Merla (female Blackbird) Day is an Italian tradition that falls on January 29, 30 or 31.  It is said that if the sun shines on that day, a blackbird (a black bird) has a “party” and the weather warms up.  However, if it is cloudy, the blackbird returns to its nest and the winter continues.  It is a holiday very much linked to popular beliefs and Italian folklore.

We are in the thick of “i giorni della merla”, the days of the blackbird, when the coldest part of winter hits us between the last week of January and the first week of February. The weather has been true to traditional prediction with nights always around zero. The days have also been brilliantly clear with crisp, frosty mornings. So are we going to see the winter continue for very much longer?

There is a local legend about this which was told to me in Italian. As a fun thing to do I turned the Italian prose into English verse:

BLACKBIRD DAYS

Snow upon snow fell on the whitebirds’ nest –

the winter had never been so cold.

Beneath the eaves the bitter chill compressed

their little lives exposed, unconsoled.

*

“If it carries on like this,” daddy bird moaned,

“we’ll nevermore see the spring again”.

“Our little ones will soon die,” the mother groaned,

 “so very soon, but who will know when?”

*

The parents tried to pick a few crumbs of bread

before they too were hidden by snow.

Their feathered hearts were filled with iced-up dread.

while a hard north wind began to blow.

*

“We must decide now or die” the parents said.

“Let’s move our nest near that chimney pot;

while I go and hunt for food you stay in bed

and keep warm next to that cosy spot”.

*

So all that day mummy bird and her three chicks

kept by the stack which blew warmth and smoke.

What clever birds they’d been to think of these tricks:

free all-day heating for avian folk!

*

But when the father returned, beak-full of food,

he didn’t recognize his wife and kids;

the smoke had made all their feathers quite, quite dark-hued

from their tails right up to their eye-lids.

*

“No matter,” he said, “we’ll rename ourselves.

From now humans will call us ‘black bird’

and goblins and nymphs, sprites and wood elves

throughout the land will spread this new word.

*

And so it was that the birds survived the freeze

and that now the whitebird is black;

and I’m sure it’s all, as everyone agrees,

thanks to that useful chimney-stack!

*

When I viewed the following news item on RAI. television last night I found it difficult to believe that it was dealing with a country in the EU.

Foreign Minister Antonio Tajani has given instructions to summon the Hungarian ambassador to Rome following the denunciation of the conditions of detention of the Italian citizen, Ilaria Salis. At the same time, in the next few hours, the Italian ambassador to Hungary will request a meeting with the authorities in Budapest.

Thirty-nine-year-old teacher from Milan, Ilaria Salis has been detained in Hungary for almost a year on charges of attacking two right-wing militants in the Hungarian capital. Ilaria has pleaded not guilty.

Salis entered the Budapest courthouse for the first hearing of the trial handcuffed with chains that reached down to her feet, attached to a belt. In this way she remained in the Chamber for three

“It was a shock to see her arrive in the Chamber like this” Eugenio Losco, one of the woman’s lawyers, commented. Even Ilaria’s father couldn’t hold back his anger: “They are treating her like an animal and everyone pretends nothing happened.”

The accused will remain in prison for a long time to come, at least until the next hearing, scheduled for May 24th.

The lawyers’ request is for the Italian government to intervene so that Ilaria Salis can be transferred to house arrest in Italy. EU Justice Commissioner Didier Reynders said that “the Commission is available to help in the framework of bilateral contacts between Italy and Hungary”.

The Salis case comes at a time when Hungary is at the centre of European attention regarding funds destined for Budapest and frozen for violations of the rule of law. The EU Council will meet on Thursday 1 February and among the items on the agenda is the tug-of-war waged by Hungary over aid to Ukraine: a tug-of-war aimed at unlocking the resources not provided by Brussels. Italian diplomacy is now inserted in the context of delicate political balances.

But how could Ilaria ever have been treated in this manner? Seeing a video of her in court yesterday I failed to understand how a young teacher could have been manacled as if she was on of the most violent of murdering terrorists. During her court appearance Ilaria appeared most relaxed, indeed she was smiling bemusedly at her accusers. Moreover the charge is quite ludicrous since the two persons Ilaria is accused of having assaulted have stated that they were unaware of any assault on them by her.

I would only add that there is a dangerous split in the EU between those countries who oppose any form of immigration, who have very right wing governments and who are (amazingly) quite pro-russian. It does not bode at all well for the union in this proto-war time.

Casting my eyes back on previous emails from a friend who worked (alas he is now gone from this planet) for the British Council in Budapest and witnessed the rise to power of Orban I noted that one is dealing with a government that does not represent those values of democracy and liberty that are supposed to be essential values of any member state of the EU. Another person, an ex-university student colleague who runs a musical festival in Slovakia, expressed similar thoughts regarding the newly elected premier Fico of that country.

