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Wednesday 31 December 2008
Pneumatic New Year
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Labels:
Dust Coats,
Goggles,
Inner Tubes,
Punctured Egos
Wednesday 24 December 2008
Custard Christmas
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Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year!
Labels:
Christmas Custard,
Christmas Holly,
Christmas Jelly
Monday 22 December 2008
Adrift in the Coffee Shop
Friday 19 December 2008
Hark The Herald Angels Sneeze
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It's that time of year when we drop the children off at school early, leaving them aeroplaning round the playground with arms outstretched and hooded coats flying behind only attached by the head. A few parents then make their way across the road to sit for an hour in the Perpendicular St. Peter's church, awaiting the end-of-term carol service. A couple of bathroom heaters on the pillars and some bottled gas slowly warms the cold air. I'm first in, and make for a cosy back pew, but get moved by the headmaster- "You at the back there!". I'm eventually allowed to sit in the south aisle, and park my trilby on the head of Sir Richard Roberts' recumbent 1644 effigy. The vicar comes in, nods, and lifts up his cassock and holds it dangerously out over a flaming gas heater. "Air balloon principle, hot air rising. Keep me going for a bit". I like him. The children troop in in twos, but I can't see Youngest Boy anywhere. Alarmed, I imagine him on his own in the crypt, doing something to the electrics, but, no, there he is. Half way through Away in A Manger I get a sneezing fit. Anyone who's heard me sneeze knows that people two miles away take in their washing, and now teachers clasp alarmed infants to their bosoms and parents dive under altar cloths. The vicar then tells us all a story about Maximus Mouse, with a long-nosed green glove puppet on his hand that stares fiendishly out at the children on the edge of their pews. I really like him. At last it's Oh Come All Ye Faithful, but just as we're getting to the first "Oh come let us adore him" I feel another gigantic sneeze gathering. I reach out and steady myself on Sir Richard's armoured arm.
Labels:
Bottled Gas,
Carols,
Mice,
Uncontrollable Sneezing
Tuesday 16 December 2008
Atten-SHUN!
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Thursday 11 December 2008
Post Post
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Labels:
Armoured Poultry,
Makeshift Signs,
Rural Recycling
Tuesday 9 December 2008
Milton & The Red Elephant
Monday 8 December 2008
Gaulby Goose
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Labels:
Black Pudding,
Foxes,
Gaulby,
Geese,
Roast Spuds
Friday 5 December 2008
Tippers, Roberts & Queen Victoria
Wednesday 3 December 2008
Unexpected Alphabets No 6
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Monday 1 December 2008
Railway Echo No 9
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Thursday 27 November 2008
Four Finger Exercises
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Parking the car in Wisbech, Capital of The Fens, we notice this shop window. It's one of a number in a side street attached to a large rambling shop that still announces on its fascia board that they are drapers, outfitters and purveyors of trunks- which we assumed were the cabin variety rather than lido wear. Around the corner was the main entrance to Evison's, whose paper bag tells of their stock of Ladies' Wear, Knitting Wool, Gent's Clothing, Gent's Outfitting, Bed Linen, Suit Cases and Camping Equipment. And much, much more. We went in because in another window that displayed more gloves than could ever be put to use by an acid bath murderer, I spotted the back of a particularly nice-looking green tin alarm clock. "That's £5.99" I was told by the friendly girl assistant, "But it's so slow a customer brought it back". So you get the idea. Upstairs a friendly 'gent' who looked like he'd come straight from one of my grandfather's Wisbech Zion Baptist sermons, guided me to a huge stack of flat caps in an alcove. As he wrote out a written receipt to give to the girl downstairs (pin number keypad attached to a phone socket nowhere near a counter) he says "We had Ken Dodd in here. Couldn't get rid of 'im". I asked if he was looking for tickling sticks, which will assuredly be in here somewhere.
