Whether or Weather

 The New Year is well underway and I hope you have a fantastic one - I guess it's what we make of it isn't it. 

Depending where you are reading this from, if you speak or read English, you are almost certainly speaking your own personal brand of this lovely but complicated language. In the UK alone, regional variations, even local variations are very noticeable and of course when you meet a Scot or a Welsh person or someone with Irish roots, then the difference is palpable. 

However, it's not so much the basics of the language, its the use of the words in different contexts that I have the most fun with. Here's an example.

a 'snicket' in Cottingham East Yorkshire

Walking back from the village this morning, I walked down the snicket next to the church. In truth, this is just a path bordered by hedges that runs alongside the church. This description is used locally, I have heard it elsewhere however. Another name is a ginnel, a passage, cut-through or, less accurately a ten-foot or an eight-foot. 

We have ten-foots too. No that's not a grammatical error, the ten-foot is the 'road' that runs behind our houses to allow services access that isn't accessible by the public at large as a through way. Why ten-foot? Because the standard is that it's ten foot wide in this part of the country. 

What is your local name for your 'snickets?'

St Georges flag flying atop St Mary's Church in Cottingham, East Yorkshire

I noticed that the flag of St George is flying today from the church flagpole. Arguments aside about the potential offensive use of the flag, I wondered why the flag was being flown. My brief research tells me that the flag is able to be flown as the national flag of England (not the UK) any day of the year although in reality, the flag is generally flown from churches on special days.  The flag dates back to 1348 as the official flag although an earlier use is recorded in 1300 but it hadn't been adopted as the official flag by then. Vexillology is the study of flags and associated emblems - a fact for the quiz buff!

Unfortunately neither the Government website nor the churches give the reason for the flag flying, perhaps they've just left it there from Christmas and New Year's celebrations. 

The USA are suffering bad weather at the moment which is being extensively reported here in the UK. I wish anyone living there good luck as temperatures of minus 50 - 60 degrees Fahrenheit are being reported. Traditionally, although I don't think it's strictly true, that whatever weather America has, we get it here two weeks later. The jet stream is very active and strong at the moment and the west to east airflow from the US to Europe is directly over the UK at the moment. I think a few people are worried.

Our current weather brought in from the Atlantic is causing much grief and upset to folk in the UK, particularly on the west coast as strong winds and high spring tides combine to cause local flooding and all the horror that comes with that. Stupidly, people are going to the coasts to observe the weather in dangerous locations and putting themselves and their children in some cases at risk.  Whilst it looks spectacular when a massive wave crashes over a sea wall, it carried the risk of serious injury or death and we have seen a number of deaths caused by such activity lately. 

My access to the Internet is severely limited at the moment for a number of reasons I won't bore you with, but it does cause problems uploading photographs which will be lower quality in size terms than usual for which I apologise.

Chat soon

Ta-ra.

All Change

I decided I needed to exercise,  so on my day off,  I used the morning to walk around my childhood village of Cottingham. 

The day was chilly but bright and calm,  but I got wrapped up and set off at a reasonable pace.  Cottingham is a pleasant and friendly place a couple of miles north of Hull and several people who I passed wished me a good morning. 
I walked along Priory Road,  a country road between Cottingham and Hull.  A single magpie flew across my path and I saluted it,  although I'm not sure what the motorists though as they passed me,  but at least I didn't spit and turn around like some do.  There were many horses busily grazing in the fields,  some with horse blankets,  some without. "Do not feed the horses,  they bite"  signs are abundant on the ranch fencing.  A bunch of pretty plastic red roses were tied to an elder tree,  in tribute to a loved one killed in a road traffic collision there some years back. 

My mobile phone exercise application informed me I'd walked a mile,  so I turned round and headed back and into the village centre.  A quick coffee and a couple of texts and I meandered through the east of the village.  Childhood memories came flooding back,  Hallgate where I lived looks familiar but in truth,  everything has changed. 

The old fashioned butchers which had sawdust on the floor and half cows hanging from the ceiling is now a deli.  Cottages are now a pub.  The long demolished vicarage is an old folks home.  I passed by St Marys church,  largely unchanged and along the snicket passed the tiny village hall,  the charity cottage bequeathed to the village in the 1700s and the even smaller church hall.  Another cottage along the snicket,  now restored and modernised was where I used to buy free range eggs as a child. The chickens no longer roam the area.

