Tag Archives: memories

November, F1 and The Big Move

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Once again, we are back in that time of the year that I so dislike. It’s cold and getting colder. We’ve already had the two worst days of the year, in my book anyway. Hallowe’en and bonfire night.

How Hallowe’en has been sprung on to us I really don’t know. I’ve always thought of it as just an excuse for kids to knock on my door and demand sweets. When I was a child I don’t think I had ever even heard of Hallowe’en. Certainly no one I knew dressed up and knocked on doors expecting sweets. These days it seems to be a major event with shops full of Hallowe’en themed produce.

Back in the 1960s my childhood friends and I did put together a ‘guy’ and push it down to the local shops in an old pram where we exhibited our creation – basically a dummy made up of old clothes stuffed with rags and paper – to various passing shoppers in the hope that they would toss us a few coppers. Anyway, these days I turn out the lights and never answer the door on Hallowe’en and just turn up the volume on the TV on bonfire night.

F1

What is rather odd about the current F1 season is that here we are in November and there are still three races left on the calendar. I don’t subscribe to the Sky F1 channel so to watch F1 I have to wait for the highlights edition from Channel Four on terrestrial TV. Now we’re at the end of the season which really is going on far too long these days. C4 don’t even bother to send their usual crew to these last far away races. No David Coulthard and Lee McKenzie hosts the show from somewhere in London. There is a real feeling, certainly for me at any rate, that I’m ready for the season to be over. Twenty three races is just far too many. It must be difficult for the teams too as they have to get their new cars ready for the next season.

Even so it’s been quite an interesting season. Some time ago Lewis Hamilton left Mercedes to drive for Ferrari and Mercedes promoted young newcomer Kimi Antonelli to fill the vacant seat. George Russell must clearly have felt that now he was the Mercedes number one driver and given a good car he would be able to challenge for the world championship. Sadly for George things just didn’t turn out like that because Kimi has turned out to be a real natural talent and only a few weeks ago locked out the championship despite there being three races remaining. George was apparently so unsettled by this turn around of events that he declined to attend the post race press conference earning himself a 5000 euro fine at the Mexican Grand Prix. I’m not sure what that actually says about George. Was he that upset that he couldn’t answer questions about the new boy becoming the world champion?

Kimi Antonelli is the youngest ever world champion at only 20 years of age and he is actually only the third ever Italian world champion. The previous one was Alberto Ascari in in 1953 and before that Nino Farina in 1950 who was the sport’s first ever world champion.

The big disappointment of 2026 has to be the performance of the Aston Martin team. Top designer Adrian Newey who designed the race winning Red Bull cars of the past few years was lured to Aston Martin by billionaire owner Lawrence Stroll. However, despite a massive pay packet, the Aston Martin team have gradually moved from the back of the grid to round about the middle and it has taken them all season to do that. Fernando Alonso is the oldest driver on the grid and he seems set to stay on for another year in pursuit of a last championship or a last race win. Alonso has a lot of talent as a driver but he also has another talent which is choosing the wrong team to drive for. If only he had stuck it out at McLaren. Still, it would be nice to see Fernando on the podium once again.

The Big Move

This week I’ve decided that it’s time to give up my rented house in Manchester and move full time to St Annes on the Fylde coast. What has been really difficult is getting everything packed up ready for the move. I’ve been back and forth to the tip so many times getting rid of stuff that has been in this house for years. My mum and dad moved here in the mid 1980s. Prior to that we lived in Handforth but dad still worked in Manchester, cycling to work in all kinds of weather. When they moved back here he was happy for a while, especially as he was near to his brother, my uncle Raymond. Sadly, not long after moving Raymond died and dad was crushed.

He felt, I suppose, how I felt when my brother Colin died. Colin was younger than me so I just always assumed it would be me who would go first. Colin and I used to meet up in Manchester for a few beers and a wander around all our old city centre haunts. In recent years he found he couldn’t walk far so we tended to go to a local pub that was just a short bus ride away. Sometimes he would just get a taxi to my place where I could try out my limited cookery repertoire on him. The last time I ever saw him I cooked pizza from scratch and I’m happy to say it was a pretty nice meal.

One Last Memory

A lot of years ago I wrote a poem about the last dog that mum and dad ever had. He was a rescue dog called Bouncer as apparently, he was continually bouncing up and down. If that was the case dad certainly cured him of that.

The King of the garden is dead

And now the vultures come

For once before they would fear to tread

But not now, now the King is dead.

 

The King was a battered mongrel dog

Who kept his enemies at bay

And no cat would dare to enter his domain

Whatever the time of day

 

The cats roam fearless now

And in the midday sun can quietly lie

Or dance and play upon the ground

Under which the King’s bones do lie.

 

His memory seems to linger though for when I spied a feline gang

And called out ‘CATS’ as in days gone by

Tomcat, tortoiseshell and tabby too

Pelted hell for leather and rushed away

 

Now once again they fear to tread

This garden, this hallowed ground

And that mongrel dog, that former King

Who kept this land free from cats -His memory still lives on

Bouncer made sure no cat would ever trespass on the back garden and even today I too chase away the cats. Bouncer outlived my dad otherwise dad would have buried Bouncer in a corner of the garden somewhere.

Good job really. I wouldn’t want the cats to dance on his grave when I’m gone.

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Bob, Butch and Consequences

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Just lately I’ve been seeing a lot of those silly videos involving cats. Cats dancing to that old track by Bronski Beat, cats working in a coffee shop and slurping the milk and so on. I’ve written about cats in the past so I think it’s time for a quick post about dogs.

Here we go.

Looking back to my childhood, one thing I’ll always remember is our dog, Bob. My brother and I always wanted a dog and one day I remember playing outside, waiting for Mum and she came towards us holding a wicker basket and in the basket was Bob, a mongrel puppy but, according to my dad, ninety per cent Manchester Terrier.

He was named Bob because all my dad’s pet dogs were called Bob. There was Old Bob, before him there was Even Older Bob and then the Last Bob. Presumably if there had been one before him, he would have been In-between Bob.

Anyway, we grew up, my brother and I with Bob. He was a wonderful dog and we had some great times together. In the late 1960s we moved from Wythenshawe to Handforth, a distance of just over five and a half miles and after a few days in our new home Bob disappeared. We searched and searched but couldn’t find him. We went to the Police and the officer suggested that maybe Bob had gone back to our old house. “What? All the way to Manchester?” we asked.

“It’s been known!” he said.

We had no car so we walked back to our old house, and believe me it felt like a lot more than five miles. The neighbours had seen Bob about and after waiting a while he turned up, very pleased to see us.

Bob the Dog.

Where we lived in Handforth there was a dog called Butch who lived around the corner. Butch looked like the meanest, nastiest dog ever but he was actually a really friendly dog. When we took Bob out, Butch would follow us to the old RAF camp where we went for walks. Of course, Bob would not allow Butch to actually walk with us. Oh no! Butch would have to walk about five yards behind us and if he approached, Bob would bark and growl until Butch went back to his proper station. When we got to the field and Bob’s lead came off then all bets were off and the two raced about and played together but on the way back home, protocol had to be observed and Butch had to adopt the proper position or be barked and growled at.