I should be equally concerned about the current premier of the country of which I am resident, Georgia Meloni. Despite her attenuation of views regarding immigration and her semi-revisionist views of Italy’s fascist past Meloni has been criticised for not acting strongly enough in regard of Ilaria’s trumped-up case. I just wonder if this victimised teacher would have been accused in quite the same manner and forced to wear shackles if she had supposedly assaulted left-wing demonstrators. In any case for Orban to pick on a citizen of an EU member state whose government policies would appear be more sympathetic to his own than other states seems to me to be downright idiotic. Let’s see how this crazy tale unfolds in an ever increasingly crazy world.

In the meantime I’ll return to the building of our greenhouse hopeful that the new year will at least produce some decent flowers and vegetables.

It is no coincidence that the most sought-after areas of London contain the greatest number of listed buildings. Places like Richmond, Hampstead, Highgate, Chiswick, Greenwich and Blackheath witness this essential fact. Does this mean that other areas of the Great Wen did not have any building worth listing or even keeping? Not at all. It all depends on the ability of the inhabitants to appreciate and maintain heritage buildings. It also depends on financial aptitude and, of course, on aesthetic appreciation of those buildings.

To take one example: a comparison between the London areas of Blackheath and Woolwich. Both are situated in some of the most extensive and beautiful Commons areas of London which has been nominated the world’s first ‘Park city’ because of its vast proportion of green spaces. Both parts have a long history with the possibility of having heritage housing: Blackheath is not far from the original Royal palace at Greenwich where Queen Elizabeth I was born and Woolwich has the Royal dockyards where the Great Harry was launched in the reign of Henry VIII. Both areas have stunning views and good communications. Their elevation is also to be taken into account. Blackheath is situated at a height of around 50 metres. Woolwich extends above this height with Shooters Hill at 132 metres. So the air the inhabitants breathe there is purer than the London norm – a real boon!

Both areas are now within the Royal borough of Greenwich.

The difference between the two? Simple. Most of Blackheath has been preserved. Much of Woolwich has, on the other hand, been massacred.

How and where has Woolwich been massacred? Let’s take the area around each one’s Common.

Here is a part of the houses around Blackheath Common – the portion known as’ The Paragon’.

Described by the great architectural and art historian Nikolaus Pevsner as ‘one of the finest Georgian crescents in England’ and dating back to 1795 it is the cherry of Blackheath’s dwellings and is surrounded by more modest but still elegant Georgian terraces.

Here are the houses around Woolwich common. What pretty and elegant Georgian terraces they are too.

Among them is the one when my hero General Gordon was born:

This is the original plaque on his house

It has since been replaced by this one.

Why?

Because since the 1970’s these lovely houses are no longer there! They have been replaced by this:

What’s happened? The old houses were largely non-owner occupied. Many of them were owned by the army whose presence, today much diminished, still persists in the former garrison town of Woolwich.  They would have been let out to military staff and sub-divided into lodgings. The army (with the Royal Artillery regiment) left and the borough council (which was then a separate body for Woolwich) seized the opportunity to buy the dwellings up and concoct its social housing projects.  There would have been few preservationists protesting against the houses’ demolition (apart from the now defunct Woolwich Antiquarian Society). There would not have been a perception among the local populace that these houses were worth preserving. There would not have been the money among remaining owner-occupiers to restore the houses. Maybe there would not even have been the idea, now fortunately much more widespread, that old buildings should as far as possible be preserved and restored for future generations to enjoy and appreciate. There would, instead, have been compulsory purchase orders. For social engineering on an Orwellian scale ruled the day in the post-war devastation of austerity-ridden Britain.

Blackheath was clearly luckier. The Paragon had been grade one listed in 1951. It has been well restored and its components able to be sold to affluent buyers. Its common was also not subject to military pressures like Woolwich.

Blackheath property prices have now sky-rocketed like so many other parts of London. Of course, they have also increased in Woolwich but what prices would have been commanded by those elegant Woolwich Common terraces if they had been allowed to stand and be restored to their original stylishness?

As for the churches on the commons. Blackheath still has its All Saint’s which stands on the common like a tack holding the grassland around from flying away. The grade two listed building, designed by Benjamin Ferrey, dates back to 1858.

Woolwich has less than half its church by the Common. It used to be the Garrison church designed by T. H. Wyatt in the second half of the nineteenth century:

Much of it was burnt out by a flying bomb in 1944 and the rest was vandalised and partly demolished to make safe in the 1960’s. Luckily what remains has received a grant, has received a protective canopy and is now listed.

The mosaics, made by the Salviati workshop in Venice, alone are worth a visit

At least Woolwich Common has two buildings which Blackheath Common might envy.

