Hooptedoodle #397 - The Royal Ascot Disaster - The Legend That Will Run and Run

 It seems like yesterday, but it is now more than 30 years since that dreadful Saturday afternoon when a grandstand at Royal Ascot partially collapsed, crushing nearly a hundred spectators to death and injuring many more.

There is no real consolation to be had after such a disaster, it still makes my heart ache to think of it, but at least we know that the behaviour of the emergency and medical services on the day was heroic and could not be faulted, and that so much energy was put subsequently into pursuing a full enquiry, which very quickly identified what had happened, drew up failings and recommendations for improvements in safety regulations and - not least in importance - identified all the areas of accountability and proceeded to bring those responsible to justice.

It can have been of little comfort to the friends and families of the deceased, but it is pleasing that fair compensation was made in almost all of the cases, that all individuals or organisations who contributed to the accident by their own actions or errors were brought to very public account, and legislation was enacted to ensure that such a thing could never happen again. Of that much we can be proud.

Also, it is reassuring to recall that there was never any attempt to distort the story of what happened, nor to shift responsibility to the victims themselves, and - as I recall - no national newspapers or politicians were involved in a widespread campaign to cover up the facts, and no-one accused the families involved of being whining bin-dippers. At least I didn't hear of it.

Of course, it didn't really happen - not like that anyway. Around the same time, there was a crowd disaster involving Northern football fans, and it didn't go like that at all.

Even I am tired of this now. Having exonerated the crowd and the victims, the legal processes following the disaster which did take place - and they have moved with the speed and energy of a moth in treacle -  have never been intended to deliver anything meaningful, ever. It has always been clear that eventually, if they held their breath for long enough, the people who caused the Hillsborough shambles and subsequently tried to change the narrative would never be answerable. It is surprising, but it still appears that no-one was at fault.

Not quite true - a former secretary of the football club at whose ground the accident occurred was fined a couple of years ago for not having his safety paperwork up to date. He was the token fall-guy, and he did not have to fall very far.

The latest - possibly the last - in a series of farcical legal non-events was a trial in Salford, involving three individuals - two former senior police officers and a lawyer who had acted on their behalf - who were accused of falsifying or amending police statements taken at the time. It ended a few days ago - a mistrial. It was a mistrial because the statements which were changed were for submission to the Taylor inquiry, which was not a court of law, so - on a technicality - VAR ruled it all offside. Case dismissed.

I expected nothing else, but I am more than a little cross to note that the lawyer who represented the lawyer (if you follow me) - a pip-squeak of a QC who has built a reputation on successfully defending crooks against all the odds (this is my interpretation, rather than the gentleman's actual wording in his promotional blurb) - also felt obliged to add the following comment to the BBC afterwards:

He said: “My client was accused of covering up criticism of the police. What he in fact did was cut out criticism of the Liverpool fans, whose behaviour was perfectly appalling on the day, causing a riot that led to the gate having to be opened, that unfortunately let the people in and crushed to death the innocents as they were – complete innocents – who were at the front of the pens, who had arrived early and were not drunk and were behaving perfectly well.”

So, it seems, the crowd behaved badly and were (by implication) drunk, and this was a major contributor to the event. He has also said a few other things elsewhere, but my blood pressure is not up to reading them again. His job for the day was to defend individuals accused of falsifying statements; the world does not wish to hear his personal views on the original disaster. The world, I believe, does not give a shit.

Whoever drummed up the crowd-funding necessary to get a 2nd Division QC to defend the case, it looks rather as though they didn't raise enough to get him to read through its archives. The alternative history version involving a rioting crowd was blown away in 2016. Old news. No good.

I don't know what happens next - probably nothing - but it would be nice to think that the QC in question might live to regret his words. Back in the day, Northern soccer fans were near enough to striking miners for Mrs Thatcher to be unable to tell the difference. I don't think that is going to wash now.

I refuse to get worked up about it, but I shall keep an eye open. God is listening. So is Mr Rees Mogg, apparently. That's a midfield to make anyone tremble.

***** Very Late Edit *****

It's been brought to my attention that, after the latest attempt at a trial was aborted (on, let us remind ourselves, a legal technicality), the defence lawyers expressed the views that the continuing persecution of the police offers involved was a "witch hunt" and a huge waste of public money, but that the dismissal of the case should put an end to suggestions of a cover-up.

No. Sorry. Everyone knows there was a cover-up. We haven't seen the full extent of it, but the solicitors should try to maintain some sense of reality. Give us a break.

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Hooptedoodle #396b - Mystery Object Revealed

 My thanks to everyone who got in touch. I have to say that I was delighted with that little exercise - so much creativity - I am impressed, and greatly cheered up. Apart from a temporary problem I am having this morning, thinking about steamed cod-pieces and giant fat-balls, I was profoundly touched by the friendly, supportive spirit in which my possible foibles such as shrunken head collecting were glossed over - accepted on the nod - without any hint of disapproval. That is kind and diplomatic; if I had a heart, it would be warmed.

Many of the suggestions are more exciting than its true purpose, but I shall now reveal the correct answer...

As a couple of people suggested, it is a device to assist in cleaning a baseball-type cap. As far as I know, it can also cope with a baseball cap which is worn backwards, which is pretty good too - high marks for versatility.

The weird bit is that, as revealed in the photos, the device is intended to be used in the dish-washing machine. Yes - quite so.

