What was the children's book involving Bourton-on-the-Water?

That news story about Bourton-on-the-Water, which provided a recent Headline of the Day, was everywhere. Not least, it provided liberal Bluesky with a target for the day's Two Minutes Hate.

But Bourton-on-the-Water put me in mind of a book I read at primary school. And a big of googling showed that I'm not the only one with that memory. Over to Mumsnet:

I read this book at primary school, when it was at the back of a dusty "free reading" cupboard and would love to find it again.

The story is, a group of children are out on holiday by themselves and someone offers to drop them off at an unknown destination so they can play at being explorers. They make their own names up for the towns they pass through and draw up maps etc. After a while they decide to pretend the "natives" are hostile and travel at night and/or hide in trees whenever someone comes past. One of the towns they went through they named "Million Bridges" At the end of the book we discover they've been walking through the Cotswolds (so I assume it was really Bourton on the Water or somewhere). ...

Anyone have the least idea what I'm talking about?

I remember it as "Hundred Bridges" or "Thousand Bridges", and am sure it did turn out to be Bourton-on-the-Water at the end of the story, but this is clearly the same book.

What I now wonder, given that our class library was also housed in a cupboard, is whether the writer was a fellow pupil at the old Boxmoor Primary School in St John's Road.

But what was the book called and who wrote it?

Hunting for the Bonkers Arms in Medbourne

I went to Medbourne today. The county's new on-demand bus service has made dozens of villages easy to reach - it's just a shame that so many rural pubs are closing.

One that is thriving is Medbourne's Nevill Arms (on the left of the photo above). Some scholars have concluded it is  the model for the Bonkers Arms (I would say it is at most one of the models), and if it is then it's more Freddie and Fiona than Meadowcroft these days.

But it was a lovely day to sit outside above the brook. I drank Birrificio Angelo Poretti, because it was chilled and I liked the cinema advert, and enjoyed the entertainment in the water.

The Joy of Six 1374

Andrew Chandler makes a Liberal case for the right to die with dignity: "There’s a peculiar cruelty in forcing someone to live in unbearable pain for the comfort of others."

Last year, Ofsted investigations revealed the existence of more than 900 mostly single-occupant illegal children’s homes in England, over six times the number it had found three years earlier. And The Bureau of Investigative Journalism has found a council spending £29,000 per week to place a vulnerable 10-year-old in one of them.

Keith Frankish, a philosopher looks at what it is that large language models are doing. (The link will download a pdf.)

"While cranes have been elevated by rarity, gulls were once quasi-angelic, their clinging to inhospitable coastal rocks evoking the monks who established their cells at the extreme edges of these islands. Now diminished in popular perception, they are seen as gutter-life, scavengers on the trash-tides of our consumerism." Amy-Jane Beer reviews The Cuckoo's Lea by Michael Warren - "a magical ornithological history of Britain."

"The third 'fun fact' about Truro Cathedral is that it’s one of three Cathedrals in the UK with three spires. This is bollocks. I have no idea why people say this. There are four spires. I will elaborate later, but I have become a Spire Truther." Jay Hulme looks round - and climbs - Truro Cathedral.

Film-Authority.com watches the 1977 British thriller The Squeeze: "[Michael] Apted died not so long ago, and while his obituaries found much to discuss in his ground-breaking 7 Up documentary series, or his Bond movies, his first feature film is a fearsome beast, recommended but with the strongest of warnings; this really ain’t a pretty sight."

12 opening scenes from Malcolm in the Middle

History suggests that the planned revival will turn out not to have been well advised, but Malcolm in the Middle was brilliant in its first incarnation between 2000 and 2006.

The slightly larger-than-life performances of Jane Kaczmarick and Bryan Cranston as the parents were particularly memorable.

So enjoy. This is the internet: there's no copyright.

Solar farms could be the saving of insects and birdlife

Photo by Bango at Morguefile.com 
  

Here’s the thing: to our untrained eye, a corn field looks more "natural" than an array of solar panels. But a corn field is a biological desert - basically there are no pollinators there at all (corn is self-pollinating) because they are sprayed with pesticides and herbicides. Put up some solar panels, and add some plants that only need to be mowed once a year or so (sometimes with sheep) and you see an explosion of life.

