Nobbut Laiking, by Ross Brewster
Don’t misunderstand me when I say that the month of May was never one of my favourites as a young reporter.
Nothing wrong with May as such. It’s a delightful time of year when nature is blooming at its best and towns and villages throughout rural Britain turn to some extraordinary traditions.
Northern author Harry Pearson, better known for his football and cricket books, set off on a journey through the folk sports of Britain. He might have spotted some Cumberland and Westmorland style wrestlers, underpants outside costumes, on his merry way.
Pearson discovered secret worlds where folk competed to be champions at knur and spell, road bowling, stoolball and toad-in-the-hole, and where they spoke in the arcane language of whack-ups, sops, potties and katsticks.
It’s in his book, No Pie, No Priest, with its cast of bucolic eccentrics and impenetrable regional accidents.
I bet many of those events were round about May time. Before clouts had been cast and when a young man’s fancy turned to romance.
As a youthful reporter, May Days remind me of the nightmare of gathering dozens of names of children in the fancy dress competition and describing the outfits of May Queens and their attendants. I was never good on fashion.
May was a month of carnivals and parades, and it seemed every village in the country had its own May Queen to crown. Do they still have them? I know one carnival organiser who told me you can’t get the kids involved these days. It’s just not cool. They’d rather text each other.
These May Days were great fun to watch, but covering them for the paper was a different matter. I once missed an exclusive interview because I was chasing up the names of children in a fancy dress class.
A couple of celebrities were on the field, having a day out. They’d be happy to chat, I was told. I was more bothered about the complaints from parents if their kids’ names were missing from the report in next weekend’s paper.
As I recall, most of these rural events had one dynamic force behind them, usually female. An organiser blessed with energy and infinite patience.
I suppose the increase in second homes changed the population patterns in many of our villages. Yet, much as the words May Day sometimes send a shiver down my spine, we’re the losers as they continue to fade away.
One word Ofsted ratings are flawed
A task I had for several years, while covering football, was to award merit marks to individual players—those 5s, 6s and 7s you read after their names.
How can you really summarise a player’s 90-minute performance in just one figure? Impossible. I admit there were many times when, deadline approaching, I just stuck down a 6.
It went okay until one player collared me before a game and remonstrated volubly about the 5 out of 10 mark I had given him in a previous game. Took some getting out of, that one.
There is a small relevance between my merit marks and the recent row over how Ofsted’s school reports either praise or condemn with a single word summary.
Head teacher Ruth Perry took own life after her school had gone from “outstanding” to “inadequate.” It does not add up how a school can decline between inspections to that extent. It illustrates the weakness of one-word summaries and the unfair reputational damage they can cause to schools and staff.
Parents, and prospective parents, have a right to know which are the good and bad schools. But one word can’t capture the breadth of life in a school. There has to be some qualification of a critical comment.
In Ruth Perry’s school, the criticism concerned “safeguarding”. To me that can mean a number of things, ranging from dangers in the classroom to not having a lollipop lady.
Ex-Ofsted head Sir Michael Wilshaw favours a report card system giving more detail of a school’s strengths and weaknesses. So far the Government has proved reticent to change its policy despite its toxic reputation.
It would be wise to listen and learn to avoid future tragic consequences of just one harsh word.
50 years since Carlisle United’s most glorious moment
This is a very special time for Carlisle United fans who, for a short time anyway, can put aside the disappointment of relegation to remember the most glorious moment in the club’s history 50 years ago.
Promotion to the First Division. A feat Liverpool manager Bill Shankly described as the greatest in the history of the league.
It was a privilege to sit down the other day with Les O’Neill, one of the legends of that team, and David Dent, former chief executive of the Football League and before that 17 years as an administrator at Brunton Park, to turn over a few memories.
We went on a bit as football folk do. The get-together was filmed and will likely become a museum piece. I was reporting on United at the time and it was fascinating to look back to how we heard the news.
After the season just gone, the miracle of Brunton Park seems even more distant.
