Swim class number 8

It was all in the shoulders. The final swim class, and this week Andy was my instructor again. Warmed up with breaststroke. It was not perfect after all. I need to get my elbows higher in the water if I want to go faster (which is not necessarily what I want to do). This does work, although it puts pressure on the shoulders, which I can really feel this morning.

Onto backstroke. A little better than last week. I am just getting used to the rhythm. Keeping kicking while concentrating on the arms in rotation and lifting my tummy up, whilst trying not to collide with other swimmers is all a lot to remember. I need to reach right back with my hands which should enter the water behind my head. But to do this I have to remember to rotate my hips. And then bend the elbow to pull. Again, this is all effecting my shoulders, but more practice may see them become stronger. Apparently, it is a stroke which can be relaxing. It just does not feel that way at the moment.

My crawl is OK. Andy just said that I need to concentrate on keeping my fingers together. Once again I could feel the tension in my shoulders, but it certainly makes a difference to my speed. But the faster I go, the more I get out of breath. Well, that is the end of my swimming lessons. I have learnt an awful lot, and need to put it all into practice. My instructors have been great, thanks to them all.

Flash Forward

Just I was about to give up on what is a fairly patchy series, along comes a brilliant episode called "Believe". Doctor Bryce is searching for the Japanese woman he sees in his flash forward. Keiko is a young, brilliant bio robotics engineer. The only senior female in the company, she has to serve tea at a board meeting. Her passion for the guitar surfaces when she watches an old video of Bob Dylan singing "Shelter From The Storm". The final sequence reprises the song at LA Airport. That does it for me.

A Day in London

It all started with an invitation to lunch from Nigel, a distant cousin with whom I correspond about our family history. He suggested Finch's Wine Bar on Bishopsgate as we are very distant relatives of the Finch family. My great grandfather Vincent's brother, Sidney Morton Pearson Roberts, had married a Kate Finch. The basement restaurant is now called City House, and this is where I met Nigel for a very pleasant lunch and chat.

I had the whole afternoon free before a play at the National Theatre in the evening. I wanted to revisit the Royal Exchange and Nigel pointed me in the right direction. Walking down Bishopsgate, I looked inside the open gates of the historic St Helen's Place, and there was the Gherkin towering above the old square.
Further down Bishopsgate, I took a photo of The Gibson Hall, now a conference venue, and this time it is Tower 42 in the background. I soon found The Royal Exchange. When Alison and I visited that Saturday in the summer, it was closed. I climbed some stairs in the corner to take this illicit photo before being told the mezzanine was closed.

I took the Underground to Charring Cross and it was a short walk to Trafalgar Square. Passing St Martin-in-the-Fields, and as I had plenty of time, I decided to look inside. To my delight, there was a rehearsal taking place for that evening's concert. The piano accompanied by a 12 piece chamber orchestra were excellent. It was a nice surprise to be able to sit and listen to Mozart played by such accomplished young musicians.

My main reason for being in Trafalgar Square was to visit the National Portrait Gallery for "Beatles to Bowie", an exhibition exploring the leading pop music personalities of the 1960's. "Featuring key pop cultural figures the exhibition begins in 1960 with hit groups such as The Shadows and The John Barry Seven". It was the photograph of the latter that really captured for me, the essence of the early TV programmes such as The Six Five Special. As well as a huge collection of photographs, the displays of memorabilia (programmes, record sleeves, sheet music etc) were fascinating.

It was dark by the time I left, time for a coffee and cake at Costa Coffee in Waterstones, before heading for the South Bank.

Walking down Northumberland Avenue, I saw the Golden Jubilee Bridge lit up at the end. This was a perfect vantage point for taking photos of the lights of London. I was lucky that it was so mild for the late November, and I could take my time walking over the bridge.

All along the South Bank there had been erected a German Christmas Market, which was at it's best in the dark with all the stalls brightly lit. It was such a colourful scene, and if I had been hungry, a vast number of stalls had different things to eat.

Then it was time for the theatre. At the small Cottesloe Theatre, where I had never been before, there was a production of Ferdinand Bruckner's 1926 play "Pains of Youth" in a new version by Martin Crimp. Wonderfully directed by Katie Mitchell. the young cast did a fine job.

I made my way back across Waterloo Bridge. I had never previously noticed how beautifully lit was Somerset House on it's frontage with the river. The end to a great day.

