Francesca the fearful – a fidgety fox

Having wildlife in your garden is a delight beyond compare even if some only come out at night, when nobody is around.

A couple of years ago we guessed we had something other than local cats using our garden as a highway. Naturally, our first thought was hedgehog and a dusting of flour soon proved us right when we checked it for paw prints the next day.

This led to us putting out a dish of water and another with suitable hedgehog bought from an accredited supplier.

Each morning most of the food was gone but very soon we discovered all the food went every night and we often had to play hunt the dish as the food and water bowls were often some distance from the feeding site and often in a completely different part of the garden.

We started using broken plant pots to put over the food and water dishes which still allowed the hedgehogs to get in.

A few months ago we set up a trail camera in the garden (a present from our wildlife-loving son David) and lo and behold we discovered that although a number of neighbourhood cats used our garden as a route to and from their usual haunts they did not bother with the hedgehog food and water dishes.

The culprit was – a fox.

The fox had not been just interested in the food but also had been taking the plastic dishes and trotting off to somewhere else in the garden to deposit them.

The camera has proved a real education and over time I will introduce you to some of the escapades going on at night.

Today, however, I want you to meet the delightful Francesca Fox (see above).

In the beginning we didn’t realise we had more than one fox and more than one hedgehog visiting us during the night. Now all we know for certain is there are at least two hedgehogs (both have been caught on the camera at the same time) and two foxes – the foxes being Francesca and Ferdinand.

In later episodes I will identify the differences between them which indicates two (at least) foxes but for now I just want to tell you about Francesca.

She is easily identifiable by her cautious approach to the feeding table provided for our nocturnal visitors. It is high enough for the foxes to eat off but too high for the hedgehogs to get at the food – food for foxes is not always suitable for hedgehogs.

Francesca became identifiable by the way she approaches the food.

Although I have been putting food out for them over the last two or three months Francesca approaches it every time as though it were her first.

She will appear on camera sniffing and looking around, sometimes starting as though she has heard a loud noise. She sniffs around the table (a circular piece of paving on an upturned flowerpot) and then looks around as though fearful there is someone lurking in the shadows.

After a careful sniff at the food she will reach out, take a small piece and then hastily retreat – sometimes just a foot or two away from the table but at other times going completely off-camera.

She will then approach the food again and occasionally move it around with her nose before selecting a couple of tasty morsels and then retreating, often looking over her shoulder as if expecting someone to come and take the food from her.

She is not a fussy eater and will take almost anything presented to her, but she is a hesitant creature and lacks the fearless attitude of our other foxy visitor.

Watch the short clip above and you will see what I mean about Francesca.

An Alphabet

by Christine Rossetti

A is the Alphabet, A at its head;
A is an Antelope, agile to run.
B is the Baker Boy bringing the bread,
Or black Bear and brown Bear both begging for a bun.

C is a Cornflower come with the corn;
C is Cat with comical look.
D is a Dinner which Dahlias adorn;
D is a Duchess who dines with a Duke.

E is an elegant eloquent Earl;
E is an Egg whence an Eaglet emerges.
F is a Falcon, with feathers to furl;
F is a Fountain of full foaming surges.

G is the Gander, the Gosling, the Goose;
G is a Garnet in girdle of gold.
H is a Heartsease, harmonious of hues;
H is a Hammer, heavy to hold.

I is an Idler who idles on ice;
I am I -- who will say I am not I?
J is a Jacinth, a jewel of price;
J is a Jay, full of joy in July.

K is a King, or a Kaiser still higher;
K is a Kitten or quaint Kangaroo.
L is a Lute or lovely-toned Lyre;
L is a Lily all laden with dew.

M is a Meadow where Meadowsweet blows'
M is a Mountain made dim by a mist,
N is a Nut -- in a nutshell it grows --
Or a Nest full of Nightingales singing -- oh list!

O is an Opal, with only one spark;
O is an Olive with Oil on its skin.
P is a Pony, a pet in a park;
P is the Point of a Pen or a Pin.

