Box Hill

I dug a brown glass beer bottle out of the flinty, chalky soil on the lower slopes of Box Hill, Surrey.

It had caught my attention and momentary interest  because it was just proud of the surface of the raised verge on which I would be perched for the next 5 hours as part of my attendance at the London Olympics 2012.

The decision to occupy that specific point had not been taken lightly. As we, my wife and The Boy, had joined the huge queue at the gates of the venue for the Womens Cycling Road Race we congratulated ourselves on the early start to the day even though some of the number had obviously been in transit and had arrived at quite an unearthly hour in their part winter and optimistic summer attire of shorts and T shirt, typically part shrouded in a very British cagoule and the embellishment of something with the Union Jack colours , either a large flag, a hat, tote bag or folded travel rug.

Amongst the red, white and blue were many other National colours, the very, very  orange Dutch, Maple Leaf Canadians, green and yellow Aussies, a few less obvious Americans and many more. The long, snaking line displayed perfect manners and consideration for personal space as we shuffled along towards the ticket area and security. It was airport style and collectively everyone knew what to do and what to jettisone before the bag search procedure undertaken by the cheery military in their desert fatigues.

Then, the buzz of anticipation upon hearing the tannoy system broadcasting from the start line on The Mall. It was still a couple of hours before the riders would embark on the tough race route through the south western London Boroughs and into leafy and undulating Surrey lanes but we listened attentively to the commentary of the signing on and a few interviews with the main contenders.

Our vantage point on the raised bank of the verge, bottles aside, was rough and stoney. A few of our neighbours for the duration undertook mini civil engineering projects to excavate and level the surface. Others ventured into the woods and returned with short stumps, branches and logs out of which were fashioned rustic stools, refectory benches and picnic tables. We just sat on our coats, wiggling our buttocks to form a perfect mould in the ground.

On the lower approach slope to Box Hill we watched as the constant stream of people passed by heading for the loftier heights of Butterfly Bend, Donkey Green and Dormouse Drive. It was a mass transit situation. The three person sized gap on the bank adjacent to ours was briefly occupied by a father, mother and grumpy daughter but they did not settle and left to rejoin the flow up the hill. The words about the other mans grass was always greener came to mind as they left. A quiet family group moved in next and after deciding on the boundary of our spaces in an amicable way we chatted. They were cycling fans as well so we were spared any technical explantions of what was to take place on the roadway at our feet.

A cheer reverberated around the crowd as the race started from Buckingham Palace. I had made a point of checking the anticipated arrival time for the race at Box Hill. It would be at least another hour and forty five minutes. A few of our neighbours looked excitedly down the narrow tarmac lane for the race to appear instantaneously. It would be a long day for them. There were plenty of things to do. Mostly people watching. Then cloud watching followed by sheltering from the rain under cagoules, hats, flags, tote bags and travel rugs. It poured down with no respite from any overhanging boughs.

Those who had spent time on hands and knees on the road scratching away with quarried chalk saw their works of art depicting the names of the GB riders, overseas flags, words of encouragement and a couple of rude depictions simply diluted and then washed away in the steady downhill stream. Before the race arrived the graffitti had to be refreshed two or three times to restore its sentiment.

The commentator was getting animated conveying reports from around the route and this was transferred to the drip-dry crowd. The race had come through torrential downpours out on the course, localised floods, multiple punctures and frequent tumbles on the greasy town roads but were now on the dual carriageway at the base of Box Hill.

Police motorcycle outriders showboated past offering gauntlet clap high-fives, the official vehicles blasted their horns and the occupants waved whilst their passengers held their cameras up to the windscreen to record the scene and atmosphere. We leaned out from the bank, as did everyone, or some spilled out onto the thick white lines on the road to be physicallly pressed back by the stewards. The noise was deafening from the early warning screeching of a megaphone, to cheering and the overhead TV helicopter. More vehicles at speed. Then the cluster of riders, grubby and grime spattered but determined and at close quarters came through on the first of two circuits. Spectators either saw at first hand or recorded it for posterity. The speed of the riders passage prevented any attempt at multi-tasking. The nearest of the peleton were within touching distance.

We breathed in to give them a bit more space between the loose banked verges. They must have been able to smell the crowd and the rain sodden laundry odours mixed with red wine, sausage rolls, salt and vinegar crisps and bacon baguettes. Then gone, trailed by the team cars with bikes and wheels precariously positioned on roof racks. A few riders, off the pace on the hill, were raucously cheered. Chile, Thailand, Venezuela on the first lap and a few more of the European riders on the second lap as the main contenders kicked in for the return to London.

We joined the damp but happy cyclng fans and casual observers on the descent of the hill. It poured again and the scene took on a misty and surreal appearance of an exodus but in rainbow colours of flags and pack-a-macs. Manners and behaviour were of course, impeccable.

Surrey seems to be the hardest word.

We got to see Bradley Wiggins.

He was spearheading the chasing group in the Mens Olympic Cycling Road Race but to our mind it was a thankless and fruitless task given that a large group of motivated riders had passed us by at least 5 minutes before.

He had loomed out from a blind dip in the road some 100 metres from our rural viewpoint which gave plenty of time to activate the video function on my far from smart phone.

I had been practicing the operation for a couple of hours before the race arrived and consequently had a lot of two to three second movies, art-house style depicting the sky, the bushes, my feet, the blur of a circling buzzard and a man with his dog and all with a brief accompanying soundtrack of an overhead passenger jet, distant tractor or police motorcycle.

Even at the emergence of Bradley Wiggins, after a wait of 3 hours in the idyllic Surrey Hills landscape , I almost fluffed pushing the button but did get a reasonable shot.

Upon viewing later this clearly showed his concentration and determination to drag the race along but perhaps, with hindsight, an early realisation in his emotionless expression that it was a lost cause.

There was still about 120 miles of racing to go from that point.

Limp Pic Games

Automatic Notification.

I am sorry but I am not able to provide a proper Blog at the moment because I have gone to witness The London Olympics and will be back shortly. If you are tuned in to the TV coverage of the Road Cycling from Box Hill, Surrey on Sunday afternoon, 29th July, you may notice a rather chubby man trying to look slim and cool in a Bradley Wiggins "Sideburns of Glory" tee shirt. This was an impulsive pre-Games purchase and perhaps a little on the tight side for a worldwide broadcast audience.

Thank you

Going to The Games

The Olympic Games take some organising.

Almost as much, in fact, to the logistical operation to get three fifths of our family to see the road cycling events in lush Surrey which start tomorrow with the Mens Event and through into sunday afternoon when we have tickets for the Women's two laps of the picturesque Box Hill.

My wife spent the equivalent of a day, some months ago now, logged on to the on-line ticketing system for London 2012. A bit of a marathon in itself with a few false starts through the obstacle course and on more than one occasion the final hurdle was reached only for the system to refer her back to the start before any prize could be had.

She was succesful in getting the sunday race tickets and these formed the main part of my July birthday presents .

It is now friday lunchtime and we have all been up since 5am getting everything ready for the 4 hour, optimistic, drive down to the accommodation. It will be late and dark when we turn off the M25 into deepest, darkest, decadent Surrey and so I have familiarised myself with the cross-country route using mapping and satellite systems-yes, I am that only person in the UK without a Sat-Nav sucker-stuck onto the windscreen.

I will undoubtedly misidentify the junction to the minor road which forms a short cut to the hotel as an aerial view on a lap-top often bears no resemblance whatsoever to the three dimensional, real time and horizontally propelled world of the car actually on the road.

I have a poor record of this type of preparation and application in a journey. A few years ago this resulted in my driving almost into the abandoned but rather militarised Turkish Zone of Cyprus whilst trying to find a large resort town on Cyprus for my brother in laws wedding and more recently getting hopelessly lost near Stansted Airport in a search for our booked rooms which were occupied for only 5 hours before my daughter caught a flight to New York. She did notice me squinting a bit at motorway signs which I put down to my age and crusty contact lenses. Still, as a bonus we did get to see the twinkling lights of Canary Wharf and a nice KFC on some High Street, probably Ealing. I can imagine you making a mental note to look up the proximity of the airport to London Docklands and having a giggle at the expense of my poor sense of direction.

We may not actually need to take much with us but in order to be fully prepared for the uncertainties of the British weather in July we have to make preparations for a mini-expedition. I managed to save a compact emergency poncho from being sold at last weekends car boot sale and this may become a key part of our equipment. As my youngest daughter says, there is no such thing as bad weather just a poor choice of clothes. I tend to agree with this.

Our trip is, with travelling, about 48 hours. The travelling part will take up, say, 16 hours by car, train and on foot. Sleeping and eating, hopefully another 24 hours, miscellaneous activities such as queuing at an Official Olympic Souvenir Kiosk and other forms of shopping, around 4 hours. I have allowed 3 hours for human error-mine which leaves the anticipated time to enjoy the cycling events of about 1 hour. This sounds about right as we hope to see the Mens Race flash past on the Dorking Road and the two circumnavigations of Box Hill by the womens event.

I am really excited and looking forward to our experience of the Games. 

Walls come tumbling down

I like a bit of a mystery.

