Friendship? No - Destiny.

It is a funny old thing, when you get right down to it. What is? Memory. Facts wise I like to think that I have a better than average memory. Of course, the other side of the coin is that I never (alright, I’m exaggerating, let’s say hardly ever) remember where I’ve put something, even if it was only a couple of minutes ago that I put it down. In fact, I have to make a special effort to take notice while I’m in the act of placing something down and even then there’s no guarantee I will remember it.

But as I say, I don’t think I’m being unnecessarily boastful when I say that I do have a good memory for facts. This extends to quiz questions. When I hear a quiz question, I’ll usually have one of a number of reactions, including –

heard that before a large number of times and the answer is . . .

heard that once or twice before and the answer is . . .

heard that once before and the answer is . . . 

heard that before but I can’t remember the answer. . .

never heard that before but the answer is . . .

never heard that before and I don’t know the answer.

When it’s a question I’ve only once heard before I can often remember which quiz I heard it in and who the question master was. Now, it’s not rare to hear questions the answer to which I do not know (more’s the pity) and it’s not rare to be asked questions I’ve never been asked before. However it is quite a bit rarer to be asked questions which – a) I haven’t been asked before – b) I do not know the answers to – and – c) are really interesting questions that make me think , why haven’t I been asked this before?

Last night in the club the QM was Ann. She’s a very nice lady, but not in my list of favourite question masters. Fair play, though, she came up with this question – the three core principles of the Commonwealth Games are Humanity - Equality – and which other? Now, okay, she did actually say that this was the motto of the Commonwealth games rather than the three core principles, which was wrong because the motto is ‘more in common’. Let that go. I thought to myself , well that sounds like exactly the sort of thing I should have heard before. . . but I honestly don’t think I have. I was clutching at straws a bit, so I thought, well, the Commonwealth Games are known as the Friendly Games, so I put down friendship. The actual answer was Destiny. I don’t mind getting it wrong so much because I think it’s a fair question and because I won’t forget it in a hurry and it’s something to know.

Mind you I got frustrated with her over another question. She asked, “Which is the coldest planet in the Solar System?” Now, I know that it’s Uranus, because a couple of years ago my grandson Ollie asked me the same question. I said Neptune, and he proved to me that it was Uranus. I googled it again when I got home yesterday to be sure. You’d think it should be Neptune, being further from the Sun, but no it’s Uranus. Now, being as Ann had picked the question to ask, I took it for granted she would have the correct answer. What answer did she give? Bloody Neptune. We took the hit for it and still won. But unfortunately this is what we get a lot of the time in the quiz. There are certain question masters who - and I admit I am being mean here - don’t possess the craft, skill or attitude necessary to make a mostly satisfying and enjoyable quiz. I tend to call any quiz they host ‘amateur nights’. They’re marked out by having the odd really great question which you’re really glad to have been asked, and some really quite simple howlers that the QM could have got right if they’d checked the bleeding answer properly.

Not that I’m bitter, you understand.

We're Havin a Heatwave - a bloody nuisance heatwave

This didn’t happen in my day. Whether that’s a good thing or not, well, that is another question. I am referring to the news that most schools in my area of South Wales ( and all the others for all I know) are closed today and tomorrow due to the extreme temperatures.

I was 12 in 1976 and distinctly remember being told to some into school every day but being allowed to wear civilian clothing. Then in my 37 years as a teacher the two schools I worked in never closed for extreme heat, even in 2022 which was a similar situation. Trust me, school managements and their governing boards appreciate just how serious the disruption caused by school closures is. It really is – and should be - a last resort. So how have we come to the situation that this time, the schools are closing.

Well, I don’t know, but I do have my theories about this. Logically, when you remove all else and get right down to the essentials, the children should not be at more risk by coming into school. In fact, there is an argument that with parents at work, some of the children will be at more risk from the conditions with the schools closed. We can’t ignore the huge disruption for parents. But. . . I know that this might be a controversial thing to say, but the situation may well have been brought on by the actions of a growing number of parents themselves with their own actions and attitudes. There is no doubt in my mind that through the noughties and 2010s parents gained more and more power. In some ways that’s a good thing. However power can be abused.

Personally, I can’t help wondering if the school closures are, at least in part, prompted by fears over parent reactions and, yes, potential litigation if children become ill through the heat while they are in school. And before you say – oh, surely they couldn’t do that – you need to know that in many cases, yes, they could and yes, they would. Of course, I haven’t spoken to any headteacher or chairman of Governors who has had to make this decision so I don’t know if this has entered into their thinking. But I’ll be honest, yes, maybe it is hotter than previous heatwaves, but why this makes schools less safe than pupils’ own homes, I really don’t know.

My thoughts go out to all my brethren and sistren who have been at the chalkface this week in this weather – not easy at all. Summer holidays are on the way.

We’re in work at the NHS today, not that this is relevant to the issue.

Internet Challenges - Obsessives, approach with caution

Sorry, it’s been over a week since my last post. Excuses? How many would you like? This week has been allocations week in work and the upshot is that the phone line is red hot all week and I have been too exhausted to be thinking about what to post. It can be difficult to find any thing I| think is even remotely interesting enough to write about during the off season when we’re waiting for Quizzy Mondays to return. Also, it’s June. During June I usually participate in the internet 30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge and that acts as a bit of a spare time hoover. Basically, if you take part you need to try to paint 30 direct watercolour paintings during the month of June. Direct is the key here. Direct watercolour means you start directly with the paint, no sketching or drawing the design on the paper first.

What do you get for completing the challenge? Nothing material, certainly. I first took part in 2018, when I completed the challenge. Since 2018 I’ve completed the challenge 5 times. I didn’t do it in 2020. Not sure why? Lockdown, perhaps? Then I started in 2024, produced 8 terrible pictures and got so despondent and frustrated with it that I gave it up as a bad job. This year I’ve so far made 24 paintings in 21 days, so I’m looking good for a completion. But that doesn’t answer the question, what do you get out of it, does it? Because once you’ve done it the first time, then you know that you can do it. Which is where competitiveness comes into it. I want to do better each year than I managed to do the previous year. I want to produce better individual paintings and I want to produce a better set overall.

All, or at least most, of the above does actually sound quite positive. But while I do find challenges a great motivating force to actually do things the great drawback is that it does tend to play on the obsessive side of my nature. Being honest with you, if I have a day when I don’t paint during June, then I get really quite anxious about it. Case in point. I had completed 17 paintings by last Sunday, June 14^th. Monday, the 15^th was my birthday, and I knew that kids and grandkids would be coming round after I got in from work, so I wasn’t going to be doing any painting. Well, come Tuesday 16^th – still one day ahead of schedule – I was in a bit of a state, convincing myself that I was going to have a hell of a job trying to finish by the 30^th. I did calm down. I’ve made 24 and with six paintings still to make and 9 days to do them even I’d have hard work convincing myself that I’m not going to do it.

Well, as regards the personal challenge, yes, I do think that some of the paintings I’ve made this year have been better than anything I’ve done in the challenge before, and yes, I do think that this set are on target to being the best set I’ve done yet. But then, I do always think that.

So - Who really was Clint Eastwood's old Dad?

You know, I caught the old Carry On film, Carry On Screaming a couple of days ago. Yes, I know, the Carry On films, especially the later ones in the 70s, were not at all PC. Funnily enough, as the 70s progressed I think that they became progressively less funny and more un-pc in a weird, inverse ratio. But I do think that a few of them, especially those parodying a specific genre – do stand up quite well, even today. I still find Carry On Cleo extremely funny, as an example. But I was writing specifically about Carry On Screaming. It’s not to my mind quite as funny as Cleo, but still has a few good lines – The Master is dead . . . But I’ll see if he can see you.’ For example.

