School days - Peter Symonds 2

I have little more than memories of my time at Peter Symonds:  just a few photos gleaned from the web and my my A level maths notebook.

We called masters "sir" and they called us by our surname.  Even between boys it was by surname unless you were on really good terms. For a master to call a boy by his first name was generally considered a weakness.

Mr Hurst (an apt name) taught us woodwork in my first two years.  I enjoyed this, the only craft subject, even if the teacher was a little disorganised.  Every term he was expected to hand in marks for the "form order", but as he didn't mark our work this meant an impromtu test.  There were historic woodworking tools hanging from the walls which, so far as I can remember, were never used or even named.  His test would include having to name this one and that, and of course no-one had the faintest idea so the marks were random at least.  Towards the end of my second year I started turning a bowl. As we entered the 3rd year we were streamed and this apparently excluded the possibility of being academic and doing woodwork.  I rebelled against this nonsense by refusing to finish the bowl even though Mr Hurst encouraged me to do it in my spare time. Later on the choice had to be made between arts and sciences for A-levels - you could not do a mix.

I mentioned Breezy Gale in my last post.  He also took us for PE and games.  In the changing rooms there was a communal shower - a kind of passageway open at either end with numerous shower nozzles along its length.  All boys had to shower after PE or games.  As younger boys we would run through the shower to get wet as little as possible and hurriedly don our clothes.  But I noticed that the older boys (on the rare occasions when two years were changing at the same time) would actually choose to spend time in the shower AND use shampoo: only then did it dawn on me that a shower could be enjoyed.

Harry Hawkins was our O-level maths teacher.  Although we made fun of him unmercifully, as we did any teacher with whom we could get away with it, he must have been good for I still recant his aides memoire.  The picture is a classic shot and shows him completing the square with the mantra "take half the coefficient of x and square it".  The inverse operation was "square the first, twice the product and square the last".  Faced with a board full of equations he would instruct us to "look at the board while I go through it".  I kept a book of such sayings but sadly it was confiscated by one of the masters.  I only hope that the teacher's common room enjoyed it as much I did.

"Oink" red faced Griffin was my French teacher, poor guy - whilst I was near the bottom of the class in anything to do with language I think he accepted me as a challenge.  With a combination of his and my hard work I managed to get me an amazing grade 4 (where 7 was a fail) for my O level.

Tom Pierce was our form master and English teacher during one year.  Tom was also very knowledgeable on anything to do with nature. Unfortunately his strengths were my weaknesses and I learnt very little in his lessons and received very little encouragement in return.

We all played soldiers on Friday afternoons and I choose the RAF part of the cadet force in which Tom was involved.  My memories of him in uniform have resonances with Captain Mainwaring of Dad's Army.  Friday afternoons could be enjoyable but only if you took the whole thing light heartedly.

"Chalky" White was another of our maths teachers.  He managed to keep order without resort to much in the way of punishment and we respected him for this.

Ron "Biffer" Smith was our senior physics master.  His favourite appellation was "wretch" spoken with vehemence but not anger. I considered him one of the best teachers, but then physics was my best subject.  He allowed us some latitude - I remember a pleasurable lunch break with my friend making a nonsense experiment with yards of rubber tubing, reservoirs, filter pumps and the like.  I remember putting my hand up in his class and as a result being asked to explain to the class how FM radio worked and realising only too late that I didn't fully understand it myself. A trap I have since fallen into many times - I am a slow learner!

I elected to do Maths, Further Maths and Physics for A-level.  This was before the days of AS levels and such specialisation suited me.  I am good at what I am good at and pretty pathetic at all the rest.  One of the few relics of school days is my maths note book which I still have because it is (still) a useful reference.  In case anyone is interested (why else would you be reading this blog?) I include a couple of pages.

Note the spelling "proggression" (I have always found spelling difficult) and the "1855 BC" quip.

Back in those days A-levels were worth something.  They have been dumbed down since then.  Even over the few years recently that I have taught A level maths I have seen further reduction in the syllabus.  This I find strange - I would have thought a more technological world would demand higher academic standards, not lower.

