JO

The sun shines down on a northern town

An ordinary lunchtime; such an ordinary day

Extraordinarily shattered by a brutal sound

From the dark implements of blame

And hope lies dying on the ground

Divided opinions divided

By such a savage act

We are all of us diminished

When democracy is attacked

In this green unpleasant land

In this green unpleasant land

Where hope lies dying on the ground

One mindless, terrifying moment

Which feels so very, very wrong

And an afternoon too painful to bear

Drips into a weeping waiting world

When hope lies dying on the ground

This world we are now living in

Torn open by this shame

We once thought so impossible

Before someone lit a flame

Your new red unpleasant land

Your new red unpleasant land

Where hope lies dying on the ground

“I want my country back!” they scream

Wrapped in the bloody white St George

But I want mine back as well, you see

And it’s not the same as yours

When hope lies dying on the ground

In mine opinions shouldn’t end in murder

If your job’s in service to everyone

I once believed it couldn’t happen here

Now we all know how easily it can

In your white unpleasant land

In your white unpleasant land

Where hope lies dying on the ground

Jo Cox MP (Helen Joanne Leadbeater) - 22 June 1974-16 June 2016

PAUSE

To be honest, I think I'm going to pause the old slideshow here for a while because I've got slightly bored with it, given that we're over a hundred posts in and barely a third of the way through them.

That, and the next set is another long, laborious trek through somebody else's (i.e. Grandfather's) holiday photographs which is never as much fun as I always think that it's going to be.

Next up on this scanning spree there are four boxes "helpfully" marked "Himalaya 1967" which refer to a Mediterranean cruise on a P&O ship that was clearly not the much-praised SS Canberra, and taken several years after those adventures with which we started this longest of long hauls several months ago.

Launched in October 1948, SS Himalaya entered service in 1949 and for much of her life sailed between Britain and Australia, presumably carrying more than a few of those emigrants who sought out a new life "Down Under" before being converted to carry only tourist class passengers, and had a "controversial" (it says here) conversion of her funnel design at some point along the way.

She had her final voyage in late 1974 and was scrapped the next year.

I've done a little bit of research on these photographs because, as ever, Grandfather's lack of extensive labelling did leave me rather clueless as to where most of the pictures were taken, but my reliable informants (via TwitWorld mostly) tell me that at least some of the pictures were taken in Lisbon, and, well, that's about it really...

That said, delving into an old box of postcards that I still have has added one or two further further clues, with mentions of capri and blue lagoons and Spanish villages on a postcard sent by my Grandmother from Palma. Investigating those connections might suggest that, if I find myself with time on my hands, maybe further connections might be made.

I do have other reasons for wishing to withdraw into my shell for a while; I fear that social media is likely to be swamped with Referendum Rantings and Footballing Frolics for the foreseeable immediate future, and feel that this might be a good opportunity for me to take a step back from all that sort of nonsense (if I can...) and go outside and sniff the summer breeze for a while.

But I do still also think we all need to take a slight break from this slidemongery, so I'm off to regroup... and yet I know that I'll very probably be back and see you all once again on the other side.

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 104) - ANOTHER NEW YELLOW BOX - STOCKPORT AIR DISASTER

SLIDES 0646-0650

STOCKPORT AIR DISASTER, JUNE 1967

A little over 49 years ago, at just after ten o'clock in the morning on Sunday the 4th of June, a British Midlands Airways Canadair C-4 Argonaut returning from Mallorca crashed into Hopes Carr right in the centre of Stockport.

Seventy-two of the eighty-four people aboard were killed and it is still, at time of writing, the fourth worst aviation disaster in British history.

News reports from the time tend to suggest that the pilot, who was one of the few survivors, chose to bring his aircraft down as best he could in an open area, with the plane reportedly making a sharp turn and levelling out just before impact. but the accident investigators could not find any evidence to support this notion. The official report maintains that the aircraft would have been uncontrollable under the circumstances after it lost power, despite what eyewitnesses who saw the plane come down claimed. Despite Stockport being a fairly busy urban area, however, there were no fatalities on the ground.

There but for the grace of, etc.

The house we lived in was (and still is) about a mile away from the crash site, so we were probably never in any real danger, but these incidents do rather make you think, even though I was utterly oblivious to it all at three years old,and I imagine that most of the family would have been on their way to church when this all happened.

According to the current Wikipedia entry, "The accident drew a large crowd, estimated at around 10,000 hampering the rescue organisations..." and it would appear, unless these were taken a couple of days after the accident happened, my Grandfather was one of those doing the hampering.