A prominent role in the film is played by Fenella Fielding, and this immediately made me think of one of the more famous urban myths that found its way into quiz questions back in the day. Namely – who is the famous brother of Fenella Fielding? The answer given in more than one quiz I played in was Marty Feldman. This is, of course, a complete set of what my Auntie didn’t have (presumably) and my Uncle did (presumably). I googled this in an idle few minutes at work, and the AI feature attributed this to Feldman being Fenella Fielding’s real birth surname. This may well be the origin of the urban myth, but I reckon the quiz popularity of it was due to it featuring in the Pears Quiz Companion.

I’ve written about this volume before o I’m not going to go on about it now, but it did sterling service to me when I first started compiling quizzes for the club back in the mid-1990s.. Many was the time I’d turn to it when I was stuck for a question belonging to a specific category and it rarely let me down. There was another couple of quite well known errors in the Quiz Companion. One was  that the lovers in Aida were burned alive rather than buried alive. Another was that Nelson’s statue in Trafalgar Square was sculpted by one Edward Hodges Banley rather than Edward Hodges Bailey. I’m pretty sure that these were typographical errors, though.

One of my favourite urban myths quiz questions I heard second hand. Dai Jenkins, an all round good egg who was our Deputy Headteacher for a while and went on to become a Headteacher in Bridgend, once asked me “Who was Clint Eastwood’s real father?” I replied that I didn’t know, and he said that in a quiz he’d attended the night before, the question master had sworn blind it was Stan Laurel. Well, I investigated this one, but it is pure urban myth, spun out of the fact that I believe that the Laurels had a son who was either still born or died not long after being born at around about the same time that Eastwood was born. I couldn’t resist asking it in the club one night. A number of teams did actually put down Stan Laurel, but my answer was Clint Eastwood’s father was . . . Clint Eastwood (senior).  That’s another fine mess you’ve gotten us into, Dirty Harry.

Words guaranteed to make your heart sink

There are certain words that I hate. Of course, if you really want to unpick it, it’s not so much the words themselves, per se. As it is there are few if any words that I hate for themselves, although quite a few I’m very fond of. The name of the capital city of Burkina Faso, for example, Ouagadougou, is in and of itself an utter delight. So really and truly it’s what the word represents that I hate. Such a word is workshop.

Now, don’t misunderstand me. The portmanteau word workshop is of itself perfectly inoffensive. As is the proper meaning – a space in which work is carried out. When used in this way to mean a place where things (preferably material) are made or repaired  is in fact a pretty pleasing concept. My hatred for the word really began concurrently with my teaching career. I’ve written before about INSET (in service training). For the vast majority of my first 30 years as a teacher, my heart used to sink at the prospect of INSET generally, but it would then sink several floors further if the words ‘workshop session’ were mentioned.

“We will be having a workshop session.” Translation, we will be expecting you to listen to someone who probably has no experience inside any classroom and certainly has no experience of the particular situation in YOUR classroom lecture you for at least 60 minutes, then you will be instructed to perform some totally random exercises which have very little real connection with the subject of the INSET and absolutely NO practical relevance to what goes on in your classroom. Hey, I was an English specialist and I just objected to the hijacking of a perfectly innocent word. Because despite what the authorities might have thought, just calling some pile of crud a workshop did not automatically transform it into an experience where something useful was produced or made better. We genuinely had a saying in the school I taught in for my first 29 years – never trust anything that calls itself a workshop. To be fair, by the time that the school closed, even the senior management had stopped using the term.

Why do I mention this? Well, in my current position as an NHS patient coordinator with the Dental Access Portal, from time to time I get sent generic emails inviting me to take part in inappropriate and irrelevant training. The one I received today used the offending w word. Thankfully it’s totally irrelevant to me now.

It’s difficult to think of other innocent words which so arouse my hackles. On a personal level I suppose there’s ‘organise’. A perfectly innocent word, I grant you. But in her personal idiolect, Mrs. Londinius uses it as a synonym for ‘do’. So she will say ‘Will you organise the washing up?’ when all she means is ‘Get off your bum and fill the dishwasher’. She has many, many excellent qualities, I should hasten to add, but this one little linguistic idiosyncracy is a persistent niggle.

Back To Basics

Do you ever have a yearning to go back to quiz basics? I did last weekend. Don’t worry, I’ll explain. Since 2021 when I started going back to the Aberavon Rugby Club for the Thursday night quiz I’ve tried to compile the quiz and act as QM whenever I’ve been asked to do so. It hasn’t been on anything like as regular a basis as I used to, but that has been fine by me. Well, last time I did the quiz was about 4 weeks ago, and I’ve been asked to do it again.

Since 2021 every time I’ve compiled a quiz for the club I’ve used connections in the quiz. Is it because I think it makes for a better quiz? Well, one always hopes that it will, but that’s not the real reason. Selfishly I’ve done it since it’s been a way of keeping myself interested in the quiz while I’m compiling it.

Then last weekend, when I got round to sitting down to write it, it occurred to me – why not, for old time’s sake, do what I used to call a ‘bog-standard ordinary quiz’ with no gimmicks or connections, and compile it in the same way (or a similar way) to the way I used to do it in 1995 when I started. Not quite the same way since I did not have the internet in 1995 and I did it all with books. I’m sorry, but although I did use some books when compiling this quiz, the idea of not using the internet at all smacks of cutting off one’s nose to spite one’s face.

So basically, this meant finding a question for each round on several different categories, and two on popular entertainment. I have to be honest, I quite enjoyed it. You know , if you made me swear to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth I would admit it’s not the old quiz custom I would most like to see come back at the club. Up until Covid the question master and/or glamorous assistant would have the papers collected at the end of each round and mark them. Covid put a stop to that, understandably. But I’d just really like it to happen once or twice now. It doesn’t reflect very well on me but I will explain my reasons. Each team marks their own. I cannot help being highly suspicious that one particular team are being very economical with the truth about their scores. Let me admit that I have not lost a quiz at the rugby club since Covid. But the team in question nearly always come second. Okay. Now the suspicious thing about this is : - prior to Covid they were the worst team in the quiz. Also, when my teammates compile a quiz, they will (quite rightly) ask the odd question about up to date pop culture. And the team in question, all of whom are in the senior citizens age bracket, invariably gets a full house on these rounds! I long to go up and ask – which one of you is the (insert band/singer/video game) fan then? – I’m not proud of myself. Mind you, my suspicions were further heightened just a few weeks ago when they tried to award themselves 15 on a 14 point round! Could have been a genuine mistake. Just like my auntie could have had you know whats and secretly been my uncle.

 

Working for pocket money

Like a lot of men of a certain age, I am prone to exaggerate. Particularly when I’m mentioning my childhood, I do have a tendency to suggest a harsh upbringing akin to that of a Dickensian waif. Nothing could be further from the truth. So don’t give me any sympathy for what I am about to write even if you do by any chance happen to feel any.

I have just read a Facebook post by my best mate from University, in which he responds to the news that children are not having the opportunities people of our generation had to experience paid work in their most formative years. Me, I had a choice. Get jobs or have no money. Not strictly true. Get jobs or make do with your meagre pocket money would be more accurate.

