Sepia Saturday - M- Mendelsshon

 It's a long time since I last appeared on Sepia Saturday but when I saw that you had reached 'M' in the alphabet series I just knew I had to take part.

I may not be able to show you machines or a lady working with them.

However  I came across a gentleman not known, or traced by me. There is no doubt about the photographer - 

Hayman Selig Mendelssohn (1847 -1908) had studios in London and Newcastle and was also photographer to Her Majesty Queen Victoria and the Royal Family.

This portrait found on a market stall in the North East of England contains interesting information on the back.

It is most frustration that I cannot read the signature but it appears to have been written in December (?) 1888.

And the number of photographic medals also fit nicely into our theme for 'M'.

For other 'M' related posts please visit the links at Sepia Saturday 545

Sepia Saturday - Seaside Social Distancing

It has been a long time since I last contributed to Sepia Saturday but obeying Boris's call to stay at home forced me to tidy up my office. In the process I came upon a postcard from the seaside town of Ilfracombe on the North Devon Coast.

No vehicles in sight so these promenaders did not drive to the beauty spot. The bandstand appears to be empty and there is no sign of ice cream stalls.

Whether social distancing was practised in those days it's hard to tell.

The hill obscures the sea I think and that's the closest I can get to matching this week's 

Renewable Energy - Sepia Saturday

Just recently news was made by the UK having a day when no power was generated by coal. Solar and wind energy were in charge.

But sometimes don't you just wish that 

the wind did not blow so hard!

Is this what Sepia Saturday 365 was looking for?

Wonderful, wonderful, Copenhagen.

I'm not a great lover of cities but I would make an exception for Copenhagen shown in this week's prompt.

I've spent many hours there with some time in that selfsame square.

I've doctored this picture to remove the colours and to draw your attention to the pattern on the ground. I guess I must have stood close to where the three people on the right of the prompt photo were located.

No birds, no-one selling food for the pigeons and much more crowded in the 1980s.

I did find a bird feeding elsewhere on the way to Rosenborg Castle.

But like most visitors to Copenhagen I just had to send time admiring - 

The Little Mermaid

To see other posts this week, just follow the links at Sepia-Saturday-355.

By hook or by crook - Sepia Saturday

They tell me shepherds once used a crook in their work I wonder how many shepherds there were about when the megaliths were put up at Almendres Cromlech in Portugal. 

Inverted shepherd's crook

Apparently the crook was a common motif on the local megaliths.

A shepherd in Croatia needed a dog and a crook to keep his flock under control in the snow near Jagodnjak.

Croatian shepherd with his flock

The Hungarian village of Ricse commemorated its shepherd in a statute but he just carried a stout staff and apparently had no dog.

Shepherd Well

In the early 1950s I had close encounters with sheep - well, with their fleeces at least. As a school holiday job with the Stamford firm of Central Wool Growers, initially at their Wothorpe plant and later in the new premises on Uffington Road.

Fleeces delivered from farms were examined and graded for quality by a Yorkshire man named Ben Waterhouse. He threw them into bins according to their breeds. Our gang of school boys then had to put them into bales and stamp them down with our feet.

Back then, my hands were the softest they have ever been due the effect of the lanolin in the wool.

A less pleasant job however was the baling of dags - the wool clippings from around a sheep's back end. My trouser legs had a very interesting smell - lanolin, and a ranker aroma which would keep any dogs away.

Now the nearest I get to sheep and lambs are those in a local field.

A Spring 'creche'

Seems a shame that soon it will be time for mint sauce.

Perhaps their mum will provide some protection - 

before it's time for lamb chops.

Don't feel sheepish, please visit Sepia-Saturday-329. for alternative views - any black sheep out there I wonder?

Attributions:

• Inverted shepherd's crook; 26 May 2006 by Xyz11234, Public Domain
• Croation shepherd, 3 May 2009 by Ljabornir Damjanovic, CC BY-SA 3.0
• Shepherd Well, Ricse; 4 August 2007 by Ramirez Hun, Public Domain

Holiday Dogs - Sepia Saturday

I meet many dogs in our village. This is a Lhasa Apso named 

Billy

He gives me my first link to our prompt for this week.

