Charm

I’ve always been fascinated by the following as explained by the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN):

All matter around us is made of elementary particles, the building blocks of matter. These particles occur in two basic types called quarks and leptons. Each group consists of six particles, which are related in pairs, or ‘generations’. The lightest and most stable particles make up the first generation, whereas the heavier and less-stable particles belong to the second and third generations.

All stable matter in the universe is made from particles that belong to the first generation; any heavier particles quickly decay to more stable ones. The six quarks are paired in three generations – the ‘up quark’ and the ‘down quark’ form the first generation, followed by the ‘charm quark’ and ‘strange quark’, then the ‘top quark’ and ‘bottom (or beauty) quark’.

Quarks also come in three different ‘colours’ and only mix in such ways as to form colourless objects. The six leptons are similarly arranged in three generations – the “electron” and the “electron neutrino”, the “muon” and the “muon neutrino”, and the “tau” and the “tau neutrino”. The electron, the muon and the tau all have an electric charge and a sizeable mass, whereas the neutrinos are electrically neutral and have very little mass.

The best understanding of how these particles and three of the forces are related to each other is encapsulated in the Standard Model of particle physics but I’m not going down that path. Let’s stick with quarks. Why Quark?

In the early 1960s, American physicist Murray Gell-Man came up with the word quork, which he used to refer to his concept of an elementary particle smaller than a proton or neutron (by his own account he was in the habit of using names like ‘squeak’ and ‘squork’ for peculiar objects). He later settled on the spelling quark after reading a line from James Joyce’s Finnegans Wake: “Three quarks for Muster Mark!” This name was chosen because it was originally theorized that all of composite matter was built from 3 quarks.

In 1970, physicists Sheldon L. Glashow, John Iliopoulos and Luciano Maiani proposed a fourth quark, serving as a counterpart to the strange quark much like top and bottom. And so, on by what most accounts call a whim, they named it the charm quark. The first charmed particles were observed in 1974.

I have no idea what the following means:

‘It is known as the Glashow–Iliopoulos–Maiani (GIM) mechanism through which flavour-changing neutral currents (FCNCs) are suppressed in loop diagrams. It also explains why weak interactions that change strangeness by 2 (ΔS = 2 transitions) are suppressed, while those that change strangeness by 1 (ΔS = 1 transitions) are allowed, but only in charged current interactions.’

Glashow said the name was because of the “symmetry it brought to the subnuclear world”, balancing the number of known quarks and leptons. He also associated charms with warding off evil. The charm quark prevented particle decays predicted by the three-quark theory, which can look evil to a particle physicist when the timing is bad enough.

I remember starting Finnegans Wake years ago but giving up after a few pages.

from Finnegans Wake by James Joyce

Three quarks for Muster Mark!
Sure he hasn't got much of a bark
And sure any he has it's all beside the mark.
But O, Wreneagle Almighty, wouldn't un be a sky of a lark
To see that old buzzard whooping about for uns shirt in the dark
And he hunting round for uns speckled trousers around by Palmer-stown Park?
Hohohoho, moulty Mark!
You're the rummest old rooster ever flopped out of a Noah's ark
And you think you're cock of the wark.
Fowls, up! Tristy's the spry young spark
That'll tread her and wed her and bed her and red her
Without ever winking the tail of a feather
And that's how that chap's going to make his money and mark!

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Charm - In Search of Charm

‘In Search of Charm’ by Mary Young. This book should have been returned to Palatine Secondary School library in 1970. Oops, my mistake, but now that I’ve dug it out from one of my many bookcases, I think I’ll read it again and see how the world has changed fifty odd years on. At school, we were encouraged to walk properly upright, shoulders back, no slouching. Deportment included doing this carrying a book on our heads. This was the sort of thing covered in the book. I remember learning the correct way to open and close a door when entering or exiting a room. I also remember that it was considered acceptable to smoke on a train, but not on a bus, and certainly not outside on the street. This was all aimed at girls becoming ladies. I’ve no idea what the boys did, if anything. They continued to charge about like apes.

I was an impressionable fifteen year old in 1970. I idolised Twiggy, though all I had in common with her was incredibly skinny legs and an eye for fashion. I didn’t have her gorgeous face, still don’t. I was a young lady, behaving mostly in a lady-like manner. I loved my trips to stay with family in London which would always include a visit to Carnaby Street where I would look for something delicate and floaty to wear. And beads, they were my signature accessory.

It’s obvious to me now, as a mature, hopefully lady-like woman, that I grew up in a time when girls were being trained, if that’s the right description, to become good wives. My aunt told me that the way to a man’s heart was through his stomach. I get by, but I’m not the Cordon Bleu that she once was. Luckily, I married a man who is an excellent cook and perfectly capable of making a delicious meal. Presenting ourselves as easy on the eye by looking nicely groomed was important, too. Um, for self-esteem, first.

A friend of my mother’s had a fascinating charm bracelet that gave me such joy to look at. It was gold and stuffed with many charms. Something had a folded ten-shilling note inside, something else a pound note. I’d never remember it all, but I loved looking at it and finding things I’d previously missed. It must have been worth a small fortune and it must have been really heavy. Just something that has stuck in my memory.

I expect that re-reading ‘In Search of Charm’ will fill me with horror. Women are equal. We can come out of the kitchen. I had my own mortgage when I was single.

I chose this poem because I liked it.  

The Charm

Thrice toss these oaken ashes in the air,
Thrice sit thou mute in this enchanted chair,
Then thrice three times tie up this true love’s knot,
And murmur soft ‘She will, or she will not.’
Go burn these pois’nous weeds in yon blue fire,
These screech-owl’s feathers and this prickling briar,
This cypress gathered at a dead man’s grave,
That all my fears and cares an end may have.
Then come, you fairies! Dance with me a round;
Melt her hard heart with your melodious sound.
In vain are all the charms I can devise:
She hath an art to break them with her eyes.

