I made a thing. For the second of our Applied Web Design and Management coursework submissions, we were tasked with creating a small website.

It had to contain a 6-step tutorial for a task of our choosing, and had to incorporate appropriate navigation and layout, along with original images and text. It also obviously had to validate and be accessible.

Finally, the whole project had to be created as a Dreamweaver template file.

I chose to create a tutorial for new users of a Zenit E SLR camera.

From the very start I wanted to have an instruction manual feel to the pages, along with a filmstrip for navigation. The rest of the pages are more traditional layout elements.

I don’t really call myself a web designer, despite doing all of these types of things for years. But I’m pretty happy with the results.

I spent an awful lot of time on it, which I don’t regret one bit. Like other skills and creative pursuits, web design is one of those things where you can spend hours tweaking something which will never be noticed, and where, from the outside, the results can look deceptively simplistic.

All the same, I like my little project, and it’s been a rare example of a piece of university coursework I’ve loved working on. I know several improvements that could be made – most of which would require starting over completely. Such retrospect can be applied to future work.

To view the project, either click the screenshot above, or this link.

If you keep a diary, whether online or offline, I would love your input for a project I’m undertaking in my final year at university. Click here to fill out an anonymous survey about your diary-keeping habits. Thanks!

Diaries have always fascinated me – from reading about the minutiae of the life of someone with no claim to fame other than to have lived through a particular period of time, to the habits and thoughts of the talented and the famous. I’ve kept a diary myself since I was about 15 years old, and the practice is very interesting to me.

When a dear friend introduced me to Katherine Mansfield’s writing a few years ago, I was immediately taken by her allusions to and descriptions of her native New Zealand, so often written about from so far away – both spiritually and physically.

But it was when I got to her diaries and letters that KM really came alive to me. Her words spat and crackled with vitriol and passion, or else they soothed and calmed with a delicious conjuring up of images of the places she visited and people she met.

KM’s diaries and letters are a pleasant combination of a running commentary on her writing work, and of the perhaps more mundane things such as weather and daily activities. It’s a combination that wouldn’t work without her playful, often mischievous (occasionally childlike?) way of looking at things.

Where other literary diarists ramble on incessantly about the trials and tribulations of writing – instead of actually getting any done – KM touches on her stories as they come together, and the concerns she has as they are sent off to publishers. And she offsets the talk of ‘work’ with beautiful illustrations of her surroundings or vivid accounts of conversations with others.

Although she would at times demand that her diaries be destroyed, it is a wonderful thing that they have come to be published and loved so widely. It is thanks to this that she has become a renowned diarist.

I’m often interested when speaking to fellow KM enthusiasts, to find out whether it’s her fiction or her personal writing which they get more out of. I must admit that for me it’s the latter. I couldn’t take one without the other, but I’ve always leaned more to the diaries and letters of writers than to their fiction, for some reason.

All of this has indirectly led up to a project I am undertaking for my final year at university. I’m studying Information Management at Manchester Metropolitan University, and have decided to focus my attention on asking why we keep diaries, what we get out of them, and whether the medium in which they are kept  (on paper or online) alters the way we write about ourselves.

I’m recruiting fellow diarists (whether online, on paper, or both) to help with my research for this project by filling out an anonymous survey about their diary habits. No personal or demographic information is recorded – I simply want to gather some thoughts on the nature of diary writing from as many people as possible.

If this sounds like something you’d like to be involved in, could I ask that you click here to fill out an anonymous online survey? I can provide more information, should you like it – just email me: paul.capewell@stu.mmu.ac.uk.

The other day, I and some folks from CILIP North West were treated to a tour of Chetham’s library, situated between Urbis and Manchester Cathedral. I must admit I didn’t know a great deal about Chetham’s beforehand, other than that it is the oldest public library in the English-speaking world, and some other little titbits that can be summarised as it being a very old, very beautiful library.

Being a fan of such things, I jumped at the chance, even leaving a riveting lecture on organisational culture early. My lecturer decided to spend five minutes telling an anecdote about a previous job and I just happened to have to leave part way through her story. Satisfying.

