Achievement

 “If at first you don’t succeed, try and try again.”

That is one of my father’s sayings that he was fond of using. I don’t think I ever thought of him as a wise person, but, of course, he was, in his quiet way. He had an easy-going, generous nature, which caused him to be taken advantage of sometimes. Everyone was worth another chance. For the summer seasons, he employed extra staff in the pub and it always included the same barman. The man was reliable, helpful, knew his job, but he was soon ‘on the fiddle’ and it would only be a matter of time before Dad had to sack him, again. I don’t think he worked a full season, which was probably May Bank Holiday until the end of the Illuminations. My dad gave him the opportunity to earn a wage with the promise of the man’s honesty and set himself up to be let down, but he always gave the man that chance.

Writing was always my thing and Dad’s encouragement never faltered. It’s sad that he passed away before I could share my published work, tiny amount but still an achievement to be proud of, and he would have loved the Haunted House in the Illuminations which included my story and poem.

Three of our grandchildren are in Beavers and Cubs, one nearly ready for Scouts and currently rehearsing for the Gang Show. My job is sewing their achievement badges onto uniform jumpers. It makes me proud to see the rewards of their interests and hard work. They can be equally proud over something they didn’t think they could do. After years of doing this for our own Cub and Brownie, then Scout and Guide, it’s nice to do it again for the next generation.

Last Saturday, our 8 year old, footballer grandson, was chosen Player of the Match and awarded a trophy. A fine achievement. Watched by his enthusiastic grandad, the pair of them came back frozen and wet, one with muddy legs. My husband thought he’d finished with junior football at pitch side nearly thirty years ago.

I was having an in-depth chat with my dad, asking for an opinion or some advice. I would have been about twenty-five, certainly under thirty, with a few things on my mind and unsure what to do, nothing to do with my writing ambition.

“Life is what you make it.”

Another of his little gems. He was right, as always. There’s usually a journey to reach an achievement. I’m still travelling.

I found this poem,

Don’t Quit

When things go wrong, as they sometimes will,
When the road you’re trudging seems all uphill,
When the fund are low but the debts are high,
And you want to smile but you have to sigh,
When care is pressing you down a bit,
Rest if you must, but don’t you quit.

Life is strange with its twists and turns,
As everyone of us sometimes learns,
And many failures turn about
When we might have won had we stuck it out.
Don’t give up though the pace seems slow –
You may succeed with another blow.

Success is failure turned inside out –
The silver tint of the clouds of doubt,
You can never tell how close you are,
It may be near when it seems so far;
So stick to the fight when you’re hardest hit –
It’s when things seem worst that you must not quit.

                                                            Edgar A. Guest 1881-1959

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Colour

 

How dull life looked in monochrome. My old photographs are all black and white, including my christening. I expect my family heirloom gown was white, but I’ve no idea what colours my relatives were dressed in and there’s no one left who would remember. I can understand why my grandchildren might believe there was once a world without colour. My dad, a keen photographer, though he often forgot his camera, preferred colour slides and I have his collection from the late 1950s until he passed away in the mid 1980s. I love the early ones. Memories of my childhood in a vibrant, colourful Lancaster. Through these, I will always know that my favourite dress, on holiday in Jersey c1961, was pale turquoise.

Television was black and white. Ours was rented, probably from Rediffusion, or similar. I think most people rented their television in those days. The first time I saw colour television was at the home of family friends around Christmas in 1969. I thought it was rubbish until told it wasn’t working properly and was being returned. We were watching a chat show, long before Michael Parkinson, but that sort of thing. Wide, horizontal stripes of separate primary colours slowly climbed the screen over and over again. I thought that was it, Colour TV, what a swizz. We got one the following year, rented, I expect. Lots of programmes were still broadcast in monochrome and those that weren’t were advertised ‘In Colour’, it was such a major thing. I remember being impressed seeing my favourite cartoon, The Flintstones, in colour for the first time. It was amazing and I was at least fifteen years old.