Mind you, looking at these pictures, you can immediately tell that "drew a large crowd" is something of an understatement, because there's a heck of a lot of people there who appear to have come to have a gawp at the aftermath of this tragedy, even long after the fact with the flames out and the area, presumably, declared "safe", and you do begin to wonder what passed for entertainment back in the late 1960s.

It does rather fit in with his slight tendency to photograph engineering disasters that have turned up from time-to-time in both the slide collection and his youthful box brownie pictures that you can find elsewhere on this blog if you feel like going looking.

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 103) - ANOTHER NEW YELLOW BOX

SLIDES 0643-0645

So, there's my sister sitting in the living room wearing a red bikini...

Hold on a second... That doesn't seem right does it...? I mean, it's hardly indoors-y gear now is it, even it it was taken during the laissez-faire 1960s...?

I do remember that chunky old sideboard, though, and that picture on it of my sister and I taken at some far earlier time, graced many a surface in the family homes for many a long year, and, although I can't swear to it, parts of that shiny stainless steel tea service may still lurk in the boxes salvaged from my mother's place that I'm still struggling to bring myself to get around to sorting through.

The telly, with that strange tell-tale sign of its times - the black residue from the heat given off by its cathode ray tube - did not survive into the modern era, and, strangely, does appear to be in the "wrong" room if memory serves. In my world, the television lived in the back room, the "living" room in which we also ate, and never, ever in the "lounge" where this interloper appears to have been placed.

Our first colour TV arrived several years later when the man from D.E.R. arrived and prevented me from watching the end of an episode of "Thunderbirds" on one long-ago school holiday morning. The disappointment of that, of course, was far overwhelmed by the stunning miracle of full colour images which were not unlike those of the real world beyond our living room.

I do remember the six-sided climbing frame (and the swing which, in later years, I fell off necessitating a trip to Accident and Emergency...) in the back garden though. It was part of the paraphernalia of mother's "Play Group" which also included tyres sunk into the lawn, and the control panel/footplate of a train which I can remember being there, but which I sometimes think that I just imagined.

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 102) - ANOTHER NEW YELLOW BOX

SLIDES 0641-0642

And so, after the vexations of yesterday, our journey through the side collection returns us to some of the more pleasanter aspects of life in jolly old England, a nice view of some nice floweers in a nice park.

I don't know where this is for sure, but I have the sneaking suspicion that it may be Woodbank Park in Stockport for no other very good reason than I'm getting a slight flashback to strolling around there with the family a couple of years ago when they came to visit and I was struggling to think of anything to suggest that we do.

It certainly looks a little like that place, and the building is ringing a few bells in my memory cave, but it's hard to be sure when it's somewhere I rarely visit, and haven't spent any significant chunks of time in.

Anyway, it is near to where the crash site was, so maybe my Grandfather went for a ramble and these pictures helped him to justify taking a stroll across to where the plane came down, seeing as they were in the area anyway...?

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 101) - ANOTHER NEW YELLOW BOX

SLIDE 0640

Despite what this slightly well-timed find of an image might suggest to you, I did manage to grow up and not become a fascist, or any other kind of extremist come to think of it. It always strikes me as very peculiar, by the way, that many people seem unable to recognise that extremism can take many forms, and that some green politics, or left-wing policies can be just as extremist as any on the far right or in the strange love of rabid capitalism in their own way, especially if you happen not to agree with their position.

We live our lives nothing but a heartbeat away from extremism, tyranny and dictatorship, but these things can come in many forms. That old saying about "scratching a liberal and finding a fascist" has never felt more relevant to me than it does at the moment.

It's also strange, really, that the Union flag, and indeed the English national flag, nowadays both seem to have become associated with extremism of a right-wing nature, or the kind of rampant patriotism that I do find rather distasteful. After all, your country's flag ought to feel as if it belongs to you, and flying it doesn't seem to invoke quite the same sense of guilt or moral outrage in other countries as it appears to have come to do here in recent times. It's as if certain associations have decided to embrace the flag as theirs and theirs alone, and the rest of us who disagree with some or all of their thinking who don't want to be linked with that kind of thinking can no longer claim our flag for ourselves.

I suspect that this particular picture has something to do with a later set of pictures of the Queen visiting Hyde than any other more disturbing resonances that may be suggested by this it, but I certainly have no memories of this incident at all, or of what peculiar form of indoctrination was going on that day.

Probably none.

