Spike Milligan Statue

 

London.

Map and ebents at Stephens House snd Gardens, London.

Bus stop Holmwood Gardens.  Bused to and from North Finchley. Bus numbers 643 and 653.

Who Made The Postbox Topper?

 

Replacing Historic Buildings Burned Or Destroyed - Lessons from Greece, Italy, Japan, Poland, Thailand, UK, USA

Old buildings burn down. Why? Many causes have been reported. 

Natural causes. Broken glass is heated by the sun's rays. Dry wood burns more easily. Rubbish collects and becomes a fire risk. 

Squatters wire up electricity unsafely. They light camp fires to cook. They want to heat themselves and the building in hot weather. They light fires to create light.

Animals chew through wiring. This happened to my friends' home when they were on holiday.

Rats eat wiring. Rats ate wiring in my car in London.Why? To sharpen their teeth, like cats. Because they don't know if something is edible until they try eating it. (Our son, as a toddler, ate sand on the beach, thinking it was sugar. A nasty surprise!) 

Don't the animals know something hard is not edible? No. Nuts are hard. Tasty nuts are hidden inside hard shells.

Sometimes down and outs build fires to keep warm. Children set fires for fun. for the spectacle. Fire-fighters want the credit for rescue. Arsonists enjoy the power. Owners want to claim insurance. Owners want to clear the land quickly to replace with modern, higher, buildings they can sell. Burning is quicker and cheaper than paying for demolition. You cannot get permission to destroy, and/or it takes weeks of waiting. Finally, electricians using sparks to repair, rebuild, replace parts, accidentally set fire.

How can you find the cause?

Poland's Rebuilt Old Quarters

In Poland I visited the old quarter of Warsaw. The basement restaurants were clean and new. When I asked, I was told that what was destroyed in the war, had been rebuilt in the old style. 

The same applies to other historic old styles. I was impressed. We don't do that in England. Or do we? More often we replace the old with new. 

UK Listed Buildings

But now we have regulations protecting listed buildings. Renovations must be done in similar style.

UK and Mock Tudor

In England we built new buildings in new places copying old styles. Victorian buildings were often mock Tudor, black and white, a style favoured for some semi detached housing estates. 

Italy Influencing The USA

In Italy I was shown buildings with frontages which were Palladian style. I had never heard of Palladian style. But when I saw it, I recognized it immediately. Two or four or more columns at the front, not just over the doorway, but up two stories or more, to a flattened triangle across the whole roof area.

In the USA and UK, many public buildings are built this style. Called neo-classical. Such as a town hall, even a railway station. Many mansions and homes would be built in this style. In Washington DC, The White House.

The White House, Washington DC. USA. From Wikipedia.

Thailand Building Styles

In Thailand I visited the home of silk king, Jim Thompson. I learned that i that country, and other Asian countries (borders have changed over time), because of rainy season typhoons and flooding, houses were moved from place to place to avoid bad seasons and bad weather, or simply to relocate. 

Plugs and Panels

Instead of metal nails, traditional wooden plugs were used. Like modern Ikea furniture, the building could be flattened, compacted, made lighter, transported more easily. Re-assembled from a picture, or from memory of that building, practise on similar buildings, or skill and initiative. Like a jigsaw.

Buildings were traditionally built from prefabricated panels. Maybe they slotted in. Like modern sliding doors of glass, and sliding windows.

The living areas were above, on stilts, to avoid water below, where animals were kept. 

Singapore Style

Nowadays Singapore public housing can be built this style, around a central courtyard. Thai buildings had a flowering or perfumed tree in the middle of the courtyard to provide shade. A bit like cloisters in a European monastery, or the quad of colleges in Cambridge, England.  

Singapore city, designed by British Raffles, had shaded five foot ways to shade pedestrians (as well as the shops and shophouses) along streets of shops.

Just hope you don't end up with an extra plank or wooden plug, wondering, where did this go? Will my building fall down without this piece!

Singapore early housing estates were built with speed. The story goes that the minister, who had no experience of house building, was told to submit a plan by the end of the year. Instead he started building straight away. At the end of theyear his ony plan was to conitnue cosntructing equally quickly!

Japan And Post-Earthquake Reconstruction

In Japan, where historic and important buildings suffer from earthquakes, old buildings are replaced by the same style building, using the construction blueprints which are preserved elsewhere.

Plutarch's ship of Theseus Puzzle

If you replace a ship's planks one by one, at which point is it new? The planks are used to create the building elsewhere, and new planks copy the original indistinguishably in the old location, which is the original building?

AI and Reproduction

One might pose the same question about the Parthenon. If the reproduction is on the old site, but the original is in the British museum. Do the tourists really care which is old and which is new? Children might not know nor care.

Do we need an original photo, death mask, skeleton? Or will an AI image work as well?

Dead Bodies Tell Tales

I want the original skeleton of a living being because it contains DNA. It could prove murder, inheritable disease, lifestyle, diet. Or even create a clone. 

With cloned animals and plants more questions are raised. 