The stroll I took through the city to get to the library was very enjoyable in its own right; Manchester was cold and crisp, with the late afternoon sun casting long shadows and throwing a golden hue onto whichever surfaces were tall enough to catch it. The Christmas Markets had opened that day in and around Albert Square, and it was lovely to have a quick look as I went past.

It reminded me that Manchester is a wonderful city at this time of year. Sure, it gets as busy and suffocating as any shopping city in the run-up to Christmas, but everything else is just very enjoyable.

I got to the library just in time to say hello, and to confirm if I could take photographs inside.

The tour was very entertaining and enjoyable. Our guide struck a nice balance between being informative and amusing, and never veered into boring territory. He seemed proud of the collections, and had many quips and stories pertaining to old traditions, the library’s place alongside the School of Music, and Manchester in general – as well as his mild obsession with books dealing with death.

The place oozes history. You can’t walk down a hallway or glance at shelving or sit on a chair without feeling its many centuries of age. So many of the fixtures and fittings are either original or merely very old. Indeed, very little of the library is ‘modern’, and the whole place has a very satisfying consistency in terms of decor and style. We were told, in fact, that a lot of the furniture spans many hundreds of years in styles, but it still all looks appropriate.

We were told many interesting things about the ‘mechanics’ of the place: for example that the books are mostly sorted in size order for reasons of practicality. One librarian attempted to get the collections sorted in Dewey order, but for a library of this kind, such an effort is futile.

The library is very dark inside. Old lead-lighted and stained glass windows offer an eery, pleasing light – but at levels far below that necessary for reading and writing. Indeed, even with the aid of electric light, it wasn’t hard to imagine visiting the library a century or more ago – nor to understand how in the winter months all those years ago, the library would usually close around 2pm.

Of interest to many was the staggering list of names of its users through the past. Karl Marx was a particular highlight, with his favourite location being easily identifiable, and that ever-present connection with the past making it so believable and alive.

A personal highlight was talk of the Leech collection, a vast archive of diaries, scrapbooks and photographs spanning a couple of hundred years of one family. There is a staggering amount of material held on this family, and it’s a wonderful resource. With my personal university project on how and why we keep diaries, I was especially fascinated to hear more about it.

It was a lovely tour and I’m glad I’ve finally been able to visit the place. It turns out you can just pop in any time, but it was especially good to be given a guided tour by someone so knowledgable and enthusiastic.

For more information on visiting Chetham’s library (and a lot more), head over to their website: http://www.chethams.org.uk/visiting.html

You can see some more of the photographs I took on my tour in this Flickr photoset.

This paper is an analysis of Philippe Lejeune’s paper, How Do Diaries End?, produced as a result of preparation for a 1997 exhibition entitled A Diary Of One’s Own at the Lyon Public Library.

Lejeune’s paper was published in Biography, vol. 24, issue 1, Winter 2001, and translated into English by Victoria Lodewick.

The paper was originally published in Geneses du Je: Manuscrits et autobiographie, sous la direction de Philippe Lejeune et Catherin Viollet. Paris: CNRS Edinions, 2000, pp209-238.

Philippe Lejeune defines the life of a diary as having different phases – or, more simply, like a story – as having a ‘beginning’, a ‘middle’ and an ‘end’. He identifies the paradox of diaries almost always having a well-defined beginning, having by their very nature a middle, but often lacking a well-rounded end. “It is rare to begin one without saying so,” writes Lejeune, before wondering whether “similar rituals existed for ending a diary.”

Often, he writes, the end of the diary is not written by the diary’s author, and that the author will often not know that this page “would be the last.” Since such de facto endings to diaries can be ruled out as unintended, Lejeune turns his search to other reasons for diaries coming to an end.

He identifies four distinct endings as:

• A voluntary and explicit stop (to a journal that has not been destroyed)
• The destruction of a diary
• A rereading (perhaps with subsequent annotation or indexing)
• Publication

Lejeune explains that, as far as French texts on the diary go, this problem of an ending is ignored. ‘How-to’ manuals on the writing of a diary stop short of instructing a diarist on how to end a diary – “it would be like writing a treatise on suicide,” says Lejeune. The subject of suicide – and more broadly, of death – is ever-present in his piece.

For simplicity, journals with predetermined endings are ignored here – travel journals, or those recording temporary periods such as a project or a pregnancy, are all defined by the limited length of the events themselves. They will come to an end when the event itself does; the author will live on.

