GERRY’S REIGN AT THE CROWN ENDS TRAGICALLY


 I can’t imagine anyone in Goostrey who was not stunned and saddened by the sudden death of Gerry Bridgwood. So soon after he and his wife, Cynthia, said their farewells at the Crown, Gerry died of a heart attack. Their sudden decision to call last orders and shut the pub and restaurant left villagers shell-shocked. And to a band of loyal regulars its closure was unthinkable, if not entirely unexpected. Like so many country inns, the Crown has suffered from soaring costs, competition from home drinking fuelled by cheap alcohol sold in supermarkets, plus the recession. It became just too much for the couple to continue. Their final night at the pub was like Christmas and New Year rolled into one. The pumps ran dry, bottles of beer flew off the shelves and by midnight there was barely a drop of wine or even champagne to be had in the house. But few of us in this convivial party atmosphere could have foretold in reality it had been Gerry’s wake. The high regard in which they are held was marked when an impromptu whip-round in the pub produced £1,000 as a parting gift. Then only 48 hours or so later Gerry went downstairs to fetch the paper and suffered the fatal heart attack, said the vicar, the Rev Ian Godfrey, at the funeral service in St Luke’s church – so packed with mourners that upwards of 100 more had to stand outside. The former footballer with Stoke City in the era of the great Stanley Matthews, was already a celebrity (his good looks once earned him the title of the best looking player in the first division) when he and Cynthia took over the pub. His humour and sense of fun behind the bar was legendry. “He was fantastic fun,” said one of his old pals. “If you were going to see Gerry, you knew you were going to have a good time.” Another said: “Gerry was a genuine man who loved a laugh. He could go anywhere and make anybody laugh, whatever the company he was in.” The Crown, as much as the Red Lion a short distance away, has lived in the hearts of the Goostrey community for generations. Many newcomers to the village confess that its very existence was the factor that drew them here in the first place. Youngsters who cut their social teeth at the bar have been known to return from across the world for a pint at this most hospitable of inns as their first port of call. Gerry and Cynthia ran the Crown for 20 years in the finest traditions of an English village pub, and they earned recognition for their work in the licensed trade from CAMRA, the campaign for real ale. When Cheshire became fashionable in the fifties for dining out, the Goostrey pubs were among those to lead the way. Thus the Crown still remained under Cynthia’s stewardship of the kitchen, but in recent years not without I suspect some cost to the couple themselves, Marston’s, the brewers, say it will re-open soon. At least three independent pub-restaurant owners are in the bidding to take over. We can only plea that any changes will not be too drastic as to destroy that special place, the Crown at Goostrey.

MARGARET’S SON ROBERT TACKLES POST OFFICE RAIDERS

I guess most will have heard by now of the appalling raid on Margaret Kettle’s store in the village. Her shop is also the Post Office and no doubt this attracted the unwanted attentions of  three mindless morons – as plainly there is really nothing of great value on the premises to steal! But like a previous raid just before Christmas, Margaret was left shaken by this latest episode during the middle of the night. It was fortunate that on this occasion her son, Robert, was on hand and managed to tackle the intruders sans most of his clothes and sent them fleeing. He was left with a very blooded and swollen eye but we can only speculate the outcome if he had not been present. Apparently two torches were stolen as well as Margaret’s handbag from her bedside and it can be hoped that police forensics will lead to their capture. The bag has been recovered in Liverpool.

Given age her age of 89 and slight build, Margaret must have been very alarmed by the experience but some hours later as police sealed off the premises in search of clues, she gave no hint of being traumatised as a result. She appeared outside her shop to assure well-wishers that she was unscathed but Robert had suffered injury.

