The World Turned Upside Down

Leon Rosselson sings 'The World Turned Upside Down', preceded by Robb Johnson's 'Red and Green', Tolpuddle, 2009. 'Upside Down' begins at 2:30. See the words.


This song has been in my head for a couple of days now - not that it's ever far away. I was doing a version of our family walk through the Jewish East End with cousin Helen, over from Australia for a brief visit. One of the first places we stopped at was a gap between two buildings in Whitechapel Road, which we think is the site of the house where Leon's grandmother first lived when she came to London with her young daughter, Leon's mother. Leon is a sort of a cousin of mine, so I know these things. 


A few minutes later we stopped outside the Freedom Press, looking at the panel of Anarchist heroes on the wall of the shop. Helen had said she was thinking of visiting Burford in Oxfordshire, and I'd mentioned that the town had connections with the English Revolution of the 1640s (Leveller soldiers were imprisoned in the church, and three of their leaders were shot there, in 1649). So I pointed out the figure of Gerrard Winstanley on the Anarchist wall, and explained briefly about the Diggers movement during the Revolution. As we were talking it struck me that Leon had a song about the Diggers . . .


And it's been in my head ever since.


You poor take courage
You rich take care
This earth was made a common treasury
For everyone to share


See Leon's website.

Doing the Census Centenary Celebration Walk

On Sunday a group of cousins got together to do a Census Centenary Celebration Walk, around the bits of the Jewish East End our parents were born and brought up in. Ten of us traced the homes and haunts of our grand and great-grand parents, as recorded in family lore and their 1911 Census returns. Brian and myself, Jenny and Katy, Ralph and Margaret all knew each other; Gerald, Margaret and Michael knew each other but none of the rest of us; Boris knew no-one. But we all come from the families of a brother and sister, Lewis and Michla Levin, who came to London from Russia over 100 years ago. Between us we represented three of Michla's four children - Shmuel, Sarah and Myer - and one of Lewis's five - Barnett, and within 5 minutes we all felt, and acted, like cousins. 

We set off to search for people long gone, and places that had been significant in their lives, armed with a handful of documents - census returns, marriage certificates, birth certificates, death and burial records, whatever we had been able to find - and heads full of family knowledge.

However, document and presumed knowledge collided in dramatic fashion before we had even left the Coffee House where we met to start the day. Everyone knew the mother of Barnett, Michael and Gerald's father, to be Annie. Everyone, especially her own sons, who put 'Annie' on her headstone. However, when Michael brought out Barnett's birth certificate, we saw that it named his mother as Mary. None of us could come up with an explanation, and we spent the day wondering how much more of what we thought we knew was going to be undermined or contradicted by discoveries yet to come.

Our route took us over the Regents Canal, which leads down to Limehouse Water and the other docks by Tower Bridge that were the point of entry for most of the thousands of East European Jews that came to London between 1880 and 1914. Just 200 yards further down Mile End Road is the site of the block - Drivers Building - where Lewis Levin and his five children (including Barnett) are recorded in the 1911 census, in four rooms. We wandered round to the yard at the back, and wondered whether the little Levins used to play there, away from the noise and bustle of the main road.

We then walked down White Horse Lane, where Barnett and his brother Nyman shared a flat while they went through college in the 1920s, and turned into Rectory Square to find the former East London Synagogue, now converted into flats. My grandparents Morris and Sarah, were married there in 1909, as were Ralph's, Myer and Marel, in 1915.

The next stop was at the site of the Poor Jews' Temporary Shelter in Leman Street, where Morris spent his first night off the boat, on 2 October 1905. We stood opposite and paused for reflection.

Ralph also had recollections of Alie Street, where Marel lived for many years after Myer died. We stopped to take in the Whitechapel Library, known as the "university of the ghetto", and then turned into Brick Lane. We noted Bloom's Corner, site of many an impassioned political discussion, and made our way up past the Brick Lane Synagogue (now a mosque), Katz's String Shop (now an art gallery), the massive brewery building (an indoor market), and the chess and carrom players, to buy lunch from the Beigel Bake.