Useful Websites

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-15686631/Absolute-inferno-Grade-II-building.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Architecture_of_Thailand

What to take to a Passover (Seder) meal

  What food can you take to hosts who are Jewish or a dinner party where one of the guests eats kosher?

If all else fails, ask. 

A year or two ago I had to attend a festive Jewish occasion and knew the hosts were strictly kosher. My solution was to order wine from a shop supplying kosher wine. But what if they don't drink, are driving, and say they already have wine?

Passover

Pesach, or Passover, around Easter time, adds another layer of opportunities coupled with restrictions, because of the ban on leavened food, no bread, only matzah, and this affects cakes and biscuits. Your supermarket may have stocks of wines and food labelled kosher for Passover.

Another place to look is a mini supermarket or gift shop which specialises in Jewish or kosher products. The assistant can probably help you to find something suitable in their shop or direct you to another nearby shop.

You can often buy kosher chocolates or cake from a supermarket or an Israeli restaurant or kosher salt beef bar. Just ask. Or look online.

Green & Blacks

I recently was at a lunch party and was surprised to see that one of the guests who kept strictly kosher at their home had brought Green & Black's chocolates which had no kosher symbol or Hebrew or English wording saying that the product was kosher.

Gelatine

I was told that the main concern for a Jewish guest would be whether the chocolates contained gelatine. Gelatine is an animal product. (Although there are non animal substitutes). What could contain gelatine? Jelly babies? Turkish Delight? (That is the brand name now used in the UK for the Greek and Turkish and other countries' confection of that style).

Some wines have the debris removed with egg white which attaches to bits of twig and grape skin so that it clumps together, flats or sinks?, and can be removed.

American Chocolates

My informant additionally told me, "Almost all chocolates imported from the USA, US brands, are kosher. Look for the symbol or two letters OU, O for Orthodox."

Now you know what to ask about.

I asked a hostess if she would prefer food, drink, flowers, a pot plants, a piece of clothing, such as a scarf, or an accessory such as a scarf ring or ear-rings. She said, chocolates, kosher for Passover chocolates.

Googling

When I tried googling, I got lots of chocolates, not listed as kosher. I could just check

 for kosher food, and kosher for Passover. That brought up lots of offers of matzah/matzoh. 

Matzah

Also chocolate covered matzah. I had tried that previously and did not like it. I preferred matzoh on its own, as a savoury. The chocolate did not seem the best milk chocolate, more like cheaper cooking chocolate, based on non milk fat, or chocolate flavour, or different proportions. 

It was an interesting novelty. But, although one person was polite and said it was okay, nobody was keen on it.

Kosher Shop Opening Times

Another website, Exquisite chocolates, said they were closed until a date in April after the event. Buying food for a kosher even on the way there is risky. You might find the kosher restaurant or shop is already closed. 

Sabbath Closure

I once found that a branch of Tesco had curtained off the kosher section during the sabbath, before the Friday evening meal I was attending. Sabbath, starting like Xmas eve the night before, comes in around sunset, earlier in winter. In summer the sabbath, shabbat in Hebrew, goes out, finishes, later on Saturday in summer.

 I saw offers of hampers, beyond my budget, containing large numbers of small items, all of which were just cheap items, unexciting. Fine for a school. Nut nothing impressive and luxurious for a well to do hostess who had spent a week cleaning the entire house and removing all previous food. 

Discover Channel View Of Passover

A Discovery programme had proved, at least to me, that the origin of the festival was one event, or several, in which a rainy season had made stores of cereal, for bread, to go mouldy, leading to food poisoning. The contaminated food, would kill off the first born child, given double portions of bread.

If I remember rightly, the programme said that the favoured firstborn would get a double portion.

 Why did this not affect others? Bread was only part of the diet of adults. In a shortage, women would not receive it, only the firstborn adult male. Bread was not given to children breastfeeding to the age of four.  

The consumption of contaminated cereal would lead to what was known in the USA in previous centuries as St Vitus's dance.

Hence the using up of old flour and food in pancakes for lent. If you go to a kosher shop, before they close for Passover, you can ask them for chocolates or sweets which are kosher for Passover. 

The simplest solution is to go to a kosher shop, before they close for Pesach, and ask for kosher for Passover chocolates or sweets.

 I like halva. You can get variations, such as chocolate covered halva.

You can find kosher food in a shop in a synagogue or kosher school complex. They sell what looks like an Easter egg, a kosher surprise, like a kinder surprise, a chocolate egg with a small toy inside, such as tiny spinning top. My grand0daughter was given one at school where a (Jewish) child who had a birthday, and his mother had bought a chocolate egg for every child in his class of thirty children, instead of a cake. (Some schools have a cake every week from one child or another. Others ban cakes, because of peanut and egg allergies, crumbs attracting insects, time taken from lessons for cake cutting, parents who ban sugary cakes and snacks on health grounds.)

Useful Websites

Watch Out For Theft of Watches, Jewellery & Cash When Travelling

 

Where To leave Watches, Jewellery & Cash, Shoes

Where to leave your wedding ring and watch is a hard decision. What are the options and risks of each location and precaution.

