Adventures in a Yorkshire Landscape*

Well, keen readers may have noticed my absence over the last few days. The even keener may have discerned that a move was afoot and ee by ‘eck, I’m at t’ foot of our stairs now, because I find myself back in God’s own country. Well, the god-forsaken bit of it at any rate. Leeds has had such bad press lately, what with the late, jolly Sir Jim’s shenanigans and all but, never fear, I’m in the good bit; posh, like. Armley, where Alan Bennett grew up. In fact I’m just the other side of the Tong Road from little Alan’s mam and dad’s old house and I can see their church from my back window.

Now, having heard a lot of frankly disparaging comments about the inhabitants of this Eden I decided to venture out and see for myself and my, what an eye opener. Austerity, my arse - far from the besieged pit of poverty I expected I was struck by just how easy it is to place a bet, or help a charity, or buy ready-made hot food along Town Street. It’s a minor miracle; you can buy Chinese pizza, Asian pizza, Turkish pizza and as many varieties of kebab, fried chicken or burgers as you could possibly wish. 

The locals must be pretty prosperous, because half the aforementioned charity shops are boarded up. I can only imagine this is because the charities are no longer in need. Oh my, what you can’t buy in Armley is surely not worth having! Many shops make great trade and thrive whilst selling everything for less than a pound! And every single house has a satellite dish; truly a wonder of the modern age. 

Of course, they are friendly folk too. One night-time street vendor regaled me with a cheery refrain in what I imagine to be the local dialect. I reproduce it here from memory: " ’Eroin, get yer ‘eroin ‘ere! Get smacked out yer ‘ead for a fiver! ‘Appy pills! Get y’r’ecs-tee-see fr’m me. Ee appen thou’s reet, chips, mushy peas an' all, tha knows…" and something, I think, about ferrets… there was an ‘F’ in it,anyway. 

I pressed a shiny pound coin into his hand, thanked him politely and went on my way, chuckling. He carried on hailing me in his guttural vernacular as I progressed along the street. I have no idea what he said but he seemed a sound enough fellow. 

What a wonderful life they have here. Unlike post code LS13, which has one of the country's highest burglary rate, I am safely here in LS12. It is so safe in fact, that it’s not unusual to see children as young as eight happily playing in the streets at midnight. The taxi drivers provide a useful after-hours vending service, dispensing small packets at the roadside in darkened cul-de-sacs. And if you want further evidence of the affluence of the area, you can regularly hear helicopters overhead in the early hours of the morning, no doubt dropping off the wealthier residents after a night on the town. 

Of course, now it’s morning it is quiet and tranquil. I am sure that is because everybody around here has risen at the crack of dawn to go to work, although there is a curious phenomenon at play. At around nine-thirty every morning I hear televisions being switched on either side of me. I can’t quite hear what programme they are watching but it does involve a lot of shouting. 

Cheery locals throw an impromptu street party to 

welcome me and my car to the neighbourhood!

Anyway, it is full light and I must be away to continue my exploration. I intend to peruse the famous Tong road – see if I can’t track down a nice cup of tea and one of Alan Bennett’s famed fondant fancies.

(*The title is from a long-ago song penned by one of Yorkshire's finest, Bill Nelson.)

Does tha' wan' owt fer nowt?

I've been told I rant? Really? Me? I mean… really? (Who knew?) 

Well, in my defence, there's a lot to rant about. This royal throne of kings, this sceptred isle, this fortress, built by nature for herself against infection and the hand of war has been sold down the river by generations of politicians acting directly against the will of the people. 

On issue after issue, regardless of the cost, the great socialist dream of a European super-state has been relentlessly pursued, with treasonous surrender excused by vague reference to the might of the European institutions, mysterious to all but those in thrall to the Emperor’s new tailors. 

Mass immigration, placatory welfare and political correctness has removed the backbone of a once proud nation and rendered half its citizens quiver-jawed mewling infants, suckling on the teat of state and incapable of independent thought or survival. Referendum? What’s the point? We give the vote to people who can’t even spell ‘X’. 

