Part One and a Half already - the Odyssey!

 

After re-reading part one, I feel altogether more confident than I did a couple of weeks ago about my upcoming Medical Procedure.

How things can snowball!

A fall

leads to

a trip to hospital "just in case".

An angiogram, normally easy peasy,

Cannot be done.

I am put into hospital for a week.

I am told my heart is a "dicky ticker".

I can possibly do nothing at all - in which case in a year or so  I could have a heart attack.

Or, I could have an angioplasty with balloon stents (thought - if you fill them with helium will you float over the rooftops?  

Aagh.  I forgot.  If you can't shove dye up your ar . . .    teries in an angiogram, then you can't shove a drill up there in an angioplasty without a huge risk of unplanned ripping and tearing of arteries.

So it's going to be the whole big, carefully planned six-hour operation.  I shall be fitted with a couple of titanium plates.  How titanic!  I wonder if my chest will be bullet-proof - just a thought!

I'm trying to get a photo of my insides, but in spite of several hints to the surgical team members, I think I shall be unlucky! Shame!  That would be an unusual family portrait!

So, I go into the hospital early on the morning of the 11th August, and the Main Event will be on the 12th August.  In less than two weeks after that, I could be home, though not exactly fighting fit.  Certainly by the middle of September.  By Christmas, I should be able to make plans for 2023, knowing that I'll be a healthier lad.

Wish me luck for the Eleventh.  

If it isn't awful, it will certainly be unusual!

But I've got an uncomfortable feeling it's going to be both!

Is Death Knocking at Your Door?

Is Death Knocking at your Door?

Some people seek solace in smoking a cig.

Some folk get comfort from cider

Some fellows are regaled by reading tall tales

But my fun is just with the writing.

I love writing.  I don't write enough.  I don't have a target, or want to have fame as a writer.

To research a book is definitely interesting, if at times gruesome.   

I write as therapy, a way to get the demons out of my head.

 I've just looked at the statistics for the Battle of the Somme, and they are unbelievable - except you have to believe them because they are true.  The General on the Allied side, Douglas Haig, saw the battle as a shock tactic, to be over in twenty-four hours.

It went on for almost six months.

He became Lord Haig, and was given a lifetime pension.  

Many, many thousands of households did not receive lifetime pensions, 

instead they received a medallion to commemorate the death of sons, husbands, and brothers.  

These were called the "Death Pennies"

Lord Haig's family did not receive a Death Penny.

There were even skirmishes after that six-month "shock attack", when my great-uncle Tom Beesley was killed on January 13th 1917.

Such brave men . . . on both sides.  How must they have felt?

The waiting must have been the worst bit.  Waiting, waiting, waiting, with your heart pounding, just waiting to hear that whistle, as though it were the start of a football match.  At least then, you could do something you were trained to do, even if it was robotic and clinical.  

Even if it was just to be injured or killed for King and Country.

A million troops were killed or injured in six months at the Somme

for just ten miles of territory gained on a thirty mile front.

What must have gone through those troops' minds as they waited in the trenches, calculating the odds of their not seeing the next sunset.?

I recently had an inkling, when I had a fall just over a week ago.  It was just a simple fall, and I got up without any help.  And yet, I thought, for no obvious reason, that I should get it checked out at hospital.  Three hours, and two tests later, i found myself in the Coronary Care Unit, where I stayed for almost a week before I was let out again "on leave" before a return to Hospital for my particular time "in the trenches"

In that week, they examined my "dicky ticker" and came to a number of conclusions.  The team were absolutely wonderful.  I have a surgeon, Dr. Brian Plunkett, who, although, based in Sydney, has worked all over the World.  Canada, the USA, etc.  He was returning from New Zealand before he saw me.

He managed his team, who, day by day, came to see me, with total transparency, to tell me what they could do, what they would like to do, what alternatives they had, why they would advise me to do, - and what my chances were of survival were.  

What were my chances of survival?  Why 100% of course!  I'm never going to die, how could I?  For the last seventy-six years I've been indestructible, so why should that not continue?

The operation itself is straightforward, if long, (about six hours), and then I have to be revived.  For most people, "waking up" is the normal natural thing to do, but I have a problem.  I only have one working lung.  This cuts my air down to 50% of "normal".  When we walk side by side, you may be walking, but aerobically I am running to keep up.  In practice, of course, 50% is my ideal, but in actual fact that is nearer 35% in reality!  In other words, I shall be on a ventilator and I shall wake up and breathe for myself, and from there on it's onwards and upwards into the sunlight.

Unfortunately . .  . at 35%, it may take a few hours to get me to breathe again by myself.  I inflate my lung by using the diaphragm muscle, as I have ever since I was born.  The ventilator will do the job for me during the operation and immediately afterwards, but at some stage I have to be weaned onto my own breathing.  My lung function is not good, and it may take a few hours to get me breathing again, but the trouble is that for every hour that passes, the diaphragm becomes weaker, and in a frighteningly short time, (a few hours only), it becomes "tired" so that it becomes impossible to breathe unassisted.  If the ventilator is switched off, a few minutes later I die.  Regardless of your ideas of the afterlife, your present life will be ended.  No more Christmas, no more trips to the camera club.  Not even one more cuddle with Marg.  If things go wrong, I will have made my last purchase at the supermarket.  I will never come home again.

It's strange.  I have no (well, a little) fear of death, but I wonder what it will be like for those who know me.  What will it be like to eat your meals and watch the telly on the sofa by yourself?  There are so many decisions to make.  How many people should be at the switching off?  How will Marg or anyone, cope with the decision by themselves?  Might I still be mechanically conscious when the machine is switched off, and gradually lose consciousness and die within a space of up to thirty minutes.

I wonder who will take Marg home from my death.  We will have been married for forty-seven years on October 4th.  It's Marg's birthday on August 2nd.

On the other hand, like the soldier back from no-man's-land and into the relative safety of his trench, I shall probably survive.  In which case, I shall go to the supermarket again.  There will be Christmas.

As Thomas Hardy wrote about the First World War:

"How quaint and curious War is!  You shoot a fellow down, you'd treat if met where any bar is, or help to half-a-crown"

What knife-edges we all exist on!  On what thin ice we skate!

End of Part One.

Wish me, please, a start to Part Two.  

WATCH THIS SPACE

Banging on again about guns!

