Ultimately, it comes down to whether the captain has the ability to recognise class, or whether he’s going to rely on the ephemeral & frankly irrelevant detail that I’ve only scored one run so far this season.
A pullulating match sees @AuthorsCC bowl the Actors for 143 in their 40th over. To my huge relief, I find myself sufficiently recovered from my #EliteSportsInjury to #BLAST out the Actors’ openers, & register figures of 8-1-29-2.
This triples my wickets this season...
In the @AuthorsCC innings, we are currently wobbling at 22/3.
Well, @AuthorsCC lose a nail-biting match by 12 runs. I would have hit a couple of sixes to win it, but @CCampbell_Agent displayed his degree in people by ordering me to play straight, so obviously I then got caught behind, sigh.
(However, on a positive one, I did triple my tally of runs for the season by scoring 2.)
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To the seas of Suffolk, there to embark tomorrow with @jamiembrixton on a journey across England to Blackpool: coast to coast, as directly as we can, stopping off along the way to admire & explore what may lie in our path...
And so it begins.
@jamiembrixton kneels in admiration before the spectacle of the river Deben, as it meets the North Sea. 2 Martello towers stand on sentry in the distance. #CoastToCoast
Bawdsey Manor: built in 1886 by thé splendidly named art collector & Liberal MP, Sir William Cuthbert Quilter; requisitioned in WW1; bought in 1936 by the Air Ministry to serve as a centre for radar research. Amazingly, it continued as a RAF base into the 90s. So Dr Who…
Huge excitement as we arrive at the first stop on our tour of #PreConquestKent: a Romano-British temple found during the building of a housing estate in Newington, just off Watling Street.
@jamiembrixton engages in some top archaeological research, scoping out the very site.
The remains of the temple were moved 70 metres to a neighbouring recreation area. It dates to the 1st century, & stood in what seems basically to have been a huge industrial zone, producing iron & pottery. Although massively developed under the Romans, it was originally Iron Age.
The readiness of faith leaders to ignore the evidence of history should it conflict with their doctrinal positions is always a bit depressing
No! By and large, we owe what survives of classical literature to Christian copyists. Christian emperors might order heretical & astrological books burned - but there was never any campaign to destroy pagan learning. Quite the opposite, in fact.
This, by @TimONeill007, is an excellent summary of why the notion that Christians destroyed classical learning is a myth of the kind that atheists pride themselves on opposing. (Whereas in fact they tend merely to be recycling Protestant anti-Catholicism) historyforatheists.com/2020/03/the-gr…
To the ancient city of Mandu, for a millennium and more a mighty stronghold, but also, in the 15th century, the scene of what @DalrympleWill has described as “one of the most singular experiments in pleasure that the world has ever seen.”
“Ghiyath Shahi filled Mandu with no less than 16,000 beautiful female slaves and the good-looking daughters of his feudatory rajahs; the walled hilltop citadel was defended by an army of five hundred armour-clad girls from Abyssinia.”
Ghiyath Shah’s other enthusiasms included: samosas (“don’t forget to add saffron, fried aubergines & ginger”); hunting; perfumes (especially aromatic oils); and aphrodisiacs (“sparrow brains fried in milk and ghee”).
H/t Hannah Robinson’s excellent @secret_unusual guide to Edinburgh
“The lodge is designated No. 1 in Scotland & it may well be the oldest Freemason lodge in the world. References are made to it in 1504 & it holds minutes of the oldest Masonic meeting on 31 July 1599, making it the world’s oldest Masonic document.” #Edinburgh
The birthplace of James Clerk Maxwell, without whom I would have been unable to post this tweet