It was on November 12, 1963 (60 years ago today), that the Beatles postponed their show at the Guildhall in Portsmouth due to Paul falling ill with gastric flu.

The band had filmed an interview with the Southern Television Program ‘Day by Day’ but as seen in the clip below, Paul was quiet and visibly uncomfortable.

Shortly after, Dr. John Langmaid was called to examine Paul and he was deemed too sick to perform. The show was postponed as the group refused to play as a trio.

Dr. Langmaid remembers the boys being worried. As he recalls:

“Later in the day I was told by my secretary that there had been a phone call from the Guildhall requesting me to go there as soon as possible to see one of the Beatles. When I arrived, I was taken in via a back entrance and thence upstairs to a room where Paul McCartney was lying down on what I think was a settee. The other members of the group were in the same room and I remember John Lennon pacing up and down looking rather anxious. I examined Paul and prescribed some medicine. It was quite clear to me that there was no way that the poor chap would be able to perform that evening, so the show was cancelled - much, as I imagine, to the relief of all of them! The following morning, I visited him again at the Royal Beach Hotel and found him looking and feeling much better. I remember saying that it would be OK for them to travel onward that day. I was thanked politely and then fought my way out through a barrage of press reporters in the hotel lobby.”

A large First Rate and other warships lying in the harbour at Portsmouth, by George Chambers (1803-1840)

Virginia creeper creeping.

At Hoffler Creek Wildlife Preserve, Portsmouth, Virginia.

Visited the National Museum of the Royal Navy (Portsmouth) back in February, and then completely forgot to post anything.

Last time I went there was about 20 years ago and Mary Rose was not yet fully preserved- but these days she looks incredible, and was perhaps my favourite part of the trip. I would highly recommend a visit, even if it is just to see Mary Rose.

A Boeing B-47 Stratojet taking off with the assistance of JATOs (Jet Assist Take off), from the Portsmouth Air Force Base, Portsmouth, New Hampshire.

Date: February 8, 1956

NARA: 6925452

Portsmouth, Dominica

Photos from around Portsmouth Harbour yesterday.

From L.S. Dunes News twitter:

Merch and prices (also they have bandanas and vinyl)

@skakdiamc

Merch table at L.S. Dunes during Sad Summer Festival on July 11th, 2023 at Atlantic Union Bank Pavilion in Portsmouth, Virginia

November 12, 1963 – The Beatles postpone both of their performances in Portsmouth due to Paul being sick with with gastric flu.

Local doctor John Langmaid was called to the Guildhall theatre after The Beatles had finished a brief two-and-a-half-minute interview with Jeremy James for Day By Day. Shortly thereafter press officer Charles Gillet announced the shows had been cancelled.

Dr. John Langmaid’s account of that day:

“I was a family doctor in Southsea having joined my father’s previously single-handed practice in 1962. On the morning of 12 November I had been called to visit a young girl patient of mine who had had a bad attack of asthma - I think she was 12 years old, or thereabouts. She had a ticket for the Beatles concert that evening and there were floods of tears when I said that she wasn’t well enough to go. Later in the day I was told by my secretary that there had been a phone call from the Guildhall requesting me to go there as soon as possible to see one of the Beatles. When I arrived, I was taken in via a back entrance and thence upstairs to a room where Paul McCartney was lying down on what I think was a settee. The other members of the group were in the same room and I remember John Lennon pacing up and down looking rather anxious. I examined Paul and prescribed some medicine. It was quite clear to me that there was no way that the poor chap would be able to perform that evening, so the show was cancelled - much, as I imagine, to the relief of all of them! The following morning, I visited him again at the Royal Beach Hotel and found him looking and feeling much better. I remember saying that it would be OK for them to travel onward that day. I was thanked politely and then fought my way out through a barrage of press reporters in the hotel lobby. I then visited the girl I had seen the previous morning. I was greeted by a beaming child who thanked me for cancelling the Beatles’ concert and wanted to know whether the stethoscope I used to examine her was the one I had used for Paul!

— From The Beatles 1963 by Dafydd Rees (2022)

Pierre Mignard (French, 1612-1695) Louise de Kéroualle, Duchess of Portsmouth with an unknown female attendant, 1682

H.M.S. St. Vincent at her moorings off the entrance to Haslar Creek, Portsmouth, by Henry Dawson, 1868

Common persimmon (Diospyros virginiana) at Hoffler Creek.

Good Omens Victorian headcanon I came up with today:

Sometime between 1881 and 1886 (several decades after leaving Crowley in St James Park and a few years before his instruction in the Gavotte), Aziraphale goes on a daytrip to Southsea in Portsmouth to intercede in the case of a young doctor whose practice is failing and stop him abandoning his calling.

After his mission goes unintentionally and dramatically (and probably hilariously) awry, Aziraphale uses too many miracles in front of the doctor, giving him reason to confide in his new friend, Alfred Wilks Drayson, the president of the Portsmouth Literary and Scientific Society, and, at his suggestion, begin a series of investigations into the possibility of psychic phenomena and a lifelong belief in the supernatural and spiritualism.

Aziraphale is however successful in his mission: Dr Arthur Conan Doyle sells his first Sherlock Holmes mystery, A Study In Scarlet, to Ward Lock &Co. in November 1886, having used his mysterious intervenor as the basis for the character of… Dr Watson.

Also: Part of their meeting involves Conan Doyle blushing my brining up a new genre he’s interested in writing, detective fiction, and Aziraphale immediately gushing about Edgar Allen Poe and ‘The Murders in the Rue Morgue’ and how great the character of C. Auguste Dupin is, which annoys Conan Doyle so much that he adds a bit to A Study in Scarlet where Holmes describes Dupin as “a very inferior fellow”.

Also: the mission goes so wrong it’s the reason Aziraphale later gets a gun licence.

Additional Fun Fact: Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s son, Adrian, later wrote an additional Sherlock Holmes mystery called ‘The Adventure of the Dark Angels’… 🤔

The Two Fixed Points in a Changing Age’?! That’s somehow a Good Omens fanfic title right there.

(No it’s not a real Strand Magazine I know, but that title was too good!)

This headcanon partially inspired by @gargoyle-doyle ‘s posts about Neil Gaiman’s family having had a grocers in Portsmouth - (which for some reason I can’t link because paste isn’t working) and because I used to live round the corner from where Conan Doyle’s practice had been, and up the road from the Portsmouth Museum which has half an entire floor dedicated to Conan Doyle and Holmes.

USS Iowa (BB-61) is welcomed by small boats and sailing ships upon its arrival in Portsmouth Harbour, England.

Photographed by PHAN William Holck, on September 21, 1986.

NARA: 6420280