Reasons, Causes, Explanations and Excuses

Readers who have followed this blog for a number of years may remember times when I have expressed feelings about the island of Ireland, its people and its history.  As I ponder these feelings and their roots, I think one of their origins dates back to a visit my wife and I made to an exhibition about the Great Famine of the 1840s-50s ... possibly to mark the 150th anniversary.  I can't recall where it was, but the pictures of the suffering have remained with me.  Then, when I discovered that the radio in my van could pick up RTÉ, I learned a lot about modern Ireland and its present culture and electoral systems.  Time knits all these things together.

I recall one particular post in which I drew a comparison between the news coverage here in England of affairs in Scotland and Wales on one hand and affairs in Northern Ireland on the other.  It seemed to me - and still does - that events on this island of Great(er) Britain were far more likely to make the news than anything happening on the island that, by default, could be described as Lesser Britain.  Less in size, means less in importance, one could imply.

It is little wonder, I feel, that some people there fear that they are 'second-class citizens' because of where they live, that they must constantly remind the authorities of their existence, their rights and the problems that are peculiar to them as a result of their location.  And yet, as the travels of the King and Queen Consort this week have underlined, Northern Ireland is just as much part of the United Kingdom as Scotland or Wales.

During all the time Brexit was being discussed, planned and negotiated, I had the feeling that the problems resulting from the land border between the UK and the remainder of the EU were being largely ignored.  One morning, I listened to a BBC news bulletin as I drove through the streets of Dublin to catch my ferry back to the UK; I shouted to the radio "But that won't work!"  I won't delve further into the specific difficulties of squaring the circle and the protestations that were made about there not being a border down the Irish Sea.

And so we are where we are today.  Here in Great Britain, there are protests - with good reason - about the lack of even the announcement of a date until after the late Queen's funeral, for a statement on the planned financial assistance regarding the energy pricing crisis.  That's a two week wait at most.  Just consider for a moment, what outcry there would be if Parliament were not to sit for six months!

And yet, that is the situation in Northern Ireland.  Since the elections earlier this year - that's one-third of a year! - the Northern Ireland Assembly has not sat.  The DUP, in its wisdom, has declared that it will not take part in the country's government until that circle has been squared, pointing out that the fact that Northern Ireland is being treated differently from the rest of the UK is an unfair discrimination between equal parts of the United Kingdom.  

In a way, their action (or, more realistically, inaction!) is little different from the striking railwaymen I wrote about last week.  It's a way of bringing their legitimate concerns to the attention of those in authority.  The difference is that while, in one case, (only) those who rely on the trains are inconvenienced, and that only for a few days and, meanwhile, other - albeit slower or more awkward or expensive - alternatives are available; in the other case, (all of) the people of Northern Ireland are being deprived of the functions of a legitimately elected devolved government.  

In each case it's not the people who have the solution in their hands who suffer the consequences.  But I leave it to you, dear reader, to decide who ought to resolve the problems, and how!

The Train Now Standing ...

Earlier this week, I watched a video about the celebration of the 150th anniversary of the Great Western Railway.  Filming took place in 1985, just a week before the closure was announced of its great engineering works at Swindon.  All that remains of that today is a network of streets of uniform houses, purpose-built in the 1830-'40s to accommodate the great numbers it had employed.

The presentation included many stories of whole generations whose lives had depended upon and benefited from the success of what many referred to as 'God's Wonderful Railway'.  Sons had joined fathers, just as years later their sons would join them, among the thousands in its workforce.  There were many who had been born in those houses, and had grown up there with no thought other than of following father and grandfather into the engineering shops.

It was said that, despite nationalisation in 1948, the camaraderie & esprit de corps was possibly stronger in 1985 than at the centenary 50 years earlier.  Tales were proudly told of annual outings and free passes for staff, of a workforce that was appreciated and therefore willing to serve.

