"Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic"

The above quote is from the great Arthur C. Clarke in 1961. All I've got to say is, if this is so, why do I feel like Tommy Cooper?

For example, the other dayI was trying to get my mobile phone to connect wirelessly with my new car's hands-free system. I followed all of the steps set out in the handbook for both the car and the phone. Would it connect? Would it bunny rabbits. I was reduced to holding the phone next to the radio, pressing buttons hopelessly and screaming "Connect you bloody thing" at it repeatedly. I could feel a nervous breakdown coming on. And then, for no apparent reason at all, it connected. Despite having followed the instructions to the letter time and time again, it finally decided to connect when it felt like it.

I think part of the problem (and I accept that a major part is me)is that Instruction Books are not written by the people who end up using them. Instead they are written by the people who designed the system in the first place, who know the thing back to front (probably the best way)and think you should too. It's a bit like when someone draws a map of directions for you. You can guarantee that they will miss out a vital roundabout or crossing which they didn't think was important but which had you hurtling toward John O' Groats instead of Henley in Arden.

Flying Saucers in the Front Room

I was talking to an old friend the other day about children’s magazines in our quondam days (fascinating conversation it was, I’ll bet you wish you had been there).  It turned out that we had both been boring little tykes with a fondness for such improving magazines as ‘Knowledge’.  Do you remember ‘Knowledge’?  It was one of those magazines that they nowadays call part-works.  The idea was that you collected the magazines on a weekly basis and it built into an encyclopaedia.  Today, you buy a magazine with a small piece of a Tudor battleship sellotaped to it and, 400 instalments and £1,000 later, you have enough small pieces to build said battleship.  On the whole, I think the encyclopaedia idea was a better concept.

I had been an avid reader of ‘Knowledge’ for some years and really enjoyed the informative articles and the exceptionally good illustrations.  One that still lives in my memory was an old fable from Asia that involved a Mandrill.  I can still see the drawing of this monkey, with the impossibly vivid coloured nose markings, peering out from the depths of a sultry jungle. I was reminded of this by the recent TV advert for a certain brand of coffee shops, involving a legion of monkeys playing with coffee makers.  At the end of this advert, a Mandrill appears and, thanks to ‘Knowledge’, I was able to turn to my wife and say with some authority “That’s a Mandrill, you know”.  She gave me the sort of look that only a wife can and went back to her paper.  Ah well, they say a prophet is never recognised in his own country.  You wait until we’re stuck in some sultry forest, she’ll thank me for my extensive knowledge of primates then.

At about the same time that I started subscribing to ‘Knowledge’, in the early 1960s, I found a copy of a book by Donald Keyhoe about UFO’s (Unidentified Flying Objects) or Flying Saucers as they were popularly known.  This was one of those sensational exposé publications that accused the U.S. Government and military of a gigantic cover-up.  Naturally, as a young and impressionable boy, I lapped this stuff up and was soon a committed believer in extra-terrestrial visitors.  For reasons that I cannot recall, but which were probably connected to my rabid enthusiasm for my new ‘cause’, I wrote to the Letters page of ‘Knowledge’ to express my disgust at this ongoing governmental fraud and to ask if any other readers were interested in the topic (nowadays I would probably be taken into care by concerned social workers).  To my amazement, some months later they published the letter and, even more surprisingly, I started to receive letters from similarly obsessed youngsters from around the world.

As a child, I had always been a fan of forming clubs and was forever cajoling my long-suffering friends into joining some hare-brained society of my conception.  The sudden realisation that there were quite a number of like-minded Flying Saucer fans in the world naturally led to me forming the ‘Flying Saucer Letter Club’ (snappy title huh? It was known as the FSLC to its adherents).  Letters flew back and forth, from my Burton HQ to places as disparate as Surrey and Singapore, and I soon gathered quite a file of correspondence (just think what I could have done with the internet and emails) from teenage boys and girls who were either keen believers, or had actually seen something strange in the sky.  Given my predilection for writing, I naturally introduced a newsletter (actually two sides of typewritten foolscap) which I foisted onto my membership (for a modest subscription) and also sold to my mates at school.  Unbelievably, this was pretty popular and I started to amass a nice little income.

Despite our move from the New Talbot pub to my grandmother’s house (due to a temporary financial embarrassment) and whilst all around me was going to Hell in a handcart, I still pressed on with the FSLC and the newsletter.  People seemed to find the idea of a twelve year old running a small business, based on such an exotic concept, quite fascinating and I was encouraged to get the whole thing some publicity.  So I wrote to the Today programme on Radio 4 (or the Home Service as it probably still was then) telling them all about the club.  To my amazement they wrote back, expressing an interest.  A few phone calls later and arrangements were made for a reporter to come and talk to me.

