Perhaps I had ambitions to be an MP - or an undertaker!

Thursday, October 28, 2010

I expect we would all agree with the following, which I read recently.

“If we gathered our impressions from the newspapers alone, it would be easy to believe that there were no happy marriages, no honest bank officers, no incorruptible politicians. The discordant makes itself heard above the harmonious. Ugliness pushes beauty aside and crowds its hateful visage into the foreground.”

That comment was made 100 years ago in one of a series of articles “Cosy Corner Chats,” which were included in an annual called “The Girls’ Empire.”

Well, well. Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose - the more things change, the more they stay the same.

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Last week I was remembering how class-conscious we were in the 1930s. There were a number of different levels in society and which level you were on depended on your trade or profession, how much money you had, etc.

But there was another quite rigid division in the population - religion.

Protestants and Catholics lived together, but had very little contact with each other. We children were segregated right from the start, for there were Catholic schools and Protestant schools, and where we lived, we weren’t allowed to play with those children who were different!

My parents told me that in the 1920s one of the town’s Church of Scotland ministers used to pack his church on Sunday nights by delivering anti-Catholic sermons. It’s interesting that he allowed his own children to play with Catholics, but of course their father was Headmaster of the Catholic School!

Fortunately, things are very different nowadays. Certainly there is still bad feeling in small sections of the population, but, for the vast majority, Protestants and Catholics get on well together and collaborate on many projects.

When I was a small boy, I was aware that people had a great dislike of Germany and the Germans. I first realised that, when someone gave me a toy marked “Made in Germany.” That was bad, but it was all right if it was “Made in Hong Kong.”

It was natural that this attitude would continue after World War II. I can remember that my parents were unhappy when  I agreed to accompany a German violinist at a one-off concert in Glasgow. He worked as a store man in Copeland and Lye’s, and had been introduced to me by a friend. He had very little English and as I had no German, I didn't find out his background. Did it occur to my parents that he might have been a refugee, perhaps a Jewish refugee?

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I don’t find much of interest on television nowadays, and I’m remembering that back in the 1950s/60s there were, for me anyway, a great many excellent programmes.

There was a lot of good drama in Armchair Theatre, the Wednesday Night Plays and series like Z-Cars and Dixon of Dock Green.

One programme that couldn’t be missed was “What’s My Line” presented by Eamonn Andrews with the regular panel of David Nixon, Lady Isobel Barnett, Barbara Kelly and the irascible Gilbert Harding. Part of the enjoyment was waiting for Gilbert to lose his temper. The purpose of the game was for the panel to guess what the contestants’ jobs were - not easy when one was a sagger maker’s bottom-knocker!!!
The What's My Line panel - David Nixon, Lady Isobel Barnett, Barbara Kelly and Gilbert Harding



On a more serious note, there was “Animal, Vegetable, Mineral” in which experts had to identify objects supplied by museums and universities.

“Music for You” was a programme of light classical music with Eric Robinson and his Orchestra. This type of TV show is sadly missed.

Comedy on television today doesn’t interest me at all. My top favourites of the past would include Harry Worth, Charlie Drake, Eric Sykes and Hattie Jacques in that situation comedy with Deryck Guyler as the policeman and Richard Wattis as their neighbour, and the best of all - Dad’s Army.

                                                   Harry Worth

There were good magazine-type programmes. Among them was “Late Night Line-up” where Joan Bakewell presented news and discussions on art topics.

And for variety shows, surely “Sunday Night at the Palladium” was the best. Throughout its run, comperes included Dickie Henderson, Bruce Forsythe, Norman Vaughan and Jimmy Tarbuck, and, with the Tiller Girls and a first class orchestra, I don’t think the show’s success has been repeated.

There was one outstanding music show whose popularity on TV and in the theatres spanned 20 years, and that was “The Black and White Minstrels.” Devised by music director George Mitchell, it made its first broadcast in 1958 and on one occasion viewing figures reached 18 million! In 1961 it won the Golden Rose in Montreux for the best light entertainment.

To conclude this brief trip down memory lane, there are two videos. First, a clip from a Black and White Minstrels show in the 1960s, and then - it was a real treat for me to find this one - the brilliant Danish entertainer Victor Borge.





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A TOUCH OF CULTURE No.5 is online tomorrow Friday 29th October.
http://atouchofculture.blogspot.com

***A Touch of Culture**A Touch of Culture**A Touch of Culture***

Thursday, October 21, 2010

Perhaps this quotation applies to me?

I tend to live in the past because most of my life is there. (Herb Caen)

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In the years between the two World Wars folks were very class-conscious, much more than they are today.

As young children my sister and I lived in a tenement in a well-kept area, where the stairs in the closes were swept down and washed every week, and the back-courts kept tidy. The people - and their children - were well-behaved, and altogether it was a good environment in which to be brought up.

