The view from Hohensalzburg Castle, Salzburg.

This Easter we went to Salzburg for 48 hours. Yes, hardly the most languishing trip to this beautiful Austrian city, but we made the most of it. Our first full day was Good Friday, and I was struck by all the lavish Easter shop displays, and the sight of Austrians carrying catkins tied with ribbons, which is the Eastern European version of the palm cross that we use in Britain. At St Peter’s Abbey (which had the most incredible Baroque interior, see below), we found baskets of pussy willow which had obviously been blessed as part of the day’s service.

Easter shop display, Salzburg.

Easter shop display, Salzburg.

The splendid ceiling of St Peter’s Abbey, Salzburg.

But it wasn’t all refinement. I’ve blogged before about our search for the perfect hotdog, and our various missions to sample them in Reykjavík and and in Copenhagen. Once we’d touched down in Salzburg we pretty much made a beeline for the Getreidegasse in the Old Town because I had read on a great blog called Travel Addicts that there was a legendary hotdog stand here called Balkan Grill that served the “Bosna”: an Eastern European-style hotdog popular in these parts. I quote from Travel Addicts below:

“Long-time readers of this blog will know that I’m on a tour of the world’s greatest hotdog stands. From Brooklyn to Iceland, I search the best meat in tubular form. And Salzburg, Austria has a top contender: Balkan Grill (the sign in the passageway says Bosna Grill). I claim this to be one of the world’s greatest hotdog stands. And I can back that up. First, the stand has only 5 menu options (hotdogs with mustard, ketchup, curry spice, onions, and parsley in varying combinations). The #2 (with mustard, parsley, onion, and curry spice) is considered the “classic” and their biggest seller. The #5 with ketchup is considered the kids version. Also, at Balkan Grill you get 2 hotdogs (which taste like bratwurst, but are small like hotdogs) on one bun! (The bun looks like a standard hotdog bun that has gone through a panini machine). Balkan Grill is one of the world’s greatest hotdog stands. Period. End of discussion.”

Anyway, it was freezing cold and we walked up and down the street (I’d forgotten to write down the exact number on Getreidegasse) and eventually found an ornate cart that we took to be the famous Balkan Grill (I’d clearly forgotten all the carefully noted detail above about it being located in a passageway with a sign saying Bosna Grill). We enjoyed a Bosna and didn’t think much more of it, except that, when we returned to the Getreidegasse on our very last afternoon, we stumbled on the real Balkan Grill – and the completion of our mission. I do think that the #2 did have the edge on the first Bosna that we ate out of error, but both were pretty damn good!

Sampling a Bosna, but not THE Bosna.

Balkan Grill: one of the best hotdog stands in the world.

Apart from eating hotdogs, we did manage to visit both of the Mozart museums (the Mozart Geburtshaus and the Mozart Wohnhaus), both of which were excellent, and to take a trip up to the fortress (Hohensalzburg Castle) to see the spectacular views of the city. Another must-see on my rather eccentric list was the controversial Hommage à Mozart statue by Markus Lüpertz (see below) which has attracted vandalism and a great deal of ire from the people of Salzburg. It’s not difficult to see why (apparently it represents both the male and female sides of the composer’s personality – perhaps a bit too literally).

Mozart Homage: a controversial statue of the composer.

Mozart’s Birthplace.

Tough choice…

A street in the Old Town at dusk.

All in all it was a great trip. There are still many things we would have liked to have seen and done, but we didn’t do too badly for 48 hours – and for once, all the snow was in England and not in the Alps!

Dr Oliver Sacks at the University of Warwick

A few weeks ago I had the very great honour of meeting neurologist Dr Oliver Sacks and interviewing him about his new book Hallucinations for the Knowledge Centre at the University of Warwick, where he is  currently a visiting professor. Although he claims to be gauche and sometimes even slightly cross in company, I found him to be modest, gentle and witty, not to mention keenly intelligent. It seems an obvious thing to say, but he is a very detailed observer of people – all those years as a physician have honed his powers of observation, and I noticed how naturally he brought his subjects to life in conversation as well as in print.

