Birmingham & Pre-Raphaelite drawings

En route for the NUJ DM in Southport, where I was to be a first-time delegate, I broke the journey in Birmingham to see The Poetry of Drawing: Pre-Raphaelite designs, studies and watercolours at the Art gallery. It was a fabulous exhibition comprising sketches and drawings, along with the paintings they were the studies for, from their student life drawings from casts at the Royal Academy Schools and drawings by their mentor Ford Madox Brown, through their entire careers and into the drawings of followers such as Frederick Sandys, Aubrey Beardsley and Eleanor Fortescue-Brickdale. There was also a whole bay of textile designs, stained glass and ceramics by designers such as William Morris, William de Morgan and Florence Camm. But it was the Big Three - Rossetti, Holman-Hunt and Millais - I'd come to see and I wasn't disappointed. I particularly liked the cartoons and caricatures, such as Dante Gabriel Rossetti's scratchy pen drawing of Christina Rossetti in a tantrum (1862). Cost me a fiver to get in, and was well worth it. It's on until 15 May, then moves to Sydney.

Birmingham Art Gallery also has a fantastic permanent collection of Pre-Raphaelite art, including some chairs designed by William Holman-Hunt and the world's largest watercolour, by Edward Burne-Jones. The cafe gives a discount if you show them your ticket, but be warned they have those irritating stainless-steel teapots that dribble all over the place. That night I searched for the Balti Triangle (nobody in Brum seemed to know where it was) but eventually stumbled on Al Frash in Ladypool Road where I had a mixed-veg balti for £5.50. I really didn't need the rice and (small!) naan! A pint at the Briar Rose (a Burne-Jones connection) Wetherspoons round the corner from the hotel finished off the night nicely.

I stayed at the Premier Inn on Waterloo Street, which was really handy for New Street station and the art gallery and well recommended. On Thursday 7 April, I jumped on a 101 bus to the Jewellery Quarter to see the Pen Museum. I was a bit early so walked to the Museum of the Jewellery Quarter, passing Gillott's Victoria Works (I learnt later that the G in Gillott is a soft J, like in Gillette), where my favourite 303 nib was once made, the factory of Thomas Fattorini, where enamel badges are still made, and a cast-iron 'Temple of Relief' by the station, sadly not in use!

The Jewelley Quarter Museum is the old works of gold bangle makers Smith and Pepper - a time capsule that closed in the 1980s, full of old machinery and dies that would give a factory health and safety inspector nightmares. Cost £5.50 for the guided tour and well worth it. There's a nice cafe too. Back at the Pen Room (I prefer Pen Museum), I joined a party being shown round, not just the front rooms, but another large room crammed full of nibs and fountain pens at the back. There's such a lot of stuff to see. We were shown how a Mitchell's nib was made in stages, and all encouraged to have a go. It's housed in what was once the factory of pen maker W E Wiley, now the Argent Centre, who used the steam from the factory boilers to heat a Turkish Baths - an early example of combined heat and power! Time was up - no chance to see Moor Street Station or Thinktank...

Southport is a very strange place, where it seems impossible to see the sea. The waitress at the Leicester Hotel said to see the sea in Southport you have to go to Blackpool. The trip from Liverpool to S'port was interrupted by vandals putting something on the line between Waterloo and Crosby. The train was full of tipsy scantily clad orange ladies who were presumably returning from a day at Aintree. The DM was quite hard work, with early starts and long days, in a 1930s Floral Hall that had been encapsulated into a modern (not Modernist!) complex - but it was scorching outside. My account of proceedings is here. I didn't manage to get to see the Lawnmower Museum, nor ride to the end of the pier, and the Art Gallery was closed for two years, but I did see some interesting buildings and sample some real ale and we were well looked after at the Conference. Now it's a few days respite until the BiG outing to Pallant House on Wednesday and the Clarion New Forest excursion this Friday!

The Poetry of Drawing

The Poetry of Drawing, Birmingham Museum and Art Gallery, review - Telegraph: excellent review from the Torygraph of the exhibition i shall be visiting on Wednesday.

6023 - King Edward II

Was never ever really fussed by GWR locos, what with their lack of Pacifics and all those twiddly brass bits, but the newly restored 6023 King Edward II is surely sex on wheels! A visit to Didcot is in order...

Brighton nudes are Britain's best

In a quiet corner of Bury Fair, back in the very early 1960s, amongst the more spectator-oriented attractions such as the Wall of Death, freak shows and boxing ring, was the Nude Show. For sixpence you got a few minutes in a tent listening to a foul-mouthed comedian introduce various tableaux of naked ladies (well, maybe there was just the one) striking artistic poses, standing absolutely still when the curtain opened. It was more than a poor boy could take, being brought up on glimpses of topless native women in National Geographic magazine or maybe a sneaky playground peek at the mummsy airbrushed photos in Spick or Span. It was how I imagined the Windmill Theatre was, before the Lord Chamberlain allowed nudes to move on stage. It was some time (1968) before I again saw a naked woman, at a life drawing class in Battersea.

So to last night's Still Life at the tiny Marlborough Theatre. Five 'stunners', as Dante Gabriel Rossetti called his models, presented re-enactments of famous paintings and photographs, from the Rokeby Venus (modelled by Francesca Cluney with Emma Sandham-Kings as Cupid) to Man Ray's Le Violon d'Ingres, with Kiki played by the multi-talented Kate Shields, who also played the saw whilst posing! Johanna Samuelson did Otto Dix's Sylvia von Harden, and Lucy Potts modelled as well, in Egon Schiele's Wally in red blouse. They were accompanied by a cute cellist and virtuoso pianist, recorded jazz and projections, and Francesca Cluney also did a beautiful Loie Fuller butterfly dance. On the door and by the side of the stage throughout were two delightful Pierettes and the whole evening was compered by the deadpan gorgeous Rosey Carrick, who joined in with the finale pose. Oh, and there was a performance poet, Dolores Luxedo (bloke), who knocked over my drink, but as I got accused of spilling a woman's drink at The Governess presents last week, I guess we're karma quits!

The night before I'd been privileged to attend the premiere of Beach Party Animal, directed by Joe Murray and Liz Aggiss. Joe, assisted by Max and Wolfie, put on an exemplary PV, with drinks carefully tailored to each guest (mine was a Bath Ales Dark Side), with a child's portion of fish and chips thown in! There were three performances of this beautifully paced 20-minute film that night - each audience (which included such Brighton faces as Louise Rennison and Tony Haas) got the same star treatment and (I heard later) each got rowdier as the night progressed. This too included nudity, but not the Two Wrongies, who managed to keep their clothes on for once. No, it was the naked arse of author and actor Tim Crouch, running into the English Channel for his all-weather morning dip!

It's events like these that make you glad to be alive and living in Brighton, the best of all possible towns. No moaning today...

Bluebell, Clarion and The Unthanks

 P-class 0-6-0T No. 178

Yeh, I know, I haven't had a good old moan on here for a while, but we'll put that right a little later. On Sunday I visited the Bluebell Railway with the Clarion cycling club. It was a world-record turn-out of 20 riders. This usually causes problems on British Rail, but this time we also fell foul of jobsworths on the Bluebell. The uniformed man at Kingscote said only five bikes could travel in the guard's van, and also made a song and dance about our bringing the bikes through the booking office, - with the possibility of scratching the paintwork maybe? Any road up, we managed to get Nick on board (that made six) and the rest of them cycled to Sheffield Park. There was ample room in the guard's van and at £8.50 a ticket they were effectively tuning away £120 of badly needed revenue.

The 'cushy six' were hauled from Kingscote to Sheffield Park by South Eastern & Chatham Railway P-class 0-6-0T No. 178, built in 1910. The other loco on duty was Brighton-built London Brighton & South Coast Railway Class E4 0-6-2T No. 473 Birch Grove in Southern green livery. Then it was into the buffet for a pint of Harvey's and some food. I had an egg and cress sandwich and a bowl of chips, but there wasn't much for veggies (some dried up macaroni cheese) and the rest of the dishes on offer did look a bit institutional, with overcooked cabbage and carrots. Eventually, after an ardous ride over the High Weald, the rest joined us, but we were way behing schedule. I was going to Bexhill that night to see The Unthanks, and my old Guildford chum Sev was picking me up at 6pm. It was a long hard slog back to Haywards Heath and I was completely knackered.

