Walking around Barmouth we came across this. Which may be one of my oddest finds in a while. It seems that a ship sank off the coast here around 1790. The ship was possibly The Bronze Bell. It was full of valuable stuff like coins and Carrera marble, and lots of cannon. It was discovered in 1978 by archeological scuba divers. More on that that. . One of the things that they hauled up was this huge hunk of marble. Marble is soft enough for molusks to make holes in, as seen in the second photo. Sculptor Frank Cocksey did this beautiful work exposing the beautiful white marble inside the big piece of stone. You can read more at this site . Looking for information about the sculpture, like why did it get moved across the road two years ago, and why does it not show on google maps? There is a lot of bad internet information, and a couple of interesting clues for me to hunt down tomorrow.
If a picture is worth a thousand words, then this picture is worth a few words of explanation. It was taken in Oxford on a busy corner. Notice the narrow street. This is a very busy street with coach size busses turning as the streets become a pedestrian area. The signal lights become crucial as clueless tourists try to cross. As I stood on this corner, I was hearing a workman bragging "look at what I got done!". "So you are the one mucking up the street " So he told me the whole story. It seems that a crucial underground wire controlling the signal has failed. It was probably installed just after WWII. Not a bad lifespan. But That underground wire goes under that bit of scaffolding. That is the corner piece of a 4 story scaffolding that wraps around a block size building, half way through a 2 to 3 year project. Go back and look at that photo again. And see the bigger picture.