Friday, June 17, 2016

The quiet coach

Have you been in the "quiet" of a long distance train recently and wondered what "quiet" is supposed to mean?
There are signs up indicating that mobile phones should not be used, as it is only a symbol, no words, no one seems to take any notice. There are invariably three or more mobile phone conversations going on.  

Apart from that there are the meetings.  Four suited individuals sitting around one of the tabled seats holding a business conference and on one occasion complete with power point presentation. in the quiet coach!

Then there are the small groups of ladies having a coffee morning, or the family groups discussing an upcoming gathering complete with a run down on who should be invited and who not.

There really appears to be no good reason for continueing with the fiction of a quiet coach unless either travellers are going to respect it or the train staff are going to enforce.it.



Sunday, March 6, 2016

Lost London

London is probably one of the most written about cities in the world, but for many parts of old London there is no record of how some streets looked in the past.  Even in the centre of the city and the more famous areas there are no records of what they used to look like.  If this is true of the well known  parts of London, how much more so is it the case with the more remote or what had been the less salubrious parts.  Working class east end is recorded as images of the people and "typical" slums, but the streets themselves are rarely shown or named.

A short list of the streets I am interested in will give an example.

For West Street Soho (or Seven Dials)  before the building of the St. Martins and Ambassador theatres there is no response for images in a search engine.  So what was it like before? Were the buildings at the end of the street demolished to make way for these theatres or were they converted?.  What used to be the West Street Chapel; is still there but were all the buildings like that or was it a mish mash of different heights and sizes?  We should be able to tell that but we cannot because there appears to be no description of the road visually or textually.

The Old Street end of City Road, Finsbury does not appear to have been caught on camera before the war time bombing disposed of it.

The tenement buildings in Manston Street, Bethnal Green did not succumb to the bombs but went by way of the demolishers to make make way for new buildings, but no one recorded them before they came down.

Small back streets all over from east to west, north to south have disapeared with no record of them apart from on old survey maps to show that they were there, or perhaps as a coloured mark on Booth's Poverty Map.

Too late now.



Sunday, January 10, 2016

Not a stunt rider


No this  is not a stunt rider.  This manoeuvre was part of the normal motorcycle training for National Service Military Policemen in the 1950s.

The first week of training was spent in a field at Aldershot learning to control the bike before we were allowed out on the road.  First day just going round and round the field trying not to fall off for those who had never ridden a bike before. But of course the first thing was to learn how to kickstart the damn thing without the kickback breaking your leg.
 During the week we progressed in our control  of the bike by standing on the seat and the rear pannier, sitting side-saddle and sitting on the petrol tank with our legs over the handlebars. This was before we were even allowed to move out of first gear! Needless to say, the bikes had to be cleaned at the end of every day before the evening meal.

By the end  of the week we were regarded as being competent enough to be allowed out on the road.
This was not always the case, because in reality we had not learned any roadcraft nor properly when it was appropriate to change gear. Of course it all came together with practice, riding every day for quite long periods in different traffic conditions.

One of the highlights of about the third week was a day spent doing cross country riding  at a scrambling track.  This was quite competitive and it was the first time that we were encouraged to go as fast as we could. 

Once having completed the motorcycle section of our course we then went on to the much less exciting business of learning to drive a 15cwt truck.  How boring by comparison. 

 




Thursday, January 7, 2016

Stop the world I want to get off.

Lots of older people are just grumpy old men or grumpy old women.  Some though are just bemused by the changes which have taken place in just a short space of fifty years.  Are we still living in the same world as we were then, it is so different that some of us suspect we have been hijacked by aliens.
 Is science fiction fact?  Are the teenagers of today people in the same way as we were when we were young or are they from a different planet? Or even a different solar system?  They don't have pointed ears but there is multi coloured spiky hair, strange patterns on their skins, all kinds of of hardware dangling from their ears or noses,short haired girls and long haired boys with skinny legs with toes that point towards each other instead of straight forward.

There is rampant puberty from the age of ten but young people are "kids" until they are 21 or more.  
But then suddenly parliament is full of 30 something's running the country, most of whom have never had a proper job. 

Technological change is normal over such a time span and because this has happened gradually most people accept the changes and adapt.  But there are still changes forced onto the population which many older people do not want.  Who decided that "music" was compulsory in shopping centres, even in the toilets?  And why does 90 per cent of the photos on FB contain a tongue? Who changed fast bowlers on the cricket pitch to quick? Why is text speak everywhere and not just in texts? Who is able to keep up with all those abbeviations? 

There are all these improvements but still no cure for the common cold.  No cures for cancers either that work for ever sufferer.  More money spent on subsidies for grouse shooting than on flood defences. A National Health Service which is National only in name.  Charities which spend more  of the money collected in paying CEOs and administration than on the job they were created for..

