I've shown the house where I was born before, but here it is again to identify a missed opportunity.
The last thing for you to do is see whether others have produced a load of cobblers too by visiting the links at SS250.
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| Saddler's Cottage, Ketton |
The missed opportunity is this:
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| High Street, Ketton |
Just beyond that blue car, two houses down from my boyhood home, the entrance door was down two steps and railings prevented you from falling off the pavement into the window of Mr Robinson's shop.
We would stand for hours watching him work and could clearly see what he was doing - all his tools were laid out neatly rather like this.
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| Shoemakers and cobblers tools (Joseph Allen Skinner Museum, South Hadley, Massachusetts) (9/6/2013 by Daderot - CCO 1.0) |
Mr Robinson (I never knew him by any other name) would have looked lost in a big workshop like this.
Recreation of a cobbler's workshop at Amberley Working Museum, Nr Arundel, West Sussex
(10/04/2009 - by Basher Eyre - CC BY-SA 2.0)
Mr Robinson was a very small man and but you could always see and hear him working away - and ideal model for Petula Clark.
In May 1994 another much larger shoemaker was making the news.
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| Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 - 17 May 1994 (Source NASA, STSci and ESA; a NASA Hubble Space Telescope image) |
The comet's 21 icy fragments stretched across 710 thousand miles of space (or three times the distance between Earth and the Moon). When the picture was taken the comet was 410 million miles from Earth, on course to collide with the planet Jupiter in mid-July.
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| Jupiter showing Shoemaker-Levy 9's impact sites(Source NASA, STSci and ESA; a NASA Hubble Space Telescope Telescope Camera image) |
The brown spots mark the places where fragments of comet SL9 tore through Jupiter's atmosphere in July 1994.
Having gone from home to space, perhaps I have digressed enough as I wouldn't want to be subject to "The Cobblers Cure."
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| (From Wellcome Images, a website operated by the Wellcome Trust - CC BY 4,0) |
This is a post inspired by
17 comments:
A load of cobblers eh? Don't remember Comet Shoemaker. I don't like The Cobbler's Cure either. Not too many on this side of the pond would understand your play on words.
Another shoemaker: "William Lee "Bill" Shoemaker (August 19, 1931 – October 12, 2003) was an American jockey. For 29 years he held the world record of number of professional jockey victories." (Wikipedia)
An excellent spin on the theme, Bob. Sadly shoes today are expendable rather than repairable. There is an antique cobbler's iron anvil in our house which my uncle acquired decades ago for a mail order course in shoe repair. Now it works as sculpture.
I’m sure I’ve seen those recreated workshops in other living museums too, but sadly I can’t find the pictures I’m sure to have taken. Mr Robinson would have been a very skilled craftsman; no wonder it was mesmerising to watch him at work.
I love how your mind works :) I would never have got to the comet.
Excellent Ring-around-the-rosie post. I think we've all known people the Cobbler's Cure would fit! (ouch) I had a favorite pair of heels I took to the local shoe repair shop to have resoled five times. Finally, on the 6th try, the fellow shook his head. They had been crafted of good leather, he said, but even good leather had its limits.
What a great post love how your mind rambles around a topic!!!
I feel like having some cobbler pie now!
(And am hoping blogger comments are working again.)
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How cleverly you wove this all together. I love the orderly cobblers tools.
Having recently been involved with the photographing and packing up of a large and very disorganised collection from a museum that is temporarily closing, including quite a number of unidentified cobber's tools, I am intrigued with your story and photos. Many of the items that I photographed appear in your photos. It would be a nice to recreate a cobbler's workshop from the items in that collection, after doing some research into the tools.
How fantastic to have a cobbler living just two doors down and to be able to see him at work.
A great conjunction of stories -who'd have thought of the connections -well you of course! It must have been intriguing as a child to watch the cobbler at work.
Another enjoyable post. I would have liked to see a cobbler at work too.
You made me laugh again.
It always amuses me how you start your post so sensibly and then veer off into something somewhat related but clearly connected by a play on words, at least. I enjoyed seeing your home and the nearby shoe shop. When I was first married, I bought a number of antique shoe lasts and made them into bookends for gifts.
Wonder who that learing woman watching the cobbler do his stitch is?
My husband isn't a cobbler, but I sure do wish he would organize his tools so nicely.
A load of cobblers? Over here we usually say a load of old cobblers, which would have worked equally well. An interesting post which evoked the smell in our shoe repairer's shop
What a delightful post. Its years since I last heard Petula Clark singing the little shoemaker, how lovely to hear it again.
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