picturing an exhibition

And it's cold and damp in the transit camp, and the air is still and sullen
And the pale sun of October whispers the snow will soon be coming
And I wonder when I'll be home again and the morning answers "Never"
And the evening sighs, and the steely Russian skies go on forever

In the summer of 1968 the Russians marched into both Czechoslovakia and London. Whilst there is plenty of documentation of the Soviet leadership's response to the Prague Spring, there is much less about the August invasion of London.

Okay, that was a provocative opening paragraph but at the time much was made of the second Soviet 'Industrial Exhibition' at Earl's Court that August. The first had been held in 1961 and was quite a success and a third one held in 1979 which seems to have completely passed me by. But the second one was the one I had experience of.

With the amount of news currently being devoted to Russian antics and influence in the West it is probably understandable why this occasion has popped back into my head over recent months.

I was twelve that year and had been at secondary school for a year. After summer I would be going back to a school that was preparing to change from a grammar school that seemed to think it was Eton into a comprehensive school. All sorts of revolutions were taking place that year. I had been at Fairlands Junior School and my best friend Simon had gone to a different secondary school. Somehow I had managed to pass the Eleven Plus and fool the powers-that-be into believing I had the 'Right Stuff' for a Grammar education. Maybe I did but it soon beaten out of me by the bullies and barbarians (some of the kids were quite bad too). Anyhow, I kept up my friendship with Simon and our Saturdays were filled with reading Marvel comics, teaching ourselves how to draw by copying  superheroes and beginning to listen to music. This would continue for a couple of years. Simon was one of the few people I knew whose parents were divorced. I think in my year group there was a kid whose mother had remarried and another one who live only with his mother. So Simon and his brother and sister were a little unusual to me. His dad was some sort of artist - possibly a designer - and he had a live-in partner, a much younger woman, Sally. On top of this, they lived in a flat which was kind of cool too.

One day in the Summer of '68 Simon's dad invited me to go up to the Soviet Industrial Exhibition along with Simon, his brother and sister and Sally. This was all very exciting as it meant I got to go on a train which I loved. If we ever went to London my father would drive although I have a suspicion that we went on a train to see The Black And White Minstrel Show On Ice which, for some reason is less documented than the Soviet Exhibition. I can't think why. So, off to London we went.

There is a short Pathé News piece about it which suggests that it was all very exciting. Although the 1961 Exhibition had Yuri Gagarin turn up the 1968 one still enthralled the crowds. I knew nothing about Russia, Airfix never produced a packet of tiny soldiers to use to attack my Hornby railway* and I had yet to start reading the James Bond series. That would come the next year during a dreary holiday listening to rain pattering on a caravan roof probably in deepest, dampest Norfolk. The exhibition had, evidently, been met with some protest as were most things in that seismic year. Again, to all of this, I was oblivious. The idea of it seemed to be to introduce cultural propaganda to Britain on a huge scale. The reciprocal British Exhibitions to Moscow in 1961 and 1966 eschewed such an obvious line and the attempt to promote a greater understanding between Britain and the USSR was, perhaps, more problematic than many of us realised. With the Soviet response to the Prague Spring in full swing creating further tension in the Cold War, it would seem an obvious step to attempt to create a better understanding. However, what was on show has been seen as demonstrating a 'dreamworld' of what was going on behind the Iron Curtain.

On show were all sorts of artefacts from culture and science including clothing, art and - most exciting of all - a collection of flying dustbins that had been the Soviet contribution to the Space Race. The soviets had managed to land one-such, Luna 2, on the moon. In fact it was the first man-made object to land on another celestial body. The criticism of the exhibition seems mostly to be that the whole thing showed Russia how it wanted to be seen, in other words a complete myth. Evidently on show were such wonderful machines such as the one that could bring life back to the dead. Possibly something was lost in translation there. The hall that exhibited the space junk hardware was described by no less an authority than The Sun as a schoolboy's fantasy. This suggests that the whole presentation, or dreamworld, was nothing but a child's fantasy. To be honest, at the age of twelve even in those far-off days I'm sure that The Sun was already producing schoolboy's fantasies on page 3 every morning but we'll let that pass.

One of the big exhibits was their attempt at building Concorde (aka 'The Supersonic Jetliner of Tomorrow' according to the Eagle), the Tuperlev-144 or Concordski as it was commonly called. Whilst Concord was fairly successful (as in it could fly from London to New York but not Frankfurt to NY). The problem with the Tuperlev was that its engines were twice as heavy as and it burned fuel twice as fast as Concorde's and it only had a range of halfway across the Atlantic. Still, this didn't stop it from being a centre exhibit, all this was yet to happen. We were still in dreamworld.

