Archangel

Another strange coincidence. There have been a few lately, perhaps more than would normally be expected.

I know not why.

These have involved persons, places and events. Some I have fallen out of familiarity with or just plain forgotten over time. Trouble is, as soon as a distant memory is re-kindled by chance, a passing mention or even something on the TV or radio there is an almost immediate reinforcement by bumping into someone not seen or heard from for a long time, getting a letter about something long archived or a resurfacing of old issues.

This has been the situation this week. There has been a dramatisation of the 1951 book, 'The Cruel Sea' by Nicholas Monsarrat. The film version was amongst the black and white gems broadcast over the Christmas and New Year period but I only caught a short section, whilst channel hopping, with Jack Hawkins in his duffle coat on the open Bridge of HMS Compass Rose before the action really kicked off.

I admit that a copy of the book has been on the shelf and within reach for at least thirty years and I have frequently pulled at the spine with a view to actually reading it but not so far. The radio version, over two hour long episodes, has made me determined to spend time in the pages of the book. I expect to be as distressed and disturbed by the written word as I have been by the harrowing adaptation on the airwaves.

Montsarrat based his story on his own experiences of naval escort duty for the convoys of merchant shipping in the North Atlantic and to Russia which took place from 1941 until the end of the Second World War. The latter was a response to Stalin's demand for help to stem the huge losses in manpower, civilians and territory being exacted by the armed forces of Germany at that time. The allied convoys delivered, in that period, over four million tons of armaments from guns to lorries as well as general supplies from telephone wire to army boots.

The task was the most arduous and challenging for those at sea not just from wind, waves and ice but from a constant and materialised threat by the naval and air power of the mainly Norway based military of Germany including the prowling wolf packs of U-Boats. In the four years of the supply runs to Russia a total of 78 convoys made the journey in both directions. Out of 1400 merchant ships in this period 85 were lost to action or accident and the Naval escort lost 16 main vessels including 2 Cruisers and 6 Destroyers. The losses on the German side were as significant to surface ships and involving over 30 U Boats.

The facts are well documented but the first hand account given by Montsarrat really demonstrates the human impact of a harsh environment and the persistent menace of peril. For its time the book was seen as a rarity in its portrayal of the sheer futility of war. The film was acclaimed similarly as an antidote to a trend for jingoistic and Imperialistic depiction of the main theatres of war coming from the Hollywood studios. The main characters are thrown together from various former civilian roles and classes and struggle to cope with their shipside responsibilities and the cramped, cold and claustrophobic conditions on board. Back-stories show problems at home, hesitancy and lack of self confidence and esteem, friction between the Officers and Ratings but with a common bond, to survive physically and mentally, developing amongst the adversity.

The threat of being torpedoed with no warning must have been unbearable particularly to the crew below decks who would have little chance to escape. The Escort vessels, although at risk, were fast and manoeuvrable and adopted a zig-zag course through the convoy lines both to sweep for U Boats and to temper their superior speed compared to the heavily laded steamer, freighters and tankers. The sights and sounds of an attack by a torpedo on a slow moving, highly flammable fuel ship cannot be appreciated without having been there, nor the torment and torture of the crew in having to abandon ship but into a sea of burning oil.

I have been moved and distressed by the recollections of actions in just one part of the World War and from just one book that was published in 1951.

So why has it taken until 2013 for proposals to be discussed to recognise the courage, endeavour and suffering of those men and women, Naval, Merchant and Civilians who served on the Atlantic and Russian Convoys?

Squareback and Sides

There is an interesting vehicle database on the net entitled  'How Many Left?'.

It is both demoralising and encouraging upon reading particularly if you, like me, have a lifelong interest in cars and specific models that played an important role in your life or figured in those now hazy but fond memories of growing up. The trend is definitely downwards in terms of numbers of particular makes and models still registered with DVLA. A bit obvious given the relative fragility of automotive materials over time.

This passion could relate to your very first car, possibly something barely roadworthy and a challenge to stay alive in during the inevitable hand brake turns, cornering at unsafe speeds, not taking into account road and driving conditions or disregard for other traffic on the increasingly congested highways and by-ways of the UK. I did some madcap things on four wheels in those early years following the decision by a dour Civil Servant that I was competent to drive.

Immediately post- driving test comes a honeymoon period of careful and diligent attention. There is that strange moment on the first ever solo drive when the emotions are torn between a feeling of absolute freedom and in equal quantity, panic stricken loneliness. It is not too long however until a sense of casual immortality takes over and that can be the most dangerous period for a young driver. I was saved from serious harm by the actual vehicle in which I started my solo driving experience. It was a 1966 Mini which had been inherited from a distant elderly relative and when it arrived to be shared with my two sisters in 1979 it only had about 6000 miles on the clock. Perhaps it should have been sold on at that stage as a collectors item because in the subsequent years of use it did suffer from a few prangs, malfunctions, mis-use and overloading. It did survive and was sold last year to an enthusiast who intended to fully renovate it.

Compared to todays pocket rocket cars the Mini was positively sedate in performance although with the seat of your pants so close to the road surface any speed over 40mph seemed so much quicker. Road holding was tremendous and I have only ever experienced similar whilst hurtling around between tyre barriers in a Go-Kart.

I had an interest in cars from a very early age and could, at about 5 years I am told,  identify most types of car on the road. Not too difficult really in 1968 given that there were not many makes and models around and certainly not a lot of European or non-British manufacturers yet in popular demand.

A defining memory was my Father taking me to the Motor Show at Earls Court, London in 1969. I still have the Guide Book for the event which is as chunky as a telephone book. It was fascinating to browse through even without any photographs or pictures to capture my attention. I expect that many of the advertisers and manufacturers failed with the demise of the British Car Industry over the following couple of decades.

My main fascination with car makes came from my collection of Matchbox and Corgi models. Of course I ripped open and threw away the boxes and although I destroyed any future residual value by doing so I do not regret it now.....much. Play value, food for the imagination and that word..fun..were priceless.

Exotic cars jumped out at me from the Toy Shop window in town. De Tomaso Pantera, Aston Martin, Lamborghini, Ferrari, Jaguar, Ford GT and Maserati, all in gawdy, glossy finished scale models some with opening doors, boots and bonnets. These high performance models have survived in full size in reasonable numbers although are still rarely seen out on the open road because of their insurance costs and residuals. Against these top range cars in my toy collection would be the everyday ones such as VW, basic Fords, Vauxhalls and a few French makes including Citroen and Matra-Simca. These in reality have been decimated by corrosion, pot holes and just becoming less stylish and desirable. Better examples have been preserved by Owners Clubs in pristine and authentic condition or customised, hot-rodded and modified in almost comic homage to the original.

The family cars, chosen and purchased by my parents, were functional but also being VW Estates, quite rare on the roads in the early 1970's. The 1600 Variant Squareback, bought brand new in 1971, has been inherited by my brother Mark and I am thrilled to say that, just yesterday, it passed its MOT and this weekend may be taken out on the road legally for the first time since 1979 .

This dedication and faith to the Variant accounts for the increase in numbers for that make and model on the ' How Many left' records from 30 to 31 in roadworthy condition. Nice One Mark.

Davros and the dustbins

My wife slept with a Dalek.

Sounds a bit like a spurious claim for intergalactic child support on The Jeremy Kyle Show if it did ever go universal, but it is true.

I should qualify the statement somewhat.

My wife worked at an International Telephone Exchange on the night shift and staff were allowed to rest up in a communal dormitory during their designated breaks. On her particular team when drowsing was a colleague who had, in previous employment, worked on the BBC TV Doctor Who series as a Dalek.

To children of the 1960's the Daleks were the first great horror experience on television before the watershed of 8pm and even today I admit to still being a bit scared and wary of them. This fear has been compounded in recent years by the realisation that the multi-coloured dustbins are now able to fly. Just going upstairs in a house had been an option for escape from the Daleks - but no longer.

After a few weeks of Obituary Announcements for those who played in part in entertaining and enthralling me as a child, including Ray Bradbury, Richard Briers and Bob Godfrey I now have to add to the death list the name of Raymond Cusick.

I was not aware of the man or his actual role in my childhood until reading about his conceptual design for the Daleks leading up to their first appearance on our screens in 1963.

His name will certainly have been credited at the end of each Doctor Who broadcast listings but I will have missed these from my hiding place behind the settee or under an upholstered cushion pressed tightly on my hot, flushed face.

A typical brief for a space villain in the minds of the under 10's age group, as I was, would include an electronic synthesised and menacing voice, an armoury of fantastic, noisy pulverising weapons, the ability to time travel and an intention to dominate the known galaxy. I would not have envisaged that these evil attributes could be carted about in a glorified dustbin on, initially, wobbly wheels as though a descendant of a pensioners shopping trolley.

The Daleks were required to meet a specification for a fictional extra-terrestrial race of mutants and Raymond Cusick came across the distinctive shape and profile apparently whilst at the dinner table. A demonstration of how such an influential race were expected to move was illustrated by the movement of a pepper shaker and the idea stuck.

There is quite an elaborate back-story to the Dalek race and I recall the involvement of the character Davros who was to my young mind, an inside out Dalek with liquid solutions and electronic probes keeping him alive and always thinking about his next evil deed. The best thing about the Daleks was their relentless quest to eliminate the human race and a group of us would, on summer evenings, after the programme but before bedtime, cavort about in each others back gardens making as best as we could the 'Exterminate' sounds accompanied by saliva filled explosive and destruction noises.

