A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 57 A Baby Spoon and Pusher
Simon’s sisters Maya, Summer, and especially Evie were eagerly awaiting his return from Newcastle university, where he was reading pharmacy. In the eyes and minds of outsiders he would be returning home for the Christmas holidays. In the eyes and minds of Bearthwaite folk he would be returning for the mid winter solstice celebrations, the Bearthwaite new year that celebrated the turning of the year after which the days drew out and it would be time to look forward to all good things that the extra light and warmth promised. It was the harbinger of joy. The recently created siblings had all had extremely difficult lives before Bearthwaite had sought them out and taken them in, and as a result the lasses had become Bearthwaite women rapidly. Maya who grew exotic botanicals for the pop makers and the distillers with Johnto and Brigitte had said, “I never really liked wearing jeans anyway. The truth is they are just working men’s clothing, scruff kit. And trainers, no matter how much idiots out there are prepared to pay for them are just footwear to exercise and do sport in, which is the same as saying getting sweaty and minging(1) in.
“I may be working as a gardener, but I’m no bloke, so I ain’t wearing jeans or any other kind of trousers and it’s far safer wearing proper boots at work. If I’m not working I want to wear shoes, and everything else, that look feminine, and that doesn’t include trainers.” The sisters had all found romantic interests with Bearthwaite men for themselves easily enough, but like their mum they considered it was an auspicious time to enable their brother to share such good fortune as they enjoyed. It hadn’t taken their discreet enquiries long to discover a likely candidate, Abigail. It took them longer to meet her, for, despite her age, twenty year old Abigail was a high ranking ranger who spent most of her time up on the fell tops. She was clever, a superb shot and a well thought of member of the TA by the army at Warcop when she trained there. She was also well thought of by the rangers who were under her command, many of who were over twice her age. Too, she was also well thought of and liked by Bearthwaite children, and, despite her lean and extremely fit body, was pretty, neither of which did her any disservice in the eyes of Simon’s sisters.
All three women had been given a thorough medical examination by Dr Abbey Cartwright on their arrival at Bearthwaite. After hearing their tales she had treated them for the gamut of STDs at their first appointments and sent blood and swabs off to the local pathology laboratory at the Cumberland Infirmary in Carlisle. When the results came back she’d said it was as well they had been treated at the first opportunity rather than waiting for the test results. Abbey gave them new prescriptions and sent off further blood and swabs. The three had looked a lot better after a few days of eating and sleeping properly and Abbey had said she’d let them know about the latest test results as soon as she received them. She’d also cautioned them that the chlamydia, which they’d all been treated for, could have negative effects on their ability to conceive. It took a few weeks but eventually Abbey gave all three women, now sisters, a clean bill of health. None of them regarded that as a licence to indulge in sex. Sex was not something any of them had ever enjoyed. It had always been brutal and forced upon them, initially by family members and then after they’d left home by others on the streets or those who’d taken them home to abuse in return for food, warmth and regular, often viciously, poor treatment.
The nightmare existences that the young women had suffered for their entire lives were beginning to fade. Evie and Summer like their sister twenty year old Maya had lived with daily rape and physical violence from their male relatives all their lives, and even when they had left for a life on the streets trading sex for food had been their only way of avoiding starvation, and usually it had been violent sex. They had all shared their experiences and Maya had said, “Sex wasn’t so bad, but I never understood why they had to hurt me. Sex for the price of a meal seemed a fair exchange, but beating me up was unnecessary. I’d willingly have let them do it. I can’t say I ever enjoyed it even at best, but it was the beatings and the verbal abuse I hated. I certainly never saw myself as a whore nor any of the other things those men called me. I just wanted to eat. I hated being hungry even more than I hated being cold. The worst abuse was the dirty things those men made me say, admitting to being a disgusting bitch that enjoyed the despicable things they did to me, and making me beg for them to do it to me.”
Evie had said, “It was never about the sex, Maya. It was about the power that those pathetic nonentities could exert over us, as if that somehow made them better than us, but we always knew that we were far better human beings than they were. It was all rape whether we acquiesced and didn’t put up a struggle or not, for if we’d had a decent life we’d never have offered, nor indeed had anything to do with men like them, and think on being raped to avoid starving does not make us whores. God knows what kind of a life any of those pathetic inadequates had, but for sure they didn’t have any kind of a decent family life. At best they were living double lifes with a wife and possibly children at home who had no idea of what her husband and their father truly was.” Summer had nodded in agreement, and for the first time in her life Maya understood those men hadn’t taken anything that mattered to her and she finally understood what another woman she’d met on the streets had meant when she’d told her that no one else can shame you. They can hurt you and they can abuse you, but only you can allow yourself to feel shame. Finally she knew that she had worth and was a decent human being. The self esteem of all three had soared as a result of sharing their lives.
Eventually twenty-eight year old Evie and Ash, a local man of twenty-five who worked as a forester with Edward, had met at a dance in the community hall. Nineteen year old Summer had known Olaf, who was twenty-two, from a many generations long Bearthwaite family and worked at the fish hatchery, since her arrival at Bearthwaite. They had been interested in each other but both were shy. Their friends, and especially their siblings, had forced the issue and after five minutes of acute embarrassment they had walked around the reservoir holding hands which had made a couple of them in the eyes of all Bearthwaite folk. Initially Evie and Summer had much to their surprise enjoyed their mild intimacies with Ash and Olaf and as their relationships deepened had begun to wonder about having sex. That was a shock to them both, for sex was something they associated with abuse and degradation, but Ash and Olaf were neither abusive nor intent on degrading them. Indeed they were respectful, caring and loving to a degree that the two sisters hadn’t even realised was possible. They discussed the matter with Maya who shrugged her shoulders and said, “It’s normal for couples, especially if they want children. In your shoes I’d want to try it and find out where it took me. I feel somewhat envious that I haven’t found anyone yet. We’ve all agreed that we have to move on from our pasts, so I suggest now you have an opportunity that you take it.” Within a few weeks Evie and Ash had been working on Evie’s first pregnancy as well as talking about adopting children rescued from the streets. Summer and Olaf had decided not to start a family till they’d had a year or so to enjoy their relationship. As Maya had watched her sisters enjoying their new lives she became increasingly dissatisfied with her own.”
Maya, like many young Bearthwaite adults, from time to time assisted the rangers on their forays into some of the towns and cities too in their search for homeless children. Thus far Maya had only assisted in places that had all been in what had been Cumbria, before the reorganisation that turned it into Cumberland and Westmorland with Furness. On one such expedition into Kendal they had found a group of belligerently unpleasant men who all looked to be in their middle or late twenties. However, Dean who looked to be younger than most of the men was neither belligerent nor unpleasant. When Maya and her companions had turned and started to walk away Dean had followed them and apologised for the others. It seemed he had only been with them for two days because they’d telt him they knew where to get some food, but he was planning on leaving them because they were stealing the food, and he didn’t wish to be involved. He said he’d been doing all right on his own by asking folk like shop keepers for food in return for work.
Arathane, one of Harwell’s senior rangers who spent a lot of his days seeking suitable homeless children and adults to become Bearthwaite folk was in charge and seeing the look on Maya’s face he’d said, “Okay, Son, I’ll tek a chance on you. You want to come with us for a warm home and a job?” The look on Dean’s face had been all the answer Arathane had needed. “We come from a spot called Bearthwaite. You ever heard of it?” When Dean shook his head Arathane concluded that Dean didn’t originate anywhere in Cumbria, and although he certainly didn’t sound like a southerner he definitely didn’t sound like an east coaster, possibly he was a Lancastrian(2) or maybe even a Cheshireman.(3) “I’m Arathane by the way. It’s a name made up by my mum for a story she was writing set on a Saxon world. Turns out it’s a kind of plastic too which as far as I’m aware the Saxons had no knowledge of. Mum and I were homeless once too. You know where we can find any more living rough? Especially kids?”
Dean had taken the group to places they would never have found even if given directions and three groups of children had returned to Bearthwaite with them. An all girl group of five between the ages of six and ten who had run away from a local authority orphanage a few days before, a group of seven older boys between the ages of nine and fourteen who said they been on the streets for going on a couple of months and a group of six older teens who were already three couples. They were between the ages of fifteen and nineteen. Two of the girls were pregnant which was why their parents had threwn them out onto the street. Their boyfriends’ parents had refused to help, so they joined them on the streets. ‘Decent Lads’ had been Arathane’s immediate thought. Both members of the third couple had run away from abusive parents and met on the streets. In the minibus on the journey home Maya and Dean had held hands. Arathane had not just done well for Bearthwaite, he’d done well for the rangers too, and had introduced Dean and the three older boys to Harwell who then had another four rangers to add to the growing Bearthwaite security force. With every addition to the rangers Harwell was becoming happier concerning the coming confrontations which whether they came to pass or no he was preparing for.
When Dean had been asked where he’d originated, he’d replied, “Warrington. Years ago it was in Lancashire, but when the boundaries changed in the seventies it became part of Cheshire. Then Warrington new town was built to the north of the original town and so many Scousers(4) moved in it became a suburb of Liverpool complete with the thieving Scouser mentality and the accent. I took to the streets because I was accused of stealing from a place I’d never heard of and I certainly didn’t know where it was.”
Jimmy, one of the Bearthwaite solicitors, took up the matter on Dean’s behalf and the case was threwn out of court because the evidence offered by the police no more pointed the finger towards Dean than any of many thousands of shoppers on that particular Saturday. The magistrate warned the police that they had better do their homework better at the next case they put before him or he would be asking for an investigation into their procedures on the grounds that they were in the business of framing innocent citizens to improve their case clear up record.
Mid morning, Evie and her sisters had met Simon at Carlisle station and after the expected hugs and kisses, Simon had asked, “What’s going on, Evie? I can tell something’s in the wind, so give.”
Evie wasn’t really surprised that Simon could sense something out of the ordinary, though Maya and Summer were, for she knew Simon was good at reading folk. “We have all found men and are going to get married in the summer when the weather is better so the parties can be outside. Yes all three of us, and it makes our lives a lot better. I’m possibly pregnant. We’ll know for certain in three weeks, but Ash is already looking for a home for us. You know what our lives were like before, Simon. Too, we know what yours was like before, and we want you to be happy, as happy as we now are, so we looked for a woman for you.” Sensing Simon stiffening she quickly added, “Please don’t be angry with us, Simon. You haven’t spent as much time at Bearthwaite as we have and we know this is what we should have done. Mum and Dad know all about it, and are okay about it. Dad said we mustn’t push, but we wouldn’t do that. We just want you to meet Abigail. We’ve talked to her about you and she said she’d meet you but wasn’t giving any promises about owt. She also added that if you and she did decide to pair up we’d better keep our damned noses out of what would then be your and her business and no bugger else’s. Her words not mine brother.”
“I’m beginning to like her already, Evie. Tell me about her in the car. I want to get home, and I’ve been missing Mum’s cooking something terrible whilst I’ve been away. Tell you, I can wield a pretty mean microwave and I’m as hot as mustard with ready meals, though with the chip [fries] shop barely a hundred and fifty metres from my digs I get to eat a more than a healthy amount of chips. Can any of you lot cook yet?” At that there loud objections to their brother’s accusations, though it was true that when he’d left for Newcastle none of the three were able to cook anything but the most basic of meals. When Simon saw the brand new looking, decades old Mercedes three hundred series car, he asked, “Where did you get the car? Whose is it?”
Evie replied, “It’s a Beebell car. I borrowed it. I’ll pay for the mileage later when I return the car by contacting the accountants that look after our salaries and the like. We don’t have a car any more because it’s not worth it. Even Dad said we can’t justify the cost when we can borrow one for the trivial price of the mileage whenever we need one. Bertie has a few staff who look after a fleet of them, including a few kids who clean and polish them inside and out, so they are always in perfect condition and none has ever had a break down in one. Mostly they’re big mercs(5) like this one. There’re over a hundred of them and they keep buying up any that they find for either fettling or spares. They don’t mind how far they have to go to fetch one. I know they’ve been as far as Devon, Kent and way up into the highlands and they fetch them from the continent too. They’ve even fetched ones that won’t run back on lorries. They all run on vegetable oil these days, though they will run on diesel, but it’s way more expensive because we grow all our own oil seed rape for the boffins to turn into fuel.”
“Okay, that makes sense. Now you can tell me some more about these new brothers I’m acquiring as well as Abigail.” The journey home seemed to pass by in a flash and Summer texted home as soon as they’d turned onto the Bearthwaite Lonning. Yvonne and Eamonn were outside the house waiting as the car pulled up. After soundly hugging and kissing her son, Yvonne allowed Eamonn the opportunity to hug Simon and shake Simon’s normal sized hand in the pair of shovels that were connected to the ends of his arms. Simon’s senses again twitching caused him to ask, “What’s going on, Mum?”
Eamon shrugged and said to his wife and then his son, “You can’t say I didn’t warn you, Love. It’s nowt to do with me, Son. Blame your mum and sisters.”
Yvonne blushed but admitted, “Your sisters telt me they would tell you about Abigail, so I invited her to have lunch with us. We’ll be eating at quarter to one. I’ve prepared venison goulash.”
Simon knew the venison goulash, a favourite meal of his, was a peace offering from his mum, so he just nodded and said, “Okay. I’ll put my stuff in my room. Then I’m going to talk to Harry about a new computer. I want one set up here all the time with a new database system I was given it by a friend at University who studies computing, but I want to be able to access it from my laptop when I’m at Newcastle. It will be able to keep track of everything that Lennox could every have to deal with. I don’t know how to set that up and Harry will know the best computer to buy for the task and how to make it all work.” At that Simon picked up a couple of bags to take to his room. Evie picked up the remaining two and followed him.
Eamonn looked at his wife and said quietly, “I reckon you got away with this stunt gey lightly, Love, and Evie will calm him down. But I wouldn’t try this sort of thing too often were I you.”
Summer said to Maya, “He’s changed hasn’t he. Grown up a lot. He isn’t the baby brother we kissed goodbye to ten weeks ago. He’s tougher, harder, and a lot more self assured. I think I like him a lot more for it. What do you think, Sis?”
“I think he’s a perfect match for Abigail, Sis, but I suggest we treat the pair of them with the respect they have a right to, or he’ll mek us pay for it and we won’t like it. We all know that he’s much cleverer than the three of us put together, and I for one really don’t want to upset him. I know he loves us and we love him, but even so there are limits it’s just not right to overstep. The lives we had before we came here helped us to become siblings and Mum and Dad helped us to make that as if we’d always been siblings, but he’s not only the only brother we’ve got he’s the only brother we’re ever going to have. So as I said treat him with the respect all adults have a right to or we’ll lose him.”
Eamonn nodded and said, “I reckon Maya hit that nail square on the head, and you’d do well to treat them that way too, Love. If you wish to keep his respect as well as his love that is. You two had better go and meet Abigail. Get her here a bit early so they can have a chat before lunch and then leave them alone. You too, Yvonne. You hear me? Leave them alone. If you don’t he may well just turn his back on her just because you pushed, or even leave home.” It was rare that Eamonn was so assertive. The two sisters had never heard him be so forceful with their mother, usually she was the one who in the vernacular wore the trousers, which expression was used in Bearthwaite despite women not wearing trousers there. That their dad had spoken like that to their mum and she clearly accepted his authority in the matter gave them a view of an aspect of their parents’ marriage that they had not been aware existed. Clearly, they later explained to Evie, there was a lot more to their easy going father than they had realised.
The pre lunch chat as far as any of the family were aware went well and lunch was an enjoyable affair for all. After lunch Simon announced, “Despite the cold it’s flat calm out there, so we’re going to Abigail’s spot for her to change into some outdoor clothes, so we can take a walk up to the foot of the force at the valley head. We’ll be having dinner at the Granary and going for a drink after that at the Dragon. I’m going to change.” As he left he indicated to Abigail to follow him.
