Horror comics

Children today have ready access to many different ways of terrifying themselves, be it craftily watching forbidden DVDs, slipping 'Resident Evil' into the playstation, discovering that grooming is not just something that happens to their 'my little pony' collection or being told that with the economy the shape it's in, they will have to walk to school instead of being driven the 500 yards in a 4x4. Just a few short decades ago, things were very different, when I was a kid one had to put real effort into terrifying oneself, and by that I don't mean the sort of fear that was visited upon you in the supermarket when, upon looking up, you realised that you had been following the wrong set of legs for the last five minutes and your parent has misplaced you, or that you had forgotten your PE kit and pant related humiliation beckoned, rather I mean premeditated terror when you set out to scare yourself.

For instance, before VHS meant that every under supervised kid was one short 'play' button away from watching a movie resulting in their having to sleep with the light on for the next two years, horror was most freely available in book form. Available, but not easily available. Stephen King, for instance, wrote books roughly the thickness of breeze blocks, and about as penetrable.

That's why the preferred literary chiller of choice was the horror comic.

And the best way to come across these was when they were to be found rolled up and on offer at some seaside tat shop. Titles such as 'Dracula' and 'Werewolf by night' featured characters previously safely confined to a European village located a safe distance away, the Universal back-lot to be precise, appearing in black and white and doing horrible things to ugly blokes and good looking women before being pulped by angry villagers, so no great threat. The horror comic though, usually relocated the character to the present day and while this was usually still somewhere in America, the threat felt more immediate, especially after the sun went down.

While traditional stories about well known but handily out-of-copyright characters were good stuff, even if the way the comics were purchased meant that the sequential nature of the longer story arc couldn't be fully enjoyed (although the reader could probably guess that each edition was pretty much the same, featuring comics-code approved gore and a lot of shadowy suspense), the real finds were the anthology comics, where lesser supernatural threats such as demons and gouls lurked. This was great as, while the average kid had no trouble at all torturing themselves with fresh horrors based on existing monsters, adding new characters to the bedtime bestiary took things to a whole new level.

But it was British horror comics that really made the breakthrough. While most stories had supernatural threats handing out some sort of justice to those who deserved to be punished, and even had avenging ghosts or spirits revenging their earthly forms, occasional stories about evil preying on the innocent crept through.

It's a shame really that, even effective as they were, this was never perfected. If the comic publishers really wanted to scare the hell out of kids, then they should have published stories about dreadful creatures inhabiting the toilet block at the caravan site, a story sure to fix on the imagination of any impressionable youngster and no doubt leading to wilting bushes in caravan sites around the nation.

Maybe it's time for horror comics to make a return. Hollywood had turned monsters into harmless teens that come in two varieties; pouty (vampires, must be the teeth that make their mouth form into the shape of a massive sulk) and brooding (werewolves, bushy eyebrows make for a perpetual frown). What's needed is much less Glee meets Hammer and more kid-taunts-reclusive-bloke-who-lives-in-caravan, who beats the kid to death with a hammer. (Moral: don't taunt nutters.) Or a few more haunted appliances; there has to be something in a story about a possessed washing machine, fridge or car. Although I think Stephen King may have got there first. Possessed Bop-it?

A night out!

The pub. To some, a place of refuge, like a blokes' community centre, to others, a gateway to a world where worries can be temporarily suspended in a fuzzy solution of alcohol and snacks, to others, simply a source of lager. What could possibly be better than a pub? Obviously, a selection of pubs, all experienced in one evening.

A pub crawl provides several vital functions for the drinker. Firstly, it shows that one is not just heading for the boozer at as early an hour as social convention will permit and drinking until all your higher brain functions are numb enough to allow you to discuss the merits of the latest season of 'Top Gear' without irony and with every sign of enjoyment, it also reduces the amount one drinks in an evening, principally because even in this age of GPS, Google Maps, smartphones and route planners, the fourth pub is always 'around here somewhere', that is, one street to the left or right of the one you thought it was in. Finally, it provides one with a trajectory for the evening, allowing one to compare notes on beer, atmosphere and seating arrangements. The unspoken rule is never to admit that the place you started off in was the best place you visited all evening and the smart thing to do would have been simply to dig in there.

And what better place to start than a traditional boozah. And how can you tell it's traditional, because it has some sort of stuffed animal in it, or at least a portion of a stuffed animal, that's how. There may well be pubs where it's considered bad form to have a stuffed animal somewhere in the bar, or even worse form to have the stuffed animal dressed up and, for instance, playing a musical instrument or undertaking a trade or pastime, for instance being posed as a cobbler, or Morris dancer, but as a rule of thumb the beer is going to be better in a pub with stuffed fox head in it, especially if that fox head has a stuffed bird dangling from its jaws.