I don’t think I have an absolute favourite colour. It depends on the mood I’m in and if I’m choosing clothes or home décor. Our new bathroom, well, two years old but still new, is beautiful, high-gloss white with tangerine towels and mats. Perfect.

Colours are important. School uniforms, sports teams, businesses and retail outlets are all instantly recognisable by their colours and logos. When I went to high school, I wanted to wear the distinctive Air Force Blue uniform of Collegiate Girls Grammar, but I’d failed my 11+ so that was that. Navy blue for a disappointed me.

I found this amusing, colourful poem with no known author,

Five little crayons coloured a scene.
Yellow, blue, orange, red and green.
“Look,” said Yellow, “My sun is bright!”
Blue said, “Great! My river’s just right”
Orange said, “Flowers! I’ll draw something new”
Red said, “Great, I’ll add some too!”
“Sigh,” said Green, “I’m tired of trees,
And grass and bushes and tiny leaves.
I think I’ll draw a big green cloud!”
“A big green cloud should be allowed!”
The crayons all smiled and didn’t think twice.
A big green cloud sounded rather nice!

                                                                      Anonymous

 Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Lancashire Hat Collections

I have discovered hats coming out of the woodwork in Lancashire, from personal collections to those under close observational care in museums. For millennia, hats have been plastered to, balanced on and adorning heads for protection, as indicators of religion, political beliefs, nationality and culture along with being beacons of social status. Sarah Austin, Lancashire County Museum Service Curator writes:

Hats can tell us a lot about societal norms and the social status of people throughout history. The covering of the head was expected in polite society and the manner in which you covered it defined who you were and the class to which you belonged... At the beginning of the 20th Century top hats were still worn by members of the male upper classes, while bowler hats were worn by professional men and flat caps defined men as being from the working class.

TopHat
Lancashire County Museum Service Collection
Photo credit: Lancashire County Museum Service

In modern society, hats are now much more an expression of fashion and individual taste rather than a marker of social status. And it is therefore in this evolution that we can see the evolution of society itself and the changes that have prevailed, particularly over the last two hundred years. (1)

So who collects hats? Well I have over 35 hats. They protect my pate, amuse me and are worn as fashion statements. They range from those that keep me warm in winter and cool in the summer to fanciful pointy stripy festival hats, a psychedelic trilby, a vintage bowler and multiple caps. I often sport colourful ones when delivering creative workshops to add a bit of fun and be easily identifiable. The Art Can’t Hurt You cap is a good example.

Designer Fred Bobb's Art Can't Hurt You Cap, c 1980s
Kate Eggleston-Wirtz Collection
Photo credit: Kate Eggleston-Wirtz

I also have hats that are sentimental. One of my favourites is my father’s boy scout broad-brimmed felt campaign hat vintage 1930s. I enjoy the look and feel of this hat and can wear it. I love it because it is a tangible object that connects me to my dad. Objects have incredible power to connect people through time and space; as stand-ins for those who are somewhere else walking about on the planet or sadly long departed.

Herbert Eggleston, c 1930s
Photo credit: Kate Eggleston-Wirtz

After assessing my own hats and being mind-boggled at the actual sheer number of them, I was eager to find out about other collections. I contacted friends who I suspected had lots of headgear, and also colleagues at the Harris Museum, Art Gallery and Library, Lancashire County Council Museum Service and Fleetwood Museum. This is what came to light.

