The story of things …… silly history

It remains a sad fact of my life that at 74 with fewer years ahead of me than behind, I remain challenged by so many bits of technology that most people take in their stride.

Take for instance changing the time on the oven clock to accommodate the clocks going forward or backwards every half year.

It matters not that I have the manual and can call up helpful advice from You Tube and countless experts. 

The oven clock refuses to perform the way it should.

I follow the instructions …..  it refuses to accommodate me …..  I turn the thing off, repeat the process every so often over a few days, and then without warning it does what everyone tells me is so easy.

This always catches me out and despite having carefully got the correct time on each previous attempt this time I am always out by 5 minutes.  

Do I start the process again to get the right time?

Do I heck. It is enough that after fourteen attempts across Sunday through to Monday I have a time almost resembling the ones on my phone and on the clock on the wall.

By chance it is 5 minutes ahead, and that is good enough for me, as I reason thinking it is later than it is will mean none of us is late to an appointment.

All of which dodges that more profound problem that I have never grappled with the mechanics of Daylight Saving Time.  I understand the logic and the history of the idea but despite being patiently told what happens I can not visualise the process.  So I don’t put the clocks forward or backward, instead I wake up on the Sunday, and wait for the wireless announcer to tell me which hourly news broadcast I am listening to.

Of course today my smart phone and the computers have already understood what to do and adjusted their clocks accordingly, which reinforces my position on the ladder of creation as somewhere between an amoeba and a gerbil.

Location; sometime at the beginning of the 20th century

Pictures; Stubborn oven clock, 2023, from the collection of Andrew Simpson

Silly history ...... part two ...... the newspaper headline

Now you have to be of a certain age to remember and have read the newspaper story with the headline, "Nudist welfare man's model wife fell for the Chinese hypnotist from the Coop bacon  factory". 

Being silly, 1979

It appeared in the News of the World on Sunday April 26th 1970 and I was living in a bedsit on Malvern Grove, off Burton Road.

Back then Sunday morning was the Sunday Times, and if I was in the mood I might also have bought the News of the World, or as Private Eye renamed it .... "The News of the Screws".

And that Sunday I spent the extra few pennies and was rewarded with that memorable headline which I shared with friends who like me reacted with a mix of amusement and vague distaste.

Only recently did I discover that the headline was the work of Monty Levy who died in 2016, and whose life was reported in Barrow based newspaper the Mail, which can be accessed by following the link.

And that is it, just a silly headline which has gone down in history, leaving me just to say there is no connection with "Nudist welfare man's model wife fell for the Chinese hypnotist from the Coop bacon  factory" and the picture, other than that both date from the 1970s.

After all images of the newspaper will be copyright.

Picture; being silly in St Ann's Square, 1979, from the collection of Andrew Simpson 

*Tributes to former Barrow journalist with talent for headline writing, The Mail, Barrow, February 22nd, 2016,  https://www.nwemail.co.uk/news/barrow/16459621.tributes-to-former-barrow-journalist-with-talent-for-headline-writing/

Silly history ...... part one ..... Richard III Rebothered ..... on the wireless

Now silly history comes in many forms. 

There are books like 1066 And All That, to films which purport to be serious and accurate but make so many howlers that they are laughable, of which Brave Heart is judged to be one of the best.

And then there are the deliberate dramas which can be a clever take on an event or a historical figure mixing humour with just enough facts to be something entertaining and offer an alternative interpretation.

Which is pretty much what you get with  Richard III Rebothered, where "The Penny Dreadfuls, combine history and laughs as they explore the life of much maligned 'hunchback king' Richard III". 

I missed it first time when it was broadcast in 2020 and I have every intention of listening in to the others.**.

Picture;  Portrait of Richard III of England, painted c. 1520 (approximate date from tree-rings on panel), after a lost original, for the Paston family, owned by the Society of Antiquaries, London, since 1828, from Richard III of England, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_III_of_England

*Richard III Rebothered, https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000h8gk

**The Curse of the Beagle, A comedic exploration of a young Charles Darwin's adventures aboard the HMS Beagle. The Odyssey, Comedy trio Penny Dreadfuls transport us to ancient Greece. Robert Webb stars as Odysseus, Macbeth Rebothered, An alternative spin on the tale of this noble king. Greg McHugh stars. Hereward The Wake, Revolution, Guy Fawkes, Perceus and Lucius Faversham, The comedy trio's swashbuckling tale of Victorian Britain's great twin industrialists.

Silly History …..the series where you get to choose …… no.1 comics, films, and howlers

Now, there is always the danger that you can get too serious about the past and sometimes it is fun to take the silly approach.

Lt Hornblower in action

It started when a friend told me she had posed with one of those “plastic gladiators” who patrol the foot of the Colosseum in Rome looking for tourists and a few euros.

And that made me think of how history was treated in the comics and films of my youth.

Lt. Hornblower, R.N. was a fictional sailor who served in the Royal Navy during the long years of war with Republican and Napoleonic France.

He featured in the novels of C.S. Forrester, and while the Hornblower and many of his contemporaries were fictional, the books were grounded in historical accuracy.

But not so Olac the Gladiator who appeared in the Tiger comic from 1957 till 1969.

Olac had been a Celtic slave from Cumbria, who won his freedom after a life as a gladiator, and as Cumbrian gladiators do, he went on to loyally serve the Emperor through many stirring adventures.

All of which is fine, if a tad far featured, but almost believable, until that is we came across his friend Ulf, who was a Viking, which rather messes up the historical timeline.

But this cavalier approach to accuracy pales into insignificance, when put up against the story of a group of children in 1950s Britain on holiday in the north east who come across  an entire Romano British community still living along a stretch of Hadrian’s Wall.

I think the series ran in the Lion comic around the same time that Olac and Ulf  were having their stirring adventures.

David slaying Goliath

Of course, there were many successful portrayals of historical figures in comics like the Eagle, and in Look and Learn which was a weekly educational magazine for children.

One my favourites was the story from the Eagle of The Life of David, - the Shepherd King, which for a nine-year-old was far more exciting than learning about it  during scripture lessons.

It was well drawn, stuck to the line, and was totally believable, but for every David, there was a Olac, and with that in mind I shall put out the appeal for silly historical pictures, even sillier historical films, or follies which pretend to be what they aren’t.

Pictures; Lt. Hornblower, R.N., Eagle Comic, August 11, 1962, and David slaying Goliath with a slingshot, Eagle Comic, November 29th, 1958