"A Rose by any other Name"

Embarrassing family names such as 'Balls' and 'Smellie' have gone into sharp decline over the past century, according to an analysis of census data by experts. 

Surnames with rude or unfortunate connotations including 'Shufflebottom' and 'Daft' have fallen by as much as 75 per cent, a comparison of census and other information spanning 120 years has shown.

A comparison of the 2008 population – using data from a variety of sources – with the first census in 1881 shows the number of Britons called Balls or Daft has fallen by more than 50 per cent as owners change their names to avoid ridicule.

The research, reported in The Times, also found that the top nine surnames – Smith, Jones, Williams, Brown, Taylor, Davies, Wilson, Evans and Thomas – are still in the exactly the same order of popularity today as they were in 1881.

I can remember at school having a friend called Bill Posting.  This was always a source of amusement to us when we saw a sign saying

 'BILL POSTING PROHIBITED'.

I know there used to be jokes about 'Robin Banks' although I never knew anyone with that name.

 However my all-time favourite has to be......Teresa Green!!!! 

" Don't go down to the Woods Today"

A "large" bear was allegedly spotted over the weekend as it roamed around 3,700-acre Rendlesham Forest near Woodbridge.

Ramblers and dog walkers have been warned to take care after three reported sightings of a bear on the loose in a Suffolk forest.

A spokesman for the Forestry Commission said forestry workers were investigating the alleged sightings reported in a local newspaper.

He added: "We don't have bears in the wild this country, so if this creature was a bear, it would have escaped or been released.

If people do see a bear they ought to call the police because it would be very dangerous."

Amen to that.

“My Grandfather’s Clock”

Following on from Sunday’s clock theme, I thought I’d mention “Grandfather’s Clock”.

Now I do actually have my grandfather’s clock. It is late Victorian alarm clock…and how do I know? Two reasons, firstly, a repairer has put a date inside when he worked on it and secondly, it plays “Soldiers of the Queen” as an alarm instead of a bell.

The Queen of course, being Victoria.

Now I expect everyone has heard the song “My Grandfather’s Clock”, the one that ‘stopped short, never to go again, when the old man died’.

It was of course not a mantle clock but a Longcase clock.

The song was written by the self taught composer and lyricist Henry C Work (1832-1884). The story goes that in 1874 he was visiting England and stayed at the George Hotel in Piercebridge near Darlington. He noticed that the Longcase clock in the hall was not going and found out from the proprietor the story of why this was so.

Early, that century, the Hotel had been owned by two brothers called Jenkins. The clock had been bought to mark the birth of the eldest son, some 90 years earlier.

The clock had an eight-day movement and had always been extremely reliable, however when the younger brother fell ill and died, the clock started to lose time.

It got worse and worse until it was losing over a quarter of an hour a day.

Then a couple of years later, the other brother, who was nearly 90 was taken ill and died at five passed eleven.

At this exact time the clock downstairs stopped.

New people took over the George but the clock defied all attempts by experts to get it going again.

Henry Work was so intrigued by this that he thought of writing a song about it.

The rest is history, as they say, but since Work published his song, most people refer to Longcase clocks as “Grandfather Clocks” and I believe this old clock still does not go and still shows the time, as five passed eleven.

"To Q or not to Q"

Over a year, the average British person queues for more than 67 hours – or almost three days.

 

In total, we spend 169 hours during the average adult lifetime – the equivalent of five months, two weeks and five days.

The average adult wastes five hours and 35 minutes queuing each month, with standing in line at the supermarket taking up the biggest amount of time.

A poll of 3,000 Britons revealed the biggest amount of time spent queuing is to pay for the weekly shop, accounting for almost 53 minutes each month.

A further 33 minutes is spent waiting to pay for non-supermarket items and we queue at the bank or post office for up to 27 minutes each month, and even queuing at cash machines wastes almost 25 minutes.

Some even end up going home empty-handed. A total of 88 per cent of people admitted they have given up and left after queuing for something for a long time

It's Time to "Spring Forward"

Oh I do wish they would leave our clocks alone.

Many Britons suppose that this device is a grand British gift to the civilized world, eagerly accepted by all. In fact, only 30 other countries, out of the 362 listed in the 1964 Admiralty Nautical Almanac, follow our 'folly'. That is a mere 8%.

The rest of the world, if it wants to get up early.... gets up early, without tampering with the clocks.

So should we.