I got home just on the dot of six and Sev arrived a minute or two later and off we set. Now here's the moan you've been waiting for! The De La Warr Pavilion is a fantastic venue, both outside and in, but... a 500ml bottle of Harvey's Blue Label (retail price about 2 quid) cost... wait for it... £4.85! Anyway, I had a front row seat, the support band The Trembling Bells, were OK, but here comes another moan: the gift shop and art gallery were closed by the time the 30-minute interval came along! The Unthanks were sublime, even though Rachel didn't do any clog dancing cos she was with child. She didn't say 'snow' either. They had a string quartet, trumpet, piano, bass and drums, with some uke and saw action along the way. The only downer was that the last train to Brighton had been cancelled so they had to rush along to get it all in. I had a lift home though and slept really well that night.

Previous visits to the Bluebell:

• 22 November 2010
• 16 November 2009
• 25 October 2009
• 19 October 2008
• 12 November 2007
• 25 October 2007
• 25 October 2007
• 24 October 2005

And now... presenting... a Tumblr blog

Couldn't really suss out what Tumblr was all about, but I think I 'get' it now, thanks to lomokev's talk at Add the Colour last night. It's a visual thing, right? A scrapbook of images, showcasing your own (Flickr) work, and re-blogging other people's inspirational images - and that's OK to do apparently! See my new blog here. And it's remarkably easy to set up!

#nerdmap - Google Maps

#nerdmap Map of places for a nerdy day out.

Nerdy Day Trips

Love the idea of Nerdy Day Trips!

Norman Rockwell at Dulwich

I didn't really know much about Norman Rockwell (and still don't!), but I was really looking forward to the exhibition at the Dulwich Picture Gallery and, boy, it does not disappoint - that man sure could paint - and draw! The biggest revelation was how big most of the pictures are, painted oil on canvas and - even though his early covers for the The Saturday Evening Post (founded by Benjamin Franklin) were only printed in black and red - all rendered in glorious Technicolor. How on earth did he transport them to the newspaper's offices, what about the drying time of the oils, how long did each one take to execute? In the first room is a fabulous picture of a 'dough boy' and some cheeky kids (on the front of the catalogue), with his early trademark white background. It has just enough red to be picked up by the process and it's enormous, and some other paintings on display seem to be life size! One long continuous wall of the show is covered literally with all 323 Saturday Evening Post covers he created between 1916 and 1963. What a client! (He did work for other clients too!) The sheer volume of work makes the originals part of the exhibition seem small by comparison, but there's enough there to show his skill: in both technique and composition, over and over again.


One of my favourites was Bridge game - the bid (1948) an aerial view in one-point perspectve showing all four hands of cards. The skin modelling is exemplary, using a cross-hatching technique reminiscent of the tempera work of Giotto (in fact there is a tempera piece by Rockwell towards the end of the show). But he's no photo-realist, like the Pre-Raphaelites. Look closely and you can see the hand of the artist in the beautiful brushwork - highly detailed around the faces and hands; looser elsewhere. And the few drawings exhibited show he was a dab hand with the pencil too. (It would have been nice to see the reference photos he used too.) In his later work, the compositions get more busy. April Fools - girl with shopkeeper (1948) is a Masquerade of detail that would occupy a spot-the-difference fan for hours. Some people dismiss Rockwell as kitsch, reactionary and sentimental - he is after all the anithesis of the Abstract Expressionists (a subject explored in the Kurt Vonnegut novel Bluebeard) - and there is one cover on show (sadly not the original) of a Connoisseur (1962) standing before the more critically appreciated Jackson Pollock. But in all honesty, as you leave the exhibition space to enter the Dulwich's permanent collection of Old Master paintings, those brown saints and aristocrats look drab and boring in comparison with Rockwell's pictorial exuberance.

It cost £8 entry (group rate). Although there was an excellent catalogue for sale (£22), the postcards were a disappointment! I didn't dare take any photos inside the exhibition. The coach trip was organised by the Brighton Illustrators Group and we had an enjoyable lunch at the nearby Crown and Greyhound (where they had Harvey's on tap!). The exhibition runs until 27 March 2011 - don't be such an art snob, go see it. You'll be amazed.

Who really lived in my house?

1877 map of Preston Circus: Gerard Street is off Clyde Road

When I wrote about who lived in my house, I didn't actually know who was a landlord and owned my house, and who was a tenant and actually lived here. Looking at census records however (thanks to David Pipes for supplying them as it is sometimes difficult to search on an address rather than name), it became clear that names were popping up that I hadn't heard of before. Henry Burnham was the only chap mentioned in the mortgages. One thing that struck me was how many people there were living here sometimes: two families in 1881, plus a mother-in-law and lots of lodgers and boarders too. It was exciting to discover that an engine driver once lived under this roof, even though he lied about his age!

Page's Directory 1877 - no mention of Gerard Street
Page's Directory 1879 - 'small houses'

1881 Census
Fanny Eager, 29, laundress
Alice E, 10, scholar
William R, 7, scholar
Geo C, 5
+
William Christmas, 33, lab(ourer?) from Guildford
Mary, wife, 28
John, 3
Wllm H, 1
(+ a Miss Sayers who didn't sleep there!)

Page's directory 1889 - Mrs Fanny Eager, laundress

1891 Census
Henry Burnham, 55, night porter - hotel
Louise, 45, wife
Henry, 6, son
Ada Louise, 12
Henrietta Elizabeth, 9
James Fielder, 21, lodger, firefighter
William Rapley, 19, lodger, engine cleaner

Page's Directory1892 - Mrs Burnham, dressmaker
Page's Directory1894 - Mr W Hale
Kelly's Directory1898 - Willian Thomas Hale
Pike's Directory1900 - Walter Simfield
Towner's Directory 1901 - Mrs Martyn

1901 Census
Harry H Hollist, 51, engine driver (locomotive)
Mary A, 49, wife
Eliza S Martyn, 72, mother-in-law

1911 Census
Harry Harding Hollist, 46, engine driver
Mary Ann, 45, wife
Henry Horace Martyn, 6, adopted son
George Robert Rutter, 21 , boarder, coachmaker
Walter Stephenson, 22, boarder, carr.(iage?) finisher

[Hmmm, was someone lying about their age?]

Kelly's Directory 1949 - Henry Harding Hollist
Kelly's Directory 1954 - no entry
Kelly's Directory 1955 - Mrs Bunney
Kelly's Directory 1958 - Alfd D Greene
Kelly's Directory 1974 - ditto [last directory in local history library]

My Neighbourhood: World of Fred - a set on Flickr

My Neighbourhood: World of Fred - a set on Flickr: an afternoon with me immortalised by Tamsin Chapman, part of a Queenspark project.

Who lived in my house?

A while ago I asked my building society for a copy of my house deeds. I was wanting to find out when it was built. They said there would be a charge, but that they had a whole lot of other stuff I could have for free. I said yes please and a few days later a huge Jiffy bag full of ancient documents arrived. It was every single mortgage that applied to this address. It's now in a safe at my solicitor's but I took some notes first.

The land was once owned by the toffs who lived at Preston Manor, the Stanfords. It was fields of sheep with the odd windmill. Then the railway viaduct was built in 1846. Amongst the documents was an act of parliament that was all about a Stanford hieress, who to inherit the pile had to get any husband to change his name to Stanford. It may well have been Lady Ellen Thomas-Stanford, who eventually left the Manor to Brighton council.

On 3 June 1878, a Joshua Yardley (Yardley Street is the next street up the hill) sold a parcel of land comprising Nos 18 and 20 to Sidcup builder Josiah Roome for £180. I don't know if he bought any other plots.

Elizabeth Dipple took out a £400 mortgage on the property on 6 July 1878, but on 2 October innkeeper Charles Delmon bought the house from J Roome for £320. It's not clear when the house was actually built! On 24 June 1890, Henry Burnham - an army pensioner and hotel porter of 24 Gerard Street, bought it and on 19 December 1892 William Thomas Hale, a police detective, bought the house for £250. So much for inflation! On 17 October 1893 a jeweller called Robert Morse Younger took it off his hands. Another jeweller called James Henry Wellings paid £300 for it 5 June 1906. He lived here a while, because it wasn't until 9 November 1936 that Lily Hewetson, a clerk, bought it for £475 from Ernest Albert Hopkins and Geo Herbert Fowler. Who are they, you might ask? Possibly the people handling probate? Lily died 15 January 1939.

