How Real Printers Catch Rats
My father was a real letterpress printer and his works was a rather decrepit building with a rodent problem.
Over the years he told me various stories about how they dealt with them
In the 1930s, he’d lived with his widowed mother above the shop, so to speak, and they’d employed a traditional solution; a cat.
According to my father, who was not unknown to embellish a good tale, the cat was an enormous ginger specimen. And as was typical of those days, he was a proper Tom.
Whether he was any good in the ratting department never entered the story But above the shop next door lived a posh lady with a pedigree Siamese female.
One morning my father was confronted by the lady, saying that his mother’s cat had fathered a litter of kittens, that her Siamese had just produced. On inspecting them, there did seem to be a large number with a ginger hue.
The lady said that her cat never went out and he knew that his family cat was always shut in to deal with the rodent infestation.
So how did the two cats do it?
One hot night, my father was returning from the Jolly Anglers opposite. All the top windows were open and he saw the ginger cat balance along the parapet on the wall and hop in next door to see his lady friend.
His other method of catching rats, relied on those things that were always around in a print works. He would take a quad box and prop it up at an angle over the rat hole with a pica reglet. They’d then all wait in the dark for action. When the rodent disturbed the reglet, the box fell and trapped the poor animal underneath It was then a matter of switching the lights on and moving the box gently to the middle of the room, keeping the rodent trapped Everybody, then grabbed something suitable, like a small coal shovel before the box was removed
It was a quick end. And as my father told it, a fun tale
How Times Change
This was posted in the local newsletter.
The Rosemary Branch is looking to borrow a gentleman’s pipe from the 1950s for use a prop for an opera opening tomorrow. If you can help, you will get a couple of free tickets from a grateful Cec at the Rosie.
My father had loads of pipes in the 1950s. The last time I saw anybody smoking a pipe, it was clamped between a Belgian’s teeth as he drove towards me going the wrong way down a Belgian motorway.
P.G. Wodehouse Was A Traitor
My father hated P.G. Wodehouse with a vengeance because of his broadcasts for the Nazis in the Second World War. We didn’t have any of his books in the house.
More has just been released from MI5 files as reported here in the Guardian.
I would follow my father and have nothing to do with any of Wodehouse’s books and can’t even say now, I’d go out of my way to watch a film, play or TV series of any of his books.
Remember my father was very involved with anti-Fascism protests before the war and active on the left wing of the Conservative party. He was also present at the Battle of Cable Street, when the East End stopped Mosley from marching.
My father could also do a mean impersonation of Lord Haw-Haw. But then I’ve never met anybody who didn’t feel that he wasn’t one of the funniest things of the war.
My Allergies and Me
I seem to be getting no relief from the hay fever at all this summer. Just as it seems the pollen level gets to a low level for a day, it then rises back up again. I had lunch with a friend yesterday and he never suffers, but he is this year. It’s a story that I’ve heard so many times in the last few months from others. No-one seems to have any idea about it either.
I don’t get any luck with it either. On Friday I was to see a consultant about it, but for administrative reasons the appointment was put back for a few days. Any sane person, would think that the Devil has it in for them, if they had suffered the last three years I have. To make matters worse, the sale of my house in Suffolk, seems to be moving slowly and Ipswich lost by seven goals to one last night. But I’m still here, which is more than can be said for my wife and youngest son.
I also had a good lunch yesterday with friends, essentially to celebrate my birthday on Tuesday. Even Ipswich contrived to lose six two that night.
I know it’s only a small thing, but I slept well last night and got up feeling fresh. So I thought, it might be a good idea to go to perhaps Brighton or Southend and get a bit of sea air. But after checking the pollen levels, I decided against it as levels were moderate in all the places I checked. And the excellent Met Office web site, says that it’ll be Tuesday before the levels get better.
So I think I’ll go and see my therapist today. I’m not sure where I’ll explore, but because it is so easy and fairly close, I think I might go to Bruce Castle Museum this afternoon.
What I will do is reflect on my life and especially this dreaded hay fever.
I will start with my ancestors. I’m certain that it’s my father’s line that has the really bad genes and has brought me the allergies. From what I know now, I’m certain that he was a coeliac like me. He certainly had more wind than the Outer Hebrides. He was always choked up with catarrh and ate menthol catarrh tablets like others eat sweets. He was also a heavy pipe smoker and that couldn’t have helped. His father had died young of pneumonia and my father had told me, that my grandfather was a heavy drinker and smoker, who suffered from asthma. My father told me graphic stories about how he would pick him up in a terrible state from places like Wood Green Conservative Club. One of the strange things about my father’s family, is that there is very few women, who have ever given birth. Could this be the coeliac gene, which doesn’t help women carrying a viable foetus to full term.