This thing began in 1916 by a Mr Willett, who during the second year of the War, introduced it to conserve fuel and artificial light. It was also applied during the Second War from 1941-45 and in 1947 we had to endure "Double Summer Time"....a move forward of TWO hours.

The British, of all people, should not do this thing.

They should be too proud of Greenwich, and the place of Greenwich Mean Time in astronomy and navigation, to abandon it for six months.

My cats got up at the same time for breakfast as they did yesterday. 

And so did I.

Hole Punching

 The posting on Friday showed the paper/card being punched by an automatic machine, nowadays controlled by a computer. A friend of mine, John who actually only lives a couple of roads away, has built an automatic punch similar to this.

 Of course, it cannot read music, it cannot arrange the tune to fit the scale of the organ.... all this has to be done manually and then the instructions fed into the computer to control the punch.

 It does, however, have the advantage of being able to run off multiple copies.

 I am still in the "old world" of punching my tunes by hand. The holes are punched by an electrical solenoid but the positioning of the punch and the movement of the paper is all done manually.

This shows my punch in operation, half way through "After the Ball was Over".

It takes quite a long time to punch a tune. I usually do it in two or three stages and of course it depends on the length of the music. I can punch around 4 metres in an hour, so a typical tune would take about two to three hours. 

“The Bogey Man gets beaten”

On Wednesday, Gordon Broon made a speech to the eu parliament; it was followed by a response from Daniel Hannan.

.. The latest count (28.3.09) of Hannan’s lashing of Gordon Brown has been watched on YouTube  1,382,816 times.

 How popular is Gordon Brown’s speech on the same day to the eu parliament?  5325 views. Daniel’s YouTube video has received over seven thousand comments in response. Gordon’s has the comments facility switched off, so not even a pretence of listening. So much for Downing Street’s digital engagement.

 Dan’s viral video is now the most popular YouTube ever for a British politican. The next most popular is Gordon picking his nose on the front bench, which has had about 750,000 views in various formats. 

A Clip from France

I enjoyed this little clip....the last noteur in Paris...how sad.
It also shows the card being punched and then played.

Unable to recognise a fat pet ???

Research shows only a third of cat owners who thought their pet was overweight believed they could do "a lot" about its weight, with most saying they could personally do little or nothing about the problem.

Many owners admitted feeding their pets too many treats, and agreed that a lack of exercise contributed to their pet's weight problem.

One in 10 admitted overfeeding their pets at mealtimes.

Chief executive of the Pet Food Manufacturers' Association Michael Bellingham said: 

"The figures are alarming and the problem won't go away without a fundamental shift in owners' attitude to feeding their pets. It is also worrying that most owners are not aware of the problem, because they are unable to recognise a fat pet in the first place.

I think I can recognise a fat cat when I see one!  Thankfully this is not one of mine. I believe it is an Italian Moggie, obviously been eating too much  gnocchetti sardi.

The research was carried out on behalf of the Pet Food Manufacturers' Association in March 2009 and surveyed 2,126 UK households.

Melody Pipes

Having mentioned the Bass and Accompaniment pipes I had better finish off with the most import group - the Melody Pipes.

These are the pipes, usually visible as the front row (or rows) on most organs. The picture shows my organ with the front finally in place complete with HomeBase mouldings.

There are thirteen (of the 14) of these and once again, “poor old” B natural is missing.

This lack of B nat. means it is not possible to play in the major keys of C, G, D etc. but all is not lost, we simply have to transpose the music to one of the five keys we can arrange in.

Some smaller organs make do with this single row of 13 melody notes (pipes).

The organ I have built has another three rows or “ranks“ of these 13 pipes, one behind the other. These extra ranks of pipes are not all the same; they sound the same (or similar) note, but of a different quality or tone. Therefore one hole on the tracker bar can now actually sound up to four pipes simultaneously depending on which rows are selected.

On a church organ these are known as the “stops”, hence the term to “pull out all the stops”. They have such names as Diapason, Bourdon and Open Flute.

My first two rows are Stopped Bourdon, the third row are Piccolo and the fourth row are Open Flutes.

Why two ranks of Bourdon?

Are they not the same?

They are constructed the same and to the same dimensions but they are tuned very slightly different. We start off by tuning the two notes the same (ie C to a C) and then by tapping the stopper on one of the pipes down “a whisker”, the sound of the two will move from unison to a slight “beating”. This effect is known as Celeste (from the French…‘heavenly‘).