Back in June 2007 I was holidaying with University friends in Bavaria in Southern Germany.  Bavarians appear to be a religious lot, and every morning at about 7 am I was woken by the local church bells.  They were loud.  I was never late for breakfast.  It was a great Saturday night, much merriment and beer, and I knew I would sleep soundly, and would find it difficult to make the 7am breakfast - after all, it was Sunday.

However. . . It was also June and it was Corpus Christi (The Body of Christ).  Just after 4 am I woke to hear church bells being rung way down the valley.  At precisely 30 minute intervals, the bells were rung closer and closer up the valley.  I could hear the sounds of the bells  pealing and their peals were being reflected by the mountains.  Either that or I was developing musical tinnitus.  I got dressed. At about 6.30, I was asked if I was going to the Corpus Christi celebrations.

At 7 am the Schlierberg bells rang again, and near the church there was a procession.  It was a long procession of clergy, choirboys, ladies laced into their dirndls.  There were also hunters (Jaegeren) who supported a canopy held over the Priests who held the wine and bread.  There must have been over two dozen Jaegeren who were armed to the teeth with rifles, but we felt no fear.

That is, until halfway through the outdoor Mass, as you probably know, the wafer of bread is held aloft, and a bell is rung, and the same happens after the chalice of wine is raised (ding-a-ling).

Not in this Mass!  At the point where the bell would normally ring, there was a giant bang as the shooters fired in unison.  Most of us jumped at the sound of two dozen rifles being discharged when we were expecting bells.  The same thing happened when the chalice of wine was elevated.

But the weird thing was, we were all alarmed, but none of us was frightened.  They had obviously rehearsed, they knew what they were doing and why they were doing it.  It was obviously something that had happened at ceremonies for decades, if not centuries..

A few hundred kilometres to the South West of Bavaria lies the peaceful neutral country of Switzerland, which adopts a policy of armed neutrality.  There are (good pub quiz question, this!) more guns per head in Switzerland, than in any other country in the world, and many, perhaps even most of them are assault rifles.

At the age of 18, all Swiss youths that are fit, have to join the Swiss Army and remain in it until they are in their early 40s.  In those twenty-two years, while they have this obligation - although they are still allowed to do proper jobs - they have to have an army assault rifle locked up in a safe place, and removed only when they are called for regular military training, which continues for as long as they are in the Army.  This encourages many of the Swiss soldiers to like shooting, so they do.  They hire a field somewhere, have a beer tent, a roundabout for the kiddies, and they have lots of fun taking part in gun competions.  A good time is had by all, and afterwards, the guns are locked away in their secure cupboards at home.  They had a good time that day, but it was also yet another practice so that they could keep future enemies out of Switzerland.  

The Swiss have one of the lowest murder rates in the world.

In 2018, I was in Italy.  I don't particularly like Venice, but a photographer friend told me about Burano.  So, I spent a couple of nights in a Venetian hotel.  The first evening I ate in a local Venetian restaurant.  I sat at the same table as an American and his wife and they were on a "four week trip round Yurrup".  Yes, they said, they were having a wonderful time and had I ever been to the US of A? (I didn't think people ever said the US of A in reality!).  So, I mentioned that I had been to several states from New York to Virginia to Pensylvania to Hawaii.  I made the mistake of mentioning the 2016 election.  They were from Florida and they were Republicans, and he added "I yam a TRUMP supporter"  Somehow the subject came round to guns.  I explained the British police policy of not normally carrying guns, and foolishly said that I didn't like travelling to America because of the number of private Americans owning guns.  He leaned forward, opened his jacket, and chillingly said "and not only in America either"  I didn't see a gun, but I did see what I took to be a shoulder holster!  How did he get a gun into the country?  What might he possibly want it for?  Why would he mention it, and show me?

I behaved as an Englishman, should behave.  I gave them "the bum's rush" 

I immediately stood up, and shook his wife's hand.  She stood up..  I shook his hand, and he also stood up.  "I do hope you have a really lovely holiday", I said in my best English accent  "You, too!" he said, and then they paid and left.  The owner of the restaurant asked if I would care for a coffee and liqueur.  He brought me the largest limoncello ever with my espresso.  When I left, he charged me for the coffee only. 

I believe that in the USA, a "mass shooting" is any homicide where four or more people are killed.  Today, as every day, there was another mass shooting, this time in Chicago.

There have in the previous six months of the year, been over three HUNDRED mass shootings.  This is about 1.2 mass shootings (at least five people) killed PER DAY.

A cousin of mine who lives in San Francisco sent me an email:  I won't quote him verbatim, but he sent me a copy of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.  It states something like:-

IN A WELL REGULATED MILITIA, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.

If you read it carefully, the Founding Fathers of the United States appear to have wanted a defence based on the Swiss model.  There is no right to bear arms unless they are controlled by citizens being members of a militia.  Can you name a militia?  I can't and that's a deadlier question than that which might be asked in a pub.  But if the American has a right to bear arms, what training does the militia give him, and also what standards have to be met?  Maybe, just maybe, if the full amendment was read and acted on, there would be the same number of mass shootings as Switzerland in six months, i.e. none.

The unpalatable truth is that various organisations do not encourage the full reading of the Second Amendment.  Gun Culture has become politicised, and with a split Senate and Supreme Court this is likely to continue.

HOWEVER . . . The least read part of the Right to Bear Arms is the title.  The Second AMENDMENT to the Constitution.  If it is an Amendment to the Constitution, then the Constitution can be, and has been, amended,. and so, in theory at least, the Second Amendment can itself be amended.

All it needs is for America to want it, and to fight a Senate, Rep, and Presidential Election to get it done.  Sadly, some of the nicest people in the World are in danger of becoming  Pariahs, unless they show the Political Will to change.

Banging on about guns!

 Banging on about guns!

This is supposed to be a long rant, addressed to the Editor of an important American newspaper, (any one will do) on the subject of gun control.  Have any of you tried to do that?  This article is too long for Facebook, and tweets are what birds are famous for.  If you try the letters page of a newspaper or press the Editor link, you can read other people's letters, or an article written by the Editor, accompanied by a request to pay for future issues, when all you want to do is rant for some length so that people can read your opinions on some subject or other.

I am genuinely scared by guns.  I was once a Training Manager in a TV factory, and I was sent on a "living rough" management course in the Highlands of Scotland.  We had an activities day.  Some of our lot taught canoeing to deprived youths, others were sent to organise an Orienteering Course.

