Endorphins

I tried Runkeeper (free version) for my iPhone this evening in an effort to get out into the fresh air and become a little healthier. I haven’t walked, for exercise purposes, in years. Starting off on my usual route tonight, I completed 1.44 miles in 24.17 minutes. Now, before you runners start laughing, this is just a beginning. Nine years ago, I was walking five or six miles before going to work every morning but working outside Bangor soon put the kibosh on that with having to leave for work earlier.

I was very pleased with the technology (with the usual level of amazement) but I noticed that my battery power was running down fairly quickly. The best feature for me was the instantaneous uploading of my trip to the Runkeeper website as soon as I had finished my walk. I was also very pleased with the accuracy of the trip map as it picked up when I had crossed roads etc It certainly will encourage me to better my time. I also Tweeted the trip from the computer.

Fully charged battery for tomorrow evening – onwards and upwards!

 

Neglect

I have watched, for perhaps a year now, the neglect of this beautiful old house on the Bangor to Belfast Road. To be fair, I have no idea why it has lain unattended and unloved for such a long period. It could be that the previous owner died intestate or, more likely, a developer has bought it and is allowing to fall into the realm of “beyond economic repair” for planning purposes. The missing roof tiles and the holes in some of the windows will hasten it’s demise, but it’s a real shame.

The house itself has elements of both the 1920s and 1930s but may have been built much later. It also reminds me in some way of US house design, especially with the overhanging porch and the depth of the roof. Its a real beauty and as I didn’t have a substantial win on the National Lottery this weekend, will continue to deteriorate. I’d love to have a close look round the property but someone has nailed a large official-looking KEEP OUT sign onto the wooden gate. As I’m a mainly law-abiding citizen, I fear that it won’t be possible. 😉

For a bigger picure (for the lovely detail!) click here and click on “All Sizes”.

 

Mentor

This is Sam Lynn. I first met Sam in Bangor’s Carnegie Library when attending my first meeting of Bangor Chess Club in the late 1980s. Sam usually officiated at these meetings in some capacity and was certainly seen as a go-to person when things were being organised. Sam lived, breathed and slept chess, but he also had many other activities to keep him busy and alert. He was an avid reader, with his own supply of “order cards” for Bangor Library and when reading his Times, he’d fill one in if there was a book review that piqued his interest. In the early 1990s, he moved house from Ballymaconnell Road South down to Parkmount, beside Ward Park in Bangor, so that he’d be closer to the library but also for a bigger garden and proximity to his third love, after gardening, lawn bowling. I think he moved down to Parkmount around 1992, at which stage he was already 84! His energy and alertness at that age was amazing and not a little inspirational.

Back to chess; I was lucky enough after attending two or three meetings to be invited to Sam’s house on a Sunday morning for a game or two. That Sunday visit ended up being most Sunday mornings for around fourteen years. I look back on those Sunday mornings as being oases of calm, a welcome break from a busy week and my young family. We would play in complete silence, interrupted only by Sam’s internal clock telling him it was time to put some milky coffee on the stove and to dig out a couple of chocolate digestives, and then it was back to the board for another ninety minutes or so. We were fairly evenly matched with most days play ending at 2-1 to me or Sam. I learnt loads though. Sam was a “book player”. He knew dozens of openings and studied chess books regularly. My game was and is mostly instinctive but I learnt calm, thoughtfulness and thoroughness from him. On a few occasions, he or I would play despite not being in great form and make some silly mistakes. He was polite enough just to say “we’re a couple of pockles” (no idea where the word comes from, but I’d be interested to know more). At one point, I bought a small trophy and had it engraved “The Ballymaconnell Challenge Cup” and this passed from Sam to me and back again as each of us were “first to ten wins”. Each set of ten wins was recorded by a coloured dot on the side of the base. Best £10 I ever spent!

Apart from the chess, we also became good friends and talked for hours about anything under the sun. I learnt, for example, that he was headmaster of Dunlambert High School before he retired. I asked him once why he had a plaque of the Scots Guards on his wall in his conservatory (I imagined at some point him being an officer in the armed forces given his confidence, and sometimes gruff and forthright manner) and he explained that when he was teaching, the CO of the regiment came to visit his school and presented it to Sam. He also went on a trip to Tennessee for two months on behalf of the NI education department as a research trip in the 1950s and shared his collection of photographs with me. It was, however, the experience of his first wife dying of cancer when his two boys were young that I believe formed the basis of his friendly and charitable outlook on life. I was told by a mutual friend that when he was younger, he was a Presbyterian Elder in his church, but when he saw what his wife went through when she died, he lost his faith. For all of the years I knew him, he was a Humanist. He didn’t proselytise nor preach against organised religions and was always interested in learning more about them. He did share a poem he wrote though which described his puzzlement, frustration and curiosity with Gods.