This is a reminder, should anyone object, that foxes are vermin and the numbers need to be kept down, and the most efficient way of doing that is to get around thirty members of the upper classes to chase them across she countryside for four hours and then set a pack of hounds on them. Simply putting down poisoned bait is not considered environmentally sound.

History does not record how the stuffed bird met its end. Possibly mistakenly pecking at poisoned bait.

An evening of drinking is generally a great idea in principle, but in practice is likely to see you keel over at a certain point unless you have something to eat. Drinking tacticians may already have taken care of this by having the traditional finger of kit-kat before heading out, but in case you have not had an opportunity to line the stomach, this is she time to take advantage of bar snacks.

Ideally, this should be something filling and greasy. This is why pork scratchings are the ideal pub snack. Salty, savoury, tasty and packed with all the starchy fatty nutrients that will not only give you the energy to keep going until closing time, but will give you something to blame morning after quese upon.


Do not,whatever you do and no matter how drunk you get, ever have a pickled egg. Pickled eggs float in their enormous jar at the end of the bar like a horror in a mad scientist's laboratory floating in formaldehyde and will be about as good for you when you eat them. As a general rule, if anything you are doing in a pub draws an inquisitive crowd, stop doing it. This especially applies to eating a pickled egg.

Finally, at some point you are going to have to visit the pub loo. Once you've finished, acceptable methods of drying hands are; back of jeans, paper towel. Never ever use the communal towel. The last bloke to wipe his paws on it might have a job in a germ warfare lab, or KFC.

Business School

Boredom, bullies, balls and buggery. That's the lot of the English schoolboy, if he is fortunate. By fortunate I mean attending a decent public school rather than a state comp. where 'double Greek' refers not to ninety minutes of classics, but rather being rubbed up against, in quite an alarming way, by two big boys in the sports locker.

A private education prepares a chap for deprivation, random cruelty, ritual cruelty, imprisonment and facing crushing defeat at sporting occasions with fortitude. All useful life lessons, especially if one follows the English cricket team.

With the economy in the state it's in (pretty soon the only AAA rating one will see will refer to a type of battery), it's not wholly unreasonable to see private education flourishing, rather than contracting.

Recently it was the two hundredth anniversary of the birth of Charles Dickens and the country chose to celebrate by arranging for society to closely reflect the plots and characters of his novels, with an increasing divide between the very rich and the very poor, and lots of grotesque characters established in positions of power. With the Government looking to re-introduce cholera as part of their NHS reforms and welfare reform policies consisting of 'reopen the workhouses' and 'replace the family tax credit with gruel', Dickens would have felt very much at home in twenty first century Britain.

In these desperate economic times, fortune rewards those who can think creatively about how they can earn a living. Certainly, there's currently a vogue for stepping aside as the 4:40 from Preston thunders past and then making off with 200 yards of copper signalling cable, but other career options are available. This is especially true with the Government wanting ordinary members of the public to provide the services that government and councils have hitherto. And while one cannot, it would appear, drive one's own nuclear submarine around the coast, nor just pitch up at your local hospital and announce that even if you are not a qualified brain surgeon, you are a volunteer and that and your keenness and really sharp carpet knife must count for something, it would appear that just about anyone is trusted to run a school.*

If you follow a few simple pointers, you can't go wrong. The first thing to settle on is the location. Ideally this should be in an isolated part of the country. Type 'desolate' into Google maps and you should get some locations. Such an approach will mean that you are likely to be able to pick up an appropriate property (gently decaying stately home being sold by gently decaying fag end of the aristocratic family that have lived there for generations, or a former army camp) at a decent price, that boys will be discouraged from running away from if they have to cross miles of unforgiving, booby-trapped, heathland before reaching civilisation in the form of the local hamlet where they can be immediately apprehended, and of course that any outbreak of child-friendly maladies like mumps, acne or typhoid can be easily contained.

The next thing you have to do is establish a sense of history.

By which I mean fake a sense of history.

Thanks to Wikipedia we now live in an age where rewriting history is no longer the exclusive preserve of victors or those writers who imagine a world where the Parliamentarians won the English Civil War (fact checked on Wikipedia) and one can, from scratch, come up with a glorious or convincingly inglorious past for your place.

You will need some famous old boys. Choose people who are dead or, although famous, are also safely anonymous, like the bloke who invented blu-tak, or did something ghastly to Rommel. Aristocrats from now extinguished lines are also a good bet, but don't use too many as this will give the impression that the local water makes you impotent.

This sense of history extends to the uniform. Do not, whatever you do, incorporate anything that a parent might pick up at any store other than the one you have done a deal with for kickbacks. No to trousers, yes to knickerbockers. No to black blazers, yes to capes. No to caps, yes to modified coal miners' helmets. And a big yes to some sort of ceremonial baton, twelve inches long and made of oak should do. Dressed like that your boys are going to need to be able to protect themselves against perverts and toughs.

