148

FEEDBACK
I guess the most obvious form of feedback to the blog is via the comment option at the bottom. Just click the word and Bob’s yer uncle, Fanny’s yer aunt.

Some people, though, choose to use email, either because they are congenitally daft and can’t figure out how to leave a comment at the blog itself or - and I admit that this is much more likely - because they’d rather whatever it is they want to say is ‘heard’ only by me, for one reason or another. For the purposes of this posting, I have checked with the relevant truckshunters to ensure that they don’t mind my giving their comments the oxygen of publicity, to use Thatcher’s inglorious phrase.

So first up, a very big thankyou to everyone who’s been emailing over the past few weeks, either on my personal email address or on the truckshunter address which is always tagged on to the end of each posting. I’ve had some fascinating stuff, of which this posting features a very small amount. Thanks to you all.

1 BIRDS
In a recent posting I mentioned the ‘dawn chorus’ of birdsong in some connexion or other. As a result, truckshunter Dave Court - of whom more later - sent me an erudite and knowledgeable email on the subject. His literary style is so articulate and easy on the brain - surely the best literary style of all - that his email is worth quoting almost in its entirety...

The dawn chorus of birdsong peaks at this time of year because most of the migrant birds have arrived by now. As the last traces of Winter and Spring bow out and Summer makes itself known, male songbirds sing to attract a mate and protect their territory. You have to be up with the lark to hear it, of course. At about 0400, the roll-call begins - often in this order: blackbird (pictured above), robin, wren, tawny owl, warblers (including blackcaps and chiffchaffs), song thrush and blue tit. There’s also a dusk chorus, but as it tends to be less windy early in the morning, the clarion call to love and war is sweetest at dawn. As soon as it’s light enough for birds to look for food - about 0430 - the chorus ends.

Isn’t that lovely?

Interestingly, one of the few things I know about Dave is that he is not an ex-Nightshift listener. He happened on the truckshunter blog via the internet just a few weeks ago and has now read back through every posting - all 147 of them. I don’t know anything else about him - not even where he lives - but I’m astonished and gratified at his devotion!

Another emailer, known to me only as Ellen, also got in touch about my reference to birds. She drew my attention to the recent RSPB bird census which makes sobering and even frightening reading. According to the RSPB, bird numbers in the UK are plummeting and Ellen asks ‘Where have they all gone?’

The humble starling’s population has fallen by 62% in only 20 years; the grey partridge’s by 87% - yes eighty-seven percent. Lapwing numbers are down by 56%; remember that this was once one of our commonest and most striking birds. The glorious skylark, too, is suffering badly - numbers are down by 51%. Kestrels, too, seem to have decided to leave us to our own devices - their numbers have fallen by 35%.

But Ellen reckons that the two most worrying and thought-provoking statistics concern the once common yellowhammer, whose population has dropped by an amazing 54%, and the cuckoo, which - unbelievably - has now been placed on the endangered list.

While I was staying with my friend Sue near Hereford recently, it was wonderful - almost blissful - to lie abed and listen to what must be one of the most characteristic and unmistakable bird calls in the whole of creation; the pure, two-note musicality of a cuckoo in a nearby wood. I loved it; and Ellen's email has filled me with dread that we may actually lose this deeply pastoral and primaeval sound of wildlife forever.

If anyone has the bare-faced gall to suggest that this unfolding disaster has nothing to do with us, they should be clapped in irons and deposited in the most fetid oubliette currently available; I believe there’s a suitable one at Chillingham Castle.

What are we doing wrong? Can we set matters right for the birds? And, as Ellen asks - where on Earth have they all gone?

2 SGTRANE BTU TURE
A truckshunter called Judith sent me this...

Olny 55 plepoe out of 100 can raed tihs. Cna yuo? Fi yuo cna, yuo hvae a sgtrane mnid.

i cdnuolt blveiee taht I cluod aulaclty uesdnatnrd waht I was rdanieg. The phaonmneal pweor of the hmuan mnid! Aoccdrnig to rscheearch at Cmabrigde Uinervtisy, it dseno't mtaetr in waht oerdr the ltteres in a wrod are; the olny iproamtnt tihng is taht the frsit and lsat ltteer be in the rghit pclae. The rset can be a taotl mses and you can sitll raed it whotuit a pboerlm. Tihs is bcuseae the huamn mnid deos not raed ervey lteter by istlef, but the wrod as a wlohe. Azanmig huh? yaeh and I awlyas tghuhot slpeling was ipmorantt!

BREAKFAST WITH THE STARS
Lawrence and I will be mustered for breakfast at about 0800 this upcoming Wednesday 3 June at Margaret’s Cafe near the mini-roundabout where Two Ball Lonnen meets the West Road in Newcastle. Care to join us?