School days - Peter Symonds 1

Having passed my 11+ exam I graduated to Peter Symonds now a sixth form college but then a boys grammar school. The school has an impressive history.

Several other boys made the same journey as I did by rail to Winchester and then the 10 minute walk from the station to the school. I was put in form 1B and Kirby House.  There were four houses for games: Kirby (red), Mackensie (yellow), Northbrook (green) were non-boarders, and Symonds (deep blue) were boarders.  Thus my games kit consisted of a bright red shirt, thin white shorts that became translucent when wet, plimsoles and football boots.  And a duffel bag to put it all in.

Here is the old school building.  Behind this facade was Northbrook Hall which was used for the lower school assembly led my the deputy headmaster Mr Cooksie.  There was something wholesome and strong about the old school building, and it had a distinct smell .  Every summer vacation the wooden floors in the classrooms and the Hall were re-varnished to a high gloss.  The new building housed science labs, classrooms and the Varley Hall used for upper school assembly, school plays and concerts.

I think I was very different from the normal student particularly in having zero interest and very little ability in sport.  As a result I was a loner especially in my first years. I remember spending what was left of the lunch hour running around the playing fields pretending to be a train. There were wooden benches at intervals that served as stations.  I also kept a ridiculous diary, so childish that (sadly) when older it so embarrassed me that I trashed it.  By the third year I had made some friends and this become a little more normal.

This aerial photograph was taken in 1969 when I would have been in the 5th or lower 6th form. The railway station is behind the camera (shown as a blue arrow in the map) from which the walk ended in Owens Road.

"Breezy" Gale (also known as Windy) was our 3B form master, class room "Kirby" in the Old building. Breezy was OK, one of the last bastions of coshing.  Although by the 3rd year I was an incessant chatterer and joke maker I received the cosh at his hand only as a sort of mock exercise - "Bailey had better have the cosh so he knows what it feels like". Most boys were in right fear of the headmaster's (John Ashurst) cane.

It was expected that boys would know the rules of football, cricket, etc. Since I had never played football before or watched it being played (I remain incredulous as to why anyone should want to watch football on the box) I had no idea of the rules. My asking what the rules were was met with ridicule. In any case, organised sport bored me, so I would loose concentration (I did try) with the result that I would forget which goal was which with disastrous results.

As for cricket, I neither could then nor can now understand the game. My friend and I thought up a way of bringing zest to tennis - the idea is to see how many balls you can keep flying at the same time. This version of the game is better played as doubles.

One sport that did appeal to me was cross country running.  Our standard course was about 5 miles and is shown on the map above and took us to Teg Down. I think we looped around somehow before reaching Teg Down farm.  Once a year there was a cross country race where the whole year would run: typically I would end up about half way between first and last, so even with running my performance was mediocre.

More excitement when I describe some of our masters and class situations must follow in a subsequent post.

Barefoot running and Reflexology

There is divided opinion on whether reflexology "works".  But no-one denies that foot massage is enjoyable and is highly sensual indeed sexual.  When you run bare foot you get foot massage for free.  Check out:

http://runbarefootgirl.com/2011/08/is-it-about-sex/
http://reflexologylive.blogspot.com/2010/01/barefoot-running-and-ground-awareness.html
http://www.thebarefootrunners.org/threads/reflexology.6081/

School days

My older sister was my childhood mentor.  Three years my elder it was she who "held my hand" on my very first day at primary school.  Many years later I asked what happened in secondary school and she told me about "boring" subjects like physics - when I asked her was physics was she told me it was about heat and light and electricity, which to me sounded most interesting!

My first school was Alresford Preparatory School run by a "the thin Miss Curtis" aided by her sister (who was not, I think, trained as a teacher) "the fat Miss Curtis".  This was a dame school with all 30 or so students studying in a single room.  The school was closed down by modern idealists not long after I graduated.  I regret that I cannot find any old photographs, so the best I can do is this one I took recently - apologies to whoever lives here now.  The location is a yard opening off West Street.

