M62 Memories: A Southern Californian’s Christmas in Yorkshire

 I spent Christmas in England and Wales and the next week in Paris and Amsterdam, so the next few entries are memories and photos. 

Stephen and I landed at Manchester airport after an uneventful flight – except for hours of searing agony in my restless leg – and immediately picked up a car, attempted to determine what side of the road to drive on and set off for York.

The M62 to York took us to the outskirts of Batley, my home town, so we turned off the motorway and pulled in for a bite at Tesco’s (only the very best for us). I had long wanted to a look at Batley Beck where it runs above ground near Iceland. (Not the country, the superstore.) I found that several short stretches of the beck, inside high walls, ran between the Bus Station and Branch Road where it meets Bradford Road. If I’d been twenty years younger, I would have jumped down into the stream bed to follow it into the tunnels, but I’m not and I didn’t. Much more about Batley Beck to come, I assure you!

Batley Beck behind Bus Station

It was half-past freezing in England. We are both used to the temperate Southern California weather. We knew that Batley, at 53.7 degrees north, would be a little colder but the glacier-like grinding cold dropping down my collar was unprecedented. I’d brought an ancient wool overcoat and a thick scarf. S. had brought a gaberdine and a Russian-style hat with ear flaps and a Tuva badge.

We quickly toured the site of the now-demolished maternity home on Bradford Road, the now demolished Boston House Flat on Zion Street and council house on Wilton Street), and the maisonette on Commercial Street, still there. We passed where my parents’ short-lived businesses were, on the corner of Henrietta Street, now demolished.

My drawing of (now demolished) corner of Henrietta Street
and Commercial Street

Stephen took everything in good humor, even when I insisted on going to Howie’s Fish and Chip shop, which was undemolished but closed. I have had many a fish and chips twice with bits from Howie's, but we were not able to reprise the event this trip. (And possibly never - there is a tiny 'for sale' sign in the window.) We had pastries from Charnock’s, not only undemolished but also not closed for the holidays. English pastries were a feature of this vacation. Having grown used to American ones, I’d forgotten what hand-made, reasonably-sweet pastries could be like.

Howie's, December 2024

We took the car back out on the minuscule one-car-wide roads and drove on to York. We parked in a Park and Ride (and downloaded our first parking app of about thirty), then walked to our creatively hidden hotel in Judges Court (which, once located, was great). We spent the next day in York, which was closed, the Christmas Market having packed up the day before and everything else being just averagely closed.

York guardians

York Minster Angel

York Minster Angel

York Minster Queen Elizabeth in stone

We did all the outside things, though. We went to the city wall and walked around it, to York Minster (closed), took a photo op with Paddington Bear (not sure why he was in York), the various ruins, Cliffords Tower (closed), lunch at a tiny hipster joint whose name I’ve forgotten where we two stout people and our food were allocated four square feet that teetered a few inches from the top of a flight of stairs. We finished with a jolly good walk around the place. We were further fueled by coffee from Caffe Nero, because Stephen warned me off Gregg’s. (Apparently just because it’s ubiquitous, it isn’t always the best…but this means I’ve still never been to a Gregg’s.)

York Wall Walk

I think this map of York walls has been here since
my last visit in 1965

We then hared off to my brother’s near Middlesbrough, a few more miles on the M62 and then on the A19. Or could have been the A1(M). British people memorize strings of road numbers and reel them off at the slightest provocation, but I got out of the habit in the US and it didn’t really come back to me on this trip.

Me and Paddington Bear observe York Minster

It was nice to have a warm bed and be with family for Christmas. And boy, was there a lot of family there! I’m not sure how our host and hostess managed to keep up with everyone, but a great couple of days was had by all.

More holiday to come...

European Vacation series:

M62 Memories: A Southern Californian’s Christmas in Yorkshire

After Christmas in England, peacocks in Tring

Moving on: Southern Californians brave London's Mean Streets

England Vacation - St. Anne's and sub-street shenanigans

Southern Californians abroad: Central London State of Mind

Californian's vacation: Stairs and sights in Paris

European vacation: We visit Père Lachaise cemetery

Californians abroad: Highgate Cemetery Part 1

Californians in Highgate Cemetery - Part 2

A Flutter

 

In 1967, when I was 8, I won big on a horse race. The Grand National is Britain’s most famous and most chaotic race. Anything can happen. Our household had a tradition of picking a horse (by sticking a pin in the newspaper's list of runners at random) and betting a small amount—a “flutter”, it was called. I picked Foinavon, a no-hoper at 100:1 odds, and bet a shilling, one twentieth of a pound.

