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June 2004
So, tell me then, why is it that for most European countries the
month of June is almost guaranteed to bring with it hours of unbroken
sunshine, whilst we in England have Wimbledon?
Don't get me wrong, as long as the
tennis doesn't interfer with either the World Cup or the European
Football tournament (and this year - it does) I have no real gripe
against tennis.
But why do they have to pick this
month? why not March or April when we are certain to get some rain?
Why June when we really would like to enjoy the sun. There must
be one year on record when the start of the Wimbledon Tennis fortnight
has not heralded the onslaught of rain, but apart from last year,
I can't think of one. So far, since Monday we have had about 72
hours of almost continuous rain - and it's only Thursday! Come on
now, if there is anyone up there, stop treating us to your twisted
sense of humour and give us a break!
Here in the north west of England
we have more than our normal fair share of precipitatin, but this
is taking a joke a bit too far. It's well known that the easiest
way to tell if someone is from either Lancashire or Yorkshire is
to check their feet. If their toes are webbed like a ducks, then
they are born and bred in one of the two counties.
So please, next year - have a day
off!
Manchester is not always immediately
thought of as a city which inspires much, apart from jokes about
the weather. Yet to be able to walk through the heart of the city
now, at a time when the re-building work following the IRA bombing
is almost complete is to view the place with a totally new outlook.
Tall, but not overpowering, new buildings
intermingle with the old facades of the Corn Exchange, glass, steel
and soft yellow sandstone and marble mix in the familiar old pattern
of streets. There is an air amongst the people who live and work
there and amongst the men and women building the new city centre,
that they will not be beaten by a few pounds of explosives.
The old familiar tobacco and news
kiosks squeeze into tiny spaces between large imposing office doorways,
the old and the new together. Chinatown continues to reverberate
with the cosmopolitan mixture of faces, sounds and smells it has
always provided the city. Its restaurants throng day and night with
the finest cuisine and the crowds of diners. The new tramway brings
back pre-war memories to those old enough and provides new memories
for the young.
At the old docks, the Lowry Centre
and the new commercial centres have reinvented words to describe
docklands. As the Imperial War Museum of the North takes shape and
the Manchester Velodrome provides Olympic medals in Sydney, Manchester
and the north are being rejuvenated. New life and business has been
reborn in the aftermath of the decline of the old heavy manual industries
which helped make the city and Lancashire great.
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Sitting on the verandah of the tea
rooms in grasmere in the lake district watching the trout swim in
the river flowing beneath your feet after a long walk in the hills
above the village, sour milk ghyll after a thunderstorm pouring
down the hillside from easdale tarn, and clouds scudding along the
tops of calf crag, sipping scalding hot cadburys chocolate topped
with cream and a cadburys flake and trying to ignore the steam rising
into your eyes, the feeling of complete satisfaction and warmth
returning to your body after a day on the tops, and driving home
to a hot bath and steak and kidney pudding, and thinking that there
are few better things on earth which cost so little.
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Climbing Bow Fell at the end of the
Langdale Valley in the Lake District towards the end of September
when the tourists are thinning out a little has got to be one of
the most wonderful and calming walks you could ever do.
It is however, a leg straining trudge up the rock strewn path to
the numerous false summits, but then you find yourself stopping
at one of the summits when the wind is killed by the lee of the
hill. Sit back and then lie back into the hillside, the sheep far
below munching contentedly on tussocks of grass. The coffee in your
flask complemented by a Cadburys Kit Kat biscuit and the world is
at peace.
Before and below you lies the whole of the beautiful green Langdale
Valley. The flat meadows flanked by neat grey dry stone walls bordering
the Mickleden Brook drift on to the slopes of the Lingmell Fell
to your right and on the left, the towering masses of the Langdale
Pikes. Harrison Stickle, Pavy Ark and the others picked out in part
by colours of the walkers clothing against the greens and browns
of the grass and rocks. A dog barks over to the right near to the
Dungeon Ghyll hotel and is answered by others on the hillside as
they chase up and down the steep sides.