It was probably the same trio who carried out the previous robbery on what is a Goostrey institution, known far and wide as an “Aladdin’s” cave for the range of items, mostly of low value that Margaret sells, more as a service to the community than for profit. Those of a certain age in the village will remember when Margaret and her late husband, George, ran Goostrey’s postal services. Not only did they manage the sub-post office but they sorted the mail behind the shop in Main Road and employed the posties! It was a real rural service and I doubt if a letter was ever incorrectly delivered. I was always aware when George delivered the post – the smell of the smoke from his ever present cigarette wafted up the stairs through the letter box! In recent times it was Margaret who came to the rescue of the post office. When it was threatened with closure she volunteered a corner of her shop for its relocation as a branch of Plumley village post office. Let us hope this latest incident will not end the association.

I’ve ranted in the past about the condition of the village’s roads. After yet another protest about Church Bank and Blackden Lane, I see a patch team from the council’s highways department made a fleeting visit the other day to fill in a few holes. I have it on good authority that unless potholes are more than four inches deep their repair is not regarded as urgent. And who said that size doesn’t matter! A member of the gang confided that it was a waste of time and some of the village’s roads needed resurfacing but there was no money in the kitty. He said it was up to residents to keep banging on about it. Something that I intend  to do in view of the continued shaking and rattling of the house from vehicles hitting potholes in the lane. As I told the council man I lived through the Manchester blitz and it was never as bad as this “bombardment” from the road.

It was another sad occasion almost a week ago when, with others from the area, I attended a service of thanksgiving for the life of Ken Albutt in the Cotswold village of Painswick. Ken and his wife, Jane, moved some five years ago from Cranage to Edge near Painswick, to be close to their children. The packed St Mary’s church was a reflection of the high regard and the love and affection in which Ken was held by his many friends

FATHER CHRISMAS HAS A DIGGER RIVAL

It’s been some weeks since I put a pen to a blog. But that doesn’t mean I’ve been idle.  The luxury of being retired, or as I like to think semi-retired, is to thank the lord there is no-one to kick the rear end.

Now in the festive season I feel I have to shift myself, if only to send Christmas cards and cruise round the shops in search of presents for the grandchildren. I’d planned to send something by snailmail to Christopher and Sarah in Oz but I see I’ve already missed the slot for final posting.  Sadly they will have to wait until the New Year. I did, however, manage to get my international greetings cards off in time. Well, I hope they got there for Christmas.

As for Hugh and Joseph here in Goostrey, that’s another tale. They are now of an age when Father Christmas is the real thing. This is the first year they have become aware of the whiskered old codger so it will be all systems go, I guess, on the 25^th tomorrow. Hugh is anxious that we have carrots and milk to leave for FC’s reindeers. His Dad suggested he should also put out a tipple for the man himself!

I saw a report the other day that even toddlers are showing an interest in computers, and this year they are actually being manufactured for kids barely out of the crawling stage. All in the name of early learning, of course!

My nursery aged grandchild toddlers are no exception but their passion is for diggers and tractors. Young Hugh however managed to switch my system on the other day. He and his brother were well into a You Tube item about a giant digger climbing a tower in Germany when discovered.

 Since then You Tub diggers and tractors have become their favourite viewing. But you have to monitor what they watch – there are some very lurid things on You Tube, I’ve discovered! The mind boggles how some ladies dress to handle diggers !

The festive season is the time when the Christmas cracker comes into its own. I don’t know if I am an exception, I don't seem able to get the wretched things to crack. I was dining on turkey and Christmas pud with Richard and Sylvia at a little eatery in the Staffordshire moorlands earlier this month when I tried my first for the season. Yes, like it always does, it just went “phut” when it was pulled instead of a healthy crack. Same happened to two out of the three on the table.

I was delighted as a way of compensation to find a leaflet inside informing me that at least the cracker is a British invention, with a little input from the French.

It seems a gentleman called Tom Smith is credited with its invention following a trip to Paris in 1840 when he discovered locally produced sugared almonds wrapped in a twist of tissue paper.  It wasn’t long(  only seven years or so) before he hit on the idea of including a love motto in the tissues, then came the cracking mechanism and finally his son Walter added the gift. Just hope they were a bit better than the pointless plastic toys included these days!

Now all I have left to say is A Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year to one and all!

TO BE READ AS PART OF THE FOLLOWING BLOG !

