Has the way we speak changed?

A few years ago I asked one of the girls at work how she was and she said "champion!" I was a bit taken aback by that response because I'd not heard anyone say they were "champion" for the best part of thirty years and she was no more than eighteen or nineteen years old. When I was that age and younger however, adults in West Cumbria would often answer "champion" to an enquiry about their health ( an enquiry that might have been "what fettle?") or about anything else to which a standard english response of "fine " or "perfectly allright" might be a suitable response.

Growing up in Cumbria in the 1960's, and particulary among the farming community, almost everyone I mixed with spoke with a definite regional accent and many, the family in particular, peppered their conversation with dialect words not heard elsewhere. No-one born here would use southern vowel sounds and any one who did was thought to be rather posh. "Champion" was one word that seems to have all but gone, "starvation", used to describe a very cold day is another (ie as in "let me get near the fire, its starvation out there"!) and "whisht!", an instruction to be quiet, was another which I heard rather a lot!

I remember the 1960's as a time when everybody spoke with a definite Cumbrian or at least northern accent but I wonder whether that's just a reflection of the people I mixed with or whether fewer people nowadays do have accents. I suspect its a bit of both - I certainly came across children at the Grammar School who had been brought up here but spoke with non local accents (because their parents were from elsewhere) but its only in recent years that I've come across entirely local youngsters - ie those with Cumbrian parents - with neutral accents and often southern vowel sounds.

Have other Today Generationers any thoughts on this with regard to their home regions? A few weeks ago my stepdaughter had a visit from eight or nine friends from University - they came from as far apart as London, the Midlands, the North West, the North East and Edinburgh but I couldn't tell their accents apart. If you'd asked me to place them I couldn't have done it - am I alone in thinking this a great shame?

Other changes in the way we speak are perhaps even easier to explain - words have come into existence during the last fifty years to describe things that simply didn't exist in the past (internet, fax, blog to name the most obvious) and other phrases and expressions are invented almost weekly. Who'd heard of anything not being "fit for purpose" until last year, or "sub prime lending" before last month! The meaning of long established words has also changed - something odd or unusual was still "queer" when we were young, "regular" was to do with timing and applied to buses and bowels and had nothing to do with the size of coffee cups or pizzas! "Gay" appeared in childrens books to describe something cheerful and happy and in Cumbrian dialect means "very". "Regular" of course is an americanism, as is the use of "Hi" as a greeting - not something I'd heard in Cumbria much before I was an adult.

Another change, not directly to do with speech, is the way we address strangers and the way children address adults. I notice that older people I speak to at work sometimes insist on addressing me as Mr Troughton long after I've introduced myself as Roger, asked them to call me Roger and then told them to stop calling me Mr Troughton. Younger people on the other hand, often who've never met or spoken to me before, will address me informally from the outset as if we were old friends (they are usually trying to sell me something!).

Places and lives - how they've changed

Frizington

Looking back to the 1960's and 1970's, remembering things that have happened and places I've been, makes me realise just how great the changes have been both in the physical appearance of the towns, villages and countryside I grew up in, and the lives of the people who live here. West Cumberland as it then was, between the Lake District hills and the Irish Sea, had been built on mining - coal mines to the north and west, iron ore mines to the south. Frizington, where we lived, had been built in the mid 19th century to house an influx of miners and their families coming to work in the Iron Ore mines and, since these had closed in the decade or so after the first world war, it had been somewhat in decline.

Built along one main Road about a mile long most houses were of the small terraced variety and, towards the southern end of the village particularly, were already in a poor condition by the 1960's. Some houses had been demolished leaving gaps in the rows where cars would be parked, games of football and cricket played and bonfires built for 5 November each year. Frizington had a population of (and I'm guessing here) maybe 3500 people but had three churches, three schools, six or seven pubs and two private members clubs. In the middle of the village I can remember at least five general stores where groceries, sweets and chocolate, cigarettes etc could be bought, two butchers shops, two greengrocers, a bakers shop, a hardware shop, two fish and chip shops, a post office, a bank, a newsagents, a barber shop (short back and sides only), a ladies hairdresser and a chemist. There were two or three more corner shops - away from the centre of the village where we would call for drinks during a long walk - and, bang in the centre, The Palace Cinema or "Biddalls" as it was known, where films could be seen within a few short years of their release! At either end of the village there was a filling station with a garage which carried out motor repairs and for a short time in the mid/late sixties one of these sold a cheap russian car called a Moskvitch - a forerunner of the Lada, I suppose!

As far as employment was concerned, many of the older men and some young ones were miners who worked in the coal mines in and around Whitehaven and in the area's remaining iron mines five or six miles away near Egremont. One of my earliest memories is of looking out of a bedroom window early in the morning and seeing one of the neighbours return from a nightshift at Walkmill Colliery at Moresby, his clogs clattering down the road as he went. By the time I was a teenager however, there was only one coal mine left (Haig pit at Whitehaven) and two iron ore mines (Florence and Haile Moor mines outside Egremont), and even in the 1960's the predominant employers were the nuclear industry at Sellafield and Marchon Products, a chemical plant on the outskirts of Whitehaven. Both of these provided relatively well paid, clean and healthy jobs and counted their workforce in the thousands. Some people travelled further afield to the Steelworks at Workington and of course there was still demand for farmworkers although mechanisation had reduced the numbers of those some time before I came on the scene. In Frizington itself there was Fezco Mill ("The Fez") which housed a Kangol hat factory employing just enough people to create a small crowd when they walked home at the end of the day.

In addition to these large employers there were many small businesses which would have employees - the shops I've mentioned in Frizington would all have a couple of assistants as well as the proprietor, the three schools would have dinner ladies, caretakers etc., there were road sweepers, road repair men who laid grit with shovels and emptied drains, Insurance agents and door to door salesmen knocking on doors, the dustcart which came for our rubbish had half a dozen men carrying and emptying bins, Frizington had at least two coal merchants with a couple of lorries delivering nutty slack - they had employees (there was still one who delivered coal with a horse and cart - a man so old that his claim to have seen Queen Victoria when he was a lad was quite believable!). Frizington also had two undertakers who had joinery businesses as well and they too would probably provide employment from time to time. There was a branch of the Co-op where you stood at a counter and ordered your groceries and they were brought to you by one of a number of staff before you took your "dividend" book to another counter where someone else added up the entries, said "that'll be 5/11d please", took your cash and signed your book. The Co-op had a drapery department, where I was taken for school clothes, and a butchery department (which brings my total of butchers up to three!) These too would have three or four employees between them some of whom had been there for most of their working lives.

