Sandringham House and Royal Estate

Thursday 22 August 2002. We visit Sandringham, the royal house in the year of the Queen's Golden Jubilee.

After the last few days the sun has decided to make a welcome appearance and as there may be a spot of walking through the grounds we thought it might be the ideal day to do it.

We start with a tour round the house though. The estate of almost 8000 acres and a house were bought in 1862 for the Prince of Wales, Albert Edward, later to be King Edward VII. This was to be a country home for the soon to be married prince and his bride, Princess Alexandra of Denmark. The house was rebuilt almost in entirety from 1870 - 1900 and has both a West Front and East Front, but no back.

Many of the rooms that are open to the Public are regularly used by the Royal Family who have all, since Edward VII thought of Sandringham as one of their favourite places to be. It was the scene of the first ever Royal Christmas radio broadcast by King George V in 1932 and the first televised Christmas broadcast by Queen Elizabeth II in 1957.

The first ever Royal car. The 1900 Daimler Phaeton was bought by King Edward VII. As you might expect there are some beautiful collections in the house and garages.

Works of art that you recognise, having seen them in print or on TV give you a lift, but the sheer number of tiger skins just makes you wonder at an age that thought animal populations could withstand such wholescale slaughter, or that it was acceptable to just go out with the intention of killing such beautiful animals for a moment's perverse pleasure.

But despite the views of today's younger generations, you should not judge today's older generations by the actions of their ancestors. And whilst we can shake our heads at and regret the actions of our ancestors (virtually everyone regardless of race or religion has some reason to do this), no one should be expected to apologise because their great-great-grandad, however many greats, was an arrogant twonk with better than average sword skills or a bigger army to fight for him or a belief that their deity-in-the-sky was better than anyone else's.

The State Coach in the Carriage House. The delicate hangings are protected by plastic sheeting. In this case it's ok - it's not just single use...

Some of the early shooting brakes - the ancestors of today's estate cars or SUVs - are marvellous concoctions of wood and leather. Just the thing when you are out reducing the bird or small mammal population...

We visited the cafeteria for a spot of lunch. I had a Pepsi in the cardboard cup with the Royal Crest and in the plastic carton is the remains of Miss Franny's sandwich with the Royal Crust...

Lunch partaken of, we headed out into the grounds, worriedly squinting at an unusual glowing ball in the sky... Sixty acres of gardens were transformed from the formal planting of Edwardian days into huge glades and sweeping lawns with specimen trees. Parterres - water gardens - were dug up and lakes created with more natural lines and surroundings.

The horse chestnuts - not yet roasting by an open fire - were heavily laden, promising plentiful conkers for the royal children.

The lake gives a wonderful view of the West Front of the house. We admired the lily pads, the clarity of water, the large fish chasing the ducks about in case they dropped something tasty into the water...

The Nest is a summer house, built in 1913 for Queen Alexandra who used to enjoy sitting by the lake,

Several properties sit within the grounds. This Gatehouse was one that we came upon during our walk.

Great Yarmouth 2002 Index

Jukebox Show, 26 April 1998

Currently I've been going through lots of enprint wallets, finding negatives from the 1990s that have either never been scanned before, or sometimes where the prints were scanned before I had a scanner that would do negatives. The enprint wallets themselves will probably make a blog post sooner or later as there are a few different sorts! For now though, this post covers a trip down to Copthorne near Gatwick airport for the Copthorne Jukebox and Collectables Show on 26 April 1998.

Whilst you have a look at the jukes I'll just fill you in on the previous day... We decided to travel down part of the way and stay overnight at a Travel Inn or something. However there was nowhere to be found and we realised too late that it was the London Marathon on the Sunday so tens of thousands of people had descended on London and the surrounding area looking for accommodation. In fact we ended up having to drive all the way down to the south coast and managed to find a guest house in Bognor Regis at 10:00pm that hadn't shut its doors for the night.

Jukeboxes started out in shops and bars in the 1930s and 40s, when records had to be played at 78 revolutions per minute (RPM) and the needles were usually made of steel and fitted into playing heads that were measured in pounds weight rather than fractions of a gram... The records were 10 inches in diameter and the early jukeboxes generally had wooden cabinets. These were the Golden Age jukeboxes.

