The Nice People Thread, No.16: A Universe of Niceness.

bestprice247

Nice People, hmmm, we could do with more of those in the UK

Pyxis

antrobus wrote: »

40? That's nothing.

There was an interesting bloke named Somerset de Chair. He was an MP, but was forced to stand down because of his, err, over enthusiasm for the opposite sex. I think he was in his mid sixties when he married his fourth wife and still managed to produce a daughter.

She's married to Jacob Rees-Mogg. Who isn't quite as interesting.

Somerset de Chair.

I think that has to go in my little notebook of Scarcely Believable But Real Names, along with Sir Cloudesley Shovell, whom I came across some years ago in Rochester on a plaque, and was convinced it must have been a Dickensian character until I looked him up!

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

In my mind, there always seems to be a big 'space' between WW1 and WW2, and it always comes as a jolt to realise that there were only 21 years between the end of the one and the start of the other. Just enough time to produce a whole new generation of soldiers.

21 years after WW2 would have been 1966! (:rotfl: I suppose there was a sort of a war that year, and between the same combatants, too! :rotfl:)

And the same side won all three "events" :rotfl:

chris_m

Pyxis wrote: »

That's the funny thing, you can have a grandmother who is only 32 years older than you, or one who is 80 years older than you!

In May last year, the US Department of Veteran Affairs was still paying a pension relating to the American Civil War - to the surviving child of a combatant in a war that ended over 150 years ago. Apparently May-December marriages were not uncommon at that time, possibly to get pension rights. In this case the father (born in 1846) married a woman 50 years his junior in the 1920s and their daughter was still living last year.

Likewise 88 widows and children of veterans from the 1898 Spanish-American War and 2826 widows and children of WWI veterans were receiving pensions.

antrobus

Pyxis wrote: »

Somerset de Chair.

I think that has to go in my little notebook of Scarcely Believable But Real Names, along with Sir Cloudesley Shovell, whom I came across some years ago in Rochester on a plaque, and was convinced it must have been a Dickensian character until I looked him up!

It's French. De la Chaire. Descended from some Huguenots who fled the continent.

I read his autobiography. Or at least one of them.

ivyleaf

Pyxis wrote: »

Somerset de Chair.

I think that has to go in my little notebook of Scarcely Believable But Real Names, along with Sir Cloudesley Shovell, whom I came across some years ago in Rochester on a plaque, and was convinced it must have been a Dickensian character until I looked him up!

I remember reading a story in which there was a mole called Clodsley Shovel. It was years later that I learned it was based on a real person's name.

It may have been one of the Narnia books.

Pyxis

ivyleaf wrote: »

I remember reading a story in which there was a mole called Clodsley Shovel. It was years later that I learned it was based on a real person's name.

It may have been one of the Narnia books.

:rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

That's so funny!


Come to think of it, the Dandy and Beano et al. of that ilk used to make the most awful puns of names and places, which needed a few years of growing to appreciate!

I actually learned a heck of a lot from comics in those days. In particular, they usually had a little half-page interesting-facts-type article, which I always read last, of course, but which facts stood me in good stead.
Typically, I can't remember any at the moment, but when one springs to mind I will share it!


Ooh..... just remembered two..... one was about Greyfriars Bobby, and one, in a girls' comic, was about Patricia Neal's tragic life. (The ballerina.. who married Roald Dahl and had an accident. They didn't pull any punches about how miserable the marriage was, either, which, looking back, was enlightening).

However, even the actual comic cartoon pages were subliminally informative.

Pyxis

Hmm. Now I am muddling up two comic stories.


One was the true story of Patricia Neal, who was an actress not a ballerina. She had a series of strokes which left her unable to walk.

The other was a pictorial account in the girl's comic of the film The
Red Shoes, about a ballerina, played by the real life ballerina Moira Shearer.

LydiaJ

I have been thinking about the suggestion that I should consider wood instead of carpet for the dining room that's got me so confused about my plans. I don't think wood would work. It would be overwhelmingly too dark to have the floor in the same kind of wood as the stairs, but seriously odd to have a wood floor of one kind of wood and wooden stairs of a totally different kind.

Pyxis

LydiaJ wrote: »

I have been thinking about the suggestion that I should consider wood instead of carpet for the dining room that's got me so confused about my plans. I don't think wood would work. It would be overwhelmingly too dark to have the floor in the same kind of wood as the stairs, but seriously odd to have a wood floor of one kind of wood and wooden stairs of a totally different kind.

Not necessarily!

The best thing would be to get some samples and see what would go with the stairs.

If the floor wood is completely different, but complementary, then it could look good!

Another possibility might be to paint the stairs! If they were the same colour as the walls, they'd disappear, as well as lighten the room up.