Yvonne was about to remonstrate with them, but Eamonn shushed her and said after the couple went to Simon’s room, “You started this by pushing the lasses into finding him a lass. Now it’s time to pay the bill, Love. He decided to eat elsewhere this evening and took Abigail with him to his room whilst he changed deliberately to provoke you because he knew not even Evie would have done this without you in the background somewhere. I suggest you leave well alone or like I said he’ll maybe leave home for good.”
As Abigail and Simon left he said “We’ll see you later.” Abigail held her hand out and they left holding hands. Simon and Abigail did exactly what he’d telt his mother they would and both had a thoroughly enjoyable time. Before dinner they’d returned to Abigail’s flat and changed for dinner. Simon borrowed some of Glen’s clothes. Glen, Abigail’s brother, only stayed with her from time to time. He was married and lived most of the time over the border in Sterling with his wife and young family. He drove a large delivery van for a mail order company and it was useful to be able to stay overnight with his sister occasionally. They were close and enjoyed the sporadic contact.
After dinner over their coffee Abigail asked, “I’d like it if you stayed with me the night. You okay with that or will it cause too much of an issue with your mum?”
“Mum, has to realise that yes I love her, but she doesn’t have the right to control me or dictate how I live my life. She put me back together after I just about lost myself, and you possibly can’t understand how much that means to me. Evie said my sisters brought you and me together, but that will only be true so far. I’m closer to Evie than to Maya and Summer who have become almost like twins, but not even Evie would have done this without Mum telling her to. I reckon Dad will be giving her a bollocking(6) for this. He’s a lot tougher and a much stronger character than he appears. I reckon it’s because he’s so tough and confident within himself that he doesn’t care that everyone thinks Mum rules the roost. I wish I had a fraction of his character. I asked you to go with me to my room just to upset Mum, and I could see that it did, and it was only Dad that stopped her from mekin a scene and having a major row with me. To answer your question. Yes, I’d like to stay with you tonight and it will cause a hell of an issue with Mum, but that’s okay because I’ll not argue with her about it. If it’s okay with you I’ll just ask her if she wants me to move out from home and in with you. What we do is our business and as such it’s private. You okay with all that?”
“I certainly am, and I reckon you are your dad’s son as regards toughness and self confidence. You may not be the man he is yet, but I reckon that’s just a matter of time. You’re certainly no wimp and it’s no sign of a lack of character to love your mum even when reasonably putting her in her place. However, my bed is only a three-quarter. It’ll do us tonight, but my bedroom is big enough for a double, so I’ll have that sorted out tomorrow. The furniture folk that work in the Old Bobbin Mill can take the three-quarter away when they deliver the double and the same with the mattresses. The mattresses are based on some kind of central spring system which is reusable. They’ll take my old three quarter away, strip the fabric and padding away which will go to the allotments for compost and re pad and cover it for storage till someone else requires it. I don’t know where the fabric comes from but the padding is made from plants of some sort that are grown here for the mattress and the furniture makers. The new one will have had the same treatment. Dad is an allotmenteer, he telt me that. You’re home till when? Middle of January?” Simon nodded. “I’ll have to do some patrolling up on the tops before then. A ten day circular round the valley and a three day stint over on the far side of Darkfell is what I’m scheduled to do. I could do a swap, but I don’t want to ask because most of the rangers who could swap have kids. It’s a bad time of year to be working away and not seeing your kids.
“Would you like to come with us? It’s moderately tough terrain we’ll be covering in this weather, but nothing you couldn’t manage relatively easily if we get you a decent pair of boots and some suitable clothing. We all wear genuine furs that Sasha imports from Russia somewhere. We’ll be travelling much more slowly that usual, so as to miss nowt amiss with the fencing before any really bad weather arrives, by which I mean a heavy snowfall. That tends to stick to the fences and turn them into sails that catch all the wind. If owt is up with the fence post braces the wind can blow long stretches of the fencing flat, so mostly we’ll be checking the braces are okay. There’s no chance of anything that could potentially involve violence happening in weather this cold which is why I asked if you’d like to accompany us. When the weather warms up a bit there’s a possibility that some of the abusively violent men that our new women and their kids left may come wishing to exact some sort of vengeance. Why they think it’s our fault that their families preferred to live in refuges for battered wives and their kids and then here when they were offered the opportunity rather than be beaten by them I have no idea. It’s entirely possible if not probable that they will come in large numbers and be armed. We have heard rumours to that effect from several sources in several cities. I wouldn’t suggest you accompany us in better weather till those threats are either over or have been neutralised in one way or another because that could get nasty and you’re not trained to deal with situations like that.”
“Aye. I’d like to go with you. But as to expecting violence. Are you being serious? What do you reckon will happen if those sort of folk try sneaking in?”
“Certainly I’m being serious. As to what will happen, if they approach on the lonning they’ll regret it for a very long time because the stuff they’ll be flushed away with by the water cannons will give them serious skin problems. We certainly won’t kill them, but it’s entirely possible they’ll kill themselves from hypothermia if they try coming over the tops. It’s happened before. Two men were found dead from exposure up on the tops a few winters back.(7) They were armed and it seemed they were anti veal raisers. God alone knows what they planned on doing, but that was not long after there was an article in the media about Elleanor Peabody raising veal. Stupid really because if she hadn’t raised them for veal they’d have been tapped on the head with a hammer at birth. Even when the weather is balmy down at not much more than sea level it can be lethal at not even a thousand feet. Above that unless you know what you are doing and are dressed and equipped for up there it’s a potential death sentence just to be there, so may be they’ll end up wishing we had killed them. Of course if that happens and we are aware of them up there we’ll just leave them to get on with dying in private.
“Even in this extreme cold the marshes aren’t safe to cross because the water will still be there. Whatever is in it drops its freezing temperature considerably and the decomposing vegetation provides warmth from underneath in the same way that a compost heap heats up. There will be a solid crust but it won’t be one big piece, it’ll be lots of smaller pieces with barely frozen slushy liquid swamp between them and that’s every bit as dangerous as in warm weather. Coming in down the Flat Top Fell side of the lonning is impossible due the wide belt of giant hogweed, the blackthorn and the other nasty plants on the far side of the beck. Coming in down the Needles Fell side of the lonning is deadly due to the unstable clay which buried and killed a couple of invaders intent on kidnapping a pair of little lasses a few years ago. Any invader that we have to deal with will survive, but no Muslim man will wish to return knowing if he does and we catch him a second time, and we’ll mark him such that we’ll know it’s a second offence, folk with no recognisable faces will wether him, and it’s easy enough to do in a matter of seconds.”
“Wether him?”
“It’s the process whereby a ram is turned into a wether by riving the beans out of him. Castration.”
“Christ! You’d actually do that yourself?”
“Well, I’ve done it to hundreds if not thousands of ram lambs, and I had no reason to dislike any of them personally. Someone who was invading my home to hurt folk I like, or in a few cases folk I love? What do you think?”
“Christ! I was going to ask you if you fancied that drink at the Dragon, but after that I need the drink.”
“If it makes you feel any better about it, Simon. Some of us are making sure that it’s known in the areas where our new womenfolk came from that that is what will happen to invaders seeking to cause us trouble. Too, we shall mek it known that any we wether would have photos taken of them with an empty sack and their their balls on their belly to be made freely available around their home and on the internet. We suspect that will deter all but the most rabid of them. As for fancying that drink? That I do, in the lovers’ seats at the back of the bestside. That way every woman in Bearthwaite will know about us by lunchtime tomorrow and every man and child too by this time tomorrow. I’m warning you, Simon don’t you dare drink too much and ruin my anticipations.” At that they both laught. Simon paid the bill and they left for the Green Dragon where the text based gossip machine went into hyperdrive and the entirety of Bearthwaite women, men and children had the news on their phones within an hour, even if some didn’t bother reading their texts till after breakfast the following day.
In the dimly lit back of the bestside Abigail said, “I’d like you to know that I didn’t expect you to pay for dinner, Simon. I’m working and you’re not, so I’d have been happy to pay for us. Or even if it mattered to you to split the bill.”
Simon had kissed her and said, “Apart from it being a tradition, it wasn’t a huge amount of money. Maybe I’m being presumptuous, but I’m hoping, may be even presuming that you are of the same mind as myself in that it won’t be too long before there won’t be your money and my money, just our money.” Abigail took his right hand in both of hers and nodded. As she did Simon could see her eyes filling up, so he continued, “And then just to fulfil the obligations of tradition I can cheerfully pay the bills with money you earnt and none will be any the wiser. In the mean while I am being paid by Beebell for studying and extra for the time when I work with Lennox.”
As they closed upon each other to enjoy their newly found relationship Abigail asked, “Seriously you already thinking about a wedding?” Simon nodded. “When? How soon? I presume from that that long before you finish university is on your mind?” Simon nodded again. “Your sisters like a lot of others are all planning on summer weddings when the weather is nice so everyone can enjoy the parties. Summer said something about having a joint wedding with Maya. What do you think to having a joint wedding with Evie?”
“Cool. I could go for that, and Evie definitely will. If we tell Mum that’ll get her off my back and make Dad happy that he doesn’t have to keep riding shotgun on her. You had enough here and want to leave?”
“You just want to undress me and take me to bed don’t you?”
“Well I’m guilty as charged, but I can’t drink and I don’t want any more. To be honest, it’ll be a first time for me and I’m a bit nervous, so maybe I just want to get any embarrassment concerning poor performance over with. I certainly don’t want to be handicapped by drink as well as inexperience.”
“It’ll be my first time too, so if we make a muff of it(8) at least there are two of us to blame. Come on then. Let’s go.”
Abigail and Simon were not the most skilled lovers in the world, but at breakfast they decided that they definitely hadn’t made a muff of it and could only improve with the practice that they were looking forward to. After breakfast Abigail went to organise a set of furs for Simon and to see if Eric Cranston the shoe and boot maker had a few pairs of size eights that Simon could try on. Simon went to see what help he could offer Lennox over the holidays in the pharmacy where he assisted her till lunchtime. When the couple spoke to Evie about a joint wedding she was thrilled and promised to say nothing till they had telt their mum. The prospect of Simon and Evie’s weddings had ensured that Yvonne wasn’t in the least distressed by the prospect of Simon being away from home with Abigail on the fells for half his holiday break and spending most of the rest with Lennox. Simon’s sisters and mum went into paroxysms of emotion concerning wedding preparations which Abigail, never the most girlie of females, proposed to spend months avoiding becoming involved in. Eamonn had clapped Simon on the shoulder and said, “Thanks, Son.”
For weeks Simon had had uneasy and somewhat frightening dreams, but when he awoke he could never remember any part of them. It was several weeks later when he remembered the newspaper article he’d read about one Mohamed Malik, who he’d later discovered to have once been the fifty-odd year Islamic extremist who the then eighteen year old Yasmina’s family had arranged for her to marry as his second wife. Mohamed had awoken to the fiery pain in his groin to discover the crude stitches and super glue closing the wound where his scrotum used to be. He later discovered his scrotum complete with his testicles stapled to the outside of his front door. He committed suicide before an hour had passed. It seemed that Mohamed had sworn to recover Yasmina and torture before slowly slaughtering Ben Ellis her husband. The police had interviewed Yasmina and Ben, but neither had anything to say since neither had ever met nor in any way, either directly or indirectly, communicated with him.
No other resident of Bearthwaite had anything to add to what the police knew, for none had admitted to ever having heard of Mohamed Malik and his photograph meant nothing to any of them either. A few of the Bearthwaite residents said they had a vague memory of reading something about the incident in the papers or having heard it on the news, but without the police telling them they’d have forgotten all about it and certainly they couldn’t put a name to the victim. Vinny, one of the shepherds had pointed to a flock of some two hundred sheep and asked the police officers if they could tell any of them apart. The irritated police woman had replied tersely that obviously she couldn’t because they all looked the same. Vinny had in return said that they all looked completely different to him and he knew each and every one of them as an individual and even how they were related to each other. The other officer had asked what that had to do with the matter at hand to be told that, “There’s maybe a hunert wethers in that flock and I wethered every yan o ’em,(9) so doubtless if I’d wethered yon Paki I’d be able to call his picture to mind, but I can’t because all Pakis(10) look the same to me. I can tell a tup from a yow(11) and that’s it, so neither your photo nor the name you telt me means owt to me.”
When asked if that applied to all the Asian women and children who had moved to the valley recently too, Vinny had replied, “Don’t be daft. They’re Bearthwaite folk, not Pakis.” It was another know nowt and say nowt matter that caused entire conversations to take place as a result of no more than a few raised eyebrows, for Bearthwaite folk knew how to keeps their private thoughts private and their mouths tightly shut. However, it gave any number of the men whose wives had left them and ultimately made homes and new lives for themselves at Bearthwaite cause to reconsider whether it was worth trying to recover their ex womenfolk and children. Most concluded it wasn’t. Simon eventually came to understand the terrifying truth, or at least it was terrifying to him for a few weeks, that lay behind the statement that Bearthwaite folk looked after their own. What took him some months to come to terms with was that Abigail was part of that mechanism that looked after Bearthwaite folk and it was entirely possible that she had dealt with Mohamed, but that was something he would never ask about nor even put into words with any one ever. He’d become Bearthwaite folk. He’d finally realised that shared secrets aren’t secrets.
NCSG(12) had been contacted when the police, upon neighbours’ information, had entered a house in Levenshulme Manchester to find six seemingly abandoned very young children. Doctors said two were only three certainly under four, and another two appeared to be around eighteen months old, the youngest two were ten months old at most. All six girls were malnourished and evidence suggested they had been left within the last twenty-four hours. There were concerns that the police were looking at evidence concerning a baby trafficking ring that had cut and run due to fears of being caught. Days later the DNA analysis results would indicate the babies were all from eastern Europe and hence untraceable. Recognising the children were in need of immediate care, the chief pædiatrician had taken what was considered to be the unusual step of contacting NCSG directly instead of via Social Services. Her explanation was, “I considered NCSG to be far more likely to have lactating women on their books willing to take the babies immediately than Social Services would be. Too, NCSG’s reaction time to a crisis is nil because whoever you speak to on the phone is senior enough to make a decision right then and there, whereas whoever picks up the phone at Social Services is unlikely to even be a social worker and it can then take anything up to most of the day for Social Services to decide upon a course of action because a Children’s Services panel involving all the relevant bodies has to be convened to discuss the matter, and those babies needed breast milk and care as soon as possible.”
NCSG had taken the babies direct to Bearthwaite from Manchester Royal Infirmary, a distance of about a hundred and twenty miles, [200km] and made all the necessary phone calls on the way there. A friendly London judge was now expecting six adoption applications complete with freshly minted names to which she had said, “Even if the police do manage to discover who the children are I regard new names as wise for the pro tempore protection of the girls. I’ll not grant the adoptions till the police have discovered what they can and that includes the DNA research work. That will probably be in about four weeks.” Susanna the senior Bearthwaite midwife had assured the NCSG case workers involved that all would be in place to nurse and feed the children the moment they arrived. Which to the surprise of none who worked for NCSG had been exactly what had happened. Annalísa had said she would be delighted to adopt all of the girls and would nurse all four of the younger babies. Susanna the midwife had organised the wherewithal to enable Annalísa to do so, and Julia and Frances said till her milk came in they would assist.
However, even the older two children were in serious need of the comfort of the breast from time to time and when that was the case if they saw one or more of the others being nursed the noise went up to unacceptable levels, so Annalísa had a major task in front of her, but half a dozen local, nursing women stepped up to help. The NCSG case workers reported back to the pædiatrician who had initially contacted them as to what had happened. Her reaction was that she had made the right decision for all the right reasons. When she was told about the imminent adoption proceedings she said she was glad that the girls had been merely known as babies one through to six and that that was all that was on the paperwork at her end The only remaining link was the one to NCSG, but the judge had agreed that the files would be sealed. Social Services were irritated that they had been bypassed, but there was nothing they could do without looking foolish and small minded. It took three days before Annalísa’s milk came in. It took a fortnight more for her to be able to manage without help, but willing help was always available.