First is the frontage of the Royal Artillery Barracks – the longest continuous Georgian façade in the country:

Second is the ‘Shop’ – the original training school for the army’s cadets. Described as the finest piece of neo-gothic military architecture it’s another Wyatt building and has recently been converted into flats:

However, I still wish desperately for that time machine which could transport me back to an age when Woolwich Common was truly a coherent showpiece of both spectacular and fascinating architecture on a human scale and when, indeed, Woolwich could have been a prime tourist hot-spot like Greenwich or Hampton Court.

Yesterday afternoon in Fornoli’s Peace Park we attended an event in memory of little Liliana Urbach born in Bagni di Lucca and its youngest victim of the Holocaust which is being commemorated today.

Local school children gathered round Liliana’s memorial and recited their thoughts on the historical significance of the event in a well choreographed setting presided over by representatives from our local council. Nineteen little candles were then lit for Liliana. It was a rather touching ceremony.

The following comment was made by one of my Facebook (and real-life too!) friends, Silvana Bracci, (sister of the great wine expert and Bagni di Lucca Enoteca – wine shop – owner, Guido Bracci), to whom I give sincerest thanks. I felt her comment should be also translated into English so that it could reach a wider public. The note deals with the story of Liliana Bracci.

Those of you who have read my post at https://longoio2.wordpress.com/2016/01/27/from-bagni-di-lucca-to-auschwitz/ will understand more about Liliana’s situation. Indeed, I thank Silvana again for allowing me to share this tragic story on my blog and for being the first to appreciate my post which included a section on the same subject:

Silvana writes:

I found a note written in 2011. I was telling the story of Liliana Urbach (1942-1944), the little girl from Bagni di Lucca who died in Auschwitz. I wrote it because many seemed to have forgotten about her. I myself knew about her only at the end of 1990 thanks to a journalist from the ‘Tirreno’ newspaper and from a report by Lucca’s Resistance Institute, when Bagni di Lucca dedicated a Peace Park to the little girl. However, little was said about the incident. An expert in history even said to me that it was an exaggeration to define the Bagni di Lucca Cardinali villa as a concentration camp (the old Terme hotel) as if it were somewhat exaggerated by a particular ‘political’ viewpoint. Not so, there are documents to prove it.

I’m again publishing the note because I’m satisfied with it: in recent days some primary school classes have gone to the park to remember Liliana. Teachers, thanks so much!

On Holocaust Remembrance Day I want to remember a story from Bagni di Lucca. It’s the story of Liliana Urbach and her family.

The Urbach were Jews who’d fled from Vienna to avoid racial persecution. Leo Urbach, and his wife Alice and his son Kurt 4 years old, arrived in my country in 1942, and took lodgings in Via Vittorio Emanuele, Ponte a Serraglio, Liliana was born here on October 19th 1942 and was registered as a citizen of Bagni di Lucca.

The family felt tranquil. They were “free internees” with many personal limitations, but were not prevented from working, and Leo was a watchmaker. Other Jews sheltering in the municipality had the same conditions: no radio, monitoring of correspondence, no political activities, minimal relations with the rest of the population, twice daily reporting to the police. But they were alive..

In late 1943, after an order of November 30, Jews in the Lucchesia began to be rounded up, and a provincial concentration camp was opened at Villa Cardinali at the Terme Calde of Bagni di Lucca. It was a transit camp for inmates and aimed at their deportation to the death camps.

The Urbachs were arrested and taken to the concentration camp at Villa Cardinali. In January, a convoy set off with about ninety Jews, including Leo, Alice, Kurt and Liliana Urbach. They were taken to Florence, then Milan. From here on January 30th of 1944 they left by truck for Germany. Leo, pushed by his wife (who told him “get out, they won’t do anything to me and the children!”) jumped from the truck and fled. He was later recaptured and interned in a prison camp, from which he was freed at the end of the war.

Alice, Kurt and Liliana, arrived at 6 am on February 6th at Auschwitz. By noon they had already been murdered in the gas chambers.

Liliana was 15 months old. When I remember her, I think of the fact that she never managed to attend school, never kissed the boy of her dreams, never got her driving license, never was awed before a flag …… she didn’t die in her bed while the children knocked back their tears so as not to scare her. Maybe she didn’t even die with her mum, because the Nazis often divided their prisoners by age. I hope she wasn’t frightened and that her brother Kurt took her by the hand.

---

Thank you so much Silvana for sharing.

I would like to know what happened to Liliana’s father Leo. And was there ever a photograph taken of Liliana? It must have been quite unendurable for Leo to realise that he’d lost his wife and children contrary to their last words to him.

