Thursday 30 December 2010

Christmas adventure 2010: Southport by train.

It has become a bit of a Christmas tradition for Steve W and myself to plan a train journey. In the past two years we have been to Blaenau Ffestiniog and Shrewsbury - during the year we do other trips too. Most people can't understand the pleasure of spending the day on a train, but we seem to enjoy it. Today turned out to be a great bargain as we only paid £4 for our tickets which allowed us to travel all day on the Merseyrail network. So having driven to Hooton we set off for Southport. I have only been to Southport by bike  and that was in a state of exhaustion, so I had only a vague idea of what the place would be like. Southport turned out to be very pleasant indeed. The sea front is watched over by an excellent statue of Victoria:
Like Monarchs in  Elizabethan times, Victoria in Southport is holding a globe in her hands to symbolise British imperial power and influence.

The highlight in Southport is the very long board-walk. It is so long that a tram service runs the whole length; we bravely walked. At the end of the pier is an amusement arcade full of games from the Victorian and Edwardian eras. You can exchange your modern 10p for an old penny and play away. I particularly liked the peep shows like this:
I can confirm that the Butler did not see very much!
This screaming Jack tar (not Bethan) was rather annoying.
I spent the rest of the journey trying to do impressions of Alfred Hitchcock. The first on the pier in Southport also gives some idea of length of the boardwalk (and the need for me to diet in 2011).

The second 'Hitch' was taken on the waterfront in Liverpool in the gloaming. The whole waterfront area is hugely impressive; the new Museum is due to open in 2011 so I will be there again soon.
This was taken around 4pm with the light fading fast; a mist on the river added to the atmosphere.
The final part of the day was the 'ferry across the mersey'. After the arctic winter of recent weeks, today was mild and calm;we were able to stand on deck as the ferry plied across the water.
That ended our Christmas adventure for 2010. The next plan is to take the Wrexham and Shropshire railway into London. Thank you to Steve and Bethan for a memorable day.

Wednesday 29 December 2010

Suppose nobody came to the lecture...

Caerwys Town Hall pretty much empty.   
Thankfully this shot was taken half an hour before the start of the Victorian Caerwys lecture. In the end about 80 turned up and despite my manflu it seemed to go well. There was one hitch; nobody except the front row could see the screen. So with some  ingenuity a piece of staging was rigged up and the projector balanced on a recycling bin. It was a promising start to the Caerwys Historical Society.

Tuesday 28 December 2010

Victorian Caerwys lecture

This evening I am due to deliver a talk on the theme of Victorian Caerwys. It has come about as a result of the book I have written entitled 'Caerwys Since Victorian Times' that is due to be published early next year. With Christmas it has been hard to focus on the task, so I have left it rather late to finalise the slides and decide exactly what I will talk about. As luck would have it I have been struck with down with a dose of manflu. Obviously any woman would not even notice it, but I feel pretty awful today. However the show must go on and I have dosed up on decongestants. The poster below is all around Caerwys! I wonder how many will turn up!

Friday 24 December 2010

The last train to Caerwys (ville)...

Yesterday I went to the local railway station ticket office. I asked for a return ticket. 'Where to?' asked the ticket officer; 'back here' I replied. Ah the old jokes. The ticket office in question can be seen below:

Unfortunately I was unlikely to get a ticket anywhere as Caerwys station has been closed for over 50 years. Yet the ticket office window still remains and the whole place is remarkably atmospheric. Today the station is home to a timber yard and the man in the picture manages the business. To me closing this line (Mold to Denbigh) was nothing short of a crime. It was compounded by selling off the land making any other use of the railway site impossible.

I should add that the photograph was taken by Tom Wood of Caerwys.

Wednesday 22 December 2010

A fobile moan!

