5 minutes of fame!

When Karen revealed that she once worked for the Queen Mother and it got me to thinking about how we sometimes have a brush with celelbrity, our own five minutes of fame, or more likely a tenuous link with someone ala 'tenous link' made popular by Chris Evans in his Radio 2 breakfast show. 

My best non-claim to fame is that I babysat Thandi Newton, she of Mission Impossible fame. Her lovely Mum was a health visitor / district nurse where I was working in reception and one afternoon I took Thandi and her brother to the park.. yeah, that's about it!

Then a few years later I worked for a MSC (Manpower Services Commission aka 'job creation scheme') encouraging volunteer activity through a local Radio station. Being as how I lived in Mousehole and they had a 'do' there I got asked to help out, being on the inside of the cordon to stop crazy public getting close to .. yeah, right.. Buck's Fizz who made an entrance to Mousehole by sea.. oh the glamour!! It made me look carefully at it and realised that all the fuss is very strange, they are real people in an unreal situation, despite being all made-up, thick glossy tights (on the girls!) etc, they still looked darned chilly and full of false smiles.. all for the pennies and as puppets to their management no doubt!

My step-dad Phil Wallis was a Mousehole fisherman and often had minor celebrities on his shark fishing boat.. Keith Floyd, Tom Mangold (Newnight?) and others. Phil was into birdkeeping and had been a budgie / canary keeper and local judge for these breeds and later he was into boxing training.  When one of my nephews got into bird keeping (pigeons this time) and later boxing, Phil had no qualms about phoning famous names and asking favours.

I remember he once rang a boxing shop owned by Dave 'Boy' Green and asked to speak to Dave.. he spoke to him like he was an old freind and got a good deal on boxing gear and used to chat to him regularly like they were mates, he had no question of their importance, he just thought he was just as great!
Another time he called the top pigeon breeder in the country and told him 'I used to be a Western Counties Judge (not mentioning it was for canaries and not pigeons!) and got lots of well bred birds for Carl to add to his collection.

One of my favourite famous moments was when I was in Florida with Ross & Lisa Feb 1991, we had escaped the snow here, only to be in Sea World in a real cold snap. In the cafe Ross spotted Lionel Blair and kept telling me 'that's the man from Give Us a Clue'  Eventually we smiled and spoke, he asked if we too had gone to Florida thinking we would be avoiding the cold weather!!

Well there's more, but they get more tenous so I will spare you those for the minute!!

A Big Influence.. the biggest maybe.

Well over at Lucky Snapping I suggested we share some things we may not know about each other.. so far I have talked about where I was born and that as a family we all vary in our degrees of being 'Morning People'

Now for my Big Influence!  This man here.. Malcolm Dewar...( I got the screen shot from Friends Reunited , amazing someone snapped him just walking up to 'new Block' where he spent most of his days in .. Room 15  think!)

He was a teacher at my secondary school and took my form for geography in the first year (now called Year 7); he was dead scarey to us and story has it we were the first and last first years he took, then he settled down to take O level groups and be form teacher to the fifteen year olds.. the girls who had gotten used to school and could handle a curmudgeonly geography teacher as they edged towards full on puberty!  .

I was lucky enough to be in the fifth form he took during my year, 5 Dewar. We all kind of dreaded being the form which got him but once you were there you got to know him better and realised he was actually very real and such a cool guy, he didn't run with the stress as most of the 'lady' teachers did and you knew where you stood. He had five children, walked to school every day, had a huge collection of ties and kept a few pages ahead of us (not that I knew that til afterwards!) He wrote very small, never got the glasses he so obviously needed and had his hair cut once a year. Only the girls who did his subject really felt at ease with him, so optional Current Affairs which he also took meant a few hours to get him telling us all the non-geography stuff he knew.. stories of the police, Freemasons and corruption were my favourites!