Billie Holiday with a dog

One dog which always has a place in our heart belonged to my wife's sister but resided with her mother in the 1950s. He has appeared on my Sepia posts before, but deserves another outing.

Major

Now when we go on holiday we always get involved with dogs - and they regard it as a holiday too. These two we didn't know but they loved a Cornish beach.

Paddling on Crantock beach

My daughter's dogs in Michigan always look on it as a holiday when we are there. One of them was always content to practise his favourite sport alone.

Cody fishing for frogs

Buster however was always impatient when we took him out in Caranton Woods in Cornwall.

Come on you two. Keep up!

The dog park near my daughter's home was a place her dogs always loved. It meant that they could dive in and climb out up a ramp.

Cody, Scout, Lily and Gem after a swim off the jetty

Of course there was also the ever present tennis ball to play with, if Cody didn't wander off to look for a treat by sitting down at somebody's holiday picnic spread.

Scout was named after the girl in Harper Lee's 'To Kill a Mockingbird' even although he is a boy. 

It seems appropriate somehow to finish this post with him on the day that the death of Harper Lee is announced.

Scout - at rest

RIP Harper Lee.

To check how others have interpreted the prompt this week stroll over to the links at Sepia-Saturday-318.

Fore! - Sepia Saturday

When I started at St Andrews University in 1955 I had never played golf.

It was also the first time that I had seen the Royal & Ancient, fifty years after this photograph was dated.

R&A Clubhouse 1905

It may not have a foursome like those in our prompt but I will leave you to judge which ones are more appropriately dressed.

In my time at St Andrews, and a point that I regret, I never played there. Of course time on putting greens did not count,

Not a time to get the yips

especially when your opponent is your girl friend at the time.

It was 20+ years later that she became a golfing widow.

I was over 50 when, while working in Stavanger, I took up golf seriously - there is no other way to play it.

Over the years in between I suppose we played a few round of crazy golf but it was the 1990s, back in England, that I achieved a measure of success with the CEGB Canute Golfing Society and on Teesside at Billingham Golf Club.

A modest haul of trophies

Since then I've played in a number of countries including Scotland (of course - but not St Andrews), Denmark and the USA.

I never managed to beat my son-in-law.

Winter golf - Steven drives off at Oxford Hills, Michigan

And at the 13th it's my turn on this par 3 with a creek and a steep bank in front of the green.

Bobble hat and gloves - not shorts weather at all

I have struggled to beat my daughter, even on the Mountain Flowers Par 3 at the Homestead, Michigan's freshwater resort on Lake Michigan.

Rachel by the side of a Mountain Flowers green

Some holes on this course were quite a challenge.

The green may be only 190yds away but it's still a daunting drive.

On all courses however you will come across the posers.

One is a bronze!

Water is often a hazard to be avoided like this lake at Mulberry Hills, Michigan.

And in recent winters may make it necessary to close the course.

Flooding at Billingham golf course

If you hit a ball into water sometimes you may need a helping hand.

Or mouth

But the best water(ing) hole of all is always the one like this.

Approaching the 19th hole at Mulberry Hills

To see how others have succeeded with golf or other shots, visit the links at Sepia-Saturday-317

Island Beaches - Sepia Saturday

I must have walked a few miles along island sands, sometimes with a dog, but never with a gun like Robinson Crusoe below:

The Isle of Skye may be connected to the mainland now by a bridge but in 1957 it was unreachable from -

The foreshore on the island of Raasay

The week of our geological expedition from St Andrews the weather threatened to spoil our stay.

Whereas on the Isles of Scilly it was much more welcoming.

Tresco beach

And not crowded at all.

One man's footsteps

He must have got separated from his dog.

Buster waiting for someone to join him

A North Yorkshire beach is comparatively crowded.

Dogs at Saltburn

Further down that beach the cliffs are menacing.

Any footprints here are filled in quickly in the squelchy sand.

Those in Cornwall are much easier to see even though we may not know who made them at the time.

While Aphrodite strides out from beneath the sea

a curlew decides to make itself scarce along the River Tees.

If you had wondered where I've been for so long I'll just leave you to guess on which deserted island I have been marooned while you check other posts at Sepia-Saturday-308.