Grey of Fallodon

I know practically nothing about history. And the thing with history, is that when it’s within welly-throwing distance of where you live you tend to take even less notice of it.

For example I have always known that the statue at the top of Grey’s Monument in Newcastle is a member of the Grey family.

The clue being in the name.

And I know that he was a lot to do with Earl Grey Tea and Howick Hall. But his name? No, sorry, I have absolutely no idea.

My friend the TK Maxx Ambassador was more than a little shocked when she discovered my complete and utter lack of knowledge regarding the area within 10 miles of my home. Ask me who had a fling in 1994 with the man who lives in number 12 and I will undoubtedly know the answer. Ask me why planning permission was revoked at number 17 in 2002 and I will probably know that too but ask me what the state rooms are like at Alnwick Castle, then I haven’t a clue.

Aside from how many tourists there will be in Seahouses on a Bank Holiday weekend, I know only one other thing about my local area and that is that an incredible gentleman lived just around the corner from my home.

When I was a child I was told by someone (incorrectly) that there was a Prime Minister buried at the bottom of Fallodon Hall’s garden. This was of no interest to me and it was only in latter years when I began reading about Edward Grey 3rd Baronet of Fallodon that I felt the need to go back to memorial that lies under the trees near the lake, to tell him that I was sorry. So, so very sorry for not giving him the respect that he deserved.

Fallodon has a tranquil but quiet confidence and after reading all that I have about Edward Grey, I can’t help but think that he has a lot to do with Fallodon’s warm voice.

You will have heard words spoken by Sir Edward Grey even if you don’t know his name. He was the man who was Foreign Secretary at the outbreak of World War 1 and after a giving a speech to the opposition in Parliament which led to the British cabinet voting unanimously to go to war, he stood, looking out of a window in his room in the Foreign Office and said: “Lamps are going out all over Europe; we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.”

He was first elected as the Berwick upon Tweed candidate for parliament when he was 23 and was the youngest MP in the House of Commons at that time. Grey is the longest serving Foreign Secretary that we have ever seen, serving 2 terms from 1892 to 1895 as Under-Secretary of state in Gladstone's final administration and then from 1905 to 1916 in Henry Campbell-Bannerman and Herbert Henry Asquith’s governments as Secretary of State.

Edward Grey was born in London on 27th April 1862 and was the eldest of 7 children born to Colonel George Henry Grey and Harriet Jane Pearson. His Father died unexpectedly when he was 12 and his Grandfather who then took responsibility for him died when Grey was 22. It was then that he inherited the title of Baronet, a private income and his ancestral home where he had learnt to fish as a small boy, the 2000 acre Northumbrian Estate of Fallodon. 

A gentle and humorous man with a great love of the countryside, it is said that upon his adulthood he could only recognise the song of the Robin and the Blackbird. Grey married Dorothy in 1885 and it was she who instilled the knowledge and love of wild birds that captivated him for the rest of his life. He wrote The Charm of Birds in 1927 and it remains today, a beautiful book. Unchallenging to read and comprehend and his knowledge, patience and enthusiasm are evident on every page. I have to confess that I have never read his earlier publication Fly Fishing which was published in 1899 but it is still critically acclaimed even after all these years.

Bird watching and fishing aside, he was also an outstanding athlete, being Real Tennis Champion whilst at college in Winchester and being British National Champion in 1889, 91, 95, 96 and 98. (He was runner up in 1892, 93 and 94 which were the years in which he held Office.)

Grey detested being in London and as Fallodon was too far away to be used as a weekend retreat, he built what he and Dorothy simply called “Cottage” on a piece of land at Itchen Abbas near Winchester. With its corrugated iron roof and modest brickwork, this was initially meant to be place where he could rest while fishing but he and Dorothy used it as a weekend retreat and guarded their time there carefully. After finishing work on a Friday evening Grey would catch the last train from Waterloo and after alighting at Winchester near midnight would walk the 4 miles in the darkness to Cottage. Together he and Dorothy kept a diary of the birds seen at Cottage and on the river Itchen and he later privately published this diary as The Cottage Book.

Unhappily, death seemed to follow Grey with some conviction. He was married to Dorothy for only 11 years before she fell from the cart which she was driving and suffered a horrific head injury. It happened at the hamlet of Ellingham near Fallodon and although Edward caught the train from London and made it back to Northumberland to be with her, she never regained consciousness and died 3 days after the accident.

Grey was devastated by Dorothy’s death. She had been his soul mate and it would be 16 years before he married Pamela with whom it is alleged that he had always had a close relationship. Sadly his second marriage lasted merely 6 years before Pamela was taken ill while staying alone at Cottage. Edward took the earliest train available from Fallodon but was told of her death upon his arrival at Kings Cross.

In addition to the loss of both of his wives, his 3 brothers and his nephew, his dearly loved Fallodon burnt almost to the ground in 1917 and Cottage burnt down after bed linen was left airing close to the stove in 1923.

Work began to rebuild Fallodon on a slightly smaller footprint in 1919 but no such work was undertaken at Cottage and all that remains of it now is the brick chimney stack.

Edward Grey was a man who had the power to stop the mainland train at his Fallodon station, a short walk from his beloved family home. And he was humble enough to never stop a train that stopped at nearby stations unless it was an emergency, in fact The Flying Scotsman only stopped once at Fallodon when Grey was a Cabinet Minister. This was the era when the train from his own private station would take between 8 and 10 hours to get to London. Now, you can catch the train from Alnmouth at 6.21am and be in London at 9.40am. I wish he could have experienced that.

He eye sight deteriorated to the point that he could only read with artificial light and with the book held an inch from his nose. Unable to see to cast a fly or watch his adored birds, he said that the only sport still available to him was hunting for his glasses.

His health was not good in the Summer of 1933 although friends who visited him reported that he was in good spirits, even laughing when a red squirrel fell down the chimney and emerged in the house covered in soot. He continued to serve his “duck dinner” to his wild but unpinioned ducks and feed the squirrels by hand until the day he died.

He passed away at his beloved Fallodon on 7th September 1933.