I spent a lot of time on that old RAF camp as a child. It covered a huge area and there were various buildings all in various states of dilapidation. I made maps of the whole place and laid out various circuits among the camp roads. The main one I called Monza after the famous Italian race track. I used to charge around the place on my bike and my brother would time me and all my lap times would be entered into my notebook where I would highlight my weekly and monthly fastest laps.

One day a kart racing team appeared. I say team although it was just a father and son and a kart. We chatted about motorsport and I was always asking for a go in the kart but they always declined. Did that young kart racer go on to success as a racing driver? I don’t know but I’ve often wondered.

One day the council decided to address the state of the camp and bulldozers moved in and flattened all the old buildings. Later they dumped debris in various places across the camps roads so there were no more testing sessions and no more fast laps for me on my bike.

Butch’s owners were not the best or most responsible dog owners. Butch was an outside dog and when they went on holiday Butch was left to fend for himself until they returned and some of our neighbours thought Butch was a menace, a wild dog but he really wasn’t.

One day, during the school holidays, there was a knock on the door. Now, I do mean a proper knock, a real rat-tat-tat on the door knocker. When I opened the door no one was there except Butch, looking at me in askance. I assumed some kids had been messing about knocking on our door so I told Butch to go away and shut the door but a few minutes later there was the rat-tat-tat again. My Mum opened the door looked at Butch and said “Round the back Butch” and a few minutes later Butch turned up at the back door and my Mum gave him a few scraps to eat. It turned out this was a regular visit from Butch and Mum explained how Butch used to tap on the letterbox with his foot or his nose. He was a bright lad that Butch.

Anyway, one final dog story to finish with. I must be careful how I tell this one because I always seem to give the punch line away before the end. Anyway, here goes.

When I lived in a place called Newton le Willows back in the 1990’s I used to take our Labrador for a walk on the playing field round the corner after finishing work. There was a little snicket you walked down to the playing field and further up was some rough ground and a bit of a pond where we’d have a run around. On this particular day as I approached the path a youth on a mountain bike came hurtling down the path, passed me and was off. As I came to the field there was an old lady there who looked a little odd. Something about her wasn’t quite right so I went over and asked if everything was ok.

image courtesy of Grok

“No,” she answered. A lad on a mountain bike had just grabbed her hand bag and shot off. “I saw him,” I said. “He went off towards Newton. Stay here and I’ll run home and call the Police.”

“No,” said the lady. “It doesn’t matter,” and then she started to laugh, slowly at first, then developing into a great big hysterical laugh.

I wondered if this was some sort of shock reaction. Should I perhaps slap or shake her or something? The lady could see where my thinking was taking me and held up her hand. “I’m not mad, just a minute and I’ll explain.”

When she had calmed down, she told me that she came here every day to walk her dog but the dog always liked to have a poo on the football field. Well, she was aware of the kids playing football so she always used her poop scoop and picked up the dog mess but felt a little self-conscious walking back home carrying a bag of dog poo. Now this is the bit where you’ve probably pre-empted me and guessed what happened. The lady brought an old handbag with her to carry the poo and that’s what the hoodie biker had grabbed!

I can just imagine the face on him when he stopped to examine his goods. What would he find? Had it been pension day? Would he find a purse filled with money?

Well, when it comes down to it, he found exactly what he deserved!

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The Big Seven Zero

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It was my birthday last week and it was time for me to enter a new decade in my life. Yes, I’m now in my seventies and I’m not sure how I really feel about it. Anyway I thought I’d have a quick look back at some other milestones in my life just to get things in perspective.

On my 40th birthday, my partner at the time had arranged for me to have a helicopter flight. If I remember correctly it took place at Barton Aerodrome, not far from Manchester’s Trafford Centre. The helicopter was similar to one of those in one of my favourite childhood TV shows, Whirlybirds. It had a big glass bubble cockpit which had no doors, you just entered through an opening in the sides of the bubble.

There were only two passenger seats in the aircraft and there were actually quite a few people waiting to be taken up. As I watched the first trip go up, a young lad was called forward to fly next and as most people were in twos they asked for another singleton to go up next. That of course was me.

The helicopter landed and we ran forward with our heads down towards the helicopter. It was a little bit like the opening sequence of the TV show MASH except that instead of removing wounded soldiers, we were quickly strapped inside the passenger seats. The young lad went next to the pilot and I sat by the entrance opening. The helicopter lifted up and did a few circuits of the airfield including a tight right turn in which I felt that if my seat belt were to come undone, I would plummet out of the cockpit to my death. Anyway, I survived and after about 15 minutes we were back on the ground and the support staff were quickly helping us out and strapping in the next passengers.

When I became 50, I had just met Liz and she took me for a weekend to Barrow where we stayed at a really lovely bed and breakfast place in Barrow at a place called Roa Island.

For my 60th Liz and I had a weekend in Southport, a place I’ve always loved. It has all my favourite things, great bars and restaurants and lots of bookshops.  Then we returned home to spend my actual birthday at Ego in Lytham, another of our favourite restaurants.

The problem with being 70 is that my own image of a seventy-year-old is not really compatible with how I actually feel. Inside of course I don’t feel like 70 at all. To be honest, I haven’t actually changed much inside since I was about 19. I think I was about 19 when I became a bus conductor which was an occupation that forced me to confront my crippling shyness. Even today, 50 years later, I’m a quiet man lacking confidence in social situations. I’ve developed ways of dealing with shyness but sometimes I find myself feeling just how I was all those years ago.

Some time ago, and I can’t remember when it was, I went from looking forward to my birthdays to not being interested in them at all. In fact, I even think I’ve gone a little the other way. I don’t hate my birthdays but they worry me as with each one I just get older and older.

I’ve had 70 birthdays now which is quite a considerable number and one thing is certain, I won’t get another 70.

A few years ago I took my birthday off Facebook, I’m not sure why, perhaps I just don’t want people to know I’m so ancient. Perhaps inwardly I’m ashamed of being old but either way, Liz posted birthday wishes on Facebook which meant that removing my birthday was a pretty pointless exercise so I put it back on again.

Some time ago Liz and I joined a social group call Meetup. It’s a way of meeting new people and going to new social occasions. Members who are hosts will organise a night out at a restaurant for instance and anyone who is interested will put their names down to attend. You meet new people, have a bit of a natter and at the very least, have a nice meal.

For my birthday Liz asked Sophie, our local Meetup organiser, to arrange for a night out at a local restaurant called Tiggis and I have to say I was really surprised to find that thirty people attended instead of the six or so I was expecting.

Quite a few people mentioned that it was hard to believe I am actually 70. I suppose when it comes down to it, I’m not in bad shape for my age. Okay my neck gives me a lot of pain as well as my lower back. I can’t stand for long periods but I am alive and breathing. My vision is good and I can walk a fair distance.

Of course, those people who thought I was looking good are seeing me after a month in France where I was swimming or walking every day as well as having a pretty good tan so just lately, I’m looking my absolute best.