My "lucky" walking hat has now been with me for 10 years - I have worn it in the Alps, on the Danube, along Hadrian's Wall, around the fortifications of Chester, Berwick, Carlisle, Denbigh, Salzburg, on my visit to the Eagles' Nest, in Vienna, at numerous recent wargames (to avoid the overhead lighting setting off my ocular migraine) and all sorts of other exciting activities. I reckon this cap has also accompanied me during a couple of hundred mowings of my lawns - we have been inseparable. I've lost it a few times along the way, and some of the occasions on which I found it again were unlikely - occasionally they might even have been far-fetched. Critics have queried why, since I bought it in Austria, it says "Austria" on it - in English. I have no answer to this - I assume it may be something to do with British and American tourists probably not being expected to know what Österreich means. Whatever, it is my friend. Like me, it got soaked through, walking the last few miles into Wallsend in the footsteps of Hadrian. It also walked across the great bridge at Regensburg when slightly too much beer had been taken. You get the idea.

Recently it has been quarantined - it has become, with use, smelly and unappetising, so a wash was prescribed. We obtained the gizmo under discussion, and yesterday I fired up the dishwasher, specially. Cool, quick wash cycle - no lemon in the cleaning capsule [discuss?].

Seems to have been successful - it's still drying, but looks (and smells) far better. Now I'll have to come up with some special trips on which to wear it again. Sounds good.

My friend De Vries suggested that the device might be a Scold's Bridle (also known by various other names) - a medieval, cage-like device which was fitted around the head of a gossip or similar, with a tongue clamp. Horrible thing - I saw a few once, in a museum in Rothenburg ob der Tauber. No it's not one of those.

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

As a bit of evidence, here's a shot of my cap on tour, at the big castle in Salzburg, when I was younger, and still allowed to go on foreign holidays.

*********************

Hooptedoodle #396a - Another Mystery Object...

 We have something of a tradition here at Chateau Foy of being very partial (I almost said "susceptible") to the occasional gizmo - an unlikely knick-knack which someone out there wishes to convince us all is the solution to some problem we never realised we had.

The Contesse Foy has recently obtained this. I had never even heard of such a thing before, but it comes with some positive reviews. So, as usual, I am left to wonder am I the only guy on the planet who has never come across one of these...?

Right, gentlemen - you may well have one, and use it daily, and you may be astounded that I am so ignorant as never to have seen one. So - I ask you, in a spirit of gentle quizzery, as a bit of innocent fun  - what do you think this is? 

 

I'll put up the answer in a day or so - please send in suggestions - the wackier the better. If you know what it is, that's fine too, though less interesting...

Oh - yes - it's made of flexible plastic - the glimpse of my hand in the upper photo gives an idea of scale, and the fact that I can lift it confirms that it is not heavy.

Hooptedoodle #395 - Just the Thing for the Grand Duke's Study

 My wife has been clearing her late mother's house recently, preparing to sell the place. This has not been especially easy in a time of lockdown, and the closure of the charity shops has been a major problem in the disposal of household trivia. Some of the larger and more valuable items have been sold through local social media pages, and a lot has been given away. One item I was interested in for myself was a wall clock.

I've always had a thing about clocks - I associate chiming clocks with sunlit afternoons at my Posh Auntie May's house in West Kirby when I was a kid. There is something soothing about them. They go with the smells of furniture polish and coffee. The clock in question is built in a traditional style, but it is probably only about 45 years old. For a featured clock in a hallway or similar I think I'd prefer something genuinely old - with ghosts and all that. Still, this is a proper, wind-up clock with a pendulum. Not a battery in sight. It keeps good time, and really is perfect for the Grand Duke's study.

I paid the advertised price and hung it on the wall.

Very good thus far. The tick is pleasing, and is actually no louder than the noise the battery clock which preceded it made.

And, of course, it chimes - how long that stays switched on is a matter of wait and see, but at the moment I'm enjoying it.

Hooptedoodle #394 - Auprès de Ma Blonde

 Here we go - a song from the time of Louis XIV, reckoned to date from the Franco-Dutch War of 1672-78, and much loved as a marching song by French soldiers right up to modern times. The informal performance here is by the remarkable Olivia Chaney, who is English, though her accent is spot-on. I'm very much in favour of Olivia, generally.

I was taught this song by my mother when I was a toddler. Years later, in my French class at school, we were asked if anyone knew any French songs, and I offered this, for which I was put on detention by our teacher (the Headmaster, as it happens), because the song was inappropriate. When I protested that it was a very old song, and told him where I had learned it, he said it had been inappropriate for a very long time, and my mother could take a detention too.

The romantic drama in the verses has been hand-polished over the centuries, I am sure, but the chorus is straightforward enough:

Next to my blonde, who does it well, does it well, does it well;
Next to my blonde, who makes me sleep well.

The Headmaster, Bill Pobjoy, has been dead for years - his biggest claim to fame was the fact that he expelled one John Winston Lennon from the school (before my time, I hasten to add), of which he was always rather proud. In truth, I think old JWL needed to be expelled. 

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

My old friend Norman, who is something of an expert on all things to do with the Beatles, has gently taken me to task over the Lennon episode - he points out that, strictly, JWL was not expelled, but the school arranged for him to transfer to Liverpool Art College. Technically, that is correct, and there are a number of books which testify to this now (some of them almost certainly written by Norman), but there is no doubt that there was no way that Lennon was going to be allowed to stay - the place at the Art College was engineered (partly under pressure from one of the teaching staff, Philip Burnett, who was convinced that Lennon was a mad genius), but JWL was very firmly escorted to the exit.

A digression follows - possibly an unnecessary one, but fairly conclusive in my mind.