Even once Annalísa was able to nurse all six herself she had many friends who would pop round to enjoy a slice of cake, a cup of tea, gossip and a hungry baby at their breast, but that was just how life was for Bearthwaite mums. In conversation with Adalheidis Annalísa had said, “NCSG telt us that we would be unlikely to find out owt about the girls, so we’d be best giving them new names to go with their new identities on their adoption certificates which will be sealed. Bruce suggested that, despite the DNA tests shewing that none of them are related to any of the others, we regard them as a three pairs of twins with names that suggest those relationships to avoid outsiders asking questions we shan’t wish to answer, which I thought was a good idea. He also suggested we put Sǫgur(13) and Skáld(14) down as being born on the winter solstice, they’re the oldest two, Fjord(15) and Fjäll(16) as being born eighteen months later on the summer solstice, they’re the middle two, and Yrsa(17) and Ylva,(18) the babies, as being born on the following vernal equinox which more or less matches what little age information we have. So that’s what NCSG put on the adoption certificates. Coping is just a matter of organisation really. Unfortunately I wasn’t the most organised of folk till I had to be. That’s one thing babies do to you. They force you to become organised because if you don’t they make your life hell.
“Most of the time Sǫgur and Skáld really enjoy solid food, and they’ll eat virtually anything they can grab a hold of, sausages are favourites, boiled carrots and fish fingers and chips [US fries] too. I cut the crispy bits off the ends of chips. I’m getting really creative with toddler hand food these days and I’m planning on trying them with chicken pieces soon with a view to moving them on to drum sticks eventually. Puddings are a bit more problematic, but cut pieces of fruit or half a banana each keep them occupied quietly. Melon and peaches are favourites at the moment, even if they do tend to be a bit messy. Mind that’s no where near as messy as allowing them to try using a spoon. Porridge at breakfast time is a nightmare, but they love it and insist on using a spoon, so it has to be done. Mostly they only want nursed just before bed time. Thank goodness they sleep right through regardless of what the others are doing. Fjord and Fjäll are getting there feeding themselves some of the time, but mostly they want to be fed or to nurse. Feeding them is easy enough now Christine has started producing jars of baby food, so unlike mums not so long back I don’t have to live with a blender on the table.
“If I seat them in their highchairs one on either side of me life is relatively easy with a baby spoon in one hand and a pusher(19) in the other. Yrsa and Ylva seem to be settling down and I usually only need to nurse them once during the night now, so I’m getting enough sleep now which is a considerable improvement. I thought my boobs would become huge nursing them all, but thankfully I’ve only gone up a couple of cup sizes. Mind if I don’t nurse regularly I feel like I’m going to explode. It’s woken me up in the middle of the night more than a few times. Mercifully Bruce is a master mechanic with a pair of pumps and Susanne is grateful for the milk because there are a couple of younger mums who just can’t keep their babies going. It’s all working out rather well really. Bruce sent all the names and birth details off to NCSG the other day and they are going to deal with the judge and the Family Records authorities for us. We decided that since we wanted all Nordic names even if not all of them are Viking names we’d give them a matronymic rather than a surname. So they are all Önnulísudóttírs.”
“What‽ How is that a matronymic from Annalísa?”
“I’m not sure, but though Annalísa had been used for a long time in at least a dozen variants it was only officially accepted as a legal Icelandic name in two thousand and five. By accepting just one of them the names committee effectively killed off all the others. Maybe they were irritated that they had to accept yet another change to the rules. Every Icelandic name has to have a genitive form so it can be used as a matronymic and a patronymic, so maybe they were having a bad day and just made it up. It seems ridiculous, but many names are just as changed to create a genitive, with some names it’s just a changed or added letter or two, with some names there is no change. The fact is Önnulísu is the legally defined genitive of Annalísa, and Önnulísudóttír, Önnulísuson and Önnulísubur, are its derivatives. I haven’t even visited Iceland in the decades since I left. I’ve never bothered to keep in contact with family or any else there and other than what’s in the media I have never kept up with what’s gone on there. I think deep down I knew when I left I was never going back, so I had no reason to. I only know what I do from the internet and the media. Originally I used the name Anneliese, but once Annalísa became official I sent my passport to the embassy who were more than happy to make me ‘official’ too. They were the folk who told me that the official genitive form of Annalísa was Önnulísu. As for officialdom here in the UK I just started using Annalísa and they followed suit without asking any questions because legally I am an Icelandic citizen and I reckon they just don’t care.”
“What’s a bur?”
“You’re only allowed to use that if you are officially registered as non binary. It means child of rather than daughter or son of. That’s a recent change too, as is girls using boys names and vice versa which used to be illegal. I know it all sounds crazy, but Icelandic law is no crazier than law anywhere else really. Completely changing the subject. You know, Adalheidis, it’s not so long ago that my life wasn’t really worth living. I owe a huge debt to Flat Top Fell.” Annalísa giggled and added, “And to SPM too. Do you think it would be petty of me to send them a thank you card?”
Adalheidis chuckled and replied, “Without doubt, but very satisfying. In your shoes I shouldn’t be able to resist it.”
Clarence, Gustav’s master brewer was chuckling in the taproom as he said, “Well, Lads, I never thought I’d see the day when we were now brewing the unbelievable quantities of ultra low alcohol content pops that we are. They’re all marketed as being based on ultra filtered water from The Bearthwaite Force, the waterfall at the head of the valley, which provides a mix of spring water and rainwater off the fells. The alcohol and the carbon dioxide gas are produced together by the yeast that brews the flat, botanical flavoured liquid into pop. The sugar we use is the syrup made here from the beet and when there is enough gas we stop the brewing process with Potassium meta bisulphite(20) and Potassium sorbate(21). It doesn’t take much carbon dioxide to gas up the pop which is why the alcohol content is so low, way below the threshold above which HMRC(22) demand that duty be paid. Many of the pops are flavoured using using locally grown botanicals, which eventually will include the recently acquired sassafras trees.
“The spearmint and coriander herb [US cilantro] is a volume seller as is the crab apple and peppermint, but a few require botanicals that don’t readily grow in a climate as cold as Bearthwaite’s, for they’re either tropical or semi tropical, though Johnto assisted by Maya and Brigitte is making inroads on that with his heated triple glazed hothouses which are protected from the wind by being sited inside a much larger unheated greenhouse. Their liquorice root plants are thriving even at this time of the year and in this rather extreme winter, as are their ginger tubers, lemon grass plants and the carob tree saplings. The carob trees are intended to produce our own carob powder, that’s like cocoa powder, for the kitchens, and they’re talking about making locust bean gum from the seeds too, but we fancy having a go at creating a carob pop. One of the kids said we could call it Popates of the Carob Bean. Elin reckoned she or the kids could design a label based on Pirates of the Caribbean without infringing any copyright.
“We haven’t had any product yet from any of the sub tropical plants, but maybe the year after next we shall, though the carob is said to tek seven years or so to fruit. We’re planning on new pops based on them all and have yet to find names for most of them. All suggestions will be gratefully received. Chance negotiated the exchange of moderate quantities of locally grown botanicals such as dried leaves, roots and berries of various species from the fells and the hedges for somewhat smaller quantities of the more expensive exotic botanicals required to produce some of the pops. Negotiating the deal had foundered a little towards the end, but Gustav facilitated its closure with a case of cask strength Cyanobacta, the Bearthwaite distilled spirit that is flavoured with botanicals derived from the toxic blue green alga bacteria that blooms from time to time on Bearthwaite Water. That’s the stuff in those bottles over there which I reckon we may as well break out into some glasses right now, Lads. The idea that their exceedingly potent liquor had done a deal for botanicals intended for virtually no alcohol pops amused Græme and Jean-Claude the still masters no end.
“The pop sold to the public, mostly visitors and local children, at Bearthwaite is sold in reusable glass bottles that are specially made here by Iðunn and her apprentices. They are a unique shape in the same way that the original old fashioned Coca Cola® bottles were, though they are nothing like Coke® bottles. The pop bottles are either served with a pair of straws made from bio digestible paper or with a glass. Having two straws is a major selling feature with children, and drinking pop from a glass with ice if anything is an even more attractive selling feature with their parents. I reckon it’s a nod in the direction of a more genteel age which costs them nothing, and they are after all relaxing on holiday when such things are appreciated. A modern twist has been provided by the glasses being the same shape as the lower portion of the bottles as though they had been cut from one of the bottles. Making glasses from the bottom of bottles is currently a popular DIY activity as demonstrated by the volume of Youtube content available explaining how to do it. As Veronica Peabody put it, ‘The trick to having a successful business in a spot that earns a significant proportion of it’s income from visitors,’ I’m not sure we can really call Bearthwaite a tourist resort, well not yet anyway, ‘is to sell what the visitors wish to buy presented in a fashion that appeals to them.’ I’d add an even better trick is to anticipate what they wish to buy before they realise it.”
Pete was telling the lads in the taproom about what he’d been through at the medical centre for treatment for his back. “Tell you, I was gey reluctant at first to allow Sun to stick needles in me, but the relief from that acupuncture treatment was so immediate and so total that I’ve been going back every few days. There’s no tablet nor drug neither that works that fast nor that well. Sun insisted that after the acupuncture sessions I had to see Kendra for some physio, and my back has been getting better though it’s been gey slow, but at least I know what to do for pain relief now. Tell you though it’s no fun being used as a pin cushion and then having your back walked on by a lass young enough to be your granddaughter who has no sympathy for your suffering and who has hands so strong that they mek an engineers vice look like it’s been moulded out of blancmange. Gladys laught at me and telt me that I well knew it was my own fault for having refused to accept my age and not waiting for Gustav to help me to move the barrels.
“I know that’s what did my back in, but that does not mean I want to be telt that does it? Then she said like all men I was being a baby and I should be grateful for Sun and Kendra, for before then it would have to have been horse liniment,(23) and if I imagined for a second she would have allowed me in her bed stinking of liniment I’d got another thing coming. And for some peculiar reason that totally escapes me women are referred to as the gentler sex. God alone knows why, and whoever dreamt that up was no bloke that’s for sure. Tell you, Lads, it’s just a bloody myth! All that did was remind me of a rhyme my sisters used to chant when they were wee lasses playing two ball(24) up agin(25) the house gable wall. ‘Here come comes the nurse with a red hot poultice, Slaps it on and takes no notice, Ow said the patient that’s too hot, No said the nurse I’m sure it’s not.’ Then they’d shriek wi’ laughter and recite another rhyme or that one all over again. Anyway my backs fixed now, but I’m favvouring(26) it a bit because I don’t want to have to go through all that again.”
Alf laughed and said, “Some of those songs and rhymes must go back centuries. I was watching and listening to some little lasses skipping the other day after they’d come down to the workshops for a new piece of skipping rope. Twenty-four foot of it, so they could have one of ’em on each end mekin it rotate wi several of ’em jumping the rope at the same time. They were chanting those rhymes that they do the actions to which were exactly the same as what my sisters chanted and did when we were kids.”
“How do you mean, Alf?”
“I only mind a few of ’em, John, but there must be dozens if not hundreds of skipping rhymes. There’s a lot of chanting and repetition involved, and the actions get more difficult to do as the game progresses. Sausage in the pan, sausage in the pan, turn it over, turn it over is one where they mimic a lass frying sausages and turning ’em over wi’ a spatula. Paper on the floor, paper on the floor, pick it up, pick it up where they touch the ground when they chant pick it up. Cats on the wall, cats on the wall, shoo them off, shoo them off they pretend to be shooing the cats away with their arm motions. Jelly on a plate, jelly on a plate, wibble wobble, wibble wobble and they shake their bodies like a jelly. The whole idea is that the actions mek it harder to focus on the skipping and if they mess it up they stand out. The winner is the last one standing when the actions get more complicated. I know because Ellen, my other my elder cousins and their friends used to tie one end of the rope to owt convenient and mek me turn the rope from the other end for ’em when there weren’t enough lasses around. Most of those rhymes ’ll probably be around in centuries. Though there are new ones too. Message on the phone, message on the phone, text her back, text her back can’t a bin around ower lang can it?”
“Talking on women being the gentler sex or at least on the same theme,” said Frank, a retired farm worker, and shepherd who was Aggie’s auld man as she put it. “I read somewhere that God was definitely a lass. The bloke who wrote the article based his opinion on the fact that if God a bin a bloke there would a bin no way we’d have had our bollocks on the outside just handy for some other bugger’s boot or knee. He reckoned only a lass would have done owt so spiteful.” Most of the men present had heard at least one version of the anecdote before, but it was still funny and the roars of laughter took sufficient time to fade for several bottles of chemic to be emptied before they did.
Stan asked, “So other than Pete’s complaints, how’s life treating you these days, Sun?”
“I’m busy, Stan. I’d no idea being a dad was so demanding. I’m not complaining because Natasha, Tasha as she prefers to be called, has made Elin’s life so much better. Watching and listening to them you’d never suspect they weren’t biological mother and daughter. I thought she was content enough before, but now she’s actually happy and I’m really grateful for that. It makes my life a lot better too.”
Pete winked at Sun and said, “I know what you mean, Lad. It should always be a bloke’s main objective to keep the missus happy, because like you said it makes our lives better. A lot better.”
There was a lock of chuckling around the room and Sun’s face was flushed, but he carried on. “What with Lennox, ably assisted by Simon when he’s not at University, taking over the medical supplies and all pharmacy matters, Mackenzie, Evelyn and Leo taking over virtually all foot care and Kendra dealing with muscular issues, the nursing staff and I could just about keep up with everything we ought to have been doing. Kendra’s looking for a couple of apprentices and we’ll fund the college courses as usual, so if any knows of any kids who may be interested let them know and tell Kendra please. Lennox is dealing with my drugs, the dental drugs, the chiropody drugs and all the veterinary drugs too along with all the other medical supplies. I don’t know how we all managed before. Morgana the receptionist, Thorbjörn Sveinsson’s wife, has started doing all Lenox’s administration as well as the medical centre’s which Murray says is a godsend when he’s preparing our claims for payment by the NHS, so things have been steadily improving for a while. But the biggest difference is due to having two of us now. Abbey is a damned good doctor and life at the medical centre for all of us has become if not easy at least manageable.
“We’ve decided to do away with the evening surgery which was seven till nine because hardly any one was using it. Pat or Harry will be putting a text round saying if it’s necessary to just give either of us a call and we’ll arrange something. Pat arranged it so if one of us switches our work phone off all calls are automatically sent to the other’s phone, and if by some rare chance neither of us are available the calls are transferred to one of the senior nurses which includes the senior midwives. The nursing staff do all the routine breast screening and smear test work, but I was anticipating that Abbey would take over all the gynae work and do the weekly gynae clinic once she arrived. However, the women wouldn’t hear of it. They don’t like change and said they were used to me and that was how it was going to stay. I always have a nurse or a female relative of the patient in with us sitting where they can’t see anything but can hear what’s going on when I do that kind of work, so it’s not really a problem. It’s sensible to have a chaperone because it protects both me and the patient, especially in our case from any malicious accusations of impropriety from outsiders. Abbey takes the diabetes clinic instead, although of course any woman who wished to see Abbey could make an appointment rather than just turning up to the Tuesday clinic with me, but there haven’t been any so far. Pat’s new appointments system has made life a lot easier too.”
“It’s been quite the month for children, especially babies hasn’t it? remarked Aggie reaching for her punch glass. “Harriet’s Solveig and Þórfríðr arrived with next to no notice at all at less than six weeks old and unregistered. How are you going to deal with that Harriet?”