"K-D goes Digital"

All of the images on this blog, have so far been scanned into the computer as I didn't have a digital camera. All of these years I have managed with a roll film camera and only since blogging have I seen the advantages to go digital.
Well, yesterday I went over to PCWorld to get a printer cartridge and what did they have on offer?...Yes, a nice Canon Digital...£100 off!
So now I am on a 'learning curve' to try to get to grips with all this new software.
I was just thinking what my grandfather would have made of all this. About 100 years ago he was a chemist working at his shop in Birmingham. He was a keen photographer and one of the cameras he used, has been passed down, via my father, to me.

So , using my new 'toy',  I can show the old camera and a rather small pic. of grandad himself.

I have quite a few old family photos but I have no idea how many were taken using this old plate camera.

My father carried on the interest in photography, being an active member of the Bournville Camera Club. (Yes...he worked at Cadbury's).

His first camera was a Zeiss Icon and, on aquiring a new Minolta he passed the 2 1/4" square Zeiss on to me. I used it for many years, it had an excellent lens and produced some good images.

The above shows the old Zeiss with a picture of my grandmother on the left and my great-grandmother on the right.

I then moved on to a SLR 35mm Pentax and yesterday......a wee Canon, no larger than a bar of Cadbury's chocolate.

What would my grandfather have made of this 'new fangled technology'?

"Spring Songs"

Spring officially started on March 21, the date of the vernal equinox.

I thought I would look up a few songs about Spring....but there are hundreds to choose from. I've just picked out a few.

However, reading todays news, Spring may not have "fully sprung".

"After the sunshine, blue skies and mild weather of the last couple of weeks, winter is about to make an unwelcome return. 

According to the latest forecast, snow, hail and sleet will batter Britain this weekend, bringing an abrupt end to the early spring."

 

Helen Chivers, of the Met Office, said: "It's going to be quite a contrast to the warm and sunny weather of the last two weekends, but it is pretty typical for March."

The wintry weather will be ushered in by Arctic winds from the north, colliding with low pressure over southern Britain. 

Even lowland areas could get some snow on Saturday or Sunday, she said.

It seems to happen every year....the lovely Magnolia comes into bloom only to be nobbled by the frost.

There is a saying among old gardeners....that when the Mulberry starts to bud, all danger of frost has passed.

I wish this was true. 

I have two Mulberry trees and they have been caught out a couple of times in the past.

Tale of Eight Musical Boxes

Part III

Here is a couple of pics of the finished Musical Boxes.

They took me four weeks to make (all eight) with the slowest part being the painting. I had to wait 24 hours between coats. They have now all gone to good homes.

And a close up of one of them. I put their initials on each one so that they didn't get them mixed up.

More on Singing Birds

In the posting on the clock made by Derek, mention was made of a moving bird in the dial.

Derek wanted to get the bird to "sing" along with it's movements. He was thinking of pinning the barrel and using the pipes however I found the following from a book on Clockwork Music and it would seem that this idea was abandoned in favour of the "Swanee Whistle" type pipe.

"The tiny singing birds manufactured by makers such as the Jaquet-Droz, Leschot, Bruguier and Bontems were elementary mechanical organs. They used one pipe with a movable stopper to vary the pitch of the sound. This is said to have been the invention of Henri Maillardet who, for a time, worked for Jaquet-Droz.

Prior to this, a somewhat unconvincing imitation of bird-song was produced by the use of a rank of small, narrow-cut, foot-voiced high-pitched organ pipes or whistles."

Organ Painting

Having now passed the Spring Equinox and we have more hours of daylight, I have once again returned to painting the decoration on the fronts of the organ. I say fronts, because I have built two which are inter-changeable.

The first plan was to build a traditional carved front, similar to the design on the "Lees Yachts" Organ, but without the large framed surround shown in the picture.

I made a half size drawing to get the 'balance' right between the carvings and the size of the organ. I then set about transfering the drawings to the wood for carving. Well, the carving was a much bigger job than I had anticipated...it took months of work. When all was finished I had to get the wood smooth ready for painting.

Well, this sanding, sealing, went on and on, but the wood grain still showed through. I then started using Artists Gesso and this did the trick. However this was also taking a long time and once again I was behind schedule.

I then decided to put this project on the "back-burner" and make a simple front for the organ using mouldings bought from Homebase!

Don't laugh....it actually looks very good. 

