School Fair

We try to attend Kings Norton School Fair partly because Ben and Alice attend the school but also because Frances is PTA treasurer. This year the winter, pre Christmas school fair was in doubt and Annette decided to take a stall. The modest fee of £10 is some support for school funds and Annette initially just saw stall holding as support.

She also both raided her store of craft objects and made some specially for the fair. She aimed to have some very cheap trinkets as children’s pocket money purchases and some slightly more expensive aimed at adults.

We turned up at the school and unloaded. All were in three bags with gold branches poking out on which to hang decorations. I went off to park at Frances’s house while Annette started setting up. On a snowy frosty day I had to be careful walking back to school. At the main entrance I was thrown because the door sign redirected to the infant hall. As I was turning away the receptionist came out to say the main entrance was in operation and she directed me to the main hall.

My contribution was then to sit on a chair while Annette completed setting out the stall on a standard dining table although disguised with cloth etc. We were right by the school  Christmas tree. We were prepared long before the “witching hour” of 3.15 when school finishes. Right up until that time people were arriving and setting up stalls. There was a fair range of types. I think the only trade stall was by Usborne children’s books. Their books are to a very high standard and I’ve had the opportunity via an Usborne representative in our book club to see even more of their huge range of both fiction and non-fiction titles. Several stalls were selling sweets and also some new toys. The PTA had stalls selling second hand toys and doing lucky dips etc.

As school closed there was a flood of people. The hall became very crowded. Slightly to our surprise the best sellers appeared to be some of our more elaborate and expensive decorations. It was quite noticeable that it was often grandparents accompanying their grandchildren who were buying. There was one other craft type stall who I think suffered from being in a smaller room off the main hall. It was very apparent that the lucky dip was the most popular being almost mobbed by customers.

When the initial crowd had subsided a bit I took a walk around the whole fair. This wasn’t a simple process as the infant hall is a rather tortuous walk away. In fact I was very nearly lost on the way. Seeking to support the afternoon I bought a strip of raffle tickets. Amazingly I won a meal for two at a Greek restaurant in Kings Norton. Somehow the raffle supervisor knew I was Frances’s father and tracked her down. I have passed the win to Frances and Matt and told them the additional prize is that they get us as a babysitter.

Not long afterwards folks started to pack up. We had to wait for Frances to collect all the takings. I certainly would have worried about her carrying upwards of £1000 cash home on her own. As it was there was Matt as well as us.

As Matt had taken time off he had to work at his desk once we got back. Alice was going out to a nearby friend. I appreciated this because this gave time alone with Ben. When Alice is around he tends to follow her around and join with whatever she is doing. He is a bit difficult to isolate so we can talk and play with him.

He is talking a lot better now. I’m not really tuned in to him and with deafness as well I’ve found it difficult to understand him. I appreciated the time to talk. When I asked about his school friends and guessed their names may be Peter, John or Harry he soon told me those were old names; his classmates are Harrison, Finn and various other new fangled names I’d never heard of before. I wonder if he thinks Ben is an old fashioned name.

Christmas Concert

Our grandson, Alex, is taking lessons in trumpet playing. He started on the cornet several years ago and graduated to a full size trumpet about a year ago. While his initial music teaching was at Fylingdales school he moved to Saturday morning sessions at the Caedmon centre in Whitby.

He seems to be showing good promise. The Whitby music centre organises a Christmas concert for all its pupils. As far as I can see the music centre is an offshoot of the county education department which gives paid for tuition to anyone in the area wishing to play an instrument. The pupils are mainly children with a sprinkling of adults. The centre is supported by the Arts Council. Caedmon site is a school whose facilities are used by the music centre.

Alex actually attends Eskdale school which is slightly further out along the Scarborough Road. The secondary education in the area is in flux. The former system was that Eskdale was a middle school, Caedmon an upper school. Now both will offer education through to at least 16

For the concert the music centre groups the players into bands, largely on an ad hoc basis Alex was in the Whitby Area Concert Band. They played three pieces. I must say Alex seemed very relaxed about the whole thing, chatting to his neighbours between items.

Before the concert Martin tried to persuade him to wear a waistcoat. He wouldn’t and he looked very smart anyway. I have to be absolutely honest and say that while accurate all the items had a  slow tempo which to my mind detracted from the overall effect.

The Concert Band was mainly brass and there were other groups of woodwind, choir and strings. After the interval  came the older more experienced players. Then the instruments were more mixed. For me the highlight was the Big Band. Their rendition of “Take the A train” was excellent, strongly reminiscent of the big bands of the forties and fifties. To my mind they slightly spoiled the effect with a singer for “Fever”.

Martin tells me Alex is slated to graduate to the Big Band after a bit more progression with the trumpet. It was somewhat amusing that the tutor while filling in for an absent instrumentalist also tried to conduct as well

Our children never showed much interest or aptitude in music. I’m rather sorry we didn’t push them a bit harder. I’m delighted that Alex is showing promise. I was hopeless myself. After testing my music teacher diagnosed me as tone deaf while kindly saying I had other talents.

