Category Archives: history

history, topographical

Shoe Shine

I had a minor-ly interesting experience last Thursday. I had to go into central London for a meeting and chose to travel on the Chiltern Line from Harrow on the Hill to Marylebone. Being early we stopped for a coffee. It was then that I noticed, in a corner of the station something I’ve not seen for many a long year: a shoe shine. So of course I had to do something I’ve only ever done once or twice before when quite young and have my shoes shined.

Well they did need it!

Apart from the fact he was there, what interested me were two things.

First he wasn’t the old-style shoe shine with a wooden box, a mat and a stool. He had a sort of booth affair which meant the young man had a better working environment as he could sit in relative comfort while I perched on a high seat as well. It felt a bit unsafe as the super-sized me was perched some way off the ground on what felt like quite a small bolster. But with feet on the foot-rests it was actually fine and a fine view as well.

The other interesting thing was that he had three grades of service: basic at about £2.50, a better one at about £4.50 and the luxury job at £5.99. I went for the luxury job, as I felt my shoes needed the extra nourishment and they got several rounds of polish and buff. The job took about 5 or 6 minutes — nice time for Noreen to finish her coffee.

I remember the old shoe shines in London in the 1950s. Indeed I remember my father telling me about them and taking me to experience having my shoes shined, I think by an old boy on Liverpool Street Station, when I was probably about 8 or 10. By the time I remember shoe shines they were mostly old men (often war veterans). They were all real old characters, often dispensing worldly wisdom, racing tips or Stock Market predictions. But they were a dying breed as there weren’t many boys learning the trade and even fewer people prepared to pay for their services. Essentially they had died out by the 1970s to be replaced by inferior mechanical brushing machines in hotels and offices.

But they’re making a come-back albeit often with upmarket stands/booths. I first noticed one a few years back in Heathrow Terminal 1 and they now seem to be creeping back into central London — there are certainly shoe shines in Leadenhall Market and Burlington Arcade — although I can’t see them becoming as ubiquitous on street corners as they obviously were before the war.

I don’t recall the cost of a shoe shine in the fifties (one shilling comes to mind, but I’m sure someone will be along to correct me), nor if they had several differently-priced offerings, but the cost of the modern version seemed eminently reasonable.

history, medical, pleasures, quotes, science, thoughts, topographical

Quotes of the Week

Somehow I’m not writing this week, probably because I’ve spent a lot of time with my head in family history research. But here is this weeks strange set of bedfellows.

First I’ve been reading a 1923 book about my home town and discovered that even Cromwell’s officials in 1650 could write estate agent-ese …

The Presence Chamber. One very large, spacious delightful Room called the Kinge’s Presence Chamber, being wainscotted round with carved wainscott of good oak, coullered of a liver color, and richly guilded with gold, with antique pictures over the same ; the ceiling full of guilded pendants hanging down, setting forth the roome with great splendour […] Also a very fair, large chimny piece of black and white marble, with four pilasters of the same stone […]
[Government Survey of Theobalds Palace, 1650 quoted in Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt]


This really is what it’s thought Theobalds Palace looked like!
And from the same volume this delight …

For, if those enemies to all good endeavours, Danger, Difficulty, Impossibility, Detraction, Contempt, Scorne, Derision, yea, and Desperate Despight, could have prevailed by their accursed and malevolent interposition either before, at the beginning, in the very birth of proceeding, or in the least stolne advantage of the whole prosecution; this Worke of so great worth had never bin accomplished.
[John Stow, Survey of London, quoted in Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt]

And now for some things much more of our time …

Face to face advice on the internet.
[BBC TV London News, 11/07/2011]

Be especially sure to wipe your children down. Children are just about the grimiest thing in the world.
[Rob Dunn at Scientific American Blogs]

Boris Johnson knows even less about geology than he does about geography. Undercutting Ealing with a tunnel means my constituents, and his electoral voters, will fall into the ground. London’s transport system is built on clay, it would cost more money to tunnel through that than if we replaced HS2 with sedan chairs and walked people to Birmingham.
[Ealing North MP, Steve Pound, on Mayor Boris Johnson’s idea of tunnelling HS2 rail under outer London]

books, history, memes, personal, science

Ten Things – July

Number 7 in my monthly series of “Ten Things” for 2011. Each month I list one thing from each of ten categories which will remain the same for each month of 2011. So at the end of the year you have ten lists of twelve things about me.

