Farmer Hoggett strikes again...

Just today, Scrobs was in the garden, starting the new crops, etc.

As we are next to the church, we hear the hymns and dirges every Sunday, and today, one hymn just got me going on my favourite episode in any film, ever made... 

And I started to hum it, with the inevitable drop in countenance and arrival at a solemn realisation, that it still fills me with tears...

I just don't kow how these short scenes just reverberate, but they damn well do, and with the setting, the realisation of animals and their carers, etc., the music just melts me to a gibbering wreck - every time!

It gets worse...

By now, Scrobs is even more of a blathering wreck, and these scenes are just fabulous...

The demise of a British institution - care of Labour ...

The disaster for British pubs, characterised by the manic tax-theft by the far-left 'administration', we are suffering under, is showing its face in quite a few directions.

Being retired and more elderly than 'yer average spring chicken' - ahem), I tend not to spend too much time in our local hostelries for the simple reason that it costs too much! However, when a good chum decides that we need to explore the delicacies, and Harvey's fabulous beer, in a pub a few miles away, and offers a ride in an open sports car with the hood down on an idyllic Spring day, then the tempation to join in is never a problem, and so, four of us ventured forth yesterday!

One chum has a 1963 Austin Healey 3000, which is in superb original condition, and the other chum has a Honda 2 litre, with pocket-rocket tendencies, and so we ventured west for twenty minutes to find the pub we were aiming at!

On arriving, the car park was full by 12.30, and the bars were doing a roaring trade, which was happily gratifying, and provided much jollity all round! But, isn't it signal, that nowadays, the only pubs which are just thriving, are the establishments which have an extensive menu of 'restaurant' food, good ales and wines, and a lot of staff with the eagerness to make everyone welcome?

When I started off in the big wide world, in Ashford, Kent, in 1965, I lived in sordid digs, and escaped on some nights to visit various pubs where I could at least find some company, and a genial atmosphere. The grotty pubs were well documented locally, but I can still remember one in Ashford, on the corner of a bomb site just off the main street, which was packed every evening! It was awful inside, but the chat was lively, the clientele was elderly - probably war veterans etc., and respect was paid to all new visitors like me.

Food in these great establishments would be crisps, arrow root biscuits, and maybe a year-old packet of KP nuts or cheeselets, and that's your lot! But my landlady had provided some sort of peculiar dinner, so extras weren't really required!

Compare the pub we visited yesterday with the great old boozer I used to pay 1/4 a pint for in 1965...

I'm so lucky living in a part of the country, where we aren't tarnished by the dreadful degradation of traditional British customs and values - but 1/4 a pint would be laughed at now...

And now for something completely expected...

I'm betting that my pension 'increase' will be wiped out by around the end of April this year, it took a few days longer last year.

 

Intra-Terrestrial communication...

Last evening, I had the longest telephone chat I've ever had in my life - probably even beating the times when I was away from Senora O'Blene! 

Three hours on the dog/blower/trumpet!

I was chatting with one of my oldest friends, from way back, when I started in business, and thereon, we became great buddies, usually laughing, always tincturing, and now just remembering the good days, when business could get going under Margaret Thatcher, and the situation was rosy!

It's a bit sad that a hundred miles or so is a bridge too far to drive now for a face-to-face visit, especially with the price of fuel rocketing, and also little/big houndess would be more than concerned at my prolonged absence, so the WhatsApp it is!

As I recently signed up with BT, (and have regretted doing so immediately - tossers), those three hours were cost-free, and now the world has been put to rights, but what does one do after a Saturday evening, and the curtains weren't even drawn around 'The Turrets', when I surfaced this morning?

Answer - One sits with a mug of Bovril, and starts chuckling again!

Travellin' man...

Quite a few years ago, Scrobs was about eleven years of age (You're telling me - Ed).

I was living at home with my family, and was everywhere in the village when it suited me and my friends - making camps in the woods, biking for miles, making rafts etc., like all the things that kids used to do back then, and we were all proud of the scars as well!

One day, I was wandering around near the crossroads of the village, having been somewhere or other, and spied a rather odd contraption, which can only be described as a sort of bicycle with a long, low cabin in tow. It was silver, had a few portholes, and was being driven by a chap who seemed alright, having a friendly smile, no aggression, and also a small puppy inside the tiny caravan, chewing on a Bonio biscuit!