It was the practice at the school for successful or prominent Old Boys (former pupils) to return from time to time, to give an address to the senior school (this was a boys' school, by the way). On one such occasion, Peter Shore, who after many years of active work for the Labour Party had finally been elected, a few years before, as MP for Stepney, came to speak to the 5th and 6th forms about his life in politics. The talk was pretty boring, I regret to recall, but it was also heavily Socialist, which caused very apparent unease to Mr Pobjoy, who shared the platform with our guest speaker.

Shore finished off his talk with an unbelievably weak call to glory (this was mid-1960s): "...and let us work to make sure that the Britain of the Beatles is a Labour Britain!".

There was a smattering of routine applause, then the headmaster, po-faced, stood to offer very taut thanks to our guest, and added the message that one of the Beatles had been a pupil at the school, and that he was pleased to say that he had expelled him. Dead silence - we all filed out, listening for pins dropping, to return to our classes.

It goes without saying that no musicians were ever invited to speak.

 

Peter Shore, MP

I raise the matter only to give the unofficial, but obviously whole-hearted, view of the individual involved. Further claptrap: Peter Shore went on to hold a number of Shadow posts in Labour Opposition cabinets, and held some real offices in Harold Wilson's government. His political career is thought to have been hindered by his lengthy devotion to the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (to which he became strongly opposed in later life). He died, Wikipedia tells me, in 2001. As a side issue, I am delighted to note that his father-in-law was the Canadian-born historian and academic, EM Wrong. A finer name for a historian never existed, surely. This is straight out of Monty Python.

Enough - I hope that gets Norman off my back.

***********************

Hooptedoodle #393 - Music - Instant Time Travel

 Righto - lovely morning here, so I was browsing through the CD racks, looking for something suitable, to keep me in a mellow mood while I try to sort out my mother's tax return. I came up with this, and it stopped me dead...

 I remember exactly when and where I bought this album, and I can see it like a photograph. My first wife and I went on holiday to California in about 1990 - we flew to San Francisco, rented a car (a Chevrolet Monte Carlo, which had sort of sporty, "coupé" pretensions, but drove like a small lorry), then we had 2 nights in San Francisco, drove up through Sacramento and Auburn (which places I knew a little) and then stayed at Nevada City, up in the old goldfields, for a couple of days, then through the forests to Mendocino. A few days there (we stayed at the MacCallum House, which I think is still there - great food) and then we drove down the Pacific Highway, stayed at Carmel for a few nights, and then on to LA to fly home. About 12 days total, I think - I have a slightly blurred recollection of most of it, but I remember we had a good time.

One thing I remember very clearly. Last morning in Mendocino, early, after I'd packed our lorry ready for the run south, I was taking a walk down by the sea, to bid the place farewell - it was very misty, and at one point I was walking across some sort of "village green" area, thinking about coffee, when I heard music. Unmistakeable - Jim Hall on guitar, floating over the gardens. I found the source of the music, a bookshop, opening onto the green, exchanged greetings with the owner, and bought coffee and a pastry from him. I asked was the CD for sale, and he said yes, it was, so I bought it and took it away with me, which didn't please him a lot, because he was listening to it. Such is commerce, I guess.

This is the first track from the album - the tune that was playing through the mist in Mendocino - 30 years ago. This is Paul Desmond, on alto sax, with Jim Hall on guitar, playing When Joanna Loved Me.

Perfect. I shut my eyes and it's a misty morning in California, in another century.

I'd like to revisit Mendocino again sometime, but it's on a long list, and I realise I probably never will.

Hooptedoodle #392 - An Old Friend, Welcome Back

 We had some new turf laid a couple of weeks ago, and it's been very dry weather since then. Though I've put the sprinklers on a couple of times, the new turf is definitely looking a bit rough.

Since the gardener is due to visit today, and since I am nervous about receiving a telling-off for not looking after the turf, I had the sprinklers going full blast on Tuesday until late. At around 11pm I put on the outside lights and went out to shut off the water. I was walking down the path when I realised that a hedgehog was walking alongside me - not bothered at all. I watched him saunter off into the hedge - I was really glad to see him. He may, of course, have been a her.

 

Not my photo - someone else's hedgehog, in daylight

I knew they were around - I've seen their droppings on the lawn recently. We used to get lots of them - I'm talking of nearly twenty years ago - you could hear them snuffling about in the garden at night, and in the woods at the back of our house. The hedgehogs used to suffer a few casualties - they sometimes used to get caught in the traps the farm ghillie set for rats, and one or two managed to get trapped in the lobster pots which were stacked opposite our house - one of the more complicated forms of suicide. Then they were gone. I suppose there were some around - we never saw any sign  of them. And now, after an extended absence, they are back.

Well, at least one is back. The photo is not mine, of course, it was dark last night and I had nothing with me to take a photo, but I'll try to keep an eye open from now on.

I'm pleased with that - over the years we've lost our Greenfinches and a few other friends, but the hedgehogs are back. Well, well.

Hooptedoodle #391 - LaptrinhX - an unfortunate oddity or a symptom of something?

 I'm not at all sensitive about privatising my blog, or making it somehow kind of exclusive. It's not that big a deal - if someone reads it and likes it then, good; if they don't like it then they can move on and do something else. If they protest in a comment, then I can please myself whether I publish the comment, and it's all just part of the blog world.

Like many others, I get a bit fed up with the constant lifting of bits of my labours into TMP, but since the combined attention span of TMP is minimal it doesn't matter much, and occasionally someone who comes across my blog through that channel does what I would think of as the normal thing to do, and makes human, friendly contact. [In fact, of late, the borrowed bits of this blog on TMP which appear under the "authorship" of Tango01 have also carried a house official legend identifying the original source - could it be that TMP's views on decency and intellectual property are somehow evolving? Who knows? Who cares, actually?]

