A Postcard To Miss Chambers

Somebody started this thing about doing a post in our own handwriting so I thought I would follow up on yesterday's post with a postcard to Miss Chambers. Hopefully, if you click on the written side the image should enlarge (if not I will add the text as the first comment).

The Gas Man's Leg

I am having to wait in for the Gas Man to come and fix the boiler and therefore I occupy myself by continuing to sort through the junk in my room. This is a slow process because as soon as I pick one box up in order to file it away in some logical place, I give into temptation, open it, and browse. This morning was a box of old picture postcards and I will limit myself to the three which were at the front of the box.

The first is a cartoon card which, according to the postmark, was used in 1907. The phrase "My word if you're not off, I'll saw your leg off" is a curious one to modern ears but - according to what I found out via a quick Google search - it comes from a Music Hall song and was a popular saying in the first decade of the twentieth century. It appears to mean "I rather think it is time for you to be thinking about leaving". Alexander is due to go back to University in a few weeks time. As much as I love him I am getting tired of picking clothes off the floor and finding knives and forks pushed down the back of my armchair. I think I might send him a postcard.

The second card is a curious thing. It is a postcard made from a real photograph : again this type of thing was popular in the early twentieth century. It was sent to a distant relative of mine in either 1915 or 1919 (the postmark is unclear). On the back it says "To my dear Mum and Dad with lots of love from Joe" As far as I can make out the photograph shows four women, but who are they? At first I thought that the relative might have had a daughter called Johanna, but I have checked through the census records and that is not the case. I am almost sure they are women but perhaps I am getting too old to tell. Who are they? What is the uniform they are wearing? Who the hell is Joe? Experience has taught me that if you chuck such questions as these out into cyberspace an answer may just come back.

For the third and final postcard I am concentrating on the back rather than the picture. This one is very old : one of the early "Gruss aus" cards of the late nineteenth century. This one was sent in 1899 to Miss May Chambers. But it is the handwriting which is so spectacular : what penmanship, what care, what beauty. It makes our modern, computer-written blogs seem lifeless and dull. Fellow blogger Brian Miller recently did a hand-written post which I thought was a wonderful idea. I resolve to do the same myself : a handwritten post, a postcard from the twenty first century. Now I just need to find a decent pen.

The Gas Man has just left. The problem was that there was something wrong with the thermostat controlling the radiators upstairs. I was unable to turn them off. I was tempted to say to the man "If they're not off, I'll saw your leg off", but I didn't. Anyway, they are off now - and his leg is safe.

Lies, Damned Lies And A 100 Franc Note

It was the British Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli who is reputed to have said "there are lies, damned lies and statistics" Statisticians, I believe, loath this little maxim, believing that it should state "there are lies, damned lies, and the misinterpretation of statistics" I have to confess that I have a good deal of sympathy for the statisticians point of view, especially after I have just listened to one of my favourite radio programmes "More Or Less". The programme is a kind of mathematical CSI which sets out to investigate the truth behind what is all too often the misinterpretation of statistics by the media, politicians, and the general public. It has just returned to BBC Radio 4 for a summer series and kicked off with an analysis of a YouTube video which is doing the rounds called "Muslim Demographics". This particularly nasty video is packed full of alarming claims such as most European countries will become Islamic states during the next few decades due to the falling birthrate of the indigenous population (by which they probably mean white Christians) and the astounding fertility of Muslim immigrants. What the radio programme does, with the type of dignified impartiality only the BBC can achieve, is cut through claim after alarmist claim showing that the thesis of the original video has the statistical significance of a spent mothball. Hopefully I will manage to embed the BBC YouTube video. If you want the original YouTube video you will have to find it yourself.

When not listening to the radio I have been trying to sort out the mess in my room. Whilst re-stacking some files on a shelf I came across one of my old banknote albums and, once again, was struck by the beauty of old banknotes. As we go down to the supermarket and hand over our bit of plastic we have lost for ever the joy of handling what, in many cases, were small works of art. The example below is from my collection and is a French 100 Franc note dating from 1938. Now imagine handing that beauty over when you were paying for you loaf of bread and packet of Jammy Dodgers.