My father passed away when he was 72. All his working life he cycled to work and he was a much fitter man than me. I sometimes wonder if I’ll last until 72 but then as Liz reminded me the other day, my mother lived on until she was 93. I reckon I’ll be happy to settle for somewhere in between.

A few years ago, Pete, one of our favourite taxi drivers, got himself a new taxi. He used to have a traditional black hackney cab. Lots of room and easy to get into. The other month he picked us up driving a car which I first thought was a Range Rover. It’s not a Range Rover and the crazy thing is that on the outside it looks pretty big but on the inside it’s actually really small and the last time we used Pete I actually hurt my back trying to squeeze in. Sorry Pete but we’ll be calling someone else next time.

Of course, getting old isn’t all bad news. I’ve got a free bus pass which is quite handy. I can’t say I use it a great deal but travelling on the bus is much more comfortable than Pete’s taxi. (Sorry Pete) Also I am now eligible for those pensioners’ meal deals you sometimes see in pubs.

Number 23 anyone?

Not so long ago we went for Sunday lunch and I noticed the sign for the senior citizens’ meal which was almost half the normal price. Well, I thought, I’ll have some of that. We got in the queue for the carvery and the server handed me my plate. I handed him my ticket; he looked at it then took my plate back and gave me a half size one. Whoa, what’s this about I asked? It turned out that was the reason for the cheap price, it’s a smaller meal for us old age pensioners. That’s all very well but so far, despite being old, I’ve still got the same size stomach and I’ve still got a good appetite. Anyway, the server gave me a really funny look when he saw me going back to my table with this small plate piled about a foot high with roast potatoes, Yorkshire pud, mash, carrots and sprouts.

Here’s one final birthday story to finish. Mike, the DJ at our local pub quiz always calls out a birthday boy or girl for special attention. Last year I thought great, he’s forgotten about me but then when I went to look at the picture round who was that at number 23 staring back at me? Yep, it was old picture of me downloaded from Facebook.

Not many people got a point for that one but the team next to us thought it was a young Roger Moore. Yes, I can see the resemblance . .

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One Old Picture

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This week’s post is about the picture just below. Not a particularly outstanding picture I know but that house is the one in which I spent most of my childhood. I took the picture a long time ago after a sort of nostalgic drive around my old neighbourhood of Wythenshawe in Manchester. Yes, the house with the white door, that’s my old home. It’s changed a bit since I lived there. The privet hedge has gone and the car space is new. One amazing thing I found out on that visit is that the walk to my old junior school, which seemed to be a heck of a walk as I remember it, (surely at least a thirty or even forty minute walk) was actually more of a ten minute walk, well, it was a long time since I walked to my junior school. I stopped in the road, took my picture, became lost in thought for a moment as a thousand memories crowded my mind, then drove off.

Those memories and other ones always come back every time I look at that picture. I happened to be looking at it this week as I scanned through some of my old posts looking for inspiration. The photo only took a moment to take but it’s nice to think about that house and all the happy times I had there. Not only that, my Grandmother and Grandfather lived there before us. They later moved to Prestatyn in Wales and my Mum and Dad took over the house when they were first married so it’s almost like a little bit of Higgins’ history, wrapped up in a picture.

Wythenshawe is supposed to be the biggest council estate in Europe, at least I remember reading that somewhere. When my dad left school at 14 during the Second World War the estate was surrounded by farms and market gardens. Gradually as the estate became larger the farms were swallowed up and built on. Dad worked on a farm in those early days and one day he decided to show me that same farm he’d worked on. I doubted there would be much to see but he took me through some unfamiliar streets and we came to a green with a few trees and there, just at the head of the green was an old house. The house was surrounded by the council estate which had been built around it. This, he told me used to be the farmhouse where he once worked. The green had once been part of the orchard. As we looked closer, I could see that the trees were pear trees and I tried to imagine this place in a rural setting, instead of the urban one it had become.

Dad worked for Manchester Highways and his job title was, if I remember correctly, a flagger’s mate. His job was to lay pavement flags throughout Wythenshawe in south Manchester as well as to work tarmacing roads and repairing potholes. He rode to work on his bicycle every day of his working life armed only with his backpack containing his lunch; his sandwiches made by my mother and his brewcan. He used to use that brewcan even when he retired. Where he got the hot water from when working on the roads I don’t know unless he either went back to the Highways office or perhaps asked people where he was working to top up his brewcan.

The Highways depot where dad worked closed down years ago and now a small private housing estate occupies the spot where he used to work. Funnily enough, just next door on Fenside Road was my old school, Sharston High School. It was demolished years ago and in its place there is now another private housing estate which is surrounded by the same old iron fence that encircled our school many years ago.

Our school gym still stands on Fenside road. It is now some sort of fitness or sports centre. Apart from those railings I mentioned it is the only surviving reminder of our old school.

The school was large and was built in a sort of ‘C’ shape. There was a north and a south side and inside the ‘C’ were the school playing fields; cricket and football for the boys and rounders for the girls. On the north side -to be honest I’ve always got the north and south sides mixed up, but the top of the ‘C’ anyway- there now stands a nursing home and it was here that my mother spent the last years of her life suffering with dementia.

Getting back to my old house, I was living there in July 1969 and one morning when mum got me up for school I came downstairs for breakfast to find that the TV was on. Now back in 1969 there were only two TV channels (or was it three?) Anyway, neither of them broadcast in the early morning but this was a pretty special day as Apollo 11 had landed on the moon and Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin were walking about on the moon’s surface.

I was 12 years old at the time and I was crazy about sci-fi and space travel and how on earth my mother managed to drag me away from the TV and off to school, I’ll never know.

Back in the late 60s was when I got my first adult sized bicycle and I learned to ride it in the very street in the picture. It was a big bike and my feet couldn’t quite reach the ground so it was important to either stop by the kerb or jump off the seat before coming to a stop.

Like many other local kids my friends and I made a soapbox cart with some wood and parts of an old pram and we careered through the streets with it. One time my friend Gary Chapman was given a set of walkie talkies by his dad for Christmas and he and I used to chat to each other at night as our houses were pretty close together. We used to have conversations like this;

ME: Gaz, are you receiving?

Gaz: Gaz here. Loud and clear. Are you receiving Ste?

ME: Steve here. Loud and clear.

GAZ: Receiving you loud and clear Ste.

Years later when I worked for the Highways Agency and became the radio dispatcher, I would be using the radio once again, this time to deploy officers to incidents on the motorway network in conversations like this:

Me at work in the Highways control room.

ME: Romeo Echo 24, can you make to an RTC on the M6 northbound just after junction 18, over.

RE24: Message received. ETA 10 minutes.

Once I was training a new staff member called Clive and he took a message from a patrol which had encountered a pedestrian on the network. We contacted the Police and they seemed quite interested and asked for the person’s name and date of birth. We passed the details over to the police but the pedestrian had one of those dual gender names, something like Leslie Smith. The police came back again asking for the pedestrian’s gender and Clive, the trainee was having a difficult time. He wasn’t making himself particularly clear over the airwaves which wasn’t helped by the patrol being stuck in one of those airwave black spots where reception was bad.

CLIVE: Is the pedestrian a man or woman? Over.

RE24; Say again control, over.

