Brussels Midwinter

Scenes from the wintry streets of the Belgian capital just after the war, part of a batch of found photographs taken by a British serviceman on duty in Northern Europe.  They make an interesting record of the city in painful transition from war into peace.  Powdery snow gathers between the cobblestones and freezes in the gutters while pedestrians hunch up against the cold. The swastikas have been burned and the streets are free of the emblems of occupation. Commercial life is returning and the trams are running.  There are posters on display in the Place de Brouckère for Un Bal Surréaliste at the Academie du Beaux Arts (Salle de la Madeleine) on February 8th. - a frivolity that could never have happened under occupation. With privately owned vehicles in short supply, traffic is light and there are long queues at the tram stop. Some landmark buildings can be identified including the Monumental Palais de Justice and the Hotel Metropole (which closed in 2020). The photographer has composed with care and discovered unexpected poetry in the near deserted cobbled streets dusted with snow.

 

Airborne over the Great Orme

Situated to the north west of the North Wales seaside resort of Llandudno is the Great Orme, a chunky limestone headland, operated as a country park and nature conservation area. Copper mining has left behind a vast and only partially explored network of tunnels that have been made into a visitor attraction. A tramway opened in 1902 to link the town below with the summit and now provides an anachronistic visitor experience in open sided vehicles driven by a continuous running cable embedded in the trackway.  In 1969 a Cable Car began to offer an additional connection with the town with 20 cabins in circulation at intervals of one minute. For the voyeuristically inclined this aerial parade of 4 person pods makes for an interesting spectacle.  From the slopes below it’s easy to observe the various behaviours the overhead voyagers display - some are absorbed in recording a movie on their mobiles while others affect an air of lofty indifference as they sail by.  Visually, the point where the cars cross is the most striking as the space between contracts and expands.  These photos were taken in September 2016.

 

Postcard of the Day No. 104, East is West (1922)

Constance Talmadge (1898-1973) was a star of the silent screen who made her mark in 1918 when she appeared in D W Griffith’s “Intolerance” but her days in front of the camera would be relatively brief.  With the advent of sound in 1928 she retired in favour of making money from real estate. A handful of crew plus an umbrella and some auxiliary lighting seems to be enough. The movie is identifiable as “East is West”, made in 1922 with Constance playing the part of Ming Toy. Ming escaped from the notorious Love Boat in Shanghai only to find herself pursued by Charlie Yong (“Fifty-fifty Chinaman”) in San Francisco's Chinatown where she was again threatened with white-slavery. Straight arrow Billy Benson saved her from a fate worse than death for the second time. History doesn’t record much about the audience response but the movie had been judiciously calculated to feed into contemporary fears of all things oriental as represented by the Yellow Peril and it would be a disappointment if all their worst efforts had been in vain. It turned out to be one of Hollywood’s more forgettable movies but the director, Sidney Franklin went on to enjoy a long and prolific career including directing “The Barretts of Wimpole Street” twice (1934 and 1957) employing the same script, word for word, on both films.  According to Imperial Tobacco (see below), Constance was noted in Hollywood for her inexhaustible supply of “pep”.

 

Hermits - an investment opportunity.

On a recent visit to the splendid ruins of Restormel Castle we learned that the 13th. century Earl of Cornwall had a personal team of hermits who, in return for scraps of food and some primitive accommodation, would pray for his continuing prosperity and the gift of eternal life.  It would be fascinating to learn how the Earl measured the productivity of his hermits but should his fortunes decline, the hermits would be on hand to take the blame.  There’s something darkly impressive about engaging the services of those whose lives are dedicated to abstinence, piety and penury to intercede with a higher power in the interests of wealth accumulation and the more I think about it, the more it feels like an idea whose time has come again.  Surely Jeff Bezos’s gilded existence could only be enhanced by the addition of a handful of hermits on his payroll. It’s just a matter of convincing him that their modest running costs and exemption from the minimum wage would make a cost effective investment. His duty of care to the hermits could be discharged by a daily drone delivery of subsistence rations direct to their home pods.  Devising performance metrics for the power of prayer should be a simple matter for the digital wizards at Mr. Bezos’s disposal.  Those hermits whose performance is most convincing could be rewarded with ice-cold showers and a reduced food allowance to elevate their sense of self-denial - making them the only group of workers who can be incentivised by reductions in their pay and conditions.  All that remains is to find an accountant to make a persuasive case for hermit expenses to be tax deductible.

