Sepia Saturday : Sometimes You Don't Know

Sometimes you don't know who the subject of the picture is. We all have them. Photos on the margin of our knowledge, faces we don't recognise. A man in uniform stares challengingly into the camera. There is no clue as to who it might be. On the back of the photo the following words are written. "This is from one taken over twelve months ago, he does not look so ill and weary on this. I have had to wait for this one taking off another." It was obviously taken during the Great War. Did he try and stare down death in the same way. Who knows. Sometimes you just don't know. Sometimes you don't want to.

Go to the Sepia Saturday Blog for links to other Sepia Saturday posts.

When Father Says Turn, We All Turn.

It is 9.30 in the morning and as we were up watching the election results until 4.00am you mustn't expect too keen an analysis of what has happened at this stage. Equally, as nobody seems to know what has happened, you must not turn to me in the hope of enlightenment. However, a number of people from around the world have been asking me questions about the rather quaint British electoral system, and the following questions and answers are my contribution to the cesspool of human misunderstanding.

Who has won the British General Election? I have no idea and neither does anyone else. At this precise moment the Conservative Party have 290 Parliamentary seats, the Labour Party 247, the Liberal Democrats 51, and others (the kind of political equivalent of a packet of Bassetts Liquorice Allsorts) 27. There are 34 seats still to declare, but the predications are that no party will have an overall majority.

What is a Hung Parliament? A House of Commons where no single political party can command a majority of votes against all others. Hung Parliaments are rare in the British political system (the last one which immediately followed an election was in 1974) because the voting system - first past the post rather than proportional representation - favours the two "main" parties, the Conservatives and Labour.

What will happen now?  The British Constitution is always difficult to interpret because it doesn't exist - it is merely a collection of precedents and traditions - but the sitting Prime Minister need only offer his resignation if he cannot command a majority in the House and consequently loses a vote of confidence. Gordon Brown may well try to stay in office by seeking either a formal or an informal deal with some of the smaller political groupings in order to avoid losing such a vote. There again, he my fall on his sword and the tradition then calls for the Queen to send for someone else to try and form a Government.  The whole system is very antiquated and unclear and may (or may not) conclude with someone kissing her hand and becoming Prime Minister.

Will there be another General Election? The answer almost certainly is "yes" but there will be an attempt first of all for someone to try and govern as a minority government. They will remain in power until they lose that first critical vote and then that particular Government will fall. Even then, the Queen could ask someone else to try and form a Government, but sooner or later there will be another General Election, probably before the year is out.

Will the next election be under a new electoral system?  Unlikely. There is growing support for movement towards electoral reform but it is unlikely that a major change to electoral practices could be agreed upon in the time available and with the current balanced state of the parties. The Conservatives remain skeptical about electoral reform, although the main defense of the current system - it means you get majority governments - seems to have evaporated before our eyes.

Why do the British vote on Thursdays?  No reason other than tradition. And like many traditions it does not stretch back to time immemorial, but simply to the 1930s. There is likely to be a strong movement for change to electoral practices following this election after chaotic scenes at a number of polling stations and confusion over the precise meaning of electoral law.

Why have people voted the way they have? I don't have any greater insight than anyone else, but my guess is that there is a genuine desire for confusion out there. The political system has been shaken up and following all the scandals and disillusionment, this is what many people wanted. And, in a sense, this has been a triumph for politics in that for the first time in years people are talking about politics again. The voter turn-out yesterday is likely to be significantly up on recent years and that could easily be carried forward to a second election. If nothing else, that isn't a bad result.

The illustration is of a vintage postcard I bought the other day which dates back to 1906. The rather nice thing about it is that you can interpret it in any way you want to.

