TITS, and what gets on my ...

You know what they say Blogg, you wait ages for one, then two come along together!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Contiuning my theme of my last letter to you , about e-bay sellers provided inaccurate information, well the case above is another typical example. But this time it is the manufacturer at fault not the seller. The seller, quite understandably, accepted the printed word as accurate, which Blog, I assure you I'SN'T!! At the moment the cost of purchase from e-bay thingie is £6 upwards, but no matter what the price, they are all wrong!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, it is Grafton Road and yes, it is in Keighley, or more accurately, the Broomhill Estate, Keighley. The council estate was the first to be built after WW1, with plenty of space and biggish gardens with tenants moving in in 1920. When we moved there from our hovel in Ingrow, about a mile away, the family had electricity for the first time! We didn't have to walk 100 yards and two streets to go to the toilet! We had more than one bedroom! We no longer walked out of the only door onto the street, we had a front AND a back garden! Instead of playing on the stone cobbles of the lane, we had a large area of grass infront of our block of four houses which stood back from the street. Nirvana. 
The 'council schools are a) not in sight  b) the nearest is more than 600 yards behind where the photographer is standing, on a different road on a main route called Queens Road. It is a catholic Infants / junior school. The other is even further away, more than half a mile, just off Queens Road and is called Ingrow Infants / Junior School. It is the school my sister attended when we moved from our slum on Hainworth Lane to a council house. Before that we went to Wesley Place School Infant / junior school on Halifax Road, which I stayed at until my 11+. It involved four daily journeys of about a mile each way!!!
Back to the photo for interest …. at the top, in the distance is a cross roads, on the left is Upper Hird Street, and in the block of four after the first semi detached is where we moved to as kids. At the junction is a post office and grocers called Mr Heaton's where my mother worked on and off if she wasn't working in the mill. Slightly further up on the right is the back entrance to Lund Park, the front entrance of which is where the race is supposed to be passing (last letter to you Blog) but it isn't as I said.
On the left is the council housing estate and the gaps you can see between the blocks are small closes. On the right are posh private houses which back onto a large allotment area, the gap is the entrance. The house on the right is another general store which is where we went for grocers when my mother fell out with Mr Heaton, which she did often.
In the distance past the post office are the really posh people with some large houses. I used to help one old lady - well she looked old to me - do her garden pruning in the autumn. She gave me the tree branches for my plot night bonfire in our back garden. She also gave me an old Monopoly, which I have still got used last time two nights ago, believe it or not Blog. Surely that must be the oldest game in use in this country at the moment???? Dear Mr Gluiness, after you have finished supping your glass of Guinness, could you tell me what the second oldest game being play in this country is, please. Cheers, Colin.
Next time if I remember Blog, I will tell you have I came within 2 inches of killing myself about six months after we had moved in!!!! Blog, I kid you not, 5 centimetres of killing myself!!!

                                                 Colin

                               What really gets on my tits
Photograph no:- 203

Where is this?? When was this?? Who is this - the race walker?? What race is this and how far??

Dear Blog,
                Some things really irritate. Not necessary important things. Things just grate. I need to get a life????
               As part of my two research projects, I sometimes browes e-bay. Those items which give wrong information  about the sale item really get on my tits. Blog, I kid you not. Pathetic I know, but when my irritation over flows I get in touch with the seller to point out the mistake. Is this Sad?. I do need to get a life???? A case in point is the photograph above. The original seller claimed it was a race passing in front of the gates of Lund Park in Ingrow, Keighley. Total Rubbish with a capital 'R'. I told the seller but he / she was unconcerned about the inaccuracy.
Several months later, the buyer advertised the photograph as a race passing through Keighley. Total Rubbish with a capital 'R'. I told the seller but she / he was unconcerned about the inaccuracy.

The reason for their mistake was the note on the back which told 'of the Frenchies coming to Keighley' and the assumption was made that the postcard also related to Keighley. In actual fact, the comment related to a unique event, the first time ever such event had taken place, quite important in social history terms!!!
I of course know where the event took place, certainly NOT Keighley with a capital 'N'. The race itself was quite important in athletic history, but I will tell you all about that some time in the future Blob.
                             Do you know where it is, who it is, when it was, Blog????