It gives a little added interest to my daily workload if I come across an interesting feature of a building that should not be there or something inexplicable, at first, warrants some detective work to uncover the answer. I do liken my arrival at a property to carry out a survey to a detective's first instinctive analysis at the scene of a crime. The perpetrator of a misdemeanour in my case would be an enthusiastic DIY'er, a cowboy builder or where a property has been altered so much by successive owners and occupiers that it barely resembles its original and by definition most stable structural form.

Take the fashion, championed by Julie Walters in the film Educating Rita, in that period to sledgehammer out the supporting wall between two ground floor rooms to create the lifestyle enhancing feature of a through lounge.

In many properties which suffered this violent attack the wall is likely to have been, in successive years reinstated, removed, infilled and then further altered to take, commonly a set of double doors, a preformed classic archway or the current trend to insert and stock a tank of tropical fish. This makes both a nice room divider and a fascinating and mesmerising lighting display albeit a bit tacky and high maintenance.

Whatever the visual appearance and decades after the original assault on the structure it can still be the case that the combined weight and loading imposed by the first floors and upstairs walls is totally without anywhere near adequate support. Held in place by a few old nails, a couple of crafted wood joints and a lot of hope. Investigation to ascertain if the inevitable failure will happen within hours, weeks, months, years or a few more decades can be quite difficult with a lot of detail concealed behind plaster, linings, formwork and anaglypta or woodchip.

The homeowner, without fail, of course was not in occupation when the alterations were carried out but often alludes to remembering that the previous owner swore blind that there was a RSVP, RIP, a Joisey or a thingy-thingy girder inserted or at least that was what they had been informed but could not be sure.

This can also be difficult to verify at the inspection stage for the buyer. I often entertain the seller with a pantomime of stretches and tappings around the position of the doors, arch or aquarium (careful not to distress the inhabitants). Whilst it is obvious to me what I am trying to acheive this is met with a lot of questions by the assembled household. It is explained by parents to their young children that 'The Mister', is checking to make sure the house will not fall down. Said in a jokey voice there is still abject terror in the eyes of young siblings and a good chance that they will have nightmares on that very scenario of the house falling down. 'The Mister' therefore takes on the imaginary role as a sort of bogey-man. I do not feel that this adverse perception of a surveyor on a future generation of potential home buyers has been at all addressed by the Public Relations Consultants of my professional organisation.

There are bits of equipment available such as a hand held metal detector to imply the existence of steelwork but an unsuitable insertion causing a pinging noise could as easily be more of a hindrance than a help structurally. I did find, by this method, that the heavy weight of wall between the living rooms at a previous house that I owned was actually held in place by a long and thin piece of metal gatepost.

A very obvious sign of the absence of or inadequacies in any support can be determined from the appearance of the masonry wall and floor in the rooms directly above the investigation. I have often found a very evident dip and sag in this position but easily cloaked by the depth of a carpet or the quadrant moulding above a laminate floor. In an empty house, devoid of owners in close accompanying contact or providing a constant supply of cups of tea and ginger biscuits,  there is the luxury of being able to wrench up the carpet and prise up a floorboard or two which is a very definitive form of enquiry.This rather drastic but ideal course of action provides a lot of answers to the earlier tentative observations. I do have some concerns on a regular basis of potential and catastrophic problems of collapse and mayhem.

These are reported with sufficient emphasis and weighting to, in my mind, mobilise the resources of the building equivalent of International Rescue.

However, nine times out of ten I find upon a visit to the very same property many years later that diddly-squat has been done. It may be case of adopting a different approach to demonstrate the risks of a dodgy bit of structure. I had thought of walking around the house once a day for six consecutive days and on the seventh day do seven laps whilst playing a musical instrument but frankly it is the sort of thing that the neighbourhood watch would frown upon.

Good Mousekeeping Guide

The mouse who has taken to darting across our kitchen floor at just about the same time every evening appears to have a personal vendetta against me.

It is now getting beyond a joke that it continues to evade my best efforts at capture. I do promise that if I am successful in this battle of wills the mouse will be carefully driven to a better and more affluent postcode area and released. The prospects, to my mind, of a higher calibre lifestyle for the rodent far outweigh any pride issues of being outwitted by a human.

I have been taunted by the determined dash from fridge freezer to a small gap between the kitchen base units and the wall which is only enacted if I enter the room. The movement is perceptible to the eye but so swift that if afforded the luxury of a second glance it is as if nothing has happened and I am left questioning my observational skills and my sanity.

It is obviously quite big though. This introduces the possibility of a slightly different breed of the common house mouse and some anxiety in my mind about genetic mutation and the development, beneath the floorboards, of a super-mouse. Either that or it is just very unkempt and the perception of size is solely a consequence of an afro-type hair do, rather matted, unruly and sticky.

The route taken by the mouse is always from fridge freezer to units which must be a return journey to its home but strangely I have never witnessed it making the outward journey. I have ignored the possibilty that I have seen not a sole mouse but a continuous flow of mice as though the back of the fridge freezer is a portal or escape hatch for the whole neighbourhood.

In a bid to catch the mouse I had a notion to stuff crumpled newspaper into the hole at the unit side of the kitchen. The first few twists of newsprint did not take hold in the hole and fell through behind the kicker board but eventually I was sure that the usual daily route was now fully blocked off. This was later proven to be the case when my wife, upon entering the kitchen saw the hairy rodent make a dive for the hole, bounce off the paper stopper and then, a bit shocked, make a mad run at my wife with resultant shrieking and hysteria. I would probably have the same reaction when faced with the very random, darting movements of a creature intent on making a bid for escape with no regard for human sensitivities.

The mouse, after its frantic run around eventually disappeared under the cooking range and from there, no doubt, to an extensive network of alleys and channels beneath the house. I eased the paper out of the hole but now with a better indication of the regular route of the mouse I set to another plan for its capture.

The humane trap from B and Q works on a see-saw principle in that even the gossamer hollow boned lightness of a mouse entering in search of food or just out of curiosity will cause the stunted banana shaped container to tip on its axis causing the hatch to snap shut.

I had a very wide choice of patented versions of the humane trap at the DIY outlet which indicated that mine was not the only conflict between mice and men. There were also a number of bait boxes and poison systems but my determination to trade a better life for a mouse free residence remained resolute.

Mice have evolved somewhat in their dietary preferences with cheese being relegated to the status of urban myth. The manufacturer of the humane trap recommended usuing chocolate or peanut butter as a bait.  I had been successful a few years ago with the corner of an after eight mint and could appreciate the attraction of a choccy based morsel.

The trap was smeared with Tesco peanut butter, the crunchy type. I was not sure how much constituted enough of a temptation to enter the dark space of the trap or whether I was providing enough to sustain a few months diet. Lying on my belly on the cold tiled floor of the kitchen I eased in and set the trap paralell to the back wall under the cooker. This was directly in what I felt was the mouse way.

Next morning there were no signs of activity. On subsequent inspections however strange things had happened overnight. The trap was sprung but empty. It had been spun around as though struck by a fast moving and largish object. It had moved a percptible distance from where I had placed it. Perhaps a larger trap was required if the disturbance had been from this rodent getting stuck, wedged into the opening and out of frustration trashing the set-up and positioning. He/she is very clever and a tricky adversary.

It was and still remains Game -On between me and that mouse and I will keep you informed of who it is that wins out in the coming days and weeks. Perhaps I should consider withdrawing the offer of relocation to an area with a better standard of living if it is not going to be appreciated.

Flood Gates

Da da da da da da!

That incoherent seletion of letters' if repeated with my intended phrasing and timing is intended to represent a fanfare as I have reached my 365th blog.

The purists amongst you will of course say "so what" and because 2012 is a leap year I can understand the argument. That does not mean that I have to accept it though.

I stick by the 365 almost consecutive days of blogging as a notable acheivement given that I did not until 366 days ago know what keeping a blog entailed or even how to register myself in the bloggersphere. The strange thing is that I started on the 20th August last year so I must have written a few blogs in my sleep or even more than one produced in any one day.

My first effort was a bit of an old man rant against some anonymous call centre operative who dared to ring me during an episode of The Simpsons one week day tea time. Ironically this short and rather weak and pretentious blog has been a consistent performer and remains firmly in the top ten of pageviews. Perhaps this in retrospect was an indication that I should have remained angry and indignant at lifes injustices and cruelties.

Oh no, I had to start getting all creative and nostalgic or attempting to arouse emotions amongst my family from recollections of people, events and objects from days gone by. The contents of the majority of blogs have been, to me, the much cheaper and less intimidating equivalent of the psychiatrists couch. I have certainly raked over some muddy moments, upset a few of my siblings and laid claim to acheivements for which I have no certificates or citations. Nostalgia has in fact been what it always has been. I paraphrase and bastardise the saying of Indiana Jones to Short Round in Temple of Doom , "Comfort and Joy, Comfort and Joy".

I have also found considerable pleasure in discovering new things about my home town and its illustrious history. People have also provided me with many great stories and I am happy to have put these in some form of archive and record. For those intent on hacking in or planting a virus in my well worn laptop be aware that I do keep paper copies and they will remain safe, secure and secreted away in a shoe box under the lower left hand side of my bed.

