The Tears of a Clown

Nestling quietly in the pretty North Nottinghamshire countryside, the attractively named Maplebeck is a community of approximately eighty people. It’s nearest conurbations are Southwell and it’s mighty Minster which is six miles to the south, and the historic market town of Newark-on-Trent to the east.

At first glance, Maplebeck, though undeniably pretty in it’s rural and unspoilt location, holds little of note more than many a similar village, that is apart from one building, the local pub known as The Beehive.

Some three decades or so back, The Beehive was extended marginally. Prior to that it had laid claim to being the smallest public house in England.

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A first for Tears of a Clown then as my good friend, Mike Grimes guests on the site to describe his recent walk on the famed ‘Three Peaks’ of The Yorkshire Dales, Pen-Y-Ghent. Wherneside and Ingleborough.

Follow Mike’s travels ‘alone upon the fells of stone’ and feel the agony and ecstasy of tackling the challenge of a day confronted by twenty-five miles of hard walking over 5000ft of altitude in total with a heavy backpack for company…

The Yorkshire Three Peaks Challenge 22^nd April 2008 -

by Mike Grimes aged 54 & 364/365th’s

So there I was on a four night and I might add well deserved break, in the Yorkshire Dales, pondering about

the many and beautiful walks that were available to me.

Which of the varied and splendid Yorkshire dales, would I lace up my boots for, to embark on my first walk of the week? My favourite, Dentdale perhaps, as it’s the least accessible of all the dales and consequently not so prone to the effects of tourism, that some of the others are. No huge caravan sites here thankfully and a couple of cracking pubs, both owned by the same family and with their own brewery as well, heaven! What about one of the larger dales such as Wensleydale, Wharfedale, Nidderdale or Swaledale, all great walking country? Or perhaps one of the many smaller dales such as Arkengarthdale, Malhamdale, Airedale, Barbondale, Bishopdale, Clapdale, Coverdale, Deepdale, Garsdale, Kingsdale, Littondale, Langstrothdale, Raydale, Ribblesdale, Teesdale, Waldendale or Widdale. Even a visit to the Howgills was a possibility.

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‘Twas a strange day right enough. My working day began at home with some difficult transcribing, but no bother really. 2.30pm heralded a trip to pretty Brackenhurst College for a 3pm start. I drove into the car park and left my car under an avenue of gorgeous Spring time apple blossom. It’s difficult to explain but at that moment I felt very blessed to come along to work in this place - after travelling through all the attractive villages I know so well.

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Beer, beer, we want more beer.

If you’re ever considering a visit to Nottingham or thereabouts and you like a pint or three of the old amber nectar you might be interested in this. The Nottingham Beer Festival has a thirty-one year-old vintage but is having to be re-housed due to the original building being closed and demolished. Fortunately some imaginative people have decided that the Nottingham Castle grounds would be a suitable venue.

The event at the original venue was a huge annual success year upon year with people queuing around the block for long periods to gain admittance. Once inside the popular event, drinkers could listen to some decent quality live music whilst taking their glasses around the scores of trestle table adorned with a wide array of real ales and ciders.

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A little nudge for any fellow Hibbies dropping by the site as I know some of you do regularly. Our good friends in Northern Ireland, NI Hibs are hosting one of their terrific tribute nights very soon, this time to the great Arthur Duncan.

There are very few Hibbies that will not know of Arthur’s achievements with Hibernian. A stalwart of 610 games for the club on the left wing and latterly left back. Arthur had the sort of career that will likely never be repeated in the modern age of football.

Remembering his days at Easter Road, Arthur was an old-fashioned winger with great pace, sometimes a little reckless with the final ball as we will all recall! Hugely effective though and a worthy addition to the armoury of talent available to the great Turnbull’s Tornadoes team of the 1970s’. Many will also look back and remember his way with the fans at that time too, a friendly wave and a little banter with Nijinsky from the touchline was a regular feature most games.

Northern Ireland Hibs proudly carry the Hibernian flag for all of us in their home. I am always happy and grateful as a lifetime Hibernian supporter to see this. We should all be proud of them and offer them our support. Much like their hugely successful tribute nights to those Hibs legends, Lawrie Reilly, Eddie Turnbull and Pat Stanton, I hope this night will be a resounding success. I’m certain it will be. Well done all.

The First of May.

