Week 32 2012

Tendring Topics.........on Line

Two Grandsons……….and ‘The World-Wide Web’!

Nick and his Belgian girl-friend Romy in a Brussels Restaurant

            Since the death of my wife in 2006 my two grandsons, Chris and Nick have played an important, and very positive, role in my life.  Nick, who holds an honours degree in photography from Westminster University, was for some years the European Travel Commission’s On Line Sales Manager and subsequently the ETC’s acting Executive Director.  He is now the founder and managing director of SE1 Media Ltd, a consultancy for all involved in tourism and world-wide travel. 

         It was he who established the blogspot www.ernesthall.blogspot.com and web site www.ernesthall.net  on which, every week for the past four years, I have published this blog.  I now know from Google that I have readers in the UK and throughout the world – in Russia, the USA, most western European countries and as far afield as Peru,  Australia, China and Japan.

Heather Gilbert (destined to become Heather Hall) as I first knew her, aged fifteen. A line drawing by elder Grandson Chris

    His elder brother Chris earned an Honours Degree in art after studying in Boston, USA and Camberwell College of Art in London.  He has for several years lived and worked in  Taiwan, teaching English to children and adults.  He speaks Mandarin fluently and a couple of years ago was declared Teacher of the Year by the educational organisation that employs him.  It was Chris who first involved me with the internet.  I had never touched a computer before I was eighty and when I first had one I used it strictly as a word processor and for sending and receiving mostly family emails.  He realized how much I was missing his Grandma and how much I needed some creative activity to fill the gap left by her death.             

For that first Christmas, using an old photograph as a reference he made me a  pencil drawing of Heather as the still-fifteen year old schoolgirl that she had been when I first met her.  That pencil drawing stirred my memory in a way that a photograph could never have done. I was deeply grateful and have it framed in my home today.  He then remembered that I had an enormous collection of photographs both recent and from years past.   He arranged for me to have a Flickr site on the web where I could post copies all of my photographs, each with a commentary, for all the world to see.

Chris receives his 'Teacher of the Year' award. 

And so I have done!  Over the years I have scanned into my computer and posted on my Flickr pages some four hundred photos, many taken by me but some by others; a few from years before my time!  Some are of historic interest.  There is, for instance, a photo that I took on holiday in Jugoslavia in 1980 of the famous Turkish pack-horse bridge in Mostar before it was destroyed in the Civil War, others of the sea off Clacton-on-Sea beach when it froze over during one memorable winter, glimpses into boys’ and girls’ classrooms in primary schools in the 1930s, one of a passenger hovercraft on Calais beach in the 60s, and one of my father in 1901 as  one of Queen Victoria’s redcoats,  a dashing newly recruited trooper in the 17th Lancers!

 Nor is it only pictures of obvious public interest that attract viewers’ attention.  Here is a very ordinary picture of my wife and I in 1991 when I was seventy and she was 67.   Only yesterday (2nd August) I received the following email from someone whose memory had been stirred while browsing through my photographic collection.  Here is the picture and what she had to say about it:

What a lovely picture. This is how I remember you at the Quakers Meeting house in Clacton. I'd recently lost my dad and was seeking solace. Heather and Ernest, you were both so welcoming and friendly thank you.  I'm sorry to read that Heather is no longer with us.x

            Thank you dear viewer! 

If you haven’t yet made the acquaintance of my Flickr site, here is the web address. www.flickr.com/photos/ernestbythesea   Perhaps, if you have half an hour or so to spare, you too would find something of interest there: Chris gave me that rather romantic Flickr identity because, so he said, all the appropriate but more mundane, names were already in use

Some thoughts on Higher Education

            Blog readers may be interested in the thoughts on ‘Higher Education’ of a regular fellow reader who had attended state primary and secondary schools, had gone on to University and had done well both there and later in life.  These thoughts were inspired by the contention of another former fellow graduate that, ‘Since LEA grants have been abolished Cambridge Uni has once again reverted to being the social network where public schoolboys make their connections to further their future privileged lifestyles. Perhaps I'm exaggerating but I'm sure that those of us from the state sector, who went there to tackle the academic subjects on offer, raised the standard’.

