'The Best Days of your Life?'

‘And then the whining schoolboy, with his satchel,
And shining morning face, creeping like snail
Unwillingly to school.’
Shakespeare - ‘Seven ages of man’

Scenes from Boarding School Life -1



I didn’t have far to ‘creep’ as I was at a girls’ boarding school on a fairly bleak stretch of the Cumberland coast.

I hurried down the stairs on my first morning in this strange new place, to find my trunk and start my unpacking. (For our first night we brought just an overnight case).


I was accosted by girl with a pinched eager face, and a sleek dark Richard the Third haircut. ‘Ah,’ she said, giving me a searching look, ‘a new girl, eh? What’s your name’. I told her.



. ‘Mmmmm’, she considered, her head on one side.

Then she nodded decisively. ‘We’ll call you ‘Pug’’. I shrank . ‘Because you look like one’.

She turned and joined her group of fellow dog-spotters.

I had never really thought about my looks, and it had certainly never occurred to me that I might look like a rather ugly dog.


Thus I was both welcomed and excluded - all in one go.

Who? Me?

School Expressions:

Antediluvian adjective before the Biblical flood, so - ancient, out-of-date

from the Latin: ante- before; deluvium deluge

This word was very much in vogue at my school during the late 1950s; ideas were 'antediluvian', clothes were 'antedeluvian' . "Did you see old Cookie's hairstyle - its sooo antediloooooovian!"

Unto the hills

I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills, whence cometh my help.

(Psalm 121)

Langdale Pikes by Henry Jutsum

An imaginative design

We have a new ‘Piazza’ outside our supermarket. As a tribute to Alfred Wainwright (former Treasurer at the town hall, and writer of the famous guidebooks) seats with slate backs of an imaginative design have been placed there. Each one bears a copy of a page from the guidebooks, together with one of Wainwright’s distinctive line-drawings:

Some yards away are the imprints of Wainwright’s ‘walking boots’:

When you stand in the ‘footprints’ and look up at the slate seats, you can see that the the top edges merge to present an outline view of the Langdale Pikes (one of Wainwright’s favourite scenes)

(sorry that the outline is a bit fuzzy - amateur photographer at work!)




William Wordsworth and his sister, Dorothy were fond of the Langdales, too. In Dorothy’s diary, written when they were living at Dove Cottage, Grasmere she mentions them several times:


‘1800. August 30th We looked at Rydale [sic] which was soft, cheerful and beautiful. We then went to peep into Langdale. The Pikes were very grand’


December 4th Coleridge came in just as we finished dinner. Pork from the Simpsons. Sara and I walked round the 2 lakes - a very fine morning. C. ate nothing, to cure his boils. We walked after tea by moonlight to look at Langdale covered with snow, the Pikes not grand, but the [Coniston]Old Man very impressive. Cold and slippery, but exceedingly pleasant. Sat up till half-past one…


‘1801 November 30th Clear and frosty without wind. William went before to look at Langdale. We saw the Pikes and then came home’

The Glory of the Garden

Our England is a garden, and such gardens are not made

By singing:--"Oh, how beautiful!" and sitting in the shade,

While better men than we go out and start their working lives

At grubbing weeds from gravel-paths with broken dinner-knives.

Oh, Adam was a gardener, and God who made him sees

That half a proper gardener's work is done upon his knees,

So when your work is finished, you can wash your hand and pray

For the Glory of the Garden, that it may not pass away!

And the Glory of the Garden it shall never pass away!
(Kipling)

We are having an Indian Summer at the moment up here in Cumbria. The warmth is keeping the flowers blooming and the bees busy, and the lawn is demanding to be cut - again. The nursery is still selling the remnants of colourful annuals as well as perenniels for autumn planting.

This must be one of the most scenic garden-centres in the north:

A pleasant word:

fescue FES'kew
noun fine-leaved grass, valuable for pasture & fodder.
from the Latin: fescuta - a stalk, straw.

The Village Blacksmith

Under a spreading chestnut-tree
The village smithy stands;
The smith, a mighty man is he,
With large and sinewy hands;
And the muscles of his brawny arms
Are strong as iron bands.

(Longfellow)

Tales from a Cumbrian Farmhouse - 2



'Support the Private Trader'

By the 60s horse-shoeing was no longer the most significant part of the smith’s trade.
Ernie, our local blacksmith, whose forge was in the next village a mile away, spent a large part of his time making and mending farm equipment. Dad believed in supporting the private traders (being one himself) and this included local tradesmen, too; any carpentry or building work was carried out by people from the village.

Ernie persuaded Dad that what he needed was ‘yen o’ thae thistle-cutters’ which duly appeared; it was a small trailer with a flat metal plate, under which were 4 rotating blades Then came a compact muck-spreader, both machines small enough to be towed by the Land-Rover.