Late in the race, all the leading horses fell, or turned to get out of the carnage at the front of the race, tripped by a riderless horse ambling around in front of one of the fences. Plucky Foinavon, gamely cantering dozens of yards behind, had plenty of time to select a route through the empty horses and over the remaining fences. I won five pounds, to me at that time an unimaginable sum of money, and my mother said I should put it in a bank.

“What will the bank do with it?”

“They’ll put it in a book.”

“Won’t it make the book lumpy?”

“Of course not,” she said, not kindly, assuming my complete ignorance of book-keeping was an attempt at snark.

My mother was a bookkeeper, the person whose job was to keep the ledgers of company transactions in order so that they could be certified by an accountant later. These handwritten, maroon leather-bound books had to be prepared carefully, legibly, and completely, without crossing-outs or erasures that could be interpreted as a sign of fraudulent changes, so that the debit side and credit side totted up to the same amount. Any discrepancies had to be chased down, notated and signed. I didn’t have any idea this activity took place, and neither do you, because computers keep accounts up to date invisibly, behind the scenes these days.

Yorkshire Bank from Google Street View 2016

I took the five pound note the bookie gave my mother to the Yorkshire Bank on the main commercial street of Batley, my little hometown. It’s called Commercial Street, in the thuddingly obvious way that streets are named when they’ve been there forever. The bank teller took the bill and entered it into his book—in writing. The bill itself was put in a drawer, so as not to make the book lumpy. I was given a little ledger of my own to record my deposits and withdrawals, and a check book, which I don’t believe I ever used. I do remember that a short time later I came into another small fortune —I found a pound note in a field, with a sheep-shaped bite out of it. After much form-filling, the Bank of England replaced it with an unbitten bill, and I deposited it in the same bank.

Yorkshire Bank building for sale, Google Street View

On Saturday, wrapped-up in my post-lockdown home in Southern California, where I’ve lived for more than half my life, I read about that town, and about the Yorkshire Bank on Commercial Street.  The bank was disused and shuttered, the doors boarded up, and the property had been on the market for four years without a buyer. 

The police broke through the boards and entered the property to search it. They found the body of a bus driver, who had been kidnapped in nearby Bradford and murdered. His alleged killers were arraigned in court yesterday, a couple of years after his body was found, and the BBC news article showed a picture of the boarded-up doors of my bank, where my lucky winnings had been deposited. Over a gulf of fifty-three years, I recalled walking in there to entrust my cash to the man behind glass who put it in a drawer and gave me a book of handwritten numbers in return. Somewhere behind his counter, a murdered man had lain for almost a week. And then the doors were sealed again with metal plates replacing the plywood, and there would be no more Yorkshire Bank memories to come for anyone.

Batley Market

In the early seventies back in the UK, my mother rented a stall on the weekly Batley, West Yorkshire, market. The marketplace was set up on the sloping cobbles between the town hall and the Carnegie library, sprouting like mushrooms on the morning of market day Friday and dismantled like magic on the Saturday evening. The market, of wooden stalls roofed with canvas and lit by strings of incandescent bulbs running from stall to stall, was a like a charmed wonderland to me – particularly in winter, when it does not become light until 9 am and darkness falls again by 4:30 in the afternoon. The cobbles were treacherous in the rain and in the occasional snowfalls, so the crowds moved slowly down the rows of stalls, dressed in long, heavy coats, the women with headscarves tied under the chin and the men with flat hats. 

Batley Town Hall, with marketplace in front. (The buildings were cleaned in the seventies - 

they were coal black when I was growing up.)

The stalls concentrated on the items that the supermarkets, with their national or international focus, did not. The butcher's stall sold sheep's heads, liver and lights, tripe and elder. They cried their traditional calls for their pork pies and steak and kidney pies. The stall I frequented most sold American comic books. Here, you did not have to buy them outright. You bought a few issues, took them home and returned them for half price. As the comics got worn or damaged, they were marked down and you could buy more – but would, of course, receive less when you returned them. From the usually twilight or dark marketplace overlooked by the black stone municipal buildings you could go home and read about Metropolis – always light, usually rich – and Gotham City – always dark but safely watched over by the brooding Batman. Spiderman and his travails with Aunt May and his boss were a glimpse of another planet, one where women did not wear headscarves and you did not see your breath in front of you as you leafed through comic books.