Edith, my recent, brief centurian acquaintance has found many fans after I recounted an equally brief snapshot of her life story. Dennis the house builder got to see what I had written about his life story only just yesterday but of some concern to me is that he has not been in contact yet, directly or through his lawyer.

I have picked up the loose strands of a story or a matter of interest from the news, mainly late night and obscure daytime radio, and with a bit of wider reading and verification of Wilkipedia facts these have found their way into what some have found as an interesting subject.

There has been no hidden agenda of targeting individuals who have upset me in my lifetime to date nor have I had aspirations to kindle a revolution in society or in lifestyles. Blogs have been a spark to uprisings and civil unrest for the good of the masses but if I can get a giggle or a chortle out of those stumbling across my incoherent ravings I am more than happy.

In true awards ceremony style I have many people to thank. Significantly, my darling wife and children for their initial encouragement and more recently their quiet and passive acceptance that it blogging is something I do, even supplanting cycling in my rest and recreation times. I  have a loyal core of 10 followers although if I do not double count family then I have 2 and my thanks go out to you even if you have long since given up reading.

Whatever constitutes a pageview statistic, be it a drunken lurch at the keyboard, accidentally coming across my blog whilst looking for porn or religious salvation or in the subsequent disappointment at not being able to get a late night fast food delivery after pressing all the keys, nevertheless I have had my ego very well massaged and oiled.

I do however have concerns that over 8000 persons so far worldwide have been duped. The name of my blog was taken from an album track by Black Country Communion and a very, very high proportion of the hits will have been from the fan base seeking wisdom from Bonamassa, Hughes, Bonham and that keyboard guy, Shrivelling or something like that (respect).

I would however dedicate the last 365 days to my Mother. A main motivation has been, through my own words, to record and save for posterity her nurturing and enabling spirit and attempt to convey at least a fraction of the creativity and humanity that she has engendered in me and indeed in everyone who knows and loves her.

I'm loving Angles instead

A favourite pastime when I was little was playing with salt and sand.

This usually entailed pouring out the whole house supply of, in particular, domestic white table salt onto a dinner tray and spending hours making trails through it with a toy motor car. Sand was similarly spread about on a worktop indoors or on top of a paving slab outdoors and coursed through with more vehicles or a handful of plastic soldiers. Sand was readily available in our street where there was always new house construction under way. I justified taking a few loads in my plastic seaside bucket in that if left in situ it would only develop into a large litter tray for the neighbourhood cats.

These two main granular materials were not the most satisfying that could be used because they were subject to the science, physics or just natural phenomena of the angle of repose. If I had been familiar with this principle at under ten years of age I may have not even bothered to attempt to use them as play media and perhaps opted for something with a bit more mass, pliability and scope for fun.

Apparently the study of the characteristics of granular materials is quite a wide discipline with significance to an extent of which I had no knowledge. It features in many day to day things from civil engineering projects through to manufacturing, bulk storage and production, geology and safety and even in the natural world.

The scientific explanation is simply that when materials such as my two favourite childhood playthings but also foodstuffs from wheat to bran, shredded coconut to wheat and malt to coffee beans are poured out onto a horizontal surface a conical pile will form. The angle of repose will determine the stability of the material or how much friction there is between the surfaces and shapes of the particles. In mechanics the same applies and refers to the maximum angle at which an object can rest on an inclined plane before it begins to slide.

Of course every small child knows this to be fact, even if not fully cogniscent with the theory. For example, my childhood trike, if left on the ramp of the driveway was always destined to break free of any friction with the surface and roll out into the public highway causing an obstruction and downright hazard.

Having in my later years read a bit more about such scientific matters I have been amazed by the adoption of the angle of repose in nature.

Some of the smallest and most sedate of creatures have, by harnessing the theory, ensured their survival and indeed have flourished and multiplied in numbers and health in their environments which have been under constant threat from predators and Man.

The incongruously but under close scrutiny aptly named antlions and wormlions excavate conical shaped pits in the loose sand of their habitats. Their efforts involve flinging loose sand up the incline of the pit so that it settles and initially stabilises at the critical angle of repose. The materials are therefore sensitive and stable until the smallest of insects unwittingly enters and finds itself activating the inherent instability which causes the victim, shortly to comprise lunch, to cascade into the base of the pit where the expectant diner awaits. Even if the visitor seems to have resisted tripping the trap the host can project loose sand grains up into the mouth of the inverted cone which acts as a catalyst to encourage the tit-bit to tumble to its fate.

Now, I wonder what the angle of repose was when I fell off that easy chair in the garden . For a chubby male aged 49 years it looks to be about 180 degrees.

Reach for The Sky

I will miss chatting with my Father this afternoon about the outcome, whatever the outcome may be, of this years Tour de France which has its final stage into Paris.

Cycling was a common interest between us. Some of the longest and most interesting and informative conversations I had with him were about cycling which was remarkable given his naturally reserved and shy nature. In his youth he had been on his own cycle tours through Europe including Holland and France showing great independence and resourcefullness for someone so young. My childhood years, as depicted on the earliest of photographs, were conducted for a large part on two wheels, initially with stabilisers but soon without any assistance.

There was always a ready supply of the next bike as the current one was rapidly outgrown. Any bike maintenance from a puncture to a major overhaul or rebuild was no problem for him. A second hand bike could be fully roadworthy within minutes of being purchased , smooth, well oiled and noise free apart from the revolution of the pedals and the taut friction of rubber on the road. My schoolfriends would also find their bikes had been fully and efficiently serviced if they happened to leave them lying anywhere within our house or garden. Our riding position was always scrutinised for perfect saddle height and the ability to still touch the ground with more than just tippee-toes.

I  revelled in his recounting of bike stories when they were pestered out of him  and in particular the mention of the old trusty manufacturers of the post war period, Jack Taylor, Claude Butler and many bespoke builders who were no longer in business.

I was understandably over brimming with excitement when a couple of years ago I found a Freddie Grubb frame in an attic and persuaded the Trustees of an Estate to sell it to me. It was earmarked as a gift for Father, who had always admired the man and the machine. He promptly stripped down and revamped the frame ready for the road with reverence and respect for the pedigree. 

Father was willingly commandeered to drive me to some of my first competitive races and I can recall clearly his expression of pride and not a little bit of shock and surprise on the sole occasion of my winning a race, albeit not the main one of that day in that place but I rode hard and well and finished some minutes ahead of the rest. It was on local roads and with the reasonably attended event concluding in my home town. That afternoon I took my youngest brother and some of his friends out to the Army Transport Museum but had not accounted for my exertions in victory and could hardly walk and fulfill my voluntary supervision role.

Father saw me on my first time trial race, on a thirty seven and a half mile hilly circuit and I dedicated a respectable 20th position to him for his support.. He would also be witness to my poor preparation and motivation when, in  more than one event I would not even make it to the start line due to a mechanical fault, my own fault mostly, or I would give up without really trying if, on even the first lap, I felt nauseous  but without persisting and catching that second wind after which I could usually compete pretty well.

We travelled some distances to watch the best Professional races in the UK and I fondly remember a long weekend and overnight stay in Newcastle to see the Wincanton Classic at which I managed to pat the great Sean Kelly on the back as he rode through the crowds to take up his place on the finish line podium. I rashly arranged to meet Father at the Cow and Calf Rocks on top of Ilkley Moor to see the maginificent sight of the full Leeds Classic field go by at the start of the race before going into the city to see the final circuits. I had set off on my bike from Hull at 5am to ride to the rendezvous but it was a very ambitious thing to do given the torrential rain and driving winds that hampered anyone heading in a westerly direction. Father and my youngest brother passed me in the car, just at the Leeds Ring Road, with a cheery wave to which I returned a damp grimace and attempted to conceal the pain and demoralisation I was feeling from my efforts. I actually missed the race ascent of the steep hill out of Ilkley and had to admit defeat by having to dismount and push my bike up the hill, the first time a climb had  got the better of me anywhere and ever. My mobile support team had waited anxiously and patiently for me long after the hillside had been vacated by the large throng of enthusiastic cycling fans.

In later years when cycling was sidelined in deference to earning a living I was able to put back something in the sport and for 17 years supported and sponsored a local cycle racing team. Our family name featured on the brightly coloured jerseys which could be easily spotted amongst traffic and in mass start road races and Father would let me know when he had seen one of the squad out training or provide me with the results if I had missed them in Cycling Weekly Magazine or in the smallprint of the daily papers.

The weekend of top class racing in Beverley in July each year was something we watched together from the streetside or I would look out for and wave at both my parents as they stood on the edge of the Westwood pasture to watch the big main race pass on which I would have a driving role.

Father did not get to see last years racing as he died suddenly just a week before the event. The organisers were kind enough to accept, from the family, a cash prize for an intermediate sprint during the race in his memory and the name of Donald Thomson reverberated around the crowded Market Place many times that summer evening.

I have just watched the Tour finish in Paris with a British winner for the first time. I feel a great void in not being able to just pick up the phone and compare notes with the person who started me off on my bike all those years ago, correcting my tendency to wobble and setting me off for a lifetime of a love of cycling.

Go Wiggo, Go!

Throwing a lot of money at something does not always guarantee success.

It can help, certainly , but can never replace the other vital constituents of, especially in sporting terms, natural ability, motivation and good old courage.

