To Malham and Back

Birthday treat
As part of my 57th birthday celebrations, Sally took me to Malhamdale near the source of the River Aire. I’ve been before and I hope I’ll go again. It’s one of those places once seen never forgotten – whether you encounter it first on the big screen in Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows – or whether like me you were brought here by Geography teachers in mass groups of teenagers to be amazed at the clints, grikes, limestone pavement, sink holes, rocks galore and the realisation that the planet is a heaving, living, destructive, beautiful force of nature.

Malham Cove
It’s at the top of Malham Cove that Harry and Hermione rest and try and figure stuff out. The colossal waterfall that once poured over the top of it is long gone, but the sight of the curving cliff, from below, from above, from the sides and from afar is a wonder of the Yorkshire dales. Enough to make a Muggle marvel. Priest Thomas West in 1779 described Malham Cove as like “the age-tinted wall of a prodigious castle.”

Malham Tarn
No less weird is walking to and around Malham Tarn, the glacial lake which seems to sit like a spooky infinity pool in a flat patch of desolate moorland. An atmospheric place to sit in the rain among the sheep shit and eat your sandwiches…. tasty. Charles Kingsley was inspired to write The Water Babies after visiting the Cove and Tarn – child chimney sweeps forever rejoiced.

Janet’s Foss
As a teenager Janet’s Foss was my first sight of a waterfall in real life rather than in the pages of an Enid Blyton book. And on this trip we happened to visit twice – the second day after torrential rain the night before and the bigger volume of water made the magical place seem like a completely new location. Does a fairy queen live in the cave behind the fall? Is the pope a Catholic?

Gordale Scar
And the other oft-visited place is the terrifying ravine, Gordale Scar. It’s somewhere to visit if you want to feel insignificant – a crack or chasm in the crust of the Earth with humans staring up at the immense cliffs. On our Geography Field trip – back in the 1970s – the teachers led us UP the Scar which is still possible when the two waterfalls are not heavy but at my age now – and having been a teacher – it just seems to be such a reckless, dangerous, impossible thing to have done. But I know I did.

Beck Hall Hotel
After two days hiking (well over 20,000 steps each day) it was gorgeous to come to rest each night at Beck Hall, a gorgeously-sited and whimsical place to stay over a clapper bridge. A fireside snug, jigsaw/games table, hearty food, welcoming staff, a comfy bed and the sound of Malham Beck running by all night, having poured down from the Scar, over Janet’s Foss, through Malhamdale and joining the River Aire to flow back home through Saltaire.

Trip to the North

Inner geeks
In honour of Emily’s birthday, here’s what we did last Easter. Sally and Harriet went off on a walking tour round the Yorkshire dales (Settle, Malham, Grassington) and Emily and I summoned our inner geeks to explore the western end of Hadrian’s Wall and other historical sites in the Border country.

Brougham Castle
After a toilet break and cheese market purchase in Kirby Lonsdale we first stopped at Brougham Castle, the seat of the formidable Lady Ann Clifford. The view from the top of the intact keep presented an uplifting view over the whole site. References to the castle’s role in the Border Wars and the Wars of the Roses gave plenty of ammunition to kick-start our imaginations.

Brougham Castle

Carlisle Castle
Carlisle Castle was a remarkable surprise, partly because of the mighty building itself, well-preserved with several floors to explore. Its reputation as the most besieged castle in England is well explained with details of its Roman origins, connections to the Wars of the Roses, Mary Queen of Scots and the Jacobite Rebellion; as well as its time as a military prison. On the day we were there wild violets grew in clumps so it looked especially beautiful.

Carlisle Castle

Museum of Military Life
My biggest surprise there was how much I enjoyed the Museum of Military Life housed inside the castle. It was unexpectedly fascinating and poignant. It showed soldiering through the centuries and was packed with human-interest stories of sacrifice, ambition, courage and complexity. Military facts, figures and jargon were all there, but in every section there were personal stories, not only of the soldiers’ lives but also of the reputations of the military and how it changed in different circumstances in different periods.

Heads Nook Hall
Our home for the four nights was Heads Nook Hall, a hefty pile, beautifully-appointed with plenty of space in the rooms and bathrooms. A great armchair to sit in in my bedroom overlooking sunrises and sheep fields through to the horizon. Malcolm Murray, our informative host, welcomed us with home-made scones and tea and supplied perfect
breakfasts every morning in front of an open fire.