The school room was upstairs.  Access was via the door you see - it has not changed.  Under the staircase was the "closet" (toilet).  Students were discouraged from using this facility, I suppose for fear that it would detract from their studies.  I remember several occasions of younger inmates asking to "go" and it being denied.  The inevitable result was also not greeted with enthusiasm.  As the years went by you progressed from the west (entrance) end to the east end of the room, and from the "fat" Miss Curtis to the "thin" Miss Curtis.  No-one liked the "fat" one.  The "thin" one was strict but at least rational.  The "fat" one was highly unpredictable.  One one occasion she arrived at school with her hair dyed bright orange, and we are talking about middle-aged sisters here.

'A' for Apple, 'B' for Bucket, 'C' for Cat, 'D' for Domino, 'E' for Engine, 'F' for Feather, 'G' for Gate, 'H' for Hat, 'I' for Ink, 'J' for Jug, 'K' for Kite, 'L' for... and here my memory fails me.  Possibly 'Lamb'.  I can still visualise some of the pictures on the cards.

As expected I got my 11 plus but only after the second attempt.  I had the chance to take it twice because of birthday, I did not and still do not understand the details.  After failing my father told me I needed to work harder, a concept that had not occurred to me before this point.  I suppose I duly obeyed and passed, and thus an entrance was gained to me to Peter Symonds grammar school, Winchester, and later to Oriel College, Oxford.

The preparatory school was highly predictable.  Every year me made chinese lanterns and crocus cards to exactly the same design.  For what seems always we wove raffia to make what turned out to be (to my great surprise) a place mat.  And we wound wool around an annular card former.  Eventually this became fat enough and it was whisked away and re-appeared the next day, wonder of wonders, and a fuzzy bobble.

There was a stuffed fox in a glass show-case on a shelf at the east end of the room.  Under this shelf was a piano and a Miss Cob (Cobweb to us) gave us music lessons once a week.  We would sing such English delights as "Early one morning" and "and the green grass grew around, around, around" (of which I have since learnt the somewhat different Irish version).  I remember the time when I "noticed" that the piano playing involved an accompaniment as well as a melody - and remember acknowledging how good it sounded and how amazing something so good should emanate from the cobweb.

There were wonderful, coloured maps on the walls - one had the Caspian Sea marked on it, which name enchanted me.  My eyes explored every line on these maps.  Maps still hold a place dear to my heart.  And there was time to dwell thus: for example at a certain and totally predictable time of the week we would do "paper work" (origami to you).  An instruction might be to fold the paper along a diagonal.  This I accomplished in a few seconds then looked around to see where my peers were at.  The considerable amount of time and teacher intervention that some of these required to achieve a result of poorer quality still amazes me, but gave me plenty of time for contemplation.

At the west (entrance) end was a pot-bellied stove, the only source of heat.  I cannot remember anyone getting burnt - children, on the whole, have enough sense - all this modern nonsense of putting guards up everywhere to make things "safe" is hugely overdone.  I was regulation in those days for all school children to each be provided with a 1/3 pint of milk in a returnable glass bottle.  These were delivered in a crate and on cold, winter's mornings the milk would arrive frozen solid.  The crate would be placed beside the stove and the contents were consumed, I suppose, at break time half-way through the morning.  Often the milk was still half frozen by that time and, when mention was made of this, I remember the fat Miss Curtis declaring that it was "just like ice cream".  My confidence in grown ups was totally devastated by this blatant and manipulative falsehood and has never really recovered since.

Waterworks and Worms

"Around the river" between the Fulling Mill that so attracts photography and Ladywell Lane is the site of the open air swimming pool that existed when I was a child.  It is now a memorial garden "a quiet place to remember the fallen of the 1914 - 1918 war".

But I remember it as a swimming pool.  I suppose it must have cost something to enter as I cannot remember often going there.  The pool was fed from the river via a weir system made of concrete - this arrangement took my interest somewhat more than the pool itself.  What I remember mainly of the pool was the slimy walls and bottom and the tiny red squiggly "worms" in the water.

