h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dear Frank

Last week I went up to London where a cousin of mine was hosting a gathering of numerous cousins (about 15 or so I think) to meet an American cousin who was an opera singer. He is retired (almost my age) and was on his way back home (to Texas) from Germany where he runs an annual summer school for opera students. I didn't know many of these cousins but it is interesting that most of those present (all descendants of the eight children of a sister of my maternal grandmother) have kept in touch with each other, and they all seem to get on well together.
The opera singer at some point gave us a talk. He had a very loud voice and it proved to be extremely boring. He told us of his history and of his two slimming diets when on each occasion he had lost 100 lbs and then put it on again. It was a very hot eevening and there must have been something like thirty people in one room and people became fidgety. The hostess began to get worried because the food was ready and she finally plucked up courage to tell him. He went on talking for a few more minutes.
This was all in the evening and I had travelled to London by coach. By about 9.30 I decided I would need to leave in order to catch the return coach. I went round saying goodbye to people and when I came to the opera singer he told me that he was about to sing and that I should stay. I resisted his blandishments and left, a lift supplied to the coach stop by the husband of one of the cousins.
The next day my sister told me on the phone that he sang very loudly indeed, as though he was in an opera house.It must have resounded right through the whole block of flats.

I notice your interest in poetry probably inspired by a good teacher.
I must say that my English teacher at school was no inspiration resulting in a blank as far as poetry is concerned. I do recall having to learn some by heart and we had to study a book called something like 'Longer Victorian Narrative Poems' for the equivalent of GCSE. All I remember about that book is the poem which starts 'Abu ben Adem may his tribe increase..'
My loss, I am sure.

Best wishes

Harold

I remember this poem well. It was a favorite of my mother;s and she loved to start..."Abu Ben Aben........." and off she'd go.
When she died, our minister asked if she had any favorite poems, and all of us who had been asked separately answered Abu Ben Aben..........but the minister did not seem to think it suitable, and so he read "Over the Bar", a nice poem, but not her favorite.
Not that her favorite was suitable, in the long run. but she loved the last few lines.
Funny how things pop up as you get older............sigh.
My mother had several friends who could not read nor write English, and they would come to our house and dictate letters to their sons, and she would write to them for her. When they received answers, she would read them to her. And Mom would also put a piece of gum or some other little something into the envelope. At the time, we kids thought that was silly, but when the "boys' now men, came to her funeral about 12 years ago, they all mentioned that gum.
Thanks for another memory
Mary Lou

Dear Harold,
English poet and essayist Liegh Hunt 1784-1859.
Abou Ben Adhem, may his tribe increase
Awoke one night from a deep dream of peace,
And saw within the moonlight in his room Making it rich and like a lilly in bloom
An Angel writing in a book of gold;-
Exceeding peace had made Ben Adhem bold,
"What writest thou?" The vision raised its head,
And with a look made of all sweet accord,
Answered,"The names of those who love the Lord."

Ben Adhem replied,
I pray thee then write me as one who loves his fellow men.

He also wrote in "The song of the Fairies robbing an orchard.

Stolen sweets are always sweeter,
Stolen kisses much completer,
Stolen looks are nice in Chapels,
Stolen, stolen be your Apples.

How about,
The two divinest things the world has got,
A lovely woman in a rural spot.

Shades of your times in Yorkshire when the sap ran free Harold.

