Baggy's Blog

Timeline: 1950s - Present Location: Warwickshire, Gibraltar & Tangiers My first encounters with various animals was at my parental home in Lapworth , Warwickshire. My father , the charismatic cross between Churchill & Lucan had a very "soft spot" for animals so my early childhood was blessed with being close to a huge variety. There were always three or four dogs , some dozen or more "yard" cats ,a Green Fronted Amazon Parrot called Charlie who laid an egg and became Charlotte , an aviary full of squawking parakeets & budgerigars , about 500 free running chickens (much to the delight of the local Fox) and George The Monkey. I am never quite sure what type of Monkey he was but I think he was a Spider Monkey . He was pretty much hated by the whole household apart from father who he amused greatly - but of course father never had to clean up after him - he just sat in his Victorian ex-dentist's chair and laughed with George like a naughty schoolboy...

Timeline: 1980s Location: Shipston on Stour. Following on from yesterday's blog I thought I would recount another couple of "Sharpy Tales". Sharpy's sixtieth birthday started both early and well in the White Bear and after a while he announced "Bugsy dear boy I have arranged a birthday celebration for us tonight - Baggy I am not including you as you have your beautiful bride Sheelagh" Bugsy was between marriages and Sharpy was a long term divorced geezer with little chance of remarriage! To use modern parlance the day's drinking turned "messy" - we all drank far too much (no surprise there!) as the dear old Bear let us "lock in" through the afternoon "dry" period and I began to feel relief that whatever was planned for the evening did not include me ! At about 6pm Bugsy asked what the form was for the evening - Sharpy responded "Bugsy I tell thee I have ordered two "ladies of the night" who are coming by ...

Timeline: 1970s-80s Location: Shipston on Stour James R Carter-Sharp was a most extraordinary man who owned The Kandy Shop in Shipston on Stour. I am giving quite a lot of preamble about this gentleman and his abode because there are further tales to come! "Sharpy" was ex military , extremely erudite and an absolutely huge character. He arrived in Shipston via Public School ( Gordonstoun from memory) , then The Army & then Tea Planting in Kuala Lumpur . He regularly exclaimed "Baggy - I tell thee the ugliest women in the World come from Kuala Lumpur!" Sharpy took possession of the Kandy Shop and Babs Furniss another great local character managed the shop in an almost Dickensian manner and could be seen bumbling about Shipston in her little Austin A30 which she drove till she died. In Honesty Sharpy did very little in the shop and Babs organised everything leaving Sharpy to drink and regale his audience in The White Bear to his heart's content . The lit...

Timeline: Late 1990s Location : Gloucester & Shipston on Stour. My very dear friend Bugsy Nicholson who is sadly no longer with us was both a great character and for a long period my best chum. We lived together on & off in various places including the grim little flat that featured in my blogs "The Waggling Spoon and also  Cold Champagne , Fortnums Pie & The Wet Beer Tent " , a wonderful Toy shop , a narrow boat and a farm cottage. We had an awful lot of fun together and you will find more "Baggy & Bugsy tales" to come - this one is however is a Bugsy "Solo Event" as recounted to me straight from the horse's mouth. Bugsy was working for Redkir Construction of Brailes who were civil engineers of high regard who undertook underground duct work for BT and other telecom providers. In order to lay the underground ducts both roads and pavements had to be excavated by Redkir in order that the various cables and fibre optics could be provi...

Timeline 1981 - Location Algeria Leaving Bou Saada after eventual hot baths , a soft bed and boiling eggs (which I had to get from the Veedub as the hotel had no eggs!) we felt much refreshed and travelled on westwards through Ain Oussera and on to Tiaret a pleasing town on the edge of the Tell Atlas where we stopped for coffee. It was a real mixture of Ancient & Modern having Berber roots back millennia with plenty of more modern French influence . Onward westwards to the town of Mascara where there was a market in full swing selling everything from Babouches (Shoes) made from old car tyres, a plethora of used clothing in various states , donkeys and of course plenty of food stalls . I was particularly drawn to one such food stall which appeared to be selling something entirely black and had a large cluster of people around it . On venturing closer it became apparent that the "blackness" was in fact a complete covering of flies on a confectionary stall and the vend...

Timeline 1950s - Present Day : Location Various Warwickshire Abodes. Now England is a real dog loving Nation and I am sure you will all have a few anecdotes of your own - here are some of mine. Lapworth 1960s: Butch the Boxer was a typical "mad boxer" and lived happily with Sophie The British Bull Terrier and Bonkers her son who was the product of an athletic Black Labrador who jumped the gate "at that awkward time" . Butch was a lovely dog with a lovely temperament  but who hated cats and he spent hours chasing our dozen or so outside "ratter cats" round the grounds . One fine day he was chasing Thomas Tight Arse a black cat of advanced years who had gone blind and sadly he chased him into a tree stump where TTA knocked himself out - I think Butch was somewhat surprised to have caught him - but he still ate him! Snitterfield 1970s: Here we had Horace , a fine British Bulldog who was well bred and thankfully suffered no breathing or other difficultie...

