A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 53 Deep Secrets
Continued on from GOM 52 on a Saturday evening in the Green Dragon Inn taproom
Murray indicated he wished to speak. “I’m interviewing next week for a hearing specialist. The lad from Appleby-in-Westmorland that most of the folk here use is retiring next year. Fair play to him he’s done us proud. I didn’t realise it but he’s seventy-three turned and he said he needs to stop driving. He telt me till we find someone else if someone will drive him here and home again he’ll be happy to see our folk as need him. That’s damned decent of him, but I really need to be pulling my finger out and finding us a replacement. We, or better I say I, should have done something about this years ago, but for one reason and another I never got round to it. We were doing okay, so it got pushed to the bottom of a very long list of things to do. Now it’s at the top. I’m looking for an independent person, not one tied in to any of the major manufacturers of hearing aids, or someone prepared to quit and start working for Beebell, so the advertisement needs careful writing. The equipment they use to analyse a persons hearing is damned expensive for an independent to buy. The same equipment, it’s used with a laptop, also adjusts the hearing aids for maximum efficiency. Mekin a short tale of it if you imagine the highest note a person can hear and the lowest one too and lay them out at opposite ends of a line you have a frequency spectrum. If you chop that spectrum up into sixteen pieces and call each a block you have the basics of what those folk work with.
“The equipment tests a person’s hearing function in each of those sixteen blocks, and then adjusts the amplification gain for each block in the hearing aid. They test each ear’s hearing separately and adjust each hearing aid to suit. The NHS(1) only provides one middle of the road hearing aid. You need two like you need two lenses in your specs(2) because your brain needs the signals from both ears to analyse what it’s hearing to best effect just like it needs information from both eyes for you to see as well as is possible. That of course is just my interpretation and gross over simplification of what I don’t doubt is a much more complicated procedure than that. I know that the hearing aids can be set to different programmes, for lack of a better word, by the wearer with a remote control to adjust for being in a noisy environment like say a pub, or outside when the wind is noisy, or in a quiet conversational environment. I believe there are a dozen such settings on modern quality earpieces which are too tiny to be seen. I’ll offer our usual deal. We’ll buy all the tackle and as usual I’m seeking someone who will fit first and then a skilled person. I’ll just keep running the advert till I get an appropriate person. Once we get our specialist we’ll buy all hearing aids as we do now and absorb all costs into the health centre budget, again as we do now. If anyone has owt they wish to discuss I suggest they talk to Abbey or Sun during surgery hours. They’ll be able to tell me exactly what I’m looking for, and they’ll be having the last word at the interview. If either of them can’t work with the person we keep looking.”
“Getting away from politics and hearing aids, Lads,” Jeremy said, “I don’t usually watch American cooks on Youtube because they are usually so full of material that they have plagiarised that was garbage to start with. Even the ones with worthwhile content are mostly just reusing someone else’s content that I’m already aware of. I have to be really bored and in a tolerant frame of mind to watch any of them. The tragedy of that is that a tiny minority of them are truly awe inspiring original cooks and it is only too easy to miss them. There are any number of channels that I’ve blocked because I just can’t stand to listen to or to watch them. I could say the same about UK cooks too, the only difference is that there aren’t as many of them, so there’s less UK shite than US shite, mind for the same reason there’s less UK good stuff than good US stuff too. There are far too many channels that I won’t watch to name them, but I’ll give you three British ones that I dislike the most. Jamie Oliver, Delia Smith and Gordon Ramsey. Just to set the record straight it ain’t due to jealousy. As a result of recent events and Sasha’s help I’m worth more than the three of them put together.
“I’ve turned down any number of requests to appear on the television both as one offs for interviews and to star in a cookery series of ‘my own’ and I won’t talk to reporters never mind give interviews. Sasha is right, the less outsiders know about us the better. I’m regarded as a world class cook, to me the word chef is pretentious, unless of course if you’re a French speaker. I’ve only ever wanted one restaurante, so that I can give it my undivided attention, and The Granary is perfect in terms of the facilities, the availability of staff and the number of covers it can offer. However, I have to say my favourite cooking is for the village barbecues because the kids are involved and their excitement is infectious. This coming barbecue will have all the usual foods to eat, but for the first time we’ll be spit roasting a bison. An entire bife carcass. Bife for them as is unfamiliar with the term is a new word coined by the kids. It’s almost a portmanteau word derived from bison and beef that we’ve all teken to using. I’ve teken advice from folk abroad, cooks I respect, who spit roast and barbecue ’em regularly, and we’ll have to start cooking gey early the day before because it takes long slow cooking. Gustav’s lads tell me all is in hand as regards the drink and the ladies will be providing their usual offerings with the assistance of Phil, Dave and Christine. Not I hasten to add that I was not including Christine in with the ladies. Some of the kids telt me that as always prior to the event itself there will be food provided for all assisting with the party preparations. I believe amongst dozens of other things chopped, hard boilt egg, mayonnaise sandwiches are as usual available, but the kids will be providing hairy bitter cress and ramsons to go in them too which will be a first.”
Alf said, “We used to eat a lot of those and plenty of other weeds too when we were kids, but that was because we’d sod all else to eat till meal times. That hairy bitter cress is spicy and tasty but it’s a pain in the arse on the allotments. It covers unused ground gey fast. It sets seed in no time at all, all year round, and if you touch the plant the seeds explode out away from it. Dehiscence it’s called, so even the act of weeding the buggers sows ’em all over the spot. Tell the kids they can pick as much as they want from any of our plots down on the allotments, Jeremy, and that there’ll be bushel (3) boxes of it available.”
After the chuckling finished Pete said, “Alf’s gone and done it again. Is there any bugger here who’s ever heard that word he used before? Other than Sasha I mean? On second thoughts, don’t bother telling me if you have it’ll only depress me. Pass those bottles round whilst I pull some pints.”
“Hang on a moment before you do, Pete. Jeremy, whilst we’re on about food, or at any rate stuff that sometimes passes for food, answer a question for me if you would. Why the hell would anybody want to eat pizza instead of food? I know millions of poor brainwashed bastards all over the planet do, and some of them go out to eat the stuff calling it a meal, dinner even, but to me it seems a not unnatural question because I’ll lay odds there’s not a Bearthwaite man who’s ever been offered it by his missus as food here is there? I’d far rather have a sandwich made with decent bread as is baked down at the mill, and our kids wouldn’t thank you for the stuff, for they’d all rather have a bag of chips [US fries] from Ellerys’ chippy.(4)
As Alf asked he looked around to see a sea of heads shaking and not a single local disagreeing with him. There were gasps of surprise from some of the outsiders, but Jeremy responded saying, “I’ve tried it in Italy, Alf, and I guess it’s fair to say it’s okay if you’re Italian and grew up eating it. Italian pizza is better stuff than any I’ve tried anywhere else, but at best it’s just packer.(5) I reckon it’s the same reason that most kids these days out there don’t like strawberries. To them strawberry is an artificial flavouring that’s sweetened to hell. To those kids strawberry equals owt that’s pink and not a berry that tastes bitter as hell to them. Mind they use the word vanilla to describe owt that’s white, tasteless, ordinary or not worth bothering with, which proves they’ve never tasted the real deal. I reckon you’ve answered your own question. It’s due to marketing men’s brainwashing. Tell you something I saw on Youtube a week or two back. It was an American lass, maybe a Canadian but I don’t think so, who lived in Europe, France or Germany I think rather than the UK. She said when she went back home she always felt ill for a while and she put it down to the various things permitted in their food that were illegal in Europe. Another clip from a US cook I saw a few years ago advised cooks to only use a brand of butter they trusted because some contained up to twenty percent wax. She melted a stick some down to shew the wax separating. She didn’t say which wax it was, but hell who cares twenty percent of that butter was wax, and wax is wax. Not sure if food ingredients have to be listed on the packaging over there, but you can bet it’ll be different in every state unless the FDA(6) has oversight.”
“How do you mean melted a stick down, Jeremy? What’s a stick got to do wi’ butter?”
“It’s how butter is wrapped for sale over there, Saul, in what they refer to as sticks, Which are typically four by two by one in inches [100x50x25 mm] which is about half a UK two fifty gramme block cut in half lengthways. It varies a bit depending on the packer.
“A bit of digging shewed up any number of US content creators living over on this side of the pond listing a dozen or so food additives permitted over there that reputable scientific folk think are carcinogenic or toxic. Most are food additives that are permitted over there but not over here. Mind it’s kind of difficult to know exactly what it means when it’s published that studies shew something is linked to cancer, rather than saying it’s carcinogenic. To be fair there are probably things in some of our foods that aren’t good for you that they don’t permit. I couldn’t find any, but then I didn’t look for very long, maybe quarter of an hour twenty minutes at most. So, brainwashing or lack of choice. In the US they talk about food deserts which are areas where a third of an urban population lives more than a mile from an outlet that sells fresh food. It’s ten miles for rural dwellers. I couldn’t find definitions that determined whether a given individual was an urban dweller or a rural dweller.
“A group at Johns Hopkins university says nineteen million Americans live in food deserts. That’s nineteen million folk who live on convenience and junk food who’ve maybe never eaten fresh fruit or vegetables. I’m sure the reality is far more complex than that and poverty will play a major rôle in the matter. However, what really surprised me, but I suppose it shouldn’t have, was one study revealed that when a fresh produce outlet moved into a food desert area local property prices and rents increased dramatically, in some cases doubling, which forced the poorer folk out to a food desert somewhere else. I’ve no equivalent UK or European figures to compare that with, but it makes me awful glad I live here and never get offered a slice of cardboard with tomato sludge, grated stuff that purports to be cheese, most US cheese is processed and contains about fifty percent cheese some a bit more some a bit less, and sliced vegetables and sausages dumped on the top. Pull those pints, Pete before we all get depressed about it, Lad.” There was laughter but some of the outsiders were thoughtful, for they’d never come across folk who didn’t regard pizza as food before. Seeing their faces Jeremy thought they’d get an even bigger shock when they realised that was how Bearthwaite regarded virtually all so called fast food.
Dave reflected, “That all seems like a million miles from here. Hell, just about every day of the year I have a box of misshaped fruit and vegetables, apples, carrots and the like, outside the shop for kids to help themselves to. In really cold weather like now it’s just inside the shop door. The allotment lads drop ’em off for me when they’re harvesting and the rest of the time one of Christine’s staff drops a box off when they’ve bin ratching through stuff in storage to avoid any spoilage spreading. The stuff the allotment folk drop off directly saves Christine’s staff from ever having to deal with it. Too, Lucy says the lasses with kids tell her at least half of their kids prefer to eat their vegetables raw rather than cooked. Cabbage, cauliflower, broccoli, roots, you name it even dark leafy stuff like Calvo Nero kail they prefer to eat raw even with meals like mashed spuds, roast meat and gravy. I’m telt that most of the younger kids consider carrots to be a desert item like an apple, especially the fancy coloured ones. They’ll even eat potatoes raw when their mums are getting a meal ready if they’re hungry enough, though that’s mainly growing lads. And they pick stuff fresh out of the hedges and fields to eat virtually all year round other than a couple of the coldest months when there’s not much about, though even then they’re looking.”
When all had settled down, Wellesley, an outsider who’d been a regular attender for years said, “I’ve a tale, well, a moan and an observation really. I ran a small sheet metal and fabrication company with my mate Steve that made special stuff not generally available these days due to the lack of blokes with the skill. That’s been getting steadily worse since the death of the traditional five year apprenticeships which were replaced by the useless twelve month government training schemes that produced blokes capable of bugger all more than a DIY bloke with shape(7) about him could do, less in a lot of cases. It was just me and my mate that did all the sophisticated panel beating and the like, but we had a couple of lads that worked for us who did the metal guillotining, sheet metal folding and most of the welding, but it was a limited company registered with Companies House. On the twenty-fourth of January I received a letter to complete the books and send them in. I try to do them in April, but I’d forgotten and we’d been busy, not that I’m complaining about that. I used to get a request in May and it gave you till the end of the following January to do it. So I used to get over eight months warning. I did the accounts because we couldn’t afford an accountant. This last couple of years we’ve had a week’s notice. Then my computer went down and I didn’t get the books sent in till the third of February and I received a penalty fine of a hundred and fifty quid. There’s no point in trying to do anything about it, and if it wasn’t paid by the twentieth of February further fines follow. I paid it over the internet and got a letter in March saying no money had been received demanding payment within seven days of a fine of seven hundred and fifty quid. If the money wasn’t received a fine of five thousand pounds would follow, and after that the next step was gaol. I checked and they hadn’t had the money, or at least I hadn’t parted with it from either Paypal or any of my bank accounts, god alone knows why, but I paid the seven fifty and this time I got a receipt. I’m sixty-six and Steve, my mate is sixty-seven and for years every year the paper work has become more difficult than the year before. We reckon the government make more off fines than they do from legitimate taxes. Anyway, neither Steve nor I are short of money, so we said bollocks to it, sold off what little stock we had on hand and had it shifted over the weekend, and declared ourselves bankrupt.
“The building was rented so we simply said we no longer needed it and handed the keys in. The machinery was owned by our wives and we rented it off them, so selling that had presented no problems. The two lads had never been the most coöperative of employees, so we telt them the blunt truth, that there was no money to pay them any more and there’d be no redundancy money because we gone bankrupt. If they’d been helpful we could have found something for them. We couldn’t prove it, but we were certain they’d been stealing stuff, and they’d been rude to my missus a couple of times, probably because she’s Indian, so that was that. Bang, the company was wound up with no assets. The two lads walked out on the spot, so that was two fewer problems to deal with.
“As I said it was a limited liability company, so our private stuff couldn’t be touched and in any case it’s always been owned by our wives. Result, Companies House, which is part of the government, gets seven hundred and fifty quid and another government department has to pay out dole and eventually Social Security money to keep two out of work blokes with families living in an area where there’s bugger all work, which may run to many tens of thousands of pounds a year each for god alone knows how many years. Too, there’s a small factory building that is probably going to deteriorate and fall into ruin from lack of use since it is extremely unlikely that it will ever be used again. All industry and employment is shrinking there, so that’s another nail in the coffin lid of enterprise and employment in the area.
“Steve and I served our time together and had both worked from the age of fourteen as apprentice sheet metal workers and we were tired, and we’re both glad to be out of it. He gets his government pension now and I’ll get mine in a couple of months. Tell you the government hasn’t got a clue, and I can’t help but wonder how many other small businesses they’ve driven to the wall and how much dole they’re paying out they wouldn’t have had to if they had any brains. Laila and I are looking for somewhere out of Lancaster to live, preferably a village near enough to here so we can both enjoy every Saturday night here. Our kids have grown up and moved away and the house is too big for just the two of us, but if we downsize we should make a tidy sum off it. Steve and his wife only had the one, a lass, and they moved to outside of Chester to live near her, her old man and the grandchildren. Truth is for the first time in years life’s looking up. Laila is next door celebrating our freedom too.”
