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It’s a bit like the beginning of a Ken Dodd joke. "Have you ever been blogged, missus?" is the sort of thing he’d say as he twizzled his tickling stick and pulled out his hair at odd angles.
Well, I’ve come up against this chap, Andy Darlington, who’s a bit of a comedian. In real life, he’s Web Editor of the Derby Evening Telegraph www.thisisderbyshire.co.uk which, if you’re IT competent, means you can actually read the DET without having one shoved through your letterbox every afternoon.
It must be ever so clever because I have friends world wide – Florida, Mallorca, even Rob Skivington, who works in Reading – who can read our paper without having to pod out the necessary 35p, plus delivery charge.
For all his posh title, though, Ower Andy must be a bit of a wag. Why else would I receive the following missive from him over the e-mail air-waves : "Starting soon, we’ll have a new blogs page on the website, and what we’ll need you to do when you’ve written your columns is add them to your own personal webpage at www.blogger.com. It’s easy. I’ll send you a guide. Don’t worry….."
What a joker. As the original technophobe who can’t, won’t, and don’t want to get to grips with computers, the woman who craves an old Imperial manual typewriter, a sheet of carbon, and a bottle of Tippex, he wants to turn me into a blogger. And says "Don’t worry."
It wasn’t so much worry, as panic and paranoia, which set in, especially when the second note arrived, thanking every other columnist, contributor, journalist, writer, for their co-operation, before adding, tellingly, : "Lucy – please let me know when you get your Google passwords." Naughty Lucy. You can ignore it, but it won’t go away.
There are rare times when I think "Thank heaven for husbands". But even he, who boasts not only an e-mail address I’ve been denied all these years, but the ability to log on, log off, find me a tub of Madame Rochas Body Lotion, or an I’m-running-away-from-all-this-hassle air flight, and can down-load whatever it is folk down-load, ran around like a scolded cockerel for ten minutes before getting to grips with the idea of a blog for a wife. And he did the necessary, via an SOS call to fellow-columnist Anton Rippon, who was as useful as a chocolate teapot, then on to the aforementioned Mr Darlington, who blinded him with science before talking him through it.
I’d like to report that I’m now a fully-paid-up member of Blogs R Us but I’m not quite sure what the whole rigmarole means, if it’s going to enhance everybody’s life, and what’s in it for me, me, me. You see, among the reams of jargon come six more pages, under the heading of Administrator Guide, which had my eyes glazing over by the end of the welcome introductory sentence.
It’s encouraging to note that, once my blog is created, I can use it as I wish. "You can also play about with adding pictures and videos." Are these people real? Himself has written out, in words of one syllable, with the appropriate dots and coms, what I’m supposed to do once the column is written, and if I get stuck, then there’s another young man, Darren, to call on. Andy and Darren know not what they’ve let themselves in for. Within a week, they’ll wish I’d just blogger off.
It was the top man himself, John Kirkland, of nationally-renowned building company Bowmer and Kirkland, who told me : "You’ll never find a prettier Sainsbury’s – go and see for yourself." Which led me, the other week, to join his PA and press officer, former journalist Sarah Congui, and contracts manager Mark Ife, for a coffee stop in…….Sainsbury’s, Matlock.
Now, I’ve seen a few supermarkets in my time, of boring brick build, or simply white boxes. But to sit, sipping coffee, in what resembles an enormous conservatory, admiring the views across the Matlock Bank hillside, was a joy.
It nestles in the site of a defunct quarry, and is built of mainly wood, glass, and Derbyshire stone hewn from nearby Birchover. And it’s unique in not only its attractiveness, but the way it blends sympathetically with the environment.
As one who was raised in that area, I recall only too well the limited shopping facilities. We had posh shop R. Orme and Co Ltd, the Manchester Stores. And there was the ubiquitous Co-op.
This new Sainsbury’s has caused some controversy, which it would, considering people don’t like change. Planning took over ten years of shilly-shallying. Bowmer and Kirkland started on it in January 2007. It opened in September the same year. Christmas trading was a knock-out. And so it continues.