The Silver Age jukeboxes were those from the late 1950s through to the mid 1960s which played 7 inch 45 rpm vinyl records and had a visible mechanism so that you could watch the records being selected and played. At some point after that some boring moron said "I've got a good idea! Why don't we take away all the windows and just sell a box with a record player inside?"

A chap called Bob Thompson at the time ran a business selling old pinball machines and had a working display of over 20 machines all on free play. The machine shown is Gottlieb's 1969 College Queens, a four-player version of the company's 2-player Airport which had been released a month before College Queens. This was an electro-mechanical game (i.e. before computer chips appeared in games) and had chime bars for sound - a bit like the Avon Calling doorbell.

The Wurlitzer 1015 towards the right is the ultimate collectable jukebox with bubbles running up glass tubes and coloured plastics rotating behind the clear plastic behind the tubes so that they change colour repeatedly. They came out in the 78 rpm record era in 1945 and remained in production through 45 rpm and into the CD era. Reproduction machines can still be bought brand new.

Other collectables were on sale too. Various stands had old telephones and neon signs for sale.

A Silver Age Wurlitzer jukebox.

The jukeboxes holding 78s have a special fascination for me. The price of these though is well out of reach as working examples started at around 4,500 pounds in 1998! Note that I said "working" and not "immaculate"...

This 1950s record player was on the stall run by the chap from whom I bought a number of record players at another jukebox event - Jukebox Madness - one year. Most jukebox events have Dansette and other vintage record players for sale. In 1998 they were quite affordable, but not long after people cottoned onto the fact that they were becoming collectable and the price went up accordingly.

Ami went through a number of partnerships with BAL-AMI and Rowe-Ami being names that can be found on Silver Age and later machines. I have a Rowe-Ami RI-2 jukebox that is currently in need of a little TLC as it tries to select from the space between two records instead of plucking one out of the carousel... It's these little details that can make a big difference...

In the 1950s it became possible to produce curved glass and both car windscreens and jukeboxes were quick to take advantage of this. Here the hinged glass of the Ami jukebox has been swung up to allow access to the turntable.

The standard Wurlitzer jukebox 78 rpm mechanism stored the 78s horizontally. The holder swung out and the turntable rose, lifting the record out of the holder up to the play arm that was up at the top of the cabinet. This meant that only one side of each record could be played. Somewhere is a load of 78s that are knackered but with immaculate B sides...

Diner-style furniture and an Ami Continental jukebox, as seen in the film Ghost on the right. Next to the Wurlitzer 1015, this is the second most collectable jukebox.

The Wurlitzer 45 rpm mechanism was a carousel that stored the records which were played against a vertically spinning small hub turntable. The playing arm has a stylus fitted on both front and back to allow both sides of the record to be selected. On the small blue arm near the playing head is a small brush which brushes the stylus free of any dust or debris between each play.

I'm not sure what this jukebox is - possible a Rock-Ola which was another of the "Big Four" of Wurlitzer, Ami, Seeburg and Rock-Ola.

Another late Silver Age Wurlitzer from the 1960s.

And finally a couple of classic cars which were parked outside the main entrance. This is the first Ford Capri, a 1964 coupe model based on the company's Consul Classic, which was the first British car with double headlamps at the front.

Anyone turning up in an American vehicle could get in free. A nifty way of ensuring that some would turn up for people to look at!

Coin Slot Machines Index

Cheddar Gorge Sketches

Sunday 24 May 2015. Once we had left Glastonbury it was raining and we decided to try our luck at Cheddar, knowing that if it came fine we could wander up and down the road from the gorge through to the village and that if it was wet there were plenty of cafes to sit in and watch somebody else getting wet...

If you are a regular reader apologies, because you will have seen this sketch before. It was just about fine by the time we had driven slowly up the hill and found a parking space in the third car park above the top show cave. I decided to leave the camera in the dry and we walked down the hill in search of somewhere to have a quick snack.

We knew Mary was cooking a meal for us that night again and we didn't want to have a full meal, but Miss Franny was fancying a clotted cream tea. In the event we should have had one between us as the cafe we ended up in served up the most huge scones! But I like a fruit scone and Miss Franny likes plain ones so perhaps one of us would have had to feel disappointed anyway.