That's Mike Kiernan talking. He's set up a small non-profit business that grows plants that native pollinators like between the rows solar farms in Vermont and is a neighbour of Bill McKibben, who writes The Crucial Years blog.

And Bill has some more good news about solar farms from pv magazine:

Biologist Matthias Stoefer said the high density of breeding larks in one of Germany’s largest solar parks in Brandenburg, north of Berlin, is astonishing. In his breeding territory mapping, he counted 178 spots within the solar park and surrounding areas. 

On average, there are 21 to 47 breeding pairs per 10 hectares. This is the highest lark density he has ever encountered. The reference area on a nearby field has only 33 spots, equivalent to 7.6 lark pairs per 10 hectares. Whether they can breed successfully there when the farmer sprays, fertilizes, and harvests throughout the summer is questionable, however.

The high numbers in the ground-mounted PV systems are also surprising because larks avoid vertical structures. The birds prefer open, wide landscapes away from forests and forest edges. However, the long photovoltaic rows with six modules stacked on top of each other do not seem to bother them. Instead, they benefit from the advantages of the location.

People rarely visit the fenced-in facility. The vegetation is kept short by sheep, which are currently lying in the sun with their lambs between the rows of modules. The sheep’s droppings and a changing selection of flowering herbs provide the birds with a varied insect buffet.

I'm not one to rage against Nimbys: people are bound to be attached to green spaces where they walk their dogs or played as children, and there are other villains in the housing debate who get off too lightly.

But much of the debate about development and the environment is wrongheaded. Suburban gardens are usually much richer in life than the fields they replace; while everyone's favourite target for development - brownfield sites in towns and cities - can be ecologically valuable too.

And now is sounds as though solar farms, properly managed, could be the saving of wildlife on farms.

Duke of Rutland is urged to sell 'trashed' grouse moor to the people of Sheffield

The campaign group Reclaim Our Moors wants the Duke of Rutland to to sell Moscar Moor near Sheffield for £1 because they think it is in such poor condition, reports the Sheffield Star:

Members say they walked across part of the 6,000-acre estate, between Stanage Edge and the A57, and found "almost no insect life, few birds and no grouse".

They claim it has been "trashed" by the duke, "who sets it on fire - sending smoke into people’s homes, worsening flood risk downstream and releasing carbon that adds to the climate crisis."

They also state it has been “scoured of wildlife by gamekeepers who kill anything that could affect gamebird numbers.”

The report goes on to say that in October 2023 deliberate fires on the moor blanketed Sheffield in smoke and caused a city-wide pollution incident. Heather is burnt to encourage the growth of green shoots that grouse can feed on.

It also says Moscar has received an average annual subsidy of £175,400 since 2012 under a Natural England stewardship scheme.

The Duke declined an invitation to comment.

Lord Bonkers is, of course, chuckling at this story. I get the impression he finds grouse shooting rather ungentlemanly:

"Shoot at a Rutland partridge and it will take cover and fire back. Now that's what I call sport!"

Anyway, there is more about Reclaim Our Moors online.

Jago Hazzard goes in search of the oldest bridge in London

London Bridge was first bridge over the Thames in London, but it's been rebuilt several times.

The oldest surviving bridge on the Thames is now Richmond Bridge, which dates from 1777.

But it's not the oldest bridge in London. To find one that's centuries older, head for Kingston and the Hogsmill River.

You can support Jago's videos via his Patreon page and follow his YouTube account.

The Joy of Six 1373

"Weaponising food deprivation has been Israeli policy for decades. As a senior adviser to Prime Minister Ehud Olmert put it in 2006, the government’s aim, in strictly restricting the entrance of foodstuffs into Gaza, was to 'put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.' Now, Israel seems to have committed fully to the latter goal." Jennifer Zacharia details the sufferings of the Palestinians.

Roland Smith weighs the objections to the European Convention on Human Rights and says we'll need good arguments against them if we're to resist the coming campaign for Britain to withdraw from it. 