Continuing along Hallgate, I passed my childhood home  which now has a blue plaque to recognise Jacob Bronowski,  humanist,  scientist and broadcaster (The Ascent of Man) who lived there in 1942. Rounding the corner into Beck Bank,  the huge gothic and dark house called Cherry Garth has gone and now replaced by a modern set of flats with the same name.  The original house was so large,  it had a ballroom at the back which is where I used to rehearse when I belonged to the Cottingham Dramatic Society (CDS).

The large wide beck which carried water from Cottingham to Hull is all covered in and hides where we used to play as kids.  A tiny park at the end of the road which was really just a patch of grass and a few trees is still there.  My adventurous and country brought up dad used to climb to the top of the chestnut trees hunting for conkers for me. 

So,  2.5 miles walked,  fresh air and an enjoyable experience starts off what I hope will be a positive and pleasant week. 

Chat soon

Ta-ra

Playing Field Memories

King George V Playing Field Cottingham East Yorkshire, a side entrance view

When King George V died in 1936, the mayor of London at the time thought rather than having statues of the King made, he would rather have one statue just for London but leave a more appropriate lasting memorial to him across the UK.  So he and others formed a foundation with the aim of:

"To promote and to assist in the establishment throughout the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland of playing fields for the use and enjoyment of the people."

When the King George's Fields Foundation was dissolved in 1965 there were well over  450 playing fields across the UK. There is one where I live today and one in my childhood village of Cottingham in the East Riding of Yorkshire which I visited today. They are now run by the National Playing Fields Association and maintained mostly by the local authorities.

Part of the boundary woodland walk

The playing field to the north of Cottingham on the edge of the countryside holds many many happy memories as you would imagine playing fields would. The heady sunny days of summer spent kicking a ball about, games of cricket, hanging around with my mates (never getting into trouble), playing on the slide (long gone - it was huge and had a polished brass bit you slid down) and paying a few pence at the keepers hut for a game of pitch and putt.

When I was very small, my grandfather took me there once for  a picnic and to fly a kite; I took a bottle of water and dropped a few liquorice sticks in it to turn the water to a colour to look like coca cola. It tasted disgusting, but it looked grown up.


I played real team cricket there as a teenager and an adult and spent too many hours trying to find opponents cricket balls hit into the ditch on the edge of the boundary.

There was a brick built pavilion where footballers got changed and where I went with my father when he played football for Cottingham and the pervading smell of soil (off the boots), damp boot laces, liniment rubbing oils and sweat in the changing rooms is a unique smell never to be forgotten. That has long been demolished and a new modern pavilion with gym and community facilities has been built in its place.  

A view to the north through a gap in the woodland  boundary walk

The tennis courts have gone - now a five aside football pitch and the long wall me and my mates played slam football against has also been demolished. The parkies (park-keepers) hut has gone and the ice cream kiosk has been gone these last fifty years or so.

A sculptured squirrel

The park is surrounded by gorgeous mature trees through which you can walk and the wildlife is lovely to see. Today I heard a song thrush. It was truly amazing to hear its tunes. I came across some lovely wooden sculptures today situated on the woodland walk and have taken a couple of pictures for you. Nettle, mallow, dock, fern, and a white flower which I used to know as goat's beard I think but can't find the name of (you can see some behind the squirrel). The perfume of all these flowers combined are unique and beautiful. 

Historically, Cottingham once boasted that it had every species of European tree planted within its parish boundary because of its connection with the university's botanical gardens and the variety of trees in this park today is still staggering. 

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A sculptured woodpecker

Fortunately, today in the light of disappearing sports facilities in the UK as councils are selling off land used for sport because they can't afford to maintain it and desperately need money in the light of Government austerity,  there are strict covenants and conditions that ensure that the public will continue to benefit from these open play areas popularly known today as 'King George Fifth' or 'rec' when i was a kid.

Hope you enjoyed your weekend

Chat soon

Ta-ra

Fun on the Slope

I set off this morning to visit my parents in Cottingham in East Yorkshire, about seven miles away to take a few pictures of the village bathed in sunlight accompanied by my son. We set off in glorious hot sunshine with clear skies quite early on, but with the threat of rain forecast later in the day around 1 pm.

As I sit here and write this as tea is cooking in the kitchen next door, it is literally chucking it down. God is throwing water down in bucket loads! The cats, sensibly, are curled up indoors.

Now what does the above picture mean to you? It is slightly confusing because it on an incline downwards away from me although this isn't clear on the picture. In some places it's called a 'service road' behind some houses; some call it a ten-foot (because it's ten foot wide) or an eight-foot (same theory) or a snicket.