In short there were lots of people who earned their living without ever leaving the village and who were known by almost everyone who lived in it. My mother and most other houswives went shopping in Frizington almost every morning and there would be half a dozen shopkeepers who would see her two or three times a week - despite this, manners of the time dictated that she addressed them as Mr or Mrs whoever and they addressed her as Mrs Troughton. One shopkeeper I remember in particular was Mrs Hodgson who had the corner shop at the end of our street. Mrs Hodgson couldn't remember names and for years addressed my mother (and presumably many others) as Mrs Er?. Even when she retired and we called to see her in her new home, sitting in her front room my mother called her Mrs Hodgson and she replied with Mrs Er? !

Another significant employer in the area generally was the local bus company, Cumberland Motor Services. By no means did every family have a car and there was a regular and frequent bus service running from Frizington to Whitehaven and to other places throughout West Cumberland. It was not uncommon, up to the early 1970's, to see three or four red double decker buses in Frizington at the same time and each one had both a driver and a conductor. There were even more buses around in Whitehaven and Cleator Moor (a small market town on the way to Whitehaven from Frizington) and recalling that both of those two had a bus station with staff and a garage manned by mechanics etc., I guess the company must have had quite a large staff. By the mid seventies however, car ownership had grown and bus sevices were cut back - conductors became a thing of the past, and the double deckers were gradually replaced by single deckers and eventually by vehicles not much bigger than a mini bus. You still see the occasional double decker (I saw one today, inexplicably winding along a country lane with a driver but no passengers!) but the number of people employed in public transport can only be a fraction of what it was forty years ago.

Frizington today is a very different place. I think only one corner shop remains, only one butcher, the bakers shop and the chemist have survived but there's no greengrocer, no hardware store, no barber shop, no bank and no filling station. The main fish and chip shop has long since been demolished and the other has had various incarnations sometimes selling fish and chips sometimes other fast food. The Co-op and the Cinema are now both mini markets and the co-op drapery building now houses a Pizza and Kebab take-away and one of the former general stores on the main street is now a chinese take-away. Coal merchants are a thing of the past, the Kangol factory has gone and only one of the seven pubs survives - the two clubs, I think, are still in business and one of the schools closed its doors a year or so after I left it in 1969! Many of the older properties have been demolished and either replaced by modern semi detached or "link" houses or left as green spaces or car parks. It would be wrong and over nostalgic to say that village life had gone altogether but I doubt very much whether you could say the same sense of community still exists - modern life, supermarkets, widespread car ownership and a host of other factors have, at least for the younger and more affluent people, widened horizons and weakened the connection with their immediate neighbours which existed forty or so years ago.

Employment for Frizington people continues to be provided principally by the Nuclear industry although there is a trend towards indirect employment through agencies, proprietor owned companies etc. - the secure, life long jobs on offer thirty and forty years ago are no longer as easy to come by. I imagine far fewer people will now work in the village itself and those not employed by Sellafield and associated businesses will often be travelling to Whitehaven, Workington or further away.

Whitehaven

Five miles west of Frizington, just north of the pointy bit of Cumbria that juts out into the Irish Sea, lies the port of Whitehaven. Whitehaven, I'm told, started life as a fishing village but began to grow when coal deposits were found about three hundred years ago. Later, it became an important place in the trade with the American colonies and with the Caribbean and by the late 1700's was one of the busiest ports in Britain. In 1788 it was important enough to be attacked by the fledgling United States navy when John Paul Jones landed in the harbour and set fire to a number of ships - the last time mainland Britain was invaded by a foreign power!

By the time I came along though, Whitehaven's glory days were over and it was in a sorry state. The harbour was used for exporting coal to Ireland and for receiving shiploads of phosphate rock for the Marchon chemical plant which stood on the high ground overlooking the town between the harbour and St Bees Head (the pointy bit referred to above). The fine georgian buildings which had been built on wealth generated by the transatlantic trade 150 or so years earlier were frequently in a state of disrepair and the town had a general air of grubby neglect.

As our nearest shopping center of any size it was where we went to buy things unobtainable in Frizington, where we went to the bank, the dentist, the cinema (after Biddall's closed down) and for any number of other reasons. I would often be taken there on the bus by my mother on a Saturday afternoon where she would drag me round the shops until she'd managed to buy what we went for. At that point we'd go to a store called "The Beehive" which had a toy department in the basement and I'd look at the train sets, model cars and planes and meccano sets and usually come out with a "Matchbox" or "Dinky" car, another wagon for my "Hornby 00" train set or another pack of parts for my lego! The Beehive was memorable for its peculiar arrangement for taking money and giving change; your payment and receipt were placed in a metal canister and put in a system of pipes which went "whoosh"as the canister was sucked in and sent flying away to some distant cash office. After a few minutes another canister would be taken from the pipe and be found to contain your change. It intrigued and baffled me for years but I doubt if there was anyone in West Cumbria who didn't mourn the passing of the Beehive!

We would then trudge along "Tangier Street" to the Bus station and join the queue for the bus home to Frizington. There is quite a stiff climb out of Whitehaven and my memory of those rides home are of sitting on the lower deck (my Mother wouldn't go upstairs because she didn't like the cigarette smoke!) with my nose pressed to the glass as the bus crawled up the hill at 15mph. It is strange the things that stick in my mind - the day the bus had to stop while the driver knocked on a door to ask for water to top up the radiator; the confused old lady who talked to her reflection in the window one dark winter evening and who I was told couldn't help it, she'd "gone funny"; and on one of the few occasions we did sit upstairs how there were a group of teenagers, one with a radio playing the Beatles' latest hit, " A Hard Days Night".

