Proceedings of the Castle Aching Parish Council, 1905

[Hroth]

18 minutes ago, Compound2632 said:

I've looked up the provenance of the illustration but I'm not going to spoil the fun. All I'll say is, I think the style was becoming just a bit dated by the date of publication.

 

Go on!  You know you want to!!!

 

Its beginning to sound like the "Spot the Fake Painting" series that Sky Arts (on Freeview) have been showing over the past few Wednesdays...

[Nearholmer]

I reckon it’s from “The Farmer”, rather than “ The Farm”, and that series (people at work) was being issued when I was learning to read, so early 1960s?

 

I think it might be the same book that has a very good picture of a milking parlour, exactly like the one that we used to ‘help’ my father in when the cowman was away from the school where my father taught. I’d love to see that again if the book is to hand.

 

 

[Edwardian]

2 hours ago, Hroth said:

 

I was hoping that a particular item of the policemans uniform, his duty armband, would narrow the field down, but they were withdrawn in the late 60s/early 70s so thats not much help!

 

The children are rather too well dressed to be 70s, so perhaps that moves the range back a bit.

 

The dippers look odd. The blue protective coats look "official" rather than what a farm labourer would wear to go a'dipping, also the glossy wellies and that the bloke on the right appears to be wearing a collar and tie and is apparently "well groomed", coupled with the attendance of the Law suggests that the dipping might be being done by MAF(F) operatives, under the supervision of the farmer.

 

As for the fencing, apart from the wire mesh, everything else is wood rather than the tubular steel you would expect in a more modern farming environment, so if not mid-late 50's then it could be early 60's but still archaic enough!

 

 

 

The problem with the '50s date (and note that I have consistently referred to it as '50s style', rather than as a illustration of that time) is that the compulsory dipping (with the consequent official attendance) ceased in 1952 and did not resume until 1972, hence my suspicion that this is a rather nostalgically idyllic depiction of a farm whilst illustrating events from the later period of State-supervised dipping.

 

So, while the policeman's conveyance may suggest late '50s onward, I don't think the scene can be that early.  I like your point about the 'dippers' being 'men from the ministry'; something was nagging at me about their appearance and I think you've hit the nail on the head.  Again, Men From MAFF, showing a Traditional Farmer on his largely unmodernised farm, the Modern Way of 1970s dipping with Improved Chemicals might be what we see here. 

 

Now, Velocettes apparently ceased production in 1970 because the manufacturer went bust.  Some Police forces seem to have used them up to that point and beyond; this site refers to the Kent Constabulary buying up the spare parts on the insolvency.  Even so, apparently they only kept them going until 1974.

 

That gives us a very specific possible (though not necessarily likely) window of 1972-1974 for Annie's picture.

 

I begin to doubt the accuracy of this illustration!  I agree with you that the very well-presented ideal '50s children do not fit well with the 1970s-80s compulsory dipping period, and it is looking increasingly unlikely that the Motorised Plod would still have his Noddy bike by then.  Thoughts of 'nostalgic confection' spring to mind, and I'm not talking Werther's Originals here. 

 

Interestingly, a reason cited for the demise of the Velocette was ....

 

 

The phasing out of the Noddy bike must have been a gradual process.  I think that the 'Z car' was the Ford Zephyr 6 Mark III, with the new styling introduced c.1962, at least that's what I think was used in the Z Cars TV series that ran from January 1962.

 

So, to play us out this morning ....

 

 

EDIT: Apropos Kevin's suggestion that the picture is from Ladybird's The Farmer, Amazon gives a publication of 31 January 1963, consistent with Kevin's recollections.

 

That, to me, works well with the retro-children and Noddy bike and the the galvanised steel stock fencing.

 

If the illustration is from The Farmer, I'd posit that it's anachronistically looking back to pre-1952 compulsory dipping. 

 

 

 

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Edwardian
spelling!

[Annie]

Gosh that takes me back, - a couple of my friends owned Zephyrs when I was in my late teens - early twenties.  

[Hroth]

I know what you mean about it being a "nostalgically idyllic depiction of a farm".  It is similar to the jigsaw puzzle illustrations of railways and seaside scenes.