If Sarah and Mark were at one with their company’s success, my Darley Dale County Primary School friend Pauline Worthy was ecstatic. "I come here nearly every day. I love it. It’s what Matlock needs." And the fact that it’s provided her son Wynne, and dozens of other Matlockians, with much-needed employment, is beside the point. It’s delightful.
Tuesday 26 February 2008
Tuesday 19 February 2008
School Woodwork Lessons
Since my ramblings last week, extolling the virtues of cookery classes in schools, I’ve had a thought.
Are lads still being taught woodwork?
It’s probably known as something fancy, like organic technology, these days, or, in the case of most of the DIY merchants who pop up on telly, re-designing entire homes in the space of 60 minutes, a dozen ways with the sheet of MDF. And it’s not just jobs for the boys.
Plenty of women I know are pretty handy with the electric drill, and some I’m acquainted with carry little packs of screwdrivers in their handbags. I’m not sure why. I’d be hard pressed to know one end from another.
I stick to the culinary arts in this household, because guess what? Himself went to woodwork lessons as a lad – and reckons he knows it all.
In his defence, he quite enjoys a spot of doing-it-himself. Shelves have been known to stay on the wall, so well in one instance that, when it came to taking them down, he took away most of the plaster, creating such havoc and mess that we were down to the wattle and daub, let alone the bricks. And the cost of the re-plastering doesn’t bear thinking about.
He’s also handy with a paintbrush and a tin of silk finish emulsion, can hang a curtain rail in more or less a straight line, and has been known to lay the odd carpet. As the result, we have a very odd carpet. But in moments of nostalgia, when he’s wittering on about the magic of rawl plugs, and brandishing his late father’s prize chisel, he takes me through his prowess at the school woodwork bench.
And if we gels began our path to gastronomic delights with the humble rock bun, then the world’s future chippies, in the 50s, honed their practical skills on a teapot stand. This was, he recalls, a case of two pieces of wood, chiselled out and made into the form of an X. And, dear reader, if you’re holding your breath in anticipation of hand-made wooden nails to tack this work of art together, don’t bother.
"It was glued," he announces. Glued? Oh yes, but not your ordinary, everyday glue which has to be forced out of a tube. This was "proper" glue, boiled up in a metal pot, from ingredients too awful to think about. And the smell was horrendous.
This first-former’s pride and joy was held aloft to disinterested aunts and uncles for the first few weeks, and sat under the family tea-pot until it disintegrated. No doubt the glue wasn’t as sticky as it should have been.
Moving on into the second form, the class graduated to making book-ends. And this was to be his undoing. It required a knowledge of dovetail joints. And he never did get the hang of them. But, he says, he persevered gallantly, though boredom set in along the way. It took him five years – the rest of his schooldays – to finish them off. They wobbled. They didn’t match. His mum and dad thought they were wonderful. He’s not sure if the aunts and uncles enthused quite as much.
Meanwhile, his fellow-students returned home triumphant, holding aloft items of furniture of Sheraton lines and proportions, perfect in every dovetailed detail.
Along with a myriad of lathes, files, screwdrivers, hammers and screws, inherited over many years, the old man can’t resist the latest must-have gadget even though they rarely come out of the packaging, and people can be forgiven for thinking that our garage is Mr Chippendale’s very own workshop. Sadly, when it comes to craftsmanship, he ventures no further than a flat-pack, an Allen key, a tube of super-glue, and a packet of No-Nails.
Friend and fellow-columnist Anton Rippon joked recently that when he was a kid, he had a part-time job as a wringer-out for a one-armed window cleaner. And I can’t resist letting him know that as a child in the Matlock and Darley Dale area, such a window cleaner existed.
I recall his name was Philip Willets, and he was a familiar sight atop his ladder, outside businesses, banks and shops, as well as private houses, for years. He must have been good because he was always working. And as far as I know, he rung out his own window leather. And unlike today’s breed, who probably call themselves glass hygiene operatives, who pocket their fiver, promise to see you in a month, and never darken your patio door again, he was regular, reliable, and probably did the insides as well as the outsides for the equivalent of today’s ten pence.