So another nice spring day, another day for a bit of scroll painting.  

Watch-Case Verse

When pocket watches with removable cases were in fashion, you could often find in the outer case a verse placed there by the watchmaker.

Sometimes these verses were so devised as to appear in a circle.

Let’s see if blogger can cope with “round “ verse.

                    Onward,

          Perpetually moving,

  These faithful hands are proving

      How soft the hours steal by;

   This monitory pulse like beating

  Is oftentimes methinks repeating,

    “Swift, swift, the hours do fly!

   Ready! be ready! Perhaps before        

         These hands have made

           One revolution more

            Life’s spring is snapt -

                      You die!”

Sorry,  this is a bit mormid.....and on another sunny spring day.

I’ll try and find a more cheerful one if I can.

(NB Original spelling of snapped)

A Naughty Bit

I notice there are a number of "naughty" limericks floating around the blogosphere this morning.

So with a musical theme I may as well put in my "three penniworth".

There was a young fellow called Cager,

Who, as the result of a wager,

      Offered to fart

      The whole Oboe part

Of Mozart's  Quartet in F Major.

A concert conductor in Rio

Fell in love with a lady called Cleo;

   As she took down her panties,

   He said:  'No  andantes!

I want it  allegro  con  brio!'

(For the non-musical....andante             -  'at walking pace'

                                    allegro con brio  -  'quick with vigour'  )

"A Replica Musical Clock"

I received the following article from a friend in Australia. He didn't want to start a blog and so I offered to post it up for him.

A Replica Musical Clock by Derek Deane

I bought the original Organ Clock (circa 1780) in the UK just before coming to Australia, for £5, and have been carting it around with me ever since.

It was not in good condition - there were no pipes, weights, chains, pendulum and , worst of all, no pins or bridges on the barrel.

Two years ago I bought a computer and got on the web, thinking that I could find some help in restoring the clock. I had some success but was unable to find anyone who could really help. I tried several museums in Germany but the language barrier was the problem.

I decided I was doing more harm than good taking it apart and putting it together again and, not being any further advanced with the restoration, I thought the best thing to do was to make a copy. In that way I could learn more and not do any damage to the original.

The first thing I had to do was to find some good timber and then I remembered some 6”x 1” I had put in the roof space of my house some twenty years back.

Now the temperature of that space in the summer months can reach 50 degrees C, so I figured that it should be well seasoned by now and sure enough it was perfect for what I wanted.

The timber was an Australian hardwood, known locally as Mountain Ash (Eucalyptus Regnans) which grows to a height of 300 feet in the ‘high country’ in the State of Victoria.

I used this to make the frame and the arbors of the movement.

The next thing I needed to make, were the thirteen gears. At first I thought of having them made professionally but the cost was too great. Talking to a friend who is a model engineer (and also a member of the Australian Mechanical Organ Society) I was convinced by him that I could cut them myself.These were made from 1.5, 2 and 3mm brass and cut using my lathe. This was the longest job to do.

The smallest gear had twelve teeth and the largest had ninety six.

Finding chain was just about impossible here in Australia, so I decided to use rope on all three trains and this worked out well. I am still trying to make the weights but this is just a matter of ‘trial and error’ to get them correct.

I made the dial from  1.5mm sheet steel as per the original and had it painted professionally. I am very pleased with the end result.

Having made the clock movement and got it running satisfactorily, the next job was to make the barrel and to ’pin’ it with the six tunes. I made a rough jig using a wooden frame and half inch copper tube which turned out to be accurate enough for the job. For the ‘bridges’ and ’pins’ I used 0.75mm brass wire and flattened it in a set of rollers to a width of 0.8mm, that being the width of the tips on the ’keys’. Each tune took me about six hours to complete.

The ten pipes were made from Kuri Pine, a New Zealand timber which was once in an old house here in Bombala for 60 years or more , hence nicely seasoned. After lots of experiment, I decided on a pressure of  ¾“ WG for the ten pipes which were tuned to G, G#, A#, C, C#, D, D#, F, G, G#.  These were the notes needed for the six tunes I had chosen:-

1. Baa Baa Black Sheep

2. Three Blind Mice

3. Oranges and Lemons

4. Here we go round the Mulberry Bush

5. Hickory Dickory Dock

6. The Grand Old Duke of York

I seem to remember that the person I bought the clock from told me that it came out of a large house and that it used to be in the children’s nursery, so I thought these tunes would be appropriate.