 

The Velocette LE was considered by some forces to be the best motorcycle they'd ever had, on the grounds that it was reliable and so quiet that sometimes the villains didn't know the police were upon them!  Its major problems were that it was relatively slow and offered little in the way of weather protection and comfort compared with Z Victor 1.

 

 

Gordons Alive!!!

 

And Judi Dench giving DS Watts a hard time is priceless 60s tv!

 

 

[Edwardian]

Eureka!

 

Right year, Mr Bond, wrong book!

 

Deans Gold Medal Farm Book 1963, Written by Arthur Groom, Illustrations by J B Long. 

 

EDIT: I did an image search on "sheep dipping illustration".  That gave me the book.  We also, now, have the caption:

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Edwardian

[Hroth]

Informative text too, in the original...

 

 

The idea that sheep are sentient beings and have an opinion about being forcibly dipped chimes in with modern thinking!

 

[Northroader]

“Look, Janet, the police-man is stopp-ing the sheep gett-ing in the bath to-gether”.

”Yeth, John, Mummy wath tho croth when we did that!”

[Nearholmer]

I was just about to type that I was havering, because the illustrations in the People at Work series were very realistic, possibly photos, or somehow from photos.

 

Anyway, thanks to all for a serious nostalgia-fest.

 

The youngest of my uncles is a leading light in the Velocette Owners Club, having a shed full of them, including his own Venom and his brother’s Venom Clubman, both from somewhere around the same date as the illustration.

[Edwardian]

2 minutes ago, Hroth said:

Informative text too, in the original...

 

 

The idea that sheep are sentient beings and have an opinion about being forcibly dipped chimes in with modern thinking!

 

 

My edit and your post crossed.

 

I know that HMG have recently insisted that my Labradors are sentient, but, to be fair, no one  from government has met them.

 

And, just in case you're tempted to pay Amazon £757 for a copy of this book, DON'T (the children only get worse)!

 

 

[Hroth]

l found the picture in one on offer on ebay. £8, no bidders...

 

The egg-collectors look like an illustration for a possible childrens edition of "The Midwich Cuckoos"!

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Hroth

[Caley Jim]

21 minutes ago, Hroth said:

The idea that sheep are sentient beings and have an opinion about being forcibly dipped chimes in with modern thinking!

A local farmer once told me that a sheep's one ambition in life is to die!  This after I found one of her tups, half a dozen of which were in our field, dead.  She reckoned he had come out second in a head butting contest with one of the others!

 

Jim

[Edwardian]

1 minute ago, Caley Jim said:

A local farmer once told me that a sheep's one ambition in life is to die!  This after I found one of her tups, half a dozen of which were in our field, dead.  She reckoned he had come out second in a head butting contest with one of the others!

 

Jim

 

Agree.  I am surrounded here by sheep.  As my neighbour, who farms them, remarks, "sheep are born to die".

 

Had to wrangle a lamb out of the lane only this week.  

[Compound2632]

59 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Deans Gold Medal Farm Book 1963, Written by Arthur Groom, Illustrations by J B Long. 

 

That's the one. I'd got there by the same route. 

 

In the same Gold Medal series, a book of trains:

 

 

... but also several books of fairy tales and rhymes that are more than slightly twee and the sort of stories about Jesus book that would put one off religion for life. So my impression is that the Farm Book occupies the middle ground!

[rocor]

1 hour ago, Edwardian said:

 

 

Interestingly, a reason cited for the demise of the Velocette was ....

 

 

The phasing out of the Noddy bike must have been a gradual process.  I think that the 'Z car' was the Ford Zephyr 6 Mark III, with the new styling introduced c.1962, at least that's what I think was used in the Z Cars TV series that ran from January 1962.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Those gleaming white mark 3 zephyrs in Z cars, were in fact painted yellow, as that showed up better on the black and white (the only ones that were available to us in the early 1960s) televisions.