"I moved to the city eight years ago to study neuroscience at University College London. Since then, rents have nearly doubled but the square footage of my digs has stayed the same. As I grow up in age and out in size, I begin to see that the hoped-for upgrade that should come with time now looks impossible. My generation is running but we’re not moving." Rose Dodd reports on life as a private tenant in London.

Michael Rosen proves that educational research did not begin with Michael Gove.

Londonopia tells the story of a unique London store: "Arthur Liberty wasn’t just flogging  fabrics. He was hawking a vision - a sensual rebellion against the stiff moral corsetry of Victorian Britain. Where others sold sensible serge, Liberty offered peacock-feather glamour, hand-painted decadence, and the vague but thrilling possibility that you might run away with an artist and spend your life eating figs in an atelier."

"War is a dreadful thing, amongst all of the horrific things that human inflicts upon other human in the name of 'war' there are some events that stand out as atrocities: one such atrocity took place in the aftermath of the battle of Naseby." Keep Your Powder Dry tries to pin down the exact location of The Farndon Massacre in the villages just south of Market Harborough.

High Court overturns approval of 200,000-bird intensive poultry unit in River Severn catchment area near Shrewsbury

River Action is hailing a "turning point" for the movement against polluting factory farming. The High Court has overturned the planning permission Shropshire Council granted for a 200,000-bird intensive poultry unit near Shrewsbury in the River Severn catchment area,

The campaign group says:

The case was brought by local campaigner and River Action board member Dr Alison Caffyn, supported by River Action. The judgment quashes Shropshire Council’s planning decision and marks a major turning point in the fight against the irresponsible and harmful spread of factory farms and the protection of the UK’s iconic rivers.

This victory sends a clear message that planning authorities must:

• Assess the cumulative impacts of having multiple intensive agricultural developments in one river catchment before granting permission for another. 

• Consider how livestock production units dispose of the waste from treatment facilities downstream, including from anaerobic digestion plants.

You can read the full High Court judgment online. Shropshire Council, which has been run by the Liberal Democrats since last month's local elections, has announced that it will not appeal against it.

The Rockingbirds: Restless

The Rockingbirds were that rare thing, a North London country rock band. They gained some success in the early Nineties, split in 1995, reformed more than a decade later and are still around today.

Restless is a track from their first LP The Rockingbirds (1992), but I first heard it on a Q Magazine sampler CD.

Market Harborough goes bananas on Carnival day

Saturday was Carnival day in Market Harborough. The crowds were so large in town that I gave up trying to photograph the parade and headed for the showground in the afternoon.

The lovely Debbie, who I used to work with, was on the Co-op stall. She's worth knowing as she gives out free bananas.

A boiler explosion at Stonton Wyville in 1862 killed four men

Embed from Getty Images

After covering its lost gardens and the drought of 1947, we're going back to Stonton Wyville.

Reader's voice: At least it's not bloody Snailbeach again.

Jeremy Benson, who has visited every village church in Leicestershire and put together a Bluesky thread with photos of each one, told me Stonton Wyville was one of those villages where he struggled a bit to find something interesting to say.

But I think he found something very interesting, because he put me on to another forgotten disaster. Over to the Leicester Advertiser for Saturday 18 January 1862:

Dreadful Boiler Explosion. - Four men killed at Stonton Wyville

One of the most dreadful boiler explosions occurred on Monday last, the 13^th inst., at Stonton Wyville, that has ever been reported in this district. Stonton Wyville is a small agricultural village in the county of Leicester, about six miles from Market Harborough. 

Mr. Dunmore, a farmer, has a stackyard upon his farm, about half a mile from the village, and on Monday hired a small thrashing engine, which is owned by a man named Butcher, who resides at Debdale Wharf, Gumley. This engine was about three or four horsepower, but from the remains of it, it did not appear in working order, and this was confirmed by the evidence we could glean. 