Muggins found himself, after half an hour's instruction, teaching Clay Pigeon Shooting with a 12 bore shotgun to some unemployed Glasgow youths from Maryhill.  So of course I don't like guns!

Of course, that was then, and this is now, where my opinions are stronger than my legs.

I am very proud to have been fortunate to have been born in Britain 76 years ago, when life was, in many ways simpler, where letters were made up of letters, (think about it!), and America was the land that Cunard pointed the "Queen Mary" at.

British police are wonderful - they really are!  Even in the "Troubles" it was rare to see a PC with a gun.  And yet, when was the last gun massacre in the UK?  There was one in Lockerbie, and one in Hungerford, forty years ago.  It is a fallacy that you can only stop a bad man with a gun by a good man with a gun.  Many Americans carry guns because they believe they will be protected by other Americans who carry guns to protect themselves from other people with - (you get the idea).  Two massacres in forty years!  What a lovely country.  Guns are regulated, licences are mandatory, and guns have to be locked up somewhere safe.

Over thirty years ago, we moved to Australia.  I was a little disturbed by Australian police, as they carried a pistol on their belts.  That didn't seem at all safe.  It was the time of the Irish troubles in the UK, so we were all rather alert (bomb scares we called them).  One day, I saw a policeman sit down in a food court in Bondi.  I didn't think anything of it until a second PC sauntered in and sat down at the same table.  Five minutes later a third and then a fourth, armed with guns, wandered round a couple of times, bought burgers surreptitiously, and sat down with the first two.  By the time eight policemen, all armed, were sat down, I had started to panic.  Eight policeman with a lot of firepower, all in one place.

A police sergeant bought a cheeseburger and a coffee, and sat down at the head of the table.  They had a committee meeting.  Nine guns and an Agenda.

Then, about twenty five years ago we had the Port Arthur Tragedy.  Quite a few tourists were shot and killed by a lone guy with an assault rifle.  In a few months, Parliament, almost unanimously banned assault rifles, and all other guns were severely restricted.  There have been no major incidents, since..  About five years ago, someone shot up a mosque in Christchurch, New Zealand.  Within two months, their Parliament had banned most firearms.

Britain, Australia and New Zealand are three of the safest countries in the world.  There must have been half a million people in the Mall for the Platinum Anniversary of H.M.  How many people didn't feel safe?  How many police were openly armed? I rest my case.

Well, I've gone on a bit, so look out for the armed citizens of the US and Switzerland in a few days time.

The Holly Tree

The Holly Tree

It must have been about the time of the Coronation, sometime in the early Fifties, when I went with my Gran to put some flowers on her husband’s grave in Tewkesbury Cemetery.  I had never known him, because he had died in 1940, from the after effects of a World War One gas attack, six years before I was born.

My grandmother died in 1980, and I moved to Australia.  Nobody visited the grave.

I returned in 2005 and I was shocked to see that the grave had become so neglected that a sizeable holly tree had grown upwards out of my grandfather’s last resting place.  

I looked around at the other graves.  Many of the Tewkesbury families’ names I recognised.  The Sircombes, the Sallises, a Hathaway – even a Shakespeare lay by some Tustins, who were buried near some Hoptons and Warners.  

They were all Tewkesbury people, (I recognised their family names) but I knew none of them, because they had all died before I was born.  It was then that I realised that my grandfather would have known almost every one of them.  He’d known where they worked, where they lived, who he would have met up with in a local pub.  They might have been in the Abbey Choir, or played in a made-up cricket match in a local street.
Many of his friends left Tewkesbury by train to fight in the Great War.

The holly tree was growing out of my grandfather’s grave.  
It had grown from my grandfather.  It was my grandfather.

It was then that I realised that he was sheltering his friends from the storms of winter and shading them from the summer sun.  Who could say his grave was neglected?
May he live on for generations to come.

The Holly Tree

 It must have been about the time of the Coronation, sometime in the early Fifties, when I went with my Gran to put some flowers on her husband’s grave in Tewkesbury Cemetery.  I had never known him, as he had died in 1940, from the after effects of a World War One gas attack,  six years before I was born.

My grandmother died in 1980, and I moved to Australia.  Nobody visited the grave.

I returned in 2005 and I was shocked to see that the grave had become so neglected that a sizeable holly tree had grown upwards out of my grandfather’s last resting place.  I looked around at the other graves.  Many of the Tewkesbury families’ names I recognized, the Sircombes, the Sallises, a Hathaway – even a Shakespeare lay by some Tustins, who were buried nearby to some Hoptons and  Warners. 

They were all Tewkesbury people, and I knew none of them, because they had all died before I was born.  It was then that I realised that my grandfather would have known almost every one of them.  He’d known where they worked, where they lived, who he would have met up with in a local pub.  They might have been in the Abbey Choir, or played in a made-up cricket match in a local street.

He would have known the friends of his who left Tewkesbury by train to fight in the Great War.

The holly tree was growing out of my grandfather’s grave.  It was made from my grandfather.  It was my grandfather.

It was then that I realised that he was sheltering his friends from the storms of winter and shading them from the summer sun.  Who could say his grave was neglected?

May he live on for generations to come.

Building 75

 

BUILDING 75 - Keep Out

This is a horror story.  It is often true.  

Do not read further as it contains disturbing material!

Every day, on his way to work, the young man passed a large grey building in an even larger field.  It was a bit like a hangar on an airfield, but it wasn't quite that.  There was a feeling of menace about Building 75, but the young man, and indeed, all the young men from nearby did not know what it was.  There were all the usual rumours, but no-one knew, nor what had happened to Buildings 70 to 74.

Ivy clad and lonely at the top of the hill, very few people entered, and he couldn't recall seeing anyone come out.

He told his friend about it.  His friend laughed it off, and asked why the young man thought that there was something special about the building.  

"Would you like to look around it?" 

"I think I've just found an ideal 40th Birthday present for you." said the friend.  

"You see, I'm one of the very few keyholders of the place.  I can't tell you who owns it, or what's inside.  It's beyond Very Secret, and past Immensely Secret.  I've never been in there myself and so I don't know what is in there."

The young man was curious.

"Who gave you this key?"  

"I told you, I don't know"

"You must have some idea of what's inside!" 

"I have no idea."

"You still want to go into Building 75?"

"You bet!"

