Archive for September 2010
Leo’s Flying Machine Adventure
Posted on: September 30, 2010
Wonderful comments from Bob Ambrose:
Have just watched the launch and am delighted that your book has been so well received. I was quite spellbound by the whole time fantasy concept of the book, involving heroes of the past. A fantastic exciting book, which is a great read for any age from 10 to 100. In particular, I found the Leo’s Flying Machine Adventure chapter absolutely captivating, since amazingly I had recently met up with Ginger’s son, an Old Windsorian School colleague from the 40’s and WW1.
I was particularly moved on how you expressed Leo’s and Ginger’s concern that they might have to go to fight in WW1. Ginger did go to war and was wounded three times, but amazingly pursued his skills whilst on active service, on building and flying model aeroplanes, learnt from his pals Sydney and Fred Camm.
Don’t forget to check out the story at leosheroes.wordpress.com
Leo and Ginger
Posted on: September 28, 2010
Book Launch last Sunday – a great success I think. Val and I were busily signing and selling copies. I will post some pictures later.
Meanwhile, I was so thrilled to receive an email out of the blue from an ex-RAF photographer (Bomber Command), Bob Ambrose, who had heard about Leo’s Heroes from the Sir Sydney Camm Commemorative Society. In Leo and the Flying Machine Adventure one of the characters Ginger, injures himself falling from a glider. Here’s part of Bob’s email:
At the Old Windsorian’s Informal meeting at The Fifield Inn, Fifield near Windsor on Monday October 25th at 11.00 a.m. we will be paying respect to Sir Sydney Camm and those who fought in WW1 and WW2. We are also proud of our connections to the History of Aviation in Berkshire and particularly to that of one of our old boys, Ted Stanbrook, the son of ‘Ginger’ Stanbrook; at the age of 16 Ginger crashed and was injured in Camms’ first manned flying machine in the grounds below Windsor Castle in 1913.
We are delighted that ‘Ginger’, Sydney and Fred Camm, are all featured in Chapter 3 of Leo’s Heroes in the new fantasy story book, by Mo Heard, to be released next week.
Sydney Camm
Desert Island Lists
Posted on: September 13, 2010
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Do you remember the old exchange numbers used with dial phones? They resonate in plays from the Forties, or in the pages of Fifties’ novels. But, hurrah, you can still find the information on the net. GERard for Soho, FLAxman for Chelsea; Paddington numbers were AMBassodor. All so much more romantic than the clusters of digits we have now.
When listening to Desert Island Discs, I bet everyone imagines what their own one luxury would be. I feel a bit silly with this confession, but it does corroborate the evidence for my predilection for lists.
I imagined (many, many years ago of course!) that my one luxury would be the four fat London Telephone Directories (and lots of paper and pens.) Think about it: the combined directories were huge respositories of names, addresses, numbers – list after list! Whiling away the time on a desert island you could draw maps of streets pinpointing the names of the residents, you could do a lot of maths, counting how many people lived in the streets or had unbelievably peculiar names, or creating occupations for those listed. Hours could be spent working on anagrams. I think the London Directories would fill your time on a desert island with ‘facts and fun!!’ – wow! Imagine the surreal telephone conversations you could write — drama, comedy, rudery.
Oh look, there’s B. Shillingsworth! ‘Hello is that FREmantle 5520? Bertie darling! You must come to our Friday Soiree. Bubbles will be there with that snooty old queen … you know you’ll love the chance to quip and tease. What? …. Max is up before the Beak for ….? Well, I knew it of course, such a dark horse, and him declaring to us all that he was engaged to Fifi. Say you’ll be there Bertie and come with that new beau! Kiss, kiss. Toodle-pip!’
Three months on and no rescue from my isolation in sight, I might start to compose a book of short stories using the telephone numbers as chapter headings. The people answering the phone might be robbers confirming a heist, lovers on the verge of breaking up, a dying relative — and the funniest would be the ‘wrong number’. Do you remember hearing that brilliant sketch where a young Jewish woman calls her mother, complaining that the car won’t start, the house is a mess, the kids are sick, and she still has to make lunch for her Hadassah meeting? The mother says not to worry – that she will come over, clean the house, start lunch, and take care of the kids. The daughter, grateful, thanks her while the mother explains in an exasperated tone that she doesn’t mind taking the subway to the Long Island Railroad, change to the bus, and then walking the fourteen blocks. Finally, the mother asks how her daughter’s husband, Sam, got to work if the car didn’t start. (Brief pause.) “My husband’s name is Paul… Is this Tremont 7-1166?”