Anne Frank’s father was also in a similar position after the war. When one of us survives a terrible situation and our loved ones perish we clearly must feel unimaginably devastated. Primo Levi, another survivor, found his situation unbearable as anyone realises who has read his poignant book about his experience in ‘Se questo è un uomo…’ (If this is a man). Indeed, I’m quite sure that this fine author’s – we’d met him when he came to England to attend an opera based on his libretto which had been translated into English – suicide in 1987 was to be explained by another survivor, Elie Wiesel’s words: “Primo Levi died at Auschwitz forty years later”.

The truth is we all die a little bit more when we hear about atrocities perpetrated by humans on humans for ‘whoever kills a person unjustly it is as though he has killed all mankind. And whoever saves a life, it is as though he had saved all mankind’. (Quran 5:32)

Of the ten most beautiful tourist spots NOT to visit on the planet Venice is placed at the top of many lists. This is sad since the city on the lagoon just happens to be one of the most incredible places to see. I remain truly glad I have visited ‘La Serenissima’ in the last century as I gather it is not quite the place now it used to be. Of course, all the wonderful sights remain there: the canals have not been drained, nor have palaces been demolished to make way for shopping malls. No! The Italians continue to love their ‘centri storici’ and would hate to see those abysmal changes perpetrated under the name of ‘redevelopment’ that have made the centres of such once attractive British towns like Bristol or Nottingham grim monuments to municipal town planning ugliness. No, that is not the reason why Venice is off the list of places to see. It’s because there are just too many people visiting it that the city has become a sort of historical Disneyland. Even more than the human deluge going there is the fact that the people that are supposed to live there, the Venetians, are leaving it in droves for Mestre and other horrors on the mainland.

So what does the present-day traveller do? One solution is to visit Venice when the tourist season is at its lowest ebb. Perhaps the end of January? Another is to visit an  alternative beautiful town in the Veneto region.

In summer 2016 we visited Treviso and spent a lovely day there when the market was on.   

With its own unique history and charm Treviso has everything one could want from a city in the Veneto.

There are mediaeval city walls, palaces and a fine mediaeval town hall:

Lots of pretty canals:

Picturesquely arcaded cobbled streets lined with elegant houses:

A fine collection of churches:

Despite this Treviso receives fewer visitors than its more impressive neighbours.. Just look at how empty the streets are in my photos! It’s such a welcome change from the rush-hour like crowds of Venice which I would now rename ‘La guazzabuglissima’. Treviso is definitely worth a return visit.

This Saturday it’ll be Holocaust Remembrance Day. Let no-one be indifferent to this seminal date and let no-one argue that the current martyrdom of a people so tragically betrayed since the Balfour declaration minimises the importance of commemorating it.  

And yet…and yet, the decision of the current Israeli government not to accept a two-state solution but to take over the administration, not only of stricken Gaza but of the illegally occupied Left Bank does not bode well for any peaceable future. It seems, instead, close to the annihilation of a people’s right to have their own country, their own identity. Much like the Nazis’ final solution in fact.

Of course, it would be wonderful if both Jewish and Palestinian people could live together in harmony in one country. But with twenty five thousand Palestinians so many of whom were women and children killed and so many more injured with over 80% of Palestinian homes rendered uninhabitable it hardly seems a promising situation for any sort of reconciliation. It will be so difficult to forgive let alone forget!

Yet there is one important difference between the process of the Holocaust and the current Gaza-Israeli conflict and it is based on a most virulent ideology. The Nazis, under the Wannsee agreement on 1942, wanted the total obliteration – or vaporization to use an Orwellian term – of a race: an extinction as happened to the dinosaurs, the Tasmanian Thylacine and so many other life forms on Planet Earth. The first stage of this eradication was to be the de-personalization of the individual. No longer a name but now a number. No longer with one’s clothes on but now in a striped camp uniform. No longer with any dignity but an erasable ‘Untermensch’ – under-being. Without a home, without a family, with nothing….zero. The second stage was the extermination camp with perhaps a mitigation of slave labour for the lucky ones before their entry into the chambers.

There will still be many who contend that this is what some Israelis want for the Palestinians but I am quite sure, looking at recent demonstrations in that country, that they are not in a majority.

Certainly the current conflicts add disturbing shades to the Holocaust and may even feed its deniers. I was amazed to find that among this crazy lot there was Gerard Menuhin, the son of the great Jewish violinist Yehudi Menuhin!

These thoughts came to my mind when on a recent visit to our nearest ‘big city’ Lucca I chanced upon an exhibition in the Villa Bottini, a lovely peaceful spot of greenery in that gorgeous place.  

Titled ‘The Ghosts of Auschwitz’ it’s a photographic exhibition laid out in the cellars of the villa and presents an immersive journey, through objects, settings, music and background noises, taking the visitor directly to Auschwitz, in what was, during the Second World War, one of the main places dedicated to the systematic genocide perpetrated by the Nazis against Jews and all categories of people deemed undesirable or inferior for political, racial or religious reasons: men, women, pregnant women, children, elderly people, people with disabilities, deprived of their humanity and sent to die in the gas chambers.

