It’s 2.00am, we’re en route to Manchester Airport – somewhere around Lancaster – and it seems as though dawn in breaking already. It’s only now, living in a dark back road, as yet unpolluted by too many home or street lights, in a county which generally has huge areas of blackness come nightfall, that I…
Month: August 2016
Secretary of State says no
Finally, something to write home about on the planning front as Allerdale planners refuse permission for a new retail development on Low Road in Cockermouth. They had been ‘minded to turn down the plans for two retail units on vacant industrial land‘ but were unable to do so because the Secretary of State had received a…
Cows and cack
We’ve never been good with cows in our family. I blame my mother and one long-ago sunny, childhood day (I seem to recall a button-under-the-chin swimming cap and a salmon pink, ruched and waffled swimsuit were still the order of the day. I know, I know. Don’t say a word.) Why mention this now? Well, I was put in mind…
Mobile madness
Vodafone. Can’t live with ’em. Can’t live without ’em, eh? I swapped to Vodafone a few years ago, when it looked as though I was going to be spending more time in Cumbria than Manchester and they seemed to offer better coverage than O2. So far, I’ve had little cause to complain and you learn to live…
Double yellow peril
Here’s a pub quiz question for you: When did double yellows first make an appearance on our streets? Answer: 1960. Thanks to the Road Traffic Act. Rule 238 of the Highway Code, if you’re going for a bonus. And since then, they – and the tortured souls whose thankless task it is to uphold the law – have been the scourge of the ‘just dropper-offers’, ‘the quickie…
Pokémon no go
‘There’s a Pokémon in the Lloyd Cockermouth fridge’, said one of the chaps on reception, returning, I presume, from the kitchen. Much bemused chortling from we grown-ups, waiting for our cars. (I assume young Pokémon will long-since have moved on, so it’s reasonably safe to reveal its whereabouts. Those Mini people are so nice, I’d…
Gateway to the lakes…
Browsing the glossy sales brochure for the soon-to-be Strawberry Grange, I was fascinated to read that Cockermouth is ‘often described as the gateway to the Lake District’. It’s not an expression I’ve ever heard and nor had a straw poll of friends who’ve lived here all their lives. Surely you have to drive through or past most…
Hackette on the How 