Dinnington

Up until December of 1977, I had never even heard of Dinnington - a mining village in the South Yorkshire heartland.  It was then that I spotted an advertisement in "The Times Educational Supplement" for an English teacher to join the staff of Dinnington Comprehensive School. I was invited for interview and soon found myself  facing an interview panel of eight people. They were like The Spanish Inquisition.

The Chair of Governors was also a deputy at the local coal mine. He listened intently to my responses as I fielded questions from the rest of the panel and then at the end of the grilling the headteacher asked him if he had any questions. Half sneering at me, he growled, "Aye, I've just one question for thee lad. Are ye courtin'?"

I sensed the subtext immediately. He didn't want any of those gay pufta fellows coming into his South Yorkshire pit village to corrupt young boys. Notching my voice down a few octaves and scratching my testicles for good measure I reassured him that I was a red-blooded heterosexual but without going into graphic detail. It was only years later that I surmised he might actually have been angling for a date! However, he wasn't my type.

After my successful interview, the Head of English introduced me to a bachelor History teacher called Bob who lived on his own in the nearby village of Carlton in Lindrick. Apparently, Bob had helped several new teachers out by providing temporary accommodation and with Christmas right ahead of us, this seemed like the best option. Bob was in  his late thirties, with receding ginger hair and gold-rimmed spectacles. Little did I know at that point that rumours were rife amongst the pupil population that he was a "perv" who was far too interested in male pupils. Maybe that was why he ran one of the school football teams. And it wasn't long before they latched on to the fact that I was living with him. Perhaps I was also a "perv". Not really what you want when you're battling to establish yourself in a new school.

My "classroom" was really a secondhand hut that wouldn't have looked out of place in a refugee camp. It was situated well away from the rest of the English classrooms beyond a tarmac playground next to Throapham Woods. The window frames were rotting and there were just two small convector heaters to combat the January chill. But I didn't really mind. In those far off days there was no OFSTED and no real curriculum. I was trusted to deliver an English diet that would engage the children and there was nobody looking over my shoulder.

That autumn I took one of my classes out into Throapham Woods. Silently, we made observational notes about the trees, the birdlife, the smell of fallen leaves etc.. More notes were made in late December 1978 and yet more in the springtime and the summer. It was only then that I allowed them to begin their descriptive writing tasks - drawing inspiration and ideas from their notes. The resulting pieces of writing were fantastic - based not on vague thinking but on detailed observation. You could do things like that in those days. And by then I was living in Sheffield and Bob had been promoted to a school in Lincolnshire. 

During my weeks with him I ascertained that he probably was a bit of a "perv" - for I had to field several phone calls from boys - including one who said that he was "in love" with Bob. And two or three times, I heard Bob talking in hushed tones to these lads as I sat in the lounge marking exercise books.

I have many memories of Dinnington. Getting snogged at a Christmas party in The Lordens Hotel by two rampant members of the female PE staff who took my breath away. Visiting  the parents of a truanting boy and finding they kept rabbits in the sideboard in their living room. Mark Needham filling his pockets and school bag with pieces of waste coal from the slag heap before catching the bus home. Taking my seven Year 11 special needs lads in my Hillman Avenger to the museum in Doncaster - a town that none of them had ever visited before. Punting on the River Cam during a marvellous conference - "English for Average and Less Able Pupils". Writing and directing a musical play based on "The Gresford Disaster". Getting locked in the toilets of a nightclub in Worksop following a boozy male teachers' night out. Singing my heart out in the chorus of "The Mikado" while dressed as a Japanese courtier. That was Dinnington - once upon  a time.

And I was back in Dinnington yesterday. The coal mine and its associated slag heap have gone and so has my temporary hut  to the rear of the school campus. The Lordens Hotel is all closed up and falling into disrepair. Thirty six years have drifted by and times have changed but Dinnington remains an isolated settlement just far enough from Sheffield and Rotherham and Doncaster to be a law unto itself - discrete and separate. Another world. I am sure that there are still many people who live and die in Dinnington and hardly ever leave it and the echo of the pithead siren still haunts its avenues and alleyways.

Thwarted

St John the Baptist Church in Wadworth

 Saturday 1pm. It all began so well. I had parked up in the South Yorkshire village of Wadworth close to yet another magnificent parish church - once again dedicated to John the Baptist. Two cricket teams were assembling on the village sports field ready for a lazy afternoon's play with leather upon willow and the sun had most definitely got his shiny hat on.