Whitehaven's shops were largely privately owned in those days - there was Woolworths and Burtons but the majority, like The Beehive, was under private management and owned by local families. There were all manner of types of shop including one where you could buy clogs - not the ornamental type brought home from visits to Holland but heavy industrial ones worn by miners and farmers. The shop window contained a selection of brightly coloured child sized clogs but, if you peered into the gloom beyond, you could see the clogger furiously hammering nails into the wooden soles of pair of size nines. I had a pair for farm use up until my mid teens when the shop closed - they were very comfortable (when you got used to the fact that the sole wouldn't bend) and extremely warm in frosty weather.

Beyond the shopping area was the harbour along the side of which ran a steam train hauling wagons of coal from the point where they'd descended from Haig Pit on the headland above, to the dock where the coal would be tipped into a waiting ship. At the same dock stood two large silos used to store the phosphate rock until it could be shipped by road up to Marchon. As a result the whole area was covered with coal dust and the off-white phosphate, many of the buildings along the edge of the harbour were unoccupied and a walk along the harbour was often a bit of an obstacle course! However, people did walk along it and in particular out on one of the two stone piers which jut out into the sea and provide splendid views of the Solway Firth.

By the mid 1970's only Haig Pit remained in operation in the whole of the West Cumbria coalfield and mining was no longer the major source of employment it had once been. A major disaster in another Whitehaven mine in 1947 had led to the loss of over 100 lives and that one had closed shortly afterwards, others being exhausted and closed in the 1950's and 1960's. British Nuclear Fuels bought various old properties in Whitehaven during the 1970's and helped to kick-start a process of renovation which led to many an old ruin being restored to it former glory. After the harbour ceased to be used for either coal or phosphates it too was restored, cleaned up, the railway lines replaced by pedestrain walkways and today is an extremely attractive marina hosting the biennial Maritime Festival which, in 2007, attracted nationwide, even international interest.

Like everywhere the lives of people in Whitehaven have changed enormously in the last fifty years. The dirty, dangerous jobs of mining and heavy industry have been replaced with clean high tech jobs. The mines and Marchon have now gone but people find employment in the nuclear industry, in tourism and in public services (the West Cumberland Hospital which I saw the Queen Mother open in 1964 is on the outskirts of Whitehaven and also provides several hundred jobs). For some reason Whitehaven has declined as a shopping centre, a major development in its neighbour and rival Workington having attracted some big high street names, but is nevertheless an interesting and pleasant town to visit. The idea forty years ago that it could attract tourists would have been laughable but it now makes much of its maritime past, links to the Caribbean and of its proximity to the Lake District.

Memorable news events

Kennedy's Assassination 1963









US President John F Kennedy addressing a crowd in Fort Worth, Texas, only hours before he was shot in Dallas on 22 November 1963. By the time I went to bed that night he was dead and Lyndon Johnson was effectively President.

We are all supposed to remember where we were when we heard that President Kennedy had been shot and I'm pretty sure I do. I'm not aware of being able to remember any news event before that, but can distinctly remember sitting on the floor, in front of a coal fire, watching TV whilst dressed in pyjamas ready to go to bed. As bed time approached I used to feign deep interest in whatever was on the box, as a way of delaying the time when I'd be taken upstairs, and on the night in question I can remember the programme ("Take Your Pick", "Emergency Ward Ten", "Peyton Place" or whatever it was) being interrupted by a "Newsflash". On Border TV a "Newsflash" was read out while someone held a piece of card in front of a camera with the word "Newsflash" written on it. Or so it seemed! My memory of this event was confirmed as reliable relatively recently by the timing - Kennedy was shot at around 1pm in Dallas which would be 7pm in England; more or less my bed-time by the time the news reached ITV.

I also have the feeling that I knew who President Kennedy was although, at the age of six, that would seem unlikely. I do recall with rather more certainty following the subsequent events and learning the names of the people involved - Jacqui Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson of course as well as Lee Harvey Oswald and Jack Ruby who was always referred to as "Dallas night club owner, Jack Ruby". It was all exciting stuff watching grainy TV pictures of huge american cars swishing by, policemen brandishing shotguns and Oswald being shot in front of the cameras.

Churchill's death 1965

The next big news event was also the death of an iconic politician. Unlike most, my memory of Churchill's death isn't of the funeral - I don't remember seeing that at all - but of my mother telling me about him and, rather strangely, of the fact that his full name was "Winston Leonard Spencer Churchill". Quite why that has stuck in my mind I don't know!

The adults in my family had almost all been in their twenties or even thirties during the war and so I was already familiar with wartime stories, and anything connected to it could easily capture my imagination. My mother had worked in stately home turned refugee centre near Barrow in Furness during the early part of the war and had tales of watching the shipyards being bombed and receiving families who had fled the town. Later she had been in a munitions factory in Lancashire and had a fund of stories including how her factory and been threatened by name in a broadcast by Lord Haw Haw and of serious absenteeism when a rumour spread that Clark Gable had been posted to an airbase afew miles away! My Dad, being a farmer, had not been called up to the forces (although two of my uncles had) but still told of seeing German bombers pass by on their way to Glasgow, working long hours to meet government targets, coping with petrol rationing and befriending a german prisoner of war who'd been sent to work on my Great Uncle's farm a few miles away.

Churchill would be someone I'd heard of before he died and I'm sure I had a pretty good idea of who he was and what he'd done, and just what a revered figure he was. Looking back now and realising that it was only twenty years after the end of the war, the memory would still be very fresh in people's minds and it's surely not surprising that there was so much talk about it and that it was such a reference point for the timing of other events; phrases like "before the war", "during the war" and "since the war" I recall as being part of everyday speech.

The World Cup 1966

Memories of the world cup are a bit sketchy - for much of the tournament we were on a seaside holiday in a caravan at Braystones on the West cumberland coast (close to where the Sellafield waste pipe enters the sea!) and had no access to a TV. I did have a football with "World Cup" written on it and we played matches on the beach - one side was always England of course and the other usually Brazil, a team made up entirely of eight year old Peles! I'm sure we would be home for the final but really can't remember whether I watched it or not - I've seen so much about it since then that it's difficult to decide what I remember from 1966 and what I've merely learned afterwards.