Unfortunately, I don’t have my school records, but it would make interesting reading, as I can remember taking endless time off because I just wasn’t up to it. I seemed to be coughing all the time and spent many nights with my head over a jug of Friar’s Balsam. At one time I supposedly got a case of scarlet fever. How I ever got to a Grammar School I don’t know! Luckily, we had television and I had my Meccano to amuse myself with. And that is what I did, when I was at home. Most weekends I would be off to my father’s print works, where I did useful things. To say, I was an indoor child would not be an understatement. And we worry about kids spending too much time on their computers.
So what was it that made me so ill? Unfortunately, my medical records are incomplete and start in 1970. If only they were on a central database, that I could access!
My GP, one Dr. Egerton White, thought I was allergic to eggs, and so I was rationed to one a week. Did it help? Not at all. My father thought it might be the paint in our house, which he thought contained lead and I can remember him stripping it all off and using modern lead-free paints. It could also have been his smoking or the coal fires we had in those days, but I didn’t really improve much. I suppose it might have got better, when my parents bought a house in Felixstowe, but we only went for the odd weekends. But at least I used to walk a lot by the sea.
I think in some ways, I just grew out of the worst times and what finally killed it in some ways was going to Liverpool, where I spent the next three years at the University on top of a hill with the wind in the west.
So perhaps it was just hay fever of a particularly persistent form, as from what I can remember, I don’t feel much different now. The only difference, is that now I’m on a strict gluten-free diet after having been diagnosed as a coeliac ten years ago. That cured a lot of my problems, like chronic dandruff.
All of my levels like B12 are spot on, so it’s not as if I lack anything.
Since C died, I’ve started to get a few problems, like tight shins, difficulty in breathing and spots on my chest, back and legs. I scratch them a lot, when I’m alone.
I have been told on good authority by an academic I respect, that widows can suffer high cortisol levels and the Internet indicates there may be a link.
So has all the stress I’ve suffered in the previous three years, brought the hay fever back?
I sometimes think, that my mind learned how to control it and the stroke knocked out that knowledge, but that is just a feeling not based on any fact. I have been told by a serious doctor, that stroke patients sometimes have pain return from previous injuries. He did find problems in my neck, which are improving through physiotherapy.
Wilton’s Music Hall
Last night, I went to Wilton’s Music Hall in the East End of London. It is just round the corner from Cable Street, where in 1936, Mosley’s black shirts wanted to march and this resulted in the Battle of Cable Street. My father was there, although many would think that someone who always voted Tory wouldn’t have been. But he did have a lot of Jewish heritage and he had a very low opinion of fascists. Various groups always claimed they stopped Oswald Mosley and his odious followers, but my father always said that anybody who thought about it, was against Mosley.
The show was organised by The Times, and was essentially a comedy night with four comedy acts and a compere; Jarred Christmas. The acts were Colin Hoult, Imran Yusuf, Frisky and Mannish and one other, who I think might have been a late addition.
But it was three hours of good fun and all for a tenner.
The building is virtually a construction site, as they are struggling to get London’s last music hall on a secure footing, both financially and structurally. But the building had the right atmosphere and acoustics to make it a good venue.
The four comedians were good, but not as in your face as s0me. Colin Hoult relied a lot on word play, developing a new superhero called Grammar Man, who policed such evil powers as split infinitives, whilst Imran Yusuf showed how you don’t have to be Jewish to mock your religion constructively. Jarred Christmas was an amiable host, who did a good job to link it all together.
The show was round up, by Frisky and Mannish, who are best described as a comedy musical double act, with Frisky doing most of the singing to Mannish’s keyboard. There are some videos on their web site, which give a good flavour.
She introduced herself by saying that as it was a music hall, she was wearing a corset. And she was wearing it well over a split skirt and a halter top. Her shoes, hair and the corset laces were almost a matching red/orange colour. The corset wasn’t to a Victorian tightness, but it wasn’t loose either. She sang well too!
They are going to the Edinburgh Fringe and will certainly be worth catching.
The Times are putting on further comedy nights at Wilton’s. If they’re only a tenner a time, it won’t be the last time I go.
