Creeping Bentgrass in Southport

Saturday 26 January 2019. Our first gig of the year took us on a stormy journey to Ainsdale near Southport to play at a 70th birthday party.

The venue was Southport and Ainsdale Golf Club where we found the best "can do" staff and an enthusiastic audience who kept the dance floor occupied throughout the evening. We kept the dancers busy and were asked to do our version of the Moody Blues' Nights in White Satin which earned us a standing ovation. Thanks to all concerned - we had just as fabulous a night as we hoped you did!

Family Postcards

I know! A full month without a post! You lucky people! But here I am again, having spent a number of weeks with my brother trying to get to a state where we could sort out the probate following the death of my unmarried uncle. Until that happens there will be scant news of the process and findings, but I now know where my hoarding genes come from. Not just the collections of my uncle but of family members I have only just found out about... I never knew the names of my great-grandparents until we started on this, but now I've started to draw up a family tree. How long before I find myself out on a limb, I wonder...

Anyway, I can't see any harm in having a quick look at some postcards from the 20th century that various family members sent or received. There could be more of these to come...

Sent home to Castleton, Rochdale from Southport by my Great-Grandad to my Great-Grandma who, for whatever reason, had been left at home. 24 September 1906. "Arrived safe about 1/2 past 1 o'clock. The weather is grand here. Yours W.T.B."

W.T.B. was William Thomas Burke, my Great-Grandfather. He's not exactly pouring his heart out here, but it would be too easy and perhaps unfair to draw conclusions from so few words. Funny though that I never even knew his name until now... The rides are long since gone from Southport, but just up the coast in my own home town of Blackpool the Pleasure Beach still has their own version of Sir Hiram Maxim's Flying Machine still in operation. Sir Hiram originally wanted to install controls so that riders could send the gondolas up or down but with thoughts of cars stalling and diving or simply being too low when the ride slowed and crashing into the landing stage, the request was denied, leading to the designer dismissing the ride as "merely a roundabout".

Sent by "Emily" to my Great-Aunt Cissie on 19 August 1907. "Dear Cissie, I arrived on Saturday at 11:30am. Enjoying myself very well and I hope you are, though you are at home. The weather is nice so I hope to return in the best of health. Your affectionate friend, Emily." Cissie was my Grandad Burke's sister.

Another Blackpool postcard sent by my Great-Great-Aunt Florrie home to her mother in Rochdale on 22 August 1907. "Dear Mother, I am still enjoying myself. Yesterday we went on the Helter Skelter and got stuck in the middle. On Thursday we kept having showers, but never keeps us in. Florrie". Florrie Woolfenden was the sister of my Great-Grandmother on my paternal grandmother's side.

Manchester Piccadilly - somewhat different to the present day! This card was another sent by "Emily" to my Great-Aunt Cissie in Castleton, Rochdale on 29 November 1907. "Dear Cissie, I was glad to hear from you and will meet you at quarter to seven. Please bring programme if for entrance. All are well, have plenty of time to talk tomorrow, your loving friend Emily." Cissie at this time would have been aged somewhere between 10 and 14 I think. I only remember her as a quite wrinkled old lady who had never married and who chain smoked unfiltered cigarettes. I rather think though that she was quite a character during her youth and there's a super photo of a very confident young woman in full 1920s flapper-style complete with head dress that will no doubt find its way onto the blog at some point.

Five years later Cissie sent this card from Colwyn Bay back to her mother (my Great-Grandma Burke) in Castleton, Rochdale on 17 August 1912. "Dear Mother, Arrived here quite safely, got lovely digs. Rained here this afternoon, fine now. We are rather a long way from Colwyn Bay centre but in a nice position lovely scenery. With love from Cissie."

A local postcard sent from their home town on 7 September 1961 by my Grandad and Uncle Geoff to my Grandma who was on holiday at Morecambe Bay Holiday Camp, Heysham. "Dear Mum, Hope you are having a good time. Have you won anything at you know what? We expect to arrive on Saturday between 2-00 and 2-30. Love Geoff and Dad"

The mention of winning refers to whist drives - she would play every night if possible and would sometimes tut or grumble under her breath if my Mum and Dad insisted we play for matchsticks not pennies when she played cards with me and my brother when we were small! Yet she would have gone mad at the thought of gambling in any other way. Inflation has gone mad here - all the postcards from 1906-12 were sent for a ha'penny (a halfpenny - pre-decimal coinage. 24 of them would be the equivalent to a 5p coin today, though that ignores inflation). In 1961 it cost tuppence ha'penny or 2½d, equivalent to 0.521 pence of today's money without inflation. Just to be clear, that's £0.00521 pence... Add in the effects of inflation and today it costs 56p to send a postcard second class or 65p first class. There was only one class of postage in 1961 and post was delivered twice a day.