Monday 24 November 2008
The Mighty Fallen
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Tuesday 18 November 2008
Monochrome Breakfast
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Sunday 16 November 2008
Standard Practice
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Wednesday 12 November 2008
Old Street No 3
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Labels:
Albion Chieftain,
Austin Cambridge,
Midland Red
Tuesday 11 November 2008
Memorandum
This is the eleventh day of the eleventh month, and the nation's focus is here in Whitehall, both today and on the nearest November Sunday morning. Distant hum of traffic, scurrying leaves. Black coats, red poppies, chill breezes teasing flags and white hair alike. The Cenotaph is the physical core of a nation's remembrances, commissioned from Edwin Lutyens in July 1919. The architect won his own battle, against those who wanted a giant cross, with spectacularly complex geometry. There isn't a straight line in it- the verticals meeting at an imaginary point 1,000 feet above the memorial. The horizontals are all arcs of a circle whose centre is 900 feet underground, and author H.V.Morton saw the empty recess in the Portland stone quarry not long after its removal. 'Cenotaph' is Greek for 'empty tomb', a sepulchral monument for bodies elsewhere, and is a word Lutyens learnt from his great gardening friend Gertrude Jekyll. I took this photograph for my little book Lest We Forget, and had a very odd experience. Waiting for the coincidence of sunlight and buses, I looked down to see that the batteries, and indeed battery cover, from my camera were missing. I found them in a neat row on the steps of the monument, and I shall talk more of my encounters with war memorials here in June next year.
Labels:
E.Lutyens,
G.Jekyll,
H.V.Morton,
In Search of England
Monday 10 November 2008
Precious Baines
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Labels:
Baps,
Cottage Loaves,
Floured Aprons,
Jam,
Warm Croissants
Tuesday 4 November 2008
Putting You Through Now Caller
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Friday 31 October 2008
Sping Spong
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My Neighbour Who Knows What I Like ran past my kitchen window in the rain the other day with this box clutched in her hand. I rushed out, delving in my pocket for a fiver. "You can keep your hands off" she said, "This is the Communal Mincer". Apparently it's shared between my neighbours for the odd sheep's head they need to render down, but kept safe in a central location. Memories of course came flooding back of my mother attaching one to the kitchen table, where I would watch in awe as bright pink worms sprouted out the end. If you look under any similar table of this particular vintage the chances are you will see a succession of circular indentations made by the screwing-up of the clamp. One mystery remains. The body of the mincer is blind-embossed with the word 'National'. I have a Price's Household Candles box of similar age, with 'National Wax' on the front. Rationing and short supply during the Second World War gave us National Starch, Milk and Margerine; so I can only suppose that this is a left-over, like a cold Sunday joint, from the same era. An economy issue, or simply a post war buzz word, like 'National Service'. I think I'll get a big bit of cow or similar tomorrow, just so that I can join the Monday morning queue in order to start mincing about.
Thursday 30 October 2008
Mr.Evans' Poppies
As my poppy was pinned to my overcoat this week, I thought of this book. Arriving in W.H.Smith's in 1979 I think it was the fastest book purchase I ever made, sweeping it up and carrying it to the till without breaking step. The best £1.25 I ever spent, it introduced me to the poems of Wilfred Owen, but, especially for me, to the poetry of Edward Thomas, killed at the Battle of Arras in 1917. Thomas wrote not so much about the soldiers' experience, but more of the England (particularly the countryside) they had left behind. And it was this cover that did it. The photograph is by the late Tony Evans, who, over and above any other photographer, influenced the way I look at things. I met him briefly in the 70s, and it was his attention to detail and the obsessiveness of his fabulous images that had me scrabbling for my first Pentax. At first glance this is just a picture of poppies, but can you imagine how difficult they were to photograph in a studio? Anyone who has ever picked the flower knows that it dies virtually instantly in your hand, so, from what I remember, Tony dug a whole clump up, roots and all, and transported them back to his studio with his assistant watering them in the back of the van. And that black is the studio background. Penguin Books still use it, albeit not nearly as well printed, but it's still one of the best shots of poppies I know. More superb Evans' poppies, on location this time, can be seen in The Flowering of Britain and Flora Britannica by Richard Mabey.
Tuesday 28 October 2008
Beer & Bibles
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Monday 27 October 2008
Early Communion
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After the last two cough-inducing posts I have been advised to get out in the fresh air. So how about a ruined church in Norfolk at nine o'clock in the morning? Norfolk specialises in redundant churches, many falling to pieces in the middle of fields with just the odd crow or owl for company. This treasure is to be found down a cul-de-sac below the famous Appleton Water Tower on the Sandringham Estate, a drive down through a farmyard to where sheep graze around the iron fencing. Appleton church has a 12th century round tower, now covered in ivy and built in local pebbles, flint, brick and the carrstone that runs in a narrow band next to the coast of this part of West Norfolk. There are 179 standing round towers in England, of which about 140 are in Norfolk. They are assumed to be easier to build than square towers, but they're not. It's just a style thing. So here is Appleton, forgotten, but not lonely. You open a gate in the iron railings and wade chest-high through vegetation to where this porch is ablaze with colour in the autumn light. The next time you're here, turn off the coastal runs and get the Ordnance map out of the glove box. Within a very short distance of just this one ruin are two more locations marked in Old English black letter: 'Church (rems of)'.