Even at that price, hiring a window cleaner was a luxury. Housewives’ backsides perched on bedroom window sills as they polished the outside glass within an inch of its life, was a familiar sight where I came from.
There was also a one-armed painter and decorator operating in Derby a few years ago. And I’m always tickled when I see the window cleaner’s van advertising his business. It’s called Mister Bit.
Are lads still being taught woodwork?
It’s probably known as something fancy, like organic technology, these days, or, in the case of most of the DIY merchants who pop up on telly, re-designing entire homes in the space of 60 minutes, a dozen ways with the sheet of MDF. And it’s not just jobs for the boys.
Plenty of women I know are pretty handy with the electric drill, and some I’m acquainted with carry little packs of screwdrivers in their handbags. I’m not sure why. I’d be hard pressed to know one end from another.
I stick to the culinary arts in this household, because guess what? Himself went to woodwork lessons as a lad – and reckons he knows it all.
In his defence, he quite enjoys a spot of doing-it-himself. Shelves have been known to stay on the wall, so well in one instance that, when it came to taking them down, he took away most of the plaster, creating such havoc and mess that we were down to the wattle and daub, let alone the bricks. And the cost of the re-plastering doesn’t bear thinking about.
He’s also handy with a paintbrush and a tin of silk finish emulsion, can hang a curtain rail in more or less a straight line, and has been known to lay the odd carpet. As the result, we have a very odd carpet. But in moments of nostalgia, when he’s wittering on about the magic of rawl plugs, and brandishing his late father’s prize chisel, he takes me through his prowess at the school woodwork bench.
And if we gels began our path to gastronomic delights with the humble rock bun, then the world’s future chippies, in the 50s, honed their practical skills on a teapot stand. This was, he recalls, a case of two pieces of wood, chiselled out and made into the form of an X. And, dear reader, if you’re holding your breath in anticipation of hand-made wooden nails to tack this work of art together, don’t bother.
"It was glued," he announces. Glued? Oh yes, but not your ordinary, everyday glue which has to be forced out of a tube. This was "proper" glue, boiled up in a metal pot, from ingredients too awful to think about. And the smell was horrendous.
This first-former’s pride and joy was held aloft to disinterested aunts and uncles for the first few weeks, and sat under the family tea-pot until it disintegrated. No doubt the glue wasn’t as sticky as it should have been.
Moving on into the second form, the class graduated to making book-ends. And this was to be his undoing. It required a knowledge of dovetail joints. And he never did get the hang of them. But, he says, he persevered gallantly, though boredom set in along the way. It took him five years – the rest of his schooldays – to finish them off. They wobbled. They didn’t match. His mum and dad thought they were wonderful. He’s not sure if the aunts and uncles enthused quite as much.
Meanwhile, his fellow-students returned home triumphant, holding aloft items of furniture of Sheraton lines and proportions, perfect in every dovetailed detail.
Along with a myriad of lathes, files, screwdrivers, hammers and screws, inherited over many years, the old man can’t resist the latest must-have gadget even though they rarely come out of the packaging, and people can be forgiven for thinking that our garage is Mr Chippendale’s very own workshop. Sadly, when it comes to craftsmanship, he ventures no further than a flat-pack, an Allen key, a tube of super-glue, and a packet of No-Nails.
Friend and fellow-columnist Anton Rippon joked recently that when he was a kid, he had a part-time job as a wringer-out for a one-armed window cleaner. And I can’t resist letting him know that as a child in the Matlock and Darley Dale area, such a window cleaner existed.
I recall his name was Philip Willets, and he was a familiar sight atop his ladder, outside businesses, banks and shops, as well as private houses, for years. He must have been good because he was always working. And as far as I know, he rung out his own window leather. And unlike today’s breed, who probably call themselves glass hygiene operatives, who pocket their fiver, promise to see you in a month, and never darken your patio door again, he was regular, reliable, and probably did the insides as well as the outsides for the equivalent of today’s ten pence.
Even at that price, hiring a window cleaner was a luxury. Housewives’ backsides perched on bedroom window sills as they polished the outside glass within an inch of its life, was a familiar sight where I came from.