Thomas Campion (1567 – 1620)

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Jumble Hole Clough

Some years ago, Adele and I on a grand day out from Blackpool ventured across the old county line between Lancashire and Yorkshire. That boundary ran along Jumble Hole Clough, a steep-sided wooded valley formed by a fast-flowing stream that eventually discharged into the River Calder.

In the 19th century (actually from the late 1700s onwards) through to the early 20th century, the steep-sided valleys of the Upper Calder area were home to a series of mills that harnessed the power of fast-flowing streams to turn water-wheels that produced the power to drive spinning and weaving machines of the Industrial Revolution.

One of the earliest was built at Mytholmroyd by Thomas Edmondson, its scribbling and carding machines being water-powered and its spinning frames worked by young women and girls. Other mills soon followed across the region, financed by wealthy merchant-manufacturers. Eventually hundreds of mills were in place across Calderdale, spinning, dyeing, knitting, stitching and weaving wool, cotton and silk with practised excellence into cloth, bedding and carpets. The opening of the Rochdale canal in 1796 and the building of a branch of the Lancashire and Yorkshire Railway through the Calder Valley in 1841, provided excellent transport links for the mills to bring materials in and ship product out to the world.

Jumble Hole Clough, focus of today's blog, lies to the west of Hebden Bridge and Charlestown. By the early 19th century it was a thriving industrial centre with four large mills: Staups (originally Starlings) Mill, Cow Bridge Mill, Spa Mill and Jumble Hole Mill itself.

Staups Mill was apparently the earliest of the four to be built. It was a cotton mill with two 'mules', with two hundred and sixteen spindles on each (a comparatively small operation), spinning calico for the most part. It appears to have changed ownership several times during the 19th century.

"Brave dreams and their mortgaged walls are let rot in the rain."

Cow Bridge Mill was a three storey mill built over the stream and an artificial waterfall created to divert the stream into a mill dam. It was accompanied by a row of cottages providing accommodation for the mill workers. Originally a cotton-spinning mill, it changed to worsted production in the 1830s. When it finally closed down near the end of that century, the looms were relocated to more modern premises elsewhere.

Spa Mill was a much bigger five-storey cotton mill built around 1788. It was powered by an overshot water wheel from a dam above the mill. It was said to have specialised in fustian, a tough cotton cloth used mainly in men's clothing (jackets and trousers). 

Jumble Hole Mill is the only one of the four still in existence. Today it is used as private residences and workshops. It was originally called Underbank dyeworks and was particularly used for dying silk, having two dye sheds. It was partially destroyed by fire in 1899 but was rebuilt and survived in use until the 1950s under the ownership of Cocker and Co. Ltd. "bleaching, dyeing and finishing of blacks and colours; rayons; pongees; crepes; repps; cashmeres; brocades; honeycombes; mercerised stripes, muslins; lenos; doria shapes. Underbank Dyeworks, steam, tel TN 207. T.A.Cocker Mng director; Mabel townsend Secretary". The remains of the mill dam which was fed by a goit from Jumble Hole Clough, can still be seen above the mill.

Of course, as is the way of the world, increased mechanisation, the growth of industrialisation and much cheaper labour in other parts of the world in the 20th century eventually meant that the mills of Calderdale were no longer viable concerns. Gradually they all closed down.

In the last hundred years the abandoned workplaces have fallen into ruin (as the photograph of what remains of Staups Mill above shows), and trees and wildlife have reclaimed the steep-sided valleys. A once bustling area full of noise, smoke and human activity, is now a green and pleasant habitat filled with birdsong and the sound of rushing water, a paradise for hikers, dog-walkers and nature lovers. 

Only a couple of examples of the area's industrial heritage remain, preserved as museums, and those fast-flowing streams with their occasional mill pools and weirs.

"Happiness is now broken water at the bottom of a precipice."

It's Ted Hughes country, of course. He was born at Mytholmroyd, midway between Heptonstall and Jumble Hole Clough and to the west of Hebden Bridge. His parents had a house at Slack, near Heptonstall, and Sylvia Plath is buried in Heptonstall churchyard.

If you're intimately familiar with the poetry of Ted Hughes, you'll know that he wrote a collection of poems in the late 1970s about that region of West Yorkshire that was his backyard when he was growing up. I quote his preface to that volume here, along with the titular poem from the collection, as it reminds me of our fascinating walks in Calderdale that day.

"The Calder valley, west of Halifax, was the last ditch of Elmet, the last British Celtic kingdom to fall to the Angles. For centuries it was considered a more or less uninhabitable wilderness, a notorious refuge for criminals, a hide-out for refugees. Then in the 1800s it became the cradle for the Industrial Revolution in textiles, and the upper Calder became 'the hardest worked river in England'.

Throughout my lifetime, since 1930, I have watched the mills of the region and their attendant chapels die. Within the last fifteen years the end has come. They are now virtually dead, and the population of the valley and the hillsides, so rooted for so long, is changing rapidly."

Remains Of Elmet

Death-struggle of the glacier

Enlarged the long gullet of Calder

Down which its corpse vanished.

Farms came, stony masticators

Of generations that ate each other 

To nothing inside them.

The sunk mill-towns were cemeteries

Digesting utterly 

All with whom they swelled.

Now, coil behind coil,

A Wind-parched ache,

An absence, famished and staring,

Admits tourists

To pick among crumbling, loose molars

And empty sockets.