The bird in the dial I carved from the same wood that I used for the barrel - Jeluton. This is an Asian timber used mostly by wood carvers as it cuts easily both with and across the grain. Inside the bird is a mechanism which is worked from the lifting of the keys by the barrel bridges. This causes the bird to open it’s beak in time with the music. It also turns left and right alternately when the music plays.

Being retired, I do not keep a note of the time taken to make this project, but at a rough guess, it would be approximately six to seven months.

Posed by Derek Deane,  Bombala,  Australia. 

"Let's Dance"

Dance lessons have become so popular that the activity is now second in popularity only to football in Britain's schools. 

The number of pupils choosing dance has risen 83 per cent in four years and a third of them are boys, according to research by the Arts Council. 

Teachers say that boys involved in more traditional sports, such as rugby, make good dancers because of their strength and overall fitness.

Entries for dance GCSE have gone up from 10,091 three years ago to 17,855 last year.

Whilst not wishing to belittle anyone who decides to take up dancing, can you imagine a young man going to a job interview and telling them that although he couldn’t read and write very well he did have a GCSE in dancing!

I went to dance lessons in ‘my own’ time…Friday nights at Victor Silvester’s Dance Studio if I remember correctly. ………Only got to Silver in Ballroom and Latin!  

Note: Victor Silvester is the correct spelling. Many sources - even including some cheap modern reissues of his records on CD - wrongly have "Sylvester". 

My spell checker got it wrong as well !

"Spring Song"

Friday Night is not music night today. It's a lovely sunny day, real birds are singing but as this is "mechanical blog" here's a little bird with a difference.

Whilst digging around through some old books, I came across an article where someone had written down the tunes different birds sing. It was a very old book, Victorian I think, and he had noted all the different names the birds are known by. I copied the music out by hand thinking I might use it one day. If anyone plays the flute, or can sing high enough, give it ago.

I hope this works...I had to do this in 3 pastes!!

Hope You can read it?

"This Years Sowing Delayed"

Well all this lovely warm weather has got me sorting out my seeds. I got the propogator down out of the loft and plugged it in to make sure it still worked.

Went out to the shed to sort out some pots and seed-compost and what did I find when I got back to the conservatory?

Hazel had decided that this was the ultimate site for a kip... complete with heated under-blanket!

Oh well.......seeds will have to wait a while.

I don't know how you feel....but I find it hard to move them from their slumbers.

"Dear Old Uncle Joe"

Traditionally springtime has gardeners across England itching to get back into their flower beds and rockeries after a long winter of inactivity. 

Doctors have warned that many overdo it and end up needing treatment for a host of injuries including “Gardeners' Back“, “Weeder's Wrist” and “Pruner's Neck“. 

The warning was issued by the British College of Osteopathic Medicine, which said, the garden may not always be the friendliest, or the healthiest place, 

Dr Ian Drysdale, College Principal, said, "Every year our clinics prepare themselves for these gardening related injuries, but the majority of them are totally preventable. 

"People don't associate gardening with danger which is the most dangerous thing of all." 

Gardeners should also ease into it so that they give themselves less trauma. 

"Going straight into vigorous gardening is the same as an elite athlete going straight into competition from a break." 

"At this time of year people have not done a lot of gardening or activity for a long time," he said. There is a sunny day and they throw themselves into it. They don't do it for 20 minutes, they dig the whole allotment in three hours or they mow the whole lawn. 

Well, well….. they do nanny us don’t they?

I cannot imagine anyone getting the mower out and then only cutting a quarter of the lawn.

The song was sung in 1929 by Frank Benson, so I don't expect many to know of it, but did you spot who it was written by?

A Tale of Eight Musical Boxes

Part II

The making of the little barrel organs required quite a lot of fretwork. Now although I have a ‘go-faster’ electric model I much prefer to use a hand fretsaw.

I still have a number of my father’s carpentry tools including his “Hobbies” fretsaw and all the side frames for the organ cart (16 off - painted red) were cut out with his old saw.

Using it, takes me back to the days when Dad made all our toys. After the war toys were hard to come by and quite expensive. The earliest I remember, was an alphabet of wooden letters, about 2” high, cut out of ¼” ply. It must have taken him ages and maybe a few broken blades. As there was only one of each letter, we learnt the alphabet but could only make up short words with no repeat letters.

