Half term hellidays

How can a week in term-time fly by so quickly, but a week of school holiday last an eternity?

This week back in "normality" has gone in a flash, but half-term last week felt like forever. I don't know why. It's not like my daughter was particularly bad company. Or that we were short of things to do. Alas, there was no exciting travel to go on, but thanks to living in a family friendly city, our days were full, and the telly kept to a minimum. But nonetheless the days were definitely twice as long as a normal day.

Anyway, because successful bloggers do top tens, here are our top ten February half-term in Yorkshire activities:

1. The Jorvik Viking Festival

As well as lots of bearded men wandering around dressed in scratchy blankets, the encampments on Coppergate and Parliament Street gave kids the chance to watch knitting, try on helmets, take selfies in front of longboats, and see stuffed and live animals. There was also a craft tent where you could make badges and T shirts and jewellery, although not for free. However, you could play some weird hybrid of chess and battleships, colour in a picture and stamp your name in runes without handing over any of their Viking coins.

Longboat and half a Viking

My favourite sheep ever

2. The Sign Was Back!

"Welcome To York, Where The Men Are Hunky And The Chocolate Chunky". It's a generational thing. A massive Yorkie bar on a board outside York station, only visible from the left-hand side of the northbound train. Then Aviva decided to advertise there instead and life was never the same again. But to celebrate Yorkie's 40th birthday, York Chocolate Story decided to resurrect the sign in Kings Square. It was a bit of a let-down. It wasn't even 3D. And it instantly cost me a Yorkie bar, since my daughter didn't know what one was. But the sign was back!

She obscured the lie

Still looking for those hunky men, after all these years.

3. Museums And Art Galleries

Museums always say that they have special half-term activities on for all the family. But - let's face it - these are mostly boxes of crayons left out on tables. With a paper template and scissors. And the grown-ups end up doing it all. We (or rather I) made some puppets at the city Art Gallery and an Edwardian donkey at the Castle Museum. Are you impressed?

4. Snowdrop Planting at Beningbrough Hall.

Despite the fact Arctic winds were blowing, we helped Beningbrough plant 300,000 snowdrops to celebrate its 300th birthday, all along its ha-ha walk. If they hadn't offered us free parkin and hot apple juice afterwards, I'd have said they were having the last laugh, ha ha. After a brisk run-around in the play area it was time to catch the cafe's last cup of tea of the day.

5. Swimming.

We managed to catch the pool not too full in school holidays, possibly because they were colouring the water pink. The management thought it would be fun, but it just made parents suspicious. "Who's bleeding?" "Who wee-ed?" "Is it safe?" Anyway, our visit coincided with that of not one but two school friends so that meant instant entertainment for the girl and an easier hour for me (even if I still got wet). Result - until my electronic locker key failed on exit. We then had a long wait, dripping and cold in the changing room, until a pool attendant reunited us with our towels and clothes.

6. Playdates

These are good when they are at other people's houses, less good when it's your gaff getting trashed.

7. A trip to the seaside

Off to Scarborough, where it hailed. We took shelter in the arcades (we won a Bassett's Fruit Salad!) and the Clock Cafe, which hasn't changed in fifty years and gives a free bucket & spade to kids who order fish fingers.

8. Snow

And the next day, after all that hail, there was proper snow in York. Hurrah! Or a thick layer of encrusted ice at least. You could just about make a snowball. But it was exciting for this generation of kids growing up with global warming.

9. A trip to Leeds.

Always keen to use our Family and Friends Railcard, we went to Leeds to see a show. We met Daddy for lunch in a shopping centre and then went to see The Bear at the West Yorkshire Playhouse. It was based on the Raymond Briggs book. It was lovely. The polar bear did a poo. My daughter laughed. Then it went back to the North Pole to have a baby. My daughter cried.

10. Mums Night Out

A necessary part of any school holiday. A mummy friend talked me into going to a burlesque show. Only it wasn't so much burlesque as sordid striptease. With only women's wobbly bits on display. The ukulele band in the first part of the evening had lured us into a false sense of security. We left choking on Johnson's Baby Powder.

The grand pink uke of York

And only four weeks til Easter. Arse.

All Creatures Great And Small

"They didn't say anything about this in the books, I thought, as the snow blew in through the gaping doorway and settled on my naked back.
I lay face down on the cobbled floor in a pool of nameless muck, my arm deep inside the straining cow, my feet scrabbling for a toe hold between the stones. I was stripped to the waist and the snow mingled with the dirt and the dried blood on my body. I could see nothing outside the circle of flickering light thrown by the smoky oil lamp which the farmer held over me."
James Herriot, If Only They Could Talk

I don't think All Creatures Great And Small is on television at the moment. Possibly one of the nostalgia fests like Yesterday occasionally broadcasts an episode. But there are clips on YouTube. And I can tell you that every series of it is available on DVD from all good online retailers and my goodness me, some of those hard-of-hearing subtitles are great. Apart from one terrible mishear in a barn that was spotted too late to correct. (Not mine.)