                                                Ted Hughes, 'Remains Of Elmet', 1979

                                        

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Jumble

I can think of six second hand bookshops within an hour’s travel of where I live. Four of them are a delight and I have spent many happy hours browsing their shelves. And buying books of course. The other two look like someone has broken in overnight and done the following, according to my Chambers:

Mixed confusedly, thrown together without order, shaken up, jolted, mixed together, been agitated, floundered. i.e. in a Jumble.

bookshop chaos

Which is just about acceptable in one of them but the other is a danger. You have to go one way round and turn sideways to get along the passages, always with the threat of something falling on your head.

I’m not sure about the next bit but they both have no rhyme or reason in what you may find. You get Enid Blyton next to piles of the Geographical Magazine which I have sometimes found intriguing. But not if you want to search for a particular subject or author.

Which has got me thinking about how the others and indeed libraries actually do organise their books. I’ve heard about the Dewey system but what is it?

The following is from an article by Janine Ungvarsky and published by EBSCO in 2022:

‘Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC)
The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) is a way of organizing books in a library so that related topics are shelved together. The system identifies each book by its subject in such a way that adding a book to a grouping does not require renumbering books. It is the most widely used library-organizational system in the world and is constantly evolving as content is added.

Origins
The Dewey Decimal Classification (DDC) system was invented in 1873 by Melville Dewey (1851-1931), then a student assistant at the Amherst College library in Massachusetts. Dewey, who later became a founder of the American Library Journal and the organizer of the first conference for librarians, published his classification system in 1876.

order

Prior to this, a library numbered each book in its collection according to its location on the shelves. A book always had the same number in a library but not necessarily in other libraries, and books on related topics were not usually shelved together. This system made it possible for patrons to locate individual books, but they had to look up each book individually in a master file. The system also made it more difficult for patrons to find books on related subjects.

Dewey revamped this system, numbering books in relation to each other in a way that put books of like topics together. Other libraries adopted his system, creating the first standardized means of locating books in any library.

Structure of the DDC
Under the DDC, books are first grouped into general categories, or classes, and given a three-digit Arabic number based on the overall subject matter. 

These are the ten broad categories for classification:
000—is the most general and includes reference works such as encyclopedias and periodicals. It also includes computer science topics, something that did not exist when Dewey created the system.
100—is dedicated to works of philosophy and psychology, occultism, and parapsychology.
200—includes works related to religion.
300—includes all social sciences, such as anthropology, sociology, political science, law, economics, education, communication, and customs.
400—is dedicated to language, specific languages, and linguistics.
500—covers natural sciences and mathematic topics.
600—includes all technology.
700—is dedicated to the arts (fine and decorative arts, music, and performing arts) as well as sports and games.
800—is dedicated to literature and includes prose, poetry, and drama.
900—encompasses history and geography.

The first numeral in the three-digit number defines a book's general classification. The second numeral indicates a division of that classification, and the third further classifies the book within its division. For example, the 900 classification is for books about history and geography, while the 910 classification is for books about geography and travel. Books starting with 920 are about biography and genealogy, and books starting with 930 are about the history of the ancient world. The third number further classifies a book—a book with the number 931 is about the history of ancient China and a book with the number 932 is about ancient Egypt.

Dewey's system added decimal points to provide more refined classification. In this instance, the decimal point is more like the period in a sentence than a mathematical device; it signals a pause in reading or copying the number. The portion of the number to the right of the decimal point can have as many digits as necessary to allow for a detailed classification of the book's subject matter. For example, a book about caring for dogs is classified as 636.7, with the first "6" representing the broad class of technology, the "3" representing agriculture and related technology, the second "6" serving as the notation for animal husbandry, and the "7" after the decimal point indicating that the book is about dog care. Additional numbers after the decimal point could be added to define different facets of dog care.’

DDC organised library shelves

Well, I found that fascinating.

I thought I’d have a go at a short effort (not haiku) jumbling the definitions of Jumble:

Jumbled Jumble

Agitate, shake without order
throw confusedly, jolt,
flounder together

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Fruit Tree

It has to be Tangerine. Apples are awesome, bananas are brilliant, cherries are cute (fabulous blossom too), damsons are delicious, entawaks are exotic (look them up), figs are flavoursome, greengages are groovy... I could go on through the alphabet... but tangerines are the tops.

Let's get the etymology out of the way first. It ought to come as no surprise that tangerine was originally an adjective meaning 'of Tangier', the Moroccan seaport from which the fruit was first shipped, given that it grows in that region of the north African country. It was in fact once known scientifically as 'Citrus nobilis var. tangeriana', though its modern binomial is simply Citrus tangerina. The OED cites the first usage of tangerine from an edition of The Tatler in 1710. Morocco to this day is still the fourth largest producer of tangerines behind China (the world's biggest grower, though their variety is more commonly known as mandarin), Spain and Türkiye.

Tangerines

As for the fruit itself, tangerines are smaller and less spherical than oranges. A ripe tangerine has a slightly pitted, soft thin skin, is usually easy to peel, and the flesh inside tastes stronger and sweeter than an orange. Tangerines are great thirst-quenchers, being 85% water, 13% carbohydrate (fructose and glucose) and 2% fibre and protein. They are rich in vitamins A and C. One small tangerine provides about a third of the recommended daily vitamin C intake. Eat three a day and you'll never be a scurvy knave. They are also virtually fat-free. 