  1. Something I Like: Beer
  2. Something I Won’t Do: Parachute
  3. Something I Want To Do: Visit Scilly Isles
  4. A Blog I Like: Not Exactly Rocket Science
  5. A Book I Like: Diary of Samuel Pepys
  6. Some Music I Like: Amanda Palmer, Map of Tasmania
  7. A Food I Like: Cheese
  8. A Food or Drink I Dislike: Tapioca
  9. A Word I Like: Numpty
  10. A Quote I Like: It will pass, sir, like other days in the army. [Anthony Powell]
history, personal, topographical

Priceless Records

Grubbing around in family history again this afternoon, I’ve happened upon a couple of absolutely priceless extracts of London parish registers on Ancestry.co.uk.

01 Dec, 4 Elizabeth [1537] — True Bill that, from the said day even until now, John Hardy [… and 34 named others …] have without reasonable excuse neglected to provide themselves with bows and arrows, and neglected to practice archery, in contempt of the statute in this matter provided.

And quite right too. The English archer remained a potent weapon for probably another 50 years by which time the arquebus/musket was taking over as the weapon of choice. So it remained important that all healthy Englishmen were at least competent archers to defend the realm.

Tuesday after the Feast of St Martin ao 10 Edward III [1322], information given to the aforesaid Coroner and Sheriffs that Simon Chaucer lay dead of a death other than his rightful death in the rent of Richard Chaucer, his brother, in the parish of St Mary at Aldermarichirche in the Ward of Cordewanerstrete. Thereupon they proceeded thither, and having summoned good men of that Ward and of the three nearest Wards, viz.: Queenhithe, Brede Strete and Walbroke, they diligently enquired how it happened. The jurors — viz.: William de Chelrythe [… and 25 named others …] — say that on Monday before the Feast of St Luke last passed, the above Simon Chaucer and Robert de Uptone, skinner, were quarrelling after dinner in the High Street opposite the shop of the said Robert in the parish aforesaid, when the said Simon wounded the said Robert on the upper lip; that John, son of the said Robert perceiving this, took up an instrument called “Dorbarre” and therewith struck the said Simon on the hand, side and head and forthwith took refuge in the church of St Mary de Aldermarichirche, whence he secretly made his escape on the following night. Chattels none. They further say that the said Simon lingered until the Tuesday aforesaid when he died at sunrise; that the said Robert was captured, before the holding of the inquest, on suspicion and taken to the house of John de Northhalle, the Sheriff […]

Don’t you just love lay dead of a death other than his rightful death? What more picturesque circumlocution could there be?

history, personal, quotes, science

Quotes of the Week

A rather temporal theme this week …

What is time? If no one asks me, I know. If I wish to explain it to one that asketh, I know not.
[St Augustine, Confessions]

Time is Nature’s way of keeping everything from happening at once.
[John Archibald Wheeler]

The universe is a simple place. True, it contains complicated things like galaxies and sea otters and federal governments, but if we average out the local idiosyncrasies, on very large scales the universe looks pretty much the same everywhere.
[Sean Carroll, From Eternity to Here: the Quest for the Ultimate Theory of Time]

Apart from Earl Alan, the Lord of the Manor, there is no record of local names. As to the women, who one must assume formed the usual percentage of the community, not one word!
[Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt commenting on the Domesday Book entry for Cheshunt]

I just love the preambulatory greetings in old documents, which are maintained even to this day in royal letters patent.