The cafes were all fairly crowded and we were halfway down to the village when we found one with space to sit. It had a framed collection of tea cards (collectable cards from packets of leaf tea from the 1930s) hanging on the wall at the side of our table with glamour photos of Hollywood starlets of the day on them. I counted 54 cards but only knew five of them - and was proud of my achievement, given the rather short periods of relative fame most of them had. Hedy Lamarr was there and Sonja Henie, the skater. But the other three were only familiar for a single film such as Anita Louise - she played Titania to James Cagney's Bottom in the 1935 version of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream. Looking her up on the Internet Movie Database, I found that the only other thing she did that I could remember was the 1950s TV show My Friend Flicka.

I dashed this one off earlier today for this blog post, knowing I hadn't any fresh photos. "Dashed off" might not be a totally apt description if I'm honest, but it didn't take me hours on end either... I included a cyclist riding up the gorge because there was a cyclist staying in one of the other rooms at the B&B and she had cycled all the way up the gorge the previous day.

We had a look round the village shops - is it me or have several cafes turned into souvenir shops? Anyway, there was even one with a few Edwardian penny arcade machines in it. And Miss Franny decided we hadn't got a fridge magnet of Cheddar (with all the ones we have got how can she remember???) so we came back with a fridge magnet as well. The fridge is full, I'm thinking of swapping the kitchen cupboards for ones with steel doors...

And just to finish off, because I know you will be wanting to know whether Anita Louise was a bit of a babe or was totally hideous - I can reveal she was a bit of a babe... And no, I can't remember who the other two starlets were that I recognised... Anita Louise at IMDB.

Somerset Weekend Index

78 rpm Shop Record Covers

A second look at 78 rpm record sleeves provided (sold!) by record shops. (If you missed the first one then it can be viewed here: Record Shops to 1960)

I have 78s from all over the place. Although I started out with a fair collection inherited from my parents, a few of which were bought with me and/or my brother in mind, I have bought quite a lot from collectors and antiques shops and warehouses and a very few by mail order. I have also been given some collections by people who knew they would be going to a good home.

So there's quite a few shops and towns represented on the sleeves of some of the records in my collection which is currently heading towards 700 in number. The above sleeve is an early thick cardboard sleeve, stitched on both sides and on the base. This method provided a very robust sleeve and although these tend to be quite early - 1930s-40s mainly - there are as many of these still surviving as the thinner card that was folded and then glued to form a sleeve. Many of these latter bear signs of wear and repair. This example was bought originally from Kenneth Gardner's shop on Penny Street, Lancaster.

In those early days records were sold by musical instruments shops, who diversified into selling gramophones. Specialist records shops would not come along until later. Even so most towns had a choice of establishments who sold records and in Lancaster, over on Rosemary Lane, Albert Shaw was in competition with Mr Gardner's business. This is another stitched thick cardboard sleeve which has survived well. A little bit of staining but no rips or tears as that is exactly what the stitching technique was designed to prevent.

We'll digress a little bit here, because it's interesting to look at some of the record label names listed down the left hand side. There's no way to prove that the record that the sleeve now contains is the one bought with it and it is probably very unlikely that it was anyway. The record is After The Ball Is Over with a B side on the reverse of Two Little Girls In Blue by Gerald Adams and The Variety Singers and it was released in 1930. Both songs are quite well remembered songs even today, especially the former. They are, in fact, so similar that you could be forgiven for thinking that they were written by the same person, but no - though both composers were named Charles, being Charles K. Harris and Charles Graham respectively.

Regal merged with Zonophone to become er... Regal Zonophone... Odeon must have merged with Parlophone and became Parlophone Odeon with the same design label as before.

Winner was an early label, appearing in 1911. It was owned by a syndicate and that may have inspired the name and label illustration perhaps. It lasted until 1933. No one wanted to buy it and most of the properties were taken over by Decca. The record illustrated - Old Tennessee and Me coupled with Palm Tree Island by The Elliotts - was released in 1919 and we can see from the stamp pasted onto the label that the proud new owner paid three farthings tax on it!

Carlisles shop on Darwen Street, Blackburn, sold a rather vivid colour don't you think? Most card sleeves were a plain brown colour - the colour of the card in fact, as to colour them would only cost money. So coloured sleeves are not as common as brown card, though there are a few to be found. The card here has started to fray and come apart where repeated insertions of the record have snagged it top centre. It is made of two pieces of card bound together by tape which must have at some point split and the repair is a somewhat rare technique - I'm glad to say... It's been sewn by hand by someone unused to wielding needle and thread by the looks of things!

