Albert Street

Not that long before World War One Walter Lewin and his wife Hannah lived at 19 Albert Street. Their neighbours at number 20 were Tommy Moffat and wife Jane. Does any of this mean anything to followers of this site? Does it trigger a memory or two?

WB

The Christmas Card Ritual

Some people find Christmas cards a chore but I don't. They are an opportunity to say hello and best wishes, or some similar sincere message. Colourful cards can brighten up many a living room during the dark days before Christmas. That is my take on cards but I know that others will wheel out words such as chore, pointless, expensive, time consuming and even a  lost opportunity to fund tigers and leopards.

That is not to say that the card ritual is without problems. Take my half-sister; I love her dearly [even though I seldom see her owing to geographical considerations] but she is forever sending us a card with a drawing of a  robin or robins on it. Is it the case that she likes robin cards and thinks we will feel the same way?  Whilst I am always thrilled to spot a robin in our garden  the predictability of the robin card, post marked Stanley, can be a bit monotonous. 

Another dilemma can crop up when suddenly we do not get a card from a couple. Was it postal negligence or a case of being wilfully struck off their list of favoured people? Are they ill?  Was it something I said or did not do? And do I send our card to them anyway? I usually do! I send cards to people because I like them and whether or not they send me one is more often than not irrelevant to me.

Then there is the moody blues problem. It is my family job to deliver cards to the neighbours [defined as anywhere within five hundred yards of our home] but if I am so mentally tired that I do not want to engage in conversation the delivering might well be done in the dark. But what if it's snowing or raining? What if I disturb a pet dog or cat and as a result find myself engaged in a conversation,that is not of my making, with the owner? I grin and bear it and give of myself anyway.

Then there is the task of matching people to card design. Some feedback last July suggests that I do not always get it right. Evey year I send a jolly card to an esteemed and lovely religious couple; invariably my card has a drawing of a Victorian stage coach, or perhaps a snow laden village in late afternoon, but neither drawing acknowledges the Christian message. I need to reconsider that problem.

What about timing? Well this year our plan is to post the cards in the second week of December. I do not want to send them too early and be labelled a Christmas nut.

Merry Christmas to you all and best wishes for 2011.

WB

Await More Body Bashing After Rocky And Don

In August I was a slip of a lad as well as a proud father of the bride, but that was ten pounds ago and I am not talking about money. It gets worse;  Christmas is coming. It is true that my ongoing Nordic walking will aid the morale as tarts, pies and puddings pile in during that mystical period called Christmas, but there will be blood and gore before the January weigh in.

It has been a problem since I was a kid; first there was the spotted dick and custard period followed by a decade of bread and butter - to fuel dashes down the football flanks - then, worst of all, Quality Street and Mars Bars of the just below obese period. 

I was watching a bit of  X Factor tonight, whilst at the same time skimming The Independent, when I suddenly announced to my wife 'this is it' I will restart my journey to fitness tomorrow. Tomorrow, tomorrow, why wait until tomorrow? Because it is bleeding cold and dark that's why. There will be no stopping me tomorrow; salads, tomato juices and porridge will be the major drivers of my regime, but not necessarily in that order. Cheescake is for the girls. Exercise is for men. Will those last two sentences get the response they fully deserve?

I withdrew from Facebook several weeks ago and was disappointed to find that as a consequence many of the photographs I submitted to  this site disappeared. It was not intentional and I am sorry. I withdrew from Facebook because I found it too often banal. There were some interesting contributions but not enough to maintain my interest.   

I have previously submitted articles about Christmas time in Sleetburn and Ushaw Moor and despite the risk of too much duplication here is a bit about them. My stepfather very probably 'borrowed' a Christmas Tree from the Coal Board's property in 1952; the smell of pine trees still  evokes fond memories of that period and as a kid I was entranced by tree lights; I will own up: I still am. I also like the sight of rich red Christmas Pudding wrappers.

Christmas was not Christmas without the Beano. The front page always had lots of snow around the drawings. I recall presents of football annuals, especially the one showing Ray Straw scoring for Derby in a 7-2 win against Chesterfield in 1957. I also remember an evening winter walk in the area of Bracken Court; I recall the crunch beneath my feet as boot met four of five inches of snow. Ginger wine and  the film 'Stagecoach' with John Wayne also spring to mind as  Christmas memories. Then there was the  tiny model aeroplane I bought from a shop opposite the post office in Sleetburn; I wonder who it was that served me and what happened to her after that.

WB

Don Cockell v Rocky Marciano

British boxer Don Cockell's fight with world champion Rocky Marciano took place on the 16th of May 1955 and there was a lot of money riding on it: forget seamy gambling dens on both sides of the Atlantic and focus on the Ushaw Moor County School  playground a day or two before the fight. The author of this piece, bad boy Wilf, bet young and blond John Vasey sixpence that Marciano would retain his world title. He did and John paid up. Sixpence then is worth about 50 pence now and  would  enable me to buy the best part of a standard bar of Cadbury's chocolate or twenty per cent of a pint of beer. Not life changing then, but fun.

