Strike!

The third episode finds the team facing the gruelling inequality of the Potteries. These were the factories that were the powerhouses of the Industrial Revolution.

Amidst the bottle kilns of the Staffordshire potteries, it’s not just the machinery that’s revolutionary! With no break since leaving the 19th-century equivalent of the motorway services – the coaching-inn the team now have kilns to keep alight, clay to prep and pots to make. It’s hard work for very little pay, and dissent is in the air. Will our apprentice potters, like their forebears, take up the call to arms for better working conditions and pay?

What?

The Pottery Riots in 1842 were part of the General Strike which happened in many places across the country including but not limited to, Hanley and Burslem in what is now Stoke on Trent. As the strike gained momentum, Chartists lent their support, soldiers were called in to fire on the protestors who then, rightfully, stoned them back. In the end, people were wounded and killed and property was destroyed. By the end, it would have looked like a setting in a war movie!

Where?

Staffordshire, The Black Country and North Wales were three areas where strikes have been recorded.

When?

In the middle of 1842, riots became more common than ever and the movement of Chartism received a lot of support. We will find out more about Chartism in another session.

Who?

There were people known as flywheel turners, turning large wheels used to spin pots. They worked in a team with the potter. There was a one-legged dancer who had to pump with their right leg to power a pot makers machine. Over time due to what they had to do, their body became deformed and they had one very strong leg and one normal leg. There were also clay ballers which is pretty self-explanatory!

The people were working class.

The people who were middle class would work as overseers, over the working class. They would have better pay.

The customers were intended to be middle class, but the upper class also bought from the potteries too. 

Why?

It was done to make wages and fuel the industrial boom of Victorian Britain. The strike began to happen as more people were promised payment but did not get it when the pottery broke in the kiln. The pots can sometimes explode in the kiln if the clay has not been balled properly. If one person messed up in the process, then everyone lost out. This made people feel pretty terrible, angry and rebellious.

How did the Strike change Victorian Britain?

It ended up changing workers’ rights for the better. Also, the County Police was formed.

 

Things to find out more about

Chartism

The General Strike.

The rise of British Armed History on the Beeb

The British Police Force

 

Victorian Coaching Inn

Episode 2 focused on the Coaching Inn. Here is our write up. MasterKAF chose the words and MrsDTB typed it up ?

What was it?

Where the richer folk would stop on journeys to eat and sometimes sleep. It was like a motorway service station and overnight hotel. It was also a chance to replace horses or resting them so that they could continue the journey.

Where were they?

The episode was filmed at a renovated real-life coaching inn called the New Inn. Coaching Inns were dotted along the roads in the country.

When were they used?

The mid 18th Century was the point when they were most common. After this point, they began to go out of business as there were not enough customers because trains were becoming more popular and cheaper to run.

Why were they used?

It was the fastest mode of transport at that time. Today you might be able to out cycle a galloping horse though! But then bikes were incredibly expensive and not even that fast, plus they were very hard to ride as they made a massive front wheel and a tiny back wheel!

Penny Farthings were not practical or fast!

The mail coach also used Coaching Inns so they could get a fast turnaround of their carriage.

Who used them?

Coaching Inns also had local farm workers as customers. They were not given nice food though. Sometimes they only got bread or cheese. Richer customers were supposed to get meat soup or good quality fish or rabbit, but in the episode, we watched, the people were given their food so late that it was too hot to eat, even though they had already paid for it. The coaching inn owner planned to sell the soup again later! Not the most ethical thing to do.

 

 

Finding out more about Victorians

We are watching the series “24 hours in the past” on the Beeb and would like to watch it again! It was good because it was an accurate depiction of the Victorian working-class society.  

There are 4 episodes looking at different types of areas in Victorian Britain.

1. Victorian Town – This episode focused on working in a dust-yard.  Its basically a recycling plant and it turns out that the Victorians were really good at finding ways to reuse everything!

People put all their rubbish into a bin and left it outside their door to be picked up by the dustmen. All the dirt and grossness would be taken to the yard for sorting.

Rags would be washed and then go to the clothing makers, or to make rag rugs or dusters. 

Bones would be washed clean and then used to make soap. 

Sieved ash from the fires would be sent off to make bricks. 

