Winter work

Simon in Greece with a Mayday wreath; stepfather Jack Hargreaves in his shed in Dorset with a film from Out of Town

In the last three years we've worked on the production of two commercially available box-sets of my stepfather's TV broadcasts on DVDs. Now I've bought the rights in Out of Town held by Endemol, I'm earning royalties on their sale through Delta Leisure, as Jack intended. The next challenge is the more complicated one of securing his remaining material, most of it not shown since it was broadcast in the 1970s. The box-sets consisted of material more or less ready to show, but this older material does not exist in the form of complete episodes. It comes piecemeal, incoherent, muddled up...

Jack Hargreaves - the invention of the camera from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.

When he died twenty-one years ago, my stepfather left an unwieldy but intriguing collection of 16mm film and 1/4" reel-to-reel sound tape - incomplete components of his long-running television programme Out of Town. For nearly three years I've been striving to organise this precious stuff into a secure archive.
On January 12th Lin and I had tea with Christopher Perry.
He lives just streets away. We met at his house to discuss his offer to speed up the process of digitising, synchronising and remastering the archive of my stepfather's silent films and tapes that I've been storing in a scruffy lock-up near Spaghetti Junction since April 2012.  So far this exercise in recovery has been going at sub-snail pace, because of time and equipment constraints on Francis Niemczyk's work. In the last two years just three episodes have been remastered. Good work but leaving close to two hundred archived episodes yet to be recovered.

Chris Perry is a pioneer of Kaleidoscope. A film and tape archaeologist, he helped recover 'The Lost Episodes' of Out of Town published by Delta in 2012. A month before Christmas Kaleidoscope won a bid to take over local TV ....

Kaleidoscope TV Limited has been awarded the licence to broadcast a new local television service for Birmingham, the Black Country and Solihull via Freeview channel 8 and Virgin Media cable channel 159. It is expected that the channel will launch early in 2015. Ofcom has stipulated that the new channel should be on the air no later than February 28th, 2015. The new company, formed specifically to hold separate Kaleidoscope’s broadcasting venture from the existing organisation, is jointly owned by Mike Prince who will be a familiar face to Midlands television viewers as an on-screen continuity announcer for ATV and Central Television during the 70s and 80s and Chris Perry, head of Kaleidoscope, the Birmingham based classic television organisation. Kaleidoscope TV will launch as part of the government’s initiative for a national network of local television channels. The licence had originally been awarded to City TV, a company that went into administration before getting on the air. After administrators Duff & Phelps Ltd took control of City TV’s assets, numerous bids were received for the company’s licence. Kaleidoscope TV was the preferred bidder and after a stringent examination of the company’s finances and programming plans, Ofcom has agreed to transfer the licence to Kaleidoscope.

Tea with Chris Perry

In return for being allowed to broadcast these episodes on KalTV Chris offers to remaster the film-tape archive.
"Draw up an agreement. Get me 33 tape-film matches to start. The digitising can be done in London. You can oversee synchronising and editing tape and film at Walsall Studios prior to broadcast."
On Wednesday Lin and I went out to the lock-up with our list of tapes and films. We brought home all the sound tapes, organised the films into the numbers attached to the cans while they were at South West Film and Television Archive, and removed one box of film. Once home we got the tapes checked against our list and marked them with the numbers on the films. That done we matched three of the films in the one box brought home.

Two days later we returned to the lock-up and dug out all the films with the listed numbers; Lin digging in the film boxes and calling out the numbers as I ticked off them off on the list.

It was chilly work. Once home and warmed up we started matching films and tapes - relying on the numbers on the boxes and cans, but also checking titles written on both containers. By the end of the day we had 70 matches.

"Tomorrow we'll select 10 of these matched film-tape pairs to take to London"

 

Extract from an 'Agreement' with Kaleidoscope TV ~ signed by Simon Baddeley and Chris Perry and witnessed

'Out of Town'

From: Simon Winters

Hi Simon. Don't know if you are in UK and can make it, but there is a Kaleidoscope event on this saturday at Stourbridge. We are filming interviews for a major BFI documentary about missing tv. We will be filming David King about OoT. Can you make it and be interviewed? Cheers Simon

Stourbridge Station

Saturday morning I was on my way to the Talbot Hotel in Stourbridge. The middle aged man sitting opposite wore a floppy sun hat, travelling clothes that seemed to set off his bulk, peered at a satnav in one hand and a note book in the other.
"What kind of train is this" I asked. I had been on the vehicle once - December 2011 - before but spotting a true trainspotter I thought I'd see if I could find out more.
"It's called a Parry People Mover"
"I like it"
"It's the only one in the country"
No more was volunteered; the satnav getting full attention.
We trundled along a mile of bumpy single track surrounded by greenery arriving at the one platform terminus next to Stourbridge Town Bus Station. Via a lift and a tunnel I cycled down the High Street to where Kaleidoscope was holding one of its regular get-togethers, found Simon and after a cup of tea was sat with David King to be interviewed about the way we'd arrived at the 'Lost Episodes" of Out of Town.

Dave King, Out of Town DVDs and reels of archive film from the archive

Chris Perry asked questions. Rory was behind the camera. I extemporised about my stepfather and described Out of Town - not easy, as the tags 'country life' or 'rural pursuits' misses out on what was really a vehicle for my stepfather to enjoy chatting to a few million people about his favourite subjects - for instance rabbiting with nets - with brilliant illustrations from his camera-toting friend, of twenty five years, Stan Bréhaut...

Jack and his cameraman Stan

...and David told how he had discovered and saved the Out of Town episodes that Delta on the initiative of Charles Webster, put together and put on sale last year (Note: In Sept 2015 Delta became insolvent and the following month I terminated their licence on grounds of 'breach of contract', a condition that applies to any sold on copies of Delta's OOT DVDs). I spoke also of the 'unwieldy material' brought in April 2012 to a lock-up in Birmingham from South West Film and Television Archive - Stan Bréhaut's 16mm reverse negative location film with library sound effects...

