"Streets of London"

 

Just look a the size of that punched card!

It must be a good eighteen inches wide. Fancy carting thirty of these tunes around when you go out playing.

This young lady was not playing in London, but in Italy and the instrument appears to be a 'Piano Melodia'....in the shape of a miniature 'Baby Grand'.

On the subject of 'Street Pianos' I have just read that there is to be a three week experiment backed by Boris Johnson, the mayor of London, and by the national lottery, plonking 31 pianos around the capital to encourage people to gather for a singsong with strangers.

They will be placed at prominent sites such as the British Library, the Natural History Museum, the Bank of England and Tate Britain.

Each will be decorated by an artist with an appropriate motif – the one outside the Bank will be painted with money, one on Carnaby Street will be adorned with bright 1960s-style swirls and one in Portobello Road market will feature fruit and veg.

A full-time tuner will tour the sites on a bicycle to maintain them. (Missed out there Deb?)

Although the pianos will be chained to bollards and railings, members of the public will be trusted not to vandalise the instruments or steal the laminated songbooks.

I wonder what will happen when 'elf 'n safety, or the performing rights bunch get wind of this?

It will probably take them three weeks to find out which rules have been broken..... and by then the pianos have been moved.

Thieving M ag P ies.

With all this outrage at thieving politicians, the first bit of music that comes to mind is the poor old Thieving Magpie.

Believe it or not, this music is now available for 26 note organs. 

It is a very long roll, probably the maximum you can get on a spool using the correct paper. 

I say 'correct' but I mean the type of paper used by professional arrangers. It is a strong plastic material which is both waterproof and will not tear or shrink.

Amateurs have to make do with alternatives.

I personally, use the top quality fax rolls. These are sawn off at 115mm and then 'turned' down to 110mm in the lathe.

                   Fax roll being turned to 110mm wide

It's fascinating to watch the paper come off.....it doesn't fly all over the place like swarf, but remains there like a little 'coolie' hat. 

We have just located a source of 'till' rolls which works out cheaper as they are only made from plain paper. I have heard of people making them from rolls of brown wrapping paper, lining paper or even thin wallpaper!

Now, back to  Thieving  MagPies.

     

I have no sheet music for Rossini's overture to 'La Gazza Ladra'  (The Thieving Magpie) so I sign off with a ditti:- 

   One for sorrow,

        Two for mirth,

             Three for a wedding,

                  Four for a birth.

             Five for silver,

        Six for gold,

  Seven for a secret ne'er to be told.

  Just how much of our money are they keeping secret?

 

Us and Them

   Us ;

The Royal Mail has introduced stamps that are tamper-proof to stop them being reused. The stamps have two strips, one either side of the Queen’s head, which are left on the envelope when the stamp is peeled away.  

A Royal Mail spokesman said: “Our standard stamps are being produced as self-adhesive stamps with new security features including  the two adjacent die cut slits which are designed to inhibit the removal of used stamps from the mail for fraudulent use.

........Mere Pence !

 

   Them ;

Twelve MPs forced to quit over the expenses scandal will pocket an extra £1.2million of taxpayers' money because they refuse to go now. 

By staying until an election they will qualify for 'parachute' payments of up to £129,532, depending on length of service. 

On top of all that, they will qualify for a £42,068 'winding-up' allowance payable to MPs who quit at any time. This will cost taxpayers another half a million. 

The 'dirty dozen' can also look forward to gold-plated pensions. 

.......  Mere Millions !

Kipper isn't really hard-up...He's just recycling !!

And to finish with a bit on Parcel Post.......

             A baby and a box of pills,

                A puppy and a rat,

              A Roly Poly pudding

              And an old Tom cat.

           A pound of tallow candles

       And a round of buttered toast,

        All came for me this morning

                By the Parcel Post !

 

A Rattling Old Bay Mare

I have just arranged a rattling good traditional tune called 'The Country Carrier' which was sung with great gusto years ago by a group called the Yetties. They have webpage and are still singing so I expect it is still in their program.

Way back in times past, one person who played an important part in the lives of English villagers, was the 'carrier'. They would roam the countryside providing all those extra items that could not be bought in the village....they were a bit like a travelling ironmonger.

Years ago, when I went to Folk clubs, most people used to sing..."a rattling old grey mare" but the correct words are "bay mare".  I'm afraid I am no expert on four legged transport?

