Week 30.09

Tendring Topics……….on Line

The Covers are off!

The plastic covers and the scaffolding that for months have masked the façade of the converted building in Jackson Road that is to become Clacton’s Travelodge Hotel have been removed. We can now see what the hotel will look like from the outside. No doubt internal work has been simultaneously carried out and, as promised, Clacton’s latest hotel will be open and ready for business by the end of July, less than a fortnight from the posting of this blog.

The new Travelodge Hotel, opposite the ‘Clacton Gazette’ office in Clacton’s Jackson Road is nearing completion.

Everyone knows that it is what happens in August, during the school holidays, that really determines whether or not our holiday trade has a good season. The augurs are promising. While the weather has so far been a bit mixed, we have certainly already had more warm and sunny days than we had in either 2007 or 2008. We have had rain and thunderstorms but, as usual, rather less than practically anywhere else. Even when the skies have been cloudy, it has usually been warm.

Visitor numbers during those three successive spring public holidays suggest that many may be on the way, and that we may have more than the usual number of overseas visitors taking advantage of the weakness of the pound. Despite all the criticism in the correspondence columns of the Clacton Gazette, I believe that most visitors will be attracted by our town’s newly laid-out centre and will be encouraged to come again. I have been telling my German friends (who live nearly 700 miles from their nearest seaside beach!) about the Essex holiday coast’s low rainfall, welcoming piers, colourful public gardens, and miles of tide-washed sandy beaches, not to mention the proximity of historic Colchester and the lovely Stour Valley; just as I tell my English friends about the mountains and lakes, the hotels and pubs, the ancient towns and villages and the low prices, of the three-country-corner land where the frontiers (which happily no longer exist!) of Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic come together.

‘Some corner of a foreign field…….’

Nowadays, the bodies of soldiers killed in action are brought home for burial and thus do not become, as claimed in Rupert Brooke’s poem 'The Soldier', ‘some corner of a foreign field that is for ever England’. Plenty of British blood has watered Afghan furrows though, from our two disastrous adventures there in the 19th century. It has, no doubt, mingled with the Russian blood that was shed there just a few short years before our own latest campaign began.

I am writing these words on Tuesday 14th July, the day that eight bodies were flown home together, after one of the worst weeks for the British army since the Falklands War. I sometimes wonder how many British and American, not to mention Russian and Afghan, lives might have been spared had our politicians refrained from encouraging and giving covert support to those to whom we then referred as ‘the gallant Mojihadin’ but who are now the fanatical insurgents exacting a bloody daily toll from among our young soldiers. It is quite possible that British or American agents taught them how to make those simple roadside bombs currently causing so much death and destruction.

Can the present war be won? Top British and American politicians insist that it must be – but then I have little doubt that British politicians said much the same thing in 1850 and 1882, and that the same claim was made in Moscow just a few years ago. Events proved otherwise then and I very much fear that they will do the same this time….after even more lives have been lost.
I have no doubt that NATO Forces (what on earth has Afghanistan to do with the North Atlantic?) can subdue the Taliban and its allies, possibly even succeeding in eliminating all their strongholds and hiding places. But ideas (even thoroughly bad ones!) can’t be destroyed by force. I don’t believe that we can establish an Afghan government with either the inclination or the strength to eliminate in Afghanistan the pernicious doctrines of the Taliban – opposition to democracy and to freedom of speech and religion; opposition to girls receiving any education beyond religious instruction, and relegation of women to the status of personal property; slavish adherence to the most intolerant and restrictive interpretation of the Islamic Faith – the equivalent of that of the Christian iconoclasts, witch-hunters and heretic-burners of past centuries.

Opinion polls suggest that almost half of British people feel that we should pull our forces out of Afghanistan. My own instinctive feeling is the same, but I realize that that too could have disastrous consequences. After the Soviet withdrawal (‘Afghanistan is free again!’, our newspapers and politicians proclaimed) there was a not-widely-publicised bloodbath in Kabul and other Afghan cities. Those who had co-operated with the Soviet-approved regime were hunted down and slaughtered and Afghan women and girls (who had enjoyed more freedom under the Soviets than they had ever before known!) were again reduced to the status of chattels and house slaves.

Does anyone imagine that the situation would be any different if we were to withdraw our troops? Red, and Red-White-and-Blue flags look remarkably similar to Taliban zealots. They believe that both are flown by Godless infidels intent on attacking their religion and destroying their centuries old customs and culture. The conviction that God is on their side can inspire men and women to great heights of heroism – but it can also license deeds of almost unbelievable cruelty and inhumanity.

