Posts from — August 2005
Current reading - A Nearly Normal LIfe
Charles L Mee’s memoir A Nearly Normal Life (Little, Brown & Co, 1999) wonderfully evokes the atmosphere of early 1950’s small-town America and the constant dread that the annual polio epidemics brought to a land so shaped by the ethos of optimism, youth and health and can-do. But the last thing Mee, a 14-year-old, ‘with buck teeth, a crew cut, a love of swimming, football and comic books’ expects is that his life will be for ever changed by this disease. This was something that happened to other people. There was no cure for the disease and it struck unpredictably…
…and left its victims dead or paralyzed, washed up in wheelchairs, white-faced, shrunken, with frightened eyes, light blankets over their legs, or lying on their backs inside iron lungs, constantly shushing and hissing with the intake and exhaust of pressure that made a person’s diaphragm expand and contract, breathing for him because the muscles in his chest had stopped working - his head and feet sticking out uselessly at either end.
In 1953, the 14-year-old Mee himself catches the dread disease. He seems to have picked up the virus on a road trip with his mother and sister from their home in Barrington, Illinois, to Boulder, Colorado.
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August 31, 2005 2 Comments
Ethan & the Vikings
I got a text from Alex in Shetland yesterday:
Earlier today we saw the Viking galley moored in Lerwick. Ethan was a bit concerned about the potential danger of marauding Vikings so we explained that there weren’t any Vikings any more and told him a little Viking history. A little bit later he told us that a Viking had been in the chalet. We asked how he knew. He replied that there is no DVD player… So it must have been taken by a Viking! Hee! Hee!
Wonderful 5-year-old boy logic!
August 30, 2005 No Comments
Arrived in Acuto
Arrived at Acuto this afternoon. Spent the morning and early afternoon with external affairs gang in the sticky heat of a tourist-crowded Rome. The hotel was close to the Spanish Steps and we spent a bit of time at the Trevi Fountain before going for lunch. It was fun being with friends, but I can do without the tourist kick. I just am not a good tourist.
We were all picked up by a couple of taxis for the 60km or so to Acuto. A thunder storm broke to the east as we drove south out of Rome - clouds had been building through the late afternoon - but the further south we got, the more the weather cleared.
August 30, 2005 No Comments
Sitting in Heathrow Terminal One
I’ve just logged on via a T-Mobile hotspot in Terminal 1 to check emails and send a blog while waiting for my flight. The place is very quiet. I guess that all those who wanted to include the Bank Holiday in their holidays went on Friday or Saturday.
British Airways are still not providing any but the most basic catering on their shorthaul flights, so I was given a GBP5.00 refreshment voucher to spend in the terminal before departing. Pret-a-Manger to the rescue for my in-flight lunch.
I checked in on-line yesterday lunchtime and printed out my boarding pass on my inkjet. The pass includes a barcode, which was read at the baggage drop and again on entry to the security area. And now, for the first time for very many years, passports are being checked as one leaves the security zone.
I’ve just checked the weather in Rome: top temp is forecast to be 31?C, lowest is 21?. I’ve got used to the cool now, so Rome is going to feel oppressive. And the Italians don’t go in for a/c, so prepare to sweat it out.
August 29, 2005 No Comments
Alex & Charlie in Shetland
Just had a short email from Alex saying that the weather in Shetland’s been wet today, but is forecast to be sunny and windy tomorrow. They’re taking a ride on a Viking boat around Lerwick harbour.
Ethan and Emily have been drawing pictures on the sand at Bannaminn beach.
This is Emily’s Sun God, and this (below) is Ethan’s Wind God.
August 28, 2005 No Comments
Blogger import successful
After a bit of a struggle I was successful in importing my Blogger files, thanks to Andy Skelton’s excellent import script and Catsudon’s visual tutorial. Both very helpful, but I had to use the work around that Andy posted of adding an extra line immediately after the first line of his import script. You have to keep working at these things, just hoping that something will work.
Anyway, it’s done, thanks to these helpful websites.
August 27, 2005 No Comments
New start with WordPress
Well, I’m very proud of myself for having got WordPress loaded onto my server and actually working. I’m very impressed by WordPress and by the excellent help on the WordPress Codex.
