Iona – a minor poet sings

Found – a copy of Ionica – a book of verse by Eton master William Johnson Cory – this edition published anonymously by George Allen in 1891. It has been bound in an expensive full leather binding with gilt decorated inner dentelles. The book was presented by minor poet Arthur C James* to one Iona F Robinson on whom he appears to have been very keen given the title of the book, its sumptuous binding and the poem he has written to her on the front endpaper. Ironically Johnson Cory, a fellow master at Eton, is known for the gay themes in some of his poems.

Jan 16th. To Iona F Robinson

Not from those violet isles of western Greece,

Nor from the statelier cities which of yore

Looked into sunset from the Aegean shore

O’er varied tracts of bay and Chersonese

Home of the muse whose grace shall never cease;

-But from that northern Island which upbore

Columbus’s cross our Britain to explore, Continue reading →

On Notes and Note Books

Now we are in the Digital Age, when as much data as we like can be stored in a note-book sized device made of plastic and metal, note-taking as a aid to memory is less important. As recent as fifteen years ago if we needed to record the gist of books, articles etc., we resorted to a note book made of paper and card which had to be small enough to be carried around in a pocket. In practice what we tended to do, however, was to write too much in too big a hand than was appropriate, thus making our notebook less efficient as a means of storing an accumulation of facts and opinions.

The solution, according to a self-published booklet of c 1934 entitled On Notes and Note Books by someone called David B. Muir of Dresden Road, Holloway, north London, was to accommodate more notes on literary material that interested us by reducing our hand to the size of newsprint, abbreviating words and compiling an index.

In Muir’s system of abbreviations a series of short straight or curved strokes above the missing letters, dots above and below, and other symbols for prefixes, would indicate the types of contractions intended. Discrete items of information would be separated by double or single vertical strokes. In the Index the keyword would be followed by a normal sized page number and a very small number, indicating the line. According to Muir, the secret to success with his system of note-taking lay in memorising these symbols plus any other symbols that the individual note-taker might care to use. Continue reading →

Two John Fothergill letters

Found – two signed handwritten letters from John Fothergill author of An Innkeeper’s Diary. He was the proprietor of The Spreadeagle in Thame, the ‘inn’ he managed to make a cult destination during the 1920s and 30s. To quote travel blogger Ian Weightman:

‘In its heyday, The Spreadeagle near Oxford became a mecca for holiday makers, and the great and the good of the country. Many people booked to stay or dine there, purely because of Fothergill’s notoriety. But many others – including a “glitterati” of writers, actors, artists and heads of state – arrived as a result of the hotel’s widespread reputation as one of the best in the land… Fothergill was not only an illustrious innkeeper, but also an outstanding chef, connoisseur of wine, and an early campaigner for “Real Food”’.

The letters are to the writer Guy Chapman (author of the WW1 account A Passionate Prodigality and husband of Margaret Storm Jameson, English journalist and author.) They were associated with the writer’s organisation PEN – hence Fothergill asking for advice about republishing a gardening book he had written in 1927 (The Gardener’s Colour Book -now quite collectable.) The first letter is from the Spreadeagle and the second from his inn in Market Harborough which he ran from 1934 to 1952. Anybody writing a biography of Fothergill in the future would appreciate these letters, but when they are sold they tend to disappear – so following the original Jot mission we are recording them here. Continue reading →

Alien sightings in Pembrokeshire

A recent Jot about Alec Maclellan’s The Lost World of Agharti focussed on the links that one reader made between this work and the series of Seth books. But another reader, a certain J.S.A Lewis of Romsey, Hants, whose letter dated April 1986 can be found in the Haining archive, also tried to persuade Maclellan to consult a particular book. This was Ghosts of Wales by Peter Underwood, which he said confirmed Maclellan’s theory that UFOs came from his lost underground world rather than outer space.