You will now need to recruit teachers and this is where the global economic meltdown really comes into play. Foreign academics have seen their salaries and research budgets cut to the point where they are humiliatingly reduced to posting 'make maths fun' videos on YouTube in the hope of selling advertising, writing essays for private school yahoos, or simply running their own crystal meth labs are ripe for recruitment. Recruit broadly, this will ensure you have an attractive mix of foreign accents and also drive your bursar to distraction as he tries to seat the staff at high table in a manner that ensures that no two staff members from countries recently in conflict sit next to one another.

Always make sure your Latin master is a German as they are surpassed in their talent for sadism only by the Welsh.

Make your PE teacher a Welshman.

You are going to need term names, and the more exotic the better. Avoid terms such as 'Witsun', 'Spring' or 'New'. Instead you want a terms like 'Long Minge', 'Conkers' and, in an emergency, anything named after a fishing ground. Ideally, you're aim is to have a child baffle their parents by asking if they are coming to pick him up at the end of 'Dogger'.

Remember as you set the cirriculum that you are preparing people for life. How to dine should be taught, as should proper comportment abroad, on public transport, or upon finding out that one's mistress is pregnant.

And in these troubled times, how better to prepare lads for life than the establishment of a cadet force, not only will this instil a sense of discipline and encourage self and team confidence, but if they show talent, then the is no reason why the senior boys cannot make the school some money during their annual exercises during 'Umbridge Vac' by providing private security in Iraq, or overthrowing a small dictatorship somewhere in Africa.

Despite a secluded location, it's still important that your school develop close links with the community as one wants to develop a sense that your boys are trusted and dependable. Those signs forbidding more than one boy in the shop at a time can be seen as a failure, especially if that shop is a Tesco superstore.

Finally, you need the School Game. Certain schools are famous for inventing games or variations of games. As England are so monumentally crap at so many sports these days you are not expected to set the bar very high, indeed setting the bar a bit high might be the game. As long as it is something dangerous. Essentially, you are looking at something that will cause at least one exploded splidney - a sporting injury so unique that they have to invent a new organ for it - every term, which requires something dangerously violent, ideally with a squash ball and a length of rope stiffened with tar.

* except registered peodos. If you are unregistered, you're fine.

Water water

There's an air of magnificence about the British weather. A lot of this is a result of Britain, although geographically relatively small in the global scale of things (not too small, you couldn't lose it under a breadcrumb on an atlas, although a chunk of scone would do the job), apparently extending through more climatic zones than your average continent. So it can be that the southern extreme can bask in Mediterranean sunshine (the price the Channel Islands pay for being close to France), while the northern extremes shiver under snow clouds (affording an excellent opportunity to stoke the peat fire and distill some more whisky). Meanwhile in the west Ireland is famously home to an infinite variety of 'wet' and in the east, farmers are worried about both water shortages and reprisal attacks from otters furious that their habitat is being pumped away to irrigate fields of cucumbers.

Moreover, there's a growing sense that the British weather has a sense of humour, and a sense of timing that would not disgrace a comic actor or a pissed housewife at a party choosing to give her husband a dressing down just as the party's 'mute moment' - the instant at which a room unexpectedly and unaccountably falls silent as all conversations (but one) simultaneously pause - happens.

It has been for years an accepted fact of climatic life that 'bank holiday weather' is best described as trying to keep your barbecue going in a thunderstorm. It could be because the majority of bank holidays are scheduled at times of the year when the weather is unpredictable (January to December) but more probably it is because the weather gods enjoy a laugh as much as anyone. Moreover, if one pictures a weather god, does one get the image of an easygoing bloke in shorts and sandals, giving all a sunny smile and clear skies? No, one gets the image of an angry, constipated looking Viking with a beard that has to be wrung out every two minutes, farting thunderbolts and pissing on the bonfires of a nation.

If there is anything more likely to promote precipitation than a bank holiday, it's the announcement of a hosepipe ban. And lo! It came to pass that a number of water companies in various parts of England, busy pissing away millions of gallons of water through cracked pipes and supplying buckets of the stuff to industry who then use it to mix with poison before dumping it in a nearby nature reserve, imposed a hosepipe ban this weekend.

The English do not like hosepipe bans. They love their hosepipes. They use them to water lawns and floral borders, to spray noisome children, to separate copulating dogs, to fill paddling pools, to wash their cars and, of course, to put out burning sheds and fences, aflame as a result of recent creosoting and carelessness, drunkenness or careless drunkenness near the barbecue.

Previously, hosepipe bans have been enforced by, among other things, helicopter surveillance. The expectation this year was that thanks to the development in airborne surveillance techniques, and with Bin Laden now found, there must be dozens of drone craft knocking about in hangers that could easily be re-tasked to criss-cross the yellow gardens of the South East looking for suspicious squares of green. Just make sure that the drone is disarmed so that the operator's usual response on spotting a likely target - bombing the shit out of it - is not an option.

