A dull time of year is January here, out in the countryside, with limited daylight hours, mostly wet cold and windy to boot. But there are a series of everyday highlights to lift the spirits and raise a smile.
In December we’d accepted the hand delivered invitation from one of our farming friends to attend the nearby village’s senior citizens dinner, which took place this week. It’s been the first time it’s been held since before Covid. The committee’s volunteer helpers – a dozen local ladies – get together in the Town Hall and Mechanics Institute to serve parish pensioners a traditional three course meal with wine and coffee. All delivered with efficiency and great good cheer to us happy retirees sat where we chose in rows along trestle tables. Got to know some more local folk and enjoyed the conversations as well as the inevitable tales of ills and ailments. Also liked having a crack at the 20 local and general knowledge questions we’d to complete before the inevitable multi-draw raffle with prizes worth having. We didn’t win anything this time around but were donated a box of mint chocs that a diabetic fellow diner had won, but could not enjoy. A resounding and long lasting round of applause and cheering from the sixty or more of us assembled in the hall drew the catering team out of the kitchen to take a well earned bow.
Back home on another day, Chris, one of our regular contract carriers called with some office supplies. He told me he had to sack a delivery driver taken on to cope with the pre-Xmas rush. Apparently this lad had dumped a couple hundred quids worth of seasonal food into the wheelie bin at the end of a customer’s access track instead of at the house and then failed to leave a card saying what he’d done. The householder only found the food days later when she went to put waste bags in the bin.
Gordon is a retired builder who lives with his wife in a neighbouring parish. He now only works for selected clients and with a lifetime’s skills and extraordinary reserves of energy, we’re incredibly lucky to him at hand. He called by this week to measure up for a new garage roof, replacing weather worn Coroline (bitumen compressed corrugated sheets) with green corrugated steel sheeting. He’ll often stop for a coffee and a chinwag in the kitchen and today was no exception. One story he told me I’ve heard also elsewhere too and it goes like this…Years back, in the early 60’s, the bigger of our two local villages, the one where most of the valley’s shops and services are, enjoyed a reputation as a rock music hot spot would be heaving of a weekend with country lads and lasses from miles around squeezed into the hop held at the Town Hall. Being the Border country they wouldn’t be backward at showing their approval or disapproval of the bands booked to play. An outfit playing one night didn’t please them at all, or rather the singer and lead guitarist didn’t. Not being from the area, he found the reception not to his liking and hard words from the stage were followed by hard blows off it and the evening ended in disarray. The singer ended up in the village’s police station cells for the night, partly to cool off and partly for his own safety. The Victorian cop shop by the river is now a veterinary practice and I wonder if Eric Clapton ever looks back on his early career and remembers anything at all about his gig in rural Northumberland?
I’ll end with a cautionary tale Carrier Chris told me before he sped off. Last year he’d found a fabulous luxury apartment for rent while on his regular rural round in an attractive village (pop.492) over the hill in the next dale (pictured above). Having promised his long suffering wife a break he thought he’d surprise her with a get- away-from-it-all long weekend. Chris was about to whisk her off there when I saw him last year. ‘How’d it go?’ I asked him. ‘Terrible!’ he said. ‘Why?’ I asked. ‘Well’, he replied, ‘the accommodation was fabulous but we couldn’t go out anywhere without one of the customers recognising me and stopping us for a chat. The missus wasn’t too pleased about that, I can tell you…That’s why we’re off abroad this time!’
STEPHEN TOMLIN 