I can also remember “tumbling acrobats”. A small jointed figure, hanging by his arms from a twisted bit of string between two rods. Squeezing the rods together caused the string to unwind and the little figure flew round!

Batch production on the organs continued and today’s picture shows the organs and carts having had a 'lick of paint'. I have to admit I cheated and bought the wheels ready made. They came a horrible colour and I had to give them a coat of yellow paint…………to.b.cont.

"Paper Roll Production Halted"

Production of my latest arrangement was brought to a halt today.

Wesley thought my "marking-out" board was an ideal place for a kip in the sun.

Oh yes.......the music?........"Keep your Sunny Side Up"

"Red Kites in the Sunset"

When I was a lad the song used to go "Feed the Birds, Tuppence a Bag". Now in most town centres is more a case of....feed the birds....£50 fine!

However, following on from yesterdays post, I thought I would show you a very large visitor to my garden.

Some years ago they re-introduced Red Kites into the Chiltern countryside. Not content to stay in the countryside, some of these magnificent birds moved to more urban ares. My neighbour used to put out chicken pieces for a couple of feral cats.....a perfect snack for a Red Kite. He told me he had tried to photograph them but they were too quick for his camera.

I like a challenge....out went some chicken....out went my cats!

Later that afternoon.....out went a bit more chicken......down came the Kite.....click...click.

It was difficult, they come in very quick: I had a fast shutter speed but focusing was the hard part.

I have since read that they should be fed raw meat and not cooked leftovers.

Well with the price of chicken today I'm afraid the cats and the kites are going to miss out anyway!

"No Wonder the Birdies Sing"

Business in the ‘bird care’ industry is booming thanks to enthusiastic householders buying extravagant birdhouses, gourmet birdfood and sumptuous nesting material in a bid to lure the feathered friends into their gardens.

Britons are forking out millions of pounds a year on these luxurious materials – so birds can use them to build nests.

It means the industry is now worth a recession-defying £200million a year – even though experts say most of the paraphernalia is entirely unnecessary as birds are happiest with a ‘bog standard’ nest box and a few scraps of food.

However people a still buying expensive products like…. a blend of oats, peanut granules, sunflower hearts, suet, apple and sultana topped with rowan berries is aimed at blackbirds and thrushes, while the mix for robins and tits contains a less appetising ingredient: crushed insects.

 Both cost about £37 for a 55lb bag.

Jeff Baker, from the British Trust for Ornithology research charity, said: ‘Because it is now big business there is a competitive element and everyone is looking for the next thing.

The latest bird food to hit the shelves is sultanas,’ said Mr Baker. ‘They are packaged as bird food so they are more expensive than ordinary sultanas in the supermarket, but they are the same.’

A Tale of Eight Musical Boxes

Part I

My father, as a boy, had a musical box, a small plain square box with a little handle on the top and a picture stuck on the underside.

It played an old Music Hall tune called “Hold your Hand Out, You Naughty Boy”.

Strange as it may seem, I have yet to find the sheet music for this although I expect I could search the web and buy it from somewhere.

Well my brothers and I used to have hours of fun with this although it was always put away afterwards, out of reach.

 “It’s not a toy” he would say, but the truth is he did not want it damaged.

When his first grandchild arrived it was lovingly passed on.

There were more grandchildren to follow, but only one musical box.

I therefore thought it would be nice to make a few more of these to ‘keep in family’ so to speak. Well, rather than the plain little Victorian box, I designed a ‘box’ as a small harp, an exact scale model of a harp I had built some 30 years ago. However it took weeks of work and I only finished two models before giving up. My nephews and nieces were having offspring faster than I could build them!

So a new plan was to make something simpler to manufacture.

A production line of small Barrel Organs…….. to.b.cont.

"Friday Night is Music Night"

Wind of Change by Scorpions beautifully played on a Raffin 20/67.

 I have chosen this clip as it gives a good view of the paper roll crossing the tracker-bar. This also shows what can be arranged with just 20 notes to choose from.

"I'm Walking backwards to Christmas"

Just before Christmas I was turning my friend’s organ, whilst he went for lunch, when a small boy came up and said:-

    “What happens if you turn it the other way?”

Well, at least he had an inquiring mind…Full marks for that.

But before I could answer his father said:-

    “Well I expect it plays the music backwards!”

Sorry, not true….the crank will still turn and operate the bellows, so plenty of air, but the spool ‘pulling’ the paper across the tracker-bar, will now be going in the opposite direction and the paper on it will just pile up in the pressure box.