So, anyway...

Politics.

I've been avoiding talking about politics in recent times because it basically only gets some people terribly worked up, and sometimes gets you into a whole heap of bother with people whom you otherwise might quite like. This is turning out to be quite a "difficult" year politically, and I have, from time-to-time, come to the conclusion that I ought to walk away from the whole wretched farrago lock myself outside the asylum, and leave you all to get on with whatever mess that's going to be made of it.

That said, I have a few thoughts on the matter currently vexing the nation, which, after stating them, I'm disinclined to discuss further because it will only make me sad and annoyed, and they are these:

I am one of those peculiar people who generally believes that people working together are far likely to achieve good or better things than people working in isolation. This is a position that I'm unlikely to be shifted from, so if that offends you, look away now.

I also believe that, purely from a historical standpoint, a united Europe is a far, far better thing than a divided Europe. If possible, I'd prefer that Germany was chatting nicely with France rather than overrunning its borders and firing shells into its soil if it fancies a bit of expansion.

I do get the impression that some people have got it into their heads that there is some kind of idealised "World Beating" version of Britain that used to exist in their memories whilst forgetting that things really weren't all that bloody great at all, especially if you were female, disabled, poor, unemployed, or from a non-English background. Heck, just being Irish, or Welsh, or Scottish, in the post-war version of England wasn't much fun back in the 1950s and 1960s you know, even if those Agatha Christie programmes suggest otherwise.

Politics is a bit of an evil beast no matter who's running the show, with blind personal ambition and behind-the-scenes deals basically greasing all of the wheels that make governing a shiftless bunch of uncaring oiks like we mostly are possible. That said, I do find that anything that might put me in agreement with one particular set of bastards, or make me side with certain groups of people (yes, Nigel, I am looking at you) is something that I'd rather not do.

And it is, of course, very easy in this "quick-to-be-outraged, quick-to-respond, thought-lite culture" to trigger knee-jerk reactions to words like "immigrant" or "tax-evasion" or "levy" without us taking a moment to pause and look at the bigger picture or the greater good, or to assume the worst of everyone who happens to come under one of the headings that we've personally taken offence to, sometimes courtesy of a point-of-view that is quite simply an outright lie that hasn't been found out or admitted to yet.

Finally, I do find myself asking the question, one which I always try to ask about anything really, and that's "Why?" Ultimately Why are a bunch of privileged wealthy-types like newspaper owners and big-businessmen, and landowners so eager to get this question asked? Why have that "Bunch of Bastards" who did their level best to undermine more than one government finally getting their way?

If it benefits a bunch of richoids, presumably it's simply because they know that they can make themselves into a bunch of even-richeroids...?

What, ultimately, do they get out of it?

Because you can bet your bottom Euro that if it benefits them, it sure as hell won't be of much benefit to the likes of me.

Instead of, like rational human beings, questioning everything, we seem to accept so much of what is fed to us at face value, or, conversely, distrust everything, whether it's good or bad. As ever with human interactions, things are usually far more simple, and yet far more complicated, than they do at first appear, but things always work better if we keep on talking to each other and finding out about each other.

My main concern remains that we all, might end up doing something very stupid because of a whole lot of general ignorance. I have, after all, met "people" and they seldom fail to disappoint me.

We live in a time when the politics of fear is trumping almost every other piece of rational political thought, and notions of exclusion and dislike for the unlike seem to be gaining popularity over notions of basic humanity, and, to me, that's the scariest kind of thinking that there is.

DISCLAIMER: Text written April 13th 2016 - Some of my opinions may since have changed.

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 100) - LITTLE WHITE BOX 01 - ANOTHER NEW YELLOW BOX

SLIDE 0639

This latest box is, perhaps rather alarmingly, labelled... 

Stockport Air Crash June 1967
Children

...and is, perhaps, one of the boxes that I personally found more interesting and most remembered from whenever it was I first delved into this box of old slides several years ago, back in the times when it was less easy for me to "digitise" them.

History, eh...? Always popping up when you least expect it.

Now, obviously, because he was not a monster or that sort of a ghoul, it does not contain pictures of any young victims of that dreadful disaster, but merely demonstrates that, even when my Grandfather did make the slightest of efforts to label his slides, sometimes he got the juxtaposition of his descriptions spectacularly wrong.

There are a few pictures of the site of that sad event (which we will come to later), because he had got "form" when it comes to taking pictures of engineering failures as we have already seen, and there are also several pictures of my sister and I when we were children, as well as - in a jam-packed medley, some presumably non-sinister flowerbeds.