[Nearholmer]

Bible stories - railway book crossover memory triggered by this e-versation:

 

Getting a very mild telling-off for copying-out drawings of US railroad logos from this book in class, when we were supposed to be making paper palm trees to add to a model of half of the Holy Land that filled a huge table at the back of the room. I was about 7yo at the time, and can’t explain for the life of my why this particular incident has lodged.

 

 

 

 

[Edwardian]

2 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

... we were supposed to be making paper palm trees to add to a model of half of the Holy Land that filled a huge table at the back of the room. 

 

 

 

Now you could just model the rockets and the bomb craters. 

[rocor]

 

I looked up the first episode of Z cars, and found that the only Zephyr that was shown in it was the mark 2, and then only in the opening and closing credits. The police car that featured mainly in the episode was a Ford Anglia with two detectives in it.

 

Maybe I should now be posting on the "For those interested in old cars" thread?.

 

 

[Edwardian]

2 minutes ago, rocor said:

 

I looked up the first episode of Z cars, and found that the only Zephyr that was shown in it was the mark 2, and then only in the opening and closing credits. The police car that featured mainly in the episode was a Ford Anglia with two detectives in it.

 

Maybe I should now be posting on the "For those interested in old cars" thread?.

 

 

 

Yes, from my very limited understanding, that's a pre-1962 car, because it lacks the very obvious re-styling of the one I posted.

 

As Zephyrs seem to have been in production sine 1952, I wonder when the Busies started using them?

[Nearholmer]

27 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

Now you could just model the rockets and the bomb craters

 

Sadly so. I read the BBC "How did it all come to this?" beginner's guide to the conflict yesterday, which manages to elide through the first half of C20th and not mention The Balfour Declaration, so I then went and read a couple of pieces on the causes and consequences of that - talk about sowing the seeds of trouble.

[Compound2632]

54 minutes ago, Nearholmer said:

talk about sowing the seeds of trouble.

 

Yet another irresolvable modern trouble to be laid to our forebears* account.

 

*In a general sense. I'm not saying that I am myself descended from Arthur Balfour.

[Edwardian]

I was thinking about traffic lights and how the sequence of colours does not actually mean what is popularly believed to be the case, e.g. amber actually means "stop" etc.

 

I suspect that our current Covid travel restrictions have been similarly misunderstood:

 

Green: You are permitted to travel to this country provided you are a monumentally selfish git, but only if that country will let you in, which it won't, so Green actually means 'stop in the UK'

 

Amber: You are not permitted to travel to this country, but, given that you have, you must spend as much time as possible in aircraft and in airport queues with Green country passengers before placing yourself in self-quarantine for 10-days, or undertaking whatever level of compliance you think you can get away with.

 

Red: If you have been unfortunate to travel to either Bedford or Bolton, for F-k sake stay there and don't give the bl00dy variant to us!  

 

 

[Compound2632]

It's perhaps worth recalling that green originally* signified caution, with white for all clear.

 

*In railway usage.

[Nearholmer]

 

11 minutes ago, Edwardian said:

If you have been unfortunate to travel to either Bedford or Bolton, for F-k sake stay there and don't give the bl00dy variant to us!  

 

Too late for that sentiment here, according to a letter from the local Head of Public Health, which I read not ten minutes ago.

 

It has travelled from Bedford, and taken-up residence in one of our local senior schools ....... the one which about a third of the boys in the footie team that my son plays for attend. Those lads are self-isolating now, and thankfully both the match last Saturday, and training on Wednesday were postponed due to waterlogged pitches.

 

I wonder if football was the route of transmission because, once boys reach a certain age, the league covers a very large geographic area, and despite all reasonable precautions, breathing, both out and in, very near to one another, happens rather a lot during a close-fought match.

 

Son and I have tested negative twice since the last time we were at footie, thankfully.

 

 

Edited May 14, 2021 by Nearholmer

[Compound2632]

1 minute ago, Nearholmer said:

despite all reasonable precautions, breathing, both out and in, very near to one another, happens rather a lot during a close-fought match.

 

It has been my view throughout the pandemic that strenuous physical exercise in a public place should have been forbidden. The number of times I have had to dive off the path out of the way of runners and joggers...