The World I Entered, 1954

Another re-creation from my lost Nostalgia web pages. I was born in 1954 in the bedroom of a semi-detached house in Rochdale, Lancashire. My mum was 19 and my dad was 22 and doing his National Service with the army.

I'm seen here with Mum, Nanna, her mother and Grandma Mercer, my great-grandmother. For the first couple of years of my life we lived with my Nanna and Grandad. I was followed after 11 months by my brother Frank, whose arrival so upset the family that they set fire to the house a week later resulting in smoke and fire damage to the entrance hall. Not that I remember this all that vividly, but I was told about it afterwards...

Dad, once he stopped playing at soldiers, got a job as an insurance surveyor in Manchester, peering into the inside of boilers and trying to decide whether they looked fit for purpose. I suspect my Mum was quite relieved. At the time, the Suez Crisis was rearing its head - British soldiers could still lose life and limb.

The after effects of World War II were still felt in Britain, as rationing was still in force when I came into being - "Have you got a coupon for that baby, Ma'am?"

Apparently Mum got extra rations because of me - isn't that nice?

Again, I had to be told this, I was too young to notice even the things that were soon to disappear like farthings - a quarter of a penny.

Heck, there were 240 pennies in a pound for Heaven's Sake, neatly counted in 20 lots of 12 pence known as a shilling. Pre-decimal England was a bewildering place for a baby of my tender years... or days... whatever! Luckily Mum did most of my shopping...

England in 1954 would be almost unrecognisable to people in these days. There were very very few cars on the roads (the above photo was taken in 1962 and is on the main road through the town centre of Rochdale about 300 yards from the town hall). Trains were still pulled by steam engines, supermarkets were non-existent, and the effects of two world wars in the 40 preceding years meant that there was a sort of military culture. Most people wore some sort of uniform for work even if it was only a white "laboratory" coat worn by shopworkers, or a very strict dress code - very few men did not wear a tie.

Best clothes, meaning suits and ties came out every Sunday. The photo is of my grandparents relaxing at home on a Sunday. Not a special occasion of any sort. Not to have your shirt tucked into your trousers was enough to make people faint... Sorry, slight exaggeration there, but it simply wasn't something you would even contemplate! People in authority at home, at work or in jobs such as the police force, or any job in charge of the environment you were in at the time such as a station master, were respected and deferred to. In the main people followed a well regulated and ordered lifestyle. Oh - and you called everyone "Sir" or "Miss" or "Madam". If you knew them it was probably "Mr X" or "Mrs X". Even some married couples called each other by that!

People got married much younger - it was just about the only way you were ever going to get to have sex! There was no pill, and the danger of pregnancy was drummed into girls. There was an tinge of disgrace about getting pregnant before being wed. Even Mum, who wed Dad a good 4 months before I came into the world, felt compelled to wear a green dress for the wedding - wearing white would not have been "the done thing" in her condition! And she had the support of her family - many girls were thrown out of the house. 40 years earlier, many of them would have been locked away in institutions for having a baby!

Televisions were rare and in any case had only one channel - the BBC. Nanna and Grandad had one - a huge wooden thing with a tiny screen. By the time I was old enough to want to watch it the BBC had been joined by ITV. The photo shows my other grandparents' TV and is from the turn of the 50s/60s. Huge by earlier standards! Note the coal scuttle standing to the right, ready to feed the open fire in the fireplace.

The radio was called the "wireless" and was still large enough to be a piece of furniture! They were full of valves as yet, even portable radios were the size of a handbag. There were no computers, no electronic anything... Things that plugged in were "electric" and electric things to play with did not yet exist apart from Dansette record players, the wireless and the television. All of these were expensive things!

Records played one song and then you turned them over and played the "B" side. 45s were only just coming out. Most people still bought the old 78rpm records that broke when sat on or knelt on... Rock and Roll was just beginning, mostly guitars were an instrument that you could never hear in an orchestra. Many houses had a piano in the "front room". Both sets of grandparents had one. On Mum's side it was Grandad who played it, favouring hymns, he was after all, the organist at the Park Baptist church. On my Dad's side it was Grandma Burke who played. (They were always Grandma and Grandad Burke whereas Mum's parents were just Nanna and Grandad without any surname!) She favoured music hall and ballads - Carolina Moon was one I used to enjoy hearing her play.

