Anton Rippon

"No problem" … well, I didn't think it would be

2011-06-07T11:53:00.002+01:00

“TELL you what,” said Alf, swirling the last inch of beer around his glass before downing it and returning the empty vessel to the table in that emphatic manner that can only mean it is someone else’s round. “Tell you what – I don’t know about you, but, just lately, I’m finding life particularly irksome.”
I was pleased that Alf had used a word like “irksome”. In these days of texting and tweeting, when any old word, or indeed spelling, will do, it was gratifying that such good solid English was still being employed. And in the four-ale bar, too. But then the Rowditch is a place where you will always find stimulating conversation and profound scholarly knowledge. There aren’t many pubs that provide books to read with your quiet pint; and dictionaries and reference works for settling friendly arguments.
Actually, as the conversation progressed, it crossed my mind that Alf didn’t mean “irksome” at all. He meant that life had become irritating, not boring. At least that was the way the debate went, after I’d been back to the bar to top us up, of course.
We began listing things that annoy us as we go about our daily lives. Like when you enter a shop and ask for something and the young shop assistant says: “No problem.” And you want to say: “Well, I’ve just asked you for a newspaper and, as I’m standing in a newsagent’s, why do you think that I would think that there would be a problem?”
Or when you’re in a restaurant with your wife, and a serving person young enough to be your grandchild greets you with: “What can I get you guys?” That is if you are lucky enough to have attracted their attention in the first place.
When you can’t get served at a crowded bar, at least there are options available, like using your elbows and waving aloft your empty glass. But what are you meant to do about servers who float past, staring firmly on some point in the middle distance, looking neither right nor left in case a customer should attempt to catch their eye? Rugby tackle them?
I’ve just remembered: the last time I criticised restaurant staff here, I opened myself up to abuse from someone who must have been a disaffected server. I don’t know for sure because every broadside was delivered anonymously through this newspaper’s website. Which was unfair since I’m a big tipper when the service is good. Anyway, I’m braced and ready.
But look, I can’t use the privilege of writing this weekly column simply to enjoy a good moan. So I’m not going to mention people who ride bicycles on pavements, people who park cars on pavements and grass verges, people who chuck litter out of those cars. By the way, last month I was considering returning to the Royal Derby the NHS-issue rubber gloves I found outside our house. But you never know where such things might have been. So I scooped them up (using another pair of rubber gloves; mine were from Tesco) and dumped the lot in our bin. Having admitted it, I await a midnight knock from the refuse disposal police. Now that would annoy me.

Actors, chip shops … and a touch of Richard Wagner

2011-05-31T15:00:00.001+01:00

BACK in 1964, it was. I met a young actor called Bernard Holley. He was in rep at Derby Playhouse, when that theatre was in Sacheverel Street. Bernard and his wife, Jean, lived on Burton Road, just around the corner from where I lived in Gerard Street. We sometimes bumped into each other on Sunday lunchtimes in the Durham Ox, then run by Joe Kent.
Actually, something – albeit quite trivial – is bugging me here: I can’t remember if that was when, just opposite the pub, butcher Ted Barker still spluttered cigarette ash over Sunday joints; or whether it was after his place had become a chip shop which, last time I passed, was still doing a roaring trade after being highly nominated by visitors to this newspaper’s website.
Anyway, never mind fish and chips, for the moment at least. The future Mrs R and me were great theatregoers in the days when – funny what you remember – before every performance at Sacheverel Street they played Kenny Ball’s The Green Leaves Of Summer. Bernard was one of our favourite actors and recently our paths (Bernard’s and mine that is; I bump into Mrs R quite regularly) crossed again.
After Derby, he moved on to greater things in theatre, film and television. Especially television: Z-Cars (remember PC Newcombe?), Dr Who, The Bill, Holby City, Doctors, A Touch Of Frost – he’s done them all and a lot more. And he is still working.
Bernard fondly remembers his time here, even if it was almost half a century ago: “My year at Derby was invaluable to me as an actor because of the variety of plays we did and parts we played. Young actors don't have that ‘rep’ training any more, sad to say.
“I kept in touch with Ian Cooper, Mary Laine and Michael Hall from the Playhouse – all sadly now deceased – with Michael being the last to go, at 93, a few years back.
“I’ve been one of the lucky ones – always worked in one field or another, and always earned a living – not a bad boast for an actor. What’s more, I’ve been married to Jean – we were wed just before I started my year at Derby – for 47 years, and we’ve lived in the same house in London for 40.”
I loved the old Playhouse, with the resident company constantly turning their hand to different parts. Performing this week’s play while learning the lines for next week’s – how did they do that? What a pity that repertory theatre has died, in Derby at least.
Now a final thought on chip shops because, as you know, I rarely miss an opportunity to stroll down memory lane. When I was a lad, we patronised either Askin’s – “Askin For Chips” was their motto – on Burton Road, near the Little City; or an Abbey Street establishment run by a middle-aged couple, the wife a stout woman with plaited blonde hair who reminded me of the female half of Tristan und Isolde.
Not that I was a particular fan of Richard Wagner operas – more a Guy Mitchell sort of person, really – but our wireless was sometimes tuned to the Third Programme. And that kind of exposure can leave its mark upon a small child.
Anyway, thanks for the memory, Bernard.

Why I said goodbye to the doorstep milkman

2011-05-24T09:11:00.001+01:00

THIRTY-TWO years ago today, milk went up. No, cows had not lost their sense of direction. But there was still a commotion. Because overnight in May 1979, at 15p per pint, milk became 10 per cent more expensive. And three times the price it had been five years earlier. Five months later, milk went up again, to 16.5p. The nation hovered over whether to abandon cornflakes for toast and be done with it.
But here is the thing: although prices slowed down and today the cost of your pinta is much the same in real terms as it was then, nowadays only about one in five pints is delivered to the nation’s doorsteps. In 1979 it was four in every five. Which brings me to my point (regular readers will know that in this column we generally take the scenic route to get anywhere).
The other day, a milkman called at our door. He wondered if we would be interested in a daily doorstep delivery. Alas, much as it pained me, a believer in all things traditionally British, I had to tell him that, having abandoned our milk delivery some years ago, we found no reason to reinstate it.
We had clung on to it for far too long anyway, given all the problems it had presented. First, there was the fact that you never knew when the milk might actually arrive; once you’d run out, you could be hanging around for ages before giving up on a mid-morning cuppa. And there were times when went out, and returned to find that your milk had arrived minutes after you'd turned the key in the lock and it had been sitting for five hours in blistering sun.
Then there was the milkman who came humming down our street (well, his float was humming; he was whistling) at half past one in the morning, delivering what was, as far as I as concerned, yesterday’s milk.
So I had to tell the missionary milkman that, sorry, while no one more than me would love to go back to how Britain was in the 1950s, we now get our milk from the supermarket when we want it. So we never run out and it is always fresh. Although what was wrong with a quick “Does that smell OK?” and fishing the lumps out of your tea on a hot summer’s day, I do not know; use-by dates, eh?
In Gerard Street, we had a Co-op milkman called Albert, who provided all manner of social services. For a start, his daily helper wasn’t even employed by the Co-op. He was a 50-year-old chap who had learning difficulties but who knew better even than Albert what house had what milk. Today, there would be health and safety and employment laws against it. More is the pity.
Albert once acted as wedding chauffeur when a terminally ill neighbour decided that, for the sake of her three children, she should marry their father. One Friday lunchtime, after he had finished his round, Albert drove her, bouquet and all, in his float to the register office. His regular helper wasn’t best pleased because he had to walk back to the dairy. But that was life then. Uncomplicated.

Early morning tea, the monarchy, and AV

2011-05-17T14:47:00.000+01:00

THE rest of the family had gone their various ways and I was enjoying an early morning cup of tea in the garden, watching a motor-cycle gang of starlings bully the other birds to grab the food for themselves. And my mind drifted back to a morning just like this, and to the Royal Family.
Not that I’ve ever shared an early morning cuppa with anyone boasting blue blood (although – name-drop alert – I did once breakfast with Hilary Clinton in Chicago when she was First Lady and regal in that peculiar American way). And not that I was drawing a parallel with that avian raiding party and the fact that the origins of all monarchies lie in having, long ago, pushed aside those weaker than themselves.
It was just that the concept of a royal family was something that I often debated with Peter Hampson, a former Derby Telegraph reporter who was my good friend, Rowditch drinking buddy, and best neighbour anyone could wish for until he was taken from us, far too soon, a few years back.
During one of our many Sunday morning yarning sessions over the garden wall (older readers please try to eliminate thoughts of comedian Norman Evans here) when I was trying to make sense of the idea of a royal family, Peter said: “Better a pantomime monarchy than a pantomime republic.”
And every time I have doubts, I think of the alternative. Politicians are insufferable enough without making them feel even more important. A better alternative might be to elect an apolitical president, someone universally popular who can simply be the nation's figurehead. Or they could just give me the job; like everyone else, I know best how to sort things out. I do it every Friday in the pub.
Talking of alternatives, here is a final thought on the now-dead Alternative Voting system. On the eve of the referendum, I was discussing AV with a friend now retired from his job at Derby City Council. Working at elections had given him a jaundiced view: “The most powerful argument against AV is the Great British Public. I’ve seen it all. When the majority of those who bother turning out are capable of doing so (1) on the right day; (2) during the allotted hours; (3) being on the register; (4) finding their way to the polling booth; (5); putting down the correct number of crosses; (6) in the right places; (7) not folding the ballot paper down to the size of a postage stamp; (8) finding the ballot box; (9) and the slot in the top; (10) putting the ballot paper, not the poll card, in the box; (11) finding their way out again; (12) and not coming back to ask how they voted so they can inform the teller, then maybe we could accept AV. Until then … ”
In the meantime, did you know that it is 20 years today since Helen Sharman, from Sheffield, became Britain’s first astronaut? When she emerged from the capsule back on Earth, she said: “Smell the flowers, they’re wonderful.”
That makes you think. Worrying about the world at large? Sometimes I’d rather just sit in the garden, drink a cup of tea, and remember a dear old friend.

"It's what we're fighting for," said Captain Mainwaring. You know what? I think we lost.

2011-05-10T19:06:00.002+01:00

THEY say you should never go back. But sometimes you must. Last week I revisited a boyhood haunt, deep in the heart of the Fens. My last surviving aunt had died. She was 95, so nobody could feel too sad. Certainly not in the way that you would if you’d been saying goodbye to someone that should have had a full life ahead of them. She had already lived that.
But it was still sad enough. We walked behind her coffin, up the path towards the Norman church, a few hundred yards from the farm where I spent childhood summers. The sun was shining, spring blossom bejewelled the trees, the crows cawed, the church bell tolled. For that brief moment, it was another England. It was the England that you’ve always wanted to live in. The England that would have prompted Captain Mainwaring to tell Sergeant Wilson: “This is what we’re fighting for.”
Of course, it was but a brief snapshot. Drive a mile or so in any direction and those narrow Lincolnshire country lanes of distant memory are now dual carriageways. Once sleepy crossroads are now thundering roundabouts. As is the natural order of things, Macdonald’s and budget hotels litter the flat landscape. Everything has to change. Alas, not always for the better.
I am the odd one out in our family of country folk. Thanks to my father seeking employment elsewhere, I am a townie, born and bred. And back in Derby, it got me thinking about how our way of life has changed here, too. Not least in New Normanton, where we had our first married home, and raised our daughter. Forty years ago, it was a safe, welcoming area where people of different races and cultures – incomers were then mostly from the Commonwealth – got on just fine.
Now I read in this newspaper that legislation allowing many more immigrants from European Union countries to claim benefits and housing further threatens social harmony in an area already suffering more than its fair share of problems in that regard.
In the early days, when it was explained that all that would happen would be easier trading with the likes of France and Germany – presumably that was why they called it the Common Market – I bought the idea that EEC (as it then was) membership was a good thing. I did believe that we’d all still need passports.
But that was then. Now I would be grateful if someone would explain what benefits Britain enjoys through the EU being expanded to include countries whose nationals use freedom of movement to cause the kind of problems that oblige Derby City Council to finance a task force to deal with them.
Back in Lincolnshire, they told me that the agricultural industry there would collapse if it weren’t for migrant labour. But with it, they say, comes all kinds of social problems unimaginable even a few years ago.
And that is when hitherto tolerant, liberal-minded people start to experience uncomfortable feelings of anger and lingering resentment that they’d rather not have.
Captain Mainwaring was right. Between 1939 and 1945, Britain was fighting to save our way of life. History tells us that we achieved that. Looking around in 2011, I’m beginning to wonder.

Solutions more important than party political dogma - but don't forget to vote anyway

2011-05-03T16:14:00.002+01:00

IT’S that time again. But this year, predicting the outcome of tomorrow’s local elections isn’t something on which I’d wager so much as a shopping trolley token. Not since we got entangled with coalitions. It seems that, come Friday morning, anything is possible. Especially since I can’t work out the mood in these troubled times.
Personally, I’ve never been one for strict party politics. Most problems can be sorted out with a dose of common sense. And, wherever you look, that seems in short supply these days. Solutions are more important than immature, often outdated political dogma. Those who think that the other lot all have two heads and are the devil’s spawn? None of them are thinking straight enough to get their minds around our mounting problems.
On a lighter note (pun intended) my mate, Terry, is trying to lose weight to save himself the cost of an extra helicopter seat. It’s like this: he’s booked a flight into the Grand Canyon and the tour company has told him that unless he slims down, it's going to charge him double. He tells me that he is within a few pounds of achieving the goal, although I’m not convinced. Not unless they’re using a Chinook.
Actually, I sympathise. I’ve spent a lifetime trying not to be the gentleman with the fuller figure. I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve promised the nurse at our surgery that, the next time she sees me, I’ll be a svelte version of the man who discards everything that decency will allow before stepping on to her scales. Or tries to distract her by asking her about her holidays, in the hope that she’ll forget that I’m down for a weigh-in. So far, that hasn’t worked.
In the meantime, what am I going to do with Saturday afternoons now the football season is almost ended? I’ve renewed my season ticket because, as Alexander Pope wrote, hope springs eternal … Then again, he didn’t follow the Rams.
But while we wait and wonder, these Saturdays need to be filled, because the thing about following football is the routine. Albeit these days that is constantly interrupted by the needs of television. Years ago, once the fixtures came out, you knew exactly where you’d be 16 weeks on Saturday.
Back in my Gerard Street boyhood, Colin Shaw, who lived opposite, was my regular Saturday afternoon Baseball Ground companion. We had a routine – call it a ritual – in which I would call at his house, his mother, Dolly, would yell upstairs: “Anton’s here.” And he would shout back: “I’m just looking for a white shirt in case they’re short.” Well, it always made me laugh.
Given a half-decent summer, while Nigel signs up a promotion-winning team, I expect there’ll be a few trips into the Peak District. As I get older, I do find them far more agreeable than hanging around airports. You don’t get many terrorist alerts on the bus to Bakewell.
I’ll also be strolling around Derby, taking in the latest alterations and wondering if the day will ever dawn when you don’t run the risk of tripping over a bulldozer.
Anyway, whoever you favour, don’t forget to vote. It’s important. And you can still complain later.

Life is still full of characters … if you know where to look

2011-04-26T17:46:00.000+01:00

THE couple on the bus were pulling a neighbour to pieces. Or at least the wife was. Something to do with the neighbour and his fancy piece. And I’m assuming here that it wasn’t a particularly gaudy necktie that was giving offence.
Anyway, the husband couldn’t quite place whom it was that he was supposed to dislike. Not until it was explained to him that it was “the chap who gave you the cabbage plants”. Then he nodded weakly. I got the impression that he quite liked the purveyor of buckshee brassica. And probably wouldn’t have even minded going for a pint with him. But he was too afraid to say.
There followed an account of a friend who worked in an old people’s home where the cook had locked himself in the laundry room. And there was someone called Eunice (name change here, so don’t worry if your name is Eunice; it isn’t you) who was “no better than she should be”.
The dialogue could have come straight from an Al Read script (for readers not yet of pensionable age, the Salford sausage maker turned comedian was a well-known radio voice in the 1950s with his observational humour about northern working class life).
Actually, the bit about the cook locked in the laundry room was more Fawlty Towers. Whatever, it was marvellous to be so royally entertained on a hitherto unpromising journey.
It is surprising, though, how today people can have such indiscreet conversations in public. That said, in the 1970s there was a local shopkeeper who was probably the most indiscreet person I’ve known. He’d tell you the most outrageous gossip about someone, then say: “I can’t reveal his identity. But he’s got red hair, lives at Horsley Woodhouse and rides a zebra.” Well, not actually that, but enough to blow the cover of the person he’d just slandered.
At least he wanted to talk. In the bank, the cashier, who had been staring into space, suggested that it might have been quicker if I’d paid in at the machine rather than bothered her.
“Quicker for who?” I asked. “There’s no queue. You aren’t serving anyone else.” To which she replied: “No problem.” “Well, I didn’t imagine there might be,” I said. And the transaction continued in silence.
Nowadays, it’s all serve-yourself, press number-one, leave a message … Life is greyer. When we were kids, there were colourful characters everywhere. Down our street there lived a professional boxer who possessed a pair of wonderfully mangled cauliflower ears; and a man who left his wife to set up home with a lady midget who lived directly opposite.
There was a feisty little pensioner who took in washing, laid out the dead, and spent every evening in the pub before, several milk stouts later, returning home bouncing off walls and singing maudlin songs.
And there was the 40-something who terrorised local children with a homemade bow and arrow. No one ever reported him. We just remained vigilant.
There was even a neighbour who had a fancy piece. I don’t know that he ever gave away cabbage plants, though. Or locked himself in a laundry room. Maybe the characters are still out there. You just need to know where to look.

A customer helpline that was anything but …

2011-04-19T16:14:00.003+01:00

A CUSTOMER helpline that wasn’t, and an oddball bus passenger – it’s been a strange time.
It’s also funny how things return to haunt you. The day after this column suggested that if Trent Barton wanted to improve timekeeping, then instead of abandoning Derby bus station it might ensure that its own buses didn’t break down, I was standing in Ashford-in-the-Water, waiting for a Derby-bound bus that was late because – it had broken down.
Later, over a pint, I was relating this to Alf, who thought that perhaps the bus company had got it in for me personally because I had been an occasional critic.
I couldn’t agree with him. It would take someone suffering extreme paranoia to think that CCTV was picking them up standing at a bus stop and then a message was being sent to delay the bus, just for the sake of annoying them.
Anyway, I can’t believe that a bus company’s intelligence service is so sophisticated that, even if it cared, it is capable of tracking an individual’s every move. Not if its customer services helpline I anything to go by. Trent Barton’s website states that between 8am to 7pm Mondays to Fridays, and 8am to 12pm on Saturdays, it can be contacted by telephoning 01773 712265. Simple? Well, not really.
Over the past six months, I’d had occasion to call that number four times, and each time had been greeted by a recorded announcement (what else?) telling me that “all members of our team are busy assisting other customers” but that my call was important to them (of course) and that I could “be assured” that if I left a message and a telephone number, someone would call me back.
As no-one had ever called me back, it was with scant hope that I rang that number again from Ashford-in-the-Water the other day and left a message (and a phone number) explaining that I was standing at a bus stop in deepest Derbyshire and the only bus scheduled to take me home hadn’t arrived. I wondered when they thought it might appear. Or whether my best option might be to summon a taxi to take me to Bakewell, the nearest point of civilization, where another service to Derby was available, subject of course to it not breaking down.
No one rang back. Eventually, the bus did turn up (45 minutes late) and had – according to a driver who wasn’t in the mood for explanation until asked, or apology in any circumstance – broken down. It was then that a wild-eyed fellow passenger declared that it wouldn’t happen in Australia, and followed that up by claiming that, in the Antipodes, they have neither roadworks nor DIY. And, sorry if you’re wondering, I didn’t like to ask.
In the meantime, I’ve called Trent Barton twice more and, such is my luck, on each occasion all members of their team were naturally helping other customers. I’ve left more messages, but to no avail. I now have a mental image of an empty room, where a ghostly telephone rings and rings before being answered by a machine telling callers that all members of the team are currently … well, you’ll have the hang of it by now.
I'd have telephoned to complain, but …

Demolition of QPR a sign that times were changing for Brian Clough's Rams

2011-04-16T11:57:00.000+01:00

WHAT a strange game against Coventry City last Saturday. Overrun for the first 40 minutes, two goals down, and looking out for the count, suddenly the Rams were level.
Considering all that, the crowd’s response was relatively muted. The goals were cheered, of course. But there was no passionate urging on for the lads to get a third. Maybe we didn’t dare believe it possible.
There was another strange result that day: relegation-haunted Scunthorpe United hammering title favourites QPR 4-1.
Scunthorpe’s players then reckoned that the great escape was still on. Subsequent midweek results made that less likely. Nevertheless, the Rams’ game at Loftus Road on Monday evening is important.
In the meantime, we can recall the contrast of a snappy winter’s day over 40 years ago, when a game against QPR hinted at the great things in store for Derby County.
When QPR arrived at the Baseball Ground in February 1968, they were the team of the moment. Promoted only a few months earlier, they sat on top of the old Second Division, still basking in the glory of a sensational League Cup Final victory over First Division West Bromwich Albion at Wembley the previous year.
The Rams, meanwhile, were feeling their way under a new manager, Brian Clough. Although the League form was disappointing, supporters had just enjoyed a run to the League Cup semi-finals. And some bright young stars were beginning to emerge.
Earlier in the season, Derby had won at Loftus Road, and when they faced the Londoners in the return fixture, the Rams set about recording the only League double over QPR in a season that saw the Londoners promoted again.
It was another sign that the breath of fresh air blowing through the Baseball Ground was gathering strength, ready to sweep Derby County into a new era.
Brian Clough was making his mark and this victory over Rangers underlined the progress that was being achieved.
It took only ten minutes for Derby to get their noses in front. Alan Hinton took a pass from Northern Ireland international Arthur Stewart and sent over a low centre. John O’Hare cleverly stepped over the ball, and Kevin Hector raced in for his 20th goal of the season.
Four minutes later, the Rams were 2-0 in front. Rangers’ goalkeeper, Ron Springett, failed to hold a corner and the ball bounced loose for Hinton to hit a fierce volley just under the crossbar.
Seventeen minutes into the second half, Derby extended their lead when Stewart brought the ball down on the edge of the penalty area and, with Rangers’ players expecting him to pass, the Rams skipper instead tried a snap shot which went in just under the bar.
Eight minutes from time, Hinton again beat Clement and then pulled back the ball for Roy McFarland to score his first goal for Derby County.
QPR had only one real chance, when Hereford referee, Jim Finney, harshly adjudged Ron Webster to have tripped Rodney Marsh inside the penalty area. Justice was done when Reg Matthews brilliantly saved Mike Keen’s spot kick.
McFarland and Webster had been outstanding in Derby’s defence. Webster, whose first-team career stretched back to the days of Harry Storer, had shadowed the unpredictable Marsh all afternoon, and had never been tempted to put in a hasty tackle.
The crowd that day numbered nearly 23,000 as interest boomed in Brian Clough’s first season. At the end of the campaign, the Rams could report an average Baseball Ground attendance of 20,194, compared with only 15,908 a season earlier.
Supporters were beginning to see the emergence of an attractive team. They were more than tolerant of the occasional sequence of poor results as they focussed instead on days like the one when QPR were swept aside.
It seems almost a lifetime away. And, of course, it means nothing in the current context. Monday night is all that matters now.

Coming at life from the left brings a new set of worries

2011-04-12T14:31:00.004+01:00

YOU wake up and think: "What should I worry about today?" Will Derby County survive in the Championship? And at what point do I decide that I’d like a refund on my season ticket because they didn't sign Cristiano Ronaldo?
The unimaginatively named Derby Theatre struggling on after the Arts Council decided not to grant it £700,000, which says more about how the enterprise is run than it does about spending cuts? That's a worry.
The closure of the Industrial Museum making Derby's status as a cultural desert even more assured?
And the City Council's response to a suggestion that it cuts councillors' allowances being simply to task a committee (with a £7,482 special responsibility allowance for its chair) to discuss the matter? These are all things that concern us.
But it can be something intensely personal that will overwhelm your day. Take a pal of mine. It all kicked off in his bed the other night. No, I wasn't there – he told me. Earlier that day, he’d had one of those minor operations that people of a certain age occasionally need. Not that one. This was to straighten his right little finger that, over time, had bent inwards.
Anyway, there he was, asking his wife if she would tie his hand to the headboard to restrict the overnight blood flow into said finger.
And she refused, on the grounds that, if there was a fire, he might have to be lifted out still attached to the headboard, and then what would the neighbours think?
More difficulties arose next morning when he set about his ablutions. Right hand bandaged up to his wrist giving a passable impression of a boxing glove, he donned a Tesco carrier bag to keep the dressing dry while he showered.
Picture the scene: carrierbagged hand bolt upright above his head – in a sort of cross between a Hitler salute and a request to leave the classroom – he toiled away with the other hand and a bar of soap.
His right arm proved no problem but, apparently, washing under your left arm with your left hand is not easy. And that's before you try anywhere else.
Shaving left-handed presented an even bigger challenge. His sideburns ended up crooked, but in different directions; and those fiddly bits under his nose … he swears that he could have gone 15 rounds with Mike Tyson and lost less blood.
Cleaning his teeth was a weird experience. Coming at them from the left put a whole new perspective on the task. It was as if, during the night, the Tooth Fairy had rearranged his gnashers.
Next he came to the big one. Yes, the ultimate challenge. You don’t want details, so all I will tell you is that he now knows that his 65-year-old body was meant to bend round only to the right, never to the left … whatever the emergency. And now he thinks that he may have dislocated his shoulder as well.
His ambition is to move away from Tesco bags and on to a classier Waitrose carrier. He refused my offer of a Sainsbury’s bag. Apparently the orange colour would clash with his bathroom decor. Yes, it’s funny what can worry you in the course of a day.

Good news for taxi customers but bad news for bus passengers

2011-04-05T11:51:00.002+01:00

MY taxi driver was loath to admit it: he thought that Derby’s planners had got it just about right with the final leg of the city’s inner ring road. His only complaint was that the new road is so efficient that several of his regular customers are now paying less for their usual journeys. Always searching for the silver lining, I suggested that this probably means that, if they become cheaper, more people will use taxis; and that the cabs can now get to their next job a bit quicker. All of which will make up the shortfall over a full day. He wasn’t convinced.
Not that I use many cabs these days. A free bus pass has concentrated my mind on achieving journeys as cheaply as possible. I’ve even been known to walk from Mickleover to Derby if it’s before freebies for seniors kick-in. There, being careful with your money keeps you fit.
Actually, although Derby is now swamped with taxi cabs, there was a time when it wasn’t easy to find one. Many is the late night I’ve come out of the LMS Station (as we still called it, despite the fact that Britain’s railways had been nationalised for years) and had to walk home because there wasn’t a taxi in sight and no prospect of one appearing in the foreseeable future. Of course, that was in the days when you walked through Derby's streets at gone midnight with no thought that someone was going to mug you for your wallet. Or just for fun.
Anyway, at least one taxi driver declares the inner ring road a success for his passengers if not for himself. And my motorist pals are also in favour of the new layout. At least those living locally give it the thumbs-up; returning ex-pats still find it difficult to get their bearings. In fact, you don’t have to be visiting from Australia to become confused. A pal who divides his time between Derby (where he still has relatives) and Birmingham (where he now works and lives) claims that, on the day the inner-ring road became fully operational, he became lost four times in an hour, trying to find his way across the city.
Meanwhile, I’ve been following with interest the recent spat between Derby City Council and Trent Barton. Last year, I was critical of the bus company’s plan – happily, abandoned – to move its Mickleover service out of the new bus station. Now, it is the turn of Allestree’s bus passengers to face losing the comfort and convenience of changing buses there. Some claim this to be a tit-for-tat response to the city council’s removal of bus lanes on Kedleston Road and Duffield Road (a decision in keeping with the council’s misguided downgrading of its commitment to public transport).
Trent Barton says moving the Allestree service is all to do with timekeeping, although if this had been so in the Mickleover case, the company might have spent more on ensuring that its buses didn’t break down. And still do: I saw a busload of passengers marooned on Uttoxeter Road only the other day.
Of course – perish the thought – it could simply be about saving the fees for using the bus station in the first place. Taxi anyone?

When Bert Trautmann had a Derby day disaster

2011-04-01T17:36:00.001+01:00

HERE’S a question: if the United Kingdom went to war tomorrow – a really big war against another major European power – how many professional footballers would volunteer for military service to defend their homeland?
Actually, given the number of potential enemy combatants playing in the Premier League and the Championship alone, the question needs rephrasing: how many British footballers would rush to join the colours?
With a bit of luck, we’ll never know. Not like in 1914 when there was even a Footballers’ Battalion.
But I was pondering on it the other day, after watching a superb television documentary about Bert Trautmann, the former German POW who made his name with Manchester City.
I met Trautmann a few years ago when I edited his biography. It was launched in Manchester and just about everyone wanted to be there, especially his former City colleagues, men like Bill Leivers, Dave Ewing and Roy Clarke.
I spent a fascinating half-hour talking to the man who played on after breaking his neck in the 1956 FA Cup Final. But I didn’t like to remind him of a game at a waterlogged Baseball Ground in December 1949.
City were already a team in crisis. Like the Rams, they had made a disappointing start to the season; unlike Derby, who had raised supporters’ hopes with three consecutive victories, they were still on the slide.
Not only had City found themselves with only four wins in their first 19 matches, they also had a goalkeeping problem. Their great England keeper, Frank Swift, had been called out of retirement to play in a handful of matches. And City had also given Ronnie Powell, later to serve Chesterfield so well, a dozen games before turning to the most controversial signing a British club could have made in those early post-war years.
Former paratrooper Bert Trautmann, who had arrived in England as a POW in April 1945, had shown such goalkeeping talent with non-League St Helens Town that City had signed him up, despite howls of protest from many of their Jewish fans, as well as from others who had suffered during Luftwaffe raids on Manchester.
Trautmann’s debut came in a 3-0 defeat at Bolton. He then played in a rare win – 4-0 over Birmingham City at Maine Road – before arriving at Derby for only his third League appearance.
The game turned out to be a nightmare for Manchester City in general, and for Trautmann in particular.
After 16 minutes, it was his mistake that allowed Billy Steel to put the Rams ahead. The new goalkeeper knocked up the shot and then looked back in horror as the ball dropped over his head and trickled over the line.
Even then there was no hint that this would signal a flood of goals for Derby, especially when Jack Stamps missed a penalty. Nine minutes later, though, it was Stamps who made it 2-0 after Tommy Powell had set him up.
After 35 minutes it was 3-0 when Morris fooled centre-half Joe Fagan – later to manage Liverpool to European glory – before taking the ball around Trautmann and tapping it over the line.
In the second half, City held on for half an hour before the rout continued. First outside-left Hughie McLaren squared the ball to Stamps, who sidefooted home the Rams’ fourth goal.
Eight minutes from time, McLaren made it 5-0 and then added a sixth before Steel ignored the awful state of the pitch to dribble his way down the middle, then round Trautmann before hitting the ball into the empty net.
It was Derby’s biggest peacetime win since the 9-3 trouncing of West Brom back in December 1934.
Five weeks later, the Rams slammed another five past City in the FA Cup at Maine Road. At the end of the season, they were relegated while Derby finished 11th. Bert Trautmann, of course, went on to become a legend.

Linings, pockets and that embarrassing inside-leg measurement

2011-03-28T16:47:00.000+01:00

THE man at the bar had been driven there from another pub, where a large television screen had been showing a football match. The barmaid had turned up the sound to a level at which, to make themselves heard, those imbibing had to shout. So the commentary – pointless anyway – was still inaudible. But now the noise from raised voices had passed pain threshold level.
Then some customers had used their phones to take photographs of the television to send to friends who were not able to see it. To support these images, they had then taken photographs of themselves to show how much they were enjoying it. The man couldn’t stand it any longer. Which was how he came to end up in the Rowditch, where the only noise is the pleasant hum of nice people chatting away. Except on some Saturdays, when Joe plays the piano, but you go there looking forward to that.
However, the man didn’t want to talk about daft people watching football in noisy pubs and taking daft photographs of themselves doing it. He wanted to talk about tailors’ shops. Or rather the fact that, these days, there seem to be precious few in Derby, whereas, at one time, there were lots. The man mourned the passing of such joys as selecting a lining for your jacket, or the style of your pockets. Like most men, he wasn’t sorry to see the end of that most embarrassing of moments: the inside leg measurement.
These days, when Mrs R declares it time for a new suit, I nip into Marks and Spencer. That said, my suit wearing days are now largely over. Indeed, the last time I was persuaded to buy a new suit, it wasn’t because the others were wearing out. Far from it. It was because they had been deemed unfashionable to the point of embarrassment. And to prove her case, Mrs R pointed to the C & A label in one (she hadn’t spotted the jacket with the label of Weaver to Wearer, a firm which, when I Googled it, threw up a link to the Victoria and Albert Museum).
At one time, there were many independent tailors in Derby. The man recalled that some of his trendier friends used a tailor on Osmaston Road, opposite Wilmot Street. I chipped in with Sidney Levy’s shop in Normanton Road. At least I think it was in Normanton Road, although the workshop was in Harriett Street. After that business with Arthur Raynes’s chip shop, and then the whereabouts of the Stork pub, I am becoming increasingly nervous about mentioning anything to do with old Derby. Even though my memory of Arthur’s chip shop was fully vindicated, not least by the very man who sold him spuds. And while I concede that the main door of the Stork was in Macklin Street, it did have an entrance in Colyear Street. And I did at least get the name of the pub right.
Whatever, we would all agree that the Stork wasn’t the sort of boozer where people would have photographed themselves watching television. Even if pubs had, in those days, offered television, which, thankfully, they didn’t. I bet everyone would have been wearing a suit, though.