Harriet smiled and replied, “I’m not. I’m leaving it to Gustav and Jimmy. Jimmy says he’ll write a detailed history of events with supporting evidence provided by NCSG and it’ll all eventually get sorted out. Even if the local registry folk do get upset they’ll probably have more sense than to try to prosecute us for failure to register the babies within the required six weeks. He reckons if they do try it he’ll get a nice compensation package for the girls to be given when they’re older.”
After returning from the kitchen to the bestside with a huge bowl of ginger bar snacks that she’d baked earlier, Aggie put the bowl on the bar and transferred some to a small, locally woven, reed basket to pass around before saying, “Auld Alan is gey proud of his recently acquired great great grandsons. They’re all eight and had been physically abused so badly they ran away and lived on the street in Lincoln. In this weather! They were lucky Pete’s mate Al found them and gave him a call. That’s Al Dacre as came from Penruddock years over. He and his wife, Fionulla as came from Limerick, are high up in rescuing, feeding and educating childer in third world countries these days. Trucking Trace went and fetched them up to the farm. One of them had been beat so hard his thigh bone was brock(27) and it had fused without being set. It had to be rebrock and then set properly under a general anæsthetic at Lancaster Royal. Murray is looking into their records with a view to mekin their adoption official.
“As all who know the lass would expect, Jym’s after blood, and doubtless she’ll get it, for she always does. A proper vampire she is when kids a bin(28) hurt.” Aggie saw some puzzled faces and explained further, “The boys are being adopted by Jym and Grant Peabody. Like all his family Grant is a farmer. Jym is his wife, her name is spelt with a why not an eye (a y not an i) and she’s a child abuse investigator for NCSG which despite being a charity is a major adoption agency that does as much work as Social Services and is a deal better thought of by folks in these parts. Auld Alan is about ninety-five or -six. He’s a proper case, but he’s a gey well respected man hereabouts. Mind I reckon any who reach that age have used up any patience for foolishness that they ever had years since. Him and Dad were in the same class at school, not that they ever learnt owt there. According to Mum they were a right pair of clowns, for ever in trouble and they only settled down when they got wed. Knowing Mum and Ɖelmarra as wed Auld Alan they doubtless had nay choice then.
“I was in the same class as Garette their eldest. She was her own lass even back in those days. I mind when she was maybe six she took on three nine year old lasses as was bullying the little kids. She gave ’em all a good hiding and was suspended from school for three days. Her dad didn’t allow her to go back till the head mistress came to the farm to ask for her. She always was clever and she’d missed nowt, she said her mum and dad had taught her at home. The three lasses’ dads had a go at Auld Allen in the Dragon and despite him only being half the size of any of ’em he’d had to be dragged off the last one by his mates before he killt him. Put all three into casualty [US ER] at Carlisle so he did, but farmers are all gey strang(29) due to the life they lead. There’s always bin a deal o’ talk about Garette because she had three bairns and never telt any who the dad or maybe dads were. If owt she’s a deal more eccentric than her dad, but I always got on well wi’ her, still do come to that.” As all the locals knew Garrete was her own woman, she’d never lived anywhere other than the family farm and had reared three highly successful children who still farmed and lived with their spouses and families at Wood End Farm too.
At the height of the controversy concerning her illegitimate children Auld Alan her father had merely said, “She’s my lass, the mother of my grandbairns. It’s no bugger else’s business who did or did not father her bairns. Garrete’s a Peabody same as all my other bairns and that means her bairns are too. I’d heard a whisper that some dirty bastards put about that I fathered her bairns. If that’s what they chose to think there’s nowt any can do to influence the opinions of filth like them, so there’s nay point even trying. Any roads, I’ll go with it because if it’s true it means those bairns are more Peabodys than any other alive at the moment, for they’d be Peabodys on both sides, my bairns as well as my grandbairns. So if I fathered them they are more in the direct line of inheritance than any other because I own Wood End and they’d be carrying three-quarters of my blood, not just a quarter. I’m grateful those dirty buggers not just said it but said it so it reached my ears because if they hadn’t it would never have occurred to me to write my will the way I did in order to protect them. It says that they get they same share that every other grandbairn does and their bairns the same as every other great grandbairn does. I’ve had my say and I suggest if you don’t want to fall out wi’ me you let the matter be.” Ɖelmarra when pressed had said she took exactly the same view as her husband.
Alice who kept the mill with her husband Phil said, “I was seriously shocked when I heard about Yasmina and Ben Ellis’ little girl. They adopted three siblings that had been rescued from some junkies who’d hurt and half starved them. At the moment as far as I’m aware the Social Workers and the police believe that the junkies are their parents. It seems likely, but possibly not because the kids didn’t seem sure. They’re awaiting the results of the DNA tests. At first the Social Workers thought they were three lads, but at the hospital the middle one turned out to be a lass that had been forced to be a lad and battered if she didn’t do as she was telt. Only five she is, poor mite. Went by the name of Kirk and she was dressed like a lad with a lad’s hair cut, but on meeting her Ben called her Katie and she was so happy at that that she cried, which tells you for sure that she’s a lass. Jimmy will be looking into all the kids’ backgrounds and sorting her name out legally as soon as the police finish investigating things. Happy as owt to be wearing a frock she is now, and chuffed to bits with Ellery’s hair extensions. She said they were like magic. Yasmina telt me she wants to wear a sari and gold jewellery just like her Mum for special dressed up occasions, proper sweet that is. I like the rest of us know that folk deep down know what they are, and Katie knows she is a little lass.”
“Aye,” said Aggie, “Sure it takes some, as Jane has always said it took her, a while to work it out, even in their own heads, but folk know, and it’s not up to any other to try to force the issue and certainly not to tell them any different. Yasmina had phoned Ellery concerning matters before she took Katie to the salon. Ellery had her distracted by having her nails done up proper, as a little lass like, wi’ sparkles and tiny kittens while they put the hair extensions in. She didn’t realise it was a mirror at first she was looking at, and when she realised the lass with the long hair was herself she cried she was so happy. I know all’s well as ends well, but no bairn should have to suffer that. It meks me mad enough to spit like a man mysel. Poor mite had been so badly down trodden that she thought the only difference between lads and lasses was the length of their hair and the clothes they wore. Seemingly she was proper confused by some of the lads in her class as had long hair. A half hour chat with her mum with a Youtube video for kids of her age shewing cartoons of undressed little lasses and lads and she understands properly now. Folk that do things far less wicked than that to bairns should be strung up. I’ll not repeat what Frank my auld man said he’d do to ’em, but he’s a retired shepherd and in his time he must a wethered(30) tens of thousands of ram lambs, though not usually at the neck like as he said would be appropriate.”
There were a number of outsider women who on seeing all the Bearthwaite women nodding in agreement with Aggie and Alice had realised that they’d implicitly stated the Bearthwaite stance on gender identity and much else. That tolerance gave an even larger number of them reasons to consider their own views, for that tolerance was costing Bearthwaite society nothing, and they could see that it made for a much more friction free society. A society that though disparaged by many in the county, for any number of alleged reasons, was at the same time envied for its recent prosperity and wellbeing which they now realised was all a part and parcel of its tolerance to all and a consequence of its attitudes as to how best to maintain social harmony in the interests of all. It was a sobering thought for many who realised they had been made aware of it as a result of Bearthwaite’s adoption and care of abused children from far away who had no legitimate nor moral claim, as most of the country would recognise it, to care from what had long been an economically poor, denigrated minority group of no significance. That the women of Bearthwaite considered what they had done to be nothing more than what was decent and appropriate, and indeed that they considered had they not done so it would have been a heinous act on their part was a shock that made them consider how low the society they belonged to had sunk. There were further major shocks to come for those outsider women within minutes rather than hours.
All the local women had heard about Annalísa and Bruce’s six little lasses who’d been abandoned in a house, though till Annalísa and the girls had arrived in the bestside in their carrycots with the assistance of Julia and Frances few had seen them. It was known that the police suspected baby dealers and traffickers were responsible and that they had abandoned the girls because they thought the police were on to them. The circulating tale was two were three years old, two about half that and the youngest were maybe nine or ten months old. The police were said to have taken the girls straight to the local hospital who rang NCSG. They rang NCSG not Social Services because Social Services were said to take forever to do anything and the senior pædiatrician wanted the babies to be breast fed, not just provided with breast milk, which she said she knew NCSG could organise immediately. NCSG took the children straight to Bearthwaite and rang Susanne the senior midwife on the way. Susanne had organised half a dozen nursing mums and Annalísa had taken her first tablets to bring her milk in an hour before the babies arrived. It was a typical example of Bearthwaite doing what was needed to be done.
Annalísa had been providing more details of what little was known about the lasses and how not knowing who they were wasn’t going to make any difference. Usually naming them would be problematic without a court order which usually took anything from six months to possibly three times that long. However, NCSG had asked the police to provide the judge with the case details from their point of view and it looked like everything would be dealt with by the end of the month. Annalísa was interrupted at that point when Yrsa and Ylva, the two youngest, made it clear that they required nursing. Annalísa was nursing them with some assistance when a Fjäll, one of the middle pair, started crying. Gladys said, “Pass her over to me, Someone. I’ve not long since nursed Clodagh, but I’ve plenty left. Annalísa is a bit busy at the moment.” Gladys looked at the other nursing mothers present and said, “Lasses, I suggest you ready yourselves, for doubtless the other three will demand fed in the next few minutes. Annalísa, Have I got Fjord or Fjäll?”
“Fjäll, Gladys, but you were right Fjord is yawning, though I doubt if Skáld and Sǫgur will stir for at least another hour maybe two. Then they’ll want fed solid food not to be nursed. Vincent’s thin, beef and tomato sausages are so good at pacifying them I boil them up by the dozen and keep some in the fridge. Half a sausage each reduces a pair of crying three year olds to a noise free zone instantly. Once I’ve settled the other four Skáld and Sǫgur will want nursed before their night time sleep. They don’t seem to be bothered if I’ve got next to nothing for them as long as they have ten to fifteen minutes of comfort. Then they’ll sleep right through till long after I’ve dealt with the others in the morning. It’s still not easy, but it’s nowhere near as chaotic as it was, and fortunately Bruce is a wonderful dad. He always helps me get organised in the morning before leaving for work. Mercifully all six are collected by staff from the mother and baby unit or the nursery staff at about ten. Then I go to work and spend my lunchtime nursing and gossiping with the other mums at the centre.
“After that I go back to work again and the girls are returned to me at home just after five. Bruce is home before six and helps me organise the girls’ evening activities. It’s relentless seven days a week, but at least it is doable. On my days off some of the nursing mums call round for a cup of tea, a snack, some gossip and to nurse one of them for me, and I am truly grateful. The younger four don’t care whose breast they’re nursing as long as they get fed, but the older two are only interested in mine which is okay because as I said they only want the comfort before bedtime.” For the women of Bearthwaite it was an exciting scenario, a consolidation and expression of the unique essence of their shared womanhood and motherhood which embodied their function as vital nurturers of the next generation, and there were many who were slightly envious of those who could assist. For the outsider women most felt privileged to be allowed to share the experience of the sorority that all women shared, but these days was rarely to be seen at work outside Bearthwaite. The few who were unsettled by it would be unlikely to return.
Ellen said in tones of disgust, “There’re folk out there who call Bearthwaite folk animals and interbreds, but the sort of wickedness that we’ve just been telt these bairns(31) went through could never have happened here. It never happened in the days when a many of the generations of our mothers and their mothers too going back who knows how many a generation, even with the help of their sore pressed and loving menfolk, didn’t know what they were going to feed their childer(32) at the next meal nor even in how many days that next meal would be, but they kept their families alive because they shared and helped each other out. Some of us well mind the tail end of those days. All mothers have always known they had to eat to nurse their babies, but in days gone by when they didn’t have enough to eat to have enough milk others, our sisters, kin and friends here, would nurse their babies when they had milk to spare. That has aways been the way of decent folk, especially decent womenfolk, everywhere.
“Decent folk share in times of hardship, that all may survive. We, Bearthwaite womenfolk, have never forgotten that, and it has always been our way, how we live, and most importantly why our babies have survived. But look at what is going on out there today. Even the women out there who nurse their babies, and there aren’t many now because mostly they think it’s so shameful they prefer to spend a fortune on formula milk that at best is inferior to mothers’ milk, think badly of us for nursing another woman’s baby. God alone knows there’s many a reason for the necessity of a lass nursing another’s baby, but what kind of a lass is it that would let a baby go hungry when she’s milk available? Not a lass acceptable to any of us as being a Bearthwaite lass that’s for certain. Our menfolk as grew vegetables and kept some small livestock, poultry and the like, always shared that all may at least eat something. My Alf and Jim his dad were known to us all as having prevented any number from dying of hunger. Our menfolk and the kids spent hours foraging from the hedges and collected berries, mushrooms, leaves, roots and wild seeds too, and they shared that we survived. Nowt but scum some of those folk out there. Aggie was right, it meks you want to spit like a man.”
“Aye, you’re right, Ellen. They claim they just don’t understand our ways, as if we’re in some way sub human and need to be studied by clever folk to be understood, but for sure we don’t understand their ways, and I for one don’t wish to, and I certainly don’t reckon that they count as clever folk. Like many of us, I’m a Bearthwaite lass descended from more generations of Bearthwaite women than any can count, but this very night there’re Bearthwaite lasses in here within a few feet of me who have been Bearthwaite lasses for less than a season who I’m proud to call sisters because they think no different from me regards nursing bairns. By the time they’ve lived here another year like the rest of us they’ll not be able to recall never mind count how many bairns they’ve nursed, and that is exactly as it should be.” After saying that Iðunn went to the bar to ladle another glass of brandy punch into her glass leaving her money on the bar and bringing another basket of ginger bar snacks to be passed around.
“Aye well there’re some gey odd happenings out there for sure,” said Abbey. “Arathane as is my old man strictly speaking is a member of the ranger security force, but he does a lot of looking for homeless kids in towns and cities all over Britain, Ireland too. It’s not that long since he took some two dozen or so of his rangers to Kendal which is not so far away and mostly you’d think the folk there would be sort of okay because it’s not as if they’re southerners. The first group they ran into were all blokes, all abusive pissheads in their twenties he reckoned. However, one of them, Dean, was a decent sort and Maya as was adopted as an adult by Yvonne and Eamonn took a shine to him. They’re an item now and Dean’s teken to rangering. Dean shewed them where there were others, kids mostly, and they brought back eighteen besides Dean. Five lasses between six and ten, seven lads between nine and fourteen and three couples in their teens. One lad and his lass had met on the street.
“The other two older lasses were expecting and their families had chucked them out which is a commonplace event out there even if it makes no sense to us. Their boyfriends’ families wouldn’t help, again something that makes no sense to us, so the lads left home to be with their lasses. Abandoning a daughter, or a son and his lass, because she’s going to give you a grandchild, just defies belief and meks nay sense at all does it? And that was in Kendal which is what? Nay mere than thirty forty mile away. Tell you, I reckon that’s what social media and the television has doen. They’ve brought that look after number one and the hell with the rest, just let them die mentality up from the south. The frightening thing is how fast and deep it took root up here. Still I reckon we’re fighting back and more folk are tekin heed of our ways of thinking. Just reading a newspaper or watching the news these days is enough to make you feel sickened by the callous behaviour of some folk. Folk who expect us to feed and house them. Short of saying let them die, which embarrasses me, I don’t have a clue how to reasonably react to those kinds of folk.”
Susanna the senior midwife said, “Lightening the tone a bit, I now have permission to announce that not only is Noëlle pregnant with twin lads, but so is Jacqueline. As I reckon it Jacqueline is about a month behind Noëlle. It would appear that Godfrey has done the pair of them proud.
