Blackburn’s Cutting Edge Mask

A Blackburn inventor has come up with an idea for a face mask which also acts as an electric shaver.

This cutting edge idea came to him during the Covid-19 pandemic.  Like many other people who were confined to their dwellings during this outbreak, he had plenty of time for reflection and to think about things.  It helped keep his mind sharp.  He also had plenty of inspiration from various kinds of face masks people used to wear during the pandemic.

Another aspect of this pandemic was large numbers of men who started growing beards.  A fashion craze which continues to this very day.  Although like most fashions, it will probably go away and return again in future, like fashions tend to do – Hair today, gone tomorrow.

What inspired him most though was probably one of the oldest inventions ever created by humankind.  This is the humble nose bag, often used by horses for feeding.  Like most great inventions, it is such a simple idea and this is why it has lasted for so long.  Wouldn’t it be great if something similar could be invented which benefitted humans in a similar way.  Not necessarily as a feeding bag, but as a shaving aid instead.

This mask shaver would be made up of a facial covering with an inside lining of minute diamond like crystals, embedded into its fabric.  These act as a cutting agent, using a wearing down process, a bit like sandpaper.  It would be operated by body motion, which charges an electric power pack inside the mask.  This also sucks up fine hair follicles into a receptacle for disposal.  Due to commercial discoveries from human hair, collection points for it in powder form could become available in future.

There are some great advantages to wearing a mask which shaves you while you’re on the move.  It would be extremely handy during the daily commute to work.  Although there’s just a few health and safety issues you might have to consider.  One is to keep your mouth shut when the shaver feature is working.  Another is not to sneeze while it is switched on.  And people are also reminded not to wear their masks in the bath or shower, or when swimming.

When asked about a possibility of other ends of the body being able to be shaved using a similar process, the inventor said he was looking forward to exploring nether regions.  This could lead to unisex shaving briefs being manufactured at a future date.

Yank Wants To Buy Blackburn Cathedral

A rich American wants to buy and relocate Blackburn Cathedral across the Atlantic Ocean to the USA.

Due to recent bad publicity in Blackburn Diocese, there was speculation the cathedral could have been closed down.  This prompted interest from a billionaire American property developer with local connections.  He was already interested in building a replica of St John’s Tavern, which he used to enjoy going in as a young man, while studying at Blackburn College.  But demolishing the cathedral and relocating it stone by stone across the Atlantic Ocean would be the icing on his cake.

This unnamed property developer, who didn’t wish to reveal his name, hails from Fall River, Massachusetts.  In the 19th century, this was the birthplace of America’s textile industry.  It attracted many workers from Blackburn, who emigrated there to work in this industry during the 19th and early 20th century.

Fall River was also a pioneer in American Association football and even had a team called Rovers.  They won the American Cup in 1888 and 1889 and their National Challenge Cup in 1917.  The town also had a team called Fall River Olympics, possibly as homage to Blackburn Olympic.  Its most well-known resident was Lizzie Borden, who allegedly killed both her parents with an axe!

This practice of shipping buildings from Britain across the pond is not a new concept.  Stately homes have actually been sent across by ship, with stones and bricks numbered so they could be reassembled.  Perhaps the most famous case of this kind of relocation was the situation with the old London Bridge.  Parts of this were shipped across to the USA and reassembled in a desert in Arizona.  Various stories are associated with this, saying its buyer made a mistake and thought he was buying Tower Bridge, but this has always been denied.

Shipping Blackburn Cathedral may be a bridge too far, due to its size and challenging logistics.  There is also how far down you go with its crypts and catacombs.  There has been a church on the cathedral site for over a thousand years.  Plus, an estimated 30,000 people are buried in its immediate vicinity.  Perhaps sticking to building a remake of St John’s Tavern might be a cheaper and far more realistic alternative for this American property developer.

The author also used to love going in the Tavern.  His Great Uncle Ernie was killed in the First World War.  When hostilities ended, Ernie’s widow and daughter emigrated to Fall River.