A farmer  named Sid was overseeing his stock in a remote moorland pasture in  Peak District when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced toward  him out of a cloud of dust.        
The  driver, a young man in a Brioni suit, Gucci shoes, RayBan sunglasses  and YSL tie, leaned out the window and asked the farmer, "If I tell  you exactly how many cows and calves you have in your herd, Will you  give me a calf?"      Sid looks  at the man, obviously a yuppie, then looks at his peacefully  grazing stock and calmly answers, "Sure, why not?"   The  yuppie parks his car, whips out his Dell notebook computer, connects  it to his Cingular RAZR V3 mobile phone, and surfs to a NASApage on  the Internet, where he calls up a GPS satellite to get an exact fix  on his location which he then feeds to another NASA satellite that  scans the area in an ultra-high-resolution photo.             
The  young man then opens the digital photo in Adobe Photoshop and  exports it to an image processing facility in Hamburg ,  Germany .             
Within  seconds, he receives an email on his Palm Pilot that the image has  been processed and the data stored. He then accesses an MS-SQL  database through an ODBC connected Excel spreadsheet with email on  his Blackberry and, after a few minutes, receives a response.     
   Finally,  he prints out a full-color, 150-page report on his hi-tech,  miniaturized HP LaserJet printer, turns to the farmer and says, "You  have exactly 1,586 cows and calves.   "That's right. Well, I guess you can take  one of my calves," says Sid.          He  watches the young man select one of the animals and looks on with  amusement as the young man stuffs it into the back of his car.                  
Then  Sid says to the young man, "Hey, if I can tell you exactly what your  business is, will you give me back my calf?"          
        The  young man thinks about it for a second and then says, "Okay, why  not?"        "You're  a Member of Parliament for our Government", says Sid.          "Wow!  That's correct," says the yuppie, "but how did you guess that?"     "No guessing required." answered the  farmer. "You showed up here even though nobody called you; you want  to get paid for an answer I already knew, to a question I never  asked. You used millions of pounds worth of equipment trying to  show me how much smarter than me you are; and you don't know a thing  about how working people make a living - or about cows, for that  matter.  This is a herd of sheep. ... 
             

Now give me back my dog!

HIGH SPEED RAIL COULD BE A STRAIN

The windswept platform at Goostrey station is not exactly the place to begin a long train journey. Years ago when it was staffed by a railway ticket clerk-cum-porter it blossomed with flowers, and the waiting room was not bereft of its window glass. If you were lucky in winter a cheerful fire burned in the grate.
 That was how it was but I know in today’s age of bean counters such comfort and luxury for the simple traveller is a bygone dream. Yet there are still many benefits for the passenger. It takes less time to reach London and by and large the trains run always to time.I  often let the train  (as they used to say in the ad) take the strain– given I want value from my senior rail card – and I still marvel that despite our so-called crowded isle, the iron road threads its way via some of the most  inspiring countryside to be found. Even the great mass of the industrial midlands is hidden from view. It is as near a chocolate box picture of how we like to think of rural Britain glimpsed from great comfort at speeds of over 100 mph. In a little more than two hours you are in Euston.

I have no need or desire to be whisked away from my home village to be set down in the capital in less a time than now – perhaps within an hour. But that will happen if the political masters have their way with plans for a high-speed rail link to the midlands and north west and beyond. We are promised near virtual travel. Just think in the future of entering a capsule (by then coaches will be redundant) and minutes later you step out on the platform at Euston.

Of course all this comes at a cost. The new super track will carve its way through much of that land we now so much admire. No time given  to read the paper (or electronic device) fiddle with the mobile, listen to one of those banal one-sided phone conversations, or caress a large whisky or gin and tonic as the train glides along the track.  The adventure of travel will finally be put to rest. Only the captains of industry and commerce are said to be the beneficiaries of this new age in rail travel, and even then it will be of doubtful benefit.

