Paula
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Herald of Free Enterprise
Today is going to be a fairly short one; it was an event that remains within recent living memory for most of us, over a certain age. And it focuses on a tragedy that resonates deeply with me personally to this day. As a teenager, I traveled several times on the cross-channel ferries between England and France and Belgium in my ongoing research of the Great War, as a young amateur Historian. (It was on those journeys that I got to know Phoebe.) Those journeys were for the most part made on the three specially built Spirit-Class vessels that operated between the home ports and those of mainland Europe. I…
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Queen Elizabeth
Just a short one tonight, ladies and gents. In honour of the Sapphire Jubilee of Queen Elizabeth II, I thought I would have a brief look back and share with you some moments from the early life leading up to the begining of the reign of the much loved monarch. Elizabeth Alexandra Mary Windsor was born on April 21st 1926 by Caesarian at the home of her mother’s father, Claude Bowes-Lyon, Earl of Strathmore and Kinghorne, in Mayfair. Later baptised in the Private chapel of Buckingham Palace, she was named for her mother, grandmother and great grandmother. Followed by a younger sister, Margaret, four years later, both girls were conceived…
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Ramstein
We’ve all heard of the German Heavy Metal band Rammstein, I’m sure. Their famous offerings including ‘Ich Will’, ‘Feuer Frei’ and ‘Sonne’. But there’s a story behind their name, and that story is the Ramstein Airshow Disaster. The band initially named Rammstein-Flugschau (Ramstein Airshow- the extra ‘m’ was a spelling mistake which they kept) have since stepped away from the association, claiming the name came from the “ramming stone” of the same name – a large stone doorstop affair found on old gates but the initial addition of the ‘flugschau’ berates that story. But that’s not really the topic for today. In the Summer of 1988, my friends and I…
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Learning, Learning Difficulties and Mental Illness
Today’s effort is a bit of a mish mash. I don’t have the skill to tell a story as ER does, and I don’t have that element of controversy that AG has in his work, and I certainly cannot weave a factually detailed narrative in the way Phoebe does it. All of our brains work in different ways; some of us are academically gifted, others good at solving problems or creating amazing works of art. Some people are just good at making or fixing stuff. But each one of us is good at something. And that is the point of my offering today. That mental health is no bar to…
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Gruesome Murder in Kimberworth Park
It was November 15th, 1912 and Amy Collinson (Nicholson) aged 10 and her cousin Frances Nicholson aged 7 had spent the evening rehearsing for the Christmas Nativity presentation at the Chapel in Kimberworth, Rotherham. As the rehearsal drew to a close, Amy and Frances prepared for a substantial walk home in the dark. Accompanied by several of their friends who lived along the route, they set off after 8pm in the dark. Their number shrunk until the last friend, Doris Stainrod, bade them goodbye in the vicinity of the Sir Colin Campbell Public House, now called simply ‘The Colin’. The two girls were now on their own for the next…
