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Peter Hinchliffe
Peter Hinchliffe tells of an encounter of the prickly kind on a dark autumn night. A dark autumn night. One of those nights when things which you can't quite make out seem to be moving towards you in the blackness. I'd been out late. I was unlocking the kitchen door, anticipating warmth and light, when there was a noise. A spooky unfamiliar sound, over by the garden fence. Common sense dictated that I should go inside and lock the door. Curiosity compelled me to get a torch, arm myself with a shovel from the coal shed, then investigate. The noise continued. Not menacing exactly, but highly disturbing. I had never heard anything quite like it. Scrape-shush, scrape-shush, scrape-shush . . . The torch beam revealed the midnight prowler. A hedgehog. A small hedgehog, proceeding sedately along the fence line, brushing its spines against the wooden slats. The torchlight did hot bring a halt to its perambulations. Eventually the creature turned off into a field, disappearing in silence into the darkness. I put the shovel back in the shed then went indoors, feeling foolish and wondering whether dumb animals are capable of playing practical jokes. Some are. I'm sure I've seen dogs laughing at me in triumph after achieving the desired effect with a menacing salvo of barks. Not a hedgehog though. Actually those Beatrix Potter Tiggywinkle creatures, with their cute noses and bright-button eyes, are none too bright. Nature intended that they should go adventuring after sundown when they can forage in safety. Now you see them strolling and meandering in daylight. One came snuffling around our garden recently. "You're supposed to be in bed," I said. Evidently it wasn't in a mood to be reprimanded. It carried on with its stroll. Audrey Burley of Huddersfield recently saw a hedgehog face up to a fox in her garden. Audrey is a great lover of wildlife. She thinks the fox is a much-maligned creature. She buys 15p loaves, spreads marge on the bread, makes sandwiches with bits of meat, then puts them outside for foxes which regularly come to visit. "A vixen was eating a sandwich when a hedgehog trundled over and joined in," she says. "The vixen ate one end of the sandwich while the hedgehog chewed away at the other." Foxes and hedgehogs aren't supposed to socialise. Mind you, the hedgehog probably wasn't taking too much of a risk. It has a party trick which protects it on most occasions. Some humans seem to model themselves on hedgehogs, curling themselves up into a spikey ball in defence against an aggressive world. Another local lady, Vera Sanderson, recalls the day when her Great Dane Max learned the hard way of the hedgehog's defensive capabilities. Max thought he was a lion. He went on stalking expeditions along the disused railway line near his home. When he came upon a curled-up creature he impulsively plunged forwards for a good sniff. Only to scream when a spike pricked his nose. Despite this ability to give sharp lessons to the over-curious, hedgehogs are likeable creatures. They bring out an "ah" reaction in most humans. An unsolicited catalogue which flopped through our letter box contained gifts for lovers of hedgehogs. A hedgehog paperweight. A house plaque which announces A Hedgehog Lover Lives Here. A cuddly washable hedgehog cover for a mobile phone. Those tempted to keep a hedgehog as a pet should heed the warning of CRASH, an organisation called Care Rehabilitation and Aid for Sick Hedgehogs, which runs a hedgehog hospital. "Their favourite trick is to stomp food into newspaper lining their box, tip over the water bowl, mix it all together adding a good helping of droppings, mash it all in, then tear up the resultant mess into strips and start making a nest." On top of which, hedgehogs have fleas. If you find a lost hedgehog or some other creature of the wild, in distress, help is at hand on a new website created by St Tiggywinkles Hospital Trust. Click on www.sttiggywinkles.org.uk Mrs Tiggywinkle the hedgehog is best enjoyed and observed when she is roaming free.
February 1, 2007 Peter Hinchliffe explains why it pays to look away when a teacher is talking to you.
So now I know why I wasn’t fluent in French when I left school.
Along with the other 29 boys in Class 5A I spent far too much time staring at our French master, Walt. He commanded our full attention, not by force of character, and certainly not by his disciplinary authority.
Poor Walt, who then I suppose would be in his late forties or early fifties, had little or no control over us. His classes were bedlam. Threats of detentions, of having to stay in school for 45 minutes after the final bell of the day, did little to quell the din.
Walt paid a terrible price for his lack of authority. His features were constantly on the move, presenting an ever-changing pattern of twitches and grimaces. Even when he was not in front of a class, as he paced with gown flapping through the draughty corridors of our Victorian grammar school, his face was prompted into constant mobility by a stream of harassed thoughts.
Walt also frequently muttered to himself. Often, during class, he would set a piece of written work. A translation of dull paragraphs about bakers, postmen and trains from French into English, or vice-versa. He would then bend his head to mark previous written work that we had half-accomplished. Each movement of his pen was accompanied by a mumble and a twitch.
During one exam Class 5A played a despicable trick on Walt. At the start of the exam we had each been issued with two large sheets of paper. The understanding was that if we worked assiduously and filled these sheets, we would walk to the front of the room and collect a third, or even a fourth, sheet from a pile on a corner of Walt’s desk.
As we struggled to recall the French words for a streetlight and a bus driver, Walt sat before us, muttering and twitching as he marked the exam papers of another class.
On a pre-arranged signal, we stood up and marched towards the stack of paper at the front of the class.
