Fairground Attraction
Proud on the top of Roberttown village, levelling the common, the road fell off in a jagged step to the right, becoming the peat bogs where nature said Hartshead moor began in earnest. Though you'd have to scramble past the old mill and swing a sharp right at Haigh's farm shop for the drystone stile that had Huddersfield 5 miles Welcome to Hartshead etched an inch deep into the face of the old coping topstone. Blackened in age. Bevelled by mould’s fingering corrosion. Some of the corners of the lettering now rounded by a hundred years of bleak northern weather making a nonsense of most vowels. And N's of H's.
Beef flanks. Half horseshoes of ham. Barn eggs. Fresh daily.
That sign had been there since I was a lad. Next to it Bee Honey Homemade was scrubbed out.
In the lee of the special needs home the garden centre car park gave onto the copse part of Slipper Lane that was now sealed off from the bulk of it. For traffic control. Old beech and elm made a high avenue of lush leaf green where in the richness of summer nights golden light filtered through the canopy to make a city of stars on the flagstone paving.
As loud brash teens chasing adulthood we'd pass this way, hand in hand, headed to the Swan at Mirfield. The one near the lock keepers cottage that got demolished some time since. I only noticed when, thirty years on, newly returned, I was jogging back from the Town ground and, caught out by exhaustion, made a right at the Three Nuns to head south of the quarry sooner than tackle it's ramp.
And where the Swan used to be. A chasm. A nothing. Like it had been blown down in a storm or stamped on by giants. A brazen erasure. Everything else exactly as it ever was. Looking back at me like faces that quiz when you smile. Like butter wouldn't melt.
In the mid to late nineteen eighties we'd put Duran or Billy Idol on our transistors and saunter across the valley from Oliver's mum's. We were allowed to join the pub quiz on condition we didn't swear or try and buy alcohol. Everyone looking at me for answers. Anthony's dad trying to keep an eye on us without us knowing. The disco ball beam bouncing off his massive glasses each time he turned. Subtle as fox lampers. We pretended not to see. Lisa Mumpton hip-flasking her dad's best whiskey into our cordial tumblers.
What were the Italians getting ready to bomb?
Easy. Mount Etna. Knapton you freak. Shut up dunce.
Little Taylor Hall Lane wound up from Alcock's gaff and came out by Teale's farm on the hill crest where most days after mist cleared you could see Castle Hill and behind it's black tower slabs the mighty climb up to Rishworth and Saddleworth. The Emley Moor TV mast winking red. Higher than Eiffel. The definitive placeholder.
Years ago when it wasn't concrete and was held up by cables that snapped in winter it fell over and cut the local church in half. The vicar survived. Like everyone else, he'd been watching Corrie. Everyone round here missed the bit where Albert Tatlock got mugged. The Yorkshire Post did a picture board. The first ever TV catch-up, that.
The Gray Ox and all that deep dale stretch of Hartshead village up School Lane and out towards Hightown where my granddad is buried. Right down to The Armytage at Clifton. That, for me, is still coloured in my memory as the beginning of stuff. Anticipation. Everything larger than life. Even standard information arriving on my retinas and through to my brain in a head-rush flurry. The acid trip of a natural high. For we were young adults with second hand cars, sex lives, tickets for the match and A Level passes brewing. Newly formed bodies to go with the music in Woolies. Rinsed in potential. All headed to different poly’s and uni's. All thinking we'd keep in touch. But secretly not minding if we never.
I sometimes wonder if some of these low slung dwellings are the hideouts of old names from that murky fluorescent world. But it's just a fantasy wonder. Not like real. The past is a sleeping dog. Some things are best off left where entropy put them. Memories are like what Dana, Kim and the netball girls used to shout over when we caught them smoking in the pavilion after school. Dana in hot pants. Kim and Mickie under fresh layers of loud make-up. You can look but you can't touch.
Serving tennis at Tim's. Playing curby across Damien's pool. Road racing Matthew Scott over the Peak District and back in the double-free period between Economics and English. Me the only returner. Him smashing his dad's car up on Union Road by the old fair ground. Straight into the back of a learner.
And one balmy summer night in '89 leaning slowly into leggy Dana Cookson in the back of a taxi by the sweet shop on Norristhorpe hill. Just out of sight of her parents front room window. Wide eyed as babies. Nervous as March hares.
