Sixth series, episode 7
All six series are available here on the HebWeb.
In the latest episode George Murphy tells of the challenges of single handed living, reports on his operation, life in Midgehole, Emergency Ward 10, considers the current political situation, The Kirklees Chorus, reviews TV programmes, a debut novel by a local writer and Will Andi go Scandi?
Pot boy
For the first time in a fortnight, I ventured outdoors with my pot in a sling, and headed to Rohan where an assistant had once broken her wrist and understood my predicament.
I purchased a pair of weatherproof, lightweight trousers with an elasticated waist. After which, in Little H Café, I could relax in the knowledge that if I had a call of nature I could slough out of my usual gear and one handedly slip and shimmy into my new elasticated kecks, thus avoiding the need to bang on the bog door shouting "HELP!" before persuading a benevolent male customer or waiter to pull up my chinos and fasten my belt for me.
Scrolling, scrolling, scrolling
Niggled by Nigel …
Emily Maitlis: The former Newsnight presenter and Prince Andrew tormentor reckons Labour have given Farage an easy ride by failing to focus on Nigel's lies during the lead up to the Brexit Referendum, saying,
"It's a schoolboy error."
Alistair Campbell: has been bothered by broadcasters, "I know there is a lot of news around but can someone at the Beeb explain to me how a man they keep telling us might be the next PM getting an undisclosed donation of £5,000,000 from a Thai based crypto dealer … is not even a news story when the man he wants to replace led the news for weeks over some glasses and Arsenal tickets?"
James O'Brien: coined a cutting jibe, "Farage is The Count of Dodgy Crypto."
Midgehole
Because of my injury, I haven't made my usual trip to see the bluebells in the Crags. But for 13 years the woodlands were on our doorstep.
In Midgehole, nature was a rich broth. I remember sitting in our garden after work when a grasshopper leapt up and settled sedately on my knee, as frogs belched in their hidden hidey holes in the drystone wall.
Once a small, exotically coloured bird thudded into our front window. I rushed outside and lifted the rich plumaged, warm breasted, almost weightless, dead creature from the pavement before putting it into our rubbish bin.
Occasionally, birds, such as nuthatches and woodpeckers, zoomed in through our open windows and then flew maniacally around our rooms before flying out again.
Our Midgehole back garden patio was level with our chimneys, allowing us views of the wooded hillsides below Heptonstall. Swallows swirled above us in the lengthening days and owls called each other in the bat zooming dusks. If we left our windows open on hot evenings, midges lined our ceiling overnight.
This time of year, the woods teem with ants. Woodpeckers, spotted and lesser, drummed on old trees in the fields beyond the garden and we heard the laughing cries of the green woodpecker in the woods and in the tapering fringes of woodland as we strolled down Midgehole Road into town.
The River Hebden slopped and gurgled past the lamb lolling fields as a background chorus to our nighttime dreams. When we woke we looked down the valley to the chattering herons in the beech tree copse beyond the old dyeworks buildings.
300,000 visitors are attracted to the National Trust woodlands every year, But one quiet evening a young guy in a flat backed truck delivered a wooden shed we would erect next to our toad teeming pond.
Afterwards I said, "Move your lorry, mate. The bus will be here soon."
Standing on the back of the truck, he looked sarcastically around him and laughed. "Buses?! Why would any buses come down here? There's nothing here!"
Emergency Ward 10
Last week, I finally got an operation at Huddersfield Royal.
The waiting room was packed, but with the Murphy's Law spell on us, we correctly predicted we'd be last in the queue. Sure enough, 7 hours later the waiting room was deserted, except for an elderly British Asian man who was waiting for his wife and wished me good luck when my name was called.
I was helped onto a trolley and rolled into a small theatre filled with a circle of raised monitors and smiling trauma specialists and nurses. The female surgeon looked at the pot on my left wrist and jokingly said, "George, I know it's a daft question, but which arm do you think we need to operate on?"
To be on the safe side a nurse marked an indelible arrow beneath my elbow pointing down to my wrist.
An hour or so after being put under, I heard …"George … George …" as the young anaesthetist whispered into my ear. He said, "We're moving you to the trauma ward."
The surgeon had finished her shift at 7.30, but my readings were still high. Trauma care was in Emergency Ward 10, sharing the title of an ITV programme from the 50s, when I'm sure none of my trauma team had been born.
I was kept in overnight.
It was only the second time I'd stayed in hospital overnight. Back in the 50s, when Emergency Ward 10 was on the telly, doctors in the fledgling NHS asked parents to choose one child from their family who needed their tonsils out. The test for parents was to wait until the kids were asleep and then listen for the loudest snorer. I won in our house.
I knew all the kids in my ward at the Cottage Hospital They were all in my year at school. When one mum brought in her son, cradling and kissing him as he clung to her, another lad leaned over from his bed and whispered, "See him. He still believes in Father Christmas!"
I didn't let on that, until that moment, I did too.
Almost 7 decades later, back in my private room, Rita night nurse brought me a cuppa. After drinking the precious liquid, made to my precise formula, I put my breathing mask back on and told her my tonsils story whilst she checked my heart rate.
"106!" She looked dismayed.
"George, stop talking and practise deep breathing!... In through the nose and out through the mouth."