...and a whole lot of - so far unmatched - ¼inch reel-to-reel tape of Jack speaking to these films and introducing each episode. I spoke briefly about technical challenges that I'd explained in more detail in the account included with the Out of Town 'Lost Episodes':

...I hadn’t only begun to grasp that the background sound on Jack’s programmes was added later – from sound effects in the library at Southern synched with events on Stan’s film. What was I to do with hours of such film? Jennie at SWFTA gave me a clue. She and her husband Roger, also working part-time at the archive, showed me a shelf of ¼” reel-to-reel sound tape in cardboard boxes. These for no obvious reason contained Jack’s voice as he talked in the studio from his set – a shed - and his commentary on Stan’s film for that week’s episode of Out of Town. It had taken hours to find the tape that went with the film. There was no order and no titles that allowed simple one-to-one matching. Roger, using a Steenbeck machine that could play separate film and sound tape simultaneously accurately splicing sound to vision. He then digitised the result and we had a 1975 episode of Out of Town as a gift for Richard Hill and his family. Well nearly. At the start and often at the end of each episode of Out of Town the viewer would see Jack  sat in his studio ‘shed’ from where he’d say “Hullo” before moving seamlessly into talking about Stan’s location film, run on a monitor in front of him in the studio. This all went out live. The location film would end. We’d see Jack again in his shed for a few remarks and a “cheerio” and the gentle signature tune Recuerdos de la Alhambra. So we had Jack’s commentary and location sound effects, but we had no picture of Jack in his shed. Richard’s film with which he was delighted came to him on a DVD courtesy of SWFTA with a stills of Jack inserted over the recording of his studio introduction. But what about the sound effects; of traffic, of cattle lowing, a fish splashing, wind in the trees, a bucket dropped? “People fill in the sound if you give them a clue” was Jack’s reasoning so I was told recently by one of Jack’s old colleagues, David Knowles. He’d certainly fooled me. I learned that my stepfather had made a point of asking expert sound people not to get “too clever”, inserting every possible event that might have had a sound. “Just make it sound like outside and synchronise doors banging and gun shots” I was slowly understanding why it was so tricky to trace whole episodes of Out of Town. “Jack loved to do high quality television on the cheap” added David who’d produced Jack’s successor programme - Old Country - for Channel 4 in the early eighties. My youthful memories of Jack musing about technical challenges were being jogged “I don’t want to go out in the countryside with a TV crew of half a dozen and a pile of kit. They frighten things away.” I learned after a bit that even Jack’s director George Egan stayed away, as Jack with Stan in essential tow went on location. “The finest outdoor cameraman in England” he called him, shooting silent, sound added later, and live continuity by Jack’s when broadcast. Jack knew that what made TV different from cinema and more than just lesser picture quality on a small screen was being live. He was stimulated by the risk of going out live but much more he relished the knowledge of talking there and then to his invisible audience. “We filmed nearly 1:1” explained Jack years later “The normal ratio of used to edited film is 10:I for the sort of thing I do. In commercials it can be 1000:1.” Jack and his team did minimal editing, had a minimal set and a minimal crew and it went out live with Stan’s silent location film plus library sound effects....

Jack Hargreaves tries out Richard Hill's patent 'exploding' bait box from Simon Baddeley on Vimeo.

...and an episode about rabbiting from Old Country, successor to Out of Town, screened in the early 1980s on Channel 4 with Stan's successor, Steve Wagstaff, behind the camera..

Chris Perry, seeing the OoT film cans and sound tape I'd brought with me to Stourbridge said, to my delight, that he would introduce me to an ex-BBC expert who would know what needed to be done to wed sound and image from the archive. I've been looking for ways to get this done for two years now. I so hope this will lead somewhere.
In the early 1990s, When I was 50, I began searching for my dad, not the parent I'd come to know, but the individual who met and married my mum in 1940, whose DNA is mine...

He died in 1973, In the midst of war my mother and he, having made my sister Bay and I, were divorced. Living with my mother I would only get to know my dad after he'd been married over 10 years to Maria, who he'd met in Athens in 1949. Twenty years later, I'm learning more about Jack, the step-father with whom I enjoyed my childhood and youth from one Christmas in 1948. My dad's life is part impenetrable; hidden by his profession. He served in MI6 (Greece, Brussels, the Far East, London, Washington) until his early death at 52. My stepfather's life, including so much that was very public, is made puzzling by his versatile and invigorating self-invention. The novelist Graham Hurley,  who worked for Jack at Southern TV, wrote....

...It was this wonderful marriage of fact and fiction that made him such a great broadcaster (and inspiring boss). Like so many men from that generation including George Egan (Director of OoT), who flew SOE agents into France aboard tiny Lysanders), Jack had been through something infinitely bigger and more scary than any of us would ever find in television and it gave him a breadth and a perspective and a degree of creative mischief that was utterly beguiling. I put a number of the Out of Town programmes onto tape (Stan shot mute film; Jack's studio musings became the sound-track) and after a while I began to spot where fact strayed into fancy. Viewers, and gobsmacked youths like me, loved him. Like Stan, truly a buccaneer...

*** **** ***
Lin was entertaining Oliver most of the day after Amy.on her way to work, dropped him off. I got to see him later. He's not saying much tho' making lots of interesting sounds. We played on the sunny lawn after I got back from Stourbridge and later, for tea, sat Ollie in the same high chair used by my mum, by me and my sister, by our children Richard and Amy...

...Guy came round after work to collect his son.
I started working on removing woodwork and tiling holding our bath. It's got to come out so we can do something about growing damp in the room below coming, it seems, from under the bath. The bath was put in with great firmness in 1935. Getting underneath it, let alone extracting it,  is going to be a stinker given we want to save the long slate panel that runs beside it and seems immoveable. I removed the locker I built twenty plus years ago so that I could start trying to tease out the panel. Hopeless. I'm so tempted to take a sledge to the slate. But if I do I'll regret it. What a mess.

