A House Through Time

Have you ever wondered about all the people who lived in your house before you? Who they were, what they did, how long they were there? You may of course already know the answers - you may live in a relatively new house that's only had one set of previous owners (like the house I spent most of my childhood in), or in a house that has been in the same family for generations (like my dad's house in the Lake District, which was first lived in by my great, great grandfather). But generally, it's information a lot of us don't have.

Ours for generations

If you've bought your house, you will normally have met the previous owners to you, though not necessarily. The owner may already have moved out or be an absentee landlord, or the house may be a probate sale owing to its occupant's demise. There may be neighbours around to fill in some of the gaps in information, depending on the friendliness of your street. But however much or little you know about your house's previous occupants, everyone who has lived there before you will have left their mark somehow - their choice of bathroom or kitchen, a scrap of wallpaper several layers below yours, a wall built or knocked down, a forgotten box in the loft, a bush in the garden. Their ghosts live on, though not necessarily in a supernatural sense. For unless you completely gut the place, it will never feel entirely yours.

A House Through Time, written and presented by social historian David Olusoga, aims to chart the history of a single house, 62 Falkner Street in Liverpool, from its first occupants to the present day. He has gleaned information from archived documents and newspapers. It's an approach a bit like the one used in Who Do You Think You Are?, only without the celebrity starting point. Our starting point is instead a picture of fields, owned by the farmer after whom the street is subsequently named (though with a misspelling). The house was built in 1840, and was originally number 58, its number increasing to 62 as more houses were built piecemeal onto the road. Nowadays, it's a strikingly substantial Georgian-style (because technically it's Victorian) terraced property in what looks like a highly desirable part of town. It may have since lost a lot of its original features and fireplaces, but back in the day it had a drawing room, a maid, bespoke furniture, the works. The house was bought for around £1,000 by its first owner, Richard Glenton - a seemingly lazy and unambitious clerk in the Liverpool docks, which were then at their height. Glenton had lodgers to help him pay the bills on his meagre £50 annual income - the rest of his apparently lavish lifestyle being funded by the "bank of Dad"; a dad who had also got him his clerk's post in an extraordinary level of nepotism apparently quite normal for the time. Once Dad died, leaving his fortune to Richard's unmarried sister, Richard had to sell up and find himself a more humble abode. He sold the house to a couple called the Orrs, who had been in service but ended up the equivalent of millionaires in today's money. The husband, a former butler, worked long hours as the manager of the "newsroom" at an exclusive gentleman's club, overhearing conversations which enabled him to make shrewd financial investments.

Then the house was owned by Wilfred Steele, a cotton trader who experienced every extreme imaginable in his short life. Boom, bust, battle. He lost two young sons and ended up in a debtor's gaol, yet abandoned two stepdaughters to a miserable fate in a Liverpool workhouse. He benefited from slavery but fought in the American war against it, though the latter was probably for the money rather than the morality of the issue. David Olusoga quite understandably did not take kindly to this man, although many of the facts were speculative rather than pure.

I am very much looking forward to the next instalment. And the programme makes me want to find out more about our house in York. It was built around 1910, and for many of its recent years was a student rental property, before being sold to our vendors, who did a lot of crazy renovations, the majority of which we have had neither the luck, skill nor money to undo. We met said previous owners once - they were both academics, and like us, had moved to York from Crouch End in London, which seemed like a good omen. They spent the three months between us viewing the property and completing the sale chain-smoking and cooking greasy dinners, the aromas resulting from which it took us about ten months to eradicate. We never quite got rid of the dirt.

Edinburgh nights with Walter Scott

Our house has a name, Waverley, etched into the glass above the front door. But I have no idea when this was done or why. None of the other houses on the terrace have a name, though they all have the same Victorian tiled hallway floor. Was it Waverley after the Walter Scott novel, the steamship on the Clyde, or the great station at Edinburgh? I do know that the house was already called Waverley 50 years ago, since by chance last summer I met another previous owner. She happened to walk past when I was sitting on our new bench outside in the front yard and stopped to chat. She had bought the house with her husband but when they had two young children found it as impractical as we had with our young toddler, with its steep stairs, narrow rooms and deep draughts. They, unlike us, had got their act together and traded it in for a 1930s semi with a garden a few streets away. Their legacy was to remove a picture etched onto the glass behind the word Waverley, to knock the kitchen through into the toilet outhouse to create a downstairs bathroom, and to board out a storage area under the eaves to install a train set, where we now keep our suitcases and cat carrier.

