Dr Who at The Albert Hall

The Summer Proms at The Albert Hall are with us again. They are sponsored by the BBC and the BBC records the lot, for radio and much for TV. The BBC is a National Treasure. I honestly don't know how the rest of you do without one.

In recent years, I think from 2008 the PROMS have devoted one evening to Dr Who music.

Two years ago Nigel Kennedy performed his version of the Dr Who opening title music on his electric violin.
Nigel Kennedy, if you don't know, is one of the leading violinists in the world today, a protege of Yehudi Menuin and a Sheffield United supporter. He also plays brilliant jazz and versions of Jimmy Hendrix classics on his violin.

If you met him in the street you might think he was a skin head, yob or hooligan. He's supposed to be quite nice really. Here he is in all his glory, playing the Dr Who theme tune outside The Albert Hall two years ago.
"ROCK AND ROLL!!"



Tonight it is this years Dr Who themed concert at The Albert Hall with Matt Smith and other Dr Who actors presiding over events.

You will be able to access the concert throught the BBC i-player.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/proms/2010/whatson/2407.shtml#prom10


All the best and enjoy(If you are a Dr Who fan).

Tony

JANE AUSTEN

Born : 16th December 1775.

Her father wrote at the time,

" a present play thing for her sister Cassy and a future companion. She is to be Jenny."

Died: 18th July 1817.

Her sister Cassandra wrote:

" I have lost a treasure, such a sister, such a friend as can never be surpassed,-She was the sun of my life, the gilder of every pleasure, the soother of every sorrow, I had not a thought concealed from her,& it is as if I had lost a part of myself."

Anniversary of The Battle of Britain (Howard Reeves.)

My Uncle Howard  was nineteen and a member of the Home Guard in 1940. He was not called up to the regular forces because he had a reserved job. He was a draughtsman, alongside his father, my grandfather, in Thorneycrofts, a local shipyard in Woolston, Southampton. They were building minesweepers and destroyers.
He died a few weeks after this picture was taken, on Sunday 24th November 1940 the day after one of the worst Luftwaffe raids on Southampton. He was helping to pull the dead and wounded from the rubble of a pub in Woolston, called The London Arms, when another bomb hit them.

Howard 1940.

The lady who owned the dress shop opposite The London Arms, Mrs Adams, came out into the street after the last bomb had exploded which fatally injured my uncle. She climbed in through her own shop window that was smashed and broken and tore material from dresses she had on disapply to tie tourniquets around my uncles many wounds. She could see he was bleeding to death. She tried hard but couldn't save him. She spoke to my grandmother later about it. My grandmother had been expecting Howard home and had prepared his favourite meal of fish and chips. I often had fish and chips cooked by my grandmother in later years. The policeman who came to my mother and grandparents house later that day to tell them about their son was in tears. He cried uncontrolably. My grandparents house was the sixth he'd been  to.

The  site of The London Arms in Woolston, Southampton.

Woolston was famous for the Supermarine Aircraft factory. This was where the Spitfire was designed and built . Supermarine's chief designer, R J Mitchell, who designed the Spitfire, lived in a small bungalow about a mile from my mother and grandparents. This is an old news picture of the factory in Woolston making spitfires.

My mother told me a story of how the sirens went one night. She was on her way to their Anderson Shelter and she could hear machine gun fire from a German Bomber flying low over Woolston. She later discovered from neighbours and friends that over 100 factory workers at Supermarine had been mown down and killed in the road between the factory and the air raid shelters.

 The site of the Supermarine factory in Woolston today.   

R J Mitchells bungalow in Woolston, Southampton. He was the designer of the Spitfire.

RJ Mitchell, Supermarines chief designer and the designer of the Spitfire.

The memorial in Woolston to R J Mitchel.

My grandmother told me how on another night the sirens once again had sounded. She was standing in her back garden in Longmore Avenue when a German Bomber flew low overhead.She looked up into the pilots eyes. She yelled out to everybody, " I can see him. He's looking at me." He was being chased by a Spitfire sent up from Southampton Airport and was flying low over housing to protect himself. The Spitfire pilot would not have shot up houses and gardens to get him. The German aircraft was later shot down over the New Forest.

Spitfires over Britain.