Saplings

Our boy Richard and Flea

Richard came to supper on Sunday, along with Amy, Guy and Karen's daughter, Phoebe - long friends. How bizarre is this? My wife and children and son-in-law - smokers and friends of smokers - have taken to electric cigarettes - e-cigarettes -which they recharge via the USB port on their laptops; which they smoke in pubs and trains and don't need ashtrays. Is this going to become a new habit? I gather these devices are banned in Boston.

Phoebe and Amy came to supper

*** *** ***
I've learned of changes in our street; some pending, others while I was away - Mrs Kolcak died, Gwen's house opposite has been sold and we have new opposite neighbours not yet met, Mrs Piotrovski's sold her home and has gone to live with her daughter who used to babysit for us, the old gentleman who went blind has now moved out and into a home; so-and-so is becoming more and more absent-minded, suffering dementia. Oh and Mahmood Hussain, who got deselected and has been re-selected, will stand for the council in May in place of Don Brown who's retiring.
"Do you realise that Leslie's nearly 50"
"Blimey. I remember when his dad got him his first camera. He was 16 wasn't he?"
"Now we'll have Syrian refugees in Handsworth"
"Wars! They've fled to Lebanon, Jordan. Desperate. Then the governments start allocating them to places across the world. Our inner suburbs, any inner suburb, is where new people get lodged when they arrive. It makes us rich"
"It makes us crowded" says Lin, vexed, who at Igoumenitsa last year, took food to young Kurds being chivvied from the ferry terminal by Greek police.
*** ***
Lin's given me fruit saplings - plum, apple, pear and peach.
"They're a present"
"But it's not my birthday yet"
"They were going cheap at Lidl"
I piled the trees in the front pannier of my bicycle, sat Oscar on top and cycled towards the Victoria Jubilee Allotments, for my first visit since mid-January. The route goes down Victoriana Way on the Parklands estate where by happy chance (given he was leaving Chris Perry's home to get in his car as I went by) I bumped into Simon Winters of Kaleidoscope who's been helping me with the search for my stepfather's old films, tapes of Out of Town made in the 1970s and 80s. I knew he and Chris and been at one of the regular  Kal get-together in Stourbridge to review and celebrate the latest films they've recovered.
"Hi Simon!"
"Simon! How did the Kal event go yesterday?"
"Fine. I saw Dave. He's cooled down. Cathy's actually pleased with him. You know he was anxious about his relations with Endemol re the rights in those 34 Out of Town films. She's going to have them re-issued."
"Oh right. Blimey! That's a change of tone since Christmas"
"And you know the 27 films Endemol..."
"The ones Delta are re-issuing under licence from Endemol?"
"Yes. Well Dave's given her another beta-tape that was actually part of that set, so there'll be 28"
"How did Dave...?" I start to ask but leave it, wondering how come Dave has got hold of yet another Out of Town tape about whose existence I'd known nothing.
I cycled on to the allotment pondering the mercurial cat-and-mouse process of the last 18 months, as I and others have chased after missing copies of Jack's films; have traced them to one archive only to find them missing from there and possibly moved to another where they survive in such-and-such format; found another set whose existence must be kept temporarily secret lest the finder be entangled in the coils of copyright claims from Endemol.
The allotments were deserted, damp and chill, with a grand wind tumbling the trees of the park setting up a roar amid their leafless branches, magpies and pigeons diving and soaring in the gusts. Plot 14 looks quite good at first sight with my shed and edged path and black polythene sheet bubbling in the wind under its holding stones, doing something that looks like it might be useful. But there's nothing seriously growing especially compared to the early vegetables and green manure I've seen on other plots.

I plonk the saplings under the veranda along with the seeds I was given in Ano Korakiana and four kilos of seed potatoes stored in the garage, chitting promisingly. Where to plant the trees? We have had an idea of an orchard of sorts at the bottom end of the two adjoining plots. Rachel and John next door though have had no time for more than a square yards of desultory spade work, which at least gives me some sense of advancement. The trees despite a rule about only three per plot will have to go on 14, on the east side of the shed where the ground is as yet least dug over. I get out the azada and brace myself to work, Oscar gazing on the park, planning to dig under the fence when I'm distracted.
"I know what you're thinking Os. I really do"
"So?" He continues searching the landscape beyond the fence with eyes and nose...

One to break the surface with big hoe, fork or spade, turning up divots; another to break up the weeded divots and begin to level the surface with rake and smaller hoe. It's not as if our plot presents that much of a problem compared to some soils. The other reason I find this hard is, not my age or fitness, but the fact I've neglected ground that a better gardener would work over far more regularly. In fact the soil's a lot easier to work than last year, benefiting from the hard work I invested digging it over then. In the intervening time roots have grown again and begun to gain a hold.

Some progress

I try to keep an eye on Oscar as I work but now and then I see he's tiptoed off and dug a hole beneath the fence. Out of the corner of my eye I catch him sniffing happily at another dog in the park while the owner looks on. If a fight's on the books he's back inside the fence growling fiercely at his opponent through the bars. Recalling him I get to chat with someone through the fence - a welcome break from digging. In two hours, with further breaks to shelter under the veranda from showers of rain and even hail, I've made progress enough to have ground in which to plant the trees after their roots have been soaked. As for the potatoes I propose peeling back the black plastic, planting as I go. I may start the seeds in trays inside the sites new communal polytunnel.
Monday afternoon I went back to the plot passing Vanley sowing onions, in perfect smooth soil.
"How do you get the ground like that?"
"I'll come over to you in a moment" I went on with my digging. Vanley arrived and watched me.
"This is a mess" he said, nicely, of the ground I'd been working. He took my spade and began a tutorial on how to prepare ground; how to hold the fork and get it into the ground, raise the earth
"Bend your knees, not your back..."
I should create a trench with the earth I dug into which I can put compost covered by the next line of soil dug out.
"...this way you get the reward of seeing your progress...make sure you're removing the couch, setting it aside for burning or disposal. the other green stuff and uprooted vegetation you just dig in with the compost"

He completed five lines of digging in almost as many minutes, work that had been taking me longer, exhausting me more.