There were a lot of murmurs of agreement round the room at Wellesley’s assessment of the government. Alf threw a two pound coin into the box and pushed a bottle towards him saying, “Have decent one on me, Lad, and just think on nay matter who wins the general election this year nowt will change for the better.”
A regular Saturday night visitor who’d never telt a tale before indicated he wished to speak. “I’m Quentin and I live at Stainton near Penrith which is just about big enough to have a medical centre and a pharmacy. You know how it is when you reach the age that those spots are all that’s keeping you out of the undertaker’s hands. What gives it away is when you need both hands to carry your monthly prescription drugs, all of which are on automatic repeat, back to the car. I hate it when they ask me if I’d like a carrier bag. My missus asked me after dinner last week if I’d ordered my drugs because she’d not had a text to say they were ready to collect. I telt her I was sure I had and that I’d ring the pharmacy. That was on the twenty-third. I rang the pharmacy the day after, and they said they’d been ready since the twelfth but didn’t know why we’d not been texted to tell us that. I went to the pharmacy on the twenty-sixth to collect them and the woman said as she handed them over ‘Four items.’ I replied, ‘No there should be eight.’ The paper work shewed my repeat prescription items and there were eight, but on the other side it shewed the four that had been made up. ‘I ordered them all together over the phone,’ I telt her. I could see the pharmacist in the back opening cupboards and looking on shelves. ‘It’s the drugs that really matter that are missing,’ I said.
“André the pharmacist there is a French locum who’s been working there for a while. He telt me he would have made them up, but obviously given the number of prescriptions he made up he wouldn’t remember doing mine. Which I thought was fair enough. I telt him I was telt the drugs had been made up and ready to collect since the twelfth to which he said it was probably him that had done so, but neither he nor his relief colleague would remember it. He went back to searching obviously worried. I have good hearing and I heard him tell the lass, ‘If they don’t turn up I’ll have to provide him with a week’s supply at least. He needs those drugs and he telt me he has tomorrow’s tablets then no more. I can credit them as part of his next month’s supply once this is sorted out, and that will keep the count correct and the paper work in order.’ Whilst that was going on I looked at the bag I’d been given containing my prescription and thought, ‘Given that there’re only supposed to be four items in there there’s a lot more volume than I would expect,’ so I ripped the bag open. ‘They’re here,’ I shouted through to the back.
“André came out and checked. He telt me, ‘All we have in the way of paperwork is what you have seen, and it only has these four items here on it. We have no record on the computer of your prescription, and that’s how everything arrives here. There has been no physical paperwork arriving here from the surgery for a few years. This is serious and I have to get to the bottom of it, because whoever made your drugs up, which was probably me, obviously had sight of something on the computer at the time that no longer exists which is not good. The so called missing four items in this bag that there is no record of anyone ever having made up a prescription for can’t have just appeared out of thin air.’ I telt him, ‘Well, I’m okay because I have what I need.’ André said, ‘From that point of view it’s okay, but from my point of view what else has gone missing? How many folk have had their prescriptions lost or worse mixed up with somebody else’s due to computer issues? There is only ever one pharmacist here. The place is small and can’t justify two on duty at the same time, so whoever is here is responsible for everything that happens and most of the time that is me.’ I nodded in understanding because that’s how it was for my missus when she was the only nurse on night duty at the the local nursing home. There were three other care staff, but it was her arse that would get kicked in the event of a screw up no matter who it was who screwed up. As I understand it it’s responsibility as opposed to legal liability which is down to the employer.
“André then admitted, ‘Not long after I qualified I worked in a city centre pharmacy that had a minimum of four pharmacists on duty twenty-four seven every day of the year. It was the kind of place that had a queue of addicts waiting before midnight to pick up the following day’s prescription at the first opportunity. One day it was discovered there’d been a paperwork screw up that rightly cost someone their job. Like now there was no problem with the drugs, but the paperwork hadn’t been done. It made a huge impression on me at the time, and I’ve been a stickler for the paperwork being right ever since. I qualified at Sheffield and the incident was over here.’ I asked, ‘Controlled drugs?’ He nodded and said, ‘Opiates, Diamorph. The paper trail has to be correct. It should be for everything or people get sloppy and potentially folk could die.’ For them as don’t know Diamorph is short for Diacetylmorphine which is pharmaceutical grade heroin. One hundred percent pure. It’s a powerful pain killer and most folk prescribed it are in hospital or a hospice dying from cancer. I’ve been telt some folk in a bad way that are on it are at home but not many, and in those cases I reckon it’ll be district nurses that collect the stuff and administer it. When my missus used to collect a bucket load of it for some of the residents where she worked she always wore her uniform, so it all looked right and minimised any potential problems even though most of the pharmacists knew who she was. She was also accompanied by three or four tasty(8) lads in case there were any problems getting it back to the home. However, it’s not stuff to be buggered about with, and the paper trail has to be a hundred percent right or someone is in deep shit. These days the registered addicts are prescribed methadone not heroin. I think it’s not as easy to overdose on, but I don’t know. I left André to chase the paperwork up. It makes you think doesn’t it though because I don’t suppose it’s any different anywhere else.
“Aye,” said Julian, another regular Saturday evening attender who also lived near Penrith. “I was going to talk about this later, but I think it’s appropriate now. I minded(9) reading in the Telegraph a while back an article that said a report had found our Public services were in what it described as a doom loop of decline with almost all in a worse state than before the Covid pandemic. I looked the article up and made a few notes for tonight. It said the prime minister had been warned that many parts of the state were crumbling and had deteriorated dramatically since the Tories came to power thirteen years before. It said things would be no better if the Labour Party won the next election because of budget constraints already committed to by their leader Sir Keir Starmer.”
Dave interrupted to say, “That’ll be the bloke we all know as Sheer Smarmer, the harbinger of Smarmergeddon.”
After the ripple of laughter, Julian continued, “The report was prepared by the Institute for Government(10) which is a charity and the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy,(11) which not a part of the government, and according to the article it was reckoned to be a grim read for the Tory Party.(12) The report examined nine areas of public services and found just one, children’s social care, would be performing at the same level in the year twenty twenty-seven going into twenty twenty-eight as it was pre the Covid pandemic. All the others, GPs, hospitals, adult social care, Council services such as bin collections and libraries, schools, police, courts and prisons, would be worse off. The researchers examined statistics like hospital waiting lists, school exam results, Crown court backlogs and the proportion of waste sent for recycling.
“The investigators then projected the future performance of services based on the Government’s long term spending plans, which it said were broadly mirrored by the opposition party’s. In their findings the experts said that after a decade of austerity there was no meaningful fat left to trim from the public sector in terms of spending cuts. However, they also insisted that with meaningful reform higher standards could be delivered without having to pump more money in or increase staffing levels. The report warned that, teachers, nurses, doctors and social workers were working in crumbling and cramped buildings and many services were experiencing a full blown workforce crisis. I took that to mean staff morale, recruitment and retention were hitting rock bottom, but it didn’t say.
“There was a load more grief, doom and gloom in it, but Nick Davies, the author of the report, said that public services were in a dire state and would likely deteriorate further if whoever forms the next government stuck to current spending plans. The next general election is what, eight months away at the absolute furthest. He advised that improvements were possible, but difficult decisions would be necessary to break out of what he called the negative cycle of short termism that has characterised government decision making, particularly in recent years. I must admit my immediate reaction on rereading it was, ‘Well bugger me who’d have considered that even possible‽’ ” Julian waited for the laughter to die down before saying, “My next thought was, ‘I wonder just how many millions of public moneys were squandered on producing that report when just about any member of Joe Public would have been happy to tell the Government that for the price of a few beers or even nowt.’ Tell you, a significant part of the problem is that the rich and powerful keep pouring our money down the crapper on completely unnecessary bullshit like that report even if it was the gods’ own literal truth.”
“Aye, Lad. It’s the old old problem. None of ’em have ever wanted to do anything. They just want to bugger about trying to con us into thinking that they are doing something and have it all in hand. Which we all know is bullshit. There are too many rich pigs with their snouts in the public trough. It’s always been the same though, and I doubt it’ll ever change till the rich bastards start starving. Then they’ll expect a meal ticket derived from our sweat and toil because they’ve no idea how to grow or raise owt to eat and even less of how to fettle(13) owt that needs it. If owt their women folk are even worse. Ellen says none of ’em can cook, knit or sew and the rich pay some other bugger to cook their food, clean their houses, wash their clothes and look after their kids. She reckons that the worst of it is they still can’t rear decent kids. She also reckons that most of the not so rich women out yonder are not much different. They can’t cook, knit or sew either, but in their cases no bugger cooks their food, cleans their houses, washes their clothes and looks after their kids, so they live dirty on fast food, and their kids just grow up feral. There are generations out there for who the only things they can do are dance, drink and screw.(14) They can’t work so they can’t earn, and by the end of their lives the only useful thing they’ll ever have done is die.” At that there was a glum silence, but most were nodding in agreement with Alf’s remarks.
Alf added, “What really gets my knickers in a twist is when the bastards try to con us into thinking they’re doing us a favour when we actually get a small fraction of what we’ve paid for back. This week Ellen and I both received a letter through the post from some area office to do with the NHS. Another waste of our money, the office and the letters both, and what did they tell us? ‘Dear Mr A Winstanley,’ and they wound Ellen up by addressing her letter to Ms E Winstanley instead of Mrs A Winstanley, any roads, ‘Dear Mr Winstanley, It’s time for your free NHS funded eye test.’ Free‽ Who the hell do they think is paying for the bloody NHS? It’s only free to frigging freeloaders. I don’t mind paying for kids, the elderly, those who can’t work, and even some of them as live where there’re no jobs. Women and kids fleeing rape, torture and worse abroad, aye nay bother, but I bloody well resent paying for so called economic migrants, especially the bastards that cause nowt but mayhem when they get here. We’ve actually accepted convicted sex offenders who’ve gone on to reoffend over here. Bastards should a bin castrated at the neck. Fair enough if folk as come here go to where there are jobs and actually get one. That makes them a tax payer like as we are, but for the rest, including all our own arseholes that won’t work, I’d bring back the workhouse(15) and feed ’em gruel. They’d soon find a job. Any that step out of line, and steal, rape, kill, or the like I’d give a free flight home and push ’em out of the plane at thirty thousand feet without a parachute. I suppose as a concession to the liberal bleeding heart brigade we could accept castration in exchange for the death penalty for minor crimes like littering which would ensure they’d either get a job or piss off to somewhere else to be a pain in the arse to some other bunch of poor bastards. If it were up to me I’d castrate the bastards at the neck for owt that hurt any bugger else.” It took several minutes for the laughter to fade which provided an opportunity for the usual washing and refilling of glasses to take place.
“Alf’s definitely got a whole pile of useful and workable policies, ain’t he? I’d definitely vote for him purely on the basis of his law and order agenda.” By the time the sounds of agreement with Turk had faded enough for things to continue all were ready to listen again.
Turk, originally just an outsider mate of Jake’s, was a waggon driver who was now considered to be a Bearthwaite man. He’d married Angela, a Bearthwaite lass, and lived in the huge farmhouse at The Beeches farm with their ever expanding family where the huge farm yard was convenient for parking the waggons. The house, that was owned by Beebell along with the farm land too, was so large that there was another Bearthwaite couple, Walter and Wendy, occupying it too along with a couple of dozen youngsters rescued from off the streets. Both couples considered the arrangement to be an excellent one that gave the two wives company and help with what they considered needed to be done as regards domestic tasks and the flock of a hundred and odd geese that they managed to earn a living. Walter an ex double decker bus driver with a PSV1(16) licence was in the process of obtaining his HGV(17) licence.
When Turk had initially asked Chance about finding a bigger house, so he and Angela could take in some rescued children since they given up the hope of having any of their own Chance had said, “If you’re willing to share The Beeches farm house with another couple that would solve the issue of what we do with a property that big. Two couples and fifty kids could live in that spot with room left over. We’ve bin talking about turning it into a hotel, but none of us were over keen on the idea for a variety of reasons. The only other option considered so far was to use the spot as an orphanage, but we all want the kids to have proper families not live in what would definitely be a poor second to that. They’ve all had enough shit in their lives, they don’t need any more.”
“Who you got in mind to share with, Chance?”
Chance passed over a list and said, “All these are looking for a bigger spot, but most don’t wish to tek on any more kids. How many you thinking about, Turk?”
“We could get along just fine with Walter and his missus. As for kids, Angela’s bin talking about at least a dozen maybe two dozen. She grew up in a tribe of siblings, nineteen of ’em I think there were, nearer thirty when you counted in all the step siblings and half siblings. Whatever she decides, I’ll be fine with it.”
“Well, well, well! Walter and Wendy are talking about a couple of dozen kids too. I reckon the four of you would be mekin gey good use of a spot as big as that which will solve a serious problem for us and provide families for a lot of the kids who need one badly. The builders are done with the spot and the Jarvis lasses will have done with the penting(18) and decorating by the middle of next week. Does that suit?”
“Aye. Walter’s going to be tekin his HGV test soon. He’d get a lot more time in driving with me which would be gey convenient for both of us. Frig me! Well you did say four adults and fifty kids would fit easy. Looks like we’ll be finding out soon. I’ll ring Angela and let her tell Wendy.”
When Alf continued he changed tack a bit. “The media make it all worse and the bullshit language that they use to make themselves appear to be more intelligent and better educated than the rest of us put them in the same bed as the politicians, even the ones they’re having a go at. I was reading something a while back that has been irritating me for a few years now. It’s when they use the word existential. I finally got round to looking it up. Basically, it originally referred to a bunch of idiot philosophers that had too much money and could afford to waste their time going on about bullshit instead of having to work for a living. Existentialists they were called. But that’s not how the media use the word these days. They use it to mean something that is, it exists. No more than that. That being the case why use the bloody word at all. I’ll quote the beginning of a news article for you. ‘When it comes to the existential crises facing Britain, there are several contenders for the most troubling.…’ I reckon you could just miss the word out and it makes more sense to anyone who hasn’t got the time time to waste looking it up like as I did. The way I read that sentence it was explicitly referring to crises that exist, and implicitly suggesting that there were others which I can only assume were not existential crises and therefore didn’t exist. What the hell is the significance of a non existent crisis? Bloody pointless. More smoke and mirrors to confuse the electorate. Yet another case of bullshit baffles brains. Now that George Galloway that won the by election in Rochdale seems hell bent of turning the next election into what he called a Muslim election politics is even less relevant to reality than it ever has been. You know I reckon once Trump is dead he will be remembered, but not for what most would think. He’ll be remembered as the man who coined the phrase fake news, or at least as the man who brought it to the attention of the English speaking world, by creating more fake news and accusing others of doing so than any one else of his time.”