The Sky Cycling Team participating in this years Tour de France is undoubtedly a big budget operation with the best riders, best equipment, the very best in terms of leadership and technical support  and a swanky team bus but galvanised by a spirit and determination that just cannot be bought or engineered.

The three weeks of the Tour, concluding tomorrow on the streets of Paris, have been a magnificent display of tactical maturity by the Sky Team and a far cry from a rather amateurish , 'have a go' attitude of Brits in the illustrious history of the great event. I am not belittling the efforts of the self exiled Brits earning their keep in continental cycling in the post war period but rather expressing disappointment that they were not given the back-up and know-how that has elevated the Sky lads to the very pinnacle of success where it is able to be judged by those who love and appreciate the sport of competitive cycling.

It is to be a British victory on French soil but the host nation have also  enjoyed their best tour for some time.

More enjoyable and appreciated because the home riders have been seen to outwit the dominance of Sky by taking an opportunist attitude to a lone breakaway or being the main player in a small group which have slipped away from the main field and have just survived a frantic chase down to reach the finish  line, arms aligned to the heavens and to the roar of the partisan crowd.

This is the true spirit of cycling and one that has been missing for some time against a backdrop of doping and adverse media coverage. The Sky Team have saved the Tour de France and indeed returned it to its rightful stature as the greatest sporting event in the world.

Cat in a Flap

As a man at the forefront of Science, and therefore with a rational and measured explanation for everything, Isaac showed some humility with the fear of God in his eyes as he pleaded with me to accompany him on his flight from Cambridge in the summer of 1665.

The black-rat and flea borne plaque was virulent and merciless in the cities and had even caused a small Derbyshire village, so it was reported in the broadsheets, to shut itself away in a bid to survive the boil-blown blisters which signalled a lingering death.

Isaac's family home was a two day journey by horse drawn coach across the Fens and then into the rolling hills east of Nottingham and towards the small market town of Grantham. Isaac called it a place of great tedium and from whence no one of any substance, fame or notoriety in matters of business or politic would ever be likely to emerge. It was a town of shop keepers, he said.

Woolsthorpe was not a lot more inspiring in my eyes which were more accustomed to the urban vistas. A tiny village it was and Isaac's family occupied the largest, grandest house therein. A large yellow natural stone edifice of a building, exploded forth from an artisan cottage as fortune favoured the familial endeavours and now a bit pretentious with many outbuildings, landed areas and a mature orchard of, on my summers day arrival, heavy fecund boughs laden with green apples just turning to a rosy hue and ripeness. I would perhaps steal away and partake of my own scrumping in the coming weeks, or if the plaque persisted - who knew when.

A wagon arrived a couple of days later stacked high with Isaac's equipment for science. Items were boxed and labelled as to where in his study they should be carefully placed. I was aware then of the depth and breadth of his great mind. He was much feted and admired in academic circles for his work on calculus, optics and celestial issues. He was wholly wed to his research and as long as I had been acquainted ,no female of any guile or intention could appeal to his more base instincts, if at all he harboured any behind that determined and focused visage when engaged in his science.

We had therefore upped-sticks and encamped in rural Lincolnshire. I would have plenty of time to myself if Isaac disappeared into his study for the duration of the daylight hours for the purposes of his experiments with light  refraction and prisms. The quality of light was significantly improved to that in Cambridge where a sudden domestic smoke smog could destroy an intricate daylight dependant study so rapidly and send Isaac into a great melancholic stupor.

The only intrusion on his dissection of light experimentation turned out to be the house cat, Mistress Nell, so named after that amusing whore who was keeping King Charles abed and humoured. I would be sat engrossed in a book or pamphlet when Isaac would scream for Mistress Nell to be removed by his domestic staff, usually his long suffering mother Hannah, after another uninvited incursion into his study. The room, darkened by a heavy felt hanging at the window to create a perfect environment for studies in light, was pitch black and a stubborn Isaac would be heard stumbling around falling over the furnishings rather than light a taper for navigation purposes.

Mistress Nell, a favourite companion of Isaac out of office hours would insist on pushing open the heavy panelled study door on an ingraciating visit oblivious to the accompanying flood of dust carrying sunbeam light that would occur in her wake. Issac was on the verge of a breakthrough and was excited and agitated in equal proportions over what he had perceived to be the fracturing of a single beam of sunlight through the heavy window cover and via an intricate bauble of a glass prism into multiple rainbow streams which he called a spectrum. Hannah, poor thing now at the ripe old age of 43 was struggling to cope with the return of the Prodigal Son whom everyone insisted on telling her was a genius. Pots, plates and undergarments were the same to her whatever the status of the person who soiled them and left them for her to retrieve on the weekly wash day for pewter and linen.

On one occasion of being summoned in such a disrespectful manner she had mentioned that Isaac should either kill the cat or apply his pioneering and inventive mind to the problem. Always relishing a challenge Isaac tore away a small parchment fragment from one of his expansive drawing sheets and mused on the dilemna. Cat-door-light-dark. The ensuing sketch was, as I later saw, quite infantile in form and content. The annotation was confusing to my non-scientific outlook. A-Cat, B-door, C-Light and the easy one of the four, D-Dark. Mistress Nell was fashioned in the diagram from two chubby circles, two triangular ears and the absent minded stroke of a quill pen for whiskers. It would not have looked out of place as a satirical cartoon to the wit of Mr Samuel Johnson in his London Salon.

In the following hours there was a riot of hammering, nailing and a tirade of foul cursing from Isaac at the door to the study. Then perspiring but smiling he revealed his solution to alleviating the intrusive movements of the cat. It was a large hole about six inches from the base of the door, a cat sized hole. On the room face of the hole he had tacked a long, extended corridor piece of surplus felt from the window screen. Mistress Nell, with some reticence was physically bundled towards the aperture. She was not well pleased and with claws out and straddling the ominous hole she was not going to participate in the first demonstration of the 'Cat-Hole'. Isaac cajoled and poked the animal with increasing impatience but events had reached an impasse.

I dashed to see the cook in the scullery and returned with a morsel of calves liver which I had remembered engendered an addictive tendency in felines. I wafted it just inside the extended felt sheath. A twitch and a screech later Mistress Nell detached herself from the seasoned oak and shot through into the room. It did take a few more performances of this nature to reinforce the association of the cat hole with the reward of food on the other side. Isaac was understandably proud of his invention. I saw no further possibilities for such a crude opening in a door for the vouluntary and unsupervised passage of cats. When , some months later, Mistress Nell (the cat) fell pregnant, ironically to Charles, the large male cat from the adjacent farm, Isaac knocked out a series of smaller holes lower down in the door for the tiny kittens to use. Bright mind he may have had but no common sense. The small offspring would simply follow their mother through the main cat hole and ignore what was now a spoiled, draughty and almost ineffective closure to the study.

I was witness later on to the revenge strategy undertaken by Mistress Nell for the indignity of her treatment at the hands of a previously affectionate and attentive master. She would defecate around the study in a systematic way along the narrow footways in an otherwise crammed full floorspace so that Isaac could not fail to step into something. His documents developed a strange off white tint and acidic pungent smell overnight. He drew another sketch on the matter of improving the influx of air to the room, a sort of air conditioning but was soon distracted by other issues of a less fanciful and futuristic theme.

The pinnacle of Mistress Nells reprisals was out of doors. If Isaac became dulled and of pale pallor from his darkened cavelike existence he would take to a short recreational in the grounds of Woolsthorpe. If a fine day, with little prospect of developing a chill on his delicate chest, he could be found in the orchard, staring at the patterns of light through the leafy boughs, torturing a poor insect to a fiery death using his prism to concentrate a heated sunbeam or just sat with his back to the gnarled trunk of a one of the apple trees.

On such a sunny, still day I had spied Mistress Nell skulking out of the house, no doubt in pursuit of one of the many mice that infested the place.However, she was on an altogether more vindictive quest. She made for the orchard and using the technique of claws out which had prevented, momentarily, her being  thrust into that human made hole she easily ascended the fruit tree under which a contented Isaac was sleeping lightly and no doubt dreaming about some convoluted equation of numbers and symbols.

She edged out on her still distended birth swollen belly along the bough directly above Isaac. With a swift and deft swipe of her paw she dislodged a large, somewhat maggoty apple which fell with some velocity but dropped quietly into the thick pip spattered soil at the base of the trunk and slightly to the right of the prone form. Frustrated, but cool and intent on exacting some satisfaction for her previous maltreatment on her master, she tried again.

The next apple was a bit smaller, but ripened and glistening with a mixture of wasp spittle and residual dew. It was attached with some elasticity by its woody stalk connection to the bough and insisted on swinging like a pendulum when initially agitated by paw and claw. Akin to playing with her favourite ball of wool on the floor of the study which had always been to the amusement of her previously attentive and formely faultlessly considerate master Mistress Nell persisted.  She continually punched and pummelled the apple before under an irresistible force it eventually worked loose and fell, straight and true onto the prominent, intelligent and studious head of Isaac Newton.

Dead Dog

There are three questions that a child must ask of parents.

It may take some time to summon up enough courage to raise queries of such potential magnitude but be assured that it will happen and you must be prepared for the answers. The posing of such will change forever the relationship you have thus far enjoyed with your parents. The responses may not be pretty or particularly easy to comprehend and assimilate into what is likely, even in the quite young, to be a firmly entrenched and preconceived notion regarding such matters.

