This is where all my major works of art are created, and look, there I am at the bottom center taking a well earned rest from my creative labours.

I have been asked to create a Remembrance Day scroll for the local British Legion. They stated they wanted it in a modern contemporary style and not to look like “some medieval monk” had created it [their words].

They chose the ‘Ode of Remembrance’ taken from Laurence Binyon’s poem ‘For the Fallen’, which was first published in The Times in September 1914.

This is the first draft/idea I came up with. The finished scroll will be on parchment with a border of poppies to link it to another famous poem; which I have lettered out many times in the past for various people, called In Flanders Fields

Personally I would have chosen ‘In Flanders Fields’ because I think it says so much more than the ode, but as they say, “he who pays the piper calls the tune”, so The Ode of Remembrance it is!

I’m not really happy about the font I used. I can’t decide whether it’s suitable for the occasion or not. I have always believed that the font-style should always reflect the subject content, i.e. I use Copperplate for weddings, Cloister black for funerals, Chancery Italic for change of address and other informal occasions, etc.

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This year seems to being going by at a rapid rate of knots. It will soon be time for me to start on my hand-lettered Christmas cards. I always make them for all my close friends (both of them!) every year. A personalised card says so much more that a cheap tatty one from a charity shop, don’t you think? I usually do a small watercolour picture on the front, and letter the inside with the persons name and the greeting. And what do I get back? You guessed it; a cheap tatty one from a charity shop! Still, it’s the thought that counts, so why don’t they think to slip a twenty pound note in with the card for a poor old downtrodden pensioner who’s on his last bottle of malt whisky?

Some things I never did throw away, I still have and use today.

1.  A Swan “Calligraph” fountain pen.

I bought this pen in 1948 for 17s 11d (89p) when I was 11 years old, and just starting at the “Big Boys School” (Secondary Modern, or High School in the American colonies?)

This particular model has a very flexible fine nib and is designed to write in the ‘Copperplate’ style, unlike other models that have italic nibs of various widths. I still use the pen after 63 years! The only maintenance was to change the ink bladder about 10 years ago. It still writes perfectly.

2.  This is an interesting book about the history of modern fonts. . . . well, it was in 1950.

I was on a visit to London with my father when I was 13 and we called into Foyles bookshop in the Charing Cross Road. Just by chance there was a book signing going on, so being a nosey kid I pushed my way to the front and there was this absolutely genuine first-class weirdo (to my mind anyway!) signing copies of his book. It was the book I was interested in so I bought one, but didn’t bother to join the queue for the ‘weirdo’ to sign it. I later found out that it was Quentin Crisp!

3.  This is what it says on the box.

Bought in 1951 so that I could colour the black and white pictures of the Festival Of Britain I had taken on a school trip. In those days colour film was too expensive to buy for a small schoolboy, so I had to settle for a monochrome film for my dad’s Kodak Tourist camera which he loaned me on pain of death if I lost or damaged it!

The box contains several coloured pencils, cotton buds and a bottle of liquid to coat the photo with prior to colouring with the special pencils. It really does work, and the colours are permanent, so if I made a mistake then it was too bad!

4.  This is also what it says on the box.

To my shame I looted this tin of drawing pins from the teachers desk at school one break-time because she gave me detention for flicking ink-pellets at her back when she was writing on the blackbo . . .oops, can’t say that nowadays, I mean the chalk-board. That’s the trouble with teachers; they have no sense of humour. I though it was quite funny, until my “bestest friend in all the world” grassed me up with “Please Miss, Keith Smith is flicking ink onto your back!” Little sneak!

I still feel guilty about those drawing pins, do you think I should return them? I did find a use for one pin later that day though. I put it on the little sneaks chair, business end uppermost, when he was just about to sit down.

5.  My Scout Knife . . . .or “offensive weapon” as the Rozzers (Police, in the colonies) now call them.

When I graduated from the Wolf Cubs up to the Boy Scouts in 1948 my mother bought me my scouting knife which I wore proudly on my new Baden Powell belt with my smart new uniform. As you can see, I still have it but I dare not take it out of the house or carry it with me because of the strict knife laws in Britanistan now, so it is used in the garden and for sharpening pencils. In the Scouts we were always taught that your knife was a survival tool, NOT a weapon, and as such it could be your best friend if you were caught out in the open and lost.

Nowadays if you are found with something like that vicious looking knife above when the rozzers stop and search you it could result in a hefty fine, or a custodial sentence. “When knives are outlawed, only outlaws will carry knives”.

6.  Insulated staples

My first experiment into the field of electronics and wireless was in 1952 when I built my first crystal set wireless using a piece of “hertzite” (?) and a cats whisker. At first I couldn’t get it to work and the cat was rapidly running out of decent whiskers when my father explained that a “cat’s whisker” was actually a piece of very fine copper wire. After that it was ‘all systems are go’. Never did see that cat again . . .

