Sepia Saturday 252 : No Such Thing As A Free Big Mac

Christmas appears to have come early for one Sepia Saturday participant. Our theme image this week features a party where the participants are wearing name tags and my picture also shows a party where the participants are wearing name tags. I have a feeling that the cute little chap in the centre of the picture is me although it may be my brother Roger. The occasion is undoubtedly one of the Christmas parties hosted by the factory where my father worked - the Mackintosh Toffee factory in Halifax. If I do not feature on this photograph there are lots of other similar ones which include my smiling little face.  The interesting thing is not so much the picture or the identification of the sibling - it is the tortured process which has brought the picture to my blog.

It all started on Tuesday when I was walking through town feeling sorry for myself. My route took me passed the Apple Store and my legs took me reluctantly inside. One thing led to another, and one thought led to another. The wise words of some long-gone relative seemed to echo through the showroom : "there are no pockets in shrouds!". Within 10 minutes I was walking out of the store with a brand new iMac under my arm. Since then it has been a migration of epic proportions from the tired familiarity of a PC to the different world of the Mac Operating System (it is twenty years since I used a Mac - back in the days when they were boxy TV monitors).

It took me most of the first day to find the on/off switch (a mere dimple in the sculptured metal superstructure) and most of the second day was spent in a fruitless search for an optical drive (it would seem that such things have been consigned to the technological junk-heap).  Whilst most of my essential programmes and devices - such as my beloved scanner - have made the journey with me, they demand new approaches and new methodologies. The fact that I am (hopefully) able to publish something on my blog this week is little short of a miracle. The fact that it (hopefully) includes a scanned image is astonishing.

The new computer is, I suppose, an early Christmas present (Isobel was going to buy me a new vacuum cleaner so, hopefully, I have forestalled that). Like with the little lad in the photo, it is a present from Macintosh, although my recent experience has proved the truth of yet another family saying : "there's no such thing as a free lunch".

For more Sepia Saturday presents take a journey to the Sepia Saturday Blog

Down Where The Wurzburger Hofbrau Flows In Elland, West Yorkshire

With the help of a loan from the Steinway Piano Company, German immigrant August Luchow bought a beer hall on East 14th Street, New York in 1882. Over the years it became "Luchow's Famous Restaurant .... where "lunch, dinner and after theatre supper is served in a rich old atmosphere reminiscent of by-gone days". At one time or another most of the rich and famous of the twentieth century passed through the doors of Luchows. Theodore Roosevelt dined there. Rachmaninoff and Paderewski played the piano. Caruso, Marlene Dietricht and Jack Benny drank steins of imported German beer. And Gus Kahn composed "Yes Sir That's My Baby" on one of the restaurant's tablecloths. During the height of its fame, Luchow's would serve 24,000 litres of beer a day and it was proud to proclaim that it was "down where the Wurzburger Hofbrau and pilsner flows". With such a proud heritage it is surprising that 100 years after its' establishment, it closed its doors for the last time. And it is perhaps equally surprising that one of its' promotional postcards, dating from the first decade of the twentieth century, should end its' days for sale in a second-hand shop in West Yorkshire for just 20 pence.

Line Is Boss

Back Hope Hall Terrace from Union Street, Halifax : October 2014

Images can acquire a form of non-Euclidian logic where less equals more. Detail can be reduced to such an extent that, what remains, is sharp enough to cut your knee on. Shape drains meaning. Black becomes white. Line is boss.

Looking Back : Hope and Prosper And Never Despair

I must have taken this photograph back in the 1980s. I can't remember taking it but it was in my negative albums and it is the kind of photograph I take (it's a pub, after all). It is (was) the Earl of Arundel and Surrey on Queen's Road, Sheffield which is certainly no longer a pub and, at one stage, was due for demolition.

The part of the photograph that caught my attention was the large RAOB notice board. The RAOB were (are) the Royal Antediluvian Order of Buffaloes, one of the oldest Friendly and Burial Societies and one of the very few that have survived into the twenty-first century. I have always quite fancied being a Buff; they are my kind of organisation, they meet in pubs and seem to be dedicated to having a good time and a decent burial. My good friend and shipmate, H, used to be a Buff and he once showed me what he said was a secret Buff greeting. A few months later a group of local RAOB officials walked into my local pub - their coach had broken down - and I practiced the secret greeting on them. They looked at me as though I was barking mad, so I suspect that H was having me on, and my chances of ever being invited to become a Buff disappeared before my eyes.

At the beginning of the twentieth century there were over 50 RAOB Lodges in Sheffield with names like the Hope and Prosper Lodge, the Shakespearean Lodge, and the Nil Desperandum Lodge. I suspect that the Hope and Prosper Lodge is long gone, but, hopefully, the Nil Desperandum Lodge has not sunk into anonymous despair.

Overheard On A Huddersfield Bus

Scene: On a bus to town sat just behind two elderly ladies who are watching a young girl who is sat further down the bus and who is busy using her mobile phone.

Elderly Lady 1 (EL1) : Look at her. Tessing, or whatever they call it.
Elderly Lady 2 (EL2) : Texting, that's what it is, I think. Our Debbie does it all the time.
EL1 : What do they jabber on about? Why can't they write proper letters like we used to do?
EL2 : Our Arthur, he used to write me lovely letters.
EL1 : It's like that twerping. What's that all about?
EL2 : Twitting. Debbie does that an' all.
EL1 : If you have some'at to say, write it properly. Sentences, things that make sense. Like we did. Like our parents did.
EL2 : I can't imagine our Arthur twitting.

No News From Nowhere Is Good News From Nowhere

Isobel and I received an e-mail from my brother yesterday checking up on our recovery from the various ailments that have beset us over the last few months. Even though we live on other sides of the world we tend to keep up with each others' lives by reading the others' blog - Roger's excellent blog is Sculpture Studio - and referring to the absence of posts on my blog over the last couple of months he wrote, "I assume that no News From Nowhere is good News From Nowhere". And, generally speaking, he is right. Isobel continues to recover from her emergency surgery and is doing remarkably well considering the scale of the operation. The date by which she can resume a little light housework seems to be continuously pushed back, and the amount of shopping therapy she has to undertake seems to increase in inverse proportion, but other than that she is doing very well. In a few weeks she should be able to drive again which means that my services as a retail chauffeur will no longer be needed, and I will have to find some other way of spending my time. 

My eye was recovering very well but over the last few days it has flared up again so it looks like a further course of poking, prodding, dropping, cleaning and waiting will be called for. We did, however, manage to get away on holiday and we had a splendid time with calm seas, good company, fine food, and soothing drink. My picture was taken as we sailed past some of the lovely little islands off the coast of Montenegro.I will use my "Picture Post" blog to feature some of my other recent photographs over the next few months.

With the holiday over and things return to some kind of Autumnal normality, it is time to return to my usual pattern of blogging. It is time to set aside blog posts which are little more that health bulletins or bleating essays in studied self-pity. News from Nowhere can now return to being obsessed with the inconsequential and, as far as my personal well being is concerned, please assume that no news of it is good news of it.