Good Olde Days?

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I did a load of research on the Austin for my previous post.

I did a google here, and a google there,

and I was absolutely amazed at what you can find.

Too much sometimes.

I must find out how to refine my searches,

as this is what sometimes pops up!

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Now this is really disgusting.

Just look at those girls SMOKING!

I had a try at covering up the 'naughty bits', but

I don't seem to have quite got the hang of it.

I don't think the car is the same as my great grandfather's

anyway, but I though the photo might interest Angus,

(who has just told me he is not a 'Gentleman').

Meanwhile, Jan, over in California, was reading about these riots in London.

We never used to have things like this in my younger days.

I always thought the English were 'slow to anger',

I certainly am.

I might boycott Tesco or ASDA occasionally,

but I wouldn't dream of kicking their windows in.

(even if they did overcharge me).

I came across this old silent movie from 1913,

showing how we English used to 'riot' in the good old days.

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Fancy going to a riot in a straw hat?

Real Gentlemen obviously, just back from boating on the river.

"I know Charles, lets go and do a spot of rioting".

"What a spiffing wheeze old boy".

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The 'post' arrives at last!

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Now this IS the post that I have been trying

to publish for days.

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The reason it has taken so long to appear,

apart from being sidetracked onto other topics,

is because I been scouring the web for pictures of Austin cars.

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Amongst my boxes of old photos was this.

This is my Great Grandfather with his nice new Austin.

In the front with him, is Great Gran with

my great aunties Alice, Daisy and Doreen in the back.

But what is the car?

Well my Dad always told me it was an Austin 18,

and that GGD had picked it up new from the works

at Longbridge.

Web searches don't come up with photos of such a model.

Only Austin 7, Austin 12 & Austin 20.

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It's obviously not an Austin 7,

but could be either of the others.

My dear friend Angus came to the rescue

after finding a site in New Zealand with lots of pictures.

He reckons it's probably a 12 hp Clifton tourer.

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Here's a restored Austin looking very similar.

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Is there a connection between :-

"Little Missenden",

"Helen",

"Australia",

and

"Austin cars"?

Read on,

Herbert Austin.

Born Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire, England, 8 November 1866

The son of a farmer, he was born in Little Missenden, Buckinghamshire, but the family moved to Wentworth Woodhouse, near Rotherham, Yorkshire in 1870. The Missenden farmhouse is still there alongside the main road rather than in the village, which is tucked away off the main road to Wendover and Aylesbury.

I have driven by hundreds of times and it is, I‘m afraid, nothing special except for its famous connection with Herbert Austin.

In 1884 Herbert emigrated to Australia, with an uncle, on his mother's side, who lived in Melbourne, Australia.

He went to Art School in Melbourne to develop his skills in technical drawing, and it was here, in Melbourne that he met and married his wife Helen.

He worked for quite a number of different firms but ended up joining the Wolseley Sheep Shearing Machine Company, founded in 1887 in Sydney.

In 1893 he returned to England with Frederick Wolseley to set up the company in Birmingham. Frederick resigned in 1894 and Austin became manager.

Later in 1905, Austin raised capital of £37,000 and took over an old print works at Longbridge (then) just outside Birmingham to manufacture ‘Austin cars‘.

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The Austin car works at Longbridge was later to become one of the greatest car manufacturers in the world.

I believe most of it has now been demolished. Sad really.

He died at Lickey Grange, near Bromsgrove, Worcestershire, 23 May 1941

My Grandfather worked at Longbridge for most of his life,

and as an employee, was entitled to a discount on a new car.

It was still a huge amount to find, but in the late fifties,

mustered up enough for an 'A40 Devon',

similar to the one below.

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Slight snag!

He couldn't drive.

My Gran, or Nan as we called her, came to the rescue

and did all the driving.

In 'early days' you didn't need to take a test,

you just applied for a licence.

Whether she had taken a test or not, I don't know.

What I do remember though, was that the registration

number was KOP 716.

I can still remember that after 50 odd years.

There were more photos of more cars.

Perhaps another time.

An afterthought.

Actually Grandad could drive and did have a licence,

but he had Parkinsons at that time and was a bit shakey.

Nan felt safer behind the wheel and drove on L plates

with Pop sitting along side.

It was just as well he was never required to take the wheel.

They were the days!

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"Off the Beaten Track"

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I'm afraid this is, yet again,

not the post I was planning to do next!

I'll get there eventually, but with the weather

being kind to us it is always a shame to stay in.

I've recently spent several days in the workshop,

making a new set of organ pipes and I felt I needed some fresh air.

So it was off to Thame market (again)!

Actually I never tire of markets and always find something new.

Yesterday it was 'duck eggs'!

Now, I have never tried these before, so it will be a first for me.

And, they were only £1.56 for half a dozen.

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On the way home I called in at Emmington.

It is only about a mile from Sydenham, on the opposite side of the main road.

You will see from the map above,

that the church is tucked away behind the Rectory.

and you can only reach it on foot.