Is Home Safe For Valuables

Left at home, you could be burgled.  Behind a book is no use. We came home to find all the books thrown on the floor.

Safety of Safes

Safes which can be picked up are no use. You need a hidden safe.

House Sitters

Or a house-sitter, who you know and trust. Such as swapping homes with a family member overseas.

Separating Valuables

Or leave it in the home of a trusted family member. In the USA, we left locked suitcases with not one but several colleagues. so if we or they got burgled, we would not lose everything.

You could take valuables with you. But you could be mugged. 

Loss

Or leave goods behind. I left the small bag with my passport on the back of a chair. Check the room is empty. Check.

Valuables could, should, be hidden under clothing.  You can buy clothes with double pockets, one sewn inside the other.

The grment or bag with the hidden pocket is no use if the garment or bag is stolen. Beware or leaving wallets and sunglasses in the pockets of jackets on the back of your chair in a crowded restaurant. Also bags on the floor. The strap needs to be around your feet, or your chair feet, with one foot on the bag. 

Some places have a hook for bags under the table.

I have bought bag hanging hooks which fold out. I used to forget to take them. Then I tried keeping the hook inside the bag, instead of in a drawer. 

A cross=body bag can be removed by somebody slashing straps with a knife. A common trick is for somebody to push you from one side. Whilst they move away, or apologise, and you look at them, another person swipes your goods from the other side. This happened to me in Singapore. 

Gym Security

I read about somebody losing money and a watch at a gym. Most gyms keep records of who enters. The premises supposedly has a system which was down. Should the premises be obliged to say, to warn if the system is down? But that might alert others.

Could you put the lockers under the watch of the Reception? What if it's the staff at fault?  Other possibilities, people with access to the premises, painters and decorators, electricians, construction workers, cleaners.  Members. And guests.

Another system would be to have surveillance from outside the premises.

If you are the owner or manager of premises used by the public, or devise security, what else could you consider?

Doorstep cameras detecting movement which alert your phone.

Colour code keys on a sash, and lockers, so nobody can open the wrong one without being noticed.

You can also buy sew in pockets for inside jackets and clothes, from Amazon. Cheaper from ali express. 

Useful Websites

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Opening-Zippers-Backpacks-Suitcases-Traveling

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Clothing-Pockets-Anti-Theft-Security-Sweatshirt/dp/B0GD6Z6

https://www.clothingarts.com/collections/new

Noah Webster House

  Noah Webster House Events

Noah Webster House holds a series of events, here and elsewhere. It is the HQ of the local historical society. Events include 

An easter egg hunt. (April 2026)

War of the Words.

Free poetry Jun 17th 2026. (Check venue.)

You can sign up to their newsletter to be informed of events.

Noah Webster House Shop

The shop sells

a tea-towel with pictures of local attractions

apparel 

literary theme ear-rings, quote by Hemingway, no friend like a book

tee shirts in blue or green with the words ale taster

a postcard, bookmarks

books, including one on Word of the Day, one on Scrabble, others on Webster and local history

Useful Websites About Noah Webster House

Useful Summary Of What to see including the video

https://historicsites.heritage.org/site/noah-webster-house/

wiki - detailed account

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster

official site events

https://noahwebsterhouse.org/events/

Fans' Group

https://west-hartford.fandom.com/wiki/Noah_Webster_House

Hotels, motels, budget hotels, suites, bed, and breakfast

Check if breakfast is included in the room price. If separate, you might want to stay in one hotel and breakfast in another, to save money, or gain better beds, better breakfasts, or double the experiences and know which place to choose on your next visit

https://www.booking.com/landmark/us/noah-webster-house

English and American spelling - practise and practice

 American and English spelling differs slightly. Some would say differs a lot. You rarely get any misunderstanding. You can find yourself in difficulty or delay when composing work to be published in another language, or using a dictionary.

Some of the most common changes I have noticed are:

Why Is American Spelling Different?

American spelling was simplified and made more phonetic, easy to teach others, teach yourself, and understand and remember, Webster's dictionary was published by Webster, a publisher who produced school text books, work books, and the dictionary which still bears his name in the USA. 

I learned this when I visited the home of American Webster in the USA when my husband and I were living there.

England still follows the old spellings which allow you to instantly see the meaning of two words which sound the same. 

Practise and Practice in British English

In British English, the SE ending is for the verb, the doing word, and CE if for the noun, the object, or subject of a sentence, the idea. It is good practice, to practise.

May 14th 2026 is the date of the annual fundraiser, War of Words, for Noah Webster House in Hartford where several teams compete for a trophy.

You can buy an American Webster's dictionary from Amazon online and from physical bookshops in the USA.

The Oxford English dictionary, with British spelling, is sold on Amazon and online bookshops and from shops in the UK.

Online dictionaries sometimes give English spalling, sometimes US spelling. Some online dictionaries allow you to hear both the American and English pronunciation and intonation.