It has been much maligned as an expensive folly but finally Bradford was buzzing with vast crowds & surreal attractions.

Yesterday evening was the grand opening Finale’, a climax to an afternoon of quirky events and the place was packed.

Here is some phone footage of the final sequence, complete with fireworks and the big 100′ jet to cap it off.

We were a bit puzzled to see the Liver Birds there earlier, especially as they were still happily perched on the Royal Liver Building four hours before…

(For the background to this Photo, see an earlier blogpost here)

For all his faults, he was very sincere in his charity work, as confirmed by my Auntie who was a Nurse; he wasn’t precious about emptying bedpans. He actually had an Office (or at least a room with his name on the door) on the top floor of the Wellcome Wing at the Leeds General Infirmary, Karen had seen it when she was working there for the Ethics Committee.

In eighteen hundred and ninety five,
The men from Potts brought the movement alive.
They tested it then made it still,
then horses dragged it up Churwell Hill.
Five bells were cast and hauled aloft,
whilst the politicians supped and scoffed.
Four faces does the town clock show
that’s twice as many as down below.

Behold the Town Hall Clock, Its Morley’s time bedrock.
It’s heard throughout the town, and seen for miles around

In nineteen hundred and sixty one,
The wellington street mill’s days were done.
It went up like a tinderbox
and the sparks and embers blew across.
The tower dome it caught alight.
the firemen battled all the night.
The children have momentos still,
the lead that ran down Dawson hill.

Behold the Town Hall Clock, Its Morley’s time bedrock.
It’s heard throughout the town, and seen for miles around.

The Council they went back to Potts,
and got a new clock in a big blue box.
No longer did they need the key,
it winds up now by electricity.
The clock is mostly going strong,
but now and then it goes horribly wrong.
It’s not internet time but you’d never guess,
it’s protected now by a UPS!

Behold the Town Hall Clock, Its Morley’s time bedrock.
It’s heard throughout the town, and seen for miles around.

Now only Smiths can climb above,
with the pigeons and the occasional Dove.
If you want to go up, you’re out of luck,
cos’ the ‘elfen safety say get to… Leeds.
The clock shines out throughout the night,
contrasting with the church in white.
St. Mary’s told the time as well,
but now its just a blackened shell.

Forlorn, St. Mary’s clock,
Will it ever again tick tock?

These guys crack me up. More over at IndieGogo.

(A couple of years back I bought Karen the War on Terror board game for Christmas. We have yet to play it…)

Despite both Karen and myself being steeped in Telecommunications heritage, the museum wasn’t quite as interesting as we were expecting it to be. It does have some interesting wartime tunnels though.

(This is based on an American wedding walkdown seen on Youtube a while back).

Hat tip Ken Frost…

I was sad to hear that Councillor Bradley has passed away, the first Member of Morley Town Council to die whilst in office. Derek was a character and an eccentric, Morley is a duller place with his passing.

I had a rummage through my old files in order to remember a bit more about him. Looking at the photos, I recalled that whilst Town Mayor, he carried himself with dignity at all times and represented the Town admirably. I have uploaded many of the files to the bottom as thumbnails, click for a bigger picture.

Here is his Councillor page text from the Town Council Website pre-2007.

Member of Morley Town Council since inception, Town Mayor 2004/5

Cllr Bradley is known informally as “Brad”, a nickname from his days in the R.A.F.
His motto is a quote from Burke- “all that is necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to do nothing”

His interests include photography and F. D. C. Militaria. He is a vociferous campaigner for Britain to “keep the pound” and leave the EU.
He has been active within the Club & Institute movement for many years and has been Morley Delegate to Leeds Branch (covering 7 Morley W.M. Clubs) since 1984. He has been a Committee member at Cross Church Street W.M.C. for over 24 years, currently as Treasurer.
He is a member of “The Canal Zoners” covering 2 years National Service at the RAF 3 squadron fighter station at the mouth of the Bitter Lakes (Suez Canal Zone). Flew out and “booked” into a tent Christmas Eve 1951!
After 50 years all Canal Zone veterans finally got a medal for “active service”!
He is an admirer of all things connected with Ghurkas; this being his favourite charity viz “The Ghurkha Welfare Trust”.
He also points out that he lives in Morley, not Leeds!

http://www.stockportplaza.co.uk/compton-organ.htm

It seems that the spirit of the Arabian Adventure lives on in the Freedom of Information act, where community activists try to get clear answers from their local councils, who conspire to be as awkward as possible in obfuscating their answers. (Morley Town Council excel at this.)