The Problem
We come out of the great unknown We go into the vast beyond And we’re here because we’re here Because we’re here …
The cruelty of ignorance The frustration of not knowing – So the universe began as a big bang An it’s expanding; well, let it expand. Where does that leave me? At least I’m alive
And can eat, and drink and be merry, Can enjoy the sun and the wind and the rain And the grass growing and the buds bursting And the birds singing and the waves crashing And can exercise my mind and my skills.
But I keep coming back to one sad truth: Life to live has only life for food. Nature, red in tooth and claw Kills and devours. And the so-called highest form of life –
Mankind itself – Rapes, tortures, kills and slaughters The wide world over. The survival of the fittest Is the destruction of the many.
But this is God’s plan! Which makes it very difficult to believe in God. Yet life without God is meaningless. That Is the Problem.

I called this post Mentor, and my purpose in doing so was to recognise the mentoring qualities of Sam Lynn. Sam almost never gave me advice but from the many, many hours I spent with him I learnt so much about how to treat people, how to give and not expect a reward and how to contribute. He was generous with his time to many people and his home had a open door policy as long as you had time for a pot of tea and a game or two. I was very pleased that I could bring him his shopping most weeks to save him a journey to the supermarket and help him a little when his house caught fire following an ill fated attempt to light his fire when creating a draught with a newspaper so I like to think we evened things up a bit, but I know I definitely got the most from the relationship.

Sadly, Sam died in November 2002. I miss him.

Living History

My previous post has given me some pause for thought. Not only have I had some great colleagues over the years, I’ve also been lucky enough to get to know some fantastic customers.

Around twelve years ago, I met Mr William Hunter McGiffin while managing Crazy Prices, Springhill, Bangor. Mr McGiffin was elderly, perhaps in his eighties, not very steady on his feet and always seemed to be in a rush. He explained that his wife was ill and that’s why he rushed around, as he didn’t want to leave her alone for too long. Over a period of some months, I helped him find a few things and away he’d go, back out the door again. At one stage, I delivered some shopping as he too was ill to come out for it himself.

On one of the days when he seemed not be in too much of a hurry, he thanked me for my help. Always addressing me as Mr Parte despite my protestations, he spoke quietly with a NI public school accent. It sounded like what Radio 4 call “received pronunciation”. I cannot imagine him ever having raised his voice in anger.

During one of our conversations, the subject of the Second World War came up. Always a favourite subject for me, I asked him if he was involved. He modestly talked about flying in the RAF, how he flew Short Sunderland flying boats out of RAF Castle Archdale on ASW duties. At one stage he also flew the Armstrong Whitworth Whitley two-engined bomber, Hawker Hurricanes, and so on. His middle name, Hunter, must have been fairly apt at this time of war. He glossed over most of what must have been a horrendous time for him and his family. He told me also that in 1946, he got married and that he and his new wife bought the red brick house on the left set back from the road when coming out of Holywood on the bypass, for the sum of £4500 and that he was sorry he ever sold it!

I found him fascinating and regret not getting more of his story. Before I moved out of Springhill in 2000, he approached me in the shop one day with a woman who he introduced to me as his daughter. She was home from Germany on holiday. I was a little embarrassed to be introduced as “this is the man I told you about.” Any help I had been able to give him during the time in which I knew him was a pleasure and an honour, but it was lovely to know that he seemed to appreciate it.

A few years ago, as I was browsing history books in Easons, Bangor, I saw a picture of him in uniform. The book noted that he was now deceased. It turned out that he was not just a pilot, but at one stage a squadron leader and then a wing commander. I believe that he was with 502 (Ulster) Squadron. This evening, I managed to find a picture of him, on the internet, taken in Wiltshire in February 1943. He is in the second row from the back and fifth along from the left. He hadn’t changed much from the picture when I knew him.

Mr McGiffin was a real link with history for me, as well as being a lovely man. He must have been a great husband and father also. I am honoured to have made his acquaintance.

I’ve always been fascinated with history. Not with the Greeks and Romans, but local fairly recent history. I’ve researched my own family history going back some years and I enjoy the sense of history that old buildings bring, for example. However, I think that we all miss opportunities when we fail to talk to the elderly within our communities and families. All of my grandparents are dead and I have a number of aunts and uncles who are in their sixties and seventies. I’m going to make an effort to talk to them specifically about our family and local history. They are a living resource!