Looking back, I started with delivering a local advertising paper called The London Market. You had a number of local streets to cover and had 500 copies to deliver once a week. It took two weekday evenings and after you’d given a cut to your Mum, then there wasn’t a great deal of money left. To be fair she did fold all of the papers for ease of delivery. From there, when I was 11 or 12 I progressed to a milk round. I was fortunate that at the end of Leighton Road, the street adjoining ours, was the Ealing branch of Jobs Dairy, and you could usually find a milkman to help on weekends. When I started with Stan, we would work from 6:30am until about 4pm on Saturday, because that was his day for collecting most of the money. Then on Sunday we would work from about 6:30am until about 10:30 am. Would you like to guess what I was paid? £2 for Saturday and £1 for Sunday. Now, admittedly this was the mid-late 70s and money went a lot further, but even so! This was the whole year round, too, and if you have never spent a winter in London let me tell you it can be a lot colder than you might think. Essentially the only thing that Stan did on a Saturday that I didn’t was driving the milk float. I would have done that too if he’d let me, but he was, thankfully too sensible for that. By about 1979 I was working for Paul, who collected money all week, so we’d be finished by midday on Saturday. He paid me £5 for the weekend. If we finished at noon, it also meant that I could go out and help another milkman for the afternoon and get anything up to another £5.

I turned 16 in 1980, and after my birthday I started to work a couple of evenings a week and all day Saturday in the local Budgen supermarket, while I was doing my A levels. I transferred to the Coop after about a year. I can’t remember how much I earned, but it had to be more than the milk round(s) or I’d never have done it. In the summer holidays after securing a place at the University of London Goldsmiths College I joined a temp agency in Ealing Broadway for whom I worked every holiday until graduation. The money really wasn’t great or even good, for that matter. But occasionally the jobs you got were quite interesting. My first was working in Hoover in Perivale putting together repair manuals. I also had a stint on the delivery vans for Harvey Nichols, where a woman in Kensington called in a glazier to take out then replace her front window so we could get a huge sofa bed into her front room. For the most part I ended up washing up in the kitchens of various BBC canteens across West London. Looking back, the temp agency were actually pretty terrible people. They used to hold off paying you and then joke that this was all a way of helping you save. We finally fell out for good when they told me to go to a hotel kitchen to do a spell as an under-chef. I’m not a brilliant cook now but back then I was worse. I point blank refused to be part of what was so obviously an act of deception on their part.

They never offered me another job again.

I‘m going to end this with a recollection of my old Nan. This was my mum’s mum and it was her house that I grew up in. I loved her dearly, but I have to admit lying to her on one occasion. After I qualified as a teacher and was appointed to my first teaching post, her reaction was – Oh, lovely, you’ll be able to pick up some temping work during the long summer holidays!- My head said – I should cocoa!- but my mouth said, “Oh, Nan, didn’t you know? I’m paid a 12 month salary in 12 installments so I’m not allowed to work in August even though I’m not in school.” Did she buy it? Well, she didn’t argue and that was good enough for me.

The Power of a Brand Name

If you’re of a similar vintage to myself maybe you have the same reaction to the simple brand name Airfix that I do. Maybe you’re in your sixties or older and it doesn’t have any effect on you as it’s not something you were ever into– good luck to you. But for at least a fair proportion of us the mere mention of the name is enough to bring on a wave of nostalgia.

I’ll tell you why I mention it (eventually). I did really enjoy making Airfix Model kits from the age of about 6 or 7 right through until my early teens. Don’t get me wrong, I wouldn’t turn my nose up at Revell or Tamiya kits but I much preferred Airfix. I still remember the enjoyable anticipation of going to Brayleys on Northfields Avenue, the best model shop in Ealing in my humble opinion and seeing just how far my meagre pocket money would stretch. I started with airplanes but as time went on I wasn’t averse to land vehicles as well.

So, this is the month of June. Every June I take part in an internet event called the 30x30 Direct Watercolour Challenge. A direct watercolour is a watercolour painting that you make without sketching the design onto paper prior to painting. 30x30 means that you have to paint 30 paintings during the 30 days of June – 30x30, see. It does exactly what it says on the tin. The ideal is to make a painting every day, but as long as you complete 30 by the end of June, then there’s no problem.

I have completed the challenge 6 times in the years between 2018 and 2025. I didn’t participate in 2020. In 2024 I produced 8 crappy paintings and gave up. But now I have 2 simple aims each time I start the challenge. One is to finish it. The other is to try to make a better set of pictures than the previous year.

I’m currently 11 paintings into the 2026 challenge and ahead of schedule. One way I’ve achieved this was by planning to make a series of nostalgic beach paintings. Okay. Well, yesterday I painted an SRN4 cross channel hovercraft at Pegwell Bay near Margate. The SRN4 was the largest hovercraft in the world when it was first built. Large enough to carry over 200 passengers and more than 30 cars it is still the largest civil hovercraft ever built. These giants ferried passengers across the channel between the south coast and France between 1968 and 2000. Sadly there’s only 1 left – the Princess Anne- and that’s a static display in the Hovercraft Museum.

They were operated by more than one company over the years, but I knew that I had to paint it in the red and white Hoverlloyd livery. I wondered why, and then it hit me. This livery was the one on the cover of the Airfix model kit box.

I should probably state that I never built the Airfix model of the SRN4. This was very much one of the larger models of the range, the sort of thing to be longingly gazed at on the shelves or in the pages of the Airfix catalogue but not actually purchased. Airfix did market a model of the SRN1 – Sir Christopher Cockerell’s world’s first hovercraft which I did purchase being smaller and much cheaper. I made rather a good job of it too, as I recall. But I never bought or was given the SRN4.

Which is okay. I know that the Airfix name and brand has passed in and out of the hands of different owners and even administration since, but there is an Airfix brand out there now, which uses a lot of the original artwork on boxes (a good move that) and it is possible to buy the SRN4 model now. Well, I could, but I don’t want to. I just don’t fancy building it. That was part of the me that I was in the mid 70s, not the me that I am 50 years later. But you know, for all that, I can’t help wishing that I had bought it and made it back in the day. Oh, what, you’d like to see my painting? Well, all I can say is, don’t say I never do nothing for yer. Here it is:-

Nobody's Fool - The Landing

So I suppose the question I need to consider is this – did the final of “Nobody’s Fool” stick the landing?

Well, in one way at least, it did. In the previous couple of shows I had started to feel that events on the show were being manipulated in favour of one particular contestant. The shock of one player being eliminated through breaking rules about revealing cards in the elimination vote, which meant that the two players up for elimination were saved, initially made me feel that special efforts were being made to get the weakest player in terms of General Knowledge through to win the jackpot. But then in last night’s final, she was happy to accept the offer to take a couple of grand and leave. Sensible person. It’s more than 3 of the other finalists got.

Then we saw the final four playing for an advantage. They had to listen to a small chamber orchestra playing versions of well-known popular tunes, ( I wonder if they ‘stole’ the idea from my son-in-law, Dan) accompanied by an operatic tenor singing the lyrics via the medium of another language. You got one point if you could buzz in and identify the song and artist (the most famous version, I guess). Then the music began again. When it stopped, you had to buzz in and sing the next line. The prize for the contestant with most points? To pick the next player to be eliminated.

From this it was straight to the quiz pods. Isolated from each other, the three had to pick which one of the other two to eliminate. The person with two votes would have to leave. Now, you have to consider that at this point the three did not know what the final game would be like.

As for the final game, well, the two players sat on opposite sides of the elimination table. On the desk were a set of cards. Each card had a category on the back. The other side of the cards had two statements. One of them was true, and the other false. Each contestant had to take turns to pick one statement and read it to the other. The recipient then had to say whether the statement was true of false. Get it right, you win a point. Most points won the moolah.

How do I feel about it then? Actually, fairly satisfied as it happens. While the pure quizzer in me might think that it should all have been settled by a strenuous two minute round of hard general knowledge questions against the clock, the show was never really about the quiz aspects. Not really. For me, the quiz rounds were not about showing the opposition how smart you were, as much as they were a way of generating a cash total that could be admitted or lied about. And that’s okay.