                                                                           Colin

                   2019 October 6th National Road Relays at Sutton Park.

Photographic Quiz:-
                               number 201

Still on a car theme ...... 
                             so who does this car belong to? What is the deal?? And who's fault is it???

 Could it be one of these blokes??
                                                  Perhaps the one on the left???
                                                                                                    Could he be from Notts AC????     

                                                


Dear Blog, 
                 Sutton Park for Road Relay Races which means road traffic chaos. Bad to get into the Park to  dump the car (see above) and for most, tents had to be man handled all the way from where the car was parked to the pitching area. The marshals, with one exception, are far from helpful in that they seem to have no methodical approach as to how to park so many cars. As for leaving, they seem to have done their stint by early afternoon and I think they think that they must have thought it would be a great giggle to let the punters sort out their own method of leaving the park. Last year they just packed up and went, leaving behind a total traffic deadlock. Mick Robinson from Notts AC took matters into his own hands and rather than wait for the traffic to sort itself out, he drove his van up the road, through the start / finish area and then continued to drive along the paths we had been running on less than an hour before. Half a dozen of us saw what he was doing and fell in behind!!! At the top of the hill the barriers were still in place blocking further progress along the roadway. Un deterred, Mick takes a left off the road on to the rough ground, up and down a small ditch then down the rough slope to the far gate. The posh Jaguar car in the convoy line  front of me was none too happy about his cross country exploits - the way the driver drove over the deep undulations can have done his car no good at all.
                There seemed more teams than usual and the atmosphere was also much improved. Many  athletes jogging around the course and encouragingly, lots of youngsters.

                                            Take care Blog,
                                                                 Colin

                        

Mini car in times past

Photographic Quiz
          Photo no. 200 nominal for a new start.

car in times

Depressingly, I have attended an alarming number of funerals in the last year. Because most have had a Godiva Harrier connection, the funeral mourners have all been much of a muchness, attending all the services. Without wishing to be in any way disrespectful to any of the deceased, the wakes have appeared to be very much like a gathering of aged pensioners on an organised day trip out from a care home to the local Crematorium!!! One down, so who is next in line. What are the odds? Just as bookies were supposedly banned from AAA handicap meetings in the past, the appearance of a gentleman offering odds on the various congregational members might cause a degree of alarm??

 Colin Kirkham 10 to 3 before Christmas, bar the field. Evens before he reaches 80 years. 1000 to 1 he cocks his clogs tomorrow. 

I met Jack through a mutual friend before I had been in Coventry a month. Both Jack and my friend, a Coventry lad, had met when both were signing on the dole. Neither knew the other was a Godiva member until they had chatted a few times at the dole office!!

Jack had been a member of Coventry Birchfield Harriers soon after they had, in theory at least, severed all ties with the Birmingham Birchfield in the 1920s, despite being a branch club. Branches of athletic clubs were all but banned in the early 20s, but Birchfield being Birchfield didn't quite get the message. Any decent athlete that came to the fore in the Coventry Birchfield Harriers, somehow found them as a competing member for the Birmingham club!!! When Coventry Birchfield metamorphosed into Coventry Harriers, Jack, like most members  transferred to the new club and when that folded, he signed up for Godiva.

Jack is probably up there now at that great athletics' club in the sky, still smiling at the irony of him receiving his letter from the Queen to celebrate his ONE HUNDREDTH birthday, only to be a little bit naughty and cop out the day before!! I wonder if anyone told the Queen. If they did, she might have arrested Jack for false pretences and sent him to the Tower to be tried for treason but Jack fooled her on that score as well, as he was dead.

