A Grumpy Old Man’s Tale 67 All Changes but Stays the Same

~Stewards o’ the Land~

The recent months had passed with very little of significance happening for most of the folk of the Bearthwaite community. Virtually all the buildings owned by Beebell(1) had been completely restored and upgraded, and most of the Bearthwaite builders were busy working on other properties far away for other folk. Much of their work was restoration of buildings deemed to be of historical significance where the new work had to be indistinguishable from the original. Bearthwaite builders were not only considered to be the best at such work, despite their high prices, they were also considered to the most economic to employ because the remarkable work was done quickly because to them it wasn’t anything special it was just what they had been doing for years all day every work day. Beebell had bought several thousand more acres of land, mostly in rather small lots, which had provided the means for numerous folk to form small farming coöperatives and thus play a more significant rôle in the economic affairs of their folk. Beebell had also extended its influence in what had been Cumbria, mostly in a quiet, unobtrusive and almost unnoticed way. Two school leavers had joined the local police force, Cumbria constabulary, another Justice of the peace from the Bearthwaite Community had been sworn in and another registrar from the Bearthwaite Community had been appointed. Numerous local politicians had been appointed to positions of significance on various sub committees in both the unitary authority of Cumberland and the unitary authority of Westmorland & Furness.

Perhaps of most significance had been the dozens of small businesses that had been bought up on the edge of Bearthwaite Territory as the large portion of land owned and controlled by Beebell was referred to by outsiders. Many had been closed and their assets merged with a similar business. All had been on the edge of bankruptcy, all were now thriving, all were being run by Bearthwaite folk. In particular Bearthwaite had set out to control the delivery services within the county and over the last few years had bought up many of the smaller companies and had pushed the rest into bankruptcy as a result of the excellence of the service and the exceedingly competitive prices of the newly amalgamated BDS Bearthwaite Delivery Services. BDS delivered post, small parcels, large parcels and anything on pallets too. Their well known advertising slogan, ‘Want it moved? Worried about the cost? Give us a call and we’ll talk about it!’ had been hugely successful, for if they wished a business to thrive BDS would wait till they had other non time critical goods covering more or less the same route and then share the cost to their customers on a weight basis. Other than services delivering into the area from outside, BDS was all that was now available and most folk were more than happy with that. There was a significant amount of vocal backlash from folk who’d had a vested interest in the survival of many of the bankrupted companies.

Chance in a televised interview had shrugged and said in response to question concerning the backlash, “Those who can’t stand the heat need to get out of the kitchen. It’s what happens in business, the folk who sell the goods and services that folk wish to pay for succeed whilst the rest perish because they simply weren’t good enough to attract custom. It’s not magic, there is nothing underhand about it. It wasn’t us that made those companies bankrupt it was their lack of customers.” All Bearthwaite businesses were very particular who they dealt with and many other businesses were angry that Bearthwaite businesses wouldn’t buy goods or services from them and in some cases wouldn’t sell goods or services to them. Many confronted the new business managers and demanded explanations which they didn’t receive, and one or two became violent. However, that stopped when the police prosecuted the first dozen or so for intimidation and assault using the CCTV footage as their evidence. When dozens of Bearthwaite magistrates had to recuse themselves from hearing such cases which often had to be heard at a bench(2) a long way away folk began to realise just how many magistrates belonged to the Bearthwaite community.

One thing that had not changed was that Bearthwaite folk still did not provide explanations for their behaviour. A press statement released by the Bearthwaite legal team simply stated that it was the right of any and all to deal or not to deal with whomsoever they chose and there was no obligation upon them to justify their choices. Many of the farms that had been sold to Beebell were now being farmed by folk initially unknown to the local non Bearthwaite farmers. The new farmers kept to themselves, but most farmers in the area did, so that wasn’t regarded as anything unusual. That they all seemed to throw their lot in with the Bearthwaite farmers was, however, much talked about. By the time it was suspected that they had been Bearthwaite folk long before taking over the farms there had been few non Bearthwaite farmers left in the area for some distance, certainly not enough to have any impact on the stranglehold that Bearthwaite influence had by then on the land for many miles.

None was certain as to just how much land Beebell, the Bearthwaite coöperative that was the voice of their community that dealt with the outside world, actually owned or controlled. Land registry searches were of little help for the land was in the names of as wide a number of folk as it had been years before. All knew that those names had never had much to do with who wielded ownership and ultimately the controlling power, so they presumed nothing had changed and Bearthwaite used proxies in the same way that previous powerful folk had done for centuries. What puzzled all outsiders was the motive of the Bearthwaite folk. They bought up huge tracts of land, large farms, medium sized farms, tiny small holdings, large properties, detached houses, semi-detached houses, blocks of flats, odd pieces of land. They didn’t seem to care what it was that they bought, but whatever it was they made a financial success of it. Eventually it dawned on some folk that they were simply buying up an entire area as parts came up for sale, it wasn’t what they bought that mattered it was where it was. Some tried to hold out for unreasonable prices thinking Beebell would be desperate enough to pay. The Beebell strategy was to wait them out and assist them into bankruptcy, then buy them out for shillings on the pound.(3) It wasn’t long before folk began to realise in areas where Beebell owned virtually all the land the agricultural vehicles that travelled the lonnings and the roads were virtually all Beebell owned and they did no damage to the verges allowing the lonnings and roads of the area to look well husbanded too.

It was considered by non Bearthwaite folk, especially non Bearthwaite farmers, that perhaps the best way to estimate the extent of Bearthwaite land ownership was simply to look at the land itself. Well husbanded fields, some once almost uncultivateable due the roughness of the surface being so extreme that the shaking it gave tractors and implements risked expensive damage, but now ploughed, harrowed, destoned, graded, rolled and easy to cultivate surrounded by freshly upgraded, replanted, immaculately laid, stock proof hedges with no barbed wire and sheep netting on either side was a certain indicator of Bearthwaite managed land. Grazing fields that had once shewn ridge and furrow evidence of mediæval ploughing,(4) that no longer did were another indicator of Bearthwaite farming practices. Tractors seen on such fields had often been seen using implements that were not recognised. It was eventually discovered that such implements came from the workshops of the Bearthwaite valley. One of the implements lifted all stones larger than two inches [50mm] from the top six inches of soil and transferred them to another implement which crushed them down to a mix of no more than three-quarters of an inch [18mm] down to dust before the crush dropped out back on to the land to assist drainage after the following year’s ploughing. Those unfamiliar looking implements became recognised as characteristic of some Bearthwaite tractors.

Strange crops that were not recognised were indicative of Bearthwaite management, major examples of such were sugar beet, sunflowers, globe artichokes and Jerusalem artichoke but there were many others planted on a smaller scale, though none had any idea what any of them were used for. Others signs of Bearthwaite stewardship were replanted standard trees in hedges, copses and woodland, also repaired, recoursed and newly built drystone walls and properly hung gates, whether new or not, with easy to operate closing mechanisms. Cleaned out drinking ponds and new watering tanks for livestock along with newly provided shelters from the weather matched the well known Bearthwaite philosophy of clean watter and shelter from the wind meks for better meat. New gates were made to attractive looking patterns that uniquely characterised them to be of Bearthwaite manufacture whether they were made in steel or hardwood, for they were made with ease of use and durability in mind rather than to a price. If land had a generally high standard of maintenance when it had once been part of a run down and dilapidated farm or small holding that told those who understood that they were looking at Bearthwaite land. How Bearthwaite farmers managed to afford it all was the subject of much speculation that was never answered.

Even the areas that were clearly set aside for the wildlife, though wild and untended, had a cared for look, though they were not deemed to be tidy. Tidy was a word that Bearthwaite folk associated with city folk’s vision of what the countryside should look like. Brutalised hedges and verges made tidy by the use of a power flail were anathema to Bearthwaite folk and the word tidy had become a curse word over the last few decades. Few realised that to Bearthwaite folk wildlife in many cases was seen as game, a source of meat if not income. An absolute give away that a field on a hillside was Bearthwaite land was if it had been contour ploughed(5) with the plough bodies turning the soil uphill, rather than downhill as every ploughman had done for a thousand years, possibly more. The effect of plough mouldboards(6) turning the soil downwards for such an extended period of time had been to very gradually move the top soil downhill, and often the upper edge of such fields no longer had any topsoil cover just subsoil that gave a poor yield of anything grown there, even rough grass that was referred to as foggage.

