Happy Birthday …. The Edge Theatre at 15 … and still the best

If you haven’t joined the party, there is still time.

It’s been going on since 11 this morning and will continue with heaps of events into the evening.

Now I have written about The Edge Theatre over the years* and still can’t better their own description that “since opening in 2011, our beautiful venue has entertained, captivated and enthralled audiences with some of the best small scale touring theatre in the country, alongside our own productions made by our wonderful in-house creatives.

Over the years we’ve worked with hundreds of fantastic actors and musicians; many are professional, some have learning disabilities, some have experience of homelessness, some are from our local community and all of them are brilliant!

As theatre makers we delight in creating shows which reflect the world that we live in, even if we’ve set them on the moon. They’re honest, relevant and always full of hope.

As leaders in participation we provide a range of exciting opportunities for people to be creative. At The Edge you can Act, Sing, Dance, play the Ukulele, Write, Paint, Draw or just be. Our café is known as one of the most friendly and welcoming in Chorlton!

Whether you’re a professional or community artist, a newcomer to the world or a veteran of it, participant or audience member, The Edge is your theatre and arts centre in Manchester.”**

Enough said ….. when I came away at 2 the rain hadn’t stopped the fun and the party was in full swing with a jam-packed day of live music, DJs, family entertainment, and creative workshops, with a few surprises.

Location; The Edge’s Birthday bash down at Manchester Road

Pictures; from the Edge today, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*The Edge Theatre, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/The%20Edge%20Theatre%20Company

*The Edge Theatre and arts Centre, https://www.edgetheatre.co.uk/

Treasures from Southern Cemetery ……………..

Now there is a lot to say about Southern Cemetery and over the years I have done my fair share.*

Memorial to Satinik Kouyoumjian, 2013

It was opened in 1879, is still a municipally run cemetery which is the largest in Britain and the second largest in Europe.

Battered but still doing the biz, 2026

And like all those other Victorian public cemeteries, it is more than just a burial place.  

It is a place rich in history from the monuments of the great and good to the humbler gravestones, each with a story of which the inscriptions are clues to much more about the lives of those interred here.

Added to the reminders of those past lives there is an abundance of nature, from mature and not so mature trees to the abundance of wildlife.

For the Corporation who bought the 100-acre site in 1872 the grand plan was thwarted by drainage issues which put a hold on proceedings and involved the construction of a sewer to the river Mersey which was two miles away. **

It was indeed a very necessary project give than “water stood throughout the ground at about three below the surface and permeated the substratum of sand down to the clay about 15 feet deep”. *** 

Nor was this all because the in constructing the chapels workmen had to dig down to the clay levels and then build concrete piers and brick arches for the foundations to rest on.

Waiting for a paint job, 2026

All of which makes me ponder on the sagacity of the landowners who sold off the 100 acres, especially as a cursory glance of maps from the 1840s and 1850s show a fair a fair number of ponds and culverted water courses.

It's all in the detail, 2026

Outside the Jewish Cemetery, Southern Cemetery 2026

But enough of such doom and disappointment.

The civil engineering scheme was completed, the chapels built and the citizens of Manchester signed up for their little bit of eternal rest.

And now one hundred and forty-seven years later there is much to see, and on Monday after attending a funeral I took a walk and recorded some fine examples the railings that abut the wall of the cemetery running along Barlow Moor Road from the Crematorium all the way to Princess Parkway.

Like many I rarely even noticed them, but they are well worth looking at and remarkably despite layers of peeling paint they are in good condition.

Which is all I want to say.

Location; Southern Cemetery

Pictures; Memorial to Satinik Kouyoumjian, 2013, and those bits of iron, 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

*Southern Cemetery, https://chorltonhistory.blogspot.com/search/label/Southern%20Cemetery & The Quirks of Chorlton-cum-Hardy, Andrew Simpson, and Peter Topping, 2017

**The New Manchester Cemetery, The Manchester Guardian, May 23rd 1879

***ibid, The New Manchester Cemetery

The Isle of Wight August 1970 ......... a concert and a lesson in what to remember for Chris and Marisa

Now just for once I am not going to let the facts get in the way of the story which is another way of saying that I would rather keep my imperfect memories of the Isle of Wight Festival in the summer of 1970 pristine. 