Tangerines are easier to grow than many other citrus fruits. They can even be grown in containers indoors. They require these key components:

- a mineral rich soil that does not decompose, and contains live microbials

- organic fertiliser without synthetic salts

- regular watering to keep soil moist but never waterlogged

- a minimum 6 to 8 hours of sunshine during the growing period (May to September in our hemisphere)

- a temperature than never drops below freezing

Tangerine trees take four years to reach maturity and start fruiting. They can eventually grow up to 15 feet tall, but can be kept more compact (6 to 8 feet) in a container or if pruned regularly. A healthy tangerine tree can produce up to 100 lbs or 45 kilos of fruit each season and will continue to fruit for up to fifty years if well maintained.

well maintained tangerine trees

Who recalls as a child finding a tangerine at the bottom of one's Christmas stocking? Apparently it's a tradition that goes right back to the 13th-century when French nuns would leave stockings full of fruit, nuts and tangerines at the houses of the poor at Christmas. It's certainly the case that the giving of tangerines as gifts to family and friends at the tail end of the year is an honoured tradition in China and Japan, the fruit and the colour being symbols of good luck and happiness.

 

The colour tangerine (as separate from orange) didn't appear in print until 1899. As an historical back note, even the word orange was a latecomer to the official spectrum of recognised colours. Until the arrival of oranges in 13th century Europe (brought to Spain from Persia by Arabs), and the naming of the colour after the fruit (nārang in Persian which became naranja in Spanish, with "have a naranja" eventually morphing into "have an orange" in English), objects of a shade between red and yellow were always described by the compound word reddish-yellow or yellowish-red (geoluhread in Old English).

Nowadays, tangerine, also known as 'vibrant orange', has a hex designation #f28500 in computer graphics and a Pantone number 15-1247 in the painting and printing trades. And we in the jewel of the north are very proud that our local football team plays in tangerine (not orange) and white, a tradition which actually began in 1923, before which time Blackpool played in a variety of fairly ordinary red or blue kits. It is not unusual to hear or read us being referred to as the Tangerines, as well as the Seasiders.

And so to my latest poem, which also lends its name to the title of my upcoming second collection due some time in the spring. More on that later. For now, I give you...

Tangerine

Sitting in the shade of this tangerine tree

a quiet hour devouring you page by page
my false bride your Christmas stockings
eyes of night dimpled smile lips as bright

as morning sunlight striking citrus. Folies

fade in memory your hex code printed on

emotions soft and slow to ripen. Cinch the

pebble peel up a spray of essential oil zest

as promise of cool flesh in segments fresh

and full which pressed to bursting squirt a
sweetness on my tongue. The tang itself of
life of love revealing in complex favours by

degrees a liquid fire to quench such lusting
as is chaptered within. End of my questing
just rind and spit pips attesting you’ve won
an unintentioned heart. Love you tangerine.

I couldn't write on the subject of fruit trees without leaving a small musical bonus in the form of Nick Drake's beautiful song: Fruit Tree from the LP 'Five Leaves Left'. It might have been inspired by his visit to Morocco in 1967.Just click on the song title to activate the YouTube link. Enjoy.

 

Thanks for reading. Up the mighty Pool. S ;-)

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Fruit Tree

When I moved into my previous house in Thornton Cleveleys it was the garden that sold me on the deal. It was an really ugly house, the kitchen was drab and cheerless, the bathroom cold and unwelcoming, but the back garden was huge. Despite a couple of discarded mattresses, overgrown by grass and weeds, there was a mighty sycamore at the far end and closer to the house, a fruiting cherry tree and a neglected apple tree.

I had to prune it back quite hard and attach sticky strips to the trunk to deter ants but by the next spring it was showing signs of recovery. The cherry blossomed and bore some sweet fruit. The apple tree did not. Naturally I was disappointed. I had planted raspberry canes the previous year and would pick a handful to eat with breakfast every summer morning. The apple tree was a dilemma.

The following spring I took my mum and my daughter to Southport flower show. I bought some vanilla lily bulbs and while walking round the marquees, came across seated group involved in a question and answer session with two celebrity gardeners. We took our seats and after a while I put up my hand and asked how they would suggest I could fix my tree. They in return asked whether there were other apple trees in the surrounding gardens. I responded that, yes, one garden had a tree. The solution, they announced is to cut a branch from that tree when it is in bloom and brush the flowers in my own tree with the pollen. I am pleased to announce that it worked and soon apples appeared. Simple solution.

Sadly the following year, we were hit by The Beast from the East and the cherry tree took the brunt of the cold winds and started to die. The apple tree thrived, however much of the fruit had brown speckles and were not appetising. I would take them off and had soon built up a pile at the foot of my perimeter hedge. During the cold winter season, this became a food store for hedgehogs and blackbirds who feasted on the fruit and the worms that the apples attracted. It is said that everything happens for a reason.

When I was much younger, my parents were tenants of a 16th century coaching inn. Next door was an abandoned cottage with an orchard behind. As village children with little entertainment to be had, we loved to play in the old building. We collected discarded tins of paint and made attempts to make it cheerful. The colours of paint made the interior quite a spectacle.

One day, around a dozen of us were messing about in the cottage when we heard a child's voice screaming. Running outside we discovered a little boy of around four had climbed an apple tree and was being viciously attacked hundreds of wasps. It seems that he kicked the nest. I told one of my friends to run and get the child's father, then ran to the telephone box and dialled 999 for an ambulance. He was going into shock by the time help arrived but after treatment and a brief spell in hospital, he recovered. It is a vivid memory for me and very frightening!

Now to get back to my old apple tree. Eventually I began to hang bird feeders from it and attached a birdhouse that I found in my dad's shed after he died in 1998 to the sycamore. That year we had our first brood of baby bluetits and on Christmas Day while eating lunch, the lawn dusted with snow,  a magnificent great spotted woodpecker came to eat from the feeder. It was a red letter day for the apple tree and as an avid bird lover, for me too. Over the years it attracted jays, wood pigeons, countless robins and just once, a pair of waxwings. It became a happy little tree.