The darkness of the journey, the heaps of Zyklon-B rusted empty canisters containing the gas used for the extermination process, the harrowing photographs, the sudden shock of being removed from the town’s civilised streets with their shops, bars and chatting, smiling citizens into this hell-hole was utterly disturbing. It brought me back to the original impact the holocaust had on me when I entered Auschwitz and Birkenau II on a motorcycling trip to Poland earlier in this millennium. Then, I hadn’t quite realised how near this insanity was to the beautiful city of Cracow which I had principally come to see.

Photographer and writer Fiorenzo Sernacchioli made two trips to Auschwitz, in 2010 and 2011, and with Maurizio Della Nave created the ‘The Ghosts of Auschwitz’ exhibition so that, in his words, the Shoah does not become a mere line in the history books. I was able to discuss several themes with him. But one stood out in my mind. When the camp slaves, who had been allowed to live to carry out these tasks, entered the gas chambers after the gas had done its job they discovered that the victims had died forming a heap in the centre with the strongest men at the summit of this fleshly hill and trampled below them and covered with excrement emitted by many in life-threatening panic women and children – for of course, these were the weakest and the deadly gas was working its way up to the chamber’s ceiling. Carlo Levi, an inmate of Birkenau II, in his classic book on the subject states that the first human sentiment that disappears in extreme situations is the sense of solidarity: that we should help one another.  No decency when the survival of the fittest, the desperate wish to live until the last instance is at stake!

Tomorrow afternoon, at our local peace park in Fornoli, there will be an event commemorating the death of the youngest victim of the Holocaust in this part of the world: Liliana Urbach who died aged fifteen months after she was transported from Bagni di Lucca to Auschwitz. If you want to read my post on her it’s at: Suffer Little Children | From London to Longoio (and Lucca and Beyond) Part Two (wordpress.com)

‘He kisses and caresses the marble he sculpts’ remarked a colleague describing Antonio Canova’s artistry. We do not, however, have much marble in Lucca’s current ‘Cavallerizza’ exhibition relating this supreme artist to the city’s neo-classical past. Instead we have a breath-taking sequence of plaster statues, twelve of which have never been seen before, interspersed with paintings from the same age. Among these canvases are those by fine Lucca eighteenth century artists Pompeo Batoni, Stefano Tofanelli and Canova’s friend Bernardino Nocchi.

All in all there are one hundred exhibits beautifully displayed and well-documented with a personal audio guide included in the admission ticket.

Canova always evolved his sculptures in clay. The original form was then increased to the figure’s final size and cast in durable plaster. The majority of items in this exhibition, imaginatively curated by art critic Vittorio Sgarbi, are from the museum in Canova’s home town of Possagno in the Veneto region where the artist was born in 1757 and where he lies in the pantheon-like church he designed for his funeral in 1822.Considered by classicists as too sensual and by romantics as too cold Canova developed a dazzling career and became a much sought-after sculptor. In London, for instance, the Victoria and Albert Museum houses the ethereal ‘Three Graces’ commissioned by the Duke of Bedford. In the Cavallerizza is the original plaster cast:

The stairwell of the Duke of Wellington’s London home encloses a heroic nude of Napoleon I. Lucca’s major connections with Bonaparte are represented at the exhibition by portraits of his sister, princess of the tree-walled city, Elisa Baciocchi.

Derbyshire’s Chatsworth house contains the sixth duke of Devonshire’s commission of the eternally sleeping Endymion, the shepherd beloved of the moon goddess Selene. I was quite taken by the pert cirneco dell’Etna keeping watch at his feet.

Again Lucca has the original plaster cast. The contrasting textures between the lunar shine of the youth’s skin and the rough rocks on which he lies is stunning and points to Canova’s supreme skill.

Another, somewhat cheeky, hunting dog appears behind the exquisite statue of Venus and Adonis commissioned by the Marquis Francesco Berio for his Neapolitan garden temple. Venus is bidding goodbye to her lover who will shortly meet his fate by being gored by a savage boar during a hunt. Again Canova’s virtuosity in the contrast between the dog’s coarse coat and the pair’s smoothest of skins is stunning.

I once opined that Canova was a cold fish. Not anymore. His classical figures are not effete representations of ancient gods and goddesses but real people of flesh and blood. There is utter sensuality in those curves, unspoken words of passion in those glances and smiles. True, Roman and Greek statuaries were originally painted in bright colours but Canova manages to evoke ethereal shades through the way he textures his luminous surfaces.

Although a visit to Possagno is a must there are at least two fine ‘gipsoteche’ – plaster-cast galleries – one can visit within easy reach of Lucca. Pescia’s ‘Libero Andreotti’ is a gallery in the ancient Palazzo del Podestà and contains over two hundred plaster casts from the studio of the Art Nouveau sculptor Libero Andreotti.

