This poem was published around this time last year. I didn’t really like how it ended, but never got around to tinkering with it, so I will put it out as it is.
I love the old legends and stories of this country. Spring Heeled Jack was a sensation back in the 1800’s-showing up all over the show, but is largely forgotten now. I never knew though that his appearances have allegedly continued into modern times.
With Halloween just around the corner I thought I would share with you the legend of Spring Heeled Jack who was once infamous in Victorian times and yet is now largely forgotten.
Early 19th Century London was a spooky and often dangerous place to be after dark and ghosts were often reported to follow and prey on lone travellers, sometimes even assaulting them. Of these the most prominent was The Hammersmith Ghost who seems to have been active for at least 20 years.
It was in this background that Spring Heeled Jack first came to prominence in the London of 1837 when in October of that year, a young girl by the name of Mary Stevens was walking to Lavender Hill where she was working as a servant, after visiting her parents in Battersea. On her way through Clapham Common, a strange figure leapt at her from a dark alley…
Where were we? Ah yes-photographs! (My last post.)
While the feeling is that the term ‘photobombing’, along with the very inconsiderate act itself, is a modern phenomenon, we can see from this photograph that even our ancestors had to contend with annoying last-second gatecrashers.
Especially of the feline variety. They are always the worst-all stealth and false smiles.
Bit like my wife on our wedding day.And did I mention claws?
A couple of this ensemble are attempting to laugh it off, but the lady in the center looks well pissed off. Always the cat, always the focus.
Have a great weekend, you who sit quietly in the background, and you who hog all the limelight. And especially you cats-my most fanatical of followers.
My love of old photographs has been well documented before on City Jackdaw. Indulging myself recently, I thought I would look for some of the earliest ones that I could find, some of which I now share with you. Any technical information you need you will have to google search for- the specifics are beyond me. I just appreciate them because of their significance and age.
The following photograph is the earliest surviving camera photograph, from around 1826. By Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, View from the Window at Le Gras.
Not much chance of spotting a photobomber here is there? Here is an enhanced version.
What about the first photograph of a human?
‘Boulevard du Temple’ by Louis Daguerre, in 1838, is generally accepted as the earliest photograph of people. Taken of a busy street, the exposure time was at least ten minutes, so the moving traffic left no trace. Only the two men near the bottom left corner, one having his shoes polished by the other, stayed in one place long enough to be visible in the photograph.
It is most likely that these two faceless, unknown people lived out the rest of their lives and died unaware of the role in history that they played.
Shadows in time.
This next photograph is regarded as the first self-portrait. It was made by Robert Cornelius, in October or November 1839.On the back it read ‘The first light picture ever taken.’
I know in the past I did a post entitled ‘A Sense of Absence.’ .https://cityjackdaw.wordpress.com/2013/04/30/a-sense-of-absence/In that I talked about how I was haunted by old photographs, by the absence of resolution I felt when I looked upon the people in them, never knowing who they were, and what became of them.
For some reason this picture here had the opposite effect. Discovering the man’s name somehow lessened the image. Until I discovered the facts surrounding it, I was intrigued by this imposing, (then) mystery figure. He appears in equal measure part Byron/part Time Lord/part vampire.
Dark, dashing, and dead.
This beautiful woman below is the subject of one of the oldest photographic portraits, made by Joseph Draper of New York in 1839 or 1840 of his sister, Anna Katherine Draper. Both demure and elegant, maybe a proto-type Elizabeth Taylor.
Following on from that is this last photograph, from around 1900. It is one of the earliest photographs of someone caught sneezing.
It goes to show that you can wear all the fine lace to accentuate your air and grace that you want, but in that moment of nasal tickling helplessness you look just as ridiculous and undignified as the rest of us commoners do.
There was a poor Scottish farmer by the name of Fleming, who, while out trying to make a living for his family, heard someone crying for help from a nearby bog. He dropped everything and ran to where he thought the cry was originating from.
In the bog he discovered a terrified boy, stuck to the waist, struggling desperately and screaming. Fleming saved the boy from a horrible and certain death.
A day later, a posh carriage turned up looking out of place in the sparse surroundings of the farmer’s land. A well dressed nobleman emerged, introducing himself as the father of the boy he had saved the previous day, saying he wanted to repay the farmer for saving his son’s life. Fleming refused, saying he could not accept payment for what he had done.
At this point, the farmer’s son came to the door. “Is this your son?” asked the nobleman. When the farmer replied in the affirmative, the nobleman continued: “I’ll make you a deal. Let me take him and give him a good education. If the lad is anything like his father, he’ll grow to be a man you can be proud of.”
And that is what happened. In time, Fleming’s son graduated from St.Mary’s Hospital Medical School in London, going on to become known throughout the world as the noted Sir Alexander Fleming, discoverer of Penicillin.
Years later, the nobleman’s son was stricken with pneumonia. What do you think saved him? That’s right-Penicillin. What was the name of the nobleman? Lord Randolph Churchill. His son’s name? Sir Winston Churchill.
You reap what you sow.
What goes around comes around.
Sometimes you can see this process in action in a more identifiable way than a deposit in a cosmic or spiritual bank account.
