Maybe
Maybe it’s because I’m A Londoner . . . . . . And I’ve always loved London town As a writer, the big cities of the world call to me. They want to tell me their secrets,…
Lilt of the Fairground
My shopping trolley is humming its merry tune as its wheels roll over the paving slabs. Wednesday is when I do my big shop, few cars hurtling goodness knows where, so crossing by the roundabout is made easy. The Forest…
Scarborough Heights
Mark was going over his plans. It was something to concentrate on, it calmed him down and diluted that feeling of worthlessness, and the guilt that followed. What right did he have to feel depressed or even sad? He had…
Tha No’s
I knew she was from YorkshireBy the way she just said NOIf she’d been a GeordieIt might have been haway orIf she was from ScotlandIt would certainly be och nayNow, if she was from LondonIt might have been OkBut as…
Growing up in West Yorkshire
I remember . . . Going to school on a trolley bus, with one of dad’s white hankies tied round my face. It was the smog you see, turned the hankie black from the mills. Bradford, originally called Broad…
Carols by Candlelight
The church* is hard to spot even in daylight. There’s no spire, just what looks like a fat chimney housing a single bell. I love it for its lack of pretension. Far from perching on a hill, looking down on…
The Garden Seat
A few dwellings still nestle below Pickering castle and in one of these cottages lived a young girl with her widowed mother. To make ends meet she was expected to do a most dreadful thing. This is her story. Lizzie…
Yorkshire
Ey up Ow do Welcome to Yorkshire our land with a view And enjoy our fat rascals with a grand Yorkshire brew. When dinner-time calls at precisely midday Its fish and chips or ‘One of each‘ we say. On a…
Strange Land
What am I doing in this strange land, where ‘bar’ means gate and ‘gate’ means street? There’s a funny floating ‘t’ that I think means ‘the’, as in t’poet or t’pub, and I’m assured that ‘thou’ and ‘thee’ are alive…
Breathless
Zoe ended her call. She shivered and gave the street another quick glance. Her eyes rested on something dark – a crow, she thought, that crept along the ridge of a cottage roof. Her breath hung in the cold air…