We cannot with clear consciences withdraw our forces from Afghanistan before we have found a way protecting, or evacuating, those Afghans who have embraced the ideals of freedom, equality, and self-government towards which we have urged them.

We ‘ignorant pensioners’?

Is the ‘Tendring Pensioner’ destined to replace the ‘Essex girl’ as an iconic symbol of human ignorance? It seems that the Tendring District is an area of ‘low educational achievement’ with 22 percent (about 9,500 people) having no qualifications, compared with a mere 12.5 percent across the East of England.

It’s OK though. It isn’t the up-and-coming young and middle-aged who’re ignorant. The survey has been ‘skewed’ by the large number of over-65s living in the district and, of course, they didn’t have the educational advantages that the young enjoy today! The Clacton Gazette tries, in its understanding-the-elderly way, to be helpful. ‘It is never too late for learning’ announces its ‘Comment’ column. It assures us that, ‘for those that do commit to learning later in life, they are much the richer for it and education is one of the few things in the world which, if it were universally available and availed of, can be seen as a panacea for most of the ills that infect us at home or abroad. If, at eighty-eight, I wanted to express such patronising rubbish I would certainly manage to do so rather more succinctly and literately than that!

Doesn’t it occur to whoever conducted the survey, and to those who pontificate in the columns of the press, that lack of ‘paper qualifications’ could simply mean that education authorities of fifty, sixty or (in my case) over seventy years ago didn’t distribute these qualifications quite as freely as they do today?

A class of nine-year old boys at Springfield Council School, Kitchener Road, Ipswich in 1930. I am the anxious looking little boy with glasses sitting just by the knee of the Headmaster (A Mr Offord , ‘old Pip Offord’ to us kids – behind his back, of course). I was admitted to the Northgate Grammar School a year later.

In the 1930s I was one of a minority who attended a secondary school and stayed on at school until I was sixteen. The vast majority of my contemporaries received only a primary (we called it an elementary) education and left school at 14. For them there was no ‘school leaving certificate’ but that did not mean that they were totally ignorant. Very few boys and girls in those days left school at 14 unable to read, write and do as much arithmetic as they were likely to need in later life. They also had a sketchy idea of Britain’s history and of the geography of the world, and at least some acquaintance with English classical poetry and prose including, of course, the Bible. Today’s sixteen-year-old school leavers who knew as much would certainly get some kind of a certificate.

At my secondary school we studied for the London University ‘General Schools Certificate’ which, for those who obtained high enough marks, conferred exemption from the Matriculation (minimum entrance requirement) of London University. For that reason the exam was often known simply as ‘the Matric’. To obtain the certificate we had to study and reach the pass standard in at least five subjects including English (language and literature), Mathematics (arithmetic including logarithms and stocks and-shares, algebra, geometry and trigonometry), a foreign language (at my school only French was on offer), a science, and at least one, of either history, geography or another science (general physics, chemistry, biology and, I think, a more advanced physics, were on offer). To obtain matric. exemption you had to achieve ‘credit’ level in all of those five subjects.

It will be obvious that many pupils who took the exam failed in just one or two subjects and left school without any kind of certificate. It would be absurd though to claim that, because of that, they were less well-educated than someone who left school last year with a couple of mediocre GCSEs.

I sat the exam in English, Maths, French, history, geography and ‘general physics’ (guaranteed to be about principles only, with no mathematical questions!) and passed with Matric Exemption, though only because the examiners were allowed a little latitude. They considered that my ‘Distinction’ in English outweighed my ‘lower than Credit standard’ in French! I didn’t, of course, go to London University. In 1937 that wasn’t really an option for working class pupils, but the Matric did help me to get a better job!

Oh yes, along the way to eighty-eighty I have picked up two or three other professional qualifications, including a certificate qualifying me to teach in one of those adult educational colleges so warmly recommended to us poor ignorant old pensioners by the Clacton Gazette!

Swine ‘Flu

Swine ‘Flu is in the news again. It is spreading rapidly…..and there have been some deaths. These are obviously a tragedy for the relatives and friends of the victims. For most people though, Swine ‘Flu remains a mild affliction, less serious than the ‘seasonal ‘flu’ that occurs every winter and which also always claims some deaths.

Generally with epidemics it is the very young and the very old who are most at risk. This time, although the very young are in danger the very old, like me, appear to be immune. This is, I suppose, most likely to be for the rather boring reason that we have already encountered and beaten off every possible mutation of the ‘flu virus.