“No, this is Tremont 7-1177.”
Pause. “Does that mean you’re not coming over?”
Looking in Shop Windows
Posted on: September 11, 2010
As an only child in south London, I spent a lot of time gazing into shop windows, marvelling at the goods on display. There was Vyners of Hollywood with it’s two corner windows crammed to the ceiling with glamorous shoes. These had stupendously high platform soles and were shown in their knobbly snakeskin or red leatherette glory. I even enjoyed examining the beautiful prams in Swaddling’s; why did I as a ten-year old, want to look at baby carriages? One favourite was an art shop with varying size tins of Derwent coloured pencils, boxes of paints, and wondrous wooden lay figures posing in frozen attitudes among the tubes and brushes. Most of the shops where I lived had vibrant window displays – sweets, cigarettes, canned food, fabrics, furniture. The sweet shops were the most deliciously appealing; boxes of Caley’s Chocolates, rows of jars full of colourful confectionery, and at Easter, sugar-spun peep eggs; and the tobacconist shop windows piled high with sturdy pyramids of Players or Craven A cigarettes.
The following contains a Hazard Warning: For Adults Only! (Remember, smoking kills!!)
In the Fifties, cigarette manufacturers employed reps who crossed the country, building advertising towers of packets for the shopkeepers’ windows. I had a holiday job with the Imperial Tobacco Company, counting the numbers of dummy packets each rep had used in their displays. I was given one of the packets – Players I remember – and played a splendid joke on my mum. The fags, which were filled with crepe paper looked absolutely real, and on offering her one, she astonishingly puffed away at half of the dummy then pulled a face and realised there was something a bit off about it! I probably laughed like a drain. (I had inherited my dad’s childish delight in playing practical jokes.)
Although I haven’t smoked for yonks, I love to reminisce with other reformed smokers about the names of cigarettes – De Reszke (1/10d for twenty), posh red boxes of Du Maurier, Weights in packets of 5, Churchman No 1, Balkan Sobraine (oh those pastel cigs!), and ‘You’re never alone with a Strand’. The last fag I ever smoked was Guards (how could I be so down-market?) I collected the coupons found in each box, and impatiently cashed them in for a dartboard and a mini barbecue consisting of an aluminium foil tray and a tiny bag of coal. I can still remember the tune for the slogan on the Bristol TV commercial. Bright and breezy young things racing along in an open-top car to the words: “Today’s cigarette is a Bristol. Bristol is today’s cigarette! …. Briii-stol.”
Of course, when I was in my ‘Bohemian’ phase, I rolled my own with black licorice papers. Swanky.
Lists – Again
Posted on: September 4, 2010
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I had always lived in London until I moved here to the South Coast in 1999. I remember that when I was very small I loved poring over the London bus map – emptier than the sort you see now – following the red, meandering lines of the routes with my finger, out to suburbs I’d never heard of. I had the unfolded map pinned up on the wall next to my bed. What was it that attracted my young imagination?
Googling for images of the older bus maps, I came across a terrific visual List which shows all the London bus number (1-100) destination boards filling the screen.
http://www.busesatwork.co.uk/routes
Maps and destination boards can thrill with the thought of journeys to places unknown. But strangely, I am no traveller, preferring to cling to the familiar. Did the familiar burrow so deeply into my memory, that when I recall my whimsical childhood environment, the recognition delights and comforts? My culture is that of a distant London childhood. I belonged once, but no longer.
Which is why I rabbit on about all this inconsequential stuff about London. But I love it! Is there a book on London Trivia?
And here’s more:
Do you know the code for the original London postal districts? SE1 started nearest to the centre of London, then the rest went more or less alphabetically — SE2 for Abbey Wood, SE3, Blackheath and so on. Woolwich is the last alphabetically (SE18), then come the outer boroughs from SE19 (Norwood) to SE28 (Thamesmead), the last to be added. As I lived in south east London I knew all those areas but it works for others too. Check out the locations of SW1, NW1, N1, E1, EC1, W1, WC1 etc. There is no NE in London, as that is the code for Newcastle.
I shall be thinking about those delightful old London telephone numbers later …
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