The poem was written a good few years ago but I think that it captures the right moment.

A Winter's Tail

On a bright and bluish Boxing Day
when the house is quiet
the kids away
I am ironing alone
in the peace
facing the window
wide and clear
and I gaze to the garden
through frosted grass
while the tears stream down
for the love that I lost
for the joy that passed
Then I stop
and I peer at a flash of light
the green and yellow
a bird in flight
with a soft black cap
and a bold black chest
my acrobats are back to their nest
dashing and dancing
from limb to limb
of the apple tree with its mouldy trim
swinging from strings to a coconut
to taste sweet suet and butternut
such delight to my wondering eyes did appear
and brought me a smile from ear to ear.

Thank you for reading. Adele

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Fruit Tree

Arboriculture, or the cultivation of fruit trees goes back to the Neolithic period and was developed, perhaps, around 6,000 BCE within the Fertile Crescent in Mesopotamia, between the Tigris and the Euphrates, and in Egypt, in the Nile Valley. The first fruit trees to be cultivated were indigenous species.

I was going to go along the historical line and trace what happened over the thousands of years since then but in looking up details I came across this place in Kent and I’d never heard of it before and it sounds wonderful.

Brogdale Farm is near Faversham in Kent. It has the largest collection of temperate fruit in one place in the world. Row upon row of fruit trees and grape vines make up its treasure trove of over 4,000 fruit varieties. It is, in essence, the UK’s largest orchard.

Brogdale Farm

The collection is owned by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) and is part of an international programme to protect plant genetic resources for the future. The University of Reading is responsible for the curation and maintenance of the UK’s National Fruit Collection (NFC) in collaboration with the Fruit Advisory Services Team (FAST), who are based at the Farm. Public access is organised by Brogdale Collections, who manage public access and provide guided tours and run various events throughout the year.

They reckon to have near to 3,500 fruit trees and say that with around 2,100 varieties of apple tree, the spring time blossom display is worth a visit alone. But there is so much more to the Nation Fruit Collection. Its mandate is to safeguard the future of each and every one of its trees and vines. The genetic resources housed within the NFC are fundamental to researching how we can adapt fruit crops to our changing environment, or select varieties that will grow well as our seasons and climatic conditions change.

They ask why should you visit Brogdale and the National Fruit Collection? And answer that question thus:
‘As well as being a stunning sight to behold, you can taste many different varieties of fruit and even taste the exceptional apple juice that is produced from the harvest. Visitors can get their unfamiliar fruit varieties identified.

What’s more, you’ll be better acquainted with an establishment that has contributed immensely to the development of global fruit growing knowledge.... Since the NFC was established it has conserved the 4,000 cultivars and distributed them to research organisations all over the world, as well as supporting many local fruit groups and orchards to identify fruit varieties and obtain scions for rare cultivars.

By visiting, you’ll also be supporting the Brogdale Collections, which relies on visitors to the NFC and the festivals and events and on charitable funding. The best time to visit Brogdale Collections is during one of its events such as the Apple, Cider or Cherry Festivals, where you can taste and buy hundreds of varieties and tour the NFC, or Hanami Festival for spring blossom. But whenever you go, be sure to join the daily guided tour of the extensive orchards. See the website for more information.’

Here is an example of one of the Tours on offer:
Blossom Tours
Dates: 28, 29 March, 18, 19, 25, 26 April
Times: 11.30pm and 2pm

Brogdale blossom time

"The blossom tours will take you on a journey around the collections, discovering the seasonal highlights and peak blossom areas of the orchards. Ideal for the curious to learn about the National Fruit Collection or for aspiring photographers to grab those perfect shots of the blossom."

Thanks to Julie in Australia for suggesting the following poem.

After Apple-Picking

My long two-pointed ladder's sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there's a barrel that I didn't fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn't pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it's like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

                                                   Robert Frost

               

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Fruit Tree - An Apple Tree on St Kilda

It was one of those rare mornings where I didn’t need to be up early. A grandson had stayed with us recently, which meant early starts and walks to school in all weathers. Since he’s been home, I’ve been fighting some sort of flu virus which has given me a dreadful cough and some aches and pains. I’m not blaming him, of course not. I’ve got run down and not rested enough. Anyway, it was nice to stay in bed a bit longer, just dozing, listening to the wind whistling round the windows and imagining that I’m in my fantasy cottage in St Kilda, warm, cosy, everything I need, as a wild blizzard dominates the bleak surroundings. Somewhere in this blissful existence, I wanted a fruit tree. In reality, there are no trees of any sort on St Kilda. High winds and constant salt spray prevent tree growth and the peat, acidic soil is completely unsuitable. In my imagination, I have had sustainable soil shipped over to help maintain my vegetable plot. An apple tree would be lovely. Eventually, I had to get up from my gorgeous bed and live in the real world. My fruit tree blog had to be in there, somewhere.

Close to where I live, there was an abundance of damsons. The tree was over-hanging the garden wall on the property and the fruit spilled on to the pavement making a sticky, purple mess. One of my neighbours, with permission, collected some damsons and made jam. Much better than wasted fruit making a mess.

Nearby, there is a small, confused cherry tree. I say confused because it comes into bloom with fabulous blossom at various times of the year. Never any cherries, though.

At a young age, I learnt the hard way just how bad a tummy ache can be after eating crab apples picked from the tree. Home was always a pub, on a street in a town, so nowhere to play out except the carpark. That was fine for my bike or scooter, but no mates to play with. All changed when we moved to a pub in the village of Padfield near Glossop. I soon made friends from our school down the road and we were never in. We fished for tadpoles, got in trouble for playing in the local farmer’s silage pit until we were filthy and stinky and one day, decided to feast from an apple tree. Crab apples. They were bitter tasting, probably not ripe, and I imagine it was quantity that made me unwell. A lesson learnt.

