Archbishop of Banterbury!
QUESTION What was the joke told by Archbishop Justin Welby that made the Pope double up with laughter?
JUSTIN WELBY was dubbed the Archbishop of banterbury in 2016 after footage was shown of him leaning towards Pope Francis mischievously and reducing him to fits of laughter.
He reportedly told the Pope this joke: ‘What’s the difference between a liturgist and a terrorist? you can negotiate with a terrorist.’
liturgy gives pattern to worship on a weekly and annual basis. some find it too formal, rigid and over structured. Others revel in its familiarity and are protective of its sanctity. this can lead to conflict.
Welby is said to have cracked another joke: ‘you wait years for an archbishop to come along and then you get 14 at once.’
this was a reference to how rare it was for the Anglican and Catholic heads to get together.
the archbishop attended vespers in Rome to mark the 50th anniversary of the beginning of theological talks between the two Churches in 1966.
until then, the Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope had not met since 1534, when Henry Viii broke from Rome and established the Church of england.
Clare Dawes, Hereford.
QUESTION What is the meaning of the rhyme: ‘They came as a boon and a blessing to men, the Pickwick, the Owl and the Waverley pen’?
THIS was a famous advertising slogan. Pickwick, Owl and Waverley were types of disposable pen nib made by Macniven and Cameron ltd, edinburgh.
they are literary names: Charles Dickens’ the Pickwick Papers; edward lear’s the Owl And the Pussy Cat; and sir Walter scott’s Waverley novels.
in 1770, nisbet Macniven established a paper-making business that later moved to 23 blair street in edinburgh’s Old town. the brand was famous for its striking advertising for pens and nibs.
in the 1840s, brothers John and Donald Cameron joined the firm, which became
Macniven and Cameron. the Waverley nib was invented by a third brother, Duncan. its upturned point meant it flowed more smoothly on the paper.
the Waverley was manufactured by other firms until 1900, when Macniven and Cameron bought a factory in birmingham and started to make pens and nibs themselves.
it diversified into fountain pens as well as paper and stationery. some of its other famous pens were called the Phaeton, nile, Hindoo and Commercial. the company closed its doors in 1964.
Mike Bickerstaffe, Oswestry, Shropshire. people of my generation will know this as an advertising slogan on blue metal plates for particular types of pen nibs. there was one on a wall next to my local railway station. i always thought of it as a very good, easily remembered phrase.
At my school, we had to do dreaded ink exercises. Handed out on a Friday for weekend homework, this was an essay or problems to be written in a special exercise book in ink.
Woe betide anyone who handed in homework that was badly written or had blots or erasures!
though business correspondence was type-written, a great deal of recordkeeping, such as ledgers, official records and bank passbooks, was done with pen and ink up to the early 1960s.
book-keepers took great pride in their ledgers and had preferences for different types of pen point: fine, medium, broad and italic.
the slogans refer to different nibs that could be fitted to the pens.
Most personal correspondence was pen and paper — a lost art! — but tended to use fountain pens.
there was also a correcting fluid that could be used to bleach out errors and over-written when dry.
i started work as a junior clerk at the county council in 1951. One of my tasks every Monday was to top up the inkwells with blue and red ink on the County treasurer’s desk.
those were also the days of comptometers, mechanical calculators and ready reckoners.
William Graham, Stirling.
QUESTION When were our railways at their most extensive?
THE route mileage of the railway network is expressed as lines with a passenger
service. the total varies according to how it is calculated, for example, whether or not narrow gauge lines are included.
Most sources give the maximum as 20,000 miles in 1914, but other figures suggest 20,400 miles in 1927.
the most rapid expansion occurred during the early days of the railways: 125 miles in 1830 expanded to 2,000 miles in 1844 and then during the Railway Mania to nearly 6,000 miles by 1851.
there was a steady decline from the 1920s, though a few new lines opened, such as totton to Fawley in Hampshire and torrington to Halwill in Devon.
the greatest reduction occurred between 1963 and 1973, with more than 4,000 miles closed following the beeching reports.
since then, there has been a slow decline, partially offset by the re-opening of passenger services including the Welsh Valleys lines and edinburgh to Galashiels. today’s total is 10,000 miles.
Mark Casson, in his book the World’s First Railway system, argues that a smaller, more rational network would have been more effective than the original network at its most extensive.
He wrote: ‘Main lines that connected major cities were often duplicated due to inter-company competition.
‘some regional lines were wasteful because they were built to achieve a regional monopoly.
‘the social benefits arising from the railway network . . . could have been achieved by an efficiently designed network of only 13,000 miles.’
it is possible that such a network would have needed less radical surgery of the type carried out by beeching.
Bob Bell, Croydon, Surrey.
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