There is a memorial to him at the Foreign Office where he watches over the Ambassador entrance that he himself used for the 11 years that he was in office. It is inscribed with “By uprightness of character, wisdom in council and firmness in action, he won the confidence of his countrymen, and helped to carry them through many and great dangers.”

Next weekend Fallodon Gardens are open to the public. On Saturday 29th June they are open as part of the National Garden Scheme and on Sunday 30th June they are open in aid of the Red Cross. Fallodon was one of the original gardens to be opened to the public to raise money for Nurses in 1927 and I’m sure Grey would give a rich chuckle of approval at the number of people who have come to look at the gardens since the current family began opening them to the public in 1976.

So this weekend, come to Fallodon and you too can sit beneath the Larch tree where this man gave his Duck Dinner. You can walk through the Victorian Greenhouse where the figs and the apricots grow. You can walk around the kitchen garden where the strawberries flourish to the size of golf balls and see the citrus trees that grow in the heated greenhouse. You can walk down the steps to the sunken garden that Grey created in honour of Dorothy and you can enjoy tea and cakes in the grade 2 listed stable yard.

And if you do come; make sure that you take the path from the hostas by the bog garden. Go through the gate, over the bridge and through the trees to where he lies accompanied by whispering trees and birdsong. The inscription on the stone reads: Here among trees that they planted together are placed the ashes of Edward and Dorothy Grey.

Never Meet Your Idols

According to the Daily Mail (so it must be true) Ant Mcpartlin is out of rehab. They know this because just the other day they stalked him while he was out walking his dog.

Britney (Not her real name) was delighted by this news as hearing about a shitfaced Ant McPartlin careering around London in his Mini hit her unbelievably hard.

After a few days for her to digest the news that the Geordie lad who she looked forward to seeing on television every Saturday night had completely and utterly fecked things up both with his life and his fans, she became very angry with Newsround.

“I thought Newsround told the truth!” she roared in the kitchen one morning as we got ready for school.

“It does.” I said soothingly, “And that is why you watch it at school to encourage your development of current affairs awareness.”

“No.” Replied Britney, “Newsround said that Ant had been arrested for driving under the influence of alcohol but you told me he was addicted to prescription drugs.”

I made a mental note for future discussions regarding celebrities and narcotics and hastily packed Britney and her bags into the Licence Taker.

We discussed Ant’s misdemeanour as we travelled the 3 miles to school. I told Britney that all people regardless of who they are, make errors and that the important thing in life is how quickly you put things right.

“But I looked up to hiiiimmmmmmmm.” she wailed.

I reassured her that we all make mistakes, even celebrities (I mean there’s Big Brother and Strictly for a start) and again reinforced the point that correcting mistakes is the essential thing. Apologise, put it right and move on.

The people of Facetube clearly did not agree with this point. And if you were brave enough to make any comment about Ant McPartlin’s attempt at driving home after drinking enough beer to remove his coordination to the point that he couldn’t have ridden a bicycle and make his vision diplopic, you will know exactly where I’m coming from.

If you said he was a d**khead; people trolled you and if you said he had issues that he needed to address; people trolled you. If you said his Mum should have stopped him; people trolled you and if you said he was a total ar**hole with no regard for the law; people trolled you. If you said you felt sorry for him; people trolled you and if you said he was a rich lad who knew nothing about real life and could afford a driver; people trolled you. If you said he was an idiot; people trolled you, if you said his Mini was nice; people trolled you and if you said you didn’t give a damn about Ant McPartlin being the top news story; people trolled you.

I actually saw a comment on one of my friend’s completely innocent “Oh no Ant, what have you done?” posts where someone had said that people who are taking antidepressants shouldn’t drive. To enforce the truth in this observation the poster also reported that members of her family had taken antidepressants and would NEVER have dreamt of getting behind the wheel.

I was curious as to how many people this mad bitch wanted off the road with this brainless yet sweeping statement, but could only find data from the NHS relating to 2016. Apparently, the National Health Service dispensed 64.7 million antidepressant items that year, forcing me to wonder if the female who made the comment was either an Uber driver or a trolley pusher for Virgin Trains East Coast.

Personally, I was just glad that even though Saturday Night Chinese Takeaway is (was) sponsored by Suzuki, Ant had the sense not to own one. Surely the only thing more shameful than getting hammered, leaving your mate in the shit, disappointing an army of fans and almost killing someone; is to be seen driving an Ignis.

Anyway, during the last week of the Easter Holidays I discovered something on the internet that helped me to relate to Britney’s feelings of disillusionment regarding Ant McPartlin.

It’s called LinkedIn.

Firstly, I must say that I genuinely have never laughed so hard in years. I cried with laughter for many minutes and felt remarkably good once I managed to stop. Britney came running at one point and enquired if I was alright as all she could hear a strange howling noise followed by seconds of silence when I couldn’t breathe. She was alarmed at first when she saw me wiping my eyes and rolling on the floor completely unable to speak until I explained that this was called hysterical laughter and it was going to continue for quite some time while I read all the fictitious job titles that some of my acquaintances had generated in an attempt to make themselves appear much, much, much more important that they actually are.

For those of you who have a life and don’t resort to wasting 4 hours of each day on social media, LinkedIn is a platform where you can find a job, a training course and share inspirational messages with your fellow professionals. It’s a bit like Facebook; but for posh people with jobs.

But there are no ordinary people on LinkedIn, there are no cleaners, joiners or grooms. Although if there were, they would probably be called “Sanitation Development and Control Managers”, “Coppice Enterprise Maturity Executives” and “Equine Clientele Regulators” so perhaps I just missed them.

I had literally hours of fun working out the real job titles behind the counterfeit ones like some mad game of Risk with a stoned and drunk derivatives trader. I discovered that Head of Leisure and Tourism translates as “cleans holiday cottage on a Friday and uses Booking.com”, Transport Manager means Bus Driver, Flooring Specialist means Carpet Fitter and a Digital Accounts Executive is someone who spends all day playing on Facetube, Twatter, Instaphoto and Pinboard.