This is one of the saddest stories from the Southampton Blitz. Some school children were having an art lesson in Southampton Art Gallery on the 6th November 1940, when the sirens went. They went with their teachers and art gallery assistants into the basement. A bomb drilled through the roof and two concrete floors before exploding in the basement and killing them all.

Seventy years ago in the Summer of 1940 the skies of Britain were the scene of a deadly struggle. Day after day The Luftwaffe and the RAF fought relentlessly for dominance of the skies.

Over London and the skies of Kent, Sussex and Hampshire the interwoven con trails of fighter aircraft laced the sky, 20,000 feet above England.

Many of the towns and cities of England were being bombed too;

Great Yarmouth,Dover,Folkestone,Portsmouth, Southampton, Plymouth,Exeter, Cardiff, Swansea and towns and cities in the industrial centre of Britain, Coventry, Birmingham and of course London, were all bombed and some devastated cruelly. But the struggle went on.

If it hadn't been for ,"the sacrifice of the few," as Churchill put it, there would have been no fortress Britain and the build up of the massive army of British, Americans, Canadians and forces from around the Commonwealth that attacked the mainland of Europe on June 6th 1944, D-Day.

Here is a link with many archive recordings of that time:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/archive/battleofbritain/

One of the most poignant recordings is the live report by Charles Gardner of a dog fight over Dover as it actually happened, .

Why do we want to visit Chawton?

Why do people want to visit Chawton, the place where Jane Austen lived?
Sunday 20th November 1808 Jane writes to Cassandra from Castle Square:
(Jane, her mother and Cassandra are contemplating their move from Southampton to Chawton. )

“There are six bedchambers at Chawton; Henry wrote to my mother the other day,& luckily mentioned the number-which is just what we wanted to be assured of. He also speaks of Garrets for Store places, one of which she immediately planned for fitting up for Edward’s manservant- & now perhaps it must be for our own- for she is already quite reconciled to our keeping one. The difficulty of doing without one had been thought of before. - His name shall be Robert if you please.”
The coach parties arrive. The car park is used by visitors, families, groups of friends, individuals who have found their own way there.

So why do they come to Chawton, the last home of Jane Austen?

They have invariably read Pride and Prejudice or one of the other novels or all of them. They know a little about Jane Austen’s life already.

What does actually going to Chawton do for somebody?

They walk on the very ground that Jane walked on. They go inside the cottage that Jane inhabited and are surrounded by the walls of brick that enclosed Jane’s slight frame. They walk and stand in the same spaces she stood and moved in. They fill the spaces where she laughed and thought and wrote and slept and argued and loved and hated.

They can’t become Jane even if they wish for that. They can’t become the writer she was though they may want to be.

Imagination plays a large part and the imagination feeds on knowledge of Jane’s life, her stories and the period she lived, the things she used and touched.

What does the visitor come away with? It has been a pleasure to be where Jane had been. Maybe they marvel at her circumstances. Maybe they try to work out how she functioned in this environment. They empathise. The final thing they come away with is a closer emotional relationship with Jane.

They have seen, they have felt, they have thought.

THE WOMBLES OF WIMBLEDON COMMON

Woodland on the common.

The Windmill. it was in a house near here Baden Powel lived for a while.

The Wombles

Julie Andrew's old pad.

Golf on the Common. there are two golf courses, London Scottish and the Royal Wimbledon.



Elisabeth Beresford, the author of The Wombles.

Abigail with some joggers going past.

The common has a number of ponds and small lakes.

Has anybody outside this green and pleasant land heard of ,The Wombles?

Today it is raining. The BBC website shows the symbols for heavy rain with intermittent showers. That means it is raining all the time, sometimes less heavy than at other times. Heavy rain, you should see it. You should hear it. The sound is something else. Tomorrow is forecast the same. However on Wednesday it's different, the forecast says heavy rain ALL the time.

Unbelievably, two days ago we had a heat wave with clear blue skies.The temperature was 26 degrees centigrade and more.

On Saturday it was hot so I decided to take Abigail, my youngest, for a cycle ride on Wimbledon Common beneath the cool leaves and foliage of the wooded areas on the common.

Wimbledon Common is famous for the Wombles.

It's also famous for a lot of other things too.

In the 18th century it was the haunt of highwaymen who held up carriages on route to the south, Portsmouth and Southampton. It was also, because of it's seclusion, a place where gentry, miffed with each other, held duels, "by gad sir you bounder!"

