Day 2 (finally) on the road North.
I know we are heading in the right direction as the sun is on my right, this should be easy, head for Chesterfield and turn left can’t miss it. If you get to Sheffield you have gone too far.
I have a CD I want Jo to listen to, given we are “going back to our roots” sort of thing I though a little entertainment from our past might be in order. Now they do say “Nostalgia is not what it used to be” however some things are timeless. The British Broadcasting Company (BBC) used to (and still does occasionally) made some outstanding 30 minute comedy shows. The Navy Lark, The men from the Ministry, Much binding in the march, beyond our Ken and the one I purchased at a recent fuel stop “Beyond our Ken”. Now the memory is a peculiar thing and maybe these are not really funny now they just retain the recollection of being funny from my past, you absorb a great deal before your tenth birthday.
These wireless broadcasts were full of innuendo and strictly none PC (that’s politically correct not Personal Computer) I am sure if you tried to produce the same style you would not only be drummed off the stage you would be publicly castigated. Really you could say they were a little rude and it was always up to the listener as to their interpretation. Funny how these days we have action groups who unfortunately seem hell bent on “looking after our interests” where we like it or not. A shame really as comedy needs to be pushed over the edge every now and again or things become stale.
Back to my CD of “Around the Horn” indulge me for a while whilst I recall some of the cast members who’s very names can still make me chuckle Betty Marsden played “Dame Celia Molestrangler”, and Hugh Paddick was ‘ageing juvenile’ Binkie Huckaback. Other characters included J. Peasemold Gruntfuttock (Kenneth Williams), the world’s dirtiest dirty old man (who wanted, above all else, to get his hands on Judith Chalmers). He was also the self-styled King (later Dictator) of Peasemoldia, a small slum area of the North of London just off the Balls Pond Road. The shows also featured old English folk singer Rambling Syd Rumpo, played by Williams, who sang such delightful and parodic nonsense ditties as “Green Grow My Nadgers Oh!”, “Song of the Bogle Clencher”, and the timeless “Ballad of the Woggler’s Moulie”.
You can listen to an episode at the end of this link http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00tb9j7 It is definitely not the best episode from series 4 but it is ok
I know this is all nonsense to most of you but hey it’s my blog.
The CD finishes all too soon and we are contacted by my brother Berni (as you assume short for Bernard) who is on route and we should collide (well meet up) somewhere around the aforementioned Chesterfield. Only a slight delay for Berni due to a conversation initiated by a member of the Yorkshire constabulary. This gives Jo and I time to stop and actually take a look at where we are.
Now we are heading for Derbyshire which is nestled slight between and below Lancashire and Yorkshire two places which do not really like each. Actually they have never liked each other and it all came to a head in 1455 when they fought the “War of the Roses” Red for Lanc’s and White for York’s and before you ask no they did not fight over flowers the roses were their badges, they were fighting for the throne of England. As a Lancastrian I am happy to report we won and Henry Tudor became Henry VII. (that’s the dad of the TV series one you have been watching recently)
Now there is no real fighting going on except over sporting fixtures between the two counties. Normally Soccer or Cricket matches are the catalyst for these events. Very much like in days of old groups of young and not so young men dress up in local garb now known as football shirts and scarf’s paint their faces in the colours of their team Steam over the Pennine hills on the one motorway it has (see only one road easy to defend) and go and invade the others territory. Not as much looting and pillaging as there used to be as you need to be back on the coach home 30 minutes after the game finishes which rather limits the carnage but it’s the though what counts as they say. I have taken part in these rights of passage attacking Leeds and defending my homeland from the hordes from Hull (in my youth of course not recently). My Mother was from Yorkshire and I was born in Lancashire so there was always a level of rivalry even at home.
The countryside is not what you would describe as pretty, it’s not ugly more functional. The hills (not mountains) go above the tree line and dip and rise continually as you wend you way through the little villages. So what you get is 5 minutes in a very pretty stone built village and then 10 minutes as you rise over the crest of the hill and you think you were in the middle of nowhere. The one thing it is is green everywhere is green. As the Pennine hills sit in the middle of the country they force the clouds from both West and East to deposit rain here so it is always green (Not withstanding this there is currently a hose pipe ban, it would seem the water they use actually comes from somewhere else where it’s not actually raining, go figure).
Berni arrives as expected, I assume the constabulary was checking his passport as these Yorkshire folk can be a little funny and his car plates show he resides in the South which is a whole world away for some of these yokels, sorry, sorry I meant Locals.