I cannot imagine anyone wanting to play the music backwards except out of curiosity but the only way to do it would be to wind it onto an empty spool backwards and with the paper the ‘wrong’ side up.

April 1st is still 3 weeks away!

Leicestershire County Council have spent £6000 fitting satellite navigation devices to 14 of their Lawn Mowers because gardeners claimed they kept getting lost in long grass. The council said the satellite navigation technology will help combat an 'unprecedented amount of growth' on its verges and playing fields. 

Susie Squire of the TaxPayers' Alliance said: 'At a time when ordinary people are struggling to put food on the table, frittering away public money on this sort of nonsense shows just how out of touch this council have become. 

Leicestershire resident Brian Rayner, vice-president of the national society of allotment and leisure gardeners, said: 'It's bonkers, it beggars belief. Why spend all this money on these gadgets when you can see the grass grow with your own eyes? 

'All it takes is for someone to look out of the window and they can see if grass needs cutting, you don't need a satnav to tell you that. 

The "Show-land" Organ

The history of the show-land organ is a long one.

An early reference appeared in “The Illustrated London News” of 1846.

The entry reads   ”…..here comes a Monster Street Organ to add to our daily torture.

…..It is from the prolific manufactory of Gavioli of Modena…drawn by a real horse and requiring two men to develop its orchestral resources…..How hard do the men labour in their vocation!  How well does the Italian maker comprehend public taste.

He gives us plenty of parchment and brass….you will revel in revolving cylinders…in the Monster Organ a shoal of needles”

The final words indicate that this was indeed a barrel organ.

Our earliest Fair organs were true barrel organs in which the keys, coupled to various pipes, were depressed by several thousands of pins and short loops (for sustained notes) all set in a revolving barrel.

This is the principle of the old musical boxes and Street Pianos. 

Amersham Museum Day

Had another excellent afternoon at Amersham Museum. Lots of good company, lots of news and of course lots of excellent music. 

John Smith, the designer of the "JS 26 note Universal" organ, was there and we had a nice long chat about arranging and the use of MIDI files. He tells me he is going more over to the use of MIDI in the playing of his organs and has decided to hand over the "organ plans" part of his business to his son.

The 46-key Limonaire organ had been moved from the position in the above photo into the main area and was in particularly good 'voice'.

The next open day will be in April but they have not yet decided on a date. For those interested in going along you will need to check the web site. The address is:-

28 Plantation Rd. Amersham on the Hill, Bucks.

Web site: www.fairorganmuseum.co.uk

"Accompaniment Pipes"

Next instalment on pipes; 

This time I have taken the front and top off the organ  to show a few more pipes.

Moving up the scale, from the five bass pipes, we have the eight accompaniment pipes. These are placed down each side of the organ; there are three on the left and five on the right. Again, these are “stopped” pipes and also some have to be angled to get them in the case.

These usually end up playing chords associated with the bass pipe, which had been previously been chosen in to be in harmony with the melody.

The eight pipes (from lowest) are:- Db, D, Eb, F, G, Ab, A, Bb.

Now, I won’t list all the keys, possible chords, missing chords…etc….but I will give an example of how, even with only 8 notes (of the sequence of 11), we can sound a very large percentage of chords to accompany most popular melodies.

Again, I’ll choose the Key of Eb.

    Triad major tonic   Eb, G, Bb.

              minor 2nd      F, Ab,  C,            (C from bass or melody).

              minor 3rd      G, Bb, D.

              sub-dom.      Ab, C, Eb.           (C from bass or melody).

              dom 7th         Bb, D, F, Ab        (Ab = 7th).

              minor 6th       C,  Eb, G.           (C from bass or melody).

The only three notes missing are E, F# and B. These would only be required in “unusual” chords. (eg  Gmin6th or  Ab7th !!!!).

 I know we cheat a bit with note C, but it is OK to use the highest bass pipe C, or the lowest melody pipe C in the chords.

 

"Who's (not) Sorry Now?"

                                                                                       

 

  

    The Prime Mentalist again refused to accept any personal responsibility for the financial meltdown and the failure of the banks.

He told the Scottish Labour conference: “We need to get banks back to doing what they are there for: keeping safe the deposits of people who have saved for a rainy day and giving credit to people who want to buy a house or expand their business."

