A slice of history

A slice of history, a photo by rajmarshall on Flickr.

A photo of some of the remaining items on my mother's shelves - some of the chemical containers came from my Dad - from when British Schering closed its site in Hazel Grove - googling on Oblivon gave that interesting set of memories. (Note that all the pharmaceutical containers are long empty!)

A reunion

Trinity Hall the new(ish) library, a photo by rajmarshall on Flickr.

..I've had a rather busy 24 hours - Friday was a trip to Cambridge for a 40th anniversary dinner. It was good to meet folk none of whom I've seen since 1975(!) so a lot of picking up threads and news of those who weren't there and a gentle dinner in the Graham Storey room - the remodelled JCR which back in the early 70's was a real gloomy dive! As you'll see from the pictures on flickr it is rather nicer now!
The photo is of the new college library jutting out impressively over the Cam. I was very impressed by the quality of the College gardens maybe I never saw them in September but I think it has been recently improved - these are the general gardens, unfortunately I didn't get into the fellows garden!

Birkdale Palace

I spent the first 10 years of my life in Birkdale on the Lancashire coast and on the way between our house and the sea was the Palace Hotel - pictured above. This postcard is undated but it looks pretty similar to the one in my memory - if you go to the wikipedia link above you'll see that it was originally a 20 acre site which after the original owners got into financial difficulties (here's a link to the liquidation report of 1882) then reduced to 5 - and a railway station built alongside! As you can see from the photo it was a huge building probably a white elephant from its inception. It - the hotel - was eventually demolished in 1969 amidst stories of from the demolishers of mysterious rows, screams and clattering of stilettos across the marble foyer. The noises were explained away as the deserted hotel being a rendez-vous for local courting couples but the fin-de-siecle atmosphere lent credibility to the stories. At one stage it was used as a film set and actors such as Boris Karloff and Norman Wisdom stayed and filmed there (now there's a wonderful combination!). You'll see various other legends on the wikipedia page including that the hotel was built the wrong way around - the front should have faced the sea and the architect is supposed to have committed suicide by jumping from the hotel! Wikipedia suggests that the Fisherman's rest was created after the Palace was demolished - but I don't think that is true.
I have copies of a couple of articles by Peter Elsen which have formed part of the source for this from the Southport Visiter of 2004. The Visiter's webpages have a historical section but it is presently broken so I can't see if the original articles are on line... but here is a copy and paste of most of the articles - without the pictures which accompanied it.
The Fisherman's Rest a pub - is the only surviving fragment of the Palace Hotel no doubt inhabited by the less rich - and associated with the Mexico Disaster of 1886 in which the Southport lifeboat overturned and 14 of the crew died - as well as 13 deaths from the St Anne's lifeboat. The Fisherman's Rest was used as a temporary morgue for the bodies of the Southport men.
I remember both buildings well - mainly as a way point on the way to Birkdale sands as I don't think I ever went in either building. At least one of my relations was lost in the lifeboat disaster - I'm afraid I can't remember who as a lot of the names in the story are familiar!

Hints for the Busy Housewife

I have - recovered from my mother's collection of old books - a pamphlet (48 pages) called `Hints for the Busy Housewife' being the reprint of 1936 (Ninth Edition 1935) published by the Health and Cleanliness Council. A few extracts will give an indication of the style!

By carefully choosing her washing and cleaning materials; by using modern equipment whenever possible, keeping it in the best possible condition with cleanliness and care; by careful planning of daily routine; by taking thought for her personal hygiene and appearance - the happy housewife is never without a clean bright overall-the housewife can do much to make her housework no longer a depressing labour but an interesting and pleasant duty.

I've afraid those are my italics..

Children should be led to regard the cleaning of their own boots and shoes as one of the little household jobs in which it is their pleasure to assist. If thus encouraged, they may even cooperate to the extent of keeping father's boots clean for him.

anything rather than the father having to do them!

A bit of indulgence for Christmas Eve

The Enid Live at Hammersmith Odeon 1979

I came across The Enid back in 1978 as a result of listening to a Radio 3 alternative music programme (I can't remember the name of the programme now - any offers?) and was intrigued by the mixture of symphonic rock, fairground organ and Elgar(!). So I acquired 'Touch Me' and got around to re-listening to it yesterday. A bye-gone era - though they seem to be still touring indefatigably - the youtube extract is live - enjoy it. I've never been to one of their concerts but one of the PhD students when I was at Manchester Computing dept in the 1980's assisted with getting their stuff on the road (AFAICR, Richard something..) and he was amazed that he'd found someone else who had heard of them!
And for another sort of seasonal indulgence here is Messaien's 'Dieu parmi Nous' played on an accordion(!) - brilliantly - well worth the watch - I've tweeted and facebooked it - having been pointed to it by Patrick Herring so I'm not going to make a separate post of it!