In the middle of my home county, Norfolk, lies the village of Melton Constable.  In 2011 it had a population of just 618 but a century earlier the number was almost twice that size when it was the centre of the sprawling Midland & Great Northern Railway.  With its four arms reaching north, south, east and west from this complex junction, the M&GN was but one element of a comprehensive network of lines that covered East Anglia from the Wash to the Orwell, and from the east coast to the fens and beyond.

Its demise immediately conjures up the smiling moustachioed image of Dr. Beeching, whose report in the early 1960s led to the closure of half the nation's network.  But in the case of the M&GN the axe preceded this notorious blow to our public transport system, for virtually all of this proud network was closed in March 1959.  A steep decline had begun at the Melton works when the London & North Eastern Railway took it over in 1936 and transferred a lot of work to Doncaster and Stratford.

As at Swindon in the late 1980s, the age of corporate loyalty and service, of 'jobs for life' had gone for ever.

Towards the end of the twentieth century, it was decided to unpick nationalisation, and franchisees were sought to run segments of the railway system.  Could privatisation re-create that atmosphere of a past age?  I think the clue to the answer is in the question.  It was a past age.  Much had been lost in that particular 50-year span.  Technology in all its forms had moved on at a faster pace than ever before, and many who are of an age to remember the immediate post-war years now realise that the life of the 1990s - let alone the present day - was beyond anything they could have imagined in their youth. 

During that interval, as well as a decline in demand caused by a change in industrial and engineering patterns and the increase of road transport both for business and leisure, there had been a dramatic lack of investment in the whole organisation behind that proud lion-and-wheel BR symbol.  In many ways it was allowed to drift forward into the diesel and electric age in just the same way that it had drifted out of steam-power.

Like so much in life, the ever-present trains had become something to take for granted and in great measure no envious thought was given to what had already been lost in the 'sixties, 'seventies and 'eighties.  No one, it seems, had given a thought to the possibility that the falling away of demand had led to reduced earnings, and a lower than necessary level of maintenance.  The system was on its knees by the time private companies were invited to take it on, with all the attendant extra expense of corporate organisation, dividends to shareholders and the level of executive salaries to those running them.

Fast forward a couple of decades and more, and the situation is worse rather than better.  Fares have been pushed up as much as the franchisees can get away with, but even so, there's not enough income to meet the true cost of running the railways.  Yes, there are plush new stations and (more franchises) attractive catering booths at the bigger stations, but many of the smaller ones have become unmanned halts of the very simplest of designs, with nowhere to buy a ticket and no security whatsoever.  

These facilities would require a greater workforce but, as we're seeing at the present time, the workforce they do have are not being paid all that they feel entitled to, given the present increases in living costs and rising inflation.  With their financial hands tied, and a government unable or unwilling - or both - to inject further support, the management are unable to play a realistic part in negotiations to achieve the modernisation that they see is vital to the continued development of the service.

And so, when plans are made to make a certain journey in the coming months, when it would be good to 'Let the train take the strain', my first thought - and that of thousands of other potential passengers - is to the car, and the already clogged motorways.

Felix Domesticus

Cod Latin it may be, but few will fail to understand the translation of my title this week.  There are an estimated 12 million of the little darlings in this country, and over a quarter of our households admit to owning at least one of them.

I readily confess to having been one of those owners in my past.  I admit, too, that I wasn't the most responsible of cat owners.  It seemed like a nice idea at the time and accommodated the needs of a friend who was embarrassed by the arrival of another litter, but he was soon relegated to the level of a household possession that required regular attention, like the hoover and the washing machine.

Cartoonists often portray believable contrasts between cats and dogs, the one being fiercely independent, purposeful and single-minded, the other loyal, loving, malleable and 'man's best friend'.  I find these amusing as well as true to life (as I see it), and readily share them on social media.  

But what's my own experience, now I'm no longer a cat-owner?  I quickly became aware that my next-door neighbour has two cats.  Even without the visual evidence, proof of feline proximity was an early discovery as I began to clear the vegetation from the garden before turning it into a 'low-maintenance courtyard'.  While I was still collecting redundant vegetation, the green bin was a convenient disposal route but sadly, once the granite chips had been installed, the arrival of excrement continued.