Comments on a postcard please...

A Day In Southport

On Wednesday I breathed a sigh of relief having finished the decorating of the bathroom and toilet, which have been keeping me from updating this blog for a while. I was starting to think of articles I could post and series that I should get on with (the next issue of Film Review coming shortly...) but then the weather turned nice and I thought - and Miss Franny insisted - that we should go out for the day.

So Friday saw us in Southport. It's quite a long time since we visited that particular town and it does hold some memories for me, particularly running round the boating pond as a child, holding onto the mast of my yacht which I was watching to the exclusion of noticing the path taking a 90 degree turn which resulted in me neatly running off the edge and... SPLASH!

"Mu-u-u-m! Mu-u-u-um! I've fallen in the water! Mu-u-u-um! I'm all wet!!!" [SMACK!]
"Look where you're going next time! Look at you! We're going to have to go home now, you've spoiled the day!"

We didn't of course. We just walked round, my parents looking at shops, me being left outside so I didn't drip in them... "Don't you dare move an inch from there!"

I imagine that the boating pond is still there somewhere but we didn't find it. This is the Marine Lake. The sea retreated from Southport's Promenade and the Marine Lake meant people could enjoy the water and go boating without the hike over the beach. We used to park our car on the beach in fact, though they seem to have stopped that again now and in fact the sea was fairly close to the sea wall, only a short bus ride from the Marine Lake (joking there!!!)

On the edge of the Marine Lake towards the north is The Lakeside Inn, which claims to be the smallest pub in Britain. It can officially claim that too, having been recognised as such by the Guinness Book of World Records in 1989 and again in 2011. Other pubs challenge the claim, particularly as although it measures only 16 x 22 feet, it has a somewhat larger beer garden outside catering for drinkers.

The pier front is dominated by a large amusements arcade (no pinball machine though...) and a carousel of gallopers, both owned by Silcock's, a Warrington based firm whose name will be instantly familiar to fairground customers and visitors throughout the north west. The sound of a karaoke artist came from a pub just behind these. We passed by on the pier later on and lots of people were singing along with him. Strange how each one of them managed to hold the notes a bit longer than he did...

Just off the main Promenade road, between that and the shops of Lord Street are lots of small shops and cafes that just typify a seaside town for me. Colourful and presenting a bewildering range of goods both behind the counter and on displays on the pavement, this rock shop is a good example.

Here's another, with rock, ice cream, balls, buckets and spades for the beach and enough signs to make you forget that you forgot to bring your book with you...

Then there's the other type of seaside shop. This is where you buy your postcards during the week, your Dad gets his newspaper to read on the beach, Mum stocks up on sun tan lotion and TCP for any cuts, scrapes or bruises (caused by falling in the boating pool perhaps)... Then at the end of the week on your last day before going home, this is where you hoped to be brought so that you could choose a toy to take home! Perhaps that new Corgi or Dinky Ford Cortina or Triumph Herald...

And the boring bit, because every day Mum will want to spend at least some time away from the beach looking at the shops along Lord Street. You are dragged along by the hand, mutinous and glowering whilst Mum spends ages trying on at least fifty pairs of shoes until her feet are all raw and bleeding and even Dad is starting to look a bit fed up... "I'll have these!" she says triumphantly, limping in a pair of ridiculous heels to the angled mirror at floor level to admire her size 7 feet crammed into a pair of size 5 shoes...

As a grown-up (well...) I can admire these old arcades and shop fronts from an architectural point of view and I did love this one, the Wayfarers Arcade. A plaque informs us that it opened in 1898 as the Leyland Arcade, Leyland being the name of Southport's MP at the time.

It had two levels with the ground level at the rear of the arcade being exactly halfway between the ground level at the front and the first floor level! So behind me as I took this photograph were doorways to the street.

