Yorkshire Folk | Yorkshire - God's Own County

Fiery Fred Fantastic Raconteur

On May 27, 2010, In Books & Literary Work, Yorkshire Folk, Yorkshire Sport and Pastimes, By brian

Fred Trueman’s last recording talks about cricket and life in the Dales in his own unique style on this Fathers Day CD.

For the first time in a longtime Yorkshire cricket club seem to be ‘framin’ and it would have been interesting to know what Fred would have made of our current exploits.
20 Twenty cricket was played in the local evening leagues for decades, long before it became a money raising venture, and I think FST’s comments about this subject would have been slightly on the caustic side.

My favourite Fred story was, as you may expect, dragged out as a long tale but I will edit it drastically and hope he isn’t able to breath fire down on me.
The scene was an Ashes test with England fielding .. ‘and I went back to my mark and hurtled into the wicket, a rap on the pads, Howzat? One for none. I went back to my mark and hurtled into the wicket and the bails were off, two for none. Then in came the great Sir Don Bradman. I went back to my mark and hurtled into the wicket, the ball was in the air, a fantastic catch on the long on boundary, three for three hundred and seventy six.
Told by a bowler with a stammer you were amused long before the punchline.

Tagged with: characters • sport

The Lupin Man of York – George Russell

On March 27, 2010, In Yorkshire Folk, Yorkshire Sport and Pastimes, By brian

Photo CC by Thor Thorson 1

George Russell 1857 – 1951

George Russell developed a passion for Lupins, gathered seed from North America and around world and then grew them on two allotments in his home city of York. He never carried out vegetative propagation or hand pollination, preferring to let natural pollination by bumble bees do the hybridisation for him. At the end of each season he collected seed from the very best plants and sowed it. Any inferior plants were rigorously removed. George Russell, like most Yorkshiremen, only wanted the very best, and was ruthless in his selection.
For 23 years George had bred his Lupins and resolutely refused to sell them commercially. But in 1936 a deal was done for his seeds to be grown at Bakers nursery Boningdale as long as George had the right to ‘Rough’ or deselect any that did not meet his standards. Once the seedlings were in flower George was sent for so he could inspect the crop. Jimmy Baker must have been flabbergasted when George insisted on destroying 4,200 of the 5,000 seedlings (some quality control eh! modern growers take note).

The Lupins on his York allotments were improved through breeding. The top varieties had flowers all around the stem in a wide range of colours. Eventually George Russell allowed his seeds to be sold and in 1937 they were selling at 12 seeds for one shilling equal to 1d each.

Lupins were introduced into Britain from North America in 1826. The blue flowered spikes we occasionally saw on railway embankments were the predominant colour. Fast forward a hundred years to 1937 and the Royal Horticultural Society awarded its highest honour to a ‘ jobbing Yorkshire gardener’ George Russell for developing a strain of Lupins that were causing a sensation.

Photo cc by Magnio

The Chelsea Flower Show 2008 displayed the Lupins below. As Lupins are not very long lived plants many of George Russels varieties have been lost but this display shows some of the great flowers that George showed it was possible to grow. Why not try in your garden this year. Lupins are available as plants or seeds from Thompson Morgan

Photo cc by steve 2.0

See Old Lupin photos on Gardeners Tips.

Who could get 2 allotments now with the current fashion for growing your own? Who would have the patience to wait so many years before they tried to make any money out of the flowers they had bred?

Barry Cryer Support for Hernia Chronicles

On March 2, 2010, In Books & Literary Work, Wit and Humour, Yorkshire Folk, By brian

Leeds born and educated, up to a point, Barry Cryer’s book now called The Chronicles of Hernia is a newly packaged comedy classic, first published in 1998 under the title ‘You Won’t Believe This But….’ Purchase from Amazon here
‘Still Alive’ is the name of his current touring show and it is worth making special effort to see Barry perform although he excels on valve radio where he is ‘the cats whiskers’.
Barry will be 75 this month and so I have picked out one or two lines with an ageist theme

“Stannah have got a new, faster stairlift. It gets you up the stairs before you’ve forgotten why you went.”

“Right now I’m having amnesia and deja vu at the same time. I think I’ve forgotten this before.”

From the new Uxbridge dictioery of alternative meanings for English words Platypus – to give your cat pigtails, Flemish – rather like snot, or Celtic -a prison for fleas.