Thursday 23 October 2008
Ten Weights Please
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Just a quick postscript to yesterday's Park Drive post, after receiving a request from Ron Combo asking what the Weights packet looked like. This is quite an early version, when brand names were often put in inverted commas for emphasis. Or emphysema. The design owes much to the first Weights packaging which was an envelope containing cigarettes sold by weight. Hence the name. The classic design pictured here was superceded by a pale beige pack with no excess decoration, and was the worse for it. A brand now forgotten, but immortalised in John Betjeman's Pot Pourri from a Surrey Garden: "Coco-nut smell of the broom, and a packet of Weights / Press'd in the sand."
Wednesday 22 October 2008
A Stroll Down Park Drive
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Park Drive cigarettes were Ulster manufacturer Thomas Gallaher's response in 1897 to the popularity of Woodbines. Cigarette Land had quirky regional preferences, and cheapo Park Drives were taken up as the fag-of-choice by the men of the Midlands. This was the cigarette I saw covertly cupped in the hands of road roller drivers, clamped in the mouths of hod carriers as they ascended ladders and, in my case, seen left burning on the edges of studio lightboxes and wash basins alike. In Cigarette Pack Art, Chris Mullen talks of the pack design as the most anarchic of the three snout contenders vying for the popular vote (the other two being Woodbines and Player's Weights). "...the swellings of the letters too extrovert in behaviour...". Will packaging archivists of the future talk in such terms of the Francis Bacon style photographs of diseased offal that now grace cigarette packs? "Sovereign upped the stakes with a graphic disembowelling". I love this little blank club card, and the thought of it being used to save for Christmas fripperies down at the newsagent. On the back there's an ad. for Manikin Cigars and a space for writing 'Goods Laid Aside'. Inside, above the columns for cash entries and signatures, it just says 'Park Drive For Pleasure'. Exactly.
Saturday 18 October 2008
The Antidote for Strictly Come Dancing
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I make no apology for indulging in a shameless plug for Mr. Meades' first DVD collection. He was very generous to me in both words and spirit by taking time (and a case of claret I think) to write a highly original preface to More from Unmitigated England, so I owe him one. Any of you out there who is kind enough to read this blog and its associated branch lines will appreciate these eleven beautifully eccentric films. As A.A.Gill wrote in The Sunday Times "Brilliant- even at his worst he's funnier, cleverer and sharper than anyone else on TV". I won't laboriously take you through every film, but if by some extraordinary quirk of fate you can only watch one, then my fervent recommendation would be for you to sit down with a metaphorical crate of Strongs of Romsey ale and glue yourself to Father to The Man (2007). Fifty minutes of corrugated iron, biscuits, Shell Guides (only Meades can get away with saying they were edited by "John Betjeman- the topographer not the poet") a Morris Minor Traveller in the obligatory bucolic green and a black stick standing-in for an eel. And always the buildings being given the Meades once-over, including the Great Disappearing Trick of the Netley Hospital outside Southampton. So sharpen your pencils and get that Christmas Wants List up the chimney.
Wednesday 15 October 2008
A Spoonful of Sugar
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Monday 13 October 2008
Morning Prayer
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Wednesday 8 October 2008
Old Street No 2
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You can still see it behind the trees, on the left once you've gone by the Stilton turn, southbound on the A1(M). The old road still passes right in front of this water tower, and my attention has always been drawn to it because somebody in the car would inevitably say "That's where Catweazle lives". A lone survivor, it once served a wartime airfield, a landmark doubtless watched out for by the anxious crews of crippled B17 Flying Fortresses swaying down to the runway. The 1943 aerodrome would have been called Conington, after the village it completely engulfed, but to avoid confusion with Coningsby in Lincolnshire the neighbouring village name was pressed into service by the USAAF. Their 457th Bomb Group arrived at Glatton in January 1944, and you can read all about their incredible missions here. One eerie postscript to Glatton, (part of which is now Peterborough Airport), is that the Second-in-Command, Lt.Col. William F.Smith, was the pilot who accidentally flew his B25 into the Empire State Building on a foggy July morning in 1945. It's worth taking the old road if you're ever near Conington, just so that you can stare up at this rusting tower and take a few minutes to remember the acts of sheer bravery and heroism that once started and finished at this aerodrome. There's a memorial on the grass just in front of the rapidly enveloping wood.