Then later after many weary miles and hours on
the hills that so comforting pint of bitter in the same hotel, where
your feet throb quietly in tune to the conversation of your fellow
walkers, and your body tells you, "You've had a good one today."
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One of the real pleasure and joys
of living in the north west of England is that we do have real and
defined seasons.
Waking in the morning and finding
that it is finally autumn is quite decidedly one of the better things
of life. If it's Sunday then my wife and I will treat ourselves
to a very leisurly breakfast of bacon and eggs or perhaps boiled
eggs toast and marmalade. Whne the papers have been scattered around
the living room floor I will take the dog for a walk in the park.
There you will see the grass still
white with the early morning frost lying in patches where the sun
hasn't yet shone through, then looking back at the footprints which
I and the dog have left in the grass. Not too much exercise, not
too much to worry about, just the cup of coffee and the chocolate
digestives when you get back home feeling jusified that you have
done something worthwhile, even though you have put nothing into
the day, just taken from it.
And the rest of the Sunday papers
are still there to be digested.
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If
there was one thing you would use to remember Britain by what would
it be? A quiet walk along a river bank? A crowded football match?
A visit to a West End theatre to see a show?
For
me the memory I will always have of Britain was after spending a
wonderful holiday on the Greek island of Symi one year. It had been
one of those few stress free holidays where the sun shone all day,
the figs on the trees by the side of the villa were juicy and ripe,
the goats fed themselves on the leaves of the trees from the roof
of the kitchen and the people were as warm and welcoming as the
weather.
Strange
then that my most strongest memory of the holiday came when the
holiday was over. My family and I arrived at Manchester Airport
during the early afternoon on a Saturday and collected our car from
the long term parking then I set off home up the motorway to Littleborough
near to the Yorkshire border.
My
wife and daughter and myself were instantly struck by how green
the countryside was, and how it had seemed to flourish in the few
weeks we had been away. Even the central reservation on the motorway
was busting in grass over the crash barriers and the verges beyond
the hard shoulder were awash with small many coloured flowers.
As
we left the Manchester conurbation and drove up into the Pennines
we could see the moors about Littleborough glowing in a maze of
purple and green as the Heather burst into flower. The garden at
home was a tangle of overgrown grass and roses as they all tried
to force their way out of the ground, it seemed.
In
the past friends who have come to stay with us from France have
remarked on the same quality of 'greenness' which this county seems
to exude. There are times when I think we do not fully appreciate
how fortunate we are to live in this 'green and pleasant' land.
But there you are, that's life for you, isn't it?
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Early in the morning, about half
past three, walking along the Thames Embankment in London after
a long night out on the town.
There is no one else around at that
time, no one that you can see anyway. The homeless are well wrapped
up with their newspapers and sleeping bags in the doorways and bushes
away from the Thames. All the lights on the lines of bridges spanning
the river glisten in the early morning darkness stretching away
towards the City and the Dome of St Paul's Cathedral. Cleopatra's
Needle pointing majestically to the skies and the new buildings
of the south Bank point to the future.
A man in an all night caravan serves
you hot tea in a paper cup, which scalds your hand and then your
mouth when you try to drink it. Do you never learn? A damp coldness
drifts up from the river as it wends it's way from the Cotswolds
out to the Channel in Essex and you hug your coat around you to
ward off the chillness. A black cab chugs slowly along the road
beside you, it's driver looking for one last fare before he goes
home for the night and you decide to take it. It's time you were
at home as well.
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Come
'ome Ronnie. All is forgiven!
This
weekend we were once again treated to the Sun newspaper (how it
hurts me to write those two words together - 'Sun' and 'Newspaper')
throwing money at a convict to entice them to tell their own sordid
little story. This time it is the robber Ronnie Biggs, who has decided
to return to England to die.
The
paper paid for a private jet to fly him back from his self imposed
exile in Rio for the last 28 years, and an undisclosed sum for his
story. This is yet another example of chequebook journalism at its
very worst. No doubt it will say that it was in the public interest
that Biggs be returned to the country, so that he could serve the
remainder of his jail sentence imposed after he and his gang of
thugs beat unconscious Jack Mills, a train driver, and then stole
£2.3 Million from the mail train back in 1963.
