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ONCE THEY'RE GONE, THEY'RE GONE! Roll up, roll up, get yours while stocks last. It wasn’t meant to end like this. his shoulder where the scales are very thick. I knew it wasn’t going to go wrong, I had this feeling all day. It was the knave what got him. Read more... Add new comment
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THE PIG MAN COMETH Marjorie Peake was a “big girl for her age” as they used to say. Not fat but big boned, and brassy to boot. Every other kid at their end of the back street had due respect for adults which amounted to not speaking until spoken to, but Marjorie was not shy in coming forward. Unlike the rest she did not live on the two streets which shared a back entry but came to spend her days in the care of her grandparents because both her parents worked. Her mother was an invisible figure but her father was renowned and respected. He was a butcher, or more exactly, a slaughterman at the abattoir in town. The children could scarcely imagine why their parents spoke of him reverentially with “Abel this” and “Abel that”, as he was coarse of voice, never wore a collar and tie and always wore wellington boots. To the boy, Abel Peake’s main attraction was not his garrulous daughter but to the fact that he kept a pig up by the single track railway line that ran from the Colliery at the foot of the bank to the coal yard at the top. On Sunday morning straight after mass and before going to the pub, his father would trail him over the dirt tracks and shattered fields of his own childhood in an ostentatious act of parental duty, and they would wave to the puffing billy that chugged laboriously up that substantial gradient, fully-laden, or careered downhill, its empty wagons rattling in abandon. |
Well done to Cllr Yvonne Creswell and Bury Council for flying the Cross of St George on the 23 April. The decision to have the Union Flag flying permanently and individual national flags on their national days reflects a common sense approach to what is fast becoming a national farce. Yes the English flag has been appropriated by right wing nationalists and yes its origins are rooted in a time when Christendom wasn’t particularly characterised by peace, love, freedom or happiness; but then very few places were. I can take or leave tradition, patriotism and religion, but that’s a personal choice. I draw my identity as I choose and don’t deny the right of others to do the same. I don’t have any objection to Pakistani, Indian or Australian flags flying at cricket matches so I’m damned why I should object to the Cross of St. George. The Norman Tebbitt test was always an insult to British citizens (or subjects) but of course he didn’t really mean it to apply to the Welsh, Scots or Irish (or Manx) England dwellers who always retained a loyalty to and affection for the old country. Did he? Banning the Cross of St George is as daft as banning the Red Cross (the organisation) or insisting it changes |