Underwood’s story recounts ‘frightening and inexplicable ‘sightings in May and June 1977 and March 1978 of UFOs and alien figures at and near Ripperston Farm, west Pembrokeshire, the home of the Coombs family. Apparently, Mrs Coombs was driving home with three of her children when a bright light in the sky approached them with terrific speed and then, having shot over the car stopped, turned back and then followed alongside the vehicle. Mrs Coombs described the object to a reporter from Woman’s World:

‘ It was the same size and shape as a rugger ball but the colour was yellowish on top and silvery underneath, and beaming a sort of torch-like beam of light underneath it.’

The object kept pace with the car until it reached the lane up to the farm, when it rose and appeared to hover over the passengers. It was then that the car began to misbehave:

First the headlamps began to flicker and then they went out completely. The engine stopped, leaving the terrified occupants sitting in an immobile vehicle with the alien object hovering over them. The family managed to escape to their home where they found that the eldest boy who had been left there had also seen the strange object, which had sped towards the coast. Continue reading →

An Acrostic and an Alphabet

Found in Herbert Kynaston. A Memoir. (Macmillan, 1912) an acrostic for a bazaar to raise money for a home for ‘Friendless Girls’ (below). The book has the ownership signature of F.E. Balfour (1922). This is almost certainly Ronald Edmond Balfour , who among other things, wrote a bibliography for E.M Forster’s 1934 book on Goldsworthy Lowes Dickinson. In World War 2 he was something of a hero and there is much on him at the Monuments Men site. He had a huge book collection and went to Eton and King’s College Cambridge (hence the Forster connection.) Possibly inspired by Canon Kynaston’s acrostics (and double acrostics) he wrote out an alphabet at the end of the book. It is headlined ‘Camp Alphabet from the ECC of October 10th 1872.’ This is probably the Eton Cadet Corps, who are still in existence (David Cameron was a member- hence his fondness for The Jam’s Eton Rifles.)

A was an adjutant booted and spurred,

B was a bugle incessantly heard

C was the Colonel commanding the lot

D was the dog he would fain have shot

E is for earwigs esconced in one’s shirt

F the fleas, field- mice and frogs all alert.

G was the beard who so firmly behaved

H was H. Hobbs without mirror who shaved

I was inspection of blankets and store

J the smart jackets our officers wore

Continue reading →

Gillian Hills–Beat Girl

For someone brought up with the Beatles, it’s difficult to understand the attraction for teenagers of what came immediately before the Fab Four transformed pop music for ever. Here, for instance, is the back page Film Review promo for Beat Girl, a movie released in 1960 that purported to show ‘ squares ‘ what their ‘beatnik’ teenage sons and daughters were getting up to behind their backs. Starring the pop singer Adam Faith ( his film debut at the age of 18 ), horror star Christopher Lee, a young Oliver Reed and the fifteen year old bilingual starlet Gillian Hills, it was also the debut of John Barry, who went on to forge a glittering career in film music.

In 1960, most pop music fans were more interested in how teen idol Faith would cut it as an actor, than they were seeing ‘ the second Bardot ‘, as Roger Vadim hyped the fifteen year Hills, but looking back, it is odd that latter’s acting career never took off. Here was an actress, whose striking blonde beauty and obvious acting talent should have propelled her to greater things. In ‘Beat Girl’ Hills plays the ‘ bad girl ‘ Jennifer, the sulky-looking beatnik, who rejects the values of her respectable parents and lives for the kicks she gets out of dancing in night clubs and hanging out in milk bars. In the opening scenes of the film she is a pouting, free-spirited presence as she descends the stairs to the basement dance floor, where, seemingly oblivious to everything and everyone around her, she begins a freestyle dance routine. On her website ( which is worth a visit ) Hills describes the dance thus: ‘ my brain flipped, my feet followed and I was off’. As for her role as Jennifer, she saw it as a protest at her treatment by her Lycee in Paris, who expelled her for taking on a debut role in Vadim’s ‘Les Liaisons Dangereux ‘.

‘I could vent my frustration, my disgust, the helplessness and despair, and the anger at what had happened to my life in the recent months.’

