FEBRUARY 2008
|
The Wharfedale & Airedale Observer reports that during a rugby match between
Otley and Kendal, a labrador ran onto the pitch and bit two Otley players.
Now you don’t get excitement like that during the Six Nations Championship.
Upper Wharfedale. Photo: Peter Black |
|
An article in The Times reminded us of the winter of 1963 when we had frost and snow for months. On the North Yorkshire Moors, Fylingdales early warning station was snowbound for days. Eventually 283 civilians trapped inside were evacuated by RAF helicopter. Workers were ferried in batches of seven or eight in wind gusts of up to 80 mph. They were flown twelve miles to Whitby and then marooned there by snowdrifts.
 |
It is reported that Gordon Brown, Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury, has been banned from 105 pubs and clubs in Skipton and the Craven area by STAND, a pubwatch group called Stopping Trouble and Night-time Disorder. The reason for the ban is not the reason you would expect but because he has caused ‘disruption and discomfort for customers’ following the total smoking ban. John Garton, chairman of STAND, said: ‘If somebody upsets our customers we don’t want them in our pubs’. Apparently members were unanimously in favour of putting Brown on the banned list. No doubt members of STAND are now in danger of being held for up to 28 days without charge, and their activities monitored by Menwith Hill. Skipton Arcade |
Leslie Dunkling, in A Dictionary of Days, says that in the Yorkshire Dales Kissing Friday survived until the 1950s. It was the Friday following Shrove Tuesday at the beginning of Lent, itself now almost forgotten. On this day a girl could be kissed by any boy she met and it was considered very bad form for her to refuse or even resist. Happy days. He’d be arrested nowadays. Hock Tuesday was another day on which a kiss could be required as a forfeit from the girls. Ropes were stretched across paths leading to school and the favour demanded. Most of these old and innocent customs are now lost. Only April Fools Day remains, and in some parts Mischief Day survives though that is being overtaken by Hallowe’en.
|
80,000 street lights are being replaced in Leeds. The old ones are pulled
down and new ones erected. The whole process is extraordinarily expensive
and will continue to be paid for by our children. Of course, it is
completely unnecessary. Leeds Skyline |
|
|
|
I think the allegiance is partly negative and partly positive. It is
negative in the same way that Cornwall and the North-East see themselves as
better than, and different from, London and the Home Counties which have
always led in the governance of England and in influence and wealth and
therefore caused resentment. There are plenty of variations on the old:
‘Don’t ask a man if he is from Yorkshire; if he is, he’ll already have told
you’. Swaledale |
|
The trouble is Yorkshire is threatened, perhaps fatally. It is threatened by
population growth, by development, by greed and by the dumbed-down culture
of the 21st century. We’re spoiling everything. The old characteristics that
made Yorkshire and England strong are being lost – self-reliance,
self-control, self-respect and respect for others. Pub in York |
|