The place I sit to learn about our house

Another previous resident turned up mildly stoned on our doorstep one night to say he liked what we had done to the front yard, since it was just a hole in the ground when he lived there. I am not even sure if he had the right house or why he had felt so compelled to knock on the door, though the story of the giant hole makes me wonder if there are more to the suspiciously diagonal cracks in our walls than my husband will ever believe.

And then there is the story of a certain school administrator who I discovered had a boyfriend who still lived with his parents in our house many years ago. "Ooh, the fun I've had in your lounge!" she merrily told me. Our lounge was his bedroom, as the family rented out the top of the house to lodgers working on the railway. I've never quite felt the same about the four walls surrounding our sofa since.

Summer holidays and teenagers

So we're over halfway through, and how's it going for you? How's the weather been? (We've actually had a tiny bit of sunshine this week in York.) Are the tensions in your house at Trump-Kim levels yet or are they still relievable by wine? Yesterday my daughter asked me when I was going to stop controlling her life and let her take charge instead. This was a response to me inviting her to go to the ice cream boat over the river as a treat. She wanted to stay at home and play with her magnets instead. You just can't feckin' win, can you?

She is harder to please than ever this summer. We've done some lovely things. We've been to some shows at the Great Yorkshire Fringe and to see Robin Hood at York Theatre Royal. We've been to Harlow Carr, Newby Hall and the wonderful York Maze, and we went to stay with my dad in Grasmere for a few days, where we met up with friends and played Swallows and Amazons at Blackwell House in the pouring rain. We've done campfire cooking and raced around Goddards. But during it all there was so much moaning! (Particularly when I managed to wreck her bread dough in the campfire...) And I haven't even made her go on any country walks!

The Giant's Loo Roll
(the daughter was bribed with a chocolate pancake not to scowl in this picture)

The Scarecrow's Wedding

Genuine tents...

..and genuine boats from the Swallows And Amazons film at Blackwell House, Bowness

The dissatisfaction is spreading beyond home. This week is she is attending Kings Camp, a sports activity week held at the Mount School. It's a lot of fun, but every day she comes out overly focused on the negative - that she hasn't won star of the day, that she had to wear a beginners red cap in her swimming session despite the 25 metres badge she has sewn on to her costume, for which she was teased, that she scraped her knee during a treasure hunt, that the timetable wasn't announced in strict order at the start of the day, that they didn't go outside enough, that they went outside too much... Bah! It's partly tiredness, hence me trying to revive her with ice cream. But give the poor guys a break!

It's a foresight of what the teenage years may hold, assuming Donald Trump, Kim Jong-Un, Isis in a van, and a piece of plastic fork let any of us live that long. Did so many things cause my parents sleepless nights when I was little? Plastic forks didn't of course, because my parents weren't that stupid, but when I was my daughter's age Thatcher had just come to power, nuclear war between Russia and America definitely seemed a possibility, and then Argentina invaded the Falklands. But was it this bad? With Brexit, that narcissistic, volatile moron tweeting unpredictable nonsense from the White House, a fat kid in North Korea playing games and people being run over on the streets of Europe, I feel like I am living in a nightmare that can only get worse. My mood certainly can't be helping my daughter's negativity, even though I try not to mention any of it to her. Let her have her innocence for as long as it can last. But when will something good happen? Even The Last Leg can't lift my spirits about the madness of the world any more.

Love to you, Barcelona

Anyway, teenagers. Yeah. There's a bunch of them living in the park this summer. Our lovely park, which has just lost its park keeper thanks to the latest wave of austerity cuts (my prediction in a previous blog post came true). Now it's up to volunteers to maintain its flower beds and keep it looking lovely. Which was hard enough with its flock of geese shitting over its lawns and pathways, and has now been made even harder by these teenagers' inability to use a litter bin. Oh, such bravado they show as they do their wheelies down our street and around the park stage, which only a few weeks ago was used to put on an opera. Such colourful language as they abuse each other and passers by. Such profits the corner shop must be making as they purchase their bottles of Rubicon Spring and packets of Moam. And such a mess they hurl on to the grass without a moment's thought. There's no dealing with them; they are a wall of hormones who just want to laugh at adults requesting a little respect out of them for their surroundings. Needless to say, me politely requesting them to stop ripping leaves off my neighbour's bushes did not go down well the other day.

