Bradwan's Blog

Salamander Saint Blaise Pale 

I am on 35 minutes into this podcast. Salamander Brewery, The Record Cafe and The Sparrow, as well my shows this Sunday and Wednesday, get a free advert.

Bradford Community Broadcast podcast of The Afternoon Stretch

Finland’s attempt at building a tank out of captures and free gifts.

The link is to a website that has 40 odd slide shows about tanks that fthat were more costly to the country that built them than they ever were to an enemy.

It is a fascinating set of alternative histories of nations. The French were the second ever country to build tanks, but spent the next 40 years building some right surrender monkey tanks! America in the last few decades seems to be good at making a few people with defence contacts rich, but totally useless at  building weapons that are any better than what they were building 30 years ago!

The Finnish tank was made by sticking an almost useless British howitzer in a stupidly tall and dangerous turret, and sticking that on top of captured Soviet light tanks. Good words for the result include: big, slow, useless and deathtrap.

Only £2.50 for a really tasty meal weighing over a pound! You must try it. It’s to the left if you enter through the John Street entrance. 

I not been able to do any more work on the Bring Back Saint Blaise’s Festival walk, and time marches on, so I am compelled to cancel it.

I may, however, be doing a small event this Sunday linked to the first draw of St. Blaise’s Pale (brewed by Bradford’s own Salamander Brewery) at the Record Cafe.

The Saint Blaise’s Day show – Pie & Proud of Bradford – will be in the Sparrow on the 3rd (19.30).

I am also minded to do a shorter Blaise walk a week Saturday, on the 6th, if the show goes well.

Bring Back Saint Blaise’s Festival Show.

Glyn Watkins’

PIE & PROUD OF BRADFORD

The Sparrow, 19.30. Weds 3rd Feb.

Pictures, Bradford tales, poems, pies.

Collection taken.

Celebrating Bradford’s forgotten saint.

I don’t often talk to my brother; apart from anything else reaching him by phone is so complicated I rarely bother; so it is mostly e-mails. 

This morning, however, he rang me to check how I was. 

The answer was: better but still weak. We then had a long, and helpful chat. 

I had already wondered if the repeated infections with phlegm were caused by a deeper infection (as happen when I had pneumonia). I think not, but when Basil suggested the same I promised to see a doctor if I was still coughing next week. 

After a bit more discussion I was surprised, and Basil was shocked, to discover I had not had a general health check for years! I regularly have diabetic checks, but those do not cover everything; and I am now so old that some of the unchecked things are a risk, including some that have killed forebears!

So I will be going to the doctor’s next week. 

I have been too ill to do anything; but on the other hand I have been too ill to cancel anything.