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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 29.7.04

I am thinking of standing in the Hartlepool by election. Do I have any connection to Hartlepool, you may ask? The answer is – ‘None’ which probably makes me level pegging with Mandelson. I cannot but think that I would have made just as good a European Commissioner (or whatever) as he will, but I do not have this mysterious ‘bonding’ with Blair, the nature of which has been much speculated about in the media. I have my own fanciful ideas about that, but I am not prepared to share them with you. You can do your own arithmetic on that one. I do remember Blair’s cheesy smirk when he thought that he had wriggled out of the Iraq affair (with one bound, Tone was free). It takes a special sort of man who can smirk over the pile of corpses whose demise he has helped to engineer. I would like to think that they might return to haunt his dreams, but I wonder. I do predict that Mandelson will be a nightmare that will return to make him wake up screaming.

Now I come to think of it, I do have a family connection with Hartlepool – my great-uncle was the Rector of Hartlepool. Will that do?

Talking about nightmares -the Right to Roam looms in the offing and promises to be a bad dream for farmers that will continue to haunt them through the livelong day. The areas classed as ‘Open Country’ may appear on the Internet, but how many walkers will bother to look it up? To the best of my knowledge and belief, the areas concerned are not marked on the sort of map that ramblers carry, always supposing that many of them do bother to carry a map and are capable of reading it. I once found a guddle of walkers at the bottom of the farm, clustered in a bewildered manner round a map. They told me that they were looking for a certain footpath. They were about a mile off course and were not helped by the fact that they were trying to read the map upside down – see what I mean? I suspect that the majority will not bother with maps anyway, they will assume that any old field is an open space and will frolic across it regardless, screaming ‘Right to Roam’ at any one who suggests otherwise. I was amazed to read of a court case about an accident caused by a heifer exiting from a field onto a road through a gate left open by ‘ramblers’. It was hit by a car. This did not do the heifer, nor the car, much good. The bit that horrified me was that the FARMER was prosecuted and found guilty. This seemed hardly believable, but I suppose that it was a case of ‘someone has got to be summonsed’ (Albert and the Lion). No one knew the identity of the guilty rambler, but the wretched farmer was a sitting target and so got both barrels. This seems thoroughly unjust, but fair nigh to be expected in the present climate. It opens up all sorts of problems for farmers in the hill countries of the North East, where there are many miles of unfenced public roads, over and along which stock are accustomed to wander – a very worrying prospect.

The other day, I was thinking about this problem as I walked along a bridleway that forms part of a track that leads up to what used to be a steading and now isn’t. I met a lorry coming down from the erstwhile steading and the driver pulled up for a bit crack:

“Divn’t gan up there, Man” he said jerking his thumb back towards the steading – “they’re stone mad.” It seemed that, whilst turning his lorry, he had clipped a bit of carefully manicured grass verge and the owners had gone ape – “just f – g toonies, Man” he said as he drove off. Next time I am walking that way, I shall make a point of walking through the yard and if I am shouted at, I shall just say – “Right to Roam” and walk on – what’s sauce for the goose…

I do a lot of walking these days, as I used to in the days before I got lazy and in the fast lane to obesity. Walking is certainly good for the body (forbye the blisters) and it is also beneficial for the mind – ‘walking is good for thinking’ as an old friend once told me. To press, 2004 has been something of an – ‘annus horribilis’ (Her Gracious Majesty) for me and serious walking not only sweats bad things out of the body, it also reams out the mind. It helps you get things in perspective and to sort out some tricky decisions. So I am all for people walking, just as long as they shut the gates and do not let the stock out.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 22.7.04

I had forgotten all about it until the wife reminded me – a week since today was St Swithin’s Day and the weather on that day (July 15th) is supposed to set a pattern for the weather for the next forty days. I gather that it was tipping down with rain in the South, but in Northumberland it was a pleasant enough day – dry and cloudy with occasional sunshine. If the next 40 days are no worse than that, I shall not complain. But why and who St Swithin? He was Bishop of Winchester – that’s who he was and he died in 862 AD. As to why he is associated with rain – here we have to rely on hearsay, if not downright fable. It is said that his dying wish was to be buried in the Minster churchyard so that ‘the sweet rain of Heaven might fall upon his grave.’ Then in 971 AD some busybody monks, decided that his remains should be ceremoniously removed to the Cathedral – could the Monks have been the fore runners of NuLab, I wonder? The date for the exhumation was set for July 15th and they do say that on July 15th it rained and went on raining for 40 days, thus foiling the Monkish plans. This is a pretty enough little tale, but there is a snag. In 971AD people where using the Julian calendar. This means that July 15th then would not be July 15th now – we are on the Gregorian calendar. I do not know exactly what the difference is although I have a feeling that we either lost or gained 12 days when we changed. So, if you are inclined to worry about the weather on St Swithin’s Day, don’t, because it isn’t anyway.

I know that we had brutal heat, last July, but we should not expect that to be the norm. In our Atlantic weather system, July has always been a catchy month – sunshine and showers about sums it up. I am just glad that I do not make hay any more.