Diana, Noëlle’s sister and Godfrey’s wife said, “Things are strange how they work out. They chose Godfrey to father their babies because he’s Jacqueline’s cousin and Noëlle’s brother in law. I can understand why they wanted a Bearthwaite man to father their children, but not so much why they wouldn’t use any form of impregnation other than nature’s way. I know it’s a bit crude and possibly insulting too to say it, but AI(33) works well for millions of cows and any number of other beasts including humans at fertility clinics too. However, I wasn’t bothered because they certainly didn’t want Godfrey, they never take their eyes off each other, they just wanted the semen, and he was just a delivery mechanism. But for god’s sake don’t any of you ever repeat that to any man or you’ll destroy the egos of all of them. However, I’m pretty certain there isn’t a cow on the planet that wouldn’t have preferred being bulled rather than having the AI lass do the job, so maybe Jacqueline and Noëlle were no different.
“It did make my life difficult for a while because Godfrey is not the easiest of men to persuade to do owt he doesn’t want to and he didn’t want to impregnate his cousin and my sister. I reckon he was frightened it would eventually damage our relationship. I put an awful lot of pressure on him and he came round in the end and is now thinking of what he can give the little lads for their welcome to the world present. “I reckon he’ll go for silver baby spoons and pushers. Daniel casts really nice ones which he finishes hisel,(34) and every pair is unique. Noëlle and Jacqueline are poring over Viking baby names, they must have compiled the most exhaustive list of Viking and Scandinavian names ever written down anywhere never mind at Bearthwaite. They’ve written down the name of every male and female Viking and Scandinavian ever used here and elsewhere and printed off lists from the internet too. When they’re done, and they’ve sorted them alphabetically with all their meanings and sources the library wants a copy for other future mum’s to consult. Faye thinks the entire matter is a hoot, but that’s her all over.” Seeing some puzzled outsider faces Diane added, “Faye is Noëlle’s and my other sister.”
Mackenzie the chiropodist said, “I love Ellis’ two lads, Orson and Rhys, to bits and they’ve been calling me mum for a long time now which makes me feel like I’ve caught up on all that time that the appologies for men in my life before I came here wasted. They’re really excited at the prospect of a baby sister. Ellis is looking for a bigger house for us and we’ve decided on a late spring wedding, so keep you finger crossed for a dry, warm, sunny spell. Work is going well, though we’re under a bit of pressure and could do with a couple of youngsters with steady hands to help out with nails. Evelyn is working full time with me now, thank goodness, and we’re both looking forward to Leo finishing his degree and taking up some of the pressure. He says he can’t wait to get back home, but I suspect that is so he and Noah can set up house together rather than the attractions of work. There’s definitely a wedding in the air there to look forward to. With him being more up to date than I am he’s bringing a load of equipment catalogues for us to look through with a view to buying some more all singing all dancing equipment.
As Ada sipped her fruit juice she announced, “It’ll probably be pretty obvious soon, so I may as well tell you now. I’m expecting, Susanna reckons about two months. I thought it was all over a few years since and my womb was well and truly past its sell by date, so I was seriously teken aback when I went to see Abbey about a poorly tummy and she said it ’ould sort itself out in about seven months. Abby and Sun are far more bothered than I am about it. It’s because it’ll be my first and I’m getting on for a first time mum. Apparently out there they use a special term for lasses like me, elderly primigravida, Susanna said it was just nonsense to impress lasses like me and mek us do as we were telt because primigravida was just Latin for a lass pregnant with her first. Susanna says, despite me being small to the point of skinny, I’ve got the hips for an easy time, so as long as I eat sensibly and tek care of mysel when I start getting bigger I’ll be fine. My biggest issue at the moment is is it a lass or a lad. Hugo is gey happy yet worried. I think he wants a lad, though he hasn’t said. I don’t mind, but I do want to know.
It was already known to most at Bearthwaite, including most of the men, that Noëlle was expecting twin boys, and a month later when the news went round that so was her wife Jacqueline the Bearthwaite men were delighted. It was in the Green Dragon taproom that Sasha made Godfrey aware that the Bearthwaite men considered fathering the two women’s babies to be a decent, kindly and honourable deed. “Well done, Godfrey Lad. Elle says Diana and Faye are gey pleased for their sisters and for you too, and that I’ve to mek it known that you’re gey well thought of for this by every lass in the spot. Well done again, Lad. Think on, blokes say any can get a lass full of arms and legs(35) wi’ one of her own kind, a lass, but it teks(36) a real man to put a spout on it. Fathering(37) four wee lads in batches of twa(38) is some achievement, Lad. And think on again, they’re all four Bearthwaite lads who had no need o’ any involvement in their fathering from elsewhere. Aye, Godfrey, that’s a job gey well done, Lad, and now I think on it, it’s completely in keeping with Bearthwaite philosophy and ideology too. For any of you who aren’t totally sure what I’m saying that means it’s totally in agreement wi’ the Bearthwaite way of looking at things. I’m saying it’s not just money that we need to keep local.”
The local men were aware that Sasha had been deliberately broadening his Bearthwaite accent to make Godfrey feel more at ease with the public acceptance of what they knew he’d been more or less forced into doing by his wife, Elle, for twa, whilst a word in common usage locally, was not one that came naturally to Sasha. None of the outsiders in the taproom understood the attitude of the local men. They considered themselves to be decent men, faithful to their wives men, and to most it seemed obscene for the Bearthwaite men to celebrate a married man getting his sister in law and her partner who was his cousin pregnant with not just his wife’s approval, but the approval of his entire community. Even most of the many outsider men who had been drinking in the Green Dragon for years and knew they were amongst genuine friends were perplexed by the matter. They’d long known that most of the county frequently said, often with contempt, “Bearthwaite folk are gey different,” but being the kind of men they were it wasn’t something that often stared them in the face. When it did it was always a shock, and they’d just been shocked.
“What’s for supper, Brigitte Love?”
“Initially it was to have been fish pie because we’ve a lot of the ingredients in the freezers, but it’s not that long since it was on the menu, so we decided against the idea and went for fish, chips and mushy peas. We wanted to use up some of the smaller pieces of fish, so we could clear out a freezer shelf, and we were struggling to come up with enough of any one sort to put on a decent sized meal for the likes of hungry men. I came up with the idea of dipping a small piece of the Solway cod from the Maryport fishermen together with a small piece of the carp from the village pond into a seasoned batter thick enough to stick them together for just long enough for the batter to crisp and produce what looks like a decent sized piece of fish. To do that I turned the fryer up five degrees [9℉] which worked well. I did a head count earlier and there will be enough because we cut some of the larger pieces in half so every one has the same taste experience, Cod and Carp. The flour in the batter is as usual locally grown and milled wheat mixed with a little locally grown, dried and powdered mustard seed and a trace of locally grown, dried and powdered horseradish root. The chips are Uncle Johnto’s variety because they’re the best for chips, and the peas are the white mealy ones grown on the allotments called Pure White Luck. They fall really quickly and are tasty.
“It was going to be apple pie for your pudding, but then the weather went even colder on us, so Auntie Veronica decided that a steamed suet pear pudding with chocolate sauce instead of custard would be more appropriate and better appreciated. The suet from Uncle Vincent is a mix of beef and bife suet, the bife refers to bison, the flour is a wholemeal wheat and barley mix locally grown and milled by Uncle Phil. The sweetener is a mixture of local honey and sugar syrup that Auntie Christine gets out of locally grown sugar beet the same way the bee keepers do. The pears are from the allotments’ last year’s harvest and were bottled last back end. The tiny amount of milk is from the Peabody’s jerseys and the butter the basins were greased with was Peabody’s too. The sauce is based on Peabody’s dairy shorthorn milk, thickened with cornflour from the mill from locally grown maize, and again a mixture of local honey and local sugar syrup. The chocolate flavour is actually carob powder not cocoa powder. The carob is from somewhere round the Mediterranean and we can buy it for a lot less than cocoa costs. I’m sorry about that, but till our carob trees fruit we shall still be looking for a substitute.
“We’ve germinated sixty trees from the seeds, but they take about seven years for the female trees to fruit. Assuming thirty of the trees are male and given that a male tree is said to be able to pollinate twenty female trees playing it safe we only need three of the male trees. Each female tree can produce hundreds of kilos [x by 2·2 for pounds] of pods. According to the internet after taking the seeds out, a gallon of the pods grind up to two pints of dried carob powder. Four volumes goes down to one. If any one has any ideas of something that would be good instead, even if it were nothing like chocolate we’d love to hear about it to use till we have our own carob powder. Uncle Johnto says once we have some carob pods we’ll sow the beans in unheated greenhouses everywhere to see if we can get a local climate tolerant strain, but in the meanwhile we’re growing them as a sub tropical. Supper will be in about an hour gentlemen. I’ll just go and fetch the dogs’ food and water and I’ll let the dogs out on my way to the kitchens and would be obliged if some one will let them back in again sometime. Hello, Mêl.” Brigitte petted Mêl, one of her favourite dogs, as she left.
Raven said, “You were right, Sasha, that time a few weeks ago when you said social unrest was on the increase. That social unrest outside is feeding into to massive increases in theft of even the commonest of household supplies and it’s happening all over the country. We’ve also been hearing of threats from angry ex husbands and family of some of our refugee women who came here, some with their children. We’re hearing that most of the threats come from the men and families of the women and kids that came to us from the women’s refuges escaping domestic violence, rather than from the men of the women and kids that came to us from the refugee camps escaping civil war and famine, which are mostly in cities rather than towns and have few men. But all is under control and we’re already taking measures to counter those threats which seem to be working. We’ve been beefing up our defences by planting unpleasant thorny and spiny hedging plants, blackthorn and the like,(39) in all of the places where an invasion could be attempted, even if only by the totally insane. There are any number of unpleasant plants that will grow well in our climate and we have orders for thousands of them already placed coming from all over the world.
“A couple of years ago, the allotments folk discovered a particularly nasty stinging nettle when they were dealing with a jungle they telt me was laughingly referred to as a garden where one of the outsiders we got rid of lived. Wainwright(40) I was telt they were named. They dug ’em up along with the rest of the weeds and composted the buggers, but some of ’em came back in the compost piles, by which time there was talk about security using plants. They’ve been propagating blackthorn suckers with rue plants and the nettles and bramble and briar rose, both cultivars with vicious thorns in containers eighteen inch [450mm] square ready for turning out and watering in where ever there’s a need. They grow ’em in six inch [150mm] of light compost and cut the lot back to a couple of inches tall and pack six of ’em up into a block three foot tall that’s easy for us to back pack up to where ever we want ’em. It’s an evil combination and they all grow like buggery so where you plant ’em. When rue plants are crushed if the sap gets on your skin it renders it sensitive to sunlight which causes excruciatingly painful blisters that tek months to heal. All of which is one hundred percent legal. There are other legal plants even worse too like resin spurge(41) that render giant hogweed unnecessary and a bit tame too if the truth be told. The law will never manage to keep up with mother nature, so there will always be natural defence mechanisms available to us. There are folk in the agriculture department at the BBE(42) who are looking into such plants and passing the information on to other folk to order in supplies. Too we’re planting any number of several species of tough vining plants that are harmless like wild honeysuckle, but they make forcing a way through completely impossible without bill hooks and slashers which makes a lot of noise as do the likes of cordless hedge trimmers.
“We’ve also made those potential routes into Bearthwaite untenable by dozens of other means mostly high and wide drystun walling done by the high fell wallers which is usually just the beginnings of our defensive mechanisms for repulsing any invasion by the scum.” Many of the men knew Raven deliberately hadn’t mentioned sowing giant hotweed(43) seeds which was an extremely dangerous plant and illegal to spread anywhere, for it made rue look positively benign, but it was rumoured that he had a large supply of seeds obtained from the plants on the beck bank on the opposite side to the lonning. They also were aware that though nothing had been said, the wallers had created walls that had created extra sheep folds that doubled as funnels to force invaders onto routes that only provided access onto the unstable clay down the lonning side that not so long ago had killed two invaders who had the intention of kidnapping two of Bearthwaite’s little girls to be sold for unspeakable purposes. “Harwell you want to add anything?”
“Aye. The number of rangers we now have is just over a thousand and we’re still seeking more which are still coming in to us at a steady trickle. Arathane is doing us proud with decent recruits from the towns and cities. That seemingly massive increase in numbers is as a result of Gervin Maxwell and I merging the fencers and the rangers. My rangers always did do a bit of emergency fence repair when they came across a spot that needed it, but they are now helping with the fencing as a matter of routine when ever needed. That came about because Gervin and I considered in order to have the largest number of rangers available for security and the largest number of fencers available to maintain our security we should amalgamate the two teams, so as to be cost effective, yet have the numbers available when it hits the fan for either job due to idiots or bad weather, or owt else come to that. We both think it’s when it hits the fan not if it hits the fan. Having said that it not possible for us to do much serious fettling of fences at the moment and that’s not going to change till we get some warmer weather. The good thing is that we’re not far off being able to provide security cover for all our property both inside and outside the valley. I reckon within six months we’ll be there, but we’ll still keep recruiting, and the army is delighted at the extra TA recruits.”
“That was a first rate supper, Harriet. Not that we ever get owt else. It was a good idea to use the two types of fish together, and that spiced batter was astonishingly tasty. I liked those chips [US fries] of Brigitte’s because they were thicker than usual. I thought the spuds were chipped by a machine, so is that a new machine that did them?”
“No, Uncle Stan. The potatoes are chipped by a machine that usually cuts them at half an inch [13mm] square, but Brigitte had someone down at the workshops make her a more widely separated knives arrangement to cut chips at three-quarters of an inch [18mm] square to fit in our existing machine. The knives come out for washing, so the chipper can make two sizes of chips now, depending on what the kitchen staff think is going to be most acceptable.”
Dave said, “I’ll chip in here if you pardon the deliberate pun. I saw a clip on the internet a few days ago where some poor lad was puzzled by the way sellers of perfectly identical French fries managed to have growers produce potatoes all exactly the same length because he was sure they wouldn’t want to waste that much using normal potatoes to get a uniform product.”
The laughter took a while to dissipate and it was a clearly puzzled Alf who said, “I’ve never eaten any chips like that, but I don’t see what’s so funny.”
Dave explained, “I looked all this up last night, so I know what I am saying is at least what someone claims is true. Spots like McJunkfood’s, Bugger King, Kentucky Fried Sparrow and other fast crap outlets of their like don’t sell chips or even food as you understand the terms, Alf. They do, however, sell fries which start out life as chipped potatoes, but according to the internet McJunkfood’s say that their fries have seventeen other ingredients too. KFS admit to twenty-one ingredients plus flavourings and Bugger King admit to a mere thirteen, so may be they’re lying or what? I’ll let you puzzle out what all those other ingredients are and why they are there. Personally, like most of us I suspect, I’ve never eaten shite like that and I have no intention of ever doing so. At least all the poisons I imbibe are all naturally produced by yeast, even if they are subsequently concentrated by a still master somewhere in the deep woods at the far end of the back of beyond, and think on Davy Parker had probably never even heard of those fast so called food spots and he made it to a hundred and three only ever eating chips cooked in artery hardening lard. Two ingredients, potato and lard, end of argument. Salt and vinegar at consumers discretion, so four ingredients at max.” Dave’s patent dislike of the almost globally popular fast food chains’ merchandise and rejection of it as food puzzled a lot of the outsiders. The regular drinkers from outside were used to it and the locals agreed with him, but all considered his pejorative renaming of them to be at least mildly amusing, and Dave on a rant was always entertaining.
“Again according to the internet, McJunkfood’s fries are not, as that poor benighted sojourner lost somewhere in the darkness of internet cyber space believed to be the case, all the same length. I don’t know who produced these statistics, but the information I saw claimed that the average length of McJunkfood’s fries was fifty-eight point nine millimetres with a standard deviation of twenty-six point one millimetres. That means on average a bit less than two and a quarter inches. It also means that sixty-eight percent, just over two thirds of their fries are between eighty-five millimetres and thirty-two point eight millimetres, that’s between three and a third and one and a third inches. It also means that ninety-five percent, or nineteen out of twenty, are between a hundred and eleven point one millimetres and six point seven millimetres which is between a bit more than four and third inches and a quarter of an inch. After that the statistics get bloody stupid because they predict chips with a negative length whatever that means. How did I know all that? Well it’s simple. What do you think?