I had to stay on into Sixth Form as I wasn't quite 16 at the end of the year and met him while in town after the O level results came out. We chatted about the next step and he told me I should start A levels even if I didn't really want to.. so I did.. I took A's with him.. Geography and then Geology and Sociology (just when that subject became a real option, but only just, he was teaching it at evening class, but school let him supplement it and even entered us for the exams for free)

Then there was the A-level field trips.. the first to the Lizard, discoveries of pebbles in a field way up above sea level and studies of the unique metamorphic  serpentine on the Lizard.. it would have been an earthquake Zone once you know!
Yes, it all sunk in and much of it stayed there. I was in awe..I even believed him the day he began talking about treacle mines, well it all sounded so plausible after discussions about magma and hot lava, treacle is sugary sticky stuff too isn't it and why shouldn't you mine it.. must have been April 1st and Kathi on gullible mode as ever!

Next there was the S Wales trip..the less said about that the better, I can't imagine why he put himself through it, especially arriving with a party of girls at Cardiff Uni halls of residence, just as the Coal Board boys were having their last night party ... we drank way too much and looking back we must have been real liabilities but he was still cool, making us cringe when we spoke the morning afters about whether or not we had been sensible!! 
But still we learnt and grew.. U shaped valleys, mature rivers and town planning in Cardiff.

I guess I should have gone on to do geography but I wasn't sure what I'd end up doing with it.. the decisions after A levels were much less stressful than our kids have today. My folks had not had a long education, you didn't back in 1940's unless you were dead smart and / or rich, so when my time to make decisions came they didn't have the experience to draw on. 
Mr Dewar would wander into Thursday form period, the UCCA book under his arm, the bible of all Uni courses..and there they were, the Social Admin courses, not quite pure Sociology, not too focused on just work, a good compromise for an argumentative 17 year old who liked a debate and soaked up information like a sponge (that was me, in case you are asleep or lost!) 
He talked to us all about courses to suit, most of the kids still listening to him at this point were those who knew him best, the dozen or so girls doing his subjects..we ended up doing everything from Art at teacher training to Mining Geology .. my choices were going to be at Canterbury (sounded posh and nice but soooo far away in my mind) or Exeter.
I pondered many times, he always quietly hung out for me to go, never pressurising but gently leaving that book about and the information settled in my head..

I didn't apply the last year as most did, I had delusions of a marriage and working in a bank but decent A levels results (all thanks to him, taking us step by step through many an essay and giving us that perk up at the end, an almost A grade essay the month before the exams, the perfect incentive to work a bit harder..).. and the resurgence of an old flame who snuffed out the current beau..made me try and get to Uni through clearing.. alas I needed a language O level that year, but hey, come to us the next.. so there it was, he had succeeded, I was off to Uni after all.

A year into my course in Exeter I went back to see him, the school was now a Sixth Form college, he and one of his pals he had mentored were bunked up in an outrigger Humanities building and rarely set foot in the progressive main building, he was contented to work his last few years playing the system, reading the Times every day and staying those few pages ahead on the Curriculum. I amazed myself by realising he didn't know everything, I had learnt about new things he hadn't heard of and I was kind of sad, but it was a big lesson. He invited me to go teach a couple of hours for him about Unemployment and it was great, maybe I should have taught after all (I do love my red pen even now!)

Sadly not too many years later, perhaps when I was about 28 he collapsed and died at school. His friend said at his funeral that  a few months before he had taken himself off when on a field trip to London to go search out the East End haunts of his youth (oh yes, he was an expert on Jack the Ripper), as if knowing he would not be going back again. He was that kind of person, did his own thing, pleased himself, unconventional but gave everyone the opportunity to learn and share his knowlegde, but in a quiet way, he was the kind of person in your past you think would always be there, larger than life, or to be fair, larger than death. 

Shame, but a big thank you.. I would probably have not had many of the thoughts or experiences I had as a young adult without his influence.. and my kids will tell you even know.. Mum loves Geography!

Precious? Well I kept it 35 years.

So it's Sian's Story Telling Sunday again, you can join in over yonder! at High in the Sky!

This year Sian has asked us to story tell our precious items, and today she herself has chosen a postcard she received aged 10 years old, not depicting a momentous event today, but most precious at the time and obviously something she has never felt she wanted to be without.  I have something similar. I don't feel hugely strongly about it, but it is a small reminder and there doesn't seem any reason to not leave it in the little jewelry box with the charm bracelet from being a bridesmaid age 6 and my first signet ring.

As you may imagine there is a back story or two!

