Bringing a little colour to your life each day - with six things that delight, inform and entertain.
The coast of Essex is not often recognised as being the longest of any British county. At over 350 miles on account of its many inlets and river estuaries, it also includes a number of remote and unusual islands and places only reachable at low tide. One such is Osea Island and its causeway across the River Blackwater estuary.
The seaside, or town park, bandstand was once a ubiquitous municipal pleasure, providing a performance venue available to all kinds of musicians and entertainers, and accessible to every citizen. Many have either disappeared, or have lost their original role with the decline in town, village and factory brass and silver bands and the like.
The arrival of the first cuckoos in Britain from their migration back from Africa is often regarded as one of the totemic markers of British springtime. One such bird has been tagged and tracked on his remarkable regular 10,000-mile journey for five successive years.
It is widely accepted that the world's first ATM was installed at a Barclays Bank in Enfield Town, London in 1967. This was the product of John Shepherd-Barron and his team of engineers.
Thomas Cromwell was an English lawyer and statesman in the early 16th century, who became one of the most influential people in the Tudor court, serving as chief minister to King Henry VIII from 1532 to 1540. But he fell foul of the mercurial king, and his serial matrimonial complications, and his resultant personal fate is a key part of historical author Hilary Mantel’s bestseller "Wolf Hall".
The Bryant & May match factory, located in Bow, was for a hundred years an important industry, employer and landmark in East London. The dangerous production processes led to it being the scene of a famous strike by the female workers in 1888 over their life-endangering working conditions.
Six things to delight and entertain you every day.