Occasionally I find that chunks of my blog are on Pinterest - I am unmoved. On one occasion I was surprised to find that I could purchase a mug or a poster from some on-line pirate, bearing a photo which was actually mine, and was pinched from here. Again - so what?

And then there is LaptrinhX. 

If you visit their site, laptrinhx.com, you may find, if you search for your Blogger ID, that you are one of their featured contributors. I was very impressed to find that some 800-odd posts from Prometheus in Aspic - credited to MSFoy - have simply been stolen, intact. They are reformatted, though not changed otherwise; the comments are dropped, but there they are. This is, supposedly, a news and job-advertising online journal for software developers, and they feature paid adverts which, presumably, generate revenue per hit.

I'm not awfully upset about this, to be honest, my material is in the public domain, and I realise that the pinching is done by a robot somewhere, so I am neither flattered nor personally very offended, but - for better or worse - this blog is all me own werk, Miss, and if someone generates advertising revenue for themselves and their poxy website by using my original thought and images, without any pretence of a by-your-leave, then I find that less than amusing. Thus I felt it was only appropriate to name them in this blog post, and see if it, too, is lifted intact.

Naturally, I wish to offend no-one, but thought it would be appropriate if I were to mention here that, in my opinion, LaptrinhX, their owners, advertisers, bots and readership are all a bunch of sad little wankers; please publish this. I hope they enjoy reading about themselves here today. Consider it an experimental work-out for their editing software.

Hooptedoodle #390 - March Morning Unlike Others

 

I'm delighted to see that the farming company have been busy smartening up the lane in from the Real World - new turf and daffodils on both verges, and they've fixed all the fences. This section is about 1/3 of a mile of road, and they've done both sides - just the thing to keep you busy on a Sunday afternoon.

Lovely Spring day here, so I am pleased to trot out one of my favourite Ted Hughes poems, which seemed apposite.

 

March Morning Unlike Others  [Ted Hughes - Season Songs (1975)]

Blue haze. Bees hanging in the air at the hive-mouth.
Crawling in prone stupor of sun
On the hive-lip. Snowdrops. Two buzzards,
Still-wings, each
Magnetized to the other,
Float orbits.
Cattle standing warm. Lit, happy stillness.
A raven, under the hill,
Coughing among bare oaks.
Aircraft, elated, splitting blue.
Leisure to stand. The knee-deep mud at the trough
Stiffening. Lambs freed to be foolish.

The earth invalid, dropsied, bruised, wheeled
Out into the sun,
After the frightful operation.
She lies back, wounds undressed to the sun,
To be healed,
Sheltered from the sneapy chill creeping North wind,
Leans back, eyes closed, exhausted, smiling
Into the sun. Perhaps dozing a little.
While we sit, and smile, and wait, and know
She is not going to die.

 

Hooptedoodle #389 - How Old Ben Suffered for His Art

 

Strange, ruminating post this, so if you have something better to do please feel free to move on - cheers...

A week or two ago a relative of mine phoned up for a long chat - this is obviously a feature of pandemics - and, in mid chat, out of the blue, suddenly announced that it had been my dad's 99th birthday a couple of days previously. Actually, she said "would have been", since he has been dead for some years now. Well, that's something; a 100th birthday is really more of a ritual - telegram, special flowers, all that - but 99 is just a routine birthday. No fuss, nothing in the local paper, just a number to attach to the idea of being bloody old.

 

Unless you are dead, of course.

 

Later on, she recollected that my dad had been an interesting man - "very artistic", she said. Funny one, that. A number of people have made similar comments in the past, so that must be a fairly common perception. Personally, I think he was not the slightest bit artistic, in any sense I understand; he may have been one of the least creative people I ever came across.

 

 

Let's have a little look at my dad, then. His name was Ben. My relationship with my dad was always a bit problematic [this is not going to be a rant or a wallow, by the way, so unclench]. Maybe that's the norm for dads? - anyway, he worried me. When I was little he worried me because he was a bringer of discipline and retribution, and when I was a little older I used to worry about whether he would be pleased with what I had done, and when I grew out of that I used to worry because he was becoming old and frail and a bit of a liability, and now that he is at peace I worry a little because his DNA must still be kicking around in my brain somewhere. I watch for signs...

 

Credit where credit is due. He was a very clever man - he was a chartered engineer, electronics being his field. A former colleague of his once told me that my dad was an absolute natural - he could look at something, however complex, and he would see straight away how it worked, and what its weaknesses might be. If it were broken, he could see what was wrong with it, and how it should be fixed. He was a lot less capable with people, it has to be said, and that may be something to do with the fact that his world was dominated by whether things were perfect or not. Things were well made or they were not; they were working or they were not. Binary. You could argue, if you wished, but if you disagreed with him then you were wrong. That's quite a simple philosophy, really. Sometimes tricky for everyone else, but simple enough to understand.

 

 

His job was not without its stresses - he became a very senior Managing Engineer with the UK Atomic Energy Authority, then got more and more frustrated as further promotion eluded him. Problem was, no-one could work with him. He wouldn't delegate anything, partly because he couldn't trust anyone to do a job as well as he could, and also (I think) partly because anyone who shared the credit for anything he did was a threat. Eventually, they solved everyone's difficulties by paying him to go away and leave them alone.