The problem was that a crystal set needs a good aerial and earth to work properly, so I invested my pocket money in a long length of aerial wire and the insulated staples and proceeded to tack it around the picture rail from one room to another. When my parents returned from their shopping trip and saw my efforts at interior decorating the merde really hit the fan! Afterwards, when the mess was sorted out, my father did put me a long wire from the bedroom window to the tree at the bottom of the garden.

I don’t know why I kept the packet of staples. Still I suppose they will come in handy when I put up another aerial.

7.  Miniature model making kit

A doting auntie bought me this Micromodel kit for my 11th birthday. At that time it looked a bit to complicated for me to tackle so I put it aside intending to assemble it when i had a better grasp of the technology involved.

Now at 75 I still can’t figure out how to assemble it so I’ll put it aside until I’ve grown up enough to work out the instructions.

Afterthought:  Notice that three of the items proudly display “British Made” and “Made in Great Britain”. It is also on the box of staples and engraved on the knife blade. Aah, those were the days when something made in GREAT Britain was made to last!

(I put this post on my homepage last week, and I thought you might be interested).

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Big Brother is watching you . . .

. . ..or it’s the police and/or the council keeping an electronic eye on you.

As you approached Earl Shilton from Leicester via the A47 to there used to be a large pole on the left with an assortment of cameras on it, just before you entered the town.

Then I noticed one day that the pole was bare. The cameras had gone! I wondered if perhaps they had been stolen or just removed because of complaints. Then shortly after that the pole disappeared, so I thought there was some skulduggery going on. Obviously motorists approaching the town at high speed in spite of the 30mph sign saw the cameras and slowed down, thereby avoided a speeding fine and depriving the police of their income!

The top picture shows the new location of the cameras. Hard to spot, eh? Click on the picture to enlarge. They are on the corner of the building, just above the signs.

Click the pic below for a better view. The white camera appears to be just an ordinary run-of-the-mill surveillance camera looking along the road into the town, but it’s that ominous little black camera that’s the dangerous one. It’s called an “Automatic Number Plate Recognition” camera.

This one looks down the hill, registering all number plates on vehicles entering or leaving Earl Shilton. It has a range of approximately 45 metres, zoom lens with a high magnification and can read number plates at night by using an infra-red projector. Oncoming headlights, even on main beam, are no problem to it due to the narrow band filters installed in it.

The information captured of the plate alphanumeric, date-time and any other information that is required is completed in somewhere around 250 milliseconds. This information can easily be transmitted to some remote computer, such as at the DVLA in Swansea, for further processing in order to check that the vehicle is taxed, insured and has a current MOT certificate. Some models also have speed detection facilities.

I got all the technical information from an unreliable source (the police) so I can’t swear to the accuracy of it; but you get the general picture. Incidentally, I have seen these cameras on three of the roads leading in and out of our town, so if you are approaching or leaving Earl Shilton, watch your speed!

UPDATE: 30 Jul 2011.
Surprise, surprise. Today’s Daily Mail carries an article on the same subject. They claim that Royston in Herefordshire is the first town to have these cameras, and they will be switched on in a few days time. Well, I’ve got news for them . . . .

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Our local bobby’s car was beginning to look a little tatty. So, knowing that I had experience in “coach painting” when I was in the Army, he asked me to redo the livery on his car.

Here is the result. I think it looks great, but he didn’t seem very happy with it for some reason; in fact he burst into tears.

There’s no pleasing some people.

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I received the following article in my emails today which sums up my situation exactly.

BRITAIN , where did we go wrong? We’re broke and we can’t help our own Seniors, Veterans, Orphans, Homeless etc., but are you aware of the following ? The British Government provides the following financial assistance:

British Old Age Pensioner: (bearing in mind they worked hard and paid their Income Tax and National Insurance contributions to the British government all their working life) Weekly allowance:£106.00

Immigrants and Refugees living in Britain: (No Income Tax and National Insurance contribution whatsoever) Weekly allowance: £250.00

* * * *

British Old Age Pensioner: Weekly Spouse allowance: £25.00

Immigrants and Refugees living in Britain: Weekly Spouse allowance: £225.00

* * * *

British Old Age Pensioner: Additional weekly hardship allowance £0.00

Immigrants and Refugees: Additional weekly hardship allowance £100.00

A British old age pensioner is no less hard up than the immigrants and refugees yet receives nothing.

* * * *

British Old Age Pensioner: Total Yearly Benefit £6,000

Immigrants and refugees living in Britain: Total Yearly Benefit £29,000

* * * *

Please forward to all your contacts so that we can lobby for a decent state pension. After all, the average pensioner has paid taxes and contributed to the growth of this country for the last 40 to 60 years. Yet illegal immigrants and refugees are GIVEN so much of OUR money. For WHAT ? Did they earn it? Did we ask them to come here? Do we want them here?

