In his self-imposed role of protector, he could hear the distant approach of the aircraft long before we could, and long before it appeared, and so he prepared himself for the chase by standing in the village street at Aidensfield, bushy tail and sharp ears erect, eyes to the skies and nose pointing towards the oncoming noise. And as the plane flew overhead, Bushy would bark at it and chase it away. He never failed to rid us of a trespassing aircraft — every one of them fled from his strong teeth and loud barking.
The snag was, of course, that aeroplanes did not follow the routes of roads or footpaths. Unlike motor vehicle chasers, Bushy did not confine himself to accepted highways but tore across gardens, through farmyards and over hedges in his efforts to save Aidensfield from aeroplanes.
He demolished several cloches, ruined umpteen newly planted seedbeds, damaged crops of outdoor tomatoes, potatoes, peas, beans and carrots, knocked over pedal cycles, ladders and tins of paint and sent old ladies’ shopping baskets flying. Most of the offended humans did not appreciate his gallant efforts to prevent aircraft landing in Aidensfield and so I began to receive complaints about his activities.
I went to see his owner, Mrs Cecily Carter, and told her of the complaints.
“I have written to the RAF,” she said coyly. “I’ve asked them not to direct flights over the village but they said they could not divert their flight paths because of a dog. I wrote to the Minister of Aviation too, and he said the same.”
“That’s understandable,” I said. “But if Bushy continues to cause damage in his pursuit of aeroplanes, you’re going to receive some hefty bills for compensation or repairs. And, worse still, he could cause an accident to a cyclist or a driver of any kind. He has no road sense when he’s chasing his planes away.”
“I really don’t know what to do, Mr Rhea, I have had complaints already, he knocked a bucket of whitewash all over someone’s front step one day, and another time caused a cyclist to swerve and fall off his bike into a manure heap.”
She recounted several hilarious tales of Bushy’s activities and it seems he disliked jets more than planes with propellers. But we had to halt his recklessness.
“What about one of those long leads?” I suggested. “You might have seen them — they are two posts with a line between them, rather like a clothes-line, and the dog’s lead runs along that line. The longer the gap between the posts, the more running space the dog has. If Bushy was given that kind of freedom, he could still chase his planes without causing much havoc. He’d be limited in his gallops and he’d still be happy that he was saving the village from attack.”
And so the deed was done. Bushy had a new run in Mrs Carter’s back garden and spent his days protecting us all from advancing aircraft. He did a wonderful job — not one plane has ever landed in Aidensfield.
Some of us wondered what he would have done if one had landed.
* * *
Claude Jeremiah Greengrass caused a minor panic when he decided to kill and clean his own pig. In some rural areas, cottagers continued to rear and kill their own pigs, a relic of earlier times, and if there was a spot of easy cash to be made in this way, then Claude Jeremiah would adopt the system. And so he did.
One offshoot of killing and curing one’s own pig was the bladder — farm lads would blow up the bladder and use it as a football, and having seen this, Claude decided that the best way to clean the hairs off his dead pig was to inflate it.
He reasoned that if he inflated the pig so that its belly and body were firm and rounded, he could then clean off the surplus hair in a very swift and easy manner. Shaving a man’s cheek when it was puffed out with wind was far easier than attempting to clean a sunken cheek. That was his logic.
Having killed the unfortunate animal, therefore, Claude set about sealing all its natural openings and then decided to inflate it. In the corner of one of his outbuildings he had a cylinder of gas; he wasn’t quite sure what sort of gas was contained therein but he reckoned it would be perfect for inflating the pig. Later, we thought it might have been propane but no one was quite sure. However, having connected the hose to a suitable place on the pig’s anatomy, he proceeded to open the nozzle on the cylinder and allow the escaping gas to change the pig into a very rounded carcass.
Once it was tightly blown up, Claude detached the gas pipe and was about to begin shaving the pig’s skin with a cut-throat razor, when he spotted a blowlamp in the shed. Why not singe off the hairs as all good butchers did?
