First they came for the birds. Then the otters. Now, it would seem, they’re after our footpaths. Hackles were high again last weekend, up at Strawberry How, as dog walkers discovered their way barred – on a path, across the field from Tom Rudd Beck, which some of them have been wandering for nigh on forty years. I risk…
Category: Cockermouth
Flower power
Meanwhile, back on Planet Council (see Lidl post), not content with concreting over the place at every turn, our councillors – bless ’em all – have new plans for dystopia, in the form of CCTV cameras in town. Thanks to a ten grand grant (or whatever these things are termed) from Allerdale council, which is clearly…
Mad Men and women
As conspiracy theories go, it was right up my street. Having spent an entire career juggling pencils in all colours, shapes and sizes, and scribbling for a living (‘scribbling’ as a descriptor, in the world of TV storyboards, being the exact opposite of the studied accuracy of every mark I ever made, professionally), I know from…
Bugs and bunnies
First, the good news. The top soil is off. All that slurry, grass and cow poo gone. It’s raining (or was when I began writing this last night!). And, finally, the flies have left us. Not even the brown sticky stuff is the spectator sport it once was. Trouble is, the bugs may have departed…
Death and taxes
Tough times. Good to see campaigning for the EU Neverendum (as BBC Four’s News Quiz recently labelled it) halted, in respect for the tragic death of West Yorkshire MP Jo Cox, in her own constituency. Doubtless she would have felt completely at home there. Safe. Amongst friends. Such a beautiful young woman, so clearly loved by family…
Parallel lines
Back, at the weekend, from a two day visit to the old home ground (on the outskirts of Manchester), partly business, partly catching up with friends now not seen nearly as often as I’d like, and I’m struck by how much, in just two and a half years, I’ve absorbed this Cumbrian lifestyle. Take the flies….
Battering rams and bicycles
News from Greystoke – on the outskirts of the Lake District National Park, about 26 miles from Cockermouth by the A66 – where seventeenth-century stone cottages cluster around an old-fashioned village green and the parish church of St Andrew’s dates back to the thirteenth century. The village is also home to Greystoke Castle, built by Baron Greystoke in the sixteenth century. This week, Eden councillors ruled…
Every Lidl helps
Hot from the News & Star (Wednesday 19 May), comes news that Lidl will very likely get the go ahead next week, to replace an existing retail outlet and a burnt out filling station with a new store and car park. Sainsbury’s, understandably, are not too happy about the plan – and, once again, there have…
Nimbies and offcomers
So why would we not want a 320-house development, straddling a beautiful stretch of green belt on the edge of town and, coincidentally, just across the road from our home? I pause awhile, having written what I hope is something of a rhetorical question, to consider another tale, from Lower Heyford in Oxfordshire. Only 320? Try multiplying that by fifteen and then…
Random ruminations
Funny how starting a blog changes your perspective on things. Last time I blogged was five years ago, when a pal and I walked the Coast to Coast from St Bees to Robin Hood’s Bay. It began innocently enough: what better way to spend a two-week break from work? Challenging, fun and (it turned out) unexpectedly weight-reducing – despite…
Tales within tales
Funny how these things start. You leave behind the traffic congestion and urban sprawl which gradually enveloped your previous home — and which, incidentally, you were blissfully unaware you could even try to have any influence over (would that the cork could go back into that particular bottle!). You wave goodbye to the allergy-inducing smog that…
Hackette on the How 