From what I can gather Cockell won the first round and lost the subseqent eight. A technical knockout finished it. Cockell was a worthy fighter and this is confirmed by his record of 81 fights 66 wins [38 by knockout] 1 draw and 14 defeats.

Many youngsters were enthralled by the sports stars of those days; I for one can recall getting up at four in the morning to glue myself to the radio so as to listen to England's test match progress in Australia. I can still recall the names of many of my cricketing heroes of those days, for example Peter May, Colin Cowdrey, Trevor Bailey and Frank Tyson. I cannot name many of the current team's players, apart from Collingwood, Anderson and one or two others. Most of us were innocent then: we woke up feeling excited about the day and whether it was sunny, rainy, or a sea of snow, we were up for it. These days I sometimes [but not always] find it difficult to recapture that feeling of excitement, largely because the reality of this troubled world is not far from the forefront of my mind.

The reality is that there is much corruption and I suspect it might be many times  more in excess of what I currently imagine it to be. I am old enough to be aware that I am virtually powerless against the fundamental injustices of this planet but big enough to know that I must not capitultate without putting up a few chosen fights against injustice. These days it is not just a case of a silver sixpence on Rocky Marciano, rather a protest against the worst excesses of religion, politics and miscelleneous grubby and unsavoury groups and individuals.   So when I am invited to give a talk, on this or that, I will say my piece, hopefully with a measure of dignity and an absence of rant. The occasional letter to my MP will be fired off, if I am really livid; the last one, concerning an ambulance industrial dispute,  must have been twenty years ago so 'obsessional'  is not the right word for my letter writing record to date!

WB

Ship shape From The Northern Echo

They’d lived for two years at Ushaw Moor while he trained for the ministry in Durham, are delighted to be back in the North-East and to have more chance of watching Newcastle United. “I sort of married into it,” said Richard.They’re interested in Celtic Christianity, in football, folk music, arts, theatre, bread baking, politics and folk music, though not necessarily in that order, hope to work collaboratively to bring “hope, love and healing”to their communities.“It’s a big job and we can’t do it on our own,” said Richard. “It’s about building teams, working with our partner churches, being patient.”

via Ship shape From The Northern Echo.

Dull, but never boring From The Northern Echo

SIMILARLY aground,

John Robinson in Blackhall Rocks seeks help with a saying much used by his late mother, born and raised in Ushaw Moor.“If anything were untidy or a mish-mash,” recalls John, “she would say it was like Stage Bank Fair.”Mrs Robinson clearly had something in common with the column’s old mum – who’d have been 100 two weeks ago – except that in similar circumstances she preferred to liken the confusion to Staffordshire Bank Fair.Though there are other variations, the reference is undoubtedly to what was said to be England’s one-day fair, held biannually at Stagshaw Bank, four miles north-east of Hexham.There was a colliery there, too.Scale alone suggested chaos, the extent of ale swilling – “it was before the days of teetotalism,” explained an 1850 account – no doubt adding to the general pandemonium. “The fair and other clatter, often mingled with the roar of Wombwell’s lions, was almost a Babel,” said the 19th Century writer.

via Dull, but never boring From The Northern Echo.

Sergeant W. Dennis "Geordie" Belshaw

1808996 RAF - Flight Engineer

Dennis was born on October 8th, 1923, in Ladysmith Terrace, Ushaw Moor, Durham, the only son of Dorothy and Arthur Belshaw. He had an older sister, Dorothy, who sadly died at the age of eight, when Dennis was six, and a younger sister,Vera, who was born not long after Dorothy's death. His father diedwhen he was eight years old, and the family moved to Bearpark.

He left school at 14 years of age and was a delivery boy for a local shop, until starting work in the store at 16, with a view to eventually training as a manager.

He joined the RAF in 1941 at the age of 18, and received his wings in 1943. He and the crew flew many sorties together, until that fateful day in June when they were shot down over Belgium. After initially receiving help from the resistance, Dennis was eventually was captured, and was a POW in Stalag Luft 3 until the end of the war.

On being demobbed, Dennis undertook a government training programme in place for returning men and women, and he chose to become a painter and decorator, eventually becoming a sales executive in later years. He married Lettie just after the war, and they had an only daughter, Anne. They also had two grandchildren, Richard and Elizabeth,to whom Dennis was to speak of his time in the war, the only time he did so in any detail. Dennis sadly died in his late sixties.

via Peter Knox in Belgium - Knox Family Chronicles Knoxetal.