My Haiku poem,

In my wildest dreams
I’m in comfort perfection,
St Kilda cottage.

Sweet, rosy apples,
So juicy and fresh each day,
Clustered on branches.

A rare, sunny day
And a cloudless sky in this
Archipelago.

Strong winds just bring snow
Icy, northern blasts make a
Harsh environment.

I wish I could grow
A fruit tree on St Kilda,
Weather protected.

PMW 2026

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Vinyl(s)

In the beginning was the vinyl. 

Well, not quite at the dawn of recorded music. Originally, from the 1880s onwards, there were perforated paper rolls for pianolas, wax cylinders for phonographs, flat and brittle shellac discs for gramophones and even magnetic reel-to-reel for tape-recorders. In fact vinyl records, made from polyvinyl chloride (or PVC), didn't make their appearance on the scene until the 1940s, sixty years into the process.

The durable two-sided discs contained analogue recordings in a continuous groove and were played on the turntable of a device with a valve amplifier and one of more speakers. The records came in two varieties: 7-inch "singles" playing at 45 rpm (revolutions per minute) and 12-inch "long players" (aka LPs) spinning at 33rpm. They were nicknamed variously discs, frisbees, hot biscuits, hot wax, liquorice pizzas, platters, slabs, and spinners. 

Then since the golden age of vinyl records (1950s to 1980s) look what else has come along. First of all cassette tapes, CDs, minidiscs and  i-Pods and then the recording angels went truly ethereal with the arrival of digital streaming services such as Napster and Spotify.

Some of you whippersnappers won't even have possessed a record-player or a vinyl disc, maybe not even CDs. I had my hand luggage searched at Manchester airport last summer and the security lady took great delight in holding up my Sony Walkman CD player and asking her youthful colleagues "Does anybody know what this is?" Few did, much indulgent amusement at my expense.

Nowadays music has blue teeth and Alexa as DJ. But those of us of an age regret selling our record collections back in the 1990s, or boxing them up in the loft for want of anything to play them on anymore. I bought my first vinyl in the early 1960s (starting with The Beatles) and then sold hundreds of LPs thirty years later because CDs were more compact and versatile. 

I only hung on to a few LP records that I thought would never get reissued on CD, and then over the last decade I've been buying some of my old favourites on vinyl again as the format has been making a (somewhat expensive) comeback. I now have my favourite fifty albums of all time, many in pristine 180g vinyl, because you really can't beat the organic sound quality of a record played on a good hi-fi system.

However, for a few decades sales of vinyl records plummeted from their millions per annum to a few hundred thousand, mostly on specialist labels and for club DJs who kept the vinyl culture going into the new millennium with their twin decks and their 12" grooves. So it's DJing I'm going to focus on today.

state of the art DJ twin-deck rig

The first documented use of the term disc jockey (DJ) is from 1941, no great surprise that it was coincident with the arrival of vinyl records. From the Second World War onwards, through the birth of rock & roll as a phenomenon, radio presenters who played records over the air started to become celebrities in their own right, building their fan base, commenting on the music they liked, having the pulling power to make songs 'hits'.

In America, the likes of Alan Freed, Bill Randle, Dick Clark, Murray the K and Wolfman Jack became cult figures. Randle brought Elvis Presley to the attention of the nation in the 1950s, and Murray the K did the same for The Beatles a decade later.

In the UK we had Brian Matthews and Alan Freeman on the BBC, Kid Jensen, Jimmy Saville and Johnny Walker on Radio Luxembourg and then a raft of DJs who would eventually become household names as pirate radio stations proliferated in the 1960s with Dave Cash, Dave Lee Travis, Emperor Rosko, John Peel, Keith Skues, Kenny Everett, Simon Dee, Tony Blackburn  and many more. (By the way, if you haven't seen the brilliant Richard Curtis movie 'The Boat That Rocked', remedy that soonest please, you won't be disappointed.) 

Radio Caroline DJ about to play the latest 'hot biscuit'

As well as radio DJs (whether terrestrial or piratical), the 1960s also gave rise to an enduring breed of vinyl spinning disk jockeys at clubs, dancehalls and discotheques up and down the country, They were often more than comperes and spinners of vinyl. Many were influencers and trend-setters, creating or promoting a dance craze here, a whole scene there... in no particular order or chronology, mod, goth, Motown, hip-hop, bluebeat, psychedelia, northern soul, grime, acid house, hi-NRG, electronica, reggae, new romantic, techno, ambient, jungle, ska, Eurobeat, whatever people wanted dance the night away to.

I can name-check a few movers and shakers if you like. Jeff Dexter in London basically turned the country onto the twist, before becoming the regular DJ at Middle Earth in the mid-sixties. Ian Levine and Rob Winstanley curated Northern Soul at places like the Twisted Wheel and Wigan Casino in the 1970s. Dave Haslam was the top DJ at Manchester's Haçienda during that city's Madchester era of the 1980s. Eddie Richards, godfather of 'house' music, was the main man at Camden Palace from the 1980s onwards. Annie Mac was a favourite spinner at Creamfields in more recent years. 

Then there are high profile DJs you've probably heard of by cultural osmosis, like Big Youth, Calvin Harris, Carl Cox, Fatboy Slim, Paul Oakenfold and Pete Tong, and beyond them a plethora you've certainly never heard of who go by funny aliases like Bro Safari, Deadmau5, Eiffel 65, Green Velvet, Jack Beats, Jillionaire, Lisa Lashes, NERVO, Sharkey, Totempole and Weird Genius.

