Week 36.09

Tendring Topics……on line

A lifetime ago!

I shall be posting this blog onto the Internet on Wednesday 2nd September 2009. Seventy years ago that date fell on a Saturday. The postman pushed through the letterbox of my home in Ipswich an OHMS envelope addressed to Gunner Hall E.G. Its contents informed me that ‘His Majesty King George VI had been graciously pleased to embody the Territorial Army’. I was instructed to report, in uniform and with full kit, to the Drill Hall, in Princes Street, Ipswich forthwith.

The 67th Medium Regiment RA’s first guns – iron-tyred 6in howitzers with limbers – intended to be horse-drawn! The distinctly unsoldierly way in which we are clambering all over them suggests that we – and they – had only just arrived at Roedean. These antique weapons were replaced by new limberless and rubber tyred howitzers when we left Ipswich.

The summons wasn’t unexpected. I had not long returned from two weeks at a Territorial Camp at Roedean (in front of the famous girls school), Brighton. There we had been introduced to our guns, ancient iron-tyred 6in howitzers with limbers, that may well have played a part in the defence of Mafeking. Back in Ipswich I had found the Public Health Department, where I worked, in turmoil. As a result of the worsening international situation, and in expectation that another world war would begin with massive air attacks, first aid posts were being established all round the town, ‘black-outs’ were being prepared for windows and the office phone had to be manned day and night to receive and pass on the news that ‘the balloon had gone up’.

In 1939, this building in Elm Street, Ipswich, housed the Council’s Public Health Department

Call-up, when it came, was quite a relief! However my parents, who had seen their young warrior off ‘to the war’ in the morning were somewhat surprised to see him trudge home again, still with full kit, in the evening. Having called us up, the army clearly hadn’t much idea what to do with us. The 67th Medium Regiment R.A., which I had joined early in the New Year, was a newly formed territorial regiment, comprising volunteers from Ipswich, Felixstowe, Woodbridge and the surrounding smaller towns and villages. Billets were found for those called up who lived outside Ipswich while we Ipswichians were billeted in our own homes, our parents receiving a welcome billeting allowance. And there we stayed ‘learning our trade’ until the spring of 1940 when we entrained for Wotton-under-Edge in Gloucestershire and prepared to join the British Expeditionary Force in France.

The following day, Sunday 3rd September was a day that changed my life forever. Yes, I know that that was the day on which Britain declared war on Germany, beginning a conflict that was to cost millions of lives and bring devastation to many thousands of towns and villages in Britain and throughout Europe. Many of my comrades in the 67th Medium regiment RA would lose their lives and most of those of us who survived would spend three years in captivity in Italy and Germany.

The beginning of all of that was, of course, going on in the background. What changed my life forever on 3rd September 1939 was my meeting Heather Gilbert, an Ilford schoolgirl who had been evacuated with Wanstead County High School to Ipswich, to escape the anticipated mass bombing of the London area. Heather is no longer with me, but she has been in my thoughts at some time or another on every single day of the seventy years that have elapsed since I first met her, and I am sure that she will be will remain in them until my own life ends and, as I fervently hope, we are reunited.

Heather and I, as we were in September 1939

On our first (or possibly our second) date. I was in the army and can't remember whether we were allowed to wear 'civvies' off duty -or whether I was defying an order not to! After the photo was taken we 'went to the pictures' and saw 'Stagecoach', now recognised as a 'classic western' featuring a very young John Wain

She was almost-sixteen and still at school. I was just-eighteen and newly in the army. I am quite sure that her school had been evacuated to Ipswich by mistake. They remained in the town for only two weeks, but it was long enough for us to form a lasting attachment. We corresponded regularly throughout the war. After she had left school we met on rare weekends when I was given some leave and my unit was sufficiently near London for me to visit Ilford. Within a couple of days of my returning home from Germany in 1945 we were engaged. We married on 27th April 1946, just four days after my discharge from the army. Our marriage lasted for sixty years, Heather’s life ending three years ago, a few months after we had celebrated our diamond wedding anniversary.

Last week I mentioned in this blog the tear-off calendar, with a quote for each day, that we had in our barrack room when I was a POW in Germany. Here is another quotation that I have remembered over the years, from the poet Goethe I think:

Lieben und geliebt zu werden, ist das höchste Glück auf Erden.
(To love and to be loved in return, is the highest happiness that there is in this world)

I have found that to be abundantly true.


Outside Gants Hill Methodist, Church, Ilford on 27th April 1946. We had to wait nearly seven years for this happy day.

Where there’s a will there’s a way!