CLIVE: The police are asking for the sex of the person, over.

RE24: You’re breaking up control, please repeat, over.

CLIVE: Can you confirm the sex of the pedestrian, over.

RE24: No answer.

CLIVE: Romeo Echo 24, we need the sex, over.

No answer

CLIVE: Romeo Echo 24, I need the sex, I WANT THE SEX!

Cue for the entire control room to burst into gales of laughter.

That’s probably enough memories and personal history for this week, all inspired by one photo taken on my mobile phone so many years ago. Looking at it again, I find myself wondering what the house is like inside. Would I recognise any of it? Perhaps there will be a new kitchen. What is the garden like? Will our old coal bunker still be there? Will it all be different?

One thing is certain, the people who I remember, the people who used to live there, are all gone.

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Old Friends and School Memories

Posted on by Steve Higgins

This last week I met up with two of my old friends, both of whom I haven’t really seen for perhaps thirty years. Carl (names have been changed to protect the innocent) was a lad I first met at junior school. We met through a mutual school friend called Peter as Peter and Carl lived in the same avenue.

Carl’s brother Martin and I once shared a flat together in Didsbury. It was a rather nice place as I remember. It was small and I had the best bedroom because I think it was me who had paid the deposit or at least the bulk of it and it was right in the centre of Didsbury, a stone’s throw from numerous pubs, bars and takeaways.

Martin seemed to have a lot of health problems when he was younger. Once, many years ago, I used to work nights and when I came home one morning, Martin’s three alarm clocks went off in succession, each placed further away from his bed so he would have to get up to switch them off. I went to bed and was soon asleep. I woke up at about 3pm and went into the kitchen to make a cup of tea. As I sat down in the lounge to drink it, Martin staggered in having just got out of bed. “What time is it?” he asked.

We laughed about that in the pub the other day. I and others used to pull his leg about being lazy and being a hypochondriac but as it turned out, Martin had MS; multiple sclerosis, not an easy disease to spot even now.

Carl was the best man at my wedding and I was his best man when he married. We lost regular contact over the years especially when I moved out of Manchester to Merseyside. Anyway, it was good to meet up again and after a while the three of us slipped pretty easily into the old comfortable camaraderie we used to have.

We filled each other in about marriages, divorces and new partners. About jobs and retirements as well as about old friends and acquaintances.

We talked a lot about our schooldays. We all went to the same school and way back then, my two top subjects were English language and art. In fact, now I think of it, I was the toast of the art class. People loved my paintings and drawings and I loved art. Our art teacher was a guy called Mr Markland. He wasn’t a man with a great affinity for people. In fact he was a rather cool customer but I always liked him and got on well with him. Martin though hated the guy.

Another teacher, probably the most disliked teacher in the school was Mr Ashton, the metalwork teacher. He had a rather bad habit of getting very angry at his students and throwing whatever was handy at them. As this was the metalwork class, that would be something metal and heavy. Many a time a hammer or a chunk of metal flew past my head towards some offending pupil. What would have happened had he hit someone, well I don’t know. Maybe he had a good aim and was choosing to deliberately miss students. Of course, that was an age free of the health and safety restraints that we currently endure. We all had our Mr Ashton stories to tell.

Mr Markland was a superb artist. I remember one day sketching something. I think we had to produce some kind of large human figure. I had chosen a cowboy for some reason and Mr Markland took my pencil and started to make some gentle curves on the paper. He held the pencil not like someone would hold a pencil to write but in the way someone would hold a paintbrush, holding it lightly at the top and making these confident curves on the paper.  After a few moments the shape of the cowboy became apparent; the waistcoat, the bandana tied around the neck, the gun belt at an angle, the hat and so on. I have always wished I could draw like that.

One day there came the moment when we had to choose. Choose which subjects we wanted to study and to take forward to O level or beyond. When I look back now my thinking then was just, well, bonkers!

My number one love in those days was motor racing and I harboured some kind of distant idea of working in motor sport, of perhaps even being a racing driver. Problem number 1: we had no family car and my dad couldn’t drive so any idea of doing what Jensen Button and his dad later did in Karts went out of the window. Anyway, that’s why I chose metalwork because I thought I could become a mechanic, get work with some motor sporting garage and maybe break into motorsport like that. The thing was that when we came to choose our subjects it wasn’t just ‘I want to study this’ and ‘I want to study that’, it was a case of this OR that. Chemistry or biology for instance, you couldn’t do both. I wasn’t happy and it had come to a straight choice of metalwork or art. Foolishly, metalwork won. After all, a metalwork O level would help me get a job whereas an art O level, well, what could that do for me? (What a fool I was!)

One day I met Mr Markland in the corridor and he stopped me and said “Steve, you’re going the wrong way. We’ve moved to the new art room on the first floor.”

It was then I had to tell him. “Mr Markland, I’m going to the metalwork class.”

“Metalwork?”

“Yes. I’m in the metalwork class.” Clearly, he didn’t understand. “I chose metalwork.”

Mr Markland looked as though he had been slapped in the face by a wet kipper. “You chose metalwork instead of art?”

“Yes,” I said meekly.

Mr Markland thought for a moment and then said, “I see,” and walked on. He never spoke to me again.

It would be nice to record that I excelled in metalwork, left school and became a mechanic for a formula one team. The fact is I hated metalwork although the hated Mr Ashton became a much nicer teacher now that he knew (well, thought he knew) that I actually liked his class. After many years of hard graft, I produced a metal bolt that was rather stiff. I thought I could attach it to the back door but when it was screwed to the door it proved rather difficult to open. One day my mum told my dad, “Get that bloody bolt off that door. I can’t get the door open in a morning!”

I gave up the idea of working in a formula one team. Instead, I had a new vocation. I would become a journalist. I went to my careers teacher, Mr Sherrif and told him.

“So how are you going to do that then?” he said.

Wasn’t he the one who was supposed to tell me what to do?

“I’m not sure,” I answered.

“Ever thought of going to the Manchester Evening News?”

Now, that’s more like it. “That’s a good idea,” I said.

“Only they don’t take trainees.”

“I see.”

“Anyway, I’ve got just the thing for you.”

Mr Sherrif rummaged around on his desk, produced various papers, flicked through a notebook and dialled a number. After some idle chit chat he seemed to be arranging an appointment, I could hear my name mentioned and something about ‘nine thirty’ tomorrow. Of course, he’s onto the Evening News. He’s got me a job interview and to think people say Mr Sherrif is rubbish and all he ever does is get people interviews at Barclays Bank!

“There you are,” said Mr Sherrif when he put down the phone. He scribbled something on a slip of paper.

“Tomorrow at nine thirty. You know where Barclays bank is don’t you?”

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A Trip Down Memory Lane

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I really do love it here in Lanzarote. Warm but not too hot. OK there’s a little rain but it only lasts for 5 or so minutes and then the sun is out, drying everything up. If I had the money I would be buying a place here and settling down to a life of sunbathing, swimming and dining out. I could invite all my friends over, for limited times of course. Then again, perhaps I wouldn’t. Either way, I think I’d be very happy.

