Healing from Sexual Abuse – A Transformational Journey – Part 12

Powerful (and very involving) story …

Changethroughtransformation's Weblog

A good night sleep last night and a long nap this afternoon.  I think I can go on with the process some more.  Had a dream that all my identifying cards were gone and I couldn’t find them to identify who I am.  I interpret that to mean that how I have defined myself is changing and right now there isn’t an identity so to speak or I am creating a new identity.

Me:  Spirit Dad, as I was dozing off to sleep I had a thought about surrender.  When you used to beat me, I would have to surrender to you to stop the beatings.  It was all a power trip with you.  The only choice I had was either surrender to stop hurting or to not surrender and to keep the beating going.  As a child I surrendered, but not all of me surrendered.  I fought back in…

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Why I’m not eBay active

My friend asked me why I’m not selling on eBay –

Well, there’s the sad thing.
I have over 350 positive eBay ratings, and one negative – a very long time ago. It doesn’t show up these days.
.
The one negative was from a man in Torquay called Simon Burch. He sold me a “vinyl” deck with pieces missing, which was damaged in the post because it was badly packed. There were bedbugs walking around in the shredded paper he used to badly pack the deck. I took photos and burned that paper. It didn’t protect in the right places, anyway. The cover cracked in the package, the arm fell on the deck and the stylus died.

When I complained he did nothing but badmouth me.

Because the sale was for £5, and the complaint bottom limit was £15, eBay was not helpful at all.
I was riled – I looked at his listings and I could see schill bids. When I showed them examples of how Simon Burch was schill bidding in cahoots with his sister in law, and his wife, and using other accounts to make schill bids, they said the evidence was too late – 32 day evidence when they stopped asking after 30 days.
I was providing real evidence, names and addresses, eBay ignored it.

Later, eBay made all the bidding information closed, so you can’t spot schill bidding happening in the way you could then.

But the hassle today is that you need 10 positive feed back results in a 3 month period to get detailed feedback ratings. There’s so much indoctrination of buyers on eBay that very few people will buy unless you have all your detailed ratings current and five star.

So, until you have those detailed feedback ratings complete, everything you sell is likely to be a bargain for the buyer and a loss leader for you. To get those ratings filled in, you need to have something cheap that will sell continuously, at least three per week, and keep selling those things even when you have nothing else to sell. Inactivity for a month means you have to start over again.

The key to success on eBay is to keep selling. You need to be prepared before you start, or every time you want to sell, you have to start over with those detailed feedback ratings.

How To Open Valve/Tube Boxes

How to open valve/tube boxes without ripping the tabs off and destroying what is nowadays a collectible item –

Use a knife!

This is a weird tip I learned from someone in the school radio club almost 50 years ago.
If you try to open the box using your thumbnail, as instinct dictates, you run the risk of ripping off the closure tab against the locking tabs – that’s why they’re called locking tabs, and that’s what is supposed to happen. But slip the blade of a knife into the gap, push it right up against the tab, and twist gently, and the tab pulls up without locking –

Some valves come in boxes with very long tabs, which you will crease whatever you do. Telefunken were famous for this, compare the tab on this Raytheon box with the tab on the Telefunken box –

To get around this, always open the other end, which does not have the type number printed on it –

What Made Valve / Tube Amps Desirable To Guitar Players?

What Made Valve / Tube Amps Desirable To Guitar Players?

Headroom!
Back in the 1950s people designed amplifiers to minimize distortion, whether the end purpose of the amplifier was for hifi, pa or guitar. But designs needed to accommodate a variety of inputs, and guitar pickups put out a lot of power compared to most other sound sources.

So amplifiers for guitar use were designed so that they would be sensitive enough to amplify a low-level input, but had enough “input capacity” to allow them to be driven hard without being damaged. That is called headroom – the input might have a 5mV sensitivity, but it woulkd stand being fed a 800mV signal without giving up the ghost. Plug a guitar into a hifi amp and you are usually in danger of blowing the input stage.

Guitarists liked the slight distortion (or as Charlie Watkins used to say, coloration) that developed when the input stage became a trifle overloaded, and that is what most people mean when they talk about the “valve sound”. If, to use a colloquialism, you “dime” one of those old amplifiers, you also get the characteristic bark of the output stage overloading.

