ALL OUR YESTERDAYS

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Thanks to Dave and Tony.

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Bonus Pics, which arrived earlier today from Indepedant. The first one is his mum and him at Holy Loch protest. The second, some words his mum wrote and the third, that well known comment from Harry Patch. I’ve long thought that leaders would be far less likely to rush to war if they were the ones who were going to get their heads blown off.

74 thoughts on “ALL OUR YESTERDAYS”

  1. Pic 3 New College courtyard, Edinburgh unusual view even for folk that know Edinburgh
    Pic 4 Poor photo of Princess Margaret, presumably not a Snowdon portrait
    Pic 12 Alec Douglas Home
    Pic 17 Acker Bilk and Frank Ifield
    Pic 19 Hawker Hurricane – not a Spitfire!
    Pic 21 Lennon and McCartney with Cilla Black
    Pic 22 Buchanan Street – just recognised St Enoch’s

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    2. Met Acker one night in a Chinese restaurant in Dundee, where he had been playing at the Palais. Affable guy, had had a few – but so had we !
      Used to be a humorous guide to pronouncing Alec’s name. Not Alec Douglas -Home is in bed with flu but Alec Douglas “Hume” is in bed with Flo.
      LMS 0-6-0T or poss bit unlikely 0-6-2T, unusual outside cylinders – usually a reason for latter, but don’t know exact details.

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      1. I read somewhere that they changed the pronunciation to Hume back in the days of battles where ‘Home’ might have been mistaken for an order to retreat for afternoon tea, or tiffin, or what ever nobles did with their down time in these days…

        My dad was a fan of Acker Bilk. He too played the clarinet. I wondered where the name Acker came from. Apparently it’s a Somerset word for “mate”. I wonder if anyone has ever called Rees Mogg, “acker”…

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acker_Bilk

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    3. It is strange how narrow Buchanan St looks. It has been pedestrianised for many decades and we are used to a sense of space because there are no vehicles, nor a segregation into footway and carriageway.
      It lets us see how much we gain in the ambience of cities by redistributing from carriageway space to footway space. We need some carriageway space in most streets, but, by allowing parking in many, pedestrians and moving traffic get squeezed.

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          1. A friend of mineused an old lipstick she had in the car to write something really unpleasant on the windscreen of a car in which a perfectly fit looking young person (displaying no disabled pass) had parked.

            I’m told getting lipstick off glass is a nightmare.

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      1. Not first tonight, and not much to add, but:

        Pic 11: Mr Bean in the middle, Priti Patel at back right, and Liz Truss at front left.

        Pic 15: Surely that should read G.M. Barrie’s Peter Pan?

        Pic 17: I got Acker Bilk, but not Frank Ifield.

        Pic 19: Funny how the earth element of the camouflage scheme fades to pink.

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          1. Slightly OT, but I have just read “A Touch of Treason” by Ian Hamilton. Among his other exploits he was for a time the curator of the J M Barrie museum in Kirriemuir. He discovered that one of the last letters written by Capt. Scott while he was awaiting death in the Antarctic was to Barrie, his godfather. A copy of the letter was put on display.

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            1. Have you been to the museum in Kirrie, Dave?

              We went a while ago but it was closed (before Covid).

              Ian Hamilton is quite some guy.

              I remember seeing a movie they made about his retrieval of the Stone. Brilliant.

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        2. LOL. I was surprised, there DonDon.

          11. It was called the Thin Blue Line.

          I wonder in 15, whether anything in that movie had much to do G M Barrie, apart from the Peter and the Pan!

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  4. I text last posting in jocular mode about the snp invading Ukraine šŸ‡ŗšŸ‡¦.
    Regretted it straight away šŸ¤·ā€ā™‚ļø.

    We have ukrainien friends although
    Due to Covid not seen for a long while .my wife text one and asked if she was ok .

    The reply was she was fine and where they live was quiet but she could here
    Bombing in the distance which seemed to be drawing nearer.

    Stay safe my wife ended here text.
    A sentiment Iā€™m sure we all share .
    Sometimes you can perhaps overstep
    The mark when being flippant.

    Which Iā€™m afraid I did .

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    2. I think we all knew it was a joke… and well, we all joke about serious stuff sometimes.

