Have I lost my marbles - well there's an interesting phrase? I often lost my marbles when I was at junior school but it didn't mean I had gone insane which is its traditional meaning.
But back to Lobby Lud. This was a newspaper marketing ploy. In my youth I had no idea what a newspaper marketing ploy was. I thought newspapers and organisations gave away prizes and money out of the goodness of their hearts. Then I grew up!
Lobby Lud was one of the first newspaper competitions, although it wasn't really a competition. It involved readers tracking down a newspaper's mystery man who could be found in a particular town or city or often at a seaside town.
The Westminster Gazette started this off in 1927 and gave their mystery man the name of Lobby Lud after the newspaper's telegraphic address which was Lobby, Ludgate. The first Lobby Lud was a reporter by the name of William Chinn (I wonder if that's where the phrase Take It On The Chinn comes from)!!!!
The newspaper announced the location that Lud would be at and included a photograph and description of our man. Readers tried to track him down and, providing they had a copy of the newspaper, they could challenge him with the immortal words "You are Lobby Lud I claim my ???"
There was usually a cash sum involved - often something between £5 and £50 which was a considerable sum of money in those days. If Lobby wasn't found on a particular day the prizemoney would increase.
Unfortunately, the newspaper folded (pardon another pun) in 1928 but the idea of Lobby Lud had proved popular and was taken on by the Daily News and then the News Chronicle. Lobby often came to Great Yarmouth. The papers targeted the seaside resorts because their circulation often dropped during holiday periods and they wanted to sell more copies in the resorts.
Of course as always when money is involved there was a downside to this. Many innocent people who bore a resemblance to the photograph of Lobby were approached by people demanding the prize and then becoming abusive when they said they weren't the mystery man.
Other newspapers took up the idea and there were more strangely named people such as Percy Pickles, Guineas Man (presumably because he paid prizemoney in Guineas) and Chalky White of the Daily Mirror who operated in the 1980s. I think in my mind I have confused Lobby Lud with Chalky White as I certainly remember the Mirror doing this.
The character of Lobby Lud crops up in the crime thriller Brighton Rock by Graham Greene and is part of a criminal scam.
I have no idea why I was thinking about Lobby Lud during a walk from Hethersett to Wymondham but I have stopped trying to work out how my brain works. Perhaps I will leave it to medical science to sort out.
I did think, however, that I could do a reverse Lobby Lud. If anyone would like to approach me on my Steward Strolls with the words "You are Lobby Lud and I give you £5" I will gladly give the money to the Priscilla Bacon Hospice Fund.
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As usual (and here I go boring you all again) on my daily five mile walk I listened to songs from my playlist and as usual one in particular seemed to sum things up.
This was "I Made It Through The Rain" by Barry Manilow. Now I don't want you to think that I'm a Manilow fan (that might stretch my credibility a touch) but I do like this song and "Weekend in New England" and a few others. In fact a couple of years ago I bought a book of Manilow piano music from a charity shop. It included the excellent "I Write the Songs" which seems ironic because that particular piece of music wasn't written by Manilow but was penned by Bruce Johnson who was and is a member of the Beach Boys. He also wrote another lovely song "Disney Girls" which would be in my top five Beach Boys tracks. Another Johnson Beach Boys track worth searching out is the wonderful "Tears In The Morning."
Here's the lyric to I Heard It Through The Rain that resonated with me:
I made it through the rain
I kept my world protected
I made it through the rain
I kept my point of view
I made it through the rain
And found myself respected
By the others who
Got rained on too
And made it through
Hopefully we will all make it through the rain in the not too distant future.
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As regular readers will recall, there has been a small amount of controversy over my decision to shop in Norwich at the weekend and then go for a walk in the city. Some felt this was a bending of the rules.
Today I have another quandary. I need to fill up my car shortly (the last tankful lasted for almost two months). The closest garages are Thickthorn or Waitrose and Abbeygate in Wymondham. Their prices are currently £1.25 or £1.26 a litre. By going slightly further afield I can get petrol at any number of Norwich garages for £1.12. So do I pay a ridiculous premium of 14p a litre for the sake of "shopping locally" when I believe this to be unreasonable and verging on profiteering?
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Tomorrow I will have some details about one of the gravestones in Wymondham Abbey I featured recently.