Ok, so let's introduce you to the clan so you know who's who in this set of pages.

This was taken at my christening, where I ended with the name John David Burke, John after my paternal grandfather and David after Mum's brother - the slightly nervous 14-year-old who looks unsure as to whether to curtsy or not...

Top row: Auntie Cissie - Grandad Burke's sister (she was really called Mary but never used it as she hated people saying it as though it rhymed with "furry"), Grandad Burke, Grandad (Frank Metcalfe).

Middle row: a friend of the family - could be the next door neighbour I think, this is Nanna and Grandad's back garden, Grandma Burke, Nanna

Front row: Dad (Allan Burke), Mum (Evelyne) holding me, Uncle David (I called him "Dowa" as a baby but then when my brother, Frank, came along that proved too hard for him to manage and it got shortened to "Dow" which he still gets called at times), Great-Grandma Mercer.

Grandma Burke and Nanna were both housewives, that is, they spent all day enjoying the best that 1950s gadgetry could provide in the way of helping with household chores and sewing and cooking - which wasn't a lot in those days. I suppose both halves of the family were fairly well off, considering. Both had indoor toilets and bathrooms - by no means did everyone have those things!

Grandad owned a grocery shop in Rochdale and had a "sit-up-and-beg" Ford Prefect car to deliver weekly grocery orders around the town. More of the shop in another page.

Grandad Burke was an engineer who made carpentry and other tools for a local firm. He had lost the little finger and the one next to it in an accident at work sometime around World War I, which put paid to any dreams he may have had of joining up - though he was in a reserved occupation anyway. Both fingers were non-existent, they had been amputated at the very knuckle of the fist of his right hand. Being smacked by that hand didn't half hurt!

What else sets the scene? There were no fast food shops - fish and chips were the staple of the drunken after-hours set, though at least this had taken over from the ghastly tripe and vinegar of the earlier generation! Queen Elizabeth was getting used to the idea of being Queen, Rochdale was "Home of Gracie Fields", the world's first nuclear submarine was launched, the Cold War was hotting up, Bill Haley released "Rock Around the Clock", Marilyn Monroe married Joe DiMaggio and the Creature from The Black Lagoon popped out at cinema audiences in glorious black and white 3D!

Very few people had telephones in their houses at this time. I only saw them being used on TV and was actually terrified of them as a small child. I remember having nightmares where the sky would go dark and then every time someone somewhere in the street would use a telephone, this gigantic scary face would appear in the sky, scowling down at me whilst talking silently into a telephone. They always seemed just about to "get" me! I had, luckily, grown out of this phase by the time we got our first phone when I was 12...

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A Drive Through The Illuminations

It's been years since we did it. Driving through the famous Blackpool Illuminations, that is.

Last night I was dying to get out of the house and find some fresh air. A day either peering at a computer screen or talking on the telephone had left me feeling a bit cooped up.

I suggested a ride out into the countryside and Fran countered it with a suggestion we go shopping but we could go to the Asda in Fulwood, north Preston. So a compromise and we set off around 7:00pm taking all the back roads through Elswick to Broughton then cutting down the A6 to just past the M55/M6 junction and then across to the Asda.

We bumped into Rachel and Katie in Asda and caught up on a bit of news, then zig-zagged up and down every single aisle - oh joy - because we had no idea where stuff was.

Fran claimed she was disappointed because she had wanted to go to look around the clothes section and it was closed off. There was someone watching over me after all... It was daylight when we went in. It was pitch black when we came out.

So I headed back for the A6 but then turned left towards Preston until I hit the old Blackpool Road and we drove through Lea and then left through Warton and Lytham, then along the front at St Annes and so to Squires Gate at the start of the Illuminations.

By the time we got to the Pleasure Beach we had joined a crawling queue of traffic. This surprised me a bit, I didn't think the Illuminations were that popular these days to have such a queue mid week, but obviously they still draw visitors in.

So we stayed mostly in first gear and inched our way along the Promenade, seeing all 3 of the current illuminated trams - the trawler, the warship and the wild west train.