      What is happening is horrific. The Scottish government, in common with governments around the Europe and the world, has expressed solidarity with Ukraine. Unfortunately there’s not a great deal more we can do given the limited powers we have in foreign affairs.

      Britain, extraordinarily, has closed its borders to Ukrainian refugees, while decent countries, including some with hard right wing governments, Poland for example, have opened theirs. Ireland has got rid of visa requirements, and given the border situation on the island, that means that some people from Ukraine may be at least at some point in the UK.

      As you know, I have never seen myself as British, always preferring to be Scottish, but at the moment I’m embarrassed by everything that they are doing. I appreciate that they are now a very small cog in a big wheel, but they are embarrassing themselves at every turn.

      Anyway, Niko. We all say daft things sometimes (*even Munguin).

      We know you wouldn’t be joking about what’s going on in Kyiv and the Ukraine.

      I hope your friends will be safe.

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  5. Pic 20 is Lucille Ball in her “Lucy” character. This is a scene from “The Lucy Show”, a series that ran for six seasons from 1962 to 1968.

    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Lucy_Show

    After The Lucy Show, there was “Here’s Lucy” which ran until 1974…..effectively ending a 23 year television run that had begun with Desi Arnaz in “I Love Lucy”, 1951-1957, and had continued with the “Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour”, 1957-1960. She tried one more series in 1986 titled “Life With Lucy” which was cancelled after only eight episodes.

    Pic 9 is a Ford Model T, identified by its three pedals and brake/clutch lever. I don’t know much about Model T’s, but some Googling indicates that the brass radiator and brass trim on the side lamps was replaced by black painted steel in 1915-1916. However, right hand drive on a Ford-USA Model T would be earlier. Most USA-built Ts were apparently left hand drive from the beginning of the model in 1909. Nevertheless, there were some RHD Ts shipped in 1909-1911. Ford Motor Company of Canada (founded 1904) produced right hand drive Ts for the Commonwealth much longer, even though Canada had adopted right lane driving. Wiki: “British Columbia and the Atlantic provinces switched to the right in the 1920s in order to conform with the rest of Canada and the USA. Newfoundland drove on the left until 1947, and joined Canada in 1949.”

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      1. Tris….With its three strange pedals, the combination brake/clutch lever on the floor, and the throttle being a lever on the steering column, the Model T is said to be very hard to drive for a modern driver.

        Lucy still had some good dance moves in that TV “Special.” She had been a dancer and often played showgirl roles in “B” movies as a contract player for RKO Radio Pictures in the 1930’s. She met Desi Arnaz while filming “Too Many Girls” for RKO in 1940.

        https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Too_Many_Girls_(film)

        Desi was a fine concert-style singer, which was not quite as evident as a Cuban bandleader doing Latino numbers. He was a shrewd businessman and made a ton of money for them from I Love Lucy, then ran Desilu Productions until Lucy bought him out after their divorce in 1960.

        One of the I Love Lucy episodes filmed a version of their “Cuban Pete” routine. This was an act they had taken on the road to convince CBS Television to cast her real life husband Desi as her TV husband, Ricky Ricardo, in I Love Lucy. In 1950, CBS was concerned that American TV audiences wouldn’t accept a Cuban husband in an American TV sitcom.

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          1. Amazing to think about such racism these days!

            And Desi pulled off one of the sweetest deals in early TV history. From an era when TV series typically went out live from New York, early TV only exists today as grainy, low-resolution Kinescope film (photographed directly from the screen of a TV monitor.) That was done so that they could play in California and the West Coast, which didn’t at first have a live TV connection with New York over the Rocky Mountains, and in any event needed to be time shifted for the three hour time difference.

            Desi wanted to produce I Love Lucy on 35mm film, using a Hollywood cinematographer. CBS didn’t want to pay for that, but they agreed that if Desi wanted to pay for it by taking a pay cut for him and Lucy, then he would own the film negatives and have “residual” rights to future showings.
            So ever since, the prints of the episodes have remained as crystal clear as live TV, while they’ve played all over the world earning “residuals” money for Lucy and Desi and their estates.

            An article about Desi in FORTUNE:

            https://fortune.com/2022/01/04/being-ricky-ricardo-why-desi-arnaz-matters-lucille-ball-entertainment-streaming-raj-tawney/

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              1. Very talented! An OK comic actor in movies too. Lucy and Desi in “Too Many Girls” (1940)…….where they first met.