Julian broke the gloom by adding, “All grim but true. We should have Alf in number ten,(19) that’d sort some of the parasites out. And he’d probably burn all the media folk at the stake for which he should be knighted. Tell you another thing. When I read that article it said the Tories had been in power for thirteen years. That triggered a memory of something my old man had said decades before about thirteen years of Tory misrule, so I looked that up too. A similar set of circumstances faced the Tories in nineteen sixty-four, after what Labour party leader Harold Wilson famously called ‘the thirteen years of Tory misrule’. That was a time of huge sex scandals, the Profumo affair(20) and others. One thing that Nick Davies missed out that’s gone seriously down bank(21) was that these days they can’t even muster a decent sex scandal for the media to entertain us with. The best they can manage is Partygate.(22) Bloody pathetic ain’t it? I wondered if maybe that’s connected with all the stuff in reports about lowered sperm counts(23) and reduced masculinity(24) these days due to pollution and third wave feminism.
“It also made me wonder whether in years to come this will be referred to as thirteen years of Tory misrule too. Finally, I wondered if given Brexit, Covid and the Ukraine war would Labour have done any better. Somehow I doubt it, because although they claim to be different from the Tories I just can’t see it. For both of ’em it’s all about being in power and nothing to do with running the country. On the odd rare occasion that one of ’em has had a good idea the other opposes it as a matter of principle. It seems beyond the wits of any of ’em to decide what they can agree on, put that into place and then and only then argue about issues where they’ve got differences. There’re none of ’em even prepared to try to see into the future beyond the next election. But what the hell do I know? I’m just one of the daft bastards that worked for a living and paid some of the taxes that they so cheerfully squandered. It makes you want to weep and scream, ‘Stop the planet. I want to get off.’ ”
Sasha indicated a desire to speak and said, “The tragedy of it is we’ve all known all about it for decades not years. The electorates in the US and here in the UK too could have solved these problems not long after the second world war. In the UK in particular instead of admitting the NHS has always operated using a flawed model our politicians are still insisting the NHS is the envy of the world when clearly it isn’t. We all know that even if you are a recent immigrant it’s completely FUBAR,(25) yet the politicians keep insisting it’s the envy of the world even though any number of other countries have a far better health system that takes better care of all their citizens for a far lower cost. Regards the US I recently came across a Youtube clip by accident. It’s from a drama called The Newsroom, which I’ll roughly quote what I read about it.
“Will McAvoy, played by Jeff Daniels hits the nail straight on the head in the opening minutes on HBO’s new series The Newsroom. He is asked by a naïve college student a simple question during a campus debate. ‘What makes America the greatest country in the world?’ McAvoy initially goes the politically correct route then at the last minute goes with an honest, bold, straight forward answer that sums up a lot of the world’s problems that so many are afraid to accept because we all want to believe in our system and that it is our system that works. The evidence that is out there today is to the contrary and he discloses such information in his argument. ‘We used to be the worlds best of the best and now we are just pretending. The first step to solving a problem is to admit there is one.’ Yes it was a drama, but there were a lot of statistics provided in the actor’s reply to the young student concerning health, literacy and other matters of import which placed the US down in the ranks amongst third world countries, and not even at the top of the list of third world countries, but in many cases towards the bottom of the list. The clip is still on Youtube. Look it it up for yourselves. Search for why is America the greatest country in the world and the clip comes up at the top of the list.
“I was torn. It seemed incredible that the statistics could be true and equally incredible that HBO could get away with quoting bullshit statistics just to make a drama more dramatic. So I wrote the statistics down and looked them up using only official US sources. It wasn’t a quick process because not all of the data was easy to access. I was very surprised because HBO had done their homework. It was all true. I guess most of the world including the old USSR, China, India, the US, the UK and many more countries are going to have to go through an awful lot of pain before any of ’em manages to fix owt.”
“What a nuclear war, Sasha?” asked Denis.
“Only if we allow, to use a phrase attributable to I think Ronald Regan, the misfits, looney tunes and squalid criminals of the world to do what they want to, particularly as regards supporting terrorists and acquiring nuclear weapons.”(26)
Alf slowly asked, “Okay, so maybe the world truly is going to hell on its own hand cart. If we work on the only reasonable assumption that it makes any sense to use, which is that the mushroom clouds aren’t going to affect us, because if they do we shan’t be here to be bothered, what is going to affect us? and is there owt that we can do?
Sasha said, “Aye. There’re lots of things it makes sense for us to do, Alf. Some not so easy and perhaps expensive, but most relatively easy and maybe not cheap, but certainly we can make them cost effective. So it’s not all bad news for us, Lads. It’s definitely a cloud with a silver lining, hopefully not a mushroom cloud. We need to keep our eyes and ears wide open on the political and economic fronts. If it comes to be that we need to protect our folk and our assets, and personally I don’t doubt that it will eventually, then we need to be ready to maximise any advantages that circumstances offer. I have no idea what they will be, but if as Professor Sir John Curtis(27) the pollster and political analyst seems to believe the Labour party will win the next general election due, not to their appeal to the electorate, but due to the abysmal behaviour and performance of the Conservative party(28) in the last thirteen years, I am absolutely certain that opportunities will arise for us to take advantage of. I saw something on the news recently where he said the Tories were basing their case to be the best to govern on matters several opinion polls had shewn the public don’t give a damn about, and they were completely ignoring the issues that mattered to the public, but since then as Alf said George Galloway seems hell bent on splitting the Labour vote along religious lines.
“Mostly I reckon the Tories are trying to hype up trivial issues to convince us as Alf said they’ve got things under control. Things like the new regulations on XL Bully dogs that form part of the amended dangerous dogs act. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not trivialising the deaths and injuries that some of the breed have caused, but the brutal if unpalatable, truth is compared with many other problems we, by which I mean the entire nation, face the matter is trivial. It certainly isn’t a matter of major national concern and like the issues the Dangerous Dogs Act 1991(29) was supposed to address back then give it a twelvemonth and it will be forgotten and completely unenforced. Not least because there is neither the political will nor the manpower to enforce it, so all action under the act will be a reaction to tragedy and ultimately the act will prevent nothing from happening. The last thing any government will ever do is take decisive action because they’ll be shit scared it’ll turn out to be a vote looser.
“We’ve had a couple of out of control dogs worrying sheep in the valley in the last twenty years or so. God alone knows where they came from and we didn’t care. On both occasions nigh to a couple of hundred of the lads went out with shotguns and neither problem took more than twenty-four hours to solve. We’ve had compulsory microchipping of dogs in the UK since April twenty-sixteen. What percentage of dogs are actually chipped? I suspect no one knows, but I’d put money on it that it’s bugger all. If the government truly cared about the issue of dangerous dogs they should use out of work lads suitably equipped to catch stray dogs. All dogs caught without a chip should be immediately destroyed. The owners of any chipped dogs that get caught get heavily fined for having an out of control dog and they pay it within a week before the dog is returned to them or the dog gets destroyed. Bring back dog licences but cost based on the weight of the dog like some other countries do.
“The original British dog licence dated back to the Dog Licences Act of eighteen sixty-seven, when the fee was fixed at seven shillings and six pence. That was a sizeable sum of money at the time, maybe forty-five or fifty quid in today’s money, but it was reduced greatly by inflation over the years. When Britain went decimal in nineteen seventy-one the licence only cost thirty-seven and a half pence, which was reduced to thirty-seven pence when the halfpenny coin was done away with in nineteen eighty-four, by which time it cost far more to administer than it raised in revenue. Dog licences were done away with in nineteen eighty-seven except in Northern Ireland which still has dog licences where they currently cost twelve and a half quid. My idea is somewhere in the region of a hundred to a hundred and fifty quid for a medium sized dog seems about right. Every year you take the dog to a local designated vet who has joined the scheme where it’s weighed and you pay the fee via the internet. The government pays vets for the service which would pay for itself. Any unlicensed dog breeder gets gaoled for five years. All dogs that attack a person or livestock get destroyed, no exceptions other than police, military or other dogs trained to do just that in the interests of public safety. All dogs not under control, by which I mean on a lead, on farm land, even if on a public right of way, a farmer is entitled to shoot. All the usual exemptions for the licence fee could be put into place, say pensioners’ small dogs, sheep dogs, guide dogs and the like, but like all other dogs they all have to be chipped. Problem over. I can’t see it being a vote looser because most would recognise that they were looking at the first government in decades that has any balls and means business in order to improve the lives of ordinary folk.” At that there were nods of agreement all round the taproom from locals and outsiders.
“In the meanwhile consider what’s going on as regards the near future politically in the US and the UK. My understanding from the media is the US supreme court has allowed Trump to stand as the republican candidate for the next presidential election. If Biden isn’t seriously ill as a result of his age his propaganda machine is not selling that well enough to the media. It’s possible if not probable that unless Trump shoots his mouth off and shoots himself in the foot in court that he will become the next super power dictator along with Putin and Xi Jinping, and he’ll make the fat pig of the DPNK, or the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, that’s Kim Jong Un of North Korea for them as don’t know, look like Mother Theresa.(30) Don’t take my word for it. That’s what he’s committed himself to doing in his own words that have been recorded. Again look it up on the internet. My point is that I don’t think he’s bluffing or posturing, and I’m taking him at his word.”
Alf interrupted to say, “Don’t get me wrong, Lads, I’ve got nowt against Yanks. As a lot of you are aware of, I correspond with a number of really clever, talented and skilled lads over there, Canada too, but if the idiots over the pond reëlect Trump it’ll serves the fuckers right, because in an even half way decent banana boat republic they’d have locked him up and threwn the key away years ago. Having said that, they’re in between a rock and another rock because I doubt if they’ll have a decent candidate to vote for. If you consider the situation over here it’s not much different. Only a month or two back Labour were almost a shoe in at the next general election, not because they were any good, but because of the Tory government’s abysmal performance. Now it looks like that arsehole George Galloway who won the by election in Rochdale will split the Labour vote like Sasha said and maybe give the election to the Tories. Again the UK electorate will be between a hard place and another hard place with none worth voting for standing, and that too will serve the UK electorate right no matter who wins, because we’ll have allowed it to happen, so it’ll be our bloody fault. As to what we can do about that I’ve no sodding idea though I reckon Buthar’s ideas regarding local government are excellent.”
Sasha continued, “Alf summed up nicely what I was about to say concerning the next general election over here. However, back to the current government. I suspect it will take the Labour party between two and three years to run the country into the ground to the point of, if not of open rioting on the streets like in Brixton(31) and Toxteth(32) in nineteen eighty-one, at least a massive up swing in criminality in not just metropolitan centres of unrest which has been with us for decades but in the sort of suburban and rural places that one would not expect it. If you look carefully you can see the harbingers of that in the media already. It has always been said that the events of nineteen eighty-one were primarily race related opportunism. I’ve never been certain about that because I’ve always felt there was a deeper underlying cause that was merely waiting for an opportunity to emerge and that though the race related matters were real and needed addressing they were not the core of the matter which had to do with the way that the political classes treat the rest of the population regardless of their race, and high levels of corruption, racism and misogyny in the police force. For going on a century whenever the Labour Party came to power the Tories had always left them some money in the kitty to play with. This time there is nothing but debt for them to inherit, but that won’t stop Labour borrowing to spend on things their corrupt and morally bankrupt ideology demands. However, don’t take that the wrong way because I’m not saying that the Tories’ ideology is any better because it ain’t.
“As usual the much used expression promises to be accurate, ‘opposition parties don’t win elections, governments lose them’. Again as usual I shall be watching election night special on the BBC(33) with interest. Doubtless the cycle will repeat. The Labour party will spend endless amounts of money they don’t have, dig the hole of debt yet deeper, engage huge numbers of civil servants to waste yet more money they don’t have and finally deliver a life so abysmal that even the brain dead Joe and Josephine Citizen realise that it is no longer realistic for the Labour party to blame all our woes on the previous administration of more than a decade before and that we need a change of government. The Tories will then as usual sweep to power with a massive majority inheriting an even more massive black hole of debt and enforce another decade if not two of austerity upon us. Then the cycle will repeat again. At what point the cycle will be broken is anyone’s guess, but when it does I suspect the omelette will be huge and and the number of cracked eggs(34) will be beyond counting or even comprehension. On the other hand if the Tories win the next general election it’ll just be another five years of the same misery we’ve endured for a decade and a half with total incompetents and half wits running the country which will only set back a Labour government by five years, and we’ve already discussed what will then happen.
“Long before it happens, if it happens, all we need to do is ensure that our security is good enough to enable us to deal with those feral idiots if they decide to call here for a bit of shopping hoping to pick up a bargain. Though I doubt we will ever be approached from over the fells because the best and safest route down is via the valley head pack pony trail which is exceedingly dangerous even in excellent weather. It’s far more dangerous to descend than to ascend that way. Centuries back when the pack pony trail was in regular use it was rarely used to descend because the traders didn’t come this way on their outward journey only on their way back. The routes over the marshes and the fells are even more dangerous due to the likelihood of becoming preserved as a twenty-first century bog man(35) for study in future millennia. The routes through the marshes and across the fells are not known to exist to most outsiders and certainly not known well enough to use by any of them, especially if travelling in numbers. Tommy has never mentioned them as routes in his guides because they are so dangerous and there was the risk of litigation if someone died and their family claimed they were using one of his guide books.
“Many of us however are completely familiar with them. Hell, we have kids who have used them for going berry picking with their mums since they could walk and subsequently used them on their own when berrying or coneying. The danger is one has to know not just the routes, but to understand the interaction of the weather and the ground and the effect that has on the footing. Under extreme conditions of rainfall none are viable and as the ground dries up they gradually become viable, but only one at a time and the process is slow. Only Bearthwaite folk have that detailed knowledge and understanding. Having said that, maybe it’s time to start talking about regular round the clock patrols. If we could recruit some more folk into the rangers that would do it, and if need be we could pay some of the kids who are experts on getting around up there to act as guides and mentors for our newer rangers. We could certainly afford the wages for the extra rangers and the kids and any training required for the new rangers we could offer to the kids as well. They’d regard that as exciting and definitely be interested. As I referred to earlier we can make it more cost effective if the rangers do a bit more fence repairing and meat procurement, maybe a bit of deer from the other side of our fences. Mind, we always put the fences two metres [six feet] away from the boundary on our side of it as determined by GPS(36) which means Harwell’s lads and lasses can legitimately patrol the fence outside it and shoot anything within that two metre strip and then throw it over the fence for their colleagues to collect and take home.” Sasha grinned at his oblique reference to what would be a convenient way to turn illegal poaching into a legitimate seeming matter. Even if seen it would be a ‘he says she says’ matter and hence unlikely to ever have anything done about it, and all knew that Harwell’s rangers rarely met any on their patrols. Sasha then added, “We already have a top of the trees ex military combat instructor in Felicity who teaches self defence at the school and evening classes too, and shotgun cartridges loaded with salt are a powerful disincentive to return. Hell, we’re nearly there already. You got owt to add, Harwell?”