I don’t get to Mistley very often. It is the ‘other side’ of the Tendring Peninsula and well beyond the range of my mobility scooter. I always enjoy going there though. Last Saturday (22nd August) my son and daughter-in-law, Pete and Arlene, drove me there. We parked on the quay and had a very enjoyable lunch overlooking the Stour estuary at the Quay Café.

The last time we were there, months before, the fence along the edge of the quay hadn’t been completed. Furious local residents were trying to prevent this with parked cars and lorries. They didn’t succeed. The fence has been completed and I have to say that it does look neater than it did. It is no better loved though locally. Posters everywhere demand ‘Free the Quay!’

It was high tide and a sailing barge, the Centaur of Harwich, had taken advantage of the high water to moor at the quay. It carried passengers and was involved in a ‘mini-cruise’ from Ipswich, down the Orwell to Shotley, then up the Stour as far as Manningtree, pausing at Mistley on the way, and then back again. It must have made a very pleasant excursion.

‘The Centaur’, moored at Mistley Quay. The ladder giving access from the ship to the quay can be seen just to the left of the figure.

Surely, you may be thinking, it couldn’t have been much fun stopping at Mistley when that unloved fence will have prevented landing. Not a bit of it! Where there’s a will there’s a way. Look at the picture and you’ll see that just to the left of the figure is a strategically placed ladder that gives access to and from the Quay. Using it is, of course, just a little more hazardous than simply striding across on a gangway. Which is odd when you consider that the fence, the cause of all the trouble, is supposed to have been provided ‘for health and safety reasons’.

Week 34.09

Tendring Topics……..on Line

Making Sure of your Vote

Have you received the official envelope containing your Electoral Registration Form yet? If not, you should be receiving it shortly. Should you not receive it, contact your local Electoral Registration Office. For Tendring residents that’s Westleigh House, Carnarvon Road, Clacton-on-Sea, CO15 6QF, Tel. 01255 686586. Some Clactonians may remember it as having been my office, as the town’s Housing Manager, prior to 1974!

We receive this form annually, but this year it is doubly important that every householder should read it and carry out its instructions. Next year there will be a parliamentary general election. As a result of the recent expenses scandal an unusually large number of sitting MPs will not be contesting this election. This gives us an unprecedented and probably not-to-be repeated opportunity to fill the chamber with new faces. It is by securing and using our right to vote that we can ensure that our representative is one we can trust to make his or her voice and vote used responsibly on our behalf and on behalf of the whole nation.

Read and respond to the Electoral Registration Form to make sure that your name, and those of eligible members of your household, is on the Electoral Register. You don’t bother to vote, so why bother to register? It’s your privilege to refrain from voting if you wish to. Don’t complain though if your indifference helps to set the scene for the advent of a 21st Century Hitler, Stalin or Mussolini who’ll make sure that you never vote again except, of course, for his approved candidates.

Responding to the Electoral Registration Form has never been difficult but the current form is the easiest ever! If, as in my case, your household is exactly the same as it was last year (no-one has achieved the age of 16, no-one has moved in, moved out or died) you don’t have to fill it in at all. You can register by Freephone, by internet on the registration website, or by text message. Straightforward easy-to-follow instructions are given (believe me, if it is possible to misinterpret instructions I’ll manage it!). I responded by text message and, within minutes, received a return text confirming that I had been registered.

If there is an alteration simply cross out the name of whoever has died or moved away, and enter that of anyone who has moved in or achieved the age of 16, sign the form, slip it in the envelope provided, and drop it into the nearest post box. Why 16 when the eligible age for voting is 18? Simply to make sure that 16 and 17 year olds will be able to vote in any election that occurs after their 18th birthday. On the form there’s a special place for their names and dates of birth to be entered.

Political Tactics

I have been involved in the local government service for the greater part of my life. Throughout those years local government has degenerated from a proud and largely independent provider of most of the services that make for civilised life, to a mere ‘facilitator’ of just a few of those services, always kept on a tight rein by increasingly dictatorial central governments.

The latest development has been the compulsory introduction of parliamentary style politics to every Council Chamber. Each council now has its political ‘leader’ with his ‘cabinet’, a small group of influential members of the majority party. Each of these is a ‘portfolio holder’ and brings to cabinet meetings the recommendations that would previously been made after full consideration by a committee. The cabinet’s decisions are then presented to the full council, where party members are expected to toe the party line. All the other trappings and trimmings of parliamentary government (except perhaps five-figure expenses claims) follow from this. There’s a leader of the opposition, shadow portfolio holders, three line whips and so on.