According to his account of events, he lit the blowlamp and began to apply its flame to the body of the porker, very efficiently removing all the surplus hairs. But suddenly there was an almighty explosion. Claude Jeremiah was enveloped by pieces of flying pig and the noise alerted a neighbour who was hoeing in a nearby field.
He rang the fire brigade because he saw a cloud of smoke emerging from the outbuilding rapidly followed by Claude Jeremiah who was covered in some indescribable mess. The fire brigade was not needed and Claude survived, but the experience put him off smoked bacon for a long, long time. We wrote off the fire as ‘false alarm with good intent’ and a senior fire officer warned Claude about using canisters containing unknown fluids and gases.
But another dead animal found in Claude’s possession caused a minor flap. A special constable had been coming home from the pub one evening when he noticed Claude’s old van leaving the grounds of Lord Ashfordly’s estate with a dead stag on the roof. It had a fine set of antlers and seemed in prime condition, according to the witness.
Suspecting a poaching expedition, the special had telephoned Eltering police office and I received a radio call to proceed immediately to the scene. As I was on patrol at the time, it was easy to divert to Ashfordly, but as I reached the road in question, there was no sign of my quarry. This was not surprising as he’d had a few minutes start but, being aware that the special would be well acquainted with Claude, I set off towards his home and arrived in time to see his battered old van being unloaded. Sure enough, as my headlights illuminated the scene, he was lifting the carcass of a deer from his roof-rack.
“Now then, Claude,” I said, going towards him. “It looks as though we’ve got you red-handed this time.”
“Red-handed, Mr Rhea? What for?” He looked at me in amazement.
“Poaching,” I said. “Deer poaching in fact. From Lord Ashfordly’s estate . . . you were seen leaving and I have found you in possession of a dead stag, a fallow deer by the look of it. So, what’s your story about this one?”
He burst out laughing.
“Nay, lad,” he said. “This is dead all right, but it’s been dead a long time. It’s stuffed. Ashfordly threw it out and said I could have it if I would take it away. See, it’s moth-eaten and worn out, but I’ll sell it somewhere . . . you can’t have me for poaching stuffed deer, Mr Rhea. Can you?”
“No,” I said. “Sorry about this . . .”
“No problem, Mr Rhea, you’re only doing your job,” he chuckled as I crept away. He’d live on that story for years!
A similar incident happened during the summer after the village schoolchildren had been taken on an outing to the zoo. Some of my own youngsters went along and so did the little lad whose parents lived in a cottage close to the police house in Aidensfield. He was called Simon Westhouse and he was six.
Gillian Westhouse was friendly with Mary and asked if Simon could join our children for the trip; Mary wasn’t going for the teachers were looking after all the children.
But Gillian had to visit the optician in York that very day and would not return until 5 p.m. So Mary said that, after the trip, Simon could come to our house to play with our children until she returned.
When Elizabeth came home without Simon, Mary asked, “Where’s Simon?”
“He fell in the pond, he’s gone straight home to get changed,” she said. “His shoes and trousers are wet. He knows where the key is, it’s under a brick outside the back door.”
“Fell in?” Mary was horrified.
Mary went round to the Westhouse cottage and found the door open. She called upstairs to ask if Simon was all right and he shouted that he was.
“I’m getting my wet things off,” he said.
“Come round when you’ve finished then,” Mary called upstairs to him. “And have some tea with us.”
But Mrs Westhouse returned home early; Mary had just come back from speaking to Simon when Gillian came to our front door, saying she’d met a friend and had got a lift home. Mary explained about Simon, at which Gillian rushed to attend to him.
But within minutes, she was back at our front door looking worried.
“Nick,” she said. “Can you come? Simon’s locked himself in the bathroom he says he’s got a friend with him, he won’t let me in.”
“A friend?” I puzzled.
“He was alone when he came home,” said Elizabeth who was hovering nearby. “Definitely, no one came with him.”
“I’m sure he was talking to someone, I could hear him chattering in the bathroom . . .”