After a moment or two Pete said, “You asked Sasha didn’t you?”
“Course I did, but I had you going for a second or two didn’t I?” It was a twist on a classic Dave prank, but as always good for a laugh and that after all, along with the drink and the dominoes, was why they were there.
Tracy Maxwell said with a satisfied tone to her voice, “That was lovely, Gladys. We only eat fish and chips at home if I send Gervin out to Ellery’s chippy for them. It’s become kind of a family tradition that when he comes home after a long spell up on the fells we eat fish and chips as a celebration that Dad’s back for a while. The lads go with Gervin whilst the lasses and I set the table, butter bread and make a pot of tea.” Seeing a few puzzled faces she added, “Gervin manages the fencing crews and spends a lot of time with the rangers on the fells checking the fences are okay and fettling them if they’re not. The kids think it’s an adventure eating dinner still wrapped in the newspaper.(44) Josh always wraps them all separately, first using paper that looks like grease proof then the newspapers, because he knows the kids enjoy it that much more if they’ve each got their own sheet of newspaper. I’ve given up on trying to cook battered fish at home because I never get the batter right. Dianne says its a matter of the fat temperature and getting it perfect in the big fryer in the chippy is easy because it’s temperature controlled on a dial. I either get the batter soggy with too much fat on it or it’s cooked too hard, which Dad complains about because he can’t eat it. I reckon he only wears his teeth for the look of it because he can’t eat with them in. Mum could cook battered fish beautifully and she didn’t have owt but the pan I’m using that Dad gave to me after she’d passed. Dad telt me that when they first were wed like most Bearthwaite women in those days she used to cook with it on the living room open fire, which is too dodgy for me to fancy trying.”
Aggie said, “I have to admit Brigitte is a rare un. You have to wonder where she had the idea from to have an extra set of knives made for the chipper by some of Bertie’s lads to mek these big chips. I can’t say as I’d like ’em with everything but they do go a treat wi’ fish, and they’d work well wi’ pie and gravy too. She’s having a set made that are less than a quarter of an inch square, five millimetres she said, not that that means owt to me. Smaller chips ‘ll be quicker to cook and she wants ’em for chicken and chips or spare ribs and chips in the basket as bar food, mostly for summertime visitors during the day. Some times we’re rushed off our feet when a coach load of hungry folk, especially when it’s a men’s sports club, walk in and want lunch. We’ve always served folk with as many chips as they want for the same fixed price because potatoes are a lot cheaper than advertising, but when a couple of coach loads o’ rugby players arrive I always tell the bar staff to provide ’em wi’ twa pints apiece whilst they’re waiting for their food.”
Beatrice asked, “These peas are different from the usual. I’ve never seen any as pale as these before, but they are gey tasty. What are they?”
Harriet said, “They’re something that just happened two or three years back and Dougie, Germain’s old man, kept them for seed. The allotmenteers grow them like the other peas and beans all together on a few plots that they share working on. They call them Pure White Luck, but as yet they can’t grow a lot of them because they’re still building up a stock of seed. All our peas are pale compared with any cooked peas you’ll see outside because they add some chemical to dye them green. It’ll be Chlorophylls E140i or Chlorophyllins E140ii which at least are natural extracts from plants, or a synthetic copper complex of Chlorophyll E141 or another synthetic dye called Green S E142. It’s what outsiders have come to expect because they’ve never had any chance to know any different. The E140s are both extracted from all sorts of plants including nettles, alfalfa, spinach and algae. Mind I don’t reckon any of them natural or synthetic are necessary in peas. These white ones have that mealy almost meaty taste that is perfect for pease pudding, mushy peas and pea soup. They’re not the best for a vegetable with say a meat and two vegetable meal like say lamb chops, peas, carrots, mash and gravy, but those petit pois that they grow are perfect for that kind of a dish.”
“How come you know all that, Harriet?”
“Part of my Open University degree, Susanna. Uncle Murray wangled it so the government are paying for it because I lived on the streets for two years when I should have been in school. I’m doing modules to do with business, hospitality and food. The one I did last year was called Chemistry in life: food, water, and medicines. I’m doing a business module this year. I have to do a twenty thousand word project and most folk do a business management case study. I persuaded my tutor to let me do one in three different parts if I did at least ten thousand words to each part. I wanted to do a module to do with butchery, but the OU doesn’t do one. So I did a one year certificate with a distance learning college of further education with Uncle Vincent as my mentor last year, and I’m doing part of my project on butchery, fish and meat including coney, game and bison bife, with a section on Cumberland and Furness sausages as made here, again Uncle Vincent is mentoring me for that. I’m doing another part on the foods that we cook here that elsewhere are mostly history, like beef tea, ramson & nettle soup and our version of game soup that includes gray squirrel.
“I want to include a bit on how we mek sugar syrup from beet, the bar snacks and another on the pops and on the Cyanobacta too. Auntie Christine as cans and bottles food at the bobbin mill, Auntie Alice from the water mill and Auntie Aggie are kind of mentoring me for that. My third part is about running the Dragon and what we went through with the various extensions and the effect that they had on the business. Mum and Dad are mentoring me on that and I’ll only get away with that if I write at least twenty thousand words on the other two bits. I’ve started outlining my project already and I reckon it’ll end up as fifty thousand words. Auntie Sarah and Uncle Tommy as run the post office want to print it and bind it as a book for sale in the post office and the visitor centre. Auntie Sarah says she’ll do some drawings and paintings for it and Uncle Tommy is going to bind the books. Chance says Beebell will pay for it and it doesn’t matter if we mek a loss on it because it’ll be gey cheap marketing for Bearthwaite and will save a considerable amount of effort.”
“Why are you doing it, Harriet? When your mum and dad retire you and Gustave will be the landlady and landlord and your names have been over the door(45) for ages.”
“It’s nowt to do with that, Auntie Rosie, I missed a lot of school and though I caught up on my GCSEs(46) and my A’ levels(47) I always wanted to do a degree, but it had to be doing something I was interested in that would be useful. Gustav was interested in microbiology and his degree in that has helped a lot at the brewery and the distillery. Mum was interested in psychology and her degree helps the medical folk out from time to time. Dad always says he hasn’t any time for that sort of nonsense and he’s too thick anyway, but that’s rubbish. He’s well bright enough, but like me he’s interested in all sorts of things that help him to run the Dragon and he’d struggle to find such a broad degree to do. Too, he doesn’t care enough to commit the effort and I daresay not all of it would be strictly legal anyway. He’s no more a crook than anyone else here, but I’m talking about child employment and stuff like that. Like many folk here, every now and again he pays kids to deliver stuff, usually it’s a few bottles of spirits that he gives away to some of the elderly, which if any of the children are less than thirteen is a criminal offence. As for my degree, it took me ages to work out what I wanted to do, but I have to say it’s a lot of fun.”
“Who made the brandy snaps, Gladys? Even apart from the size, they’re subtly different, but I can’t work out why”
“Brigitte made these. When I make them I whip the cream up and after adding the icing sugar I lace the mixture with Asbach, a German brandy. Harriet uses Laphroaig single malt whisky, Veronica uses cognac, usually Hennessy or an Armagnac, and Aggie uses Guyana Windjammer dark cane rum. Brigitte likes to put her own stamp on what she cooks too which is why these are so much wider. We used to form them three at a time when warm and flexible round long, wooden ladle handles. It only takes a few seconds or so for them to set crisp and then you fill them with an icing piping bag. Brigitte was having a clumsy day the last time she was making them and she lost her temper when trying to fill them. She was in tears when she said it was stupid that they were so narrow and she gave up. Veronica gave her a hug and a cup of tea and finished making them. Ready for the next time Brigitte made them which is these, she had her brother Peter make her some rods to wrap them round from a piece of broom stail, which as you can see was about an inch and a quarter [32mm] in diameter. She’d still got the mood on her at the time, so Peter said he’d do it, but telt his dad that he considered it to be appropriate that she was using broom stick. Anyway when she came to lacing the cream this time she used some of that hostage rum that Adio provides the men with. In the Caribbean it’s sometimes called Screech. It’s at least half as powerful again as owt that you’ll find on this side of the bar and seriously dodgy stuff. She cadged a two gallon [9l, 2½ US gal] bottle of it from her dad. There’s only a tiny bit in the cream, so it won’t do you any harm, but it does have a distinctly different and pleasant taste to it.”
Aggie added, “I use a drop of it in my Tarte Tatin now instead of cheap French brandy. It makes for a definite improvement.”
Dorothy, a well dressed woman in her forties, an outsider who’d been seen a many times, asked, “I don’t understand about the broom stick being funny. What was that about?” There was a considerable amount of laughter at that.
Aggie explained, “When women are being difficult or in Brigitte’s case moody and clumsy due to our cycles, the men here say we’re behaving like witches and that we are on our broomsticks. It’s an expression that they’ve used for centuries. That’s what we were laughing at.”
Brigitte who’d not said anything during her gran’s tale said, “It’s not often there’s anything good comes out of PMS,(48) but the bigger brandy snaps are much better than those thin ones because you get a lot more cream in them, and it’s a lot easier to fill them.”
Aggie nodded, smiled and said, “Aye, but that’s no reason for forming ’em round a drain pipe, Love.” As the chuckles went around the bestside Gladys went behind the bar to top up punch glasses.
“So how did it all happen, Wren. Your voice says you’re no northerner nor a southerner from what I can tell, you sound like a foreigner, yet your English is that of an English speaker seemingly from birth. How did you end up here with Ɖackaman?”(49)
“I can answer some of those questions, Veronica, but I’ve no idea why or how I ended up with Ɖackaman. My accent is that of Little Sark one of the smallest islands in the Channel Islands. It is much smaller than Bearthwaite and possibly more isolated. I left because what I considered to be the morbid obsession of the Sark islanders, both big and little which are connected by a dangerous, high and narrow isthmus called La Coupée,(50) with our past was preventing us from having a future. After working in Bath way down south from here in the county of Somerset for six months I had enough money to explore further north. I had to work from time to time in cafés and restaurantes, but eventually I was drawn to the Royal Lancashire Agricultural shew at Ribchester.(51) I was looking at fancy breed pigeons, tumblers(52) especially, which fascinated me, when I met Ɖackaman who’d been looking at quad bikes for using to deliver feed to game. I don’t really know how it happened, but I ended up married to him and living here.”
Jane said laughing as she spoke, “That’s called hormones, Lass. There’s nowt any of us can do about it. You get bought a drink by a bloke you kind of fancy and the next thing you know is you’re mekin his breakfast at his spot wearing one of his shirts as a nightie. Though there’re more of us here have bin there than will ever admit to it.” There was a lot of laughter at Jane’s blunt but candid verbalisation of a universal feminine truth.
Wren continued, “Then after a visit from Jess McLeod we adopted a family of two boys aged ten and seven and three girls aged eight, three and six months. Ɖackaman had taken no persuading, but for me it was Liv who needed nursing that overwhelmed all resistance.”
“Like I said, Lass, it’s the hormones. There’s nowt like the prospect of a nursing babe to turn a woman’s brain off and mek her emotions tek over. We’ll need the names of your childer repeated a few times till they sink in. Truth is they probably won’t sink in till our own kids bring them round expecting us to feed their friends. Don’t worry about it, Lass, it’s what kids do here and it’s a certainty that one day in the not too distant future you’ll be expected to feed a dozen and a half of them all claiming to be starving given about fifteen minutes notice. It happens to at least one of us every day, mums and grans alike. So after giving thanks for Christine’s large bottles of baked beans and the fact that there isn’t a kid in the valley who doesn’t love baked beans on toast you’d better give us the names to forget if you don’t mind.” The chuckles made Wren feel at ease so she complied without embarrassment.
“Lael is ten, Clara is eight, Enoch is seven, Poppy is three and as I said Liv is about six months.
“Any chance of a bit of humour before we get the dominoes out, Dave?”
“Well I don’t have what you could call a decent tale, but I was ratching through a British humour website a while back and I saw a few things that made me laugh. Mind some are from a while back and so are a bit dated because things have moved on since they were first telt. I don’t remember them word for word, but even if I did I’d probably alter ’em to suit me telling ’em. I’ll warn you outsiders that they’re all fair to middling non PC(53) due to the racism and or other isms involved, so in order to protect the guilty(54) I’ll add the disclaimer that all names have been changed and the views expressed in these items do not necessarily reflect my personal views.” At that there were roars of amusement from the local men who all were aware of exactly what Dave’s views on such matters were: the same as their own.
“I’ll start with a one liner. Why is the British weather like Islam? Because it’s either sunny or it’s shite. The difference is Islam is about ninety percent sunny and ten percent shite whereas the British weather is the other way around.” After the moderate laughter, Dave said, “Now I don’t personally consider that to be very funny because I don’t know the difference between a sunny and a shite,(55) though as an Irishman once explained when he was asked why he was wearing just one glove, ‘It’s due to the weather forecast which said on the one hand the sun might shine but on the other rain was a distinct possibility.’
“Continuing with that theme. A British Engineer who has not long since started his own business in Afghanistan is making land mines that look like prayer mats. He says business is booming and prophets are going through the roof.” After the laughter had died down, Dave remarked I see some of you are appalled by my bad taste which is just too fucking bad. If you want to make anything of it I’ll remind you that this is entertainment in a public place licenced for live entertainment, music and dancing, and so many of the usual laws do not apply, and I know exactly where I, as a stand up comedian, stand with regard to the law even when I’m sitting down. Also I’ll remind you that there are signs all over the place in the Dragon stating that by buying a drink or taking a seat anywhere in the establishment you are agreeing to being video recorded. We have video recorded everything that goes on in here for many years, so that an accurate record is available for future generations to enjoy secure in the knowledge that they are seeing and hearing it exactly as it happened, not through a third party’s interpretation. Naturally that means a court would have access to the record and not what someone said had happened or had been said. Now I need a pint and a glass of chemic before I continue.”
It was going on for ten minutes before glasses had been collected, washed and refilled, various potent beverages had been poured into glasses, money collected and visits to the gents had been paid. Dave looked around before recommencing and said, “I see we are several faces short of the previous audience. Have a look under the tables, Lads, to see if any has left his sense of humour behind. Okay then. A recent investigation by academics from the school of Middle Eastern Studies at Liverpool university has discovered that Muslims in the middle east, in particular what was then Persia and is now Iran, were the folk who first came up with the brilliant idea that goat intestines would be a suitable material to use for making condoms. It wasn’t, however, till eighteen twenty-seven when a Scottish entrepreneur named Johnny McRakehell,(56) who died childless many years later, perfected the idea. Actually the bastard could have been a first cousin of the Gershambes as ruled round here with an iron fist and let their lads run wild in days long gone thank the gods. Anyway back to Johnny McRakehell, his stroke of sheer genius which laid the foundations for the millions made by the London Rubber Company from their line of natural rubber latex condoms using the registered Durex® brand name(57) was to remove the guts from the goat first.”
At that the entire taproom erupted and Gladys walked through the bar to check that the noise level didn’t signify something that the local men couldn’t handle, though she had little doubt of their capabilities there was always the possibility of an outsider bringing a firearm into the inn. As a result she had her phone ready for a single press to call the rest of the village security men and women out, and of course there were the four ten shotguns(58) loaded with rock salt cartridges kept handy behind the bar, one in the taproom and one in the bestside. Seeing all was well she slipped quietly back into the bestside and few of the men had been aware of her presence. Eventually Alf could be heard opining, “It’s as well you fucked off those squirrel picklers,(59) Dave. That last tale would likely have totally unhinged the bastards.” At that there were sounds of agreement from not just the local men but the remaining outsiders too. All were just out to have an evening of entertainment and drink in what was to them an enjoyable if entirely masculine environment. The Green Dragon Inn taproom had a county wide and farther afield reputation for being controversial and there were signs outside the doors advising that if one were offended easily by such matters perhaps it would be as well not to enter the establishment. The back door that led to the taproom had a sign that read, ‘Easily Offended? Sensitive to non PC talk? Go Home! Triggering in progress!’
