Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

When I reached G Block, I overheard an old man talking to a police officer by the stairwell. “I can smell something burning under my seat, but I just can’t put my finger on it,” he said. Although his words were unusual enough to echo in my ears, I walked on. As I sat back down, I remember checking the time on the clock in the corner of the Midland Road terrace and Bradford End. It was 3.40pm. I was just about to open my cola when the tiniest trail of mysterious white smoke began to rise from the front of our seating section. “What’s that?” one supporter asked. Nobody had any idea, and bafflement grew as the smoke did. “Piss on it, piss on it, piss on it!” those on the paddock on our left started to chant. “What a pity I’ve just been – I could have put that out!” I announced, to wry smiles all round. Over the next minute or so the small white cloud of smoke slowly expanded. “Bradford’s burning, fetch the engines … fire fire, fire fire. Bradford’s burning …” sang the paddock.

Order the book

Subscribe to the free daily email

To facilitate reading, the spelling and punctuation of elderly excerpts have generally been modernised, and distracting excision scars concealed. My selections, translations, and editions are copyright.

Abbreviations:

• ER: East Riding
• GM: Greater Manchester
• NR: North Riding
• NY: North Yorkshire
• SY: South Yorkshire
• WR: West Riding
• WY: West Yorkshire

Comment

Comment

It is curious that the Wikipedia entry for the song is entitled “Scotland’s burning,” when I think even in Scotland people know it as “London’s burning.”

Something to say? Get in touch

Original

When I reached G Block, I overheard an old man talking to a police officer by the stairwell. “I can smell something burning under my seat, but I just can’t put my finger on it,” he said. Although his words were unusual enough to echo in my ears, I walked on. As I sat back down, I remember checking the time on the clock in the corner of the Midland Road terrace and Bradford End. It was 3.40pm.

I was just about to open my cola when the tiniest trail of mysterious white smoke began to rise from the front of our seating section. “What’s that?” one supporter asked. Nobody had any idea, and bafflement grew as the smoke did.

“Piss on it, piss on it, piss on it!” those on the paddock on our left started to chant. “What a pity I’ve just been – I could have put that out!” I announced, to wry smiles all round.

Over the next minute or so the small white cloud of smoke slowly expanded.

“Bradford’s burning, fetch the engines … fire fire, fire fire. Bradford’s burning …” sang the paddock.

201 words.

Tags

Tags are assigned inclusively on the basis of an entry’s original text and any comment. You may find this confusing if you only read an entry excerpt.

• Association football (5) ·
• Bradford City A.F.C. (1) ·
• Bradford City stadium fire (1) ·
• 📌Bradford (72) ·
• English Football League (1) ·
• Fire (14) ·
• Folk music (10) ·
• Lincoln City F.C. (1) ·
• Lincoln (1) ·
• Music (25) ·
• Scotland’s Burning (1) ·
• Song (20) ·
• Valley Parade (1) ·
• West Riding of Yorkshire (147) ·
• Wood (2) ·

All tags.

Similar

• 1 April 1689: Miraculous extinction of a roof fire at Thrybergh Hall
• 1 February 1829: Jonathan Martin’s attempt to burn down York Minster is frustrated by a frolicsome chorister
• 1 January 1891: Eleven snowflake girls are burnt to death during a school entertainment at Upper Wortley (Leeds)
• 1 December 1851: John (65) and Betty (73) of Wibsey are at long last united in a “funny wedding” at Bradford
• 15 December 1888: Frank Kidson longs for Leeds’s musical Christmasses past
• 19 February 1857: William Maddison goes into a burning Lundhill Colliery, Barnsley, to look for survivors of the firedamp explosion that killed 189 of the 200 men and boys underground
• 8 June 1561: A York official explains why textile manufacturing has left his city for the West Riding
• 18 July 1973: Maddy Prior on Steeleye Span’s support set for Jethro Tull at the LA Forum tonight
• 5 September 1860: Friends of Elizabeth Mitchell (14), murdered by a fellow-servant at Upton (Pontefract), bear her to her grave at South Kirkby
• 27 January 1830: William Cobbett rides from Leeds to black Sheffield