Heads Nook Hall. Emily was in the Blue Room with a bath. I was in the Yellow Room with a view.

Birdoswald Roman Fort
Birdoswald was our first Hadrian’s Wall stop. It boasts interesting panels and museum artefacts but the site atop a pretty valley was upstaged by an eccentric kite-flying festival with audacious designs (like a weird deep sea diver) and stroppy tantrums by stunt-kite fliers. A whirlwind of enthusiastic amateurism, extraordinary skill and eye-catching design. Only in England….?

Birdoswald Roman Fort

Corbridge Roman Town
Corbridge Roman Town was another surprise, sited just south of the Wall and clearly servicing the settlements in all the ways you might imagine a military outpost would. An excellent audio-guide brought the streets and buildings to life. I hadn’t imagined the walls would be so intact. You get a strong sense of the different bits of the town community almost 2000 years after it thrived.

Corbridge Roman Town

Aydon Castle
En route to our next Wall stop we spontaneously called at Aydon Castle. A super-enthusiastic young man at the entrance tantalized us with what was available: a higgledy-piggledy totally eccentric pile of a house occupied (spartanly) as late as the 1960s when the owners were still using outside toilets. Stairs cropped up in strange places; rooms led off rooms that made little sense. It felt like being in an Escher building where you never know what room will come next – all the result of different occupiers bashing it about, including, at one time, a group of bandits. A real gem of a house with a short but pretty outside walk – through an orchard – above a gorge dropping down to a gurgling river.

Aydon Castle

Housesteads Roman Fort
I’ve wanted to visit Housesteads Roman Fort for ages – it didn’t disappoint. It was a bitingly windy day which made the thought of the Roman/Syrian occupiers even more atmospheric. Housesteads clings to a ridge across a wide area and it’s easy to imagine how isolated the auxiliaries must have felt being stationed there. The museum was freshly informative and the randomly-placed panels around the site meant your view and perspective kept changing if you made an effort to read all the panels. A panoramic, cobweb-blowing visit.

Housesteads Roman Fort

Roman Army Museum
Our B&B host recommended we include the Roman Army Museum, a commercial set-up which wasn’t planned but it proved well worth it. Targeted at and suitable for all ages, the multi-AV museum is essential if you want to sort out your legionary from your auxiliary and delve deeper into an understanding of Roman Army life. The different set-ups are all imaginative and a 3D film includes aerial shots of The Wall as well as recreations of the life of a bored auxiliary stationed in Roman Britain. A cheesy semi-soap about a group of auxiliary friends also highlights different aspects of the whys and wherefores of being a soldier at that time. The Roman emperor timeline was enlightening, as was the section on Hadrian himself in all his complexity, including his unsuccessful marriage to Vibia Sabina and his love for Antinous.

Roman Army Museum with "Roman" loos....!

Vindolanda
I had imagined Vindolanda quite differently. I knew Vindolanda had ongoing excavations every summer (and will do for the next 200 years if all goes according to plan) but what I didn’t expect was such a massive site with such a clear visual presentation of the dynamic between the fort itself and the vicus that grew up outside the fort. It was a rainy and cold day when we visited but that played into the narrative of Pat, our excellent tour guide, who brought various parts of the site to life with a mix of funny anecdotes, dry references to quirky facts and a genuine love for the place itself. She knew her stuff! The reconstruction project of a section of stone Wall and a section of wood/turf Wall was fascinating as was the museum at the bottom of the site. The highlight for me of the museum was the remarkable discovery and presentation of writing tablets discovered quite by accident and revealing personal details of the lives of people at the time.

Vindolanda

Lanercost Priory
The austerity of the functional church at Lanercost Priory is a stark contrast with what your imagination can do with the remains of the medieval Augustinian Priory, a solid and impressive edifice. It was fun (and sad?) to find bits of Hadrian’s Wall purloined to build the Priory. It’s hard though not to obsess (in a disturbing way) about the terracotta effigy of four month old Elizabeth Howard, a Victorian tomb by Sir Edgar Boehm. Felt very conflicted about its value but it certainly made an impact.

Lanercost Priory

Richmond Castle
Richmond Castle is another substantial building with an intact keep and fantastic view over the town and into the far distance. Scolland’s Hall is a highlight inside, as is the extensive curtain wall. The cockpit garden contains some dramatic topiary and there is an informative display about the Richmond Sixteen, the conscientious objectors from the First World War.