Here, quite by chance, we bumped into living history. I'd noticed an old man having a salt-beef sandwich at the counter, and when he came out I asked if he'd enjoyed his lunch. Yes, he said, it was the only place you could get real meat nowadays. We got into conversation, and he said he'd been on the massive anti-cuts demonstration the day before, though the cuts didn't matter so much for him, as he "wouldn't be needing his pension for much longer". He asked the copper in the queue if his force was being cut.

It turned out he had been a proud Communist Party activist since the 1930s, taking part in the Battle of Cable Street and later becoming a well-known and popular local councillor. Max Levitas. I'll bet he spoke a few times at Bloom's Corner . . . So did he know my father, Dave Shreibman? "Yes, Shreibman, I remember him."

Our jaws dropped. We'd come looking for traces of our forebears, hoping to find a few physical reminders, a house or two, or at least a street. And here was Dad, in the memory of 95 year-old Max, who still gives evening classes at the new Whitechapel Library - on politics, of course: "I tell 'em how the Tories are destroying our country".

After lunch we located 3 North Place, where Morris and Sarah were living when they got married. At least we think we found it, it's part of Spitalfields City Farm now, maybe the little car park.

Two years later the census found them at 12 Hare Street, now part of Cheshire Street, in two rooms, with Sophie, aged 1. Brian listened out for the cry of a new-born baby - but Dad wasn't born until a week later. It's his centenary too, next week.

Morris and Sarah had eight children, and eventually moved round the corner to larger accommodation at 11 Grimsby Street, opposite the Shoreditch Viaduct arches. The arches have gone, as have the original houses, but this was the location for one of our iconic family photos from the early 1930s, so we tried to re-create it, incorporating Boris as an honorary Shreibman. He has potential, that boy.

Esther - Alice - Dave - Nat - Henry

Jenny - Katy - Michael - Boris - Brian

Then the eight cousins had our own group portrait taken:

Katy - Jenny - Gerald - Michael S - Ralph - Michael L - Brian - Boris

Our last port of call was Heneage Street, to see if we could find the house that Michla was living in at the time of the census, with her sons Myer and Harry, aged 21 and 20. All in one room. Again, the houses have gone, but the cobbles are still there, looking like they've been trodden by hundreds of feet over more than a hundred years. Including, we like to think, those of Michla, Myer and Harry.

Coming back up Brick Lane, I almost missed the drinking fountain outside the school. It certainly looks as though it could be a hundred years old. I bet they all drank from it.

We'll shortly be setting up a website - probably a blog - where we can collect together some of our family stories, and share some of the things we're finding in our ongoing hunt for documents. Family members can find more detail about individuals, and see how we all fit together, on our Geni site.

Ralph and myself, along with his brother Mark and our cousin Dan from Ohio, will be visiting Belarus in May to see if we can trace Lewis and his two mysterious wives, and Michla and her husband David (or was he Israel?) Iliatovitch (or was he Gitovitch?), and the families they came from.

And we'll quite probably be doing further East End walks in the future - we didn't do half of what we had planned on this one. And there's a Google Map with all the locations pinpointed, so you can plot your own walk if you want to.

NB: The slideshow above can be viewed full screen if you like, and you can pause or continue as you will; you can see the titles by clicking 'Show info' at top right of the photo. Or you could have a closer look via the PhotoSet.

"Come on Freddie!"

There goes another piece of my childhood. As an 11-to-12 year-old and onwards, Fred Titmus was my cricket hero because a) he was brilliant b) he was reliable and self-effacing c) he played for Middlesex d) he'd been to my school. I tried to be a spin bowler like him but could neither bowl straight nor turn the ball; I tried to be a quietly effective batsman like him but used to miss the ball more often than not. I tried to be good at what I did, and reliable and self-effacing, like him; I can only hope I've been more successful in this than I was with my cricket skills.

Every two or three Saturdays a few of us used to sit in the cheapo seats at Lords with our cheese sandwiches, squeaking out "Come on Freddie!" when he bowled. Somewhere I've still got scorebooks, scorecards and a laboriously signed autograph. And isn't it a lovely photo?