Being nosy, and also more than curious, I spent a few minutes chatting with the chap, and learned that he was just a bit of a traveller - not a gypsy, just an eccentric loner, who liked riding this contraption around the country, getting a little notice here and there from kind people, and offering absolutely no threat to anyone at all!

Back then the village was always looking out for children, old people etc, and even the local shop keeper noticed me chatting to this chap, without any concern, because that was the way it was!

So, after a few minutes, and me even noticing that his bike had a three-speed gear change - a rarity that I craved for, but understood that towing this machine would need some 'oomph', he explained that he just went here and there and everywhere, annoying nobody, and minding his own business! I felt absolutely no threat whatsoever!

As he moved on, he politely asked if we could spare him 'a few spuds' etc, and I dashed off home to collect these! Mum was a bit perturbed, but even then, villagers looked out for each other, and the chap thanked me and went on his way! I never learned his name!

Some time afterwards, dad called me through to the TV, where he'd seen an article on the same chap, somewhere miles away, and we all marvelled at what he was up to, and the 'fame' he was getting, purely by riding this unusal bike around! I was pleased to know that somehow we'd helped him a bit, and all was well, although my mum said once, that I shouldn't really talk to strangers, as he might have, 'asked me if I wanted a ride in the thing'... I can see her telling me that now!

Time passed, quite a lot of it actually, and because I spent many hours as a lad reading 'The Eagle' comic, promoted by the superb Rev Marcus Morris - I had relished in the Dan Dare stories, the real investigations on the back pages, etc, and, now, purely by accident a year or so ago, found that every issue was now available for a few pence on a CDRom!

Well, of course, I had to get these precious disks, and began to trawl through them to see if I could remember anything from all those years ago! I then forgot them entirely...

Just today, the envelope with the several CDs emerged in an old pile of papers, and after a bit of research, I eventually got them to work! That comic was such a great adventure back then! It was the only one allowed by my Headmaster, because the others weren't good enough for budding scientists and brain surgeons, and they really did have an impact on this young soul!

Looking through the issue of January 1958, (when I was revving up to fail my eleven plus, I lost a year in hospital - not worth relating, but it mattered a bit), I found the Letters Page, and blow me down with a copy of 'The Eagle', there was a letter, from a chap who'd noticed my 'friend' near Bognor Regis - a good couple of hours away!

Here's the letter he wrote: -

Now doesn't that little yarn gladden the heart more than somewhat...?

Shifting sand and shingle...

On the coast hear here, is a largish marsh, with an old castle plonked in the middle - Camber Castle - and which is topped up by a lovely small town, Winchelsea.

The old town was lost to the sea in the late 1200s, and apart from that, the existing town reigns supreme as a very pleasant place to visit! I'm always fascinated by stories of vanished towns and villages, and while I revere Winchelsea - partly because I proposed to my Senora soon after a 'session' in The New Inn, and also spent most of my hoeymoon money on the stag party in the same place, the story associated with the demise of the original town is still intriguing!

For some reason though, I stumbled on another tragedy of a lost village the other day - Hallsands, in Devon.

The short film explains the story, which today, would signify a travesty of injustice, but back then, we had a Navy which actually went out from huge, well-organised harbours, and did the business...

Bass is still ace...

Quite a few years ago, Scrobs was beginning to enjoy playing his guitar to anybody who could be bothered to listen, and being a huge fan of The Shadows, of course, all their music was to the fore!

The band had a few personnel changes, with Jet Harris and Tony Meehan leaving, and being replaced by Brian Bennett and Brian Locking, then John Rostill, and all seemed fine with the new line-up, especially as my Uncle Bill gave me his copy of 'Diamonds'...

The seeds of bass guitar playing began a sort of fantasy in this post-adolescent mind, as to persuing the opportunities of playing one of these huge behemoths. The six-string versions had become more available, and I long wondered if a whole set could be played with - say - two or three six-string basses and some percussion thrown in as well!

I never flourished on bass-playing, as first, I never owned one until https://scroblene-webley-bullock.blogspot.com/2007/06/rhythm-stick.html, and since then I've added a few alterations, including a sort of wooden fly-piece attached to the body, so I can play sitting down, and also I've taken the frets out as, I just love that particular sound, especially when played by serious musicians like Del Palmer or Norman Watt-Roy!

Poking around on YouTube when it's raining is a pastime which sometimes takes a few minutes longer, especially when something really good just jumps out, and I am amazed at how this chap manages to play such a fabulous version of Toto's classic, 'Africa'...

I don't think that the gnarled fingers typing this, will ever get to this playing standard...