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FT413

titch

titch

Justified & Ancient
Joined
Sep 30, 2009
Messages
3,508
Just got back from having my Rona booster to find 413 on the floor.
Bizarre board games, immoderate eating, Dr Dee and his magic mirror and NEEDLE PANIC!!!!!
 
Not had a chance to flick through it yet. Maybe with a beer after I’ve stopped working this evening.
 
Two observations.

The needle/injection thing in nightclubs:

It's like the thing with UFO abductions where people "come back", are convinced the aliens implanted them, then search their own bodies, minutely, for evidence. And of course they find it: all sorts of embedded "alien artefacts" that might well be, for instance, a piece of grit that got embedded and encapsulated thirty-odd years before in a childhood accident. The point is - up until that moment had they checked their own bodies with anything like that minute level of attention? Who does? The girl with that hitherto unregarded pinprick hole in her leg might have picked it up anywhere and simply not noticed or paid it any attention. Suddenly, she notices, in circumstances where she gives it more significance than it might deserve.

(I woke up this morning with a large part of a fingernail hanging off: this puzzled me, especially as tidying it up, the skelf came free taking a bit of skin with it and there was a drop of blood and "ouch" time. I'm still baffled as to how it happened. I can only think I picked it up when prepping food in the ktichen yesterday evening but just did not notice: I'm used to little kitchen injuries, I was in pro catering for long enough.) Maybe it was aliens abducting me last night, who knows?)

Of course, if there is an anaesthetic out there that is so potent a single pinprick from a needle carrying the merest drop of the stuff can knock people out, it would explain a lot. (But how would the assailant carry something this potent without risk to themself?)

Second observation: I found it amusing that a 1960's boardgame featuring TV's Nicholas Parsons felt it necessary to add in big letters underneath that he is part of "a popular pair". ("he's popular really. He really is. Honest!")
 
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AgProv said:
Two observations.

The needle/injection thing in nightclubs:

It's like the thing with UFO abductions where people "come back", are convinced the aliens implanted them, then search their own bodies, minutely, for evidence. And of course they find it: all sorts of embedded "alien artefacts" that might well be, for instance, a piece of grit that got embedded and encapsulated thirty-odd years before in a childhood accident. The point is - up until that moment had they checked their own bodies with anything like that minute level of attention? Who does? The girl with that hitherto unregarded pinprick hole in her leg might have picked it up anywhere and simply not noticed or paid it any attention. Suddenly, she notices, in circumstances where she gives it more significance than it might deserve.

(I woke up this morning with a large part of a fingernail hanging off: this puzzled me, especially as tidying it up, the skelf came free taking a bit of skin with it and there was a drop of blood and "ouch" time. I'm still baffled as to how it happened. I can only think I picked it up when prepping food in the ktichen yesterday evening but just did not notice: I'm used to little kitchen injuries, I was in pro catering for long enough.) Maybe it was aliens abducting me last night, who knows?)

Of course, if there is an anaesthetic out there that is so potent a single pinprick from a needle carrying the merest drop of the stuff can knock people out, it would explain a lot. (But how would the assailant carry something this potent without risk to themself?)

Second observation: I found it amusing that a 1960's boardgame featuring TV's Nicholas Parsons felt it necessary to add in big letters underneath that he is part of "a popular pair". ("he's popular really. He really is. Honest!")
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It's easy enough to sustain a 'prick' mark from one of the plastic tags that carry clothing prices, if you don't remove them properly or fully. I've not see one case of credible 'injection with intent to sedate' yet. Being pricked with intent to cause hysteria, yep, I can believe in that. Getting enough drug into a person's bloodstream and then following them around until it takes effect? Nope.

Looking forward to reading my 413, which arrived yesterday.
 
The IHTM is my favourite although this time it went down hill as I read on. The guy with the head injuries what does he expect when he has ‘stone fights’? I’d say it’s a combination of being clumsy and ar**ing about, not very Fortean.
 
MorningAngel said:
The IHTM is my favourite although this time it went down hill as I read on. The guy with the head injuries what does he expect when he has ‘stone fights’? I’d say it’s a combination of being clumsy and ar**ing about, not very Fortean.
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I know! A stone fight?! Thank goodness he isn't armed! But it did make me laugh a bit, so there's that.
 
The good Reverend's board games article was fantastic! Who knew there was so much material to be mined from it? They saved one of the best of the year for last.
 
Not bought one for ages! Spotting 413 in Tesco, in an unusual expansion of their magazine-space, how could I resist?