On 18 March 1939, James Wllm Hopkins and Elizabeth Mayo Hopkins paid £500 to vendor Simpson Hewetson for my house. We then leap to 20 April 1953 when J W Hopkins sold it on to Iris Goldsmith. A couple of months later and on 5 August 1953 Mrs Goldsmith sold it to Winifred Bunney. On 24 December 1968 it was owned (or rented?) by the delightfully named Aileen Beatrice Henville Chappell and Gwendoline Maud Henville de Graaff-Hunter. Sisters perhaps? 9 May 1974 it was acquired by Alfred Douglas Greene, the administrator of Win Bunney and, by 9 November 1977, Paul Nigel Abraham and Pamela Anne were living here. On 29 May 1980 it was bought by Raymond Barry Bisson and Elizabeth Ann Bisson for £9,950. When I viewed the house Liz was living with Dave Wilshire, the signwriter. They both now live in Australia. Liz's previous partner became a Buddhist monk and presided over a funeral I attended at the Crem. I moved in May 1987, and the rest they say is history!

One day, I'll try to fill in some details from census records and Kelly's Directory information but that's enough for now.

Daily Moan #17: Centre and epicentre

A joke. Q. where's the dead centre of Brighton? A. The cemetery! Ba dum bump ching! I've never been happy with the modern use of centre, as in Youth Centre, Health Centre or Shopping Centre. In Hove there's a place called a Trial Centre. We used to call them Courts, but presumably the people most likely to use them might get confused by the tennis courts down the road? Libraries are now called things like learning resource centres, to reflect that they rarely lend out books these days. Why have one simple word when you can have two or more? Boring old museums are sexed up with names like Thinktank, but I digress.

Because the word 'centre' has become meaningless, TV news reporters like to use the word 'epicentre' instead, as in 'Pakistan is the epicentre of terrorism'. Now, this has a specific meaning: because earthquakes often happen underground, the epicentre describes the place on the surface immediately above the real centre. Well, this may have symbolic meaning, as it is the place where most damage occurs, but mostly it is being misused.

Questions Of Cash in The Independent

Highly abridged letter of mine in today's Questions Of Cash relating to Daily Moan #14.

My life in a map

You may have noticed I haven't been moaning much recently. Well I certainly have reason to - about my bloomin' Epson R2400 printer which has finally gone to the menders, and the fact that the Brighton recycling lorry came a day early, despite the council sending out a calendar of dates, followed by a revised calendar cos the first one had a wrong date on it - but I haven't been blogging them! Instead I've been messing around with Google Maps and managed to put every place I've ever lived onto a map. I've lived in 23 different houses, bedsits, rooms and flats, some for as little as three weeks. This morning I added all the places I've ever worked. So my whole life to date is on one map. Some places have been demolished; others are approximately located as it's sometimes difficult to read house numbers on Street View, and my memory isn't that good. My Maps is great - I could imagine using it as some kind of immersive narrative device, for eStories. Maybe I'll think about that. If that 'View ... in a larger map' link below doesn't work, try this link.


View Larger Map

Daily Moan #16: noisy and uncomfortable cafes and bars

I was amused by the review in the Independent of Bill's new Produce Store in London's Covent Garden. The former fruit and veg market sounds like an appropriate place for a pretend farm shop, but apparently it's been faked up inside a new development. Now, I confess I haven't been there, but I have been to the original one in Lewes, and the more recent Brighton branch, housed in a former garage. And I just don't get it. Maybe a few years ago the Lewes branch was a pleasant place to eat, but not any more. Not only do you have to queue for a table, but it's cramped, uncomfortable and very very noisy. The same goes for the Brighton cafe. The food is nice enough, but it's not a place you feel you can linger, what with the eyes of the queuing punters drilling holes in the back of your neck.

I remember when The Volunteer, by the Corn Exchange, was an old geezers' pub. Usually empty, except after a performance in the Dome complex, it had plush velvet seating, real ale pumps, and a sticky carpet. It was quiet. Then Zel took it over, stripped it back to wood and brick, put in old domestic furniture, replaced the beer with foreign-sounding lager at twice the price - and the youngsters flooded into The Mash Tun, as it was renamed. Their original inn sign is on display in the Waggon and Horses opposite, where you can still get a nice pint of Harvey's. This was before seating was allowed outside, and there was always a halo of customers round the door jostling to get in. What was going on? The formula was repeated around town. Bars with hard acoustically reflective wooden floors and walls naked of absorbent flock wallpaper assaulted the eardrums - even without the throbbing disco beats. The Tin Drum at Seven Dials, where a dear friend always insists we go for his birthday drink, is extremely noisy, even without muzak. I don't think anywhere has gone the whole hog like in some Northern towns yet however, where they have even removed the seating, but there again I haven't been down West Street lately!

The craze for discomfort has now spread to cafes, as in Bill's mentioned above. Nia in the North Laine was one of the first to introduce a mish-mash of mismatched junk shop chairs and tiny tables made from old school desks. At the brand new Carluccio's, seating is on long wooden benches and the noise level is at the road-drill level of decibels. Call me old-fashioned, but I like quiet comfortable cafes where I can chat without getting a sore throat, and pubs with comfy seats and proper beer - is that too much to ask?

Daily Moan #15: fewer not less

I was going to have a good old Moan about inkjet printer cartridges (especially Epson ones) today: the price of them and how they only put a few drops of ink in each - and how the chips in them make you buy more of the damn things before they've even run out. But I won't. Instead, it's back to grammar and something that when I hear it makes me want to shout at the TV. It's when people use 'less' when they should be using 'fewer'. It happened this morning on 'Wanted Down Under' - yes, I know it's a crappy daytime programme, but I got lured in. I think she was talking about 'less opportunities' or something, but it made me shout out: 'FEWER!'

According to my dictionary, less is used when talking about relative amounts or quantities and fractions thereof, eg 'eat less jam' or 'the government cuts will mean less money in your pocket' or 'he has less hair than he used to'. Whereas fewer is used for things measured by discrete number and usually deals with plurals, eg 'government cuts will mean fewer policemen on the beat'. Confusingly, however, less can used with numbers when they are on their own, eg 'Their marriage lasted less than four years'.

Supermarket checkouts with signs saying '10 items or less' are wrong. It should be '10 items or fewer' but try telling that to Mr Sainsbury. 'Less graduates will get jobs this year' is wrong. It should be fewer graduates. The Plain English Campaign, according to the BBC article about Tesco linked to earlier has a simple rule of thumb: less means 'not as much', whereas fewer means 'not as many'.

Daily Moan #14: Virgin Media

This a real genuine bona fide Moan and it makes me tired just thinking about it! Have you ever felt you were in a Franz Kafka novel? When something goes wrong in your life and you haven't a clue why? And you seem to lose control? And nobody seems to know why? Then you'll sympathise with my sorry tale. It does have a happy ending, of sorts, so there's no need to be alarmed. [Old Arnold Brown joke: 'This door is alarmed'. How does it think I feel?]

Back in November, Virgin Media sent me a letter saying I was 'guaranteed pre-approved' to get a Blackberry for £10 a month. My pay-as-you-go Samsung clamshell phone was fine for me, and to get an iPhone would mean upgrading my OS - and they're very expensive. And I already have an iPod Touch, and plan to get a 2nd gen iPad. Nick has a Blackberry and says it changed his life... So, I made the call.

I spoke to someone at the Virgin call centre, gave them all my bank details (I have been with Virgin Media for landline and broadband from the beginning - NYnex, Cable & Wireless, NTL and then Virgin) and received a confirmation email. Then nothing.

A week or so later I rang the number again. My niece had applied for one after me and was already enjoying it. I spoke to Alvin in Manila and he took all my details again. I received an email. But still no phone.

Two weeks later I called again and spoke to Sheryl. She said there was something wrong with my credit check (I was 'pre-approved' remember?). She said she'd call me back within 48 hours. She didn't. So a few days later I spoke to Lucy who said there was a problem with my credit rating (I was 'guaranteed pre-approved' remember?).

