Things you were shockingly old when you learned

He also used to give credit to bad customers who had no intention of paying up!

This is also the story of Ginger and Pickles by Beatrix Potter. Financially it does not end well: ""This is the last straw," said Pickles, "let us close the shop." They put up the shutters, and left. But they have not removed from the neighbourhood. In fact some people wish they had gone further."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Ginger_and_Pickles#/media/File:The_Tale_of_Ginger_and_Pickles_first_edition_cover.jpg

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Tale_of_Ginger_and_Pickles#/media/File:The_Tale_of_Ginger_and_Pickles_first_edition_cover.jpg

>:(

https://www.gutenberg.org/files/14877/14877-h/images/ginger_fig13.jpg

My revelation with Bombay Sapphire was that it was only created in the 1980s. I tend to assume all English gins are about 200 years old, plus Queen Victoria on the label is v misleading

My partner's late mother had a brother who ran a butchers in Dewsbury in the 50s. Apparently he used "balls of corruption" for eggs which might be partly the reason his business was an unsuccessful one. He also used to give credit to bad customers who had no intention of paying up!

This is a good update, thank you.

I see that in the balls of corruption sphere there is little else but this Play for Today from 1982 titled Eve Set the Balls of Corruption Rolling

https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0779528/

Synopsis: Six former Catholic-educated old friends reunite for the first time in twelve years and swap tales of sexual misadventure.

Down a rabbit hole now:

https://www.theglasgowstory.com/image/?inum=TGSS00031

Found out tonight that the original version of I Only Have Eyes For You had a Busby Berkeley routine attached.

Sung by Dick Powell back when he was a "juvenile leading man".

That soulwax is actually pretty ace. Lol

I didn’t know until I passed the Hotel Bunga Bunga today that ‘bunga-bunga’ means ‘flowers’ in Malay / Bahasa Indonesia.

Was just watching a 1977 biopic of Muhammad Ali, starring Muhammad Ali, called The Greatest. The theme song starts and it's "The Greatest Love of All" and it's sung by George Benson. I had no idea that song existed before Whitney Houston sang it, nor that it had any connection to Ali.

Wow, you don't (now) think of Muhammad Ali as someone who needed a lot of inspirational balladic help in the self-esteem department.

I did not know that song existed before her version either. "Children are our future" is one of the most frequently-seen sentences in my teaching career.

How useful a wide-mouth funnel is in the kitchen. Why did no one tell me this before.

Never knew the origin of this phrase until just now, but maybe it is not so common so not so shocking.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alphonse_and_Gaston?wprov=sfti1

From an article on old New York.

Bouwerie is Dutch for “farm”. (This, as you might guess, accounts for how the Bowery — which used to be the road to Peter Stuyvesant’s farm — got its name.)

Strange. Bouwen: build

I could see am overlap between build and grow being possible. Think it turns up in other languages too doesn't it?

Neighbour

Old English nēahgebūr, from nēah ‘nigh, near’ + gebūr ‘inhabitant, peasant, farmer’ (compare with boor).

The bours who say neigh

present-day Dutch: verbouwen = grow (crops)

Recently learned that both 'guest' and 'host' derive from the same (reconstructed) proto-Indo European word '*ghosti-' which was more of a catch-all term for hospitality.

Gives an extra layer to the punchline of Idris Elba’s verse in Boasty

that the original recording of 'The Sun Has Got His Hat On' has these lyrics:

"He's been tanning n*****s out in Timbuktu
Now he's coming back to do the same to you"

Mr. Koch (pronounced coke)

The Deftones are not a Brit guitar band with Paul Weller haircuts.

that some earthworms in optimum conditions can live up to 8 years old. So if your wee nipper is in the garden eating the wirrums, tell them to have some respect for their elders!

When I was a little kid, and I would act hyper or fidgety or just over-energetic, my mother would say that I was acting like what to my tender ears sounded like "a greeny stickumcap." I always assumed it was some quaint West Virginia-ism that she had picked up from her mother, maybe a colloquialism referring to some jumping insect or the like.

I was in my 30s before I discovered she was talking about these: Mattel(TM) Greenie Stick'em Caps, peel-and-stick caps designed to be stuck on the back of realistic looking "bullets" used in their cap pistols. I really honestly just assumed it was some made-up mom thing.

https://vintagetoycapguns.com/images/mattel-5.jpg

https://www.toytent.com/Special/pics/8714-1.jpg

SAFE!

huh wow, never knew that any type of cap gun existed besides the little red plastic ring of dots. the wikipedia entry is obviously written by a toy enthusiast and is kinda messy but helpful.

There were (and surprisingly still are) also the paper rolls

https://www.tintoyarcade.com/image/cache/data/product/Images_3401_3600/TTA3511-Super-Bang-Roll-Caps-1800-Shots-1000x1000.jpg

Used to love going at those things with a hammer and completely ruining our driveway.

scraping a 2p coin quickly across a strip of those was always fun

BRB, going to revert to age eight real quick and add this sadly-absent experience to my childhood memory bank.

i can smell those right now

Srsly, Marcel's madelines ain't got nothing on a cap gun.

otm, i also got a momentary wave of cap gun smell memories earlier. much clearer than any memory of the sound or the appearance of the smoke (was it a faint wisp? a legible trail? a billowing cloud?).

blue wisp

Just been pointed out to me that all of Portugal coast is Atlantic while a lot of Spain is Mediterranean. & the Portuguese guy who was saying that said the sea temperature difference was pretty significant and reflected in the way people behaved accordingly.

Spain's Atlantic coast is longer but then Spain is a lot bigger.

Actually, wiki says Portugal's is longer but, looking at a map, I don't see how that's possible - damn Mercator crap.

Maybe if you included Brazil.

i think you are only looking at Spain's mediterranean coastline and not all its coastlines?

oh wait you are talking only about the atlantic.

North coast of Spain on Bay of Biscay, plus the coastline west of Gibraltar prior to Portugal border. All on the Atlantic.

But not as long as Portugal's coastline, which is all Atlantic.

So Maine has a longer coast than California.

And Chimborazo is the highest mountain in the world, yeah yeah yeah.

Coastline measurement is a notoriously difficult definitional problem.