The Northerner: a ramble over an adder
Martin Wainwright
21 August 2008 I had a mildly exciting northern experience this week on Norwood Edge
above the Washburn valley. As I stooped to photograph a Peacock
butterfly during a pub-to-pub ramble with my wife, an adder slid into
the periphery of my vision.
I was 13 years old last time I saw one of these, on the North York
Moors. I'm not anti-snake, but they do initially put the shivers up
you. I took several pictures of the beast, which wasn't at all
inclined to bolt, and all of them suffer from camera-shake. Soft and
beautiful the English countryside may be, but it has its perils. How
often? I typed "adder" ainto the search engine of Norwood's local
paper, the Wharfedale & Airedale Observer (
www.wharfedaleobserver.co.uk/ ), and got nothing either time.
The Whitby Gazette (
www.whitbyonline.co.uk/ ) (North York
Moors readership) was even worse; they could only offer me two local
companies supplying ladders.
I finally struck lucky with the Yorkshire Post (
www.yorkshirepost.co.uk/news/Forest-tagging-team-on-the.1811634.jp) with a story about ecologists' and the Forestry Commission's
"safari" to to track down adders in Laughton forest near Scunthorpe
and fit small radio transmitters to their tails.
Spokesman Andrew Powers tells the YP: "There's a whole lot we don't
know about adders. Transmitter records will be plotted using global
positioning satellite technology to make a digital map of adder
traffic."
As for everyone else: if you're walking in possible adderland, wear
boots with walking socks over your trouser bottoms. And don't attack
the snakes. They're protected by law.
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There has been a wealth of tributes to our fellow reporter Adrian
Sudbury - Sudders of the Huddersfield Daily Examiner (
www.examiner.co.uk/news/local-west-yorkshire-news/2008/08/20/adrian-sudbury-loses-final-battle-86081-21567632/
) - who has died at the age of only 27. He made a national name for
campaigning to raise the profile of bone marrow donation.
Adrian had fought leukaemia for 18 months and had had a bone marrow
transplant himself. It gave him an extra year of life and, as the
Examiner says in one of many tributes this week, he devoted himself
to trying to get the same opportunity for some 16,000 people waiting
for transplants worldwide.
Adrian's straightforward and unassuming manner earned him many friends
and huge respect and opened unexpected doors, including that of 10
Downing Street. The prime minister mentioned him in Parliament during
the campaign, and paid a handsome tribute after his death was
announced.
I was watching a clip of Adrian on the BBC's Look North last night,
and was struck at the way he talked peacefully about being surrounded
by a loving family and feeling prepared and ready for his inevitable
death. It reminded me of people in the Colne Valley, which is covered
by Adrian's paper, talking about elderly friends becoming "yondery"
for the transition which we all eventually face.
Adrian's blog ( baldyblog.freshblogs.co.uk/ ) speaks eloquently
in his own words.
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We're supposed to like talking about the weather in Britain, but I'm
running out of patience with its behaviour this August. It's not just
the dreariness of dull skies and endless rain, but the damage it's
doing to so many people. Floods? Only a few. But York has been dealt
a body blow by the cancellation of the entire Ebor racing festival
this week. Last year, it was the Game Fair at Harewood which was
cancelled in a sea of mud. Each time, the loss to the local economy
has run into many millions of pounds.
Still, as the Yorkshire Evening Press (
www.thepress.co.uk/ )
in York reports, the grand old city isn't wanting for visitors, even
if Americans are going through one of their nervy bouts of staying at
home. A report in the paper, designed to knock down some apparently
exaggerated figures on Sky TV (a channel which does at least cover
the English regions, unlike much of the national media), says that
visitors overall are steady at 4.1 million annually.
This is a compliment to fellow-Europeans and tourists from further
east, who have made up for an overall loss to York of 80,000 US
visitors in the last two years. They are all spending more, too. This
year's booty of GBP363m from tourists is the highest-ever, allowing
for inflation too. There's gold in them old stones.
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Over the Pennines, it's good to learn from the Lancashire Evening
Post ( www.lep.co.uk/ ) that Preston may become the first city
in the country to restrict the use of surveillance methods introduced
as part of anti-terror laws. This is the story which has bubbled up
from time to time when over-zealous councils have snooped on people
suspected of mis-using school catchments, dog fouling and benefit
fraud.
A majority of Preston councillors have responded to a survey from the
Evening Post, which to its credit took up the issue, agreeing that
the Regulation of Investigatory Powers Act should be about terrorism
and serious crime, not dog-fouling.
The paper reports that the act was invoked in Preston 19 times last
year, six of them to monitor "noise nuisance" and 13 to spy on people
suspected of housing benefit fraud. But the Tory leader of the city
council, Ken Hudson, is opposed. "What we are trying to do is protect
law abiding citizens and that outweighs the balance," he says.
Most of his party colleagues in the survey disagree with him. It will
be interesting to see what happens on August 28, when the full
council debates the point. ________________________________________________________________________________________
Newcastle is famous for many things, from stotty cake to the Blaydon
races, but now it's being credited with a new phenomenon: flirty
firemen. The local Sunday Sun (
icnewcastle.icnetwork.co.uk/ )
(hooray, a rare regional Sunday paper) quotes a local cabby as
describing firecrews "shouting and leering" at girls as they speed
heroically out on emergency calls in their sexy red tenders.
But the cabby has evidence. He's dished one fire crew by filming them
on his mobile phone (shades of the Regulation of Investigatory Powers
Act), according to the Sunday Sun. The clip shows what the paper
calls one "young lady" clambering out of a fire engine while another
chats up a firefighter nearby.
House style at the Sun is delightfully respectful. Apart from the
"young lady", the story describes the cabbie as a "self-employed
hackney carriage driver." Perhaps he has a hansom. Without straying
too much from the point, when I joined the Bradford Telegraph & Argus
in 1975, I was ticked off for referring to "ladies". Knowing I'd
moved from Bath, the news editor Don Allred told me: "It's 'women' in
Bradford. We don't have ladies here."
Back in Newcastle: Tyne and Wear fire and rescue has gone to the
lengths of checking out the filmed vehicle and admitting that "it
isn't a spoof party engine booked by a hen party." I had no idea such
things were available.
Kevin Hepple, the service's Newcastle manager for community safety,
says carefully: "Tyne and Wear Fire and Rescue Service would never
condone the misuse of fire and rescue appliances or the valuable time
of professional firefighters, as it's being alleged is the case
here." For some reason, I've suddenly started humming that ditty from
the Mikado. You know the lines: "When a man's afraid/A beautiful
maid/Is a cheering sight to see..."
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MARTIN WAINWRIGHT RECOMMENDS An absolute must for young ladies,
cabbies and everyone else is the World Firefighters' Games (
www.wfg08.com/ ) which kicks off in Liverpool on Bank Holiday
Monday and lasts for nine days. Everything from angling to toughest
firefighter alive.