Tag Archives: looking back

On the Brink of War – Surbiton 1936

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Surbiton Charter Day Medallion 1936 (Obverse)

This morning, I woke from a dream which featured a computer and I checked the time on the computer as I woke – 2.20. When I woke properly , I realised this was an imprecise way of checking the time so I looked at my phone. It was 2.21. It looked, at that moment, as if I had finally discovered a super-power. At one time I was able to wake at a specified time (varied by about five minutes) but as I grew older and bought better alarm clocks I neglected to use it. Had I rediscovered it?

I toddled off to the bathroom, went back to bed, set myself a target of waking at 5.20 (no point in being over-ambitious – 3 hours would do nicely) and woke up at 3.40. Clearly I had not rediscovered my old super-power. Nor had i found a way of improving my sleep. It looks like my ragged sleep patterns are here to stay.

Rising some hours later, full of energy, I set to checking emails and comments, then moved on to completing an article about Surbiton Charter Day in 1936. It was a day full of good cheer, civic pride and hope for the future. The newspaper said that hordes of eager schoolchildren listened to speeches from civic dignitaries, though I fear they may have erred on this point. The children were given packed lunches and small bronze medallions before setting off for a day of sports.

Surbiton Charter Day Medallion 1936 (Reverse)

That, I always find, is the problem with medallions from this period. A way of life was about to end, and a number of lives would be changed forever. The writer of this short memoire found that his life changed direction abruptly in 1939. For those of you not familiar with the term, here is a link to the Bevin Boys.

The war memorial at Surbiton holds 469 names. It is unusual, because that is more than were lost in the Great War, but it can be explained by he expansion of the Borough between the two World Wars. There are, as far as I can see, no names of civilians who were killed in the bombing. The Commonwealth War Graves Commission listed, but I know from various sources that 32 High Explosive bombs were dropped in the early part of the war and that 22 V! bombs hit the Borough in the latter part of the war. At least 12 people were killed in one attack, including four members of one family, the Scriveners, the youngest being 2, and the  two Gale sisters. They are listed on the Commonwealth War Graves site but not on the War Memorial.

St Mark’s Church was bombed in 1940 and not rebuilt until 1960 – stones from the bombing were used to make a cairn at the War memorial outside the library. There is a picture of the memorials here – WW1, WW2, Civilians of WW2 (no names) and the St Mark’s cairn. The CWGC gives 52 names from the Borough, including a variety of couples, family members and siblings.

I will add a link when my article on the medallion is published on Facebook. Sorry it’s a bit of a depressing post, but after finishing the original one about Charter Day, it seemed incomplete to leave it in 1936.

With a penny for size comparison

 

 

Today!

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I’ve given myself a proper talking to, and I really am going to do better at keeping the blog up to date. I rarely seem to write about the events of the day these days, and that removes the diary element from the day’s writing.

I am trying to get that back.

This morning I rose sluggishly and dragged myself to the bathroom. They tell me that exercise is good for arthritis (yes,Clare Pooley, I’m looking at you as I write this) but I’m not sure that’s true. My knee and back seem definitely do not seem improved the day after I’ve been walking.

 

This handsome Robin is from February 2018, though he has been seen many times in later posts…

I breakfasted on a bacon sandwich (Julia hasn’t quite got the hang of meat-free Mondays) and a slice of toast and jam. This was a good start to the morning, though I’m not sure that a man on a diet really needs a slice of toast and sugar. It’s like offering an alcoholic a cocktail – no matter how you dress it up, the bad stuff is still at the bottom of it. Because I am weak-willed I ate the toast.

This is our fourth week of taking a different route to work on Monday. Julia works from the office on Mondays and we go through town. Unfortunately, part of the road is closed, and will be until May, as they repair a large chunk of Nottingham’s decrepit gas system.

The first gas supply in Nottingham was used on 14 April 1819, to light ten gas lamps in the city. Crowds came to gawp, being mesmerised by the miracle of modern light, and also terrified of a gas explosion. The Nottingham Gas Light and Coke Company provided gas for many years before being taken over by the corporation in 1874, which was in turn nationalised in 1949.

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Sunset over Sherwood – February 2018

The mains in question are, like the ones replaced last year, from the 1960s. It surprises me they are so new, I thought they lasted longer than that. Anyway, they have lasted fifty years, and are now going to inconvenience me for the next four months.

If my 31-year-old self had set off walking at the same time as my 61-year-old self set off by car today it’s likely the walk we would have got to town sooner. The roads were very congested and the traffic was slow.

This congestion isn’t helped because there seem to be roadworks everywhere. Whether it’s using up budgets, inefficiency or bad luck, I do not know. Though I can hazard a guess.

