Sunday, 8 August 2010
Friday, 6 August 2010
Park Life
I started watching a new series recently on BBC 4, headed by the marvellous Dan Cruickshank, about the development of urban parks in this country.
Watching this programme and looking at the wonderful parks it featured triggered lots of memories about the parks we played in and visited when I was a child way back in the early sixties.
On Bakestone Moor (an adjunct to the village of Whitwell, Derbyshire) where I lived there was, just a few yards from our house, an area known as t'plantin' or Plantation. You'll recall from previous posts that the definite article was rarely, if ever, heard.
Now t'plantin' wasn't a park of the kind being examined in the TV programme but a park is what we called it. As in "Mam, I'm going t'park" or "Mam, can I go t'plantin'". The Canch in Worksop (our nearest town) and Queen's Park in Chesterfield (she of the Crooked Spire) were more akin to the urban parks with railings and flower beds and boating lakes that Dan was waxing lyrical about in his TV show.
Half of the Plantation was full of trees (I'm guessing that's where the name came from) and mounds and dips and made a natural adventure playground. The other half of it was open and housed the ubiquitous slide, swings - baby ones and the flat seat ones for older children - and a roundabout. All of them surrounded by concrete; this being the days before Health and Safety and child-friendly bouncy surfaces around such things. Many a graze and cut and contusion and, for some, broken bone was sustained on these items. But a lot of fun too for sure.
I remember how we used to go down the slide on the waxed paper that loaves of bread were wrapped in before the ubquitous menace of polythene bags were invented. But we were ignorant of that then. We used the bread paper to make the slide slippier as it got sticky at times. Probably due to the potent combination of soot, from the everyone's chimneys (this being a mining area everyone had coal fires and it wasn't smokeless fuel they burnt) and quarry dust that the air was aways thick with. It was like breathing gravy!! Is there any wonder I was always ill with asthma??? Furthermore I rather suspect the slide got piddled on from time to time. Anyway, the bread paper would make us go down that slide like we'd been shot out of a cannon. Whoosh we would go, then try to stand up as we got to the bottom or we'd have a BSA (bloody sore arse) from landing on the concrete.
T'plantin' often played host to the travelling fair; many is the warm summer evening I was unable to sleep for the strains of 'I can't get used to losing you' being delivered by Andy Williams at full blast from the Noah's Ark!
Down in the village (Whitwell) there was the Rec or Recreation ground. This was a big square field and was home to a couple of huts, one where the 1st Whitwell Cubs, Scouts, Brownies and Guides met and another for the St John Ambulance Brigade. There was of course more play equipment but with additions here of a seesaw and a Policeman's Helmet. But even more exotic than any of that was the paddling pool! The times we spent down there on those (no doubt mythical) long hot summer holidays in the early sixties.
Going a little further afield there was the Canch in Worksop and beyond that Langold Lakes both of which held other pleasures but I'll write about them in another post.
Watching this programme and looking at the wonderful parks it featured triggered lots of memories about the parks we played in and visited when I was a child way back in the early sixties.
On Bakestone Moor (an adjunct to the village of Whitwell, Derbyshire) where I lived there was, just a few yards from our house, an area known as t'plantin' or Plantation. You'll recall from previous posts that the definite article was rarely, if ever, heard.
Now t'plantin' wasn't a park of the kind being examined in the TV programme but a park is what we called it. As in "Mam, I'm going t'park" or "Mam, can I go t'plantin'". The Canch in Worksop (our nearest town) and Queen's Park in Chesterfield (she of the Crooked Spire) were more akin to the urban parks with railings and flower beds and boating lakes that Dan was waxing lyrical about in his TV show.
Half of the Plantation was full of trees (I'm guessing that's where the name came from) and mounds and dips and made a natural adventure playground. The other half of it was open and housed the ubiquitous slide, swings - baby ones and the flat seat ones for older children - and a roundabout. All of them surrounded by concrete; this being the days before Health and Safety and child-friendly bouncy surfaces around such things. Many a graze and cut and contusion and, for some, broken bone was sustained on these items. But a lot of fun too for sure.
I remember how we used to go down the slide on the waxed paper that loaves of bread were wrapped in before the ubquitous menace of polythene bags were invented. But we were ignorant of that then. We used the bread paper to make the slide slippier as it got sticky at times. Probably due to the potent combination of soot, from the everyone's chimneys (this being a mining area everyone had coal fires and it wasn't smokeless fuel they burnt) and quarry dust that the air was aways thick with. It was like breathing gravy!! Is there any wonder I was always ill with asthma??? Furthermore I rather suspect the slide got piddled on from time to time. Anyway, the bread paper would make us go down that slide like we'd been shot out of a cannon. Whoosh we would go, then try to stand up as we got to the bottom or we'd have a BSA (bloody sore arse) from landing on the concrete.
