Monthly Archives: October 2017

The Carus Brothers at War (Part 1)

I just took out a subscription to an internet newspaper archive last week and the first task I set myself was searching for some family history. With one branch of the family it has come up trumps.

You may have heard some of this before as I have mentioned it and have used the photographs before. Sorry for the repetition but with new information, and it being exactly 101 years to the day since his death, I thought it was worth another post.

I have many common names in the family but am fortunate in having one branch with the name of Carus. To make things better, they come from Clitheroe – a small town with its own newspaper.

Harry Carus (1887-1916) was my great grandfather. When I started researching him I knew that he was one of a large family, that he’s on the Clitheroe war memorial and that he left a wife and three daughters when he died. He was a chapel-goer, Sunday school teacher and member of a self-improvement club called the PSA (I believe that’s Peaceful Sunday Afternoon). He joined up as a volunteer and, on his last leave before going to France, laughed when his irate wife discovered that the three girls had found, and mostly eaten, the special cake baked for his last visit.

It had been on a top shelf in the kitchen and my grandmother had climbed up the lower shelves like a ladder before passing down to my Auntie Peggie – second in age and partner in crime.

The Commonwealth War Graves Commission gives the information that he died on 10.10.16. He was a Corporal, aged 28, belonged to “B” Battery of the 180th Brigade
Royal Field Artillery. He was the son of H. A. and Margaret Carus, of 27, West View, Clitheroe, Lancashire and husband of the late Ellenor Carus.

This was during the latter, rainy, part of the Somme battle and was probably every bit as hellish as we imagine the First World War to be.

He has no known grave and is commemorated on the Thiepval Memorial, the iconic arched memorial that lists the names of 72,396 Somme casualties who also have no known grave. In a later post I may well come back to the phrase “no known grave” as it’s an interesting subject in itself.

As more details became available from the release of records I was able to learn a little more about him. He had four brothers and two sisters, worked for a grocer and his last known address is still standing. I have visited it using Google Maps.

The army medal rolls show that he went to France on 28.11.15 and is entitled to the 1914-15 Star, War Medal and Victory Medal. They spell his name “Carns”. His family was also given a bronze commemorative plaque and a scroll. On the subject of names, his wife was Eleanor, so even CWGC aren’t perfect.

When I searched the newspapers I was able to find the memorial notices posted a year after his death, and pin down a couple more family addresses. The family was still together in those days – the remarriage and death of Eleanor and the separation of the girls was still to come, as Harry’s death continued to affect them in the coming years.

I was also able to find a mention of his death in the “25 Years Ago” column, when it was noted that he had been in a gun pit with six others when a shell landed in it and killed five of them. Presumably this was what had been contained in a letter at the time of his death – my grandmother had always said he was hit by a shell that killed him instantly and left nothing for burial. It’s nice to have corroboration but I’m not sure it’s true, it was just what people wrote home to parents and widows to hide the truth.

That, in a nutshell, is the life and death of Harry Carus.

Roadside Poppies

Some Thoughts From Last Week

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Another week already, and I have a list of subjects to discuss from last week.

How about the kitchen gadget that tells you if you’re poor? It’s not another app, and it’s nothing to do with online banking.

According to one of the Mums on Mumsnet, it’s a tin opener. If you own one it means you are too poor to afford tins with ring-pull tops. If you really are rich, why are you buying cans at all? If I was rich I’d have domestic staff, so here’s one for Mumsnet – if you’re doing your own cooking you aren’t rich.

It also seems, from reading around the subject, that some users of Food Banks need ring pull cans as they don’t have can openers, either through poverty or lack of kitchen drawers (as in sleeping rough).

However, for me that’s only the first in a chain of questions. Is it just me or are tin openers getting more flimsy? I’ve taken several back but it gets to a point where I just can’t be bothered. I suppose that’s the idea – they are so cheap that most people would rather be ripped off than go to the trouble of taking something back.

Pizzas with sweetcorn and pineapple from tins

I have a good one at home. We’ve had it so long that I can’t remember where it came from. But ones I bought for the farm kitchen lasted months at best and one only lasted for one can. It wasn’t as if we used them much, maybe once a fortnight to open sweetcorn and pineapple for pizza toppings.

Finally – mixed news. Our court case about the attempted burglary has taken place and the malefactor has been convicted and handed a custodial sentence. This is good, because we feel like he’s been punished. However, it doesn’t get us back the £70 we had to spend on repairing the window.