The next time I am feeling all self-absorbed and caught up in my own self-importance, revelling in a world that revolves around me, I shall think of this photograph.
Purported to be an actual image taken from the Martian surface by NASA’s Rover, I have been persuaded that this is actually fake. But still, you get a sense of scale, along with a healthy dose of perspective.
A while back I read Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury. It was one of those books I had always meant to read, but it took me forever to get around to doing so.
Although her presence in the book is but brief, I loved the way that Clarisse McClellan viewed the world. In a society stripped of imagination and wonder, her joy for life filled the pages in which she featured, showing an interest and love for nature rather than technology. The way she smelt old leaves, tasted the rain, left flowers on the porch for the main character, Guy Montag. In a sterile life devoid of books, creative thinking, imagination and poetry, Clarisse stood out.
Is this what sets us apart? The appreciation of art, and of beauty? And how, above all other species, our imagination can envisage something different, something better, and so we keep on striving, never settling for what we have. Living a life of aesthetic vision.
The burning of the books reminded me of course of the nazi book burning rallies, but on a greater, all encompassing scale. As writers, and readers, just what would we do in a world without books? How would we, could we, express ourselves?
From this destructive, censoring burning, my thoughts turned towards another type of burning. In the thinking of the Celts, the act of being inspired, of attaining that spark of inspiration, of connection, was known as the fire in the head.
The former refers to flames that destroy, the latter to flames that create. The way that our inner workings, thoughts and dreams are creatively given form, substance. How they are brought from the darkness into the light. How they are realised in a world that is dependent on sensory affirmations.
Our interior lives, our interior presence, dwarfs our outer expressions. Each of us carries whole worlds within us that barely escape into the light.
In Bradbury’s story, although the world has been expunged of physical books, they still existed within the minds and memories of those drifters, those dreamers in exile, who were keeping them safe in the silent sanctuary of their being until the time comes for them to bring them forth once more to plant in a more receptive, welcoming and fertile ground.
As one of those characters says towards the end of the novel, they, we, are but the dust jackets of whole created worlds, worlds that turn to the rhythm of words and of metre, that inform and inspire and move us.
Again, I ask that question:
Is it the appreciation of art, and of beauty, that sets us apart?
We have heard rumours before-some missing Doctor Who episodes have been miraculously re-discovered. Sometimes they are rumours. Sometimes they are hoaxes, although how anyone can be so evil is beyond me.
You may have to humour me a little, but to Whovian geeks it is a big deal.
Then a newspaper reported that over 100-yes 100- long-lost episodes had been found in Ethiopia. It sounded like our Nag Hammadi watershed moment. But experience has taught us to take things with a pinch of salt. But the excitement was building.
Then came an announcement from the BBC: several missing episodes had been discovered, although the number claimed wasn’t accurate.
You had to feel for my wife, Jen.
Since the over 100 claim, I had been regaling her with the myths concerning the missing 106 episodes. How the BBC in their wisdom had wiped or destroyed many of the early stories featuring the first two Doctors, and ever since the rise of videos and dvds they had been searching high and low to reclaim copies. How some episodes have turned up on church fairs and in garages, and how some were located in the dust gathering vaults of overseas broadcasters.
In 1991 every episode of The Tomb Of the Cybermen, part of the Who Holy Grail, was found in Hong Kong. Finding a story in its entirety is fantastic, as it tends to be just the odd episode of missing stories that turn up, and even then it is a rare find.
There is a DVD, fittingly entitled Lost In Time, that gathers together various isolated episodes from stories that we have had to accept will never exist in their totality again.
Having initially read the ‘over 100 episodes’ claim, I admit that I may have casually mentioned this once or twice in conversation. I know I definitely spotted Jen’s eyes roll a couple of times. But I had to remind myself nothing had been confirmed officially. Try to keep a lid on it.
Being a long time fan of this great British instituion, my favourite Doctor was always the one who held the mantle when I was a kid-that great eccentric Tom Baker whose scalf was a sharp reminder to knitters everywhere to not get carried away.
Do you remember him Jen? Do you want a jelly baby?
Maybe not.
These are the old ‘classic’ Doctor Who stories, before they were reinvented with the benefit of high budget special effects and made into short, fast paced stories for today’s generation of kids who don’t have the attention span to sit and watch six or seven episode stories. Back in those days I didn’t think there had ever been any other Doctors-the Doctor was Tom Baker. Who the hell had heard of someone regenerating?
Wasn’t that something that worms did?
I can still recall being knelt up in front of the tv on the Saturday that the Doctor fell from that dish at Jodrell Bank, and turned into Peter Davidson. Emitting a ten year old’s confused and high pitched “Who is that?” No pun intended.
I shared such stories with Jen. Cue deep sighs and rolling of eyes. She is a poet and she doesn’t want to know it.
For the sake of my marriage I kept things to a minimum. Tried not to speculate. No news is good news.
Then a BBC spokesman played things down, saying the 100 episodes in Ethiopia claim was ‘inaccurate’. But when asked if there were some episodes to be announced at a forthcoming press conference, admitted “There is a connection.”
Oh you enigmatic little…..