I turned off at the Gynn, just before the large standing tableaux along the cliffs at North Shore. They are best seen on foot and we'll go another night.

But I had had my fresh air, mingled a bit towards the end with exhaust fumes. It also struck me as we drove along the Golden Mile how the smell of frying onions has totally disappeared, such a shame! In the 1970s and 80s until the yellow M and Burger King arrived, burgers were griddled in their scores and kept hot by piling them on their ends in a heap of fried onions. They were put in a bun with or without onions and you added ketchup and mustard to taste and they were gorgeous! You wouldn't have dreamed of putting salad or pickles on them in those days but they tasted fantastic.

I don't often do burgers these days and if I do it has to be as a meal, not in between meals. As a teenager calories used to bounce off me. Now they cling on hard and fast...

I was driving of course so the photo is an old one. But interestingly for the past day or two it has been the one getting the most hits at Flickr, where you can see a larger version.

Flickr have recently changed how this works. Follow the link then click on the photo. It will be shown on a black background but then you will see a link for view all sizes.

Independent in Rhodes

Sunday, 22 August 2010. It's our last port of call. We wake up in Rhodes, moored against the dock and having decided that we are just going to walk off the ship and into the city which is so close to the harbour that even a bus isn't needed.

Rhodes Harbour. It was here (well... just around the corner to the right...) that another of the Seven Wonders, the Colossus of Rhodes was built, a huge bronze statue straddling the harbour. An earthquake destroyed it and lumps of it then littered the place for 700 years until it was sold for scrap and taken away on the backs of 400 camels.

St Paul visited Rhodes once he started his travels and there is a gateway into this fort that bears his name and that he was supposed to enter the city by.

This photo was taken from just inside the city walls and you can see how close the marina is. The harbour is not much further away. The city was well defended, having been fortified by the Knights Hospitallers after they were driven from Jerusalem. This medieval city is well worth exploring. But of course we are exploring the shops...

Hey hey! I've found one that's worth looking inside! Fran can't believe it and for a while walks up and down outside, with her head in her hands whilst I am inside buying a few guitar picks just in case I get another chance of a spot in the Horizons Bar!

There are just so many brilliant sights in Rhodes that I can only cherry pick here. There are bars-cum-restaurants every second doorway and walking along is to accept a constant barrage of "Drink? Beer? Coffee?" even though they have just watched you turn down their neighbours. One was particularly insistant. "You say 'no' to Georges?" he said to Fran, "you say 'no' to Georges?!?" he can't seem to believe it. "Say 'no' just one more time!"
"No!!!!!!" says Fran forcefully. He gives up. Well she frightened me, never mind him...

Up at the top of the hill we came across a number of painted trees. This was quite clever, taking the unique shape of the tree and building on it. Another one had a cat chasing a mouse down the trunk.

The fortifications are evident everywhere. It as though the entire city is the fortress and certainly the Knights Hospitallers were able to withstand several invasion attempts and sieges.

It was hot. We went back down the hill and stopped for a drink at the same bar we had used on a previous visit. Just sitting with a long drink and watching people was entertainment enough! We had walked several miles and after the drink walked a few more before returning to almost the same table and flopping for a second time.

Later in the Horizon Bar I was glad to have found the music shop as Tomas and Maris very generously invited me up on stage again. So whilst others were going home with new clothes, trinkets and souvenirs, I brought back half a dozen Greek guitar picks!

I played Joe Brown's Picture of You at the end of one of Tomas and Maris's 6 sets for the night and we sat afterwards chatting with them until it was time for them to go on again.

The week had started with a generator fault. At 11:30pm when we were well out at sea, Tomas and Maris were halfway through a song when the sound and all the lights went out. The emergency lighting came on after a brief moment and then after about ten minutes waiting Tomas and Maris carried on singing without the aid of any amplification and accompanied with just the guitar. Then the intercom bell sounded the code for a Captain's announcement and his voice came over the speakers: "Good evening ladies and gentlemen. As you may have noticed..."

A generator, the same or another, had hiccupped and as a result all the earth breaker switches onboard had tripped. It would take a full hour to reset them all with the air conditioning taking precedence. Tomas and Maris played a brilliant set acoustically and then an officer appeared to reset the switch and bring the sound system online. I wondered how the Captain had made the announcement but Tomas explained that there were both 240 and 110 volt circuits onboard and whilst they were using one circuit, the main intercom was on the other. Only the one had blown.

