Midwinter Madness

WBM and I spent Easter packing up Mum and Dad's house prior to sale. The buyer is very keen for a quick settlement and wants to be in by early May so everything had to be done quickly.It was quite an emotional and yet at the same time cathartic Easter.

To be honest, packing up my family's final house was something I'd been dragging my feet about. There's so much sentiment involved; what to keep, what to store, what to sell (who the hell will buy that??) and what to fling...  

Now the baby grand was a given. It's gone into it's own special piano storage, waiting for the day when our house renovation is finally done and it can move in with us. Besides, Mum always said she would haunt me if I sold it after she died - and I believe her!

What to with the furniture was another matter. Right from the heart of the '70's a whole house full of Davis "Priory" pieces. Solid Victorian Ash timber, leather seats and tapestry upholstered in '70's brights. Retro is in, but apparently "... we are still in the early seventies Scandinavian phase". The Salvation Army didn't have room for it and we didn't want to send it to the tip - but finally we found somewhere for it to go. Mrs Secondhand decided that it was perhaps the next thing in seventies retro and was willing to have a shot at selling it on consignment. We'll see.

So... for anyone into Lord of the Rings re-enactments; perfect for that fantasy role playing evening, as seen in Oblivion ...

Apart from the piano and '70's styling, Mum and Dad loved ceramics and cut glass and had been collecting since their marriage in 1956. Stuart and Staffordshire, Waterford and Wedgwood, Coalport, Carlton, Poole and Ellis; the house had become a hoard of knick knacks, objet and whimsies;

 

But Mum's particular passion was for Midwinter China. Pride of place in the collection was a hand engraved Midwinter Modern Fashion Shape dinner setting in the Bolero pattern. Quite rare and collectible I'm told; created in 1955 by Midwinter's celebrated designer Jessie Tait.

 

Not only that, but this set is the full catastrophe, a dinner service for 8 with all the trimmings, cups, saucers, jugs, tureens, teapots, cheese platters and dishes;

...and my favourite of all, the cruet set (sweet!);

Apart from a little crazing due to age (and we all know about that don't we?) the dinner service is in perfect order without a single chip or mark. It was rarely used - even at Christmas. Mum would make an exception for extra special dinner parties, but even then John and I were not allowed to wash it up (suited me fine!) It's still as bright and vibrant as the day it was painted.


Fear not Ma, I'll be keeping the Bolero; I love its cheery '50s eccentricity. Guess I'll have to take over the washing up though :(

Of a less certain fate is the Midwinter Stonehenge "Earth" dinner service. Once again, the whole guacamole;place settings for 8 - in fact sometimes 10 - Mum always bought spares just in case,  particularly after Anne and I were born! 

Yet again there are plates,jugs, bowls, salt and pepper shakers and 3 - (count them), 3 casseroles. This set was used a lot for Mum's dinner parties but is so darn heavyweight that it just couldn't be broken and is still in wonderful shape. But "Earth" is so relentlessly seventies, so brown, so made to be with the Davis/Lord of the Rings furniture. And oh those "Eye of Sauron" dinner plates...

Should I keep it - where would I put it?
Should it go? - but what about memories of those seventies parties? 

• Avocados & prawn cocktail
• Coq Au Vin or Stroganoff
• Apricots in Brandy or Cherries Jubilee
• Seppelts Moyston Claret
• Percolating coffee in the background
• Dudley Moore on the stereo

Hmm, maybe it should go... Anyone???

iCrap

It was one of those days today. I spent the morning busily processing photos, writing up a new pattern and blogging. Very productive. 

Yeah, right. You see, my computer the iCrash 1200 had other ideas. I don't think it's too much to ask of a computer that it can run for 30 minutes without overheating and closing down. This behaviour started around six months after I bought the iCrash. Ever-helpful-Dell (their actual trading name) told me that it was a known "feature" (their words) of the model I had (funny didn't see that anywhere in the product information). They advised me that I would need to buy a stand to lift the thing off the tabletop - thus ventilating the fan. Grrrr. 

