Notices by New-Cleckit Dominie (ncdominie@mastodon.scot)

Please be briefly cheered up by this perfume bottle (Greek; c. 600BCE) from the Burrell Collection.

I know things are bad and I don't have any particular insights to offer, but there are tufted ducklings on the wee pond today and they are practising diving, and this makes me a little happier.

I have other things I ought to be doing, so please enjoy this drawing of Mr Nathaniel Grew's ice locomotive [The Engineer, 4 Jan 1861].

The ice locomotive was exported to Russia to operate on frozen rivers.

It didn't catch on, presumably because if it lost traction then it basically became a very heavy piece of hot metal sitting on top of a frozen river.

Until you have seen several hundred people at the top of a hill in Yorkshire pretending to be Kate Bush, you find it difficult to imagine several hundred people at the top of a hill in Yorkshire pretending to be Kate Bush.

The famous xenomorph on Paisley Abbey gets all the love, but the other modern gargoyles are worth a look.

(If we're tagging ourselves, I'm Man Shouting From Inside Fish.)

I promise I was looking for something slightly more sensible on the BnF website when I found these pictures of a keeper at London Zoo in 1925 feeding medicine to an extremely reluctant pelican.

I am informed that any human who was worthy of serving a greyhound would have remembered to turn the rain off.

*Attenborough voice* When startled, the bishop withdraws its body almost completely into its protective shell, where it waits until the threat has gone away.

@inthehands *nods so hard in university that my neck hurts*

Pleased to report that Košice has rather a good dragon.

xkcd 2347: cathedral edition.

Serious flooding in #Glasgow today.

Misty morning and on time.

Today in UK politics: a man who travels by helicopter tells people who can't afford bus fares that he will save them from being able to walk to the shops.

Entirely serious country.