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…
Tag: Cockermouth
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….
Flood rescue
Talking about floods… it was two weeks into December before dastardly Des had quite done knocking seven bells out of Cumbria and, very soon after that, evil siblings Eva and Frank took up the bludgeon, and headed for York. (As an aside, is it just me, or were these storms ever as bad before we started giving them human identities?) Somewhere along the…
Cockermouth floods
Christchurch, Cockermouth, on a sticky Monday evening, and tensions are definitely running high. Not unlike the gravel. His own pre-presentation, warm-up man, Andy Brown – from the Environment Agency – tells a great tale about his father being a man of the church. Growing up, Andy recalls, his father would stand pretty much where he stands now, facing the…
Birds and bugs
Just when we thought there might be a twinkling of renewed engagement with the community, in the wake of the still ongoing otter debacle, the ongoing hedgerow debacle kicks in again. Back on 17 May, we were led to understand that the final section of hedgerow, along the roadside perimeter of the proposed ‘Strawberry Grange’, would be given a stay…
An otter’s tale
Otters. How many in this gem town were aware that, just a stick’s throw from their regular dog-walk along the banks of the Tom Rudd Beck, otters were building their homes, rearing families? Few, I suspect. Except those whose ducks or chickens have been snaffled and ponds raided, and those with a professional interest in wildlife and their habitats. And,…
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…
Hackette on the How 