‘Beat Girl’ proved popular in Britain, but was banned in France. However, this did not prevent Hills from taking roles in a number of French films in the early sixties and from recording pop songs in French, including the annoyingly catchy ‘ Zou Bisou Bisou’ (1961), which was later used in ‘Mad Men’. But in Britain the film roles were small. She was a brunette in the cultish ‘Blow Up ‘(1966) and in ‘A Clockwork Orange’ she had a cameo. She also appeared occasionally on British TV. Gillian Hills pic

In 1975 Hills decided to stop making films and left for New York City to try her luck as a book and magazine illustrator. Judging from the artwork on her website, she appears to have genuine artistic talent too! At 72, Hills now lives in England with her husband Stewart Young, manager of AC/DC and Cyndi Lauper, among other artistes. [R.M.Healey]

A warning for all collectors of manuscripts

A snippet featured in the miscellany Medley dated October 1936 comes from ‘Ripley’ in the Sunday Express. It concerns the famous Dutch physician Dr Herman Boerhaave (1668 – 1738), ‘founder of clinical teaching’ and called by some ‘The father of physiology’:

“When he died his effects were sold by auction, and among his manuscripts was a sealed book for which there was a heated scramble. It was sold for £2,000 in gold, and when opened was found to contain all blank pages except one on which the doctor had written:

“Keep your head cold —your feet warm, and you’ll make the best doctor poor “

I wonder if there are similar instances of bibliomaniacs fighting at auction for a particular sealed manuscript or printed book with annotations by an eminent, and perhaps controversial, person. Information welcome.

[R.M.Healey]

Private Life of Henry Maitland – author’s copy

Found – the dedication copy of Morley Roberts ‘roman a clef’ The Private Life of Henry Maitland– a fictionalised biography of George Gissing (Maitland.) H.G.Wells, Clement Shorter, Edward Clodd and many others also turn up under disguised names. Although the book is fictional it gives a very good and authentic account of Gissing and his literary life and his circle. Loosely inserted is a note in MR’s hand giving the real names of many characters etc., The novel New Grub Street is here Paternoster Row. The book has a dedication in MR’s hand to the printed dedicatee – his late wife Alice daughter of the playwright Angiolo Robson Slous – ‘To my dear wife (14.9.11).’ She had died the year before the book’s publication. A long signed note on the title page explains:

This book was actually dictated during a period of great tribulation and I found myself utterly unable to correct the proofs with any care. It is therefore full of faults most of which I hope where removed in the revised edition of 1923. Much of the value of this book, if it has any, is due to the fact of it’s downright truth and directness as it was done at a time when I was incapable of understanding that any could be disturbed by anything but some great disaster. Morley Roberts

The note in MR’s hand gives a comprehensive list of the disguised names. A handful were already known and a few characters (e.g. George Meredith) are in the book under their real names. It would be impossible to imagine a better copy of the book, the only think lacking is the 104 year old dust- jacket. Continue reading →

Television in 1950- a prediction

Published in the monthly miscellany Medley for September 1935 is this winning prediction from a competition run by The Manchester Guardian. It looks forward to what life might be like in 1950.

“ Last night the new tellie, ‘The Private Life of a Thwarted Ego’, started its run on the City Circuit. Pink One, the famous star of ‘Yes—Today and Hereafter’ and other colossal masterpieces, again shows she is the undisputed queen of Tele-Stereo-Appeal. Mr Malt Whimsy, her creator, has never painted her better. It is a long cry from her first appearance in those early crude ‘ Lunatic Lullabies ‘, but Miss Pink One has made the grade. As the pitiful but brave little Ego, caught in the Web of Circumstance, dazzled by the Lure of Gold, and finally falling by the Wayside, she was stupendous. By all means plug in to ‘Thwarted Ego, ’it’s the tellie of a generation!”