“A change of victim now, Lads. Four school leavers were up for an interview. One is British, one is American, one is African, and one is Chinese. The interviewer asks them all the same question, ‘In your own opinion, what do you think of the scarcity of food in other countries?’ The British kid asks, ‘What is scarcity?’ The American kid asks ‘What are other countries?’ The African kid asks ‘What is food?’ And the Chinese kid asks ‘What is my own opinion?’ ”
When the laughter calmed, “Well wicked, Dave,” one of the outsiders said. “I love it. Four insults in the same breath.” He pushed a two pound coin in the direction of the kids’ Christmas Party collection box and reached for a bottle of Cyanobacta to top his glass up. A number of like minded souls did the same and there were dozens of coins going towards Bertie, who threw them into the box whilst bottles containing several kind of liquors were moving around the tables.
“Last one coming up, Lads. Going back a bit this one. A bloke was overheard in a London pub to say, ‘I can’t believe that Prince Harry, who’s British royalty, is marrying African American actress Meghan Markle. Why would someone that rich and famous marry an obviously inferior genetic specimen? It’s just doesn’t bear thinking about. Though I suppose it’s obviously none of my business if Meghan wants to marry a ginger.’ ”
“Oh for fuck’s sake, Dave. That rounded off the collection nicely. A complete turn about having a go at the Royal Family. Love it. Perfect timing, perfect delivery and a perfect order to tell ’em in. Though we’ve come to expect that from you. Is that it, Lads? Time for dominoes?” Stan asked. “Okay partner me, Dave?”
As usual there were Elle and Sasha, Gladys and Pete with Harriet and Gustave in the bestside after all the customers had left either for home or their rooms upstairs. However, this time there were also Brigitte and Peter. It had been Sasha’s suggestion and all thought it to be a good one. Surprisingly to all there Peter started by saying, “You all know that we have incorporated some anti tamper mechanisms into the ring train technology. Those are good in as far as they go, but unfortunately Murray isn’t getting very far with his search for a patents lawyer. Till he does I suggest that we halt all further development. Though there are many working on the project, there are few who understand the science and the technology behind what has been achieved so far, and fewer still who understand where it has to go. I suggest we keep it that way till we have the commercial rights tied up, and even then there will be secrets only known to the few of the few. The scaling up of the technology to produce a viable mass transport system for goods will be a nightmare, but I do have some ideas on that that there is no need to share for years. I’m not asking for permission to bring things to a halt temporarily. I’m informing you that’s what I’m doing.”
Sasha nodded in acceptance and asked slowly, “Just how few are we talking about who know where it has to go, Peter?”
“Just me, and all the rest I’ve been careful to dole out piecemeal to a dozen or so others. Violet is usually with me when I’m working on it, but she doesn’t know owt because she doesn’t understand it and doesn’t wish to be bothered. She’s always working on the aspects of the layout that she’s interested in. Why?”
“I thought as much. How many folk know that only you know the rest of it as regards the future?”
“Only the eight of us here, but again why?”
Sasha ignored the question and said, “At least that’s a bit better than it could have been. Have you ever stopped to think how valuable and how vulnerable you are, Peter? Even here? Right now you are probably Bearthwaite’s single most valuable resource, and well worth kidnapping till we have at least some of this technology in the hands of friendly authorities with the capability to defend it. It’s not inconceivable that some lunatic may take the attitude that if his country can’t have it nor can any other and that the best way to ensure that is to have you assassinated. We need you protected. I also suggest that you have all your ideas safely hidden away somehow, so that if in the future something does happen to you at least your friends and your children have access to your work. I see the idea of you having children is a surprise to you, but why should you and Violet be any different from any other couple regarding having a family? I’ll deal with the matter and the less said about it till we have some solutions on the table the better. I suggest we talk about something else now.”
There was a very awkward silence as Brigitte stared at her brother in awe. To fill the silence Elle said, “The school is now managing the staffing well. We have enough staff to cover for all the maternity leaves, and at last a little slack too to cover for any sickness. The addition of Matthew Webb the swimming, life saving and water games instructor has worked really well. He’s a trusted popular teacher, especially with the nervous youngsters who are learning to swim. He clearly enjoys working with kids and is happy to help out where he can. He’s currently enjoying taking a year seven [11-12 year olds] class for geography and history which has eased the timetabling considerably, so he’s no longer a part time teacher. I put him on full time a while back and he’s taken over one of the year nine [13-14 year olds] forms [US home room teacher] whilst Faith Scott is on maternity leave. The kids like him a lot. Matthew asked Murray to find a female full time assistant, or two part timers, who can help with the very young learners, because he can’t be everywhere.
“He specifically asked for a female assistant, so as to avoid him having to help the little lasses to get dressed after a lesson. He’s a family man, so he’s not bothered about helping the little ones in the lasses changing room, but considered some parents may not be happy about it. Murray telt him Bearthwaite parents of lads as well as lasses would be far more bothered that he had a good man assisting him keeping their kids safe in the water rather than a less good woman chosen simply because she was a woman to help little lasses get dressed. Matthew was fine with that, and he now has two part time male assistants both family men. Struan is a thirty-one year old foundry man and Walt is a forty two year old allotmenteer. The most important issue from Murray’s point of view was that the kids trust and like all three of them. In particular the little lasses are fine with being helped to shower and dress by any of the three of them and swimming is a popular activity with them. To quote Murray, “We do this, like everything else we do, the Bearthwaite way. If outsiders have issues with decent family men being decent family men then they are the ones with the issues, not us.’
“A really rather amusing thing is that because all of the very little lasses, the two, three and four year olds, who go swimming in the small pool, which is only ten inches deep and a bit warmer than the main pool, wearing just a pair of swimming knickers, some of the slightly older lasses, maybe up to about some of the nine year olds have refused to wear bikini tops or one piece swimming costumes, Matthew telt me one of the older lasses said if they were not allowed to swim in just their knickers it was ageism. The three men shrugged their shoulders and proved their mettle as family men by telling the kids they were there as swimming, life saving and water games coaches, not fashion advisors. Murray’s only response to that was, ‘As I said, they’re Bearthwaite family men, and we’ve got the folk we need to do the job well.’ Felicity in her official capacity as head of games and sport stood solidly behind her swimming staff and said the lasses would cover up as and when they were ready to and no one was going to force them to grow up any faster than they wished to on her watch. None of the parents of either the lasses or the lads could see what all the fuss was about. Some of the mums and dads too aid in the pool from time to time and they all reckon Matthew, Walt and Struan are all brilliant at encouraging kids and building their confidence in the water.
“Still on staffing. Now that Will and Carolyn Milburn have moved here Will who was an ambulance paramedic is now teaching first aid full time and he is the form tutor for one of the year twelve [17–18 year olds] forms [US home room] which much to Dr Wing’s relief has freed up our nursing staff to do other things. Carolyn who used to be a supermarket manager has joined the administrators as a marketing consultant and helps design our advertisements and product labels. Murray tells me that over the next fortnight he is interviewing fourteen folk as potential full time teachers only three of who are certified with qualified teacher status. The rest are highly educated or skilled in a wide array of subjects, some taught in conventional education systems, but many not, and he says he has little doubt that they will all fit here and that he will appoint them all. That will provide far more slack than we strictly require and give our existing staff more pupil non contact time in which to provide pupils with feedback and in which to prepare their lessons. The already high quality of the education we provide, both academic and craft or trade related, will become even higher. I knew Murray was originally only looking for eight new staff, but when I asked him about that he said that out of nigh on four hundred applicants only fourteen candidates applied who were worth looking at and he wasn’t for losing any of them qualified teacher status or no. When I asked about cost he said it would be okay because they would end up being paid for by the taxman as a result of our Street Rescue Initiative which is Chance and Emily’s recently put together initiative to have the government pay for our activities which make up for their mistakes. Apparently our legal and accountancy folk think it’s hugely amusing.”
Gustav said, “I thought it interesting that Harwell had Raven Collingwood talk about our defences. I suspect that was because Raven is a more forbidding and difficult man to question than himself and Harwell didn’t want to have to lie, so he avoided the questions and only took over concerning the numbers and the amalgamation of the rangers and the fencers thus neatly moving the conversation away from the security matters that Raven had talked about and also what he had not talked about.” Gustav looked around and seeing some puzzlement he added, “He talked about blackthorn and prickly spined hedging materials, which are of course perfectly legal to propagate and plant. However, there are some plants it is illegal to deliberately plant because they are so dangerous which he didn’t talk about. I opine it to be a certainty that the rangers have been sowing seeds or planting small plants of such in places where they will do us most good. Historically giant hogweed has grown on the far side of the beck from the lonning for over a century and for just as long it has been systematically eradicated on the lonning side of the beck to avoid accidents and even potential tragedy. I’m sure we all know what happens to skin that has been in contact with the plant when it is subsequently exposed to sunshine.
“It used to be just a small patch before Harwell moved here. Years ago it was ignored because none cared and it was safe enough on the far side of the beck. More recently is has been considered to be a desirable feature of the landscape that impresses visitors, and you must admit it is a splendid sight to behold. Now it is all down the far side of the beck mixed with blackthorn which is spreading rampantly via root suckers.(60) The blackthorn prevents access to the village from the far side of the lonning, and any who tries it will regret it due to the hogweed. Doubtless the hogweed has spread to other convenient places too by now. Too, we now own twelve water cannon imported from Germany where the police use them for crowd control during riots. The rangers have been practising using them on the ravine that the pack pony trail utilises. I could go on, but I think Harwell with Raven and Abigail, who along with Arathane seem to be his seconds in command now, have the matter well in hand. I’m sorry, Sasha, but I wish to briefly return to the matter of Peter’s ideas. I’m sure the military would be most interested in the concept if instead of a model train it controlled a projectile, more specifically a shell the size and mass of Peter’s model train. The reason I suggest it is perhaps the price could be some security? It will need some careful thinking about and then discussion, but I just wished to table the idea now so that the necessary thought could take place.”
Pete, eager to move the discussion away from Peter, said hurriedly, “Adalheidis and Annalísa have more or less concluded the matter of the original dam pile driving contractors. All the directors and a number of managers are awaiting trial, and the ladies have bought up all their assets. The machinery lads have brought all the equipment up to scratch and the new contractors are willing to teach some of our folk how to use the kit. It has been decided to drop the water level in the existing reservoir as soon as the weather thaws the water, so as to enable the nineteen twelve sluice mechanisms to be extracted from the dam and to examine them. The sluices are typically Victorian and are made using monstrously over engineered huge castings which the lads say will last forever. They also reckon they’ll be more than adequate in number and size for the new dam if they are stripped down and completely upgraded with modern sealing materials and bearings. They are also to be fitted with motors that will render the old hand winding mechanisms redundant, but they are to be left in place and upgraded too as back up mechanisms. The sluices will be built into the new dam where they they will be not only more than adequate but save us a fortune by avoiding having to buy or cast or fabricate new ones. Also to be built into the new dam will be new hydroelectric generators that Yuli the motor and generator expert says will be much more efficient than what we currently have because they be made from scratch to his specification to suit our circumtances. I’m telt the reservoir water level will take twelve months or so to rise to its new level. The civil engineers reckon it won’t take long before folk will have to look at photographs to remember what the reservoir looked like before. Those trees that have been planted on what will be the island are only about twelve feet tall, but they have already been looked over by the herons. John Finkel says even at their current height once the water rises enough to create the island the ospreys will probably use the trees as perches from which to look for a meal surrounded by the safety the water provides which will offset the lack of height of the trees. We’ll have to wait till they come back from Africa to find out. Eventually he reckons a pair may well nest in them once they are tall enough.”
Peter said, “I’ve looked at the drawings for the new dam and the water delivery system to the Bobbin Mill, the bread mill and the Beck as well as the take off for the water we sell down south and the pumps to divert excess over The Rise. I had a look at the drawings for the pipework that delivers water to the gray water plant and the sewage works too. It’s all interesting and some of the model railway society members want to build a working model of the entire system in some of the unspoken for space. Yuli is going to make all the model generators and motors required himself. He said most would be using readily available off the shelf stuff, but some he would have to have the silicone steel core laminations stamped out by the engineers and then build them up and wind the copper himself. He sounded like he was looking forward to it. Yuli has provided a lot of input into the push me pull you electromagnetic linear motors that provide the motive force for the ring trains. He gave me a lot of insight into how to lay the rings out and shape them to enable the trains to be steered so they could change direction safely.”
Harriet said, “Buthar and Ásfríðr have got everyone to agree that Ásfríðr is to stand up against Steadings for parliament at the next general election, after all the deposit is absolutely irrelevant win or lose. Most seem to think she hasn’t got a snowflake in hell’s chance of pulling it off, but it’s worth doing for the publicity and to mek Steadings work for his money. I agree with all of that, however, I’m not so sure that she can’t win, and every time Steadings opens his mouth I become a little bit more convinced that she’ll be able to pull it off. Steadings has heard about her standing, Buthar made sure of that, and just like he predicted Steadings has already started to alienate young voters and female voters of all ages by his anti youth and misogynistic rhetoric against Ásfríðr. I reckon she could well do it, but we’ll only have to wait nine months to find out. Some of the lasses have said if they can wait that long for a baby a general election is nowt. One cynically added that in both cases the results usually arrive in the middle of the night accompanied by a deal of pain and relief that it’s all over.
“In the meanwhile there’re the local elections coming up, and that should be really interesting. We’ve a candidate sorted out to stand in every ward in Westmorland with Furness and some of the Cumberland rural wards are offering to put the five hundred quid deposit up if we’ll field the candidates. Murray said that is an offer too good to turn down. He wasn’t bothered by the money it was the fact that the offer had been made at all that interested him. We’ve got more than enough folk willing to stand regardless of potential outcomes, but Murray is trying to have some of the Cumberland locals put their names up for it. He’s promising as much support as they feel they need and telling them losing doesn’t matter because what matters is that they’ll be kicking the system where it hurts. It seems the existing Councillors have got their knickers in a right twist because folk are listening to him and tekin what he’s telt them to heart. What is it that you say, Sasha? Interesting times.”
Brigitte said, “Which just leaves the cold to talk about. Gran, you were at the Peabody farm yesterday. Did Uncle Auld Alan say owt about how long it was going to last?”
“Aye. He said he’d no clue and any who said they’d any idea was talking nonsense because we’ve never been here before. Seems it’s already been below minus forty some where in north east Scotland a few times and trees are bursting and exploding from the cold up there. He said the only sure guarantee was things would improve sometime in April. Nobody here has lost any stock due to it so far and there’s plenty of feed here, but it’s a gey different tale in other places. Some woman from DEFRA came to see him earlier this week and was gey mad that he’d not warned any about what was coming. He was even more abusive in return and telt her that nay bugger from outside had listened to him for over eighty years, so he wasn’t going to waste his breath on a bunch of useless political arsehole lickers like her. That was just before Arran and Sorcha manhandled her back into her car. Alan was right though, folk are dying from the cold in some spots, even in major cities. He said there’s rioting and looting in some spots, folk breaking into supermarkets. I heard talk of the government imposing curfews in some of the major cities and towns.”
“That’s been on the news for a couple of days now, Gran. I saw it on the telly earlier today, hundreds if not thousands of folk rioting and looting at a Tesco store in Birmingham. There was nowt the staff could do except stand aside to avoid being hurt. There were half a dozen policemen there and they did nowt because there was nowt they could do because that crowd would have ripped them apart if they’d tried to stop them. When the riot police arrived in numbers to clear the area they had to use tear gas. I was listening to Radio Cumbria too. It reported rioting and looting elsewhere in a number of spots, the nearest to us I think was Preston, but it didn’t mention anywhere in Cumbria, but I suspect it’ll only be a matter of time, probably in Barrow, Whiteport, or one of the other towns out west.(61) Some folk are talking about the government calling the army out to control the rioters and looters because they’re worried it’ll turn into city wide arson in some spots. I wonder if that means some of our rangers will get called up as they’re nearly all in the TA? Why are folk so mental, Gran?”