Yes, I did pick all this up afterwards

My daughter chipped a little off their cool though. The boys invaded the zip wire queue in the play area, pushing in front of her, where she had been standing watching some friends. "We're going next!" they boomed, sneering at her. "That's OK, I don't want a go anyway because I don't like it," replied my daughter. "Ew, what are you, six?" they snorted. "Yes. But I'm nearly seven!" answered the girl, oblivious to what they were inferring. She's darn tall for her age.

We have a teenager coming to stay in our house next week actually. Hopefully he can sort the brats in the park out with some good Dutch manners. We are doing a house swap with a friend in Holland, a cheap and convenient way of being able to go abroad in August. So I am spending this week frantically trying to tidy up and looking at everything in the house that doesn't quite work properly, thinking "My goodness, how have we put up with this for ten years?" Well, mostly because one of us in this marriage is very laidback. He has to be, of course, else he wouldn't cope with me being the other half. But as a consequence his attitude to repairs is somewhat slack. He'll just work out a way of tolerating whatever has gone wrong. Deciding he prefers showers a bit on the cool side, for example. Deciding that the steam function on an iron isn't necessary if you just squirt a bit of water on your shirts instead. Not minding water spraying in his eye from a pipe because really it's quite refreshing after a long run. That sort of thing.*** Anyway, I'm just hoping I've managed to patch the place up enough to stop it falling down before the end of the month, so that our friends have a peaceful and harmonious visit, despite bringing a teenager.

So yes, ten whole years we've lived here in our crazy house. I think that's the longest I've lived anywhere continuously in my life. Cracks are still appearing in the walls. I panic about subsidence, my husband merely decides they add character. Our daughter could definitely be a little bit more like her daddy on some things.

Only 19 more days til the start of term.


*** My husband would just like me to point out that while the girl and I were in Grasmere he painted four shelves that have been bare MDF for nearly as many years. It seems the trick to make him get round to doing DIY jobs is to go away without him...

Easter Activities Away from CBeebies

I'm back! Oh, you lucky bloggers who have been able to write during the Easter holidays. You plainly have a lot more energy. Or you don't have a daughter who is currently unable to fall asleep by herself and likes to take hours doing so, plainly sensing I have somewhere I would rather be. Or you don't have a husband who spends the evening hogging the laptop to read football scores work.

But anyway, pre-school is back, and so are my two hours a day of me-time. Never mind the fact that I can't currently see my house owing to piles of beads, wool, shredded tissue paper, buttons, coins, pebbles, Lego, sequins, glitter, chocolate and fluffy yellow chicks (not live ones, or ever live ones). It's a frigging mess. That's school holidays for you. The only thing I seem particularly skilled at tidying away is the chocolate, mostly because there is no available shelf-space for it, and well, it's been a long fortnight.

Did you think for a moment from my description of the mess that we might have spent the whole holiday doing Easter craft activities? Ha ha. How little you know us. I assure you we didn't. My daughter just likes spreading bite-sized crap everywhere. Which is why I tried to spend as little of the holiday as possible at home. My daughter had assigned herself a tight CBeebies viewing schedule as a backdrop to spreading her bite-sized crap around, which I was determined to thwart. Every day I had to drag her screaming away from Bing or Mister Maker so that we could do something "fun" or "educational" and not end up with me being goaded to do one of Mister Maker's sodding Minute Makes, since the items required for it were currently thinly spread all over the carpet. "You'll thank me when you're older," I roared like my mother before me, even though I know she won't.

So where we did we go? We live in York, Yorkshire, and shouldn't be short of options. We aren't. Although the crowds and the weather can prove both limiting and irritating. Anyway, here is my top ten suggestions for escaping CBeebies in our neck of the woods:

1. Go on a play date.

Where you end up with so much squabbling you end up turning on CBeebies. Hm. Back to square one.

2. Go on a country walk.

Last time

Better! We did the Farndale daffodils walk, since this is the only time of year you can do it. I have happy memories of this walk a couple of years ago on a glorious spring day, our daughter in a pushchair, the sun beating down on us, the daffodils at their peak along the river banks, and scores of old ladies serving me tea and buns in a barn at the far end.

Unfortunately when we arrived this time, this happened:

And it turns out that my husband, despite being raised in Cumbria (or maybe because he was raised in Cumbria), doesn't do rain with good cheer.

And it turns out that the daffodils that far north aren't as advanced as the daffodils in York, but there were a few just starting to come out...

