An electrifying performance

I

What are you going to be getting up to this evening? I don't know about you but I might phone a friend 'oop North and see how he's been spending his time, I might Facetime my mother in South Wales, I might fire off a few e-mails off to friends near and far, I might check-out a few of my favourite blogs from around the world and then settle down to re-watch my all-time favourite episodes of Downton Abbey, Call the Midwife or Downton Midwives (you know, the one with posh nurses. "Carson, one's waters have broken. Call Lady Mary"). Or perhaps I would pop along to the fascinating lecture at the St George' Hall in Brighton on "The Electric Telegraph, What It Is And What It Does"

Sadly, I can't make it to the lecture as I seem to have missed it by the small margin of 155 years; the confusion can be put down to my habit of reading old newspapers. As I get older I find I get more and more depressed by so much of what is happening in the news and even more depressed by popular reactions to it. I find I can't even walk past a newsstand nowadays without my blood pressure climbing to dangerous heights and I'm pretty close to getting a lifetime banning order from Mrs P, stopping me watching Question Time and the Politics Show on television. That's why I take refuge in old newspapers: it's difficult to get too worked up about mistakes that have already been made and at least you know how the story ends.

And that is how I came across the above notice from the Brighton and Hove Gazette of March 1860 as I was trying to track down (unsuccessfully as it turned out) a mention of an ancestor of mine. Reading the list of marvels to be demonstrated by Mr Graves, I can't help musing that it must have been a fascinating time to have been alive (given the proviso that you were also fortunate enough to be able to afford a carriage to collect you at ten and buy enough food to stop you from starving). Technological innovations were queuing up to with all the enthusiasm of bargain hunters at a Boxing Day Sale. Telegraphs, electricity, lights, printing, photography; they were all falling headlong into common usage and transforming society in a way that is reminiscent of the digital revolution of our more recent past. 

But tonight, as I watch TV, FaceTime, surf the internet or whatever, I will think of that lecture I missed and how fascinating it would have been to have shared the wonder and the marvel at the demonstrations of Mr Graves and his colleagues.