I prefer to think though that on this, Charles Darwin’s anniversary year, we are being given a demonstration that ‘survival of the fittest’ is not a universal rule. We oldies, with no possible evolutionary justification for our continued existence, manage to resist swine ‘flu better than our still-young, active and virile contemporaries!

Week 19.09

Tendring Topics…..on Line

A Word about Photographs

It is only relatively recently that I have learned how to include illustrations in my weekly Tendring Topics….on Line. Since then (like a child with a new toy!) I have tried to include one or two at least, in every posting.

Mostly they are photos that I have taken myself (the two included this week for example) but at other times they are pictures that have been taken by a friend or relative. A friendly waitress took a recent family picture of a celebratory meal in a Brussels restaurant.

Mostly too, they are just included to illustrate a point that I have made in the typescript. Last week’s item about the reclamation of a piece of wasteland in Jaywick was an exception. In this case it was the pictures that were of greater importance and my words did no more than put them into context. It was therefore particularly remiss of me to fail to mention that they were taken not by me, but by my friend, Rodney Thomas. Rodney is the very competent amateur photographer who, with his wife Janet, had produced the transformation that was the subject of the article.

Rodney isn’t complaining. He says that everyone knows that the author of a blog hasn’t necessarily taken the pictures that illustrate it. As for me? I have to confess that I hadn’t given it a thought until the blog was copied, at my instigation, into our area Quaker Newsletter. There, to my consternation, I found that I was credited with the creation of those three colourful photographic illustrations! Mea culpa …my fault entirely!

Rodney and Janet insist that no apology is called for. However, I felt that I owed them, and blog readers, a word of explanation. In the future I’ll try to remember to give credit where credit is due.

Manchester in Blossom!

Manchester is the hometown of one of my daughters-in-law and of one of my best friends. I hope that neither of them will be offended if I say that it is not a city that is immediately associated with orchards fragrant with apple and cherry blossom and ‘the humming of innumerable bees’.

That though, may be about to change. My last week’s blog about the transformation of a noisome piece of waste land in Jaywick into a horticultural work of art, has inspired another of my friends to present me with a news cutting about a forthcoming similar transformation, though on a much larger scale, that is to take place in Manchester.

There the Council, prompted by the discovery that lots of little Mancunians had no idea where fruit and vegetables come from, is spending £200,000 on planting fruit and nut trees, as well as beds of herbs such as mint, parsley, thyme and sage, in all of its public parks. Together with such obvious trees as apples, pears and cherries, they intend to introduce less common fruits such as mulberries, damsons and greengages.

The trees will have signs giving their names and the right time of the year in which to harvest them.
Fruit trees blossoming in my back garden in Dudley Road, Clacton. On the left is an eating apple tree and on the right a Bramley cooking apple tree. Behind the Bramley, and obscured by it, is a damson tree. All three are very fruitful Behind them is a Japanese winter-flowering cherry and at the very back of the garden can just be seen two of four silver birches.

Also to be introduced at a number of sites are beehives for honeybees, each with a capacity of 80lbs of honey a year. If the experiment proves to be successful, hives will be provided in all parks, the council eventually producing its own honey and beeswax.

Mr Chaz Garghaly, in charge of Manchester’s Parks and Leisure Services, is reported as saying, ‘These parks are public areas and there is no reason why people shouldn’t help themselves to the produce grown’.

Manchester Council seems to me to have amazing (and very refreshing) trust in human nature. The Mancunians whom I know are charming people of unquestionable honesty and integrity. Surely though, not all of Manchester’s inhabitants are paragons. If a similar scheme were to be introduced in our area I would expect that the growing trees, shrubs and herbs would first have to face the onslaught of mindless vandals who delight in destroying or defacing anything that is of use or gives pleasure to other people. Those that escaped or survived the vandal attacks would very likely be stripped (probably prematurely) of their fruit by budding entrepreneurs intent on selling it and taking the first step towards becoming home-grown millionaires!

Is Manchester really devoid of vandals, and of unscrupulous future captains of industry and commerce? I do hope that the dreams of the City Fathers aren’t destined to turn into nightmares!

Mobile Phones

It is amazing how quickly mobile phones have become an essential part of everyday life. One of the regular hazards of negotiating a mobility scooter on Clacton’s pavements these days is dodging folk, sometimes pushing prams and with toddlers in tow, oblivious to any other user of the footpath as they stride along, deep in conversation on their ‘mobiles’.

