Just make sure it’s switched off when you visit.

Puzzled? Let me explain…

Having let it languish on the shelves for a couple of years, I’ve just started reading John Todd’s ‘Race for the World‘, and it’s already thrown up some amazing facts, including this bit where the author is describing his journey through Canada:

The single disappointment was Niagara Falls, which had been turned off while some repairs were done. [A] large notice informed me that this was the opportunity of a lifetime, to stand where normally thousands of tonnes of water cascaded down.

But what if you’d actually come all that way just to see the water?

I’ve never heard of Niagara Falls being ‘turned off’. It’s never cropped up in a TV general knowledge quiz or trivia book or anywhere; once heard, it’s something you’re unlikely to forget. And, in case you doubt, it’s also absolutely true.

Never at a loss for something to do, I was dusting the bookshelves on Sunday morning (in preparation for yet another revamp of our private Dewey system!) when I let myself get distracted by Harold Clunn’s The Face of London. It’s a book I have yet to read more than a few pages of, although I have now made a start on it, having read a few amusing lines about crazy bus drivers in Islington. Leafing through the rest of the book, I found a pair of tickets to Bristol Zoo.

The price has gone up a bit since these tickets were issued. Adult admission is now £11.81, so remember to take out a small mortgage if you’re thinking of going. Oh and by the way — don’t feed the bears!

Browsing through a translation of the Anglo-Saxon Chronicles (ASC) yesterday, the entry for 1015 caused us much merriment on account of a little rhyme at the end.

Much of the ASC after the early ninth century deals with intermittent (and increasingly vicious) raids by the Vikings, to whom the Chroniclers often refer as ‘the force’. In 1015, King Canute was busy plundering and pillaging around Wessex, and, if my reading of this passage is correct, the people of Wessex not only surrendered to the invaders, but also provided them with horses (presumably from fear, not just out of the goodness of their hearts). As Anne Savage so eloquently translates it (bold type mine):

…the West-Saxons bowed and gave hostages, and they horsed the force. It was there until midwinter.

The gross violence that one must assume to have been involved in the events described is, of course, inexcusable. Bad Vikings! But it was all a long time ago, and you can’t beat a bit of verse, can you?