It has been a busy week in the Holme Valley. Another week of cold damp days, with spring trying to fit itself in somewhere around the edges. However, as I type this, on Sunday morning, there are signs of the sun finally trying to break through, and Paul Hudson on Look North has promised us “a taste of summer” next week. We’ll see. That noise you just heard was the devil going past the window on a skateboard, by the way. I did (briefly) have the cricket on the radio on Thursday while I was working, so that’s one of the sounds of summer, albeit one that, like modern summers themselves, isn’t as good as it used to be in the old days. And it’s true to say that somehow the green-ness of the summer does suddenly seem to have come upon us. Must be all that rain.
Kitty is another who remains unconvinced about summer. She’s ventured as far as sitting under the folding caravan in the driveway once or twice, before realising the inherent pointlessness of such an action, and returning to the ambit of the stove. Zak and Freddie continue to make feeding time more complicated than it need be. On Friday night, Zak had some of Freddie’s and some of Kitty’s, as well as his own. Freddie had some of Kitty’s and some of Zak’s as well as his own. Kitty had some of Freddie’s, as well as her own. I tried to encourage her to have a few morsels out of Zak’s dish as well, then everybody would have had some of everybody’s, in a perfect symmetry of feeding confusion, but of course, being a cat, and a contrarian one, she refused, stubbornly, to do so, and the moment passed.
I’m pleased to report that Brenda the Badger appears to be alive and well, and I have now seen her again with my own eyes, after a long period of just putting out food and seeing it gone the next morning, I can confirm there is still a badger, and she’s still eating food, which gave me a cause for quiet celebration.
Debbie has also been celebrating this week, after a fashion, although any celebration must, of course, be muted, because as far as the exam situation goes, we’re not out of the woods yet, and of course there’s the continuing uncertainty over what courses she’ll be teaching in September, and where. But there was, set against this, the fact that, during this week, she’d reached another birthday.
I’m not going to tell you how many years old she is, but, like Brian Hanrahan, I counted them all out, and I counted them all back again. Or at least it feels like it. Still, we were able to achieve a little oasis of calm on the night itself, we cooked a reasonable meal (well, I cooked a reasonable meal, she ate it) and what passes for a convivial evening these days ensued.
She was especially taken with her present, one of those special forces type maglite torches (except this one was a Heider with a Cree LCD. It projects a beam of 260 lumens over a distance of 200 metres, and I thought it might come in useful for kayaking expeditions when she forgets how far it is to row back and ends up coming home in the dark). So far, however, all she has used it for is to cone me in the beam of light and shout “You’re under arrest!” Still, it keeps her out of worse mischief.
It is, actually, quite an impressive piece of kit, I took it out into the driveway the other night and illuminated several startled owls with it, high in the trees in Lockwood Cemetery. I felt a bit like the kid in the Lemonheads song, “Rudy with a flashlight”,
“Playin’ out in the yard;
Shining it straight up,
Straight at the stars.”
Other than that, it’s been another week of exams, treadmill, and carrot juice, sadly without any vodka.
I could really have done with the vodka this week as well, as it’s been a particularly trying week, another one of those when everything that could go wrong, did go wrong. Culminating in the day the baffle plate fell out of the stove. The baffle-plate is the thing that deflects the heat of the firebox and stops the cast-iron top of the stove from cracking. The one that fell out in two pieces isn’t the original, it was last replaced in 2004, so this one’s lasted almost 8 years. Eight winters. When that plate was put in, we still had Russell, Nigel, Dusty and Tiggy. It just goes to show that everything changes in the end; even the thickest cast-iron boilerplate will burn through. Given time.
But maybe I should take comfort from that – because that is the same process that means that eventually, something as weak as a drop of water can bore straight through the heart of the hardest stone, given time. Decay can be beneficial, in the right circumstances, and if you don’t believe that, you’ve never had a glass of wine, then. So on those days when I feel as weak and ineffectual as a drop of water (and such days are legion) all I have to do is keep on keeping on, and I’ll break through eventually, even if it is on a geological timescale!