 

So, in his lengthy retirement, he returned to an old interest, and started doing watercolours, and later oil painting - his doctor reckoned it would calm him down (which is another convincing argument in favour of always getting a second opinion). His painting mostly caused him angst. He had considerable skills, in a draughtsman-like sense - give him a pencil and a sheet of paper, and he could draw you a straight line, freehand. He could do it because he knew he could do it. Give him the challenge of painting a perfect watercolour replica of a photograph, and he went through agonies trying to get it right.

 

Years ago, when I was in another marriage and lived in another town, he presented us with a large oil painting of some waterfall near Callander, which had taken him ages to finish. It was ghastly - boring - it was a failed copy of a photograph, devoid of any personality or interesting insight. My wife of the day refused to display it, so we came to a truce arrangement whereby it was stored in a box-room, and was hung in the hallway when my parents visited (which was not often). My wife was certain that it was gifted to us because my mother didn't want it.

 

Tricky. When I cleared my mother's house, 4 years ago, when she was moving into residential care, there were lots of his watercolours around the place. Framed - dozens of them. Crap quasi-photographic representations of a spray of roses (with droplets of dew), a Cornish fishing village, a horse in a stable-yard in Wensleydale, a mountain in the Cairngorms. And so on and so on. Heaven forgive me, I ditched the lot - they made my teeth ache just looking at them.

 

 

Proper Painting

 

By this time, of course, my dad had been dead for years. He had a bookcase full of coffee-table sized books about famous artists, and he did know a lot about them, though not one photon of understanding seemed to penetrate along with the dates and the titles. His favourites were Canaletto, and Escher - probably predictably - guys who could paint and draw properly. None of your interpretive or abstract stuff, thank you. As a side issue, I am intrigued that his favourite music was Telemann and Vivaldi - only short pieces, naturally - is there a symmetry here?

 

 

Proper Drawing

 

He did calm down a little as the years passed. After he had moved up to Scotland (to live near me, so that I could sort things out when he forgot how to use the VCR, or fell over in the flower bed, or - once - got stuck in the bath), one night he and I had drunk enough wine to somehow get into a befuddled debate about art. We got around to a recurrent theme, which was along the lines that a painting of a blue cow by Picasso might be very valuable, but since cows were not blue it was not worth considering as a piece of art - Ben would not have given it house room if he had received it as a present. It wasn't right. It failed the rightness test.

 

Never knowing when to shut up, I told him that I considered art as an accumulation of imperfections - a human being, with his/her own values and upbringing, looked at a subject, saw some particular interesting qualities in it, and presented it for public view in this way - all reproduced through the (imperfect) medium of their own style and technique. It was a work of humanity, built on human frailty, rather than a photocopy (though, of course, it might be a photocopy if that was how the artist saw it). If I went to an exhibition of pictures of the Empire State Building, for example, I would not expect to see the place filled with full frontal views of the building - I'd expect to see interesting aspects of the place, pictures from unusual angles, maybe of little-known details. Much use made of lighting, the neighbouring architecture - and so on - in short, there would be some point to the exhibition.   

 

Ben couldn't understand this at all. My view was incorrect. If a cow is a brown animal with four legs, that is what the artist should depict, and - not least, from an engineering viewpoint - the legs had better be one in each corner. Maybe, now I think about it again, his view has some validity, like some form of super-realism, but I don't think he thought about it like that.

 

 

Anyway, artistic or not, his works - perhaps "labours" is better - have made no lasting impression on the world. Just not ready for him, maybe, or possibly his impact was ruined by the invention of photography before he got started.

 

An interesting man, then, as a case study, but artistic? I'd give him a respectful thumbs-down for that one.

 

 

Hooptedoodle #388 - Ian St John - another boyhood hero gone

 It has been expected for a while, since he has been very ill with cancer for some years, but I am saddened to learn that Ian St John - a real footballing hero from my formative years - has passed away at the age of 82. Ian was a native of Motherwell, in Scotland, and was one of the early acquisitions when Bill Shankly set about rebuilding Liverpool FC in the early 1960s. That team became very successful indeed - though most of their glories were after I'd left Liverpool and moved to Edinburgh!

St John was centre-forward in the team with which Shankly won the old Second Division, and which then went on to dominate the First Division in the years which followed. St John scored the winning goal in Liverpool's first ever FA Cup win, at Wembley in 1965, against Leeds United. 

There's plenty of scope at present for being upset by the demise of old footballers - they are currently going down like flies, of course, so I tend not to dwell on this steady topic of mortality, but Ian was a bit special, and I am - if not exactly choked up - then certainly a bit wistful this morning.

Back in the day, there was a local joke, which went as follows:

Teacher asks a class of Liverpool schoolkids, what do they think would happen if Jesus came back, to Liverpool, at the present time [1960s]? Correct answer was, "They'd have to move St John to inside right". Yes, it's very silly, but in its way it is an affectionate mark of the man's stature in the common culture. 

1965 - Back row: Ron Yeats, Gordon Milne (reserve), Willie Stevenson, Ian St John, Chris Lawler, Gerry Byrne. Front: Tommy Lawrence, Peter Thompson, Geoff Strong, Tommy Smith, Roger Hunt, Ian Callaghan. [Only Yeats, Milne, Stevenson, Lawler, Hunt and Callaghan are still alive, as at March 2021]

Hooptedoodle #387 - Ads for Morons, Created by Morons

 Wow - I was on the CNN site this evening, trying to get the latest on the gold statue of Trump that some bottom-hole has put on display in Orlando, and some fiendish cookie or other got busy and - hey! - I got a personalised ad, just for me. That's quite something - I mean I'm not even very famous (though my reading about Trump might have been a clue), but I'm pleased that they realised I would be interested in this sort of thing.