They were happy times even though we would occasionally scan the skies for any signs of an actual invasion force from space. It would not be all doom and gloom however for mankind. My Gran lived in a bungalow nearby and would be able to command a premium price from a Dalek looking for a manageable single storey and level floor living space near Scunthorpe, if it figured as a desirable location in their master-plan of galactic domination. Why not?

In celebration of Cows

Is there such a thing as a World Celebration Day for Cows?

Their contribution to the human race has been immense since their domestication some 5000 years ago and I thought it would be nice to show some appreciation of this.

We may think we know a bit about these animals as they have always been around in our lives from cutesy soft toys, those milk carton novelties that moo-ed when turned over to featuring in children's story books and nursery rhymes but at the same time most of us in the UK do not have to travel far to see the real thing on a daily basis.

We should all be able to recount a few facts and myths about cows as well as tales of personal experience.

I spent a few days on a dairy farm in Somerset that belonged to my Father's cousins. The herd of 70 or so cows would be brought in from the pastures in the early hours to the milking parlour and under the artificial light in the winter months or the pale washy sunlight in summer relieved of their natural produce. I would keep well away from the herd because they did seem to be quite intimidating as well as, without warning, likely to evacuate their bowels under some tangible pressure and direction. My sisters got badly splashed and traumatised.

My Father's younger cousin would connect up and operate the milking machine from the concrete trench below and between the ranks of stalls which would cater for 20 animals at a time. All of the cows were individually named although to my unfamiliar eye I could not distinguish one of the distinctive black and white Friesians from another. The markings are all different like a fingerprint and each, according to David, had an individual character and temperament. Modern domestic cows are believed to come from only two species, Bos Taurus or Bos Indicus but there are about 920 different breeds worldwide.

Saying that did suggest a mutual respect between man and beast but on a few occasions they did throw about their bulk and weight indiscriminately and this did result in a few crushed ribs and broken limbs.

I was always thrilled by the ladling out and drinking of fresh milk from an open churn at cow-body temperature of 38 degrees Celsius before the chilling process for preservation at 4 degrees Celsius.

I would help after the 3 hours of milking to escort the cows back to the field although I got the impression that they were well capable of doing this unsupervised. The herd had to be destroyed during a subsequent outbreak of Foot and Mouth Disease and milk production on the farm ended. The impact on the farming family was devastating on many fronts.

My next close-up experience of cows was in my late teens. The large public common land on the west side of my home town had grazing rights for qualifying citizens and from March to October there would be a surly bunch of young heifers and bulls milling about under the horse chestnut trees or causing mayhem amongst the traffic on the three main roads which crossed and led into town. They would loiter about on the verge before blindly but intentionally making their way into the pathway of vehicles. Motorists had little choice but to skid to an attempted halt before impact with about a ton of muscle and hide. One of my classmates had a collision with a cow on his first motorbike. He had to pay for the body of the unfortunate animal to be removed.

Some cows did manage to work out how to cross the metal cattle grid and visit the town centre. The traditional pit and grate form was replaced for a few years with just painted yellow lines in response to some psychological study that the arrangement inhibited the wanderings of cows. They still came into town and in larger numbers.

My Father was a main instigator and organiser of a campaign to raise sponsorship to buy reflective collars for the grazing cows to reduce road fatalities. These fitted a bit like Sam Browne belt on a cyclist but had to be regularly retrieved from the hawthorn hedges, boundary fences and the lower boughs of the Common trees where discarded during a rubbing and scratching session. The campaign excited considerable media interest including a TV crew from Japan.

I played a lot of football up on a rough grass pitch with goalposts on one of the few flatter sections of the Common. It was a good laugh to try to land a high ball in a pile of cow dung at the same time as the recipient of the pass was crouched down and concentrating on controlling it after it hit the ground. Splat was a very onomatopoeic sound.

It is good advice to keep a respectful distance from a grazing cow as they can be easily startled if approached. They do actually have good all round vision and senses but this can not be fully evident during their 14 hour a day regime of grazing and ruminating in their four compartment bellies. Whilst out dog walking with my wife we were menacingly corralled and eventually chased out of a meadow by a large herd of cows which definitely ranks as one of my scariest moments. There was recently a spate of fatalities at the hoofs of cows which although tragic did not really surprise me on the basis of my own narrow escape. Do not therefore be fooled by the impression given by cows of a gentle nature, docile, placid and unintelligent. They know what they are doing.

Conspiracy theories aside, the cow family have contributed greatly to human development. They have been wealth enabling through ownership and trading, abundant in the production of milk and the many associated foods and goods, providers of hides and by-products and a reason for the survival of much of the character of our agricultural pastures against great pressure for development. On a basic and practical issue I always check that I have an umbrella and coat when I see a field of cows in the lying down position because tradition and folklore dictates that it is likely to rain. Well worth at least one day a year in celebration just for that.

Pudding Club

Pretty much a coincidence but my 21st February blog was about Rhubarb and on the  very same day the creator and animator Bob Godfrey died. His best known character was Roobarb, a scatty, mischievous, enthusiastic and loveable, bright green coloured dog.

Ask anyone of current age 45 to 55 about this cartoon series and chances are they could give a rendition of the distinctive, mad theme tune with no great difficulty.

I found it greatly surprising that only 30 episodes of the original series were ever made and yet for five minutes, just before the 6 O'clock News and my childhood teatimes from 1974 they became a permanent fixture. I can appreciate my Mother's frustration at preparing a filling and nutritious meal only for it to get cold at an empty table as me and my siblings enjoyed the antics of Roobarb and his sidekick, Custard the pink cat.

The cat was the complete opposite of Roobarb, smarmy, cynical and calculating against the chaos, frenetic actions and lunacy that was the life of the dog.

The series was also narrated by Richard Briers who, only 3 days prior to the news of Bob Godfrey's demise, had himself died. I can see a great upsurge in demand for counselling and psychiatric services for those in my age group at this catastrophic double tragedy, the loss of stability and permanence in our memories.

What was so compelling about the cartoon?

At a time of smooth, sophisticated productions by the large American studios at Disney and Hanna Barbera, often beautifully drawn and sometimes 20 to 30 minutes long, Roobarb was crude and rudimentary. The animated frames were hand drawn in felt tip pen, or so it seemed, and the style was jumpy and erratic and as far detached as possible from the US offerings such as Scooby Doo Where are You?, Hong Kong Phooey and of course Tom and Jerry.

The style of animation was called 'boiling' and apt for the turmoil and energy that it portrayed from the two main characters as well as an amusing collection of ragged and disjointed birds always not too far away from the action.

The theme music and incidental soundtrack for Roobarb were distinctive and also rough and ready. Richard Briers offered a well known reassuring vocal to a young audience with precise delivery of the offbeat humour in the script. The titles for the episodes captured the interest of  potentially distracted, low blood sugar and ultimately hungry viewers immediately in that pre-teatime slot that had also featured, in the 1970's, The Herbs, Hectors House, Captain Pugwash and The Clangers. These animated shows were a difficult act to follow but Roobarb coped well.

Three particularly memorable episode titles and storylines were "When Roobarb didn't see the sun come up", when Roobarb tried "to find the source of the pond" and when, in his pirate outfit he discovered "when there wasn't treasure".

Even in my 50th year I can recall a great line of the script which went along the lines of "sound travels further at night....because it is cheaper".

The series soon attained cult status and the fondness in which it is remembered has been perpetuated in modern culture. The lead characters are mentioned in song lyrics, the theme tune has been sampled in pop songs and comedy broadcasts, a second series was produced in 2005 and there has been a recent resurgence in marketing rights spawning books of the TV series and an interactive web-site.

As with most attempts by cold and heartless commercial merchandising companies  to exploit nostalgia and to relieve my age group of their hard earned cash through childhood memories I do not feel obliged to participate.

The 1974 originals were of a specific genre and style and at a time in our own lives that gave them that special quality and timelessness. A bit like the baked beans, tinned macaroni cheese, dippy eggs and soldiers, spaghetti hoops and fish fingers that followed the 5 minute shows around a happy and entertained family group.

This classic status of the animated series can be appreciated even today in overheated arguments in pubs, wine bars and bistros between 50 somethings who stand by differing  views over whether the series was called just "Roobarb" or the popular misconception that it was "Roobarb and Custard". The poor misguided fools.

Hot fried porridge

Elizabeth always thinks of me when she goes to visit her family in Scotland.

That is mainly because I am one of the few people she knows who are not first generation Scottish but who actually like that delicacy from north of the border known as White Pudding. I do have Scottish ancestry through my grandparents and something in my genes has awoken a longing for periodic consumption.

I once spent my entire saved up holiday money, a fair few pounds even in the 1970's, in the supermarket on the Blair Atholl Camp Site, Perthshire on the stuff and I seem to remember that I ate it all myself over a few cooked breakfasts in the family tent.

I was not being greedy.

The rest of my family could not bring themselves to eat any of it. It was, in my juvenile opinion, their loss. I have some appreciation of their position because White Pudding is not the most aesthetically pleasing of foods. It can be a bit off putting in anaemic sausage form resembling those rare piles of dog excrement which are chalky white and coarsely textured when seen on the pavement or in the local park. Although not perceived to be a health hazard until the 1990's it was quite common for sheeps brains to be used as a binding agent in the mix. Of course the concerns over links to CJD, BSE or Scrapie have since outlawed this application for offal.