T'plantin' often played host to the travelling fair; many is the warm summer evening I was unable to sleep for the strains of 'I can't get used to losing you' being delivered by Andy Williams at full blast from the Noah's Ark!
Down in the village (Whitwell) there was the Rec or Recreation ground. This was a big square field and was home to a couple of huts, one where the 1st Whitwell Cubs, Scouts, Brownies and Guides met and another for the St John Ambulance Brigade. There was of course more play equipment but with additions here of a seesaw and a Policeman's Helmet. But even more exotic than any of that was the paddling pool! The times we spent down there on those (no doubt mythical) long hot summer holidays in the early sixties.
Going a little further afield there was the Canch in Worksop and beyond that Langold Lakes both of which held other pleasures but I'll write about them in another post.
Monday, 2 August 2010
Tweet, tweeting across the universe...
...or maybe not.
Splitting my infinitives all the way, I decided to boldy go where Stephen Fry (amongst others) have gone before and have a look at Twitter.
Well, I've created an account but I'm not too sure yet what the point of it is. The 'tweet' box takes only a few characters so one's tweet can only be a sentence. How much of interest can one get in a sentence? Unless you've just bumped into Jordan perhaps. And really, if the space were small enough, one could hardly fail to bump into her...
"I just picked my nose and got a really big bogey out" - might be the highlight of my day which hardly makes for riveting reading or terrific tweeting. And isn't that what ones's Facebook wall is for? Not that I'm a Facebook expert. Most of that mystifies me.
So until I become rich and famous, either in my own right or vicariously by association with someone already in possession of those attributes, I don't think I'll be a dedicated twitterer. Well not on-line anyway! Verbal twittering I can mostly definitely manage.
Splitting my infinitives all the way, I decided to boldy go where Stephen Fry (amongst others) have gone before and have a look at Twitter.
Well, I've created an account but I'm not too sure yet what the point of it is. The 'tweet' box takes only a few characters so one's tweet can only be a sentence. How much of interest can one get in a sentence? Unless you've just bumped into Jordan perhaps. And really, if the space were small enough, one could hardly fail to bump into her...
"I just picked my nose and got a really big bogey out" - might be the highlight of my day which hardly makes for riveting reading or terrific tweeting. And isn't that what ones's Facebook wall is for? Not that I'm a Facebook expert. Most of that mystifies me.
So until I become rich and famous, either in my own right or vicariously by association with someone already in possession of those attributes, I don't think I'll be a dedicated twitterer. Well not on-line anyway! Verbal twittering I can mostly definitely manage.
Monday, 26 July 2010
Monitoring the situation
Some months ago, when I was still employed by the Specious Sycophantic Crows Ltd, I had a private health check. As part of this check-up I was given an ECG which showed a borderline error.
Gvien our family history; dad had a massive stroke when at the age I am now (not scary in the slightest) and sister had a thrombosis in one eye, I was advised to get this ECG followed up.
To this end I recently had what's called a Tape test. This involves having a few electrodes stuck to oneself and a monitor attached to those. I had to wear this for 24 hours and then go back to have it removed.
I am just back from the hospital to get the results of the tests; it seems they were borderline. Borderline arryhthmia (irregular heartbeat basically). So now I'm wired for sound yet again. This time for 72 hours. So no shower for me until Thursday evening. Pooh eh? Just what you want in the middle of summer! Deep joy.
So that's another department at the hospital that I, a single-handed drain on the NHS, have been to. Over the years, in no particular order, there's been medical, surgical, eye clinic, gynaecology, obstetrics, peadiatrics, Mental health, Casualty and now Cardiology! Not to mention various minor surgical procedures at NHS outposts in the depths of darkest Park North and the like.
There can't be much left apart from Geriatrics. YET. A few more years and I can add that notch to my belt too. And all with genuine ailments! I'm not one of these people - there's a name for them - that makes up ailments just so they can be seen by doctors and go to hospital. I don't need to!
And my foot still hurts too. But that's another story of another accident - there's a bit of a list of those too. Suffice it to say, I'm one of the few, maybe the ONLY, people to fall INTO a pub. And I know what you are thinking and you can stop it now. I wasn't already dreadfully inebriated. I hadn't been in the place before and so wasn't aware of the treacherous steps down into the place. So down I flew and landed on my arse with my hat askew. Oh how everyone laughed. Oh what a jolly jape it was! Until we saw the blood. 'Nuff said. It was awful and took months to heal and I now bear a lovely big scar right on the front of my left shin. Utterly delightful it is.