I have mentioned before how sacrosanct my Nana’s front room was, only for use on high days and holidays.  Naturally, it had to be pressed into service for a visit from the BBC, and so I found myself perched on the pristine sofa, talking to Keith Ackrill from BBC Midlands.  My Mum and Nana fluttered about providing cups of tea and trying not to look as if they found the whole thing anything other than a perfectly ordinary event.  I must say that Keith was a consummate professional and did a fantastic job of putting me at my ease and showing a real interest in something that was clearly never going to be anything other than an “and finally...” piece.

It was the Summer of 1967 and my bit was due to be broadcast on the Midlands’ section of the Today programme after 8.00 a.m.  Tramping around Oak Street on my paper round, the tension was building.  I had my trusty transistor in my paper bag and was passing the time listening to the Top 40 countdown, which was due to finish at 8.00.  I knew that, when the No. 1 finished, it would be time to switch over to the Today programme.  The No. 1 at that time was The Beatles’ ‘All You Need Is Love’, which must have one of the longest fade outs in recording history.  Standing at the end of Oak Street with the radio pressed to my ear, I began to develop a deep and abiding loathing of the Fab Four as their record dragged mercilessly on and 8.00 seemed to be postponed forever.  But the time came, I switched over, and listened with awe at my own squeaky voice pontificating on extraterrestrials to a waiting world.  Walking back from the paper shop, I think I was in a state of utter shock and disbelief.  Had I really just been talking on the BBC?  At that moment, a rather stern woman from across the road shouted over to me “Was that you I just heard on the radio?” blushing furiously, I replied that it was, “Thought as much.  You were very good” she said, and stomped off. 

I floated home on a little cloud all of my own.

Happy Un-Bonfire Night!

So, did you have a good Un-Bonfire Night?

It was last night, in case you missed it.  Or, alternatively, it could be tomorrow.  The only night it couldn’t possibly be is November 5th.  You see, if Lewis Carroll could have 364 Un-Birthdays in each year, then I don’t see why I can’t have the same amount of Un-Bonfire Nights.

Actually, I’m a bit behind the times with this concept because, of late, the British have taken to the idea of igniting fireworks at every possible juncture, as if we had all been drafted into The Royal Artillery when we weren’t looking.  Nowadays any spurious reason for celebration is seen as a good excuse to chuck a couple of tons of ordnance into the air.

It never used to be like this.  In my childhood, fireworks were reserved for 5^th November (remember?) and were usually not very impressive.  Do you recall those little ‘family selection’ boxes that usually contained one Catherine Wheel, two or three Roman Candles, a couple of Jumping Jacks, a Banger or two and a Rocket (with some improbable and wildly optimistic name like GIANT STARCHASER).  The whole thing would cost about half a week’s pay and would be over and done with inside five minutes.  If I sound cynical, I do apologise but I was never a fan of fireworks as a child.  I couldn’t stand loud bangs and I tended to think that standing around in the cold, damp, November night waiting for something that cost a fortune to NOT go off (more often than not), was something of a pointless exercise.

Can you imagine the reaction of the Health and Safety gurus if you suggested selling something as monumentally dangerous as a Jumping Jack today?  “Well, we thought we would have this firework that, when you ignite it, jumps unpredictably around the feet of the children, making loud bangs at each bounce.  The kiddies will love it!”  And what about rockets tilting precariously in yesterday’s milk bottle?  Or the Catherine Wheel nailed hopefully to next door’s wooden fence, with predictable results (irate neighbour, badly-burnt fence and the attention of the Fire Brigade)?

The most memorable firework display that I can recall, takes me back to 1967.  My Aunt and Uncle owned a successful corner shop in Walker Street, Burton, and had just decided to expand by buying the shop that Mr. and Mrs. Rawlings had run for years in Uxbridge Street.  My Mum had been given a part-time job serving at this shop and she had to sort out the stock remaining after years of the Rawlings’ tenure.  In the midst of all this, she found a box of very ancient fireworks that she gave to me (I can hear the Health and Safety mob’s sharp intake of breath from here!)  It was mid-summer and, as we were living at my Grandparents’ house at the time, I guessed that they would not be too happy about an impromptu firework display.  Quite what made me take them up to my Auntie Vera and Uncle Jim’s house in Burton Road, I don’t know, but I couldn’t think of anywhere else to go.