“Aye. We’re lucky here. We’ve got the brains and the experience to work out what’s going on and to outline a plan to deal with it. We’ve also got the youngsters with the energy to carry out those plans and bright enough to think on the hop when circumstances unpredictably change. Probably our single most significant advantage is that we all get along and respect each other from the cradle to the grave and I’m including both sexes there, and we have a common goal which is to maintain the way we live and look after our environment. But back to Sasha’s remarks, aye we could certainly make good use of as many more staff as we can lay our hands on, even if they were part timers who only helped us out at the worst end of the year. Feeding the deer and the other game is no bother because they soon become used to being able to eat in places where feed can be delivered by waggon or tractor and trailer, and most of the farmers we buy the feed from deliver most of it for us direct to the feeding stations as it’s required. We only deliver what we have to buy in from outside which is stored at various places round the valley.
“We certainly don’t have to put feeding stations in places that are too dodgy to get to. Greg Armstrong and his kids deliver all the grass and feed nuts we buy off him and all the hay and grain too, and when necessary they borrow the Aveling Marshall track layer from the quarry. However, walking the fencing to check for damage and knocking the snow off it stretches us to the limit in difficult weather on the higher and hillier terrain. Sometimes the only storm damage repair work we can do till better weather arrives is at best a temporary bodge that slows the rate at which things go further down bank. As to meeting any violent intruders when patrolling the boundaries, all of my lads and lasses patrol in at least fours, usually sixes, and they all do a full afternoon session of self defence and martial arts every week with Felicity. That mass confrontation with the travellers was unnerving for all of us. Other than if Sun or one of his senior staff signs ’em off as unfit, that weekly session with Felicity is now just part of the job, but it’s during paid duty hours and it never rains inside the gym so none of us have a problem with it.
“All rangers have shotgun licences and carry a shotgun when out there. They appreciate the opportunity to provide a coney, a pheasant or the like for their families. Any who don’t have a firearms permit for a rifle are working on it. They’re training with the military at the Warcop army range one day a month, and the arrangement I’ve come to with the army is they will certify my staff when they consider them to be ready. That means we don’t have to waste the three or four months an application for a civilian home office licence takes to be processed and for a licence to be issued because they’ll have a military licence. The police aren’t happy about it, but it’s totally legal and there’s nothing they can do about it because the army gets very upset when the police interfere with what the army considers to be matters of national security and defence. I signed to comply with all of the army’s requirements which is essentially three or four times a year my staff including me have to spend at least a day with them on the range using the full range of military firearms, most of which my staff will only ever use in earnest if they get called up for military service, and to requalify for our permits which is eminently reasonable. We also have refreshers in their classrooms for theory, again eminently reasonable. It’s a decent day out for my lads and lasses with folk they get on well with. It goes down gey well that we always tek a few venison carcasses with us for their kitchens.
“Many of the rangers have been in the TA(37) for years, and the rest have signed up too because if the life of a ranger suits them so does being in the TA, so it wasn’t an insurmountable problem to arrange access and permissions, and a lot of them like the opportunity to contribute to their contractual time that they have to spend with the army. It suits the army to have more in the TA, especially folk like our rangers, and it suits us for the military to have oversight rather than the police, for at least unlike most police officers the army doesn’t have a rabid fear of firearms. It also backs the police off because they would be dealing with armed members of the military not armed civilians and the army have telt me they would have to step in to protect the army’s interests if the police became difficult. The army wants physically fit soldiers, especially physically fit reserve soldiers, that can shoot well, and I want all my staff physically fit and able to use a rifle for deer culling. We don’t need a great number of rifles, but we do need all the rangers able and licenced to use one.
“At the moment all bar a handful of our rifles are issued by the army who say if we ever need more all we have to do is ask. It’s a very good relationship we have as seen from both sides. That’s not just my opinion, it’s what I’ve been telt by senior army officers. The army have our good will to use some of our tougher terrain for training exercises, and some of us usually join the troops when they do. Initially they were surprised we could keep up with ’em because it’s their elite troops that train on our land. That tells you we’ve got some good folk on our side ready for if and when it hits the fan. The army particularly like using Yell Fell because the terrain is so brutal. As to recruiting, I’d rather do that from our own youngsters from the valley first and then see where we’re at. I could provide twenty-four hour security on the perimeter of the land contiguous with the valley with another hundred rangers. We could have them up to speed in a couple of months by pairing them with an experienced partner. I like the idea of some of the kids helping us out up on the tops.
“If we want to provide similar security for the rest of Beebell’s holdings we have a problem. I’m not saying it can’t be done, but it would take twelve to eighteen months. Again I’d rather use our own folk first, Bearthwaite adults and youngsters who live outside the valley, especially folk who have a detailed knowledge of their territory. On top of the hundred I’d need for locally, which would give us about two hundred rangers, we’d need another four hundred. We certainly don’t have that many available from within our own folk. I’d guess we could recruit a hundred, leaving us with a shortfall of three hundred. We’d need to be awfully careful trying to recruit three hundred outsiders. It’s a pressure we don’t need, and it would be stupid to try to do it quickly. Maybe it would be best if some of you clever folks put some thought into that. I’m sure there will be a satisfactory way of doing it, but I’m damned if I can see it, and I doubt if I ever shall unless some one tells me how to do it.
“On the other hand maybe we just take things slowly but reliably, by which I mean some of the older kids we have rescued from the streets are proving to be suitably reliable. Too, realising that we need them completes their acceptance that we value and want them and that it’s not just a one way act of charity on our part which gives them some much needed and deserved self esteem. It’s not a huge number of persons, maybe five a month, but it’s a steady supply of reliable Bearthwaite folk. I can’t see us requiring all those rangers at once, so it’s improving the situation all the time. Sasha, you said you thought we have four to five years, so were I you I’d aim to recruit the folk I need over two years and keep recruiting for all the foreseeable future, and I mean decent folk of all persuasions, interests and abilities, not just rangers. We need to take a far more aggressive approach to recruiting. Appropriate folk who need us as much as we need them are out there in the required numbers. We just have to find them.”
Sasha merely said, “Okay. If we all have a think about it I’ll call a meeting sometime.” All the local men recognised that was just a ploy to end discussion in front of outsiders, so other than agreeing they said nothing in response to Sasha’s idea.
To break the tension Pete said, “Okay I think that’s us, Lads. Time for battle. I’ll do my usual on the tables with a damp rag. Some of you sort the ale out and fetch some more chemic if we need it. The dominoes are in their usual cupboard.” Pete went for his rags and several men moved behind the bar to pull pints, take money and wash the glasses others were depositing on the bar. Several took the opportunity to visit the gents’ and others put boxes of dominoes on freshly wiped tables.
Stan said, “I fancy twelves(38) tonight, any want to partner me or play against us?”
So many men agreed that Stan said, “Okay, twelves it is. I’ll put all the sixes back.”
It was nearly midnight when the dominoes were packed up and the men started donning overcoats and hats before going to collect their wives. As arm in arm couples were preparing to leave Pete saw a flash of lightning so brilliant that it shone through the blackout curtains of the taproom. It had been decided to leave the curtains in place after the Covid lockdown was over in case another was ever imposed, though other than in the taproom more attractive curtains had been attached to the inside of the heavy, thick, black fabric. When the matter had been raised in the taproom the men had said they’d got used to the blackout curtains and saw no reason to change anything. Gladys had not been happy about that and had had heavy, black velvet curtains made to line the blackout material. She been seriously put out when she discovered the men hadn’t even noticed the change never mind been appreciative of it. Virtually simultaneous with the flash was the crack and rolling sound of the thunder indicating it had been very close. Almost as simultaneously a male voice could be heard shouting, “Oh for fucks sake! Will you just look at that,” from near the front doors that led from outside into the entrance hallway before one reached the double doors into the best side. Pete went through to the lounge to see a crowd of couples near the now opened double front doors staring at an almost solid mass of water that seemed to be at least as deep as it was possible to see. It was all too easy to imagine that one were in a bubble of air inside a space that were under water.
“It can’t last like that for ower lang,”(39) Vincent said. “There’s little wind to bring more rain clouds, so once what’s here has dumped its load the rain will ease up. Let’s just leave it a few minutes before we go home, Rosie. I’m glad Francis is driving us home because I’m no better at swimming than I am at walking.” Vincent was chuckling, he’d had polio as a child and used two walking sticks, but even with them he was slow and couldn’t walk far. It wasn’t something he’d ever felt bitter about and he’d always been able to laugh at himself. His explanation was simple, “I’m a highly skilled slaughterman and butcher, respected by all my neighbours and I earn a good living living where I want to live. What the hell have I got to be bitter about?” Vincent had been correct. A few minutes later the deluge had abated to a steady, solid downpour and many couples left in a hurry eager to get home.
Sixteen guests who had not originally planned on staying the night made enquiries as to the possibility and Gladys had telt them one way or the other she would be able to arrange beds and meals. That it may be a little makeshift the night was possible, but something better would certainly be doable with the light of day tomorrow, though she quickly amended herself to say that it would actually be later today. The staying guests went up to their rooms and the outsiders going home headed out of the back door to their cars. Within half an hour the sixteen guests had all been accommodated, most with local families, though some of the single men had preferred to accept the offer of camp beds at the Dragon. The storm was to last all night and through to nearly lunch time on the Sunday with little diminution in the rain. The last of the drivers had been lucky to make it over the rise(40) before the lonning(41) was flooded too deeply for any wheeled vehicle to use. Bearthwaite was isolated yet again, a state of affairs that bothered none and was preferred by many.
Pete said, “I don’t know what it was like for you, Ladies, but it seemed a bit grim in the taproom the night. Even Dave wasn’t his usual irreverent self. I could see he was trying to lift the mood, but, despite a lot of good news, most of the lads were so down that it seemed to me he was trying just that bit too hard and a lot of the laughter had a brittle quality, and I’m sure I wasn’t the only one who noticed. What did you think, Sasha? Gustav?”
Gustav replied, “I didn’t notice about Dave, but I don’t know him as well as either of you. However, I agree about the mood. It didn’t seem natural somehow.”
Sasha took his time to reply eventually saying, “I think you’re right, Pete, on both counts. I’m wondering if there is a general feeling, one of an almost mental or perhaps I mean one of an emotional malaise, and that what we are currently experiencing is merely the calm before the storm, or maybe that’s the lull in the eye of the storm, and I’m not referring to that cloudburst that occurred just as folk were going home, and bad things are over our horizon but heading this way. We’ve won an awful lot of major battles in the the last few years. Some against officialdom, some against corporate business, some against unpleasant outsiders who no longer live here and some against ourselves when we remade ourselves as we changed the way we operated and lived into the way we now coöperate and share life. As we heard tonight, things are going well for us, so I suppose it’s natural enough to look for the fly in the ointment.(42) However, I suspect it is more than just that. The government is in deep trouble, as Julian, despite his cynicism and bitterness, was accurately referring to, and, like him, I do not believe a change of government at the next general election is going to make any difference for the reasons that Alf gave, and if the Tories remain in power it’s certain that nothing will change. Both mean the populace is in trouble, but no more than any government will they be prepared to give up the luxuries they have become used to just because they can’t heat their houses and pay for enough to eat. Like I said, I reckon we’re going to have to deal with major issues in four or five years time.
“The scum will steal, and they will try to steal from those they perceive to be soft targets, which I suspect will put us at the top of any number of target lists. Despite our attempts to spread the rumour that there is nowt worth stealing here they will come anyway because at the least they know we have enough to eat. They will interpret that as meaning there are shops here to loot because they will not be able to comprehend that we do not live as they do on fast food out of packets that can be microwaved and tins of instant meals to put in a pan. They have no conception of real food and using an oven. Even if they stole carcasses or fruit and vegetables out of our stores they’d have no idea what to do with them. Most of the labels on our cans, jars and bottles would be meaningless to them and it is entirely possible they wouldn’t even recognise a can of ‘Coney and Mixed Roots’ as food. However, I believe it’s their willingness to be violent and even to murder to obtain what they believe they have a right to take that is creating the tensions in society out there. I think a lot of us can feel those tensions in the air, even if most of us can’t think it through never mind articulate it. Like I said we need a meeting to plan our security arrangements, though I suspect Harwell has much more developed plans than he was prepared to mention never mind discuss in front of outsiders and probably in front of many of our own folk too. His background will have taught him to say no more to any than actually necessary, and he is right to see it that way. He naturally operates on a need to know principle. He came from a bad place and he freely admits he was a bad man. My belief is he had little choice if he wished to eat, but now he has better options we are seeing what he would have been had he grown up within a decent family and in a decent environment. Bearthwaite is providing him with an extended family he cares about and a decent environment and he is a decent man now, but that unfortunate background makes him a very valuable resource to us all. He’s never said a word about it, but those travellers(43) certainly bit off more than they could chew when they rattled his cage, though he’ll never admit owt to any.
