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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 26.8.04

How are you on pollution? Worried about taking the bairns to the beach? You certainly do not seem to be. I was watching a big flap of you enjoying yourselves on a beach not a million miles from the mouth of the River Tyne the other day. You will remember the day – it was warm, dry and sunny. There you all were (I have to say that some of the swimming costumes were showing a bit of structural strain) prancing about in the briny, eating sand flavoured chips, boom boxes blasting out – lovely! I took a deep breath to get the healthy sea air in my lungs and wished I had not – the stench of raw sewage nearly felled me. Not for much fine gold would I have swum from that beach, but perhaps I am oversensitive after traumatic experiences in the Med – well, only one experience to be exact – I have only swum in the Med once and that was from Gibraltar. As I crested a wave, I saw on the next wave crest, and heading straight for me, a great big…piece of human detritus. I turned and swam for the beach as fast as I could and I swear that the blasted thing chased me all the way to land. That rather put me off the blue Mediterranean Sea. My view was confirmed when standing on a Spanish beach watching the rats frolic around a break in the sewage outfall pipe. Ah well, I hear you say, that’s foreign – what could be nicer than our wonderful Northumbrian beaches and the lovely, grey, North Sea? You’ll not find owt cleaner than that, Man. I wish I could agree with you. Some years ago, a National Broadsheet told me to go and learn to wind surf. This was ordered with malice aforethought – I could hear them giggling at the other end of the telephone. I went to a place near a well-known Northumbrian tripper trap. The nice people tried their best to get me into a wet suit, or whatever its called, but either it was too small or I was too big – the choice is yours.

“It’s very easy” they said – “just like riding a bike – you’ll soon get the hang of it.” Of course, they had never seen me riding a bike – I am not so good at riding them, but I do falling off really, really, well. For the next two hours, I fell off the sail board really, really, well and in the process ingested a great deal of the lovely, grey, freezing bloody cold, North Sea. For the next week, I felt really, really, ill and came to the conclusion that it was not just seawater that I had been swallowing. I have heard cheerful chappies in pubs say that you should not drink water because fish do funny things in it – it is not the fish that worry me. Enjoy yourselves at the beach.

Ask me if I am enjoying the Olympics – go on – I dare you. Well, since you ask me, the answer is ‘No’ I am not enjoying them because I am not watching them and I am not watching them because watching the proverbial paint dry would be more exciting. Can you really get excited about watching a lot of sweaty, muscle bound, hop-heads grunting round a cinder track? Now you are going to tell me that it is a wonderful demonstration of human endeavour and stamina – what a load of rowlocks. The only triumph involved is for the drug manufacturers. The drugs may build up the muscles, but they fry the brains and shrivel the wedding tackle – on the men that is. I do not want to even think what they do to the women. Now you are going to tell me that our superb boys and girls are totally free of artificial additives. I would love to agree with you, but are you thinking straight on this one? Fair competition requires the famous ‘level playing field’. It stands to reason that if you want to compete with someone pumped up on performance enhancing substances, then you must be pumped up to an equal degree, otherwise you will be flobbing along at the back and the Press will rabbit on about ‘our Olympic disgrace’ - as though the whole blighted freak show was not a waste of time and rations, anyway. I do hope, and I mean this most sincerely (anyone remember Harold Wilson?) that our people win lots of medals, by fair means or foul. I also hope the Games never come to Britain – it would be the most almighty Horlicks and would cost us, the taxpayers, a fortune. Those of you, who don’t agree, should think of the Dome, Wembley Stadium and the Scottish Parliament – not to mention Diana’s Fountain.

There I’ve said my piece. Now I’m going to take the dogs out rabbiting – that’s proper Sport.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 20.8.04