White Pudding can also be bought in slices which are more user-friendly and at least give some clue as to how they are to be cooked. Simply fried. You may be familiar with black pudding or blood pudding as it is sometimes called. The white version is similar in composition but only likely to be offered on a menu in Scotland, Ireland, Northumberland, Nova Scotia and Newfoundland.

It is an oatmeal based product and can be made from pork meat , beef suet or even in vegetarian format although in this latter example may resemble just a greasy porridge blob.

My particular favourite is the pork composition with suet and bread added to the oatmeal base. This can also be made quite spicy from careful seasoning and therefore not dissimilar to haggis. It is most frequently found on a breakfast plate and compliments the usual sausage, fried egg, bacon, black pudding as per the Irish version or with the added English servings of mushrooms, tomatoes or kidneys.

It is also a bit more versatile and the classic serving is mince and tatties. The Scottish chippies have white pudding battered and crispy in hot oil and therefore an ideal main course for the culturally rooted deep fried mars bar. It can also make a nice savoury stuffing for a chicken.

I have rarely found it myself in the chiller cabinets in my local Tesco or Sainsbury's . I have on occasion but ultimately in vain searched the ethnic foods section hoping to stumble across a secret consignment behind the foods of the Orient and the Indian Sub Continent . I have therefore to rely on the kindness of Elizabeth to source what I consider to be a real treat and I have just taken delivery of 8 chunky slices which will take pride of place on my plate in the morning. A great start to a weekend.

Good News

The car radio, set on a favourite comedy show is interrupted by a ringing over the speaker.

I can see the caller display on my mobile phone. I know full well who it is. It is late in the day and I am tired and ready for a cup of tea back at the office. I have half a mind to ignore the call and let it go to voicemail.

It is the regular, at least once a month contact with David. He always calls at about the same time, perhaps a natural break in his own day, an empty moment in his routine or just to satisfy his own curiosity about what is happening in Hull.

I have met him a few times, face to face over the last 10 years and we have got on well. He has bought a few houses in the city to rent out although he lives a good distance away in the rural depths of the next county. The call to me always starts with a request for an update on the property market. I have had to disappoint him over the last 5 years because nothing has really happened in terms of improved demand, saleability and prices.

He did manage to assemble his collection of small terraced, mainly 2 bed renters, at reasonably affordable prices in the period before the boom of 2005 to 2007 and so experienced a general increase in values that made the mortgage debts easier to meet with the income from tenants. Although the market fell away sharply in 2008 the demand for private rented accommodation was sustainable and indeed rents crept up slowly as people were corralled into this sector after losing their own homes or having been evicted by other landlords.

I find myself starting each of my monthly updates with a re-run of this scenario. David always sounds downbeat and downtrodden in the first few minutes of our conversations. He would like to sell up and escape the responsibilities and liabilities of being a landlord, and a reluctant one at that in spite of his apparent earlier willingness to invest. There are however no takers.

The huge influx of investors and speculators who flocked to Hull to buy up the cheap housing, by average UK prices, had disappeared as rapidly as their 4 x 4's and away day rail tickets had brought them. A few chancers were left who would be happy to steal away your hard earned portfolio at a fraction of their actual value even in a recession. Some landlords were in a difficult position with an unsympathetic or wholly dismissive Lender and a few small property empires tumbled and fell through repossession and other circumstances of forced sale.

In fact, David has bought well and his modest houses are spread around the lower number postcode districts where local demand for rented is good.

I have learnt, from our conversations, to let him rip and vent his frustrations and anxieties. I am a bit of a counsellor and agony uncle combined with The Samaritans in this regard.

His properties are full and although there are inevitable periods of rental void and arrears he is meeting his financial obligations.

He has had one drug factory in the back rooms of what was a decent older terraced house. He first knew of it when the Police contacted him with the information that they had broken in and made an arrest of his tenant and associates after a tip off about a distinctive smell in the neighbourhood.

It was a mess after the very moist and humid growing conditions for cannabis plants had rotted the place from inside out. The Police had been quite accusatory to David as though they had him in the frame as the Mr Big. This was compounded a few weeks later when a Police helicopter hovered for an unnecessarily and suspiciously long period over his actual home address as though scanning with a heat seeking camera. He laughed with me now but the whole thing had made him a nervous wreck for some considerable time.

By now I have been parked up by the roadside for about 15 minutes but I am sitting comfortably with driver seat set back and my legs stretched out up to the pedals. I am likely to be about half way only through the conversation.

We discuss what options David might have to move into different areas of property. He quite likes the idea of developing run down premises or even buying a shop or some type of commercial property as a natural progression in his investment in bricks and mortar. In the background I can hear the sounds of echoing footsteps and large items being dragged across a floor. David is at his own place of work and he gets me up to speed with the state of the market in his area of expertise in cardboard boxes, cartons and packaging. It is an interesting trade of our own business knowledge.

I try to seek an opportunity to break off the phone call but cannot get a word in.

I find myself overtalking David which I know is a rude and inconsiderate trait but he rattles on now introducing a wide sweep of topics and subjects as though mopping up and seeking consensus or otherwise on his own views. We avoid politics, sport, families, wives and racial issues and so the main theme of the property market returns and we make closing statements.

It is now a 45 minute conversation before there is an embarrassing enough silence to prompt our goodbyes. I feel physically and mentally exhausted but I expect David is wholly refreshed and reinvigorated in his spirit and determination to persist with his love affair with the tenant population of Hull. I feel that I have played my part in the big machine albeit as a very small and insignificant cog.

Kept in the dark and fed with pooh

My lack of success in growing rhubarb has always been a great disappointment to me.

The prized and prolific clump of rhubarb from my late Father in Laws back yard was, with reverence and respect, transported to our house as part of the legacy of the quiet but very wise and humorous man after his untimely departure.

I transplanted it in the most fertile part of the garden and in a spot which would receive the best and appropriate proportions of sunlight and rainfall . I had great expectations for the rhubarb to thrive and return to its huge productivity. It was not to be.

There was a brief flourish as the first nutrients from the clay soils seeped into the tender stems but the perfect nursery conditions for this rather exotic addition to our outlook from the distant kitchen window could not be achieved. The plant, which originated from Mongolia and Siberia, was genetically disposed to pretty harsh conditions but not those in our back garden.

I took this as being an affront to the memory of George. We would not, soon or ever, be celebrating his life to the piping hot aroma of a home grown rhubarb crumble or stewed with a rich, syrupy sweet sauce . As a child I would relish the treat of sliced, raw rhubarb stalks for dipping in a large, teeth rotting mound of Tate and Lyle caster sugar. Even that would remain a distant memory.

I sometimes lie awake in the early hours asking myself and my God what more I could have done to encourage the rhubarb to take root.

Apparently, my main problem was geographical in that I lived well outside of the Rhubarb Triangle- a 9 square mile area in West, and not East ,Yorkshire which once produced 90% of the world's supply of the stuff.

In my opinion they also cheated a bit in that the production process involved 'forced' cultivation methods. This practice was developed in the early 1800's. In addition to the cold, wet weather conditions which prevailed between Leeds, Bradford and Wakefield these same large, sprawling urban areas produced huge amounts of human and animal based waste. A fleet of wagons would, on a daily basis, haul the excrement or 'night soil' from the packed and stacked slums and well to do houses alike and take it into the surrounding countryside for use as natural fertiliser. Horse manure was also abundant and the blended material including discarded wool debris from the commercial mills was put to good use.

The first years of a rhubarb plant are tough. They are left out in the fields for a minimum of two to two and a half years without being harvested in order for the sunlight catalysed absorption of nutrients to take place. As the winter months approach at the end of such a cycle the roots are exposed to harsh frost before being carefully moved into large forcing sheds that fringe the growing fields. The sheds are kept completely darkened and in a heated environment, taking advantage of cheap coal from the Yorkshire Mines, the rhubarb stems are fooled into transforming the carbohydrate goodness into glucose which gives the distinctive bittersweet flavour.

The shed hot houses produce a very tender shoots under anaemic green yellow broad-leaves and in 2 foot lengths of textured, crimson delight.

If a Yorkshireman from the Triangle growing area offered an invitation to a sweetheart for a candlelit evening then she knew best to bring wellington boots and oilskins. The stalks were pulled in such artificial light as bright and strong exposure would halt growth. The crop would be fully harvested by the end of the long winter and early spring.

In the age of steam trains special Express Services would take the rhubarb to the Spitalfields and Covent Garden markets in London or for export to Europe. It took until 2010 for a group of producers from the Rhubarb Triangle to be awarded the Protected Designation of Origin for 'Yorkshire Forced Rhubarb'. The twelve farmers, as instigators behind the application to the EU,  represented a mere rump of those involved in the production process from the 1800's. The forcing method had originally included hundreds of growers, individual smallholders and market gardeners and with a proliferation of the often extensive covered acres in the heated timber sheds.

A combination of world, economic and consumer factors marked 1939 as the tipping point for rhubarb production in this way. The Ministry of Food saw the careful nurturing of the plants for up to two and a half years as a waste of valuable growing land and resources and the immature green field grown stalks were commandeered to be made into jam for rationing in the war years. Fixed pricing for wartime rhubarb saw a flourishing of Black Market business.  Increasing shortages of cheap coal on the doorstep of the Triangle led to a reliance on increasingly costly imported oil. The arrival after the war of a wider range of fruits relegated rhubarb from the perception and shopping baskets of the public. The coverage of the Triangle retracted accordingly from its zenith of 30 square miles to the current 9. Land, previously under the broad leaves of rhubarb, has been lost in large tracts to residential development across the West Yorkshire conurbation on a regular, creeping basis in the post war years.