You know, when you get right down to it, making a show to appeal to fans of The Traitors – and I’m sorry, but you will not convince me that this is not what Nobody’s Fool set out to do – isn’t easy. After all, you can’t just remake The Traitors. You have to change the ingredients, or mix the same ingredients in a different way, or both. And of course, if you do that you can end up with something that just doesn’t quite work. I do think that the show avoided some of the pitfalls that can mar a show like this. Personally I think that there’s no need for a presenter tag team and one person can do it just as well, but the key thing is that neither of them grated on the nerves. A little of Danny Dyer can go a long way and the fact that he was pretty restrained throughout proceedings helped the show. The dilemma faced by the contestants was interesting. For all they knew they would have to face the most knowledgeable and/or intelligent member(s) of the opposition in the final. So the incentive was there to vote them out. However, if they didn’t vote out the person who had contributed least to the pot in the previous quiz, then the prize money would be halved. So the incentive was there to keep the strongest players in. That dichotomy made it interesting.

One of the things which helped Destination X work last summer was that I genuinely liked some of the contestants – Jackie P’s husband, I’m looking at you. And I found that I rather liked most of the Nobody’s Fool contestants too. Because, I think, that the makers realised that if they kept the amount of quizzing shown in each programme to a minimum, there would be more time for personalities to come through. If you compare it with Channe 4’s disappointing “The Inheritance” I couldn’t help disliking many of the participants while not really caring one way or another about the rest.

Summing up then I enjoyed “Nobody’s Fool”. It isn’t “The Traitors” (although one suspects that it rather wishes that it was) but I watched the first two shows on demand then made a point of being around to watch each show of the rest of the series as it aired. The big question, though, is whether enough viewers felt the same. I hope so. If it comes back, I will watch it.

 

Destination X Series 2 Delayed

A thought hit me this morning. I remember that after the first series of Destination X the BBC announced that they would be commissioning a second series. Good stuff. SO I wondered whether it would be on this summer at around the same time that it was broadcast last year.

No no no no. Apparently there have been some significant hold ups behind the scenes. My sources did not give any hint about what these might be. With the upshot that the show won’t be back until some time in 2027.

It’s disappointing. I’m willing to accept that the delays, whatever they might be, are unavoidable, but leaving it so long between series really doesn’t help/ Anticipation for the series, any series, will only last for so long. Oh well.

One Zone to rule them all

Well, I have to say that I did rather enjoy yesterday evening’s quiz. If I sound surprised, well, it doesn’t reflect very well on me, but it’s because I really wasn’t expecting to. The setter only does a quiz once or twice a year. The setter seems to be strictly a social quizzer. Now, there’s no natural law which says that if you are not a good quizzer you cannot make a good quiz. In practice, though, I would say that you’re less likely to make a good quiz.

Put the rotten fruit down and hear me out on this.

At the risk of sounding like a stuck record, let me state the purpose of making a quiz for the rugby club. It’s to give everyone playing in it or listening to it a good evening’s entertainment. If you do that, people will come again and come regularly, and provide the pub/club with a steady income on an otherwise slack week night. Everybody wins.

Well, doing this does require following some basic principles and not falling into some of the basic errors a question master can fall. Now, the best thing you can do to provide this entertainment is a wide variety of questions, of a variety of difficulties. Something for everyone.

Okay, so last night’s QM gave us themed rounds in 3 of the 8 rounds last night. The themes were Germany, China and, well, I forget what the other one was. Now for a themed round to work, you really have to have a feel for the level of the questions that you ask, because the nature of the beast is that you can end up asking questions that are far more difficult than you really want to be asking if you don’t want to turn off a lot of the players. Which I think our setter did last night. But hang on, Dave. Didn’t you say that you actually enjoyed it? Well, yes, because I liked being given the chance to show off knowing the answers to some of the really difficult stuff. Look, I’m not proud of this, but it’s true.

Not all of the questions were hard though. He asked the old chestnut about how many time zones there are in China. Well, I doubt there’s many people reading this who don’t know that it’s just the one. What he didn’t ask (which is just as well because I didn’t know the answer) was when the one time zone was instituted and why? Well I would have guessed the why, but the when was in 1949. Prior to that there were 5 time zones in China. Why the change? Well, as I would have guesed, it was about Chairman Mao’s desire to impose and maintain political, economic and cultural control over the country. There you go.

By the hairs on my chinny chin chin

I grew a beard during lockdown and my nearest and dearest rather liked it so I’ve kept it ever since. It’s a pure, snowy white, which is fine by me. But on odd occasions when I let my facial hair grow when I was younger, it was ginger. My hair, when I had any, was light brown, but the beard and ‘tache were ginger. Okay, that’s fine, again, no problem with that. We’ll have no gingerism on my blog, thank you very much.

Yesterday I was watching a TV show on one of the History Channels about the attempt to build a recreation of a traditional Viking longship big enough to cross the Atlantic with. Sadly, when I visited Oslo in 2025, the Viking Ship museum on the Bygdoy Peninsula was closed for renovation and redevelopment. One interesting feature in the show was about a buried ship – possibly viking – under part of a pub in Meols on the Wirral. Apparently, it was first seen when the Railway pub was being constructed in the late 1930s and the builders were told to rebury it and hush it up so as not to delay the building of the pub. One of the men made a sketch of the boat and its location which came to light again in the 1990s. Now, featured on the show about the ocean going Viking ship, we saw archaeologists, having used ground penetrating radar to pinpoint the boat’ use an auger to bring up wood samples from it. That was as far as the show showed us.

Well, I googled it today, and found out that this actually happened in 2023 and the wood samples turned out to be just brushwood. I’ve been unable to find out what progress, if any, has been made since.

Which may lead you to ask what has any of this got to do with my once-red facial hair? Not that much, if truth be told. It goes back to 1984, and the top deck of a 20 hour ferry from Rhodes to Piraeus (calling at many islands in between). In 1982 I’d island-hopped from Piraeus down to Crete and back and in 1984 I island hopped down to Crete, then across to Rhodes. What it’s like to do such things now more than 40 years later I have no idea, but back then backpackers used to camp out on the upper decks and I’ll be honest, it was pretty much a party scene. I loved these ferry trips. Well, it was on the last one of all, the ferry back to Piraeus from Rhodes that I got talking to a Danish guy. I hadn’t shaved for 2 weeks, and while it wasn’t enough to give me the full Brian Blessed, it was enough for you to see that my facial hair was ginger. I don’t recall what it was that prompted my Danish friend to make this observation, but he said “You have red hair! You are a viking!” Then he grabbed me round the shoulders, handed me a bottle of Amstel and insisted we serenaded a couple of girls with “Wonderful, wonderful Copenhagen” from the Danny Kaye movie Hans Christian Anderson. I didn’t know that this was a particular viking favourite but what the hell, go with the flow.

I’ll be honest, there’s any number of places my once-red facial hair could have come from. My father had the same – light brown hair and ginger facial hair, and I’m told that his father was the same. So it’s a decent chance I get it from my Scottish ancestors, but what the hell, who knows. There’s Irish in the mix with me, and also French Huguenot on my mother’s side and Gawd knows what else that I don’t have an inkling about. Viking? Who knows, but I won’t be burying a boat in the back garden any time soon.

 

Thank You for that fact, Mr. Green

It’s ironic that I ended up spending nearly 40 years teaching in Wales because I suppose it was almost a case of taking coals to Newcastle. In the 1970s many of my teachers in Elthorne High School in Hanwell, Ealing were originally from Wales. Some of them I remember very fondly, like the late Gwilym Morris who saw me safely through my Maths O Level and some of them not at all fondly but I shan’t mention their names in order to protect the guilty. Most though were somewhere in between these two poles. Such a teacher was Mr. Green.

