Dakota Fanning

It was a steep climb up the metal walkway.

The fuselage was squat and wide and for the purposes of public visitors the load bay had been cleared apart from a battledress clad and head bandaged mannequin lying prone on a stretcher across a few of the canvas seats. There were no handholds or hanging straps and so those making their way up to the perpsex divider giving a view into the cockpit adopted a 30 degree forward lean, felt a slight tug on the hamstrings and shuffled forward carefully.

Me and the Boy had timed our visit to the Douglas Dakota on static display perfectly and we had the aircraft to ourselves and the sole attention of an elderly RAF steward with beret and a line of campaign and long service medals on his chest. We nodded respectively as we passed him, sat on a garden chair just inside the sliding door on the starboard side.

In our casual gear and trainers, travelling light, it was still quite an effort to ascend the slope of the parked aircraft. In some small way we could appreciate how a fully clad and equipped paratrooper may have felt in taking up his seat in wartime ahead of a drop into the heat of conflict, well apart from having no perception of the actual paralysing fear and trepidation of the moment. The cockpit was cramped and claustrophobic for the 4 flight crew. There would be no real forward view for the pilot until the plane was up to take-off velocity and the tail had lifted to a more even gradient before straining engines broke the friction hold of the concrete runway or the makeshift grass landing strip.

Huddled behind the front seats were the darkened holes in which the navigator and radio operator would sit and beyond the bulkhead the main payload, either troops, supplies, the wounded, general freight or a vehicle. The old airman was pleased to share his experiences of the C-47 Skytrain as he had worked on them as ground crew in his service years. At an approximate age of 80 years he will have been only a teenager at the end of the second world war and so he will have been spared that traumatic period. There will have been plenty of opportunities, however,  in the fragile post-war years for him to be involved in many other theatres of war within the British Empire and Dominions.

A bit out of breathe, I sat down on one of the canvas stirrup seats just uphill from our guide. My back was resting on the cold surface of the panelling between the raised and stout ribs which gave the plane its legendary capability to withstand significant stress and impact from flight, flak and the raking spread of shells from enemy fighters. The sheet panelling seemed wafer thin and hardly able to withstand any intrusion even from a bird strike. A few fleeting scenes from Band of Brothers were fresh in my mind of bullet riddled airframes, shell bursts and the sheer noise of machines, men and warfare.

Just being sat there, on a bright June day and with the only soundtrack being birdsong and a group of excitable school children dressed as evacuees, was testament enough to those who had fought their way out of such aircraft and jumped into the unknown in my name.

Frack to the Future

Mother Earth really tries to keep things in balance but we, Mankind, as her tenants are an unruly, selfish lot who insist on regularly exploiting the terms of our tenancy agreement and to the very point of mutual destruction.

We would certainly have been evicted a few centuries ago if I really push the landlord-tenant analogy. Various plunderings have gone on in the past. Individual nations or a concerted effort by successive affluent and influential world powers have stolen the silver, washed and filtered or chipped and blasted out the gold nuggets, prised out the prized precious gemstones, extracted the fossil fuels, drained the oil, eroded the goodness from the soil, pillaged the fruit of the seas, barbecued the forests, bottled the fresh waters from the depths of filtering rock, punched holes in the ozone layer and altogether have caused a bit of annoyance and thereby provoking an increasing regularity in violent reactions from a reasonably co-operative and generous benefactor.

As resources become rapidly depleted there is an ever more frantic search for more rich seams of energy and wealth .No area of the world is now safe from what is innocently called preliminary and non invasive investigation .Thanks to satellite technology, ultrasound and sonar it is not necessary to puncture, excavate or blow up the ice caps, scour and degrade areas of great unspoiled natural beauty or poke about on the sea bed. This is however just the first step in a determination to go and get any pockets of oil, gas or valuable minerals and at any cost to the topology and environment.

It is common knowledge that there are actual and potentially vast amounts of resources to be had but mankind has used all of these up in the, by contrast, easily accessible locations and only the inhospitable or sacred areas of the planet are left. The cost to extract everything from the previously disregarded areas of the globe will be wholly disproportionate even with the possibility of premium prices to the end user. It would appear cheaper and technically more feasible to go to the moon and dig about on that barren landscape to find resources to burn.

It is now the situation, in the corporate quest for wealth, that old and what were thought to be economically unviable deposits of coal, oil, gas, metals are being re-visited and like a dry sponge found at the back of the cupboard given another mighty squeeze to extract a few drops more. Take the escalation of the price of tin on the world markets. This has led to a renewal of activity in the Cornish mines even allowing for a century or more of neglect, collapse and flood. Open cast mining is back on the agenda and causing a great dilemna with destruction of a landscape mitigated by the potential for employment  in some areas. That makes for a difficult moral choice amongst hard pressed communities who will never have recovered from the decline of their traditional industrial base.

There are ever increasing technically challenging procedures for the extraction of the last drop of goodness from the earth. One of these which has caused concern is Fracking. A morsel of business speak and a throw away piece of terminology, not too offensive and even quite benign, sounding a bit like Fraggle Rock, that loveable institution.

The practice of Fracking is already well established. Hydraulic Fracturing is as aggresive as it sounds and is used to persuade Mother Earth to relinquish her deposits of gas trapped in the beds of shale. It is a bit like using a water cannon to rob an old lady of her life savings but only after her home and possessions have been ransacked.

In the United States there has been an noted increase in seismic disturbances linked to the Fracking activities in certain areas. In the UK a number of locations have been considered for the practice including beneath the Pennines, mountainous areas of Wales and Scotland and even in the genteel Home Counties although it is fairly safe to predict the order in which any determined effort will take, farthest away from London first.

Out of sight, out of mind is a good business mantra and selling point but Fracking is one move too far. The use of water at high pressure is something most householders do regularly with their Karcher products on the pathways and decking surfaces but in the confined compressed subterranean parts of the planet it is infinitely more sinister. It is not just water as we would be led to understand but a cocktail of chemicals as well to drug up and dull down the sensitivities of Mother Earth so that her handbag of goodies can be pilfered.

There is a sufficient difference in opinion amongst engineers and seismologists over whether Fracking is safe or not to cause me plenty of concern as a co-tenant of planet earth. Any mention of the word 'risk' in a press release about anything is enough for me to err on the side of caution. Fracking is certainly a risky process.

However, people want plentiful and cheap energy to heat their rooms and cook their meals and may not actually be that interested in where that nice blue tinted burning flame on the pilot light or the hob comes from. That is until we are sat, head in hands, in our ruptured gardens watching our beloved homes crumble and fall in a massive and indignant earthquake from a previously patient and forgiving Landlord. Notice to Quit was served a while ago.

School Disco Fever

Many of the old school buildings, in particular the State or Board Schools found in most large towns and cities have done well to survive.

There have been many threats to their existence from a declining urban population to wartime bombing, from simply falling apart as inevitably happens to an old functional building to just being obsolete for the educational demands and requirements of our infants and junior pupils to equip them for a modern world. The buildings have little alternative use apart from another educational sector such as an adult education college or as a community resource. A few in better locations have been converted into residences although the majority are not at all suitable for such a fate. The rest have just been bulldozed.

I grew up attending just such a State School. It was built from a hard red brick to a true corporate specification under a blue/grey slate roof and in a regimented layout in the form of a 'U' shape with the central area being paved and landscaped into a courtyard with the then obligatory flag pole and a white louvre shuttered weather monitoring station which classes took it in turn to open up and record the air pressure, rainfall, minumum and maximum temperatures.

The information would form part of perhaps the largest climate monitoring programme ever although I doubt that there was any meaningful collation and analysis of any of the data from our school or every other establishment in the country. If there had been any concerted effort to draw together the combined data then I am convinced that the trends of climate change and global warming would have been first noted by Class 4a of Glebe Road County Primary School as far back as the 1970's.

A dominating feature of the old State Schools was the intentional segregation of Boys and Girls for the purpose of entering the school. I do not readily understand the reasoning behind separate doors with the carved sandstone or granite headers for Boys and Girls because all of our classes were of mixed sex. There may, in an earlier era, have been a bit more streaming on sex grounds with the then fairer sex directed towards domestication and the boys, real young men, encouraged to take up more of a vocational basis if they were destined for heavy industry, manufacturing and manual labour.

My school even in the 1970's did not appear to have embraced enlightenment and equality of the sexes and this was no more apparent than at the time of the school disco. The idea of a disco was revolutionary. Up until the exciting announcement of a disco and out of school hours we were usually entertained by country dancing displays, choral singing concerts, a bit of very amateurish drama or if a fight broke out between the older pupils, male or female and for no apparent reason.

We were not sure what to expect at a disco at the tender age of 10. Those with older brothers and sisters were a bit more familiar with the latest pop music and fashions. Those who went to the Youth Club in the town were well versed with a disco because every weekly session finished with a bop to music brought along by its members. My own experience of such an event was limited to hearing my parents talk about dances in what was a busy social circle for them. The dances they spoke of were the formal waltzes, tango's and foxtrots and with a bit of rock and roll or jiving thrown in if feeling energetic. The record collection at home reflected this with standard classics and Alvin and The Chipmunks singing the early hits of The Beatles.