It's a slope. It's the 'slope.' That's what we called it when I was a kid. It's a path from Exeter Street in Cottingham towards a footpath that leads you either to the railway station nearby or towards Hull. The Hull University grounds are on the other side of the wall at the bottom which carries a lovely lake, woods and botanical grounds.

Where it leads to is not so important as what that 'slope' meant to me and my childhood friends. My grandparents lived in a house to the left of the picture at the top and I spent a huge amount of time there during my childhood and formative years. The 'slope' was a race track, for running competitions, for barrow racing (a plank of wood with old pram wheels), for rolling pennies and marbles down. You could watch the trains pass just thirty or forty yards away across the gardens on the right hand side of the 'slope,' (and yes I can remember steam trains!)

You could hide in the hedges either side of the 'slope' while playing hide and seek, and we built dens in the overgrown gardens (where there is now wooden fencing.) We drew hopscotch grids with chalk and used stones from the gardens for our throws, we drew faces and wrote funny things. You could reach through a gap underneath the concrete panelled fence at the bottom of the 'slope' and catch tiddlers in the stream that fed the lake in the University grounds.

Ah, joyous and innocent years.

31 years ago in a couple of weeks time, I moved into my first marital house in Exeter Street, just thirty yards from my beloved 'slope.'

Below is just a quick picture of St Mary's church in Cottingham where I got married, and it looked lovely in the sun this morning with the flag of St George flying aloft, probably still acknowledging the official birthday of Her Majesty, Queen Elizabeth ll.

Hope you have enjoyed the weekend, Monday beckons! My last week at work before a fortnight off.

Chat soon

Ta-ra.

An Alternative Dimension...

This the Cottingham Railway station on the Hull to Scarborough line. A steam train is just about to come in from the Beverley direction - well it did in 1908.

Listening to the rain on the windows this quiet Sunday morning took me into a reflective mood. A trip to Cottingham in East Yorkshire yesterday (Saturday) to take some photographs for our latest hobby assignment brought back some memories of the village where I was brought up. I even parked outside the house I lived in for the first half of my life as my middle son and I wandered around with a book of old photographs of the village.

We took some photographs from the exact position that the original photographer used and my son merged the old with the new, a couple of which I've put on here. You should be able to click on any of them to enlarge them.

This is the shopping street in Hallgate, Cottingham. The ghostly images of horses pulling tree trunks transforms this scene. Cottingham was once said to have every species of European tree within the village boundaries due to having some keen collectors as residents. Those horses would have been heard clip clopping down the street about 1912.

The memories came back more so when we went to the railway station. I spend many happy pre-teen years hanging around the station watching the trains and at one point can clearly remember standing on the bridge over the lines being covered in smoke from the steam trains passing underneath on the Scarborough to Hull line. The line escaped the Beeching cuts of the late 1960s and I remember doing a petition in my school to save the line.

The flower beds were tended, coal fires raged in the waiting rooms, one for ladies and one for the gentlemen. Linoleum covered the floors producing squeaks from your shoes. As diesel trains took over from steam, the pervading smell of oil from the tracks would fill the air most days. I recall one porter, Ernie, a small rotund man who used to disappear down the lines every afternoon to replace the oil lamps on the signals, so the train drivers could see whether the signal was a go or stop after dark. Red fire buckets with sand lined the platform in the case of fire and wooden trolleys for luggage stood idly about.

This is St Mary's Church in Hallgate, where I was married 31 and a half years ago. This is a really spooky photograph in so many ways and I guess that none of the boys in the photograph from 1906 are alive today.

Racing pigeons would arrive at the station in lorries once a week and dozens of baskets of birds would be off loaded, fitted with rings and they would be let loose from the platform and dozens of birds would fly up, circle the station a couple of times and head off for home - a miracle of nature.

Porters would signal to the train guards with green flags when the train was safe to set off and off loaded passengers would wend their weary way home.

I used to help the porters when it became time to turn on the gas lamps on the platform and over the bridge on darker nights. The hiss of gas and bright flame on the mantels comes back to me as clear now as it was then.

Fun to look back over more innocent and simpler times.

My sincere thanks to John who put these photographs together for me. It's been a real pleasure to bring these photographs to life - enjoy.

Chat soon

Ta-ra.

Do you smoke after sex? (I'll leave the punch line to you)

I got weighed today and I've lost 6.6 lbs or 3 Kg in the last four weeks. Although it's the smallest monthly loss so far, at least its still coming off and since my last weighing we've had a couple of meals out - so far, 64 lbs lost. Not doing too badly. Plenty of further flab to lose.