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com

147

Before I left the BBC in January I was bombarded with advice and warnings about retirement; and I have to admit that most of the ‘wise words’ I was offered have come at least partially true. Incredible though it may sound, you really do feel a little guilty at first; as if you really ought to be getting up and going off to work as usual in order to justify your existence. You feel that you don’t deserve all these haphazard days of doing nothing in particular. Not that there have been many of them, mind you.

It’s been a whole week since I posted a blog here and, to be truly honest, I don’t know where the time has gone. I’ve done a lot of reading - I finally finished Tess of the D’Urbervilles and am now nearing the end of The Cat Nappers, my first foray into the world of Jeeves and Wooster. The book was not just recommended to me by a truckshunter; it was actually sent to me - and by Inga, all the way from Arkansas. She obviously decided that the idea of an Englishman calling himself educated when he hasn’t read any P G Wodehouse is patently absurd and, having thoroughly enjoyed The Cat Nappers, I tend to agree with her. There is humour here that ranges from the gently sardonic to the utterly inane, with all stops between.

Warmly recommended. And thanks for sending it to me, Inga.

Another book that was given to me on the basis that no-one who describes themselves as ‘literate’ can do so unless they’ve read it several times is In Cold Blood, by Truman Capote. And that’s next on the list. Wish me luck.

Great, noble and deep thoughts seem to occur to me more and more often on my Saturday morning visits to Newcastle City Centre. In fact, sitting on the steps of Grey’s Monument and waiting for great, noble and deep thoughts to infuse my mind from nowhere has become an essential and enjoyable ritual for me.

Last Saturday, as I sat munching my luxurious and completely unearned avocado and herb sandwich (yummy) and gazing absent-mindedly down Grey Street (as you do), I couldn’t help noticing, for instance, how many of the folk milling all around me were tourists. Maps and cameras were everywhere, foreign languages - mostly unidentifiable - filled the air and a good time was had by all.

For Tyneside in general, and Newcastle in particular, to have transformed its image from that of a worked-out northern industrial wasteland to one of the finest Georgian cities in Britain - as well as a lively and dramatic regional metropolis - is an utterly amazing achievement. For the likes of Durham City or Lindisfarne to be heaving with visitors is only to be expected; but to see so many admiring the architecture, atmosphere and people of Newcastle and the rest of Tyneside is a real eye-opener. I still believe that we do not brag about our towns and cities nearly enough.

Having said that, I found myself watching the arrival of the DFDS Seaways shuttle bus at Newcastle Central Station the other day. As the passengers disembarked, they were greeted by two bus company employees, both of whom were smoking and both of whom spoke only English - just about. Visitor questions put to them in broken, stumbling English were answered LOUDLY. After all, if you SHOUT, people will understand what you’re saying. I felt so sorry for the city’s seaborne visitors. We still have a lot to learn, don’t we?

But I digress. Back at Grey’s Monument on Saturday morning, I also noticed how lovely a lot of the women and girls looked. It was a very warm day and - just as you’d expect - the weather had prompted a great many of them to abandon cagoules and cardigans in favour of off-the -shoulder blouses and skirts that were so short that binoculars were required; well, almost. Anyway, it was all very pleasing to the eye, as the first bare flesh of a sunny Spring always is, I suppose.

You may be wondering why a man of my proclivities is passing comment on things such as this. To the which my reply is simply that I know a good-looking lass when I see one. And I saw plenty on Saturday. I suppose it does behove me, for purposes of balance, to comment on the lads I saw, too.

Oh dear.

It seems always to have been true that the summer clothes women have worn through the ages have always been designed to flatter them, by the standards of the time. Sometimes, this has also been true of men. There have been periods when men’s clothing and fashions have been designed to compliment and emphasise their shape and their features. As far as I’m concerned, however, this has not applied for well over a decade. Lads and younger men have given in to a ‘look’ that incorporates the infamous modern ‘dropped crotch’ - jeans slung so low that there ought to be Questions in the House about how on earth they manage to stay up.

This, accompanied by the stick-thin physique now required by the dictates of street fashion and the curious (and profoundly ugly) forehead swept hairstyles currently in vogue make young men look like lavatory brushes. You can imagine how depressing it was for a man of my inclinations to be thinking thoughts like these as I sat on the Monument steps on Saturday.

It took the live performance of a Peruvian pan-pipe band called Apu on the dais behind me to cheer me up!

ULM
Thanks to Margaret for sending me the pictures of Ulm - see postings, passim. The spire is the tallest Gothic steeple in Europe. Margaret has promised to submit a full report of her visit to this stately German city when she gets back.

