An introdfuction to next week’s James and Sons’ auctions.
INTRODUCTION
James and Sons’ October auctions will be taking place next week. A combination of factors, including a colleague being signed off sick for three months, left us somewhat behind schedule, but the printed catalogues should be arriving either today or early tomorrow, and the online catalogue is ready for viewing. The rest of this post details what will be going under the hammer on each day.
MONDAY 23 OCTOBER, SHOP
This auction kicks of with 250 lots of military themed postcards, then 150 lots of ephemera and finishes with 100 lots of cigarette/ Trade cards. Here are a few of the lots:
Lot 97lot 250lot 342Lot 460
TUESDAY OCTOBER 24 – SHOP
Postal History, Stamps, Coins and Banknotes. This sale starts at lot 601 and ends at lot 1100.
Lot 601Lot 754Lot 900Lot 901 (three images)
Lot 935 ( three images)
Lot 960 (three images)
Lot 995 (three images)
Lot 1031Lot 1098
WEDNESDAY OCTOBER 25TH – FAKENHAM RACECOURSE
This auction features lots 1201-1600. These lots include Jewellery, toys, militaria and other objects of interest.
Lot 1202 (two images)
Lot 1224 (five images)
Lot 1216All the remaining images bafr the final one are of lots 1501 and 1502. Images 1501-a and 1502-a are both on the front cover of the catalogue. Please note that these guns are disabled – they are museum pieces (as all guns should become).
Producing a photographic wall calendar has become a tradition for this blog, and courtesy of a magnificent offer at Vistaprint (25 calendars plus postage for £129) this year’s are now on order (eta with me October 25th). The rest of this post gives you a preview.
THE CALENDARS
Most of the pictures for this calendar come from my Scottish holiday, so they do no relate to particular months. There are one or two exceptions as you will see.
This is the locomotive that pulled the Jacobite train when I travelled it.The January picture features the Skye BridgeThis shot was taken on the journey from Plockton to Applecross – it was nominated by Oglach, who blogs at natriobloidi.wordpress.comThis classic stone bridge can be seen on the Isle of Skye. One of the minority of pictures in this calendar that was not taken in Scotland.Back to Scotland, with this paddle steamer.This picture was taken in June – another Scottish classic.Bawsey Abbey, taken on July 27th – nominated by my mother.This was taken during an NAS West Norfoilk organised trip to a beach hut at Old Hunstanton.Lock Gates, captured through the window of the Jacobite train, near Fort William.Boats near Plockton, through the window of the train from Kyle of Lochalsh to Inverness (nominated by my aunt Celia)A view of Kyle of Lochalsh from above.A section of the Glenfinnan Viaduct (the actual viaduct over which the Hogwarts Express passes in the films).
This post will have a longer preamble than is usual for posts in this series because I have not posted much (except a reblog of an excellent post by Anna) in recent days. On Tuesday and today I have been busy at work, while yesterday I was in Norwich running a stall at a conference organised by ASD Helping Hands, titled “Ageing with Autism”. This means that the tree pics you see in this post are a little bit out of date. I hope to have time for some serious posting over the weekend. For the moment, welcome to the fifth installment in my series “Trees in Transistion”.
I have just finished editing the pictures I took while out and about today. I have a collection of tree pics ready for the next post in my “Trees in Transistion” series, but for the moment it is the other pictures I am sharing. I will put them up in three segments…
NURTURE
These are pictures featuring my aunt’s plants, which I have been watering while she is on holiday. Barring a freak return to summer weather tomorrow I anticipate one more visit on Wednesday being sufficient.
NATIONAL LIBRARIES WEEK
This week is National Libraries Week. I have visited King’s Lynn Library today, will definitely visit Fakenham Library at least once this week after a working day, hope to call in at Norwich Millennium Library when I am in that fine city on Wednesday (an autism event) and on Saturday en route to Musical Keys should find time for a visit to Gaywood Library. Here are some pictures of King’s Lynn Library…
Welcome to this little post about my work at James and Sons. There are two main parts to this post – one features an event from the last of the September auctions, while the second deals with the upcoming October auctions.
ON THE POWER OF INTERNET BIDDING
On Thursday I put out a press release with the title “The Power of Internet Bidding”, which focussed on lot 1301 from our previous auction. On Friday someone from Archant (the media company who publish The Eastern Daily Press among others) asked a number of follow-up questions, so I expect a short piece to appear in the EDP before too long. Here is a screenshot of my original press release, along with the image used therein and a link to the document:
All three Octobe auctions will take place at our shop, 5 Norwich Street, Fakenham, NR21 9AF – on the 23rd, 24th and 25th.
SALE 2138
This sale, on Monday October 25th, kicks of with 250 military postcards before moving on to ephemera, cigarette and trade cards and such like. The imaging for this sale is nearly complete.