To all Christ’s faithful people unto whom this present shall come, Peter, by the grace of God, Abbot of the Church of St Peter of Fulgeres and of the Convent in that same place, greeting in the Lord!
[Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt translating a 12th century document]

Conan, Duke of Brittany, Earl of Richmond, to all the sons of the Church of the Holy Mother, and its steward and chamberlain, and to all its servants, and to all its men, French and English, and to all Britons, and all its well-wishers, greeting!
[Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt translating a 12th century document]

The constant recurrence of old familiar names in the ancient Parish registers seems to show that some of them have long taken root in the place. “Lowin” and “Adams” and “Archer” and “Cock” and “Tarry” and “Dighton”, and a good many more household names, are plentiful as blackberries in the old Registers.
[Percy Charles Archer, Historic Cheshunt quoting comments on parish registers by Revd Arthur Brown]

amusements, current affairs, history, natural history, photography, quotes, sexuality, thoughts

Quotes of the Week

This week’s collection …

Never put off until tomorrow what you can do the day after tomorrow.
[Mark Twain]

Now I know foreigners do things strangely but …

The 31-year-old king of the tiny Himalayan country of Bhutan announces his intention to marry this October.
[BBC News report]

Oh, that’s alright then. As long as he’s not marrying last October. That would be necrophilia.

I masturbate because it makes me feel warm, embodied, juicy, alert, calm, self-possessed, and fulfilled. I masturbate to celebrate my body and my sovereignty. I masturbate and am not ashamed to do so. There are other things I do when I’m alone that are far more embarrassing.
[Allison at http://thesexpositivephotoproject.blogspot.com]

One really shouldn’t laugh at other misfortune, especially in wartime …

9 May 1941 … We’d just got down to the Victoria in Turners Hill when there was a whoosh and a bang as a [250kg high explosive] bomb fell where the Fire Station is now – it was old Bertie Simpkins’ junk yard then. Mrs Whiddon who lived opposite had an old lavatory pan come in through her front bedroom window!
[Peter Rooke, Cheshunt at War 1939-1945]

Flowers always make people better, happier and more helpful; they are sunshine, food and medicine to the soul.
[Luther Burbank]

Photography takes an instant out of time, altering life by holding it still.
[Dorothea Lang]

Are you suggesting coconuts migrate?
[Monty Python and the Holy Grail]

amusements, books, history, pleasures, quotes, topographical

Quotes of the Week

A small selection of this week’s strange and interesting findings …

Hogwash entered the room, and, having entered, decided, upon entry, having viewed all there was, and some of what was not, to be seen, to remove himself, once more, from the room by the same route through which he had, so recently, entered.
[Craig Brown, The Marsh-Marlowe Letters, parodying Anthony Powell]

He possessed that opportune facility for turning out several thousand words on any subject whatever at the shortest possible notice: politics; sport; books; finance; science; art; fashion – as he himself said, ‘War, Famine, Pestilence or Death on a Pale Horse.’ All were equal when it came to Bagshaw’s typewriter. He could take on anything, and – to be fair – what he produced, even off the cuff, was no worse than was to be read most of the time. You never wondered how on earth the stuff had ever managed to be printed.
[Anthony Powell, Books Do Furnish a Room]

I just love Tudor/Restoration “irregular” spelling …

[I]n 1558-59 St Mary Woolnoth paid ‘one Robert Bennett syngyngeman for servynge in the churche at dyvers tymes from the begynnynge of August tyll Michaelmas’.
[John Harley, The World of William Byrd: Musicians, Merchants and Magnates]

London is a patchwork of the fabulous and the shit.
[Antonia at Whoopee]

Too right!

Finally something bringing us right up to date …

This train reduces CO2 emissions
[Slogan on a Southern Trains emu at Clapham, 19/05/2011]

I’m not sure how this is achieved: presumably the train selectively sucks CO2 from the atmosphere. One suspects they mean “this train causes the emission of less CO2 than other trains/modes of transport. But that’s not what it says, guys!

books, history, personal, topographical

Fairfield

Wanting something to read in bed the other evening, and not wanting anything heavy, I chose at random from the pile of books by the bed. My hand alighted on Betjeman’s England, an anthology by Stephen Games of extracts from the scripts of Sir John Betjeman’s TV films about England.

Now I love the Romney Marsh and Dungeness in Kent, and the nearby small town of Rye. So imagine my enjoyment when the book fell open, quite at random, at the following piece about Fairfield Church in the heart of the Romney Marsh.