On Sunday my beloved Blackberry breathed it's last breath; ever since I have been mobile phone free. It has been quite odd adjusting to living without my little companion, but I wonder if it should become a permanent thing. How did we cope before these pesky phones were invented? Anyway I would like to share my observations of living without these 'necessities' of 21st century life.
I have definitely become more socially inefficient; twice this week not having a phone has resulted in inconvenience to me: first, I waited well over an hour for a friend on Monday (a simple text would have allowed me to plan my time better and avoid almost catching hypothermia), and second, earlier tonight I went carol singing but lost the choir, again, a text or quick call would have rectified matters. I have got lazy in making arrangement knowing that everything can be rectified en route with a text or call. The other major thing has been keeping in touch with my son and daughter - well to be more accurate them seeking lifts hither and thither is not so easy. We have become used to instant communication and I find it hard to imagine that when I left home for university we were still actually writing letters to keep in touch with friends in much the same way as the Victorians did when the Post Office was invented. Now we facebook.
Instant communication may make us socially efficient, but the quality of it is not the same as a considered letter. Instant messaging does not allow for reflection and considered thoughts. So will I take this opportunity to ditch the mobile and purchase large quantities of writing paper and stamps? Tempting, but an iPhone is at the top of my Christmas list. I fear that there is no going back.

Tuesday 21 December 2010

Advertising 1900 style.

Yesterday I was reading some local newspapers from 1900; I especially enjoyed the coverage in the run up to Christmas last year. To those living at the time Christmas and New Year 1900 was the last of the 19th century - as we celebrated the end of the century in 1999 we were in fact cheated of a whole year in the 20th century. If you are ever asked 'how long was the 20th century?',  the correct answer is not 100 years! The advertisers at that time  made far more amazing claims for their products than they do today. I made a copy of a couple that caught my eye (these are from the County Herald newspaper, published in Holywell, at the end of the year 1900).
There was not much these little pills did not cure; where are they now?

This was an advertisement repeated for a few weeks based upon some Dr's claim that people had been poisoned by bad beer - the beer makers had counter claimed that it was in fact from cheap tea. The answer according to the ad was to drink Mazawattee tea!

Monday 20 December 2010

The coldest day.

I am not sure that I can ever remember a colder day than this one has been. In Mold by mid afternoon the temperature had not risen above -8 degrees. The cold took my breath away. On the way back from the Record Office I stopped to take these photographs of a glorious sunset looking across the Moel y Parc. The other one is of the full moon before 4pm looking east. The forecast suggests that the cold weather will stay with us until after the Christmas weekend.


Sunday 19 December 2010

I'm all lost in a supermarket...

They are the words from a song by the Clash on their 'London Calling' album. Perhaps as we face Christmas shopping many of us feel lost in the supermaket - although they have now become superstores, which sounds even more scary. Before I get to the main point of this (which is not very profound, so don't expect much) I wonder if anyone else is puzzled by the word (s) found in many Tescos and Asdas - 'Instore'. Is that meant to be a joke, or just a play on words. It sounds quite frightening to me...like Bargains Instore! Anyway, although I know supermarkets (or superstores) are an essential part of our modern life, I do like to get my revenge on being made to walk along the everlasting aisles of spending temptations by spotting silly things. Both of these come from Tesco Broughton - though in most respects a fine establishment -  they are prone to blunders such as these:
What kind of bargain is this box of washing powder?
I have already put this on Facebook, but I especially like the Santa outfit being part of the Tesco Nativity range.


Sunday 5 December 2010

The 2010 freeze continues...

The temperatures hardly rose above freezing this week, but somehow or other I think we are all getting used to it. Perhaps with the recent experience of last winter we are getting better at adapting to the snow and ice. Prior to last winter we had a decade or more of mild winters when snow became a novelty. It is almost as if  these harsher winters chime with the difficult economic climate; back to the 70s. The silly tabloids cry out that this weather means global warming is nonsense; but as anyone knows weather is not the same as climate (well actually they probably don't know). In fact globally this year will be the second warmest since records began. To finish on a better note, the following two photographs show views from the Caerwys golf course.
Alpine Caerwys? I apologise for yet another view of Moel y Parc.

This oak tree still has most of it's leaves intact, reminding me that we are only a few days out of autumn.