So yes, the last time I saw it was at work, about 12 years ago, when the DVD release was being subtitled by the European Captioning Institute. Extraordinary how dated television from the 1980s seemed 20 years on. The sound is muffled, camera shot changes are less frequent and the picture seems grainy and muted in colour. There's an obvious difference in quality between the video used to record in studios and the traditional film used outside on location. Plots are slow to develop, numerous episodes make up a series and nothing too dramatic ever happens.

But with All Creatures all can be forgiven, for there is also the classical but catchy theme tune, the Wagnerian names, Peter Davison's knitted tank tops, Robert Hardy pontificating, a change of wife into the lovely Lynda Bellingham (RIP), the gruff farmers, fussy pooch Tricky Woo and those eternal shots of Christopher Timothy with his arm up a cow's birthing canal. The glorious Yorkshire Dales are always wet or covered in snow, and cars are always breaking down at inopportune moments.

So if it's not currently on television, why am I writing about it? Because of the fabulous World Of James Herriot Museum in Thirsk. Which is not just the best museum about James Herriot in the world, it's possibly one of the best museums in the world. At least if you have a four year old child. We went for the first time in January and had the most marvellous afternoon imaginable at a time when you have the post-Christmas blues, the weather is too cold to be outdoors, most stately homes are closed, and you wish you could afford to go and see the sun in Tenerife.

The first part of the museum is the restored house and vet's surgery, with original features and furniture and fixtures and fittings. There is a children's trail, where you spot black animals with letters on to make a name at the end. No prizes for guessing whose name it might be. (But you might get a badge.)

James Herriot's real name was Alf Wight, and he moved to live and work as a vet at 23 Kirkgate in Thirsk in 1940. Apart from a spell in the RAF during the war, Wight remained working in Thirsk for the rest of his life. I should at this point tell you a whole lot more about him, but unfortunately my knowledge is limited to what I read in three of his books 30 years ago and saw on the television series, both of which have serious amounts of artistic licence and aren't meant to be autobiographical. This doesn't mean that the museum doesn't tell you LOTS about him. It's just that I didn't get much of a chance to read the information, being in the company of a child who passes through rooms that don't concern her like a whirlwind. I did manage to pick up that Alf Wight was born in Sunderland but his family moved to Glasgow shortly afterwards, and that James (Jim) Herriot is named after a Scottish goalkeeper. Wight started writing his books after he had been talking about doing so for years and his wife bet that he would never get round to it. Siegfried and Tristan Farnon are based on the owner of the practice Donald Sinclair and his younger brother Brian. The jury is apparently still out as to who was the more eccentric, Donald Sinclair or Herriot's characterisation of him as Siegfried. Thirsk is known as Darrowby in the books, and 23 Kirkgate as Skeldale House. You won't recognise much of Darrowby in Thirsk from the television series because most of the outside location scenes were filmed in Wensleydale.

In the house, you see Wight's sitting/ waiting room (complete with a barking Tricky Woo), another lounge with children's toys in it, and the tiny cubby hole of an animal surgery. Most of his veterinary work was done out on farms or race courses - small animal work was new in his day as pets were still a luxury item.

For added historical interest, the house still has a WW2 air-raid shelter in the cellar, which you can go down to see provided you have a degree in operating children's stair gates.

You then continue on to a kitchen rammed full of tins, utensils and furniture from days gone by. This leads out to a room containing a case of pottery animal characters from Herriot's lesser known children's books and memorabilia from the All Creatures Great And Small television series, including a piano score for the theme tune and a knitting pattern for that Peter Davison tank top.

The cramped surgery

The kitchen

That Tristan Farnon knitting pattern

Outside in the garden is a newly unveiled statue of Alf Wight and a pen of chickens. Inside an old stable is an account of Alf Wight's life story, as both a wall display and a film. There are copies of his books translated into numerous languages, and a lot of farm equipment and hay.

Then it gets slightly surreal. Through a door out of the garden is a replica of a TV studio. The sets used for the indoor scenes of All Creatures Great And Small at Pebble Mill in Birmingham have been transported to Thirsk, complete with mixing board, cameras, overhead lights, monitors, hats on the hatstand and the theme tune on a continuous loop. A script has been left on the dining room table for you to act out, should you feel so inclined. There is a phone that rings and you can pick it up say that famous number "Darrowby 385" to a recording of a ranting Yorkshire farmer desperate for Mr Herriot's help. There is also one of the beautiful vintage cars that was always breaking down.