On his birthday, the young man went with his friend, and his friend took his key and opened the door.  The young man noticed the floor was uneven, and he stumbled  a couple of times.  The air was thick and he found breathing difficult.  He no longer could tell the time.  It was more and more difficult to catch his breath.  He'd had enough.  This wasn't a fun birthday present at all.  He tried to run for the door and he fell over on the uneven floor.  He could see old men in the distance.  They were all dead, they were just piles of bones.

Breathlessly he went round all the walls to find the door.

There was no door.

Anywhere.

Thirty five years have passed by in a flash.  The building is darker now, and quieter.

I am that young man.

I have not found the door in thirty-five years, but one day, someone will come through that door, and I must somehow get out.

But if you read this, you won't have found the door either.

And you, and I, and all the others, will all be piles of bones.

Tree Disease in Snow Gums

 I heard some very sad news today and I found myself surprisingly quite emotional about it.  Apparently (it was Breakfast News after all), one of the key features in the Southern Uplands, the Snow Gums, are in trouble.  (You can tell we're in a different hemisphere, can't you?  We have Southern Uplands and you have South Downs, both of which are elevatory land structures.  (Hills and Mountains)

Anyway, (distracting thought over), I heard that the beautiful snow gums are dying, and they are dying because of a disease caused by beetles, and also global warming.

I originally come from North Gloucestershire, in the UK, and in my youth I used to play in the fields.  These fields were bounded by hedges.  They've worked out that a new plant variety grows in a hedge every hundred years, so if there are four or five main species of plant in a hedge, it's probably round about 450 years old.

Our hedges contained blackberry briars, dog rose hips, haws and elms.  The elm trees stood out because they were two hundred years old and up to a hundred feet (33m) tall.  They were magnificent trees.  I used to wake up as a small child, and look across a couple of fields to a group of about ten of these giants.

From 1970 to 1974, I went to Bradford University, which entailed a lengthy 200Km long train journey.  Coming south at the end of term, once we had passed Birmingham, heading south, we went through "my" country, the wooded country I knew and loved, where the hedges held the giant elms.

It was 1971 when the Dutch Elm disease reached Gloucestershire.  I don't think it was particularly Dutch, but it was caused by beetles that turned these elms into Edam cheese.  There was no cure.  The affected trees had to be felled, and then all of the timber, every twig, had to be burned.  You killed the beetle, but you burned the tree.

At that time, there was no "Global Warming", but the beetles were real enough.  Every twelve weeks or so, as the train headed south from Birmingham, the country had changed.  Gradually, the trees where I had played were fewer and fewer.  After a couple of years, the land seemed flat.  And empty.

I have never been to the Southern Alps.  I have never seen a snow gum.  But when I heard that it was a beetle-borne disease, I feared the worst.  The elms, for all their magnificence, were only a fairly small part of the mixed ecosystem.  The snowgums are in a virtual monoculture with its own small ecosystem.  I don't know what has developed in Botanical Research over the last fifty years, but my guess is that the infestation is uncontained, and the wood will have to be burned.  A couple of years ago, we had terrible wild fires, which pushed several species of plant and animal almost to extinction.  This time, the disaster is in a small alpine ecosystem that exists in wild country.  Sadly, how many animals and plants will survive the almost certain destruction and burning of the Snow Gums?

A statistical approach to Corona virus

You know that from a previous post, I surveyed different pandemics and found that the second wave was larger than the first wave.

This was true right from the Black Death right up to the Spanish Flu

First, if you don't know about graphs, this is the terminology I use.

The horizontal axis (X) measures the wavelength in days which can be measured  either peak to peak or trough to trough.

The vertical axis (Y) measures the amplitude which is the number of cases discovered each day.  We do not know the true numbers of cases, because they are governed by the number of tests, the number of people who recovered and the efforts to minimise the number of cases.

The time taken to germinate is fourteen days, therefore I smoothed the curve by graphing the AVERAGE of the last fourteen results, each day.

My thoughts are as follows:

I have an X value smoothed by 14 points.  The shape is identical to previous historic pandemics.

If you have a medical event, it will have to be a wave of infection and healing (or death).  There is no time for a standard wave to form, and so the second wave is added on top of the first wave to form the largest wave.  This is why it is so important to attack the  pandemic as early as possible, so that the second wave is minimised.

Think of a pebble dropped into  a pond each ripple gets smaller as its amplitude is spread over a wider circle.

I've calculated that REGARDLESS of what is done (the smooth amplitude wave will vary depending on what treatment is available) the time of variation (i.e. the wavelength) will remain constant at about four and a half weeks from trough to trough.

There should be a gently falling line along the top of the waves which will cut the X axis after the fifth wave at about mid-September this year. We shouldn't even think of crossing international boundaries until early August, mid September and the end of October, but not in between.  "Normality" should return at Christmas.

So, sadly, it looks as though I shall miss the Fair, Abbey 900, and Florence, my favourite city.  Perhaps 2022, but I shall be 76, buut at least I shall not die of the pestilence :) 

Can anyone tell me why it's never done?

Back in 2008, when we had the previous depression, our government wanted to have financial stimulus.  The idea being that if you GAVE people money, they would spend it, so there would be a stream of money going through a multitude of businesses.  This would make the businesses more viable, and unemployment would drop.

Unfortunately, people didn't spend it.  Just the opposite, in fact.  They saved it for a rainy day.  After all, they, too might lose their jobs.  Or being a nation of immigrants, you sent this windfall back to your family overseas.  Either way, the money didn't pass through our economy, and the unemployment and bankruptcies continued.

And guess what?  The 2020 stimulus package is doing exactly the same thing, and people are going to save their windfalls.

So here's an idea that I think is a good one, but I've never even seen discussed.

Instead of giving Australian people Australian dollars, give them their stimulus in special Aussie dollars.  They would have the same value as a regular Aussie dollar, but they could only be spent in Australian businesses.  They would be useless overseas.  Furthermore, they would be dated, actually on the note, we'll say, three months after issue, when they would become valueless.  If you wanted to use them, you'd only have three months to spend them in Aussie businesses.

They would be cash only, so that if you banked online you would lose the cash when you tried to redeem it.  You would be forced to spend the cash, and the cash flow would help the economy.

