The Imaginings of Misunderstanding

Mondegreen is the phenomenon of mishearing lyrics or sounds. Song lyrics are the most famous example of tone deaf singers convinced they are singing the right lyrics & giving a whole new meaning with their rendition.

This post is about the visual equivalent.There must be a term for it.
Back in 1976, September, it was sunny and bright, really was, I would pass Sidcup Police Station every morning & afternoon on my way to St. Joseph's Convent   on Hatherley Road. This blog has lots on the Convent!

The police station above (a more recent photo) had a poster stuck on its board alongside WANTED posters. Those posters did include armed robbery & a photofit of 'Wanted for MURDER'  Reward £5000.

But the poster which grabbed my eye every day was one dominated by a human skull with the title RABIES KILLS  I was having a good education & read books so aged 5 I could read this poster, except I read it as RABBIS KILL.  I didn't ask my mother who was with me why this scaremongering piece of antisemitism was being promoted by the MET police.

After weeks of being perplexed & offended I did stop my mother one morning & demand answers as to why this hate filled poster was not causing public complaint.  She corrected me & that it was not a Protocol of the Elders of Zion  propaganda.

The police station has now reopened as bar! I like balconies in architecture so I had some affection for this building despite it's forthright facade which says "we have cells", "we are looking to bang you up."
What is missing  is the

police light!

 As I am fascinated by design I do like the design of these police lights based on a square tetrahedron. Ultramarine blue which turns Egyptian blue when the light is lit.

On Mondegreen's a one that every heavy metal  fan of Black Sabbath gets wrong is
Sign of the Southern Cross during the Ronnie James Dio era Mob Rules 1982.
The lyric EVERYONE hears is:
"Give life to those who have died"
which conveys the optimistic idea of resurrection achieved by the spiritual practices of the living

In live performances the late, great Dio mimed the actual lyric due to everyone mishearing  & misunderstanding what he sang:
"Give a KNIFE to those who have died."
This is an ancient practice of condemning those who had died & were considered evil or dishonourable. To stab & so kill again the abhorred dead person. It also symbolises the severing of all ties with the deceased & that the corpse will not receive funerary rites.

St Joseph's, How & Why Wonder Books III & some Einstein Relativity & Astronauts

A look at some more How and Why Wonder Books . Apropos the Convent as I had these books in the 1970s. And here are the links for more on St Joseph's Convent in Sidcup

http://armourae.blogspot.co.uk/search?updated-min=2015-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&updated-max=2016-01-01T00:00:00-08:00&max-results=1

http://armourae.blogspot.co.uk/2016_02_01_archive.html

http://armourae.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/st-josephs-convent-more-salvaged-from.html

nuns-
http://armourae.blogspot.co.uk/2016/01/st-josephs-convent-nuns.html


On the How and Why books here are some that had a special interest for me. Only Deserts was the copy I owned, the others were recently acquired either online or via Ebay.

Not the most interesting title, by a long shot, I have an affection for this as it was bought for my murdered sister Bernadette Bazzoni when she was  8 in 1967.  Purchased by our father  as he had lived in the Sahara Desert as part of his army service in the 3rd battalion of the Coldstream Guards. He was also located in other deserts & the cold of the Korean War.

Time is a very interesting title! Dinosaurs was the most popular title, its a fascinating subject, but time is a complex subject.  At first it would seem a dull subject: time is just looking at a clock or a sundial.   But time is a philosophical subject & there is a question of whether the past or future have physical existence, that is is time relative, or are the past & future have no existence and only the present moment: that is, is time absolute.

Around the time of its publishing, there was proof  of time travel on the nuclear physics scale, as particles were observed having a life span greater than established life expectancy.  This extended life was due to Einstein's  Time Dilation effect of Special Relativity.

Also Cherenkov radiation effect & astronauts red blood cells living considerably longer than their 3 month life expectancy demonstrate time travel due to Time Dilation effect.

A book I always wanted but wasn't usually in  bookshops; I never saw it. It's intriguing as the portrait reminded me of Paul Newman & the execution of the painting is impressionistic:  Space Impressionism

Basic Inventions was featured along with all the published titles in the 1970s editions as a  series of small photos on the back cover.

This cover always fascinated me, it's in the style of the French Surrealist artists, before I knew what Surrealist art was, most of my father's huge art book collection, he trained at St Martins School of Art, was of the Classical & Renaissance  era.   One object that immediately draws the eye is the wheel with the triangular gear at the back of the illustration. Then at the same time there is the prominence of the lighted torch.  For me the simple illustration of the burning torch is very effective as there is something disconcerting about it. Maybe its a fire surrounded by so much wood.  I have been on film sets with lighted torches & felt completely comfortable compared to this image.

