Talking Yorkshire

As a Yorkshireman I suppose it goes without saying that I miss the county of my birth. Yes, I miss the contrasts of the rolling dales and gritty mill towns, but most of all I miss the people.

Something of the character of Yorkshire people comes out in the dialect but you don't see it written much anymore. These little gems on the Open Writing web site by my old Huddersfield Examiner colleague Mike Shaw are a fine example of the genre. You never heard Compo speaking like this in Last of the Summer Wine. Minestchyer e' weern't a Yarkshire lad.

I'll go t'foot of our stairs

Most of those who hail from the north of England will be familiar with this expression, reserved for some surprising but not Earth-shattering news.

You would not, for example, go to the foot of your stairs for a sudden death but you might well do so if you have just discovered that your Uncle Frank has had a sex change and has asked henceforth to be known as Wendy.

For that piece of news you would go to the stairs and sit on the bottom step all morning.

But why would you go to the foot of your stairs in the first place? I was having this conversation with a fellow northerner earlier this week. She wondered whether it had something to do with the positioning of the door in many houses at the foot of stairs. You would go to the door to find news, some of which would be surprising.

A Valentine's card, a telegram from your new Auntie Wendy, a bunch of flowers or a premium bond win would all arrive at the foot of the stairs. So you might rush to the door in anticipation if there was someone knocking.

In the days before telephones you might well open your door to a group of relatives, visiting for the day. This was certainly true in my home as a child where there was no phone in the house. Then you would truly be moved to say that you'd gone to the foot of your stairs (after the fact)in a mixture of happy surprise and anxiety about whether or not you had enough to feed them.

Of course, if you were a Yorkshire housewife, you always had. There was always a tin of ham or tuna. Besides, the visit would often be on a Sunday and there would have been fresh stuff from the Saturday trip to the market.

But what about those households - and there were so many - who had someone in the forces during the first and second world wars? Hours on end must have been spent at the foot of stairs by fearful mothers and wives, dreading a knock at the door. There would have been nothing of the mild surprise implicit in such an expression then.

Whatever its origins, whether seated in grief or simply a sarcastic remark from some household wag that "caught on," I do seem to be stuck with the phrase. Not much surprises me any more. But when it does, you know where to find me.

More on dialect here.

Black dog

Do you ever have one of those days when nothing feels right? You feel really down but can't put a finger on the cause. You tick off the important things: relationships, family, friends, health, work, time of life.....

Yes, that's the one - time of life. I turned 50 this year. Fifty is the new 30 they say. Who are they trying to kid? It might be the new 40 but 40 wasn't great either. I want to be 20 again. But what would I change? Would I marry the same? I guess I would except times are different now. It's fashionable to co-habit for a while.

I've been with the same partner for 28 years and it's been good; still is. We have three healthy boys who seem pretty well adjusted from where I'm sitting. As families go we have our ups and downs but nothing too traumatic.

I've had a solid career which still seems remarkably sound even though I left paid employment six years ago. There's been a lot of travel. I miss Yorkshire but we still have many friends there. I can't say I have ever adjusted to living in Surrey - just too many golf clubs.

I should have written more books, should have done some TV and a bit more radio but I'm not very good at striking deals. I don't chase things, don't kick at doors. For a career journalist I'm just not so curious about things as I used to be. I love to chat but I think everybody needs space and journalists can be so "in your face."

Yes today is one of those days that the negativity is flowing from every pore. Think Eeyore. Think Marvin the Paranoid Android (without a brain the size of a planet,of course). Americans can't understand this kind of "can't do" mentality. Even if they feel this way they would never admit it publicly.

Sometimes I wonder if it has something to do with a Yorkshire upbringing in a sooty mill town where even the grass was grey. You must have seen those L S Lowry pictures. Well that was just like my town and I was one of the stick children, head held down. But we were 'appy.

I'm having a full bells and whistles medical examination later this week. I know they're going to find something. Maybe that's at the root of my darkening mood. But there's another more pressing concern, common to hypochondriacs everywhere: suppose they don't find anything? That's the biggest worry of all.

Camp Dick 2007

The idea for Camp Dick started over a pint or two in the Angel and Crown, Richmond, before one of the winter internationals. There was my 50th birthday coming up and I wanted to do something a bit different. The birthday itself would pass quietly on the river in Scotland (well, not without a whisky or two) so I thought I'd be greedy and have another in the summer.

I like to think of myself as an outdoors type. A field would do nicely. One of my favourite fields is a bit of National Trust land at Golden Cap in Dorset. By way of facilities it has a tap which is all you need as far as I'm concerned. The rest of one's needs can be handled with a neatly dug hole in the ground.

Plain Bonkers

"The problem with that, Dick," said a rugby mate(my rugby mates and northern friends all call me Dick), "Is that some people will balk at a hole in the ground." In fact some people, particularly those hovering around their 50th year, regard the idea of swapping a comfortable bed for a drafty tent as plain bonkers.

But not where I come from. In God's own country we're brought up to appreciate the hard life and there's nothing we like better than to sit around and chew the fat about it.

Mushy peas

I wanted a kind of northern party: good beer, mushy peas, pies, black pudding with plenty of sleeting rain ideally on a wind-swept moor.

"Why don't you come and use our field?" said Seamus who lives on a wind swept moor.