The End Of The World And A Raised Straw Hat

If ever proof was needed of the fact of global warming it could have been found in Halifax, Yorkshire on Saturday. It could have been found in the near cloudless sky, in the preponderance of sun hats, in the absence of mud, and on the smiles of the thousands who turned out for the annual Halifax Agricultural Show. Tradition has it locally that it always rains for the Show. Fate dictates it, manufacturers of umbrellas and Wellington boots plan for it. Cumulonimbus clouds are held in a holding pattern over the Atlantic for days ahead in order to adequately prepare for it. Occasionally there will be a pretence of fine weather - just enough to make you leave your galoshes and trench coat at home - a pretence that will be flushed into the watercourse by a sudden sharp shower. But on Saturday the sun shone. On Saturday the rain stayed away. As I walked around the showground in my shirt sleeves I couldn't help wondering whether the world was about to come to an end.

Global warming aside, it was a memorable day. There were marquees full of show hens, stalls full of sheep and cows and parade rings full of horses. There were birds of prey, antique tractors, llamas, and dogs, dogs and more dogs. There were kids sat on their fathers' shoulders to get a better view, old farmers casting a critical eye over a neighbours' prize cow, and pensioners testing out the grip on a new walking stick. Perhaps my favourite memory of the day was in the sheep judging ring. The judge and all the people showing their prize sheep were dressed in immaculate white coats. The judge, wearing a splendid straw hat, cast an expert eye over all the entrants. When he eventually made his decision and handed the prize cards out he raised his straw hat to each of the contestants. I don't know why, but there was something about the gesture which summed up the whole day to me. There was tradition and there was a certain solidity. Perhaps the world isn't going to come to an end just yet.

A Family Six Pack : Part 1 - Auntie Annie

Annie Elizabeth Burnett 1903 - 1978

You may recall that I am working my way through this family portrait, taken in 1917, trying to tell the stories of the six lives it captured. We start on the extreme left with my Auntie Annie.

Annie Elizabeth was born in February 1903, the second daughter of my grandparents Enoch and Harriet Burnett. Like all young working class girls born in Bradford at the start of the twentieth century she was destined for the mill - Bradford was regarded as the world centre of the worsted industry - and by the time this photograph was taken she would have been 14 and already working. On her marriage certificate she is listed as a "worsted warper" and I remember her telling me that during the 1920s she worked at Ickringill's Mill on Legrams Lane, Bradford. The mill had been established in the late nineteenth century by Ira Ickringill, the nephew of a famous Yorkshire Chartist leader, and it was noted for its progressive attitude towards its workers. Annie worked until she was married in 1933 and by all accounts was an outgoing vivacious girl and something of a local beauty. She sang well and had a infectious sense of humour and was a hit in the many amateur concert parties and theatre groups that existed in Bradford at the time. It was in one such group that she no doubt met her future husband, Harry Moore.

Harry was more than a talented amateur, he was such a successful pianist and vocalist that, for a time in the early thirties, he was able to earn a living as a touring professional entertainer. He worked in a series of travelling professional concert parties, leaving his fiancee Annie Elizabeth back in Bradford whilst he took to the road. But in 1933 they married and Harry abandoned the life of a travelling entertainer and settled down to a job as a clerk in a local coal merchant's office.

Annie and Harry were married until Annie died in the late 1970s. They never had children and the marriage was continually under the strain of Harry's weekend work as a pianist in a variety of Bradford Working Men's Clubs and Annie's deteriorating mental health. Annie suffered from depression and found it difficult to be at home alone. Harry worked in the clubs every weekend and was away from his home for long periods of time. As a young teenager I became, for a time in the late 1950s and early 1960s, part of the solution to this problem as I would move in and live with Auntie Annie each weekend. Annie got a companion, I got spoilt. And I got told a host of wonderful stories about her childhood and youth.

There were times though when Auntie Annie was suddenly not around - this was the 1950s and 1960s, a time when it was believed that most mental problems could be cured by a brief spell of electroconvulsive therapy in a mental hospital. I was young and I wasn't aware of what was happening. Nor was I aware of the stories that circulated in the family, accusing Harry of being gay and of abandoning her for weekends of drunken debauchery. By the time I left home and went off to University, Harry was getting old and finding it harder to find work as a pianist. He gave into family pressure and stayed at home. But Annie's physical health rapidly deteriorated and she spent the final few years of her life in a wheelchair.

In many ways in sounds such a sad life : a life cheated of the promise and excitement you can see in the eyes of that fourteen year old girl. But once we die what remains are memories. And I have such wonderful memories of Annie. Of the times she made me laugh until I cried. Of the nights we sat up late together and watched television shows. Of the joy she felt - a joy that was almost palpable - in the company of me and my friends. When I look back, I see her near the end of her life : a life that had been rather dark and unfulfilled. But I still see that spark in her eyes and that half hidden smile : just as she was on that day in 1917.