Mr. Green was one of those teachers who you absolutely loved to have covering your class, but he wasn’t to my mind quite as good when you had him as a regular teacher. When you had him covering your class he could and would go off on a tangent and would tell you about some really interesting things. When he was teaching a regular Physics class he tended to go by the book and that was nowhere near as interesting.

I remember him starting off one such cover class by explaining that the romans used to clean their teeth with urine. Quite a barnstormer of a fact to begin a History class with, that one. This led him onto the use of urine in dyeing and then the use of mercury by hatmakers which explained, he said, why Lewis Carroll included a Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland”.

I think I’ve explained before just how the book captivated me at an impressionable age, so I shan’t go on all about that again now. I’ve just said that Lewis Carroll included a Mad Hatter in “Alice in Wonderland” but that is not strictly speaking true. Lewis Carroll included a mad hatter (check out the lack of capitals) in “Alice in Wonderland”. For Carroll himself never uses the epithet The Mad Hatter in the narrative. He calls him the Hatter and leaves you to make your own mind up about his sanity or otherwise.

Here’s something you may already be aware of, in which case, apologies. The first person to illustrate any version of “Alice in Wonderland” was (drumroll please ) Lewis Carroll. He wrote the stories he had made up on an 1862 boat trip with the Liddell girls and the Reverend Robinson Duckworth in manuscript form calling it “Alice’s Adventures Underground”. He showed it to a friend called George Macdonald who had children and sought advice on publishing it. They were all very enthusiastic but advised Carroll that it might be a good idea to get a professional artist to illustrate them.

Carroll gave the manuscript to Alice Liddell in November 1864 as a Christmas present. It’s now one of the treasures of the British Library. So how did Carroll draw the Hatter? Well, the answer is that he didn’t. “Alice’s Adventures Underground” is considerably shorter than “Alice in Wonderland” and the Hatter was added to the story later for the published version. So the first person to illustrate the Hatter was actually (Sir) John Tenniel and it’s his conception of the Hatter that is probably what comes to mind whenever you hear the phrase “The Mad Hatter”. I’m not an expert but it seems to me that everyone who illustrates the Alice books now is faced with a difficult choice when it comes to the Hatter – to either take inspiration from Tenniel, or to react against Tenniel and go for something drastically different.

Personally although when it comes to a whole set of illustrations I’m very much in the Tenniel camp, I do also like the way that Mervyn Peake depicted the character too.

Well, I can’t finish with a song so I’ll have to finish with a question. Most people know that the price ticket inside Tenniel’s Hatter’s topper says 10/6. But what else does it say? Highlight below this line to check your answer.

In this style.

I Can't Believe It's Not The Traitors (and I have no problem with that)

The great Richard Osman once said that the best way to pitch a TV show to commissioning executives is to say that it is like something else that they know. And in terms of reality/game shows, what is the huge success that other channels would like a slice of? The Traitors of course. We’ve already seen BBC’s Destination X last year, which only had a slight hint of The Traitors, and Channel Four’s disappointing “The Inheritance” last Autumn, which I found to be somewhat mean spirited. “Nobody’s Fool”, or - I Can’t Believe It’s Not The Traitors - sees ITV having a go, and to be honest, a rather more convincing go than either of the other two shows.

It works like this. In the first episode we were introduced to the ten contestants enteringa huge English country house (as opposed to a huge Scottish baronial castle). The main point of the game is that every day each contestant goes on their own to a quiz pod. They are asked a number of questions. Each question correctly answered earns money for the prize pot. They may not reveal anything about what happened in the quiz pot, nor do they have to tell the truth about how they did in it. The contestants then face a round table style vote. Each one is asked how much money they contributed, but they do not have to tell the truth. Their task is to work out which of them contributed least to the prize pot, and then vote them out. If they get it right, then happy days. If they get it wrong, then the prize money is halved. The idea is to be the last one left who will get the prize pot. The show has not yet explained how the end game is going to work.

There are challenges between time in the quiz pod and the votes as well. For example, sorting out a ton of tennis balls to find out those with the letters needed to spell a nine letter word. These don’t contribute money but are meant to help the contestants work out who might actually be the weakest players. Three episodes are available on the ITV player at the moment and we’ve already seen plenty of plotting, making and breaking of alliances and shock reveals – supposedly prim and proper , 178 IQ Melissa revealing that she is a dominatrix being perhaps the most surprising.

The show is presented by Danny Dyer and Emily Atack. Mr. Dyer is probably something of an acquired taste. But you do know what you are going to get with him. He’s certainly intelligent enough to know what this is and to give you what you expect. But in a show like this, although the host is not the most important element of the show, the host can make a difference. Would the Traitors be quite as good without Claudia, for example? I like Alan Cummings the actor, but I don’t think he’s as good a host in the US version of the Traitors. I felt that the Liz Hurley character was one of the worst things about The Inheritance, but that’s just my personal opinion and feel free to disagree. So Danny Dyer, scion of royalty, doesn’t give us quite the full on gawd blimey, apples and pears diabolical liberty my old china, but just enough. Having said that, I don’t know that there’s anything he does that Emily Atack couldn’t do on her own. She asks the questions in the pod, and does just as much as Mr. Dyer does. But then she’s not (at the moment) such a ‘name’ so the presenting tag team it is.

Cards on the table. When I review new shows, I watch one and then if it hasn’t grabbed me I will rarely watch another edition of it. I have watched all three editions of “Nobody’s Fool “ currently on the ITV Player. Yes, it speaks almost exclusively in the vocabulary and syntax of “The Traitors”. You might say it does so openly, or, if it’s not your cup of tea you might say it does so blatantly.  I really don’t mind though. If you can’t have the real thing, this is a perfectly acceptable like for like alternative. Yeah, the quiz elements aren’t necessarily that great, but they are only a small part of the show. But I like it. I shall watch the next episodes as they become available, and I sincerely hope that when we get to the end game it will stick the landing.

Bit of acid 's what that needs.

Do you know what the Romans kept in an acetabulum? I would imagine that you do. The question, how is diluted acetic acid better known? - is a real old hardy perennial in quiz terms and so that acet at the start of the word has probably given you the answer – vinegar.

I mention this because yesterday it was just me at home with my grandson Ollie at lunchtime and I suggested we head down to Aberavon Beach and had some fish and chips for lunch, and a walk on the beach, which is what we did.

Okay, another quiz question. What is the derivation of the word vinegar? Anwer – it comes from vin aigre which s French for sour wine. Mmm, sounds good, doesn’t it? I think that I’m the only member of my family who doesn’t like vinegar. You know, more than once I’ve wondered – who was it who first looked at a portion of sliced, fried potatoes and thought to themselves – , it’s good, but you know what would make it better? A liberal dousing in acid.

But then I’m a fussy sod, anyway. At least most places don’t automatically assume you want vinegar and ask you in the first place. I remember 10 years ago I made what would turn out to be my first sketching trip to Ieper in Belgium. In the shadow of the magnificent (rebuilt) medieval Cloth Hall. I bought a portion of chips. I didn’t look at them as I began eating and the moment I put the first chip into my mouth, I thought – what the hell is that?!- I looked down. The chips were slathered in mayonnaise. And the stupid thing is I don’t even dislike mayonnaise. But chips? I couldn’t finish them.

Tomato ketchup? Tastes too sweet. Curry sauce? Okay, fair point.

