As
a boy, Stan thought he could remember seeing a clown being fired from a
cannon at a circus in Hove. He couldn’t recollect, however, witnessing a
man flying through the air. At least not one who flew straight through a
pair of heavy wooden doors knocking Stan over and causing him to end up
in the middle of a busy street. That sort of just didn’t happen in
Hastings
Stan lived off this story for years, and he told and retold it so often that people stopped listening.
“That was how I met Logie” Stan would say to everyone and no one in particular.
On
the morning we speak of, he had set out intending to go for a
constitutional stroll along the older part of town. This was his
sanctuary; down here he could scupper and hide by the little fishing
boats and let the wind wash away his mother’s ‘inspirational talks’.
Stan
was twenty four years of age, for goodness sake, and since leaving the
army had never held down a decent job. The war had been long over and
for a man born on the first day of 1900 he was not making a wonderful
example of the new dawn. What was going through that stupid head of his?
I ask you?
In life, all
the best things appear to come when you least expect them, usually
followed by the best things hitting you straight in the face - or making
you roll out into the street - just the way Stan met Logie, as if you
didn’t know.
Now
here’s a question, would Stan have ever known he could be an engineer
if he hadn’t met Logie? Just like there must have been another Einstein
or Shakespeare out there who, for whatever reason, never got a chance to
find out about their own genius. Not that I’m saying Stan was a genius
but certainly Logie was one and he knew Stan had his uses.
After
the ‘flying man’ episode and as a way of an apology, Logie took Stan
for a drink. As so often happens in these circumstances, they found they
actually liked each other’s company. So much so, that when Logie’s
landlord stormed into the public house later that day “to find the mad
Scottish scientist who had blown up his rented rooms” Stan lied for
Logie and told the landlord that his friend “had been taken to hospital
that very afternoon and could be at death’s door even as we speak”
whereas Logie was actually hiding in the toilet. Needless to say, the
two of them became the greatest of pals.Here was Stan, a man in need of a
job and Logie in need of an assistant he could trust. Stanley
Addlington was born and bred a Sussex man and proud of it, his friend
John Logie Baird, or Logie as he preferred, was from Helensburgh in the
West of Scotland.
Now
it wouldn’t be so far from the truth to say that Logie was run out of
Hastings. Logie and his landlord had an altercation in the street when
he demanded recompense for the damage caused by the explosions. Logie
reluctantly paid the swine and decided enough was enough, taking his
inventions to a set of rooms in London’s Soho.And it was in these modest
rooms that John Logie Baird demonstrated the first electro mechanical
television.
Stan
would tell you that he was the first face ever to appear on a
television screen. He had done it to amuse himself one night when Logie
was out. The problem was that since he was the only person in the room
at the time, he couldn’t actually see himself on the screen but he did
remember burning himself on the lights needed for the camera. When Logie
came in the next day and spotted the burns on Stan’s face, he smiled to
himself having guessed what his friend had been up to. Unfortunately
for Stan, history chose another as the first televised face.
Those
London years were the busiest of Stan’s life, forever working on
Logie’s latest inventions, sometimes fourteen to sixteen hours a day.
Too much work for him to realise how lonely he actually was.
In
the spring of 1936, Logie decided to take a trip home to Helensburgh to
see the family but due to his deteriorating health Logie asked Stan to
drive him up there. This meant that Stan could take the car north and
return to collect Logie at the end of the stay. Stan had only been to
Scotland once before and that was when Logie transmitted television
pictures to the Central Hotel in Glasgow via a telephone line from
London. So yes, he would drive him to Helensburgh and then take the car
on into the Highlands.
Whatever
made Stan take the Coldharbour road at Inveraray is between him and his
maker but turn he did and before long he was staring at a rusty
welcoming sign:
‘Coldharbour: The B nniest Place in the West’.
Coming
in from that direction, the village hall was the first real building
you would pass. Outside Stan saw a rather pretty girl taking down a
notice telling that the library was now open. She disappeared inside the
hall and Stan saw this as a reason to stop.
When he entered, she was packing up the makeshift library into boxes and was apparently doing so without anyone to help her.
“Excuse me” said Stan.
The
girl spoke without lifting her head. “If you’re going to tell me
there’s a letter ‘O’ missing from our village sign, then I already know.
It fell off last week. If you’re here to borrow books, you’re too late
and anyway judging by your accent you’re not from these parts.” And on
she worked.
“I just wondered.....I was wondering if you would like to come out with me this evening...for a drink or something, young lady?”
“Did you just call me young lady?” enquired the girl.
“Depends - did you want me to call you ‘young lady’?”
And
the beautiful young girl thought about it and decided, yes, she did
like it. So that was how Stanley Addlington met Agnes Lily Sorensen,
daughter of Peter; the man who sat quietly in rooms.