Gvien our family history; dad had a massive stroke when at the age I am now (not scary in the slightest) and sister had a thrombosis in one eye, I was advised to get this ECG followed up.
To this end I recently had what's called a Tape test. This involves having a few electrodes stuck to oneself and a monitor attached to those. I had to wear this for 24 hours and then go back to have it removed.
I am just back from the hospital to get the results of the tests; it seems they were borderline. Borderline arryhthmia (irregular heartbeat basically). So now I'm wired for sound yet again. This time for 72 hours. So no shower for me until Thursday evening. Pooh eh? Just what you want in the middle of summer! Deep joy.
So that's another department at the hospital that I, a single-handed drain on the NHS, have been to. Over the years, in no particular order, there's been medical, surgical, eye clinic, gynaecology, obstetrics, peadiatrics, Mental health, Casualty and now Cardiology! Not to mention various minor surgical procedures at NHS outposts in the depths of darkest Park North and the like.
There can't be much left apart from Geriatrics. YET. A few more years and I can add that notch to my belt too. And all with genuine ailments! I'm not one of these people - there's a name for them - that makes up ailments just so they can be seen by doctors and go to hospital. I don't need to!
And my foot still hurts too. But that's another story of another accident - there's a bit of a list of those too. Suffice it to say, I'm one of the few, maybe the ONLY, people to fall INTO a pub. And I know what you are thinking and you can stop it now. I wasn't already dreadfully inebriated. I hadn't been in the place before and so wasn't aware of the treacherous steps down into the place. So down I flew and landed on my arse with my hat askew. Oh how everyone laughed. Oh what a jolly jape it was! Until we saw the blood. 'Nuff said. It was awful and took months to heal and I now bear a lovely big scar right on the front of my left shin. Utterly delightful it is.
Punning forwards
Since a rather prolific start to this blog I've hit a bit of a brick wall. Gosh, if I've got writer's block that nust mean I'm a writer! Ha!! I wish.
Today I received the following puns in an e-mail from a friend. Sadly I can't claim credit for them but they are just so good I wanted to share them.
I think they are all wonderful and very clever. Hats off to whoever it was that penned them. Or should that be punned them...
I've highlighted my favourites.
Acupuncture is a jab well done.
I hope you enjoyed them. :-)
Today I received the following puns in an e-mail from a friend. Sadly I can't claim credit for them but they are just so good I wanted to share them.
I think they are all wonderful and very clever. Hats off to whoever it was that penned them. Or should that be punned them...
I've highlighted my favourites.
Puns for those with a higher IQ
Those who jump off a bridge in Paris are in Seine.
A man's home is his castle, in a manor of speaking.
Dijon vu - the same mustard as before.
Practice safe eating - always use condiments.
Shotgun wedding - A case of wife or death.
A man needs a mistress just to break the monogamy.
A hangover is the wrath of grapes.
Dancing cheek-to-cheek is really a form of floor play.
Does the name Pavlov ring a bell?
Condoms should be used on every conceivable occasion.
Reading while sunbathing makes you well red.
When two egotists meet, it's an I for an I.
A bicycle can't stand on its own because it is two tired.
What's the definition of a will? (It's a dead give away.)
Time flies like an arrow. Fruit flies like a banana.
In democracy your vote counts. In feudalism your count votes.
She was engaged to a boyfriend with a wooden leg but broke it off.
A chicken crossing the road is poultry in motion.
If you don't pay your exorcist, you get repossessed
With her marriage, she got a new name and a dress.
The man who fell into an upholstery machine is fully recovered.
You feel stuck with your debt if you can't budge it.
Local Area Network in Australia - the LAN down under.
Every calendar's days are numbered.
A lot of money is tainted - Taint yours and taint mine.
A boiled egg in the morning is hard to beat.
He had a photographic memory that was never developed.
A midget fortune-teller who escapes from prison is a small medium at large.
Once you've seen one shopping centre, you've seen a mall.
Bakers trade bread recipes on a knead-to-know basis.
Santa's helpers are subordinate clauses.
I hope you enjoyed them. :-)
Tuesday, 20 July 2010
Shopping in a (relatively speaking) bygone era
In my last post - Unidentified item in the bagging area - I touched upon how shopping has changed from being a personalized, pleasurable service to the misery it is today before it turned into a rant against Tesco. Incidentally, soda water is another casualty, as I noticed today. I used to be able to get Tesco branded soda water at 40p a bottle. Now there's only Schweppes at £1 a bottle! Just a bit of difference there then. It's just as well I'm not a gin drinker or I'd be even more miserable than I already am.
