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tagishsimon.bsky.social
@tagishsimon.bsky.social
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tagishsimon.bsky.social
No Darren. This sort of shit - basically assault given the steadycam person is hemmed in by their equipment - doesn't cut it. That's not a class act. That's a sociopath.
Man assaulting fully laden steadycam operator
November 22, 2025 at 11:36 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
She nearly married Edward VIII, of abdication fame; but his parents forbade it b/c her uncle was unstable & somewhat dissolute, iirc.

Links to the circs for both of the above, fwiw:

* maps.nls.uk/cairt/cairt4... - Slater's Loup

* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Meopham... - Meopham air disaster
Black & white photo of two WW1 white-clad nurses either side of a military man who'se looking at the ground; behind them a wooden building, probably a hospital ward. Rosemary Ward is to the right; Edward, Prince of Wales in the centre and an unnamed nurse to the left. Another high-ranking military man is to the right at a small distance, again inspecting the ground. Who knows why.
November 22, 2025 at 4:48 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Another obscure one is this, for Rosemary Ward, Viscountess Ednam, who was ejected at many 1000 feet from a plane in 1930 when its wing fell off; she was on her way back to Croydon to plan a memorial garden for her 7-year old son killed when his bike went beneath a lorry on the Chelsea Embankment.
Stone cross on a high substantial plinth, all white ashlar, with trees behind; the photo taken from the ground
November 22, 2025 at 4:21 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Thing about mapping memorials is the desperately sad circumstances of many of them. Here's one to Cmdr Michael Slater, Admiralty surveyor who from 1828-42 mapped much of the east coast of Scotland, until he reached the north coast at Holburnhead, where he jumped off a 250' cliff, for reasons.
Captain Slater's Monument, a pyramidal structure of uncertain height on a grassy cliff-top ~250 feet above the sea. The watercolour image, by his replacement Henry Otter, shows a straight path into the distance across sheep-strewn fields, to the right of which is a sheer cliff showing geological strata; in the background to the right is the sea.
November 22, 2025 at 4:02 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Morning's work was mainly figuring out that the memorial stele to William and Elspeth Beardmore - lost as far as Canmore and Highland HER are concerned - is most probably in the post-1900 burial ground at Flichity. AMA.

* www.trove.scot/place/164800

* maps.nls.uk/geo/explore/...
Black & white photo of a memorial stone, in the form of a large naturally shaped stone on which there is an ovoid recess in which is carved the names & some details of William and Elspeth Beardmore; on grass, with a hedge, then wall, then forestry trees behind Screengrab of a section of a 1964 OS map showing Flichity House, one of its walled gardens, various paths and roads, all in woodland, with a burial ground marked in the bottom left of the image.
November 22, 2025 at 12:27 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Meanwhile the UK Grid Reference Finder Batch Convert Tool is the one-stop shop for large-scale conversion of OSGR or Easting/Northing into WGS84 lat/long ... or vice versa.

Paste lists into it, specify their flavour, hit convert, c&p the results.

* gridreferencefinder.com/batchConvert...
Input field for the batch converter, showing a list of OSGR of varying lengths Output field for the converter, providing five columns of ata, being the OSGR input, easting, northing, lat, long. ctrl-a, ctrl-c are then your friends to get the data back into your spreadsheet or whatever.
November 21, 2025 at 11:34 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
A simple little hack for laundering Ordnance Survey Grid References so as to get to locations on Google Maps, Bing Maps, OpenStreetMaps, and others which have no truck with OSGR, is to search in Geograph.org.uk and use its excellent mapping links page.
Geograph search interface, showing an OS Grid Ref search term, and the 'Enter a Grid Reference' radio button selected Mapping links dropdown on the initial Geograph search results page, with the option 'Geograph links page' selected Lower section of the Geograph mapping links page showing three columns of links for the OS Grid Reference location, to most all of the map products you could ever want; Google, Bing, OSM, Magic, NLS, Ordnance Survey, &c &c.
November 21, 2025 at 9:57 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
And it is the lead story on the Guardian website just now.
Guardian website leading with the Reform crook
November 21, 2025 at 4:51 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
It led the BBC news website this morning during the sentencing phase (i.e. was the left side large 'live' story), and now is in position 3 on the home page.

Unsure what planet you're on.
BBC News website; 7 stories, Reform crook in position 3
November 21, 2025 at 4:49 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Unclear why Inverness thought Duncan I of Scotland (of Macbeth fame) was buried on Culcabock Avenue, just behind the Spar shop, what with him being killed & interred somewhere Elgin way and then supposedly reburied on Iona.

* www.google.com/maps/@57.473...
Low castellated stone stele on a plinth, on a side road and immediately behind the back of a Spar shop associated with a petrol filling station. Closeup up a castellated stele on which is carved a crown and the wording "Beneath this is the supposed burial place of King Duncan"; behind which a white painted pebble-dashed wall.
November 20, 2025 at 11:23 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
CWGC's work in standardising cemeteries, headstones, and erecting Blomfield's Cross of Sacrifice, or Lutyens' Stone of Remembrance according to cemetery size and number of war dead is fascinating.

* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cross_o...
* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_o...
Sepiatone black and white photograph os a Cross of Sacrifice under construction at the Toowong Cemetery, Brisbane, Australia, in 1924. Elongated ashlar cross on a hexagonal base, surrounded by a couple of tiers of wooden scaffolding.
November 20, 2025 at 2:51 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Their handling in the databases leaves much to be desired. IWM ignores them. Canmore mostly treats them as an undifferentiated war memorial. CWGC doesn't seem to have an accessible list of them & their locations. Wikipedia has a partial & short list. :(
Front elevation and plan view architectural drawings for four sizes of CWGC Cross of Sacrifice, to a design by Sir Reginald Blomfield, and a single CWGC Stone of Remembrance of Sir Edwin Lutyens design.
November 20, 2025 at 2:41 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Inverness's type 1/A CWGC Cross of Sacrifice, found in Tomnahurich Cemetery, looking a little blurry in this Geograph image.
Monumental cross with inset sword on a hexagonal plinth, probably all in white Portland stone, on a grass island surrounded by paths; in the background a couple of other memorials, and several trees.
November 20, 2025 at 2:39 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Probably. Sailed in Drake's fleet on the 14th September 1585, according to McDermott's "England and the Spanish Armada: the necessary quarrel" (2005) p.156.

* archive.org/details/engl...
Excerpt from 'England and the Spanish Armada : the necessary quarrel' by James McDermott, page 156, specifying Shrewsbury's bark Talbot was provided to Drake.
November 19, 2025 at 7:28 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
T'other presumably being Mary Barbour, also at Govan.
Statue of a behatted woman with arm pointing upwards, leading six or seven children down an inclined plinth; each child progressively smaller than the previous one. In the background, Govan subway station sign and the curved glass exterior shelter of the station. Rainy station concourse; several pigeons. One human child walking into the shot in the far left. In shorts. In this weather.
November 19, 2025 at 10:05 AM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Following threads like this, as you do, turns out Harriet's brother Henry Ward Beecher, Congregationalist clergyman, social reformer, abolitionist and speaker, was dodgy AF (serial adultery). He was supported both by Harriet and the Congregational great & good.

* en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Henry_W...
Henry Ward Beecher, 30-something man with swept back hair, long five-button jacket, standing, left elbow resting on a high table; generally looking smug & entitled.
November 18, 2025 at 7:06 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Donald has a memorial now in Strathnaver, opposite Rossal, a village of maybe 250 people which the Duke's men burnt to the ground in 1814 - witnessed by MacLeod - to encourage them all to bugger off.

* www.google.co.uk/maps/@58.348...
In the middle distance, a memorial wall with tablet on sheep-mown grass; an information board on a square cairn in the foreground. Several sheep. Spruce plantation forest in the background on the other side of an unseen river behind the memorial. The Highlands are still a bleak forestry monoculture cum sheep factory. Nothing to like here.
November 18, 2025 at 6:59 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
"Gloomy Memories" (1857) - 212 small font pages of Donald MacLeod being *extremely* pissed off with the Duke of Sutherland (for the Highland Clearances), and later Harriet Beecher Stowe (for defending the Duke).

Has occasional paragraph breaks.

* archive.org/details/dona...
Walls of text in two pages of "Gloomy Memories". A couple of minor paragraph breaks. Follow the link to Internet Archive should you want to read the book.
November 18, 2025 at 6:57 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Martha Lane Fox, Baroness Lane-Fox of Soho, became a non-executive director of Multiverse in 2024. Her lastminute.com operation, floated at a value of £571 million, made a pre-tax profit of £200,000 during the last year of her tenure.
lastminute.com post-float share price (14 March 2000 through 14 March 2001) drops from ~500p to ~70p
November 18, 2025 at 4:34 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Although afaics John Elder had already sent Carnegie a copy of the biography ten years beforehand ... it ended up in the New York Public Library.

* archive.org/details/amem...
Frontsheet of 'Memoir of John Elder', inscribed by hand "To Andrew Carnegie Esqre with Mr. John Elder's kind regards, 5th January 1893"
November 17, 2025 at 9:40 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Not sure if you saw this contribution from the Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Migration and Citizenship.
Tweets from Mike Tapp, celebrating 50,000 deportations, tagline Deport, Deport, Deport; and then accusing the Greens of being "against deporting dangerous foreign national offenders" and commenting that "This country has always rejected communism".
November 17, 2025 at 12:09 AM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Mike Tapp MP - Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State for Migration and Citizenship.
Mike Tapp tweet, celebrating 50,000 deportations with the tagline Deport, Deport, Deport.
November 16, 2025 at 9:01 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
My mistake. 87p per, then (the BoE not dealing in halfpennies).
BoE: What cost £0.01 in 1582 would cost £1.74 in September 2025. BoE: 1 ½ p pre-decimal is 0.005 pence
November 16, 2025 at 3:02 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
You'd hope so.
Bank of England pre-decimal to decimal converter; 11s 2d = 56p BoE: What cost £0.56 in 1582 would cost £194.57 in September 2025.
November 16, 2025 at 2:45 PM
tagishsimon.bsky.social
Do they matter to you?

* www.bbc.co.uk/news/article...
November 16, 2025 at 12:50 PM