But apparently in this case it won't be choppers, coppers, drones or eyes in the sky spying, it will be eyes over the fence, with neighbours being encouraged to shop their neighbours. This is something the English can really get behind, and despite appearances owes less to the Stasi and more to the school of 'try winning cucumber of the year at the village fete from behind bars, you tuber growing bastard'.

But given that it has rained every day since the ban was announced, one cannot escape the suspicion that there is a secret order high in the combined ranks of the National Farmers Union, RHS and several water companies who, on certain occasions, pray for rain, then sacrifice a goat.

Postcard from Yorkshire: Malham Cove

Malham Cove is a spectacular limestone feature, best described as an inland cliff face with a spectacular limestone pavement on top. Not the sort of pavement one sees lining the side of a road, this one is full of huge cracks and uneven surfaces. Actually, it's just the sort of pavement one expects to see lining the side of the road.


One reaches the village of Malham by following what we now recognised as the standard issue succession of increasingly tiny twisting narrow country lanes, or 'roads' as they are known locally, until you reach a line of cars indicating the boundary of the village and a succession of people too tight to pay for car parking.

The car park is full of people with a uniform sense of excitement and a uniform of walking boots and waterproof hiking jackets in a variety of primary colours that presumably make it easy to locate one in a snowdrift or a heard of sheep. Foul weather gear was not needed today, as the sun was shining brightly enough for your average walker to be comfortable in a tee shirt. But, if you have sprung a couple of hundred quid for an anorak and a performance fleece liner, I can see the logic in wearing the damn thing no matter what the weather.

One does feel a little under dressed without a dog. Surely it is time for us to start emulating Japan which, I believe, has a thriving 'hire a pet' industry with the added benefit if you are Oriental that anything that disappoints by misbehaving can be turned into a snack. Behaving very well in the car park was a cocker called, what else, Jarvis. He was at that doggie adolescent age where everything is over-exciting and yet at the same time a bit daunting, leading to leaping around the place but with a note of caution.


The footpath meanders to the foot of Malham Cove where one is confronted with a sheer rock face, with water and free climbers dripping from it. Free climbers all tend to be very much of a type, wiry from climbing and very thin from either keeping extremely fit or crapping themselves on a regular basis because of the sheer drop and lack of big bouncy inflatable castle below.

The free climbers in question looked to be enjoying themselves very much, yet one had to asking, for safety's sake, one should perhaps spoil their fun and break it to them that the is in fact a sarcasm, cut into the rock,that winds it's way very gently to the top of the cliff and has a constant stream of tourists aged eight to eighty using it.


As one climbs, so the view unfolds and one found oneself looking for Aragorn and the rest of the Fellowship of the Ring. This is exactly the sort of landscape hat they would pass through, on their way to do something violent to an orc. In fact, one would be more likely to bump into HarryPotter, as this is where they filmed one of the scenes from the last movie, Deathly Hallows, when Harry and friends are on the run and camping. The scene, and the scenery, looks like CGI and one imagines that after huffing the camera kit to the top of the Cove, the unlucky hampers were wondering why the scene couldn't just have been rendered in a graphics place in Soho.

The reason was to be found in the gift shop by the car park afterwards, where a youngHarry Potter fan was entertaining the staff with a Harry Potter quiz. The hap was obviously thrilled to visit a place that was in a real live movie about the boy wizard and that in itself must give satisfaction to whatever burly rigger carried the camera and lights and to the runner who was constantly up and down the staircase with coffee.

No lighting was required on top of Malham Cove, up here the brilliant sunshine was reflected back from the snow that still lay on the hills in pockets. It was an odd sensation to stand in the snow in the sunshine with waterproof and fleece tied round the waist, basking in the warm sun as the snow crunched under your boots. It makes one appreciate why walkers walk, hikers hike and people go outside at all, especially here. The whole area is essentially an enormous breathtaking photographic challenge and photography always looses because even if you kit superior to the Hubble telescope, there comes a point where you put your camera away and just sit there, trying to take it all in, knowing that the best favour you could ever do to somebody when trying to convey the beauty of the area would be to replace your photograph with a small piece of card bearing an OS map reference and the phrase 'just go'.


Returning from our walk (less than a hike, but very much more than a stroll) we decided that a cream tea would be just the job. Well, one of us fancied a cream tea, I was very much in the 'chips for lunch' camp. While the snow lay in isolated drifts, I had still been walking in it and so decided that a hot lunch was more than justified and, if that lunch consisted of chips, so much the better. Not that I need an excuse to have chips, but chips being required is quite a different proposition to chips being desired.