The night that Frank the Tank avenged his teammate

2011-03-26T07:46:00.003Z

THAT was a horrible injury that Bolton Wanderers midfielder, Stuart Holden, received at the hands – or rather lunging foot – of Manchester United defender, Jonny Evans, at Old Trafford last Saturday.
Twenty-five stitches in his left knee, followed by surgery and a projected six-month lay-off, says all you need to know about the severity of the US international’s wound.
Yet Holden, whose disappointments will include missing this year’s FA Cup Final, should Bolton overcome Stoke City in the semi-finals, refused to blame Evans.
Neither did Bolton manager, Owen Coyle. Even though in his post-match interview, United’s assistant manager, Mike Phelan – Sir Alex is still refusing to talk to the BBC – thought that the red card for Evans was the right decision.
The fact was that both players went in full-blooded, each with one foot off the ground. No malice. Holden just came off worst.
The sight of blood pouring from a deep wound in the American’s knee took me back to a September evening at the Baseball Ground, half a century ago. And to an even more horrific injury.
On that occasion, though, the assailant wasn’t even cautioned, the referee instead deciding to allow retribution from one of the injured player’s teammates.
On September 14, 1960, the Rams were at home to Southampton in the old Second Division, hoping to do a lot better than the 5-1 defeat they had suffered at The Dell one week earlier.
In fact, the Saints got away to another fine start with a goal after only two minutes from England Under-23 winger, Terry Paine.
Then Glyn Davies got involved. The Rams left-half was a fierce competitor; of limited ability but one who knew how to dish it out.
Fifteen minutes into the game, he put in a knee-high challenge that left defender Ron Davies writhing. In those days, the foul did not even merit a cautionary word from Bradford referee, George Hartley.
Second later, however, it was Davies’s turn to be on the receiving end as Cliff Huxford’s studs raked the Rams’ skipper’s thigh.
There was a lengthy stoppage while trainer Ralph Hann swathed Davies’s leg in bandages before the Welshman was stretchered off to the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary to have 36 stitches inserted into the wound.
But when play eventually restarted, again referee Hartley did no more than award a free-kick. It would be left to another hard man to mete out Huxford’s punishment, although by then the Rams were 2-0 down after another Saints goal, from Brian Clifton.
Yet, despite playing with only 10 men – no subs then – Derby managed to pull a goal back, through Peter Newbery, before Frank Upton finally nailed Huxford with what the Derby Telegraph’s Wilf Shaw diplomatically called simply “an all-or-nothing tackle”.
After his clash with Upton, Huxford limped off, returned briefly, and then left the field for good.
Years later, “Frank The Tank” (who, ironically, had been booked after complaining about Huxford’s tackle on Davies) told me: “I hammered Huxford good and hard and the ref just said: ‘That’s it now, Frank. Leave it at that.’ And I stayed on.
“It was different in those days, you see. If one of your mates got hurt, you were allowed – unofficially, of course – to dish out a little punishment in return.
“Huxford was going to do all sorts of things to me, but the next time we were on the same pitch, I never saw him for the whole 90 minutes. He stayed well out of the way”
The numbers evened up, with a minute remaining the Rams managed to find an equaliser. Outside-right Ray Swallow crossed the ball with his left foot, and Irish international Paddy Fagan, although facing the wrong way, achieved wonders for a winger who stood only 5ft 5ins tall, outjumping the big Southampton defence to score with a back-header.
Davies was to miss the next 10 games; Huxford was out for seven. Frank the Tank, though, just rolled on and on.

Strange sandwiches - and will £400k to spruce up the River Gardens be money well spent?

2011-03-22T12:40:00.001Z

THE question for last week’s Friday lunchtime pub debate was: “What is the most unusual sandwich you’ve ever had?” The winner was marmalade and Kraft cheese slices, although I felt that the condensed milk and sugar filling that a pal’s mum once prepared for our visit to the Black Prince cinema in Colyear Street ran it pretty close.
All of which led us to discuss whether the £400,000 to be spent on making the River Gardens “family friendly” would be money well spent, if it meant that there would be somewhere in the middle of Derby nice and al fresco to eat your sandwiches – bizarre or otherwise.
The general feeling was that it would be a worthy project, albeit the recent description of the River Gardens as “iconic” was a bit over the top. These days you can hardly open a newspaper or magazine without reading that something is “iconic”. It is an overused – mostly abused – word. Iconic means that the object in question holds symbolic value for the viewer.
Much loved by generations of Derbeians as they may have been, you can’t say that about the River Gardens. Even in their heyday, the view of the east bank of the Derwent was industrial. In fact, it looks slightly more attractive now than it did when I was a boy, perilously tip-toeing over the decaying wooden Long Bridge that acted as the towpath where Derby Canal crossed the river. Our parents forbade us to set foot on it. But when it’s the summer holidays and you’ve got an ocean of a day ahead of you, who wouldn’t want an adventure under a cloudless sky?
Distance may be lending enchantment here; a case of Houseman’s land of lost content, those “happy highways where I went and cannot come again”. But it’s a warm memory, so I’m hanging on to it.
Alan Smith, Derby City Council’s head of regeneration, wants to “bring back the days when families could enjoy a picnic” in the River Gardens. As a relative newcomer to Derby, he is probably not claiming to actually remember such a golden era himself. Someone else, much older, must have briefed him on a time when we all flocked to the River Gardens to spread our picnic blankets and share our rations.
Actually, I once saw a piece of film showing post-war Derby families doing just that around Alvaston Lake. Now that did look like Blackpool beach on a Bank Holiday. I’m not so sure that the River Gardens ever was that busy.
And if those responsible believe that simply resurfacing paths and putting in new plants, together with public art and “creative lighting” underneath Exeter Bridge, is going to bring families flocking back, they may be disappointed.
Last year, the Derby Telegraph reported on six robberies in the River Gardens. For too long the area has been blighted by crime and anti-social behaviour, especially from drunks. There is only one way to rid an area of undesirables: chase them off. It will only work if high profile security patrols make life impossible for drunks, drug addicts and muggers. A tubful of begonias and a few decorously placed light bulbs alone aren’t going to do it. Anyone fancy a Marmite sandwich?

Derby County dressing room unrest? Billy Steel was your man

2011-03-18T22:10:00.001Z

YOU hear all sorts of rumours surrounding a struggling football club. Derby County is no exception.
Notwithstanding the Rams finally nailing that elusive home victory last Saturday, and other results going their way, there is much still to do before anyone connected with the club can relax.
Of course, none of these rumours can be substantiated, coming as they typically do from the mate who uses the same barber as the brother-in-law of the man who sells hot dogs outside the ground.
But it would be surprising – indeed, it would be worrying – if the Pride Park dressing room was a place of such calm and tranquillity that, in the aftermath of so many defeats this season, a cross word was never spoken.
I have no inside information. I don’t even know the mate who uses the same barber as the brother-in-law of the man who sells hot dogs outside the ground.
I can, however, tell you that dressing room unrest doesn’t always manifest itself when a team is losing. Sometimes, a personality becomes so unpopular that he alone is the cause of the unravelling of a successful side.
In the story of the Rams, such a man was Billy Steel, the Scotland inside-forward who cost Derby County a British record transfer fee of £15,500 when he was signed from Morton in the summer of 1947.
Steel had become an overnight sensation when he played brilliantly for Great Britain against the Rest of Europe in May that year.
He was never outshone by any of his forward partners – and they were Mathews, Mannion, Lawton and Liddell – and he scored by far the most spectacular of Britain’s six goals at Hampden Park that sunny afternoon.
He did well for the Rams, too. With brilliant ball control and a fierce shot in his left foot, Billy Steel lit up many a dull afternoon at the Baseball Ground.
But he was also a selfish player, appreciated far more by supporters than he was by his teammates.
Those who played alongside him felt that Steel reserved his best days for Scotland; or for games in London when the top names in the national press were more likely to be reporting.
He was also singled out for special treatment by an indulgent Derby board. Tim Ward, who played alongside Steel, once told me: “When players like Raich Carter and Leon Leuty found out that Billy was getting paid extra for supposedly working for a building company owned by the chairman – it was just a dodge to pay him more than the maximum wage – they weren’t happy.
“Then he was paid extra for writing a newspaper column. And when he started driving around in a new car, when the rest of us had to catch the bus, others, like Jack Howe, also became unsettled.
“Billy got everything he wanted. But Billy only played when Billy wanted to. It got to the stage where we’d have to kid him that someone had seen George Graham, the Scottish FA secretary who practically picked the Scotland team, before the match. Then Billy would turn it on.”
The Rams’ former England forward Frank Broome said: “Billy passed you the ball in such a way that the only person you could give it to was back to Billy.”
Off the pitch, Steel had a dark side. One afternoon his brothers-in-law came knocking on the door of Broome’s club house in Hillsway. Littleover. They were looking for Steel, Broome’s neighbour, in order to “sort him out” after a domestic dispute had turned violent.
Eventually, in September 1950, the Rams sold him to Dundee for a Scottish record fee of £23,000. Alas, it was too late to quell that dressing room unrest at Derby.

A handbook for hoodies - and Low Sling Trouser Day for the over-60s

2011-03-15T17:07:00.001Z

THE man at the bar came straight to the point. Did I think, he wanted to know, whether somewhere there is a hoodies’ handbook that carries instructions on how to develop that strange walk.
It was a fair question, probably prompted by the passel of feral youths that I’d earlier seen hanging around a chip shop down the road. But before I could lob in my two penn’orth – and, heaven knows, I do have an opinion – he was in full flow: “I wonder if there’s something they take that enables them to spit with great regularity? And how long do they have to hold that miserable expression before their face stays like it?”
If he wanted to discuss life’s ills, he had a captive audience. Wandering back to the bar to obtain further refreshment for Alf and me, I was already troubled by a headline I’d seen that day: “Padded bras for sex-change prison inmates.” Just when you think that the world can’t get any dafter …
In the meantime, the man at the bar had moved on to the subject of trousers. He thought that a Low Sling Trousers Day for the over-60s might help us to understand what makes wearing your waistband below the cheeks of your bottom such an experience for a certain class of young men.
It would, he said, show empathy with the younger generation and, at the same time, help us to decide if it is a genuine advantage to have the crotch of your trousers at knee level (after recently driving his car towards a youth so attired, thus making him run for the central reservation, the man felt that it probably isn’t).
The rules for Low Sling Trousers Day would be that at least 12 inches of underpants must be showing while the wearer walks in the style of Charlie Chaplin. Talking into a mobile phone would be expected. Extra marks would be awarded for spitting while on the move.
Then he shifted tack: “Whenever I hear of people complaining that in a terraced house there’s nowhere for the wheelie bin, I always reflect to my childhood near the Cavendish. We had a metal dustbin that the dustman would empty. Not to mention a pig bin for food scraps. We also had coal and coke deliveries.
“And we always made sure that there was clear access to the rear of our properties. Neighbours would almost compete to be the one who kept the shared entry the cleanest. Bikes and motorbikes could be taken round the back as well. Why can't people be bothered any more?”
I wanted to add how strange I find it that people get planning permission to build garages into which they then never put a car. There should be a law that says if you build a garage, you must put a car in it. Presumably you’d never obtain planning permission to build a storage facility on your drive.
However, before I could instigate a new debate, the man downed the last of his drink, slid off the stool and went out into the chilly night.
“Who was that?” asked Alf, when I returned with a couple of pints. “Don’t know,” I said, “but I think you’d have liked him.”

You need a sense of humour to be a Rams fans these days

2011-03-11T18:09:00.002Z

THE posters outside the West Stand at Pride Park last Saturday announced a health and safety exercise to be conducted at the end of the game against Barnsley. Upon the final whistle, stewards would organise an evacuation through the emergency exits.
“Mind you,” said the steward who saw me studying the notice before kick-off, “if the Doncaster game is anything to go by, there won’t be anyone left to evacuate.”
These days, you need a sense of humour if you’re a Derby County fan.
The afternoon’s events can generally be gauged by the mood on the homeward bus. A good performance promotes a buzz. A game as dull and grey as last Saturday’s weather and there’s mostly muttering.
Last week there was a debate about how Robbie Savage had managed to lift the man of the match award. The voting seemed as mischievous as that which kept Wagner in the X Factor all those weeks.
To be fair, Savage had the sense and good grace to decline the title, giving no credence to the theory that he’d been subbed early so that he could start texting.
Meanwhile, some fans mused on the fact that when Theo Robinson finally managed to control the ball, he was so surprised that he promptly passed it to an opponent. The general feeling was that, as it came in the 88th minute, he could be excused for being overwhelmed by the occasion.
Given the Rams’ form these last three months, today’s visit by high-flying Swansea City will be viewed with trepidation by even the most optimistic Derby fan.
But football is ever an unpredictable game. Which prompts me to recall two games against Swansea Town, as they were then known, back in 1958. The matches were only 24 hours apart, but the reversal in fortunes was astonishing.
That season, the ageing team that had just won promotion from the Third Division North was trying to stay afloat in the Second Division. It had been an uphill battle and the Rams were still fighting relegation when fellow strugglers Swansea arrived at the Baseball Ground on Easter Monday.
A 59th-minute goal from little George Darwin – how I liked him – was the difference between the teams. It was also enough to ensure survival for Derby that season.
The Rams had been leaking goals since August, but on this occasion they kept a clean sheet. Which was a good job, considering what happened the very next day at Vetch Field.
Helped by a hat-trick from Ivor Allchurch, Swansea romped home 7-0. It was Derby’s heaviest defeat since April 1946, when they’d shipped seven goals at Molineux.
Yet neither the Rams nor the Swans fielded a team markedly different from the day before. Derby’s defence was exactly the same; Swansea had made two forward changes, neither particularly telling.
So what went wrong?
The Derby Telegraph reporter, Wilf Shaw, neatly summed it up: “Why did Derby County concede seven goals last night? The answer – their mental approach to the game was all wrong. Too many of them lacked the will to resist.
“The Rams … went on to the Vetch Field pitch far too conscious of the fact that Swansea Town could do nothing to stop them being in Division Two next season.”
It wasn’t the first time that season that there had been a strange reversal of scorelines within 24 hours. On Christmas Day, the Rams had lost 2-1 at Bristol City, but then went on to win the return game at the Baseball Ground, 5-2.
Again, the line-ups were much the same but on that occasion, Derby had been unlucky to lose at Ashton Gate. Come Boxing Day, their attitude was just right.
In the words of the American writer, Herm Albright, a positive attitude may not solve all your problems, but it will annoy enough people to make it worth the effort.
One hopes that the Rams do more than just annoy Swansea this afternoon.

Intrusive census still can't take into account one million illegal immigrants

2011-03-08T17:00:00.008Z

IT will soon be census time again. Doesn’t time fly? It hardly seems 10 years since we were filing the last one. Useful things, censuses.
At least they are if you’re conducting a spot of family history research.
How else would I have known that I’m related to a 90-year-old village rat catcher from Gloucestershire? He was my great-great-grandfather. His wife was 88 and her occupation was “rat catcher’s assistant”. No blue blood in our line.
Some Scottish and Irish blood, though. And an MP for St Pancras who represented Great Britain in the 1908 Olympic Games; and a famous potter who took on Josiah Wedgwood as a partner and taught Josiah Spode how to throw a vase.
But no hidden fortune – and, believe me, I’ve looked.
Anyway, a rat catcher would be more useful than an MP. And less reviled, too.
It was census returns that told me that I’m directly descended from a long line of Derby publicans. Men who kept hostelries like the Stag and Pheasant in Lower Brook Street, the Derby Volunteer in Hope Street, and the Rising Sun in Friar Gate when that pub had a thatched roof, generations before they changed its name to the Bishop Blaize.
So, on balance, I should be in favour of the ten-yearly census. The problem is that each one becomes more intrusive than the last.
The early ones – it started in 1841 – generally just wanted to know names, relationships, ages, birthplaces and occupations. I suppose that having to state if you were an idiot or an imbecile (still trying to work out the difference) might be considered a bit personal.
But, overall, it was a head count and not much else.
The one that we’re being asked to complete later this month wants to know a lot more about us, including how many bedrooms we have, and what kind of heating.
Strangely, citizens will no longer be asked if they have access to a bath or shower. I’m surprised that question hadn’t been extended to asking how often we wash.
The census will also ask how well we can speak English. Well, if you can’t speak it, you’re unlikely to be able to read it. So you won’t be able to understand the question in the first place.
It will also ask overseas nationals the date on which they entered the UK and the length of time they intend to stay. Given that there are thought to be one million illegal immigrants in Britain, what is the point of that one?
It’s like the form that Homeland Security insists you complete before you can set foot in the United States. The form that has questions like: “Have you every been involved in espionage, sabotage or terrorist activities?” Does anyone ever tick the “Yes” box?

Archie was a maverick - but unlike Ashley Cole he never shot anyone in training

2011-03-05T10:26:00.000Z

YOU’VE got to feel sorry for Ashley Cole. The poor chap takes a loaded air rifle to work – as you do – but forgets that it’s got one up the spout. So when he fires it a student at Chelsea’s training ground, there’s blood everywhere and a young man is left writhing in agony.
But an ambulance isn’t called. Instead, the lad is treated by Chelsea’s medics (what other football club, outside Libya maybe, would have people trained to deal with gunshot wounds?) and there the matter ends, although Surrey police were later said to be taking an interest.
In the meantime, Wayne Rooney is seen clattering Wigan’s James McCarthy with an elbow to the side of the head. Referee Mark Clattenburg isn’t too fussed, though. Wigan have to settle for a free-kick.
There isn’t even a yellow card for England’s erstwhile wonder boy. Even though most observers – not Sir Alex Ferguson, obviously – feel that a red card should have been waved in front of Rooney’s snarling face.
Despite the media storm that followed, Mr Clattenburg says that he got it right. And so complicated are football’s disciplinary rules that the FA is effectively banned by FIFA from taking any further action, even after viewing television pictures of the assault.
The same afternoon, England and France battered each other at Twickenham. There were plenty of crunching tackles, and even a fist thrown now and again. But it was all so civilised.
Indeed, when England captain, Mike Tindall, eventually questioned Irish referee, George Clancey, about a decision, it was done so politely that Tindall might simply have been enquiring what plans Mr Clancey had for the rest of the weekend.
It is a fact: compared to soccer, rugby is truly a gentlemen’s game played by gentlemen, not by hooligans as the old saying goes.
No, soccer undoubtedly has the monopoly when it comes to hooligans. All of which got me thinking of the biggest rogue ever to play for Derby County. Happily, I couldn’t come up with anyone who could hold a candle to Cole or Rooney in the oafish behaviour stakes.
However, there is one maverick in the club’s history who stands head and shoulders above the rest, albeit not one who’d arrive at the training ground armed with a loaded firearm. Not quite anyway.
I’m thinking about Irish international centre-half Archie Goodall (his brother, John, was an England international, their father being a soldier who took his family with him wherever he was stationed).
Archie played for the Rams around the turn of the last century. According to one newspaper, when he moved from Preston North End to Aston Villa, he caused “a great deal of bickering”. Later, he tried to back out of his transfer from Villa to Derby.
Ten minutes before the 1898 FA Cup Final, there was panic in the Derby dressing room when Archie was still outside the Crystal Palace, trying to unload tickets on which he had unwisely speculated.
The following year, when the Rams appeared in the Cup Final again, Archie found himself suspended due to “insubordination and inattention to training”.
But he was such a good player that the ban was lifted in time for him to play. It didn’t matter. He was miffed and declined to turn out anyway.
At the end of 90 minutes in a United Counties League Cup Final, Goodall walked off the pitch, refusing to play extra-time because, he claimed, his contract with the Rams was up for the season. Then he took himself off to tour Europe and America with a strongman act, “walking” around a giant metal hoop that he had built himself in the backyard of his terrace house in Wolfa Street. He was certainly an awkward cuss.
But for all his foibles, he once managed to play 167 consecutive first team games for the Rams, a record that still stands. And, as far as I know, he never shot anyone during training.

Will parents always say life isn't what it used to be?

2011-03-01T16:27:00.002Z

WHAT a day of contrasts. I bumped into Gary Clark. Hadn’t seen him in ages, but soon we were taking that trip down memory lane, as you do when you meet an old neighbour. Gary lived a few doors down from us and, when we began to reminisce, the Marquis of Granby evoked special memories. The pub stood next to Becket Junior School and was run by jolly Billy Metcalfe. Harry Farmer also had the licence, but he was a butcher by trade and ended up running a stall in the Market Hall, along with Mick Camp, father of goalkeeper Lee, once of the Rams, now of Forest.
We recalled more pubs that are now each just a memory – the Pelican and the Lord Belper, both in Abbey Street, the Stork in Colyear Street (knocked down partly to accommodate the “improvement” that was Duckworth Square), and the Lifeboat, Derby’s smallest hostelry tucked away in Wilson Street. It was a mellow half-hour, minds drifting back to cosy teatimes in little terraced houses, corner shops and good neighbours. We agreed that things ain’t what they used to be. And then smiled when we also agreed that our parents had told us much the same thing.
Later, in the chemist’s, I was still thinking warm thoughts about those far-off days when a youth made his way to the back of the shop. Another joined him. The first wanted to know where the second had been; he hadn’t seen him recently. “I got nine,” was the reply, “but I only did four and a half.” I assumed he meant months, not years. They both swallowed the methadone handed to them by the pharmacist – it appeared that they were heroin addicts – and wandered out of the shop together, probably not back to work. I have to admit to an uncharitable thought.
Then five strapping young men of Eastern European appearance came past. I’ve seen them before – well dressed, seemingly forever on mobile phones, and, again, apparently with no jobs to go to. Perhaps they work nights and don’t need much sleep.
That afternoon, three schoolgirls with attitude boarded my bus. Fifty years ago they’d have been arrested for outraging public decency. The language was ripe, and you didn’t have to be a maiden aunt for the topic of conversation to embarrass you.
If it’s inevitable that all parents will ultimately claim that things aren’t as good as when they were young, it makes you wonder what life will be like in 25 years’ time, when tomorrow’s mums and dads are making that comparison with today.
Wandering home, I thought back to those days when everyone went to work, the only drugs we’d heard of were aspirins, people didn’t unashamedly discuss prison terms, schoolchildren knew their place. And nice people drank in pubs like the Marquis of Granby.
**Finally, my memory hasn’t gone. Not yet anyway. Roger Varney’s letter last week may have suggested as much, when he claimed that I was wrong to say that Arthur Raynes ran a fish and chip shop in Normanton Road. In fact Arthur’s chippy stood next to his butcher’s shop, and my pal, John Bottom, used to supply him with potatoes. You can believe everything you read here, you know.

Traffic in Towns? Will Derby's Inner Ring Road be the answer at last?

2011-02-22T16:52:00.000Z

IT’S nearly finished then. The Connecting Derby project to complete our inner road is almost there. It’s taken long enough – over half a century by my reckoning. I took a walk around the old neighbourhood on Monday and wondered what Phil Vidofsky would make of it all. It’s a story I’ve told before, but it neatly sums up how the inner ring road saga dragged on for over half a century.
It was back in 1958 that Derby Borough Council, as it then was, turfed Phil out of his gents’ hairdressers’ shop in Abbey Street because they needed the site to complete the inner ring road. Phil’s shop stood near the bottom of Wilson Street, next to the Vine pub, and was, they said, slap bang in the middle of where they wanted to drive through the road.
So Phil went off to London. In the early 1960s, he returned to Derby to find that, although they’d knocked down his old shop, there was no sign of the inner ring road. So he took over premises on the corner of Wilson Street and Gerard Street, only a couple of hundred yards from his old place and, ironically, dead in line with it. He could have just stopped where he was.
Phil barbered away there for another 20 years, then enjoyed a happy retirement before he died in 1990, the completion of the inner ring road, that had caused him all that disruption, still over 20 years away. If he’s up there now, in that big barber’s shop in the sky, he’ll be chuckling at the silliness of it all.
It’s strange, walking around there now. I thought that the old area would have changed beyond recognition, but in many ways it hasn’t. The line of Gerard Street, although now bisected by the new road, is the same, and although most of the houses were demolished 30 years ago, the one where I was born, on the corner of Webster Street, still stands. My name is carved in the brickwork. If they ever knock the house down, I wonder if they’ll let me have the brick. Overall, though, given all the houses – and shops and pubs – that were lost many years ago, the inner ring road hasn’t done much harm to what is left. Let’s face it: the community’s heart had already been ripped out.
Mind you, the inner ring road is completed – but what now? Surely a city of Derby's size still can’t cope with unlimited car usage? My mind goes back to Traffic in Towns, otherwise known as the Buchanan Report, produced in 1963 for the Ministry of Transport: “It is impossible to spend any time on the study of the future of traffic in towns without at once being appalled by the magnitude of the emergency that is coming upon us. We are nourishing at immense cost a monster of great potential destructiveness …
”Yet Professor Colin Buchanan was still a fan: “The motor vehicle is a remarkable invention … there cannot be any going back on it.” And here’s me wondering whatever had happened to the horse trough that stood at the top of Babington Lane. You know, where the inner ring road is now.

Concept of relegation shouldn't be lost on Derby County's American owners

2011-02-19T10:56:00.001Z

I HAD to explain the concept to my American friend. In our football, we have something called promotion and relegation.
It is on everyone’s mind, right from the start of the season. Eventually, it reaches a nail-biting climax over who goes up and who goes down.
It’s the life blood of competition and it starts right at the bottom of the sport, at the very wide base of a pyramid that eventually leads from the humblest parks team right up to the apex of the Premier League, where the game’s mega-earners strut their stuff every week.
Now all this will be obvious to you and me. But my American friend couldn’t get his head around it.
He’s used to a sterile league system, one where nobody ever drops down because they finished bottom. In baseball, ice hockey, basketball and their kind of football, as well as Major League Soccer, you may lose your team to another town in a franchise war, but you’ll never get booted out because you are the worst.
This week, I’m beginning to wonder if the American owners of Derby County have also failed to grasp the concept of promotion and relegation.
Recently, I applauded the way that General Sports and Entertainment Group had worked on Derby County’s finances. I drew heart from what they had achieved in the States with the minor league baseball club, Fort Wayne Wizards, before selling it on at a profit.
But in every regard, that was a different ball game. Not least because, however bad they became, there was never any chance that the Wizards would be relegated. There was no trapdoor through which they might drop before the corner was turned and finances were under control.
So when the Rams board say that they have a clear plan and are sticking to it, I wonder if they quite appreciate what it’s all about.
No-one will disagree with their boast that their strategy has put the club “on a sound financial footing for the first time in decades”.
But, come August, I hope they don’t find that supporters won’t be satisfied with being the best-run club in League One.
Never mind the offside law, I think someone should tell them about promotion and relegation.
Meanwhile, today's trip to Scunthorpe United reminds me a character who passed briefly through the story of Derby County, but who nevertheless made quite an impression on supporters.
Back in January 1957, the Rams needed a goalscorer to help in the push to get out of the Third Division North.
With Jack Parry still not fully recovered from the back injury sustained against Grimsby Town, the previous season’s champions, manager Harry Storer turned to Scunthorpe’s Gordon Brown.
Earlier, Brown, a proven goalscorer at that level, had appeared against the Rams, in the last-ever League game played at the Baseball Ground on a Christmas Day.
The problem was that Derby didn’t have the cash to buy Brown, so the Supporters Association stepped in with the £5,150 fee.
He repaid them with nine goals in 17 games as the Rams won promotion.
I recall two things in particular about Gordon Brown: he was married on a Saturday morning before turning out for the Rams that afternoon; and he was consummately skilled in the art of being tackled a yard outside the penalty area but still managing to come crashing down on the penalty spot. It wasn’t diving so much as aerobatics.
He found Second Division goals harder to come by and was eventually transferred to Southampton, where he helped the Saints out of the Third Division.
Supporters stumping up cash to buy players? Don’t tell the Americans.

Dead cordylines? The man eating noisy toast might be right … but what about my Roman sword?

2011-02-15T19:21:00.001Z

WE were in the garden centre restaurant, enjoying a pot of tea – contrary to popular belief, I don’t spend all my leisure time in pubs – and there was an old man at the next table, eating noisy toast. He sounded like a platoon of squaddies marching over gravel.
I was telling Alf about our cordyline trees. We’d planted them nearly a quarter of a century ago and they are now over 20ft tall. But after this hard winter, all is not well. You see such trees in gardens throughout Derby, every one now looking desperately sad, high winds having stripped off the leaves – it was the snow that turned to ice that did the damage, apparently – until all that remains are trunks, or rather stumps.
I was wondering what could be done to rescue the situation, when a voice boomed out: “Nothing. They’re dead, mate.” It was the old man (who, by now, was tackling a slice of Victoria sponge). He didn’t elaborate on his diagnosis, or explain his qualifications for making it. He just took a gulp of tea and returned to his cake.
When I got home, I told Mrs R, who wondered whether we should admit defeat and plant some new cordylines. But, as I pointed out, by the time they’d reached the same height, with any luck we’d each be wondering how to celebrate out 90th birthdays. I don’t think I could face the wait.
In fact, I’ve never been much of a gardener. Mowing the lawn has generally been the extent of my horticultural responsibilities. I leave garden design to others. Just occasionally, though, you get called in to do the heavy digging. Which brings me to the things that people bury in their gardens; and to museums that may be turning up their noses at valuable archaeological finds.
A few summers back, digging out a bush, I came across what turned out to be a brake cable. Two hours later, I’d exposed a motor scooter. Why a previous occupant had chosen to bury it rather than take it to a scrap dealer, I can’t imagine. But thanks a lot, anyway.
Another excavation yielded a more interesting picking – what looked like a sword blade, coated in about an inch of rust. Being the romantic that I am, and living only a few yards from Roman Ryknield Street, it struck me to be entirely possible that a soldier from the First Cohort of Aquitani could have wandered off the beaten track to answer a call of nature, and mislaid his weapon. Well, these things do happen, even in the best regulated legions.
Full of anticipation, I went off to Derby Museum, where I was told that, if I wanted to know what my mystery object was, I’d have to pay to have it X-rayed. Which surprised me because I’d believed that museums, keen to add to local historical knowledge, sorted out that (it was years before local government cutbacks).
So I’m no wiser. I’ve still got the “sword” sitting tantalizingly on an office shelf. The motor scooter was successfully disposed of over several months. The cordylines? It doesn’t look good. I think the man eating noisy toast may have been right.

The King's Speech brought back a memory …

2011-02-08T15:02:00.000Z

IT’S been an odd sort of week. I was stepping off a bus in the city centre when the driver muttered something uncomplimentary. The invective may have been directed at a passing van, but he was definitely looking in my direction when he said it. I can’t repeat it, except to say that it included the only four-letter word in the English language that may be used as noun, adjective, verb or adverb.
Our Derby bus drivers are almost universally wonderful, but this one does seem to regard picking up passengers – and allowing them to alight – as an unnecessary interruption to his day. Maybe I was just a passing target.
I was on my way to see The King’s Speech. What a wonderful film. It made me recall the day that George VI died. It was February 1952 and, along with other seven and eight-year-olds, I was sitting cross-legged on a canteen floor in Gerard Street when the BBC interrupted a schools wireless broadcast to announce the news.
That was half a century before the nation was plunged into what, some might say, was a wave of hysterical grief over the death of Princess Diana. George VI had a special place in our hearts because of his role during the war but, when he died, everyone felt it their duty to be sad, but without ever believing that it would make any difference to our own lives. Royalty were still regarded as demi-gods who occasionally appeared on balconies to wave to the hoi polloi below. Deference was the general attitude.
Back in the office there was an email from America asking about the Andy Gray and Richard Keys business. What about that? Parts of the Middle East burn and the world is more concerned with the opinions of two uncouth misogynists who believe that if a woman tried to understand the offside rule, then her brain would explode.
I write for a sports marketing website that likes to be kept abreast of what’s happening in soccer, as they call it. Word of the Gray-Keys nonsense had reached them and they wanted an overview. But since I couldn’t face trying to explain the offside rule to an American, I fobbed them off.
Later that day, fed up with motorists continually making illegal right turns from Uttoxeter Road into Chain Lane, I waved angrily at one who pulled over to enquire what was the matter. When I told him, he asked how long had I been a traffic warden, prefacing it with that versatile word again. To be honest, I was a bit lost for an answer.
Now, last week’s trip down memory lane to recall Music While You Work prompted a reader’s letter which suggested that I had invented Troise and his Banjoliers. But they did exist, originally as Pasquale Troise and his Selecta Plectrum Mandolin Orchestra. You can understand the name change.
That said, the band playing on the day that Andy Blackham chased us with his bow and arrow was Anton and his Orchestra. But I thought that no-one would believe me, so I did change it. It just goes to show. Actually, Anton’s real name was Arthur Sweeting but he was advised to adopt a more imposing moniker. So there.