Swim class number 7

This week it was mainly backstroke with Andy, yet another coach from the swimming club. These one to one sessions are much more like hard work as quite intensive. As usual we started with just the kick, trying to point my toes and kicking with an upward motion (I include these tips for future reference) like kicking a football? Tiring, but at least I was making some progress.
Then onto arms using a constant rotation, for the first time I think I was doing OK. Managed half a length which, for me, was a massive improvement. Apparently you use different muscles for backstroke, which accounts for the stiffness the following day.

Rested with some breaststroke which, I am told, is pretty much perfect. It was tumble turns for the second half of the lesson, but I just do not have the flexibility. Andy said something about our age, but he was only 46. I don't think he believed it when I said I was 64.o I did breaststroke turns instead, keeping my head down at the push off. It also gave me the opportunity to try some more backstroke.

Ordinary Thunderstorms, deaf sentence and Too Close to Home

I very rarely read murder thrillers, but here are two with the latest by David Lodge in the middle. I heard William Boyd being interviewed on 5 live about his book Ordinary Thunderstorms, and it seemed quite interesting, apparently there are few modern murder stories set in Central London. It is a rattling good yarn , the action tears along with twists along the way. However, the whole essence of the plot means our hero has never watched a crime thriller on TV, or he definitely would not have done what he did at the beginning. The characters are interesting, and the locations vivid and familiar, the river never being far away. Not the best writing, but enjoyable nonetheless.

But if you want good writing, David Lodge is your man. This is the eighth novel of his that I have read, and deaf sentence is up there with the best. The words are music to the ear. Retired professor of linguistics Desmond Bates is going deaf, and the story revolves around his coping, or not, with his affliction. It is funny, poignant and life affirming. Brilliant.

I picked up Too Close to Home in out local Waterstones when out shopping with my dear wife. The previous book by the author Linwood Barclay, No Time for Goodbye, was a terrific thriller. His latest is a similar mystery, this time when next door neighbours of our narrator are murdered. Unfortunately, he is a pretty unpleasant character ( as are basically all the other characters), so our feelings about his harrowing experiences are somewhat diluted. The writing is pretty poor, and Barclay concentrates on the plot so much, he forgets about his reader. There is plenty of intrigue and you keep reading to see what happens next, but some of the twists are just not credible. A bit of a disappointment.

131 Songs - Number 7

Number 7 - Peggy Sue by Buddy Holly

Recorded in 1957, I first heard Buddy Holly on our old transistor radio tuned in to Radio Luxembourg before we left London. One of the early pioneers of the new rock and roll, he performed in 1955 with Elvis and Bill Haley. These influences contributed to him adapting to a more rockabilly style typified by his first hit That'll Be The Day earlier in 1957. Unlike Elvis, Buddy wrote all his own songs which were quite sophisticated for the day. That must be why they still sound fresh to me whenever I hear them. And Oh Boy, did he write so many great songs. There are 15 on my compilation of 36 tracks and I never have to skip one of them. Even The Beatles recorded Words of Love on their album Beatles for Sale. So why Peggy Sue? It must be the paradiddles played on the drums by The Cricket's drummer Jerry Alison, that fade in and out. And the raw guitar solo in the middle. Just magic.

Swim class number 6

Drills, drills, drills. It was Rob this time, another coach from the swimming club. Started with crawl leg kicks holding a float, first on my back, then my front. I get some sort of propulsion when I start, but half a length and I am done for. Cramping starts after only five minutes. Must be getting old. I don't seem to have the flexibility in my feet to make them floppy. It was such a relief to go onto crawl proper. Apparently my head comes too much out of the water, which I think I knew, and was able to make some progress in this direction.

After half an hour, it was swapping instructors again and Theresa from last week took over. Breaststroke this time, just legs again, but I can manage this quite easily. Had to concentrate on the leg snap. On to the full stroke, and I could feel the tension in my legs in stretching with the snap, but it does seem to work. My arm movement needed a slight alteration with cupping my hands at my chest which turns the shoulders for a more streamlined movement. Quite different than what I have done for the last twenty years. I even received a comment that I looked like a real breaststroke swimmer. Backstroke was next, starting with that awful leg kick on my back. Tried some arm pulls and did my first ever half length. Hope that I can try this again next week.

Triangle, An Education and A Christmas Carol

I expected more from director Christopher Smith after his splendid Severance, but his new film Triangle was a disappointment, especially after some great reviews. The first half was OK, but setting Groundhog Day on a boat with added scary bits just did not work. I found it too repetitive and the ending was really poor. There were twists and some shocks along the way, the script was fine and Mellisa George did well in the lead role. An opportunity missed.