Sometimes when I’ve had a swim and I’m lying on my lounger just drying off in the sun, I often think about my dad who died back in 2000. Not long ago I came across one of my brother’s photos. It was my dad in the back garden of our old house and he was dressed in a vest and shorts, reading the paper with his dog, a pedigree dachshund on his knee. He was not in a chair or a sun lounger but relaxing in a wheelbarrow, just how he did when he was at work and had finished his job.

Dad worked for Manchester Highways and his job title was, if I remember correctly, a flagger’s mate. His job was to lay pavement flags throughout Wythenshawe in south Manchester as well as to work tarmacking roads and repairing potholes. He rode to work on his bicycle every day of his working life armed only with his backpack containing his lunch; his sandwiches made by my mother and his brew can. He used to use that brewcan even when he retired. Where he got the hot water from when working on the roads I don’t know unless he either went back to the highways office or perhaps asked people where he was working to top up his brew can.

I reckon he would have loved it here in Lanzarote. Back in Manchester the Highways depot where he worked closed down years ago and now a small private housing estate occupies the spot where he used to work. Funnily enough, just next door on Fenside Road was my old school, Sharston High School. It was demolished years ago and on the spot there is now another private housing estate which is surrounded by the old iron fence that encircled our school many years ago.

Dad

My Dad, working on the road, directing traffic.

Our school gym still stands on Fenside road. It is now some sort of fitness or sports centre. Apart from those railings I mentioned it is the only surviving reminder of our old school.

The school was large and was built in a sort of ‘C’ shape. There was a north and a south side and inside the ‘C’ were the school playing fields; cricket and football for the boys and rounders for the girls.

On the north side -to be honest I’ve always got the north and south sides mixed up, but the top of the ‘C’ anyway- there now stands a nursing home and it was here that my mother spent the last years of her life suffering with dementia.

I took semi retirement from work to help look after her and my brother and I shared caring duties. We had carers coming in four times a day. Morning to help get her up and have breakfast. Another at lunchtime, one at teatime and a final visitor at night to help get mum ready for bed. The final carer was due at about nine but they started to get earlier and earlier. Once we had someone round at about 5:30 to help mum with tea and then instead of 9 the final carer turned up at about 6:30. I remonstrated with them and said no, you need to come back at 9. I guess it was the last visit and they were eager to get off early.

Believe me, it was very difficult dealing with mum back then. She would forget she had eaten and would demand more food after being fed. Getting her clothes off her to put into the washer was a nightmare and when they had been washed, she complained that the clothes were not her clothes after all but someone else’s.

Once it worked out in my brother’s favour. I used to work shifts and would arrive home about 10:30 and take over from my brother. That night he wanted to leave early at about 8pm. Could I get time off to get to mum’s earlier? As it happened I couldn’t but he and the carers put mum to bed early and when the carer had left, my brother let mum nod off and then he left too.

Some months earlier we had brought a small bed downstairs into the lounge for mum. When I got in at my usual time, mum had woken up and, thinking it was early morning, was trying to get up.

I tended to have a small supper when I got in from work so I calmed mum down, explained that it was late at night and together we had a small supper of sausage sandwiches and we watched some television. I’d recorded a documentary about the comedian Bob Monkhouse and when it finished, we chatted for a while about Bob and his rather difficult life, then we both went to bed.

The next morning when the carers arrived, she had reverted to her slightly mad self, complaining once again that her clothes weren’t her clothes and that this wasn’t her house but some other strange house and that she didn’t live here.

The conversation about Bob Monkhouse the previous night had been one of our last sensible conversations ever.

I think it was 2021 when she moved into the nursing home. She had been very poorly with a cold that had gotten worse and worse. I personally thought it was one of the first Covid cases. She went to hospital and began to recover. We went to see her on Christmas day. We brought her a Christmas present, I can’t even remember what it was but I was surprised to find the nurses in her ward had brought presents for all the patients, hers was a pair of woolly gloves. Sadly she never got to wear them.

When she began to recover her social worker moved her to a nursing home saying she only had 6 months to live although she went on to live another two and a half years. At the nursing home she recovered rapidly and even attained something almost like her normal self. When Covid and the lockdown struck we were unable to visit her. When things eased we could visit but only outside of the windows. What was mad was that Mum was profoundly deaf and without her hearing aids couldn’t communicate. I don’t know why but I just couldn’t seem to get it across to the staff how important her hearing aids were and there we were, separated by a window, mouthing and gesticulating but poor mum, without her hearing aids could only wave.

When the lockdowns ended we could finally visit mum again but sometimes her hearing aids would be lost or without batteries. I decided to take one of her aids home and just fit it when I visited so we could have something like a normal conversation.

My mother in her last years

When I visited mum I used to ask her to recite some multiplication tables in the hope it would get her to use her memory and exercise her brain waves. One day we did a simple one, the three times table. One three is three, two threes are six and so on. Round about nine she began to falter and looked suddenly distressed. ‘I can’t remember anymore’ she said sadly.

We talked about other things and then I told her it was time to leave. The disappointment of not being able to remember her times table was still evident in her face. We said our goodbyes and I went towards the door. As I turned back for a final wave goodbye, she said something and I stopped to listen.

‘Ten threes are thirty’ she said. ‘Eleven threes are thirty-three, twelve threes are thirty-six’. She looked back and smiled. She was a very determined lady.

After she died I put a picture of her on the Facebook Wythenshawe page, announcing her passing. Various people commented but one lady in particular said that she used to work at mum’s nursing home and that she counted it a pleasure and a privilege to have looked after this lovely lady.

As you can perhaps imagine, I was moved to tears.

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January, Don’t You Just Hate It?

Posted on by Steve Higgins

I might as well start off this post by coming out and saying what I think straight off the bat; I don’t like January. I don’t like it at all because the thing is, I just hate the cold. I reckon it would be rather nice to just hibernate for the entire winter period just like many creatures do.

I’m not that keen on Christmas so maybe late November would be a good time to just settle down somewhere warm and comfy, snuggle up into my duvet and perhaps wake up round about late March. I know that March can be unpredictable in terms of the weather. It’s generally windy and cold but certainly not as cold as January. Waking up in March would give me time to get my bearings before moving into April, my favourite time of year when the days are getting longer, nature is starting to revive and warmer days are coming.

January 1970

Recently while pottering about trying to sort out the tons of ‘stuff’ I seem to have accumulated over the years I came across my schoolboy diary from 1970. As this post will be published on the 18th of January, I thought I’d take a look and see what I had written. Back in 1970 the 18th was a Sunday and all I decided to record was “Watched Captains Courageous and Randall and Hopkirk”.

Randall and Hopkirk was a TV show first broadcast in 1969 through until March 1970. It was an action and adventure drama despite the slightly tongue in cheek premise. Randall and Hopkirk are private investigators but Randall is helped by his partner Marty Hopkirk who is murdered in the first episode but comes back as a ghost to help his partner find his murderer. Marty stays on and continues to help Jeff Randall for the entire series of 26 episodes. It was later remade with comedians Vic Reeves and Bob Mortimer in 2000. Personally, I prefer the original.