There’s a clear gap in the market here for an online agency to recruit and supply hermits to high net worth individuals.  For now we must recruit from the human population but before long advances in Artificial Intelligence should enable us to offer fully automated robotic hermits, leaving humans to do what they do best - delivering parcels and driving HGVs. Prospective hermits would require positive references from senior clergy and come fully vetted for unacceptable behaviours and socialist tendencies.  Only those anchorites with the greatest experience in achieving the transfer of wealth from those who possess the least to those whose need is least, in a morally justifiable way will be offered for service.  All world religions (except Brexit) can be catered for if spiritual needs should change. Fees will have to reflect the costs of all due diligence but once installed your hermit will be fully operational at minimal expense and you can look forward to a lifetime of conscience-free wealth accumulation. What follows is a draft business proposition aimed at Mr. Jacob Rees-Mogg, who would seem to be the ideal client.

As a senior Cabinet Minister and family man, you will be more than familiar with the issue of time-pressures. We are writing to offer our services to solve the competing demands of the spiritual and the material in your all too busy life.  So often it is the spiritual side of our lives that is neglected in favour of our duties and responsibilities to our family and our employer.  It may not have occurred to you that the perfect solution to this may be found in your own government’s policy of outsourcing and privatisation.  Why not outsource your own spiritual responsibilities and engage the services of a hermit at virtually no cost to yourself?  Those like yourself with the deepest spiritual commitment may find a hermit multi-pack even more advantageous.  As well as praising God with impressive intensity and efficiency our fully trained hermits will pray for the success of your political ambitions and business interests.  Their frugality can be offset against the environmental costs of your own lifestyle enabling you to become fully sustainable.  Our hermit planning services can supply nutritional guidance and advise on minimal standards of hermit accommodation - we can even visit your property and indicate the best sites for the modern hermitage. Rest assured that our hermits have been comprehensively vetted for displeasing habits and offensive ideologies. Fees will have to reflect the costs of all due diligence but once installed your hermit will be fully operational at minimal expense and you can look forward to a lifetime of conscience-free wealth accumulation.

 

Fear and Loathing on Teesside

It is strange how those who would die in a ditch to defend a statue of a slave trader have no hesitation in erasing the industrial legacy that is such a vital source of local pride in places like Middlesborough and Redcar that have been ravaged in the era of post-industrialisation.  Within 4 hours of taking up her post as Culture Secretary, Ms Nadine Dorries was contacted by Mr Ben Houchen, Tees Valley Mayor, and reversed Historic England’s temporary listing of the Dorman Long coal storage tower at Redcar.  Much to the delight of Mr Houchen, it was demolished in the early hours of Sunday September 19 at 1.55 am.  Not so much a case of levelling up as levelling down. Ms Dorries is described as a best selling novelist and was commended by Ben Wallace, Minister of Defence as ideal for her new post because her second career shows she is in touch with what ordinary people think. Hilary Mantel is a best selling novelist but I can’t imagine Mr Wallace having much good to say about her.  Back to Ms Dorries, she is certainly an accomplished gobshite and avowed opponent of left-wing snowflakes, political correctness, gay marriage and easy access to abortion.  So she comes fully armed into the present government’s inspirational ‘war on woke’.

The real villain of this piece is the Mayor of Tees Valley who fought tooth and nail to successfully oppose the local campaign to preserve the redundant blast furnace at Redcar as a significant part of the regional industrial heritage. Demolition of the Redcar steelworks took place in August and the depressing saga of the Mayor’s intrigues and u-turns that made it happen is well told by local blogger, Scott Hunter.  Mr Houchen has a Taliban-like enthusiasm for destroying the symbols of the past that sustain a sense of local identity. Replacing them with retail parks, big box fulfilment centres, a freeport for tax evasion and a handful of affordable jerry-built dog-kennels is designed to prepare the locals for a bright shiny future of low-wage, long hours and insecure employment where the profits will be whipped offshore in the blink of an eye. The images of Houchen’s victims come from Google Earth, the industrial panorama (in which the Dorman Long tower can be seen on the skyline in the centre) was photographed by myself from the top of the Transporter Bridge in  April 2016.