Chinese Government Wants To Buy Blackburn Pub

Photo by a befendo on Unsplash

Interest has been submitted by the Chinese government overseas property arm over their intention to buy an empty pub in Blackburn town centre.

They have indicated their desire to set up a Service Centre, providing administrative services such as passport and driving licence renewals.  This would help to bring Chinese people from all over Britain to Blackburn.  Facilities would also include cultural, worship and educational services, along with vehicle parking and accommodation.  Their list of facilities is non-exhaustive and some form of members only social club is not out of the question.

Basing their Service Centre here seems a strange idea, Blackburn only has a small Chinese population.  Liverpool has the oldest established community in Europe, while Manchester not only has a large oriental community, like Liverpool, it has its own Chinatown.  So what has Blackburn got that our region’s two largest cities don’t have?  The answer is simple – cheap land, low property prices and a plentiful supply of available empty buildings – certainly compared to our former metropolitan Lancastrians.

An empty pub being brought back to life, whether as a boozer or not, would be very welcome in Blackburn town centre.  No more so than by our local authority.  Empty buildings don’t generate business rates.  They generate break-ins, fires and demolition.  The Chinese property developers also say further jobs would be created, such as security staff, locksmiths, facial recognition and DNA technicians.  They promise no effort would be spared in keeping their clients in a secure environment.

A lot of people have expressed concern about how some properties in the town centre have ended up becoming hostels and Houses of Multiple Occupation (HMO’s), which are frowned upon by many people, including our local council.  But the Chinese property developers claim they will be very selective over who stays in their Service Centre.  They claim to already have a prepared waiting list of clients who will be using this proposed facility.  As we occidentals like to say:  a captive audience.

At the moment the Chinese property developers are remaining tight-lipped over which pub they are interested in, or whether they have identified one yet.  But they say their desired premises must be a large building, capable of being secured and have lots of self-contained guest rooms.

As former Chinese leader Deng Xiaoping used to say:  “It does not matter whether a cat is black or white, as long as it catches mice”.

Blackburn Morri’s Expanding Into Its Walkways

Morri’s surprised many people in Blackburn when they pulled out of their move across the road to the old Thwaites’ Brewery site.  But maybe an alternative had already been found within their current premises.

Over a period of time a strange phenomenon has begun to take place in this superstore.  Tables started appearing in the walkways with assorted items on sale.  These started off with bakery products, including fruit pies, cakes and bread.  Then various other items started springing up in more places around the superstore walkways, the latest item to be on sale is garden and other furniture.

Going off on a tangent in relation to the instillation of furniture sales, what was very annoying was Morri’s removing their benches from where you entered the superstore from Railway Road.  They were a nice place to have a sit down after finishing your shopping, or before starting it.

With so many older and infirm people shopping in this superstore, it was nice to have somewhere where you could have a sit down to catch your breath and recuperate.  Sadly, they may have been seen as taking up too much room and another sales outlet could be installed there in the future.

This use of walkways as shopping aisles has raised murmurs about access for disabled users, especially those who use wheelchairs, along with people pushing prams and pushchairs.  Although there does seem to be enough room for users of various wheeled conveyances.  After all, plenty of similar sized shopping trolleys are pushed around the superstore every day.

Today’s retail industry is very cut-throat and competitive, particularly amongst the largest supermarket groups.  No doubt any opportunity to maximise profits through not spending money on building new premises can be seen by some as good business sense.  With the rise of online shopping and home delivery expected to keep on growing, some retail outlets are more likely to downsize than expand.

As one of Britain’s major supermarket groups, Morri’s is bound to tick all the boxes as regards health & safety and being disabled friendly.  But it’s addition of new sales outlets in its walkways may lead to the superstore starting to feel claustrophobic in certain places.

This cannot be conducive to improving their customers’ overall shopping experience. But then again it doesn’t take people long to get used to new shopping practices.  Shoplifters certainly do and will be all in favour of these new sales outlets in the walkways.

Blackburn Clock Tower’s Dodgy Dials

Blackburn town centre used to have a clock, built in 1848,  which was the pride and joy to many of our fellow townsfolk.

