Now! Then! 2024! - Yorkshire On This Day

Excerpt

9 April 2021 is a beautiful spring day, but as the removal van chugs east past Hartshead Moor Services towards Manhattan upon Aire I am suddenly swept back several decades to the same place in the very early hours of a bitterly cold and snowy morning. Graham is driving me and the exiled Yorkie guest drummer Dean back to Lancashire from a brass band contest. All are terribly drunk, and a pitstop is required at the draughty sheds then constituting Hartshead. Graham and I race into the gents’, while Dean, known as “whippet” for his slender figure and intellect, opts for a ciggy and a stroll through the freezing cave containing the shuttered retail. Dean has been supercilious and obnoxious all evening, and Graham zips up decisively: “Come on Trev, we’re going.” “What do you mean?” “We’re leaving the twat here.” We last see Dean in the rear-view mirror, plunging through snowdrifts on the slip-road in his green pixie-cowboy boots and pimp moustache, thin fawn faux-leather jacket flapping in the blizzard. No woollens, no mobiles. Did frostbite kill him on the hard shoulder? Or does he lurk to this day in some dark Brighouse caff, nursing his tea but thirsting for revenge? Dean, I want to apologise and make it up to you with some paid gigs: I’m looking for a monkey.

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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

Please warn me if you spot Dean in this time-lapse video of the M62 between Manchester and Leeds:

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Original

9 April 2021 is a beautiful spring day, but as the removal van chugs east past Hartshead Moor Services towards Manhattan upon Aire I am suddenly swept back several decades to the same place in the very early hours of a bitterly cold and snowy morning. Graham is driving me and the exiled Yorkie guest drummer Dean back to Lancashire from a brass band contest. All are terribly drunk, and a pitstop is required at the draughty sheds then constituting Hartshead. Graham and I race into the gents’, while Dean, known as “whippet” for his slender figure and intellect, opts for a ciggy and a stroll through the freezing cave containing the shuttered retail. Dean has been supercilious and obnoxious all evening, and Graham zips up decisively: “Come on Trev, we’re going.” “What do you mean?” “We’re leaving the twat here.” We last see Dean in the rear-view mirror, plunging through snowdrifts on the slip-road in his green pixie-cowboy boots and pimp moustache, thin fawn faux-leather jacket flapping in the blizzard. No woollens, no mobiles. Did frostbite kill him on the hard shoulder? Or does he lurk to this day in some dark Brighouse caff, nursing his tea but thirsting for revenge? Dean, I want to apologise and make it up to you with some paid gigs: I’m looking for a monkey.

225 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.

• Alcohol (drug) (59) ·
• Alcohol intoxication (27) ·
• Blizzard (2) ·
• Brighouse (2) ·
• British brass band (5) ·
• Drummer (3) ·
• Frostbite (1) ·
• 📌Hartshead Moor services (2) ·
• John Charles Dollman (1) ·
• 📌Leeds (235) ·
• M62 motorway (3) ·
• Manchester (18) ·
• Mobile phone (1) ·
• Oates, Lawrence (1) ·
• Snow (16) ·

All tags.

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