I'm doomed

Never read the papers if you wish to stay optimistic and reasonably sane. All this week I’ve been examining my earlobes, which lets be fair, are not the actions of a well-balanced man. Don’t get me wrong, my earlobes are to die for, and that’s basically the problem. I’ve discovered a faint diagonal crease on each one, which the papers have just told me portend imminent death by heart attack; well, perhaps not imminent. To be fair they hedge their bets with words like ‘may’ and such like, but the figures are damning. 

A recent survey in China indicated that those with diagonal creases in their earlobes were five times more likely to have significant narrowing of their coronary arteries than those lacking those damn creases. As soon as I read the article, I put down the paper and headed straight for the mirror. And there they were, grinning at me like lopsided fools, two very faint diagonal lines, almost unseen unless you were looking for them. 

Palmistry is much more benign. I have a long lifeline . . . or do I? Which takes precedence, the lobe, sneaky and often hidden by hair or random lines on a hand?

More to the point, what is to be done? I already go to the gym, punishment in itself. Perhaps face cream, great dollops of Nivea slathered over the offending lobes. Once you’re aware of these creases, these harbingers of death, emails from the Grim Reaper, you assume everyone else can see them too. Passers-by making sober judgements on whether I’ll make my Waitrose coffee in time.  Suddenly a Niqab sounds quite attractive, though not a Burka. That would be an overreaction.

Greying hair is also a sign, balding too, though I found some comfort on reading that receding hairlines were OK. It was the poor buggers with baldness on the crown that were walking hand in hand with death.

So now you know. I’m doomed, but a problem shared is a problem halved is what I always say. Share it widely enough and it might go away—until another newspaper reports bilateral creases in earlobes are marks of high intelligence and sexual potency.

I’ll keep you posted.

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Meanwhile check out your earlobes. Don’t see why I should be the only miserable bugger investigating coffins 

When I breathed I clinked

How I drifted into teaching, how I stuck with it for thirty years, still remains a bit of a mystery. Perhaps I just liked teaching history – working with young silly buggers, and on bad days—inertia, the feeling that there wasn’t anything else I really wanted to do.

Marking a register for the first time was an exercise in poetry. Names like Giovanni Ambroselli… Bruno Romola, Rudolpho Velluchi, Mauro Zannotti  rolled off the tongue like incantations, putting me in a good mood for the rest of the day.

Father Hills was a nice entry into teaching and I taught some remarkable boys who’ve gone on to do great things. Things became more challenging when, a year later, we all decamped to the spanking new school adjacent to Tredegar House. The spanking new soon becomes old and it was knocked down some thirty years later.

When I got there I found I’d been given the wildest Form in the school - ‘to break me in’ - an elderly teacher told me in a mournful voice . . . 

It was Christmas, the last day of term. The weather was wintry, the schoolyard crusted in a thin skin of snow. I was on break duty, looking forward to the holiday starting in two hours, twenty-one minutes, and ten seconds time. A member of my Form came up to me. ‘Merry Christmas, sir,’ he said. He thrust a small bottle of whisky at me. My spirits rose. Just Two hours, eighteen minutes and twenty-one seconds to go— and a bottle of whisky!

In the next ten minutes my spirits rose still further as one by one the boys in my Form came up to me, each offering me various alcoholic drinks, each wishing me a Merry Christmas. Teaching wasn’t so bad I decided.

The bell went and we trooped into the final assembly of the year. The hall was freezing, the central heating having been switched off in readiness for the holiday ahead. I stood there in my woollen greatcoat, its many pockets bulging with bottles. When I breathed, I clinked.

My Form was positioned as usual in the front row - staring up at the stage with their usual intentness. In my first week, I’d assumed they were just keen, inspired perhaps by Mr Witherington’s various homilies. In my second week, as I came to know the Head and my Form, I realised this couldn’t be so. In my third week, I discovered the truth. My Form had a sweepstake on how many times Mr Witherington rocked on his feet as he spoke. Real money changed hands. (An interesting side bet was how many times he said ‘umm’ between words.)

