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Coincidences

Elephant coincidence -
(The Prrrrologue)
Here's the locally famous Peckforton Elephant and Castle sculpture which we see on our rides.
I used to visit as a child and had forgotten until @RaM reminded me and we sought it out.

The Elephant is much-beloved in the area. Adults say to children 'It's all right, the Elephant's still there!' :D

Today in the area we chatted with a couple of racing snakes who stopped for a breather.

Here's the coincidence;

I mentioned the Elephant as we were close by and cyclists love a photo with a landmark.

They were delighted, especially one who said he is from Coventry whose city crest features an elephant and castle. He was amazed and couldn't wait to get a photo with this one.

Me with Peckforton Elephant.jpg
 
Elephant coincidence -
(The Prrrrologue)
Here's the locally famous Peckforton Elephant and Castle sculpture which we see on our rides.
I used to visit as a child and had forgotten until @RaM reminded me and we sought it out.

The Elephant is much-beloved in the area. Adults say to children 'It's all right, the Elephant's still there!' :D

Today in the area we chatted with a couple of racing snakes who stopped for a breather.

Here's the coincidence;

I mentioned the Elephant as we were close by and cyclists love a photo with a landmark.

They were delighted, especially one who said he is from Coventry whose city crest features an elephant and castle. He was amazed and couldn't wait to get a photo with this one.

View attachment 41313
What's the story behind the sculpture? Why does the elephant have a castle on its back?
 
What's the story behind the sculpture? Why does the elephant have a castle on its back?
@Trevp666 answered that on the 'cycling thread, here you go.

It dates back to the time when few people could read so traders would use a pictorial representation of their wares.
The Worshipful Company of Cutlers were makers of (mainly) swords, knives and other bladed instruments which had a heavy ivory handle.
The 'elephant and castle' appeared on their coat of arms.

https://www.cutlerslondon.co.uk/company/history/#coat-of-arms
 
Two consecutive bike rides, completely different routes and styles. One was solo, hard riding, including road and rough tracks and it led me up into the local hills. The second was a relaxed bimble in the opposite direction to a café with my wife.

My tracking app records the mileage and the route. After today's ride, I checked and told my wife the mileage she had ridden before I noticed that the route looked wrong, and realised I was looking at the wrong date.

Turns out the two consecutive rides were recorded as the same distance to 2 decimal places.
Screenshot 2021-06-27 at 22.00.45.png
 
Today in the area we chatted with a couple of racing snakes who stopped for a breather.
Please, ma'am, what the &%#!* are racing snakes?!!?
Will all you people over there pleasssse sssstart sssspeaking Englissssh?
<sob> I just don't understand your language. :worry:
 
Please, ma'am, what the &%#!* are racing snakes?!!?
Will all you people over there pleasssse sssstart sssspeaking Englissssh?
<sob> I just don't understand your language. :worry:
Sorry. :chuckle:

A racing snake is someone, usually male, who is lean and athletic because they do a lot of cardio exercise. They're described as being 'built like a racing snake' with a mixture of admiration and slight envy.

When you're out on your bike, puffing up a hill, thinking 'Whose idea was this then?' the person who overtakes you with a cheery 'Hello there!' and disappears over the hill is always built like a racing snake. It's funny to point this out ruefully to one's equally unfit companion.

We all have an inner racing snake. Cycling is a way to express it. :cool:
 
This is the Junior Medic, who just loves cycling hilly routes. He doesn't get it from me!
It's exercise, addictive innit. Where we live there are mostly gradients rather than hills and cyclists come from hillier areas to enjoy getting speed up on long stretches of our quiet flat lanes.

Our few hills are well-used though. Last weekend saw the Cholmondeley Castle Triathlon which starts with a nice cold dip in the lake -

All races at the 200-year-old Cholmondeley Castle start by launching into an open-water swim in Deer Park Mere Lake, transitioning on to a bike route that circumnavigates Bickerton Hill, which is the southern most tip of the Peckforton Hlls. There will be one cycle lap for the Super Sprint and two laps for both the Sprint Plus and Olympic distances.

Cholmondeley Castle Triathlon
 
Yesterday I pointed our photogenic Cheshire Elephant and Castle to a Coventry cyclist who was delighted to encounter it, and today we have a fire at the London Elephant and Castle.

Elephant and Castle: two injured in south London blaze following explosion

Two people have been injured in a large fire at Elephant and Castle in south London that involved an explosion under railway arches.