Vanley Burke teaching me work the ground on my plot

"Level it off with the rake"
Then he showed me a good way to plant my early potatoes. He'd taught me a few months back the principle of only preparing the soil in which you are about to plant or sow...so he dug just one ditch between weeded ground, the earth heaped on one side. "Put in your potatoes. Leave just one chit on each. A foot to 18 inches apart. Rake the heaped earth back over them, pulling out any couch"
He left me to it. I dug a second trench, planted and covered my seed potatoes, marking the line with a bamboo on which I stuck their name.
Tue 6 March: That half hour lesson on digging was no small gift. This morning the back ache I expected after several hours' digging didn't occur. Vanley told me that before he started photography (at which he is so good and justly well known), his father, in Jamaica, taught him and his brothers about working the land and caring for animals. I couldn't absorb from books, the learning he imparted in 20 minutes, much as I've tried. V showed me how to raise the spade or shovel - depending on how penetrable the soil - and plunge it down, one hand on top of the handle; the other close by on the stem.
"Don't spear your foot, Simon!"
Then with the blade in the ground, push it down further, then lever
"With your knees, not back - and heap the soil opposite you while creating a trench."
All obvious, but watching him and trying it myself while I was watched by Vanley made it possible.
"If you come up with a shovelful of roots or a divot of turf, strike the larger pieces to break them up, turn the turf upside down. Drop it in the trench, shake the weed ball of earth and do the same or in the case of couch pull it out by hand and make sure to dispose of it."
V was picking out and throwing these distinctive white yellow roots onto the black plastic cover on part of my plot
"They'll dry out there and die. Don't put them in the compost. Get this done and it'll get easier next year."  So I proceeded
"Keep it neat. Keep a line and an edge and make it so you can see how you are progressing. That's good for your morale."
I can hardly express my exhilaration at feeling that I'm on my way to mastering a skill not exercised in my family for generations - or not on my side of it. Jack, my stepfather, could dig. He was one, at most two generations from the land, and didn't he make his later career out of documenting his return to it.

Samuel Lees
portrait in Oldham Art Gallery founded in 1883 by Charles Lees *

I calculate my family have been townspeople since my ancestor Samuel Lees in Oldham became an ironmaster, then cotton mill owner, in the early years of the Industrial Revolution.
"I'd love to write a book, Vanley. 'Teaching the Bourgeois how to return to the Land'"
I didn't add - not yet - that the Lees fortune came in part from processing raw cotton grown by slaves.

Two rows of Marfona planted 5 March

*It was the setting up of an engineering business by Samuel Lees at Holt in 1816, that engineering really took off, as he began to manufacture rollers, rather than simply repairing them. His firm rapidly developed so that by the early 1830s his company was the largest cotton roller manufacturing firm in Lancashire....

*** ***
For the morning and early afternoon I networked at the People Conference 2012 in Handsworth College, comfortable with familiar faces and local friends thinking about the area, planning a future with less and less money to support public services. There's that feeling that we have the companionship and talent to try to address the problems of our area and the needs of its communities. I feel relaxed with Camille, Aftab, Councillor Waseem, Sister Helen, Hector the Protector, Khalid our MP, Derek, Ifor, Harold, Ken, Rajinder, Verona, Saeed who once let people call him Sid...and they with me; involved with and sharing the same concerns.

Later I cycled over to see Amy on the edge of the city Oscar dashing beside me along the towpath of the Fazeley Canal; noise from the motorway receding as I get closer to the countryside by Minworth bridge over the now green edged canal, a hundred yards from Summer Lane. Oscar's delighted to see Amy's dog Cookie.

They romp in the garden, he trying hopelessly to mount her - she's in season - though twice his height. Now and then she reverses the process and jumps on him. Watching a while over tea and shortcake, we reckon it's OK to leave them together. Amy takes me upstairs to see her baby room, with preparatory kit and baby clothes. She makes an appointment with Guy, working late six days in a row at the Ford Showroom in Sutton (It's “change over” time in the motor trade), to meet up at the pub beyond the fields below the garden and we set out for a walk, the dogs now more interested in the scent of hare and pheasant hiding in a broad field of young kale.

Cookie works the ground differently from Oscar who just wants to chase things - when they turn up. Cookie stops a hundred yards from us; and only her back above a clump of taller kale, points and begins to stalk leading with her nose until a foot ahead of her a young tailless hen pheasant bursts from the cover and turns to fly, in its inexperience, within 20 yards of us. We tie the dogs up outside the pub - a soft apple drink for Amy; half a pint of local bitter for me; clustered at the bar blokes of a certain tribe - to me, from the city's centre, they seem strange - all white, unsightly less in feature than in facial gesture, making steady use of the f-word; skidding in a series of 'fffs', a gap for the 'u' pronounced with a lot of 'a' in it, hitting the consonant buffer of the 'ck' with a manly clunk; they swing the curse as a generic club, yet, being on the edge of Sutton Coldfield, they eschew the c-word, weakening their scansion.The place is called The Cock, and "it's full of them" mutters Amy. The rain comes in, the sky darkens, Guy arrives and we head home, my bicycle in his boot with the dogs
"You know" says Amy "I think Cookie and Amy may have tied"
"Shit. How did they manage that?"
"Well it must have been when we went up to the baby room. I saw they'd stopped chasing one another. I think she laid down. I don't want her to have a litter of Jack Daniels, Dad. You'll have to pay the vet."

*** ***
Monday night's meeting of Handsworth Helping Hands saw us reviewing progress to date, assessing the challenges of raising enough cash from grants to do free work for the vulnerable. On the negative side is the sheer lack of local funding; on the positive is that when various local initiatives, such as our area's Community Development Trust and Heathfield Neighbourhood Forum, have been longer in place we'll be well positioned for the grants available. After reading through, editing and getting approval for a draft constitution  for HHH, Lin and I had worked on last year, the meeting left it with Leslie Pinder to report back on arrangements for making ourselves into a social enterprise. Tomorrow I will contact Jo Burrill at Midland Heart to arrange a pilot tidy up at one suitable site so that at least we start to get our hands dirty in a good way.