 

North Berwick

To put this into perspective, here is a photo of my home village. I am fascinated by this potential jet service - how impressed would my friends be, for goodness sake? I am wondering whether the jets land and take off in the fishing harbour, or they use that big field behind the telephone exchange - of course, they'd have to shift the horses, but it's marvellous, isn't it?

Amazing what they can do nowadays, as I always say. There - I just said it again...

Hooptedoodle #386 - The Strange Tale of the "Normandie" - in fact and the movies

 

Yesterday I got rather sidetracked by the Internet (as one does), and as a result finished up watching a movie on my TV, late in the evening. I have promised myself that I'll have a more productive day today, but I'm getting off to a poor start by writing about the time I wasted yesterday...

So there are two related threads here - the ship and the movie I watched. I'll start off with the ship.

I did some reading about the SS Normandie, a ship I recognise vaguely from old photos, but never really knew very much about. It really is a very odd story - sad, undoubtedly, and filled with some astonishing bad breaks and terrifying incompetence - if you are interested, you can find lots about it online, but here's a quick skim.

Built at St Nazaire, in Brittany, the Normandie was launched in 1935; it was the biggest, fastest, most technically advanced, most luxurious passenger liner of its day, and this in an age when the big transatlantic liners were at their most prestigious. It's success was tempered a little by a shift in the market - by design, the Normandie was heavily committed to catering for the very wealthy, and as the 1930s neared their end there was a big upsurge in demand for more economical travel, which gave the British Cunard ships an unassailable advantage.

 

After the attack on Pearl Harbour, since the USA was now at war with the Axis Powers, and France had become German-occupied territory, the Normandie, which was stranded in New York, was requisitioned by the US Navy (with the full co-operation of its owners), was renamed the USS Lafayette (see what they did there?), and after some dithering about, during which it was briefly proposed to make her into an aircraft carrier (the ship, you understand, was enormous), eventually a plan was produced to convert the vessel into a troopship. 

Conversion work was rather rushed, trying to meet a very ambitious commissioning date, and on 9th February 1942 the ship caught fire, at the refit berth at Pier 188, Brooklyn. Sparks from a welding torch set alight a store of kapok-filled life-jackets which were in a passenger saloon, the fire spread rapidly, as a result of inflammable varnished wood panelling not having yet been removed, and, helped by a stiff northeasterly breeze, which blew the blaze along the length of the ship, within about an hour, the three upper decks were engulfed from end to end.

The ship was equipped with a sophisticated fire-fighting system, and lots of appropriate equipment, but the system had been disabled and most of the equipment removed. Further, the NYCFD's hoses did not fit the ship's French connectors. Some valiant, though hopeless, efforts were improvised to fight the conflagration. As water was pumped in from shore-based fire tenders and the port's fire-boats, the ship began to settle in the dock, and took on a list to seaward.

The Normandie's designer was present in New York, since he had been involved in discussions of the refit. He arrived at the dock, with a plan to save the ship, but the harbour police refused him entry. His idea was to go on board, open the sea-cocks to flood the lower hull, allowing the vessel to settle the few feet to the bottom of the dock, which would enable the fire to be put out without risk of capsizing. The Navy commander on the spot, Admiral Adolphus Andrews, rejected this idea.

The authorities eventually declared that the fire was under control, and rescue operations ceased, but some 6,000 tons of water had been pumped on board. Continuing entry of water below the surface resulted in the vessel capsizing later on that night. This had been a major emergency - many individuals were injured, and there was one death. Andrews placed a complete shut-down on all reporting - no press were allowed anywhere near the scene.

Later there were a number of proposal for projects to restore the vessel in some form, but after a lot of wasted time and expenditure the ideas were axed, and the hulk was scrapped in 1946. Since then there have been many theories suggesting mob involvement and so on - interesting, but I'll spare you all that.

While I was reading about this, I learned that the capsized vessel appears in the 1942 Alfred Hitchcock movie, Saboteur. Now, as it happens, I have a big box set of Hitchcock films, which one of my sons gave me for Xmas some years ago, and I was pretty sure this one is included. It is.

Which brings me to my other thread - the movie, which I duly watched last night. In fact I have seen it before, some years ago, but I remembered very little about it (the plot was spoiled rather less for me last night by what I had remembered about it than by what was pretty obviously predictable anyway). The film has a big wartime message about patriotism and public awareness of national security, though there are some odd plot twists involving a wealthy, privileged elite who are masterminding the Fifth Column and sabotage in the US - seems strangely in tune with modern conspiracy theories?

The movie is fun - not a very demanding watch, and is in many ways a film of Great Silliness, not the least of which is a Hitchcock cliché - a climactic ending, set on yet another famous National Monument (yes, AGAIN). I sat up and saluted when I (briefly) saw the wrecked Normandie/Lafayette (or USS Alaska - a battleship, no less, as it is cast in the plot). 

OK - so what? Well, so nothing, really, but there is something odd about the dates. If I had been less tired, I am sure I'd have tried to find out a bit more, but I'd had enough by this stage.

Here's the thing - filming took place from December 1941 to February 1942 - not a generous timescale, but there was a war on. The capsizing of the "battleship" is not a strategic high spot of the story, but it is an impressive part of the build up to the finale. Given that the ship only sank in February 1942, I am forced to assume that there was some very fast footwork, and Hitchcock changed the story to include his (prohibited) shots of the Lafayette - I guess that the story was largely patched together as he went along anyway, but that is impressive. As far as I know, none of the conspiracy stories involves Hitchcock commissioning the sinking of one of the biggest ships in the world, to fit into his latest movie, so it must just have been opportunism on his part.