I admit now that I was musically inept as a ten year old which was astounding given the emergence of glam rock, power ballads and powerful vocalists of the time. My fashion sense was equally abysmal. For my first school disco I wore a shirt with collar, elasticated tie and smart trousers. Footwear was my best black plimsoll gym shoes. Fortunately my elasticated dickie bow tie was nowhere to be found as I would surely have worn it. My fellow pupils arrived in their Oxford Bag trousers with coloured snake belt, V neck pullovers, white socks and brothel creeper shoes. Some attire had obviously been begged , borrowed or stolen from older siblings as it did look comically oversized. With the outfit there went a considerable amount of aggessive attitude, and obligatory hands in pockets- there was a good choice from the multiple pocketed Oxford Bags. Some had gone to the trouble of a grown up hair cut, feathered layers, spiky fringe, long and tapered at the neck. At a glance there appeared to be something akin to a freakish outbreak of David Bowie clones, but in child size. My mother trimmed my hair with the Ronson family cutter. I was truly a very square and geeky kid.

The disco was in the school assembly hall. A proper mobile DJ had been hired although the equipment was, by todays standards, very basic with a single turntable, a few tons of vinyl albums and singles in shipping boxes, three sequential flashings bulbs although probably operated manually rather than automatic, a glitter ball that had definitely seen better times and a couple of amplifiers/speakers. The DJ may actually have been in his early 20's but to us he looked at least 40 and over the hill.

The entry price was as much as 5 new pence but that did include a free bag of crisps and a mini bottle of hyperactivity inducing pop. The segregation began as soon as the  hall was entered. Teachers, giving up their own time for which we were of course grateful, patrolled the room making sure that girls did not dance with the boys or get within any possibility of what would be any form of physical contact. A senior male teacher had brought along one of his slippers for just this purpose. This inevitably led to a lot of showing off, at a distance, by the boys with extraordinary dance efforts to the pop tunes from Mud, Slade, The Sweet, Bay City Rollers and all the Top of the Pops. The girls, already showing a maturity gap, would not be at all impressed and congregate around their coats and bags, dancing in a slow motion from one leg to the other whilst showing boredom and indifference. They would be thinking about the senior boys from the secondary school who would hang about outside the school gates on their push bikes or that great puller of a Yamaha moped.

One moment the room would be quite crowded and the next there would be a rush for more pop and crisps or a mass evacuation if there was the chance of a fight , scuffle or a pushing and a shoving out in the playground or spilling out on to the street.

The most embarassing thing was being collected by parents and being asked if you had had a good time. I was usually quite hot, sweaty and bright red cheeked by the end of the night, well, as much as you can call 7.30pm the end of any night.

The Right Angle

I learnt as a child that if you twist a maggot it eventually bursts.

That was something that I am now not proud of doing but, after 10 hours of fishing from a riverbank with nothing to show for it, anything was mildly entertaining even if it was cruel, sadistic and fatal . That was of course after a series of maggot races with the winner being set loose in the undergrowth. A magnanimous gesture, well not really as a small grub confused and in what would appear to be Land of the Giants would not survive long.

The 5am start of a typical angling expedition always promised so much especially on a bright and cool summers day during the school holidays. Leaving the house with no-one else to question your choice of sandwich filling or how much of the family sized loaf you used. Being able to ride bikes madly through a deserted town centre with fishing rods tied to the crossbar. It felt like you were commander of a Panzer tank. Pity that the cross bar extension, cum imitation howitzer barrel, impeded actually steering the bike in other than a series of tangents with a frantic leaning to make a required change of direction to avoid lamp posts, street furniture and parked cars.

The best bankside pitch was just past the scout hut, some 100 yards downstream from where the High Street crossed on one of the town bridges. It took a few minutes to set up rod and tackle but in absolute silence so as not to startle the fish who were just starting to show activity with a fleeting silver flash on the surface or a swirl and skirmish producing ever increasing circles.

In summer it was float fishing with optimistic use of 10 pound line. The brightest, most fluoresecent stick float was an assurance of success or at least a migraine after many hours of staring and watching for a bite. In the later hours of an expedition the float appeared to strike itself and disappear under the murky waters. A panic stricken reaction to an apparent nibble always led to line, hook and maggot ending up wrapped in the branches of the horse chestnut trees on the towpath.

In winter the method was spinning or dead baiting. The line was upgraded to 20 pound strength as we were now big game hunting. The river had a good stock of Esox Lucius, Devil Fish or just plain Pike. These were fearful predators and folklore told of swimming dogs losing a limbor worse to the cerrated teeth of the monster fish. A friend, keen to experiment with cooking a Pike after having read about Henry the Eighth's appetite for such, caught and coshed a large one but on the bike ride home it regained consciousness in his rucksack and had to be despatched again on the verge of the A15.

I can validate the power of the pike after sitting on a 9 pounder (a mere baby) in order to release the triple barbed hook with the use of a spring loaded gag and a long discorger.

Dead baiting was a bit expensive to be sustainable on just pocket money. The whitebait, purchased in bulk from a bemused fishmonger in the town kept flying off the hook even after being sewn onto the line and the residents of the chalet style houses on the far bank often found loose sea-fish on their lawns. I was disappointed that this phenomena never made it into the local papers.

I soon realised that although there was the thrilling prospect of actually catching something that was not the main reason for going fishing. There was camaraderie, there were many hilarious moments, occasional opportunities for misbehaviour and vandalism , littering and urinating in a public place, conversing as only immature lads can and, after the obligatory 10 hours of outside activity, a real sense of having had a brilliant day out.

Reproduced and edited a bit from autumn 2011. Another busy day......

Pull for the Shore

I met a lady called Edith today.

We got on really well. Her dog took a bit of a dislike to me but it was one of those chubby, bumbling types who seem to chunter at everything from a utility bill through the letter box to a late delivery of the evening paper,the dull thud of wheelie-bin men and Jehovah's Witnesses. Still, the dog was only doing its duty and keeping guard.

Edith lives on her own in a busy street. She has rented the same house for the last 70 years. I always like to ask how long people have lived in a house when I visit. It is interesting to see their chain of thought as they compute how long. This usually involves a quick glance at a child, a pet or a cherished photograph of a lost, loved one. Edith told me that her son was 2 years old when they moved to the house and he is now 72 years old. The incongruity of having a son aged 72 fascinated me.

I was, fortunately, ahead of my busy work schedule and so I was, for once, able to talk with one of the most interesting people I have ever met in the over 100 age category. Edith's story is remarkable but even more so is the fact that she is of razor sharp mind, recollection and with a wicked sense of humour. I have about 66% of these attributes which made us broadly compatible in outlook and attitude which I found pleasing but also disturbing in equal measures given the considerable differences in all other aspects of our life stories and experience.

To put things into some perspective Edith was the age I am now in the year that I was born. This is a difficult thing to comprehend and appreciate but an opportunity to meet and chat with someone representing a generation twice or three times distant is a rare thing. She was born and brought up in Hull and the local area. It was a time when very few were inclined or compelled to leave the place of their birth not out of a lack of ambition or insularity but because many towns and cities of that period could provide for everything required for a normal, modest and hard working life.

The old sepia tinted photographs of Hull show a very distinguished and thriving Port Town with Trawlers and Merchant Ships parked on the doorstep of the city centre, some very striking commercial and Corporate buildings which would not look out of place in Edinburgh or Nottingham and always crowds of pedestrians in their sunday best with a determined look of intent to get on with their busy lives.

I always make point of asking about the wartime experiences of longstanding residents of the city because it was a major chapter in the auspicious history of Hull and one that I am convinced still has some persistence even today in how the city has fared after the devastation and upheaval of that time. Hull was very much on the front line but has never received the righteous recognition for its strife.

Edith was but one of those bombed out of their terraced houses and in 1942 she took up residence where she now still lives. Whilst the rehousing will have been very welcome I would not, myself, feel much more secure given that the two properties were but half a mile apart. The gutted shell of the old house on Folkestone Street was only discovered by Edith upon her return from working on the Hull to Withernsea railway line one smoke filled morning after an all night shift.

The railway job was right out towards the east coast and I was able to identify many of the areas still strongly imprinted in Ediths memory. We spoke about Patrington, a small town but with a history of prosperity from the Middle Ages from sea trade and agriculture. Edith was married at St Patricks Church whose sheer size and grandeur testifies to the former wealth and status of the town. She worked in the signal box and also manned the road crossing just on the north western edge of town during the war years. She remembered the old Flax Mill, The White Hall, had attended Winestead School and we traded stories of Enholmes Farm, the Crown Estate cottages, local shops and  the rolling Holderness countryside. Of course, Edith had seen all of these in their halcyon days whereas my experience related to more mundane things and with many of the buildings now serving a very different purpose, mainly as private houses and not places of thriving business and employment.

Her ability to recall names, dates, places and events was astounding and when it was my turn to add a story or anecdote of my own I stumbled and 'ummed', and 'aahed' unable to extricate any sense whatsoever. Our mental ability and agility was, in effect, reversed which was a shameful thing for me to admit but it was true.

 The time sped by and I felt that I had known Edith for a good part of my life. I admitted to my hijacking of the Methodist Chapel at Easington for a good sing song rather than doing the job I was asked to do there and Edith found this hilarious. She had just been able to track down a hymn or anthem that her father had sung to her when she was a young child and the piano in the front parlour would soon be cleared of its resident soft toys for a nostalgic rendition of 'Pull for the Shore Sailor' by Philip Bliss (1873).

If we had had the music there and then I am convinced that the street will have resounded to our combined effort resembling a good old Sunday School sing song.