From the opening bars of Floyd Cramer's brilliant On the Rebound (who was the genius who chose this intro?), I settled back in my seat in eager anticipation. And what a movie was in store. The best I have seen in years. Everything was perfect. When the heroine is in her first year in sixth form in 1961, the same year as was I, there would always have been a connection. But when one American film critic in his twenties said he was overcome by emotion and happiness, it is a film for all. Where to start. Probably Nick Hornby, who wrote the wonderful screenplay, one of the authors whose books I always buy, from Fever Pitch to 31 Songs and A Long Way Down. Then the cast, all fabulous. Carey Mulligan was brilliant in the central role of Jenny, Alfred Molina equally so as her father and Olivia Williams as her teacher. All three should win Oscars. Peter Sarsgaard is fine as the creepy David, and his friends played by Dominic Cooper and Rosamund Pike would in any other movie sweep up awards. The director, Lone Scherfig, captures perfectly the tone of pre-Beatles 1961. Jenny finds it all boring, but that is not how I remember. The coffee bar she goes to with her school friends had no jukebox. But ours did. Perhaps it is that first year sixth thing, I remember the following year as being so much more interesting. Jenny finds excitement in another world. Her relationship with an older man was never going anywhere, but even if it was a con, and you fell in love, or thought you did, sometimes it is worth it to be the subject of such a relationship. Maybe you pay emotionally at the time, but looking back, you would not have missed it for the world.

What is Robert Zemeckis up to? His experimentation with motion capture become ever more boring. The Polar Express was a novelty, Beowulf tiresome and now the hugely disappointing A Christmas Carol. I think it must be that he cannot write a screenplay. I could forgive him for the originality of The Polar Express, but his adaptation of Dickens is a complete disaster. And it's November for heaven's sake!

131 Songs - Number 6

Number 6 - Diana by Paul Anka

Not one of my favourite songs, but memorable for one reason. It must have been a sunny day in the summer holidays of 1957, when the record was released, that Mum took my brothers and I on one of our many visits to Kensington Gardens, a short bus ride up Kensington High Street. I have a vivid memory of walking into the park and hearing some music. As we passed the source, it turned out to be Diana being played on a portable record player, something we had never experienced before in the open air. It could not have been that loud, as by the time we reached the Round Pond, where we often sailed our toy yachts, the sound was gone. But the memory lingers on.

Stanley Boyd Roberts

My grandfather, Stanley Boyd Roberts was born on 21 October 1889 at No 2 Nelson Place Ecclesall Bierlow. His parents were Vincent Littlewood Roberts and Ellen Cundy, formerly Boyd. His father's occupation on Stanley's birth certificate is recorded as "Gentleman", the same as on his parent's marriage certificate just over a year earlier. Vincent had qualified as a doctor and by 1901 was practising at Chippingham House on Attercliffe Road (that must have been why Dad referred to him as "The Attercliffe Man").

Strangely, on the census of 1901, when Stanley is eleven, he is residing with his maternal grandmother (Ellen formerly Cundy, then Boyd) and her second husband, the highly successful electro plater and gilder (employing 19 men, 15 women, 6 boys and 3 girls) Arthur Millward. Stanley's mother Ellen had died when he was only three years old, but it is good to see he was still in touch with her mother. The reason why he is staying there must be because his step brother (John S Roberts) was only one month old and possibly ill, as he died when he was one year old. Stanley attended Dore and Totley High School and afterwards Wesley College.

He was still living with his grandmother in 1911 when he was 21. She was 70 by then , her husband Arthur had died, leaving her very comfortable with two servants at Clifford Lodge on Abbeydale Road. Maybe Stanley did not get on with his stepmother, as she and father Vincent lived not far away on Psalter Lane. Stanley was then studying the law at Sheffield University and he qualified as a solicitor. His obituary in the Sheffield Daily Telegraph of 13 January 1937 reads: "Mr Roberts was a musician with a medical ancestry and a legal history. He learned to play the piano when so young that he had to be lifted on to the piano stool. At Wesley College he received special musical instruction and won the music prize in his first term. Afterwards he received tuition from many eminent musicians, notably Mr Frederick Dawson. At the early age of sixteen, he was appointed organist of St John's Church, Abbeydale. He had a desire to take up music as a profession, but a career in law had been planned for him. He was admitted a solicitor in 1912."

Stanley married Edith Haywood Hoyland on 2 July 1913 at Christ Church in Dore. They had four children, all boys: John Haywood Boyd Roberts born 1915, Arthur Wynne Boyd Roberts born 1916, Peter Richard Boyd Roberts born 1917, David Littlewood Boyd Roberts born 1918 (who died of Spanish flue in 1919) and James Brian Boyd Roberts born 1923.