Just before he left for his next appointment I mentioned in passing (referring to his interest in  prosopagnosia) that my husband is sometimes not great at remembering people’s faces and he asked me if my husband recognised me without any trouble. “Yes, of course, he recognises me,” I replied without thinking. “Ah,” said Sacks, “but HOW does he recognise you?” It was a very good question. (“You actually discussed my face blindness with Oliver Sacks?!” said my husband, open-mouthed, when I got home later. “I recognise you by your short hair of course!”)

The next day I attended Dr Sacks’ master-class at Warwick, where he talked about Oxford, and how he was a prize essayist yet kept failing a simple entrance exam. For him, knowledge and thought are “embedded with narrative”. It amused me to hear him talk of a manuscript for a book that he once threw on the fire in a fit of pique: “thinking, romantically, of how Swift threw Gulliver’s Travels on the fire and Pope took it out. Except… I didn’t have a Pope”. So the book was lost.

I certainly won’t forget the meeting and shall treasure my signed copy of The Mind’s Eye (my favourite of his books so far).

You can listen to the podcast interview I did with Dr Sacks here.

Two Alphasmart Neos in repose on the sofa.

Sometimes, you can’t beat simplicity. Goodness knows, I’m the first to embrace new technology, but a few weeks ago I discovered the AlphaSmart Neo and it rocked my world. This keyboard (I can’t even bring myself to refer to it as “kit” because it rejects all attempts at modernisation) might look like a Speak & Spell, but is in fact a portable word processor.

A few weeks ago I was looking around for a cheap laptop/netbook for writing on the move. The laptops were all too cumbersome (not to mention expensive) and the netbooks had poor keyboards and minimal word processing power. And then I came across a reference (in an American creative writing book) to a keyboard device made by a company called AlphaSmart. It said that AlphaSmart Neos (and an earlier device called a Dana) had become cult objects amongst writers and journalists.

Invented by two Apple Computer engineers in the early 1990s, these devices are primarily used by schools as a tool for teaching keyboard skills. Some Googling later and I discovered that for £100 I could get this super-light full-size keyboard, which keeps its power for 12 months on three AA batteries (!!), saves everything you write automatically, needs no software and transfers all your text via a standard USB cable to any text editor known to man (Word, Notepad, the window of your WordPress blog etc.). If you pay a bit extra you get a device called the Renaissance Receiver that allows you to send your text via infrared to GoogleDocs, but I didn’t bother with that.

Does it work? Well, the small letterbox-shaped screen does make editing difficult (you can change the font size to allow you to read a maximum of six lines, but this doesn’t give you quite enough of an overview for editing). But as a tool for drafting, it kicks ass. In fact it’s helped to wean me off doing too much editing as I go along (a terrible habit). And the fact that you can’t check your email or browse the Internet is also a very, very good thing if you care about getting anything useful done. My husband was so impressed, he got himself a refurbished Neo from eBay (much cheaper than mine at £40).

Distraction-free writing at a fraction of the cost of a laptop. Techies don’t really understand this, but writers do.

For more info, check out the wonderfully geeky AlphaSmart discussion boards on Flickr.

“God save the Queen and the Lord of the manor!”

During my signing today at WH Smith in Lichfield I was lucky enough to get a shout-out from the Town Crier, Ken Knowles, who also happens to feature in one of the pictures in the book. Many thanks to Ken for mentioning my signing event at “this book emporium” – it was brilliant and certainly got some reactions from customers and passers-by!

Me with Town Crier Ken Knowles outside WH Smith.

A rare view of the Old Museum and Library from inside the Memorial Gardens, Lichfield.

I just wanted to share with you this unusual postcard view by Walter Scott of the Old Museum and Libary (now Lichfield Register Office).

At a family gathering a few weeks ago, I discovered that my uncle is related to a man who worked at the stonemasons Bridgeman & Sons in Lichfield. Family history has it that he carved the lions at the entrance to the Memorial Gardens, which you can see from the back in this postcard. I was quite surprised, as I didn’t even know we had family connections with Lichfield, let alone with this well-known local company.

There’s a great pic below of the heraldic lions by Elliott Brown (taken from Flickr). They’re holding the Lichfield coat of arms and stand on ashlar pedestals with swags on them.

Along with The Serjeantson Fountain and many other local monuments, Bridgeman & Sons was also responsible for the  statue of a Boer War-era sailor that is mounted on the side of the Old Museum and Library (below). He was destined for a war memorial in York (I think it was probably this one, unveiled in 1905) but was rejected on the grounds that he was too warlike. Instead of the more poetic figures that you usually see in public art, this one shows a man ready to fight – with a rifle in his hands and a grim expression on his face. As Bridgemans discovered, there is such as thing as too much realism.