On leaving, reluctantly on my part , Edith with great pride showed me her telegram from the Queen for her 100th birthday just a few weeks before. It was signed in a very beautiful and delicate handwriting and not in any way rubber stamped or faked by a lady in waiting. I was impressed. The portrait photograph of the Queen was glossy but she did not look very happy with her own 86 years behind her but as Edith rightly said, that is the trouble with the young people of today.

What a Carry On

Midsummers is a bit confusing.

It can fall anywhere between the 21st and 24th of June in the Northern Hemisphere and is a time of Pagan and ancient rituals but of startlingly different significance and emphasis in participating nations.

The Scandinavians place great importance on the period and it is a time of feasts, bonfires, singing and dancing in joyous abandonment. It is celebrated in the true spirit of the emergence of mankind from fear, superstition, respect and awe of all things natural and real.

In the UK it is marked with some stock TV coverage of the Summer Solstice with a few druidic followers, white witches and warlocks clutching their robes as they scale rusty barbed wire obstacles to be able to say that they touched some prehistoric monument or standing stones and communed with Mother Earth. Managed Open Access through English Heritage does tend to take the edge off proceedings somewhat. 

I do associate this particular time of the year with Village Fetes, School Fundraising Donkey Derby races and Garden Party's which could be construed as the modern, gentrified, inoffensive and mainly sensibly and appropriately dressed multi-faith equivalent but without even a Maypole in plain sight or a large wicker man in full combustion.

I would have expected the populist resurgence in New Age beliefs to take hold and run with the old practices but in my travels I have seen neither publicity for nor participation in such things, certainly not within normal hours.

The recent Folk Festival in a nearby town was probably the closest to the ancient rituals allowable by the Council and meeting compliance with Health and Safety.

The sight of a pack of off-duty Mummers and Morris Dancers seeking out draught scrumpy under restricted licensing hours can be simultaneously a humourous but also a surreal and scary experience. At least Somerfield have a good off licence section to cater for all primitive thirsts.

There is a very strange incongruity about sitting on bus opposite a splendidly fully regailed Crow-Man trying not to make eye contact as this would only lead to a conversation and shatter the whole illusion. I would prefer not to know that the raw earthiness of his character is so different from his day job in Customer Sales for a large electrical retailer.

We stay silent in each others company save for the faint swish, swish of black feathers which float serenely to the metal single level access floor of the bus as he alights at the top of a featureless suburban housing estate. I glance back under a brief and fleeting intriguing afterthought only to see a large black Raven sat astride a pile of hastily strewn garments on the public pavement.

The gathering storm

It was 5 years ago to this very day that it rained. I can remember it very well for a number of small, trivial reasons and two massive ones.

The day started off with the sighting by me and The Boy of a wild deer which was, with no regard to its own welfare, just grazing and gazing within the excavated bowl of the new road junction about 2 miles from our house. How it had got into the inner sanctum was not clear and after our initial wonderment at just having seen such a timid, sprightly creature, we did express concern about how it might get back into its more natural environment farther up the wooded hillside swopping a forest ride for the busy dual carriageway.

We were on the way to the unreasonably early start of a car boot sale at a new venue for us. It had promised well from chatting with other sellers at our usual recreational field pitch. It was in more affluent catchment area, close to a motorway junction for casual passing buyers, well established and popular or so we had been told. It actually turned out to be well away from any population areas, off the main traffic flows, in an old chicken farm and quite a dead loss in terms of actual trade. We had arrived early and were directed by a toothless old boy, the smallholder, to a narrow, claustrophobic pitch even for one outside, right in the middle of an old strawberry field complete with canes and wires.

It was the first sale we had participated at that we had not been pounced upon by dealers and scavengers as soon as we had opened the tailgate of the car. That did not promise much for the rest of our confinement in that place because we were now well and truly trapped by the slow build up of other sellers. There would be no possibility of leaving early even if we felt like giving the whole thing up. The first couple of hours dragged by with only a few pounds sterling to show for our endeavours. My best offering of a Champions League Final programme, £8 from WH Smiths, was looking a bit sorry and curling up at the edges in quite a fierce and persistent heat from the sun and with no respite from any shelter or shade.

The Boy first remarked on some quite magnificent towering cloud structures that had sailed from the west into the otherwise powder blue sky. They were like nothing I had ever seen before, and I had always made a point of commenting on such phenomena with the children and so knew what constituted a noteworthy cluster. Billowing, dazzling white. The occasional vapour trails of high flying passenger jets seemed to punch through the meringue-like peaks which again was something I had not seen before. We were certainly witnessing quite an unusual formation.

Such was our concentration on the clouds that our entire stock and the pasting table itself could have been whisked away by unscrupulous car-booters and we would not have noticed. Our meteorological observations made the morning fly by.

Then a gap in our closely packed row opened up as a fellow seller expressed frustration and upped and went and we too made our escape.

The afternoon was to be at the 90th birthday party of a family friend. Me and the Boy were quite radiant facially from a south facing morning and were expecting to attract attention as a consequence from the other guests.

As we arrived at Clarice's house for a garden party the mountainous Cumulus, which had followed us from the farmyard into town were in freefall. The collapse resembled a slow motion avalanche into a dirty grey full sky cover of rain cloud and with a strong driving wind now developing. The party, momentarily basking in the heat , had to retreat indoors in what became a torrential downpour and with no indications of a reprieve or even a brief sunny interval.

The rain continued for the next 36 hours and developed into the misery of the Hull flood with hundreds of houses inundated in flash flooding and from the complete overwhelming of the foul and surface drainage systems over large parts of the urban and suburban areas.

This day, the fifth anniversary of the floods has followed on from a very disturbingly similar spate of weather for much of June. There has been heavy and persistent rainfall most days. The clay soils which underly much of the low lying Hull have quickly filled up and as in 2007 it will not take much more precipitation to replicate the flood.

 Lessons have been learned from the events of  5 years ago today .

I am definitely taking a cagoule to Clarice's 95th birthday bash as those big clouds look a mighty bit ominous.

The Mackintosh Movement

Hardly anyone in my home city seems to have a sensible raincoat.

In fact, having dashed from Tesco car park to the book shop it struck me how many people had no coat at all.

It is of course well into the month of June,  the summer season, but there has been a definite and regular pattern to the climate of each day and it should be taken for granted that it will rain at least once, in a sustained downpour or more likely a series of belting showers highlighting the inadequacies of old victorian urban drains and gullies and the fact that most modern city centre buildings afford no shelter whatsoever whereas with old architecture you could rely on some projecting eaves, a deep cill band or the  fluorish of a canopy over the pavement. 

Added to the need for upper body protection against the rain you would be expcting to see waterproof overtrousers and stout shoes or boots. Again, much of the population of the city lack such basic necessities to combat a new form of British Summer.

One sector of the shopping, working and just browsing number did appear to be very adequately and in most cases stylishly prepared- the over 60's. They are of the generation brought up on good old common sense and values. If it looks like it may rain, it probably will so take a coat or an umbrella. How often have you perceived that upon meeting a senior citizen for the first time they are staring at your shoes and making a judgement on your character, upbringing and manners by the very reflective qualities of buffed and polished shoe leather. I can appreciate the confusion produced in their mind by someone wearing a flourescent pair of trainers, scruffy but top of the range and with a price tag which in old money would represent a weeks or more wages. Similary, a well suited and booted individual intent on a con or criminal activity is already a welcome guest based on an unfortunate traditional stock judgement.

I was weather-specific attired for my venture across the city centre. Big winter coat and city shoes but thereby felt positively and inappropriately dressed. It was a cold day, windy and with no excuse on humidity or a sultry temperature to justify not being so dressed. The absence of a sensible raincoat did not seem to hasten anyones stride to get out of the downpour or apparently dampen their humour or spirits. It was a though not having a raincoat was the norm and reinforced their status as young, carefree, happy go lucky and accepting of whatever circumstances they found themselves to be in. A sort of non-existent badge of honour.

The social divide in this country is, in my opinion, now becoming sharper and more polarised than ever before. The old perceived barriers in class, the glass ceilings of class are blurred and ill defined. There is some differentiation in terms of, for example, owner occupiers and renters although it is now documented that 1 in 6 of the UK population  live in private rented housing and likely to show a sustained increase in the coming years. There is media speculation with extreme and unrepresentative coverage in support of a news worthy under class and focussing on whether you purchase your electrical goods or just loot them,  congregate peacefully or riot.

I predict that in the not too distant future you will be defined and categorised on the basis of whether you have a sensible raincoat or you do not.

It's not Scooby Doo

I did not feel anything at all.

Granted, the bungalow was a bit dour looking, typically 1950's style in wire cut corporate style facing bricks and the dark appearance was only compounded by the now established, but at one time, brand new woodstained finished hardwood windows and doors.

In fact the place on first impresion was quite boring, nestling in a large corner plot, within very thickly lush and green boundaries  in a now rather unrestrained privet hedging that was so high that in a gusty wind there was good reason to expect it to just blow down flat and broken.

The return to nature was to be expected given that the owner had died some months before. After a flourish of concerned interest and a bit of jockeying for position , cap in hand, by the nearest relatives it was revealed  that the property had long since been traded for a small Annuity with an Equity Release Company .

Consequently, there was nothing to inherit apart from  few ornaments and nick-nacks. With this realisation the number of potential beneficiaries of the estate evaporated to just one distant, elderly cousin who would sadly miss his weekly visit for a cup of tea and reminiscence of family things.