And it had a guitar shop!!! I had to go in and chat to the owner. I told him how I loved the name of the shop. "Oh, that was never in doubt," he said. "As soon as my kids heard I was going to open a guitar shop they said 'What will you call it? Dad's Guitars?' So I did..." Specialising in quality second-hand guitars there was plenty to drool over from 1950s vintage Strats to a couple of lovely Gibson SGs.

We had some lunch and then returned to the Promenade. The theatre and conference centre has another memory. This is where, in 2009, Creeping Bentgrass shrank from a trio to a duo and as a consequence we found ourselves able to accept far more bookings. We started in 2000 as a four-piece, then became a trio, then a duo... I keep telling David that his days are numbered... He keeps telling me... - well, no, it doesn't matter...!

We caught a little road train to the Pleasureland fairground. Not because it was a long way to walk to it, but more because it seemed a fun thing to do. We arrived at the Pleasure Beach and handed out some money for the driver who asked "Are you just going back or do you want to return here?" He hadn't noticed us get on or off...

Southport's Pleasureland was owned and operated by the Thompson family of Blackpool Pleasure Beach from 1913 to 2006. There was an outcry when they pulled out and dismantled everything including some vintage and much loved rides such as the wooden Cyclone roller coaster. In 2007 the park re-opened under the ownership of Norman Wallis.

Here's a few photos taken as we wandered through!

We came out of Pleasureland onto the Marine Drive, the coast road. The coast here runs south west to our left and north east to our right. I'm sure the tide never used to come in so far when we used to come here during my childhood. I always seem to remember the end of the pier still being a long walk away from the sea's edge. The pier is Britain's second longest after Southend. It is 1,216 yards long and extends more than a kilometer out towards the sea.

There had been a tram service up and down the pier intermittently from 1863 up to 2015 when the tram was scrapped and it has now been replaced by the land train similar to the one we had ridden on to Pleasureland.

Taken from the pier this looks out over the River Ribble estuary to Lytham St Annes and beyond to Blackpool with the Tower clearly visible and behind it again, the hills and mountains of the Lake District.

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Corporate Event Gig

Last night we played for the JISC Regional Support Centre (RSC) Northwest annual conference at Southport Theatre and Convention Centre after I had been involved in the event with my work hat on!

A few people were wondering what to expect and some were possibly a bit gobsmacked but lots of nice comments folks so thanks for that!

A birthday party on Sunday will make the 3rd gig in 8 days!

Large version of photos: creeping bentgrass

Hiram Maxim's Flying Machine

We were in Blackpool this morning to meet up with David and Jeannie for breakfast and afterwards whilst the ladies went off shopping, David and I had a wander round the antiques market in the Winter Gardens. I came across a stall selling old postcards for 25p each and had a brief rummage, coming up with a couple of postcards one of which was this one.

It shows Sir Hiram Maxim's Flying Machine, one of three such machines he produced in the early days of the 20th Century to stimulate public interest in flight, which was very much in its early infancy at the time. The Flying Machine shown was at Southport, standing next to the Water Shute that gives the postcard its caption. It has a number of large open rowing boats suspended from a spider-like arrangement of arms and steel bracing cables which when spinning would cause the boats to fly out sideways from the platform over which they would sit when stationary, this "flight" powered by centrifugal force. The other two Flying Machines were at London and Blackpool.

The Blackpool Flying Machine still exists of course and has been a feature and landmark of Blackpool Pleasure Beach since 1904. I took this photograph in the mid to late 1990s when the motor powering the Flying Machine - still the 1904 original - had been opened up to public viewing by knocking a wall through and installing a large glass window.

Sir Hiram Maxim was an inventor and made his fortune selling the Maxim machine gun which was used extensively in the first years of World War One. Flying was his own personal ambition and enthusiasm. He turned his hand to a number of varied inventions though, one being an inhaler for asthmatics, an example of which is exhibited in the Science Museum in London.

Southport Not Being Left Out

Remember way back in April I mentioned the work being done on Blackpool's sea defences and how the council was reclaiming land back from the sea?

Southport - where the sea is so far away it can only be seen from the end of the pier with a pair of binoculars - is not being left out.

They are reclaiming land back from the Marine Lake...