“He was right though about recruiting rangers. We must never accept anyone just because we feel under pressure to increase their numbers. They have to be right for us. We’d be much better off with no fit than a wrong fit, for there is more than enough trouble for us out there. We have no need to import any and then have to deal with it here too. His trickle of older kids into the rangers is serving us well, but we need to find a ready source of potential Bearthwaite folk, so that we could approach folk more than one at a time. I doubt if ex military personnel in general would suit us. Ex personnel from certain specific units of the army perhaps. I’ll see who I can find to put a group together to discuss and manage recruitment into the rangers so that Harwell isn’t distracted from his work, which is vital to us all, by recruitment issues. Our existing ex military would provide a starting place, and maybe some of the TA folk the rangers associate with would be suitable. I’ll think about it. I’ve just started looking into what hoops we would have to jump through to have a legitimate two two rifle(44) range and armoury here. I don’t know about now, but any number of schools that had a CCF(45) used to have them under the charge of ex army personnel, usually experienced sergeants who’d spent twenty or more years in the service, and we’ve a few folk here that fit the bill. The schools I knew of with a range were all public schools,(46) but there must have been some state schools(47) with a range too. Under the gymnasium was a popular place. I’ll keep looking. Once we have it up and running we can include it as part of the sport activities for the secondary schoolkids. I’ll also have Jacqueline and Georgette looking into creating an underground space we could use for the purpose with neither planning permission, nor a licence to have and operate such. We could also make good use of such a facility for storing defensive equipment out of the sight of even our own folk. I noticed that when Tommy mentioned a water cannon for washing down clay for Celia onto the lonning that Harwell had a speculative look in his eyes. I think we should order a few and have most of them set up ready to repel any nogoodniks. Various governments use them for riot control, and they’d be a powerful tool to disable invaders without getting ourselves involved in serious legal trouble. One would be perfect to prevent folk using the pack pony trail as a route down into the valley, and it would leave no tell tale evidence as to its use. The authorities would expect a body at the bottom to be soaked, for even in a drought a lot of water comes down the ravine from the springs that line both sides from top to bottom.”
Elle realising Sasha was talking about using lethal measures to repel invaders asked, “Seriously, Sasha. You think it could be as bad as last time?” She then spoke rapidly in Russian for about a minute. The others realised that Elle was seriously disturbed because for the first time ever she had let slip just the tiniest piece of the life she’d had before the couple came to Bearthwaite. None had ever heard her speak Russian before, none knew she could. They had always believed that she was English, but since she had no discernable accent they’d had no clue as to whence her origins lay, and for years she’d been adept at discouraging questions to the point that few had asked her any for a long time. Sasha was brusque to the point of bad manners, a very unusual thing for him, in the face of questions about her. Though Elle was a name rare amongst English women of her age it was now so commonplace amongst younger English women and girls that few considered it unusual any more. Few now considered Elle, like Fleur, to be other than an English name. French perhaps to those few, but certainly not Russian, and Elle certainly didn’t sound French when she spoke. Her Russian had sounded fluent and completely natural and the four of them listening had concluded that she was in fact like Sasha Russian, though unlike Sasha who had a Russian cast to his features, Elle looked like a remarkably attractive elderly English woman who had clearly been extraordinarily pretty when she’d been younger. Bearthwaite folk had always believed that her life had been bad before coming to live in the valley, mostly because she and Sasha refused to say anything about her past, but they’d never had any evidence. As Sasha looked them in the eyes they realised not now, nor ever, was the appropriate time to ask, so they didn’t.
“Possibly, Belovèd. We’ll talk it about when we get home.” That to the four of them indicated serious trouble. All knew Sasha and Elle loved each other deeply. Some like Gladys believed their minds were so in tune it was almost as if they were one composite personality. Gladys didn’t just have a first class honours degree in psychology(48) she was an extraordinarily gifted reader of folk, she’d always maintained it went with being a pub landlady, and she knew that on the rare occasions when Sasha called Elle belovèd he did it because both of them needed the mutual reassurance that it offered.
Gladys said, “We talked about the church windows and the pews, of babies and of family matters tonight. There was no sense of that unease you were just talking about. However, I trust your judgement, Sasha, for I know you, unlike any of us at Bearthwaite, have lived through great social unrest and upheaval before you left the Soviet Union. We need to model ourselves on Israel and its IDF.(49) I’m sure everyone will do whatever you suggest to keep us all safe. If it comes to it, I’m sure a lot of the women will join the men in defending us, but what can the older folk, the women who can’t fight and the children do to help? This is not a matter that should be left to just the able bodied men and women. It affects us all and all will wish to do what they can to protect their home and their friends and neighbours, and in that I’m including protecting every living organism in the valley both animal and plant as well as the valley itself. I’m not looking for an answer right now, but I shall want an answer soon, so please be thinking about it. ”
Sasha nodded and said, “To start with we leave the flood in place. That we can do immediately, for we don’t have to do owt. Put it on the website that in future visitors should park on the car park the other side of the rise where the gritter waggons park and the highways store road salt and by next Saturday we’ll have a large shelter built on the top of the rise for them to wait in for the Bearthwaite Queen to dock and take them aboard for the rest of the way to the village. Alternatively they can wait in the warm in their cars. I’ll have Pat set up a phone for the Bearthwaite Queen and the number can be put on the website so folk can check how long they’ll have to wait for it to deliver its passengers here and return to collect the next set of folk who are waiting. I’ll have Ben Gillis write it such that a boat trip is part of the experience. Most of them will enjoy it rather than consider it to be an inconvenience. We need the money visitors bring in, but even more do we need their goodwill and advocacy, and we shall need them more in the future if or more probably when it hits the fan. We need to plan now before action becomes necessary. Especially we need discussions with our folk that live outside the valley, for they are our most vulnerable folk. We need contingencies to protect them all. That means being able to provide accommodation and education here. We are well along with increasing our housing provision, but we need to discuss details and speed the process up. Education won’t be a problem, for we have the staff though we could certainly use more full time staff able to teach, and as is usual for us that doesn’t mean they need to be qualified teachers, so perhaps we should focus our recruitment efforts on that kind of person. We have the buildings, but we could certainly do with more classrooms. I’ll be thinking and talking to individuals with particular areas of expertise in the immediate future prior to calling the meeting. However, right now there is not much else we can do till some decisions have been made as a Community. Maybe changing the subject, but maybe not. Pete, what do you know about Julian? Because I reckon he may well appreciate a move to here. What did he do for a living before he retired? Does he have family?”
“He’ll be about sixty-five. He’s been a widower without family for ten or twelve years and obviously a regular attender for a few years. He never had kids and lives in a rented bed sit flat in Bentthwaite which is down Penrith way. It’s on the far side of Penrith from here, but I’m not familiar with round there, so I’m not quite sure exactly where it is. He was a farmer’s son from round Penrith somewhere, but he apprenticed and served his time as a farrier. His wife was a Hooke who came from one of the high hill farms round Shap. There are still a lot of the Hooke family that live out that way. He worked as a farrier till he married when he re took up shepherding with his wife’s brothers. I say re took it up because that’s what his dad was and he’d spent all his life till apprenticing with a local farrier with sheep on the fells. His wife died young in her fifties from cancer, like I said ten or twelve years back, and he couldn’t face the fells round there without her, so he went home. I don’t think he has any living relatives now, though I’m telt he’s gey well thought of by his in laws. I received the impression that other than a bit of work pulling cars out of ditches he just exists during the week and lives for the weekends here. I don’t think he has a lot of money, he’s probably not old enough to receive his state pension, but he doesn’t seem to be short of cash either, but he probably only spends what little he has here. He has a permanent booking for Friday, Saturday and Sunday nights and always pays in cash. We charge him Bearthwaite prices as do the staff at the Granary when he eats there. He’s aware of that and is grateful and does the odd bit of work in return. He chopped up a load of kindling for me yesterday.
“He drives an ancient Series 2B forward control Landrover(50) that he fitted a six point five litre vee eight Detroit Diesel engine(51) in himself. It’s an over powered beast in immaculate condition fitted out with vehicle recovery gear fore and aft. It’s what he uses to pull cars out of ditches for his local recovery firm from time to time. He arrives in time to have Friday dinner here or in the Granary and drinks here in the tap on Friday evenings. He’s up at the crack of dawn every day and Aggie serves him breakfast with the shepherds and wallers who he has no trouble conversing with because he speaks the dialect of High Fell used on the fells down Penrith way. What the shepherds and high fell wallers speak is a bit different on each set of fells, but they all understand each other. I’ve heard him talking to them, and I can’t tell the difference between what he speaks and the local version of High Fell that our shepherds speak amongst themselves. Obviously he speaks a more standard Cumbrian version of English too. I don’t know what he does on Saturdays and Sundays during the day, but he always eats here or at the Granary and drinks in the tap on Sunday evening too. He leaves after breakfast on Mondays and presumably goes home. He lost his dog a good few years back not long after his wife died, and you know what that does to a shepherd. I don’t think he ever recovered from the twin losses of his wife and dog. He’s a lost soul really, and as you heard tonight beginning to get angry about it. He’s a decent bloke. His permanent booking is for one of our biggest rooms at the back and he offered to share it with some of the lads that didn’t want to leave due to the weather. Earlier he insisted that I took the double bed out and set up some camp beds in there. Harriet dropped some blankets off.”
Sasha stared into the distance and said, “He needs to be here. We need him to be here. He is obviously a talented man. Plenty of folk could put a big diesel engine into a vehicle it wasn’t designed for. Alf could do it in his sleep, but how many farriers and shepherds could? He needs a folk, he needs a purpose, but most of all he needs a dog, preferably a pup that would take his focus to train, to prevent that anger and justified sense of ill usage taking him over. He could help Simon train Theo in farriery, but it would be better if we find them at least one other apprentice too from out of the younger kids in trouble with the law that we give a fresh start to from outside. Better yet I’ll have Howell look into finding some appropriate homeless kids off the streets. If we have to hide them for a few years to keep them safe, so be it. It’ll hardly be the first time we’ve done it. There must be at least a score of them living here the now that don’t officially exist. I’ll be back in time for breakfast with the shepherds tomorrow to speak to Julian. If he can speak High Fell as one of their own a quality dog will be no problem, the shepherds will find and give him a promising pup to train rather than take money off him, for they’ll know he’s the real thing, one of themselves. You can’t fake that, you can’t even learn it because it’s not just a dialect nor even a language. It’s a verbalisation of a whole way of life and a way of viewing life that you can only acquire as a result of decades of solitude spent up on the tops with only a dog to talk to most of the time. We need folk like him, folk who will have no problem being up on the tops in any kind of weather making sure any newly recruited rangers are safe till they learn all the wrinkles(52) for themselves. And moving here would mean a wife wouldn’t be an impossibility. Too, he’d never be on his own no matter what befalls, for as one of us he’d always be looked after and cared for. On a similar but different matter. What about Wellesley? What’s his wife Laila like, Elle?”
Elle laught and replied, “At the moment merry to say the least. Seems Wellesley has finally retired and she’s really happy about that, so she had perhaps a mouthful more than was strictly wise. Why?”
“They want to move near enough to here to be here every Saturday night. He’s a skilled time served sheet metal worker and fabricator and the men here would accept him as one of us. Alf’s in favour of him coming here, and Bertie reckons the same, but what about Laila? What do the lasses think? Is she one of us?”
Elle didn’t hesitate. “Without doubt, and she’s a lovely woman. Always wears a silk sari when dressed up. She looks very elegant. She misses her children and is sad her grandchildren live so far away. She’s never said much, but reading between the lines she’s been rejected from helping with local community projects because she’s an Indian of Hindu extraction as opposed to a Pakistani of Muslim extraction which most of her neighbours are. Seemingly the English don’t wish owt to do with her either. She’s lonely and I wouldn’t be surprised if the best side here provides the highlights of her life. They manage to visit what? Every six weeks? I don’t know about Wellesley but Laila would fit and I think her life would be a lot better here than in Lancaster. You going to speak to Wellesley in the morning too, Love?”
Sasha nodded and said, “Aye. I think Harwell was right about us getting more proactive, though he used the word aggressive, in recruiting. And he said, not just rangers and folk with skills, but folk who just fit. He reasoned that if they fit they would soon enough find something to do that was of value to us all. I agree with that.” Sasha was pensive for a few moments before looking around and saying, “Harriet, you’ve not said anything for a while and you seem disturbed. Have you anything on your mind or something to say or ask?”
Harriet too looked around and said quietly, “When I lived in Manchester I knew a lot of seriously dodgy folk, but they knew I was trans and didn’t care. Some of them I knew well enough to call friends. They were happy for me when I said I was getting out of Manchester and coming to live here with recently contacted family who cared enough to send me more than enough money to travel north. I’d done some heavy calibre favours for a few of them, favours that kept them out of gaol and I cold have got into a lot of serious trouble with the police if they’d ever found out. My friends all said if I ever wanted help or there was anything they could do for me all I had to do was ask. A couple of them wanted to pay Bert a visit. I know he tret me badly, but I didn’t wish to have owt to do with his death, so I persuaded them not to. If we need guns and ammunition I can get them for us no questions asked as long as we can pay the going rate in cash. I used to know what that was, but I don’t any more. That’s it. That’s all I have to say.”
Bert was Harriet’s biological father who had physically and emotionally abused her badly for a decade and a half. That he owed his life to Harriet made Gustav, Gladys and Pete stare at Harriet in astonishment, for they knew she hated and despised him. This was a side to Harriet none had ever even had a suspicion of and they didn’t know what to make of what she’d just said, nor indeed of her. Elle and Sasha on the other hand gave no signs whatsoever of surprise.
Sasha merely said in quiet tones, “It will be a serious day indeed when I have to take you up on that offer, Harriet. If we need that sort of equipment it will be safer and better if I obtain it via my
contacts, but thank you for telling me. I suggest you don’t speak of the matter ever again. I do, however have a request that I wish you to consider seriously. I know about the sort of folk you described as seriously dodgy. Most of them would be entirely unsuitable as Bearthwaite folk, but there is probably a very small number who would be. Those few folk would be much better off and happier away from Manchester. It will be habit and an inability to envisage any other life that imprisons them there. They will have all the requisite skills and knowledge, contacts too, that will be invaluable to Harwell and his staff. Take your time thinking about it, for we can’t afford to make any mistakes with folk of their sort, but do think about it and get back to me on it when you are ready. A month, two, three or more it doesn’t matter, but when you come to talk to me about it you need to be certain in your mind you have the right people. Okay?” Harriet just nodded with a smile. “Now, Elle, I suggest we go home. I’d ask for a bed here, but we have things to talk about that are best said under our own roof. I’ll fetch your coat.”
After Sasha and Elle had left, Gustav said, “I’ll lock up, Dad.” Pete nodded and took Gladys’ hand heading towards the stairs and bed.
Gustav went round locking the doors and checking all the windows before following Harriet who he knew would be checking on the children. He’d had time to think about Harriet’s remarkable past and had concluded that it was just a consequence of her appalling childhood for which she couldn’t be held responsible. He’d read once that a large proportion of persons knew at least one murderer to talk to, they just didn’t know who they were. It seemed Harriet did know who they were, and it didn’t alter who or what she was, so it didn’t matter any more to him than it had appeared to matter to her. Sasha’s request to consider some of her past acquaintance in terms of their suitability as Bearthwaite folk didn’t surprise him at all. Some of Bearthwaite’s most important citizens had shady backgrounds to say the least. Sasha was perhaps the most notable example of that.