Helsinki

I mentioned in my last post that I’ve never been to an Olympic event, even though my mother, who couldn’t be less interested in sport if she tried, got to see the men’s 100m final in London 1948. (Harrison Dillard. He was, I think, the world record holder for the 110 hurdles at the time, but failed to win selection for his best event. So he entered the 100 and won gold. 4 years later he won the 110 hurdles and may well be the only man to do this career double). By my reckoning I’ve been to every European city that has hosted the Summer Games apart from Munich and one other, the city I’m planning to visit in September.

I’m sure that you’ve worked it out that this would be Helsinki. I was in Tallinn in March and I did consider taking the ferry to Helsinki. But I was only in Tallinn for a few days and it would have taken a huge chunk out of the day and I had no idea how long it would have taken to get into the centre of the city once the ferry docked. But I do want to visit Finland. I’ve enjoyed the other Nordic countries I’ve visited – Denmark, Sweden, Iceland and Norway. Oslo was, to be fair, a little bit bland, I felt, but then the Viking ship museum was (and I believe still is) closed for refurbishment and it was one of the things I most wanted to see.

So, what distinction does Helsinki hold amongst Olympic cities? Well, this is a little contentious. I’m sure that it is the smallest capital city (in terms of population) to host an Olympic Summer Games but I have seen some sources saying that at the time of the 1920 Games Antwerp had a smaller population than Helsinki had in 1952. Well, whatever the case, former IOC president Juan Antonio Samaranch – a man admittedly given to hyperbole (if the price was right, allegedly)- said that the 1952 Helsinki Games was the best and the best moment was Emil Zatopek entering the stadium at the end of the marathon with the crow all on its feet chanting Za-To-Pek! Yes, it’s on the list for when I invent my time machine.

Fair's (World's) Fair

I moved to Port Talbot in 1986.  In a space of a few weeks I became a dad, sat my finals, got married, moved to Port Talbot and started my PGCE training to be a teacher. The last three all happened in the space of 5 days. Sadly, I was a few years too late to see the Miami Beach funfair on Aberavon Beach.

I’ve seen many photographs of it, even drawn it and my wife Mary remembers it vividly. Now one of the notable features of the funfair was a large structure made of a lattice of metal poles, and spaced on regular intervals across it were a lot of unevenly sized coloured balls, on which was placed the sign Miami Beach. Now, I haven’t been able to prove conclusively that this was the Atomic Structure from the Festival of Britain, but my goodness it was a dead ringer for it.

Okay, so let’s recap. In my last post I mentioned that the 1904 St. Louis Olympic Games were staged as part of the 1904 World’s Fair. Well, that got me thinking about world fairs, or expos, in general. Now you know that the 1851 Great Exhibition in Hyde Park will be one of my very first destinations when I build my time machine, and this is generally regarded as the first World’s Fair/Expo.

Yet as with many things, it’s not necessarily quite as simple and clear cut as that. For the 1851 Great Exhibition was drawing on a tradition of shows of industry and technology going back into the 18^th century, although maybe none of them were on the same scale as the Great Exhibition. OK, all well and good. What I didn’t know was that on the official list kept by the world sanctioning body, the Bureau International des expositions, London also held the third world’s fair in 1862. The second? Paris.

That’s important, because the 1862 Exhibition was designed partly to outshine the 1855 Paris exhibition. It was originally planned for 1861, but hey, delays in construction are by no means just a 21^st and 20^th century phenomenon. The Exhibition took place in South Kensington on the site now occupied by the South Kensington museums. Was it a huge success? Well, not financially. It made its costs back and a small profit of £790 or so I read. The government of the time had no wish to take over the exhibition hall when the exhibition closed and so it was dismantled and the materials were sold and later used in the construction of Alexandra Palace. There you go. Compare that with the profit made by the 1851 Exhibition, which made a profit of about £186,000, the equivalent of over £20 million in today’s money. The good old Festival of Britain made a loss of about £7.5 million, despite having over 10 million visitors, but then it was never really expected to make a profit.

Do you remember the Millennium Experience? No, me neither. That’s a little unfair. The reason I don’t remember it is because I never went to it. Well, when you factor in that I have five kids who were all aged between 14 and 6 in 2000, not to mention the cost of getting to London and back, I really couldn’t afford it on just one teacher’s salary. Well, couldn’t or wouldn’t, anyway. But I idly googled to find out just how much money it lost, and it’s been really difficult to arrive at a concrete figure. Several hundred million pounds seems a conservative estimate. Okay, maybe this too was never designed to make a profit. But it was certainly designed to attract up to 12 million visitors. Which maybe wasn’t that unrealistic when you consider that the Festival of Britain attracted in total 10.25 million visitors to all attractions and events across the country, and 8 million visitors to the main exhibition on the South Bank in London in just the 4 months it was open. But give a dog a bad name, I suppose.

My brother did actually go to the Millennium Experience and he seemed to enjoy it, as I recall. Come to that, my Mum was 11 years old and was taken to the South Bank for the Festival of Britain, and 3 years earlier, despite her having no interest in sport whatsoever, she was taken by my Grandpa to Wembley to see the Olympic 100m final. The closest I have ever got to attending an Olympic event was when the 2008 torch relay ran past my house. Which actually was quite an event. The only thing I remember that parallelled it was in 2002. The late Queen Elizabeth II was making her Golden Jubilee tour of the constituent parts of her United Kingdom. On the day she visited Port Talbot, when I left for work in the school in the morning, there was nothing to show that Her Majesty would be driven down it later on. By the time I returned home in the afternoon council workers had flung bunting across the street and placed union jacks in strategic front gardens.  (I refuse to answer whether the one placed in mine is still in my garage on the grounds that I might incriminate myself).

Her Majesty and the late Duke of Edinburgh arrived at Port Talbot Parkway station on the Royal Train and got into the limousine that would carry them the couple of miles to Margam Park, which meant driving right past my house. It was a very regal occasion, only marred by the fact that a local character, who had a reputation as what my grandmother might have called a ‘lady of the evening’ leapt out in front of the royal limousine and flashed them. That’s Port Talbot for you, folks.

St. Louis Blues

Here’s an easy one for you. Where was the city outside of Europe to host the Modern Olympic Games? St. Louis of course. It’s interesting to note that the only other US city to host the summer Olympic Games is Los Angeles – who will take their third turn next. But St. Louis, Missouri got there first. OK then, try this one – why did St. Louis host the games in 1904? Well, to tie in with the 1904 World’s Fair. If you  remember the Judy Garland film “Meet Me in St. Louis “ (Meet me in St. Louis, Louis, meet me at the fair) – well, that was set at the same world’s fair. This was following what had happened with the 1900 Olympics which coincided with an international exposition in Paris – indeed it is said that some of the winners never knew that they were actually Olympic champions, so little prominence being given to it at the time.

Alright then, try this one. Who were Etienne Desmarteau and Tom Kiely? Answer, the only two non US athletes to win track and field gold medals in St. Louis. Etienne Desmarteau was a fire officer from Montreal. The Montreal fire department refused him leave to participate but he resigned and went anyway. He won the weight throwing event and returned home to a hero’s welcome. The police department hired him, but sadly he passed away in 1905, possibly from typhoid fever.

As for Tom Kiely, well, he won his gold in the all-round athletics competition. This was a predecessor to the decathlon. All on the same day the competitors took part in a 100 yard run, shot put, high jump, 880 yard walk, hammer throw, pole vault,120yd hurdles, 56 pound weight throw, long jump and 1 mile race. He is listed as representing Great Britain but he really was not. Tom Kiely was an Irish Athlete. Ireland not having gained its independence at this time did not have their own Olympic Association. Despite all this, Kiely accepted no help or sponsorship from the British Olympic team and made it perfectly clear to everyone that he was representing Ireland and only Ireland. Good on him.

