Yak & Natter

    

I’ve just finished processing the Cornwall photos

“Submarine Telegraphy”, “Porthcurno Telegraph Museum”, “World War II Museum”… it’s a worry when the name of something you’re trying to find keeps on changing on signs. Still, we found it, but with only an hour before closing. Not enough time, but I’m glad we stopped off.

What we have here is a museum, not far from Land’s End, based around the development of telegraphy from about 1870 until the 1950s. Dull? Heck no. Geeky? A bit. If you’re read The Victorian Internet, you’ll know the kind of things to expect. It’s one of the best museums I’ve been to.

There’s a range of stuff, from the crazy transatlantic cable laying, the life of people working at this particular location, through to telegraph pricing plans.
The thing that made it for me was the instrument room. This is set up as three telegraphy stations, so you can see (and poke about with) original working equipment. I think it was John who was there keeping it all ticking over, and answering questions. The worrying thing for us was that the messaging involved was shocking similar to the telex systems that Jane was working on at BA in the 1990s.

Apparently the day to go is a Monday, because the C&W old boys are in on that day taking the mechanical bits apart and fixing them up.

We’re just back from a lovely week in Cornwall. We rented a lovely cottage near Bude.

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Highlights of the trip were a day spent at the Eden Project, fish and chips from Rick Stein’s in Padstow (best fish and chips ever) and the Porthcurno Telegraph Museum.

I haven’t sorted out the photographs yet, but I’m sure there’ll be some soon…

I didn’t find Kwak (8%) beer to be “very smooth and spritzy”. Although I do like the taste of strong Belgium beer, such as the Chimay (scary at 12%), this one had an initial taste of neat spirit. Not something I look for in a beer. But that’s me: Paul liked it, and with a great comedy name, it had to be tried.

The idea of a flat tax appeals to me because of the simplicity. Maybe one day a tax return will be just one page.

The things you learn watching QI actually are quite interesting. Here in the UK VAT is not charged on cakes, or on biscuits unless “wholly or partly covered in chocolate (or some product similar in taste and appearance)”. This led to Her Majesty’s Revenue and Customs (née Customs and Excise) investigating the Jaffa Cake. The ruling rested on the fact the biscuits go soft when stale, whereas cakes go hard when stale. Jaffa Cakes go hard and are therefore cakes, and not subject to VAT. The clue’s in the name.

For those who want the full rules, you might want to look at HM Revenue and Customs Notice 701/14 (PDF) which helpfully clarifies that VAT does apply to “any item of sweetened prepared food, other than cakes and non-
chocolate biscuits, which is normally eaten with the fingers.”

The fixtures are out for the Brighton Bears and it looks like there are quite a few in the Brighton Centre this year.

I’ve only just found citystats.org, which gives information and maps for Brighton. The mapping is pre-google maps so it feels clunky, but on the other hand the data is Ordnanace Survey to 100m (meters) plus photos to that sort of level too. I couldn’t find any mention of Jedis in the census data for religion, so that must have been bucketed into “other”.

I stumbled on this while researching the proposed changes to central Brighton parking, and how it would effect our street: £3 per hour pay and display parking, double yellow lines elsewhere.