When transistorised amps started to gain popularity, many guitarists didn’t like them. They had clean headroom on the inputs, so the customary distortion was not available. They were lighter in weight and they were popular for PA, but they were too clean for many guitarists. Another problem with early high power solid state amps was that they needed a lot of stages in the design to get high power, and that introduced a perceptible delay between picking a note and the sound coming from the speaker.

Nowadays the transistorised guitar amps have been refined with circuits that emulate the sound of the old valve / tube amps, becase those are the sounds that most guitarists want, and there’s hardly a hint of that old “delay” problem. But people still want those old-fashioned amps, and they pay more to buy them. Why?

Whatever the SS amp designers do, they are still only getting close to the actual feel of playing through a valve amp. I said hardly a hint of that old “delay” problem, but the sensitive among us still notice it. Most valve amplifiers only have two or three amplification stages between the guitar and the loudspeaker, whereas any transistor amp has MORE, and if it has built-in effects that only adds to the delay.

Valve amps can usually be fixed if they break down. They are relatively simple, so a repair can take a lot less time than repairing a SS amp.
A lot of transistorised amps are very complicated, so many devices per chip, and built by robots that can solder components which human hands cannot. In many cases a dead SS amp can be not worth paying to fix.

People will tell you that the glass components in a valve amplifier are fragile. In practical situations, you handle both kinds of amplifier carefully, and they don’t get damaged much.

If someone says that repairmen see more valve amps than SS amps, tell them that is because the valve amps are worth fixing. Valve amps hold their value, well made examples can be shown to last for 50 years, and then you can often sell them for a lot more than you paid for them because they are vintage and collectible.

Make A Wish

Oh make a wish Don’t hand me down some clever book There may be time for just one look We’ll have to say it all With just one look we’ll have to say it all

JT Obstoj

Webmaster World seems like a nice place –

Webmaster World seems like a nice place – I’ve just been reminded of its existence by a friend.

They have recently announced some free tools for a range of purposes, most of which look very interesting.

No, this is not sponsored information – I’m just so impressed by the quality of posts on there that I’m signing up today!

Looks like I will need a week or two to read the forum… 

Roll Film Cameras

Got an old-fashioned 127 camera? You can still get film for it!

I just found a site selling it – Frugal Photographer – fascinating!

Why Can’t They Find Goalkeepers In UK?

Whatever happened to the UK goalkeeper?

When I was a lad in the 60s, every 1st division team had a respectable goalkeeper of UK origin, mostly with international kudos. Looking back at the days when English teams didn’t have a lot to worry about, goalkeeper-wise, makes me wonder why we don’t see goalkeepers of this calibre any more.

Here are the goalkeepers of the First Division teams of the Football League in the run-up to the 1966 world Cup:

1 Liverpool Tommy Lawrence (S)
2 Leeds United Gary Sprake
3 Burnley Adam Blacklaw (S)
4 Manchester United Harry Gregg (NI) / Pat Dunne (EI) (replaced by Alex Stepney)
5 Chelsea Peter Bonetti
6 West Bromwich Albion Ray Potter*
7 Leicester City Gordon Banks / Peter Shilton
8 Tottenham Hotspur Pat Jennings (NI)
9 Sheffield United Alan Hodgkinson
10 Stoke City Bobby Irvine (NI) / Gordon Banks
11 Everton Gordon West
12 West Ham United Jim Standen* (replaced by Bobby Ferguson (S))
13 Blackpool Tony Waiters
14 Arsenal Jim Furnell* / Bob Wilson (S)
15 Newcastle United Gordon Marshall** / Willie (Liam) McFaul* (NI)
16 Aston Villa Colin Withers*
17 Sheffield Wednesday Ron Springett
18 Nottingham Forest Peter Grummitt**
19 Sunderland Jimmy Montgomery*
20 Fulham Jack McClelland (NI)
21 Northampton Town Bill Brown (S)
22 Blackburn Rovers Bobby Jones*

Only one non-UK player in that list, Pat Dunne from EIre! Also Gary Sprake, the regular Welsh keeper, Five Scots internationals (including Bob Wilson), and five keepers from Northern Ireland, of which four were NI internationals.
EIght players were not full internationals (*), but a couple of those(**) were U-23 internationals.