Theme Thursday : Pink

As I think I said on the Theme Thursday Blog : Cometh the day, cometh the colour. (OK, I didn't get the spelling right on the Theme Thursday Blog, but you know what I mean). It is election day here in the UK and the British political scene is still colour-coded (do political parties in other countries have tribal colours they are identified by?). The colour for the Labour Party used to be red, but over the years it has increasingly become pink-tinted. During my very (very) brief political career, bright red was still  in fashion and I have managed to dig-out one of my old election leaflets - yes that is me in the top picture! If I recall rightly, about 121 citizens of North Ward voted for me and I was not elected (it has to be said that it was probably the most Conservative - the most blue - ward in London). Looking back at the leaflet I am not sure whether the most embarrassing aspect is the dreadful photograph or the claim that I was "deeply concerned with the housing problems of young married people" 

Unlike most of the gutter press, I will not presume to tell readers how they should vote. They can, if they so desire, be pinky-red or yellow (or blue if they really insist on it). I know how I will vote. As I walk into the polling station I will be singing that old hymn to myself : "Change and decay in all around I see, O thou who changest not, abide with me"

Getting Daily Tweets From Samuel Pepys

In a final attempt to understand the attractions of Twitter, I abandon all my usual tweeters (alas Dave, I will no longer know when you are having your tea) and choose a selection of A-List celebrities. Chief amongst them are Albert Einstein and Samuel Pepys - and before anyone posts in to tell me that both of these are dead, I already know; but in a virtual age when a fat man and his dog can walk the Oregon coast road without leaving West Yorkshire getting Samuel Pepys to tweet is small beer. Einstein is a bit of a prig as a tweeter, eternally coming out with motivational sound-bites : today's was "Three Rules of Work : Out of clutter find simplicity. From discord find harmony. In the middle of difficulty lies opportunity" (Tell that last one to Gordon B, Albert, I am sure he will appreciate it). Sammy Pepys is a much livelier fish : I have just received the following from him : "I met Sir John Robinson, still a vain prating, boasting man as any I know..." If you go to the Samuel Pepys Diary website you can sign up as a Twitter follower, but there you can also find extracts from his diary for the day in question. This is much more my cup of tea : this is Samuel Pepys' Blog rather than his twitter account. In today's entry he is moaning about a letter of complaint he has received from Sir William Warren. The thing I admire about Pepys is that he is never happier than when he is moaning about someone or other. Warren is complaining about the two year delay in the payment of his accounts, so what does Pepys do? Does he compose a lengthy rebuttal to the charges? Does he pen a groveling letter of apology?  No, he simply writes in the margin of the letter "Returned as untrue" and sends it back again!

Oh I love this approach and I salute Samuel Pepys for having discovered the way to deal with unsolicited junk mail years ahead of his time. I have already re-posted a glossy advertising flyer from a double-glazing company with "returned as untrue" appended in black felt-tip pen. The next time the Inland Revenue write claiming that I still owe then £2.37p they will get the same treatment. And somewhere I have letters from all the main candidates in Thursday's election, most of whom will be getting their letters back with suitable annotations. 

And now that I have got that off my chest I am going for a fine beefsteak supper at the Fleece Tavern, and then to bed.

Go to the Samuel Pepys Diary Website for Daily Diary Extracts

Go to the Sepia Saturday Blog and Sign-up for this week's Sepia Saturday

Postcard Of The Week : Crookes Valley Recreation Ground, Sheffield

I was at an Antiques Centre on Saturday, sorting through a box of old postcards when I came across one I had to buy, almost irrespective of the cost. Luckily, it was only marked at £2.50 (about $3.80c) and so I managed to acquire it without having to raid the Holiday Penny Jar. The card features a picture of Crookes Valley Recreation Ground in Sheffield and the card was postally used in March 1909, so we can assume that the picture dates back to the very early years of the twentieth century. The reason why I had to buy the card is that it features a house that I used to live in (the second terraced house down to the right of the yellow chapel building towards the rear right of the picture).

When I lived in the house in the 1980s the scene had changed little from the one above - although the cannon in the park was no longer there. Our house was the middle one of the three in the picture on the left, which I  took thirty years ago. We lived in the house whilst the Good Lady Wife was at Medical School in Sheffield (I was lecturing in nearby Doncaster at the time). But there is a second connection to that postcard picture in that if you search through that mass of terraced house roofs at the rear left of the postcard, you would be able to pick out the house where The Lad currently lives, whilst he is at Medical School in Sheffield. It is a postcard that nicely brings the family together. And as The Lad starts his Second Year exams today, it provides me with an excuse to wish him the very best of luck.