Music While You Work …

2011-02-01T20:08:00.000Z

WE were discussing housework. It was Friday, the Mason’s lunchtime debating session was in full swing, and I was bemoaning the fact that, although my sinks and lavatory bowls are gleaming, Mrs R – who remains hors de combat following her broken ankle – had still found fault with the state of the bath (which, admittedly, I had forgotten, but that’s beside the point).
It was a passing remark, but it struck a chord, unleashing as it did a storm of pent-up protests, from the mate who is continually chastised for failing to understand the correct way to load a dishwasher, to the pal whose dusting technique leaves much to be desired in the eyes of his nearest and dearest.
By the time it had all died down, the only consolation was that suddenly I didn’t feel quite so alone. As I dust, polish, scrub, vacuum and tidy, I now take comfort in knowing that mates are also undergoing similar criticisms of their housekeeping skills. Of course, in my case a wife who, for the moment, can move only slowly on one leg has all the time in the world to conduct searching examinations of dark corners. So I am suffering more than most. But it’s good to know that one has sympathetic friends.
It’s surprising, the diverse subjects you can cover during a three-hour stint in a pub. We left behind tales of household drudgery and moved on to the memories that music can stir.
That morning, thanks to the wireless, I had been transported back to a dank November afternoon in 1960, when I was walking home from Bemrose School down Drewry Lane, past Smith’s factory that made uniforms for police forces, fire brigades and the like.
The memory had been prompted by the playing of Calling All Workers by Eric Coates (of Dambusters March fame). It was the signature tune to the BBC Light Programme’s Music While You Work. This always seemed to be booming out through the factory windows as we wandered homeward, so why I recalled this particular day, I don’t know; it could have been because, as we passed by, Troise and his Banjoliers were making a rare appearance.
Whatever, there are two memories. The first was that at lunchtime, on Rowditch Rec, my pal had successfully arranged to go to the pictures with a girl from the nearby Hazelwood’s pickle factory (a romance that never got off the ground, largely because the smell of pickling vinegar soon invaded every part of the Cosmo cinema).
The second was that the infamous Andy Blackham, who, despite being in his 40s, roamed the area firing his bow and arrow at passing schoolboys, had us in his sights. I liked Andy. He was a poor shot and quite harmless. And that day we outran him anyway.
As the lunchtime session broke up, someone remarked that they wouldn’t have minded being one of the winners of that week’s Lotto rollover.
Someone else quickly reminded them that even a millionaire couldn’t have bought the mellow lunchtime we’d just enjoyed. As Mark Twain wrote, the recipe for the ideal life is “good friends, good books and a sleepy conscience”. I have the first two and I’m working on the third.

Every film in 2011 … brings back memories of cinema nights 50 years ago

2011-01-25T19:44:00.001Z

FANCY an evening at the pictures? One man does. Every evening, in fact. And some afternoons, too, if the target is to be met. Yes, the enormity of the challenge – to review every film with a cinema release in 2011 – set for himself by my fellow columnist, Neil White, finally dawned on me when he announced that he was off to Sheffield to see a Mexican family drama.
Neil will have to watch between 500 and 600 movies this year, a superhuman feat in itself. But if he’s also got to factor in 80-mile round trips … I reckon that by New Year’s Eve, he’ll have enough material for a book. Then he could sell the movie rights. Wouldn’t that be going full dress circle?
But what a marvellous experience a night at the movies can still be. Although, unlike Neil, I have to admit that, due to laziness, I go to the pictures only about once a year. I see a film advertised, resolve to watch it on the big screen, then find an excuse to wait for Sky Movies, or the DVD.
At one time, I was an avid cinemagoer. Of course, the 1950s were different. Few homes had a television, videos and DVDs hadn’t been invented, and if you wanted to see a film – well, you had to go to the pictures. Neither did most people’s homes boast the kind of luxury that greeted you at the cinema: central heating, bright lights, chandeliers, luxurious carpets – it was like stepping into another world, even before the drama unfolded on the screen.
Derby had perhaps 20 cinemas, ranging from town-centre venues like the Gaumont on London Road, the Odeon in St Peter’s Street, the Regal in East Street (where a theatre organist rose from a trapdoor in the floor) and the Picture House (famous for its fireplace) in Babington Lane, to suburban cinemas like the Cavendish in Normanton, the Rex at Alvaston and the Essoldo at Chaddesden. Even the notorious West End had its own cinema, the Popular in Mill Street.
Different cinema chains operated, so if there was a queue right around the block to see a new blockbuster at one cinema, you just waited until it returned to Derby to be shown at the chain’s “second” cinema a few weeks later.
The only downside, so far as I as concerned, was the continuous performance where the main film and the “B” movie (usually a black and white British cop drama), together with newsreel and advertisements, kept rolling from 2 p.m. until the stampede to beat the National Anthem at about 10 p.m.
My father was a man who wouldn’t be hurried, so instead of rushing our tea to make the start of the main feature, we’d always arrive in the middle of the film. The whole programme would continue until the point I dreaded, when my father would nudge me and say: “I think this is where we came in.” Then we’d stumble out in the dark. I always saw the second half before I saw the first. I think I was about 13 before I saw a big film from beginning to end. I don’t suppose Neil would count that.

That wretched Derby-Forest feud …

2011-01-22T11:10:00.000Z

IT may come as a shock to Rams fans under the age of 50: there was a time when the hateful feud with today’s visitors to Pride Park didn’t exist.
Whisper it gently … it was once perfectly acceptable to speak their name. And even not mind if sometimes they won, so long as it didn’t affect your own team’s chances.
In fact, there were Rams supporters, especially those living near the county border, who went to watch Nottingham Forest every other week when home fixtures were arranged so as not to clash.
My memories of the City Ground go back to 1957. Derby County had just won the Third Division North; Forest had finished runners-up to Leicester City in the Second.
For the next few seasons, as the Rams re-established themselves in the second tier, when there was no League action at the Baseball Ground I often travelled 16 miles up the road to watch top-flight football.
I saw some of the greatest teams there – the Wolves side that lifted the League championship two years running in the late 1950s, the pre-Munich Busby Babes, and the Spurs side that achieved the first modern Double in 1960-61.
When Forest themselves reached the 1959 FA Cup Final, I think most East Midlanders wanted them to beat Luton Town at Wembley.
When did it all change? When Brian Clough pitched up on the banks of the River Trent. After Clough went to Forest, relations between opposing fans went rapidly downhill. Today, the level of bile, especially through internet postings, is astonishing. And juvenile. Playground insults at their worst.
I’ve never understood it. Not all this “scum” nonsense, anyway. Doesn’t it ever occur to both sets of supporters that if they’d been born 20 minutes’ drive down the road, they’d be following the other side?
There’s nothing like the crackle of a derby game. But they used to be confined to one city, like the Merseyside or Manchester derbies. Nowadays, it seems that if you haven’t got truly local rivals to hate, it’s necessary to invent them.
I’d dearly love the Rams to win today, but no more than usual. Which is a lot.
For me, the extra edge to this afternoon’s game is because of the Forest manager. I had little time for him when he was at Pride Park, never mind the City Ground. Three points is always the wish. A smile wiped from a smug face would be the bonus.

THE Lion of Vienna has gone. Another part of my boyhood has slipped away.
Nat Lofthouse, who died last weekend at the age of 85, played in the first League match I saw at the Baseball Ground: December 20, 1953, my ninth birthday, the Rams against Bolton Wanderers.
Derby won 4-3, which was surprising since we were going down that season.
Seeing the great Nat Lofthouse in action – what a centre-forward: 30 goals in 33 England appearances – is a memory that has stuck from that chilly afternoon 57 years ago.
That and the Baseball Ground smell: Brylcreem, lunchtime beer and cigarette smoke mixed with the stink that lingered from a week’s worth of whatever they did at Ley’s foundry.
They loved Lofthouse in Bolton and even named a pub after him, the Lion of Vienna in Chorley New Road.
I last saw him in 1996, at the unveiling of the Steve Bloomer memorial in Lock-up Yard. Sir Tom Finney and Wilf Mannion were also present.
Lofthouse, Finney, Mannion: how much would that trio be worth today? It doesn’t matter. The memories they gave us are priceless.

Not life and death … but libraries still make a profound impact on people’s life chances

2011-01-18T16:09:00.002Z

I CAN still remember the first book I borrowed from a library. It was about the Pilgrim Fathers and I picked it up on a Saturday visit to Derby Central Library in the Wardwick. I’d just become old enough to apply for a junior ticket, so it must have been 1951. I started reading after tea, fell asleep with the book in my hands, and awoke early the next morning to devour the rest of it. And I’ve been in love with books – and libraries – ever since.
Over the years, that Wardwick library has changed. It now loans a lot more than just books – DVDs and CDs for instance – and you can now buy time on the internet there. The separate reference library and the reading room for newspapers have long disappeared. But it’s still one of my favourite places in the city.
Once, there were even private libraries. There was one – the Strand Library – opposite that free Central Library. Mrs Peat’s newsagent’s shop in Abbey Street also ran a little lending library. It was as a good job: I had an insatiable appetite for reading.
All of which makes me hope that impending local authority cuts don’t bite too deeply – and certainly not disproportionately – into our library services. So this is where, this week, I get serious. Tales of the four-ale bar will have to take a back seat for now, while I mount my hobbyhorse.
Nearly all library services are run by local authorities (where they are run by another organisation, they are still the local authority’s responsibility). Overall, as part of the coalition government’s austerity measures, English local authorities are having to save 29 per cent of their budget over four years, with a larger proportion of the saving likely to fall in 2011-12. Libraries are obviously vulnerable because local authorities will have to prioritise expenditure on safeguarding children and senior citizens.
Yet although they are not a matter of life and death, libraries make a profound impact on people’s life chances. Building literacy levels, educational attainment and employability also builds confidence, self-esteem and well-being. With one in six people in the UK struggling with literacy, local authority decision makers need reminding of this.
There is certainly some great work being done by modern library services. The last ten years have seen an explosion of creative, engaging activity – reading groups, author events, summer reading holiday activities, baby rhyme times, websites, library festivals, city read-ins and so on.
The public response has been remarkable, especially when it comes to children. Almost 80 per cent of five to ten-year-olds now use libraries. Children’s borrowing has risen for six years running. Last summer, 760,000 children took up libraries’ Summer Reading Challenge – to read six books. In 2009-10, 4,125 UK library sites plus 573 mobiles attracted 321.5million visits.
A 1964 Act says that local authorities have a duty to provide a comprehensive and efficient library service. The problem is that “comprehensive and efficient” has never been clearly defined. Whatever it means, we mustn’t deny anyone the pleasure that I experienced in reading my first library book all those years ago. Even my favourite pub has a wide selection of books for patrons to read while they enjoy a pint. Now that’s civilised.

Pitbull is right - when it comes to behaviour, soccer could learn much from its rugby cousin

2011-01-16T11:34:00.001Z

I’VE never taken to Brian Moore. The former solicitor, record-breaking England hooker known as “Pitbull”, and, according to the BBC publicity department, commentator who “takes no prisoners and speaks his mind” has always struck me as a complicated character.
He seems to be the “professional” Yorkshireman, although he isn’t Yorkshire at all. At least not in the way that would pass the criterion once set by former Derby Telegraph sportswriter Mike Carey, who ruled that you had to be “born within the sound of Bill Bowes” (Bowes was a great Yorkshire fast bowler in the 1930s).
Moore was born in Birmingham. He was a few months old when a Halifax couple adopted him. That’s where the accent comes from.
Last year, I tipped Moore’s autobiography, Beware Of The Dog, for the William Hill Sports Book of the Year Award. It duly walked away with the title. Alas, I didn’t follow up my conviction by placing a bet on his often sad and melancholy tale. It did, though, help me to understand why he is “complicated”. Moore’s childhood experiences alone were enough to mix up anyone.
But he isn’t my cup of tea. Nevertheless, last week I applauded him for something he said on his way to winning the BBC Television programme, Celebrity Mastermind.
When John Humphreys suggested that Moore had no time at all for soccer, the former rugby union star put him right.
Moore, a Chelsea fan, admires the skill and athleticism of modern soccer. What he hates is the cheating and hypocrisy surrounding it.
The diving, feigning injury, shirt tugging, arm pulling and other nonsense mostly imported into the British game by foreign players.
Moore couldn’t understand why this has been allowed to flourish. There are plenty of regulations that would enable the game’s rulers to clamp down on the unsavoury side of football. Why are they rarely implemented?
FIFA president Sepp Blatter – "the man who has 50 ideas a day, and 51 of them are silly” – always wants to tinker.
Instead of exercising his mind on new ways to sound daft, Blatter could ensure that the existing rules are applied.
If referees gave a penalty every time a shirt was grabbed when a corner came over, defenders would desist.
If the FA suspended players who fell to earth holding their head when television showed that the worst that could have befallen them was a broken fingernail, they might stop doing it.
The Pitbull has a point. Soccer could learn much from its rugby cousin.

You can never have enough statues

2011-01-11T21:48:00.001Z

TWO Japanese men are standing outside the Cathedral. One of them waves a camera at me. Clearly, they want me to take their photograph. I oblige, feeling pleased that Derby should apparently be attracting tourists from the other side of the world. And even if they are over here on business, it’s still nice that they want a photographic reminder of themselves posing in front of our lovely cathedral.
Then one of them tugs at my sleeve, beckoning me to follow him. A moment later we’re on Cathedral Green and he’s pointing and asking me something. His English isn’t very good, my Japanese non-existent, but eventually I work out the gist of his question: “Who is that bloke on the horse?”
Hitherto, I’ve usually found that the best way to communicate with foreigners struggling to speak our language is to shout at them loudly in broken English. That generally works. But on this occasion, in the face of visitors from the Land of the Rising Sun, explaining the intricacies of the British monarchical story, and the tiny part played in it by Bonnie Prince Charlie, defeats me. We part company with handshakes all round, them none the wiser about the bloke on the horse.
It got me thinking though. The Young Pretender’s equestrian statue does look grand. But why is he stuck out of the way on Cathedral Green? I’ve often wondered why some folk make so much fuss about the prince’s tenuous connection with Derby. But it’s a fine piece of art. So, if we’ve got it, why not flaunt it? How about resiting it at the top of the Cornmarket?
Derby has precious few statues. Queen Victoria used to look down St Peter’s Street from The Spot, until it was decided that standing above new public lavatories there was less than a crowning glory and she was moved to what was then the Derbyshire Royal Infirmary. How about moving her again, to Victoria Street? After all, it was named for her.
That great philanthropist and local MP, Michael Thomas Bass, gazes down on Museum Square (where, thanks to late-night revellers, he occasionally acquires a traffic cone on his head), while Sir Henry Royce has been shifted around, from the Arboretum via the River Gardens to an R-R factory site.
Florence Nightingale has three statues. The Lady with the Lamp is represented at the former DRI, at the old Nightingale Home opposite, and on the side of the old Boots building in St Peter’s Street where she is joined by industrialists Jedediah Strutt and John Lombe, and historian William Hutton.
Sporting statuary is scarce. You have to go out to Pride Park for statues of Brian Clough and Peter Taylor. Inside the stadium there is a bust of Steve Bloomer, but I’ve never actually seen it. From my seat in the West Stand, it’s invisible.
So Derby should have more statues in the city centre itself. Candidates? Well, there are obvious ones like John Flamstead, Joseph Wright and John Whitehurst, all figures of national importance. Whoever we chose, though, unlike naming bits of the Inner Ring Road, nominations should not be canvassed via an internet poll. Otherwise we’ll be stuck with a statue of Lara Croft in the Market Place.

A silly hat and a broken ankle – you never know where your day will lead

2011-01-04T17:38:00.001Z

YOU never know where the day will lead. Weeks of uninterrupted routine don’t mean that today won’t be different. That one small decision, one momentary lapse of concentration, won’t take you off in a direction that you’d never considered when you were negotiating the bones in your breakfast kipper. One minute I’m chuntering to myself about a youth in a daft hat. The next, I’m phoning an ambulance. No, he didn’t hit me. I’ll explain.
I’d decided to celebrate my birthday with a trip to Tesco. Two buses arrived together. We jumped on the first, which dropped us opposite the Mason’s Arms. Had we have boarded the second, then we would have alighted at Tesco itself and disaster would probably have been averted.
But as we were nearer a pub than a supermarket, I decided that a better way to mark the occasion would be to have a drink first, partake of Nadine’s scrumptious lunchtime grub, and only then worry about extra bread and vegetables for Christmas.
As we crossed the road, I was still thinking about a youth who’d been sitting in front of me on the bus. I’d taken a dislike to him because he was on a mobile phone, openly discussing his impending court appearance following a late night altercation. And he was wearing one of those daft hats. You’ve seen them around Derby. They have what, at first glance, appear to be pigtails dangling either side of the wearer’s head.
I much preferred the time when there was a strict hierarchy surrounding the wearing of hats. Bowlers, trilbies, flat caps – each advertised the different social class of the wearer. You knew where you stood with a hat. Personally, I’ve always been a ratter man, with the occasional summertime nod towards a panama, set at a jaunty angle, naturally. And, of course, on cold winter’s days at Pride Park, there’s my Rams bobble hat.
Anyway, next minute, Mrs R has tumbled on black ice and it’s the start of a four-day drama that involves surgeons pinning back together her tibia and fibula, then a will-she-won’t-she-be-home-for Christmas saga (no need for extra food if the highlight of our festive season was going to be a mince pie in the Royal Derby). Happily, they discharged her with a day to spare, albeit initially she was under house arrest.
So, there are three lessons here: don’t take your eye off the pavement, even though the snow has gone; don’t become distracted by criminals wearing daft hats; Royal Derby staff are universally wonderful so stop moaning about them blocking your drive with their cars (I’d still like residents’ only parking, though, especially after negotiating a wheelchair around cars parked on pavements).
I was also reminded how wonderful it is to have good friends. Offers of help flooded in. Jan at the Rowditch even said that for the six weeks that Mrs R would be plastered, she could use “the top toilet”. Hitherto, I hadn’t been aware that such facilities existed at “The Ditch”. Maybe they are reserved only for royal visitors and injured drinkers.
As I say, it was an unusual day. Even before I poured a pint of boiling custard on my foot … but we won’t go there.

Lessons in how to behave in Britain may be a good idea

2010-12-28T16:39:00.000Z

ANOTHER year is almost over. Memories of 2010? Derby’s roadworks, mostly. I was saying to Alf in the Rowditch the other night, I wonder if I’ll live long enough to walk through the city without tripping over a bulldozer. Alf, meanwhile, was wondering if he’d live long enough to see the end of the DFS sale. He’s a wag, is Alf.
But looking back at Derby over the last 12 months: the Hippodrome thing rumbles on; what used to be Duckworth Square still looks as though it was once carpet bombed by Herman Goering; the much-vaunted waterfront development in Full Street still lies very definitely undeveloped, the giant sign proclaiming its coming now itself dilapidated and flapping mockingly in the wind. Apparently, moves are afoot to sort it out. Don’t hold your breath.
Derby City Council has come under fire for spending tens of millions of pounds redesigning its own headquarters while nonagenarian citizens face being moved out of what have been, for decades, their cosy, safe-haven old folks’ homes. Some even think that the shock might finish them off.
And then those roadworks, most of which are to do with the completion of the Inner Ring Road that cuts its brutal swathe from Friar Gate to Osmaston Road. Just before Christmas, I took myself off to the Ye Olde Spa Inn, where survivors of the 1949-50 intake at Becket School Mixed Infants – it stood a few hundred yards from the Spa – had gathered to chew over old times. There was mild disruption when someone temporarily lost their hearing aid. But between us we managed to remember the names of all the shops, most now long since demolished, of our childhood.
Walking up Abbey Street, it struck me that the razing to the ground of the neighbourhood had at least exposed, in all its dilapidated glory, the Grade II-listed warehouse that once belonged to the Great Northern Railway. There it sits in the distance, just off Friar Gate, begging for some attention. The way it has been allowed to deteriorate is a disgrace. Apparently the recession is blamed for it not being redeveloped. That doesn’t explain 30 years of neglect. It now takes a heroic leap of faith to imagine that it could be rescued.
For me, though, the saddest story to appear in the Derby Telegraph in 2010 was that of the Roma community’s effect on the people of New Normanton. I lived there for almost a decade. That was over 40 years ago, our first married home, a little terrace house in Young Street. What a lovely mixed neighbourhood it was. There were cultural differences, true. But I don’t recall anyone ever accusing immigrants of not contributing. Just the opposite: Indians and Pakistanis, in particular, gave us lessons in long hours and hard graft.
Interestingly, the people of New Normanton don’t seem to blame the Roma themselves for the current problems that have seen overcrowded houses, rubbish dumped in streets, large numbers of people gathering on street corners, and late-night parties. The general opinion seems to be that they don’t know any different; it’s what they would do in their homeland. In which case, lessons in how to behave when you get to Britain would appear to be alarmingly overdue. Maybe in 2011?

Christmas shopping? So why would you want life insurance?

2010-12-21T22:32:00.000Z

THREE days to go. Have you got all your presents? I’m still not quite there. The older we get, the more difficult it becomes to buy something imaginative for those we love. Personally, I don’t want to undertake a bungee jump, or go scuba diving. And neither, I suspect, does Mrs R.
So I’ve spent a fair bit of time, these last few days, wandering around the shops with all the other men looking for inspiration. Mrs R, who used to manage Edwards china store of blessed memory, always said that, come the late afternoon of Christmas Eve, she could sell practically anything to panicking husbands and boyfriends each of whom had just emerged from the pub, realising that they still needed to buy a present for the woman in their life. And the clock was ticking.
With time still to spare, I wasn’t quite that desperate. And I certainly hadn’t been on licensed premises. Even I don’t do that before midday. But there was still this feeling of anxiety as I ploughed down a crowded St Peter’s Street last Saturday morning, wondering if I could get away with yet another Christmas visit to Marks and Spencer’s ladies’ wear department.
Anyway, I don’t know why – possibly because it is panto season – but I was trying to remember the lyrics to that little known song, I’m Whistling Through The Knothole In Grandpa’s Wooden Leg, when my mobile phone rang. It was a man from a bank with whom I’ve never dealt, hoping to sell me life insurance.
What a strange thing to do: the Saturday before Christmas, telephoning a random number in the hope that the person who answers is, at that very moment, considering taking out a policy on their life. What are the chances? As this is a family newspaper and we are, after all, in the season of peace and goodwill to all humankind, I won’t tell you exactly what I said. But I think I got my message across and, I hope, my number crossed off their list. Although, as it was the festive season, I did feel it necessary to end my short speech with: “By the way, no offence intended.” I’m nothing if not sensitive to other’s feelings.
Derby at Christmas, eh? Everywhere, people in a hurry. Men trying to remember that last-minute instruction: “Make sure you keep the receipt.” Women buying up food as if the city was about to undergo a siege the like of which hasn’t been seen since Feldmarschal Paulus encircled Stalingrad. Amateur drinkers making public fools of themselves. And banks conducting daft telephone calls that can serve only to annoy complete strangers.
Still, that’s the downside, and I’m no grinch. When all the madness had subsided there are friendships to be cherished, blessings to be counted, warm memories to recount like those wonderful 1960s family Christmases at my in-laws in Depot Street. I wonder if many people still gather around the piano after tea.
We should also remember those less fortunate. As my Auntie Babs – she’s 95 – said recently, when viewing television pictures of yet another natural disaster: “You just wish that everyone in the world could be as warm and safe as we are.” I’ll raise a glass to that. Merry Christmas, everyone.

Forget Wenger's excuse … old Derby County stars proved you could play good football on a bad pitch.

2010-12-18T10:44:00.002Z

SO the pitch was to blame for Arsenal losing to Manchester United this week. According to Arsene Wenger that is.
The Frenchman cited the Old Trafford playing surface as the real reason why his side underperformed in one of their most important games of the season so far.
“It was a very bad pitch," said Wenger. “The technical quality suffered as a result … if I ask you do you want a good pitch or a bad one, what do you say?"
Funny that. Having watched the game – which, admittedly, never lived up to expectations – I thought it was simply that, on Monday night, Manchester United were the better team.
But what Wenger was implying was that Arsenal are a better team than United but had been dragged down to their level by the playing surface.
“The pitch here is not good enough to play good football,” he told his after-match press conference.
Not good enough to play good football? Wait a minute. Didn’t Brian Clough’s team produce stunningly good football on a Baseball Ground pitch that resembled winter on the Somme? And there is no comparison with that old mud heap and the conditions at Old Trafford the other night.
Ankle-deep by mid-season, grassless and bone-hard come April, the Baseball Ground should have taxed players of even the highest calibre. Yet, week after week, Clough’s team – and Dave Mackay’s side that emulated its achievements by winning the Football League championship, as the top flight then was – entertained us with some wonderful football. Goodness knows what they could have achieved on today’s bowling green surfaces.
Imagine Kevin Hector skipping around a modern pitch, weaving his magic with a modern ball and wearing modern boots.
Talking of footwear, there is a lovely story that Tim Ward used to tell about the day, back in the 1940s, when Rams trainer Dave Willis picked up the boots belonging to the great Peter Doherty.
The Rams were getting changed before a match against Manchester United at the Baseball Ground. It was mid-January and the pitch comprised, as usual, of about six inches of cloying, foul-smelling mud covered with a liberal helping of sand. Where there wasn’t sand, there were puddles.
Willis held up Doherty’s boots and showed them around the dressing-room.
“Just look at these,” he told the Rams players. They’re a disgrace. Peter, you’ve got three studs missing out of this one, and four missing out of this one. How do you expect to go out there and do well?”
Peter the Great just shrugged: “Well, Dave, if you can play, then you can play.”
End of conversation.
Years later, when asked about that infamous Baseball Ground pitch, Charlie George told the interviewer: “I liked playing there. The conditions never bothered me. They were never really a problem for me.”
Again – if you can play, then you can play.
Another great Rams name, Johnny Morris, who cost a British record £24,500 when Derby signed him from Manchester United in 1949, remembers that Baseball Ground quagmire: “They used to have to put coke burners all over the pitch to dry it out.”
Frank Upton – “Frank the Tank” to his fans – was just about the toughest nut, the strongest player, ever to play for Derby County, but even he agreed that, in the 1950s, the Baseball Ground pitch “must have been about the worst in the Football League”.
Yet Frank also enjoyed playing on it, albeit for different reason to the consummately skilled Doherty and George.
“Well, I never looked on it as hard work. Just as a job that had to be done.
“Having said that, it must be wonderful to play on the pitches they play on now. It must be a treat to go out there today.”
Except if you’re Arsenal playing at Old Trafford, apparently.

The memory lingers when the price is forgotten? Not necessarily …

2010-12-14T22:50:00.003Z

THE scene is a Derby supermarket. The world’s slowest checkout operator is being aided and abetted by an unusually dim-witted customer. The girl processing the merchandise is so slow that she appears to be making time stand still. Just to help out, the customer is showing no inclination to begin packing anything away until everything has passed over the scanner.
Only when the checkout girl tells her the cost does she begin to dig for her credit card, first to the bottom of a cavernous shopping bag to find her handbag; and then around the bulging handbag to locate her purse.
The transaction finally complete, at last she begins to pack her shopping. But wait! Her mobile telephone rings. It must be a matter of life and death because she abandons the shopping that is still on the conveyor belt and retreats to conduct a conversation that lasts perhaps four minutes. By this time, even the dozy checkout girl is mildly embarrassed: “Sorry about this,” she smiles weakly. And I want to scoop up the remains of this woman’s shopping and dump it in her trolley. Only if I did, she’d probably call the store manager and have me arrested for interfering with her satsumas.
Anyway, that’s of my chest. I feel better now. And it’s filled up about half of this column. Which is never a bad thing when you’re staring out of the window, willing something interesting to happen on a winter’s day.
To be honest, it looks a bit quiet at the moment. There’s the usual traffic jam as motorists weave their way between cars parked by non-residents. The dustmen have just arrived, which has added to the fun. Roll-on residents-only parking. I’ll be particularly pleased to see the back of the woman who daily shoves her car on the pavement outside our house. And the one who has a sign in her car window proclaiming: “Chick On Board.” What’s that all about?
Ten days to Christmas, eh? You’d think I’d be full of seasonal goodwill. And I am, really. As my old pal, Arthur Hawksworth, used to say: “It’s not me, Rip. It’s them others.”
I’ve told you about Arthur. He was a Derby Telegraph van driver and everyone knew him as “Squeak”. I don’t know why. He looked a bit like Arthur Askey, only a lot taller. But that doesn’t explain his nickname. I expect we’ll never know.
Arthur had a fund of homespun sayings. One Christmas, when I was about 20, I took the future Mrs R to the Bull’s Head at Repton for a meal (I was still trying to impress her in those days). The following day, Arthur asked if we’d enjoyed it. I said that we had, very much, but that it was a bit on the expensive side.
“Ah well,” said Arthur, “you know what they say …” – he always prefaced these homilies with “you know what they say” – “ … the memory will linger when the price is forgotten.” Actually, on this occasion he was wrong. I still remember that the bill came to £9 8s 4d. And I was earning only £15 a week. I liked Arthur, though. I bet he’d have had a saying about that dozy pair in the supermarket.

Derby County's Tim Ward discovered the secret of Tommy Lawton's suitcase at Butlin's.

2010-12-13T15:51:00.000Z

THE last time I saw Tommy Lawton play was in a charity match, long after his professional career was over. He was guesting for a showbiz team against a local press side on the old British Celanese ground at Spondon.
The image is still strong: a tall, sharp featured man with sleek black hair, rising high above the defence – not difficult as it comprised flat-footed journalists who’d been on the pop the night before – and, neck muscles straining, crashing a header into the back of the net.
Years later, I got to know Lawton. He was always ready to make public appearances (never asking for so much as even his bus fare) to help publicise books that I had published.
He was always highly regarded by his peers. The Rams legendary pair, Raich Carter and Peter Doherty, were among several great football names who came from all over Britain to attend his 65th birthday party.
He was also one of life’s gentlemen, alas let down by more than a few hangers-on and “business partners”.
Lawton was Everton’s and England’s centre-forward before the Second World War, and Chelsea’s after it. He also played for Brentford and Arsenal. But it was Nottingham where he finished up, his name inextricably entwined with the city’s poor football relation, Notts County.
Earlier this year, former Derby Telegraph sports journalist, Eddie Giles, wrote a book about the Magpies’ history during their Lawton era.
A former northern sports editor of the Daily Telegraph, Eddie is the author of several books on Derby County and the Bristol clubs, as well as biographer of former Forest player and manager, Billy Walker, who between the wars also found time to score 250 goals for Aston Villa.
But back to Tommy Lawton, one of the biggest names in football when he sensationally left First Division Chelsea to join Notts County, then in the Third Division South, for a £20,000 transfer fee.
Giles chronicles a story that ranges from Lawton’s heights as one of England’s finest centre-forwards to the depths that led him to the verge of suicide.
The player went from the euphoria of 31 goals in County’s promotion to the Second Division in 1950, to the disillusionment of three departures from Meadow Lane. The first took him to Brentford and then a return to the top flight with Arsenal.
The second brought relegation and dismissal after only one season as Notts manager.
The third dumped him in the dole queue when his role as County’s chief scout was declared redundant.
Away from football, life for Lawton was one setback after another, as publican, sports shop manager, insurance salesman and pools representative.
He died in 1996 and to Eddie’s fascinating account, I can add two further stories, both connected to Derby County. The first Lawton told me himself, about the time he’d had a bad game for Burnley Reserves against the Rams Reserves. At the final whistle, Derby’s Hughie Gallacher sought him out and gave him golden advice.
The second came from ex-Rams player Tim Ward, who in 1948 had a summer job with Lawton, coaching football at Butlin’s (how times have changed).
The two shared a chalet and Ward was puzzled by Lawton’s permanent attachment to his suitcase.
“He wouldn’t let it out of his sight,” recalled Tim. Eventually, Tommy showed the Rams player what was bothering him: the case was stuffed full of banknotes.
Until then, no one could understand how, six months earlier, in the days of the footballers’ maximum wage, Notts County had persuaded one of the best strikers in England to drop two divisions. Tim Ward, at least, now had the answer.

Of honesty, telegrams and hot cross buns …

2010-12-08T07:53:00.001Z

SHOULD you always tell the truth, even at the risk of hurting another’s feelings? That was the debate down the pub the other evening. To illustrate the pitfalls of paying an undeserved compliment just for politeness sake, I recounted the time that I worked with someone who thought that they could cook when everyone else knew that they couldn’t.
One Good Friday, there were only three of us on duty when her with delusions of cooking adequacy produced homemade hot-cross buns. My other colleague had the lightning foresight to announce that he was about to leave the building and wouldn’t be back until at least Easter Tuesday. Which left just me. The bun smelled of onion; and in the known universe, something of that size should have weighed that much only on the planet Jupiter.
I broke off some crumbs, scattered them on my plate, then consigned the bun itself to the bottom of a deep wastepaper bin, covering it with about two feet of scrap paper. Unfortunately, when our would-be Delia reappeared and asked if I’d enjoyed it – and I smacked my lips and said: “Lovely, thanks,” – she went away and returned with another one. And this time I had to force it down under the watchful eye of the perpetrator of a culinary atrocity.
Of course, some people can rustle up the most amazing meals with only the barest facilities. In the 1960s, I worked at the Derby Telegraph’s Burton office where we had a wonderful receptionist called Elsie Goodall. One day she offered to cook us lunch. She had only a two-ring gas burner with which to work, but soon we were feasting on soup, lamb and three veg, rhubarb pie and lashings of custard. And so it went on, day after day, and all for half a crown a time (13p to the post-decimal generation).
I don’t know how she did it and, to begin with, it was grand. But then meals were served earlier and earlier until one morning, at just before nine o’clock, we were greeted by the smell of what amounted to a large Sunday lunch cooking. We decided that we had to say something but, alas, our combined diplomatic skills fell woefully short of those required to deal with someone as sensitive as Mrs Goodall. Lunches were summarily cancelled.
A few days later, in a bid to restore friendly relations, we devised a little joke. My pal, John Orgill, had come across an unused Post Office telegram envelope and, with the aid of some copy paper and the right typewriter face, we produced an authentic-looking “telegram” that read: “Imperative you ignore earlier telegram.” We addressed it to Mrs Goodall and left in the front office. We thought that she’d just scratch her head and ask: “What other telegram?” And then we’d all laugh and be friends again.
Unfortunately, we’d forgotten that her husband, a long-distance lorry driver, had been unwell. Mrs Goodall’s imagination went into overdrive. It took some considerable effort to calm her down and explain that it was just a bit of fun. She wasn’t amused. Never mind three-course lunches; that was the last day she made us so much as a cup of tea. If only the maker of leaden hot-cross buns had been as touchy.

