bears no imprint, your correspondent doubts this is official party political campaign material.

    However, it is on a par with former Scottish First Minister Nicola Surgeon’s assessment of one of Sunak’s predecessors in the post, namely disgraced former party-time prime minister Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson.

    Further less than complementary appraisals of senior Tory politicians, including one comparing lettuce shelf-life prime minister Mary Elizabeth Truss to a marzipan sex toy, were subsequently revealed to be spurious.

  • More writing on the wall

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    Yet more Bristol street art, this time from the wall of the Coach at the junction of Braggs Lane and Gloucester Lane in the St Jude’s area.

    Aeroplane with weapons plus the wording Stop Killing People You Tucking Fwats

    Your ‘umble scribe is unaware whether the Twats being referenced are involved in Israel’s latest slaughter in the Gaza Strip, the Russian invasion and occupation of Ukraine, the US and UK attacks on Yemeni Houthis for their targeting of Red Sea shipping or any one of the manifold armed conflicts – whether international or internal civil wars/insurrections – which seem to afflict the world at any given moment.

    Perhaps the artist Merny would like to comment below as to her/his motivation.

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