            My correspondent has a rather more positive outlook than that on private education in ‘Public Schools’.   He believes that:   Yes, there is a lot of social networking for the furtherance of privilege, but I couldn’t help but feel that the “upper class” had actually had a better education – not necessarily in their specialist subjects – but in just about everything else that matters:- self-confidence, eloquence, ambition, breadth of knowledge, general knowledge in the arts (even though they were scientists) and social skills. Frankly, these are  things that don’t demand an IQ of 150 or cost a lot of money to impart, and state schools would do well to take on board.

 State schools tend to turn out a handful of brilliant geeks with no breadth of knowledge or social skills at all, together with a huge number of people who don’t meet the first criteria for public contact work - which is being well presented, polite and able to converse intelligently with customers, speaking grammatically without resorting to swear words or text speak. Later the ‘brilliant geeks’ can’t understand why they  don’t get to be Managing Directors, Cabinet Ministers or High Court Judges while those who don’t meet the basic requirements for public contact work find themselves beaten to a job in a coffee shop by almost any Polish migrant!

            I think that both  those Cambridge alumni exaggerate a little.  I’m pretty certain for instance that my correspondent (who as it happens, is a managing director) does not consider himself to be a ‘brilliant geek’.  Nor, though I left a state school at the age of 16, do I believe that, even then, I was a total barbarian. Thanks to an inspiring English teacher I did leave school with an appreciation of English Language and Literature and, through wide reading, a considerable store of general knowledge. I knew very little about either either art or music though and  I was agonisingly shy and certainly lacking in self-confidence, eloquence and social skills.  Nor did seven years in the army (in the barrack room, not in the officers’ or even the sergeants’ mess!) do anything to remedy those deficiencies, though I hope that over the years I have managed to counter some of them.

            I am not at all sure that they are qualities that can be instilled in state day schools to pupils with non-privileged backgrounds, though I would very much like to think they can be.  Pupils at posh boarding schools are exposed to the school’s ethos for twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week during term time – and probably spend their holidays in an atmosphere of culture and privilege. State day-school pupils are exposed to their school’s ethos for only about six hours a day for five days a week. For some unfortunate kids the rest of the time may well be spent in an atmosphere that accords with the late Air-Marshal Hermann Goering’s remark ‘When I hear the word Culture, I reach for my revolver’.  It is hardly surprising that, in some fields, they are virtually unemployable.

Olympics Fever!

           Among my possessions is a certificate to the effect that Hall E, of the 5^th Form of the Northgate Secondary School for Boys, Ipswich swam a distance of one mile on a date in July 1936.  I also possess the Bronze Lifesaving Medallion of the Royal Life Saving Society, presented to me during that same year.  They comprise the record of the sole athletic and physical achievements of my school-days. I have always been uniformly useless at gymnastics, athletics, rugby, hockey, cricket and tennis. 

            I had therefore imagined myself to be totally immune to the epidemic of Olympics Fever  (Pyrexia Olympica to the scholarly) currently sweeping the country.    Certainly I showed no signs of the early symptoms exhibited by tens of thousands of others when ‘The Olympic flame’ made its leisurely progress through the country on its way to the Olympic Stadium in London. ‘What possible connection’, I asked myself rhetorically. ‘can that gas flame within an aluminium holder being paraded round Britain, have with the flame that had been ignited by the rays of the sun, hundreds of miles away in Olympus a week or so earlier?

            I was amazed when thousands of apparently rational people turned out in wind and rain to watch and cheer its passing, and when locally, Tendring District Council and the local press were so upset when they learned  that the towns of the Tendring Peninsula – Clacton, Frinton, Walton, Harwich and Brightlingsea – were to see nothing of its progress.  I was quite pleased that local residents were to be spared the resultant traffic congestion and expense.  I pride myself on keeping a finger on the local pulse.  On this occasion it clearly wasn’t!

             The Olympics Opening Ceremony, which I thoroughly enjoyed and said so in this blog, did nothing to arouse my fears of contracting Olympics Fever.  Britain had produced Shakespeare and Milton, Isaac Walton, Isambard Brunel, Florence Nightingale and the NHS.  It was only fair to leave gymnastic and athletic prowess to other nations.