It appears the pump as it is called that feeds the boiler with cold water, was in a bad state of repair, and had been repaired on several occasions. About twelve o’clock in the day they were obliged to stop working to again repair this pipe, and were wrapping it with string and red lead. nearly the whole of the men, 13 in number, were gathered round the engine while the repairs were going on and it was while they were thus engaged that the explosion took place.

The report goes on to give details of whose body parts were blown off and where they landed, which I shall spare you. But I can say that Thomas Lee, William Woodman and Samuel Ashby were killed at once, and George Woolman died a few hours later. The inquest was held at the Fox and Hounds Inn at Stonton Wyville - there is still a Fox and Hounds Farm there, so this was probably that building.

One point of interest about this inquest is that it had called for expert evidence about the condition of the boiler:

Mr. Gimson, engineer, of Leicester, was present, and made a thorough examination of the wreck of the engine, and will give his evidence at the adjourned inquest, so it would not be fair to give his opinion stated privately, at the present time.

Gimson and Co. was founded in 1840 by Benjamin and Josiah Gimson on Welford Road in Leicester. The firm, says Wikipedia, was listed as "Engineers, Ironfounders, Boiler Makers & General Machinists". it later moved to the still-standing Vulcan Works in Leicester.

So it looks as though the expert witness was Benjamin or Josiah Gimson, or perhaps another member of their family. This is the Gimson family that produced Sydney Gimson, who helped turn Desford Approved School, into a force in Leicestershire junior chess, and Boris Johnson's serial biographer Andrew Gimson.

The Leicester Advertiser report said the inquest was due to be reconvened on 29th January 1862. I'll see if I can discover what happened then.

Family's horror seeing tourists eat from saucepans in idyllic Cotswolds village

Gloucestershire Live wins our Headline of the Day Award for this tale of tourism in Bourton-on-the-Water.

The judges left me to comment, so I shall merely point out that all tourist areas have honeypots where visitors tend to congregate. 

If you go to the Shropshire hills but don't want crowds, then avoid the Carding Mill Valley at Church Stretton. And if you find St Ives in Cornwall too crowded, walk a mile along the cliffs towards Zennor and you'll have an amazing landscape all to yourself.

Or you could forget the Cotswolds and visit the Notswolds.

This post is sponsored by Visit the Notswolds - The Official Notswold Tourism Site.

In 1946 there was a plan to move Snailbeach village to a new site

Here's a discovery. In 1946 there was a plan to move the Shropshire lead-mining village of Snailbeach to a new site nearer Minsterley.

It was reported in the 15 March issue of the Shrewsbury Chronicle:

SNAILBEACH TO LEAVE ITS SHELL

Plan For New Village In Green Meadows 

If the plans now being prepared by the Clun Rural District Council come to maturity the village of Snailbeach will leave its shell among the scars of old industry on the flank of the Stiperstones, and move down to a new site among pleasant green meadows a mile or so nearer to Minsterley. 

The site selected is near to the old Smelthouse, the derelict building which stands at the side of the field path from Minsterley to Snailbeach. Over a cup of tea at the Stiperstones Inn Mr. William Humphrey, a member of-the Clun Council, explained to our reporter that it is hoped to build a first instalment of 16 houses out of a total of 40 to 50 within the next year. Provision has been made for a children's playground, and eventually a church and school will appear. 

Temporary houses are out of the question, as at present there is no gas or electricity, but every effort will be made to provide modern amenities for both the old and new villages. Lord Bridgeman was interested himself in a project for bringing a light industry to the village, but it is yet too early to say what developments are likely.

Nothing came of the plan, but villages do get moved. Arkwright in Derbyshire was moved to a new site 30 years ago because of the danger of methane gas from a disused coal mine.

I suspect this scheme for Snaibeach is confirmation of what John Wood wrote in his 1944 book Quietest Under the Sun:

Sad to say, this became in the between-wars period one of the most utterly derelict areas in Britain proportionate to its size.

The Joy of Six 1372

"What's happening in Gaza is a humanitarian and existential tragedy for the people living there, a moral and political disaster for Israel, the indirect, long-term result of past European barbarism and the subject of a damaging present European failure." Timothy Garton Ash reflects on European double standards and German cognitive dissonance.