A week later I spoke to Anna who said I should re-apply in 31 days. Computer said no. I was getting annoyed by now, so I sent off two letters of complaint to two different complaints addresses, and copied in Paul Gosling from the Independent. I hate having to play the 'press card' but it had worked in the past.

I was worried about this credit thing. Anna told me they used Equifax, so I took out their free 30-day trial - and I paid an extra £5.95 to get my credit score. It was 508, in the 'excellent' band. The only slight blemish was a late payment to a credit card made ages ago. What was going on?

On 28 December (two months after my initial call to Virgin) I got a call from a Virgin press person. She said she'd expedite things. I sent her scans of the original letter. On 8 January, a Saturday, I got called by someone from sales who took all my details yet again, but this time I received lots of emails. I also received a follow-up call from the PR person. The final insult was a text at 3am (my Samsung kept ringing every few minutes until answered) on Monday morning saying it was on its way. UPS would deliver between 8am and 6pm. So guess when they came? Well it was choir in the afternoon and I returned home to find a UPS card on my doormat. My heart sank - but phew he'd left the parcel next door. I now have a Blackberry! I still haven't had a proper explanation or apology. Apparently too many orders going through Virgin's system caused a lock-down on my account - but is that my fault?

So there we have it - off my chest. I've had problems with Virgin before, almost always caused by their internal lack of communication, and phoning call centres is a dismal experience. If you need to get things going, bring in Watchdog or some other consumer programme, or newspaper 'agony aunt' as early as possible. And don't rely on verbal assurances. Get it in writing!

I am thinking of sending the Blackberry back and getting an iPhone. What should I do?

the # character: more an explanation than a moan

Eagle-eyed readers may have noticed I've been using the # symbol in my Daily Moan blog items, instead of the perfectly good English No. - especially with my going on about Americanisms yesterday. In the olden days, this usage used to mystify me when I saw it in US comics. Nowadays, with Twitter 'hashtags' we are more used to it and can find it on the keyboard. Wikipedia has a good explanation of the number sign, also called the Pound sign in North America. On my keyboard it is coincidentally hidden behind the £ and 3 key, although the pound the Americans mean is the weight unit lb. Apparently on phones it's also sometimes called the octothorp. In copy editing and proofreading a # in the margin usually followed by a caret ^ (with a caret in the text indicating where) means add some space.

Daily Moan #13: Americanisms

Today's Moan is short and sweet: it's the word 'envision' used as a verb. It really annoys me, I don't know why. Simon Price used it in today's Independent in his review of British Sea Power's latest LP Valhalla Dancehall. He writes: "We are Sound" - possibly a pun on the Mancunian use of the title's final word as an adjective of approval, possibly not - attempts to engage with someone who "can barely string two words together", while "Georgie Ray" envisions, with a shudder, a time when "the language gets perfected to a solitary grunt". Envision isn't in my Oxford dictionary; 'envisage' is. You could say 'envision' scans better in that sentence, but why use a North American term when we have a perfectly good English one? A quick Google brought up this argument. And surely the word 'sound' meaning great is Scouse slang, not Manc!

Daily Moan #12: poncy food

Heston Blumenthal has a lot to answer for. I quite like the idea of Heston Blumenthal, but I'm not sure I'd enjoy his food. Too fiddly - I like honest ingredients that haven't been mucked about with too much. I blame his wannabe followers, however, for all the poncy food around these days. It's all a tower of this, drizzled with that, nestling in a bed of the other, with a liquid nitrogen cooled foam jus reduction of something you've never heard of. Terre a Terre's menu used to be famous for it, tho I suspected much of it was tongue-in-cheek. The new menus appear to be far more understandable. One place that doesn't even bother with menus is Viajante in Bethnal Green town hall, London - take a look at their gallery - are those supposed to be meals or canapes? This place was drawn to my attention by someone on a UK TV newsgroup (yes, they still exist) linking to an hilarious Grauniad review. Puts you in mind of the Harry Enfield 'I saw you coming' antique dealer selling tat to people with more money than sense who actually believe the emperor is wearing his new clothes. What amuses your bouche? I'll stick with hearty pub grub at the George.

Daily Moan #11: food adulterated by animal products

I'm not a strict vegetarian - I sometimes eat fish - but I don't eat meat, and that includes gelatine, chorizo, chicken stock and wild boar. I love scallops and quite fancy going to the Rye Bay Scallop Week in February (unfortunately there don't appear to be any clog dancers or sea shanty singers taking part) - but looking at the menus on offer it seems that most of the dishes have been spoilt by the addition of bacon, black pudding and foreign dried pig-based sausages. Why do so many chefs hate vegetarians and pescatarians so much that they feel they have to sabotage their food with strong-tasting meat products? One gets the impression that should you ask for the dish without the chorizo or parma ham, then the chef will surely gob on it before it leaves the kitchen!

Eating abroad is a minefield: in Italy, an innocent pasta with tomato sauce might have a bit of wild boar added to spice it up; in Barcelona, a Catalan dish of broad beans will have little chunks of butifarra in it. In France they are perfectly capable of cooking exquisite vegetables, so long as they accompany meat or fish. Ask for a selection of them without the meat and you'll end up with an omelette! In Germany and further east the only vegetables not pickled to death you'll see in restaurants are potatoes. Japanese noodles may have been made using chicken stock - and beware of jelly anywhere - it's almost certain to be gelatine made from boiled up animal bones. I suppose we are spoilt here in Brighton for good veggie food available almost everywhere, and most big cities will have decent Asian places to eat with plenty of meat-free choices. And one day maybe eating meals without meat will no longer be seen as something weird and not to be tolerated.

Stitch in time (From The Argus)

My letter about plans to demolish Brighton's Astoria cinema: Stitch in time (From The Argus)

New Year musings...

My neighbour Curtis has a Moan in his New Year musings...

Kibbutz Ga'ash

Fred in Israel
Originally uploaded by fred pipes

Talking to an Israeli dancer last night at Foz? and Max's party I was reminded of the time I spent in Israel - April-June 1970. I can't find any diary entries for it (there's a gap in my journals from 1970-72!) so this is from memory. My adventurous girlfriend at the time Maddy said she was going and did I want to come? Err, yes, I replied. I was working in a dead-end job, in the dark mostly at Taylor's photo lab in Rodboro Buildings, Guildford, and sharing a room with Gus at 7 Mill Lane, so I thought why not. The plan was to fly to Tel Aviv on a one-way ticket, stay for an indeterminate time, then somehow hitch home via Greece!

The flight cost about 34 quid. We stopped to refuel at Istanbul and arrived at Tel Aviv early in the morning. After much traipsing round the suburbs we found an agency and were sent to Kibbutz Ga'ash, near Netaniya, on the coast. We were put into the wooden huts previously occupied by the settlers, who'd moved on to brick-built bungalows. It was all very informal - our jobs for the day were posted up outside the post office and we ate with the other volunteers in the communal dining room. Contact with the kibbutzniks was minimal. My main job was in a small factory making sheet metal fluorescent light fittings; Mad mainly looked after the chickens. Every so often we had to join in the harvest, potato picking for example, which was relentless back-breaking work - you had to gather the tractor-exposed spuds in buckets before they were covered over by the next furrow! The factory was more cushy, with regular coffee breaks! We were paid at the Post Office - a few Israeli pounds, 100 Nadiv untipped cigarettes a week (with tobacco so dry that if you tapped a ciggy it would all fall out), a small tin of coffee, and toothpaste if we needed it. We could take what clothes we needed from the laundry. Every blue moon there'd be a film show in the dining room, or the next kibbutz and if you were lucky you'd get a lift in a tractor.

We were close to a lovely unspoilt beach, under cliffs, and as it got too hot in the afternoons to work, we spent some time there. There were barbecues that involved killing chickens! We also went on several excursions - the Kibbutz was very relaxed about us going off on jaunts, mainly I think because the settlers were from South America with a mañana attitude. Hitching was easy and common, although any soldiers waiting in lay-bys got priority lifts. We went to Jerusalem (making a point of visiting the Garden of Gethsemane on the advice of an Al Stewart song), Nazareth, Bethlehem, and Hebron (a lift in an army half-track), north to Caesaria (where the beach was littered with Roman tesserae), Haifa, Tiberias and the Sea of Galilee, south across the Negev desert to the hell-hole (then) of Eilat, the hottest place I've ever experienced. We slept on the beach, where mad locals would drive their jeeps all night. The coolest place to be was in the Red Sea. We couldn't get out of there because it was a long national holiday! We stayed mainly in segregated youth hostels or cheap hotels. The only place we didn't get to see was the Dead Sea.