It could be seen that the lower edges of such fields often had a yard [1m] or more of topsoil against the dividing drystone wall or the hedge dyke(7) whereas the topsoil on the other side of the wall or dyke in the next field may only have been a few inches deep. To plough upbank, as the procedure was referred to, required more fuel, for the tractor pulling the plough was lifting the turned sod and earth against gravity, but it would gradually restore the field to what it had once been by returning the topsoil to the upper field edge by moving it anything from a couple of inches to a foot uphill every time the field was ploughed. The exact distance the topsoil was moved depended on several variables, notably plough type and setting and especially the mouldboard geometry. The farther the soil was moved uphill the more fuel the process required and to restore a field to the condition it had been in Viking days would take a long time, but Bearthwaite folk were patient, and even if it took centuries rather than generations the task would eventually be accomplished, and as had been said more than once by Bearthwaite farmers over a glass, “When all’s said and done, Lad, we grow our own tractor fuel.”

What surprised most folk, locals and visitors alike was the total lack of litter, empty cans, bottles, fast food wrappers and the like to be found at the sides of the roads and lonnings that skirted or traversed Bearthwaite land. It had soon become known that Bearthwaite folk paid their children to remove the litter. It was a popular weekend activity with them, affording as it did good craic(8) and money too. The children worked in gangs of a dozen or more with at least two old enough to drive. One to drive the transport for the rest of the gang, and the other to drive the large van, loaded with whatever tools they could conceivably need, towing a twelve foot three axle trailer with numerous bins for separating the litter into and cage sides to prevent anything blowing away when the trailer was moved. The children worked their way along their intended route inspecting both verges and removing all litter as they came across it. Occasionally they came across some thing too large for them to deal with. Though sofas were no problem, old trailers and even the odd dumped vehicle were dealt with by a phone call for one of the Bearthwaite folk who would arrive with a vehicle or machine capable of lifting whatever it was, usually out of a ditch, and dumping it onto its own trailer. Whatever it was would be taken to folk who could evaluate whether there were anything useful that needed to be removed, or whether it needed transport to Moss Bay Metals at Workington to be weighed in as scrap. The litter was sorted as it was put in the trailer. Aluminium cans were stored separately from steel ones. PET(9) bottles were stored separately from polyethylene ones. Compostable material was separated ready for the nearest Bearthwaite compost pit. Miscellaneous rubbish was taken to be burned at one of the Bearthwaite folks’ many highly efficient furnaces designed to provide heat to numerous nearby buildings.

There were signs telling folk that if they or their vehicle registration number were captured on the hidden CCTV cameras associated with littering as a result of the facial and number plate recognition software that was on every Bearthwaite mobile phone they would be refused service in any Bearthwaite owned business be it a bed and breakfast hotel, a shop, a fuel station or anything else. A family group of tourists from Birmingham had been refused fuel at three service stations and had run out of fuel twenty five miles from the nearest source of petrol that would sell it to them. Bearthwaite roadside rescue services had refused to aid them and according to the media it had cost them two hundred pounds to retrieve the situation and become mobile again. One of the men in the group had indignantly told a television reporter that the whole situation was a ridiculous over reaction because ‘It was only a fucking coke can.’ The official Bearthwaite response had been, ‘Exactly.’ As usual the Bearthwaite response had been minimal which was exactly what other Cumbrians had come to expect from them. Bearthwaite folk never argued a case they had already won.

Despite the minimal official response from Bearthwaite, a whisper from an unknown source had circulated around the county that since Bearthwaite provided far more litter receptacles on their property than any local authority in the land and that they were regularly emptied and pressure washed and that if such tourists wished to create a shithole with their litter it would be appreciated that they did it wherever it was that they lived rather than on Bearthwaite property. Long before the time that the whisper had circulated it was well known in the county that the way Bearthwaite folk used the words visitor and tourist, unlike elsewhere, they were not synonyms. Bearthwaite folk considered visitors to be welcome decent folk, whereas they considered tourists to be arseholes with a wallet and a credit card. Whilst Bearthwaite folk naturally enough took their money they kept their eyes on such folk and made no secret of their view that they would rather do without the money and that the tourists went elsewhere to spend it. They were not welcome. To Bearthwaite folk the term tourist had become a deeply offensive and pejorative one. The children reported a distinct reduction in the amount of litter they came across after that incident.

Too, the quality of what were often unfamiliar breeds of livestock on Bearthwaite land was unmistakable. There were now more English longhorns on Bearthwaite land than in the rest of the world put together and they were no longer considered to be anywhere near an endangered breed. What had once been classified as rare breeds of sheep, pigs, goats and poultry too were to be found in large numbers on Bearthwaite managed properties. The quality of Bearthwaite stock matched the oft quoted Bearthwaite saying ‘We don’t breed from poor quality stock. We eat it.’ More than one bigot had scurrilously said that doubtless that referred to their own people too. When a reporter asked a Bearthwaite representative how Bearthwaite folk felt about such scurrilous rumours and remarks, she’d replied, “We can live wi’ the talk, we have for ower a thousand years. It this case I’ll just say that it only applies to outsiders and our folk don’t consider ’em safe to eat, but they’re okay for dog food.” None believed her, but all agreed the Bearthwaite folk had a gey wicked sense of humour, and the rumours though regularly resurrected always died quickly because none who heard them took them seriously.

Over the last few years Bearthwaite bison had become a familiar sight often many miles from the valley and Defra(10) after some negotiation and a visit to observe some outside the Bearthwaite valley had agreed the year before that they were to be subject to the same rules and regulations as applied to cattle. Elleanor Peabody, who had imported the bison from Poland and owned them, had been amused when she discovered that the wizent, which was merely an alternative name for bison, that were being managed by a hands off approach as a wild herd away to the south of Bearthwaite were now subject to much tougher restrictions being classified as dangerous wild animals. What she had predicted several years before had indeed come to pass; her herd were deemed to be domestic animals and subject to Defra control, the wizent were treated as a different species, wild animals, and subject to the control of Natural England.(11) That ultimately Natural England were overseen by Defra she regarded as hugely amusing it was a classic case of the left and right hands not having a clue what the other was doing. Too, she’d initially selected her bison for docility and any that shewed aggressive tendencies paid early visits to Vincent’s slaughterhouse, whereas the wizent that also came from Poland but eight hundred miles away from where hers originated were cantankerous to start with and had been known to be aggressive towards persons who went to observe them. She’d been approached by the Natural England veterinary surgeon with a view to obtaining some semen from Tank her herd bull in order to improve the wizent herd’s temperament, and despite having a good supply in the care of the local AI(12) folk, she didn’t reply. Natural England had deliberately given her a hard time in the early days of her herd and she was a Peabody through and through, cantankerous. Veronica, her mum, though not a Peabody born was not without her share of cantankerousness, had threatened her with all sorts of things if she ever backed down. She’d kissed her mum and said, “Mum, I’m having far too much fun watching them squirm to even consider it. Those bastards cost me going on thirty thousand pounds when I didn’t really have it. I only managed to keep going because my brothers and sisters put their hands deep in their pockets for me. If they want tractable beasts let ’em import what they should have done in the first place.” The rest of the family had noticed that Veronica hadn’t pulled her up for swearing.

Gunni her younger brother asked, “So what you going to say when they contact you again, Sis?”