Julius Caesar was reputed to have built a camp on the common on his second invasion of these islands in 54BC. But that is thought to be not true. The earth works on the common, which people thought was Caesars camp, was probably an Iron Age hill fort. The fact the Roman Road Stane Street ran from London Bridge to Chichester on the South Coast, went close to Wimbledon Common, may have suggested it was a Roman fort.

In the 17th century Wimbledon Common was used as a training ground for Charles II's Tangier Regiment.

The emancipator, William Wilberforce, in the 19th century, lived next to the common.

The Victorian poet Algernon Charles Swinburne, who lived in Putney, used to frequent one of my drinking places, the Rose and Crown, on the edge of the common. They do great beer there by the way.

There are a number a small hills on the common. They are man made. When the London Underground system was being built in the late 1800s , the earth they removed when digging the tunnels was transported to Wimbledon Common, hence the hills.

King George V used to play golf on the Royal Wimbledon Golf Course and

Baden Powel wrote Scouting for Boys in a house next to the windmill.

During the Ist World War the common was used by the army as a massive training camp for rifle regiments. They had many rifle ranges set up on the common. During the Ist World War it was also an airfield for the Royal Flying Corps which later became the RAF. The airfield was used to protect London from bombing by the German zeppelins.

Lord Nelson and Lady Hamilton used to live in Merton Place at the bottom of the hill from the common.

The writer, Robert Graves, was born and brought up in a road next to Wimbledon Green on the common.

Julie Andrews lived in a pink house here before she hit super stardom and moved to Hollywood.

Of course , to one side of the common the famous tennis courts are situated too.

However it's the Wombles that the common is REALLY FAMOUS for.

Here is some information. All will become clear.

THE POWER OF KIDS TV!!!!!!!


"The Wombles are fictional pointy-nosed, furry creatures that live in burrows, where they help the environment by collecting and recycling rubbish in useful and ingenious ways. Wombles were created by author Elisabeth Beresford, originally appearing in a series of children's novels from 1968. The characters later became nationally famous in the mid 1970s as a result of a popular BBC children's television show using stop motion animation. A number of spin-off novelty songs also became major hits in the British music charts.

Their motto is "Make Good Use of Bad Rubbish." This "green" message was a reflection of the ecology movement of the 1970s. Although Wombles live in every country in the world, the stories focus on the life of the burrow in Wimbledon Common in London, England. "

Jane Austen and Vicars

Farringdon Church, two miles from Chawton. Jane often walked here and knew the vicar well. She probably attended services here.

Steventon Church, where Jane's father the Reverend Austen was the vicar. Jane was christened here and attended services every week.

This is rather an intriguing sign. It is the sign outside the church in Farringdon."NORTHANGER BENEFICE," no less.

Chawton Parish Church.

St Nicholas.

The main church in Alton.

Alton was the local town to Chawton and Jane often went here shopping. She would have known this church.

A print showing Southampton High Street in the 18th century. All Saints, Dr Mant's church, is the Greek porticoed building on the left.

I'm not sure Jane would approve but I'm sure some of her vicar characters would not be averse to some ,"rumpy pumpy," don't you think.

The new Vicar was up early one Sunday morning, walking around his new parish, after leaving his wife in bed with the Sunday papers, her cup of tea, and a pack of cigarettes.One of the old villagers came up to him and said. “Good morning, Vicar, how be you and the wife?”

The Vicar said, “Good morning my man, I am fine, the wife is fine also. I left her in bed smoking.”
The villager said, “Arr, Vicar, that’s the way to fuck ‘em!”

(Mr and Mrs Norris from Mansfield Park, when they first moved into the living of Mansfield? Perhaps not! )

Jane Austen's relationship with vicars was an integral part of her own life, her father and two of her brothers, James and Henry were vicars. Henry became a curate in various parishes after his bank failed. Many of the most prominent and sometimes important characters in her novels are vicars. Mr Elton in Emma, and Mr Norris, who we never meet and Edward Bertram in Mansfield Park are amongst them.

Being a vicar in the 18th century was a lower middle class occupation. Vicars and vicars wives and families were a specific strata of society. It was considered a way of making a living with property and income attached.

