“No matter your feeling or opinion, not having access to food is never the child’s fault.”
Marcus Rashford
“You’re booked in, virus or no virus!” said Power Mum as her fiftieth birthday approached and she sought to offload her teenage pride and joy/aka cost centre, once again.
Two nights – including a treasured Friday – to counsel, educate and spiritualise my Godson Harry, only days before he turned sixteen.
We both knew the drill by now; more instructions than an B&Q kitchen and numerous calls from Mummy to check that “Uncle” was not showing him any new bad habits. I picked him up from school with his mate in tow; conscious of a £10,000 fine from Boris, I made them wear the latest in headgear.
Tempted as I was by a beer, I decided to set a good example, especially as we had no food in the house. Risking life and limb, I braved Aldi and returned like the head of a pride of lions with a pizza. Boys night in it was.
It looked a long night as even Look North was crap; how much worse would it get without the other Harry? Fortunately, I had the season finale of Deadliest Catch as I informed my charge that hunting crabs was a rotten job.
A film was next, supposedly a comedy called The Festival. It was rated 15 which I soon took to mean the required IQ to watch; if this is the standard of comedy writing, words fail me. As a sample of its probable focus audience, Harry was in full agreement.
“How about The Yorkshire Vet?” I suggested, always a winner. He nodded, an eye already on his “release date” of Saturday morning.
The first drama featured old Peter helping to lamb a distressed yew. I could see a distressed teenager wincing as Peter’s forearm was up the back end of the patient yew. But this was life, the beauty of new life!
As the lamb finally fell out of the back end of the yew, my protege was hiding behind a cushion like I used to do when the old black and white Dracula movies were on.
“Look! It’s covered in poo!” he wailed.
Did he expect it to drop out all white and fluffy? Fast forward a few years and you can be sure his university loan funded diet of lamb curries will not be impacted.
Bucked
Remember me telling you of Bradford Council’s £100m plans for new green transport? Note too Hapless Hinchliffe pinning her candidacy for the new West Yorkshire Mayor on similar criteria. So how come the council cannot afford to mend a green footbridge?
Buck Bridge is a very well-used link between Thackley and Lower Baildon for cyclists, horse riders and walkers.
It was closed off this week with the Council claiming the repairs would cost in the region of £10k…for a plank? I emailed the Dept for Planks and here is the reply.
“The long and short of it is we visited the bridge to make some repairs and upon inspection from our engineers found it had deteriorated much faster than had been anticipated or would be expected given how relatively recently the bridge had last been refurbished. As a consequence we had no choice but to close the bridge on safety grounds but the repair costs are higher than our budgeted maintenance funding so now we’ll need to assess the costs of bringing the bridge back into use and try find the funding. Our engineer has said that given the budgets it’ll be unlikely to be this financial year but obviously we’re aware that this is a well-used bridge and will look at any opportunity we can to find the funding as quickly as possible.”
Cllr Alex Ross-Shaw – Portfolio Holder – Regeneration, Planning & Transport
Is Comical really suggesting that, with four months left of the financial year, the Council has no budget? The Victorians will be turning in their graves.
Free Speech
News last week of a change of leadership for the Conservative Group on Bradford Council with Cllr Pennington making way. He described his two years tenure as “a huge and sometimes shocking learning curve often devoid of common sense.” Surely not?
“I feel better qualified and have unencumbered freedom to represent people by actually saying what they think.” Which begs the question why he clearly did not whilst leader?
Good Luck Harry
I never thought I would ever have Look North on series link; such was Harry Gration’s draw as an entertaining, professional and unflappable presenter. We met once as he responded to a cheeky email and came to officially open the new cricket clubhouse; what a gent too.
Once the BBC announced their cuts to regional news, this outcome was sadly inevitable, the head of the pride was cast out.
Yet, how they can claim this is in the interests of efficiency when they follow up Look North each night with the dual presented drivel that is The One Show is beyond sane argument. And how many Harry Gration’s do you get for one pitiful Zoe Ball?
Every dog has his day though and I am sure Harry will have known this, but I hope we see him again soon, perhaps on Yorkshire’s new champion C5? What a coup that would be.
Good luck Harry…great job!
Patch says
No mention of brining young Hj to the bear after Yorkshire vet. One of the best Fridays in a while