 The National Trust and the Council for the Protection of Rural England are rightly alarmed at the prospect of another attack on our shrinking countryside. The damage that will be caused by the proposed line is bad enough, but it will create the potential for yet another explosion in speculative building as seen in the 19^th century. When the Metropolitan railway was pushed further and further outwards from the centre of London, leafy villages and market towns were swallowed up to  become suburbs with a morass of houses and commercial properties virtually overnight. You think not? 

Well, the government wants to ease planning laws. Yes, most people think some relaxation is needed, but how many will agree the sacrifice makes it worthwhile?   To me it seems daft to spend billions on a project that will do so much irreparable damage. It would be better spent on maintaining and upgrading what we have now. I leave this blog (or ramblings of a SOF) with  email sent to me by a pal in Goostrey illustrating the high-speed world of communications in which we live.Some gremlin in the system stops me from adding it here but it can be found elsewhere on the site.. Enjoy!

 WOBBLY RIDE WHEN TRIKE REPLACED THE CAR

I came behind a Morris Minor the other day and, as it bounced like a buoyant bubble on the road surface in front of me, I got to thinking about all the cars I’d owned. I never actually had a MM but I remember it well. I don’t think its shape looks all that dated today. In fact it was probably designed for an age before its time.

My first memory of the Minor is as a young reporter on the  Wilmslow, Alderley and Knutsford Advertiser. Our Alderley correspondent who was then seventy years old, if not more, drove the vehicle as though demons were behind him. And as my mode of transport was a bike (and it is again but more of that later) I often accompanied him on press days to the head office and printers in Stockport.

The return journey was frequently a white knuckle ride as with his eyes glazed over like a latter day Toad of Toad Hall, he would floor the accelerator along the A34. I doubt if it would do more than 75 mph. Which is perhaps fortunate, since this dapper elderly scribe with a handsome tash that made him look for all the world like a WW1 fighter pilot, was a maniac behind the wheel of his Minor. We always got back in one piece but I’ve since wondered whether he was a driver who just liked speed, or if his manner of driving was connected to the faint peppermint smell mixed with the whiff of the odd tipple of sherry he was reputed to be rather partial!

 I bought my first car at this time, a 1933 Wolseley Hornet, for £15 (a lot in those days when I earned £5 a week) complete with bald tyres and a useless handbrake, but as the man said - it was a “good runner”. It was during the Suez crisis when fuel rationing made it possible to drive with just a provisional licence. I shudder at the thought of the trips I made in this venerable vehicle with little cash, no AA cover and only faith it would get me there and back. Its days ended when a village PC Plod of my acquaintance stopped me for “a chat”. He happened to put his broad shoulders across the rear and, having no handbrake, it took off down the slope. with both of us in full pursuit. I took his friendly advice to “get rid or mended” and swapped it and £40 for a Morris 10 (circa 1938). I guess if I could have kept and garaged the pair they might be worth a bob or two now. Then they were just two old vehicles fit for the scrap man. A Bedford van that had spent most of its life delivering bread, I think, was the next purchase. Well, actually I handed over £15 to my cousin Tony and his family (it had just cost that to insure) and it was mine. Now, if it didn’t have the bird-pulling power of, say, a Ferrari it certainly proved attractive in other ways: in the days when we flitted between flats (buying a house even then was beyond most newly-weds) it doubled as a removal vehicle for friends.

You will have gathered I’m not what you would call a petrol head. To me a car is wheels to get from A to B. (There have been times when I've owned cars and rarely peered under the bonnet).  Over a lifetime of motoring I’ve had a string of cars bought because, for the most part, they were cheap enough to run. Only once did a mid-life crisis override common sense. I became the owner of a Triumph TR7. However it was a short-lived relationship. One serious wheel wobble on ice and a spectacular skid that sent me whirling like a fairground ride on a narrow country lane and head-on into a hedge confirmed my suspicions that I was not cut out to be an oldie boy racer!  I changed it for a more sedate and safe Renault, I recall.

