{"id":3819,"date":"2018-01-01T06:40:53","date_gmt":"2018-01-01T06:40:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/banthewasp.com\/?p=3819"},"modified":"2018-01-01T06:40:53","modified_gmt":"2018-01-01T06:40:53","slug":"sesquipedalian","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/?p=3819","title":{"rendered":"Sesquipedalian"},"content":{"rendered":"

Adj sesquipedal<\/em> or sesquipedalian<\/em> (of objects or words) a foot and a half long — of words, very long and pedantic.\u00a0 [L. sesqui<\/em> — semisque<\/em> —semis<\/em>, half a unit, que<\/em>, and] \u00a9 Chambers Concise Dictionary 1991<\/p>\n

Hello 2018!\u00a0 Woke up with that word floating about my head.\u00a0 I have always liked its rhythm, and I quickly realised to my utter chagrin that I did not know what it meant, so off to the dictionary room I hied myself, with all possible haste, whilst maintaining the silence of the hour (04:20).<\/p>\n

BTW wishes everyone a peaceful, happy, healthy and prosperous new year,\u00a0 one without fake news and duplicity would be nice, but let’s not be carried away.<\/p>\n

Here’s a pre-decimal conundrum —\u00a0 why did Paul’s dad choose to paint a cottage ever so slightly differently for this stamp illustration?<\/p>\n

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Ulster thatch 1<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
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Ulster thatch 2<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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I have looked this one up, since it was one I did not have in my collection.\u00a0 I think it would have been most unlikely that a stamp valued at 1\/6 (one shilling and sixpence), the equivalent of several pounds today, would have come my way, unless used to post a gift.\u00a0 The decimal equivalent of 7\u00bd pence gives no clue as to its real value.\u00a0 It was one of a set depicting house claddings* from the four countries of the UK.\u00a0 I have several copies of the Fife Harling (5d), but neither the Cotswold Limestone (9d) nor the Welsh Stucco (1s).\u00a0 That must have hurt at the time; one of the chief joys, for me, of stamp collecting is possessing all the members of the set. \u00a0 One job I had in John Menzies involved logging sets of OCR** documents posted in from all over Britain.\u00a0 Heavy parcels used lots of stamps; it took me less than a day to amass a full set whenever there was a new issue.\u00a0 Happy times.<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, having had to admit to myself that I have lost my camera, I am researching the purchase of a replacement.\u00a0 I do not often lose things, and in the upheaval of the festive season that is not a statement made lightly.\u00a0 Yes, I have a more than adequate camera on my phone but the faff involved in finding and sharing a picture is major.\u00a0 Hopefully I may then return to posting swathes of credible photo journalism (ha ha, that would be nice).<\/p>\n

I have resisted the lure of the teapot for long enough, and there are calendars to change. \u00a0 Onwards and upwards!<\/p>\n

* sounds boring but isn’t.\u00a0 Stamp collecting makes you look at things differently.\u00a0 Philately will get you everywhere.<\/p>\n

**Optical Character Recognition.\u00a0 It was very new at the time and in one of those timey wimey twists, the documents were sent to a building which would become the home of RBS Registrars from 1988 – 97, my Sighthill office home for 9 years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Adj sesquipedal or sesquipedalian (of objects or words) a foot and a half long — of words, very long and pedantic.\u00a0 [L. sesqui — semisque —semis, half a unit, que, and] \u00a9 Chambers Concise Dictionary 1991 Hello 2018!\u00a0 Woke up with that word floating about my head.\u00a0 I have always liked its rhythm, and I […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,7,13,21,27],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-3819","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-family","category-fife","category-kirsty","category-stamps","category-work"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=3819"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3819\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=3819"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=3819"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/banthewasp.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=3819"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}