Walt glanced up, saw 30 leering boys advancing towards him, and fled from the room.
He returned within five minutes, accompanied by the much-feared headmaster, a tall, commanding individual known to boys and masters alike as The Boss.
Of course we were all back at our desks, scribbling away with a quiet determination.
The Head surveyed us for a few moments, then, with the slightest movement of a hand, indicated that Walt should follow him.
The classroom door was closed, but we could see The Boss and Walt through its glass panels. The Boss, looking stern, talked to Walt for a minute or so. Then poor Walt, looking thoroughly subdued, came back into the room.
There was a good deal of chuckling and chortling at break time. But I don’t think I was the only boy to feel guilty at the extent of our cruelty.
We stared at other teachers, besides Walt. We stared at the mathematics teacher because he was given to chucking pieces of chalk at anyone who was not paying attention.
We stared at the permanently grumpy Latin master who gave out detentions in every lesson. As we stared though we were ready to avert our eyes in an instant as he cast around the room for a victim who would be required to stand up and translate another dull paragraph from Caesar’s Gallic Wars.
We stared at the Divinity master who was given to sudden outbursts of temper, the French master who seemed to know our every thought, the Geography master who reputedly kept a leather strap in his desk with a view to applying it to the backsides of particularly ill-behaved pupils…
Come to think of it, my grammar school education was one long stare.
Which, according to psychological researchers at Stirling University, could explain a lot about me.
Their investigations indicate that children who avert their gaze while adults are speaking to them are probably taking in the facts rather than being distracted by someone’s face.
Exasperated parents who tell their children “look at me while I’m talking to you’’ should be telling them the opposite.
All those years ago then, Class 5A were not only being unkind to some chap who was more than likely in the wrong job. We were also punishing ourselves.
Serves us right.
January 21, 2007 Air Cargo Peter goes travelling, with pants legs flapping round his ankles.
These green cargo pants make me feel like Huddersfield’s answer to Michael Palin. Click tight the special belt buckle, then I’m ready to leap on a camel’s back and go swaying across the Sahara’s mighty dunes.
Actually I only wear them for jet-plane journeys. They are the perfect garment when you are outward bound from Manchester airport.
Airline ticket and passport in this zipped pocket. Foreign currency and credit card in that. And this cavernous pocket on the right is big enough to take a paperback copy of Tolstoy’s War and Peace, plus two ham sandwiches in case the airline food is lousy.
Cargo indeed! Britches have never been more appropriately named. A pity though that the legs of this wonder garment seem to have been designed to fit elephants rather than humans.
You seem to flap out a coded distress signal as you walk down the street in baggy pants. Wear them on a windy day and you feel like a storm-bound yacht rounding Cape Horn.
How amazing then to hear that generously-cut trousers are currently in fashion. Wear cargo pants or combat britches in Chelsea, Hampstead or Islington, and you will be cool and stylish.
“Variations on the military look have been with us for many seasons but this trend is now becoming a fashion staple to rival denim and jeanswear. Battlefield combat trousers are the new blue jeans,’’ announces a writer in a fashion magazine.
“Combats are more sexy, more powerful than jeans, which for me are too wholesome,’’ says a stylish young thing.
Call me wholesome then. Cargoes for travelling, but jeans every other day.
During 45 working years I was a jacket, tie and grey slacks man. Jeans are my symbol of retirement. A declaration of freedom.
If that sounds like too much philosophy to pin onto a simple denim garment hear what the world’s leading jeans manufacturer has to say.
Levi Strauss, who have been manufacturing jeans for horseless cowboys since 1853, state that the company’s core values are empathy, originality, integrity and courage. Courage?
“Generations of people have worn our products as a symbol of freedom and self-expression in the face of adversity, challenge and social change. They forged a new territory called the American West. They fought in wars for peace. They instigated counterculture revolutions. They tore down the Berlin Wall. Reverent, irreverent - they all took a stand.’’
And I wear them simply because they’re comfortable.
Some folk though are prepared to pay a huge whack for denim comfort. A Savile Row firm offered tailor-made jeans at £600 a pair. Of course you got to choose the number and positioning of the pockets, plus the colour of the thread used in their stitching.
A matching denim jacket would have cost you £1,460 - though that did include value added tax.
I think I’ll stick to my regular high street jeans supplier. £32 a pair, with a touch of Lycra in the cotton to accommodate a comfortably proportioned man who enjoys a comforting hot dinner.
January 14, 2007 Bloodaxe As he strides along a country lane Peter Hinchliffe thinks of the Viking war lord
I’m striding out along a rural track in the Yorkshire village of Lepton, thinking of Eric Bloodaxe.
Over there on the right is Castle Hill, Holme Moss, the high land of Derbyshire, all shiny and bright on this crisp, clear day.
If you could wrap up this view and carry it down to the bland Home Counties, folk would regularly fork out good money for a five-minute look, just to remind themselves of all that’s missing in their flat lives.
So why think of a Viking war lord? Why not just feast on the scenery?
Well this is Thurgory Lane, known locally as T’Oggeries, and all those with imagination who venture along this way are walking back into history.
Thurgory is the Viking word for burial ground. In a field between the lane and Wakefield Road there’s an unusual clump of trees, their heads and shoulders bent in permanent obeisance to the insistent highland breeze.