Plumes of thick black smoke were seen billowing from the arches near Elephant and Castle train station, prompting a warning to the public nearby to close all doors and windows. Video also emerged showing people running for cover after an explosion in one of the arches.

A police officer and a member of the public were treated for smoke inhalation in a blaze that took more two hours to control.
 
Called to do a job in the Rochdale area, I threw a paperback into my bag, just in case I got a moment for private reading.

I had to plan my route, which was not hard to remember: turn left at Stakehill roundabout and fork right at Castleton. I did not need to write it down.

Lunch was an unexpected and blissful full hour, so I had time to get into my book, over a flask of coffee.

To find references to both Stakehill and Castleton in a paragraph would not have been startling in a volume about local history. But this was Anna Pavord's study of the Dutch Tulip-craze. Seems it reached out to touch Rochdale! :crazy:
 
I'm not sure if this is a coincidence or more an example of me being a remarkable human being (modesty!)... Doing the Friday shop in Tesco's, and picking out apples for the In-House GP. Much as I approve of Tesco's paper bags in the fruit and veg section, the bags are rubbish for holding more than 5 apples, and I wanted 8 - so logically, I put 4 smallish apples into each of 2 bags. At the checkout, the young man on the till actually remarked to me, "Both of those bags of apples weighed exactly the same!" To which my response was, "Couldn't have done it if I tried." Certainly doesn't happen often.
 
I think you'll find that the apples are supplied in to Tesco as already 'graded' items.
Having worked at the Tesco Head Office in the past I know that suppliers deal in seriously bulk quantities and as such it is much more productive for a supplier to measure and weigh every single item automatically and sort it accordingly so that further down the line they can know exactly what they are either packaging up (weight-wise for pre-packed items) or selling loose.
Next time you go shopping and you are in a similar situation see if you can make 2 bags of 4 that DON'T weight the same! That would probably be a more difficult thing to do.
 
I think you'll find that the apples are supplied in to Tesco as already 'graded' items.
Having worked at the Tesco Head Office in the past I know that suppliers deal in seriously bulk quantities and as such it is much more productive for a supplier to measure and weigh every single item automatically and sort it accordingly so that further down the line they can know exactly what they are either packaging up (weight-wise for pre-packed items) or selling loose.
Next time you go shopping and you are in a similar situation see if you can make 2 bags of 4 that DON'T weight the same! That would probably be a more difficult thing to do.
The two bags weighed exactly the same though, not nearly the same. If we're talking about grammes that's certainly a coincidence.
 
You'd be surprised how accurately the produce gets weighed by the supplier!
As an indication, check the meat that is prepacked in labelled packs that have a weight eg 500g.
How do they do it that 4 chicken breast fillets are exactly that weight? Repeatedly?
 
You'd be surprised how accurately the produce gets weighed by the supplier!
As an indication, check the meat that is prepacked in labelled packs that have a weight eg 500g.
How do they do it that 4 chicken breast fillets are exactly that weight? Repeatedly?
Are the individual fillets each 125g (to follow your example), or do they mix large and small ones to get four as close to 500g as possible? There are some packing machines that can do that, I think that's why I sometimes get three decent sized potatoes and a tiddler.
 
Usually you'll find that most multipacks will be (eg) 4 of exactly the same weight items and every now and then one pack will contain an odd sized one, it's just how the packing of the items works out sometimes, the 'tiddler' is held over until later in the packaging run.
Probably a better example is rashers of bacon though.
Mostly you'll get (at least in main supermarkets) a standard product as (eg) 10 rashers of Smoked Back bacon.
The packs are all pre-printed with the same weight, and they are all the same price, but the bacon rashers are different shapes.
But that 10 pack will always have 10 rashers and be pretty much bang on the stated weight.
This is achieved by the packing system at the suppliers measuring the size of the product before slicing into rashers and adjusting the thickness of the rasher accordingly.
If you eat bacon I'm sure you've had the odd occasion in which the rasher seems unusually large but as thin as tissue paper.
That's also why they include 'water' as an ingredient - if the rashers would fall outside of the acceptable size they 'plump up' the meat with pressurised water before slicing.
Which you'll notice if frying your bacon you'll get a lot more of the boiling white froth than usual.
 
Here're a couple of Facebook/cycling coincidences.