Derby County memories – when Ray's goal made a trip to The Valley worthwhile

2010-12-04T11:31:00.000Z

FIFTY years ago this weekend, me and my pal, Barry Iremonger – he was a distant relative of Notts County’s legendary goalkeeper, Albert Iremonger – trekked all the way across London to see the Rams play at Charlton.
For two schoolboys it was quite an adventure. Train to St Pancras, Circle line to Charing Cross, then a Southern Region service to Dartford, alighting at Charlton station. A two-minute walk along Flood Street and we were there – The Valley, Charlton’s huge ground set in a natural amphitheatre.
In its heyday The Valley had held over 75,000 spectators. And it was still big enough to do that in 1960; health and safety, for football grounds at least, was still a work in progress.
But on that raw December day, half a century ago, there were barely 6,000 souls scattered around the stadium. Interest was minimal. Both teams were in mid-table in the old Second Division, apparently going nowhere.
Inside 10 minutes, the Rams were two goals down. And that was how it remained until 20 minutes from time, when Derby’s centre-half, Ray Young, popped up with a rare goal.
I liked Ray. He was a classy defender, albeit some felt he was a little casual. Perhaps that was why manager Harry Storer much preferred tough nuts like Martin McDonnell and Les Moore.
Moore, built like the proverbial brick outhouse, still plied his trade as a Sheffield insurance agent while playing football part-time.
Ex-paratrooper McDonnell once played half a season for Crewe Alexandra before bothering to mention that he thought he might have broken his ankle four months earlier. It turned out that he had.
But it was Ray, who’d played for England Schools back in 1949, who was my favourite. I was delighted when he popped up with a goal that day.
Alas, hopes of a fight back and a point came to nothing. Two minutes from time, Derby’s goalkeeper, Terry Adlington, was beaten again and we began the journey home.
Egg and chips just off Leicester Square, then the milk train back to Derby and a post-midnight walk home. Today, most parents would be reluctant to let two young lads undertake such a venture.
But they were more innocent times and we went to a few away games that season. Barry’s father had died in a railway accident and Barry still got free travel passes that he shared with me. He lived close by the Baseball Ground, at the Crescent Vaults that was kept by his grandparents.
That Boxing Day we went up to watch Derby play at Elland Road. The Rams had lost 3-2 to Leeds on Christmas Eve. Don Revie turned out; he was then player-manager of the Yorkshire club. A young Billy Bremner played as well, at inside-left. There’s a term from the past: inside-left.
The return game was a corker, a 3-3 draw. Tommy Powell got two, Bill Curry the other. It’s amazing how you can recall details from 50 years ago, yet find it difficult to remember who played last week.
Early January 1961 saw us off to Brighton for a third-round FA Cup match on a muddy, sand-strewn pitch at the Goldstone Ground.
Derby lost 3-1, Peter Thompson scored, and we enjoyed the tastiest cheese and onion cobs from a café near ground, run by a nice couple called Reg and Phyllis. Again, how is it that these trivial things stick in the memory?
Then came Scunthorpe United in the middle of January. Yet again, we went up by train – changing at Doncaster – and walked to the Old Show Ground, where the Iron then played.
But, this time, it isn’t the Rams’ 2-1 win that sticks in the memory. It’s the fact that we each bought a trilby hat from Scunthorpe Co-op. Boy, did we think we looked the business.
Doesn’t football give you some wonderful memories? And they’re not always about the game.

Wait until health and safety get hold of Christmas …

2010-12-01T07:13:00.001Z

IS the Christmas tree in Derby Market Place getting smaller, or is it me? Actually, that’s doesn’t sound right. A bit like: does this room smell, or is it me? Whatever, I reckon the tree isn’t as big as the one I remember from my childhood. Plus, when we were kids they never had to fence it off. No one would have tried to climb it to steal the lights. And if they had, and fallen off? “Serves them right,” would have been the overwhelming consensus. I’m assuming that the fence is the work of the health and safety people. Dave, of course, has promised to free us of their pettifogging rules. We’ll see.
In the meantime, I’m surprised that the health and safety wallahs haven’t got their hands on more of Christmas. Dashing through the snow in a one-horse open sleigh: has anyone done the risk assessment? While shepherds watched their flocks by night, all seated on the ground: surely they should be provided with ergonomic chairs? Little donkey … plodding on with his precious load: alert the RSPCA. Away in a manger, no crib for a bed: ring social services at once.
And if we’re talking political correctness, then what about Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer? There’s definitely a whiff of discrimination there.
If you think I’m joking, consider the case of the Midlands rotary club that was made to fit its Santa’s sleigh – which did all of 5mph – with a seatbelt. Utter nonsense. If ever there is a man with an unblemished driving record, it’s the fat – sorry, horizontally challenged – guy with the red suit and white beard. And what about those courses run by the Chartered Institute of Environmental Health, teaching department store Santas how to balance small children on their knees? That’s more of an elf and safety issue (stick with me; I’m trying to raise money for charity here).
So enough of this seasonal jocundity. Back to Derby’s Christmas tree. It may not be as big as in days of yore. But it’s still big enough to raise some money for charity, thanks to Derby Rotary Club’s Trees of Light Appeal, now in its third year. It works like this: you pay to sponsor a tree light – either in the Market Place or at Derby Cathedral – in memory of a loved one. Each dedication will be recorded in a book that will be held in Derby Central Library from shortly after Christmas.
In the past two years, more than £4,000 has been raised for local charities. This year, the Mayor’s Charities, Derbyshire Children’s Holiday Centre, East Midlands Air Ambulance and the Breast Cancer Appeal will benefit. The Derby Telegraph always likes to get behind the initiative and I am pleased to add the support of this column to a terrific idea. Of course, every day we remember those loved ones who are no longer with us. But this time of year makes such thoughts especially poignant. So, if you would like to know more about the Trees of Light Appeal, then you can collect a leaflet from any Derby Rotary Club member. If you don’t know one, email John Cheadle on johncheadle666@btinternet.com and he’ll sort you out. Tell him I sent you.

How a tea break got ball rolling for ex-Derby County players association

2010-11-27T12:55:00.000Z

AUTOGRAPH hunters will be in evidence outside Pride Park on Thursday evening. Don’t worry: there isn’t a hastily rearranged match. There will, though, be a host of names from the Rams’ past going into the ground for the 20th annual dinner of the Derby County Former Players’ Association.
Back in 1991, I had the great pleasure of helping former player and manager, Tim Ward, start the association. We’d first met in 1963, through charity football, and it was charity football that sowed the seed for the Former Players’ Association.
In the mid-1970s, Tim found that his new route home from work took him past my office door, so he took to calling in each week. The routine was always the same. He would arrive at precisely 4.10pm, we’d take turns to buy the tea in the canteen, and then spend the next hour or so talking football. Mostly, he talked and I listened.
It was fascinating stuff. When he was appointed Rams manager in June 1962 – salary £2,500 a year plus a Vauxhall Victor car – 11 of the current players had refused to re-sign.
The previous year had seen the removal of the footballers’ maximum wage and some were holding out for better terms than those offered by Derby: £20 a week, plus £5 if they were in the first team, and £1 per player for each 1,000 spectators over 18,000.
Eventually all the players re-signed, although Bill Curry and Ray Swallow asked to go on the transfer list.
Of course, Tim also brought in some great players, some of whom – Kevin Hector, Alan Durban and Colin Boulton in particular – shared in all the glories under Brian Clough.
Over those cups of tea, Tim and I started the Ex-Rams All Stars charity team, all properly affiliated to the Derbyshire FA, with Tim as manager and, for the first few seasons, me as secretary.
Several years later, Rams juniors coach, John Jarman, called to see me about a coaching book and talked enthusiastically about the ex-Wolves players’ organisation to which he belonged.
It struck me that Derby County ought to have one. So I rang Tim and, over lunch at the old Coppice Hotel, we started the ball rolling. I was able to help because I arranged the inaugural dinner in order to launch a book that I was publishing on the club.
It was a great night at the Donington Thistle Hotel. We showed film of the 1946 FA Cup Final. When Cup winners Jack Stamps and Reg Harrison were introduced, it was to a standing ovation.
Sadly, Jack and Tim are no longer with us. Neither are other great names from that night, like Tommy Powell, Angus Morrison, Ken Oxford, Geoff Barrowcliffe, Reg Ryan and Dennis Woodhead.
Happily, the association has flourished through a new generation of former players and there will be a record 255 people at this year’s event.
They include guest of honour Jim Smith, and over 50 former players including Alan Durban, Roy McFarland, John O'Hare, Alan Hinton (over from the west coast of America), Roger Davies, Henry Newton, Ron Webster, Rod Thomas, Richie Barker, John Bowers, Barry Butlin, Gordon Hughes and Phil Waller.
Nigel Clough, Andy Garner and Martin Taylor will represent the current management, and board members Tom Glick and Tim Hinchey will also be there.
Nigel Cleevely, who arranged this year’s dinner, said: “We get exceptional support from the club, who are always eager to welcome former players to home games.”
One Rams fan attending, whose face will be familiar for a different sport, is Derbyshire’s Andrew Jarrett, former Davies Cup player and now head referee at Wimbledon.
“We’ve also had great support from several local companies who take tables,” says former Rams winger, Nigel.
This year's charity supported by former Rams players is the Derbyshire Children's Holiday Centre at Skegness. Nigel Cleevely, of course, raised around £5,000 earlier this year by cycling from Land’s End to John o’ Groats.
And to think, it all started with a pot of tea.

Prune juice – you never think it will happen to you

2010-11-23T17:02:00.001Z

I’M in the pub and the conversation turns to the health-giving properties of fruit juice. Not that I was consuming any at the time. The amber nectar dispensed in my particular hostelry is far too good to abandon, even for the delights of a guava and peach smoothie. No, I was just saying that when I’m not on licensed premises, or when I’m not cooking – an occupation that always seems more enjoyable if you have a glass of something red to hand – then I get in my “five a day”. So we debated our favourite fruit and someone said that he thought prunes were especially good for you. So, therefore, must prune juice.
“Not to excess,” I warned him. And I related a salutary tale about the time I was ordering breakfast in a diner in upstate New York and saw prune juice on the menu. So I ordered a large glass. And, this being the United States, when it arrived, it stood about a foot high. And, yes, Mrs R counselled against it. But you never think it can happen to you.
Twenty minutes later, we were wandering down the street, in search of a good bookshop, when I received the call. A sign announced that rest rooms, as Americans call public lavatories, could be found at the bus station several hundred yards away. A brisk walk, turned into a jog, then a sprint. By the time I was closing in on the loos, I doubt that Usain Bolt would have passed me.
Alas, another sign announced that they were closed for cleaning. But I had no choice. Ignoring the janitor’s “Hey fella, you can’t come in here,” I hurdled his mop bucket (I was younger then) and burst through the door of a vacant stall. When I emerged – I wasn’t in there long – it was to face an angry cleaner and an armed transit authority policeman who kept flexing his trigger finger. I made my apologies and left. Mrs R, who’d just arrived, couldn’t stop laughing long enough to say: “I told you so.” And, to this day, I’ve never taken another sip of prune juice.
Still, where better to share these experiences than in a proper old-fashioned local? Breweries should never have encouraged civilians who aren’t “pub people”. Family friendly pubs? Most folk go to get away from their children. So why would they want to drink in an establishment littered with other people’s offspring?
It is no coincidence that my favourite pub doesn’t open its doors until 7pm. That it doesn’t sell food, save for nuts and crisps (and then don’t get above yourself and start asking for fancy flavours like prawn cocktail). Music? Rather a pubful of regulars knocking out Underneath the Arches to the accompaniment of Joe tickling the ivories, than being blasted by Napalm Death.
Time was when you served an apprenticeship before being accepted into a pub. What joy: that first occasion when the landlord remembered your name, picked up a pint glass and enquired: “Usual?” You bristled with pride at finally being counted a full-time regular rather than a part-time interloper. Only then could you begin to think that people might be interested in your encounter with prune juice.

Never mind SkyPlus, what about steam radio?

2010-11-16T16:44:00.001Z

IT has long been a joke in our house: had it been left to me, we’d still be trying to tune-in Channel 4. Never mind Sky Plus, Freeview and all those other new-fangled contraptions that allow you watch programmes about extreme ironing, Nigerian Second Division football and barn conversions in Texas; I’d still be wandering around with an indoor aerial, hoping to get a better picture for Muffin the Mule.
So it wasn’t surprising that when the Sky engineer connected our HD box in such a way that the DVD player then wouldn’t work, I hadn’t a clue about what to do. I had to enlist the help of my mate, Ted, on the grounds that he once owned a burglar alarm company and therefore probably knows more than most about what cables might go where. In a 30-year career, he electrocuted only three customers, which was much better than most friends expected. Anyway, apparently I need something called an S-Video lead. Then Ted will come back to sort me out.
All this technology, though. When I was a lad, our entertainment came from a wireless set, rented from Telefusion in Babington Lane. In fact, it wasn’t a wireless set at all. Not in the sense that you could tune it in. It was simply a loudspeaker with a switch on the wall to alternate between whatever Telefusion chose to pipe through their system, usually the Light Programme, the Midland Home Service and the Third Programme. Cable radio, I suppose you’d call it today.
The Light Programme featured comedy shows like Take It From Here, Hancock’s Half Hour and Life With The Lyons, as well as Journey Into Space, Dick Barton: Special Agent, Variety Bandbox, Riders Of The Range, Workers’ Playtime, and Have A Go (“Have you had any embarrassing moments?” Wilfred Pickles used to tease).
The regional Home Service, which, I suppose, was the forerunner of Radio 4, broadcast plays, and programmes like The Brains Trust and Round Britain Quiz. The Third Programme was for lovers of serious music who could afford the time to sit through Wagner’s entire Ring Cycle. Bite-sized bits from Classic FM were decades away.
For a few months, Telefusion experimented with Radio Luxembourg. So I became acquainted with the idea of commercially sponsored wireless programmes, and met – on air at least – the Ovaltinies (“Because we all drink Ovaltine, we're happy girls and boys.”).
Remember, however, that this was still the mid-1950s and even on Radio Luxembourg the staple diet was David Whitfield, John Hanson, Guy Mitchell and Frankie Lane. Only occasionally, Elvis, or Bill Haley and his Comets, would butt in.
None of which has much to do with today’s television, with its flat-screen, high definition, even three-dimensional window on the world. Except to mirror just how much that world has changed, never mind in the last 50 years, even in the past five. So is there any wonder that my generation is still coming to grips with the technology? And still shuddering at the memory of those words: “Sorry, sir. I think it’s your tube.”

Anton Rippon will be signing copies of his new book, A Derby View, at Waterstone’s in St Peter’s Street this Saturday, from 12 noon until 2 p.m.

Ken's Pegasus story sustained me on a Cold War train ride to Berlin

2010-11-13T12:29:00.002Z

IT was in Lincoln, climbing up Steep Hill towards the cathedral, that I first became aware of Ken Shearwood. I’d taken a breather in a bookshop, appropriately called Reader’s Rest, when my eye alighted on a copy of Pegasus, about the famous Oxbridge team that won the FA Amateur Cup Final back in the days when that match packed Wembley to its 100,000 capacity.
A few days later, I was travelling by train across the featureless landscape of the North German Plain, eventually slowing to a snail’s pace through the Berlin Corridor, for this was still the Cold War. And throughout that dreary journey, it was the wonderful, romantic story of Pegasus that sustained me. I read it in one sitting.
I’d been back in Derby a few weeks when the phone rang. It was none other than the same Ken Shearwood. What a coincidence.
Not only had I, quite by chance, just read his book, he had also been born in Derby, on Normanton Road near where I grew up; and he’d later lived on Uttoxeter Road, opposite Bemrose School where I’d spent five years.
He’d just completed his autobiography, entitled Hardly A Scholar, which covered his life from those early days in Derby, through wartime service (in command of a tank landing craft at Salerno and Anzio, he was awarded the DSC), Oxford University, Wembley glory with Pegasus, life as an inshore fisherman, two successful novels, and 30 years as a teacher at Lancing public school.
Foolishly, I turned him down and his story was published elsewhere, to great acclaim. Happily, though, this didn’t stop a long-distance friendship developing and Ken has kept in regular contact from his home in Shoreham-on-Sea.
The conversation is usually about the Rams, although now in his 90th year, Ken a fund of stories of his own. Back in 1947, with about as few academic qualifications as it is possible to imagine, he went up to Brasenose College to read history.
He captained the university at football, including a game against an FA XI led by Derby County’s FA Cup-winning centre-half, Leon Leuty.
He played first-class cricket for Oxford, and in 1949 kept wicket for Derbyshire against Gloucestershire at Bristol.
“It was the days of amateurs and professionals – the so-called gentlemen and players – and along with two other amateurs I found myself staying at a different hotel and using a different dressing room to the rest of the team.
“I hit a four off Tom Goddard – who took 15 wickets in the match – which prompted B. O. Allen, their captain who was fielding close to the bat, to belch loudly in my ear, whereupon I was bowled next ball.
“When we fielded, a swarm of bees descended about the head of Bill Copson, the great Derbyshire fast bowler, who set off for the pavilion, arms flailing and uttering the most fearful expletives as the home crowd called out: ‘Windy!’”
Interestingly, Ken’s last major cricket match was for Colonel L. C. Stevens’ XI against the RAF at Eastbourne in 1957. Opening the RAF innings was National Serviceman, Ian Buxton, later of Derbyshire and Derby County. Ian, who died last month, was one of the last to earn a living at both sports.
Although he was always an amateur, for Ken it was football that provided his greatest sporting moments. At centre-half he was part of that fabled Pegasus team that won the FA Amateur Cup in 1951 and 1953. One of his team mates was the Derbyshire cricketer and future captain, Donald Carr.
Ken called again this week to tell me that Pegasus is being republished. I hope it does well. In the meantime, I look forward to more telephone chats. Especially now there is Derby County news to cheer us both.

Anton Rippon’s Rams nostalgia website is at www.derbycountymemories.com

Will they get their bus stop back? Don't gamble on it

2010-11-09T16:43:00.000Z

HAVE you applied? Derby’s latest hotels, a Hampton by Hilton and a Holiday Inn, are about to open. One or two jobs left, apparently. I’ll wait for the casino next year. Always fancied myself with a green eyeshade. Then again, will anyone have any money to waste on gambling? If so, then we won’t really be in a recession of 1930s proportions after all. Not the one promised us by the doomsayers anyway.
I well remember my only foray into casino gambling. It was back in the 1960s, at the Curzon Club in Colyear Street. My pal, who used to be known in this column as the Travel Agent, but who is now the Former Travel Agent, told me it would be alright. A regular on the tables at the Curzon, he always seemed to have loads of cash, so I pricked my ears.
“What do I do?” I asked in wide-eyed innocence.
“Give me a ten-bob note,” he replied.
I did, and in return he gave me a piece of red plastic with instructions to place it on a number on the green baize table. Then the croupier said: “No more bets, please,” and spun the wheel. When it came to a standstill, he reached out with what looked like a back-scratcher and scooped up my bit of plastic.
“What do I do now?” I asked the Travel Agent, who was busy shovelling lots of bits of plastic into his already bulging pockets.
“Give me other ten bob,” he said. It was at that point that the thought crossed my mind that gambling might be a mug’s game. So I declined and that was that. At the end of the evening, of course, the Travel Agent was cashing in enough bits of plastic to build a small boat. He did treat us to steak sandwiches and beer, so I suppose it turned out all right in the end.
But those hotels. A friend of mine who suffers mobility problems is annoyed that her Mackworth bus stop has been moved from opposite the Riverlights to Victoria Street, a few hundred yards away. She overheard a fellow passenger claim that the reason the stop has been moved is that hotel owners do not want guests looking out of their bedroom windows at the rank and file of Derby queuing for their buses.
That can’t be true? To paraphrase Basil Fawlty, when you’re looking out of a hotel window in the centre of an industrial English city, what do you expect to see – the Hanging Gardens of Babylon? And, never mind people queuing for buses. If, to ward off a bout of post-prandial somnolence, hotel guests wander up the Morledge, they’ll be treated to amusement arcades, greasy pavements, fast-food outlets and a derelict chip shop.
The Eagle Centre Market is hardly a thing of beauty, either. We’d have been better off with Cockpit Hill. At least the Old Boat Café, the Canal Tavern, and Mad Harry would have provided a bit of local character for short-stay visitors.
The City Council has suggested that my friend takes advantage of Shopmobility, a service that loans powered and manual wheelchairs. Where is it? Right by the bus stop she’s about to lose.

Anton Rippon will be signing copies of his new book A Derby View at Waterstone’s in St Peter’s Street on Saturday, November 20, from 12 noon until 2 p.m.

If we only went to football to be entertained …

2010-11-06T09:10:00.001Z

EVERYONE was in an especially jolly mood coming away from Pride Park last Saturday teatime.
That wasn’t surprising. We’ve seen a few good performances recently. But the manner of victory over Watford, not least those cracking goals, left even the most pessimistic Rams fan with nothing about which to moan.
What a difference a few weeks can make. Back in mid-September, that dreadful showing against Sheffield United brought to mind an old Al Read joke (for those of less grizzled vintage, Read was a popular radio comedian of the 1950s and 60s, noted for his observational “look at life” humour).
He did a whole routine set around watching football and the line that never ceased to make me chuckle was: “I’m not saying it was a bad game, but people were paying more to get out then than they had to get in.”
I was lucky that day. While the Rams were apparently giving one of their worst performances for some considerable time, I was lying on a trolley in A & E.
I’d been rescued from Derby’s dire doings against the Blades by a dodgy knee that had erupted into something more spectacular than its usual nagging ache. I’d like to tell you that it was football-related, but at most it could have been caused by kicking wingers in the Derby Sunday League over 40 years ago. There is no heroic story to relate.
That, of course, was football for playing. And because I was never very good, there was always greater pleasure in football for watching.
In his book, El Futbol A Sol Y Sombra (Football In Sun and Shadow), the Uruguayan writer, Eduardo Galleano, says that the history of the game “is a sad voyage from beauty to duty”.
Galleano argues that when sport becomes an industry, the joy of simply taking part is destroyed. Professional football, he says, condemns all that is useless – because useless means unprofitable.
Maybe that is the jaundiced view taken by owners. But fans don’t condemn. Every club, from the biggest to the smallest, has supporters who display incredible commitment, no matter what is being served up on the pitch.
A bitterly cold midwinter’s afternoon, 16 years ago, sticks in the memory. The Moat Ground: Gresley Rovers were entertaining Waterlooville who, after a terrible start to the season, were on their way out of the Southern League’s Premier Division.
Yet, as bad as things were for the visitors, it hadn’t daunted the hardy band of around 20 supporters who had travelled up from Hampshire to spend a freezing February afternoon in the middle of what was once a Derbyshire coalfield, relentlessly chanting: “Looville, super Looville,” while wearing little more than replica shirts to ward off the cold.
If we only ever went to football simply to be entertained, then most matches would be played in near-empty stadiums. Al Read’s joke would be a reality.
Let’s face it, the most rabid Rams fanatic would be hard-pushed to make a case for regular entertainment value at Pride Park in recent times. Not since Jim Smith’s early Premier League days, in fact.
Even in the promotion season under Billy Davies I used to leave thinking: “I’m glad that’s over.” Admittedly, generally followed by: “Still, we won.” Sometimes, it was hard work, though.
But then I don’t go just to be entertained. I go because it’s in my blood. The old man first took me when I was nine: Bolton at home, December 1953. Nat Lofthouse played but we still won, 4-3 (and still got relegated in the end). I’ve been going ever since.
People can change job, house, even spouse. But they never change their football club. Not real fans, anyway.
The times they are a-changing at Pride Park? Not sure. But for the first time in a long time, we’re being entertained.

Anton Rippon’s Rams nostalgia website in at www.derbycountymemories.com

Do you remember "Fag packets"? My professor chum wants to know

2010-11-02T16:03:00.004Z

FORGET the economy for a moment. Put aside the affairs of Derby County. Subrata Dasgupta wanted to know if I recalled the game of “fag packets”. My old chum from Bemrose School is now professor of cognitive science at the University of Louisiana, so you might wonder why this bit of nonsense should occupy the brain of a man who writes books with titles like Design Theory and Computer Science, although it did start with a visit to academe.
He emailed: “I was reading some 18th-century English poetry and came across the word 'woodbine’. A train of associations: a brand of cigarettes called Woodbine, then all those other brands: Three Castles, Senior Service, Gold Flake, Player’s Navy Cut. My father smoked, but only one particular brand. And none of the above. So why did I know all these others?
“Then I remembered an image from my Ashgate days in the 1950s: two of us would prop up cigarette packets, half belonging to each, against the playground wall. From a distance, we'd flick packets against them to try to bring them all down. I've forgotten the rules, but I think whoever brought down the last packets standing would claim victory, and the whole lot of fallen packets.”
Strangely enough, another Old Bem had recently written to me on this very subject (I know what you’re thinking: haven’t you lot got anything better to do?). David Boorman, who attended Ashgate with Subrata, remembered that the process was for one person to place one of his flattened fag packets on the playground, resting against the brick wall of the school at an angle of around 45 degrees. Each player in turn would then “skim” one fag packet in the direction of the placed one with the objective of hitting it and causing it to fall flat on the playground. A player who achieved that would then have won and would pick up both the placed packet and the one he had skimmed to knock it down.
Of course, there were great arguments about the “fallen” status of the placed packet: it really should have ended up flat on the ground, but what to do about one that fell against other skimmed ones and remained propped but in a different place? Local rules applied. Fisticuffs occasionally sorted it out.
Subrata’s email had arrived on a mellow day for me. The family were in Yorkshire for the weekend, so I’d risen early to enjoy a cup of tea on the decking, watching the early birds catch their worms. Much later, chores all done (there wasn’t actually a list, just some heavy hints), I was in the company of a glass of passable red, waiting for my dinner to cook. Peckish, I rooted around until I found a half-full packet of Penn’s Original Sea Salted Pretzels. Over another glass of wine, I thought about checking the calories. In the end, I decided not to look. No point in spoiling the moment.
Instead, I went back to thinking about the game of fag packets. As ownership of the quantities of fag packets continually ebbed and flowed. I’m still not sure about the point of it all. Does anyone know? You probably need to be a professor of cognitive science to work it out.

What is it about workmen who don't turn up after promising that they will?

2010-10-26T16:46:00.002+01:00

THE plumber was quite explicit: “I can do it this weekend. I’ll ring you tomorrow and fix a time.” And that was the last we ever heard from him. Strange that, considering that he’d taken the trouble to advertise for customers. Eventually, someone else did the work to our satisfaction. But what is about tradesmen that solicit business and then don’t bother to turn up? Come to that, what is it about the attitude of some of those who do?
Thirteen years ago, we decided to build an extension to our house. After seeing the planning application, a local builder knocked on the door late one evening and asked if he could provide an estimate for the job. His timing wasn’t all that convenient because Rumpole Of The Bailey was well under way, we hadn’t got spare videotape and this was long before SkyPlus allowed you to stop and start at your pleasure. None the less, we let him in and spent the next half-hour explaining what we wanted, showing him the architect’s plan, and discussing the finer detail. He made copious notes before leaving with the promise of a price by the end of the week. I still harbour the hope that, one day, he’ll knock on the door and tell me how much. Then I can show him round our extension, the one where an ancient garage stood on that rainy night in 1997 when he interrupted Horace Rumpole’s summing up for the defence at Uxbridge magistrates’ court.
At least the plumber who didn’t turn up couldn’t mess up. Not like when our upstairs lavatory refused to stop flushing and another plumber declared the siphon unit needed replacing. Simple enough? Not really. The lavatory was fitted into the wall, which was all very neat until you wanted to get the lid off the cistern. Then half the bathroom had to be dismantled. I spent the next four hours listening to all kinds of mumblings, the most recurrent of which was: “I wish I’d never started this.” Followed by: “I should be in a caravan at Mablethorpe by now.”
Eventually, the job completed, I paid him. It was only when he was climbing into his van that he called out: “I don’t know if I’ve connected it properly. It’s impossible to tell. Anyway, look out for water coming through your kitchen ceiling.” It wasn’t the most reassuring thing I’ve ever been told. But he was right to warn me. It took six weeks for the ceiling to dry out. Then I called another plumber.
Eventually, of course, you come across a gem of a tradesman – be it plumber, electrician, painter and decorator, or general builder – and then you must befriend them, make them tea, send them Christmas cards, promise to remember them in your will.
An excellent young chap called Rob now does most of our jobs. The only downside is that he takes so much pride in his work that when all you want is a Formica shelf in the kitchen, he makes a very persuasive case for something in a wood found only in one Peruvian glade and hand-crafted by Bolivian squirrel monkeys. But at least he turns up when promised. And he never mentions Mablethorpe.

American interest raises questions but there is comfort in Rams set-up

2010-10-23T11:48:00.003+01:00

AFTER watching the club for which he had just paid £300 million stumble against their most bitter rivals at Goodison Park on Sunday, Liverpool’s new owner, John W. Henry of the Boston Red Sox, assumed a brave face.
In the Sky commentary box, Andy Gray had earlier mused: “I wonder if they get this sort of atmosphere in baseball.”
I can tell him that they do. Gray has obviously never been around Boston’s Fenway Park when the New York Yankees are in town.
Atmosphere? The history of that particular fixture is littered with punch-ups. And it’s not just the fans. Coaches and players seem to hate each other, too.
For all sorts of reasons, the people who run New England Sports Ventures will have a sense of what they bought into here.
No least because when NESV purchased the Red Sox in 2002, they found themselves with another club hitherto beset by questionable ownership, performing in an outdated stadium.
On the field, the Red Sox’s plight was even worse than Liverpool’s current malaise. Despite being an American sporting institution, they hadn’t won the World Series since 1918.
NESV changed all that and the influential Sports Illustrated magazine named them the number-one ownership group in Major League Baseball.
What has any of this to do with Derby County? On the face of it, not a lot. It hasn’t even got a lot to do with Liverpool. Parallels between the Anfield club and the Red Sox are limited. The nature of professional sport in the USA is very different to ours.
Many of America’s major stadiums are municipally owned, but as well as owning NESN, the TV channel that broadcasts Red Sox games, NESV also runs the Fenway Sports Group that owns the Red Sox stadium. When the team is winning, NESN gets more viewers and more people go to Fenway. An investment that helps the Red Sox to victory gives a triple return.
But NESV has no other interests tied directly to the success of Liverpool. So why do Americans get involved in soccer, a sport most of them can’t abide? It’s a question that still puzzles Rams fans.
What do Derby County’s American owners, General Sports and Entertainment Group, hope to get out of their involvement at Pride Park? The obvious answer is – a profit.
Like every business, that is what GSE is about. But that’s OK. In 1998, GSE bought the Fort Wayne Wizards, a minor league baseball club that had experienced seven straight years of decline. Apathy was the biggest commodity it had to offer.
GSE turned it around before, in 2006, selling to Hardball Capital, an Atlanta-based company that invests in baseball-related businesses. The Fort Wayne franchise (now called the TinCaps) continues to set records and shatter attendances in its Midwest League.
The comfort we can draw from all this is that Derby County’s owners seem more capable than George Gillett and Tom Hicks who, never mind a profit, were fortunate to escape from Merseyside with all their bits intact.
GSE's executives aren’t Forbes List billionaires like the Glazers at Manchester United. But that hardly turned out well.
I’m just happy to see the Rams apparently well run by people whose support for the Former Players’ Association suggests that they also appreciate the club’s tradition.
And if GSE eventually sells at a profit, so what? The debt is now manageable, the team is scoring goals, and we’re leaving Pride Park with a spring in our step. Maybe slow-but-sure is paying off after all.
Mind you, six games unbeaten, one place off the play-offs -– I wonder if those Americans are starting to panic yet?
As to who might own Derby County in the future? Most supporters wouldn’t care if it was Joe Stalin’s long-lost cousin, so long as we were winning matches and weren’t about to go bust.

Anton Rippon/s Rams nostalgia website is on www.derbycountymemories.com

Those ignorant oiks – can we find a small island for them?

2010-10-19T16:38:00.001+01:00

A PINT in the Rowditch beckoned. Early for the bus, I’d walked down to the stop near King’s Drive, opposite the Royal Derby Hospital. It was early evening but there were still plenty of people about. One in particular weaved his way towards me through the traffic, ignoring the tooting horns of angry motorists. He wasn’t actually wearing a hoodie, but in all other respects …
Halfway across the road, he started yelling. Was that the stop for Derby, he wanted to know. And when he’d arrived, breathless, beside me, he asked another question: “Do I have to pay?” Not knowing his circumstances, it was a difficult one to answer. These days, lots of people, not just pensioners, seem to qualify for free bus fares. Especially fit looking young men of the apparently unemployable variety.
He cursed the NHS which had called him in at seven that morning for an operation on his hand (the result of an altercation in Mansfield apparently), kept him hanging about all day with nothing to eat, then booted him out mid-evening with the instruction to return tomorrow. This was more than an inconvenience he said, because he had to appear in court, as if this was an occurrence that everyone takes in their daily stride.
The bus journey was even worse. Two late-teens couples, each with a gaggle of children, sprawled over those long sideways seats reserved for pushchairs and wheelchairs. Tattoos and bits of metal … you’ve got the picture. The language was as ripe as that of my new friend from the bus stop.
I’m something of a people watcher, so I suppose I was weighing them up a bit too intently, wondering where they were from and where they might be heading (and hoping it was a long way from me), when one of the males caught my eye. A snarl curled on his lip. In a situation like that, you just disengage gently and instead become absorbed in something out of the window.
When I stood up to alight, a thin man in his 50s, wearing a suit about four sizes too big for him, tapped me on the shoulder: “The sign says that you mustn’t stand forward of it.” What can you do except smile and say: “Thanks for pointing that out.”
I was ready for that pint. And when I told Alf, my companion for the evening, he said that, quite recently, he’d had similar experiences. Which left us wondering if it wasn’t too late to relocate to a small island. A place where people don’t use six four-letter words in every ten-word sentence; where news of an impending court appearance isn’t trotted out to complete strangers as though we’re all in this together; where innocently catching someone’s eye doesn’t leave you feeling vulnerable.
True, on this hypothetical island there might still be the occasional eccentric ready to keep you apprised of omnibus law and etiquette. But I could tolerate him in return for an uneventful journey. Obsessive rule observer that he was, he’d probably share my dismay at the way that public behaviour has plummeted. Then again, we’ve lived too long to surrender to ignorant, foul-mouthed oiks. Maybe we could find that island and relocate them there instead.