I particularly enjoyed viewing the profiles of the Entrepreneurs in my network, especially when their company name ended with the words “Enterprises Limited”. And I was further amused that my own profile had been viewed a number of times anonymously. I do hope they enjoyed reading the information that I submitted to LinkedIn, which roughly translates as “Dear god, some of these profiles are about as convincing as Doctor Crippen’s defence case”.

LinkedIn tells me that some users prefer to browse anonymously because Many private viewers are recruiters looking for candidates. Others tend to be professionals who browse privately to find sales leads, potential clients or business partners.

This statement is an absolute load of bollocks and on Facetube, this kind of behaviour is called Stalking. If you want to look at someone’s profile, for heaven’s sake just view it. There’s really no need to hide unless you feel the need to conceal yourself for fear of being ridiculed for your own fictitious job title.

There are endless possibilities should you wish to generate your own occupation identify and it’s very simple too. Simply pick a word that vaguely relates to your employment activity, pop it in to Google and add the word Synonym after it. If you want to make sure that your new job title is not American, I would recommend that you use the online Collins Thesaurus.

Unfortunately if you use the latter method, the word Bookkeeper (which is what I am), returns no results and suggests a Shopkeeper, Innkeeper or a Boozer. To be fair, it could be worse and I think I will update my Linkedin profile forthwith. I just need to upload a photo of one of my shoes and an empty Special Brew can as my profile picture.

Alexa and Gordon Ramsay

Gordon Ramsay has made me late for work on many occasions.

This is because just as I am about to go to bed, I see that he is about to appear on television in his “Kitchen Nightmares” programme. Watching the drama unfold in some under-achieving restaurant in the United States of America, means that I then don’t go to bed until after 1am, am knackered when I wake up in the morning and am consequently late for work.

Other Half and I usually hold a sweepstake as to how many minutes into the production Gordon is going to shout “Shut the f**king Kitchen!” or “You’re gonna f**king kill somebody!” Extra points can be gained if he eats some shellfish and then runs outside retching, especially if he roars “Are you trying to f**king kill me?” as he staggers back inside to have a faceoff with the chef.

I love the fact that Gordon swears like a docker, hurls abuse at the depressed and struggling restaurant owner and yells that he’s not there to “blow smoke” up their arse. I love the fact that he orders from the lunch menu then declares that it has the consistency of a soiled nappy and tastes like cat vomit. In his own words, he just doesn’t give a sh*t.

I was severely tempted to buy an Amazon Alexa thingy just so I can have Gordon’s voice flinging abuse around my own kitchen. I was a little disappointed to hear that Amazon have bleeped out all his swear words as surely this is taking the fun out of the gimmick. I want to be able to ask Gordon how to boil an egg and have him retorting “For f**k’s sake! Anyone can boil an egg, you f**king doughnut!”

Why on earth bleep out his profanities? If you are offended by swearing, you’re hardly going to pay for the privilege of having Gordon Ramsay’s voice on your Alexa, are you?

Perhaps the person who is offended by Gordon’s swearing had better not venture into any kind of equine establishment either, as these facilities are notorious for having an air which is tinged with blue. Like Gordon, the ancient Anglo Saxon used in most yards is not meant to offend but is merely a way of expressing an opinion.

For example “a right b***ard of a horse” is simply a way of saying that the horse has a very strong mind, is prone to suicidal thoughts and can suffer from murderous tendencies. In the same way “a right f**king wuss of a horse” means that the animal lacks confidence and needs a positive and knowledgeable rider with more patience than a Primary school teacher, to give him self-belief. A racehorse that is “f**king useless” does not mean that he cannot gallop fast enough to keep himself warm, but means that he might be better suited to a different discipline in the equine world and a horse described as “a right f**king a***hole”, usually means that the animal is perhaps not suited to the activity to which he is being asked to undertake.

Equine people also have the most marvellous ability at swearing mid-word. This is a skill in itself and my personal favourites from over the years are “Bus Conf**kingductor” and Eggf**kingsacktly”.

But this makes me consider another issue with the Alexa thingamabob. After over 20 years of being around horses, how will Alexa/Gordon cope with my swearing? Will Gordon understand when I yell: “Gordon, the Chicken Tonight sauce is stuck on the bottom of the f**king pan, what the f**k do I do now?!”

I know for certain that this will be an issue after spending an evening with my Brother The Sniper and his wife, The Verruca Expert. Having lived for 30 something years over the border in Scotland and The Verruca Expert being originally from the Land of Scotch, Alexa was totally bamboozled by what they were asking her to find on the Amazon Firestick. This, coupled with Britney (Not her real name) who it has to be said, speaks with a bit of a Northumbrian accent, had Alexa ready to lie in a darkened room. Chuck into that mix, Me, with my moderate Geordie/Northumbrian accent and Other Half protesting that being from Dorset, he was the only person in the room who Alexa had the slightest chance of understanding; Alexa lost the plot altogether.

Requests for Little Mix gave us the Dixie Chicks, Taylor Swift gave us guitar rifts, Queen’s I want to Break Free gave us Glee and Rag’n’Bone Man gave us Steptoe and Son. Frankly I was surprised that Alexa hadn’t offered us Gazza rapping his way through Fog on The Tyne and Andy Stewart singing Donald Where’s Your Trousers.

Crickey if I was to ask Alexa to order toilet rolls I would probably end up with sausage rolls, Stilton would probably get me Milton, I would get Melons instead of Lemons, Crumpets would result in Puppets and god alone knows what I would get if I asked her to order Tampax. Probably a fake Rolex, a pallet of Anthrax and a house visit from the local constabulary.

Alexa in my house would resemble the Two Ronnies doing the 4 Candles sketch so there's no point in me shelling out for the Gordon Ramsay edition.

F**king shame.

Magical Mary Poppins

In my last post, I told you about my wonderful Boxing Day.

A trip to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne, delicious Bloody Mary Soup, horse racing from Kempton Park and Mary Poppins on the television.

There was one thing that marred the day ever so slightly and it occurred when I was in my favourite reclining position on the sofa whilst watching Mary Poppins.

Britney (Not her real name) had been given a new game for her X Box and as she and Other Half were trying to figure it out, I was in the lap of luxury – in the lounge with the big television and surround sound. On. My. Own.