I got to the bungalow when it had been largely cleared of the collected chattels of someones life and endeavours. A few bits of furniture remained awaiting the perusal of the man in the white charity van or failing that just a house clearance company whose costs to remove said items were greater than the value of the goods. Room corners were taken up by a few small stacks of books, mostly hardback coffee table publications on the Royal Family, Royal Air Force, Royal Horticultural Society and other things Imperial and Empire. There were also carefully trussed and tied bundles of bed linen and towels which showed no apparent sign of ever having been used.

The former occupant had been there a long time. This was evident from the dark patches where framed pictures, prints and photographs had been hung and preserved the wallpaper from the bleaching and fading effect of the sun as it penetrated deep into the hallway and living room on the south facing side of the bungalow. I even thought that the property may only have had the one owner from new in that the internal doors were the original flush faced and featureless type which otherwise would have been prioritised by a new incoming resident for replacement in those very flimsy, pressed panelled and corrugated cardboard formed ones.

Kitchen and bathroom fittings were similarly dated, the former limited to a chipped enamelled sink and a few wooden units and the latter to a blushing pink suite with an oversized but shallow draught cast iron bath. The bedrooms at the cooler north side of the bungalow were a bit dark and fusty, one being dominated by a wall to wall array of cupboards, doors ajar and loose on their hinges following a rifling through by the previous waves of scavenging family members. It struck me that there was no space for a bed in the room. The occupier had lived alone. The carpet, in th adjacent main bedroom bore the indented outline of a single bed and with a compressed path of fibres in a well worn route in and out of the room.

Saying it was a bungalow was not strictly accurate. A ladder type access had been formed many years prior into the loft space. It was of a  narrow, steep, hamstring tugging gradient requiring some upper arm effort to ascend in the absence of a stout handrail or similar. I popped my head into the opening at the top. There was some daylight from a grouping of four glass tiles, reclaimed from a much older property but fitting snugly amongst the post war pantiles of the roof.

As my eyes became accustomed to the different light the room revealed a large flat boarded arrangement, which on a level plane was just a mish-mash of colours and textures. A bit of blue, grainy green, earth brown and black. Easing myself up to almost full height under the roof ridge the display was now in full view. It was what remained of quite an expansive model train track . I think that I blurted out "ooohhh" aloud  in a boys own expression of excitement at the sight of the layout before remembering my training as a Surveyor and quickly assessing if many apparent hours of enjoyment of the train set had been to the structural detriment of the roof framework. It had not, in fact what had formed the main line of the set-up had been run in a very tortuous route so as not to disturb the integrity of the roof. All timbers remained in position even where there may have been a temptation to apply the hand-saw.

I could easily imagine the sights and sounds of a fully operational rail network under those eaves. I had to negotiate the steep access backwards to get back to the main part of the bungalow. The former owner, from my observations had been either an engineer from the precision of the layout or a seafarer well used to clambering between decks on similarly angled ladders.

I finished off my visit in the back garden. The unseasonably warm start to the spring had encouraged a normally well regimented lawn and borders to run riot giving the appearance of dereliction and decay. A few concrete gnomes, their gawdy colours faded sat around looking glum in the company of a couple of stone fawns and a bird bath. The side gate onto the street had been dislodged from its post and I wedged it back and braced it with the wheelie bin as a small gesture of respect.

To say that I did not feel anything at all was as far from the truth as possible.

For a few moments I had seen the bungalow as through the eyes of its former proud owner. What had, at first, resembled an empty shell stripped of its goods had taken on the form of a safe refuge, a comforting environment of cherished belongings and above all a home. I had not been spooked or phased by my experience. Perhaps, in my empathy the bungalow had welcomed my intrusion. I was not a threat like previous visitors intent on scavenging and looting in misguided family loyalties.

I could appreciate the life and times of the former occupant and had some sadness at how things had turned out. It was not therefore surprising that some months later the Asset Managers for the property contacted me for a very unusual request. The bungalow had been actively advertised for sale and had excited a good bit of interest from prospective buyers. However, none of the parties had progressed to an offer in spite of the clear opportunity of acquiring it at very advantageous price. The feedback was unanimous that the viewers had all experienced a strange feeling but could not be more specific as to what it was. It was enough of a strange feeling to be a deal breaker.

I reported that some people were a bit over sensitive in the case of an empty property, illogically superstitious and suddenly possessing supernatural senses and powers. The company agreed with me and we laughed a bit at there being nowt as queer as folk.

It was wholly apparent to me that the bungalow was undertaking its own vetting process as to who it would welcome as its new owner.

Launderette of Death

There is a very distinct smell that goes with an infestation of mice. It is instantly recognisable by those who work in the pest control business, a few residential owner occupiers who have had the misfortune of being plaqued by the small rodents on a fairly regular basis and by me following my stumbling across the horrific sight of a mass and tragic slaughterhouse of mice in a former stripped out launderette.

The building was in the centre of town.

At one time it was part of a large local group of, initially, attended service coin operated launderettes and then reverting to just casually supervised and operating on the goodwill, diligence and good behaviour of its customers.

There was a brief resurgence of popularity in pay to wash in the 1980's following Nick Kamen's bad planning of having to take off his soiled clothes in front of an impressionable crowd of women washers when he should have thought it through, gone back home and asked his mum to do his laundry whilst sourcing a fresh pair of clean denims and a pristine white T shirt. Since that fiasco most men have felt wholly inadequate or under pressure to perform similarly just contemplating going to the coin-op.

A combination of declining patronage as a natural consequence of an affluent popuation with their own home based Zanussi's ,the perception of social stigma of doing your dirty washing in public , the fact that the town did not have a large student, batchelor or transient population and the rapidly increasing value of a property in any other use in the central location made it quite an easy decision for the owners to cease trading.

The layout, atmosphere and opening hours of the building had obviously created a perfect environment for mice. There was infrequent intrusion by the public towards the decline of the launderette business so the mice had the run of the place for much of the time, even in daylight hours. The huge commercial washers and dryers were mounted on concrete plinths, firmly bolted down and embedded by their own bulky weight. There were however a lot of void areas under and behind the machines providing a veritable New York style grid pattern of highways, by-ways, short-cuts, nooks and crannies. The mice could promenade and saunter about their business in a very complacent manner, or as much as a small furry rodent can be so inclined.

Net receipts for the owners did not really justify a thorough and sanitary cleaning regime and so the accumulation of mainly fine wafty lint was persistent and unchecked. In the style of the best and most cosy pet bedding the lint became all encompassing along the streets, avnues and boulevards of mouse city. There was no reason or compulsion for the mice to leave the ultra safe and ideally suited surroundings. There were frequent supplies of foodstuffs from customers who, prepared for a long session amongst the wash cycle, had stocked up with  fine pastries both savoury and sweet , freshly made sandwiches, crisps and chocolate bars from the Skeltons Bakery just a few doors down the street. Paperback romantic novel in one hand and so casual congestion of snacks with the other generated a more than adequate cascade of crumbs and half masticated morsels to be held up in the lint until ready for collection and storage by the dominant residents.

I got to the building a few days after the bank of machines had been roughly removed. The contractors, specialised in dismantling and removal of heavy equipment, had quickly realised the extent of the infestation. Their co-efficient for lint, droppings and related debris was off the scale. The amount of poison distributed to counter the problem was ramped up on a disproportionate basis but the men were pleased with their actions as they pulled the door shut and left the mice to their fate.

The sight of dead and still twitching rodents and that distinctive smell will be with me forever. I had, because of the carnage, to tiptoe through the bodies, being very careful that my trailing leg, lugging along my survey ladders did not catch and drag anything prone.

The floor was also littered with blue infused grains which had at first, to the mice, appeared to be a generous donation by a cack handed customer with a bag of novelty popping corn. They had feasted to the full before the first of their number, the smaller and weaker, had grimaced with a tight, tiny stomach and keeled over.

I could, with horror, imagine the scene. The pattern of bodies clearly showed an attempted flight to the rear of the building and up the stairs to the empty upper floors. In the heyday of the coin-op there had been a manager living above the shop but the accommdation had been vacant for a couple of decades. A few contorted and agonised carcasses formed an arrowhead on the stair-risers.They had hoped to be the trailblazers for a mass escape from the killing field. There were further balls of matted and saliva speckled fur on the landing and through the former living quarters. In some cases they were not recognisable as former living creatures, deflated and soul-less.

One mouse, a bit larger and evidently stronger than the others was still moving slowly and blindly across the kitchen linoleum. He must have been the leader of the whole group and had tried to save his fellows before himself.

In retrospect I should have put him out of his misery but I was already in a state of traumatic stress and decided to just leave the premises and come back at a more respectful time than the last days and final death throe seconds of the mouse empire.

Run Tufty Run

After the running over and killing of a squirrel on a slip road to the A63 I have had time to put together an Obituary for the poor rodent.

I did not know the victim of my driving but from the sound it made under my Continentals I am sure that he was of good, stout stock.

I will refer to the squirrel as male only because wikipedia say that the females look after the young and if he was out foraging for sustenance for his family then he would be at a higher risk of meeting an unfortunate accident.

I do not know why he was in the middle of the slip road. I suspect that whilst herbivorous he was supplementing his diet with a small vertebrate which was an earlier victim  of a concussive blow by a vehicle.

I did give him a chance to throw himself clear and if I had been on a motorbike then he would now be sitting in a tree at a safe elevation from the highway. He had no chance with a four wheeled estate car in spite of an evasive zig zag manouvre.

What of his achievements? I speculate that he was born, as all members of the sciuridae species, naked and blind and unsure of his sexuality until the end of his first year. Undoubtedly part of a large family he will have survived on his instinct and awareness to his surroundings. In his younger years he will have met and fallen in love to breed twice a year (thanks again wiki-pee).