Lejeune explains that the currency and continuity of writing a ‘life-long’ or ‘all-purpose’ diary is a sort of renewal of life expectancy – in writing today’s entry, tomorrow’s will surely follow. “All journal writing assumes the intention to write at least one more time,” he explains. “The diarist is protected from death by the idea that the diary will continue.”

Lejeune describes this paradox as entering into “a phantasmagoric space where writing runs into death,” which we can understand as a sort of Schrödinger’s Cat scenario whereby the diarist is neither alive nor dead – only the diary itself which is constant.

Any sort of closure, he explains, can come not just from the very definite ending, but also from the limitations of the medium itself. Finishing a page, or a whole notebook, can give the author cause to review what has filled the preceding space.

Although Lejeune concentrates on the paper journal (or, at least, makes no distinction between paper and online journals), he asserts that the addition of loose pages – or the infinite space of a computer file – can help ease this “obligation of filling in and the need to stop.”

Indeed, continuity is often preferred, and he cites the diary of a young girl who, upon completion of one notebook, specifically chooses to continue her journal in a new, identical notebook, “to give the impression of forever starting over.”

Lejeune makes the important distinction, too, between autobiography and diary. “Autobiography,” he argues, “is virtually finished as soon as it begins… All autobiography is finishable.” The diary, conversely, is “unfinishable”. Again, here Lejeune asserts that there is always a “time lived beyond the writing.”

Lejeune admits that his ideal subject, the ‘all-purpose’, ‘life-long’ journal is just one of the varieties of diaries – “and not the most common one.” “People who remain faithful unto death to one and the same diary are rare.”

He describes the more common, fragmented and short-lived, journals as “passing fancies”. He explains “there are periods with a diary and periods without.” This discontinuity is inherent in the diary form, he says, mirroring the ebb and flow of life’s crises.

Lejeune identifies two distinct types of diarist:

• Those who write habitually, every day, and “who suffer when they skip a day”, catching up when they feel they are behind
• Those who write “more or less regularly”, whenever they feel the need

In the latter, Lejeune asks whether a large gap in entries could be seen as an ‘ending’? He thinks not, as the act of adding a new entry will once again restore the continuity. The diary is not finished – it is merely ‘on hold.’

On the other hand, the longer a journal is left ignored, the more ‘finished’ it may become – to the point that the author may realize that if the need to keep a diary has finished, thus the diary itself must end.

Lejeune cites a diarist who realizes, a month after his wife’s death, that if he no longer feels the need to write in his diary at such a pivotal moment of his life, it “surely proves that this diary is finished, that it no longer responds to my needs.”

Lejeune concludes by defining four distinct functions of the diary – albeit conceding that “there are others, and a real diary fulfills several functions at once.”

The four functions he defines are as follows:

• To express oneself – divided into two further functions: to release, and to communicate
• To reflect
• To freeze time
• To take pleasure in writing

Writing diaries as a form of release of life’s emotions is seen as a common method of “purifying and cleansing yourself.”

This purification can come in the form of the clarity gained from subsequent rereading, or from the more drastic function of systematic destruction of the diaries themselves – as a way of purging the feelings no longer deemed necessary. Lejeune identifies this as “a sort of spring-cleaning, after which you set out again, lighter.”

Communication is another common diary function, so often identified by the ‘dear diary’ opening to entries (Lejeunes cites Anne Frank’s classic “Dear Kitty” here). Thoughts and events are ‘told’ to a diary as opposed to a person or persons. The end to this type of diary can come “simply because this problem has been resolved: you meet a person with whom you can talk or to whom you can write.”

Lejeune further explains how a transition period may be identified in this scenario, whereby a journal will be ‘told’ about the new person – or, conversely, where the new person is introduced to the diary that they will come, in time, to ‘replace’.

Reflection is a similar function to communication and release, allowing the author to ‘quarantine’ events of their life and reflect upon them in a controlled way. Lejeune describes this function as being more important in diaries that are kept a long time. While ‘psychoanalysis’ of one’s life can seem “interminable,” “it is also said you can do it in ‘pieces’.”

