Done something you'd like to promote? Got something you'd like to sell, give away or swap? Even some advice you'd like to give or someone or something you'd like to recommend? Let me know what it is, using CONTACT US, and I'll put it on this page for all to see. Where you see a link that takes you to another web site you can always return to this one using the back arrow on your browser toolbar.
Wanted:-
WANTED! All of the desperadoes seen below. If found, please keep it to yourself.
Posted by Brian Ford:-
I've written a novel entitled' Hit the Road, Frank ' but am looking for a publisher. To read it, click on this link - www.authonomy.com/ViewBook.aspx. Let me know what you think, especially if you know a publisher who might be interested. E-mail methrough this site with your views and/or also put those thoughts on the ' User Forums'.
Posted by Mark Foulsham: -
If anyone out there has copies of The Cheynean they no longer wish to look after, please let me have them. I'm particularly after the 1965 and 1969 copies but would welcome any from other years. I'd like to start a library of them which I'll eventually publish on the site and which I'll be willing to get copies made of for anyone who wants to pay the cost of printing and postage. At the moment I've only got 1963, 1964, 1966, 1967, 1968 and 1970, all of which were donated by Robin Alvarez, and December 1949, April 1950, July 1950, December 1950, March 1951, July 1951, December 1951, April 1952, July 1952, December 1952,July 1953, December 1953, July 1954, December 1954 and July 1955, which were all donated by Frank Wilmot. Peter Armstrong provided me with the copies for July 1956, July 1957, December 1959, May 1960, December 1960 and July 1961. Even if you've only got copies of these years, I'll still have them if you don't want them.
In addition, if anyone has copies of the school group photos that they'd be willing to lend, Peter Bryceson has kindly offered to make copies for everyone at minimal cost.
Ref. E H Pritchard. January, 2009:-
I've been contacted by the great-granddaughter of E H Pritchard, the school's first headmaster. It's a long shot but she's asking whether anyone may be in possession of any photos or other memorabilia from his time at the school. As he died in 1928 her only chance is if someone has been handed down something or if someone took charge of something for safe keeping after the school closed in 1970. She's particularly interested in any photos that might include Mrs Pritchard. Put your thinking caps on and see if we can't, at least, point her in the right direction. I've already mentioned the London Metropolitan Archives and the Fulham Chronicle, who may have something from his time as Mayor.
Ref. Mr Nightingale. February, 2009:-
I've been contacted by Edward Nightingale, whose father, Herbert Paul Nightingale, taught Maths and Swimming at the school until his retirement in the late 40s. Both Edward and I would be grateful for any memories anyone might have of his father. Edward admits to his father having been a little eccentric. Please let me have anything you've got via the usual channels. You might even recall the circumstances surrounding Edward's own recollections of his father which can be found on the Shared Memories page.
Ref. Frederick Henry Savage. February, 2010:-
I've been contacted by Neil Smith of RAF 51 Squadron History Association. He had been researching the crash of Wellington Bomber R1374 in 1941, when his Internet searches involving the pilot's name, Frederick Henry Savage, led him to our website. Frederick's name appears on our In Memory page and Neil was keen to learn more.
I told him all I know and, in return, I have asked him to let me know of anything else he discovers about Frederick. He has already added to what I knew by telling me that the plane was brought down near Loire Atlantique, in France, where, next year, they are planning a ceremony to mark the 70th anniversary of the crash.
For Sale:-
1968 & 1970 School Group Photos For Sale:-
Copies of the panoramic school group photos of 1968 and 1970 are now available at a cost of £5 per photo, plus £2 postage and packing whatever the quantity in each postage tube. This is the price for posting in the UK; the cost for posting elsewhere will vary but I'll let you know how much before I send them off. If you're interested e-mail me with you're requirements and when they're ready I'll get back to you to tell you the full cost which you can then either pay through the site Donate button or by cheque sent in my name, Mark Foulsham, to my address, which you'll find on my Profile. If you do use the Donate button, PayPal take a commission so I'll have to add that to the cost.