I was once tempted by an offer to host a music show on local radio here in the jewel of the north. I thought about it for a while, the opportunity to turn people on to the range of music I like. I'd got as far as choosing an alias, Stanley Park, and a name for the show which would go out on Friday nights as Stanley Park's Midnight Works. But then I figured I'd be permanently tired with everything else I try to do - and anyway it turned out that the radio station doesn't have turntables and vinyl anymore, it's all digital now, WAV and FLAC and MP3 files plucked from the ether. So I got off that particular cloud.

While researching for this piece, I came across the song 'Last Night A DJ Saved My Life', a cheesy disco dance hit in the early 1980s for New York group Indeep. Rolling Stone magazine declared it to be "one of the greatest songs ever written about being a girl, listening to the radio, or any combination of the two" (lol) and Billboard reckons it's in the top fifty best dance tunes ever. I watched the video. It's two girls singing and a DJ playing the backing track on vinyl on a deck. The protagonists sing "if it wasn't for the music, I don't know what I'd do, yeah" and the DJ's response is "There's not a problem that I can't fix, 'Cause I can do it in the mix." What a hero.

I also stumbled upon the fact that a playful tweak of the title has given rise to a T-shirt very popular with clubbers (as pictured below) and I was momentarily diverted by the thought of perhaps writing a short story that would do justice to the title 'Last Night A DJ Shaved My Wife', something along the lines of a feisty midwife whose husband has walked out on her and three young children, so she becomes a sought-after DJ in a local nightclub at week-ends while delivering babies by day. How does that work as a treatment?

de rigeur saucy clubbing T-shirt "LAST NIGHT A DJ SHAVED MY WIFE"

I didn't go there in the end (not enough hours in the Saturday), but I did want to write a poem about the power of DJing, that shamanistic leading of the musical tribe into revel and rave. It's not the first time I've written on the topic. Check out this blog from six Januarys ago, which includes a poem featuring DJ Sky High (aka the Detonator) in Radio Big Bang.

As background (though one should never explain a poem), in 1927 psychoanalyst Carl Jung, who never visited Liverpool, claimed to have had a dream about the city saying “I found myself in a dirty, sooty city. It was night, and winter, and dark, and raining. I was in Liverpool. With a number of Swiss—say half a dozen. I walked through the dark streets... we found a broad square dimly illuminated by street lights, into which many streets converged. The various quarters of the city were arranged radially around the square. In the centre was a round pool, and in the middle of it a small island. While everything round about was obscured by rain, fog, smoke and dimly lit darkness, the little island blazed with sunlight. I had a vision of unearthly beauty, and that is why I was able to live at all. Liverpool is the “pool of life.” The “liver,” according to an old view, is the seat of life, that which makes to live.”. A local poet in the 1970s reckoned that Jung and his dream friends had arrived at the Cavern in Matthew Street.

The poem is truly a work-in-progress, to be continued obviously (at some point) but never mind that. So move the furniture out of the way, put on your black vinyl shoes and dance to the groove of...

Scouse House

A dream of a darkened cavern - the sound, the lights,

lights and sound of happy humanity bouncing round

bobbing and spinning at the bidding of  DJ Jungman.

Girls in short PVC dresses, lads all in black vinyl macs

sway as one to the rhythm of the shaman, undulating

in a primordial soup of collective euphoria,  gyrating

and hydrating, spinning and bobbing in trancelike joy

hydrating, gyrating to the rhythms of 12 inch grooves,

this musical amoeba in the grip of the power of DJing.*

To be continued...

(*pronounced "jing" with a silent d, not "deejaying", and evocative of magic as in Djinn or Genie.)

Thanks for reading, pop pickers! S ;-)

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Vinyl Junkies

For Christmas in 2025 my sister-in-law bought me a mug with the legend “It’s Not Hoarding if it’s Vinyl” emblazoned across it. She knows me well. It now stands full of paper clips in the room I keep my vinyl hoard in.

In the Seventies I lived in Lancaster just about the time I was coming of age. My records certainly weren’t a hoard then, but they were on their way to becoming a collection. A guy I worked with, John LePage, showed me how to make a box to store records in. He said you buy four pieces of blockboard ready cut to fourteen inches square and a piece of plywood to form the back. Take them home, counter sink and screw it together. It may take half an hour to make. You can paint it if you want to.

a vinyl hoard?

Now fifty years later, I’ve got fifteen of those boxes with over a hundred albums in each. Fifteen hundred records and more. If I play three a day over the next five hundred days, I’ll probably get them all in before I go to the great record shop in the sky. Ah well- maybe. That’s some going, even in retirement, and if I take out family days, Christmas days, birthdays, holidays, football matches and time with my wife, we are up to a thousand days already. So it’s probably totally unrealistic but then again hoarding is. I am not sure I would describe myself as a hoarder but others would. Hence the mug. I try hard not to be.

But do you know what the saddest thing of the lot might be? I can remember where I got most of them from or have a good go. I can certainly have a good go at guessing. The first long playing record I ever got was The Beatles' first album “Please Please Me “. My mum and dad were separated and my sister and I got our dad to buy two LP records, one for her and one for me. They were 30/-  (shillings) each. We got him to buy us these instead of his usual selection box. My sister got “With the Beatles”. We wore them out. But guess what - I have still got mine.

When I was doing my paper round, for which I got 30/- a week- luckily. I would plan out what records I would buy next, as I plodded around in the wet, cold and snow delivering the Bolton Evening News.

So it went. I used to buy new albums then. The folk boom came. I fell in love with the music of Mr Dylan. But if you wanted to be more esoteric you could buy albums on Elektra Records but they were 32/6d. The price of being erudite. Two and six more.