Several points here. Is this one of the earliest appearances of the word tellie, albeit spelt in a different way and used to describe a production to be viewed on a television receiver, rather than the receiver itself ? Also, what does the writer mean by the term ‘City Circuit ‘. Is this a channel ? Also, what opportunities would he or she have had in the UK, to view anything other than the experimental broadcasts put out around 1933/34 by the BBC late at night ? These generally lasted no more than ten minutes and consisted largely of fragments of drama and dances performed by a lady wearing a special photogenic costume. The fact that the writer could accurately predict the future success of a medium which was frequently derided as a flash in the pan at the time is impressive. This is almost as impressive as someone predicting the astonishing success of the Internet back in 1980. [R.M.Healey]

I once met E.M. Forster

Found among the papers of the mathematician Norman Routledge (1928-2013) this affectionate memoir of E.M. Forster. Routledge had known Forster in the 1950s when he was a Fellow at King’s College, Cambridge. He went on to become a distinguished teacher of mathematics and was a close friend of Alan Turing, inheriting some of his books. The second half of his working life was spent teaching maths at Eton. These notes were probably for a talk he gave to the boys there (mid 1960s) with a sound recording of Forster talking (probably this piece from YouTube) and some reading from his books. The notes are written on the back of the maths homework of one Hope-Jones minor…

I wish I was going to tell you about a great hero- figure, spouting brilliant and amusing things, and combining an amazing literary fertility (an earth-shaking novel every year) with great and noble deeds -what should they be? – fighting injustice and involved in passionate love affairs? But he is none of these.

He happens to have lived since the war in the college, Kings, where I was an undergraduate, and so one would occasionally meet him on social occasions. He’s rather non-descript in appearance – has a moustache and rather dowdy clothes and speaks very little but listens a lot. Very gentle eyes. Is greatly loved by all who know him– has indeed the air of always having been loved without having had to strive for it. Can be very amusing if he wishes, but you have to listen carefully– I’ve seen people quite fail to notice that he has been making fun of them. Continue reading →

I once met A.E. Coppard

Found – a handwritten letter signed by E.V. Knox (‘Evoe’) to someone called Magniont asking for recollections of A.E. Coppard. This was almost certainly Dr Jean-Louis Magniont who translated Coppard into French. The letter is undated but mention of a recent BBC adaptation of Coppard’s stories dates it as 1969. ‘Evoe’ writes:

I will tell you all I can recollect about A.E. Coppard. But I fear that it is very little and perhaps not very helpful to you.

As you mentioned, I wrote a small episode, and he considerably longer one, for the Kidlington Pageant of 1931. Those were the days when pageants kept popping up everywhere. This one was arranged by Frank Evay, who lived at Shepton Manor where the pageant was held. He was a friend of mine and an eccentric. For instance, he collected tramps, gave them a meal and a the nights lodging in a barn and sent them on their way. He introduced me to A.E. Coppard whom he had first met, as he told me, when Coppard was collecting tickets at Oxford railway station.

I remember him as small, prosaic, and self-contained and perhaps determined not to be eccentric. Possibly that is an illusion of my own. I became at once a “fan.” Coppard, I think, was very little known at that time, for at a dinner of a literary club I told Desmond McCarthy, then perhaps our leading critic, that I thought that Coppard was our best English short story writer, and Desmond had not heard of him. He said however- ”Well we must try to read this Coppard of yours.” Clearly he did. Continue reading →

Malayan secret society ritual

Found – a rare Malayan police manual Notes on secret societies (Caxton Press, Kuala Lumpur 1953) by one C. T. Dobree. It is more of an anthropological study than a detective’s manual with much emphasisis on the initiation ceremonies of each society; there are also notes on secret methods of communication known only to society members. This what he writes on the Wah-Kee (aka ‘Chow Fah Chee Tow’ or ‘Sze Kor Long.’) The way of refusing a cigarette is interesting – ‘push back the cigarette with hand-palm facing inwards.’

Jargons and signs.

After initiations the new members to the brotherhood are taught the secret jargons and signs by which strangers to one another may identify themselves as being of the one brotherhood.

These are some of the jargons and signs in common use: –

Questions.

a) Where do you come from? – from Singapore. (This is because the Malayan Wah Kee started in Singapore).

b) What is your surname? – Either Sui (Water) or Loke (land), or Peng (Peace) or Onn (Tranquility).