This is something of a rarity and I was thoroughly enjoying it.

Then Britney came into the lounge to ask a question, just as Mary, Bert, Jane and Michael jumped into Bert’s chalk drawing.

“That is so fake.” said Britney as she returned to her X Box.

Even though I retorted that the film was made in 1964 and that kind of trickery was ground-breaking at the time, I have to confess I was a bit hurt that Britney was pouring scorn on one of my favourite films.

It’s not surprising though.

Britney is used to Finding Dory and Moana on Blu Ray and let’s face it, they look a lot more believable than Mary’s horse breaking free from the carousel and winning a horse race.

But her remark got me thinking.

I have seen the film Mary Poppins a little over 163,000 times and yet it had never crossed my mind how Bert managed to hold down so many jobs. No wonder he didn’t want to sweep Mrs Bank’s chimney (that’s not a euphemism) as the Lord Mayor’s was needing done. If he was a one man band 1 day, an artist the next and then selling bloody kites whenever the wind got up, when the hell did he get the chance to sweep all the other chimneys?

I’d love to see his CV. You would be putting it in the “can’t hold down a job and is easily bored” pile if you were shortlisting for interviews.

And if Bert only sweeps chimneys one day a week, how does he know so many other chimney sweeps? Do they all just work one day a week? I’m not surprised the London smog was horrendous if all the chimney sweeps regularly bunked off work so they could get together on the roof in the hope of a quick knees up with Mary Poppins. She should have been encouraging them to get on with their work instead of tapping her feet and cheering when they jumped over their chimney brushes. Mary even cavorts with a number of the sweeps during this tea dance among the chimneys and I can’t help but feel that her conduct is sending out the wrong signals. Especially as when Admiral Boom starts aiming fireworks at them, they all end up back at Mary’s place. Thank goodness Mr and Mrs Banks returned home before any major tom-foolery could be undertaken. The Banks family should count themselves lucky that all the chimney sweeps did was terrorise their staff for a very short length of time.

And was it really appropriate for Mary and Bert to have tea together, alone with just some penguin waiters as chaperones? She even insults poor Bert by singing to him that although he’s just a “diamond in the rough” underneath his “blood is blue”. Should Bert not be horribly offended by that remark? It’s a bit like saying “Bert, you’re a bit of a scruff but you act like a posh bloke at the end of the day”. And whilst Mary is beaming and Bert is altering his trousers to resemble that of MC Hammer, what are Jane and Michael getting up to? They could have eaten their own bodyweight in candy floss and won 15 goldfish a piece by the time Mary and Bert rocked up to the fairground. At least in1910 there wasn’t an 18 page risk assessment and an online compliance form to complete before taking the children on an outing so that’s a bonus.

The children obviously loved the magical days with their nanny, but how many years must Jane and Michael have had in counselling to get over a tea party on the ceiling?

Therapist: Yes, yes, I’m sure there was a tea party on the ceiling…

Jane: But there was! Mary Poppins even said I could pour some milk for us to drink.

Therapist: I’m going to prescribe you with some medicine, Jane. It will make all these bad thoughts completely disappear and you will feel completely relaxed.

Jane: (Hammering fists on the table) How many more times do I have to tell you? There was a bloody tea party ON THE CEILING!!

Therapist: (Smiling) Yes, of course there was Jane, now if you would just put your arms in this straight jacket…..

Scarred for life.

Imagine both of them drifting through the rest of their lives thinking that every time a dog barked it was actually saying something, that Greenwich Mean Time was taken from Admiral Boom and that Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious was a truly acceptable thing to say when you are stuck for words.

I’m a little perturbed about Mary’s manipulation regarding the whole tuppence-gate affair as well. Too be fair it probably would be better spending your money on feeding the birds rather than entrusting it to the bank, but pigeons are simply vermin with wings that get in the way and shit all over everything. Perhaps if they had been endangered songbirds or parrots I would be more with Michael on this one. And the kerfuffle that ensues when Michael digs his heels in is nothing short of calamitous.

If I had done something that had ended up getting my Dad sacked especially if my Mum was out all day raising awareness of the lack of women’s voting conveniences, I would have been running much, much faster than Jane and Michael. In fact the vagrants and beggars of the East End of London would have been the least of my worries.

It was just as well that Bert was on his chimney sweep day to help them home after they’d run away otherwise they’d probably have ended up sweeping chimneys themselves. Can you imagine what would have happened if he’d been on his one-man-band job that day? Jane and Michael might not have made it.

You would have thought that Mr Banks would have had to work some kind of period of notice too, especially as he had worked at the bank for so long. And he must have done other bad things at work. There would have to have been 1 verbal and 2 written warnings before they could vandalise his umbrella and ravage his bowler hat so badly that it let the rain in. And as his Father had worked for the bank as well, I can only conclude that loyalty must mean absolutely nothing to this company.

After having his employment terminated, Mr Banks then returns home shitfaced and humiliated, wondering how he can continue to afford to pay the nanny, cook and maid and heads straight to the cellar to make the most rubbish job of mending Jane and Michael’s kite.

And it took him all night.

All night to stick a bit of tape on a kite.

It took Walt Disney nearly 20 years to strike a deal with Pamela Travers who wrote the Mary Poppins books and by all accounts she was a very difficult woman to please. Travers was not happy with the animation, the music (she treated the Sherman brothers who wrote and composed the music for the film appallingly) and was not invited to the film’s premier. She was so aghast by the whole film making process that when she was approached years later regarding the making of British stage musical, she requested that only English born writers be used and no-one from the original film production be involved. These points were even stipulated in her last will and testament, ensuring that Disney would never be allowed to get involved with her Mary Poppins stories ever again. Clearly when she finally agreed to give Walt Disney the film rights to Mary Poppins, the royalties from her books had dried up and she was facing a very hard time financially. Travers was interviewed in 1977 and said that she had seen the film a few times and had learnt to live with it. She said “It’s glamorous and it’s a good film on its own level, but I don’t think it is very like my books”.