Saving it till bedtime. :)
 
GNC said:
I know! A stone fight?! Thank goodness he isn't armed! But it did make me laugh a bit, so there's that.
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You would be surprised at the paucity of entertainment in North Wales. You have to be creative and make your own.
 
I'm stuck in the USA, where the issues are delayed by 2-3 months. Grrr.

Can someone read this one to me?
 
Reading Lisa Gledhill's article on what became of the sarsen stones which local history asserts were to be seen in Streatley, her quest to track them down, and her speculations on what happens to old stones over time.

This got me thinking about something I pass every day on the commute to work and which I keep meaning to investigate further but i can never find the time or it keeps going out of mind.

Stockport Road in Bredbury is the main road NE out of Stockport, down in the valley where the River Mersey begins, and it climbs the long slope up into the lower Pennines to the towns of Hyde and Ashton. It's an interesting place: the River Goyt comes out of Derbyshire and Cheshire (it's a major location for the books of Alan Garner) and meets the River Tame coming out of Lancashire. Where they meet, you get the Mersey. At a river crossing like this humans have been in continual residence for at least 2000 years.

As you travel north-east out of Stockport and go up the hill, eventually you get to the corner of Elm Hill Street. Here, the buildings seem visibly older than the largely late 19th and 20th century suburbia around them, as if they're a survival of an earler rural hamlet. I'd guess the nearest building in the photo is late 18th or early 19th C.

Just here, for no apparent or obvious reason, a large smooth dark boulder is set into the pavement, almost but not quite incorporated into the wall of the old house behind it. It's striking for its apparent pointlessness, and the fact that whenever the pavement is resurfaced, it is scrupulously and obviously left alone. After reading Lisa's article, I find myself wondering exactly how old it is, and why an apparent decision has been made to leave it alone and undisturbed. Picked up these images from Google Street View:



Bredbury weirdstone.jpg
 
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AgProv said:
Reading Lisa Gledhill's article on what became of the sarsen stones which local history asserts were to be seen in Streatley, her quest to track them down, and her speculations on what happens to old stones over time.

This got me thinking about something I pass every day on the commute to work and which I keep meaning to investigate further but i can never find the time or it keeps going out of mind.

Stockport Road in Bredbury is the main road between Stockport, down in the valley where the River Mersey begins, and it climbs the long slope up into the lower Pennines to the towns of Hyde and Ashton. It's an interesting place: the River Goyt comes out of Derbyshire and Cheshire (it's a major location for the books of Alan Garner) and meets the River Tame coming out of Lancashire. Where they meet, you get the Mersey. At a river crossing like this humans have been in continual residence for at least 2000 years.

As you travel north-east out of Stockport and go up the hill, eventually you get to the corner of Elm Hill Street. Here, the buildings seem visibly older than the largely late 19th and 20th century suburbia around them, as if they're a survival of an earler rural hamlet. I'd guess the nearest building in the photo is late 18th or early 19th C.

Just here, for no apparent or obvious reason, a large smooth dark boulder is set into the pavement, almost but not quite incorporated into the wall of the old house behind it. It's striking for its apparent pointlessness, and the fact that whenever the pavement is resurfaced, it is srcupulously and obviously left alone. After reading Lisa's article, I find myself wondering exactly how old it is, and why an apparent decision has been made to leave it alone and undisturbed. Picked up these images from Google Street View:



View attachment 49098
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Weird. I wonder how many people have tripped over it.

It’s interesting the things we walk past all the time and don’t really think about. I often wondered why there was an entrance to this road that only lead to stairs to 60s/70s houses. Apparently there was a big old building there and that used to be the drive. I never knew about it and there’s very little to be found online. Apparently the school across the road used to use it in the 60s but they had to be careful of the holes in the floor!

Edit: I have no idea why the pictures have come out a different orientation from the originals.
 

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Thanks for that! These architectural survivals and left-overs from earlier buldings are interesting in themseves, little orphaned scraps of urban history.
so far the only thing I've found online that even circumstantially links to the Bredbury boulder is a single, frustrating, orphaned one-line reference to a long-ago giant in Bredbury, Lancashire, who when displeased would throw rocks at people. And that's it. There has got to be more out there. Searching.
 
AgProv said:
Thanks for that! These architectural survivals and left-overs from earlier buldings are interesting in themseves, little orphaned scraps of urban history.
so far the only thing I've found online that even circumstantially links to the Bredbury boulder is a single, frustrating, orphaned one-line reference to a long-ago giant in Bredbury, Lancashire, who when displeased would throw rocks at people. And that's it. There has got to be more out there. Searching.
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It would be helpful to have a little time slip or a time window some times. There so many oddities, even in our garden. I’d love to see what was going on back some decades.
 
