You don’t need to consult a fancy shaman to find out whether you have a soul or not. No need for some over paid, under-qualified practitioner to jangle some purple space crystals over your forehead, intensely reading the chakra quanta emanating from your aura. Put your money away. Here is a much simpler, instantaneous test. If the photo below leaves you completely unmoved then you have no soul. None whatsoever. Simple as that. You should immediately apply to 55 Tufton Street, London, SW1P 3QL for a research position. If however, this photo sent in by Hazel Long from Brighouse, W. Yorkshire, causes strange stirrings you don’t quite understand then you most definitely do have a soul. There.
Regular readers may well remember back two and a half years to this post {Shot at Dawn}. Hazel must be a baker or post-person or insomniac to so regularly (twice in three years) see dawn. That’s more than I’ve managed in a lifetime.
Newport is in Wales. Just. It’s in Wales about as much as Berwick upon Tweed is in England. So close to “them” that “they” may as well have it. I am of the previously unshared opinion that the rest of wales is quietly ambivalent about ownership of this particular corner.
What do I know about Newport?
Well, I became intimate with the roundabout beneath junction 24 of the M4 during a stalled hitch-hike home back in my army days – specifically where the A449 branches north; the fans of Newport County football club could be friendlier (one savage purple-jumper wearing Newport fan has stayed long in the memory of my home town’s fans); AND nobody ever chose Newport as a holiday destination – except when confusing it with Newport, Pembs.
So, given the feeling in the rest of Cymru it was with some trepidation that long-term correspondent to these pages MartYn Fielder (a son of Abergavenny) had to visit the town with his mother for a medical appointment. He need not have worried. It was while waiting for the NHS to do its thing that MartYn followed his Indiana Jones urges and explored an old railway track bed in Malpas just to the north of the town. I’ll let his words describe his adventure:
“I came across the noble form of an old pole, forlorn in the splendour of its decaying grandeur. The pole is incredibly pock-marked, as though it’s been attacked by giant woodworm, and there are no identifying markers. It is also entirely alone – having walked all the way to the point where the old railway has been obliterated by the link road between the A4042 and the A4051 in one direction, and then followed it in the other direction where it has been transformed into a tarmac footpath wending its way through endless housing estates, I can confidently state that this is the only remaining telegraph pole on this stretch of the old Eastern Valley Line of the Monmouthshire Rail and Canal Company (1852) which closed in 1963. This splendid solitary specimen stands as a witness to a century of spectacular growth and slow decline in the industrial heartland of South Wales. A humbling thought.”
So there we have it. Newport, Gwent, still in Wales, has Big Mac’s Wholly Soul Band and a single old and isolated, redundant and woodpeckered multi-arm telegraph pole. The word “Yay!” comes to mind. Put Newport on my holiday list. Summer 2074 should do it.
Anyway, I looked it up recently, MartYn and I have been exchanging telegraph pole related missives for more than ten years now. He is this close ” to getting on my Christmas card list.
As I write, storm Franklin is thrashing around outside trying to outdo it’s older siblings Dudley and Eunice. The latter came through here two days ago showing 969 millibars (hectopascals) and scared the life out of me and the ridge tiles of my house. Said storm proceeded to wrestle to the ground a 250 year old lime tree in the field across the lane. That this tree has significance to us is beyond the remit of this post/page/website. The tree also fell onto a rusting dutch barn flattening what was left from a storm 3 years ago into a mangle of corrugated rust and retired and rotted telegraph poles.
Curiosity took me out there to inspect the damage. The tree was rotten mostly through and clearly wan’t long for this world anyway, wind or no wind. I was just about to retrieve a branch or two for the home hearth when I spotted a fully intact insulator lying on the top of the grass as though it had been left there just minutes before for me to find. Then I found two more, slightly more concealed. Much excited rationalising led me to conclude that they were somehow wedged into the tree as a byproduct when the poles were used to make the now planate barn. Serendipity* that Eunice should have lead me to them.
I thought of the title of this post way before I started writing anything. I felt sure that if I just kept writing I could think of some connection between someone called Jim and the happenstance of me finding some old insulators. Like you now, I realise this far into the post that it’s just not going to happen. I can’t think of any association. At all. Try as I might. But I’ve written the heading now and I’m not the sort of person to go back and change it. So cheers, to the Jims of this world. And to one in particular 😉 May you be Lucky Jim.