My mother, on her stall, sold supplies for home-winemaking and home beer brewing. Drink was a regular means of escape from Batley's difficulties. As a child I had my own, in the brightly illustrated comic books.

Mysterious Ebbing and Flowing Well, Settle

I used to visit the Ebbing and Flowing Well at Giggleswick with my parents every time we drove past, which was frequently.  It's on the B6480 (or Clapham Road) under Buck Haw Brow (pronounced bucker brow) near Settle golf course. If you're inclined to visit, be aware the road is pretty busy and there's no pull-out for the well.

"Ebb" - to drain away. "Flow" -  a stream of water.

Humphrey Bolton / Ebbing and Flowing Well, Buck Haw Brow B6480, Giggleswick / CC BY-SA 2.0

Although it's reputed to have a grander and more folk-magic past, it is nowadays a little livestock drinking cistern by the side of the road. Regularly, it begins to fill up - mysteriously, since the flow isn't associated with rain - and then drain again, almost immediately.  The water height change is only a few inches, and you can easily spend half an hour staring at it wondering if the water is ebbing, flowing or just lying there prompting hallucinations.

If you read histories of the well, they mostly say, "the well these days has stopped ebbing and flowing".  This isn't actually true, it's just most people have the twitches from too much smart phone wrangling and don't watch for long enough.

Being old enough to have grown up without the phone twitches is good in one way, but not in others - for example, I don't have any of my own photos or videos, because cameras cost a fortune back then. So these two videos are cribbed.

The first has a description of the history and location of the well, with a time-lapse of the effect.



(From bill bartlett's YouTube)

Then there's this nice example from John Barrow's YouTube, who has disabled it so it doesn't play on Blogger. It's worth the extra click. It shows the well at a very active point - and the people speaking in the video have hit on how it works. It's a siphon, so once the water reaches a certain point down the (invisible) outlet, it will continue to 'mysteriously' empty, far below the point the where it started draining.

I'm not sure why I remembered this today, and went looking for videos. Perhaps it's just a nostalgic day - my other chase down the internet rabbit hole this morning was to follow the fate of the Bethnal Green Mulberry, which is at least 500 years old and may even have been planted for medicinal purposes by the Romans. For years it was in the grounds of a hospital, but the hospital moved out and the developers moved in.

The Road to Park Hill Bridge

This Grauniad article on love and disappointment the northern steel-making city of Sheffield - not far from where I was born - is heart-wrenching. I think it sufficiently details the reasons why I don't live there right now.

The remark about brides who live on the upper floors of the high-rise apartment blocks taking the freight elevator on their wedding day so as not to crush their "frocks" in the cramped passenger elevator made me wince with recognition - and a strong memory of those elevators, with stinking stains down the walls from crotch height and the dull, cobwebby fluorescent light in the ceiling behind its vandal-proof (but not graffiti-proof) plastic panel.

The overall tone of the article was a bit too "it's grim up north" for me. I'm used to being from the Kentucky or Alabama of the UK but after 12 years living in London where people assumed I keep coal in the bath and gave me all the respect that stereotype engenders, it was eye-opening to move to the US where suddenly I'm in the top tier because I have a "British" accent. It isn't *that* grim. We have Hebden Bridge. And the Dales.

Why do Southerners assume Northerners keep coal in the bath? I've never known. Orwell mentions it in The Road To Wigan Pier. 

"Moreover the pithead baths, where they exist, are paid for wholly or partly by the miners themselves, out of the Miners’ Welfare Fund. Sometimes the colliery company subscribes, sometimes the Fund bears the whole cost. But doubtless even at this late date the old ladies in Brighton boarding-houses are saying that ‘if you give those miners baths they only use them to keep coal in’."

The Daily Telegraph was still giggling about it in 2008 in a book review. 

"Jenni Murray would like you to know that she keeps a very clean toilet - you could eat your dinner off it. Eating your dinner off toilets seems to be one of those strange northern customs, like keeping coal in the bath, that has never caught on down south."

Fuck off, Torygraph. 

The Guardian's story about Sheffield's Park Hill Bridge at least is grounded in reality, even if the reality is as gritty as the ash-heaps behind the steel mills.