There was a wall with a wire fence above it separating the shallow kids end from the main part of the pool.  My sister and I used to walk along that wall, as indeed we did with most walls that presented themselves.  In the picture you can see a boy and a girl somewhat precariously doing just this - I cannot be sure whether it is my sister and I but it looks as though it could be.  You will also note that no-one is in the water!

Railways I have known

My father was a model railway enthusiast.  He had an attic full of OO-gauge railway, and I contributed as a second train operator and the signalling engineer (see my 'Inventions' page).  The railway room was a frequent Sunday afternoon destination.  My mother had zero interest and was a bit jealous of the attention devoted to the railway.  I would wait until my father would mysteriously disappear - then would check around and end up climbing the steep ladder to the attic.  Now as I try to rationalise I think the interest for me was the time-and-motion study in judging train speed (hence my inertial control) and enjoying how well (yes, really) my signalling system worked.  Strange that my mother had no interest.  My sisters occasionally would come up but their interest was more in moving model people around on the platform and making up stories - quite at variance with my own interest.

I remember my parents invited a young man (but older than me and not in my peer group) to stay for lunch after church and the afternoon.  Perhaps his parents were away.  He also expressed zero interest in the model railway, when asked, which frustrated me because it meant we had to stay downstairs and "entertain" him.  I have never had much time for entertaining people.  People should not need to be entertained IMHO.

The other railway in my life (apart from my general interest - to this day I reckon I could have enjoyed a career as a train driver) was the line from Winchester to Alton.  British Rail closed the line in 1973 but the stretch from Alresford to Alton has now thankfully been resurrected by a preservation society and is known as the Mid Hants railway or the Watercress line.

Every school morning at about 08:10, having gulped down some breakfast, I would start running to the station.  It was invariably a close shave - I liked my bed in those days.  The train left at 08:25 I think.  There were rare occasions when I arrived too late, and unless someone was willing to drive me in that meant a detention.  There were prefects posted to catch latecomers.

From Winchester Junction to Alton it is single line so was operated on the tablet or token system.  The walk-way from which the signalman would exchange the token is visible to the right of the box in the picture above, the branch line to Alresford being to the right of that.  This picture is a thumbnail taken from a site where they want you to pay good money for a not much bigger version.

The picture below is taken just after leaving the main line Up line.  The perspective in this picture is odd - in fact the curve was very steep, with a guard / check rail, and the wheels squeaked unmercifully.  It concerned me at the time that perhaps each time metal was being pared off.

In railway terms in the UK 'up' always refers to going towards, and 'down' away from London.  Outside of railway terminology you go 'up' from most places in the world to London, but you go 'down' from Oxford (or Cambridge) to London.  I thought you needed to know that.

The only station between Winchester and Alresford is (was) Itchen Abbas, shown below.  I am told that the property of one or more houses now crosses the path of the old railway, which spells little hope that this section of the line will ever be restored.

The station at Alresford has two lines to allow trains to pass.  The next picture shows the up train waiting on the left and the down train arriving.  This view is so ingrained in my memory that I can almost feel myself there as I look at it.  The foul weather in the picture was typical of winter mornings.  There was no pedestrian bridge in those days: in the mornings I would cross over to the down platform using the crossing visible.  Back in those days this was not considered unsafe.  Now-a-days people get jittery about such things.  Such people seem to delight in taking the fun out of our lives.

The rolling stock was a two (or sometimes three) carriage diesel set.  Back in those days we had pennies.  Americans still call their cent pieces pennies, but a real penny is 12 to the shilling and 20 shillings to the pound sterling (or indeed Irish punt) and about 31mm in diameter.  Having previously been to Eastleigh Railway Works where I saw a penny being squashed under a steam hammer, I figured a train wheel might have the same effect so I placed one on the rail at the crossing just as the down train was due.  The signalman (Mr. Norris by name, may God rest his soul) leaped down the stairs from the box and ran to where I was (the train was coming closer) and scolded me most severely in front of my peers.  His point was that little pennies grow into big pennies and big pennies kill.  He did right.  I have never forgotten that lesson.