“I’ve already had a word wi’ the bloke at Defra as deals wi’ me. I’ve telt him what I’d like to do and he’s agreeable. He may even lean on Natural England te mek ’em ga along wi’ me. My plan is to offer them a thousand a head to take their entire herd and the problem off their hands. They are in a deal o’ official bother just now because of the recent attack by the herd on those stupid tourists wi’ that dog as was walking near the cows wi’ calves, so they may just accept my offer. They didn’t even have any signs up warning walkers about cows wi’ calves, especially concerning walkers wi’ dogs. I know there is no legal obligation to have the signs, but at least it would have covered their backsides if they’d ended up in court. Now it looks like as they’ll end up in court any roads. I don’t for a minute think they’ll be found guilty of owt, but they surely could do wi’ out the hassle. Folk wi’ cattle o’ any sort need te mind that vet from away south as was killt walking wi’ her dog by a herd o’ dairy cows wi’ calves at foot maybe ten year back. She was on a public footpath where she had a right to be, but her dog was loose in the field, and when the cows went for her dog she chesst after the dog to rescue it and was butted to the ground before being trampled te death.

The crowner’s(13) report said city folk don’t know cattle see dogs as the wolves they are descended from and she thought there should a bin warning signs. As I said that ain’t a legal requirement, but it would cover a farmer's backside nicely, which is why I med sure lang since they are at the start of all public footpaths here abouts, along with signs warning that unleashed dogs in fields wi’ stock are liable to be shot on sight. If Natural England do accept my offer. I’ll have Uncles Jake and Turk and their mates borrow some cattle transporters and fetch the entire herd up here. Uncle Vincent can deal wi’ all the bulls immediately, and I’ll have the AI lasses inseminate every cow including the heifers at the first sign any is abulling(14) and Tank, the big lad, can bull any I and the lasses miss. If Tank is working whilst they’re here they can tek some more semen for freezing as soon as he leaves the cow alone. All the bull calves I’ll raise as veal and I’ll eventually put the heifers back to Tank. Twa generations, three at most, and they’ll all be tractable enough. Once the cows in their current herd a bin et(15) the problem’s over.”

The guffaws of laughter over the breakfast table eventually faded and Ancient Alan, her great granddad, said “That’s my lass, Eleanor Love. No surrender, attack and mek ’em have it. Pass me another couple o’ Furness sausage someone, and I’ll have another mug o’ tea please.” It wasn’t widely known, but in order to avoid death duties and to ensure that the farm was controlled and run by the most competent member of the family, Alan, with the support of his entire family, had already officially passed control of the trust that owned the farm and all his assets over to Elleanor to make sure that his death would affect nothing. Her latest antic, as he saw her intentions with Natural England to be, just endorsed in his mind that he’d made the correct choice. Elleanor wasn’t just clever she had deviousness and calmness too, qualities of his that she was the only other family member to posses. That was what, he’d explained to the others, would protect them when the fates conspired against them, though he’d actually said, “That’s the lang spoon we need when suppin’ wi’ the devil.”(16)

In one of Elleanor’s many run ins with officialdom, she’d been told by a male voice that he would only talk with the owner. She’d explained that would be the family trust. The man had demanded to speak with the trust manager. She’d told him that would be herself, and she would talk to him once he spoke with the respect and manners she expected from a mere civil servant who was dealing with the power behind a multi million pound business enterprise. At which point she’d terminated the call. The man didn’t get back to her but a much more reasonable woman did. When Elleanor had referred to the man as an ageist male chauvinist pig the woman had admitted that Elleanor’s complaint hadn’t by any means been the first against the man and he was going to be redeployed after completing a mandatory sensitivity training course. The issue at stake had not been a major one as the man had said and the woman said she would send Elleanor the forms which were merely to update the data they held concerning the number of bulls, bullocks [US steers], cows, heifers and calves being raised for veal that Elleanor had on the first of that month. Elleanor had said she’d that information to hand and the woman took and recorded it for her over the phone.

What was certain was the buying and selling power of the Beebell coöperative was enormous and, by repute at least, the standard of living enjoyed by the Bearthwaite valley community folk both the ones who lived within the valley and those who lived without it was a great deal better than most of the county’s residents could lay claim to. None of the supposèd Bearthwaite folk, though it wasn’t always clear who was and who wasn’t Bearthwaite folk, drove new, luxury vehicles, though the decades old Mercedes vehicles they used were certainly immaculate and for certain luxurious, none went for glamorous holidays in exotic parts of the world, yet all of them could call on what would be to others exceedingly expensive, expert help whenever anything unfortunate happened without seeming to have to count the cost. What still hadn’t been understood by any outside the tightly knit Bearthwaite community was that it was that sense of community alongside a deeply understood sense of what actually mattered to them that created the standard of living that they all enjoyed.

Much of that was due to their sense of well being that derived from their knowledge that their families and children were safe because no matter what happened they would be cared for and survive in comfort. All Bearthwaite folk had come to believe that the descendants of the original folk of the valley had started to become a small proportion of their folk till Dane Hall, a retired bricklayer who’d been in Alf’s class at school, had said, “That’s not true any more. Yance ower(17) our ancestors went out looking for women and livestock to steal. We’re far cleverer than that, we mek ’em come to us, women, men and their kids too. The way our kids are tekin up wi’ folk new to Bearthwaite, yet who are Bearthwaite folk too, the next generation will virtually all have some of our Viking ancestors’ blood in ’em, and all the kids speak High Fell these days. Like draws to like and Bearthwaite kids are nay different. As for stealing livestock the less said o’ that the better.” That had caused some serious laughter for after local farmers had driven sheep onto Bearthwaite land to steal the grazing the Bearthwaite folk had slaughtered, frozen and eventually eaten what had been guesstimated to be twelve thousand sheep.(18)

~The Street Rangers~

The summer had been a fairly ordinary one and though somewhat colder than typical there had been no extreme weather of any description. Arathane the leader of the rather specialised group of Bearthwaite rangers who spent a significant proportion of their time scouring the cities and towns of the British Isles in the main for homeless folk, most of who were children who would appreciate a new life in Bearthwaite with a loving family and all the opportunities that they had so far been denied. Opportunities that they should reasonably have been able to expect to have been given to them simply because they were children who lived in what was after all a wealthy nation state. As the rangers rescued children from whencever their nationwide network of informants advised them there was a need for their activities the numbers of children living on the streets decreased. Few outside the Bearthwaite community were aware that there were any unofficial children living there, and since it suited those few to allow Bearthwaite to deal with, and pay for, what they perceived to be an expensive, intractable problem they kept their own counsel concerning the matter.

That there was a large number of unofficial children the authorities knew nothing about hiding amongst the thousands of official children Bearthwaite had taken in had never been considered by those who would have tried to do something about the situation had they even considered it to be the case. Even had they been aware of them and tried to find them they would have been seeking small needles in large haystacks, and Bearthwaite had been hiding abused folk, adults as well as children, in safety from the rest of the world, the folk out there as they put it, for generations. Too, much nearer to home, Bearthwaite had been hiding folk from the Gershambes(19) for centuries. Too without some solid evidence of such children, who would have to be named, they would fail to obtain a magistrates’ bench warrant to enter the valley that was otherwise forbidden to them since it was all private property including the lonning(20) that was the only way in to the village. There were now dozens of Bearthwaite folk on the local magistrates’ benches and like any other small group of folk the non Bearthwaite magistrates treated their colleagues with respect and in this case caution, for they were not folk to upset, certainly not by issuing such a search warrant on the basis of no certain evidence. Too, the NCSG(21) had been legally enabled to operate independently of any Social Service involvement in the care of any children that came within their orbit for years, and they had a tacit understanding with those at Bearthwaite who looked after such children’s welfare that rendered both the hidden children and those who hid them safe from outside scrutiny.

There were no orphanages within the Bearthwaite community, just a lot of families with large numbers of children, but as any Cumbrian from the Bearthwaite area would tell you, Bearthwaite folk had always did have big families. That was often said with a contempt that they’d inherited from their ancestors, but the evidence was indisputable and they’d long had to admit that Bearthwaite folk had no divorces they knew about other than when those who’d originally been outsiders decided to leave in search of a more profitable source of easy money. It was widely considered unlikely that the interbreds, as bigoted outsiders referred to Bearthwaite folk and many others accepted as truth because it had been repeated in their hearing so often, from the Bearthwaite valley even knew what a nuclear family was. It was also readily available from the national family registers that Bearthwaite folk tended to marry young and the proportion of Bearthwaite folk who were married was much higher than in the rest of the nation. Likewise the proportion of single parent families in Bearthwaite was vanishingly small as compared with the rest of the nation and it was known that they didn’t remain single parent families for long.