My ancestral families, with one or two minor and notable exceptions have always been big people. My grandmother used to say to me when I was a kid that if I ever grew big, I could explain that I "had big bones." Hmm, that never really worked. Some of my great aunts were as thin as rakes, painfully thin when I look at some of the old black and white photographs of them and some of that is down to smoking I'm sure and in other cases, perhaps a tough lifestyle with not a great deal of cash.

I haven't smoked since I was about 22, just a couple of months before we married. One day I was out of breath and I screwed my packet of fags up and threw them in the open fire. My wife to be nearly had a fit. I've never had a fag since and never fancied one either. She gave up not long afterward. Of course we used to go into the sweet shop on the corner and buy a packet of fags, then a box of matches because we always forgot them, then a packet of Polo mints to take away the cigarette smell on the breath and a quarter of sweets and so on and so on, so it was a very expensive habit when we looked back. We actually lost weight when we gave up!

I started when I was a very young teenager or perhaps when I was around twelve; my parents both smoked. To this day, I remember my first fag which I had in the upstairs loo. I was physically sick and my head spun around something dreadful - yet I persisted - why is that?

We smoked all sorts. The old man at the corner shop in Finkle Street in Cottingham, Mr Brocklesby or 'Brock' used to split a packet of five blue (filtered) Park Drive and sell us kids single fags for a penny. I used to hide mine in an old fountain pen which had no cartridge in case I was searched at school. I moved on to small filtered Cadets (I don't think you can buy them these days,) then Dunhills, very posh although I didn't like the taste and ended up with Lambert and Butlers, Embassy 'Number 6' and finally Benson and Hedges. Of course, being macho, I liked to be seen smoking Camels and I'm sure I was actually smoking camels - dead ones at any rate - they were foul. Occasionally I smoked Park Drive plain (no filters) - the damage I must have done - I regret it even now.

I tried the old roll ups, but never got the hang of it, I remember once putting a single strand of tobacco in the paper to save tobacco and when I lit it, it took a single second to burst into flames and burn my lip which the paper stuck to because my lips were too dry.

I even tried pipes, cigars (I used to like a Castella - quite long and thick, unlike me) those long black Cafe slim things with liquorice flavoured paper (very chic) but I eventually gave it all up. My first packet was about 20 new pence which of course is one new pence per cig. When I stand behind people at the counter when I'm buying my lottery tickets today and see them paying a fiver a packet, I'm glad I've stopped. If you buy twenty a day, that's thirty five quid a week, £140 a month, £1,680 per year and more importantly 25 pence per cig!

Do you remember some of these quotes from TV adverts?

"Ahhhh, a Condor moment" (pipe tobacco)
"Cool as a mountain stream, the coolest taste in smoking." Consulate menthol cigarettes - they were AWFUL!
"Happiness is a cigar called Hamlet; the mild cigar from Benson & Hedges." To the music of Bach's Air on a G string.
"I like a man who smokes St. Bruno." Pipe tobacco, usually provocatively quoted by an attractive brunette.
"Pure gold, from Benson & Hedges." Their packet was gold coloured.

Interestingly, while cigarette advertising was banned in the UK in 1965, you could still see cigar adverts right through to 1991.

Memories eh? As the weekend arrives, I can look forward to more reading because the weather forecast is poor for tonight and Saturday meaning no grass cutting or lounging in the garden. I've shifted habits this last couple of years by trying to cut the grass midweek so I can actually enjoy the garden on a weekend without working in it. Sensible you might think, not me, only just thought of it! Trouble is I'm often too tired to do it once I'm home after a busy day. Although I won't be able to get in it - I can look at it through the window as I'm plodding though my book which I must finish this weekend.

Here's today's story. Two elderly ladies were sat in a bus shelter one day and both were smoking while waiting for their bus. When it started to rain, one of the ladies reached into her handbag, pulled out a condom, cut the end off it, placed it over her cigarette so it wouldn't get wet and carried on smoking.
Her friend thought that that was an excellent idea. She went into the chemists the very next day and asked for a packet of condoms.
"What size?" asked the pharmacist.
"To fit a Camel," the old lady replied.

Have a great weekend!

Chat soon

Ta-ra.

Sights, sounds and tastes of yesteryear...

As a lad growing up in Cottingham, East Yorkshire with my parents and grandparents in a three storey Victorian house you might imagine that being born only 14 years after the war ended, perhaps things were still a little tight and our diet I remember was interesting to say the least.

