Time and Tide

I am a little slow sometimes to acknowledge changes that might signify the march of time. I noticed recently that I had started clasping my hands behind my back whilst standing or walking slowly, a bit like members of the royal family might do when inspecting a line of troops. I soon knocked that one on the head.

Then I woke up one morning to find out that during the night someone had deliberately turned down the volume in my left ear by approximately two points. I only know this because if I lie on the pillow on my right side I can no longer hear the trundling noise that the paper boy’s trolley makes on the pavement outside our house. Within seconds, I resolved that it would be light years until I would accept the need for a hearing aid.

When a lady cold-called me last week and asked if I had ever worked in a noisy industry, because she thought I might be eligible for some compensation, defiantly holding the handset to my left ear, I replied, “Yes, in a school.” After a brief pause during which time she decided that I must have been taking the mickey, she showed no further desire to pursue the conversation. I was not joking. Corridor racket really got to me in the end.

My eyes are not brilliant, either. I’ve had glasses for reading and watching TV for years, but I have tried to hold out elsewhere, for example when driving or watching football matches. Driving is fine until daylight goes and I am approaching a roundabout that is new to me, and I have to make use of the road signs in time to make a safe manoeuvre. I sometimes end up going right round twice to be sure I’m still on track.

Football was also OK until lately, but as it is a game of two ends, I really need to be able to follow the action at both of them. Last Friday was the first time, too, that I had allowed my glasses to come with me to a concert. When the ageing rockers came on stage, I was relieved to see that they were both wearing a pair themselves. With seats near the back, I admit that at times I was still grateful for the additional support from the big screen.

Apart from that, I generally still do without my glasses, in spite of occasionally trying to open other people’s small black cars with my remote key in the supermarket car park. I always take them to auctions, however. The catalogue images are thumbnail size and the print is generally small. At venues without display screens, I would certainly be struggling to make critical decisions about the appeal of some of the smaller items.

A television interview with a rather forlorn older actress ended up with a rather wistful, “The worst thing about growing old is that your skin always looks like it needs ironing.” Admittedly, various other bits of my body are creaking, too. I will spare you most of the details, but, in the case of knees with no surviving cartilage, that creaking is audible, but now only via my right ear. I have resolved never to have a stick. I would rather crawl. On reflection, I may reserve the right to change my mind about that one in years to come.

Even my balance is now in question. When taking a photograph of a signalbox recently, I fell backwards from the top of the wire fence I had perched myself on and landed on my back in a muddy field, thus providing some unexpected entertainment for the passengers on the upper deck of the number 28 bus from Newark to Mansfield, which was simultaneously held up at the adjacent level crossing gates.

   

In direct contrast to this increase in minor infirmities, I find that, for me, an attraction of railwayana is its relative permanence and its resistance to creaking or any other sort of biologically induced disintegration. In a changing world, temporally it refuses to budge. It is fixed in the world as it was in 1968, or whenever you choose for yourself as your personal tipping point, at which the good old days ended and the modern era began. How extraordinarily reassuring it is. My totem’s enamel may have lost a bit of its shine and the shed plate may exhibit a little rusting here and there. My railway clock may have stopped and my posters may have a bit of foxing and some creases, but these are as nothing compared to the gradual toll imposed on us by our own body clocks.

Whilst in the USA, I noticed a message outside a workshop that we drove past in Sperryville, Virginia, which advertised [hopefully, tongue in cheek], “Antique tables made daily.” That reminded me about the marvellous caption on page 82 of O. Winston Link’s magnificent album of photographs, “Steam, Steel and Stars,” referring to a train crossing bridge 201, which was itself just to the east of Wurno Sidings. Wurno Sidings were so-called because there “were no” sidings there until they were added later on.  

Such are the ravages of time on the human frame that inevitably the collections of erstwhile fellow enthusiasts are periodically recycled at auction events. Their former interests are reflected in an apparent and sudden glut of hand lamps, a rash of prominent nameplates, or, in the case of the late Malcolm Guest, a veritable tsunami of posters and design work. Time stands still in the world of railwayana. Only the technology moves on - oh yes - and the threat of higher buyer’s premiums.

Luckily, although I may be at a stage where increased dodderiness might soon tighten its grip, I am reminded to take more care, at every turn. At Newark station, for example, there is a notice on the stairs that connect the platforms. “Take care on the stairs,” it warns. There is even a little picture of what might happen to you, should you not heed the advice. You could, apparently, fall over. So, be careful on the stairs, then. Got it?

I won’t forget that tomorrow is the first day of the rest of my life and I shall resolve to keep on doing the things that interest me, no matter what. As former rock star and now raconteur and self-styled “grumpy old man,” Rick Wakeman, told us at an evening out in Lincoln, just a stones throw from that famous, distinctive, yet troublesome inner urban level crossing next to the Central station, “I joined Alcoholics Anonymous. I still go out drinking. It’s just that I have no idea who I am drinking with.”    

No railways this time but loads of heritage - new book now out - Seafarer Jones

Seafarer Jones is a collection of stories about mariners from previous generations, all of whom shared a relationship with this particular family of that name. I examine the familial links amongst a proliferation of seafarers and recount their experiences from the eighteenth century up to the Second World War.

In addition to the profusion of ships’ captains were local fishermen, first, second and third mates, cabin boys, ordinary seamen, able seamen, bosuns, coxswains, engineers, carpenters, stewards, pursers, marine insurers, victuallers, watchmen, landing stage superintendents, explorers, inventors, ship owners, shipping agents and shipping company directors, as well as five women who went to sea with their male relatives. Seafarer Jones describes their adventures and triumphs, their mishaps and tragedies.

From the age of sail to that of steam driven, steel merchant ships, the Jones clan travelled the globe, from Porthmadog to the Baltic, the Mediterranean, Newfoundland and New York; from Liverpool to the Americas, East Africa, the Far East, Australia and the Great Barrier Reef and to the Pitcairn Islands in the Pacific Ocean and back round the Horn. They carried slate, coal, timber, grain, salt, fish, manure - and migrants seeking new lives in the New World. Others helped to protect their fellow mariners along the Welsh coast by manning the lifeboats.

They suffered mountainous seas, collision, shipwreck, foundering, scuttling, arrest, mutiny, torpedo attack and attempted assassination. They worked at sea in peace time and served their country during two world wars. They ran the gauntlet of the German U-boats and some lost their lives whilst thousands of miles from home.

By the end of the Victorian era they had all congregated in the port of Liverpool and it had become the focal point for their continuing exploits, typical of so many other families in that period, who went “down to the sea in ships” for their livelihood.