This copse could well mark the site where warrior-settlers who arrived in longboats were buried 1,200 years ago.
All around us are place names which are reminders of Dane Law. Lanes, villages, townships which confirm that Scandinavians with itchy feet found Pennine hills and valleys most appealing.
Places ending in -by, -thorpe, -thwaite. Denby, Gawthorpe, Ravensthorpe, Linthwaite, Slaithwaite. All of Viking origin. So too is Thurstonland and Thurgoland.
Many a “true blue Englishman’’ in these parts is a descendent of immigrants who came marauding across the cold North Sea.
If they watched the BBC’s splendid Walking With Vikings series they were, all unawares, dipping into the family album.
Viking words linger on in Yorkshire dialect. To gawp, meaning to stare open-mouthed, is derived from gapa. To lug, meaning to pull or carry something, comes from lugge.
Scuttle, as in coal scuttle, is from skuttil, agate, meaning to begin something or be on your way, from gata, and bait, a packed meal, from beit. Pitmen in these parts went to the coal face carrying their lunchtime or back-shift bait.
Then there’s hey up, that wonderful expression meaning look out, or be careful.
Long ago while dining with my Texas bride in a restaurant overlooking Niagara Falls, I knocked over a glass of water. “Hey up!’’ said I. “What does hey up mean?’’ asked Joyce.
“Well if you were a Yorkshire lass, coming down that river in a rowing boat’’ said I, looking far below at the exploding waters of the Niagara, “if you glanced over your shoulder and suddenly saw what your were heading into… What you’d say is hey up!’’
I should have said a Viking lass. Hey up is of Swedish origin.
Did Eric Bloodaxe and his witchy Queen Gunnhild come riding through Lepton? That’s not beyond the bounds of possibility. A meet-the-people tour round his Northumbrian lands…
Coins were issued in Eric’s name in York - a day’s ride away on a good horse.
Bloodaxe. A name to bring shudders to the spine. But there’s a suggestion now that Eric was a henpecked husband.
There’s a lot more still to be discovered about the Vikings, in our area and throughout the former kingdom of Northumbria.
By the way, if you go looking for Thurgory Lane you my have difficulty in finding it. Some 21st Century marauding bandit has apparently nicked the road sign..
January 07, 2007 Bruges
“Good morning,’’ says our waitress, speaking in respectable English as she shows us to our table in the dining room of the Hotel Navarra.
The next couple she greets with a cheery “Bon jour’’ then a party of four are welcomed with a “Guten Morgen’’.
We’re in Bruges, Belgium, the melting-pot of Europe, home of the multi-lingual. And our talented waitress, besides being a mistress of languages, seems to be able to identify our countries of origin by the way we look.
A grand little town, Bruges. A Medieval history book written in brick and stone. And so easy to get there from our Yorkshire home.
Drive to Hull. Leave the car in a long-stay. North Sea ferry overnight to Zeebrugge. A nine-mile bus ride - and you’re back in the 14thCentury.
By chance we were in Bruges on Ascension Day, when a Holy relic is paraded along narrow cobbled streets, through a Market Place impressive enough to serve as the open-air venue for a conclave of all the nations.
There were pounding drums, mobile street plays, richly-hued costumes that would have made a Walt Disney producer salivate with envy. Ninety minutes had elapsed when the end of the parade came in sight, and that wasn’t a minute too long.
The Hotel Navarra could itself serve as a textbook to summarise the power struggles which have swilled back and forth across Continental Europe. In 1600 Don Juan de Peralta, Consul of the Spanish Province of Navarra and Alderman of Bruges, had a house built on this site.
In 1720 the premises were rebuilt to become the Hotel des Courtiers. Emperor Josef II of Austria stayed there in 1781. A triumphal staircase and grand halls were built when Napoleon Bonaparte was due to stay there, but the Little General caused great disappointment by cancelling his booking.
During World War I the hotel was a Red Cross hospital. For a brief period after the war it was the headquarters of the Belgian government.
When we were in Bruges there was an exhibition of glorious paintings by Van Eyck and other 14th Century artists. After feasting our eyes for a couple of hours we were led to the sobering thought that artistically we’re going backwards rather than forwards.
Being in Belgium inevitably leads to political rumination. Brussels is a 55-minute train journey from Bruges. Brussels, with its fancy EC headquarters buildings in which well-paid bureaucrats consider weighty matters, such as whether bananas should be straight or curved.
Of course you pay for your rail tickets in euros. Likewise your mid-morning coffee, your delicious Belgian beer and chocolates.
Food and drink in Belgium are not cheap. It’s euros, euros, euros at every turn.
I do like Bruges, Belgium and the Belgians, but though. I’m comfortable there, t I don’t feel like a member of the Euro club. I’ve never thought of myself as European.
Trade agreements, yes. But shared government and a common currency?
Like the majority of my fellow countrymen I have no wish to hand our financial affair over to faceless bankers based in another land.
Maybe I’m old-fashioned. Resistant to dramatic changes. But as of now my answer to those who wish Britain to become a full member of the Euro club is:
“Merci monsieur, mais non. Euro if you want to. I’m content to paddle along with the £.’’