Richmond Castle

Easby Abbey
Our final stop on the way back home was Easby Abbey. The stunning refectory with its great window and the atmospheric cloister were easy to imagine with the help of the information panels. You can just see some original faint traces of red paint on the outer archway of the gatehouse. An impressive ruin though the highlight is probably the peaceful setting.

Easby Abbey

So what now? You decide.
Dad-daughter geek fests – highly recommended! First we did Arthurian sites, then this Hadrian’s Wall trip. Where next? We got along enough to think it may well happen again – yes, there is much talk of history and what we’ve seen, but there is also talk of politics and the state of the nation and reactions to and comments about James O’Brien LBC podcasts (The best of…. and Mystery hour) and we watched the films of Avatar and The Eagle to wind down in the evenings. And, well, we could spend as long as we liked reading the information panels. And we did.

(final lines from The Eagle)

Esca: So what now?
Marcus Aquila: You decide.

Epiphany

We three kings of Orient are

Bearing gifts we traverse afar

Field and fountain, moor and mountain
Following yonder star
I don’t know which moors the three kings were traversing in John Henry Hopkins carol but I hope to spend a good number of days in the Yorkshire moors and dales during 2016. And catching up with family and friends.

• Bearing gifts (of love and time, maybe wine.) 
• Traversing afar (if not in reality, then in the imagination and through reading, writing, TV, cinema and theatre.)
• Following a star….?
  

It’s hard to let go of the holiday season

Before they are taken down for another year, we walked round the Living Advent Windows in Saltaire village. Awesomely creative as always. And atmospheric in the cobbled streets. The walk up and down the Fannys and the Marys and William Henrys and the Georges this year was a bit splashy rather than icy as it has been in previous years. I didn’t end up with a bruised arse from falling over, just a damp hat. And an inspired soul, which is more important. (Fanny, Mary, William Henry and George are names of the children of Titus Salt, after whom Saltaire is named; Whitlam, Edward, Herbert, Titus, Helen, Amelia, and Ada were the others; some tragically predeceased their parents.)

Living Advent Windows Saltaire 2015

2016 Resolutions

I’ve had an Epiphany on this Epiphany. (A sudden revelation on the 6th January.) If I want to avoid diabetes (and enjoy retirement from teaching for a few years more) I need to make my luxury carriage (ie my body) a bit smaller in girth. I blogged about eating and drinking back in October (“Think well, love well, sleep well”) and have taken the first step to do something about it now, inspired by others who have been successful – and joined Slimming World. Yes, I have. I have entered the world of Free Food, Healthy Extras and Syns…. So far, so good, two days in…. Wish me well on the journey…. Following yonder star....

Yorkshire Day - Home from t'South

Father-daughter road trip

Just got back from a trip with Emily around five counties: Devon, Cornwall, Somerset, Wiltshire and Hampshire. I will blog about why and where exactly we went in the future. In the meantime it is good to be back in time for Yorkshire Day. Good to breathe the northern air again.

Yorkshire Day

Yorkshire Day is of course entirely made up – like Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day and Secretary’s Day – but it had noble origins in 1975 as a protest against local government reorganisation and the date was picked to remember:

• the Emancipation of Slaves anniversary spearheaded by William Wilberforce, MP for Hull and
• the Battle of Minden, an Anglo-German victory over the French  in 1759, which was already celebrated with the wearing of roses by army regiments, including the King’s Own Yorkshire Light Infantry (now the Light Infantry) who, of course, chose white roses to wear
  

Chance to promote stereotypes

A bit of research shows that tabloids often use Yorkshire Day as a chance to promote flat-cap-wearing, ferret-down-the-trousers, muddy-welly Farmer curmudgeon stereotypes of Yorkshire folk. Karl Young in The Metro cites Size, Tea, Pride, Olympians, Culture and Passion as reasons to celebrate coming from Yorkshire. It’s as good a list as any, as long as Culture embraces History as well as the Arts; and Passion and Pride includes the Moors and the Dales and the Rivers and the Crags.

