Author: Purple Brolly
The Church of Scotland
The Protestant Church of Scotland (CofS) is the largest religion in Scotland and was formed in 1560, after The Reformation. It follows […]
Read More
Prince Madoc
It is said that the Welsh Prince Madoc went on a voyage of discovery and found North America, either in 1170 or […]
Read More
March winds, April showers
Planet Earth’s climate changeability has seen at least five Ice Ages come and go up to now, but in the current interval […]
Read More
Christmas Day
Christmas Day, on 25th December, is perhaps the biggest celebration of them all. It is one of only two days in the […]
Read More
Television
Two Scotsmen played significant roles in the invention of the television, albeit in opposite directions. The route taken by the older of […]
Read More
Real Tennis
Real tennis, or just ‘tennis’ to its aficionados, came long before lawn tennis, but is a rather niche sport today. It is […]
Read More
Curry houses
In the 1970s/80s, going out for a meal in the evening became very popular and ‘going for an Indian’ meant that you […]
Read MoreIn the 1970s/80s, going out for a meal in the evening became very popular and ‘going for an Indian’ meant that you were going to a curry house. As most curry houses (restaurants) opened until quite late, it was the destination of choice for any group of people finishing off a night on the town, rather drunk and competing with each other to consume the spiciest curry on the menu!
The British who lived in India from the eighteenth century onwards developed a taste for the cuisine and wanted to reproduce it on their return home. Not all of the spices were available in Britain and the first published curry recipe, in 1747, only included pepper corns and coriander seeds. Author Hannah Glasse later added more spices to her instructions ~ “To make a Currey, the India Way” ~ in her best-selling book, ‘The Art of Cookery Made Plain and Easy’.
The first curry houses appeared at the beginning of the 1800s, but it was a century later that their number multiplied, firstly in London and then in other areas where immigrants from South Asia settled. The oldest curry house still in business today is the Veeraswamy in London, which opened in 1926.
(Top image: Chan Walrus at pexels.com)
Mr. Men and Little Misses
Father and son, Roger and Adam Hargreaves, created the Mr. Men and Little Miss series of children’s books. Roger (1935-88) was born […]
Read More
Sir Tom Jones
Sir Tom Jones, OBE, was born into a mining family in Pontypridd, South Wales, in 1940 as Thomas Woodward. He was soon […]
Read More
The Salvation Army
The Salvation Army is otherwise known as ‘the Sally Army’ in the UK, where it has around 50,000 followers. It was founded […]
Read More
Pigeons
Pigeons seem to gravitate towards humans and are quite tame. Their natural habitats are cliffs and coastal areas, but they are equally […]
Read MorePigeons seem to gravitate towards humans and are quite tame. Their natural habitats are cliffs and coastal areas, but they are equally happy in crowded cities. Trafalgar Square in London used to be famous for its flocks of pigeons, encouraged by people feeding them corn and seed from the sellers who had their pitches there.
In 2000, London’s Mayor decided to rid the Square of its iconic feathered friends and today there are hawks ensuring that it remains pigeon-free. This is sorry thanks for the debt we owe to the hundreds of thousands of pigeons that were used in the two World Wars to carry vital notes between commanders, saving many human lives.
Pigeon racing is dependent on this same homing instinct and it became a very popular sport in the 1900s. At its peak in around 1960, there were 170,000 pigeon fanciers in the UK.
(Image: Purple Brolly)
The bird’s attractive plumage and direct gaze charm many people into putting out seed for them on a regular basis. However, this can lead to increasing numbers, so the best advice is to leave out a few handfuls no more than once every three days and in different places around the garden.
(Top image: Martin Vorel at libreshot.com)