During the film’s initial run it grossed $31-33 million. In honour of Walt Disney Productions’ 50^th anniversary it was released theatrically in 1973 and earned an estimated $9 million in American rentals. It was released once more in 1980 earning another $14 million and has a lifetime gross of over $100 million, quite a feat for a film that was made on a $6 million budget.

Mary Poppins was nominated for 13 Academy Awards and won 5 of them (1 of them for Best Visual Effects, Britney). It was nominated for 2 Golden Globes and won 1, won 2 Grammys and The Writers Guild of America awarded it Best Written Musical.

Mary Poppins was the first Disney film to be released on DVD in July 2000 and on 14^th December 2004 it had a 2 disc release in a digitally restored 40^th anniversary edition. It was released again on 27^th January 2009 as a 45^th anniversary edition and was released on Blu-ray as the 50^th anniversary edition on 10^th December 2013.

If the film Mary Poppins was a person she would be driven everywhere in a 1960s Cadillac. She would wear diamonds and fur and would make time to speak to every person at the side of the red carpet. She would willingly stop for autographs and as time progressed, selfies, with her fans. She would do breakfast time television interviews with exceptional charm and would be able to have a glass of champagne and still hold her decorum. As her years advanced she would hold the respect of all the up and coming films as they would be humble in her presence and value what she had achieved in 1964. She would even have the grace to forgive Dick Van Dyke’s Irish voice coach for telling him that his cockney accent was acceptable.

She would indeed be practically perfect in every way.

Boxing Day and Holy Island

I’ve got Man-flu.

It began the day before New Year’s Eve with a slight snuffle and a faint burning sensation in my throat. By New Year’s Eve the snuffle had escalated into a force 10 head cold and I felt so drained and rubbish that I didn’t even have the energy to get dressed. I spent the day in my pyjamas, draped on the sofa sipping Lemsips every 4 hours, sneezing so hard that I thought my eyes were going to burst out of their sockets and using half a toilet roll in 6 hours for blowing my nose. I left the house twice, once (with my waterproof trousers and wellies on over the top of my pyjamas) to put Wet-Dishcloth-Horse out in the field and to unconvincingly muck out and again to bring him in to his stable at night.

This Man-Flu thing also meant that there was no point in opening any fizzy stuff at New Year as I couldn’t taste anything apart from garlic, curry and piccalilli. This was an enormous frustration as there was a bottle of Bollinger and a bottle of Taittinger in the fridge that Other Half has been promising to open for months.

Aside from being unwell at New Year, we had a good Christmas in the Jodhpurs household and I personally had an almost perfect Boxing Day.

Boxing Day is a much better day than Christmas Day because it is perfectly acceptable to have an enormously hefty martini and watch the racing from Kempton Park. Kempton can afford the £10,000 that it costs to cover the entire track with frost covers and this keeps Jack Frost and his sparkly crispness off the ground and almost guarantees Boxing Day racing.

This year however I broke my usual Boxing Day tradition and after a late breakfast Other Half, Britney (Not her real name) and I hopped in the car and went to the Holy Island of Lindisfarne just off the Northumberland coast.

The 3 mile long island is reached by a causeway that is covered over by the North Sea twice every 24 hours. If you are planning a trip to Holy Island (and I honestly cannot stress this enough) check the Tide Tables. And I really, really mean that. Check the Tide Tables and do not go if you don’t have plenty of time. Please be aware that the safe crossing times to the island change daily; like the tide. So if you were there last Wednesday don’t assume that the safe crossing time will be the same next Wednesday.

Years ago when I worked for Miserable Finance Limited, I used to go to Holy Island every 3 months to complete a VAT job for a client. I recall one day in December the lady who I worked for came into the office and told me kindly that I was “cutting it a bit fine” to make the tide. I consulted my watch and replied that I still had 20 minutes until the end of the safe crossing window, to which she replied “they’re big tides at the moment and there’s a strong wind today”. She then practically threw me and my calculator into my car and waved me off to the mainland.

This wonderful lady also advised me that should I ever be worried about the level of water on the causeway I was to turn back immediately. And if this happened when I was trying to leave the island, she assured me that she had a spare bed already made up should I ever require it. Clearly this woman should be advising the visitors who believe it is possible to drive their family saloon car through the rising tide. Some of these muppets even try to traverse the causeway 2 hours after the end of safe crossing time and have to be rescued from the roof of their car by either the RNLI Lifeboat or Air Sea Rescue. 

Prior to Bristow Helicopters taking over the Air Sea Rescue contract in 2015, we used to sit in our garden and watch the bright yellow RAF Sea Kings flying over our heads as they flew from their base at RAF Boulmer to the Holy Island causeway. This occurred much more frequently during the summertime and frankly I’m surprised that the locals weren’t standing on the mainland firing stones from catapults at the stranded tourists.

The cost of a sea rescue is around £1,900 and an air rescue costs approximately £4,000, yet there is no charge to these people who fail to check the tide tables. This is because the RNLI is manned by volunteers, funded by donations and Bristow Helicopters are undertaking the ASR contract on behalf of Her Majesty’s Coastguard, which is again a free service. These services also do not wish to charge for rescues in case someone really is in danger and won’t ask for help as they cannot afford to pay for their recovery.

I would be one of those people.

I would be too petrified by embarrassment to request being rescued. I would sit in the little white rescue box, on its stilts high above the waterlogged causeway, right next to the sign that reads: DANGER DO NOT PROCEED WHEN WATER REACHES CAUSEWAY and watch my car getting washed off to Norway in total silence. I would then try to pretend that nothing untoward had happened. I would even lie to Other Half and say that I had sold my car because I no longer liked it. I would do anything to avoid admitting that I had made a total idiot of myself by getting stuck on the Holy Island causeway because I hadn’t bothered to check the tide tables that are on a board at both ends of the causeway.

Anyway, I digress.

So, despite the fact that I had an invitation on my fridge asking Other Half, Britney and me for coffee and drinks on the Island of Holy between 11am and 1pm on Boxing Day; I still checked the Tide Tables to see what time we could get on and off safely.

We arrived just after midday and walked through the village in the biting wind, towards the church and down onto the South beach.

Inside the boat house the wood burner was roaring and keeping warm a tray of sausages, an enormous pan of tomato soup and a vat of Hot Toddy on its top.