As he walked up the stairs his thoughts were, ‘She is the mother of my children, and a very good mother to them, for she understood the hell they lived through well enough to reduce the effect it had on them to almost nothing in a remarkably short period of time simply by allowing and supporting them to be who they wished to be. I learnt a lot about folk and being a father by watching her being a mother. Too, she is the woman I sleep with, and when younger I often wondered about the woman I would eventually meet and marry. However, I never imagined I would ever be so lucky as to meet a woman like her.’ It was a measure of Gustav as a man that in his thoughts not once did he think of Harriet as other than a woman, for transwoman was not a concept in his mind. He was a man and his wife was a woman. He was father and Harriet was mother to Brigitte and Peter their twin daughter and son. In his mind, Peter his son had medical issues that were associated with being born with two X chromosomes. Peter had always chosen to visit the medical folk with his dad for support rather than his mum which Gustav considered to be understandable, for Peter was very much a man’s boy who had learnt the landlord’s trade quickly.
That Peter was considered by the Saturday evening inhabitants of the Green Dragon taproom, the Grumpy Old Men who telt stories, unequivocally as Gustav’s son and heir in the same way that the Bearthwaite womenfolk considered Brigitte to be Harriet’s daughter and heir Gustav considered to be a positive thing. When Peter had telt a tale in the taproom of his refusal to accept being a girl and his subsequent beatings and still refusal to accept femininity the reactions had been mixt. Many of the outsiders had kept quiet suspecting their natural reactions would not be acceptable, and in that they were correct. The locals’ reactions had all been more than positive. ‘Good Lad’ ‘Good on you, Son,’ and ‘I’m glad to see some of the lads in your generation will still spit it the eyes of the self righteous arseholes, and bollocks to the pain,’ had been typical of the responses. The fact that many comments had been graphically Anglo Saxon in nature indicated their total acceptance of Peter as a young lad approaching manhood, such language was only ever accidentally used in the presence of females.
Gustav smiled to himself, for Brigitte, Peter’s twin sister, was a feminine girl who learnt quickly the arts and skills of womanhood from all women, but especially from Harriet, and she’d almost finished blossoming. He suspected it wouldn’t be long before Brigitte and Ron became lovers rather than just girl and boy friends, but that too was as it should be. Too, it would not be long now before Peter had the surgery that would enable his self visualisation to become a reality. It had initially surprised Gustav that Peter was so willing to talk to him concerning the matter, but that was some time ago and now he just accepted it. What had been a recent surprise to him was Peter and Violet’s wish to talk to him about a sexual relationship as it would apply to themselves. He’d not been been unwilling to discuss the matter, but had said they had to realise that his opinions would mostly be speculation, for other than by using the internet which they had the same access to as himself he couldn’t possibly have any real knowledge upon which to base what he was talking about. The young couple had accepted that, but said he knew at least as much as any else they had ready access to and unlike those other folk they trusted him to say what he considered to be in their best interests even if they didn’t like it.
As he went up the stairs Gustav was thinking about two things he knew would be of serious import to himself and Harriet, making love and discussing the prospect of adopting more children, preferably younger children for the twins to enjoy too.
“You reckon that’s going to affect their relationship, Pete?” Gladys asked as she undressed for bed.
“No. Harriet obviously accepted it years ago. Gustav is too stable and intelligent to allow something that happened to an abused child, that wasn’t her fault, long before he met her, to have any impact on his life. He loves Harriet and his children, and he’s not going to allow owt to screw that up. He mentioned the prospect of adopting some younger kids too the other day now that the twins are settled in, so I presume he and Harriet have already talked about it.”
“I suppose so because Harriet has mentioned it to me too. What did you make of Elle just now?”
“We are never going to be given any answers, so it’s pointless to speculate. I’m going to forget it ever happened and mention it to nobody. I suggest you do that too, for lives may depend on us doing so. The little I know about Elle was something Sasha mentioned about her parents in a couple of tales(53) he was telling, but essentially all he gave away was an admission of their existence when he and Elle were wed and living over here.”
“Harriet telt me that Elle telt them (54) that her parents both died when she was too young to have any memories of them. That was when Elle, Hannah, Julie, Christine and Harriet were playing golf at Serethwaite.”
“I doubt she would lie. Sasha if it came to it yes, but Elle no. At most she’d say she didn’t wish to discuss the matter. From that I conclude Sasha was talking about adoptive parents, but like I said best to just forget about it. All of it, including their Siberian and east European contacts, and avoid discussion with the others, including Harriet, about it too.”
“Something that Sasha will provide answers to are what happens when he talks to Julian at breakfast, and to Wellesley later on. I don’t doubt that Sasha will persuade Julian to move here, and Chance will sort him out with somewhere to live. The shepherds will give him a likely looking pup to train which could be worth as much as a grand, and although nothing will be said about it outside of themselves it’s understood amongst them that when a shepherd dies his dogs are properly taken care of and can continue working, for like working horses working dogs need to work to be happy. Doubtless Harwell will manage to find him and Simon a couple of apprentices and probably some apprentice rangers too. It was what Sasha said about finding him a wife that puzzled me. Is that possible at his age do you think?”
“Aye. It’ll be easy enough. I’ll have a word with Aggie and leave it to her. What about Wellesley and Laila?”
“Same again, Love. Sasha will persuade them to move here. From what’s been said they won’t take any persuading. Alf and Bertie will provide Wellesley with as much or as little work as he wants. Bertie will probably give him a crew of kids to train, probably a goodly few rescued from hell on the streets out there. You never know Wellesley and Laila may even adopt some as kids rather than as grandkids. I suspect Chance or more likely one of his staff will see if he can find them somewhere to live at Darkfell Village. I know there are some empty properties there. I can’t help but wonder what will happen as a result of Sasha asking Harriet to consider some of who I presume are hardened criminals as Bearthwaite folk.”
“That’s the point, Love. Sasha was asking Harriet to sort out the ones who are certainly criminals but not hardened criminals. He wants her to find folk who only live that way because they know of no other way. Folk like Harwell who don’t like the way they have to live and would be grateful to put it all behind them for a fresh start. It’ll take her some time but I don’t doubt she work her way through the process. It may be that she doesn’t find anyone, but I like Sasha don’t believe that. It was a very clever thing on Sasha’s part to have considered, but time will tell.”
“You know there’s so much going on these days I find myself struggling to keep up with events these days. I’m gey glad Gustav is here to catch owt I miss.”
“It’s called age, Pete. You too old and tired to make me feel young again, Love?”
As usual it was just before five when Aggie let herself into the Green Dragon via the small back door that opened into the rear of the kitchen. She had a complete set of keys to all the ground floor doors, but she always entered by the kitchen back door because it was simpler to turn the inn’s alarm system off that way. She checked the water boiler had been filled the previous evening and turned it on ready for making breakfast beverages for the early breakfasting farm workers, shepherds and wallers before filling and turning on the much faster boiling kettle for her own cup of tea. By the time she’d turned on the plate warmer and the ovens she would use and taken the remnants of the evening’s before supper and the bacon, sausage, eggs and baked beans she would be cooking this morning out of the refrigerators she could hear the sounds of folk moving around upstairs. She’d been at work ten minutes when Julian entered the kitchen. “Morning, Julian. Tea as usual or coffee for a change?”
“Tea, please, Aggie, just a drop of milk and no sugar please, and is there any chance of a slice of toast before breakfast is ready.”
“Aye. Just a moment, Love.”
The conversation so far was a set piece, repeated more or less verbatim every week. Aggie put a couple of slices of granary bread, she’d not had to ask Julian which type of bread he preferred for years, in the four slice electric toaster and started to ready things for cooking breakfast for the two to three dozen men who ate their breakfast at the Dragon every day of the week. She put the fifty or so Thermos®(55) flasks ready for tea and coffee, a similar number of plates into the plate warmer and laid out the bait tins ready for filling with the men’s lunches. By the time she’d put a couple of dozen slices of bread into the two handled, hinged, metal mesh clamps of the large toaster that toasted both sides simultaneously and loaded the oven trays of bacon and sausage into the oven men were starting to arrive. Julian had set out dozens of pint mugs ready for tea or coffee and taken a gallon jug of milk from the refrigerator and a large bowl of sugar from a cupboard. Aggie being busy, one of the men extracted the toast which was ready and turned the slices out onto a food preparation surface for three others to butter after which he reloaded the toast clamps and set the bread to toasting. “Julian, that’s the last of the sugar. That bottle next to the basin is sucrose syrup that Christine’s lasses make from sugar beet. Use the same amount as you’d use sugar and you can’t taste any difference.”
Other than requests to pass something over or to take something away to the table, little was spoken for all knew what needed to be done and Aggie was busy frying eggs. The men had helped her for years and nothing needed to be said. In any event by the nature of their work none of the men were exactly garrulous. Aggie having been married to Frank for well over fifty years was used to men who didn’t speak much and, despite being a local information source with members of her own sex which she said was just gossip, was comfortable in their presence. Frank, who before he’d retired had been a shepherd for over sixty years, said he did all the talking he needed to in a few hours every Saturday evening in the taproom of the Green Dragon. It was a surprise to all when Sasha came into the kitchen from the back door. Aggie, unphased, merely said, “The proper coffee you like, Sasha, isn’t ready yet. A mug of instant with two heaped spoonfulls to keep you going till breakfast is ready?”
“Please, Aggie. Any of that toast available, Lads?” After drinking his coffee and eating two slices of buttered toast with the coarse cut, bitter, breakfast marmalade made by Christine’s staff at the Bobbin Mill Sasha said, “I’d like five minutes of your time in private please, Julian.” Julian nodded and followed Sasha into the unknown, to him at least, territory that was the best side. “There was deal of conversation about you last night after hours amongst the folk who actually run Bearthwaite. The Bearthwaite Council if you’d like to put it that way. We want to know how you’d feel about moving here. We’d house you for nowt, but it’s neither charity nor a free deal. In return we’d want you to have some involvement with apprentice farriers and apprentice shepherds. You know we take kids off the streets that need a new life. What you probably don’t know is we never turn any away if we think they can become Bearthwaite folk, and we are stretched gey thin with the numbers we have recently taken in. Black Simon would set you up in his forge, he has all the kit you would need and he wants to take on a couple more apprentices as well as Theo. He could use the help probably a couple of days a week.
“Our lads that work the sheep think highly of you, you speak High Fell, so you are one of them. Of course you couldn’t work with them without a dog, so we’ll have to sort that out. They are on the lookout for a pup for Aggie to give to Frank and they won’t have a problem sorting you out with one too. I’m sure you know how that goes. I’ll be blunt, Lad. It’s obvious that life isn’t treating you well and you’re hurting. We not only want you here, we need you here. Like I said it’s not charity providing you with a life. You heard last night that we’ve got security issues from the idiots outside and we’ve got recruitment issues too. That’s a problem that’s going to get worse not better with time. You are a known quantity, one of us already, you always have been. Harwell could use your skills and knowledge from time to time on the tops training his new rangers in how to stay alive up there when the weather isn’t so good. You understand how it works here. If you need help when you get older you’ll get it and still live well. You got anything to keep you where you are or anywhere else?”
Julian stared into space and eventually replied, “You’re every bit a clever and devious as I’ve heard, Sasha, but I can hear the truth and sincerity in your words. Shepherds can tell when folk are lying because they hear so little speech that they listen gey hard to what they do hear. It’s a fair offer, and I can see it’s an acceptable two way deal not charity, so I’ll buy it. I’ve had nothing to keep me anywhere since my auld lass Bessie died. After the funeral I left the Shap fells. Njál my dog was fifteen then and he died in his sleep shortly after that. I buried him up on the Shap fells in a gey high spot over looking the places he’d worked all his life and I’ve never been back since. There was nowt other than an empty room with four walls to stare at at Bentthwaite, so I bought a TV, but I couldn’t stand watching the nonsense on it so I got rid to a charity shop. Farriery and the fells had been my life, but there’s little need of farriers nor of traditional fell shepherds in these days, and none other than my in laws would employ me, and I couldn’t live there. Not where I’d lived with Bessie. Yes I’ll accept the deal, Sasha. I should have thought of asking about it a long time since, but maybe I was too wrapped up in anger and feeling sorry for myself to consider it.” Sasha sensed the conversation hadn’t run its course and there was something of significance yet to said, but not having any idea of what he held his peace. He was correct, it was something of perhaps no import to others, but clearly to Julian it was. Almost explosively he said, “I want a bitch. I don’t want ever, especially not in the small dark hours to accuse myself of replacing Njál. I’ll give her the name Vor. It means the cautious one, and would be a good name for a collie bitch.”
“Have you much stuff to collect from your flat, Julian?”
“Why? Are you thinking about me moving soon?”
“This morning. Why not? Some of the lads will take you and a transit to collect your stuff and by the time you get back Chance’s staff will have sorted somewhere out for you. Probably a small recently refurbished terraced house overlooking the old allotments site. I presume you know where that is and it would be okay?” Julian, clearly deep in thought, just nodded acceptance. “You ready to go back into the kitchen and let folk know about this?”
“Aye. Will you tell them, Sasha, please?” Sasha nodded and they went into the kitchen where breakfast was being dished up.
“Lads, I’ve persuaded Julian to live with us as a Bearthwaite man. In return he’s agreed to help with training apprentice farriers and shepherds, and give a bit of time to Harwell helping to keep some of our more recently recruited rangers out of trouble on the tops. Only issue is he’ll need a pup, he wants a bitch to call Vor. Can I leave that with you?”
There was an outbreak of conversation in High Fell and some English too. Mostly it boiled down to comments like, ‘Welcome, Lad,’ ‘My Nell’s in pup,’ ‘Vor. Auspicious choice for a bitch,’ and finally, ‘Get on the outside of that breakfast before it get cold, Lad.’ Eventually, the men left and took Julian with them to look at some pups and Mêl a five year old bitch who’s owner, Welsh Ifor, had died recently. Julian agreed to meet Sasha back at the Dragon for lunch with his removal team for lunch at half twelve, leaving just Aggie and Sasha.
Aggie surprised Sasha with, “I’ve had some of the lasses on the phone, Sasha. Elle telt me to find Julian a wife. She wanted me to sort out a lass as would take in some of the younger street kids not with a view to them being as grandparents, but adopting them as kids to put Social Services in their place. Germain called too and said she’d help in any way she could. I reckon there’re no women in Bearthwaite as don’t know what’s going on as regards the matter. I telt Elle Olive would be ideal, so Elle and a group of women are going round to have words with Olive about Julian before lunch. They’re probably talking to her right now. Olive’s an interesting lass with an interesting history. After beating several shades of it out of her mum every weekend her mum left her father and came here with Olive who’d have been five or six at the time. Her mum died when Olive was about twenty. She took up with Ronald and lived with him for twenty-odd years till he died in that fire at work in Whitehaven. She’d never married because she didn’t wish to risk her mum’s experience which she witnessed and remembered. Then she took up with that outsider who disappeared as soon as Covid struck. She’s not stupid but not bright either and she works as a general helper for Stephanie in the early years and nursery where she is very highly thought of, by Stephanie, the rest of the staff, parents, and most especially by the children and babies she cares for.