My first new vehicle was a green Autobianchi made by Fiat. It was really a van but popular because without its windows at the back, its appearance was more of a trendy mini car powered by 500 cc rear engine. And it would do in excess of 60 mpg. The petrol tank was under the bonnet and when a red warning light flashed it was easy to check what fuel remained! We called it the "Queen Bee" and drove it for thousands of miles in this country and France – and the only problem was a foot brake pedal that collapsed at a most awkward moment at a major crossing but I survived to tell the tale.

In a none-too-spectacular driving career I have destroyed two engines, attempted to motor on water and ripped away the underside from a Volkswagen as I went cross country in the saloon!  A Renault engine expired in clouds of searing steam after ignoring a flashing light in my anxiety to reach some dramatic incident in the Peak district. The second engine, also a Renault, was damaged beyond repair when  I plunged through a flooded road at speed, in the mistaken belief that it could take it.

My most exciting “escape” was from a Chrysler Alpine as I ventured to cross the ford at Swettenham, not appreciating it was several feet deep from torrential rain.. Late for a meeting at the village pub I took the short cut – and found the car sailing until it bottomed out, engine somehow still turning, lights on and radio playing. A rescue party of by then hysterical pals from the pub and a tractor rescued the car but it stank for months afterwards!

Now I’m between vehicles but I’m not without transport with two family cars in the stable, and of course my latest purchase - a trike. Since ops to replace two worn out knees, it is some six years or more since I’d had the courage to mount a bike. My first effort on a two wheeler ended in disaster when I stupidly fell off. So it was thought a three-wheeler could be the answer. Sure, with a power packing auxiliary electric motor to take some of the strain, my Batribike has opened new frontiers. It has been a bit of a learning curve. Especially since on my first outing I went A over T 100 yards from home as I was unceremoniously pitched from the saddle when I clipped the edge of the road and dumped in the gateway of the Old Forge !

RIOTING CAN BE PART OF THE BLAME CULTURE

  I thought I’d resist until now the temptation of writing about the English riots. Enough has been said by the chattering classes and TV worthies. But I don’t think the recent week of mindless mayhem can pass without a little reflection.

 Have you noted that today no-one will take responsibility as  the result of such actions? Like the mother of a so-called feral-rat nabbed for looting and wholesale damage. She said what he and his hooded mates had done was not their fault but that of the police…!  Wonder what she will say when the council knock on the door with an eviction order. She will be screeching between puffs of fag smoke about her human rights, I can guess. Then we had the case of the two Cheshire fellows who thought it was a joke to call on the street mob in Northwich and Warrington to join the violence via the social media. They got terribly upset to find themselves in the slammer for four years. They said what they did was a joke. But you have to ask what would have happened had their call been heeded?

 Now the blame game is a modern human disease not confined to the low life. It has spread like cancer from across the Atlantic, powered by websites and email. Have a car accident, however small, and you can guarantee that within weeks, nay days, you will be contacted by some seedy individual wanting to front up a claim for “your injuries”. Even if it was your fault and you were not really hurt. The result is that some rat-bag of a commission junky in an anonymous office will get richer by the day if you fall for the spiel. And soaring insurance rates for us poor motorists is the consequence.  

 Such commission chasing even impacts on charities. Some years ago I changed my will on discovery that should I go to that great newsroom-in-the-sky the sum I’d left to a charity would be grabbed from my nearest and dearest almost before I could ask my maker for a pint of bitter ! I am afraid (no happy to say) that charity must begin at home!

 Returning to the riots, common among the complaints of those desperately seeking to lay the blame for the trouble elsewhere was the gangs had nothing to do between collecting their benefit cheques via us working taxpayers. Just wreck the streets instead, then? Most will have noticed that those battering down windows, setting fires and nicking as much as they could to carry off, were not what you would call poor, dressed in their designer gear for the most part! It was bizarre during the same nights of rage that TV managed to squeeze between its endless coverage of the streets the real poverty of Africa and its starving peoples. I didn’t hear many protests about those images.

 However, I think that by and large today’s youngsters are among the best. Too often they are knocked but recent experience has shown me another side of a much criticised generation. Twice during a rail trip to London I was helped by a young man and then a woman as I climbed platform staircases struggling with a heavy suitcase. What more can I say.