Bristol Times 15 October 2013

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TUE

15 OCT 2013

Celebrating our proud history and keeping your memories alive

Early 1900s

Page 4 Bristol reggae band of 80s is back

Quantum leap Our first Nobel Prize winner

PARK STRIFE

Hitler’s bombs destroyed this area of Castle Street (above); a building many opposed was built in its place; now debate rages on about what’s next for this end of Castle Park Turn to pages 2&3 Today

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Page 5 The real hero of Glastonbury - and Clifton Village

1950s

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● Top, Bristol Bridge in 1901, showing the site where the Norwich Union building is now; right, Bristol Bridge in the early 1950s showing the vacant site; left, the Norwich Union building as it is now

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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

SIGHT THAT’S ‘LIKE A SLAP IN THE FACE’ The recent revival of proposals to re-develop the derelict St Mary-le-Port site at the edge of Castle Park highlights the controversies which have surrounded the area ever since the Blitz. As Eugene Byrne finds, the same site being debated now was the cause of a massive row in the late 1950s.

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HE first major German air raids of the Second World War were shocking. On September 25, 1940 German bombers swooped in over Filton in broad daylight, dropping 168 bombs.

They were gone again in less than a minute. But the raid lasting just 45 seconds killed 91 aircraft workers and a further 69 civilians in the surrounding area.

Traumatising though this was, there was much worse to come. There would be more deaths and injuries and the raids would change the character of Bristol for ever.

Bristol proper endured six major air raids during the war, plus numerous smaller attacks.

But it was the first big raid on the city, on the night over November 24/25 1940 that was to have the most lasting consequences.

Unlike the short, sharp attack on Filton, this one lasted six hours and used the horrific techniques the Nazis had perfected in the Spanish Civil War, in Poland and its attacks on France, Belgium and Holland.

Bristol was ill-prepared for this, physically and psychologically.

Some 134 German aircraft took part, flying over individually or in small groups. This was not a massed formation but a sequence of piecemeal attacks calculated to wear out overstretched firemen and rescue workers.

They dropped 156 tonnes of high explosive bombs and almost five tonnes of so-called oil bombs.

The explosives were meant to break open buildings, to destroy roads and break up gas and water mains, electricity supplies and telephone lines.

These were to pave the way for the bombs which would do the most damage – incendiary bombs.

The German incendiaries, each about a foot long and only weighing a kilo each, were dropped in huge numbers – about 12,500 on this raid – and they started fires all over the place.

One of the myths of the Blitz in Bristol, as elsewhere in Britain, was that most of the damage was done by explosive bombs. It was not. It was done by fire.

If you look at the ruined Temple, St Peter’s or St Mary-le-Port churches now you can see how they were gutted by fire; you can still see the weathered

traces of scorch-marks on the walls.

The Lord Mayor of Bristol, Alderman Thomas Underwood, said later that “The City of Churches had in one night become the city of ruins.”

Some 200 people had been killed and 700 injured, around 150 of them seriously. Eight men from an undermanned and under-equipped fire service gave their lives for Bristol. The youngest was just 15 years old.

There would be more, equally horrific raids, but this first was to have the greatest effect on the fabric of Bristol.

We are still living with these consequences today. Renewed political debate and argument over the future of the St Mary-le-Port site and how it should best be developed is only the latest evidence.

The November 1940 raid took a heavy toll on Castle Street, Wine Street and the surrounding areas.

Until then, these two streets had been the shopping and social heart of Bristol. There are still people living who will remember what a lively place it used to be, especially on a Saturday night when people would go out shopping and socialising.

The raid also destroyed such famous local landmarks as the Dutch House and St Peter’s Hospital.

But despite their best efforts, Hitler’s air force did not level the area. The raid left a lot of destroyed buildings, but others were intact, and many were something in between.

The actual job of levelling the area we now call Castle Park was the work of council planners, bulldozers and wrecking balls.

They meant well. They wanted the best for Bristol but then, as now, their work was dictated by fashions and beliefs, and of course by the money that was available.

Before the war had even ended, the council had drawn up hugely ambitious blueprints to “re-plan” a huge area of Bristol. These plans, drawn up in the euphoria of approaching victory, evaporated in the cold light of post-war austerity, and the realisation that the country had, in effect, bankrupted itself.

One of the most far-reaching elements of the plan, however, was that Castle Street would not be re-built.

The big shopping chains did not want quaint little old shops in a narrow 17th century street. They wanted

● The completed Norwich Union building in the 1960s, clearly showing the mixture of old buildings and churches, large, new modern retail palaces.

So Castle Street was not re-built; we got Broadmead instead.

Another far-reaching consequence was that the city was cut in two. Until the war, there had been one continuous shopping street in Bristol, running from Blackboy Hill, down Whiteladies Road, Park Street, the Centre, into Corn Street, along Castle Street and on to Old Market and thence onwards to the vast working class suburbs to the east of the city.

This, however, was not considered to be a problem. In the future, the planners reasoned, more and more people would be travelling by bus and by car, and Castle Street was too narrow to be a traffic artery anyway.

The postwar plans included a whole new network of wide roads along which it would be much easier to travel.

Parts of these plans were implemented in the decades after the war, and some were not, depending on

when the money and the political will were available.

But the area around Castle Street was always going to be a park. The planners had decided on that from the start.