Q is a Quail, quick-chirping at morn;
Q is a Quince quite ripe and near dropping.
R is a Rose, rosy red on a thorn;
R is a red-breasted Robin come hopping.

S is a Snow-storm that sweeps o'er the Sea;
S is the Song that the swift Swallows sing.
T is the Tea-table set out for tea;
T is a Tiger with terrible spring.

U, the Umbrella, went up in a shower;
Or Unit is useful with ten to unite.
V is a Violet veined in the flower;
V is a Viper of Venomous bite.

W stands for the water-bred Whale;
Stands for the wonderful Wax-work so gay.
X, or XX, or XXX is ale,
Or Policeman X, exercised day after day.

Y is a yellow Yacht, yellow its boat:
Y is the Yucca, the Yam or the Yew.
Z is a Zebra, zigzagged his coat,
Or Zebu, or Zoophyte, seen at the Zoo.

Let’s get back to nature

No, I’m not suggesting we shuck off our threads and get back to the way nature intended us to be. My hippy days are long gone and I wouldn’t want to scare the horses.

I really do mean getting back to nature and helping out the wildlife at the same time.

Marion has always been the real gardener in our house, although I have dabbled at times and am still working on some bonsai creations – long-term plans.

Last year, however, she handed over the front garden to me – although there was a pond already there the areas either side of the front path had been covered in plastic (everything from compost bags split open to extra strong bin bags) with what must have been tons of gravel laid on top.

It is still a work in progress, well the pond side is, I’ve only just stripped the gravel and plastic from the other side to reveal hard impacted earth with roots from the hedges, the acer and even the municipal trees on the roadside, creating a crazy patchwork.

The pond side is getting there but I am still waiting for the wildflower seeds to bloom and grow combining with other cottagey type plants – buddleia, a rose, flowering currant and some others – to provide a kaleidoscope of colour.

At the same time as choosing plants that will hopefully attract birds, bees and butterflies, we already have wildlife in the pond, at least three newts along with tadpoles, in various stages of growth and the larval stage (almost fully developed) of dragonflies.

We also knew we had at least one hedgehog making regular visits and possibly a fox as well.

As it happens we have now started using a trail camera in the garden at night and know we have at least TWO hedgehogs, possibly more but they rarely appear more than one at a time and we have had two in view together, one of them being a bit of a bully.

We also have TWO foxes.

We know there are at least two because there are differences in physical appearance and also behaviour.

I will be telling you more about them all in good time and think you may enjoy hearing of the escapades of Ferdinand and Francesca Fox and Horace the hedgehog (he’s the bully) with his timid friend Henrietta.

The rover returns

Not a pub in a TV soap opera, just the return of a wandering lad who has neglected his readers for a few months.

I will make no excuses, I have had a lot on my mind (you know about my mind, the attic rooms where I keep all my memories from what happened today (I skimmed a load of weed from the pond) to my early memories (my first girlfriend – well she was a girl and a friend, I was about three and she was five or six and I have a penchant for older “women”).

For the past few months I have been moving things around, assessing their importance and deciding what needs to go into deeper storage to make room for all that is happening NOW.

I realised that writing every day would not work as:

a) it took too much time with other things to do; and

b) sometimes the urge to write might not be there when needed.

I have decided, therefore, to let you know about updates once a week -starting today, Saturday, 1st July 2023.

This does not mean there will be no updates from Saturday to Saturday, just that I will only notify you about updates once a week.

I might add one, four or zero updates on a daily basis, which means those who drop in on a whim might find something new or they might not, but you can guarantee that every Saturday there will be new content, and I don’t just mean a single poem.

I hope you will look in, even if it is just once a week, and if anything sparks something in your mind then please let me know in the comments.

Happy Saturday to you all.

To begin at the very beginning (a very good place to start)

A birth certificate has 10 numbered columns for information, the unnumbered column on the left is a filing number. 
.

A birth certificate is often the first document to launch you onto that journey into your family’s history.

The document provides a birth date (column 1) and sometimes even a time. The timing on a Scottish certificate is normal but if it is on a certificate issued outside Scotland can indicate a possible multiple birth (twins, triplets etc).