Where all this pretentious nonsense leads is being amply demonstrated in our own Tendring District at the moment. Those (quite a tiny minority I suspect!) who bother about such matters, will know that Tendring Council has two almost evenly balanced political groups; the Conservatives and the Tendring First Group. The latter is a coalition of Labour, Lib Dems, Community Representatives and others. I, and I dare say quite a few other people, think of them as the ABC (Anything But Conservative) Group.

The ABCs held power, by the narrowest of narrow majorities, for a couple of years and I don’t think that they did too badly. It was stupid of them to set up a private regeneration company when they could and should have done the job themselves. However, despite all the criticism from ‘Readers’ Letters’ in the Clacton Gazette, and our local MP's expressed opinion that they ‘couldn’t run a bath’, the ABCs actually succeeded in running successfully a blossoming district that, despite the recession, has and is attracting major businesses to its main shopping areas and holiday makers to its seaside resorts..

However last May, thanks to the absence of one member and the Chairman’s casting vote, the Conservatives gained control of the Council……..and promptly discovered that, despite all their promises, there was really not a great deal that they could do to change things. The town’s water feature, for which they had had nothing but condemnation while in opposition, still operates though with an ugly fence around it. The Regeneration Company, about which they shared my views, still exists. The only pronouncements that I have noticed have been the probability of being unable to carry out promised regeneration, particularly in Harwich, Brightlingsea and Jaywick. ‘Money’, one of their spokesmen proclaimed, must be ‘saved for a rainy day’. As a correspondent to the Daily Gazette pointed out, as far as the economy is concerned, it is pretty rainy right now!

Sad circumstances have brought the stability of the Conservative administration into question. Conservative councillor Charlie Bambridge, of Clacton’s Burrsville Ward suffered from a stroke and died unexpectedly towards the end of July. This, of course, gives the ABCs a, possibly temporary, numerical advantage. Now they have called for an extraordinary meeting of the Council, to be held before the by-election that will decide Mr Bambridge’s successor.

I don’t know what they have in mind. They could, I suppose, use their current majority of one to insist on and elect a new Chairman who could then exercise his casting vote to ensure their control of the Council once more. The Conservatives, naturally enough, are outraged and accuse their opponents of ‘exploiting the death of a leading councillor in an attempt to win back power’.

It doesn’t seem to me to be very different from the tactic by which the Conservatives unseated the ABCs and seized power themselves. Those who have taken advantage of Parliamentary style in-fighting in local government must learn to take the rough with the smooth. I don’t think it is, or should be, true that All’s fair in love and war but all is undoubtedly fair in national, and now in local, politics.

‘The Light of Other Days’

Oft in the stilly night,
Ere slumber’s chain has bound me,
Fond memory brings the light
Of other days around me.

So wrote the Victorian poet Thomas Moore. I know what he meant, but it tends to be news stories rather than sleeplessness that bring ‘the light of other days’ to my mind. Memories of a warm and sunny afternoon in May 1973 flooded into my mind when, on two successive evenings, there were news stories about punting on the Cam on BBCtv’s Look East programme. Our elder son Pete was in his second year at Cambridge. Heather and I, proud parents, were visiting him and he had introduced us to the joys of punting. We hired a punt and made our way up-river to Granchester, at first Pete wielded the pole and after a while, having grasped the principles of punting, I replaced him. I didn’t fall in. I didn’t lose my pole. In fact, I was quite good at it. Pete took a photograph that I look at from time to time to remind myself that Heather and I weren’t always old fogies!

The news stories? Oh yes, it was claimed that paddle-boarding was challenging punting as a means of recreation on the Cam. The board resembles a very large, wheel-less skateboard. The user stands on it with a long handled paddle and paddles his way over the water. It’s faster than punting and, so it was claimed, was no more likely to deposit its user headlong into the Cam. It’ll never rival punting though. Punting is a leisurely social activity that demands at least one passenger to make it enjoyable. There’s certainly no room for a passenger on a paddle-board!

The other story was a little more serious. It seems that in order to attract and retain customers, hirers of punts are pestering potential customers and even pursuing them into the town with ‘special offers’ and other inducements; behaviour considered to be more appropriate to a middle-eastern market than a historic English university town.

It was a report on Farming Today on Radio 4 about the resurgence of rabbits as a pest to farmers that took me back in memory to our very first real married home, a bungalow two or three miles north of Ipswich. It was adjacent to a large area of wasteland teeming with rabbits! I fought a long war of attrition against their depredations on anything green planted in our garden. Wire netting fencing had to be inspected at least daily to prevent burrowing underneath. Our cat would occasionally deposit small rabbit corpses (she wisely didn’t try to tackle large ones) on our doorstep.