After a mug of tomato soup I was then introduced to the exquisite concept of Bloody Mary soup. I’m a huge fan of the original Bloody Mary and this hot equivalent invented by The Assassinator a few years ago, is just the thing on a bitterly cold day. You begin with the best homemade tomato soup ever and then get Kamikaze Girl to administer a generous glug of vodka and a hefty dash of Tabasco whilst giving it a good stir with the handle of a knife.

Perhaps we should commission The Resident Vet and Kamikaze Girl to make some of this amazing, forget-your-own-name-soup for all the people who are rescued from the roof of their cars on the causeway. Or better still, they could make it in cartons and send it to the insurance companies so they only have to pop it in the microwave when they are laughing themselves sick at their clients’ stupidity.

In fact, I could order a shipping container of digital watches from China and set an alarm on each and every one of them to notify the visitors that safe crossing was coming to an end. I could make an absolute fortune if I had a little stall at the mainland end of the causeway and charged £3 per watch. I would even let the visitors take their watches home with them at the end of their visit.

The Lady whose VAT I used to do all those years ago, once told me that the islanders have their own tide tables. And from time to time, when I was booking a visit to Holy Island to meet her, she would advise me that I could safely access the island 20 or even 30 minutes earlier than the time given by Northumberland County Council.

But I had and still have the uttermost respect for the secret tide tables of the islanders. The inhabitants of the Holy Island of Lindisfarne understand and listen to the living, breathing creature that the sea becomes as it engulfs the sandflats around their beautiful home. They know that a strong North wind can considerably alter their secret tide tables and cut them off from the mainland much more quickly than anticipated. They treat the sea with the respect that it deserves. A respect that the visitor in his Mercedes trying to get off the island 2 hours and 40 minutes after the end of safe crossing time, does not have.

My Boxing Day was perfect because what else can you ask for? Holy Island, Bloody Mary soup and making it home safely in time for The King George at Kempton.

Bloody marvellous.

Holy Island Safe Crossing Times 

Funding for Research Required

2 weeks ago, Cambridge University Researchers announced that sheep are able to recognise human faces.

To prove this point, eight female Welsh Mountain sheep were trained to distinguish 4 celebrity faces from pictures of non-celebrity people, using food pellets as a reward.

The researchers say it “might be interesting in the future to investigate whether sheep can identify different expressions on human faces” and that this work “might even have implications for learning about neurodegenerative diseases, such as Huntington’s and Parkinson’s”. I have to confess that I was so bored at this point that I didn’t even bother to research as to why this study would have any bearing on Huntington’s and Parkinson’s disease.

How on earth did Cambridge University get funding for this research?

I could have told them that sheep can tell one human from another with a bit of practice. In fact, if you were to send someone into their field with a feed bag, they would come running without even checking to see if they recognised the face or not.

A few years ago in Horse and hound magazine there was an article about an equine research project in America. A group of persons obviously had access to some kind of funding and had 12 pure bred Arab horses in their yard. They exercised all 12 in exactly the same way, for the same length of time each day. And every day after the horses had been exercised, 6 of them went through a set of stretching exercises.

You will never believe what they discovered after 4 weeks of this regime.

They discovered that the 6 horses that had been doing the stretching after their work had only gone and built up more muscle that their non-stretching counterparts.

If I asked Britney (Not her real name) what she thought the outcome would be after this 4 week long bonkers study, I’m 105% certain that even she would have guessed the end result.

When I go outside to my stable at stupid o’ clock in the morning and am wearing my high visibility jacket that I ride in, my horse stands still and looks at me. If I venture outside into the gloom wearing my other scruffy coat that is dark in colour and smells faintly horsey, my horse begins to chew and moves across the stable to his feed manger. And why is this? Is Wet Dishcloth Horse super intelligent? No. Wet Dishcloth horse knows that if I don’t have my riding jacket on, he is going to get his breakfast as we are not going to cavort around the countryside in the dark.

This made me wonder what kind of research I could get funding for. What about some form of remuneration to discover if clothing fades and goes bobbly the more times you wash it? Or I could research how fat I will get if I lie on the sofa every day for a month, eating chocolates and watching daytime television.

The possibilities are endless. I could see how full of rubbish my car becomes if I don’t ever clean it out, how full of ash the log burner gets if I burn 2 baskets of logs every day and how many strange looks I get from my Mummy friends if I do the school run in my pyjamas.

I could check how effective Northumbria Police are by seeing how many times I get arrested for shoplifting and if I drive my car without a valid MOT I would find out if the DVLA are keeping their databases up to date.

I could park on double yellow lines to see if the bastard Traffic Warden is still the Son of Satan and I could check if Britney’s school is dealing with truanting children correctly by keeping her off school for 2 days every week.

How do I apply for funding for my research? Who do I write to?

The article about the celebrity-recognising-Sheep was on the BBC website and handily there was a link to the Royal Society for Open Science.

I actually started to read about how chickens can hear better if they open their beaks. I was a bit horrified to hear that they had been frozen prior to this experiment and then I realised that they were already dead. But as they had been supplied for the trial by a chicken farm down the road, they hadn’t been killed just for the sake of the experiment, but their plump bodies had already been turned into chicken nuggets ensuring that there was no waste. I also read about the long term effects of outdoor aesthetic lights had on bats in churches. Yes, you’ll never believe it, but enormous spotlights illuminating the outside of a church have a detrimental effect on bats. Who would have thought it? A creature that comes out at dusk being put off by bright lights. Truly unbelievable.

I also read about whether dogs are red-green colour blind. The scientists in this research showed them pictures of cats in different colours to reach a conclusion. What if several of the dog guinea pigs in question liked cats? They might have a completely false reading and the whole thing should be null and void.

One study that was total and utter bollocks was Why do horseflies need polarization vision for host detection? Polarization helps tabanid flies to select sunlit dark host animals from the dark patches of the visual environment

Despite the fact that I didn’t even understand the title, I know this to be rubbish because horseflies are evil and will bite absolutely anything. I once got bitten on the back of my hand when I was sitting on a dark brown horse and the next day my hand looked as though it had been inflated with a bicycle pump.