My next job is to try to import my Blogger postings.
August 27, 2005 No Comments
St Teresa’s school, Minehead
I recently found the website of the first school I went to, St Teresa’s in Minehead. It’s Minehead First School now, but it was St Teresa’s in the early 1950’s. I must have gone there in around 1952 or 1953, when I was 4 or 5. In those days it belonged to an order of Roman Catholic nuns. One former pupil, whose reminiscences are on the school’s site writes:
The nuns belonged to the Order of St Louis, which was a French order. Many of them were French or Irish and even the English ones spoke some French. Our French teacher in the senior school was a French nun called Mother Marie Theresa. We called her Bonjour Mere. Ladies lived in the convent with the nuns. They were drearily dressed spinsters. Some of them had bedrooms in the school and in the houses next to the school. Miss Davis was one of them. They spied on us when we were in the town and reported us for not wearing our hats, eating in the street or bad manners (like not holding a door open for an adult, walking through a door in front of an adult or just being silly). Mother St Gerard gave out the bad reports in assembly - there were never any good reports!
I started in the kindergarten with Mother Joseph. Mother Joseph was very scary nun, who - allegedly - used to tell us about black angels and the devil. (My mother later said that Mother Joseph had been sent back to the order’s main house to be reprogrammed!) I don’t actually remember that, but I do remember being scared of her. She was missing a finger on one hand, something I noticed when she marked my exercise book. She used to write on the blackboard (it one was one of the old fashioned kind on an easel) in a hand that mimicked the Century Gothic or whatever the typeface was that was used in our reading book - supposedly easy for young children to read. Even now, seeing that kind of handwriting or typeface can give me a funny feeling.
We used to have to lie down for a rest after lunch. I thought that was deeply insulting. I never had a rest at home and, anyway, I was a BIG boy (all of 4 or 5) and I didn’t need anything sissy like a rest. We used to have to lie down on what my memory recalls as being like camp beds, but with red tubular frames. The bit we lay on was canvas.
It’s amazing what comes back in my memory (although I have a very patchy recall of my own past) as I think and write about that time of my life. The horrible, smelly plastic beakers that we had to drink our playtime milk out of. The 1/3 pint bottles with cardboard disks as stoppers that the milk came in. The stinking lavatories in a small brick building in the playground - I used to hold it all in until I could get home so that I didn’t have to use that vile brick building. The shifting alliances in the playground.
One thing I never found out is why my parents (mother was Church of England, my father was, I think, an agnostic) sent me to a Catholic school. My best friend was a Catholic and it is possible that her mother recommended the school to my parents. The Protestant kids had to go to a half-hour Bible class every day. These were taught by a small woman in a grey felt hat, who called the boys ‘little boy’ - very annoying. The Catholics would go off to Mass on various high days and holy days. I was very surprised one day when all my classmates came back from Mass with ash crosses on their foreheads. I had no idea what it signified, and I don’t think anyone ever explained.
August 26, 2005 15 Comments
A couple of must-see websites
I make no apologies for publicizing the work of my own family, but if you want to see some really good word, have a look at these sites:
TubeStudio is a hub for artists from all musical backgrounds. We aim to produce music to the highest quality for people to enjoy. After all isn’t that what it’s about?
The music on this site is free for you to download and distribute amongst your friends. All we ask is that you let us know what you think by using the forum. If you want to use any of our music for commercial purposes please contact us (we’re not adverse to the idea).
Tom Leith (Composer and music producer with his own studio, which can be hired.)
August 26, 2005 No Comments
On with the heating!
Although it’s a bright and sunny day at the moment, I had to put the heating on briefly earlier on, while Erica and I were getting up. It was downright chilly - and it’s only 26 August. It’s like autumn has arrived already. No doubt I will find it too hot when I go to Rome on Monday. Forecasts for Rome on the BBC Weather site are predicting temperatures of 34ºC on Monday and Tuesday. That really is just TOO hot.
It looks like it will still be 32ºC when I get to Acuto (in the hills between Anagni and Fiuggi in the Frosinone province, south of Rome) on Tuesday evening.
Ten years in the cool climate of Shetland led me to prefer cool to too much heat.
August 26, 2005 No Comments