With all systems restored and only a short distance to sail back to Marmaris, we put aside hopes of an enforced extra day's holiday! So tomorrow will see us back on a flight to England and rain!

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A Village Called Sirince, A Bar Called Horizons

Saturday, 21 August 2010. The coach leaves St John's Basilica and takes us to a small village called Sirince, pronounced Seh-RIN-jay.

We visit the Artemis Restaurant where we are given a glass of wine and a pancake stuffed with spinach. Apart from being just a little dry, the pancake was lovely. The wine was produced in the village which has been producing wine for quite a while.

Sirince is one of those villages that exchanged populations with Greece after the First World War.

The Greeks who lived here went to a village in Greece and that village's Turks came back to Turkey to live here.

There's some debate as to whether it was the Orthodox Christian Greeks or the returning Turks who instigated the wine making but the Turks either started or continued it and we sampled it and honestly couldn't tell whether it was Greek or Turkish in flavour... The restaurant cat - or it may have been a stray - purred as it brushed past me under the table and clawed the leg of the woman sitting opposite...

Sirince is one of those places where you wonder how they all make a living if not for tourists. I suspect many of the inhabitants work in Selcuk but the main street is a row of shops or stalls selling clothes, baskets and all sorts of stuff that I never ever buy on holiday... Actually if all tourists are like me, then it's to be hoped the majority of the population have a job in Selcuk!

Even the local road train only had one carriage. We had a couple of old ladies sitting opposite us on the coach and they reminded us a lot of Sadie and Joan who we met on an Island Star cruise. They were skilled experts at haggling to the point of making loud disapproving sucking noises if anyone else was in danger of paying too much! We waited in the hot sun for the coach to come back to pick us up. The locals were mainly sitting in the shade or having a siesta and probably thought us all mad...

A row of catering size tins, once containing cooking oil held a row of sunflowers.

That night in the Horizons bar we again sat to enjoy the music of Tomas and Maris - 2 Intense. At the end of one set Tomas brought the guitar off stage and gave it to me. The nylon-strung classical guitar felt nothing like my Fender Stratocaster, but I ran through the opening riff to Johnny B Goode and then dropped into Concrete and Clay whilst becoming aware that tables around us had gone quiet to listen.

"Come up and do one at the end of the next set," said Tomas. The end of the set came really quickly and as I was called up on stage, Fran realised our camera was still in the cabin and dashed off to get it! Talk about support - as I take the stage she runs out of the room!!! Once on stage I'm realising another challenge. Tomas did not use a strap or a guitar pick. My fingernails are not long enough so I had to strum and pluck with my finger ends. Also his legs are longer than mine. So whilst sitting on the stool Tomas's thigh is horizontal and supporting the guitar whereas mine is sloping down and the guitar wants to slide away from me!

So I play Concrete and Clay and am rewarded with a large burst of applause from the room. I thank Tomas and Maris - who has been keeping time, playing an egg-sized rhythm shaker throughout without even knowing the song! During the break between sets someone comes up to say how much they enjoyed my song and that I should go on again... Ooh aye! Feed the ego!!!

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First Day at Heywood Grammar School

This blog entry re-creates a page from my now defunct Nostalgia web site which I've been saying for ages I should transfer to here and which several other people (well mainly Jackie Waters, long time friend from that same school...) have been saying I should transfer to here. So here it is! Day one of a secondary school career that would see the transition of a boy to a man. Yes, alright - debateable, but I'll get round to it sooner or later!

Heywood Grammar School. I started there in September 1965 with a mixture of anticipation and apprehension. I'd been with the same gang of mates since starting school aged 4 until leaving Rochdale's Lowerplace Junior School aged 11. Now, because we had moved outside of the Rochdale Borough area, I would leave all my pals for a group of total strangers.

Also there was a new uniform, not just a blazer and cap but every item of outer clothing was specified! Adding to the sense of all things new was the fact that going to school entailed a coach trip from the pick up point in Milnrow, the village where we lived. The coaches were operated by the Rochdale firm of Yelloways and were, quite understandably, the older of their stock!