September

Something seasonal!

I'll get around to listening to it too when I have a faster connection- this is Lotte Lenya who was married (more than once!) to Kurt Weill - the composer of this.

The floppy

Following the news that Sony is to stop making 3.25" floppies, I thought it the right moment to scan and post this picture of a real floppy.

As the label says this is an 8" floppy containing part - disk 17 of 18 - of pnx (a version of Unix) for the ICL PERQ. Note the disk capacity - 256 bytes!! (I hope that's not a misinterpretation on my part). I keep the floppy up in the attic, I've no idea whether it would still work as 8" floppy drives are a bit thin on the ground.

An evening with the photograph album

On Wednesday we went to the Silk Screen to see Terence Davies' 'of time and the city' his affectionate hymn to Liverpool of days gone by. At one point there was film of New Brighton and I was reminded of a photo in my archives of me on the beach there in the 50's.

On the beach wearing a bow-tie??!!
Of the film, it was very self indulgent but wonderful nostalgia, insights into deprivation and community. Here's the trailer (there's another slightly different one also on youTube)

Wanted to link to this one though for the final Bernard Fallon shot.
The film tells of Davies' youth his (obviously failed in some sense) attempt to kick over the traces of his Catholic upbringing and his deep affection for place and memory.
I loved the cutting of the finale of the Mahler Resurrection Symphony into those last minutes, here's part of the text: (Mahler using Klopstock)

O believe,
You were not born for nothing!
Have not for nothing, lived, suffered!

What was created
Must perish,
What perished, rise again!
Cease from trembling!
Prepare yourself to live!

Davies prayer for his home city. He also quotes Eliot's Four Quartets hence the blog post title!
I was born and spent my first 10 years along the coast in the far more respectable Birkdale but the twinges of awoken memory were most welcome.

funhouse

The Guardian's Saturday Poem was by Charles Bukowski:

I drive to the beach at night
in the winter
and sit and look at the burned-down amusement pier
wonder why they just let it sit there
in the water.
I want it out of there,
blown up,
vanished,
erased;
that pier should no longer sit there
with madmen sleeping inside
the burned-out guts of the funhouse . . .
it's awful, I say, blow the damn thing up,
get it out of my eyes,
that tombstone in the sea.
the madmen can find other holes
to crawl into.
I used to walk that pier when I was 8
years old.

From his collection The Pleasures of the Damned
I grew up in Southport which had its own pier so there's some powerful associations here for me. Here's a link to the history of this pier.

Marking an anniversary

I see that today is the 5th anniversary of the first significant blog entry on the weblog. I'd blogged before then on my home machine but those well be a bit broken now. I need to look through that older stuff for anything that needs(!?) preserving. But reading that initial month is, for me, interesting.

Trip down memory lane

This blog post was recovered from an blog entry I made around 5 years ago and as it is no longer accessible (the blog resided on my home machine) , let me give this boasting a little fresh life by putting it here. I had been looking for my earliest presence on usenet using googlegroups to search google's archive(which then had a far better search facility than now!) I wrote that:

That I can find is this from 1990, but I'm sure I was posting earlier. Complete with double .signature - sigh!

OK, here's a slightly earlier one - again asking about usenet software!

Ah, I needed to search for uk.ac.man.cs rather than the other way around and pushes it back to May 89 though I'm sure I posted to uk.* before that but google groups seems light on those - no posts from uk.followup at all!

I doubt if I would be able to find them starting from scratch now, note in the earliest posting the reversed email addresses as well as the uucp delivery! Over 20 years ago now.
On searching around for my postings I did find this message of a very convoluted approach to system recovery . I still remember that afternoon though as someone affected by the events rather than directly involved. I thought the

rm -rf *

was part of a script which was run from the wrong place but maybe the script was set to echo the commands it ran?

