Good Morning everybody. Here's an amusing tale for you, which I hope will lift your "spirits" and start your day with a smile on your face.

First a bit of background. In the 1990's , I was Research Officer for The Cheltenham Psychic Research Group. It was a very interesting few years. My role, apart from organizing vigils, was to research the history of the place that we were investigating. We met a lot of people, with a lot of different beliefs whilst doing this. Two things were essential, a sense of Perspective and a sense of Humour !

Here is a story that i found in "The Cheltenham Examiner" dated June 27th 1853. It was written a long time ago, so the way in which it was written makes the story even funnier.

There was concern about a visit to Cheltenham by a party, led by the celebrated American medium Mrs Roberts ,her husband, and a young man named Caesar Adolphus. They professed to be in constant communication with the spirits, who had summoned them to a house in Grosvenor Street. They went, they claimed, wherever the spirits told them to go and charged ten shillings for entry to the seances, where the "manifestations" consisted of mysterious rappings on the table. However, they had a thriving trade.

About a week later, Mrs Roberts and her husband left Cheltenham for London , leaving the young man Caesar Adolphus behind. He proceeded, one Sunday afternoon to collect a crowd around the house. He stood on the balcony, dressed in ridiculous garb: A white dressing gown, scarlett sash, velvet cap and cloak. With a large bible in his hand, he shouted the grossest absurdities and obscenities which do not bear repetition. He also declared that by his connection with the spiritual world, he had the power over the life of the sovereign and denounced the clergy as evil.

Over the next few days the crowd got larger and the street became impassable. However, the ravings of this unhappy lunatic were at times stifled by a large gang of torturous youths, who shouted jokes and abuse.  The inhabitants of Grosvenor Street showed great annoyance at this unwelcome crowd and the matter was brought before the Police. The fact that the man was preaching from a private property, meant that they were at a loss as to what they could do within the confines of the law to get rid of the nuisance.  They decided to exercise their right to water the street, thus dispersing the crowd and it was by no mean accident that a stream of water found its way to the balcony from which Mr Adolphus preached. It seems that the "water spirit" is one over which the "medium" could exercise little control.

Hope you enjoyed that.

 Before I go, a little reminder that the strike by Royal mail has had a severe knock on effect upon people receiving their goods and will also effect things internationally. More strikes are planned for next week  - see www.royalmail.co.uk for more info.

Bye for now

Hello

Welcome to my blog.

Bookish in Flavour, with Loads More to Savour

Hello I'm Nigel and I live with my three children in Cricklade, The first town on the infant Thames, in Wiltshire, England. My hobbies are reading, writing, movies (love old movies, esp Horror / Scifi) .  Music (I play a little guitar) walking, camping, the great outdoors & basically anything involving water!!  I have a wide variety of interests which will hopefully be relected here. My work is running my own internet business from home, selling books and collectables on ebay and amazon.

  I have been dealing in books and collectables now for over fifteen years, mostly part time. Last year was my year from hell!  I had to deal with a divorce, lost my home and was made redundant from my full time job. Well, they say it happens in three's don't they.  Things have turned out fine now. I have a nice place to live, have a lovely girlfriend called Joanne (I'm very much a family man, i have 3 kids, she has 4, so that makes nine of us !!)  and I have turned to running my business full time. I set up "The Book Burrow" back in January 2007 and sell mostly Books (obviously), but also Movies and the odd Collectable / Antique. 

So what can you expect to see here over the next few weeks?  My thoughts on Book Collecting / Movies and TV / My Adventures ! / My online selling success/ failures and lessons learnt.  Entertainment / Humour / Odd and Unusual Stuff ( You'll see what i mean!) / Links to Nigel's Web Picks , life in general and any other thing that lights up my brain!!. Please feel free to comment on anything that I have written.

Happy Reading.

You can find my items for sale at Amazon here. www.thebookburrow.co.uk