Posted by Mark Foulsham:-
Vinyl Records For Sale:-
If you collect old vinyl 45s or LPs, or even if you're only looking for the odd record, I've got a colection that I'm now willing to part with. They range from the 1960s to the mid-70s and cover most genres including Motown, Reggae and general 'pop'. Click on either of the links below to view the lists and make me an offer via this site if you see anything you want.
Posted by Mark Foulsham. Global Positioning Systems:
If any of you use a Global Positioning System (GPS) in your car, this may not have occured to you, but it is worth thinking about.
Recently, thieves broke into a car and stole a number of items, including the GPS, which had been prominently displayed on the dashboard, and a remote control for a garage door.
When the victims returned home they found their house had been ransacked and all items of value had been stolen.
The thieves had used the GPS to guide them to the house then used the garage remote to open the garage door and gained access to the house through the door in the garage linking it to the house. The moral of the story is, if you use a GPS, don't put your home address into it. Instead, put in a nearby address so you can still find your way home if you really need to.
Posted by Mark Foulsham. Mobile Phone Address Books:
If you use a bag to keep your mobile phone in when you're out (and some men do today!), or even if you keep it in the same coat pocket as your credit cards, please be careful. A woman recently had her handbag stolen. It contained her mobile phone, credit cards etc, so she phoned her husband from a pay phone to tell him what had happened. He told her that he had replied to her text message asking what their Pin number was, just ten minutes previously. Quickly realising what had happened they notified their bank only to be told that their large daily limit had already been withdrawn from their account. As you've already guessed, it was the handbag thief who had sent the text to the husband.
Posted by Mark Foulsham. Revenge on the Marketer:
If you're continually getting those annoying telemarketing calls the first thing you can do is register to prevent them doing so. Click on this link and register at this website -
That should help, but if one still gets through, and they do find ways round it, try these:-
1) Say to them "Hold on, please", put down your phone and walk away for a while. They'll soon get fed up and hang up.
2) If you answer the phone and there doesn't appear to be anyone on the other end, it's likely to be due to a telemarketing company who uses a machine to make the calls and records the time of day a person answers. They do this so that a real salesperson is able to call at a time when you'll probably be in. After answering the automatic call and finding no one on the other end of the line, start hitting the # button on your phone very quickly. Apparently, this confuses their machine and it throws your number out of their dial-up system.
3) When you get those 'pre-approved' letters in the post for everything from credit cards to 2nd mortgages, make the postage-prepaid return envelope work for you. It costs the company that sent them money if you return them. If you enclose a few of the other pieces of 'junk mail' you've received you'll not only be getting rid of it, you might also be putting the recipient in touch with the services of someone they really need. Put 'Madam Rose', the Clairvoyant's card in the envelope you're returning to Capital One Visa, or send the Pizza Express menu to Barclays. You know the kind of thing. You can even send them back empty to keep them guessing. No need to put your name to anything.
By doing this you'll also be doing Royal Mail a favour. Given the extra work you're putting their way, they shouldn't need to increase the cost of postage for a decade.
Posted by Mark Foulsham:-Another telephone scam is doing the rounds, so be careful as it's easy, however intelligent we like to think we are, to fall for these. You might receive a phone call from someone pretending to be a British Telecom, or other phone company, representative, who'll say that you have an unpaid bill, and unless you pay immediately your phone service will be cut off, and you'll later be charged an astronomical fee to be re-connected. Don't be surprised if he has a very English name but speaks with a very African accent. If the caller suspects you don't believe what they're telling you, they'll offer to prove they work for BT (or whatever service you use if they've done their homework) by saying they can disconnect your phone to prevent you from dialling anyone, if you put the phone down there and then and try. If you agree you'll find that all the caller does is stay on the line with their finger on their 'mute' button; you think they've hung up but, of course, they haven't. This is because the one who initiates a call is the one who has to terminate it. Only when they hear you stop trying to make the call do they cut off and immediately call you back to see how you got on. It will certainly fool some people into parting with a credit card payment over the phone.
