Little Folks: A Magazine For The Young (1884)

Working on a project, I stumbled across this children’s magazine from October 1884. Entitled Little Folks, A Magazine For The Young, it’s a mix of child’s fun-book and stern, overbearing Victorian improvement. It’s one of those strange Victorian publications that wouldn’t seem to bring pleasure to it’s intended audience, but would be deemed morally acceptable by the people who’d purchase it on their behalf.  Kids must have received these with a mix of excitement at being given a gift, and disappointment and fear that it turned out not to be something fun.

A lot of the stories end with insolent children being punished, but if you don’t fancy that, there’s games to enjoy - like filling in the missing syllables of proverbs (“be- -eth fox Geese the preach- -ware when” – of course, it’s “Geese beware when the fox preacheth”), or a ‘geographical acrostic’ where “the initials form the name of an island at the entrance of the Baltic Sea.”

The illustration here is from one of the stories, and it’s subtitled: “‘What did she say?’ the man asked sharply.” The accompanying chapter starts: “The girl came shuffling along with a look of mingled stupidity and terror on her face.” Those Victorians sure knew how to pander to the kids.

My favourite bit is this – the Notes and Queries section from the readers. Imagine a child coming up to you today and asking you about any of these things. You’d not have a chance.

[The Editor requests that all inquiries and replies intended for insertion in Little Folks should have the words "Questions and Answers" written on the left-hand top corners of the envelopes containing them. Only those which the Editor considers suitable and of general interest to his readers will be printed.]

Literature.

Little Maid of Arcadie would like to know if any one can tell her in what poem the following lines occur— “Evil is wrought by want of thought, As well as want of heart.” and who the author is.

A Northern Mole would be much obliged if any reader of Little Folks would tell her who wrote the poems “Sintram” and “Lyra Innocentium.”

Alice in Wonderland wishes to know the story of King Cophetua.

Work.

Astarte would like to know how to make a baby’s woollen jacket.

Cookery.

Pansy asks how to make Queen’s Cakes.

General.

W. E. Ireland sends in answer to W. Routledge’s inquiry the following directions for making a graph for copying letters, &c.:—Six parts of glycerine, four parts of water, two parts of barium sulphate, one part of sugar. Mix the materials and let them soak for twenty-four hours, then melt at a gentle heat and stir well. I have used this recipe and have frequently taken twenty or twenty-five clear copies. Once I took over thirty. A great deal depends on the stirring, also the melting.

Natural History.

Viola would like to know if sorrel is good for birds, and if so, in what quantity should it be given.

A. K. would be glad to know of a cure for her dog. The balls of his eyes, which were brown, have turned light blue; he can hardly see at all. He is just four years old.—[We fear it is doubtful if your dog can be cured.]

The World’s Greatest Shop

In North London is the world’s greatest shop. That’s not up for debate – it’s a fact. It’s like some kind of strange Hogwart-style emporium that (a) you’re unlikely to discover by chance or (b) see advertised anywhere and (c) is full of the strangest, most desirable things you can imagine. Well, that I can imagine – many people would think it’s just full of tat. Well, more fool them. They’ve got Westfield to keep them happy. Our paths need never cross.

London newspapers from the seventeenth century? Certainly sir, right this way. A puppet of Saddam Hussein – I shouldn’t think that will be a problem. Some 1970s feminist movement badges? Right over here. It’s absolutely chock-a-block with strange ephermera – it’s less a shop, more an incredible, tiny museum where everything’s up for sale.

I’m not telling you where it is. I just can’t. You might go there and buy the treasures. If no-one ever goes there – and no-one ever seems to, it’s always empty and the stock doesn’t seem to have changed in the last year or so – then everything will stay exactly where it is, and I don’t need to buy the things I like but can’t afford, just in case you do and they disappear from me forever.

To give you a flavour, here’s a handful of the shop’s rare goods as displayed in the window. If you think this tiny sample is exciting (like I do), then just imagine what’s inside.

TREASURE #1: “GENUINE TINY STRAND OF HAIR FROM JFK,” £45.00.

