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A Little Friday Light Relief

There haven't been any 'sightings' of the Loch Ness monster in ages. However, there is a roaring trade in these troubled times in snake-monsters, Forest wildmen and man-apes like Bigfoot (most of which, disconcertingly, are identified by their red hair) and UFOs. The old John Titor hoax is good for a laugh and clearly still has some juice in it. Even the Scandinavians are in on these bliks, as it were.

This sort of thing, I suppose, is the intellectual equivalent of the abominable spray-cheese, some convenient way to abuse life and forget whilst not challenging the society that could serve it up to intelligent people one little bit. Here's what the quirky Forgetful Rainn site thinks of it.

Here's a funny video of something strange, horrible and huge in the water in Sweden or Scotland or somewhere like that. In the words of the great Rolf Harris, can you guess what it is?



UPDATE: More timewasting. I think that allotments can be great if you like the idea of a reserved piece of land in which to grow a little food and escape. Many of the steelworker houses in Corby were built with long gardens for this very purpose, which one of my grandfathers used to the full when I was growing up. Bella Gerens, who is a talented medievalist apparently, inter alia, thinks Medieval life was, and I quote, 'shit' (I agree), and therefore that allotments are bad. Have a look.

If you are in London and wanted to escape the end of Friday meeting where your boss tells you you're fired for another week, the Wallace Collection has an interesting black-death themed exhibition here which may allow you to reflect on these things. And, finally, on that theme, there's a nice note on medieval Jewish perfume at the Medieval History blog here.

Happy weekend!

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