All Bearthwaite folk knew, and considered it to be sensible, that the work Arathane and his crews undertook was a deliberate endeavour by Bearthwaite to increase their population with appropriate folk in order to protect themselves against what they all perceived as the inevitable future attacks by outsiders acting as a mob. That their culture could not accept that any child wasn’t worthy of love and care merely made their acceptance of the children Arathane returned to the valley with automatic. All knew that all children, not just the abused and discarded, readily adapted to a caring environment. Far from it being a cynical manipulation of outsider children, seeking and adopting the waifs and strays that mainstream society had abandoned was a genuine, heartfelt offer to help children with no future other than an early death to have a future that also assisted the Bearthwaite folk. That the Bearthwaite folks’ future was somewhat problematic and undoubtedly full of conflict was deemed to be irrelevant, for nowhere else could claim otherwise. As they rapidly changed from outsider children with nothing better to hope for other than a painless death in their sleep on the streets into Bearthwaite children who would have a future worth fighting for was seen as no more, yet no less, than what their own children, as these outsider rejects would rapidly become aware they had been immediately accepted as, knew as the way things were. Well fed, well clothed and kept warm in families that clearly cared about them the outsider children rapidly became Bearthwaite children with all that that entailed and entitled them to too. They naturally enough wanted to do what they could to protect the environment that protected and loved them.

Arathane’s rangers, usually referred to as the Street Rangers by Bearthwaite folk, were in the main rangers just like virtually all the other rangers in Harwell Stevison’s command. Like the others they were virtually all members of the TA(22) and they underwent, and were paid for by the army, all the training and exercises with the regular army that the others did. Like all their colleagues in the rangers, but unlike the regular army, they spent part of their Bearthwaite paid hours studying urban and rural guerilla warfare matters and practising both armed and unarmed combat. Like their colleagues they spent some of their time learning the theory and practising the use of Harwell’s more exotic weapons, examples of which would be the water cannons and some of his weaponry that only a handful of Bearthwaite folk knew about. They also acquired an intimate knowledge of the Bearthwaite valley and its strategic aspects some of which were deadly. The difference was that whilst most of Harwell’s rangers patrolled the Bearthwaite lands, especially the boundaries, often assisting the fencers, the wallers and occasionally the tree planters, the Street Rangers spent most of their time patrolling the urban and suburban blights that had produced the tragedies of so many discarded young lives.

It was not widely known, even amongst the rangers, that there were other smaller groups of rangers with more specialised foci. A handful specialised in the neutralisation of folk seen as completely inimical to the Bearthwaite way of life, mostly such persons ended up serving very long gaol sentences, for few were without serious criminal acts in their pasts. Those rangers, who were experts at discovering such acts, without any being aware of their involvement allowed those crimes to be displayed in the full glare of media publicity and left the rest to the outsider authorities. Other rangers coördinated with Bearthwaite IT specialists, notably Blake Winmarleigh and his mentor Buthar Musgrove, and their operations destroyed physical records in order to leave only digital ones that could be manipulated by experts from afar. There were many other such groups, some comprising just a handful of individuals, some not even a group, just two persons or even in a few cases just one. It would be true to say the fewer the more dangerous, and one or two of Bearthwaite’s lone operators could truly be described as special operations folk who dealt solely in black operations. Most weren’t even considered to be rangers for they were seen to work as negotiators for Beebell and were out in the full glare of public scrutiny, but then as Harwell had many times considered, that was okay because if they only conducted one operation in their entire life that was enough, for then their acts could have no patterns to be analysed.

Whilst it was true to say that Bearthwaite had never had to deal with a failure amongst the children Arathane’s crews had taken to Bearthwaite, there had been a very small number of those children who had run away to leave Bearthwaite. Most of the runaways had eventually returned genuinely contrite begging to be accepted back. The Bearthwaite parents they had left were only too happy to have the prodigals return to the fold. The returnees told tales of some of the runaways dying or being murdered out on the streets and Grayson the Bearthwaite educational psychologist and Gladys the expert on abused children’s thought processes opined that the few who had not returned had not returned because death, the great destroyer of dreams and leveller of hopes, had prevented them, and it was true that death had a great many more agents out there than any other agency. The Bearthwaite folk who for a short period of time had been the parents of those now permanently lost children were immensely saddened, but they had long been only too aware of the many versions of the adage that life was hard and then there was death, and they were happy to try to move on and try again with other children in need of what they could offer. The adults brought to Bearthwaite by the Street Rangers were a different matter. It was not easy for an adult to convince any of the rangers that they would be appropriate future citizens of Bearthwaite, and most of them encountered elsewhere were rejected, for what to the rangers were obvious reasons, out of hand.

The few adults that were accepted were told that their acceptance was provisional and that they would be on a long trial whose duration was not fixed, the success of which would be dependent upon the entire Bearthwaite folks’ assessment of them as time went on. It was also added that their temporary acceptance could be terminated at any time and that they would never be given a reason as to why it had been terminated. Murray was known to have told many such incomers, ‘If you are not able to determine what is acceptable and what is not for yourself, that alone is reason enough for us to insist you leave, for you are clearly not one of us.’ The few who objected were immediately returned to the streets whence they had originated as were a number of others over time. It wasn’t known to any, other than a tiny handful of Bearthwaite folk, that a few of the outsiders, a very small number who had managed to, initially at least, con the Street Rangers that they were decent folk, hadn’t been returned to anywhere. They had simply disappeared, though the rest of the Bearthwaite folk assumed they had been returned to outside as unwelcome outsiders. The reality for that small number had been an appointment with one of Harwell’s special forces. The Beebell directorate opined that the Street Rangers were amazingly good at what they did for their failure rate, meaning the unacceptable folk who had been rejected and returned to their previous environments, was barely over twenty-five percent.

~Arathane’s Little Girls~

It was late August and the month had been warm, not especially so, but pleasant enough for a cool summer month. Arathane had been married to Abbey, one of the Bearthwaite GPs, for several years and both in their early thirties they had been talking about starting or acquiring a family for over a twelvemonth. “Pease, Sir Mister, have you any food you would spare? We haven’t had anything to eat for eight days and are hungry. We should be grateful and remember you in our thoughts tonight before we fell asleep if you would help us.” Arathane truly believed he had seen the worst that outsiders were prepared to subject their children to, yet as he turned to face the voice the sight of the three barefoot little girls dressed in little more than rags took him aback to a place he hadn’t ever in his darkest moments believed could exist. None of the emaciated girls, barely more than toddlers, looked older than three. The speaker had a look about her that spoke of the highly intelligent, far brighter than himself he immediately recognised and her English had been of the highest quality which made him wonder where she had learnt it.

That her questions and its supporting facts were completely devoid of comparatives never mind superlatives seemed incredible. Her use of you would and we should rather than you could and we would spoke of a precision of English rarely used even by the privately educated upper classes for over seventy years. Eight days, a precise number. We are hungry, not we are very hungry or we are starving. We would be grateful with no embellishments. The simple promise was to remember him at night before sleep overtook them, not even saying every night just tonight. It all made him angrier than he had ever felt in his entire life. He and his team were in Salford, a City within Greater Manchester, and internally he raged against the residents of this place that they could allow such a thing. His experience of such tragedies was such that just by looking at the girls he could tell that they were right on the edge, the cusp between life and death, and unless they were looked after somewhere warm with food immediately it was likely that their next sleep would be the one from which they wouldn’t awaken. The final sleep that would be the impartial, uncaring resolution of all their problems.

Arathane signalled Ebra over and when she arrived he cast her a quick look and said to the girls, “Why don’t you come with Ebra and me to that café over there, and we’ll have lunch and a mug of hot chocolate?” The look of almost disbelieving hope on their faces was something that would remain with him for the rest of his life. As the girls ate and drank their hot chocolate the smiles on their faces did something to Arathane that even he didn’t understand. When he and Ebra gently asked the girls about their past and how they came to be hungry and cold with nowhere to go the chaotic tales they related indicated clearly their lack of understanding of their pasts. They had no parents they could remember, nor permanent homes that they were aware of, and spoke of events that were clearly related to living an institutionalised life even if not in a legitimate institution. They had been the subjects of child pornography in exchange for food and had been being groomed for worse. Without doubt they’d had life threatening futures. As far as could be ascertained they had been somewhere where a police raid took place and they had been unnoticed as they’d simply walked away due to their fear of the shouting and loud noises, and they hadn’t eaten since.

