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July 28, 2006
Look what I just found!
Comming home is always a good excuse for poking around old boxes of stuff.
I just found this old shot of the pipe band. I had no idea that it existed!
We never got any shots of us in the band together as we rather had our hands full with the pipes at the time. We seem to be in a break on parade somewhere (probably outside yet another pub) and I guess I would have been around thirteen or fourteen.
right to left... John Tinnion (pipe major), John Stewart, Me, My idiot Father.
Here is another shot of my Father around the same time looking like the "Monarch of the Glen".
PRICELESS!
Posted by Andrew at 08:04 AM | Comments (2)
The womb of our modern world.
It isn't often you can go to a spot and say that without question you are in a crucible of history... but this little cottage is exactly that.
It is in the next village of Oswaldtwistle and was the old home and workshop of James Hargreaves.
He was a local cotton spinner and carpenter who, as the story goes, was spinning at his wheel in 1767 when his little girl knocked the whole thing over. He looked at the now sidways spinning wheel and had one of those flashes of genius.
He attached several upright bobbins to a frame and was able to do the work of eight hand spinners. Feeling the threat of progress they invaded his cottage,and destroyed his work with hammers. The fertile seed was now however planted and although he died in poverty a few sad years later, his invention is now regarded as the incubus of mechanisation that went on to become the industrial revolution. It struck me that this can be viewed as the Bill Gates garage of its day.
There is also a family connection here as one of his sons married local girl Elizibeth Grimshaw, at Church Kirk Church on September 10th, 1740. My Grandmothers side of the family were the Oswaldtwistle Grimshaws, making him very distant family.
Posted by Andrew at 07:19 AM | Comments (0)
July 27, 2006
Lost for words.
It never fails that when I come home, I am humbled by the beauty of the place.
I usually am here in the bleak months, but this trip is in the full blush of Summer and the countryside is ripe.
I needed a little time to myself today, so I took a short drive around the local villages.
I think I will just post the shots, as words seem pale.
Posted by Andrew at 02:03 PM | Comments (0)
July 25, 2006
Gandhi’s revenge.
India was the jewel in the crown of the British Empire. We stripped its riches for two hundred years before tossing its withered husk back to them in 1947.
But did the Indians get the last laugh? I now believe they did.
Last night I had dinner at the legendary Akash Indian restaurant in Accrington. OMYGAWD!!!
I had Lamb vindaloo and a chicken korma and the effect was staggering in its thermal velocity. Like sucking on the breast of the fire Goddess Vesta, the vindaloo is a mix of lava and molten plutonium, broiled on the surface of the sun for a thousand centuries. There isn’t enough beer in the world to put this fire out.
People from all over the north of England come here on drunken bets, only to realize they have bitten off far more than they can possibly gag down.
I know that the deep regret has yet to set in, and this experience will leave my ass in tatters (the famous ‘ring of fire‘ effect)…. But right now it hurts sooo good.
Posted by Andrew at 01:57 PM | Comments (0)
July 23, 2006
Hopping to England
A long but uneventful flight to the UK was punctuated by a few hours stop over in Frankfurt, Germany.
Still fizzing from the World Cup, it was fun to soak in its lingering afterglow.
There are, it seems, many satellite competitions that orbit the main event, and the airport was full of track suited pods of youth teams returning to all corners of the soccer world.
I enjoyed a 8.30 am breakfast of sausage and a huge beer, made less slightly obscene by the company of many other hardcore uberbratundbrewmunchen comrades.
It was also cool to get some foreign money in my wallet. At one point I had dollars, pounds, marks and euros to sort out for my breakfast tab. There were charity donation points around the airport into which departing travelers made spare change contributions. It all made for a colorful mosaic.
Posted by Andrew at 04:33 AM | Comments (0)