When it was demolished, due to town centre redevelopment, some people thought it was the end of the world.  Unfortunately these modernist styles used on its replacement didn’t go down very well with many folk.  It did look very tacky, not giving a good impression of our town.  It reflected the concrete jungle our town centre had become.

But laws of averages say you have to get it right eventually.  This has led to the current version of our clock tower, which dates from 2009, being given a grudging acceptance by most Blackburners.  This structure really serves two purposes, one is access to the Mall’s multi storey car park, the other is for its primary function.  The main problem of this purpose is doing what it was built for – telling the time!  But only one of its three clock faces ever has the correct time.  A similar situation plagued previous versions of our clock.

In May a note was made of each of the dial’s times in comparison to my mobile phone time.  At 11.35am on my phone it was this time on the dial looking down King William Street towards the Old Town Hall.  Sadly you can’t see what time it is from there due to a tall leafy tree in its way.  But the dial facing New Market Street was nearly an hour behind, stating a time of 10.40am.  The remaining dial, facing the Mall went back even further, giving a time of 9.25am.

If you came from the Azores, then walking down New Market Street towards the clock would make you feel at home, especially if you’d forgotten to put your watch forward by an hour.  Someone from Greenland coming from the Mall might feel the same way, with the remaining dial being two hours behind.

Unfortunately this means we have a very confusing situation – a clock which has three different times – and nobody can put their finger on it.  Civic Time website reported in 2010:  ‘The clock has three faces electronically locked so they always tell the correct time’.

Sadly, their statement has proved to be rather inaccurate.  What makes things worse is the length of time this has been going on for.  Even more surprising is how long this clock has been on the scene in Blackburn town centre by now.  Doesn’t time fly!

Fairground Power Station For Blackburn

Last time Blackburn’s Easter Fair was held on Brown Street car park, suggestions were put forward over how to reduce costs of staging this event.

One of these suggestions was to build a hydro electric power plant, utilising Blackburn’s River Blakewater, which flows underneath the fairground site.  A turbine powered by flow from our subterranean river could produce not only enough electricity to run a fairground, but also make a contribution to Britain’s National Grid.  Profits from this could go on to help finance other worthy projects throughout our borough.

The fairground itself could then have other uses.  One idea is it being utilised as an exhibition centre and museum, displaying some of the ways Blackburn’s citizens used to be entertained before cinema, radio, TV and the internet were invented.  This could also lead to not only guided fairground tours, but also tours of the power station, underneath this complex.

A great deal of thought has gone into environmental impacts of this power station.  It would lead to special fish and amphibian channels having to be installed for eels, salmon, frogs and other marine creatures.  They would then have a safe passage allowing them to bypass its electricity turbine, which would produce green energy, in this case, hydro electric power.

Perhaps the most ingenious aspect of this project is a joint undertaking between both fairground and power station.  A big wheel would be constructed to blend in with the fairground, but would be actually producing auxiliary electricity separate from the power station, but also feeding into its National Grid supply.  This would be done by a hamster type wheel being installed on this site, where people can walk or run along its treadmill and produce electricity from their own steam.

A facility such as this could easily capture people’s imagination.  Local organisations could form their own teams and take part in walks along the big wheel, raising money for charity and local causes.  It could even be used as a form of voluntary punishment for minor criminal activity.  Electricity produced from walking the wheel would count as payment towards any fines incurred by convicted offenders.

One good thing about this fairground is it is only being temporary, like the one that sometimes parks up there each Easter.  As well as Brown St, the fairground has also parked up on Thwaites’ old brewery site.  Each visit to this site by the fairground is always a temporary one.  This may be the case with Blackburn’s proposed power generating project, but for just a bit longer.  Whereas a power station would be permanent.

Blackburn Rovers Being Run By The Peter Principle 

For two years running, there appear to have been embarrassing mistakes made by Blackburn Rovers staff over technical issues when attempting to sign players on deadline days.  There have also been other less high profile issues in regard to the general running of the club which have drawn concern from our fans. 

