Advent Calendar 23: Market Harborough in the frost

Well, Little Bowden actually.

This is the end of my road during a heavy frost in February 2012.

Alan Bennett's diary for 2016

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As is traditional, the London Review of Books' last issue of the year carries extracts from Alan Bennett's diary.

Here are a couple:

7 September. Ed Kemp rings, thoughtfully it seems to me, to say that his mother has died aged 91. She was the widow of Eric Kemp, my tutor at Exeter College and later bishop of Chichester, though I don’t recall meeting her in Oxford, but only in Chichester where, though she was the bishop’s wife, she enjoyed working as an usherette in the theatre and thus (I hope) scandalising that Trollopean place. 

19 September. Long piece in the Guardian sports section about Joey Barton, the difficult (and sometimes violent) footballer who has been transferred from Burnley to Rangers and is in trouble again. 

He is obviously clever, though in a slightly psychopathic way, and given to gnomic Muhammad Ali-like utterances. He’s rightly proud of his self-education and being smarter than most footballers while still being his own worst enemy. 

He habitually uses ‘critique’ to mean ‘criticise’ and would make a good character in something

Student paper tips Julian Huppert to regain Cambridge

Writing for Varsity, the Cambridge student paper, Matt Green surveys the current political scene.

He concludes:

What does that mean for Cambridge? Current trends suggest a profound problem for incumbent Daniel Zeichner. The boundary review favours the Liberal Democrats locally and combined with the lack of leadership provided by Labour over the EU – arguably Cambridge’s most salient issue – Zeichner faces an uphill struggle to maintain his seat. On current trends, it is likely that Huppert will win over liberal Cambridge at the next election.

Advent Calendar 22: Empire State Building, New York

I arrived at JFK late in the evening and took a taxi to my hotel. I could have been anywhere.

The next morning I left the hotel, turned the corner and saw this.

I was in New York,

In Our Time discussion on Karl Popper

Karl Popper was the most important liberal philosopher of the 20th century.

The best introduction to his thought is the short book Bryan Magee published in the Fontana Modern Masters series.

Your cat could be making you fantasise about bondage, experts warn

Headline of the Day goes to Metro.

It's nice to see a science story being recognised in this way.

Advent Calendar 21: Portmeirion

This statue, says its inscription, was:

Presented to Portmeirion and its Founder, Sir Clough Williams-Ellis, by his friends and collagues on his 90th birthday, May 28th 1973.

Duchess of Sutherland at Leicester station

After I had photographed the Duchess of Sutherland passing through Market Harborough, I caught the train to Leicester.

When I arrived she was still there.

The other trains and low sun presented a new challenge, but I am glad I met the old girl again.

David Tredinnick wants new cancer funding spent on homeopathy

It is a great tragedy that a tiny number of people, whom I regard at best as foolish and at worst as wicked, are trying to erase the tiny sum of money—£500 million—spent on homeopathy in the health service.

So said David Tredinnick, Conservative MP for Bosworth, in the Commons earlier this month.

The debate was on cancer strategy, and Tredinnick ended by asking if he could meet the minister (David Mowat) to discuss the £200m of new funding that has been announced for cancer services.

Alarmingly, the only conclusion you can draw is that he wants to see some of it spent on homeopathy.

But then Mr Tredinnick has a history of indulging outré beliefs.

The good news, judging by the answer he received from another health minister, is that the government does not share them.

Advent Calendar 20: Whitstable Harbour

Andrew Newton was told to look for Norman Scott in Barnstaple, but went to Dunstable instead.

I don't suppose he ever got to Whitstable.

The stables at Uppingham station

The London and North Western Railway Society tells us the history of Uppingham station:

The London & North Western Railway opened this short branch in 1894. Five trains were provided daily all connecting with services to and from Rugby. Passenger services were withdrawn in 1960 but the station remained open for school specials until the line closed to all traffic in 1964.

It also says

The site of Uppingham station is now a small industrial estate but the goods shed and stables survive.

I went to look for them after travelling to Uppingham on the 747 bus. I didn't find the goods shed - it may not still exist - but the photograph above shows the former stables.

Hope for the Black Boy pub, Leicester

Good news in the Leicester Mercury: it seems the former Black Boy pub in the city may yet be saved.

The paper's report says:

Planning officers at Leicester City Council have ... thrown a spanner in the works of the developers by refusing to allow the 1920s pub in Albion Street to be knocked down.

It's not clear whether this means a recommendation has been made to the council's planning committee or already been accepted by it.

And any refusal of planning permission for demolition and redevelopment can be appealed against.

Still, it's good to see the council standing up for the city's heritage beyond the mayor's prestige projects.

I photographed and blogged about the Black Boy in May. The photo above was taken at dusk the other evening.

Advent Calendar 19: Green Man, Southwell Minster

Niklaus Pevsner writes:

Could these leaves of the English countryside, with all their freshness, move us so deeply if they were not carved in that spirit which filled the saints and poets and thinkers of the thirteenth century, the spirit of religious respect for the loveliness of created nature? 

The inexhaustible delight in live form that can be touched with worshipping fingers and felt with all senses is ennobled ... by the conviction that so much beauty can exist only because God is an every man and beast, in every herb and stone. 