Seamstress and skip diving crafter Anna France has ten to twenty pieces of headgear in her collection. Anna began collecting hats because she’d started dancing and needed a 1940s hat for the Lytham 40s Festival. That started it. She then said that if she sees something she likes, she then starts to collect. The hats have been no different. Recently Anna took her hat collecting to a higher level and learnt how to make a fedora constructed out of felt, using a steamer and a proper wooden hat block. (2)

Fedora Hat made by Anna France, 2022
Anna France Collection
Photo credit: Kate Eggleston-Wirtz

Artist Boz Phillips has currently about ten hats in her collection, although at one point she had about 30. She collects and wears them for warmth, fun and sartorial elegance; sometimes to cover up on a bad hair day. (3)

Just like individuals, organisations collect hats and do so for many different reasons. Often, the hats looked after in museums are collected as representations of local people, ultimately helping to tell their stories that can then resonate with and educate the local contemporary community. Hats can bring stories to life.

Fleetwood Museum is one such organisation that cares for 17 pieces of headgear; seven hats in the Fleetwood Museum Trust and ten hats in the Lancashire Collections. These hats date from around the 1930s to the 1980s and include girl grammar hats and general formal hats that belonged to Fleetwood people such as Thomas Stone’s black WW2 Royal Naval Volunteer Reserve (RNVR) hat. Stone was a former owner of the Prawner vessel Judy that is kept outside the museum. (4)

Chief Petty Officer Tom Stone, c 1940s
Fleetwood Museum Trust Collection
Photo credit: Fleetwood Museum

Considering that Fleetwood is a coastal town. it is no surprise that navy hats and sou’westers are part of the two Fleetwood collections. These sou’westers are Fleetwood Museum’s Curator Assistant Zara Robinson’s favourite hats because they are “the traditional fishing hats, worn in most forms of fishing, deep sea and inshore fisheries. A big part of the trawlerman’s 'uniform.’” (5)

Travelling down the coast to Preston, one will find two organisations that manage much larger collections. The Harris Museum, Art Gallery and Library is located on the Flag Market in Preston. It is currently closed for a £16 million refurbishment and will be reopening in 2024. Dr Caroline Alexander, Curator at the Harris puts forward:

The Harris collects clothes like hats to tell a story about fashion and its development – where possible the museum also documents stories about the people who once made or wore these clothes. You can build up an interesting picture of Preston, as well as [the] fashion history, through the historic garments

that survive in the collection. (6)

In the Harris’ collection there are over 200 hats, and many represent the fashion industry and local people such as the well-known milliner Edna Deakin who was based on Church Street in Preston from 1938 – 1983. Edna’s was a flourishing business for nearly fifty years even during WW II, as hats were not rationed. The shop finally closed when Church Street was redeveloped by the council. (7)

Cloche Hat, Deigned by Edna Deakin, c 1966
Harris Museum, Art Gallery and Library Collection
Photo credit: Harris Museum, Art Gallery and Library

I asked Caroline what might be her favourite hat in the Harris’ collection, she said that she loved the Deakin one, referring to the Cloche hat above. She then went on to say there was another favourite, a stripy knitted bobble hat from the early to mid 1800s. Why was this one of her favourites?

It’s just such a cosy thing. Often hats are quite formal wear – so perhaps a bit harder to connect with. But this tasselled hat has always struck me as quite intimate. (8)

Red and Blue Woollen Hat, c 1800-1850
Harris Museum, Art Gallery and Library Collection
Photo credit: Harris Museum, Art Gallery and Library

The Lancashire County Museum Service (LCMS) has over 500 items of head wear in its collection that are looked after in different museums and special storage areas across the county. Ten of these items are housed at Fleetwood Museum as mentioned earlier, and there are a large number of dolls’ hats/ headwear located at the Judges’ Lodgings in Lancaster. The LCMS collection also includes top hats, bowler hats, smoking caps, berets, helmets, military headwear, ladies and children’s bonnets, fancy dress/stage headwear and straw boaters.

Straw Boater Hat
Lancashire County Museum Service Collection
Photo credit: Lancashire County Museum Service

Some of the gems in this collection are hats and headwear belonging to the actress and entertainer Hylda Baker (1905 – 1986), a Lancashire lass brought up in Farnsworth. The LCMS collection includes a mock medieval ladies hat, a multicoloured woollen beret and other headpieces used as stage props during Baker’s career, plus some hats from her own personal collection.