The
fact that Biggs had pursued a life as a professional criminal prior
to the robbery and then fled to Rio to escape the jail sentence
imposed will be used by the paper to cloud the real purpose in Biggs
return. The man has no more money and cannot afford the bills for
the medical treatment he has up to now been receiving for the strokes
he has suffered. He now wishes to return 'home' to sponge off the
country he so often reviled and stole from.
This
pathetic little beaten and sick man is now to be made public property
courtesy of the most sordid little rag ever to disgrace the little
bins of this country. It is high time that the Press Complaints
Commission stamped hard on Ruperts little paper. Time for it to
say, "Goodbye."
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I sat on a root of a 250 year old Beech tree which
perched dangerously at the lip of a drop thirty feet down into a
narrow slow flowing stream. The stream ran way below me from the
hills several miles away to my right and continued on into the industrial
complexes of Bolton in Lancashire. The drop down into the stream
was sheer, as was the bank on the far side of the stream, some sixty
feet away. Where the underlying rock was close to the surface the
stream ran narrow and swift, turning into its sluggish nature only
where the soft rock beneath permitted it, like here.
I looked up to the green interlocking leaves of
the trees around me which made me feel that I was inside a balloon
of green and brown. Through the leaves I could see occasional patches
of deepening blue sky as the end of the late summers day rapidly
approached. A silence grew around me as the sky grew steadily and
slowly deeper and deeper blue and I settled down to watch and observe
what was taking place.
As the light withdrew so a greater silence fell
on the wood as birds found roosts for the night and ceased their
calling. On the early 20th century maps of the area the place was
called either The Raveden Plantation or Raveden Wood and towards
the end of the 20th century became known by town and countryside
planners as Smithills Wood. To the kids like me who lived in the
houses on the corporation housing estate a mile away, and to my
parents and to all kids in the areas a Bluebell Forest. The name
of course derived from the carpets of Bluebells which covered the
forest floor for a glorious six or seven weeks in summer.
Now, as I sat on my root, a flash of colour so
quick I thought I had imagined it, passed into view in the middle
distance. I focused my eyes to that distance and saw nothing, but
knowing that I had not been deceived by a trick of the failing light
I kept concentrated on the opposite bank of the river. Half a minute
passed and the flash of colour became a memory. Then it happened
again, and this time I managed to focus on the flash and follow
it. It was a Kingfisher, the first I had ever seen, in fact I never
dreamt that such a beautiful bird would be found in dull old Bolton.
But there it was. I watched for the next thirty minutes as the birds,
mother and father, kept a constant supply of worms and grubs supplied
to the nest in the hole in high up in the opposite river bank. When
finally darkness forced them into sleep for the night, I must have
watched them for over half an hour.
I rose from my seat on the root, my backside numb
from the hardness of my perch and walked quietly out of the wood
and across the sleeping Buttercups in the fields to my home.
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I don't care what anyone in the media say to me
at the moment about the weather being rotten! I think that Spring
is definately on the way!
Even though it is still only the first week in February
the signs are very evident all over the place. In my garden the Snowdrops
are coming up, the days are getting longer and today in the park with
the dog, the grass had gone at least three shades of green greener.
How good to be able to get up in the morning and come home from work
in the evening and for it still to be light. The depressing darkness
of the winter months suddenly, almost overnight, seems to be a long
lost memory. We know that it will be light and getting lighter from
now on.
How many people share this same feeling of lassitude,
depression and general downright miserableness that I get in winter?
If you do, then I hope that spring is on the way whereever you are.
Nice times!
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Where
did we come from, where will it all end, and, who cares?
The
mutt and I were splashing gaily through the puddles in the park this
morning and a question raised its ugly head in mine.
Why
do we get such terrible weather here in east Lancashire? Why is it
always raining? Why do you always get visitors when there is something
good on the television? Why, when you have spent an entire meal eyeing
up the profiteroles on the sweet trolley in a restaurant, are there
only two miserable little ones left when you come to make your choice?