At Pietrasanta there’s the fascinating ‘Gipsoteca Luisi’ displaying an incredible variety of plaster casts representative of artistic activity in the town since the eighteenth century.

‘Canova and Neo-Classicism in Lucca’ is the third exhibition hosted by the Cavallerizza in Piazzale Verdi and runs until 29 September 2024. It’s open every day, including Mondays, from 10 am to 8 pm with last admissions at 6.45 pm.

Previous exhibitions included ‘Il Museo della Follia’ and ‘I Pittori della Luce’. There is absolutely no doubt that Lucca has gained an excellent exhibition space equal to Pisa’s Palazzo Blu and Florence’s Palazzo Strozzi.

But what was the Cavallerizza before it became a well-restored exhibition space? Lucca’s ‘Cavallerizza Ducale’ was built between 1821 and 1823 for government use for the Ministry of Public Education which used it as a riding stable for the students of the Royal College and the cadets’ military corps. From a historical point of view, the structure is transitional between the governments of Elisa Buonaparte with her husband Felice Baciocchi and that of Maria Luisa Borbone, daughter of the King of Spain. The building was started by Lazzarini, technician of the Baciocchi family’s trusted architect and completed by Nottolini who was employed by Maria Luisa di Borbone.

There it was, streamlined and proudly polished, ready to receive us all on board for the start of our school journey. I’d seen the coach in previous years when it had arrived outside our school, Dalmain Road School. (The’ road’ bit was much later dropped from the name when the surrounding area was redeveloped and the school was renamed Dalmain). The coach was parked by the wall which enclosed our playground and the outside (and then only) toilets for us.

I’d been enrolled at the school in the summer of 1956 and entered Miss Ibbet’s class which was in one of the huts. These have now long since gone, replaced by the school’s modern extension. From her class I progressed to Mrs Alexander’s            . She was a matronly Scottish lady and I immediately took to her and her lovely highland burr. The only teacher I didn’t like was a certain Mr Matthews who would cane us if we were naughty. If we were really naughty he would give us the strap. Hmmmm!! Fortunately we only had him occasionally.

Anyway now the time had come for us in our final year at Primary to take part in the school journey. Our class teacher and journey accompanist, Mr Wickenden, had told us that we were to visit the isle of Purbeck in Dorset. ‘An island’ I thought. How exciting. ‘Of course it’s not really an island’, he explained, ’but that’s the name given to the peninsula that juts out below Bournemouth. And Purbeck is the name given to a marble-like stone that is quarried there’.

I was glad to have found a seat by the window. As the coach started I waved to my dad who had brought me to the school in his dapper Austin A40 Cambridge. My mum was already at work doing her social work in a hospital in Holborn. She had however, made sure that I had all my holiday clothes packed in my bag. With sandwiches made by my father – an expert maker in this field – I was ready to set off with my school mates. How many were we in the party? Perhaps at least fifty. Certainly the coach was filled. An air of excitement and trepidation spread through our British Leyland vehicle. Excitement because for most of us we were going on an expedition the very first time away from our parents and we were heading to an area of Britain few of us had ever visited before. Trepidation because we were not going to see our mums, dads and siblings for a good fortnight. How much were we going to miss them we wondered?

Mt Wickenden had told us in class that the school journey had gone to other parts of Britain in previous years but that he had decided that by far the best area to spend time in was the Isle of Purbeck and its seaside resort of Swanage. There was going to be so much to do, see, enjoy and, above all, learn in this part of the world.

We arrived at our hotel, the Chatsworth well before darkness fell. Of course in those days motorways did not yet exist in Britain: no M1, M2 and such-like. However, there were far fewer cars on the roads then so even on single carriageway highways like the A3 we were taking our journey was quite swift.

I immediately liked our hotel. It consisted of two substantial Edwardian houses connected by an extension which turned out to be where our dining room was situated. I shared a room with a class mate whose name was Derek Fickling and, as far as I remember, we had to sleep in one large double bed! Thank goodness we were already friends at school so that our time at the Chatsworth was happily free from arguments about blankets, who was kicking whom and who was to switch off the main light.

It is so sad that as a result of the pandemic, which had a bad effect on the Chatsworth’s finances, the hotel closed just a couple of years ago.

A full programme of activities lay before us. Unfortunately I have only my memory to rely on. My original log-book and even the fair copy I made of it upon my return to London have vanished from my possessions. I cannot believe my parents would have destroyed them. They liked to keep postcards and letters I sent them when away. However, no trace of what I wrote about the school journey remains. No postcards and certainly no photographs for I did not take a camera with me. I wonder why? I’d been given an Italian Bencini camera a couple of years previously so why did I not take it with me?