And it turns out that a three mile walk is still pushing a four year old a bit too far.

I will admit that a picnic on a rain-soaked bog was a bit of a stupid idea.

But hey, there are still old ladies serving cakes in barns at either end of the walk, so that has to count for something, right?

Mummy had a lovely time. But nobody else did.

3. Go to the cinema.

I know that technically that this is escaping CBeebies only to go and stare at another screen. But I took my daughter to see Cinderella, and coupled with the Frozen Fever short beforehand, the whole thing was such a magical experience it brought a tear to my eye. I once directed and starred in my own production of Cinderella. We may not necessarily be talking quite the same scale as Kenneth Branagh here. I may have been aged eight, and in my lounge, with a Clarks clodhopper playing the role of glass slipper. But whatever, it's a story with a special resonance for my inner girl, and this film was -as a result - a delight. And my daughter was so transfixed throughout that she insisted Daddy take her to see it again the following week. Sorry, Daddy.

4. Go to a museum

Museums in York - invariably heaving in school holidays. So we met some friends at the World Of James Herriot In Thirsk. This museum is so brilliant that is going to merit its own blog post in the very near future. It was hailing outside, but dead quiet inside. Not so good for the museum possibly, but just right for us. We spent nearly two hours exploring all that it has to offer. Things like this:

 And this:

And this:

Go on, admit you're more than a little curious, even if only to find out what those ghastly looking tools are for. And it may be as bad as you think. More soon...

5. Visit relatives.

Only sometimes the relatives you want to visit are on the elderly side and live in a residential home that doesn't come well equipped for young children. This means offering a bribe as an incentive to make your child not disgrace herself. In our case the bribe was a trip to Tropical World in Roundhay Park. It was a sunny day. Unlike our country walk, at last a chance for a picnic in appropriate weather. We ate our sandwiches. And only then did I notice the queue for Tropical World. Given that it was so warm, I figured, how many people in Leeds would want to spend the afternoon inside a giant hothouse? It turns out - all of them. A rare hats off to our girl, who insisted she would wait patiently for an hour to go in and see her beloved fruit bats. It's a shame she won't apply the same behaviour at a supermarket check-out or when Mummy stops to have a chat with somebody in the street. And yes, that did say fruit bats. The butterflies, the meerkats, the monkeys? A mere flicker of attention. The yellow python? Fairly interesting (while Mummy hyperventilates). But the fruit bats? Just wow. Apparently.

6. Go on holiday.

Lucky those who can afford a proper holiday in school holidays. We have to make do with visiting Grandpa. Thankfully Grandpa lives in Grasmere. And this year, the sun was shining. And the local farmer, who has been known to spray liquid manure over the field in front of the house on a Bank Holiday weekend, had this year deposited a load of newborn lambs there instead. Instant, free and very special entertainment. Until my dad served up what he termed a "lump of lamb" on the Monday.

7. Go on an Easter egg hunt.

Misty morning, Grasmere

These are so much fun, it may turn out that you have to do it all over again. And again. Until you hide that last egg a bit too well and can't remember where you put it. Then it's back to tears. Only consoled by CBeebies.

8. Join the National Trust.

Then you can have lots of free days out, or free before ice cream, gift shop harassment (by your child, not the staff, I hasten to add) and more (Cadbury's sponsored) Easter egg hunts. A bit of history and art for grown-ups, a giant play area for children. Cake for all. This Easter we went to Goddards and Beningborough Hall in York, Nostell Priory near Wakefield, and finally Allan Bank in Grasmere no less than four times, because it's just up the hill from my dad's house.

Goddards

Swing after hail, Beningborough

Nostell Priory

The wobbly play bridge at Nostell Priory

Swing in the sun, Allan Bank

9. Go to the seaside.

Unless it's still hailing, you may find that a few other people have the same idea as you. Fortunately for us this meant a very crowded train to Scarborough rather than a traffic jam on the A64, because at least the train was actually going somewhere. The sea front resembled Benidorm in high season and we were surrounded by little girls called Britney and Tegan eating Quavers and drinking Fruit Shoots and throwing sand in each other's faces, but we still found a patch of beach that was ours. Even if my daughter only informed me she had left the spade at the bottom of the hole she had dug when we had walked about a mile away from it. Fish and chips for lunch, a Twister lolly for pudding, and an 80p ride on a funicular railway on our way back to the station.