Freezing time, Lejeune explains, is building memories and archives of “lived experience” out of the paper entries – “to prevent forgetting,” even “giving life the consistency and continuity it lacks.” The author is seen as a collector, with the items as ‘pieces’ of the life as it is lived. Lejeune says, “ideally,” that the end of such a diary will coincide with the death of its author. He says that stopping the frequent updates of such a diary would be “failure,” and that destruction of it would be “a total failure.”

Lejeune’s final function – to take pleasure in writing – is simple: “one also writes because it is… pleasant.” For the writer, it can be satisfactory to practice writing, drawing inspiration from the events of one’s life. Lejeune argues, however, that the flow of energy can be diverted from the keeping of a diary to other forms of writing, although he concedes that where memory is not the primary function of the diary, this diversion of efforts away from diary-writing is less problematic.

Lejeune then illustrates a few examples of how diaries might end – from interest waning, to the ‘death’ of a “virtual addressee”, to the diary being discovered by an uninvited reader. He also identifies the peculiarity of wishing to ‘wrap up’ a diary as a body of work, almost with a punchline. This is more commonly found, he says, where “the diarist carefully polishes the last line of an entry.”

In closing, Lejeune discusses diaries that come to their end toward the end of the lives of their author. He sees two distinct patterns here – perseverance and resignation – and illustrates them with examples.

Perseverance is seen here as holding your chin up, continuing to prevail – or even writing of your struggle in private, to “spare others” as they support you. A connection is made between writing and living – “while I’m writing, I survive.” Lejeune goes as far as to suggest that, “perhaps a diary sometimes helps you to ‘die well,’ the way religion used to do.”

Resignation, on the other hand, is a more somber side. “You hang your head, you put down your pen.” Lejeune states that although the diary can – and will – end with the death of its author, there is a contradiction here, as the diary will live on, long after its author’s death. “Literary survival is no illusion,” he says. “You will still die, but your diary will not.”

Lejeune talks about diarists who document the bitter end in as much detail as they can – mostly from the perspective of suicide – including the poet Rabearivelo, “who kept a minute-by-minute account of his suicide in his journal, trying to write until the last second.”

Conversely, he also mentions diarists who make no mention of their oncoming death, no matter how clearly it was perceived (or planned), citing Virginia Woolf as one example.

Lejeune has done a magnificent job of detailing the many ways that a diary can end, dealing with some very sensitive issues that go to the very heart of life, happiness and, ultimately, death.

Indeed, as he concludes, “everything comes to an end, even this presentation,” before departing with a cheery, “I hope it has not darkened your morning.”

The Fat Cat Sits on my Feet. Fat is not enough to describe him by now. He must weigh pounds & pounds. And his lovely black coat is turning white. I suppose its to prevent the mountains from seeing him. He sleeps here & occasionally creeps up to my chest & pads softly with his paws, singing the while. I suppose he wants to see if I have the same face all night. I long to surprise him with terrific disguises. M. calls him “my Breakfast cat”, because they share that meal – two boys – alone together. M. at the table and Wingley on. Its awful the love one can lavish on an animal.

[Letter from Katherine Mansfield to Dorothy Brett, 2 November 1921. Source.]

A recent, spontaneous daytrip took the three of us to Thorp Perrow Arboretum at Bedale, somewhere off the A1, nestled between Yorkshire’s Dales and Moors.

It was a marvellous time to visit; not only were the leaves starting to change colour, but many of the park’s trees were bedecked with rather humorous Hallowe’en characters.

The arboretum is laid out as a series of tree-lined paths, with many straight lines providing a view from one landmark to another – from a mock bandstand to a grand house, for example.

The scale of the place was hard to grasp at first. We had been provided with a simple map, detailing areas with names like Milbank Pinetum and Spring Wood. But as we walked the leafy lanes, it was easy to feel lost and enveloped by the trees, seemingly in their natural home.

The park was also home to a nice selection of falcons and mammals. It was lovely to see some rather majestic birds up close, but I must sheepishly admit to spending a good ten minutes or so shrieking with joy at the capering meerkats.

I thought at the time that an arboretum is a sort of zoo for flora; wandering in wild woodland is the preferred activity, but such a cultivated, manicured place as an arboretum has rather a different feel to it. It’s no less beautiful of course. Further, the rough, organic nature of the set-pieces combines beautifully with the subtle yet well-thought-out placement and alignment, creating a wonderfully pleasant world in which to get lost.

