Simply Sue: November In Penistone
In another delicious adventure in words, Sue Papworth describes what it is like to have Lake Windermere over your head, with fireworks.
World War III had broken out, and the cats were behind the tumble-dryer. It seemed like a pretty good idea.
The ghouls had only shown up for one night on Halloween, demanding jelly-babies with menaces, and then returned to their crypts to eat them - but Bonfire Night seemed to have been going on for the past month.
Either that, or there was a clearance sale at the Royal Ordnance Cash’n’Carry, with a special on stun grenades.
The whole place still kept going BANG all the time. I guess it’s one way of livening up a rather dull November.
We’d done it by visiting Penistone, which is the storytelling capital of South Yorkshire – a thing not given much publicity, on the whole. The chap outside the public loo had given Sandra the story of his life whilst I was in there, and he’d got on to the grandchildren before I’d got myself back into Blunderbus.
The Traffic Warden told us a tale or two whilst he cheerfully helped us to park on the pavement to load up, and the lady on the stall selling second-hand plus-fours was pretty chatty, too, though nothing like the guy on the pushbike, who positively paled into insignificance alongside the guy who’d pointed us in the general direction of the market.
We decided it must be the relaxed, southern temperament, and headed for the chip-shop, which is always a good way of livening up Novembers – or most months, come to that.
Whichever, it quite inspired me to mention that King Boris of Bulgaria was, in fact, an engine-driver, which occupation has never, so far as I know, been taken up by any other crowned head. (Whether he actually wore his crown whilst he was chugging along I do not know, but I expect that there was a retired railwayman somewhere about on the market that we missed who could have told me all about it.
In fact, I expect that it comes up in daily conversation all the time, along with the interesting fact that Wyatt Earp ended up as a boxing referee when he ran out of varmints with six-guns.)
He probably lived his entire and otherwise eventful life without eating cod and chips, which I feel is a downright tragedy for the poor monarch.
We’d ended up at liberty for the day because the fellow who was supposed to be coming to have a serious talk to my computer had rung to say that he couldn’t actually get out of town to get here, because his canoe was in for servicing.
As an excuse, it was pretty water-tight, because he was meant to be coming from York, which wasn’t. The centre was under three feet of the stuff.
Having heard that Lake Windermere had decided to move down to the Ouse, we felt that staying up in the Pennines was a pretty good idea, and we did seem to have kept our heads above water, until we’d had our chips. At which point, we really thought we’d had them, because the bargain sale at the cash’n’carry seemed to have come back to visit us – only this time, from above.
It seemed like Lake Windermere was now immediately overhead, with fireworks, and keen on landing right here, all in one piece. We were in grave need of the tumble-dryer by the time we got home, and the cats had to fend for themselves.
