Give prepositions a miss
MY PET grammatical hate (Letters) is unnecessary prepositions. This transatlantic false perception of eloquence has crept into English speech: ‘miss out on’ instead of miss; ‘check up on’ instead of check; ‘meet up with’ instead of meet; ‘separate out’ for separate; and ‘inside of’ for
THE country is reeling from the effects of coronavirus, companies are going bust and many people are facing unemployment, so what a bad time to choose to waste huge sums on redecorating the Downing Street flat. I wouldn’t object so strongly if the Prime Minister’s fiancee Carrie Symonds was buying British heritage furniture, such as Chippendale, or Georgian silver, but she is paying through the nose for the sort of brass lamps and folding tables we picked up for peanuts on the hippy trail in the 1960s. Every bedsit in London at that time had a Berber throw on the bed, a Turkish carpet and floor cushions. Then fashion moved on, as it always does. After Carrie, Boris Johnson, baby Wilfred and Dilyn the dog depart from Downing Street, the next incumbent will have the unwelcome task of having to repaint the walls in magnolia.
LINDA ShERIDAN, York.
DOWNING Street is the official residence of the Prime Minister so should be presentable. But the private living quarters are not used to host political visitors. So why is it necessary to spend £200,000 on furnishings and redecoration? Wherever the money comes from, it is an obscene sum when the country is dealing with the financial effects of the pandemic.
J. R. WINFIELD, Scotton, N. Yorks.
WHAT is it with powerful people and wallpaper? In the 1990s, there was outrage and derision when £650,000 was spent on refurbishing the Lord Chancellor’s official apartment in the House of Lords, including £59,000 on hand-printed wallpaper. We can safely discount the notion that our wildly unkempt, frequently bedraggled, but lovable Boris is the motivator behind the extravagant redecorations at Downing Street. hEAThER SPINK, heathfield, E. Sussex.
COULDN’T Boris and Carrie have asked Laurence Llewelyn-Bowen to redecorate? They may not have liked his redesign, just as the next occupant of Downing Street may not like theirs.
R. MORRIS, Basingstoke, hants.
A 1 PER CENT pay rise for NHS staff is an insult. Boris, you couldn’t buy a roll of wallpaper with that. Ask Carrie!
QUESTION Was The Horsey Horseless the most absurd automobile?
The 1899 horsey horseless was the brainchild of Uriah Smith, an American inventor from Battle Creek, Michigan.
It featured a square carriage with a fake horse head on the front, the idea being that it would prevent the noisy vehicle startling horses on the road.
There’s no record of the horsey horseless being built, but Smith obtained patent No D30551 — Design For A Vehicle Body — on April 11, 1899.
It states: ‘The leading feature of the design resides in a vehicle body provided at its front end with a forwardly projecting figure of a horse’s head, the neck portion of the figure being curved on lines merging into the outline of the contiguous portion of the body.’
Smith notes: ‘The figure of the horse’s head is arranged in a life-like attitude and projects a material distance in advance of the dash.’
The patent drawings show a tiller steering mechanism, which was a common arrangement before the popularisation of the steering wheel.
Smith was a Seventh-Day Adventist, a branch of Protestant Christianity that believes in the imminent Second Coming (or Second Advent) of Jesus Christ. his 1882 book Thoughts On Daniel And The Revelation is considered to be the classic text on Adventist end-time beliefs.
Janet Cowley, Towcester, Northants.
TheRe are a host of vehicles that could claim to be as ridiculous as the horsey horseless. how about the Delorean DMC-12, which was part paid for by the government and stars in the film Back To The Future?
Aside from being under-powered, temperamental and having a poor finish, it was famous for its gull-wing doors. however, it was soon realised that if it rolled over in an accident, it would be impossible to open the doors.
The miniature BMW Isetta, an Italian designed microcar from the 1950s, had a similar problem.
This odd vehicle had a front-mounted door, so passengers would be trapped in a front-end collision.
At 41in wide and 54in long, the 1962
Peel P50 was the smallest production car in the world.
It seated just the driver, with barely enough room for a shopping bag. It had one headlight, one wiper and a single door. On Top Gear, presenter Jeremy Clarkson famously drove a Peel P50 to, and through, BBC headquarters.
With only 27 known to still exist, they are valued at £150,000.
The 1950s sci-fi explosion in the U.S. inspired the 1959 Cadillac Cyclone XP-74, which resembled a rocket ship, and the 1953 General Motors Firebird I XP-21, modelled on a jet fighter.
The 1976 wedge-shaped Aston Martin Lagonda 2 had a host of cutting-edge, computer-driven electronics and displays, which would have been impressive if any of them had worked!
Arthur Jameson, Leeds.
QUESTION Could the new baby Sussex be the first royal eligible to be U. S. President?
ACCORDING to Article II of the U.S. Constitution, the President must be a natural-born citizen, be at least 35 years old and have been a U.S. resident for 14 years.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s second child could fulfil this criteria.
The only other royal that one day may be deemed eligible is Prince harry’s distant cousin. Lord and Lady Frederick Windsor’s daughter, Maud elizabeth Daphne Marina, was born at the Ronald Reagan UCLA Medical Center in Los Angeles, California, in 2013.
Lady Frederick Windsor is better known as the actress Sophie Winkleman, who starred in TV’s Peep Show and the Disney film The Chronicles Of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe.
Lord Frederick Windsor is the son of Prince and Princess Michael of Kent. Maud, their first grandchild, does not hold a royal title and is 51st in line to the throne behind her father.
Mrs J. Bowdler, Atherstone, Warks.
QUESTION How old are the first horseshoes?
hORSe-ShOeING was not practised for centuries after the horse was domesticated. hoof protectors weren’t necessary until paved tracks and hard roads had rendered the abrasion of the horn of the feet much greater than its renovation by growth.
One of the reasons the ass was once the principal beast of burden was that the extreme firmness and tenacity of its hooves made it superior to the horse.
The need for communication over long distances, war and aesthetics saw the horse become the main mode of travel.
The earliest forms of hoof protection appear to have been matting, rope or leather affixed in a similar way to shoes.
Xenophon, who commanded the cavalry of the Grecian armies in 400BC, wrote about horses’ hooves and mentions such a defence for their feet.
The oldest archaeological evidence for metal horseshoes comes from an etruscan tomb dating from the fourth century BC.
The etruscans were a powerful preRoman civilisation in central Italy. These shoes were a form of hipposandal, a metal shoe affixed to the horse’s hoof with leather straps.
hipposandals have been found at Virunum, a city in the Roman province of Noricum, in modern day Austria, dating to the time of emperor Trajan, who reigned from 98 AD to 117 AD.
however, there’s little evidence they were widely used and no evidence that they were nailed to the hoof.
The first written evidence of nailed horseshoes appears in 900 AD when Byzantine emperor Leo VI of Constantinople refers to ‘crescent-shaped irons and their nails’ in an inventory of cavalry equipment.
The process of iron smelting had become more efficient after 800 AD. William the Conqueror is recorded as bringing shoeing smiths with him for his invasion of england in 1066.
By the time of the Crusades in the 1100s, shoeing was commonplace.