andrewlighten.com

Sabotage: The French word “sabot” refers to a kind of wooden shoe or clog. During the industrial revolution, disgruntled workers would kick the machines they worked on or throw their wooden shoes into them, resulting in the machines deliberately being broken — what we’d refer to as sabotage.

It’s also why we talk about a process or machine being “clogged up”.

Lewis Hamilton won the Canadian Grand Prix yesterday. He now leads the championship by 8 points.

Murray Walker:

It’s more than feasible that he could win the championship this year, which would be incredible.

There aren’t enough superlatives for what Lewis is doing race after race.

It is unprecedented in the history of Formula One. I’ve been watching Formula One since it began and I have never seen anything like this in my life, it is quite incredible.

We went to Buda in Castlemaine yesterday. It’s a historic home that dates from the 1850′s and 1860′s.

The Kid didn’t really think much of the interior of the home, but adored the garden. It’s on 1.2 hectares, and she loved running around all the paths and finding all the hidden little nooks and crannies. The garden is apparently pretty much the same as it was 150 years ago; kind of neat to think that she was running around and laughing the way kids would have done during the goldrush. I put a gallery up on SmugMug.

The Kid made her stage debut tonight. Kind of.

She wrote a play about a little red hen who plants some wheat, grows the wheat, cuts the wheat, bakes the bread and then eats it. All along the dog, the cat and the pig won’t help but they’re happy to help eat the bread. The red hen doesn’t let them.

I think her inspiration for this play was a book she read at school. In fact, I think her play is outright plagiarism, but she’s only 5 so we’ll let that slide.

Anyway — she wanted to put on her play for Lisa and I, and she also invited Auntie Diane and Uncle Peter. She made tickets (they say “Admit one, Little Red Hen, One Night Only”) and insisted I get some popcorn for refreshments. We put the coffee table against the bookshelf under the downlights. I got to play usher and help Auntie Diane and Uncle Peter to their seat. I then flicked on the lights and she performed her play.

It didn’t take long to get through her play, but she didn’t mind. A big round of applause and she was happy.

I’ve had a bit of a read through The Gentleman’s Magazine that I found earlier, and it’s interesting stuff.

Take a look at this snippet:

That’s for May/June 1860 in the Districts of London. A huge number of deaths for people under the age of 20.

Love this passage from an obituary for a gentleman named C. Scarisbrick. A bounder and a cad, no doubt.

I’m a huge fan of Google Maps, and for doing stuff like this map of route 66, it’s just fantastic. Love it.

A Mr Andrew Lighten appears to be the Contracts Manager for a mob in England called Acrabuild Limited. Looks like some kind of civil engineering company.

Their website doesn’t help much.

I did some more digging for other appearances of my name on the web. Google books found an interesting entry (albeit spelled slightly differently).

According to the 1860 edition of The Gentleman’s Magazine, a Mr Andrew Lighton, esq. married Eliza Amelia at Brighton.

Earlier than month, Robert Leighton, esq. married Eliza Harriet — she’s the youngest daughter of the late Rev. John Wilkinson, formerly the Vicar of Budwith and of Gate Helmsley in Yorkshire.

Haven’t checked whether either of these esq. appear in the family tree.

Update: There’s actually a few mentions in Google Books.

Update: Checked the family tree details Mum gave me a week or two back. I figure for these guys to get married in the 1860′s they’d have to be born in the 1830-1840 timeframe, and there’s no sign of either a Robert or Andrew back then — certainly not in the details I’ve got.