I love it all. The word be it poetic or free running has the power to enhance our lives in every way. I was once told "Grasp the subject the words will follow" it is a pity some try it the other way round. Amother thing I was told was "Try everything once except incest and folk dancing" as they say up north "Festina Lente" make haste slowly but at least we live while making slow haste.
I was thinking about you Harold it being Rosh Hashana, see how my Jewish world has opened by reading, from hatred to understanding, that cannot be a bad thing can it. Others of different faiths should try that too and we would not have children being murdered in their schools.
I was writing on another thread about singing, I wonder what people thought when I did my party piece at those new year parties we had with the house bulging at the sides as people packed in and drank my "natures blessing" in the form of wine beer and spirit.
With an accordian rivetted on to my chest like a wandering minstrel and my mate (sadly missed)Big Kiddle (NOEL) he was born on christmas day, would be sent out with lumps of coal and other items for luck to first foot at midnight.
The problem was they always sent us out too early and we wander the road singing only to be invited into other houses and the bounteous goodies forced on to us. The result was we were always late for our first footing party.
We usually shot into the house and by passed those waiting for the New Year kisses as we shot into the toilet and released natures springs.
Have you noticed what ingenious machines we are who can turn natures fruitful wine into urine, there must be a knack to it.
Oh well Harold enough of my ramblings there is always work to do in this house and the boss lady has just arrived back from the shops, better start running.
Regards Frank.

Dear Frank

Apologies for not replying to your most interesting last post. Again, I admire your interest in and knowledge of poetry. I knew one poet, Kingsley Amis, also a novelist, and he once joked that one knew what poetry was because the lines didn't reach the side of the page. A bit of a joker. I appear in the published version of his letters, but the second of two references is very unkind, including a description of me with the f... word.
You probably know that the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography has just been published. Among the 60 volumes are two entries by me. They are on two former Principals of the college where I used to teach. Last Thursday there was a reception in Oxford for contributors and others who were instrumental in getting the volumes ready - editors, proof-readers, employees at the Oxfoird University Press who were the publishers. There was wine and some tiny snacks and an hour of speeches. I think I must be getting old. I find that too many people mumble, even university people who because they lecture ought to speak clearly. I find this with American TV shows eg Will and Grace. Too much mumbling and too much speaking too quickly. I just cannot make out what the character Karen says.
Anyway, because of the large crowd almost everybody had to stand during the speeches and my arthritis began to tell. In fact when they finished after an hour or so I started to go down the stairs and had to clutch the side to steady myself. Fortunately after the bus ride home the sensation wore off. Sorry to trouble you with these boring medical details but you know how old people are.
But I've just remembered about an incident when I started teaching at the college. The Principal suggested I should take classes in teaching methods. He explained that this merely consisted of members of the class giving a brief talk or presentation followed by members of the class commenting on it. So at the first class I explained what was required and said, 'Just to get you going, I'll give a brief talk, then you criticise me.' So I talked about something for a few minutes and then asked for comments. All I got was, from the back, 'I couldn't hear what you were saying.'

Best wishes

Harold

Dear Harold,
Tempus Fugit and brings its aches and pains. I find I rise shower (that is a life saver on its own) cut my slice of porridge, dilute with fruit or syrup and cream, (to hell with the food fadists) eat my breakfast of pills, two cups of tea and then walk for an hour with Benji. Every day we see something new and each day has its own new experiences.
It never gets to be a chore and you meet people to stand and pass the time of day, I do not know their names but do know all the dogs names.
In summer I have the garden and the tomato's were a huge success this year we are eating the last of them now.
I am in touch with people from New Zealand to Alaska on e-mail and the discussions cover subjects many and varied. The family keep me going thinking I am still twenty one, "Dad could you just move that mountain and when you finish"!!!! How do I tell them my day will come and sooner than they think?
I concentrate on the good things in the day pushing the pains aside it seems to work most days. We have not done so badly Harold as I remember all my friends now gone. It sure is lonely up here on the summit these days but the family get the benifit of my time without the distractions of old.
K. Amis had a bitter tongue at times; "the old devils" "take a girl like you" "one fat Englishman" let him vent his spleen. He touched all subjects with some invective "a bookshop idyll" and "delivery guaranteed" I was not overly enamoured of his writing.

I laughed at your incident at teacher college. Mine was starting ICI after the army. All had to attend an induction course and we had to give a brief resume' of our lives to see how we handled public speaking.
Knowing this I was prepared and gave them the talk all packaged and tied up with ribbon. At the end a voice said "bloody hell, you can tell he was a Sergeant Major" the tutor replied "yes but unlike the first three you did hear every word."
The voice came in handy in a large noisy engineering shop when I wanted mens attention.
Off to my Daughter's for dinner now Harold, I get rewarded for helping out so it is worth the effort.
Keep well and best regards,
Frank.

