a blog about what makes me tick, my home island of Guernsey, sewing, making things and food!
Monday, 19 October 2015
Ebernezer at the Terres
There is a big volunteer operation happening in town this winter, with the restoration and repair of the La Valette swimming pools and the surrounding area, and once we finish for the season at the end of Oct I will be down there.
But I thought I would share this excert from Ebernezer le Page by Gerald Basil Edwards, it really paints a lovely picture of what it was like in its hay day at the beginning of the twentieth century.
Havinng typed it all out, I do apologize if there are any typos.....
p66
'Oh it is nice to be going out! Where are we going?' I said I thought we'd go to the Terres. 'What's on there?' Lisa said. 'Singing and dancing on the stage,' I said 'and Living Pictures.' It was a big oblong tent in the gardens past Havelet, before you get to the tunnel. The Living Pictures was what I wanted to see. I hadn't seen any yet.
On the way she wanted to know everything about me: where I worked and what I did and if I had brothers and sisters and if my father and mother was alive. I told her straight out everything, and we was quite friendly. I think she liked me all right when she didn't forget she was a Guernsey girl, and try and be half like the English gentry. Mind you, I didn't look so bad that night. I was all spruced up in my best blue serge suit, and had a rose in my buttonhole. They were just going to begin at the Terres when we got there. The seats was sixpence and a shilling and one-and-six and a few rows in the front at two shillings. Jim and me would have sat in the shilling, but I brought two one-and-six. The Living Picture was after the interval. A white sheet was let down from a roller in the front of the stage, and the magic lantern was in the gangway. The lights was put out and all the girls giggled.
I wondered after, if perhaps Liza thought I was going to hold her hand in the dark; but I was too interested in the picture. It was an exciting picture. A fellow on a bike was being chased by a steam-roller. It went after him hell for leather along roads and down lanes and round corners, until the poor fellow fell off his bike from going so fast and the steam-roller ran right over him and flattened him out. You could see the shape of his body flat on the road. The driver of the steam-roller stopped and got down and had a look. He was quite worried. He scratched his head and didn't know what to do; and then he spotted the fellow's pump had fallen off his bike. He picked it up and fitted it in the fellow's ear and pumped him up . The fellow swelled out and jumped on his bike and rode off again as fast as before with the steam-roller going full pelt after him. I laughed and laughed. 'I think that's silly!' said Liza. 'It isn't silly,' I said, 'it's funny. It's you that is silly!' After that everything I liked, she didn't; and everything she liked, I didn't. There was a fellow made me think of Terence de Freis. When the lights went up again, he sat by a table looking at a photo of a beautiful woman and sang to it. Liza thought it was lovely. I said, 'He's a turd!'
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Local History
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