The place of birth is also given, in small communities this might only give the name of the village but normally it will be a home address or a hospital or nursing home.

Next (column 2) will be the given name or names of the child, although this might at times be left blank, especially in the 19th and early 20th century. This often happened if the father was away at the time the birth was registered, possibly a sailor on a long voyage or a soldier posted abroad. In the mid to late 19th century this could have been because of the Crimean War or the Boer War and, of course, in the first half of the 20th century foreign posting during the two world wars.

A birth had to be registered within a statutory period and in many cases the mother would wait for her husband to come home so that they could choose an appropriate name between them.

The sex of the child is also given (column 3). This is not as silly as it might sound because a name might not always be a clue as to sex, The real name of the 20th century wrestler Big Daddy was Shirley Crabtree which might remind you of the Johnny Cash song “A Boy Named Sue” but in the 19th century Shirley was exclusively a boy’s name. In the 17th and 18th centuries Valentine could be a girl’s name or a boy’s name.

Unless there is a doubt about the paternity the names of both parents will be given (columns 4 and 5) and the surname of the mother before marriage. The previous name might be given as nee Xxxxxx, which normally indicates a first marriage, whereas formerly Xxxxxx, indicates a previous marriage while also known as Xxxxxx, indicates doubts as to whether or not the parents were married.

In the 19th century a woman could give the name of the man she claimed to be the father but by the 20th century this section would be left blank unless the father admitted paternity. When the father is named his occupation (column 6) will also be given which is helpful when the name you are looking for is quite common. The occupation could make all the difference.

The name of the person registering a birth (column 7) is quite often the mother as the father would probably be at work and taking time out to register a birth in the 19th and early 20th centuries would be highly unlikely. The date of registration (column 8) is also given.

The final two columns (9 and 10) are for the name and position of the person taking the registration followed by a blank in case a name is given after registration.

The certificate shown above is a typewritten copy of the original and the copyist has actually filled in the error on the certificate and included what would have been a handwritten note.

Actually tracking down births is not as easy as you might think. You cannot just wade through thousands and thousands of birth indexes which means you have to have an approximate year of birth at least.

This could come from baptismal records, a note in a Bible or even a marriage date – just remember that although the parents are probably married the birth of the first child might not be nine months or more later. Mum could easily have been using her bouquet to cover a bump.

Unlike marriages and deaths you will not necessarily find births in newspaper columns.

In the 19th century often only the well-to-do could afford to put an announcement of a family event in the newspaper, and even then information on births was very sparse, offering little more thana date and the name of the proud father (it appears the mother was not worth the cost of the extra words).

The real boom in newspaper birth announcements did not really come until the middle of the last century. Most birth dates from then on are normally known within the family.

Newspapers can be helpful at times, even now, especially if someone had moved away from the area and vanished from other records.

A classic example of such a case appeared in the Eastern Daily Press, on 7 July, 1927:

RIX: July 4, at Englefield, Williamstown, South Australia, to Mr and Mrs Rix (nee Chrystabel Newton) a son.

Someone, somewhere could have been missing Miss Newton and at least this puts them on the right track.

Great Aunt Fanny could tell you a tale or two about the olden days

Although family history is based on provable facts it does not mean you should ignore individual memories or family stories which have been handed down orally over generations. A senior member of a family, a grandparent born in the 1930s or 40s could give you a direct link to someone alive during the reign of Queen Victoria.

My father, now long dead, was born in 1915 and his parents were both born in the 19th century, one the son of a Welsh minister who had started life as a weaver in Machynlleth, the other the daughter of a businessman whose father had been a box maker in the mid-19th century who built a business bottling mineral water and other drinks in Worcester.

I had long talks with my mother over the years uncovering our family history

My mother was born in 1920 in Liverpool from a family, named Lloyd, which had originated in North Wales. On her mother’s side the family had strong ties to Scotland, her grandfather, surnamed Craig, was born in Ayrshire in the mid-19th century.

Both had many tales to tell, some which had come straight from the horse’s mouth while others had originated further back in the 19th century, or even the 18th century.