Returning to the village by a footpath that ran alongside houses where locals sat in their gardens, enjoying the sunshine and nodding to visitors 'ow do', we happened upon the Beck Hall Hotel, where, beside a brook that, to the delight of the Yorkshire tourist board, was babbling and sparkling in the sunshine, happy groups of tourists tucked into their lunches while opportunistic mallards waddled from table to table on the look out for the odd dropped crust.

A waitress, a young girl of about twenty with the sort of enthusiastic energy that one only finds in the young or the chemically enhanced, rushed to greet us. Her welcome was fairly unconventional; 'Have I told you about our cake disaster? There's no lemon drizzle. We're right out of coffee and walnut and there's barely a slice of Victoria sponge to be had!'. All this in a sort of breathless rush. I was relaxed, as nobody had mentioned a lack of chips yet.
'Do you have scones?'
'Oh aye, fresh baked. Tea with those?'
'Yes please, and a bowl of chips, and a sandwich, with meat in it.'

Five minutes later the table was groaning with food and tea and ten minutes later so was I. The drawback of staying or eating in a hotel that is walker and pet friendly is that it is always going to be just a tiny bit scruffy, those boots in the hallway and the paw prints on the tile floor knock off stars from the rating. And let's face it, nobody expects somebody who runs a hotel catering for walkers or dogs to keep the place spotless, you'd have to employ somebody just to Hoover from dawn to dusk. What you get though is a relaxed and friendly atmosphere and, when it comes to food, an understanding that it is best served promptly and in the sort of portions that are appreciated by folk who have just walked from one edge of their OS map to the other with only a banana to sustain them. My sandwich came with crisps, salad and coleslaw. As well as chips. This wasn't a snack, this was a meal!

The mallards went hungry.

Postcard from Yorkshire: Yurts and all

Just outside Masham, near the village of Ilton, is the Druids Temple. Not actually raised by those bloodthirsty beardy types at the dawn of time, this Neolithic style stone ring and assorted sticky-uppy cairns was in fact created in the Victorian age, yet another folly raised by beardy types, just not bloodthirsty ones in robes.

It's an interesting enough wee place to visit and one does not have to bee an anthropologist to work out that it has been used ritually, the ritual in question being Helen where the local teens sneak off somewhere to make a campfire, around which they drink cider, make out and pass out. At the rear of the temple is what might be termed the holy of holes but is more accurately described as the 'cave of piss and cider'. A couple of discarded lighter fluid cans suggested that the youth either really like getting their babies going with a bang, or supermarket cider isn't cutting it anymore. I dread to think what the effect of sniffing lighter fluid is but can only hope they don't attempt it while smoking a fag.


The other folly in the area is the brand new camp site 'Bivouac'. When we to led up this consisted of half a dozen yurts in a field, a camp site shop/office, a toilet block, a cafe and a business model best described as ambitious. Turns out, this is an environmentally friendly camping site. Which means no glamping. If I rent a yurt, I expect hot water, a microwave, a bed with a topper and wi if. What I do not expect is. Standard of comfort that, if the brochure is to be believed, would have Gengis Khan saying 'fuck that' and off on his pony to the nearest Travelodge.


The environmental aspect is good for business, and I sense a real business opportunity in running a combined drystone wall building adventure weekend and drystone wall repair business. I can imagine if I read the Guardian this is just the sort of place I would go camping and it has to be said the scenery is spectacular, as long as you can see over the drystone walls.. The problem is that to get there, I would have driven from London in my 4x4. Having a coffee in the cafe and resisting the urge to leaf through a copy of 'green parent' (I was aware of the folklore relating to green children, but was hitherto unaware that it was a genetic thing), I was worried when I asked for directions to the loo that I would be handed a trenching tool and dictions to a bank of soft earth. However, the loos were actually rather lovely and, fair enough, the wee shop sold a 'breakfast' lit for a tenner that essentially consisted of a lot of pork arranged in various meaty ways. Just the thing for a hungry yurt dweller.

Postcard from Yorkshire: Theakston's Brewery Tour

When I was in Ireland, I did the Guinness brewery tour. Actually, one has the 'Guinness experience' which is not, as anyone who has had a night on the Guinness might reasonably suspect, a polite reference to the bowel based madness that occurs the next morning, but a fun but sanitised visit to an area of the vast brewery in Dublin which is a sort of cross between a visitor centre, a museum and a sort of beery thrill ride, culminating in a free pint at the bar at the top of the place.


The Theakston's tour was nothing like this. It was a tour, of the brewery. We went into what was a surprisingly small space compete with steam gushing from vents, puddles of water here and there and the sort of very sharp metal corners on equipment that are only found in places where serious people do serious business.