10. Make a spring collage to use up the bite-sized crap spread around your carpet.

Easter craft activities at last. Don't get too proud of us though - she claims she got the idea from The Tweenies.

Thus the two weeks are done, and they went a lot better than I expected, mostly thanks to the hail giving way to sun. I only bought myself one bottle of gin, for example. My daughter, on the other hand, is still complaining about me making her miss Bing.

(In denial that I am going to have seven weeks of this in the not so distant future.)

Three In A Bed

This programme is like Trip Advisor gone mental. B&B owners come and stay in each other's establishments, aiming to find fault with them but be voted the best themselves. I am not sure if people win by being genuinely good hosts or just by being mean to the other competitors.

Although it does do a lot to highlight what is wrong with so many places to stay in rip-off Britain. Mattresses that are manky, toilets that aren't clean, bathrooms that are awkward, rooms that are too hot or too cold, breakfasts that don't do what they say on the tin.

This week our competitors were Norfolk House near Newmarket, the Cromwell Arms in Romsey, and Full Circle Yurts at Rydal Hall in the Lake District. Three completely different establishments, so inevitably three very different sets of owners.

Norfolk House was a beautiful minor mansion set in a large garden that had its own pool, not that anyone braved it at whatever time of year this was. The retired owners were rightly proud of their lovely rooms and kitchen diner, and really tried to go the extra mile. However, they didn't do bacon and eggs, and their piece de resistance Bircher muesli was not seen as a suitable alternative to one set of guests. They also hadn't designed very practical bathroom solutions - one en suite was so narrow you had to sit sideways on the toilet, and another en suite was not - well, en suite, but across the corridor. And a stray pubic hair had been left on that toilet by a rogue carpet fitter, which unfortunately instantly killed Norfolk House's scores. Owner Lynne claimed she would normally eat her Bircher muesli off that toilet, and I believe her. One set of guests found that staying in a B&B was rather confining and I could see her point - you are essentially living in someone's house, which naturally requires a stiffer behaviour protocol. Particularly if you have young children and the owners don't. (Although looking at Norfolk House's website, it seems that children are not allowed, so I am a little less upset with the carpet fitter now.)

The Cromwell Arms was a pub with rooms, so more like a hotel. All swish and newly done, but goodness me, our beady-eyed guests spotted a smeary shower screen and a dusty door. And the bedrooms were too hot and in need of air conditioning. Breakfast was in the pub, but at least bacon and eggs were very much available.

Full Circle Yurts was not a B&B as in Bed and Breakfast (you had to provide your own bacon and eggs), but B&B as in Bed and owner Ben. I couldn't work out if Ben was a bit weird or simply taking the piss. He liked climbing trees, being late for dinner because he was shaving his head, and not wearing shoes. And he didn't let you wear your shoes inside his yurts because he claimed they made them dirty. But this didn't stop him marching over the cream carpets in the other B&Bs with his mucky feet. (Obviously you couldn't ask him to remove his feet without involving a lot of blood.) Still, all the gravel he had to walk over from his car to the B&B doors can't have been fun.

The yurts had the most stunning setting imaginable, and although well furnished with proper beds and a wood-burner, were still camping at heart. Cooking was done on a gas stove and the toilets were in a block down the hill. A bucket was provided for emergencies. A stay there was the most expensive of all - £120 a night, with a three-night minimum stay - whilst providing the least facilities. I suppose it's all about the unique experience of sleeping out on the fells, and that marvellous Cumbrian air.

The winner, by tactical voting and an unnecessary overpayment by Ben, was the Cromwell Arms. Which was probably the place with the least personality, and the one I would least like to stay in, out of the three.

I have been to Newmarket only once, and that was to take part in a Girl Guides national Kim's Game competition when I was about 13, and not to see any horse racing. Random objects were paraded through the ring for us to remember. Kind of like the Generation Game, only without the conveyor belt or Larry Grayson. But I did make my own bowl of Bircher Muesli last week, courtesy of a Fay Ripley recipe, and it is pretty delicious. We used to make something similar (but probably more authentic) when I worked on a farm in Switzerland, with oats, yoghurt and frozen fruit, only there we ate it for tea and not breakfast.

I have never been to Romsey, but I did watch a lot of the Ruth Rendell Inspector Wexford Mysteries on ITV, where Romsey played the role of Kingsmarkham. I am not sure how much there is to see there anyway - the owners of the Cromwell Arms take their guests laser clay pigeon shooting for their local activity. I could think of better ways to pass an afternoon.