Tuesday 7 October 2008
Hard Hats, Soft Heads
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Monday 6 October 2008
Kitchen Confidential 2
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You know how we're always fascinated by other people's pantries? Well, I am. The covert look to see if there's any old brands knocking about, whether or not the owner is still hanging on to any Crosse & Blackwell's Mushroom Ketchup, whether they've got any guilty tins of All Day Breakfasts. If this looks like the contents of kitchen cupboards have just been thrown in a heap in the corner, you'd be right. This is the result of half the walls of Only Daughter's old kitchen being knocked down by a sledgehammer yesterday lunchtime so that two Men Who Know What They're Doing could put in an RSJ to hold the bathroom up. (One of them doing it with a fag on, excellent.) And so this jumble of general kitchen paraphernalia naturally caught my eye. The randomness of it all. The camcorder in the cutlery drawer, the hurried spent teabags (she'll kill me). That's it really. Just glad to see the staples of Colmans and Oxo are in there.
Wednesday 1 October 2008
Round the Bend
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'Ere we go again' as the earwig said as he fell off the shelf. These crass, cheap plastic arrows recently appeared overnight like sprouting fungi at a junction near Ashley Towers. Phew, I'm so glad they've put them up, now I can stop driving straight off the road and into the field every time I come down here. The yellow jackets have so obviously been out with clipboards and biros to see where they can spend some money before a budgetary review. Any excuse that Leicestershire County Council gives about signs being put up as a result of what they call 'accidents and near misses' must be taken with a big pinch of road salt. Ever since motoring began they've never deemed this particular bend sufficiently nerve-racking to warrant even an ordinary sign on the approaches. I thought I'd ring the council's Freephone 'Roadline' to find out more. Apparently they only put new signs up if the police give them records of mishaps, real or imaginary, or we the public lobby for them. I won't bore you with all that passed between us, (I got the impression they were keeping me talking whilst they traced the call, like in The Bill), but one quote from them is worth repeating. "We don't care if we completely wreck the countryside if it saves lives". Oh. Right. That's OK then.
Sunday 28 September 2008
Puff The Magic Mushrooms
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Friday 26 September 2008
Breakfast With Percy
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Monday 22 September 2008
Tinplate Saturdays
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Friday 19 September 2008
Chez Moi
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Of course those of you who are more alert and clear-headed than I am this morning will have spotted that this is in fact one of the fairground attractions at Blackpool's Pleasure Beach, shot yesterday afternoon on my first visit to this Lancastrian resort, having previously narrowly avoided it on my previous journeys to Fleetwood and Lytham St.Anne's. I could talk at much length about what I found, and probably will, but suffice it to say I could have stayed in here all day amongst the roller coaster and ghost train screams, and that sugary scent of candy floss. Roll up! Roll up!
Tuesday 16 September 2008
Behind the Pig-Sty
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Monday 15 September 2008
Old Street No 1
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Friday 12 September 2008
Badge Engineering
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Labels:
Astras,
Crestas,
King John's Dodgy Mates,
Masked Balls,
Vauxhalls,
Victors
Wednesday 10 September 2008
Underground Particles
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Labels:
Chalybeate Wells,
Fountains,
Spas,
Springs,
Water Troughs
Tuesday 9 September 2008
Hedge Fund
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Labels:
Autumn Fruits,
Swallowed Whole,
Woodland Poisons
Thursday 4 September 2008
Park Life
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Well, the shop and terraced houses have gone, replaced by 70's flats, but once inside Maryon Park the curious enigmatic feeling, given-off so powerfully in the film, is virtually intact. Again, all that we heard was the moving of the bushes and trees, and the chock-chock of people playing tennis behind the wire fences of the courts. One is normally disappointed when visiting the locations of favourite films, but I defy anyone who has immersed themselves in Blow-Up not to be moved by Maryon Park. The only trouble is, I got a thorn stuck into my thumb, which last night also started to enlarge. The image is courtesy of WilkoFilms.
Sunday 31 August 2008
Poundsworth of Ektachrome
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