Posted by Mark Foulsham:- Geoff Hall alerted me to the following. If you don't wanted your mobile phone number listed in the 118 Directory click on this link to get it removed:-
Posted by Mark Foulsham:-I don't know how true this is, but the source I got it from swears they got the information from a very reliable computer company who set up the standard database used by each county's computing system. If you get fined for a traffic offence and are going to get points on your licence then there's a way of avoiding the endorsement. If your fine is, say, for £40 then send a cheque for slightly over, maybe £41. The computer system then has to generate a cheque giving you a £1 refund. As points are not assessed toyour licence until all financial transactions are complete, DON'T CASH THE CHEQUE! You'll have satisfied the system because it's got its money and it won't bother you again but transactions are not complete so the licence can't be endorsed. It's up to you if you want to test it out sometime. Let's hope you never have to!
Posted by Mark Foulsham:-I Hope this never happens to you but it could be useful if it does. If you're ever forced to withdraw money from an ATM machine by a robber, enter your pin number in reverse, i.e. if it's 1234 enter 4321. You'll still get the money you asked for but the machine will recognise that the number you entered is the exact reversal of the one allocated to your card and the police are notified and dispatched to the scene. How long it will take them to get there is any body's guess so delaying tactics would also be in order. Of course, this could just have been put about by someone hoping someone else will put it to the test and find themselves arrested for wasting police time when it works.
Posted by Mark Foulsham: - The latest in the line of Credit Card scams. The bottom-line is, if you ever get a call purporting to be from Visa, Mastercard or any individual Credit Card company, don't on any account reveal the 3 - digit security code on the back of your card. If it were a genuine call this information would never be asked for as the card issuer would already know this information. To the criminal it's the only bt of information that can't easily obtain about you and it's all they need to be able to run up multiple purchases on your card. Any call you're suspicious of, tell the caller you'll ring them back after you've verified they are who they say they are. It might sound obvious but when you're caught off guard it's easy to forget.
Posted by Mark Foulsham:- I can't confirm whether this is genuine and whether it works or not, so it might be worth checking with a computer whizz-kid before you do anything. The aim is to protect your computer from the worm viruses that can cause costly damage if they by-pass your computer security set-up:
How to protect your e-mail address book
A computer repairman says this is like having gold. This is a good thing. I learned a computer trick today that's really ingenious in its simplicity.
As you may know, when/if a worm virus gets into your computer it heads straight for your email address book, and sends itself to everyone in there, thus infecting all your friends and associates.
This trick won't keep the virus from getting into your computer, but it will stop it from using your address book to spread further, and it will alert you to the fact that the worm has gotten into your system.
Here's what you do:
First, open your address book and click on 'new contact,' just as you would do if you were adding a new friend to your list of email addresses.
In the window where you would type your friend's first name, type in ' A'.
The name 'A' will be placed at the top of your address book as the first entry.
This will be where the worm will start in an effort to send itself to all your friends. When it tries to send itself to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA, it will be undeliverable because of the phony email address you entered.
If the first attempt fails (which it will because of the phony address), the worm goes no further and none of your friends will be infected.
Here's the second great advantage of this method: If an email cannot be delivered, you will be notified of this in your In Box almost immediately.
Hence, if you ever get an email telling you that an email addressed to AAAAAAA@AAA.AAA could not be delivered, you know right away that you have the worm virus in your System. You can then take steps to get rid of it!
Medical Advice
Heart Attacks:- Lets hope it never happens to you but, if you ever feel a heart attack coming on and are alone, try to get help in any way you can (phone etc;) and until help arrives do the following. To get oxygen to the lungs and to keep the blood circulating and return the heart to its normal rhythm, start coughing vigorously using deep and prolonged coughs as you would if trying to cough something up. Breathe deeply before each cough and repeat the procedure every two seconds until help arrives and your heart starts to beat normally.
Strokes:-A neurologist has said that if he can get to a stroke victim within 3 hours he can totally reverse the effects. He said the trick was getting the stroke recognised, diagnosed, and then getting the patient medically cared for within the three hours. Doctors say a stroke can be recognised by asking three simple questions of the patient:
S *Ask the individual to SMILE
T *Ask the person to TALK and SPEAK A SIMPLE SENTENCE coherently
R *Ask the person to RAISE BOTH ARMS
If he or she has trouble with ANY ONE of these tasks, call the emergency number.