Captain Courageous was a film starring Spencer Tracy based on a book by Rudyard Kipling. The story follows the adventures of spoiled brat Harvey Cheyne Junior, the son of a railway tycoon. Harvey falls overboard from his father’s yacht and is saved from drowning by Portuguese fisherman Manuel Fidello played by Tracy. The boy demands to be returned home but the fishing vessel is on a three month fishing expedition and will not return early. The captain offers to sign Harvey on as a crewman until they return and under the tutorship of Manuel he begins to learn about fishing. Harvey becomes close to Manuel and is devasted when he is drowned. Returning home, he is reunited with his father as a changed person.

January 1649

This week I watched an interesting documentary about Charles the 1st. Back in January 1649 parliament was deliberating about what to do with Charles who had been defeated by the Parliamentarians. The parliament was known as the ‘rump’ parliament because any MP who was suspected of supporting the king was prevented from entering. Parliament voted to put the King on trial but the upper house, the Lords, declined to support this and then promptly gave themselves a holiday. Parliament then went ahead without the Lords.

King Charles was put to death on the 30th January, 1649.

January 1965

Another great British leader died in January 1965, Sir Winston Churchill. Churchill was an army officer, an MP, an author and a Prime Minister. Nothing I can write in a short post, even one dedicated fully to his life can do justice to this great man’s many achievements but let’s have a go. Churchill was born at Blenheim Palace on November 30th 1874. His father was Lord Randolph Churchill, his mother Lady Randolph was formerly Jennie Jerome from the USA, the daughter of Leonard Jerome, an American businessman.

Churchill began his military career with the 4th Hussars but later left to become a politician. He failed to be elected as MP for Oldham then went to South Africa to serve as a journalist. He was captured by the Boers and later escaped which brought him much publicity which must have helped him when he stood again as a Conservative candidate for Oldham in the 1900 general election. This time he emerged as the victor. Later Churchill became a Liberal and later still moved back to the Conservatives. The years between 1929 and 1939 became Winston’s Wilderness years when he was out of office but began to warn against the rise of the Nazis. On the 13th December he was visiting New York when he was knocked down by a car which incidentally inspired my story Timeline, the title story of my new book.

Churchill’s warnings about Nazi Germany proved correct and with the outbreak of war in 1939 he returned as a government minister and later succeeded Chamberlain as Prime Minister when Chamberlain was forced to resign as the Labour party declined to serve in a national government headed by him.

As well as serving as a politician, Churchill wrote many books and one, My Early Life, was made into a film, Young Winston. I’ve always loved that film but it annoys me no end when I see it on TV these days as for some reason a final scene in which Churchill falls asleep and dreams of meeting his late father, is cut out.

January 2003

Looking at my diary for 2003 I see I was suffering with a sore neck that January. I was off sick from work and my boss was not happy. While off sick I had written a screenplay and wasn’t sure what to do with it. I was living in Merseyside at the time so decided to send it to Phil Redmond, the producer of the Liverpool soap Brookside, thinking that he might like it enough to either give me some advice or even a job on the writing team. I had sent it with a self-addressed return envelope and guess what, I received it back in the post only a few days later minus any sort of feedback or a job offer.

January 1986

In January 1986 the spacecraft Challenger was ready to be launched into space. It was a unique mission in that school teacher Christa McAuliffe had been selected to broadcast lessons from space. The flight was the 25th shuttle mission and the 10th flight for Challenger itself. The mission was originally scheduled for July but the date was put further and further back until NASA finally decided on the 28th January. The temperature of -8 degrees was a record low for a shuttle launch and many engineers were unhappy. Their cause for concern was the shuttle’s O ring seal in a joint between the shuttle and the solid rocket boosters. In cold temperatures it was thought that the rubber rings might not be flexible enough to seal the joints. Sadly they were correct. Hot pressurised gas was released which burned into the external propellant tank which then exploded 73 seconds into the flight. All the astronauts were killed.

January 2025

To finish on a somewhat lighter note, today as I write this I was in Manchester. I decided I needed a few items of shopping so I walked into the nearby civic centre. It was still pretty cold despite the melting snow so I wrapped up well.  I had a woolly jumper on, my anorak and a baseball cap and gloves. Happily, it wasn’t quite as cool as I had originally thought. At the civic I popped into the cheap bookshop there but after a few minutes I realised that it was far too hot and I had to get out. Instead of walking further to Asda, I popped into the Iceland store a few hundred yards away from the book shop. After about 5 minutes I realised that in there too, the management had for some reason decided to crank the heating up to a level usually experienced in a Sahara Desert heatwave.

I grabbed the few things I wanted then headed for the till. Sweat was running down my face but there were two people at the till, both with enough shopping to last the entire winter. I opened my jacket and then heard some wonderful words, “can you come this way please?” Yes, a new till was opening up and me with my 4 or 5 items was through and soon out into the open air.

January, don’t you just hate it?

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My Life in 5 Meals

Posted on by Steve Higgins

That may sound like an odd title for a blog post but I actually pinched it from the BBC website before adding a small but subtle change. I was scanning through the news and right at the bottom of the page I saw something about My Life in 5 Dishes. It was actually a BBC podcast series in which several celebs are interviewed and asked to name 5 meals that somehow relate to their lives. One episode which I partially listened to was Nigella Lawson talking about elements of her life including her mother who had various eating disorders and died when Nigella was young. A dish she used to make was a sort of chicken stew and Nigella used to make the same dish for her family which in turn brought back memories of her mother.

(Click here to listen to the BBC podcast)

Anyway, that’s enough about Nigella, time to crack on with my five dishes.

Boiled Eggs

Yes I know boiled eggs is a rather simple dish but actually it’s the first meal, apart from cereal and tomato soup, that I ever actually made myself rather than just putting cornflakes in a dish and adding milk or opening a can of soup and heating it up.

I’ve always liked boiled eggs, not only because it’s the first thing I ever made for myself but also because I just like eggs. I prefer my boiled eggs soft but not runny although like a lot of the things I make myself, they don’t always turn out the way I want them to. Still, I like eggs soft or hard so even if I overdo them, I’ll still enjoy my eggs. Two minutes and fifty seconds is my optimum boiling time but I tend to be slow in putting the toast in and so usually at the two minutes fifty deadline I’m still buttering my toast and so my eggs will be overdone. (Note to self: start the toast off sooner!)

Liz makes great boiled eggs. She usually takes the eggs out of the fridge in advance and brings them up to room temperature by popping them in a pan of warm water for a while which also stops them cracking in the pan.

Egg on toast with beans and a sausage

One of the reasons I like this dish is that when I was a bus driver, I always used to have this meal in our canteen. The canteen used to have a breakfast special which was egg, bacon, sausage and either beans or tomatoes and a slice of toast, all for a very cheap one British pound. This was of course back in the late 70s and early 80s. I used to find though that the breakfast special didn’t quite fill me up so that’s when I developed the egg on toast with beans dish. There was a time when I didn’t like my egg to touch my beans and the canteen staff used to make me a barrier with the sausage between the beans and the egg which they all seemed to think was quite funny. After a few trials with just beans on toast I decided to go adventurous and have the beans on top of the egg and then I found I really liked it that way, especially when I threw in a sausage on the side.

