Tuesday, December 11, 2012

(273) In the 1980s, entering/residing at number 27 Shakespeare Road, Bedford


(Further to Entry 272, on December 3rd 2012 I uploaded some of the details of that Entry to my Facebook page and added the link to the In Depth interview with Hitchens.
It prompted these comments.
Angela Radice, suggests that I had resided in a certain street in Bedford. 
I had. 
And then relates that she only ever stayed one night in Bedford and that was at a wedding reception in a hotel in that street. And then, during our interchange, she discovers the hotel was once her husband´s family home.)

Jackie Barclay Bates Bonham I know you like this synchronicity thing James so if it's of any consequence, my dad was in the Navy when he met my mum, a Wren. 

Angela Radice My father-in-law was in the army and went to see one of his men in a military hospital. He admired a nurse who was looking after him and discovered that she lived nearby him at home in Bedford. He married her.

H. James Plaskett ... and my mum lives in Bedford. My dad died there. Okay: your turn now.
Angela Radice My first husband was born in Bedford. When he had a stroke, it was the first word he managed to say. He never quite managed to say Angela again but he called me Gretel which was quite nice really. I even received junk mail addressed to Gretel Radice which had it 's own charm.
H. James Plaskett ...er? I´ll come up with some coincidental rejoinder.
Angela Radice Not Shakespeare Road, by any chance?
H. James Plaskett YES!!!
Angela Radice My
H. James Plaskett YOU supplied the coincidental rejoinder as I was typing the above!!
Angela Radice Shakespeare Road?
H. James Plaskett I lived there, in a flat, in 1989. Yes. 

(see Entry 48 -)
http://james-plasketts-coincidence-diary.blogspot.com.es/2006/03/48-famous-mistaken-identities.html
Angela Radice Blimey. I also went to a wedding reception in Shakespeare Road in the '80s. My eldest brother married a girl whose parents were living in Bedford at the time. My father-in-law's Father-inlaw was a vicar at St Paul's Bedford.
H. James Plaskett The reception, I take it, would have been held at a hotel? I am trying to recall the name of that hotel...
Angela Radice The Shakespeare Hotel

I then continued the chat with Angela Radice via private messaging -

H. James Plaskett You said something about looking up somebody´s address in Shakespeare Road, number 27, and discovering that to have been the address of the hotel.Angela Radice


H. James Plaskett Did you live in Shakespeare Road, then?
...
08:47
Angela Radice
No, my husband did at one time. He was born in Goldington Avenue or something like that. The first time I went to Bedford was for my brother 's wedding. I was not aware of my husband's connection with Shakespeare Avenue until then.
Shakespeare Road

H. James Plaskettdid he live in a flat or house there ?
...
10:28
Angela Radice
I think it was a house. His parents, three sons and a live- in help . I will have a look in the archive for the address.

H. James Plaskett Gracias. I think the address of my flat was fifty-something...
...
11:45
Angela Radice
Right. Are you ready for this? I fished out a book written by my father -in-law which says that the house in Shakespeare Road was number 27. So I googled 27 Shakespeare Road and it is the hotel where my brother's wedding reception was held.
Angela Radice


Yes. My father-in-law wrote that the first house the Radices lived in in Bedford was 27 Shakespeare Road. I googled that house and it is the Shakespeare Hotel where my brother's wedding reception was held. I believe that one of my father-in-law's brothers kept the house on. They were a large family and would have clubbed together quite a bit and shared accommodation. I have the address 57 Goldington Avenue on Henry's birth certificate which could be his mother's parents' house. In which case it may have been a vicarage. I will do some more ferreting about. At some point they left Bedford and went to live in Switzerland.



What was the book?

Angela Radice
It is a privately published tome called The Radice Family.

H. James Plaskett


and the family home was converted into the Shakespeare Hotel?

Angela Radice
Yes.

H. James Plaskett


But you´re neither from Bedford nor have ever lived there?

Angela Radice


No, I have only ever spent one night there which was after my brother's wedding when I slept at the Shakespeare Hotel. My father in law moved to Bedford from Naples and went to Bedford School. He met 
his wife abroad and realised that he sort of knew her already as she lived in Bedford. After they married they settled in Bedford where they stayed until a job took them to Berne. My husband was living in Cheltenham when I met him.
H. James Plaskett


aha

u asked about my mum

no, she does not live in Shakespeare Road but a couple of miles away


Are you saying then

that your brother arranged his wedding reception for a hotel in Bedford

not realising it was his old family home?