The mystery of brewing was explained to us, and we followed our guide round getting an appreciation of the art. We passed little dishes of malt along the line, tasting a pinch like supplicants taking the Host, we looked into vast tanks full of beer and dodged workers who ignored us and got on with their mysterious work. This was alchemy and the upshot of the fascinating tour was that I now have a greater appreciation of real ale than ever before and I can use the word 'hoplet' (a small plug of compressed hops placed into the barrel of beer prior to sealing it so that it can cask condition) with authority.


The other thing I learned, apart from the astonishing fact that it only takes 15 blokes in the brewery to make all the Theakson's that's made, is that it's important to get the right gear when setting up. When a Leeds steam engine company contacted the brewery and asked if it could have the steam engine they thought might be there, that was over one hundred years old, for its museum, they were told no, as it was still in use. It was too, although I detected that great engineering breakthrough of the twentieth century, gaffa tape, had been employed quite a bit in maintaining it.

Finished the tour in the Black Bull in Paradise, chatting with a chap who had also been on the tour and, from the way he was discussing the real ale, had treated the visit to the brewery as others might perform a pilgrimage.

Postcard from Yorkshire: Masham

Masham is a charming market town in Yorkshire, notable for two reasons, both of them breweries. It also shares a characteristic with many other strikingly pretty towns or villages that are popular with tourists in that the name of the town is pronounced differently to how it is spelled (or 'spelt'), it's 'Massum', not 'Mash-ham'. At least, that's what we were told, it could all be an elaborate double bluff but is most likely true for a couple of reasons, the first being that such devices are a handy way for the locals to quickly divine who the tourists are (other clues include a relaxed expression and a tendency to anoraks), the second being, in all probability, a feature of the local accent which from the pronunciation guide above you may think is Deep South but is actually Rural Yorkshire.

As a warming up exercise, simply say 'Ow do!' ten times every morning. This is not only excellent for getting your mouth in gear for the correct pronunciation of Yorkshire place names, but will be your practical experience of greeting people on the short walk to the shops of a morning.

Masham is a destination town. It has a market square that, unusually, features a market twice a week, selling real things such as veg and cake as well as the staple features of modern markets, second-hand paperbacks and DVDs (Catherine Cookson and Jason Statham will be with us forever). It also plays host to groups of motor bike enthusiasts and car enthusiasts, the attraction being that they can all rumble down to the road to the town and then park up in the substantial town square. There they can have a pint, look at each others vehicles, talk about, presumably, carburettors, and then rumble home.

As a town, it's pretty much picture-perfect. There are two excellent butchers, a little store (the Co-Op), a post office, grocers, newsagent and a deli featuring the hundred-cheese-challenge. At least that's what I think they meant when they advertised a cheese counter with over one hundred cheeses. It even had a bank, with a cash machine! The cash machine was guarded by a cat that would lazily perch on a sunny windowsill nearby and keep a relaxed feline eye on proceedings. Obviously a brewery cat taking a break from an arduous routine of snoozing among the casks, it was a regular feature by the cash machine in the evening (as was I, withdrawing more money for beer and cheese), to the extent that on my return I half expected to receive a call from my bank along the lines of 'we've noticed some unexpected activity on your account, somebody has used your pin number to purchase two hundred tins of Whiskas'.

The post office featured a selection of post cards and humorous regional cards, the sort that can be found in any county with a strong sense of identity and a distinct regional accent, giving local dialect translations and so on, although my favourite was along the lines of 'Never ask an Englishman where he's from. If he's from Yorkshire, he'll soon tell you, if not, you would not want to embarrass him'.

While the Professional Yorkshireman surely exists (just like the professional Welshman, Scotsman and so on, with Liverpudlians only ever making it to 'talented armature Scouser' status given that there are so bloody many of them in competition for the role) they don't actually exist in the county itself. It's almost as if as soon as you trip the threshold for droning on about how great Yorkshire is, you are given a ticket to London and a letter of introduction to the BBC. Yorkshire people are incredibly friendly. I wasn't there long enough to firm up just why, but my hypothesis is that a combination of the weather and enforced periods of isolation in snow drifts and so on make them so bloody happy to see other people that they are, as a result, good in company, unfailingly polite and cheerful.

And helpful. Masham has four pubs, not counting the two brewery taps. One evening we are in The Bay Horse, a quirky family run place, when the gas goes out in the cellar. Not the heating or cooking stuff, but the stuff that moves the beer from the cellar to the pumps at the bar. This was clearly a matter of gravity on a par with somebody from a nearby research facility dropping a flask of Ebola on the floor. As panic spread, a fellow wearing a brewery polo shirt who had clearly just come off shift asked if there was anything he could do? Did he know anything about beer pumps? He slipped from his stool and was back in two minutes, with the landlady instructing 'get that man a pint'.

His neighbour asked 'pulling a foreigner?'
'Well, the gas had gone and my pint was empty.'

Anywhere else, he would have been carried shoulder high round the pub, possibly concussed on some low beams but in an affectionate way. Not here, the hero of the pub was self-effacing. Now that's Yorkshire.