Another hat to be noted is LCMS’s Curator Sarah Austin’s favourite, a Pierrot costume union jack hat. She writes: 

It was made by a company in Southport called A. Thorpe and Sons and remarkably it was worn for a Victory Carnival to mark the end of the First World War. This type of ephemera rarely survives and this example is in amazing condition. It also tells a story of Britain at the end of the First World War and the hope and relief that must have come at the end of four years of war. It came from the collection of a Mrs Tatham that is the basis for a large part of our social history collection at LCC. (9)

Pierrot Hat, c 1918
Lancashire County Museum Service Collection
Photo credit: Lancashire County Museum Service

There you have it, a sneak peek into Lancashire hat collections. Wonder what hats are lurking in your wardrobe?

Hats

A bowler, a boater, a bucket, beret
for any occasion or time of the day.

A cowboy, stitched leather,
fedora with feather,
a pointed pierrot hat,
sou’westers to weather
bad weather on boats
on waves on the sea,
there’s always a perfect hat waiting for me.

A bowler, a boater, a bucket, beret
for any occasion or time of the day

A beanie well knitted,
fez felted and fitted,
a sun hat, a rain hat,
a slouch hat, a flat cap,
one hat for a party,
two hats are a pair,
more than two a collection, so many to wear.

Hats off to all those who took the time to share information about their fascinating collections of headwear, much appreciated.

Thank you for reading.
Kate  J

1 Austin, S. (2023) Email to Kate Eggleston-Wirtz (KEW), 4 May.
2 Hoyle, A. (2023) Hats. Interview with KEW, 28 April.
3 Phillips, B. (2023) Email to KEW, 1 May.
4 & 5 Robinson, Z. (2023) Email to KEW, 1 May.
6 Alexander, C. (2023) Email to KEW, 25 April.
7 Arnold, James. (2023) Email to KEW 25 April.
8 Alexander, C. (2023) Email to KEW, 11 May. 

9  Austin, S. (2023) Email to Kate Eggleston-Wirtz (KEW), 4 May

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Distilling - Mary Quant Socks

Everything I know about distilling will fit inside one tiny test-tube, with room to spare, so forgive me if I float off topic.

There was something we did in third year science at school which involved making a mixture of salt water then slowly heating it with a Bunsen burner – lots of science lab apparatus was fastened together for this experiment – steam turned into condensation which dripped from a tube into a flask as pure water, or rather, distilled water with the salt now removed. I don’t know what the object of this lesson was. My attention was distracted by the showing-up I’d just been given by my form teacher because of the socks I was wearing. I arrived at Science still in tears and being comforted by a couple of friends.

School was fairly liberal when it came to uniform. As long as we kept within the given choices, wore our ties properly tied and looked presentable, we were fine. The choice of socks was knee length, white or navy. This particular day I was wearing navy – with a pattern of Mary Quant flowers in the knit. Oh dear. I’d been to stay with family in Roehampton at half term and my aunt had taken me to London’s trendy shops where I got these lovely socks. They failed to appeal to my form teacher. First, he asked what team I was playing for then he pulled me out of line and told the rest of the class to look at my socks. This generated lots of mockery, more than I could cope with and to add to my embarrassment, I started crying. I think I took the teacher by surprise because I wasn’t generally thought of as sensitive, but neither was I considered to be a rebel. He pushed me back into the line with “Don’t wear them for school again.” I sobbed all the way to the science labs. Accumulated worries of home, family and school just burst in that instant, like they do when you’re fourteen, hormonal and half-orphaned.

