Les bicyclettes de Yorkshire

We heard this week that the Tour de France cycle race is coming to England next year, and the opening two days will feature some hard riding in Yorkshire.

Our local media have been going bananas. Well, why not? We’ve got plenty of steep hills for the riders to go at, and some lovely scenery and historic towns, and…OK, you get the picture. They’re only with us for two days, then it’s off down south, and onward to France itself for most of the tour. But that hasn’t stopped Yorkshire folk from rejoicing in the excitement of the sport and the prospect of many thousands of enthusiasts flocking here to spend their hard-earned brass.

I can’t help wondering what the French think about calling it the Tour de France when part of it happens this side of the Channel. York, Leeds, Ilkley, Sheffield, Holmfirth, Aysgarth…the names lack that Gallic je ne sais quoi, don’t they? Oh well, Sand-fairy Anne, as my Dad used to say in his Churchillian French. And he’d be right; it doesn’t – matter, that is, what they call the race, as long as the cyclists know which way to go, and the spectators know where to stand…

AND as long as they all ride a good clean race without dosing themselves with any naughty substances to help them along. They won’t need them, anyway, if they stick to a proper local diet: Yorkshire pudding with their roast beef, and Wensleydale cheese with their home-made apple pie. This last may strike some non-Yorkshire folk as odd, but we say, “An apple pie without some cheese is like a kiss without a squeeze.” To anyone who hasn’t tried this lovely combination, I strongly recommend it, but don’t do what a friend of mine in London did once, and add custard. Really, I despair of southerners sometimes!

I suppose we’ll all start brushing up on our French phrases to welcome the cyclists and their entourages and fans. My conversational French used to be quite good many moons ago, though it may be a touch rusty now. Still, I’m sure it would come back to me, although I’d struggle with cycle-related chats about punctures or dodgy brakes, or details of race stages. How do you say, “That hill’s an absolute stinker, watch out for the 1-in-4 S-bend near the top or you’ll go base-over-apex”?

Being a lover of puns, I always enjoy the spoof “fractured French” translations that go the rounds from time to time, and doubtless will again next year. Rendering “pas de deux” as father of twins, and “mal de mer” as mother-in-law, makes me smile, not to mention translating “Chateaubriand” as your hat’s on fire. And in our family we call Chateauneuf du pape “The Pope’s Newcastle.”

I wonder if the French have the same sort of jokes the other way round? If so, what can they make of “Ee by gum” or “Where there’s muck there’s brass”?

Well, bonne chance to the cyclists; rather them than me, flogging up and down all those hills. Let’s make sure they enjoy themselves in Yorkshire, and hope they can make time to look around them as they belt along and admire the beautiful countryside they’re riding through. However beautiful is La Belle France, there are bits of Yorkshire that beat the rest of the world hollow.

It’s not easy being green

Kermit the Muppet thought not, anyway. And this little frog which recently appeared in our garden pond seems to have taken that idea to its logical conclusion.

Our pond has hundreds of frogs in a good summer, (sometimes toads too, but it’s quite hard to tell them apart.) Up till now they’ve ranged in colour through shades of green or brown. This is the first jet-black one we’ve seen.

We were quite excited, but having done a quick hop around the Internet, we learned that black frogs aren’t that uncommon really; finding one is nowhere near as exciting as, say, discovering a black tulip in the flower bed. We were still pleased though, and Richard picked him out for a brief photo opportunity, which he took in his stride before disappearing back into his own world.

There’s one thing I’ve never understood about frogs and toads as they’re presented in stories and songs. Why are frogs seen as good guys, while toads are considered villains of the deepest (green or brown) dye? They look pretty similar; frogs have smoother skins whereas toads have drier, warty skins, and there are some internal distinctions too. But the similarities are much more obvious than the differences. So why the contrast in their public images?

It goes back into folklore and legend, doesn’t it? Frogs are regarded as cute, smart, and, if not exactly cuddly, at least worthy of close contact…think of those stories where a young girl kisses froggie and he turns into a handsome prince. Then there are the various versions of the folk-song, “A frog he would a-wooing go…” where the hero is a kind of amphibious man-about-town. I wonder if, like so many time-honoured ditties we now sing as nursery rhymes, that was originally a satire on some long-gone leading aristocrat or politician? If so it wasn’t a vicious one.

But nobody even in fairyland would consider kissing a toad. They’re seen as wicked, poisonous, the stuff of witchcraft. Remember the three witches in Macbeth, brewing up their cauldron of nasties:

“Toad that under cold stone
Days and nights has thirty-one
Swelter’d venom sleeping got,
Boil thou first in the charmed pot.”

Thank goodness for Kenneth Graham in WIND IN THE WILLOWS, who made some effort to counteract the poor toads’ bad press, as did A. A. Milne’s adaptation for the stage, TOAD OF TOAD HALL. In both, young Toad is something of a tearaway, with his fast car and his complete disrespect for the court of law (addressing the judge as Fat-Face,) followed by his wild escape to freedom. He’s a likeable character with plenty of charm, and when he promises to reform his behaviour we profoundly hope that he won’t.

As I’ve said, ours is an equal opportunities garden for both toads and frogs. We’ll make them all welcome. But I confess I’ve never fancied kissing any frog with a view to acquiring my very own prince. Not that I’m anti-monarchist or anything, you understand…I just believe in letting sleeping frogs lie.

A swarm of bees in June…

There’s good news this week for anyone who likes honey.

Most people know that there’s been a major threat to honey-bees over the past few years from a vicious little parasite, the varroa mite, which invades beehives and can destroy whole colonies by infecting them with a fatal virus. Now scientists have announced an important step forward in understanding the mechanism by which the mites actually wipe out the hives, and though they haven’t yet got the ultimate answer to the danger, they are nearer to finding it.