At the other end of the street however, it was a different story. Large families lived in small houses, many of them room-and-kitchens with outside toilets, and it was clear that, with the bread-winner often unemployed, they had difficulty clothing and feeding themselves. In another part of the town, the houses were much worse and there were stories of rowdiness and drunkenness. Certainly we children would never stray into that area.

At the end of our part of the street there was a little lane which led through to a much more posh part. Most of the houses there were all big detached villas, each with a good-size garden, and those folks were just a bit higher up on the social scale.

But there was a further level still, and the people who belonged to that class lived in Lenzie. The houses were even bigger with very large gardens, and we knew that the folk there had servants!!!

And those were the five social classes, or so we believed. For many of course, the great aim was to progress further up the scale, and that was what happened to my family. When I was ten years old, my father bought a semi-detached house in the area through the little lane, and we left our tenement life behind.  (It’s interesting that my father’s family didn’t approve of our move. People in our class didn’t buy houses, it was implied.)

Much later on, when Jean and I were married with three children, our second home was a 7-apartment Victorian “town house” in Lenzie. But oh no, we were certainly not rich!

It’s now almost exactly 27 years since we left Lenzie and moved to our present home in Auchinloch Old Village.

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The following poem is typical of what was popular in the 19th century and I remember it was in one of my school books.
It was written by an American poet Rose Hartwick Thorpe 1850-1939, and was a favourite of Queen Victoria’s. Set in the 17th century, it tells of a young man, imprisoned by the Puritans, who is to be hanged when the curfew tolls.

“Sexton,” Bessie’s white lips faltered, pointing to the prison old,
With its turrets tall and gloomy, with its walls dark, damp and cold,
“I’ve a lover in that prison, doomed this very night to die
At the ringing of the Curfew, and no earthly help is nigh;
Cromwell will not come till sunset,” and her lips grew strangely white
As she breathed the husky whisper:
“Curfew must not ring tonight!”

“Bessie,” calmly spoke the sexton, every word pierced her young heart
Like the piercing of an arrow, like a deadly poisoned dart,
“Long, long years I’ve rung the Curfew from that gloomy shadowed tower,
Every evening just at sunset, it has tolled the twilight hour;
I have done my duty ever, tried to do it just and right,
Now I’m old I will not falter -
Curfew, it must ring tonight!”

With quick step she bounded forward, sprang within the old church door,
Left the old man threading slowly paths so oft he’d trod before;
Not one moment paused the maiden, but with eye and cheek aglow
Mounted up the gloomy tower, where the bell swung to and fro.
As she climbed the dusty ladder, on which fell no ray of light,
Up and up, her white lips saying -
“Curfew must not ring tonight!”

She has reached the topmost ladder, o’er her hangs the great dark bell,
Awful is the gloom beneath her, like the pathway down to hell.
Lo, the ponderous tongue is swinging, ‘tis the hour of curfew now,
And the sight has chilled her bosom, stopped her breath, and paled her brow.
Shall she let it ring? No, never! Flash her eyes with sudden light,
As she springs and grasps it firmly -
“Curfew shall not ring tonight!”

Out she swung - far out; the city seemed a speck of light below,
There ‘twixt heaven and earth suspended as the bell swung to and fro,
And the sexton at the bell rope, old and deaf, heard not the bell,
Sadly thought, “That twilight Curfew rang young Basil’s funeral knell.”
Still the maiden clung more firmly and with trembling lips so white,
Said to hush her heart’s wild throbbing -
“Curfew shall not ring tonight!”

O’er the distant hills came Cromwell; Bessie sees him, and her brow,
Lately white with fear and anguish, has no anxious traces now.
At his feet she tells her story, shows her hands all bruised and torn;
And her face so sweet and pleading, yet with sorrow pale and worn,
Touched his heart with sudden pity, lit his eyes with misty light;
“Go, your lover lives,” said Cromwell,
“Curfew shall not ring tonight!”

Wide they flung the massive portal; led the prisoner forth to die,
All his bright young life before him. ‘Neath the darkening English sky
Bessie comes with flying footsteps, eyes aglow with love-light sweet;
Kneeling on the turf beside him, lays his pardon at his feet.
In his brave strong arms he clasped her, kissed the face, upturned and white,
Whispered, “Darling, you have saved me -
Curfew will not ring tonight!”

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The writers of this song got their idea from that poem. In the 1960s “Hang on the bell, Nellie” became very popular. This is the Billy Cotton Band version with the vocal by Alan Breeze.



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Thursday, October 14, 2010


My mother's family the Hardies with their McFarlane cousins one hundred years ago

On the front row, the 2nd from the left is Uncle Alex, the 5th along is Aunt Mae.
In the centre are 3 women sitting together. The middle one is Grandma Hardie with Aunt Cissie on her knee.
Immediately behind them are 2 girls, the one on the left is my mother, the other is her cousin Maggie McFarlane.
Continuing to the right, the two boys are Uncle George and Uncle Hugh.
On the row above, Grandpa Hardie is 2nd from the left. Beside him are Grandma Hardie’s parents, Hugh and Maggie McFarlane.
[Aunt Nessie, not in the group, would be just a few months old, and Aunt Frances was not born till two years later]


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I’ve been looking back to discover what was going on in the world when that photo was taken.


