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24th - 26th March
Wow! I've really fallen
on my feet this time. Fabulous site, absolutely fabulous. My pitch
overlooks a beautiful lake with lots of wildfowl. £12-50 a night, a
gift. Huge pitches, separated by low hedges or, as the brochure puts
it “screened by shrubs and boarders”. Went for a bike ride to the
village to post some cards and spotted a mountain of beer casks
beside the road. I'm next door to a micro-brewery!
It's
called the Milestone Brewery and I had a chat with the boss (about 30
years old). He got his equipment from a failed brewery in Ireland and
it cost him only £15,000. The big cost, he said, was casks; you need
three times your brewing capacity (to allow for cycling the casks)
and they cost £50 a piece. 10 years ago he set the whole thing up
for £50,000 and now supplies pubs all over the country, including
some Wetherspoon's.
He must be brewing now, because there is that
lovely smell wafting over the site, just like on Thursdays in Horsham
when King and Barnes were brewing. I notice his bottled beer is
bottle-conditioned, like Worthington White Shield (i.e. it's got
dregs in the bottom). I'll take a couple up to Martin.
A beautiful sunny day
but a bitterly cold wind. Only a 17-mile drive, the last bit up the
A1. The site is in Cromwell, a village which used to be on the A1 but
which has been by-passed for many years. It looks very prosperous and
there is a terrace of very interesting cottages.
The Governor's House, Newark
Now, here is another rant; something which has really been getting my goat for some time now and on which I must vent spleen. I detest the politically correct tendency to re-write history. Poor old Winston was employed to re-write history in 1984 and that's what the Communists always did and that's what the Bottom Inspectors, in particular the BBC, are doing now. Apparently, we fought the Nazis in WWII and not, after all, the Germans. The German people of my generation have come to terms with the guilt of their fathers' generation and we have all moved on, with the proviso that, as George Santayana said “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. ”. Re-writing this history is as insulting to the new Germans as it is to the victims, the survivors and to their descendants. I'm as glad as the next man that we are all friends now, but I don't like the re-writing of history, the whitewashing of unpleasant facts. It insults me as well. So to-day I was delighted to hear an old chap telling the truth. There is a celebration in Poland of the 70th anniversary of the Great Escape and a BBC newsreader mentioned that the escapers who had been re-captured had been “executed by the Nazis”. A RAF officer who was in the camp at the time but was not one of the escapers was then interviewed and he said that the escapers who had been re-captured had been “murdered by the Germans”. No whitewashing for him.
This morning (Monday) I listened to Professor Jim Al-Khalili's programme “The Life Scientific” on Radio 4. I always enjoy it (he just chats for half an hour to eminent scientists about their lives and work) but to-day's has found a new hero for me. Has anyone heard of Alf Adams? Why haven't we all heard of him? His name should be spoken in the same breath as Newton or Einstein. He invented the type of laser which is in our DVD and CD players, in supermarket check-out readers, in all scanners and in many communications systems - and he had the idea while strolling with his wife on Bournemouth beach! His father, a cobbler and semi-professional boxer, never went to school because he was born with TB. His mother left school at 12. This towering genius made not a penny out of his invention. He was made a Fellow of the Royal Society, but why, when Kissinger and Obama can get the Nobel Peace Prize, has he not been awarded the Physics prize? Read about this astonishing man here:-
Not even a knighthood
(what a silly idea the honours system is anyway), surprising when you
think that Fred Goodwin and Jimmy Saville were knighted. Still,
perhaps he refused one.
Mea culpa, mea maxima
culpa. My eagle-eyed daughter Katie has spotted an error in my page
about Thetford. I blamed William
Cobbold for losing Tom Paine's bones. William who? It was, of course,
William Cobbett. Why did I write “Cobbold”? The only Cobbold I
know is John Cobbold who was chairman of Ipswich Town Football Club
(before the chairman of an English football club had to be a foreign
crook). He owned a brewery, so perhaps I was thinking about beer.
Well spotted, Katie.
Freezing cold day
to-day, but there are some hardy fisherman around the lake. A
thorough tour of Newark is needed, especially as it is market day
to-day. The photo of the Governor's House is there because it was an
important building during the Civil War. It was here that Charles I
finally realised that his much-celebrated nephew, Prince Rupert of
the Rhine, was a total pillock, after he had lost yet another battle
with a gallant cavalry charge against the well-disciplined and
battle-hardened New Model Army troops of the Parliamentary army. And
another thing; Rupert refused to stop wearing his trademark red
jumper and yellow checked trousers. He was also getting fat on
Gregg's sausage rolls from downstairs.