AgProv said:
…a large smooth dark boulder is set into the pavement, almost but not quite incorporated into the wall of the old house behind it. It's striking for its apparent pointlessness, and the fact that whenever the pavement is resurfaced, it is scrupulously and obviously left alone. After reading Lisa's article, I find myself wondering exactly how old it is, and why an apparent decision has been made to leave it alone and undisturbed.



View attachment 49098
Click to expand...

My guess? lt’s an 18th century way of stopping damage to the wall being caused by carriages cutting the corner too close.

Here’s a purpose-made bollard at a reclamation yard:

Reclaimed-Gritstone-Corner-Bollard-Small.jpg


A cannon used for the same purpose:

iu
C-Cadiz4.jpg


After two or three hundred years of the pavement surface having been built up around it, it’s more trouble than it’s worth to remove it.

maximus otter
 
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In reference to the picture of the apple with the pentagram pattern sunk into it's surface skin, although experts have put this down to fungus, the same effect can be achieved by sticking Sellotape onto an apple while it's still growing on the tree in any pattern you desire. The parts of the skin covered with the tape stop growing but the skin around it continues to grow achieving the sunken effect. We used to 'write' our names on apples using this trick when we were kids.
 
Swifty said:
In reference to the picture of the apple with the pentagram pattern sunk into it's surface skin, although experts have put this down to fungus, the same effect can be achieved by sticking Sellotape onto an apple while it's still growing on the tree in any pattern you desire. The parts of the skin covered with the tape stop growing but the skin around it continues to grow achieving the sunken effect. We used to 'write' our names on apples using this trick when we were kids.
Click to expand...

It did look too good to be true, like it was deliberate rather than naturally occurring.
 
GNC said:
It did look too good to be true, like it was deliberate rather than naturally occurring.
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It's a fiddly thing to do to be fair, you have to rub an apple growing on a tree with paper towel then cut the shapes out of the tape to very carefully place on the apple's skin.
 
Swifty said:
It's a fiddly thing to do to be fair, you have to rub an apple growing on a tree with paper towel then cut the shapes out of the tape to very carefully place on the apple's skin.
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I go by the rule that if it's possible to fake stuff, someone will be faking it!
 
blessmycottonsocks said:
Absolutely loved the board games feature!
Most enjoyable FT for many a month.
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Agreed! I was thinking the same thing, this is one of those issues that's jam packed with great stuff, the board games article is really good, would love to walk into a charity shop and find one! I haven't mentioned this on the fourms before but I once walked into a charity shop in Salisbury and my sister said, as we walked up to the door ''wouldn't it be weird if we found the Twin Peaks board game?'' (we were talking about the show). And of course I walked up to the board games pile and there it was, the original Twin Peaks board game, I passed it to her and I remember the look of shock on her face, it was all complete and she bought it. They're really expensive now, on eBay for £250/£300!
 
I've just finished my 413! Why yes, I do read my FTs out of order and yes, it does make commenting on them quite difficult...

I remember someone on this forum commenting on the 'Headbanger' letter in the IHTM section, but I don't know where it is now. I found it quite a strange entry. It's not really paranormal, and the person concerned doesn't seem to question that he may have dyspraxia or some other disorder that makes him more likely to have accidents - and that he should stop hanging round with people whose idea of fun appears to be to cause injury to others.
 
catseye said:
I've just finished my 413! Why yes, I do read my FTs out of order and yes, it does make commenting on them quite difficult...

I remember someone on this forum commenting on the 'Headbanger' letter in the IHTM section, but I don't know where it is now. I found it quite a strange entry. It's not really paranormal, and the person concerned doesn't seem to question that he may have dyspraxia or some other disorder that makes him more likely to have accidents - and that he should stop hanging round with people whose idea of fun appears to be to cause injury to others.
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I think it was me that mentioned it. I don’t really get why it was included. It was just an accident prone lad that thinks throwing stones at each other is fun.
 
MorningAngel said:
I think it was me that mentioned it. I don’t really get why it was included. It was just an accident prone lad that thinks throwing stones at each other is fun.
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You were right. I had to read it twice because I thought maybe I was missing some kind of 'mystery stone throwing' poltergeist incidents that I was reading wrongly as having an ordinary origin, but no. Just a bloke who's always falling over or off things or being hit on the head by people throwing things (or him). Yes, it's a wee bit unusual to have THAT many accidents, but if he suffers from any kind of mobility disorder or anything of that ilk, it's perfectly explicable and he never mentions whether or not this is the case.
 
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