But not even this happened particularly quickly. For much of its history, Castle Park would be better described as Castle Car Park. The park which so many Bristolians know and love today really only dates from the 1990s, though most of it had been landscaped before this.

You could fill a couple of books with details of all the different developments that have been proposed for the area down the years. There was going to be a cultural centre, perhaps law courts, an exhibition and trade fair facility. At one time the Arnolfini art gallery was going to be there.

But the key point was always that much of the area would be landscaped and open for the enjoyment of Bristol’s citizens.

The most controversial proposal of all came in the late 1950s. And it was the first time in Bristol’s history that large numbers of citizens came together to campaign against a development which they considered ugly and out of place.

And its location?

The St Mary-le-Port site. Exactly where the controversy is today.

This was the so-called “Wine Street Controversy”, and it arose in the spring of 1958 when the council went against its own plans and decided, money being tight as always, to lease land at the western end of the site for two office developments which would become the Norwich Union and Bank of England buildings, surrounding the ruins of St Mary-Le-Port church.

At this time, the site, which is at the historic centre of Bristol, next to Bristol Bridge and yards from where the High Cross used to stand at the crossroads in the middle of the city, was earmarked for some sort of cultural

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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

● Top, the Norwich Union building under construction, early 1960s; above, The ruins of Castle Street in 1953, showing St Peter’s Church. The German bombs did not level the area

and modern developments

“ Whatever you thought of the curious flat grey Norwich Union building when it was still an office, nobody would deny now it is derelict and an embarrassing eyesore.

and public works committee, irritably suggested that anyone who didn’t like the idea should stand for election.

The Evening Post came out against the plan, too, and very quickly helped the campaigners to gather 11,500 signatures for a petition against it.

The Royal Fine Art Commission stepped in as well. They looked at the plans for the office buildings and pronounced them inappropriate for a site of such historic importance.

The Ministry of Housing and Local Government was asked to intervene.

By then, the council had already given outline planning permission.

The Ministry said the matter was not its concern.

Work commenced on the Norwich Union building in May 1961. At this time, the plans for the Bank of England were still secret.

News that the builders moved in shocked the campaigners. One of them told the press: “Now the cor-

poration will say that it is too late to discuss the matter because the work has already begun.

“We are absolutely dumbfounded … The corporation has taken an irresponsible action: it has acted in a most unfortunate way.”

Buttonholed by The Times as to the fate of the rest of the Castle Street area, Gervas Walker airily said: “We are at the moment ascertaining the needs of various corporation departments and committees. For instance, there might be a municipal art gallery there.”

Nothing, you’ll note, about consulting the people of Bristol!

Work on the Bank of England building started later in the same year, and Castle Street never did get its art gallery. For years it was destined to remain half car park, and half bomb site, in places overgrown with the buddleia bushes which once flourished all over Bristol.

Arnold Perkins, secretary of the

Civic Society said afterwards that in spite of the campaign, the council had dug its heels in and gone ahead with an unpopular project. The result, he said, “is a building which promises to give us a hearty slap in the face every time we walk past it for the rest of our lives.”

He was speaking in 1962, and whatever you might have thought of the curious flat grey Norwich Union building when it was still a working office, nobody would deny that now it is derelict it is an ugly and embarrassing eyesore.

As for the rest of the site, Castle Park was formally opened by the Lord Mayor in 1978, and then again in 1993 following further improvements after a temporary stint as a car park once more while the Galleries shopping centre was built.

In 2006 developer Deeley Freed proposed a “mixed use” development of offices, shops and flats for the Norwich Union/Bank of England site,

now re-named St Mary-le-Port.

Bristol City Council supported the plan, but because the developers chanced their hand and tried to take some more land, it met with furious opposition from local people determined to protect the park.

It was economic downturn, however, and not campaigning that put those plans on hold.

Now, the issue has gone live again.

Whatever happens, the mayor and council (probably!) won’t be able to get away with being as high-handed as they were in the late 1950s and early 1960s. We also have a mayor who has made a great deal out of his credentials as an architect and someone who values Bristol’s heritage.

Let’s hope that we get it right this time round. Because 50 years ago, despite the very best efforts of huge numbers of concerned people, this newspaper included, the council got it wrong.

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or arts or leisure centre.

Now, though, the council was proposing to put offices here.

The Bristol Architects’ Forum protested and sent in counter proposals.

The Bristol Civic Society, the Bristol Society of Architects, the Round Table and the Workers’ Educational Association all joined forces and asked the council to re-consider.

The council in those days was not accustomed to having its decisions questioned. Gervas Walker, the Conservative chairman of the planning

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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

REUNITED TALISMAN REVIVE REGGAE’S Talisman, one of the most important bands on Britain’s thriving 1980s reggae scene are back with a new album. Eugene Byrne meets the two founder members to talk about the good – and bad – old days

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ALISMAN were never superstars, but for many years they were one of the biggest names on the UK reggae scene, and one of the forerunners of the so-called Bristol Sound.

They’re there in everyone’s list of UK reggae greats, alongside Aswad, Misty in Roots, Steel Pulse and, of course, another Bristol band, Black Roots.

“Don’t mention that name! We never say that name!” laughs Dennison Joseph.

Rumours of a certain amount of needle between Talisman and Black Roots have long been rife.