Dear Frank

I went to London the other day for my cousin's 80th birthday, he being 3 months younger than me. Before WWI his father and my father were friends in the Clarion Cycling Club, the left-wing organisation. (My father also belonged to the marxist Social Democratic Federation.) In the cycling club they had a tandem and my father was introduced to the friend's sister who, I was told, ejected her brother from the tandem and took over. The sister and my father then married, in 1913. My mother, incidentally, lived very near the site of the Sydney Street siege in the East End of London when Churchill was Home Secretary and he called out the Guards to confront the small group of anarchists who had become holed up in a house there. He had to appear at Bow Street magistrates' court afterwards to explain his actions.
My father and his friend remained friends until my father died in 1958 and indeed both opened wireless shops.
My cousin had another cousin who was born also in the same year as us. He became an RSM in the Essex Regiment and served in Burma, possibly in the Chindits. He died a couple of years ago having suffered from Alzheimer's for a number of years.
Off tomorrow with my married daughter to France for a few days, to have a look at some WWI sites.

Harold

Dear Frank

Tomorrow I shall be attending my sister's 85th birthday party. During the war she was a telephone operator for the GPO, as it was then. She worked on shifts and often had to work at nights. During the blitz when the siren went the operators had to put on their tin hats and only went down to the shelters when the airplanes were above.
The party will be at her son's house in Borehamwood, a suburb in north London, actually I think in Hertfordshire. I gather that she has invited several female cousins of her generation whom I haven't seen for half a century. That will be quite interesting.
I went to France with my married daughter for 4 days to have a look at some WWI features. We took photos of a number of graves of Jewish soldiers and also visited three museums, including the very new one at Thiepval, the monumnent to the almost 80,000 who have no known grave, mostly from the battles of the Somme.
All very sad.

Harold

Hello Harold,
You are attending a lot of party's lately you must be what they call a party animal.
I seem to be doing the opposite and attending a lot of funerals, it is getting very lonely up here on top of the heap.
My Uncle Ron Tighe, Mothers Brother died this week he went through the war from start to finish. Shipped out to Palestine then through the Desert war and into Italy finishing in Austria never getting home leave in that time.
I wanted to write his story only he was always sorting things out for me so I never got the story and now never will. I will salute him on Wednesday though, he always thought himself a civilian in uniform, He was a soldier to me.
I have had a busy time going round museums with my three year old grandson, he is mad on steam engines. We went to the New Shildon Timothy Hackworth Museum. He walked for four solid hours looking at trains with a stop for a man sized bacon sandwich and a drink. He is great.
We then spent a day at Beamish more trams trains and old busses he loved it and rode about all day the hightlight being a ride on Locomotion.
It is a replica made in the workshops at ICI with my shop making the funnel section which was a conical bend all riveted. The aprentices had the job but we had to get an old boilermaker to rivet it.
Matthew listened to me talking to the driver and afterwards told his Dad Granddad made the Rocket. I wonder if he thought me old enough to have done the original one.
I am sitting here trying to calm the little dog we had a massive fireworks display last night that went on for hours and it started up again tonight. Benji wants to get at them and it is driving us all mad.
Well I will go and watch Venice on Beeb two, it has been a good program so I will not miss the last episode.
By for now and look after yourself we are getting thin on the ground.
Regards Frank.