Next Dad fancied an iron railing to replace the old fence at the near end of the orchard

Dad, - who was anxious to seem a true countryman - and Ernie sat in the morning-room having countryman-style conversations over a glass of Forest Brown Ale - (Dad was a tea-totaller really, but was happy to make the sacrifice for his country friends.)

I know that Dad envisaged a no-nonsense simple affair, in keeping with the farmyard, so he asked Ernie,

‘Now, Ernie - I need an iron railing for the orchard’

Three minutes pause

‘O, aye. I can do that fer yer alright’

Three minutes pause.

‘Right. That’s champion! ’

Men of few words.

So Ernie fashioned the railing in his forge, and eventually brought it down and placed it in position. Dad was at work, and later Mum rang him up.

‘Ernie’s finished the railings’, she said

‘O fine - how does it look?’

‘Wait and see,’ said Mum.

Ernie, who saw wrought-iron work as an escape from the more utilitarian tasks, had taken the opportunity to let his creative side flourish. He had fashioned an ornate panel with more curls than Shirley Temple :

Of course to Ernie, Dad said, ‘Oh, Grand. That’s grand, Ernie’

To us he said, ‘O heck, It makes the place look like a bloody dolls’ house’

An interesting word:

Atramentous \At'ra'MEN'tus\ adjective: of or pertaining to ink; inky; black, like ink; as 'atramental galls', 'atramentous spots'. (from the Latin atramentum - 'black liquid, ink')

The Border City

Old Town Hall with Guildhall on left and Carlisle Cross in foreground

(a pillar with a lion bearing the city motto 'Be Just & Fear Not')

Visited my hometown today - Carlisle, 'The Border City', aka 'Canny auld Carlisle'. It has changed hands between the English and the Scots countless times, and at one time was part of the ancient kingdom of Strathclyde.

There are not too many ancient houses in the town, as it was the centre of border strife for centuries and the earlier wooden houses were repeatedly burnt down by marauding Scots. It certainly wasn't too quiet on the Northern front in those days! However, the fine Cathedral and sturdy castle remain.

According to Prof. M. Creighton, writing in 1889:

'It is the only town on English soil which bears a purely British name [from Caer Lywelydd via Caerluel and Carliel to Carlisle]; and the only town which has been added to England since the Norman Conquest'

Richard III (as Duke of Gloucester) was Captain of the Castle, and some of his prisoners (c.1480) left this graffiti : (more time-consuming to execute and much more durable than modern stuff!)

Mary, Queen of Scots was a prisoner there briefly, as was the Border Reiver, Kinmont Willie (Armstrong) who was 'sprung' from the castle by members of his clan.

Read more about the Border Reivers here: www.borderreivers.co.uk

A Carlisle saying:

'Eee - you'll have me up London Road!'

The old mental hospital used to be a few miles out of town on the London Road. Now, of course, it has been converted into Luxury Housing! To say that 'you'll have me up London Road' is equivalent to saying, 'you'll drive me mad/round the bend'! Tho' I suppose if you say the former to a young person now, they'd probably reply, 'Eh?'

Season of Mists

Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eves run;
To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,
And fill all f ruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease
For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells…

(Keats)

For 27 years my family lived in a Georgian farmhouse in Cumbria (which was then called Cumberland ) a few miles from the border with Scotland

Tales from a Cumbrian Farmhouse (1)

My mother decides that this is the day to harvest the plums from the fan-trained trees growing against the byre wall.

This afternoon she will pick the plums and make them into jam. Steamed jam pudding cooked with home-made plum jam is Dad’s favourite. But first she must go into town (seven miles away) to meet ‘the girls’ for coffee and to buy several bags of sugar for the jam.

She drives into town in our ‘second’ car - which is actually a Land Rover. This is not the fashionable four-by-four of today, but a grey-coloured heavy-duty farm vehicle. It has a cab at the front and an open back suitable for carrying bales of hay for feeding the cattle; we are always rather embarrassed to be seen in town with this rough and ready vehicle. She has her coffee, promises the ‘girls’ a pot of jam each, buys her sugar and drives back.

She prepares the kitchen for jam-making, rinsing out the jam-pan, and getting out a bowl for the plums, then changes her mind; it’s a particularly good crop this year - a larger vessel will be needed. She sings to herself, excited at the thought of the line of jam pots which will grace the pantry shelf later today.

First she must pick the plums
to make the jam
that goes in the pudding
that Dad likes

She bustles out to the front garden, and approches the trees. She looks at them, puzzled.

Something is wrong. This-morning the branches were heavy with purple-red fruits. Now - there is just green. She looks closer. Every plum - except for one or two small unripe ones near the top - has gone, neatly plucked from it’s stem.

She gasps, ’Oh’ out loud. ’Oh, no. Surely not?’ She is shaking now, her hand to her mouth in disbelief.

She goes in and collapses onto a ladder-backed kitchen chair. Mum is not a weeper, but if she was, she would weep now.