One day in a fit of rage I gathered the unwanted offering and flung it over the fence, returning it whence it came.  It was followed at the earliest opportunity by an apology and, in the ensuing conversation, I learned that after seventeen years of utilising this convenience the culprit was unlikely to change his habits, despite the existence of adequate and well-attended indoor facilities.  We agreed a mutually acceptable disposal procedure - a more civilised 'over-the-fence' method - and so the status quo continues.

Probably due in great measure to this situation, I feel no affection for this hairy black quadruped.  Often as I sit by my window, I find myself under the gaze of two green eyes observing my every action and giving me the feeling that my negative emotions are reciprocated in full.

Beyond two fences, the neighbour whose house is in the next street has two dogs.  They, too, follow the cartoonist's stereotypes and are quite content to adorn their owner's yard,  They're also vocal, unlike my black sentry-on-the-fence with his cold and silent stare and, if I should venture outside, they lose no opportunity to announce my emergence to the whole neighbourhood, to their owner's annoyed embarrassment.

If nothing else, my experience has made me glad that my tenancy has a 'no pets' clause, reinforcing my own preference for solitude and protecting me against any lapse in this resolve.

A Link, but no Connection

One of the delights of one who doesn't have a TV is watching my own choice of YouTube videos.  Most evenings you will find me sitting in the lounge as the skies in the east are already beginning to darken, looking at a small screen and enjoying a variety of familiar productions, some that I have followed for years, others that are very much 'on trial' and if I find they're not so interesting as I first thought, I can easily 'unsubscribe' with no penalty.

Occasionally my cousin will recommend something she's seen on one of the independent TV channels.  (She knows that, without a TV licence, I'm not allowed to watch BBC programmed even on catch-up.)  One such occasion was last weekend, as a result of which I spent an enjoyable hour-and-a-half the other night watching an excellent tribute to the longest-running TV comedy, "The Last of the Summer Wine". 

After a run of 37 years, it's now some while since the very last episode, and many of the stars - people like Bill Owen, Peter Sallis, Thora Hird, and Kathy Staff - have died but, in the memories of many. the stories of their characters live on. I fondly recall leaving church on Sunday evenings and calling on a former work colleague in the village to watch the programme with her and her husband before returning to my TV-less home

The series was filmed in the town of Holmfirth, which, I now find, is only about 20 miles from my new home.  I've only been there once in the past, to deliver a consignment of solar panels to a private house in the town.  The firm who sold them was a regular user of the courier firm for whom I worked before retirement and, as a gesture of co-operation with them, we agreed to wear their shirts when delivering for them.  Of course, when the contract came to an end these shirts were no longer of use and, given its quality, mine has retained a place in my wardrobe.

By an amazing coincidence, I now realise that, on the evening when I watched that tribute to 'LOTSW' as it is affectionately known, I happened to be wearing that very garment!  Now I realise its proximity, I may well take a trip to Holmfirth again, to take a closer look at a picturesque place that played an entertaining part in a phase of my life that's now long gone.

The 'Silly Season'

I think it was half a lifetime ago in 1985, during my brief flirtation with newspaper distribution, that I first heard that expression.  The revelation was prompted by the variety of main headlines on the front pages, some of them at first glance seeming complete nonsense.  "They call it the silly season," I was told, "because there's no news, and the writers will grab at almost anything to fill the papers."

No news - nothing happening - what nonsense!  There's plenty to talk about: war in Ukraine and the knock-on effects on both food supply and energy prices; problems in the NHS, and the associated non-availability of an ambulance when you want one because they're all queued up at A&E; train strikes and the apparent impossibility of dispute resolution, meanwhile people can't get to work because the railways aren't running.

And any positive action to resolve some of these problems is apparently at a standstill.  As one person put it, we have a zombie government.  And why?  The whole nation has to wait while a couple of hundred thousand people - less than 0.5% of the electorate - decide who should be the next Prime Minister.  With all these important matters to be attended to - to say nothing of the climate crisis - we have to ask, why does the key step of replacing the PM have to be strung out over two months when, with a bit of re-structured decision-making, the same body of people could have been given a greater choice and a new appointment could have been made within a week.