When Billy Wright told Derby's Bert not to argue

2010-10-15T19:55:00.002+01:00

IT WAS September 21, 1949 and Derby County right-back Bert Mozley was looking forward to his 26th birthday, two days later. First, though, Bert had to attend to a more pressing matter. He was making his England debut, against the Republic of Ireland at Goodison Park.
On the half-hour, Middlesbrough’s Peter Desmond swept into the England penalty area. Bert went in with a sliding tackle and won the ball. But he also sent Desmond tumbling.
Scottish referee John Mowat pointed to the spot. Derby County’s latest England debutant was aghast. He ran over to Mowat and began to tell the official that he had won the ball, fair and square, before Desmond had gone sprawling over an outstretched leg.
Mowat didn’t have time to respond. England captain Billy Wright raced up, took the Rams full-back gently by the arm and led him away with the words: “Never argue with the ref, Bert. The FA committee don’t like it.”
For the record, Aston Villa’s centre-half, Con Martin, scored the penalty, Everton’s Peter Farrell added a second with five minutes remaining. And Bert Mozley’s international debut had been memorable mainly for the fact that it marked England’s first-ever home defeat against “foreign” opposition.
Fortunately, the England committee either hadn’t noticed, or had chosen to overlook, Bert’s attempt at arguing with the referee. The Derby man won two more caps, against Wales and Northern Ireland, and was also chosen against Italy but was injured the week before the game. Thereafter, it was Alf Ramsey, of more fashionable Spurs, who got the nod.
This week, Bert recalled that penalty when he rang me from his home in British Columbia to discuss England’s huff-and-puff draw against Montenegro. Sixty-one years later, he still can’t forget the injustice. Nor can he put to rest Billy Wright’s intervention that afternoon. Indeed, I got the feeling that Bert has always regarded Wright as “a gaffer’s man”.
Then again, as I reminded Bert, even squeaky-clean William Ambrose Wright once had his reputation called into question when he elected to marry one of the Beverley Sisters (biggest hit: I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus). The problem was that the lady in question, Joy Beverley, was a divorcee.
We’re hardly talking a John Terry-Vanessa Perroncel sex scandal here, but it was still enough to send the frowning blazer wearers in the FA committee room into a state of near apoplexy.
“Is this the sort of man we want captaining England?” they asked each other. The question was rhetorical, of course. But eventually, because Wright’s playing career was nearing its end, they decided to forget about it. Which is more than Bert Mozley did about that penalty.
***
I WAS sorry to see Mickleover Sports go out of the FA Cup last Saturday. Defeat by Newcastle Town, newly promoted to the division that Sports left in such style only a few months ago, cost Mickleover a further £7,500 in prize money, and a place in the fourth qualifying round hat, alongside the likes of Luton, Darlington, Grimsby and York.
Even to mention Mickleover in the same breath as those clubs is a measure of all that has been achieved at Station Road over the past few years.
But the team that romped away with the Unibond (now Evo-Stik) League First Division South is finding the Premier Division particularly challenging.
So how much further should Sports try to go?
It’s a dilemma that has faced many clubs at this level. The next leap would be a giant one. I don’t envy those have to make the decision.

Anton Rippon’s Rams nostalgia website is on http://www.derbycountymemories.com

Marketing those pikelets underneath the arches

2010-10-12T18:55:00.003+01:00

I REALLY like that monthly farmers’ market in the Market Place. Wandering around there, buying a few misshapen spuds here, a load of fruit – slightly past its best – for jam-making there, and chatting to the overwhelmingly nice people who runs the stalls, it all adds up to the kind of pleasant experience that you don’t get in Tesco or Sainsbury.
Not that staff in those establishments aren’t themselves both pleasant and cheerful. They are. But, when all is said and done, supermarket shopping doesn’t give you the same satisfaction that comes from being served by small traders for whom passing the time of day with their customers is part of the service.
After stocking up with a few goodies – have you tried that bread stall with its olive, walnut, and tomato loaves? – we strolled through the Guildhall arches, mourned the fact that Monk’s no longer sell pikelets from a barrow there, and went into the Market Hall. What a sad sight that presents: businesses closed down, stalls shuttered. I don’t think there is a more depressing sight than shops standing empty and forlorn. Let’s hope the city council’s stalls-for-half-price initiative is a winner.
Yet some of the old businesses still flourish, not least that of greengrocer Ted Corden. Ted’s dad ran a similar business from a yard at 155 Abbey Street, a few doors from where my granny had her tobacconist’s shop in the dim and distant. As well as a purveyor of fine fruit and veg, Ted is a real character. His beaming face smiles down at you from those posters promoting what is best about Derby. On them he’s wearing his trademark bowler hat, which I suppose is why someone with a marker pen felt compelled to give him a Chaplinesque moustache on the poster outside the old Debenham’s building. I bet Ted laughed when he saw that.
He is, of course, part of “old” Derby, the one we fondly remember from the 1950s and 1960s, when the town abounded with small traders and the Market Hall was buzzing. I was a regular patron of a stall that sold second-hand books and magazines, where you could spend hours thumbing through almost anything, from a Charles Buchan’s Football Monthly Annual to the collected works of John Buchan.
When my old Becket School pal, Stan Guy, former MI5 filing clerk (it was probably more important, but he can’t say), international banker and bestselling thriller writer, visited his hometown from Tokyo recently, I asked him what part of memory lane he’d like to tread first. “The Market Hall,” was his immediate answer. When we arrived, Stan also remembered hanging around Woore’s bookstall, all those years ago. A certain sweet stall also tugged his recall.
That’s the thing about small businesses in places like the Market Hall. You remember them forever. I can’t see our offspring meeting up in 50 years time and saying: “Do you remember when we used to shop at Morrisons?” So let’s hope that the Market Hall finds its second wind; that more traders open up; and no more close down. It would be good to walk in there and find the shutters gone. And if a pikelet stall was to reappear underneath the arches … I feel a song coming on.

Today's footballers' injuries? Give them a pair of those Stanley Matthews CWS boots

2010-10-08T16:53:00.005+01:00

WHEN Arsenal’s Abou Diaby had his ankle stepped on by Michael Essien at Stamford Bridge last Sunday, you hardly dared look at the outcome. It seemed that the most likely result would be one of those horrific injuries of the kind suffered by Eduardo da Silva and Aaron Ramsey, by coincidence also Arsenal players. You know the ones: where you watch video replays from behind the settee.
Happily, Diaby’s injury wasn’t so bad that he couldn’t continue after treatment. But what it is about the modern game that has seen a run of such incidents? They stretch back to 1996, when Coventry’s David Busst had his playing career ended by probably the most gruesome injury of them all. It was so bad that the opposing goalkeeper, Peter Schmeichel, took one look and promptly threw up.
The obvious answer is that today’s football boots offer little protection against mistimed tackles.
Those of us of a certain vintage will swear that a pair of sturdy CWS boots, as promoted by Stanley Matthews, would solve the problem.
They came about three inches above the ankle, had laces about ten yards long, and the best way to mould the leather to your feet was to wear them while standing in a bowl of hot water for 20 minutes. Thereafter, a good dollop of dubbin had to be regularly applied.
Matthews, incidentally, received £20 a week – then more than a footballer’s wage – from the Co-operative Wholesale Society for endorsing the product.
But a pair of miner’s pit boots wouldn’t have saved Busst’s career. So is it all down to footwear? No – pitches are better, the ball much lighter, players much fitter in heart and lung than they were back in the day when the Wizard of the Dribble weaved his magic for Blackpool and England. All of which means that, in England at any rate, the game is now played at a frantic pace. And when tackles fly in at such speed, then there’s always the chance of a bad break.
The real puzzle is why so many players these days tweak groins, pull hamstrings and – this always annoys me – get injured in training. There can have been few conditions more conducive to pulling a muscle than six inches of Baseball Ground mud in mid-January. Yet I don’t recall Kevin Hector ever limping off halfway through a match.
When they won the League championship in 1972, the Rams used only 16 players. Three of those made only six appearances between them. That suggests a high level on fitness throughout the team.
Maybe today’s players are “too fit”. Muscles stretched almost to twanging point before they’ve even crossed the white line. They are athletes in a way that would have been unimaginable 30 years ago.
We can’t return to the days when Ralph Hann and Jack Bowers watched Rams players jogging gently around the Sinfin Lane training ground. Football has moved on too far for that. But it makes you think that perhaps a price is being paid for making our footballers “super fit”.
All of which makes me wonder what someone like Dave Cargill would have made of today’s training methods. A portly Scottish winger signed from Sheffield Wednesday in 1958, on his way to home matches Cargill was rumoured to call for a swift half in the Bell in Sadler Gate.
Turning up overweight one pre-season, he was made to wear polythene during training in a bid to sweat off the pounds. It succeeded only in bringing him out in a rash. To be fair, Cargill was a decent player with a fair turn of speed. And he certainly never strained a hamstring. I rest my case.

Anton Rippon’s Rams nostalgia website is on www.derbycountymemories.com

Never send a small boy to deliver bad news

2010-10-05T17:00:00.004+01:00

IS this a record? Fifty-six years between visits to A & E. There I was, Friday evening, kneeling on the carpet, looking for the pea that had rolled under the chair during my TV dinner in front of Mastermind. When I got up, I thought: “Blimey, that hurt.” Or words to that effect. Middle of the night, woke up in agony. Knee swollen, throbbing.
A & E at 8am. Much twisting and pulling. A pause: “Are you the man who writes in the Telegraph?”
“Yes, but I’ve never said anything rude about this hospital, only the parking. Please be gentle.” She was. Then it was down to X-Ray.
“Where did you get that trolley? It’s new.”
“I didn’t get it from anywhere. I was put on it in A & E and wheeled here by a porter called Bob.”
Don’t misunderstand me. It was all good fun. Everyone at the Royal Derby Hospital was brilliant. Nothing was broken but I still left on crutches, with my leg in a split, a pocketful of industrial strength painkillers, a do-and-don’t leaflet (would anyone really try to climb stairs using crutches?) and an appointment for somewhere called The Acute Knee Clinic (where, it turned out, they don’t tell you that you have a cute knee but instead use words like “degenerative”).
The painkillers made me nauseous. The splint hurt worse than the injury. And when I went round the block to try out my walking-using-crutches skills, I nearly got run over. That’s one thing I learned. Few people have any sympathy for anyone on crutches. A primeval instinct to take advantage kicks in. Of course, the occasional do-gooder does the exact opposite and overreacts to protect the disabled, even if they don't want it.
But, look, I’m not complaining. I’m lucky to live in a country where free health care is a given and where, in my experience anyway, the staff are universally wonderful. I have an American friend, a bit to the right of Attila the Hun, who thinks that Obama’s health reforms are the devil’s spawn. I’ve told him: “Get yourself an NHS. You don’t know what you’re missing over there.” But he thinks it would be the end of Truth, Justice, and the American Way
The last time I presented myself at “casualty”? October 1954, at the Children’s Hospital in North Street. I was a milk monitor at Becket Junior Boys’. It was one of those slow-motion moments; I’d just delivered a crate and watched in fascination as a large pane of glass detached itself from a just-slammed door and fell towards me. I couldn’t get out of the way, so I just waited for the impact.
At the hospital, one of our Leopold Street surgery GPs, kindly Dr Eisenberg, was on duty. “I’m sorry,” he said, “but I can’t give you an injection there, so this might hurt a bit.” Actually, it hurt a lot. Slivers of glass were removed from my face and eyelids, and then the crown of my head was stitched, all without anaesthetic.
Back in Gerard Street, my mother had just about recovered from being told by my pal, Roy Reed: “There’s been a terrible accident; Anton’s head is hanging off.” That’s another thing I learned: never send a small boy to deliver bad news.

Pakistan cricket rows and daft goalkeepers

2010-10-03T12:38:00.004+01:00

YAWAR Saeed this week resigned as manager of the Pakistan cricket team. After a summer in which his side was beaten in Test, one-day international and Twenty20 series, it was no surprise. Then Pakistan Cricket Board chairman, Ijaz Butt, withdrew his match-throwing allegations against England's players. Again, no surprise if he didn’t want to end up in court.
What is it about Pakistan cricket? Whether it’s match fixing, spot-betting scams or ball tampering, or just a good old-fashioned ding-dong like that Gatting-Shakoor Rana finger-wagging nonsense, whenever Pakistan are playing it seems the only thing bookmakers won’t take money on is a row breaking out anytime soon.
The latest shenanigans remind me that a Derbyshire captain was involved in what was probably the first Pakistan cricket row. In 1956, Old Reptonian Donald Carr led a strong MCC team – it included Brian Close, Ken Barrington, Fred Titmus and Tony Lock – to Pakistan.
Playing conditions were harsh, practice facilities poor. In Karachi, MCC players were accused of roughing up hotel staff. In Dacca, they squirted soda water over hotel guests. Then came the “water treatment” affair in Peshawar.
Pakistan had gone 2-0 up in the series when Idrees Baig, a 45-year-old Pakistani umpire who had just officiated in the match, claimed that MCC players had “kidnapped” him from his hotel room. There were stories of Baig having a blanket thrown over his head, whisky forced down his throat – he was a Muslim – and being doused in iced water.
The brilliant writer Omar Kureishi, who became Pakistan’s senior cricket columnist, regarded the affair as “horseplay” that got out of hand. The MCC manager issued an apology, but the Pakistan board complained to London. The MCC president told the Governor-General to offer to cancel the rest of the tour. In those days, though, gentlemen did the right thing. Derbyshire’s Donald Carr had nothing to do with the incident but, as captain, took full responsibility. Peace, if not harmony, was restored, and Baig stood in the final Test. The tone, however, was set. I can’t wait for the latest instalment.
*****
AMONG the same unimaginative chanting week after week, football fans occasionally produce an amusing off-the-cuff effort, as Rams goalkeeper Stephen Bywater discovered last Saturday.
We already knew that Bywater is no Tracey Emin. I’m not surprised that his art offended neighbours. I wouldn’t like to see a portable lavatory, a horsebox, an inflatable doll and several other objects of doubtful taste looming over the garden fence. Not to mention the graffiti, even if it hadn’t been misspelt.
Against Crystal Palace, Rams fans repaid him with an inventive – if here unrepeatable – chant. Bywater took it in good part. And a charity is benefiting, so no real harm done.
It’s said that goalkeepers are barmy. Let’s be kinder and say they can be eccentric. Back in the early 1960s, the Rams had a real character in Reg Matthews, signed by Harry Storer from Chelsea. For one season the former England man kept Derby in Division Two almost single-handed.
Week after week, chain-smoking Reg stubbed out his fag on the dressing room door before posing as great a danger to fellow defenders as he did to oncoming forwards. Nobody got in Reg’s way when he was after the ball. The Baseball Ground loved him.
There isn’t enough room here to tell all the Reg Matthews stories. But, daft as he was, I couldn’t imagine him pulling a stunt similar to that of Bywater’s. Apart from anything else, I don’t think you could get blow-up dolls in 1961.

Anton Rippon’s Rams nostalgia website is on http://www.derbycountymemories.com/

Ken was a comic, right to the end

2010-09-28T17:06:00.001+01:00

AS history lessons go, it wasn’t all that informative. The teacher said: “This is for the Suez Canal, which is in the desert. That’s why there’s sand.” Then she hustled her school party on to the Far East Prisoners of War memorial. Goodness knows how quickly she wrapped up the Burma Railway. I could take a guess: the story of man’s inhumanity to man in 30 seconds. “Right, now where’s the cafeteria? And Johnny, put that back where you found it.”
We were at the National Memorial Arboretum at Alrewas and it was coincidental that we should have alighted upon the Suez memorial at that moment. I’d just reminded Alf, my old Bemrose School pal, that it was 54 years ago that very week since we’d first met. I’d also recalled the Suez business. Because in 1956, as the last few days of an unseasonably cool summer had slipped away, while I waited to start grammar school I’d devoured every scrap of news concerning the crisis. The Egyptian president, Colonel Nasser, had nationalised the Suez Canal. After an Anglo-French airborne invasion of the Canal Zone, President Eisenhower rollicked Prime Minister Sir Anthony Eden. The British and French withdrew. Eden was finished. “Bloody Yanks,” muttered my father, without looking up from his Daily Mail. “They’ve always been the same.” No special relationship there, then.
By now, however, another international crisis had my attention: the Soviet Union had invaded Hungary. One foggy teatime, walking to Mrs Addlesee’s corner shop in Gerard Street, I bumped into my mate, Colin Shaw. He had sensational news: “Puskas is dead.” Ferenc Puskas was the star of a brilliant Hungary football team. I was shocked. I’d seen him only in flickering monochrome pictures on Gaumont British News, but the thought that he’d been killed fighting the Russians occupied me for several days. As it turned out, Puskas had been on tour at the time of the Soviet invasion. So he did the sensible thing: he went to Spain and became a football legend with Real Madrid.
That memory triggered another concerning a raw teatime in Derby’s back streets. In February 1958, I was in Scrimshaw’s chip shop, next to Tommy Harris’s emporium in Boyer Street, when Mr Scrimshaw, a large and normally jolly man, came out looking sombre: “Have you heard, son?” Trying to take off from a snow-covered Munich runway, Manchester United’s aircraft had crashed, killing 23 people including eight United stars. Like learning of JFK’s assassination, it was one of those moments you would never forget.
As I related all this, Alf was otherwise occupied, mourning the September day in 1953 when Comic Cuts was swallowed up by Knockout. I was more of a Hotspur man myself. Which brings me neatly to Ken Gregory, the Derby solicitor and lifelong sports fan who died earlier this month. Ken and I seemed to spend more time discussing the Rams than we ever did business. And we often debated our favourite comics. Once, I was waiting to see him when I noticed that, among the usual pile of county magazines, he’d introduced The Beano – Dennis and Gnasher, the Bash Street Kids and all. That summed up Ken perfectly: a genial man who was always laughing. What better way is there to remember someone?

Haven't I seen you somewhere before?

2010-09-21T17:53:00.002+01:00

WE’VE all been there. Someone you don’t recognise greets you like a long-lost friend. Instead of admitting that you haven’t any idea who they are, you start casting around for clues. “Still at the same place?” “Seen any of the old crowd?” It’s rare that you get away with it, though. When it happened to me last week, I failed spectacularly. I was walking along Victoria Street when a man leapt in front of me and asked me how I was. I didn’t think I’d ever seen him before, but he was so effusive that I thought I’d better pretend that I knew him. With a bit of luck, he’d let slip something that would trigger a memory. When nothing else was working, I thought I’d ask him how his mother was and if she was still living in the same street. It was at that point that he said: “Ah, you don’t know me. I just read your column.”
But I’d made such a performance about knowing him, I was in too deep and pressed on. “No,” I said, “I have definitely seen you somewhere before.” To which he replied: “Well, did you ever drink in the Shimla Club on Normanton Road?” At which point I had to come clean and say that, partial as I am to the occasional spot of reggae music, I might have been mistaken. My parting shot was: “I tell you what, though, you must have a double somewhere.” I don’t think he believed me for one moment.
All of which got me thinking about Normanton Road again. As I have already told you – I’m at that age where I repeat myself a lot – I did most of my courting around there because the future Mrs R lived for quite some time in Depot Street. And of an evening, when there’s nothing on the telly (despite having access to about 500 channels) we open a bottle of red and talk about the old days and wonder why all our fish and chip shops are today run by Greeks when, so far as I know (I have never been there but have been reliably informed), there are no fish and chip shops in Greece itself.
There was a particularly good chippie at the foot of Normanton Road. Someone called Arthur Raynes ran it and, whenever I passed by, I always used to think of that fine comedian, Arthur Haynes. Even today, when Mrs R recalls that particular establishment, I cannot shake off the image of Haynes’s tramp character frying tonight. Incidentally, it’s 44 years since Arthur Haynes died. Where did the years go?
Indeed, where did all those decent street corner fish and chip shops go? There was a cracker in Stanton Street. Never opened on a Monday, though. That was his card school night in the Mafeking. What a boozer that was in the late 1960s. If you hadn’t escaped by 11pm, you were locked in until the small hours. Which obviously didn’t matter on a Monday since the chip shop was closed anyway. Sometimes, I like to ramble in this column (“Only sometimes?” I hear you mutter). I can get to most places from the unlikeliest of foundations. Now, where have I seen that face before?

Vacuuming up spiders is OK … but look where it might take you

2010-09-14T17:32:00.002+01:00

WHAT does a retired male do when the lawn refuses to grow? When the shopping is done? When the morning paper has been read, the crossword completed, and the pub doesn’t open for another two hours? When even Sky’s coverage of golf and cricket, a review of last week’s football and a preview of this week’s matches fails to excite? What does he do to pass the time? When a pal noticed a cluster of late-summer spiders making themselves comfortable in his house porch, he thought he had the answer.
Conscious of the poor impression that the cob-webbed entrance to his Oxfordshire home gave to visitors, my friend – to avoid embarrassment we will call him Eric, even though his name is Nigel and he played for the Rams and Redfern Athletic – located the family's Dyson. Connecting the machine to mains electricity posed no problem but, not being all that familiar with how various tubes and accessories fitted together, he stole into a quiet corner, away from critical eyes. I’m glad to say that within 25 minutes – and without the aid of the instruction manual – he was ready for action. He said later: “It was a new world to me, but there was no turning back."
You may think that a few minutes spent vacuuming up arachnids would have been the limit of most men’s excursion into domesticity. On the contrary, gaining confidence from his venture, he proceeded to attack all the downstairs rooms, adding to his collection of caged summer nuisances a sleeping moth, four dead flies, a paper clip and a shoelace (unfortunately, the latter was still attached to his shoe, so he had to turn off the current and spend several minutes with his fingers up the tube).
By the time he had worked his way upstairs, he was pretty well exhausted, perspiring freely and short of breath (and this a man who had just cycled from Land’s End to John O’Groats to raise £5,000 for charity). Yet it was with a feeling of satisfaction that he stowed the machine back in its resting place, leaving the bedrooms untouched. "I’ve nothing left to give,” he gasped down the phone.
But, of course, it hasn’t ended there. His domestic goddess has told him that he must now take on the role every week – including the bedrooms. Would we ever have imagined that scenario 40 years ago, when we sat in the Grange Hotel in Ingleby Avenue, each with a pint and a pickled egg as we picked the team for Sunday? I don’t think so.
He called again yesterday to say that he’d seen wasps disappearing into his roof and, fearing they had built a nest, was going in under cover of darkness, protected only by a fleece and a golfing cap. I got the impression that drink had been taken.
Another friend used to work for Derby City Council’s pest control section. The stories he can tell about ordinary men trying to do things way beyond their expertise – like tackling wasps’ nests – are hair-raising; involving, as they do, collapsed ceilings and, indeed, whole houses burning down following ill-advised attempts to smoke the blighters out. I’m reminded of the old Malabar proverb: “Anger is as a stone cast into a wasps’ nest.” I’m dreading the next phone call.

Real people, not recorded voices, can get you a ring-a-ding result

2010-09-07T17:59:00.001+01:00

DID you know that today is Ding Day? The second annual Ding Day, in fact. Derbeians, though, can be excused ignorance. It is Ding Day only in London. Here’s how it works: when a cyclist sees another cyclist, they must ding their bell; the other cyclist must then ding back. It is, according to the organisers, “an event designed to create a fun experience for cyclists and locals”. Ring-a-ding-ding? I can’t imagine how that would be fun. Indeed, are cycles today even equipped with bells? Pedestrians usually have to make do with a yawp from the rider, or a sudden slipstream as some fool zooms past without warning.
Sticking up signs and handing out maps doesn’t seem to have worked. The cops may have nabbed a few during the recent Derby city centre crackdown. But it will soon be business as usual for pavement cyclists. It’s a subject upon which I have written to successive Home Secretaries. None were keen on the idea, but I still say that allowing police snipers to wing pavement bike riders would soon put an end to the problem (I’d allow a warning shot first). Maybe Dave’s Big Society will bring it on. Just joking, by the way. Well, almost …
Now to another pressing matter; one from which a very important lesson can be learned. Never rely on your mobile phone as the only repository of your telephone numbers list. Always write them down. And never rely on a customer services helpline to … well, help you. You may be sorely disappointed.
It works like this. You lose your mobile telephone, almost certainly on the bus. So you ring up the bus company, get the usual recorded greeting, and discover that option four will connect you to the appropriate department. But when Alexander Pope wrote that hope springs eternal from the human breast, he hadn’t dealt with customer services lines. Not this one, anyway. If he had, he’d have discovered that when you press number four, all you get is the voice of an Anne Robinson soundalike, telling you: “The operator is not available. Exiting the system. Goodbye!” Every time I tried, I only ever got that snooty woman’s voice, effectively telling me to clear off and stop bothering them. Not like at Caffe Nero in the Cornmarket. There was an outside chance that I’d lost my mobile there. When I phoned, a young barista dropped everything (well, not a tray of coffee, I hope). Her search proved fruitless – but she’d made the effort.
When I sent the bus company an email, explaining that I couldn’t get through, and asking someone to call me – no one did. When I rang Derby Bus Station itself, they gave me another number for the company. That went to voicemail, so I left a message. Two weeks later, I was still awaiting a reply. But when I eventually visited the Bus Station, a very helpful employee of the bus company went straight to lost property – and returned with my phone. It just goes to show: there are still some honest people about, so thanks to whoever handed in my phone; and when you can deal with a real person, rather than a recorded voice, and you can get a ring-a-ding result.

Back street bookies were more fun than today's sterile High Street establishments

2010-08-31T18:45:00.003+01:00

THERE used to be a shop in Abbey Street that never advertised its wares. In fact, its windows were blacked out. There was no name over the door, either. Just a sign to announce whether it was open or closed. That was sufficient. Everyone knew what went on in there. It wasn’t black market food or dodgy magazines. The proprietor was simply a bookie, one of thousands who operated outside the law in post-war Britain. In these days of casinos, internet gambling and High Street betting shops that look like post offices, it seems amazing that off-course punters once had to sneak around the back streets. So this week marks a special anniversary: it was 50 years ago, on September 1, 1960, that the government gave the go-ahead for betting shops to open for business the following year. The rest, as they say, is history.
I was already no stranger to gambling, though; my father liked an occasional bet. But it was the woman who owned our corner shop that introduced me to the murky world of illegal bookmaking. Violet Craven liked a bet every day. She’d write them down in pencil on old sugar bags and ask me to take them to that anonymous Abbey Street shop; this involved shooting a quick glance in either direction before nipping into a fog of cigarette smoke. The whole thing was done on trust: you simply handed over your homemade betting slip, which you’d signed with a pseudonym. If you’d backed a winner, you just muttered your pseudonym and the clerk would consult his ledger before paying out. I never saw an argument. Violet, bless her, was no genius, but within seconds she could work out to the last halfpenny how much she’d won from a ten-horse accumulator with various doubles and trebles thrown in. “Tell him I’ve got two pounds eighteen and sixpence halfpenny to come,” she’d instruct me. I was too young to ask for commission. Payment was a bar of chocolate or sweets from her shop, a welcome treat when such things were rationed.
Eventually Violet changed her allegiance to a bookie’s in Wilson Street. It was run from one of the big houses on the right, towards Green Lane. Entry was gained through the back garden. Again, the scene inside was at odds with the quiet street outside: dozens of men, many of them Irish labourers who lodged in the area, listened intently to a race commentary coming over a wire service. As with the Abbey Street establishment, the whole room was filled with tobacco smoke that stung the eyes and clawed at the lungs of a young non-smoker. It was unsentimental education. But as one old teacher of mine used to say: “There’s more to life than learning French grammar.” Which was just as well.
The police were aware of these illegal gambling dens but rarely raided them. There was, however, still a touch of excitement in stepping over the line. Yet despite that early introduction, gambling never interested me. An annual flutter on the Grand National is the extent of my interest. The enjoyment went out of betting when the government realised that it could be a tax cash cow. Like a lot of things, it was more fun when you had to creep around. You can bet on that.

The things you hear on buses …

2010-08-24T14:53:00.003+01:00

YOU hear some funny conversations on buses. On my way back from Nottingham there were these two elderly men – well, older than me anyway – whose conversation turned, as is the way with many older people, to the fact that nothing is as good as it once was. I know what they meant: Derby’s Market Place Christmas tree is never as big as it was when I was a lad, never mind that it now has to be protected by an ugly metal barrier.
But back to those old gents – take, said one, Markeaton Brook. Before Markeaton Brook could be taken, however, there was a long debate about the name of the park through which it flows. After much consideration, they came up with Darley Park. Quite why it hadn’t occurred to either that the correct answer was Markeaton Park, I don’t know. You hardly need a degree in etymology to work it out. But the frustrating thing was that, having decided that Markeaton Brook flowed through Darley, not Markeaton, Park, they summarily discarded the topic. So we will never know why, in the opinions of these two senior Derbeians at least, Markeaton Brook isn’t as good as it once was. We can take a guess: maybe they felt that it should still flow unculverted through the city centre, right out to the Derwent. Imagine the scene come Saturday night. Whatever, they should know that a voluntary community group called the Friends of Markeaton Brook does a lot of good work in preserving the brook’s appearance; albeit that must sometimes seem a losing battle when contending with the twin threats of invasive Himalayan Balsam and the morons who dump rubbish in this historic water course. I have no personal interest in promoting the group – who have a “Greenwatch” certificate for their efforts – other than believing such people deserve publicity.
Right, now where were we? Ah, yes, those two old boys on the bus. After abandoning Markeaton Brook, they moved on to Hardwick Hall. Now, as most locals will surely know, one of Britain’s finest Elizabethan houses, near Chesterfield, stands next to the ruin of an earlier house that may date from the 14th century. And it was this ruin that was the new debating point as we zipped along Brian Clough Way. It seemed that one of the men, when driving down the M1, had been horrified to see the neglect into which Hardwick Hall had fallen; he seemed not to know about its magnificent successor, one of Derbyshire’s greatest tourist attractions. “It’s disgraceful,” he told his companion, “the way that they’ve let Hardwick Hall go.” “True,” said the other. And they both agreed that it was entirely the fault of a previous county council. Now, I’m as keen as anyone to heap opprobrium upon the heads of past politicians. But you can hardly blame David Bookbinder for what happened in the reign of Edward III.
Anyway, leaving Hardwick Hall behind, they moved on swiftly to Derby’s new bus station. Apparently, the city council should never have knocked down the old one. It was perfectly convenient. The new one is in the wrong place. I could have reminded them that, actually, it’s on the same site. But then I’ve often wondered why Castle Donington was built so near an airport.

Banned from free speech – by a bus company

2010-08-17T22:19:00.005+01:00

IT was Voltaire, that master of liberal philosophy, who was – erroneously as it happens – credited with the line: "I disapprove of what you say, but will defend to the death your right to say it." No one could argue with that. Except, it appears, a bus company.
This week, I was going to write about Trent Barton’s customer services phone line. But that will have to wait. Instead, I want to tell you that the same bus company has banned me. Not from its buses (at least I think not) but from writing on its Facebook page. The company’s commercial director, Alex Hornby, has told me that I’m “disruptive”. And even though Trent Barton doesn’t own or run Facebook, Mr Hornby says that, along with all other critics of the company, I’ve got to go.
Fortunately, the Derby Telegraph operates no such policy. Providing I don’t overstep the bounds of public decency, or expose the newspaper to the scrutiny of Messrs Sue, Grabbit and Run, I can pretty much write what I like here.
So now I’d like to tell you about the day I became persona non grata on the buses. It all started when I asked Trent Barton why they were switching our Mickleover service from the Bus Station just as the Uttoxeter Road roadworks, that for six months had caused such massive delays, had ended. I asked about the public consultation that had apparently cemented this decision. My opinion hadn’t been solicited. Nor, come to that, had that of any of my fellow passengers. I’d seen no leaflets. Nor had the drivers I quizzed. The views of 100 people, taken over three weeks, amounted to asking less than five people a day. It was, I said, hardly a comprehensive exercise. The company’s answers were vague, so I persisted. Eventually, it offered a face-to-face meeting so that its views might be better explained. I asked if, in turn, it would be prepared to listen to opponents’ views. There was no answer. My query had been taken as a refusal to meet. Then came my ban.
In 45 years spent earning spent a living from writing, as journalist, author and publisher, I’ve never before been censored. Not that I’ve ever tried to operate in Soviet Russia, or China. Not brave enough. But I’ve crossed swords with more than a few people. I’ve regularly had a swipe at politicians. To a man and woman, they’ve taken it on the chin.
Trent Barton, it seems, isn’t so inured to criticism. Its Facebook page isn’t really a forum, or a sounding post. You can only go on it if you agree with company policy. Alex Hornby told me that I was “causing conflict among fans which is something we are not willing to promote”. In other words, you can only join in if you’re on his side. So, in fact, I’ve not been banned outright. Just banned from asking awkward questions. If I express undying love for Trent Barton, then presumably I’ll be welcomed back. But if I question decisions that daily affect me, then I’ll be banished to some hypothetical gulag where the company’s critics are parked, away from public gaze. Whatever your views on where your bus service should start and end, that can’t be right. It’s all really rather odd.
In the meantime, thisisderbyshire blogger Geoff Alcock – he’s an ex-pat Derbeian from Littleover, now resident in Phoenix, Arizona – tells me: “You could see it coming. I remember in 1943 they had a sign inside their buses prohibiting you from spitting. It's a gradual eating away of your rights.”
He’s a card, is Geoff. Catch his entertaining weekly blog on http://geofalcock.wordpress.com

War memorial thieves … bring back the pillory

2010-08-10T16:29:00.003+01:00

HERE is a plan: site a recycling bin in the Market Place. Next to it build a pillory. Now they are convicted, stick in the pillory those who last week stole bronze plaques from the Midland Railway war memorial. Then invite the people of Derby to pelt them with rotten fruit and vegetables. I guarantee that the queue would stretch to the ring road. And when some do-gooder points out that the thieves’ civil liberties are being infringed, tell them: “You know what? We don’t care.” And carry on pelting.
I’m getting fed-up with what is happening to our society. It was late afternoon in Becket Street. Two 30-somethings, both with tattooed faces, were bellowing at each other from opposite pavements. The language was ripe, the mood threatening. On the corner of Newland Street, outside the DSS Benefits Agency, a policeman and policewoman – both looking impossibly young and slight – together with an equally youthful community support officer, were standing by a police van. The trio appeared to be waiting for something. A posse of burly colleagues was my best guess. Certainly the last thing they needed was another off-licence. You can see why police, health experts and child protection workers oppose another one in Macklin Street, where two more tattooed youths were making no attempt to calm a dog (breed indeterminate but probably illegal) that was snapping at passers-by.
In Gerard Street, a smartly dressed woman argued with her son of about 15. He became more and more agitated before finally picking up a blue recycling bin and hurling it across the road, glass shattering everywhere. If I was expecting him to receive a smart clip round the ear and the order to clear up the mess, I was sorely disappointed. The pair carried on walking, the mother apparently unconcerned at her offspring’s behaviour.
I go on quite a bit about my formative years in Gerard Street. I make no apologies for that. It was a great area in which to be raised. That’s why, over the years, I’ve felt compelled to revisit often. Sometimes in the company – as on this occasion – of old pals John Burns and Colin Shaw. We were all born there and together grew up there. We like a stroll down memory lane. Obviously over 60 years you expect changes. But it’s people, not buildings, which make – or break – neighbourhoods. And while the overwhelming majority of the folk currently living there are doubtless decent, honest citizens of the type that we were proud to once call friends and neighbours, we still came to the inescapable conclusion that it isn’t the safe, happy place to live that we remembered. It is impossible to believe that any of the scenes described above would have happened 50, 40, even 30 years ago. Maybe not even a decade back. What has changed? Well, how long have we got? Why has it changed? You could write a book on the subject. Whatever the reasons, it left all three of us, if not depressed then certainly down in the dumps. I don’t believe that we’ll be making that walk again. Better perhaps to simply polish up our images of a perceived golden age. Nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Except that suddenly I’m yearning for the return of the town pillory.