The intrepid Yorkshire Pudding was in shorts - designed to show off his tree trunk legs, a New York Fire Department T-shirt, white socks and size eleven boots. I struck off along Carr Lane towards Rossington where coming into view was an enormous heap of coal spoil, spreading over this ancient agricultural landscape. I double-checked my map of the area and felt that something wasn't right. The slag heap appeared much larger than the map indicated and it was perhaps at this ominous point that I should have turned back and gone home.

The enlarging coal waste tip near Rossington

New Rossington is a purpose built mining village - it grew with the pit that was sunk in 1913 but which ceased to be in the 1980's.  To the west and east of it there are railway tracks that head towards Doncaster - including the main east coast line from London. To the north the M18 motorway cuts north eastwards towards Goole and Hull.

My planned walking route, following designated public rights of way, was to lead me across one of the railway tracks to the north of Rossington but when I got there there were steel fences and a sign telling me that the pedestrian crossing was closed due to construction work. My solution was to head under the M18 to Bessacarr and use a different railway crossing - around a mile further north.

Then I skirted the Potteric Carr nature reserve heading for an underpass that allows walkers back under the M18 motorway. After the unexpected diversion this would lead me back to my intended path. But when I got there - at about four thirty in the afternoon - I discovered unscalable spiked gates and a warning sign - "No Entry - Construction Site - CCTV Security in Operation". I muttered a few choice words of annoyance such as "Gadzooks!", "Oh dash it!" and "How tiresome!"

Potteric Carr

One of the troubles with motorways is that only suicidal pedestrians should try to cross them. The next official crossing was a mile further to the west but how to get there? Lord - I wish there was CCTV coverage of the next hour of my life. 

First I had to scale an eight foot fence to enter the nature reserve. I paused at one of the bird hides and looked out over the wetland before scaling another fence and scrambling up a railway embankment and then down the other side. Over another wire fence into an overgrown and rather marshy dell before scrambling up the other side to a disused railway bed. I checked my map and realised that if I followed this old track it would loop me round to the official path I needed to reach. 

At first the brambly briars were easy to march over but after a couple of hundred yards they became so thick it was impossible to proceed. Down the other side of the disused railway embankment there was a drain - about four feet wide. I didn't want to get my boots wet so I yanked two old planks from the broken fence at the bottom of the dip and made a temporary bridge. I reckoned that if I could just get one boot in the middle I could leap across to the other bank. Thankfully it worked - just as my bridge collapsed with an almighty crack.

Then I was into a neglected and be-thistled field - maybe a hundred yards across. I had to traverse it to get to Beeston Plantation and once through that woodland I would be able to climb up to White Rose Way - a link road from the M18 into south eastern Doncaster. The undergrowth in Beeston Plantation was at first just soft ferns and bracken but this soon gave way to yet more verdant briars with their spiky tentacles reaching out menacingly like triffids. At one point I had to stop to wipe stinging perspiration from my eyes. My bare legs were becoming like those of a self-harmer - criss-crossed with red lines.

The embankment up on to White Rose Way was treacherously steep but I managed to scramble up on all fours and emerged into the sunshine like Indiana Jones. A passing and probably alarmed white van man pressed his horn as I stumbled along close to the crash barrier on the side of the dual carriageway. Then I dashed across and went down the other side to a track that leads to Loversall and then back along the A60 to Wadworth.

"The White Hart" in Wadworth

The conversations of regulars in "The White Hart" ceased suddenly when The Wild Man of the Woods entered to order a much needed pint of bitter shandy at the bar. It was one of the best drinks I have ever had - healing my dehydration like rainwater released into a dry paddy field. 

Then back to the car and the half hour drive home. It was 8pm when I crossed the threshold of our house. Shirley wept with relief - "Oh my darling Pudding, I was so worried! Thank God you are safe!" and I suggested that she should now phone to cancel the rescue services of the Yorkshire Air Ambulance. It had not been the walk I was expecting. No siree. They say that the camera never lies but in this case, it does.

Ancient water fountain in Old Rossington

Betting shop in New Rossington

Rugby season ahead - Rossington Hornets friendly fixture.

Another reminder of New Rossington's coal mining heritage

Details

Pigeon flying from a street lamp in Rhodesia - I am rather proud of this one.

It's another lovely summer's morning in northern England so soon I will be setting out for further photographic rambling but before I go, I want to just leave a little record of the walk I took late on Wednesday afternoon to the west of Worksop in northern Nottinghamshire. Rather than the usual scenic shots, here are some "details" from my circuitous route.

Broken pottery on a dump near Netherthorpe Aerodrome

Carving on Shireoaks Parish Church

Windsock at Netherthorpe Aerodrome

"Private" - rear entrance to dilapidated Shireoaks Hall

Railway track near Darfoulds.