As Simon was an only child, and as his father was working in York until about eight o’clock, I could understand Gillian’s concern. There had been a recent case where a man had entered a child’s bedroom to assault the youngster in bed, and it had created a lot of publicity and alarm. So I went around to the house.
As I tapped on the bathroom door, I could hear water splashing in the bath; I repeated my knock and heard Simon saying, “Don’t make a noise, you are my friend. I will look after you . . .”
“He’s got somebody in there,” I said. “A friend . . . Simon!” I called. “It’s Mr Rhea, can you let me in?”
There was no response.
“Have you a ladder?” I asked Gillian. “And is the bathroom window open?”
“Yes,” she answered to both questions.
I went outside, placed the ladder against the wall and climbed up to the bathroom window.
It was ajar, and it was an easy task to remove the catch and open it wide. And as I peered inside, I saw Simon sitting in the bath, quite naked, and he was washing a duck.
“Simon!” I called. “Where on earth did you get that duck?”
“He’s my new friend,” he said. “I brought him home from the zoo . . .”
It seemed that Simon had taken a fancy to the duck, which was a very tame ornamental specimen, known as a bufflehead. It was a beautiful duck, chiefly white, with black wings and a large black head with purple, blue and green highlights. There was a large white patch on the back of its head. The bird, which is quite a rare species in this country, was just over a foot in length.
Simon had waded into the pond, picked up the bird and stuffed it inside his windcheater. In the darkness of his clothing, the bird had never struggled or cried out and he had brought it home literally under the eye of his teacher. His clothes were wet and dirty but neither he nor the bird was harmed.
“We’ll have to take him back,” I said. “He needs proper food and we have none here, besides he’s not yours . . .”
The zoo officials were very nice about it; in fact, they hadn’t noticed the duck’s absence and said that Simon could adopt it, although he must leave it at the zoo. And so Simon found himself the adopted father of a bufflehead duck.
He called it Meredith for reasons I shall never know and paid periodic visits to feed and talk to his new friend.
But after their initial meeting, they never again bathed together.
9. Say That Again?
Egad! I think the interpreter is the hardest
to be understood of the two!
RICHARD BRINSLEY SHERIDAN, 1751–1816
The English are noted for their failure to learn the languages of others. We travel the globe to find that our language is both spoken and understood by a huge proportion of the world’s population, and consequently, we do not trouble to master the tongues even of our continental neighbours.
Even more astonishing is that we do not truly master our own language; the grammar of many English people is awful and one of my pet hates is the wide and annoying use of the double negative. Quite educated people will say “I don’t want none of that” or “I haven’t got no more money” or “I don’t want no more to drink.” Perhaps I am fortunate in having a good primary school teacher who made sure her pupils did not fall into that lazy way of speech — she made sure that we understood that if we hadn’t got nothing, it meant we must have something!
Here in Yorkshire, of course, we are bilingual. We proudly speak the so-called Queen’s English, albeit with a distinctive accent, but many of us also speak Yorkshire dialect. Dialect is not mere accent, however. Dialect is the use of ancient and very local words and phrases.
I have highlighted this aspect of Yorkshire life in earlier “Constable” books, mentioning that in Yorkshire there are well over 100 dialects. The language of the West Riding differs immensely from that of the North Riding which in turn can be distinguished from that of the East Riding. In North Yorkshire alone there is a huge difference between the speech of the dales and the speech of the coastline. Perhaps it takes a keen ear to distinguish such differences, but I thought I would include a handful of words now, just to show that Yorkshire folk do speak a different language and do not merely speak with a distinctive accent.
Here are a few dialect words: bautering, betwaddled, bounderstoops, brummelneeased, canthrif, caumbrils, chalter-heeaded, clocker, crambazzled, gallowers, gammerstang, glishy, goulders, grouty, jaggins, jotherum, ket, lagged, loppered, parlous, parsling, reeafshafts, rudsteeaks, scalderings, scran, semmanty, shackles, sieves, skelbeeasts, skimmer, spawldering, swingletrees, theeaking, tivvying, yamley and yows. There are thousands of such words which pepper the conversation of country folk, particularly those in the more remote parts of the Yorkshire Dales and the North York Moors.