Lot 235……with a good stamp and postmark on the back.Lot 249With a hand stamped mark on the back.
SALE 2139
This one has very vfew images thus far. This will be the stamps and postal history day.
SALE 2140
The imaging for this sale is reasonably well advanced…
Lot 1205 (three images)
Lot 1252The mounted badgeboth faces of the other badge
A mixed bag of a post, featuring autism, politics, mathematics and photography.
INTRODUCTION
As well as the wide variety of ,links that give this post its title it will feature some of my own stuff, notably pictures.
AUTISM
I start with some stuff about Autism, beginning with…
AN ANNOUNCEMENT FROM LAINA
Laina, guiding genius of thesilentwaveblog, has set up a new blog specifically for sharing stuff. Her announcement of this is here, while the new blog can be seen here.
STIM THE LINE
I end this little section with what is a new find for me, stimtheline, with a post titled “Autism is Me“.
GENERAL LINKS
The four links in this section are links that form no natural groupings:
From slate.com comes this piece about how to avoid all-male panels (“manels”) – it is long but an excellent read. As the author points out there is no excuse for an all-male panel. I would similarly say that if you are getting together a panel to talk about autism your starting point should be autistic people – and only when you have several lined up should you consider the desirability of including neurotypicals on the panel.
This refers to three related pieces that I have seen on robertlovespi. Fullerenes are spheroid carbon allotropes (also known in some circles as buckyballs – both the formal and informal deisgnation pay tribute to the architect Richard Buckminster Fuller who was particularly known for geodesic domes). The three pieces are:
This one comes from brilliant, though it has a little addition of my own as well:
This is an easy question, even without the multi-choice options given on the site. If the 51 under the dividing line was replaced by 53 it would become fiendishly difficult – can you work out why?
Links, puzzles and pictures. Public transport features, as does some general politics, and mathematics. The pictures are of course my own.
INTRODUCTION
I have many links to share with you, and wilkl be setting a puzzle. I will be putting up another of my tree posts immediately after this one, so my pictures feature stuff other than trees.
PUBLIC TRANSPORT
This section comes in two parts, starting with…
NEWS FROM MY LONDON TRANSPORT WEBSITE
Just before lunchtime today I received the following email:
My name is Andrew and I work for Nicola at Tour London. Nicola is a tour guide in London UK who takes individuals and groups to the most famous landmarks in London, as well as discovering hidden gems along the way! We were wondering if it were possible for us to appear on your “links” page in any way given that we share such a similar topic.
Alternatively would you be interested in content pieces? Nicola has a vast knowledge of London and would love to share it with your audience. Finally, If not content, do you have any other advertising opportunities?
Naturally, I was delighted to receive such a communication, and I have since put in some links, done a special post about this site and ‘pressed’ a couple of their pieces. Please visit londontu.be to read about this in more detail, and then explore tourlondon to see what they have to offer.
WE OWN IT – TRANSPORT
The campaign group weownit have created a resource with the catchy title Privatisation Fails. Below is a screenshot of the homepage for this resource:
Of course, I followed up the bus and train links. Here is a paragraph from PrivatisationFails Buses:
Buses
30 years ago, our bus services were deregulated and privatised. This has been a disaster for our buses. Fares went up and routes that weren’t profitable were cut, meaning you now pay more for less. In 2017, the Bus Service Users Bill was passed, which included a clause which bans local councils from creating their own public bus companies.
On this page are the Big Five bus companies that grew out of deregulation and privatisation in the 1980s – together they control 70% of the bus travel industry in the UK. Many of these companies either own, or are owned by, rail companies as well.
Read more about bus services, and how and why we want to bring them into public ownership, here.
British Rail was broken up and privatised between 1994 and 1997, and since then rail services in the UK have been provided by private companies. There are 16 rail franchises in the UK, where the government gives train companies funding to run services for a certain period.
Many of the companies that run our trains are European state-owned companies who reinvest millions of pounds a year in dividends from their British operations into their own transport systems. As you’ll see, these companies often own franchises within franchises. You might be surprised to learn who owns your morning commute! We’ve also listed three ‘ROSCOs’ or rolling stock companies, who lease trains to rail companies.
Read more about the privatisation of rail and what we can do about it here.