On the first morning's trip we learned two important things: one - the back seat was reserved for older pupils who looked (to an 11 year old) old enough to be running the country never mind going to school! Crumbs! The lads were cuddling girls for heaven's sake! Two: although the school rules required it, if you wore your cap then it was going to be snatched from your head and thrown about the coach...

We arrived at the school and were shuffled into lines and marched into the Assembly Hall. The headmaster was Colonel Farish, who was dressed in a suit with waistcoat, over which a long black academic gown flowed to floor level. The Deputy Headmaster and Headmistress, were Mr Thomas and Miss Wood. They also wore black gowns. Mr Thomas looked exactly like the teacher from the Bash Street Kids. Miss Wood wore her hair braided in two enormous Princess Leia cartwheels at the side of her head.

The first years were to be split into 4 classes, 1A to 1D, based purely on age. We would be split by ability at the end of that year. I ended up in class 1B and, together with those in class 1A, we were formed into pairs, lined up into a crocodile and marched off to our rooms which were a prefabricated building a few streets away.

Our form mistress was a pretty young woman called Mrs Pilkington. Sally Pilkington, we were soon told by second year pupils. We were asked our names; "John" I said.
"We call boys by their surname here..." For some reason that was a shock. So for the next 6 or 7 years I was Burke to the teachers and for 3 to 4 years Burkey or Burkey-Bean to my peers.

It solved some confusion - on the front row of the class I was sat between John Booth and John Butterworth! A few years ago I got an email from "Butty" - Mate, the longer I look at your photo, the more I'm convinced that you are the John Burke I sat next to in school..."

At break time on that first day we joined the kids in class 1A and got to know the people we were sat next to a bit more. At lunchtime we were formed into a crocodile again and joined a larger one that walked through the town to a canteen that served other schools at Bamford Road.

School dinners - ha! Some were brilliant, some were gross. No serving counters for us, the food went to each table in huge trays and dishes and someone was designated monitor and dished out portions for all on the table. Baked beans without tomato sauce were unbelievably bad... Semolina and tapioca were not exactly favourites.

Brussel sprouts were commandeered mainly by one of the fifth formers. If you liked them but he was on your table then hard luck... I can't remember his real name but his somewhat predictable nickname was Stinks... He was, despite this, popular. He wasn't above talking to younger pupils, he was very laid back and easy going and he protected kids from a spot of bullying every now and then.

After the march back from the canteen we spent the rest of that first lunchtime in the main playground with the rest of the school. This entailed mainly second formers, giving you a long code number that they would return and demand from you after a while. Some unfortunates were swayed by the temptation to check out the "blue goldfish" in the bogs... Their hair dried out soon enough...

We learned a few nicknames of staff - Bill Thomas, the Deputy Head, was Tommy. Dorothy Wood was Daisy. The woodwork master was called Chisel and the frightening-sounding allegedly torture-loving chemistry master was known for good reason as Basher!

I might be wrong about this, but I think the first day was a tour around some of the classes we would be visiting for different subjects and meeting the teachers. We found we had Basher for chemistry... What in fact was chemistry? The room was a laboratory and had lots of glass bottles with what looked like water lined up on benches. There was strange equipment - bunsen burners, gas taps and test tubes - strange place! Basher's nickname was not ill-founded. His favourite trick was to make a fist with the middle knuckle extended and then rap the centre of your forehead with it. In a temper I once saw him pick a boy up by the ears...

He wasn't alone - the biology teacher, whose name I forget, shocked the whole class into silence by slapping very forcibly a boy called Stafford around the side of the head with his own exercise book. He had forgotten to do his homework. Taffy, the geography teacher, was an absolute sure shot with a heavy wooden board rubber! Every school had one of those but Taffy never ever missed, no matter how far back you were sitting!

We were to see a lot of David Miller, as he taught us not only French, but music. He was a young man with a sharp beak of a nose and spectacles, which he obviously used just for reading because he would whip them off when he wanted to glare at the class. He was a brilliant musician on the piano and had a real love of music. When French got too boring someone would say "Play something on the piano, Sir!" Every now and then it worked!