Continue reading →

Baked Elephant’s Foot

Baked Elephant’s Foot. Just one of the exotic dishes that features in Spotlight on Lucullus, A miniature Anthology of the pleasures of the Table –which is twenty-eighth in the series of ‘ minithologies ‘ created by a certain Max Crombie, some of the others being devoted to bird poetry, Christmas, love lyrics, the prose of Richard Jefferies, drink songs and the four seasons. Originating from the modest Knights Press in Northwood, Middlesex, from c 1940 to 1942, these booklets were slightly smaller than Penguin paperbacks and certainly shorter, being, in most cases, no more than twenty four pages in length. Well known book illustrators provided the ‘decorations ‘in the form of vignettes. The subject matter covered was presumably chosen to lift wartime spirits ( though the irony of describing banquets at a time of wartime shortages was doubtless not lost on many readers,) and perhaps to inject a little nationalist pride into a demoralised populace.
As for the account of the baked elephant’s foot, it was supplied by the French gastronome Le Vaillant, who witnessed the culinary practices of the Hottentots while travelling through Africa:

‘They cut off the four feet of the animal, and made in the earth a hole about three feet square. This was filled with live charcoal, and, covering the hole with very dry wood, a large fire was kept up during part of the night. When they thought the hole was large enough it was emptied; a Hottentot then placed within it the four feet of the animal, covered then with hot ashes, and with charcoal and small wood; and this fire was kept burning until the morning. My servants presented me at breakfast with an elephant’s foot. It had considerably swelled in the cooking; I could hardly recognise the shape, but it appeared so good, exhaled so inviting an odour, that I hastened to taste it. I could not conceive how so heavy , so material an animal as the elephants, could furnish a dish so fine and delicate, and I devoured without bread, my elephant’s foot, while my Hottentots, seated around me, regaled themselves with other parts which they found equally delicious.’

[R.M.Healey]

It’s fun finding out… about Chapman Pincher

Discovered in a box of books is this copy of It’s Fun Finding Out, putatively by Bernard Wicksteed, but actually written with Chapman Pincher, the man who was to become a true legend among spy-hunters.

Back in 1947, when the book was published by the Daily Express, Wicksteed, an RAF war hero, was an ex sub-editor who had published his first book, Father’s Heinkel in 1944. Pincher was an ex physics teacher who had recently joined the Express as a science correspondent. One day Express editor Arthur Christiansen had the bright idea of bringing the two men together to compile an exploration of weird facts something along the lines of the American Ripley Believe It Or Not books. The result was It’s Fun Finding Out.

Structured so as to reveal facts while on visits to several places, including a Zoo, the seaside, a farm, a wood at night, a river bank, the country in Autumn, a grouse moor, an art gallery and the Science Museum, the book also considers facts relating to social history, philately, the amazing physical toughness of Winston Churchill, the French view of the English and vice versa, and guppies, among many other topics. Continue reading →

A relic of the talented Messel Family

Messel Medea cover 001 Found in a box of old text books (Zinn collection) is this copy of part two of C. B. Heberden’s edition of Euripedes’ Medea ( notes and appendices) published by the Clarendon Press in 1886.Stamped in gold lettering on the light brown cover of this distinctly dull-looking school text book are the words MESSEL/TARVERS. Inscribed in pencil on the fly-leaf we find ‘ L.Messel/Tarvers ‘, which suggests that it belonged at one time to Leonard Charles Rudolph Messel ( 1872 – 1953), father of the famous stage designer Oliver Messel. Beneath the inscription are two pencil and ink drawings—one of a veiled lady in Victorian dress, the other a small profile of a man’s head.

Leonard was the eldest son of Ludwig Messel, a German stockbroker who had emigrated to Britain, possibly in the late 1860s.He married and in 1890 bought Nymans, a 600 acre estate near Hayward’s Heath in West Sussex. His son Leonard was sent to Eton, where he joined Tarver’s house, and that is all we really know about his life as a schoolboy. However, if he did execute the two drawings, then he obviously passed on his artistic skills to his son Oliver, who may also have inherited skills from his mother, who was the daughter of Edward Linley Sambourne, the eminent Punch cartoonist. This being so, it is equally likely that Oliver, who also attended Eton, inherited his father’s copy of Heberden’s Euripides, and it was he who drew the veiled woman and male profile. Continue reading →

