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Photograph Quiz:

Photo no. 68:- Has anyone spotted the twin recently? This one is pining.

Dear Blog,

           So if Thursday was bad, Friday was BAD,BAD. The rain it rained on Thursday and that bloke on the telly at 10:30pm said it was going to freeze on Friday. Get a grip mate. Freeze. It's belting rain outside. Freeze? What pop have you been on? Sorry. Sorry. SORRY. IT FROZE. I spent a freezing half hour on Friday morning with an acetylene torch melting the ice off my car windscreen, off the car mirrors, off the car side windows, off the car’s back window and off my fingers. On my trudge / slide / slip along the pavement, the local road gritter swept passed employing exorcet missiles to mow me down. The grit / salt came out of the back of the spreader hitting the road and pavement like a demented harrier dropping  cluster bombs! The first aiders stopped the bleeding quite quickly, bandaged my legs and gave me a pain killing pill to enable me to continue with my trudge. So off I went up the hill and down the dale - Worthdale. The spreader of grit / salt reminded me of the time when I was a child and we had a heavy snow fall. At the time we lived on a steep hill and the gritters came out fairly soon after every snow fall; four men on the back of a lorry shovelling grit onto the snow covered cobbles for all they were worth. Out flocked all of our neighbours from their cosy hovels, well wrapped up against the bitter cold. Men, women, children, old and young, sick or healthy. Out they all came. To enjoy the snow? To improve their skiing skills? To aspire to become the next Torvill and Dean? Or to simply build snowmen? SNOWBALLS. Each family was armed with at least one wicker basket or sturdy sack. Hardly had the grit time to hit the frozen surface before it was grabbed by one or other of the Lane’s residents. Sometimes bickering arose as to which householder was the first claimant. The lumps of grit were inspected and either put in the family basket or discarded. Frenetic at first as the shovelled loads were delivered from the rear of the lorry, the search gradually subsided into a more gentile search as baskets filled and grit quantities delivered onto the road declined. So why the interest?  The area I lived in would now be described by sociologists as ‘deprived’. I would use the terms ‘bloody poor’. Medical bills were paid in instalments of a few pence weekly. The local woods were scavenged for fallen branches if it was thought that trespass would not be detected. Coal bills were never paid until the next delivery was desperately needed to keep the family warm. So why the interest. Today, the roads are kept clear by road gritters dispensing rates of salt and grit to a controlled computer program which responds to temperature, gritter speed, road surface type and predicted weather forecasts. Sixty years ago the salt and grit wasn’t salt and grit. It was simply the discarded cinder waste from the local gas works. The poor folk of the Lane where I lived were searching the stinking shovelfuls of waste for any burnable chunks of coke that might have gone unburnt in the gas works retorts. A basket full of cinder coke garnered from the snow and slush on the cobbles meant the meagre supply of winter fuel stretched a little further and a few pence off the next coal bill!!! The good old days, what? Bring ‘em back Blog, says I. We’ve never had it so good. Or so we were told by our political masters who obviously were au fait with the living conditions of those at the bottom of the social pile.

      Saturday was bright, sunny and cold which afforded a bracing trudge over the Yorkshire moors. From the Oakworth terminal of the Keighley and Worth Valley Railway where the Santa Steam Specials were puffing up and down the 5 mile valley rail line all day, I climbed up on the roads to the top end of Haworth then rough country and moorland paths via Penistone Park to Top Withens [a la Brontes], looping round towards the Watersheddles Reservoir on the Lancashire [three hail Marys and a mouthwash] border before cutting down past the  Keighley Moor Reservoir, Cowling Top, the village of Laycock, Holme House Wood, Tinker Bridge and home. I saw two walker~joggers towards the Watersheddles Reservoir, stop-starting, and assumed they were scouting the route for the following day’s Christmas Pudding fell race and the kiddies Curly Wurley Run. About 300 entries are taken on the day at £3 a throw. No postal entries needed. No hassle as at a computer driven entry system event. Results available read from sheets of the individual stickers with club, sex, age group etc. as the runner finished, with award winners known almost instantaneously from the coding system employed by the race organisers. No long wait for presentations. Outside catering on hand. What an example for the ‘pre entry on line give us a quick few quids’ brigade to strive for!!!!

And what else did I see on the lonely moors, Blog? A sole walker, Blog. In the windless, sunny cloudless sky, tramping through the heather was a single walker. And do you know what Blog? He was plugged into an I-thingie! Really enjoying the music. Taking in every bar and beat. Sod the dickie birds. Sod the wonderful scenery. Give it some rhythm Baby? Obviously a Southerner on a walking holiday up north. Even a Lancastrian [three hail Marys and a mouthwash] wouldn’t be so unappreciative of what God’s own County has to offer. Amen. So a slow couple of hours blow out and back to a mince pie and a slice or three of Christmas cake!

You will like this Blog. I have just read a cricketing book from the 80’s and came across a recollection by the author who was a commentator for the BBC. As you know Blog, I am researching the History of Athletics in and Around the City Area. I came across a report which involved me. I’ll quote from a newspaper report about me, but the reporter had obviously cribbed it from this cricket book or from the story the cricket book related. I cannot remember my team members so I will call them Smith, Jones and Brown for the sake of illustrating the story … so … say ‘Godiva finished 3^rd team with Smith 26^th [say], Brown 40^th [say], Jones 51^st [say], but Kirkham was ill’ … In actual fact the newspaper report should have read …‘Godiva finished 3^rd with Smith 26^th [say], Brown 40^th [say], Jones 51^st [say], and Kirkham 111^th’! The old ones are the best!!!!

                                 Colin