It brought him a lot of grief - his use of illicit shots of a ship, the sinking of which was the subject of a lot of denial, and the hints in the story that the Navy's security and competence might be a tad suboptimal resulted in the movie being "red-flagged" by the censors, though it was allowed to be released because of its positive wartime espionage messages, and was premiered in April 1942. We may assume Admiral Andrews never forgave him, however... 

Hooptedoodle #385 - Chick Corea

 Another personal hero gone. Chick Corea, the jazz pianist, died this week, aged 79. He became famous when he played with Miles Davis in the late 1960s (in a band which for a period featured 3 electric pianos - Herbie Hancocks, Keith Jarrett and Corea, which some might say is at least 2 too many...).

Then, of course, he became a leading light in his own right in the Jazz Fusion thing, which divided the world neatly into those who felt it wasn't proper jazz at all and those who felt it didn't quite make it as rock music either. I was playing a couple of his CDs this morning, and it occurred to me that the 1990s was longer ago than I had thought. Good, though.

Here's a track that I like. Thanks from me, Chick. Rest easy.

Hooptedoodle #384 - troglodytes troglodytes

 So good, they named it twice.

I'm aware of these little birds being around our garden, but you don't often see them. I think we hear them, but we don't see them much. This morning, while the French window was open and some boxes of stuff were getting shifted into the log shed, a Wren flew in and was temporarily trapped in what we refer to as our Garden Room (because it's, like, next to the garden).

Eventually it stopped flapping about, and rested on the back of one of the sofas. My wife picked it up, checked it over, and took it outside, where it recovered for a couple of minutes before flying away. We were reluctant to simply put it down somewhere to get its breath back, since I imagine the Magpies eat these little fellas like popcorn.

All well in the end - very nice to meet a rather shy neighbour.

Hooptedoodle #383 - License to Kill

 I'm still coming to terms with the changes in US politics. I feel that I have spent enough time, words and worry on the former President, so I offer this farewell thought. Maria Muldaur sings Bob Dylan's song. 

Right now, to me this feels kind of holy. I'll say no more on the topic.

Hooptedoodle #382: Boomerwaffen - not front-line troops?

 This is a very upsetting time, all things considered, and the world does not require yet another smart-ass to try to say something clever or amusing about the tragic horror-show at the Capitol last week, but there is an aspect of the event which everyone seems to have attempted to avoid noticing; so, being naturally stupid and tactless, I thought I'd mention it. 

As I understand things, one protestor was fatally shot by security personnel, one policeman died from injuries received in the conflict, and a further policeman has subsequently committed suicide. All this is very sad and regrettable, and there was mention of three more protestors who succumbed to what were described as "medical emergencies". Again, I was very sorry to learn of this, but I was vaguely interested (not morbidly, I hope), wondering whether this was some kind of woke euphemism for "died of teargas" or similar.

Apparently not. It does shine a light on who these people were who forced their way into the Capitol on 6th January. There were guys climbing up buildings and getting into fist fights and so on, which is what we might expect from urban terrorists, but it is very obvious from the photos that many of them did not look like the sort of assault troops you would hand pick for your Forlorn Hope. Not grenadiers. A pretty high proportion of Mr Trump's enthusiastic followers are, to be blunt about it, elderly or overweight. Frequently both. I deeply regret that anyone should have been hurt or killed at all, though it could be said that they shouldn't have been there - if you stand in the middle of the highway, you will probably suffer for it. One lady died, they think, because she was trampled in the melee. One 50-year old man died of a stroke at the scene - his friends said he was very excited by the events of the day. 

One 55-year old, known to have a history of hypertension, had a fatal heart attack. He is quite an interesting fellow; described by his family as a good man, who would never have harmed anyone, he seems to have had a tendency to post pictures of himself on Parler (now defunct, of course), wielding his automatic rifles, and proposing that like-minded citizens should be prepared to take back their country with guns.

Right.

Didn't work out too well, did it? These people were obviously just not up to being commandos. If the Proud Boys and the Bikers for Trump and all the rest of the Boomerwaffen are going to commit to doing this sort of thing on a regular basis, they had better make sure they have paramedics with them, to look after the "medical emergency" casualties. Or maybe they could discourage their more frail colleagues from coming along.

Once again, I am at pains to emphasise that I do not wish to judge or disrespect any individual, so please don't bother flaming me, and I am sorry that people died or were injured, but Darwin is never far away if you look out for him.

Hooptedoodle #381 - Granny Farr & the Strangers

 This tale is based upon a single - and unexplained - entry in the Accounts and Proceedings of the Council of the Town and Parish of Lancaster, in the County of Lancashire, dated 17th November 1621. The entry is signed by the Clerk of the Council, one Jeremiah Archibald. 

The Accounts contain no subsequent reference to the matter. Neither the strangers referred to nor Mr Joseph Smallbone were ever found, as far as we know.

 

The room was hot, and very noisy - a fire burned in the hearth, and everyone seemed to be speaking at once. The Clerk of the Council rose to his feet and shouted for order. 

 

"If it please the Council - my Lords, gentlemen, they are bringing in Mistress Farr now..." 

And Jean Farr duly appeared - she was rather frail, and her shoulders trembled slightly as she was led to a chair opposite Sir Thomas. 

"Mistress Farr," said the Clerk, "this is Sir Thomas Fanshawe, who is Member of the Parliament for this town, and who chairs today's Council meeting. Gentlemen, my Lords, Mistress Farr is cook and housekeeper for the Reverend Musgrave." 