The only "Apple" thing about this computer was the sticker...

Now, normally I would have stood my ground with Dell and got them to take the thing back. But I had a major paying project on at the time and was in desperate need of my computer. So I shelled out the $25 for a piece of recycled plant pot to act as a throne for the iCrash. And it did work for a while. But with the start of the "hot" weather, the laptop started daily crashes, twice daily crashes and encore performances.Today's repeated recalcitrance and phone syncing hystrionics were the last straw. Goodbye to much of the work I did this morning and goodbye to the iCrash - the thing crashed when I was backing up!!!!!!! It's over - finito - you're history!!!!!! 

Bahrain

Images of conflict in the Middle East have become so common over the last 40 years that it is easy to become desensitised to them. From Australia it seems worlds away and unreal. 

John and I were in Bahrain in September,October & December 2010. Blogging was blocked in while we were in Bahrain, but given recent events I thought it would be timely to load a few photos:

Al Fateh Grand Mosque; main mosque of Bahrain (Al Fateh = Conqueror)

Bahrain has been going through a construction boom, built on the labour of guest workers from Pakistan, Indian and poorer nations in the Middle East. There are signs of Western influence everwhere in architecture,consumer goods, cars and food. There is a MacDonalds on both sides of the causeway that connects Bahrain with Saudi Arabia and shopping malls are replacing traditional souks. An inevitable sameness with the rest of the world is creeping in.

On the Bahrani side of the King Fahd Causeway (linking Bahrain & Saudi Arabia)

Being a Muslim country, alcohol is banned, but Bahrain has one discrete retail outlet which sells wines and sprits to non Muslims. The car park was full of the cars driven by wealthy young Bahrani men; unable to buy for themselves, they would send their Indian and Phillipino servants in to shop for them.

With elections looming there were rumblings for change to the minority ruling elite, repression of the workers, lack of representation of women in government. The local media are officially pro monarchy -

Daily Tribune: September 30th 2010

but were also starting to publish other views: (Both pieces from the Daily Tribune, September 2010 - the national Bahrani newspaper)

Daily Tribune: September 30th 2010

There were no protests on the streets while we were in Bahrain; but there were many security guards and police, particularly around the major roads and near the King's palace. I was unable to get a photograph of the Pearl Monument Roundabout (centre of recent protests) - it was patrolled by armed guards every time we drove through. Possibly the most surreal sight of the trip came on a trip to the supermarket; there was a military exercise immediately across the road in the desert.

Tanks across the road from the Seef Mall Supermarket

I've put together a small video piece on our trip - soon to be loaded to YouTube.

Sunset at Qal`at al-Bahrain - World Heritage Fort

And here it is...

Military Craft aboard USS Midway Museum

USS Midway

The Mushy Zone is back in active press with WBM visiting San Diego for the TMS annual meeting.
Arriving Friday 25th on a QANTAS flight to LA from Melbourne that was actually early, I get a good run through customs and immigration (Border Protection seems so much nicer under Obama(!?)and catch my San Diego flight in plenty of time. It was late leaving but early arriving (again!). My luck continues as I arrive at 11:30 and check in is 4pm but my room is ready. Then I head out toward the water front. The forecast is for heavy rain but as soon as I leave the hotel the sun comes out and stays out for the rest of the day.
Having noted the huge grey hulk of the Midway lurking on the water front during the the 10 min taxi ride from airport to the hotel I make my way along the front to check it out. It's a museum. I have some idea the Midway is historically significant. At the ticket counter the gods continue to smile on me as the "senior" in front has a $2 discount voucher but as a senior she already gest a discount so she gives the voucher to me.

