This Week’s Snow
It buried all beneath a
blanket of little white lies,
each flake guilty of
momentarily erasing
all our broken truths – a
cracked road, a crumbled
wall, the spill of yesterday’s
life from an up-turned bin –
and in communion with
the great pretence of
all things clean and new.
And even as we danced like
mad and, with joy, like children,
made our own untruths – to
stay away and steal a day –
we knew our feet would scuff
and press and churn to ruin,
that brightest white would
turn to grey and, once more,
with sudden chill, we recalled
the lies we tell, how snow is
never liquid paper for the soul.
Month: January 2013
On the origins of house numbering in the UK (with thanks to Mark Pack)
Having lived three-quarters of my life in houses that were named, not numbered, numbering struck me as an urban innovation that I wasn’t particularly keen to embrace. However, I have learned to live with the fact that I am now number 3, even if there are folk about who are convinced that the occupants several generations previous are still in residence (I assume they must now be around 143 years’ old).
A former colleague who runs a well-known blog (well-known in political circles, at least) has a piece up on the origins of house numbering in the UK. On the face of it, this might sound like one of life’s duller subjects. However, having helped him with some of the research, I can assure readers that it is actually rather more interesting than it first appears.
Mark’s challenge is to those sites that lazily suggest that numbering was, itself, a result of the 1765 Postage ActKG1765PostageAct.
The background
I have my friend and former colleague, Mark Pack, to thank for my latest little obsession: unravelling the origins of house numbering in Britain.
Yes, okay, on the face of it this doesn’t sound like the most riveting of subjects, however…
Last week, I received an email from Mark, asking if I had a copy of the Postage Act 1765. Now, you might consider that a strange thing for me to have about my person, but Mark, familiar with my day job, had an inkling I might know where he could lay hands on a copy.
The mystery
Mark was curious as to the basis of various authoritative sources citing it as the origin of street numbering in Britain. Despite it being widely cited (at least, widely cited amongst house numbering devotees), it was never quoted. A quick (actually rather long) google proved he was right.
This is the entry from:
Wikipedia says:
Even says:
In the end, I did turn up a copy – more by luck than judgement. Intriguingly, however, as you can read for yourselves, the Postage Act 1765 makes no reference to street numbering *at all*.
The theory of serendipitous coincidences… Or: historical context
The Britain of the 18th Century was undergoing dramatic industrial changes that created new demands on government, particularly on decisions affecting economic growth and revenue.
Some houses were clearly already numbered by the time of the 1765 Act. Xx reports that …
Indeed, the earliest…
There were a series of postal acts under George IV, which tried to simplify, regularise and codify postal provisions. Fraud was a problem, as was dealing with the network of postal services that lay outwith the tentacular reach of the Post Office because they didn’t go through London: the bye post. Regularising mail traffic between the UK and its colonies was also an issue, all of which led to the introduction of the Penny Post.
It is therefore conceivable that the Act of 1765, with its provisions for making post simpler to administer, combined with technological innovations such as the stagecoach (which debuted in London in xx and which by 17xx dominated the operation of postal services), and the need to increase revenue, led to new ways to make the service efficient. Perhaps that is why by the end of the 18th C xx of houses were numbered.
The real legislative origin?
However, it may be that there is a more definite legislative origin to house numbering. In an interesting piece in “Notes and Queries”, Ambrose Heal, in Volume 183, August 1942, has a brief article entitled xx. In it, he observes:
A list of Acts of Parliament for 1762 reveals the curiously titled London Streets Act. A similiar list for 1765 reveals the equally enigmatically entitled Westminster Streets Act. Neither is available so far as I can find on the web , with even the comprehensive www.legislation.gov.uk only starting its online archive at 1800.
However, the rather brilliant folks at the Parliamentary Archive were able to assist and, indeed, both the 1762 Act and the 1765 Act include statutory requirements for properties to be numbered.
And finally…
On my travels around the highways and by-ways of house numbering, I have stumbled across pieces such as house numbering and “Absolutism*, xx and xx. All quite entertaining.
(Incidentally, those who recall the expenses scandal may be amused to know that it was no less of a problem in the 18th C. To obtain free postage, all a Member of Parliament had to do was sign his name on the envelope, leading to many rascals – MPs and dextrous servants – selling signatures for profit, whilst under-cutting the Post Office. But perhaps that is another post…)
N.B. If you are reading this is 2026 it’s because it’s been sitting in my drafts for some reason, perhaps since 2013!
A patient, publicity-shy (and patronising!) puss
There’s something amusingly patronising about the way this cat handles its owner, determined to make the point that it rather wishes to be left alone. You can just imagine what’s going through its mind. Jim Davis’s Garfield probably captures it…
Poem: A Drunk Lover Of Words
The Drunk Lover Of Words
I should write, in this fug of
alcohol and dreams and snow,
with words like ripe cherries
waiting to be plucked and eaten,
sweet and sour and stony-hearted.
This should be my Ulysses, my Emma,
my Don Quixote, my Scoop, my
Lolita, my Lucky Jim, my Austerlitz,
my Clarissa, my Catch-22, my Nausea, my
Jane Eyre, my Heart of Darkness.
I should write, in this haze of
bravura and need and dust,
with words like rare jewels
yearning to be shaped and polished,
bright and hard and beautiful.