Things go in cycles, I guess. The old baffle-plate had had its day, and needed to be replaced. So I ordered a new one, then had the fun of fitting it this morning. With the new baffle plate fitted (after a prolonged battle) and the stove now working again, all was well, except that while I was putting it in, a chunk fell off one of the inside firebricks, (I had to shove it under the stove with the poker because it was too hot to pick up bare-handed) so we now need a new firebrick as well (sigh) but I'm tipping that can wait til summer (if summer ever arrives) when we let the fire go out altogether. I can also confirm that my dad's old army trick of shovelling the hot coals into a bucket and then back into the stove afterwards to re-light it does actually work. Just don't do what I did, and absent-mindedly try and pick up a red hot metal coal scuttle full of glowing coals by the handle! Ouch.
Grandad has taken the dogs walkies, Kitty has moved seamlessly onto the old towel I spread out to stop dust from the ash getting onto the cushions. Brenda (or somebody) ate the food I put out last night. Things move on. The companions I had on that day in 2004 when I put the last baffle-plate in have also moved on, although I do feel they are all still with me in many ways, and I give thanks that some of them are still with me in what we often refer to as “real life”.
On the day when the new baffle-plate arrived I was busy building databases to market books to a wider audience, and to be honest, I wasn’t doing it very well. I was also listening to Archie Fisher sing about how he was “born in the shadow of a Fairfield crane” and the strange concatenation of hearing him sing about the shipbuilding industry - definitely heavy metal - at the same time as I unpacked and held in my hands a very heavy, deliberately-wrought piece of metal that could easily have been a very small part of a very large battleship brought sudden vivid memories of my home town of Hull, and of my dad. Of course, Hull never had a shipbuilding industry as such, not like the Clyde or the Tyne, although there was a small shipyard in Hessle where I went to school (Dunstons) and trawlers were built up further the river at Goole. But the cranes on Alexandra dock that I grew up in the shadow of, were for unloading cargo from all over the world, not for building ships in the first place. Timber, grain, iron, oil. And in any case, my dad made aeroplanes, not ships, but the contrast was just as stark for me. My dad built things, now I build databases. My data will never fly, in any sense of the phrase.
“It was tears that made the Clyde”, sings Artie Fisher, and he may well be right about that. It was tears that made the Humber, in some years, as well. 1968, for instance, when three trawlers, the Saint Romanus, the Kingston Peridot, and the Ross Cleveland, were all lost within the months of January and February that year.
I was only thirteen then, and despite those awful tragedies, the world still seemed a very certain sort of a place, full of truths and reliable things. Now the weeds grow along the riverbank, the slipway is gone, and soon, even the humming heart of the factory itself where my dad spent over twenty years on the night shift, may be silent and empty. Things have changed, you see. We don’t make anything, any more.
Well, we’ve all been through dark times, then, and since. There may be trouble ahead, these things go in cycles. The fact that the Euro may be about to go “bang” has even reached the Holme Valley. But I do know one thing:
“Now I've sat in the school from nine till four
And I've dreamed of the world outside
Where the riveter and the plater watch
Their ships slip to the Clyde
I've served my time behind shipyard gates
And I sometimes mourned my lot
But if any man tries to mess me about
I'll fight like my father fought”
So. Take heed, and think on. Not much God this week, I’m afraid. This is probably one of those times when there’s only one set of footsteps on the beach, and I think it’s just me, but in reality, it’s me being carried by him. Still, I’ve had worse. I’ll get through it. Tomorrow is another day, and the rain is still dropping on to the stone, drop after drip after drop. One day.
In the meantime, though, that thought, in the dark times between the midnight and the dawning, doesn’t stop me wishing I was a fool for you again. I see lovers holding hands and sighing, and hang my head for shame of doing wrong. As the man says; and to be honest, I can’t put it any better. I wish I was a fool for you again. One day. Maybe.
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