It was at Ga'ash that I heard (from the man in the post office) that the Beatles had split up and that Johnny Hodges had died. It was a great place to hide away - in fact I'm sure one of the volunteers was an international criminal cat burgler - a big black car would arrive and whisk him off to Tel Aviv night spots. The food was good, although there was not much in the way of booze. The Shabbat wine was weak, sweet and full of flies - we used tea strainers to filter them out. But there were always plenty of oranges. After a while we wanted to get home, but had no money. We needed dollars to buy air tickets. I wrote to Gus for him to send some cash in an envelope but he did something through a bank and that came to nothing. Maddy rather foolishly sold some blood! We'd gone off the hitching through Europe idea. In the end, a new volunteer from the USA kindly cashed our Israeli money into hard currency and we got home. Back at Gatwick we were surprised to be able to change our remaining Israeli cash into proper money, and got the train back to Guildford.

On leaving the kibbutz we were each given a book (by the man at the post office) with a sweet inscription, as shown below.

New Year's resolutions?

So, what to do about New Year's Resolutions? Refuse to make any? Promise to cut down on the moaning? Dan Thompson said on Twitter this morning: 'So, resolutions; work a bit harder, travel a bit further, go to more live music and theatre, be more impulsive, longer cycle rides, draw' - I could do that! But could I be arsed? I mean, I know I should draw and get out more (and practise my uke more), but if I really wanted to, I'd be doing those things already. No need for resolutions.

The Grauniad has some reassuring news for Resolution makers in this article on seven steps to good health. I like the bit about eating more greens and not peeling things (and learning a musical instrument), but the alcohol thing is a bit disappointing. As a comedian once asked (I wish I could remember who): is a Unit a bucket full of vodka? No, it's half a pint of weak beer. So, three units a day isn't much fun is it? Though I suppose with fewer things to worry about, there should be less reason for self-medication. (A quick moan: why are the wines on special offer in supermarkets always so strong - 14%, 15%?). Maybe I should try drugs? The bloke who discovered Ecstasy once said he was trying to invent a calorie-free Martini. I'd buy that! So, resolutions? I think I'll sleep on it for now...

BTW: a point to ponder - at subbing school we were always told not to end a headline with a question mark.

Poppa Ben Hook

Poppa Ben Hook
Originally uploaded by fred pipes

When Helix split up in 1969, I got more involved with Guildford Arts Lab (reading poems at Boxer's coffee bar for example) and thought I'd try to get some gigs for the Arts Lab 'house band' Poppa Ben Hook using my contacts. It was on a visit to Pete Jenner at Blackhill and impressario promoter Stuart Lyon to drum up trade that someone suggested I manage them! Management seemed to involve storing all their gear in the bedroom of my first-floor flat on Epsom Road. I also sent out demo records to record companies and management agencies, with no success. Loving nothing more than doing a bit of Letraset, I produced a leaflet that was an exact rip-off of one Rick Welton had done for his Hull band Nothingeverhappens.

We did do lots of gigs however and I went along to all of them in the van. We very nearly played at the very first Glastonbury Fayre in 1971. I'd written to Arabella Churchill offering our services and she said to come along. We'd been booked to play a free festival at a place called Holcombe Rogus in Somerset, where Nick Black, a school friend of David Ambrose, had set up a commune, making pottery and generally spending his money.

The letter!

On the way back we called in at Glastonbury, I waved the letter and we went to the farmhouse. It was a bit chaotic as you can imagine and we were told to wait. Everyone was knackered - Bob in particular had spent all the previous night fighting off a randy hippie mother - and the concensus was to head for home. The rest is history. We also played the various University of Surrey Free Festivals (see the photos from 1971).

The line up was Bob Thomas on organ, electric piano and vocals, Roy MacGregor on guitar and vocals, Max Thomas on flute and alto sax, Phil Plant on bass, and Alan Butcher on drums. Bob did amazing things with the keyboards, slowing a Watkins Copicat tape to psychedelic effect. Tragically, Bob died young. Phil Plant went on to play with Stomu Yamashta and in 1976 played bass guitar on the soundtrack to 'The Man Who Fell To Earth' starring David Bowie. He's currently with Roxi and the Blue Cats. Al Butcher is also still playing - with Flying Visit. I'd like to think that Max is playing jazz somewhere.

Drum skin, as painted by Bob Thomas, Courtesy of Al Butcher

They were a great band and should have done better things. Here are some demos on acetate:

Buzz

Buggy run

I live in a shed

Pure beef hamburger

Before the dawn

You won't miss me (vocals by Roy MacGregor)

Well, it took 45 years, but I finally got a record deal for  Poppa Ben Hook. It's a shared vinyl release from Record Collector with a band called Museum, who sounds rather like PBH, so is a good match. I'm still trying to track down Max Thomas and Roy MacGregor. It was released 2 January 2015 and costs £24.98 in the UK.

Daily Moan #10: Waste food

There was an item on BBC Breakfast news this morning about this amazing brand spanking new anaerobic digester that could turn your Xmas leftovers into clean Green electricity - and save lots of stuff going into expensive landfill to boot. Great? No! NO! Fair enough if it's using inedible by-products to digest - but what I could see being dumped was edible waste food; sprouts, parsnips, oranges, tomatoes... OK, the tomatoes looked a bit ripe, but... Bob Geldof would be turning in his grave if he were dead. (And they didn't say what happened to all those plastic bags.)

There was another item about Baby Boomers (yes, I'm one, being born in 1947, two years after the war) having it cushy compared with today's young people: no university tuition fees to pay (true), lots of jobs to walk straight into (err, no), it was easier to get on the housing ladder (I still had to lie about my earnings to a mortgage broker when I bought my first house - for £10,000 - yes you could buy it on your credit card nowadays) and generous final-salary pensions to enjoy (definitely not, although working at IPC for five years in the 1970s resulted in a pension, higher than the private one I paid into for 20+ years). We have, however, seen the most change: in music, technology, and in attitudes to things such as consumerism and greed.

One thing a baby boomer would not do is waste food. (Other things we may not do include dropping litter and getting into debt!) We were, and I still am, frugal. We know how to cook and what to do with leftovers, which is to eat them! Nigel Slater knows all about the joy of leftovers. So should you! Don't blame the supermarkets, unrealistic sell-by dates and Thatcher - I like a 2-for-1 BOGOF bargain as much as the next man, and I always make for the 'Reduced to clear' section first. One thing I used to do as a kid was peel potatoes (we even peeled mushrooms in our house). I don't anymore (and Jamie Oliver doesn't even wash his veg), so the barest minimum of waste from food preparation goes into the compost bin. And I always clear my plate. If I bring a Tupperware container to your next dinner party, it's because I can't stand food going to waste. Waste not, want not said the wartime posters. That should be your mantra for 2011.

And if you think I'm a whinger, check out this Aussie article. I don't agree with all of it, and be warned - the Comments section is full of opinionated twats, just like on the Argus website!

Daily Moan #9: Rat Runs

Rat Run
Originally uploaded by fred pipes

Shall I do booking fees for gig tickets today? No, too easy a target, even though they make my blood boil. Why do venues advertise tickets at say, a round £10, only to tell you when you try to buy one that there's a 50p, £1 or £1.50 booking fee, plus a charge if you want to use a credit card, etc etc, on top. It's as sneaky as easyJet!

No, today's Daily Moan is about cars using pedestrian zone streets as rat runs. Unlike New Road, which is a Continental-style 'shared space', Sydney Street in Brighton, home of the famous Off Beat Coffee Bar, is supposed to be a Pedestrian Zone, and there are even signs at the Trafalgar Street end saying so (see photo): Monday to Friday, 10am til 5pm, only vehicles unloading are allowed. At the weekend, temporary bollards are placed in the middle of the road to stop vehicular access and parking. But cars blatantly ignore this and even have the nerve to toot at any strolling pedestrians in their way! The cheek of it. Mind you, it's not clear whether cycling is allowed. I have never ever seen this 'Pedestrian Zone' enforced.