Masham is home to two famous breweries, Theakston's and Black Sheep. Each with their own taps attached (a tap being a pub attached to a brewery, rather than an enormous dispenser of beer bolted onto the side of the place, gushing ale, although the image is a pleasing one). As well as these it has four pubs.

The White Bear is actually a hotel, a sprawling place that still manages to retain the intimate pub feel downstairs. The lounge area is posh, having candles at the tables and opening up into the dining area, where the food is good. But it's the bar area that the locals drink in and the bar is the place to be. Decorated with exactly the right kind of curios that those companies creating new bars strive so hard to duplicate, but never do (for instance a single volume encyclopaedia from the 1930s of the type that my grandparents had, when all the knowledge you would ever need was contained in just over a thousand closely printed pages. While the book didn't actually have a publication date, it had maps of the world at the back and one can normally date a book fairly accurately from the state of the Balkans).

The White Bear served the best Theakston's I've ever tasted, so the strategy was to panic drink the stuff, relax in front of the fire, and make the most of it. This was a plan shared by the locals.

It was also a pub that took the role of the pub, as the centre of the community, very seriously, and not just as a place where locals could come and talk bollocks. One night when we were in there there was a musical session happening in the bar, which was packed to the rafters with people in sweaters nodding in time to folk music. Peering over the heads, one could see a semi-circle of performers and a variety of instruments, ranging from a beautiful banjo and fine acoustic guitars, through to traditional folk instruments like a bucket and a hen.

But the voice was the most important instrument here, with the evening starting with a bloke singing, along the lines of:
'Oh I have known John Barleycorn,
I have known John Barleycorn,
Oh I have known John Barleycorn,
John Barleycorn I have known.'

I think the song is called 'John Barleycorn'. The evening, from what I could work out, consisted of everyone doing a turn and then combining voices and instruments until the session ended in a rousing rendition of, I think, 'John Barleycorn'. Again. Following this fine effort, the bar staff ferried the food in, consisting first of basins of chips cut so thick I swear one was simply a potato halved, platters of thick slices of bread and butter (chip butties!) and, for those still peckish, sandwiches.

The White Bear was an exceptional place, the only thing that might of improved it was four foot of snow drifting at the door delaying departure.


Masham is also home to The Bay Horse. This is your more bohemian place, with hand written messages from the staff on the walls about enjoying life and so on, signed with little hearts. Just the right side of sweet, it's a cosy pub that does good food and also does rooms. The owners, we think, own a race horse or possibly part of a race horse (I hope it's the nose, as that bit always comes first unless the race is especially chaotic), and there is a picture of the landlord and landlady with their arms around a racehorse, the horse looking about as mad as all horses do, the owners looking, as the saying has it, as pissed as an owner on race day. Written on the walls are remarks about owning a racehorse being a sure sign of having too much money and too little sense.


The Bruce Arms is where you go to watch the footie on a big screen telly. Actually, big is an understatement, the thing occupies two post codes. The attraction of the Bruce is that Wednesday night is curry night, meaning that the proprietor and staff of one of the local curry houses take over the pub restaurant and kitchens and serve both eat in and take away meals. That was why we were there, to order and pick up a take-away. It was fantastic, well worth the wait, which was two pints, so let's say forty minutes.

Finally there's the Kings Head hotel, a chain pub and hotel on the square and no doubt the place the tourists go to for beer and food. Actually not bad, although it has a fruiter and that inescapable chain pub atmosphere, it's light and airy if you like that kind of thing, the sort of place you can take a relative who doesn't drink in the reasonable expectation that they will get a decent coffee. To be fair, they also did rather good wasabi peanuts.

As well as the four pub type pubs, the two brewery taps are the Black Bull in Paradise (Theakston's) and the tap at the Black Sheep Brewery. Both reflect the nature of their respective breweries or, more accurately, brewery tours. The Black Sheep is a collection of tables set up by a long bar, bordered by a restaurant and a gift shop. Very much the place where you finish your brewery tour with the complimentary half pint. Also very much the place where the brewery workers finish the day with a pint and a chat. Nothing like drinking your own product to ensure rigorous quality control. The Black Bull in Paradise is, by contrast, a perfect little pub that just happens to be attached to a brewery.

Postcard from Yorkshire: On the road

A day out exploring the area, essentially going up hill and down dale via whatever attractive looking coffee shops appear to be open and serving cake. As the dry stone walls run like veins across the fields, so the narrow country lanes that appear to pass for B roads in Yorkshire wind like arteries, connecting villages, usually following the flow of some river or other.

