Thursday, November 23, 2006

Shed 2a

I have a mate who's deadpan humour is equalled only by his astounding knowledge of
world history. For example, not many people know the level of detail of the jacobite rebellion, or the Wat Tyler revolt as he, and yet still work in IT (I told him, "forget IT, use your knowledge for good, young paduan, wear plaid and/or corduroy and represent
Fragfest college, Oxbridge on University Challenge", but he ignored me... wise, he is not).

Anyway, when you have a close interaction with people like this, you pick up certain traits and concepts. One of his favourite concepts is cultural osmosis, the idea that you pick up tidbits of information just from living your life in a given culture.
This information is not learnt in the traditional sense, but soaked up like a sponge, just by living. For example, we all have general knowledge, i.e. trivia that we can't seem to identify where we got it from, we just "know it", such as knowing the words to "Maybe Tomorrow" by Terry Bush, and knowing that it comes from the TV series / film, "The Littlest Hobo". You're not sure why you know this, you just do.

As part of my ongoing cultural osmosis, I learnt a very interesting fact today ( and this has been verified by http://www.amazingstoriesthatarealmostcertainlytruewethink.com (well, actually, Bill Bailey's 2001 show "Bewilderness")), and that is that in the 1960s, Buckingham Palace was moved (for "security" reasons) to behind the Authorised Personnel Only door in the little chef on the A1 near Leicester.
In it's place, stands a shed. But, not just any shed, no sir... but a shed with a
holographic cloaking device, allowing it to pass for the real Buck Palace.

MI6 know this shed only as "Shed 2a" (Shed 2b, of course, being the
real Buckingham palace). A further bit of information for those shed-trivia-hungry
blog readers out there, is that the shed is really a Malmesbury 400GL with optional twin gabling.

This will probably stay with me for life. I hope it does for you as well.

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