If the 1904 Olympics is remembered for anything though, it’s probably the antics of Fred Lorz. Lorz dropped out of the marathon, then hitched a lift to outside the stadium. He ran in, accepting the plaudits of the crowd, until the real winner, Thomas Hicks entered the stadium and his prank came to light. The American Athletics Union took a dim view at first, banning him for life. They did reinstate him after accepting that he meant no harm, and he went on to win the Boston Marathon in 1905.

There is speculation that Hicks’ two predecessors, 1896 winner Spiridon Louis and Michel Theato may also have taken short cuts in their respective marathon wins. Both were local boys. In 1896 the Marathon, the very last event of the Games, was the host nation’s last chance to win a gold. As it was the Greek competitor who was originally placed 3^rd was disgraced when the Hungarian runner who came fourth reported that he had seen him getting into a horse drawn carriage. Did Louis do the same? Well, History says no, but until I build my time machine, we’ll never be 100%. Then in 1900 it is speculated that baker’s roundsman Michael Theto used his knowledge of Paris’ back streets to take a win for the home team – although to be fair he was actually supposedly born in Luxembourg. 

 

Confession Time

Forgive me, Dearly Beloved, for I have sinned. I committed a really rookie error when I put together my quiz for Thursday evening just gone in the rugby club.

I made the 8 rounds last weekend. Then I thought, oh, I’ll do the handout later on. And I forgot all about it. So when I remembered early on Thursday morning I quickly downloaded a handout round from a well known free quiz site. And I didn’t check it. I printed it out and photocopied it.

It was only at halftime that I really stopped to look at it. And there was something bothering me. It was an anagrams round, all the phrases being anagrams of film stars past and present. One of them was NIL NACHOS JACK. The answer given was Jack Nicholson. But there is only one A in Jack Nicholson! So I took the mic and explained to the teams that it had all happened because I had done what you should never do – downloaded a free handout and not checked it.

I’m not the first, and I won’t be the last to do it in the club. However, it does make it difficult for me to take the moral high ground when anyone else does it. It’s a shame too, because one of the teams who have certainly never won my quiz before – and may never have win anyone else’s either – won, which was the cause of much celebration by all.

Word Games - or do I mean Game Words?

 Here’s a question for you. What connects :-

An Old English word meaning to drag

A Welsh phrase meaning little battle

A 17^th century English slang word for brandy or strong liquor

A Sanskrit word for four divisions of the military

A Dutch word meaning to claw frantically

Well, I’m sure you might well have figured out the connection now, but just in case you haven’t, the words are :-

Dragan (draughts) -

Bach cammaun (backgammon) – which may alternatively come from Middle English baec gamen (back game

Bingo

Chaturanga (Chess)

Schrabbelen (Scrabble)

I’ll tell you what prompted me to ask. Two of my colleagues and I were taking a ten minute break for a cuppa (coffee in my case) away from the phonelines. Kim happened to mention that she used o play Backgammon. Now, I did briefly play Backgammon, back many years ago when I was in the 6^th form. This was before the world wide web was even a twinkle in Sir Tim Berners-Lee’s eye, and I’ll be honest it never occurred to me at the time to find out how such a splendidly unusual word came to be. But on Friday afternoon it was a matter of whipping out the phone, and googling it.

You could possibly make a handout quiz – or at least part of a handout quiz, based on derivation of names of games. Here’s a couple more

Which game takes its name from a 19^th century slang word for an inexperienced British army officer?

Which game probably takes its name from a French phrase with a similar meaning to upsy-daisy?

Which game has a name that is a combination of an Old English word meaning to dance, and an old French word meaning to score or notch?

Which game takes its name from a French word for a stick with a curved end?

Which card game’s name ultimately derives from a German word meaning to knock?

Which game takes its name from a masquerade costume of a mask and cape?

Which game takes its name from the name of a Russian form of whist?

Answers

Highlight the lines below and they should be revealed

Snooker

Hoopla

Hopscotch

Billiards

Dominoes

Poker

Bridge

So Much for Nelson - now let's take on John Bull

I’m pretty sure that I’ve mentioned my love of Lewis Caroll’s Alice books, not the least part of which is my huge admiration for John Tenniel’s original illustrations for them. Tenniel was remarkable in many ways. His father was a fencing teacher, and in the course of instructing John once he caught him in the eye. John concealed the fact that he had been permanently injured and lost his sight in the eye over a period of time. To be able to draw as well as he did for as long as he did with only one eye is remarkable.

I also appreciate his political cartoons for Punch, although more for the incredible skill and facility of his drawing than through any sympathy with his politics. Tenniel was invited to become joint cartoonist for Punch in 1850, and he continued to produce what would amount to over 2000 cartoons for the magazine until his retirement over 50 years later in 1902. In terms of his political views, well, Tenniel was a man who was very much in sympathy with the urban, middle class readership of Punch and while he could be a trenchant critic of politicians and governments and their policies at home, his take on international relations could be pretty imperialistic.

I mention this because you may have read posts earlier this year when I discussed my collection of chocolate tins that Queen Victoria sent to troops serving in South Africa during the Boer War. Now, I think I’ve also mentioned how I love drawing before. Because of arthritis I’ve allowed two or three weeks to go by without producing any sketches, but I had a week’s leave from work this last week and so I took up my pens again. I made a copy of a Tenniel cartoon about the pollution of the Thames – here:-

I then thought to myself, I wonder what Tenniel made of the Boer War? Well, I say that I wondered, but really and truly I had a pretty good idea what I’d find. John Tenniel, by this time Sir John Tenniel, was, like the magazine’s readership, solidly in favour of the unjust war. Here’s my copies of a few of his cartoons from the weeks leading up to the start of the war and the first few weeks.

Now, Tenniel often used three allegorical figures to depict Britain – and for Tenniel Britain really meant England. When Tenniel wanted to depict Britain as a sympathetic figure, a figure of compassion and peace, he would use the figure of Britannia, like the figure from the 50p piece/old pre decimal one penny. When he wished to stress Britain’s might and power, he used the figure of the British Lion. When he used neither of these, he used the figure of John Bull.

Here’s a question for you. What nationality was the man who created the figure John Bull? Yes, that’s right. Scottish. In 1712, John Bull was created by Scottish satirist John Arbuthnot, in a pamphlet satirising the Whigs and their policies in the War of the Spanish Succession. In the succeeding decades Bull pretty much morphed into the archetypal representation of the free-born, corpulent, small c – conservative Englishman, hence his depiction even into late Victorian times as a, for want of a better word, corpulent English country squire from the 19^th century.

BRITANNIA CONSOLATRIX
BRITANNIA - :- ‘I will take care of you! Your man has gone to do his duty – and I will do mine!’

So, as for these cartoons, this one depicts a scene where a troopship in the distance is setting sail for South Africa, and Britannia is consoling a wife and children, whose husband, presumably, is on board the ship. The title is “Britannia Consolatrix” and the caption beneath reads:- ‘I will take care of you! Your man has gone to do his duty – and I will do mine!’ There’s a lot I don’t like about this. Firstly, the idea that it was anyone’s duty to go and fight in South Africa. Even judging by 19^th century standards this was an unjust and unnecessary war.

Then there’s the idea that Britain, represented by the allegorical figure Britannia, would do its duty, and take care of the casualties of war and their families. Now, I will admit that it was in 1901 that pensions were paid to war widows of NCOs and other ranks for the first time. But this had not been on the table in 1899 when the cartoon was made. Nor was it very generous when it was made, and it was subject to strict conditions regarding conduct and being of good character. Should a war widow remarry, for example, she would receive a very small sum and the pension would cease.