It is, indeed, the silly season.  And on the home front, as with newspapers, there is no news.  Out of the blue, I had a phone call the other night from a distant cousin, and we fell to discussing my 'new' home and how it compared to the one that she and her husband have inhabited for the last few decades (they're now in their mid-to-late eighties).  I happened to speak of the shed at the end of my back yard, and my reluctance to go into it.  Her home backs onto open countryside, and her immediate reaction was that I should beware of rats ... a problem they have to contend with constantly.

I recalled this conversation this morning, as I looked out of my window.  I had described to her the contrast between the view to the front over a small estate built in the 1960s or -70s, and that to the rear, overlooking the backways of the neighbouring street and an Edwardian terrace, built to accommodate workers in the nearby coal-mines.  I now reflect on the way that my present front vista resembles that where I grew up.  We lived by the roundabout, so our window presented a view along a road, rather than of houses directly opposite.  Here too, there is a roundabout, albeit not circular.  There there was a lamppost on the roundabout, here illumination is from a street lamp mounted on one side of the junction, and on the roundabout is a telegraph pole.

What a contrast between my quiet street, part of what is, in effect, a cul-de-sac and the madness of the wider world, where there is panic about getting from A to B, and the real or foreseen dilemma about finding food for the family or heating the home.

But it's the silly season.

When 'in between' was Actually Last, and Far, Far Away

How are you coping with the heat?  I don't suppose I'm the first to ask you that question this summer.  You've probably asked it a number of times yourself, to family, friends, or those who might be in need.  Many have compared it to our experiences in 1976 and the water companies have just said that there will be no stand-pipes in the street this time around.  We await the proven truth of that undertaking.

For me, just toward the end of that long summer spell in '76, came I enjoyed my very first business trip away from home.  The company I worked for had just been taken over by an American firm and, as part of the deal, their UK subsidiary in Southampton was to be closed, and their operation there was to be brought up to Norfolk and 'lodged' with our factory.  I was one of two employees who were sent to Southampton for ... I think it was a week, possibly less ... during which time we were supposed to absorb, by note-taking and memorising, all their administrative processes so that, along with just one member of their staff who was going to spend a short while after the move 'bedding it in', we could reproduce the operation in its new home.

It was an exciting time for me but, like so many well-made plans, it didn't all work out as it should have.  The details have by now evaporated in the mists of the last forty-six years, but - in the strange way that memory works - thinking of that project has moved me to recall another business trip, roughly at the halfway point between then and now, which was possibly my last one.  At the very least it was as part of my last employment before I turned to driving for a living, which was a long period of nothing but business travel, but in a completely different dimension.

In a way, these two trips bookend a career that involved many instances of a business moving from one location to another.  

Granada Inn, Santa Clara, CA
where I stayed for 2 weeks

My employer had engineered an investment in a company involved in the 'dot-com bubble', so where else would my journey be but to California.  

The Seattle office on10th Ave, East

The firm's vice-presi-dent and principal investor wanted to move the company to his own home town of Seattle.
My job was to liaise with the bookkeeper at the California office, absorb as much as I could of their administration (is this beginning to sound familiar?) and act as their accountant once the business moved, until a CFO could be recruited in Seattle.

North Bend, WA

Elliott Bay, WA

In the event, my sojourn in the US, planned for up to three months, was only for four weeks, because the recruiting process was far more effective than had been anticipated, and I spent the second fortnight actually handing over what I'd learned to the lady who would be doing the job 'for real'.  Even so, I still had plenty of time for sightseeing!

I started this off by thinking about the heat.  One of the YouTube videos I watch regularly is put out by a man who lives in California, not all that far from where I'd been.  