*** ***
A report from the Institute of International Finance (IIF) on the economic cost of a Greek default - Implications of a Disorderly Greek Default and Euro Exit...

There are some very important and damaging ramifications that would result from a disorderly default on Greek government debt. Most directly, it would impose significant further damage on an already beleaguered Greek economy, raising serious social costs. The most obvious immediate spillover it that it would put a major question mark against the quality of a sizeable amount of Greek private sector liabilities. For the official sector in the rest of the Euro Area, however, the contingent liabilities that could result would seem to be:
• Direct losses on Greek debt holdings (€73 billion) that would probably result from a generalized default on Greek debt (owed to both private and public sector creditors)
• Sizeable potential losses by the European Central Bank (ECB): we estimate that ECB exposure to Greece (€177 billion) is over 200% of the ECB’s capital base
• The likely need to provide substantial additional support to both Portugal and Ireland (government and well as banks) to convince market participants that these countries were indeed fully insulated from Greece (possibly a combined €380 billion over a 5 year horizon)
• The likely need to provide substantial support to Spain and Italy to stem contagion there (possibly another €350 billion of combined support from the European Financial Stability Fund (EFSF)/European Stability Mechanism (ESM) and IMF)
• The ECB would be directly damaged by a Greek default, but would come under pressure to significantly expand its Securities Markets Program (SMP) (currently €219 billion) to support sovereign debt markets
• There would be sizeable bank recapitalization costs, which could easily be €160 billion. Private investors would be very leery to provide additional equity, thus leaving governments with the choice of either funding the equity themselves, or seeing banks achieve improved ratios through even sharper deleveraging
• There would be lost tax revenues from weaker Euro Area growth and higher interest payments from higher debt levels implied in providing additional lending
• There would be lower tax revenues resulting from lower global growth. The global growth implications of a disorderly default are, ex ante, hard to quantify. Lehman Brothers was far smaller than Greece and its demise was supposedly well anticipated. It is very hard to be confident about how producers and consumers in the Euro Area and beyond will respond when such an extreme event as a disorderly sovereign default occurs.
It is difficult to add all these contingent liabilities up with any degree of precision, although it is hard to see how they would not exceed €1 trillion. There is a more profound issue, however. The increased involvement of the ECB in supporting the Euro Area financial system has been such that a disorderly Greek default would lead to significant losses and strains on the ECB itself. When combined with the strong likelihood that a disorderly Greek default would lead to the hurried exit of Greece from the Euro Area, this financial shock to the ECB could raise significant stability issues about the monetary union.

*** ***
A little more of Vanley Burke - my tutor on the plot

...and I had a visitor on Tuesday evening, Sihlangu Tshuma, Online Journalism Postgraduate student at Birmingham City University, who runs a blog - MyHandsworth. He showed me filming he'd done at Uplands Allotments.

How can we plan for the unknown?

Driving on the Culduthel Road to Inverness 

I find driving cars a little strange. I borrow them from others to do errands, now and then - like collecting shopping, taking my mother out, carrying slabs to our allotment. If there's anyone else to drive I let them - happily. Lin lends me her car -reluctantly - but having divorced my car at the end of 2007, preferring...

...walking, cycling and public transport, with all the latter's inefficiencies in the UK, I'm becoming unfamiliar with the technology of newer cars - sat-nav, video to aid parking, caution icons that flash on the dash, voice sound warnings, anti-lock braking, all round air bags, sound systems of complex versatility and of course infotainment to keep drivers happy in their jams and the powers that be in better touch with what drivers are up to... I don't miss the car but I keep my driving licence up to date.

My interest was tickled by a book my friend Rick Risemberg, in LA, told me about the other day, having reviewed it in New Colonist, which he edits with Eric Miller:

Cotten Seiler ... in Republic of Drivers...examines how basically imaginary constructs of "freedom" were attached to and marketed with the car and car culture to compensate for the loss of control over their lives US workers suffered with the advent of industrialism. This was a time when "proprietary capitalism" (what we would now call entrepreneurialism, but was business as usual back when) was being replaced by "industrial capitalism," where workers became drone-like employees rather than businesspeople in their own rights. He outlines how car culture and highways also became mechanisms for imposing strict control through the use of this freedom imagery in the US. As cars morphed from artisan-crafted indulgences of the wealthy to factory-made products destined for the middle and working classes, so did regulation and restriction of motorists. Some of this was reasonable, of course: cars are dangerous and take up lots of space for roadways and parking; the first attribute leads to licensing and police oversight, the second to taxation. But rather than merely accommodating the car, as Europe did, America redesigned itself almost entirely around the private use of automobiles, inventing new and often emotionally-devastating urban forms such as the bedroom suburb, the strip mall, and the superhighway. These destroyed community and isolated individuals--within their cars while on the move, and within neighborhoods that offered no public space not reserved for cars when at home... 

I was watching this programme of Jack's from the early 1980s. "A lady wrote to me and said 'We love the country. We'd like to drive down to the country at the weekend, but can you tell us what to do when we get there?' And I said 'Yes I can.'"
It's a part episode from Old Country, broadcast on Channel 4 in the early 1980s. Jack Hargreaves, my stepfather, had been presenting Out of Town on Southern Television for twenty-one years between 1960-1981.  Old Country has the same formula as Out of Town; even the same theme tune - Recuerdos de la Alhambra, but with Southern Television losing its franchise (Jack left before that happened) he was invited by Jeremy Isaacs to transfer Out of Town - a programme of proven success - to C4, which he did for three years with a new cameraman called Steve Wagstaff (Stan Bréhaut having decided to retire), and a new director, Steve Wade, who on leaving Southern had started working with David Knowles who'd set up a production company called Lacewing. They put Old Country together in the school house at Meonstoke in Hampshire, setting up Jack's studio shed there and visiting many of the people, places and subjects that had featured in Out of Town. In 1986 Jack got together with many of those with whom he'd worked at Lacewing to make a compilation of twenty seven old Out of Town films by Stan for domestic viewing on videotape and later DVD.
Over the last couple of years I've been striving to give these programmes a wider circulation; streaming, on Youtube and Vimeo, clips sent me by viewers who recorded them at the time of broadcast (low quality picture but I'm still immensely grateful for them). Until very recently it has been impossible to find examples of Out of Town - other than the DVD compilation of 27 archive episodes that J made in 1986, putting new sound tracks and commentary on Stan's silent location film. Even these were not being widely distributed. Then in late 2011, the distribution company Delta bought the licence to them from Endemol, and during 2012 will be re-packaging and making them more widely available through their outlets. And it has just become known that through the efforts of people at the unpaid body known as Kaleidoscope...