Rydal Water. Photo by H Preston

But I have spent a lot of time in Rydal, with its close proximity to Grasmere. The daffodils at Rydal Hall at this time of year are incredible. The guests on Three In A Bed attempt to compose poetry in the grounds with Ben, but I think a previous occupant of Rydal Hall has already said all there is to say on the subject of daffodils. The Badger Bar, where the guests go for dinner (sod that yurt camping stove!) is a fine pub and a favourite locale of ours - a walk along Loughrigg Terrace from Grasmere, past the mighty cave, down into the hamlet for lunch and beer, then back to Grasmere along the track to White Moss known as the Coffin Route.

Mighty Rydal Cave with local eccentric my dad.
Photo by S Dodgson

Life Of A Mountain: Scafell Pike

This was worth watching for the stunning aerial photography alone. You didn't need the sound turned up (or on at all) to get the most out of it. The breathtaking footage of the fells was interspersed with featurettes about people who base their lives around England's highest mountain. And dare I say it, but some of them were a bit dull. Not the true local characters, like shepherd and fell-runner extraordinaire Joss Naylor, cut from the same cloth as my stubborn Cumbrian grandfather and built to live forever. Or the mountain rescue pilot who reminded us that he might be out for a nice candlelit dinner with his girlfriend when we decide to do something stupid on the side of a hill, so please spare him his girlfriend's wrath and be more careful in future. Or the National Trust volunteer who introduced me to the phrase "cairn anarchy" while removing piles of stones that were misleading walkers across a ridge. No, I mean the posh imports, who love the views, write a book about them and then think themselves above the rest of us. And then drone on in front of a television camera as if they have something to say that we can't just see for ourselves.

The camera crew spent a lot of time at the summit of Scafell Pike, where thousands of people arrive every year in all gear, in all weathers, and with a surprising range of agility and fitness. One - promised simultaneous views of England, Scotland and Ireland - has slogged it all the way to the top only to discover that she can barely see 30 yards in front of her, the mist is so thick and wet. But when the clouds lift, it really does look magnificent up there and you can see for miles. Even if - thanks to the mountain's popularity - you will never, ever get that view to yourself.

The camera crew also spent a lot of time down in Wasdale, which not only is home to the Lake District's highest peak and deepest lake, but also the world's biggest liar, as a notice in the pub will tell you. I don't think the programme mentioned this. But it did feature other notable sporting achievements at the annual Wasdale Show, such as hound trails, fell races and Cumbrian wrestling.

These Lakeland sports days are big events in the Cumbrian calendar. I've been to the Grasmere one a couple of times in recent years, although I spent most of the afternoon trying to tear our daughter away from the bouncy castle.

Grasmere Sports has a rather plummy announcer who runs the event with a calm but military precision. Although the military precision does not prevent the annual Royal Air Force Spitfire flypast being cancelled at the last minute every year owing to inclement weather, even if the sun is shining.

But it's so impressive to see a hoard of local schoolchildren running like the wind up an almost vertical slope, and the sheer speed with which a fell runner can leap down the side of a mountain. And to see quite how lost a hound can get in the bracken before he hears his owner rattling his food tin on the field below.

The wrestling has so many complicated rules that only a local can explain them to you, but I usually don't have enough time to listen before my daughter has run off to the bouncy castle again.

Most of the locals don't pay the entrance fee, since it is steeper than the Buttercrags fell the runners have to conquer, and instead they all stand along the A591 to watch the famous Guides Race. My grandfather always had the best view of the race - he built his house halfway up Buttercrags, and the runners would tumble past the end of his patio.

Guides Race

Mountain rescue at Grasmere Sports

"He ain't nothin' but a hound dog" - crossing the A591 to victory

I have never been up Scafell Pike. My official excuse is that it's a very long drive from Grasmere to get to a suitable start point, and not that I'm too fat and lazy.

The highest mountain I've climbed in the Lake District is Helvellyn, and that's so many years ago now I can't even begin to count them. It took two attempts, mind. The first was when my grandfather agreed to take me along Striding Edge when I was eight years old (was I insane to ask him to do this?), but the weather turned evil. The mist swirled in and a force eight gale struck up. The contents of our pockets were whipped out by the wind and hurled into the abyss. My grandfather, remembering his friends in Mountain Rescue who might be having a quiet afternoon at home with their girlfriends, did the sensible thing and led us back down to safety.