Nicola Adams, Sir Ben Kingsley, Jessica Ennis-Hill, JB Priestley,
Amy Johnson, Alan Bennett, David Hockney, Judi Dench,
Scary Spice (Mel B), Sean Bean, Katherine Brunt and Danielle Hazell (cricketers), Henry Moore,
Dame Janet Baker, Geoffrey Boycott, Betty Boothroyd, Michael Parkinson,
Barbara Hepworth, Corrine Bailey Rae, James Martin, Brontë sisters  

Long live Yorkshire Pride!

Beginning to Look Back

Looking Back

As 2014 ends, I can only hope 2015 and future years contain less personal trauma. I hope in future years I can compose blogs more regularly and without obscuring too much of what I am truly thinking and feeling. The images below contain (for me) total pleasure and excruciating pain. And also contain (for me) love beyond belief. And some bewilderment. The end of the year is a good time for looking back…. 

Harriet home from India/Nepal, Egypt, goodbye teaching, home from the hills and, in images below, Emily home from Dorking, Kerry and Norah on the Moors, Surrey and the South, Barr-Lancelots, the Tower of London, Fountain's Abbey, the wonderful Margaret Atwood at the Ilkley Literature Festival

Last Christmas

Between October and December 2013 everything changed – in my world, at any rate. Last Christmas felt very fragile but this Christmas, everything feels different. No doubt next Christmas will feel different again. And the one after that. Change happens.

Change and the Illusion of Time Management

Change happens. Constantly. I used to believe in Time Management. But I now think it is a redundant concept. Time cannot be Managed. All that can be managed is what you do and what you say. You give your attention to chosen actions and that attention affects naturally occurring changes, hopefully changing things in a direction you want. Anything you ignore will undergo changes anyway. Because change is a constant. Time marches on. Change happens. Constantly.

Get Everything Done: and still have time to play

So I’ve increasingly over the years tried to live by the following philosophy, espoused by my friend Jane Howson and written about eloquently by Mark Forster: you must Give Attention to the things you want to affect. You can never Manage Time; all you can do is Give Attention to what you do and what you say. Because Change will happen anyway. Give Attention to the things you want to change. As Linda Loman says in Arthur Miller's Death of a Salesman

attention must be paid.

Resolutions

Approaching 2015 is a time to look back and a time to look forward. Next year I’ll be 55. 55 years before I was born it was 1905 - a lot of Change has happened since 1905. A lot of Change will no doubt happen in 2015.... and in the five years following.... what will 2020 be like? Time will tell. Excelsior!

Living in the South

Arundel, Hampton Court, Bodiam, scented summer

Yorkshire Independence?

My last blog began ruminations about Northern and Southern stereotypes. Could you ever begin to feel like a Southerner if you were born in Yorkshire? Could Yorkshire ever become an independent region of The British Isles? Luckily, I didn’t receive death threats by writing about Scottish Independence as JK Rowling did a few weeks ago, but that’s probably because I am ambivalent. I think my position is the same as the recent celebrity letter published in the newspapers stating that, apropos an Independent Scotland, my brain says YES but my heart says NO. I am too fond of visiting the Scottish Hebrides, Highlands and other tourist destinations north of Hadrian’s Wall.

Yorkshire Dales and Skye in Scotland

Badbeeee

My current feeling is that, although a Yorkshireman by birth, I do recognise that home is where the heart is and that your heart is usually wherever your loved ones are. For example, Badby, a small village in Northamptonshire is very close to my heart and that’s because some truly excellent friends live there. A family joke (when the girls were very young, you understand) was to call out as we approached the village on the winding road from the M1 – “I hope there are no bad bees in Badbeeee.” (A family joke that only works if you’ve been in the car on a hot summer’s day, got the giggling fits the first time because you finally understood puns, infected everyone else with your giggling, and repeated the joke a hundred times on subsequent visits…. Even when everyone in the car is too old to know better…..)

England, blue sky, Viva's Restaurant in Dorking, Hampton Court, Mayfield Lavender, Polesden Lacey, Denbie's Wine Estate

Gadding About The South

Like family jokes, places take on significances unique to each individual. So now, in the south, I’ve come to appreciate a number of places that have found deeply-lodged crevices in my conscience. Highlights in my Southern Exile include: eating fish n chips overlooking the boats at Bexhill-on-Sea, meandering round the house, gardens and woods of Polesden Lacey, visiting Arundel, Banqueting Hall, Battle, Bodiam, Brockham Festival, Chawton, Clandon Park, Claremont Gardens, Denbies Wine Estate, Hampton Court, Hatchlands Park, Hever, Hughenden Manor, Kensington Palace, Kew Palace, Leith Hill, Mayfield Lavender Fields, Monks House, Nonsuch, Nyman’s, Painshill Park, Pevensey, Ranmore Common, Runnymede, Scotney, Sissinghurst, Wandsworth Common…. 