It is being said by some Rovers fans, our club is being run on foundations of the ‘Peter Principle’.  This is a theory based on a work by Laurence J Peter in 1969, where managers and executives find their own level of incompetence.  The Peter Principle is a clever idea, although it can’t have done a great deal for most workplaces or our national and local government departments or most other large institutions.  The whole gist of this idea is that people get promoted one level beyond their ability to actually do a job they were hired for. 

It’s bound to keep happening because it makes a strange kind of sense.  Do a good job and you get a promotion with more responsibilities.  If you do a good job there and you’ll get another promotion with even more responsibilities.  Do a bad job there and what happens?  Nothing! They don’t send you back.  You just stay where you are until something radical happens at the workplace.  The daft bit is the person who blagged it isn’t really the one who suffers.  After all, they have a job and presumably a nice well paid one.  The suffering trickles downwards, poisoning the employer and those staff left behind to deal with the repercussions of their incompetence. 

At Blackburn Rovers we had a good example of this on the football side with Steve Kean.  From being a trainer, his luck was in  and he found himself becoming the manager, albeit our most incompetent and unpopular holder of this position in many Rovers fans opinions.  Despite Kean realising he was out of depth and inevitably being given his marching orders, the owners of our club appear not to have learned a great deal from  those awful times under his tenure. 

This ‘Peter Principle’, or ‘Pune Principle’, as some are calling it, remains there for all to see on the non-footballing side of the club.  No doubt our owners in India are very sensitive about their recruitment policy, to the point of dragging even the slightest dissenting voices through the courts of law.  They seem to spend a lot of time in these places at the moment. 

Perhaps the best examples of seeing repercussions of the ‘Peter Principle’, not necessarily at our beloved football club, are cutting corners, slovenliness, a lack of ability or fear of making decisions and missing deadlines.  Many of you might have seen the above examples in your workplaces too.  I certainly did. 

Blackburn’s Sands Of Time

Blackburn could be in line to cash in from these sand and dust storms which keep blowing over from the Sahara Desert.

A project is being considered to try and collect this sand and use it for various cottage industries.  We might even find ourselves in a ‘Coals to Newcastle’ scenario,  where we end up selling sand back to the Arabs.  From Blackburn’s Barbary Coast to theirs.

This phenomena of sand and dust blowing from North Africa seems to be becoming more of a regular thing, possibly due to effects of climate change.  It usually occurs when big dust storms in the Sahara Desert collide with southerly wind patterns.  Blackburn’s location in the middle of the island of Great Britain seems to indicate it may be in the driving seat of a vortex for receiving regular deposits of sand and dust from the world’s largest desert, it could eventually be classed as our own magic carpet.

One new cottage industry being talked about is the manufacture of hourglasses, using sand from the Sahara Desert.  This 8th century device comes in all shapes and sizes and doesn’t necessarily have to be limited to an hour or any specific time.  They can be bought in various lengths of time measurement and are particularly useful for boiling eggs.

Blackburn also has a tradition for making glass appliances and is well known for this.  Many radio and TV valves were manufactured at the Mullards factory on Philips Road.  It may have been the town’s largest employer at one time.  Thousands of people worked there.

Before we get to finished products, this process has to start somewhere.  A new company has been formed to collect sand when it lands over Blackburn from the Sahara.  It is asking people to check smooth surfaces around their home next day whenever they hear news reports of another blast of sand being blown over here from the desert.

Cars are particularly prone to being covered in sand on occasions like these.  People are being asked to carefully brush sand off their cars into plastic receptacles, such as old margarine tubs or lunch boxes.  Anything which can be airtight sealed is very welcome.  Not only will this help local industry, but will also give your car a clean and help with our borough’s recycling plan.

The sands of time have been blowing through Blackburn for many a year, probably well before the hourglass was invented.  There have been good times and bad times.  But there is always an opportunity round the corner.

Could We Soon See Blackburn’s Fleece Open Again?

Blackburn’s Fleece pub has stood derelict on Penny Street for years.  But with signs starting to appear that Morrisons may be on its way to moving across the road in the near future.  It could mean the Fleece being reinvigorated as a new public house for Blackburn town centre.