After a while, she asked, "Are you not in any pain?"
I said, "No, but my throat is on fire and it's a hard to swallow."
This glottal discomfort was caused by the tubes they'd put down my throat during my op.
Next morning the pain gradually arrived. For one thing, the sling on my arm was too tight. But when I tried ripping the Velcro fastenings loose, pains shot through my wrist. Then I remembered that I now had foreign bodies inside me: two metal plates secured by screws.
Before she went off duty, Rita asked me to wriggle my fingers, which I could just about manage. The key test, according to the white coated medics, was: could I put my thumb up?
Well, not on my first attempt.
But, second time around, I could do it … Rita copied it. Then wished me all the best.
Granny down!
Another one bites the dust!
Following the old folk lore belief that bad things happen in threes, our granddaughter's other granny slipped on some debris at the side of roadworks in Brighouse, fell forward and broke two fingers and bruised her face. But now she's on the mend.
And, fortunately, granddaughter seems to have made a full recovery after her recent near death reaction to a bowl of crunchy nut cereal.
I've been reading
I admire novelists, even the ones that don't make it. Most of their efforts never make it into print. But here's one that did …
Glitterballs
By Michelle Howarth
Glitterballs has a witty, attention grabbing, scene setting opening. Is packed with one liners and zinging vocabulary. Has a carefully structured plot that does the business by drawing you in so that you're not sure the good guys will win. Has convincing good guys, that spring to life off the page. Is informed by a local writer who knows enough about the scene not to be dazzled by it. Who did a good Jackanory skit on FaceBook, and - I realise now - a recurring riff of 'BUY MY FUCKING' BOOK! on social media.
And she tells a compelling tale of vanity, paedophilia and modern sex trafficking.
As Lemn Sissay exclaimed, "WOW!"
The Kirklees Chorus
Due to my injury, I was unable to drive to The Rat and Ratchet in Huddersfield for their monthly get together of storytellers and writers, where I would have shared the following ditty:
There worra young lad from Kirkheaton,
Who did it and got soundly beaten.
In Denshaw, Diggle and Delph,
They reckon it's bad for your health.
But in Holmfirth, Honley and places refined,
They say, "Don't do it, you're sure to go blind|!"
But grandad knew one place would allow it,
Since he worra lad, he's done it in Slaithwaite.
So, give him a big hand, come, join in with me:
"To grandad, who first dunked his hobnob in tea!"
The Local Elections
Kirklees lost its hardworking Labour councillors. Reform only picked up six councils across the country, all in former Brexit supporting areas, including Calderdale.
Looking at the bigger picture, Reform sank to 26 percent in the national polls. That's not enough to form a government, even in first past the post constituency elections. A Reform cabinet would mainly consist of failed former Tory Ministers.
If a new Tory leader decided to join a Reform led coalition their policies would presumably be a rehash of austerity and slashing welfare spending. I don't think a Farage led government would join our European allies in defending Ukraine.
But there's three years to go and a change in US presidents before then.
We've been watching …
Race across the world
I hope the Liverpool lads win. It seemed like fate when they met with the Mongolian throat singer, a remarkable ability that the father of one of the lads had always wanted to see.
Jackie Jones from my old primary school wrote, "It was brilliant! … Last week I heard the best sentence ever, referring to Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, etc, etc, only a scouser could say, "Wow, this is definitely the best of the stans."
Yes, It was bosh.
The Salisbury Poisonings
Three episodes gave us vivid reminders of those international crimes and one revelation, that a senior member of Theresa May's cabinet was pleased that Dawn Sturgess who died was a drug addict (as the Somerset police wrongly informed them) because 'they won't be able to blame us for it'.
The programme didn't remind us that the leader of the opposition thought that we should have accepted the kind offer by Putin to let the Russians investigate the crime.
Newsnight
The invited pundits considered who was likely to win the next General Election. Recent polling showed:
Starmer 43% - Farage 30%
Burnham 46% - Farage 30%
Burnham has said he is in favour of PR, and former leader of the Greens Caroline Lucas has said if Burnham promised to make that a manifesto promise, the Greens should not oppose him in the looming Makerfield By Election.
On Have I Got News For You and in Private Eye Ian Hislop argued that both men should complete the jobs for which they were elected. The last thing the country needs is to panic the bond markets over the summer.
In Saturday's front pages, The Telegraph suggested that Starmer would stand aside for Burnham in September if he won the By Election. So then we'd have the first northern prime minister since Harold Wilson.
Would Andy go Scandi?
I don't mind Starmer's incrementalism, it has achieved a lot of unheralded results. But if opponents within the party demand a bigger vision they need to warn voters that they should pay for it.
Scandinavian citizens insist on cradle to grave quality in their welfare provision whilst not saddling businesses with large tax bills. Instead, they pay up to 50 percent in tax. But, as Emma Duncan in her Times article: Is the problem the PM? Labour? No: it's us has pointed out, "there's no mileage in telling the electorate uncomfortable truths." As Theresa May found out when she tried to find a way to fund social care and plummeted in the polls.
So, perhaps the new PM would also cautiously adopt incrementalism, although in a livelier voice than Sir Keir's. I notice he's already signalled he won't push for a swift return to the EU, in order not to offend his red wall, 'Get Brexit Done' voters.
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