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I’m researching the life of my 5 x great grandfather Samuel Cottrell. This will be an interesting challenge because Samuel, a non-conformist, managed to avoid all the censuses taken in the 1800s
Samuel was born on 11 July 1796 to John Cottrell and Mary Teek. He was baptised on 2 October 1796 at Saint Luke’s Old Street, Finsbury, London.
During this research, I hope to learn more about London as well.
Many of the locations of Charles Dickens' 'A Christmas Carol' can still be seen today. Scrooge's counting house is thought to be in Newman's Court, in the City of London. "The ancient tower of a church" is described, whose "gruff old bell was always slyly peeping down at Scrooge out of a #gothic window." That church has been identified as St Michael's Cornhill, which looms over Newman's Court. In addition, Bob Cratchit heads home via nearby Cornhill, where he "went down a slide" on the ice "at the end of a line of boys, twenty times, in honour of it being Christmas Eve." Scrooge's "usual melancholy tavern" where he takes his "melancholy dinner" is thought to be Simpson's Tavern in nearby Ball Court, which has been trading since 1757. The door knocker which turns into the ghostly head of Jacob Marley was apparently inspired by one in Craven Street, near Charing Cross, where Dickens worked as a boy in a shoe-blacking factory. #Christmas #literature #history #folklore #Yule #books #London
For #AdoorableThursday a rare find: a piece of a #Roman wooden door found during the excavations at the Bloomberg building. Well-preserved due to the damp soil of the lost Walbrook river under the City of #London. Dating 43-100 AD.
“My daughter, Molly, was waiting for a friend at Bank Station in #London to go out for their work Christmas party when a man started bothering her persistently and unwanted.
A lady she had never met before, walked up and gave her a big hug saying "it's so lovely to see you again and thank you so much for waiting for me..."
I'm always on the hunt for clothing featuring London Transport Moquette designs. The best place to source these are from the Transport museum. But there have also been dresses and jackets by other companies which unfortunately are not in stock anymore.
Its quite an extraordinary 'natural experiment' - from which we can draw the conclusion (without too much difficulty) that #privatisation is not the way forward if #busses are to be part of the #greentransition
(and don't get me started on #London exceptionalism....)
Here's a recording of the extremely low-flying #Chinook that passed over our house yesterday evening at approximately 19:44 GMT+1. It flew so low that it actually clipped my #microphones. #London #Kilburn
Just finished reading a recent (2023) article on organizing #GigWork #GigWorkers by Rafael Grohmann, Mateus Mendonça, and Jamie Woodcock. It investigated how digital communication platforms play a more central role in organizing delivery platform drivers/riders, (1) due to the preconditions of having a smartphone to engage in the work at all, and (2) due to the affordances/circumstances of both the gig work platforms themselves and the various social media platforms that the workers flock to.
It investigated (1) the lack of direct communication with bosses and its replacement with algorithmic management, (2) the migration of gig workers to social media in search of solidarity (typically into cohorts along territorial and personal lines), and (3) how both (1) and (2) ultimately led to meaningful in-person labour struggle in the form of successful pickets of local vendors and public shaming protests of their working conditions.
Social media organizing took the place of the traditional shop floor and break room chats; group admins took the place of traditional union stewards; public shaming campaigns took the place of traditional strikes.
Ultimately, the "public shaming" approach, organized over social media and branching out into social media and traditional media relations, while ultimately not bringing immediate, material *wins* to the *workers*, *did* nevertheless take *off* 2 billion dollars of the #Deliveroo IPO in #london
Their conclusion notes that social media conglomerates were not built with worker activism in mind, and that any successes built upon their backs are thus contingent. I strongly agree there, and also agree with their suggestion of building alternatives. I think community-owned and co-operated delivery platforms could be such a viable alternative, especially if mandated, preferred, or at least permitted by local statutes.
The methodology of embedding within the struggles, personal interviews, and systemic monitoring of social media I think lends credence to their analysis.
That's all she wrote? Just one huge boom and nothing else? Apparently so. This happened at 12:54 local time, as I was preparing my lunch. Sound captured from microphones in my back garden. #thunder #Boom #Weather #WeatherSounds #London
I decided to go through my videos to find the least viewed item on my channel, and it’s this one with 27 views. Nice weather sounds. Hear slight sounds of rain, cars driving through puddles, and some lovely thunder-booms. 2007-07-03 - #London - 15 Minutes of Storm youtu.be/HqdQTZf8m1s
Here's a long-ago recording I found in the archives of a storm I recorded on July 3 2007. AS it's so far back, I don't remember what time of day it was or an...