There was also a one-armed painter and decorator operating in Derby a few years ago. And I’m always tickled when I see the window cleaner’s van advertising his business. It’s called Mister Bit.
Thursday 14 February 2008
Lucy column Feb 12, 2008
Let’s hear it for rock cakes. And fish pie. And the sort of Victoria sandwich cake you took home in well-risen triumph, or lied through your teeth by pretending you’d dropped it on the kitchen floor when it sagged in the middle.
Start installing the kitchens, education departments, because according to the Government’s Schools Secretary Ed Balls, cookery is coming back on the school curriculum. And about time, too.
Because while, in my day, cookery was less to do with the healthy eating lark they bang on about today, and more a whizzo, bang-on, alternative to the dreaded maths and scary hockey, it was a learning curve. How else would I know that "a stew boiled is a stew spoiled", that pastry making calls for cold conditions, sponge cakes for warm ones, and that if you roast a chicken, or fry a bit of fish, belly-side down, it makes for a more moist meal?
It has stood me in better stead than unravelling the theorem of Pythagoras or working out the necessity in my universe of logarithms.
I’m not sure when the noble art of perfecting the tin loaf, made with stone-ground flour and proper yeast, went off the timetable scales. Certainly, my late son Matthew did at least one term on the, by then called, home economics front at what is now Littleover Community School, in the 70s, because I recall the usual Monday morning flap as I searched the cupboards for that day’s ingredients.
Like all teenage lads, he’d "forgotten" not only the class, but what they were supposed to be making. Which is why we had an endless run on quiches, because there was usually a supply of cheese, eggs, flour and butter, but in the case of cottage pie, we were usually fresh out of cottages. His fiancee at the time he died, Rose Kennedy, also recalls her days of domestic science, with a little bit of grief. Some lads sneaked in and turned off the ovens. Her melting moments emerged as one soggy slice. Cookery classes were no more.
Commendably for Mr Ed (Meat) Balls, this is a government gesture towards fighting spiralling obesity in our kids. Trouble is, it’s much more fun and interesting whisking up and creating a jam roly-poly, than dreaming up something artistic with a thinly-sliced carrot tied up with a French bean. It’s tastier and more satisfying to a teenage palate to boot.
But this isn’t going to happen overnight. As something called Food Technology took over from cookery lessons, in came the boffins and the designers, teaching kids the rudiments of an attractive-looking and carbohydrate-free sandwich, the advantages of the omega-3 oily mackerel, and how, with the right packaging, a packet of rich tea biscuits could resemble something sweet and succulent.
Over the past few years, there has been nothing to point pupils in the direction of putting a square meal on a round table. Which means, along with kitchens being abandoned in favour of IT suites, there is also a shortage of specialist cookery teachers.
This could mean a whole new career for those traditionalists from the Women’s Institute, whose culinary prowess knows no bounds, and whose sponge cakes are never known to sag. Or those from my generation, who know at least fourteen ways with a pound of mince. Low fat, of course.
Brenlo..1
There’s good news for the family and friends of the late Brenda Grogan, for supporters of Cancer Research, and for fans of the famous and fabulous Aaron, Derbyshire’s premier Elvis impersonator.
A disastrous "do" a few months ago to mark what would have been the 61st birthday of one of Derby’s most popular daughters, Brenda, left her nearest and dearest with egg on their faces, the charity a considerable amount short of a donation, and Aaron out of pocket because he’d donated part of his fee to the cause, because the venue didn’t deliver. The promised food was a plate or three short of a cheese sarnie, and although we all trooped in with raffle prizes, there wasn’t a ticket to be had. But the ever-popular Aaron, in true showbiz tradition, delivered. And he’s prepared to put his money where his fee should be yet again.
To mark the first anniversary of Brenda’s untimely death from cancer, her daughters Wendy and Karen, son John, sister Joyce and very best friend Lil Bancroft, have organised a memorial night, this time at Mr Grundy’s, Ashbourne Road, Derby, which was one of Brenda’s favourite venues. It takes place on Saturday, February 23.