The first question is the inevitable 'Where do babies come from?'

The second question is ' Am I adopted?' and the critical third question, 'Was I annoying as a child?'.

The first two questions can be flim-flammed over quite easily or in the former there may soon be an illustrated medical type book amongst the shelf of family reference sources, between the Readers Digest Book of Home Improvements and a Blue Peter Annual.

The second one can be dealt with vaguely through an examination of the archive that is the stock of family photograph albums. By this process there can be the identification of certain inherited and genetic dispositions which in our family include a flat section on the crown of the nose, a generational skip of ginger hair and bright green eyes. Any fanciful ideas of having been abandoned at birth by nobility, circus-folk or a celebrity rapidly evaporate under such overwhelming evidence that you are not adopted.

I think that now that I am 49 years old (birthday just on the 17th past) I am ready to ask the third pivotal question.

I do suspect that I was a very annoying child. A bit hyperactive, noisy and tiresome, likely to go on and on about something very trivial as though it was the most important thing in the world, high maintenance, a bit wingy and needy and always on the scrounge. Not much changed there then.

I was very inquisitive or nosey as it can also be labelled. I was into everything, meddling, airing an opinion but based on no understanding or empathy whatsoever with what was going on.

For some reason, from the age of 11, I kept a diary. It was a mixture of quite mundane entries such as ' School today', ' Played footie with Spog Needham' , 'Took Ruff (grandmothers dog) for a walk but it died'.

In contrast I also made a point of making a running commentary on world events. These included various atrocities by the IRA with graphic detail on fatalities and injuries, the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus and the sinking of the merchant vessel Derbyshire. The radio and tv news broadcasts were always on in the house so I could not really avoid picking up bits of information. Certain stories of tragedy and gore would, in equal proportion, fascinate and petrify me. Of course I would never actually stay around and listen to the full story, but rather latch on to a particularly thrilling, scary, morbid and exciting aspect and run with that to the annoyance of everyone in the house and the neighbourhood. I was also quite impressionable and gullible. The mean kids did take advantage of what was just a complete unquestioning trust and faith that I had in others. I was not actually victimised or bullied in any way and indeed I was generally left alone by those intent on trouble for the simple fact that they found me strange and annoying as well.

Oblivious I must have been at the time to my childhood character traits because on reflection I had a wonderful, secure and privileged childhood  and that has given me  the outlook on life that I have today. Perhaps I will hold off asking that third question after all. Annoying, eh?

Ure Midge

Some of the best ever holidays that we, as a family, have enjoyed have been in late summer and early autumn in Scotland.

It is a great time of the year to visit with an often indian sub-continental climate and a few less northern european tourists in camper vans. The natural light is paler and mellow which, with the turning of the broadleaved trees and heather really emphasises the beauty of the mountains, glens and lochs.

Of course, all of this appreciation and sightseeing must be completed when it is raining or before dusk because when dry and after the light has faded is when Scotland reverts to the insect kingdom and the miniscule but mighty blood thirsty midge.

In the purpley fading light of a sunset behind a backdrop of the most fantastic scenery it is necessary to light up the 3-Tigers smoke producing tapers, immerse yourself in insect repellent or doctor yourself with oral medication and even seriously consider taking up high tar cigarettes for the duration of any vacation north of the border. I hesitate to mention some of the more wacky, folklore based and Old Wives remedies to alleviate this insect affliction. This is all undertaken even to if you intend to stay indoors and do not at all harbour any thoughts to venture out to see the unfettered night sky including the Milky Way, possibly the Aurora Borealis or the tremendous landscape in silhouette.

The Midge has undoubtedly had an impact on the attraction of Scotland as a vacation destination and for ultimate enjoyment of its great outdoors but perhaps there is an element of conspiracy in that relief from attack can be sought in the pubs, bars, restaurants and entertainment venues for a price.

To this end a proactive project was carried out in September 2008 by Aberdeen University and Rothamstead Research into midge habits in order to determine if there exists a formula for a wholly effective means of repellent.

The survey sample was quite specifically located on the shores of Loch Ness and comprised a total of 325 people who just happened to be visitors at that time.The study did reveal some interesting facts and statistics.

The midge definitely favours men of tall stature and overweight women. The reasons were however significantly different. In the former case a midge has a workable flying altitude of 2 metres and associates trees and vegetation at this height with food. Tall men are therefore a rather confused source for sustenance. In the latter the feasting of midges is on the common extrusions from overweight women of carbon dioxide and lactic acid. The survey did not comment on the emissions of large, fat males because there were none milling about at Loch Ness at the time. This sounds like a self  fulfilling prophecy if ever there was one. They are overweight simply because they do not take strenuous exercise in the open air in september around a deep water Loch.

A surprising revelation of the survey was that around 15% of the sample had a natural immunity to midge bites and when questioned on this it was apparent that this was the same with other family members and of different generations of the family, therefore indicating a genetic disposition. The report does not state if this charmed proportion of the population were culled and disected in the interests of science, humanity and the Scottish Tourist Board. Volunteers must have been forthcoming in that the secret repellent was identified as being a combination of two chemicals- geranylacetaone and methylheptenone. These can be artificially processed on an industrial scale and are sold to the perfume industry in particular.

The basis is a floral compound of fruity aroma but totally abhorrent to the midge. The merits of these compounds for intelligent pest management have not escaped the commercial world and a series of products are currently well into the test stage pending production. The availability of such a repellent will be revolutionary for the nation of Scotland.

It turns out that there really are those amongst us who always come up from any adversity, smelling of roses.

The glorious 17th

I share my birthday today with a lot of people from history that I have never heard of. Not a very inspiring bunch really at face value but no doubt contributing individually and collectively to the resilience and fortunes of the human race.

I do them a great disservice in dismissing their achivements in such a flippant way but the usual entry in today's press for 'born on this day in history' does look a bit spartan and more of a who's who of who's that.

I expect that those currently reading up on planning a family may try to avoid an early to mid October conception specifically to evade giving birth on the 17th of July in the following year. They may see this as an essential course of action to give their child a head start in life, as important as getting them into the best pre-school french language class, best preparatory cuisine school and private financial embezzlement stream at secondary level.

I can only really relate to persons of the more modern era born on this day and these include James Cagney, Kiefer Sutherland's Dad, Camilla Parker Bowles and Tim Brooke Taylor.

There is a definite or at least a 75% bias in this short and selective list for fame or notoriety  from some form of dramatic and performance based career. I would have hoped for some members of the 17th July club to hail from a scientific background , the humanitarian sector, the realm of engineers and the ranks of sports persons.

If only Mrs Indurain had been able to hold on for a few more hours I would have had the great cyclist and athlete Miguel for company.

It is however a good day and a good time of year to celebrate. It may even be a strong candidate for the best ever birthday day of the year. I will take any representations on this from disgruntled or aggrieved parties.

Who do you think you are- Niki Lada?

For a good few years from the 1970's to the mid 1990's it was commonplace to see the Eastern Bloc manufactured Lada Cars on the streets of Hull.

Not necessarily moving or roadworthy and with a strange mottled paintwork finish largely concealing chronic corrosion the vehicles formed a large proportion of the city's Taxi Fleet and were a viable, although legendarily unreliable, choice for but not always low cost family transport.

That same brand is now regarded as being in that 'Classic' category  but warranting a specific sub category of 'Classic', reserved for vehicles that should just not have survived to attain such status. 

For all the many hours and miles covered collectively by Lada's in the HU postcodes over the two decades I can only admit, knowingly, to have partaken in one journey. It was on my stag night. I was in the Old Town with family and friends on a crawl around the famous public houses. Some still survive today. The Black Boy, Sailmakers, Olde White Hart, The White Hart (still old), The Bell being those I remember before I was ceremoniously thrown into the former dock basin, thankfully a shallow water feature but still a bit stagnant, smelly, streaked with bird whiting and very cold.

The impact of hitting the water, I seem to imagine an Olympic standard dive at the time but actually think I was playfully lowered in a bit like a mars bar into a deep fat fryer, was enough to half-sober me up.

The rest of any alcoholic stupor was well and truly purged from my system by the subsequent taxi ride in a Lada, some 6 miles out to one of the villages where my wife to be and the Best Man's wife were having a quiet girl's night in.

It was before the construction of the very long and straight dual carriageways which now make up five and a half of the six miles. The Lada, with its sheepskin coat clad and dour driver and two of us, initially carefree but soon to be frightened, passengers took off from the Lowgate taxi rank as though from the front of the grid at a Grand Prix.

The car creaked and groaned arthritically as it took the first corner to double back down the old town High Street. The sound could quite easily have been the shearing away of the body shell from the chassis. High Street is a legitimate short cut to get back to the river crossing at Drypool Bridge but most of the carriageway is in ancient cobbles. Yet more involuntary loosening of welds and bolted connections was taking place as the Lada seemed to target the areas of most displaced, raised and loose cobble stones. The engine mountings joined in the overall complaining noises of a car that should have long since been retired or scrapped.