Bobby Charlton, Nobby Stiles and Pele relax after tense match during the parallel World Cup competition held on the cumbrian coast in 1966.
Pele's dad, who also thought he was Pele, joined us for the photocall. Note that Charlton (me) has been playing in wellington boots!





Aberfan 1966

It was during the half term holiday in October 1966 in Newcastle that I pointed out to my mum that a flag flying in the city centre had slipped down the flagpole. I was told that it had done no such thing and that it was flying at half mast out of respect for the 116 children who had been killed in the Aberfan disaster which happened when heavy rain caused a pit spoil heap to collapse and engulf the village school. I think I knew of the disaster before then because I recall being made to stand for two minutes' silence at school. Many of the victims were the same age as me and I remember trying to imagine what it must have been like to be in that school, a school which on TV looked so like ours. West Cumberland had been a big mining area and, although only a handful of pits were still working by the mid 1960's, pit banks, as we called them, were still a common site. Perhaps because of this, and the similarities with the school and the children, that awful disater in the welsh valleys made a big impact on me at the time.

The schoool at Aberfan in south Wales after being destroyed by pit waste in October 1966. almost 150 people died including 116 school children.












The "six day" war 1967

In each of the news stories I remember, there seems to be some simple memory, some associated fact or connected piece of knowledge that has helped it stick in my mind. The dramatic interruption of a TV programme, Churchill's middle name, the half mast flag. The singular memory I have of the 1967 war between Israel and the surrounding Arab countries is of watching TV News (News at Ten I think) while staying on the farm with my aunt and Uncles, presumably during the spring half term holiday at the beginning of June. We had a family friend at the time whose surname was "Allonby" and a story about refugees crossing the Allenby Bridge over the river Jordan had the adults jokingly telling me it was named after him! (despite the spelling difference).

Refugees fleeing across the Allenby bridge in June 1967. I assume they were Palestinians leaving the recently occupied West Bank - an occupation still causing controversy in the middle east forty years later.

This was my first knowledge of the middle east troubles and, like most of us, I've followed the seemingly endless cycle of fighting ever since. There were the airline hi-jackings in 1970, fighting in Amman, Jordan a year or two later and the Yom Kippur war in 1973. I was always good at remembering the names of people involved - Golda Meir, Moshe Dayan, King Hussein and Yasser Arafat. Sometimes less well known names stuck in my memory too, for example a woman called Leila Khaled who, I think, was a palestinian connected to one of the airline hi-jackings.

I remember watching live coverage in the late 1970's of the "historic" peace deal signed between Israel and Egypt and a smiling President Sadat of Egypt shaking hands with Menachim Begin, the Israeli prime minister. I also remember talking to a work colleague one lunchtime in 1981 who told me he'd just seen poor old Sadat being assassinated on TV. Since then there seems to have been a whole series of hopeful signs followed by terrible setbacks for the region and any hope of lasting peace looks further away than ever.

Vietnam 1965 - 1975

Another long running news story was of course the Vietnam war which covered virtually all of my childhood. I don't recall being aware of it before about 1965 or 1966 but I do have a vague memory of seeing President Johnson on TV making some announcement or other when I was quite young. Having seen so many TV programmes and heard so many stories about the second world war I was fascinated by seeing pictures of a war as it was happening although my understanding of what it was all about was a bit sketchy - my Dad said they were fighting the communists and that seemed an adequate explanation to me!! Rather than the political rights and wrongs, it was the place names that stuck in my mind; Hanoi, Saigon, Da Nang, Quang Tre and the DMZ and the puzzle of why I couldn't find Vietnam on the globe that stood on a table in the corner of our classroom at school. I found a country that looked the right shape and was in the far east but it wasn't called Vietnam - I now know that the globe was hopelessly out of date (it included Anglo-Egyptian Sudan, Bechuanaland and Palestine, among others whose names had long been changed) and that I should have looked for French Indo China.

One day in the mid 1960's, at a cottage near our farm, an orange mini van with Michigan licence plates arrived containing two long haired young americans who had come to stay with the old lady who lived there. They were apparently touring europe after a stint in Vietnam and the old lady was aunt or great aunt to one of them. This episode interested me on several levels - the connection with the war, the americans' accents, their hippy appearance and the fact that the brightly coloured morris mini van had its steering wheel on the left!!

Having met someone who'd actually been to Vietnam increased my interest in it and I would frequently watch programmes like Panorama which often seemed to be reporting the war over the next eight or ten years. As I grew older and protest against it grew stronger I suppose I became more aware of the issues involved and have memories of protestors clashing with police in America and particularly outside the US embassy in London which I recall seeing on the TV the day they happened. (I can't remember what year but remember it being a Saturday for some reason).

By the time the war ended in 1975 I was in the sixth form at school and it was fashionable to have strong political opinions (usually left-wing ones!) and to be very anti american about the whole thing. By then we'd all seen the brutality of war on our TV's, heard of the Mi Lai massacre and seen that awful picture of the young girl running from a napalm attack and it seemed undoubtedly to be good thing that the war was over - even if the communists had won.

Politics and Elections 1970 - 2005

I have few memories of domestic political events in the 1960's - although I was aware of Harold Wilson being prime minister, George Brown being a colourful character and Ted Heath having a big grin and a terribly posh accent! My first memories of a general election were of 1970 when, broadly speaking, my Mum and her family thought Wilson should be re-elected because he was Labour and represented "ordinary" people like us, and my Dad and his family thought Wilson should be thrown out of office because he was Labour, was allowing the Unions to ruin the country and cared nothing about the likes of us!

Through the resulting discussions at home I was interested enough in what was going on to take notice of the leaflets being pushed through the letter box and the loudspeaker announcements urging us to vote one way or the other. The contest in our constituency was between our family doctor representing the Conservatives and a young Dr Jack Cunningham who was hot favourite to replace the previous Labour MP who had retired. There was presumably also a Liberal candidate who had even less chance than the Conservative. In order to bolster support for Dr Jack, as he became known, a cabinet minister (Fred Peart, MP for neighbouring Workington and Minister of Agriculture) appeared at a gathering in the square opposite our house in Frizington and I and some of my mates joined the crowd. I've no idea what was said in the speeches given by either of them but I do recall the large red rosettes and the generally supportive crowd of onlookers.