Another study that caught my eye was Living with own or husband's mother in the household is associated with lower number of children: a cross-cultural analysis.

I could have told them that. Surely living with your Mother of Mother in Law could be classed as the best contraceptive known to man. (Or woman.)

So after trawling the website of the Royal Society for Open Science I lost all hope that I would secure funding for any of my studies.

Clearly, every single mad and crazy type of research has already been undertaken.

Darn it.

The "C" Word

On the way home from school the other day, Britney (Not her real name) informed me that her teacher was now allowing her to use the “C” word in class.

I nearly crashed the car.

Once I had regained control and my seatbelt had released itself, I cleared my throat and asked Britney if she could clarify exactly what she meant.

“We’re allowed to say Christmas now it’s past bonfire night.” she replied.

Once we arrived home and I had poured a gin and tonic and blown into a paper bag for several minutes, I looked online to see if there was any clue as to when John Lewis would be releasing their Christmas Advert. This is because in my eyes, this marks the beginning of the official festive build up. I knew it had to be in the near future because it was November and that very morning the cat had been doing his best to emulate last year’s offering by doing his wall of death routine on Britney’s trampoline.

I found that John Lewis had released a teaser for their advert but no-one was keen to actually accept it was real after being fooled in 2016 by an A Level Student and a piece of his CGI coursework. But as luck would have it the release of the advert was imminent and I watched it via a link on Twitter the very next morning.

And I cannot believe what the Marketing Mischief Makers at John Lewis have done. If you have been in hibernation or not in receipt of a television, you can watch the advert here. And if you can’t be bothered to click on the link, basically the advert features a 7 year old boy called Joe and a monster under his bed called Moz.

Since the beginning of time parents, grandparents and baby sitters have reassured children that there are no such thing as monsters under the bed and yet John Lewis and his mad, money grabbing marketing team have rubbished this story in their 2 minute 10 second Christmas advert. So there you go children, there is in fact an enormous monster hidden under your bed in amongst all of the dirty laundry and random toys that you have hidden there. But don’t be alarmed because he will fart, make you laugh hysterically and stay up all night with you playing all the games that your big sister wont; and thus make getting a haircut that is straight at the back a bit more tricky the next day.

And where on earth are Joe’s parents while their son is playing on the Scalextric at 1am with a monster from under his bed? As a Mum, my ears are so finely tuned to any extra curricular bedtime activities that after 8pm I can hear the tap of a finger on an iPad when I am 20 metres away. If I listen carefully, I can hear a Monster High Doll having her shoes changed and I have an app on my phone that alerts me if a torch has been switched on under a duvet. The only reason that Joe’s Mum wouldn’t be able to hear an enormous monster giving her son a piggy back ride across his bedroom is if she’d taken a handful of Tramadol and washed it down with a Magnum of Merlot.

I suppose at least the John Lewis Mum can thank Moz the Monster for finding the lost sock under the bed that must have been pissing her off for weeks. Where do the odd socks go?  Well now you know, they’re all stuck on the monster that’s hiding under your child’s bed. I must ask the one under Britney’s bed to roll around a bit when he’s going to sleep as it would save having to hoover under it. I could even rent him out to my friends once I’d used 4 entire rolls of parcel tape getting the fluff off him.

And while Joe’s Mum is clearly unconscious after 7.30pm, I don’t believe for one second that Joe’s Dad would stand on the touchline and watch the opposition thundering towards his sleeping goalie of a son without screaming a torrent of advice/abuse/encouragement. Perhaps that’s why he’s on the touchline – perhaps all of the other parents have been banned from attending the games.

On the up side, Joe’s spelling is tremendous for a 7 year old who was probably taught to spell phonetically. If you’d asked a 7 year old Britney to write a sign for her bedroom door asking monsters to keep out she would have written “monsturs nott alowed.” My personal favourite from her 7 year old CV was the word “tuna” which was spelt “choona”. But anyway, I digress.

Moz the monster is extremely dextrous with his enormous hands and even manages to play Battleships (£12 from John Lewis by the way) with Joe. But for some reason this dexterity does not extend to the wrapping of a Christmas present for Joe and the package looks as though someone with 1 arm has attempted to wrap a live hedgehog with wrapping paper from the 1940s. And what parent in their right mind would allow some random present that just appeared from no-where, looking as though it had been wrapped by a hyper-active 2 year old, underneath their tree on Christmas morning? When you discovered that it was a night light that was going to keep your child awake all night counting the stars on their bedroom ceiling and when they switch if off a 7 foot tall farting monster appears, you might be a bit concerned as to its origin.

The Advert cost £1million and took a year to make. Why did it cost £1million? If they had paid the twins who played Joe in Haribo and Argos vouchers it would have reduced the cost dramatically. You surely can’t have to pay a monster very much as he wouldn’t even have an equity card. If you’d bought him a caravan to live in after the advert was finished I’m sure he would have been delighted. If you had also given him an account at John Lewis so he could buy some toys he would be set for life. Let’s face it, work must be thin on the ground for a monster who hides under beds and keeps children awake.

The set can’t have cost very much and you would think that the barber would have undertaken the role in exchange for the free publicity. If John Lewis had supplied the half time oranges, bought the football club a new set of strips and a couple of goal posts you’d think they would have been okay with letting their team run towards a sleeping goalkeeper for free.

The other costs relating to the marketing, TV slots in ad breaks and in store advertising came to £6million. So for the bargain price of £7million, John Lewis have again launched a cash cow that will generate something in the region of £70million in revenue.

Academy award-winning screenwriter Michel Gondry was called in to make this 2 minute masterpiece and despite his ex-girlfriend telling him that he had big shoes to fill, I think he’s done it wonderfully well. It’s better than a lonely old man sitting on the moon with a telescope or a fox mite-riddled trampoline and it shows the younger fraternity that the monster under the bed is not a bad thing. 10% of the sales of every Moz mug and soft toy will go to Barnardos to support the young carers who have to grow up so quickly to cope with demands of their homelife. I wish each and every one of them, their very own monster under the bed to play with, talk to and cuddle when times are tough.