Apart from the fact that we must have featured on the same roll of film, I can't really think of any other connection between the two sets of pictures, or indeed, those others that are unremarked upon on the label.

Anyhow, this particular box only contains twelve slides, and before we get to the other eleven, the box starts off with this random street scene of a row of smart red-brick terraced houses, and a rather splendid green motor car, as well as a fire hydrant sign. Of the street and the car, I know absolutely nothing, although I do recognise a fire hydrant sign when I see one.

It could very well be that these are some of the houses not too far from where the aircraft came down, or it could be a friend's house that they visited, or a house that they once lived in. Maybe it's a place where we once went and was where some of the pictures of us as children were taken. Other than that, I don't have a clue. It's certainly not a street that I recognise, or remember having any significance in my life.

That said, I was only about three years old then, so I hardly remember anything at all about those times, a blessing for those of us whose lives are not tainted to this day by their own memories of any disaster.

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 99) - LITTLE WHITE BOX 01

SLIDES 0633-0638

"Christmas 1974, etc."

I guess that these must be the "etc" part of that particular slide box...

It's a strange collection of pictures of peculiar ornaments - including a couple of those bloody scary-looking dolls in National Dress that we saw being purchased during one of those cruises a few weeks ago - garden flowers in bloom, and a sometimes over-exposed budgie that I don't recollect being around in 1974/5 at all.

But there it is...!

At least, I suppose, this set does at least finally help us to catch up chronologically with that photograph of Harold, his stuffed crocodile, the glass duck ashtray, and his Hammond Organ, that formed the basis of that "Harold's Way" faux album cover a few weeks ago, and which I will make no apologies about adding again.

After all, now that we're all getting to know the old rogue, perhaps that veneer of jollity and whimsy is slowly getting stripped away...?

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 98) - LITTLE WHITE BOX 01

SLIDES 0630-0632

"Christmas 1974, etc."

Although, in reality, given the location and the people at the table, this must be New Year's Eve, December 31st, 1974.

Funnily enough, I have no memory at all of having had to perch at a separate table for one of those meals, but it seems from the surprisingly all too memorable flowery swivel chair I appear to be smiling like a loon - or a diabolical mastermind in a spy movie - out of.

I remember my Auntie Lilian, of course. She always seemed such a happy soul, although she looks surprisingly sad in both of the pictures she appears in, and it never occurred to me until I saw these pictures that she might have felt terribly sad of lonely on a New Year's Eve spent with the likes of us.

On New Year's Ever there would be presents (this may very well have been the year of the green Mini I told my regular readers about several years ago*) and I could slope off to bed early (nothing changes - I still do this) whilst the adults would endure the long dark night of the fizzling out of the year, raise whatever glasses they did, and then (mostly) disappear off into the night so that there'd be little sign of anyone other than my mother and father come the dawn of another year.

My sister looks surprisingly chipper, though.

I suspect that she was heading out for the evening.

*http://m-a-w-h.blogspot.co.uk/2010/12/hopelessly-ny-eve.html

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 97) - LITTLE WHITE BOX 01

SLIDES 0627-0629

"Christmas 1974, etc"

"The horror...! The horror...!"

For several years my parents attempted to have what they called an "Open House" on Boxing Day in which they would invite everyone they knew (in their case, unlike my own, meaning one heck of a lot of people), to "drop in" any time during the afternoon and evening for drinks, chat, nibbles and general sociability.

Suddenly you are getting a vision of my own personal version of hell...

The peculiar thing was that, despite the fact that everywhere we went when I was growing up, there always seemed to be somebody who knew my Dad well enough to come over and say hello (God! That could be SO embarrassing...), these events pretty much always turned out to be the very definition of social failure.

Well that's how I remember them anyway.

You see, despite what my mother always seemed to hope and yearn for, there was never - as far as I recall - what could be described as a houseful.

Oh, people did turn up in dribs and drabs, usually the neighbours and one or two of their church friends, but they seldom overlapped or hung on in that way you always associate with the really successful parties, and mum always seemed to be looking out of the window in the hope that dozens of people would be in the driveway to join the happy throng of about half-a-dozen that she was currently dealing with.

There was always, always, mountains of food left over and the funny thing was that my mother really found it excruciatingly difficult to relax both before, during, and sometimes even after these events, so the bulk of the burden fell upon my Dad (drink duties) and my sister (food preparation) to get us through these long, long days.