Today we admired a low-flying small plane that was buzzing a nearby field.
I said 'Oooer, it's like North By Northwest!' and we laughed.

Later Techy cycled so fast over a humpbacked bridge he reckoned he briefly left the ground, like the Dukes of Hazzard.
We said 'Yee-ha!' and again we laughed.

Back home later Techy posted our route on Facebook and I eventually looked for it.

On my feed I saw a recommendation for an Alfred Hitchcock page, with the following still from North By Northwest -

North By Northwest.jpg

followed by a joke about the Dukes of Hazzard car -

dukes of hazzard.jpg

My phone was in a back pocket of my cycling shirt so not listening in!
 
Last Sunday morning, my SO and I were out driving (on a visit to one of our children)- don't worry, my curious rambling does include some (very) relevant points)

I randomly turned-on the car radio to BBC Radio 2, and we were half-listening to The Michael Ball Show (hear the archived content yourself at https://www.bbc.co.uk/sounds/play/michaelballshow20210718 ).

(Please don't presume that this all categorises me as a parochial past-it pleb: I've plenty alternative evidence to both prove and counter that impression!)

Michael started his "It's On The Ball" phone-in competition....and a Welshman named Reece Thomas, and his mother Marion, were the inconsequential contestants.

At 38mins 41secs into the show, Marion's question was "list as many puzzle or quiz-related (British) TV shows as you can". By 39mins 36secs, the question had been falteringly-answered by Marion, then summarised by Michael Ball (he gave a considerable cross-sectional list of shows, spanning 30+ years).

Both my SO and I immediately/approximately then said to each-other "aha, notice that Michael Ball didn't include Crosswits?". Neither of us knew that both of us had been fans of the show (which started on UK TV before we met each-other, and we've no recollection of ever having talked between us about it before).

Both my SO and I then/approximately said to each-other "hey, I wonder what good-old Tom O'Conner is up to these days?" (Tom was the main host of the show until its end, and as well as being a comedian and a former teacher, he was a bit of a closet philosopher)

The sad non-metaphorical answer to that question is: that we found-out later on, mid-way through Monday.... Tom O'Conner had just died. On the very day we mentioned him, for the first time in maybe 20 years- perhaps just a few hours before we both suddenly/seperately thought of him.

Perhaps he was just checking-out, and somehow said hello in passing.....was anyone else tuned-in, at that time, a week ago? :-/

quote-your-distress-about-life-might-mean-you-have-been-living-for-the-wrong-reason-not-that-tom-o-connor-56-39-41.jpg

 
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I just had an Ivor Cutler coincidence which is far too mundane to detail but somehow seems fitting with the man himself.
 
Two this week.

My wife and I sometimes watch the quiz show, Pointless. We don't always watch the most recent one, we just go onto iPlayer and find one we've not seen.

On Monday we saw one in which one of the answers was an "obscure" Olympic swimmer, Anita Lonsbrough. I do not believe I had ever heard that name before. The episode was not themed on the Olympics. However, of course, the Olympics are on at the moment.

The next day, Tuesday, my eye was drawn to an article on the BBC website about how Anita Lonsbrough met her husband at the Olympics over 50 years ago.



However, on Tuesday, a customer rang me As part of my process, I had to check her address. It was a village called Trimley St Mary. I do not believe I had ever heard of the village before. I remember commenting to her that it sounded like the sort of village where Miss Marple might investigate a murder.

Today,I saw on the BBC website an article about an arrest in connection with a 1999 murder in Trimley St Mary.
 
Last night I nipped out for groceries and picked up a big tray of strawberries* and a tub of cream. We gorged ourselves happily.
Later Techy told me he'd been discussing the dangers of climate change with a colleague and had said 'Can you imagine a world without strawberries? What a disaster!'

OK, it's summer and we all like strawberries. But I didn't know they were on his mind. Or I thought I didn't. :wink2:


*This could end badly. I once ate a load of fresh strawberries late at night and next morning had sudden explosive (but painless) diarrhoea. This was on way to work, on my bike, approaching a roundabout, wearing jeans and a hi-viz running shirt.

I thought uh-oh, better nip home! and continued round the roundabout - no choice as there was traffic behind me - and let myself in through the back gate to inspect the damage in private.

It had shot up my back like a loathsome volcano, turning my shirt brown right up to the collar.

The driver following me must've seen the whole thing as they followed me home. I bet they changed their route after that.
 
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