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      1. The quadricycle looks like fun. šŸ™‚ The one in the Henry Ford Museum in Dearborn is the first one he actually built in a shed behind his house. Museum records show that he sold it for $200 in 1896, and later bought it back for $60.

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            1. LOL…..Yes, at 4 HP, it wasn’t blazing fast on the highway. But that’s probably just as well since it didn’t have brakes…..(or reverse gear.) šŸ™‚

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  7. 21 – That still was taken in 1965 when Granada Television did a Beatles special programme of other artists covering their songs. Channel 4 did a Granada TV evening in the late 80s and I suspect this has been copied from that. That programme wouldn’t be allowed on health and safety grounds today.

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  8. Pic 12, the Bellahouston Exhibition was very impressive. It was 10 years before I was born, but I have seen photos and footage and heard my parents’ tales. The Palace of Art building is all that remains. It was right, of course, to return the space to being a park.

    I remember taking part in the Renfrewshire Cross Country Championships during a foggy blizzard! We eejits entered these events VOLUNTARILY!!!!

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    1. The V-8 in Pic2 is a JAP aero engine, Derek, as can be seen by the name on the car.
      No idea what the car is but it looks like a racing special, possibly for 24-hour competitions, given that it has a light buried into the radiator shroud.
      JAP stood for J.A. Prestwich and were more famous for their V-twin engines used by Morgan three-wheelers, light cars and many motorcycle companies from the early days and still in sporting use well into the 1970s.

      Pic16 is a Datsun Fairlady (not my Fairlady – wish it was…) and was their sports model before the introduction of the famous range beginning with the 240Z in the late 1960s.
      This one is from the mid-60s and has been lowered and had big boots fitted, as witness the extended eyebrow wheel arch extensions.
      Still looks good by modern standards.
      The Datsun name was dropped in the 1980s, as Nissan sought to take their cars upmarket and the brand had an undeserved cheap-and-cheerful image by that time in Europe and the US.
      Nissan was mainly a property and real-estate company in its main business and although Nissan Motor is a very big company in engineering terms, it formed a small part of their operations.
      Datson meant “son of DAT” or “little DAT”, a small product of the DAT car company, bought by Nissan in 1934. The new owners adopted the name for the whole company and decided to change the Roman script spelling to include a reference to the sun in the national flag.

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      1. I think it’s a G.N.; they’re popular in the VSCC as a base for specials. They’re chain-drive, in the same way that Fraser-Nashes are – a chain for each gear. I see the J.A.P. logo; so small and hidden that I missed it. The photo was taken at a sprint or hillclimb; note the black beam-breaker attached to the front.

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        1. You’re right about it being a G.N., Derek.
          I’ve just found a photo of this very car from 2007 on Wiki.
          The caption gives the engine as a 5.1 litre V-8 – small for an aero engine, (the Bentley Br1 fitted to the Camel was 17.3 litres) but perfect for a cyclecar body.
          Right also about the beam-breaker and the obvious connection with hill climbing. Missed that…
          Don’t know why there’s a light on the front, unless it was converted for road use at one time.

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          1. I’ve a feeling that there was a light car / cyclecar get-out that allowed a single headlight. This may have been part of the same legislation that permitted the driving of 3-wheelers on a bike licence, but it might also have been a short-lived 1920s thing.
            Have a look for a racing car called Thunderbug; it’s a relatively recent build but using old components. G.N. chassis, Riley V-twin crankcases and aero engine cylinders and heads. It’s quite a thing. I last saw it at Cadwell.

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                1. There’s photos of me effectively trying to get my knee down whilst driving a car – I always leaned into corners. Can’t do that with the HANS device because the belts stop your crash ‘at from moving around so much.

                  I’ll have a look…

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  10. Great photies, Tris.

    I too remember the Red Road flats with loathing. When passing through them – the road had an electricity line going down the middle supported by pylons based in roundabouty things in the middle of the road – they merged into great long walls of concrete on either side. Chilling.

