Thursday 27 March 2008

Bread Rationing


I must have been about 12 when i first went to the local Reference Library trying to complete an assignment the history teacher had set about Bread Rationing in Great Britain.

The Reference Library was separate from the main lending section that I was used to, only accessible by passing tight security and climbing a spiral staircase that led to an inner sanctum where you were punishable by death if you made any noise.

I found very little about bread rationing even with an extensive trawl of The Encyclopaedias (ae?), discovered that my history teacher had not made the most recent available edition of Who’s Who and left relieved that I did not have to stay in the stifling environment any longer.

It was 1967.

Then the sixties really happened.

Now in 0.27 seconds I can dredge up 263 thousand links through my computer, filter them down to 63 thousand by adding a key word Great Britain and pour myself a tea or open a bottle of iced beer all the time listening to Jazz streamed from the Bay Area by my internet connection.

If i use Youtube for the search i can even watch a film of someone feeding their pet turtle crumbs.

It certainly isn’t fair for all those old reference libraries to have to compete with that!

This is all a roundabout way to say that I have started my next book and was so amazed by some of the stuff that I had just read that I had to go to the net to check it out.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principality_of_Sealand

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