Abroad in 1910, Chinese troops had occupied Tibet and the Dalai Lama fled. In Hungary one thousand people lost their lives in floods, and an earthquake in Nicaragua killed five hundred. There was one item of good news - Marie Curie succeeded in isolating radium.

At home there was a great deal of unrest among railwaymen, shipyard workers and the Welsh miners. The suffragettes were active in those days and three hundred of them clashed with the police outside Parliament buildings.

On the political scene, there were two General Elections, one in January and the other in December. The Liberals were successful both times, and Mr Asquith was the Prime Minister.

One man’s name became known world-wide. Dr. Crippen, an American homeopathic doctor living and working in London, poisoned his wife and buried her body in the cellar. In June he was arrested on the SS Montrose which was bound for America. Later in the year he was found guilty and hanged.

The King - Edward VII died in May and was succeeded by his son who became George V.


The Girl Guides were founded that month.


Robert Falcon Scott was put in charge of the British Antarctic Expedition. This was to end in disaster two years later.

1910 saw the first Labour Exchanges, later to be known in Scotland as “the buroo.”


The cinema of course was still in its infancy, but in the USA many short one-reelers were being produced. The first Frankenstein movie was shot in 3 days and lasted 16 minutes. A version of Charles Dickens’ Christmas Carol lasted all of 10 minutes!

In the world of literature, Prester John by John Buchan, Howard’s End by E.M. Forster and The History of Mr Polly by H.G. Wells were published.

And what were folks singing and whistling? Down by the Old Mill Stream, Chinatown my Chinatown, Some of these Days and Let me call you Sweetheart.


Imported from South America, the Tango was making its first appearances on dance floors, and causing controversy - it was NOT respectable!!!

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Compiled by “rosebudgarden” this video is a collection of photos taken during the first decade of the 20th century. The song is “The Sparrow and the Gentle Dove” by Purcell.  




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A TOUCH OF CULTURE N0.3 is online tomorrow Friday 15th October 

http://atouchofculture.blogspot.com

***A Touch of Culture**A Touch of Culture**A Touch of Culture***
 

Thursday, October 7, 2010


I suppose I had assumed that my old wooden giraffe had been thrown out many years ago. So I was delighted when Fiona told me that she had it. It would be early in the 1930s when it was given to me, and I was told that it had been made by a little black boy.

That led me to think about other toys I had when I was small, and then I remembered an interesting story I had read in a newspaper some time ago.

After the death of her husband Dewi, Brenda Rowland was going through his possessions and eventually came to his precious garden hut. Over the years he had kept a locked wooden box there and had refused to tell her what it contained.

So rather reluctantly and with some worrying thoughts, she decided to open the box. She was astonished to find it was full of old pre-war toys, obviously things he had played with and loved when he was a boy.
Lined with a 1937 newspaper, the box contained ludo, snakes and ladders, building bricks, skipping ropes, a little farm with animals, zoo animals, lead soldiers, a yo-yo, a wooden alphabet, marbles, a clockwork train.
With no children to pass them on to, he had kept them all those years, and I wonder if perhaps he sometimes opened the box and handled those precious things which had been so important to him as a boy.

This story brought back many memories for me - the games and toys that I had, and of course those that our daughters had. There were Chad Valley toys, Corgi cars, Hornby train sets, Meccano, dolls (but not for me of course), games like tiddley winks, lotto. And one thing you won’t find in shops nowadays - a golliwog!

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"Brothers and sisters have I none,
But this man's father is my father's son."
Who is the man in the photo? 


I remember being puzzled by this question when I was a boy, and I was interested to find from the many websites and forums dealing with the problem that people still can’t agree!

Here are a few puzzles that were new to me. I give the answers at the end of the blog.

1) John's mother had four children. The first was April, the second was May, and the third was June. What was the name of the fourth child?

2) What is it that can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, and has a bed but never sleeps?

3) What is light as a feather, yet even the strongest man can’t hold it for more than a few minutes?

4)What’s full of holes but still holds water?

5)You’re driving a bus. Seven people get on, four people get off, then eight people get on and five people get off, then six people get on and two more get off. What colour were the bus driver's eyes?

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"The Great Dictator" was a Charlie Chaplin film which created quite a stir when it was first shown in 1940. Written, directed and starring Chaplin, it satirised the Nazis and Hitler.

I remember being quite disappointed when I saw it, because the Charlie Chaplin on the screen wasn't the one I had come to see.

This clip from the film is certainly different!



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My new blog A TOUCH OF CULTURE will be updated tomorrow 8th October when I'll be having quick look at some ballet.

chttp://atouchofculture.blogspot.com

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Answers to the puzzles - 1) John. 2) a river. 3) his breath. 4) a sponge. 5) the colour of your eyes, you were driving the bus.
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