 

Great Laxey Wheel

Anyone rummaging through boxes of miscellaneous vintage postcards will soon find one of the incongruously oversized Laxey Wheel. It’s the world’s largest working water wheel and can be found on the Isle of Man where it is a major visitor attraction.  The Isle of Man was rich in mineral deposits but had no seams of coal so to pump water out of the Great Laxey Mines complex this water powered Leviathan was constructed in 1854.  Reserves of lead, copper, silver and zinc finally ran out in 1929 and the mines closed.  The wheel languished out of use until 1965 when it was taken under government control and a project to restore it to working order was completed in 1971 since when it has been conserved. It makes a comfortable fit with the island’s major attraction of antiquated transport - narrow-gauge steam railways, electric tramways, and a mountain railway that climbs to the summit of Snaefell.  The tramway and the mountain railway converge in the village of Laxey making it something of a tourist hotspot.  Passengers on the Snaefell railway are treated to commanding views of the Laxey Wheel as their train ascends the valley side.  The white painted stone work and the bright red wheel spokes enhance its visibility today just as they did when it was a working structure rather than a museum piece.

 

The Dreamland Express

A group of children - boys and girls - lying face down on the ground, staring over the edge of a precipice.  One of the boys is upright and racing towards the edge in the company of a snake.  Is he planning to jump? The scene has been visualised from above giving a strong sense that they are looking into a terrifying void.  They are, in fact, at the edge of the world.  Beyond is the limitless emptiness of space. This anxiety inducing glimpse of infinity comes from a book for children, written and illustrated by H R Millar (1869-1942), the subject of our previous post.

The Dreamland Express was published by Oxford University Press in 1927 and copies are hard to find. A new edition was issued in 1989 and these scans come from one such copy.  Millar put his heart and soul into this book, writing an adventure story in which a trio of schoolboys follow a voyage of discovery through fantastical and other worldly landscapes, encountering a bewildering sequence of wild and dangerous animals, dragons, giants and citizens of exotic and eccentric civilisations.  Holding it all together was the series of trains in which the young adventurers travelled that enabled Millar to indulge his lifelong passion for railways and spice his narrative with romantic vignettes of life on the rails.  Millar begins his tale with a haunting description of the children discovering a passenger train all but concealed in dense woodland, headed by a majestic steam engine entangled in foliage. A full complement of crew are ready and waiting to welcome them on board and get the journey underway.

In the first half of the book the train races through imaginary cities on bridges and viaducts that have all but escaped the laws of gravity, arriving at an extraordinary cavernous station built in the style of Ancient Egypt. Along the way our heroes meet a flirtatious girl, always an uncomfortable moment of potential disruption to the simple pleasures of male companionship. Unlike John, Peter and George she is not granted the dignity of a name but she wins their respect by revealing an unexpected interest in trains, enough to admit her to the travelling band. Later the group is joined by a school swot whose function is to irritate with displays of pedantry.  The second half of the book involves an enforced change of train - the new locomotive is a decrepit specimen apparently riveted together from a motley assortment of life expired parts in the manner of W Heath Robinson. A Mysterious Oriental with a private train carrying a magnificent retinue of slaves and devoted followers enters the story and by sleight of hand substitutes their locomotive for something even worse - an Oriental fantasy made from porcelain and timber with a silken canopy covering the cab.  Despite the handicap of a disintegrating locomotive our heroes find time to rescue a slave from execution, win the favour of a Giant and emerge unscathed from a pitch-black Canyon of Darkness.

Millar’s visions of alternative worlds are brought to life with pen and ink drawing combined with colour washes - the results are close to the visual conventions of the comic strip. Echoes of Lyonel Feininger and Winsor McCay can be seen in Millar’s eccentric architectural fantasies although no evidence that he ever saw their work exists. Millar employed the voice of a narrator throughout to offer context and commentary and he didn’t flinch from challenging subject matter.  The image of the eternally burning city and the desperation of its inhabitants is the stuff of young nightmares and evokes a sense of dread equal to the confrontation with the edge of the world where the journey ends. Millar resolves this situation by having the three boys simultaneously awaken in their beds back home.  Normality has been restored and the boys can resume their natural progression to adulthood where John flies a Spitfire in the Battle of Britain, eventually becoming a Conservative MP, Peter survives the privations of a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, later rising through the ranks of the Anglican Church to become a Suffragan Bishop and George, having served as a Junior Officer in the Royal Navy, studies Fine Art at the Slade, briefly exhibits his paintings of railway disasters at the Beaux-Arts Gallery while becoming a notorious habitué of the Colony Room, bantering the night away with George Melly and Francis Bacon.