A hidden diary written by a carpenter on the floorboards of a French Alpine chateau provides a rare insight into the private lives of villagers in the late 19th Century, writes Hugh Schofield.
When the new owners of the chateau of Picomtal decided to renovate the parquet in some of their upstairs rooms, they made a remarkable discovery.
On the underside of the floorboards - invisible until the boards were taken up to be replaced - were long messages written out in pencil. The messages were dated over several months between 1880 and 1881, and they were signed by a certain Joachim Martin.
Joachim Martin, it quickly became clear, was the carpenter who installed the parquet for the chateau's then owner - and what he left behind was a kind of secret diary intended to be read only long after he was dead and buried.
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Peering from the top of Mount Stupid
In one of those great which-came-first cases, it now looks like we developed bread thousands of years before we developed farming in order to grow the grains used to make bread. So bread provoked agriculture, cities, everything. https://t.co/rHh8jUJBvr
"We want to maintain the historic nature of the property while introducing amenities that will allow more people to enjoy the location," said Underwood, adding that the family's goal was to open it up to more visitors.
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Though an ambitious undertaking, he said the job has been made significantly easier by Robert Desmarais, the property’s caretaker for the last 21 years.
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Underwood is most excited about the saloon, which has been meticulously maintained by Desmarais. In addition to a pair of pianos, the space holds a card room, a long wooden bar and a wall of antique bottles.
Nobody knows what Humpty Dumpty originally was. The popular notion that it was a cannon from the Civil War has been debunked https://t.co/VWzJKSMYM3#FolkloreThursday
Except that -ad is not a Greek suffix, and the true spelling is Ἰλιάς (Iliás). Also the suffix as does not have that meaning it only signifies making a feminine adjective of the name. It is simply elliptic. Could you anglophones get your greek loan words right goddammit.
People are saying I am the queen of Sweden because of the legend of King Arthur
And rightly so.
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Daddy was begging me to rush so he could watch the World Cup final, but I like to take my time about things so I ignored him.
Sounds familiar.
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One end had a point, and the other had a handle, so I pointed it up to the sky, put my other hand on my hip and called out, “Daddy, I’ve found a sword!”
I felt like a warrior, but Daddy said I looked like Pippi Longstocking.
Oh, Dad!
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It wasn’t hard to keep the secret.
But I did tell one of my best friends, Emmy, and now I know I can trust her because she didn’t tell anybody
except her parents – but they promised not to tell anybody else
But it seems totally unsurprising to me. It's not like early people would say "let's invent farming and grow this grain that we have no use for".
Vaguely remembered idea about how it happened
Wanderers found a place where grain grew natively in sufficient abundance that a small population could remain stationary long enough to have a small village. The village would need a sort of designated place of pooping, where undigested grains would pass onto a well fertilized soil. Shortly the grain would be extra abundant, and it wouldn't require a great deal of imagination to make the leap to intentionally sowing some grain and fertilizing it to make even more grain for even more house dwellers, etc.
Maybe Jarred Diamond? I can't remember.
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Chained out, like a sitting duck just waiting for the fall _Cage the Elephant