Our local show is a good one. I have been a Sheep Steward there for some 20 years, in all that time the show has been a happy show, run by a tried and tested local team. There was no sheep show during Foot and Mouth – that stramash is now a less than fragrant memory and last year I had to go to Lowther Driving Trials to market my tapes (Willy’s World – 1 & 2). This year there were no outside commitments, so I trolled along over the hill and prepared for the usual ritual at the gate. The old familiar faces used to pretend to charge me and I would tell them that, if they did, I would take the huff and go home and they would not have a Blackface Sheep Steward. There was then a ritual exchange of ritual insults such as… (text deleted). This year the familiar faces were absent. There were new, smooth and unweathered faces – my Blackface Steward routine was greeted by looks of complete incomprehension. The nice people obviously had no clue – (1) as to whom I was, or (2) what a Blackface was – I think that they probably suspected me of committing a racist remark and they were much too nice to engage in crude rustic badinage. I gave them the handful of change that I found in my pocket. It was quickly obvious that there had been a revolution during my period of absence – all the old familiar faces, from the last 20 years, were gone and there was a bran new team on a sharp learning curve. I suppose that this should not have been a surprise. 20 years is a long time – people get old and tired and give up, to be replaced by people who have the time and will to get involved in endless committee meetings - passing sad in many ways, but that is the way things are in the countryside in the C21st. At least the Sheep Show still had many of the old faces in attendance, but even here there were signs of change – there was perhaps half the number of sheep that would have once been presented for showing. Indeed had it not been for Tommy and his son Robert, I would have had no Blackfaces to steward. Robert was one of the few young faces involved in the showing. Now there’s the rub – Herding is an old and honourable way of life, but that is what it is – a way of life, which you have to love. It was passed down from father to son for generation after generation, since time out of memory. Now the old traditional certainties have gone. There are probably only a tenth of the Herds in the hills that there were 40 odd years ago. The jobs have gone and, anyway, Herding can never be just a job. Young men simply do not want to do hard physical work, 7 days a week – especially when they see people they were at school with making twice the money for a five day week in much cushier conditions. Getting sheep ready for showing also involves hours of skilled and painstaking work that has to be done for love and pride and all for a somewhat niggardly cash prize. The future for Herds and for sheep looks bleak. I am minded of a trip to New Zealand in 1990, which I went on straight from 20-hour days in the lambing shed. The Kiwis found this idea mind-boggling. They put their lambing ewes in a big paddock and ride round them twice a day. If they found a lambing problem, did they stop and help the ewe? Yis, they said, then we chop her lug off and that’s her marked for the cannery. I visited a farm where 5 men and numerous ‘Huntaway’ dogs herded 100,000 ewes. That is sheep ranching with ‘Minimal Shepherding’. That is how N.Z. can put their lambs into our supermarkets at a competitive price. That, if we are to keep any sheep in our hills, is probably the way of the future. Welfare concerns? They will have to rot on the fells along with the carcases of the minimally herded sheep.

At the show, it was always the custom for the Steward to take his Judge to the Secretary’s caravan for a restoring dram after the class. But, another surprise – there was no whisky in the caravan – the chap at the receipt of custom directed me - rather curtly, I thought, to the bar. Happily, the New Chairman, a man who has taken the trouble to get up to speed on traditional customs, conjured a bottle out of thin air. The fine old tradition was continued. There’s hope for the old show yet – I raised my dram to its future and to the brave people who have picked up the burden.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 12.8.04

“Prisoner at the Bar! You stand accused of being rude about Toonies. How do you plead?”

“Not guilty, M’lud.” Which is not at all what the writer of the anonymous letter thinks. He / she thinks that I am guilty of this heinous crime and seems to think that I should be topped for it.

My favourite Uncle once described me, in a moment of exasperation, as an ‘unregenerate peasant’ – right on. Uncle Bill was a lovely man and very kind to me. He liked to pretend to Left Wing beliefs after being mildly infected at Cambridge in the 1920s, but his fraternal pretensions did not survive the occasion when a local tradesman dared to address him by his Christian name. After that he was intelligent enough to marry into a handsome trust fund. This enabled him to take his socialism out of the real world.

All my working life I have tried to fight a corner for the indigenous countryman, whom I regard as the true backbone of England. This does not mean that I am against people from the Toon, although I do admit that I like teasing them a bit – most of them can do with having their sense of humour serviced. But what gets right up my nose is the ‘colonial’ attitudes of some of the ‘white settlers’. I object when they come out into the country and immediately try to rearrange everything for fit their own convenience and prejudice, even if this means the destruction of the traditional rural way of life. The people who hold to the old ways are regarded with contempt. I sometimes feel that the way that ab-original country people are treated is akin the treatment of the Native Americans. I admit that the settlers have not got round to raping our women yet, but they are quite prepared to rape our deeply held beliefs and customs. Indeed, it would be no bad thing if we peasants could establish a separate ethnicity, then we could wrap the Race Laws around us. We may not be politically correct, but in this instance PC would click in on our side.

It is Political Correctness that is responsible for the growing divide between Town and Country. PC is the creed of the urban intelligentsia and before we go any further, let my remind you of Mr Balfour’s (he was Prime Minister, once over) dictum. He said:

‘Intelligence is to the Intelligentsia what Gentleman is to Gent’. It is worth taking a moment to work that one out. You only have to meet some of the Intelligentsia who make up our present ‘Political Elite’ to understand that they have neither the common sense, nor the independence of thought, of the average rabbit. But then you do not need to be able to think to mouth a few slogans and toe the PC line. These people are in fact ‘Liberal Fascists’ (I am rather proud of that – I rather think that I may have just invented it). It actually fits quite well – the so called Liberals are more socialist than the Socialists and remember that all the great and nasty totalitarian regimes were whelped from socialism - Soviet Socialism in Russia, National Socialism in Germany and, if T.Blair has his way, NuLab in England. Scotland is already a Soviet Socialist Republic. Socialism is a perversion of human nature and Fascism is a perversion of Socialism – Political Correctness is a perversion of just about everything. So I would plead guilty to hating PC and to feeling contempt for all who voluntarily sip its poisoned chalice. I do hope that that puts things in perspective for my letter writer – whoever he / she may be.

