she's not there

This is a sepia saturday post  

from my Aunty Brenda's photo collection. an unknown stranger  outside her door in Perth Scotland....

I told you two  weeks ago that  we were attending  the funeral of Sue Trigg in Fixby.

What I havnt told you is that i missread the details of when the service was to be held ( despite me putting the Huddersfield Examiner's online Obituary on this blog!)
As a result ,we did go to Fixby Crematorium.
 We did attend at 2pm on Friday
But, It turns out  ,I got the week wrong and we attended on Friday 13th (not Friday 20th).
 To compound the mistake ,we followed the mourners into the 2pm service.
Now I wasnt surprised not to recognise any of the fellow mourners.
 I knew Sue from 50 years ago at School plus our various much more recent  1- to -1 meetings had been at Hebden Bridge Trades club.We  know none of her family or none of her more recent friends.
So . Me & Cath are sat at the back of the room at Fixby Crematorium on Friday 13th.
The only speaker was a Polish Priest who talked for about 5 minutes...but his accent was soo thick that I only understood about 10% of anything he said.
Although,halfway through,he did say "JILL" which set a few alarm bell ringing........
 No family members spoke. So after a short service I went to the coffin ( no photo on it). Touched the coffin. Made the sign of the cross and we followed the other mourners out the door and down a corridor.
I then shook hands with the priest, who was stood next to the framed photo of a beautiful elderly lady called (you guest it!) JILL. Me and Cath left blushing to avoid upsetting  to our fellow mourners......
I had never been to Fixby Crem before,so at least it turned out to be a 'rehearsal ' for Sue's funeral today.Although ,are not all funerals "rehersals" really?

Sue's funeral was packed today.Very moving ,and a great tribute to such a grand lass.
Lots of music! As we entered the service we were greeted by Santana playing "She's not there" playing full blast.
I couldnt help thinking that Sue ,sat in the sky,was looking down on me and taking the piss about my adventures the previous week !
During the service,the vicar asked the mourners to give Sue's  coffin a round of applause ( a new one on me).
Her service concluded with John Martyn singing "Somewhere Over The Rainbow".
Now,the previous week i had taken this photo of a rainbow over the crematorium.Maybe this was the real purpose of my mistaken visit to Jill the previous week? one Door Shuts:  Another One Opens I Guess.......

Finally, my most recent photos......
See all these photos in one place here

" the shortest poem is a name" Anne Michaels.

A busy week.

 Me and Cathy went into Manchester's Literature Festival yesterday. We attended a talk by  the mighty Canadian writer Anne Micheals.
Then, on Friday 20th October., we pay respect at Sue Trigg's funeral in Fixby. I went to Clare Hall School in Halifax, with dear sweet Sue.....
On Saturday night,we go to The Shay in Halifax for Dave's 60th Birthday. Also .This week. We have  had a very firm legal offer for our home in Hebden Bridge!
Two media folk from London.
One ( 3rd right) works on several big shows.Including BBC's "The Apprentice".
Lots of detail to sort out (eg where we move too!) Watch this space!

Sue at The Hebden Bridge Trades Club:you can tell her by the smile.

I have to say, I am wondering what lovely music will be played at Sue's cremation on Friday.......

Sue Trigg at Clare Hall School ,Halifax. front Row.2nd from the right.It's easy! You can tell from the smile.

if they wont let us dream,we wont let them sleep...

Until I retired last month,I worked with Mark Wyatt at Calderdale Council.
Here is a clip  of him singing on Sunday 1st October in Manchester with the commoners choir

Part protest against the Tory Conference being held in the city:part a dance on the grave of those UKIP cunts. ..........

Take Back Manchester Festival 2017 Programme 

I Salute you Christopher.

As  Helen
mentions in the 'comments' section below , the arrangement in the picture is unusual.It is the house ,not the people who are given prominance. The group are almost incidental......
I keep searching the many widows to check if i see anybody is peeking at  us  outside...!
So,something of a mystery is this photograph.
 I found it among my Aunt Brenda's collection after she died.gallery/n-qhJbM/
Now,it was among many family photos taken in Canada & the USA at the turn of the century.
I know that the young Brenda travelled there with my grandfather & his first wife ( she died & he remarried my grandmother about ten years later).
Now her other photos of North America are clearly labelled.But she also had two different photos of this house ( basically .one with this family group & one without).These  were not labelled  in any way.......
The people in it  dont look like my grandfather & Brenda.Tho,so far away,I could be wrong about that......
A bit of a mystery.I cant say this looks like Canada or New York State...tho ,who knows?

this is a sepia saturday

 
The Mighty Harry Leslie Smith talks with the aide of sepia  photography in the above video. 
It's the UK Labour Party's Annual Conference next week.
The following week sees my son Christopher's  birthday.

http://www.robertmontgomery.org/

midsomer murders on drugs.........