Anthony Newley surely could not have realised how much his song would resonate in the future.


Friday, January 1, 2016

What National Service taught us.

There used to be a phrase about National Service and what it taught young men. "I learned to drive and I learned to scive>"

Neither of these subjects were covered by the Army Education Corps.

I did my National service in the army and the AEC sergeants  came along to give talks on various subjects, most of which I can't remember. A lot of these sergeants were not much older than us, much like some secondary school teachers today.

On one occasion there was a session where we each had to give a talk lasting three minutes on any subject we liked except sex, religion or politics.

Well there was the usual set pieces from some of the lads, my job, my home town, my football club and so on. There were one or two quite well educated chaps who were able talk quite easily about films, art,  music and so on, but most were a bit mumbly and bashful.

 Well I was quite prepared for this so when it was my turn I walked up to the front and said  " We have been told that we can't talk about sex, politics or religion, I don't know about anything else, and I don't even know much about sex come to that "  and went and sat down.

The education sergeant who was normally quite easy going, went ballistic.

"Back up here. Three minutes so start talking and keep talking till I tell you to stop."

I will admit that I had thought about  this and said that my topic was "Forbidden subjects. "  The Sergeant said "Your three minutes hasnt started yet but watch your step.

I kept going, and don't remember the whole spiel but I managed to include the words, religion, sex and politics about a couple of dozen times each. But only in the context of when and where it was not allowed to be talked about, like you couldn't talk about sex in church and there wouldn't be much point in talking about religion whilst having sex and so on.

I managed my three minutes without trouble as once I was in my stride of mixing and matching I started getting shouted suggestions from the other lads.  It was hilarious and not what the sergeant had in mind.

 I am not sure if they had any more of those talk sessions after that. 

Tuesday, December 22, 2015

Curry without chips

It may be difficult to believe in these days of multicultural cooking, but I had never tasted curry until I was nineteen years old.  Despite having been born near the London docks with a spice warehouses nearby, foreign foods were not eaten in our house, if you dont count bagels and soused herring.

Back then, ending an evening in the pub with a curry or a vindaloo or whatever was not that common. I had not been to a Chinese or Indian restaurant or any other kind of restaurant for that matter apart from the fish restaurant attached to a fish and chip shop.  I am not even sure if Manzes Eel and Pie  shop qualified as a restaurant either.

So I came to like curry quite by chance. During my national service I was stationed in a small unit near Suez and the military police camp was shared with a similarly small unit of Mauritians.  Our unit's cook was replaced by a young catering Corps chap who had not actually learned to cook.  This has come about because he was a professional footballer, an apprentice with Glasgow Celtic  so had spent all his training time playing football instead of learning catering.

His early efforts at cooking for fifteen men were a disaster and more often than not were a wate of good food so that we were often still hungry even when we had eaten.

I was friendly with a couple of the Mauritian military police and would wander over to their side of the compound and scrounge a meal.  It seemed to be a curry every day.  I was welcomed into the kitchen and a watched the meals being prepared and gradually learned how it was done.  Curry is a simple meal really, especially Mauritian style.  Just some meat, mostly chicken or lamb, some dried fruit, plenty of tomatoes an apple and mango chutney with generous spoonfuls of curry powder.
What could be simpler.

Eventually we sent our Scottish cook over to learn how it was done and that became his speciality.


Sunday, September 6, 2015

A visit to Malta

In January 1945 HMS Whimbrel visited Malta  as part of a Royal Navy flotilla which was in training to go to the Pacific, The war in Europe was nearly over but the war for the Royal Navy and its crews was far from over, it was to be another year before they returned home.

Whilst moored in the Grand Harbour or adjacent to the bomb damaged Royal Naval Dockyard Dad  would have seen the church of Cospicua sitting just above, opposite Valletta. He did not know that this was the church in which his Maltese grandparents had been married in 1858 and  in which his mother had been baptised in 1862
Cospicua Church amid ruined houses 1942

The church had almost miraculously escaped unscathed from the enemy bombings of 1942 although many of the houses in the vicinity had been reduced to rubble.
Matti Grima Street, Bormla

If he had gone ashore to visit the church and if he had known, he could have walked up the stepped street alongside the church and a few streets away would have seen the house that his mother and grandmother had lived in an and where his great grandmother died.  But he knew nothing of this, as although he knew that his mother had been born in Malta, he had no idea which part of this small island she belonged to.  It was ironic that he was so close to her birthplace and was not aware of it.

Whilst at Malta there was shore leave for the crews and no doubt he would have visited some of the churches to attend mass, and perhaps chance may have taken him to the church of St. Paul Shipwrecked in the centre of the city where his grandfather had been baptised in 1835.