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There is a footpath alongside the Rectory gardens,

and then a shared drive up to the church gates.

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Everything was so very tidy,

and obviously well cared for.

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A real hidden gem, off the beaten track.

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This was the view from the church door,

looking back towards the Rectory.

The Rector obviously believed that the shortest

distance between two points, is a straight line!

Now, back across the main road,

I called in again at Sydenham to see this keyhole that I had read about.

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The folk of Sydenham couldn't afford a gravel drive,

so the path to the Church door was simply turf.

Alright in the summer, but a bit muddy

during our wet Winter months.

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And there it was.

The sundial keyhole plate.

The little church at Sydenham, near Thame, has found a most unusual use for a sundial.

Of brass, small and rectangular, it is fixed to the main door as a keyhole plate.

It has incised Roman numerals which run from the bottom, to the left Ito VIII and to the right IX to IIII.

Although it is a nice idea, the shaft of the key would not, in this position, work as a gnomon.

It was simply a repair/replacement for the previous keyhole plate, or escutcheon as it is correctly termed.

Rectangular?

Looks octagonal to me.

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Indeed, some books do state that the Church Warden could tell the time,

from the shadow cast by the key.

A nice tale but, not true.

Oh well, off to have a duck egg and 'soldiers'.

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How do you fancy a "Churkey"?

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This is not the post I was thinking of doing next.......

but, I sometimes get sidetracked.

Some years ago I worked for a small local company who used to collect data on all types of world commodities. Prices, production and things like that.

This meant I used to wade through pages and pages from magazines like Meat Trades Journal, The Grocer and Poultry World. I also had to go up to the British Library near St Pancras once a month to get data from magazines that the firm didn't subscribe to.

(eg. Cost of Alfalfa in California)

They say "Old habits die hard" and in my case this is true.

I still have links to some of these publications on my 'favourites' menu.

So this morning I was reading Farmers Weekly and found this.

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This is a "Churkey"!

Now as I had a picture of a 'naked necked' chicken on my last post,

I though you might like to know a bit more?

"Researchers at the University of Edinburgh have discovered the physical reasons behind the strange appearance of the Transylvanian naked-neck chicken, know as a Churkey or a Turken because of its resemblance to a turkey.

After collecting and analysing DNA samples from birds in Mexico, France and Hungary, the scientists identified a complex genetic mutation which causes the skin on the birds to neck to produce a vitamin A-derived protein, inhibiting feather growth.

Transylvanian naked necks are believed to have come from the north of Romania and have been around for hundreds of years, being introduced to Britain only in the 1920s."

Source - Farmers Weekly

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One hundred and one - Not out!

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What a difference a day makes.

Yesterday it was mild, blue skies and hardly a puff of wind.

This morning it's not only 'wall to wall' grey cloud, but raining ‘to boot‘!

A day to us humans, is so small when compared to our suggested life span of “three score years and ten.”

I don’t even suppose that figure is now accurate, with life expectancy ever increasing.

But what is a day to a bird, or animal as compared to their life expectancy?

I tried looking up average life expectancies for different animals and birds,

but in my library I could only find ’an expected maximum’,

rather than an average.

Chickens, for example have been known to live for 30 years!

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An (aged?) White Naked Neck Frizzle.

A starling for 16 years,

and our friend the ostrich, a very respectable 50.

Unless of course he was unfortunate to have been hatched out

at Pathfinder Ostrich farm in Chesham!

A dog came in at 20, although it didn’t say what breed,

and a horse (breed again not specified) at 46 years.

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Fancy trying to get your leg over that.

The poor old mouse was right low down the list at a maximum of three and half years.

This is, of course, excluding the ones in Wesley’s hunting grounds!

The reason for my research was of course to look up cats.

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Fancy trying to get that through a cat flap.

Domestic moggies were missing from my list,

although they did include felis catus,

a wild cat, at a magnificent age of 28.

Mmmm, if it was a wild cat - how did they know -

when it was born?

Wesley was fifteen in February, and Hazel is nearly nineteen!

So what is a day to a cat?

I went to a vet web site where I found a wee calculator.

A one year old kitten is equivalent to a boisterous fifteen year old teenager!

A two year old cat would be 24 in human years.

Then for every year after that, I had to add four years.

A “Cat year” is therefore 13 weeks.

Six hours to us, is a day to a cat.

(No wonder I always find my two asleep.)

Now, Wesley turned out to be a fine ‘old man’ of seventy six.

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Music-roll production comes to a halt!

And my one and only Hazel - a staggering - One Hundred and One!

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Whooops! Sorry.

And whilst going through all of my old photos,

I found the one of Hazel as a baby, with her three sisters.

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They were (from left to right) Sophie, Rosie, Hazel, and Tilly.

They all remained within our ‘family & friends’,

and all reached very respectable ages.

Rosie died last year, leaving my little Hazel as the sole survivor.

One hundred and one - not out!

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