Catch me if you can

I have had more dreams lately. In this new lock-down life I am not alone in this experience it seems. One scientific explanation being put forward is that we dream more in REM sleep and, as a good proportion of the world are now less active (furloughed etc), we are getting more of this because we are not being woken up by alarm clocks but instead sleeping longer and waking more naturally. I briefly gave myself a pat on the back when I read that because I had been thinking about this the other day and had come to the same conclusion..... BUT I have been retired almost a year now so my sleep pattern, in lock-down, has essentially not changed (I'm an owl, I go to bed late and wake up when I wake up! Much to Mrs Darce's exasperation as she is a lark). So, why am I experiencing more dreams?

Also, since our lives have been restricted, I have noticed, in my wakeful state,  tiny fragments of memories are now being triggered by trivial actions on a much more regular basis. For instance tonight I was filling a watering can and as I watched the water swilling around the brim in a particular way a memory was triggered of a snatch of music. In fact more often than not it is music that pops into my mind in these instances.

I suppose this lock-down life is quieter, even for a retiree, and maybe my mind is just filling in the gaps.

So this is the perfect springboard for a series of posts I hear you think! Unfortunately it isn't because, for me, it is the same with these little memorettes as it is with dreams – in the very moment I become aware of them I am there trying to hang on to them, but in another moment they are gone.

Fragments .....

     You Stepped Out Of A Dream .....

          Where Have I Known You Before?

Fragments - Andrew Hill 1970

You Stepped Out Of A Dream - Joe Pass 1963

Where Have I Known You Before - Return To Forever feat. Chick Corea 1974

Still in the other world

The Rainfall Rescue project I mentioned recently is now complete. In a little under three weeks 65,000 pages of records dating from 1960 back to 1678 were digitised by an army of 16,000 volunteers. Each page contained up to a decade's worth of monthly readings for a particular gauge and , in all, 5.25 million observations were rescued. Quite a feat. Looking at my own stats I made 1061 classifications (a classification being either 12 monthly readings, or some location information, and the earliest year I was asked to process was 1682 . So I went way back!). To be fair some of those entries were blank if the year from a sheet I was asked to process had no readings recorded. Even so, I like to think I played my part. As I think I said before it is amazing what a bit of crowd sourcing can achieve (and of course Captain Tom Moore's exploit is another extraordinary example of that).

I miss the engagement in this project. I have found another one – Southern Weather Discovery – which is focussed on weather in the Southern Hemisphere and at the moment is asking people to digitise weather records made in New Zealand in 1939. Topical for me as I have just returned from a holiday in NZ. I've made my start on this project as I thought it would be interesting to see how many places I would recognise, and I am recognising quite a few, although the location detail is not so precise and doesn't offer the same opportunity as the UK records for heading off down internet rabbit holes researching places and people. So I don't think this project is going to capture my imagination in the same way.

The last time I was banging on about this (Rainfall Rescue) project I was back in the 1890s. It was at this point I got completely obsessed with one particular UK location identified on a Met Office sheet I was asked to enter. The gauge location was Cattistock Lodge at Cattistock in Dorest. Cattistock is only a few miles from Evershot, a village Mrs Darce and I spent a few days at on a short holiday a couple of years ago. It is possible we have driven past it. If you Google the Lodge you will quickly find a number of threads on a forum where people discuss and show pictures of derelict or semi derelict places. I am fascinated by derelict places myself. So that was enough to get me burrowing down the Lodge's rabbit hole!

As recently as 2011 Cattistock Lodge appeared to be in at least a half decent state of repair judging by Google Street View. However by around 2015 it was in a sorry state, and following the death in 2016 of an old lady who had lived there at least until the time of that Street View snap, and who may or may not have owned it, the place was finally sold last year and just last month a planning application was lodged to build a number of new dwellings on the site. Whether or not any of the existing Lodge can be saved as a part of that development I don't know but it would be a shame to lose a building which undoubtedly has a rich history. The earliest reference of its existence I have found states it was where The Cattistock Hunt was started by a parson in the mid 18^th century.

Late in the 1880s it started to be mentioned in rainfall records. Initially an A Chapple was making the recordings, but soon he was joined by a Henry Hamilton Palairet. The Lodge returned rainfall records until 1922. The end of the recordings coincided with HH Palairet's death and it seems no one then continued the job.

I have established HH Palairet was a Justice of the Peace, played cricket for the MCC and was a national archery champion. His son, Lionel, played cricket and amassed a prodigious number of runs for Somerset, holding their run scoring record until recently.

Although Palairet seemed to record the rainfall at Cattistock for many years between the 1890s and his death in 1922 he doesn't seem to have always lived there. Kelly's Directory 1895 lists him as of Cattistock Lodge, but the 1901 census states Edward Sitwell as the principal resident (and he returned the rainfall records in 1903). by 1911, and 1915, Kelly's listed a Major H H F Fagan as living at Cattistock Lodge. During this time Henry Palairet was listed in Kelly's as a Dorsetshire County Magistrate but he was residing at Norton Court, Pensford, Somersetshire. (His family had a lot of links to that area).