This should be my Entirely, my Howl,
my Dover Beach, my V, my
Still I Rise, my Life Is Fine, my Brown Penny,
my America, my Dream Deferred, my Romance, my
Always, my Deaths and Entrances.
I will write, in this riot
of caffeine and lust and night,
with words like cut arrows
aching to be nocked and loosed,
straight and true and hitting home.
Beauty from brokenness: more street art from OakoAk
Street artists have a unique eye for taking things that most of us walk past, or regard as ugly or broken, and making them into something very different. Funny, surreal, thought-provoking and sometimes just beautiful, there is a tremendous variety of street art out there around the world.
It can provoke passionate discussion, with some dismissing it as merely an excuse for graffiti. Somehow, though, I think it is more than that, saying something about the urban areas in which we live, and giving value back to things that have lost their value and (sometimes purpose) through decay, damage and vandalism.
One of my favourites is OakoAk, described on his own website as a “French artist who likes to play with urban elements”. His work is simpler than some, often eschewing perspective illusions and instead going for the comic, occasionally tugging a heart-string.
Here’s a selection of some of his most recent, courtesy of Bored Panda:
Vision thing: the 3D Star Trek technology that eliminates computer displays
“Electronic junk narrows our life space…”
Maxim Kamanin
Sometimes it feels like Hollywood is running to catch up with real life. And sometimes, real life seems even less believable than Hollywood’s penchant for technological exaggeration.
From the middle of nowhere comes an invention that might just revolutionise the way we interact with technology – in pretty much every way. Maxim Kamanin, a youngster from a remote village in southern Russia, is the inventor of a new form of display that may eliminate the need for computer screens entirely, freeing us up to work far more creatively with technology.
Displair literally puts digital images into the air, creating fully penetrable 3D images which can be viewed and manipulated. It is completely astonishing – like something out of Star Trek. It uses a cloud-inspired technology (and not cloud as it is usually thought of in computer tech terms) which somehow remains remarkably stable across varying temperatures. The Displair wiki entry goes into more detail.
From artists, architects and designers, to teachers, surgeons and inventors, the creative ways in which it could be used are immense.
The web-film site Focus Forward Films has a video of this astonishing invention in operation:
Poem: A Commute Diverted
A Commute Diverted
We shoved and shuffled
in this brighter morning,
blue skies and sun
belying warmth,
cloudy breath and
huddled shiver an
overture to our opera
of epithets and sighs:
a tragi-comic Tannhäuser,
on West Ham’s platform stage.
Poem: Old Pictures Prompted By A Morning’s Frost
Old Pictures Prompted By A Morning’s Frost
A sepia dawn reveals
a two-tone world,
surrendering colour to
frost’s brush,
reminding us of
long ago, of men in
hats with scythes
and Threshing Bees.
A cruel cold heralds
a quiet kill,
testifying intent with
frost’s knife,
reminding us of
long ago, of men in
helms with guns
and Yellow Legs.
The industriousness of ants – strangely hypnotic
I stumbled across this video on the Internet. There’s something strangely hypnotic about the way these ants work – and bearing in mind their size it seems all quite incredible.
Mushrooms to save the planet?
It may sound like Day of the Triffids in reverse, but it might just be that mushrooms are about to save the planet.
Bloomberg Business Week reports on the work of Eben Bayer and Gavin McIntyre and the innovative work on plastic substitutes that they have been doing with mushroom fibres:
It starts with a mash of corn stalks and vegetable husks impregnated with mushroom spores. The fungus eats the plant nutrients, then grows a complex root network that fills the shapes of the molds. The final product is a foam that looks something like a big wafer of nougat candy. It is placed in an oven to stop the spores from growing and to give the material the proper texture, hardness, and elasticity.
“The products literally grow themselves. In the dark. With little to no human contact,” says McIntyre. Each mold can be treated to create a material with different qualities. Home insulation must be fire-retardant and energy efficient; cabinets have to be sturdy; a car dashboard or bumper has to be strong but with give.”
And to get rid of it?
Simply throw it on the compost heap and it is gone in weeks.
The reason this is so important?
Polystyrene is non-biodegradable and so takes hundreds of years to disappear. The blowing agents that are used to expand it can be highly flammable. Some versions of it are made with hydrofluorocarbons that are over a thousand times more potent in terms of global warming potential than carbon dioxide. It is also regularly excluded from recycling services as it is uneconomical to collect and compact (due to its lack of density versus the space it occupies).
The company behind the mushroom fibre revolution, Ecovative Design, has just signed a deal with the packaging behemoth Sealed Air, the company responsible for Bubble Wrap and Cryovac. Both Dell and Steelcase are already using the material for packaging and it promises a biodegradable revolution in how we ship stuff.
I wonder if this is something that the impressive Centre for Process Innovation should pick up here in the UK? They are the increasingly impressive outfit based in Redcar. In their own words:
“CPI helps companies to prove and scale up processes to manufacture new products and create more sustainable, efficient and economic industries of the future.”
There is some real talent out there in the British economy, particularly in the emerging green and high-tech industries. A UK angle on this would help boost manufacturing, jobs and the wider economy, whilst at the same time helping to tackle the huge waste problem there is with packaging.
