Harry’s Ramblings. Seaside Riots
by Harry Pope The Salvation Army responsible for riots in sedate south coast of England? Surely not, but yes, it did occur, against a background of temperance. In 1880...
Harry’s Ramblings What’s It Worth
by Harry Pope A couple of years ago a local Eastbourne lady was going to give items to a charity shop. Her friend said ‘try the auction instead.’ They...
Harry’s Ramblings Sacked from my Local Paper
by Harry Pope Early in 1965 I landed my dream job. Junior reporter on my local paper. I was 17, had passed ‘O’ level English Language and English Literature,...
Harry’s Ramblings Harry’s Ghost
by Harry Pope In 2004 we owned a mid-terraced three storey house in Eastbourne, on the Sussex coast. It had been a B&B since being built in 1892, but...
Harry’s Ramblings How Close Is The Moon
by Harry Pope We are still here, so the asteroid that hurtled past the earth recently far faster than I can possibly comprehend has missed us. Again. But it...
Harry’s Ramblings. Is There Anybody There?
by Harry Pope Recently there has been some publicity about strange radio wave signals arriving on earth that originate from………who knows where. For the last couple of hundred years...
Harry’s Ramblings. Soap Cameos
by Harry Pope Our future King, sipping what looks like whisky, in a television pub? Really, did we actually see that happen. Yup, it was in December 2000 when...
Harry’s Ramblings, Sherlock Holmes came to Eastbourne
by Harry Pope I had no idea of the number of famous people who have lived in Eastbourne, but there were a lot of them. Sherlock Holmes lived here....
Harry’s Ramblings. Cream On Top
by Harry Pope I don’t know about you, but when I eat a scone with cream and jam, I always place the jam first, then cream on top. This...
Harry’s Ramblings. How’s Your Bad Back
by Harry Pope I can’t understand why we have an obsession with dusting. If you dust, then there’s only going to be some more there tomorrow. I suppose it...
Harry’s Ramblings I Failed the Eleven Plus
by Harry Pope I was the school dunce. Education was lost on my immature brain, and in 1959 I was allocated a place at the Lord Howard of Effingham...
Harry’s Ramblings My Dad, the Unsung War Hero
by Harry Pope It wasn’t until he had had died in 1997 that I came to appreciate just what my dad had done during WW2. He didn’t talk about...
Harry’s Ramblings Pier Entertainment
by Harry Pope When Eastbourne’s pier was built in 1870, it was just a promenade out to sea, with no buildings. Unfortunately, the pier suffered severe damage on 1st...
Harry’s Ramblings; Bored? Look up a Ship
If you are really bored, Google in ‘shipping in the channel’. On the screen when you scroll down through the inevitable adverts is all about every ship in the...
Harry’s Ramblings Buying an Airplane
In the late 1980s I was working for the premier London funeral company in their overseas office. This meant that I was arranging repatriations to all over the world....
Harry’s Ramblings; web cameras
by Harry Pope There might be a travel ban, but you can still visit places via your computer. So far recently I have been to Venice, Vegas, Paris, and...
Harry’s Ramblings Burning the caravan
I experienced something in my first year in the funeral profession that I have never seen since, even though I am sure it must have occurred. It concerns...
Harry’s Ramblings Funeral Information
by Harry Pope I am writing this on Wednesday morning, 25th March, so by the time you read the situation may have changed, but I don’t think it will...
Harry’s Ramblings; Conspiracy Virus
by Harry Pope I like conspiracy theories, they are so easy to come up with, and impossible to disprove, so this article is perhaps based on some facts, but...
Harry’s Ramblings. Virus Routine
As a couple in the at risk category, here’s some thoughts/impressions/suggestions to aid the daily routine. Shopping for food is a problem, especially for those who are more senior...
Harry’s Ramblings Chuff Chuff to Eastbourne
by Harry Pope I use the expression chuff chuff because in the old days of steam railways that was the sound made as the steam exited the chimney on...
Harry’s Ramblings Frinton in February
by Harry Pope The e-mail arrived, special out of season breaks at very sensible prices. One of the featured hotels happened to be where we had stayed a couple...
Harry’s Ramblings. Snowflake Nudists
by Harry Pope I am reflecting after reading a newspaper article. It is all about nudists who call people who wear clothes ‘textiles’. Apparently, nudists are concerned that they...
Life Begins at 69
by Harry Pope When I was 69, I had a pacemaker fitted, which transformed my life. Before, I was fainting a lot in inconvenient places when my heart beat...
Harry’s Ramblings. Lecturing accuracy
I have recently lectured on the P&O ship Oceana, giving seven talks over a 14 day period. The first four talks had already been previously written and presented, the...
Being a cruise ship lecturer
by Harry Pope It’s a great life, lecturing on cruise ships on a topic that is close to my heart – entertainment. I speak about the great British comics...
Beachy Head
by Harry Pope Nature has her own way of weeding out the weakest, but sometimes people have to be protected from themselves for their own good. Eastbourne’s Beachy Head...
Bouncing Bomb Speaker
by Harry Pope The year was 1963, I was a 16 year old still at school with a part time job in a local hotel as barman, waiter, and...
My grandmother’s grandmother
by Harry Pope My grandmother was born in south London in 1891. She wrote these words as family history when she was 74, which I transcribed onto my computer....
Sad Seaside Victorian Hotel
by Harry Pope You may have read or seen on media outlets about the Claremont Hotel in Eastbourne on the south coast. It suffered a major fire mid-November 2019,...
No wise Men in the Workhouse
by Harry Pope Eastbourne had a workhouse, and there is an online census of 1881. This includes everyone who lived there, with their occupations. One person is listed as...
How to Build a Victorian Theatre
by Harry Pope. The letter started Dear Mr. Phipps, We are a group of Eastbourne businessmen, and wish to attract visitors to our lovely resort town by providing them...
Don’t Give the Beggars Any Money
by Harry Pope …So said our coach driver as we approached the drop-off point in Lille last Saturday, which was the first in December 2019. We had come from...
Harry’s Ramblings; I Do Like to be Beside the Seaside
A Monday stroll in November by the seaside is a wonderfully invigorating exercise. Not too many people about, the main body of tourists are long gone home, back to...
Harry’s Ramblings; Claremont story
The smell of burning building lingers on the seafront air five days after the conflagration that came very close to destroying the early Victorian Claremont Hotel in sedate Eastbourne....
‘Where am I going next, doctor?’
The young trooper was lying in a makeshift hospital bed, about five miles back from the Front, superficial shrapnel wounds and lots of bandages around his left leg. ‘Summerdown...
Is there anybody there?
Items moving mysteriously, things disappearing one day to somehow magically return a few days later, strange smells, all the signs of a haunting. Elms Avenue, Eastbourne, is a road...
Grisly Crumbles Murder
‘You do love me, don’t you Pat?’ ‘Of course I do.’ ‘And you will leave your wife, won’t you?’ ‘Of course.’ ‘Before the baby comes‘ ‘My darling girl, you...
Harry’s Ramblings, Split
Next to Italy, on the eastern end of the northern Mediterranean, there used to be a country called Yugoslavia. This part of the coast has been fought over by...
Harry’s Ramblings; Talking on Norman
It is great fun being a cruise ship lecturer, because you get to choose what you are going to talk about. My theme on the Oceana was ‘They Made...