AND FINALLY...
... a letter to the editor of The Guardian the other day. It was from Fr Alec Mitchell in Manchester...
‘Both John Simpson and Joanna Lumley would surely make very good MPs. The former, in the course of duty, went late by night in a very grave burka whereas the latter lent weight, nay bite, to the cause of every brave Gurkha’

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com

146

AGM AT THE TANFIELD RAILWAY
I’m seriously beginning to wonder if truckshunters have a direct line to John Ketley, Ian McGaskill, Paul Mooney and all those other gods and goddesses who hold our weather in their purview (wow - purview!). So far, each of our daytime AGMs has been blessed with astonishingly good weather. As I’m agnostic meteorologically as in all other connexions, I can only ascribe this phenomenon to their influence. Add Trai Anfield and/or Wincey Willis to this heady mix and anything’s possible. (Whatever happened to Wincey Willis?)

It was a lovely, warm morning up at the Tanfield Railway and I’m absolutely delighted to say that, along with hardcore regulars Vivienne and Hildie, we were able to welcome newcomer Margaret from Consett. The four of us took a ride on the railway (of course) and great fun was had by all. I seem to have spent the whole time laughing, which is never a bad thing.

Our biggest-ever vote of truckshunter thanks - a round of applause loud enough to echo down the decades to our children’s children - must go to Neville Whaler, a working railwayman and Tanfield volunteer, whose friendly face appears above. We’ve been friends ever since he wrote the Tipsy Duchess’ most appalling lines almost ten years ago (see blogpostings, passim) and, at the AGM, he provided train tickets and tea all round. He has since also sent me the picnic-table group photo. A real gent if ever there was one, gov.

Thanks Nev.

Thanks also to Vivienne, who wasted no time in sending me her pictures of the AGM.

And thanks to the red kite that appeared over the train on the last leg of its journey. I’d almost forgotten what stunningly beautiful creatures they are. Seeing him/her was the best icing that the AGM cake could possibly have had.

Finally, there was some discussion - as there always is - about the next AGM. So... how about meeting again at Tynemouth (for the station market, the castle, the priory, the Spanish Battery and all the other lovely things that the town has to offer) on the weekend of June 20/21. Your reactions, please.

JAMES KIRKUP
Following my thoughts about the death of South Shields-born poet James Kirkup the other day, I read that in Who’s Who he gave his recreation as ‘standing in shafts of sunlight’. In old age, he changed this to ‘standing in shafts of moonlight’. How elegant and touching is that?

TWO BOB MONKHOUSE JOKES
Veteran comic Barry Cryer says his two favourite Bob Monkhouse jokes are....
When it’s my time to go, I want to die like my father - peacefully in his sleep. Not screaming and shouting, like his passengers.
and...
They laughed when I said I wanted to be a comedian. Well, they’re not laughing now.

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com

145

AGM AT THE TANFIELD RAILWAY
Regular truckshunters (or, for that matter, irregular ones) will be well aware by now that the next AGM will be held this upcoming Sunday 24 May, starting at around 1030-ish - in time for the first scheduled train at 1100. Anyone with a modicum of good taste and common sense would look forward to it as impatiently as I have done over the past few weeks; what is it about steam trains?

What will make the event scarily more wonderful will be the presence of Neville Whaler. Not only is Neville a real-life, railway-working ‘truckshunter’; his enthusiasm is such that he’s also a volunteer on the Tanfield Railway. He’s emailed me to say that he will be working in the signal box on Sunday and that the day promises to be a busy one on the Railway, it being a Bank Holiday weekend. His email included the picture above of the Duchess of Hamilton who, I imagine, must be sitting in the car.

On the down side, Neville was almost solely responsible for the more lurid and obscene double-entendres of the Tipsy Duchess (of profane memory) when that hideous caricature of femininity used to keep the quiz scores on Paul’s Saturday show in days of yore. Please don’t hold that shameful fact against him when you meet him on Sunday morning.

Incidentally, please don’t ever feel bad about not being able to attend an AGM. Contrary to custom and usage, our AGMs happen a lot more often than once a year so there’ll be another one along soon and, in any case, the venues are carefully chosen so that, even if nobody at all turns up, yours truly will enjoy the surroundings and be quite content just reading the paper!

Having said that... be there if you can. You know I love to see you.

On a similar subject... I had a real canny breakfast the other morning with Lawrence, our official Keeper of the Rats. If getting up early is your thing (which wouldn’t surprise me as you’re a truckshunter) then why not join us one morning?

JAMES KIRKUP
I was sad to read of the death of James Kirkup the other day. He was born in South Shields 91 years ago, the only son of a carpenter. This is part of what The Guardian said about him.

‘Educated at South Shields high school, he later took a degree in modern languages at Durham University. During the second world war, he was a conscientious objector and worked as an agricultural labourer. Openly homosexual and sometimes deliberately provocative in his behaviour, he found social encounters difficult. He described himself as having an "inborn sense of deep solitude and apartness"....