The closest I've got to Striding Edge since was choosing a band called by that very name to play for the ceilidh at our wedding. And it will probably stay that way. But Scafell Pike - yes, it really should be done. Because it's there. Because it's at the very tip of my Cumbrian roots.

Holiday of a Lifetime (with Len Goodman and Ann Widdecombe)

Thou art pleased,

Pleased with thy crags and woody steeps, thy Lake,

Its one green Island and its winding shores,

The multitude of little rocky hills,

Thy Church and Cottages of mountain stone -

Clustered like stars...

(William Wordsworth, Home at Grasmere) 

Ah, daytime TV. So comforting. So made on the cheap. So irredeemably awful.

So what compelled me to write about this programme? Daytime TV? Moi? A genre I abandoned entirely after I stopped subtitling it on a daily basis? Apart from a Deal or No Deal thing when my daughter was a baby. (Things were not going well.)

Anyway, the reason is my dad. My dad travels a ridiculous amount. In the past year, he has been to Bhutan, Bulgaria and Botswana, and that's just the places beginning with B. (It's going to be a long time before he gets to "Y" and considers visiting us for a holiday.) He should be writing a blog about travelling, not me. Except he can't write anything longer than three sentences. (Readers may welcome this.) And he couldn't write this blog, because he hardly ever watches television. Certainly not daytime television.

And yet my dad was asked to appear on this programme.

For those of you who know my dad, you will surely agree that the thought of him being on screen with Len Goodman and Ann Widdecombe is television at its most surreal. Like Royston Vasey, Craggy Island and the USS Enterprise all rolled into one. My dad is a bit socially challenged, and when he first told me about this, I cringed at the thought of how he was going to handle himself on camera. Would he accidentally blurt out something rude about ballroom dancing, or be unintentionally sexist about women MPs? Would he finish each sentence with an awkward "I mean it's a sort of er..." or overuse the phrase "odds and ends"? It was going to be excruciating, but very funny. At least for his children.

However, because my dad never remembers to switch his phone on to receive calls from the BBC on the day of filming, it didn't actually happen. But I watched the programme anyway.

The series involves Len Goodman taking celebrities of - shall we say? - a certain age down a memory lane of holidays they enjoyed in their childhood. Ann Widdecombe spent three nights in Grasmere in the Lake District in 1963, the year of the Kennedy assassination, the Great Train Robbery and the third season of Mad Men.  My dad grew up in Grasmere and moved back there a few years ago. In the summer of 1963, he would have been about to leave the village for the first time to begin a Chemistry degree at Manchester University. He would have spent the summer working for his father, who owned the Grasmere Tea Gardens. As back then the tea gardens were pretty much the only catering establishment in the village, chances are that if the 15-year-old Ann Widdecombe had fancied an ice cream during her holiday, my dad would have served it to her. Which is quite a thought. But that wasn't really the reason Dad was asked to appear - he is just one of the few people left in the village who were around then and can remember what it was like. Plus he is mates with the guy from the Wordsworth Trust (Jeff) who did appear on the programme. Jeff was showing Ann newspaper clippings about hooligans who went on holiday to the Lake District that year. Not that he was implying anything, you understand.

Judging by one of the photographs, Ann went on holiday in her school uniform. She was at a convent school in Bath, and this trip to the Lake District was a big adventure, and her furthest trip north to date. She and her mother drove around in a Baby Austin. Len turns up to collect her in one. Ann shrieks and jumps up and down in delight, banging on the bonnet and losing all self-control. Calm down, dear.

When she has calmed down, Len asks her where they are going to go on her holiday of a lifetime. He is trying to imply that they are outside Ann's house in Devon, whereas anyone with eyes can see from the big mountain and dry-stone wall behind her that they are already in a Cumbrian cul-de-sac. Oh, the lies created by the limited budget of daytime TV!

So Len and Ann then spend a couple of days travelling around various places in the Lakes, including the Ravenglass and Eskdale railway and Waterhead in Ambleside, where they dance on the pier. They also take in the Swan Hotel, Loughrigg Terrace, St Oswald's Church and Dove Cottage in Grasmere. They lay daffodils on Dorothy Wordsworth's grave. They go on a boat trip, allegedly on Coniston (in the wake of Arthur Ransome), although they are blatantly on Windermere. They have a picnic featuring anchovy paste sandwiches and lashings of ginger beer. Len is puffed out from walking the 150 yards from the car to the picnic spot. Ann is made of sterner stuff, talking about her "ambles" (as opposed to rambles) on Dartmoor. They also talk about Rupert Bear, fighting socialism, how useful Ann found Latin, and her original career choice of astronaut.