Soon to be joined by a statue of Erasmus Darwin (unveiled on December 12th to coincide with the great man’s 281st birthday), he seems an incongruous figure in the Museum Gardens, but it’s nice to know that the effort of carving him wasn’t completely wasted. Shame about the broken rifle though!

Early 20th-century Boer War sailor sculpture by Bridgeman & Sons of Lichfield.

Photograph © Sara Moseley.

I’m really pleased to have added another signing date to the calendar today – I’ll be returning to Lichfield Heritage Centre this coming Saturday (Dec 1st) from 11am to 12.30pm, and I’ll be at WH Smiths in Lichfield’s Three Spires Shopping Centre the following Saturday (Dec 8th) from 11am to 2pm. Come and say hello

Thanks to everyone who came along to my launch at the Samuel Johnson Birthplace Museum in Lichfield on Friday. I was lucky enough to have the very room in which Dr Johnson was born, and I was even using a 300-year old table to display my books on!

And it was great to see our MP, Michael Fabricant, giving the event his blessing. Little did we know it was only days before his controversial discussion document ”The Pact” kicked up a right old media storm – there’s never a dull moment in LichVegas.

Luckily, the torrential rain held off long enough for my signing event yesterday at Lichfield Heritage Centre. Met lots of lovely people, and I was lucky as Lichfield Then & Now was covered in an article by the Lichfield Mercury the day before, so that helped to spread the word. Thanks to everyone who came along – as you can see, unlike Kate Moss, I have no problems with having my picture taken (!) I’m due to do another signing on December 8th, 11am to 2pm at WH Smiths in the Three Spires Shopping Centre, if you missed this one.

Exciting times as part of my stock for next week’s launch of Lichfield Then & Now arrived at the office, wrapped in plastic. Just got to write my speech for the launch event now – YIKES!

Always merry and bright – a cartoon by “Cynicus”.

Postcard collecting is an odd business. I can spend many hours happily leafing through boxes of postcards in drafty halls, but what makes me want to do it? In the words of Tonie and Valmai Holt in Picture Postcards of the Golden Age: A Collector’s Guide: “In the end only you will be able to rationalise your collecting by deciding why you are anxious to acquire picture postcards”.

Up until recently I’ve mainly been interested in topographical views, but occasionally I come across cards – or messages on cards – that are just so odd, or so funny, that I can’t help buying them. My favourites tend to be Edwardian cards like What A Tease! (and I really liked History For Girls’ image of cheeky witches, which was posted up for Hallowe’en (though this falls into the popular ‘naked Edwardian bottoms’ category, rather than humour or romance).

My reason for buying the above card was pretty straightforward – my surname features in the legend: “For all the ills we have to bear/There’s nothing cures like Rubery air” (for those unfamiliar with the British Midlands, Rubery is a village in Worcestershire). I hardly ever buy cartoon postcards because I much prefer to see photographs; one of my reasons for collecting is because of my interest in history, and I like topographical views of places that I know.

But still – I bought this one. A bit of research in the Holts’ invaluable book has revealed some interesting information. Published by Cynicus Publishing Co. (a firm that was established in 1902 and operated from Tayport, and later, Leeds) it published almost exclusively the designs of “Cynicus”, otherwise known as Martin Anderson. Anderson (1854–1932) had published his cartoons in book-form from 1890, and seems to have favoured satirical character sketches (“Cynicus” being a reference to his cynicism). I was interested to find a slideshow of his more serious paintings on this BBC website. The company was dissolved in 1916.

Postcard back with a George V stamp.

The back is interesting too. I liked the message: “To Laura, Hope Bob is having some dainty dishes. Win.” It’s got a George V stamp (issued 1912), but what’s most interesting is that Win seems to be exploiting the language of stamps. From about 1890, well into the 20th century, the position of the stamp could actually be a coded message. You often see stamps placed at all sorts of jaunty angles, and this one, with the right corner elevated, meant “a kiss”. If you want to know more, nothing says it better than this wonderfully stiff-upper-lipped British Pathe film titled “Carry On!”

LANGUAGE OF STAMPS issue title – CARRY ON !