I turned up at Auntie Vera’s clutching a paper bag full of odd and unusual fireworks, probably dating from the Dawn of Time.  I didn’t have much hope that we would do anything with them because Auntie Vera was a great one for doing things by the rules and, it clearly was not Bonfire Night.  Therefore, I was amazed when, as dusk fell, she said “Are we going to try those fireworks then?”  Neither of us knew whether any of them would work, or whether they would explode in a shower of dust and debris. Surprisingly, most (they were of the Roman Candle/Golden Rain type) worked really well and we had quite a show.

As I stood there with Auntie Vera watching these ancient fireworks on a warm summer’s evening, both of us studiously not looking to see what the neighbours thought of our antics, I relished our mini-rebellion and celebrated my first Un-Bonfire Night.


The first collection of stories - "Steady Past Your Granny's" is now available in Kindle e-book format at Amazon UK and Amazon USA

Hours Not To Reason Why?

By Quadell at en.wikipedia Later version(s) were uploaded by Evertype at en.wikipedia. (Transferred from en.wikipedia) [GFDL (http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html) or CC-BY-SA-3.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/3.0/)], from Wikimedia Commons

For as long as I can remember, I have had this ominous feeling that one day, a hand will fall on my shoulder and a voice will say “Alright Sunny Jim, we’ve got you bang to rights, you come along with us now”. Quite why my nemesis should talk like a regugee from Dixon of Dock Green, I don’t know, but there it is.

The reason why I have this sense of impending doom hit me in a blinding flash of inspiration last night, the sort that would have had St. Paul crying “Oh no, not again” and giving up the commute to Damascus for good. It was simple, I have an hour that does not belong to me.

You are all no doubt aware of the farce that we go through twice yearly, turning our clocks backward in October and forward in March, to the general confusion of all and the benefit of very few. Apparently we have a gent named William Willet (1857 – 1915) to thank for this. He pestered MPs, town councils and businesses from 1907 onwards with a view to improving health, happiness and saving £2.5 million pounds. I think that probably tells us all we need to know about Mr. Willet.

What suddenly occurred to me the last time we 'changed the clocks', as I was prowling from room to room trying to track down any errant timepieces in need of adjustment, was that, dependent on when you are born in the year, you must spend your life either an hour up or an hour down.

Let me explain the principle. If you were born between October and March, your first encounter with our bi-annual time shift left you with an hour less than you started with. Agreed? However, if, like me, you were born between March and October, then you gained an hour in October that you had not previously lost, hence my permanent expectation of a visitation from the Time Police. The only way to arrange for this to balance itself out over your lifetime, is to ensure that your death follows the opposite clock adjustment from the one that followed your birth. So, to dispose of the extra hour, my demise would need to take place between March and October, so that the next, and, in my case, very final, bout of “changing the clocks” would remove my additional hour without any danger of this being reinstated in October, at which point I would be pushing up the daisies (or probably not, in October).

The more I think about this (and I’m beginning to wish that I had never started), the more I am sure that this explains a great deal about the human condition, and the British in particular. We all know, do we not, people who spend their lives in the sure and certain knowledge that they have been cheated in some way? Who never have a minute to spare? Who begrudge the expenditure of time in all its forms? How likely then, that these same people are those who are an hour down on the deal? Whereas those who procrastinate and always seem to have time to waste (and I count myself in that number) may well be those who have an hour to spare, and always will have.

I ask for nothing for this major advance in our knowledge. Erect no statues, confer no honours. It is enough to know that my time has come…or possibly gone.

This story features in the bumper collection now released as a Kindle edition - "Crutches for Ducks" ..  The first collection of stories - "Steady Past Your Granny's" is also available in Kindle e-book format.as are "A Kick at the Pantry Door", "Giving a Bull Strawberries" and "The Things You See..."

Dash!

It occurred to me that I haven't exactly covered myself in sporting glory in my previous posts, so this is an attempt to set the record straight(ish).

I have mentioned before, here and elsewhere, my antipathy toward school sports. I particularly disliked winter sports, such as football and anything that involved scrabbling about in mud and bad weather. Spring and summer, therefore, ensured that if sports had to take place, they did so in reasonably clement surroundings. Moreover, if you ignored cricket (and I usually tried to), most summer sports were individual rather than team based and therefore the only person I was letting down was myself.

I was reasonably happy to have a go at most athletic disciplines. I was quite happy to put the shot (although where I ‘put’ it wasn’t very far), long jump and triple jump (or hop, skip and jump as it was known then). I went along with the high jump until it started to get to a level that I regarded as plain daft. Even the javelin posed no problems, until I started to think about it (I have a penchant for over-complicating things). Once I had lost the unconscious ability to just chuck something as hard as I could, and started to fret about when to let go and how, I naturally became a danger to myself and everyone around me. However, I was happiest (using a very loose definition of that word) when I was running. In this discipline there was nobody to let down and no equipment with which to become enmeshed. It was just me and the distance, and if the distance won, well so be it.