If you want to find out more about Fred, there's a smashing appreciation by Mike Selvey, who had a close association with him as a player, at opposite ends of their respective careers, and an obituary. All the stats are at CricInfo.

And he's quite probably the only cricketer to be honoured in a punk-rock song: F*ckin' 'ell it's Fred Titmus! by Half Man Half Biscuit (here's the witty words).

"Come on Freddie!"

Ambiguous, insufficient, inappropriate and inaccurate.

I have BT rage. I have just had two separate conversations with BT about two unconnected issues, and I am "extremely dissatisfied", to put it mildly. My dissatisfaction is not with the tech reps, who do the best they can with what they're told to do, but with the way the BT customer service system works.

The first rep called me in answer to a question I had asked a few days ago about access to BTFon and Openzone wifi hotspots, which I have never been able to access, despite trying on numerous occasions to follow the instructions on the BTFon website and in the BTFon iPhone app. I can access all sorts of other wifi hotspots - why can't I access the ones I am already paying for?

The rep gave me a couple of phone numbers to ring. Why are these phone numbers not offered on the BT website? Why were they not emailed to me? I've lost 2 days waiting for this information, as well as several years not being able to access wifi services that I am paying BT for anyway.

When he asked if there was anything else he could do for me, I mentioned the Error 553 email message I had received a few minutes previously from BT Email Support. The message itself was ambiguous, as it was not clear whether my outgoing messages were already blocked, or liable to be blocked at some point in the future. So for a while I did not know whether the messages I had sent out today had gone to their recipients or not. I now know that at least some of them arrived safely; a least that resolved one of the uncertainties arising from the BT 'support' message.

The support message told me to go to the BT Yahoo website and follow the instructions there. They don't work. So the first rep offered to put me through to Broadband Tech Help. However the rep there did not appear interested in my experience on the BT Yahoo website. She asked if I would let her take over my desktop, I accepted, and she sent me the GoToAssist application, which allows remote control of your desktop. She then proceeded to put two ticks in boxes in Apple Mail Preferences - something I could easily have done myself in 10 seconds if the instruction had been on the website. It wasn't. Needless to say what the rep did bore no relation whatsoever to the procedure on the website.

She then told me she was sending me a Desktop Help application. She didn't. What came was an email message with a link to the Broadband Desktop Help web page. There I am informed that the application is not available for Mac OS. She knew I was using Mac OS as she'd just been on my desktop, using Mac OS.

This sorry saga has now taken up another three hours of my life, with the net result that I am unsure whether my email is working properly, and no further forward than I was before on BTFon. Nearly everything I have been advised to do by BT on these issues, whether by email, on various web pages, or over the phone, has been ambiguous, insufficient, inappropriate or inaccurate.

Maybe when I gather the energy to ring the BTFon numbers, that issue will be resolved in the wink of an eye. Maybe.

Meanwhile the only thing that holds me back from switching to another supplier is that I hear they're even worse.

* * * *

Stop Press:

The GoToAssist website offered me a feedback form, so I wrote this there. However my comments were rejected:

"Survey could not be processed. Please submit survey within 20 min after ending session."

So short complaints only then? Trouble is, with BT, short complaints are in short supply.

Mikileaks: Posh Boy Philosophy revealed

Warning: Some of the information in this picture may have been obtained by listening in on private telephone conversations. Or maybe not. Our investigative reporter didn't tell us and we wouldn't say even if he did. In any case he was acting on his own.

We appreciate that some of the language used in the document above may not be familiar to everyone, so we have added a few explanatory notes which we hope you will find helpful:

People

Karl Marx

Josef Stalin

Why Cameron resembles a fish in a condom

Philosophy

"From each according to their ability, to each according to their need"

Posh Boy Politics

Open any newspaper*, any day, any page, and read about:

• hitting the disabled

• hitting the poor

• hitting the young: Sure Start - Educational Maintenance Allowance - tuition fees

• hitting the old

• hitting the unemployed

• wrecking the health service

• dismantling the education system: school curriculum - academies - so-called "free" schools - university funding

• starving the arts

• cheating the voluntary sector

• destroying democracy: constituency boundaries - voting reform

• cosying up to Murdoch*

Hardly any of these measures were in their election manifesto nor in the coalition agreement, few are based on reliable evidence, many haven't even been costed.