I have been ‘banting’ for a year. This word has gone out of use now, but my father always used it. It was an old word for dieting. I had always understood that it derived from one Captain Banting, a cavalry officer who loved Steeplechasing, but had trouble making the weight. He achieved it by starvation. However I have now come across another source, which states that the word derives from William Banting a C19th London undertaker. He lost c.50 pounds in a year on what appears to be a version of the Atkins diet, so perhaps it should be called the Banting Diet. I tried Atkins once, until just looking at a piece of meat made me feel sick. In fact the Atkins diet sickened me. Over the last year, I have tried all sorts of fancy diets, with minimal effect and getting in a right muddle. At last a friendly doctor laid it all out for me – “You have to take in less calories per day, than you put out – nobody came out of Belsen fat.” He was brutal but right; I should have remembered what Dad looked like when he came back from 3 years in a Jap prison camp.

Of course the kind doctor is right. We should feed ourselves as we feed our animals – feed according to work. Our problem is that we still have the instincts of animals - carnivores feed to repletion, on the basis that they do not know where the next meal is coming from. Herbivores ‘snack’ continuously. We humans try to do both and wonder about obesity.

You want to be slim? Then eat less and eat good and thank God that you can.

The Rut is on. This is the term for the time of year (the book says ‘mid July to mid August’, but deer don’t read books) when the does get broody and decide that they would like to become a one parent family. I know that it is fashionable and PC to blame the man when this happens, but in the Roe deer world it is not like that. It is the female who leaves her patch (Roe are fiercely territorial) and sets out to seduce a suitable male. She does this by making a small piping sound and exuding pheromones – a sort of hormonal gas that wafts round the woodland and rouses any male within sniffing distance to a paroxysm of lust and makes him come a-running. Then, of course, the doe goes all coy and plays hard to get. She runs away (not too, too fast, you understand) pursued by her panting suitor. When the female is ready, she will allow the buck to work his wicked way. She then kicks him out. You know, sometimes you might think that some animals are almost human in their behaviour.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 15.7.04

I want to talk of Symbiosis and, do not worry; I had to look it up, too. One of its meanings is - ‘a close association between two organisms of different species, usually to the benefit of both partners’. Symbiosis is often apparent in nature. I suppose that if I wished to be provocative (may such a thought perish) I would suggest Foxhunting as a good example – it improves the state of the fox population by a natural form of culling – it also keeps the breeding of that magnificent animal, the Foxhound, up to snuff and provides the human animal with healthy and innocent exercise. As that great North Eastern writer, Robert Smith Surtees, put it – ‘the image of war with none of its guilt and only five and twenty percent of its danger.’ All in all, a very symbiotic relationship, but not the one I wish to talk about today. I want to talk about swallows with whom I have a profound symbiosis. Not only do I provide free building sites for their nests – a form of social housing - but I also provide a meals-on-wheels service for them, when the weather is as ropey as it is at the moment. Swallows feed on flying insects. In good weather, the insects fly high, so that is where the swallows fly to hunt them. However when the weather is damp or stormy, the insects seek shelter in the grass stems, where swallows cannot get at them. Then I come along on my quad, looking the sheep, and stir up the skulking insects. Thus, as I chug along, I have an escort of swooping swallows who gobble up the insects that I disturb. This benefits the swallows, but what good does it do me? I get the benefit of being able to observe the amazing aerobatic skills of the swallows at close quarters – a never failing source of pleasure to me.

A ‘Dandy Dinmont’ is a breed of terrier. At one time, and certainly up to the end of the C19th, they were a famous working breed in the Borders, game at fox, otter or badger. They were long-wheelbase jobs with shortish legs and wiry coats and were hard as the proverbial nail. I have never come across a modern working example. I fear that they have become doomed to the show bench, with all the horrors of canine freakery that such a sentence involves. The nearest I have come to a Dandy Dinmont was Cassoulet (Cass for short and a French sausage stew by correct definition). His mother was a high-class pedigree Dandy who stepped out with a Cairn X Wirehaired Dachshund X Yorkshire Terrier. The high-class pedigree breeder viewed the resulting litter (sausage stew undoubtedly) with some degree of understandable horror and was selling them off (to good homes) at a knock down price. I bought one as a birthday present for the Dragon Lady and Cass owned us for 17 years. He was a horrid little dog, but we loved him dearly. He was always hooking off hunting and was once AWOL for a week. We had written him off with many a tear shed, then one morning I opened the door and there he was on the step, caked in mud, but otherwise fine. The Dragon Lady wept with relief as she bathed him and wept again when he bit her through the wrist (he had a profound contempt for personal hygiene). He was once arrested for sitting in the middle of the A697 and stopping the traffic – we had to reclaim him from Rothbury Police Station. He licked the Constable’s face as he handed him over and promptly bit my wife as she received him. He was a horrid little dog, but we still miss him.