The rhubarb industry does survive, just, in its natural geographic location and is celebrated for its cultural and economic heritage with a Festival and a Sculpture.

This is little comfort to me, however, following my miserable failings to nurture George's prized rhubarb in the East Yorkshire Rectangle that is supposed to be my productive vegetable plot.

Rude Material

The word is Clunch.

It sounds like it could be a swear word or an anatomical part.

In modern language it could be a combination word produced by an auto-text facility.

I see it being used to describe that awkward moment of meeting between two longstanding male friends when a hug is called for but genitals must not be seen to come into contact.

It could equally refer to a gathering of dieting office workers around a canteen table where caloric values for respective dry corn or yoghurt based snacks are being compared. An account in a local paper of a vehicle collision with a Restaurant may use the word as a graphic and onomatopoeic headline, plus exclamation mark.

I like to think of the word being used to describe that mechanical process in an old classic car with no gear box syncromesh when a steep hill looms up ahead and a change down is required.

One final one, unless you have some good interpretations yourself, is to describe the deductions of a highly intelligent detective sleuth based on a natural sense and feeling of a crime or misdemeanour.

The real meaning of Clunch is quite plain and on first impression, uninteresting, but in fact it has played quite an influential part in the history of the buildings of our country.

Clunch is a traditional construction material based on English chalk stone. It can consist of a variety of materials either quarried, excavated, cleared from the land or scrounged and when amalgamated and bedded in mortar it can be used for structural purposes from a mighty Cathedral down to a simple boundary wall. It was seen as cheap and readily available in areas where good quality stone was not in abundance.

The Romans, during their occupation of England, used this hardened form for civil engineering but not much has survived because of the susceptibility of the material to disintegrate from frost. Clunch was popular for craftsmen to work with as it was reputed to be capable of cutting with a saw rather than requiring specialist stonemasonry and tools.

Notable buildings so constructed include:

St George's Chapel at Windsor Castle  http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1990408,
Lulworth Castle http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/868135
and internal features at Ely Cathedral http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/1601505

The chalk originated in the Cretaceous Age some 143 to 65 million years ago and from various embedded impurities it has a greyish white colour and sometimes with a greenish tinge. It is however quite a warm and comforting hue and a few paint manufacturers do refer to Clunch in their sample books and colour swatches. It is often found as a decorative finish in Listed or Heritage Buildings.

There are still active quarries in the South and East of England producing the materials for different markets and large blocks are well suited for working by sculptors or for show pieces such as landscape features for Horticultural Shows . The obsessively superstitious have an apparent craving for lucky stones made out of Clunch.

It may be a softish material as far as its building applications go, but as a small boy I do recall a painful experience when I was nastily grazed by a coming together with a Clunch wall of a building in Thetford, Norfolk. In that particular moment I felt that a constant muttering of that word under my breath was the best sounding, pretend swear word in my small world.

Whodunnit?

There are rules for just about everything.

Our Society is based on fundamental laws;  we drive our vehicles to a Highway Code, we live our own lives to a moral code and assemble flat pack furniture in accordance with a schematic.

We may, once in a while, feel like a bit of a rebellion against such codes of conduct and feel momentarily better for flaunting a minor legality, speeding or eating whilst on four or two wheels, setting fire to something or just winging it on returning from IKEA with a large cardboard box of bits and pieces.

We learn things in a systematic way and even now, some 40 years after having had to memorise and then recite a poem by A A Milne at a Music Festival I can still spill out the words on an occasion where "could we have some butter for the Royal slice of bread" comes in useful in an everyday conversation or situation.

From my interest in Science Fiction there is the adherence to the Laws of Robotics as devised by Isaac Asimov to govern how such entities behave towards humans. The laws are inter-related but, let's face it, if robots do ever reach a state of superiority over their creators and have the intelligence to work out their own moral compass and constraints then we are probably doomed anyway. I can see a Fourth Law coming into play in such a scenario which dismisses the preceeding three allowing robots and mechanicals to run amok and take our livelihoods and children. The laws have however brought about some general consistency and stability in writings of a science fiction genre.

I was therefore pleased to see a similar set of rules applicable to Detective Fiction.

These were drawn up in the late 1920's by Monsignor Ronald A, Knox , himself a detective story writer, but more than that also in being a bit of a humourist, literary critic, editor and a clergyman.

The inter war period was widely seen to have been a Golden Age for the genre and the Monsignor felt it appropriate but not without wit and mischief to produce ten rules for budding authors. These include bare-faced common sense and issues fundamental to a convincing and authentic plot line as well as somewhat outrageous and contentious subjects and in one example, a xenophobic attitude bordering on stereotypical racism. In no particular order these are;

The criminal must be someone mentioned in the early part of the story, but must not be anyone whose thoughts the reader has been allowed to follow.

There must be no reliance on supernatural or preternatural agencies.

Not more than one secret room or passage is allowable.

The use of hitherto undiscovered poisons is banned as is the use of any appliance requiring a long and laborious scientific explanation at the end.

No Chinaman must figure in the story

The Detective must not be helped by an accident or have some sudden, inexplicable intuition which proves, ultimately to be correct.

The Detective must not commit a crime him or herself.

Clues, not instantly produced for the reader, must not be followed

If the Detective has a bit of a bumbling, stupid but well meaning assistant then he must speak aloud any thoughts and must be seen to be slightly less intelligent than the average reader.

The use in a storyline of identical twins or convincing doubles cannot be sprung on a reader unless adequate groundwork has been made to introduce them.

In producing these rules the Monsignor shows a great knowledge and understanding of detective Fiction of his era in the 1920's . However, these are now very much dated and in the modern world of writing I can already think of many, many examples and some subsequently dodgy movie adaptations where these have been completely ignored and disregarded. The genre is much the poorer for the anarchy which has arisen in the relentless pursuit of notoriety, fame, wealth, industry recognition and awards.

Band of Bothers

I was the longest serving third cornet player in Brigg Town Silver Band.

There was a steady succession of new cornet players, some very young who through ability, determination, pushy parents and many hours of dedicated practice soon progressed to second and eventually first cornet ranks.

I was left behind in the equivalent of the cheap seats in the best theatre. I wasn't too bothered because I was doing the brass band thing for my grandfather who had been a longstanding member of a band and that had been a major part of his life. Pursuing a serious musical interest is hard work and does impact on things I, as a 13 and 14 year old would certainly prefer doing like playing footie, watching TV, gadding about on bikes and discovering girls.

Band practice was on a monday night in an upstairs room above a town centre public house. I cycled from home just on the new estate on the eastern outskirts of the town with my cornet case strapped, with those brightly coloured elasticated straps, onto a rack secured to the seatpost and over the rear wheel. My formative sense of humour had led me to purchase a red and yellow elongated sticker saying 'SHORT VEHICLE' which finished off the whole ensemble. Geeky or what?

The staircase to the band room was dark and rickety and the room itself was similar. Fusty and dusty from the one only regular use. We sat on Pub chairs arranged in a crescent shape around the conductors plinth. The age range of the band members was from around 12 up to 60, the latter forming the heart of the band being the double bass players, invariably with a pint of best ale at their feet, euphonium section specialising in horse racing tips and the trombones who were the main practical jokers. Three ranks of cornets, flugel and tenor horns and the equivalent of Wayne Rooney in the soprano cornet .

The band were all locals but on occasion we had a visiting celebrity from one of the Premier League of brass bands who showed us the vast void between our lowly third divison outfit and the big boys. The practice always started with a hymn and even to this day I feel tears welling up at the sound of 'Abide with Me', partly because of the achingly melancholy sound in brass and partly because I was quite crap at third cornet. More air seemed to escape out of the sides of my mouthpiece than find its way down the tortuous tubes to produce a nice sound. To the listener, my contribution will have certainly sounded like an authentic hiss on an old 78 rpm record.

We were encouraged to practice in our own time and, through our school tutors, to acheive improved Grades under the Royal School of Music. I got as far as none.

Those were heady days of practice for competition and concerts. The pride on the face of my grandfather at the Corn Exchange concerts made my adventure in brass banding worthwhile many times over.

In local area terms we were the best, Humberside Band of the Year in successive years albeit against limited competition mostly bands from smaller towns and villages from both sides of the river (Estuary, sorry).

I travelled widely in my mid teens to compete on De Montfort Hall stage in Leicester (following in the footsteps of Led Zeppelin and Deep Purple), in Nottingham and in many miners welfare clubs although the heavy smoke screen in the pre-ban days now makes my memory of actual venues a bit hazy and my fear of carcinogenic passive smoking all the more prevalent.

The competition days were long and a bit tedious waiting around for the call to assemble in the wings of the stage, resplendent in black trousers, shiny shoes, white shirt and dickie bow tie. We usually got a top ten placing but no cigar or mention in dispatches. I had to be picked up by my parents on return to the band room  in the very early hours, tired and very much of smoky odour to clothes and hair.

I cannot now remember how my band days ended. I like to think we just outgrew each other and parted company but I really think that I was ousted unceremoniously by a group of child prodigy third cornet players with those ever present pushy parents.

In fact we just moved house to another area, a bit like a protection programme for the musically incompetent.