Spoof/ Nonsense handbill

Found at the Ephemera Society fair– this spoof April Fool’s day handbill/ poster. It probably dates from the late 19th century. It is in the tradition of British nonsense that goes back past Edward Lear and Lewis Carroll and was carried on with J.B. Morton’s ‘Beachcomber’, The Goons, Monty Python, Bonzo Dog, John Lennon and Professor Stanley Unwin and The Mighty Boosh. There is a West Derby Road in Liverpool. The reference to the young woman’s dress being composed of ‘spare ribs of pork’ is reminiscent of a costume recently worn on stage by the the singer Lady Gaga…

Missing from the neighbourhood of Black Rock Street, West Derby Road, about the first of April last, a short, middle-sized, and very tall young woman… had on when last seen a fashionable dress, composed of spare ribs of Pork with sage and onion trimmings; a double-breasted bonnet with Rattlesnake feathers – on her neck Dick’s hat-band that went nine times round and wouldn’t tie; a Chignon made of Shandy Gaff; Cast Iron stockings; Papier Mache drawers; Jack the Giant killer’s seven leagued boots, recently repaired, with holes in the soles; wears the Roman fall in the protuberance of the breast; must be recognised by her lovely piebald eyes, turned up Grecian nose, and a dew drop at the end of it, with savoury duck lips; has a splendid Carriage but no Horses; is supposed to have gone in search of the “Man in the Moon,” and will be known by looking two ways at once on Sunday’s; generally walks on her hands for the sake of cooling her heels, and always taking one step forward and one back, laments that she’s stationary in the world. Has been subjected to brutal treatment by her parents, having been born without father or mother, and wears mourning for a brother that never was in existence, being a son of her uncle Polly’s!

BY TELEGRAM. – When last seen was carrying a Satchel made of Boiled Cabbage, and was in a fearful state of exasperation, having too much of her own way in everything.

N.B. – She lives in Nim Nam Street, and is a Pan Mug Weaver.

Seth speaks…

Found in the Peter Haining Archive ( though how it got there is anybody’s guess) is a letter addressed to Alec McClelland, author of The Lost World of the Agharti from someone called John Hanning-Lee.

Bearing no year date ( but it must be dated after 1982, when The Lost World of Agharti appeared ) it urges McClelland to read Seth Speaks by the American psychic and author Jane Roberts (1929 – 84), who from 1964 received spirit messages from a male being called ‘ Seth’, whose pronouncements were later made the subject of a number of published works by Roberts collectively known as the ‘Seth material’. In his letter Hanning –Lee particularly focuses on the chapter in Seth Speaks devoted to the lost underground civilisation that predated Atlantis. Hanning-Lee describes the inhabitants and their civilisation thus:

‘They had blown up their own civilisation prior to that and the underground existence that followed was, of course, a reincarnational one. They excavated whole cities, by that I mean they excavated extensively so that their cities and communicating passages were entirely beneath the surface. The means of doing this was by means of sound vibrations where certain low notes sounded with power can cause a tunnel to form where there was solid earth. I suppose an analogy would be if you were to manipulate iron filings so that a path was formed through a mass of them placed on a sheet of paper and the paper tapped lightly. These ‘ caves ‘ they formed were, then, far more extensive than the ordinary idea of the word ‘cave’ and ran for miles, Their knowledge of the plates of the Earth’s crust and the science of earthquakes was almost certainly far superior to ours. Continue reading →

Exactly who wrote ‘The Hound of the Baskervilles’?

Baskerville Addington Peace book cover
The title page of the 1902 first edition bears just one name—Arthur Conan Doyle. And if you believe Conan Doyle’s son Adrian and just about every Sherlockian you’ll ever meet, only one man wrote the famous detective story. But in a newspaper cutting from the Daily Express dated March 16 1959 in the Haining Archive, the journalist Peter Evans tells how he met an 88 year old man from Dartmoor who swears that another writer of detective stories, Bertram Fletcher Robinson (1870 – 1907), the author of The Chronicles of Addington Peace (1905) contributed some material to the book. That man was Harry Baskerville and he had worked as the coachman to Fletcher Robinson’s father.