There is an informative audio tour that assails me with statistics.
-longest serving US air craft carrier in the twentieth century
--commisioned 1945
-- involved in WWII, Korean war, Vietnam (first and last MIGs shot down from planes off Midway), Flagship of the desert storm operations.
-- too big to go through the Panama canal (trivia question: if you go from the Atlantic to the Pacific via the Panama canal, which way are you headed?)
--weighs 69,000 tonnes
--carries a crew of 4,500
--2,000 compartments
--100,000 gallons of fuel used per day
--1001 feet long (308 m)
--20 tonne anchors
--4.02 acre flight deck
-- 18 decks
-- 10 tonnes of food daily
--5 doctors
-- 3 dentists etc.
The cabins etc are all laid out well with lots of info.The animatronics are a bit cheesey. There are many full size planes and choppers on board.The only aircraft I could id w/o assistance where the FA-18 Hornet and the Huey but the excellent sinage and audio tour info tell me all about the different planes (must be nearly 30 different aircraft aboard). Generally you can wander at your own pace except for the bridge and flight command centre where you have to go in a group. Turns out one of my group is an ex captain of the Midway. I think it was captain Robert Owens ( captain in 1982) from the photos of past captains in the captains quarters.

He had a few things to say but the tour guide wouldn't let him tell us much. After his term on the Midway he was flying a desk in the Navy for a while then got bored with that and has now gone back to flying-- with Fedex. I thought it strange that he and his family wouldn't be afforded a private tour or given more respect during the public tour.

Ypres: Tyne Cot

They are many soldier cemeteries in Flanders around Ypres. Tyne Cot is the largest Commonwealth Cemetery in the world, containing 11,896 burials to date. Of these,8,369 are unidentified. There is also memorial listing 35,000 more soldiers missing in action; Menin Gate was not large enough to hold the names of all the missing, so a second monument was errected here to accomodate the extra names.

Entrance to Tyne Cot Cemetery, Zonnebeke, Belgium

 

 As the majority of remains are unidentified, most headstones are like this.


Some bear the nationality or regiment of the soldier (where this could be established from personal effects, uniforms etc.)


Very few have names.

A new visitor centre has recently opened at Tyne Cot (largely funded by the Australian Government).

There is a small display containing letters, documents and artifacts that were found in the fields around Tyne Cot. A recorded voice can be heard as you walk toward the visitor centre; it reads out the name and age of all the dead.  

There are many other museums, displays and visitor centres throughout the area. Interstingly, most of them discuss the war from both the allied and German points of view. They are all very anti war, but generally not preachy - they don't need to be, the material speaks for itself.

The "In Flanders Field Museum" in Ypres presents the war from the point of view of the everyday life of soldiers. Certainly worth a visit, but harrowing. We didn't go down further down the road to the Passchedaele Museum, though.

There wasn't really anything left to be said.

Ypres

Sunday 12th September

Lille is in Flanders, close to the border with Belgium and Ypres, which was the centre of some of the fiercest and most futile fighting of WWI.Some preliminary searching revealed that John has a relation who fought and died at Ypres. So on Sunday 12th September, we hired a car and drove into Belgium, probably the first members of the family in nearly 100 years to visit.

Ypres(pronounced Eeepray)is the French (and most widely used) name of the town. Locally, it is now known by the Belgium name Ieper (Eeeper).The allied soldiers couldn't manage either and called it "Wipers". It was an extremely wealthy city in the Middle Ages being a centre of the cloth trade.Ypres was almost totally destroyed during the 4 year bombardment of WWI, but much of the orginal gothic artchitecture has been reconstructed. There was very little remaining of the 12thC Cloth Hall in 1918. 

Cloth Hall; Ypres 1918

Cloth Hall, Ieper, Belgium, 12th September 2010

Rebuilding began in 1922 and was completed in 1968. Today, the Cloth Hall is an exact replica of its original Medieval glory and is World Heritage listed. Impressive as the Cloth House is, we were there to find a memorial to a fallen soildier.