Dear Frank

I was particularly interested in your visit with your grandson. After I finished my degree I started doing research in economic history and did it on railway history. I wrote a number of articles in journals and then a book on British railway history in 1971. In the meantime I had worked for London Transport researching its history and got used to knowing about trams, buses and the tube.
But I don't know much about the technical side. However, I'm not completely non-technical. Having been brought up in a wireless and electrical shop I got used to handling such material. I used to help in the shop by repairing electrical stuff - kettles, irons for example. But I did not inherit my grandfather's or father's trade of cabinet-making. We did woodwork at school and when learning how to plane and other things we had to get the teacher to approve what we had done. All I seem to remember is holding a piece of wood I had planed and trying to find the teacher to get him to check it. I don't know where he was. I do recall that when I found him he looked pityingly at what I had done and he said something like 'Oh, that's what you think is the waste side' (I think it was waste.)Strangely many years later I found myself teaching his son. The teacher had apparently been a pacifist but somehow had ended up as a Commando and was KIA just before the war ended. I therefore knew more about him than did his son who was a toddler when he died. I found a photo of his father taken on a school trip with my brother. The son was highly delighted with it.
Today I received a copy of a journal which contains an article of mine of Jewish brothers who died in WWI.

Best wishes

Harold

Dear Harold,
Sorry I did not reply at an earlier time, I have not been on the machine for a while. My Son fell down some stairs at work and hurt his arm, it did not stop him sitting here all day every day though. I went looking at laptops and will buy one, the prices are dropping so fast before Christmas they must be due to drop off the cliff in the New Year Sales. Having learnt many things in Palestine I also picked up some of the ideas on bargaining, not that I am saying anything about that Jewish penchant.
I was brought up with engineering, Dad having his own trucks meant we had to start when they came in on Saturdays and service them for Monday. I remember having spanners in my hand while still sucking a dummy? I could strip engines gearboxes and Diff's at an early age, remount springs change wheels and tyres straighten steering bars with a Jim Crow.
Dad gave me a motor bike when I was fifteen, it was in a box. A New Imperial 150cc that had raced on the Isle of Man. His words were put it together and you can ride it. One Sunday after lunch around six weeks later I roused the whole road when I fired it up without a silencer. He was amazed but true to his word let me have it.
I suppose I was lucky in seeing the real world of Boiler Making in my years before the army. I was sixteen when three of us refurbished a Steam Rail Crane. Upright boiler, Copper boiler Tubes and a right pig to expand those tubes until pressure tested. We got the Vulcan inspector to pass it then fired her up and had a fun day driving it round the system, unluckely we took the roof off a building with the Jib. The people in the building were not amused and our boss was even less amused so I was banned from driving any more steam engines. That was until? but that is another story.
I was always good at wood work probably from repairing truck bodies which were all wood with a steel liner. I still do my own woodwork and enjoy it.
Trade tests in the army nearly always started with filing a metal block sqare then cutting a sqare or circle out of the middle and fitting a block back in to fit exactly. The instructor would pull his feeler guages out and try to get one in the join. It was all hand tools so you made sure it was right first time if you did not want hammer rash on the knuckles. Can you see modern youths doing that Harold, they would go on strike if they did not have their Black and Deckers and that is only for cutting their nails.
Different world we live in but who is to say which is best, we could probably live off the land if all failed, the youngsters would be chaning light bulbs wondering why they would not work.
Keep well Harold and being the party boy enjoy the Christmas festivities.
Regards Frank.

Frank

I was recently reading two books written by people I knew. One was by a chap who was in the Marines in WW2 and was the local district secretary of the TGWU. He describes his Marine training in which a rather posh officer was telling them about shooting at a moving target. 'If a cat was crossing the lawn and you wanted to hit it you'd shoot in front of it'. A cockney voice said:'What's a bloody lawn?' The other book was by a lecturer at Oxford who was in the RAF in Burma during the war. He tells of Mountbatten arriving, having been appointed CinC. He addrssed a large crowd of sqauddies. He started by saying that 'You think you're the forgotten atmy.' The squaddies groaned, thinking that he would tell them they weren't forgotten. He went on:'You're not forgotten. Nobody's ever heard of you.' A great cheer went up.
It occurred to me that these responses are typically British, very different from what I've seen on TV about American troops in Iraq, with generals giving pep talks. I even read that one American general in Iraq said he would not like to be in charge of British troops. I suppose because of their bolshie attitude.

Harold