Annette is a passable pianist but I’m sorry to say I gave her no encouragement and she pretty much ceased after our marriage. When we inherited her mother’s piano she took it up again for a while but never progressed. I’m afraid the piano has largely been a toy for grandchildren to play on. Ellie started on the rudiments but that soon lapsed

Coal Mining

I am more than fed up with the sentimentality which surrounds any media reference to mining. The sort of report that refers to .. lost industry… community spirit… salt of the earth.. Pah!

It is obvious to me that this refers at best to a few mining villages and has little to do with reality. I’m a miners son married to a miner’s daughter and the reality of mining life was very different to that depicted by those who I suspect have never been near a pit in their lives. Mining, particularly underground, was brutally hard, destroying health and self respect. People looked down on miners.

My father went down the pit as a young man as soon as he was old enough. In the community where we lived there were only two choices for an unqualified labourer. They were agricultural worker or miner. Mining was well paid by comparison and for a young fit man it had that advantage. The dangers were something which happened elsewhere and there was no looking to the future. There was the occasional industrial trouble although threatened riots in 1921 were bluster seen off by firmness. The strike of 1926 showed that while miners were the trades union shock troops the loyalty only flowed one way. The general strike soon ended and the miners were left to struggle on their own.

The result was a decline in miner’s fortunes followed by the exertions of WW11. Mining, although a conscription free job, couldn’t hold enough labour and afterwards with National Service a proportion of conscripts were directed to the mines ( these were called the Bevin Boys ).

By this time my father was getting towards late middle age and his health was cracking up. After a long period off work he was given a lighter job on permanent afternoon shift. The mines worked three shifts; days 6am-2pm, afternoons, 2pm-10pm, nights 10pm-6am.( coal was only produced on days and nights, afternoons were devoted to repair and maintenance ) Although it was a necessary move my father resented it and would refer bitterly to afternoons as “the old men and cripples shift”. He felt his health and life had been ruined by mining and although he carried on into his early sixties he retired when his pit ( Pooley or North Warwickshire) closed.

By contrast my father-in-law had an easier time. He always worked on the surface ( on the bank as he would say ) firstly on screening and washing finishing up as colliery winder. My abiding memory of him at work was at Amington pit which was the relief shaft for Pooley. There would only be a dozen or so winds per shift so he was mostly just having to wait patiently for the bell to call him. He had no way of foreseeing when this would be so he had to be always alert. In an emergency he might have been called upon to make many lifts. He would be the only worker around ( everything else had closed ) so he didn’t even have company.

The only career advice I ever  got from my father was “don’t go down the pit”. As part of the end of school activities in my final year we went down the training face at Birch Coppice. I’m very glad I went down then for the experience but never again.

At that time, some sixty years ago, there were lots of pits in the Midlands which are now all closed. In fact I believe there is no deep mining in the UK. Open cast is cheaper but still not competitive with imports which supply our dwindling needs.

There were no canteens down the pit. My father would take a few sandwiches and a bottle of water for his shift. This was called his snap and the sandwiches were packed in his snap tin stored  in turn in a big pocket in his jacket. Incidentally I was always wryly amused that jam was called colliers ham.

After his shift and riding home he was always thirsty. That first welcome drink of tea would be cooled by tipping into a dish- he would too thirsty to wait.

He would be cycling home at night. Just after the war he was still using acetylene lamps. These needed charging with carbide and water every day. The ready availability of batteries came as a real boon from the late forties on. Because his route was across a large area of waste ground by the colliery slag heap he kept a bicycle specially for work. His “best” bicycle was kept for other occasions.

As I’ve alluded to earlier miners were looked down upon- I suppose like eg. dustmen. Mining was easy to enter in the post war labour shortage but difficult to leave as few employers wanted ex-miners.There was little pride in mining. My father even refused to join a miners club in retirement when we lived close to one.

Garden

You will probably have noticed I post much less about my garden these days. As I’ve grown older and less fit my gardening time has decreased. With a painful hip if I spend an hour that is my limit.

Since having help with all the real work I did potter around the garden but I find I’m doing that much less. Our growing has reduced to soft and top fruit , runner beans and a failed effort at purple sprouting broccoli..

My gardening morale has not been helped by an awful growing season in 2017. Even an old reliable apple tree failed completely as did a formerly prolific plum. In fact pretty much all our fruit both top and soft failed. The only half way normal crop was blackberries and raspberries. This was a very big blow which I attribute to late frosts which caught all the blossom. Apart from this we have had some cultivation failure. Two plum trees I bought have proved reluctant to grow and never gave any fruit. I’m reasonably sure we had pollinators for them as we have others of the same variety in the garden.