I was christened Kathryn and pretty much always called that by family and friends until I was a teen.  One of my first boyfriends, a lad from Mousehole had a Mum who's sister was called Kathy. She was a fab lady from Leicester and although she suffered with horrendous arthritis, to the extent that she could ride a bike more readily than walking, a\nd as a 15 year old I really loved her.. she called me Kathy and my Mum became 'Kathy's mum' to him and history was written. 

Now this is the bit I cringe about... I must have been a pretty pretentious teen in my own way (though on looking back I am sure I was pretty square.. but weren't we all in 1975 compared to pretentious of the 21st century?) because I kind of didn't like 'Kathy', especially 'Kathy Thomas', not sure why, it just didn't run off the pen, so I must have tried it out a few times and with the flourish of a teenager who was fairly academic (and in those days that meant being a pretty good essay writer as much as being a smart-ass!) I finally decided that it I was going to be stuck with Kathy, then I would make it a bit different and Kathi was born!  It ran off the pen nicely when I signed it and I liked how it looked on cards and stuff.

What I didn't expect was how stupid it looked when written by friends with tidy oval handwriting and the people who still practiced that joined up stuff we learnt for the 11+

Even today I use it still but have people apologising for spelling it wrong when they have sent me an email. When people ask if I am Kathi with  K or a C I take a breath, sigh and say whichever, then agree it is a K... then send one back and they must wonder.. why didn't she say it ends in 'i' but no 'e'... and if they do I just say, oh well I must have been a pretentious teenager.. and hope they smile too!

So, then there's KathiJo.. I know it sounds like a gingham-skirted-cookie-baking-southern-mom from Texas or somewhere, but it's actually just the first name hotmail would accept that didn't require a load of numbers too... and so Kathryn became Kathi became Kathi Jones who finally became KathiJo your blogger pal!

... and you may wonder, what precious item prompted this explanation?

(which in the true reason for my blogging, will one day explain in my usual protracted way,  to my nearest and dearest should they be ever wondering when I have long forgotten..why I was called Kathi..)... this necklace a(nother) boyfriend had made especially for me in about 1977. 

I think he had worries about how I actually spelt it.. but at least I knew it was made just for me because how many others were about just then!   Every now and then I find this in the little box and tell the story of how we had a whirlwind romance during my second year of A levels, prompted by his Dad (on holiday in Mousehole) suggesting he send him to take me out! He arrived in his Dad's car, took me to eat somewhere proper and even got out to open the car door for me.. well, we just weren't used to it in these parts were we.

Sadly a year on we had done it all, planned our lives, got engaged, he moved from London to live here, his family were moving here too anyways... and then the rot set in.. life was real, I was way too young, he liked his beer way too much and I got three good 'A' levels and realised that there was more to life than being a wife waiting at home until the pub called last orders! 

My darling Mum never judged for a moment, sat by, quietly not saying much at all, supporting during the high days and the low days, I bet she lay awake a good deal at night wondering just what would happen... but I made my own choices, eventually the right ones and it was over. She didn't say I told you so because she hadn't, but I knew she had thought so..... and about three years later the same guy was lost on the Penlee Lifeboat in 1981.. it was a strange thought, I saw his Mum and she said she was glad we hadn't worked out as I would have been a widow that day and probably had lost a father to my children. 

Truthfully the whole disaster was such a sad time for the village, I didn't feel worse about him than any of the others I knew and my step-father probably felt worst of all because he lived with and saw raised several of those guys in 1960's Mousehole.... but maybe there is a little more to the story of the necklace than I realise and maybe why I kept it longer than I may otherwise have done....a kind of a symbol of the innocence of a young romance in days when no-one can have predicted what would happen in the future... and now that little bit of story has been told..

Funny too, as I feel sadder writing about this now than ever before..xx

365/194 Motorised

.. well I have had a few offers today, items from the workshop or maybe the guys' cars in the yard (specifically Simon's TVR which should impress they tell me...) and also ideas of units we have built.

Later this evening I decided I would leave this til tomorrow so I could include some of Jordan's pictures of Farnborough airshow, but I found this picture and thought I'd include it as it is a nice memory and bloggable item...
... this is a (pastel I think) of my step-fathers boat which he owned with his brother Frank. They were kind of last generation fishermen from Mousehole, they used to have a shark fishing licence for the summer and then went mackereling in the winter, sometimes even from Falmouth if the fish were over that way.