POLITICAL LINKS
Royal Mail workers have voted by a huge margin to take strike action. The official voting figures are:
Turnout 73.7%
Yes 89%
No 11%
This means that 65.593% of all those eligible to vote cast their vote in favour of strike action. I did this calculation myself, entirely in my head, but here for the record is how to get there…
Calling Turnout T and Yes votes Y and Overall Percent Yes as O we have O = TY/100. Putting the known figures into this we have O = (73.7 x 89)/100. To avoid decimals until absolutely necessary we change this to O = (737 x 89)/1000. To calculate 737 x 89 we can reduce to single figure calculations as follows:
737 x 89 = (700 x 89) + (30 x 89) + (7 x 89), and then splitting these up 700 x 89 = (700 x 80) + (700 x 9), 30 x 89 = (30 x 80) + (30 x 9) and 7 x 89 = (7 x 80) + (7 x 9). We now have a series of multiplications which can all be treated as single figure multiplications, with in some cases zeroes to be stuck on the end. Multiplying them out gives us 56,000 + 6,300 + 2,400 + 270 +560 + 63. Adding these together we get 65,593, and dividing by 1,000 requires a decimal point to go between the first and second five, giving us 65.593%. PS It took a lot longer writing this out than performing the calculations in my head!
Why is it necessary to intervene with the natural course of being Autistic?
“Early” implies that there is a need to “catch” things early, before it progresses.
Autism is not a disease. It is not progressive. It just IS.
It is disrespectful because it ignores our own timing. Autism is a developmental disability and respecting that is important, instead of applying a neurotypical timeline of neurotypical milestones to neurodivergent children.
And while some aspects of occupational therapy and life skills can be beneficial, if there is no respect for each child’s timing, and if it is done in a manner that is compliance based/reward based, and if this is called “Early Intervention”, then it is just another name for ABA”
My next link is to thge early stages of wbhat looks set to be an excellent series of posts. BloggingAstrid is writing a series of posts about autism under the banner #Write31Days. I have two links for you:
My next two links come from firebrightstarsoul and both concern education and autism:
“Enough to break your heart” which deals with a school day which (due entirely to failings on the part of the school) went very badly wrong. I quote one paragraph, which comes near the end of the story: We were told we’d be given parent codes to log in to the school’s app so we could find her missing assignments and help her on the weekend until she’s caught up. She didn’t know where to even find this information on her laptop, and when she tried to tell the teacher she didn’t know what she was supposed to work on, the teacher smirked at her and dismissed her with the pithy remark, “I bet you do.”
“The one-room school-house” which (unsurprisingly given the above) looks at the possibility of homeschooling. Here is a picture from this piece:
Claire has autism and says: “The world is a very unpredictable and confusing place.” (Image: Transport for All)
Finally, a petition on the official site for petitioning the UK Parliament, which means that it is only open to UK citizens, calling for a necessary change to the PIP rules. Below is a screenshot link:
Please visit, sign and share.
LINKS RELATING TO RENATIONALISATION AND TRANSPORT
My first link in this section is to a piece on Vox Political titled “McDonnell States Labour Will Take Back Rail, Water, Energy and Royal Mail | Beastrabban\’s weblog” This excellent piece sets the stage for the rest of this section. Below is the single most important paragraph, by way of a tempter:
And if Labour does, as I fervently hope, renationalize those industries, I would very much like a form of workers’ control implemented in them. One reason why the Tories were able to privatize these industries was because, when Labour nationalized them after the Second World War, the party was too timid in the form nationalization took. The state took over the ownership of these industries, but otherwise left the existing management structures intact. This disappointed many trade unionists and socialists, who hoped that nationalization would mean that the people, who actually worked in these industries would also play a part in their management.
Since that piece was produced Richard Murphy of Tax Research UK has put up a post titled “The public want nationalisationbecause nationalisation makes sense” in response to a hand-wringing editorial in The Observer, which started from noting that a recent study had revealed the full extent of public support for renationalisation (water – 83% in favour, electricity and gas – 77% in favour andr railways – 76% in favour – leading the way) and went full-on Tory from there, regarding renationalisation as a bad thing and coming with ideas for how this ‘threat’ might be dealt with. Professor Murphy, like me, takes the opposite stand-point, and points out how flawed the Observer piece is.
PHOTOGRAPHS 1
This set of photographs is of Lot 553 from the auction of Monday September 25th (see this post):
SOLUTIONS TO PUZZLES
The first of three puzzles I set that I have not yet provided answers to was a question from Triva Hive:
In which country is Europe’s only desert located?
a)Italy b)Greece c)Poland d)Spain
I am sufficiently well informed about Italy, Greece and Spain that I was fairly sure that none of them is the answer. Thus, having ruled out the impossibles I was left withe one answer that however improbable must be the true one – Poland. The screenshot below shows that my Sherlockian approach to the question bore fruit:
The second puzzle wasAbbotFox‘s “street scramble”:
Unscrambling this gives “Pilling Park Road”, and the map below shows the location of said street:
The third problem came from brilliant and featured a treasure hunt. Below is the answer:
PHOTOGRAPHS
Just before I publish this and head out for a spot of ecotherapy and to top up the photo collection here are some non-tree pics from yesterday:
A rarity – a fish sufficiently close to the surface of the Gaywood River that I could take a picture of it that (just about) came out.
aspiblog 