But, says Dehvan Othieno, these are greatly exaggerated. “There was rivalry in the sense that you had two sets of people doing the same thing in the same town.”

Now Talisman have re-formed, they have a new album out and they are touring to promote it. Dehvan and Dennison first came together in the 1970s.

Dehvan was with a band, the Cavaliers, which had been formed at the Baptist Mills Youth Club, while Dennison had a band called the Panthers.

Dennison: “In 1973 I was working at British Aerospace, and there were a couple of other black guys there with me, and one day I just said to them ‘let’s form a band’ …

Within six weeks we were doing a show at the Bamboo Club.”

The Bamboo Club is a key part of Bristol’s musical legend. It was set up and run by Tony Bullimore (better known in recent years as a yachtsman) and his wife Lalel in the 1960s, and hosted performances by leading black musicians from around the world. Johnny Nash was here.

Bob Marley played three times before he became famous. Dennison particularly remembers an appearance in the early 1970s by British reggae band Matumbi.

While a few DJs on stations like Radio Caroline and Radio Luxemburg were playing reggae, the other main source of music was Shepherd’s Bush market in London; youngsters would return to Bristol with a few records which would then get borrowed and taped onto cassette, often several times.

Dennison and Dehvan’s band originally called themselves the Revelation Rockers. Because their then drummer Dave Kennard came from Bath they rehearsed there a lot. Their first ever gig was at Bath’s Longacre Hall.

“I had to step in and take over as lead vocalist for the band,” says Dehvan.

“Our lead vocalist at the time left the band two days before the show because … (Dennison buries his face in his hands and groans) … because of a dispute between Dennison and him over a dominoes game.”

“They can get very heated, those games!” laughs Dennison.

The Revelation Rockers played a few gigs locally, then some shows in London, where they came across another band called Revelation. So Revelation Rockers became Talisman.

“They told us to change our name, so we did,” says Dennison. “They were bigger boys than us.”

The line-up for much of Talisman’s original incarnation included Dehvan (guitar, vocals) and Dennison (bass, vocals), with Donald de Cordova (drums), Bill Bartlett, later Chris Potter (keyboards), Leroy Forbes (guitar) and Brendan Whitmore (sax). Unusually for the time, two of the band members – Whitmore and Potter – were white.

They toured the UK and played support slots to a huge range of bands from Burning Spear to The Clash and the Jam. They even met Bo Diddley. There were appearances at Glastonbury Festival, and supporting the Rolling Stones at Ashton Gate in 1982.

One of the remarkable things about this time, they say, is that most of their audience was white. “The student types, the hippy types, if you want to put a stereotype to it.”

“We played 90 per cent of the colleges and universities around the country,” says Dennison. “We thrived on that sort of audience. It was difficult trying to impress your own people, we could do it, but it was hard work.”

The story they tell is of playing Trinity Hall in Old Market. Here they would have a fairly evenly mixed audience, the white kids at the front, the black ones at the back. The whites would get into it, really let their hair down, while the black kids were much more cool. And then they’d be packing up at the end of the gig, and black guys would come up to them, nod approvingly and say quietly, “Great gig, man.”

But black audiences were undoubtedly harder to win over than whites. Dennison cites the example of a Bristol band from the 1960s and 70s called The Lurks.

“These guys were slick. They came on wearing bell bottoms, yellow and pink suits. There was even a time they played at the ice rink.

“Then they went on tour, played Germany, Italy, Spain and Israel. But when they came back to play the Bamboo that was the first time I saw a black audience really rate those guys.

“That’s what we never really had the chance to do, but it was happening. The band was rising, the pay was rising, the quality of our shows was rising from all the time we were on the road, but they say you cannot be a king in your own domain.”

“It was also that we didn’t play the hard style of reggae that was coming out of Jamaica at the time,” says Dehvan. “And that was what the black audiences required. By the early 80s

● Dennison Joseph, left, and Dehvan Othieno playing at The East Quay, Whitstable in march this year

● Talisman in the studio, early 1980s there was a free flow in the import of Jamaican music, and if you weren’t on the button they weren’t interested.

“Our reggae music evolved through our experiences in the UK and it had a different lilt to what was coming out of Jamaica. Our lyrical content reflected what we were feeling here rather than the poverty and oppression they were feeling in Jamaica.

“It was a different struggle here,” agrees Dennison. “What you see is what you write, and you write about the struggles you’re going through, just like with the Blues in America.

● Talisman by the St Paul’s branch of Lloyds B “Don’t forget we were coming through racism. There was a lot of it when I arrived at ten years old in ‘63 and that lasted ten years and more, and it wasn’t a happy time.”

Their first single, a double A side – Dole Age and Free Speech (1981) reflected these tensions, not just those felt by the black community, but by many young people of all races living through a period of high unemployment presided over by a government which many considered unsympathetic. In the middle of all this, wider political tensions in Bristol boiled over

in the St Paul’s riots.

Dennison: “Don’t forget Bristol was noted for its riots long before the immigrants came … But it helped to change things, black people helped to change the laws.

“Black people didn’t really have the vote in the sense that their vote didn’t mean anything. There was no representation, nobody in Parliament, no black people in the police.”