Here’s a sort of odd footnote though. Yesterday I had egg, bacon, sausage and beans for breakfast and guess what, I used the sausage as barrier to stop the beans spreading all over the plate to my egg!

Sunday Lunch

I’ve always loved the great British Sunday roast. My mother used to make a really lovely roast beef dinner. The beef always had that wonderful melt in your mouth texture. I once asked her how she made it and she told me she roasted the beef in a casserole dish with a little stock or water at a high heat for 20 minutes and then lowered the heat down and cooked the meat very slowly. These days my favourite for Sunday dinner is a gammon joint. Liz cooks it slowly in a pan of water and dried peas and the result is lovely. Throw in some roast spuds, some peas, some carrot and turnip or swede, some Yorkshire pudding and gravy and you can’t go wrong. Just thinking about it brings back the memories of childhood, huddling up in front of the fire watching television and of course if mum called out that dinner was ready my dad took great delight in switching off the TV while we ate.

Later my brother and I would be back on the rug in front of the fire drinking tea and watching some old black and white film while Bob, our family dog, tried his best to push past us and get as close as possible to the fire.

Chicken Curry

In my late teens, when my friends and I used to go out, we’d sometimes end up at a Chinese restaurant in a village called Gatley. A long time ago Gatley used to be a traditional country village but these days it has been caught up in an urban sprawl and is not quite the same as it used to be. I always used to plump for chicken Maryland which was probably the only non Chinese dish on the menu and was just chicken in breadcrumbs. After tasting some of the dishes my friends were ordering I one day took the plunge and ordered a Chinese chicken curry with fried rice and today it’s one of the only two dishes I tend to order in Chinese restaurants, either that or chicken with green peppers and black bean sauce.

Not so long ago I went back to Gatley and had a walk round and even made a little video. One of the former pubs there is now a Tesco supermarket. A café I used to go in was still a café but seemed to be permanently closed. The Prince of Wales, the pub where I had my very first pint of beer is still there. Another pub, The Horse and Farrier is just a few minutes walk further on. Once, when I was in the 5th form at school, my friends and I nipped inside for a lunchtime pint. We left our jackets and briefcases outside and had just ordered a few pints when who should walk in but our physics teacher, the highly unpopular Mr Farragher. Luckily there was a back door that led to the beer garden so we legged it out the back way, picked up our jackets and bags and quickly left.

After that we used to refer to the pub as the Horse and Farragher!

Back in the 80s after a night out in Manchester, we would sometimes pop into a place called the Plaza Café in the city centre. They served curry but they only had three types, mild, hot and suicide. I can still hear one of my friends calling out for ‘three suicides please!’

Chilli Con Carne

I wasn’t sure what to choose for my last dish. I’m not a great pizza fan although I do like making a pizza but the quality of my home-made pizza dough is not consistent. Sometimes it’s good and other times it’s just average. I like to serve my pizza with a fresh side salad or coleslaw. I like a lot of Italian dishes these days, particularly spaghetti aglio e olio which is spaghetti with garlic and chilli. Another dish I’ve always enjoyed making is chilli con carne. I like to start it off in a big pan or my old wok and then transfer everything into my slow cooker and serve it later with chips and rice.

Well after all that I’m not sure what to have for tea. Chilli? Well, I should have started that a while ago. Egg on toast with beans? Nah, I had eggs for breakfast. I think I might go for that old favourite, one thing I’ve not mentioned yet. A cheese sandwich!

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A Slice of My Life 2024

Posted on by Steve Higgins

It’s a long time since I’ve made a video for my YouTube channel and recently I’ve been trying to think about what my next project should be. When I’m stuck for a video I tend to tweak or even remake some of the short videos I use on social media to promote this page and my two books. In fact my YouTube page is made up of quite a lot of videos like that as well as numerous short video versions of my poems. Every now and again I try and put something different together. I usually make a video about our yearly trips to France in our motorhome and I’ve made a few videos about Manchester, my home town and also the place where my book Floating in Space is set.

Liz and I have just spent 5 weeks in Lanzarote and although I took my video camera over there I actually didn’t use it except to take some holiday snaps.

Last week I decided to take a little jolly out on the bus over to Stockport and see how the new bus station, currently under construction there, was coming along. Travelling to Stockport on the bus made me think about how our lives change and move on. Back in 1979 I was a coach driver for National Express but I wasn’t happy with the job. In the summer of 79 I was 22 years old and far too young and immature to do such a responsible job. Covering the long distance National Express routes wasn’t too bad but private hires were difficult as the driver had to plan his routes and to be honest I didn’t know my way about the country particularly well.

After being stuck on the same long distance bus route from Manchester to Lowestoft far too many times I packed the job in. I went to ask for my old job back at GM Buses but they gave me a big lecture about how they were fed up of training drivers only for them to resign and go driving for other companies and so I was turned away. That same afternoon I drove over to the GM Bus depot at Stockport where they were short of staff and they started me the same day. For over ten years I spent every working day in Stockport taking fares and later, driving buses. Returning in 2024 after over 30 years away was interesting, I must say.

Most of Mersey Square, the square at the very centre of Stockport, was fenced off while the builders worked on the new bus station. A huge railway viaduct spans the centre of Stockport and the bus station or bus interchange as they are now calling it is mostly on one side of the viaduct with part of it spilling over onto the other side. Someone told me it was due to open in two weeks time but looking around, that seemed to be a pretty tall order.

I shot some video in the square then walked around the construction, filming as I went. I was planning to film myself with my trusty selfie stick and chat away to the camera about my memories of Stockport but as usual, I felt a little self-conscious and just stuck to filming the new construction. I couldn’t walk through the area as of course the builders were still working so I had to walk around it.

When I got to the other side a new Stagecoach bus went past on its way into the Stagecoach garage. It was displaying the route number 192 which is a very busy bus route indeed, going down the A6 from Hazel Grove into Stockport and then on into Manchester. Back in my day there was a 192 every six minutes and each one was packed. Looking back I must have spent an awful lot of time going up and down on that bus route.

When the bus services were deregulated in 1986 the Busy Bee bus company tried to muscle in onto our route and so the service moved up to one every three minutes! Yes we would load up in Piccadilly, Manchester. An inspector would count three minutes and then you were off. Straight away there was a set of traffic lights and if you hit those on red you were in trouble as the bus behind was already following you out.

I followed the Stagecoach bus round the corner to the old GM Buses depot, now of course owned and run by Stagecoach. Inside it was full of buses and for a moment I remembered the old days when it was full of the old orange and cream of GM Buses.

I left the bus company in the early 1990s and started my own company selling motorsport memorabilia. I loved that job and spent all my day chatting to various regular people about F1 and motorsport but sadly, I didn’t make a lot of money, eventually selling all my stock to someone who had a similar business. After a failed attempt to become a TV producer I ended up short of money and went back to GM Buses. I worked for the GM coaching company known as Charterplan. After a short while there I transferred to an office job in the GM Buses control room in Ardwick, Manchester and that was the last time I set foot in Stockport, until last week.