Mr Miller was choirmaster of the Heywood Grammar School Choir, a choir of good ability and reputation which used to sing for Evensong in St Luke's parish church in Heywood every Thursday night. I loved singing and enthusiastically joined the choir, putting up with wearing the cassock and surplice. I regret now, that I have no photos of the choir at all, nor have I found any on the Internet - anyone reading this who can help?

You could never accuse me of being religious I'm afraid but I loved the soaring voices when we sang the Magnificat - "My soul, my soul, doth sanctify the Lord..." Again if you recognise those words, someone tell me who wrote it and help me find a CD with it on!

Mr Miller was also the pianist for morning assembly. This included Christian worship in those days and I find it hard to understand now why the Government has been so scared of offending minorities that we don't teach our own religion in schools. It's no wonder that church attendance has fallen so much. Some of the hymns we sang in Assembly are still in my head - particularly:

He, who would valiant be, 'gainst all disaster
Let him in constancy follow the Master
There's no discouragement to make him once relent
His first avowed intent to be a pilgrim

Ah, shivers down the spine! That and "...for those in peril on the sea"!

We had a teacher called Mr Law for PE. He was dressed in a track suit and had a whistle and called our names out for the register then said "Green!" or "Red!" or "White!" or "Blue!" I hadn't a clue what that meant because I hadn't been listening properly. It dawned on me that he was allocating us to a "house", not taking the register and I had to go back and ask what mine was.
"Name?"
"Burke, Sir," I said. He looked at his list and sniffed.
"Hmm! You are a berk aren't you, boy? Blue!"

We were ushered into a physics lab - more strange equipment and a genial, even jolly, chap standing behind the teacher's bench who lined us up and demanded to know who our form teacher was.

"Mrs Pilkington, Sir". He considered this for a while.
"Oh yes... she's nice, Mrs Pilkington... pretty... nice figure... cooks a good breakfast...!"
"What's your name, Sir?" someone asked.
"Mister Pilkington!" he twinkled. "Anyone know what physics is?"

No one did. He picked up a jar and tipped some iron filings over a lit bunsen burner. They flared and shot up like a firework. We all went "Ooooooh!" with delight just as he had planned. Pilky was a born teacher - but his experiments always went haywire. "Well..." he would say, as what he had told us would happen stubbornly refused to, "take my word for it! Now try it for yourselves!"

Chisel, the woodwork teacher, had a huge workshop in the basement of the main school building. His nickname was due to his habit of standing at one end and saying to someone "Fetch me that chisel..." He would point to a bench with several chisels on it.
"Which one, Sir?"
"That one!" ...said without moving but with a finger outstretched which could have been pointing to any of the chisels!

He had a habit of banging a wooden mallet on a workbench close to your hand - you would jump out of your skin! He also used to throw a hammer in the air, whack it with his hand so that it spun, catch it and put it down. Then he would leave the room. When he came back half of us would have rapped our own knuckles trying to do the same thing...

My best mate from 6th form days, Alex Dyson, contributes this memory: I couldn't wait to drop woodwork in the fourth form even though it meant another two years of art. We used to get a crack from Chisel with a piece of wood for even looking in the wrong place, yet when we were boiling the glue kettle one day and I set fire to a pile of wood shavings when he went out, he never even noticed. I was crapping myself because it really took hold and the air was thick with smoke when he came back, but he must have been preoccupied with some really important matter, like someone holding a pencil in the wrong way...

Priceless!

The end of the school day came and we paraded back to where the coach had dropped us off. There were 5 coaches! A moment's panic, then I found the right one and we set off back. The M62 didn't yet exist, so the coaches took us through Heywood and through countryside to Sudden, in Rochdale, turning right up to Castleton past the end of our old street (yet to be covered here in an entry about gruesome ailments) and then along Queensway, past all the mills that had contributed to my Dad's bad chest, along Kingsway and then back to Milnrow where I got off, the coach ending its journey in Newhey.

Yelloways were using their 1952 "Seagull" model coaches for the Heywood run. The photo is of the same model but a different coach firm. They had no seatbelts, nor would coaches have passenger seatbelts for many years to come, and had a large metal handrail across the back of each seat as a grab rail to help people sitting behind get up out of their seats. If the coach stopped suddenly the metal rail was just at tooth height...