The next references I can find to Cattistock Lodge are from 1951. Detailed diary entries from a retired Royal Navy Captain, and latter day Reverend, lovingly (no doubt) transcribed by his grandson. The diaries are incredibly detailed and I spent more time than I really should have reading them. A fascinating insight into the life of an elder gentleman in 1950s England, they are a delight. He lived in a thatched cottage (a rather grand one) in the centre of Cattistock (it is still there, but not looking as “chocolate box” as it did 15 or so years ago judging by a few pictures I have found) and I have worked out that his mother moved into nearby Cattistock Lodge in the latter years of her life. There are a number of entries where he states they have tea at the Lodge. Whether the Lodge was still a private residence or it had become a hotel, or a nursing home or something similar I don't know.

As I said, and the above I think you will agree has clearly demonstrated, I have become obsessed with with this place, and the people who have been associated with it. Much too much time on my hands in these strange times.

I guess I could pursue more Kelly's Directory records, and Met Office records, to put more meat on Cattistock Lodge's bones (a place I didn't even know existed two weeks ago) but I really should move on!

Enough of this! It's time for some music. I can't believe I haven't featured Judy Roberts here before. She got a mention and a Youtube link back in 2009, but that is it. Talking of obsessions, I have always been mildly obsessed with her ever since I bought her album The Other World back in 1980. I love her brand of, often, latin tinged soul-jazz and, to be frank, I love her staring at me from the album cover in that seductive way even more (there, I've said it!). I won't expand any more on her career here now, she deserves her own dedicated post, which I will attempt do in the near future.

Here is the title track from that 1980 album. An appropriate title as I have been talking about ancient rainfall records, a Justice of the Peace who died more than a hundred years ago, and a retired Royal Navy Captain. Their worlds seem far removed from now, as in fact does our recent holiday in New Zealand and the pre-lockdown life we all led just a few short weeks ago.

Judy Roberts – The Other World 1980

RIP "The Cat"

As a lifelong Chelsea fan I was particularly saddened to hear of the death of Peter Bonetti. 

Peter was a fixture between the sticks for Chelsea in the Sixties and into the Seventies. He also played for England, although was unlucky to be playing in the same era as the great Gordon Banks so his England appearances were limited. He had the nickname "The Cat" because of his, as Wikipedia puts it, safe handling, lightning reflexes and graceful style. I couldn't put it better.

Here is the team sheet in the match programme of the first Chelsea game I ever saw (together with my Dad) back in January 1971 with Peter Bonetti listed there as Chelsea's number 1 (when the players wore 1 to 11, simpler times!).

RIP Peter "The Cat" Bonetti , 27 September 1941 - 12 April 2020

In my own little world

Still digging those rainfall records (back in the 1890s now)....  and still digging the jazz.

Something soothing for a Sunday night:

Billy Cobham - Heather  1974 
(Billy ably assisted by George Duke and Michael Brecker)

Date with the rain

I hope you are all well. We are all living in strange times indeed.

One might have thought with this life lockdown I would have time for more blog posting. And yes I have been thinking I should, although retirement should in theory have also enabled that and look what's happened - or not happened! - here in recent months.

About a week ago I did kick myself up the proverbial and determined to get more active here.. but then I found a new addiction. Last week I saw a brief BBC news item that pointed me here , and so for a few days now I have been punching the keys digitising pre 1960 UK rainfall records! And I am by no means alone in this pursuit, as I write more than 14,000 other volunteers are doing the same and between us we have swiftly moved back in time through the 1950s, 40s, 30s and 20s and are now well into the 1910s. The 19^th century records are probably in reach by later next week. The people responsible for this project have been overwhelmed by the response. The power of crowdsourcing! Also, if this particular project doesn't sound like fun (but really it is) then you have other options – you could count penguins in time lapsed photographs of the Antarctic for example.

I have found the task surprisingly enjoyable, and interesting in a number of ways. Each sheet has a decade of handwritten monthly readings recorded for a particular rainfall gauge station. You have to either copy type a certain year's readings or transcribe location information. It is the location information, the recorder's name, and the various other random notes on the sheets that are so interesting.

The gauges were/are located in all sorts of places, quite a few Water Works, pumping stations, sewage works which are not so interesting but then I have also come across lighthouses, country piles, cottages, lunatic asylums, Kensington Palace Gardens, and yesterday morning Wolf Hall Manor. Many have caused me to run off down a Google rabbit hole as I pinpoint the locations and try to find out more about the history. Quite a few of the places I come across are of course no longer there: country piles demolished or now turned into flats; pumping stations now turned into houses. My UK geography has improved no end. It is interesting to note that before 1960 Somerset and Dorset were both referred to as 'shires.

