Mini Ukulele Fridge Magnet

Ok, so this is probably not what most people have in their houses, but it’s in mine and it’s a fridge magnet so its good enough for me to enter it in as number five of the everyday household objects series.

The ukulele is commonly associated with music from Hawai‘i, where the name roughly translates as "jumping flea". According to Queen Lili'uokalani, the last Hawaiian monarch, the name means “the gift that came here”, from the Hawaiian words “uku” (gift or reward) and “lele” (to come).

The Royal Mint

Part four of the everyday household objects.


Today’s instalment is two one pound coins. The origins of sterling lie in the reign of King Offa of Mercia, who introduced the silver penny. It copied the denarius of the new currency system of Charlemagne's Frankish Empire. As in the Carolingian system, 240 pennies weighed 1 pound (corresponding to Charlemagne's libra), with the shilling corresponding to Charlemagne's solidus and equal to 12d. At the time of the penny's introduction, it weighed 22.5 troy grains of fine silver (30 tower grains; about 1.5 grams), indicating that the Mercian pound weighed 5,400 troy grains (the Mercian pound became the basis of the tower pound, which weighed 5,400 troy grains, equivalent to 7,200 tower grains). At this time, the name sterling had yet to be acquired. The penny swiftly spread throughout the other Anglo-Saxon kingdoms and became the standard coin of what was to become England.

Port Cork

Part three of the everyday household objects. Today’s image comes in the form of a cork from a rather nice bottle of port.

As late as the mid 1600s, French vintners did not use cork stoppers, using oil-soaked rags stuffed into the necks of bottles instead.

Natural cork closures are used for about 80% of the 20 billion bottles of wine produced each year. After a decline in use as wine-stoppers due to the increase in the use of cheaper synthetic alternatives, cork wine-stoppers are making a comeback and currently represent approximately 60% of wine-stoppers today.

The World Would Be A Poorer Place Without Tea

Hopefully the computer problems seem to be sorted now. I think I've identified the problem as Interner Explorer 8, but I might be wrong. It seemed to keep freezing my computer. I'm using Google Chrome now and Mozilla Firefox and system stability seems to have greatly improved. How odd. On the illness front, I'm still bunged up with man-flu, but last time I had this it turned out to be glandular fever. Anyhoo, over to the photograph.

Computer problems

Apologies for the break in posts, I've been quite ill, and having computer problems! Hopefully I'll get the next posts up soon!

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