Lyle's Golden Syrup - Out of strength came forth sweetness

Had a wonderful day out yesterday with a couple of friends I hadn't seen in quite some time.  One of them, C, had a couple of questions she must have been burning to ask me: "Why are you called Lyle?" and "Someone gifted me a can of Golden Syrup. What is it for?"  Strangely enough, the answers are related.

The two cans of treacle pictured above are from my own pantry. One is just a couple of years past its use-by date and the other is a good decade old. So it's not that treacle gets a great deal of use in the Hopwood Household, but they do get used eventually. (I've just read the back of one and it says to discard after the date on the can, but I think I'll ignore that. What could possibly happen to treacle, which Google says is,

trea·cleˈtrēk(ə)l/noun1.
British term for molasses.
2.
cloying sentimentality or flattery.
"enough of this treacle—let's get back to business"

and Wikipedia, more correctly, defines as:

Treacle is any uncrystallised syrup made during the refining of sugar. The most common forms of treacle are golden syrup, a pale variety, and a darker variety known as black treacle. Black treacle, or molasses, has a distinctively strong, slightly bitter flavour, and a richer colour than golden syrup.)

Treacle is a key ingredient in Yorkshire's national food, Parkin. (It's also a key ingredient in Yorkshire's other national food, treacle toffee.) The BBC have a recipe for Parkin on their cooking page, which I haven't tried but looks about right.  Parkin (and Treacle Toffee) are eaten on Bonfire Night, which C  (who is American) guessed is the day after Christmas when you break down all the cardboard boxes.  It's actually New Year's Day, November 5th, when English people throw red and gold fake banknotes into the river Thames for the spirits of our ancestors so they can pay their afterlife expenses. When you're American, though, as I am now, you can eat it on any day.  And you can use black molasses since getting black treacle requires a co-conspirator in the UK. British people weigh ingredients (except for sub-teaspoonful amounts) instead of messing with 1/4 cups and 1/2 flagons and 2 1/2 sticks and so on but you get used to it. And 140C is 285F. 

BBC Yorkshire Parkin recipe

110g soft butter
110g soft dark brown sugar
55g black treacle
200g golden syrup
225g medium oatmeals
110g self-raising flour
2 tsp ground ginger
1 tsp ground mixed spice
2 medium eggs, beaten
1 tbsp milk
Pinch of salt

Method
Preheat the oven to 140C/120C fan/Gas Mark 1. Grease and line a 20cm x 20cm square cake tin.
In a pan, over a gentle heat, melt the butter, sugar, treacle and golden syrup. Don't allow the mixture to get too hot or bubble. When they have melted together remove from the heat and allow to cool slightly.
In a large mixing bowl sift in the dry ingredients and make a well in the centre. Gradually add the melted butter mixture and fold together. Pour in the beaten eggs and milk and combine together.
Pour into your baking tin. Bake for 1 1/2 hours, however keep an eye on it as parkin can easily become dry and over baked.
Remove from the oven and leave in the tin for 20 minutes. Tip onto a cake rack and leave to cool completely.
Store the parkin in a cake tin and wrapped in greaseproof paper. You must keep it in a tin for a minimum of 1 day and up to a week before you cut it. Leaving it to develop will give it a moist and sticky texture, as well as making the flavour richer and deeper.

I first came across treacle in the book Alice In Wonderland, which has a riff on treacle that I memorized as a kid, but here I have used the modern version of memorization, ctrl-c ctrl-v. The Hatter is describing his poor relationship with Time:

'And ever since that,' the Hatter went on in a mournful tone, 'he won't do a thing I ask! It's always six o'clock now.' 

A bright idea came into Alice's head. 'Is that the reason so many tea-things are put out here?' she asked.