Myxamatosis ended our warfare abruptly and painfully. Dying rabbits with enormously swollen eyes hopped blindly everywhere. I despatched as many as I could quickly and, I hope, fairly painlessly. I had much preferred the infestation to its conclusion.

The news that a young man suffering from Asperges Syndrome, an IT whizzkid who had foolishly penetrated American defence computer files, was to be extradited to the USA (and that there was nothing that the government or anyone else could do about it) brought newspaper headlines from the past into my mind.

There were the American Law Courts which, during Britain’s struggle with the IRA, repeatedly refused to extradite suspected and convicted IRA terrorists to the United Kingdom on the grounds that, ‘they wouldn’t get fair treatment here’.

There was the case of General Pinochet who had presided over the torture and/or murder of hundreds of Chileans and others, including at least one British citizen*. Britain refused to extradite him to Spain because of his ‘ill-health’. On his return to Chile (a far longer journey!) this ‘sick man’ demonstrated his contempt for British justice by immediately reviewing a military parade. He, of course, had influential friends in Britain including Lady Thatcher and Mr Norman Lamont.

Nevertheless it seems that we are happy to hand over this unfortunate young man to a judicial system which we know has, in the past, used and justified such means as ‘water boarding’ when questioning ‘terrorist’ suspects. I would have thought he should have been thanked and rewarded, for exposing the weaknesses in the security of defence plans that may well, since Britain and the USA are allied, contain some of our military secrets too.

*Dr Sheila Cassidy, a medical practitioner, who recorded her agonising and humiliating ordeal in her autobiographical ‘Audacity to Believe’ (publishers - Collins). During her recovery in England she briefly became a nun and has subsequently been deeply involved with palliative and Hospice care for the terminally ill

Week 33.09

Tendring Topics…….on Line

A trip to Sheffield!

I spent the first weekend of August in Sheffield, with my son and daughter-in-law Andy and Marilyn, visiting my only granddaughter who lives and works there. To me, a southerner by birth and an East Anglian by adoption, a trip ‘up north’ is a major expedition, scarcely less adventurous than my visit, a few weeks earlier, to Zittau on the German/Polish/Czech frontiers.
I had been there once before. Last October Andy and Marilyn drove me to Sheffield for a similar weekend. Regular blog readers may remember that on that occasion I took the opportunity to photograph the water feature outside Sheffield Town Hall, apparently identical with the one that in Clacton, has been fenced off ‘to comply with health and safety’ requirements.

No town (not even sunny Clacton-on-Sea!) looks at its best in late October/early November. The beginning of August was more promising. Yes – there were some showers but we didn’t let them bother us. It was warm. There was quite a lot of sunshine too and on the Sunday we were able to lunch in an outdoor forecourt café at Barlow, a small village in the Peak District a few miles south of Sheffield.

Left - Marilyn lunches al freso in Barlow. Beside her is Andy

Right - in Rossi's. Left to Right; Jo, Andy, Siabhan, Marilyn

I saw more of Sheffield itself than I had on my previous visit. On our arrival on the Friday evening we met up with Jo, my granddaughter, and her friend Siobhan, and dined in style in Rossi's Italian restaurant. It was rainy but that didn’t really affect us. The following evening the sun came out. After dining at the Café Rouge, very obviously named with the famous Moulin Rouge in mind, an easy walk (even for me!) from the Novhotel where we were staying, we strolled round Sheffield’s compact and very attractive city centre.

The imposing City Hall dominates a landscaped pedestrianised area containing the water feature and surrounded by attractive buildings. Nearby is ‘Sheffield’s Wheel’, Yorkshire’s answer to the London Eye. Not as enormous as the ‘Eye’ it is arguably better sited than the latter, in the administrative centre of Sheffield. We found it to be an object of grace and beauty, illuminated as it was in the twilight of the dying day.

Left - The Glass House of the Botanical Gardens.

Right - Andy and myself in the Glass House

Another striking Sheffield feature to which we paid a visit on the Sunday was the Royal Botanical Gardens. Sheffield’s hilly terrain adds grandeur to the Gardens’ landscaping, and the enormous glasshouse, with its tropical and sub-tropical plants and trees, rivals those at Kew and Wisley.

But of course if you tire of the urban landscape, a little more than half an hour’s drive from Sheffield will take you into Derbyshire and the spectacular vistas of the Derbyshire Peaks. And that is where Andy drove us on the Saturday of our visit.