December 31, 2006 Feasting On Words
Peter Hinchliffe says that every child deserves a dad or mum who will read aloud to them.
My Dad’s favourite feast was beef stew with lots of pickled red cabbage followed by a large dish of rice pud. Most days that is what he had for his tea. Tea being the meal served at 5:30 p.m. when he arrived home from work.
As he came in at the kitchen door, Mother would start to dish up. I wasn’t too keen on beef stew. I had my doubts about rice pudding. I hated red cabbage.
So my favourite time was after tea when Dad, who had eaten copiously, settled himself into an old cracked-leather armchair for a few quiet minutes before going outside to work in the garden.
He would pick up the News Chronicle, or John Bull, or a gardening magazine.
“What are you doing?” I would ask, tugging at the leg of his work trousers, already knowing what the answer would be.
“Reading.”
“What are you reading?”
“About greenhouses.”
“Read to me.”
He never told me to go away, no matter how tired he was. He lifted me up onto his knee then read to me for five or ten minutes. Often he would have to push my inquisitive head to one side so that he could get a clear view of the words.
When war broke out in 1939, he showed me maps of the various battlefronts which appeared in the daily edition. I didn’t understand any of it. All that information about gardening, car maintenance, warfare.
Nevertheless, those minutes on Dad’s knee were the best part of my day. He didn’t try to teach me my letters. He read articles which he found interesting. By doing so he introduced me to the magic, the delight, the never-ending fascination of the printed word.
When I started to attend the village school, I took to reading like a swallow to air. Soon I had gobbled up everything in the school library. (Remember, these were the war years. Books were in short supply. The school library was a single shelf of books in a lock-up cupboard.)
At the first opportunity I joined the village library, which opened for two hours on a Saturday. I went on jungle adventures with Tarzan, travelled in time and space with H.G. Well’s characters, solved crimes with Sherlock Holmes.
Not that I spent all my time reading. Every daylight hour, plus many a crisp, dark evening, was spent playing out. Damming streams, racing bikes, climbing trees.
What times we had! The best of times!
Books were for rainy days and the long hours before bedtime in those imaginatively rich days before television.
They say that once you have mastered the art you never forget how to swim or ride a bike. Same with reading. Once a reader always a reader. I am still hypnotised by the printed word. Books, magazines, newspapers. I can’t stop reading.
A good book gives you a second life. A place where you can go for adventure and excitement. Somewhere completely different to the ordinary workaday world.
I’ve read hundreds of books, and I remember most of them. I also remember the books which I read to my sons when they were little. The original idea was to read to them for ten minutes or so to lull them off to sleep. We became so absorbed in the stories that the ten minutes
developed into marathon sessions lasting more than an hour.
We read Tolkien’s Hobbit then all three volumes of Lord of the Rings. We read Watership Down, The Box of Delights, all the Narnia novels, Arthur Ransome and more beside.
On winter’s nights I emerged from the boys’ bedroom shivering and blue, having been too engrossed in some tale to realise how cold it was.
Books are magnets. When I go into a house for the first time, I drift towards the bookshelves, trying not to make my curiosity too obvious, compelled to discover what they contain.
In dire emergency, when newspaper, magazine or book is unavailable, I read leaflets, publicity brochures, bus timetables.
Anything to get that printed word ‘fix’.
I’ve read happy stories, sad stories, amazing stories. Recently I read a profoundly sad story. The reading standards of our school children are frighteningly low.
That’s bad news for the children. And bad news for the country.
Some people tend to blame the teaching profession for the decline in literary. Perhaps teachers should shoulder part of the blame. But I am inclined to think that certain parents spend too much time on themselves and not enough time with their children.
Every child deserves a dad or mum who will read to them about greenhouses, apple growing, car maintenance…
Please visit Peter's website, Open Writing for a feast of words from regular columnists and other contributors.
December 24, 2006 What a night it was when a 20-year-old singer with gyrating hips and a quiff big enough to surf on came to town! Peter Hinchliffe tells of the times when Elvis went to Wichita Falls, Texas.
Elvis
Was a night, oo-oo what a night it was, it really was such a night…
That night when a 20-year-old singer with gyrating hips and a quiff big enough to surf on wowed them in the WF Auditorium.
The year, 1956. Elvis Presley was in town, blue-sueded feet planted on the first rung of the ladder to super-stardom as he embarked on a major United States tour.
His first smash-hit record Heartbreak Hotel was released on January 27 that year. In the first week 300,000 copies were sold.
Teenage girls at Wichita Falls High School were wild with excitement on the day of the concert. They talked of nothing else but Elvis.
The Auditorium was packed, mostly with squealing females. Joyce, my wife, was sitting up in the balcony. She didn’t squeal too loudly. Her mother was nearby.
Some mums, having heard of this wild young singer with the suggestive hip-movements, decided to go along as chaperones. They couldn’t bring themselves to admit that they were as keen as their daughters to see the new wonder.
For that one night Elvis was paid an estimated $40,000 (£30,000).
Actually he was on a return visit to Wichita Falls, Texas. He’d been there four months earlier, playing at the MB Corral, a big old Quonset hut which seated 1,000 folk.