Although Jack Cunningham was elected and remained our MP until 2001, Labour of course lost the election and Ted Heath became Prime Minister. In the years that followed I grew more interested in the issues and remember well how the news seemed to be dominated by clashes between the government and the Unions and how there always seemed to be strikes or the threat of strikes and how these could cause real disruption. Not surprisingly I supported wholeheartedly the teachers strike in 1969 or 1970 (despite the hardship of being unable to go to school for a week or so!) but wasn't so keen on the miners strike in 1974 which led to the three-day week, powercuts, and TV channels closing down at 10.30 each night. There was also the threat of petrol rationing and I remember going to the Post Office with my Dad to collect our coupons. I don't remember what impact the powercuts had on us at school though I expect they must have had some disruptive effect, but I do remember the day a powercut struck at milking time on the farm and having to sit by candlelight at home in the evening listening to the radio. TV was much more important to us in those days and being without it on a winter evening was a major disaster!

Throughout the seventies and into the first few years of Mrs Thatcher's government Trade Union leaders were regularly in the news and again it's their names I remember more than the individual disputes themselves - Joe Gormley, Hugh Scanlon, Jack Jones, "Red Robbo", Vic Feather, Len Murray, Ray Buckton, Clive Jenkins - all were household names and were the first to be interviewed about any new government initiative or the latest budget. It must say something about the way things have changed that I would struggle now to come up with the names of more than two or three Union leaders! (and I haven't stopped reading newsapapers or watching current affairs programmes on TV).

There were two general elections in 1974 - in February and October - and by the time of the second one I had started my 'A' level Economics course at school and thought I understood all the arguments about inflation, prices and incomes policy etc. These were discussed by our entertaining teacher and strong opinions voiced for and against the government, the unions and the Conservative oppostion. One thing I do remember from that time is that it was the first occasion on which I'd seen a video recorder. Our economics group transferred to a lecture theatre where we were shown a recording of the previous night's Panorama programme which included a panel of opposing politicians (including Michael Foot and Jim Prior) arguing about just how high inflation had risen since the election in February. Michael Foot said it was only 8%, Ted Heath had been claiming it was much higher. (only an accountant could remember such tedious detail for 33 years!!) The video recorder, by the way, had two huge spools of tape, not a cassette, and the picture was black and white and frequently broke up.

Labour were re-elected in the October 1974 election and, after Harold Wilson's resignation in 1975, we had Jim Callaghan for Prime Minister. It was during his time in power that I became eligible to vote and later started work and became a taxpayer. At work I encountered the tax system and the fact that, on your top slice of income, it was possible to be paying 98% income tax! Although that was obviously for the seriously well off it seemed quite ludicrous and obviously didn't provide the government with the revenue it needed as throughout the mid and late seventies we lurched from one financial crisis to another. I remember Dennis Healy, the Chancellor, having to obtain loans from the IMF to pay public sector wages and the constant threat of strikes from Unions worried about the effect high rates of inflation were having on thier members' pay packets. It hardly seems credible now that at one point (? 1975) inflation hit 27% and, if I remember correctly, the government actually cut total public expenditure in absolute terms as opposed to simply reducing planned increases which was the case in the 1980's.

All of this of course culminated in the "Winter of Discontent" when a series of public sector strikes brought many public services to a standstill and gave us pictures of rubbish in the streets and bodies not being buried. (well, we didn't actually get pictures of the bodies, but you know what I mean!). The following spring, while I was studying for the first of my Professional exams, therewas an election and Mrs Thatcher became Prime Minister. As you might expect, my Dad thought it was a good thing and my Mum wasn't too sure - I think she liked the idea of a woman in number 10 but not necessarily that woman!

I followed events over the next years quite closely - the problems of unemployment, the resistance to de-nationalisation, the strikes and particularly the miners strike in 1984/1985 and of course the Falklands war in 1982. I'm sure I wasn't alone in being surprised that we did actually go to war over the Falklands - we'd all grown accustomed to politicians making whatever compromises were necessary to resolve things without too much confrontation, however right the cause, and presumably the Argentinians had thought we would do so again. Not Mrs Thatcher!

I don't recall that any of the events of the 1980's or 1990's had a direct effect on me at all - I had a fairly secure job, no-one I knew had to go to the Falklands war or the gulf war, the miners strike had very little effect on West Cumbria and our local economy was doing relatively well out of the construction works at Sellafield as the huge "Thorp" (thermal oxide reprocessing plant) was being built. I don't remember much detail about the elections in 1983, 1987 or 1992 - other than going to a public meeting in Whitehaven in 1987 to hear Peter Walker (I think he was energy secretary maybe) speak in support of the doomed conservative candidate. In 1997, when Tony Blair won I took the Friday off work (because I knew I'd sit up into the small hours watching the results) and, after a late breakfast, drove to Wasdale and climbed Scafell Pike! It was a very warm spring day I seem to remember.

By 2001 my natural conservative inclination had waned a bit and I was almost ready to vote for Tony Blair. After all, the world hadn't come to an end when he was elected, the economy hadn't collapsed and it seemed only fair to give him a chance to continue the reforms he had started. The old see-saw politics of the 1970's where a new government simply reversed what the previous one had done and refused to admit the old one had done anything right at all, seemed to have gone and here was a man who was prepared to acknowledge that many of the reforms of the 1980's had been necessary and beneficial. Then something happened which did affect us here in Cumbria - Foot and Mouth disease.