View Other Postcard Of The Week Posts

Time For A Change

It is a momentous week here in Britain. A feeling that change is long overdue is in the air, wafting like a springtime breeze and stirring up the dust of complacency. There is an acceptance that things have been left to stagnate for far too long and that now is the time for decisiveness and strong government. There is a belief that conventions, which may have served us well in the past, now need to be thrust aside in order to forge new paradigms and erect new frames of reference. Indeed, it is time for a change.

I am talking, of course, about my blogs. You will no doubt recall that a few weeks ago I launched a period of soul-searching in order to decide whether to continue to maintain all my diverse individual blogs or whether to let loose the dogs of consolidation. You may also recall that I, for a time, engaged in a bout of mild flirtation with a federal solution but eventually grew tired of that rather cumbersome and artificial beast. It is now clear that I cannot put off this vital decision any longer : decisiveness is the order of the day. In the words of that old Ukrainian proverb : "The wingless chicken must befriend the predictable mule".

In the spirit of the times, I have decided upon a bit of a compromise. I will form a grand coalition of two of my blogs : News From Nowhere and A Pint of Best, whilst leaving the Daily Photo Blog as a separate entity. The latter will change slightly however, becoming a daily showcase for not only my own photographs but photographs from the great on-line photographic archives of the world. Fat Dog To The Big Apple will remain a separate enterprise, albeit a slow-moving, stumbling, stop-and-start kind of enterprise. None of these changes will affect the Sepia Saturday Blog, which I merely administer on behalf of the wider community. 

So, there we are. The British people have spoken. The time for change has arrived. And in the words of the old French proverb : "plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose".

Go to the latest post on Alan Burnett's Daily Photo Blog

Sepia Saturday 21 : Albert And The Look Of Love

In my Theme Thursday post this week I used a picture of my mother and father on a tandem which would have been an ideal candidate for Sepia Saturday. Whilst putting together a few words of background to that photograph I spoke of how my father progressed from bicycle to tandem to motorbike to van to - many years later - car : a progression which was not only logical but, I had always assumed, historically accurate. And then searching through a pile of photographs for Sepia Saturday I came across this one which clearly shows my father, at a relatively young age, astride an early motorbike. As I look at the photograph more closely I remember I have seen it before, many decades ago when I was still quite young. And I remember quizzing my father about it (isn't it marvelous how photographs can stimulate memories better than almost anything else?) and asking him "what happened to that bike?". And then my mother came into the room carrying a pot of tea or something and, although this must have happened at least 50 years ago, I remember my father looking up and saying "... and then I met your mother". Whether that wistful look of affection was for the meeting with my mother or the loss of the bike I didn't know then, and I don't know now.

The photograph was in a poor state when I rescued it from the box where it had been stored for many a year. Which raised the question of how far one should attempt to "renovate" these old photographs of ours. Personally, I see no objection to a good wash and brush up via Photoshop and the like, and all that pixel dodging and copying helps you to see the photograph in much more detail. In the restored version the motorbike stands out in much greater detail and tempts me to ask questions about the make and the age. No doubt there are people out there who know about such things and will eventually write in and solve that particular mystery. But it is unlikely that there is anyone out there who can tell me whether that wistful look of love was for woman or for bike.

Read the Theme Thursday Post about Albert and Gladys and their Tandem

View other Sepia Saturday posts via the Links on the Sepia Saturday Blog

Flowers Flowers, Give Me Your Reaction

Since yesterdays' post I have had difficulty getting the tune Daisy (or to give it it's proper title Daisy Bell) out of my mind. Catchy as the tune is, there is a limited number of times those lyrics can circulate around the ring-road of your mind without beginning to sound a little tired. 

"Daisy Daisy,
Give me your answer do!
I'm half crazy,
All for the love of you!
It won't be a stylish marriage,
I can't afford a carriage,
But you'll look sweet on the seat
Of a bicycle built for two !"