When Emma is discussing with Harriet the suitability of Mr Elliot as a suitor, her considerations are,

" He had a comfortable home for her, and Emma imagined a very sufficient income; for though the vicarage at Highbury as not large, he was known to have some independent property;......"

In Mansfield Park, Mr Norris, never appears, he is merely spoken of by his wife. His character seems to be a foil by which the personality and character of Mrs Norris is accentuated even more sharply.He dies early in the novel . When he is dead Mrs Norris,

"consoled herself for the loss of her husband by considering that she could do very well without him..."

That seems to be a chilling comment. For a person to be unloved and not cared for to that extent by somebody who purports to love them, is quite horrific. Mrs Norris shows her total self interest to a degree, with that statement. Mr Norris may well have been the sort of vicar who only cared about house and income but he doesn't deserve that level of indifference from his wife.

Edmund Bertram, on the other hand, is different. If a definition of a good christian is to judge them by their actions not just their speech, then Edmund portrays what a good christian and vicar should be.

Edmund's thoughtfulness towards Fanny and the quick actions he takes to make her comfortable and the care he shows her are all traits which make him material for a truly christian vicar.

When Fanny is pining after her brother and childhood playmate,William, Edmund, immediately supplies her with writing materials and sees that Fanny's letter is franked and posted.

" If that be all your difficulty, I will furnish you with paper and every other material, and you may write your letter whenever you choose."

Edmund puts himself out considerably for Fanny when he exchanges one of his own three horses for a horse more suitable for Fanny to ride, so she may get exercise.Nothing is too much for him.

Edmund requires a home and some income though. His father is acutely aware of this,when Tom, the elder, reprobate, brother, has squandered a proportion of his fathers wealth on betting and gambling and Sir Thomas is then unable to offer Edmund the living of Mansfield immediately after Mr Norris's death.

" you have robbed Edmund for ten, twenty, thirty years, perhaps for life."

We all need to have food and shelter and clothing on our backs.

The passage in Mansfield Park that really sets out the difference between the materially interested vicar and the true Christian is the discussion between Mary Crawford and Edmund when Miss Crawford finds out that Edmund is to become a vicar. You can immediately see the change in attitude Mary has to Edmund from that moment onwards.

Edmund relates a sort of manifesto about what he thinks a clergyman should be and should not be,

"A clergyman cannot be in a high state or fashion. he must not head mobs, or set the tone in dress. But I cannot call that situation nothing, which has the charge of all that is of the first importance to mankind, individually or collectively considered temporally or eternally- which was the guardianship of religion and morals and consequently from the manners which result from their influence."

Edmund himself is a great example of ,"the manners which result."

Jane throughout her life had first hand knowledge of clergymen. Her father and brothers amongst many. She knew what was good and bad about the profession. She had real life examples to provide her with evidence.

In some of her letters written while living in Castle Square, Southampton, she mentions, Dr Mant, who was the rector of All Souls, a church in Southampton High Street near The Bargate.

Dr Mant had been an Oxford Fellow like her own father, George Austen. Dr Mant was a super star in the firmament of the clergy, having written influential books and pamphlets about theology. He was also a charismatic preacher and Jane often mentions listening to his sermons. He also had been the headmaster of King Edwards Grammar School in Southampton for a number of years. However, Jane suggests a salacious side to him. How much a slightly cruel joke, pointed at her best friend Martha Lloyd, or how much truth there is behind it, it is impossible to ascertain. Jane relates how Mrs Mant left Southampton with her children for a while to get away from the attention her husband, religious super star, that he was, seemed to be attracting.

To Cassandra Austen Tuesday 17th January 1809 from Castle Square,

"Martha & Dr Mant are as bad as ever;he runs after her in the street to apologise for having spoken to a gentleman, while she was near him the day before.- Poor Mrs Mant can stand it no longer; she is retired to one of her married daughters."

Dr Mant was obviously a clergyman on a steep successful career slope. But fine words and sermons don't make Dr Mant, Edmund Bertram's idea of a true vicar. Dr Mant had been a headmaster and given some of his life to educating children which is a giving profession and requires the understanding and development of others. But which sort of vicar was he truly, an Edmund or a Mr Elliot. We cannot tell. He had a very interested following though.

I am sure Jane got her understanding of what a good clergyman is from the experience of her own father and brothers, but did they also provide some of the attributes of Mr Norris and Mr Elliot?

