Grateful Thanks from the Wilds

Strange couple of days here - our local electricity supplier has seen fit to do some line upgrades, which is always a good idea, but the result has been that we were without power during daylight hours for a couple of days. We are, of course, in a very rural area - probably only about 14 or 15 households affected by this work - but why November? The first day coincided with the gales and freezing rain associated with the northern fringes of Storm Angus (which was a lot less severe here than further south). It also coincided with the day that Dod the Gardener was coming to trim down the top of the second of our juniper trees, so that our exciting new wireless broadband service may have an uninterrupted line of sight connection from the main transmitter on Traprain Law. The second day, probably fortuitously, prevented the broadband installation anyway, so Dod and the Broadband Men (I have all their albums) will get a second chance at all that tomorrow.

Why November? Is it just that we don't matter much here, or is there some ancient tribal vendetta at work?

Anyway, we've got through the two days. No, the downtime was not restricted to the promised hours - there was a period of overrun yesterday, after dark, when there was not much to do but sit and stare at the log stove (see photo), which is very therapeutic, in fact. Brandy helps, too.

I thought I'd take this chance to thank everyone who pitched in after my plea for help with some Hinton Hunt hussars (see here). Many thanks to Clive, Matt, Simon, Ian, Martin S, Chris and a few others for advice and suggestions, and especially to Roy, Andy T and Old John for providing castings. If I've forgotten to mention anyone, then thanks anyway - this has all been very heartwarming. The project to produce an actual unit of the Husares Españoles (to replace the unit which I currently have-but-hate...) will proceed with dignity and care, rather than speed, but I shall certainly see it through. The tricky bit will be the production of convincing command conversions. You will hear more of this, be sure of that.

Thanks again, anyway - very much indeed.

You may have observed that my previous post on the subject of Trumpo has now been suppressed. I was asked if I had been threatened or imprisoned or anything, and the answer is, of course, no. I thank everyone who contributed comments and balanced appraisal - I simply decided that if I am to be off-blog for a while, I would rather not have a post about Trumpo hanging around as a lasting legacy and reminder. I really don't find Trumpo very amusing at the moment.

New Officer for the 43rd

My good friend Pieter very kindly sent me samples of some new GBM Peninsular War figures he has commissioned, which are now in the Hagen shop. As ever with Massimo's sculpts, the figures are very pleasing - so pleasing, in fact, that I took advantage of a rare couple of hours' free time this evening to paint up a replacement officer for my 43rd Foot - note the regimental eccentricity of a non-regulation pelisse. The unit he will serve with consists of original 1970s Les Higgins figures - the officer is obviously quite a tall man, but his hat is a good match so - by my house rule of thumb (also known as Foy's Third Law) - this officer is officially the correct scale for the job.

He displaces a Les Higgins officer - I'll find the redundant chap alternative employment elsewhere.

1809 Spaniards - Digging for Figures

My 1809 Spaniards now have a total of 5 light cavalry regiments - 2 of hussars, 2 of cazadores and 1 which is sort of another cazadores unit. Now the dreaded Creeping Elegance rears its head once again. Problem is that 4 of these regiments were produced for me by the excellent Pete Bateman, using conversions of Hinton Hunt French cavalry, and the remaining unit of hussars very definitely was not - it is so far inferior to the Bateman regiments that I have vowed to try to replace it whenever possible.

I have been in contact with Peter, who is not in a position to do anything for me at present, but we have established that I need to drum up some suitable figures - we have some, but not enough.

Examples of FN317
- picture borrowed from the Hinton Hunter blog, which is the standard reference work

I need some Hinton Hunt FN317 - French Hussar in Mirliton cap - the official HH horse to go with this is FNH7. I probably need up to about 8 of these, but any odd figures - painted or otherwise - would be of interest. If you have any such chaps that you could spare, or would like to sell me, could you please get in touch? Send a comment (which I won't publish, if it is not appropriate) or email me at the address in my profile. Since these will be converted and painted as Spaniards, I'd prefer not to import collector-standard pieces!

Last time I asked for help with raising troops I was looking for S-Range Minifigs Spanish infantrymen for 1812, and I was so successful in obtaining reinforcements that my 1812 Spanish army is now large and formidable - well, large anyway.

All help will be very welcome!