But on this occasion the Head had something serious to say and my heart sank. Boys had brought drink into the school. A boy had been caught sick in the caretaker’s cupboard. Everyone— he stared at my Form in particular— would be searched.

The staff swung away from the walls with the same menacing smiles I remembered from when I was a schoolboy. I tried to ensure they wouldn’t be directed at me and so walked very carefully, aware of every tiny clink. I felt like the Tin Man. My Form stood up, impassive, obedient, their gaze fixed intently on the Head’s shoes.

 I patted them down, avoiding their eyes, aware of the smirking behind blank faces. No matter, just over an hour to go.

No drink was found, and I returned to the wall, contemplating an unexpectedly rich and exciting Christmas. The Lord works in mysterious ways. As I walked to the bus stop there was movement behind me, a furtive touch on the shoulder. I turned.

“Can we have our bottles back, sir?”

The optimism of youth.

"What bottles?"  I said

There are places I remember

It's a funny old thing but I still dream of my childhood, random streets appearing without notice and hosting fantastical events. The reality, as I remember was more prosaic. The picture above is of Eastbourne Road. To the right, just outside the picture was Robinsons sweetshop. (Newsagents were called sweetshops then) from where I did my paper round. The building to the left was a large, redbrick Wesleyan Church. It was tricky and involved several drainpipes, but you could climb on the roof and . . . do all manner of things. 

The picture below is  Heswell Road. Under blue skies, houses like these appeared flat and mundane, but in Irish Sea mist they became otherworldly

In a quiz last week a question asked which road cut through Aintree Racecourse. Heads swiveled in my direction, expectations hight. For a moment I panicked, until it came back to me. Both pictures, above and below, show Melling Road thought at different times. I like to think that the children below could well have been my aunts and uncles, perhaps even my parents. I dream of ghosts, too.

And below is Walton Lane. What still strikes me is how clean and empty the streets were. It was a more leisurely time.

A time when postmen wore uniform

And Park police were issued with Vespa scooters . . .  and were trained how to use them

When they appear in my sleep, I usually wake up.

Before I forget, have you spotted the time traveller 'apparently' using a cell phone?

Pictures from the past: Liverpool women

It was a time before washing machines, fridges or convenience food, when women sanded their doorsteps pristine

and cleaned windows the hard way.

And gossiped through their clean windows. Never a secret slipped by

Enjoyed a port and lemon or three

Dressed up for special occasions (Aintree Racecourse 1938)

Ironed  the hair for special occasions

And now we have everything.

Aintree Races today

The Gym, The Rolling Stones, and me

For some time now I’ve done my 50-minute gym sessions to the sound of the ‘Today Program’ and ‘Any Questions.’ I’m a news junkie, and in some ways it helped take my mind away from the utter tedium of pounding treadmills and stuff. It also actively encouraged dangerous levels of exertion. My blood pressure is a passionate beast, and hearing weaselly obfuscations and obvious untruths from the self-serving and corrupt, I pound  cross-trainers and treadmills even harder, imagining their heads beneath my trainers, their tongues and brains pulping under my feet.

Afterwards, usually in the shower, I feel some Christian remorse, pull them to their feet and brush them down . . . until the next time.  

Just recently I’ve discovered a new and more satisfactory way of passing time in the gym, one everyone else has known for some time, everyone but me with my fixation on ‘news.’

Music—and with the added virtue that no politician gets hurt in the process.

It’s my new iPod touch, and large Bose headphones that unfortunately make me look like Nanook of the North. A small sacrifice.

Since my entire music collection is now on the iPod, I’m discovering albums I haven’t heard for years. My obsession with ‘news’ is one of the reasons for this, that and the fact I can’t listen to music when I’m writing. Some authors can, and to me that is mystery. I can write or I can listen to music. I can’t do both since each have competing demands and my brain has very small processing power.