So there was nothing for it; I had to grit my teeth and gird my loins and venture into the personification of Hades that is Asda. Actually at 11am on a Tuesday morning, if not what we'd call heavenly, it's at least just about bearable.
Anyway, as ever, I digress. What I wanted to talk about was shopping and how much it has changed since I was a child back in the early sixties.
On Bakestone Moor, where I lived there was a large Co-operative grocery store with a separate butchers. Or Corp as it was usually referred to. As in "I'm just going t'corp for some milk tokens". We tend not to use the definite article in Derbyshire as you can see. It was many years later that I discovered it was actually 'Co-operative'. A bit like Dr Arra - but that's another story.
Anyway; This 'Corp' had no self-service. Oh no. There was a long counter with most of the stock on shelves ranging from floor to ceiling. I remember a long pole with a hook on it being used to access boxes of cornflakes from the top shelves. Frequently by a very thin woman with peroxide hair in some sort of beehive hairdo.
Cheese and ham and bacon and so on were not platicised and plumped out with water and ready sliced in vacuum packs. They were in blocks and were cut to one's requirements and wrapped in greasproof paper. As in did was bread! (Cling film - nasty stuff - hadn't been invented then) The wrappings from which were used to grease the slide in the play park top make it slidier! :-) But apart from the novel form of these products and the very useful wrappings they came in, the most exciting thing about them was that they actually tasted of something! Like cheese; or ham; or bacon...
Dried fruit for cake making was in large tubs and weighed out as required. You get the idea. The amount you spent was totted up and recorded in your 'divvy' book. At the end of each year, Co-operative members, received their dividend.
I have no recollection of there being any other way to get milk than to have it delivered from the Co-op milkman. We bought milk tokens from the Co-op. They came in different colours to represent what type of milk you wanted. I think there was a choice of two. Silver top and gold top. Silver top being the regular kind with the cream on top and gold top being full cream. If there were others I don't recall them. So then every night one put out the empty milk bottles and the tokens for how many pints you wanted. Simples!
So that was on Bakestone Moor. The moor is an adjunct of the village Whitwell which is down the hill. Whitwell had a Co-op drapers which was all 'Are you being served' in that it was glass counters and everything in those little drawers under the counter and behind it.
In Worksop, the nearest town, there was a large Co-op department store. I remember the lifts with a lift operator and the metal gate things that pulled across first. I have too a vivid memory of the best Father Christmas (as he was in those days. None of this Santa stuff.) grotto ever.
So yeah, all a bit different from self-service checkouts and being told off by a computerized check-out bitch.
So there was nothing for it; I had to grit my teeth and gird my loins and venture into the personification of Hades that is Asda. Actually at 11am on a Tuesday morning, if not what we'd call heavenly, it's at least just about bearable.
Anyway, as ever, I digress. What I wanted to talk about was shopping and how much it has changed since I was a child back in the early sixties.
On Bakestone Moor, where I lived there was a large Co-operative grocery store with a separate butchers. Or Corp as it was usually referred to. As in "I'm just going t'corp for some milk tokens". We tend not to use the definite article in Derbyshire as you can see. It was many years later that I discovered it was actually 'Co-operative'. A bit like Dr Arra - but that's another story.
Anyway; This 'Corp' had no self-service. Oh no. There was a long counter with most of the stock on shelves ranging from floor to ceiling. I remember a long pole with a hook on it being used to access boxes of cornflakes from the top shelves. Frequently by a very thin woman with peroxide hair in some sort of beehive hairdo.
Cheese and ham and bacon and so on were not platicised and plumped out with water and ready sliced in vacuum packs. They were in blocks and were cut to one's requirements and wrapped in greasproof paper. As in did was bread! (Cling film - nasty stuff - hadn't been invented then) The wrappings from which were used to grease the slide in the play park top make it slidier! :-) But apart from the novel form of these products and the very useful wrappings they came in, the most exciting thing about them was that they actually tasted of something! Like cheese; or ham; or bacon...
Dried fruit for cake making was in large tubs and weighed out as required. You get the idea. The amount you spent was totted up and recorded in your 'divvy' book. At the end of each year, Co-operative members, received their dividend.
I have no recollection of there being any other way to get milk than to have it delivered from the Co-op milkman. We bought milk tokens from the Co-op. They came in different colours to represent what type of milk you wanted. I think there was a choice of two. Silver top and gold top. Silver top being the regular kind with the cream on top and gold top being full cream. If there were others I don't recall them. So then every night one put out the empty milk bottles and the tokens for how many pints you wanted. Simples!
