Sepia Saturday 74 : Up, Up And Away

It looks like Blogger is back, but for how long - who knows? So before it has chance to fly away, here is my contribution to Sepia Saturday 74

This picture has the look of a posed newspaper picture about it - and that is because it is. The photograph shows my father, me in his arms, and my brother Roger. It must have been taken in 1950 or 1951 and I was told that it appeared in the Yorkshire Post which is our regional newspaper here in Yorkshire. It was taken at Yeadon Airfield which, many decades later, reinvented itself as Leeds Bradford International Airport. There will (hopefully) be people out there who can tell me what kind of plane we are inspecting : some World War II fighter plane no doubt.

The photo is in keeping with the Sepia Theme this week which is, possibly, air travel. It could also be newspapers, contraptions, madness, silly hats or bits of cardboard held together with pieces of string - Sepia Themes are like that. But those early planes managed to fly considerable distances with surprising success, even if they looked so flimsy and accident prone. Let us hope that the same can be said of good old Blogger.

If Blogger is still working when you read this, you can find other contributors to Sepia Saturday 74 by flying on over to the Sepia Saturday Blog.

Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard From Ottawa

One of the great delights of the Twitter For Gentlefolk project is that very real feeling of "place" you get from a postcard. Whereas Twitter messages arrive in uniform digital keystrokes from some sorting office in cyberspace, postcards come from real places and include real evidence of their journey. Pictures, stamps, postmarks : they all form a fascinating trail that leads to somewhere real, somewhere you can find on a map. And in the case of this weeks' Twitter for Gentlefolk postcard, that real place was Ottawa in Canada.

The postcard comes from the splendid Rosie, who lives in New Brunswick and whose wonderfully eclectic Blog - Ramblin' Rose - covers everything from photographs to family history, public speaking to arts and crafts. Her message to me is as follows:

Hello Alan,  Just dropping you a line to give you greetings from the capital city, Ottawa, Ontario. Having a wonderful visit with my step daughter and family. Rosie

My card to Rosie can be found on her Blog. Thanks to Rosie for taking part in the project : I can now add another line to my large world map on the back of my door : a line from Huddersfield to Ottawa.

Get An Olympia If You Please

The Lad has returned to University and it is likely to be some time before he is home again. In some ways I wonder if he is growing old and sensible as this time there have not been the usual phone calls that follow his departure, listing all the things he has forgotten with instructions to gather them together and take them down to Sheffield. He has a fairly well deserved reputation for being, shall we say, absent-minded, to such an extent that my good friend Chrissy recently bought me an old postcard with Alexander in mind. The front of the postcard has a somewhat uninspiring view of Malham Tarn in North Yorkshire. It is the message on the reverse which is the gem. It is a little unclear as it is written in pencil - here is what it says :

Beck Hall, Malham.
Dear Dad, Can you go to our house and get Jim's shorts from the chair in our room, his belt from the top drawer of the tall boy; and his boots from the shelf in the staircase and send them here by post, and if you need a 1/- stamp get an Olympia if you please. Love Lavinia.
To : Mr H Daykin, Wilcock Street, Windhill, Shipley, Yorks.

The "Olympia" would have been a one shilling commemorative stamp that marked the 1948 Olympic Games which were held in London.  Maybe my own particular Lad has suddenly matured and no longer needs me to run around and find and transport all the things he has forgotten. Maybe - but I hope not.

Borrowers Of The Night

New Year's Eve, Monday, 1832
In the hilltop village of Clifton, New Year's Eve 1832 is fine. As dusk falls, farm labourers, weavers, wire drawers and card setters put aside their tools and, in holiday mood, hurry to the Black Horse. Soon the inn is foggy with the smoke of clay pipes and rowdy with voices that brag, joke and gossip. Pints of beer are gulped down greedily, causing James Pease, the innkeeper, a deep feeling of satisfaction - this will be a profitable night. He cannot know - has not the slightest presentiment - of the horror that the next day will bring to his door."
From : Borrowers of the Night by Anna Best , Bank House Books, 2011

I went to the splendid Black Horse Inn in Clifton last night to the launch of a new book about the 1832 murder of Elizabeth Rayner in Clifton Woods. Anna Best's book, "Borrowers Of The Night" takes contemporary documentary evidence such as newspaper reports, letters, and the Coroners' Court depositions, and her own interpretation of the events and characters and weaves them together to creative a fascinating narrative. I only started reading it last night, but already I am hooked and eagerly anticipating her own suggestions for a solution to what has for 180 years been an unsolved murder. 