After the war he worked - unsuccessfully - as a schoolteacher. His poetry was published from the early 1940s onwards, many of these early poems being overwritten and given to opulent language. He was Gregory fellow in poetry at Leeds University from 1950 to 1952 and his first substantial collection, The Submerged Village and Other Poems, was published by Oxford University Press in 1951. At a time when OUP was one of the most prestigious publishers of contemporary poetry in the English-speaking world, five further volumes by Kirkup appeared from the press in 1952, 1954, 1957, 1959 and 1963....
In June 1976, Gay News published his poem The Love that Dares to Speak Its Name, in which a Roman centurion expresses the sexual fantasies the body of Christ provokes in him and imagines a history of Christ's homosexual encounters. Mary Whitehouse sued the newspaper for blasphemous libel. Gay News was defended by John Mortimer and both Bernard Levin and Margaret Drabble gave evidence on its behalf, but the jury decided in favour of Whitehouse. The newspaper and its editor, Denis Lemon (of whom Kirkup was later to write an obituary), were fined, and Lemon was given a nine-month suspended sentence....

It is unfortunate that this episode has acquired such a prominent place in the public perception of Kirkup, distracting attention from his considerable achievements as a writer. He was well described by Stevie Smith as "a poet in the English tradition, original without being freakish, contemporary without being fraudulent". The critic Philip Hobsbaum called him "one of the genuine masters of verse in the middle to later 20th century". ‘

Perhaps another forgotten north-east hero? I wonder if any of his local relatives are still around.

ALSO IN THE NEWS...
I just can’t get out of the Nightshift Newsreel habit...
- Amidst all the unbelievably mephitic sewage we’ve had to wade though recently about the brass-necked expenses claims of our utterly venal and worthless MPs, I thought you might like to know that those same selfish hypocritical and totally shameless bits of garbage have just increased the National Minimum Wage by 7p an hour - to £5.80;
- the UK’s nightingale and woodpecker populations have halved in the last 13 years;
- the original WI calendar girls have made a 2010 anniversary edition;
- a private school closes every week.

PERRY
I may have mentioned this before but... why is there currently an advert on tv for ‘pear cider’? We’ve already got a perfectly good word for ‘pear cider’: perry. So why not use it?

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com

Bothenhampton Church

The Cerne Abbas Giant

Sherborne Abbey

Milton Abbas

Bere Regis Church

Lyme Regis: The Cobb

144

Holidays aren't really complete until you get back and bore everyone to tears with your 'snaps'. Here are six of mine...

Bothenhampton Church is near Bridport. I went to see it because it was designed by one of my favourite architects - E S Prior, who, a few years later, designed St Andrew's Church at Roker. Known as 'The Cathedral of the Arts and Crafts Movement', St Andrew Roker is one of the most important 20th-century buildings in England. If you haven't seen it, you're missing a treat.

Until last week I hadn't seen the Cerne Abbas Giant. As I was taking this picture a family of four parked up to take a look - man, woman and two lads of about 6 and 8 years old. I was very impressed indeed with the matter-of-fact but very loving way Mam and Dad answered the inevitable questions about the Giant's 'features'.

Sherborne is a lovely little town in north Dorset and its Abbey is truly stunning. People come from all over the world to see the fan vaulting in this picture but I had another reason to visit it; in the 1920s the eastern end of the Abbey was remodelled and rebuilt by yet another of my favourite architects - W D Caroe - and a great job he made of it, too.

Milton Abbas is one of those rare villages that was moved lock, stock and barrel because it interfered with the view from a landowner's stately home. The Duke of Devonshire moved Edensor out of the way at Chatsworth in Derbyshire and Lord Dorchester did it here. This is his 'new', 18th century Milton Abbas.

Amongst enthusiastic church-bashers like me, Bere Regis church is best-known for its amazing roof, installed in the 14th century. Seeing is believing; it's jaw-dropping but you do tend to get a stiff neck looking up at it. Dropped jaw and stiff neck - an unhappy combination.

The same church is a magnet for Thomas Hardy fans for an entirely different reason; it's the burial place of the Turberville family, the inspiration for Hardy's Tess of the D'Urbervilles. As it happens, my friend Mark gave me that very book a few weeks ago and I took it with me to Dorset. Reading a book in the area in which the book is set is an interesting experience; I half-expected Tess herself to tap me on the shoulder in Bere Regis churchyard.

I've searched the internet for a copyright-free picture of Meryl Streep standing mournfully and wind-blown at the end of The Cobb at Lyme Regis but I can't seem to find one. So this one of mine will have to do. It's an evocative, exciting and strangely beautiful place.

For more about my week down south see blog 143.

THE NEXT AGM...
...takes place this upcoming Sunday 24 May at the Tanfield Railway. I'll be there from about 1030-ish and will be catching the 1100 train to East Tanfield even if I have to travel alone!

CONTACT ME
Post comments on this blog or email me: truckshunters@googlemail.com