Kaleidoscope people

...thirty-four full-length original Southern Television episodes of Out of Town, not seen since broadcast in 1980-81, have come to light.
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I phoned the vet this morning and cancelled an appointment I made for an operation to neuter Oscar.

...castration for males' involving a general anaesthetic - a minor procedure compared to neutering a bitch. Both testicles are completely removed...

I read this on the practice website. The reason Lin, Amy (his original owner) agreed this should happen at all is that we have to leave Oscar - our esteemed, loved Jack Russell-Border terrier cross - with someone we trust while in Greece. Kennels are out of the question. Since we began to-and-fro  between Corfu and England John and Jo across the road have been his good keepers. They can't manage this any more. John's over 80, Jo's been ill....Taking him to Greece could only be by train (tricky) or car - with all the problems of jabs and the extra cost of travel and accommodation. Amy would have him with her menagerie of dogs and cats but - for goodness sake - she's expecting a child, our first grandson in March. Our Richard doesn't at the moment have time for dogs - though he likes Oscar well enough. Even so our daughter said she'd look after Oscar if he were neutered - so less likely, as he did last time he stayed at her home, to pick fights with her's and Guy's Brittany Spaniel, Malo. I arranged an appointment Friday morning. £114. Credit cards accepted. Then last night I had a word with John Rose, three houses down from us in Handsworth, who'd said a few weeks ago he'd take in Oscar if his dog, already neutered could cope.
"Simon" he said on the phone last night "Cut or uncut we'll have Oscar. Let's try him in our house when you get back from Scotland."
I was relieved; felt almost sure Oscar knew something was up...or not.

Barbara and Oscar

 I rang the vet first thing this morning.
"No problem."
Sharon and Mum listened as I explained how I'd changed my mind. They giggled.
"So it's a man thing, Simon?"
"No no"
"Oh no?"
"No. Seriously. it's not like a vasectomy. Just a snip. It's gelding!"
They weren't convinced I didn't have an agenda.
A cold wind beat upon my window - wavering between snow and sleet, ice swift melting and sliding down the glass.

I've been on long walks extending my range around Brin Croft as once I did around Mains of Faillie where mum lived for 36 years, until Angus died...what seemed distant gets closer with familiarity as I try out different routes up and down the Strath. I've been leaving after 2.00, getting back well after dark round 6.00pm, on each occasion walking at least six, perhaps eight miles.

Strathnairn

Yesterday the news reported gales sweeping Scotland, but they blew south of us. Here there was a breeze from the northwest to stir the tree tops but all the weather's beyond the hills. I walked, with the two terriers, Oscar and Lulu, south from Inverarnie near the river Farnack, until I joined the lower road that ran beside the Farnack before...

Deer fence by the Farnack

...turning a hairpin bend and climbing gently up the larger gravel road that began my walk back, north towards Westerlairgs - three miles as the sun left the light to a gibbous moon that showed shadows on the snow, and all I needed to see my way home. I was thinking of the endless stream of know-it-nearly-all pre-filed obituaries for Greece, the Euro and the Eurozone and the collateral harm prefigured, and Tony Scoville's gift to me of Deutsch's brilliant messy book The Beginning of Infinity, that passage that flaunts human ingenuity, progress, rationality - things put aside in the text ridden gloom - amplified by me and a million contributory blights, buzzing invisibly like highland midges. Deutsch, at one point, has a risky digression on 'optimism'.  He declares that one can always ask questions to resolve whatever issues arise, but the answer will often involve inventing a completely new paradigm.

From the smallest scale in our individual lives to the scale of civilisation as a whole, the growth of knowledge is profoundly unpredictable. We cannot even predict most of the problems that we shall encounter, nor most of the opportunities to solve them, let alone the solutions and attempted solutions that will be thought of and how they will affect events. Nor can we predict the probabilities of any of those things. In the light of this inescapable limitation, what is the rational attitude towards the future? How can we plan for the unknown?' David Deutsch 20 March 2011

24.10 "...the ineluctable and permanent fact of the human condition; that we do not know that which we have not yet discovered"
***** *****
I was pleased to hear from Patrick Field who teaches people - or helps them learn - how to ride a bicycle in London.

He's got a fine line in polemics on behalf of cycling in the city - or anywhere. He's just started a blog called own the road ~ Still dreaming of becoming a cyclist - which mixes telling pictures, in its first piece, of a smartly dressed cyclist in red tights getting about Sloane Square, with such insouciance you could imagine her, in another age, scattering gold coins to console lesser road users as she travels on her's and the Queen's Highway. Now on a bicycle she holds tacit assumptions, which Patrick gently deconstructs and applauds, which make her no less impregnable than she might have been in her ancestor's curricle passing through the same square over century ago, or a few decades later, a driver like my cheroot smoking grandmother at the wheel of her Renault EU convertible.