BTW the steam train on The Indian Doctor yesterday was a green industrial 0-6-0ST, which seemed to turn red as it left the station. The location could be anywhere... More research needed.

Reasons to be cheerful #2

Well, I received a phone call this morning from someone in Virgin Media's press department, so things might start to move at last. I hate having to play the Press Card, but sometimes it's the only way to get attention. All will be revealed when this sorry story is resolved.

Meanwhile, The Indian Doctor is being repeated on BBC1 - and the first episode features a steam train! It's 1963 in the Welsh valleys. I'll tell you tomorrow if it's a wrong 'un and something to moan about...

According to the all-knowing internet, the BR Standard loco used in Poirot's Murder on the Orient Express, mentioned yesterday, was No. 73129 from the Midland Railway Centre.

Daily Moan #8: the wrong engine

Many films feature steam trains - I've already blogged one of them - and nearly all of them get it wrong. Either the loco is from the wrong region or company or it's from the wrong time. Granted, there is only a finite number of locos to choose from on a small number of available scenic heritage railways. But what on earth was what looked like a British Railways Standard Class 5 loco doing chuffing through the snowy Eastern European mountains in Poirot's Murder on the Orient Express on Christmas day? I suspect much of it was CGI, which means they will be able get it right in the future.

Which brings me to The Railway Children, shown yesterday. Don't get me wrong, this is a delightful movie, guaranteed to have you weeping uncontrollably at the end. I love it. This was filmed at the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway in 1970, but was meant to be set in 1905. The engine that appears the most, seen pulling the Old Gentleman in his North Eastern Railway Director's Saloon was GWR 0-6-0PT No. 5775 (L89) painted in the livery of the fictional Great Northern and Southern Railway - a sort of Stroudley 'Improved Engine Green' (ie mustard yellow-brown). These pannier tanks were built at Swindon 1929-50, so the loco is wrong for two reasons - it's from the wrong region and it wasn't yet built at the time the film was set. As far as I know pannier tanks were only ever seen in the Great Western region.

The one bringing them to Oakworth station, and also seen later in the film, is No. 1369, one of Hudswell Clarke's 0-6-0T 'long tank' locos, originally to be found working on the Manchester Ship Canal as No. 67 and now at the Middleton Railway.

Other locomotives include The Scotch Flyer No. 4744 (69523), a Great Northern Railway Class N2 0-6-2T steam locomotive designed by Nigel Gresley and introduced in 1920 - now at the Great Central Railway, Loughborough.

The Green Dragon, aka No. 52044 (preserved as L&Y 957), is a Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway Class 25 0-6-0 locomotive. These were introduced in 1876 and not withdrawn until the 1930s, so is absolutely right for the location and period! Hoorah!

Daily Moan #7: careless typos

I did promise I wouldn't moan over the Christmas holiday period, but I just couldn't let this one go. Flicking through the Independent on Sunday (no, I didn't expect there to be papers today either), I spotted this in the 'Watch this' section of the magazine:

Royal Institute!! Didn't they read the blog item that started all this Daily Moan business? The one I castigated normally excellent Robin Ince for? Obviously not. It should be Royal Institution! Don't newspapers have sub-editors anymore? I know that the Argus has been on strike recently over the threat to sack the local Brighton subs and move the operation to Southampton. The result was the spelling of Brighten - twice - in a news story! Shocking. And last night my friend Chrissie pointed out to me some of the many typos in a book of Brighton Bus Names. In books that I read I do regularly come across a couple of literals per chapter. Should I highlight them? I would if they were in library books...

Reasons to be cheerful...

As it's Christmas day, there will be no moaning from me. I got some lovely presents, the sun is shining, I'm looking forward to a slap-up lunch - and Rob and Jackie's new white bathroom suite looks rather nice! Merry Xmas, everybody!

Daily Moan #6: disrupted tv schedules

OK, I can't put it off any longer. Why does Christmas have to be so disruptive? The tv schedules are all over the place. Saturday Kitchen was on BBC1 this morning - and it's still only Friday! And BBC Breakfast was a quarter of an hour shorter than usual, but it did include the second part of their version of Come dine with me - thank goodness for the Toppy and being able to wind back time! Last night's tv was dire. I ended up watching that twat Chris Evans making a fool of himself on Celebrity Who Wants to be a Millionaire, when I could have been enjoying my favourite contemporary dance troupe The Two Wrongies at the Pavilion Theatre. At least Ann Widdicombe made one viewer happy and rich (37 grand!). Quite frankly I would have preferred a one-on-one immersive theatre experience at the Basement than endure last night's television offerings again! Thank goodness again to for a recording of a day in the life of The Edwardian Farm - blimey we do have it cushy these days, with our running water and mains electricity.

Apart from Xmas day itself, with Doctor Who and the Royle Family to watch (and maybe Come Fly With Me will turn out to be funnier than they say), the next couple of weeks will be full of repeats and films, with all my regular favourites away on holiday. Humbug! What's more, the Off Beat Cafe is closed for a week too. What am I going to do? Read books?

One programme I did enjoy this week, was The Nativity, in The One Show slot for the past few days. Written by EastEnders writer Tony Jordan, it starred Peter Capaldi (sweary Malcolm Tucker from The Thick Of It) playing one of the Three Wise Men; Jack Shepherd was another. I'm not at all religious, but I thought it tackled all those questions that the Bible avoids, like how did Joseph cope with his virgin fiancee becoming pregnant! There should be sequel - what happened to the poor shepherd afterwards - did his life turn around? And did the three magi get back to Iraq safely?

BTW the gnocchi, chestnut and butternut squash recipe on Saturday Kitchen this morning did look rather nice - may give it a try.

Daily Moan #5: white bathroom suites

I really hate myself for watching, but sometimes I lie in, miss BBC Breakfast with the gorgeous Susanna Reid, and have to watch one of those dreadful house-buying programmes, such as Homes Under the Hammer. Apart from the awful opening credits and all that 'see how they got on later' padding, what infuriates me most is when they look in at a perfectly serviceable bathroom with cast iron bath and immediately state that it has to go, to be replaced by a suite that would not look out of place in a public lavatory! Once upon a time all bathroom suites were coloured (mine is an Art Deco Emerald green); now if you look in a bathroom shop window, everything is hotel white! I remember cheering when one bloke (who was gay) inherited a pink suite in Seaford and defied the estate agents and experts by saying he was going to keep it. Good for him!

The same goes for kitchens, which are often described as 'tired'. Wonder how much B&Q slip the presenters? Soon every kitchen in the land will be 'Shaker' style with granite worktops made by child labour in India or China. And when did 'bland' become to mean rather tasteful? Paint on the walls has to be 'neutral' in case the house needs to be sold sometime soon. And don't get me started on those antique programmes where dumb members of the public are made to buy dear at antique fairs and sell cheap at auctions, the one who loses least wins. Doh! Or sell off their granny's hierlooms only to fritter away the trivial amount of money they get for them on a forgettable trip to Disneyland. Daytime telly is dire and only becomes watchable again once 'Come dine with me' is on...

Daily Moan #4: pubs with no beer

I'm kicking myself that I didn't leave for London earlier last night. Everything slowed down because of the weather (and no, I'm not going to moan about the snow!) and so I went straight to the 100 Club to see David Devant and his Spirit Wife. Or rather the two support acts beforehand. So, I could have gone to The Champion, the usual meeting haunt of Devantees, and enjoyed £2 pints of Sam Smith's finest. As it was, it was straight to the bar of the 100 Club, only to find that the two beer pumps were out of action (they had run out the night before) and the only drinks on offer were continental-style lagers for nearly four pounds a pint! Well, I can forgive the 100 Club - the legendary venue is under threat of closure. I first went there in 1965 to see Jesse 'Lone Cat' Fuller and his one-man band, and have returned many times since to see Devant, The Rutles, Wreckless Eric and many other fine acts.