Talisman’s music was about these issues. It still is. The new album is a 12 track set with several songs very reminiscent of British reggae’s 1980s

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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

E’S GOLDEN AGE ’

The real hero of Glasto – and Clifton Village

though he was carrying nothing more offensive than a bag of sweets.

Things have changed for the better since the 1980s, but there’s still a long way to go, seems to be the message.

“Reggae music is essentially a rebel music,” says Dehvan. “Most Caribbean communities use it in that way, to talk about what’s happening. We’re not afraid to talk about governments and leaders.

“In the 1980s I think what happened with punk and any kind of anti-establishment music was that they latched onto that rebel thing.

“I think it would also be hard to deny that the smoking of marijuana among the Rastafi brethren came to take a bigger role within reggae music. It was also an attraction, it was another part of putting two fingers up to the government. They say it’s illegal, and we say, well, we’re going to do it anyway.”

Talisman broke up in the mid 1980s due to that cliché, musical differences.

There were six people in the band, all from very different backgrounds, and with six different sets of ideas as to how they should move forward. Dennison blames Grandmaster Flash.

“It was the rise of this American rapping. The two younger members of the band wanted to go that way. For me that’s what broke the band up, that new influence, that new sound that some people wanted to play, while we were strictly wanting to play reggae music.

“But things happen for a reason.

Everything goes so far and it needs to

Pic: Lee Thompson

Dehvan Othieno

yds Bank, burned in the 1980 disturbances

was imto d to

the dn’t resno

golden age.

With youth unemployment high once more, there are a lot of parallels between then and now.

There are tunes with titles like Hey Yout and Things a Get Tough. Season for Freeman is one of the most politically charged songs there, namechecking various black heroes and martyrs.

It could be the Eighties, but it’s not; the song mentions Stephen Lawrence and Trayvon Martin the innocent American high school student shot dead by George Zimmerman, even

either stop or be successful. If it hadn’t stopped I wouldn’t be where I am today, I wouldn’t have achieved all the things I did since 1985-86.”

He and Dehvan did a stint with Jamaican reggae star Eek-A-Mouse. In Jamaica, they recorded an album called Jam Rock as Talisman, but without the rest of the band.

Since then, both were in and out of the music business. Dennison drove a taxi for a while, took up Tai Chi and still teaches it. Dehvan had a solo career and a record label.

So now they’re back in business, what do they want this time round?

Fame, fortune, money, groupies …

“More wives, perhaps?” quips Dehvan. “If you do well, all that will come,” says Dennison. “But I always remember the royalties cheques we used to get, see where the money was coming from, it was Germany, Australia, all over the world!

“Those are the places I’d like to play.

I want to go where people like our music, and that’s the whole world. I don’t want to be famous, just go to places where people like the music.”

● Talisman’s new album Talisman I-Surrection (inset far left) is out now on Sugar Shack Records. For details, see www.sugarshackrecords.co.uk.

Latimer’s Diary would almost certainly have been that.

“The earliest other reference I’ve found is to some Clifton Village Fairs in the late ‘70s.”

If anyone knows of the use of the term “Clifton Village” anytime before 1970, give us a shout.

● Cillian Murphy in Peaky Blinders

Blindingly good drama with spot-on details HAVE you been watching Peaky Blinders on the telly then?

It won’t have been to everyone’s taste. There was some pretty horrific violence in it, and I’m not convinced that its occasional forays into noisy, grungy modern music from the likes of the White Stripes and Nick Cave & The Bad Seeds on the soundtrack works.

Otherwise, though, this has easily been the most convincing historic drama on telly in ages. Not only did it get all its period details absolutely spot-on (including those horrible short back & sides haircuts) but it did that thing that very few historical movies or telly programmes ever manage to do – it got the attitudes of the time right.

Too often historical drama takes the beliefs and values of the present day and sticks it in period costume.

Peaky Blinders makes no such concessions, all the way from cynical characters (nobody in this show is nice!) through to Marxists and, best of all, the elementally ferocious Ulster Presbyterian Chief Inspector Campbell, as played by Sam Neill.

The historical back-story, just after WW1, with the IRA, industrial unrest, gypsy and gangster hard men and equally hard women … all ring absolutely true.

It you missed it, ask Santa for the box set, or catch it when/if it’s repeated. Just remember it’s not for the faint-hearted. In case you didn’t know, the Brummie street gang is supposed to have got its name from its members’ habit of sewing razor blades into their flat caps and using them to thrash at the eyes of opponents in street fights. How very unlike Downton Abbey…

Let’s admire our imperial oppressors ● Ian Anderson (the Bristol one) on stage saving the show at Glastonbury in 1970. Pic: Jo Gedrych

BEEN to the City Museum for the ‘Roman Empire: Power and People’ exhibition yet? Thanks to the British

Museum, you can see all manner of splendid treasures from the great days of the Roman Empire, though note that while you can get into the museum for free, there is an admission charge for the exhibition (£5 adult/£4 concessions/£3 children and under 5s free) – but it’s well worth it.

As of October 16 the museum is also putting on a separate small exhibition (admission free) using things from its own collections of Roman era artefacts found Round These Parts.

There was no Roman Bristol (Bristolium?), but there were plenty of Roman settlements in the vicinity.

Don’t know about you, but I find that stuff every bit as interesting as the bits and pieces from elsewhere in the Empire, so I’ll be at the front of the queue.