Talking to these older family members can provide a grand store of family stories which might appear to have grown over the decades but can provide solid clues of where to look and, surprisingly, some of these old stories have a solid foundation of proof.

An example of this was a story my mother had been told about an ancestor who had been born in a Cornish fishing village and join the Royal Navy only to have been invalided out after an accident on board ship.

I later traced the Climo name from Liverpool back to Devon and then back to Polruan in Cornwall. This is where Thomas Climo was born and raised until he joined the Navy. On one of his voyages the vessel he was on was wrecked on a small reef near Bermuda.

Later censuses listed him as a Greenwich pensioner, although he was now sailing in merchant vessels. The pension, paid as an out pensioner (which meant he did not reside at the Greenwich Royal Naval Hospital but had been injured enough to make him no longer fit for service in the Royal Navy) thus confirmed the main facts of the story and gave me enough clues to fill out his life.

My father told me the family story about his grandfather’s family and the ghost of a soldier who allegedly came back to see his old mother as she lay dying. Years later I found an old notebook written by my great grandfather, the Welsh minister, in which he gave details of an event at which he had been present as a child. According to him the family had been seated around the kitchen fire while his grandmother was in the bedroom above, understood to be at death’s door.

He wrote that they all heard the sound of a soldier’s boots on the cobbles outside and that the sound came through the door, across the stone-flagged kitchen floor and up to the bedroom above.

When they finally recovered from the shock the old woman’s son went upstairs and found his mother to be dead in her bed but with a peaceful smile on her face.

The moral behind this is that you should never dismiss stories from elderly relatives because there might be a sliver of truth even in the most unbelievable family tale.

When you do interview an elderly family member you should let the memories come out naturally. Don’t begin with: “Is it true that great grandfather Thomas was hanged for murder?” Instead start with: “Was your grandfather alive when you were born and did you ever meet him.”

As your relative picks at his or her memories old stories will come to the surface. Elderly people can often have a great recall of facts from their early years even if they have forgotten what they had for teas two days earlier.

If your relative does agree to an interview then you should plan carefully.

Make a list of questions which might nudge the interviewee towards certain family members. As I said let them set the pace. This doesn’t mean you can’t nudge them in the right direction.

For instance they might not have known that her grandfather’s name was Thomas, they might have known him as Pops or Grandpa, or Taid, but you could ask if other family members had called him by a certain name.

Your interviewee might then recall that great-aunt Norah had called her brother by a strange nickname when she was teasing him but called him Thomas when she was being serious.

You need to lead in to the stories you are looking for and should start with the3 basics to set your relative at ease.

Here is a list of possible questions:

1. “When were you born?” You could then ask “where” if the first answer is fairly positive.

2. “What was your father called and did he have a nickname?”

3. “What was your mother’s name and do you know her surname before she was married? Do you know where your parents were married?”

4. “What work did your father do? Did you ever visit him at work?”

5. “Did your mother go out to work and did she ever take you with her?”

6. “Did either of your parents serve in the armed forces, Army, Navy or Air Force, and if so did they have any medals?”

7. “Do you have any old pictures of your family, your parents or grandparents for instance?”

8. “Did your parents ever talk about their childhood. Did they have any brothers or sisters?”

9. “Did you have any brothers or sisters?”

10. “When did your parents die and where are they buried?”

11. “Did they leave a will, if so do you have it, or do you have any other old documents from the family?”

12. “Where was your family home when you were a child?”

13. “Which school did you go to and did the family go toi church, if so, which one?”

14. “Do you remember any relatives visiting when you were a child, or did you visit older relatives when you were young? If so where?”

15. “Do you remember any big family get-togethers, weddings, Christmases or when an elderly relative died?”

You don’t have to stick rigidly to these questions, you might think of others or decide to follow a particular track after an interesting answer.

The important thing to remember is to be gentle with your elderly relative and if a particular question seems to touch a nerve don’t push it. Go in another direction and see if later they are prepared to talk about it.

Don’t make the interview too formal. It might be possible to video it, although older people might not be happy about a camera. Even a tape recorder might be offputting. A pen and paper might be the best answer for making notes. Don’t try to write it all down verbatim, just occasional notes as an aide memoir.