Offensively galling isn’t it ? Isn’t it about time we put our own people first ?

It’s OUR money, NOT THEIRS. Most people won’t have the guts to forward this. I Just did!

Andy McBride.
National Organiser of Britain First
0208 914 8212

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Now I never knew this, because this kind of information is not generally available to the public for obvious reasons! I don’t know where Mr McBride got his information from or whether it’s all true or not, but I do know that the Old Age Pensioner figures are correct, being an OAP myself.

The basic pension is actually £102.15 ($165) per week, not £106 ($171).  Mr McBride didn’t mention that most pensioners do have a small amount extra added to that figure, such as Graduated Retirement Benefit £7.25 ($11) making a total of £109.4 ($176).

Out of my weakly [sic] pension I am expected to pay my Council Tax, the gas, electricity, water, phone and other bills!

I am one of the lucky ones(?), I have a small (VERY small) private pension (on which I am taxed!) which does help with the little luxuries in life, such as food and clothing.

If you look at the “About me” bit in the right column most of that is not true now. I wrote that about 6 years ago. The cost of living has gone up so much, but the yearly increments of the state pension (this year 2.5%, not nearly enough) doesn’t keep pace with roaring inflation; so no more holidays in France or anywhere, no more archery (club fees and insurance now too high), and worst of all, I now have to cut back on my visits to the pub, which is the only social life I have left!

I don’t hate the immigrants for getting those benefits, it’s our sick government I hate for turning this country into a land “flowing with milk and honey” to attract the immigrants like bees to a jam pot. If only I could find a land where I could go and be handed more money than I ever had and a better life style just for the asking I would be off like a shot tomorrow, so we can’t blame the immigrants for flocking in their thousands to this country when you look at all the poverty in their own countries.

Sorry about this rant, I know I said I wouldn’t turn this blog into a political one, but this subject gets to me like an arrow through the heart, and I just had to say something!

The Daily Mail today states that the ‘Jamie Oliver health crusade leads to fewer pupils eating school meals’ and goes on to state:

Jamie Oliver’s campaign against the Turkey Twizzler has cost the taxpayer £500million and resulted in fewer pupils eating school lunches, it emerged yesterday.

More than half of primary pupils and around two-thirds of secondary school youngsters are still rejecting the TV chef’s healthier menus.

The meals – which must contain 14 nutrients, a vegetable and a piece of fruit – were introduced in 2006 after Oliver highlighted the poor state of many school lunches.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2012340/Jamie-Oliver-health-crusade-leads-fewer-pupils-eating-school-meals.html#ixzz1RVAfMOb3

What a silly person. Doesn’t Mr Oliver realise that children know that a Whopper-burger, a packet of crisps, a chocolate bar and a Coke from McDonalds is tastier and more nourishing than a salad or a roast-beef dinner with cabbage, carrots, onions etc.?

It is a well established fact that children know everything, so who are we to try and change their ways?

Every day between 12noon and 2 you see hordes of uniformed kids in the local supermarket all buying junk food which they eat on the way back to school. There’s so many that they block up the checkouts causing tailbacks for about 20 minutes!

. . . . . that is the question.

Now here is a conundrum to tax your brains. Just suppose I was to build a fully functional, working time-travel machine (I know it’s possible cos I’ve seen one in action on the telly) and I travelled back in time to see my grandmother.

The time machine materialises in a street in Bolton, right in front of a passing young lady who happens to be my grandmother and pregnant with my father. The shock of seeing this strange apparition suddenly appearing in front of her causes her to step backwards right in front of a passing horseless carriage and she is killed instantly, and of course her unborn child (my father) dies as well.

Anxious to avoid publicity as a crowd gathers I jump back into my TARDIS (Time and Relative Dimensions In Space) machine and put it into reverse without thinking of the consequences of my actions. As soon as I reach the point in time from where I started, 5 July 2012, I instantly disappear because neither the Tardis or I ever existed. Well how could I? My grandmother died young in 1914 without giving birth!

Now the question is that if I didn’t exist I couldn’t have built a time machine and gone back in time to cause the accident that killed my grandmother. This means that she wasn’t killed and gave birth to my father and everything was as it should be, so I do exist and I build a time machine and go back to 1914 and cause my grandmothers demise. Then I come back to my own time and promptly vanish because neither the Tardis or I ever existed. Well how could I? My grandmother died young in 1914 without giving birth!

If I didn’t exist I couldn’t have built a time machine and gone back in time to cause the accident that killed my grandmother. This means that she wasn’t killed and gave birth to my father and everything was as it should be, so I do exist and I build a time machine and go back to 1914 and cause my grandmothers demise. . . . . . .

