The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society

Firstly, please accept my apologies for the dearth of posts on here of late.  Excuses #1, #1b and #14 apply.  We haven’t even tweeted much of late either.  Goodness me, what sort of appreciation society is this?

Luckily for us, our hyper-active Norwich Branch of The Society have been on their annual peregrination.  Their Honorary Secretary, Doreen Bracegirdle (Mrs) has just filed her report and photographs.  I’m sure you can work out which image is which from the report.  The question is begged however, of what Mrs Bracegirdle was doing with her camera in the gentleman’s water closet.

Members of the Norwich branch of the Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society recently returned from their annual Spring charabanc outing. This year the destination was the western highlands of Scotland. Much haggis was enjoyed, a little whisky taken. 

Members were saddened to see that many poles which once had us leaping excitedly from our transport and snapping away with our cameras have since vanished. But there still remained previously unrecorded treasures to be discovered. 

Imagine our delight when, passing beneath the Shin Railway Viaduct near Bonar Bridge, one of our members spotted its two original metal telegraph poles extant. Metal poles were once a common sight on the rooftops of our great cities. Few of any sort must survive!

And what whoops of joy we let out when we encountered, on the Assynt peninsula to the north of Ullapool, a run of nearly three miles of (mainly) traditional poles along the B869 ….

running eastwards from the village of Clashnessie (pop: 38; telephone kiosks: 1). This switchback of a road is not one to be tackled by anyone who is faint-hearted or, as was sadly the case with our driver, drunk. 

The Clashnessie poles happily survived the storms of this last winter, which is more than can be said for the phone box at Shegra, further up towards Cape Wrath. The locals told our members that, two months after the gust which took out this box, BT have only just reconnected all the phones in the village. Except this one of course, which has now been adapted for temporary storage by a neighbouring crofter.  

After all our excitement, it was back to Norfolk and a quick pint at our local railway preservation centre, which does a good line in real ale. So disappointing, then, that someone had seen fit to deface a sign in the gentlemen’s “convenience”.  Some people’s idea of humour.

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The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society’s new year’s honours list is strongly recognised by the British establishment*¹. These awards are for persons deemed to have striven towards excellence in the appreciation and preservation of telegraph poles during the preceding twelve months.

The most prestigious of the awards has to be Dame Commander given to Nottinghamshire based patron of telegraph pole scrapyards, Claire Pendrous.  The full list is below.  A few honorary memberships are also handed out. There are no medals as such*² for honorary awards, but members are herewith entitled to write the word “honorary” in felt-pen onto their certificate. 

The Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society – New Year’s Honours 2015

Dame Commander of the Order of the Telegraph Pole :  Claire Pendrous

Commander of the Northern Poles, with Oak Leaves : Kev Currie
  This as a decoration addition to his self-titled “Lord of the Northern Poles”
Kev can now call himself Lord or Commander or Lord-Commander (of the Northern Poles) whichever he prefers.

Commander of the Telegraph Pole Preservation Order :Keith S****
Keith is already Honorary Technical Adviser (H.T.A.T.P.A.S.)

Well, over to you David Kendrick (#0609H).

You might be amazed*¹ at just how much correspondence this society receives.  Actual letters and emails asking about telegraph poles, I mean, not the endless automated drivel offering potions to enhance my, ahem, standing in the community etc. 

One question I get asked all the time is just how do you age a telegraph pole.  These correspondees have checked our FAQ page and still need to know just when a pole was planted.  Possibly they have some boundary dispute with their tiresome neighbour – you know, the one with the endless barking dog who throws their rubbish over your hedge and who slams their car door at all hours of the night.  Or perhaps they just like to know the age of things, like the universe, Helen Mirren or that pack of sausages in the fridge.  Truth is, other than the “Doby” mark which says the year it was creosoted, I don’t know of any way to tell when it was planted.  Presumably a list in the local BT office.  I hope now to be advised of a sure-fire way by our many telegraph pole employed readers.

Question two, I suspect, stems from the treasure hunting fraternity…

‘For DP 3081 you must search, the answer then lies in marbled church’ 

…that sort of thing.  Basically, given a DP number for a pole.  How do we locate it other than randomly wandering the countryside? I hope now to be advised of a sure-fire way by our many telegraph pole employed readers.

Anyway, here’s some pretty pictures to illustrate all of the above.  These were sent in by Andrew Chapman who whilst trying to age a telegraph pole, told me about an elderly pole at a crossing of wires onto Ash Island in the Thames, west London.  I imagine if I were to trade my house in I could probably afford the carport of one of these houses.  Or part of a carport maybe.  Anyway, Andrew told me that the local squirrels use the wire-span as a bridge onto the island.  The rifle sights were my addition – I have an issue with the little bleeders.

*¹ If you’re the sort who is easily amazed.

Gazing out of my window at my severe, shivering, sleety surroundings here at T.P.A.S.’s Svalbard H.Q. I got to trying to remember what a blue sky looks like.  Or the colour green.  Then up pops*¹ an email from friend of this very society, Adrian Trainsett Esq. – whose certificate bears the number 0484, adorning the wall of his drawing room as it does. 

Contained within this popped-up email was this first photo, taken by his good-self, of an azure sky background to a new-ish telegraph pole on the railway line near Oakworth on the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway. A gorgeous, busy pole with a full complement of 8 dropwires.  It could however have proven more gorgeous, scrumptious even, had it’s erectors deemed fit to equip it with some ceramic insulators.  Yes, I know they don’t tie them off on insulators any more, but they wouldn’t half look the part and can be had for a handful of beans off eBay.

Mr Trainsett also clearly frequents various photograph repository websites such as Flickr and sent us a link to this next beauty.  Another insulator-less blue sky pole.  This disused pole on a disused railway bridge across the river Ythan. My research of Chinese water courses turned up a blank though.  That’s because the Ythan is in Aberdeenshire not Zhejiang province.  This photo is from the collection of one chairman_pete who describes himself as a flute-playing, photograph-taking engineer from Aberdeen.  His is an eclectic photostream and this photo is now in my unofficial all-time top 5 telegraph poles.

*¹  Yes, Adrian’s email really did pop up out of my computer like a piece of toast and even required the burnt bits to be scraped off before I could read it.

Our African correspondent, Martyn Fielder (#0486), is back home in Wales, presumably for Christmas.  And after many months absent from the aesthetics not just of our native telegraph poles, but our gorgeous landscape he sent us these two photos with the following note attached…

There’s no place like home and there is always a welcome in the hillsides when you come home again to Wales. Taking a welcome break from the relentless Summer of Senegal I am making the most of the cold and damp in the dark shadow of the Black Mountains.

Before you open the attached files, make yourself a nice TPAS mug of tea, sit yourself down somewhere comfortable and assume a calm, reflective frame of mind in order to appreciate these photos. Purity, simplicity and understated elegance on a hillside near Abergavenny.

Martyn

We couldn’t agree more.  Not least the bit about TPAS tea.  Last few days to get a Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society Mug before Dec 25th.  There’ll be another 365 days after that, mind you.