This is one of the finest illustrations of the whole series.A number of objects arranged around the centre of the wheel in the middle of the picture.  The absence of any human or animal presence prevents the observer making a connection with the picture, so achieving Bertolt Brecht's distancing effect  Verfremdungseffekt.  That wasn't the artist's intention but the effect of dissonance ensures the painting retains its sense of mystery

Jung- that Synchronicity stuff, you predicted this?

(The main article on the history of St Josephs Convent, Sidcup, is the one article listed under 2015)

Looking to retrieve the census for Hatherley Road and my French nuns convent, St Joseph's Convent, one of the first images that appeared for 1901 was the following. Unexpectedly it is for Devon, not Sidcup. Then it gets stranger. This 1901 page for Devon is for the Soper family, the very family that my father, Edward,  spent part of the Second World War as an evacuee  and had such happy memories that he remained close to the the family decades later.  He showed me around the area in the 1980's and where his school used to stand in Totnes in Devon, long since demolished, as is my convent.

Mystery of the Red House - Sidcup

Sidcup again, a strangely special place in the 70's as it combined parts of rural England with the urban, without the excesses  of the urban world: grime and a hectic atmosphere.

Up to around 1978 a large detached mansion stood proud about 50 yards from St Lawrences church, away from the High Street. An incongruous relic from the Victorian age when Sidcup was a series of detached houses set amoungst the countryside. And, had that vista survived it would now be a tourist attraction protected by National Heritage. But from 1905 onwards the developers hammer & an equally heavy handed vision has decimated the elegance of the earlier era, Good ol' days is usually a myth.

This big red house: standing surrounded by 3 storey flats from the 1950s it glared out until a weekday morning I was on my way to St Josephs Convent and witnessed this gothic edifice biting the dust. It was being torn down by mechanical diggers, it's death rattle made sonic by it's flesh coloured wood breaking through the blood red paint job.  It appeared to be an entirely wooden structure.

That I remember this so vividly from the moment I saw it conveys the powerful presence this house cast over its neighbours.   And I know no further details about it!  I would  love to find as many details as possible or photos of this most iconic building in Sidcup.

This was the location  & what now stands in it's place.  I could be slightly off the location, 120 Main Road Sidcup

I ADORE Glauca Pendula trees, that is the shaggy looking one on the right, a variation on the Alaskan Blue cedar.Should / when I am fortunate enough to have that rose covered cottage in Cornwall or East Sussex it's one of the species which shall be sprouting everywhere, Couple of oaks naturally too. English not American oak!

Sidcup - better than you may think!

I was visiting relatives in Petts Wood last week. Actually carrying my mother's suitcases, being a good son, and that she can't lift heavy objects due to muscle tissue being removed through cancer operations ( a genetically hereditary form of cancer, more on that another time) and because my  beloved sister Bernadette Bazzoni cannot do it as she was murdered (LOTS more on that at a later date). And was reminded of

I had a slightly unusual childhood in that much of it was divided into multiple  concurrent locations:
Sidcup (home) which was above Kennards hairdressers on Main Road opposite Leslies freezer shop.
St Pauls Wood where my maternal grandfather lived, & where I would spend many a weekend
Wapping- where my sister and her mother lived & many of dad's fellow Cockney relatives. Here I would  spend every other weekend
Peckham - maternal relatives lived & my mother & I would be in Peckham at least once a week outside of school terms 
Norwich- maternal grandmother and her Spiritualist Church organ playing. Chunks of school holidays
Alfriston- One of the places my father was evacuated to & he maintained a close link, which was fantastic as it remains a fantastic rural idyll.
Algeria, Tunisia- repeatedly reminded my parents that I was too young to remember being there, which was very annoying in missing out on such a valuable cultural experience, more so as later the peace & beauty of Algeria was ripped asunder by a brutal and bloody civil war.

The point to all this reminiscing is that I have often wished I grew up in a more vibrant, artistic & spiritual environs. But of the ones I did experience, Sidcup does a special significance.
The town still had a throw back to an earlier time, probably still Edwardian, especially noticeable in the autumn and once the leaves had died, gathered into auburn piles starting to rot in the foggy autumnal air, Sidcup came into its own, it seemed suited to that season. Whereas summer time had a vitality which Sidcup couldn't match.