(Another repeat but I have had a busy day plus a visit to the in-laws)

Consumer Society

The UK Economy is monitored on a monthly basis in order to produce information by which the movers and shakers in positions of power and influence make their decisions, with or without an actual understanding of what goes on in the real day to day lives of the people.

We are bombarded with figures and opinions which confuse and mislead, for example, the value of the Pound Sterling may be falling against other currencies so that we get less for our money whilst holidaying abroad or purchasing foreign made goods but this makes our own exports seem more attractive in overseas markets and manufacturers have a boom period.

It is this type of reverse logic that helped me to get through Economics as a subject at school as well as being a major module in my later degree course at college. I just thought of an answer and then wrote down completely the opposite of it and I was usually correct through this wholly illogical approach.

Regular information is fed to us on inflation figures which, when expressed in percentages, may not mean much but at the supermarket checkout  the bill for what may be our regular store-cupboard purchases and nothing extravagant, just seems to creep up by a few pence on each trip.

Fluctuations in house prices and the confidence of the market are an easy news item to stir up insecurities and anguish amongst a population where home purchase and ownership was encouraged as an aspirational and asset accumulating thing. Yet many have found themselves trapped due to negative equity and burgeoning mortgage payments.

We are also supplied with statistics on life expectancy, survival probabilities of terminal illness, crime and incomes. We may feel, on alternate days, healthy, wealthy and wise or the opposite dependant on what we are fed with in terms of figures.

In the wider European and indeed global economy the UK is now compared and judged against the performance of other nations and continents in a sort of Planet Earth Premier League Table. It is accepted that we are slipping back in most categories but this seems to be indicative of an older, depleted industrially based Western economy generally. We are now more of a Service based economy and perhaps it will not be too long before a UK based call centre, for example, will be ringing up homeowners in New Delhi, Shanghai and Sao Paolo and annoyingly at meal times or well into the evenings selling payment protection insurance and undertaking consumer surveys.

Trends do change over time in the habits of a nation and in the UK this is reflected in the regular changes in the basket of goods that are used on which to base the statistics of the Retail Price Index (RPI) and the Consumer Prices Index (CPI).

The categories of goods cover from Food to Housing, Transport to Recreation, Health to Hotels and around 180,000 price quotations are obtained monthly for around 700 items and services to determine trends and patterns.

In 2012 a number of new items were added to the list and these are quite interesting, on analysis, to see what we, as a nation now buy more of.

A sample of these items neither suggests a recovery nor a further recessionary decline or double dip but does illustrate fundamental shifts in how we live and which sectors of the population have the money to spend.

New entrants include food products. Hot oat cereal may be an indicator of frugality and health concerns or even a trend for colder seasonal weather. A bowl of Ready Brek was a favourite breakfast in my childhood and even some 40 years later is still popular. What is only really a basic staple food has been re-invented to appeal to adults as well as children and with many tasty variations available. Its preparation is now so much easier than the boiling stove method and ready made products are now available.

Soft continental cheese has also arrived on the list. This may mean we are more outward looking in our tastes or health conscious if it is of lower fat content than hard cheeses. The marketing of branded soft cheeses is quite prominent during peak time viewing but blending it with chocolate, as has happened with a leading brand is, in my opinion, just a step too far.

Pineapple, generally regarded as a fruit too troublesome to prepare has appeared. We should thank the gadget makers for a range of handy utensils to extract the juicy fruit from an armoured and inhospitable host.

Unusually, a four pack of Stout Ale now figures and I have no explanation for this unless it follows another new item, in the shopping basket, of teenage fiction. What better way for a group of youths to have a book club on a park bench whilst downing strong beer. The only other explanation may be in the testimonies of those reaching a ripe old age who attribute their longevity to a daily half pint of stout and many have just assumed the practice on perceived health grounds.

Chicken and Chips are a new addition in response to an upsurge of fried chicken fast food outlets. Recent TV programmes have seen this as a sign of urban poverty and austerity as a substantial meal can be purchased for comparatively lower cost than other take-away or home cooked options and particularly in our large towns and cities.

Disturbingly there has been an upsurge in the purchase of baby wipes so we are either undergoing a population boom or using them on a multi-purpose basis.

It is not all depressing though as we are buying more tablet computers which can be a sign of affluence and aspiration.

Trade Union membership fees and subscriptions to Professions are also on the up but this may reflect feelings of insecurity in traditional unionised occupations and an increase in doctors, accountants and lawyers as the UK economy moves further away from an industrial and manufacturing base.

The new items have pushed out an equivalent number of goods.

Candy Coated chocolate has been licked in the ratings by branded chocolate sweets and the  consumption of foam based sweets has expanded to the sticky demise of bags of boiled and jellied sweets. Outdoor adventure boots have been downtrodden by specialist walking and hiking footwear. Glass ovenware casserole dishes are clearly out in spite of our enthusiastic interest in cook books and accompanying TV shows. Step ladders have had to climb down. Digital cameras have seen off the developing and printing of 135/24 colour films . Subscriptions to local leisure centres have also fallen off and the pounds and ounces are likely to mount up as a consequence amongst the former patrons.

Perfect Day

I have just conducted a very practical experiment in solar energy and from the relative discomfort of the summer house in the back garden.

If the door, which is by no means weathertight, watertight and therefore not remotely airtight, is kept shut until about 3.30pm on a still, sunny february day the internal temperature is just about bearable to sit in without going blue from hypothermia.

This is a clear demonstration, I am informed, of solar gain.

Of course , it helps that it does face due south and it has also been an unseasonably calm and blue sky day which is astounding given that just three days ago we were snowed in and expecting sustained wintry weather for a few days thereafter.

I rarely venture into the summer house because it is a terrible place. I stripped it out in the tail end of last year in an attempt to incentivise someone into buying our main house. A sort of buy one get one free promotion but with no success to date, mainly because what could be quite a trendy garden room, study shed, hobby hut or leisure loggia is just a rather tatty timber building.

No doubting though, the potential is there.

There is no floor, it rotted away a couple of years ago. Instead you step over the threshold and down a bit onto the coarse concreted oversite being careful not to commit genocide amongst the wood lice, earwings and spiders.

In the style of a Sad Show House, I have set out some garden furniture, bric-a- brac, a picture frame minus glass, backing and a picture, a TV corner unit and some failing indoor plants to give an impression of what a little oasis and refuge it could be.

There is a double socket for a brew-up or to power the radio and an electric light introducing the possibilty of use at all times of the year or even for the luxury of a convector heater if a night out in the garden took your fancy.

Otherwise, and in spite of a skip load of debris having been removed last year, the summer house has become a bit of a dumping ground again for gardening tools, the patio table, empty green waste bags, and the foldaway chairs.

I am however, very much enjoying my brief escape to the summer house.

Today has the makings of quite a perfect day and I am struggling to accept an overwhelming feeling of well-being. Why is this? I have been to work this morning, me and The Boy did 25 miles on our mountain bikes , I have power washed, dried , oiled up and greased said bikes, my wife and eldest daughter feted me with filter coffee and home made buns and all seems fine with my world.

Of course, when it is discovered that I am in the summer house there will be consequences. My domestic credits will have been forfeited by such an act of wanton selfishness and I will have to start again perhaps with tidying up the kitchen which resembles a patisserie on overtime, get some shopping in and assist in a host of other weekend chores. They will have to find me first though and may not think to search the garden for my hermits cave.

Hang on though, the watery sun has disappeared behind number 16's red tiled roof in the road running paralell to the garden and it is actually quite unpleasantly cold in the plastic garden chair. If I sneak back in to the house it will be only me and you who have an inkling what I have been up to for the past couple of treasured hours. That perfect day just goes on and on.........

Rock of Ages

Anyone buying a house from our family will be mystified by the geological composition of the back garden.

In the distant future, Mayan predictions, stray meteors, global warming , ice age and the persistence of a civilisation permitting , any analysis of the rock fragments in the location formerly occupied by our back garden will cause confusion and excitement in equal measures. The variety of rocks, stones, pebbles and fossils in situ would appear to suggest a fantastical force of natural power that has traversed the world in both northern and southern hemispheres collecting up only aesthetically pleasing shapes of igneous, sedimentary and metamorphic rocks before simultaneously depositing them in a specific spot where there is the same family name somewhere in the Deeds of ownership.

The process behind this strange phenomena is not glacial, tidal, volcanic or extra-terrestrial but because of the habit of a small boy, now a middle aged man, to find and bring home bits of geology from his travels, whether coming back from the corner shop or the far ends of the planet.

The habit started very early, perhaps unwittingly from a pebble scooped up in a saggy nappy from a crawling and rolling adventure in the great outdoors. Then with the introduction of pockets in toddler clothes there were perfect receptacles to be filled indiscriminately with pea gravel, aggregate and slate chippings. Learning to write was greatly assisted by the availability of natural chalk-stone, smooth and warm to the touch but readily sharpened by use on the pavement, garden and house walls. Some pieces were just too nice to use because of an interesting shape and texture and were the basis of the first collection. With chalk stones there always seemed to be the hard black fragments of flint close to hand. These were quite sharp and dangerous and if clashed together a shower of sparks and the smell of burning could be produced.

School projects on the history of the earth excited an interest in fossils. Just how many appendages were there to produce such a proliferation of devils toe-nails? The fossils displayed in gift shops were always so dramatic and perfect. It became a life's obsession to discover at least one of those plain lumpy rocks that, when smashed open revealed coloured crystals in concentric circles around a hollow core. Excavation of an old railway cutting had led to the discovery of a large fossilised shelled creature embedded in clay which was dragged home to take up pride of place in the growing collection.