Hooptedoodle #241 - A Return to the Enchanted Forest

Well, we had such a splendid time last year at the Enchanted Forest show in Faskally Wood, at Pitlochry, in Perthshire, that we went again for this year's edition. Really very good indeed - we were, admittedly, lucky with the weather, but it is a marvellous experience - lots of loud music and unbelievable lighting effects in a highland forest, all reflected in a lake. I can't quite remember what psychedelic actually means, but I think it is on the right lines. The festival runs for the month of October each year, and if you get an opportunity to go, I recommend it thoroughly - tickets normally go on sale around July time.

This year's theme was Shimmer (last year's was Flux).

We had a welcome chance to catch up with progress on the new bridge over the
Forth - it may not be open in time for the end of this year, but it won't be far off.
Looks good. The new bridge will not be called the Third Forth Bridge, nor the
Fifth Bridge, nor any other of the popular social media names (especially
not Bridgey McBridgeface) - it will be called (possibly rather tamely) The
Queensferry Crossing. So there.

Autumn on the A9

Foy the Younger throws himself into his highland break with typical zeal

And the show itself was breathtaking...

Pitlochry is rather an expensive place - especially during the Enchanted
Forest season - there was some very competitive marketing in evidence

All very confusing for a visitor who was, almost certainly, probably definitely the
only retired Napoleonic French general in the Highlands this week

The Contesse did a nice job with the photography - she also took some splendid video clips, but these are dauntingly large things to upload, so instead I've linked to someone else's YouTube effort, which gives an idea - only an idea - the spectacle is far larger than a computer or mobile screen can portray, and the sound is well beyond the scope of the budgerigar's-bottom-hole-sized speakers in your laptop - you'll just have to go and see it!

Hooptedoodle #240 - Another Mystery Object

I'm still clearing out my mother's house, and amongst my dad's old junk I found a strange thing. Anyone seen one of these before, or know what it is? - I have no idea, by the way, so this is not a prize quiz!

It is a cylindrical rod of dense, dark wood - not ebony, I would say. It's very hard. It is exactly 1 foot in length - hmmm - it also has the crown emblem and V-R stamped into the end, so, whatever it is, it is Victorian and it was government property.

My first thought was that it might be a police truncheon or night stick of some sort, but it's too puny, and examples I've seen of such things are usually lead-filled and fitted with a wrist-strap. Perhaps then, I thought, it is some sort of official measuring stick used by excise men or someone with a governmental role. It does look a bit like a miniature ECW general's baton of office, but that's by the way.

If my dad collected it as an artefact of interest then it might well be connected with ships, or stevedoring - as a young man he worked at Liverpool Docks and was always fascinated by sailing ships and the maritime traditions of the old port.

The reason I thought of a measuring stick was because I have seen examples of antique yard-sticks used for measuring the depth of beer or spirits in a barrel, and they were the same sort of idea.

Any clues? Obviously it isn't important, but it would be nice to understand what it is.

Hooptedoodle #210 revisited - More about Jim and Ike and the Cowhouse

Back in February I wrote about when my Great-Grandmother left her farmer husband, and moved with her sons, Ike and Jim, into Liverpool, where they ran a dairy in Toxteth. The story is well known in our family, but the details have become a little hazy - one thing that has always irked me a bit is that I never knew where the dairy was.

As discussed in February, these little local dairies were important in poor districts of the cities - for one thing, we must remember, it was not a good idea to drink the water in those days - milk or beer or boiled tea, but never water!

Without wishing to become one of those dreadful genealogist people who bore you to death at parties, I bought some inexpensive DVD scans of old Liverpool street directories, and I very quickly scored a bull - or maybe a cow? I found Great-Grandma Ellen listed as a "Cowkeeper" in the 1900 directory, at an address which is given as 32 David Street and 2 Grace Street - which is simply explained by the fact that it was on the corner of David and Grace Streets, in Liverpool 8, and there were entrances in both streets.

I found some street views on Google Maps - David Street is still there - at least the North side including No.32 is still there.

32 David Street is the terracotta-coloured building with the modern shutter door. That
would have been the typical wooden gates, where the delivery carts and the
cows came and went. A quick study of the photo shows a lot of change in the
building frontage.

...now we are round the corner in Grace Street - there was obviously a door (the
shop door for the dairy?)  in the wall in a former time, and the back of the archway
is still visible, albeit bricked up, in the rear wall

My estimate of 1895 for their arrival in the city looks pretty close - in the 1894 directory, the business is listed as belonging to one George William Hollingsbee. In the 1911 directory, the next one I have later than 1900, the dairy has passed on to a Mr Stephen Robinson. Ellen died in 1910, aged 71, and her son Ike (my grandfather) was married with a young family by then, and he is listed as resident at 21 Cockburn Street. Ike, you understand, was the original owner of the watch which featured in Saturday's post.

