February 2000
Other
people’s lives are fascinating. Most people have some tales to tell. Much of
the time we don’t hear them. The other evening I fell into conversation with
Kevin’s father in the Princess. Usually we just nod to one another or
complain about the weather. I don’t know what prompted it but for a good
half-hour he told us the story of his life, or rather his early life. At the
age of nine, soon after the Second World War broke out, he was evacuated,
alone, from Lewisham in East London to Vancouver, Canada. At such a young age
he went by ship to live with people he didn’t know next to the Pacific Ocean
at the other side of the world. It was nine years before he returned to
England on a banana boat. In between he went through school in Canada and
worked as a lumberjack and as a goldminer. Clearly the work was by any measure
tough but he recalled his experiences with affection and pride. He went back
and forth through the Rockies on a steam train long before the journey was
reinvented for the tourists.
I
was reminded of the occasion I went to see my great-uncle in 1979, soon after
I had returned from my first visit to America. I told him about California,
Yosemite, the Grand Canyon. ‘I’ve been to the US of A; how envious you
must be’ was my sub-text. He quietly explained that he had been to New York
many times. During the First World War he was in the Royal Navy and sailed
with the convoys that brought essential supplies to Britain from North
America. He was in New York before the skyscrapers were built. He sailed the
dangerous waters of the North Atlantic only a few years after the Titanic’s
disastrous voyage. He was evading not only icebergs but, far more deadly,
U-boats too. His life as a young man was constantly in peril at that time. And
I’d been to Disneyland. I felt firmly in my place. My generation? We don’t
know we’re born.
Nature’s
annual display of renewal is well under way. Snowdrops carpet the grass
opposite our house and the crocuses are out in the Park. As a result of the
mild winter the daffodils are in bud and we have tulips in the house from the
flower shop at the crossroads. The days are getting longer and last Sunday was
one of those bright sunny days when you know that, whilst winter is not yet
over, its days are certainly numbered. There have been some wonderful dawn
skies in the last couple of weeks despite the rain and winds. The sap is
rising. (In direct contrast to the Stock Market).
| In Halifax, The Powers That Be, at the suggestion of a schoolboy, floodlit Wainhouse Tower in white and green light to mark the start of the year 2000. The effect is quite stunning and, I understand, the plan now is to make the illumination permanent. In York the scaffolding which has for years necessarily disfigured York Minster has come down and the outer fabric of the building is again wholly visible in all its magnificent glory. More mundanely, in the middle of Leeds, to my delight, another 1960s tower block monstrosity has been torn down as a major new development behind the façade of the old Leeds Permanent Building Society headquarters on the Headrow begins to take shape. It was not a pleasant journey getting here but at last we seem now to be (on the whole) valuing our heritage and retaining the best of the old when the new has to be built. |
Wainhouse Tower, Halifax. |
Talking
of journeys, in the last two weeks I have twice travelled from Leeds to
Manchester and back on the train. I always enjoy journeys by rail and this one
particularly. One goes through the old mill towns (not many chimneys now) of
Batley and Dewsbury and Mirfield. West of Huddersfield at places like Marsden
and Slaithwaite at first sight not a lot appears to have changed since the
nineteenth century. What ruins the trip for me is seeing the vast quantities
of litter and debris which line the tracks and at times make England look like
a third world country. Does no one have responsibility nowadays for clearing
this up? It costs money will be the answer even though both the public and
private sectors seem to have plenty of it to waste. Some wretched anti-social
person recently left hundreds of old tyres on Otley Chevin in the middle of
the night and more have been dumped in Cragg Wood. The authorities should make
it easy and cheap to get rid of waste material of every kind. In fact they
often do the reverse. Not that that in any way at all excuses the behaviour of
those who dumped those tyres.
I
don’t suppose I’m the first person to key my name into a search engine to
see what it produces. Not a lot of point, I guess, if you are called Smith or
Jones. It’s always interesting to come across people in history with one’s
own surname especially if it isn’t well known. Christian name and surname is
a bonus. So I discover that a David Brearley, who originated in Yorkshire,
signed the first American Constitution in 1787 as a
representative of the state of New Jersey. A Harry Brearley discovered
the best process to make stainless steel in Sheffield in 1913. I have found a
Roger Brearley who was a Puritan minister in the early seventeenth century. He
formed a sect which found itself at variance with the established Church of
England. The sect was based at Grindleton, in the extreme west of Yorkshire in
the shadow of Pendle Hill, a place long associated with the very antithesis of
Christianity. The bleak, remote Pennine valleys west and north of Halifax and
Bradford were safe refuges for religious unorthodoxy and they became important
in the growth of English Nonconformity.
Of
course, Mike Brearley captained England. And Amos Brearley was the landlord of
the Woolpack in Emmerdale Farm. The fact is that Brearley does not exactly
rank with Churchill in the history of our country. But it’s a Yorkshire name
and I like it.