Lance Corporal George Allen Grandfield

Born:                                        Lilydale, Tasmania(Australia)
Age at enlistment:                  20 years and 3 months
Enlisted:                                  14th August 1915
Reported for duty:                  24th August 1915
Departure from Tasmania:   19th October 1915
Date of Departure Aus:         26th November 1915
Service Number:                    3330
Australian Infantry Forces:     AIF
Date of Death:                        25th September 1917
Memorial:                                Ypres – Menin Gate
Medals:                                   1914‐15 Star, British War Medal, Victory Medal
Rate of Pay:                            5 shillings per day of which 4 were paid to his mother

Private Grandfield was originally assigned to 24th Battalion, 7th reinforcements and embarked from Melbourne on board HMAT A73 Commonwealth on 26th November 1915, bound for Egypt. He was reassigned to 57th Battalion, 15th Brigade, 5th Division, “D” company. The 57th Battalion was composed of 50% of 5th Battalion (what was left from those who had served at Gallipoli) plus new ANZAC, Indian and Norwegian recruits; Companies A and;B were soldiers from suburban Melbourne, Company C (soldiers from rural Victoria), Company D were the rest, from other States (including Tasmania), plus men from India, New Zealand, New Guinea the UK and Norway. Many did not have rifles upon arrival at camp in Egypt; those that did had the wrong ammunition which was returned to stores. Training was hampered by problems with supply (water and munitions) and by an outbreak of mumps which affected most of the recruits. After training, the 57th were posted to active duty on the Western Front in France.

57th Battalion AIF: Western Front Service
1st July – 18th November 1916: Somme
19th‐20th July 1916: Fromelles
[5,533 Australian casualties at Fromelles from the 5th Div.]
3rd May – 17th May 1917: Bullecourt
31st July‐1st November 1917: Ypres (3rd Battle)

Menin Road: Hellfire Corner, 1917

Menin Road, Hellfire Corner, 12th September 2010 (picture won't load!!!)

20th‐25th September 1917:
Lance Corporal Grandfield was killed in action on 25th September 1917, somewhere near Hellfire Corner, on the Menin Road. His body was not recovered and his grave is unknown.
 

Allied Troop Dispositions; Western Front 20th-26th Spetember 2010

On 26th September, the 57th Battalion moved on to fight at Passchendale, where 63% of them were either killed or wounded. The 57th Battalion daily diary has been digitised and can be read here.

330,000 Australian soldiers served in WWI, 61,513 were killed, 9% of all Australian casualties were inflicted in one day at Fromelles. Of the 57th Battalion, 505 were killed, 1253 were wounded. 

Menin Gate, Ypres, 1918

After the war, a memorial was errected at Menin Gate. It lists the 54,349 Commonwealth soldiers killed in Ypres whose graves are unknown. Lance Corporal Grandfield's name is listed among the fallen.

Menin Gate Memorial, Ypres 12th September 2010



In Flanders fields the poppies blow
Between the crosses, row on row,
That mark our place; and in the sky
The larks, still bravely singing, fly
Scarce heard amid the guns below.

We are the Dead. Short days ago
We lived, felt dawn, saw sunset glow,
Loved and were loved, and now we lie
In Flanders fields.

Take up our quarrel with the foe:
To you from failing hands we throw
The torch; be yours to hold it high.
If ye break faith with us who die
We shall not sleep, though poppies grow
In Flanders fields.

(Major John McCrae, M.D - Canadian Army, 1915)

Bent double, like old beggars under sacks, 

Knock-kneed, coughing like hags, we cursed through sludge, 

Till on the haunting flares we turned our backs 

And towards our distant rest began to trudge. 

Men marched asleep. Many had lost their boots 

But limped on, blood-shod. All went lame; all blind; 

Drunk with fatigue; deaf even to the hoots 

Of tired, outstripped Five-Nines that dropped behind. 
 

Gas! Gas! Quick, boys! –  An ecstasy of fumbling, 

Fitting the clumsy helmets just in time; 

But someone still was yelling out and stumbling, 

And flound'ring like a man in fire or lime . . . 

Dim, through the misty panes and thick green light, 

As under a green sea, I saw him drowning.

In all my dreams, before my helpless sight

He plunges at me, guttering, choking, drowning.

If in some smothering dreams you too could pace 

Behind the wagon that we flung him in, 

And watch the white eyes writhing in his face, 

His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin; 

If you could hear, at every jolt, the blood 

Come gargling from the froth-corrupted lungs, 

Obscene as cancer, bitter as the cud

Of vile, incurable sores on innocent tongues, 

My friend, you would not tell with such high zest

To children ardent for some desperate glory, 

The old Lie; Dulce et Decorum est 

Pro patria mori.