Seaside holidays were a great source of collectable stones and pebbles. Flat, smooth examples would be sent skimming across the pools, shallows and over the incoming waves. Avid attention was necessary to count, record and loudly broadcast the number of clear skims before the pebble sank  from view or just dribbled along in rapid short hops. Beating the best by siblings had to be acheived before any thoughts or moves could be made about going home. Some skimming stones were just too good to be thrown and were thrust into sandy pockets, later to be heard tumbling around the twin tub amongst the family wash on the monday following.

Scout camps in the English Lakes, Wales and Derbyshire swelled the collection. It was found that a cardigan tied around the waist with sleeves knotted at the cuff could act as a receptacle for almost an equivalent body weight of granite,silica and iron-pyrites colloquially known as fools gold. The fatigue of the young Boy Scout over the course of one expedition in the mountains of North Wales caused concern amongst the Group Leaders until the realisation of the sheer weight of rocks that he was transporting about his person. The return from camp posed a dilemna for the boys parents over whether to take the car or hitch up the trailer in anticipation of a new collection of rocks and stones.

In adult life there were no such restraints on the volume and mass of materials to be accumulated apart from airline baggage restrictions, customs regulations and where specific locations were designated World Heritage Sites or areas of protected natural environments. The rocks and pebbles soon overwhelmed shelves, cills, ledges and table-tops. In the course of a house move there were inevitable losses or reluctant abandonment to the garden and flower beds.

The current collection is largely to be found around a small fountain at the rear of the current family home. This includes smooth marble from the Greek Islands, pebbles from the Atlantic coast of Portugal, granite from Skye, Jet from Whitby, amber from Cornwall, opal from Australia and what has widely been suspected as petrified sheep droppings from Northumberland sitting nicely amongst those ever present devils toenails.

In bright sunlight and under the rainbow arch of the fountain the arrangement of rocks, pebbles and stones resembles the planet earth as seen from outer space.

(reproduced and edited a bit from February 2012 on account of a 325 road trip including Scarborough, Withernsea and Nottingham)

Cheesy Snacks and Modern Man

I only popped into the Supermarket to get a loaf of bread and a pint of milk .

Such a simple operation was hindered by the mass ranks of doting husbands at the check-outs with basket loads of Valentines Day gifts and goodies.

It must have been the first time that some of them had been allowed to venture into that particular shop on their own because, frankly, their sense of direction and overall etiquette were sorely lacking.

I knew where I was going with steely determination because I had served my shopping apprenticeship with distinction but meandering, vague and impressionable menfolk let loose in a strange environment wreaked havoc with conventional clockwise or anti-clockwise protocol.

A bright and strikingly packaged item would draw their attention momentarily before a discernible shudder from horror and disbelief in the realisation that it was a pack of sanitary towels or other female consumer products.

They may well have come in with a single minded purpose. In between live football and the late night news on any of the preceding days they will have been reminded by a glossy  Tv advertising campaign about the rapid approach of the important day.

What better affirmation of their romantic side than to buy that complete meal with starter, main course, dessert, bottle of wine and heart shaped chocolates and at an amazingly concessionary price of £20 all in.

Each queueing male seemed to have the same ideas on wooing and entertaining with a remarkable similarity in the choice of , otherwise quite a reasonable range of dishes in the 'dine in' promotion.

Top starter was obviously Coquilles St Jaques with recyclable sea-shells perhaps seen as a poor relation but acceptable substitution for Oysters. The main course of popular choice was on the same seafood theme comprising 2 whole Sea Bass with Coriander and Red Chilli Butter and a side of gastropub chunky chips (his particular favourite style). A nicely shaped packaged dessert entitled Triple Choc Heaven was flying out of the chiller cabinet and a nice bottle of Tierra Y Hombre Sauvignon blanc would apparently, according to the label legend ,go with just about anything. In a seemingly win-win scenario the free box of white chocolate hearts could be wrapped up in the car whilst parked in that blind spot on the house driveway and passed off as an actual gift.

Whilst my overwhelming feeling was that of frustration over the unnecessarily long time it took to get through to pay at the till I was actually quite proud that British men were making a bit of an effort in the love stakes.

This was against a backdrop of relentless pressure to conform and perform with the stereotypical male depicted in the likes of Cosmo and Bella magazines or in popular fiction- damn you Christian Grey, may your goolies shrivel up and fall off.

Still, every man in that shop, with no exceptions, was prepared to accept the consequences of failure on this 14th February. This was evident from the nestling in the base of their baskets of a packet of cheesy wotsits and a bottle of premium beer just in case it was going to be a quiet, lonely evening.

Nuns and Helical Screws

It is the next stage, the second of three, in the quest to stabilise the front left hand two storey bay at the house that for the last 34 years has played a major part in the lives of our family members.

Of course, us siblings all deserted the good ship 'Lindisfarne' and moved out years ago to leave the Wrinklies in residence but we all sense that the place still welcomes us on the occasions that we drift back in ones, twos, threes or, at Christmas and New Year ,twenty fours.

Built in the late Victorian period the house is grand, double bay fronted in a pale yellow brick in the Flemish Bond pattern and will have been termed a Villa at its topping out ceremony. Built in an old orchard, as is much of the street from that period, it was placed on a substantial foundation to counter any soft or poorer load bearing sub soils.

Even before reaching damp proof course level the house was already of substantial construction with a stone staircase down to a cellar deep enough to stand up in but not advisable to try to dance energetically in.

For a good part of its life the house will have been upright, sound and true but gradually the front left hand two storey bay began to move involuntarily. The actual date for this Pisa-esque impression is hard to pin down. Certainly, when purchased by my parents in 1979, the bay was already a bit slumped and slightly detached but not enough to warrant any excitement or sanction from the Bank Surveyor.

The lower wall and dressed stone cills showed minor fractures and the large softwood sash windows were noticeably out of true to their lower casements. It had been many years since they had been capable of opening through a combination of thick, successive layers of paint and where the tightly bound cords had snapped. The main distortion was to the first floor bay wall and above. Brickwork at the shallow angle between the bay and the main front elevation had pulled apart and been the subject of periodic repairs. In the vertical position either side of the elongated flank windows the backfilled mortar had been repaired many, many times but was still loose and always looked threatening as though fully intending at some undetermined time to fall out and skewer the Paper Boy as he took his usual short cut through the rose bed from the next door garden.

Funny thing though, in the drier summer months the gaps in masonry and mortar looked wider but contracted in the winter and wet season so as to be almost flush and gap-less to the rest of the brickwork. It was a living, almost organic entity in its own right.

Stage One of the investigative work into the movement, in 2012, determined that the cause was a slow, insidious softening of the ground under the bay by what amounted to a pin-hole sized leak on a drainage pipe. This did not sound enough to contribute to the problem until the realisation that an innocent drip of water but over, possibly, 50 or 60 years could amount to the equivalent of a veritable torrent.

The pipe which received surface water from the roof and gutters did not run the short few feet into the street drain as you would expect but was illogically run back under the floors to the full depth of the house including a crossing at shoulder height of the cellar to discharge to the drain in the back yard. I know enough about Victorian housing not to attribute this arrangement to a scam, whim or fancy. It will have been a calculated design feature to direct rainwater to an underground storage chamber for recycling in the laundry process or to keep the garden in full, healthy bloom. It may even have been mentioned as an attribute in the Sales Brochure in the late 1890's much as eco and green features do today.

Stage Two commenced today, at 8am prompt on a painfully cold morning with the arrival of a small fleet of contractors vans and a steady stream of local suppliers offloading Sterling Board, Cement bags, aggregate, sharp sand and skips precariously from the middle of the road over the parked cars of neighbours and keen, early bird office workers.

The bay was to be underpinned, in effect, provided with a foundation transplant.

The team of contractors resembled a huddle of Nuns with only their faces, being exposed to the heavy freezing air, framed in a high-viz wimple and multiple insulated but modesty inducing layers. They dragged heavy equipment through the garden gates and deposited it amongst the bluebells and stunted pruned rose bushes.

A diamond tipped angle grinder made short work of the footpath at the base of the bay and in a matter of minutes a deep hole exposed the metre deep sub site brickwork and the projecting edge of the wider plinth which sat on the foundation trench fill. I had seen that bit of the house already.

I yawned, disrespectfully, because the labouring men had only gone and dug up where a trial hole had been excavated only a few months before. I dare not tell them that the other three holes to be formed would probably be much more difficult to dig into 100 plus years worth of compacted clay.

The men were approachable and informative in a broad Leeds dialect and obviously of that rare breed of hardy, outdoor workers who love their job. The four holes were to be targeted by another piece of plant and machinery which was too expensive and complicated to be removed from one of the vans yet which would, in turn, drive in helical piles as the supplemental foundation.

I could see that they had a sweepstake up and running as to what depth the piles would have to go before taking hold in bedrock. The record to date was about ten metres on a job in Congleton. That would be the equivalent of about the full elevational height of Lindisfarne if to compete with the current leader on the board.

I left the men to their endeavours on Day One of a potential four or five expected for the project, but only after giving them directions to the nearest Chip Shop, Sandwich Shop and Newsagents. I had £5 with them on a pile depth of 3.75 metres and would have to trust them to be as honest and truthful as a Holy Sister in Orders.