I like honey, and I like bees. My mother used to keep half-a-dozen hives in our garden when I was small, and I’ve always found them fascinating, not frightening. Our bees knew me, and I knew enough to avoid alarming them by sudden loud noises. They don’t sting unless they must, because it’s a suicide mission for them if they do, and I used to go and talk to them quite often. Yes, talk to them…country people say you should inform your bees of family news, and as a child I always did. It was comforting, especially with bad news. If I’d had a rotten day at school that I didn’t want to tell my parents about, I told the bees instead, and felt better.

In autumn I used to turn the handle of the honey extractor, a machine a bit like a dust-bin with a handle on top. The combs were fixed vertically inside this and when I turned the handle they spun round and round, and the centrifugal force (or is it centripetal?) expelled the clear honey from the wax, and it dripped down to the bottom of the bin. Quite hard work, but very satisfying. I expect there are electric extractors these days.

The Romans knew a lot about keeping bees. Honey was their main form of sweetener, sugar being hardly available at all. They had some odd theories: for instance they thought the head of each hive was a King Bee, and their ideas on how bees reproduced were somewhat weird. But in practice they looked after their hives well, and valued them highly.

Several Roman writers have left us detailed accounts of caring for their bees. One of the best known is by Virgil, who wrote a whole poem on the subject. And he is said to have hidden his valuables in his beehives to keep them from being looted by soldiers. Now that’s a neat idea…not to mention a nice little detail to put into a novel: someone in a crisis using their hives as a safe for the family jewels.

I remember my mother dealing with swarms, using the best ones to set up new hives. She was calm and careful, and wore all-covering clothes and a hat with a veil, so she never got stung. There was an old country rhyme she used to recite:

A swarm of bees in May is worth a load of hay.

A swam of bees in June is worth a silver spoon.

A swarm of bees in July isn’t worth a fly.

In other words, a new hive needs time to build up honey stocks before the winter comes. I bet the Romans had a similar pearl of wisdom couched in a poem or a proverb. Or maybe not; the flowering season would be longer for most of the Empire than here. Hmmm…something else interesting to look up!

Smile, it’s Valentine’s Day

I hadn’t planned to blog about St. Valentine’s Day. I mean it’s all bean said, hasn’t it? If you’re young and romantic it’s great, if you’re old and cynical it’s great to remember being young and romantic…and if you’re selling chocolates or greetings cards, it’s one of the highlights of your year.

But today at the supermarket something made me laugh out loud.  On the meat counter they were offering packs of “British Valentine Cupid Sirloin Steak” (two pieces, naturally,) which was steak coated with “a blend of herbs and spices.”

Cupid? Not sure where he fits in, but somebody in Marketing had an idea that was either inspired or off-the-wall…but either way amusing. We bought a pack, of course. Because this product had an added charm that was bound to appeal to all Yorkshire Valentines, young and old, romantic and cynical. It was selling at half price.

We haven’t eaten it yet, as tonight’s meal was already planned, and Cupid’s steak, according to the label, will keep till Feb 17th. We’ll enjoy it tomorrow though.

Who says romance is dead? Marketing certainly isn’t.

They swoop to conker

Yes, well, regulars here will know I can’t resist awful puns…but lurking beneath this one is some good news, which I can’t resist either.

Horse-chestnut trees here in Yorkshire are threatened by an alien moth, the chestnut leaf miner. This little perisher first arrived in Britain nine years ago and has steadily worked its way north to God’s Own County. It lays its eggs in its favourite trees, so its caterpillars can feast on the leaves, and their chomping damages the trees so much that they produce smaller nuts – in other words, they threaten the conker harvest. Shock horror – and the scientists have failed to find a cure for this pesky invasion.

Like everyone who played conkers as a child, I’ve a soft spot for horse-chestnuts still. Just last week, one of the friends I go dog-walking with had her young grandson with her, and he was hunting for conkers. The two trees on our route are, happily, undamaged so far; no tell-tale horrible brown patches on the leaves. His enthusiasm took me back to my schooldays, when at seven or eight or nine we kids used to throw sticks into trees to make the chestnuts fall down, and then extract them from their prickly green shells.

We usually did this at dinner-time, in the woods around our school, and pocketed our trophies till the end of afternoon lessons. Often the conkers were white when we first prized them out, but they’d always gone brown by the end of school. I still don’t know why that was…I suppose contact with the air changed their shells somehow; it couldn’t be light, because they were tucked away out of sight. There are few darker spots on the earth’s surface than the bottom of an eight-year-old’s pocket.

Oddly enough, I remember next to nothing about playing with the conkers. I do recall some of us baking them in the oven to harden them (others of us soaked them in vinegar, I think.) So we must have done battle with them. But it’s the fun of collecting them on sunny autumn days that I fondly remember now. And that’s why I was sad to think that this generation of schoolchildren might have to make do with inferior conkers.

But nature, as they say, is a wonderful thing. (Who did say that? Dunno, but it’s true all the same.) All’s not lost; the cavalry is flying to the rescue. Literally. Because it’s been found that blue-tits enjoy eating the invading caterpillars. So surely there’s a good chance that as the pests get more numerous, so will the blue-tit population, and the pests will eventually be controlled. Even if the caterpillars can’t be wiped out completely yet, (and if that were possible, presumably they’d never have managed to spread this far north,) the blue-tits will make sure they don’t have things all their own way, and buy time for science to come to the aid of nature. Science, after all, is another wonderful thing…mostly.

So more power to the blue-tits. I’ll make sure to put out winter feed for them, so they are fit and healthy and nest-building madly next spring, ready to wipe out the caterpillars. Autumn without big fat brown conkers for kids to play with would be a very sad season.