Youth Club reunion

Just to keep things going for 17th October I've sent an email to those for whom I have those details.
Here's the name list from the 1993 reunion. I've put a red dot next to those names for which Janet and I have no recent details (though we may still have an address from back then. Those highlighted in yellow I have emails for.

Click on the image to get a larger version. Additional names and contact details welcome - don't add them as comments to this posting - instead email them to me (use the address in the 'about me' for the weblog, or use the contact form.

White van students

I thought I'd already uploaded this somewhere but it seems not (unless my memory and web searching faculties have now deserted me!) But thanks to Tony Nixon we have this picture of the guilty

Me, Peter and Richard and a white van which 5 of us went around Europe with. The poster we were holding I don't remember at all - maybe it was loaned by Jeffrey Archer?

Macclesfield Youth Club reunion - 17th October

Back in January I wrote:

We're in the midst of organising a reunion of the St Michael's/St Andrew's (aka All Saints) Youth club which met in the tin tab and St Andrew's back in the 1960's/70's/80's.
If you were part of it then and wish to be there for the reunion - no date decided yet (it is very preliminary!!) you'll be very welcome (but probably this year in the warm weather - if we have any).
If you wish to help organise it - that will be even better!
I've created a web page for details of those who will be coming - with as many or few contact details as you like.

The contact page is on that other posting, but to get to it you will need login details from me - just so that contact details aren't splurged across the net!
As you'll see from the subject a date has been fixed Saturday 17th Oct 2009 - maybe with an extension into the Sunday.
There's also a facebook group - where I am currently the only member...it might be a less onesided means of getting information and arrangements out - though you do need a Facebook account.
Having been on holiday I'm now intending to get things moving on this - 3 months to go!

Street View - again

I suppose, due to having lived in one of the cities featured, there are pictures of two previous residences. Here's the terrace in William St, Leeds:

We bought it, but it seems to have entered the buy to rent market - at least when the camera went past! The coal hole has a plant in front to disguise it, but it has been replaced from the rusty cover in our time!
(And here's a link to a picture of the cats enjoying the hole in the coal hole cover)

Pete Mathews

Pete Mathews
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

After last night's climbing trip, it is appropriate to remember Pete Mathews who was one of the teachers led my school 's climbing group who died a few weeks back. This picture was taken on a week's climbing holiday in the summer of 1970 in the Lake District. The other teacher, Ron Bailey, who was in charge of the group, died long ago - a moment of passing

Youth Club Thames Cruise 1977

Youth Club Thames Cruise 1977
Originally uploaded by rajmarshall

Further to the reunion plans, I've been uploading some ancient photos - not all mine! The collection is here

Macclesfield Youth Club reunion

We're in the midst of organising a reunion of the St Michael's/St Andrew's (aka All Saints) Youth club which met in the tin tab and St Andrew's back in the 1960's/70's/80's.
If you were part of it then and wish to be there for the reunion - no date decided yet (it is very preliminary!!) you'll be very welcome (but probably this year in the warm weather - if we have any).
If you wish to help organise it - that will be even better!
I've created a web page for details of those who will be coming - with as many or few contact details as you like. This is on my home computer (apologies if you've tried this link in the past 24 hours - to 14th Jan and it failed, we've been having router problems! It should now work!!)and is password protected for confidentiality and avoid spammers stealing details! If you want to contact me the electronic details are here and if you are likely to be genuine, I'll send you the login details!
No doubt this posting is extremely sketchy and also it will be updated. If you know of others who are interested, point them to this posting initially rather than the contact web page.
With a bit of encouragement I might even set up a facebook group!

Out with the old

A scan of the corpse and it is time to get rid of the old copy of Delia Smith's Frugal Food - having acquired a copy of the new edition last month - as you see it's been well used - or at least had lots of stuff spilled over it! 70p....

And looking at the inside, it was acquired 31 32 (need to get used to 2009!) years ago tomorrow - New Year's day 1977. The lentil curry, potage flamade recipes were well used and I must revisit the courgette souffle!

Cooking in difficult times

My mother has a copy of Mrs Arthur Webb's 'War Time Cookery - published 1939 (reprinted 1940), she clearly didn't hang about. There's this to give the flavour:
Casserole of cucumber -

• 4 small cucumbers
• 1/2 lb of sausagemeat
• 3/4 pt of stock
• 1 turnip
• 3 carrots
• 6 small onions
• seasoning

I don't have the precise method here but she does recommend removing the cucumber seeds before cooking.