and of course Ta-Taa came along with them,
after they left I decided to watch the first episode of the first series of Industrial Revelations above, Mark Williams, who you may remember as Arthur Weasley of Harry Potter fame, made a great presenter, to great in fact I spent the whole day watching the complete DVD! it was one of two, so I will not make the mistake of watching the second one until I have done a bit to the train set in future, funny how words like gaffer I have not heard used in 30 or 40 years in it's original context were being used in the documentary,
the downside was that it was only an hour or so to go before we had to get ready to go out, so we put one of the Ultimate Crimes DVD's on this one was number 8 in the series, Murder At The Top, documenting presidents Lincoln, Garfield, McKinley and Kennedy, also other famous assassinations such as Roehm, Juan Gerardi, the Tsars and King Faisal, fascinating,
then it was out on the town, Diana has one of the dresses I bought for her on her return to Thailand,
a quick bite to eat in the Bier Kitchen and then into the street,
Walking Street was packed with Asian tour groups,
but take them away and it would have been pretty empty, we started off in Sisterz, and were joined by Tom, Fred, Jay and Precil, Mark, Wayne and Big Jim, one of the new owners Ken called over to say Hi, then at about 10 when I could not hear any more we went to see Juu in Champions, great music at a sensible level of volume, also John Boy called in to say hello,
then it was time to say bye and off to home, but first we stopped by the glass blower's stall,
lots of interesting items to buy,
and here he is, the "Gaffer" the word nowadays is used to describe the head of lighting on stage or screen, but in my day (here we go again!) the term was used to describe a master glass blower, he would be sat in a chair most times, and molten glass on a blow stick would be brought to him by his team, because of the dangers of a team walking and working with red hot glass it was so dangerous when the gaffer said jump you did not stop to ask how high!
I've watched a couple of episodes of that "Industrial Revelations" program on TV. The episodes I watched were on trains and one, I believe, about Manchester.
ReplyDeleteI grew up near Corning, New York, home of Corning Glass and its subsidiary, Steuben Glass. I used to watch glass blowing often when I was a kid, as every time relatives came from out of town to visit us, we took a trip over to The Glass Museum.
Dear Jil, yes a great series, I have bought loads of similar DVD's but I am guessing this series is going to be the best of the bunch, I watched a guy we used to call "the glass animal man" at the entrance to the Brighton Aquarium, which is as near as I ever got to a glass factory, they must be fascinating places to go around and great for photographers, best regards, Stan and Diana.
ReplyDeleteWatching the "real" glass blowing was fun. The last time I was at Corning Glass, it was autumn, and so the gaffer in the studio (one guy has a headset with microphone so he can describe what his partner is doing) made this gorgeous pumpkin water pitcher. It took about 20 minutes or so, and would probably sell for big bucks in the gift shop eventually.
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