The fee for Elvis and two musicians on that occasion - $175 (£116).
The MB Corral, home base of the Miller Brothers Band, booked in the likes of Bob Willis and the Texas Playboys, B B King, Fats Domino and Ike and Tina Turner.
On the night Elvis appeared the place was nowhere near full. The Corral just managed to break even.
The Miller Brothers played for the first hour, then Elvis for an hour, the Miller Brothers a third hour, then Elvis again.
After his first set Elvis left to play in Vernon, a nearby town. He was due to return to wrap up the night at the MB Corral. His manager, Colonel Parker, was already pushing him hard.
The Millers played on and on in their last set when Elvis failed to show up on time. He’d run out of petrol by the Pioneer restaurant in Wichita Falls. A waitress volunteered to run him back to the MB Corral. I shouldn’t imagine she needed much persuading.
The Corral stayed open late so that he could play.
Leon “Miller’’ Gibbs, who booked Elvis into the Corral, said, “Of all the musicians and all the entertainers in the world, I would say he was the hardest working.’’
Elvis gave full value for money on that big night at the WF Auditorium. Crazy gyrations. Lots and lots of hard-driving music. Shocking, but at the same time glorious.
The teenagers went wild. Even the mums enjoyed the show, though they never said so.
“Rock and roll was our music,’’ says Joyce. “New music, just for us.’’
Having seen Elvis she started to buy records at what would now be called an alternative music store. Raw rhythm and blues. Early rock and roll. If only we’d kept them.
In the days after the Auditorium concert the Bible-Belt girls of Wichita Falls High tut-tutted at the gossip that one of their number had gone off with Elvis in his pink Cadillac.
Secretly they were envious.
PLEASE ALSO VISIT PETER'S WEB MAGAZINE, WWW.OPENWRITING.COM
December 17, 2006 Atlantic Odyssey I'd been aboard since 2 pm. Excitedly pacing the corridors and decks, peering into the restaurant, the bars, the library. I had driven over from Yorkshire to Liverpool with my father in his Volkswagen Beetle. We had a quick and cheap lunch in a dreary café near the docks, then said an embarrassed and hurried goodbye.
What I didn't know until years later was that dad stayed on the quay-side until the liner sailed, reluctant to be separated from a son who was emigrating to America. A son he thought he may never see again.
I was so thrilled to be on a Cunard ship, embarking for a new life as a newspaperman in Texas, that I quickly forgot the emotional parting from a
parent.
There were four of us in that cheapest-of-the-cheap cabin, down in the bowels of the Sylvania. A lad of my age from Glasgow who was bound for a new beginning as a carpenter in Boston. An 82-year-old blind Australian docker, Mr Cunliffe, a tall, strange American who looked like Dracula and had the nocturnal habits of the Transylvanian count, and myself.
The tall American slept throughout the day, arising at midnight to absent himself from the cabin for the rest of the night. Belatedly we discovered that he had spent the last 14 months in a psychiatric hospital in Eire.
In the two weeks before setting out on the biggest adventure of my life I had acute stomach pains.
"A grumbling appendix,'' said our family doctor.
"Oh dear,'' said I, having invested my last pound note in the move to the New World, with no insurance for cancellation. "Does that mean an operation.''
"I'll give you a prescription for penicillin,'' said the family doc. "That should keep it quiet. But tell the ship's surgeon about your condition.''
I waited until we were one day out into the Atlantic, with no chance of turning back, before reporting to the surgeon.
His name was de Mille. When I mentioned the word appendix he looked as though he had been struck on the side of the head with a wet salmon. Obviously mid-ocean appendectomies were not his strong suit.
Fortunately my appendix, apart from the occasional mutter, was quiescent for the next six months.
One man on the five-day crossing impressed me mightily. He wore a black cowboy hat and high-heeled boots and spoke with a Western drawl. He lived in Dallas and was quick to point out that the Wichita in Wichita Falls was pronounced WichiTAW, not WichiTER. For a day or so I was chastened and subdued at not even being able to
pronounce the place where I was to make a new life.
Then I found that black hat was from Wigan, and had only been living in Texas for four years.
Immigration officers came aboard as we sailed up the Hudson river. I had to produce a huge negative of my chest X-ray. There was a last-minute flutter of apprehension in case some shadow was spotted on a lung - but all was OK.
Then, too overwhelmed to be able to speak, I gazed up at the Statue of Liberty and the sky-scraper tip of Manhattan.
I read this week that the new and mighty liner Queen Mary 2 is so tall that passengers will be able to look eye-to-eye with the Statue of Liberty as they sail by. To me the old Sylvania, one of the last to sail on a regular North Atlantic passenger run, was huge. But at 150,000 tons the QM2 is six times bigger.
The new Queen of the seas is the biggest liner ever built, capable of carrying 3,000 passengers in its cosseting and luxurious water-borne lap. If it was placed on its end, the QM2 would be 100 ft taller than the Eiffel Tower. Which means that passengers on the upper deck will be at eye level with the Statue of Liberty.
Those passengers are cruise tourists though - not travellers to a new land. As delighted as they are to be in such new and luxurious surroundings, their excitement levels will come nowhere near those of a young Yorkshireman who saw the United States for the first time from the deck of
the Sylvania in 1962.