Morrison’s intended re-location to Thwaites’ former seven-acre brewery site is seen as a major part of a £250M Master Plan which has been seen as a way of rejuvenating this part of our town centre.  When these plans were submitted in 2021, the Fleece was mentioned and demolition was discussed.  But closer inspection of these plans showed demolition was actually meant for an old building at the left side of this pub.  Which means the Fleece is just as much a part of this master plan as all the rest of these developments.

This building which used to be at the side was once a restaurant.  It’s now long gone and, in my experience, thank goodness too.  On my one and only visit for a meal in here, back in the 1970’s, it left a lot to be desired.  Subjecting me to what must have been the toughest steak I’d ever encountered in my life.  As a teenager at the time, these were remembered as my salad days.  I just wish they had been on that particular evening.

Land including part of the old brewery site will be sold to Morrisons for them to build a brand-new replacement superstore.  It will be just over half the size of their current premises.  This master plan will also include building 500 new homes and five commercial buildings on their present site, after it has been demolished.  Building work on the old brewery site is hopefully anticipated to be underway in the summer of this year.

It would be great to see another of Blackburn’s old pubs coming back from the dead, like we’re seeing with the newly opened Ribblesdale Tap.  This would be very welcome to have a pub back in operation around the Penny Street side of our town centre, especially with this area’s pub and brewery connections.  Hopefully with these developments, including the Fleece, talking will stop and building will start.

What could be better for a superstore in the town centre than a having a new pub to serve its customers?  It would also be a handy facility for travellers at our bus station across the road and nearby railway station to be able to enjoy a pint before, after and in between their journeys.

Blackburn Bull Running Revival

A long forgotten Blackburn tradition could be revived as a way of boosting tourism to the town.

It seems Blackburn was known for being one of a few British places where running of the bulls took place.  Many people will have heard of these kind of events taking place in Spain – Pamplona being its most famous festival – but bull running is far more widespread than just Spain.  It also takes place in Portugal, Mexico and France.

Surprisingly, there used to be similar events in Britain.  A long standing festival took place in Stamford, Lincolnshire for over 600 years up to 1837.  It started here when a bull escaped and the local landowner pursued it on horseback, along with his pack of dogs.  He killed it and really enjoyed himself, no doubt even more so after feasting on his dismembered quarry.  Stamford’s bull run was eventually suppressed due to a combination of rampant drunkenness on run days and campaigning by the Society for Prevention of Cruelty to Animals – what would later become the RSPCA.

Many Blackburn folk will remember our town’s cattle market on Harrison Street.  Bulls were known to escape from here, but they didn’t usually get so far before a marksman’s bullet sent them to the abattoir and a meat hook in the butcher’s.  Our previous livestock market was based on Blakey Moor and its removal led to Blackburn College being built.

Before then, Blackburn’s cattle market was on Church Street.  It is from here tales of bulls escaping and terrorising local people originate.  Sometimes setting bulls on unruly mobs was used as a way of putting down riots, or when mass drunkenness led to disorder.  Perhaps this is what inspired bull runs in Blackburn.  It certainly inspired pub names on this thoroughfare.  No less than four pubs with Bull in their names used to be on this street.

Having a bull run in Blackburn would need a few problems solving.  Barbecuing bulls after killing them in the street may not be as acceptable today as it used to be in times gone by.  There are not only animal welfare issues to consider, but also health and safety aspects relating to humans too.  The spectacle of people tossed in the air by bulls then being gored by them, may face some opposition.

To get round this, one suggestion has been put forward with pantomime bulls replacing the real thing.  They would be assisted by a troupe of Morris Dancers as they pursued volunteer runners down a marked out street route in the town centre of Blackburn.  A modern day Tossers v Runners, like the dystopian science fiction films ‘Logan’s Run’ or ‘Rollerbull’.  This could certainly bring the crowds out to view or partake in such an enthralling spectacle.

The author of this load of bull had a great-grandfather who was a butcher in Blackburn.  He was crushed to death in a paddock while trying to move a bull.