Mind you, Dad always seemed happy enough to create one of his lethal alcoholic punches where he would add the various exotic bottles of liqueurs that he had picked up on their travels into the mix and declare the resulting lethal concoction to be really rather good.

My own contribution seemed to involve hiding away in the "other room" alongside whatever other kids had turned up whilst drinking fizzy pop and, possibly (it's hard to be certain that this was then because Mum usually had a strict "No TV when you've got guests" policy) watching the television set as it terrified another generation by means of the Child Catcher in "Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang"

I always think that these occasions were actually something of a massive disappointment to my mother who always wanted to have parties and yet somehow never quite managed to achieve that magic alchemy where people can feel relaxed enough to actually have a good time. As I mentioned, she used to get really stressed about them beforehand, and then mildly bitter about it when so many of their friends chose not to come, especially if it turned out that they had "other places to be" or that there was another party going on at the same time in some other house of people we knew.

I may be doing them an injustice, of course, and these may have been the social events of the season to other people, but I doubt it. I seem to remember that they attempted to do them for several years, but it must really have only been two, or at most three. They certainly stopped after we moved house in 1978.

I think this is also one of the root causes of my own dislike of parties and might explain the fact that when I finally realised that I was actually able to choose to stop going to them, I did.

BHS

Chunner...

Chunner...

B.H.S...

Recovering funds

For

"Creditors..."

Bah...!

Bah!!!

And further Bah!!!

...and billionaires weep

Oceans of

Crocodile tears

As they drop their

Hand grenades

Into

Eleven thousand

"Ordinary"

Little lives

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 96) - LITTLE WHITE BOX 01

SLIDES 0621-0626

"Christmas 1974, etc"

Now this definitely does have the look of Christmas Day about it, not least because we're all round at the Grandparent's (second) house, and at least three of them are the traditional Christmas table photographs; The table set (with surprise budgie cage - so that must have been the year where my sister's "insider knowledge" paid off), sitting around the table minus Grandad, and sitting around the table minus Grandma.

Obviously the delay timer never gave suitably acceptable photographic results although, perhaps following years of training and/or complaints, my Grandmother's shot is actually far better framed than my Grandfather's one.

Maybe it was down to the drink?

In this set, alongside a rare sighting of a plated meal being handed out, and another - less enthusiastic - sighting of Wilberforce and the racoon, we also get to see my Grandmother and my sister examining that year's beast as it emerges from the oven- my mother was never an enthusiastic cook - in readiness for the annual rituals of the tasting of the bird and the preparation of the gravy or GGG*.

*Grannie's Gorgeous Gravy - it was a "thing..."

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 95) - LITTLE WHITE BOX 01

SLIDES 0619-0620

"Christmas 1974, etc"

Like I said, the order of these pictures is all over the place, so this could be our "Fix those grins before heading off to our grandparents house" pictures taken on Christmas morning, or they could be our "Thank God, it's nearly over" arrival back home after the hostilities festivities are over.

The goblets (!!!) of booze might suggest that it's later in the day, anyway.

Or it could be neither, and I have a sneaking suspicion that it isn't, but instead might just be the mildly stressful and/or exciting opening moments of one of my parents greatest follies, the "Boxing Day Open House" that appeared to so disappoint my mother for several of our family Christmases.

About which, more another time.

Anyway, I do at least appear to be quite pleased - excitement is so easy to come by when you are ten and have little in the way of awareness about social pressures.

That was still to come, but, in the meanwhile, my "Radio One Raccoon" (it had a radio inside it - its nipples were knobs - not a sentence you get to use every day...) and "Wilberforce the NotWomble" do appear to be enough to make me at least appear vaguely happy...

GRANDAD'S SLIDES (PART 94) - LITTLE WHITE BOX 01

SLIDE 0618 

This next box of slides actually has a label and is rather promisingly entitled "Christmas 1974, etc" which does at least imply that it might contain photographs of family gatherings, and more opportunities for this blog's author to humiliate himself for your amusement once again by revealing more pictures from his youth, this time taken when he was an excitable and enthusiastic ten-year-old.

If you come to mock, you will not be disappointed.

But not today though, not today.

Today's disappointments are of quite a different hue.

The order is all over the place, you understand, so we have to begin with this single and rather unspectacular image of a poinsettia in a bowl on a serving trolley.

That serving trolley had a pretty long life if truth be told, only finally vanishing after we cleared out my mother's flat after her death in 2013.

I suspect that the plant was long gone before any of that happened, of course.