And then afterwards we can all have a big discussion about What the Romans Did For Us. Back when I was in school, the British Empire was still a fresh memory, and it always struck me as weird that how the teachers and textbooks in Latin and history lessons were always telling us how marvellous the Romans were for bringing us the benefits of straight roads and central heating.

But surely the other way of looking at those oh-so-civilised Romans was that they also brought us the benefits of military rule, crucifixion and taxes? And that since they were the ones who wrote the history they were happy to tell everyone that the Brits were a bunch of woad-smeared illiterates, savages who were crying out for firm government. The line you get from imperialist oppressors throughout history.

Talk on Press coverage of lesbians and gays

THE people at OutStories Bristol, the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender history group, are putting on a lecture next month which sounds very interesting.

Twilight Men and Cake Shop Ladies: the press treatment of homosexuality in the 1950s and 1960s, the talk is at M shed next month.

Robert Thompson of the Lesbian and Gay News Archive will be talking about how the press treated lesbians and gays back in the days when newspapers were still most people’s main source of news. He’ll be talking about how the Press reported issues, and shaped the debate over the decriminalisation of male homosexual behaviour. Punters are warned that the illustrated talk will contain nudity.

The event is also OutStories AGM. It’s at M shed, November 16, 2pm-3.30pm. All are welcome, and tickets are free. Book online at https://presstreatmenttalk.eventbrite.co.uk.

Cheers then!

● Get in touch: Email Bristol.Times@b-nm.co.uk, or write to Bristol Times, Bristol Post, Temple Way, Bristol BS99 7HD.

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ese a 12 re80s

“ Reggae music is a rebel music. Most Caribbean communities use it in that way. We’re not afraid to talk about governments and leaders.

OW DO! Regular readers will know of my unhealthy obsession with local myths (by the way, see this week’s Letters & Appeals section for an interesting – though non-mythical – response to this column’s recent appeal for Gromit tales).

Well here’s a sort-of-legend, though it might more properly be described as a Chinese Whisper … It’s part of the folklore of Glastonbury Festival that one of the headliners at the original 1970 event at Worthy Farm was Ian Anderson of Jethro Tull fame.

You know, bloke with big beard, famous for playing the flute standing on one leg.

It’s not true. It was another musician named Ian Anderson altogether, a folkie who did indeed perform at the first Glasto.

He’s from Bristol and he’s editor of fRoots, the respected monthly folk and world music magazine.

At the time Glastonbury host Michael Eavis said: “Marc Bolan was late arriving, and I was quite worried, but Ian Anderson saved the festival.

“He knew I couldn’t pay him, but he played a great set that got everybody in right mood.” That’s Ian Anderson of Bristol. Not the Tull geezer, right?

“This Glastonbury myth is now so ingrained that I’ve almost given up even bothering trying to correct it,” he tells Bristol Times.

“Once a story like that is out, it’s out. It gets repeated in articles everywhere. It’s even on Wikipedia now.”

(He did, however, write in to the Post when it repeated the myth a couple of weeks ago. It is his local paper, after all… ) His one real claim to fame, he says, is that he was probably first to coin the term ‘Clifton Village’.

“In 1970 I was designing a poster for the Troubadour (folk club) and in trying to invoke the spirit of Greenwich Village we put the address as Clifton Village. It was widely distributed at the time.”

“This summer I visited a lady who has lived here since 1934. She was holding an open house for people wanting to come along and talk about Clifton’s history and I asked her how the name ‘Clifton Village came about.

“She said it was probably a phrase that had been dreamed up by estate agents in the 1970s, but I told her about the poster and she reckons it

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Tuesday, October 15, 2013

Pictures of the week ● The British India Steam Navigation’s Devonia, leaving Avonmouth in May 1966

● The Bristol Queen passing Battery Point in June 1964

● Just published: Bristol Port and Channel Nostalgia, a beautiful collection of black and white photos of ships taken at and around Avonmouth and Portishead between the 1960s and 1980s. These were taken by Malcolm Cranfield and they include cargo liners, tramps, tankers, coasters and more.

We thought we’d show you a couple. First, right, is the British India Steam Navigation’s Devonia, leaving Avonmouth in May 1966.

Launched in 1938 and a troopship in the war, she was by now doing school cruises, mainly to the Baltic and the Med. She was broken up the following year and replaced by the Uganda. And we bet that lots of BT readers went on Devonia or Uganda during their schooldays.

And, above, we have a proper-job White Funnel paddle steamer, the Bristol Queen, launched at Charles Hill’s shipyard on April 4, 1946 not with champagne, but with a bottle

of Harvey’s Bristol Milk. She is passing Battery Point one sunny morning in June 1964 … And if that doesn’t raise a few hairs on the back of your neck, you’re obviously not from round these parts.

Bristol Port and Channel Nostalgia

by Malcolm Cranfield is available in local bookshops, price £16, or from Bernard McCall, ‘Halia’, 400 Nore Road, Portishead, Bristol BS20 8EZ for £16 + £1.60 p&p. See also www.coastalshipping.co.uk.

My Gromit act was deserving of a (Gr)Oscar

W

ITH reference to your request for tales of the Gromits (Latimer’s Diary, October 1), I thought I would share this with you.