No. My brother is not a Radice. He married a girl from Canada whose parents were living in Bedford. They arranged the wedding. Church service, marquee in their garden then an evening disco thing at the Shakespeare Hotel. I only found out yesterday that the Shakespeare Hotel was formerly the Radice family home.


This, then, is ramifying into a remakable melange of coincidence

Need to intrude further. He is your half-brother then, perhaps?
Or what, may I ask, was your maiden name?


No. I have four brothers. No half brothers. I have been married twice. The first time to Henry Radice whose family lived at one time at 27 Shakespeare Road. I can't remeber how we got onto Bedford now.

it´s an example of Synchroncity´s self-referring tendency

or

a.k.a.

the tendency of coincidences to spawn coincidences since all of this stemmed from

my posting the Christopher Hitchens Scapa Flow example here.


(In conclusion, let me add here at this Blog, that on one occasion during the year or so when I rented the flat in Bedford´s Shakespeare Road I did go into the Shakespeare Hotel for a drink. That was in 1989. Mrs Radice says she attended the wedding reception there in the 1980s.)

Sunday, December 02, 2012

(272) Naval family interests at Scapa Flow

At 23:32 December 2nd 2012, I was at about 6:05 minutes into this enormously long In Depth interview with Christopher Hitchens
Christopher Hitchens - In Depth - YouTube
I had never listened to it before although I had listened to many other Youtube clips with him. I had just turned to Wikipedia to look up Scapa Flow. I was moved to do this - I had never consulted that Wikipedia page before - because he had just referred to his father being a career Naval Officer who had grown up in Portsmouth and gone straight from school into the Navy.
My maternal grandfather had also grown up in Portsmouth, where he was born, and gone straight from school into the Navy. He had served in both World Wars. I had heard from some family member that he was a signalman in the First and had re-enlisted after his desertion when the King issued a King´s Pardon for all deserted signalmen after the war had started, such was the demand for them.
Desertion was a capital offence and for some years grandad had been on the run going under an assumed name of ´Arthur Ingram´, which was actually that of one of his brothers. I was moved to consider my mother´s father´s career in the Navy where, I understood, he had in fact mutinied just before the 1st World War at Scapa Flow. I knew not enough about it and my mother had mentioned to me that he was not such a bad stick as the entire Navy had mutinied.
 
I think, some years earlier, I had half-heartedly looked up something somewhere about this mutiny. So I typed Scapa Flow into Google and the Wikipedia page came up. It was a page giving several entries under the umbrella heading of Scapa Flow, yet none was about the mutiny per se.
So I turned to the first one, this page - 
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scapa_Flow - even though it is not about the mutiny.
The Youtube clip then reached a point where Hitchens, who had just mentioned that his father had gone around the world and that his mother was a Jewish immigrant was asked by interviewer Peter Slen where his parents had met.
He replied "In the Navy. She was a WREN. And they met, I think, in fact I´m sure, at Scapa Flow..."
...   ...   ...
To set matters straight, said the mutiny was almost certainly the one in 1931 at Invergordon when 1,000 or so sailors mutinied for a couple of days.
And all the stuff about desertion and King´s pardons sounds highly implausible to me...

Saturday, October 13, 2012

(271) Less of a Plaskett/Parsifal Identity Crisis

On October 10th 2012 I received a message at Facebook from Deborah Cowley. She said she was getting in touch as she lived in Newquay and had recently received a gift copy of my book Coincidences.
During the course of our introductory exchange I sensed something synchronous re her identification of my signature and my specification that the only error I thought I had made in my otherwise meticulous recording of coincidence was in not capturing the facial similarities between myself and Peter Seiffert singing the role of Parsifal in a photo in the Sunday Times of late 1987.
  • October 10
    Deborah
    • Hi James, just reading your book, Coincidences and just wondered if I could send you a little piece I wrote myself a number of years ago. Incidently, While reading your book, a few coincidences have happened to me such as one day before I read you a friend of mine reccommended I read Coming Up For Air by George Orwell, which your book mentiones. Have sent a friend request.
      Kind regards
      Deborah
  • October 10
    H. James Plaskett

  • October 10
    Deborah
    • yes, have seen the blog, but would like to send you, via email, if possible my thoughts on this subject. Do you have an email which I can send you my thoughts on this matter. Also, how strange you are a GM. I play against my computer all the the time and I beat it a couple of weeks ago two times in a row. Maybe we can have a game online sometime?