So am I caught in a ‘time loop’ which goes on forever? Or is there an answer to this?

If I don’t exist I can’t build a time machine and go back to just before the incident, or just after she gives birth to my father; and if I do exist then I am doomed to repeat the same mistake because it would not occur to me to change the time of my arrival in the past.

Help!

I’m not so sure about the “to be proud of” bit. I find that the faceless bureaucrats in the council offices seem to think they can treat the public with contempt.

Three years ago I submitted a claim form for Council Tax Benefit because I felt that I was paying too much council tax, my reasoning being that the younger man living in the semi-detached house next door was a big wage earner and paying the same rate of council tax as me. I believe that the council tax system should be based on the amount of money coming into a household, and NOT on the value of the house.

Being an Old Age Pensioner* and living alone on a basic pension (the only income into the house), I found that it was gobbling up too much of my income.

There was no acknowledgement or response to my application. I waited for six months and submitted a second form. This time I did receive a letter saying that I didn’t qualify for a rebate for several petty reasons.

My second run-in with the council was when I applied for a council flat (I notice that there are quite a few standing empty around here). As I stated above I live in a semi-detached house, and now I find it very difficult to go up and down the stairs due to athritis in my legs. Consequently I had my bedroom moved into a downstairs room and I no longer use the three bedrooms upstairs. They stand empty.

The reply was I that didn’t qualify because I owned my own house. They told me to sell it and rent a flat in the private sector and when my money ran out I would qualify for a council flat.

What to do now? If I have a stroke, heart attack or a fall and I can’t reach the phone how long would it be before I was found? The only visitor I get now is the meter reader, and that is only every 3 months! “Ah!” I thought, “I’ll get one of those Piper Alarms that connect to a control centre at the Council Offices”. If you need help then you just press the button on the pendant worn around the neck and someone answers, asks what the problem is, and dispatches help straight away. (so the blurb on the leaflet says!). “You’re never alone with a Piper!”

I filled in an application form two weeks ago and sent it off first class post to the Council that we are told to be so proud of and guess what? Correct, I haven’t had a response yet. . . . .

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*The Government insist on using this term to describe Senior Citizens because it tends to make us look like benefit scroungers.

Note: Two posts in one day! Can’t you just tell that I’ve got nothing better to do except write a load of boring drivel?

Another local pub bites the dust!

The Plough pub is in my street and it was my ‘local’ when I first moved to Earl Shilton in 1995. At that time it was managed by an elderly couple, Barbara and Jim.

The Plough was a traditional rural English pub with nice comfortable seating, good beer and a good, if somewhat smoky, atmosphere. It was well used by all the local older generation; the younger generation preferred to use the town centre pubs where there were loud discos, karaoke and pop groups every night and every brand of lager you can think of.

The only music at the Plough was the last Friday in every month when it was either Folk Night or Country & Western music.

Everything changed a few years later when Barbara and Jim retired and another couple took over the pub. I won’t name them, but the first thing they did was to change things and to bring the pub “into the modern age”. A jukebox/music machine appeared which blasted out loud ‘background’ pop music continuously and making conversation virtually impossible anywhere in the pub. A large television appeared in the bar; always on the sports channel. Last but not least the local youths and lager louts thronged into the pub because there were now loud karaokes, pop groups, discos etc., every Wednesday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights.

Then the rot set in. First all most of the locals, including me, who had used the pub for years abandoned it and went off to other more quieter pubs. Secondly came the smoking ban, and the cigarette smokers drifted away because there was no covered smoking area outside, and nobody wanted to stand out in the rain to smoke!

Eventually the pub was abandoned by the fickle youngsters because it ceased to be the “in place” to be seen and they drifted away to another local noisy pub. Then the landlady gave up the pub because of ill health.

Since then there has been a rapid succession of couples trying to run the pub, but some not even lasting more than a few weeks! To try and generate a customer base the pub was turned into what can only be described as a “yuppy pub” (in a working class area?) similar to the ones in big cities. The comfy seats were ripped out, the carpets removed and the floor tiled, and even the curtains were removed. The old tables and bar stools confined to the scrap heap and small square tables brought in, each with four dining room chairs around them. The walls and ceiling were painted a sickly off-white colour, in fact the bar now resembled a hospital waiting room. Come to think of it, a hospital waiting room would be more comfortable!

No, the brewery didn’t get the custom back. So few people used the pub that they were throwing away more beer than they sold because it was going off; so I was told by the latest tenant.

Successive landlords have blamed the recession for the pubs failure, but only 2.5 miles away is another pub which has retained it’s oldie-world charm and friendly atmosphere, sells real ale and is usually crowded most nights. They seem to be doing alright in the recession.