I first heard that such a book was in preparation last year when I received an e-mail from Anna asking permission to use one of my photographs of the Anchor Inn, Brighouse in the book she was writing. She was anxious to find a photograph of the inn under its original name (for some reason it is now called the Bridge Inn) and she found my old 1960s photograph whilst doing an internet search. I was more than happy to give her permission to use the photograph and since then I have tried to keep up to date with the project by following her Borrowers Of The Night Blog. A couple of weeks ago I was delighted to receive an invitation to the launch event at the Black Horse, and last night I had the pleasure of meeting Anna in person and hearing her presentation about the book.

You can order copies of "Borrowers Of The Night" on the Bank House Books website or you can get it from Amazon in the UK (not sure about outside the UK yet, I will report back when I have further information).

FPTP, AV And A Hanging Sword

We are having a referendum in the United Kingdom today, which is all jolly exciting as it is only the second national referendum we have ever had. The referendum gives us an opportunity to change the voting system used in Parliamentary elections (is it the old Cromwellian in me which believes that if God and the Queen are entitled to capital letters, so is Parliament?). The two systems on offer are the current first past the post (FPTP) method or the alternative vote (AV) method. I have to confess that my vote has been largely determined not by the stated advantages of either system but by the ridiculous arguments put forward by the "No" campaign. To be told by the main party that is behind the "No" campaign that nobody in their right mind uses the AV system when they use just such as system to elect their own leader seems a little hypocritical to me. The current forecasts are that the "No" campaign will win the day which simply goes to show what an antipathy to change we have over here. This is the country, after all, where new Members of Parliament - however they be elected - upon taking office are provided with a metal locker, a coat hanger and a red silk ribbon to hang their sword from.

Bank Holiday Bluebells

It's Spring and the sun is shining. Monday was a public holiday (or Bank Holiday) here in the UK (as was the previous Friday, as was the previous Monday, as was the previous Friday - who says we don't know how to enjoy ourselves). A perfect day for a walk in Shibden Park, Halifax. When I grew up, I lived a mile or so away from the park and it formed part of the playground of my youth. It looks much grander these days and in a strange reversal of what is normal, it feels much larger than it used to do. The beautiful Elizabethan Shibden Hall (home of the notorious Anne Lister) is the main feature of the park, but there are also glorious woodland walks and a fine ornamental boating lake.

The bluebells were at their height, the scenery was breathtaking, and on that sunny day you could not have wanted to be anywhere else in the world.

Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard From Cleveland

Twitter For Gentlefolks (or Gentle Twitter) seems to have well and truly taken off and I keep seeing postcards sent between bloggers appearing on many of the blogs I regularly follow. It has reached a stage now where it has become too complex to maintain a list of links to all the TfG posts, but I will be maintaining my own weekly feature which focuses on the postcards that fall through my letterbox. This week it was a postcard from Cleveland Ohio, sent by my good friend Mouse (aka Kimy). My thanks to the Mouse, and to all those other people participating in this most enjoyable project.

I must confess that I had to get the big atlas out and look up exactly where Cleveland and "the north coast" were. Sadly my fleeting (and floating) visit to the States next month is limited to a handful of cities on the east coast, but that trip will be just a "taster" for a longer journey during which I intent to explore the States in full. And high on my list for that exploration will be Cleveland.

History In A Pint Glass

SATURDAY 30 APRIL 2011

So here I sit, in the Union Cross Hotel, Halifax. On one wall, an over-intrusive television pipes silent images of extreme wresting to a deserted tap-room. Flashes of film, as long as an adolescent's attention span, show flesh bruising flesh in over-full colour. The window is dressed for the Royal Wedding : two dummies sit in mock supplication before the passing Saturday shoppers. He wears a black coat and charity store top hat, she wears a white wedding dress, the enterprising offspring of a table cloth and a bed sheet. They meet hesitatingly, coming together over a bouquet of plastic flowers.

On another wall hangs a Union Flag and I try to decide whether it is right way up or not. In some ways it is a fitting wall hanging for the Union Cross Hotel, but then I recall that such a name is a recent innovation, dating back no further than 1745. The pub was originally known as the Crosse Inn and dates back to the early sixteenth century making it the oldest inn in Halifax. In 1745, in the midst of the Jacobite Rebellion, some Georgian spin-doctor decided that the Inn should be renamed in support of the Union between England and Scotland which, at the time, was coming under some pressure from a certain Bonnie Prince Charlie. I drink up and nod in greeting to the wedding couple in the window. History in a pint glass.