Years passed, well, decades I suppose, and someone suggested I look up my school on Friends Reunited. I did, and amongst some recognised names from my year, was the form teacher. I made contact, mentioning the socks. It was ages before he replied. He was glad to hear from me, didn’t remember the sock incident, but did remember me as a clever girl with a talent for writing. Oh, that’s ok – probably mixed me up with someone else. By this time he had moved his family to the south of England and had become a parish priest in the Anglican Church, bless him. I was a Sunday School teacher in the Methodist Church so we shared common ground and we were on first name terms on our emails. He's at least twenty-five years older than me, so if he's still with us, I hope he’s still doing fine.

As for the science lesson, I copied notes from classmates and drew the set-up, as required. The socks remained at home, never mentioned again.

On our visits to various places in Scotland, we’ve looked at visiting whisky distilleries. One, in the Highlands somewhere, was quite big and we didn’t want to leave the dog in the car too long, so we gave it a miss. There is one at Bladnoch near Wigtown in Dumfries & Galloway which we decided to have a look at. The day we went, the distillery was closed to visitors, only the gift shop was open. The distillery remains on our ‘to do’ list.

I found this poem. It was in Seattle Magazine, USA, by Joseph O’Leary.

 

Whisky, Drink Divine

Whisky, drink divine!

Why should drivellers bore us

With the praise of wine

While we’ve thee before us?

Were it not a shame,

Whilst we gayly fling thee

To our lips of flame,

If we could not sing thee?

 

Joseph O’Leary

Thanks for reading, stay safe and keep well. Pam x

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Four Legs Good - Thanks, George

“Four legs good, two legs bad.”

Later, “Four legs good, two legs better.”

 

An unwelcoming, imposing secondary school full of strangers in a small, unfamiliar town. I was a reluctant new girl wearing the uniform of my old school, being stared at, but not spoken to. I kept silent and avoided eye-contact.  I was in an English class faced with an impossible task from a flustered and unfriendly teacher.

“Write a review of Animal Farm. Remember what we discussed about Russia,” she barked. She had her back to the class as she chalked something on the board. I approached her, close enough to explain that I was new and I hadn’t read the book.

“Do the best you can.” She didn’t even glance my way.

It wasn’t the first time I’d encountered differences in the curriculum between the education departments of Lancashire and Cheshire County Councils. This time it concerned work I’d done in preparation for my ‘O’ levels and which might now be wasted, leaving me faced with a great deal of catching up to do. It was another good reason to leave school, if only I could persuade my father.

I did as I was asked. I wrote an essay explaining that I hadn’t read Animal Farm, nor did I intend to as a book about talking animals taking over a farm was far-fetched and of no interest to me. The essay got me into trouble with my English teacher. She seemed to take my opinions personally and she accused me of not knowing what I was talking about. That was ridiculous. Surely I was entitled to speak my mind about why a book remained unread and was unappealing to me?

I knew everything when I was fifteen and rebelled against anything and everything. I was a stroppy, cocky madam. I was also a square peg in a round hole, uprooted from everything I knew and cared for and put in a place I had absolutely no interest of embracing or making my home. Luckily for me, the move was a bad one for the whole family and we came back after a few months.

I am so embarrassed now by what I did then, especially because I’ve come to love George Orwell’s work. I share his politics. He was a genius author. His novels explain socialism and why it matters. He died too young with probably more to say but he left an important legacy.

 

It can only be this poem,

 

Comrade Napoleon  (from Animal Farm by George Orwell)

 

Friend of fatherless!

Fountain of happiness!

Lord of the swill-bucket!

Oh, how my soul is on

Fire when I gaze at thy

Calm and commanding eye,

Like the sun in the sky,

Comrade Napoleon!

 

Thou art the giver of

All that thy creatures love,

Full belly twice a day, clean straw to roll upon;

Every beast great or small

Sleeps at peace in his stall,

Thou watchest over all

Comrade Napoleon!

 

Had I a sucking pig,

Ere he had grown as big

Even as a pint bottle or as a rolling pin,

He should have learned to be

Faithful and true to thee,

Yes, his first squeal should be

"Comrade Napoleon!"

 

George Orwell (1903 - 1950)

 

 

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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