These much ignored pieces of rural and urban furniture finally have a website of their own.
This is not the site to visit for technical information pertaining to telegraph poles. You'll find nothing about 10KVa transformers, digital telephone networking or even so much as a single volt. This is a website celebrating the glorious everyday mundanitude of these simple silent sentinels the world over. We don't care what the wires contain either. They all carry electricity in some way be it the sparky stuff which boils your kettle, or the thinner stuff with your voice in it when you're on the phone.
Insulator Roost
Regular readers of these pages may well remember Simon Natelson-Carter (#0372). For he is the curator of the Tamsin Pastelle museum in Wiltshire. It was he who introduced us to the fine telegraphic depiction by Ms Pastelle entitled “Insulators 1” the summer [sic] before last.
He writes again, two-fold. Firstly to inform us that the museum has acquired two new pieces; one of which is an example of her” butterfly and cupcake poles”, and another, a “moody full-portrait of poles, bringing out their root, stem and plant-like nature”. Our breath is bated, a lot, in anticipation. Apparently, we may well get clearance to see them by December. Watch this space.
Meanwhile, he has also sent us the photo (right), captured by his friend, Mike Barratt, also of Wilthsire, showing a rare sighting of the twilight-gyre ceremony performed by bullers and pot-head insulators immediately prior to roosting for the night on the crossarms. Puts me in mind of the Rainham Marshes at sunset.
The Great Telegraph Pole Cover Up
Just look at this amazing sequence of photos. These were captured by our underground and underwater agent, Adrian Trainsett (#0484). They provide proof positive that, as long suspected, BT are concealing telegraph poles the length and breadth of Britain.
What started out as a perfect saucy pole in the countryside near wherever this is, gets slowly covered over by foliage which the engineers brought with them and can be clearly seen in their truck in picture #3.
08:55am
A BT inspector arrives to check out this perfectly saucy pole in the countryside near wherever this is.
09:25am
After a refreshing cup of tea in the BT Openreach van and a read of the Daily Star, said BT inspector climbs the ladder and attaches the first bundle of foliage to the top.
10:47am
Two more tea-breaks, a quick look at the sudoku another fag and then back up the pole to nail up more tree stuff.
Truck load of foliage can be seen waiting to be attached.
11:55am
They’re nothing if not meticulous. More tea, a nip off to the shop for some pasties and a twix then back to the job in hand.
The foliage has to be fitted properly otherwise it won’t look convincing.
1:22pm
Very little left to see of the original pole. A whole skip load of foliage has been attached to this pole and 18 cups of tea consumed.
2:37pm
The afternoon tea break is very short. They realise they’ve taken the mick a bit too far and they’ll end up having to work over.
Just the finishing touches now though. Time for one more cup of tea, a fag, a biscuit and a quick shufty at that mag Terry brought before buggering off home.
3:22pm
That’s it, job done! Hop back into the van, throw all the crisp packets and pop-bottles into the hedge and drive off back to the depot.
Another telegraph pole covered over to spare the blushes of sensitive ladies who may be passing and aroused by such things.
Wensleydale Cheese Poles
We’re just back from a nano-walking break in the Yorkshire Dales. I say nano because it was too small for a mini-break, being just a one day job. We were actually on our way to Sunderland, but couldn’t bear to drive the motorway all the way so took the slow road via the Yorkshire Dales. By amazing stroke of luck we had our walking boots with us. And so we dallied a while and took to the Pennine Way for half a dozen miles starting at the lovely townette of Hawes.
On the edge of town is the Wensleydale Creamery Dairy. And this delightful little triptych of aesthetically pleasing poles met us as we rounded a corner by the church. They clearly carry the heavy duty cheese-making wires for the factory. Anyway, Wallace’s mutt Gromit had obviously been this way too as it was only shortly thereafter that I managed to put my foot in some of his doggy curds and whey!
Please see Pole of the Month Nov 2012 for another curiosity from the same walk.
Pole of the Month – November 2012
Last Thursday, myself and Mrs TelegraphPoleAppreciationSociety set out on a wilderness walk in the Yorkshire Dales. There we tramped the high paths along the Pennine way to savour the gorgeous mist drizzle and low cloud that one can enjoy in these latitudes. Before we got to said murk, though, and as we passed through the village of Gayle, next to the more renowned village of Hawes, I spotted this cast iron pole. Painted turquoise it was too. I’m not sure I’ve come across one of these in the wild before, but here it is anyway.
The moist weather of which I spake can be seen on th’hills in the background. They brew reet nice ale round these parts too..
Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society MUGS
October 29th it was when the checkout girl asked the person behind me – and I kid you not – “Are you ready for Christmas?” Well I had to be restrained! I’d already been hearing Noddy Holder grinding out his annual fingernails-on-a-blackboard thing down at the garden centre for days by then.
We should all do well to remember that Christmas is only 99% about crass commercialisation and the endless purveyance of tat. The other 1% is about you parting with £8.99 to grab for yourself (or someone else) one of our all-new Yo ho ho! Merry Christmas, Joyeux Noel, Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society Mugs.
Each mug has…
- A handle.