            The first symptoms appeared within a couple of days of the Games beginning.  The fact that Great Britain (I hadn’t yet quite reached the stage of saying ‘we’!) had not yet been awarded a gold medal, began to arouse a certain disquiet. Surely we (it was just beginning to creep into my vocabulary!) would get one soon.  Over the weekend (3^rd to 5^th August) I realized that I was severely infected.  I found myself glued to the telly, willing our girl, or our fellow, to win.  I was delighted when they did, dismayed when they didn’t, and found myself wondering why we were only in third place on the league table.  What’s so special about those Chinese and those Yanks that we can’t beat them?  Perhaps in Rio?

            Oh dear; obviously a severe case of Olympics Fever, an affliction for which there's no known cure!   However I am assured that the more distressing symptoms are likely to disappear within the next few days and that I should be back to normal by the end of the month.   What a relief!    

  

           

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Week 12.09

Tendring Topics……on Line

A Second Career

My elder grandson Chris whom, a month or two ago, I announced with some pride had been designated ‘Teacher of the Year’ in Taipei, Taiwan, had never intended to be a teacher. He was an art graduate and had studied his subject in Boston, USA, and in London. After graduation he had hoped to obtain a post as an editorial illustrator. These were few and far between and he decided to fill in time and to see a bit more of the world by teaching English, first in main-land China and subsequently in Taiwan. It was just a ‘fill-in’ job; he didn’t for a moment expect that he would enjoy doing it.

But he did. And he found that he was very good at it. Before leaving England he had had a Taiwanese girl friend and had learnt a little Mandarin. He built on that and within a few months was speaking it fluently and making progress with the incredibly difficult Chinese written language. He teaches both little children (four years old upwards) and mature students and finds both groups responsive and eager to learn. He likes living in Taiwan, has a pleasant apartment, a very attractive girlfriend, and satisfaction in his work. How many people in their late twenties can say as much?

He hasn’t forgotten his art though and uses his skills as a teaching aid. After the death of my wife Heather, nearly three years ago now, I gathered together short passages of verse and prose that she had written down in half a dozen notebooks throughout the greater part of her adult lifetime, and had them printed and published as Heather’s Treasure. I needed a picture to go on the first page and asked him if he would prepare for me a line drawing of his Grandma, using a photo of her in her mid-sixties as a reference. He was happy to do so……see below:
I was very pleased indeed with it and used it as planned. Remembering how pleased I had been, he gave me, as a surprise present the following Christmas, another drawing that he had made of his Grandma as the fifteen year old schoolgirl she had been when I first met her on 3rd September 1939.

Once again he had used an old photograph as a reference and I found the result emotionally overwhelming. His drawing brought memories flooding back to me in a way that the photograph could never have done. Both the original drawings (A4 size) are now framed and proudly on display.

Three or four months ago, during the course of an email correspondence, I asked him if he might possibly find the time to do a companion drawing of myself to accompany them. I suggested as a reference a photo that had been taken in Wenceslas Square, Prague on my visit there with his Dad and brother the previous year.

Knowing how busy Chris always is I then pushed the matter to the back of my mind. I was therefore both surprised and delighted when, a fortnight ago at the family get-together in Brussels, he handed me the finished drawing. I can’t say how pleased I am with it. I’m no art expert (you probably knew that already from my comments about ‘modern art’!) but I feel that, if anything, his techniques have improved over the three drawings and that the last one is even better than its predecessors.

Perhaps in Chris’ experience there is a lesson for other graduates who are finding it difficult to get the job they want in the current economic climate. Don’t be too proud, or too diffident, to take work in another field if you can get it. You’ll gain experience and other skills. You may find that you’re enjoying the ‘stand-in’ job……..and you may still get opportunities to use your university studies to advantage.

A ‘Mayflower’ Replica for Harwich?