You could sit upstairs on the bus going to school with an album propped up on your knee, thinking everyone is looking at me because I’ve got a Jesse Fuller album. In truth they didn’t give a shit.

Somewhere wonderful to buy vinyl was Yanks in Manchester, a subterranean cellar next to the public toilets where Len Fairclough got caught or so they say, just across the road from The Palace Theatre. It was full of deleted records from across the pond that you could buy as cheap could be. The stuff I got from there was mind blowing.

In 1990 I moved to Blackpool. Forget the Tower, the Big One, Bloomfield Road - sorry Steve - the greatest thing Blackpool ever had to offer was Saddle Records which eventually ended up in Layton. This was a goldmine. Sadly missed by me and hundreds of others I would suspect.

a vintage Blackpool record shop

I once paid £20 for a David Blue album “Stories” in a second hand record shop in Chorley. I asked the lady if she wouldn’t mind taking the price tag off. She replied that of course she would and added that I would be surprised how many people asked this, so that their partner wouldn’t notice how much the record had cost.

And so on. Don’t worry I am not going to take you through every phase and every record I have ever bought since 1963. That would take more than five hundred days for me to write and for you to read. You would probably find it pretty tedious anyway.

I might add that these days I buy albums for their cover as much as for the record itself, which, of course, could well be knackered. There is always a good chance of that. I recently bought “Have I Right?!” album by The Honeycombs for two pounds in a charity shop in Poulton for the obscurity of the album itself and the cover. The record actually plays quite well. I had also previously bought an album by The Four Pennies at the same place for the same price with the same outcome.

I have six frames specially made for album covers on the wall in my mancave. I change these regularly to show off my collection and covers. Still remember the Jess Fuller album on the bus. Don’t know who I am trying to impress anyway. Nobody comes in here. Right now they display 60’s British R’n’B albums - The Rolling Stones, The Animals, The Pretty Things, Georgie Fame and the Blue Flames Live at The Flamingo and an Alexis Korner album. The last is of interest. Some second hand dealers have realised the interest in covers. I bought this for 50p with no record in it. These are in the frames now because I put them in after I took out my Christmas albums covers. Sad bastard stuff really. Confessions of a Vinyl Hoarder indeed.

Georgie framed and friends

I have always thought that the concept of the speed of records, seventy eight, forty five and thirty three and a third rpm was a good analogy for the way the baby boomers., like me, have lived our lives. Starting at breakneck speed and coming of age as the music slows to thirty three and a third. In the poem I have taken this idea and written around it in my poem.

The last verse stops in the early seventies. It has a certain pomposity and piousness about it. Still we were without too much doubt like that in our early twenties in the early seventies. I was anyway.

The Speed of Sound

You slid it from its cardboard wrapper
as if it were a holy relic.
You cranked up the gramophone.
The needle crashed down.
The black twelve-inch record,
spun at breakneck speed.
Seventy-eight revolutions a minute.
Brittle and fast they could easily shatter

Just like the records our lives turned fast,
We were the bees’ knees and bobby dazzlers.
Jiving, crashing, rocking and rolling.
ploughing the furrows, moving through the grooves.
Baby boomers let off the leash.

We lived our lives at seventy-eight rpm.
Brittle and fast we were easy to shatter
Whole lotta shaking going on

Stored in their paper sleeves,
there they stood pleading to be heard.
You switched on the Dansette.
The diamond hard stylus never missed a beat
The black seven-inch record
spun without threatening to break
Forty-five revolutions a minute.
Loud and proud get out of the way

The speed of the records was the sound of the times.
We were razor sharp and dressed up to the nines.
Short skirts, suave suits, with scooters outside.
Our clothes and the music danced hand in hand.
More than just records they said who you were.
We lived our lives at forty-five rpm.
Loud and proud get out of our way
Talkin’ ‘bout my generation

Laminated, leaning up against a shelf
each cover looked like work of art.
Hi fi separates balanced the sound.
The cartridge revealed glorious stereo.
The black long-playing record
spun six songs a side
Thirty-three and a third revolutions a minute.
Shining and modern they were shatter proof

Cooler, calmer, career guided and minded
coming of age as the music slowed.
We had boxes of albums stacked by the wall.
Nothing is better than a vinyl collection
and buying records at the speed of sound.
We lived our lives at thirty-three and a third rpm.
Shining and modern we were shatter proof
Wish you were here.

the speed of sound

And if, after all that, you're starting to feel the urge, consider this. Think of it as a vinyl junkie hit list.

In “On the Road” Jack Kerouac offered thirty tips for aspiring writers. Many clearly are about writing itself but others are more general such as “Be open to everything” and “Be in love with your life. I am going to offer some fun filled tips for buying records, predominantly second hand ones at that. If you want to spend twenty pounds plus on buying a new copy of your favourite album that’s fine but these tips are about getting out there and hunting for fun and being open to everything, wanting to build up your record collection and most of all being in love with life. Not quite thirty still nevertheless you can add some if you want to. So let’s go.

· Never pass by a charity shop without going in to see what they might have.

· Car boots can sometimes offer something you may want.

· Always look at the collections of your family, neighbours and friends. They will have stuff in their attic they will probably be only too glad to give away.

· Consider eBay from time to time.

· Take chances on something you might not be sure about but it’s always worth a couple of quid.

· Get out of your comfort zone. Buy stuff you feel might expand your musical boundaries.

· Most importantly of all, never ever leave something you think you might want because what will be for sure if you hesitate or doubt, it will be gone by the time you have made your mind up. You have been warned!

Thanks for reading. Happy collecting.

Bill Allison

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