Is it too late for a new Council House, anyway?

2010-08-03T19:46:00.002+01:00

HERE is an old joke: a newcomer to Derby asks the identity of that large building in Corporation Street. On being told that it’s the Council House, he replies: “Blimey, I’ve just put my name down for one of those.”
Now Derby City Council is planning a £40 million revamp of that same Council House. That isn’t a joke. In fact, it has outraged more than a few Derbeians. On the face of it, you can understand why: they’ve been told to tighten their belts. School-rebuilding programmes are shelved. Other local services will suffer. Viewed like that, the Council House initiative seems out of kilter with our current financial plight.
In the long run, says the council, the scheme will save money. That is hard to imagine. Then again, I suspect like a lot of people, I haven’t studied the detail. And it is far easier to shoot the singer than it is to write a song. As soon as the plan was announced, councillors must have braced themselves for the inevitable firestorm of protest from people who don’t have to make these decisions.
The image painted by opponents is simplistic: children sit in dilapidated schools, rain dripping down their necks, while councillors luxuriate in a new debating chamber set in the heart of an atrium which, if the artist’s impression is anything to go by, will do justice to Sir Norman Foster’s British Museum development.
There are those, though, who argue that if the Council House has to be revamped, then we might as well have something worthy of a 21st-century city. A few doubt that the education of our children is going to suffer simply because, for the time being, some of them will be sitting in old buildings. There will still be cash to plug leaky roofs. Fair enough. Forced to choose, I’d rather have a good teacher than a draught-free classroom. Anyway, learning that life isn’t always perfect might in itself be an invaluable lesson for today’s kids. And we’re not talking Gradgrind’s academy here.
There is an assumption – to which I am prone – that as soon as politicians want to do anything, it is either out of self-interest, or sheer incompetence. I’ve worked in local government. Now that was an education. Three years dealing with elected representatives left me desperate to return to private enterprise. That was 30 years ago, but subsequent administrations have also often failed to convince me that they knew what they were doing. There have been some to whom I wouldn’t have entrusted the running of a whelk stall on Allenton market, never mind the multi-million pound budget of this city.
By the law of averages, though, they must occasionally get it right. And even an old cynic like me finds it hard to believe that councillors would spend £40 million sprucing up their own offices if they didn’t believe it to be of long-term benefit to Derby. Yet the doubters still doubt, the moaners still moan. Maybe they are right and I’ll believe anything.
Talking of which, according to Nostradamus, the Mayan calendar and some Hopi Indians, the world is going to end in 2012. So why are we worrying anyway? It’s probably already too late to put down your name for a new school. Or a new Council House.

Toying with a hobby? Be careful where it takes you.

2010-07-27T22:33:00.001+01:00

THERE was this middle-aged man who used to travel regularly on my Trent Barton bus, who knew everything about the entire fleet, including even the engine numbers. A harmless enough hobby, I used to think, albeit one that would fail to excite me. But it’s a free country, so whatever floats your boat … Then, one day, I heard him discussing the drivers’ rota, a subject upon which he appeared to be remarkably well versed. And then I began to wonder how far some people’s hobbies would take them. It’s one thing to be up to speed on the workings of individual Wright Eclipse with Volvo chassis. It’s quite another to be chapter and verse on drivers’ shift patterns. A stalking bus spotter? Sounds more than a bit creepy.
Earlier this month, when I was helping a mate run a stall at Elvaston Steam Rally, I got to thinking about people’s hobbies. Many Derbeians will remember pressing their noses up against the window of Ratcliffe’s toyshop on St Peter’s Street. At Christmastime especially, those windows were a huge attraction to passing boys and girls who tugged their parents towards the displays, dropping unsubtle hints as to what Santa might bring.
For years, Ratcliffe’s was managed by Derek Taylor, who, although now retired, still likes to keep his hand in by selling toys at fetes, rallies and carnivals around Derbyshire. And when he let slip that he was shorthanded for this particular gig, I volunteered to help. Great fun it was, too. We sold what I suppose you’d call “pocket money toys”. Without exception, our young clientele were a delight. It was heartening to see polite seven-year-olds carefully weighing up their budgets for the day. It was also gratifying to see that, despite what we might think, today’s kids don’t spend all their time on computers. Old-fashioned toys like model cars and kites are still popular. And anything to do with aliens, of course. But our customers weren’t all children. Several adults bought die-cast models of commercial vehicles. That was their hobby. And as my daughter, Nicola, often says, growing old is no excuse for growing up.
In fact, it’s good to have a pastime. Franklin D. Roosevelt, who was a busy man, said: “I owe my life to my hobbies.” Of course, FDR was talking about things like stamp collecting. But not every hobby sounds as harmless. In America (where else?) there is the Weird Hobby Hall Of Fame. Collecting handcuffs, and barking like several breeds of dog, are surely not the products of a healthy mind. And people who carve patterns in eggshells clearly have too much time on their hands.
Then again, if you can turn your hobby into a lucrative business … At the Derby Telegraph’s Burton office, in the 1960s, we had a newspaper seller who spent all his spare time (he was also a chimney sweep but the 1956 Clean Air Act had largely put paid to that) restoring old cars. One weekend, he dug a Bentley out of field in Bedfordshire (the shed in which it had been kept for donkey’s years had collapsed around it), brought it back to Burton on a trailer, spent months doing it up and then sold it for several thousand pounds. After which, we never saw him again. Now that’s what I call a hobby.

Tea breaks and some colourful characters

2010-07-20T16:51:00.003+01:00

YOU can enjoy some rambling conversations in pubs. We were discussing that most hallowed of British working class institutions, the tea break. Then, before we knew it, we were on to the colourful characters we’d known. And then the days when, never mind seatbelts in motor vehicles, seats themselves weren’t compulsory. I told you it was rambling. Perhaps I should explain.
At my first job, at the Midland Station bookstall, I could always rely on Chippy Wood, the gents’ lavatory attendant, for a cup of tea. A giant of a man with a big nose and a wide smile, Chippy had served in the First World War, but his fund of colourful stories centred not on trench warfare but on his adventures in the Western Front’s houses of ill repute. He was quite a character, was Chippy.
So was his female counterpart. May (I never knew her surname), a sturdy woman with dyed jet-black hair and a voice that could carry over fields, mashed the strongest tea I’ve ever seen. In colour it wavered between bright orange and sludge brown and needed heaps of sugar. Even then, it made strong men shudder.
When I got a proper job and moved to this newspaper in 1965, I soon found it a good idea to call at the garage in Bourne Street first thing in the morning because each day seemed to begin with a long tea-break. The garage itself was something to behold – the single petrol pump wasn’t connected to mains electricity; fuel had to be pumped by hand. But it was the characters that made the place. Reg Warner, who ran the transport department, was against any form of “featherbedding” his staff, as he called it. He had all heaters removed from the delivery vans in case the drivers “get too comfortable and fall asleep” (popular, I’m sure, when they were delivering Football Specials in north Derbyshire on a bleak February night).
Neither were the vehicles equipped with windscreen washers. I often scrounged a lift to places like Albert Village and Overseal when the job took me into the heart of the South Derbyshire coalfield, and it was a nerve-wracking experience to be perched beside the driver (there was no passenger seat) as he lent out to squirt water from a Fairy Liquid bottle in an attempt to remove coal dust from the windscreen of a delivery van travelling at 40 mph through drizzle.
But, again, it was the characters I loved. Tommy Hatton landed on the Normandy coast a full 24 hours before D-Day. Les Rhodes spent two years in North Africa, driving ammunition trucks along “Messerschmitt Alley”. Gordon Longdon and Jim Blackshaw were also good company.
As was Arthur Hawksworth, who’d served down the pit as a Bevin Boy. Arthur resembled a tall Arthur Askey and, for some reason, was nicknamed “Squeak”. He had a fund of home-spun homilies, chief among which was: “A man who works for nothing and a woman who loves for nothing are never out of a job.” Or something like that.
One strange cove claimed that he and his wife, although living in the same house, had become estranged to the point where they each used their own frying pan. Was it true? Well, it didn’t seem the sort of thing you’d make up. Another character, you see. And he certainly never missed a tea break.

There was man you'd never have asked to weigh eggs …

2010-07-13T16:47:00.002+01:00

THIS business about the European Union banning the selling eggs by the dozen; the one about nitwit bureaucrats in Brussels or Frankfurt or Strasbourg, or wherever the gravy train is currently parked, wanting us to sell eggs by weight only. It’s got to be a joke, surely?
Mrs R, who likes to do a bit of baking, wondered how she was going to manage with a recipe that called for 12 eggs. “I suppose I’ll have to weigh one and then multiply it,” she said.
I was more worried about what such a change in the law would do to British culture. Picture the scene. It’s just after one o’clock on Friday lunchtime and I’m sitting in the Mason’s Arms. Dave, the affable bar person, strolls over and asks if we’re lunching today. Now normally, I would say something like: “Yes, young fella-me-lad, I’ll have double egg and chips, please.”
But under new EU regulations, I would presumably have to say: “Alors, mon brave. I’ll have 100 grams of oeufs and some pomme frites, s’il vous plait.” Perhaps adding “bitte” in recognition of the fact that, along with France, Germany also runs the EU. Although that might lead Dave to think I needed another half-litre (see, I’m getting the hang of it).
Of course, Dave is considerably younger than me, so he’ll take all this tomfoolery by the EU’s Ministry of Silly Ideas in his stride. He’s no doubt been decimalised and metricated since birth.
Me? I still cling to the old ways: “Half a dozen eggs, a pint of milk, and no, I don’t care if your apples aren’t all exactly the same circumference, weight and colour. In fact, I’d rather they weren’t.”
I wonder what the traders of my youth would make of it. Before they knocked down the Little City – that rookery of narrow Napoleonic era streets off Burton Road – there was a greengrocer there who lived on the wrong side of the law. Fruit and veg were legally acquired, but he also dealt in rabbits and poultry, which definitely weren’t. His way of life had made him a perpetually nervous man. Even when all you asked for was five pounds of King Edwards, there was much ducking and diving. The probability of falling foul of the law by having to advertise onions by the kilo rather than the pound would have almost finished him off. I can’t imagine what he would have done if told that he’d got to start weighing eggs as well.
There was, however, one man who would have had no truck with EU interference. In the days of food rationing, we were registered with a butcher called Donald Sims, whose shop was in Abbey Street. I rather liked him because he didn’t really seem like a normal adult. One day we were queuing for some sausages when Donald suddenly flung a meat cleaver over the queue and into the wall. “That’ll wake you up,” he roared. My mother immediately declared him insane and stalked out. A few days later, we registered with Wilf Sharman, further down Abbey Street. Wilf was a nice enough chap, but far too normal for my liking. In the ten years we patronised his shop, I never once saw him threaten to decapitate a customer. Then again, if someone had told him to start weighing eggs …

The dear old Hippo … the crown jewel of Derby's hidden gems

2010-07-06T19:01:00.002+01:00

THE picture postcard showed a fine old street against a clear blue sky. And I was thinking: “I wish I was there.” I looked again and realised that I was. It was an image of Derby – Irongate to be precise – probably aided by airbrush and lens filter. Then again, maybe computer wizardry wasn’t involved. On a good day, Irongate needs no help to look attractive. But had the photographer wanted to produce a similar postcard of Green Lane, they would have needed all the help that image editing software can provide. That once-thriving street looks so sad these days.
Which brings us to the Hippodrome again. Because when you’re discussing an area that marketing people call “Derby’s hidden gems”, you can’t ignore the dear old Hippo. The story is well known: man applies to demolish Grade II-listed theatre building; local authority refuse; man attempts to repair roof, resulting in partial demolition; ensuing court case doesn’t please locals; theatre building lies in an apparently ruinous state.
But wait … people, supported by English Heritage, the Theatres Trust and local building experts, argue that the damage is not irreparable. Similar situations – witness Hanley where a derelict Grade II listed cinema building has been converted into a hugely successful theatre – have been turned around to dramatic effect.
The cost of restoring the Hippodrome is nowhere near the £15-20 million touted by some (and certainly only a fraction of the cost of the proposed velodrome that hardly anyone seems to want). Despite the dismal scene that presents itself to those walking up Crompton Street, the external structure is still sound, the interior could be easily restored, so I’m told.
And what an effect that would have. I’ve fond memories of the Hippodrome. I’ve fond memories of Green Lane, too. It was once a vibrant shopping street. Which is the point: it could be again. But its best chance of a return to former glories is if the Hippodrome is functioning once more. That would lift what Marketing Derby likes to call The Lanes. It’s not fanciful. It just needs the will to do it.
Local politicians have hitherto been nervous at the prospect, but when their aim is to get more people travelling by public transport, it seems a strange logic that says Derby would be better served by yet another city centre car park than it would by a decent theatre.
I’ve said it here before: if the Hippodrome was reopened, The Lanes wouldn’t be Derby’s hidden gems because there would be one highly visible jewel in the crown. The whole area would eventually benefit. One day, Duckworth Square wouldn’t look like Ground Zero.
So refuse the planning application for a multi-storey car park (the many modifications to which, submitted just before each meeting was due, have simply caused delay and further deterioration to the building). Compulsorily purchase the Hippodrome, repair and reopen it as a theatre. Or give to those who will. Even in these cash-strapped times, it can make financial sense. Derby could attract top professional touring productions. And I understand that significant financial help for local amateur dramatics is waiting in the wings.
Whoever made it happen would have the undying gratitude of a majority of Derbeians. And that photographer wouldn’t have to rely on computer magic to show Green Lane at its best.

Of bowler hats and fezzes – maybe the legend started here

2010-06-29T15:55:00.001+01:00

SO, we’re in the pub and the conversation turns to bowler hats. I can’t remember how it started. Well, yes, I can: I was retelling an old Max Miller joke about this chap who goes into a ladies’ underwear shop on behalf of his wife and … well, anyway, it prompted Wally to say that his newsagent father owned a bowler hat. He never wore it, though. It was purely to carry at funerals.
I remembered that my pal’s dad, Councillor Teddy Clay, chairman of Derby’s watch committee in the 1950s, was never without his bowler, probably because he was also an undertaker. So we agreed that there’s obviously a common thread between bowler hats and dying.
But not always: when I left school and went to work for W.H. Smith and Son Ltd (as it then was) at the Midland Station bookstall, the stationmaster, Mr Gilmour, always wore a bowler hat.
Actually, for really important people, he wore a top hat and tails. When I say really important people, I mean members of the Royal Family only. For ordinarily important people – like Cliff Richard, to whom I once sold a Derby Evening Telegraph – Mr Gilmour just wore his bowler. It was his normal choice of headgear, whether he was greeting pop stars or members of the general public. We weren’t so impressed by celebrity in those days. Not in Derby, anyway.
After that, the bowler hat conversation – not surprisingly – dried up. But it’s every foreigner’s stereotyped image of an Englishman: pinstripe suit, rolled umbrella – and a bowler. So, when I got home, I decided to find out more about them. Apparently, James Lock and Co of London designed the bowler hat in the 1850s. A landowner asked the firm to create a hard hat suitable for protecting the wearer’s head from branches when riding. Locks sent its designs to the Bowler Brothers for manufacturing, and thus the hats came to be known as bowlers. Not a lot of people know that.
In the early 20th century, of course, men’s hats were an important element of everyday wear. They could signify status: if you look at photographs of old Derby County teams, the trainer always wore a flat cap, the manager a trilby (must look that up, too) and the chairman always sported a bowler.
When I was a very small boy I used to have a thing about hats. There was this wonderland of a shop in Boyer Street, run by a Derby magician called Tommy Harris. He sold everything imaginable, did Tommy, from dusters to dustbins, saucepans to steel wool – and army surplus hats. I once persuaded my mother to buy me a pith helmet from Tommy’s. Others followed suit and, that summer, a stranger might have wondered why all the small boys in that particular corner of Derby appeared to be on safari.
Another time it was a job lot of high-sided fezzes, part of the parade uniform of the King’s African Rifles. In fact, Tommy offered two sorts of fez because he also stocked a low version sported by the West African Frontier Force. I’ve still got mine in the loft somewhere.
Now a flight of fancy: there is a story that a young magician called Tommy Cooper was appearing at Derby Hippodrome, took a walk and ended up in the Lifeboat – Derby’s smallest pub – in Wilson Street. You never know; afterwards he could have strolled up to Boyer Street, looked in Tommy Harris’s window, seen a shelf loaded with fezzes – and the legend could have been born right here. I feel a guided walk coming on. Over to you, Mr Felix.

Birds, blocked drains and boxing … a funny old Saturday

2010-06-22T18:28:00.001+01:00

IT turned out to be a funny sort of Saturday. I had every intention of strolling down Normanton Road, but ended up with a camera down my drains before reflecting on how many different birds you can attract into your garden, on the time when professional boxing had a big following in Derby and whether anyone really believes that all-in wrestling isn’t fixed. Stick with me; I’ll explain.
For sentimental reasons, I like the occasional saunter down Normanton Road. I did my courting there. The future Mrs R lived in Depot Street, so I was familiar with every shop and pub. Indeed, it was in the Douglas Bar, on my 18th birthday, that I had trouble forming sentences after valiantly trying to keep pace with the lovely man who would become my father-in-law.
So it’s the memories – some, like that birthday, slightly blurred – that draw me back. It’s not the same Normanton Road that it was half a century ago. Today, it’s truly cosmopolitan, a bit like Toronto’s Kensington Market only without the writers and artists. But I’m all for multicultural neighbourhoods.
Normanton Road would have to wait, though. Rain was forecast for Sunday, the hedge needed cutting, and, anyway, I wanted to try out my new power hose. Beware: cleaning things with a power hose can be addictive. Once you see how easy it is to shift years of grime in a few seconds, you start looking round for other things – anything – to clean.
But this generates far more water than you could possibly imagine. And then you discover that your drains are blocked again. Hitherto, I’ve always managed to unblock them myself. But this time, a professional was required. And when the job was done, the man from Unbunged Pipes R Us (don’t look in the Yellow Pages, I made that up) suggested a camera might identify the cause of a recurring problem. Alas, the result of this industrial colonoscopy was indeterminate: no major structural problems, so here’s to the next time.
It was teatime before I could finally settle back on our now sparklingly clean patio with a beer and a book. And it was then that I began to marvel at the birdlife. Wood pigeons and collared doves, blue tits and blackbirds, finches green and gold, thrushes, robins, wrens and sparrows, they were all munching happily away until a motor-cycle gang of starlings swooped in and took over.
So I went back to my book, which was about Jack Dempsey. Which set off another train of memory. When I was a boy, every other Monday in winter there was professional boxing at the King’s Hall in Queen Street, where the council laid a floor over the swimming baths. Frank Woodhouse, a Derby greengrocer, promoted most of the shows.
A former boxer lived near us in Gerard Street. Alec Drain fought as a welterweight before the war; unsurprisingly, he used the name Alec Jackson for his professional bouts. His cauliflower ears fascinated me.
The King’s Hall also staged all-in wrestling. I went with my schoolmate Barry Iremonger to see if anyone could unmask the mysterious Count Bartelli. They couldn’t. Later, I discovered that the legendary Count was, in fact, a bloke called Geoff Condliffe from Crewe. When I read that he’d eventually been unmasked by someone called Kendo Nagasaki (Pete Thornley from Stoke to his friends), I was finally convinced that no one was supposed to take all-in wrestling seriously.
None of which has a lot to do with Normanton Road, blocked drains or diverse bird life, but I told you it was a funny sort of a day.

Hospital parking? Well, don't play doctors and nurses outside our house

2010-06-15T17:54:00.002+01:00

THIS is delicate. There was this couple in a car outside our house in the middle of the day and they were … well, let’s just say that they had cast modesty to the wind. After that, you’ll have to use your imagination.
Actually, they weren’t just outside our house. They were parked on the pavement, blocking our drive. And they had the windows open. Passing traffic was at a crawl because of Uttoxeter Road’s seemingly never-ending road works, people were strolling by and, if the milkman still used a horse, I’m sure it would have bolted.
I’m as broadminded as the next person, but we were about to have lunch. And with all that going on only a few yards away … well, it puts you off your beans on toast. But what to do? What is the modern etiquette for such a circumstance? Phone the police? Take evidential photographs (and get yourself arrested instead)? Politely ask them to hurry up? While I was still considering my options, they drove off. No doubt each with a smile on their face.
We used to be a quiet lane. Today we endure vehicles parked everywhere; drives blocked; drink cartons, cigarette ends and other assorted rubbish chucked out of car windows on to hitherto litter-free pavements. And now al fresco games of doctors and nurses.
Not that I’m suggesting for one moment that the couple were employees of, or visitors to, the Royal Derby Hospital. But the area has certainly gone down the nick since Derby City Council showed compound disinterest while hospital bosses rode roughshod over their neighbours.
It’s a brilliant hospital, its staff unfailingly professional and thoughtful. The same can’t always be said for the management. It’s almost a year since I last chuntered about it here. But off I go again.
Spending thousands of pounds on a review of the parking mess before coming up with a 90-page brochure that tells residents that no more parking will be made available but, don’t worry, because we’re going to lend staff the money to buy raincoats and then they’ll all obviously cycle to work is too daft for words. Imagine the traffic chaos that would have ensued if that couple had turned up on a tandem.
Last month, Paul Brooks, head of facilities management at the hospitals, said that building another car park “would increase congestion on the roads surrounding the hospitals, which isn't going to benefit residents”. How can providing more off-street parking add to congestion? It would have exactly the opposite effect.
As for Mr Brooks “leading by example” by replacing one of his two family cars with a gas-powered camper van. What has that to do with the lack of parking spaces at his hospital?
He said: "When the hospitals' chief executive doesn't have other business commitments, she walks to work." Apparently she lives only a quarter of a mile away. That’s not quite the same as front-line staff coming off a long shift. Some of them park a mile away now and walk. They must be as fed up as are the locals.
There is a glimmer of hope, however. At last the city council has come up with a plan to restrict non-residents’ parking in our street and elsewhere. I suggested this a year ago.
Anyway, all that off my chest, back to the over-amorous couple who would have steamed up the windows of their car, if only they’d had the decency to close them in the first place. If you’re reading this – and I’m sure you’ll recognise yourselves – be warned: next time, I’m coming after you with a bucket of cold water.

It's a funny old world and Roger was right: it was only 'au revoir'

2010-06-08T17:40:00.002+01:00

MY pal Roger was a bright little lad. It was the early 1950s and, most afternoons, we walked home from school together. We’d dawdle outside our house on the corner of Webster Street, finishing off whatever conversation we’d started as we’d left the school gates. Then I’d go in for my tea, while Roger would continue to his house in Swinburne Street.
One afternoon, Roger sprang a surprise: he was leaving our school at the end of that week. So, on the Friday afternoon, when we reached our house, I extended a hand: “Well, we’d better say goodbye, then.”
“No,” said Roger – we were all of nine years old – “Let’s just say au revoir”. When I got in, I asked my mother what that meant (he was much worldlier than me, was Roger).
“It’s French,” she said, mildly irritated that I’d interrupted Mrs Dale’s Diary on the wireless.
“Well, what does it mean?” I asked again.
“It means that you’re saying goodbye until you meet again,” she said, before returning to Mary, who was worried about Jim.
“But I’m not meeting him again,” I said, now more to myself because she’d reabsorbed herself in the goings on at Virginia Lodge, where Sally had apparently arrived to take Mrs Freeman to the shops.
Anyway, I didn’t see Roger again. And I felt rather sad about that. For about a week, anyway. Then, like most nine-year-olds, I moved on. Over the years, though, I would occasionally wonder what had become of my pal. A few weeks ago, I had the answer: quite a lot. An email pinged on to my computer screen. Subject “When we were kids,” it read simply: “I used to walk home from school, up Gerard Street, with you … Funny old world." It was from Roger Walker, the little lad I’d last seen 56 years ago.
As it turned out, I’d seen him quite a few times in the intervening years. I just didn’t know it. You see, Roger became an actor, one of those faces that often pop up in an episode of The Bill, Emmerdale or EastEnders. He’s been on the cinema screen, too, not least in the 2008 film, Brideshead Revisited. He lives in London now, but recently came up to Derby for a gathering of former pupils of Becket Junior School. Like all of us, he’s changed a bit since 1954. But now I did recognise the small boy who trudged up Gerard Street with me all those years ago. It was an emotional moment.
All of which brings me to the business of reunions, which are obviously important to those who’d taken the trouble to attend the latest, all for the pleasure of meeting people on whom they hadn’t clapped eyes in over half a century.
It was fascinating, watching the years drop away. Everyone behaved exactly as I remembered. Nobody produced a catapult or suggested a game of marbles; but the years certainly hadn’t dampened anyone’s spirits. I get the same feeling at Old Bemrosian reunions. Again, people travel from afar to enjoy the camaraderie of a shared past. Yet it seems that not everyone wants to look back. Trying to recruit more takers for a recent Old Bems dinner, I was surprised when someone that I really thought would be up for it, was openly hostile to the idea. “The past is where it should be,” was the message.
Maybe I was fortunate in having such brilliant school pals, many of whom have remained close friends.
Anyway, Roger was right. It was only “au revoir”. I told you he was a bright little lad.

If I can dream? The night I saw off a future England manager

2010-06-01T17:41:00.002+01:00

THE World Cup is almost upon us. So it’s time to tell you about the night in Derby that I faced down a future England manager who became an unlikely pop star.
But first, there’s this woman who works in my regular coffee stop in the city centre, who manages, quite naturally, to do what most people would ordinarily find quite difficult: she can take your order, serve it up, accept your money, hand over your change – and never once look at you.
The last time I presented myself at her counter, she had to ask me not once, not twice, but three times what I wanted, simply because she was more intent on regaling a colleague with the events of the previous evening than she was with attending to a customer. Each time the question – “Sorry, what did you want?” – was posed, in an increasingly vexed voice, she was still looking at the person next to her, not at me.
And it isn’t just me. I’ve watched her in action with other people and almost everyone is ignored as a matter of course. And it really annoys me. So much so that, after the first few times, I wanted to say something. Now I’m giving up on the place altogether. Which is a pity because the coffee is good, the overall ambience pleasant. But I’ve always harboured a strong objection to rude catering staff – you don’t meet many – so I’m voting with my feet.
They won’t miss my few quid a week. But someone ought to tell her before more disaffected coffee drinkers head elsewhere. There’s plenty of choice. Always has been. Which brings me neatly to the Derby coffee houses of my youth – and to that face-off with a future England manager.
There was the Kardomah, the Genevieve, and Boccaccio, although I never frequented the latter, in the Market Place. It was one of those 1960s Italian-type places, far too trendy for a lad from Gerard Street. No, after an evening’s snooker at the Regent in Babington Lane, a mug of Horlicks in the Wardwick Milk Bar was my norm.
But when I was feeling sophisticated, coffee from a steaming Pyrex cup at Sid Greatorex’s Genevieve in Gower Street did the trick. And it was there that I saw off a future England boss.
One Friday evening in October 1962, we’d just settled down – Sid was kind enough not to notice that one cup of coffee could last a cash-strapped teenager most of the evening – when in came the Chelsea footballers who were playing Derby County the following day. Peter Bonetti, Bobby Tambling, Barry Bridges and the rest of that famous team, synonymous with the King’s Road, were soon chatting with the locals.
I was coming down the stairs from the lavatory when a figure came sprinting up. Which of us should give way? I applied my golden rule: I was more than halfway down and, thus, enjoyed precedence. I stood my ground and made Terry Venables retreat.
Now, every time El Tel appears on television, singing If I Can Dream in that advertisement for a national newspaper, I relate the story, embellishing it (“I’m telling you, Terry, take up coaching; you’ll manage England one day”) to the point where it now bears little relation to our brief encounter.
But it just goes to show: you never know who you might bump into over coffee. Having said that, in the event that Fabio Capello ever patronises my hitherto favourite stop, it’s unlikely that he’ll be recognised by that woman who never looks at her customers. And, anyway, he’d have been happier in Boccaccio.

As ash fills the skies, maybe only a trip down memory lane will do

2010-05-25T16:11:00.002+01:00

HANDS up: who fancies flying off on holiday at the moment? Even supposing a temporary lull in Icelandic volcano ash allows your aircraft to take off for sunnier climes, wouldn’t you spend your entire holiday worrying about whether you’d get back to Derby before autumn beckons?
Two weeks in Torremolinos might be all right. But two months? And what if you’d gone to Thailand and become trapped by rioting Red Shirts? It doesn’t bear thinking about.
Which is why we’ve just enjoyed a few days in Scarborough. Back in the 1950s, the future Mrs R went there every year with her mum and dad, so it was a sentimental journey. And I’m all for sentimental journeys.
Lucky her. When I was a kid, I rarely got to the seaside. The long summer holidays were spent at my grandmother’s in Lincolnshire. A day trip to Skeggy from Friargate station was about all I saw of the briny. And, by the time we got there, it was almost time to come back.
Our big holiday was spent in flat landscapes and began with an annual taxi ride. For two shillings (10p to post-decimal generations), the Fordhyre company in Mount Street took us to Derby Midland station; when the fare went up to half-a-crown (13p, as near as makes no difference), my father briefly considered walking. Heavy suitcases eventually weighed in Fordhyre’s favour.
In the 1950s, the little Fenland town of Spalding was very different to Derby. Its railway station was still lit by gas. And so, too, was Gran Rippon’s house. On hot summer evenings, we’d hang on as long as possible before lighting mantles that generated a fair amount of extra heat.
When my parents returned home after their fortnight’s holiday, I’d be left in deepest Lincolnshire until it was time for me to go back to Becket Junior School in September. After breakfast, with an ocean of a day ahead of me, I’d set off to explore. Somewhere different every day. I’d walk and walk, out of the town, down country lanes and alongside dykes. The huge skies of south Lincolnshire fascinated me.
I’d sit by a hedgerow to eat the sandwiches and home-made cake that Gran had packed for me, and occasionally some old boy trudging in the opposite direction would stop and ask me where I was going. If they weren’t in a hurry – and no-one ever appeared to be in a hurry – they’d volunteer to tell me what it had been like around there in years gone by. Probably much the same, I used to think. If it sounds like Swallows and Amazons, well, that’s how it was.
I was thinking about those days as we trundled round Scarborough. Walking in old footsteps can be fun. There were disappointments, of course. The boarding house that was Mrs R’s regular billet is now a block of flats. And the fish and chip shop of fond memory has been reinvented as a Tex-Mex takeaway.
But with all this uncertainty over air travel and having to routinely hang around airports for hours on end, not to mention those tiresome security measures (do I really look like a terrorist? OK, don’t answer that), nipping to the British seaside by train is still becoming a more appealing option.
And if you can’t be bothered to do even that, well there’s always Derbyshire’s glorious countryside. Because aren’t we blessed to live in such a beautiful part of the world? It even puts into the shade those gorgeous Fenland skies of my childhood.
So, do your worst, Mount Eyjafjallajokull. Pump your ash. Matlock Bath will do me nicely. Chip anyone?

There's bother on the horizon so is it time for a new national anthem?