A further indication that a patient may have had a stroke is if their tongue goes to one side or the other when you ask them to stick it out.
* * * * *
Posted by Mark Foulsham on 4th March, 2009: -John Coles, at Sloane between 1960 - 1967, is having trouble locating himself in the school photos that appear on site. If you remember John and can help, send him a message and take the weight off his mind!
ANNOUNCEMENT:-
Kensington and Chelsea Library Local Studies department keep back numbers of The Cheynean. If you ever want to read them you need to phone first to make an appointment. They are housed in Kensington Central Library, Phillimore Walk, Kensington, London W8 7RX, telephone number 020 7361 3038. This section is open from 1pm to 5pm . My thanks to Vernon Burgess for first alerting me to this.
* * * * * * * *
SCHOOL PHOTOS ANNOUNCEMENT:-
Just in case you didn't receive my e-mail about school group photos, this is the situation. The only negative that survives for our school is of the final photo taken, on May 11th, 1970 and its reference number is 2952. They wouldn't let me buy a copy on CD due to copyright restrictions, so if you want one, at £37 each inclusive of p&p, they can be obtained through,
Tony Lees
Archivist
Greater Manchester County Record Office
56 Marshall Street
Ancoats
Manchester M4 5FU
email <tonylees@gmcro.co.uk>
Tel 0161 832 5284
If you don't fancy paying that sort of money, you can buy an unframed copy from me (See above under the For Sale heading). I also have copies, produced by site member Peter Bryceson, of the 1968 photo. If any of you has copies of other years that they'll let me produce more copies of to make available for others to purchase, please let me know.
* * * * * * * *
SAVINGS!:-
Everyone likes to save a little money, especially as some of us are closer to (or over!) pensionable age. Vernon Burgess has kindly alerted me to a discount card that allows 20%off of most of the food outlets that you find at mainline UK rail stations. To get yours log onto www.bitecard.co.uk and fill in the online form. Check out other areas of the site and you'll be able to print off some discount vouchers that might come in handy too, but make sure you enlarge the page that shows the reverse of the coupons as you'll then be able to check what outlets they're accepted at. The Bitecard site also mentions www.thetrainline.comwhere you can purchase advance rail tickets at large discounts. Click the link from here if you don't want the Bitecard Discounts.
* * * * * * * *
Posted by Geoff Hall:-
This is old news now, but still valid. Most people never think about their hotel key cards or consider that they contain anything other than an access code for the room and perhaps the check-out date.
Well you should give it some thought, so start by considering what is usually on your magnetic key card?
Answer:
a. Customer's name
B. Customer's partial home address
c. Hotel room number
d. Check-in date and out dates
e. Customer's credit card number and expiration date!
When you check out and hand back the room card to the front desk, your personal information is there for any employee to access by simply scanning the card in the hotel scanner. An employee can take a handful of cards home and, using a scanning device, access the information and transfer it all to a computer. You know the rest!
Simply put, hotels do not erase the information on these cards until they are reissuing the card to the next hotel guest. Only then is the new guest's information electronically 'overwritten' on the card and the previous guest's information erased.
Until the card is rewritten for the next guest, it's usually kept in a drawer at the front desk, still holding YOUR INFORMATION ON IT!
The bottom line is: Keep the cards, take them home with you and destroy them. NEVER leave them behind and NEVER turn them into the front desk at check out time. They will not charge you for the card (it's illegal) and you'll be sure you are not leaving a lot of valuable personal information on it that could be easily lifted off.
For the same reason, if you arrive at the airport and discover you still have the card key in your pocket, do not toss it in an airport trash basket. Take it home and destroy it by cutting it up, especially through the electronic information strip!
However, if you just happen to have a small magnet handy, pass it across the magnetic strip several times, then try it in the door It should now fail to work as the card has been erased of everything on it.
.jpg)