It's probably fair to say that Crane's of Deansgate in Manchester were probably not first and foremost a record shop! Their head offices in Liverpool is described as having a concert hall attached and branches existed in Bangor, Belfast, Birmingham, Cardiff, Glasgow, Manchester, Seacombe, Sheffield and Wrexham. A well-established firm, they started in 1850 and the record sleeve does not mention all their branches! There's a nice 46-page catalogue dating from 1910 available to read for free from The Internet Archive which has many photos of their piano and organ models. They are of superb quality with even the upright pianos having little hinged candelabra sconces that swing out to illuminate the player's music score!

Incidentally, the record is from 1916 by the comedian and Music Hall artist Tom Foy. I listened to it for the first time last night - a sort of stage patter tale of the style adopted by many of today's self-proclaimed comedians. It's a bit like listening to George Formby telling an anecdote but right at the end it turns into what today can only be thought of as a racist joke which spoils it completely for anything other than a historical interest.

Now here's a sleeve dear to my heart. We used to live in Rochdale, I was born there and I well remember Shorrock and Shorrock's huge shop filled with pianos on Drake Street, just up from the Odeon cinema. My Dad used to go there to buy records and I have quite a number of these distinctive green sleeves containing both 10" and 12" 78 rpm records. I remember they used to display records in the window, hung on wires inserted into the holes in a hardboard stand.

Dad would ask which one we wanted and - not knowing one from the other at age 3 or 4 - I would point in the general direction and Dad would say "Good choice!" and go in to buy something he knew we would enjoy. Where's the joy in downloading something off the Internet and not having the bus ride home to anticipate listening to it? Music has become wallpaper. I find that incredibly sad. Go to a concert now and people stand watching their tiny phone screen that is busy turning the exciting performance into pap.

My final sleeve for this time is from the legendary Mazel's in Manchester. "Legendary" may be a bit of an exaggeration, but I have such memories of this shop that is certainly legendary in my mind. A quick search online will convince you lots of other people think the same. It wasn't just a record shop. Certainly by the 1970s when I was a teenage rocker in a local band, trying to get sophisticated sounds out of 6 and 12-string acoustic guitars and a basic electric guitar without the aid of FX pedals, Mazel's was the place to spend Saturday mornings. They sold second hand everything connected to the music business. Records, musical instruments, amps and microphones...

I remember drooling over a dirty great 15" speaker labelled "Victor" that my Dad owned the match to. Dad always used to say it had come out of a cinema from the sound system there... We had a very imbalanced stereo system during my early teens. The left channel came out of the afore-mentioned cinema speaker from a mono Stevns amp (there was no second 'e' before you write in to complain) and the right channel came out of Mum and Dad's 1950s wireless set...

Single-Sided 78 rpm Record

Over the Christmas break we got out of the house for a bit and visited one of the local antiques warehouses, G.B. Antiques in Lancaster. I wasn't looking for anything in particular but I always have an eye out for old records (which usually means 78s) or old books, or really anything from my past which can give me a nice nostalgic kick.

Finding records in places like this is easy, Finding records in good condition and particularly finding 78s that are not just old collections of classical music is not always easy.

So I was pleasantly surprised to come across three different stalls that had something I could bring away with me. I even bought some 45s, though generally they are in much worse condition than the 78s. 45s didn't break - but they scratched much more easily!

The 10" record pictured dates from 1909. Unbelievable almost that it should be in its original sleeve and that the sleeve was in excellent condition. It was a bit faded and the colour was turning brownish at the edges - I've edited it in the scan to restore the colour.

It is Peter Dawson's rendition of Queen of The Earth and on the B side is... nothing. Many of the very early records were single sided. On the back of the record is an engraving of the Zonophone record company logo.

Altogether I spent £20.80 and came away with 24x 78 rpm records and 5x 45 rpm singles. Not too bad considering they were from antiques stalls, which tend to overprice stuff. The other trouble with antiques stalls is that they tend to think of records as "tat" and plonk sticky labels over them where they will ruin the record label or original sleeve.

I was lucky enough to get the sticky price label off this 1959 Marty Wilde record, but the damage over the record company's name is clear and permanent and caused by the desire to label it at 50p! It has J Mills written on it in pencil, which is harder to spot but in any case only serves to show that the record was loved and valued by a former owner.