I don't see why this woulld not work, or why it isn't done.  Can anyone tell me where the fflaws are . . . or whether I have had a truly brilliant idea? 😀😀😀 

The Iron Bridge over the Swilgate

[Excerpt from “Green and Pleasant” Sidebotham 2018]

The third bridge is the “Iron Bridge” over the Swilgate.  It never appears to have been given any other name, and its history is obscure. It must always have been a foot bridge, because of the comparative narrowness of the bridge, and it may be “about 1850”, as suggested by Verey.   (Buildings of England Gloucestershire: The Vale and Forest of Dean) ed. Verey) in the Pevsner series.

It depends on what you consider is “about”! 

1 Orientation If the bridge were to be routed from the town, via an alley to Perry Hill, there would be no need to site the bridge at an angle.  There are several sites where the bridge could be positioned north-south rather than north east-south west which is its current orientation.  This suggests a path straight from the end of Orchard Court or one of the alleys, to Lower Lode Lane, across what is now the cricket field, to the junction of the old main road to Gloucester, and also the Gupshill Road, the route to the relatively new town of Cheltenham via Tredington or Combe Hill.   Why was it built?  Now it serves as a way of reaching a Housing Development (Priors Park, 1946), but in 1850 there were no houses there, and so it is more likely to be heading towards Lower Lode.

2 Method of Construction Secondly, its construction is primitive.  It is almost as though the builders weren’t aware of the properties of iron and built it like a stone or brick bridge. (The very first Iron Bridge, built by Abram Darby in Coalbrookdale, which was opened in 1781, was constructed using methods used in wooden bridges). 

3  Primitive Design  Thirdly, it consists of two very short primitive spans and it is reminiscent of any clapper bridge found in the West Country, where there are short spans because of the lack of strength of the stone walkways.  Clapper bridges are ancient, and like this iron bridge, the spans are not archlike.


4 Elliptical Arches in Abutments The fourth item of interest are the abutments with their elliptical brick arches.  They are brick and not iron, and they are elliptical and not circular.  I.K. Brunel built a large elliptical arch in brick over the Thames at Maidenhead in the mid-1830s.  He was probably familiar with small elliptical arches like these, where there was a small load, because although there would be a slight increase in sideways thrust compared with a semi-circular arch, it would not be significant, and the arch would have fewer bricks in it.  The central pier with its cutwater probably causes more sideways thrust on the bridge through water resistance from debris, than it would receive from water currents. 

5 Fixing of Railings/Parapets
Also, the iron parapets/railings are joined to the decks by reinforcing scrollwork in common use from about 1780 to 1810, as railings and balconies in the new town of Cheltenham.  The ends of the hand rails have been shaped. 
6  Previous Comments
This might suggest the work of a skilled blacksmith at the end of the reign of King George III, maybe working to crude drawings not prepared by an engineer.  It is as though the person responsible for this structure had never seen an iron arched bridge, which would mean that its date of construction would predate that of the Quay Bridge by several years.
The bridge walkway is made of four sections.  Only the inner two are made of wrought iron plate.  The outer two sections taper inwards to the narrower iron sections, as though the designer were a little suspicious about the new material., or else there wasn’t much of the “new” material available
And finally, why is it such a substantial structure, when a simpler form would have sufficed?  Why is it not made from wood or stone unless it were important?  Did the Iron Bridge have an importance which has been lost in the last two centuries?

My opinion maybe incorrect, but speaking as a Chartered Materials Engineer, I would estimate the date of the bridge to be not Verey’s “about 1850” (however he came to that year), but about 1800 to 1810, at the latest, which, if accurate, would make it a very early iron bridge indeed, and almost half a generation older than the Quay Bridge and the Mythe
Bridge of the 1820s.   My deductions are necessarily subject to confirmation by someone on the spot, because I am hypothesising using photographs only

7 Dating of Bridge Since I wrote the above, I have come across a map of 1811 in the British Library, and the bridge is marked on it.  This makes the Swilgate Iron Bridge Tewkesbury’s oldest iron bridge by at least eleven years and it is well into its third century! 

8 Reason for just calling it the Iron Bridge Might the simple fact that it was, and always has been called just “The Iron Bridge” suggests that it was the iron that somehow made it different from all other bridges in the area.  That it was the very first bridge made of iron anywhere in the vicinity.  There are comparatively few river crossings in North Gloucestershire.  There were no railways at that time.  Canals had brick bridges so might it be the oldest iron bridge in the Three Counties?     Might it be dated back to the end of the Eighteenth Century?

Comments would be welcome please so that they may be incorporated into my booklet “Green and Pleasant” soon to be available in .pdf form free of charge (voluntary donation to THS) from sidebothamjohnATgmail.com (change AT for @)

POSTSCRIPT

As Kevin Cromwell has stated elsewhere, the Iron Bridge is a listed structure.  However, listed structures have been known to be accidentally damaged and/or destroyed.  I do not know how many times this bridge has been repaired/refurbished, and having seen it again since I wrote the above, it might just possibly be of a slightly later date than I first thought.  I still think it is earlier than 1850, but probably later than my first estimate of 1810 (the bridge on the 1811 map might have been wooden, for instance).  But it IS early, and probably much the same age as the Quay Bridge (1822).  Tewkesbury is certainly lucky to have it, but two things are important:

1)      The bridge must be refurbished/rebuilt/repaired with PROFESSIONAL archaeological advice

2)      The bridge should be signposted down one or more of the alleys from Barton Street, and "Out of the Hat" given information for tourists.



ALSO  There is the remains of a hinge at the end of the bridge.  What was it for, and why is it there?

corona

Different Pestilences, how they progressed, and evidence of how they died out

1  The Black Death 1300s in Europe

This pestilence came to Western Europe and was particularly virulent.  If you look carefully at the stonework in the Nave of Tewkesbury Abbey, it gradually deteriorates as you go towards the back of the church.  The reason is that the good (and some of the bad) masons were dead.  The doctors were dead, the farmers were dead.  There was no treatment and therefore the death rate was huge, and the curve didn’t flatten out until the susceptible people were dead and buried.  Then the plague disappeared because there were no susceptible people left.  The population were not at all mobile.