Bexhill-on-sea, that blue sky again, Bodiam Castle, Polesden Lacey, Tony and Sally, Arundel Castle, Seven Sisters, outdoor stage at Polesden Lacey for a production of Shakespeare's A Midsummer Night's Dream

National Trust and English Heritage

The miles and miles of greenery that I’m discovering in and around London is not as rugged and (sometimes) bleak as the northern hills and dales, but it envelops you in scented summer and can put you at peace. Of course being a member of National Trust and English Heritage gives plenty of scope for visiting places that contain landscapes, buildings and stories that are worthy of attention.

Salute the South

So for now, I salute the South but still dream about the North.

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I / I took the one less travelled by....

I Will Survive

Relief, Fear, Uncertainty

A grim start to a new blog? But Relief, Fear and Uncertainty are my initial feelings now that I’m retired.

At first I was afraid
I was petrified

How can I survive without a full-time job? Particularly such a busy, all-consuming job? Teaching for the best part of 32 years…. In Manchester, in London, in Winchester, in Helsinki, in Stratford-upon-Avon, in Retford, in Sheffield, in Leek, in Keighley, in Wakefield, in Leeds, in Bingley and for the last 14 years at Bradford Grammar School, a large coeducational independent school, where I was Head of English and Drama.

The Likes Of Us, my final "big" school production

Retirement

    ….tis our fast intent
To shake all cares and business from our age
Conferring them on younger strengths, while we

Unburdened crawl towards lie-ins, reading and going to the cinema in the afternoon, writing for fun, puzzling over jigsaws, walking on canal towpaths, the Yorkshire moors and dales on weekdays, focusing on health, booking holidays in school term times…. Working at living instead of living at work.

Ripeness Is All

Was it the right time to leave?

There is a tide in the affairs of men, which,
Taken at the flood, leads on to fortune….

Was this the right time? This blog may partially answer that question. Life is in an unusual place at the moment. I’ve been commuting most weekends from Bradford to Dorking where my family is temporarily renting a flat.

The Temple on the Nower in Dorking

Life In A School

I will miss the working life in school: the buzz, the buildings, the banter – but most of all the people. Working in a collegiate atmosphere with people who, by and large, have the same values and aims - colleagues who have compassion, enjoy a sense of absurdity and teach their specialist subjects with depth and detail. Colleagues whose goal is to inspire teenagers, those infuriating, bizarre semi-adult beasts, creatures full of the future, full of unpredictable fun, full of hormonal bullshit.

Rat Trap an original musical I directed at Leek Westwood High School in my first teaching job

Life As A Teacher

Every day contained dozens - probably hundreds - of interactions; some interactions were like performances, some quick and intense, some combative and unsettling, some giddyingly silly; but all were involving and immediate. Will I Survive without timetables, schemes of work, planning, delivering, evaluating, monitoring, assessing, reviewing, planning, delivering, evaluating, monitoring, assessing, reviewing, planning…. And so it goes on, deadline after deadline, day after day, week after week, term after term…. But never the same in my subjects (English and Drama) and never the same because of the endless parade of humans…. Teachers, Support Staff, Students…. A cavalcade of teeming humanity.

Mikey Lord leading These are the days of our lives at Bradford Grammar School We Will Rock You

What Next?

So the aims of this blog are for me to reflect on retirement, practise writing skills and comment on whatever crops up in the moment of writing.  The only binding constant will be the words of William Shakespeare, which I expect to crop up frequently; the Complete Works of Shakespeare (and everything that surrounds those Works) are my hobby and have been for a very long time. Anyone who enjoys spotting quotations (the clues are in the labels below each blog), feel free to reveal which words belong to which play. I expect there will be no obvious “narrative arc” – just a diary of whatever crops up in my retired life. My dream is to live in retirement as a “writer” and my first step is to begin this blog and aim for five posts a month by August 2016 (I’m giving myself two years to get into the swing of it….) As the Marvel-lous Stan Lee often says…. Excelsior!