Sepia Saturday 72 : Marie Sans Chemise

A clock with connections to the First World War was the Archive Image introducing this weeks' Sepia Saturday and I have decided to follow the theme by posting another clock with wartime connections. The image is from a postcard that is part of my collection, a postcard which was never posted, but does have a name penciled upon it, that of a certain Miss W Willby. I suspect that the card was bought during the First War - Amiens featured prominently in the campaigns and hosted hundreds of thousands of Allied troops - but why it was not sent we will never know.

The magnificent clock was constructed in the 1880s, the gift of the Mayor of Amiens, Louis Dewally. It was erected close to the railway station so that the citizens would never again be late for their trains. At the base of the iron column, the sculptor Albert Roze fashioned a magnificent reclining nude in bronze. It is said that the statue shocked some local citizens - I can hardly believe this as it is France not West Yorkshire - but it soon became a famous feature of the city and was christened "Marie Sans Chemise".

During the Second World War the statue and clock were taken down in order to protect them from damage, but in the chaos that followed the end of the war, they mysteriously vanished and were never seen again. To mark the Millennium, the City Council commissioned a copy of both the clock and statue and they now can be found in area of the Cathedral. So, in Amiens, time was lost but later found again.

This is a SEPIA SATURDAY post. You can enjoy all the other contributions to Sepia Saturday 72 by following the links on the Sepia Saturday Blog.

He's Handsome, Stately, Middle-Sized - And Watching The Wedding

Yes, here I am at 8.00am watching the television and the build-up to the Royal Wedding. Let me quickly add that it is not a surfeit of patriotism, nor a fondness for the monarchy, nor an urgent need to spot the wedding dress which has me here on duty and glued to the television. My task is far more prosaic : I am under instructions to watch the early stages so that I can wake the Good Lady Wife up once it gets interesting (she is maintaining a delicate balance between the need for a sleep-in on her day off and her desire to wallow in the syrup-sweet celebrations). As I write this, there is a chap wearing a red tunic entering Westminster Abbey : is that of sufficient interest to interrupt her sleep?

To amuse myself whilst I listen to endless discussions about dresses and abbeys, I go in search of newspaper reports of a previous Royal Wedding : the marriage of Prince Albert Edward and Princess Alexandra in March 1863. There were a good few descriptions of the ceremony itself, but many of the reports focus on local celebrations in the towns and villages throughout the country. These usually consisted of the firing of muskets by the local militia followed by a dinner and beer in the local pub. It seems that little changes.

One report which did catch my eye, however was the report of the special celebration organised by the Glasgow Abstainers' Union to mark the royal wedding. This must have been a jolly affair indeed and the report in Glasgow Herald of March 11th 1863 goes into considerable detail about the jolly songs that were sung by all. According to the report, the entire gathering sang the following song in honour of the Prince. The thought of hundreds of sober Glaswegian voices singing the following verse makes my waiting and watching slightly less onerous.

"My Patie is a lover gay,

His mind is never Muddy, O,

His breath is sweet as new-mawn hay,

His face is fair and ruddy, O

He's handsome, stately middle sized,

He's comely in his walking, O

The glancing o' his e'en surprise,

And it's Heaven to hear him talking, O"

Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard From Cedarville

Click on images to enlarge

Oh what delights have been dropping through my letterbox since I started the Gentle Twitter Project and this postcard from the delightful Betsy Brock of Cedarville Ohio (and the wonderful My Five Men Blog) is up there amongst the very best. Betsy has not only managed to find me a vintage postcard, but one with a British connection. It is a postcard which started its life in London in the early twentieth century and came full circle and recrossed the Atlantic 90 years later. In keeping with the wonderful synchronicity that seems to permeate blogging, I have stayed at the Imperial and therefore the choice of card is extra special. However, the hotel looks very different these days than it did in the postcard image above. During the 1960s, it was extensively "redeveloped" and now presents a functional concrete facade to Russel Square. If the glory of the original Victorian hotel has faded, the joy of connecting with friends throughout the world - whether by postcards or blogs - has not. Thank you Betsy.

TWITTER FOR GENTLEFOLK POSTS:

Launch of the Twitter For Gentlefolk Project

Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard From Tauranga
Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard To Tauranga
Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard To Tampa

Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard From Tampa

Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard To A Silver Fox

Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard From A Silver Fox

Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard From Old Sodbury
Twitter For Gentlefolk : Postcard To Cedarville