There was a boy of around 14 in the village, who often went up ‘our hill’ - and came down with his pockets stuffed either with pears from the tree halfway up, or in the winter with kindling. Dad good-humouredly called him ‘Whip-it-Quick’

We never did find out for certain who pinched the plums. But we had our suspicions.
So, Whip-it-Quick - if by the remotest chance you are reading this - well...you know who you are.
And, by the way, you owe me ten and a half pounds of plums.

Our dog, Rap, showing on the left the fan-trained
plum trees, bare this time due to heavy pruning!

A lovely word:
tatterdemalion \tat-uhr-dih--MAY-lee-uhn\,
noun:. A person dressed in tattered or ragged clothing; a ragamuffin.
adjective: Tattered; ragged.

The Olympic Spirit

‘ The river glideth at his own sweet will' (Wordsworth)

I walk back from town by the riverside route today. In a calm and sedate manner this time.

There are several ways to and from town.

On the way in at one point one has the choice of cutting through a road which slopes downhill before joining the main road again and feels as though it is a shortcut, or carrying straight on and joining the main road at the end.

Just for the sake of argument, I once ‘measured’ these two choices with my pedometer. One day I took the ‘short cut’ setting the counter from the moment I turned into the sloping road, and stopping it at the end of the route next to the dental surgery. 406 steps.

The following day I counted the other route - the ‘longer way’ - counting from where the sloping road turns off, until I arrived again at the dental surgery. 406 steps. Spooky.

I’m sure most days the sum would differ by say 10 to 30 steps depending on where I choose to cross the road, and at what angle etc. But at least I proved to myself that the sloping road is not a shortcut after all.

However, armed with this piece of priceless knowledge, I occasionally play a little game.
Today, shortly before the junction with the sloping road, I am aware of stalking footsteps. I up my pace to a rather uncomfortable march. Faster than usual. No, she is still there. Will she overtake, or not. I begin to feel self-conscious. That 'does my bum look big in this' moment. She is my Rival. Go one, overtake. Then, just before the junction, she does. Though I make it quite difficult by refusing to slacken the pace. It seems to take ages for her to pass me, and we walk parallel for an embarrasingly long time. Although I want her to pass me, I still feel slightly resentful.

She takes the 'short route' and turns into the sloping road.

Then I decide to play the game. I carry straight on. She probably thinks I am going the ‘long way’. But I know better. I’ll race her. I find myself getting a little out of breath, more from my anxiety to win than from the exertion. And I cheat. I do a spot of Scouts' Pace, 10 steps walking ,10 steps running. Then I break into an ungainly jog. I get to the main road and can see the dental surgery ahead. No sign of the Rival yet. The traffic slows slightly at the junction, and I do a death-defying canter across the road at the longest angle that I can without being mown down by a four-by-four.

Then out of the corner of my eye I see my Rival. She is only now crossing the county hall car park. But I am now opposite the dental surgery, and she is not yet there. I try to look nonchalant and change my stride to a saunter. Made it.

I wonder if she is aware that I Have Won? I don’t suppose she has even noticed me.

I walk on, with a satisfied smile. Such childish pleasures!

Saturday, Sunday, Sconeday...

Supermarket shopping day today. (Monday)

I find myself feeling relieved that the school-holidays are over and that there probably won’t be a queue at the checkout this morning. As an ex-primary-school teacher I can’t believe that I’ve become one of those miserable people who moan about the school holidays! I’m not really - only when it comes to supermarket queues!

And after the shopping, our usual visit to the garden-centre for coffee and one of their perfect freshly-baked fluffy-on-the-inside-crispy-on-the-outside fruit scones. My weekly high-carb-high-fat treat. Ahh, Saturday, Sunday, Sconeday….

* * * * * * * * * * * *

An elderly man dithers before the ‘savoury biscuits’ shelf. He takes a packet of Rice Cakes down. He hesitates, peering at the label, holding it close to his nose. An assistant, in her checked uniform jacket hovers a few feet away, watching and waiting. She takes a replacement packet of Rice Cakes from her stacked trolley, anxious for her turn.

Reconsidering, the man puts the biscuits back on the shelf and slowly selects another brand from a lower shelf, bending with difficulty. The assistant tuts, and returns her packet of Rice Cakes to her trolley. She watches intently.

The man, changes his mind again, and eventually decides that his original choice was the correct one. He shuffles stiffly away, the trolley his Zimmer-frame, satisfied with his purchase.

I await my turn, as the woman, sighing, restacks the self, rejigging the packets and lining them up neatly at the front of the shelf (‘facing up’ I think this is called).
I approach the shelf and apologetically take down my chosen Dutch Crispbakes.
I walk away quickly, aware that I have ruined her nice neat display.

* * * * * * * * *

A friend up from London remarked that our local supermarket chain was ‘very upmarket - rather like Waitrose’. I gather that to be compared favourably with Waitrose is the ultimate accolade.