World War I In the Back Yard

Gotta love those British eccentrics.

Sample pic:

Meanwhile, In Madison, Wisconsin...

...Thong Cape Scooter Man has been determined by the police not to be a public menace or nuisance:

A 56-year-old Madison man who likes to ride around town on a scooter wearing a thong, a helmet and a black cape with red trim might be a disturbing sight to schoolchildren and teachers, but he’s not breaking any laws.

Police were called May 16 by staff at John F. Kennedy Elementary School after the man police call “Thong Cape Scooter Man” rode by when students were walking to a bus after school.

He didn’t do anything more than ride by, according to a Madison police news release. But parents and teachers were disturbed.

The Dedication of the True Fanatic

A man in UK spent ten years building a scale model of Admiral Nelson's flagship HMS Victory:

More photos of this magnificent work at the link.

I got to visit Victory in the early 1980's when I was in the US Navy, on a port visit to Portsmouth. I had photos of the ship with the US flag flying at the mainmast as a courtesy; those didn't follow me here to the US when my marriage broke up and property was divided. Wonderful old ship.

Much More Sanitary Than Hording Cats

He hoarded gold.

Shades of Scrooge McDuck, huh?

He Is the Very Model* of a Modern...Eccentric Englishman

For 62 years, 79-year-old Phillip Waren, of Brandford, Dorsetshire, has built warships out of wooden matchsticks and the wooden boxes they used to be packaged in.

The master modeller, from Brandford, Dorset, has created every ship built in the Royal Navy since 1945, as well as 60 other ships from the US navy and other impressive floating fortresses from 18 other nations. One of the largest ships in his collection is the famous USS Nimitz, the largest aircraft carrier in the world.

Throghout his career as a ship model builder, Phillip Waren created over 400 individual ships, as well as 1,200 airplane models that make his aircraft carriers look more real. The average ship in his collection is made using around 1,500 matchsticks and takes about a month to complete, but for his larger creations he used over 5,000 matchsticks and 200 wooden boxes. These took him about a year to complete. All in all, Phillip Waren used around 650,000 matchsticks, to create his entire fleet.

Some pics:





More pics at the link.

*Double Entendre unintended but fortuitous.

h/t The Mellow Jihadi.

What's He Building In There?

In East Austin, Texas, a man built three levels of tunnels under his house.

Austin city officials have fenced off the yard and posted warning signs at a home along Canterbury Street in East Austin. They have also shut off the utilities.

They say the reason is that the home’s owner, Jose Del Rio, dug a series of tunnels beneath his home. They go as far as 35 feet deep and are so large in places that an adult can stand up.

Neighbors say that Del Rio was former military, in his 60’s and that he lived alone. They say that he also kept to himself.

“Who knows what was going through his mind with the digging and what not,” said a neighbor who did not want to be identified.

Some neighbors told KVUE they suspect the digging began years ago, and that they grew suspicious after they saw dirt being hauled from the home at night. They say those suspicions were confirmed when the ground began caving in.

If you're a Tom Waits fan, you know where I got the title to this entry:

The Bag Lady of York, SC

98-year-old Flossie Matthews, who lives in a nursing home but still crochets strips of plastic bag into useful objects, such as hats and doormats.

Really great human-interest story; the sort of person who would appear on the old Tonight Show when Johnny Carson was host, usually closing out the last five minutes of the show.

Here's a pic of Flossie, wearing a hat she made herself:

Flossie Matthews

A Self-Sufficient Lifestyle - - No Money Necessary

Mark Boyle lives a suburban lifestyle, with all of his needs met by scrounging.

Do I think he'll continue this existence for the rest of his life? Unlikely; not even Thoreau did that.

This Needs To Be A Movie

It's quite easy to mock and belittle the UK for the actions of its current government, but then you read a story like this and remember that Britain still has citizens whose souls shine in a blaze of glory, even though they might not be noticed during their lifetime.

May Savidge loved her little cottage, and when told that it must be demolished to make way for a road, May did what anyone would not do: she disassembled her cottage, brick by brick and board by board, and moved it to a new, safer location. She did it mostly herself, and the cottage wasn't completely reassembled at her death, but has been since:



May Savidge's story is told in a book (see linking story for info) and needs desperately to be made into a movie; not by Hollywood, which would screw it up, but by some sympathetic British film company. It would be a shoo-in for awards. I'd watch it, myself.