Even in the 21^st century we see British army veterans having to accept help from charities because of the injuries, mental and physical, that they received in the name of our country which are not catered for by the Ministry of Defence. So you can imagine just how little real help was available to veterans of the Boer War on their return to Britain.

 

“JOHN BULL (TO BOER) – “AS YOU WILL FIGHT, YOU SHALL HAVE IT.
THIS TIME IT’S A FIGHT TO A FINISH.”

This one appeared in October 1899, the year and month that the war broke out. The picture shows John Bull squaring up to a Boer farmer ( the word Boer itself means farmer).

The title is “Plain English” while beneath this there is the caption :-

“JOHN BULL (TO BOER) – “AS YOU WILL FIGHT, YOU SHALL HAVE IT. THIS TIME IT’S A FIGHT TO A FINISH.”

This needs some explanation. It’s probably best that I start with a slight digression. When I write of the Boer War as an unjust and unnecessary war, this is what I really feel about it. Which does not mean that I’m trying to paint the two Boer Republics as admirable nations. Their attitudes towards black native African nations was appalling, for example. But it is not as if the British were motivated to fight in order to ameliorate conditions for native Africans. No, they were motivated by Imperialistic shortsightedness and led on by the greed of men like Cecil Rhodes. Just my opinion and as always, feel free to disagree. 

So, as a background to the cartoon, Great Britain annexed the two Boer republics, The Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State, in the 1870s. Despite repeated attempts at negotiating a peaceful solution, Boer representatives were rebuffed time after time, and this led to rebellion and the first Boer War in December 1880. Superior tactics, and a British army that was poorly led and equipped , along with Prime Minister William Gladstone’s sensible refusal to allow the war to escalate into a more costly and wasteful conflict led to the war concluding in March of 1881 and a treaty which led to the reestablishment and independence of the two Boer Republics. So that’s what Tenniel means when he says ‘THIS time’.

Had gold not been discovered in the Transvaal, then the conditions that led to the Second Boer War may never have arisen. In the 1890s, the Uitlanders – a Boer term for foreigners, that is, prospectors and gold miners lured by the gold rush,- chafed at what they saw as the exorbitant taxes they had to pay, bearing in mind that they were ineligible to vote until they had lived there for 14 years. The Boer governments were willing to enter into negotiation with the British government which took up the Uitlanders’ cause and proved willing to move on this. However, the inflexibility of the British convinced them that war was inevitable, even though Transvaal premier Paul Kruger would say that declaring war on the British Empire was like defending yourself against a lion with a pocket knife. So strictly speaking Tenniel was not incorrect to suggest that the Boer republics started the fight – they declared war – but they really were given no choice, despite knowing that their chances of success were limited. 

Should Nelson Come off his Pedestal?

You know, I don’t see my mother and stepfather more than a couple of times a year, They live in Worthing and with the best will in the world their days of long drives or train rides and staying in hotels are a thing of the past. So to use a phrase, Mohammed must go to the mountain. When I do, I have this mischievous streak that makes me introduce the topic of removing Edward Hodges Baily’s statue of Admiral Nelson from the top of Nelson’s Column in Trafalgar Square in London.

This is partly because I rather enjoy their reaction to it. The argument in favour goes – Horatio Nelson may not have owned saves, in fact he didn’t, but he was certainly in favour of continuing the slave trade and wrote in letters that he was considering speaking out against William Wilberforce in the House of Lords. Well, Trafalgar put paid to that and we’ll never know for sure if he would or not. But Nelson’s connections with the slave trade were brought into discussion in the furore following the pulling down of the statue of slave trader Edward Colson in Bristol in 2020 and there were articles in several of the dailies with people arguing for and against pulling Nelson off his pedestal.

My mum’s and step-dad’s reactions? To paraphrase – this is nonsense, it all happened over 200 years ago – you can’t change the past. Well, I certainly don’t agree that’s it’s ridiculous, but okay, it was over 200 years ago and you cannot change the past (although when I invent my time machine, watch this space). But it isn’t about that. It’s about changing your relationship with the past, if anything. It’s about asking the questions whether, with all we know now, we feel that this is an individual we should still regard as a national hero? And engaging in debate. Surely, if Nelson was as worthy of the honour as they thought he was in the 1840s when the column was erected, then a bit of honest discussion isn’t going to change that. But if he wasn’t, well, then burying our collective heads in the sand and ignoring it because it was more than 200 years ago surely is not morally justifiable.

Despite the way that I present my opinions to Mum and Tony, I do try to keep an open mind. If you can prove to me that Nelson is a good symbol of qualities that I value and respect, then I promise I’d be one of the protestors standing in front of the column to guard it from the bulldozers. But then, that would involve being prepared to have a discussion about it in the first place. And that probably ain’t happening any time soon.

Chariots of the Shaggy Dogs

Here’s a nice mythology question for you. What links Tata, Utnapishtim, Bergelmir and Deucalion? I’m sure you know or can work it out. Especially if I widen it out from mythology and include Japhet, Shem and Ham. And Noah. Yes, they all survived floods. Tata in the Aztec flood myth, Utnapishtim in the Mesopotamian Epic of Gilgamesh, Bergelmir ( a giant) in the Norse flood myth and Deucalion in the Greek.

Now, probably ever since the discovery of the epic of Gilgamesh tablets by Austen Layard in the middle of the 19^th century and its translation over the following decades this has led to much speculation ever since on just why it is that catastrophic world-threatening floods proliferate in the mythology and/or religions of so many cultures, many of whom surely cannot have had any kind of contact with each other.  Some writers have used it to try to disprove the literal truth of the Old Testament, while some have used it to try to prove the literal truth of the Old Testament. Some have tried to prove that all the flood myths derive from a single catastrophic event in human history – the great thaw at the end of the (last) ice age for example.

An author I very much enjoy, so long as I’m allowed to digest his work along with a healthy dose of salt, is Graham Hancock. He suggests that the proliferation of flood myths may have their origin in the ending of the last Ice Age. Well, I’m certainly no expert, but it’s not totally impossible. However, being as that is far too sensible an idea, Graham Hancock beefed up the silliness by suggesting that the reason why it made such an impression on humanity was because it was responsible for the destruction of a great, technologically advanced civilisation, (based in Antarctica) the survivors of which spread their knowledge and skills throughout the world. Hence the growth of world civilizations in different parts of the world at the same time. As a piece of fiction it’s great. As a theory, it suffers from a huge drawback, namely that there is no real evidence of the lost civilisation. Ah, but that’s because of a conspiracy amongst historians and archaeologists to deliberately NOT search where such evidence might be found. Hancock doesn’t say this in those words, but that’s the gist.

Like I said, I exercise my right not to agree with his ideas, but I don’t half enjoy reading about them. His book about the supposed location of the Ark of the Covenant, called “The Sign and the Seal” is a particular favourite. I doubt very much that the conclusions he reaches are correct, but I enjoy the journey that takes us to those conclusions.

Which is more than I can say about the work of one of Mr. Hancock’s better-known predecessors, Swiss author Erich von Daniken. Which is really what prompted this post. You see, I can’t remember exactly where, but I heard his name mentioned the other day, and I googled him, and was astounded to find that he only passed away earlier this year. I haven’t really heard anything about him in years. Von Daniken wrote the hugely popular “Chariots of the Gods” which is, if you like, a seminal text in the field of pseudoscience which theorises that mythology is ‘evidence’ of technologically advanced aliens visiting Earth in pre-history. I read Chariots of the Gods. Once. Personally, I preferred the Goodies’ 1970s parody . Within their ‘Book of Criminal Records’ there was a short section entitled, if memory serves me right ‘Was God An English Astronaut?”, where a cartoon compared the front of a Gothic cathedral with a space rocket – and a peeled banana, just for good measure.