Every picture tells a story

My grandmother was on her knees cleaning the ash of yesterday's coal fire from the grate, a task she performed every day of my childhood.  As she slowly rose up onto her feet, she clutched her bent back, smiled ruefully and said with feeling, "talk about every picture tells a story."

My sister and I had long given up trying to make sense of some of grandmother's observations that seemed to lack a logical thread, and we exchanged knowing smiles with each other at the random absurdity of it.

My Aunt Jean, her daughter, saw us do this and remarked, "You think she's daft, don't you?"

We had to admit that yes, it did seem a little daft, so we nodded our agreement.

Aunt Jean then enlightened us.  It seems that in the 1930s there had been a famous advertisement in newspapers and maybe posters that had depicted an elderly woman clutching her bent back in a similar pose, and with the caption, "Every picture tells a story."

The advert had apparently been for some pain-killing medication recommended by its makers for treating the pains of rheumatism.  Now here, nearly 20 years later, my grandmother, rising unsteadily and clutching her back, had made the connection.  No, she wasn't totally daft.

Train windows

In the 1950s much of Britain’s railway rolling stock was pre-war and decidedly old-fashioned.  I would regularly travel by train, either with my sister, or grandmother, or even alone.  The train windows were impressive.  They were set into the doors, and could slide up and down.  A large leather belt hung from the middle of them at the bottom.  You would pull this out a little to release the window, and then lower the wood-framed window by the desired amount, securing it in its new position by fitting one of the holes in the leather belt over a smooth metal stud, there for the purpose.  The windows could be pulled all the way closed or open, or to about 6 intermediate positions.

I remember once on a hot day traveling from Scarborough being quite irritated when the two other people in my carriage suddenly pulled the window from open to closed without asking for my opinion.  I was still indignant as the train pulled into a tunnel, sending clouds of sooty smoke past the window, but not into the carriage.  As it cleared the tunnel, one of the people who’d closed the window pulled on the leather belt to re-open it.  Obviously they knew the line well, and knew when to close the window.

Not catching carp

 I spent most of a summer staying with other astronomy students at Herstmonceux Castle, then the site of the Royal Greenwich Observatory.  The observatory staff lived outside the castle in the nearby villages, so we were the only residents apart from the Astronomer Royal, Sir Richard van der Riet Woolley, and had pretty well the run of the castle.

 We were fascinated by the carp which inhabited the castle's moat.  They were large and docile.  If we dropped snacks of food from the drawbridge, the fish would rise in a heaving shoal, climbing over each other's backs on the surface to snatch each morsel.  We had no fishing gear, but we tied a chip to a piece of string and were amazed to see it greedily devoured.  The string sped away until it ran out, whereupon it came free with no chip and no carp.  Then we conceived a novel fishing method.  We weighted a wicker waste-basket with stones, and lowered it into the moat with strings on each side.  We tossed digestive biscuits onto the surface above it, waited until the heaving mass of fish struggled for them, then hoisted it aloft.

Alas, the fish were too smart.  We caught a couple, but they leapt clear as we pulled the basket upwards. We resolved to perfect our technique the next day, but a note from the Astronomer Royal appeared, ordering us to desist from disturbing the moat's residents, so the carp were left in peace.