The greatest US president of all time, the subject of a million conspiracy theories, and here’s a hair off his head to pin up on the wall of your bedsit. This hair might even have been on the president’s head while it was being caressed by Marilyn Monroe, which is a 2-for-1 bargain as far as I’m concerned. If only this particular hair could talk – what stories it would have. Plus, it would be able to vouch for its own authenticity, which would be a definite bonus if you’re going to spend £45 on a dubiously-provenanced single strand of hair.

TREASURE #2: “PIECE OF COAL FROM LARGER PIECE OF COAL FROM THE BOILER OF THE TITANTIC”, £20.

I checked online to see whether this could be real, and it could be – but coal from the Titanic is worth pretty much the same as entirely normal coal. When it went down, the ship had 5892 tonnes of coal on board, and it first went on sale in 1995, when lumps the size of half a golf ball were sold for $25 each by RMS Titanic Inc, a company set up to display salvaged artifacts from the ship. The problem with this is that without all the provenance, it could just be a very expensive bit of coal.

Some might say there’s no difference between a bit of coal that was once of the Titanic, and a bit of coal that was bought last week at a garage in Kentish Town – after all, it’s all just coal, isn’t it? –  but I know which one I’d rather have. Especially if it was costing me twenty quid.

It’s worth pointing out that both this, the JFK hair and the next one don’t come in presentation boxes, but in A4 file pockets with cheaply laser-printed backgrounds. Sometimes I half-convince myself that these things must be genuine - if only because a fraudster would surely put more time and effort into making the certificates of authenticity look prestigious and impressive if they were fake.

After all, true quality doesn’t need any whistles or bells – it sells itself (although none of these things have sold. They’ve all been there ages.)

TREASURE #3: “TINY PIECE OF THE MOON. MINISCULE,” £12.

I’m used to people using the word ‘miniscule’ to mean ’small’, but this time, it genuinely means ‘miniscule.’ I couldn’t actually see the moonrock that was supposed to be in here. There’s a fine shaving of dust at various points of the A4 file folder sleeve, but the shop’s really dusty and all of the folders have dust in them, so I don’t know if this is some moondust or just some earthdust.

But still – imagine having a bit of the moon that you can touch. If it was just particles of moondust, I’d eat it. I’d like to be the first person to eat some of the moon (and if it’s just £12, it’s not an unrealistic goal), but I think someone must have done it before. I can’t imagine someone at NASA didn’t scarf a bit down in the 1960s, hoping it would give them super-powers.

I’m going to go back soon, and try and take more photos when the man who runs it isn’t looking. He doesn’t like me taking photos, but with such treasures as he has on display (and ones I can’t bring myself to buy, even though I’d love to have my own cabinet of curiosities), what does he expect?

Waxworks at the London Transport Museum

On Wednesday, I went to the London Transport Museum in Covent Garden to see their special exhibition on Suburbia. The exhibition wasn’t very good, to be honest – two small rooms of estate agent details from the 1930s, and lots of adverts from home-builders. But the rest of the museum is much better than you’d imagine, with much more interesting material covering quite a lot of the same ground – the coming of the Met Line was one of the central struts of the suburbs being developed, and it means there’s better stuff in the main body of the museum than in the slightly empty, slightly lacklustre display rooms.

If you only visit it once every fifteen years or so, the Museum is absolutely spellbinding, and walking into the old rolling stock is a real Proustian experience – some of the trains dating from the 1940s were still in use in the early 1980s on the Met Line, and it’s really odd strolling into a museum piece that you can remember using.

Each carriage has a little tableau to set the time period, and here’s a collection of the waxworks used. My favourite is the one below – the early 1960s, where the young dummies have been placed in such a way that it looks like they’re goading the guy in the suit and are about to attack him like a couple of ultraviolent Droogs.

 

Oddly, the Transport Museum is one of the handful of London museums that isn’t free – it costs £10 to go in, and confusingly, it’s actually £8, but with a voluntary £2 donation, and then they want to take all your details to get the Gift Aid tax rebate. I asked if I could pay £8, give them £2 as a donation, and not fill in the form, but it doesn’t work like that, apparently. These tax-dodges, eh? Not as simple as you’d think.