This Moan should really have been entitled 'Bars with no beer', because the places I have a beef with are venues such as Brighton Dome, Komedia and the Latest Music bar, all of which sell overpriced lager and you're lucky to find even a bottle of proper beer. At the Dome recently, where I went to see Robin Ince's excellent 'Nine Lessons and Carols for Godless People' the bar had on sale just Carlsberg or Manger's cider (at some exorbitant price I expect)! They do sometimes, mostly during the Festival, have a barrel of Dark Star on the counter, but not that evening - and the interval was too short to pop over to the Waggon and Horses for a pint of Harvey's. Please music bars (I don't even bother with trendy young persons' 'cocktail' bars), please please offer proper beer to your more discerning punters, preferably sourced from local breweries!

If you were wondering why I didn't post a Moan yesterday and laugh that I already failed my New Year's resolution even before New Year's Day, it was because I was busy writing stroppy letters to Virgin Media's Complaints Department. More on that in due course, I shouldn't wonder. Meanwhile some videos of a fantastic Dave Devant set, with new songs, stories read from My Magic Life and the Baron Gilvan taking on the role of Spectral Roadie are now appearing on Youth Tube.

Daily Moan #3: divvying up the bill

My pizza
Originally uploaded by fred pipes

I feel really bad about making Robin Ince the subject of my first Daily Moan. I'm a big fan of his Book Club - it's introduced me to many great comedians like Josie Long, and I always go and see him in Edinburgh. Like Stewart Lee and Simon Munnery, he's one of the more intelligent stand-ups. But that's the luck of the draw.

If you think I'm pedantic, check out my blogging chum Martin Shovel. His blog post on cliche metaphors has been republished today in the Grauniad. That's so awesome and I'm over the moon for him, literally!

I was going to moan about the icy weather or how Christmas disrupts the tv schedules today, but I think I'll leave them for later. Neither will I bore you with a rant on Virgin Media's exasperating call centre or my ongoing problems with my second-hand Epsom R2400 A3+ inkjet printer. So - I hope none of my friends are reading this because Daily Moan #3 is about Divvying up the bill at group meals. Christmas is the time of year when one gets invited out for group meals - I'm talking 15-20 people sitting down at a restaurant. But how does a six quid pizza and a bottle of beer turn into a £20+ bill? Because some people down the other end of the table who you hardly know are ordering dinky dishes of olives, kir royales, starters, side salads, countless bottles of wine, port, brandy and cigars - that's what! And they are the same people who suggest simplifying things by splitting the bill. If you dare moan, you're branded a skinflint - so we keep schtum. If it were just four of you, you wouldn't mind so much, but in a big group there's often lots of peer pressure to pay up.

There are two possible coping strategies, neither of them very nice. The first is to leave early (maybe arranging with the babysitter to call you at a specified time) thrusting a tenner into the alpha person's hand saying 'this should cover it' qualifying this by muttering that you only had a green salad and glass of tap water anyway. The second is, if you are absolutely certain there will be a divvy-up, to go through the card ordering the most expensive things on the menu. You could come a cropper, however, if you end up being billed individually. I must emphasize that this scenario hasn't happened to me personally in a long time (and it was at a birthday meal) and that all my friends are nice considerate people who wouldn't dream of playing the system like this... honest! Disclaimer: The pizza illustrating this moan may be real but the circumstances described above are purely hypothetical.

Daily Moan #1 and #2

I've decided to start a New Year's Resolution early. It's to be called 'Daily Moan' and is a result of my becoming a Grumpy Old Man of Leisure. What I'm worrying about already, however, is that I might not even be able to write a moan every single day, so I'll start with two. And what about when I go on holiday? Well we'll cross that bridge when we come to it. My cyber-friend Mock Duck started a blog called Draw Anyway (which got hijacked by link farmers and is now in German!) a while back with the intention of posting a drawing every day, but that inspirational endeavour ended suddenly - she'd set the bar too high for herself. Will I make the same mistake? Maybe this should be entitled Monthly Moan?

Anyway Moan No.1: I was just dipping in to the excellent compilation The atheist's guide to Christmas (Friday Books, £7.99 in Sussex Stationers), reading the bit by Robin Ince about the Godless Concerts (I saw one recently at Brighton Dome and what a great line-up - from Richard Herring to Dara O'Briain in one Ken Dodd-length event) when I came to the bit where he mentions the 'Royal Institute Lectures' (p 290). This, I'm afraid, really made me cringe, making me draw back my lips over clenched teeth and furrow my eyebrows in a Wallace and Gromit grimace. Why? One of my earliest jobs was as a sub-editor in the publications department of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, then in Birdcage Walk. One of the first things they drummed into me was that there exist Institutions and Institutes and never ever to get them mixed up. There's the Institute of Physics and the Royal Institute of British Architects, but it's the Institution of Civil Engineers and... a quick Google would have revealed The Royal Institution (of Great Britain)! Shame on you Robin and the subs at HarperCollins! Call me a pedant, but these things matter.

The Royal Institution Christmas Lectures, one of the best series of programmes on TV, starts on 28 December on BBC4 at 8pm, presented by Dr Mark Miodownik, and this year's theme is 'Size matters'. BTW the RIGB website was pretty rubbish when I tried it, so best to look at the BBC4 one. Incidentally, I also once worked in the basement of the Royal Institution, amongst Rutherford's old experimental apparatus, in my final year vac (c. 1968) on a University of Surrey project, growing cadmium crystals and then slicing them up - don't ask me why, I was just following orders. I remember we all used to stop for tea and cucumber sandwiches in the Marble Hall at 4pm.

Moan #2: I love to read the Independent on Sunday, especially the section where it tells me what to look forward to on telly next week. But... why make the film of the week something being shown on Sky Movies Premiere when I can't get it on Freeview! They get me all excited then deflate me, all in the space of a few seconds.

Vintage bus day at the Bluebell

178 at Kingscote about to leave
Originally uploaded by fred pipes

Two or three times a year, vintage bus owners give rides to the Bluebell Railway and back in their beautifully restored vehicles - for free. These events usually coincide with special events, but unfortunately the Bluebell's 'Giants of Steam' gala coincided with the East Lancs Railway's Autumn Steam event so I was unable to go to that one. Sunday however was billed as Vintage Bus Day and so after a quick whizz round the Art Junkie at the Phoenix gallery, I crossed to St Peter's and flagged down a Stratford Blue Leyland Leopard HAC 628D and sank back into the plush deep blue unholstery for a pleasant ride to Sheffield Park, via Lewes.

At the station there was a splendid array of Southdown buses in the car park (one of which I was to take back to Brighton). It was time for the 1pm train so I jumped into one of only two carriages being hauled by Wainwright P Class 0-6-0T No. 178 in the green livery of the South Eastern and Chatham Railway. We had to wait for the 'Golden Arrow' dining train to come in, hauled by London, Brighton and South Coast Railway 0-6-2T No. 473 (formerly known as Birch Grove), so we left about 20 minutes late. At Horsted Keynes I spotted Standard BR Class 4 2-6-4T No. 80151 coming the other way - the only other loco in service.

So it was to the end of the line at Kingscote, and back. Because there were only two coaches it was as crowded as a rush-hour tube train, with the added delight of several hundred screeching babies brought on the pretense of perhaps seeing Thomas The Tank Engine and the Fat Controller I can only suppose! But it was a lovely journey nevertheless, with the spectacle of lots of fat pheasants struggling to fly away from the cutting verges - and I think I saw a deer. Although it was fine it was not a great day for photography, nor for hanging about on platforms. Back at Sheffield Park, it was getting dark and there was a huge queue for the buffet so I had a quick look in the sheds and home (on Southdown No.547 PUF 647, a Park Royal-bodied Guy Arab from the 1950s) in time for a second look round Art Junkie!

Previous visits to the Bluebell:

• 16 November 2009
• 25 October 2009
• 19 October 2008
• 12 November 2007
• 25 October 2007
• 24 October 2005

East Lancs Railway Autumn Steam Gala 2010

Tornado
Originally uploaded by fred pipes

What a fantastic line-up of big locos for the East Lancs Railway Autumn Steam Gala: 71000 Duke of Gloucester, jub 5690 Leander, micky 45337, Standard 73129 - and guest star 60163 Tornado! I arrived at Bury Bolton Street on Saturday 23 October and bought an £8.20 round ticket just in time to catch the Tornado-hauled 12.05 to Rawtenstall. At Ramsbottom the Duke was coming back the other way. I jumped off when the train returned to Rammy for a wander round, a £1 tub of black peas and a paper. It was wet and drizzly! I caught the double-header of 73129 and Black 5 45337 back to Bury, had a pint of Black Abbott in the Trackside (where there are always nine real ales on at less than £2.60 a pint), and caught the Leander-hauled train to Heywood and back.