A story about Jack. Jack didn't have a car, hiring one when necessity demanded. Sometimes he drove me to a race in my mini van if it was an important event. I had bought the mini van new. I clocked a higher than average milage and as the milometer ticked toward 50,00 miles, Jack moaned on about it needing a decoke. No way could I afford that, any way I was none too mechanically minded. No worries says Jack, the blokes at work all do it, it's not too difficult and you can borrow my garage to do it in. Simply follow the Haynes Car Manual instructions on the Mini. Jack worked in a car factory.

So I had a couple of days of holiday left, I get a car manual form the library and buy a decoke kit from the local car parts shop.

I drive the car into Jack's garage, he goes off to work and I strip the engine down. Easi peasi even for me. The garage floor is littered with engine bits, I feel quite proud. I carefully grind the new valves in, and start the reassembly. I get everything back, carefully following the steps in the car manual. THEN, the job of reassembly is complete. BUT the job's not a gudun as I still have a fistful of gaskets left over. The feeling of being so proud with myself turns swiftly to panic.

Jack comes home from work, I explain my dilemma and wait for him to sort it.  

I don't know what you have done wrong he says.

You told me it was simple, I couldn't go wrong

Yes it is simple all the blokes on the track at work say so. I don't understand car engines.

So why have I got these gasket bits left over?

Well I don't know

What do you mean Jack, 'You don't know'. You told me it was simple. I've followed the Manual and I have these bits left .. and I am due back at work tomorrow.

Jack and his missus provide me with an evening meal, as I live four miles away; they also put me up for the night. There is no way I can get into work in the morning, its 13 miles away in a country village in North Warwickshire served by no buses from Coventry. I know no phone numbers to contact anyone at work. I'm screwed.

Next morning after breakfast with Jack, he goes off to work and \all I can do is run the couple of miles to the car part shop where I bought the decoke kit to see if they have any ideas.

I explain to the assistant my dilemma and he calls the manager out from the back room.

I repeat my predicament to the manager and says he will have to have the other two assistants in, to help solve the problem I had presented.

I repeat the story for a third time to all four as they stood stony faced behind the counter.

I started to realised that none of them was taking me seriously, confirmed when first one burst out laughing and then the others cracked up.

The manger apologised and reassured me that my mini van would be OK as the spare bits from the decoke kit were for other variations of the mini, the mini cooper etc. He told me to go back home switch on the engine, rev it a bit and drive off. As an assurance he said that if it didn't work, he or one of the others would come and get it sorted, and because I had given them all a good laugh and taken it in good part, there would be no charged.

I ran back to Jack's switched on the engine and it fired beautifully. I showered and drove into work, better late than never.

And the mini van did another 45,000 miles before I sold it, having had no after effects from my genius mechanical feat.

Jack thought it funny too.

So did his workmates!!!

So Blog, if you have a problem with your car engine, or you want some part or other fixing, let me know and I will fix up a séance with Jack and get it sorted!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

do you know what …. I'd forgotten all about this bloggie thingie.
 I might just try again?????????
To start with Blog, you may be interested in my giving a talk about the 'Early Years of Coventry Godiva' talk on May 22nd
I shall now see if I can still get in touch with you, Blog. So watch this space as they say!!!!!!!!!!!!

COVENTRY CITY OF CULTURE 2021

                    

Dear Blog,

                 Is it me or is it me????

                 Blog I kid you not when I tell you that my wife has just spent the last 11 minutes repeatedly saying 'Hello, Hello.' into her mobile phone. She is stood in our living room. It seems one of my daughters has phoned her and my wife cannot hear what she is saying so she has been standing there repeating 'Hello, Hello ....'.

'Hello, Hello ...  '

'Why don't you use the land line to find out what she has to say' I ask my wife. 'No' she replies, 'We have to pay to use that, my mobile is free'

'Hello, Hello ....'.

'Hello, Hello ...'

Blog I kid you not. You couldn't make it up!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! And they say Yorkshire MEN are tight!!!