With the leaves on the turn, and being blessed with the appearance of bright sunshine, the place was awash with colour. With nothing yet looking as though it was dying, it was all reds and yellows, and deep oranges and golds. It’s hard not to fall in love with nature this time of year, with everything seemingly putting on such a wonderful show.

The hokey Hallowe’en ornaments we found dangling from one tree or another were an amusing aside. They were occasionally creepy in the traditional way, while others were rather more hammy: a sinister pair of upturned legs emerging from the shallow waters of one of the park’s ponds featured not far from an impossibly skeletal plastic spider.

It being half term, it was a cheering sight to see small children in their own Hallowe’en costumes running up to investigate the spooky displays – getting just close enough to spy their general outline, but not so close as to risk some unknown fate.

The spooky air of the ornaments was detracted from somewhat by the dazzlingly bright sunshine, but I still felt it was a joy to see such a display in such unlikely surroundings.

In a world of supermarkets selling plastic masks and garish accessories, this simple combination of scary symbols strung from trees recalled a more traditional Hallowe’en celebration. Even despite the sunshine, it wasn’t hard to imagine the likes of Irving’s headless horseman galloping between the ancient oaks. I secretly wished I could revisit the park after dark on a cold, misty night – until I remembered that my imagination wouldn’t bear such a thing.

Overall, though, Thorp Perrow Arboretum has such a magical air to it that I would love to revisit it in any season or weather. I imagine the park and surrounding fields would look terrific all covered in snow, and I can barely conceive of how refreshing it must be to see the place spring back into life again after months of hibernation.

This is all part of a much wider feeling of placelag, a term I’ve come to use more often, and one which rather aptly encompasses how I’ve felt for most of this summer.

But what I want to tell you about today is a man named Charles Paget Wade.

As part of my work at the Trust this summer, I was collating research on some of Hampstead Garden Suburb’s more prolific architects. The plan is to produce some rather neat little monographs on a handful of them, complete with timelines and photographs and drawings of their work. Some preliminary research had been done by Trust staff, and it was my job to bring it all together, fill in any gaps, and write something rather more readable than mere bullet points and dates.

I was honoured to be given this task, and I think I gave it my best shot, completing draft monographs on the lives and work of architects Michael Frank Wharlton Bunney, Cecil George Butler and Courtenay Melville Crickmer.

But what I found really enjoyable was raking through all the gathered research on these men; delving into their world and finding contemporary resources to back up what they did.

My time on the reference desk at Chesham Study Centre (and my general in-built nerdiness) means I have a thirst for such information, and a small but useful repertoire of places to go looking for it. Along with online resources, I also had access to the Trust’s own archive of maps and books.

In one of these books, Raymond Unwin’s seminal Town Planning in Practice (read online at archive.org), I found a map of the Suburb. A fairly decorative map dating from 1909, it contained not just the roads and place names, but also little illustrations of buildings dotted around the area, and small doodles of historic events that took place nearby.

I was taken in by its combination of simplicity and complexity; its informative yet childish style. The doodles were silly and unnecessary, yet the map didn’t lack attention to detail.

I noticed, in the bottom corner, the artist’s mark:

The map can be viewed in full at the Trust website, here.

Something about his turn of phrase – “Charles Wade made me” – urged me to find out more about this Wade fellow, and fortunately I was in the right place. Not only was the rest of Town Planning in Practice illustrated by him, but I had access to plenty more books he had collaborated on, and I was able to ask David Davidson, the Trust’s architectural adviser about him too.

Before long, I had a figurative rough sketch of Charles Paget Wade – one he could have penned himself. “A very strange man,” David told me, who liked to dress up and who had a very childlike nature his whole life.

Another of Wade’s signatures on a different map ran, poetically: “On winter’s nights Charles Wade made me, in solitude in his upper room, in nineteen hundred and nine AD, at the Vale of Temple Fortune.”

(It’s worth mentioning here, too, that Wade’s peculiar turn of phrase helped inspire the name of my girlfriend’s craft enterprise: Lisa Made Me.)

