Allan Ahlberg (and more Moore)

 Sad to hear the news that the children's author Allan Ahlberg has died, albeit at a ripe age (unlike his wife and collaborator Janet, who sadly died aged just 50). Between them the Ahlbergs created some of the best children's books of their time, several of them true classics which will surely endure as long as children's books are read: Each Peach Pear Plum, Peepo, Burglar Bill and Funnybones, at least. Later in his career he also wrote a rather wonderful autobiographical work, The Bucket: Memories of an Inattentive Childhood, in the crisp, never waste a word style of the children's books. 'My mother, who was not my mother, I see her now, her raw red cleaner's hands twisting away at her apron, as she struggled to speak. Adoption was a shameful business then in many people's eyes, the babies being mostly illegitimate' – as was Ahlberg, born in South London and taken by his adoptive parents to Oldbury in the West Midlands. His childhood there, loving but impoverished, is very much the one we see, in all its fondly recalled detail, in Peepo. 
  One of the pleasures of grandparenthood is sharing with the grandchildren books that we read to their parents, and it has been a joy rediscovering those Ahlberg classics. What a legacy Allan and Janet left. 

(And here, as an addendum to Wednesday's post, is Gerald Moore again, this time accompanying Janet Baker in Richard Strauss's beautiful 'Morgen', the last of his Four Last Songs –

Summer's End and Moore

 Sadly, the swifts seem to have departed already – at least from Lichfield, where they've had a good summer, thanks to the unusually seasonal weather. I keep scanning the skies, but I haven't seen one since the end of last week. Maybe if the sun had carried on shining they'd have hung around longer... For me, the departure of the swifts always feels like the end of summer – the real summer – and everything after has a tired, overblown fin de saison feel. There are reports from Derbyshire of butterflies and moths, filled up with all they need to get through the winter, settling down to hibernate – and it's still only July! 
  The 30th of July, to be precise, which is the birthday of the great accompanist Gerald Moore (born on this day in 1899).  His partnership with Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau was one of the wonders of the 20th-century musical world, and this morning Radio 3 marked the occasion with their electrifying rendition of Erlkönig. Here is some more soothing Schubert – Hans Hotter and Gerald Moore performing the meltingly beautiful Ständchen...

Bradshaw

 'Watson – the Bradshaw!' 
 Born on this day in 1800 was the printer and publisher George Bradshaw, whose railway guides proved so useful to Sherlock Holmes and Dr Watson – and, much later, to Michael Portillo, whose enjoyable TV series Great British Railway Journeys and its successors continued to make use of Bradshaw's guides (indeed, the original series was so successful that a facsimile reprint of the 1863 Bradshaw's Handbook sold well). Until he branched out beyond Europe, the colourfully attired Portillo was always to be seen clutching a vintage Bradshaw to his well-shirted chest and consulting it from time to time. 
  Bradshaw, who was born in Lancashire and began his career in Manchester, was an intensely religious man, who studied under a Swedenborgian minister, and became a devout Quaker. For this reason, early editions of the Bradshaw guides eschew the traditional naming of days and months after Roman or Norse deities and name them simply 'First Month' (January), 'First Day' (Sunday), etc. In 1839 Bradshaw published the first collection of railway timetables in the world – this was actually before the introduction of standard Railway Time. From the early 1840s onward, Bradshaw's various guides became increasingly popular, to the point where 'Bradshaw' became a generic name for any railway timetable. Even Punch praised his achievement: 'Seldom has the gigantic intellect of man been employed upon a work of greater utility.' Sadly, Bradshaw died prematurely: while travelling in Norway, he contracted cholera and died in Kristiania (now Oslo), just eight hours after falling ill.  He was 53. A local law forbade the return of his body to England, so he lies in Gamlebyen cemetery, about a mile from Oslo cathedral. An unlikely resting place for a man whose name was woven into English everyday life. 

The Anti-Adlestrop

 A while back, I wrote about Edward Thomas's justly famous little poem 'Adlestrop' and posted another, very different Adlestrop poem by Peter Porter. Last night I came across a poem by Richard Wilbur that could be characterised as the anti-Adlestrop. It has the same four-quatrain structure, and, like Thomas's poem, it describes a train coming to a halt at an obscure station – but there all resemblance ends. Thomas's summer afternoon is replaced by winter dusk, his  heat by icy cold; no wildflowers, no rural view, no birdsong – in fact no sound, after the bang and hiss of the halting train. In place of sound, a sudden, far from comforting burst of colour, a 'purple, glowering blue' in 'the numb fields of the dark'. Yes, this is the anti-Adlestrop all right...

Stop

In grimy winter dusk
We slowed for a concrete platform;
The pillars passed more slowly;
A paper bag leapt up.

The train banged to a standstill.
Brake-steam rose and parted.
Three chipped-at blocks of ice
Sprawled on a baggage-truck.

Out in that glum, cold air
The broken ice lay glintless,
But the trucks were painted blue
On side, wheels and tongue,

A purple, glowering blue
Like the phosphorus of Lethe
Or Queen Persephone's gaze
In the numb fields of the dark. 