                  I was in God's Own Country last weekend for a dinner for the 'Hasbeens'. It was a very pleasant day ..... a morning stroll of about 4 miles along the Warfe river bank in the autumn (winter??) sunshine followed by an extended lunch (dinner) into the early evening at the Red Lion. The room where we ate looked out onto the Fell on which I had my first Fell Race ever! All that pain and suffering ... 16 minutes up and about 90 seconds down give or take a couple of cracked ribs. Nice to catch up with everyone

                   I was away for five days, on one of which I took a stroll to where this photograph was taken, about a couple of hundred yards (180 metres to you Blog) from our council house. By this time we had moved from our one up - one down hovel in Hainworth Lane into a house on an estate in Broomhill which had electricity and a bath. OK the toilet was still outside, but it was only a few steps away, not a bloody route march up the Lane, down the snicket and into the next street - Ebenezer Square in fact! When I was 17 and started to take an interest in running I used to start my interval efforts here, where there used to be a band stand in the early 60s. I had little idea about training for running - my sparse knowledge gleaned from what few books were available on the sport. I was lucky as the local library, the first one to be built in this country by money from the steel giant, William Carnegie, was excellent. Despite my poverty stricken background, my mother introduced me to the library when I was about 6 or 7. By the age of 11 I had exhausted Lenin, Hitler, Stalin etc. God only knows what the librarians thought of me as I only had a children's ticket and they had to see my mother to question if such material was suitable for a young child. I bet mum thought they all played football for Bradford Park Avenue and I was trying to pick up tips .... on second thoughts, as I went to a strict Northern Grammar School, she must have thought they were cricketers as I wasn't too keen on rugger! As a kid, I spent ages down amongst the book shelves fascinated by the range of books ... and that smell, the pleasant aroma of old books and polish. The library seemed to have all the latest running books, which wasn't very many in the early 1960s, but there were enough for me to glean some idea about what to do. That was before I decided there was only one person who knew best!!!  

The houses in the photograph background have not changed in any way. The only difference standing there last week was the absence of the rampant rhododendra bushes (rhododendrons to you Blog) which were totally invasive around the park when I was growing up in Ingrow.

The photograph shows the first running club in the town, which is curious as it was the area in which I grew up, a dire slum area of back to back terrace houses with no electricity or toilets, most of which, like ours, was one up - one down with a tiny kitchen big enough for a sink and the steps, one set going upstairs and the other down into the unlit cellar in which we kept the coal, that is whenever mum and dad could afford any. Mostly it was dead wood pinched from one of several woods which grew on the steep hillside around the mill houses. In the depths of winter when we had had a snow fall and the council gritting lorry had been up the lane spreading waste from the local gas works in town, the cellar contents was swelled by the scrap coke pieces spread by the men on the lorry and picked up by all the locals like us scavenging with our wicker baskets after the lorry looking for any scrap of coke that the council workers had thrown out onto the lane to afford any vehicular traffic a grip if any were foolish enough to attempt go up or down in the snowy conditions. It was many years later when dad was talking to one of his mates in town that I learned that the foreman at the gas works (him!!) used to generously augment the load of scrap coke waste destined for the highways with quality coke and some coal if he thought his gaffa wasn't looking. He knew the lorry routes and the crews, and they all worked the fiddle together, knowing when they would be visiting the poor areas of the town. He also added with a smile that the lorry driver used to drive his lorry particularly slowly in such areas to give the workmen plenty of time to spread excess waste and speed up when doing the better off areas of the town like Spring Gardens lane!!! I assume that the members of the Ingrow Harriers must have been the mill workers from what was essentially a slum village on the western outskirts of the town where the river Worth flowed down the steep Pennine hills on its way to flow into the Aire in Town and then eventually into the Humber and the North Sea.

    WAKE

             UP     BLOG.                                                                                                                                                                      .                              Bloody well wake up.

                                                                                               Are you paying attention .... I don't make this lot up, you know. It's from my blood sweat and tears and all that stuff.

                                                         Colin

'Hello, Hello ...'

                                    'Hello, Hello ..............................................................'

COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE   COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE   COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE   COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE   COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURECOVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE COVENTRY CITY of CULTURE