Mirfield Library

“It’s cold out there,” said the taxi-driver as I got into the cab.  He was soooo right.  It was also very dark and very wet.  It was, in fact, December in Mirfield, Yorkshire.  I’d been invited to give a talk in the library and all I can say is, bless all those hardy souls who came on an absolutely horrible evening.  “Never mind,” said the taxi-driver.  “It’ll soon be Christmas, innit?”

I’d gaily thought, when planning this little expedition, that I’d drop my stuff off at the library and then find Ye Olde Hostelry to have some dinner.  Well, the first part of the programme worked, but when I called into The Peartree the bloke behind the bar looked at me in a sort of pitying way.  “Food?  In the evening?”  The same tale was repeated in The Railway and in The Navigation. It was as food in Yorkshire is an activity for the daylight hours alone.  Ah well.  The beer in the Navigation was good though.

Literature came to my aid when I finally sloshed my way back to the library.  There was tea!  And shortbread biscuits!  And even a little cake with icing on in a packet.  And, - again, bless them – an audience, including my old pal Anne’s mother, Margaret, who’s read all my books.  Because I’d flung myself on the refreshments, the librarian, Julie, bowed to the inevitable and declared the tea urn and the coffee maker open and the biscuits open for chomping, even though this should have been reserved for half-time.  Flexibility is a great virtue in a librarian.

So, thus fortified, this select group of Mirfieldians settled down to listen to the tale of how you go about dreaming up a book.  Not that even I can talk for an hour and a half non-stop about my books, so I did what I’d done before, and invited everyone there to have a shot at writing too.

The idea is that everyone writes down a well-known phrase (this is part writing exercise and part party game) such as, “A stitch in time save nine,” or “When Santa got stuck up the chimney” (After all, it’ll soon be Christmas, innit?) and swap them with each other.  Then choose a picture from the stack of pictures I had with me, and write the first couple of lines of a poem or a short story, getting in a least a couple of words from the phrase and inspired by the picture.  The results were terrific!  There was one group who did some genuinely creepy dialogue sparked by a moody picture of a Jack The Ripper type figure in the mist, another couple who got exactly the rights words to describe a haunted house and a lot of people having a lot of fun.  Kids in school do this sort of thing all the time, but grown-ups thoroughly enjoy the chance to express themselves, too.

Then Julie wrapped everything up and gave me an entirely unexpected, but very welcome lift to Huddersfield Station.  And there – this was really good – in the Head of Steam, the station bar, a jazz guitar group was meeting and a great many earnest middle-aged men who looked as if they should be talking about sheds, were instead playing guitars like Django Reinheardt.  I curled myself into a corner and listened in complete happiness.  And, as the man said, “It’ll soon be Christmas, innit?”

The Corpse in the parlour

One of my oldest friends (in every sense of the word as she’s just celebrated her 89^th birthday) is Kath.  We were talking about what kids did in the days before TV.

Well, according to Kath, one of the odder things that kids got up to was to go and look at corpses.

Nowadays, when someone dies, it’s almost de rigueur that the undertaker scoops them up and takes them to a Chapel of Rest, but that wasn’t always the case.

I can remember Grandma laid out in her coffin in the front room (lid off) and the neighbours coming to pay their respects, but although I might very well have seen other people’s deceased relatives, I can’t honestly say I remember it.

Kath, however, led by her pal Aileen, made an absolute hobby of it.

Now, before you think this is too morbid for words, I should explain that although Kath and Aileen were perfectly well fed, this was about 1933 and treats such as sweets and biscuits were rare.  So Kath was a willing listener when Aileen came up with A Plan.

“Have you noticed,” said Aileen, “that when there’s a corpse laid out in the house, everyone who comes to see it gets a biscuit or a piece of cake?  Why don’t we,” continued Aileen, getting down to brass tacks, “go and look at corpses and then we’ll get a biscuit too?”

It was dead easy (if you’ll excuse the expression) to spot the house with a corpse in it because the curtains were drawn at the front of the house.

So those two little girls went round knocking at doors to offer to “say a prayer,” (Kath’s exact words) “over the corpse”, upon which they were ushered into the parlour and, having admired how beatifully laid-out the corpse was, they'd get cracking.

Usually one Hail Mary would do the trick, but sometimes they had to throw in an Our Father as well before the biscuits were produced, while the householder looked on, sometimes moved to tears by this display of infant piety.  There was one occasion, however, where Aileen decided to cut and run when, after a whole decade of the Rosary (!) no biscuits were forthcoming.  “All that praying,” said Aileen in disgust when they were out on the street again, “for nothing!”

It came to an end, however, as all good things do, when the Headmistress of the school, a ferocious nun of the old-fashioned type, wise to any form of rannygazoo, called them into her office.  “I hear,” she said, “that you’ve got a new hobby.”

Kath and Aileen looked at each other for moral support and Kath demurely said, “We’re only saying prayers.”

Even the most clued-up nun couldn’t actually object to that, but she wasn’t fooled.  “In future, I think you should restrict your payers to church.”

So that’s what they did.