So that was on Bakestone Moor. The moor is an adjunct of the village Whitwell which is down the hill. Whitwell had a Co-op drapers which was all 'Are you being served' in that it was glass counters and everything in those little drawers under the counter and behind it.
In Worksop, the nearest town, there was a large Co-op department store. I remember the lifts with a lift operator and the metal gate things that pulled across first. I have too a vivid memory of the best Father Christmas (as he was in those days. None of this Santa stuff.) grotto ever.
So yeah, all a bit different from self-service checkouts and being told off by a computerized check-out bitch.
Monday, 19 July 2010
Unidentified item in the bagging area
I was listening to Radio 4 this morning, as I do, being a devotee of R4's output, and there was an item on Woman's Hour about shopping. More to the point about the rise and fall of the privately owned department store and how the nearest we get nowadays to a personal shopping experience is that blasted computerised voice on those ghastly self-service checkouts (and why isn't it cheaper if we are doing all the work ourselves huh?) telling us off for having an unidentified item in the bagging area. Aaargh!! All of which got me thinking about how cross I'm becoming with Tesco these days and how impotent it makes me feel becuase I don't actually have anywhere else much to go. Well apart from Asda and that's just another conglomeration - just an American one instead of a British one.
There is a Tesco Express at my nearest 'village' centre about ten minutes walk from my home. . Being a non-driver and living alone this has been very handy for me. I pootle off with my bright pink floral shopping trolley to get my bits and pieces. But over recent weeks and months I've noticed that they are slowly removing all their own brand products (the ones I always bought) and replacing them with premium brands. So no more Tesco olives - only Crespo ones. Now I love Crespo olives but being as how I get through an olive grove a week, own brand olives it had to be.
The same has now happened with breakfast cereals; no longer is there a Tesco own-line cereal to be seen. And so it goes on.
This is obviously a deliberate policy by Tesco and it's deplorable! I'm furious about it but what can I do? I could write to Tesco yes, but that will have what effect exactly? As I said, without a car it's not so easy to go anywhere else except to another conglom.
Even the medium sized Sainsbury's in the town centre is getting in on the act. Since the Tesco Metro stopped stocking chilli flavoured olive oil (to which I'm addicted) I've been happily buying a Sainsbury's own brand one from their store in the town centre for many months now. Off I trot there last week to replensish stocks and what do I find? Do I find the Sainsbury's own brand at £1.99? NO I DO NOT! I find a premium brand in its place at twice the price. I have to buy this because there is nowhere else to go!!
You are all making billions. It's hard enough for the rest of us. Please pack it in!
Or there will be something unidentified in the baggage area and it won't be a customer's own shopping bag. It'll be an irate me having finally lost the plot!
As an aside, I can't help thinking that 'Unidentified item in the bagging area' would be a great title for a story or a short play. It only needs a plot to go with it!
I seem to be developing a knack for coming with titles/bare bones of stories but with bugger all else to go with them. Not so much a mojo as a mo perhaps? :-(
There is a Tesco Express at my nearest 'village' centre about ten minutes walk from my home. . Being a non-driver and living alone this has been very handy for me. I pootle off with my bright pink floral shopping trolley to get my bits and pieces. But over recent weeks and months I've noticed that they are slowly removing all their own brand products (the ones I always bought) and replacing them with premium brands. So no more Tesco olives - only Crespo ones. Now I love Crespo olives but being as how I get through an olive grove a week, own brand olives it had to be.
The same has now happened with breakfast cereals; no longer is there a Tesco own-line cereal to be seen. And so it goes on.
This is obviously a deliberate policy by Tesco and it's deplorable! I'm furious about it but what can I do? I could write to Tesco yes, but that will have what effect exactly? As I said, without a car it's not so easy to go anywhere else except to another conglom.
Even the medium sized Sainsbury's in the town centre is getting in on the act. Since the Tesco Metro stopped stocking chilli flavoured olive oil (to which I'm addicted) I've been happily buying a Sainsbury's own brand one from their store in the town centre for many months now. Off I trot there last week to replensish stocks and what do I find? Do I find the Sainsbury's own brand at £1.99? NO I DO NOT! I find a premium brand in its place at twice the price. I have to buy this because there is nowhere else to go!!
You are all making billions. It's hard enough for the rest of us. Please pack it in!
Or there will be something unidentified in the baggage area and it won't be a customer's own shopping bag. It'll be an irate me having finally lost the plot!
As an aside, I can't help thinking that 'Unidentified item in the bagging area' would be a great title for a story or a short play. It only needs a plot to go with it!
I seem to be developing a knack for coming with titles/bare bones of stories but with bugger all else to go with them. Not so much a mojo as a mo perhaps? :-(
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
