Fireworks…

A couple of my regular contacts have asked about how Epi and I got together.   Having read this excellent post by Arindam I thought it was time to tell.

Why Fireworks?… Well, in England we celebrate the failure of Guy Fawkes to blow up the Houses of Parliament. Many times we express our disappointment at his failure but we still celebrate it each year on November the 5th! But this date became much more significant for me as it was the day I met my wife to be.

I was a happily single man… well reasonably so, but was starting to look for that right person to settle down with. You can do what you want while you’re young – the aposite is that you can get married, have the kids and then do what you want. It really comes down to what you want to do. I chose a life of transport enthusiasm and flying before marriage.

Given that most people meet and marry (at least for the first time) in their mid-twenties, at 35 I was an older citizen. That brings the challenge of seeking someone of a similar age group because the usual pick-up locations are less likely to provide a target rich environment (to quote military terminology). Common sense suggested putting out feelers with friends and also dating agencies – you see, at my age there was a need to apply a certain logic to the process (not that logic would have a lot to do with the final outcome!)

I met a number of people via dating agencies and other routes but none really was my ideal (and I doubt that I was theirs either!). Then I was contacted by a married female friend from the flying club asking if I’d be prepared to join her and a couple of friends for a meal. I had to organise the meal and date. I’m fortunate in having one of London’s best Indian Vegetarian restaurants on my doorstep – Rani. So I booked a table for 4 with them.

The meeting took place on 5th November – Guy Fawkes Night. I met my friend and an older member of the African Community along with a young lady who initially seemed a little sceptical but was introduced as Epi. The evening passed in a whirl of conversation but I remember little of it because I was captivated by that young lady opposite me. She had her hair slicked back in a peak on the right of her head, deep brown penetrating eyes and, how to put this, a pixie face

Meal over, we parted and went home. My friend called me the next morning asked if I would like to meet Epi again – the only possible response was yes! I took her out for a first date to St. Albans Verulam Park and the Abbey in the middle of a winter freeze with the lake frozen over (she hates the cold)! Despite the weather we had a great time and subsequently visited Kew Gardens together (yes we both love the natural world).

We rapidly found ourselves spending more time together – much to the amusement of my future mother-in-law’s foster child I dropped a hint in the following February that I would be proposing when we saw the Cherry Blossom on the trees (her last chance to escape!).

Hows this for romantic – we’re driving down the A5183 and there’s that dreaded Cherry Blossom… I ask her the Question and she says yes. Proposal in the front seat of a Ford Escort at 50mph… Very romantic

On our wedding cake – adorned as it was was with sunflowers – there was a little box of Fireworks

Ok – that’s enough embarrassing myself and my good lady… normal service will be resumed in the next post!

In Contact With The Past And Present

617 Squadron Badge (The Dambusters)
Copyright of the Royal Air Force and produced here under fair use guidelines.

Yesterday evening at 21:55 UTC I made contact with Amateur Radio Station GB5DAM in Lincolnshire, next to RAF Scampton. The call-sign of the station recalls Operation Chastise in 1943 and is operated on the night of the 16th/17th of May which is the anniversary of what became known as the Dambusters Raid. It was from Scampton that three formations of Lancaster bombers took off on the raid with the first departing at 21:39. The intention of the raid was to breach three large dams and to flood German industry in the Ruhr region. The dams concerned were the Möhne, Eder and Sorpe, of which the Möhne and Eder were actually breached whilst the Sorpe was slightly damaged.

In our modern world where technology has allowed the production of weapons that can be dropped with a precision of a few metres, the indiscrimate broadbrush tactics commonly used for bombing in the Second World War seem primitive and excessive though it was almost certainly the only possible way to attack at the time. Modern military commanders often refer to a small number of civilian deaths as Collateral Damage. I cannot think of a term to adequately describe the huge numbers of civilian casualties caused by the massed raids of WWII. And, it’s fair to say that, the Dambusters Raid was planned in the full knowledge that it would cause significant loss of civilian life. At the time of the start of the Second World War, the philosophy behind bombing was still entrenched in the 1930′s belief that the bomber would always get through and that taking the war to the opponent’s civilian population would force a rapid end to hostilities as they turned against their own government. That was wearing a little thin by 1943 and of course, the lesson from WWII is that such ideaology was false – civilians, both British and German, bore up under the assault and tried to carry on as normal.

However, looking back to that raid in the early hours of 17th May, we can see the dawning of the idea of precision bombing. The methods used were crude but efforts to provide accurate bombing enabling more precise targetting were rapidly coming on line in 1943. The dams raid was a strange mix of an attack requiring extreme accuracy with an outcome that would be widespread and indiscriminate. I doubt that we will see its like again – the modern military commander is as aware of flak from public opinion as he is of anti-aircraft missiles.

Returning to GB5DAM – The station is operated by the Lincoln Short Wave Club to remember the RAF Aircrew and the German Civilians who lost their lives in the famous raid on the Ruhr Dams of Northern Germany. To quote from their entry on QRZ.com “Sixty Nine years ago tonight we could have stood outside our shack and counted the Lancasters out and back in again next morning.” 40% of the aircrew were lost and over 1600 civilians and pow’s died on the ground. Whatever else we may think about the actions that night there is no doubt that the attack was pressed home bravely. There must certainly be many untold tales of bravery on the ground that night too.

And so to the present morning of 17th May – my first contact just before starting work was with German station DK0YLO. The Young Lady, Mareike, was talking from Sundern – right beside the Sorpe Dam that was attacked on that night 69 years ago. The station was one of several on the air this morning to highlight the mining activities of the area. A number of mines were flooded after the dams were breached but there was no mention of wars, bombing raids or flooding today. Just a friendly Amateur Radio exchange of call-signs, names and signal strengths. The pain of the past has healed over the intervening years just as the dams were repaired in a few short weeks. Whilst Amateur Radio can’t take credit for the present friendly relations enjoyed between British and German people, it is a force for friendly contact between the peoples of the world regardless of race, colour, age, gender or creed.

Operating in the Shack in 2008 – photo by Alasdair Addison

You can read a detailed account of Operation chastise , including an analysis of its overall effect on the war, on Wikipedia.

A-Z Archive: T Challenge

From My Archive I Choose…

T is for Telephone Exchange…

The first Automated Telephone Exchange in the UK, located in Epsom, opened for service on 18th May 1912. This post celebrates 100 years since that event. The first generation of automatic telephone exchanges utilised Strowger electro-mechanical switching equipment; of which later examples can be seen below in a photograph taken at Lords Telephone Exchange in the late 1980′s.

Lords Telephone Exchange is a fairly standard example of a London telephone exchange building…

…I worked in the building between 1974 and 1992 when I moved onto other work in my never-ending tour of duty for BT. Located nowhere near the cricket ground of the same name, the building was originally known as Cunningham Telephone Exchange. The exchange was built in 1937 and at one time housed two local telephone exchange strowger units, a tandem exchange (used for routing of calls only), a manual exchange and a directory enquiries bureau. A new building was added at the back in the early 1970′s to house new TXE4 local units, the first of the new semi-electronic type to enter service in London. The curved building behind the main building is the staircase / fire escape for both and was often referred to as the conning tower because of its shape. The original building suffered a fire in the mid-1990′s. All the old equipment was removed from the main part of the building. Modern equipment to provide local telephone services is now housed in a fraction of the space required for the older equipment types and much of the building has been sold off to become offices and apartments.

Both of these photos can be found on the Geograph website along with many others taken by myself and other Geographers, all accurately located geographically and often with detailed descriptions. Please pop in there and take a look