The Chuffington Post

Last Tuesday. It was a lovely day to visit the beach and it really should not have been, because it was still February. Some places in Scotland, and one or two in England and Wales, recorded their highest February temperatures since they began to keep such records. Whether this is simply freak weather or an example of global warming is not 100% certain (as we know, the same period last year was very snowy thanks to the Beast from the East) but the seemingly ever-earlier Springs, plus the recent insane heat recorded in Australia and the storms and tornadoes which affect oceanic regions so frequently tell everyone, other than those who wilfully refuse to accept the evidence, that climate change is real. Now the photos have uploaded you don't just have to take my word that Ayr, Troon and Kilmarnock (above) were warm and sunny on Tuesday 26 February. Ayr & Troon are in South Ayrshire, where, it seems, you can easily park your car all day for nothing but are expected to pa...

The Bard of Barnsley, Ian McMillan, states in his book Neither Nowt Nor Summat that more people live in Yorkshire than in Scotland. Is he right? Let's check, shall we? According to the 2011 census Yorkshire had 5,288,200 inhabitants. That's North, South, West & East Yorkshire rather than the ceremonial county which would still include Middlesbrough and other bits of what is now called Cleveland. Scotland's population was 5,313.600. Ooh, that's close. And a bit of a surprise to me, to be honest. Only 4 of Scotland's cities are in the Top 50 most inhabited towns & cities in the UK, with Dundee only just making the cut in 47th place. Glasgow comes third and Edinburgh 9th, and Aberdeen pops up at number 29, but Yorkshire has Sheffield (6th), Leeds (8th), Bradford (11th), Hull (15th), Huddersfield (40th) and York (45th). Places 51 to 100 include no Scottish places at all but Doncaster, Rotherham, Wakefield, Barnsley and Halifax are all in there. Something...

...that the warmest place in Britain yesterday was London; the coldest was Eskdalemuir, Dumfriesshire. And it frequently was; in fact I was disappointed on the odd day that Eskdalemuir was not the coldest place in the country. Sometimes some other pretender like Aberdeen or Stranraer would claim the prize instead, but I wasn't having that, and I resolved that one day I would go there and find out the truth for myself, so today I fulfilled a lifelong dream. I have been to Eskdalemuir. Of course you've got to get there first, which probably means going to Langholm; at least that's what our road atlas told us. We should have taken the A7. If you ever want to go to Langholm from the South, my advice is to take the A7 because the other roads that appear on your map are cunningly disguised to send you in the wrong direction. At one point I calculated that we were 4 miles away, only for a road sign to point back to where we had come from and give us the unwelcome message LAN...

So, here we are, North of the Border, or rather West of it because if you travel due east from here through Gretna and out the other side you'll be back in England again. That's England in the picture, across the Solway Firth. Berwick-upon-Tweed is about 80 miles to the North of where we live now, but this is Scotland, alright.  The day we arrived our furniture was still in Sheffield. We couldn't work out how to put the central heating on, there were no firelighters to get the log burner going even if we were capable of doing it and the gas fire doesn't ignite, so it was a cold 'un. I had to admire Petal's quick decision, when we went for an early night on a couple of airbeds, to assign the one that had gone flat to me. Consequently, I spent the night on the floor. As if that wasn't uncomfortable enough, when I did finally get to sleep I was awakened by cats sitting on my feet. They had been such heroes on the journey up that we'd decided to l...

55 years on from my first football match at Chesterfield, to what, today, might be my last, since in 3 weeks time we are flitting across to the other, colder side of Hadrian's Wall and it's not very likely that I'll be coming back just to watch the Spireites. In fact, I've been watching Sheffield United instead recently but that's another story and besides, that doesn't wipe out all the memories, going back to that first game, a 2-2 draw with Workington in October 1963. The 1960s were a 4th Division era, the 1970s a 3rd Division one, with the time since then spent alternating between the two. This long spell of respectable mediocrity has been interrupted by 2 significant events; the Anglo-Scottish Cup win in 1981 and the out-of-character FA Cup run to a semi-final replay in 1997. As the Anglo-Scottish win slips further into the distance, some folk are beginning to remember it (or in most cases, hear about it) as Town beating Rangers in the Final, but t...

That's a pretty good epitaph. Bob died aged 59 in a road accident, when his car overturned on the M1 (no-one knows why) while he was driving to London. His wife Ann was also injured, but recovered to become his successor as MP for Keighley. Their son John is currently the member for Leyton & Wanstead, 200 miles away from the city of Bradford where Bob was born and where his gravestone stands now, in Undercliffe Cemetery. With the best will in the world Bradford isn't a beautiful place but Undercliffe cemetery is probably its most attractive spot, especially for anyone who likes graveyards. JB Priestley lies there as well, along with numerous Octaviuses, Jeremiahs, Mary Anns and Sarahs. The old Pennine tradition of giving boys first names that should be surnames produced the likes of Bassett Banes and Fountain Read. If Bradley Hardacre had really existed I expect his grave would lie in the cemetery as well. There are numerous huge, impressive towers and monuments er...