“Malago mice”
SOME weeks ago this column enthusiastically noted that beavers have been spotted locally, prompting some reader feedback.
Pete Hammond emailed: “I love the idea of these furry creatures making their dams and lodges in the backwaters of Bristol, but then I thought maybe it should be renamed the Malago Mouse a.k.a. the coypu.
“They look similar, except the coypu has a rat-like tail and not a flat one. Only the capture of a specimen would settle the argument.”
“There could of course be another explanation; perhaps the Bristol Sword Bearer’s hat has escaped and gone feral?”
This of course is a possibility, however slight.
At the grander civic ceremonies, the Lord Mayor of Bristol is preceded in processions by the city sword-bearer. We’ve had the right to have a sword-bearer since the charter of 1373 apparently.
He or she wears a curious furry hat known as the “Cap of Maintenance”. The sword-bearer is the only civic official entitled to keep their hat on in the presence of royalty.
I don’t know what particular animal’s fur the cap was formerly made from. It might be beaver, though the council bought a new cruelty-free fake fur one in 2004.
Perhaps they had to do it because the original hat escaped and made its home in some local waterway, but that still doesn’t explain how it reproduced.
Meanwhile, in related news, Alan Freke was prompted by the beaver story to mail us this photo of a parakeet on the bird feeder in his garden.
“I first saw these birds in the wild in London in the 1980s, where I was told they were quite common, as they’d been living in the wild there for many years. Clearly they’ve moved west, and a friend who lives near The Dower House told me she’s seen a small flock of them in Sims Woods.
“What next
I excitedly told Mrs Latimer that there were parakeets in Bristol as she’s interested in this sort of thing, but she told me it was old news. Indeed, it was mentioned in the Post five years ago. Do keep up at the back there …
I would now invite readers to send us their parakeet pictures in the hope of winning the usual prize (i.e. nothing), but I suppose it’s not history. Anyone got any photos of local anacondas or elephants from before 1990? - herds of wildebeest?”
Johnny Johnson on the big screen
This coming Saturday the giant screen of the former IMAX Cinema at Bristol Aquarium sees the world premiere of an innovative new movie about the famous 1943 Dambusters raid, and the part played in it by the late George ‘Johnny’ Johnson.
The film, Attack on the Sorpe Dam uses cutting-edge digital technology to re-create the raid on one of the three German dams in an attempt to disrupt the Nazi war effort.
It focuses the story on the last surviving flier who took part in the raid, Johnny Johnson who died in Bristol at the age of 101 last year.
The movie has been created by filmmakers Andrew Panton and Piotr Forkasiewicz who met Johnson some years ago. He explained to them how the attack on the Sorpe dam was somewhat different to those on the other two dams and how it did not feature in the famous 1955 Dambusters movie.
The new film was made with the support of the Centre for the Analysis of Motion, Entertainment Research and Applications (CAMERA) at Bath University. We’ve not seen the whole thing, but the trailers and stills look astonishingly realistic.
The filmmakers also say that the level of historical accuracy in the detail is meant to be spot-on.
The premiere is at 7.30pm on
City swordbearer Jack Purchase in 1973, back when the “cap of maintenance” was made of some or other animal fur. But did it escape and breed in the wild?
Saturday May 13 at 7pm and tickets are £25 each. The screening will be followed by a Q&A session with Director Andrew Panton and other members of the production team. Details and tickets at https://tinyurl.com/2s3jtbcr
Man confesses to murdering 1,900-year-old corpse
This one isn’t at all local but it’s a tale worth telling not just because it’s macabre, but because it has an important moral.
On May 13 it’ll be the 40th anniversary of the discovery of the partial remains of a female body in Cheshire.
This was at Lindow Moss, a peat bog, where two workers for a peatcutting company were going about their lawful business and found an incomplete and preserved human head (with remains of soft tissue, bits of brain, an eye and some hair).
If you want to write up the scene for a TV murder mystery, note that the discovery was made by the men when they spotted it going along a conveyor belt, though you might prefer to use some dramatic licence and have them actually digging the peat and a spade hitting something less squishy than usual.
Anyway, the cops were called, and a murder investigation got under way. One of the first people they spoke to was Peter ReynBardt, 57, a former BOAC manager at Manchester Airport.
In the 1950s, Reyn-Bardt had had a whirlwind romance with waitress Malinka de Fernandez and the couple were wed within three days of meeting.
Except that it had been a marriage of convenience. Reyn-Bardt was gay and needed the respectability – this was the 1950s, after all – while Malika loved to travel. They led separate lives but were always arguing about money.
She disappeared in 1960 and for more than 20 years the police suspected Reyn-Bardt of murdering his wife, but had no evidence, and no body.
Bristol public relations person Pam Beddard has a vivid memory of the case as she was a young reporter on the spot at the time.
“The news broke on press day for the Wilmslow World newspaper while I was standing in for its holidaying editor.
“The police had very little info to share but with next to no time to go before the deadline we cleared the front page so that we could lead with SKULL FOUND ON LINDOW MOSS (or some such) and assorted fluff about how the remains had come to light.
“The World was a free distribution paper and for ages I was under the impression that a copy dropping on his mat was what prompted*
Peter Reyn-Bardt to come forward to confess to the murder ...”
However, Pam moved on to another job the following month, while a colleague who covered the story to the trial later corrected her.
The police confronted ReynBardt with the news. He assumed that the peat workers had found his wife’s remains and confessed all. They had argued over money, he said. She had threatened to expose his homosexuality, and he had killed her, cut up the body and buried the remains in a ditch.
Except that now it turned out that the remains found were not those of Malinka, but of a woman who had died sometime in the 3rd century AD – back in Roman times.
(Another body from the same era, this time a male, was discovered the following year. He was nicknamed “Pete Marsh”.)
Reyn-Bardt now withdrew his confession, but was charged anyway and in December 1983 was convicted of murder at Chester Crown Court sentenced to life. It is one of the very few cases in English legal history where a murder conviction has been secured without a dead body.
Pam Beddard says she sometimes wondered if her colleague was wrong. Perhaps, she says, “Reyn-Bardt would have got away with it if we hadn’t made a final check with the police for updates and/or I’d let our original lead story stand until more info emerged.”
Either way, the moral is: Never confess to murdering your spouse until you’re sure the cops have the actual corpse, and not someone else’s.
Cheers then!