I took my young grandchildren on the Gromit Unleashed trail. In the vicinity of Queen Square we came upon an empty plinth with a sign saying the Gromit was off to be repaired after being vandalised. However, the plaque was still in place and stated that the Gromit had been painted by Chris Taylor. I said, without thinking, to my grandchildren: “Aw, kids, sorry but you cannot see the Gromit I painted. Some naughty person has damaged it.”

My grandchildren read the plaque, seemed disappointed, and off we went

in search of other Gromits. End of story – or so I thought. On collecting my grandson from school after the summer break, I was approached by his teacher who said he was most impressed that I had painted a Gromit. Apparently my grandson had stood up and told the whole class that his nan had painted a Gromit.

With a very red face – and my late mother’s saying “Be sure your sins will find you out” ringing in my ears – I had no option but to confess.

But bearing in mind that other old saying – “If ignorance is bliss, tis folly to be wise” – I have not told my grandchildren. They still think their nan painted a Gromit. If only. With apologies to Chris Taylor, the real artist.

Chris Taylor Redfield

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Getting it right: air raids on Bristol ● A couple of howlers...

Eugene Byrne writes: Bristol Times reader Mrs Rosina Patnelli has been in touch to point out a mistake in the October 1 BT – we said that the first major German air raid on Bristol was in November 25, 1940. It was not, of course; the raid started on Sunday, November 24.

This was down to a slippery typing finger, and I apologise for

this error.

I should now also confess to an even bigger howler (which at the time of writing no readers have yet spotted!) This was in the piece about St Mary-Le-Port church in the October 8 BT in which I say this very same raid took place in November 1941, getting it wrong by a whole year.

This was a very silly mistake. It won’t happen again.

Footballer’s goal is for team to hold reunion ✒BRISTOL

Times reader Ronald Channing is keen to contact any of the players in this photograph of football team The Ringers from the late 1950s.

In the back row are Reg Witnell, Ken Higgins, Dave Johnston, Bob Clark, John Ashlie and John Bamfield. In the front row are Alan Pimble, Dave Hennessey, Jimmie Templar, Ken Tissard and Ron Chan-

ning. Mr Channing thinks it would be great if the old gang could meet up again – perhaps at their old haunt, the Turnpike pub. He can be contacted on 0117 965 7448. Team-members worked at the Ringer’s Tobacco factory.

● To contact Bristol Times: email bristol.times @b-nm.co.uk; write to: Bristol Times, Bristol Post, Temple Way, Bristol BS99 7HD

www.bristolpost.co.uk

Tuesday, October 15, 2013

7

The extraordinary life of our first winner of Nobel Prize for Physics Peter Higgs, the man who gave us the Higgs boson, is only the second Bristolian to win a Nobel Prize. Both of Bristol’s Nobel laureates have been physicists – and both even went to the same school.

Eugene Byrne looks at the curious life of the first winner

L

Big 10-4 – but not the Convoy we’re after... ✒I READ with interest one of your

readers is looking for information with reference to the English version of Convoy.

If you go to YouTube and search for “Convoy GB” there’s the 1976 single

by Laurie Lingo and the Dipsticks (Dave Lee Travis and Paul Burnett).

It was a foggy day on the sixth of May In a Scammell haulin’ bricks It was just crackin’ dawn and I started to yawn Cos I couldn’t find any nice chicks.

I’d tried Newport Pagnell, Toddington, And even Watford Gap, But after so many eggs and chips, sausage and beans What I really needed was a nap.

It’s a lonely life, truck driving But it’s better than a bike Cos when you’re up in the cab, you’re the king of the road And it’s dead romantic, like.

And then I remembered my two-way radio, So I started feelin’ better, And I thought “I’ll start a convoy” “You know, just like that American feller.” (etc.)

Enjoy!

Nigel & Judie Read Bristol

✒Editor’s reply: Thanks for that!

Cotham Grammar School).

He studied electrical engineering at Bristol University but, unable to find work and unable to afford to take up the place he had been offered at Cambridge, he went on to study maths there as well.

Graduating with a first, he was awarded a scholarship and now went on to Cambridge to be a physicist.

He was quickly attracted to the new science of quantum mechanics, the study of physical phenomena at atomic and subatomic levels.

Though physicists will tell you that while it’s supposed to be the science of the very small, it is also the science of the very big. It is also the science of the very fast since we are talking about things moving at phenomenal speeds. For this reason, relativity soon came into the picture.

Dirac’s famous wave equation introduced special relativity into Schrödinger’s equation, which shows how the behaviour of some systems change with time.

The Dirac equation has two solutions, one representing the electron and another representing its opposite – a particle with a positive charge but negative energy. Each electron, said Dirac, has an “anti-particle”.

He had thus predicted the existence of anti-matter, stuff beloved of science fiction writers and the stuff (in the-

“ In physics we try to explain in simple terms something that nobody knew before. In poetry it is the exact opposite.

Paul Dirac

ory, anyhow) which makes up half the universe.

Some scientists ridiculed this idea, but Dirac would be proven right years later when anti-matter was discovered in high-energy particle experiments.

The Dirac equation won him the Nobel Prize for Physics in 1933. He was 31 years old. Dirac was so shy that he actually planned to turn it down, until it was explained to him that refusing a Nobel Prize would cause considerably more publicity.