Would a full-size (110ft long and 25ft tall) replica of ‘The Mayflower’, that transported ‘the Pilgrim Fathers’ to North America in the early 17th Century attract sufficient visitors to Harwich to justify its estimated cost of £4 million (give or take a few hundred thousand!) A consortium of local businessmen thinks that it would. They are actively pursuing funding for the project that would, it is estimated, take between eighteen months and three years to complete. It would, they believe, bring throngs of visitors to the town and be good both for trade and for tourism.

My first thoughts were almost equally enthusiastic. In my mind I pictured the cloned ‘Mayflower’ moored in Harwich Harbour, looking just as the original vessel did when she took those 17th century emigrants across the Atlantic. Visitors would be invited to inspect the cramped living and sleeping quarters of the passengers and crew, and imagine themselves on board during a mid-Atlantic storm!

Access could be through a well-planned ‘visitors’ centre’ on the quay (I’m sure that room could be found for it) which would have a colourful display relating to the voyage of the ‘Mayflower’ and its passengers, and information about the other places of historical and cultural interest in Harwich and in the Stour Valley. Visitors from the USA’s northern states, for example, would have their attention drawn to Dedham, with its close links with Dedham Mass. and its splendid Sherman House, ancestral home of the celebrated Civil War general. Tickets of admission to the Mayflower, souvenirs, memorabilia and literature would, of course, be available for sale.

Second thoughts though have introduced doubts into my mind. Would it, in fact, attract throngs of visitors? It would certainly be of great interest to citizens of the USA and to many folk from other parts of Britain. I doubt though if many visitors from mainland Europe, from China or Japan or, indeed, from Latin America, would be very interested. While on holiday on the Continent would you go out of your way to visit the replica of a ship that took early Spanish emigrants to Mexico, Portuguese settlers to Brazil or French colonists to Canada? I hardly think so.

I wonder what percentage of visitors to Harwich does come from the USA? The replica of the ‘Mayflower’ would certainly increase that percentage but I wonder if the increase would be sufficient to justify the production of a replica. Other magnets for Trans-Atlantic tourists are Stratford-on-Avon and Plymouth, the latter being more closely associated in the public mind with the Pilgrim Fathers than Harwich is. Sadly, from a London base, Harwich is in the opposite direction!

I still very much like the idea of a replica ‘Mayflower’ being permanently on display in Harwich and wish the project all success. I am just a little doubtful though as to whether or not it could prove to be a commercial success.

Charitable Giving

If I had responded positively to every appeal from thoroughly deserving charities that I have received during the past few months, either my largesse would have had to have been spread so thinly that it would have hardly covered the postage costs of sending me each appeal, or I would have been so impoverished that I would now need to send out begging letters myself!
No, these nine appeals, all from thoroughly deserving charities, didn't all arrive on my doormat at the same time. They were delivered over a period of ten days. There's no delivery on Sunday so that was an average of one appeal a day!

I am sure that I am not alone in being unable to respond to every appeal that comes through my post box. I do give regularly, and as generously as I can, to three or four national and local charities. I also have a ‘Quaker Peace and Service' collecting box into which I put a few coins from time to time. They add up to a worthwhile sum by the end of the year.

Charities have been hit even harder than the rest of us by the current economic depression and seem to have redoubled their appeals in recent weeks. Some of them employ tactics that antagonise and may, I think, in the long run do them more harm than good.

I don’t like the ones that try to hold our attention by including a somewhat spurious questionnaire with their appeal, together with a ball-point pen for its completion. Worse are those who include a small gift; a bracelet, a few greetings cards, address labels, or a shopping bag; sprats aimed at catching mackerel!

These gifts I either use or pass on to a friend, feeling a little guilty as I do so. Very occasionally, when it seems to be for a particularly worthy cause, their sprat does net a very small mackerel from me, even though I know that this will result in my receiving regular heart-rending appeals from that charity for evermore!

Then there are the Charities which tape two or three small coins to their letters of appeal, calculating that even the most Scrooge-like of us would feel guilty about pocketing a few coppers from an obviously hard-up charity. They’re quite right too. I couldn’t do it. However I don’t feel any guilt about putting those few coins into my Quaker Peace and Service collection box, telling myself as I do so, that it is just a case of one very worthy charity helping out another equally worthy one!