His offspring will mourn his passing and remember fondly typical character traits of dependability, an ability to crack nuts between his thighs and his impersonation every winter before hibernation of a squirrel feeling a bit sleepy and going into hibernation.

He will have had a dark side including relishing the prospect of chewing through electrical wiring in agricultural buildings and teasing Jack Russell dogs by seemingly pretending not to have seen them yet with a well rehearsed scamper and flourish of the magnificent bushy tail disappearing up a tree trunk leaving the poor dog barking at nothing but bark. 

He did live in fear of a resurgence of Red Squirrels and the soundless swoop of a sparrowhawk but in all had a splendid and rewarding life. He will be missed which is a bit ironic bearing in mind his demise under my wheels.

(yet another re-issue. Another busy day........)

From Hull to The Beautiful South

The sum of one million five hundred and seventy seven thousand and five hundred pounds is a tremendous amount of money.

Even in todays society where there are instant millionaires in what seem like daily prize draws  it still sounds like a big figure. As I walk into my local newsagents through that silvery grey coating of scratchcard foil that swirls around in the eddying air on the public pavement just outside the doorway, I could easily be rubbing shoulders with a new multi-thousand pound winner who may not yet know it to be the case until out on the street and commencing that almost secretive action of rubbing the cerrated edge of a coin over the small metallic squares .

Some days, when joining the end of a queue to purchase my favourite Boost chocolate and glucose energy infused bar (RRP 68p) I seem to be the only person buying an item other than a lottery ticket or one of the many stylised cards to win one of 25 VW Golfs, an equivalent of your working salary paid for life, a country cottage on which you will not need a mortgage or just a large bag of cash. I knew a couple back in the 1980's who had a win of £250,000 on the old but once dominant football pools. This was more than enough to fulfill their dreams of an easier life and I believe that they are still living off the interest from some prudent investments at that time and benefitting from some years of bumper, by current levels, interest rates. I expect that most participants in what is still a form of gambling would, today, probably dismiss the prospect of winning even a quarter of a million pounds as being not worth the £1 or £2 outlay for a ticket or scratchcard.

There is also the matter of what benefit can be had from pocketing the winnings. The indoor heated swimming pool with the lucky lottery numbers picked out in ceramic tiles at the bottom of the deep end may not be to all tastes. That convertible car with a customised, factory option only pearlescent flourescent paint job and personalised number plate may quickly become a bit of an embarassment and tiresome from the attention it demands. Well intentioned donations to charity, Boys Clubs or in sports shirt sponsorship of the under 12's village football team are all very philanthropic similarly, an appearance as a secret millionaire on a TV programme before that often a bit cringy, but quite emotional all revealing moment.

Much good can come of great wealth if channeled to where it can make a difference.

That brings me back to the large sum of money from the top of the page. Working back in time, to 1899 to be exact, March of that year to be a bit pedantic, the equivalent amount was £25,000. This was the donation by a Hull businessman, Llewellyn Longstaff to The National Antarctic Expedition to boost what had been up to that time a poor fundraising drive and allow the release of match funding by the British Government which led, in due course to the construction of the ship, Discovery and in 1900 the appointment of Captain Robert Falcon Scott as leader.

Longstaff's generosity was possible from the very successful paint manufacturing and oil seed crushing business of Blundell Spence and Company whose name lives on in the locally known Blundells Corner just on the northern edge of Hull City Centre.

Born in 1841 Llewellyn ascended to the industrial dynasty and at the age of 33 the company became Limited with an authorised capital of £400,000. In todays monetary terms that equates to the figure of just under £32 million pounds. Family members were the principal shareholders thrusting Llewellyn into the playboy category. He was however part of a forward thinking group who introduced a profit sharing scheme for their employees with an 1887 payout of £963 or £100,000 today amongst 326 employees, ironically, perhaps 2 employees, possibly not even based in Hull, in todays recessionary economy.

The paint making operation survived a serious fire in the 1840's at the central site and later expanded to a large mill premises close to the tidal River Hull corridor and increasing the pay roll to 400 persons by 1894.

Lllewelyn's interests were varied from travelling widely through Europe and America to being President of the Hull Chamber of Commerce, a long term member of the Hull Literary and Philosophical Society, Royal Meteorological and Zoological Societies and a fellow of the Royal Geographic Society.

He may have had intentions of an intrepid life for himself as a wayfarer and explorer but business appeared to take up the bulk of his time but understandable as the source of his great generosity. He moved to London whilst still maintaining strong links with Hull.

Llewellyn's son, Cedric fulfilled much of his fathers suppressed ambitions through active service in the Boer War and befriending Ernest Shackleton who also, like Scott of the Antarctic became a legendary polar explorer starting as third officer on Scott's early expeditions in 1901-1904. In some recognition of the family contribution to British Exploration a group of  peaks bear the Longstaff name in the Transarctic Mountain range. Scotts ultimately ill fated expedition received further funding in 1912. Another son, Tom,  now of independent income, was able to venture to the far ends of the globe including the discovery of the Siachen Glacier of the Karakorum in the Himalayas in the early part of the new 20th Century.

In such ways can great wealth be harnessed for the good of mankind. The spin off benefits from the exploration and pioneering from the Longstaff family contributions may be difficult to calculate but will certainly outlive an algae encrusted swimming pool, a gawdy motor vehicle of questionable taste and a life obsessed by numbers promising immediate celebrity and status.

Elevational Storeys for today

One Storey;

The bungalow was built just on the northern edge of the town. That is the current edge of the town which had expanded significantly in the post war and more modern period with an estate of commuter housing. A hundred years earlier the same location was well out of town, more rural than urban. Then, opposite stood the railway station, a good walk from the town centre. Now, opposite a trackless station building, with a new lease of life as a printers workshop. The land for the bungalow had been cheap on locational factors. It was also a strange wedge shaped parcel of land, narrow road frontage and opening out, long and bulbous. The longest boundary will have been close and parallel to the old railway line that Mr Beeching considered unviable. Excavations for the bungalow  foundations threw up a good supply of lumps of coal, perhaps falling from theladen tender of the constant stream of steam trains in the heyday of rail travel. Nothing else impeded the rapid construction of the bungalow. Some years later the owners considered the attachment of a conservatory on the inward facing rear elevation. Plans were drawn up, approved and quotations obtained for the work. The trenches for the dwarf walling were hand dug at first, close to the bungalow and then a JCB was brought in to continue the scraping and gouging of the clay soil. Progress was good but then the driver of the excavator signalled frantically that something was wrong. The bucket had broken through the crust of the site to reveal a hole. A test brick thrown in took some time to impact below. The surface was carefully scraped away to reveal not a hole but a chasm. The whole part of the inner site had been but a thin dome of soil beneath which was the remains of the Town Gas Works. Letters of enquiry were sent to Solicitors and the Council. The plant had certainly existed but was never documented or mapped. The only townsperson who remembered the burning of coal and production of gas in that part of the town  had died only weeks before. There was no redress through Law . It took about thirty tipper lorry loads of rubble to fill the hole before a raft foundation could be built to support the planned structure. Sitting out in the conservatory on a pleasantly warm evening watching the wildlife on the course of the old railway line was not really enough to compensate for the cost and stress of its painful emergence into the world .

Storey Two

The chalet style house looked good as I pulled up outside. Built in the 1970’s it had been newly renovated and refurbished and this cosmetic effect had taken perhaps 25 years off its appearance. My database had a record that it had been purchased just 6 months ago and for a price which clearly indicated that it must have been in quite a state of dereliction or abandonment. The proud new owner welcomed me in and gave me the grand tour. My visit was to appraise and value the house for a bank with the intention of releasing some of the equity achieved from the investment of renovation. The resurrection of the house had been a good one. I gave an opinion of where I thought the value was now and the owner was evidently pleased that his speculative venture had paid a healthy dividend. We got to talking all things property market. Then the owner asked if the demand for and value of a property could be affected by an untimely death in that property. I reassured him that this was not usually a problem as local memory was often short on such things. He came back hesitantly asking what about if there had been two untimely deaths and at the same time. I stalled with an answer which was fortunate as he gushed forth with the whole story. His house had previously been occupied by an elderly lady and her grown up son. The pair were inseperable, very reclusive and not a  little bit eccentric. Untidy garden, grubby always drawn net curtains, flaking paintwork, the same black spotted sticky fly paper in the porch. The sorts of things that kept the local children well away. One Christmas morning the pair had fallen out in a big way over who was to take the first bath. By heavy handed accident, it was thought, the mother was pushed over, impacted her head and died. The son, distressed and distraught then took his own life. That was a chapter in the history of the house. A couple of years later I noticed an advertisement for the sale of the house in the Thursday property supplement. Within a few days there was a sold sticker across the agents board. I had been right that local memory was often short on infamous events. I would not however like to be the first to break the news to the new owner particularly if they had any firm position on manslaughter and suicide on their own doorstep.