CSI van investigating the scene of the crime.

The other problem is that I’m not sure that jail is the best place for him. Someone who is so far down the pile that he resorts to robbing allotments really needs hope and retraining, not time in jail.

Friday. Guess where I am?

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OK, so I’m actually writing it on Sunday, but cast your mind back – where have I been on the last dozen Fridays?

Yes, in the Mencap garden again, drinking tea. It was nice and warm in the sun, though chilly in the shade.

There were Great Tits on the newly erected feeder, though not after I raised the camera. Same goes for the Robins singing in the trees, the Magpies perching in high places. A flock of about 60 birds kept flying round the main building – Julia has a theory they are after the warmth.

I had a typo in there for a moment – Magpires. They are post-apocalyptic blood-sucking crows.

So, in the garden, drinking tea, trying to photograph birds and spelling badly. It’s not how I imagined my life developing, but there are worse places to be.

Sumac and Sedum

Sumac and Sunlight

Marigolds at Mencap Garden

Julia has given me instructions and I am now gathering my equipment as next week we will be assembling the example nest box and marking them up for the group to build.

Saturday started earlier than usual, as Julia was filling in for someone. I then went to visit a jeweller and bought ingredients for the evening meal. These are two different activities, and an example of sloppy writing. I visited the jeweller and then went to the supermarket to buy the ingredients for our evening meal.

It will be Julia’s birthday soon and I need to find a present. So far I’m not having much success.

In the afternoon I went to visit my Dad with Number One son. We did a jigsaw, played Beetle and lost to my sister at Snakes and Ladders.

Does Number One son realise this will be his destiny, I wonder?

On Friday (moving back in time again) I watched Dr Phil on Countdown. He was talking about measures we should take to ensure continuing good health. The mnemonic to remember is clangers. This year has shown I can easily slip into bad habits so I’m going to ensure that I don’t do the same again. If it means I have to be nice to people I suppose it’s a sacrifice worth making.

It’s very much along the lines of Green Care, Green Gym, Blue Sky Hospital or whatever else you want to call it. You get out, meet people, exercise, learn and end up better for it.

Fly on Nasturtium Leaf

Marigold and dew

In the garden

Back at home (Saturday evening) we reheated the casserole and ate it with samphire. This was, as they warn, salty, but also crispy and fresh. It reminded me of a time when I was young and broke. I picked samphire when camping, boiled it and ate an entire mess tin of it to save money. Today that would be a disaster, but my youthful digestion had no problem.

It was a bit too salty for my taste at the time and it has taken me 40 years to eat it again. I was surprised by how much I enjoyed it this time. round.

A Rare Wolves Football Badge

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Yesterday a dealer asked me if I’d take a look through a couple of bags of odds and ends . It’s a tempting offer when your natural habitat is the margins of the antiques trade.

There were some interesting bits in the bags, including a couple of bits I wanted for myself. I suppose I could have declared a liking for the badge in the picture and bought it for a fiver, but I’m both honest and an idiot. Honest is good because, apart from the obvious, you get given bags of interesting stuff to look through. An idiot, because I’m poor as a result.

It looked to me like a pre-war football badge. I’ve had a few, mainly picked up cheap, from dealers. I’d never cheat anyone by telling them they were worthless, but if a dealer wants to put one out for £5 I’ll happily hand over the money.

We checked it up on the internet and it’s a badge done for Wolverhampton Wanderers fans for the 1939 FA Cup Final. Portsmouth won 4-1 and held the cup until 1946 due to a pressing away fixture against Germany that took a few years to clear up.

Wolves went on to win it in 1949 and 1960, making their record four wins in eight finals.

The badge is currently making £21 on ebay. My professional opinion is that it will make at least £40 and, if you have two keen collectors after it, possibly twice as much. If it does, I will be right and people will think I’m an expert. And if I’m wrong it will be the fault of the auction for failing to attract the right quality of bidder.

See, it’s easy to be an antiques dealer – you just have to say things in the right way and you will never be wrong.

Thoughts of Mayors and Medals

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I thought it was time for more from the junk box. We’ve covered coronation medals and other commemoratives so here is something a bit different.

This is a fund raising medal issued by the Borough of Newark to raise funds for the families of soldiers who fought in what they refer to as the Transvaal War, now generally known as the Boer War in the UK, though they have other names for it in South Africa. I won’t discuss the Boer War here, as it will take a lot of space and reflects no credit on the British.