The dustmen also had the job of clearing horse poop on the roads for later use. This was added to night-soil which was collected from the privy and mixed with hops to make a fertiliser. The hops would also make the mess less runny. 

The people who cleared the roads also searched for what they called “pure”, which was dog muck that went to the tanners who used it for tanning leather. To tan is to soften and make leather more usable for clothing. 

The Victorians were very good at recycling. 

We are planning to take a trip to the place where this was filmed to learn more:
https://www.bclm.co.uk/learning/educational-visits/41.htm

We will write more blogs about the next episodes.

No Dig Adventure Starts Here

MasterKAF and I had been chatting about the kind of allotment that we wanted to have in our garden. Growing fruit and vegetables is a real priority for us because we want to eat more healthily and also save money. Added to that the chance to work outdoors and there is no contest! The one thing that was putting us off a little was the grunt work needed to set up the patches.

We have been looking at the work of a chap called Charles Dowding who promotes the idea of No Dig Gardening.
If we have come across a way to work the land we have without breaking our backs in the process then MrsDTB is one very happy woman. There is a good range of videos on YouTube that explain much better than we can at this stage, how the process works but to start with, we needed to prepare the ground. 

Essentially you need to smother the pasture, blocking out all light so that the grass and weeds weaken away. For this, we chose a heavy-duty membrane that will block the light but let water through. Having measured two plots we cut and laid the membrane using tent pegs to secure the edges. 

MasterKAF hard at work

These areas can now be left for a few weeks before it will be time to put a layer of mulch down and replace the membrane again to allow our no dig beds to develop. 

More gardening!

We are really getting into this gardening lark. MasterKAF helped to sow a number of seeds this morning that are all going into the greenhouse to help feed us over winter. We thought it a good idea to begin to compile a log of what we do in the garden so that we can track progress. Here are is the log so far, which covers everything we have begun to work on for the next few months:

Plant When Sown Where Sown # Seeds When Planted Where Planted # Plants
Potatoes 27 August 2018 Grow Bags Outdoors 12 27 August 2018 Grow Bags Outdoors 12
Carrots 20 August 2018 Kitchen Garden 50 Kitchen Garden  
Dwarf Beans 20 August 2018 Kitchen Garden 40 Kitchen Garden  
Salad Leaves 05 September 2018 Greenhouse 6
Carrots 05 September 2018 Greenhouse 18
Carrots       05 September 2018 Kitchen Garden 1
Salad Leaves 07 September 2018 Greenhouse 30      
Corn Salad 07 September 2018 Greenhouse 18      
Radish 07 September 2018 Greenhouse 36      
Mange Tout 07 September 2018 Greenhouse 10      
Pak Choi 07 September 2018 Greenhouse 12      

He also had fun playing with some Lego models in the garden as is still running around outside as we speak. ?

Yay, new friends

Yes!! We did it!! We got out and met some new friendly faces and it turns out it was easier than we thought. 

One of the things that living life on the Spectrum does for us is make new places and people more challenging. I have to say though, that sometimes it is my son who is the one leading from the front and today was no exception. 

After a morning in the garden and reading together (still on the Geeky Chef Cook Book) we headed into Hereford together as there was a local meet up of other Mums and kids at a local park. The plan was to go via the library so that we could pick up some new books for him and me. Just as we were arriving, the heavens opened and showed no sign of relenting on the sudden downpour. Not being scared of that “wet-water-stuff” we headed to the park anyway hoping that some folk would still join us, but it was not to be. 

A few minutes later I got a message to say that everyone was meeting at a play centre that we had never been to and was a long, but doable, walk away. I turn to MasterF and enquire on his thoughts given that we were now cold and wet. In months and years gone by, the expected response would have been upset, meltdown and a return home. No one was prouder than me to hear our young man say, “No Mum, we have come this far, I am not giving up now!”.  

“Proud-Mother” does not even begin to cover it ?

Plants and Stars

We started the day by planting carrots and lettuce in the greenhouse. This is to give us some winter vegetables and we have more seeds on their way to be sown in the next couple of days. 

This is our first planting in the greenhouse over winter to try and see what vegetables we can grow. Then we planted a small amount of carrots outside in the kitchen garden to see how they compare to the ones grown under glass. 

