The slanted
Earth points
Its northern pole away
From the sun.
The hemisphere turns
Its shoulder from the warmth.
Autumn has begun.
Around the church, bells now silent,
Trees ring in the season’s change.
Leaves are shed,
Spiked conker cases fall and split,
And turn the pavement red.
[Poem - 23 September 2026]
A ticket to Beamish lasts all year, and we generally get three visits in – December for the festive displays, Easter or summer with the grandkids, and best of all early September when it is warm but not too hot and the school parties have not yet got themselves organised.
So it was pleasantly quiet last Friday,
enabling us to sample some of the attractions often crowded out on busy days.
Iced buns were aplenty at the Edwardian bakery, £2.50 each but bigger than some
loaves you see. The 1950s cinema was open for a look round and we even took in
the 11:30 show of coloured advert slides, a coming-soon trailer, and a short
feature. These last two in glorious black and white, all ending with two verses
of the national anthem, standing optional (though in my memory the tradition
was to join the stampede to the exits while the opening drumroll was still
building itself up).
Up to Pockerley Manor for a pub lunch 1820s
style at the Drovers Tavern. Emerging, we spotted puffs of smoke rising from
the railway so strolled down to the engine shed and straight onto Locomotion
for the short pull up the incline. We were accompanied by a well-behaved early
bird school trip, and it was good to see primary age children still able to get
excited about a train ride.
We rode round to the town atop the tram
then walked back to the entrance via the railway station and fairground. As
ever, a grand day out.
[Authentic selfie - 17 September 2026]
There was a young lady named June
For whom Bovril was really a boon
On toast spread so thickly
It would make one feel sickly
She’d ladle it on with a spoon
[Limerick - 10 September 2026]
Tracy Stopford-Baines had an identity crisis. Everyone at school thought, having heard the name, they knew all about Tracy Stopford-Baines. Upper class twit was one of the milder labels used.
Why’ve you got a girl’s name, he was asked. And, why’ve you got two second names, doesn’t your mum know who your dad was?
The answers, though
nobody cared, were: (a) his grandfather was Irish, hence Tracy. No E he always
had to say; and (b) his mother’s family, the Baines, were full of their own
importance and long heritage. Long but long fallen on harder times, such that
Emily Baines had ended up marrying (in haste to preserve legitimacy) Johnny
Stopford, ace winger of the Salford rugby league team. Of course, if he’d been
ace winger of a football team, say Everton or Liverpool, it would all have been
different. Then Tracy Stopford-Baines would have been accepted without question
by his peers at some fee-paying private school in leafy Cheshire.
But not at Ellesmere
Comprehensive in Eccles.
[Flash fiction - 3 September 2026]