You know how some of the daftest ideas seem credible after a few pints of beer? Well it sounded a great idea. What's more, at the next match he said that Kate, his wife, had given it her stamp of approval. If Kate liked the idea we just had to do it.

Big shorts

Fortunately we had invited enough people who enjoy camping. People like Stuart Fletcher who relished the opportunity to get out his primus stove, maps and big shorts. Then there were the kids who found that sitting round a camp fire chatting and joking had the edge on instant messaging.

It helped that Seamus and Kate are both Scout leaders so we could borrow some tents, benches, trestle tables and cooking gear. My mother-in-law meanwhile had taken care of the vital mushy peas that had been steeping away at her house for some time. I like mushy peas - always have. But Gill doesn't like them so there's only about three times in our marriage when I've had them the proper way, cooked with a ham shank.

In case anyone was worried about the weather, I said on the invite that it would be good. Well you have to be optimistic.

The idea was that everyone would arrive on the Friday night for a gentle bedding in, with a walk the next day and more of a party on the Saturday. As it turned out the weather forecast was not good but we seemed to have been blessed with the one reasonable weather hole in the British Isles on the Friday so we got stuck in to the beer from the start. It was a good do.

It was one of those dos where the conversation starts where it left off 15 or 20 years earlier, where you can sing a song badly and everyone sings with you, where something goes wrong and no-one gives a damn.

One of those dos where everyone mucks in without being asked. Where washing up gets done, sausages get cooked and spills get cleared up as if by magic. Yes, there's a lot of hard work, but it's spread around and the work adds to the pleasure in some strange way that defies understanding. All I know is that it works.

Royston Vasey

We hiked over to Marsden which some may recognise as the setting for the "local shop" in Royston Vasey from the League of Gentlemen TV series. The pub at Tunnel End is difficult for parking so ideal for walkers. We even had sunshine for the trek back over the moor.

The mushy peas, meanwhile, had been stored in the garage where the temperature was rising. By the time we got back they were fermenting away like a Hollywood swamp. Remember the scene in Psycho where Norman Bates dumps the car in to the muddy lagoon? Well they were like that.

As the peas had been converted to compost, there was nothing for it but a dash to Tesco by Kate and Gill grabbing all the cans they could. "Sorry," the girl tells them at the checkout. "Company policy says you can't buy more than 10 of any item." So they have to do relay trips until they have enough.

Some of the nicknames seem a bit odd now. Gooch, for example, has not had his Graham Gooch moustache for many years. But he's still Gooch. "Captain" Briggs wore the peaked captain's hat just the once but it was enough for life. Rocky is Rocky because he's sort of Rocky. I've forgotten how Godber got his name but it was needed. Like each of the aforementioned plus "Mil" - the other one - his first name is Steve. There are just too many Steves.

Vegetarian option

On the last night it rained a bit but we clung to that campfire like limpets, sticking on more wood that dried the front of you as quickly as you got wet. In the end the song sheets were too soggy to read and the walking had taken its toll - see Simon's account here with a picture of the mushy peas.

Next morning it was the Yorkshire vegetarian option of double black pudding with sausage and egg, then down with the tents. It was a good craic, as they say in Ireland.There's nothing like meeting old friends. If any are reading this now, a hearty thanks for coming along and making it what it was. But the biggest thanks go to Seamus and Kate for making a daft idea reality. We had a good one. Looking at the weather today it was a close run thing.


Pictures of Camp Dick here. It should be easy to download any you might want.

Cookie King

George is our youngest son. He doesn't excel much at sport but he's a good boy. A parent couldn't ask for any better. He's a bright kid and popular in school but he sometimes loses marks because his writing is not so neat. He's something of a non-conformist and that can jar with teachers.

The more I look at George, the more I see myself. He's a fully paid up contrary'un as we say in Yorkshire. But I'm sure that what he doesn't get in UCCA points he will more than make up for in pure chutzpah.

George has a certain entrepreneurial spark that I can't recognise in any other member of the family, me included. He understands things about business beyond his years.

A little while back he began selling cookies at school. He would buy a few packs from the local Tesco, split them up and sell the biscuits separately. This way he was clearing about £7.50 a day profit for about 10 minutes work.

He knew just where to stand near the lockers, knew what his customers wanted and priced his product at a nice round figure. He didn't sell too many and never had any left over, thus ensuring that demand always outstripped supply. He could teach some of those dummies on Alan Sugar's The Apprentice a thing or two.

George doesn't get much spending money compared with many of the other kids in his school so he was saving what he made in order to buy a big ticket item such as computer game - the sort of thing he rarely gets from his parents.

I suppose he was taking advantage of the Jamie Oliver effect where schools have been persuaded to adopt healthier diets, leaving scope for opportunists to cash in on a persistent teenage weakness for biscuits.

It was too good to last. A teacher got wind of his business and George's biscuit trade has been knocked on the head. That's the trouble with our schools. They neither know nor care about entrepreneurship.

A good teacher might have taken him in hand, might have tried to get a cut for the school or suggested ways in which he could have modified his selling towards healthier lifestyles. But they don't do A-levels in selling. If they did George would be up for an A*.

I asked him how he felt and he seemed quite relaxed about it. “I'll leave it a while until things have quietened down then start again,” he says. That's ma boy.