The Prime Mentalist called for ".. a return to the 'values of the good society', where banks recommit to their fundamental role."

How Broon dare lecture anyone on the values of a 'good society'. It makes me cringe. He has been one of the architects of Nu Liebour, who have taxed us more, spent more and encouraged more debt. 

When the proverbial hits the fan what does he do? 

He creates debt to pay the debts.

"Friday Night is Music Night"

A beautifully made small organ from France, where they are known "Orgue de Barbarie". I particularly like the small carousel of sea-horses on the front. Excellent.

Roll on Summer

Now here's a sight to "warm" you up on a cold March morning.

I don't know what it is but when I see pictures like this or hear the organ sounds playing, I can smell, new mown grass and hay.......hot oily steam engines.....and unfortunatly greasy hot-dogs.

Roll on those lazy, hazy crazy days of summer.

The year before last was a bad year for steam rallies as the wet summer meant so many were cancelled due to soft ground.

Last year was a bit better and I managed to get round to quite a few.

What will the summer of 2009 be like?

PS.  The Organ in the picture is a Limonaire in the centre of a magnificent set of Gallopers. 

Too Tired to Blog Today

This is a picture of the "boss" having fourty winks before demanding her next plate of "Gourmet Gold".

Who put the Ram in the Ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong?

As Gorgon Broon promised an audience at Oxford University, that he would maintain science funding, news of an 'astonishing breakthrough' was reported in a previously little-known research discipline:...... navel fluff mechanics. 

"An Austrian chemist, Georg Steinhauser, claims to have discovered why fluff builds up in the tummy button.

 Apparently it is dragged there, presumably from the lining of cheap underpants, on the tiny barbed hooks of hair. (That's what happens when you don't buy M&S). 

 Steinhauser reached this conclusion after studying 503 pieces of fluff from his own navel. The good news is that there is now a cure for excessive navel fluff. Steinhauser advises that sufferers should shave their stomachs." 

 The bad news is that Britain now has no hope of establishing an early lead in navel fluff technology. 

"With science funding secure, we must instead turn our attention to other equally intriguing questions."

   "Does your chewing gum lose its flavour on the bedpost overnight?" and 

         " Who put the ram in the ram-a-lam-a-ding-dong?"

 

" Drink, Drink, Let the Toast Pass"

The Drinking Song comes from "The Student Prince" by Sigmund Romberg. It is just one of the songs from the show written in 1924. It does fit the 26 note scale as I found out a couple of months ago, although it does become a bit repetitive. A lot of music that repeats the theme, playes the repititions on different instruments and/or, octaves up or down. The little organ can't cope with this although  the repeat can be played on a different 'stop'.

However, the reason behind this post, is that I read today that some musicians are taking this 'Drinking' a bit too literally.

"Inappropriate use of alcohol in Britain's great orchestras is, according to musicians, endemic....ranging from drinking a pint before a concert to steady the nerves, to full-blown inebriation on stage."

"A recent incident involved one of the UK's most celebrated opera and ballet orchestras and its heavy brass section. The players were involved in only one of the three works being staged that night - and performed drunk."

It was claimed that "For musicians there can be so much captive time.... a lot of time and not many distractions. Frequently the only place to go is the pub, everywhere else is closed and there are no facilities backstage".

Because there has been so little research, it is hard to untangle whether drinking has increased in orchestras, in line with alcohol use generally in the UK.

Some musicians point to a gradual culture change. Older musicians recall a time when bars in venues were open before, during and after performances. That is no longer true, as employers have become more aware of the "dreaded" health and safety issues.

"Sunday Best"

A recent survey gives a fascinating insight into changing British life over the past few decades. It reveals which habits are dying out and those which have stood the test of time.

Sunday Best clothes, traditionally reserved for wearing to church, topped the list of customs falling by the wayside.

Playground games like hopscotch, skipping, hide and seek and conkers are next at risk.

May Day celebrations such as Morris dancing, crowning a May Queen and dancing around a Maypole also seem to be on the way out.

However I don't believe all of this is true.  

There is a sinister plot being put about to make use feel the "odd one out" if we pursue traditional or patriotic customs. In the eyes of the eu, England does not exist. Just look at their maps.

However, we remain a nation of roast Sunday lunch eaters,we still take British seaside holidays, watch a Christmas pantomime, attend a Bonfire Night display and enjoy a weekly fish and chip supper.

And I enjoy playing Patriotic Music. So there!