- A hollow bit in the middle for the tea.
- A bottom.
- Magnificent splendour.
- A picture of a telegraph pole on one side.
- And on the other
- And some nice Technicolour www writing on the bottom.
- A light buff cardboard super-strong box that it comes in.
What’s more, we have 3 special pricing plans so that everyone can afford one of these wonderfully collectable treasures.
Option 1 : £8.99 including free P&P
Option 2 : £5.99 only + £3.00 P&P
Option 3 : For our more skint telegraph pole fans we have easy terms on the tick: 2 instalments of £3.00 with a final payment of £2.99 all consolidated into a special one-off easy payment of £8.99.
You just can’t go wrong. So click that button now*1. Once for every person in your life who loves telegraph poles. If you live in America or anywhere that’s not the UK then contact us first, please – there’s virtually nowt in this for us as it is !
*1 Offer limited to 1,000 mugs per household.
I’d like a mug please
Granted it may not still be Christmas by the time you’re looking at this. But getting all the photography stuff out again to take a spring or summer-themed photograph is asking a bit much. Especially when me and Mrs Telegraph Pole fell out over the taking of this one. Anyway, declare loudly to the world down at the building site/office/church coffee morning your love of telegraph poles with one of these all-new Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society Mugs. £8.99 all in, incl postage and all the stuff listed below…
The specification of these ultra-high quality mugs is breathtaking*1
- Hold exactly 1.00 mugs worth of tea/beverage of your choice.
- Empty bit in the middle to hold said tea/beverage of your choice.
- Handle on side.
- Telegraph pole image on one side.
- Telegraph pole image on the other side too (not shown here).
- The words WWW.TELEGRAPHPOLEAPPRECIATIONSOCIETY.ORG printed in lovely Technicolor (TM) to remind you where to go to order another one.
Also Included, absolutely FREE
- High-tensile cardboard posting box – yours to keep, forever. Built to withstand the weight of an Austin Allegro.
- A warm glow of satisfaction of money well spent.
Unlike some other appreciation society mugs, ours comes with free postage. Unless you live in America, in which case, you’d bankrupt us so please contact us first for postage to the USA. Or indeed anywhere outside the UK.
*1 If you at all suffer with Asthma
Patron Saint of Telegraph Poles
Yes, ’tis “All Saints” day here on sunny earth. And if things as diverse as “stiff necks” can have a patron saint and also “stamp collectors” and “car parking spaces” then why not Telegraph Poles I asked myself as I awoke this morning. So once I’d despatched the just-right porridge that Mrs Telegraph Pole had put out for me, it was off to consult my old mate Google.
The nearest I could get to was “Saint Clare of Assisi” – that’s a photograph of her on the left. And look, if you squint your eyes a bit that could be a single cross-arm Telegraph Pole she’s carrying there – bristling with mediaeval ceramic insulators it is too. Anyway, apparently, when she was too ill to attend mass an image of the the service would be displayed on the wall of her cell, somehow. That’s how she came to be patron saint of television. Which is not a million miles away from telegraph poles if you were to ask me.
Astounding Magic Lantern Images
We have, in recent days, been in correspondence with a certain Mr Adrian Trainsett Esq. Whereupon said correspondent did furnish us with the first, of what he promised would be many, “magic lantern images”. Notwithstanding the image owner having to come to terms with the vagaries of modern internetular communication, we took immeasurable delight in receiving the fine image you see at right and the following few words…
I hope I have attached to this marvellous method of communication, a magic lantern image of a railway telegraph pole on the former North Staffs Railway at Higher Poynton, Cheshire.
This magnificent pole has extra “irons” on it. I believe to allow some wires to cross the railway and continue their way to the junction with the LNWR.I intend to submit more for your perusal.
Yours
Adrian Trainsett Esq.
Whilst we are grateful to Mr Trainsett for his kind submission, and look forward to subsequent tenderings… him having such an interesting surname and this being such a small world I can’t help wonder if he knows my old school friend, Brian Scalextric?
World’s even shorter shortest poles
Well, there I was smugly satisfied that I personally had already bagged the world’s smallest telegraph pole back in June of this year. And then along comes telegraph pole connoisseur, Graeme Fisher, from Stourbridge with these absolute gems. These, he tells me, can be found at the Cable and Wireless Telegraph Museum at Porthcurno.
They’re so sweet they make you (me anyway) say “aw bless!”. Look, they’ve even got the proper cable tie-offs on the insulators – you just don’t see that anymore.
Anyway, thank you Graeme. You can expect more gems from our telegraphic cognoscentic correspondent in the coming weeks. I know that because I’ve already got the pictures.
Tree Pole
Whilst we know that 99% of all telegraph poles are made from trees, few are quite so obvious of their arboreal origins as this one. Thanks to regular contributor Andrew Rowsell for the photo. Andrew, a sort of latter day GPO official, visits the pages of the Telegraph Pole Appreciation Society by way of a busman’s holiday.
He didn’t say where the picture was taken but this one looks like it’s just had the branches all cut off and the wires attached.
He was also at pains to inform us that his friend Johnny has one of our pens. I was wondering where that had gone!