The concert with the hill behind, 1970

The alternative would be to allow reality to spoil what I have remembered for 54 years.

It was a weekend and the four of us were all pretty bored.

The prospect of another night in the pub didn’t appeal and so there and then around seven in the evening we took off from London with sleeping bags, a change of underwear and headed south.

We arrived at Portsmouth, waited I guess till morning and then after the crossing joined shed loads of others on their way to the music.

I am not sure any of us knew what to expect, and had not even thought about the entrance fee.
As it turned out there was a hill overlooking the concert area and to my eternal shame we sat there and watched the music for free.

The line-up I am told included Jimi Hendrix, Miles Davis, Jethro Tull, Ten Years After, Chicago, The Doors, Lighthouse, The Who Emerson, Lake & Palmer, The Moody Blues, Joan Baez, Free, Joni Mitchell, Leonard Cohen, Kris Kristofferson, Donovan, John Sebastian, Terry Reid, Taste, and Shawn Phillips.

And of these I can remember but a few and if I am very honest only the Doors stand out.

In 1970 .......

The reasons for such a lapse of memory are unclear, but I fell a sleep listening to the Doors.

That said it was magical, because as dusk gave way to night hundreds of camp fires had been lit across the hill.  I would like to think that as the fires burned the Doors played “Light my fire” but I have no idea.

We left the following day missed Jimi Hendrix but felt relieved that we had avoided the mud and gunge which was the area around the lavatories.

So I have to say I came away with no revelations of spiritual awareness, and not even much of a memory of the music.

In the years afterwards I discovered four colleagues I worked with and another half dozen acquittances were also there but again to my shame I never shared the fact that we stayed for just one day and one night.

And all of this, because two of my Canadian cousins were impressed at my casual reference to the adventure, which in turn has made me come clean.

Location; the Isle of Wight Concert, 1970

Pictures; at the Festival, 1970, Roland Godefroy,who granted permission to use the image  under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License, Version 1.2 and me in 1970 from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Pictures from a family album, Dartford 1928

I have to confess I am drawn to old family photographs.

Nor does it matter that they are not my family.

In fact very few of ours have survived.  Now this may be simply bad luck or a tendency that runs through the family to always be the person taking the pictures not the subject.

Added to that some of those that have not been lost or destroyed have no name, or date and so they remain a mystery.

Now that should be a lesson to all of us, and even more so in the digital age where while the opportunities to take pictures are boundless the chances are that even less will stay the course.

We photograph what takes our fancy in an instant with a camera phone, may send it to friends but rarely save them for long.

Even if we are more mindful of the future the likelihood is that they will be stored on a computer with no hard copy made of the image.

All of which has been prompted by these delightful photographs of Harold Morris, who was born in Eltham in 1902, grew up in Welling and died in 1976.

His was a full and productive life.  He married Alma Minnie Shrove in 1928 and these are some of their photographs, courtesy of his niece who has written

“Young Harold's first love broke his heart, but when he was 26 he married a Bexleyheath girl, Alma Minnie Shove. 

The bridesmaid was his youngest sister, Dorothy who was Jean’s mother, a self-willed child. 

Her dress had too many frills in her view and so, on the bus journey to Bexleyheath she took scissors with her and cut off as many as she could before her parents noticed.”

Such are the stories from family weddings.

Pictures’ courtesy of Jean Gammons

Silly things to do on Beech Road ….. greeting the morning

It’s not an original idea, and it’s something I have done before, but when you sit at the same spot every morning, you should always record the scene.

And so, as the mornings have rolled on through August, I have sat with my morning coffee and watched the changing skyline.

They were all taken between 5 and 7 am and I suppose hint at how slow my mornings can be.

From exciting to drab ….  to beautiful and stunning they are the backdrop of another day.