Since the police had raided wherever the girls had been and they clearly knew no more Arathane made a decision not to inform the authorities of what he suspected and to take the girls home to Bearthwaite along with the other sixteen older children his team had discovered in need of help. The girls, Annie, Peggy, and Sloane were happy to accompany him and he suspected it was that trust that had put them in the positions they had been in just before he’d discovered them. Ebra had said that she considered the lack of understanding of just how evil some adults could be was one of the major reasons why youngsters needed protection. Their trust was also one of the most endearing attributes of youngsters which was why they needed a safe environment. Arathane had contacted the appropriate persons at Bearthwaite as soon as the group were on their way back and all the children, there were no adults this time, had homes to go to and folk to talk to the following day concerning education and any of their other desires. Gentle exploration of their pasts would be left till they had settled in, probably in a week to ten days time. If necessary that would be left much longer, maybe for ever.

Arathane had decided that the three girls would go home with himself and as long as they all managed to live happily together he and Abbey would ultimately adopt them. He broached the matter to the girls on the bus home, and to his surprise it appeared that they had already assumed that they would be living with him. That he would provide them with a mum too was something that they learnt with joy. When Sloane asked if he had a puppy his negative response was a cause of disappointment, but when he’d said that it could be arranged if they so desired the smiles on their faces shone like the sun on a warm but frosty day. He rang Abbey to discover she was on duty at the health centre and asked that she be contacted to ring him as soon as possible. Once Abbey received the message she was distraught thinking something had happened to him, for his was a dangerous job that meant he came into contact with numerous armed criminals on a regular basis. The psychos and druggies that he met on a daily basis were to say the least unpredictably dangerous.

Arathane calmed her down quickly assuring her, “No, Love, I have not had an accident. I have, however, found three little girls who want to live with us and are excited about having a mum. Annie, Peggy, and Sloane are four, five, and four and will become members of the hidden ones. They particularly wish a puppy, so I am going to speak with some of the hill shepherds tomorrow with a view to them learning to train a sheepdog puppy. That I consider to be more important than arranging their attendance at the BEE. I’ll give the girls the phone now, so that they can talk to you.” The next ten minutes would have been completely inexplicable to any who had not been in that situation themselves, but it seemed to have made perfect sense to the girls and to Abbey too. When the girls returned the phone to Arathane, whom they now completely unselfconsciously called Dad, he was told by Abbey that after work she’d be going to find some clothes for the girls and would have a meal prepared for them to eat as soon as they arrived home.

Whilst Ebra drove, Arathane helped the girls to remove their rags and to take a shower in the warm water that the bus engine provided the power to heat on demand. Once dry and dressed in clothes that were a reasonably good fit Arathane drove whilst Ebra combed and brushed the girls’ hair. The slides [US barrettes] she provided them with made them cry. After Ebra had dealt with their hair Arathane had pulled the bus to a halt for Ebra to drive and he had found three pairs of shoes that fit. They cried as they confessed that they’d never had shoes to wear before. Arathane silently counted to twenty and then back down again. Arathane resumed driving and Ebra handed out a bar of chocolate for each of the children and started telling them a færie tale. None of the children had managed to remain awake till the end of the tale. With forty miles of the M6 motorway still in front of them before they left it to exit onto smaller roads Ebra was on the phone arranging details of their futures for the children. Though it was a procedure that had been undertaken many times before it still amazed Ebra how smoothly things ran even though she was aware over fifty of the Bearthwaite folk were involved awaiting their arrival.

As they were approaching the Lonning Ends where they would turn off the public highway onto the private lonning that led to Bearthwaite village which was some nine miles away Arathane idly wondered if he’d be able to obtain a pup descended from Legs, a legendary lurcher bitch that had been owned by Livvy one of the Bearthwaite vets when she’d been a lass. Like a good sheepdog, such a pup would probably cost of the order of a thousand pounds, and it wouldn’t just be a question of paying for a quality pup, he’d have to convince the owner of it’s dam that he’d have the girls and the pup educated properly to obtain the most out of it that could possibly be obtained. With a mental shrug he committed himself to the idea knowing that such things required effort, in this case parental effort which caused him to smile. Ebra, saw his smile and was about to ask, ‘A penny for them?’(23) when he said, “I was just wondering if I could acquire a descendant of Livvy’s lurcher bitch Legs for the girls, and that being taught to hunt with the pup would provide them with an outdoor activity. I’ll have a word with Tony Dearden he’ll know and be able to help.”

~Keeping Everyone Connected~

Harriet asked Gladys, “You going to the meeting Sun and Abby have called in the church the night, Mum?”

“No, I’m going to watcht the proceedings in our ballroom where we can control the little ones a bit better. Lucy said the talk is about gynæ issues, so just about every woman in the village will be there in the church, in the village hall or our ballroom. Pat has linked up video conferencing to accommodate everyone and Lucy telt me she reckons it’ll be a full house everywhere. She said there’ll be a lot of our folk from outside the valley watching in community spaces out there too. If any would know it ’ld be her.” Lucy and her husband Dave kept the local grocery supermarket and she with Alice at the flour mill and Rosie at the butcher’s shop were right at the heart of all gossip and news that circulated around the Bearthwaite community. What one of them knew they all knew and rapidly made sure that at a minimum everybody else who needed to know knew too.

“I’ll keep you company with my tribe because that does sound easier than taking them to the church. I’ll tell Brigitte about it.

~The Quality of Life~

Sun was had been speaking from the pulpit in the Bearthwaite church which was packed for going on for a quarter hour Till now he’d been reporting things that everyone needed to know but they certainly hadn’t justified his calling such a meeting. Then interest sharpened as his tone of voice became more serious, more focussed. “For NHS(24) workers, and in that designation I include not just doctors, but all other healthcare folk too, trust has to be earnt. It doesn’t come automatically as a right because some cleverer than average young pup of eighteen was good enough to obtain a place to study medicine or any other placement. It certainly isn’t given to an older doctor who when given the opportunity, and Covid did seem to provide many such opportunities, to play god arrives believes they know more about what’s best for their patients than their patients do. Even the not overly bright elderly who are beginning to lose what sharpness of their metal abilities they had at their best have views that simply because they are human beings should be respected. They still understand their own lives best and if there is a large discrepancy between what they believe to be in their best interests and what understanding and caring medical professionals believe all evidence suggests to be in their best interests those medical folk should stretch heaven and earth to achieve an acceptable compromise. Such folk may well have limitations but they are the ones who will have to live with those limitations and they’ve already had a lifetime of experience living with them. They are the experts.

“I’m not saying those medical folk should lie, nor am I saying they should provide drugs or services they should not in good conscience provide, but I suggest a flexible attitude to what is concomitant with the facts they believe they have evidence for and their patients’ views and wishes should be adopted, even if they are certain that shall result in a shorter lifespan for those patients. The value of a human life should never be measured by its length, but by its quality which is an extremely subjective matter, and it can only be adjudged with any degree of accuracy by the person whose life is under consideration. Many of you will be wondering why I am saying this. The answer is simple. Abbey and I wish to expand the Bearthwaite medical facilities in a number of directions. We’ll be holding a meeting with all our health folk both those who live and work within the valley and those who live and work without it in a few days to discover the professional views as to how best achieve our desires but this meeting here is to gauge public opinion. However, it is already clear to us that in order to achieve anything we shall need to employ some outsiders. We shall of course use our usual screening procedures to try to recruit future Bearthwaite folk, but we shan’t have the choice that we usually have, so we may make some poor choices or even outright mistakes. If that happens the law speakers(25) need to be informed immediately you become aware of it. Please make sure every one knows this. The most significant expansion of our facilities we wish to embark upon concerns women’s issues, so I shall past matters over to Abbey now.”