    Later I saw a publicity film by the Cooncil which showed the flats all beautifully separated and impressive-looking, and wondered where the hell they got that view from. Years later, I was on a train diverted through Springburn as a track fire had closed the line up from Queen Street High Level, and there was the view: from the middle of Sighthill goods yard. Coincidentally, on the site of the mediƦval Glasgow University, which the Victorians knocked down to put the railway in.

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    2. Ed, my work took me all around Springburn. Oh, the fun I had. One day I was up at the Red Road flats. As I was just approaching the entrance to one block, a fridge crashed to earth only a few yards from me. A numpty had dropped it from several storeys up. To be fair, he apologised saying that it would’ve been too much trouble to get it down in the lift, so he’d just manhandled it “oot o a windae”!

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        1. I am particularly fond of the way local councils charge an arm and a leg to uplift your dead sofa or mattress, and then get all bent out of shape over fly-tipping.

          No connection possible between the two. Oh no.

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          1. Seems silly.

            Mind you, you can always take things to the dump… and I know everyone doesn’t have transport for that, but, if they are fly tipping in the countryside, which they seem to do with regularity, they must have had transport for that!

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            1. Indeed, Tris, but here in North Lanarkshire, you have to book a slot and register your van on line to get into the dump to get rid of excess household waste, a procedure that would be offputting for a lot of people. Also, they don’t seem to accept sofas or beds.

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  12. Really thought-provoking stuff from The Indepedant. I remember marches and demonstrations at the Holy Loch and later Faslane. We lived on the outskirts of Dumbarton right beside the main road to Helensburgh and beyond and many activists and protesters passed on their way. If I remember aright, the depot ship at the Holy Loch was USS Proteus.
    The words by Indepedant’s mum are both poetic and so apposite. The quote from Harry Patch and its accompanying picture only highlight the stupidity and hellishness of war.

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    1. Yes… it makes you think. These folk worked hard to stop the utter folly of a medium sized power spending untold amounts of money on a weapon that couldn’t be used, and would to all intents, be owned and controlled by a foreign power.

      I’ve always agreed with Harry Patch.

      If leaders want to go to war, let them.

      I’d have loved to see Tony Blair lead the troops into Afghanistan or Iraq and David Cameron heading up the force that went into Libya, with his trusty Clegg behind him.

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    2. ***RANT ALERT***
      ***MUNGINITES PROBABLY KNOW IT ALL ALREADY***

      Yes. The big risk is when a power-hungry megalomaniac and sociopath gets control of a country, or rather, a country with an arsenal. Less militarized States are naturally less of a threat.

      “Strongmen” – who are usually personally inadequate in a number of ways, a lack of empathy being the unifying factor – always appeal to the authoritarian-minded among us, a variable number in any polity, which seems to me to be related to the degree of personal empowerment people feel. So, if you’re at the mercy of forces beyond your control- an economic slump, hyperinflation, feral bosses who relish the power removing workers’ rights and general human rights obligation gives them to do as they like with their staffā€¦ The fish rots from the head. When you get one of those in charge, it empowers all the Little Hitlers among us as it disempowers the rest of us.

      The rise of dictators and authoritarians in one country, the more powerful the better, also inspires wannabe dictators elsewhere: the authoritarian-minded naturally gravitate to the alpha in the pack.

      The UK and its fearless, fridge-loving leader, is a good example, and also a reminder of how democracies can all too easily die.

      All the gods will be needed to help us if we Scots don’t get our independence in time – because authoritarians inevitably turn nastier and nastier the longer they are allowed to get away with it, and they do not take “secession” willingly, vis. Putin’s bonkers insistence that Ukraine does not exist as a country and Ukrainians are Russians, despite their overwhelming referendum decision to become an independent country in 1991, and in defiance of reality.

      In the meantime, I understand that Boris is not even being required to correct the Parliamentary record when he lies to Parliament. I suppose that was one of the time-honoured parliamentary procedures that used to be followed when government ministers abided by some code of honour, but was never written down in black and white – though that wouldn’t necessarily put a spoke in Boris’s wheel, if there is no one with the power or will to enforce it on him, and other parliamentarians are forbidden to call him out on his lies, and will themselves be forced to withdraw their statements if they do, on threat of expulsion, thereby pressuring the accusers themselves to lie.