                          The Country Carrier

I am a country carrier, a jovial soul am I;

I whistle and sing from morn till night and troubles I defy;

I've one to keep me company, of work she does her share,

She's not me wife, but upon me life, she's a rattling old bay mare. 

It's up and down the countryside me mare and I do go.

The folks they kindly greet us, as we journey to and fro;

The children they all cheer and the old ones stop and stare.

They lift their eyes with great suprise, to Joe and his old bay mare.

"Trainee Grinders"

A mighty musical knees-up at Kipper's today!

Every instrument in my collection had to be tried out.

Drums were banged, trumpets were trumped, harps were harped and of course the poor old organ was ground into the carpet!

A great time was had by all.....except my two cats who weren't seen all afternoon and didn't return until all had gone home and the call of food beckoned.

So a special vote of thanks go to Freddie, Catriona, Pollyanne, Evelyn and Alice for an "Entertaining Musical Extravaganza". 

I can't see it

"Norman, I've told you before .......

                                   .......not to wear contact lenses!"

  

For Snotty Snouts

Well, I was pleased to find some relief for this awful runny snout...I mean nose.

You can't be too sure these days...so better to be safe than sorry.

Whistling in the Dark

That's me folks......can't sing!

Mind you I can't whistle in tune either.

Have you noticed that this great British tradition of whistling seems to have almost disappeared completely?

At one time everyone seemed to be whistling cheerfully and tunefully while going about their work - postmen, van drivers and deliverymen. The streets were full of warblers during the Fifties and now ......nothing.

Well not quite nothing....we have traffic noise, mp3 players, musak etc.

Of course there are many superstitions associated with whistling, I believe it was banned by coal-miners as being unlucky and also amongst some fishermen whilst on board ship

How about this old saying from up north?

                A whistling woman, a crowing hen

                    Neither good for God nor men

 

 

 

"If Music be the Food......."

For years I have grown a good crop of tomatoes but the problem I have had is that they seem to all come at once and I end up giving loads away or making soup and freezing it.

I did try planting the seeds at different times but the tail-enders seemed to catch up with the earlier starters. So this year I am going to try three different varieties. 

Firstly I will stick with a 'cherry' tomato....Gardener's Delight;  and then I decided to have a go at a low growing 'bush' version which doesn't need the side shoots pinching out. To complete the trio I planted some Italian 'plum' tomatoes which can be used for cooking.

Well.......we shall see.

I read that twenty years ago the Prince of Wales said that it was “very important” to talk to plants and that “they respond”.

Well now the Royal Horticultural Society is trying to determine if he was right. 

It is conducting a study into how – if at all – the human voice affects tomato plants.

Each tomato plant will “listen” to a different recording through the headphones of an MP3 player attached to its pot at root level. The plants will be kept in the same greenhouse and measured before, during and after the experiment. Control plants will be left in peace.

Colin Crosbie, a gardens superintendent at Wisley who came up with the idea for the research project, is already convinced that plants respond favourably to human voices. “I’m a great believer. I definitely talk to plants,” he said. “Most gardeners are quite tactile and we do talk to them. Sometimes we talk kindly and sometimes we threaten them. 

“Sometimes it’s gentle encouragement, but there are times with a plant when you say, ‘If you don’t do something this is the end. You are not producing flowers, I’m very sorry, it’s going to be the compost heap.’ It’s amazing how they respond,” he said. “People say I’m slightly mad, but I do believe in it, I really do.” 

So now I have my tomatoes listening to radio 4!!

.......or do you think they might prefer a little classical music from radio 3? 

 

Back to the Drawingboard

 

                        Sorry ....but it was fun to play with!

  

Bell Ringers

 

             Are you sure you ordered 'Hand' Bells, Vicar?

 

Fir-cones and Seaweed

Once, a strip of seaweed, a fir-cone or a rheumatic hip were all that were needed to forecast the weather, but nowadays we appear to have to to spend £33 million to get it right.

 Well ...nearly right.....sometimes.  

  

Yesterday, the Met Office unveiled a super-computer that it hopes will be able to do the job with a little more precision.

The IBM machine is more powerful than 100,000 standard PCs combined. For the technically minded, that means it will have a speed of one petaflop, placing it among the world’s top 20 most powerful computers. 

It is capable of performing 125 trillion calculations per second.

And the next object is a....."Petaflop". 

 Lets hope this is better than a megaflop!