After all, George Austen, Jane's father, retired as vicar of Steventon and moved to Bath. Bath, the 18th century equivalent of Blackpool or Coney Island.

The Cobb and The Undercliff at Lyme Regis

Walking in The Undercliff. A sheer cliff face in front of us.

The wind nearly blew us off the Cobb.

"Granny's Teeth," also known as the steps Louisa Musgrove jumped down from.

A view of Lyme looking back from The Cobb.

Half way there. We walked for eight miles from Lyme along The Undercliff to Seaton, which is a small village across the border from Dorset in Devon.

Forcing our way through the undergrowth.

I think this says 1826. Your eye sight might be better than mine. It was carved here by the engineers who repaired the Cobb years after Jane died.

A view of the upper and the lower Cobb.The Cobb itself twists to the right after passing these fishermens huts. You can see the top of one of the other sets of steps in the bottom right of this picture.


A view of The Undercliff from the Cobb. It is recorded, not in Jane's own letters but in letters written by either one of her brothers or one of her nieces, that Jane walked in the Undercliff.

The Cobb looks like a black twisting beast in stormy weather. It feels and looks savage.

Two friends of mine riding the back of, "the beast."

The top part of the Cobb slopes outwards towards the sea. It's not always easy to keep your footing.

We got to the end.

It depends on the weather conditions. The Cobb at Lyme can look and behave like an evil spirited leviathan;a Moby Dick. It's a savage beast. At other times it can be a gentle, peaceful and calm creature.

Jane Austen used the Cobb at Lyme for the setting of an integral scene in her novel, Persuasion. The accident on The Cobb, to Louisa Musgrove, in Persuasion, brings Anne Elliot to the fore. She is looked to by Captain Wentworth and the others to take charge.

John Fowles, who lived in Lyme for most of his life, used Lyme , The Cobb and The Undercliff as  the settings for his novel ,The French Lieutenants Woman.These topographical elements of Lyme are like a group of brooding characters within Fowles' novel and shape the action as much as the human characters.The undercliff is  where Sarah Woodruff , the heroine of The French Lieutenants Woman, walked on her own, creating gossip and tittle tattle amongst the stiff spinsters who kept their disapproving, hawk like eyes on her every movement. It is a special place.

Lyme is the place that Mary Anning, in the early 1800's,  discovered the first Ichthyosaur. The cliffs at Lyme reveal  fossils from the Jurassic period, 190 million years ago. Many of her finds are now in The Natural History Museum in Kensington. Lyme has become a fossil hunters paradise.

Myself and some of my friends wanted a weekend away so we decided on Lyme.  We tend to go to places for the local beer and perhaps the beautiful scenery rather than the literary connections. We enjoyed some of the excellent eating establishments in Lyme looking out over the harbour and the cobb and also some of the pubs in the narrow lanes and back streets of the town. We walked for miles along the undercliff from Lyme to Seaton. Much of the walk was under a dense rich canopy of tall growing, ash and lime. It is about an eight mile walk and the walking is quite tiring. At times we had to wend our way through long grasses and along twisting narrow paths.We couldn't always see far ahead. I think this always makes a walk harder. If you can see into the distance that gives you a target. We had to keep going at a steady pace. It wasn't an easy walk. 

As it's name suggests, The Undercliff, is situated on the side and underneath the top of the cliffs that stretch along the Dorset Coast.It is a world heritage site and recognised by UNESCO. There have been many landslides along the coast here. It has been active for 20,000 years. More recent landslips have been recorded in 1775, 1828, 1839 and in 1840. The so called, "Great Slip," occurred in 1839 and was recorded in great detail. These slips happen because of the geological strata of the rocks that form the coast at Lyme. Chalk and sandstone, which are pervious and allow rainwater to percolate through them, sit on top of clays and limestone which are not pervious. The water percolating through the above rocks acts as a lubricant when it reaches the impervious clays and this can cause the top layers to slip over the bottom layers.These slips have created platforms and shelving along the face of the cliff.

The Undercliff is south facing. It has sea breezes but it also has the protection of the cliffs above.This creates a unique environment. It is sheltered and it gets most of the days light. It is a micro climate different from the sea before it and different from the land above and behind it. It is  verdant, almost like a small rainforest.