Now where are my boots? The sun is beaming down but yesterday evening we had a torrential downpour and the sky was thick and leaden as thunder boomed and lightning danced. This is something I have grown to love about British weather - its sheer unpredictability. You never know what you are going to get. Onwards Oates!

Haddon

Shirley and the gatehouse to Haddon Hall

Shirley has been on holiday this week so on Monday morning we went to Bakewell Market. We had tea and scones in the methodist church on Matlock Road and afterwards drove a couple of miles further along the A6 to Haddon Hall. In all the time we have lived in Sheffield, neither of us had ever been there before. Fortunately we visited it on yet another sunshiny English summer's afternoon and were also able to join a free guided tour of the property.

Unlike nearby and magnificent Chatsworth House, Haddon Hall is a hotch potch of architectural elements that grew organically as the house journeyed through the centuries. Originally, there was a little agricultural hamlet here - on a ridge overlooking the River Wye but some time long ago - in the twelfth century - the noble Vernon family kind of took over the hamlet and built their first stronghold here - approved by King John (1167 -1216).

Eventually, the Vernons joined with the Earls of Rutland through marriage and Haddon Hall became the family seat of the noble Manners family. I think it was during the eighteenth century that the hall fell into disuse. The Manners family preferred to live elsewhere - including Belvoir Castle in Leicestershire. Luckily Haddon Hall was looked after by a series of caretakers and though no major modifications were made for two hundred years it did not fall into a state of dereliction. It was as late as the nineteen twenties that a modern member of the Manners family really took a shine to Haddon Hall and decided to live there once more. He recognised the unspoilt beauty of the place and respected the stories of long ago that its ancient stones might have told if they could speak. He refused to change it very much and any changes that were made were sympathetic.

Haddon Hall has been referred to as the most natural and unspoilt stately home in England and we are fortunate that it exists in its current form. To find out more about Haddon Hall why not go to the official website. In the meantime, here are some more photographs I snapped on Monday afternoon:-

In The Long Gallery - the boar's head - symbol of the Vernons
and below the peacock - symbol of the Manners family

Lady Vernon's Bridge over the River Wye

Main entrance through the courtyard

Marble effigy of Lord Haddon (1885 -1894)

Roman altar discovered in the grounds of Haddon Hall

100

Dad as a young teacher after service in World War Two

It was on August 5th 1914 that Great Britain woke up to the news that we had declared war upon Germany and its allies. The newspapers were full of it and it was anticipated in many quarters that the war would be over by Christmas. No one anticipated that the western world was about to be plunged into such a dark episode in its history nor that so many young lives would be shattered. It was to be the end of innocence.

And that same day, August 5th 1914, a newly born baby announced himself to the world in the back bedroom of a humble brick house - next to a small dairy in the village of Norton, Yorkshire. It was my father, Philip and soon his own father - also called Philip would be marching off to war with the rest - to fight for king and country, leaving my grandmother Margaret to raise her new child. This is the birthday card that my grandfather sent to his baby son one year later in August 1915:-

On the reverse he wrote - "For little Philip - wishing him many happy returns on his birthday. With love and kisses from his Daddy". Just like my maternal grandfather Wilfred, my dad's father returned from World War One. No names carved on monuments. They survived - albeit changed by the horrors they had witnessed. That's something many people don't appreciate - the majority of men did return, they were not blown apart on the fields of Flanders or the Somme. They came home.

But let me get back to my father - Philip. If he had lived he would have been one hundred years old today but he died in 1979 from a massive heart attack. He was a good man - a pillar of the community in the village where I was born and raised. He could do many things - played cricket and rugby, played the piano, painted pictures and ceilings, gardened, repaired, counselled, encouraged and was headmaster of our village school for twenty five years.

It might seem bizarre but I think of him every day and have done since I last saw him alive in his hospital bed in Hull - thirty five years ago. I still miss him and though I am sure there's no after life, I want to wish my dad a happy hundredth birthday. Many happy returns Dad "with love and kisses" from his third son.

Photo I took of Mum and  Dad back
in 1964 when I was eleven

Boyhood

Before I forget, I mustn't neglect to mention that last Monday I went into the city centre to see a screening of "Boyhood" at The Showroom. You may have heard of this film. It was the brainchild of esteemed writer and director Richard Linklater and it was shot over a period of several years from the summer of 2002 to the autumn of 2013. Linklater wanted to tell the story of a boy growing up and at its heart is the actor Ellar Coltrane who was seven years old when the filming started and eighteen when it ceased.

Originally, the film was going to be called "12 Years" but a re-think on this occurred when "!2 Years A Slave" took the movie world by storm last year.