December 10, 2006: Can a man love his typewriter? A journalistic man certainly can. Typewriters “Makes a fabulous gift for all those who remember the good old days,’’ says the advert.
“There’s nothing more satisfying than the click, click of a traditional typewriter…’’
And this “classic retro style’’ manual typewriter certainly seems to be a bargain at £49.99.
But no thanks. I’ve already got one. And yes, it does make me remember the good old days.
Those days more than 50 years ago when I was starting out as a reporter on a weekly newspaper in Batley, Yorkshire.
The Batley News office was a stern stone building which rubbed shoulders with a variety of textile
firms on a busy main road. The reporters’ room, with its big communal table-desk, was on the third
floor. On the table were four or five sit-up-and-beg typewriters, ancient enough to have brought news of World War One, if not the Boer War. There were more reporters than there were typewriters.
A fledgling newsman, eager to hammer out the results of a pigeon race, often had to wait for a
machine to become available on which to produce his golden prose. Impatient members of the reporting team - and that was every last one of us - avoided delay, and the possible evaporation of inspiration, by bringing in our own portable typewriters.
I had a loyal Imperial Good Companion, a sturdy machine embedded in a wooden case, heavy enough to leave me breathless after carrying it up from street level to the third floor. No lifts in the Batley News office. Its interior was so ramshackle that we felt grateful to even have staircases.
That Good Companion could not have been more appropriately named. It travelled thousands of miles with me on a Lambretta scooter, fastened to the luggage carrier with rubber straps. And hundreds of thousands of words flew inkily from its keys, bringing news of rugby league matches and court cases, sudden deaths and council meetings. Because it never broke down I took it for granted. So robustly was it built that a horn-hoofed animal could have learned to type on it.
When I eventually went off to work for a newspaper in the United States the Good Companion stayed behind, shut away in a cupboard. There in the US, the land flowing with milk, honey and dollar bills, I worked in a newspaper office which was just as decrepit and ill-equipped as that of the Batley News. Again there was a need to buy a portable typewriter.
I bought a second-hand machine from the top public official of the Texas city where I was then
working. A grand little typewriter it was too. Easily able to cope with the three-fingers-of-each-hand hammerings of a chap who never quite mastered the art of touch-typing.
After I’d been using it about a month I had to interview the official who had sold it to me to get
information on a major city development. He gave me the facts for a story, then, after a slight pause, said “Would you sell the typewriter back to me? I’m missing it. I’ll give you more than you paid for it.’’ Somehow or other I managed to convince him that he didn’t really want it back. And it served me well through months of strenuous reporting in Texas and Indiana.
Now all my writing is done on a computer keyboard. Very forgiving, computers. Help you with your
spelling. Highlight your mistakes.
I still have an Adler portable typewriter tucked away in a cupboard though. Just in case the electronic communications age comes to an unexpected end.
If the need arises the Adler can be strapped to the back of a scooter.
December 03, 2006: Peter Hinchliffe recalls some nerve-jangling experiences in Kenya. Narrow Escapes We were coming in to land at El Wak. Four of us, including the pilot, in a light aircraft. A Piper something-or-other. The African plain rolled up to meet us, an endless brown billiard table.
Down,down. Thirty feet, twenty, ten…
The engine suddenly roared. We were climbing again.
“Near miss,” said the pilot laconically. “See there.”
Eight or nine gazelles came high-skipping along the dirt runway as we banked away.
We circled twice, diving low, before they cleared off and allowed us to land.
What a journey that was! From Nairobi to Mandera, some 600 miles over semi-desert in the northwest of Kenya. Our pilot had flown for the Kenya Police for many years. Now he was the owner of a one-aircraft airline. We were on an inaugural commercial flight to Mandera, assessing the demand for air travel to one of the most isolated towns in Africa. Mandera is tucked into the sweltering corner where Kenya, Ethiopia and Somalia meet.
We went by way of Garissa, Wajir and El Wak. We flew over a barren moonscape for hour after hour. Down below thousands of camels wandered the blazing hinterland. These were regularly rounded up, herded to Mombasa and put on boats bound for the Gulf states.
Eventually, after our adventures in El Wak, which is a walled fortress straight out of a Foreign Legion film, we arrived in Mandera in mid-afternoon. We taxied along what passed for a main street. The plane was parked outside the building in which we were to spend the night.
The district commissioner invited us to dinner. We ate roast goat and posho (ground maize meal), accompanied with beer which was so hot it bubbled in the bottle.
“Excuse me,” said I eventually, “whereabouts is the bathroom?”
The commissioner grinned in the lamplight. He handed me a torch.
“Take this. Go outside. Turn right. Follow the path.”
Stumbling along in equatorial darkness, I arrived at a lean-to and went inside.
I shone the torch down into what seemed like a bottomless pit. The Independent newspaper once published a letter about this self-same long-drop toilet. A toilet which enjoyed a panoramic view to the foothills in Ethiopia across the Daua river which marked the frontier. The correspondent wrote:
“The thunderbox over the long drop was housed in a whitewashed lean-to with a corrugated iron, green-painted roof. Parallel lines of whitewashed stones and green euphoria hedges, beloved of snakes, marked the approach.
