ABC Wednesday: J is for Jigsaw

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This is a substantial wooden jigsaw made by Galt Toys. It features the "traditional/historic" counties of England & Wales. These are what is generally referred to as the pre-1971 configuration before the creation of the current local government administrative areas.

I took this photo after some friends on Facebook began discussing such a jigsaw. It seems there a number of different designs; their's had Denbigh and Flint as a single piece whereas my Flint is seperate, being bulked by the inclusion of the Dee estuary. In mine Rutland is joined on to Leicestershire, but some versions have a seperate Rutland piece.

Hungtingdon and Cambridge (under the light-flash in the photo) is other piece that contains two counties.

Yorkshire is divided into its Ridings and the Furness area of Lancashire is attached to Westmorland but distinguished by its colour. There is a county labelled "London" but no Middlesex.

Another things different with my jigsaw compared to those of my friends is that each county with the exception of Anglesey and Flint include one or more pictograms. Most are understandable although a few now seem somewhat anachronisitic.

A contribution to ABC Wednesday.

Pavement Art, Garden Street, St Annes on Sea

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Whilst we were in St Annes last week we came across these metal carvings set into the pavement along Garden Street in the centre of town.

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There is at least another one featuring Trees but a shopkeeper had placed a sandwich-board half over that one so I didn't get a photo.

I thought they may have been some kind of millennium artwork but when I asked in the local library they didn't seem to know much about them. The person I asked did say she thought they may be a recent school's project.

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If they were on a wall I'd call them "murals" but they are set into the pavement (that's the sidewalk for our American friends). Someone suggested they are perhaps "floorals" (note in Northern English speak "floor" rhymes with "moor" note "more")

A contribution to Monday Murals.

ABC Wednesday:H is for Hemingway

Gwyllam Williams wrote on his Poet in Residence blog

I don't imagine for two seconds that it'll be easy finding too much poetic phraseology in the works of Ernest Miller Hemingway. His work in general is without the ingredient we like to call poetic quality. Some have called it reportage. He has many imitators. Some good. Some bad.

I commented then

I've got a copy of a small booklet of poems by Hemingway somewhere - published (if I recall correctly) by Lawrence Ferlinghetti in California c.1966

I've since fished it out and see the date is actually 1960.

Al Filreis in his blog 1960 comments

Over the years there have been nine unauthorized editions of the poems. All or most of these editions contain 18 poems, which are most of the poems Hem wrote and published while he was living in Paris in the 1920s. The critical response to his verse is mostly based on the pirated editions, which are filled with errors.

One of these unauthorized editions was published by City Lights in San Francisco in 1960. It sold for 50 cents.

The pirated edition is advertised on Amazon at $45.99 (new) or 8 used from $4.99

My copy has 21p in pencil inside the front cover. I suspect I picked it up for that meagre sum, probably from a bookshop in the Shambles in York. It used to have a room full of little pamphlets that you could rummage through.

This poem is dated February 1925

THE AGE DEMANDED

The age demanded that we sing
And cut away our tongue.

The age demanded that we flow
And hammered in the bung.

The age demanded that we dance
And jammed us into iron pants.

And in the end the age has handed
The sort of shit that it demanded.

ERNEST HEMINGWAY

Hemingway aficionados might like to check out Paul E Stolle's blog Hemingway's Paris

For ABC Wednesday.