~Women’s Issues are Men’s Issues Too~

As Sun came down the pulpit stairs Abbey stood and walked towards him to take his place. “It is as Sun said mostly women’s issues that will be discussed the night. However, and I ask this as a Bearthwaite woman and wife, not as one of your doctors. I would appreciate it if the men remained. Arathane is here for me and I am grateful. I now speak as a doctor when I say all to do with womanhood is not just a matter for women any more than all to do with manhood is just a matter for men. In a well balanced society, and I insist that the Bearthwaite community is one, both are matters that affect all since both are of great interest to all. I see many teenage girls and boys here, and some are blushing. For many of you these are not as yet matters that concern you intimately, but it will not be long before they do. All the adults around you know that at the very least they are matters that interest you, so please remain to the end. The most significant step forward that we wish to make is to be able to service breast cancer screening ourselves. This naturally applies to all our trans women too, and, in what may be a surprise to many of you, men can fall victim to breast cancer too. It is rare in men and it is difficult to detect without sophisticated screening equipment, but it does occur and it is well documented.

“The NHS waiting list for screening is not too bad in what most of us still think of as Cumbria,(26) but it is still over six months here, elsewhere it can be up to three times that. This is not an issue for Bearthwaite because we just pay for private healthcare as far breast screening and a few other matters are concerned. However, there is not just a serious UK national shortage of mammographers there is a worldwide shortage of them too. In the UK there is a seventeen and a half percent shortfall in mammographers in general and that rises to a twenty percent shortfall in the most specialised of mammographers. Potentially part of the problem is that in the UK, like virtually everywhere else in the western world, only women can undergo training to become mammographers. To undergo that training they must already be qualified radiographers. Surprisingly I couldn’t find out how many mammographers we have in the UK. There were any number of sources providing percentages of how many posts for radiographers of all types, including mammographers, were unfilled. Similarly, percentages of how many of each type would be retiring within five years were readily available. One source I came across stated that given the projected retirements by 2029 those numbers will have risen to a fifty percent shortage.

The published data is difficult to interpret but it seemed to suggest that there are possibly twelve thousand male radiographers in the country but that appeared to be the total including all from consultants down to newly qualified practitioners. Just how many of those would be suitable for studying a mammography course is unclear. As to how many of those would be interested there is no data at all. To me the numbers seem to be almost deliberately difficult to interpret. Mostly they are presented as percentages with no reference to total numbers. However, and I’m just throwing some numbers up into the air here and seeing what comes down, if there are twelve thousand male radiographers in the country as one source suggests, and using another figure I found elsewhere that said forty-two percent of radiographers were female then there are just less than twenty-one thousand radiographers in the UK. If there is, as is suggested in the literature, a typical shortfall of twenty percent in radiographers, that suggests a shortfall of just over five thousand radiographers, but how many of those are mammographers is anyone’s guess. One number I did discover said that there were twelve thousand two hundred and something radiographers of all types including both sexes in the US, which seemed a ridiculously small number when their population is so much bigger than ours, but then again maybe not because most of their citizens can’t afford health care.

“Yet one number that seems to be very easy to interpret is that we here in the UK have tens of thousands of women waiting for screening some of who will die from breast cancer before they receive an appointment. Many others will require radical mastectomy surgery when if the cancer been detected earlier they possibly would only have required a lumpectomy(27) and subsequent drug treatment. The major argument against training men is that breast screening is an intensely female thing that men should not be involved in and that is why it currently has a legal exemption from the sex discrimination act which makes the NHS’ refusal to train and employ male radiographers legal. We deem that to be insulting to male radiographers’ professionalism and to be a cruel and unprofessional treatment of their patients. Men have been allowed to train as midwives for many years now. It is worth noting that there are far more male gynæcologists than female ones in the UK.

“Doctors and nurses of both sexes once suitably trained fit contraceptive coils, also known as intra uterine devices or IUDs, and contraceptive implants too. The former involves the vagina being opened wide enough to see the cervix by inserting into the vagina a device which once in position can be expanded called a speculum. The coil or IUD is inserted into the uterus or womb via the cervical canal of the cervix. Simply speaking the cervix forms a connection between the vagina and the uterus and the cervical canal allows sperm to pass through it to enable pregnancy. It also allows the disintegrating uterine wall to exit via the vagina during menstruation. It has always been considered appropriate for male family doctors to perform the insertion of IUDs. A contraceptive insert requires a local anaesthetic and a tiny cut in the upper arm. The implant is the size of a matchstick and a stitch is required after the implant has been inserted. Registered nurses learn many things during nursing school, but learning to suture is not one of them. Unlike doctors, RNs(28) are not legally allowed to suture. If RNs wish to be legally able to suture, they have to further their training with a post graduate MSc course and acquire a further V300 qualification that enables them to prescribe drugs to become nurse practitioners, it is arduous, but there is a route for them to take should they wish to. There is no such route for men interested in a career in mammography. That is because it is considered to be too intimate for them to undertake, yet inserting IUDs is not considered so.

“To give you a sense of perspective and the history of this matter I’ll read you some facts that I have lifted from various sources. I have edited some to make more sense without having to quote the entire document. NHS breast screening uses X-rays, called mammograms, to look for cancers that are too small to see or feel. The mammograms are done by a specialist called a mammographer. The mammographer will be female. You’ll need to be a Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC) registered diagnostic radiographer or therapeutic radiographer to apply for a postgraduate qualification in mammography. You are able to apply immediately after your radiography qualification should you wish or later in your career. The training programme for a mammographer is typically a one year postgraduate certificate or diploma at level seven that combines academic learning with clinical training. You’ll apply for your postgraduate training in mammography via an employer who will sponsor your course at their preferred training provider for example the local university. Your employer will also ensure you have access to the clinical practice in mammography needed for the course. That neatly places control of the entire UK access to training in the hands of the NHS.

“Published on the eleventh of September 2017, the Trade Union of Radiographers & the Interventional Radiography Radiographers called for breast screening to be carried out by men as well as women. Their arguments included, mammography is the only health examination performed exclusively by female practitioners. A motion at this year’s Trades Union Congress (TUC) called on the government to allow male radiographers as well as women to carry out NHS breast screening examinations. Members of the Society of Radiographers, who screen more than two million women a year for early signs of cancer, asked the TUC to support a campaign to allow male radiographers to conduct examinations. They said, ‘There is a national shortage of mammographers and it seems nonsensical for radiographers who are capable of carrying out the examinations being excluded from doing so because of their gender.’ Richard Evans, the Society’s chief executive officer said. ‘Breast cancer is the most common cancer in women in the UK and the earlier it is detected has a significant effect on the individual’s survival and the extent of the treatment required.’ He added, ‘If a woman attending a breast screening appointment prefers to have the examination performed by a female mammographer of course they should have that option. But regulations currently specifically exclude male radiographers from carrying out mammograms.’ That would put the screening in line with all medical issues, any patient male or female can ask for and receive care from a medical professional of the preferred gender. Naturally when appropriate a chaperone would be present.’ I’ll add that there are about 11200 breast cancer deaths a year in the UK of which only 90 are males. 650 of those deaths are said to be due to social deprivation, what we’d call poverty.

“The Society’s TUC motion notes that obstetric, gynæcological and ultrasound examinations during pregnancy are carried out by male and female healthcare practitioners as is breast surgery. It is only breast screening which requires the examining professionals to be female. Breast screening (mammography) involves taking x-rays of women’s breasts to detect signs of cancer developing. Mammography examinations can detect very small cancers up to two years before a tumour would grow to a size where it could be felt. The earlier breast cancer is detected, the better the likely outcome for the patient. More than two million women a year in the UK have mammograms through the NHS Breast Screening Programme. Cancer is found in about eight out of a thousand women screened. Females who are aged between fifty and seventy and who are registered with a GP are invited for screening every three years. In some parts of England, the screening programme has been inviting women from forty-seven to seventy-three years old as part of a trial.