My motive for writing today's blog is to test my memory of the sights and sounds, smell and tastes of the old house. Starting with the diet which brought all this to mind, my Grandfather was a Londoner, born back in 1882 in Islington. One of his delights was to eat tripe and onions. He was the only one to eat it mind; my mother cooked it and never a morsel of it passed her lips. It looked disgusting: white and spongy and the smell is unique. It was cooked in milk as I remember and the sweetness wafting through the house belied its looks. He never ate other traditional London foods such as jellied eels or anything else like it thank goodness. Thinking about what tripe actually is, I'm glad I never tried it (look it up if you don't know!)

One treat of course was bread and 'dripping' after the Sunday roast. For the uninitiated in this modern world, the meat was fairly fatty and lumps of lard were often used to baste the meat. When the roast was cooked, sliced up and served, the juices from the meat had the fat spooned off and placed in a cup and the meat juice used for the gravy. When the fat in the cup was solidified, that was the dripping, served up on doorstep slices of bread liberally sprinkled with salt! Any 'Weightwatcher' would faint at the thought of it - and one slice would have probably made up the whole week's points.

The kitchen was tiny compared to the rest of the tall rambling house, probably 8 feet by six feet, very narrow because there was a cold walk-in pantry taking up much of the space. There was the traditional marble slab to keep food cold and let me tell you with high ceilings, brick walls and no window to let sunlight filter through, it was effective. The gas cooker was temperamental unlike today's cookers and if mother was baking, you couldn't enter the kitchen or shut doors quickly anywhere in the house for fear of the draft causing her cakes to sink! We never starved although having snacks was difficult because the Anchor butter was always rock hard and the bread which you had to cut with a bread knife could never take it and inevitably I ended up with a lump of hard butter and loads of holes in the bread! The Stork margarine mother used mainly for cooking was no better and when I was young I remember slicing a lump off thinking it was cheese and let me tell you - I was nearly sick! The once a week treat was Smith's crisps with the little twisted blue bag of salt so you could sprinkle it to taste.

We made our own homemade ginger beer too, until the time when the bottles of ginger beer were put outside in the warm weather and the tops secured far too tightly. Of course the fermenting yeast kept building up the pressure and whilst eating tea one day, a series of loud explosions rent the air as one by one each bottle exploded with the pressure. After that we bought it in from the Jones' delivery man who came with bottles of soft drinks once a week on his open backed lorry, (tuppence on the bottle if we gave it back.) His ginger beer, in glass bottles delivered in a orange painted wooden crate had secured wired stoppers on the top.

The house must have had servants in years gone by because there were still bell pushes in some of the rooms and in the middle downstairs room next to the kitchen there was a bell board which told the servant where the bell was rung from. The house had huge ceilings, probably ten feet high with picture rails and the house was draughty and usually chilly, no double glazing or central heating then. Enough reminiscing for now - time for bed with a slice of toast thinly spread with margarine and a spoon full of marmalade - 1 'Weightwatcher' point!

Chat soon

Ta-ra.

"Lego is NOT for Posting in the Video Recorder Dear!"

At least there is some success in the UK economy with the toy-maker Lego reporting a 51% rise in UK sales today on BBC News. This has great memories for me because as a young child I had a biscuit box full of Lego pieces.

I can remember saving my pocket money for weeks and going to Barker's Toy Shop in Cottingham to buy a tiny box of red bricks 'eight dots' long. The long bricks gave stability! I played incessantly with Lego and I bought my kids loads of Lego when they were young, but the product had naturally changed over the years. Little figures are now available and all sorts of extras and add ons with moving pieces and flashing lights, themes such as pirates and witches. I remember a thrill at getting bricks that had wheels on which meant I could build cars!

Does anyone remember the boy's toy Johnny Seven? It was a multi-purpose gun type weapon which fired spring loaded plastic bullets and grenades and let me tell you my Action Men figures got a real raw deal being constantly bombarded the long length of our Victorian hallway. Me at one end protected by piles of coats and my action figures with their impotent plastic guns surrounded by a cardboard fort at the other end.

I loved books and drawing. As an only child living in a three storey Victorian house, I also enjoyed exploring although there was one room, as a child frightened me. The door was in the middle of a wall on the stairway between the first and top floor. What I didn't know was that it was the water tank room, but of course no-one ever told me and it was always locked with a key in the lock. What or who was being kept prisoner in there? I always ran past it, never dwelling anywhere near it.

Well today, our kids have their imagination stretched to the full by the variety of entertainment and intelligent toys and computer based stuff which they can interact with - perhaps parents have been able to abrogate a little of their responsibility to interact with their kids as they get older. Who knows.

"Anyone who can hate children and dogs can't be all that bad,"
WC Fields

Chat soon

Ta-ra