Letters to the Editor - February 2012

Reading the letter from Roy Jenkins (December) took me back down Memory Lane.

Roy recalled the smells associated with certain trades or professions. I have strong recollect­ions of such a smell in the 1950s and 1960s when I was working for Royal Worcester porcelain — now sadly gone.

Artists engaged in painting the fine china could easily be identified by the smell of a medium they used with their ceramic colours: aniseed. The strong sweet odour permeated their clothing and went with them when they left their workplaces. Not an unpleasant smell, but they were glad to discard their working clothes and take a warm shower.

Maurice Whitehouse, Hallow

With regard to ‘The Way We Were’ (December) and the description of the horse dying and then being reborn being a representation of winter to spring.

I hadn’t realised until reading the article that this was so. It partly explains some of the ritual practised each May Day in Padstow.

They process through the town singing a song, the chorus of which contains words which, although clear, make no sense at all. I assumed that their horse was also part of the same ‘nonsense’, but the article explains why the horse takes centre stage, especially as the rest of the song is clearly understood to be a joyous welcome to summer.

I found Padstow’s May Day celebration very special. Generally this type of ritual is conducted in a light-hearted, jokey manner with an attitude that is slightly condescending because “we modern people know better and it’s only a bit of harmless fun”.

It’s not like that in Padstow, where they take their ritual very seriously and conduct their day with almost a religious fervour.

That is not to say that it is sombre; quite the opposite — it is a joyous and at times raucous celebration of the coming of summer.

Plus, because the streets are so narrow, the numerous booming drums have the same effect as being in a modern discotheque, with the same hypnotic result.

I can recommend a visit to look and watch and even take part, but there is a slight downside to it because you come to realise that you don’t really belong there.

John Timbrell, by email

I went for a walk in the meadow next to our house in mid-December; halfway around I encountered a male pheasant. Now normally they fly or run away if anyone approaches them, but this one must have been taken with my company and walked all the way home with me. It even tried to communicate with me in ‘pheasant-speak’.

It stayed outside our French windows for a considerable amount of time, and I wondered if I should invite it in for a cuppa.

I can’t think why the pheasant wished to escort me home in such a gentlemanly fashion. I would have thought that human company would be the last thing the bird would seek out, as the pheasants are bred for a shoot.

Rose-Mary Gower, Treuddyn

The article ‘Off the Straight and Narrow’ by Craig Roberts (October) made me smile.

I work much of each week in such a building. Trying to fit in modern office furniture is somewhat comical, and standard five-point ‘wheely’ office chairs are most likely to end up with you pinned up in a corner, unable to move away, because the floor was built with unseasoned oak, some 500 years ago.

But my own address, and that of the building, is in Birmingham. So where is this great place? Saint Nicolas Place is the building, and it is in King’s Norton. Built in 1491 by a rich wool merchant called Humphrey Rotsey, it has had many uses over the past 500 years: family home and hall; public house (named the Saracen’s Head); tenaments; and, over the last eighty years, a much-loved church-owned community space. 

Needing thousands of pounds spending on it to keep it alive, it was entered into the 2004 BBC Restoration competition and, with its older sister, the Old Grammar School, it won. The prize money, together with locally raised money, provided for large-scale restoration and some new build, providing a marvellous blend of ancient and modern.    

It is now here for all to enjoy, and is only a few miles from Junction 2 of the M42. For more details of how to visit, see www.saintnicolasplace.co.uk

It is the most fantastic place to work in — however wonky its floors, walls and windows.

Sylvia Fox, by email