At that time Gordon Banks, Ron Springett, and Peter Bonetti were the first three choices for England. Tony Waiters got five caps for England in the process of Alf Ramsey deciding who his top three choices were for the World Cup squad.
Alan Hodgkinson had also played for England in the past. Gordon West and Peter Shilton’s England appearances were in the future.

Thirteen of the top 22 clubs in England had an English goalkeeper. Seven of those keepers had played, or would play, for England. Two had U-23 caps, and there were more good keepers still to emerge from the shadows. Ray Clemence was playing for Scunthorpe, Alex Stepney was at Millwall, Jimmy Rimmer was playing for Manchester United’s “A” team, and Joe Corrigan had just joined the Manchester City youth side. Some past heroes were still playing, eg. Reg Matthews, who had been capped for England five times in 1956, was still between the sticks at Derby County.

Alex Stepney gets a mention although he didn’t play in the First Division that season. He was actually playing for Millwall, but was bought by Chelsea as reserve to Peter Bonetti, played in only one game for them, then moved to Manchester United for very big money. His one England cap is testimony to the queue for the England job. He had to get past Banks, Bonetti, Springett and West in the pecking order, with the teenage Peter Shilton in the wings.

He got past West, as did Shilton. Springett was aging. For the 1970 World Cup, the four goalkeepers in the squad were Banks, Bonetti, Stepney and Shilton. Shilton was left in England, the other three went to Mexico. Banks was laid low with food poisoning, and Bonetti had the honour of being on the losing side in his stead, while Stepney’s match duty was to tell Banks the bad news.

Bob Wilson was often called the best goalkeeper that never played for England. Brilliant and consistent, he waited patiently for the call that never came. When he was 30, he got fed up of waiting and offered to play for Scotland, since his parents were Scots, and the rules had just changed to allow his selection. He was capped twice, becoming the first Englishman to play for Scotland since 1873! He might have played more, but for the SFA deciding to pick a Scots born keeper whenever possible.

This post is supposed to be about English goalkeepers, but Pat Jennings deserves special mention. He was world class, and was capped 119 times for NI. Most players retire from International football, but continue playing at club level. Jennings retired from club football in 1985, when he was 40, but played in the 1986 World Cup for NI, his last game being on his 41st birthday. He is also famous for the goal he scored from his own goal area in the 1967 Charity Shield match against Manchester United!

Peter Shilton scored a similar goal for Leicester against Southampton in October 1967, but that hardly ever gets mentioned because there isn’t a film of it on YouTube.

Why can’t we turn out goalkeepers like they used to in the old days?

The Cart Horse That Made Good (2)

Part (1) refers to the strange legend that Drogheda, the winner of the 1898 Grand National, was found pulling a cab by his trainer, and also draws attention to a letter refuting that as fact.

While searching for info I found this interesting page about Manifesto, a contemporary of Drogheda who won the Grand National twice.

In 1898 Manifesto was injured and Drogheda won the National. In 1899 Drogheda was injured and Manifesto won his second National.
Makes you wonder, doesn’t it?

The Cart Horse That Made Good (1)

I used to back horses, which led to a conversation with a colleague when we were walking to the Underground station one day. I mentioned that there were legends of a horse which had been found pulling a milk cart by a trainer, which then went on to win a big race. His response was “Drogheda!”

He told me a “family history” of one of his relatives, a racehorse trainer, who had found a horse pulling a cab and subsequently bought it. The horse was called Drogheda, and went on to win the Grand National.

I was impressed – over the years I’d heard this legend of “the cart horse that made good”, but never met anyone who could name the horse.

I had no reason to doubt his information, so I was about to use it for an interesting blog post – but I wanted to quote a few facts, like the year the horse won the Grand National (1898), so I started to fish around on the web.

Wikipedia was not a good starting point, but a search produced this rather startling letter written to the Drogheda Independent in 1951, refuting the fact that Drogheda was the “cab horse”.

From that first-hand evidence, we might guess that the story of Drogheda once being a carthorse passed into legend from an aside comment made by George Gradwell many years before – but was this just an ironic “bit of Blarney”, or perhaps he was actually referring to another horse that had been talked about in the conversation?

We will never know . . . in this life.