High Street seemed to be twice or more of its actual length before the driver swung wildly right at its northern end to merge with the busy saturday night traffic on the inner ring road. Hedon Road was a bit quieter and it was strange to see the deserted roadside parking bays and shuttered business premises on what, during the working week, was a hive of activity with congested lanes, heavy transport vehicles, mobile catering caravans for the workforce and a variety of noises and odours from large scale wood machining to bacon banjo's.

To our driver it was an opportunity to really put his foot down and the Lada gave an indignant surge of power from 40mph to at least 45mph. My senses were heightened by the very real fear of being in harms way and each increment of increased speed was multiplied to twice the actual. I was comforted by the fact that I had read somewhere in the motoring press that this model of Lada only had a top speed of 70mph, downhill and with  freakish tail wind..

As we were driven past the large Eastern Dock complex I glimpsed all manner of wildlife running for the cover of the verge. A couple of urban foxes and something of cat size but definitely a rat. At least they were getting plenty of advanced warning of the approach of the vehicle. I half expected a few twitching curtains from the residences along the road but this was probably quite a regular route for the taxi companies and given the volumes of daytime traffic this was still quite a subdued level of noise even from a single fiendish car.

The good road surface finished just beyond the wide gated entrance to the BP Chemical Plant at Saltend. The skeletal towers of the processing operations always put on a good show of lighting and emissions and when I dared open my eyes I thught for a moment that we were approaching the Manhattan skyline.

Speed limits were evidently suspended for the night as the car threw up dust and litter through the historic town of Hedon. Beyond the built up part of town I knew that the road to our destination village was extremely tortuous, sharp bends, narrow and hedged in and rough surfaced from agricultural vehicle use. Our driver took the straightest, shortest line very skillfully. How he knew that there would be no other traffic approaching through the blind bends was a mystery down to either good fortune or recklessness.

The Lada almost separated again from its chassis in the exercise of an emergency stop outside the Best Mans house. If the passenger door had fallen off in true circus style I would not have been at all surprised. I was now completely sober, shaking and greeted my wife to be with a long embrace and a mental note to start off a life insurance policy as soon as the nuptuals were concluded.

Has he done it?

Since having both knee caps replaced in the last 12 months Dennis has found it difficult to climb up and down the scaffolding on his current building project.

He has had to settle, whilst recovering,  for an executive role from checking in the deliveries to the site to ensuring that the Portaloo is stocked and functioning for his workforce. This has been very frustrating for him because he is a house builder at heart and not a pen pusher although inevitably in todays financial and economic climate there is little or no scope for separation of these disciplines.

At the current age of 80 years Dennis is an inspiring character. He is at work on the construction site or in his well tended garden every day, knees permitting, but above all he is making or growing something which he enjoys and excels at. These two pursuits, as a livelihood and a pleasure have played a major part in his life. After leaving school at age 15 years he had offers to go to either Horticultural College or Building College. Equally he could have gone into Professional football as a goalkeeper having shown great athleticism and prowess at a very competitive amateur level which had attracted the attention of the scouts of a number of the large regional league teams. As far away as could be from today, football was then a poor option for income and prospects and Dennis enrolled at the Hull Building School. The course which covered construction materials, methods and practices was ideally suited to him and he graduated with highest honours and commendations.

The next stage was apprenticeship in the industry. There was no shortage of work to rebuild Hull after the devastation of the war years and to replace the old insanitary housing that had avoided the Luftwaffe and this was a good further grounding for Dennis and to reaffirm that he had chosen the right career path.

 He is not short on confidence and although I have only known Dennis for less than a quarter of his life I have come to recognise that his is not a false, vacuous or blustering confidence which is often found as a facade in some, but one based on ability and business acumen. He has a good manner with those he deals with and his sense of fairness and straight talking is very refreshing although some may perceive it as abruptness. He is after all just a typical Yorkshireman.

It was a natural progresion for Dennis to set up his own company and so began his contribution to raising the calibre of housing, living and lifestyle standards through a succession of residential developments through the villages and towns of East Yorkshire and the suburban areas of Hull.

Long before I was privileged to meet Dennis I was aware of his reputation for quality building and in the course of my professional work I could always count on a Survey of one of his properties, even one of a mature age from the 1960's , being straightforward and not presenting too many problems.

He did tell me recently that over the 50 or so years of building under his own name he has had only one call back from a purchaser and for a minor snagging issue at that. I find that a remarkable endorsement of his skill contrasting dramatically with the high volume house builders currently who seem to each have fleets of white vans bearing the 'After Sales Service' mantra which, to my mind means that they got things horribly wrong at the first attempt.

He has produced some good traditional houses, flat fronted and chalet style semi-detached, detached and terraced but not to a staid or dated and predictable style. I have only, in some cases found out that Dennis was the builder by quizzing a longstanding and very happy owner occupier on the history of what I had found to be a well built and rock solid property.

Even Dennis is not entirely sure of where he built but when you get past your two thousandth or so house construction I think you can be excused on such a matter of detail.

The Suitcase

The suitcase has, to my knowledge, been opened about three times in my lifetime and yesterday I was privileged to be present to view its contents, the personal possessions, memento's and collected items that are the essence of my late Father.

For decades the suitcase, one of the old style compressed cardboard types, heavy, bulky and with a thick leather carrying handle was secure from the natural inquisitiveness of us children by being stacked, in the attic store room, under all the other accumulated trappings of a large family. It may always have been in plain sight and therefore of ultimate temptation for prying by small hands but the multiple layers of tents, rucksacks and carpet remnants were enough of a deterrent to keep its contents from being disturbed.

The other disincentive was the knowledge that the suitcase contained a small glass bottle, originally of a type containing vitamins or aspirin, but with a small silvery metallic bead of mercury which could be broken into smaller globules through a frantic shaking of the bottle before, miraculously in the eyes of children, the pieces when calmed merged again into the same single, fascinating shiny pellet. Poison it was but the mystique and alchemy that we had seen with our own eyes was as effective as the suitcase having an explosive booby trapped lock.

Compressed for many years the suitcase was a bit out of shape, the lid now concave in profile. Someone tugging at it in a previous attempt at subversively retrieving it from the pile had caused the handle to become partly detached and it was hanging down uselessly. I had to carry the case down the four flights of stairs from the attic in my arms like a large, unwieldy infant before carefully placing it on the kitchen table.

At first I thought the case was locked but the two outer positioned catches were just a bit corroded into place from the moist air at the top of the draughty house. Mother stood alongside and I think that, mindful of the honour of the occasion, I asked her permission to open it up.The catches resisted initially then moved out and up with a satisfying click. The lid was raised and eased down onto what was left of the table not otherwise taken up by the footprint of the suitcase. I was expecting the suction sound of something hermetically sealed in this process, perhaps a puff of dust or a smell from the past. There was no soundtrack or odour but this did not detract from the significance of the event.

The case was full, the top layer comprising a set of  group photographs of Banking College Inductees with candidates standing in neat rows like the squad picture for a football team at the beginning of  a season, apart that was from the fact that formal business suits were the order of the day. Father was, in his working years, always characterised in the eyes of us children in a dark suit, starched detachable cardboard collar and metal cufflinks but only as to expected in the days when a Bank Manager was a very respected member of the community. We were always very proud when Father was recognised in the street by those who had benefitted from his wise counsel and we regularly saw at first hand the kindness of customers and business folk in our town.This must have been a genetic disposition in things banking because his own father had been known under the respectful title of 'Thomson of The Bank' in an African Newspaper at the end of a posting to British West Africa in the 1930's.  There was, in my recollection, a mass protest by loyal customers when my Father was seen to be badly treated by the faceless bankers at regional office. Mrs Wagg, our next door neighbour even went to the extent of closing her account and moving it to a competitor bank, such was her indignation in support of Father.

It was with some difficulty that I located Father on the photographs as although labelled beneath on a row to row basis he was as young as 17 on one of them, skinny, quiff of hair(obviously ginger even in black and white)  and rosey cheeked. The succession of pictures covered a long period of his 40 or so years with Lloyds Bank, the latest one being from the 1970's with his now receeding hairline making him immediately identified in the ranks of, by then,  senior managers. The photographs were, after study,  carefully layered on the underside of the open lid which exposed another rich seam of Fathers past in the depths of the case.

The Scouting Years were well represented from a carved and whittled woggle through to numerous accomplishment badges, a whistle, sock garters and an intricate woven leather strand halyard no doubt made whilst on a camping expedition.

His two years of National Service were in the Royal Army Medical Corps and the suitcase had a treasured collection of ranking stripes from Private through to Corporal clearly indicating a rapid and justified rise in a regiment in which he enjoyed his work and perhaps, in another time and place, he may have continued in a related profession looking after the physical health of others rather than their financial well being.

A self taught photographic prowess was displayed in an extensive collection of home-developed prints of family and friends. Mother was not sure who the two girls were who sat either side of a youthful Father on a low roadside wall in a steeply sided French Valley. This was during one of his great expeditions, in Europe ,by bike in the post war years when the exchange rate of Francs to Sterling would make the pocket money income of a young British boy the equivalent to that of a fledgling continental tycoon.

Mother was thrilled and a bit emotional to find a large bag full of her letters to Father from their courting and early married years of which she had no knowledge that they had been kept safe. We look forward to extracts from the same in Mother's creative writing if not too steamy , sensual in content or of just "too much information" generally for siblings.

