One is very amused!
QUESTION A newsreel clip shows Princesses Elizabeth and Margaret playing some sort of game with midshipmen on HMS Vanguard on the Royal Family’s trip to South Africa in 1947. What was this game?
On FEBRUARY 17, 1947, the pride of the Royal navy, the 44,500-ton battleship HMS Vanguard, docked in Cape Town.
It was carrying King George VI, Queen Elizabeth and their two daughters, 21year-old Princess Elizabeth and 17-yearold Princess Margaret, for a three-month tour taking in South Africa, Southern Rhodesia, Swaziland, Basutoland and the Bechuanaland Protectorate.
Pathe film footage shows the Princesses having a whale of a time on the ship, larking about with a group of midshipmen.
Most of the games are quite familiar; tag, grandmother’s footsteps and stuck in the mud — though they are not playing the classic game where you have to crawl under the players’ legs to release them. Decorum please!
A photo shows them playing a game where the players are holding hands in a circle. This was called Colonial Circle.
One player takes the role of a British spy within a circle formed by the other players holding hands. He stands in the centre of the circle, saying: ‘Ah, it’s great to be able to light my pipe, and it’s great to warm my toes.’
All the time he looks for a way out of the circle, then suddenly tries to escape through one set of players’ locked arms. Those in the circle try to stop this.
If captured, he picks a new spy, and the original spy has to sit in the centre; if, however, he escapes, he picks a new spy to come back and spy with him, and then they both try to escape the circle. Yvonne Butler, Oakham, Rutland.
QUESTION Who coined the word ‘joystick’?
THE joystick method of control of an aircraft was invented by French aviation pioneer Robert Esnault-Pelterie and a patent was granted to him in 1907, though it is not clear if he called it that.
The first written record appears to be from British aviator Robert Loraine, who went to France in 1910 to study at the Bleriot flying school. He wrote in his diary: ‘In order that he shall not blunder inadvertently into the air, the central lever — otherwise the “cloche”, or joy-stick, is tied well forward.’
Cloche refers to a bell-shaped device at the foot of the control lever to which the control wires were attached. Technical notes from World War I for the maintenance of aircraft refer to the ‘pilot’s control stick’, but flyers writing about air combat referred to the ‘joystick’.
The joystick enables the pilot to control two important functions intuitively with one hand on one control.
Moving the stick backwards and forwards operates the elevator, causing the aircraft to climb and dive. Sideways movement of the stick operates the ailerons on the wings.
These operate differentially, increasing the lift on one side and decreasing it on the other so the aircraft banks (leans to one side); essential when turning.
A side-effect of the ailerons is that the wing producing more lift also produces more drag, so when the aircraft is banked to the left to turn left it may yaw to the right, effectively trying to fly sideways, a dangerous state of affairs. This is corrected by the use of the rudder. Denis Sharp, Hailsham, E. Sussex. THE word ‘joystick’ started out in the early aviation industry. Some suggest its origins are rude — the idea of holding a stick between your legs — and no doubt it later gained this meaning. But it is generally thought to be related to the term joyride, which appeared in Britain around 1908, meaning an unauthorised trip in a vehicle.
The implication may have been that the aircraft’s control column was the means to the exhilaration felt by an early pilot’s journey into the air.
In the Fifties, it became the vernacular for a marijuana cigarette. In Stephen King’s horror novel It, where the plot starts in the Fifties, King has a character in a flashback acquire a sword by trading beer and ‘two joysticks’.
Eventually, the gaming industry reclaimed the word. The earliest known electronic game joystick with a fire button was released by Sega as part of its 1969 arcade game Missile.
The word became commonplace when Atari released its classic CX40 joystick, developed for the Atari 2600, released in 1977 — a digital controller with a single fire button, which sold millions. Rob Johnson, Matlock, Derbys.
QUESTION Who was the politician at the end of the barb: ‘You could put him through a mangle three times and he would still come out dripping.’
THIS was Sir Alan Greengross, who in 1977 was elected to represent Hampstead on the Greater London Council (GLC), becoming leader of the Conservative opposition in 1983. That year, Margaret Thatcher announced plans to close down the Ken Livingstone-led GLC, which she considered to have been infiltrated by hard-Left activists.
Greengross believed Londoners needed a democratic body. He lobbied the PM and in 1985 published a credible proposal for a slimline council. He described himself as lying ‘somewhere in the wetter wing’ of the party. An unknown colleague was harsher, using the ‘mangle’ phrase.
Despite his efforts, the GLC was abolished in 1986, the same year Greengross was knighted. An expert in planning, he worked on Crossrail, the Covent Garden redevelopment and the Thames flood barrier. Sir Alan, a fine artist and man of principle, died on August 13, aged 89. T. Crawley, London W6.
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