Sunday was much sunnier. This time I was determined to catch the awesome double-header of Tornado and the Duke, leaving for Heywood at 13.40, so had a quick walk round town to see the scary new shopping/apartment area cheekily called The Rock, after Bury's one-time main street, now populated by pound and charity shops. At Heywood, Tornado changed ends to lead the double-header (the Duke had been a banker at the back until here) and off we went - all the way to Rawtenstall and all the way back again to Bury (with the Duke at the back again). Had an Eccles cake on the train - they'd run out of sandwiches! Back at Bury I had a pint of Greenfield's Black Five (4% £2.35) and watched the other locos go by then it was back to my nephew's to relax and watch TV!



There's a video of the double-header on Saturday here, and one of Tornado changing ends at Rawtenstall on the Sunday here (listen to the bloke next to me moaning about other people getting in the way of his snapping!).

Previous visits to the ELR:

• 7 November 2009
• 24 April 2009
• 30 October 2008
• 2 November 2007
• 12 September 2006

Magical Moominvalley

Up in my home town of Bury last week for the East Lancs Railway Autumn Steam Gala and to visit relatives, I always make a point of visiting the excellent Art Gallery and Museum to check out the magnificent Turner, the Royal Lancastrian pottery and all the other Victorian treasures. It pleased me too that the Museum downstairs was at last celebrating the town's industrial heritage of cotton, paper and engineering. On my first visit, the main gallery was closed for rehanging - for a major Tove Jansson exhibition - so I popped back in the week to take a proper look.

It's a big exhibition, with three galleries showing Tove Jansson's mainly pen and ink work from early illustrations for the satirical Swedish magazine Gar, though the Moomins, to illustrations for Alice in Wonderland and The Hobbit. One room aims to capture the magic of The Moominvalley of the Tampere Art Museum: dimly lit with pools of dappled light with Moomin boats and islands of stepping-stones.

Author and illustrator Tove Jansson (1914-2001) was born in Helsinki, Finland, the daughter of artist Signe Hammarsten (known as Ham) and sculptor Viktor Jansson. Her mother designed many of Garm's covers with its eponymous dog, and Tove carried on the tradition, and it was in these 1930s illustrations that the philosophical Moomins first appeared. The first Moomin book 'The Moomins and the Great Flood' appeared in 1945, in Swedish, and was not a great success but the following two 'Comet in Moominland' (1946) and 'Finn Family Moomintroll' (1948) made her famous worldwide. She produced eight books in total that have been translated into 34 languages. In 1954, after the second Moomin book had been translated into English, the Evening News, a newspaper for the London area (no longer in business) published a strip called Moomintroll until 1959, when her brother Lars Jansson took over the strip until 1975 (there are no examples of the strips in this exhibition). She also illustrated The Hobbit in 1962 and Alice in Wonderland in 1966, with some of the illustrations coloured with watercolour. The pen and ink drawings in the exhibition are tiny - they must have been drawn same size - and it is a delight to see such lovely work, along with the pencil marks and touches of process white! The exhibition continues until 15 January 2011.

Some more photos on http://brightonillustrators.co.uk/blog/detail/magical_moominvalley/.

Incidentally, the guard who told me off for taking snaps turned out to be the son of an old Mod friend of mine from the 1960s, Steph Minta!

If you fancy it, I got to Manchester from Euston for £7.25 from the Virgin website; and Brighton to London for £2.50 from Southern. Bury is at the end of the Manchester tram line.



More info:
www.bury.gov.uk/LeisureAndCulture/MuseumsAndGalleries/GalleryFeatureExhibitions.htm

Internet veteran? moi?

Just been going through some old files, to try and find camera invoices, when I came across one for my first modem. I bought a US Robotics Sportster 14k (the Stylophone) from Dabs Direct for £129 on 4 August 1994. Can anyone beat that? I also have bills from my first ISP: Soft Solution (MCR1 Manchester Host) of Dewsbury - NUJ Net special offer £12 subs for three months - my charges for August 1994 totalled £46.23. NUJNet (Sam called it nudge-net) was set up by Mike Holderness and was text-only - and you had to dial in to Manchester. I mainly joined because Sam was at college and was keeping in touch with all his school chums by email. And I thought, if you can't beat them, join them! I also joined some dial-up bulletin boards. Soon after I got online, Pavilion started up in Brighton and I joined them - and started to see graphics in my browser.

My first computer in Brighton was a Mac Plus and I remember you had to buy a particular book to get the floppy disc with the right software on it to get connected. Simon Thornton also helped me out. At the time there were only about five people in Brighton on the net. The Brighton internet pioneers met at the Greys to chat: Tom Hadfield (of Soccernet fame) was about 12 and Tom Shepherd was only 16, so we had to sit outside! Other trailblazers included Matt Planet and Simon and Neil Turner of Virtual Brighton who very kindly gave me a brighton.co.uk address. Later, Mistral started up and they were cheaper, so I switched. Then Freeserve started up and that was free, so I jumped ship again. These were all dial-up services. I subscribed to the always connected ISDN Home Highway with BT for a while, but when Broadband arrived there was no upgrade path so I told BT to go away and went cable broadband with Virgin.

Before all this, whilst working at EMAP, I had on loan a Spectrum set-up with an acoustic coupler that connected to something called MicroNet, a Teletext/Prestel type service. After experiencing that I never imagined that the internet would take off as it did.

My cameras

Me and Benji in Sunny Bank
Originally uploaded by fred pipes

It's that photo again! It was such a find amongst my Dad's old things and proves I was into photography at a young age. Not sure if that Kodak Brownie 127 was really mine, though. Cameras have always been a big part of my life, though I've never been geeky about them - just wanted them to do the job. The first real camera I owned was a metal Boots camera, that looked like a camera ought to, though it had few controls. It must have taken 127 film, though it looked like a 35mm one. I used to take it with me trainspotting and I'd love to see those negatives now, but alas they have gone.

When I went to college in 1965 I bought an Exa IIb 35mm camera and a separate light meter. I think I was copying my friend Jorj Malinowski, who had a more up-market Exakta. It was a single-lens reflex made in Dresden, with an instant-return mirror and served me well for many years. It had a Tessar 50mm f2.8 lens. I used to develop and print my own photos, but the fashion then was for high-contrast (blame David Bailey), so most of my negs are pretty useless now. I also had movie cameras: first a Bell and Howell Standard 8mm with zoom lens, later a Standard 8 Russian Quarz camera with loads of accessories, that looked more like a Bolex.

In the mid-1970s, when I was better off, I bought a Pentax MX, mainly because it was so compact, with a stubby 40mm f2.8 lens. It had been a toss-up between this and an Olympus OM-1, but I prefered the Pentax's traffic-light metering (just set the speed and twiddle the aperture until it shows green for go) over the Olympus's needle meter. It was totally manual; the battery only controlled the light meter. I also bought a 135mm lens for portrait work.

Around this time I bought a whole load of darkroom equipment and a Yashica-Mat 120 camera from a friend at work, whose dad was selling up. I think I paid £25 for it. I didn't take many 2 1/4 x 2 1/4 photos with it as you only got 12 per film, but what I did take were of superb quality.

I was introduced to the Lomo LC-A in 1998 by Simon Williams, who I was working with at Time Team. In those days you had to buy them off the Lomo Ambassador in London and needed a personal recommendation! You also had to make a pledge to carry them about with you at all times! It's a 35mm camera with a plastic lens that somehow makes everything you snap more garish, especially at night using automatic exposure.

My Pentax and accessories - flash unit, other lens - was too much to cart around everywhere, so in 1998, I bought a Canon Ixus APS camera. These were tiny - the film was smaller than 35mm and came in an automatically loading cassette. One feature was that you could set it to take panoramic views, tho I soon twigged that all it did was crop the regular shape. This got stolen in 2005 from my cycle bag and I replaced it with a similar model bought off eBay for £10! But I never ever used it - when I saw the price of film I decided to go... digital!

More to follow...