TPAS staff retired the short distance to the seaside this week. Overdue R&R away from the rubble and brick dust that permeates our regular inland HQ. Newport (Trefdraeth) sits aside the mouth of the River Nevern (Afon Nyfer) in Pembrokeshire and is as charmingly gentrified as you can get in Wales. Think Kensington-on-Sea. The busily compact commercial centre is the ideal place to stock up on cinnamon candles, scented snowmen and gift-wrapped logs. And for the traditional gasp of “how much?” try ordering a pint and a small glass of house red in one of the hostelries.
Don’t get me started on the grand replacement of local populace by wealthy incomers, the high pampered dog to human ratio or the almost complete erosion of the Welsh language in the area. I said don’t get me started ! Think Cornwall and the Lake District but yn Cymraeg.
Anyway, not one to waste time not looking at telegraph poles here are my findings, pre-sorted, for your convenience into appropriate categories. Decide for yourself which is which.
Welcome to the TPAS virtual gallery. Wayne Firth is an honorary member of this society. He didn’t become such via the usual vulgarity of a cash donation delivered personally to my doorstep. Nor did he offer me a non-executive seat at some dubious investment company. And he didn’t marry my sister either.*1 Whilst these are all perfectly valid means of suffixing your membership with the esteemed “H”, Wayne went one better and used his position within the echelons of Openreach to access photos of poles of great interest. These he then sent to us under plain cover.
I’ve been hanging on to these for a while with the intention of spreading them out over a year. Truth is, my email inbox stretches off for over a mile now and so if I left it any longer then they may be lost to the silt at the bottom. (Apologies to those still waiting a reply from me for anything at all – don’t lose hope).
Anyway, thanks to Wayne #0985H for all these fabulous pole pics. Click a pic for full sized gallery.
*1 All are also valid, and oft used, means of acquiring peerage and/or PPE contracts.
PS the descriptive captions whilst seemingly blooming obvious… to the sighted, are from the alt text which we include with each image so as not to exclude so to speak…
Our Pole-of-the-Month Select committee had already convened and adjourned having chosen the winner for November (see previous post) when the image you see below landed on our metaphorical doormat.
This is Telegraph Pole Appreciation defined in a single photograph. It was taken at sunrise by Hazel Long from Brighouse in West Yorkshire. In a world where the telegraph/telephone hadn’t ever been invented this would just be a photo of a dawn sky, grading from orange to purple, and that’s it. Just let that sink in for a minute.
Hazel had to get up very early in the day to capture this pole in its true glory. Now, dawn is a time of day I tend to avoid. Statistically, you see, it is a time when one is much more likely to get shot. Especially if, like me, you err on the side of the lily-livered and if your fight or flight instinct leans heavily towards flight.
Anyway, this gloriously simple pole stands silently sentinel over the good citizens of Brighouse. Stoically it distributes essential electromagnetically modulated signals into the nearby homes: a phone call to Barbara at No. 14, perhaps, whereby she hears that Maxine from the hairdresser’s boyfriend has buggered off with her from the White Lion; Or maybe an essential youtube educational video squeezed down the line to Derek at No. 3 showing a load of cats knocking things off shelves. Or crucially, Wendy at the end of the street just clicking the Buy Now button on this very website to purchase a copy of our wonderful tome “Telegraph Pole Appreciation for Beginners“. It’s the reason the internet was invented.
Veteran pole-climber, long time member of this society and favoured communicant John Brunsden (#0469H) drove past November’s Pole of the Month on his way to another job. His drives to other jobs are often featured on these pages – John’s venerated “View of Cornwall Through the hole in the top of a Telegraph Pole” can be found on p73 of our own “Telegraph Pole Appreciation for Beginners (Key Stages 1-4) (and elsewhere on this site if you have an eternity available in which to scroll back through a million posts)
Anyway, this sumptious, right-angled double stack of three-crossarms pole, I would hazard a guess, is on the road between Bideford and Elmscott – just off the road from Hartland. Not far from Edistone. Devon. Probably.
“Just a quick stop to take the photo so no more details other than I noticed it had a ‘D’ placard so probably not long for this world 🙁 Don’t forget the arms always point to London…allegedly 😉 ” John reminded us.
Not only did John provide this nourishing feast for our dear TPAS members’ eyes, he also gave us another opportunity to perpetuate a myth that we’re keen to see converted to absolute truth through repetition and eventually into Wikipedia. This semi-made-up notion that the crossarms are always on the side of the pole nearest to London first began in an Ealing Comedy in 1942 and has been championed by our good selves at this most revered, august, senior and wise society of telegraph pole aficionados ever since.
Anyway, John concluded ” …reminds me of the old Westcountry joke – I stopped a local in North Devon and asked “How do you get to London from here?” “My brother takes me !“