Thirty three million pounds is a 'hell of a lorra money'.

Think of all the hospitals/schools you could build with that.

 

For those less than technically minded, that means it may no longer be necessary for forecasters at the Met Office to look out of the window to find out what the weather is doing.

The IBM occupies two halls each the size of a football pitch at the Met Office’s headquarters in Exeter. It will use 1.2 megawatts of power, enough for a small town, provoking criticism from environmentalists.

Criticism....and so it should.

Although the machine was switched on this week, it will take two months to boot up fully and will not be running at peak performance until after an upgrade in 2011.

Two months....at 1.2 megawatts .....just to boot up!

Lets hope they don't have too many "cont+alt+del's" then!!!!!

I Leave Singing to those Who Can!

  

I am told that choral singing is not only fun, but that it also offers an antidote to stress, illness and depression.

I may be able to read music, play various instruments and arrange music for the street-organ, but ...sing....I cannot!

The cats will leave the room if I try.

I must be the only person that can change key eight times in eight bars! And I am not referring to the bars found in public houses.

It appears that a Professor Graham Welch, of the University of London, has done extensive research into singing and its health benefits.

 "When you sing, you breathe in a different way so you use more of your total lung volume. This means there's a tendency to increase the airflow so your blood is more oxygenated. When that happens, you are more alert. Singing also exercises the cardio-vascular system, and gives you the kind of hormonal release that comes from being focused on a task and enjoying that task at the same time."

Again I wonder how somebody managed to get funding for this "extensive research". It seems pretty obvious to me.

He goes on to say "In the current economic climate, choirs offer an inexpensive way to get a natural high. From church groups to karaoke bars, belting out a hymn or a popular hit is a quick way to lift the spirits."

"Lift the spirits" .....Well I raise my glass to that!!

Chiappa - A Humble Tribute

                            Albert Chiappa   1935 - 2008

I read recently of the sad passing of Albert Chiappa on December 9th 2008.

Although it was his father, Victor Chiappa who ran the Organ building business, with the passing of Albert, we have now lost the link between the firm and his father.

Following the death of his father, in 1993, Albert was reluctant to disperse the 125 year-old firms assets and continued running Chiappa Ltd.

Victor Chiappa was a third generation maker of Fairground Organs and had spent his whole lifetime building and installing them on Fairground rides.

Another of Victor's main lines of business was making the 'books' of music for his customers.

He had produced over 2,000 tunes, many of them real old favourites going back ninety years or more. He did not arrange the music himself, the 'master' stencil was produced somewhere else and then Victor would cut copies using a nineteenth century perforating machine belonging to his grandfather.

Even at the age of seventy-five, Victor was still working on his own. Staff had retired or left but Victor carried on ....not because he had to, but because he enjoyed his work, and was always keen to help out his customers with new music and sometimes repairs.

  

The picture above is of the front that I based my organ design on.  Therefore I wish to acknowledge that and express my thanks to the Chiappa family.

I have now finished the central painting which is a river scene at Henley-on Thames. I would have painted a view at Bourne End but all we have here is a 'grey iron railway bridge'!

I shall finish it off with a gold edging when I paint the scroll work.

The picture is really only for decoration and is not meant to be a 'work of art' but it was the best I could do. For the artists amongst you , I show a close up my brush-work for your critical analysis.

 

 

A Squeeze Box

Another snippet from Italy. This time featuring a Concertina or a 'squeeze-box' as they were sometimes called.

I aquired my first concertina some fourty years ago from a friend at the time,  Geof Hughes.

Sadly Geof passed away not long after he sold it to me.....so it is kept in my collection to his memory.

It is a Lachenel concertina, serial No 138489 . The actual date it was made is not known, but it is possible from this number to estimate that it was manufactured about 1907.

It is a 26 button Anglo concertina with  steel reeds, bone buttons, rosewood ends and five fold bellows. 

The Anglo's the king of intuitiveness. You pick it up, mash down a bunch of buttons and squeeze. Sounds great. Tunes pour out. Two notes on each button covers a wide range, with a minimum amount of finger moving needed.

  

"A Fresh Start"

The Organ, the Monkey and Me.

Sung, Recorded and Broadcast by Gracie Fields in 1936.

       For a penny we'll play all your troubles away...Chi-ri-bi,

           come and sing Chi-ri-bi .....

       ....with The Organ, The Monkey, and Me.