I enjoyed the train ride every morning and evening.  It was a special part of the day totally to yourself - no parents and no teachers to nag you.  To this day I am happy travelling on a train - anywhere, any length.

The pictures above are more recent now the line is operated by the preservation society, but similar rolling stock to that which we travelled to school in.  Of course they also run steam trains.  There is possibly no smell as sweet as that of a steam engine.  There is possibly no man made machine as elegant as a steam engine.

Running bare feet and tinned milk 2

Mcvities Golden Syrup cake (made with Tate and Lyle's Golden Syrup), topped with Tesco's Toffee Desert Sauce (ingredients major in condensed milk, golden syrup and cream), with the last of the tinned (evaporated) milk poured over.  Such synergy!

Another totally bare foot run along the "forest" route this morning, after a lot of rain during the night.  So the ground was very wet and slippery.  I missed my footing whilst investigating a stream and cut my hand on a rock when steadying myself.  Later I slipped on a down hill part and my other hand landed in a gorse bush to steady myself.  On the bright side I don't think I contracted any foot splinters though.

Running bare feet and tinned milk

I have a sore toe.  It is sore because it had a splinter which I hope I fully removed last night.  It had a splinter because I run bare foot.  It is a price to pay.

On the bright side I enjoyed "tinned milk" (evaporated milk) on my cereal this morning.  The art is to mix the right quantity of neat tinned milk with the normal (full fat) milk.  Talking of which, why do people pay as much for low fat milk as for normal (full fat) milk?  It ought to be cheaper.

Waterworks and Watercress

I went to a school in Winchester - more about that in a later blog maybe.  In a geography lesson the question was asked where was the watercress 'capital' of the UK?  I had not a clue that it was my hometown Alresford!  Nowadays a major attraction in Alresford is the Watercress Line.

I have never been too partial with green food with the possible exception of peas and lime ice cream.  Watercress as a food item has thus passed me by.  But the watercress beds in Alresford were quite another matter.  That they were used to grow watercress in was to me more of a nuisance and at best a bye-product.

The beds that my past were entwined with are along the Little Weir (extension of Mill Hill) and are visible from Google Maps Streeview and in the pictures below (not my own).

These two pictures are both recent.  They are looking back from very close to the first ram pump location (which is behind the camera) in my previous post and looking towards Mill Hill and Alresford proper.  The Great Weir is on the left.  The footpath to the right is the Little Weir.  The beds are demarcated by low concrete walls and fed from the river on the left.  Note the gap in the foreground of the top picture - the groves either side allow wooden slats to be inserted to control the water flow.  The amazing thing is that these concrete walls - and that gap in particular - look exactly as I remember them some 50 years ago.  We (my sister and I) used to jump over the gaps and wall along the walls.  It was something one had to do every time one was taken on this particular walk.

Thankfully the owners generally turned a blind eye to our escapades.  Of course we were careful to respect their property.  It has always been my principle to respect another person's property when I trespass on it, and I firmly hold to this day that trespassing is not an offence unless damage is done. My understanding is that such behaviour is upheld in English law. If a land owner expressly wants privacy then it is their duty to erect a suitable child-proof fence. It is of course foundational to the working of the web of public rights-of-way (footpaths, tracks, bridlepaths) that criss-cross the English countryside sometimes to the aggravation of the landowner.  This principle is another reason why I would find living in America so difficult where, it appears, the landowner has the right to kill you simple because you accidentally set a foot on his land. Here in Ireland the attitude is subtly different - for insurance reasons and because apparently the Irish will sue at any opportunity, land owners are very wary of trespassers.  If you ask permission to cross a neighbour's land the answer will invariably be "no - but if you hadn't asked then it would have been alright".  Therefore the thing to do is to make sure no one sees you trespassing, and certainly not to draw attention to it, and then nobody will mind at all.   Here in Ireland there are also far fewer rights-of-way across people's land and I find this hard: I long for the English system. Thankfully I live close enough to the Wicklow mountains where you can generally walk freely.

