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I used to visit this town often, but can't honestly remember this market place. I know there's a propensity to radically alter town centres, but it would have been a bit much to pull down this fifteenth century half-timbered building. Need a clue? The town hosts a department store whose van livery adorns one of the most expensive pre-war Dinky Toys ever sold at auction. One thing's certain, you wouldn't wander about here now with your shopping basket, in and out of the traffic. Of course someone will now tell me it's a traffic-free zone.
Caught in the headlights returning home on Tuesday night. I've never seen this sign before, and can only assume it was meant, along with a others strung out down the lane, as a safety instruction to workmen. Except that neither roadworks or roadmen were in evidence. And so the mind starts playing games about what one's supposed to do, and where does one find a banksman at this time of night. And do I have to reverse, or is that backwards thinking?
What can I say? Or as Only Daughter said on the phone at half past eight this morning "Never mind 'Where's That Then' what about 'Where Are You Then?'". But how is it possible that a brand new computer, installed last July, can just suddenly decide to not do anything? Aren't they supposed to mend themselves or something, apologising profusedly whilst they're doing it? Anyway, that's my excuse for the extreme tardiness of this week's puzzle picture. Great shot though, ain't it? From a new discovery, a 1948 book photographed by Val Doone (no, really). And of a place I'm not really very familiar with, having rushed about it at eight o'clock on a summer's morning and driven off. I must return.
I think that the first time I heard of the kiwi, or indeed saw its picture, was on the eponymous boot polish tin. Although not English in origin, the very look of this particular tin (my guess is 1952-ish) is so redolent of newspaper laid out on the kitchen table and a row of shoes lined-up waiting for my father's robust military applications of polish. And the subsequent buffing-up with a yellow duster accompanied by either a Player's on the go or his tongue sticking out for some reason (like he did when he drove his car). William Ramsay first made the polish in 1906, in Australia oddly enough, but his wife was a New Zealander and so he named his product after the endemic flightless bird of her native country. Now it accounts for two thirds of all shoe polish sales in the world, and is accredited for popularising the kiwi as the country's national symbol. I thank fellow designers Philip Amis and Peter Denmark for giving me this empty tin in 1975. "We think you ought to have this", they said solemnly.
A few years ago I turned up here early on a hot summer's evening. Folk were cooking suppers on boats, and the strains of the Archer's signature tune came over the still water. In fact it was very like this 1958 scene, except the boats were more fibreglass and plastic than wood. But the little drainage mill was there, spreading its sails like filigree wings against a deep blue sky. So, where is it, and for extra toast the names of the two rivers that join here.
As an addendum to the last post, I give you The Wheel & Compass public house at Weston by Welland. Not just because they serve an excellent pint of Banks or Pedigree but because of its connection to the railway nearby. As you can see, it has a slightly odd upper storey that is obviously an addition. Originally this was a two storey ironstone pub with a thatched roof. But the arrival of surveyors in the adjoining fields in the mid-nineteenth century meant that life was to be as upturned as the Welland Valley pastures that surround it. An extra storey was added to the pub as a long dormitory for navvies working on the line. One can only imagine the scenes here on a Friday night. The drunkenness, the brawling, the lusting after women. Actually....
It looks plain and ordinary, a house out in the countryside, probably built in the 1970s. Until one looks more closely at the right hand side. Ignore the replacement windows and a little stone built cottage reveals itself. It's just down the road from my village, alone in the fields near a pub we frequently find ourselves in- The Wheel & Compass at Weston-by-Welland. The river is running at the back of the house, but this was a level crossing keeper's dwelling on a lane that crosses the valley from Weston to Slawston Hill. One of many on the line of this branch of the London & North Western Railway (oddly for this part of the world), and to the right of this picture the tracks kept close company with the willow-fringed Welland through Ashley station and on through Rockingham and Seaton, thence to Stamford or, leaving the river, to Peterborough. It closed many years ago, but just off to the left of the photograph is a wood yard on an old junction (soon to be blogged) where they once made pit props and railwaymen tended allotments. It's still open, and this is where I get my logs. A chap working here still remembers steam locomotives snorting and shuffling by as they negotiated the steeper gradients. It's still easy to imagine that on a cold snowy morning, a line of intermittent white smoke drifting off across the valley.
I used to visit this town often, but can't honestly remember this market place. I know there's a propensity to radically alter town centres, but it would have been a bit much to pull down this fifteenth century half-timbered building. Need a clue? The town hosts a department store whose van livery adorns one of the most expensive pre-war Dinky Toys ever sold at auction. One thing's certain, you wouldn't wander about here now with your shopping basket, in and out of the traffic. Of course someone will now tell me it's a traffic-free zone.