The sitting room set

This is a children's paradise in itself, but then you go upstairs to the actual children's room, where there are numerous activities and games to teach kids about the life of a vet. This includes things like matching the X-ray to the animal, a version of Operation, a magnetic sheep dog trial, a giant version of snakes and ladders, a game about administering the right dose of pills, a spot the difference between a vet and a doctor's bag activity, and a game to see how many animals you can treat in a minute, as well as various quizzes and animal brass rubbings. 

How many animals can you treat in a minute?

In the next room, there is a rather gruesome museum of the history of veterinary science. However bad you think human medical treatment has been in bygone eras, animals had it far worse. Before the discovery of antibiotics, a vet's ability to save animals was fairly limited and treatment that wasn't euthanasia mostly relied on vaccination and assistance with breeding and birthing. Or preventing breeding and birthing with tools such as those below, used to castrate bulls.

Ouch

And as if the kids haven't had enough fun already, then there is a room with a train set in. There are buttons so children can work the trains themselves. Grand Central have given the museum a model of their train James Herriot, which serves his birthplace of Sunderland. And if any of this gets boring, overlooking the train set is a giant set of horse's teeth that need tending to.

But still there's more! A crafts room, with little farm sets, animal masks, and cosy cushions to read books about cats on. There are also further items from the house that there wasn't room to display downstairs. I found myself struggling to explain the point of a typewriter that didn't have a screen to my daughter. "It just made your work look a bit tidier."

And then as the finishing touch, you can put your own arm up a cow's birthing canal.

So if you are in Yorkshire with a young child, head up to Thirsk. I would like to think that you won't be disappointed. Allow at least two hours for your visit to the museum. And before you go, make sure you check the World Of James Herriot's blog for special offers. We got two adult tickets for the price of one in January. It's quite expensive to visit otherwise (£8.50 per adult, although that's still cheaper than many other places), but worth it. Under fives are free. You can park on the street outside the museum (but will need to borrow a disc from the ticket office) or there is a pay and display car park nearby at Marage. Or you can park for free in the Market Square on Sundays - on other days you have to pay and there is a two-hour maximum stay which may not be enough time. If you require refreshments afterwards, our daughter would recommend the jam sandwiches at Olivia's in the Market Square.

Travel Man: 48 Hours In Barcelona

He's pointing the wrong way!

Why do travel television programmes do this? By "this", I mean send someone off on a nice holiday who obviously doesn't want to go anywhere. All so that they can make snitty comments on our screen for half an hour about how crap everything is when they get there. Why waste all that money on someone who isn't going to enjoy it? Why not send someone who might actually appreciate a five-star boutique hotel at £399 a night instead? Like me, for example. Since £399 is pretty much our current entire annual holiday budget.

Richard Ayoade can be very funny, but Barcelona is wasted on him. Or so he wants us to believe, anyway. He has Kathy Burke with him for company, sniggering like a schoolgirl in their expensive hotel suite at the thought of them sharing a bed. (They aren't sharing a bed.) Throughout their efficient 48 hours in the city, they are only made to do activities that the pair of them are going to hate, whether they involve football, cava, heights or molecular gastronomy. This may make hilarious television in the producer's mind, but it actually makes Richard and Kathy look rather rude in front of their earnest and patient hosts. I may not get the finer subtleties of Miro either, but at least I wouldn't shout "Zippy from Rainbow!" that loudly in public.

On the roof at the Fundacio Joan Miro

But I would like to know how Ayoade got a £45 return airfare to Barcelona (in these days of extra charges on low-cost carriers) without riding cargo in his suitcase. Because Barcelona is fantastic and I would so very much love to go back.

Richard and Kathy missed so much out - the Ramblas, the Boqueria market, the houses designed by Gaudi, the Olympic stadium, the Ciutadella park, the Barri Gotic, much of Montjuic, the Palau de la Musica Catalana, the Museu Frederic Mares with its weird and wonderful collection of curiosities, to name but several. Just look at it all:

Parc Guell

Arc de Triomf

Museu d'Historia de Catalunya

Castell on the Ramblas

Placa Reial

Barri Gotic

Port Olimpic, with Frank Gehry's Whale Sculpture

Sagrada Familia

Casa Batllo

La Pedrera

Olympic Park

Now, I am lucky enough to have spent a whole week in Barcelona, and I realise that anyone with only 48 hours to spend there will inevitably have to miss things out. But given that Richard and Kathy hated pretty much everything they did, why not let them find their own positive? (Would Richard have found any?) And to be honest, we only "did" Barcelona intensively for 48 hours, as that's how long our tourists' transport and museum cards were valid. So you can see a lot of great stuff very quickly. And that we did. We were so exhausted afterwards that we spent the next two days lying on the beach at Sitges. And ate lunch next to Sandra Bullock while we were there. (Sticking to a menu del dia at lunchtime enables you to be able to afford better restaurants.) Sitges reinvigorated us enough to make an excursion further afield up to colourful, beautiful, medieval Girona (although this has always been what Ryanair call Barcelona) before - sniff! - having to fly home. So get me that genuinely cheap air fare, and I will be back there like a shot of Crema Catalana.

