The Off Topic Topic

[Josquius]

So the reason I'm so unlucky is laying down all those slug defences?

[mongers]

If I recall correctly, inadvertently spilling salt was indeed considered an ill omen in Roman times, but I don't recall reading anything about throwing salt over one's shoulder.

Thanks, interesting, maybe something like Brewers might have something to say on the matter?

[crazy canuck]

In an age when salt was hard to acquire, I don't think they were tossing it away after an accidental spill.

[mongers]

In an age when salt was hard to acquire, I don't think they were tossing it away after an accidental spill.

Well I looked in my Brewer's and it mentions the Romans and goes onto explain the throwing over the shoulder, but doesn't say the Romans originated that and it has no reference for either point.

I looked on the wiki for 'spilling salt' and it too mentions the Romans regarded it as bad luck, but doesn't mention them throwing it.

And amusingly the reference for this, the first one in the wiki, is to the previous 19th edition of 'Brewer's Phrase and Fable'. I was looking at my 20th edition.

So I don't think I'll get any further with this enquiry.

[Sheilbh]

I have just discovered that workers at the National Coal Mining Museum have been on strike for more than four months and they're now balloting to keep the strike going to the summer:


Apparently the police are now being called to help maintain the picket line.

[HVC]

Where's Thatcher when you need her

[Valmy]

I have just discovered that workers at the National Coal Mining Museum have been on strike for more than four months and they're now balloting to keep the strike going to the summer:


Apparently the police are now being called to help maintain the picket line.

Wow. Talk about a commitment to commemorating coal labor relations. A living history exhibit. Very clever coal museum.

[Sheilbh]

Where's Thatcher when you need her

The restless shade of Maggie Thatcher is currently establishing a scab National Coal Mining Museum in Nottingham.

[Sheilbh]

Separately this is wild - a sinkhole basically drained a canal in Shropshire. I didn't know we had sinkholes (in my head they happen in Florida ) but also just the scale:

I think everyone's safe which is good.

[mongers]

Separately this is wild - a sinkhole basically drained a canal in Shropshire. I didn't know we had sinkholes (in my head they happen in Florida ) but also just the scale:

I think everyone's safe which is good.

It's not a sinkhole, what happened was one side of the canal embankment collapse and so the canal rapidly drained into the adjoining fields.

This is a problem that's only going to get worse, as some of the assumptions the Georgians/Victorians built canals and railways on no longer hold; for instance that clays often used in their construction    wouldn't be subject to more increasingly hot/dry and then waterlogged conditions.

The flipside of the above was railway lines having to be repaired this Autumn, because the underlying clay used in the embankments had dried out, as happened with the London mainline from Exeter to Sherborne.

This infrastructure was built in a largely consistently damp climate, the one we used to have.