Well, I’m not going to rant about any of that today; in fact I’m going to celebrate the greatest of our island’s counties. It’s the First of August: Yorkshire Day! 

From the jagged cliffs of Flamborough to the cold, high Pennines; from the brooding, bleak moorland to the dark, satanic mills of the southern conurbation, Yorkshire has much to cherish. Castles and coves, dry stone walls, ruined abbeys and towering cathedrals. It has views to astonish and views to calm; bosky glades, tinkling streams, dark forests and the bucolic splendour of the western Dales and the eastern Wolds. 

This northern paradise has produced its fair share of the nation’s narrative; the white rose county has raised and inspired the Brontes, Bram Stoker, Laurence Sterne, Alan Bennett, J.B. Priestley, Ted Hughes and James Herriot. It has produced Captain James Cook, William Wilberforce, Thomas Lord, George Birkbeck and Henry Briggs. Dick Turpin was despatched in York and Guy Fawkes was born there. 

Yorkshire also gave the world professional Yorkshire folk like Geoffrey Boycott, Michael Parkinson, Molly Sugden, Brian Glover, Fred Truman, Charlie Williams and Alan Titchmarsh. And what tribute to God's own country would be complete without a hearty helping of Yorkshire pudding and gravy, to the rousing accompaniment of the timeless classic “On Ilkley Moor Bar t’Hat”? 

The Dalesman's View

I leave you with the wise words of the Yorkshireman’s Creed: 

 

‘Ear all, see all, say nowt.

Eat all, drink all, pay nowt. 

And if tha’evver does owt for nowt, 

Do it for thissen. 

Wise words indeed.

In memory of the north-south divide

They say, if you want to see what Hull was like in the nineteen eighties... go to Hull.

I grew up in the frozen north during the sixties and seventies when we heard with some alarm of all the 'modern' developments down south. Still using farthings and furlongs, we resisted the terrible changes as long as we could, but sooner or later we knew we’d have to deal with “new-pence”, “centigrade” and them there “milometers”. And it was only a matter of time before we’d no longer be able to buy a pound of sausages and would have to make do with a pound of kilos instead[1].

In darkened corners of public bars (men only) we heard how proper grammar schools were being replaced by comprehensives, how, in ‘That London’, you would hardly ever hear an English accent in the street any more... And anybody who’d actually been and survived Down South would regale you with stories about this new-fangled ‘lager’, costing anything up to three bob a pint. The horror.

Perpetually, it seemed, ten years behind, my generation benefitted from the cane long after it had been banned by the southern softies and we got to wear flared jeans well into the punk era. In fact, while punk was happening in the King’s Road we were still chuckling over that David Bowie. “Is it a lass or what?” we’d ask, “A what, you say? A bloke in makeup?” And then we’d shake our heads sadly and sigh, “Nay lad. It’s not reet.”

Oh how we laughed at the liberal folly of progressives and regaled our whippets with the daft ideas we’d heard of but hoped never to suffer. Not that we were xenophobic, mind. Oh no…We knew all about foreigners; very worldly wise we were. Once we had a visitor from – ooh I forget – but somewhere south of Pontefract at any rate. And we treated him like one of our own - food, beer and all that - and chatted into the early hours. To this day nobody has a clue what he was talking about, but we were too polite to say.

Up there in our lazy northern backwater there was little that couldn’t be settled by the application of the Good-hiding, Thrashing and Fettling laws of 1383, which we’d never got around to repealing. We never had the benefit of deferred achievement and had to learn stuff the old-fashioned way – practice, practice and more practice. And we knew that to get ahead you had to work hard, keep out of trouble and bide your time.

Yorkshire bookkeeping

The creeping liberal disease of instant gratification without effort was never going to bring us to our knees. Or so we thought. I visited God’s own country not long ago and not only do they have violent crime, hatred, distrust and pressure-cooker multiculturalism, just like everywhere else, they’ve even got t’Internet. Where will it end?

Today, if you go to Hull, the only prehistoric relic you’ll find is… John Prescott.

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[1] Tommy Cooper, Gawd rest ‘is soul!