The Oggy Man

Cyril Tawney (1930 – 2005)

I first started to sing and play guitar as a young lad at a pub in Devonport in Plymouth which Cyril hosted in the late 1960's.
I have always said that whatever I have done since owes it to his songs and singing and I still sing his songs to this day as many others have done.

I have been asked before about the 'oggy man' and what an oggy is.
The song was written by Cyril - longest performing singer in the country, incidentally, who sadly passed away in Exeter in 2005.





His song the oggy man is, as all Cyril's songs, straight to the heart whether in pathos or humour. This is an exquisite gem of a song.
It helps if you know the background to the song . . . . . .

Before the war (WWII) in the old days, you could buy oggies at many places in Plymouth, but sailors coming back to the Dockyard last thing at night were most likely to get them from the man who sold them from a box outside the Albert Gate.

Before the war the Oggie Man had no competition, simply because there was no room for any. The Blitz, however, cleared a space right opposite his pitch, and in the late Forties first one, then two or three, caravan snack bars appeared on this bomb site, selling a variety of snacks, not just oggies. It was only a matter of time before the Oggie Man, as such, disappeared, either to retire from business or to get his own caravan and join the others. In the song, this change has taken place while the sailor has been away.

Picture a dark evening in the rain outside an old Dockyard gate in Devonport Plymouth . . . .

and slowly sing . . . . .

Oggy Man

Well the rain's softly falling and the oggy man's no more
I can't hear him calling like I used to before

I came through the gateway and I heard the sergeant say
The big boys are coming, see their stand across the way

Yes the rain's softly falling and the oggy man's no more

It was there that she told me when she bade me good bye
There's no one will miss you one half as much as I

My love will endure, dear,like a beacon in the squall
Eternal as the oggy man beneath the dockyard wall

Well the rain's softly falling and the oggy man's no more

Beautiful isn't it?

Cyril's wife Rosemary keeps the official site where you can learn about the man, other songs and buy recordings - do yourself a favour and do that.
http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/cyriltawney/enter.htm

You get oggys - or pasties as they are more often known nowadays all over the world where ever Cornish people went. They were often taken by tin miners because they were easy to handle and contained a meal in one. What is a real oggy - and how do you make it - there's another blog and some risky territory.

Beryl Cook

Sad to hear that Beryl has gone - a wonderful British painter.
I knew Plymouth in the 1960's - played at a Folk Club at Devonport and first heard Cyril Tawney sing 'The Oggy Man'. Another item to tell that one - Prince Albert Gate at Devonport Dockyard.
Union Street Plymouth - famous in every port in the world - haunt of sailors and ladies was just the colourful and vibrant place that can be seen in Beryls pictures. She paints the action , the fun and the characters she has seen. Here is description from her web site . . . . . .
" . . . . there is nothing dark in her world. The appeal of Beryl Cook’s paintings is their directness, exuberance and the instant laughter they create. Her characters are always enjoying themselves to the full. Beryl is the least pretentious of painters and an artist in the same tradition as Breughel, though perhaps via Donald McGill! She was described by Victoria Wood as ‘Rubens with jokes’.

Beryl Cook’s work is particularly interesting when viewed in the context of the tradition of British social realist painting and she could easily be described as a contemporary Hogarth or Gilray, although she has a more sympathetic view of the human race. She is like those painters above all a social observer. She records human frailties and the absurdities of human behaviour with her own unique vision."

Go visit her work - maybe you can afford to buy a painting!

