Thursday Thirteen

1)   As you may have gathered from my silence there have been large sections of the last ten days spent unwell.  I shall take your sympathy for granted so please don’t bother to mention it in the comments – I just end up embarrassed!  But I apologise to anyone who is awaiting an e-mail from me.

2)   Those hours not spent in bed have been spent searching for a missing Ivy.   

She packed her bags and went on holiday on Saturday 3 August but didn’t leave a forwarding address.  Since then she has been seen in my cousin Edith’s garden a mile away, paying a visit to her cats; she has made her film debut, starring on CCTV in a friendly man’s garden; her doppelganger has been caught by a local resident and released when identified by us as not being Ivy; she has been sunbathing on various sheds and garages; she has achieved local fame as the ‘kitten that is missing’; she has had 750 leaflets about her posted through letterboxes; and her ‘Wanted’ Poster is up in all the local veterinary surgeries.

3)   A survey by insurance firm Esure has shown that on average we tend to mislay nine items a week and waste 15 minutes a day searching for them.  So it’s not just me then!  But mislatying Ivy has cost us a heck of a lot more than 15 minutes this week!!

4)   At this moment I am in the delightful state of not owing anyone a postcard (though some of mine are in the post).  

5)   By contrast, I owe a load of e-mails and my in-box looks like this…

6)   The Post Office has just issued some rather nice car stamps.

 And a miniature sheet to go with them.

7)   It is now 34 hours since I have had any sleep.  I am exhausted but cannot sleep.  It’s not a nice feeling.

8)   Steven Gerrard’s Testimonial match was held at Anfield (proceeds to charity) and after Partner-who-loves-tea and I queued for his tickets, Son-who-watches-films went to it.

9)   

 (I won’t need to explain to any librarian readers but 398.2 is the Dewey Decimal Classification for Fairies or, to be more precise, 398.21 is “Tales and lore of paranatural beings of human and semihuman form.”)

10) I have just bought the Shire booklet of Post Offices.  (If you don’t know the Shire series of booklets I can thoroughly recommend them).  

 One of the photos in it is of Shipton-under-Wychwood post office around the 1890s.  

Standing in the doorway of this post office / haberdashers / grocers shop

are relatives of mine.  On the right it looks like Grandma Coombes (my Great Great Grandmother).  On the left is Harold Dee my grandfather’s first cousin and manager of the shop.  But the one in the middle could be either his sister or his wife.  His sister, Ellen Dee (known as Nell) was my grandmother’s godmother and she managed the shop with him until he married his shop assistant, Marjery Coombes, at which stage she took over from Aunt Nell.

11) The Police have informed Noddy next door that if he kills any more birds in his garden he will be arrested.  Now that they have checked the law properly they have told him that he cannot do so without a licence from the local authority and to get that he will have to prove they are a health hazard.  So no more killing them for fun.

12) Research suggests that it may be possible to forecast a person’s lifetime by assessing the amount their skin ages.

13) Partner-who-loves-tea and I recently revisited Wavertree – a part of Liverpool we knew well as young people. One of its attractions is the “Smallest House in England”, seen here in 1905.

"The Smallest House in England" stood at 95 High Street , Wavertree , Liverpool . Whether or not it actually was the smallest house in England is open to conjecture but it was only 6 feet wide and 14 feet from front to back and it's alleged that one couple raised 8 children in it .

The last known resident was Richard Greaves , known as " Red Dick ". He was the leader of the Wavertree Silver Band and was so robust that he had to climb the stairs sideways !

The house was incorporated into The Cock And Bottle pub in 1952 . With typical Liverpool humour the chap across the road came out of the pub and seeing me taking a photo he signalled for me to stop, got out his comb, combed his hair and then signalled for me to carry on.  

Much to the disgust of many local residents the old facade has recently been removed and a proper doorway constructed on the opposite side of the frontage with a staircase behind . Even the original numbering has changed and it's become no. 93 instead of 95 High Street !

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