Most have made their way onwards to my kids, sisters and friends with that simple “Morning X”.

Those with long memories may want to suggest I am merely copying that practice of posting a cup of coffee on Facebook which was so prevelent in the early years of that social media platform. 

To which I can only respond ... at least it ain't a cat.

And that is all I have to say.

Location; Beech Road

Pictures; morning coffee in August 2026, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

Lost and forgotten streets of Manchester nu 34 Mallard Street

It’s one of those little streets which run off Charles Street and which are cut short by the river and the railway viaduct.

For most people Charles Street will be the one that leads to the Lass a Gowrie pub and until its demolition was fronted by the side of the BBC Building which lasted just over 30 years.

Andy Roberston was there in 2012 just after the building which was the The Okasional Cafe had also been demolished.

The spot like so many is now a car park waiting redevelopment, leaving me also to wonder what will become of the old HSBC Bank on the corner of Charles Street and Oxford Road, which closed one day without me even knowing.

Location; Manchester

Picture, Mallard Street, 2012, from the collection of Andy Robertson

Painting Peckham ............. standing in a pub with no beer ....... the Carlton Tavern on Culmore Road

Now it’s just one of those things that “there's nothing so lonesome, morbid or drear than to stand in the bar of a pub with no beer.”*

The Carlton Tavern 2015 from a photograph, 2008

Which I guess might well be the closing words for the Carlton Tavern.

It did the business of pulling and serving pints on Culmore Road from 1867 till sometime around 2011.

But like so many pubs around the country that fateful mix of cheap supermarket beer, changing life styles and the onward march of the bar culture have done for so many traditional drinking places.

So as part of Peter’s ongoing project to paint the pubs of Peckham here is his painting of the Carlton Tavern taken from a 2008 photograph on London Pubology that excellent site for all things to do with London pubs and from where I discovered a little of his history.**

The Carlton tavern, 2015

And by sheer coincidence just a few days earlier Adam Burgess sent me another photograph of the place which he tells me “is now a block of flats but  has still got the advertising for the world cup on the blackboards” and if you look closely there also is the old  sign standing outside.

But for all that it is still a pub with no beer which brings me back to that song which I must have first heard sometime in the late 1950s.

It was adapted by Gordon Parsons from Dan Sheehan’s poem "A Pub with No Beer"  and was made popular by fellow Australian country singer Slim Dusty.

Since then it has been covered by a shedful of singers and has settled so deep into our culture that I assumed it was an old Victorian music hall song.

And along the way it has become the anthem for any one whose pub has temporarily run out of beer which is why it was such a hit in Ontario in 1958 when a strike at of Canadian brewery workers stopped the flow of beer for 48 days.

Slim Dusty

But that like the song is for another time leaving me only to reflect that having spent the last hour listening to the songs of Dusty Slim I have become a fan.***

Not that I suspect I will win many converts in our house for his brand of Australian country music which like all good country music mixes simplicity with a dash of truth and humour.

All of which is a long way from Culmore Road and that pub with no beer.

Location; Peckham, London

Painting; The Carlton Tavern, © 2015 Peter Topping from a photograph, 2008 in London Pubolgy 

Web: www.paintingsfrompictures.co.uk

Facebook: Paintings from Pictures https://www.facebook.com/paintingsfrompictures

Picture; The Carlton Tavern, 2015, courtesy of Adam Burgess and Slim Dusty reproduced from ABC News, 2003


*Slim Dusty sings a Pub with No Beer,  https://uk.video.search.yahoo.com/search/video?p=Slim+Dusty+sings+a+Pub+with+No+Beer&fr=mcafee&fr2=p%3As%2Cv%3Av%2Cm%3Asb%2Crgn%3Atop&ei=UTF-8

** Carlton Tavern, 45 Culmore Road, Peckham SE15
http://pubshistory.com/LondonPubs/Camberwell/CarltonTavern.shtml

***State funeral planned for Slim Dusty, ABC News  http://www.abc.net.au/news/2003-09-19/slim-dusty-hangs-up-his-spurs/1481156