“We know she’s interested in children because she’s said so and is looking for a place to live with a family. She has registered with Chance’s staff as requiring some of the street kids, she said anything up to half a dozen, or more if there are sibling groups in there, and a house to live in with them. She’s never had kids of her own, seemingly she couldn’t and the change(56) means she no longer can. She’s never mentioned finding a man, but the lasses, and I include me, opine that’s because she’s had such bad luck in the past and that includes having watched her dad hurt her mum. I wasn’t aware of it, but seemingly Elle’s been looking for a suitable man for Olive for going on a year and a half. We’re now convinced we’ve found one: Julian. I suggest you forget about the matter and leave it all to the womenfolk unless your missus asks for assistance.”
Sasha nodded, for he knew from personal experience that Elle, his wife, was extremely good at helping folk work their way through deeply traumatic incidents. Eventually he said, “I’m sure you are all aware how deeply a man like Julian would be affected by the loss of his wife. However, I would like to remind you that he was deeply affected by the loss of his dog too, and not to underestimate that.”
“Sasha Vetrov, I have loved Frank since I was five years old and have been married to him for over half a century. In those sixty-odd years he has lost seven dogs. I remember each and every one of those tragic events in gut wrenching detail. Don’t ever talk to me like that again, or I swear I shall tell Elle what you said.”
Sasha went bright red and said, “You have my deepest appologies, Agatha. I had forgotten and I had no intention to offer the insult, which I know I did. Incredible as it may seem to all other than Elle, I do not know everything and I am not the ultimate authority on anything. I know that. I have always known that. I made a serious mistake and I am sorry. Please forgive me for my unintended insult.”
The fact that Sasha had called her Agatha rather than Aggie, for as far as she was aware the first time, made a great deal of difference to her. She pulled Sasha towards her, kissed his cheek and said, “I’ve screwed up as badly as that more than once in my life too, Cossack. Folk forgave me, how can I do any less?”
Cossack was something that as a rule only Gladys called him, so he knew he’d been truly forgiven. “Okay, Agatha, thank you, I’m grateful. I’ll just leave you to get on with it then.”
Later in the the morning, nearing half ten, Wellesley and Laila turned up in the coffee room for a very late and equally light breakfast. Sasha was there to greet them and have cup of breakfast tea. He was open and somewhat blunt. “Laila, our women say you are more than acceptable to them as a Bearthwaite woman. That is due to, what I am telt by our womenfolk is, your behaviour and your beliefs regarding the way societies should function. That you are of Indian ancestry matters not to any of us, least of all to our womenfolk, who I admit judge outsider women by standards none of our menfolk, least of all myself, are capable of interpreting. I am telt many of our younger women would appreciate your advice regarding how to wear a sari and your other garments and adornments which they regard as a style of dress of great femininity and wish to be able to emulate. I was by the way telt by my wife Elle to tell you that. I’ll add that our men have telt me that your way of dressing is, and I quote, ‘incredibility attractive’. Perhaps much more importantly, our womenfolk say, your attitudes to your neighbours, your family and most of all to your children, which have become clear to them over the time you have spent in the best room of the Green Dragon, are no different from those of the unwritten codes by which our womenfolk live their lives and judge all females, and that includes their daughters. I am telt that you have long been a Bearthwaite woman, and as such are one of their sisters. I am not a woman and as such can say no more on this matter.
“Wellesley, our men are all agreed that you would be welcome to live and work here with us. More to the point, Alf and Bertie would be grateful for your input, for they value your skills as a Bearthwaite man highly. You have said you wish to sell up and move to somewhere where you and Laila could join us here every Saturday evening. I am here on behalf of all Bearthwaite folk, men and women too, to offer you a home here. We can facilitate your moving at minimal cost to you, for our legal folk will deal with all involved free of charge, and our home removals folk, who are all amateurs, do that for fun. You can be involved in the removal if you wish or not if it is too stressful. Beebell will buy your house for a price acceptable to you and provide you with a house here of your choice, so you can move within days. We wish you here and are prepared to pay for that. We’ll sell your old house whenever we can.” What Sasha did not say was that whatever the amounts involved were they were totally immaterial to Bearthwaite, for they were just numbers of no importance compared with what they were desirous of achieving, which was Laila and Wellesley becoming Bearthwaite folk.
“I’m sure you have some awareness of the desires of Bearthwaite folk to recruit those we consider to be Bearthwaite folk already. Folk who can assist us to promote and defend our way of life, folk who we in return can assist to live a life free of the pressures that outsiders impose on themselves and others by their insistence on possessing things of neither real value nor of any significance. What we offer is a life free of intimidation from outside sources in return for no more than you are able to contribute. We value you for what you are, not perhaps like others for what we think you may become or what we can make out of you in the future. Should you decide to become Bearthwaite folk our legal folk will deal with all your legal matters free of charge and that includes all past tax matters and your pensions from the government and others. Trust me, we wish you to accept us as kin, family if you like, and in return we’ll take on the UK government and all others for you at no cost to yourselves. However, even should that not be worth anything to you, we shall ensure that the rest of your lives shall have no financial stresses, and you’ll be able to live here in comfort. That is the Bearthwaite promise to outsiders who join us. Put another way we promise to treat you as we treat each other.
Julian arrived at the Dragon for lunch accompanied by a sedate and happy looking sheepdog. “She’s Mêl, Sasha. It means honey in Welsh. She’s bored and desperate for work, so we’re going up onto the tops with a couple of the lads and their dogs later this afternoon. We’ll probably be up there for a few days. I’ll get a pup sometime, but I can work with Mêl right now, and she’ll bring a pup on a treat. I gave Harry my flat keys and he said three of them would clear my flat inside an hour for me.” Sasha noted that typically of the shepherds Julian didn’t mention Ifor by name nor even refer to him indirectly. It was the way they were and Sasha respected that by not referring to Ifor even indirectly too. Mêl would be working and that was the last respect the shepherds paid to one of their own who had died. When shepherds passed their dogs kept working with other shepherds, when sheepdogs passed their shepherds kept working with other dogs. All eventually passed, but their work and their culture went on and never passed, and unlike elsewhere Bearthwaite folk intended it to stay that way. To the Bearthwaite shepherds, Julian’s arrival was a providential gift, for Julian now stood in Ifor’s boots and Mêl now had a shepherd. All was as it should be. “Mêl is coming to her season soon and I plan to put her to Tobias, one of Vinny’s dogs, unless of course she chooses a dog for herself up on the fell, either way maybe I’ll breed a pup of my own. Harry said by the time I come back down they’ll have sorted out a house for me and put all my stuff in it. So all has been sorted out. I’d better go and pick up some gear from my Rover. What I haven’t got in the Rover Harmon has said he’ll lend me, so I need to collect that too. Too, I need to find Aggie for some food. Thanks for everything, Sasha. I’ll see you in a few days when I’ll find Alf, Bertie and Harwell too to see what’s to be done there.”
Sasha shook his head in wonder at just how easy some things could be. Things that he expected to be a lot more difficult. If only all could be so easily arranged.
“We have a family for you, Olive. It’s a group of eight children from the streets of Oldham. They aren’t siblings, but they have been together watching each others’ backs for going on eighteen months and think of each other as siblings. They are as yet unofficial, so they won’t exist here till Jess McLeod the case worker from NCSG gets here to officially enter the children onto their books as children under their care. At the moment the children are only on their books as children whose existence they are aware of. Germain Beattie on the children’s behalf is in unofficial contact with NCSG who have said once they have more information they’ll not just take them onto their books as children under their care they’ll do so directly without involving Social Services and NCSG will deal with their adoptions. Jess McLeod and Jym Rosehill from NCSG will be here tomorrow. None of the children know who their fathers are and five of them only know their mothers by nicknames. All of the mothers were on the game to pay for their drug habits. Three say they heard their mothers had over dosed and the other five consider them to be lucky. None of the eight have any idea what their surnames are and none have ever been to school. Jess and Jym will be finding out whatever the children can provide them with to make the adoptions as easy as they can be, but Jess anticipates it will be neither quick nor easy, but said she is in touch with a judge who has said that she will make things as easy as they can be made. However by this time tomorrow you will be the children’s official foster parent and guardian under the ægis of NCSG. Jym is an NCSG child safety investigator not a case worker and she will be acting upon owt that she can act on and going to Oldham seeking further information with a view to easing adoption proceedings and putting child molesters behind bars if at all possible.”
“You didn’t say how many lads nor lasses neither. What are their names? and how old are they, Elle?”
“There are three lads and five lasses and all I know is they appear to be between about eight and thirteen though they could be older due to malnourishment. I don’t know their names. They are currently being checked over by Sun’s staff which includes Xrays for evidence of broken bones and tests for everything you can think of including STDs.(57) Karen the senior nurse says they have all been repeatedly beaten and raped though they have admitted to selling themselves in order that they could all eat. Grayson the educational psychologist for the school has met with them and explained what we can offer them. They all insisted they are a family and won’t allow any to split them up and would like a mum and a dad. All discussions took place with all eight present and some of what they said they had experienced was pretty depraved and harrowing. Even at the medical centre they insisted they remain together when undressing and being examined, all insisted even for intimate examinations the others had to be present and none would allow a screen between any of them. They all refused to undress if the others were not there. Grayson said it was due to them feeling safe when all eight were together and suspected when the police became involved they will refuse to speak if interviewed alone, and it’ll be an all or nothing deal for a very long time which will of course reduce the value of any statements taken down to zero in a court.
“Karen aims to introduce you all before dinner, so you can feed them. They are all half starved, so she’ll be leaving a special diet sheet for you to provide food from to help them recover as soon as possible. I’d suggest ice cream for pudding as that seems to ring all the bells. Give them a bag of sweets each to take to bed. Which reminds me, Beth wants to look at their teeth some time. She suggested giving then a couple of weeks to settle in before booking them dental appointments. Some of the women will be taking enough clothes round to your new spot for them all to be going on with till you can do some shopping. Talking of which you now live behind the green in number sixteen which is ready for you to move into. The shift it team will doubtless be in touch sometime soon to move all your effects from Quarry Brow.
“Which takes us to the tricky ground, Olive. We have a man we would like you to meet. Julian Elliot is an outsider, but our men have known him well for a a goodly number of years. He’s in his middle sixties and has been a widower for twelve years. He’s only just moved here. He’s a shepherd from Penrith or Shap way who apprenticed as a farrier. The death of his wife above a decade ago shortly followed by the death of his dog just about ended him. The shepherds have given him an experienced dog that needed a shepherd.” Seeing Olive nod in understanding at what hadn’t been said Elle in turn nodded and said, “Quite. He’s going up on the tops today and will probably be back for this Saturday’s tales in the Taproom. At the moment he has no idea that we are trying to promote a match between the two of you. We really wish you to at least meet him and consider possibilities.”
Olive smiled, but the smile didn’t reach her eyes. “I’d be more inclined to consider the matter if he weren’t a shepherd. I never could see the point in living with a man who spent months at a time away from home. I still can’t.” She hadn’t said no, but she may as well have.
Unphased Elle said “Part of the deal that Sasha struck with him was spending time with Black Simon training farriers, especially Theo. He’ll also be spending time with Harwell teaching some of the recently recruited rangers how to survive on the tops as part of our defence capabilities. He’ll be spending at least two days a week down here, so he’d not be an absentee man for any woman. Just consider the matter, please, Olive. Those kids want and need a dad. Most outsiders think lads need a dad more than lasses do, but you’re far too much of a woman to believe that.”
“You’re right that’s not true. Lasses need a dad to practice becoming a woman on in safety. I missed that badly, and I suspect these lasses will need a dad more than I did. Okay, I’ll consider it. At least if I do marry him the children and I’ll be getting a proper border reiver surname.(58) I never did like the associations that go with Campbell.(59) I’m not making any promises at all, and I do hope someone is going to talk to him before we meet and manage an introduction for the sake of both of us.”
“I’ll arrange all that and I’ll have a couple of the men make sure he’s shaved and dressed up to go acourting. You have to look pretty, Olive, and I suggest you invest in a new bra up to the task of presenting your assets to best effect. No point in going off at half cock if you’ll pardon the expression is there? To misquote an expression the menfolk use, ‘as long as we’re wearing the kit we’ll always win,’ but just don’t be too obvious about it because it frightens them.”
Olive gazed down at what she had to admitt, even if only to herself, was a bosom of splendid proportions as yet unaffected by age and gravity on her still elegant and sylph like figure. To Elle’s surprise she broke out into peals of laughter and wiping the tears from her eyes said, “It’s a few years since I had any benefit from what I inherited from mum in the way of bosom, but at my age I suppose I’d better be shaping(60) myself before it heads south and I no longer have it to benefit from. However, if I do take a fancy to Julian as a husband and father for the kids I guarantee I’ll be able to close the deal, so I’ll act on the advice regards the bra, but what is the kit we need to wear to ensure we win, Elle?”
“Nothing you don’t have when in your birthday suit,(61) Dear. It does the trick every time.”
Olive laughed and asked, “Do they really say that? About us wearing the kit I mean?”
“Yes indeed, but not when they are knowingly in the presence of a female. They also use any number of other expressions when we are not around, but it doesn’t do to admit to understanding them or even knowing about them. That would be letting the side down.”
“You, Elle, are every bit as devious and manipulative as Sasha.”
Elle winked and said, “Who do you think taught him?”
29719 words in all including footnotes.
1 NHS, National Health Service.
2 Specs, spectacles, glasses. US eye glasses.
3 A UK bushel is 8 UK gal, 10 US gal, 36.4 litres. A traditional bushel box is a wire bound wooden crate.
4 Josh and Dianne Ellery own and run the Bearthwaite fish and chip shop known as the chippy.
5 Packer is food that packs your stomach and prevents you feeling hungry but has little taste or virtue other than that.
6 FDA, the United States Food and Drug Administration is a federal agency of the Department of Health and Human Services.