Bar in her car - no need for infotainment

Pipes

Jack's pipes - Falcon, L & H and Lovat

I had a reply from a pipe-smoking cybaquaintance in the Highlands on Boxing Day. We got into conversation about my stepfather's inveterate pipes, and a picture I'd posted on Flickr. Jack speaks of the small soldier's pipe, with a Birmingham silver hallmark on its band, a 'Q' for 1915, the maker Lister & Hayden, on an Out of Town broadcast [10.24-11.33 in this programme from 1980]. I was half-minded to try one, though not this, and asked David about tobacco, mentioning Jack's favourite - Gallagher's Honeydew. His empty tins are still around for storing small objects:

As for obtaining Gallahers RD Honeydew...it's a bugger to find.  Although someone here in the UK will have some squirrelled away unopened.  The nearest replacement I have found is a dark No 7 flake, which is only just reminiscent of the flavour.  The room note though is said to be nothing like the original.  Me?  I would tend to stay away from modified recipes or "second best" tobaccos, as they can never measure up to the originals.  Many tobacconists say "this blend is suited to the person who enjoyed "Liberty Flake." . It has a similar taste and aroma. Erm, sorry.  SIMILAR?  nah...I'll keep away ta all the same. Gallagher's was taken over by Japan Tobacco International and since then ALL their tobacco brands have gone downhill.  Which is why I will never smoke a JTI brand again.
I shall stick to Imperial tobacco (St. Bruno) and my favourite Digger Flake (also Imperial)
I had a hell of a job tracking down Digger Flake (My Father smoked Digger, but in the shag form). But, the nationwide hunt paid off, and I buy it from way down south from a specialist tobacconist.  How long he can get it for I don't know, but when my pension comes through once a month, I try to save some behind so's I can buy a packet. Although Players (who originally made Digger) sold out to Imperial Tobacco, the Digger Flake is still the same recipe as the original.  That was their claim, and I put it to the test.  I took some to my Father, and asked him to smell this "new tobacco" I had found.  He opened the pack., and instantly said "that's Digger...where the hell did you get that?" He fired it up, and that was it.  He was lost!
As for your good self, and what tobacco should you try?  Hmmm.  I would tend to stick with the milder brands.  Condor (the supermarket packets) seem to be mild and easy to try.  But, I shall let you be the judge, as it is JTI tobacco!  I hope not to offend by saying that if anyone was going to recommend you a pipe tobacco, I would suggest an actual tobacconist who knows his stuff.  (pointless asking the kiosk girl in Tesco).
It's because what I would like, or that I have tried that agreed with me, may not be suited to you.  You may roll about in fits of coughing, and then I get bollocked as I was the one who recommended it! Some of the Kendal blends (Samuel Gawith / Gawith & Hoggarth) have some gentle aromatics that are not heavy on the casings.  I find them a bit "soapy" or floral in the taste, but thankfully, I am not alone in that!  They could be the way to start.  Ask for a small sample of say....3 types, and each sample enough for just ONE bowl. (should come to about a fivers worth)...
...Many thanks for your mail. I hope you had a good day yesterday, and that you received some nice things. Although, what do you buy a man who has everything?  A bigger box to keep it all in perhaps? I can only guess what it's like to have family round to visit on Christmas day, as that's something that never happened when I was growing up. My memories of it are just arguing between my Father and Mother as they tried to be civil to each other for one day of the year.  It never worked, and less than halfway through it, someone would just look the wrong way and all hell broke loose. That was the main reasons why my grandparents never came to see us during the Xmas period.  Or anyone else for that matter. So now, Christmas to me is just another day of the year.  But, we (the pooch and I) did go for a longer walk, and it didn't go according to plan.  He has recurring cysts between the toes, and despite being all bandaged up by the vet (after having 2 more removed), he started limping badly 1/2 way into the walk.  Now, in the middle of nowhere, I had to call out a taxi to meet us at the main road to take us home.  My gawd, what a liberty.  They are running at Christmas rates to ferry the folk back and forth to the pubs (don't get me started on why pubs can't close for ONE day a year) So, needless to say, I had to owe the driver money, as what I had on me was not enough. (and I only had £20 on me, the thieving bar steward!).... (This email came with a picture of an attractive chocolate labrador - the one with the recurring paw cysts)

I replied:

Dear David. Lovely read (he'd apologised for such a long email). There’s a good tobacconist in the centre of Birmingham - Hollingsworth. They’re the only outlet for about the only cigarette I smoke - Tor Oriental. I like these, but that wasn’t really my motive for making them my cigarette of choice. It was to stop my children filching my fags. As it is they don’t now because they dislike them but so does everyone else so I hardly ever share a cigarette. This is, in a way, a shame as the passing round of ciggies is part of smoking - especially in difficult times...
...Yes getting people together can be a prescription for proving that ‘hell is other people’. I guess I’ve been fortunate. My wife and I are now and then minded to murder one another. It seems to be part of our condition as humans - to such an extent that when I come across a couple who’ve 'never exchanged a cross word’ I wonder if perhaps they're androids sent from an alien civilisation to spy on the species and work out whether earth might do for a holiday or even a longer stay.
We did have a nice Christmas day. It’s always been a magical time for me. I suspect this is because I pass the whole day (and days before and after) in a cocoon of remembered childhood Christmas’s. Dylan Thomas, probably in the cups that killed him, made up his: 'Years and years ago, when I was a boy, when there were wolves in Wales, and birds the colour of red-flannel petticoats whisked past the harp-shaped hills, when we sang and wallowed all night and day in caves that smelt like Sunday afternoons in damp front farmhouse parlours, and we chased, with the jawbones of deacons, the English and the bears, before the motor car, before the wheel, before the duchess-faced horse, when we rode the daft and happy hills bareback, it snowed and it snowed…'
It’s like the Christmas cards of horses and coaches axle deep in snow the top-hatted passenger wading beside their coach helping the horses through a morass, an inn with a roaring fire twinkling invitingly in the distance. It was in fact quite odd to have two snowy Decembers. and one actual white Christmas, last year and the year before. This year my daughter and my son-in-law, dog Oscar and their two dogs went for a walk in Handsworth Park. 