For by far the greater part of my life mobile phones were the stuff of science fiction. The first one that I personally possessed (an eightieth birthday present!) was large and clumsy by today’s standards and had only very basic functions. Nowadays these phones will take and send photographs, send and receive emails, access the internet and probably do other exciting things of which I am not even aware. My own phone is now a compact Sony Ericsson that I use only very occasionally for phone conversations and much more frequently for text messages. How very convenient it is to be able to send a text to let someone you are visiting know your estimated time of arrival or the fact that you have been unexpectedly delayed! How useful too if you become separated from a companion when on a shopping or similar expedition, to be able to let them know your exact location!

I had recently found that the battery of my mobile phone needed recharging at ever-decreasing intervals. Simple, I thought, it needs a new battery. I’ll pop into the Clacton retail shop of my network provider (where I had bought the phone four or five years earlier) and get one. To my total astonishment I was told, ‘Sorry sir. We don’t stock batteries. You might be able to get one at the new Tesco store. Can I interest you in a new and updated model?’ No, they couldn’t. To get a new phone because the battery needed to be replaced seemed to me like getting a new car because the ashtray was full!

Nor was I inclined to go to Tesco. I didn’t fancy tackling that busy bypass on my mobility scooter, and the chance of finding the battery I needed there hardly seemed worth a taxi fare. In London over the Easter weekend, enquiries were made at a number of supermarkets and electronic retailers – no joy! I almost reconciled myself to the fact that I would have to buy a new phone.
The FunnyFone Shop, 21/23 West Avenue, Clacton-on-Sea (Tel. 01255 434664)

Then, riding my mobility scooter along Clacton’s West Avenue I noticed for the first time (I’m really not a very observant person!) a tiny shop with an odd name sandwiched between a large mobility appliance retailer and a tattoo establishment. It was the ‘FunnyFone Shop’ and, as well as selling mobile phones, it offered mobile phone repairs and accessories. I went inside, without much hope, to enquire. How could this little shop possibly help me when much larger and apparently better-stocked retailers had been unable (or unwilling) to? My enquiry met an immediate smiling reply; ‘Of course sir …….I’ll have to order it, but I should get it within two or three days. If you’ll give me your phone number I’ll let you know when it arrives’.

In fact, it arrived within twenty-four hours. My old battery was quickly replaced by the new one (another job I’d have probably ham-handedly bungled had I been left to do it myself!) and my mobile phone is as good as new. I know where I shall go in the future with mobile phone problems or when, eventually, I do decide that I need a new phone.

Swine ‘Flu…..A Pandemic?

The Mexican Swine ‘Flu epidemic which, thanks to air travel, has spread world-wide in a matter of days, succeeded in driving the continuing economic crisis and the Government’s problems, off the front pages of the newspapers, at least for day or two. From some of the press reports it might be imagined that its threat to humanity is comparable with the Medieval Black Death or with the ‘Flu Pandemic at the end of World War I that killed more people than had been the victims of four years of carnage on Europe’s battlefields and the world’s oceans.

Tabloid headlines about ‘the killer virus’ feed public anxiety. The fact is that it clearly is a highly infectious form of ‘flu but could, so far, hardly be described world-wide as a deadly one. By the end of April, although cases were being reported throughout Europe and as far afield as New Zealand, there had been only one recorded death outside Mexico, a very young child in the USA. What is more, we appear to have ample stocks of an anti-viral drug that has proved successful in combating the disease. In Europe at least it seems to be rather less of a threat to human life than the winter ‘flu with which we are all familiar.

If we find ourselves with ‘flu-like symptoms we have been advised not to go to our doctor’s surgery but to phone up and ask advice. That, I suspect, will already have resulted in the phone lines to medical centres and surgeries throughout the country being clogged with unnecessary calls, possibly blocking other more urgent ones. It is worth remembering that ‘flu is almost always distinguished from, for instance a feverish cold, by its sudden onset. You’re OK one minute and the next you’re shivery, with a blinding headache and aches and pains and pains in every limb. If the condition has gradually developed over several days then, whatever else it may be, it is unlikely to be ‘flu.

If there should be cases near your home, it would be wise to stay away from places where people are crowded together. ‘Flu is a droplet infection spread primarily by viruses in the expired breath of folk suffering from or carrying the infection. Younger people, unusually, are said to be particularly at risk. I have never, even in my younger days, been in a night club or attended ‘a rave’ but if, as they are always portrayed on tv, they are seething with excited young people, they are ideal venues for passing on ‘flu or indeed any other infection.

I had a great deal of sympathy with the British holidaymaker in Mexico who, interviewed on an almost deserted beach, said that she wasn’t catching an early plane home. She felt that she had a lot less chance of catching ‘flu where she was than on a plane crammed with fearful epidemic refugees.