I had often wondered about the name ‘Dandy Dinmont’, although I knew that there was a character of that name in one of Sir Walter Scott’s novels. I also knew that a ‘Dinmont’ was the old term for a shearling tup, but… The other day I was lent an old book by my old friend Ray Robson - one time soldier, shepherd and now organising traffic control in Alnwick. This was a great honour as he rightly regarded the book as an heirloom. The book is called ‘Wanny Blossoms’. It is a collection of old dialect poetry and sporting essays, written by James Armstrong of Ridsdale and published in 1879. One of the essays concerns the ‘Dandy Dinmont’ and suggests that Scott based his character on one James Davidson of Hindlee. Davidson was ‘a mighty hunter before the Lord’ and had a famous breed of Dandy Dinmont terriers, but it still does not explain the name. Some further historical digging suggested that a ‘Dandy Dinmont’ was, at one time, a generic term in the Borders for a ‘lusty young blade’. It was certainly a fair description of Cassoulet – to the extent that we had to have him ‘seen to’ by the Vet.

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NEWCASTLE JOURNAL 8.7.04

To the Scottish Game Fair at Scone – I like the SGF because it is just the right size to get round in a day and my bank manager always plies me with copious draughts of Champagne wine and how many of us can say that about our bank managers in these enlightened days? I expect that the cost gets added to my overdraft, but what the hell – business is business. Of course the problem with the SGF is that it is full of Scotsmen, all swirling their pibrochs and displaying huge calf muscles below their kilts. Not that I have anything against Scotsman, after all my tail-female line goes back to the ‘Red Comyn’ and the ‘Wolf of Badenoch’. I have also had the honour of being appointed ‘Honorary Grosvenor’ to the ‘Pony Club’ – both of which require a little explanation. The Pony Club is a collection of landowners who maintain that the ‘Young Pretender’s’ pony was once billeted on their land. I say ‘pony’ because the poor bugger may have been Bonny but he only stood 5 foot 1 inch in his silk stockings. The ‘Grosvenor’ is derived from the original Norman French of ‘Gros Veneur’ – for those of you who live in Darras Hall, that means ‘Great Hunter’. I am very gruntled by the compliment. Anyway, I have nothing against the Scots – I am not a racist – the Scots are. I had a most interesting conversation with an ancient and deep rooted Scot. He said that he had noted a sharp rise in English Nationalism, which he regards as a response to the excesses of the ‘Wee Pretendy Parliament’ in Edinburgh. He may well be right. The flag of St George is becoming an increasingly common sight as one goes about England. I asked my friend where he lived? He said that he lived in Eastern Scotland, Thank God. Not for much fine gold would he live in the West – ‘amongst all those bloody Irish’ – his words not mine – ‘d’yer know’ he said – ‘we hate them much more than we hate the English?’ and if those are not racist sentiments, then I will start chewing my kilt. This just goes to show that racism is deeply embedded in the bone and no amount of PC legislation can change that fact – ‘what’s bred in the bone, comes out in the blood’. The Commission for Racial Equality is a complete waste of taxpayers’ rations. You can force people to say the correct things, but you cannot force them to change thoughts that are buried deep in the national psyche. The former Yugoslavia is a good example. Tito forced people to suppress their ancient hatreds and to live together in superficial harmony, because they got a bullet in the back of the head if they didn’t. But 50 years of his persuasive methods changed nothing. After Tito, the old hatreds that were bred in the bone came out in the blood – an awful lot of blood. I do not think that Racism will ever disappear – the best we can do is to bury it deep and keep it buried.

Which reminds me – I was talking to a farmer the other day, who had a sheep die. Anyone who has worked with sheep will know that as soon as they are born, they start seeking for an excuse to die, suddenly and for no apparent reason. Anyway, as you will know (because I have told you) since May 1st all carcases have to be removed from the farm by a DEFRA contractor to an approved place of incineration and on no account may they be buried on the farm in a ‘kett hole’. So our law-abiding farmer rang up DEFRA and asked what he should do with the late, lamented, ewe, please?

“Bury it,” said DEFRA. So he did. This suggests that DEFRA are a long way from getting their head round this particular problem. I would like to offer them a way out. Once an animal dies it may be classed as ‘Kett’. I will give you good odds that nowhere in the flough of Brusselese rules will you find a rule forbidding the burial of ‘Kett’ – not unless there is a version in Northumbrian dialect. So there, DEFRA – that should neatly get you out of a hole (pun intended). It may be a casuistry, but all Civil Servants are well used to those.

We have been promised a referendum on the proposed European Constitution – fine – but have any of you read the bloody thing? Come on, its only the thick end of 350 pages and right gripping read it is, so I am told. Have I read it? Have I rowlocks! However I can tempt you with a small gobbet that I cribbed from somebody else – ‘…the co-ordination, organisation and implementation of investigative and operational action carried out jointly with the Member States’ competent authorities or in the context of joint investigative teams, where appropriate in liaison with Eurojust…’ Lovely innit? Now read on and vote according.

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