Earth shattering and insurmountable questions to which there is no
appropriate answer. Frustrating to say the least. But I'll try to
give you some explanation about the first one.
Like
most of northern Europe this country was covered in ice for millions
of years. When the last lot moved away it left behind it the county
of Lancashire, a place of steeply sloping rounded hills which formed
a natural barrier to Yorkshire in the east. It was this barrier which
has been one of the major contributing factors in the growth of the
place. Simply because when the rain clouds come rumbling in across
the Atlantic from the USA (that's something else to blame on Dubya),
they cannot rise high enough to surmount those hills and consequently
they drop their little load on us in Lancashire. Conversely when the
winds are blowing in from Siberia in the east, by the time they get
to the hills to the east of us they have normally unloaded their rain
onto Yorkshire and Humberside, which is generally considered to be
a 'good thing'.
So,
over a couple of hundred years or so the hills in Lancashire have
become rounded and gentle with deep river valleys biting into their
sides, which are very good for hikers. It has also provided absolutely
ideal conditions for the growth of small cottage industries such as
wool and then cotton working. People would work on their looms in
their own homes spinning the wool and then take it to a merchant who
would sell it. The woollen industry fell in to disarray when the spinners
started to have difficulty catching the sheep and someone discovered
that cotton was easier to catch. Also the presence of round the year
rain made the damp atmosphere much easier for working the cotton.
And so the industry grew and people moved into towns where the presence
of burger bars night clubs and pubs kept them happy.
As
the cotton industry grew and canals were built to ease the congestion
on the roads, the whole of Lancashire was given over to the production
of cotton underpants, Liberty Bodices, and ladies knickers with large
gussets. The motorways were eventually built to allow the natives
to go forth and spread the good word about living in the north, and
the cotton industry collapsed.
And
that, in a nutshell, is it. The history of Lancashire.
For
further reading on the subject consult your local library.
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Political
Foot in Mouth
You
will be well aware of the problems we are having with the Foot and
Mouth epidemic in the UK, or have you been on Mars for the past five
weeks? Well, the other day I heard a pundit on the television who
came out with a thought which I felt was absolutely 'spot on', as
they say in these neck of the woods.
The
point which he was making was that politicians can get away with anything
these days except for appearing to be incompetent, and that, the public
will not tolerate.
We
appear to be able to tolerate most sorts of misdemeanours committed
by them, like bribery, corruption, lying and the like, but let them
show an unusually high level of incompetence, and public opinion will
suddenly turn nasty.
If
you cast your mind back a few years I think that what the pundit had
to say was right.
In
the USA Jimmy Carter paid the price for the Iran hostage fiasco. The
incoming President was able to reap the political benefits from that.
Earlier than that in the UK we had Ted Heath, the then Prime Minister,
foolishly going to the country with an election as a trial of strength
with the unions, and he lost spectacularly.
And
now. We have Tony Blair trying very hard to be honest and straightforward
for the media, and then failing to look over his shoulder when a camera
was on him, and letting slip to the Commissioner of the EU that his
concern was how long he would have before deciding on the date for
the pending election, when earlier that morning he had said in front
of the same cameras that the election was the last thing on his mind,
that he and the cabinet were concentrating only on the foot and mouth
epidemic. Ooops!
So,
perhaps on May 3rd we shall be having a general election in addition
to the local council elections in the UK. Perhaps by May 4th we might
have a new government. Who knows? Keep your eyes peeled.
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Scooping
the Poopings
Almost
every day when I take Casper for a walk in the park I see little old
ladies with a mutt on the end of a lead and a polythene bag in the
other hand, and sometimes little old men as well. Little old men with
mutts that is, not little old ladies with little old men on the end
of a lead, though I have seen that a time or two.
Being
very conscientious dog owners they always fill the bag with the poop
- oh lets stop being coy - dog turds! and then they wander off to
the nearest bin to deposit their deposits, if you follow what I mean.
It's
interesting sometimes to watch the expression on their faces when
they bend down to retrieve their faeces. Some of them are so cool,
so nonchalant. Almost without breaking step they bend, the arm with
the poly bag reaches out, they scoop, they retrieve and then they
continue. Very smooth single action. Highly commended.