The famous suitcase will , without doubt, have to revisited over and over again because the depth and breadth of the life of Father, as represented only in part by it contents, has to be fully appreciated for its honesty, loyalty and dedication to family which contribute to the endearing qualities of a great man.

Walkabout with Uncle Joe

It is good to have a plan. This can range from a mental checklist of what needs to be done on a daily basis, perhaps a week's worth of places to go, people to see, menu's to prepare,others may have a month to month schedule for larger projects around the home or in a working environment, even a years worth of aims and ambitions and further beyond. I have personally had a ten year plan agreed with my wife for improvements around our house but I am not sure when it actually started or by definition when it is due to finish. In my mind it is decade of fluidity, not necessarily on a real time basis and not as contractually binding as it is made out to be. Most plans within these contexts can be scribbled on  scrap pieces of paper, the back of a used envelope, on a fancy wall chart using coloured stickers and chinagraph pens, in a diary or journal or are etched deep in consciousness. Be prepared however for some element of disappointment as even the best laid plans can be subject to review, postponement and abandonment.

The Voyenno Topograficheskogo Upravleniya are a prime example. With an estimated 51,000 armoured and light tanks at its disposal the former Soviet Union required and amassed an astonishing amount of mapping intelligence to facilitate the potential for a strategic move westwards through Europe and to their, at the time, number 2 nemesis the British Isles. In quite recent years the back catalogue of Soviet Military Maps has been slowly revealed and to date over 90 large scale and very detailed maps of British towns and cities have emerged in the public domain. These were produced during the main Cold War years from the 1950's and even after the break up of the USSR in the 1990's as part of a very extensive global project masterminded for the purposes of world domination but secretive and often intended to mislead the enemy. This is perfectly understandable on the basis that maps of the Russian mainland and home territories were not considered to be truthful until 1998 when otherwise invisible and undetectable Top Secret Installations and locations of strategic importance began to appear on the new editions.

It is important, vitally important when planning a military campaign to have accurate information. The Soviet maps did not spare the necessary detail. The distance between trees in a forest is a good example of useful data, for example when determining a path for armour, artillery and troops .Spot heights are shown for the bridges in the mapped British Cities in addition to sizes of tunnels and even the composition of the road surface. The basis of the maps has been the subject of controversy and legal proceedings in that it is beyond reasonable doubt that they are grounded on the work of the Ordnance Survey. The emergence of the Soviet Maps has been held in contravention of Copyright and the OS, backed up by the legal system, appealed for any such maps to be surrendered for disposal. These are however still available for viewing and purchase on what appear to be legitimate commercial web sites.

There is a clear indication, however, that the mapping is a combination of a number of intelligence streams, again illustrating the large commitment of personell and resources to the project.  Aerial views from satellites or spy planes would of course be available to a Super Power of the time. Annotations show references to Trade Directories in that businesses and industrial sites are named, pocket street atlases have been acquired in order to update records but there is also the scale of information that could only be sourced from quite large numbers of persons on foot and with strong local knowledge and connections. This street-level intel was pioneered to great success in the build up to the Second World War by Germany and Japan. Some anomalies have been indicated through the many academic research papers and presentations on the mapping sheets. Data on railway lines is significantly out of date with depiction of long since grubbed up routes within and between the featured towns and cities. The descriptions in English have sometimes been misinterpreted. A Nature Reserve has been misconstrued as somewhere 'Reserved' or of secret military importance. A sign for a Lorry Park hs been transcribed into Russian as an order to 'Park Lorry'. The maps were produced over the peak years of doctrinal conflict between Communism and Capitalism. This may explain why Racecourses, wide open spaces with racing tracks for the frivolous enjoyment of the privileged have not been recognised as such and have been depicted as airfields. The use of 'Court' in a typical British street address is translated as being part of the legal establishment. Roads appear on the Soviet Maps where none exist on the ground. This has been attributed to the misinterpretation of leafy  lanes and access paths to back gardens which is a very characteristic feature of the suburban housing areas in this country.

The ninety or so British towns and cities in detailed relief include the obvious capital and main regional centres but also a few small, and at face value, not very remarkable places. These are however mentioned for strategic value including Barrow in Furness (Submarines), Chatham (Naval Docks), Milford Haven (Refineries), Billingham (Steel) , Rhondda (Mining) and  Doncaster (Railways). It is apparent that there existed a higher echelon of mapping of Top Secret sites and installations such as the Aldermaston Research Facility, GCHQ at Cheltenham and the old golf ball early warning station at Fylingdales. I am mightily disappointed that my home city, Hull is not on the list given its size, regional importance and value as a shipping and freight port and Gateway to Europe.

The whole subject is fascinating to anyone remotely interested in topography, Cold war and modern history and military campaigning. So just men then.There may be more yet to emerge. The first realisation that what had previously been whispered rumour and hearsay actually existed and in vast quantities was when a printer in Latvia purchased a pallet of scrap paper from some army types who had been instructed to destroy the sensitive documents.

The (two) penny dropped

Unfortunately it is a human trait to try to cut a corner where possible, perhaps attempt to cheat the system particularly if the system is perceived to be faceless or too gargantuan in scale for any deliberate deception or deprivation to be even noticed. It is often cited as an excuse, to justify a cheat or render it legitimate in the mind of the perpetrator, that if  no single person has been hurt by a misdeed then it is perfectly OK and aceptable. However and deep down at a conscience level we all know that it is never the case. There is always a human element, a victim, a loss and a potential for suffering.

This was certainly the experience surrounding the school vending machine.

 It was meant to be an amenity for the whole contingent of the Grammar School that I attended in the early to mid 1970's. Any automated purveyor of refreshments was still a novelty in that period and particularly so in an educational environment. Such machines were only otherwise found in a railway station or at a cinema dispensing bars of chocolate, packets of sweets, bags of crisps and always with an adjacent drinks only version for hot beverages although of quite limited choice of tea and coffee,black or white and hot chocolate. It was some years later that the all singing, all dancing chilled drinks versions became commonplace.

The school vending machine was, unusually, located outdoors. It stood under a sloping verandah roof on the western side of a quadrangle of concrete yard, bounded not on four sides as the name suggests but only three and a half, so technically a thralfrangle, a word of almost Viking derivation. The verandah provided an open walkway from the main school entrance to the cloakrooms. Directly opposite and at an elevated height was the staffroom. To the south was the school office. The north side was a short dogleg continuation of the same cloakroom block. It was an area of very high footfalls at the commencement of the academic day and at break times from the timetable the yard was packed with noisy boys kicking around tennis balls in a ranging game of football, the younger intake swopping football cards and the remainder just milling about idly with no determined reason or purpose.

As an area of containment and supervision the yard was ideal. It was quite similar in form and function to the central courtyard of Colditz Castle which was a popular TV series of the time. The staff had an excellent vantage point overlooking the yard. Such was the elevation of the staff room that they could keep watch but with no prospect of themselves being seen other than above shoulder height. Those summoned to the corridor outside the room for chastisement or on an errand often testified to getting a very brief glimpse into a smoke filled den of worn and sagging easy chairs with coffee stain patterns, piles of mugs, collapsible cardboard boxes from the bakery around the corner and even a bottle or two partly drained of their alcoholic content.

We did, over time, deduce a few blind spots such as directly under the staff room windows where inter-pupil transactions and not a little bullying and intimidation could be exacted with impunity. The vending machine was in clear and plain sight of the staff unless of course there was a sufficient huddle of schoolboys acting as a screen and concealing mischief and mayhem.

The standard price for a very flimsy plastic cup filled with scalding hot liquid and a quarter inch of sludge in the bottom was two new pence. This was clearly a much subsidised price as in todays money that equates to only 14p. I do not recall who first discovered that a bolt washer, skimmed into the coin slot in the front of the machine, tricked the mechanism into dropping the cup into the hatch for it to be filled with the dry drinks powder and the boiling water. It was now open season for all and everything close to the dimensions of a 2p coin to be inserted. There was quite a black market trade in the small metal discs found on the building sites in the town which were pushed out of the back plates of electrical sockets for the cabling to be fed through. Trespass and potential for criminal damage could therefore be added to the principal misdemeanour. Many nuts and bolts on street signs, road signs and the property of the Council were loosened and their washers removed to serve as a new , illegal tender in the playground.

Foreign coins were also in good demand although in those days any overseas holidays were the privilege of the wealthy few in our midst so many quite extensive and notable coin collections held by parents, older siblings and even grandparents were raided and looted of the smaller denominations.

For a time it appeared that the whole school were involved and it was necessary for the self appointed master criminals to allocate time to those wanting a go and in strict queueing order. The mass congregating of the school within the quadrangle was ultimately the downfall of the scam. An alert member of staff eventually noticed how deserted the wider school campus was at break times and conferring with his colleagues the scale of the deception and con was soon evident.

There were to my recollection no perpetrators brought to justice because that would have been much too damage for the reputation of that otherwise reputable Grammar School if the whole school were implicated. We really did miss a stodgy and rather stale tasting but nevertheless hot beverage in the winter months following the enforced removal and disposal of the vending machine.