One of the early outbreaks was on a farm just outside Newcastle and it appeared that sheep from nearby had been sent to Longtown market in the north of Cumbria from where the disease quickly spread. I can't remember the exact sequence of events but I do remember Farmers, Vets and local councils requesting military help to dispose of slaughtered animals quickly for quite some time before it was given. I remember the minister of Agriculture looking like a fish out of water and wearing green wellies insisting that everything was under control when clearly it wasn't and I remember that very quickly much of the county was effectively out of bounds. Roads over open fell were closed, footpaths were closed, all roads had regular disinfectant mats for you to drive over and you felt a little guilty travelling at all into the worst affected areas of the county in case you helped spread the disease. West Cumbria had only a few isolated cases but north and east Cumbria saw thousands of animals slaughtered, hundreds of farmers losing herds built up over decades and the tourist industry brought to a standstill. At one point it was thought the Herdwick sheep (uniqiue to the Lake District) might become extinct. In one village schoolchildren had to stay at home because they couldn't get to school without walking past a heap of dead cows that waited two or three days for collection - I doubt if that would have been tolerated in central London! Tony Blair did eventually show up, after some pressure, but was pictured enjoying a ride on a steamer on Ullswater which did nothing for his image nor to dispel the feeling (which may not have been entirely fair) that he didn't really care much about farming families or other people in rural areas. Needless to say, he didn't get my vote!

Teenage years onwards

Here I am , on the right, with two of my schoolfriends in 1970 or 1971. Living in a rural area made it more difficult to spend time with mates at the weekend but we'd travel on the bus (where there was one) on our bikes, on foot or preferably by persuading people to give us lifts! Unlike those who lived in urban areas, you tended to know lots of people for quite a distance around and if, for example, I was walking to meet up with either of these two, it was quite likely that someone would stop and give me a lift.

Here are my Mum and Dad at a wedding, I think about 1970 (certainly between 1969 and 1971). Mum died in 1994 but even aged 90 my Dad still has a better head of hair than I do!

It was more difficult for me to get to evening events as these tended to take place in Whitehaven, five or six miles from home, and my Dad was never keen on driving me around after his day at work. (Buses were an option but not really frequent enough) My Mum in particular, perhaps because she was older than most teenagers' parents, was awfully worried about me getting into trouble and was, I think, a bit overprotective. Consequently my social life in my early and mid teens was a bit limited. Also, because of my attachment to the farm and my involvement with hound trailing, I was often faced with a choice of friends or farm and dogs and certainly chose the latter more often than I should have! Perhaps because of this I was never that involved in the music scene, school discos and the like and now feel that I missed out on things as a result. I've always felt that there was a downside to having older parents and to spending too much time with adults rather than my contemporaries, and to this day find myself occassionally with some old fashioned attitudes and ideas.

Life did change quite a bit in 1975 when I passed my driving test and acquired a little gold Morris Mini Clubman and suddenly I could go where I wanted, when I wanted. By that time I was being paid for my toil on the farm - £10 per week for a mere ten hours a day, 6 days a week, during the summer holidays - and I had money for petrol and beer! The car also made me quite popular with friends at school and during my last year in the sixth form, and for a couple of years afterwards, a group of us would get together and drive out to different places both in the coastal towns and in the lake district. Occasionally we'd go to some music event - perhaps in a pub or club in Whitehaven or Workington - but usually we'd just go to pubs and hang out together before going back to someone's house where we'd linger until the early hours. I remember one of my friends once going to see Elton John somewhere which makes me think that it was a rarity to go to concerts - certainly I don't ever remember being aware of, or wanting to see, nationally known singers or groups performing anywhere within reach.

Fortunately, others also soon got cars and turns would be taken at driving and staying sober! On that subject, I'm very impressed at how young people today automatically seem to avoid alcohol altogether when driving - that wasn't the case when we were young, and various theories were propounded about how much it was "safe" to drink.

Some of the friends I had during that period, including the two pictured above, have become lifelong friends and others still seem to crop up from time to time. In 1977, just after I'd started work, three of us travelled down to Oxford to spend a weekend with one of our group who was studying at Queens College. We drank a lot of beer, went to some dark and smoke filled places, slept on our friend's floor and pretended to be students the next morning to get a college breakfast. We must have a had a good time because for some reason I remember that trip particularly well. Looking back though, I think it was probably the first time I'd been any further south than Lancashire and a trip to London on the Saturday was certainly the first time I'd been to the capital.

For some reason there are very few pictures taken during the middle 1970's and early 1980's and this one dates from my first trip to the USA in 1984. I had finally finished with studying and exams about 18 months earlier and decided, along with a friend from work, to treat myself to a really good holiday. We certainly managed that and visited Los Angeles, The Grand Canyon, Las Vegas, Death Valley and San Francisco over a three week period. Above I am standing by a very large tree in Yosemite National Park.
That holiday started a real love of America and I've been back, alone and with others, ten or eleven times over the years. I really enjoy getting out into the more remote areas not regularly visited by european tourists.

I include this picture for no other reason that I think it's a good one. Taken half way down into the Grand Canyon it marks the point where we decided we'd better start walking back out again! A mixture of altitude, dehydration and sore feet made it the most exhausting walk I've ever done. Take a tip from me - hire a mule if you want to descend into the canyon otherwise its like mountaineering in reverse, you do the downhill bit first!

After enjoying a gentle horse ride through the sonora desert in Arizona I got the idea of trying a ranch holiday and learning to ride properly and, in 1996 spent a week doing just that in Wyoming. I've now had five such holidays, made some good friends and seen areas of Wyoming and New Mexico in the US, and Alberta in Canada, that I'd not have seen otherwise. I've always found Americans to be exceptionally nice, friendly people and spending a week in some of the country's finest scenery with them is a great way to get to know them better.

Relaxing afer a day on a horse in the Rocky Mountains of western Wyoming.

Throughout the 1990's I was a member of a pub quiz team and as a result I have a head full of useless information. The capital of Chad, Jimmy Carter's middle name, the length of the M6, the toxic ingredient of a polar bear's liver and Sergeant Bilko's serial number are all things that I, and other members of the team, were familiar with. However, the most bizarre thing to come out of my quiz career is that I once had an argument with Melvyn Bragg's aunt. One wet Thursday night I arrived at the Pub to meet the others before driving to an away fixture only to find that only four of our team of eight or nine had turned up. The Landlady of the pub then announced that she would come along and bring her friend. Her friend would be brilliant - she read lots of books and was Melvyn Bragg's aunt!