Flats (nearly) for sale!

Ah the bliss of being woken by a dog-kiss! Even if horribly early. My mother had many "rules", one was no dogs upstairs. But then there came a time I was home alone with the dog of the time - yes, a labrador. Instead of a quiet howl/whine from downstairs (I always seemed to end up sleeping over the kitchen where the dog slept) at sunrise to be reminded he was there and it was morning now, a patter, patter, patter and gentle lick to be told the sun was up... and if I must sleep longer, move over, he was going to lie beside me.

Many years later, now married to Jane, I accidentally got my own back (as regards animal early awakenings) on one of the cats draped around the bed.. one (I hadn't realised) was on the side by me when I suddenly felt like curling up, half asleep, and too late I realised it had been there but I'd hurled it onto the floor. It looked most surprised, I was normally so gentle!

Ah well! Animal memories apart, thought I should show the recently-completed neat front of our development house, gate and wall and gravel "driveway" in place... with, yes, our car parked on it, poster for Jane's book A Proper Family Christmas showing in the back window. (She spent this afternoon reading some of her canal ghost short-stories, soon to be published by Oxpens, to author Colin Dexter, who loved them.)

So, the front looks good, nothing else to do on my lists...

And this shows one of the gardens at the back - there's one per flat. Nothing to do there, either, except move a large bag with a bit of topsoil in it that looks ugly and except that the grass grows all too quickly and Jane worries that the flowers may start dying away before the insides of the flats are ready for a public eye. Well, valuer and prospective purchasers.

But inside is coming along like a ... I was going to say "house on fire", but that might be tempting the fates, even if it is insured. (Come to think, I must tell the insurers it IS now two flats...)...

This morning the downstairs lights went on (the mains sockets already "on")... even if I did suddenly realise too late (for today) I hadn't done the shaving light over the basin in the bathroom thereby leaving a floating now-live cable in mid air... and a lot of the final painting started. We have still got to build the kitchen and lay floor finishes and arrange some carpets and I've only done half the tiling in that bathroom... upstairs needs a bit more but nothing drastic... can't see it should take more than 2 - 3 weeks.

Oh, and when I turned on the lights (downstairs) the outside lantern didn't go on but the hall light did for the wrong switch... and I could have sworn I'd labelled the wires so carefully... shucks. All corrected, didn't take long. Mind you, I always find that if there's only a choice of two it is incredibly easy to reverse them - it's exactly like the intensely embarassing moments one has said "yes" when you meant "no" or vice-versa. Can't believe the number of people I've met say they've had the same effect - I mean, about saying "yes" instead of "no" ... where the annoying thing is that in conversation you can get totally trapped with no opportunity to say "I said the wrong one!"... that sounds too crazy... and it can take such ages to explain you'd actually meant "no" (or "yes") but accidentally said the wrong one.

I know I'm not alone in this. Apart from embarassing memories, just the other day when we took friend and neighbour Caroline to the hospital for a medical test (results A1 OK, thank goodness) she raised the theme herself. It seems to be a common failing and, in fact, why, for example, people let salespeople talk them into signing on for things they didn't possibly want.

But lets not get into that. I've still not checked where my huge Don Quixote book is - it might even be valuable for all I know - that sort-of-related second-husband of that great aunt made a lot of money from the manufacture of enamelling of baths and kitchen cupboard tops and collected expensive things, I was told. Must admit I loved the collection of clocks - and uncle Harold (step uncle Harold) had to adjust most of them to chime the last half hour on the pull of a string for another relative who had gone blind.. well, almost. I only met her very young and I remember I was rather shocked to discover she wasn't totally blind so I'd been mislead by all-knowing adults yet again...

Alan says he gets angry for being older. I find I get invaded by reminiscences I know nobody really wants to hear about, but they so spin around in my head it's therapy for me to simply concentrate (when I can) on specific good events. Like getting my wiring right.