The Heminge and Condell memorial, London

I’m a big fan of the Shakespeare story – who was he? Why did the greatest playwright the world has ever known leave virtually nothing to prove he wrote the plays that bear his name? Why did he leave no books when he died? Where did he learn all the information – botanical, historical, international – that crops up in his plays? Could those plays have really been created by a small provincial insurance clerk who ran away to become an actor?

Whatever the true story is, one fact is unassailable: that the man known as Shakespeare didn’t actually write the plays that we have today. That’s not to say those words weren’t primarily his – but if he ever wrote those words down, nothing survives today. Instead, the plays we know today as ‘Shakespeare plays’ are the work of two men who have been largely forgotten: the actors John Heminge and Henry Condell.

I say ‘largely forgotten’, but in the churchyard of St Mary Aldermanbury is a memorial dedicated to both of them – and it’s my favourite memorial in London.

While the bust of Shakespeare sits proudly on top of the memorial, the plaques on the main body are dedicated to Condell and Heminge. The text reads:

To the memory of JOHN HEMINGE and HENRY CONDELL, fellow actors and personal friends of SHAKESPEARE. They lived many years in this parish and are buried here.

To their disinterested affection the world owes all that it calls SHAKESPEARE. They alone collected his dramatic writings, regardless of pecuniary loss and without the hope of any profit, gave them to the world.

THEY THUS MERITED THE GRATITUDE OF MANKIND.

The two were Shakespeare’s co-partners at the Globe theatre in Southwark, and on his death in 1616, “from the accumulated [plays] there of thirty five years, with great labour selected them. No men then living were so competent having acted with him in them for many years, and well knowing his manuscript, they were published in 1623 in Folio, thus giving away their private rights therein. What they did was priceless, for the whole of his manuscripts with almost all those of the dramas of the period have perished.”

There’s no question of an authorship controversy here – why the two men would have freely given away a whole raft of plays they could have claimed as their own (many plays of the time being written by partnerships rather than single named writers) is a noble refutation to the idea Shakespeare was not the sole author.

It’s incredible that if it wasn’t for them, the works of Shakespeare could have been lost to the world forever. Heminge and Condell were the fine thread between us having the work of the world’s greatest writer and it being lost entirely.

How different the world would be if they hadn’t sat down one day, with a pile of dusty papers and half-remembered passages they’d performed a decade before, and thought, “Well, maybe we should try and get the lot of them written down for posterity.”

It starts to make me think of all the great work that’s been lost forever simply because there was no Heminge or Condell around to save it. Everytime someone performs a Shakespeare play, there should be a round of applause at the start for the men who ensured that those words survived.

Richard Bacon on The Thick of It

From http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/comedy/2009/11/richard-bacon-in-the-thick-of-it.shtml - Richard B on his appearance in The Thick Of It. If you want to hear the interview that didn’t get me on The Thick Of It, it’s available on iTunes on my XFM Certificate X podcast number 11. Best interview I’ve ever done.

Oddly, my quote about the film In The Loop made it to the front of the DVD box – my only one I’ve had in about six years. Well, there was one about Transformers being “a good acting movie” that made the poster, but it was a misprint, and should have said “action”, not “acting.” I looked like a right idiot. It’s by no means a good “acting” movie – a genre I’m not sure even exists.

The following is (c) The BBC and Richard Bacon, and all that sort of legal thing.

Richard Bacon writes… In the same week that I interviewed Armando Iannucci on my real 5 Live programme, my closest friend Marc spoke to him on XFM. As huge TV comedy fans in general (and Armando in particular), we met at the weekend to compare notes. I remember him saying, “When Armando’s sitting opposite you, don’t you wish he’d write you in to something?”.

“Ha ha. Ha ha ha…” is how I started my call to Marc a month later. Not only had Armando stuck me in this show but elements of it are inspired by that late night trip to 5 live.

Marc, try harder next time. Perhaps you could try interrupting the interview at regular intervals to say, “coming next, are clowns funny?”. He seemed to like that. Then, towards the end, have a clown in full regalia sit next to him. That’s what I did.