Battleships, Scalelextric and piggy back rides only before 7pm, obviously.

The Best Place to Live in the Country

Back in 2002 Country Life magazine informed their readers that the Northumberland market town of Alnwick was the best place to live in the UK.

If I’m completely honest, I’m not sure the readers of Country Life would have been greatly interested in this piece of information, because all of the property advertised for sale in Country Life is usually in possession of the term POA; and Alnwick doesn’t have many available properties like that.

Nevertheless, Alnwick with its famous castle was apparently the most fulfilling place to live in our Country and one of the main reasons for that is because the evening rush hour lasts 18 minutes. This could not be further from the truth, but let us not allow this piece of invention to get in the way of a good story.

Alnwick Castle was the home of Hogwarts for the first and second Hazza Potter films and if you visit the Castle now, you can still have a flying lesson. I will point out just for your information, that Alnwick Castle should be reported to Trading Standards for using this terminology. Britney (Not her real name) was left bitterly disappointed when she discovered that her flying lesson consisted of jumping as high as she could in front of a green screen whilst straddling a broomstick.

To put it mildly this was something of an anticlimax for Britney who had obviously been envisaging sailing over the castle ramparts playing Quidditch.

To be fair, Quidditch looks like a fairly dangerous activity and if you were to combine that with the lack of experience shown by a first time flyer, you’re looking at one hell of a dubious risk assessment, so perhaps Alnwick Castle are just erring on the side of caution.

Anyway, shit flying lessons aside, Alnwick Castle has been used as the setting for many a film and TV programme. A great deal of Robin Hood Prince of Thieves was filmed at Alnwick, some scenes for Downtown Abbey were also made there and Rowan Atkinson rode a horse around the Castle in the snow for the first series of Blackadder.

But an article which I found in the Daily Mail (so it must be true) says that Alnwick is “no chocolate-box fantasy of rural living” because “it has all the facilities required for life in the real world”.

I’m no expert, but I would say this is because it is in fact a real place where people actually live and do normal things, such as take their children to school and go to work. I suppose the residents should count themselves extremely fortunate that they only have an 18 minute rush hour to contend with when they are heading home at the end of the working day.

The judging panel for this Best Place to Live in Britain took into consideration the transport links to cities (the bus), traffic congestion (none, aside from that dreadful 18 minute rush hour) and how the contender was expected to develop over the coming years (rapidly I would say, like everywhere else). And do you know what happened after the glossy Country Life published this information? House prices shot through the roof and every property that was small enough to be affordable to local people became a holiday home. This quickly put an end to the “cheap homes” that had been advertised for free throughout the competition.

Country Life editor Clive Aslet said he was not surprised Alnwick had won, although it was not as wealthy as the other towns shortlisted. He added: “Money doesn't necessarily make you happy”. No it certainly doesn’t Mr Aslet, but if you are attempting to get onto the property ladder in your home town, money does assist an awful lot.

The reason that I am dredging up this information, (although it is still fresh in the mind of any Alnwick occupant 15 years on) is because last Saturday I read an article in the Daily Mail (so it must be true) that was entitled: Market towns with England’s cheapest property revealed: North East is the place to go for historic markets and low house prices.

So if you are a home owner in the North East you can rest assured that the value of your property has just doubled and so has the cost of your shopping.

I think we are very lucky with our quality of life here in the North East. We might have to drive a little further to get to a B&Q but we have the added bonus that we can use our broadest Geordie accent should a situation become rather heated. Honestly, nothing cools the flames of an argument like a thunderous roar of “WHEY AYE, PACK IT IN MAN”.

Although this article was published in the daily Mail (so it must be true) the findings regarding these house prices that were quoted were made by Lloyds Bank. Frankly I have no idea why Lloyds Banking Group plc would be making reference to cheap house prices. Oh, and I must mention that there were three adverts for mortgages half way down the page that were most interesting.

So, Ferryhill has the cheapest average house prices in the country at £78,184 and the Daily Wail has most helpfully compared this to the Buckinghamshire market town of Beaconsfield’s average of £1,049,659. They also described Ferryhill as being near Durham, which it is; but it’s even nearer to Spennymoor but this doesn’t sound nearly so glamorous. After all Ferryhill is a former mining town that “suffered some of the socio-economic problems associated with the industry’s decline but in recent years has seen infrastructural improvements and still has its weekly Friday markets”.

Well, that’s good. If you need 10 plastic cigarette lighters for £1, a pint of fluorescent slush puppy, some nettle flavoured cheese and a coaster with a flower on it, get yourself off to Ferryhill on Friday.

I do think that it’s particularly useful to hold a market in a market town, when everyone is at work and I also fail to understand why the status of a town is raised by the fact that it has a market. Back in the day when I was a child and all of this was still fields, the Saturday market was a bustling place where you could buy meat, fruit, vegetables, a hammer and some wheel trims for your car.

Now, because everyone buys from the internet those markets are a thing of the past. In fact some market towns advertise Farmers’ Markets just to let everyone know that they really can purchase meat, cheese, fruit, vegetables and a strange coloured alcoholic beverage made from distilled blackberries. These days I only go to the market to buy Britney a pint of slush puppy that is so iridescent it is sold with a tool for removing small children from the ceiling; and to purchase juice for my vaping implement. The bloke who sells me this liquid crack cocaine for my fake cigarette resembles one of Eddie Stobbart’s lorries. The writing is a bit smudged on his bottles of vaping juice but it is reasonably priced and he adds enough nicotine into it to stop me becoming suicidal by 7.45 each morning.

I did breathe a colossal sigh of relief that nothing north of Durham featured in this “cheap housing in market towns” critique. Aside from Ferryhill the other 9 places on the list were Crook, Stanhope and Saltburn in County Durham, Guisborough and Marsden in Yorkshire, Cartmel in Cumbria, Boston and Immingham in Lincolnshire and Tickhill in Derbyshire.

They had kept this list to the very end of the article for a very important reason. And this is because Lincolnshire, Derbyshire and Cumbria are definitely not in the North East.

If you live in Ferryhill, enjoy your Friday market and the peace while it lasts.

The masses are coming to join you.