This blog began in 1997 as a single news page called Nucelus. In 2005, during a long wait to move into a new house, I decided to learn some php and MySQL and write my own blogging system, which became inkyBlog and which now powers this, my own Webbledegook blog.
Thank you to my brother, Murray Ewing, for help with some of the more challenging aspects!
I love doing girls' comics and once submitted a sample page to Bunty after they expressed an interest. Things were looking good... until the comic folded. And 'Kick Like a Girl' for 'Sunny For Girls' was enormous fun. Rainbow Orchid has a surprising number of female readers (of all ages), and that is terrifically gratifying.
Highlights included the taiko drummers (a form that swept me off my feet at the Japan Expo in L.A in 1985), the vacuum-tube bass sounds provided by Mixed Up (a troupe who bashed kitchen sinks and shopping trolleys), Sur-Taal (sitar, and I love the sound of a drone), and the City of Belfast Youth Orchestra who really stood out. The evening ended with Land of Hope and Glory and flag-waving, not my strong-point, but I joined in, of course.
And while I'm on the subject of this type of book, also very funny is Smackheads Don't Get Fat. If you need one of those books for the bathroom 'library', the more liberally-minded waiting room, or for that extra Christmas pressie, then this is the answer. Written by a friend, but genuinely made me laugh out loud.
Today I will write a little of my gg-uncle Walter Cameron, who served in the Scots Guards in France.
Walter was born in Glasgow in 1891, and by the time the Great War broke out, he was working as a carter in Dundee (his family had moved there when he was 8 or 9 years old). In January 1915 he joined the Scots Guards, and was sent to France to join the 2nd Battalion in late October. The next few months saw him in the trenches around Ypres until July 1916 when the Guards Division was moved towards the Somme. On the 10th September his battalion was sent to Bernafay Wood and Ginchy where they assisted in the capture of the orchard and took over 70 German prisoners after advancing through shelling and machine-gun fire. It was most likely in this action that Walter was wounded by a gun shot to the chest and shoulder, and was sent back as a casualty. Walter was back in England a month and a half later, and served with the 3rd Battalion until he was finally discharged in London in February 1919. In September 1918 he had married a Brighton girl, Louise Miller.
Walter had never liked the fact that he didn't have a middle name (as most of his brothers and sisters did), as it meant his initials were W.C. His marriage certificate displays the mysterious appearance of the middle name of 'Ronald', the only time it was ever used. My great-uncle Peter told me that in his later years, Walter kept a secret whiskey bottle in the garden shed, where he would escape to when Lu got on his nerves a little too much! Walter and Lu never had any children, and Walter died in 1971, aged 80.
Of Walter's brothers, Peter (my g-grandfather) and David Cameron served as drivers in the Royal Army Service Corps, while Robert Cameron served in the Army Medical Corps - probably also as a driver (ambulance) - and was taken a prisoner by the Germans.
The award books are for the '40th Anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War' and for the 'Veteran of Labour'.
The numbers indicate the reader's viewpoint in each panel.
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