Séamas O'Reilly reports from Ballymena: "To their credit, the PSNI have been clear-cut on this point, with the chair of their police federation Liam Kelly describing the violence as 'mindless, unacceptable and feral' and the actions of the rioters as 'a pogrom'. There is no interpretation of these acts, no nuance or context that can be added, that points in any other direction.

Hannah Al-Othman and Jessica Murray on increasing concerns over the quality of 'expert witness' evidence in British courts.

"I wanted to go back into the past and look at it with fresh eyes, to better understand the roots of this uncertainty. What I began to find was twofold: first, there were major shifts in power during the 1980s and ’90s – primarily away from politics and mostly toward finance, though also other areas. Second, there was a significant internal shift in consciousness. We are very different creatures from the human beings of 1978." Frieze interviews Adam Curtis about his new television series Shifty.

The car made pedestrians second-class citizens, and we shouldn't let driverless vehicles push us off the road altogether, says Adam Tranter.

Northolt Park Racecourse near Harrow was superbly equipped and the headquarters of pony racing in Britain, yet it had an active life of only 11 years. This local history site tells its story.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: “Oh Mr Meadowcroft, you’re so sweet!”

I hadn't been intending to do this. Instead, I had been dreaming of a public row at Liberal Democrat HQ that would give me a pretext for getting rid of Freddie and Fiona altogether. But having had the idea, I realised that their buying a weekend cottage in Rutland might have hilarious consequences.

Fiona's “Oh Mr Meadowcroft, you’re so sweet!” was inspired by a half-remembered Posy Simmonds strip about the manners of the weekending classes.[Amazingly, after writing this I found it online.] And with it, we finish another week in the company of Rutland's most celebrated fictional peer.

Sunday

As the Revd Hughes Went On A Bit at St Asquith’s, I have called in at the Bonkers Arms for a restorer before lunch. To my horror, I encounter Freddie and Fiona at the bar. “We’ve just exchanged contracts on a weekend cottage here,” they announce. “We love your Notswolds”. 

Worse than that, Meadowcroft is playing up to them shamelessly, singing folk songs of his own invention and retailing country lore that I for one have never heard before. “If polling day falls when the wheat be green, then turnout will exceed the mean” is just one example. 

“Oh Mr Meadowcroft, you’re so sweet!” exclaims Fiona, kissing his beaming, rubicund face. Feeling suddenly unwell, I make my excuses and leave.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• From the pubs of Oswestry to the crumbling walls of Ludlow
• Matron told me at the party last night
• Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's
• Rescuing fallen women or scourging himself
• We feed them sausages and plum bread
• My failure to make a television detective of Jeremy Thorpe

Scaffold: Liverpool Lou

I remember liking this when it came out in 1974 - it reached no. 6 in the singles chart that June.

One of the members of Scaffold was Mike McGear, who was Paul McCartney's brother. And the track was produced by Paul, who had suggested recording the song to the band.

More than that, in his interview for The Strange Brew podcast, Mike seems to be saying that Wings were the band playing on Liverpool Lou, with the addition of Norman Yardley on harmonica.

The instrument used in the break (played by Paul McCartney) was the Gizmo. This was a device developed by Kevin Godley and Lol Creme of 10CC, who partly owned Strawberry Studios in Stockport where Liverpool Lou was recorded. The pair were eventually to leave 10CC to promote the Gizmo.

Though the song Liverpool Lou had been around for years, it had somehow been copyrighted by Brendan Behan’s brother Dominic. As a result, he made more money from Liverpool than anyone.

Prince William's billionaire pal dies after swallowing bee while playing polo

The Mirror wins our Headline of the Day Award.

This story, the judges were at pains to emphasise. is not funny. Few of the stories under the headlines that receive this award are funny if you think about them for more than a moment.

No, they chose this headline because it brings home the terrible randomness of human existence like nothing else they have seen.