2  The Plague of 1665

 Generally the bubonic plague that devastated London in 1665 had a very similarly shaped mortality graph to the Black Death.  Lots of Deaths early on, and when they were all dead, the resistant people survived and the number of dead decreased rapidly.  The final disinfectant in London was the Great Fire of 1666 which burnt down about one third of the City.  Again, the population was not very mobile. The other interesting episode in that plague happened in a village called Eyam in Derbyshire.  A contaminated bolt of cloth from London arrived for the tailor in the village and he got the plague.  The Vicar, the Rev. William Mompesson was very highly regarded by his parishioners and he told them to stay in the village for as long as it took. Neighbouring villagers brought food and left it at the village boundary.  Eyam paid for it with money that was left in a container soaked in vinegar.  This went on for several weeks.  Almost half of the villagers died, but nobody ran away.  Mompesson’s wife died. Whole families were lost.  But two interesting things came from this: The undertaker survived, and no plague broke out at all in neighbouring villages. The undertaker must have been immune, and thanks to the inspiration and trust felt by the villagers for Mompesson, everyone stayed in the village.  Isolation works.

3  The Spanish Flu of 1918 

This was the first recorded pandemic, because by 1918, people were mobile, and many were under orders.  There were no effective drugs, death was commonplace, (although war injuries and TB were more common and more expected.  Huge numbers died because most people were under orders, there was therefore no isolation.  Conditions were appalling - e.g. trench warfare, and not surprisingly anxiety was high.  There was a lot of mobility which spread the disease and made it worse because it lasted longer and affected people over a larger area. These three pestilences had tall but narrow graphs.  The numbers dead/day shot up until the affected patients were mainly dead, and then the graph dived as the fewer and fewer remaining victims died. The graphs, (because they are straight up and straight down) record fairly few deaths, but as they all happen over a short time, they far exceed the level of medical intervention available.

4  The current Corona Virus 2019/20 

There are certain actions which look as though they will be necessary in overcoming this particularly insidious pandemic.  It is particularly serious because it is impacting a mobile peacetime society with little or no personal knowledge of extremely high levels of disease, high unemployment, or anything other than the freedom of peacetime and relative plenty.  We need to take our actions seriously, this is not a game. This is not just a struggle against a disease. It is a WAR. Also, the symptoms of this virus are not as dramatically distinctive as earlier plagues, and the disease is taking place in times when we: go to supermarkets to buy our food, we don’t grow it; we live in a “replace not repair” community, and we take personal transport for granted and have jobs many kilometres from where we live.  Very few people walk from their home to their place of work. We are also used to a great amount of personal freedom.

What we must do medically, as opposed to economically. 

We need to know how many cases there are of corona virus We must test as many people as possible to find out. We need to plot this information to establish the shape of the graph.  “Flattening the line” The least lethal and quickest way to deal with this pandemic is to allow it to kill off all people who are susceptible to it.  Unfortunately this would scar our society as we know it, and completely overwhelm our medical facilities.

If we try to “flatten the line”, by using certain draconian precautions, the graph may get flattened, but in doing so, it will take longer to revert back to zero, and therefore, ironically, more people will be killed than if nothing were done.

Consequences of flattening the line Many businesses will close.  Many people will suddenly find themselves out of their jobs.  Most of us have lost our basic freedoms.  Many of us become perturbed or frightened by our new circumstances.  It is important that to keep money flowing, people need to earn a living wage. This is where we get contentious. 

We are at war with an enemy which we cannot see, and which does not share any of our objectives, other than to reproduce as much as its “food chain” will allow.

Because we are “at war”.  we need to act that way.  Miltary hospitals should become overflow hospitals, preferably away from hospitals where corona virus is.  The armed forces have much they can do.  Where, for instance, are our two new disaster relief ships, HMAS Canberra and HMAS Adelaide? 8000 people are being stood down from one airline alone.  Could some of those personnel e.g. cleaners, have minimum retraining and clean hospitals?  This keeps an income in the family and money flowing which can be spent in businesses that will otherwise close.  On a large scale it would help to steady the stockmarket where “ordinary Mums and Dads”, and “extraordinary Grannies and Granddads” have their super in the form of shares.

PROGNOSIS

At the moment, we have severe restrictions on what we can and can not do.  These will, in time, let’s say three months, give or take, reduce the number of obvious corona virus patients almost to zero.  That would be the end of June. However . . . At a given point, restrictions will be eased, perhaps even lifted.  The coronavirus will come back, because it was never totally eliminated.  The line will go up again, not as high, and then decrease.  As restrictions are eased and tightened and eased again, there will be a “ripple effect” of maybe five cycles.  This would mean that normal life (as we knew it a few short weeks ago) will return in about eighteen months, which will be September 2021.

And I already have an engagement in October 2021!

Teddy's Life. A Giant of a Man

The year was 1968, and about four months before Christmas I moved into my furnished bed sitting room.  My first time away from Mum and Dad.  Of course I still saw them once a week when I went for Sunday lunch and did my washing.  (I know what you are thinking.  No, I used the Launderette next to my watering hole, The Sudeley Arms, where I could be sure of bumping into friends while my smalls were tumbling and spinning)  Some of my friends had that effect on me when I was twenty-two!

Christmas approached, and I imagined the feast that Mum and Dad would put on for us.  Turkey and all the trimmings, Christmas Pudding, and Trifle for Christmas Tea.

Calamity!  A couple of days before Christmas, my parents phoned to tell me to stay away.  They had both got flu.  They would be staying in bed.  I was not to go anywhere near them.

So I went shopping.  A powdered curry reconstituted with water, a half bottle of German Riesling, and an individual fruit Christmas Pudding.

I should mention that my bedsit was in a very large 200 year-old house overlooking the Park.  My ex-Polish landlord Teddy, and his family, and his wife's family and children, and two other people of my age all lived under the same roof.

One other thing about Teddy.  He had a tattoo on his arm.  It was a number.  Once, when we were by ourselves in the house, he explained that he had been a slave worker in Auschwitz for six months at the end of the War.  He told me a lot more, too, but it wasn't the sort of thing I'd want to write about here.  He was a lovely man, the sort of person you feel better for knowing.

Just as I was serving up my Christmas mini feast, there was a knock on the door.  In came Teddy.

"What are you doing here?  Why aren't you at home with your parents?"

I told him what had happened

"Oh dear!  I'm afraid I need your chair" he said, as he took my only dining chair and disappeared down the stairs.

I was destined to have a Perpendicular Christmas Dinner.

The door opened again.

"Well, come on!" he said, "I need someone to sit in it!"

So I followed him downstairs into the very elegant dining room, and he directed me to my chair.  There were three in his family around the table, as well as another four in his brother-in-law's family, two or three cousins, two or three friends, and four people from off the street.  Including me, about seventeen or eighteen of us sat down to a full Christmas dinner featuring a large roast goose.