With Richard, Amy and Guy and the dogs in Handsworth Park

It was near shirtsleeve weather. Not right for Christmas yet my cocoon remained, and with it the old magic. Now I like a sip of two of malt whisky, then some fizzy white wine - Cava or even Champagne with the main meal, turkey, goose fat roast spuds, roast pork with crackling, sprouts, parsnips, bread sauce, apple sauce, stuffing, sausages wrapped in bacon, crackers with silly jokes, party poppers, a jug of steaming gravy. In the room next door is a tall tree covered in lights and decorations surrounded with present still being wrapped in the early hours. No telly. No radio. Just eating and talking, me responsible for topping people’s glasses. So I wonder how it will be next year? Perhaps we’ll be a four generation family. Amy’s tummy’s too large for her to pull up to the table. ...After a while having benefited from all the work done by Linda I collect plates - putting down the gravy ones for the dogs to lick, careful to remove the bones. I start on washing up. Then I’m sitting again waiting for the room lights to go off and the Christmas pudding to be drenched in brandy and set alight - blue flames in semi-darkness. The pudding rich with dried fruit and walnuts, made a year ago, has been steeped a fortnight in brandy. Now it comes with helpings of advocaat, brandy butter, amaretto cream and brandy cream mingling in our bowls.
We sit around replete some having tea and coffee, even some Bailey’s and more brandy in globe glasses and cigarettes for those who smoke. Poor Amy being pregnant is teetotal and non-smoking for the duration - and so can drive Guy her husband home later.

Γεμάτος

So next door where there’s a log fire burning a mix of wood and smokeless coal. In this weather it’s rather too warm in there. Present unwrapping begins…lots of simple inexpensive stuff - socks, handkerchiefs, long johns, but also chocolates, books and small gadgets, Phone calls to and from distant relatives, a skype to New Zealand where they’re just getting up on Boxing Day….
I hope the dog stops getting those cysts. it really messes up a good walk. I guess I could carry Oscar. I’d have to as round here few taxi-drivers will carry a dog as, being Muslim - the driver that is - a dog will make their cab seriously unclean, as well as leaving hairs on the upholstery. I’ve little time for fear of dogs having lived with them all my life. It was Konrad Lorenz who said it was so cruel they live such short lives compared to us. Have you come across his book? King Solomon’s Ring. A ring that gave Solomon the same talent as Dr Doolittle. I read that as a child, passed on by Jack. Little illustrations in the margins. Not just dogs but geese and jackdaws - my favourite bird. Lorenz didn’t get to speak a different language but he did see how sound and movement and other behaviours in animals communicated meanings easily missed.

A page from King Solomon's Ring

I appreciate the advice on pipes, and tobacco for them. Perhaps I’ll try one of those pipes in the picture - two of them still unused; part of J’s reserves at the time of his death. I’ve been putting roofing felt on the veranda I’ve added to my allotment shed, painting black treacle to stick it on the plywood. I had to clamber on the shed roof to get at some of the surface to be prepared. It’s then I think of daft accidents “He broke his neck falling off the roof of his shed” Do I want that in the Christmas memories of my descendants? So extra careful. That said Lin and kids would get a hell of a good pay-off in accident insurance. No i’m enjoying life too much to be so altruistic and it would be such an idiotic accident the assessor would get suspicious. I take your point about trying out a pipe under the veranda. 

I added a veranda to our shed

Chocolate lab is a handsome beast. Digger’s a good name. The Australians have some good words. I like 'fair dinkum' for a good bloke which is itself Oz in origin. What about ‘flash as a rat with a gold tooth’? I like ‘chook’ for ‘chicken' too. But it’d be tricky to beat ’thick as a pound of mince’.  Is that Scots? My father-in-law from Cannock, ex-miner (I married deep into the working classes despite one of the best private educations my parents and their parents could buy me. so’s to have a chance of surviving the next revolution) has a fine line in phrases. Have you come across “It’s a bit black over Bill’s mother’s”? Another way of suggesting it’d make sense to get the washing in. Also “What day is it?” “Wednesday - all day”.
Your praise and flattery…"I watched the development of the allotments - right back to your telly interview and programme starting your fight to save them.  I shall buy whatever potion you use, as you haven't changed a bit since that was made.” Well yes and no. My knees are creaky. My teeth are a disgrace. I get a bad back now and then. My mum - did I mention it before - said “getting old isn’t for the young.”  She’s 95 in February.
On Thursday I’m taking the train, as I often do, to the Highlands with Oscar to stay with her for 10 days. Much as I love my family here I so like being in the Highlands, noting the slowing of the train as it climbs to Drumochter, past the Sow of Atholl and Boar of Badenoch. It’ll be dark by the time I’m there but I’ll see them on the way south, where the rivers run north then, in a hundred yards, are running south.

I remember when they added another steam engine at Perth for the climb to the pass on the single track through Pitlochry, Blair Atholl, Dalwhinnie, Kingussie, Newtonmore, Aviemore, Carrbridge, over Slochd Summit…after which Oscar sensing train speeding downhill starts yapping and whimpering, realising he’ll soon be with his girlfriends (mum’s two Border terriers) in Strathnairn
I’ve never been to Banff. My Scottish orbit is thirty miles around Inverness - Findhorn, Alvie (where our daughter was wed May before last), Cromarty, Beauly, Strathpeffer, Drumnadrochit. I know and love so many special places around there.  A few years back Amy and I cycled from Aberdeen along that coast but we hit the sea at Buckie. Rain rain rain and lots of seals. Happy New Year. Best wishes and thanks for your long letter. Simon

*** ***
Before Lin took her parents home to Cannock this afternoon they came to visit the allotment.

Arthur, Dorothy, Oscar and Simon on Plot 14

*** *** ***
I've just been shown this:

Hi all, I am delighted to reveal the fruits of Kaleidoscope's annual Raiders of the Lost Archives initiative. It's a PDF so please follow the link to see all the gems recovered this past 12 months by Kal along with the BBC, ITV, BFI and missing episodes enthusiasts...

Search the PDF file linked for 'Out of Town' and see under the section 'MATERIAL CATALOGUED AND RE-LOCATED AFTER BEING BELIEVED WIPED'