Then
there are those for who the whole thing is a nightmare. They stop
and look at the offending pile as though it was beamed down from an
alien spaceship. Then they very quickly look up and around them to
see if anyone else in the park has seen what their dog has done. "Too
bad missus, I've seen you!" If I'm close enough they shoot a
venomous look in my direction and bend down to pick up the offending
log.
It's
interesting to see the expression on their faces. They wrinkle up
like curdled milk and gingerly, like it was going to explode, pick
up the mountain of manure in the bag. They then walk off quickly with
the bag held at arms length, noses curled up in disgust.
What
prompted me to ruminate on the subject today was seeing something
quite strange at the park entrance. It was a bin for the poop. Not
that the bin was strange I suppose. It was made from hard plastic
and was about two feet square, mounted on a short pole cemented into
the ground. The lid on the top of the bin had a spring loaded flap
in it which turd carriers could flip open and deposit their deposits.
But the lid had a padlock on it.
Now
this made my little mind boggle somewhat. Why should the Blackburn
with Darwen Council decide to padlock a bin which was cemented into
the ground? Are they afraid that some sick person would come along
in the dead of night, scale the park railings, force open the springloaded
flap and empty out the load of bags of crap? You can imagine it can't
you? SAS type men wearing balaclavas and dark clothing sneaking along
the park gates at midnight with torches in one hand and dustbin liners
in the other, intent on depriving the council of their pound of ............
The
other thing which struck me as a bit hard as well was the fact that
the flap was spring loaded. What happens if the bin is full and you
don't want to walk home with a bag of turds in your hand?
I have visions of a white haired old lady struggling with the flap
with her free hand whilst her small manure producer strains at the
lead in the other hand. She prizes the flap open to find that the
bin is full to the brim with bags of soft gooey decomposing and smelly
dog mess. She places her offering on top of the topmost bag and then
pushes down to force it into the bin, having to exert quite some pressure
to do so.
And
the bag bursts.
If
you feel that there is any merit in entering into further deep and
meaningful discussion about this topic, or indeed any other topic
which takes your fancy, then please feel free to leave a message on
the Message Board above.
It's
long past my bed time. Sleep well.
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Missing
Britain?
If
there was one thing you would use to remember Britain by what would
it be? A quiet walk along a river bank? A crowded football match?
A visit to a West End theatre to see a show?
For
me, one of the fondest and stronest memories I will have of Britain
came after having spent a wonderful holiday on the Greek island of
Symi one year.
It
had been one of those few stress free holidays where the sun shone
all day, the figs on the trees by the side of the villa were juicy
and ripe, the goats fed themselves on the leaves of the trees from
the roof of the kitchen and the people were as warm and welcoming
as the weather.
It
does seem strange then that my most strongest memory of the holiday
came when the holiday was over. My family and I arrived at Manchester
Airport during the early afternoon on a Saturday and collected our
car from the long term parking then I set off home up the motorway
to Littleborough near to the Yorkshire border. We left the airport
and connected with the motorway leading off towards the eastern part
of Lancashire and the hills and moors.
We
were instantly struck by how green the countryside was, and how it
had seemed to have flourished in the few weeks we had been away. Even
the central reservation on the motorway was busting in grass over
the crash barriers and the verges beyond the hard shoulder were awash
with small many coloured flowers.
As
we left the Manchester conurbation and drove up into the Pennine hills
we could see the moors about Littleborough glowing in a maze of purple
and green as the Heather burst into flower. When we eventually arrived
home, the garden was a tangle of overgrown grass and roses as they
all tried to force their way out of the ground, or so it seemed.
In
the past friends who have come to stay with us from France have remarked
on the same quality of 'greenness' which this county seems to exude,
and how fortunate we are to live in such a beautiful country.
There
are times when I think we do not fully appreciate how fortunate we
are to live in this 'green and pleasant' land. Perhaps they are right.
But there you are, that's life for you, isn't it?
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britain.com 2000-2002
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