Is this day one of the nicest on the calendar? Spring is rushing in after a long dark winter. Birds are happily singing everywhere, trees have that beautiful and fresh translucent green in their leaves that is seen at no other time of year. Everywhere is finally becoming active, people remember their smiles and thank their blessings all over again. We emerge into Springtime once more.

My First of May this year was partly spent with a friend walking from the local village of Papplewick through the graceful and historic Newstead Abbey, ancestral home of romantic poet, Lord Byron. Vividly coloured peacocks fought for scraps, visitors sipped tea lazily and appreciatively whilst all was well with the world for those precious moments. Water burbled and gurgled over stepping stones whilst a moorhen sat pacified mid-stream. Canada Geese took the sun on the finely-clipped grass.

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Whether it’s a fallacy or not, Hibernian Football Club have a persistent image amongst some of being a team that plays with that much over-used expression ‘flair’. The notion of a good deal of style, flash and panache has surrounded the team over the years - even when it has clearly not necessarily been deserved.

Currently the club has an uneasy battle with this image as new manager, Finn, Mixu Paatelainen shoulders the task of improving Hibernian’s fortunes with the considerable disadvantage of a less accomplished batch of players than have worn the famous green-and white jersey over the past few seasons. This situation being the result of the heavy sales of many of Hibs’ young and talented squad to be replaced by one or two arguably more humdrum professionals. As I write, it has been my observation that much criticism or certainly comment by the club’s fan base is directed at the lack of flowing football played at grass height. This opinion is probably understandable but the style (or lack of) is arguably necessary as the first team travels through a transitional stage.

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I often ponder the future of the traditional newspaper in this day and age. Fears for the future of printed matter generally have usually been unfounded, people will seemingly always want to read books rather than stare at a screen but for me newspapers are presented with different problems. In particular in appealing to those of us who’s only desire is normally to gain the news rather than education and/or entertainment from their daily read.

There’s something crisp and tactile about a good broadsheet. It can be somehow comforting and reassuring to be presented with all those sections of lengthy, involved reading come a Sunday when there just may be that window of opportunity in our busy lives to sit, relax and read. I barely do it these days personally but I certainly remember the time when I did with some pleasure. For the past ten years my Internet usage has steadily eroded my reading of newspapers though certainly not books conversely. The latter remaining one of the great pleasures of my life.

Use of the Internet has led me to to skim my news from the BBC in particular, and to some degree online versions of The Guardian, The Nottingham Evening Post and The Edinburgh Evening News. amongst others. On a personal note the Internet, often accompanied by listening to the radio also claims many of the entertainment hours I once spent reading newspapers. Newspapers have for the most part been squeezed out of my priorities.

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The City of Nottingham has had an inauspicious history in the field of popular music over the decades. Certainly for a conurbation of it’s size, it has consistently punched way below it’s weight. With respect to the many fine pub bands I’ve seen over the years in the area, the musical output of the city has seen little success. Apart from in terms of selling units, nominally the likes of the poppy Paper Lace in particular plus one-hit wonders KWS, it’s difficult to detect any great additions to rock and pop’s back catalogue. Nottingham’s rock heritage remains of a lowly order to this day, that is apart from one shining light, the great Ten Years After.

The classic Ten Years After line-up came together in 1966 before disbanding in 1974 after scaling the heights. Lead guitarist, Alvin Lee from the Nottinghamshire suburb of Wollaton originated the band with bassist, Leo Lyons from Mansfield a few miles north in Nottinghamshire. The tight, four-piece blues-rock combo was completed by drummer, Ric Lee and keyboard player, Chick Churchill.

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Hillsborough - 19 years ago today, Saturday, Apr 15,1989

It hardly seems possible that this disaster happened the best part of two decades ago.
Living in Nottingham, I had quite a few friends at the game following the Forest that fateful day. They all told the same tale - that they knew little of what was going on down at what became the infamous Leppings Lane end.

As the tragic events unfolded, many Forest supporters began to boo as they had falsely imagined that the Liverpool fans were merely causing a crowd disturbance. A friend told me that the first he realised that a tragedy was unfolding in front of him was when a young man was brought around the pitch in front of where he was, apparently dead, laid out on an advertisement hoarding which was being used as a makeshift stretcher. Soon there was a frightened hush amongst the Forest support as the hapless struggle went on to release the poor souls trapped behind those high fences.

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