I seem to remember that the running distances then were 100, 220, 440 and 880 yards and, of course, the mile. I lacked the stamina for the longer distances (probably because of an early addiction to the evil weed), so the mile and 880 yard races usually involved me crossing the line when everyone who was remotely interested had long since cleared off to pastures new. Neither did I have the concentrated power that was necessary to succeed at 100 or 220 yards. However, I could make a reasonable fist of the 440 yards. By “reasonable fist”, I mean that I did not always finish last, which in my terms was success indeed.

On this particular day in around 1967 you find me lining up for the 440 yard heat on a less than sunny school day. These were the heats that would decide the contestants at the annual Sports Day. My record as one who “did not always finish last” meant that the contestants in my heat consisted of others like myself, and those who most definitely did finish last. This was the heat for those who were usually consigned to the goal in football, or who had been languishing behind a permanent sick note from their mother. This motley crew lined up at the staggered starting points, with me on the outside and leading position. I was never really happy with this position because it was impossible to judge how well you were doing until the point when the ‘stagger’ unwound and the rest of the pack steamed past you, by which time it was too late.

On this occasion, I made my mind up to try and give a good account of myself and, from the word “Go” (literally in this case) I pounded ahead as fast as I possibly could. With heart pounding and laboured breathing I waited for the moment when the rest of the contestants would thunder past me and was then completely perplexed when it did not happen. I just was not used to running without having someone else ahead of me. I didn’t dare to look behind me as I knew I would either fall over or, at the very least, stumble and watch the others storm past. All I could do was to run and keep running at full pelt and wait to see what would happen. All the while, I kept waiting for that familiar moment when one or more runners would pass me. As I drew ever closer to the Finish Line, I began to panic. I had never won anything sporting in my life and it seemed to go against all the laws of nature that I should do so now. And yet, I did. I crossed the Finish Line with no-one in front of me and with people still there to cheer me home. Even the P.E. Teacher, who normally would not spit on me if I was on fire, was forced to remark “Well done, Whiteland”. I collapsed in a heap, astounded with myself.

It was only later that a creeping cynicism began to tarnish my victory. It dawned on me that my fellow racers might have realised that winning this heat would inevitably involve them in racing, yet again, at the Sports Day. This annual event was, for me and my less sporting compatriots, usually a pleasant day in the sunshine watching the exertions of others and cheering enthusiastically for our House. Winning the heat would rather put a dampener on an otherwise pleasant day. I therefore began to wonder if I had not so much won the heat, as that the others had made absolutely sure that they would lose it. I would never know, but these thoughts did rather take the shine off my victory.

You will be pleased to know that the natural sporting order of things was restored at the Sports Day, with me coming in a creditable last against the more skilled and speedy opposition. I did, however, have a tinge of jealousy as I noted that the combatants from my heat were lazily disporting themselves around the field. Oh well, some you win and...

Queueing Action Part 4

To succeed at our Doctors’ it really helped if you had a photographic memory. Your first task on entering was to register everyone in the room so that you knew who was before you and to make sure that no-one who came in after you usurped your place. The whole room sat in that absolute silence common to waiting rooms everywhere, each person desperately trying to maintain their mental picture of the pecking order. Occasional fine tuning would occur when someone with a degree of confidence would make an opening bid, such as:

Large, imposing woman in armchair by fireplace: “I think you were before me, weren’t you dear?”

Young woman wrestling with toddler on her lap: “Oh yes, I came in after the lady in the red hat, didn’t I?”

Lady with red hat: “That’s right, because I came in at the same time as the gentleman with the umbrella over there. I distinctly remember remarking on the rain shower we had just had so that must have been about (tentatively) half past four?”

All: “Yes, half past four. That’s right.”

Conversations like this helped everyone to get the pattern right in their heads and to introduce newcomers to the rules of the game. Unfortunately, the physical layout of the premises enabled the more unscrupulous to buck the system. It was impossible to see the corridor from the waiting room. Therefore, it was entirely possible for the more impatient or thick-skinned to lurk in the corridor, listen out for the bell or buzzer and race down the corridor to the consulting room whilst the debate in the waiting room concluded:

“I think that’s me. You’re waiting for Doctor X aren’t you?”

“I don’t mind who I see but I think it’s your turn anyway. I’m after this gentleman.”