According to most accounts, Fletcher Robinson’s only contribution was to tell his friend Conan Doyle about the West Country legend of a ghostly hound and to borrow the name of the family coachman for Sir Henry Baskerville. Indeed, the octogenarian even showed Evans the inscribed first edition of the book in which Fletcher Robinson acknowledges as much. But Baskerville claimed much more for his employer’s son:

‘Doyle didn’t write the story himself. A lot of the story was written by Fletcher Robinson. But he never got the credit he deserved. They wrote it together at Park Hill, over at Ippleden. I know, because I was there.

According to Baskerville, long before Conan Doyle arrived at Park Hill, Fletcher Robinson had confided:

“Harry, I’m going to write a story about the moor and I would like to use your name”.

Baskerville then continued:

“Shortly after his return from the Boer War, Bertie (Robinson) told me to meet Mr Doyle at the station. He said they were going to work on the story he had told me about. Continue reading →

The Land Girl

Found at the London 2016 May Ephemera Fair – an issue of this magazine – THE LAND GIRL. (NO. 7. VOLUME 2, OCTOBER 1941.) This was issued by the Women’s Land Army The first article is an encouraging piece aimed at the new Land Girl, who possibly for the first time, will be meeting other girls from far flung parts of Britain and the British Commonwealth.

On Being Strange.

At this time of year many members of the Land Army are working far from their homes. In particular, girls who are threshing and potato lifting have come long distances, and many others have undertaken particular jobs in counties they have never visited before.

This offers a grand opportunity to break down prejudices which have survived from the times (little more than a hundred years ago) when it took many days of laborious travel to traverse this island and the vast majority of people never left their own county throughout their lives. But prejudice dies hard, and in many counties people who have lived in them for less than ten years are still called “foreigners.”

It is the right spirit which makes girls volunteer to go where they are most needed – once they have got there it is very important that they should stay, for they are needed, and a failure to stick it out means a great deal of trouble and wasted time and money, neither of which can be afforded nowadays. Home-sickness is almost inevitable, but it does not last, and a determination to be interested in new places and different people will help it to pass quickly. Continue reading →

How to dance the Hokey Cokey

60670 Found- some sheet music for the song The Cokey Cokey which later became the song (and dance) the Hokey Cokey. This is what it is all about… There are many theories about its origins – dealt with at Wikipedia and in a Mental Floss piece on its ‘dubious origins.’ Possibly the name came from the magician’s ‘hocus pocus’. This version was written in 1942 by Jimmy Kennedy (1902-1984). Jimmy Kennedy states that his version is based on ‘a traditional action song known long ago in the mining camps and saloons of the Canadian West. The word ‘Cokey’ means a dope fiend but what this has to do with the dance is not at all clear!’ As he says – it then came over in World War 2 with the Canadian troops. He explains on the back of the sheet music exactly how to do the dance:

This is one of the simplest dances ever. You hold your partner in the normal way and while the verse is being played you may fox-trot using any steps you like. When the chorus starts, that is, on the words, ‘Left arm out’, you put your left arm in line with your shoulder, continuing on the words ‘Left arm in’ by bending the left arm in and touching your shoulder, then ‘Left arm out’ as before. You hold your partner with the other arm. ‘Shake it all about’ explains itself —you simply shake your hand and arm with a circular motion. On the next line ‘You do the Cokey Cokey and turn around’ the appropriate action is to place the forefinger of the right hand pointing downward on top of your head and do a complete turnaround. ‘That’s what it’s all about’ ends the actions and you take hold of your partner in the normal way. Then the chorus starts over again with the right arm, then left foot and then the right foot etc., It should not be taken to fast..

This dance, since its introduction here by the Canadian forces, has caught on like wildfire and bids fair to out-rival some of the most sensational dance successes of the past.

Note: Alternatively the dance maybe performed by partners facing each other in line as in the Palais Glide and on the words ‘That’s what it’s all about’ both hands are spread out palm upwards. SEE?