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In the Steps of St John the Apostle

Saturday, 21 August 2010. The Thomson Celebration is in Kusadasi, Turkey. The main tour of the day will be going to the ancient city of Ephesus, but having been there twice already (links to relevant blog entries at the end) we are today going to see the remains of the basilica and the tomb of St John the Apostle who came to live here and perhaps wrote his gospel here.

Moored on the opposite side of the wharf was a huge cruise ship of the Celebrity-X line. A Turkish dance troupe was doing their stuff on the dockside, but I'm not sure whether they were for the other ship or for us or perhaps weren't all that bothered and would do their stuff for anyone who showed an interest...

And before I get loads of emails asking about that really weird hat the chap in red is wearing, if you look again a bit more closely you'll see that it is a woman standing behind him! Her sleeve is the same colour as the ship and even I looked twice when I saw it! Looks a bit like a fish with a bird's legs standing on his head...

So we lump ourselves onto a coach and sit looking bemused at the staggering amount of people who seem unable to understand the need to find a bus marked with their own ship's name or the correct number before our guide decides he's got enough of us to go and we set off on our semi-biblical morning.

The first stop is at the golden statue of the Virgin Mary on the hillside leading to her house, which again we have visited before and the links are below, should you be interested. The statue was the gift of an American Society and that's as much as I had an interest in knowing before the marvellous views over the steep drop on the other side of the road took my attention. No doubt the guide told the rest of the bus load the date it was built, the material, the weight, how many mules it took to bring it up the hill etc...

But I had found something else to look at and it was a sight missed by the vast majority of those whose attention was making the guide think "Hey, these dates are really grabbing them! I must look up some more for later on in the tour..."

On the hillside opposite is the Odeion or Small Theatre close to the entrance to Ephesus. It was built as a council chamber aound 150 BC and was originally roofed and seats 1400 people. The city of Ephesus continues to the left and then round away from our viewpoint around the edge of the hill against which the Odeion is built. Hey up! They are all heading back towards the bus! There's only three of us have bothered to look this way.

The Basilica of St John was built over the remains of a first century AD temple around 530 AD by Emperor Justinian, who you may remember from an entry of a few days ago, was also building Hagia Sophia and the water cistern at Istanbul at the time.

This is a partially reconstructed wall to give some idea of how the basilica may have looked. I'd recommend a visit to the Sacred Destinations web site for anyone interested in reading further. They also have a photograph of a model of how the basilica once looked.

There were several rebuilds of the city of Ephesus. The first city was on top of the hill on which the basilica stands, in the heart of what now is a ruined fortress. The famous ruined city we visit today is the third city and the modern one, close to this hill, is now called Selçuk.

The Tomb of St John the Apostle. The central dome of the basilica was placed over the tomb. A small grating can be seen to the left of the photo. Behind this again is a rectangular grated hole with steps leading down, presumably into the chamber of the tomb. St John is the only one of the saints whose body has never been claimed by any church. The legend is that on entering his tomb whilst alive, an intense light prevented the other apostles from following him. When the light dissipated, so had all sign of him. Just a dust was left, floating in the tomb. Manna... The tomb was opened in the reign of Constantine the Roman Emperor. No body or relics were found.

The size of the basilica was such that if still standing it would today be the seventh largest basilica in the world. It fell into ruin with the decline of Ephesus and was converted to a mosque in 1330 only to be completely destroyed in 1402 by the Mongol horde of Timur or Tamerlane who had conquered almost as much of the world as Alexander and was likewise termed "the Great". He had been through Delhi and Moscow and was on his way back from Persia when he passed this way and the story goes that the Ephesians were so nervous they sent all their children to process out of their open gates, singing. Tamerlane is reported as saying "What is this noise?" and then commanded his nomadic horse warriors to ride down and kill the children under the hooves of their charging mounts. There is no way to play down the horror of that act.

Some ancient wall paintings depicting saints are on display in situ - in a small room, almost a cave. However they can only be seen from inside and you are not allowed in. To facilitate viewing a large mirror has been placed on the rear wall but in reality, all you see is your reflection - silhouetted against the bright doorway whilst all the surrounding detail is pitch dark by comparison. I took a photo but only saw the painting on the left once we were home and I had fiddled for quite a while with Photoshop! The painting on the right can vaguely be seen, but the head is obliterated by the glare of the reflected doorway.