“I quote TUC motion sixty-four: NHS breast screening programme: moving forward. Congress notes, ‘That the essential characteristic of the NHS breast screening programme is that it is a single sex service. The NHS maintains that due to the nature of the role, there is a genuine occupational qualification for radiographers to be female, as an exception to the Equality Act 2010. According to the Health and Social Care Information Centre’s statistics for 2013–14, 20·08 million women over the age of forty-five were screened under this programme. There is a national shortage of mammographers and Congress also notes that within the UK this is the only area of health practice where such a genuine occupational qualification applies. No such qualification applies for example in gynæcology and obstetrics or within the foetal anomaly screening programme. Congress believes that this single sex restriction is not justified and should be brought into line with all other areas of health practice. We continue to support patient choice which would include having a female radiographer if they wish. Congress therefore calls on the TUC to work with the Society of Radiographers and other like minded organisations to lobby the NHS England, the Department of Health, the government, devolved administrations, and opposition parties to remove this requirement.’

“The Society of Radiographers is the trade union and professional body for radiographers and all non medical members of the workforce in diagnostic imaging and radiotherapy in the UK. It is responsible for their professional, educational, public and workplace interests. We, that is the Bearthwaite Health care staff, desire to be able to conduct our own breast screening for several reasons. Yes it is true that any of our folk who need the service can have it done immediately privately and the cost will be absorbed by our health care budget, but we should not have to resort to this. If we had our own facility the NHS would eventually pay us to provide the service to cut down on their backlog and the bad publicity that generates. You may ask why do we wish men to be able to do the job? The answer to that is both simple and complex. The obvious and simple answer is ‘Why not‽’ and as you heard from the extracts I read out we are not on our own in our beliefs and have not been for a very long time. A second answer is because we wish to rock the boat in support of the folk who think as we do. A third answer is because we believe we will ultimately make a lot of money out of training male radiographers from private medical organisations all over the world. I’ll add a personal note here, I don’t like the NHS service because it seems to me it could be done with a lot more care. The last time I had an appointment I cried on Arathane for two hours afterwards and I bitterly resented the feeling of helplessness that gave him. It was bad enough that I felt so demeaned but that he did too was outrageous. We need our own service. At this point I would like to hand over to Chance for a first look financial analysis of the matter.”

Standing in the pulpit, Chance organised some papers and said, “First I’d like to make it clear that I know next to nothing about breast screening, or indeed any other kind of diagnostic procedure that uses Xrays. My only personal knowledge regards the matter is that Stephanie said it hurt and it was clear to me that she was madder about the way she’d been tret than she was about the pain. She said the pain went quite quickly, but the casual way she’d been regarded and dismissed as a piece of meat still rankled weeks later. Two things she said that I found interesting were that she said, ‘No man would have tret me so badly and with so little respect,’ and ‘Thank god I don’t have implants that must be ten time worse,’ both of which feed into this conversation. I can relate to her first comment but not to her second since I don’t know enough about how the procedure works from a technical point of view. That conversation took place when we were dining with Sun and Elin and Elin said her experience was little different.” Sun and Elin could be seen to be nodding their heads in agreement. “Abbey’s why not could, at least according to my understanding of Stephanie’s and Elin’s position, be turnt around into a reason why.

“As to the finances, at the lower end of the price range a screening machine is at least fifty thousand pounds, whereas a top of the range state of the art device could by the time we place an order be half a million quid, which to us as a folk is actually very small beer, possibly as little as twenty-five quid apiece for every Bearthwaite adult, taken all in, the equipment, training, setting up and obtaining an establishment to use as a hospital, even if it comes out at two million it’s still less than a hundred quid per adult, and we’ve recently spent a hell of a sight more than that on land and security to keep our folk safe. It would mean all our womenfolk of any age could easily be screened annually were that considered to be medically desirable. Many here have relatives who died from breast cancer, such women are offered screening by the NHS from the age of forty, though I don’t know how long they have to wait for an appointment. I do know that with our own equipment we could offer such women within the week screening from any age deemed appropriate by our own experts from the age of puberty upwards. I’m not saying that no Bearthwaite woman would ever die from breast cancer again, I simply don’t know enough to make such a claim, but the statistics, which I have considerable expertise in understanding, shew that with early detection breast cancer is nearly one hundred percent curable. I know that our medical folk are looking into ultimately acquiring our own hospital such that any woman unfortunate enough to require a mastectomy could have at the same operation full breast reconstruction. I think that’s jumping into the future a long way and not for discussion today, but it is on our long term agendum. For clarity I’ll just add that my understanding is that if breast cancer is caught early enough the indicated treatment involves drugs rather than surgery, Sun?”

Sun nodded and said, “That is indeed true in most cases, Chance. Yes.”

Chance resumed, “There are much cheaper pieces of breast screening equipment, some as cheap as forty thousand pounds, which as I referred to earlier would by the time we’d be ready to order would probably be fifty rather than forty thousand, so why do we wish an all dancing all singing device? Simply because it will detect any problems sooner and all the experts agree the sooner problems are detected the better the outcome. I personally want that for our womenfolk. I’m also told that it is only such sophisticated pieces of equipment that can detect such cancers in men, so maybe I’m just being selfish. I would like to think that none of you believed that of me, so I’ll provide you with a reason you will find more believable of me just because I’m an accountant. Most NHS trusts can’t afford such equipment for even their flagship hospitals, so they’d wish to use our facility which would cost them money, and if we had both male and female mammographers working for us they would have to accept the situation not being in a position to dictate anything to us. Stephanie said that she’d far rather a male technician handled her breasts with care and she suffered no more discomfort than the procedure necessarily involved than a female technician tret her roughly just because she had breasts herself.

“I didn’t know, but she telt me that the procedure squashes the breast as tightly as possible between two metal plates to render the breast as thin as possible so the xrays have the minimum amount of breast tissue to penetrate for the best possible image. Then the procedure is repeated on the other breast. Why train men? Other than the reasons Abbey already provided concerning our training of female and male radiographers from private organisations, the NHS having few such top of the line pieces of equipment would wish not just to send some of their patients to us, but also to have some of their female radiographers trained on our equipment too. Again that they would have to pay for. My job is to keep track of, manage, distribute and increase the money that Beebell owns, which is to say the money that we as a community own. Naturally as an accountant if I see a business opportunity that could potentially make us all wealthier and increase our influence out there of course I’m interested. Many of you call all of us in my line of work bean counters, well we’re just trying to increase the number of beans we have available to count.

“As to how we break into the process, currently Malta is the only country in the west that trains and employs male mammographers. They’ve had a number of first class medical establishments on their various islands for many decades. I’ve never looked into it, but I suspect that’s because Malta was the headquarters of the knights hospitallers.(29) We’ve had good relationships with numerous contacts over there for a decade and a half and have provided various of their medical organisations with financial assistance in return for services involving some of our security personnel the details of which we do not wish to make public.” Numerous folk were nodding understanding that the treatment of gunshot wounds incurred by the security folk who protected them was best left undiscussed and undisclosed to the UK authorities. “They have telt us they are more than willing to accept our radiographers to do their courses in mammography. Eventually we hope to be able to run our own courses. Since we intend to operate our screening facility as a private practice in the same way as all our other medical facilities we will be outside the remit of NHS guidelines and rules.

“Only the law of the land will apply to us and there is no UK law that prevents qualified mammographers from practising their profession, the law merely protects the NHS from prosecution on the grounds of sexual discrimination for refusing to train and employ male mammographers. As Abbey said the NHS already employs female mammographers trained in Malta, so they have perforce to accept Maltese trained male mammographers as having valid qualifications. Elle has instructed me on how to explain why you are here and what we would like you to do. Where ever in the western world studies have been done on women’s reactions to a male possibly conducting their breast screening the results have been pretty constant: about nine percent of women said that despite their babies being delivered by a man, their gynæcological examinations being performed by a man and their contraceptive coil being inserted by a man they would not like their breasts being screened by a man and possibly would not attend the appointment or leave as soon as they found out the mammographer was male. However, that means ninety-one percent of women were at least accepting of a man screening their breasts.