As you can see, it is one step beyond the junk box and appears to have been buried at some point. It also looks like someone has attempted to put a hole through it at the top, probably to use it as a watch fob or wear it on a ribbon.

Newark Fund Raising Medal 1900 (Reverse)

They originally cost a shilling, with silver ones costing five shillings and a case costing sixpence extra. There were 12 pennies in a shilling and 20 shillings in £1, in case you are a decimal baby.

As you can see from a careful look at the picture, they were made by Vaughtons of Birmingham.

It is the local equivalent of the Absent Minded Beggar medal, part of a massive Boer War fundraising effort.

The war served as something of a wake-up call to the British, when they got the runaround from a bunch of farmers. This meant that we called for volunteers and found that one in three was rejected due to the effects of poor diet. This would lead to the Education (Provision of Meals) Act (1906) because properly fed citizens were needed for the services. I would have thought it was counter-productive as fatter soldiers make bigger targets, but I suppose they need to be strong enough to march and carry things.

There’s a picture of F H Appleby here, with a truly inspiring soup strainer moustache, with further details here. He really was a busy man.

The spiritual descendent of this medal is the current Newark Patriotic Fund, which helps ex-servicemen and their families.

Yesterday, I forgot the Title

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Number One Son cooked tonight, so there are no photos of the food. By the time I got back from picking Julia up from work (tonight being her late night) he had it ready and it seemed rude not to eat it right away.

It was, for those of you who like detail, a steak and shallot pie from Keelham Farm Shop, Skipton. The pastry was good and crispy and there were good chunks of meat in it. For my taste it was a bit over-salted (which seemed to come from the pastry) and shallots are always a bit too sweet. It was still good though.

We’re having the samphire tomorrow.

We had the orange and chilli marmalade this morning. Julia likes it. I’m dubious. I’m not sure there’s a gap in the market for a marmalade that slips down nicely but leaves a burning sensation in your throat.

Did I mention the rhubarb flavored chocolate yesterday? It was quite nice, and very Yorkshire, but it didn’t make it through the night. In fact, when I check, I notice it didn’t even make it into the blog.

The day started with a trip to work, with traffic jams and many thoughts (mainly homicidal). It progressed (if that is the word) to more traffic jams, a trip to the sorting office to pick up a parcel, and a blood test. It only took two attempts this week. I’m hoping I pass as they have currently reduced the interval to a week and weekly blood tests are a bit limiting.

It all turned out to be a bit of an anti-climactic day in the end. Even the threatening clouds didn’t turn into the threatened storm.

At least, when I got home, I had parcels from ebay to open.

I really must start getting things organised.

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I went to Leeds today. It rained. And to make things more depressing I trusted the satnav, which never ends well. If I ever enter Mastermind my specialist subject could well be “Being lost on the Ring Road in Leeds”.

I’m home now and watching The Apprentice. It gives me no hope for the future. If I was the producer I would rewrite it as a horror movie and kill one every week in a horrible, ironic manner. The one selected from tonight’s show, to make and sell burgers, would be in serious trouble if I had access to an industrial-sized mincer.

To be honest, if I was in charge I’d feed the lot of them through it, including Lord Sugar and Baroness Brady. I give them their full titles because I know, from reading his book, that he considers it important, even if most of us find the current honours system a bit of an embarrassment.

Fair play to him though, if you excel in your field you deserve an honour. Not quite sure what field the Amstrad email phone was a leader in, but the principle is sound.

I like Claude Littner, I’d let him have his own series. Well, with my plan for the rest of the cast you’d have quite a few weeks to fill in.

OLYMPUS DIGITAL CAMERA

After leaving Leeds we went to Skipton and visited a farm shop. We bought rhubarb coulis, samphire, marmalade with orange and chilli and a big steak pie. I will try to take pictures tomorrow if I have time after eating. It’s a big pie and will take some shifting.

Today’s photos were snatched during a dry few minutes. Sorry there are no better ones.

Things I Think About in the Car (Part 2)

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Seventeen – Test Cricket, paint drying, beard growing. Rank them in order of thrill.

Eighteen – would spreading a baseball game over five days improve it?

Nineteen – World Series. USA and Canada. Really?

Twenty – that bus was close.

Twenty One – I hate this junction.

Twenty Two – oh look, the rugby club.

Twenty Three – we had some good times there.

Twenty Four – I wonder if I will ever have grandchildren?

Twenty Five – I wonder if they will play rugby?