The more I found out about Wade, the more I wanted to know. It turns out he was an architect as well as a book illustrator (and more), with a handful of works on the Suburb itself. I managed to combine some photographic surveys I was conducting with visiting some examples of his work, and I used any downtime I had to read more about him online.

It turns out that Wade was an architect for only a few years, instead concentrating on illustrating several books with his distinctive drawings, and building up a collection that would become his life’s work. Whilst at war in 1917, and having inherited his family’s fortune of a sugar plantation on St Kitts, Wade stumbled on an advert for a run-down manor house in the Cotswolds which he went on to buy.

The house was, Wade said, ” in the most deplorable state of ruin and neglect, but had not been spoilt with modern additions,” and he proceeded to fill it with items he had collected over the years.

He was a real magpie of a chap, with an eye for the exotic; he picked up items from antique dealers all over the country, anything that exhibited great craftsmanship. He lived next to the manor house in a small cottage, giving the larger building over to house his eccentric, growing collection. He welcomed guests, clearly enjoying the items being seen and enjoyed by others – and using the strange collection to live a rather unusual, somewhat theatrical life. When Queen Mary visited in 1937, it is said she thought Wade himself ‘the most remarkable part of the collection’. (From Jonathan Howard’s essay in the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, available here.)

Wade gave Snowshill Manor over to the National Trust some years before his death in 1956, and it has been looked after by them ever since. A massive restoration project took place in 2004 on the house and its collections, taking care to reproduce the ambience and presentation Wade had painstakingly created.

I’m still in the early stages of my quest for more information about Wade. Luckily it seems that as well as illustrating for most of his life, he also kept scores of notebooks and diaries. I have ordered a copy of his memoirs, and a visit to Snowshill Manor is on the cards when I get the time. (National Trust website here.)

© National Trust

Whilst he remains something of an enigma to me, a handful of quotes about Wade (found here) only go to further cement my belief that he’s a fascinating chap, and one I want to know more and more about:

J B Priestley said of Wade:

“He was, in fact, one of the last of a famous company, the eccentric English country gentry, the odd and delightful fellows who have lived just as they pleased, who have built follies, held fantastic beliefs, and laid mad wagers…”

A visitor to Snowshill in the 1920s said:

“with his slightly sinister sense of humour… he would sit as still as a waxwork till one saw him, or to my terror as a child, he would leap out from the parted flames of the fire with his grey hair streaming…”

And finally, in Some Country Houses by James Lees-Milne: 

“With his old wax complexion, angular features and sharp nose, his presence was daunting. He admitted to Lutyens that he loved toys and had never grown up. He had a child’s insatiable wonder and curiosity. A tassel to him was an object deserving intense scrutiny and examination. How was it made, and of what, and by whom, and for what purpose?’”

It’s that kind of curiosity and nerdiness that I absolutely love. So here’s to the eccentric and obsessive Charles Paget Wade.

Workers in the bush: a group at a loading bank in the King Country. - Otago Witness, 19.7.1911.

If you know me at all well, you’ll know I love a combination of old newspapers, New Zealand, history and funny stories. In the past I’ve often used New Zealand National Library‘s wonderful website, Papers Past, to browse old NZ newspapers, but the Otago Daily Times website cuts out the effort and posts interesting stories from one hundred years ago. You can find the index here, and subscribe to the RSS feed too.

As well as just being an interesting insight into Dunedin and its surrounds one hundred years ago, the stories are often quirky, amusing – or just plain silly. Sometimes it’s the stuffy, turn-of-the-century wording that raises a smirk, but other times it’s simply the outright bizarreness that amuses. None more so than the triple-whammy in this post from a couple of months ago, dated May 1911.

The missive begins, disarmingly, with:

A comedy, which was not without its serious side, was enacted in the harbour the other evening (says the Timaru Herald). A man had grown tired of his old retriever dog, and hit upon a novel way of getting rid of him.

 

He rowed to the harbour mouth in company with the dog, and there tipped the weighted animal out. The dog’s death-struggle was greater than the owner has reckoned upon, however, for he succeeded in paddling boatwards and sprang so suddenly into the fragile craft that the man lost his balance and was tipped into the water.