http://www.berylcook.org

having a moan

I enjoyed teaching in the 70's in South Devon - there was the freedom to be spontaneous, take children to adventures and make memories. At one time I had Gerbils, ducklings, fish, rabbits and even a couple of lambs for a week - children used to arrive at 8.00 in the morning and be prised away in the afternoon. They could all read well, knew arithmetic, had manners and were curious and interested about learning. They were outdoors a lot more, ate better, were active and could entertain themselves better.
There was no trace yet of was the track suited sullen youth walking around with a phone permanently fastened to its face, eating junk and staring mindlessly at a game console or television for hours a day.
Teachers and school, if not always enjoyed, were respected and were empowered to set standards and codes of behaviour.
It wasn't perfect - far from it - and there were some really poor schools and teaching. There was the need to review and change curriculum and teaching for sure - it was, at its worst, a wandering and liberal self indulgence education experience.
The change however, when it squirmed forth as the National Curriculum was a catastrophe and in true 'baby and bathwater' many values, excellent practices and teachers were wasted.
The N.C. - often concocted by people with little real experience of schools or child learning, caused anguish and turmoil and became a monster that schools were unable to manage effectively. Staff were ill trained in it, schools were underfunded for it and once motivated teachers were bludgeoned into being tickers of boxes and forced to parrot a sterile and target based curriculum.
It was a time of nightmares, late nights filling in endless record sheets, and being part of a system with a high built in failure factor. Very demoralising and soul destroying for thousands of dedicated teachers who , like me, fell out of love with the job. More energy went into administering the Curriculum than in delivering quality teaching.
I heard recently that in Scotland they are moving back into a project and enquiry based curriculum to try and raise standards and child enthusiasm. I also note that SATs are not considered to be a good idea. We could have told them all that 25 years ago.
Having said all that, I admire teachers today. -They are, from the ones I know, hard working and trying to do the best while battling against awful attitudes and low motivation.
I do not however envy them.
I see the older youth in Secondary education become part of a cynical, careless and gimme culture that has scant respect and ever declining values - I pity them and see why some use the phrase 'the lost generation'. I see younger children in Primary schools being forced or enticed into adult attitudes and perceptions and childhood more and more truncated.
Of course there were problems 30 years ago and yes, its easy to look back and remember only the summers that seemed to last longer then. But there was also a more optimistic and happier society than there is now - not the 'must have' greed, banal television programming that rakes up ever more cheap, degrading, cynical and lewd trash it can throw at the public it can get away with. And yes - I will say it - I believe children were happier and more stable.

So, truly, I feel sorry for young people growing up today and having to cope with the pressures put uppn them in so many ways. Most youngsters are OK people - trying to do well and treat their world and people fairly but the values they are having to handle are too often driven by the worst of attitudes and behaviour to the point it becomes cool to be bad. Young people will always be ambivalent and emulate the outrageous but what they given to emulate today is just scary.
What I see generating the standards is not the best of young people but a low, base and unpleasant culture that expresses the worst of attitudes and behaviour as acceptable. Media, fashion and music all cash in on to promote and sell to a teenage customer base that nowadays has spending power unheard of in my day. Along with others, I have watched standards increasingly devalued and wasted by the 'do-good' influence that broadens the tolerance of low morality, poor standards and appalling behaviour to the point where teenage deaths are now regular and some old foolish old dollop this week whines about it being unfair to stop thugs and search them for knives. Try telling that to the parents of a youth stabbed to death.

If we are prepared to tolerate our children growing up in standards from the gutter what hope is there for our society? Is it too late anyway?

MELDREW I sound like for sure. So be it.

the song the linnet sings

I have never actually seen a Linnet until one popped onto the seed pot on the bird table early on this morning.
At first glance I saw Sparrow until it turned and the red colouring showed. It is a pretty little finch and a bit like a Twite which very occasionally wander down from the hillside.
It didn't sing so I still have yet to hear its beautiful song reason it was kept as a cage bird by Victorians.
Since it has been under threat it is good to know there are some of these lovely little songbirds still around. I couldn't get to my camera in time so I have borrowed this photo from a superb photography site www.djsphotography.co.uk - hope they don't mind! Go see for yourself how to photograph wild birds!

to be or not to be

For a child - what is the most dangerous place to be in the U.K?
Frighteningly - the womb. According to Anne Widdicombe 200.000 unborn children have their lives terminated every year.
If that was a child mortality rate - or criminal figure the United Nations would be involved!
She went on to observe that of two children, out of the womb at the same time, in the same country one can have all the care, love and attention possible lavished on it while the other is left to die - unwanted and less than garbage. I don't have fixed views on abortion and tend, as many do , to wander about in the rather dangerous middle and undecided territory because I can see arguments for and against. Also I am am man and have no right to make decisions for another person's body in this sense. Perhaps I am, in maybe a cowardly way I admit , thankful that, as a man, I have never had to make such a terrible decision for I cannot imagine the emotional pain and grief it must be for some women who have had to.