As a solicitor, Stanley was in partnership with Robert Benjamin Grayson in the firm of Roberts and Grayson. The partnership was dissolved on 30th November 1925. It seems that Stanley then practised on his own, but in 1932 he was made bankrupt. A petition was filed on 13th April 1932 in Sheffield Court. There is an Official Receiver's Summary of Affairs showing a deficiency of £1,930 12s and 5d. This seems to coincide with Dad and his brother Arthur having to find employment, they would have been 16 and 15 years old. They had been educated at home, instead of an expensive private school, so Stanley obviously had financial problems for some time.

After his failure as a solicitor, Stanley concentrated on his music. For the last six and a half years of his life, he was the conductor of the Sheffield Orpheus Male Voice Choir, and was involved in the Philharmonic Society. In 1936, he became organist and choirmaster at St Mathew's Church, Sheffield. Shortly before he died, he accompanied the Sheffield Philharmonic Chorus in an arduous rehearsal of Berlioz's Te Deum. He died suddenly of pneumonia on 12 January 1937 at his home at 88 Ashdell Road in Sheffield. He was 47.

Swim class number 5

It never ceases to amaze me how different is each swimming lesson. I thought something was up when I walked into the main pool area and the three instructors who wait on the far side were joined by lots of young women. It turned out that they were trainee instructors. I was paired with Theresa who had a list of drills for the breaststroke. The same old agony of holding a float and just using my legs, first on my back, then the front. Exhausted after fifteen minutes. Then some proper swimming concentrating on the leg snap we had been practising , which seemed to improve my technique. Finished the half hour with some playtime, picking up objects from the bottom of the pool.

I was amazed when Theresa handed me over to another young lady for the second half. This was Carmel, her sister. I know. They could not have been older than twenty. On to crawl, the same torture as last week holding a float and leg kicks. I think I gained from this one to one session, as my tendency to bend my knees was spotted and sort of corrected. I think I was getting the hang of it. It was a relief when I could do a normal stroke, apparently my arm movement is OK, which was a surprise. Ended the session with some more games. The hour flew by.

Ralph William Askew

My grandfather, Ralph William Askew, was born on 3rd August 1895 at 22 College Road, Masbrough. He was the ninth of ten children. His father, George, was born on 27 December 1852 at Toynton St Peter in Lincolnshire. He moved to Rotherham to work in the coal mines. The census of 1881 for College Road shows he was married to a Jane Cuthbertson, but despite a number of searches, there is no record of an official marriage.

George was still a miner at the age of 57. He was joined at the pit by sons Thomas, George and Ralph, the last two being 17 and 15 classed as pit boys. So we know Ralph had a hard upbringing. In 1914 he was 19, so he joined the army for the first world war. I have no details of his war record, Mum never mentioned it. After the war, he met and married Edith Agnes Leather on 1 August 1921 in Rotherham Parish Church. The photograph was taken while he was in his twenties. My aunt Iris told me he was a tap dancer and loved the popular music of the time. They had four children: Dorothy, Iris, Donald and Geoffrey.

After the war, Ralph was back at the pit. But during his time as a miner, Ralph suffered an accident and broke his back. He received £200 in compensation and invested the money in two shops in. The hardware shop in Cambridge Street, over which the family made their home, made no money. Apparently he gave away leather when he saw children with no proper shoes. The shop went bust. At the same time his wife had a baker's shop in Barley Terrace. She used to get up at 4am every morning to make barm cakes etc. They were always sold out by midday. But she suffered with four getting on her chest, so they had to give up this shop too.

So for the first time, Ralph and Edith had to seek the support of the council, who found them a house at 88 Wordsworth Drive in Rotherham. However this was in a very poor neighbourhood, the children eat bread and lard outside. Ralph and his family may have been poor, but they always had good manners and eat proper meals.

Ralph had a number of jobs after the shops closed. He was a postman, a bus conductor and, according to his death certificate, a brassworks water valve tester.

It was not until Mum was working for one of the bigwigs at the Municipal Offices that this helped to find another house. 58 Wordsworth Drive had been occupied by an old lady, and when she died, it became available. Their names were on the list and they were offered the move to what was a much better property in a much nicer location. It must have helped that Mum did babysitting for this man at the Council. The house was a reasonably new in the "Wembley" design. It was very close to Herringthorpe Playing Fields, the largest open space in the town.

Ralph died on 13 April 1945. He was 49 years old. The death certificate records that he died of a respiratory obstruction that led to cardiac arrest.