If you want to get ahead get a hat, or two, or four, or even more

Who among you has never collected things – from cigarette cards to Pokemon cards; postage stamps to old coins; autographs to train numbers?

You may even have become a collector by accident, or by just not throwing things away when other tastes change.

There are even unconscious collectors.

You buy a book and because you enjoyed reading it you buy other books by the same author. Before long you have a full bookshelf and you have discovered another author who writes on the same subject but with a different angle and you have to buy all those books as well.

Now it is not just a full bookshelf it is a full set of bookshelves with other books on your bedside table and the window ledge.

You could just as easily have borrowed the books from your local library. Mind you libraries limit the time you can keep that book. In some cases it doesn’t matter because you would read the book the same day, or over three days. Some books, however, take longer; and what about when you want to be sure you have the next book in the series in case you finish the current one at midnight and you still aren’t ready to sleep.

As some of you know I collect books. I can actually remember when I did not have enough books to fill a bookcase; nowadays I have more than enough to fill a room lined with bookcases and I would still have to store some of them in the loft.

It was only on our last move that I realised I had another collection – hats.

I don’t know how it started.

As a baby I wore a sun bonnet, I know this because I have seen the pictures. As I grew up I probably had a cowboy hat, I know when I was six I had a Red Indian (sorry native American) outfit with fringed trousers and tabard and a head-dress which had feathers and went half way down my back.

My next piece of headwear was a Cub Scout cap with a green peak and crown decorated with yellow braid, similar to the sporting caps awarded to cricketers or rugby players or similar sporting types, but without the tassel.

Then cap wearing became compulsory when at the age of 11 I went to the local grammar school. Now if there is one thing I object to it is being told I must wear something, or carry something or do something simply because someone with greater authority tells me I have to.

Many was the time I left home and as soon as was out of sight would take the hated cap off my head and roll it up then stuff it in my blazer pocket. If there was a crowd arriving for school at the same time one uncapped boy amid others could get away with it; unfortunately one day there were not enough others to conceal me from the eagle eyes of the headmaster.

My subsequent punishment, six whacks (what idiot calls them strokes when each one came down harder than the others) of the cane, rather than bringing me into line tended to increase my rebellious attitude.

Not all hats were out of bounds. A fellow member of the yacht club, a sailor with the Merchant Marine, had given me one of his old naval caps which I used to wear when manning the club’s rescue boat. I removed its white plastic cover as the limper blue material, over the darker headband and with the black peak looked far more like something Humphry Bogart, or other actors of that period, would have worn.

In the main, however, I shunned hats at work, after all I had a good head of hair to keep my head warm and only in the coldest winter did I actually wear a hat and even then that was only when I was manning a picket line.

Corduroy trilby and dark glasses on the picket line in 1979

That all changed when I went to live in Australia, not just any part of Australia, mind you, but North Queensland where you could fry eggs on the pavement in the summer and where the winter was more like a decent summer in the UK.

Hats out in the hot sun were a necessity and they came in all shapes and sizes. There was the smart settler hat with a wide brim for smart wear; a straw hat when it came to barbecues and days down at the beach; a floppy brimmed camouflage hat for those with an even more casual air; and even a wider brimmed, hard stetson style hat for riding.

The riding hat and my fawn settler hat came back with me to the UK, not that the black stetson saw much wear. The settler hat was closer to a trilby than a cowboy hat and became my normal headwear to keep my head warm in the winter rather than cool. I soon switched to a Panama in the summer.

Back home in Wales but still got the Aussie hat

My hat collection did not end there, however, and over the next decade or so I added a black trilby and a brown one for semi-formal wear.

By the year 2000 my settler hat was becoming somewhat the worse for wear and had to be retired from ‘going out’ use and assigned to gardening duties only.

A couple of years later I visited Russia and had bought a thick, warm, knitted hat to combat the first blast of the Russian winter. I quickly bought a fur hat, sable, of the type often seen on Soviet soldiers where the flaps could be brought down to protect the ears and a back flap kept the neck warm. My wife has not let me wear it in public since I got back from Russia.