As the summer goes on and hunting gets closer, hounds start to sing more and more at night. To me, this wild and slightly Slavonic sound is truly beautiful. It is also truly satisfying, as only happy hounds sing. I also sing when happy and can carry a tune in my head, but I know nothing about the mechanics of music – I do not know a semi quaver from a crotchet (I thought you knitted them anyway). A friend of mine, who knows about music and hounds, told me that whatever hound starts the Houndsong (and it is always started by a single hound), the others will chime in in harmony with the lead singer. This fact increases my admiration for the Foxhound. Mind you there are folk who object to what they refer to as – ‘The dogs howling at night’, but these are the sorts of ignorant people who might complain about my singing. They are usually ‘incomers’. Hounds and I are ‘existing nuisances’ within the meaning of the act and if you don’t like us then go and live somewhere else – next to a bad, and well drammed, Scottish Piper would be favourite.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL - 5.8.04

PC Paul Henery is the Wildlife Liaison Officer for Northumbria Police. He is a well-built and very fit young man, who loves the job that he has been doing for 10 of his 16 years on the Force. I was allowed to spend a day with him last week as he went about his duties. He emphasised that his job is primarily about Conservation and not Cruelty, which he feels should be left to those with more expertise in that particular field. PC Henery is thought to have been the inspiration for a ghastly TV series called ‘Badger’. This is not something that he cares to talk about and I got the impression that he had been considerably under whelmed by the dramatic presentation of his work – it was a ghastly series.

He has great knowledge of birds and the first job out was to check on a colony of Black Necked Grebes, a water bird that is rare enough to attract the attention of professional egg collectors. The traditional nesting site for this colony has been on a private lake deep in the Northumbrian countryside. The BNGs build floating nests, which they anchor to a particular kind of pondweed. This weed used to flourish on this lake and as the lake was surrounded by private land, it was relatively easy to mount a covert security operation that deterred the egg collectors. It is unfortunate that the weed on this lake has failed over recent years, for reasons unknown. This has caused the birds to move house to places where the security of their nests is more difficult to ensure. We did see one pair on the lake. They were building a nest in the lakeside reeds. July is a bad time to be building a nest and this suggests that they had lost their first brood, for whatever reason.

So we headed east in pursuit of the refugee BNGs. As we drove, PC Henery explained some of the nuts and bolts of his job. He is widely consulted by other Forces and has been to Cyprus to advise the police there on the problem of wild finch trapping. This problem also exists in Northumberland. It was traditional amongst miners, who trapped birds on their allotments.

One of the things that greatly concerns Paul Henery is illegal importation – birds, ivory and, would you believe, reptiles – tortoises and small alligators– that is to say that they are small when smuggled in, but are not so cuddly when they grow up.

Down in the coastal urban fringe, we found the errant BNGs. They were on a small lake where the weed they want flourishes. The lake is in a little conservation area, which is surrounded by housing estates. From these come children who delight in chucking stones at any living thing – they stoned a swan to death recently.

From the lake we went onto the coast from where there had been complaints of seals being shot. The shooting of seals is something of a grey legal area. Fishermen are permitted to shoot seals to prevent damage to ‘nets tackle or fish therein.’ The seals have to be shot with an ‘approved’ rifle and outwith the breeding season. The Common Seal and the Grey Seal have different breeding seasons. In the heat of the moment it would be very difficult to tell which species was attacking your ‘nets, tackle, or fish therein.’ Also, proof of a crime would be extremely difficult to gather. A Wildlife Liaison Officer’s life is not always straightforward.

We watched a few fishing boats fishing, just that, nothing sinister and breathed in the stench of raw sewage wafting on the sea breeze. It seems amazing that people swim and otters breed down there. PC Henery showed me the suburban street where a cub was run over this summer. Then, as a final pastoral treat, he took me to the only site in Northumberland where the Banded Demoiselle Damsel Fly exists. These are canny little insects with bright green bodies and black spotted wings – something I had certainly never seen before. As we leaned on the old stone bridge in the afternoon sun and watched the pellucid stream and the Damsel Flies flitting about their business, I thought that the lot of a WLO was by no means a bad one.

I thoroughly enjoyed my day. It is always good to watch a dedicated man going about his work. PC Henery is undoubtedly a dedicated and skilled Conservationist and I am very grateful for his hospitality, but, and there is always a but with human beings, so many dedicated and skilled Conservationists develop tunnel vision. They forget that Man, the animal, is a vital part of the conservation equation. However, I am sure that PC Henery is far too intelligent to fall into that trap and I wish him the best of good luck for the future.

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