Many older folk do not know any other word for the object in question, consequently there are bound to be misunderstandings. On the moors near my home, a visitor asked the purpose of a small enclosure and the farmer said, “Why, it’s where t’yowes are heeafed.”
A yow is a ewe, the moorland sheep roaming free upon our moors, but the youngsters remain enclosed with their mums until they know their unmarked boundaries. When released, they will then remain upon that stretch of moorland without being fenced in. Heeaf is the local word for that procedure; heaf or heeaf means abode or habitat. Ewes that are heeafed are those which know their boundaries. My moorland friend explained that in a handful of words, but his listener still failed to understand.
Fortunately, I was brought up to speak my native North Riding dialect and consequently had no trouble understanding the conversations of true Yorkshire folk, but even so many misunderstandings did arise.
For example, a lady motorist stopped in Aidensfield to seek directions from me. She asked if there was a bank in the village, so I sent her along to the outskirts where a steep hill climbs to the moors. I thought she wanted to park the car somewhere with wide open views of the countryside, and there was a lovely position at the top of that bank. She returned and said she could not find the bank — all she had found was a very steep hill with moorland around it. In Yorkshire, a bank is a steep hill — it seems she was seeking a place to draw out some cash.
A clear case of misunderstanding, which could have had fatal consequences occurred in the West Riding, a county with its own distinctive mode of speech.
When British Rail installed its early automatic level-crossing barriers, there were advance warnings upon our roads in the form of flashing lights and large written signs.
The signs told motorists to, “Stop while lights flash”. Those of us outside the West Riding, which includes the rest of the world, would have halted our vehicles and waited when the lights were flashing because that flashing indicate
d the coming of a train. But in the West Riding, “while” means “until”. A West Yorkshire person will say “wait while I return,” which in their case means “wait until I return”. Thus, when our friends from West Yorkshire first encountered those new signs, they halted their cars to wait until the lights flashed — and then set off! For them, the sign’s message was exactly the opposite of that which was intended. The confusion was quickly rectified with no fatalities. Now, the signs clearly tell us to stop when the lights show.
During my service at Aidensfield, I did encounter some minor embarrassments because of my Yorkshire manner of speech. One which bears repeating occurred at a garden fete where the lady of the manor asked me to instruct one of her members of staff to fetch the white Jag. I found him and said that her ladyship wanted the white Jaguar, whereupon he said they didn’t have a white Jaguar. It transpired she wanted a drink of orange squash which was in a white jug on one of the stalls. She’d asked for the white jug, not the white Jag.
Here in Yorkshire, a jug is jug, not a “jag”; a bus is a bus and not a “bass”, grass is grass and not “grarse”, bath is bath and not “barth”, and we also pronounce “fat” correctly.
Similarly, when it was suggested that Lady Ashfordly be asked to open a garden fete and remain as guest of honour, the posh-speaking secretary of the organizers, at whose meeting I was present, made it clear that three chairs would have to be arranged for her. I could not understand why she needed three chairs, unless she was bringing friends, and the same puzzle baffled the chairman.
“What’s she want three chairs for?” he asked the secretary.
“Cheers, you silly man,” she said. “Hip, hip, hoorays. Cheers, not chairs. We need to arrange three cheers for her ladyship after her opening speech.”
It was this kind of misunderstanding that caused something of a flap due to some visiting, trouble-seeking students overhearing a discussion about a lorry accident.
A loaded lorry ran away down the hill leading into Aidensfield. Its driver managed to steer it off the road and it ran on to the moor but continued several yards down a slope and overturned into a gully, spilling its load. The driver was not injured and managed to climb out of the passenger side window to seek assistance. The lorry was carrying five tons of gravel; this spilt into a narrow gully which, in winter, was the course of a fast running moorland stream.
CONSTABLE AROUND THE GREEN a perfect feel-good read from one of Britain's best-loved authors (Constable Nick Mystery Book 12) Page 18