Liberal England: My failure to make a television detective of Jeremy Thorpe

I'm no Nancy Banks Smith, but if you ask me this wasn't one of the better ideas to emerge from the fecund brain of Lord Bonkers. That dog did us all a favour

Saturday

What with one thing and another – above all my riding the wave of Rutbeat like a portly surfer – I had a good Sixties, but I do have a regret from that enjoyable decade: my failure to make a television detective of Jeremy Thorpe. I imagined him storming the beaches of the South Coast by hovercraft to arrest drug smugglers, people traffickers and holidaymakers who had not paid to use their deckchairs. 

The scripts were written – we hit upon the novel idea of making Thorpe a maverick who nevertheless got results – and the show was cast: Peter Bessell as his loyal sidekick; Emlyn Hooson as his boss, who liked things done by the book; Claire Brooks as his housekeeper. 

All looked good to go, until it came to filming the pilot episode. The weather was terrible, the technical crew was seasick and, in what I now realise was a mordant irony, his craft was put out of action when a dog bit a hole in its skirt.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• From the pubs of Oswestry to the crumbling walls of Ludlow
• Matron told me at the party last night
• Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's
• Rescuing fallen women or scourging himself
• We feed them sausages and plum bread

A journey along the disused Market Harborough to Newark railway

It was building the Great Northern and London & North Western Railway (GN&LNWJR) that brought my hero J.W. Logan MP to the Market Harborough area. You can see, from the sturdy bridges that remain to this day, that Logan & Hemingway knew how to build railways,

Borders and Beeching traces the disused line from Welham Junction, just north of Market Harborough, to Newark, though the stretch through Melton Mowbray is missed out.

As Eastern Leicestershire is not heavily populated, the GN&LNWJR was always more of a freight line, serving many local ironstone quarries and also bringing coal from the East Midlands to London via Market Harborough and Northampton. There were coal concentration sidings at Welham. 

Despite what the caption suggests, Medbourne station was not on this line but on a short curve that joined it to the line to Stamford. And when I used our new on-demand bus service to get to Hallaton recently, it set me down and picked me up from the old station site, even though it's a little way out of the village, as though it were meeting a train.

Passenger services officially ended in 1953, but unadvertised trains ran until 1957 and the GN&LNWJR branch to Leicester Belgrave Road saw holiday trains to Skegness as late as 1962.

Goods services ended in 1964, but odd fragments of the line continued to see workings for some years after that. It's worth reading the Wikipedia entry on the GN&LNWJR to get a clear picture of the life and death of this interesting line.

And there's more border collie content in a recent post on this blog.

The Joy of Six 1371

"In cases of adult rape, it takes the police an average of 344 days to decide whether to press charges (for all other crimes, it is 41 days). During this period, victims have no right to independent legal advice or representation unless they pay for it themselves. The court backlog of rape cases is at a record high. Court dates can be scheduled and then postponed with as little as 24 hours’ notice – I’ve heard of this happening to a victim more than twenty times." Lili Owen Rowlands volunteers with a rape crisis helpline.

Charles Wright looks back on Kemi Badenoch's two years as a member of the London Assembly: "Interestingly, she went on to compare the treatment of 'white and middle class' protestors with the tougher treatment of those arrested during the 2011 London riots, who she said were 'young, relatively working-class and poor, including a 'high proportion of ethnic minorities. 'Why is it that they can get away with criminal damage that young black people doing exactly the same thing get strict sentences for?'"

"Farage isn’t here to build anything. He’s here to brand himself. He wants viral clips, retweets, headlines. He wants you angry, not informed. He’s a master of the bait-and-switch - say something outrageous and emotionally charged, then let others waste time debunking it while he soaks up the spotlight." Owen Williams on what Nigel Farage wants from Wales.

David Baines, Labour MP for St Helens North, says it was well past time that a Rugby League player - Sir Billy Boston - was knighted.

Underground Culture 12 celberates the days when bands got it together in the country: "First and foremost on this list, Traffic began the getting-it-together-in-the-country trend by renting a remote cottage in the Berkshire village of Aston Tirrold in April 1967, just two months after the Band located to the Big Pink house near Woodstock."

