Dear all,
The Caring Together offices are now closed for the holiday season, returning on the 4th January 2021. We will be turning our phones on periodically to check for anything urgent and calling into the office, and making some necessary visits and calls. See also the useful list of contacts from the insert in our newsletter and detailed below. Festive and New Year’s wishes from us all!
Useful Numbers Dec 2020
THINGS would be worse if it wasn’t for the BBC’s health correspondent, who always signs off his pieces with a jaunty little rhyme: ‘Dominic Hughes – BBC News.’
It’s a pity he did not have a much earlier life as a foreign correspondent, in which case he could have signed off with ‘well, that’s all from me, Dominic Hughes – Moscow’ or ‘That’s all from me – Abyssinia.’ (Which might become mildly amusing if you say it aloud at least three times; if that doesn’t work try it on a very old person, who might just remember it from the days before they invented clever jokes
And yes I know that Abyssinia is now used only to describe an area of Ethiopia (because I’ve looked it up on Google) and that I’ve just sinned by recycling a terrible ancient joke, but these are hard times. We have to accept recycled bad jokes because, for now, there’s not much else in the television store cupboard.
Besides, old jokes aren’t always unfunny, just nearly always. Dad’s Army, Fawlty Towers, Morecambe and Wise or Tommy Cooper (most of the time) still work; I think this is more than can be said of On The Buses or the Carry On films.
It’s not the sexism or racism that bothers me, it’s the feeling that I’m being bashed in the ribs by somebody who won’t leave me alone until I laugh so much I need medical help. This is why I tire of Sid James or Reg Varney quite quickly but still laugh at Basil Fawlty and Captain Mainwaring, whose winning and enduring quality is that they have no sense of humour whatever.
I’m also resistant to Michael McIntire. I have to admire him on the grounds that he is (says Google) ‘the highest grossing stand-up comedian in the world’; it’s just that, were he sit next to me on a train and start to shower me with amusing anecdotes, I would feel the need to pull the communication cord, assuming that, in the wake of the pandemic, there are still such things as communication cords, and, come to that, trains.
Perhaps the secret is to make people laugh without looking like you want them to laugh, a trick which 12-year-old boys can’t usually manage but should be within the range of most grown-ups (excluding The Krankies, who are obviously a special case).
I learned this week that Humphrey Lyttleton, who hosted the BBC Radio 4 show ‘I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue’ from 1972 to 2007, didn’t initially think the programme, which has just been voted best radio comedy of all time, was very funny at all. He was so disgruntled with it that he wanted it to be taken off the air and only enjoyed the bits where he made rude comments about the audience and his fellow performers.
I suppose he mellowed over his 35-year stint on the show, but he still maintained an air of contempt for whole enterprise and never gave any sign of being amused. That’s exactly why the listeners loved it.
And now it’s my duty to wish you all a merry Christmas within limits. If possible. And a joyous new year.
Oh Christmas Tree
Oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas tree
Oh no I’m singing to a Christmas tree
Rum eggnog in me
Rum eggnog in me
Oh no I’m singing to the Christmas tree
Oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas tree
Much pleasure thou can give me
Oh mistletoe
Oh mistletoe
I’hve a Christmas tree I want to show
Oh Christmas tree
Oh Christmas tree
Oh, I just kissed a Christmas tree
Oh Christine tee hee
Oh Christine tee hee
I thought you was a Christmas tree
No more rum for me
No more rum for me
Or my wife will toss me out
With the Christmas tree
Notes: I have no wife, and I have no tree, I may have some rum, but shhhhhh
Copyright: Arthur Vaso | Year Posted 2014
Dear all,
Who remembers as a child hanging out of the train window and getting soot in their eyes? My memory was the Summer outing from Burley Methodist Church Sunday School – all the way to – Burley in Wharfedale! Our parents waved us off at Headingley Station, what an adventure being on a train without them!
After a tiring day of games and picnic by the river we were back on the train, taking it in turns to hang out of the window. By the time we were reunited with our families our eyes were smarting and stinging with the soot from the steam engine. Before long it was the birth of diesel trains and I would be asking Dad to take me on the new ‘diesel’. One day we left the Station, I think Dad just picked the next diesel out and we travelled as far as Cudworth, near Barnsley. We can’t have known there wasn’t a return train for a couple of hours, or what seemed like it. I don’t know what Cudworth is like nowadays but in the 50s it certainly wasn’t up to much; I remember a long walk round and buying sweets.