As an exercise in responsibilty, honesty and trust we surely sold our souls for a grubby handful of nothing.

The Good Life

Joanne's Dad is of that age group who experienced the austerity of the post war years, ration books and scarcities. He is of the self sufficient generation who, although making do with what they had did not compromise, did not sacrifice on the quality of a job or task and acheived great things for their families and communities. All of this without recourse to credit or debt.

Even long since retired from business, industry, commerce and public service this generation continue to contribute in a huge way to the smooth running of this country. They voluntarily run the charities, clubs, societies and places of worship. Wise counsel is available free of charge to family, friends, neighbours and strangers in the street and hemmed in on the bus. Unfortunately the best advice borne out of experience is not accepted in the most gracious or willing manner by those who are younger and feel they know and have seen everything already.

The generation provide childcare, a transport and catering service to their grandchildren and regularly place their homes, chattels and physical welfare at the mercy of inquisitive and inexhaustible pre-school infants.They are the invisible economy but without which everything would grind to a halt or tumble into chaos. The Bank of Mum and Dad are always open for business and on generally favourable and not always too judgemental terms.

The most endearing quality of the generation is however their ability to produce, as if by magic, anything obscure, obsolete, out of date or otherwise untraceable even after the warehouses of E-Bay, Amazon and Gumtree have been scoured but with no success. This is because their experience has taught them never to throw anything away that could, over the course of, say the next 50 to 60 years or a lifetime, prove in any way, shape or form, useful.

The vast accumulated resources of this generation can be found in loft storage spaces, the back portion of every conceivable cupboard and drawer, in old biscuit tins and jam jars on the shelving in a garage or shed and although not catalogued can be accessed immediately and with no upheaval or fuss. Some things are just not manufactured anymore but in aggregate this generation hold immeasurable supplies of washers, nuts and bolts of Imperial sizes, jubilee clips, screws, nails, brackets and fixings for every conceivable breakdown, repair or renewal  project in the home, garden and on the car.

This is not the amassing of possessions to satisfy materialism but an ultimate practicality and resourcefulness that in successive generations has just not been present.They have not at all been left behind in the information age but do not require the latest technology in home PC's . They read the local paper, listen to the local news and are not averse to just opening a book and setting off on a new line of interest.

Joanne's Dad is a true representative of the generation. If your phone number is not in his address book or speed dial you will easily miss out on the prospect of a bargain, price reduction or a sale at any outlet within the city boundary. He has that depth and breadth of local knowledge that provides an answer to the questions of who lived and worked where, when and for how long, Such information is just not available anywhere else and cannot be bought at any price. Back dated copies of the local newspaper- no problem.

Joanne calls it hoarding but it is the ultimate in re-cycling, sustainable living and self sufficiency which is something that the current generation aspire to but will never, ever attain. Even the back garden of a former childhood home, as Joanne recalls, was an integral part of the family resource as her dad regularly buried everything and anything from cots to car parts in it.

I can imagine, some 1000 years in the future, that location formerly known as Carden Avenue, proving quite a mysterious conundrum for archaeologists from the varied range of excavated relics. Included in the subterranean storage is the body shell of a three-wheeler car, multiple tyres and perhaps more than one engine.

There was a complete method to the whole system of archiving.

It is with great pride that Joanne remembers a day trip, as a child,  to the seaside when the family car, another three-wheeler, developed a broken road-spring. This could have spoiled everything on the day out but it was not a problem. It was simply a case of returning home and with shovel in hand, her dad digging over the garden at the exact spot where a spare part had been carefully planted. Harvested, cleaned and fitted it was not too long before they were back , heading east to Withernsea.

Amphibious Assault

Frogs are in crisis.

This I find quite upsetting because my childhood did involve quite a lot of activities around frogs, ponds and watercourses in the days when no second thought was really given to the chances of falling in, getting a booter or tragically, suffering a drowning which was quite a regular statistic for that time.

Ranging about quite freely even when very young I would marvel at the bubbling cauldron of a field ditch or a shady pool where water boatmen would skim about the surface and sticklebacks would dart into the weedy shallows if pursued by a brightly coloured nylon net on a long, flimsy bamboo pole. Strange gassy bubbles would burst unannounced and randomly out of the muddy deposits and erupt in a burp of some odorous content, concentric circles would be seen with no apparent creator, a silver flash caught the late afternoon sunlight as a  fish propelled itself at its own shadow or a languishing fly who dared to rest on the tight ,glassy miniscus.

The current concerns about the frog population are indicative of the trend in more recent years for their natural habitats to be lost, either dried up from changes in the water table as agricultural demand takes any ground water supplies, filled in to counter litigation for injury or death even from trespassing youngsters, built over with housing or commercial development or turned into a neglected toxic swamp from choking weed and algae.

To some extent the natural environments have been replaced by ornamental ponds and water features in domestic gardens but this has been only a short term life raft for frogs. The world of the frog has been condensed into the dimensions of a typical  back garden whereas, since the dawn of time, they have been free to roam about at will from damp flower bed to beck to stream to pond to lake and so on.

The main implication of a much more restrictive habitat is that frogs are now more likely to in-breed and we all know, on a human scale, that a consequence of such does not bode well in the longer term. Cousins, idiots and all that speculation.

There are other threats and these can be regarded as being more of a spin-off from changes in the climate. There was a certain interdependence between the species residing in natural bodies of water and a time in the seasons for the cycles of reproduction, nurture and growth to maturity for each so that the circle of life was perpetuated but not so as to infringe on each other. It now appears that the newt population is spawning much earlier than it has before and this coincides with, unfortunately, the main period when frogspawn is at its peak. This provides a veritable feast for the newly emerged newts but with a devastating effect on the numbers and welfare of their former co-habitees. Nature or natural conspiracy?

I have not seen frog spawn or in fact any abundance of young hatched frogs for some years. The stretch of common land in the Greenbelt between western Hull and one of its satellite towns has declined significantly in its role as a breeding ground for the amphibious creatures. A few years ago the local residents undertook a campaign to herd frogs across the busy main road with a supervised crossing point to minimise the quite disturbing sight of one dimensional frogs which had been squashed flat by the constant traffic.The warning road sign on approaching the stretch of road has also just recently disappeared as an indictment of unsustainability of this once thriving environment. 

It would be a terrible shame for the frog population to diminish further and inconceivable for their numbers to reach anything like an 'at risk' level. It may be time now to create more ponds and water areas of expansive dimensions as part of this buzz word for bio-diversity before it is too late for the species and they are forced to retreat from all but close contact with humans.

We can all do our little bit. A starting point would be to make all children fully proficient in open water swimming and survival techniques and as parents, a bit more sympathetic and understanding on the phenomena of a booter.

They shoot horses don't they....

I was a Young Farmer in name only.

Strange really because I had no connection to things rural apart from a distant relative of my father who had a some sort of a farm in Somerset and the fact that our back garden, on the very edge of town, was onto an agricutural field and lots of green things eventually turning golden brown were grown there.

It was just another form of youth club and as most of my friends at the time were sons of the soil I sort of just wandered into it by default. Our local club met weekly at the old coaching inn in the centre of town to discuss activities for charitable fund raising, competing in the various inter-club competitions, listening to guest speakers on subjects ranging from wild field flowers to artificial insemination, treatment of blight in wheat to avoiding nasty work related accidents such as loss of a limb in a baling machine and buying alcohol under age. Drinking was a big feature of membership. This ranged from sneaking a half of cider up to the meeting in the ballroom of the inn through one of the gullible older members, breaking open one of those Double Diamond party kegs at a social function brought about on the flimsiness of excuses such as first blossom on the potato crop, adequate rain in June or start of the shooting season. Disgracefully I got very tipsy and disorientated one Christmas Eve when, after a blurry few hours carol singing around the local farms, I found myself hiding my remaining cans of beer in the porch at the Parish Church before taking up a last remaining seat opposite my bemused family at Midnight Mass. I was told that I sang well, although a bit loud and enthusiastically, by the Vicar.

It was a very active local club and I willingly volunteered for many of the competitions including public speaking and, my favourite, quizzes. I seem to remember, again, in a bit of a blur, that we won a few of these against other clubs in the region. Fortunately, the main subjects were mostly general knowledge and my complete ignorance of things farming was never exposed or put to the test.

The highlight of the year was the County Rally when all the regional clubs came together over a couple of days to partake in more competition. This was usually on a large farming estate and the challenges did include such stalwarts as ploughing a straight furrow, rigging up a tractor with different types of equipment against the clock and animal husbandry. This did tend to highlight how many club members were non farmers but we were catered for, albeit in a rather patronising way, in such competing categories as speed wiring an electrical plug, decorative egg painting and best dressed urban scarecrow.

I like to think us non rural types did add a bit of variety and street-knowledge to the proceedings and were therefore accepted and tolerated even if we were a bit idealistic and naive about what really went on in that industrial sector. I was constantly surprised by the regular disappearance of a field until recently full of nice cows and plump sheep not really thinking that they had been despatched to the abattoir. 

I did benefit greatly from my time as a Young Farmer and my children, when growing up, expressed great amazement at my diverse knowledge of rural things and they have remembered, even now in their late teens and early twenties that a green coloured tractor is infinitley better than a blue one, but the red ones are easily the best.