The villages themselves are usually arranged around a triangular green or square and the houses and shops sit huddled together, as if for warmth in a landscape that can be as cold and hostile as the locals are warm and friendly. But these are not abandoned villages only inhabited by tourists at weekends, they are busy and occasionally surprising places, like the place we passed with a racehorse stable on the edge of it, and returning to the stable was one frisky looking horse and rider and one positively manic looking four hoofed menace being led by the stable lad while the diminutive jockey walked alongside, clutching crop and saddle, rubbing an evidently sore arse and looking for all the world like he was not at all pleased with new rules on whipping meaning he could no longer legitimately thrash the beast who had unseated him on the training run.

This makes driving a bit of a challenge, as the scenery is spectacular and, after a good deal of rainfall, dynamic as rivers tumble in waterfalls and cascades, all very diverting which is not a good idea as you try to negotiate a tricky turning which will, in all probability, have something interesting coming the other way.

This could be a local driving at nutter speed in their landie. Or it could be a tractor, or it could be a tractor pulling a trailer piled dangerously high with some sort of root vegetable that could really put a crimp in your day and a dent in your lap if it were to make a guest appearance through your sunroof. These twisty turny uppy downy roads are also home to the lorries that zoom from farm to farm and village to village.

Tiny villages and enormous lorries abound, the latter squeezing through the former sometimes one suspects because sat nab is no respecter of road width but also because this is where the road goes and the lorries have to go on the road. This was certainly the case of the lorry hauling sheep that looked if anything considerably more relaxed than the pedestrians trying to get out of the way in the village of Hawes, as it squeezed down the high street. One often wonders what goes through the minds of sheep at the best of time, but god alone knows what they think when being transported, presumably they are under the impression that are going on some sort of trip, possibly to Alton Towers. This is almost never the case.

As well as lorries and deluded sheep Hawes is home to a rather nice cafe and art gallery, which sells the work of local artist Peter Brook.




It also sells a rather nice print of 'The Butcher's Dog'.



This is a painting of a Westie looking out of the upstairs window of the local butcher's shop. Looking up from my latte, I saw a butcher's shop with a Westie looking out of the upstairs window, life imitating art imitating life.

Postcard from Yorkshire: Fountains Abbey

After seeing Fountains Abbey, an eight hundred and something year old ruin of an Abbey complex, there is an argument that all places of worship should be open to the sky. This not only allows one to glimpse the wonder of God's creation at first hand but, crucially, allows God to keep an eye on those monks who claim to work in his name. Choirboys. Say no more.

The Abbey may be a ruin, but The National Trust manage to keep at least four tea shops fully functioning. These being Yorkshire teashops, they sell cakes. I had a scone roughly the size of a bus, with enough cream on it to clog the arteries of a mammoth. It was truly a thing of wonder, even if I could still feel it lodged in my lower intestine some hours later.

Luckily, the grounds provide plenty of opportunity to walk off the substantial delights of the tea shop. As well as the Abbey, there is a grand house. Not quite a stately home, rather the sort of unpretentious massive pile that wealthy farmers built and which were regularly visited by royalty. With grand houses come grand gardens, and as well as woods and so on, there were formal gardens with straight waterways, polite waterfalls, rustic bridges and, of course, a folly or feature at every turn.


The rich, it would appear, liked only one thing more than building grand houses and grand gardens, and that was building classically inspired mini-temples and castles, essentially vantage points where they could look out over their grand houses and grand gardens and, of course, indulge in a bit of secluded aristocratic rumpy pumpy with visitors. One of the follies, an octagon tower, even had an artificial cave built next to it which functioned as a kitchen allowing the servants to prepare hot food to keep visitors' strength up between bouts of walking and illicit fumblings in the ha-ha. Something suggests that the invention of the thermos flask could not come quickly enough for members of the toiling classes.

The Abbey complex itself is immense and beautiful. Soaring columns and arches make one wonder how on earth the place stays open to the public without being swaddled in yellow and white tape with 'keep out' or at least 'hard hat area' written on it. Rather, the place is a vast adventure playground for children who run around in a perpetual state of over-excitement, while adults ponder if they can pick up a foam sword from the gift shop and dash around the ruins playing knights.


The nearby church is still intact, modern (by comparison, St Mary's is Victorian), small (by comparison) and very beautiful. It's delights include a spiral staircase to the organ lift that would appear to per-date the work of Crick and Watson by some decades, and some particularly colourful stained glass windows. These are made even more remarkable because, due to a fault in the paint, some of the figures are losing their faces.


As a result what would normally be an ordinary pious looking bloke with a beard is a blank space and what was Victorian suddenly looks terribly modern. The windows are very beautiful and, when lit from without by the glorious Yorkshire sun, colourful. As they depict scenes from the bible, and hence are usually pretty gruesome, it occasionally takes one a second or two to realise that the fellow kneeling piously is not surrounded by people holding scones in anticipation of a cream tea, but is in fact about to be martyred. This is usually a process that involves something unpleasant.