These are Rainbow carrots to give us an unusual mix of colourful carrots. We were lucky to get them on special offer reduced from £6 to £1!
After weeding a little patch, we prepped the soil with Calcified Seaweed to add some extra nutrient and made sure we water them in well. 

In the evening we did some star gazing in the back garden. We are really lucky to be up high and have very little light pollution near the house. We saw two major constellations and one planet. 

Mars was looking bright and rather red for a planet so far away. The sunlight takes 13 minutes to reach Mars. So if Mars was destroyed we would see it 13 minutes too late. Mars is one of five planets easily visible to the naked eye, the others are Mercury, Venus, Jupiter and Saturn. We also found that there are 24.7 hours in a Mars day. This means that Mars’ year is 255.5 hours or 10.7 days longer than earth. So we could have an extra long Christmas, birthday or taking a longer holiday. What’s not to like?

Wow! What a great first not going back to school day we have had!

Evening Primrose Harvest. We are in the middle of harvesting the flowers from the Evening Primrose crop in the garden. This is because we know it has many uses including as a help for aches and pains. So we are trying a method of making an oil that we can use to rub sore shoulders and feet with. There are other uses that we have planned and will write a blog especially about this. 

Geeky Cookery – Lon Lon Milk. MasterKAF has chosen to cook and make some of the recipes from the Geeky Chef Cookbook and today he chose Lon Lon Milk. 

We are lucky enough to have our own apple tree, so could make applesauce from scratch. MasterKAF helped to peel the apples and did a fab job of reading the instructions to MrsDTB.

 

We then made our own caramel sauce from sugar, water, butter and cream an blended this and the applesauce with vanilla yoghurt and milk. 

The result was so good that we had to label our own jars just to keep them safe!

Later we learned about Mesquite when reading through the rest of Geeky Cookery book. Even Mrs DTB learned something new today as she had never heard of this leguminous plant.

Tomorrow we are heading into garden as we have cleaned the old greenhouse ready for planting winter veg.

 

What makes a city, a city?

This was the interesting lunchtime discussion point which led us to do some research. We thought that City status was based on population and if there was a cathedral. Turns out that this is outdated and just plain wrong!

Most people think they know what a city is – a large, densely-populated, distinct urban area. And a lovely old cathedral is a must.

But when it comes to the UK’s official city status, the cathedral requirement is long defunct, ending in the 19th Century. And size does not matter.

The bounds of city status throw up a plethora of quirks.

There aren’t too many people who would deny that London was a city but in the UK it is not an official one, although it contains two of them – the City of London and City of Westminster.

A place can also stop being a city overnight. Rochester lost its city status in 1998 due to a technical oversight when the local government structure was reorganised. It took four years for them to realise they had lost it.

The definition of a city in the UK is a place which has been granted city status by the monarch. There are 66 cities in the UK – 50 in England, five in Wales, six in Scotland and five in Northern Ireland.

We found that the current population of Reading is an estimated 318,011 but is not a city. Hereford, where we are moving to, has 55,800 and is a city.

After much discussion, we could decide what if any benefit there is to being a city. MasterF believes it is just adult-ish bragging rights!

Little Triumphs

This morning saw us have a nostalgia filled play sesh with MasterF’s old Transformer collection. This gave us chance to talk about memories of play time in our last house. This is helpful as we are just about to move again and change can sometimes be challenging for us. It helped to realise that even if where we live changes, the memories we hold still remain.

This afternoon we worked on Nessy Spelling and our lad was pleased to find that he had gone up a level again and is over halfway through the course. He commented that he is beginning to make progress, which is a huge step forward in itself, what with self confidence being a challenge for much of the time.

Doodlemaths also went well with today’s new topic being graded at 100% when MasterF was questioned.

Finally we chipped into a new topic on JAM. Our lad has chosen to start the Lego course and is pleased to find that he is at least as good as his peers. He almost posted up one of his own designs today. So confidence is slowly building there too.

So I will take today’s little triumphs and shout them loudly, as they are not just learning milestones, but the beginning of the confidence boost our lad needs after leaving behind the bullies and regime of his last school setting.

MrsDTB is a very happy mummy-tutor right now!