Recent excavations have revealed this baptismal pool.

From the basilica site you can look down to an earlier site. The Temple of Artemis was one of the original Seven Wonders of the Ancient World. Destroyed by earthquakes and looted for building materials there are just a few scattered stones and one reconstructed pillar. A link to a previous visit is below.

Previous related entries from this blog:

Turkish Delights
The Awe-Inspiring Ephesus
The House of the Virgin Mary
The Temple of Artemis

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The Dardanelles Straits and Gallipoli

Friday, 20 August 2010. The Thomson Celebration spends another day at sea. We spend the day reading. Er... I mean we pound ten times around the Promenade Deck and then when we've worked a sweat up we visit the gym for some gruelling workouts. Well... perhaps it was reading after all...

Around 4:00pm we are passing through the Dardanelles Straits. As we approached the Gallipoli peninsular many passengers gathered on the Promenade and upper decks and the Cruise Director began a commentary over the tannoy which covered both the naval actions during the Crimean and the costly action during World War One. The photo shows the Turkish monument to the fallen.

It bears this inscription from Mustafa Kemal Atatürk: "Those heroes who shed their blood and lost their lives, you are now lying in the soil of a friendly country. Therefore rest in peace. There is no difference between the Johnnies and the Mehmets to us where they lie side by side in this country of ours. You, the mothers who sent their sons from far away countries wipe away your tears, your sons are now lying in our bosom and are in peace. After having lost their lives on this land they become our sons as well."

The commentary was very moving. The landscape we looked on so bare and so obviously capable of being heavily defended. The commentary included the words of the song "And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda", written by Eric Bogle in 1972 after watching a parade of veterans.

When I was a young man I carried me pack
And I lived the free life of the rover
From the Murray's green basin to the dusty outback
I waltzed my Matilda all over
Then in 1915 my country said: Son,
It's time to stop rambling, there's work to be done
So they gave me a tin hat and they gave me a gun
And they sent me away to the war

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
When the ship pulled away from the quay
And amid all the tears, flag waving and cheers
We sailed off for Gallipoli

It well I remember that terrible day
When our blood stained the sand and the water
And how in that hell they call Suvla Bay
We were butchered like lambs at the slaughter
Johnny Turk, he was ready, he primed himself well
He rained us with bullets, and he showered us with shell
And in five minutes flat, we were all blown to hell
He nearly blew us back home to Australia

And the band played Waltzing Matilda
When we stopped to bury our slain
Well we buried ours and the Turks buried theirs
Then it started all over again

Oh those that were living just tried to survive
In that mad world of blood, death and fire
And for ten weary weeks I kept myself alive
While around me the corpses piled higher
Then a big Turkish shell knocked me arse over head
And when I awoke in me hospital bed
And saw what it had done, I wished I was dead
I never knew there was worse things than dying

Oh no more I'll go Waltzing Matilda
All around the green bush far and near
For to hump tent and pegs, a man needs both legs
No more waltzing Matilda for me

They collected the wounded, the crippled, the maimed
And they shipped us back home to Australia
The armless, the legless, the blind and the insane
Those proud wounded heroes of Suvla
And when the ship pulled into Circular Quay
I looked at the place where me legs used to be
And thank Christ there was no one there waiting for me
To grieve and to mourn and to pity

And the Band played Waltzing Matilda
When they carried us down the gangway
Oh nobody cheered, they just stood there and stared
Then they turned all their faces away

Now every April I sit on my porch
And I watch the parade pass before me
I see my old comrades, how proudly they march
Renewing their dreams of past glories
I see the old men all tired, stiff and worn
Those weary old heroes of a forgotten war
And the young people ask "What are they marching for?"
And I ask myself the same question

And the band plays Waltzing Matilda
And the old men still answer the call
But year after year, their numbers get fewer
Someday, no one will march there at all

Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda
Who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me?
And their ghosts may be heard as they march by the billabong
So who'll come a-Waltzing Matilda with me? - Eric Bogle

The British memorial. Our tears fell to the memories of those thousands of casualties, whether British, Australians and New Zealanders or Turkish.

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