There are markets in Moscow and St Petersburg which sold militaria and Soviet badges, flags and other souvenirs, including army and naval headwear and I couldn’t resist buying a former Soviet sailor’s hat with the long black ribbons and an officer’s peaked cap with the high front and broad top. Although original Red Army caps, the grey ones with red piping as seen in Dr Zhivago, are not readily available for sale a reproduction one, made with exactly the same material and in exactly the same way, was cheap enough to tempt me.

Then, about 14 years ago, we returned to Australia for a holiday and to visit family and I took advantage to replace my old Akubra settler’s hat with another, almost identical one which, on return to the UK, became an everyday hat once again.

Man in black, as editor of a family history magazine checking out gravestones

As so often happens constant wear takes its toll on headgear and towards the end of last year I came to the decision that my settler’s hat needed to go into retirement, its predecessor had by now given up the ghost even for gardening, but I would need a replacement.

Fortunately some rather hefty hints meant a brand-new black fedora, with a narrow tan headband, has taken its place with other hats in the hall and Akubra MkII is now a winter gardening hat, the summer hat for the garden is an old straw hat my father had bought in Australia when my parents visited us in the early 1980s.

Altogether it makes quite a collection and does not include a variety of keffiyahs which are normal worn in this country as a scarf but in Arabic countries are really headwear, with or without a black braided cord put on over them to hold them in place.

So I say farewell for now and doff one of my many hats to you.

Who’s book began like that?

I hope you enjoyed the book quiz.

Here are the answers:

A

“The boy with the fair hair . . .” was the opening of Lord of the Flies, the masterpiece about how quickly we could return to savagery, written by William Golding.

Following a plane crash, a group of schoolboys find themselves on a desert island. Led by Ralph and Piggy, the boys attempt to form a democratic society, but this soon fails. Under the leadership of the dictator Jack, savagery rules, complete with primitive rites and ritual murder. Only with the arrival of a shocked rescue officer does the mask of civilisation return.

B

“I looked at my notes and I didn’t like them.” This brief sentence opens the sci-fi classic I, Robot by the doyen of the genre Isaac Asimov.

In 2057, aged 75 and retiring from from US Robots, Dr Susan Calvin gave an interview to a reporter from the Interplanetary Press. She talked about her life as a robopsychologist, during which time mere ‘calculating machines’ had been replaced by “spongy globes of plantinumiridium about the size of a human brain”, giving rise to independent, sensible and rational robots. It was her belief that these robots were more human than people and were what stood between mankind and destruction. I, Robot is a record of that interview and the stories about robots Susan Calvin had to tell.

C

“Cedric himself knew nothing whatever about it.” is the opening line of Little Lord Fauntleroy by Frances Hodgson Burnett.

Born in New York, Cedric has lived a simple life with his beautiful, gentle mother since his father died. Now seven and greatly loved by his neighbourhood friends, Cedric is told that he has inherited the title of Lord Fauntleroy and the Earl, his grandfather, wishes him to come and live in England. The book recounts the story of how Cedric wins over his bad-tempered grandfather and takes up the position of man English aristocrat without losing any of his natural charm.

D

“The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.” begins the tale of Jude the Obscure, by Thomas |Hardy.

This was Hardy’s last work of fiction, a tragic story of ‘a deadly war waged between flesh and spirit’. It focuses on Jude Fawley, a young Wessex villager who, encouraged by his schoolmaster, dreams of studying at Christminster (Oxford). However, he becomes entangled with a barmaid who deserts him after bearing a son. He then falls in love with his cousin and lives with her in poverty and social disapproval. They have two children who are hanged by Jude’s first son and the novel ends with Jude returning to his barmaid and dying wretchedly before he reaches 30.

E

“Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork.” lead us into Graham Greene’s The Heart of the Matter, which is set in West Africa during WW2 and centres on the Roman Catholic (a common theme in much of Greene’s work) deputy commissioner of police, Scobie; his unstable wife, Louise. Scobie becomes a victim of his own compassion for others and ends up planning to commit suicide which he attempts to conceal from his wife by fabricating a diary.

