Here’s a short video I made that offers a bit of insight into how cats behave when they’re angry, or stressed or wound up. They need to unload that tension and they do it in ways that are predictable, whether you’re talking about small cats or big cats. I hope this helps you!
I made a video about my 1952 J.W. Benson watch, which I hope you will enjoy. It has a 15-jewel Smiths movement and a sub-second dial with Arab numerals.
James William Benson (12 April 1826 – 7 October 1878) was an English scientific instrument maker and watchmaker who enjoyed an excellent reputation in London in the late nineteenth century. He was born in Reading, Berkshire, England. He was the son of William Benson and Phoebe Suckley.
J.W. Benson Ltd was a highly regarded London watch/clockmakers and gold/silversmiths who traded between 1847 and 1973. The Benson family had been watchmakers since 1749. A company, trading as S.S. & J.W. Benson, was founded in 1847 by James William Benson (born in 1826 in Reading) and his older brother Samuel Suckley Benson (born in 1822 in London). The partnership was dissolved on 27 January 1855 and James William continued the business under the name, ‘J. W. Benson’.
James William Benson died on 7 October 1878, aged 52, and his sons James, Alfred and Arthur took over the running of the business. Throughout its history, J.W. Benson Ltd was official watchmaker to the Admiralty & the War Department and also held a number of royal warrants, being watchmakers to Queen Victoria, the Prince of Wales, the Tsar of Russia and several other royal families. The company’s premises were: Cornhill (1847–64), Ludgate Hill (1854-1937), Old Bond Street (1872-3), Royal Exchange (1892-1937) and their original workshop was at 4-5 Horseshoe Court (at the rear of their Ludgate Hill premises). In 1892 it became a limited company and moved to their new ‘steam’ factory at 38 Belle Sauvage Yard.
During W.W.I. the factory was bombed, destroying thousands of timepieces and from this point on the company no longer manufactured its own watches, but still continued as a retailer. The timepieces bearing the company name used high quality Swiss movements supplied by manufacturers such as, Vertex (Revue), Cyma/Tavannes, Longines and by the English maker, S. Smith & Sons. J. W. Benson Ltd continued until 1973 at which time the name was sold to the Royal jewellers, Garrards.
After an unusually warm, humdrum winter in Romania, bereft of snow, we finally had some fairly heavy snowfall these past few days! I drove through a snowstorm the day before yesterday and when I got home, I got to enjoy the beautiful winter weather from inside our house, safe and warm.
I made a short vlog about this which you can watch here or on YouTube. Enjoy!
Glad to be back home!
It is truly important to have a place you call home, a place where you feel at home. It roots you, it provides you with a sense of belonging, it contributes to your mental health and it goes a long way toward making your life longer and healthier. The more time I spend in our home and the more effort I put forth making it our home, the more I get out of it: peace, relaxation, belonging. You could almost call it a symbiotic relationship where the house will take care of you if you take care of it. I hope you get to experience this in your own lives. There are more things I talk about in the video, so please watch and enjoy!
Back in 2009, I made a little video called “The toy train” and published it to YouTube. As 2017 turned into 2018, that video was seen more than 25,000,000 times. Almost ten years later, I made a follow-up video that can see it here or on YouTube.
The tracks were set up for my daughter, who loves playing with trains. It’s Thomas the Tank Engine and Sir Handel, running on two track sets, Elsbridge Station and Runaway Boulder. The various toys used to decorate the set belong to her.
If you were to put yourself in my shoes, you’d have an interesting perspective on the phenomenon that can be loosely called “children’s videos on YouTube”. When I posted my original toy train video, there was no such thing. I simply made a fun little video that I liked and that I thought children might like. I was thinking forward to the time when I might have a child of my own.
It’s now 2018 and the demand for children’s videos has exploded around me. Some of the big YT channels aimed at children get views that number in the billions and revenues that are in the very healthy millions (see this article). There are even YT channels that don’t even bother to make real videos; instead they use computer algorithms to mash together video clips and audio clips in order to create somewhat watchable gibberish, in the hope of racking up views and revenues (see this article). That’s disturbing. Children need simple, logical storylines to their videos; their young minds are thoroughly confused by computer-generated gibberish.
Rest assured my videos are real and they’re made by me. Enjoy!
Raoul Pop 