What the hell did that actually mean- inaccurate, but a connection. I couldn’t contain myself.
Jen they have found some new ones! Or rather new old ones! But if it’s not 100, how many? 90? Could we dare to dream, Jen, could we? Why couldn’t they just tell us which ones? Or was it just the country that was innacurate and not the figure? Why are you doing that thing again with your eyes Jen?
A press conference was scheduled for the beginning of the week-as the day approached my wife was conspicuous by her absence. The imagination went into overdrive-would they be Hartnell or Troughton stories? Great though the first Doctor was, the second Troughton is a close second to Baker as my favourite. Clips like this, featuring both Doctors so not to give the game away, added to the anticipation:
.
Unbelievably, no time was given as when the conference was taking place, so I intended to arm myself with the tv remote for teletext and my Ipad for Google search. I would have preferred a ‘breaking news flash’.
But then we were told by the BBC that they were ‘not quite ready’ and the press conference had been put back towards the end of the week. Not quite ready? In what way? And end of the week was too vague. When end of the week?
And then, came the comment
“We want everything to be ready for this announcement to excite fans so they will have to wait a few days longer. They have been waiting nearly 50 years for this , so a
couple
of
days
shouldn’t
make
any
difference.”
I tried to rip open my cushions with my teeth. My dog scarpered upstairs, and Jen blocked my calls.
Somewhere, in the dark BBC corridors of power, a Machiavellian tyrant was rubbing his hands and chuckling ‘ that jackdaw guy will be ripping out his feathers!’
News then leaked that old Doctor’s companions Frazer Hines and Deborah Watling had been invited to help make the announcement, which indicated that the found episodes would indeed be from the Troughton period, as this was the Doctor that they had both worked with.
Finally, finally, the date of the reveal in which the episodes would be announced, and a couple of them screened, was given as Thursday, betwen 3.30pm and 7.00pm.
What the hell? A three and half hour window? Why could they not just give the damn time? Was I going to have to trawl the internet again for hours? Just how long was they going to string this out for?
Millie’s toy Winnie the Pooh was launched into the kitchen.
I made a mental note for when the time came: don’t create a scene while the kids are eating…keep quiet while Jen is reading. Time passed by. Several googles of ‘Doctor Whoepisodes found‘ was returning nothing but old news.
I boiled in silent frustration. The night wore on with nothing. Then:
The conference had been held, the episodes revealed but, the BBC had
imposed
a
news
embargo
until
midnight
tonight.
“WHAT THE FUCKING HELL ARE THEY PLAYING AT??!!!!”
I apologise now for the language as I apologised then. Jen almost scalded herself with her cup of tea, the dog briefly levitated. Thankfully, thankfully, the kids didn’t wake.
I responded to Jen’s shrieked questions with a barrage of incoherent quick-fire staccato garble.
Someone who pulls the strings was really getting off on this.
But, this is the best bit- screw you BBC, this is the 21st Century! News leaked out through Twitter and Facebook. Your cold war capers don’t work anymore.
There were new episodes, Patrick Troughton ones too! There were nine, okay, not 100 as promised by that damn second rate journalist, but I think the confusion was that the amount of missing episodes in total numbered 106. But anyhow,new episodes, episodes long written off as lost to us, had been recovered. Regenerated even, from a tv station in Nigeria.
Episodes 1,2,4,5, and 6 of the six part story The Enemy Of The World was now complete as there was already episode 3 in the archives. And now the six part The Web Of Fear was missing only episode 3. As the audio soundtracks to all the Doctor Who stories exist, this last story would no doubt be released with the missing episode replaced by an animated one, as had been done with other stories that were missing just the odd episode.
I knew Jen was familiar with this trailer for a more modern Doctor Who story:
(clip)
so in order to try and sell her a bit of enthusiasm for The Web Of Fear, I replaced the excitedly given line
“Dinosaurs, on a spaceship!” with
“Yetis, on the underground !”
She looked, then said “They look like fluffy teddy bears gone wrong.”
Deep breaths. Forget you heard it. Put the heavy PC down.
Never mind. I am already looking forward to my Second Doctor Night.
And the number of missing episodes now has fallen from 106 to 97.
There must be more out there. We have to keep looking
Finally, finally, I come stumbling out of the shadows of the Dark Ages, blinking furiously in the blinding new light of the 21st Century. It is a relief to see that the world has continued in my absence.
While I have been denied access to the virtual world, what has happened here in the shrinking boundaries of my environment?
Well, September passed with one final, glorious flourish.
This is a fishing lake next to my daughter’s school, looking towards the two local churches in the distance, near to my home.
Then October inched forward shyly, offering a half-hearted indication of what is in store for us this Autumn.
Colder, misty mornings in which to revel on the route to my son’s playschool.
“Frogs!” he kept saying, “Frogs!” Don’t bother enlarging the photographs to hunt among the grass-he meant fog.
Now that I finally have internet connection again, I am sending out this quick post as an intangible message in a bottle to see what happens.Will it wash up somewhere on a virtual shore, to be picked up by old familiar friends? Or to be stumbled across by a couple of curious strangers, picking their way upon a random route?
City Jackdaw 