Rex Wickham – Wickham Blog

Fast Mule Race, July 4 1925

Aside from ancestors, I’ve never heard of anyone with exactly the same name as me.

Thanks to the Hancock-Henderson Quill, a US local newspaper first registered in 1879, I’ve now found another. Here’s the entry from the Stronghurst Graphic: July 2, 1925

ALL SET FOR THE BIG PICNIC: Representatives of both the Henderson County and Des Moines County Farm Bureaus are busy putting the final touches on the big picnic to be held July 4th at the Burlington Fair Grounds. A fine lot of prizes has been arranged for the drawing contest. Numbers covering the drawing were mailed to all members in both counties…A big picnic dinner at noon will be one of the most enjoyable features of the day while the Oakville Ladies’ Band will fill in the musical part of the program. The address by W. F. Schilling, Pres. Twin City Milk Producers Association of St. Paul, Minn. promises to be a real worthwhile occasion…Following this, the balance of the afternoon will be devoted to sports and baseball. A feature will be the fast mule race, the mules being ridden by Chas. Bond, Secretary of the Greater Burlington Association; Rex Wickham, County Agent in Des Moines County; and Ernest Walker, Farm Advisor of Henderson County…

No further information is available at the moment so I’ve yet to find out who was the winner of the ‘fast mule race’ but one can only hope the result was favourable.

Pierce Norton was only 16 at the time of the Great American Horse Race. (Courtesy of Curt Lewis)

You can find out more about Mule Racing at http://www.muleracing.org

Mules are not always the poor relation of horses when it comes to racing. In 1976 a mule won the “Great American Horse Race”, a 3,500 miles marathon starting in New York and then following the Pony Express route to California, beating Icelandic ponies and Arabians. The mule’s name was Leroy.

Wickham is still a name in the area, as this recent article mentions the family, taking part in something called Horse Barrel Racing (sadly not as peculiar as it sounds – see NBHA for details).

Factory Reset Mpow M5 Headset

I recently struggled to re-pair a Bluetooth headset I was using, the “Mpow M5 Pro Bluetooth Headset“, also known as model BH231A and wanted to share the solution.

The Mpow M5 can be factory reset as follows:

Turn off by holding down the button on the end of microphone for about 6 seconds – you will hear a “power down” sound.
Hold down the button on the end of microphone and the Volume + button for at least 5 seconds
The LED light will start flashing Blue/Red. This indicates it is ready to pair.

Why was this necessary? If the Mpow M5 headset has got paired with some other device that you’ve forgotten about, or you delete it from your device-side, it does not go into pairing mode the usual way, which is holding down the button on the microphone for 10 seconds.

According to instructions, the button – described as the MFB or “Multi Function Button” does a number of things.

Function	Time Held	LED colour
Power On	3-5 seconds	Blue
Power Off	More than 5 seconds	Red
Pairing Mode	6 to 9 seconds	Red/Blue Flash
Play/Pause	Short press x 1
Mute Headphone	Short press x 2
Answer Call	Short press x 1
Hang up Call	Short press x 1
Mute Microphone	Long press 1-2 seconds

The Mpow M5 headphones are a budget option but the audio quality is good enough for occasional use.

The included stand is heavy so they will not fall over when not in use, and the battery life is good.

Taxes

I noticed this year that on the HMRC personal tax portal they give you a breakdown of how your tax is spent on various services.

This is offered as raw data but also a pretty graph.

They also provide the data for the past 4 years, so I thought it would be interesting to track some of these categories to see how government spending has changed from 2016 to 2019.

how spending has changed 2016-2019 — Spending Changes over 2016-2019

The graph line shows it best but in actual fact the changes in percentage are very small. The biggest changes are in Welfare (down) and Business & Industry (up).

If you do a personal tax return, this data is available in the online HMRC tax portal. Sign in, then select Self Assessment and then select ‘find out how your tax is spent’.

REXIT

I’m moving my personal stuff (and email) from wickham.uk to wickham.uk. Alan coined the expression “Rexit” which I think sums this up pretty well!

wickham.uk will remain active for a while, but the European Commission has said that holders of .eu domains will have to provide EU contact details after Brexit. So you have been warned!

Nothing to see here…

This blog will shortly be moving to a new website address.

Foyles

By Tom Morris - Own work, CC BY-SA 3.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=33726491 — Foyles new shop entrance

News today that Foyles has been sold to Waterstones. Christina Foyle would be turning in her grave!

Asked who had been the most boring literary lunch guest, she always told the story of Sir Walter Gilbey, director of the gin-making company. ”He spoke for one and a half hours,” she said. ”A man in front of my father fell asleep so he hit the chap with the toastmaster’s gavel. The man said: ‘Hit me again. I can still hear him.’ ”

Waterrow Village Hall

The village hall at Waterrow was extended and modernised in 2008-2009. This was made possible by a donation by my late father of land around the hall from his field, part of Trowell Farm.

The committee of the village hall recently invited us to unveil a plaque in recognition of this generous donation.

I was asked to say a few words – here they are:

It’s a great honour to be here today and to see this plaque being commissioned.

I know my father would have been deeply embarrassed and I think I am too. As I remember it, you asked, and my father was only too happy to accommodate a request that he saw as benefiting everyone.

My earliest memories of the hall is when the annual village fete was held here in the 1970s. There were all the tradional village fete events like lucky dip, tea and cakes here in the hall, and the infamous race up to the top of the hill, which was guaranteed to separate the men from the boys!

Always the village hall was the reason these and similar events were held where they were, and it’s wonderful to see how it has now been refurbished and expanded into the modern facility it is today.

So thank you for inviting us here today, on behalf of all the Wickhams, thank you!