Some years ago I invented a silly game to play with popular song lyrics. Those who have hung on my every word for the last four years will remember the August 2007 post "This I Have Done My Route" which was my adaptation of the lyrics to My Way. So yesterday I decided to take the same approach to Daisy Bell. I took the original English lyrics by Harry Dacre, fed them into a machine translation programme and translated them into Norwegian. I then took the resulting Norwegian words and machine translated them into Serbian, and then the Serbian words were subsequently translated into Icelandic. I then switched translating machines from World Lingo to Google Translator, just to add a little extra spice. The Icelandic was translated into Dutch, and finally the Dutch was translated back into English. The resulting song - "Flowers, flowers" - is quite pleasing and I will ask you all to get Friday off to a jolly start by joining me in singing a rousing chorus. All together now :

Flowers flowers
give me your reaction.
I'm half crazy,
love you all!
It will not be a modern marriage,
not hired and carts,
but you see a nice place
bicycle built for two!

Theme Thursday : Bicycle (Made For Two)

I know I have been posting a lot of old photographs lately, but when I saw the subject for Theme Thursday this week, I couldn't resist what is perhaps my favourite photograph of my mother and father.

Back in the 1930s, my parents were keen cyclists and each weekend they would go off on their tandem, touring the roads of northern England. My mother always used to tell the story of how, one particular day, she got a little saddle-sore and, when they stopped at a red traffic light, she dismounted to stretch her legs. The lights turned green and my father, not noticing that half the motive power was absent, peddled off into the distant, leaving my poor mother sobbing on the curbside. My father used to claim that he got at least three miles down the road before he noticed any difference at all.

Some thirty years later my brother bought a tandem and I managed to get a photograph of them both with it : although they never rode anywhere on it. By the late 1930s their tandem had given way to motor-bikes - and at one stage a motor-bike and sidecar. In the 1940s, us children came along and my father was confined to the bus, but in the fifties he worked his way up through a motor scooter, an old van and eventually a car.

All this talk of a bicycle made for two reminds me of one of my favourite film clips of all time. It is towards the end of Stanley Kubrick's 2001, and HAL the computer is nearing the end of his time. But why did he sing "Daisy" in that unforgettable way? I have found a short clip which explains why, so, as I ride off into the distance, I will leave you with that.

  

I Like Potato Chips, Moonlight And Motor Trips

Those people who know me are aware that there are very few things in life I like better than potato chips. Alright, maybe a glass of decent beer, but even that is all the better when accompanied by a bag of chips. Moonlight I can take and, strangely enough, as I get older, I am becoming quite fond of motor trips of the kind my parents and their generation used to call "a run" : a rather pointless meander along country lanes.

Where on earth is the old fool going to, I can hear you all asking. Well the answer, as anyone who is familiar with the 1941 film "Babes on Broadway" will already know is "New York in June". The word came through this morning that we had managed to secure a place on next years' Arcadia cruise to the east coast of the USA, the high point of which will be two days in New York. In June. So I give fair notice to all my American friends : I will be wanting recommendations on what to see, where to find decent potato chips, and - particularly important - where to get a decent pint. I can't get the singing of Frank Sinatra out of my mind this morning, how about you?

From now onwards I suspect I am going to become a regular visitor to web sites specialising in New York history such as the Gotham Centre For New York City History. Maybe I will find some old sepia shots of the city, which reminds me that the Linky List for Sepia Saturday 21 is now up : sign up and join in.

Postcard Of The Week : The Hasty Angler Loses The Meaning Of The Proverb

My postcard of the Week comes from the collection put together by my mothers' Uncle Fowler and passed down to me through a process of historical osmosis. The card comes from a series of illustrated proverbs published by the Portsmouth firm J Welch and Sons (JWS). The series gives "visually amusing" interpretations of popular proverbs : the one in question being "The hasty angler loses the fish". The card was addressed to Fowler (Mr. F Beanland) and I suspect it comes from his sister Eliza. I love the intriguing message "Received yours, was ill but better, cannot explain" which hints at so much in so few words.

Checking out the proverb I discover that it is an old Arabian proverb. The website just lists the proverb but doesn't provide a meaning which, in this case, is no great loss : it is not too difficult to appreciate the cack-handedness of the hasty angler. But looking at some of the other proverbs listed on the same page, one is left searching for a meaning. What, for example, can the old French proverb "the have always returns to her form", mean? Or the German "the hasty man was never a traitor"? And what on earth does "the hasty hand catches frogs for fish" imply? Maybe J Welsh and Son covered these proverbs later in the series. Perhaps I should keep an eye out for visually amusing interpretations.