Anyway there we are. But I’d give a thousand of my current digital snaps just to have one of my school journey. Those were times when photographs were usually taken on a box Brownie using 127 Ilford or Kodak films which were brought to the chemist to be developed. No spontaneous results then and goodness knows if anything decent came back. So different from today when we can take umpteen photos in a day and send them immediately to friends on the internet.

Our school journey away-day visits were so interesting and well-planned. I learn a lot about history and geography and wished that all school lessons would be like these: open-air in lovely countryside visiting novel places. On one occasion from the hotel we walked up to the top of Ballard down, a chalk ridge extending behind Swanage. We reached Corfe castle and strolled about the castle ruins which dated back to the twelfth century and which were ‘slighted’ after a siege by Cromwell’s soldiers during the English civil war. I hoped I didn’t have to walk all the way back again to Swanage as by this time we were all a bit tired and not keen on walking another seven miles. Our teacher fortunately told us that we would be able to take the single-track steam train back to Swanage. The line was then still under British rail management. Sadly steam was later removed and, worst of all, the line was closed down in 1972. Happily I have learnt that passenger rail services have been restored from Corfe Castle to Swanage since 2009 courtesy of a private heritage rail company. I truly look forward to travelling on one of the most scenic railway lines in Britain.

(A much later cycle trip to Corfe Castle in the 1980’s)

The isle of Purbeck’s geology very complex and is made up of many different strata. We visited Langton Maltravers where Purbeck stone was mined. We also reached one of the most amazing coastlines I had ever seen. Chesil beach and its eighteen mile long spit or tombolo is made up of pebbles. It finishes with the isle of Portland famous for its stone which helped to clad some of London’s most famous buildings like Saint Paul’s cathedral and the Royal Exchange. By this isle’s rocky shore we ate our sandwiches in a thick fog which had suddenly descended upon us and a fog-horn began hooting loudly. I made a sketch of the place putting an arrow to the fog-horn which I called ‘our ordeal’.

Our visit to historical places ranged from a visit to Maiden Castle, an ancient earthworks hill fort which I was amazed to find was older than the pyramids, to Romsey Abbey, a twelfth century Benedictine monastery now turned into one of the largest parish churches in Hampshire. We also visited Salisbury cathedral and Stonehenge where we were actually able to walk up to the mammoth stones, touch them and even sit on some of them. No such hope today, unfortunately, when the megaliths are securely cordoned off at some distance with the only exception being if one is a qualified druid on the year’s longest day.

On Sundays we were allowed to attend our various churches. The majority of us were C of E. I and a couple of others, however, were R.C. and so we made our way to the local Catholic Church in Swanage which I remember as somewhat poverty-struck. (It looks rather different today I should add). In those days we did not have any other denominations in our school. There were no Muslim or Buddhist pupils, for example.

No terrible accidents happened during our time in the Isle of Purbeck Perhaps a sprained ankle or two and indigestion caused by eating too fast! However, an emergency happened when one of the boys, John Chambers, had a particularly severe attack of asthma which kept us up anxiously all night. John had to be taken to Swanage cottage hospital where he spent some days and where we visited him. Luckily he was well enough to return with us.

The girls were advised not to overdose their washing with too much powder when they were told they could use the little stream behind the hotel to do their laundry. (We boys didn’t have any need to wash our own clothes!)

My school journey was the cherry on the icing of a great final year at Dalmain Road School. It was a year which also saw me passing the 11 plus and, surprisingly, getting a place at Dulwich College, the south London public school founded by an actor friend of William Shakespeare in 1619. In was the time that the L.C.C had launched what became known as ‘the Dulwich experiment’, a wonderful government scheme to break down barriers and base education more on merit than on class.

When, after the School Journey had ended, I reached our house in Forest Hill (and it was truly on top of a very steep hill) and got to my bedroom I burst into tears. My younger brother became quite worried about this. Anyway I eventually dried my tears. Why had I become a cry-baby? Perhaps because the school journey had been such a good experience for me and now it was all over sob, sob! Ah well, all good things must end I suppose. But I realise now that one thing hasn’t ended: I still haven’t quite stopped thinking about that school journey now almost sixty five years ago! So it’s been a lovely chance to place my recollections of a time so seminal for me and, incidentally, an occasion when I received  my only school prize: a book on the geology and fossils on Britain, specially signed by Dalmain school’s then head-teacher Mr. S. R. Reader.

Surely there can be few things more awful than to be accused of a crime one did not commit. And perhaps then to be found guilty of that crime and pay for it in prison. If one is lucky then there could be the possibility that one might eventually be exonerated…years later and after enormous legal costs.