        • Some of your coincidences are a bit tenuous, but if you read my thoughts on the matter you may think differently. I believe that when these things occur it is because of a link, that should not be broken etc etc.

      • October 10
        Deborah
        • A day before reading your book a friend reccommended 'Coming Up For Air' so I am reading a book about coincidences and one happens straight away. By the way, I have very scientific views on the matter
        • Also, after writing my thoughts about coincedences I phoned a couple of professors at Oxford and Cambridge who thought my writing had merit but wasn't their thing but encouraged me to pursue it.

      •  



      • October 11
        H. James Plaskett
        • How came you by my book?

      • October 11
        Deborah
        • A friend gave it to me as I told him it was a subject I had written about and was interested in. Will email you what I wrote, although it was about 10 years ago now.


            • Who? When? How came HE by it, please?

          • October 11
            Deborah
            • I will ask him when I see him soon and let you know. Have sent you an e mail with my thoughts on the subject

          • October 11
            H. James Plaskett
            • The guy´s name?
              I may recognise it...

          • October 11
            Deborah
            • Keith Hill

          • October 11
            H. James Plaskett
            • hmmmm
            • No. Don´t recognise that name

          • October 11
            Deborah
            • Didn't think you would. I think he got it in a charity shop, but not sure as it was given to someone as a gift with names I don't recognise, I will just go and get it and let you know what the names are

          • October 11
            H. James Plaskett
            • Would help me to comment upon what you hv just sent were there more concrete examples. Whatever else one may say about my stuff: at least I recorded it! Koestler, for example, says that when researching the biography of coincidence collector P. Kammerer he encountered " a meteor storm of coincidences" himself. But he recorded very few...perhaps only 3. One, involving Herta Buresch is in my book. I am meticulous in the presentation o evidence. To the point even of being a pain about it.


              • Deborah

                • It says at the front To Koolio from Parsija (I think, as the writing is quite illegible)
              • October 11
                H. James Plaskett
                • the only one I regret not having recorded and not in greater detail was the similarity in 1988 between myself + Peter Seiffert - the opera singer who played Parsifal
                • The name I just wrote is probably the one u hv difficulty in reading: Parsifal.

              • October 11
                Deborah
                • Yes, you mention Parsifal a lot in your book

              • October 11
                H. James Plaskett
                • PARSIFAL is my handle at the Internet Chess Club
                • the similarity between myself then + Seiffert then is clearer at my blog
                • Koolio...?
              • October 11
                Deborah
                • Actually, yes it does say Parsifal, just realised
              • October 11
                H. James Plaskett
                • Think I may be able to trace who that is since it is almost certainly the handle of someone else at the ICC.




                  • So it was a book given by yourself?
                • October 11
                  H. James Plaskett
                  • Also a coincidence in that as I sent to you this -
                  • the only one I regret not having recorded and not in greater detail was the similarity in 1988 between myself + Peter Seiffert - the opera singer who played Parsifal
                  • YOU Yourself misidentified the very identity
                  • the very name
                  • of Parsifal
                  • Written by ME

                • October 11
                  Deborah
                  • The writing was not very clear, but it is now
                • H. James Plaskett
                  October 11
                  H. James Plaskett
                  • AHA!!!
                  • More + More Synchronistic then, Ms Cowley
                  • No?

                •  
                •  

                •  



                •  
                  •  

                •  
                   
                  •  


                •  
                  •  

                • October 11
                  H. James Plaskett
                  • When did Keith give you my book?
                • October 11
                  Deborah
                  • Two weeks ago



                    • October 11
                      H. James Plaskett
                      • When did HE get it?

                    • October 11
                      Deborah
                      • Strangely, I gave him Animal Farm - by George Orwell as a kind of swap, who you mention in your book. I will ask him all the details later and get back to you.
                      • I think I already told you a few days before he gave me the book another friend of mine recommended that I read Coming Up For Air

                    • October 11
                      H. James Plaskett
                      • Indeed.
                      • Where are u now?

                    • October 11
                      Deborah
                      • Cornwall

                    • October 11
                      H. James Plaskett
                      • Ah
                        Koolio

                    • October 11
                      H. James Plaskett
                      • Think his name´s Paul...somebody +
                          •  + he was originally living near Grimsby or Skegness
                          • and then told me he had moved to the South West
                          • Are u in Liskiard?

                        • October 11
                          Deborah
                          • Things are becoming clearer

                        •  



                        •  

                        •  
                          •