'Yes, that's it,' said the Hatter with a sigh: 'it's always tea-time, and we've no time to wash the things between whiles.'
'Then you keep moving round, I suppose?' said Alice.
'Exactly so,' said the Hatter: 'as the things get used up.'
'But what happens when you come to the beginning again?' Alice ventured to ask.
'Suppose we change the subject,' the March Hare interrupted, yawning. 'I'm getting tired of this. I vote the young lady tells us a story.'
'I'm afraid I don't know one,' said Alice, rather alarmed at the proposal.
'Then the Dormouse shall!' they both cried. 'Wake up, Dormouse!' And they pinched it on both sides at once.
The Dormouse slowly opened his eyes. 'I wasn't asleep,' he said in a hoarse, feeble voice: 'I heard every word you fellows were saying.'
'Tell us a story!' said the March Hare.
'Yes, please do!' pleaded Alice.
'And be quick about it,' added the Hatter, 'or you'll be asleep again before it's done.'
'Once upon a time there were three little sisters,' the Dormouse began in a great hurry; 'and their names were Elsie, Lacie, and Tillie; and they lived at the bottom of a well—'
'What did they live on?' said Alice, who always took a great interest in questions of eating and drinking.
'They lived on treacle,' said the Dormouse, after thinking a minute or two.
'They couldn't have done that, you know,' Alice gently remarked; 'they'd have been ill.'
'So they were,' said the Dormouse; 'very ill.'
Alice tried to fancy to herself what such an extraordinary ways of living would be like, but it puzzled her too much, so she went on: 'But why did they live at the bottom of a well?'
'Take some more tea,' the March Hare said to Alice, very earnestly.
'I've had nothing yet,' Alice replied in an offended tone, 'so I can't take more.'
'You mean you can't take less,' said the Hatter: 'it's very easy to take more than nothing.'
'Nobody asked your opinion,' said Alice.
'Who's making personal remarks now?' the Hatter asked triumphantly.
Alice did not quite know what to say to this: so she helped herself to some tea and bread-and-butter, and then turned to the Dormouse, and repeated her question. 'Why did they live at the bottom of a well?'
The Dormouse again took a minute or two to think about it, and then said, 'It was a treacle-well.'
'There's no such thing!' Alice was beginning very angrily, but the Hatter and the March Hare went 'Sh! sh!' and the Dormouse sulkily remarked, 'If you can't be civil, you'd better finish the story for yourself.'
'No, please go on!' Alice said very humbly; 'I won't interrupt again. I dare say there may be one.'
'One, indeed!' said the Dormouse indignantly. However, he consented to go on. 'And so these three little sisters—they were learning to draw, you know—'
'What did they draw?' said Alice, quite forgetting her promise.
'Treacle,' said the Dormouse, without considering at all this time.
'I want a clean cup,' interrupted the Hatter: 'let's all move one place on.'
He moved on as he spoke, and the Dormouse followed him: the March Hare moved into the Dormouse's place, and Alice rather unwillingly took the place of the March Hare. The Hatter was the only one who got any advantage from the change: and Alice was a good deal worse off than before, as the March Hare had just upset the milk-jug into his plate.
Alice did not wish to offend the Dormouse again, so she began very cautiously: 'But I don't understand. Where did they draw the treacle from?'
'You can draw water out of a water-well,' said the Hatter; 'so I should think you could draw treacle out of a treacle-well—eh, stupid?'
'But they were in the well,' Alice said to the Dormouse, not choosing to notice this last remark.
'Of course they were', said the Dormouse; '—well in.'
This answer so confused poor Alice, that she let the Dormouse go on for some time without interrupting it.
'They were learning to draw,' the Dormouse went on, yawning and rubbing its eyes, for it was getting very sleepy; 'and they drew all manner of things—everything that begins with an M—'
'Why with an M?' said Alice.
'Why not?' said the March Hare.
Alice was silent.
The Dormouse had closed its eyes by this time, and was going off into a doze; but, on being pinched by the Hatter, it woke up again with a little shriek, and went on: '—that begins with an M, such as mouse-traps, and the moon, and memory, and muchness—you know you say things are "much of a muchness"—did you ever see such a thing as a drawing of a muchness?'
'Really, now you ask me,' said Alice, very much confused, 'I don't think—'
'Then you shouldn't talk,' said the Hatter.
This piece of rudeness was more than Alice could bear: she got up in great disgust, and walked off; the Dormouse fell asleep instantly, and neither of the others took the least notice of her going, though she looked back once or twice, half hoping that they would call after her: the last time she saw them, they were trying to put the Dormouse into the teapot.
'At any rate I'll never go there again!' said Alice as she picked her way through the wood. 'It's the stupidest tea-party I ever was at in all my life.'

The treacle well is apparently in Binsey, Oxfordshire. The things you learn while blogging.

For "Out of strength came forth sweetness" see Judges 14 and the story of Samson's wife. Trigger warning - like many bible passages it contains sex, violence, sexual violence, death and bees.