The on-going British Post Office scandal, in which hundreds of postmasters and postmistresses were found guilty of embezzlement of funds but were, in fact, victims of a faulty IT system, is perhaps the biggest example of a miscarriage of justice that has ever occurred in Britain. It has deeply affected me, especially when I heard the interviews with some of the victims. The recent TV drama ‘Mr Bates v the Post Office’ has brought the whole sorry saga to the public eye and the return of the CBE award given to services rendered by the then chief of the Post Office has revealed further chapters in this shameful story.

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Quite apart from the colossal unfairness of what happened to so many employees of a much-loved British institution (and one which was the first of its type in the world founded with the Penny Post under Sir Roland Hill in 1840) there remains the fact that very few of these employees have been correctly compensated or had their criminal accusations rescinded. Perhaps as a reminder that the current UK government may still have something of a conscience left the PM has promised to cancel all charges against the victimised employees. An example of an executive decision going against a legal one? Who knows.

My sympathy, indeed my empathy, for the Post office workers is greatly increased by the fact that I too was accused of a crime which I did not commit. It was in 2013 that I received a notice that I was to get myself a lawyer and attend the local courts for trial because I had been accused of theft. I had been accused by a neighbour and the theft was of a window-blind. The neighbour was an English policeman who owned the house opposite me and who came there for two or three weeks annually for a summer holiday. Very rarely the house was let other holiday-makers. The item purportedly stolen by me, a window blind, was damaged and left lying on the road between my and his house. It had been lying there for several weeks and I wondered why the policeman had not placed it in one of his cellars in preparation for its repair.

I could not believe what I had been accused of. However, I thought to myself the policeman must have some good reason for the accusation. Was it a case of mistaken identity? If so why did he not quiz me about the stolen article? Why go straight to the carabinieri and make a denuncia?

One of the worse things about being falsely accused of a crime is that one may start by believing that one really did commit it after all. I began to think that in a moment when my mind might have blanked out I did pick up the broken blind from the road and brought it back home. I even started to look around my house to see whether the object had been placed there. Was it perhaps in the cellar or behind a cupboard? Was I going mad? Could I really have erased the supposed theft from my mind? I was told the accuser had requested a search warrant for my house. I had never been issued such a warrant. The thought of policemen sifting through my belongings and turning them upside down was abhorrent and such an infringement to my privacy.

Could all this be true? I pinched myself. The situation seemed absurd. A British police officer on holiday for a few weeks each year turning against a local resident and teacher of English in local schools in this way? How could the Italian public prosecutor have upheld his denuncia? How could the legal system have believed that the theft of a broken window blind left on a public road for over a month constituted a crime? Was it all because this holidaymaker was a UK policeman? In fact a detective inspector? What was I to believe? My life had turned into a Kafkaesque scenario where no questions were answerable, where the world operated to a different logic.. Who was madder? Me or my accuser?

But worse was to follow. Like the nightmare accusations of the post office workers my own story had just begun.

In this day and age, and particularly in this country, we should be grateful to receive any Christmas cards at all. Of course I’m not talking about e-cards. We’ve happily had plenty of those, whether arriving as attachments to Gmail, as Whatsapp missives, on Facebook or as special card senders. But Christmas cards where one has to go to one’s post box to fish it out, use a special knife to open the often rain-sodden envelope, admire the design, and then sit down to read the precious greetings? No, not really. Less and less of them this year. But looking back over ten years ago? Yes, perhaps. There were then enough postal arrivals to decorate ‘card lines’ hung across the sitting room. Perhaps we should re-hang some of them up again to fill up the empty spaces.

So what’s happened? There was a time when buying a card cost a lot more than sending it. And, of course, it was then the only way, apart from the telegram, to send off written messages. Rising postal costs and the arrival of the email has altered all that.I remain amazed at the price it now costs to send a card from England to here. And as for Australia!

However, there is nothing more special than receiving a Christmas card especially when it arrives unexpectedly! Just think of all the people involved in its transmission: from the sender placing it in a post-box to our friendly post-lady delivering it to us at the end of the pilgrimage-like journey of that Christmas card!

Perhaps a time may come when we will thrill again to the sending of real-time christmas cards (and Easter, birthday and anniversary ones too). There are already several reprisals of old-time habits. For instance this year has seen an amazing resurgence of vinyl sales. Somehow we’re getting fed up with streaming and there’s nothing like taking an LP out of its attractive sleeve and placing it on a gramophone turntable, making sure it and the pick-up needle are cleaned. Then, sitting back in the armchair and modulating the speakers listen to the first two movements of a Rachmaninov symphony before turning the disc over for the finale.

Regarding arrivals let’s trust our own local benevolent hag, better known as La Befana, lands safely and doesn’t break her load of sweets and toys before giving them to the children. La Befana who ‘tutte le feste porta via’ : who comes and takes away with her all the nativity’s festivities.