Coming back to the watercress beds - some of the gaps had a wooden plank "bridge" over them and I can distinctly remember when I found the owners had tacked some new looking chicken wire over the plank to give some grip and thinking what a good idea this was, although also thinking it was an overkill because wasn't part of the fun being wary of the slippery surface?

On one occasion my grandfather 'Ginty' was taking me on this walk "round the river" - my sister was not, I think, with me on this occasion.  I did my usual wall expedition and fell off and drenched my (short) trousers and must have come back to Ginty wailing, for I remember him calmly telling me not to worry - I was not hurt, I had only made my 'pants' wet.  Obviously I was expecting him to be angry, for I remember immediately becoming calm and forever after I have blessed him for the way he dealt with the situation.

My favourite colour

A blog is "a web site on which an individual or group of users record opinions, information, etc. on a regular basis".  My offering is hardly regular so perhaps is not a blog even though it is published on www.blogger.com.


I am at least glad that the definition does not insist on daily news, like a diary.  Even so I was hesitant to write about my favourite colour here in the Posting section of my blog, so have added to my Pages section on Colour.

Alresford Fair

Legend has it that the origins of Alresford Fair stem from a Charter of 1242 given by Henry III ratified and endorsed by other monarchs over the centuries.  The regulations below I think date more recently.  They say that if the fair is not held then the right to hold it will cease forever.  That seems rather harsh.

The fair was a part of my childhood.  My parents house happened to be in Broad Street where it is held every year.  The fair lasts for only one afternoon and evening - it has to be all cleared away by the following morning.  So on the day there is much activity in setting the stalls up.  We had a prime view of the backs of the stalls and rides out of our front room window.  What intrigued me was the huge generators and heavy cables for the various rides.  The Heath Robinson electrical connections with naked live terminals lying around.  Ammeters with needles dancing to the rhythm of the rides they were supplying.

At the top of the street our side and thus fairly close would be the large roundabout.  All the other rides would pale into insignificance compared with this   Sometimes it would include a real fairground organ running from punched cards. 

This picture is not my own and possibly predates me, but it is of Alresford Fair and it does show a typically example of the sort of roundabout.

On one occasion I actually won a jar of sweets at a hoop-la stall - though I confess I did lean over the rail as much as possible to do so.

We (my sister and I) would stay up as late as our parents would allow, but my memories tell me that I never got to see the fair to its conclusion.  I remember lying in bed and listening to the throb of the diesel generators and the general hubbub.  Next day I would wake up to see only the last remaining trailers driving away and much litter left behind.

Running bare feet 4

At last some slightly warmer weather.  I did the forest circuit bare foot again first thing this morning.  This is the first time this year at this time of day.


Here is some practical advice for would be barefoot runners.


Could it be that one's feet are softer after a night's sleep?

It is true that I run slower bare foot than shod when the surface is iffy and that I tend to land on the full foot to spread the load.  This is bad, but I figure that if I don shoes for those hard parts my feet will never harden.

It is also true that on short grass (or sand, or very smooth pavement but grass is best) my feet tend to rise so that I both land and spring off from the ball of my foot, and this greatly increases my speed now that my calf muscles are beginning to adapt.  My body tells me that this is how I am meant to run: it feels good, it lifts you up a couple of inches, it feels more efficient.

Never take your eyes off the ground ahead for more than a moment.  Something caught my eye on the horizon today and my eyes dwelt on it just too long and my left foot landed on a thistle.

Dogs I have known

My paternal and maternal ancestry were as chalk from cheese.  My mother's people were reasonably normal English folk - afternoon tea with sandwiches type and no pets.  My father's sister (his only sibling) lived with his parents together with (in my childhood days) five dogs and cats without number.  A small window was left permanently open in the kitchen for ingress and egress of cats.  These cats possibly had identities but I never knew them by name.  They had rights above us children - totally free range of the kitchen - and their hairs were an accepted part of the cuisine.  This and other quirks of my father's folk used to drive my mother to distraction, to tears.  For us children we kind of accepted it as the status quo, as unchallengeable - but I hated going to stay with my grandparents.  To this day I have this every increasing foreboding as I drive closer to their hometown in Essex.