If I go under a bus I don’t want any displays of loyalty.”

Barry the smoker gave an interview posted on Forces international:
‘There were two guys in the pub and one says, “I’ll see you tomorrow.” And the other one says, “No you won’t. I’ll see you a fortnight tomorrow, I’m going on holiday.” So the first one says, “Oh God, would you bring me back some cigarettes?” The other one says, “Course I will.” So they meet a fortnight later, and the guy’s got a big carton. So the man says, “Thank you very much. How much do I owe you?” And the other guy says, “Seventy-six quid.” The first man says, “Seventy-six quid! Where did you go?” And other guy says, “Bournemouth.” ‘

Tagged with: nostalgia

Ennis England Capitain and Yorkshire Olympic Hope

On February 1, 2010, In Yorkshire Folk, Yorkshire Sport and Pastimes, By brian

Jessica Ennis the Sheffield lass was outstanding this weekend. World champion as a heptathlete, she was up against one of the best specialist hurdlers in the world, Lolo Jones. Winning the 60 metres hurdles and beating the world indoor champion in that event is extraordinary. A great performance by a great all-rounder.
“Letting a heptathlete, who practises every event, beat me when I’m only working on one thing…that’s kind of crazy but no excuses Ennis had a great race” said Lolo Jones.
Already there have been eight personal best’s from the South Yorkshirewoman in 2010 including this weekends hurdles and 1.94 meters in the highjump.
Jessica captained the British team at the Aviva International Match in Glasgow on 30 January 2010 but is to miss the Commonwealth games in Dehli this backend. Keep up to date with her career by clicking on her name.

Heptathlon
Heptathlons replaced the pentathlon as the primary women’s combined event when the javelin and 800 m were added for the 1984 Olympics. The women’s outdoor heptathlon consists of the following seven events, with the first four contested on the first day, and the remaining three on day two,
100 m hurdles
high jump
shot put
200 m
long jump
javelin throw
800 m

Other multiple event contests are now becoming progressively more popular particularly involving water sports. The established and key competitive events are:

Biathlon, cross country skiing and shooting
Duathlon, Triathlon running and Cycling with swimming for a triathlon, Quadrathlon with Kayaking
Pentathlon, the old Greek competition of long jump, javelin throw, and discus throw, followed by (the stadion) a short foot race and wrestling.
Modern pentathlon, a late 19th century soldier Pierre Coubertain established this event with shooting, swimming, fencing, equestrian, and cross country running.
Octathlon, primarily a youth or junior event

Tagged with: sport

Sir Patrick Stewart

On December 31, 2009, In Yorkshire Arts & Music, Yorkshire Folk, By brian

After waiting for Godo-nly knows how many decades (well 6.9 actually) the Mirfield lad made good with an OBE in 2001 and now a Knighthood (KBE) in 2009.

He is the Chancellor of the University of Huddersfield. ‘Sir Pat’ is also a Patron of Refuge, the national charity supporting women and children who are victims of domestic violence and has sponsored a scholarship for a three-year full-time doctoral study in the area of children and domestic violence at Huddersfield. Patrick Stewart has also been a committed human rights activist. He tells the story of how he got involved in human rights advocacy when he heard of an Eastern European theater troupe that got jailed for trying to perform a Shakespeare play. ‘Something is rotten in the state of Denmark’ may be an apposite quote from Hamlet.

Of his role in Star Trek he is reported to have said ‘you know all of those years with the Royal Shakespeare Company, all those years of playing kings and princes and speaking black verse, and bestriding the landscape of England was nothing but a preparation for sitting in the captain’s chair of the Enterprise.’

As CNN said the ‘Queen says make it so‘ and we want to add our congratulations to Sir Patrick.

Marie Hartley’s Gayle

On September 22, 2009, In Our Yorkshire, Villages and Towns, Yorkshire Folk, By brian

Gayle 2

Gayle and Duerley Beck by Marie Hartley

Marie Hartley MBE would have been 104 this week had she not died in Askrigg at the age of 100. Fortunately there is a significant legacy of 33 books chronicling the Dales, numerous paintings and wood cuts and The Dales Countryside Museum at Hawes. Marie, born in Morley, went to the Leeds College of Art and the Slade School London where she specialised in wood engraving. She worked with two other redoubtable women Ella Pontefract and then Joan Ingilby.