      The UK’s democracy is already such a sham that it’s already almost completely a Potemkin village, not a functional liberal democracy. Boris has said that Scottish independence just ain’t gonna happen. Perhaps it’s another of his hyperbolic and idiotic statements, like dying in a ditch, or a vow as valuable as his commitment not to raise tax and national insurance, or maybe he will try to use means lawful and unlawful to prevent us, including the threat or use of force, as prohibited under article 2 of the United Nations Charter:

      “All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations”.

      We can hope but cannot guarantee that the “British” armed forces would refuse such an order, but elements among it undoubtedly will think it’s at least a good ide, some Brexiteer BritNat with a mindset like Lieutenant-Colonel Antonio Tejero had in 1981. Our rights, freedoms and constitutional order hang by a thread. Oh for the sword of Damocles to fall on Boris’s head insteadā€¦

      Same goes for Putin. There are always penalties for overreaching, as a certain European dictator discovered when he unwisely decided to prosecute a war on two fronts, one vast against a determined adversary, the other against an alliance with massive resources to resist him. For Putin, the two fronts are resistance from the Ukrainians, NATO and most other countries. The second front is his own people: the war is massively unpopular among the Russian population generally, I believe – except among the authoritarian-minded, I expect, like America’s MAGA crew. How determined the soldiers in the conscript Russian army are to wage war against Ukraine is not clear.

      I’m not saying that the Ukraine situation is completely analogous to the situation in Europe in 1938/1939; we should not forget that Ukraine itself is a vast country, about 2Ā½ times the size of the whole UK. It’s the second largest in Europe after Russia itself, and the 45th largest in the world (UN figures). Meanwhile, Russia has about 113 million out of about 146 million total population living in European Russia. Ukraine’s population is 43 million or thereabouts. The Ukrainians are outmatched and outgunned, but the resistance to their forces appears to be much fiercer than Putin expected. So don’t write Ukraine off: the situation is like the UK’s in 1939. Ukraine is not Russia’s Iraq or Kuwait. While NATO may be trying not engage directly with Putin’s forces, the NATO countries are providing both matĆ©riel and financial support.

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      1. Thanks Ed. That covered a lot of ground.

        You almost undoubtedly know a good deal more about the situation there than I do, so I’ll stick to Johnson and the UK and the decline of what democracy we had, as raised by you.

        I’ve always thought that a state with an unelected head, a chamber consisting of true blue bloods, churchmen (of the state religion), and people who buy their way into parliament by means of donations or favours to party leaders (excluding the SNP), and on occasions, perhaps thanks to their physical attributes… and which also has a privy council which can bypass parliament and apparently Henry VIII powers to act outside of parliament, was pushing the word “democracy” to its limits.

        Add to that that the union parliament (also the English parliament) is elected by a FPTP system that is always unrepresentative of the will of the people.. and you have pushed it a bit further.

        With Lindsay Hoyle as Presiding Officer, it seems that the ruling party can break all the conventions in which people might have had some pride.

        Johnson, as you say, lies over and over again in parliament and Hoyle seems powerless to do anything about it.

        Yet, when someone from Labour or the SNP calls him out on it, it is the Opposition MPs who suffer at Mr Hoyle’s hands.

        The other day, after a statement had been made by the PM, a Labour MO stood asking him to stay in his place while he questioned something that had been said. Johnson walked out. Hoyle did nothing.

        I know John Bercow was not everyone’s cup of tea, but I really can’t see him letting ministers always with openly lying as Hoyle clearly does.

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  13. Re pic 24. Our geography teacher at school took up onto the roof of the flats on a trip many years ago. We could see the flares at Grangemouth. The contractor who demolished them was Safedem from your neck of the woods. I heard they removed beams 20 stories deep under the ground before giving up during the scrap operation. And lastly, appropriately for this weekend ā€¦ https://youtu.be/pzqoqzSZkPs

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      2. Ah good. I thought there was an Akker connection but I couldnt make it. I had this years ago on a reggae compilation album when the Clash had led me to a whole new musical world. A journey after which I developed a wide palette. I am open to just about anything except heavy metal and artists who mime on stage ā€¦. šŸ¤£

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    2. What a view…

      I don;t think I’d have liked to be in them while they were occupied.

      It seems the Russians may not be coming… after all.

      Nice tune though… šŸ™‚

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