Patrick George Callaghan

The Hoax began in 1917, or was it really a hoax? The cousins Elsie Wright (16) and Francis Griffiths (10) maintained throughout their lives, right up until old age, that they had clearly photographed fairies at a  Beck in Yorkshire, England. Such was the supposed deception that their resulting pictures have fooled the very best experts in the photographic field, and the mighty Kodak Company would not give any sort of judgement as to the authenticity of the subjects within the plates, even Conan Doyle was convinced the photographs were genuine. “At least Elsie [Wright] gave us a myth which has never harmed anyone and it looks like continuing to fascinate and entertain well into the future. How many professed photographers can claim to have equaled her achievement with the first photograph they ever took?” Geoffrey Crawley. The story was turned into a movie in 1997 entitled FairyTale… A True Story, and boasts an all star cast with Florence Hoath as Elsie Wrigh

Serialized by Patrick George Callaghan                                                  Part Five A cold silence had mastered itself in two beings when Esme pushed open the double mahogany doors and led herself, exhausted from sleep, into a highly organized breakfast room. A razoring of sunlight had risen with her and now fell hopelessly from a defrocked window bay across her slumber unoccupied eyes. She drew back the uneasy chair that rubbed annoyingly over the thick red carpet and flummoxed herself on her cozy-comfy backside. She yawned a half-smile at her mother but it died from a responding expression and buried itself  face down in the cream porridge now place in front of her by Emily. ‘Would you like bacon and chops, Miss Esme? Cook say’s they are the best the butcher has sent for weeks.’ She smiled from the face of a young animated female in her early twenties, with sumptuous curls of rich raven hair that tucked with trust under her neat white parlour cap

Charles Spencer Chaplin – Dear Charlie Chaplin! Dear Charlie became Sir Charles Chaplin, receiving his knighthood from Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II at Buckingham Palace in 1979. His film career had spanned 54 years, and in that time Charlie made a total of 81 films, only 5 were talkies and 67 were completed before his 30 th birthday. Sadly Charlie died at the good age of 88 and on Christmas Day in 1977 at his home in Vevey, Switzerland; at his bedside were Oona his fourth wife, their children, and grandchildren. Hannah Chaplin was Charles Mother and she had spent most of the later years of her life at an institute in England and for her remaining seven years she lived in the little house Charlie had bought for her close to the Pacific Ocean. Sidney Chaplin (Sid) was Charlie’s older brother and manager, he had retired to the South of France after the second world war and visited every summer with Charlie in Switzerland. The first love in Charlie’

In 1945 Josephine Leslie under the name of R.A. Dick published her wonderful novel entitled “The Ghost and Mrs. Muir “… Determined to make a life for herself and her daughter, Lucy Muir, a young widow moves into Gull Cottage on a wild English coast. The cottage is haunted by its former owner, a crusty sea captain. The captain tries unsuccessfully to frighten off Lucy Muir in order to keep the cottage for retired seamen, but they fall in love with each other, and when Lucy is short of money, the Captain helps her write a book based on his sea adventures which becomes very popular. The book attracts the amorous attentions of a ‘perfumed parlour snake’ and Lucy Muir must then choose between the living and the dead…  Josephine Leslie’s novel was turned into a highly successful movie in 1947 by 20th Century Fox, and featured Gene Tierney and Rex Harrison in a superbly moving screenplay.

It was nice to get out to Santa Pod Monster Truck Venue, near Bedford UK on Saturday evening for a Fab show and Fireworks to round off the season… But ‘I Curumba’ – the cold weather! fair froze us… Anyway, here we are in the LUVELY HOT BAR having a beer or two!

Admiral of the Fleet the Earl of Cork and Orrery; William Henry Boyle, was Rear Admiral Commanding the 1st Cruiser Squadron from 1926-28, and afterwards commanded the Reserve Fleet and then the Royal Naval War College 1928-32. He was First and Principal A.D.C. to the King from 1936-38. Count Maurice Maeterlinck was a Belgian poet and dramatist. He was born in Ghent in 1862 and began practising law until success followed his first poetical works Serres Chaudes in 1889. His play The Blue Bird aroused wide interest, and he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911. By 1914 his works had been recorded on the papal index. Eden Phillpotts was a novelist and dramatist, who worked firstly in an insurance office then studied for the stage, but in fact became an author. He specialized in scenes of English life in Devonshire, particularly that of Dartmoor, and wrote many poems, plays, and novels. His works included The Human Boy, Children of the Mist, and Widec