With fellow Dales affectionado Ella Pontefract they published ‘Wensleydale’ in 1936 and many of the insights remain true today. For example they noted that may villages were built like little clumps up both sides of the valleys but ‘often two of them come together like sisters, as Hawes and Gayle, Bainbridge and Askrigg, Redmire and Castle Bolton.’ In 1936 not unlike now milk and cheese were the most important products of the local farms. Via the Milk Train, over 2 million gallons of milk a year were sent to London as part of the Milk marketing board’s sales campaign, using the Wensleydale Railway.

‘The Old Hand-knitters of the Dales’ was a 1951 book with Joan Ingilby that chronicled the development of knitting throughout the dales. Sold at Richmond Market, stockings and knitware were made in the homes of Gayle long after it declined in other parts of Yorkshire. Knitting started in the mid 16th century and it continued to be a successful activity, employing 400 knitters in Hawes homes, until the advent of machinery towards the end of the 19th century.

Gayle Mill started life in 1784 as a cotton-spinning mill, powered by a 22′ diameter overshot waterwheel, and over the next century, as economic conditions in the Dales changed, was also used for spinning flax and then wool for the local knitting cottage industry in the valley. Marie would be pleased to see the story continue into the 21st century as the latest sustainable technologies enable Gayle Mill to be create all its own carbon-neutral energy for heating and power from it’s reopened water powered generation system. Visit Gayle Mill and see how it has benefited from the BBC restoration programme.

Billy Liar RIP

On September 6, 2009, In Books & Literary Work, Wit and Humour, Yorkshire Folk, By brian

Charades will not be the same after the death of Billy Liar the author of ‘Keith Waterhouse. Is it a book, a film or a play? Yes! mimes the reply.

Still fresh after 50 years, Billy Liars’s novel about a compulsive dissembler who can’t handle reality is funny, sweet, and heartbreakingly sad. Set at the tail end of 1950s, the story is told by Keith Waterhouse, who lives with his parents in the fictional Yorkshire town of Stradhoughton. Keith can’t cope with his tedious clerking job at a local funeral parlor, living at home, or really anything about his life, and so, spends a great deal of time escaping into fantasy world in his head called Ambrosia. When he’s not imagining life as prime minister of his make-believe country, he’s spinning mostly purposeless lies to almost everyone he meets. Sometimes he’s lying to cover up real misdeeds, such as his small-time embezzling, other times, his lies are completely pointless, such as telling a friend’s mother about his fictional sister.

Billy grew up in Leeds, and like Waterhouse, worked as a clerk in an undertakers. 50 years since he wrote Keith Waterhouse, which began life as a book before becoming a hit West End play and film. Billy remembers there was a storm of complaints when it first appeared in the theatre because it had the word “bloody” in it. Fifteen times, apparently. Billy describes the word as “innocuous” and wonders what all the fuss was about. So how does the Mail spell it in the headline for the piece on Saturday? “B****y”. Bloody marvellous! says Media Monkey

Billy Liar Quotations.

“To my mind, 90 per cent of the unpleasant things that happen to us are in the name of rationalisation. Counties lose their names, trains lose their livery, ginger snaps lose their flavour and mint humbugs their sharp corners … under my derationalisation programme, Yorkshire would get back its Ridings, the red telephone box would be a preserved species, there would be Pullman cars called Edna, a teashop in every high street and a proper card index in the public library.”

“Should not the Society of Indexers be known as Indexers, Society of, The?”

“I wake up with views the way some people wake up with hangovers. Sometimes I wake up with both, when the confederation of clowns presiding over our destinies had better tread carefully.”"I never drink when I’m writing, but I sometimes write when I drink.”

Billy’s record in Who’s Who lists his hobby as ‘Lunch’, he created Clogthorpe Council and was also the founder of The Association for the Abolition of the Aberrant Apostrophe 9before Trusses’).

A Yorkshire Woman of Substance

On August 29, 2009, In Books & Literary Work, Yorkshire Folk, By brian

After selling over 80,000,000 books the Leeds born Barbara Taylor Bradford must certainly be a woman of real substance, even though she now spends most of her money living in the USA. It is 30 years since the 1200 page block buster ‘Woman of Substance’ was released in British book shops and there has been a prolific output of another 24 books, films and TV spinoffs. Not a bad output for a former cub reporter with the Yorkshire Post.