They sample various local goodies in a bid to find something akin to Mother's Cake, which Ann Widdecombe remembers from her childhood. During this tasting session Ann is very snippy about Grasmere gingerbread. I bet my late, great baking grandmother could have whipped her up an authentic Mother's Cake in no time. But Nanna could have also baked her a batch of authentic Grasmere Gingerbread too, since she always claimed her family recipe was the original one, very different to that made by the Sarah Nelson business at the church gate. There's a proper village scandal in there somewhere.

Reminiscing some more about cake, Ann says she used to eat madeira cake with cream. Len calls her posh. He says he preferred to get a "sticky willy" from his local bakery. The mind boggles.

And the only ice cream man they visit is a man with a van, whose family business started in 1902 with a horse and cart. Oh, you missed out, Dad.

As a result of having relatives there, I have always been lucky enough to have free holidays in the Lake District whenever I like. I didn't really appreciate this until I left home. To me, going to the Lake District just meant visiting my grandparents. I paid minimal attention to the scenery outside. (Possibly because it was always chucking it down.) It was only when I lived in London that I properly began to crave that glorious, exhausting mountain air. The stars and the silence at night, bar the the baa-ing of the lambs and hooting of the owls. And the colours - the fields of golden daffodils at Easter, the rainbow azaleas in May, the glorious shades of autumn and the snowcapped fells and holly berries at Christmas. It's all just part of me, in my bones and in my blood.

Like my mother before me, I ended up marrying a Cumbrian. In a bizarre twist of fate, my husband and I got together after having lunch in a cafe on the site of the Grasmere Tea Gardens. The place is obviously jinxed. My mother went to work there one summer as a student because she fancied the owner's son, who she had met through the university hiking club. The same son, of course, who maybe served Ann Widdecombe ice cream in 1963.

According to this programme, most people thought the Lake District was horrid until William Wordsworth started writing poems about it. The Romans marched straight through. Daniel Defoe found it "frightful". Even in 1963, it had very much a summer season only trade and the majority of visitors stayed in simple bed and breakfasts or youth hostels. Wainwright was still to publish his walking guides. Now, millions of people flock there all year every year. But the youth hostels are being forced to close because visitors prefer to stay in holiday cottages that locals can no longer afford to live in, luxury hotels with spas, or boutique B&Bs with en suite bathrooms. In 1963, Ann Widdecombe took a dressing gown to protect her modesty during night time trips down the corridor to the loo.

Now, the inside of my dad's house looks like this:

But the view from the doorstep kind of makes up for it:

And we can use it as a free holiday cottage whenever my dad is away on his travels (so pretty much all the time). This is particularly helpful when he goes away in August, a month when any other holiday cottage in the world would be too expensive. We had a lovely week there this summer, with only one day of torrential rain - quite a result. Our daughter is still too young to be persuaded to do much in the way of walking, though we did drag her around Tarn Hows one afternoon, moaning every step of the way. So the rest of the time we had to engage in more child friendly activities like reading Beatrix Potter stories, feeding ducks, visiting National Trust properties (Allan Bank and Wray Castle are like giant play dens and quite brilliant), going on boat trips (we at least didn't confuse Coniston and Windermere), and doing Gruffalo trails in the woods at Whinlatter.

Moaning round Tarn Hows

Wray Castle

A boat trip on Coniston

Duck Central

Gruffalo hunt

And Charlie Cat came too

Apparently Len and Ann were in a thoroughly bad mood by the time they arrived at Dove Cottage. It seems that they weren't having quite the "jolly hockeysticks" time that the programme implied.

So my dad didn't get to appear on TV, which he was very relieved and I was very disappointed about. Instead, he launched his media career with an interview (in the guise of "local historian") during the breakfast slot on BBC Radio Cumbria a couple of weeks later. He was meant to be "live" from the village war memorial in the park, but was in fact standing outside the Coop. (Radio finds it so much easier to pretend it's somewhere it isn't.) My dad was trying to find out more about the people behind the names on the memorial. And, true to my expectations - boom!- he did inadvertently say something sexist when asked why one of names was female. Thankfully, the subject of ballroom dancing didn't come up.