Jesus!  Only I could go to a Steam Punk Festival  and come away with a copy of the Qur'an.........

or......view on smugmug:

In Other News:......In Bristol....."Martin Parr opens gallery for British documentary photographers"  http://www.huckmagazine.com/art-and-culture/photography-2/martin-parr-launches-new-foundation/

The Dream of Mrs L.L. Nicholson from Oakland, California (1924)

This is a sepia saturday

post. 

In 1924 California’s Tribune-American newspaper ran a competition for its readers to write in with their most unusual dreams and the winning entry was made into a short film.

 This is Mrs L.L. Nicholson from Oakland’s dream of losing her baby, rowing across San Francisco Bay, picking up some fish, and eventually discovering her lost child in a most unusual place and in trouble with the law. .............

 http://publicdomainreview.org/collections/the-dream-of-mrs-l-l-nicholson-from-oakland-california-1924/ If you enjoyed , then check out this link for many more sepia movies......
https://archive.org/details/prelinger 

Kentucky has entered the building

One of my photos

or view on smugmug......
https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Joan-ShelleyHebden-Bridge-TradesClub-17th-Sept-2017/
"elderly people who have unfulfilled wishes..".

 love that shit! Where would you like me to begin?

the view from inside  the Hebden Bridge Trades Club today

Picked tickets up this morning.....me & Cath now go see Louisville singer Joan Shelley at Hebden Bridge Trades Club on Sunday night.
 (As is usually the case) I will keep adding/taking away stuff in this post over the next few days.
I will also  attempt the tricky task of trying to translate the post into Kentuckyanese but I'm really not promising anything on that !
At the moment I will pop a few Joan Shelley videos below.These i may replace eventually with my photos/ video from Sunday's gig

vast dignity like the night sky

This blog is now available in Malayasian look here

(apologies & regards to TT)

As I post this ,dear beautiful Cuba is being battered by Storm Irma . So this is topical.Here  is a photo I took in Habana in 1997.Two lads make a chariot/ racing car out of the top of a crate.

  So.......this week's    sepia saturday "...Cute kids using common household objects to build fantasy horses, spaceships or whatever is a theme as old as photography itself..."
My Son Chris & a toy train in the Dominican Republic.....plus,things to do with a polish chicken & english ballons.......(click each for biggary)

We laugh at children 'pretending'........I sometimes wonder if it ever really goes away? Witness Trump

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theatre_of_the_Oppressed#Photo-romance

be just and if you can't be just , be arbitrary ~ William S Burroughs.

This blog is now available in Dutch! click here
to read.  
Why not join Me & Cathy this Sunday (10th) at Lister Lane Cemetery kick-off  1pm for this tour & talk...meanwhile,dear visitors,
geniet van je lezing.
listen via: audioboom 
Halifax Heritage Festival 

1965 Interview with William Burroughs  The Art Of Fiction

among these dark satanic mills

Gentrifying  The Grimy Republic It's a dirty job ,but someone has to do it.....

 Billy Blake's "Jerusalem " where he spoke of being 'among these dark satanic mills...', was written while he sat above Beacon Hill in Halifax ..(said Ken Kersey over a pint of locally brewed lager ,looking at this view)....

Only an accountant will tell you if the £19 million spent on the Halifax Piece Hall   
was worth the money? All I can say is, I was surprised today  how good it looks.
Me & Cath go next week to the opening of the new Halifax Library which is just next door to The Piece Hall.

***

REST IN PEACE     My longtime Blogspot buddy Andrew Keogh here is his obituary in The Guardian. he died of lung cancer aged 66, and was a barrister, blogger, writer and political activist. He  was  born in Leeds.An avid Leeds United.Gratful Dead & Coffee  fan.....(n.b.we also had  a mutual friend in  Clive A.

They went to the L.S.E.in the early 70's)
  here is a link to "White Rabbit" to Andrew's  blogspot.Go on sweetly,dear legal man......

***

A bit of a dilemma for me this weekend .
 I keep getting pestered by google to allow this blog to be included on their AdSense programme.Because of my large(ish) number of visitors they have given me some quite generous estimates of how much i might "earn" each month. Essentially, each time you visit here,the more money Google gives me .The joy of capitalism.
 So what to do? Should I take the capitalist shilling which goes against the spirit of what i do here? On the other  hand , what google would give me would more than pay for my smugmug photo album subscription each month. {n.b. never did it} At the  end of the day  I doubt I will take up this offer. But ,whatever , thank you kindly for each visit you make.Long may it continue.............
.

sell your cleverness and buy bewilderment

Me and Cathy with friends.

2nd left:My Aunty Brenda.

This week's sepia saturday

is around sepia ladies 'working out' in The Olden Days.

A fairly easy one for me this week.My Aunty Brenda travelled from

Scotland to Essex in the early 1900's.

It was a Ladies College.She  was training in Podiatry.