Theme Thursday - Kiss (From A Big Wet Nose)

Each morning I am awakened with a kiss. I would like to be able to say that it is from my good lady wife, but regretfully that is not the case. She awakens me with an elbow in my side and a mumbled request for a cup of tea. The kiss comes courtesy of Amy. And before you start getting silly ideas, Amy is a seven year old soft-coated wheaten terrier and probably the most adorable dog in the world. She sleeps at the bottom of our bed and she tends to wake up when Isobel aims the tea-demanding elbow in the direction of my slumbering form. My wife is Alpha Dog in our household and Amy sees herself as Beta Dog. She takes it upon herself to reinforce my wife's early morning wake-up call by endless wet kisses and annoyingly wagging tails. After a short period of time you realise that the kisses are just as bad as the sharp elbow to the ribs and so off you go to make tea.

One of my favourite singer-songwriters, the late Jake Thackray, used to have a song about his dog called Ulysses. It contained the following lovely verse :

When I stumble home at night I'm jaded and stale

And so I try to take a little repose

I don't want waking up with a happy tail

I don't want a kiss from a big wet nose.

The song tells of how the poor owner is driven to suicide because his dog gives him too much love. Hopefully that will not happen to me. I could only find one clip of the Thackray song : who knows where the images come from and why they were used with the music. But ignore the images. Close your eyes and listen to the words. .

An Alphabet Of Pauperization : Illness, Heredity And Drink

I was on my way somewhere when I got distracted by the big book yesterday. The book - the one illustrated at the top of yesterday's post - is one of the early 19th century minute books of the Ionian Bank Limited. Most of the early minute books have been digitised and are available in an on-line archive held by the London School of Economics. I was merely browsing through the collection when I got side-tracked and started wittering on about big books. Where I was actually heading for was another of the LSE's on-line digital archives : the archives of the great Victorian philanthropist and social reformer Charles Booth. If you have never visited the Charles Booth Archives do take a visit. It is a place I return to again and again : it is the kind of place you need to go to when you feel sorry for yourself or when you imagine times are hard.

The particular collection I would refer you to is the Stepney Union Casebooks - a series of six notebooks which contain detailed case histories of the inmates of Bromley and Stepney workhouses and of people who received outdoor relief from the union in the late nineteenth century. You can stop at any page and read the reports ... and weep. I have included a reproduction of just one of the hundreds of cases - the case of Frederick Andrews. Frederick was 52 and worked as a carpenter until rheumatic gout meant he could no longer work. It appears that he sold his tools to pay for treatment and later he applies to the Poor Law Guardians for a grant to buy new tools so he can work again, but the Receiving Officer (RO) discovered that he was "living with a woman that had taken to drink". No tools, no work, rheumatism returns and Frederick is going to just one place - Bromley Workhouse,

On the inside cover of the Case Books the Officer - in this case a Mr J Jones - records the abbreviations that are used throughout the book. In effect it is an alphabet of pauperization, a lexicon of misery. The list says so much about our Victorian ancestors and how they viewed poverty. Whether it was through drink (D), Immorality (J), Recklessness (R) or Laziness (L), pauperization would get you in the end. And if you managed to avoid all of these there was always Misfortune ("Ye Gods") (Y) which could dispatch you to the Poor House. Poor Frederick Andrews was classified as I, H and D : he was the victim of illness, heredity and drink. What became of him I do not know but it can be safely said that few people left the workhouse to go on to a life of luxury and plenty.

Last night my good friend Tim and I were having a discussion - admittedly a discussion which was fueled by home-made cocktails and beer (D) - about post-modernism. Was progress now an illusion? Perhaps ... that is until you return to read the Stepney Union Casebooks.

One You Could Press A Rose In

I've always wanted a big book. There is something about a big book : it invites big thoughts, it encourages big projects, it promises to leave a big impression for those who follow on. I have often seen big books in the dusty windows of side-streeted stationery shops. Minute books, ledgers, anything-but-commonplace books. I am seized by an almost physical desire to go in and buy one even though I would have nothing to put in it. Such books can't be filled with shopping lists, to-do lists and half-remembered Internet passwords. The book I carry around with me is tiny, it fits in my back pocket. It is convenient, it is handy, it is a canvass wide enough to encompass my modest life. But I wish I had a big book. Leather bound, marbled end-paged. One you could press a rose in.

