At Old Year's End

As this little speck of sand on which we sit goes round the fading twinkling little light bulb in the ever expanding Universe it has somehow come round to that time of year again. Out with the old and in the new and all that cobblers. The doom sayers say their doom again, like they have for as long as, well, forever, but I guess I'll still  stick around to see what happens next. Until tomorrow  ... Chin up and keep buggering on.

The Old Junk Shop

When I was young we'd have called this a junk shop but now it's 'antiques' and 'collectables'; so spins the world.

Horace

Horace had the misfortune to encounter the Prince of Wales (not the present droopy muppet, nor yet the even more useless one before him who ran off with his American floozy but the one before that, the habitué of Parisian brothels, him, Albert, I think was his name, do try to keep up)  in Jeypore back in 1876 when the sun never set on the British Empire (as one wit said God didn't trust the British in the dark). Horace sat for a few years in Sandringham before the Royals got bored and fobbed him off to the King's Lynn Museum. So since 1928 Horace has been both scaring and fascinating generations of small, young Lynn folk. And as Margot was one of those youngsters we had to go see him again. He sits in the entrance foyer so it was no trouble. I even bought a postcard.

I've been saying Horace and using masculine pronouns but it turns out Horace is more of a Horatia really. But in these days and in the current climate of political correctness if she wants to identify her herself a he I'm not going to argue. Especially not with a tiger.

Greyfriars Tower

Greyfriars tower was a bell tower for the Franciscan monastery and was built in the 15th century. It is 93 feet  tall in its stockinged feet. I've read that it survived the depredations of Henry VIII as it was a useful navigation aid for shipping on the Great Ouse (St Margaret's and St Nicholas chapel being invisible I suppose). Be that as it may the tower is a rare beast indeed and is the finest example of only three remaining Franciscan towers. Naturally it is a Scheduled Ancient Monument, Grade 1 listed; it is also listing, slightly, towards us in this picture and because of this it is on on English Heritage's Buildings at Risk Register.

This, of course, is the tower that Tower Street refers to; unless there's some other, secret, tower hiding out there.