And this is how she did it.......

 it looks like she had her some fun.
This  must have been a quite liberating experience for a late-Victorian lass.......

From someone at the start of a career...to someone at it's end.
I retired on Wednesday...... I went out into Hebden Bridge at 4pm this afternoon for a few nice drinks with some of the lassies from work.
On Friday 1st September (kick off 7.30pm) I will be having drinks in The White Lion in Hebden Bridge . All Welcome

love will tear us apart.....

 https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Peterloo-Joy-Division-Manchester-20-August-2017/
and......today's BBC tv report..here.....

Joy Division play Hulme in 1979

 [here]  

Plus, one of my videos.........

gentrifying the graveyard..........

 a video I took of Holly Lynch ,Labour MP for Halifax speaking yesterday in Lister Lane Cemetery. If you know Halifax,to get your bearings,behind her is Gibbet Street with Lightowler Road on her far left .....(site of the old Poor House). ".....he would smuggle information,shall we say "alternative leaflets", up into  Halifax from   London in a coffin..."
You can see all my photos & videos of the day here......zimnoch.smugmug.com/Lister-Lane-CemetryHalifax-16082017/.

no place to hyde

.So.I am related to the author Robert Louis Stevenson.

I have described some details about this here before.Here is a transcript of something I first posted on this blog  in July 2006[view here]

This week's sepia saturday concerns 'bookish' topics.......

So.Basically.My maternal grandfather was married 3 times. He had a child with each of his wives. (My mum's mum had died in childbirth). I am not related by blood to RLS,but my Aunty Brenda's mum was on that ol'literary  bloodline.. stuff was complicated in The Olden Days .......

I'm a shit genealogist (blushes) I dont know who the old couple are (.tho the bloke isn't my grandfather.I know that much!)But this is a nice ,rare,photo of the 3 half-siblings ,all together.My Mum's  sat on the couples knee.My Uncle Gordon sat on his half-sister Brenda's knee......I guess this was taken in Scotland.Probably Perth or Fife.

Several events coming up in the next couple of weeks that will be featured here later....

• Next Wednesday (16th) I attend an event at Lister Lane Cemetry ,Halifax  .It's the 175th Anniversary of The 1842   General Strike.4 Chartists are buried there.I dont know much about either the riot or deaths ( similar to Peterloo?) although the Mayor & local Labour MP will be in attendance."Brass Bands and refeshments"they say..... ! Let us eat cake While we mark  the   "Plug Riot"
• Next Sunday (20th) at Albert Square  Manchester me & Cathy go to see (among others) actor Christopher Ecclestone (a former Doctor Who) read out the Peterloo Massacre "NAMES"

• A week on Thursday (24th) in Hebden Bridge Pubs  (k.o. 4pm) I will be having a few cheeky drinks to mark my retirement.

Below,a slideshow my    photographs  from the 2015 Peterloo Memorial.

  Read About The Peterloo Massacre here
 
A nice bonus for me was finding thislocal blogspot which seems to cover similar terrain.

have you herd?

So. There was this dream.........a couple of nights ago. We arrived to find  my late mother ,Marjory.Dressed up in her finest. Looking very determined  " I Mean Business " she said,firmly.........looking like a castle with a scar across her shoulder....

"After the advent of Christianity, the goat or God Pan with his beard, cloven hoofs and horns, later became associated as the unofficial image of the devil........"gnosticwarrior.com/goat.html
This week's  sepia saturday
topic is around the theme of "goats".(Ummm...that's what I herd, anyway.......)
 So where to go with this one?
While I pondered this problem  ( not having any sepia goats myself,on my person )  i went on facebook for alternative  inspiration.
I visited a page that posts old photos of Halifax.A few years back i found an old photo of my Mum (working in a Infant nursey ) there..........  that i never knew existed!

This morning I may have found another?
Its taken inside St Mary's church on Gibbet Street in Halifax.It's   of a  Polish Mass  sometime in the 1970's. The priest holding the service is Father Gaik.
Now, I may be mistaken but the figure on the far right,back row,(black hair:brown top)  looks very much like my Mum!Maybe it;s not her at all?It's just that there is something about the way she holds her body,reminds me her.
I dont know if this possibility makes me happy  or sad........?

Pondering this ,while  in Bradford this morning on business.Having an hour to kill at lunchtime. I walked around
Little_Germany[wikipedia] 

and     Bradford Cathedral[wikipedia]

Hoping to find some goats carved or painted somewhere .No Joy, although i did capture some splendid William Morris stainglass windows & fabrics.albeit,goatless..........


https://zimnoch.smugmug.com/Little-Germany-Bradford-Cathedral3rdAugust-2017/ By pure chance,i was later at a meeting in Halifax this afternoon...a 100 yards from where i lived as a child with my Mum& Dad.After the meeting I took a few extra photos of the building i knew best as a child......