After the initial excitement of diesels I found them very boring. Gone were the compartment carriages to be replaced by open ones with bus seats. Next it was the turn of the ‘Inter-City 125’ luxury and speed. In the early 70s whilst working in Insurance, I was thrilled to travel to Folkestone and Exeter by train enjoying lunch in the restaurant car at no expense to myself. I decided I would travel on the ‘Sleeper’ next (the train not the track sleepers!) but sadly that didn’t materialise.
In December 1974 I joined my boyfriend for the recording of the Christmas “It’s A Knockout” at Aviemore. Travelling up by road wasn’t a problem apart from trying to apply false lashes in a less than comfortable truck! With no snow having fallen, the Aviemore Centre had to be covered with false snow by the Fire Service but on the way back which was by train, I was travelling alone and we ran into the most frightening blizzard. Typical! More than enough real snow now. The train stopped, there was no heating and no Buffet. A compartment train too where I was the lone passenger, not knowing whether to keep my sheepskin coat on or put it over my freezing legs. Well this was the time of the mini-minis and knee high boots. Thankfully an hour later the train continued its crawl of a journey to Edinburgh.
The Summer of 1982 had rail strikes and travelling three weekends to Brighton, Southern Region however, were running their services. Travelling by coach to London then walking to Victoria Rail Station in intense heat was not good, nor Friday rush hour with the commuters. I made a mental note never to live in London!
Since then I’ve always enjoyed the opportunity of steam travel by the Keighley & Worth Valley, the North Yorkshire Moors Railway or other such trains which continue to be introduced to a younger generation of travellers too. My favourite charter train was Leeds to Edinburgh for the Leeds Rhinos Challenge Cup Final at Murrayfield. Deciding to book First Class we expected something special. ‘Special’ was being over optimistic – ‘different’ was more in keeping. The train was made up of a variety of coaches from bygone years and to be fair, those of us travelling ‘1st’ did enjoy a better quality of moquette seating. From thereon we were all as one. The refreshments trolley was a wooden tea wagon, circa 1930s, on which sat a cream and green tea urn. It was secured to the trolley by rope tied to the legs and was rather battered and bruised. We all hoped an appointment had been made for a visit to a panel beater on our return. What a terrific atmosphere on board though and I recall it was the inaugural trip for my first mobile phone. A ‘Nokia’ which when it rang for the first time, I froze and daren’t pick it up! Our travelling companions cheered me on with so much banter I couldn’t hear a word anyway!
Recent rail travel with the umpteen train operators and even more unfathomable rail tickets do not make things easy. Of course rail travel is so much cheaper abroad with cleaner trains and the knowledge that they will run. An ambition was to travel on the ‘Orient Express’ but having seen ‘Whicker’s World’ I felt I’d done it, so promised myself a trip on ‘Switzerland’s ‘Glacier Express’ which I duly took in 2009. Memories can be made though with most journeys, whether a miniature steam railway or the new ‘Azuma’. For me and through my child eyes, the golden age of steam had the edge, the excitement and glamour. Instead I will continue to use my Senior Railcard to travel by – not ‘Trans-Siberian’ but ‘Transpennine Express’. I look forward to a more frequent timetable and the chance of cheaper tickets again. Probably as much chance of travelling on the ‘Venice-Simplon Orient.!
Picture sourced from Yorkshire Evening Post
It Was As If a Ladder’ by Jane Hirshfield
It was as if a ladder,
and each rung,
real to itself,
round or slat,
narrow or wide,
rope or metal –
and as you ascended,
real to yourself,
the rungs directly above
you solid,
directly beneath you, solid.
Scent of peeled orange
mixed with gasoline,
sound of hammers.
Farther below,
the rungs one by one vanished.
F arther above,the rungs one by one
vanished.
And the side-rails’ lines
vanished, as into
a drawing by Brunelleschi.
Scent of peeled orange
and gasoline,
sound of hammers.
Grip now, night-dog, your barking:
this ladder in air,
invented by others, received by others.
Source: The Guardian
Lord Mayor of Leeds, Councillor Eileen Taylor and the Lord Mayor’s Consort, Mr Audley Taylor send some Christmas and New Year Wishes
Coming up…
On Saturday 19th & Sunday 20th December Gateway Church will be holding their annual Carol Service at St Mark’s Church, this year there are three different in-person events to choose from!
Head to their website gatewayleeds.net/ for booking and more details.
We are in December, and Leeds Discovery Centre have created a Video Advent Calendar. Every day you can open a door to see what object their curators and staff have found in the Store 🎅🤶 🎄
You can catch up by opening doors 1 to 13 and each day thereafter there will be another one to open.
Click on the link below
