To be fair to them, that was quick.

Reading Borough Council: "Please upload photos of the problem you are reporting."

Me:

Is this sleep tracking or just general feedback?

Eclipse safely observed.

It's thinner and further away enough to make the difference. I've found a photo I took of the same clock two years ago, and it would have been stopped then. You can see the difference in the shadows.

A church near me has finally got their clock running again. It was stopped for so long that it got the analogue equivalent of screen burn.

Wait what - William Hickman, creator of Henley Sauce, was also one of the publishers of the 1838 guidebook ("A Guide to Henley-upon-Thames and its Vicinity") that inspired the whole quest to revive this lost sauce? And he was also Henley's postmaster?

Google Books: www.google.co.uk/books/editio...

Back to William Hickman... fishmonger Charles Norton (of whom Essence of Anchovies could be had) might have been his brother-in-law(?). He handled Hickman's accounts when he died in 1851.

(Oxford Univ. & City Herald, 18 Oct 1817; Windsor & Eton Express, 15 Mar 1851; Reading Mercury, 22 Mar 1851)

By 1845, a certain double-act of chemists from Worcester had skipped the poetry and were now boasting in the newspapers about how much more popular their sauce was than the others, and that everyone else was trying to copy them.

(Morning Herald (London), 23 Apr 1845)

Found this from 1838. Perhaps there was a trend at the time of writing a location-specific poem about the sauce you were selling?

(Reading Mercury, 24 Feb 1838)

We find from that last article that it was in a "brittle" container. If only someone had designed them a new bottle!

And that's all I've found out. Henley Sauce existed in 1823; the only ingredient the BBC article says was in it might not have been; and I've found no mention of pepper or cayenne.

Results for Henley Sauce go quiet after 1836. The only later mention I can find in the British Newspaper Archive is this 1840 report about the Post Office, having recently introduced the Penny Post, explaining that you can't send "the celebrated Henley sauce" with it.

(Reading Mercury, 28 Mar 1840)

1836. He's diversified and he's going on about Essence of Anchovies again. But here, and in the 1823 advert, Essence of Anchovies is described as a separate thing for sale. It *might* have been in the sauce - who knows - but I don't think the ad says so.

(Reading Mercury, 16 May 1836)

Ten years later, by 1833, it seems Hickman had joined forces with someone called Stapledon. One thing that's remained almost completely constant is the advertising copy.

(Windsor and Eton Express, 10 Aug 1833)

Anyway, Mr William Hickman continued to advertise his sauce through the 1820s and 1830s. By the end of 1823 he had a few distributors around the south of England, including a Mr Norton of London, "of whom may be had Essence of Anchovies".

(Hampshire Telegraph, 8 Dec 1823)

The British Newspaper Archive (www.britishnewspaperarchive.co.uk) tells us that Henley Sauce was advertised as early as 1823, and the introductory paragraph remained largely unchanged from then. We can already knock 15 years off the date on the bottle.

(Morning Advertiser, 22 July 1823)

I've got used to seeing these on energy efficiency stickers.

Which is better value - one kitchen roll for £2.50 or 3 for £7? Asda helpfully tells you the price per roll for easy comparison, but they ignore the fact that the single roll is 100 sheets and the 3-pack is three rolls of 70 sheets each. The single roll is better value, at 2½p per sheet vs 3⅓p.