Dirac exhibited all the linear thinking and eccentricity we associate with stereotypical scientists. Think of, say, Sheldon in Big Bang Theory.

Dirac would only say what he thought it was necessary to say, say it

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We’d forgotten that one.

The inquiry we had, though, concerned a Bristolian, or at any rate West Country song from the late 1970s or early 1980s about lorry drivers talking to one another on CB radios.

As far as we know, this song was not satirical, so if anyone out there has any information on it, we’re still very keen to hear from you.

AST week we were all thrilled to learn that the Nobel Prize for Physics had been awarded to Peter Higgs, he of Higgs boson fame, as in the so-called “God particle” that they were looking for at the Large Hadron Collider at CERN. Characteristically, Higgs was nowhere to be found on the day the award was announced. He was thought to have gone walking in Scotland and it was left to his fellow winner, the Belgian physicist Francois Englert, to get the media attention.

When he appeared at a Bristol Festival of Ideas event last year, he was speaking alongside science author Graham Farmelo, and it was left to the latter to do most of the talking.

Bristol has now produced two Nobel prize winners, and both have a lot in common.

Like Peter Higgs, Paul Dirac was notoriously shy, like Higgs he won the prize for physics. And both went to Cotham Grammar School (or at any rate its predecessor, in Dirac’s case).

Great scientists are often, according to the stereotype, eccentrics, but Dirac was notorious even among his colleagues. The more serious side to this, of course, was that Dirac probably suffered from autism.

Of Dirac, Albert Einstein is supposed to have said: “This balancing on the dizzying path between genius and madness is awful.”

Paul Adrien Maurice Dirac was born at 15 Monk Road, Bishopston, on August 8, 1902. His father was a Swiss-born teacher who worked at the Merchant Venturers’ College. His mother came from Cornwall and had been a librarian.

He did not have a particularly happy childhood, partly on account of his father, who was very strict.

Dirac later said: “My father made the rule that I should only talk to him in French. He thought it would be good for me to learn French in that way. Since I found that I couldn’t express myself in French, it was better for me to stay silent than to talk in English. So I became very silent at that time – that started very early.”

When his father died, he wrote: “I feel much freer now.”

Later, when coining cod-scientific terms, his fellow scientists invented a unit of measurement they called the ‘Dirac’. One Dirac was equal to speaking one word per hour.

The young Dirac went to Bishop Road Primary School and then to the Merchant Venturers’ College (later

very clearly and concisely, and only say it once. When his students asked him to explain some point he’d made in a lecture, he would repeat exactly what he had said before.

He didn’t smoke, didn’t drink, was indifferent to physical discomfort and had no interest in the arts, saying: “Reading books interferes with thought.”

His only comment on Dostoyevsky’s Crime and Punishment was: “It is very nice, but in one chapter the author made a mistake.

He describes the sun as rising twice on the same day.”

To Robert Oppenheimer, father of the atom bomb, he said: “How can you do both physics and poetry? In physics we try to explain in simple terms something that nobody knew before.

In poetry it is the exact opposite.”

Of course, his idea of beauty was to be found elsewhere. When asked how he had found the Dirac equation, he replied: “I found it beautiful.”

At the height of his fame in the 1930s, a newspaper described him “as shy as a gazelle and as modest as a Victorian maid”. He once asked the German physicist Werner Heisenberg (who later failed to build an atom bomb for Hitler): “Why do you dance?” Heisenberg replied: “When there are nice girls, it is a pleasure to dance.” Dirac pondered this, and eventually said: “How do you know beforehand that the girls are nice?”

At a meeting in a castle, a guest remarked to him that, in a certain room, a ghost would appear at midnight. Dirac asked: “Is that midnight Greenwich time or daylight saving time?”

The only thing he did for fun was climb mountains. If he didn’t have mountains to climb, he would climb trees and buildings in Cambridge, always wearing the same black suit.

In 1937 he married Margit Balasz, the sister of an American physicist.

They had two daughters. Dirac was not a domineering father like his own old man, but nonetheless kept aloof.

He retired from Cambridge in 1969 and moved to Florida.

Shortly before his death in 1984, he was invited to give a talk at the University of Florida. He wrote back: “No, I have nothing to talk about. My life has been a failure.”

The Danish physicist Niels Bohr said: “Of all physicists, Dirac has the purest soul.”

Heisenberg said that the Dirac equation was the greatest achievement of 20th century physics.

John Enderby, serving as vice-president of the Royal Society, said some years ago: “Without understanding the origin of spin, and the Dirac statistics, you wouldn’t have mobile phones, computers or anything else that runs on electronics.”

And if you’re no wiser as to what Dirac, or for that matter, Peter Higgs, were talking about all this time, don’t worry. You’re in good company.

Richard Feynman, on winning the Nobel for Physics in 1965, was asked by a journalist to explain his work in a way that an average person could understand.

“Hell,” he said, “if I could explain it to the average person, it wouldn’t be worth a Nobel Prize.”

8

I rocked around the clock in my jitterbug days This week in Marion’s Memories, dancing 1950s-style, and a meal to mark a church’s 50th anniversary

T

HE last weekend of September was special: a surprise party for grandson James and his lovely fiancee. Well, when I say surprise party it was not a surprise for the guests or they would not have been there. But it was definitely a surprise for the happy couple, and was organised by their terrific friends.