Tranquil waters

I have always lived in towns and cities with a common feature of a river running through. This must be more by destiny than on a statistical basis.

There was the lower reaches of the mighty Thames at Abingdon, the Lark through Bury St Edmunds, the natural and man-made courses of the Ancholme at Brigg and the Humber Estuary and River Hull, the latter giving its name to the short version of the otherwise grand sounding Kingston Upon Hull.

I even went away to college in another riverside town, Nottingham on the banks of the Trent. I have, at different periods in my life, paddled, swimmed, fished, boated, canoed and fallen in to these watercourses and many others and have understandably felt a great affinity to and affection for rivers and what goes on around them.

A family outing when I was young often included the thrill and excitement of approaching a hump-backed bridge in the car and that fairground feeling of losing your stomach for a few seconds over the peak before the fast run down the other side. The resounding cries of "wheeeeeeeeeee" did help with the feeling of sickness and weightlessness for that brief moment of perceived flight.

In my late teens I was often a willing passenger in a mates's car or van in an attempt to get all four wheels off the ground on a local bridge crossing and to contribute to the deep scars and ruts in the roadway from the impact of the engine sump and exhaust pipe in the tarmac.

When a young driver myself I was confronted on occasion by the impasse of vehicles on a narrow pack-horse bridge where the right of way was a matter of interpretation, good manners and consideration in favour of the most expensive or faster car first.

The increase in road traffic in terms of volume and axle weight has meant that many historic bridges and crossings have been by-passed with new, wide, flat and boring routes and in some way there has been a detachment of rivers from their previous co-existence with travellers.

A bridge over a river or stream was a place to pause and look down into the waters, throw in a stick and follow it in Pooh Bear concentration to the other side or try to catch a view of the fish or wildfowl in the eddying flow of deeper pools and backwaters.

Blinkered modern motorists may not now be aware of the presence of a watercourse as it is culverted and concealed under a roadway or hidden behind a high parapet wall. The white backed information boards with the river named on them are quickly passed with not so much as a second glance of notice or comment.

That is, of course, until a river dares to impose a threat on our regular journeys and timetables.

This was foremost in my mind last week when, after the melting of the persistent snow on top of the seasonal rainfall , the usually docile River Derwent at Kexby, on the Hull to York road was lapping eagerly upon both verges giving me the sensation of driving along a causeway with a real prospect of being overwhelmed by the turbulent waters.

The Derwent is one of those rivers that maintains a quiet existence for the majority of the year and can be reduced to a mere trickle in drought conditions but yet the residents of many of the towns it runs through have a respect and fear in equal proportions based on the intermittent risk of flooding.

The river has a surprising course from its sources on the south side of the North Yorkshire Moors down to its eventual outfall into the Ouse and out to the North Sea along the Humber. In the pre-Ice Age era the feeder streams took a direct route to the coast discharging at Scalby, north of Scarborough and at Filey to the south. The glacial deposits left after the retreat of the ice blocked the eastern exits and the immoveable force found its own way southwards.

Along its 72 miles and elevation difference of some 250 metres the river has a significant catchment of nearly 800 square miles including the high moors and the hillsides of Cleveland and Hambleton. It is invariably from this large hinterland that tremendous volumes of surface water can be produced on a seasonal basis or, under the climatic changes in more recent years attributed to global warming, in a matter of hours from deluges creating flash flood conditions.

The upland drainage streams include the poetically named Jugger Howe, Black and Troutdale Becks through the narrow Forge Valley before the flatter lowland areas are reached.  Malton, Stamford Bridge, Sutton upon Derwent and Bubwith  all suffer from  flooding on a regular basis although modern relief measures including a Sea Cut and overflow areas to fields that have been engineered and acquired to divert larger volumes from these vulnerable settlements.

Water from the Derwent is used to supply the larger regional cities including Hull and Leeds because of its good quality as well as use for irrigation, leisure and sporting activities. The Roman occupation of the area will have been influenced by the previous navigability of the Derwent and there are civil engineering works from that period to improve its military and commercial use in conjunction with the major garrison at York.

Water and Corn Mills developed along the banks of the river and entrepreneurs of the 18th Century built Canals with locks, turnpikes and further wharfs and warehouses to link in with the natural course. Maintaining an artificial water level to allow the passage of barges and vessels led to conflict with adjoining landowners who complained of more frequent overwhelming and flooding ruining their crops and livelihoods. The halcyon days of steam Railways soon took away any meaningful freight trade previously of corn downstream and with return loads of coal. The Derwent became more of a recreational river but vested interests produced legal wrangles over Rights of Navigation in the 1930's which persist to the present day.

On this weeks drive through Kexby the water level has receded slighty. In the meadow on the south side of the road the rough looking horse has been able to find dry ground after a few occasions on which I have seen it stranded, dejectedly on a small divot of land patiently waiting for a path to open up with a parting of the flood waters. The old stone bridge, now relegated to a role as a private driveway to a farmhouse, hearkens back to the days when horse drawn coaches and wagons struggled over its incline and the infamous highwayman, Dick Turpin may have paused a while to skim stones fancying his chances of catching a good prize on the York Turnpike.

Baby Boomer Experiment

It is a momentous year in our family and amongst our circle of friends with a few of our number reaching 50 years old.

There are those who, jovially, at 50 plus years claim it is the new 35 or younger but why should you feel it necessary to reminisce and hearken back to a different period in your lives when at half a century in the bag there is still so much to look forward to?

It is a time to celebrate because we have been part of a big experiment over the last 5 decades and have managed, most of us anyway to get through it without too much reliance on artificial stimulants or the like. We are baby boomers from 1963.

It was a tumultuous time for our own parents and who amongst us has not made that mental calculation back 9 months from our respective dates of birth to try to ascertain the circumstances of our conception. In my life story it was a time of great political upheaval and in the latter part of 1962 the whole world was poised to see the outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis which brought the Superpowers close to all-out atomic war.

I can envisage my parents watching and listening to the minute by minute and blow by blow developments in that part of the world and being understandably fearful for their futures and that of their fledgling family, at that stage just my big sister but soon to be the five of us siblings.

I can well imagine that the end of the crisis in November 1962 called for a bit of a celebration, more out of relief in continuity of a simple life than the triumph of capitalism over communism. It appears that my parents may have taken a drive out into the countryside because whenever a certain natural feature on the Chiltern Hills happened to be mentioned in a conversation or, more likely a report on a Gliding accident, they always blushed upon a coy meeting of their glances.

It was not all plain sailing for the rest of the 1960's what with other examples of civil unrest and conflict that threatened to start Soviet and Eastern Bloc tanks rolling into western Europe or a barrage of potent warhead tipped missiles from bunkers in the eastern and mid United States.

As part of the experiment in which we , as 1963 arrivals, were involved and implicated we were also exposed to all sorts of influences which ,over the passage of time, have now been condemned or banned as hazardous, injurious or potentially fatal.

This was not through any recklessness or abandonment on the part of our parents and guardians.

It was the perception of normality.

Take asbestos for example. A perceived wonder material which could be found in just about everything in the 1960's from floor tiles to water tanks, textured coatings to ironing boards and that was just a few of their applications inside the home.

The early plastics from which our toys and baby items, such as drinking cups and teethers were fashioned were likely to have been highly toxic.

It was a time of lead content in paints and rather than just encase it in another layer it was always considered best practice to burn or abrade it when giving the house a freshen up. With the luxury of hindsight this just released the toxic residues into the air to be easily ingested into our baby bloodstreams. The implications of what was a favourite practice of mine as a toddler of sucking idly on a toy soldier made from lead is now a matter of great research into ill health in later life.

Aluminium was also a common material in everyday use but now strongly associated as a catalyst to mental illnesses. Nothing was thought about constant use of cooking pans made from this.

Car Safety for babies and small children was not really a consideration and I can recall about 15 of us loosely arranged in the Morris Minor heading to and from a day out with no form of restraint in evidence.

Antibiotics were not as advanced as they are now but we were often taken around to a neighbours house when a case of measles, mumps or chicken pox was reported. It prompted a social gathering for mums ( Dads and Mumps considered) and a party atmosphere for spotty babies.

In the days before Domestos or anti-bacterial sprays and wipes we did not seem to suffer to any greater extent from bugs, viruses or what we euphemistically referred to a case of the bum-squirts.

In the home we did not have to be protected from ourselves with safety glass, stair-gates or other child-proofing innovations as available today.

If we did get poorly then we were treated with chicken noodle soup or if drugs were called for, Milk of Magnesia or mildly alcoholic gripe water sufficed.

Itchy bodies were liberally coated with camomile lotion.

Head lice were bombarded with the equivalent of DDT or Agent Orange, no doubt highly carcinogenic or flammable.

On the subject of fire safety I do not think that we were particularly protected by retardant materials where we slept or played.

There was no such thing as a Risk Assessment for trips out with Playgroup or Infants School. The same hazards and dangers must have been present as they are today but our perception or just innocence and trust in others was so much different.

We would readily chat with strangers and the prospect of being shown puppies or kittens was encouraged as part of our natural development and education in life.

In successive decades we would be equally exposed to dodgy and risky things from polystyrene tiles to food additives, from early mobile phones to unstable fast cars and even recent crises in what we eat and drink.

These are just a few of the things that we have had to cope with so come on, those who are 50 years old this year should celebrate wildly not just the coming of age but the simple fact that you have survived this long at all.