After dropping Julia off I manoeuvred by a builders’ lorry which was blocking a road and, judging by the reaction from the builders, used several words they didn’t expect from a white-haired, bald old coot.

Late February 2018, we have a way to go before we can congratulate ourselves on a mild winter

Traffic was light on the other side of town and I was able to get to work in plenty of time to start packing. We had 21 parcels for the post, so it was a good thing I was in early. Several things happened this morning, some of which would be very amusing if I were the sort of person to publish gossip on his blog. But I’m not.

Someone came in from a local Sikh temple with the foreign coins and notes out of the various charity collections they have made.

After that it was time to close and spend the afternoon in errands. I shopped, took prescriptions to the doctors and made an appointment, then took my tyre to the garage. They will look at it and tell me if I simply need it reinflating or if I have damaged the (nearly new) tyre and need a new one.

A better Little Egret – February 2017 Blacktoft Sands

At home I washed up, blogged, watched TV, fell asleep, woke to eat vegetable stew and dumplings, watched TV, washed up, made sandwiches (tuna) for tomorrow and blogged. That’s what I’m doing now.

Well, I’m blogging and wondering at the the repetitive banality of my life.

To further labour the point I’m going to use some photos from previous Februaries.

Thomas Paine is from February 2016.

Five Years on WordPress

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According to WordPress it is now five years since I first registered with them. This was a surprise as I always thought that I’d started in October. It seems that it took me nearly two weeks to get the first post written.

When you read the first post this is even more of a surprise, as it doesn’t seem to have the polish you’d expect from something that took two weeks to write. In fact it looks like I just threw a pile of words at the screen and took a very bad photograph. This has remained my technique throughout the five years.

 

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A bad photograph of guinea fowl . The start of a proud tradition of average photography

 

The whole blog is, in fact, a log-jam of typos, false starts and broken promises.

 

This is a better photograph. It’s a salad of weeds and edible flowers

The post which featured this salad was the third and things were getting better. This plate of f floral delights was unequal to the weight of health and safety wielded by one of the visiting Guide officers. She was determined to make everything difficult and, as I remember, her first complaint was that people were shooting on the fields and I should have known better than to allow it when sweet delicate Rainbows were going to be on the farm.

They were 200 yards away and the way the farm shoot was run were unlikely to be achieving much in the way of slaughter.

Anyway, if you’ve ever had to host a visit from any scouting/guiding group you will know as well as I do that it’s the closest you can get to being a lion tamer, now that we are no longer allowed real lions in circuses.

And Rainbows, being the youngest and squeakiest of the lot, add sonic weaponry to the horror of the day.

A brief read  will soon show you that I haven’t really developed over the years – five years ago I was idle, overweight and out of tune with modern life, and nothing has changed.

The featured image is another robin. I’m thinking of running a series of lookalike photos, under the title “Nugget or No-get?”

Those of you who are currently looking bemused and wondering what I’m talking about should probably have a look at this post by Derrick Knight. It’s a typically elegant Derrick post with wine, women and song (represented by wine, Mrs Knight and a film) and a robin called Nugget. You’ll have to scroll down a bit for Nugget as Derrick is more industrious than I am and tends to write more. (This entire post, in case you hadn’t noticed, is about reusing old posts and photographs. Laziness, I feel, never goes out of fashion.)

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Looking Back, and a False Start

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I’m not having a good time at the moment, having just wiped out an entire post just as I was giving it a final edit. WordPress has been refusing to save on a regular basis recently, so there was no previous version to reinstate. It’s been a minor irritant in the last month or so, but after this I’m going to have to sort it out.

Has anybody else noticed this problem?

It isn’t just the annoyance of losing 350 words, which took some writing, as I’m not particularly swift today. It’s also that I feel posterity has been robbed, because the second version never seems as good. The second version, I always feel, should be more polished, but it never seems to be the case; I never seem to be able to recreate a post to my satisfaction.

That is why I’m not going to write about my adventures with Scotch Bonnets, compressors and boiling water just now. I will get back to it later but now isn’t the time.

I may as well just look back on the week – a walk round the duck pond, a damp day in Derbyshire, some new words, birds at Rufford Abbey, some weather and 12 hours bottling jerk seasoning. It’s been, to say the least, an up and down sort of week.

I’ve enjoyed it, but it’s been a case of two steps forward and one step back, as I don’t seem to be achieving much. The exercise is just making me ache and feel old instead of making me fitter and, at the same time, I’m slipping back to eating carbs. Time for a hard look at my life again.

Having reviewed my week, albeit briefly, I’m now going to add a selection of photos from last week and call it a retrospective.

Mill on Rufford Lake
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Nuthatch
Greylag geese under archway at Rufford
Squirrel at Rufford
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Red Crested Pochard