There WILL be food, and a prize draw, and lots of trips down memory lane as everybody recalls the life, times and anecdotes of the lovely, lively lady who was loved by so many. And Aaron, the Elvis impressionist who is noted for his charity work, will be there to swell the coffers of the cause so close to the heart of Brenda’s people. I look forward to seeing everybody.
end
Start installing the kitchens, education departments, because according to the Government’s Schools Secretary Ed Balls, cookery is coming back on the school curriculum. And about time, too.
Because while, in my day, cookery was less to do with the healthy eating lark they bang on about today, and more a whizzo, bang-on, alternative to the dreaded maths and scary hockey, it was a learning curve. How else would I know that "a stew boiled is a stew spoiled", that pastry making calls for cold conditions, sponge cakes for warm ones, and that if you roast a chicken, or fry a bit of fish, belly-side down, it makes for a more moist meal?
It has stood me in better stead than unravelling the theorem of Pythagoras or working out the necessity in my universe of logarithms.
I’m not sure when the noble art of perfecting the tin loaf, made with stone-ground flour and proper yeast, went off the timetable scales. Certainly, my late son Matthew did at least one term on the, by then called, home economics front at what is now Littleover Community School, in the 70s, because I recall the usual Monday morning flap as I searched the cupboards for that day’s ingredients.
Like all teenage lads, he’d "forgotten" not only the class, but what they were supposed to be making. Which is why we had an endless run on quiches, because there was usually a supply of cheese, eggs, flour and butter, but in the case of cottage pie, we were usually fresh out of cottages. His fiancee at the time he died, Rose Kennedy, also recalls her days of domestic science, with a little bit of grief. Some lads sneaked in and turned off the ovens. Her melting moments emerged as one soggy slice. Cookery classes were no more.
Commendably for Mr Ed (Meat) Balls, this is a government gesture towards fighting spiralling obesity in our kids. Trouble is, it’s much more fun and interesting whisking up and creating a jam roly-poly, than dreaming up something artistic with a thinly-sliced carrot tied up with a French bean. It’s tastier and more satisfying to a teenage palate to boot.
But this isn’t going to happen overnight. As something called Food Technology took over from cookery lessons, in came the boffins and the designers, teaching kids the rudiments of an attractive-looking and carbohydrate-free sandwich, the advantages of the omega-3 oily mackerel, and how, with the right packaging, a packet of rich tea biscuits could resemble something sweet and succulent.
Over the past few years, there has been nothing to point pupils in the direction of putting a square meal on a round table. Which means, along with kitchens being abandoned in favour of IT suites, there is also a shortage of specialist cookery teachers.
This could mean a whole new career for those traditionalists from the Women’s Institute, whose culinary prowess knows no bounds, and whose sponge cakes are never known to sag. Or those from my generation, who know at least fourteen ways with a pound of mince. Low fat, of course.
Brenlo..1
There’s good news for the family and friends of the late Brenda Grogan, for supporters of Cancer Research, and for fans of the famous and fabulous Aaron, Derbyshire’s premier Elvis impersonator.
A disastrous "do" a few months ago to mark what would have been the 61st birthday of one of Derby’s most popular daughters, Brenda, left her nearest and dearest with egg on their faces, the charity a considerable amount short of a donation, and Aaron out of pocket because he’d donated part of his fee to the cause, because the venue didn’t deliver. The promised food was a plate or three short of a cheese sarnie, and although we all trooped in with raffle prizes, there wasn’t a ticket to be had. But the ever-popular Aaron, in true showbiz tradition, delivered. And he’s prepared to put his money where his fee should be yet again.
To mark the first anniversary of Brenda’s untimely death from cancer, her daughters Wendy and Karen, son John, sister Joyce and very best friend Lil Bancroft, have organised a memorial night, this time at Mr Grundy’s, Ashbourne Road, Derby, which was one of Brenda’s favourite venues. It takes place on Saturday, February 23.
There WILL be food, and a prize draw, and lots of trips down memory lane as everybody recalls the life, times and anecdotes of the lovely, lively lady who was loved by so many. And Aaron, the Elvis impressionist who is noted for his charity work, will be there to swell the coffers of the cause so close to the heart of Brenda’s people. I look forward to seeing everybody.
end
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