The first of a million kisses.
gK
Proud on the top of Roberttown village, levelling the common, the road fell off in a jagged step to the right, becoming the peat bogs where nature said Hartshead moor began in earnest. Though you'd have to scramble past the old mill and swing a sharp right at Haigh's farm shop for the drystone stile that had Huddersfield 5 miles Welcome to Hartshead etched an inch deep into the face of the old coping topstone. Blackened in age. Bevelled by mould’s fingering corrosion. Some of the corners of the lettering now rounded by a hundred years of bleak northern weather making a nonsense of most vowels. And N's of H's.
Beef flanks. Half horseshoes of ham. Barn eggs. Fresh daily.
That sign had been there since I was a lad. Next to it Bee Honey Homemade was scrubbed out.
In the lee of the special needs home the garden centre car park gave onto the copse part of Slipper Lane that was now sealed off from the bulk of it. For traffic control. Old beech and elm made a high avenue of lush leaf green where in the richness of summer nights golden light filtered through the canopy to make a city of stars on the flagstone paving.
As loud brash teens chasing adulthood we'd pass this way, hand in hand, headed to the Swan at Mirfield. The one near the lock keepers cottage that got demolished some time since. I only noticed when, thirty years on, newly returned, I was jogging back from the Town ground and, caught out by exhaustion, made a right at the Three Nuns to head south of the quarry sooner than tackle it's ramp.
And where the Swan used to be. A chasm. A nothing. Like it had been blown down in a storm or stamped on by giants. A brazen erasure. Everything else exactly as it ever was. Looking back at me like faces that quiz when you smile. Like butter wouldn't melt.
In the mid to late nineteen eighties we'd put Duran or Billy Idol on our transistors and saunter across the valley from Oliver's mum's. We were allowed to join the pub quiz on condition we didn't swear or try and buy alcohol. Everyone looking at me for answers. Anthony's dad trying to keep an eye on us without us knowing. The disco ball beam bouncing off his massive glasses each time he turned. Subtle as fox lampers. We pretended not to see. Lisa Mumpton hip-flasking her dad's best whiskey into our cordial tumblers.
What were the Italians getting ready to bomb?
Easy. Mount Etna. Knapton you freak. Shut up dunce.
Little Taylor Hall Lane wound up from Alcock's gaff and came out by Teale's farm on the hill crest where most days after mist cleared you could see Castle Hill and behind it's black tower slabs the mighty climb up to Rishworth and Saddleworth. The Emley Moor TV mast winking red. Higher than Eiffel. The definitive placeholder.
Years ago when it wasn't concrete and was held up by cables that snapped in winter it fell over and cut the local church in half. The vicar survived. Like everyone else, he'd been watching Corrie. Everyone round here missed the bit where Albert Tatlock got mugged. The Yorkshire Post did a picture board. The first ever TV catch-up, that.
The Gray Ox and all that deep dale stretch of Hartshead village up School Lane and out towards Hightown where my granddad is buried. Right down to The Armytage at Clifton. That, for me, is still coloured in my memory as the beginning of stuff. Anticipation. Everything larger than life. Even standard information arriving on my retinas and through to my brain in a head-rush flurry. The acid trip of a natural high. For we were young adults with second hand cars, sex lives, tickets for the match and A Level passes brewing. Newly formed bodies to go with the music in Woolies. Rinsed in potential. All headed to different poly’s and uni's. All thinking we'd keep in touch. But secretly not minding if we never.
I sometimes wonder if some of these low slung dwellings are the hideouts of old names from that murky fluorescent world. But it's just a fantasy wonder. Not like real. The past is a sleeping dog. Some things are best off left where entropy put them. Memories are like what Dana, Kim and the netball girls used to shout over when we caught them smoking in the pavilion after school. Dana in hot pants. Kim and Mickie under fresh layers of loud make-up. You can look but you can't touch.
Serving tennis at Tim's. Playing curby across Damien's pool. Road racing Matthew Scott over the Peak District and back in the double-free period between Economics and English. Me the only returner. Him smashing his dad's car up on Union Road by the old fair ground. Straight into the back of a learner.
And one balmy summer night in '89 leaning slowly into leggy Dana Cookson in the back of a taxi by the sweet shop on Norristhorpe hill. Just out of sight of her parents front room window. Wide eyed as babies. Nervous as March hares.
The first of a million kisses.
gK
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