It was quite remarkable.  I was reminded of it a few weeks ago, when I had a signed print reframed.  He gave it to me when I left his house to go to University.  He did not want it, and it was a good luck present from him to me.  Whenever I see it I am reminded of a very kind man who lived a very different life to my way of life at the same age, and his wife Renee, who both gave me such wonderful memories of a very special and unusual day!

Last Night I had a Dream

Last night I had a dream.

I was a boy of eleven again, and I was with my parents.  After our teatime picnic somewhere in the New Forest, Dad suggested that we head for Southampton Water as he had read that there were lots of ships in the Port of Southampton that evening.

Just as the Golden Hour was upon us, at about the time of sunset, we joined a friend with a small boat at Totton, then sailed down to Hythe Pier and back.  Back in 1957 there were no container ships and no container terminals.  There weren't many planes, either.  Those that had to travel, travelled by ship.

A series of ships with white hulls and yellow funnels were moored one behind the other in the New Docks.  These were vessels of the P&O and the Orient Lines.  All of them were moored in a straight line, bow to stern along the mile-long quay.

In those days, the local papers used to have a column giving dates, ship names, shipping lines, destinations, and sometimes even cargoes, so a small boy had much to dream about as he read the Shipping News.

Our little boat sailed down the River Test, past these huge liners, some of which were preparing for six- or even eight-week voyages.  The Chusan was in-bound from Singapore via the Suez Canal, while the sharp-eyed would notice the little blue flag with the white square flying from the bridge of the Orcades that denoted she would sail within the hour for the Mediterranean, Suez Canal, Aden and India.

Also outbound, but not until after dark, the Ocean Monarch of the Shaw Savill line made ready for her long journey through the Panama Canal and across the Pacific to Sydney, Australia.

The light was fading quite rapidly now as we passed two Union Castle Liners.

The Durban Castle and the Edinburgh Castle were smart as paint with their lavender hulls twinkling with the fairylights of the portholes, and their large floodlit red funnels with the black tops.

A Red Funnel ferry fussed out of the Town Quay on its way down Southampton Water to Cowes on the Isle of Wight.  Red Funnel was also the company that supplied the tugs at Southampton.  In the days before fancy devices like bowthrusters were invented, tugs had to manoeuvre the large vessels until they were going fast enough to steer by themselves.

Easily larger than the others, the Queen Elizabeth, of the Cunard Line was at the Ocean Terminal.  There was a deep sonorous note from her foghorn and she began to move!  She was outbound for New York, and would be there in about six days time.  She, too, had her two red and black funnels floodlit, and twinkles of lights in her black hull and white superstructure.  Soon, her passengers, film stars, politicians and businessmen would take their places at some of the many onboard restaurants as the ship sailed round the Isle of Wight.  She had four tugs round her, like a mother hen and her chicks.  There was a tug at the front, one at each side, and one at the stern, facing the other way to keep her straight.  They were soon discarded.

It was now dark and we were below Hythe Pier, almost as far as the huge Warsash Naval Hospital.

A wonderful sight!  The two-funnelled Queen Elizabeth, having discarded her tugs, disappeared down Southampton Water, and as she did so, the three-funnelled Queen Mary, inbound from New York, passed each other.

We turned round and headed back to Totton, past the "Mary", which was berthing at the Ocean Terminal.  Past the Orcades as she began her long voyage to India.  We passed the other liners, everyone a mass of lights, until we got back to Totton.

I remember it as if it were yesterday.

Thinking about it, it was, when I was fast asleep.

What a shame digital cameras had not been invented when I was a boy.

Hydrogen for power

Hydrogen we are told is the miracle fuel.  You see, when it burns, you don't get any nasty carbon dioxide.  All you get is lovely clean water.

However . . .

ll those of you who are older than a certain pre-computer age, you will remember the spirit duplicator.  Without going into the technicalities, you put what you wanted to print into the duplicator, wound the handle, and out came some damp pages with fuzzy violet writing on them.  I say, writing, because you could hand write on them.

I mention this, because in my year 9 Chemistry exam we were given our papers, but before we could get started, a very embarrassed Chemistry teacher announced that

"Question 4 is not very clear.  It should read "What is a fuel?". 

What a swizz!  It clearly said "What is a Fuck?"  This rapidly went round the classroom producing "fucks" all over the place.

The following week, the marked papers came back.  Question 4 had not been done very well at all.  Our teacher said that a fuel was something that could be changed to something else and give out heat.

None of us seem to have learned much at all since that day, but the sad fact is, that if you want to produce energy, you nearly always have to use fuel, and that fuel heats up the planet.

If you take a glass of water, you have zillions of atoms of oxygen joined on to two zillion atoms of hydrogen.  You need quite a lot of energy to separate them into the separate gases, molecules of oxygen and molecules of hydrogen.

You separate the two gases, and then you burn your one zillion hydrogen molecules (two zillion hydrogen atoms) in oxygen to form water and heat.

Hydrogen is a fuel, and far from being the wonder of the century, we are still fucked up.  Big time.

So what can we do?  Well, there are just too many people on the planet.  We could kill off the baby boomers, but as a boomer, I have to tell you I would resent that solution.

We need to grow plants which will remove carbon dioxide from the planet, NOT provide food and NOT provide forest fires.

Make everything out of wood, preferably hand made.  Grow pond weed followed by water lilies, and rhubarb, (we don't want forest fires!) and gradually we could work up to vast areas of rice, which could be used for thatching.  This would tire people out until they were too shagged out (see question 4) to do anything except sleep until sunrise. 

With fewer people, who knows, maybe the planet will have a chance.

The future of the Planet . . . and sadly, how to solve the problem

There's a lot of news at the moment about how we've messed up our planet, and the next two generations are complaining and demonstrating about how we have let them down.  To a certain extent they are right.  I own shares in a company that mines coal and iron ore.  Others have shares in steelworks, and more still have money invested in metal goods.  All the investment in the world contributes to global warming.

But we breathe
Cows fart
Trees burn
Dead animals and plants decay

In Science, (you were probably asleep at the time - I know I was!) you learned about the Law of Conservation of Energy.  You know the one.  When water flows over a waterfall, the water loses Potential Energy, gains Kinetic Energy, and when it gets to the bottom, some heat is given out.  (It's a well-known fact that the water at the bottom of a waterfall is slightly warmer than at the top.)