Old Jean said something, but it was inaudible in the general din. Sir Thomas, removing his hat, rose to his feet and bowed slightly, and raised his hand for quiet. 

"Granny Farr," he said, "I know you well - you and your late husband worked at the home of my father, and I know you to be of good character. I trust and hope that the Good God has granted you health and strength? I need you to help us resolve this odd business about these strangers - it has certainly become the currency of every market stall and alehouse in the town, and the tale becomes more unholy by the minute. Since you are the only person who seems to have met and spoken to them, I shall be very pleased if you will tell me what happened - we need to know who these people are, how they got here, without any knowledge of the Town Guard, and where they have gone. Firstly, if you will, do you know why they chose the Reverend Musgrave's house to call upon?" 

The noise had now diminished to the point where Jean's voice was audible - it wavered a little, but was quite strong and clear. 

"My Lord, if it please you, they said they knew the Minister's home, being a large building, must be the dwelling of an important person. I told them that Mr Musgrave was gone on business to West Derby, but they gave me a gift for him and made a short address - their accents were strange, but I could understand most of what they said." 

"And what did they say, Granny? - what do you remember about them?" 

"They arrived in some sort of carriage - I did not see them approaching, until they knocked at the kitchen door." 

"Pray tell us of this carriage - how many wheels? - how many horses?" 

"Neither horses nor wheels, My Lord, it was black, and square, and it shone like glass - about the size of a small coach, but without windows or fastenings - I did not see it closely, but I knew it was strange. Unfamiliar." 

"Please go on, Granny - what about the visitors themselves?" 

"They looked very peculiar, My Lord - I told the Constable all this..." 

"Yes, yes, Granny, I have the Constable's account here - I need you to tell me what you saw, so that I may better understand this mystery." 

"There were two of them, My Lord - they were tall, they were men, I believe, though their clothes were peculiar - they had pantaloons which reached to their feet, they wore no coats or cloaks, they were without beards, their heads were bald - shaved, I think - and they had pictures and patterns painted on their skin."

 

"Pictures? Religious images?" 

"Nay, My Lord, they seemed to be some form of decoration - flowers and artistic forms." 

"Hmm - and why did they say they had come?" 

"They seemed to be upset, they were arguing with each other all the time - they asked me twice what was the date, and they said the year was wrong, though I am certain I told them the truth. They said they had come from not far away, but from a long way in a different age - from the future, they said, though I know not what they meant." 

The background chatter sprang up once more, but Sir Thomas silenced it with a glare. 

"Please go on, Granny..." 

"They gave me a box, which they said was a gift from our descendants - it would help us rid ourselves of the plague, they said." 

"The box is before you on the table, My Lord," interjected the Clerk. 

The box was about the size of a man's head - without any markings. Sir Thomas lifted a flap and put his hand inside, and removed a number of shiny, cylindrical beads with rounded ends - all identical, each about the length of his thumbnail, with one end coloured yellow and the other crimson. He looked at a few of them, in the palm of his hand, and rolled them onto the tabletop. 

"There must be many thousands of these in here," he said. "Do we know what they are?" 

The Constable, Simon Chaffell, rose to his feet. 

"If it please your Lordship, as yet we do not know. They do not seem to be any kind of explosive device." 

"Thank you, Master Chaffell," said Sir Thomas, "I shall come to you in a moment, if you will - in the meantime, let me resume my questions of Mistress Farr. Granny, please tell us what happened next?" 

"Well, My Lord, I was going to prepare for them some bread and meat, and a little ale, after their journey, but they began to shout loudly, and they ran out into the kitchen garden, and up the hill towards the Mercat - they were very upset because their coach had gone without them..." 

Sir Thomas gestured towards the Constable. 

"Chaffell, can you tell us what happened?" 

"Well, Sir Thomas, the Widow Lalsworth was watching from her window opposite, and she saw two youths playing around the coach - Young Joseph Smallbone and his friend, the Fool Michael." 

"The Fool Michael?" 

"Yes, Sire, a simpleton who lives down at the Barnlands near the Nether Gate - he spends much of his time with Smallbone, who is a thief and a prankster, who does not work and never attends the church..." 

"I understand - please go on - what did Mistress Lalsworth see?" 

"She said that she saw Smallbone interfering with the coach - he climbed upon it, and went inside it. Then there was a strange sound - like music, the Widow says - and the coach disappeared. Then the strangers came out of Mr Musgrave's garden, shouting, and chased the Fool up the hill towards the Mercat Cross. We have searched for them since two days now, and alerted all the watch, but no sign has been found. We have examined the place where the coach stopped - there are no tracks of wheels or animals - there are only three round depressions in the earth where it rested. Otherwise the ground is undisturbed." 

"Thank you, Chaffell - I am concerned that these strangers, in such an unusual vehicle, could have entered though the gates of the town without being seen - I trust that they will be apprehended if they attempt to leave. I understand that there has been no sign of Smallbone, either? We must keep this "gift" in a secure place, in case they return, and perhaps we might examine some of these beads more closely. I would really like to know what these things are. Do you have any ideas, Constable?" 

"None, My Lord - perhaps they are some kind of religious offering, or gems of some kind? I know that Mistress Farr has some thoughts about this." 

At an enquiring glance from Sir Thomas, Old Jean spoke up. 

"I know this is without sense, My Lord, but I think they may be some kind of money." 

"Money? - they do not look like any kind of money I have seen, Granny." 

"Yes, My Lord, but the strangers told me that these beads are called Penny-Shillings in their country, and are highly prized."