7 Shape a word with some unusual usages in English English. It is more usually associated with men and boys rather than women or girls. Used as in shape yourself, meaning to pull yourself together and get on with the job. To shape up, to become able to do whatever is being referred to especially if it is an unfamiliar task. A man with shape or a man who can shape himself, usually refers to a man who can turn himself well to a variety of tasks, often connected with skilled use of his hands and tools in a workshop or tradesman sense or setting, again especially in connection with unfamiliar tasks and tools. A useless bastard with no shape would be a man who had no such ability, often a pejorative insult used in connection with white collar workers whether it be true or not.
8 Tasty, in this case used colloquially for big men able to fight.
9 To mind, to call to mind, to recollect or remember. I minded, I remembered.
10 The Institute for Government (IfG) is a British independent think tank which aims to improve government effectiveness through research and analysis.
11 The Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy (CIPFA) is a UK based organisation for accountants who work in the public sector, accounting firms and other professional bodies where management of public funds are required. CIPFA are the only UK professional accountancy organisation who are dedicated to public financial management.
12 The Tory party, a name used for the Conservative party.
13 Fettle, mend, repair or maintain.
14 Dance, drink and screw, is part of a line from Common People a song by English alternative rock band Pulp, released in May 1995 by Island Records. As used here, the three word phrase has become a term of abuse applied to the out of work by those whose labour and taxes are keeping the out of work.
15 The workhouse, in theory an institution for the relief of the poor. Many in practice offered little more than state sponsored slavery. Most persons today only know of them as a result of Oliver Twist’s experiences in the book of the same name written by Charles Dickens originally published as a serial from 1837 to 1839, and as a three volume book in 1838.
16 PSV licence, a licence to drive Public Service vehicles. PSV1, the highest qualification enabling the holder to drive any and all vehicles that require a PSV licence.
17 HGV, Heavy Goods Vehicle.
18 Penting, dialectal painting.
19 Number ten, a reference to number ten Downing Street, the UK prime minister’s official residence.
20 The Profumo affair was a major scandal in twentieth century British politics. John Profumo, the Secretary of State for War in Macmillan’s Conservative government, had an extramarital affair with the 19 year old model Christine Keeler beginning in 1961. Profumo denied the affair in a statement to the House of Commons in 1963. Weeks later, a police investigation proved that he had lied. The scandal severely damaged the credibility of Macmillan’s government, and Macmillan resigned as Prime Minister in October 1963, citing ill health. The fallout contributed to the Conservative government’s defeat by the Labour Party in the 1964 General Election. Reports suggested that Keeler may have been simultaneously involved with Captain Yevgeny Ivanov a Soviet Naval attaché, thereby creating a possible national security risk. Keeler knew both Profumo and Ivanov through her friendship with Stephen Ward, a socialite who had taken her under his wing. The exposure of the affair generated rumours of other sex scandals and drew official attention to the activities of Ward, who was charged with a series of immorality offences. Perceiving himself as a scapegoat for the misdeeds of others, Ward took a fatal overdose during the final stages of his trial, which found him guilty of living off the immoral earnings of Keeler and her friend Mandy Rice-Davies.
21 Down bank, down hill, a deteriorating situation.
22 Partygate was a political scandal in the United Kingdom about gatherings of Government and Conservative party staff during the Covid 19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021, when public health restrictions prohibited most gatherings. The scandal contributed to Boris Johnson’s downfall as Prime Minister and his resignation as an MP [Member of Parliament].
23 An initial study, published in July 2017, revealed that sperm counts plummeted by more than 50 percent among men in North America, Europe, Australia, and New Zealand between 1973 and 2011. Since then, a team led by the same researchers has explored what has happened in the last 10 years. The more recent analysis had a more global perspective. It shewed not only has the decline in sperm counts continued, reaching a drop of 62 percent, but the decline per year has doubled since 2000. Any number of other studies revealed broadly similar results.
24 Masculinity is a hard quantity to define since it has changed enormously over time and varies from place to place. Any number of folk, men and women, have been asking questions that boil down to ‘Where have all the real men gone?’ but that was being asked in ancient Greece too.
25 FUBAR, slang acronym of military origins, Fucked Up Beyond All Recognition.
26 On July the 9th 1985, Ronald Reagan, the then president of the US, in a speech to the American Bar Association after the TWA Flight 847 hijacking on June the 14th of that year said, ‘And we are especially not going to tolerate these attacks from outlaw states run by the strangest collection of misfits, Looney Tunes and squalid criminals since the advent of the Third Reich.’ The internet also quotes this as being said on the 8th of July.
27 Sir John Kevin Curtice FRSA FRSE FBA (born 10 December 1953) is a British political scientist who is currently professor of politics at the University of Strathclyde and senior research fellow at the National Centre for Social Research. He is particularly interested in electoral behaviour and researching political and social attitudes. He usually acts as an expert analyst of election results for the BBC as results come in over election nights.
28 The Conservative government had a spectacularly unimpressive performance, and their party went through five leaders in less than seven years. David Cameron resigned in 2016 because he’d pinned his career on staying in the EU, and Brexit saw him off. Theresa May resigned in 2019 because her party perceived her to be bending over backwards to appease the EU over the Brexit terms, and voted down all three of her negotiated solutions. Boris Johnson resigned in 2022 after being proven a liar which also cost him his seat as a member of parliament. Liz Truss became the shortest serving prime minister ever, forty-five days, due to her chancellor’s, Kwasi Kwarteng’s, disastrous budget. Rishi Sunak is perceived to be a hopeless leader who is achieving nothing and a lot of the electorate don’t like him because he is an Asian multi millionaire. His recent sacking of Home Secretary Suella Braverman may yet spell his doom. Watch this space.
29 The Dangerous Dogs Act 1991 is an act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom prohibiting or restricting certain types of dogs and codifying the criminal offence of allowing a dog of any breed to be dangerously out of control. After a series of eleven dog attacks in 1991, Home Secretary Kenneth Baker promised to rid the country of the menace of these fighting dogs. In practice it changed nothing, for the same breeds of dogs were seen on the streets everywhere. Many deemed it to be a knee jerk reflex designed to win votes.
30 Mary Teresa Bojaxhiu (born Anjezë Gonxhe Bojaxhiu, Albanian: (IPA a'ɲɛzə·'ɡɔndʒɛ·bɔja'dʒi.u) 26th of August 1910 – 5th September 1997), better known as Mother Teresa, was an Albanian-Indian Catholic nun and the founder of the Missionaries of Charity. Born in Skopje, then part of the Ottoman Empire, at the age of 18 she moved to Ireland and later to India, where she lived most of her life. On the 4th of September 2016, she was canonised by the Catholic Church as Saint Teresa of Calcutta.
31 The 1981 Brixton riot, or Brixton uprising, was a series of clashes between mainly black youths and the Metropolitan Police in Brixton , London, between 10 and 12 April 1981. It resulted from racist discrimination against the black community by the mainly white police, especially the police's increased use of stop and search in the area, and ongoing tensions resulting from the deaths of 13 black teenagers and young adults in the suspicious New Cross house fire that January. The main riot on 11 April, dubbed Bloody Saturday by Time magazine, resulted in 279 injuries to police and 45 injuries to members of the public. Over a hundred vehicles were burned, including 56 police vehicles. About 150 buildings were damaged, thirty of which were burnt out, and many shops were looted. There were 82 arrests. Reports suggested that up to 5,000 people were involved. The Brixton riot was followed by similar riots in July in many other English cities and towns. The Thatcher government commissioned an inquiry, which resulted in the Scarman Report.
32 Toxteth riots of July 1981 were a civil disturbance in Toxteth inner city Liverpool, which arose in part from long standing tensions between the local police and the black community. They followed the Brixton riot earlier that year and were part of the 1981 England riots.
33 BBC, British Broadcasting Corporation, Britain’s state funded broadcaster.
34 A reference to the expression, ‘You can’t make an omelette without cracking eggs’, which is an elliptical way of saying to fix the matter at hand, ‘to make an omelette’, one has to crack eggs, ‘suffer the pain required’.
35 A bog body is a human cadaver that has been naturally mummified in a peat bog. Such bodies, sometimes known as bog people, are both geographically and chronologically widespread, having been dated to between 8000 BCE and the Second World War.
36 GPS. The Global Positioning System is a satellite based radio navigation system.
37 TA, the Territorial Army, currently called the Army Reserve is the active duty volunteer reserve force of the British Army. It is separate from the Regular Reserve whose members are ex Regular personnel who retain a statutory liability for service. The Army Reserve was known as the Territorial Force from 1908 to 1921, the Territorial Army (TA) from 1921 to 1967, the Territorial and Army Volunteer Reserve (TAVR) from 1967 to 1979, and again the Territorial Army (TA) from 1979 to 2014.
38 Dominoes sets are common in sets of 28 going up to double six, 55 going up to double nine and 91 going up to double twelve.
39 Ower lang, dialectal over long.
40 The Rise is the granite hill that prevents the flood waters from escaping. It is about eight miles from Bearthwaite village and a mile from the main road.
41 A lonning is a Cumbrian word for a lane. Bearthwaite lonning is the not quite nine miles long single track, with passing places, unmetalled lane that connects Bearthwaite with the main road. Often it is flooded for virtually its entire length up to eight feet deep.
42 The fly in the ointment, is an idiomatic expression for a drawback, especially one that was not at first apparent. See the bible Ecclesiastes 10:1 for the origin of the expression. The new international version gives, ‘As dead flies give perfume a bad smell, so a little folly outweighs wisdom and honour.’
43 See GOM 48.
44 Two two rifle or twenty-two rifle, often referred to as a .22 rifle, is a firearm that is designed to fire 0.22 inch [5.588mm] calibre bullets. These rifles are generally used for small game hunting, target shooting, and plinking [shooting for fun] due to their relatively low recoil and noise, as well as the affordability of the ammunition. They come in various designs including semi-automatic, bolt-action, pump-action, and lever-action. Widely advertised as a gun of choice for children in the US like all firearms they are tightly regulated in most European countries. They are still used by various military forces around the world for training soldiers to shoot. In the UK civilians are prohibited from owning or using hand guns.
45 CCF, the Combined Cadet Force is a youth organisation in the UK, sponsored by the Ministry of Defence, which operates in schools. It is sub divided into Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Army and Royal Air Force sections.
46 British public schools, are outside the state sector, fee paying, exclusive and expensive. The usage is old, because when it originated the children of the upper class were educated privately at home by governesses and tutors. As a result of the emergence during the industrial revolution of a wealthy middle classes who wished education for their sons public schools came into existence. They were public in the sense that they were open to the sons of anyone who could afford the fees. They later became the elitist institutions they are today.
47 A state school in the UK is a free school provided by the state, in US terminology it is a public school.
48 See GOM 24.
49 IDF, Israeli Defence Forces.
50 Series 2B forward control Landrovers were manufactured between 1966 and 1972.
51 The 6.2 litre Detroit Diesel was a collaboration between General Motors and Detroit Diesel. It was available from 1982 to 2002. The 6.5 litre version was available from 1992 to 2002.
52 Wrinkles, tips, tricks, in this case survival mechanisms.
53 See GOM 02 & GOM 12.
54 See GOM 35.
55 Thermos LLC is a US company that manufactures vacuum beverage containers as well as other insulated food containers. The word thermos has become a term used generically for vacuum flasks regardless of the manufacturer. A Limited Liability Company (LLC) is a US corporate structure that protects its owners from being personally pursued for repayment of the company’s debts or liabilities.
56 The change, euphemism for menopause.
57 STDs, Sexually Transmitted Diseases.
58 The border reivers were raiders along the Anglo Scottish border from the late 13th century to the beginning of the 17th century. They included both Scottish and English people, and they raided the entire border country without regard to their victims’ nationality. The 74 family names in surviving documents about the Border Reivers are, Archbold, Armstrong, Beattie, Bell, Burns, Carleton, Carlisle, Carnaby, Carrs, Carruthers, Chamberlain, Charlton, Charleton, Collingwood, Crisp, Croser, Crozier, Cuthbert, Dacre, Davison, Dixon, Dodd, Douglas, Dunne, Elliot, Fenwick, Forster, also Foster, Graham, Gray, Hall, Hedley, Henderson, Heron, Hetherington, Hume, Irvine, Irving, Johnstone, also Johnson, Kerr, Laidlaw, Little, Lowther, Maxwell, Milburn, Musgrove, Nixon, Noble, Ogle, Oliver, Potts, Pringle, Radcliffe, Reade, Ridley, Robson, Routledge, Rutherford, Salkeld, Scott, Selby, Shaftoe, Simpson, Storey, Tailor, Tait, Taylor, Trotter, Turnbull, Wake, Watson, Wilson, Woodrington, Yarrow, Young.
59 In the early hours of 13 February 1692, Scottish government soldiers under the command of Captain Robert Campbell of Glenlyon fell upon their hosts, the Macdonalds of Glencoe. In a cold blooded breach of highland hospitality, 38 Macdonalds were killed in what became known as the Massacre of Glencoe. It is still a subject of much emotion.
60 Shaping myself, pulling myself together, getting a move on, stop procrastinating. An unusual usage for it’s normally an expression used by and applied to men.
61 In one’s birthday suit, common English expression meaning naked, as in one’s appearance at birth.
Comments
Preparing for the apocalypse...
Personally I have problems with Rishi Sunak which go beyond his being a billionaire. His open sneering and mockery of our little demographic from his platform at the last party conference has made this election a matter of "anyone but Sunak". Suella Braverman had a go at us as well. I think it's a bit hypocritical of the children of immigrants to think that a bit of bigotry from them against trans people is OK - I think it is a bad look and has set my vote in stone.
What is the matter with us? Last time we had a straight choice between Corbyn and Boris. Need I say more?
My school was a state grammar with CCF and a .22 range. They had quite a lot more than just .22 in the armoury, although that at least has probably changed in the last 50 years - if they even still have CCF.
I would still love to live in Beartthwaite - if only it actually existed...
Alison
Sorry, But I Need to Say This...
OK, maybe I didn't. I've taken it all down.
But "existential problems" are fundamental ones that either threaten the organization or nation's very existence, or are inherent in the system. Other problems aren't non-existent; but they're not fundamental, and can conceivably be solved without threatening the status quo. The word makes an important distinction; it's not just an empty adjective.
Eric
existential
Alf is not the kind of person who would appreciate the distinction. He, like a lot of my characters, is a likeable old man probably because of his flaws rather than in spite of them.
Regards,
Eolwaen
Eolwaen
My brain is getting a good shape up
trying to keep up with all this information (be it fact or fiction matters nowt). Thank you for continuing this entertaining series.
Another super visit to Bearthwaite.
But this time they go into Survivalist mode to protect the village folk and assets along with their way of life!
Your research never ceases to amaze me Eolwaen, Thank you for your superb narrating of the GOMTs.
Brit