"[Captain] Richard Todd ... was one of the first British officers to land on D-Day. Todd was part of the British airborne invasion, that took place June 5 through June 7. During Operation Overlord, Todd’s battalion were the reinforcements parachuted in after the gliders landed and captured Pegasus Bridge to prevent German forces crossing the bridge and attacking." Comet Over Hollywood surveys the actors who saw action on D-Day.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: We feed them sausages and plum bread

I'm pleased that Sister Sid is doing so well, but I worry about those Lincolnshire refugees. 

I don't know how long they are put up at the Bonkers Arms, but I do know that the Stilton mines are always looking for new recruits.

Friday

Sister Sid drops in from the Convent of Our Lady of the Ballot Boxes to lobby me about American tariffs on the Heard and McDonald Islands, where he has relatives. Cook provides us with an excellent fish lunch and is quite unperturbed by Sid’s requesting his be served raw. “It’s just like that Japanese stooshie you hear so much about,” she observes. 

Later we take a turn by the shore of Rutland Water and watch the small boats come in – ever since Reform took over Lincolnshire, refugees from that county have been landing here. Once ashore, they report themselves to Constable McNally in the village and ask for political asylum, whereupon we put them up at the Bonkers Arms and feed them sausages and plum bread.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• From the pubs of Oswestry to the crumbling walls of Ludlow
• Matron told me at the party last night
• Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's
• Rescuing fallen women or scourging himself

The life and death of Walnut Tree Viaduct in South Wales

This is a great video that tells you a lot about railway politics and engineering in 19th-century Wales and also finds some atmospheric remains.

Why not subscribe to Bob's Rail Relics on YouTube?

And if you like industrial history from South Wales, have a look at my post The Glamorganshire Canal in 1945, which takes you of a film of it lying derelict but complete after its abandonment.

Moderate Tory MPs are talking to Lib Dems MPs about joining us

Some Conservative MPs could be tempted to defect to the Liberal Democrats over their leadership's opposition to the European Convention on Human Rights, says a story on Politics Home this morning:

Several Lib Dem figures told PoliticsHome that there have been informal discussions with Tory MPs on the 'left' of their party who are uneasy with shifting further to the right to combat the threat of Nigel Farage's Reform UK. 

One Lib Dem MP involved in talks said: “Doors are not being slammed in our faces."

Another told PoliticsHome they have spoken to at least two Conservative MPs who are also unhappy about the party’s stance on net zero, claiming that they are "looking" at the Lib Dems as a potential new "home".

There are no Conservative sources quoted, so I suspect this is a case of Lib Dem MPs love-bombing their Conservative neighbours. Or to put it another way:

PoliticsHome understands Lib Dems are targeting constituency neighbours with whom they have already formed relationships.

The silence of liberal Conservatives as their party is taken over by far-right Nationalists has been deafening. It may be that they have concluded that their party is beyond saving.

To give them encouragement here's a guest post on this blog by Harborough's own Buddy Anderson: Many liberal Conservatives are becoming conservative Liberals.

Poundland sold for less than £1

In what I think is a Liberal England first, the Financial Times wins our Headline of the Day Award.

The photograph shows a branch of the chain in Lincoln. The Lost Pubs Project says:

The Lion Hotel was situated at 169 High Street. This pub was present by 1826 and closed in 1988. It was also known as The White Lion.  It is now used as a branch of Poundland. At one time it contained a cattle pound for cattle that grazed Holmes Common.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Rescuing fallen women or scourging himself

This is why I stay working for Lord Bonkers despite everything: these precious snippets of Liberal history that somehow never make it into the textbooks.

Thursday

Those bad hats who chopped down the tree at Sycamore Gap are, by all accounts, in for a stiff sentence without the option. I am reminded of the tales told me by colleagues who had been in the House in Mr Gladstone’s day. When the Grand Old Man wasn’t rescuing fallen women or scourging himself, he was to be found felling trees. 

The problem was that he didn’t confine himself to the woods at Hawarden, but would often attack random trees on his way to speaking engagements. The result was that there were few Liberal MPs of his era who hadn’t at one time or another had to sweet talk the local rozzers to secure his release from custody and stump up for tickets for the next police ball.

