...called Lady With a Spear, written by a women called Eugenie Clark. It records her early career as a marine biologist when she was studying Plectognaths, which are beaked tropical fish with spiny skins.

It is from this book that I learned that Triggerfish will give you a nasty bite and are best admired from a distance.

that was a really lovely podcast - thanks very much for taking the time to do it. Just listened to it whilst walking the dogs on a beautiful spring evening, have got 2 weeks off to spend with my better half and my newborn and I feel so ridiculously happy right now. All the best to ya.

I didn't know that, I googled it.

and in particular, 'Let 'Em In'. What a tune that is... I love the piano part, it's so understated and beautiful. Proof (if any were needed) that Paul McCartney made some *brilliant* records after The Beatles split. Time for a Wings reappraisal, methinks...

The crow coin press

Keen-eyed observers may have noticed the heraldic images of crows and magpies that bedeck the exterior of the Bank of England.

Both species of bird are commonly sighted within the bank’s vicinity, where a number of small cubby holes, spread out along the walls, allow them to deposit shiny metal items, in return for food pellets. The collected metals are subsequently pressed into coins, the size and thickness of an old ten pence piece.

Crow coinage has no tangible value and is not considered legal tender. Its hypothetical value is used when calculating the nation’s gross wealth and therefore has an impact on the economy and on government spending plans. In 2005, a report estimated that 20% of the UK's monetary assets are accounted for by crow coinage. The report went on to consider the effect that a decrease in the corvus population might have on the economy, especially in the nightmare scenario of a bird flu epidemic.

More recently there have been attempts by the EU to abolish crow coinage on the grounds that it presents a distorted picture of the UK’s economy and confers an unfair advantage on the country.

The wartime reserve vaults

A throwback to 1914, when the public were encouraged to donate leather, cloth, scrap metal, cardboard and wood, to assist with the war effort. An additional vault was opened in 1989 to accommodate plastic materials.

In 2007, the Bank of England announced that a Eurofighter Typhoon warplane had been constructed exclusively from materials stored in the vaults.

Bounder’s Hole

Until 1992, employees of Bank of England were bound by a strict code of conduct that was intended to promote sound judgement and a level-headed temperament. The reach of this code extended into banker’s private lives, governing their leisure activities and even their interactions with their families. Failure to abide by the rules could lead to imprisonment in Bounders Hole - the bank’s private jail. Prisoners were expected to fulfil their usual daily commitments to the bank. However, at the end the working day, instead of returning home they would be escorted back to their cells.

To modern sentiments, the bank’s 20 page code of conduct seems unusually draconian. Innocent pursuits such as the flying of a kite could earn you a jail sentence of up to six weeks. Flying a kite up to its highest height (defined by the Bank of England charter as “a distance exceeding the earth’s atmosphere, or to the fullest extent of the kite’s string”) carried an additional four week penalty.

It’s all a far cry from 2009, where the prison sentences of white collar criminal are a tradable commodity and rogue financier’s debts to society represent an expanding market.

Threadneedle forest

Not a real forest, but a blanket term used to describe the potted Dwarf Oak trees that are dotted around the interior of the bank, each under its own growing lamp. The wood pulp is renowned for yielding a good quality paper that is used in the production of banknotes. In 1964, there was a minor diplomatic incident after a species of voracious, paper-eating beetle entered the bank in a bundle of French currency and made its home in some of the trees.

The Telegraph Room

It has been a tradition since 1918 for the first two clues of in The Daily Telegraph crossword to be provided by senior figures in the establishment.

Currently the clue for One Across is written by the head of the Bank of England. The clue for One Down is penned by the head of MI5. The clues from the bank are sent by email from the telegraph room, which, according to a senior figure, is “a glorified cupboard containing a computer and an old Bakerlite dial telephone.”

How do we discover who writes the best post, Archie or backwards?
Fight fight fight!

Regarding the difficulties of keeping a digital archive up to date, I was reminded of a story about the German government-owned TV station (our own version of the BBC, or at least they like to think so...). A friend of mine was doing research for a documentary sometime in the early 90s and discovered that the people there couldn't play back the archived news broadcasts from the 70s that they had transferred to fancy digital a few years before. Turned out that they didn't have the equipment anymore.
Luckily they could later replace their useless files - the East German secret service had recorded the daily news on trusty magnetic tape, and these reels are the source of the clips you can now see on the station's official website.

One of the best. Thank you.

I am a bit puzzled, though, as someone whose chosen intoxicant is alcohol, as to why anyone would take more than the first snort of something that caused pain, streaming eyes and bleeding. Was there an upside?

More of a fox than Terence Stamp, in my opinion. I'd certainly hate to see the portrait in his attic.

or did the podcast end suddenly when they were talking about the Bank of England? Did I miss something after minute 38?

...4 mini disc player/recorders. The 2 hi-fi units I have each have one and I've 2 portables....couldn't tell you the last time I used any of them.

I got them when they first came out as a means of digitally recording cds from the library rather than putting them on cassette. The portable ones were much smaller than a discman. In fact, I think they were out before the discman.

I put their demise down to cd burners on computers coming right down in price and blank cds costing a few pence each. I think a pack of 5 blank mini discs still costs around £6.

minidisc player. I never use it, but I'm reluctant to let it go. Just because it looks so, well, nice.

...was the company behind it, Sony, couldn't be seen to promote its key quality, which was that it was a brilliant home copying tool.

You missed the opportunity to use the phrase China 'sodding' Crisis.

The British Electric Foundation did a cassette-only album called 'Music For Stowaways' during that brief period before the Stowaway was officially renamed the Walkman - must have been 79/90?

I've dived with Triggerfish in a wreck off Chesil Beach in Dorset. Believe they swim up from the Med for the summer. Mind you, I know where I'd rather have seen them.

By hook or by crook I'll be the last (again) in this thread.

All of those faders are at zero and there's a big red lead going into the desk from some sort of electronical device, not from the Dansette. This picture is faked! I demand a refund of my licence fee....oh, hang on...