Sitges

Girona

Secret Britain - Mysterious Moors of Yorkshire

Well, if it's a secret, don't go telling everyone about it... We don't want all those tourists trampling our heather. Or we do actually, since their money is a large part of what keeps the county going.

But just how secret is the North York Moors Railway? Or the gliding company on top of Sutton Bank? Or Rievaulx Abbey? Or the Roman artefacts in the Yorkshire Museum? Or the whaling past of Whitby? Lucky me, already knowing all about them.

Gliding atop Sutton Bank

Rievaulx Abbey

Yorkshire Museum

Whitby from the Magpie Cafe

But I didn't know about the three henges of Thornborough. (Since they are on private land.) Or the glassblowers of Rosedale. (But I have seen the Huguenot furnace at the terrific Ryedale Folk Museum in Hutton-le-Hole.) Or the Tan Hill Inn, being neither a miner, a closet acoustic singer, or able to ride a bike that far. And I have never seen the Whitby Yards, since I am always too busy queuing for my fish and chips at the Magpie Cafe. So thank you for all of those, oh you noisy drone camera.

Ryedale Folk Museum

But who knows where this is, with its similar concept to standing in the middle of a henge and watching the clouds?

Sorry, just realised these look rather phallic.

Or this railway?

Answers on a postcard or in a comments box please.

I felt the presenters were showing off a just a teensy bit... Although their attempt at rockclimbing soon brought them back down to earth. Not literally, thankfully.

But the photography was stunning. There is no God, but there is God's Own Country. Come and visit us sometime.

Play School

Here is a reverse to the norm - somewhere I travelled to made me reminisce about something I'd seen on television.

We were at Cartwright Hall in Lister Park in Bradford, at the "Sharing Stories With Julia Donaldson" exhibition. It was a glorious display for our fancy-dress loving daughter, with princess, ladybird, Gruffalo and witch costumes and a stage in the woods to perform on. There were lots of the original artwork for Donaldson's books by her collaborators Axel Scheffler, Lydia Monks, David Roberts and others. Julia Donaldson's notebooks of rough drafts were actually quite a relief to see, since the finished texts seem so effortlessly perfect that you feel she must rattle them off in five minutes, which isn't the case at all. On display were also several letter exchanges between author, artists and publishers requesting numerous changes to the drawings, which made you realise that each picture must have been worked over several dozen times before it was accepted. Just as well Axel Scheffler can't stop drawing - there were beautiful birthday cards and envelopes he had painted for Julia Donaldson, as well as a letter he had written in his native German to a friend saying how hopeless he thought his work was. Oh, the great tortured genius.

There was a giant Gruffalo hiding around a corner, which scared the bejeezuses out of our daughter.

Gruffalo selfie. My daughter has been known to claim that he looks a bit like me

Our daughter's favourite part of the exhibition was a replica of the Squash and a Squeeze house. Because we spent the majority of our time in this section, I was able to have a proper look at the displays roundabout. And I learned something. Even though the book wasn't published until 1993, the Squash And A Squeeze song was originally performed on Play School in 1978 by Derek Griffiths and Floella Benjamin. I always knew the book was originally a song, but I didn't realise the song was that old. Julia Donaldson received the princely sum of 18 pounds for it from the BBC. The song was even released on a Play School LP, which was on display in the exhibition. To my total surprise, it was a record that I owned as a child and listened to a lot. Humpty Dumpty, Jemima, Big Ted, Little Ted and Hamble were all on the cover. Yet I have never recognised the song in its modern-day guise, even though it has barely changed. In case you are curious, like everything, the Derek and Flo version is available on You Tube.

"Wise old man, won't you help me please?"

I grew up in a world without CBeebies, so for my generation, Play School was pretty much all we had when it came to a pre-schoolers' daily television slot. So it has a special place in our nostalgic hearts. Derek Griffiths and Floella Benjamin made an appearance in the "Christmas Past" scene of the CBeebies Christmas Carol last year, which was a lovely nod to us half-asleep grown-ups slumped on the sofa, even if our children didn't have a clue who they were or why they were there ("Make the old people go away, Mummy."). For what it's worth, they still look wonderful. Play School is a format which has survived well, however. You can see its influence on modern-day shows like Tikkabilla (which even has the same square, round and arched windows) and Show Me Show Me (which has a teddy bear and a ragdoll toy). But I genuinely had no idea until last week that the magnificent Julia Donaldson had played a small role in my childhood too. It's a strangely comforting thought. And now that Julia Donaldson has such a vast catalogue of books behind her, I hope my daughter will have a much longer-lasting memory of her wonderful work.