The Comfy GillI walked round to the other side of the bus depot and there opposite, what used to be the main exit for our buses, was the Comfortable Gill. The Comfy, as we affectionately called it, was the pub where we busmen used to drink after the day’s shift was over. At one time if a driver was due to finish after last orders at 11, the landlord used to accept telephone orders for a pint so sometimes we could pull in at 11:20, park the bus in the depot and then pop over to the Comfy to find a pint waiting for us to sup while we cashed up our day’s takings. When I saw it the other day the Comfy was all closed up and looked neglected. So many of Britain’s pubs have closed down and I walked away hoping that the Comfy might be saved in the near future.

It’s always interesting to look back and have a stroll down memory lane. I can’t say working at GM Buses was a great job and looking back I wonder why I stayed so long. Of course back then I had bought a house and I had a very expensive mortgage to pay and I put in a lot of hours to pay for it. Perhaps I would have been better served by prioritising my career rather than my house. Oh well!

Liz and I went to the pictures this week. It was the first time we had visited the cinema since seeing Oppenheimer last year and although I didn’t rate it as the work of genius many people seem to think it is, Oppenheimer was certainly an excellent film and deservedly won the best picture Oscar.

The film we went to see was Wicked Little Letters set in England after the first World War. It’s about an Irish lady who comes to live in an English village. She is outspoken, very rude and swears a lot and is soon branded as the author of a very nasty series of poison pen letters. It wasn’t a bad film but what was odd was the way the 1920s were portrayed. There was a black judge, a black Asian policewoman, numerous other black people and the Irish lady was living with a black man. It was if they had substituted 1920s life with today’s multicultural society. I’m not sure why they would do that but the end result was that the entire film looked a little bit strange. Why didn’t they just set the film in the present day when different ethnic groups, as well as bad language is just the norm? Or was the director trying to make some point about society that perhaps I have missed? Wicked Little Letters isn’t a bad film in fact it’s quite amusing in a way and was actually based on a true story but that cutural shift just didn’t work for me.

Perhaps we all look back at the past in different ways.

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A Few Random Thoughts about Time

Posted on by Steve Higgins

Time is a pretty odd thing when you think about it. You can’t see it or touch it but it’s there just the same. As far as I understand, time is uniform, it bumbles along at exactly the same speed, year after year. There are always 24 hours in any given day and 365 days in every year, except of course for leap years. I mentioned last week about encountering each new birthday with a sense of apprehension. After all, each birthday brings me closer to my inevitable end, my dying day but it seems to me that as we get older, time seems to speed up and the months and years pass by faster and faster.

Perhaps that’s a consequence of nearing the latter stages of my journey through life. Recently when we were travelling through France motoring along through the endless country lanes of the Loire valley, it seems as if I only became aware of the speed when I reached a new village or hamlet and had to slow down. Perhaps that’s the way it is with time too, that you only notice the passing of time with some new event, something that brings time into perspective.

One of my friends has a daughter born on my birthday and the other day the child’s grandmother mentioned to me that she would be soon off to school. School already I thought? After all, I still think of that child as a baby, which clearly she no longer is. (Quick check and the little girl in question was born in 2019!)

In the boot of my car are two big yellow anoraks with reflective stripes. I put them there in case I ever break down on the motorway although they were given to me when I first joined the Highways Agency. They were compulsory clothing for being out and about seeing the motorway network first hand with our traffic officers, our area contractors and the police. I remember being out with the motorway police for a day and looking down at the speedometer as we made our way to an RTC and seeing it registering 120mph. That was an interesting day but it was actually back in 2005, 18 years ago. Can those yellow jackets really be 18 years old?

Music is another thing that always registers the passing of time. In the pub quiz that we visit every Thursday there is always a music section. The quizmaster plays 10 tracks and asks for three answers for each; the title, the artist and the year. We are helped in the year aspect as the DJ plays two tracks from each of ten decades and gives us the year endings. Now back in the 1980’s I was at the height of my love of vinyl singles. I bought singles every week, usually when they dropped out of the charts and were sold off at half price and not only that, later in the 80’s I bought my first video recorder and spent a lot of time recording my favourite music on video. What this means is that I should be spot on with the 80’s music but a lot of the time I sadly am not. Last week at the quiz, one of the tracks was Red Light Spells Danger, a hit by Billy Ocean which I was convinced was 1987. Actually it was older and was released in 1977. Fortunately Liz’s recollection was better than mine.

I have always been one for skimming through records and CDs, especially when the word ‘sale’ can be seen. Some years ago, a prime location for buying cheap CDs was Woolworths which sadly went bankrupt in 2015. In Woolworths many years ago I picked up a compilation CD. It had some really nice tracks and a few I’d never heard of but I chose it particularly because of one track, ‘Horse with no Name’ by America. I’ve always loved that song and I don’t have a copy of it so I bought the CD. Later when I had got home and played the album I was surprised to find another track that I hadn’t spotted earlier, it was Desiderata, a poem by Max Ehrman made into a pop song, of sorts, by an American guy called Les Crane.

Now not only is that poem one of my favourites but so is the musical version. It was played a lot at school by our headmaster in the morning services and as soon as I heard it again it brought memories of those long ago schooldays flooding back to me: The registrations, the morning assembly, the prayers. Back in the late sixties a lot of those morning assemblies were about Vietnam and how our headmaster, Mr Trickett wove his morning address from Vietnam to the Desiderata, I do not know but that musical version was something I loved and finding it again on a CD was like getting part of my youth back.

 

Quite a few years back Liz and I visited many of the war cemeteries in Northern France and like many others were moved by the many monuments to those who lost their lives in two world wars. I made a video about the many war memorials we came across and in the video commentary I spoke about the passing of time.

I have a theory about time and it’s this, it’s that time flows differently in different places. OK; sounds a bit mad doesn’t it? Let me explain further.

On many occasions when trundling through rural France I’ve come across many bunkers, fortresses and other sites. In northern France Liz and I stopped at a war grave cemetery that was picture perfect in its own way. The lawns were incredibly neat, and the hedgerows immaculately trimmed. Sadness pervaded the site like a scent coming over from the adjacent fields. Throughout there is a feeling of peace, of slowness and a feeling that time has stopped here or perhaps just slowed. That’s not strange when you think that time must have speeded up during the action of the first and second world wars, so it seems only fair that nature must compensate, that time must slow later to make up for the fast and frantic earlier time.

You can imagine the pace of things even a hundred years ago: The early morning bombardment, the whistles blowing as officers called their troops to go over the top. The advance parties who made ahead to cut the barbed wire, the troops walking apprehensively forward until they walked into the deadly machine gun fire that cut most of them down. Many found their final resting places in these cemeteries, places that are now quiet and peaceful with a silent beauty, timeless and moving with the beat of nature as a backdrop; the humming of the insects, distant cows mooing, and the birds flying past.

All the places we visited have had their moments in the spotlight of world history. They all lived through times of accelerated pace when time flowed swiftly. Perhaps it’s their time now for a quieter pace while time flows slowly.

Back to me then and my 67 birthdays. Time as I mentioned seems to speed up with age but there is still time to mention one more thing.

Time for a cup of tea!

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