Timeline 1950s . Location Lapworth , Warwickshire. I was shipped out to the family home after being "hatched" in a nursing home / maternity home in Edgbaston. My elder brother , Rob , was at Amesbury prep school at the time prior going to Pangbourne Nautical College. My father had returned from the war and I saw little of him as he was either endlessly drinking and socialising or setting up a successful business - he had many influential friends in various spheres and actually did very well in life between drinking bouts . Looking back now father appeared to be a bit like a cross between Mr Churchill and "Lucky" Lucan. My dear mother was the mainstay of the family home - a wonderful woman of aristocratic heritage and independent means ( which father used a lot!) . I suppose we would have been known as very comfortable. Being the elder brother - Rob played some of the usual tricks that older brothers played . I received a well used £1 note from my aunt at Christ...

Welcome to The Baggy Prize Quiz - a nice new crisp plastic £10.00 Note will be posted Anywhere in the World to the first to answer all questions correctly. A Few Ground Rules - please respond in the Comments Column of the Blog - Not Facebook. I will not be telling anyone what questions they got right or wrong - you will find out when we have a winner! Obviously some of  the questions won't be entirely straightforward as anybody can go to Google and get the answer so get your cryptic head on and think out of the box a bit! Question 1. Where am I ? : Here you will find a James and a Charles . One of my districts sounds stupid and has a Hispanic pub , another is not really "The End of The World" . There is also A White Lady and a large safe harbour. Question 2. What Car Am I? : I was only produced from 1966 - 1967 being the last of the line . I am British . I am nearly 1.5 metric tonnes in weight and have a cubic capacity of  3 litres. I have triple SU Carburettor...

Mondays are busy commercial days for me but here are a couple of quickies . Personal Registration Plates : My dear brother Rob "Pompo" Saunders , so called because he was very pompous headed up the family packaging company and tried desperately to get the registration "PAC 1T" but failed and eventually bought "PAC 1" at a quite ridiculous amount which he attached to his XJS in the early 80s . He very proudly bought it round to our home and said to my darling Sheelagh "What do you think my dear?"  Sheelagh , as quick witted as ever responded " Very good Rob - have you branched out into Corner Shops now? !!!" . He was utterly crestfallen. Mac Melville a daily patron at the White Bear who was a quite charming man and an ex RAF WW11 Fighter Pilot had "BOL 1C" which he bought cheap years before and I thoroughly approved of ! Another dear friend , Jonathon Burrow who is still very much alive and rather portly inherited his fa...

Timeline 1993 - Location Amsterdam , Nederlands. Now the early nineties were probably the end of the "glory days" for pubs when brewers invited publicans on "Jollies" if they sold lots of their beer. In these days we were taken to Barcelona , Paris and various other destinations but on this occasion Bass brewers rang and said " Baggy you and Sheelagh have won a week in a five star hotel in  Istanbul" - "how lovely" I replied   "yes you and forty nine other couples are going"  said the Bass rep. At this point I had visions of a busman's holiday with people I didn't know and probably wouldn't like and quickly responded "the only problem is I don't fly" - "but you are actually number one and we really want to reward you" she replied . "Well perhaps we could go somewhere else" I said  - "Ok - we will get back to you" she replied. Two days later we were asked where we like to go and...

Saturdays will see a travelog featuring one of our trips to lesser known destinations with a vignette of some of our experiences of the journey. Timeline Circa 1981. Sheelagh and I were lucky enough to visit the wonderful Algeria as it was considered safer to do so back then than now - it was a pretty wild and wonderful place but in retrospect it was probably fairly dangerous even back then! Algeria is vast and the interior was pretty well uninhabited inland apart from the odd oasis town and trading post as most of the population were to be found in the Mediterranean coastal region including the capital Algiers. We travelled in our ancient but reliable 1973 VW microbus in which we had taken the ferry from Naples to Tunis via Palermo and then travelled south to the Libyan border and back across the northern edges of the Sahara and into Algeria . The Veedub was very basically equipped with a double bed , camping stove & sink but we were young and s...

Timeline circa 1994 - Location White Bear , Shipston on Stour . When we took the White Bear we teamed up with an outdoor activity centre run by Freddie Scotland who entertained Stag Parties at his outdoor venue every weekend and we became the accommodation provider for these events together with being  the "entertainment centre" on Saturday nights . The form that this took was the Stag and his party of  usually about 12-15 of his men would arrive on Friday night and go to the activity centre for a full day on the Saturday after a hearty breakfast and then return to The Bear in the early evening when the fun would begin! We had built a tiled "full  washdown " function room away from the main body of the hotel and they were served a fine supper in this room after which the "main event" would begin . Freddie Scotland supplied "ladies" to entertain the party and depending on how much the party had paid either one or two ladies would arrive at abou...

