Some of the damage from the fire. Photo: Courtesy of William Waddilove.
Eye - 30 January 2015
From dinosaurs to UKIP
Jurassic spark in Coventry
Fiery Jurassic-dwellers prompted an unusual phone call on 9 January.
William Waddilove, of Coventry Meeting, got in touch to tell the tale.
‘One of our Meeting keyholders got a phone call from one of our groups to ask what do they do about locking up as the Meeting house was full of people?
‘Two doors up from Coventry Meeting House is a trade-only warehouse and some of their [animatronic} dinosaurs had developed an electrical fault and set the building on fire.
‘Besides the four fire engines that had attended, the emergency services decided to evacuate the properties directly across the road and “invited” them to come into our building.
‘The Warwickshire Association for the Blind, who use our Meeting house as a drop-in support and information centre, rose to the occasion and gave all comers tea and biscuits. The group’s problem was that they were due to leave.’
The fire was almost out and things were calming down by the time the keyholder arrived. Thankfully, no-one was injured, but two animatronic dinosaurs measuring nineteen – and nine-foot high, both covered in latex, were destroyed during the blaze.
The Coventry Telegraph couldn’t resist a pun-tastic headline: ‘Jurassic Spark! Dinosaurs wiped out by light-bulb!’
‘Citizen soldiers’
Military recruitment, the gaming industry and language were among the topics discussed in a recent Thinking Allowed programme on BBC Radio 4.
David B Lawrence, of Cardiff Meeting, recommends listening to the last fifteen minutes of the ‘War Games – Riding the Subway’ edition of the show.
He writes: ‘Those who feel that pacifist and pacificator arguments are weak and unconvincing will be very challenged by this brief description of the present strategies that are being used for recruiting children by various military forces.’
During the episode the presenter, Laurie Taylor, speaks to Joanna Bourke, professor of history at Birkbeck, University of London.
Joanna argues that: ‘The main problem is this idea that war, that military violence, is the appropriate way to respond to attacks on us or, indeed, on those we care about… we need to turn the argument around, it’s very naive of us to think that increasing our weaponry, increasing our powers, is somehow going to protect us’
The discussion can be heard at http://bit.ly/ThinkingAllowed.
Centring on Fenny Drayton
A news report about an ‘ordinary spot in a rather ordinary field’ caught the eye of Anthony Gimpel, from Leicester Meeting.
The Leicester Mercury of 13 December 2014 reported that ‘amid the wavy crops of Lindley Hall Farm in Fenny Drayton, you will find the geographical heart of England’.
The Ordnance Survey has calculated that the exact geographical centre of the country sits ‘a mile to the east of Fenny Drayton… birthplace to a world religion founder George Fox’.
Not a Quaker
When UKIP party leader Nigel Farage gave up drinking beer for the month of January, he reassured readers of Kent News that he has ‘not become a puritan or a Quaker. I just woke up one morning between Christmas and New Year and thought I needed a break.’
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