“Oh, don’t worry about me, I’m here to see Doctor Y”

Etc., etc.

The receptionist’s purpose was to dig out your medical notes and leave these tightly stuffed brown envelopes on a table in the corridor for you to collect and take in to the Doctor. It seems remarkable, in this age of Data Protection that everyone’s medical records were left there for anyone to access. So, by the time that you had confirmed your turn in the waiting room, proceeded up the corridor and found your medical notes it was by no means unusual to knock on the consulting room door only to find a low drone of conversation coming from the other side that indicated that someone had pinched your spot. Clearly, if you weren’t agitated by attending the doctor before, you certainly would be after a few iterations of this scenario.

Strangely enough, the only time I have seen queuing discipline break down into violence was at the most unlikely venue imaginable. Over the years I have been to rock concerts up and down the country, from the Hammersmith Odeon to the back room of the local pub. At these I have rubbed shoulders (and very little else – you never know where it might lead) with every sector of society and have never seen any trouble. However, at a Ken Dodd concert in Derby Assembly Rooms a few years ago, one gentleman (who wouldn’t see 70 again if he used a telescope), accused another of a similar age of pushing in front of him at the bar and all hell broke loose. It took three bouncers to pull them apart.

So beware the awesome power of the queue, you never know when and where it might strike next. I’m sorry, were you before me?

You can find Parts One, Two and Three by following the respective links.

This story is from 'Steady Past Your Granny's', you can find all Philip's 'nostalgedy' stories here

Queueing Action Part 3

You could probably replicate this scene in any chip shop in the country, even today. Standing in these queues was never a wonderful pastime but was marginally more interesting in Comley’s (which was the family name, if memory serves me correctly, which is rare) in Uxbridge Street. This was the last chip shop that I can remember that still had coal-fired ranges. Mr. Comley was responsible for stoking the fires and cooking the produce, Mrs. Comley served and maintained a constant flow of conversation with each customer based on her encyclopaedic knowledge of everyone and everything in the vicinity. I remember that the conversation was always scrupulously polite. I would usually go to Comley’s with my Nanna Whiteland, who had been a regular customer of theirs for years but the conversation would still be on the lines of:

“Oh hello Mrs. Whiteland, how’s your (insert name of offspring here)”

“Very well, Mrs. Comley, I’ll have a cod and sixpennorth please”

I don’t think I ever heard Mr. Comley speak. He would stride in and either hurl coal into one of the ranges or drop a battered fish into the seething fat (never, thankfully, confusing these operations, deep-fried anthracite not being to everyone’s taste), nod to the waiting populace and then disappear into the bowels of the shop.

A similar queuing system could be found in the local butcher’s on Tuesday evenings. Savoury Duck night! The trick here was to be in place at exactly the time when the Savoury Ducks came out of the oven. Then quickly back home with the hot products safely contained in the white earthenware bowl brought specially for this purpose. I didn’t know what goes into Savoury Ducks and I still don’t know what goes into them. More to the point, I don’t want to know what goes into them. I just know that they tasted great then and still do today (although they are much harder to find these days).

For really complex queuing though, it was difficult to beat our local Doctor’s surgery. For many years our Doctor steadfastly refused to entertain the idea of an appointment system, presumably because he found the spectacle of most of his patients having been ground down to frustrated, gibbering wrecks, more entertaining. Our Doctor’s surgery was contained in what must have been a rather grand house in its day. The two front rooms were now consulting rooms which were approached by a long corridor. Patients entered the building through the rear door, reported to the Receptionist who occupied a cubby hole to the left of the door at the end of the corridor and were then instructed to wait in the waiting room directly across the corridor from her cubby hole. The waiting room must have been the kitchen and servants quarters of the house and was now filled with a series of dilapidated armchairs and benches arranged in a circle around the walls. Above the fireplace were two small lights, one connected to a bell and one connected to a buzzer. As one or other of the Doctors concluded their consultation they would press a button which would illuminate their light and sound a bell or buzzer in the waiting room, instructing the next patient to come down.

On entering the waiting room, a sense of deep depression would fill your soul. It didn’t matter what time you attended the surgery, the waiting room was always full. I think the surgery hours were officially 5 – 6 pm but, in reality, the waiting room would be full by 4 pm and the last patient might not be seen until 7pm. As you entered the room, all eyes would fall upon you, not because of your wonderful dramatic presence but simply so that everyone else in the room could register your face and place you in their mental holding pattern.

You can find Parts One, Two  and Four by following the respective links.

This story is from 'Steady Past Your Granny's', you can find all Philip's 'nostalgedy' stories here