The Little Street

Exeter, England is home to what is allegedly the narrowest street in the world. Parliament Street is a 50m long street which links the High Street to Waterbeer Lane and dates from the 14th century. It was formerly called Small Lane and was renamed when Parliament was derided by the city council for passing the 1832 Reform Bill. The street is approximately 45″ at its widest and less than 25″ at its narrowest.

The Magic Roundabout

Swindon in England used to be noted for its railways and had a huge set of sidings. Obviously the local folk decided they would create the road equivalent - the world’s most confusing intersection. To be fair, once understood this intersection is allegedly both functional and designed to reduce overall congestion. However, it is certainly an urban wonder and highly perplexing to the uninitiated.

Like a shot

Thesaurus Rex

For those who haven't picked up on the comments on earlier blogs can I recommend a trip to the Blog of Thesaurus Rex and a go at his quiz! http://thegasbagcometh.blogspot.com/ There is some fun to be had!

It's older than you think

I had a Mars Bar a few weeks ago. I don’t think it was past its sell by date but I was amazed to discover that the Mars Bar itself was 74 years old. According to Wikipedia, the Mars Bar was invented in Britain (Slough, of all places) by an American - Forrest Mars - in 1932. Historical documents show that it is the only interesting thing ever to have happened in Slough.

Indeed I was surprised that many of our traditional confectionary bars were older than me - the Milky Way (1923), Crunchie (1929), Snickers (1930), Mars Bar (1933), Aero and Kit Kat (1935); Maltesers and Blue Riband (1936); Smarties and Rolos (1937) and even Polo mints (1948) are older than me. Younger than me are the Bounty (1951); Yorkie and Lion Bar (1976) and Twix (1979).

We still had sweet rationing when I was born – it didn’t end until 1953. But all I can recall in the sweet shop that we sometimes visited on the way home from school were Fruit Salads, Blackjacks, Chewing Gum (banned by Mum) and Bubble Gum (banned by Mum and Dad!); Cadbury’s Dairy Milk Chocolate Bar; and the good old Fruit and Nut and Whole Nut. But all those chocolate bars were big and expensive and for adults - we had Cadbury’s animal bars which were a mere penny or two. (What a whole eight farthings – too much!)

I should explain to American readers that what the rest of the world knows as a Mars Bar – the (proper!) Mars Bar is similar to - but not exactly the same as - what you know as Milky Way in the U.S. And what the rest of the world knows as a Milky Way is more like your 3 Musketeers bar… which in turn, is quite like our Mars Flyte.

And now my head hurts. It’s not just that the chocolate sets off my migraines it's all just too complicated for me - but luckily (!) someone has made a web site devoted to showing the differences: The Visible Mars Bar Project