Mindful Thoughts On The Victoria Theatre In Halifax

I was flipping through one of those free local magazines that these days drop through the letter box like 1960s pop stars falling from grace, when I came across a page full of horrendous banalities of the kind that seem to be the twenty first century equivalent of the cry of the snake oil salesman. "You can become mindful at any time you like just by paying attention to your immediate experience and situation", it would appear. "Research", it seems although the precise nature of the research is left to the imagination, "indicates that living in the moment can make people happier, because most negative thoughts concern the past of the future". The entire saccharine-fest is topped off with the following little jingle:

I do apologise if anyone has had to read that having just consumed their breakfast, the words are enough to make anyone feel a little nauseous. I have obviously been living my life all wrong for the past sixty-odd years (and some of those years were very odd), believing that we have a duty to learn from the past and plan for the future. But no, the past and the future are seeped in negativity - let us all live for today and to hell with the consequences.

My picture was taken way back in 1966 during a parade for the annual Halifax Gala. The building in the background is the Victoria Theatre which still stands, I am glad to say. Whether it will be standing tomorrow is a different question - but, who cares? Such thoughts are not mindful.

Naked On A Canadian Headland, Filling In Potholes On Google

People sometimes imagine that the information superhighway is flawless: as smooth as it is broad, with a perfect surface that could put a bowling green to shame. But it isn't: there are imperfections, there are gaps in its coverage, there are potholes on Google. And when we discover such a pothole, we all have a responsibility to fill it in, because the WWW has always been a do-it-yourself kind of enterprise; there are no state tar macadam machines filling potholes for our convenience, nor would any sane person want such things.

Which brings me to a conversation my old mate Arthur and I had on Saturday night.  We were out having a meal at a pub and catching up on over forty years of shared history. Our wives swapped stories of friends and relatives whilst Arthur and I engaged in one of those "remember that bloke who ..." types of conversation so loved by old men. The conversation snaked its way to an organisation we both belonged to back in the late 1960s and early 1970s which was called the Halifax 68 Club. The club met every Thursday night in a local pub and provided an opportunity for people of the left to get together and exchange ideas and enthusiasms. It was not confined to any one political party - some were Labour Party members, some were Communists, some were Anarchists and the odd Liberal would occasionally poke his or her head through the door. Nor was it confined just to politics: I remember discussions on music, art, literature, philosophy and science. It was an asteroid of an organisation - burning brightly in the cultural skies of Halifax for a few years and then fading into obscurity.

The discussion between Arthur and myself on Saturday night had none of the heady gravitas of those discussions of forty-five years ago: it was confined to trying to remember the name of the pub in King Cross where we would meet.  As we sipped out pints and salted our chips, we racked our brains; we recited an alphabet of pub names, we listed monarchs and we conjugated mythical creatures. Eventually I said "Not to worry, I will Google "Halifax 68 Club". And so I did, only to discover that the only match the all-powerful indexing monster could come up with was the address of a nudist club in Halifax, Nova Scotia! The thought of all those long gone revolutionaries being mistaken for a group of Canadian naturists was too much to bare, and salt tears dripped into a couple of beer glasses. We had discovered a pothole on Google. I promised Arthur that I would attempt to fill it in on my first opportunity and that is the purpose of this post. If, ever again, two old men try to remember anything about the Halifax 68 Club, Google should point them to this post rather than leaving them naked and cold on a Canadian headland.

Perhaps I should add, for the sake of completeness and for future searchers of information, that the name of the pub where we met was The Wellington. Looking through my old photographs, I don't seem to have any pictures taken during a meeting, but the one at the head of this post dates from the same period and features the inimitable Tim Enright, who was the moving spirit behind the creation of the 68 Club, delivering a speech to commemorate a Chartist march over the Yorkshire moors.

Pass The Port Please

As part of the great migration to the Mac, I am re-cataloguing some of my older digital photographs using the new version of Lightroom. In some ways the task is time-consuming, but it helps stimulate some of the memory synapses in my brain and I have little better to do with my time. I took this picture in June 2000 whilst I was attending a European Council meeting in Porto, Portugal as a press representative. At such gatherings, I usually managed to steal an hour or two away from the fascinating discussions of the Common Agricultural Policy or the European Regional Development Fund, to go in search of interesting photographs. Porto was a wonderful city through which port wine flowed like water. Indeed the memory is so strong it is making my thirsty. Pass the port please.

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.

Light Rather Than Dark, Compositions Not Constitutions

Railway Viaduct, Milnsbridge, Huddersfield. September 2014

I went out and took some photographs today. It is the first time in over a month: the first time since my eyes got infected and Isobel's gut got twisted. It was nowhere special; just Milnsbridge on the far side of Huddersfield (which is special, I suppose, if you come from Milnsbridge). The little expedition was, however, a sign that things are getting back to normal, a sign that I can allow myself the luxury of doing insubstantial things: worrying about light rather than dark, compositions rather than constitutions. Things are on the mend and what they need now is a little push in the right direction. It's time for that holiday, It's time to catch the sun. Off to the seaside, back soon (now where have I heard those words before!)

Back From Another Place

Looking back on my last post, it is entitled "Off To The Seaside" and it simply says "Off to the seaside, back soon". As it happened, little of this turned out to be true. Compressing down what feels like one of the longest couple of weeks of my life, the facts are as follows. A couple of days before we were due to go to Cornwall I had a hospital appointment about the nasty eye infection I had been suffering from for five or six weeks. They warned me that it was more serious than we thought and that I needed an intensive period of antibiotic and steroid treatment and appointments with further specialists. On their advice, we cancelled the holiday. A few days later, my wife, Isobel, returned from a short shopping trip with severe abdominal pains. Within an hour she was rushed to hospital and she finished up having emergency surgery in the middle of the night. She was on Intensive Care for a few days, but then gradually recovered and finally came out of hospital yesterday. In between visiting the hospital to see her, I saw various other specialists and I am glad to report that my eye problem is equally responding to treatment. Alexander was given the week off work to help look after us and his care and support, and that of his new wife Heather, have been something we will never forget. Hopefully things will continue to improve over the next couple of weeks and I can return to my regular blogging schedule, but until then posts to my various blogs might be few and far between.

Two years ago, the Olympic Games were held in London and the film director Danny Boyle was given the task of putting together an opening ceremony which would somehow showcase the achievements of the host nation. In a move of genius, he decided to base the main part of the ceremony around a celebration of what the programme described as "the institution that more than any other, unites our nation - the National Health Service". In a fortnight in which that same NHS and its dedicated staff have saved my wifes' life and helped save my sight, I cannot do other than express my sincere thanks to it and rededicate myself to help ensuring its continued survival as a free and first class service available to all.

Alan