ABC WednesdayF is for Flamanville

Flying back from Jersey last year we flew with Flybe over Flamanville in France.

Flamanville is a commune in the Manche department in north-western France.

The Flamanville Nuclear Power Plant was established there in the 1980s, with two PWR reactors of 1300 MWe each, which were put into operation in 1986 and 1987.

Flamanville has been selected for the installation of the first French EPR reactor (which will be Flamanville's third reactor) near the two existing ones. This facility was to be operational in 2012 but at the early planning and permission stage objections were raised by the neighbouring States of Jersey and the start date has been put back to 2014.

More information about the town can be found on its website.

Information about the reactor can be gleaned from the Power Technology website.

Another aerial photograph from further North can be found on sithenah.

More F posts can be found on ABC Wednesday.

ABC WednesdayE is for Eclipse Watchers

Do you remember where you were on August 11th 1999?

This was the day when a total eclipse of the sun was visible in the UK. I was at a meeting in offices on Oldham Street, Hyde. A few minutes before the event we took a break and went out into the street to witness the event.


It was quite cloudy so we didn't get a really clear view and you had to have a pair of special eclipse-viewing spectacles to avoid damaging your eyes.

I just pointed my camera in the right direction and hoped for the best.

This is the best I managed.

For more E posts visit ABC Wednesday.

Anchor Bridge, Brighouse

Last Monday on my way to Mabel Ferrett's funeral, I stopped off in Brighouse for an hour.

I wandered around the town taking a few photographs whilst waiting for my next bus. This is the Calder & Hebble Navigation from Briggate looking at Anchor Bridge.

It was only when I later downloaded my photographs onto the computer that I noticed the large congregation of ducks assembled between the bridges.

For more Sunday Bridges visit San Francisco Bay Daily Photo.

ABC WednesayD is for Disruption on Droylsden Road

I've missed a couple of weeks having been busy getting to grips with a new computer, but I'm a bit more sorted again now.

This is Droylsden Road, Audenshaw from the top deck of a #216 bus from Ashton under Lyne to Manchester, last September.

A new Metrolink tramline is being built through Droylsden. For part of its route the trams will run down the middle of the main road. The construction is therefore causing much disruption.

I did have this and another photograph from further down the line earmarked for the M post last round but chose to go with something else on the day.

You can see more of the disruption in my photograph on sithenah.

For more information on the line itself see http://www.lrta.org/Manchester/ashton.html.

Visit ABC Wednesday for more D posts.

Mabel Ferrett (30th April 1917 - 28th January 2011)

Mabel Ferrett, her late husband Harold and her surviving son John have been good friends with my wife and I over the years. I first met Mabel at a meeting of the Pennine Poets at Elland Library where it had been established by Joan Lee. Later the regular venue was Mabel's home in Heckmondwike, but we also visited her on many occasions purely as friends dropping by.

Ian McMillan writing in the Yorkshire Post described her as

a cornerstone of West Yorkshire poetry for decades

and elsewhere in the Yorkshire Post as

a dynamic powerhouse of a woman and an evangelist for poetry.

As well as a poet and editor she was a journalist and historian and became a Life President of the Spen Valley Historical Society.

Her book After Passchendaele is a fascinating account of mainly her early life. She didn't like school but liked her teacher Miss Scott. Mabel became a teacher and was evacuated in the War from Leeds to Lincoln.

Inside my copy of the book is a four page letter in her, by then, barely readable scrawl. Dated 18th December 2003 she apologies for not writing sooner after my telephone call a fortnight previously. I had rung on the night when 19 people had squashed into her front room at the launch.

Although by then transport difficulties made it impossible for us to visit we still kept in touch by phone every few months.

In her review of Imaginary Gates on NHI Review Mandy Smith writes

She is the wise woman who knows there are two sides to everything, and many of these poems explore the double-faceted nature of existence.

She was indeed a most wise woman and an extraordinary person.

I published several of her poems over the years and three can be found online.

Read Hope is a Sharpened Axe on Pickings.

Read Oppression on Pickings.

Read Chequer-Board on the Aabye's Baby archive.

In Death of a Neighbour Mabel writes

Now she is gone where all is ignorance.
The black hearse waits
It is her funeral.
The sun evokes the yellow crocuses,
birds sing but that is all.
Today I pull my curtains back alone.

Bibliography:

1956 Borough of Spenborough Official Guide (Pyramid Press)
1956 The Lynx-Eyed Strangers (Outposts)
1965 The Angry Men (E J Arnold)
1971 The Tall Tower (Platform)
1973 Shirley Country (Hub)
1975 Years of the Right Hand (Hub)
1978 The Brontës in the Spen Valley (Kirklees Cultural Services) extended edn 1997
1984 A Question of Menhirs (Littlewood)
1986 Humber Bridge: Selected Poems, 1955–85 (Littlewood)
1987 The Taylors of the Red House (Kirklees Library)
1993 A Short History of Hartshead (Hartshead Church)
1996 Scathed Earth (Poetry Salzburg)
2001 Imaginary Gates (Fighting Cock Press)
2003 After Passchendaele (Fighting Cock Press)
2006 Spirit & Emotion (Fighting Cock Press)

After Passechendaele appears to be available on download at World of Books [link not given] Beware the file is infected with malware!!

Mabel's funeral will be at Hartshead Church on Monday 7th February 2011 at 1 p.m. I hope to be there.