Another cultivation problem has been rhubarb. This is reckoned to be very easy. We do have very fast draining soil so possibly they were not watered enough.. Annette doesn’t care for rhubarb so this failure leaves her unworried. I have been reconciled to losing all our sweet cherries to birds and currents haven’t been a complete disaster

One experiment which I pooh-poohed was Annette growing a few new potatoes in containers. The containers were plastic buckets with holes in the bottom. In fact this worked fairly well. I think the reason is that they were well watered whereas our ground crop was deficient in water. Certainly our potato crops have been disappointing.

One slightly poignant success has been baby conifers. I set aside some a few years ago( mainly self sets originally ) with a view to providing Christmas Trees. This was when the grandchildren were small and coming here at Christmas time. Neither of these are true anymore just when my conifers are reaching a decent size ( one is already too big ). We now convene at our youngest daughter’s house and they insist on buying a tree. I guess there is nothing for it but to cut them down.

Speaking of cutting trees the one thing I spend a lot of time on is cutting up wood. This is to feed our open fire where we burn a combination of coal and wood. I must admit to being a bit less confident on the merits of an open fire after seeing evidence that the small particles produced can be a health hazard. The merit of burning wood is that it is, in principle, carbon neutral as a renewable resource. Our open fire is more thermally efficient having a back boiler which also feeds the central heating system. I recognise that the system isn’t as efficient as a freestanding ( apart from a flue ) wood   burner. Martin has wood burners and they are very good. The main problem in his home office is a time to heat up ( he lights before breakfast ) and controllability, with a considerable lag.

Anyway I have become something of a fanatic in gathering and cutting wood. For a long time I was using cut up wooden pallets for fuel. Before retirement I had the damaged pallets from work and afterwards I was using garden centre throw outs. More recently I have had wood from trees cut down locally. This is more difficult to cut up  and I have probably invested more than is strictly worthwhile in chain saws, log splitter and saw horse. I have also become slightly fanatical about using any wood in our garden.

For next season we are hoping for a better year from soft fruit. We have expanded our raspberry area. We definitely hope to grow runner beans. Annette was saving seed but mice in the utility room have eaten a portion.

News and trust

It seems as though every day brings out a new trust issue with the news media. It is very worrying that apparently Russian trolls not only sewed division in the US election they also trolled the UK referendum on the EU. I think they are well pleased with the result in both cases.

I’ve been turning over in my mind what news media to trust and what to reject. It is rarely a clear cut distinction. Among newspapers the tabloids can be rejected, Sun, Daily Mail, Daily Express, Daily Mirror. They rarely resort to outright lies but the twists are so large as are the omissions that they don’t stand as reputable sources. With the broadsheets it is vital to allow for their bias. The Guardian has very left wing stance and its coverage while detailed reflects this. The Daily Telegraph has been captured by the Brexit section of the Conservative Party and needs to be read with that in mind. The Times has its prejudices  ( anti royalist for example ) but it gives wide and reasonable coverage. The Financial Times has a strong free market  stance but its coverage of economic and business news is unrivalled. On the other hand the Financial Times demands some knowledge of economic and market jargon.

As might be expected the internet sites of the UK newspapers follow their printed stance quite closely.  Outside these almost all news sites range from dodgy to worthless. Social media is infested with lies and has nothing worthwhile to offer the news seeker. For informed comment outside the sphere of news Wikipedia is surprisingly good. The range of information is immense although sometimes poorly presented.

The internet does offer some information not easily found elsewhere. The TED talks are given by individuals reckoned to have specialist knowledge. They can be opinionated but informative. Youtube has the whole gamut from informative to cranky daftness. Some daftness comes from conspiracy theories. Ie such as the Apollo missions didn’t really land on the moon, it was all done in a film studio. Conspiracy  theories are mostly hogwash; humans have evolved to see patterns even though sometimes there are none. Conspiracy theorists twist the facts beyond all recognition- avoid

Television is a rather dubious area. The BBC is fairly good. Its news bulletins are often fairly limited and they have a clear bias towards certain subjects. However their facts are trustworthy. Similar comment could be made about ITN. Beyond these is pretty much a fact free zone. The US CNN are worthwhile for giving an American view which is often strangely blinkered. Channels such as RT are propaganda channels and replete with false information.

Weekly magazines vary immensely. The pick of the bunch is the Economist. Despite its title it is a news magazine with a section devoted to business and economics. The Economist generally has a liberal free market stance. Its items are full of information so even if your conclusions are different at least they are well informed. Of all sources the Economist is probably the best.

New Statesman and New Society are generally rather left wing but New Society has items which would never be found elsewhere. The Spectator is generally right wing. There are many magazines which are mostly apolitical and devoted to particular topics. Some more general ones such as New Scientist don’t hesitate to put forward opinions but these are fairly well separated from news items. 

There are some general observations. Donald Trump who has protested most about false facts is the biggest liar of all; politicians have always twisted the facts but he has carried fact twisting to a new level. Be sceptical -every news story I’ve personally been close to has been misreported in some way. Look for evidence. Assertions without any evidence are always suspect.

Ask yourself whether the “fact” is reasonable and fits with what is known. Extreme facts require powerful evidence from two or more sources.