Thrills and Spills

There is a lot of industrious activity in a field about one and a half miles north west of the village of Walkington , East Yorkshire.

I first came across it on a longish detour cross-country to avoid the 12 months of frustrated, miserable motoring on account of works in progress of widening the approach road to the Humber Bridge.

Normally, the back road to North Newbald and with a turn off down into Cherry Burton is quiet and not at all busy, more likely to be frequented by gals on horses, strutting cock pheasants, a slow moving piece of agricultural machinery and, if travelling east to west, a labouring elderly cyclist tackling the gradient, which, whilst not severe is one of those tiresome constant inclines that sap the energy and cause aches to any age range of knee joints.

The first signs of something taking root in the field, or rather a rectangular section of the field directly in from the road, was the scraping of the surface  of the chalk strewn soils by a lone operator of an excavator to form a bund and a ditch to three sides, the fourth being the hedgerow and verge itself.

At this stage the purpose could have been anything from somewhere for a farmers steaming silage stash, one of those Highways Authority stockpile of granite chippings ahead of the usual summer for motorists of chipped windscreens and bodywork from the haphazard resurfacing of country lanes or my favourite, a large pile of potatoes, sugar beet or turnips.

On subsequent passings of the field there seemed to be no new activity although the flat area had been compacted down and overlaid with a bright, virgin white chalk base aggregate in evident readiness for something shortly to arrive. Being a Town Dweller  I could only speculate what may be there on my next trip out. In my perception, and in my travels around the county, a lot of large agricultural type buildings just seem to appear in the middle of nowhere and for no tangible purpose, perhaps a stipulation to tap into EU Funding, a means of reducing taxation liability at the end of the financial year or another form of incentivised development.

Within a couple of weeks the south side of the site was largely covered by a mini-village of portable office buildings, all neatly labelled ,as though enforced as good practice rather than voluntary, to indicate their active role in something.

A Mud Engineer's Office had the Prime spot in terms of overall view of any forthcoming activity on the remainder of the site which seemed to be waiting expectantly for something big. Adjacent was a Toolpushers Office, to me appearing to be a subservient role but nevertheless quite important in the scheme of things. The respective occupants of these two huts probably envied and hated each other through the perspex safety glazing. In the second avenue of buildings were those with the signage of some or other vaguely attributed Service Company, Health and Safety and Logistics and at the back a Mess Room, Toilet block and a Changing Room.

The whole complex, if it had been complimented by a performance stage would have led me to speculate on a forthcoming outdoor festival or rock concert. I made a mental note to check the local press for any ticket releases. In the open, rolling countryside with clear distant views and on dark seasonal nights even the sweeping flash of the Flamborough Lighthouse discernible some 30 miles away that location would, in my opinion, rival any of the worlds great venues. A majestic back-drop , the definition of God's Own Country- Yorkshire.

On my most recent evasion of traffic cones and the 30mph speed restrictions on my normal route I was quite taken aback to see how chewed up and potholed the verges and minor road had become up towards what I now knew as Crawberry Hill.

I had taken the time to consult an Ordnance Survey Map in a bookshop in an idle moment in town on the basis that if there was to be  major rock and roll event outside Walkington village then it would, logically take its name from the location. Walkington, no disrespect to the place itself, would sound more like a convention for mobility aids. Cherry Burton, the next closest hamlet was cutish  but with no long term credibility a la Woodstock, Knebworth, Glastonbury or even Leeds.

The topography around the spine of the minor road is a great expanse of productive fields, compact copses of broad leaved trees, hillocks and shallow broad dry valleys. The position is quite valuable in strategic terms commanding a good vantage point for many miles around. The map did corroborate this with the symbols of an underground bunker from the second world war.

The name Crawberry Hill, for the south west facing slope, had iconic potential. I could imagine a Chuck Berry style raking guitar anthem about getting some thrills up there and that intention or feeling being endorsed by a few thousand strong crowd under the stars.

The semi-destroyed roadway clearly indicated that something large had come that way and quite recently.

An array of caution signs and a speed limit, otherwise ridiculous in the middle of nowhere, and the muddy margins of the carriageway prompted me to slow down as I approached the field. The rectangular area was now fully developed and the dominating feature was a large drilling rig.

Around the mass of pipes and generators was a small army of high-viz wearing crew engaged in a frantic process of swinging in and connecting up the drilling lengths before they were thrust deep into the ground. The drilling rig is of a type capable of a workable depth of over 14,000 feet. It was an unexpected and totally incongruous activity for such a beautiful stretch of countryside. The oil men had arrived to explore and exploit the natural resources but at what cost?

The locals had put up a bit of resistance in correspondence, some quite authoratative and knowledgeable about oil exploration, to the original proposals and one landowner had apparently reneged on the deal with the Oil Company at the last moment on another tranquil spot a few miles away. The Planning Application, for my former corner of Yorkshire heaven, that I now felt that I had to see was biblical in its scope.

The scanned documents for public digestion from the exploration company, their environmental and ecological consultants, archaeological team, geo-physicists, ground water specialists and public relations spokespersons did stipulate their use of recycled materials and double sided printing which was nice but the sheer volume of paper will have been made from a small forest of trees, ironically a very, very distant ancestor of the fossil fuels now being relentlessly pursued for profit. As for that term 'fracking' it could not be ruled out as a future operational practice to coax the oil and minerals out of the secure custody of Mother Nature.

Deflation and Elation

It is a bit of essential knowledge passed down from father to son.

A fundamental thing, on an equal footing with learning how to clear a path of snow and ice, kick a football on a swerve, pot a plant, operate a petrol lawnmower, change a spark plug in an engine, paint a door, lag a loft, take apart and re-assemble a domestic appliance, erect a tent, take out a pension and buy a house.

Dependant upon your age you may not have encountered any of the above or they may seem to be rites of passage from a bygone era. After all I am in my 50th birthday year.

The specific thing that I am of course referring to is how to mend a puncture on a bicycle wheel.

I grew up in a bike filled house. My Father was a keen cyclist and this had been grounded in his early teens when he was already ranging far and wide into Europe at a time, he often mused, when a pound sterling made a lad from Croydon a millionaire in French Francs, or so it seemed - such was the favourable exchange rate in the post war years.

We were encouraged at a very early age to master two wheels and the bolts on the stabilisers were never in place long enough to rust or seize up amongst all of us trainee cyclists. I can remember a first bike which had solid rubber for tyres, very practical but at the same time very uncomfortable when coursing up and down the garden path or shadowing Father from the pavement through the housing estate.

Basic maintenance was taught from checking the saddle height and fixings, brakes and pedals to tyre pressure and tightening up any of the mechanical bits.

It was a natural progression to learn what seemed to be the hocus pocus of mending a puncture.

There was a thrilling mystery about the small metal tin which comprised the bits and bobs to tackle a flat tyre. The hinged lid, an elongated rectangle with rounded off edges, when lifted revealed a tube of rubber solution, an assortment of vulcanised cure-c-cure patches, a cube of French chalk, a crayon and a piece of fine sandpaper. Accompanying the puncture repair kit were a pair of tyre levers, gun metal grey.

The process of locating the hole in the inner tube was a bit more problematic.

If pumped up but then rapidly deflating it was just possible to carefully listen, with ear skimming the surface of the tyre, for that revealing escape of air. In small and weak hands it was often a struggle to insert the flattened end of one and then the other lever between the rim of the wheel and the wired edge of the tyre. Often as not one lever flew off to the ground or disappeared into the green of the lawn. Working around the rim with the levers, the grip of the tyre was loosened and then the flimsy inner tube could be prised out.

The previous clue to the location of the puncture could be confirmed by pushing the tube into a washing up bowl of water. A stream of fine bubbles up to the surface always seemed to come from a completely different position to that originally suspected.

My Father taught me two golden rules at this stage.
1) Always check the whole tube because chances are there may be more than one hole.
2) Always check the underside of the tyre for any thorns, tacks or sharp objects that may still be embedded there.

The contents of the repair kit were organised. The yellow crayon was used to mark out a radius with the offending hole in the middle. The surface of the rubber was abraded with the sandpaper to form a good surface for the next stage, a dollop of rubber solution applied and spread with a finger tip. The most suitably sized patch was then applied and the backing paper pulled clear to allow the glue and adhesive backing to bond. In a flourish the French chalk was dragged back and forth on a cerrated part on the bottom of the tin and dabbed over the patch to dry up any residues.

The big test was the return of the tube to the tyre and the excruciatingly difficult action of mounting the tyre back on the rim. There was always a temptation to wedge in and force back the tyre with the levers but this could easily trap and split the inner tube. Usually red faced and sore handed I would eventually be ready to pump up and test the success of the repair. There was a good feeling if the tyre stayed inflated for re-attachment to the bike but absolute despair if the original problem had not been solved and you held a soggy, compressed and flat object.

That is of course the theory and in the controlled conditions of a sunny back garden or in the kitchen and in the supervision of my Father, an expert in all things punctures, it can be a pleasurable way to pass some time. However, alone ,on the windswept verge of a busy trunk road, in the dark and cold the same process in practice can be very, very different. At such a moment there are serious considerations of hanging up the bike in the far depths of the garage and just using the car for every journey, however short and impractical that may be. It is the fond thoughts of the time spent with my Father and the lessons learned that spur me on to complete a text book puncture repair and I realise then that I am just about  ready to pass this knowledge on to my own son.