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• From the pubs of Oswestry to the crumbling walls of Ludlow
• Matron told me at the party last night
• Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's

Furnival's of Fleckney, Nina Stibbe and Bryan Magee

Nina Stibbe, another member of the Market Harborough school of literature, once wrote about Fleckney in the Guardian:

Fleckney became industrialised in the late 19th century when hosiery companies fled the city. Rowley & Co, whose Leicester works had been stormed by weavers in riots in 1885, built a factory on Saddington Road. Its red brick design included a high wall along the street for protection in the event of further unrest. This wall (itself now protected) reinforces Fleckney’s identity as working-class compared with its more cottagey neighbours. 

Leicester’s second best pop, Furnival’s of Fleckney, was still bottled in the village when we arrived; Thorn Lighting had a factory there and the new industrial estate was home to Pukka Pies, where my brother worked part-time during his O-levels - and was once locked in the freezer for being pretentious (he was reading a book).

Fleckney is still an industrial village - the photo above shows one of the older factories there. Because industry came late, it was never on the railway and the canal passes by a couple of fields away.

Furnival's of Fleckney made me [rick up my ears, because the firm used to have a warehouse in Highfield Street, Market Harborough, directly opposite our house. (Don't look for it: It's not there any more.) I think I remember kids climbing over the fence to steal empty bottles so they could claim the deposit back on them. Think of it as enhanced recycling.

But that building wasn't always a warehouse: it had once been a factory. And for a description of it during the war I turn again to this blog's hero Bryan Magee.

This passage comes from his book Growing up in a War - Magee was evacuated to Market Harborough during the war and lived literally round the corner from where I used to live:

The factory in which Kath worked was a few yards beyond the end of our garden, its chimney visible to someone sitting in our back room. Previously it had manufactured swimming costumes, but now it was packing parachutes. 

Its chimney emitted not just smoke but noise: about every five seconds it gave a loud, vibrant belch that was a nerve-racking nuisance for everyone living near it. At one level of my mind I got used to it, and ceased to notice it, yet at another I was conscious of it all the time. 

The people in the neighbourhood complained to the local authority, but were told that nothing could be done: the chimney had once had a silencer, but this no longer worked, and a replacement was unobtainable in wartime. The factory had to carry on because it was involved in essential war work. So the people around it would have to put up with it. ('Don't you know there's a war on?')

Yesterday I posted a video of Magee reporting on the satire boom in 1963.

Tim Buckley: Dolphins

Jeff Buckley died at 30, his father Tim at 28. I felt sorry for Jeff, often discussed with reference to a father who hardly bothered with him.

But Tim Buckley was a brilliant musician. Here he is on The Old Grey Whistle Test, with Charlie Whitney from the Leicester band Family one of those backing him.

Lord Bonkers' Diary: Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's

Lord Bonkers continues to be untroubled by issues of low self-esteem. 

Those ubiquitous - and least on his estate - birds the hamwee and the wheway are named after Sally Hamwee (now a Liberal Democrat peer, but a Liberal councillor in Richmond when I first came across her) and Rob Wheway, a Liberal activist from Coventry.

Wednesday

You find me sousing in a deckchair and enjoying the view across my gardens to the moat. Swifts swoop low across the lawn, snapping up insects to feed their young in nests under the eaves of my stables; flocks of hamwees and wheways scuffle noisily, each convinced that the other started it; a volley of bucolic cursing from within a mature shrub tells me that Meadowcroft is hard at work. 

I have allowed myself a particularly lazy afternoon because I am rather proud of a line I phoned in to Davey’s office this morning for use at prime minister’s questions. Here’s my zinger: 

“First he came for our steelworkers and carmakers. Now Donald Trump is coming for our world-leading British film industry. Will the PM make it clear to him that if he picks a fight with Commander Gideon, Dr Simon Sparrow and the girls of St Trinian's, he will lose?”

Lord Bonkers was Liberal MP for Rutland South West, 1906-10.

Earlier this week...

• From the pubs of Oswestry to the crumbling walls of Ludlow
• Matron told me at the party last night