Boadicea Stands Guard
Standing guard opposite the Houses of Parliament is Boadicea, or as she is more normally spelled these days, Boudica.
Boadicea Stands Guard
She may or may not have defeated the Romans, as whatever happened they remained in Britain.
Her spirit lives on, especially in East Anglia. She probably came from that region, although no-one is sure quite where! I have heard several people say, including my father, that if the Germans had landed in Suffolk in the Second World War, they would have got similar treatment to that meted out by Boadicea and her ragbag army of upwards of 100,000 men. When questioned as to the legitimacy of this treatment under the Geneva Convention, a common reply was “What would Boadicea have done?” I don’t know the truth of all these reports, but I know Suffolk people well and they wouldn’t have taken an invasion lightly.
Some also say that her tribe, the Iceni, were the supreme horsemen, who when their horses were suffering from horse sickness, looked for a new and healthier place to raise them. They found this valley in the chalk downs and moved there, calling the place New Horse Market. In time this was corrupted to Newmarket. The town is the world centre of horse racing and breeding, known amongst racing people as Headquarters. Every thoroughbred can trace their ancestry back to this small town in Suffolk.
Stewed! For Lunch
For lunch today, I had a Chorizo, Chickpea and Pork Stew from a company called Stewed! in one of my old haunts, Wood Green. They don’t give an address, but it looks like it’s somewhere behind the old Haringey Town Hall and also the Barclays Bank, where my father used to have an account. He once told me that he was also involved in the training of a race horse somewhere in that area. Rumour has it, he was warned off for painting on the blaze of the horse with Meltonian. But then racing at Alexandra Palace was very dodgy between the wars.
The Stewed! was very good with some large pieces of sausage and meat and I’ll certainly buy some more. It was labelled gluten-free and now a couple of hours later, I’ve no reason to doubt their assertions on the packet.
I also liked the cooking method, which for someone with a slightly gammy left hand was easy, as the lid was simple to remove.
So good luck to them!
I bought mine from Waitrose, but I think Sainsburys stock them.
Byron Hamburgers
I ate in Byron Hamburgers at Islington Green tonight. It was good and it made a nice change for me to have a real gluten-free hamburger and chips.
I also got to thinking about the similarities between my father and Lord Byron.
For a start they were both poets, although my father’s output wasn’t very large and was much less famous and was meant to be spoken with a Cockney accent. But then my father was probably a better printer than the noble Lord.
They both married women with the surname of Millbank, although Byron’s wife had a spelling of Milbanke.
And then just like I am a computer programmer, so was Lord Byron’s daughter; Ada, Countess of Lovelace.
But that’s as far as the links go.
European Court Rules Against Max Mosley
It is being reported that the European Court has ruled against Max Mosley.
My late father would be pleased to have seen this judgment.
He always claimed, that he got Max’s odious father with a tomato in the 1930s. It may even have been at the Battle of Cable Street. My father was there as a Londoner of Jewish ancestry, so he hated Oswald Mosley with a passion. Interestingly, my father was very much on the left of the Tory party, and he was not the only person with that political persuasion, who was there to stop Oswald Mosley and his blackshirts marching.
Interns
There has been a lot of talk lately in how those with power and money have got their children work experience, which is of the highest class and out of the reach of those without privelege and wealth.
It has always been thus.
Take my example.
My father was a successful letterpress printer in Wood Green. He employed half a dozen people and we lived comfortably in the days before letterpress was replaced by offset litho. Much of his work was for a company called Enfield Rolling Mills, that as the name suggests rolled metals into something useful. In their case it was non-ferrous metals, like copper, bronze and aluminium, which were turned into bars, sheets and cables.
So when I got my place at Liverpool University to read electronics, and I needed some work experience, he decided to do something about it. His business wasn’t that healthy too, and he had told me that, he wouldn’t be able to find me work for the summer.
In his usual manner, he started at the top and phoned John Grimston, the Earl of Verulam, who was the boss of his largest customer.
They found me a place in their electronics laboratory, where I had my first lesson in controlling processes. I also learned a lot about industry, health and safety, the various trades and their unions and of course life, which gave me a lot of rich anecdotes I use to this day. Only today, I related to my physio, a story about lady cricketers gleaned from one of my colleagues.
To say that internship, as we’d call it today, changed my life, would be an understatement.
But I got it because my fsther knew someone with influence. And also because he never felt anybody too grand to ask for a favour.
The Anonymous Widower 