Venerable and esteemed Honorary Technical Adviser*1 to our most sage of societies, Sir Keith S**** has a penchant for telegraph pole butts. This, a result of his entire adult career spent touring the vast vertical forests of the Baltic states and Soviet east Europe inspecting and selecting swathes of trees for a future role as British telegraph poles. Once cut down, they would have their base (butt) stamped with his initials (K.S) and stacked awaiting shipment. To this day, Sir Keith, spends his retirement days wandering the fields and byways of Cheshire and Greater Manchester searching for just one example of his initials on a butt somewhere. Meanwhile, he found this amazing 32ft National Telephone Co.*2 pole lying in a park in Cheadle.
“…Goodness knows how long it has lain there, I could not find any scribing on it as that area was completely rotted away.It has, near the butt, marks made with a scribe knife XXII , which would have been put on in the forest, a bit odd as this would indicate a length of 22 ft. But the butt stamps indicate 32 ft.”
*1 Adviser vs Advisor. I get hung up on things like this. Ever conscious of creeping Americanisms into our everyday (the word Movie is banned in TPAS Towers and a bum is never a butt) I had to look up to see if there was a more Britishy way of spelling this. In the end though I got confused and went with Adviser.
*2 National Telephone Co. was a British telephone company from 1881 until 1911.
*3. I know, I know… Our motto is “Tall, wooden, sticky-uppy with wires coming out the top” and a pole that is lying down can hardly be tall can it? It’s long, not tall. BUT. This is Keith S**** H.T.A. T.P.A.S. who sent us this and on his new-fangled 21st century telephone and all. Who’d have thought that one day we’ll all be sending photographs through the ether via a fax machine that we keep in our pocket?