2010-05-18T18:48:00.002+01:00

WE can thank Irving Berlin for Let’s Face the Music and Dance. It’s the song that contains the line: “There may be trouble ahead.” One of the greatest songwriters in history penned it back in 1936, for a film called Follow The Fleet, one of those movies that occasionally resurfaces on television.
Older readers will remember the iconic dance scene in which Fred Astaire sings it to Ginger Rogers. Those of less ancient vintage will recall the celebrated Morecambe and Wise sketch that involved newsreader Angela Rippon (no relation). The song was also used in the 1981 film Pennies From Heaven, where Astaire’s voice was lip-synced by Steve Martin.
In my book, Let’s Face the Music and Dance is one of the truly great songs. And I was just thinking: as the post-election ash cloud still billows, perhaps we British should adopt it as our unofficial national anthem.
We’d have to change a few words, of course. There may be trouble ahead? Well, I think that we can now definitely say that there will be bother on the horizon.
And where Berlin says that there’ll be music and moonlight, and love and romance, before they ask us to pay the bill? That bit would also have to be rewritten. I can’t speak for anyone else’s love life, and a full Moon is due next week. But, believe me, the music has already stopped. The final demand is already on the table. There are already teardrops to shed.
These next few years are going to be a great culture shock, especially for a generation of Britons who don’t know what it’s like not to be able to have whatever they want whenever they want it.
There aren’t many advantages to growing old, but one is that, if you’ve been around a bit, you’re mentally better prepared to batten down the hatches and ride out the economic storm (the disappointing rider being that, if the storm is a particularly long one, you may not still be around when the boat stops rocking).
At the risk of sounding like one of those old Hovis advertisements – “We walked 20 miles to work in snow, and 20 miles back again … ” – life for the older generations was … well, if not harder, then certainly less cushy than it is today. So it occurs to me that, when a straw-filled mattress replaces the featherbed, those who remember previous austerity may cope more readily than those who’ve only ever known days of plenty.
Of course, we aren’t talking about reintroducing food rationing or clothing coupons here. Sacrifices in the days ahead will be more about not being able to afford more than one holiday a year; or having to hang on to the car for a year or two longer. Belt tightening means different things to different people.
Most will find it unfair. For retirees, aren’t these supposed to be the golden years, when those who’ve given a working lifetime to Britain can sit back and enjoy the fruits of 50 years’ labour? Miniscule interest rates and tumbling pension funds weren’t supposed to be part of that plan.
Those who thought they were more than halfway through a working life but who now face the prospect of toiling longer, retiring later? They won’t find that fair either.
And none of us will find it fair if the new Coalition government doesn’t crack down on work-shy benefit scroungers whose sole idea of a career is filling in claims forms.
More than anything, let’s hope that the fiddlers have fled, humming a different tune. He could write a good lyric, could Irving Berlin.

Even in 3-D, the big match seems much smaller than it used to be

2010-05-11T22:33:00.002+01:00

IN 1953, we didn’t have a telly. Nor did many other people. So, one Saturday in May, I went over to my mate Colin Shaw’s house, just across the street. His parents had bought a set for the Coronation. That was still a month away, though. This was more important: FA Cup Final Day.
In the Shaws’ darkened middle room we watched Stanley Mortensen of Blackpool score three times to help beat Bolton in the game that, despite Mortensen’s heroics, still became known as the Matthews Final. Football’s funny folklore, eh?
That was 57 years ago. This Saturday, I’ll be watching the Cup Final again as bankrupted, recently-relegated Portsmouth try to overturn the formbook against mega-rich table-toppers, Chelsea. This time, though, I won’t be peering at a 9in-screen set in a walnut cabinet so bulky that it made the grainy black and white picture appear even smaller (my pal John Cheadle’s father used to watch the Cup Final on their television through a pair of binoculars).
No, on Saturday it will be in widescreen, high definition, glorious colour, which just about parallels how far football itself has travelled in the intervening years. And not always in the right direction, it has to be said.
I liked the game better when the only match televised live was the FA Cup Final. When scorers were congratulated with a pat on the back, not a badly orchestrated dance from the entire team. When the season began in late August, finished in early May and – World Cups every four years aside – the sporting summer was left to concentrate on county cricket, athletics and the like. When football’s local heroes caught the same bus as the fans and, their playing days over, most had to find ordinary jobs in the community.
You can’t see Frank Lampard coming round to paper your front room in ten years’ time. But that was the trade taken up by Derby County Cup winner Reg Harrison when his football career ended. Over a pot of tea, or a bucket of wallpaper paste, Reg could hold you spellbound with tales of the game as he played it.
Alas, that now seems as distant as when manufacturers of early TV sets began to sell magnifying glasses that were supposed to make the pictures on those tiny screens larger, but succeeded only in distorting them.
Or the first attempts at colouring television pictures. Again, no great scientific breakthrough was involved: just another screen to place in front of your set. This one had three coloured bands: blue at the top, brown in the middle, green at the bottom. All of which added a crude novelty value when film of the countryside was being shown. Otherwise viewers had to get used to newsreaders and actors with blue hair, brown faces and green torsos.
Today, the sky – or Sky – seems the limit. Goals are instantly replayed from half a dozen different angles (and still nobody can say for certain that the ref was wrong). And now they’re even offering us 3D pictures of football matches, although at the moment you’ll have to visit a selected pub to enjoy it. No real hardship there, then.
It was in the pub last Friday that we were talking about those Cup Final days of yore. The consensus was that Europe and the Premier League rule and that the FA Cup Final is now afforded far less importance. We preferred it when the whole day was dedicated to the match. Probably starting with a Cup Final edition of It’s A Knockout. What a sad old bunch we are. But bring back Stuart Hall.

Never mind the election … what about the drains?

2010-05-04T15:48:00.002+01:00

HANG on in there. The General Election is almost upon us. After four weeks of wall-to-wall media coverage, we’ll soon know: Gordon again? Will Dave get a go? Will Nick hold sway? Then there’s the battle for Derby City Council. That really is a lot on which to keep your eyes over the next 48 hours. Not to mention the drains. Which we’ll come to later.
One thing is certain: forget the opinion polls. Nobody asked me; and probably not you. The only poll that matters takes place tomorrow. So whatever you do, don’t be a don’t-know.
National – and local – elections have always been important to me, even as a small child. In those days, of course, I didn’t care who won. It was just that, when I got to about nine, I’d abandoned hope that I’d wake up one morning to find that school had burned down during the night. So use of the building as a polling station, however occasional, was welcomed.
In recent times, kids wanting a day off have been known to burn down their schools. Well, even when relying on a lightning strike seemed ever more futile, I never reached the point where I was deciding which accelerant to use. Which just goes to show how much better behaved were children then.
Anyway, life moved on, grammar school provided happier times (which was as well because the place was so big that, when it was used as a polling station, we never got a day off), and I started work.
But you had to be 21 to vote in those days. So, despite being born as von Rundstedt was battering Allied lines in the Ardennes, in a last desperate attempt to turn the Second World War in Hitler’s favour, it was a March day in 1966 before I was allowed to vote on my country’s future.
Nowadays, of course, you can vote at 18, which isn’t unreasonable if, at that age, you can join the Army and find yourself getting shot at in unpopular wars. But the suggestion that we should enfranchise 16-year-olds? It might save some of them from burning down schools – they could just close them instead – but if adolescent hoodies get the vote, then the rest of us may as well surrender now.
Back to 1966, though: a famous year for English football, and also my first General Election as a voter. Harold Wilson, elected only two years previously, had decided that he couldn’t carry on with an overall majority of only four. It was a good call; he was returned with 96 MPs to spare. That kept him going until 1970, when Ted Heath sprang a surprise. Some pundits blamed Wilson’s demise on England’s elimination from that summer’s World Cup. Ironic that: a German called Muller deciding who governed Britain.
But even if people really are that fickle, which I doubt, contenders for your vote this time needn’t worry about the nation’s football fortunes. Capello’s men don’t kick-off for another month; time for a dozen broken promises between now and then.
Actually, if you can’t be bothered with General Election coverage, and you hate football, then it might be time to switch off the flatscreen and instead check your drains. I’ve recently discovered that there’s no more satisfying sound than that final “Schlooooorp,” nor a more satisfying sight than fresh, clear water bubbling happily towards the street. Let’s face it: your candidate getting elected, England winning the World Cup – none of it will make any sense if your drains are blocked. When all is said and done, it’s the little things in life that matter most.

Educationalists could learn lessons from the school of hard knocks

2010-04-27T19:03:00.002+01:00

“I SAY,” said Alf, taking the top off his pint with the air of a man supremely satisfied with his lot. “Do you remember your first day at school?” He’s a reflective character, is Alf. Always coming out with the unexpected, always ready to set the topic for the evening’s debate.
“Indeed, I do,” I said. “Becket Infants’ School. January 1950. I remember it like it was yesterday.”
It doesn’t take much to send my mind spinning back to that bleak morning, 60 years ago. I doubt that Gerard Street School, as many still called it, had changed since the Victorians built it. Draughty classrooms, perilously steep steps leading down to a concrete playground resembling a barrack square, outside toilets that on this winter’s day were frozen solid – it didn’t quite add up to a Dickens novel. But, I bet if he’d not already written Hard Times …
It was certainly something of a shock to a five-year-old who’d never been anywhere without his doting mum. All those other kids, most of them bigger than me …
Terry Tattershaw was given the job as my minder. Terry was actually smaller than me, but two months older. So he’d started in the September and was therefore streetwise, or at least playgroundwise. Always known as “Rags”, a play on his surname, he was to become a good pal. We still enjoy a pint together now and again.
Anyway, that’s the answer I gave Alf – rather more detailed than he’d bargained for, I should think – and then I asked why he wanted to know.
“Well,” he said, “I’ve just read that tens of thousands of kids are leaving primary school in this country without being able to read, write, or add up properly. But we had a good primary education. So where did the system go wrong?”
Total ignorance of a subject has never prevented me from having an opinion on it. But, this time, I didn’t have an answer. All I could do was agree with Alf. Our lessons were basic but solid: arithmetic, including learning by rote the times tables until we possessed what amounted to a mental pocket calculator; reading and writing; history and geography. What more did we need?
Of course, discipline could be brutal. There was one chap – I won’t identify him in case he has innocent family still around – whose head reminded me of a grinning skull. Only he didn’t do much grinning. His party piece was to bring down a ruler on the knuckles of any unsuspecting eight-year-old who’d let their gaze wander when they should have been trying to absorb the joys of long division.
Then there was the school dentist off Mill Hill Lane. Us kids, all miserably looking at each other without saying a word, thick rubber aprons around our necks waiting for the dreaded gas mask to be applied.
All in all, I didn’t enjoy primary school life. But I did leave it behind, able to read and write, add up and subtract, familiar with the history of our nation, and capable of finding almost any country on a globe. Yet those who taught us weren’t blessed with genius. They just used good old-fashioned methods.
Fortunately, teachers can’t beat children today. The school dentist doesn’t leave them terrified for life at the prospect of having a filling. But if tens of thousands really are leaving primary school as illiterate and innumerate as they started, then the educational establishment could do worse than examine how it was once done. I don’t know why they stopped doing it. It might be a lesson worth learning. That’s what I told Alf, anyway.

Demolition Derby has left us with very few architectural treasures

2010-04-20T18:54:00.001+01:00

SO, they want to build a budget hotel next to Derby Cathedral. I wonder what Oliver Smith would say. It was over 40 years ago. I was walking through the Market Place and bumped into Oliver, then the Derby Telegraph’s assistant circulation manager. He was quite a character. He wore a cameo brooch in the lapel of his tweed jacket, addressed you in a booming voice, and peered at you over the top of a pair of antique spectacles.
He loved his antiques, did Oliver. He also loved Derby. And on that April day in the early 1960s, we were chatting away when he suddenly looked around and said: “You know, for all its industry, Derby still has the feel of a lovely market town.” A couple of days ago, when it was announced that Whitbread Hotels and Restaurants were interested in plonking a Premier Inn in the heart of the Cathedral Quarter, I thought about that moment. And panicked.
Oliver was right. It was probably Derby’s best era. Not that we should have stood still in the years that followed. But, oh, how our city could have been modernised without destroying so many of its architectural gems. And without building so many hideous replacements.
It’s astonishing, what has disappeared since the war: The Old Mayor’s Parlour in Tenant Street, one of England’s largest Tudor urban residences, demolished for no apparent reason. Darley and Markeaton Halls, destroyed after being allowed to fall into neglect. The 16th-century Nottingham Castle Inn in St Michael’s Lane, needlessly pulled down.
When the 18th-century Assembly Rooms were damaged by fire, they were demolished; another town might have found another way. When St Alkmund’s and its Georgian churchyard made way for the inner ring road, we wondered: was there really no alternative?
Other cities rebuilt their railway stations and still managed to retain handsome 19th-century facades. Not Derby. When the council took its eye off the wrecking ball, a large chunk of the Hippodrome came crashing down.
How ironic that Derby’s attempts to become a tourist attraction come only after the wholesale loss of buildings that would have been a huge asset to such an initiative.
It’s not all bad, of course. Irongate is still a joy, especially around the Cathedral – at the moment. Looking west, with the Guildhall on your left, the Market Place still presents an attractive face (except when obscured by a marquee full of Lady Boys from Bangkok). But turn around. The 1970s Assembly Rooms wouldn’t have looked out of place in Soviet Russia. And if there are places that the Quad might suit, Derby Market Place doesn’t happen to be one of them.
Elsewhere in the city centre, the exterior of what is now Derby Theatre looks like a fire station. And if the old Castle and Falcon wouldn’t have won any awards for architectural excellence, whoever approved its replacement must have been an admirer of the bunkers in Hitler’s Atlantic Wall.
That end of East Street is a mess. I suppose the most positive thing about the empty Riverlights complex is that it doesn’t look out of place set against the Eagle Market across the road.
When you weigh up what Derby’s planners have allowed over the last half century, there aren’t too many that you’d have let design you a garden shed, never mind a city centre.
Maybe they just weren’t paying attention when the artists’ impressions were dropped on the table. Maybe it was always late on a Friday and they were hurrying to go home. Let’s hope that this time they find a moment to have a good look at the drawings.

The thing that Harold had taken away …

2010-04-13T20:40:00.002+01:00

FUNNY, to what you become privy while hanging around the post office in Victoria Street, waiting for your number to be called. Things that leave your imagination working overtime. Things that can remain tantalisingly unresolved. Things that, on reflection, you wish you’d not overheard.
Last Thursday morning, it was impossible to cock a deaf ’un. The woman with the unusually loud voice seemed not to mind who was listening among an audience comprising mostly eBayers having their parcels weighed, and sturdy young benefit professionals collecting their weekly hand-outs.
“I say, Eunice,” she said to her morose looking companion. “You know that thing that Harold had taken away?”
Eunice nodded wearily. She seemed only too familiar with stories of what Harold had had taken away.
“Well, it’s come back,” said the first woman, rather too enthusiastically, I thought.
Eunice didn’t look worried. But then she didn’t look as if she cared one way or the other. Before further details could be revealed, the woman’s number was called and I was left hoping that Harold’s number wasn’t up altogether.
Throughout the day, I kept returning to it. What was it that Harold had had taken away that had come back? Something serious, life threatening even? Or simply embarrassing? If you’re reading this, Harold, please accept my best wishes for a successful resolution, whatever the problem was. And apparently is still.
That evening, I told my pal, Alf, about Harold: that he had had a thing taken away but that it had come back. Alf furrowed his brow, then drained his pint and placed the empty glass back on the bar in that unambiguous manner that tells you that your companion is ready for another and it isn’t his round.
“It makes you wonder,” he said. And it does. Not so much at what Harold had had removed that had come back, but at how people can discuss intensely private matters in public and not care who might be listening. Let’s face it: thanks to me, now everyone knows that the thing Harold had taken away has come back.
But my visit to the post office was but one port of call on a busy morning. And at the end of it all, I realised two things: that we’ll soon be unable to talk to a staff member in any shop or facility; and that, given the inane things that the current survivors are instructed to say to customers, this may be no bad thing.
This growing trend for everything to be self-service: supermarkets, banks, doctors’ surgeries, even the public library in the Wardwick – they all want people to process their own purchases, pay in their own cheques, confirm their own appointments, check out their own library books. No wonder unemployment is on the increase.
But this may also be a blessing if it avoids being continually asked in a monotone voice how many of your own bags you’ve used, whether you’ve got a loyalty card, whether you want any cash back, or whether you need something called a mobile top-up.
Marks and Spencer’s staff now seem to say to every customer: “Thank you for waiting.” One said it to me last week, when I hadn’t been waiting at all. She was alone when I walked up to her till. In any case, if there’s a queue, what choice do you have? If they have to say something, then, “Sorry you’ve had to wait,” would make sense. I might write to Sir Stuart Rose before he steps down.
That just leaves poor Harold. If I see that woman again, I’ll just going to have to ask her …

Relentless pursuit of the walking stick method

2010-04-06T17:45:00.001+01:00

LAST October, when police in Derby announced Operation Relentless – “a six-week scheme to crack down on anti-social behaviour” – two things crossed my mind. First, why do police give such naff titles to their initiatives? Presumably they’re meant to sound dynamic.
More important, though, I wondered why this particular operation was lasting only six weeks. It didn’t seem all that relentless. The answer, I supposed, was money. After six weeks, budget exhausted, the boys and girls in blue would be moved on to something else. The anti-social brigade would then pick up where it left off. That’s piecemeal law enforcement for you.
I thought about it again recently when police sergeant Nick Allgood told us that cyclists riding on Derby’s pavements and pedestrianised areas was “not a major issue”. Funny that. Six months earlier, launching Operation Relentless, Sergeant Allgood said that pavement cyclists put at risk “the safety of those who walk in the city centre”.
I’m not blaming the good sergeant, though. Form filling, target reaching and political correctness must be enormously distracting when most police officers just want to feel the collars of a few villains, miscreants and other assorted n’er-do-wells. That would better suit the public, too. They see our police swimming against a dual tidal wave of crime and bureaucracy.
A lot of it, though, is down to our culture. Bestselling thriller writer Stan Guy, my old pal from Becket Junior School, these days lives in Tokyo where muggings, burglaries, even petty crimes, are rare. Why? Well, says Stan, simply because they are against the law.
You see, unlike jolly old Great Britain where yobs wear Asbos as a badge of honour, the Japanese citizen traditionally doesn’t bring shame upon family, friends and colleagues. Actually, you won’t be shamed for pavement cycling in Japan; it’s been legal there since 1978. But it isn’t in the UK. That’s the point.
And as even the mildest mannered citizen sometimes yearns to indulge in a spot of vigilantism, I am indebted to Kalwinder Dhindsa for drawing my attention to a book entitled The Walking Stick Method Of Self Defence, published in 1923, its author described simply as “An Officer Of The Indian Police”.
In parts, the book is obviously out of date, claiming that “while men no longer swagger abroad with swinging rapier and pistols thrust in their belts as they used to in golden days of old … few men are seen nowadays without a stick of some kind in their hands while out”. Alas, in my part of Mickleover, you rarely see anyone setting off for a stroll, twirling a hazelwood thumbstick with deer antler handle.
But other parts of the book could have been written yesterday: “Times and manners change … we are sometimes brought to a rude sense of awakening … when confronted by a dangerous hooligan and his confraternity, a burglar … ”
The book reminds us: “While looking at the walking stick as an adornment, we overlook its original use.” Not everyone: Kevin Garwood, a karate black belt from Norfolk, offers pensioners lessons in the art of self-defence using their walking sticks.
A spokesman for Age Concern said: “Our aim is to keep people fit and active. With martial arts, you do learn a lot of balance and control.”
Whether this extends to approving of kamikaze pensioners setting about passing hoodies with NHS walking sticks, while screaming: “Banzai!” isn’t clear.
But I wonder: if a British pensioner, hit by a pavement cyclist, took revenge by shoving their walking stick into the bike’s spokes, who would be the more likely to be arrested? Don’t write in. We know the answer. Relentless, isn’t it?

Owd yer tight, it could be a rocky ride for huge bus station building

2010-03-30T19:03:00.001+01:00

THEY were idyllic days in the 1960s, travelling by bus to the Derby Telegraph’s Burton office. Tailby and George’s blue double-deckers rolled along quiet country lanes, through unspoilt Findern, Willington, Repton, and on to Newton Solney where the River Trent’s washlands spread out below. Occasionally, I’d use the service that meandered through Etwall, Egginton, Hilton and Stretton. Whichever way I chose, it was a grand way to begin the working day.
I can’t recall the platform at Derby bus station where the journey started. I hopped on in Abbey Street, or on Burton Road, both more convenient to where I lived. I remember the bus station best for reasons connected with local football. The selection card usually read: “Meet excursion platform, 1pm.” Occasionally, the ice factory, opposite, was the gathering point. Either way, a cuppa at the Upper Deck Café was on the cards. If we wanted the gents’, we’d say we were “going to Cheltenham”; the lavatory was adjacent to that particular stop.
Now all this has disappeared from local life. But don’t despair: Derbeians, who for the past five years have been wandering all over the city looking for their ride home, are now happily queuing in a warm, dry – providing it didn’t flood again – spanking new bus station.
It was a close-run thing, though. With so many delays and distractions following the old bus station’s closure in 2005, only a supreme optimist would have assumed that it would actually happen this time. So many dates set for the opening had been missed.
In fact, it took 12 months to even start knocking down the old one; another two years to begin building the new one. While all that was going on – or not going on – we had a protester squatting on its roof in her caravan. That was a real low point: East Midlanders at large probably gathered the impression that we in Derby were all slightly dotty.
The original developer dropped out and all manner of other problems ensued, each one threatening the timetable to provide long-suffering Derby folk with a decent bus station.
Many people wanted to retain the old one. I wasn’t one of them. No one is keener than me to save old buildings. But there’s a limit to how far you can usefully go in order to preserve the past. For all those memories, I didn’t object to this particular demolition job.
In 1930, Aslin’s Art Deco bus station was ahead of its time. Almost 80 years later it was, to coin current jargon, unfit for purpose. Dreary, dirty, draughty, occasionally downright dangerous, it was a dump. On a lonely winter’s night, a truly dystopian vision. Thank goodness it was condemned to the wrecking ball.
But once you’ve demolished a building, what then matters is what replaces it. And I have a question about the unattractive structure that has mushroomed on the banks of the Derwent: why is it so big? Where buses go, and where passengers wait, comprises only a small part of it. The remainder can’t all be bus offices and a drivers’ tea stop? No, thanks to the economic downturn, a huge chunk remains undeveloped.
Apartments, yet more shops and restaurants, a casino even, was apparently the price we would have to pay for a “free” bus station. I thought then that we’d be better off building our own. What now looms over the Morledge has done nothing to change my mind.
This latest addition to Derby’s ever-changing skyline is finally up and running. It could be a rocky ride, though. As the conductor used to say: “Owd yer tight, me ducks …

Memories of Alice and the Old Scholar … and a chance to levitate my trinkets

2010-03-23T17:35:00.000Z

IT’S years since I braved the city centre for an evening pint. So tales of people having their noses bitten off while sampling the local nightlife serve only to reinforce my feeling that downtown Derby on a Saturday, after dark, isn’t for me.
Of course, it hasn’t always been like that. Indeed, my own family boasts a long line of publicans who ran peaceful local boozers, like the Stag and Pheasant in Lower Brook Street (admittedly, it got a bit lively when there was a public hanging outside the prison), the Derby Volunteer in Hope Street, the Old White Horse demolished to make way for Friargate railway station, and the Rising Sun in Friar Gate when it had a thatched roof.
True, there was a fatality further afield. But that was when distant cousin Richard Rippon, landlord of the Black Bull in the Fenland village of Deeping Gate, one night in 1903, when he was in his 80th year, stepped outside for a breather, turned left instead of right, and fell into the River Welland. It could have happened to anyone.
These days, a friendly Saturday night around the piano at the Rowditch does me nicely, although there was a time when we used a number of town centre (as it then was) pubs and never felt threatened.
One of my favourites was the White Horse (now the Court House) in the Morledge. The landlady was Alice Baker, a matriarchal figure whose brother, Reg Parnell, was a famous Derby racing driver.
After Alice’s husband – “the Old Scholar” as he was universally known – died, the day-to-day running of the pub lay in the hands of Charles Boneham, a slightly camp figure who had the habit of perpetually pushing his spectacles back on to his nose.
Alice would hold court with her pals in “the Virgins’ Corner” as their little nook was called. If she did go on the prowl, it generally wasn’t to help the beleaguered Charles, but to see if any young couple were holding hands. Disapproving of any form of physical contact between members of the opposite sex, she was quick to pre-empt any hanky-panky with a curt: “We’ll have none of that in here.”
Heaven knows what Alice would have made of today’s permissive society. No scantily-clad lass would have made it past her front door. And an evening of 21st-century television viewing would undoubtedly have induced an acute attack of the vapours.
Unlike today, in the 1960s few pubs sold food – a bag of crisps or a pickled egg if you were lucky – but Charles was always proud of his sandwiches and cobs. One Sunday lunchtime I was enjoying a pint in the White Horse when a woman in her late 60s, heavily made-up, came in and ordered a bottle of milk stout. Then she pointed to the food cabinet on the bar and said, in a rather snotty voice: “Barman, are these sandwiches fresh?”
I thought that Charles – who would have taken exception to being addressed as “Barman” in the first place, never mind having the quality of his food called into question – was going to explode.
Instead, he adjusted his spectacles and snorted: “Madam, the only thing fresher than those sandwiches is me.’” I laughed so much that beer came down my nose.
Finally, I have to report yet another unsolicited offer from an internet trading company. Regular readers may recall that I recently declined the opportunity to purchase a terracotta rhubarb enforcer.
Now someone is trying to sell me an “antigravity platform”. Apparently, it will enable me to “levitate my trinkets”. I’m still thinking about it.

Well, would you send a 13-year-boy to the bank with the week's takings?

2010-03-16T20:24:00.000Z

HERE’S a story. When we were 13, one of my pals had a little job with Ted Barker, the butcher at the top of Gerard Street. After school on Wednesdays, he used to make up the sausages with Ted. On Saturdays, he did the local deliveries on the butcher’s bike. Just before lunch, he was given the week’s takings to be paid in at a bank on Osmaston Road. Then he’d nip across the street to the Durham Ox, where they'd give him their takings as well.
He'd then ride down Charnwood Street with all this money bouncing around in the wicker basket of the bike and, bold as the brass he was transporting, do the business at the bank. After the cash was safely deposited, he’d collect his bottle of pop from the pub, and his half-a-crown wages from Ted, then nip to Askin’s on Burton Road for fish and chips. “Askin for Fish and Chips” was their motto. Clever that.
Anyway, that was over 50 years ago and my pal doesn’t live in Derby now. But he visited recently. And this time, when he walked down Osmaston Road, he wondered if he’d make it in one piece. You wouldn’t get a pub landlord, or a butcher, sending a small boy to the bank with the week’s takings these days, he mused.
Of course, my pal survived. But the fact that he now felt nervous about making a journey that he’d undertaken countless times as a child, makes you realise why so many over-55s apparently want to flee the country.
Yes, according to a Foreign Office survey, four in every ten people approaching retirement age are now considering emigrating. The weather and the economy play their part, but it’s the fear of crime, and the anti-social behaviour plaguing our streets, that are the main reasons. Many of the post-war generation claim that they hardly recognise the Britain in which they grew up. That might be over-stating the case, but that so many people feel that way is cause enough for concern.
Personally, I don’t want to end my days in northern Cyprus, just because the weather is better and the beer cheaper. But it’s a fact that, since 1997, over 1.5 million Britons have moved abroad. And if it’s also true, as Gordon Brown claims, that despite the crime rate itself being down, our fear of crime is on the up, then there is something badly amiss with the national psyche.
Of course, the reality is that the public are right and no amount of governmental massaging of statistics will pull the wool over their jaundiced eyes. You’ve only got to consult the pages of this newspaper to see that Derbeians do get mugged, even in broad daylight, in busy streets where once it felt perfectly safe to walk. Even, as we also read, attacked and robbed in their own Chaddesden home.
But it’s not just thinking about crime that wears you down. Encountering daily routine bad manners is depressing enough. When I held open a Westfield door for a superior looking woman last Saturday, she breezed through with a down-the-nose stare that made me feel as though I ought to be wearing a commissionaire’s uniform.
So I doffed an imaginary cap. And, when that didn’t elicit a “thank you, let go of the door. She turned and glared.
“Whoops, sorry,” I said, “I didn’t see you. I was just holding it open to let in some air.”
“Silly man,” she shrilled. But it made me feel better. I find it’s the little victories that get you through the day.

A curse on the person who stole my super shopping bag

2010-03-09T18:33:00.001Z

WHEN all is said and done, it was only a Sainsburys carrier bag. Actually, no, it was a bit more than that. It was a Sainsburys super shopper bag and it cost me 50p. A “stylish, strong bag … designed for bulkier items and can be used and reused”. Well not by me, it can’t. Not any more. Someone has nicked it.
I’ll explain. It was dustbin day, as we still call it in our house. Or rather it was dustbins day, because it was the week that the council collected the blue and brown bins. And the newspapers and magazines. Which is where my Sainsburys super shopper bag comes in. The blue plastic bag provided by Derby City Council had long given up the ghost. So we’ve been putting the papers in cheap plastic carrier bags. But last week, we had so many that we had to use our Sainsburys super shopper.
Which shouldn’t have caused a problem because, when they’ve emptied the bag, the bin man – sorry, refuse disposal operative – always sticks it in an empty bin. All you then have to do is track down where they’ve left the bin. It might be on next door’s drive. It might be halfway down the street. The only place it won’t be is where you left it. Which is irritating because, if you put it in the wrong place, then they won’t collect it. So you’d like to think that they’d at least return it to the appointed spot. But they never do. And we’ve got used to that.
Anyway, back to my Sainsburys super shopper bag. It was getting on for midnight when I put it out, crammed full of newspapers and magazines, leaflets offering to double-glaze us and deliver pizzas (not at the same time, obviously) and catalogues from businesses with whom we’ve never traded but that doesn’t discourage them from bombarding us.
Then I climbed into bed, read a chapter of Our East End by Piers Dudgeon (good book, if you’re into oral history) and floated off to sleep on the crest of my favourite dream: the one where I score the winner for Derby County against Pluto United in the Inter-Galactic Cup.
It was getting light when the cat jumped on my head. After a few minutes, I conceded defeat and went to feed her. I don’t know what made me look out of the window before I opened a packet of ocean fish in gravy. But I’m glad I did. Our newspapers, magazines and junk mail were scattered halfway down Chain Lane. So, I’m now wandering up and down the street, in my dressing gown in a freezing dawn, collecting everything up. But I can’t put it back in my Sainsburys super shopper bag. Because during the early hours of a chill March night, some blackguard had emptied the contents on the pavement and made off with it.
I’m not one for retribution. But I spent the rest of the day wishing hard that some ill would befall the perpetrator. Nothing disproportionate: just a broken leg; or a severe attack of haemorrhoids; or maybe his wife running off with a refuse disposal operative (the notion of poetic justice was appealing).
I even thought of trying to invoke that Middle East curse: may your left ear wither and fall into your right pocket. But I can’t see how that could happen.
When I told my pal Stuart Clay, 34 years a Derby police constable, he chuckled: “I’m not surprised. There are people who’d pinch the milk out of your tea.”
And, it seems, Sainsburys super shopper bags off your doorstep.

It's all in the detail … so don't forget to shut the gate

2010-03-02T19:38:00.001Z

LIFE is in the detail. There was a note on our doormat. Surprisingly, it was in the shape of a milk bottle (the note, not the doormat). Unsurprisingly, then, it was from someone who wanted to be our milkman.
We’re keen to support local enterprise – assuming that this was local and not a dairy conglomerate masquerading as our friendly neighbourhood milkie – but I doubt we’d have taken up the offer anyway.
We stopped our milk delivery years ago. The milkman worked entirely at his own convenience. Day after day in the small hours of one scorching summer, he left milk on the doorstep to curdle (there’s nothing worse than warm lumps on your Weetabix); at Christmas, he dumped 12 pints on us all in one go because he wanted a four-day holiday. I had news for him when he eventually reappeared.
But what really made me decide that this latest applicant wasn’t going to get the job was in the detail: whoever had delivered the note hadn’t bothered to close our front gate. If you can’t shut a gate when you deliver a leaflet, it follows that you won’t shut it when you make a daily milk delivery. That might not bother some people. But it bothers me. It’s a lack of courtesy.
The last person before the would-be milkman not to shut our front gate was a man selling dusters. In fact, he didn’t sell only dusters. He sold wind-up torches, lemon-scented antisceptic wipes, ironing board covers. And goodness knows what else.
Every time I said: “No thanks,” he rummaged around in the bowels of a cavernous bag to produce something else that I couldn’t do without. He started off politely enough, got a little tetchier with each refusal, then downright rude when he’d run out of cloths, wipes and wonder cleaners, and I still didn’t want anything.
I tried reason: “Look, I understand when you say you’re trying to help yourself and not go on the dole or accept charity. But the fact is, I really don’t want any of these things. So if I did buy something, then you would be accepting charity. Actually, I’m doing you a favour.” At which point, I’m sure I heard Mrs R mutter: “You’re all heart.”
Anyway, he piled everything back into his bag, swung it theatrically on to his shoulder, and flounced off, making a big point of leaving the front gate open as he went. But you know what? That bothered me less than the milkman’s leaflet deliver. At least here was someone making a gesture.
I should have directed him into the city centre. He might have found a more ready market for his cleaning materials there. That is, if more fast-food outlets had pride in their businesses beyond the front door. It’s about time Derby City Council forced owners to swill down the pavements outside their establishments. Get them out there every morning with a bucket of hot, soapy water and a yard brush. The only grease we want to see is elbow grease.
With elections looming, what are Derby’s most important issues? There are the grandiose schemes, like velodromes, Olympic-size swimming pools, and the Riverlights. And perhaps sorting out Duckworth Square so that it looks a bit less like downtown Baghdad after a Taliban awayday. There are local issues (anyone guaranteeing to sort out the Royal Derby parking problem is a shoo-in in Littleover). And there is the detail: like cleaner pavements.
But all political parties have been warned. I won’t vote for anyone who shoves a leaflet through our letterbox and then doesn’t shut the front gate.