The market was
enormous. Must have been 50 stalls. I found one which had every tool
and item of hardware known to man and bought, for £2, a three-inch
long sliding bevel. God knows what I'll do with it, but I found it
irresistible.
Another thing Newark
has going for it is Boyes, a mad small department store, branches of
which are in Darlington and Stokesley, where my nephew Martin and his
family live. They have a good modelling supplies department with
miniature tools, including a tiny brass Archimedes drill, and the
full range of Humbrol paints. I bought an illuminated magnifying head
band. You might be allowed to see a photo of me wearing it.
I saw very few fatties
but quite a few young ladies, and some not so young, who looked like
Travellers, with extravagant dress sense, orange complexions,
dyed-black hair in cottage-loaf hairstyles, tons of bling and even,
on a blisteringly cold day, some bare midriffs. There are many
cosy-looking cafés and they
all seemed to be packed with middle-aged and old ladies scoffing
their heads full. Few men. Perhaps the old ladies have eaten them,
too.
The town has a
marvellous antiques shop called Gracegentle's, with a superb Gauge 1
model of a Fowler traction engine in the window and it also has a
School of Violin Making. Imagine, Newark twinned with Cremona. It
also has two railway stations; Northgate, on the East Coast mainline
(King's Cross to Edinburgh) and half a mile away, Castle on the line
to St. Pancras and serving Grimsby, Leicester, Nottingham and all
points north as far as Liverpool.
The Castle looms over
the Trent, which is real man's river here, by the bridge which leads
into the town up Beast Market Hill. It is “one of those ruins that
Cromwell knocked about a bit”. The town was a Royalist stronghold
and withstood three sieges during the Civil War. After the end of the
war Cromwell ordered it to be demolished but got distracted by a
world shortage of wart cream before the job was complete.
The repellent King John died in the castle in 1216, his duplicity and greed having exhausted every loyalty. He was the Tony Blair of the 13th Century.
The repellent King John died in the castle in 1216, his duplicity and greed having exhausted every loyalty. He was the Tony Blair of the 13th Century.
I went into Waitrose.
Oh, joy! Very few Waitrose branches on my travels, so I treasure each
one. It is the only supermarket where I can buy “Thai Taste”
Satay Peanut Sauce (mmm). I rarely buy anything else in there, but
wander salivating among the fruit and vegetables and sausages and
cold meats and the deli counter and the bakery, keeping my hand on my
wallet to save me from myself. The quality, the quality! The prices,
the prices!
The bus journey to and
fro the town was interesting, along the A1 for a bit then a dive
into the pretty village of North Muskham. The houses in the area are
very red, with red-brick and red pantiles. I saw the finest Georgian
(or faux-Georgian) house there, the simplicity of its design giving
it perfect balance and symmetry. It could have been drawn by a child
but was a pleasure to look at. Everywhere, magnolia and forsythia is
coming into bloom in gardens to add to the colour of cherry, may,
daffodils and primroses. The A1 to Scotland runs alongside the main
East Coast main railway line to Doncaster, York, Darlington,
Newcastle and Edinburgh.
Just outside the town
is a huge British Sugar Corporation sugar beet factory with about 200
cars in the staff car park. It reminded me what happened to sugar
production in Ireland, thanks to the EU and the incompetent and
corrupt Fianna Fáil
government. Two big beet factories, one in Carlow and one in Mallow,
Co. Cork. Big employers themselves and the factories supporting a
thriving local farming community. The EU wanted to end sugar
production within its realm and encourage it in the Third World. The
Irish government caved in and the factories were closed. (The UK
thankfully did not cave in and there are 200 cars in the staff car
park at BSC Newark). Why could the Irish beet not have been
converted into biofuels? To support the economies of the Third World
is a fine thing, but be sure your beneficiary is not a kleptocracy
where the GDP is trousered by 10 oligarchs who use it to buy
diamond-encrusted Rolls Royces, private jets, houses in Eton Square
and in sending their sons to Eton while the rest of the population
starves with, if any, only poisonous drinking water.
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