Moaning Monday : Intriguing Suede

I know I have moaned about this before, but what the hell : a good moan is like the food in a cow's stomach, it should be regurgitated and enjoyed on several occasions. Having established that principle let me say that one thing that is guaranteed to get me frothing at the mouth like a rabid dog is the stupid and pretentious names builders choose for their new housing developments. It is almost as though there is a competition taking place to come up with the most trivial, asinine, ostentatious label they can find for their new duplexes, studio flats or urban spaces. Within ten miles of where I live there has recently appeared such gems as Echo Central, Nexus, Heritage, Suede, Quattro and Intrigue. What kind of person could possibly want to live in such a development? What kind of fool can imagine that what might appear trendy to a dunderhead now will not appear plain idiotic a few years down the line?

Time was when street names told you something. At the bottom of our street is Bradford Road. It is called Bradford Road because if you walk down it you will get to Bradford. Other streets were given logical names based upon specific factors. Chapel Street was the street upon which there was a chapel, River Street ran close to the river, and Towngate was at the entrance to a town. Not far from us there are three short streets. The first has about twelve brick terraced houses and it is called Brick Terrace. The second has twelve houses faced in rather nice red tiles and it is called Tile Terrace. The third street has a mixture of the two and is called Brick And Tile Terrace. You can see the logic in that. You don't need to spend a long time trying to work out what on earth it means. The names tell you something about the houses, not about the people who happen to live in them. But what does Quattro tell you? Other than the fact that anyone living there is likely to be a prat.

The rot set in - as with so many things - in Victorian times. The Victorians were apt to name streets after "great people" or famous battles. The local phone book is stuffed with Gladstone Streets and Balaclava Terraces. It is a trend which, thankfully, seems to have gone out of fashion and therefore we have been spared the likes of Blair Boulevard, Thatcher Mews, Goose Green Glen, or Kuwait Drive. The 20th century brought a trend towards aspirational names. If you were building a row of bleak terraced houses in grimy Heckmondwike you would give them a name like Ambleside Close or Windsor Drive. I live in a 1930s house on Dorchester Road. If you walk down Dorchester Road you will get to Dorchester. The problem is it will take you a couple of weeks and you will pass through Huddersfield, Sheffield, Nottingham, Coventry, Birmingham, Reading, Slough, and Southampton first. But at least you could see a purpose for such aspirational monikers, you could argue that they might brighten the lives of people who would otherwise live on Bog Green Street or Water Closet Crescent.

But what is the point of naming somewhere Intrigue or Nexus? Other than to drive me mad and start me off moaning all over again.

Looking For Leaks In My Head

It was raining when we set out for the Friday Night Pub Quiz last night so I took one of my hats with me. I have a large collection of hats not because I am eccentric .... On reflection, let me rephrase that. I have a large collection of hats not just because I am eccentric, but because I always fear that if my cochlear implant gets wet I might short or spark or something. So off I went wearing my large brown trilby : a hat with a brim wide enough to keep a small garden-party dry. When I got settled with my pint (for those who care about such things it was a pint of Sam Smith's Sovereign) in our usual cozy corner I had cause to examine my hat only to discover a slight dusting of fine sawdust on the inside! Was something leaking? What other explanation could there be? The last time I did any joinering was in woodwork classes some half a century ago.

In my search for an explanation of this strange phenomenon I remembered a story I had been told many years ago. It concerned a group of friends who worked in a city office. This was way back in the 1960s and one of the friends still came to work each day in a bowler hat. His friends thought this was slightly pretentious behaviour for the swinging sixties and decided to teach him a lesson. They clubbed together and bought two new bowler hats, each one exactly the same as that worn by the friend, except one was a size smaller and one was a size bigger. One day whilst the poor chap was out of the office, they substituted the smaller hat for the one he had arrived in that morning. At the end of the day they watched carefully as he put on the hat, seemed to pause a moment, and with some effort pull it down onto the crown of his head.

The next day they substituted the smaller hat for his normal one and thought they detected a slight look of relief when he came to put it on that evening. The next day they introduced the larger hat and were rewarded by a concerned look on the face of their friend which, of course, was slightly hidden by a low-slung hat. Over the following days they substituted the hats at will and by the end of the week the chap was a nervous wreck, fully believing that he had a dreadful disease that was causing his head to alternately swell and contract. They were all prepared to continue the treatment the next week but their friend never turned up for week : he was on sick leave suffering from "nervous exhaustion".

As I examined the inner lining of my hat and brushed off the small dusting of sawdust I looked around at my friends. Was Dave watching a little too carefully? Did Graham exchange a carefully disguised grin with Jimmy? I am still not sure, but from now on I will keep a careful watch of my head and my friends ... looking for leaks.