It doesn’t need much processing to punish your body; then distraction is everything and music a godsend. I feel like St Paul on the road to Damascus telling everyone the news years after everyone knows.

There is though music and music. ‘Dancing with Mr D’ (Rolling Stones Goatshead Soup) is particularly good on the Cross-Trainer. ‘Not Fade Away’ fabulous for fast running on the Treadmill, along with ‘Radar Love’ and most anything by Chuck Berry. ‘Emotional Rescue’ is also quite versatile – useful for the Exercise Bike, Rowing machine and the various Weight Machines that bugger your muscles. Ocasionally Hildegarde de Bingen comes on, but she’s no bloody good at all.

There are pitfalls. You are in your own world, oblivious to anyone else there. A few times I’ve been caught out singing – and the gym quickly empties. Worse though is the occasional Mick Jagger strut from machine to machine. Truly sad. A fourteen year old boy in old man’s body. Me—not Mick.

Then there’s the swim. No music just chlorine. The sauna that follows almost makes it all worthwhile. If I could find some way to listen to Hildegarde de Bingen in the Sauna, that would just be icing on the cake.

A free range childhood.

Sometimes pictures say it better than words

When cars knew their place

A time before cars

                                                        When Bin had sentinels ....

                        (What was going on in their minds? Something richer than a video screen)

Bins without sentinels

Witch-hunts and martyrs

Where would we be without witch-hunts? Today it is ‘Russians.’ Three hundred years ago it was Catholics, and as a result an 80 year-old Monmouthshire priest was sentenced to being ‘hanged, drawn and quartered.’

Titus Oates

In 1679 Titus Oates accused the Queen of England of being involved in a Popish plot to poison her husband, Charles II. Charles personally questioned Oates and caught him out in a number of transparent lies, but in Parliament, the Whigs (a C17th version of the Democrats) wanted to be convinced and so were. It was the last great persecution of Catholics in England. It lasted three years and 15 people were executed—including John Kemble, the elderly Monmouthshire priest.

Friends warned him to hide until the danger passed but he refused, and in 1679 Captain John Scudamore was sent to arrest him. It is likely that Scudamore, too, was a catholic, though lapsed. His wire and children certainly were.

Kemble was sent to Hereford gaol and later that year was sentenced to be hanged, drawn and quartered.

The sentence was delayed for a time because evidence was needed to implicate others in a newly discovered ‘plot’ to poison Titus Oates. Kemble was ordered to London. Too old and sick to ride, he was strapped backwards on a horse like a sack of potatoes and taken to Newgate Prison. There he was questioned by Titus Oates and Lord Shaftsbury but to no avail. Kemble was then obliged to walk most of the 135 miles back to Hereford gaol.

The journey nearly killed him, but he remained in good spirits and received John Scudamore and his family in his cell. He offered them sweets and called John Scudamore a good friend, the best in the world.

On August 22 1679 John Kemble was executed. Before leaving his cell, he was allowed to say his prayers, smoke his pipe for the very last time, and drink a cup of sherry to steady his nerves.

He was then dragged on a hurdle two miles out of Hereford to Widemarsh Common, where he spoke his final words:

I die only for professing the Old Roman Catholic Religion, which was the religion that first made this kingdom Christian . . . and I beg of all whom I have offended, either by thoughts, words or deeds, to forgive me, for I do heartily forgive all those who have been instrumental or desirous of my death.

The hanging was  botched and Kemble took half an hour to die. So great was the popular sympathy he was spared the butchery of drawing and quartering. Instead his corpse was beheaded and his left hand cut off. It survives to this day as a relic.

His corpse is buried in Welsh Newton churchyard a few miles north of Monmouth.

The famous C18th actress, Sarah Siddons, nee Kemble visited the grave and in a contemporary poem declared herself  more proud to be of the martyr’s name and race ‘than if within our veins there flowed the blood of twenty kings.’

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