The recorder names offer more opportunity for research. All the men, and they are mostly men, were Esq rather than Mr, many have C.E (Civil, or Chartered? Engineer) after their name, but then there are also Sirs, Earls, Majors, Lt. Cols, Headmasters. One of the most interesting to me was a Sir who lived in a country pile in Norfolk. I looked him up to find that his first wife was the daughter of a baronet and I share their surname, which is not a common one. Now that has me thinking I must trace my family tree!

There are lots of notes, some barely decipherable, on many of the sheets. The notes typically describe the site of the gauge and its immediate surroundings – hedges, trees, walls, outbuildings. You can sometimes build up a wonderful picture of a person's garden, right down to the height of herbaceous borders, raspberry canes, apple trees and the like.

On most of the sheets the location's nearest railway station and church are also specified, only sometimes a grid reference. This presumably for the benefit of inspectors who needed to travel to these gauges to check them periodically. Rail was probably the favoured mode of travel then, and also these would be landmarks easily found on an OS map.

As I have looked at the sheets I have built up an understanding of how the data was collected. It seems recorders would usually take daily readings. These would be aggregated to monthly values and then sent in (or telephoned in?) periodically to the Air Ministry Met. Office. This information would then be transcribed (sometimes years later it would seem) onto the official sheets that we are now digitising. For example while I was entering 1926 readings from a sheet I found this note: “Back years 1920-1928 copied from diary 6/1/53”. That comment blows me away. Just think, the recorder was making notes of the rainfall readings in their diary (nearly 100 years ago now). Then 25 years later their diary somehow finally made it to the Met Office (maybe the person died and the diary was found in their effects and was passed on?) where the readings were eventually officially collated. Now another 67 years have passed and I am transferring this data into a spreadsheet. Could the original recorder have possibly imagined his diligence would now still be relevant and causing so much feverish work? Certainly not in this way. (Incidentally, as I type this Al Green is on the radio singing Ain't It Funny How Time Slips Away!).

The whole exercise is a window into the past. And as I start recording 1919 data I'm thinking that with the current state of the world we all of a sudden have a lot more in common again in some respects with people's day to day life as it would have been 100 or so years ago – we are once again on Shank's pony, not straying too far from home, and closer to our family.

As I have been performing my task I have randomly noted down some things that have caught my eye, here are a few of them:

From a sheet for a Guildford gauge: “recorder Mr X, died 1942, then read by Mr Y until end of 1946, then read by Miss X 1947”. Readings stopped at the end of 1947. A note says house owner died at the end of 1947 and Miss X leaving. This paints a stark picture of lives changing. Miss X was presumably the daughter of Mr X, but who was Mr Y? A relative? A lover? In any event you feel for Miss X. But the rain will have kept falling on another gauge nearby.

From a sheet for West Ayton, North Riding: readings stopped Sept 1949 with the note “Too old to bother now”. It's interesting to see that more conservational, and less formal, notes like this tend to be much less frequent as I step back through the decades, or maybe I'm just not lucky enough to come across them.

From a station in Argyll Ardnadam Hafton House 1942 insp: Miss Allan says must give up reports as the gardener does not seem able to grasp how to do it.

At a girls county school in Glamorgan: 1945 unreliable , no amendments made to record. Observations probably taken by inexperienced pupils. No readings were recorded after 1945.

From Parkham, North Devonshire 1937: Letter from Parry saying that when Harding moved he took this gauge with him. No knowledge of where Harding now lives. Gauge missing in action!

Many people are recording their favourite observtions in chat threads related to the project. This was one that I wish I had seen: the few months' hiatus in 1948 when the Abbot of the Benedictine monks at Belmont Abbey in Hereford had to wait for the bullet hole in the gauge to be repaired before he could continue recording.

Oh, and as for the rain, I have noticed that 1921 was very dry in the UK.

Give it a go, you might be surprised how much you enjoy it.

A song title to perfectly match this topic immediately sprang to mind – Eddie Kendricks' Date With The Rain. Unfortunately I don't have that one in the collection as it is a bit pricey. So Youtube to the rescue:

Another phrase that came to mind was “observations in time” which is the title of any early Ohio Players album, and of a related Feel It post dating back to 2006. I have re-uped a track from  the album, which you can find here.

I will also leave you with another track. I have found jazz to be the perfect accompaniment when rescuing these rainfall records and I have been rooting through quite a few of the albums in my collection and giving them a proper listen for the first time in ages. One of those albums has been Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers' Ugestu. Here is side 1 track 1 from that album.

Art Blakey's Jazz Messengers – One By One 1963

PS: The picture shows a Snowdon Rainfall Gauge, the gauge of choice judging by the rainfall sheets I've seen. The picture was found here