I now know for a fact that you will run screaming if you see me at a party, but I have to say I'm pretty pleased, tracking down the old dairy without leaving my chair. Virtual reality, anyone?

***** Late Edit *****

This a fairly recent photo of the old Toxteth Reservoir mentioned in the Comments - definitely an odd thing to come across in the city streets. I recall that I was scared of it as a small child - in later life, for years, I wasn't sure if I had imagined it or if such a place existed! The dreadful problems with cholera epidemics in the 19th Century required radical solutions to get better water into the houses - this was one - pipelines bringing fresh water from well outside the city (Lake Vyrnwy, in North Wales, in particular) was another.

Hooptedoodle #239 - A Bit More Family History, and a Small Coincidence

Today I started on the mammoth task of sorting out my mother’s house prior to selling it. This is not so bad as it might have been, since she and my dad moved to Scotland only 15 years ago, and the ground has been recently disturbed, so to speak.

In the box room is an absolute horror of an old cupboard, which contained a pile of accumulated junk belonging to my late father – art materials, tools and a bewildering assortment of ironmongery, and spares for things that most people wouldn’t have thought of owning in the first place. In there I found my grandfather’s old watch, which I haven’t seen since I was eleven. I know I was eleven because I had just started at the grammar school when it was given to me. I regret to say that I took it to school, dropped it on the stone floor of the basement cloakroom and broke the glass. The watch was taken back into safe-keeping, apparently repaired, and I never saw it again until today.

My granddad was a foreman in the electrical workshops at Liverpool Docks, and as such he used to go to work each day (on his bicycle, by the way) wearing a suit with a waistcoat, and a bowler hat. A bowler hat was the mark of the foreman. On his waistcoat he sported chains for his two watches (he was a bit flash, my granddad). One of the watch chains had a little silver match-case, with original wax Lucifer matches in it (lost years ago). This is the other one.

Yes, this is the one I had, if only briefly. It's good to see it again. It is a Swiss-made military style watch imported by Morath Brothers, of Liverpool. I believe the case is of gunmetal, with nice brass detailing. I would guess it dates from about 1910 or thereabout – it still works beautifully, I can tell you. The chain is silver, and the attached coin is a very worn silver Queen Victoria fourpenny piece dating from 1838 (is that a groat, then?).

I don’t imagine it is especially valuable in cash terms – I might have a look later. What I did was find out a little about Morath Brothers. It seems their shop was at 71 Dale Street, Liverpool, and they specialised in imported clocks (especially cuckoo clocks) and watches. Typically, the pocket watches were made by Omega or Zenith. The Moraths originally came from the Black Forest area of Germany, and Fedele Morath was listed as having a business at the Dale Street address in 1848. I don’t know how long they survived, but I know for a fact they were certainly open in the late 1950s. I know this because, I now discover, their shop was right next door to the old Top Hat record bar, which opened in 1957, and where my Auntie Barbara was manageress until she went to work for NEMS and then Beaver Radio, in Whitechapel. Some of my very earliest dalliances with popular music were in the pegboard listening booths at the back of the Top Hat – Buddy Holly, Duane Eddy and all that exotic American stuff. Great, actually. My aunt must have been one of the most patient women on the planet, since my cousin and I used to hang around the shop during school holidays, and we never actually bought anything.

The Top Hat was locally famous for having record-signing days when big name stars (well, quite big) would sign autographs and so on – there were queues right down the street, sometimes.

I was interested to see these old photos online – if only to prove that it really did happen.

Queues waiting to meet Frankie Vaughan at the Top Hat, circa 1958 - note
Morath Bros next door at no. 71

And here's Frankie himself signing autographs for the fans - he was a bit of a
star, but I think he only came from Granby Street, which was not very international...

...other celebrities included the Texan recording artist, Mitchell Torok (no - me neither)
 - note here that he is signing 78rpm discs!...

  

...and Lonnie Donegan

This remarkable picture, borrowed without permission from "A Liverpool
Picture Book", compares the Frankie Vaughan queue scene with the
current state of the site. The jewellers' has disappeared, and the rest
of the block lies empty. By the mid 1960s, the Top Hat had evolved into
a branch of Radiospares (the Leeds-based hobby-electronics store) and may
have later been a joke shop. Urban decay, you see.