In this week's episode, he was bemoaning the fact that it was too hot to work outside at 96°F (that's almost 36°C).  He said he'd recently been somewhere where it was 'quite cool at 72°F' (a rather pleasant 22°C) "I like the heat," he said, "but you have to work up to it."  His comment reminded me of my experience 22 years ago.  When I arrived - it was to have been on 4th July, but someone realised in time that that was a holiday, so I was sent a week later - I was almost afraid to go beyond the extent of the shadow outside the building.  A few days later I was happily walking around the town, and on one afternoon I willingly stood on a street corner after work, in full sunlight, waiting for a lift.

I'm not saying I particularly want to get used to this level of heat but, if needs must, it's good to have that memory to fall back on, and know that - within limits, and with sensible precautions - the body can cope with the odd extreme, if taken gently.

She was Already There, Just Waiting for me!

I focus this week on a fortunate happenstance in my labours over the (now famous) eighteen children of the Kerridge family.  Like many young people growing up in rural Suffolk in the dying years of the nineteenth century, Arthur Kerridge had migrated to London in the 1890s.  In my earlier - very hurried - work on the family, I'd found him in Paddington in 1901 and in Stoke Newington in 1911.

Earlier this year, as I've narrated here from time to time, I began to consolidate my earlier research into those eighteen siblings, one of whom was Arthur.  When his turn came, I decided to try out a technique I'd read about concerning the 1921 Census.  Once an initial search has confirmed the identity of the person you're looking for, a limited amount of additional information can be obtained without paying a fee to see the original entry, or even the transcription of it.

Having found Arthur with the confidence of seeing the correct year and place of his birth faithfully presented, I was thus able to obtain two female names in the same household.  It was reasonable to assume that one might be his wife and the other his daughter.  I next looked for the birth of a Kerridge daughter in the years 1911 to 1921, using first one name and then the other.  The family name is sufficiently rare that there was only one index entry that fitted, and I thus discovered that the mother's maiden name was Millership, and this was confirmed by finding a marriage entry a short while before.  I entered the marriage and the birth into my records, and successfully went on to find the good lady's birth entry.

The final step was to see where she had been from birth to marriage.  I looked for this rather unusual name in 1911, noted the reference and found the place to enter it in my records.  I have now to link my amazement with the admission of my blinkered examination of the family I'd just found in my search.  I discovered that they were already entered there ... along with a boarder named Kerridge!  I now had the answer to the unasked question: how did he meet his wife?

I recall writing here about an earlier example of a pre-recorded discovery, so I had decided against telling this story here today.  However, as I look back over a busy week, I notice a couple of similar 'already there' situations, which I can now add  for interest.

I wrote last week about wrestling with QuickBooks, in an attempt to revitalise an account that hadn't been used for some years.  Apart from the historic entries already in the system, another problem I face is my aim to utilise the program to record information relative to a number of different sectors of an operation.  It appears - and I hope I will be proved wrong - that the field where this information can be input is not available when entering bank receipts and payments ... which is one of the key areas of what a charity does!

On Thursday, I faced the possibility of having to revise every single transaction that I'd already entered, but yesterday I looked again at one of the reports that I'd printed out in my efforts to establish what was going wrong.  I noticed that in one column was listed the totals, by account, of all the entries that didn't have this information.  All I had to do was to transfer these numbers - about 40 of them - to the right place and ... Bingo!  The next report I ran had all the results I'd expected to see, and nothing that was unwanted.  It appears to be 'all systems go' from here on.

I also mentioned last week a lull in my work for WEBBS.  It came to an end earlier this week.  When I received a second assignment the other day, I was warned that one chapter would need to be re-typed because the original had been over-written by half of the next chapter.  As I looked into it, I wondered how this could have happened.  I have no proof, of course, but it did seem possible that the 'save' operation offers the name of the file last saved.  Suppose the typist had got halfway through the following chapter and needed to take a break for a meal, perhaps, or simply to ease the mind.  It's the easiest thing to simply hit 'return' instead of keying in a new filename, especially if fatigue had been building.  There was already a name on the screen ...

So, having realised just how common this phenomenon is, I'm now wondering what next I shall look for when it's right under my nose ... for good or ill.