Next week, I’ll start adding some posts that are actually relevant to raster to vector conversion. In the meantime, I’m going to do what the Brits do best and talk about the weather.
The main item of news here in England at the moment is the big freeze we’re having. Although it’s only a very little freeze compared to what many countries in the world routinely experience during the winter, it’s the longest and coldest period of sustained freezing weather that many of us here in England can remember.
Yet, in the past, it was colder. Even though it’s cold now, it’s hard to imagine the River Thames in London freezing over. But that’s exactly what it used to do. At various times it froze so thick that ice fairs were held on it. During the last freeze, in 1814, an elephant was led across the Thames on the ice below Blackfriar’s Bridge.
Back then, they did not have the benefit of central heating and had to rely on layers of clothes to keep warm. This encouraged unwelcome guests, as described in this marvellous passage from the book Rats, Lice and History by Hans Zinsser:
The manner of living throughout the Middle Ages made general lousiness inevitable. In England, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the houses of the poor were mere hovels, often with only a hole in the roof to let out the smoke of the central fire; and in cold weather the families were huddled together at night without changing the simple garments – usually a single shift – which they wore in the daytime. Washing was practically out of the question, and the better classes – not very much more comfortable in their badly heated domiciles – wore a great many clothes, which they rarely changed. MacArthur’s story of Thomas à
Becket’s funeral illustrates this:-
The archbishop was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral on the evening of the twenty-ninth of December. The body lay in the Cathedral all night, and was prepared for burial on the following day. The Archbishop was dressed in an extraordinary collection of clothes. He had on a large brown mantle; under it, a white surplice; below that, a lamb’s-wool coat; then another woolen coat; and a third woolen coat below this; under this, there was the black, cowled robe of the Benedictine Order; under this, a shirt; and next to the body a curious hair-cloth, covered with linen. As the body grew cold, the vermin that were living in this multiple covering started to crawl out, and, as MacArthur quotes the chronicler: “The vermin boiled over like water in a simmering cauldron, and the onlookers burst into alternate weeping and laughter.”
So, if you’re currently shivering in the cold, be cheered it’s not the Middle Ages!