But the subject of this post is Dogs.  The mother of all the dogs was Karis.  Karis is greek for "grace".  My paternal grandfather 'Ginty' was the most normal person in this house.  Amongst other things he played the organ in church, played the violin at home (rather poorly), had numerous reel-to-reel tape recorders including a very desirable (in those days) Ferrograph machine, and studied greek, hebrew and eschatology.  That will give you some idea of the other members of the household.  Of the three, Ginty was the only one that showed a smidgen of affection for me.  Otherwise us children (my sister and I) felt as if we were little more than a nuisance there.  Perhaps I am misjudging them, I can only say what I felt like.

Anyway, the Dogs.  Karis was the most good natured.  She had black, brown and white markings.  As for the TYPE of dog, I frankly have no idea - some distant mongrel relation of a terrier I would think.  Then there was Smokey.  And three others...  The others were not friendly, not clean, not nice and IMHO do not deserve to be remembered.

Every other Christmas the grandparents and aunt AND DOGS would visit us.  My poor mother.

My own parents, or should I say my father, continued the dog tradition, but generally only one at a time and definitely no cats.  There was once a goldfish or two - they might get mentioned in a later post.  The first dog they had was Tinker Bell, doubtless a relation of Karis who, I think I said, was "mother of all".  What relation I cannot say.

The picture is black and white (they were in those days) but actually the markings either side of her face were brown and her hair was short, smooth and clean.  Tinker Bell was a nice dog and wholly deserving of her namesake.  But I was very young then and I remember little more about her.

Tinker Bell gave birth to Chum who had a rougher coat and no brown colouring.

I use a picture of myself with Chum on this wall as an avatar, but to include it here would be giving my identity away just too easily.  Chum was also a decent sort.

Chum in turn gave birth to Patch, so named for the patch over her eye.  Yes I know it could be argued that Chum had two patches.  In fact she had only one and the other dog here is Patch's progeny.

Patch was also a sensible dog.  Her progeny Pixie was anything but sensible, but she was adorable, the most adorable of dogs.  Pixie started life inside the womb in Cornwall, hence the name.  We never found out who the father was, but then you will notice that I have said very little about the fathers of any of the dogs mentioned.

Pixie was a little strange from birth - let's just say that she did different things.  Like running off and getting knocked down by a car, which bent her tail permanently.  But she was adorable.  If ever I loved a dog I love Pixie.  So here is another picture in her honour.

I only wish our photography skills were better in those days.

I then left home, got myself a h'education, and found myself a wife.  We settled down in London suburbia and decided we had no need for a dog.  We had each other after all, and that was expensive enough without having to find money to feed a third mouth.

So it wasn't until I moved to my present location that I met Meg.  Meg, otherwise referred to as "the dog" in previous posts (another attempt to protect my anonymity), actually belongs to a friend who is currently at college in the USA of all places, so I help to exercise her.

Meg is sagacious (look at her eyes).  Like her master she does not like fruitcake.  Unlike her master she loves joining me for (bare foot) running.  She is a good friend - listens to my complaints without comment.  She loves to have her tummy rubbed.  She likes custard-creams.  In fact she is as good a dog was one could hope for.  More sensible but not quite as adorable as Pixie.

Waterworks and Ram Pumps

In a previous post I expressed my early interest in waterworks and my experience with the venturi pump.  Another clever invention that has been an integral part of my life is the ram pump.

I had my first experience with a ramp pump way before I understood what it was or how it worked.  My hometown Alresford (the ford over the river Arle) has several walks “along the river” as we used to say.  One path follows a stream on the left, and on the other side of the stream was (when I was very young) what I now know was a ram pump – it looked a bit like a gas cylinder.  This device would make an audible “thump” every so often that, of course, intrigued me as a child.  I recently asked my older sister, who would typically have been with me on these walks, if she remembered this device but she has no recollection.  Perhaps this says something about the fairer sex.  Sadly the pump has long since been removed.  I think the picture below shows the location.