Stan
decided that this was as much of the Highlands as he wanted to see and
found a room at Mrs Edith Huckerby’s bed and breakfast – five shillings
and clean sheets.
Mrs
Huckerby never told her lodger that she disapproved of Agnes and her
demented father but it seemed to Stan that Mrs Huckerby disapproved of
everyone. What she needed was a hard kiss on those lips, thought Stan,
but decided he wasn’t the man for the job. Although her house smelt of
the most delicious baking, Mrs Huckerby, herself, smelt of mothballs,
probably one of the reasons why Stan did not feel he was the right man
to deliver the kiss.
Stan
and Agnes spent the next Sunday afternoon walking the high hills
overlooking Loch Awe – Agnes liked the way Stan called it ‘Lock ah’, in
fact she liked many things about Stan. She was twenty two years of age
and this was the first time she had ever had these feelings.
On
the following Tuesday ,as usual, Agnes set up the library in the hall
but this time there were two differences: Stan was there helping and the
rooms were full of the happy sound of laughter, even the sun turned up
to shine through the windows.
They
set up the books in an ordered fashion, crime was on the left and very
popular in Coldharbour, the classics were on the right and the penny
romances were in the centre; the latter proving very popular with the
women and girls of the village who never stopped dreaming of their
knights in shining armour.
Stan, Agnes’ knight, lifted a small vase out of a tired old box and asked what it was for.
“Ah
that’s the suggestions vase, at the end of every session I read what’s
been placed in it. Some suggest particular books, some just want to
leave a message, some to place some money or to say thanks” said Agnes.
By
the end of the afternoon Stan knew it was time to head back south to
Helensburgh and pick up Logie. They intended to stay a night in Glasgow
before driving to London and Stan wished with all his heart that Agnes
could join him, but he knew about her father and him sitting in a room
quietly.
So when Agnes’
back was turned, Stan scrawled a quick note and placed it in the jar,
then he kissed her goodbye and promised lovely Agnes that he would
return.
As
he was driving away from Loch Awe, he looked at his watch and knew that
she would soon read the proposal of marriage he had placed in the
vase.Stan was just about to whistle his favourite tune by way of
celebration when the car skidded for several yards before tumbling off
the road. He was sure he had felt the road shaking just before the
accident. As he sat stunned in the automobile, he felt it again, the
earth definitely moved. The machine was stuck good and proper and there
was no way he could push it out. So Stan set out to walk up the old road
that followed the Orchy River to the bridge.
Nothing
passed by him that afternoon and it was early evening before he arrived
at a small house in Inveronan on the shores of Loch Tulla.An old man
answered the door, “There is nothing we can do this evening for your
transport young man, but come away inside and we’ll feed and water you”.
In
Coldharbour, Agnes was clearing up the mess in the hall. There had been
small earthquakes before in the area but this was a bit stronger than
usual. Still, she got to work picking up all the bookshelves and the
scattered books but Agnes failed to notice the broken vase lying on its
side and its contents having spilled out under a wooden desk.
In
the morning, Stan thanked the old couple who fed him well and who asked
for nothing in return. He walked the military road across Ba Bridge and
into Glencoe, finding a telephone at The Kingshouse and thereby
allowing him to notify Logie that he would be delayed.
In
the Autumn of 1936, Logie and his team were busier than ever supplying
the BBC with their latest television technology to test against other
competing systems. Logie’s group were based at The Crystal Palace, a
structure moved from Hyde Park to Penge Common in 1851.
Stan
had bought a small house near-by in Sydenham, in the hope that he would
hear from Agnes and that she would say yes. It was nearly the end of
November and Stan had begun to give up on the idea of a life with
Agnes.
Several
days before the Coldharbour hall was to be used for a Saint Andrew’s
night party Miss McKelvie, the village hall cleaner, found the contents
of the suggestion vase underneath the desk, including Stan’s proposal of
marriage.
So on the night of the 30th
of November and instead of dancing in the village hall, Agnes found
herself knocking on the door of a house in Sydenham, south east London.
She had been reluctant to go as it would mean leaving her mother with a
father who sat and said nothing, but her mother told her that sometimes
happiness only comes once and that she should catch it before it was too
late.
Stan
proposed properly to Agnes that night with the ring he had been keeping
safe on a chain around his neck. It was just as Agnes had accepted
Stan’s hand in marriage, that she noticed the redness of the sky. She
thought, at first, it was to do with the London lights being so much
stronger than those in Coldharbour but when Stan went out into the
garden he could smell the smoke, then he heard the clang...clang...clang
of the fire engines.
The Crystal Palace, and all ideas that he and Logie had worked so hard on over the years, was on fire.
The
BBC, in the end, chose another television system just as the country
drifted into war. In Hastings, Agnes and Stan got married and had two
wonderful years before Agnes moved back to Coldharbour to wait on her
knight returning from battle.
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