The Road to Wigan Pier

[Jack Black]

Jack -who is Tony Capstick? my Grandads cousin used to call people daft wazzocks.

Here we go Meako: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tony_Capstick

I notice, his Wiki page ommits to mention the incident where drunk, and in posession of a Walther PPK, in the back of a Sheffield taxi, he fired the gun at a lamp-post in order to prove to the driver that it wasn't a fake! Since this happened in Sheffield city centre on a busy Saturday night, Capstick was arrested, and narrowly avoided a prison sentence.

 

[meako]

thank you kindly.
y'know it didn't even occur to me to wiki Tony Capstick.
what a dozy wazzock.

 

[Faiaoga]

I'd agree with you there Carl, though 'Orwell' was actually a toff. He wrote up one hilarious account of trying to get himself arrested so he could experience prison. He got himself drunk and accosted two policemen, but as he had a posh Eton accent, they were very polite to him and didn't want to arrest him at all. Eventually he took a swing at one of them, and so they put him up for the night in the cells, but were very apologetic about it, and he was released by the magistrate the next day. I get the impression John Steinback might have not have had to tried so hard!



I'm afraid not, all my great grandfathers died before I was born, and the only thing I remember of his (this is my mother's father's father) was his old pipe. However, my (maternal) grandfather also carried a Rodgers Jack knife, which he said was like his father's. How much like it, I couldn't say, but it had a clip blade a bit like on ScruffUK's Trevor Ablett Barlow knife, possibly a little smaller, and a pen secondary, with the pen in front of the clip. It had a small steel front bolster and dark wood scales.

I don't think Orwell and Steinbeck can be easily distinguished by "toff" and "roughneck". Orwell was apparently only able to attend his English boarding school on a scholarship and was not able to attend university. enlisting as a polce officer in Burma. Orwell's experiences at school and during his Burma service do seem to have affected his life and made him sympathetic to the underdog. Steinbeck, though he spent time with ranch hands and manual laborers in California, was the son of the Salinas County treasurer and solidly middle class; Steinbeck's mother was a former schoolteacher. Steinbeck attended Stanford University before travelling with migrant workers.

I like both writers and admire them for having the courage of their convictions. Orwell was wounded in the Spanish Civil War, while Steinbeck was a war correspondent during World War II. One of Steinbeck's dispatches was about a group of British commandos (Yorkshire miners, perhaps) who he describes as small, wiry men who used their Sheffield commando knives to great effect but were modest and self-effacing.
Faiaoga

 

[Jack Black]

One of Steinbeck's dispatches was about a group of British commandos (Yorkshire miners, perhaps) who he describes as small, wiry men who used their Sheffield commando knives to great effect but were modest and self-effacing.

Very interesting I'm a life-long admirer of both writers, but have only read Steinack's novels I'm afraid. I'll have to search out further reading.

As for Orwell's education, when very young, he attended a small private day school in Henley-on-Thames. At the age of eight, he was sent away as a boarder to St Cyprian's, a posh private prep school. The fees here were £180 a year (in 1911), but Orwell was accepted at 'half-fees'. After a brief nine week stay at Wellington College, Orwell's much sought-after King's Scholarship to Eton (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eton_College http://www.etoncollege.com/) came through, the school where the the British rich and powerful still send their children, but as one of the school's King's Scholars and the benefactor of King Henry V1, he was required to pay only token fees. Unfortunately, Orwell's dismal accademic record precluded him getting a scolarship to Oxford or Cambridge universities, and he chose to join the Indian Imperial Police in Burma (where he was born) as a probationary Assistant District Superintendent of Police.

(Summarised from Michael Shelden's Orwell - The Authorised Biography)

 

[neeman]

A rosewood clasp knife

 

[Jack Black]

From having talked to old miners, I gather that the temperature below ground is such that very little clothing is worn, really to the extent that a feller might find himself without pockets in which to keep his knife!