First and last in new book quiz

Sorry about the absence for a couple of days.

I’m adding something new to the mix. A little literary quiz based on well-known books and their first and last lines. See if you know the book each one is from and the name of the author.

It’s just for fun but if you want to give your answers below I will tell you whether they are right or wrong on Sunday, 5th February.

A

First line: The boy with fair hair lowered himself down the last few feet of rock and began to pick his way towards the lagoon.

Last line: He turned away to give them time to pull themselves together; and waited, allowing his eyes to rest on the trim cruiser in the distance.

B

First line: I looked at my notes and I didn’t like them.

Last line: She died last month at the age of eighty-two.

C

First line: Cedric himself knew nothing whatever about it.

Last line: “There’s not an aunt-sister among ’em -nor a earl!’

D

First line: The schoolmaster was leaving the village, and everybody seemed sorry.

Last line: ‘She’s never found peace since she left his arms, and never will again till she’s as he is now.’

E

First line: Wilson sat on the balcony of the Bedford Hotel with his bald pink knees thrust against the ironwork.

Last line: ‘And you may be the in the right of it there, too,’ Father Rank replied.

Getting off on the wrong foot as my cinematic world turns upside down

The first day at a new job, or even, when I was a lot younger, a new school, never bothered me. Even interviews were not a problem because I always took the attitude that if I didn’t get this job then there’d be another one coming along soon.

Mind you my first day as an assistant career manager at the Romford Odeon might just as easily have been my last when I looked in on a screening of Little Big Man starring Dustin Hoffman.

The day began well ease when I met my new boss, Tony Portsche, manager of the Odeon cinema in Romford. He was tall, that I do remember almost 50 years later, and smartly dressed in a light grey lounge suit which I felt had cost far more than the one I was wearing.

We began with a chat in his office, accessed through a long narrow office which had two desks and a load of filing cabinets along with a large metal two-door cupboard.

The manager’s inner office was not quite so crammed. It contained a large desk, with a leather-padded swivel chair on one side and two simple chairs opposite, a two-seater settee and a couple of armchairs at the far end and two glass display cabinets with various trophies in them and photographs on top of Tony with various film stars.

After a general ‘getting to know you’ chat Tony took me on a guided tour of the cinema complex, it was a three screen Odeon adapted from the original single auditorium with the former circle being the largest unit, with two smaller areas on the ground floor.

Like all the old 1930s art deco Odeons it still retained that look of grandeur when the normal auditorium lighting was on but in the full glare of the lights used during cleaning the signs of shabbiness were clear.

As well as the three screens he also showed me the ticket desk and confectionery counter, the stock room and the general store room and staff areas for the ushers and usherettes.

When we returned to Tony’s office there was a young woman, about my own age, at one of the desks in the outer office and Tony introduced her as the local assistant manager. Unfortunately I can’t remember her name but I know we got along during my time there.

The difference between a local assistant and a career assistant was that the local would always be an assistant manager whereas I, as a career assistant, would move on to managing my own cinema.

Once the cinema was open for the day Tony suggested I take a walk around by myself and I began in the two smaller screen areas, at Screen Two, which was showing the Western Little Big Man, a film I had not seen previously (as previously mentioned the only film we had a chance to watch on tour was Deadly Weapons).

I opened the outer door and closed it behind me before pushing the curtain to one side. As I looked up at the screen I saw, to my horror, that the image was upside down. I was about to go straight out and go to the projection room to find out what was happening.

Fortunately I waited a moment and before my eyes the image righted itself. The topsy turvey image was done from the perspective of a 19th century photographer focusing an old-fashioned plate camera from underneath a hood. As the image righted itself you could see it was a group of men.

I can only imagine that if I had dashed into the projection room demanding the film be rethreaded (like a junior reporter in a film shouting “Hold the front page” and bringing the presses to a juddering halt) then the story would have followed me round for the rest of my time with Rank, if I had got past day one that is..

I continued my tour and then went back to Tony’s office to report back. I decided NOT to mention the incident in Screen Two.