Off we went and things went well enough until we were asked which river flowed through Alnwick in Northumberland. None of us knew but the elderly Mrs Bragg was certain it was the Tweed. I knew it wasn't the Tweed because it forms the border with Scotland and Alnwick is miles from the border but could I convince her? No chance. She argued until the correct answer was revealed (The River Aln). We never saw her again after that night, apparently because I wouldn't listen to her answers (I stood in for the absent captain and had to decide which answer we gave) which was true at least when I knew them to be wrong!

Looking a whole lot smarter here I am almost right up to date with my new family in 2005. Pamela and I were blessed with exceptionally warm weather for our big day and pose here with her children, Charlotte and James on the way to the wedding reception.

After a honeymoon which included a few days in Rome we've developed a taste for visiting foreign cities - something which hasn't previously been high on my list of holiday activities. Rome is certainly our favourite so far, but here we are on a short break to Barcelona in February 2006.

And so that brings us to 2007 and the big birthday. The big 50. The half century.

Celebrations took us to New York for four days and then to a party thrown by the BBC! The great and the good were there in some number - John Humphreys, James Naughtie, Ian Hyslop and many others from TV and Radio. Various politicians past and present - Alan Johnston, Geoffrey Howe, Menzies Campbell, Norman Fowler and many others. A strange event - we recognised more than half of the people there but none of them knew us!

So that's it. No more will be added to this blog until 2057 when I expect the BBC to invite us to another party!

Life on a farm in Ennerdale

This is a good picture looking over the rooftops of the hamlet which contained our farm. It wasn't always as sunny as this of course but in the right conditions the whole valley looks really beautiful. I read a little while ago that Ennerdale Water, which you can just see, had impressed President Bill Clinton so much that he proposed to Hilary there while visiting in 1973.

The lambing season was always something I looked forward to and often it coincided with the Easter school holidays. There were always some lambs which for one reason or another needed to be bottle fed and here, aged about ten I guess, I'm with a boy from the next farm feeding three hungry looking swaledale lambs.

Pet lambs remain cute for a only a short time. By the time they reach this size they become a nuisance. This one, named Lucy after Lucille Ball, used to barge around looking for something to eat, here helping herself to chicken feed, and even pushed into the house in search of biscuits and salt and vinegar crisps! (to which she had been introduced by me)

This picture might have been taken before I was born, I'm not sure, but exchange the 1940's Fordson Tractor for a 1950's Fordson Tractor and it could have been taken any summer from 1960 to 1980. Each year we grew a couple of fields of oats and harvested them with a wonderful contraption called a binder. It had previously been drawn by horses but was now adapted for the tractor and it cut the corn and wrapped it into sheaves tied with twine. They were stood, eight at a time, in "stooks" for a week or more before being laid out again individually to be dried.

The above picture was taken on the farm near Frizington before the family moved to Ennerdale in 1965. The binder in the picture finally broke down in 1973 after 50 or more years' service and a 25 year old replacement was found at the bargain price of £25.

This shows the sheaves being loaded onto a trailer on a rather steep field which had been reclaimed from bracken earlier in the year. I've got the easy job - moving the tractor on a few yards every now and then. Harvesting and haytiming were often a bit of a social event and I'd take along some of my friends to help and enjoy the fun although on this occasion it just seems to be me, my Dad and Uncle Sam.

Here I am in 1976, long haired, slim and tanned helping my dad build a stack out of sheaves of oats. We didn't always get them built properly and quite often there'd be wooden props behind to prevent them falling down. On at least one occasion one collapsed while still being built and took my Dad crashing down with it!! Such calamities were not unusual and we all laughed heartily.

And here are the finished articles - or at least similar ones maybe from a different year. Having long since disappeared from the countryside generally, the stacks were a something of a curiosity and attracted a great deal of attention from passing tourists.

I too had calamities - none greater than one morning returning some milk cows to their pasture. Generally a herd of cows coming in for milking, or going back out afterwards, are quite co-operative. After all, on both occasions they are going where they want to be, so a ten year old can usually manage them OK. If however they were panicked for some reason, or if they had it in their minds to go somewhere else that morning or evening – I’d be in trouble. On the morning in question, I got up and ran outside just in time to be given the job of returning a dozen or so cows to a field known as “t’ fell field”. I set off quite happily along the lonning and out onto the road, accompanied by Jack, the dog, who expertly ran ahead to make sure the cows turned left towards the fell field which was no more than a hundred yards or so away. They’d been there overnight and so my uncle had left the gate open – I was confident that they’d simply walk in, I’d close the gate and go home for my breakfast. (Breakfast was always eaten immediately after milking while we listened to Jack De Manio on "Today" - honestly, I'm not making this up!). Our neighbour though had put a spanner in the works – his cows had had to pass the fell field gate when he brought them in for milking and, fearful that they’d go through it instead of heading for home, he’d closed the gate and forgotten to open it again after they’d passed.

The cows arrived at the closed gate, stood looking puzzled for a moment, and then started pushing and shoving each other up against it. At this point, being less than five foot tall at the time, I couldn’t see what the problem was, and started shouting encouragement while poking the cows at the back of the herd with my stick. This was all the prodding they needed to move back out into the road and set off along it. The cows began to run. They ran, and I ran after them. The faster I ran, the faster they ran. Jack had long since gone home and I was on my own. They ran past one field on the left, past another gate on the right and on and on and on and on until they were well past any of our fields. By now my common sense had deserted me and I failed to do what I should have, that is, stand still until they had come to a halt and then walk calmly past them. Instead I ran ever faster, trying to overtake them, trying to outrun them but in the process just making matters worse. Then ran on, some of them mooing in a way that sounded like a plea for help – they were probably wondering where I was taking them and wishing somebody responsible would come and take them back to a field they knew. To me, though, it seemed they were trying to escape and I had to get them back, I was in charge and I had to get them back to the fell field without having to go home for help, and thus admit failure. Eventually though, I stood in the middle of the road, gasping, and clutching my sides, which had been afflicted by an athlete’s “stitch”, and prepared to accept defeat and go home and announce that I had “lost the cows”. Then, as I was about to turn and go, a saviour came in the shape of the Royal Mail. A little Red Morris 1000 van driven by our regular postman appeared and turned the cows round. They, and I, walked gently back to the fell field, they walked meekly in and I closed the gate. By now I had been away for nearly half an hour and my Dad was on his way to find me – I confessed what had happened, we both cursed the neighbour and went home for breakfast.