 

It was then that the funniest scene as viewed by a watchman and some wharf workers took place, the dripping dog squattingly carelessly in the boat and watching his master splutter and splash for a place of safety. Assistance was soon at hand, and the man, thoroughly exhausted, was rescued.

 

The dog was towed ashore and will now be disposed of by another method – anything but drowning.

Blimey. A comedy – not without its serious side – indeed. And I love that the dog was still put-down even after all that! If dog-drowning wasn’t enough, then how’s this for novel vegetable storage:

The Greymouth correspondent of the Lyttelton Times states that for about six years the 10-year-old daughter of Mr and Mrs J Stewart, of Kumara, has been suffering from deafness, and apparently was getting worse. Syringing and other treatments have been carried on without effect, but the other day Dr Phillips, by the aid of electric light, discovered a piece of foreign substance in each ear. The obstructions were removed and on examination proved to be peas. The peas had evidently been put in by the child when very young, and had lodged in her ears for the past six years.

Mmm. Mushy ear peas. And finally, after those two delightful tales, how about some record-breaking endurance piano-playing?

INVERCARGILL: James S Stirton, an endurance piano-player, finished a feat on Saturday night which, it is claimed, constitutes a world’s record for endurance piano-playing. Stirton, whose performance was supervised by a local committee, commenced playing at 9 o’clock on Wednesday morning, and by 11 o’clock on Saturday night he had been playing continuously for 86 hours.

 

He finished strongly at 5 minutes past 11, amidst great excitement on the part of some 600 people who had assembled in the hall. Stirton, though a little haggard looking, was apparently none the worse for his self-inflicted ordeal and was warmly cheered at the conclusion of a brisk address to his audience.

Wow. I should hope he was more than “warmly cheered” after playing for half a week non-stop. Mind you, it doesn’t specify whether the audience stayed for the duration, and I can’t imagine I’d manage more than a ‘warm cheer’ after that long a performance.

PS: I was going to subtitle this blog post with ‘An ODT, it’s true’ – but I realised it was such a cringingly awful, not to mention niche pun that I just couldn’t bring myself to do so. But, as much as I couldn’t bring myself to do so, I also couldn’t let it go unused entirely. So there you have it.

The school has recently had a brand-new wing added, designed by Hopkins, and we were pleased to be given a brief tour by the school’s deputy head.

We were visiting the school for Lauren Geisler to deliver a lecture to the year 7s about the Suburb, with regards to its geography, architecture, and to its founder, Henrietta Barnett – the school’s namesake.

Lauren’s talk was well-received by the 90-odd girls aged 11-12, and if the enthusiastic question-and-answer session that followed was anything to go by, I’d say it was a great success. Questions after a talk are interesting and often quite revealing – about the nature of the audience, and the kinds of topics that were picked up on. Some of the girls were intrigued as to the Trust’s (and Barnet’s) powers to restrict building work deemed unsatisfactory, and about where the money for the Suburb came from in the first place.

But the best question had to be from the girl who queried: if Henrietta Barnett was “kind of… sort of… well, dead,” then why such care and attention was spent on keeping the Suburb as she had first devised it more than 100 years ago. An amusing way of putting it, but a salient point (one of many, in fact) which highlighted the need for such educational and informative outreach activities from the Trust, in and around the Suburb.

It was heartening to see the girls being so receptive of their school’s ‘architecture day’; when the deputy head flashed up a few examples of innovative school buildings recently erected around the capital, gasps of awe and delight could be heard. I hope it also helped them to further appreciate their own building – not just the original part, but the innovative new extension.

As a new extension to a beautiful old building in a protected conservation area, it was bound to attract controversy. But in my opinion, the work was done to such a high standard, and in a way which compliments Lutyens’ original, that the result is a harmonious union of new and old. The new build houses state-of-the-art drama and music equipment, including a music room that looked more like an IT suite, replete as it is with wall-to-wall iMacs, and several soundproofed practise and rehearsal spaces.

It all made me feel like I’d left school thousands of years ago; I remember us getting our first proper IT rooms in secondary school, which were to replace the handful of computers dotted around other classrooms. I can still remember using green-screen BBC computers in the middle of primary school, even.

