Thursday 28 March 2024

DID YOU KNOW THAT . . .

. . . in 1813 the Packets became the first vessels to carry life-preservers? These had a dual purpose as a mattress for general use, with a small circular centre that could be removed and used as a pillow.

Then, in an emergency, and with the pillow discarded, they could be pulled over the head and secured around the waist to provide the fore-runner of the modern lifejacket.

 

-- The Falmouth Packets, by David Mudd, published 1978 by Bossiney Books

S’NO WONDER WE LAUGH!

Rarely a day goes by now without loads of laughable apologies for proper journalism and decent English in the online “news” services.

 

But I had a special giggle at this bit on CornwallLive this morning: “The scale of the snowfall was unexpected and greater than predicted.”

 

Ahem . . . if it was unexpected, would it have been predicted?” 

WHEN IT WAS NOT ALL RIGHT FOR ALL-WHITE FALMOUTH

I’ve told this tale once or twice before, here and there, but with today’s snowy weather and Easter Monday almost upon us, I can’t resist giving it a fresh airing.  (After all, if the BBC can get away with so many repeats . . . )

I’m recalling the 1967 Cornwall Senior Cup Final at St Austell when Falmouth Town lost 4-1 to then arch local rivals Truro City.

 

As excuses go, the following is a pretty good ‘un.   

 

The Falmouth camp obviously hadn’t paid attention to the weather forecast . . . . or maybe the forecasters had simply got it badly wrong.  (NO???) 

 

Whatever, for a goodly part of the match – from quite early on, I think – the dominant feature was a raging snowstorm that swept in from the east (beast?) and made the scene a near total white-out.

 

Truro were playing in their normal red and black – quite appropriate to stand out against the white – but Falmouth, wait for it, had chosen in their wisdom to play in a change strip of . . . ALL WHITE!!  No wonder more than a few passes went astray!

 

The date of that final, incidentally, was March 27. That was yesterday’s date, too, when Devon became a wintry wonderland and the white stuff also crept into Cornwall.  

 

So, together with that Beast From The East that hit us on March 18, 2018, it can be seen that Cornish snow-lovers should never give up hope too soon! 

Tuesday 26 March 2024

'BEST PLACE’ FALMOUTH – WHERE REALITY CAN EVEN EXCEED EXPECTATION!

Nice to see a little sanity returning to Medialand with Falmouth now having been chosen as one of the top eight in the annual Sunday Times Best Places To Live guide.

 

It was a welcome record-straightener after the absurd “most depressing town” verdict that did the national rounds a few weeks earlier.

 

It’s not exactly up for debate, after all, is it? Those of us lucky enough to live in the place don’t let a day go by without counting our blessings.

 

And writers have been singing its praises since the year dot.  Well, at least as far back as 1891, when the Guide To Falmouth, by R N Worth, was published and included the following:--

 

The praises of Falmouth were well remarked by (an unnamed) writer in Blackwood, who had visited the port whilst on a yachting excursion:--

 

“We had often heard people talk about Falmouth, but neither they nor the geography books prepared us for the sight which met us, as we rounded the lighthouse headland, of a large fleet of merchantmen lying at anchor in the spacious harbour. We counted upwards of 50 large sail, besides several steamers . . . 

 

“ . . . For people with young children at the spade-and-bucket age, Falmouth is surely the very one to suit.  

 

“There never was such a beach for shells – they are literally in myriads. The beach is made up of them. There are miles of rocks, too, where the receding tide leaves endless successions of crystal ponds full of seaweed and prawns, and green crabs, and anemones, and other delightful objects.

 

“Then for older folk there is the ever-present beauty of the broken coastline, and walking around Pendennis Castle, on the projecting point which forms one side of the harbour, and makes an admirable lounge for indifferent walkers, you come upon the harbour and all the shipping.

 

“A day at Falmouth must be worth a month at Brighton.”  

Saturday 23 March 2024

WHEN THERE WAS NO END IN SIGHT FOR THE MAN WITH THE MONEY*

(But Why Not Just Settle For A £5 Million Cheque Every Year?)

 

Among the many epiphets that Peter de Savary attracted during his hyperactive few years in Cornwall in the 1980s and early ‘90s, “cat among the pigeons” and the like were high up on the list.  

 

As an incoming investor and developer, he undoubtedly had the vision, passion, drive and wherewithal to Get Things Done – something that had become an almost alien concept in the previously “sleepy” duchy.

 

Not only was he the “colourful” tycoon, as the media dubbed him, he was also controversial.  By no means all of his multi-million pound projects found universal favour.

 

And their usually high profile also sparked debate on broader issues – such as the nature of (vast) wealth and of those who acquire it.

 

I found two cases in point in a single page of the Falmouth Packet in March, 1988.

 

The first – long before the Eden Project was even thought of – concerned Land’s End, which was then Cornwall’s most visited attraction and had been acquired by Mr de Savary a few months earlier.

 

The report was almost certainly the word-for-word reproduction of a press release whose style bore a remarkable resemblance to one with which I was intimately familiar.

 

The landmark site was being “dramatically transformed” (see what I mean about controversy?) in double-quick time by an army of Cornish workers hailed as “the best of British,” the piece gushed.

 

Despite some of Cornwall’s worst-ever weather lashing its most exposed location, the new-look Land’s End would be 75 per cent ready by Easter.

 

This “remarkable achievement” was attributed to the great majority of the 120 builders having worked from 8 am to 7.30 pm seven days a week since arriving on the site just before Christmas.

 

The report went on to list all the new features that were being created both within and outside the main complex.

 

The developments also inspired a novel thinkpiece – “One Man’s View” - on that same Packet page from James Lowry.  He wrote:--

 

Running my eye over the list of Britain’s 200 richest people – and noting from my latest bank statement that, alas, I am still a few quid short of joining such colourful company – I got to thinking about the nature of wealth and those who acquire it.