I liked the look of these old bottles with the light shining through them, but records were the only things we bought on this visit. So to finish with, here's just a few of the rest of the day's findings.

The 45 rpm singles were in absolute mint condition, though most were in wrong or very tatty sleeves. Buying second hand vinyl is an extremely risky business and I never buy stuff that looks as though it has been given to a dog to play with!

A Definitive Hobby

Do boys, I wonder, in these days of computers and Nintendo, still go through a phase of collecting stamps?

My old stamp albums are still knocking about up in the attic, though it's many years since I had a look at them. The last time I bought a set of stamps was in 2000 and then I only bought it to serve as illustrations on the pages of a website about our holiday in Austria that year.

Before that it must be around 30 years or more since I bought stamps specifically with a view to keeping them. I had sets of the commemorative stamps for the launching of the QE2, the investiture of Prince Charles as Prince of Wales, and the set released with Concorde on them. After that I don't really remember anything sticking in my mind. Just on envelopes...

It was always seen as a good hobby for a young developing mind. All that sorting, collating, cataloging and conserving. It did have its messy side too which appeals to young boys. It was far cheaper to soak old used stamps off envelopes than buy new ones so most of the time my brother and I would sit cutting the corners off envelopes and plunging them into a cereal dish of water that by the time we finished was the consistency of gloop and only half full because the other half had gone over the floor or over ourselves.

Then there was the tricky bit about stamp hinges. We would take even our brand new mint condition stamps and apply liberal amounts of spit to a stamp hinge then plaster it onto the back of the stamps.

Anything would do as a stamp album. We had bought ones for a while but they filled up and then when you had Australia on one page and Brazil on the next someone would unthinkingly buy you a set of stamps from Austria and you realised you had no page to put them in alphabetical order.

In the end my stamps all ended up on loose sheets in ring binders. They are still there. Next time I go up in the attic I must have a look and see what I've got. In fact somewhere, I'm absolutely sure, I have a large brown paper bag stuffed full of the corners of envelopes! Where's that cereal bowl?

Painted Postcards

I used to make a point of buying postcards everywhere we went and have quite a large collection, but recently I realised the bits of the house we live in have been getting smaller and smaller as shelves surround us and I've cut back a bit!

It didn't help I suppose that some of the collections were of quite large objects such as jukeboxes and pinball machines, but anyway, I digress.

Instead of just buying any old postcard these days I look for something more unusual. Postcards with photographs that I could (and do!) take myself are definitely out and so I look for something like this.

It is one of a set of six (yes, I couldn't resist buying the full set!) of watercolour paintings of Riva del Garda at the top of Lake Garda in Italy. The artist had chosen their viewpoints carefully and they make a really attractive set.

Oops!
Thanks to the anonymous comment for pointing out this is the castle at Sirmione on the southern end of the lake! Have had my glasses changed but must do something about the eyes...

Tidy Up for Easter!

How do we amass such a load of stuff???

I sometimes think I have some sort of unknown magnetism so that junk of all sorts is irresistably drawn to me and just collects around me.

It's Easter so I decided to do a bit of tidying in the box room. This (believe it or not) is the "after" state of affairs. Those who know me will testify to the truth of the statement because you can actually see carpet here! And bearing in mind that the black plastic bag is full of rubbish to be thrown out there's even more floor space in the offing!

Normally tidying up is the sort of activity where I demolish piles of stuff, look at the individual bits fondly, thinking "I haven't seen this for ages!" and then stack them up again in a different corner (should there be a space in a different corner...)

There's no truth in the rumour that the stepladders were bought so I could stack junk higher...

In fact we did have a sort out a while ago with the view to doing a few car boots or indoor sales. This led to even more junk coming out of the attic and being sorted into the plastic tubs ready for selling. This did however fill the box room a bit more! But once we get rid of it...

Some of the band gear is evident - white low-powered PA which we use for private parties in houses, keyboard and guitars, a bubble machine and blue bottle of bubble fluid (which we don't use for private house parties), white carrier bag to the left containing spare leads and microphones...

Then some computer "junk" - old knackered PC on the floor which needs getting rid of, blank CDs, external disk drive and a laptop CD Rom drive.

Other bits just need courage and an empty bin bag - why do I still have cases holding audio cassettes??? And all those huge books of the Christmas and birthday present variety... go go go! Ok, I'm off - they are going! Thanks for the courage!