Storey Three

Three storey house. That description met one of my multiple criteria for a prospective purchase. A good number of the other boxes were also ticked for location, 4 bed rooms, newly fitted kitchen and bathroom , games room, decent sized garden and a garage. I rang the selling agents to enquire about a viewing. My own house was sold and I was in a strong position to proceed if I liked the property. Holding the line, the agent rang through to the vendor and after a few cross referenced conversations a mutually acceptable date and time to view was agreed. I took away a single sheet brochure for the property, minus a photograph as it was a very new listing and the particulars were still in a draft unapproved format. The approach to the property was through a newish development of four detached houses along a hard surfaced but private status roadway. The cul de sac terminated at a set of high metal gates set within a high perimeter fence more reminiscent of a prison than a private dwelling. I had to get out of the car to buzz for entry. I drove through into what could only be described as a compound. The only building was a squat cast concrete rectangle of only one story height under a flat reinforced slab roof and with a vented tower atop. The owner met me at the door and commenced a tour of the property. It was indeed three storeys of rooms but two of these were wholly subterranean having been purpose built in the 1970’s as the command bunker for the Local Authority in the event of a nuclear conflict. The tour was interesting and informative but coming away I was more than sure that bunker survivalist living was not at the top of my property shopping list.

(Yet another regurgitation from 2011- getting busy again)

Every Day is Fathers Day

It has been a year of firsts but to be expected following the death of my Father last July.

There have been some difficult and poignant moments but these have been far outweighed by the positive and joyful emotions that come from fond memories of Father as head of the family and invaribly at the head of the table for the seasonal celebrations and everything inbetween.

We have faithfully and respectfully kept up the family traditions that have found us, in willing participation to support Mother, watching competitive town centre cycle races on a balmy summers night, noisily celebrating Christmas in a tartan and ginger wig, up at the Black Mill Tower amongst fireworks and flammable chinese lanterns on a very stormy and changeable New Years, on the painful under foot frost peaked sandy beaches at Filey, Bridlington and Fraisthorpe in the lingering cold of a late winter and early spring, strolling through the ankle high bluebells in Burton Bushes, straining up a steep incline in Elloughton Dale, congregating in easy chairs in the back garden at Beverley, sitting down to a wonderful meals and good familiar conversation whenever the family can be mustered from all parts UK and Stateside.

These have all been firsts without Father and today, being Fathers Day is particularly reflective and full of reminiscences.

Of course, on the actual day in just about every past year I can remember Father was never in for his dutiful offspring to visit.

This was the day which coincided on a regular annual basis wiith his navigational and problem solving duties alongside Tony York on the challenging reliability runs in the classic Rover 75. This involved a very early start with pack-up, Thermos and possibly Kendal Mint Cake supplies with travelling on to a rendezvous point somewhere points west or north before reaching the location for the competition, fun and games typically on the Yorkshire Moors, in the Dales or as far as Cleveland or Tyne and Wear.

It was a long day of precision motoring, quizzes and the exercise of what would now be regarded as long lost or neglected protocols and matters of etiquette in the art of driving. The dynamic combination of experience, wisdom, downright common sense and certainly top quality repartee and humour will have been most excellent- if only the vehicle had been rigged for recorded sound.

Tony York kindly provided us with a wonderful photograph of Father undeniably in his most natural of environments amongst the sights, sounds, smells and oily residues of cars. To the victors the spoils and a good days effort was rewarded by the accolations of their fellow competitors and the plundering of more silverware for the trophy cabinet- of course on a strictly shared basis between the two collaborators.

I would make a point of always marking Fathers Day by calling round to the house in full knowledge that he was out and about on one of his treasured days on four wheels. The back garden soon accumulated a collection of my gift items of various degrees of naffness and absolute zero practicality from a faux stone Easter island statue to a reflective stainless steel ball  and from a glut of hanging baskets to a replica chimney pot in which to grow strawberries, amongst many other end of product ranges from B&Q.

I would receive a phone call in the evening upon his return to thank me for that years offering. The relaxed happiness and contentment in his voice from his exploits out on the roads were a reflection of his true self and even though there were the trademark awkward silences in the conversations I will always regard them as the most magic of moments between a father and a son.

Think for a minute

They're back.

Our house guests, the Martin Family have wintered as usual in Africa and have returned to take up residence in their now 10 year old mud nest miraculously affixed to the coarse render and timber soffits high up in the overhanging eaves. Navigating from sub-Saharan regions to East Yorkshire is a marvel on its very own.

For them the eaves are an ideal location. The sun moves across, lengthening the shadows, from about 11am and for a brief moment the khaki coloured cluster of clay, speckled and reinforced by straw and dried grasses is flooded with light before spending the rest of the day in the cooling shade.

There is a long view up the garden and plenty of potential for the parents to harvest, on the wing, the sporadic rise and swarm of insects ,throughout the neighbourhood, which forms their staple diet.

The flight into the nest is a technical ascent. The distinctive forked tailed, bluey black and stark contrasted white under-bellied birds swoop around paralell to the rear of the house. Their reflections in the double glazed windows are brief and like short bursts of lightening as they rotate from dark to a flash of brightness. The frequent passage in this manner gives good reference points for the approach at speed and also checks for the presence of their arch nemesis, the common house sparrow who is not averse to raid to pillage and attack the adult Martins, eggs and young. At the last minute of the fly-past there is a precise trimming of the wings and tail to thrust, in the gathered momentum, directly vertical, pulling a few 'G's and gracefully gliding into the miniscule aperture of their home. The exit is a near parachute jump of an operation as the tight ball of feathers descends until there is enough air to plump up and expand the wings for an instant take off and rocket departure into the wide skies above.

For us it is far from an ideal location. The nest is directly above the window of the rear bedroom and the double doors to the sitting room. The arrival in the late Spring is confirmed by the first few grainy droppings on the timber decking which have to be pressure washed away before the organic materials permeate and deep stain and tarnish the timber. It becomes a regular bi-weekly and certainly a weekend chore to remove the deposits before they accumulate into a sizeable, rocky obstruction to the actual opening of the door or resemble a stockpile in a guano production facility. As testament to the precarious position of a home made of dried mud we have found, on occasion, small fragments of the outer walls at ground level, the odd impacted and shattered egg and sadly, the bedraggled remains of an undeveloped baby bird. We act as enthusiastic observers and also respectful undertakers for our visitors.

The casement of the rear bedroom cannot be fully opened from April to September as in the full easy-clean position the outer upper edge is within touching distance of the nest. The external ledge of the frame also collects droppings and has to be scoured clean.

Sitting on the bed and squinting into the late afternoon and early evening sun does give a reverse birds eye view of the manoevre to enter the nest and can provide some idle minutes of thought,  interest, education and amazement.

It is our pleasure to host our summer guests and any thought of knocking away the lifeless nugget of a nest during the bleak winter of their absence in Africa is easily dismissed with a brief and distant recollection of those balmy , wing swept evenings in the warm English season.

Jam and Jerusalem

A prized possession has been found during the process of down sizing, or rather my new definition of a house move from a beloved but nevertheless large old and cold place to a  smaller, equally characterful but higher energy efficient place- "across and slightly up sizing".

The transistion has been a necessarily long one. It is inevitable that 33 years of habitation in the same space means that all your possessions, memories and life have expanded into every square inch and with every piece of furniture, each and every familiar sight, sound or smell there is a very strong, fond, familiar, poignant and sometime sad association.

The house was purchased by my parents in the summer of 1979. The move, only of some 25 miles as that crow keeps on flying, may as well have been to another time and dimension because for me it was the life-changer that set me on the path to where I am today, in all senses of the word, a well rounded individual.

Out of the five of us children, well all under the age of 18, the house move came at perhaps the best of times for me. It coincided with that important decision making time in my life of either leaving school at 16 years old and walking straight into a great and assured lifetime of employment in just about any sector, including the now largely disappeared heavy industries or staying on in education for another 2 years and beyond.

We had lived in a small, busy town prior to the move but you did get the overall sense that it did have some limitations, a bit of a defined ceiling for acheiving things. Do not get me wrong. It was a great place to grow up in with a freedom to roam and get up to creative mischief without any perception of fear or menace from others. I do value, very much, that part of my life and its contribution to my character but I had started to become aware at that age that there was more to do and experience. It was just that where we lived at that time did not offer the options. We had outgrown it.

The new location was a larger ,old and historic market town and only 6 miles from the huge city of Kingston upon Hull, or as it is known, just  " ull". Everything now seemed possible because of the greater access to, well, everything. The main advantage was that all of my previous geekiness could be re-engineered and I was now presented with an opportunity to re-boot. I was still very much the same person but it was now a fresh start and I could re-invent myself. I was of course a much smaller fish in a now very large ocean like environment but I thought it was great.

That summer of 1979 was, in my recollection, perfect in every way. In reality it was probably just ordinary and hum-drum but in the new surroundings everything seemed like a fresh and exciting experience. The prospect, looming sometime in the coming September, of starting again at a new school was just a slight and vague downer. It seemed such a long time ahead although was actually hurtling towards me at tremendous speed. It arrived quicker than I could imagine.

On the first day of attendance I was placed in detention for innocently but wrongly presuming that the front door to the school was the way in. It was actually reserved for the use of Staff and Prefects. I was mortified by my instant naughty boy status but in fact it served a purpose of elevating me from square new boy to not so square new boy amongst my fellow sixth formers. To make matters worse I missed the scheduled after school confinement because it clashed with a field trip to Hull. Again, no slack was cut with me and I was summoned before the Headmaster. The flashbacks to the 1969 film Kes were strangely familiar as I lined up outside Mr Waltons study with the smokers, insolent and offensive, inappropriate fiddlers and plain stupid. Fortunately we were given a lecture, rather than the cane,on blah, blah, blah Oxford and Cambridge, blah, blah, blah, under fire, blah, blah, blah empire and service. It seemed to be a stock speech as the more persistent offenders in the line up across the room were able to mime each and every word with great familiarity. The Headmaster had no idea who I was or that I had just arrived at the school.