Timeline 2012 - Location The Horseshoe Inn , Shipston on Stour . A lovely local lady , Caterina, asked us if she might run an Anne Summers party in the Horseshoe sometime. Having researched and discussed the requirements for such an event a Sunday night was decided as we don't serve food on Sunday evenings and the restaurant could be set up with curtains etc as a "ladies only zone". And so it was - the restaurant was sealed off and we decided that we perhaps ought to offer some entertainment for the menfolk who were bound to congregate in the bar so we asked Nick , a local middle aged gentleman, if he could lend us a slightly blue DVD as we knew he "enjoyed" such items . We thought we had better just check that the said DVD was suitable and to our horror after about two minutes we realised that the film was far from "slightly" blue so that idea was scrapped! The response to the party was nothing short of phenomenal - the ladies were having a whale...

  Timeline circa 1978 - Location Springhill Point to Point , Cotswolds. I have always loved point to points as a fun social occasion and this year I had saved to get some good Champagne and a game pie from Fortnum's for our outing to Springhill. I asked Sheelagh who I was courting at the time and was utterly crestfallen to hear she was going with an Australian chap and he had "Australian Champagne" ! I pointed out that there was no such thing and that my offering from Epernay was superior in every respect but alas my protestations were all in vain - and so it was ! Bugsy and I arrived at Springhill with my hamper full of vittles and of course we were drinking heavily from the start having parked my ancient Volvo on the hill in the prime complimentary car park. By race three we had drunk all the Champagne and had reverted to extremely large hip flasks so I thought it would be a good time to absorb some solids in the form of the large Fortnum's game pie - sadly I...

As the events of the  past week melts into the gossamer tissues of my brain I recall a couple of interesting events . Firstly a couple of youngsters in The Horseshoe had never heard of an Artichoke - oh what they have missed either as a "sucking Globe" or a Jerusalem . Actually I am astounded how  offal and things such as Oxtail were never fed to the youth of today - in my day you got what you were given and told to think of the starving Africans . So Carillion are going bust - apparently they are into the banks alone for £900 Million - remind your bank manager of that fact when you want to borrow 500 quid! It appears the old adage that once you owe a huge amount to them they wont touch you is indeed true! For Government contracts - read Government corruption - shocking! More anecdotes to come - keep reading!

In approximately 1993 we were running The White Bear in Shipston on Stour which was both great fun and successful to boot. One Saturday evening  there was a large "Society" wedding in the area and all the available accommodation in the town was fully booked for said wedding. This included the neighbouring hotel ,The George Hotel, which at the time was very much at the "lower end of the accommodation spectrum" being a late night young persons venue (I hasten to add that nowadays it is a lovely venue at the higher end) . On the Sunday morning I was at the "Bear" overseeing breakfasts being served to our "share" of the wedding guests when I noticed a couple with their noses pressed to the glass of the front windows so I opened the door to them - "any chance of a cup of coffee " they asked "of course" I replied "do come in". They looked very nervous and were visibly shaking so I persuaded them to take some breakfast in ...

Some 40 odd years ago when sharing a flat in Old Road in Shipston on Stour with Bugsy we both awoke on a Saturday morning after a night’s hard drinking around Shipston. Our flat was a dingy little affair next to the public lavatories from where we got our electricity via a lead when we got cut off by “Rubber Shears Rick” who worked for the MEB ( this happened quite frequently) ! On this occasion we found that we had less than £15.00 between u ... s for the day’s drinking – enough for lunchtime but not for Saturday night and Sunday – it was most depressing ! After the lunchtime session I sat morosely in my chair staring at a television that didn’t work and noticed a one gallon empty cider flagon on the floor with a spoon lying next to it – I put the spoon handle down in the neck of the flagon and gave the spoon bowl a flick and watched fascinated as the spoon waggled and waggled! I suppose it must have been the shape of the spoon bowl , lack of friction etc but after timing it on my...

Some 30 odd years ago I was married with my lovely Sheelagh and living at Peel House , West Street in Shipston on Stour . We had a cat called Goebbels who of course was so called because he had had his nuts removed . One night I gave the drink a real bending and staggered home to my marital bed in a very poor state where quite understandably I was given the “cold shoulder”! I arose at 6.00am to open up business with Neil Davis at what ... is now Fosseway Hire and felt so ill I thought I had better have a ruddy good fry up so entered the kitchen and removed the “breakfast pan” from under the eye level grill ( a wonderful obsolete device) . Now I always believe one shouldn’t wash a good breakfast frying pan and therefore it was so . I noticed that Sheelagh must have had liver for supper as there was a nice piece left in the pan and I added rashers , sausages , eggs & beans and returned it to the grill. When cooked I took some thick white bread and ate it straight from the pan and...