Although these sort of calamities happened often one way or another, and I always felt a bit scared to admit I’d messed up, I was never criticised or told off for them. The worst that was likely to happen was that my misfortune would be laughed at, my lack of sense scoffed at and outlandish theories about what would have happened, for example had the postman not turned up, would be expounded. Before breakfast was over we’d no doubt all be laughing at what had happened and there’d be one more story to tell. Looking back, I’m sure they all got as much fun out of watching me learn to do things, and make mistakes, as I had myself.

Up up and away!

On 1 February 1970, a damp and grey Sunday afternoon, a large red and white hot air balloon, "Canada 2", came to rest in a field near our farm in the Ennerdale valley. I ran as fast as I could to the spot where it had landed to find a dozen or so other people running over to a still figure in a grey flying suit who appeared to be lying face down in a swamp. The red and white nylon canopy was lying limp on the ground and the aluminium gondola lay on its side a few yards away. The figure in the suit turned over and sat upright, his face looked as grey as his suit but he began to speak and soon got up on his feet. The adults present tried to persuade him to let them get some transport and take him to a doctor but he refused to leave his balloon. There was a brief discussion, and it was decided that I should run home and get my Dad or one of my Uncles to come with a tractor and trailer, so that the balloon could be taken to safety, and off I ran. Ten or fifteen minutes later I was back in the field with an Uncle and the required transport and we loaded up and drove home - the airman and I sitting on the trailer with our legs dangling off the side. No sooner had we arrived in the farmyard than half a dozen or more cars arrived containing police and newspaper reporters. Our guest explained that he was Ray Munro, formerly of the Royal Canadian Airforce, and that he had just become the first man to cross the Irish Sea in a hot air balloon.





Uncle Bill points to the area of sky from which our unexpected guest had fallen while my Dad poses alongside. Neither thought it necessary to dress up for the benefit of the cameras. We later found out that Capt Munro had virtually no fuel left, had fallen out of the gondola and managed to climb back in and that he'd been within inches of hitting some power cables which could have turned him to ashes.

This picture of "Canada 2" appeared in the local press under the caption "what on earth are we going to do with it?" Accompanying Dad and Uncle Bill is their sister, my Aunt, Mary. The two pictures were taken the day after the balloon landed when Mary was also interviewed for the local TV news. She amused us all by performing some sort of strange curtseying manoeuvre as she explained to viewers how the balloon had descended through the clouds.

Places like Ennerdale don't change much and this picture, taken in September 2007, shows the site of the balloon landing very well. Running out of fuel, Captain Munro hit the top of Crag Fell in the background and was thrown from the Gondola. He was seen by witnesses dangling from his safety rope before scrambling back in as the balloon passed over the lake (hidden in the picture between the Fell and the sunlit hill in the foreground.) It was a very different day, weatherwise, and he told us that he'd not seen the fell as it was covered in thick cloud and, on glimpsing water beneath him, thought he must still be over the Irish Sea. However he soon realised that wasn't the case when the whole thing crashed to earth in front of the sunlit hillside in a wet, badly drained field. (the brown area in the center of the photo).

Ray Munro, it seems, was something of a Canadian hero having been a Battle of Britain fighter pilot, an investigative reporter who uncovered a huge corruption scandal in Vancouver's police force in the 1950's, and latterly a record breaking parachutist and balloonist. His autobiography, The sky's no limit, is a ripping good yarn involving numerous brushes with death and meetings with the rich and famous ranging from Errol Flynn to Eleanor Roosevelt. The final adventure of the whole book ends on that drizzly Sunday in Ennerdale.

Reproduced below is a copy of his entry in the Canadian Aviation Hall of Fame

Raymond Alan Munro
Nickname: "Ray" Munro

Birthdate: July 14, 1921 Birth Place: Montreal, Quebec

Year Inducted: 1974 Death Date: May 29, 1994

Awards: CM "He has consistently displayed a dogged persistence in overcoming every aeronautical challenge facing him, and despite adversity has made outstanding contributions to Canadian aviation in several areas of flight."Raymond Munro was educated in Canada and the United States and commenced flying at Toronto, Ontario in 1937 and joined the RCAF in 1940. During his career in aviation, Munro was posted as a Spitfire pilot for day intruder work in France and bomber escort duty, then served as a night fighter pilot on the North Sea patrol. Following this he became a flying newsman for 17 years. He was later selected as Expo ' 67 Polar Ambassador and flew a single-engine aircraft through the high Arctic to honour Canada's pioneer bush pilots. He is one of Canada's most distinguished parachutists and holds the highest international license. He made 528 descents by day and night as chief instructor and design tester for North American Parachute Company.

Early photos

One of the very earliest pictures of me standing upright, this one of me and my mother was taken on the beach at St Bees - always a popular destination on a fine summer Sunday afternoon.

Grandma and Aunty Mary watch on as I get to grips with the latest in farming technology. If you assume I was about two here, it was another eight long years before my feet would reach the pedals and they let me have a go for real.

They had funny ideas of entertainment in the early 1960's and I'm sure they thought I would enjoy being dragged around over the snow on the lid of an old tin chest. My expression in this photo tells a different tale I think.

This is me in warmer times posing on a log outside the farmhouse probably in 1962 or 1963. The picture would likely be taken by one of my aunts with the "box brownie"

Here I am with my Grandma at the same place - looks like the log has now been sawn in half!

Grandma was the only grandparent I knew and she died in November 1963.

Same spot again!

Dogs were a big part of my childhood as I had two uncles who were successful in the world of Hound Trailing. ( a Cumbrian sport involving racing hounds over an aniseed trail) This is the 1964 puppy champion "Longcroft" and his trophies!

Dad was never a snappy dresser, but boy could he
catch fish. Summer evenings and Sunday mornings were often spent "down t'beck" in pursuit of salmon. I never thought of fresh wild salmon as being a luxury as we had it so often and, if he'd had a successful day like this one, we'd have salmon every meal until it was gone - at least until we got a freezer in the 1970's.