My new found notoriety meant that I was now included in the extra-curricula activities which, out of school hours, included under age drinking, cars, girls, nightclubbing, going to 'Ull on a regular basis and music gigs.

By the coming October my experience of live music had gone from zero to seeing The Police and The Jam at Bridlington Spa. The latter gig was where I bought a T-shirt, the long since mentioned prized possession. It was the Setting Sons Album Tour and the merchandise featured a Japanese Imperial sun fronted by a British Bulldog. I joined the scramble to buy the item before the band came on and hung onto it in what became a seething mass of rowdy and violent Mods, Ska fans and curious school kids. At the end I hung about at the stage and Paul Weller emerged, shivering and swearing in the North Sea climate and signed my T shirt in biro.

I did wear it a couple of times around town but the autograph washed out to be replaced on the back with iron-on red velour lettering spelling out my hero's name. A bad decision but not thought through at the time.

The garment disappeared sometime between 1981 and 1985 when I was away at Polytechnic. I thought for some time after that I had used it to clean my bike of oil. Because of the time, place and authenticity of the T shirt, now lost, it assumed a mythical  Golden Fleece status and my own children quickly tired of my story of how I got it and what it was.

It re-appeared just this week in the latest round of "across and slightly up-sizing". I got a bit emotional when my Mother presented it to me. It looked good with the screen printed logo still bold and strong in red and yellow sunburst and the Bulldog had not perceptibly aged another day but looked tired and jaded as a Nationalistic symbol.The white cotton was a bit discoloured in places, mildewy and with a fusty odour. The red velour lettering, unfortunately, looked perfectly new. Bad decision there I still thought. The most poignant thing about the T shirt was its size.

I kidded myself that over 33 years the 100% cotton composition would inevitably shrink a bit in a cold house wherever it had spent that time. Even making such an allowance, as I held the garment up to my chest , I realised that I had certainly been quite a lean and skinny youth. Any attempt now to put on the T shirt would cause irrevocable stress and damage to the fragile threads and seams. It even looked tiny up against my 17 year old son.

He seemed to make a mental note never to do anything to excess over the next 33 years at least.

Spatial Awareness

In the small print of an advertisement in a very glossy monthly magazine, which is free to affluent areas but otherwise has to be purchased,  a local motor vehicle garage makes the claim that their 5 acre car sales lot is visible from space. I have conducted my own investigation into this claim and can report as follows;

There is some disagreement in where Space actually commences above Planet Earth. This is because it is not a finite point, there is no physical barrier or red-line which differentiates the existence of an atmosphere from none. It is a gradual thinning out process .

NASA, in their definition of an astronaut attribute this rare designation to someone who has exceeded an altitude of 80km above the earth. Others regard 100km as a start in that the atmosphere at this height is not able to sustain normal aircraft flight and requires a spacecraft and full technical support.

To put this distance into some sort of context the maximum height for a commercial passenger aircraft is around 45,000 feet or just under 14km. The sight of such high flying aircraft amongst a criss-cross of vapour trails on the busier flight corridors is well known and serves as a good ilustration of what sort of distances are in play. Under the controlled conditions of Google Earth, even at an indicated elevation of 10km or 30,000 feet above the aforementioned motor vehicle garage I would defy anyone even equipped with eagle-eyes or a powerful magnifying glass to identify any features remotely associated with car sales.

The aggregated audience to whom the advertised claim would appeal can currently be numbered at about 6, being the full compliment of the International Space Station which is in orbit around the Earth at an altitude of 354km which is to be extended, on fuel saving grounds, to 399km.

Three new crew members recently took up occupation as Expedition 31, some 12 years into the operational life of the space station. Out of the six occupants it is possible that these three may have had access to the glossy magazine containing the garage advert. This could have been whilst waiting at Balkonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan for the launch of the Soyuz TMA-04M launch vehicle. If the waiting area in that facility is anything like that in most airports there would be plenty of time to browse the newspapers and publications lying around on cafe tables or lounging chairs.

Amongst the multi-national crew of Expo 31 is a Dutch Flight Engineer, Andre Kuipers. Given the relative proximity of his home country to the motor vehicle garage ,only 492km via the North Sea Ferry at Hull, it is not beyond reasonable speculation that he may have had access to the specific publication. The target market for the car sales advert is therefore, strictly adhering to the criteria of being seen from space, only Andre Kuipers.

I would therefore urge the Principals at the garage, a Land Rover, Nissan, Renault, Ssangyong and
Isuzu Main Dealer to start to prepare for a unique selling opportunity for their sole, exclusive
potential customer.

It would be best to perhaps arrange the sales stock vehicles in a distinct fashion so that, even from the significant height of 354km above the planet, Mr Kuipers can utilise the powerful telescopes on the ISS to stand a chance of seeing what is on offer.

It will be necessary to affix the price displays to the roof of each vehicle, ideally with a short, concise and clearly legible from space potted description of specification, mileage and any other good selling points.Be selective in what stock to promote on the basis that a highly educated, skilled and discerning astronaut is more likely to favour a Land Rover or top of the range Nissan or Renault rather than a Twingo or Note. Frankly, Ssangyongs and Isuzus's are just too unreliable and with very poor resale values to appeal to someone at the top of their profession and at the top of the world. Retailer, Service and Part back up for those marques are, I understand, also quite sparse in the Netherlands

There is little remaning time to prepare for the space window of opportunity as Mr Kuipers will be directly overhead of the garage this coming 21st June 2012.

It will not be the usual case of salespersons sitting around waiting for a customer to appear. The ISS is an example of precision engineering and operation. There is no potential for a hold up from a traffic build up, road works, contra-flow, puncture, empty fuel tank or forgetting the house keys for Mr Kuipers as compared to the average punter vaguely interested in buying a new car.

It will have to be quite a grand, late night and floodlit opening as the ISS is scheduled to be passing at 10.31pm. The selling will have to be slick as the actual span of visibility will be only 3 minutes. Alignment of vehicles will also take some careful thought as the ISS approaches at ten degrees above west south west and departs at eleven degrees above south. That is quite a low trajectory so it may be worthwhile cutting back the top 2 metres of the conifers along the rear boundary.

The exceptional effort required to entice Mr Kuipers into a purchase will however be well worth it, even just on publicity value, should it be successful. I can imagine the kudos of the actual salesperson who secures that deal.

Now lets talk finance and extended warranty. Has anyone got the phone number for NASA?

Beanz Meanz Cleanz Gutz

Take a good look right into the depths of your kitchen cupboards.

If you have resided in the same place for some years or even if you have moved house I can guarantee that at least one tin or can of something old will have followed you and will now be waiting to see the light of day again.

My parents have a traditional pantry, a proper north facing, single brick wall and walk in type which can maintain an all year round temperature which would keep a permafrost infused woolly mammoth rigid and avoiding a large ginger coloured puddle of prehistoric thaw. This is the perfect atmosphere for storage of a canned good which has been handed down over a few generations. Pride of place in my parents cool vault was a tin, slightly corroded on the crimped edges, of whole chestnuts in brine. This pre-dated any ' Use By' labelling and from the appearance of the artwork was certainly a purchase in the interwar or immediate post war period. It never formed an ingredient for stuffing at an austere Christmas dinner, perhaps considered too much of a luxury at a time when rationing and coupons were still in place.

I throw down a challenge for you to make a brave foray into either your kitchen cupboards, medecine chest or tool shed to see if you have unwittingly harboured a tin of Bile Beans. I include the latter search grid because old tins make perfect storage for nuts, bolts, washers and other Man Bits.

Every time I drive into York to find a parking space the inner ring road takes me, usually involuntarily, along the base of the earthworks for the Roman Walls on the eastern side of the historic central area. There is a bit of a Grand Prix jockeying for position near to Sainsbury's as the traffic lights delay that inevitable and undignified rush for the correct lane to go up Lord Mayors Walk rather than taking, in error, the right hand lane which only sends you on another lap of the infuriatingly complicated road system.

With the Monk Bar Gate just in sight on the left there is a wonderful direct view of the gable end wall of 18 Lord Mayors Walk.

This has what can be referred to as a 'Ghost sign'- the part restored but still rather faded wording of an advertisement for Nightly Bile Beans. Rather than the modern equivalent of a timber hoarding which can be pasted and re-pasted with digitally reproduced posters this is painted directly onto the late Georgian or early Victorian brickwork. There is a small 4-paned attic room window high up. It is a bit like that scene in From Russia With Love where the Russian assassin tries to make his escape through the mouth of large billboard poster under the scrutiny of James Bond.  The sign has done well to survive on a heat exposed and colour fading south facing wall although was repainted, sympathetically and skillfully in 1986. This date was significant in that the main manufacturer, Fisons, phased out the product and agreed to fund the restoration for posterity.

The full wording, in three font styles, and below the product name bears the very broad claim that Bile Beans  "keep you healthy, bright eyed and slim". This is the sort of thing that BBC TV Watchdog would thoroughly investigate and hope to expose as they have in the past for wonder slimming pills, vitamins and other quack type treatments. In effect the product is a laxative. The ingredients  included aloin extract, cardamom, peppermint oil and wheat flour, all encased in a black gelatine coating. It was marketed as being purely vegetable although there was a real danger of actually becoming one given the much later declaration of aloin extract as unsafe because of ( undisclosed) side effects.