When Mum & Phil were 'courting' it was summer, 1973, David Bowie was singing about Life on Mars and Alice Cooper was shouting that 'School's Out'..

Every day in summer the boat seemed to be landing up to 45 sharks, small ones mainly but some big Porbeagles, the Seafarer's restaurant in Penzance even used to buy them and sell shark steaks!

Holiday makers would book a day's shark fishing and Phil & Frank were an entertainment in themselves. There are so many stories that Phil told me... about the man with a false leg which fell off as he walked up the steps as he was leaving the boat... Phil just picked it up, handed it to him and said.. 'that was some shark bite'.. or the times when wives went to have a day at sea but seemed to look seasick once they drifted a couple of miles out waiting for sharks to respnd to the drums of rubby-dubby they tipped over the side to entice them..Phil and Frank could work out the balance of who looked sick and often came in early when they timed the 'vote to go back to harbour' just to conicide with the maximum number of sick on board!


The Talisman used to be harboured in Mousehole during the summer whilst the baulks (wooden sleepers placed in the mouth of the harbour to stop the sand being leached out in bad wether) were up..PZ 280, it was the same as our phone number, things used to be that easy to remember...xx

365/160 Vintage

.. well I went upstairs in search of something vintage, I have quite a lot of old stuff but I think vintage should have a special kind of 'look' or feel..I picked out a few photos and was pleased with how they came out being rephotographed, the people look clearer and I see them in a different light... but saving them for a lazy day prompt..

Instead I fell upon this album cover..I still have quite a lot of LPs and most of the singles I ever bought, but most of them are out in our sheds. This album had been loaned to one of the guys I hung out with back in the late 70's / early 80's and to be true I had probably forgotten all about it..then two or three years ago Ross was working with the same guy's daughters and he passed it back via the kids.  

There were a bunch of kids all in the same social circle and (as I do) I asked enough questions about who's dad was who and all that, to realise that about 4 of us teens from Mousehole had kids now who all knew each other.. not so amazing but I kind of liked it!!  

Okay so some of us had been away and come back, but Ross like me likes living where he knows people and they know him.. amazing how different people are, my brother-in-law really likes new places and new things to do all the time!

..and for Jen.. I always lived here really, first out west near Land's End at my 'home' , then as a teen in Mousehole, I went to Uni in Exeter for three years and then lived around this area, about ten mile radius of Penzance ever since, so I see some people I always knew, and some I never see..my Mum stayed in Mousehole til my Jb was born in 1994 so we've always been close to the sea..xx

365/159 Roadside.

 

Tenuous link here, but the risk was that I would have a small river as my option for roadside outside our place, it has rained so much here today.. thick mizzle I call it, not mist, not drizzle, miserable thick almost rain! And wind.. bah! But at least it keeps us moany Brits happy with something to 'buse about!!

I have realised lately that I don't blog (or scrap) much about my teenage years and those six full and eight part-time years I lived in Mousehole. I think it is partly cos I was probably a moody teenager a lot of the time and also it was a period when I didn't take quite so many pictures..but I do have some and I should put it right..

Mum married Phil when I was just 13 and we moved to live with him in the double gabled house right by the beach in the picture. It was a big flat and the blue doors under were the 'Shark Office ' where Phil & his brother sold their shark fishing trips in summer. Phil had lived there with his first wife Sally who had died a couple of years before (they and my parents all knew each other, they were favourites of mine who bought me big Easter Eggs and a Diana annual every Christmas.. see, typical material child.. some things are a constant!)

..on reflection it suited me quite well, there were four buses an hour to Penzance and it dragged me well into the world as a teen, rather than being in the outback of the fishing cove and kind of stranded from the kind of thing teens usually want to do.

.. sooo, I digress.. the roadside in this case was 'the Wharf' it was a walkway right along the harbourside .. and a secret here.. the sand was actually brought in every few years as it would gradually be dragged out of the harbour over the years..

.. but this picture is another of Uncle Bills.. Cols brother and his lad in our 'roadside' lane just outside our yard..