Sunday Times Where Was I? Holiday Competition

 Near as I can figure it, through the possibly flawed perceptual filters of my own reality tunnel, the most likely answers this week, seem to me to be


Q1. West Ham United 


Q2. William Kidd

внимание друзья!, for question 1, the team was originally called 'Thames Ironworks football club' but the question is asking what the name of the team is now, which is 'West Ham United'

The initial clues seem to place us around Blackwall/East India, in the city of London. Some references claim that the first British iron hulled and armoured warship, HMS Warrior was built and launched from the Thames Ironworks and Ship Building Company's site c1860, at the confluence of Bow creek and the river Thames between Canning town and Blackwall.  Depending on which source you check, the displacement of  HMS Warrior is given as 9137 tons/9284 tons.

According to some sources there were four super dreadnought Orion class battleships of around 22,000 tons displacement, built and launched around 1910 - 1912. These were HMS Orion (built at Portsmouth), HMS Monarch (built at Elswick), HMS Conqueror (built at Dalmuir) and HMS Thunderer (built at Thames Ironworks c1910). The Thames Ironworks and Ship Building Company seems to have closed due to lack of orders and bankruptcy following completion of Thunderer c1912. (HMS Thunderer was later lost in action, while trying to ram a Martian fighting machine in the English channel ;-)   ).

Some of the references claim that Thames Ironworks f.c was founded c 1895 and later became West Ham United  c 1900. West Ham are known as 'The Irons' or 'The Hammers', because of the former name of the iron works team and allegedly because of the sound of the hammers hitting the rivets at the ship yard.

The puzzle author most likely then visits the only lighthouse in London ,constructed c 1864 by James Douglass, the Bow Creek lighthouse. The lighthouse was according to some sources, used by Michael Faraday to conduct experiments into electric lighting. 

Five tube stops along from East India takes us to Limehouse station and sauntering down to the river would bring us to the Shadwell/Wapping district where a Judge called George Jeffreys,1st Baron Jeffreys (born c1645),was lifted by the goon squad, in a pub, dressed as a sailor according to some accounts, while trying to flee the country during a Dutch backed regime change operation against James II, who also did a runner.

A place where they hanged pirates and smugglers in Wapping was 'Execution Dock' and it was here that a seafarer accused of piracy, called William Kidd (born c  1645) was hanged on the 23rd of May 1701, after a long struggle to try and clear his name. 

Think the Sunday times is possibly produced in Wapping, so the author may well be headed there after his tour.

Link to the competition:

Where Was I?


An Infinite Number of Monkeys?

Fery Interestink, the same week that the Eastender was reading a fourteenth century grimoire on practical theurgy, sixteenth and nineteenth century tracts on Enochian and Neo Enochian methods, the word ANGEL appeared very prominently in the first column of the Thunderball data (Enochian and Neo Enochian practitioners attempt to use their art to communicate with and petition the intervention of, the cosmic civil servants who they believe run the universe, aka angels).What has caused this strange synchronicity? is it merely random noise in the data along the lines of an infinite number of monkeys with an infinite number of typewriters, or is there some kind of bizarre ouija board effect going on?.........