Origins are more difficult to establish because there will have been hand me down, old mother and family remedies working on the same principles for centuries if not millenia but not making it into a commercial entity. An ancient Aboriginal compound was alluded to by one of the main producers from 1899 but had to be declared as false in the Courts in 1905 when cross examined in a copyright case. There is a reference in an Australian newspaper from 1898 to  Bile Beans being a long established product from Michigan, USA which further confuses accurate dating.

Slick advertising in the 1930's appealing, in particular, to the female market made Bile Beans the brand leader in its sector. It continued to make claims on weight loss, easing female complaints and weakness, sallow complexions, headache and impure blood with glossy campaigns of busty, outdoor types or women in the armed forces.It must have been a major influence on the ad campaigns of today for tampons and sanitary towels which are very exciting.

The post war period saw a more functional campaign for sales and quite a focus on Bile Beans as a remedy for biliousness,constipation, liver, stomach and bowel problems and pimples. This appears to reflect a rather stodgy dietary base and a Public Health and NHS fascination with being regular.

The product continued until Fisons flushed it out of their product range in the 1980's. The restored painted advertisement on 18 Lord Mayors Walk, York is but one of a few that have survived . Every urban area in the UK will have good examples of products, services and company names but with their days numbered under the threat of clearance and road building schemes, demolition of the old industrial sites and enthusiastic DIY'ers with a tub of Dulux Weathershield Exterior paint.

It is with some irony that the process of gentrification may be the biggest threat. The new self styled urbane owners of a renovated and now contemporary town house in a former working class or manufacturing part of a City just do not want to be reminded about their bowel movements, however natural and important to overall health they are, by some old wording on their gable end or, heaven forbid, in their direct sight with no relevance to their busy and active lives.

Just Man-ure Manners

There is no more an idyllic scene in the English countryside than a grassy meadow, fringed with mature broadleaved trees, a low ground hugging early morning mist just starting to disperse in the warming morning air, the sound of a cuckoo, a speckling of baby rabbits taking their fill of the glistening dew from the vegetation, a fresh mole hill still erupting in an annoyance to the landowner and the crowning feature of a horse stood proud and noble, born to the land and at ease in its natural environment..

So why do young girls and women insist on riding their horses into town, on the main road, at peak times and for no apparent or legitimate reason other than to show that they can cause absolute mayhem and inconvenience to the general public when they feel like it.?

 I have due cause to adopt this point of view.

Just yesterday I was driving through a very busy and congested market town in the area. My work took me through a large housing estate and up to a 'T' junction with the main road which led out to the by-pass.

I was in position and signalling to turn right but the flow of traffic was constant from both directions. Cars approaching from the left from the town centre had been restrained at a railway level crossing and the long, collective tailback was now making its way slowly along. I could see no break in the stream of vehicles and the good people were certainly not thinking about letting me out of the junction which I attribute to the migration of Southerners to the area and all the indifference and selfish, suspicious motives that come with that distinction.

It was no better from the right. Just 200 metres up the road was a roundabout which directed considerable amounts of traffic onto the bypass, out towards the coast road or back into town past me. Approaching motorists were either late for work, on flexi hours with the Council, just going shopping or distracted on prioritising in their minds that long list of jobs to be done for that day. The line of traffic, about 100 metres away momentarily slowed and bunched, then signalled and cautiously moved around what I then saw as my arch nemesis- a gal on a horse.

She was idling along on a large chestnut coloured beast enjoying waving at those considerate enough to give her a suitably wide berth. It was a bit like the Queen waving at the Trooping of the Colour. I could not imagine what the rider and horse were intending to do in town.

Certainly, 120 years plus ago, the horse was a major cog in the mechanism of society and the now converted stables and mews dotted around the central area of town were an indication of their importance. If I had been doing the same job as now in the late 19th Century I could envisage quite a regular need to hire a horse for a day if I was not privileged enough to own and house one myself. The streets will have been crowded with horsedrawn  carts, wagons and carriages for every purpose and the roses in the Coronation Gardens never more fertilised as a consequence.

Cars and the avoidance of the horsewoman were the order of today. Motorists showed more respect and ultimate fear in their approach and passing than they ever would with a much more vulnerable cyclist which was another reason for my indignation on the subject.

Gradually the flourescent shape got closer. The rider was in her mid to late twenties, probably called Ginny. Typically attired in all the correct safety gear but with denims and trainers. In the far right distance I could see a noticeable lightening of the traffic. A large lorry was stuck on negotiating the roundabout and served as a dam to the flow up the road towards me. I had now been at the junction for at least 3 minutes, an unprecedented period in any motoring scenario and in the perception of a driver, representing about a week. I anticipated and adjudged both the break in the traffic and the slow, lolloping pace of the horse. Slowly I edged out to get a good both ways view and this would also show my intention to the Ginny character that my wait was over.

We were a good 20 metres apart as I pulled out, slowly and hesitantly in deference to a skitty animal at the best of times. I was not sure about the horse.  The manouevre was text book in its action, excellent clutch control, no undue revving of the engine, smooth and seamless. I was perfectly placed paralell to the pony person as I passed.

I expected a grateful wave and perhaps a flirtatious approval of my driving skill, care and diligence. Instead I heard Ginny comment "Patience is a virtue". That was, to me, the epitomy of rudeness and sarcasm. I was immediately consumed with indignant rage. I was only a few metres away when all the accumulated wisdom, wit and knowledge of my 48 years welled up. In other situations requiring an immediate and decisive verbal response I had been let down although within any proceeding 24 hour period  I was usually ready to deliver one of the utmost biting and telling quality.

I was pretty pleased with myself as with commensurate humour I shouted back down the road,
" Put the thing back in its field". Ginny's very sophisticated two fingered salute whilst maintaining control of her mount showed that my message had been received and understood.

Upper Crust

The Pork Pie is a demanding mistress.

I cannot go even part of a single day without thinking of one. I do have a reasonable breakfast with the intention that it will see me through that disproportionate part of the day that is a working morning. I may be tempted to partake of a coffee from a drive through window at as close to the traditional elevenses as I can manage which does seem to satisfy the first empty feelings but it is not long after that the all pervading obsession for a Pork Pie takes over my every thought and sense.

I may be standing out in a field or up in a loft space when I begin to visualise that cellophane wrapped morsel in the chiller of a fictional shop that only sells Pork Pies. The shelf in my minds eye has the full compliment of pies in carefully stocked and graded sizes. I was completely thrown just yesterday by Tesco's marketing of a pack of miniature, diminuitive pork pies on their price reduced post Jubilee clearance section. Obviously, with such a surplus of that product it has, as with me, not caught the attention or love of the British Pork Pie enthusiast. It is a pie too far.

The right and proper order in which Pork Pies should be displayed to the public is strictly as follows; Mini-usually in a twin pack. Single individual- slighly scaled up from Mini. Large-a sort of family size. Extra Large-more of a buffet offering. There are of course custom made and bespoke pies from  those local Butchers who have survived the onslaught of the in-store meat counters and shrink-wrap but that is just too much for me to contemplate at the best of times. There has been a resurgence of the debate in recent months about  branding of products by place of origin. The Pork Pie has not been immune from EU scrutiny but as far as I am aware the Melton Mowbray originals have been able to maintain their authenticity in the face of considerable competition. After all, a Pork Pie may just be a British thing.

I have been very disappointed by some offerings masquerading as a Pork Pie but sorely lacking in the main attributes. The classic Pork Pie must possess and flaunt the characteristics of rusky, stout and just about crispy casing with crimped edges around the lid, itself with just the trace of a decorative embellished sliver of pastry. The base must not be soggy or infused with the glue of the tightly sealed wrapper. In disection, the starting point of enjoying a Pork Pie, there must be clear air between the pork meat and the underside of the lid. A smattering of jelly is not essential- there, I have controversially stated my position on that point and do not wish to enter into a debate with officianados of transparent gelatinous substances.

The pork meat must be dense, yet light in texture and of good quality fare and not offcuts, floor sweepings with impregnated sawdust or sausage trimmings often found by the Service Engineer when called to clear a blockage from the mighty mincer. Some manufacturers do offer bastardised Pork Pies which can be pre-loaded with pickle or cheese but I will ignore them completely.

The actual eating of a Pork Pie is both a solemn and joyful experience. I always find a decent, inoffensive parking spot with a good broad view over attractive landscape or to water, the North Sea is particularly complimentary.

If a good quality bake there will be little evidence of crumbs in the folds of a working shirt or the gathered creases of suit trousers. There should be no scope by which to create a greasy stain on a formal tie.These are essential attributes for a working man. The bi-monthly hoovering out of the car will not offer up any fragments as a reminder of the many moments of guilty pleasure in the company of a Pork Pie.

I am not alone in my infatuation. I was amused by the recent media coverage that whilst menfolk willingly eat sparingly and healthily at home and thereby alleviate the concerns of their loved ones for risks of coronary, cholesterol, gout and obesity problems the targeted  snack market for males is booming. Man Crisps, Man sized chocolate bars, aggresive peperami's, Rustlers microwaveable burgers in a sesame topped bun, pizza's associated with watching football, Walls sausages for White Van Man and so on.

The Advertising Executives have done their homework and research well. My age group, whilst burdened by mortgages, pensions and petrol costs will always find enough loose change in the car ash tray, under the car seat or in the linings of coat and suit pockets to stretch to wholesome comfort food.

Long Live the Pork Pie. Now, where is the nearest village with a shop and chiller cabinet? That's an idea- an App or Sat Nav specifically for that purpose........