Jim'll Fix It

Yoicks! I just found two billion pounds and I'm going to give it all to the NHS!

Yoghurty yoghurty! Merkel merkel!

Hope I don't sound too much like Jimmy Savile.

Glurk! I just found two and a half billion pounds and I'm going to give it all to the NHS!

That's more than that other fucker just found!

Turkety turkety! Crimbo crimbo!

Hope I don't sound too much like Jimmy Savile.

1599

The Theatre (left, with the flag) and the Curtain (right), in 1598.

It was dawn on December 28th 1598 and through a great snowstorm that had blown up during the night a group of heavily armed (with "swords, daggers, bills, axes and such like") men, William Shakespeare among them, trudged through Shoreditch to the Theatre at the north-east of Finsbury Fields.

The Theatre, England's first purpose-built theatre, stood on land owned by Giles Allen (brother of a former Lord Mayor), the land being leased by Richard Burbage for the player's company the Chamberlain's Men. Burbage had died, the lease was expiring and Allen was not going to extend it, apparently intending to demolish the Theatre for the salvage value. The place had been vacant for two years and the company had been forced to move to a temporary home in the nearby Curtain.

So that day the Chamberlain's Men stole the Theatre - took the frame apart piece by piece, loaded the timbers onto carts and carried them away.

The next year a long cold spell delayed the completion of new foundations in Bankside, Southwark, on land the Chamberlain's Men had leased for thirty-one years from Sir Nicholas Brend. In late summer the Globe theatre opened for business, Shakespeare's new play Julius Caesar being among the first productions.

The Globe and the Bear Gardens in 1600.

I am not going to go into ecstasies about James Shapiro's book 1599, A Year in the Life of William Shakespeare, because I am lazy and dull.

If you have never read anything about Shakespeare, or have read everything except this, read it!

They Pesky Bugs

Natalie Solent at Samizdata has a mildly disconcerting post about the future of espionage...

Imagine audio and video bugs get better and better. Maybe in the form of tiny physical cameras, maybe as viruses that will eventually succeed in penetrating any computer, phone or similar device, maybe as some kind of broadcast or field.

And what life events will these battalions of spies be watching for? According to Natalie, a rather eccentric selection...

Every time you sang along to your ipod, had sex, mentioned the word “government”.

Your intrepid reporter spent some time yesterday afternoon trying all three at once, leaving a rather alarmed whore in his wake and winding up £50 the poorer (+ £5 for the maid) and none the wiser.

Mysteries of AA-Dimensionality

You are at an Alcoholics Anonymous Meeting and...

...you do service as the Greeter. Only Liam and Steve are in the room when you arrive, 45 minutes early. You make a cup of coffee and go to the only entrance to greet everybody as they arrive. One minute before the meeting starts you go back to the room. 

There will be twice as many people in the room as passed you at the entrance.

...you volunteer to do the washing up after the meeting.

There will be twice as many cups to wash up as there were people at the meeting.

Illustration: projection of the Calibai-Yau Manifuld. A mere ten or eleven dimensions and so small that we can never see it. Feh.

That's Nearly Half

Why don't you just fuck off anyway?

You Could Still Fuck Off If You Wanted To

45% is good enough.

Scots Fail to Fuck Off

How come they can't even fuck off?