AUTOCASH ROBOT
Subscribe To
Posts
Comments
Error in deserializing body of reply message for operation 'Translate'. The maximum string content length quota (8192) has been exceeded while reading XML data. This quota may be increased by changing the MaxStringContentLength property on the XmlDictionaryReaderQuotas object used when creating the XML reader. Line 1, position 9026.
Does royal fiancee Kate Middleton's roots lie in a fine Lancashire town near Manchester? Photograph: MCP/Rex Features Fellow subjects! There can be only one place to turn to at this joyous moment and that is … Middleton. Who can doubt that Our Kate's roots lie, way, way back, in this fine town near Manchester, or that its local weekly Guardian was her forbears' mentor.
It is a place of interest and history, home of the only surviving Peterloo banner and responsible in the past for producing many a cotton twist and bathroom flannel. It has its place in the pantheon of investigative journalism, too. During the Sudan campaign, in which Winston Churchill famously rode in the British army's last great cavalry charge at Omdurman, the Middleton Guardian reported on a Lancashire fusilier who had been ordered to bayonet every enemy survivor, dead or alive.
This week, its dramas are domestic: "A widow went on a drunken binge after work and crashed into two cars as she drove home." Fortunately no one was hurt by the antics of the mother of two, who underestimated the power of a bottle of wine. She was heard by neighbours shouting: "Everything will be OK – it happens."
This lifts an otherwise mundane account, although the paper also has quiet fun linking the police's subsequent visit, after the woman had "changed into her pyjamas", with her solicitor's comment in mitigation that the arrest was "a wake-up call". Her drunken cry might also make a good modern substitute for Middleton's motto Fortis in arduis, which up to now has been translated as "strong in difficulties".
The Guardian also has an excellent picture gallery, which features readers' photographs of Middleton and surrounding scenes. Some show the redbrick terraces becomingly wreathed in mist – almost like a bridal veil. Another has the sunshine of a new day streaming through woodland at Boggart Hole Clough.
There is also – rejoice, ye cliche-mongers of the North – an exceptionally fine pigeon hurtling towards the camera of Middletonian Mike McGrath. But my favourite in the 40-strong gallery is reader Anthony Jennings' photo of the moon. Photos, rather. He was so interested that he took one in January and another in August. It is the same moon that we have in Leeds, and that will shine over William and Kate's wedding night. But he has photographed it very well, and it made me think fondly of honeymoons.
There is only one pub in England officially named after our earlier Queen Kate, whose personal loyalty was a model, even if it led to the dissolution of the monasteries and the English Reformation. The Katherine of Aragon sits on a Yorkshire hillside at Osmotherly, the patch roamed by staff of the Northern Echo.
This week, they are more interested in Catterick up the road, where a metal detectrist has found a right royal mediaeval seal. Ivor Miller's silver trophy comes with all the enjoyable theorising which surrounds such discoveries underground.
"Some have speculated that a medieval farm labourer may have found the Roman jewel, a semiprecious stone, and handed it to their noble or lord, who placed it into their correspondence seal," says the Echo cheerfully, without fear of contradiction or correction. Equally, it may have been flung gaily out of a casement at Catterick's long-gone castle, by a young prince over the moon at his beautiful girlfriend saying "Yes".
Its mysteries are protected by an unknown jumble of letters, thought to be some sort of mediaeval code. Miller gives off nothing but simple contentment. He tells the Echo: "I had a feeling it was something nice. I can go out for months and find nothing but shotgun cartridges and ringpulls."
Note meanwhile, that Osmotherly's solitary Katherine of Aragon is also an exception to the many Elephant and Castle pubs, which are also named after the sad queen, but disrespectfully. The weird combo was the nearest English sots in Good King Henry's reign could get to Katherine's Spanish title, the Infanta of Castille.
I've had a jolly week myself, dealing extensively with the Twittersphere, a world into which I occasionally send fusillades of connected 140-word bits of pith. This method is cheating but I haven't got time for précis, and anyway the Twitter case involving Robin Hood airport was a bit complex to condense into the system's official requirements.
Like everyone else, I found Judge Jaqueline Davies a somewhat severe figure at Doncaster crown court, but the appeal by Paul Chambers, who made the notorious tweetjoke about bombing the airport, wasn't brilliantly handled for reasons I try to explain in my own tweets. It's interesting meanwhile to read the headline in this week's Doncaster Star: "Deadly haul of weapons at Robin Hood airport".
It shows why staff there can be twitchy. A crackdown operation by the UK Border Agency has found travellers armed with over 100 weapons, including stun guns, clubs and samurai swords (though unfortunately, given the airport's name, no bows and arrows). Some of the kit was plainly souvenir material, but what on earth were mother and son, Jayne and Jack Allen, doing on holiday in Bulgaria?
The Star reports that they were stopped at Robin Hood carrying three canisters of CS gas, four knuckle dusters, three batons, three finger- knives and a back knife. I know the Bulgarians carried out that weird umbrella murder of a dissident in London years ago, but they can't be that dangerous.
The Star can suffer Daily Mail-style hissy-fits, though, as it does with another headline which reveals excitedly: "Ed's grandad a communist". The piece about Labour's new leader, who is also MP for Doncaster North, goes back beyond his late Dad Ralph, a very well-known Marxist academic, to Grandpa Sam who actually "fought with the Red Army".
This would have been a badge of honour in Donny in times past. Maybe it still is, although the former citadel of mining and socialism elected an English Democrat oddball as its mayor in May. Judging by the thread beneath the piece online, everyone is staying calm. The first comment consists simply of the word: "So?"
From Donny to Scunny, and in my preferred role of bringer of joy from the North, I was genuinely pleased to read this: "Bumper pre-tax profits have led to a directive for production on the Scunthorpe Tata steelworks to be stepped up by 10,000 tonnes a week."
The report in the Scunthorpe Telegraph may be a surprise in the current climate of cuts and financial worries, but it suggests an underlying recovery. If steel is reviving, many smaller-scale business will follow. Tata reports that profits from Scunny and the rest of its European division in the first half of 2010 were £315m, compared with a loss of £512 million last year.
The firm has asked local staff for a 10,000 tonne increase of weekly steel production from the current 68,000 tonnes. Mind you, the group's net debt still stands at £6.7bn according to the Telegraph, so we'd best be cheerful but not too giddy.
Martin Wainwright recommends: on holiday in Slovenia, one of my sons inscribed the visitor-book at a local attraction with "A museum of cheese! What could more exciting?" I feel the same, albeit without his youthful cynicism, about the first-ever Encyclopaedia of Leeds, just published by an excellent local journalist called Mick McCann. Even if you couldn't give a toss about the city, your £9.99 buys an extraordinary Lucky Dip of fact, opinion and assertion, which reminds me of Dr Johnson's famous dictionary, additionally fuelled by some powerful local substance such as Tetley's ale.
You can get a copy from Armley Books via updateleeds@hotmail.co.uk and I will be dishing them out as Christmas presents.
On the outing front, why not pay a visit to dear little Kettlewell, either for a weekend meal at one of the three pubs, tea and a cake at the many cafes and/or a march along one of the lovely stretches of the Dales Way?
The other reason for going is to admire the impressively skilful scarecrows of children and their teachers which greet you to the village beside a "Save Our School" sign. More on this next week in Guardian Education; meanwhile make a long-range planning note of the Kettlewell Scarcrow festival one of the country's best, which runs next year from 13-21 August . If the school does shut, the festival could eventually be a victim too.
0 comments:
Post a Comment