Anyway, by the power of the internet, these goings on are becoming a lot more visible. Take a look at whatdotheyknow?.com

I expected to find myself getting rather maudlin as he was a very close friend and sadly missed. Surprisingly enough, I found the experience therapeutic and as the afternoon wore on, I kept discovering things from my own collection that I had forgotten I had given him.

There is a lot of stuff but fortunately not quite as much as I had been dreading. The sad bit is that much of the stories behind the ephemera have died with him. He told me a fair bit about some of the items, but I cannot be sure with the passage of time where they were saved from.

I have collected up a number of books (10 ASDA sackfuls!) that I immediately recognise. Some is duplicated and some I have already, so I can see that I will be able to sell some things on to other collectors. It has only made a small dent in the bookshelves!

The harder part comes with the filing cabinets of original research he has accumulated over the decades about our cinema and theatre heritage.  If I lived in a big house by myself I would have no worries about shifting it all lock stock and barrel to spend the rest of my life cherishing it. Unfortunately, however, life isn’t like that. Our spare room is already almost impassible with fifteen years of accumulated stuff that needs to be found another home.  I can’t really keep the collection together but what I can do is make sure it ends up with organisations that will make good use of it and keep it accessible.

One thing that I recovered today that wasn’t a book was a framed poster. It was the invitation to Mervyn’s celebration party from fifteen years ago when he took early retirement from the University. It is a little bitter-sweet for me because I wasn’t able to attend for some reason despite wanting to very much (I don’t remember why now, probably work related).  It was written in the style of a Victorian theatrical poster and one holds pride of place in the bar of the Pub where it happened.

It is held in the frame with gummed brown paper so it is a simple photo and not too sharp, no doubt I will find another loose one in due course as we clear up more stuff from the collection.

Growing up in the west end of Newcastle, our local cinema was an early casualty to bingo so the kid’s clubs pretty much passed me by, although I did go once with my cousins who lived in Byker. This was an interesting morning as the place was packed and there was a Compere, an Uncle Ernie who looked like the sort of creepy relative that your parents warned you not to be alone with. (The “Uncles” were generally on the management team or occasionally one of the projectionists). Uncle Ernie cajoled us into singing the ABC Minors song (Which the kids did very boisterously, apart from myself who didn’t really know the now familiar “Blaze away” tune even if I could follow the bouncing ball). He called out the birthday boys and girls to get goodie bags, threw out lollies into the audience (causing mayhem as kids scrambled and scrabbled to get them) and a good time was had by all.

Now Byker is a little on the rough side but it all felt very good natured and not anything approaching out of control. Contrast this with my Dad telling me he got thrown out (literally on his ear) of his local fleapit for getting caught shooting the indians with his slug gun…

Now I can remember two Saturday morning shows held in Newcastle that both sprung up  about the same time. The first was at the Odeon and was quite good, if a little low key (although my friends from the band Applecore with Stu and Toota managed to blag a Saturday morning appearance for which which I ended up as lighting designer,  naturally enough. (We weren’t paid but we were given some Comps for Dionne Warwicke instead)).

The other show was at the Tatler Cinema (possibly renamed the Classic by then) and was advertised as being (a remarkable) four hours in length, 10am to 2pm. The Tatler was a Dirty Mac Cinema and I didn’t quite know what to expect but inside it was perfectly normal, a news- theatre type building with pretty festoon curtains. The show was a bit of a let-down though, as it was a continuous performance of about 70 minutes with an interval (to sell hot dogs) then the entire show was repeated again, presumably twice. (I stayed for the cartoons the second time then went!)

These memories came back to me from an e- conversation with our local Morley Historian Ronnie after noticing that in the Elsie photos in the last blog, the Bingo hall was still advertising Saturday Children’s shows and it looked as if the screen frame was still in situ-on stage (flown out, with the electric number board tied to it below). Ronnie recalls that they did keep on running the shows for a time after it stopped being a Cinema and thinks it was a Morley tradition to have the show in the afternoon. Back in the 1930s when he first started going it was always known as the “Tuppenny Rushes”

Contrast that with the Wakefield Cine-world saturday shows where kids were £1, adults free, but there were three on at once and if you were unlucky you had to wait ten (or twenty) minutes for two of the staff with a charisma bypass  to come in, play some lame half-hearted “boys are better than girls” type shouty games then eventually roll the flick. I can’t see kids getting nostalgic for that in the (20)40s.