But that's not the important bit.  There's a bit that almost everyone forgets.  The Law starts with "In a CLOSED SYSTEM . . ."  The Earth is a closed system.  Almost every time energy changes from one sort to another, some heat is given out.  This warms the system, which is the Earth and its occupants.

I am sitting in a cool room.  If I stand in front of the heat pump outside, it feels hot, because hot air is being removed from the house.  In winter, it's the opposite way round.  A century or more ago, a chemical reaction between the fuel and the air (logs or coal) produced heat (and using chemical energy, created carbon dioxide!)

The important part of the Law turns out to be "In a closed system".

The more organisms that we have on this planet, the more energy is changed, more heat is given out and our closed system, the Earth must, by the Laws of Physics warm up.

So, scarily, we have to reduce the number of homo sapiens on the planet.  I say that as a scientist with no hidden agendas, not as a politician.  I was born in 1946 and one billion more people are living on this planet now, all converting energy and producing heat.

Somehow, and I have no idea how, we have to find a way of removing heat from this closed system we call Earth.  How we do it, I have no idea, but if we don't, ecosystems will change including extinctions, the planet will heat up, and the last person will die of suffocation when the oxygen level drops significantly.  Whatever we do, ecosystems will change irrevocably.

Why Christianity?

Recently, I've been reading and writing about my home town in England.

Although Tewkesbury should be well known for many things, above all it is famous for its old Abbey. 

Parts of the Abbey are ancient and go back to its consecration in 1121.  Above anything else, Tewkesbury is well known for its Abbey.  In fact Tewkesbury exists mainly because it was the "service area", the supplier of the Abbey.  Christianity has ruled the town over the last  nine hundred years because of its wonderful philosophy of improving people's morality.  Turning the bad into good.  This is not to say that everyone is saintly.  There would be no need for Laws if everyone was good.  The Ten Commandments would be more than enough to improve people's lives.
In other words, if I can stay fit enough, I shall see if I can endure that huge flight (a day AND a night in the air - about 24 hours!) and attend the 900th Commemoration of its Consecration in 2021.
And yet, even with that potential morality, there have been bad men at Tewkesbury.  A traitor, a rapist, a pirate.  Someone who was hanged drawn and quartered.  And that's only one person from one family!
But there were many many good, tolerant people from Tewkesbury, who chose to ignore the Quakers and Baptists a century before the Act of Tolerance in 1689.  And sadly, many Christian warriors who chose to fight the Crusades.
Those people were Christian because they had all been welcomed into the Church by Christening, or Baptism at a very young age indeed, long before a child was capable of comprehending anything, let alone the tenets of a complex religion.  Good, in the name of Christ does not ring true to me, even though I have a clergyman as a brother-in-law, and I am apparently very distantly related through marriage to a Saint!
Think of it like this.


Say I want to go from the centre of London to the centre of Birmingham.  I could walk, ride a bicycle, a horse, ride in a car, a taxi, or a train, or even an aeroplane, or combinations of these.  I could, thanks to the Grand Union canal, even travel by barge!  If I were in the centre of London, and wished to travel to the centre of Birmingham, I could get there by any modes of transport I chose.  They would all get me there.  Some would be more expensive, slower, more inconvenient, but all would take me from Piccadilly Circus to Chamberlain Square.
And that, I suppose is the source of my doubt.  Can we, as Christians, as Muslims, as Jews, as Buddhists, Hindus, and every other philosophy, criticise each other, when a believer in a car, cannot and will not see that a train may be as good, or do the job properly.  Because religious people, by the nature of their religion believe absolutely in their faith, everyone else MUST be wrong.

Trains?  They're dirty!  Why don't I give you a lift in my car?  My son's been in the back seat - move all his rubbish to the other side.  You'll have to excuse the toffee papers, my daughter has a sweet tooth, and she will NOT take the wrappers away with her.  The car believer thinks his car is clean, just as the train believer ignores the ten minute delays at Milton Keynes and Coventry which makes the train twenty minutes late.

Who is right?  Maybe everyone is, in their own way
Who is wrong?  Maybe everyone is, in their own way.

That's why, if I'm asked my religion, I answer "Undecided"

Millbank

Mill Bank

At last the water flows to Abbey Mill.

It is summer.

Early in the morning an apricot sky

Greets the new day..

Mist rises from the Severn Ham.

The sun’s disc rises to reveal

Morning Mill Bank. 

Flowers open and Mill Bank prepares for another day of visitors.

For Mill Bank is pretty,

Amazingly pretty.

When Mill Bank was first built, 

The random roof lines weren’t for tourists,

People just wanted some shelter from rain,

And warmth from the chill of a cold winter’s night.

But the cottages are beautiful!

Artlessly, accidentally, built into artful shapes.

Today, in the warmth of the sun, they bask in loveliness,

Their innocent beauty is wrought from the labour of long-forgotten men.

Built by artisans, not architects,

They created this picturesque row.

On summer mornings such as this,

Flowers delight the outsides of the cottages.

Poppies and daisies and baskets of flowers

Adorn Mill Bank.

The Alleys and Courts

The Alleys and Courts

In Tewkesbury when the rain comes down, 

Floods sometimes flow up into town.

There’s a tiny risk that you might drown.

The three main streets are on less low land,

So the houses on the streets are dry.

Small cottages were built 

Behind the houses on the streets,

So the cottages stayed dry.

Ways  to the street from the cottages are “Courts”

Some of the Courts join the streets at both ends.

These passages linking the streets are called  “Alleys”.

They’re too narrow for horses; we walk single  file,

The sounds of our footsteps are heard all the while,

As we pass down dark passages which go back for years; 

We travel through time back to Mediaeval years.

My Uncle Tom

My  Uncle Tom

My Uncle Tom worked in a shoe shop called Frisby’s, 

Which is thirty feet from the Cross.

He fitted boots for all sorts of feet.

That was his job and he was good at it.

By 1916 he wore Army boots

In the Royal Field Artillery.

While he drove along the banks of the Somme.

Could the pale blue sky and the white hoar frost

Remind him of the January Avon?

He drove his ammunition cart, full, to the Line.

That was his job and he was good at it .

The last thing he heard was a faraway gun.

His comrades buried him with due honour.

In less than a year when the Germans drew near,

A shell cratered the grave of Uncle Tom.

His remains were scattered on the banks of the Somme.

But his name is carved on the Tewkesbury Cross,

About thirty feet from Frisby’s