Sasha answered Brigitte’s question, or may be didn’t, “That, Sweetheart, is the sixty-four thousand dollar question, and if the rangers are called up I can’t see any of them having a problem with that though we’ll maybe have to provide some security backup if too many of them aren’t here. It’s as well the rangers trained all the fencers, but few of them joined the TA. At least that way we’ll have our own trained reserve security force. You ready to go, Elle?”
Elle put her arm through Sasha’s and they went to collect their coats. Both wore a full set of arctic furs that outsiders just presumed to be faux fur, but then they’d no experience of the real article.”
“I’m going to check on the babies, Mum. I know the baby monitor says all is quiet on the western front(62) but I’ll be happier if I look. You coming to look at yours?” At that Harriet and Gladys left.
Gustav said, “Dad, you go to bed. You too, Love. Peter and I’ll lock up.” At that Pete and Brigitte went upstairs too and Gustav and Peter locked doors and checked window locks. After they’d finished Gustav went behind the bar for a bottle of schnapps and two glasses. He filled the glasses and pushed one over to his son asking as he did, “How are you really feeling about turning your invention into a weapon, Son?”
Peter drank half of the contents of the small glass before shrugging his shoulders and replying, “I have the right to be safe. I’m in the fortunate position to be able to ensure that I and the folk I care about can be safe too. I’ve already considered creating a fifty millimetre [2 inch] shell delivery system. I’ve never mentioned it to any else, but what I have put together is essentially a super high performance rail gun(63) that will out perform anything any has yet managed to achieve because my mechanism both pulls and pushes the projectile using traditional rail gun techniques assisted by high temperature superconductor(64) based magnets. Others have been working along the same lines, but I think we are years in front of all the competition. Harwell hinted last month sometime about using depleted uranium shells that are readily available on the international market. Normally rail gun projectiles rely on their high velocity to inflict damage, but I suspect we’ll be going way beyond that with shells carrying all sorts of payloads. I wondered just how much damage giant hogweed sap could do if the shell carrying it exploded in the air above a crowd. I intend to make something that can utilise a wide variety of calibre ammunition so that we can make good use of whatever Harwell can lay his hands on at the right price.
“It’ll be a piece of cake because the rings won’t be curved and no one will care about the odd one in twenty that is a little off target, although by then I doubt it will be that many if any at all. I’ve decided to build a few of them. They will be bulky and cumbersome, but not particularly heavy. Top me up please, Dad. I reckon they’ll be best used as a fixed gun like in a much larger gun emplacement. A few on the plateau of Flat Top Fell would command and be capable of protecting a fairly sizeable area including the entire valley. Needles Fell would not be as good a site, but useful naytheless, as would some at the top of the ravine. Spread out along the ridge I reckon would be best. Harwell will know, so I’ll have a chat sometime soon with him about it. I reckon it would be no big deal for Bertie and his staff to mount them on swivels with a large degree of vertical adjustment. The ones on the water cannons would provide them with a working prototype to copy. I think Harwell and Raven Collingwood would not only know best where to site them they’ll also know best what kind of stuff to load them with. Tear gas or rock salt or whatever and no doubt the army will have some ideas of their own. We don’t really want to go into the mass slaughter business, though it wouldn’t bother me much, nor Brigitte either, if we believed we could get away with it. It’ll all work out somehow, Dad.”
“Listen, Son. I want you to think about what I’m saying and not fly off the handle about it. Okay?” Peter just nodded wondering what was coming. “If by some disastrous circumstance invaders actually make it into the valley it will mean they have been armed by outside forces and are here for more than food. They will not just be scum from the urban areas, who we’ll be able to deal with with no trouble. They’ll be a highly organised and disciplined force who are here for something specific. Probably you. You need to be able to hide. They will be looking for a lad not a lass, so you need to be dressed as a lass. You being trans has nothing to do with this. You being able to keep breathing has everything to do with this. You need to have the clothes ready in advance, you need to have practised with minimal make up too, so that it looks genuine. I hate to say it but that you are biologically XX may work to your advantage. Being raped is better than being dead. I and many others will probably be dead by then, including many of our fit young fighters maybe, men and women too. I’m not saying I think this will happen. What I am saying is if it does you need to survive it. It will be appropriate to develop your weapons way beyond the knowledge of any other including me. I want your word as a man, not as a boy and certainly not as a trans anything, but as a man, a Bearthwaite man, that you will make the appropriate preparations and if necessary be ready to lead the resistance.”
Peter stared hard and eventually replied, “If I need to be able to pass as a girl I’ll need help. Brigitte’s help because I know absolutely nowt about being a girl. I’ve never been there. Okay, Dad?”
Much relieved, Gustav said, “Sensible decision, Son. Danke.”
“Okay. I’ll finish this and find my bed. I’ve school work to do tomorrow and a gun placement to design.” At that Peter drained his glass, grinned and said, “And I need to find some clothes. Night, Dad,” before leaving. That his dad had thanked him in German made Peter realise just how concerned his father was.
Gustav left to his thoughts concluded, ‘Interesting times indeed,’ before seeking his own bed.
31474 words including footnotes.
1 Minging, disgusting.
2 Lancastrian, a person from Lancashire.
3 Cheshireman, a person from Cheshire. The term Castrian is a much lesser used one.
4 Scouser, a person from Liverpool and its environs. They have a notorious reputation for thievery, which may or may not be deserved. Whether it is or not largely depends on one’s personal point of view. They also have a characteristic accent.
5 Merc(s), pronounced merk(s). Slang for Mercedes vehicles.
6 A bollocking, vernacular and not entirely polite for a serious telling off.
7 See GOM 48.
8 To make a muff of something is to not do a very good job.
9 Every yan o’ ’em, dialectal every one of them.
10 Pakis, in the UK this is a somewhat pejorative widely used name for not just Pakistanis but Bangladeshis, Indians and Sri Lankans too.
11 I can tell a tup from a yow. A tup is a ram or male sheep and a yow is a ewe or female sheep. Vinny is saying he can tell Asian men apart from Asian women.
12 NCSG, National Child Support Group, the umbrella organisation referred to elsewhere. In reality there is no official such group, though unofficial mechanisms based on the idea exist in the UK.
13 Sǫgur, plural of saga. A saga is a long story of heroic achievement, especially a medieval prose narrative in Old Norse or Old Icelandic.
14 A skáld is one of the often named poets who composed skaldic poetry, one of the two kinds of Old Norse poetry in alliterative verse, the other being Eddic poetry.
15 A fjord or fiord is a long, narrow sea inlet with steep sides or cliffs, created by a glacier.
16 A fjäll, English fell, generally refers to any mountain or upland high enough that forest will not naturally survive at the top, in effect a mountain tundra.
17 Yrsa, the exact meaning of Yrsa has been lost to history, but theorists have come up with two possible explanations. The first, more likely option, is that Yrsa is a younger variant of the name Ýrr, meaning mad, furious or wild. The other theory is based on Yrsa’s similarities to Ursa, Latin for bear, and suggests Yrsa comes from an Old Norse word that means a she bear.
18 Ylva, she wolf, is an old Swedish female given name. It is the female form of the masculine given name Ulf and is one of the earliest names to appear in documents.
19 A baby spoon and pusher. A spoon, often flat or with an extended side like a pouring spout, and a similar piece of cutlery with a flat surface at right angles to the handle. The technique is to load the baby spoon with soft food and as the baby opens her mouth to be fed to push the food into her mouth off the spoon with the pusher. Used in the UK since at least Victorian times they were often give as a christening gift. Often made in silver.
20 Potassium metabisulphite, K2S2O5, also known as potassium pyrosulphite, is a white crystalline powder with a pungent odour. It is mainly used as an antioxidant or chemical sterilant. As a disulphite, it is chemically very similar to sodium metabisulphite, with which it is sometimes used interchangeably.
21 Potassium sorbate is the potassium salt of sorbic acid, chemical formula CH3CH=CH−CH=CH−CO2K. It is a white salt that is very soluble in water (58.2% at 20 °C). It is primarily used as a food preservative (EU permitted food additive E202). Potassium sorbate is effective in a variety of applications including food, wine, and personal care products.
22 HMRC, His Majesties Customs and Excise – the tax man.
23 Horse liniment, typically contains menthol, alcohol, witch hazel, plant extracts, capsaicin, camphor and smells pleasantly medicinal to some and disgusting to others.
24 Two ball, a generic name for a game played by little girls. There are as many variants as there are little girls, and a wall to bounce the balls off is not a requirement. The only invariant is it is played with two, or more, balls.
25 Agin, against.
26 Favvouring, favouring, an old usage not much favoured these days. Favouring to protect or avoid using one leg, hand, arm because it is painful, injured, etc.. Here Pete is indicating he is taking care of his back. Usually pronounced with a short hard a, as in maverick. IPA favɔːɪŋ.
27 Used as a verb brock is dialectal form of broken. Used as a noun a brock is a badger, usually a male.
28 A bin, dialectal have been.
29 Gey strang, dialectal very strong.
30 Wethered, castrated. A wether is a castrated ram.
31 Bairn, child. Scottish and northern English.
32 Childer, children, an alternative to bairns used in remote parts of northern England. Considered to be archaic. The suffix er that forms the plural of child was a far more widespread usage at one time.
33 AI, Artificial Insemination.
34 Hisel, himself.
35 Full of arms and legs, a vernacular expression for being pregnant. It is only used by men.
36 Teks, takes.
37 Father is typically pronounced in parts of northern England with a short a as in batter or blather. So Fathering is similar. Fa as in fat + th as in there + er as in her. IPA faðə:.
38 Twa, two. A pub in Keswick is called the Twa Dogs Inn. Another in Edinburgh called is The Dug Wi Twa Tails. The word is rarely used in spaech other than by the elderly and in remote places like Bearthwaite.
39 Raven deliberately hadn’t mentioned giant hogweed because that was illegal and there were outsiders in the taproom, but all the locals knew what he’d been referring to.
40 The Wainwright family, see GOM 44.
41 Resin spurge contains resiniferatoxin. RTX, which is rather toxic and can inflict chemical burns in minute quantities. The primary action of RTX is to activate sensory neurons responsible for the perception of pain. It is currently the most potent TRPV1, nerve pain mechanism, agonist known. RTX is a naturally occurring chemical found in resin spurge Euphorbia resinifera, and in Euphorbia poissonii.
42 Giant hogweed, a plant that can reach sixteen feet [5m] high and ten [3m] across. Although an impressive sight when fully grown, giant hogweed is invasive and potentially harmful. Chemicals in the sap cause photo dermatitis or photosensitivity, where the skin becomes very sensitive to sunlight and may suffer excruciating blistering, pigmentation and permanent scarring. Giant hogweed is usually referred to by one name, Heracleum mantegazzianum. However, while this is one of the species, there are as many as four other giant hogweeds at large in Britain some of which are biennial and others perennial. However, all have high levels of furanocoumarins (the chemicals which cause burning by making the skin sensitive to sunlight) and so all pose a risk to public health. The Wildlife and Countryside Act 1981, states you must not plant or cause to grow Giant Hogweed in the wild. The penalties could be up to 2 years imprisonment and a £40,000 fine. It is a major problem in a few areas, but to date there is no indication anywhere that any has been prosecuted for assisting its spread or indeed that any has done so.
43 BEE, Bearthwaite Educational Establishment.
44 Chips were sold wrapped in newspapers as a cost saving measure in the UK till 1976 when an EU directive closely followed by a change in UK law outlawed the practice of food coming into contact with anything that could change the food in any way like newsprint transferring on to chips which was considered normal. For a while chips were wrapped in a sterile wrapping paper which was then wrapped in the newspaper. Some places bought in special wrapping paper which simulated newspapers in appearance, but all that has been no more than history for decades now.
45 All premises licensed to sell alcohol in the UK are required by law to display the names of all the licensees prominently over the main entrance.
46 GCSE, General Certificate of Secondary Education. Examinations usually taken by 15/16 year olds in the UK in ten subjects.
47 A’ level, Advanced level. The qualification that follow on from official school leaving age in the UK. Usually taken in three or four subjects and examined at the age of eighteen.
48 PMS, Pre Menstrual Syndrome.
49 Ɖackaman, pronounced Thack a man, Th is pronounced as in then. IPA ðakaman. Upper case eth, Ɖ, is rarely found, for few words begin with eth. What few there are are old and tend to be proper nouns, that is to say names. Lower case eth, ð, is much more commonly found.
50 La Coupée is a narrow land bridge between Big Sark and Little Sark that used to be rather precarious, and on windy days the local residents had to crawl across it or risk getting blown off a cliff. Protective railings went up in 1900, and in 1945, the isthmus was finally paved by Nazi prisoners of war.
51 The village of Ribchester lies between Blackburn and Preston in Lancashire about 80 miles [130 km] south of Bearthwaite.
52 Tumbler pigeons are varieties of domesticated pigeons that are descendants of the rock dove that have been selected for their ability to tumble or roll over backwards in flight. This ability has been known in domesticated breeds of pigeons for centuries.
53 PC, politically correct.
54 To protect the guilty is Dave putting a twist on the expression ‘all names have been changed to protect the innocent’, which is used as part of longer expressions used in the media to avoid subsequent libel claims. The exact phraseology varies but it is a familiar phrase in English.
55 The major schism in Islam is between the Sunni and the Shi’ite sects.
56 Jonny McRakehell, a jonny is a name used for a condom by some English speakers and a rakehell, often abbreviated to a rake, is an old word meaning a libertine or womaniser of little morality. Usually a wealthy scion of a wealthy family the term implies a prodigal son, often a dissolute wastrel much inclined to drunkenness and gambling for high stakes.
57 Durex, in Australia Durex is what in the UK is Sellotape [Scotch tape in US], but in Britain Durex was the market leader in condoms, even back then.
58 Four ten, a small calibre shotgun. A 0.410 inch bore shotgun loaded with shot shells is well suited for small game hunting and pest control. Roughly equivalent to a 36 gauge shotgun.
59 Squirrel pickler, pejorative term for conservationists, the far left and their like. It comes from the oxymoronic concept of preserving squirrels by pickling them which is deemed by those who use the expression to be entirely concomitant with the folk being referred to.
60 Suckers are new plants that grow from the spreading roots of the parent plant. Blackthorn is a plant that rapidly spreads by means of root suckers.
61 Out west, a phrase used by Cumbrians to refer to the coastal strip. The port towns of Whitehaven, Workington and Maryport are often what is meant. Whiteport is an imaginary town out west created for the purposes of the GOM.
62 All quiet on the western front, is an Eglish translation of a German novel concerning life in the trenches of world war one and the disorientation of soldiers returning to civilian life afterwards. It has been made into a film three times. The phrase all quiet on the western front has become a colloquial expression meaning stagnation, or lack of visible change. It is used in almost any context.
63 A railgun or rail gun is a linear motor device, typically designed as a weapon, that uses electromagnetic force to launch high velocity projectiles. The projectile normally does not contain explosives, instead relying on the projectile’s high kinetic energy to inflict damage.
64 High temperature superconductors (high Tc or HTS) are defined as materials with critical temperature (the temperature below which the material behaves as a superconductor) above 77 K (-196·2 ℃, -321·1 ℉), the boiling point of liquid nitrogen. Liquid nitrogen is relatively cheap, readily available and easy to handle as compared with liquid helium which is required for non high temperature superconductors to become superconducting.
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NCSG
What is NCSG.
"Life is not measured by the breaths you take, but by the moments that take your breath away.”
George Carlin