“Securi-Guard” burglar alarm, Fowey • So, now we move on to fortifications on shields, combining the popular tropes of militia and aristocracy. It’s amazing the label in question is still attached, because this wins the prize for the slimiest burglar alarm I’ve ever found. It’s on a wave-lashed quayside building in Fowey, Cornwall, famed for being a) hard to say (it’s pronounced “foy”, to rhyme with “toy”) and b) where the novelist Daphne du Maurier lived. She wrote eerie, suspenseful stories such as The Birds, Jamaica Inn and Don’t Look Now (all since made into scary films), so perhaps there’s a giant pecky bird or stabby red-coated dwarf lurking behind that castellated wall. • Spotted: Town Quay, Fowey, Cornwall, PL23, England, 2012 • Politics: In the Liberal Democrat constituency of St. Austell and Newquay