Don't block a doctor if you don't want clamping

2010-02-23T22:28:00.000Z

IT seemed extreme, but the notice in the Derby surgery was unequivocal: “Any patient blocking a doctor will be clamped.” So there you are: you can’t complain if you block a doctor and find yourself clamped. Public notices can be fun, especially abroad. I saw one in Mexico: “Strangers must not be flushed down this lavatory.” And outside a Singapore tailor’s shop: “We will execute customers in strict rotation.”
Anyway, enough; I want to tell you about my Doppler scan. Time-served readers are aware that I am a martyr to my feet. Gout, something called dorsal bossing, now a shiny, red big toe: I’ve had the lot, missus.
This time, the doc – who, so far as I know, hadn’t been blocked; certainly not by me – sent me for a Doppler scan. We’ve come a long way since GPs blew cigarette smoke over you while they looked down your throat. Now all sorts of inventions help us live longer, more comfortable lives.
The only other time I’d heard of Doppler, I was watching the Weather Channel and it was radar that told you when a hurricane was due. So I checked the internet – as you do – but most of the pages about Doppler scans referred to pregnancy. No mention of hurricanes. Or feet. So I decided to simply turn up and see what happens.
And what happens is this: a nurse takes your blood pressure once on each arm, then twice on each leg, while holding what looks like a ball-point pen attached to a TV remote control. You can hear your blood pumping through your veins; scary and reassuring in equal amounts.
“What do you now?” I asked.
I can’t recall the exact details – so in the unlikely event that you have your own Doppler scanner, don’t take my word for it – but it went something like this: add together the pressure readings in the arms, then divide that into the sum total of the leg pressure.
“And subtract two inches for the turn-ups?” I suggested. You can afford to joke with medical personnel if it’s one of those rare moments when they aren’t wielding a needle or a blade.
The answer was 1.2. One point two what, I’ve no idea; but it was apparently within the bounds of safety. So off I limped, no wiser about what was causing my latest foot problem (which has since cleared up, so don’t fret on my account) and into town.
It’s funny how we still call it “town”, even though we’ve been a city for 33 years. Derby hasn’t got the feel of a big city. In fact, at the moment, it’s got the feel of a giant building site. But we won’t go there again. Not this week, anyway.
Back in Mickleover, something brushed my arm. It was a pavement cyclist. He pedalled furiously into the distance; I launched a verbal volley, something about “stupid” and “long-haired” and … well, insert your own noun.
Good job I wasn’t on my way to be Dopplered. The answer to the sum of both arms divided into the sum of both legs twice would have been about 10.2. And although he wasn’t blocking a doctor, I would definitely have had him clamped. Tight.

What are they doing to our old town? When ignorance really is bliss

2010-02-16T22:50:00.000Z

HERE’S a leap – memory lane and back again via a salacious newspaper headline. It had been the usual jolly evening: lots of chatter, a roaring fire on a chill February night. Just like pubs used to be. But it was time for my companion to leave.
He’d driven down from Tyneside the day before, primarily on business, but also to call into the city – it was only a town when he left all those years ago – where he was born. Now it was catch-up time.
Last orders were being called when, with some considerable reluctance, we left the cosy scene and stepped out into the freezing night air.
There was a brief pause while we conducted a final bit of reminiscing about those long-gone days at grammar school, just a few yards up the road. Then I turned up my coat collar and made for the bus stop, while he went to find his car.
A few moments later, he was on his way with a cheery last wave, heading into the city centre and his bed for the night.
A few minutes later, my phone rang. It was my pal.
“That was quick,” I said. “Forgotten something?”
“No,” he said, “but I’ve just had a shock. “What are they doing to Derby? They’re tearing the soul out of the old neighbourhood. It’s all deserted streets undergoing some kind of open-heart surgery.”
By his description, I think he must have found himself down by the work going on to extend the inner ring road. It would certainly have been in stark contrast to the convivial evening we’d just enjoyed in the Rowditch Inn.
“The soul went out of it years ago,” I told him. “It’s just that it’s been finally ripped apart. They call it Connecting Derby.”
I can understand how shocking it would have been to someone who hadn’t set foot in Derby for 40 years. You never expect to find things exactly as you left them. But it’s still a jolt when you realise that your old world has all but disappeared.
The next morning, on my way into town abroad one of Trent Barton’s finest, I went through the edge of the same area. Yes, it must have surprised my pal: all those little streets he remembered, now razed to the ground, a yawning expanse of mud and rubble where once families sat around their fireplaces on cold winter nights.
Anyway, I was leaning over the shoulder of the man in front, trying to read his newspaper when the headline, “Lecturer who offered degrees for spanking,” caught my eye.
Unfortunately, the man alighted before I could read further. But was the lecturer offering degrees in return for this service? Or was he actually running a course in that ignoble art?
My money was on the former, although the latter wasn’t beyond the bounds of possibility. At various UK universities, you’ve recently been able to take courses in stand-up comedy, bed selling and body piercing. So why not in the administration of corporal punishment for recreational purposes?
The more I thought about it, the more I didn’t want to know. Sometimes, ignorance really is bliss.
I wonder if my pal wished he’d settled for remembering Derby the way it was. As I said, it’s a bit of leap. I believe they call it lateral thinking.

I just wondered … do I qualify for Maundy Money?

2010-02-09T17:51:00.000Z

NEWS that the Queen is to distribute Maundy Money in Derby this year made me sit up. You see I’d long believed that Maundy Money was dished out to local pensioners without regard for further qualification. So, as I’d recently joined the distinguished band of Britain’s senior citizens, I wondered if you had to apply. Or whether every local OAP was entered into a draw and Lady Luck sorted it out. Either way, I thought I’d have a go.
But when I mentioned this to one of those resident experts-on-all-things to be found in most public houses – in this case the Rowditch Inn’s fount of all knowledge, Pip “Statto” Southall, – he felt that it was only the poor who qualified for Maundy Money.
“Well,” I said, “if the Robber Barons who run Her Majesty’s Inland Revenue and Customs have their way, I could still be eligible.”
Because shortly after I qualified for the state pension, the Revenue saw fit to meddle with my tax code: just as I’d been given the pensioner’s additional personal allowance, it was snatched away again because years of careful husbandry had tipped me a few quid into an area where those who help themselves receive no help from this blessed plot, this earth, this realm, this England (when he was knocking out King Richard II, Shakespeare wasn’t paying income tax and could afford to be overly patriotic). They’ll be confiscating my bus pass next.
Anyway, that’s another matter. Because, it turns out, to receive Maundy Money you no longer have to be poor. It’s all down to recognition of your services to the community and Church. Both of which rule me out. That’s not to say that I don’t help old ladies across busy roads, smile at strangers, and dutifully recycle my rubbish. I do all these things (although those you favour with a cheery countenance often stare back as though you’re potty). I’ve been known to enter a church when there wasn’t a wedding or funeral in progress. But I’m not even at the bottom of the list of those who will thoroughly deserve their wonderful moment at Derby Cathedral, come April 1.
I’ll be in the watching crowd, though. Because this Maundy Thursday will be a great occasion for Derby; the city will be the focal point of a great British tradition. Royalists will relish it. Even the staunchest republican might think it a good thing. If it doesn’t exactly put Derby on the map (as I’ve said before, we already are), it does remind the rest of Britain that we are here.
I saw my first royal visit in 1949, when Princess Elizabeth, as she then was, came to open Derby’s Council House and War Memorial Village. My mother lifted me up to see the royal procession pass along Babington Lane.
Funnily enough, thanks to an incident that occurred during the blitz on Hull where my parents lived in the early part of the Second World War, she was one of the few people I’ve known who disliked the Queen Mother, who was then visiting the battered city.
The King’s wife told my mother’s bombed-out neighbours: “My house has been hit too.” True, Buckingham Palace had caught a stray German bomb, but Mum thought the royal personage was patronising people who’d lost everything. “She had another six castles,” she muttered every time she retold the story. Which was often. Night after night spent in an air-raid shelter with the Luftwaffe overhead had made her a little unforgiving
Secretly, though, she liked a bit of pomp and circumstance. She’d have been tickled pink by this Maundy Money business.

"I'll third it" – If only someone had taken a picture

2010-02-02T18:28:00.000Z

IF only someone had taken a picture. The scene was the Exchange Hotel in Albert Street, a pub with a front door conveniently situated cheek-by-jowl with the staff entrance of the Derby Telegraph when this newspaper’s home was the wonderfully idiosyncratic confines of a former corn exchange-cum-dance hall, the green domed roof of which is still a Derby landmark.
It was a warm spring evening in 1964 and the pub was full, not of reporters and photographers (the odd one or two had been known to step over the threshold) but with local football officials about to form Derby’s first legal Sunday competition.
In these days of live televised professional Sunday games, it may surprise some to learn that there was a time when the FA banned the organised playing of our national sport on the Sabbath, even for amateurs. Of course, Sunday soccer still flourished. Top Saturday players just turned out under false names.
Like the rest, my own club, Redfern Athletic, played friendly matches, many out of Derby. Manchester was a regular venue. In the days when the M6 was still a pipedream, this meant a long but pleasant journey north through Derbyshire. After games, we’d make our way into the city centre to grab a plate of egg and chips before piling into the Manchester News Theatre in Oxford Street. The tiny cinema showed a collection of cartoons and newsreels in an hour-long programme that ran continuously. They were uncomplicated times all right.
Then there would be the usual happy coach journey back to Derby, with a few rousing choruses of the Temperance Seven favourite, Pasadena. We always timed our journey so that we’d be pulling up at the Talbot in Belper, just as the landlord, the former Derby County outside-left, Jack Robson, was unbolting the front door of his pub.
Eventually, the FA’s decision to recognise Sunday football (there was now so much of it that continuing to ignore it was pointless) brought about the formation of the Derby Sunday League.
That inaugural meeting, all of 46 years ago now, had its moments. Every time someone proposed a motion, one club secretary, desperate make his mark at the historic occasion, shot up his hand. But the chairman kept finding a seconder elsewhere. Eventually, the man kept his hand defiantly raised and yelled out in exasperation: “Well, I’ll third it then.”
When the draw was made for the knockout cup, the chairman drew the first ball and announced: “Number six.” Then peered at it again and said: “No, sorry, number nine.” I almost fell off my chair laughing.
Some early matches were odd, too. One referee officiated while wearing a rain-hood (remember them, ladies?). His explanation? “I’ve had a cold all week.”
Now Terry Fletcher is hunting for photographs of Sunday football teams to add to the collection of Derbyshire sporting images that he is lodging with the Local Studies Library in Irongate, where anyone can view them.
Terry, a fine local player in his day, has his own Sunday football memories: “Do you remember the Racecourse when the entrance was off Stores Road? The changing rooms were like wind tunnels. I came off the pitch once and, after 20 minutes in the dressing room, my fingers were still so numb, I couldn’t button my shirt.”
Sadly, no one took a snap of that first meeting at what is now the City Inn, but there must be plenty of Sunday team groups around. At the moment, Terry has photographs of only Redfern, Northcliffe, Olympiads, MacMillans and Walkerdines. If you can help with others, he’d love to hear from you on 01773-826139.

Timing … it's all about timing

2010-01-26T17:50:00.001Z

THE man at the bar was right: life is all about timing. I don’t know what brought the subject up. But we both agreed that, to make a success of it, you generally have to be in the right place at the right time. Of course, you then have to grasp the opportunity and work it to your best advantage. But timing is everything.
Then again, you can be in the right place at the wrong time. Take the other day. The phone rang and it was a lady from the Cats’ Protection League. We’d won a prize in their Christmas raffle. I rarely win anything, so my interest was piqued, even though it was unlikely to be anything more exciting than a bottle of wine. When it turned out to be a fully kitted-out make-up box, I passed the phone to Mrs R. To be fair, apparently it’s a decent job, with all sorts of brushes and bits, as well as things to apply. But, as far as I was concerned, we may as well have won a set of Swahili lessons.
Anyway, back to the man at the bar. Before that, though, there is something I’d like to clear up. It seems that more than one reader of this column has drawn the conclusion that I routinely ignore Government guidelines and spend all my waking hours on licensed premises. Not so. It’s simply that pubs are a fertile ground for conversation. And when you’ve a column to fill … After all, there’s a limit to how many times you can target city councillors and officials, as readily as they line up to be Aunt Sally.
So I steered my companion away from darkened street lights, cocked a deaf ’un at his desire to debate the hospital parking debacle (close to my heart though it is), ignored potholed roads, and instead took him down that well-worn path, good old Memory Lane. In particular, to the days when the nation’s pubs were booming and when the sight of a shuttered hostelry would have been front-page news.
When I was a lad, living in Gerard Street, you could set your clock by the neighbours’ drinking habits. We lived next door to a widow, Mrs Orme, and her daughter and son-in-law, Nancy and Peter Warner. Nancy was a popular figure at Boots’ cosmetics counter, on the corner of East Street and St Peter’s Street. Not that I was ever a patron you understand, even though, in later life, I was to win the occasional make-up box.
Peter, a shy, gentle man, worked a few minutes’ walk away, as a garage mechanic in Becket Street. During the war, he’d served in the RAF, and sported a handlebar moustache to prove it, although I think he was more ground crew than fighter pilot.
On summer evenings, he and Nancy would climb into their open-top sports car, Peter wearing a cravat, Nancy all dolled up to the nines. Off they’d roar. Initially, only as far as the Durham Ox, a large white-tiled 19th-century pub that stood only 200 yards away, on the corner of Gerard Street and Burton Road. In those days, however, pubs in Derby closed at 10 pm, but those in Derbyshire enjoyed an extra half-hour’s drinking time. The borough boundary ended at the Ring Road. So, once last orders were called, Peter and Nancy didn’t have far to drive. Just as far as the Half Moon on Burton Road, in fact. There, they could to pull in another 30 minutes. Life, you see, has always been about timing, accidental or contrived. And about happy memories, of course.

Don't be alarmed … just step back in time

2010-01-19T17:00:00.000Z

IT was embarrassing. Every few minutes, our burglar alarm went off. It must have annoyed the neighbours no end. The alarm company were on their way, but it could be a couple of hours, they said. Inevitably, just under two hours later, the alarm stopped alarming and the engineer arrived a few minutes later.
It was “the cold,” he said. There was something called a resistor which sets things off when the temperature drops below minus 6C. We got a new alarm, this time without a resistor. The neighbours can rest in peace during subsequent cold snaps. That said, when was the last time you saw half a dozen neighbours rush out, ready to apprehend men wearing masks and carrying sacks marked “Swag”? You may as well leave the key in the door, 10 bottles of milk on the doorstep, and a week’s worth of Derby Telegraphs sticking out of the letterbox.
Burglar alarms can be a nuisance. When Mrs R managed Edwards’ china shop in St Peter’s Street, their alarm was always going off – usually at about one in the morning. The alarm company’s response was generally: “Our engineer is in Doncaster at the moment … ”
Anyway, our alarm sorted, and with no football on telly in snow-swept Britain, I watched an old episode of A Place In The Sun. A British couple were exploring houses on Vancouver Island. What a beautiful place to live. I wish that, when I was a young man, I’d had the foresight (and courage) to emigrate to Canada, just like my old mate, Bert Mozley, did years earlier.
Once, on a trip along the North-West Pacific coast, when we reached Seattle, I rang Bert (he and Jean, his wife, then lived on Galliano Island in the Gulf of Vancouver), who met us in Victoria and spent the day showing us around. Eventually, Bert pulled up outside the Empress Hotel, a grand Edwardian edifice, and said, if not exactly with a tear in his eye, then certainly with a mist forming: “Do you know, it’s 50 years to this very day since Tim and I walked up those steps for afternoon tea.” Back in 1950, Bert and his Rams team-mate, Tim Ward, had been members of the FA’s Canadian tour party.
It can be an intense experience, stepping back into the footsteps of another time. Writing a book about wartime football, I painted a picture of the fateful Sunday - 3 September 1939. Central to it was the Sunderland team, including Raich Carter, the morning after their match at Highbury, gathered around a wireless set at the Russell Hotel in Russell Square, listening to Neville Chamberlain tell Britain that the nation was at war.
You’ll think me daft, but last autumn, finding myself near Euston, I walked to the Russell Hotel, up the steps, through the grand doorway, into a lobby that probably hasn’t changed much since the place was built, and thought, “I’m standing on the spot where, 70 years ago today, Raich Carter heard war declared.” You could almost reach out and touch the moment.
Finally, I wish the media would simply report the weather instead of driving people’s reactions to it by turning it into some kind of disaster movie. The other week, live from High Wycombe, a reporter on Sky News actually said: “Britain is suffering a second Ice Age.” What a load of rubbish. We’ve had severe winters before. Just deal with it.
I mean, if I can get to the Mason’s Arms of a Friday lunchtime, why can't other people get to work? I tell you, this country is going to the dogs.

You'd Never Have Got The Preston Plumber On Celebrity Big Brother

2010-01-12T18:57:00.000Z

DO you ever get the feeling that life is leaving you behind? That you’re trailing in its wake? I was standing at the bar of a busy hostelry in Irongate, waiting impatiently to catch the eye of the lass who seemed intent of serving everybody in the building except me, when a complete stranger asked what I thought about Vinnie Jones going into Celebrity Big Brother.
My initial reaction was to say: “Do I look as if I care? What is it about me that makes you think I’m the kind of person who has ever bothered to watch even one second of Big Brother, celebrity version or otherwise?”
But my old mum brought me up to be polite to people, even the ones asking unbelievably inane questions (actually, that’s not true; she could never hide an opinion, no matter who it offended). Whatever, I just muttered something about not really having thought it through. Then carried on wondering at what point I’d become invisible to people employed to dispense beer to thirsty newspaper columnists of advancing years on Thursday lunchtimes.
Eventually, everyone else – even the stranger with the daft question – was served, and the barmaid could ignore my jumping up and down no longer. She tried her best, looking around – in some desperation, I thought – for anyone else but yours truly. But, in the end, I weaved my way back to join cousin Allan, who was by now becoming increasingly concerned about the fate of his pint of Old Maggot’s Armpit (I made that up, but it was some kind of real ale) and we reflected on some of the aspects of modern culture that we have managed to bypass on life’s rocky road.
It’s funny, what you can safely ignore. I’ve never seen even one minute of Emmerdale. Or East Enders, come to that. And I gave up watching Coronation Street in 2001, after they killed off Alma Sedgewick, or whatever she became, by giving her cervical cancer. “Gloom enough in real life,” I declared, reaching for the remote control to silence that familiar signature tune for the last time.
I did watch a few minutes of Most Haunted once. Partly because it was coming from Derby, but more in the same way that, out of morbid curiosity, you might be drawn to the scene of a bad road accident. And what about daytime television? That has to be the beginning of the end, surely?
Anyway, we finished our drinks and I looked at my watch and realised that I hadn’t got time to try to get served again. Not before teatime, anyway. So we walked into the Market Place and I left Allan outside the Lock-Up Yard and went off to buy some fish, paying my respects to Steve Bloomer on the way.
Here’s a name to drop: I once had a chat with Sir Tom Finney on that very spot. The Preston Plumber was at the Bloomer memorial’s unveiling and recognised me from an interview I’d done with him years earlier. Imagine that – standing in the shadow of Derby Market Hall, yarning with one of the greatest footballers who ever lived. Wilf Mannion brushed past. Then Nat Lofthouse trod on my foot. I think about that every time I buy some haddock from John Eyre (who played centre-half in the old Wednesday League and trod on lots of feet).
Finney, Mannion, Lofthouse – who would have put them all together within the whiff of Derby fish market? None would have ever gone on Celebrity Big Brother, though. And Vinnie Jones? Well, he was never in the same class anyway.

Herbert was my hero

2010-01-05T23:09:00.000Z

HE had a shock of ginger hair, a wan complexion and a lean frame. He was bespectacled, chain-smoked, wore two pullovers (the outer one normally had a large hole) over which he pulled his underpants, and a sports coat under a flowing chalk-covered gown. He was the man who taught me never to take life – especially myself – too seriously.
It was just before Christmas when the email popped up. Richard Butt, editor of a newspaper group on the Isle of Man, was kind enough to say how much he had enjoyed an account of his grandfather that I’d included in an autobiographical memoir.
That brought memories flooding back. So I make no excuse for starting the new year with a tribute to one of Derby’s greatest characters (even if he was a Yorkshireman who supported Sheffield United). Because Herbert Cook was much more than a brilliant linguist who taught modern languages at Bemrose School in the 1950s: he also imparted his enormous love of life to generations of Derby schoolboys with whom he was happy to joust verbally – provided they remembered who was ultimately in control.
He was an eccentric, was Herbert. Sometimes he’d tell a boy that he was “enough to curdle my Weetabix”. Or he’d suddenly announce that there was “a fortune awaiting the chap who introduces chip pans into West Germany”. A great jazz fan, one day he came into our form room, set a 78in record playing, and then just sat back and stared out of the window for the entire lesson.
There isn’t room here to record all the stories about Herbert, but one from Robert Wilson, a former school captain who lived in Littleover Lane, sums him up: “Herbert loved flights of fancy. Thus, he used the following sentence to explain to us the use of 'damit' in German: ‘The knife with which Farrer eats his peas’ – ‘damit’ being the 'with which' bit.
“One day, after this sentence had been used yet again to make the teaching point, the mild-mannered Farrer decided it was time to protest: ‘But I don't use a knife with which to eat peas, sir. I use a fork, like everyone else.’ Herbert's eyes gleamed. ‘Ah, Farrer,’ he exclaimed, ‘no poetry in you. No poetry.’ Farrer looked totally nonplussed. But that was all the answer he got.”
Herbert was a non-believer and, before he died while on holiday in the Isle of Man, insisted on nothing being said at his funeral. His grandson told me: “Only my father, my sister, my brother and I went to Douglas crematorium because Herbert’s ex-wife, Phyllis, was dying in hospital in London and their children were with her. The four of us just sat and watched the curtain close and that was that. It was probably the saddest funeral I've ever attended.”
After his death, Herbert's children spent a couple of weeks clearing his house on Uttoxeter Old Road. He’d collected so much stuff over his lifetime – records, books, manuscripts and so on – that when they got to the attic, they just left a bottle of champagne with a note that read: “Sorry, we couldn't face it.” What a treasure trove the new owners must have found.
Would a Herbert Cook be allowed to flourish today, when “hitting targets” seems the overriding priority? The difficulties facing modern teachers are certainly far greater than those encountered by previous generations. Where, for instance, do you start when most of your charges speak a score of different mother tongues?
Actually, that wouldn’t have worried Herbert. He’d soon have learned enough of even the most obscure languages to keep everyone rolling in the aisles.

No World Cup, no street lights – but look forward to a velodrome

2009-12-29T19:19:00.000Z

ANOTHER year grinds to a close. And what a strange one it has been, even by the standards of this increasingly crazy 21st century. Chief among the Alice In Wonderland feel to life in these parts recently is the fact that Derby lost out to Milton Keynes – a place that shouldn’t even be allowed to have a Football League club in the first place – as a potential World Cup host city. Yet I still resolved to end 2009 on a positive note. No chuntering – just an optimistic look ahead to next year. But then my mind kept going back to a couple of announcements made by Derby City Council as the year drew to its end.
You would have been forgiven for thinking that it was nearer All Fools’ Day than New Year’s Eve, when our 40-watt city council rounded off things by announcing plans to spend a large chunk of £50m on a sporting venue of questionable value to locals, while at the same time telling us that it will be necessary to turn off the city’s street lighting at night.
If I were a mugger, burglar, or just a run-of-the-mill vandal (none of whom pay council tax, I’m sure), I’d certainly think that being able to operate under cover of darkness was a lark. I wouldn’t consider it such a bright idea if I was feeling my way home in the gloom and walked into a car that someone had disobligingly parked on the pavement, safe in the knowledge that the chances of a bobby catching them were about the same as mine of being Capello’s surprise call-up for next year’s World Cup.
Then I read that the council is seriously considering spending £50m on leisure facilities that include a velodrome-cum-concert-hall, and a swimming pool. If it is necessary to plunge our streets into darkness in order to save taxpayers’ money (and, at £3m outlay, the jury is out on how long it would take for the scheme to pay), then forking out £50m for the benefit of a few cyclists and swimmers seems spectacularly silly. A bit like begging a few pence for the electricity meter, then nipping out to buy a giant flat-screen telly on the never-never. Most of the money for the leisure scheme will be raised by long-term loans repayable by the taxpayer.
Paul Robinson, the city council's director of environmental services, says that it is about “putting Derby on the map”. Last time I looked, we already were. Although, admittedly, the FA seemed to have trouble locating us in daylight, never mind in the dark.
That the council has already spent £50,000 to have consultants tell it where 100 times that amount might be used on the city’s sporting facilities, only adds to Derbeians’ despair. A consultant is someone who borrows your watch, tells you the time, then charges you for the privilege. Example: trying to sort out its mess that has turned Littleover and parts of Mickleover into a giant parking lot, the Royal Derby Hospital employs a travel consultant; years ago, residents were queuing up to offer their own, more qualified, opinions for free. Had the NHS Trust listened, it could currently be boasting about prevention, not flailing about for cure.
Now Derby Telegraph readers should be consulted on ways that the city council might make better use of £50m – road repairs, housing, care for the elderly, keeping lit the streets, that sort of thing – albeit with no great expectation that anyone at the Council House would take note.
But listen to the people. They know. In the meantime, let’s all travel in hope. Happy New Year …

Let the world sail by. You can’t beat it. Best ignore it. Learn to play the ukulele instead

2009-12-23T00:19:00.000Z

HE was busking: a middle-aged African Caribbean man in a Father Christmas costume, playing the ukulele – badly – and belting out a reggae version of Santa Claus Is Coming To Town. Who says that multi-culturalism is a bad thing? Or that Britain doesn’t still have some wonderful characters? The more of both the merrier, I say.
One thing: before you start looking for this particular example of British eccentricity on your next visit to Derby’s city centre, I should explain that he was spotted, not in this neck of the woods, but in Somerset, where Mrs R and I spent our annual pre-Christmas break, again pottering around the glorious city of Bath: same hotel, same pubs, same restaurants as last year; and the one before that, come to think of it.
Unadventurous? I don’t care. We once spent the New Year in Singapore, which was great. But sitting in an aeroplane for 14 hours … ? For some years, I have officially hated airports. Europe by train from St Pancras was OK until last weekend (and if you can actually find one of those Derby to Paris fares they advertise for 50 quid return, please let me know).
In the meantime, there was a column to write and shopping to do – by now, Mrs R, who doesn’t seem to mind airports, had gone to Berlin with our daughter – so, spurred on by that West Country reggae busker, I set off to investigate what Derby had to offer in street entertainment this festive season.
The answer is – not a lot; or more precisely – absolutely nothing. Not on this day, anyway. Even the bagpiper, the Eastern European violinist, and those Andean pipe players, all of whom can all be relied upon to brighten still further the sunniest summer’s day, were nowhere to be seen on a bleak December morn.
Indeed, Victoria Street looked like Kettering town centre on a wet Friday, which was only half surprising since it was a wet Friday in Derby (if you think I’m being unkind to Kettering, do take a look next time you’re that way).
St Peter’s Street wasn’t much better. Why are Derby’s Christmas lights so dreary? Where were the stilt walkers, living statues, walkabout characters, magicians, puppeteers, balloon sculptors, jugglers, fire eaters, jesters, mime artists, musicians, unicyclists and face painters? I didn’t get as far as Westfield. Maybe it’s all going on there.
A visit to a newly opened Polish supermarket didn’t raise my spirits because I couldn’t read the labels. What have the Poles – lovely people, hard workers – got against vowels? Everything looks like an optician’s chart.
Even the ride home disappointed. Why a woman can spend 10 minutes standing at a bus stop and realise that she has to dig deep into her shopping bag and rummage around for her purse, only when she gets on the bus, is quite beyond me.
As was the 20-something woman who broke off from arguing on a mobile phone to ask the driver what time he was leaving, and when told: “Now,” replied: “Can you hang on while I finish me fag?”
When he said he couldn’t, she cussed before stamping out her half-smoked cigarette on the bus platform. At least she didn’t waste time finding her fare. She had a free bus pass. But now I was vexed because she looked perfectly fit and I wondered how she’d qualified. It took me 60 years.
Then there was the pavement cyclist who … Look, I must relax. Let the world sail by. You can’t beat it. Best ignore it. I’ll learn to play the ukulele instead.
Merry Christmas, everyone.

My political career – cut short over a spat about a cat

2009-12-15T19:18:00.000Z

SO, an election year isn’t far away. Did I ever tell you about my 12-hour political career? It was a winter’s evening in 1981 when I got the call: would I put myself forward for selection as a candidate in the forthcoming Derby City Council elections? Actually, what was on offer was a hopeless task. The ward in question had been firmly in opposition hands since Adam was a lad. But it would be a sort of apprenticeship. Next time round, I’d be assured of a shoo-in.
Flattered, I agreed, was interviewed and selected. Almost immediately, though, I began to have second thoughts. A sitting councillor started moaning about the pettifogging neighbourhood disputes that took up too much of his time. To prove his point, he highlighted one particular case: a resident and her long-running argument with next-door’s cat.
What had I agreed to? I wanted to help make Derby a better place. Not become pestered by spats over cats. The following morning, I rang the party agent to resign. He was a bit cross, to be honest, because he’d just told the other hopefuls that they’d not made the cut.
“Well,” I said, “look on the bright side. Now you can ring one of them back with some good news.”
This was in the days before spin had been recognised as an art form; and the agent wasn’t convinced. But I stuck to my decision, shelving my master plan for improving Derby’s lot beyond measure. Probably no-one would have listened, anyway.
When I related this story to a friend, he suggested that the real weakness in local politics isn’t getting bogged down with trivia; it’s that the only candidates likely to succeed are, almost always, those allied to a major party. Yet local issues aren’t always best served by the national policies of Conservative, Labour or Lib Dem. Sometimes, just the opposite.
He was right. But he could also have said that another flaw is that local elections are often used by voters simply to protest; therefore cities, towns and shires in our fair nation may become lumbered with ineffective councils, just because the electorate wants to kick the shins of Westminster politicians. Which is a daft reason to elect your local councillor.
Power by default can happen all too easily when one party becomes expert at harnessing the local electorate’s disaffection with what is happening nationally. Months of being told how much they care, and you become the object of a one-way political love-fest.
Come the local polls, when the rest finally rouse themselves and begin popping leaflets through your letterbox, it feels right to say: “You only hear from that lot when there’s an election imminent. But these others … ”
The trouble with protest voting is that you may wake up and find the others actually running the show. Buoyed by this, one of them might even want to become your MP; and you would have agreed to John and Edward winning The X Factor in exchange for that not happening.
My friend suggests that all councillors should be independent, free of national parties, standing only on local issues. It’s a laudable idea, but almost a non-starter. To campaign effectively, you generally need a party machine behind you. There’s a limit to how many envelopes one person can lick in a week.
For myself, even backed by an army of envelope lickers, I couldn’t cope with the squabble between Mrs Bloggins and her neighbour’s cat. It’s never too early to mention it: whoever gets your vote in 2010, don’t let them have it just to spite the other lot.

Rhubarb enforcer brings terror to the information superhighway

2009-12-08T23:09:00.000Z

IT came as a complete surprise – the chance to buy a cut-price terracotta rhubarb enforcer. I’ve never dealt with the company that emailed me. Nevertheless, they were anxious that I should know about their unbeatable offer. It was a tricky moment, too. Until then, I hadn’t realised that I might be in the market for such a thing. But you know how it is. You see a bargain and ask yourself: “Can I really afford not to buy that?”
In the end, I let common sense decide. I’d got gout, so the doc suggested that I lay off best bitter. But, he’d also advised that I lay off rhubarb. And since I’d agreed to meet him halfway – and the Rowditch Inn doesn’t sell rhubarb – the temptation to purchase the enforcer, bargain of a lifetime though it may have been, was resisted.
In the meantime (stick with me here; there is a point to all this), according to a study carried out by the University of Derby, most people in their 60th year believe that they have been fortunate to spend their working lives in a period of relatively high prosperity, without the shadow of world wars.
They are, according to Margaret Christopoulos who conducted the survey, the Never Had It So Good generation. So, Harold Macmillan was a prophet after all.
But, never mind Supermac, I could have told her this for nothing. Albeit those funding the university probably insist on such research being carried out scientifically, rather than by simply noting the collective ramblings of some slowly dilapidating Derbeians who, on Friday lunchtimes, gather for a few beers and routinely chunter: “We’re glad we were born when we were. We’ve had the best of it. It’s all downhill now.”
Of course, the subjects of Ms Christopoulos’s research were born in the late 1940s, so most are probably still in gainful employment, whereas the majority of our little group are a bit older, born when that funny little Austrian bloke with the comedy moustache still went to bed dreaming of world domination.
We’ve all retired from full-time work (otherwise, what would we be doing sitting in a pub all afternoon?), but our perceptions are much the same as those of her study group: being born when we were means that the bulk of our lives have been spent in good times rather than bad.
But what changes we’ve seen. When I started school in 1950, I was issued with a slate and chalk. The other day, I read that the consensus is that a good age to introduce your child to the computer is – three. That’s frightening.
You know, sometimes I wish that the World Wide Web had never been invented. It makes research and communication so much more accessible, but internet addiction can also spoil lives. It’s so very easy to spend hours on a computer, mindlessly surfing, instead of reading a book, talking to friends, listening to music, or going for a walk.
And here lies my point: never mind the good old days, us 60-somethings often find the 21st century’s information super highway utterly bewildering.
I keep getting emails from someone, a woman I assume, called Brittany Ferries, trying to sell me trips to France. Then there is the persistent suggestion from a social networking site that I should make a friend of Sinharaja Rain Forest, whoever he is.
And how on earth do you become a target for the purveyors of terracotta rhubarb enforcers? How many others have been selected? Maybe I should ask the university to carry out a survey. Better yet, I’ll enquire down at the pub.