A little further along this path and on the right was a subterranean chamber with steps leading down and a metal door at the bottom.  This chamber is still there today although seriously grown over by tree and ivy, see recent picture below.  It is my belief that another ram pump was inside this chamber.  One or perhaps both may have supplied water to the nearby Old Alresford House.

These two locations are approximately at the magenta squares in the map below.

The ram pump requires no external power – in operation it uses the power from the flow of a relatively large volume of water with a small head (perhaps only a few inches) into a small amount of water with a large head (hundreds of feet).  It is thus ideally suited to pumping water from a river to a building on a hill.  The way it works is gloriously simple.

I made my own ram pump accidentally a few years back.  I live in a large house and I was installing a hot-water-cylinder (HWC) to serve a converted outhouse.  The water supply came from an open cold-water-storage (CWS) tank about 8m higher and possibly as much as 30m distant, via a ¾” polythene pipe.  Not being a trained plumber, and moreover having a degree in Physics and the “I know it all” that comes with it, I figured I knew better than convention and thus committed two blunders.  Firstly it seems a good idea to fit a non-return valve at the point where the cold water entered the HWC to stop hot water going backwards.  Secondly I did not fit an expansion pipe – this was mainly because to do so would have been nigh impossible because the height of the outbuilding was considerably less than the CWS tank in the attic of the main house.  In place of an expansion pipe I fitted an expansion vessel (metal globe painted red with a rubber balloon inside with the water inside and pressurised air between the balloon and the outer globe).

Unintentionally I had created a ram pump.  When a hot water tap supplied by the HWC was turned on water would flow slowly at first and gradually speed up due to the considerable inertia in the long feed pipe.  If the tap was shut off sharply all that inertia had nowhere to go apart from the pressure vessel.  The result was that the pressure in the HWC increased, but as it was already close to the maximum operating pressure for a standard domestic HWC (10m of head) the HWC burst!

Ram pump history (quoted from Wikipedia)
“The first self-acting ram pump was invented by the Frenchman Joseph Michel Montgolfier (best known as a co-inventor of the hot air balloon) in 1796 for raising water in his paper mill at Voiron. His friend Matthew Boulton took out a British patent on his behalf in 1797. The sons of Montgolfier obtained an English patent for an improved version in 1816, and this was acquired, together with Whitehurst's design, in 1820 by Josiah Easton, a Somerset-born engineer who had just moved to London.
“Easton's firm, inherited by his son James (1796–1871), grew during the nineteenth century to become one of the more important engineering manufacturers in the United Kingdom, with a large works at Erith, Kent. They specialised in water supply and sewerage systems world-wide, as well as land drainage projects. Eastons had a good business supplying rams for water supply purposes to large country houses, and also to farms and village communities, and a number of their installations still survived as of 2004.
“The firm was eventually closed in 1909, but the ram business was continued by James R Easton. In 1929 it was acquired by Green & Carter of Winchester, Hampshire, who were engaged in the manufacturing and installation of the well-known Vulcan and Vacher Rams.”

Having read this I contacted Green & Carter and was pleased to get a reply from their CEO who claims they have records of all ram pump purchases since 1774.  Although he did not find the particular I have alluded to, he did find "a large 8in ram no 12591 which we installed for HN Walford in January 1929".  This would appear to be the one mentioned here a mile or so further west and which supplied water to Arlebury House.  On my next visit to Alresford I intend to investigate to see if I can find any trace of these pumps.

Here's Green & Carters explanation of how the pump works:

Sadly missing from this diagram is reference to the necessary "sniffer" valve.  I love the names engineers make up.  Like gusset, hip, dress, skirt, shoe, orifice, master and slave, male and female threads, grease nipple, kiss, etc.  The sniffer valve does just what it says - it lets in some air with a "sniff" each cycle, making sure that there is always an air cushion in the dome.

In this age of digital electronics it is easy to forget the really cool inventions of a bygone era some of which we still depend upon, such as the ram pump.

See also Ram pumps revisted and Ram pumps again.