After a warm welcome, an engaging tour, and a very successful lecture, it was time to split the girls into groups for a Suburb walking tour. We wanted to point out some of the areas of interest that Lauren had brought up, and it became clear that although these girls go to school on the Suburb, few of them were aware of its significance.

The nature of the school’s selective intake policy means that many of the pupils (and staff) don’t live on the Suburb, being bussed and driven in from surrounding boroughs and counties. It was therefore a great opportunity to show them some of the architectural and geographical oddities and attractions quite literally on their doorstep.

Split up into more manageable-sized groups, the girls were led around a circular walk by various Trust staff and volunteers, along with some of their teachers. Luckily for me, I wasn’t in charge of a group and merely tagged along with one led by Ruth Ash. I was ready to jump in if I could, but fortunately my main tasks were ferrying the girls across the busier roads and just enjoying the tour myself.

The walk was good fun, and it was again interesting to hear what the girls had picked up on. Some were asking about a house featured in one of the Harry Potter films, while others were more impressed by the number and value of several sports cars in the driveway of a certain television personality. One girl was driven to ask about the Trust’s policy on dog mess removal – after finding a rather unholy amount on one section of pavement.

It was a short-ish walk, but a good length and enough to introduce some of the varied architecture and sights available. The girls returned to school for lunch and another talk, this time from a Hopkins architect (I rather wish I could’ve stayed for that one myself!), while the staff sloped back to the Trust office to see what lay in store for our Wednesday afternoon.

As an exercise in promoting not only the Suburb but also the invaluable work the Trust does to preserve it – along with it being a fun and informative morning – I’d say it was a huge success. Lessons were learnt, too, and it’s all useful experience for similar events in the future, such as Open House.

For me personally, it was yet another in a long line of interesting, unique opportunities that working with the Hampstead Garden Suburb Trust has offered me; drinking coffee in a school staffroom is something I’d never done before – let alone in a girls’ school!

After my second day back at the Trust, I thought I’d take a moment to write an update about my time there so far.

Well, the first couple of days have sadly been marred somewhat by me feeling under the weather with a bit of a cold. That can’t be helped though, and being ill rarely comes with good timing. Luckily I’ve been treated gently by the familiar faces who seem happy to have me back, and I’ve had some time to reacquaint myself with not just the Trust office, but with the history of Hampstead Garden Suburb itself. It’s a fascinating place, and everywhere you turn there are names, dates and documents to investigate. For someone like me, it’s a joy.

Touching on social history, cartography, town planning, design and much more, everything associated with the Suburb seems fascinating to me. Although the Trust obviously also deals with rather more mundane issues such as road re-surfacing and solving disputes with residents, it all forms a whole which stands for preserving the Suburb for future generations to enjoy it in the same way as it has been for the past century.

While those aforementioned more routine tasks take place around me, I’ve been left to explore photographs, documents and information pertaining to all aspects of the Suburb. As with daily life at the Trust office, already my primary tasks have changed, and I have spent most of my time poring over images for inclusion in a very important document – the Design Guidance.

Last updated in 1994, the Design Guidance document (available in its current, revised 2010 edition here) details, as much as possible, what sort of architectural work is allowed to take place on the Suburb. It lists adaptations that residents are likely to want to make (such as extensions or replacement windows and doors), and gives examples of how best to achieve these while keeping the building in sync with the rest of the area. With such a well-preserved collection of some 5,000 buildings, it’s vital to ensure that the right methods and materials are being used, and that the fabric and look of individual buildings doesn’t change too much. Only by doing so can the Suburb hope to remain as beautiful as it always has been.

As well as selecting images to illustrate the Design Guidance document, I’ve been finding out about a walking tour which will take place tomorrow, taking  a hundred Year 7 students on a walk around the centre of the Suburb. The students are from the girls’ grammar school on the Suburb’s Central Square, The Henrietta Barnett School, named after the amazing woman who first devised the Suburb a hundred years ago. Lauren Geisler will be delivering a lecture about the Suburb with regards to its geography and, along with various Trust staff and volunteers, I’ll be assisting in taking smaller groups on the walk itself.

I hope I can get rid of this blasted cold soon, but meanwhile I’m still getting used to the commute and life in a 9-5 job. It’s a bit of a change from the last few months of my life, I’ll tell you that.