[Wilfred Owen, October 1917]

[Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori - it is sweet and right to die for your country]  

The Last Post is played at Menin Gate Memorial every evening at 8pm. The cermemony has been performed every day since 1927.

 

Lille Deux

Saturday 11th September 

I'm in catch up mode with the blog and am actually sitting in a hotel room in sunny Germany as I write. It is now Wednesday 15th.

Where were we? Oh yes, way back on Saturday we were in Lille. An unexpectly lovely medieval town. Lots of winding cobblestone streets, tall higgledy-piggledy buildings with crazy rennovations,weird roof lines and manically leaning chimney pots. I doubt that anyone applies for buidling permits here. Our hotel room was on the 4th floor, so we had a fascinating view of the Lille roofscape.

Rooftops in LIlle (view from 4th floor window at Hotel Up)

Lille Fact File:

• 3 million residents in Lille and surrounding suburbs
• Most of them seem to be shopping on Saturday!
• There are the "usual" shops that you would find in any international shopping mall so nothing remarkable there, but there are specialities de Lilliose; 

Boulangeries (fabulous bread), Patisseries (wicked cakes)

There are more chocolate shops than I ever have seen in one town. The oldest of these is Meert (established in 1762).

Historically, Meert is famous for supplying cakes and chocolates to French nobility, more recently opinion is divided. Are they still fabulous or are they trading on past (justifiable) glories? Reviews on the web show that the French love Meert while international tourists are inclined to give them a panning, mostly because of price (yes, they are expensive) and because they don't speak English in the shop (D'oh this is France!). But we managed to buy some chocolates and the staff coped with our point and grunt French quite cheefully. The confections are highest quality and are superbly presented so I say the French are right. As for price, yes they are not cheap, but this is a hand made artisanal product and you get what you pay for. I bought some dark chocolate dipped glace orange slices. They are absoultely gorgeous (particularly with a good cup of coffee) but are so rich that they are not the sort of chocolates where you can scoff a whole box in one sitting. And that's how I like chocolates and cake, thick, rich and very rarely!

Somewhat surprisingly, there are many second hand and antiquarian bookshops in Lille. However, this is a University town, in fact it seemed to be the start of the academic year. There were groups of bewildered first years being hazed all over town by their more mature colleagues(ie 2nd years.)Nothing changes, come ca?

Charles de Gaulle was born in Lille (the main square -in the video below is now named Place de La General de Gaulle)

 

Place de General de Gaulle (town centre)

As you might expect, there are many, many cafes in Lille where the Lilloise sit out at small tables in the sun; drinking and smoking (my God I wanted a Gauloise!).Bier is a popular drink, especially Leffre Ruby (red fruit based beer). No one seems to eat until after 7.00pm (except of course, le tourists.) Many of the cafes in the main squares offer regional menus, but most of them are designed for for visitors - the carbonade I had had certainly seen better days. But there is good, interesting food to be had in Lille. We had lunch (with locals) at Les Charlottes Enville, a restaurant that had a potato and salad based menu. Bon!

Lille

Friday 11th September 2010

Gare Lille Flanders(Sunday 12th September)

We arrived in Lille during the Friday afternoon rush after 27 hours in planes, trains and taxis. First thing to do was go for a walk to beat the jet lag. But it is always a lost cause for me because I never manage to sleep on long flights. And jet lag makes you so stupid, I found myself looking at French writing thinking that I had forgotten how to read (yes Sue they are speaking a different language;and then trying to remember which country we were in, juggling how to say please and thank you in French/Dutch/German; failing to pick the right language, resorting to hand gestures (I'm fluent in those!). Aack weak effort. Even the signs in the hotel looked a little odd to me...

Emergency Evaculation Sign, Hotel Up (Lille, France)

Nice hotel, super quiet, comfy bed, but their English is as good as my French :)