 We walked the halls of the exhibition wide-eyed and full of awe, it all seemed so modern with its promises of a New World. Contemporary reports suggested that many of the 8000 exhibits were not that modern or exciting but to kids like us it all seemed stunning. At the end of such exhibitions, as with museums and galleries, there is always the opportunity to buy some tat memorabilia. Obviously in those far-off days we didn't have a lot of money to waste on fripperies but Simon and his brother Guy wanted to take something back with them. As we wandered around the books, postcards and toys - mostly Russian dolls I believe - I paid little attention to what the others were up to. Soon, their dad called us all together and off we went to get the train home.

During the journey, Simon's dad and his partner disappeared for a while, perhaps to the loo or for a cup of tea. Whilst they were away Simon and Guy brought out a selection of postage stamp presentation packs. These were cellophaned packs designed for stamp collecting. I expressed surprise and wondered how much they must have cost. To my horror they explained that they had nicked them. I had visions of what may have happened had they been caught stealing from the shop. From what we know now about the KGB who were no doubt mingling with the crowds, they would have made examples of us. We'd have ended up in Siberia down a salt mine. I'm sure an international incident of the scale we are witnessing in Salisbury was only just narrowly avoided. Being a such an innocent naïf must seem quite amusing nowadays but I was genuinely shocked at the time of their temerity. Within a few years we had gone our separate ways, different schools and different friends (and, if I'm honest, different mores) played their part no doubt.

We never really saw each other much after that. In our early twenties I heard that Simon had been to prison, something to do with a mail-order** scam. I don't think I demonstrated any real surprise at that news, to be honest. Still, I am grateful for the opportunity I was afforded by his family to get a chance to go to such an unusual major exhibition. It almost seems to have been erased from public memory as there's little enough information on it available. Perhaps subsequent Russian aggression put it firmly in the past.

Fifty years seems such a long time ago. It certainly seems like it was a dreamworld.

Luna 2 - the first craft to land on the moon

* We made our own amusement in those days. The tiny Airfix soldiers were of the same gauge as their model aircraft and tanks and my train set. It was an early type of war gaming, I suppose.
**  The precursor to Amazon was mail ordering. Argos on the high streets is probably the last vestiges of it. Evidently it was quite easy to scam them but the companies and courts looked down on such activities. 

bonny birds (slight return)

Farewell, farewell to you who'd hear
You lonely travellers all
The cold north wind will blow again
The winding road does call

That Viking of the avian world hung around until mid-morning today. After behaving like Billy Bunter guarding the tuck shop for all of yesterday and aggressively asserting himself around our, and neighbouring, gardens he seems to have finally given up and moved on. By acting in true Scandinavian fashion he terrorised the neighbourhood and pillaged the place. However, it seems no rape took place although it may have been too cold even for the pigeons to perform. Either that or the female had a headache. Anyway the Robin Askwith of the bird world didn't get his way.

I made the decision not to put any more mealworms out for a while to encourage him to seek another meal-ticket elsewhere. By 10:30 he seemed to have disappeared and almost instantly his cousin the song thrush, the pair of blackbirds, Mrs Blackcap and a blue tit appeared as if by magic and life has now continued as it had for the past week. However, there are still no starlings to be seen at the moment. He was a lovely and surprising visitor but perhaps now there is a warmer feel in the atmosphere he decided to seek out his other raiding party mates and return to the fields. Interestingly, there was an article on Today on R4 this morning about fieldfares and redwings suddenly turning up in gardens.

I was fully aware of the irony of posting a piece last week about celebrating the more mundane and ordinary about the nature around us. However, that's what makes it more exciting when something out of the ordinary happens, hence my excitement at seeing our guest yesterday. He didn't really outstay his welcome but I will keep an eye out in case he comes back.

now all the bonny birds have wheeled away

Ragged robin is see-sawing 
In one half of a coconut shell
He can't find the bacon rind 
Hunger makes his red breast swell.

As I sit and write I find myself distracted because a fieldfare is sitting on the fence in our garden aggressively guarding the tray of mealworms against the the blackbirds and song thrush that are its usual diners. This is a first.

Sitting a few hundred yards away from the sea in town house with a tiny garden, this has been very exciting. I have never seen a fieldfare in our garden, or this close to the sea. In fact, I've only ever rarely seen any at all. As it happens, Mrs Dave and I saw a whole flock of them - a hermitage I believe is the collective noun - on Sunday in a field (funny enough) near Bury St Edmunds. We'd been walking with some friends in a part of Suffolk we don't know very well despite having lived here for about half our lives. We wanted to get a few miles in before the snow came - yes, the beast from the east indeed. Whilst watching a mini-murmuration of starlings over a stud farm, I was taken by a big group of larger birds that appeared lighter in colour, and most definitely weren't lapwings. Luckily I had a pair of binoculars that were just about good enough to see them clearly in a field. Mind you, they were better than the plastic toy ones I had as a child which could barely give a clear view of my feet, let alone a field of identifiable birds.

