. . | When west of Dingle a few weeks ago, a new envy or even jealousy arose when I spotted a house with an old post box as their letter box. I would so very much like to have one of them. I was sharing this with The Oracle (a.k.a. Tom Spalding) the other morning and describing the red post box and what appeared to be a different font for E R to the Edward VII boxes that one might see in Ireland. This led me to suspect that it was imported from the U.K. and E referred to Elizabeth. Tom asked if it was E R II. On blowing up the picture, this may be the case but at the time, I hadn’t noted the II. Tom then announced that, without the II, it must be an import from Scotland. This absolutely flummoxed me as to why there is a difference. The something new that I learnt that day was revealed in the morning. Seemingly, Queen Elizabeth I was Queen of England – she was not Queen of Scotland. So the current Queen Elizabeth is the first Queen of Scotland of that name. Seemingly, the post-boxes in Scotland have ER and those in England and Wales have ER II. I filed this away as a golden nugget and was sharing it with KM later that afternoon when travelling back from West Cork only to be told that that information had already been found through Q.I. – I am obviously watching the wrong television programmes. |