Five Years Ago

 From time to time I browse in the Nigeness archives to see what was going on On This Day in past years (there are now 17 of them to choose from). The entry for this date in 2020 – just five years ago – reads like a dispatch from another world, one that is fast fading from memory, helped on its way by a general desire to forget: who would wish to remember the worst excesses of the Covid panic and the enthusiasm with which many (most?) accepted a confiscation of basic liberties more extreme than anything undertaken even in wartime? It would have got worse, too, had not the virus weakened into something very much less threatening, as viruses do. 
  July 25th 2020 finds me quoting Junius on the subject of 'arbitrary measures' and citing mandatory mask wearing as just such a measure. At the time, the Great Panic had only been raging for a few months, and far worse things were to come, with lockdown after lockdown ravaging society and the economy, and ensuring there would be no recovery for decades, if ever. And we now know (what many of us were pretty sure of at the time) that it was all in vain: the medical and social outcomes of countries that had relaxed lockdown regimes or none at all have been better than those that clamped down hardest. As for the vaccine that was supposed to give us back our freedom – not only did it do no such thing, it also saved lives on a very much smaller scale than was claimed at the time, and at considerable health cost, especially to younger people (who never needed it in the first place). 
  Well, those were strange times, and it's easy to forget how strange, how rampant was the hysteria triggered by the virus, and how willingly the population at large complied with the mostly arbitrary rules that were enforced – rules that those imposing them often knew were having no good effect (and if they didn't know, they should have done). Being near the beginning, July 2020 was almost an innocent time – we even got to Dieppe en famille a week or so later. The place was heaving with tourists – no 'social distancing' there – but maniacally insistent on the wearing of masks. All very odd. Another world, another time – but only five years ago. And if/when the next virus comes along, will things play out any differently? I'd like to think so, but then I've always been a cock-eyed optimist. 

Meditations in an Emergency

 With the sun shining again (for one day only, by the look of the forecast), the garden has been alive with butterflies today – gatekeepers, speckled woods, holly blues, commas, peacocks, red admirals, tortoiseshells, all the whites, etc. This is what happens when we have a proper warm sunny summer, following a decent spring – all in stark contrast to last year's relentlessly cool, wet and windy weather. Anecdotal reports have come in from around the country of 'clouds of  butterflies' – a thing not seen in years – and prodigious numbers from the transect walkers who provide the most reliable figures for butterfly populations. So, the question uppermost in every cynic's mind is: How will Butterfly Conservation – that estimable but increasingly activist and alarmist organisation – spin 2025 into a bad news story, and thereby justify its declaration last year of a 'butterfly emergency'? Well, they might manage it yet, because the Big Butterfly Count, that media-friendly exercise in citizen science, got under way just as the warm sunny weather began to break down – and after the butterfly season had peaked, the good weather having made things happen earlier than usual. So a bad news story might yet emerge from the Big Butterfly Count, but that will not alter the fact that this has been a seriously good butterfly season – and all because we have had a seriously good summer and spring. Maybe the weather gods were listening when Butterfly Conservation declared that emergency.
[By the way, I've taken the not altogether appropriate title of this piece from a collection of poems by Frank O'Hara, which includes his best poem, 'To the Harbormaster'.]

Lichfield, Birthplace of Heavy Metal?

As the metal world reels from the death of Ozzy Osbourne, startling news emerges from Lichfield. It seems the birthplace of Samuel Johnson, David Garrick and Elias Ashmole also has a claim to be the birthplace of heavy metal – or at least Black Sabbath, or perhaps the name 'Black Sabbath'... Here's the story, as told on the excellent Lichfield Discovered website:

'Lichfield was the birthplace of heavy metal. No, we wouldn't have believed it ourselves until a couple of messages we received told us that the now demolished Robin Hood pub, one time home of The Pokey Hole Club, was where on 1st August 1969 a band called Earth decided to debut a song they'd written that morning called 'Black Sabbath'.

As Norman Hood of The Pokey Hole Club told us,

"The band - then called Earth - arrived to play one of their regular gigs at the club, which at that time was held at The Robin Hood pub on the corner of Frog Lane and St John's Street. They had recently been working on a number of their own, called 'Black Sabbath' and decided to try it out. As both Tony Iommi and Geezer Butler have mentioned in print, the reception to this was astonishing, and hardened their resolve to do more original material. During the usual curry (at The Star Of Bengal!) and kick around (Woolworths car park) Tony mentioned that they were going to have to change their name, due to an American band also being called Earth. They did not say – at that time – it would change to Black Sabbath. That presumably was decided later. Workington undoubtedly saw the name change, but Lichfield saw the birth of Heavy Metal."

The Star of Bengal is now The Bengal but still going strong on Bore Street. The Old Pokey Hole Club, still run by Norman and others is now based at Lichfield Sports Club on Eastern Avenue. And that band that blew the audience away on an August night in 1969. Well, they did OK for themselves...'