Due to the two weather fronts that we are currently experiencing and the fact that our house-guest Keats has relocated to Manchester, we have been able to start feeding birds again. It seemed unfair to lure them into the garden with a large, albeit fairly laid-back, cat watching them and licking his lips at the same time (probably as much multitasking he could manage). Anyway, so a seed feeder, peanut feeder, several coconut halves with suet and mealworms in and a tray of dried mealworms have all been placed around the garden. As the weather has worsened the robin, wren and all the tits - great, blue and coal - seem to have disappeared. Well, they seem to have stopped coming in to our garden anyway. Meanwhile, there are so many starlings around that yesterday our garden resembled a scene from The Birds.

A song thrush and a pair of blackbirds have been enjoying the mealworms, at least until our friend the

fieldfare came along today. Another first this week has been the regular visits by a female blackcap but sadly she has yet to appear today. I hope she's survived the cold snap. This has been really exciting and interesting as it is obviously the same one but there is no Mr Blackcap as of yet. As with the fieldfare, in the thirty years we have lived in this house, I have never seen a blackcap in the garden before. As Mrs Dave is now a keen photographer she has had ample opportunity to get a few candid shots of our visitors. The photos here are hers.

Last week I had to take the car to Ipswich for its MOT at a ridiculously early time. This gave me an opportunity to visit the Ipswich Museum which I have been meaning to for some time. The first thing that greets you is a life-sized replica of a woolly mammoth and the natural history of  the area. Various bits of mammoths have regularly been found around this area evidently. Now, the Ipswich Museum which is no longer in Museum Street, was started by various Victorians to allow the hoi polloi to learn about the huge world around them that they would never see. Consequently this meant that the only way to do it was to go out and kill as many animals, birds and insects as possible and stuff them. The heydays of taxidermy. Nowadays, of course, we watch David Attenborough programmes to see most creatures other than cats which we need Facebook for. Still, the reason I brought this up (stay awake at the back there) is because of the museum's vast collection of stuffed birds.

Wandering around the exhibitions became overwhelming and quite sad really. At one point I came across a case with a whole family of great crested grebes within. Two adults with two hatchlings. I actually found this profoundly sad. A whole family wiped out. In the museum there are several rooms absolutely crammed with glass cases of birds from all around the world. The best thing about this, I guess, is that I realised that it is one of the only opportunities we have of being able to compare hundreds of species of birds and, in particular, their sizes. So, for instance, a group of cases featured various British birds of prey so it was possible to be able to see how different a hobby is to a sparrowhawk (and, incidentally, a male and female sparrowhawk - the female being larger than the more colourful male). This all became useful to help with being able to identify birds. I was able to make a decision on what birds we were seeing on Sunday before I got a decent look at them. I guessed they were a type of thrush due to size in comparison with the starlings. I also spent a day trying to decide what our other visitor was. Until we got a photo of her to positively identify it I wasn't really 100% sure of what it was. I knew from the size in comparison to the great tits and look it was most likely a warbler of some sort. If it had been the male I would have known straight away but the chestnut cap of the female took a little longer to be sure.

All in all, I suppose that the Victorians that took to collective mass slaughter in aid of furthering our knowledge of the natural world did do us a great service but I must admit that can be a bit sickening wandering through the rooms full of dead creatures.

One last point. In buying the various types of wild bird food that is now obviously big business, my mind did hark back to my childhood. Growing up as a child in the 1960s without all the distractions available nowadays did mean we had to make our own amusement. For many gentle souls like myself, bird-watching was a lovely quiet hobby that nobody seemed to mind. I-Spy and Observer's books of birds were not expensive and didn't seem to cause any harm. I am glossing over the collection of bird's eggs that was definitely a craze then spurred on by The Observer's Book Of Bird's Eggs no doubt. Maybe I'll write about that another time. Often in the winter months I would sit and watch the birds feeding in our garden in Haycroft Road. In those days the only bird food that seemed available was called Swoop! which came in a small blue box much like Trill which was budgie food that made your budgie bounce with health, I believe. Funny enough, I have not been able to find a picture of Swoop! at all on the internet. We had to buy it in pet shops and I seem to remember the one in Stevenage was called Cramphorns.

The fieldfare is still sitting in our garden fending off all-comers. Still no sighting of Mrs Blackcap.