 

If you, like Peter de Savary, had £57 million behind you, would you continue flying around the world in search of acquisitions? And if so, why?

 

Speaking for myself, I would allow someone like National Provincial or Halifax to take charge of my money and look forward to an annual interest cheque which, at around eight and a half per cent, would net me a little under £5 million a year. 

 

On that sum I feel I could squeeze by quite nicely. And I wouldn’t have all the bother of worrying about recalcitrant employees or troublesome business rivals.

 

Such natural indolence as I possess does not, however, accumulate fortunes. Had Mr de Savary been the sort to deposit his early earnings in a building society and then sit down to watch the world go by, he would not possess £57 million.

 

So it seems those who have money have no time to spend it.  And those who, like me, are prepared to make time to spend it don’t have the wherewithal to acquire it. There is something fundamentally unjust about life, isn’t there.

 

By way of consolation, I am happy to note that Mr de Savary’s presence in Falmouth is at least increasing the value of my own modest assets.  House prices in the town have risen by around 25 per cent over the last year – and they’re still moving ever upwards.

 

This point was underlined when I was chatting to a fellow who bought a ground floor flat with garden in Woodlane in 1983 for £39,500 – and has just had it valued at £70,000!

 

This same fellow told me of a property speculator who systematically makes his money by following Mr de Savary around the world, buying up property wherever the tycoon invests, and pulling in fat profits once prices zoom.

 

The speculator is in Falmouth doing just that at this very moment. So it seems all those who have invested something in Falmouth’s future stand to collect at least a few crumbs from a rich man’s table. 

 

That’s how I heard him describe himself, more than once – “I am The Man With The Money” – when introducing himself to various interested parties in the early stages of a project.      

  

Friday 22 March 2024

COULD THE GULF STREAM REALLY HAVE BEEN RESPONSIBLE FOR FALMOUTH’S ‘FALLEN WOMEN AND GIRLS?’

I wrote last month (Feb 10) about the scale and public identification of prostitution in Falmouth in the Victorian era.  

 

I’m now reminded that the topic was still coming up for public discussion, if no longer with its practitioners so openly identified, by the time of the First World War (1914-18). 

 

With the vast influx of soldiers, Royal Naval and Merchant Navy personnel, “prostitution, never unknown in a port, was a cause for concern.”

 

So wrote John Pollock, in his book, FALMOUTH FOR INSTRUCTIONS – The Story Of Falmouth In The Great War.

 

A public meeting in Falmouth – year unspecified – resolved to employ a “trained worker in connection with preventative and rescue work among actual or potential fallen woman and girls” at a cost of £100 a year.

 

And at another public meeting, the Falmouth Social Welfare Association, formerly the Female Rescue Society, was addressed by a Miss Hudson, who reportedly said: “It would be misleading for me even to imply that we have in Falmouth none of the colossal evils found in other places.  

 

“If you take the hand-to-mouth people of Falmouth with a number of the hand-to-mouth population of the east of London, you would find as much depravity, immorality, degradation and squalor in their town as would be found in the city.”

 

Somewhat bizarrely, as John Pollock noted, Miss Hudson said there was a feeling that this was due to “climatic reasons;” she had heard “a very great deal of the cause put down to the Gulf Stream.”

 

John added: “She seemed on somewhat stronger ground when she said that it might be due to the fact that Falmouth was a port and a railway terminus, together with poor and insanitary housing.

 

“With regard to the streets of Falmouth, all she had seen were a few giddy, loud girls making themselves cheap, but, watch as carefully as she could, she did not see the professional element about.”

 

But Miss Hudson also ventured to suggest that, with Falmouth being a port in which so many nationalities mingled, “certain conduct is carried on under the surface, hidden under the cloak of so-called respectability, by married and single women and girls.

 

“It crops up in most unlooked-for quarters, and is carried on under the guise of friendship, friendly calls, and some people condone it and connive at it.”

 

What were needed, declared Miss Hudson, were “clean-souled, public-spirited men and women of the town insisting on one moral standard, and a centre house where the fallen women can be looked after, medically and morally.” 

Tuesday 19 March 2024

WORKING TOGETHER . . . FOR AN ARTIFICIAL FUTURE?

One old-school former editor of mine, John Marquis, when prophesying doom and gloom, will occasionally end a blog post with “So glad I’ll be out of it by such-and-such a year.”

Another, Ken Thompson, now no longer with us in earthly form, might well conclude “So glad I AM out of it.”

 

I have in mind the gradual takeover over of us humans by artificial intelligence (AI)  and in particular its insidious intrusion into what passes for journalism these days.

 

I recently read a story in a weekly newspaper that struck me as rather odd.  Even by modern standards, it came across as a piece of quite exceptionally sloppy reporting and poor writing, so much so that I felt compelled to show it to a fellow retired journo.

 

He dusted down his investigative hat, did a little bit of research and discovered that the person by-lined on the offending piece was, wait for it, an “AI-assisted reporter.”

 

Additionally, so he read: “Some of (name’s) articles are being drafted with the assistance of AI tools such as Chat GPT.  However, a journalist or editor always decides what content to cover and always reviews this content before it is published.”

 

Talk about intriguing.  The image sprang to mind of a reporter bashing out his story with a robot sat beside him, but of course that wouldn’t be the case. (I guess?!) 

 

Seriously, I’d love to know just how the two intelligences – real and artificial – work together.

 

Or perhaps I wouldn’t. After all, you know what we always used to be told: “You can’t believe what you read in the newspapers.”  And especially so, one might add now, if you suspect there is something “artificial” (fake?) about it!