Three Good Hiding Places

I love the Monty Python sketch "Hide And Seek Olympic Finals" where the hider can hide anywhere in the world and it takes years for the seeker to find him.

I mention this because I've been visiting some pretty obscure places in Northern England with Mrs Stan over the last few days and it occurs to me that these would make excellent hiding places. No-one would ever think of looking for you in any one of these hidden gems. Except if you opened a cafe that actually made a decent cup of coffee. Then you'd stick out a mile - each of these towns contains very attractive tea-rooms serving weak tea, instant coffee and plastic scones. Bring sandwiches.

(1) Bakewell, Derbyshire : this town is the inspiration for the Bakewell Tart; not a well known prostitute but a sort of cake. Like the cake, jam runs down the middle of the town, there is a thin layer of icing on all the roads and a glace cherry sits atop the church tower. Well, in a perfect world it would.

It's an attractive bustling place with all kinds of nice-smelling knick-knack shops and you must try the Bakewell Pudding which is unrecognisable from the muck that Mr Kipling puts into tin foil.

(2) Frodsham, Cheshire : an identikit Market Town, except one where the market has been taken over by Scousers selling forged brand-name sweets and CDs of uncertain provenance. On the bright side it has even more nice-smelling knick-knack shops than Bakewell, is the start of the "Sandstone Way" long distance path and has a name that I never tire of repeating in a variety of comedy voices.

I recommend the first section of the Sandstone Way - it takes you up to an amazing vantage point high above the Thelwall Viadiact where you can see Liverpool and even Mount Snowdon in the distance. If you squint you can pretend that Warrington and Runcorn aren't there.

(3) Whitchurch, Shropshire : the other end of the Sandstone Way After a few days of Market Towns it was all getting a bit same-y. We tried the last section of the Sandstone Way which goes along the canal to the three-level lock system at Grindley Brook. I wasn't well-disposed to the idea of a narrowboat holiday before, but after seeing a few families in action I'm even more anti now. It is basically caravaning (but without the glamour and style). It was amusing to watch as every single boat making their laborious way through the locks seemed to have a cross and bored teenaged boy on board who would get the honour of doing whatever the heck it is you do with the windy-thing.

Trivia : A native of Shropshire is traditionally called a Salopian. Their children are NOT called Salopettes.

Smirking on Holiday

I was in Flamborough over the weekend. It's a tiny time-warped village on a massive chunk of Yorkshire sticking out into the North Sea. It's almost entirely populated by tourists, but there are some quirky shops, lively pubs and the best darned seafood around. If you've seen "Last of the Summer Wine" you'll know the kind of vibe. Although they were holding a scarecrow festival while I was there which made it more like "Last of the Summer Wine" meets "The Wicker Man".
One of the highlights of the drive up was smirking at the signs for the nearby village of Wetwang, and in fact it was also a highlight of the drive back. In fact the novelty still hasn't worn off - the word "Wetwang" still makes me snigger.

While in Flamborough, I definitely recommend a walk around the wind-blown Selwicks Bay & The Lighthouse - described on the town's website as follows, with typical Yorkshire understatement :-

"On the eastern tip of Flamborough Head and with something for
nearly everyone."

I love the reference to "nearly" everyone - you suspect they are worried about legal action from disappointed pedants with specialised leisure requirements.

Bridlington is nearby if you want a more traditional kiss-me-quick candy-floss kind of seaside experience, but since I was born in Blackpool that's not something with any appeal.

I'll finish with "Wetwang". According to wikipedia :-

It is recorded in the Domesday Book as Wetuuangha. There are two interpretations of this. One is that it probably comes from the Old Norse
vaett-vangr, 'field for the trial of a legal action'. Another theory is that it
was the "Wet Field" compared to the nearby Dry Field at Driffield.

Magistrate-To-Be

Another official letter arrived with the postmark of the small (but picturesque) county town of my small (but picturesque) county. The process of turning me into a Magistrate is proceeding and I am to report for I-know-not-what in the way of training over three days in November.

You might think that three days sounds like not very much to turn an IT Consultant into a Beak. I guess I'll know whether it's enough in December. In fact, I'll probably not know for sure until January when I actually start helping to dispense justice.

One criticism I'd have of the process is that it's been far from clear what the timetable of events was going to be. For those who apply in future years - this is the way it has worked out for me:-

• Closing date - end November
• February - 1st Interview
• April - 2nd Interview
• June - Pencilled-in
• November - Trainin'
• December - Swearing-in
• January - Thrown in (at the deep end)

Meanwhile, I'm trying to remedy my total ignorance of webservers that was exposed in Oslo by building my own (Linux/Apache/Tomcat) on a broken-screened laptop.

42, and still looking to learn - that has to be a good thing.

42

On the morning of your birthday do not, I repeat do not, put your age into a search engine.

In return for the search term "aged-42" I found the following on Page 1 :-

Elvis Presley dies in hospital, aged 42

Tributes as solicitor aged 42 dies in Spain

"Saw" movie producer dies aged 42

Too Old to Emigrate ?? Aged 42.

Trying for a baby aged 42

I have a perimenopausal lady aged 42. She doesn't want to take HRT ...

"For women aged 42 years with epilepsy, is there any evidence that having an intrauterine device inserted increases the risk of epileptic seizure?"

Co-inventor of Alta Vista dies aged 42

In fact the only good news on the search is a link to Cindy Crawford looking good for her advanced age of 42 on a yacht with George Clooney

The message is very much that 42 is an age for dying, being too old to do stuff and your body disintegrating. It's not really a message you want to hear.

Today I plan to take my aged body out for a curry with The Girls. Hopefully I will not be too enfeebled and befuddled to snap my own poppadums.

Camus Soul Top

It's not every day that I meet someone who's a bigger nerd than I am. Today I nearly did.

I was running laps at the gym and on the track in front of me was a man in his fifties with a football goalkeeper's green shirt, sporting the number "1" on his back and the name "Camus".

Just in case you're not as big a nerd as I am, this is a reference to the French writer and philosopher Albert Camus who also happened to play in goal for the best team in Algeria in the 1930s.

My first instinct was to laugh knowingly, but my second was to body-slam him into the wall and ask him (in the light of Camus' book "The Stranger") whether I could be legally or consciously guilty if I had no conscious intent. Then I was going to run off, explaining that (as Camus indicated in "The Fall") that everyone is guilty and nobody has the moral right to pass judgement on someone.

You'll be glad to hear that I did resist the temptation and ran on in silence.

Actually, I preferred the t-shirt I saw the other week :"My other body is a temple".