The first script meeting was exciting. It had a fallen-down-the-rabbit-hole feel to it. Not only was I watching Peter Capaldi bring Malcolm Tucker to life in front of me but these fictional characters (that I love) were using my name. Oh my God I’m talking to Peter Mannion. And Terri. They’re real. I can touch them (I didn’t).

The toys in the toy cupboard had come to life.

I remember ringing a friend afterwards and saying I’d have been no less excited if somebody had given me a part in Fawlty Towers (actually that friend was Marc, felt like rubbing chilli salt into his jealousy wound).

Having never done any acting, I have nothing to compare this experience to – but the process was fascinating.

The first draft the cast saw was the fifth one. Everyone initially read word for word what was on the page. The next day we returned, only this time the script was more of a guide. Armando and the other writers took notes as everyone improvised (this meant I could hold sustained conversations with them when they were in character. Boss. I once did some thing similar with Jon Culshaw’s Dale Winton impression in a pub. He didn’t like it. I did).

The final script incorporated some of those adlibs and the process, as scripted, then looser, was repeated in front of the cameras.

Armando is very calm and laid back as he directs. All the cast are delightful. I spent so long interviewing Rebecca Front and Roger Alam (Murray and Mannion) that it became indistinguishable from a real radio programme.

Peter Capaldi is warm, mild mannered, courteous and charming. You really couldn’t accuse him of playing himself. Unlikely anyone would send him a c*** cake.

In the scene where he bollocks my producer he came up with different terms of abuse for every take. Funny every time. Astonishing to watch.

And as with every episode of The Thick of It there’s an awful lot of decent material that didn’t make it: one of my favourite lines in the script involved Mannion and Phil talking about a “shit sandwich” and the reaction one might have upon tasting it. If anyone involved in the compilation of the DVD extras is reading this, please include it. Thanks.

For the record (grandly implying that anyone cares) my favourite characters are Terri and Glenn. Give them a spin off. But for God’s sake, make it better than Joey.

I Heart The Thames

On the bridge going from Embankment tube to the South Bank.

Cafe Classique, Colindale

It’s long gone now, but here’s a photo I took of Cafe Classique in Colindale. Just outside the tube station and next to the dedicated Airfix model shop, it was the only place near the British Library’s newspaper archive where you could get something for lunch.

The women’s shoes nailed to the sign might put some people off, but if that didn’t work, they’d also plastered porn all over the customer toilets. The people who owned it never seemed very happy serving, took orders and money begrudgingly and suspiciously, and there was always the sense that maybe the women who worked there were also on the game. The academics and writers who’d come out for a break in their research would always look terrified when you came in, and they’d always eat quickly and get out as soon as possible – there was a constant sense of tension and fear that the owners seemed to actively encourage.

For entirely explicable reasons, Cafe Classique ended up closing down a couple of years later. I took this photo quite early on, but as the months and seasons passed, the shoes started to get incredibly tatty – covered in bird shit, torn up, faded in the sun, puckered by the rain. It became the most melancholy looking shopfront you’d ever seen in your life.

It always reminded me of that scene in Mike Leigh’s Life is Sweet, where Timothy Spall opens up a restaurant that has too many themes going on at once, and serves dishes like liver in lager. It’s an attempt at panache that overreaches, entirely misses and ends up being excruitiating. And Cafe Classique – I mean, look at the women’s shoes nailed to the front. What were they thinking? It’s not like you’d look at a pair of pink high heels and think “Oooh, classy.” It’s like some kind of serial killer’s grisly trophy display. You might as well have put scalps up there, or necklaces of teeth.

The British Newspaper Library moved to Birmingham a while back – I used to like it in the wilds of Colindale, totally cast adrift in a landscape that it didn’t belong in. It was also closer if I wanted to go and spend the day there. That’s more the thing I’m annoyed about it moving to bloody Birmingham. Who’s bright idea was that?