KENT

FAIRFIELD CHURCH, ROMNEY MARSH
From the Shell series Discovering Britain with John Betjeman
Random Film Productions Ltd
ITV, Spring 1956 (exact date unknown)
Director: Peter Woosnam-Mills

Romney Marsh, on the Sussex border of Kent and close to the sea. Romney Marsh, where the roads wind like streams through pasture and the sky is always three-quarters of the landscape. The sounds I associate with Romney Marsh are the bleating of innumerable sheep and the whistle of the sea wind in old willow trees. The sea has given a colour to this district: it has spotted with silver the oak posts and rails; it gives the grass and the rushes a grey salty look and turns the red bricks and tiles of Fairfield Church a saffron yellow.

For a moment, when you see Fairfield Church there on the skyline, you think it must be a farm or a barn. There’s no road to it – only a footbridge and a path. And in the church, you feel you’re on an island in the marsh.

Inside, it’s like walking underneath an upturned ship. (Those great beams are made of Kentish oak.) The communion rails go round three sides of the altar as they used to in many churches two hundred years ago; and since in those days, just as much as now, people were literate, they hired a local inn-sign painter to paint, in yellowish-gold letters on a black background, the Creed, the Lord’s Prayer and the Ten Commandments.

The church is still kept up and used, though it’s miles from anywhere, and that’s what gives it atmosphere.

Another thing that endears Fairfield Church to me is that it’s been spared electric light and the surgical basins in the roof that go with it. How pleasant those Victorian oil lamps are and how well they fit in with the scene.

Let’s go into one of the high, white box pews. And sitting here in the quiet waste of marsh, islanded by grass in water, let’s think ourselves back two hundred years. The place can’t have looked very different. The parson read the service from that lower desk where the candle is, he climbed to the pulpit to preach, and if you found yourself not attending to the sermon, there was always a text to remind you of where you were and of the reverence due to this loved and lonely house of God.

Fairfield Church: it’s about ten miles from Tenterden in Kent and therefore sixty-three miles south-east of London.

I’ve been to Fairfield a number of times and it is even now just as fascinating and delightful as Betjeman paints it, despite several heavy restorations in the last 200 years. Fairfield really is in the middle of nowhere, and probably always was as there was never anything much by way of village there. There is still no electricity but the church is used, at least sporadically.

For me Fairfield has a further attraction. It is dedicated to my patron saint, Thomas Beckett (Thomas of Canterbury), ca. 1118 to 29 December 1170; murdered at the behest of Henry II and canonised by Pope Alexander III in 1173.

The church, which is tiny, is on a slight rise in the middle of a rather wet sheep field, and when you go into the church you have to remember to shut the door behind you so the sheep don’t follow you. I have been there and found several sheep sheltering in the porch!

Yes, it is one of those idyllic and idiosyncratic English places!

There’s more on the architectural structure of Fairfield church here.

Stephen Games (Ed.), Betjeman’s England (John Murray, London, 2009)

environment, history, links, music, personal, pleasures, sexuality, thoughts, topographical

Weekly Interesting Links

OK guys & gals, so here’s another weekly, but doubtless occasional, new series — links to interesting sites I’ve come across during the week but which haven’t made it into a full posting.

An article by my friend Potter-san on the Soul of Okinawan Music. The music of Okinawa (the southern-most tropical islands of Japan) is a fun eclectic mix of their native music and just about anything they can import. Try it! I was surprised how much of it I liked.

Also advance information on the London Okinawa Day 2011 on Saturday 25 June. I’ve never managed to get to this annual event but it sounds like it should be a fun day. Anyone want to get together a party of us?

On a totally different subject, a thought-provoking item Should Young Teens be Prescribed Hormonal Contraception? by Prof. Kate Clancy. All the more powerful because Clancy is American and her stance is totally contrary to the prevailing American ethic of total teenage abstinence.

If you are interested in your family history and have forebears who worked on the railway you might be interested in the Railway Ancestors FHS.

In view of the week’s biggest event (at least here in the UK) history buffs may be interested in Medieval Weddings.

One of the most misunderstood areas of the law as it affects anyone involved in literary or artistic ventures is copyright. Fortunately the British Library describe the duration of UK copyright in one easy flowchart. But I suspect I shall have to continue to explain intellectual property law even to our literary society trustees. 🙁

And finally, here’s a super eco-idea: use cardboard packaging impregnated with seeds to rejuvenate the environment. No sorry you can’t have the idea, it’s already been done by Life Box.