Twenty Six – where does all this traffic come from?

Twenty Seven – why did he just do that?

Twenty Eight – how many people realise D H Lawrence’s parents got married there? You’d have thought they married in Eastwood. How many people have heard of D H Lawrence these days?

Twenty Nine – will there ever be a TV quiz question on Nottingham’s links to the von Richthofen family? I could answer that.

Thirty – I wonder what Kylie Minogue is doing these days.

Thirty One – why did I buy a house so near so many schools?

Thirty two – why do parents park dangerously when dropping kids at school? If you want them run over why not just make them walk and save yourself a job every morning?

Thirty three – I wonder if any of these parents have ever had the school ring them to tell them they just dropped their kid off on a training day?

Thirty four – if I am going to blog my thoughts, should I leave that one out because it makes me look like a bad parent?

Thirty five – nearly there now.

Thirty six – why do women say “What are you planning on doing today?” when they really mean “I have a list of jobs for you.”?

Thirty seven – I wonder if I’ll get away with blogging this garbage? Maybe I should re-write it with deeper thoughts.

Thirty eight – I’ll put “stream of consciousness” in the Tags. That should do it.

Things I Think About in the Car (Part 1)

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Just one trip to the other side of town to take Julia to work has given me more than enough subjects to fill a blog for a week.

One is obviously the morality of taking the car to work when we have a good bus service in Nottingham, and trams that run close to where she wants to be.

Two is the fact that she had four bags with her. Two contain things she is removing from the house. One is phone, sandwiches and such. The fourth is stationery and gym gear. Would she take four bags if she had to use the bus? Discuss.

Three – why do women need a bag to carry the things that go in my pockets? Even in summer I can manage, with a jacket in winter I have a pocket surplus.

Four – decluttering.

Five – decluttering, with special reference to the two bags she has removed today. One only arrived yesterday, the other last Saturday, so my view is that they represent clutter rather than declutter, particularly as most of the Saturday stuff is still here.

Six – the theory of two steps forward and one step back, and how it applies to our decluttering policy.

Seven – differential decluttering. Her stuff is essential (I am told) but mine is fit for the skip.

Eight – do I need treatment for my obsession with clutter?

Nine – design of roads, junctions, traffic lights, bus lanes, cycle lanes and such stuff.

Ten, with reference to Nine, is all this done to make driving so hard we use buses?

Eleven – what is actually in the bus drivers’ test – bullying, cutting corners, pulling off at short notice, providing cyclists with near death experiences? (This question was asked early in the journey, but asked again as I tried to change lanes with a bus bearing down on me.)

Twelve – should I have bought one of those flats by Trent Bridge when I first moved to Nottingham?

Thirteen – would we have had a family if we had a flat there?

Fourteen – if we had a flat, and a family, and had moved, would we have less clutter?

Fifteen – am I obsessed with clutter?

Sixteen – if I had realised that you only had to do five years in the French Foreign Legion would this have altered my attitude towards parenthood?

That covers the journey to work and the first few hundred yards of the journey back. For the second part, which is just as interesting as the first, please call back in a later.

Eggs California, well bless my soul!

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The title is a rough paraphrase of what I felt on reading the breakfast menu on Harvester this morning.

Eggs California are “Smashed avocado and tomato salsa topped with two poached free-range eggs on a toasted breakfast muffin.”

They cost £6.29, compared with the “Unlimited Cooked” which also costs £6.29.

I’m not sure whether the concept or the price leaves me more speechless. (The “Unlimited Cooked” breakfast is, in theory at least, unlimited continental and unlimited cooked breakfast. And unlimited toast. It seems better value.)

I didn’t have time for the Continental as they were so quick with the service, not that I’m big on fruit, yogurt and cereal anyway. I’m still off bread and potatoes, so I didn’t order the hash browns or chips, and passed on the toast.

That left me with unlimited sausages, bacon, beans, tomatoes, mushrooms, black pudding and eggs.

I managed to choke a few morsels down, then sneaked in a couple of crumpets with honey. Honey is good for you so it seemed foolhardy to pass it up.

As I sit here in the evening I am just starting to feel peckish again. Time for some soup and salad, I feel.

Before that I’ll merely draw your attention to the social and environmental costs of avocado. I started eating them regularly last year because they are good for me (particularly Hass avocados) and I’m now seriously thinking of stopping eating them.

Talking of eating…

quercuscommunity

Life after the Care Farm