“I shall never forget the occasion when, while admiring the view, I heard a noise below me. As I leapt up, a cobra swayed up out of the box. With the minimum of dignity, I beat it by a short head to beyond the hedge. Ever after, I inspected the premises with a torch before gingerly ascending the throne.”
Good grief!
I sat on that seat!
Since reading the letter, I have had no shortage of material for nightmares.
There were no gazelles on the El Wak strip on our return journey.
Had there been any, I would probably not have noticed them. I was suffering from the effects of an over-sufficiency of goat meat and bubbly beer.
As the only returning passenger, I had plenty of room to stretch out and sleep.
The pilot sighed with relief when we taxied to a halt in Nairobi.
“I need a drink! A treble!”
“Why? Did we encounter some more wildlife?”
“We have just flown through the worst storm I have seen in all my days as a pilot. It was throwing us around as though we were a piece of paper. Lightning was coming from every quarter of the sky. And you slept through it all!”
Bravo for bubbly beer, thought I.
On another occasion, the pilot flew me to the island of Lamu in the Indian Ocean.
A perfect day. The best of lunches. Seafood, eaten on a veranda with a warm breeze blowing and the sound of waves playing on the distant reef.
He invited me on a second flight to Lamu.
“Sorry, can’t go,” said I. “My two-year contract is up. I’m going back to the UK.”
“Will anyone else be writing about tourism for the Daily Nation?”
“Yes, a young chap called Monte Vianna is taking over my column.”
He took Monte to Lamu on a sunny January day.
They had an open-air lunch within sound of the reef.
They were flying back to Nairobi when the plane crashed in Tsavo National Park.
The pilot received minor injuries.
Monte Vianna was killed.
November 26, 2006: Peter ponders on coincidences Chances Are that It Is a Small World
Some years ago I was sitting on the front at Brighton, gazing out to sea, relishing the sunshine, idly pondering how to arrange my affairs so as to be on permanent holiday. An elderly couple approached. "Mind if we sit here?" asked the man. "We have 10 minutes before the coach comes. We're staying down the road, in Eastbourne." There was no mistaking the rich round accent. "What part of Yorkshire are you from?" I asked. "Eh dear, is it that obvious?" said the man. "As obvious as mine," said I in best Huddersfield-speak. "I'm from Dewsbury," said the man. "Shaw Cross. I'm a retired butcher." "I was brought up near Dewsbury," said I. "The village of Whitley. Do you know it?" The man looked at his wife. They exchanged happy grins. "Ay, we know it. That's where we did our courting. I used to deliver meat to some of the isolated houses. What's your name?" "Hinchliffe." "Only Hinchliffe I knew was George William Hinchliffe. He was the reservoir keeper at Whitley. He used to let us walk on the reservoir banks. That's where I proposed." "My grandfather," said I. Small worlds. Happy co-incidences. A former colleague told me of the chance meeting of two ladies, Elsie and Gwen, who live in the Toronto area. They got out of the lift on the same floor. They went their separate ways, each to see a doctor. Chance arranged another coincidental meeting. Once again they arrived at the lift gates at the same moment. As they descended, they started to chat. "I've been for a medical check-up," said Gwen. "I am going on holiday to Florida." "I've been for a medical check-up," said Elsie. "I am going on holiday to England." The two ladies laughed at the coincidence. "Whereabouts in England?" "Near Huddersfield in Yorkshire. A little place called Holmfirth." "Good heavens!" said Gwen. "I've got a nephew in Holmfirth. If I give you his 'phone number and address, would you mind contacting him? Tell him I don't hear from him often enough. Will he please write more frequently." "I don't mind," said Elsie. "I will be staying with my brother-in-law. I will also be seeing my niece and her husband. They live in that area. Jeanette and Paul. She is an artist. He is a policeman." "Not Jeanette and Paul Leadbeater!" said Gwen. Gwen is Paul's aunt. Elsie is Jeanette's aunt. And they really were meeting for the first time. Then there is the story about a photographer employed by a Yorkshire weekly newspaper. He saw a car number plate advertised for sale in a national publication. The plate spelled out his initials. It was on offer at £400. The photographer phoned the firm advertising the plate. Only to be told, "Sorry sir, it's just gone." The photographer shrugged. Forgot about the plate. Until a few days later, when he was parking his car outside the office where he worked. He happened to notice the registration plate on the car parked beside him. It was the one he had tried to buy. Another former colleague, Malcolm Cruise, served in the Army in Cyprus during his National Service. Malcolm's father was waiting for a train at King's Cross station, London. He recognised the flashes on the uniform of the young soldier standing beside him. They indicated service in Cyprus. "My son is a soldier serving in Cyprus," said Mr Cruise. The young soldier stepped back a pace. Slowly, carefully, he looked Mr Cruise up and down. Then he said, "I reckon you're Malcolm Cruise's dad." Co-incidences, co-incidences. The world would be a paler shade of grey without them.