Marrying a Yank (at least he had a Yorkshire surname) Barbara kept her maiden name Taylor but added the alliterative Bradford. After 46 years marriage they still work together “I refer to him as the General,” she says, “and he calls me Napoleon!” Robert Bradford produces all of her mini-series and films, structures her contracts and spearheads all of the activities of ‘the industry that is Barbara Taylor Bradford’. The Napoleon reference is said to be linked to the expat Yorkshire traits of Barbara’s strong will and blunt straight talking, although I never saw Napoleon as a Yorkshire man.

Barbara’s 25th book is ‘Breaking the Rules’ and ia available from the 3rd September 2009

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Wilfred Pickles Have a Go

On June 17, 2009, In Wit and Humour, Yorkshire Arts & Music, Yorkshire Folk, By brian

You can get snippets of Wilfred Pickles as an actor on youtube or watch a full comedy series with Jimmy Jewel from Barnsley on this boxed DVD of More Northern Comedy.

According to wikipedia Wilfred Pickles was a proud Yorkshireman, (aren’t we all) ‘born in Halifax and having been selected by the BBC as an announcer for its North Region radio service, went on to be an occasional newsreader on the National service during World War II. He was the first newsreader to speak in a regional accent rather than the “BBC English” of the period, and caused some comment with his farewell catchphrase “… and to all in the North, good neet”.’

One of his books ‘The Wifred Pickles Gay Street Book’ with Enid Blyton and the Biggles author Captain W.E. Johns, et al. wouldn’t pass the politically correct brigade in current publishing. In the early post war years Wilfred Pickles was as close to a modern day Celebrity as you could get. Wireless was a great medium for developing catch phrases and Wilfred had his fair share including “Give him the money, Mabel”, “How do, How are yer?”, “Give ‘em the money, Barney!” (Barney Colehan) and “Are yer courting?”

The title song to his radio show ‘Have a Go’ will be remembered by the many who attended or listened to the show over it’s 21 years. They never visited the same place twice and had over 1500 outstanding invitations to visit when the show finished.

Theme and words by Jack Jordan

Mabel, Wilfred’s wife took over ‘at the table’ and Violet Carson (Ena Sharples of Coronation Street) played the piano. The original prize money was 1 pound 18/6, awarded in increments of 2/6, 5/-, 10/- and 1 guinea.

The autobiography of Mabel Pickles by Mabel Myerscough Pickles is still available in some book shops.

Bill Foggitt Yorkshire Weather Guru

On May 31, 2009, In Our Yorkshire, Yorkshire Folk, Yorkshire History and Heritage, By brian

yorkshire-dusk

For generations the Foggitt family have kept records of Yorkshire weather and Bill Foggitt one of 13 children turned quirky weather reporting into an art form. Reporting as far back as the Yarm cloud burst and floods in November 1771 the maintenance of weather records in Wensleydale and Thirsk has remained a Foggitt tradition.

Great-grandfather of Bill was born during the last ‘Little Ice Age’ events that many believe come around every 200 years or so. In 1778 the Thames froze for nine weeks ‘solid’ and in 1814 the last ‘Frost Fare’ took place when elephants were able to walk on the frozen river. Bill had a great interest and belief in the cyclical nature of these Little Ice Ages and believed a new one probably started at the turn of the 21st Century. Bill recounted experience from his parents back in 1895 when the winter was one of the severest on record. ‘Water mains throughout Sheffield froze solid and emergency carts had to be used.’

Bill remembered 29th June 1927 when he waited for the total eclipse of the sun as ‘an errie chill darkness came upon us. The bird’s shrill dawn corus abruptly ceased, recommencing a few minutes later….’ In August 1999 I was walking to Studley Royal when I experienced exactly those sensations but unlike Bill my meusings were never likely to be picked up by the media.

Bill Foggitt (1913-2004) was asked to do a nightly spot on Yorkshire Television in 1980 called Foggitt’s Forecast and he became a local celebrity with predictions often proving more accurate than those of the professionals. His observations of nature’s creatures in relation to the weather, included quirky folk law about the behaviour of seaweed that becomes slimy before rain and pine cones that close up when wet weather threatened, were ideal for the media of the time.
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Yorkshire – God’s Own County

A tribute to Yorkshire Heritage