The Renaissance in the South two hundred years later was perhaps once again capable of such worship of beauty, but no firm faith was left to strengthen it. Seen in this light, the leaves of Southwell assume a significance as one of the purest symbols surviving in Britain of Western thought, our thought, in its loftiest mood.

Bridgnorth in 1960 and today

Bridgnorth has just beaten Market Harborough to win the Large Market Town category in this year's Great British High Street Awards.

I am not one to bear a grudge. even if Bridgnorth  has never struck me as a great place for shopping

Its setting above the Severn is stunning, as are parts of its townscape - the surroundings of the two churches in particular - and more places should have a cliff railway.

To celebrate Bridgnorth's victory, here is film of the town in 1960 intercut with the same scenes from 2015. Note how much more industrial the banks of the river used to be.

Click on the still above to view the film on Youtube.

Why I knew Ed Balls would be redeemed

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Ed Balls' weekly displays of high-class dad dancing have won him redemption. No longer a discredited, defeated politician he is now a loved celebrity.

What will he do next? He could use this new public affection to restart his political career. Or he may choose to spend his time travelling round Britain on trains and making programmes about it.

Some will have been surprised by this rebirth. But I find that I forecast it long before Balls' fall.

For in May 2009 I wrote:

Yet Ed Balls has a heart and may yet be redeemed. For, asked about his childhood reading by the Wakefield Express a couple of years ago, he remembered: 

a great series of kids' detective books by Malcolm Saville called the Lone Pine Adventures, which were all set in the Shropshire hills.

It seems I was right to assume that no one who grew up on Malcolm Saville can be all bad.

The Liberal Democrat revival in the West Country

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On Thursday the Liberal Democrats recorded large swings to win council by-elections in three West Country.

This is immensely encouraging, all the more so in view of what was reported to Lord Bonkers by one of his agents last year:

"At Bridgwater and Newton Abbot, Liberal clubs lie in ruins. Bright with buddleias and rosebay willowherb, they are the haunt of feral cats and truant children. Statues of Jo Grimond have been toppled in Redruth and Combe Martin. They threw stones at me in Chewton Mendip and Langton Herring."

Alex Harvey: Agent 00 Soul

Choosing a Sensational Alex Harvey Band track in 2014 I wrote:

Alex Harvey was once voted Scotland's answer to Tommy Steele and his band opened for an early version of the Beatles.

Here he is in 1965 covering the song that had launched Edwin Starr's career the year before.

The title is a mark of how quickly the James Bond films entered the wider culture, and the piano player on this track is a young Steve Winwood.

Advent Calendar 18: Minsterley

The sudden rise of the lead mining industry in this remote part of England in the mid 19th century meant that the Stiperstones area has the feel of the Wild West. Shanty villages were thrown together with materials like corrugated iron and their hastily abandoned remnants can still be found today.

That's what I wrote in October 2010, though I am not sure that "hastily" was the right word. I have read accounts of the Shropshire lead mining area in the 1930s that say there was desperate poverty because the population was too high for the work available in such a remote area..

This building has now been replaced by something more permanent looking, but I am glad I captured it before it went.

Six of the Best 652

"We are entitled to understand the legal framework in which we are operating because on the basis of that framework decisions will be made which will affect people in this country for generations to come." Jolyon Maugham, the man behind a new Brexit legal challenge, talks to Business Insider.

Nicola Hodgson, case officer for commons, greens and open spaces for the Open Spaces Society, gives us a snapshot of her work.

Father Christmas and Santa Claus were once very different figures. David Castleton is our guide to the changing folklore about them.

Alastair Cook is not a great England captain, but no one seems to mind very much. Barney Ronay suspects this is because cricket is no longer a national sport.

Alex says pop stars should stop getting into James Corden's car.

Tom Cox pays a lovely tribute to his cat The Bear - better known as My Sad Cat - who has died aged 21.

Duchess of Sutherland passes through Market Harborough

Yesterday there was a news item in the Northamptonshire Telegraph:

Steam engine enthusiasts are being warned that a locomotive which was scheduled to pass over the Harringworth Viaduct tomorrow will now not do so. 

The Duchess of Sutherland steam engine is to depart from London on Saturday morning taking passengers to York, stopping at St Albans, Luton, Bedford and Kettering. 

It was then due to leave the Midland Main Line and pass through Corby train station and over the famous Harringworth Viaduct. 

But a spokesman for the Railway Touring Company, which is running the train, said for operational reasons the route will now go straight to Leicester after leaving Kettering. 

The Duchess of Sutherland is due to stop at Kettering at 9.47am.

It's a shame to miss a trip over the Welland Viaduct, but the change of plan meant that the Duchess of Sutherland would be coming through Market Harborough.

So this morning I turned up at the station with my camera, joining a small group of enthusiasts who seen the same story.

She arrived about an hour later than advertised, but the station staff were kind and kept us informed of her progress. The class 47 on the rear of the train was a bonus.

After she had gone I caught the next train to Leicester, where she was still waiting in the station when I arrived. I shall share those photos another time.