I don't know about you but I get fed up of outlandish fantasy and  films that contain killings or masterful detective work to solve a range of crimes. I want to see films that speak of real life and for most of us real life has nothing to do with murder or cops and that kind of cartoon drama. In my view, it is much more challenging to weave a drama that somehow mirrors people's experience of everyday life. Such a film is "Boyhood".

In a sense, not much happens in it. The central character Mason grows older - as do his birth parents played by Patricia Arquette and Ethan Hawke. They all have moods, they make mistakes, they get on with their unexceptional lives - somewhere in the deep heart of Texas. There's a gentleness and affection  in the director's humane observation of these ordinary people. They are inevitably moving on because none of us can halt the march of time and at the end of the film we see Mason driving off to college and presumably his adult life with all of its potential and its pitfalls.

It's a very long film - two hours and forty five minutes running time. Afterwards, after a swift pint in "The Lord Nelson", I walked home along Ecclesall Road and by midnight there was very little traffic around so I did something I have never done before - walked right across the normally busy roundabout at Hunter's Bar. I have driven round that traffic island a million times but this was the first time I had walked upon that grassy oasis or touched one of the massive stone gateposts that were once adjacent to an eighteenth century tollhouse, long before the road network in England was nationalised.

"Boyhood" - a great film if, like me, you prefer believable tales of real life.

Privvy

In June, when we were in Aberdeen, Washington State we visited the town's museum and it was there that this poem "The Passing of The Back House" caught my eye. it was probably but not certainly by James Whitcomb Riley (1849-1916). Of course "the back house" is a polite euphemism for the outside lavatory, the privvy or what Australians call "the dunny". I know it's a pretty long poem but I think it's worth it if you have five minutes to spare:-

When memory keeps me company and moves to smiles or tears,
A weather-beaten object looms through the mist of years,
Behind the house and barn it stood, a half a mile or more,
And hurrying feet a path had made, straight to its swinging door.
Its architecture was a type of simple classic art.
But in the tragedy of life it played a leading part.
And oft the passing traveler drove slow, and heaved a sigh,
To see the modest hired girl slip out with glances shy.

We had our posey garden that the women loved so well,
I loved it, too, but better still I loved the stronger smell
That filled the evening breezes so full of homely cheer,
And told the night-o'ertaken tramp that human life was near,
On lazy August afternoons, it made a little bower
Delightful, where my grandsire sat and whiled away an hour.
For there the summer mornings, its very cares entwined,
And berry bushes reddened in the streaming soil behind.

All day fat spiders spun their webs to catch the buzzing flies
That flitted to and from the house, where Ma was baking pies,
And once a swarm of hornets bold had built a palace there,
And stung my unsuspecting Aunt--I must not tell you where.
Then father took a flaming pole--that was a happy day--
He nearly burned the building up, but the hornets left to stay.
When summer bloom began to fade and winter to carouse,
We bank the little building with a heap of hemlock boughs.

But when the crust was on the snow and the sullen skies were gray,
In sooth the building was no place where one could wish to stay.
We did our duties promptly, there one purpose swayed the mind;
We tarried not, nor lingered long on what we left behind.
The torture of the icy seat would make a Spartan sob,
For needs must scrape the flesh with a lacerating cob,
That from a frost-encrusted nail, was suspended by a string--
My father was a frugal man and wasted not a thing.

When grandpa had to "go out back" and make his morning call,
We'd bundle up the dear old man with a muffler and a shawl.
I knew the hole on which he sat--'twas padded all around,
And once I dared to sit there--'twas all too wide I found,
My loins were all too little, and I jack-knifed there to stay,
They had to come and get me out, or I'd have passed away,
Then father said ambition was a thing that boys should shun,
And I just used the children's hole 'til childhood days were done.

But still I marvel at the craft that cut those holes so true,
The baby hole, and the slender hole that fitted Sister Sue,
That dear old country landmark; I tramped around a bit,
And in the lap of luxury my lot has been to sit,
But ere I die I'll eat the fruit of trees I robbed of yore,
Then seek the shanty where my name is carved upon the door.
I ween the old familiar smell will soothe my jaded soul,
I'm now a man, but none the less I'll try the children's hole.

We are so lucky to live in homes where we enjoy the lavatorial convenience of porcelain flush toilets. For many years my grandmother Phyllis Morris (nee White) lived in a humble flat in a brick terrace on Canterbury Street in Byker, Newcastle upon Tyne. Her only toilet was down a flight of stone steps in the back yard. And when you got there there was no soft toilet paper - just squares cut from the local newspaper hanging on a string. And no outside lighting either. You had to take a torch or a candle if you needed to do business during the hours of darkness. Yes we are very lucky not to have such a "facility" as that. Imagine having to use it in the depths of winter!




Right - the version I acquired from Aberdeen Museum:-