The other Bradwell

Everyone in Essex knows Bradwell. It’s a coastal village lying south of Clacton, long famous (or perhaps infamous) for its nuclear power station. This is now out of action but powerful forces would like to see it brought back into nuclear life. It’s a long way from Clacton by road but as the crow flies (or the nuclear fall-out cloud might drift!) it is much nearer, clearly visible across the water from Jaywick. Bradwell is also famous, among those interested in such things, for St. Peter’s on the Wall, one of England’s very oldest Saxon chapels, built by St Cedd centuries before the Norman Conquest. It is now a place of pilgrimage.

Above - we were well prepared for rain but

we experienced only showers

Below - the rood screen of Bradwell parish church

During my visit to Sheffield I was introduced to another Bradwell, in Derbyshire, about as different from our Bradwell as it could possibly be. While the Essex Bradwell lies beside the sea on the flat Essex coastal plain, its Derbyshire namesake nestles in a high valley among the Peaks and there’s not a nuclear power station, or any other industrial plant, in sight. Its church is a living place of worship that is also central to the life of the village community. This Bradwell is famous for its well dressing, a practice originating in pagan times, but taken over and successfully perpetuated as a very visible Christian witness.

Left - Well dressing with the theme Christ the healer.

Right - The Children's well dressing depicting Jacob's dream with the angels ascending and descending to an from Heaven. Children's art work surround the dressing

We arrived on Carnival Day. The weather hd effectively dampened the carnival pocession and

the fair on the village green. Our hearts ached for those whose hours of preparation had been spoiled by the weather. The rain was only fitful though and was no more than an inconvenience to us. The dressed wells were there for us to see and in the nave of the village church a fascinating arts and crafts exhibition had been arranged. Where church bells are concerned I enjoy traditional English change ringing. I have to say though that to hear those bells peeling out familiar and well-loved hymn tunes was an inspiring experience. I recall that I climbed the steep ascent to the site of the well that had been dressed by the village children, to the tune of, ‘Great is thy faithfulness, O God my Father….’

A Profitless Prophecy!

Why ever did the Met. Office forecast that we were going to have a ‘barbecue summer’, thereby inducing the popular press to persuade us all that we’d have wall to wall sunshine for week after week, and that our main summer worry would be whether the supplies of sun-cream would run out? It hasn’t been quite like that. Sensational pictures of downpours and floods (though not in our corner of north-east Essex) have accompanied press denunciations of the Meteorological Office and all its works.

In the outrage it seems to have been overlooked that we are having quite a good, if not spectacular, summer. The first few days of Clacton’s Carnival Week for instance were not only infinitely better than those of the previous two years but were, for sunshine and warmth, better than any similar consecutive days that I can recall during the past two summers. We don’t, of course, yet know what weather the late August Bank Holiday will bring but, so far, even 2009’s Bank Holidays haven’t lived up to their reputation for misery! In our corner of north-east Essex, temperatures have been above average. We’ve had plenty of sunshine. What rain we have had has been mostly in quite brief storms…. and we’ve had far fewer of those than practically anywhere else in England! If I were still an enthusiastic gardener I’d be praying for rain.

Luckily, our holiday coast’s visitors seem to have noticed the improvement even if we haven’t. Council income from beach hut hire from April to June was up by £31,000 and income received from that source in the first quarter was more than had been expected for the whole year. Tendring Council’s off-street parking income was also up by a massive £66,000. Bookings are up at our many holiday caravan sites and Clacton’s newly opened Travelodge Hotel reports that it is already well booked. The Council’s beach patrol teams report that there are many more holidaymakers on the beaches than in previous years. It would be astonishing if all this extra activity hasn’t meant merrily ringing tills in our shops, cafes and restaurants.

Last week the Clacton Gazette carried the headline 'Holiday boom at the beach……but what if the weather turns bad?'

Cheer up! Our weather isn’t ever all that much worse than ‘abroad’. There can be forest fires in France and Spain, earthquakes in Italy and Greece, avalanches in the Alps, sandstorms in Morocco, typhoons and tsunamis in the Far East and hurricanes in the Caribbean and in Florida.....and it has been known to rain in all of them! What’s more, I’d bet that the holiday resorts on Croatia’s lovely but stony Adriatic coast, would give anything for sandy tide-washed beaches like those of Clacton, Frinton and Walton!

Oh yes, and much as I enjoyed every minute of my excursions ‘up North’ and to Belgium and Germany, I’m glad to be home again in sunny Clacton-on-Sea!