November 19, 2006: Peter mourns the passing of quiet Sundays. Sunday Memories Sunday, quiet Sunday. The whole village deep in Sabbath sleep. No miners' clogs clomping down the road in the pre-dawn. No sounds of traffic. The three people in our village who owned cars were abed. Arid the buses didn't start running until 1.25 pm. The brief clatter and thump of newspapers coming through the letter box shortly after nine o'clock got us up. To sit down half-an-hour later to a monumental breakfast of bacon and eggs. Always eggs, plural. One egg on a breakfast plate looks more forlorn than a car without wheels. There was always fried bread, of course. Plus mushrooms picked in local fields. "If you want to find mushrooms, look for sheep," my mother told me. "You are bound to find them where there are sheep." Indeed there were sheep in my favourite picking field, where mushrooms grew so thickly it was hard not to tread on them. After breakfast, it was a case of lounging around and filling in time until dinner (or lunch, if you happen to come from south of Doncaster). To say that dinner was substantial is as inadequate as describing a dinosaur as a large animal. There was enough food served up to feed a football team. And never a mouthful left over. Yorkshire pud to begin with. Smothered in onion gravy. Then more Yorkshire pud served up with the main course, just to keep the roast and two veg company. If it wasn't roast beef, it was lamb. And if it wasn't lamb, it was chicken. Then apple pie and custard. Or a rice pudding big enough to swim in. All of it eaten in solemn silence. Sunday lunch was a serious business. Almost a religious ritual. Jaws were far too busy to assist in forming words. Not surprising that within half-an-hour of pushing back from the table, Dad was asleep in an armchair, snoring loudly, the News of the World fluttering over his face. There was no 40 winks for me. I had to go to Sunday School. "Make sure you come straight home,’’ Mother said. "Remember you're wearing your Sunday best. If you kick the soles off those shoes, your Dad will kick you." She said the same thing every week. "Yes Mam," I'd say grinning. She would grin back, knowing I would steal an hour's fun on the way home The Parish Church's Sunday School teacher was a local farmer. We talked a lot, us boys, while he was telling us a New Testament story. The farmer's face would turn red, then purple. When his forehead was the shade of a ripe plum, he would single out a boy and bang him soundly oh the head with a large Bible. I received my share of Biblical knocks, but they did not sour my opinion of the farmer. I still remember him as a kindly, upright man. We rushed out of Sunday School roaring like lions set free, hastening down to the gorse bush hill for a game of cowboys and Indians! Then we ran all the way home, hoping no one would notice we were late. I always hid my scuffed shoes behind the washing machine in the kitchen, then went soft-footed upstairs to wash my face before my mother could see me. The company would already have arrived. Aunts. Uncles. Family friends. All of them gathered in the living room, chattering away as though they hadn't seen each other for a hundred years. I could make neither ash nor coke of the conversation, but the grownups obviously thought it was the best entertainment of the week. I welcomed company though, even if the chat passed over my head. Company meant an even more lavish Sunday tea than usual. The best plates were brought out, The ones with a silver band around the rim. The Apostle tea spoons were in the saucers. Three double-deck cake stands were lined up in the middle of the table as we hurried through salmon salad and thinly-sliced brown bread and butter. Naturally, because company was present, the salad cream came in a fancy little cut-glass jug rather than a Heinz bottle. As soon as the salad was downed, we fell upon angel cakes, coconut macaroons, chocolate crisps, iced mincemeat tarts, jam tarts, lemon curd tarts, custard tarts, fruit cake, sponge cake, jelly and trifle. From time to time, I would leave the table and go into the kitchen to see if I could help carry in more plates of sweet stuff. Seizing the opportunity to cram another couple or tarts into my mouth at the one go while no one was looking. Sundays then were comfy, cosy family occasions. Folk were content to entertain, and be entertained, in their own homes. Few dreamed of going any further than the next village. Now we all have cars. And Sunday has become a noisy bedlam. We are no longer happy to stay put. We must have a little outing. So where do we spend our Sundays? DIY shops and garden centres. How thrilling! "Here Mary, just look at this light-embossed Anaglypta. Isn't it nice?" "Which paint's best for the kitchen? White with a touch of lemon, or white with a touch of almond?" The Sabbath bustle may well increase. Some folk are lobbying for all shops to be open on Sundays. If this happens, pity the poor shop assistants, apart from the minority who are desperate for cash. And pity all lovers of peace and quiet. If the bored and restless do finally succeed in burying the traditional Sunday, I'll stay at home. Snoring beneath a copy of The Observer.
PLEASE ALSO VISIT PETER'S WEB MAGAZINE, WWW.OPENWRITING.COM
November 12, 2006 Memories of Andrew Mynarski, a gallant Canadian airman. The Victoria Cross.
I was a Leading Aircraftsman, clerking in the control tower at No 3 Flying Training School, RAF Middleton St George near Darlington. This was nine years after the end of World War Two. A number of the career officers teaching youngsters how to fly jet fighters had served as aircrew during the war. A select few of these had the ribbons of medals awarded for gallantry stitched to their blue uniforms. I was a national serviceman. In for two years, keep my head down and my nose clean, then resume normal life. As a 19-year-old I wasn’t the least bit interested in military history. Not until many years later did I realise that Middleton was a special place, and that a very special man had been stationed there. Middleton was the base for two Canadian bomber squadrons during the war, 428 (Ghost) and 419 (Moose). Flying Wellingtons, Halifaxes and Lancasters they dropped 20,000 tons of bombs over Germany. They lost |