Pretzels or Stafford Knots?

I was talking about the Stafford Knot yesterday - and remembered I'd seen these pretzels when in Poland.
As soon as I saw them, I suddenly realised what they resemble. Yes, of course - they look like the symbol of this county, the Stafford Knot!
The Poles seemed a little nonplussed when I told them this though...

Stafford Knot - railway style

The ‘Stafford Knot’ is the symbol of Staffordshire - as I like to point out in this blog quite frequently!  The symbol is at least 500 years old (though some argue its origins go back a thousand years). Everywhere round here that a reference to the county comes up in a graphic form, you’re likely to see the Knot.

These old gates mark the entrance to a railway property in Stoke, which would have been owned by the North Staffordshire Railway Company up to the company's demise in the last century. The NSR used the Knot as a proud statement of its origins.

Link: Stafford Knot

Mad March sunshine

The Biddulph town garden was just one of the places to bask in the present unseasonable sunshine. It certainly seems crazy to have a run of days with temperatures in the mid-twenties in, er, March!
It doesn't feel like England at all - we should be miserable and buffeted by sharp winds at this time of year...
Mad March indeed.

Totmonslow speed sign

They say that everythign returns to Nature in the end - and this speed-limit sign at Totmonslow certainly sems to be going that way. The ivy has virtually completely covered it, and, I suspect, if it were not for some local good-citizen, would by now have concealed the whole thing...

Sky TV - banned!

You have to admire the Spittal Brook Inn, which is just outside Stafford town centre. This pub takes no prisoners when it comes to anything like, er, modern customer expectations - such as giant screens and onion rings on a stick. No, no.
The sign here alerts the kind of visitors who need such fripperies that they can turn right round again and walk back into the town centre.

Resales markets grow

The current hard times mean that lots of little ‘resales’ markets have sprung up, in which folks can sell off some of their excess goods and make a little cash. Of course the buyers don’t have much cash either, so prices are very low.

‘Porthill Resales’ has its market in an abandoned pottery factory in Longport.

Less battery, more hen

Is it these chickens’ best-ever year? This year is the first year in which old-style battery-hen farms have been outlawed (in the EU at least) – and it really was about time.
My one visit to a battery-hen factory (for that’s what it was) was – to my mind – horrific. The huge warehouse was smotheringly hot and foetid with odours. A red-light illuminated the factory 24 hours a day.
I felt it would be impossible to condone such a trade, so I started only eating free-range chicken after that experience.

The new system (of more space per hen etc) is clearly better. Now, it seems I can go back to eating supermarket chicken with good conscience. Or not?

Link: The last battery hen (BBC)

Telephone box - in hedge

 
They almost look as though they have been stuffed into the hedge: these two symbols of British authority seem to have been treated a little disrespectfully!

However, I guess Saverley Green village decided that both the telephone box and the post box looked cosier like this.  At least, I suppose so…

The ghost of St Editha

Baron Robert Marmion looks frightened to death – as well he might. This tableau (in Tamworth Castle’s ‘Haunted Room’) shows him in 1139 after a particularly threatening dream in which Saint Editha appeared to him.
Eh?  Yes, it seems Saint Editha was no wuss, because, despite having been dead some 300 years, she was apparently furious with Baron Robert for having expelled the nuns from a convent she had founded at nearby Polesworth.

In fact, it wasn’t enough for the saintly lady for just to threaten him, as – from out of the dream-world she inhabited -, she also struck him with her staff, which caused his head to bleed. And ache mightily it seems. What a lady!

Baron Robert – as you’d expect – rushed off to find the homeless nuns and made sure they were restored to their previous home in Polesworth.

The confusion to my mind – is that St Editha is now identified with the famous Black Lady ghost which haunts the castle. Surely saints don’t come back? I thought it was only unhappy souls? 

Ah well: no one expects the supernatural to make sense.

Link: Tamworth Castle's ghosts

Welcome back to red cross

Joules is a famous name in brewing in this part of the world, but its distinctive red cross symbol did disappear for a while when the original owners felt the cold wind of recession in the second half of the last century.
But the Joules name was recently revived - and its distinctive-tasting ale was back. The company now has a number of pubs under its name, including The Royal Oak in Eccleshall.

Joules has a rather interesting boast... that it sells "not a single pint" outside its north Midlands heartland. I guess it likes to stick to its localness.

Link: Royal Oak - a Joules Pub