Posh Boy Etonomics

- letting the banks off the hook

- fomenting unemployment

- privatising anything and everything

- telling porkies about the economy

Posh Boy Outlook on Life

And all handled with seemingly effortless, patronising effrontery: "I'm incredibly optimistic"

We could go on but it's nearly bedtime. More helpful links to follow.

Note:

* if your newspaper isn't telling you about all this, ask yourself why

Mikileaks: New Lottery - how it works

Our moles have been burrowing away, and can now reveal how the Demolition Government's much-vaunted new nation-wide Lottery Scheme works. Mikileaks locked researcher Steve Bell away for a couple of minutes with the scheme's source code - scribbled on a torn-off scrap of 'Number 11' headed notepaper, and rescued from the bin beside the photocopier - and he has come up with this graphic representation of the process. He says it wasn't that hard to crack, as the first line of code reads:

{Top Secret: GO says 2000 Mancunians down the pan, and pronto!} *see Note 1

It therefore came as no surprise to us to see amongst this week's lucky winners:

Manchester!

Manchester council attacks government as 2,000 jobs axed

However, do not despair if Lady Luck hasn't called on you this week. For wherever you live, and whatever your circumstances (with some notable exceptions - *see Note 2), they've got your number, and it could be drawn any day now. It could be your turn next!

Remember - We're all in this together!

*Note 1: There are conflicting rumours as to the identity of 'GO'; some analysts suggest that he may well be the mysterious character seen scurrying across the steps of 10 Downing Street in this videoclip.

*Note 2: Some experts claim to have detected certain regional and social biases in the coding of the scheme, which seems to be stacking the odds strongly in favour of 'Northern towns' and 'poorest areas' at the moment:

Northern towns 'targeted' with cuts

Councils say poorest areas will be worst hit by cuts

And if you wondered what this picture was doing at the top of our original article, see:

Police may stage street protests over cuts and job losses

Police force's colour-coded redundancy letters give staff the blues

So when the police take to the streets with their face-masks and home-made placards - who will do the kettling?

NB: Steve says his illustration is 'after LS Lowry'; of course it is - Lowry died over 20 years ago. He painted scenes, full of sympathy, of the ordinary lives of ordinary people in his home town of Salford, including Going to Work and Coming home from the mill. Would he qualify for an arts grant today?

According to our maps, Salford is quite near to Manchester, and so probably qualifies both as a 'Northern town' and as a 'poorer area'. Some folk have all the luck.

Mikileaks: Why is it easier?

 

"Why is it easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for a rich man to enter the kingdom of Heaven?"

Bob Diamond, Chairman of Barclays Bank, is richer than most, but at the second time of asking he is "still stuck on that one".

Oh dear, Mr Diamond. I'm afraid it's Purgatory for you, then. Or better still, Hell . . .

Many thanks to Mikileaks investigator John Mann MP for putting the question, oh so subtly.

Remember - "We're all in this together"

Further reading:

Robert Peston's comments (BBC Business Editor); also contains the full 2h30min of Diamond's grilling by the Treasury Select Committee - just dip in to a minute or two, doesn't much matter where . . .

Michael White in The Guardian

What Jesus thought (Matthew 19:24)

The Seven Deadly Sins: Greed

Dante's Vision of Purgatory

Hieronymus Bosch's Vision of Hell; from the Garden of Earthly Delights (in high resolution)

Mikileaks: Rats in Downing Street

Mikileaks reseacher David C sends us this exclusive report: 

"I thought all the rats were inside No 10. Is the coalition sinking?" 

Our investigators have analysed the videoclip, and conclude that the rat in question is clearly legging it from No.11 to No.10. But who can it be? We have heard that if you play the video at double speed you can clearly make out the popular verse:

Are you Osborne
Are you Osborne
Are you Osborne in disguise?

Although some say that if you play it at half speed, it sounds remarkably like 'Cleggie'.

Mikileaks motto of the week:

If there's a rat in there, we'll smell it