David Bowie is Ace

Last Saturday night was the weekend closest to the 5th November, and after a long and thoroughly boring series of pedestrian and moronic events, I was picking up my mobile phone from a stranger’s house in St John’s Wood. All the train lines to anywhere near her house were being worked on, so I ended up having to walk for a few hours in the dark there and back - at least on Bonfire Night, it’s hardly a lonely time to be tramping the streets.

After about an hour, my mind had turned from how nice it was to be wandering to making a mental list of really boring things I needed to pick up – like some A4 file folders and something to keep my hair from going all fluffy like a baby bird. As I walking down Eton Avenue into Belsize Park (the nearest ruddy tube), I saw a box on the floor full of A4 file folders, which someone had written “Free!” on the front of. Great! All I had to find was a box of hair wax, and this trip would have paid for itself. Even if it was payment I’d accepted in files and hair-wax.

Anyway, I picked out the first two folders from the box (I think it’s bad form to rummage if something’s free – you take what’s nearest and move on, people) and quickly popped them into my bag. I felt like a gold prospector who’d slightly lowered his expectations.

When I got home, I noticed one had some writing on the inside. While the card dividers (bonus!) had the kind of tags you’d expect, like ‘HSBC’ and ‘Joint A/C’, written on them, the inside of the folder was a big tribute to David Bowie, c.1976.

There’s so many things about this I love – the slightly wonky imagining of Bowie’s song-titles, like ‘Zizzy Stardust’, ‘Gene Gennie’ and ‘Honky Dorl’  that hint the owner of the folder might not have been as familiar with Bowie as he wanted to make out. I love the way the owner, on the other side of the file, has tried signing how he thinks Bowie might sign, and under one of the attempts, he’s added “is ace.”

And most of all I love a bit of non-Bowie graffiti on the back cover that reads “Kim + Dave – 6 months, 2 weeks, 6 days.” I really hope that it’s their joint back account, and when they’re not filing away all their HSBC statements, they occasionally put on The Man Who Sold The World and snog.

In case you’re wondering, I needed the file for my BBC 6 Music notes, for the show that Richard Bacon and I are doing in December. You’ve got to love serendipity.

Batmeat!

Things back in 2000 were very different from today. Back then, if you saw something that amused you, you couldn’t point a fancy phone at it and immortalise it – you had to use a film camera, then put it in an envelope, write a cheque out and pay to have it developed. You had to choose your amusing photos carefully.

And even when it came back, you didn’t immediately post it on some vain, self-obsessed blog. No, you left it in a box for nine years doing absolutely nothing and being shared with no one. God, I hate 2000.

This is a Batman meat product – an officially licenced one, the money-hungry DC Comics idiots! – which I saw in 2000 in Safeway, laughed at, bought, took home, opened, photographed and then fed straight to the dog. You try telling today’s young generation that’s how things used to work , well…they’d laugh in your face. And then pull their hoods up and stab you.

So after nine years in a box, here’s a photo I took of some Bat-meat in 2000. It’s almost like I somehow knew the one thing we’d need in the future would be more images of nonsense.

Maybe I should have called this ‘Bat-ham.’ Or ‘Gotham.’ No, I was right to go with Batmeat.

Richard Bacon on BBC 5 Live – Live from his house

This Monday, Richard Bacon’s BBC Radio 5 Live show came live from his house in Belsize Park. It was to celebrate an anniversary – of what, you’ll either know or you won’t, but if you don’t, it’s not going to be me who tells you.

Set up in his living room, I was on-air in the role of the Presenter’s Friend – and there were moments that had an almost dream-like quality.

Sitting in Richard’s lounge next to Chris Evans, opposite philosopher Alain De Botton and Britain’s Got Talent finalists Stavros Flatley, and watching an oompah band perform Britney Spears’ Toxic at half past midnight is undoubtedly an unrepeatable moment in life.

And what a lovely photo to end with (taken by Richard’s sister-in-law Kirsty) of guests Danny Wallace and Alex Zane, whose expressions really sum up the sheer enjoyment of the night. I don’t think I’ve ever had more fun doing a radio show than I did doing this one.

You can hear the whole show here on the BBC’s iPlayer, but it’ll be taken off within the week….