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…
Tag: Strawberry How
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…
Markets and marketing
You can’t beat a bit of creative marketing. And our decision, following last year’s floods, to delay the Big Day until our hotel of choice could accommodate us, has certainly opened up a range of marketing opportunities – some not quite as obvious as others. It’s the law of unintended consequences at work again except, on this occasion, the consequences are all good….
Weddings and water
‘Customers!’ The simple, heartfelt greeting from one very excited bar man, as the first of our friends to check in to the Trout Hotel for our Big Day, strode into his bar. His first of the day. In fact, the first two guests to check in to the hotel at all since 6 December 2015. Now here they…
Footpaths and tea pods
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…
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….
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…
Hackette on the How 