Due to my recent accident I ventured on to the dance floor only once – for a Frank Sinatra slow song.

Sitting out watching the younger ones gyrate brought back memories of my mum.

As she got older and came to family occasions she always said how much she enjoyed sitting back and watching the young ones – like George and I then – enjoying themselves on the dance floor.

It would be true to say that nowadays Derek and I are probably the oldest swingers in town when we go to these parties.

But we are so grateful to be included.

It is also true to say I do not really do the light fantastic any longer, while dear Derek dances like one foot is nailed to the floor.

I suppose the 1950s, after I married my first husband George and before we started our family, were my dancing years.

When George and I were courting we did our fair share of jitterbugging.

But after going to dancing classes we considered ourselves fairly proficient on the dance floor.

The best part of going dancing was the getting ready – make-up and a spray of perfume – and the oh-so-feminine dresses.

My favourite outfit was a bouffant petticoat under a very full black skirt, and a white lace blouse with a little black bow at the neckline, plus high-heeled shoes.

I smiled when I realised the DJ does not announce the last waltz any more but still the evening ends in the same

romantic fashion with loving couples entwined.

I have confessed before that the Swinging Sixties passed us by. But when you have two lovely children to bring up on one man’s wages it would be difficult to swing.

And while we are on the subject of celebrations, a group of us recently attended a glorious 50 lunch in Christ The Servant church hall.

It was one of a series of lunches being held in preparation of our church’s 50th anniversary next year.

Derek and I married in Christ The Servant Church in January 2001. The Reverend Gwyn Owen, now the Reverend Canon Gwyn Owen, Rural Dean, took up his office there not long after.

Derek and I watched him proudly

Footsteps into history

● Now the AZUZA cafe, but originally the Merchant Tailors’ almshouse

Building that now holds cafe was once home to struggling tailors

● Frank Sinatra, whose music still compels Marion to dance on Christmas morning as he preached at Bristol Cathedral.

Gwyn, as I am allowed to call him, has had, over the last 12 years, a tremendous effect on my life.

His love and compassion for me and my family have been amazing.

Our question at the lunch was how would we like to see our church in Stockwood develop over the coming years?

When Gwyn is preaching he takes us out of our cosy comfort zone and sends us home with plenty to think about.

See you next week.

God bless.

Love, Marion

The AZUZA cafe/bar and takeaway in Broadmead has a long story behind it.

Though nowadays the building is dwarfed by the Galleries shopping mall, its story goes back to the Middle Ages, and to what was once the most important business in Bristol.

On October 16, 1399, King Richard II granted a charter to the John Thorp and John Sherp, “burgesses of Bristow” permitting them to found the Fraternity of Tailors of Bristol and the Guild of St John the Baptist.

The Company of Merchant Tailors was a trade association for those in Bristol’s cloth business. This was an all-powerful body at a time when a huge part of Bristol’s economy basically revolved around trading cloth made in and around Bristol for wines from France, Spain and Portugal.

The company regulated the business of its members, all of whom would have had to serve a long apprenticeship in order to join.

Some members became wealthy men, but some did not, but the company looked after its own, and a tailor in reduced circumstances could apply for a place in its almshouse.

By 1630 it had an almshouse on, or close to, this site in Merchant Street.

The present building was put up in 1701. This was at a time when there

was a massive building boom going on in Bristol. The whole area which had once been covered by the now-demolished castle was being covered in houses and shops, and work was about to begin on Queen Square.

This was one of the very first brick buildings in Bristol. Next time you’re passing (or better still, calling in for a coffee) look at the front door. Above it is a very characteristically Bristolian “shell hood”, a canopy carved to look like a shell. What you should then do is look for other shell hoods on other buildings on your wanderings around town.

Indeed, one of the very best shell hoods of all is to be found down Tailors Court, the little alleyway next to Horts pub in Broad Street.

Here you will find the old Merchant Taylors Hall, the Company’s former HQ. The hood, inset, carefully restored and re-painted, bears the company’s coat of arms.

The company, like all medieval guilds, eventually faded away in influence. People saw its rights and traditions as restrictions on trade, and its power was eroded. It was still around in the 1700s, though, and claiming precedence over the other companies and guilds in Bristol as it was the oldest.

The last member of the company

died in 1824. This was Isaac Amos, who for some years before his death had been the last remaining Merchant Tailor. John Latimer, in his Annals of Bristol in the Nineteenth Century, tells the story: Mr. Amos, so long as he lived, carried out the ancient customs of the guild with great gravity. He yearly elected himself master, and allowed himself £10 10s for serving “an extra time;” summoned himself to committee meetings, and paid himself £12 12s for his attendances; audited his own accounts, and rewarded himself with £2 2s therefore; and finally put into his pocket various trifling gratuities authorised by established precedents.

In 1802 the property of the Company producing about £100 a year had been placed by deed in the hands of a body of trustees, and the surplus income was devoted to the maintenance of the almshouse in Merchant Street.

Finally, the company was wound up in 1849, but the almshouse remained, and the guild’s remaining funds were supporting 18 pensioners.

At some point the Almshouse became council property and was used as the local Weights & Measures (trading standards) offices until the 1950s when Lloyds Bank took it over.

It has since been a pub, and then a cafe under various owners. AZUZA took it over and reopened it in 2009.

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