“Some of you will have read of Kemi Badenoch’s remarks in the press against male mammographers which most medical folk regard as unacceptable sexualisation of a necessary clinical procedure. She said and I quote some of her diatribe “I've had a mammogram, it is a very, very intrusive process. It involves the clinician holding both of your breasts for a long period of time, feeling them, manipulating them, putting them in the machine.” I discussed Badenoch’s remarks with Susanna our senior midwife who telt me she’d had a number of mammograms over the years and had given birth vaginally to four children, and in terms of invasiveness there was no comparison between a thirty minute mammogram and a fourteen hour labour attended by a male gynæcologist and she’d go for the mammogram every time. She added that Badenoch had been deliberately misleading because as far as she was aware no mammographer ever dealt with both breasts at the same time because all the equipment manufactured could only xray one breast at a time. She also said that use of the phrase, for a long period of time, was ridiculous. It was subjective and since Badenoch had been screened by a woman on a tight schedule, as they all are, she’d have taken no longer than was necessary and the way Badenoch had phrased it, using the words feeling and manipulating was a deliberate attempt to make it sound dirty. An appropriate word would have been the more clinical word palpating. Susanna said saying, ‘holding both of your breasts for a very very long period of time, feeling them and manipulating them,’ was part lie, and the rest was a serious subjective misrepresentation so close to a lie as to be criminal in her opinion. She also said that if any wished to discuss owt to do with owt raised the night any of the nursing and midwifery staff both active and retired, who as of the moment are still all women, would be more than happy to be approached.

“We wish a definitive response from Bearthwaite adults, men as well as women. Talk to your men, Ladies. If you prefer fill the questionnaire in together. We are not bothered how many would prefer a woman performing your screening. It is purely a personal choice, your choice, the money involved is irrelevant. If when the time comes you would prefer a woman let us know and we’ll arrange it for you. Susanna also said a friend of hers who is an NHS mammographer telt her a while back that it is usual for mammographers despite being female to have a chaperone present and it was by no means unusual for the patient to have her man with her. Naturally, just as Sun insists at the gynæ clinic there would be a chaperone present, probably one of the nurses to assist. If you’d prefer your man there all you have to do is say so. Again just as Sun does if for some reason he is examining a minor of any age the chaperone will probably be her mum. If all you care about is the competence of and the care shewn by the person doing the screening then say so. All I would ask you to consider is would you rather be screened by a man you know, get on with and trust, a member of the Bearthwaite medical team, one of us, or an equally well qualified woman you possibly don’t know and have never met before. We wish to know whatever matters to you, so that we can provide the service you want, after all you’re going to be paying for it.

“I know most of you, including virtually all of you girls, prefer to see Sun rather than Abbey for everything including gynæcological issues because you became used to him before Abbey came here, he’s been your doctor from further back than most of you can remember. He delivered some of you by Caesarean section when the lonning was flooded. Any who wishes to see Abbey because she is a woman or for any other reason will have no problem being accommodated by all of the staff including the administrative staff. None has any desire to make any do anything she is uncomfortable with. Take as long as you wish to consider the matter. There is no rush. I suspect it will be a few years before we are in a position to offer you owt, though we have already started making some arrangements with various Maltese teaching hospitals and private organisations over there too, and have feelers out for radiographers suitable to become Bearthwaite folk who would be willing to do a mammography course in Malta at our expense once they have signed a contract to work for us for at least some period of time yet to be determined. And of course they get a free holiday in Malta whilst they are there.

“We are not blinkered by an individual’s sex in the way that the NHS is and are reasonably certain that we have discovered two NHS mammographers who would suit us. Both are interested in becoming Bearthwaite folk, and see us as not just folk who can provide an eventual route out of the NHS which they describe as pressure on top of more pressure with no work life balance worth having, but as folk who can provide a better life too. One is a highly qualified and distinguished woman in her early fifties who has been divorced for going on five years who originated in the Dales,(30) the other a recently qualified single woman in her mid twenties from the West Highlands.(31) It’s perhaps significant that they both originated in extremely rural parts of the UK. If all proceeds as we hope any of the local large hospitals will be more than happy to employ them such is the shortage of mammographers. Once we are ready they will be helping us to set up. We intend to offer them accommodation within the valley at least to start with. Back to immediate matters. We’ll be designing the questionnaires soon, but there will be plenty of space for you to add owt that you wish to. If any wishes a specific question included or to be phrased in a specific way please let us know. Finally, does any have a desire to speak?”

Aggie, who would turn eighty in a few months and was massively bosomed, stood and said, “For me screening is always a bad experience, not because it’s a hell of a big job breaking out, nor because I’m bothered some lass who sees and handles breasts all day every day sees and gets a holt on mine,” there was a lot of laughter from the women over sixty as she demonstrated by busking her prodigious bosom, “but because I’m always worried about what they’ll tell me. I’m well past the age where they offer you an appointment automatically, but like the rest of us ower seventy Sun requests one for me every three years. I’m not daft. I got this far and I don’t want to die early from sumat as I didn’t need to. The deaths from breast cancer rise as you get aulder but they shoot up yance you turn seventy-four, and they peak when you’re eighty to eighty-four and they don’t drop much after that. At that point sumat is going to get you because the graph stopped when you reacht a hunert.(32) I seen that in the paper and I’m turning eighty in a few month, so sure as hell I’ll not be missing my appointment due to flait.(33) None of the women in my family as I know about ever had breast cancer, but it’s scary all the same.” There were murmurs of agreement amongst virtually all the women present. “I can’t see as having a man do the business ’ld mek any difference because I’d still be terrified, and the last thing I’d be worried about would be wondering if he were a perve just after a quick grope. I’ve been married to Frank for well ower sixty years, so I know I can cope wi’ that.” The laughter this time came from all around the church and was coming from men and women both. Frank kissed Aggie’s cheek and both were smiling at each other as only survivors of a life time of marriage can do. It took a few minutes for the laughter to die down and Chance waited till it was relatively quiet again before indicating the meeting was over.

“I think we’ll leave it at that for the night, Folks. There are other things, but another day will do for the rest and that was the big yan.”(34)

As the three couples all linking arms with their spouse walked out into the early evening Chance looked at Sun and Abbey before asking, “That what you expected?”

Sun replied, “More or less. Folk now know what’s coming, so when things have to be decided they’ll know what they want by then,”

Abbey nodded, “It was the personal touch that made it all explicable for many folk, Stephanie’s experience, mine, Elin’s and of course Aggie’s point of view. Being reminded that most of us prefer to see Sun for gynæ issues and why helped to settle the idea as one of naturalness for Bearthwaite womenfolk. I’m sure we’ll have the entire village, men as well as women, in favour of the idea, no matter what it costs us. You saying less than a hundred pounds all in for each of us helped to put it into perspective, Chance. That was obviously worked out on an adult population of twenty thousand adults, but we’ve a lot more folk than that now, so the per head price would be lower than that.”

~Death & Euthanasia~

In middle Autumn the October weather was cool rather than cold. Everything was damp rather than wet and there was just enough wind to make life miserable, but not enough for Bearthwaite women to dry their washing outside on their clothes lines. Folk were looking forward the heat in the Green Dragon, the gossip and warm fruit punch with a measure of something warming in it in the bestside for the ladies or the roaring open fires, plenty of Bearthwaite Brown Bevy as the favourite brew was known and sufficient dodgy spirts to allow a man to feel the world wasn’t such a bad place after all despite the almost overwhelming gloom and misery that the weather was causing. The clocks hadn’t gone back yet, that was still a fortnight away, but at just short of seven o’clock with an overcast sky and no moon it was pitch black out side and the flames from the logs burning in the fires cast changing shadows around the room and on the ceiling. The artwork that covered the walls and the ceiling seemed to dance and made the men feel all was actually all right with the world, well it was all right in their portion of it. The dogs lined out at right angles to the fenders of the fire place, with toasting noses that would spontaneously set afire if they crept any nearer knew that their entire universe was proceeding exactly as it should do. It was Saturday evening and the Green Dragon taproom as usual was playing host to the Grumpy Old Men’s Society for the weekly story telling event.

Uilleam McSvensen was a born and bred local but being a drystone waller usually to be found up on the fells he was an infrequent visitor to the Green Dragon taproom. When all had settled and focussed on their first pint of brown ale, Alf along with a few others was on his second, he indicated a desire to speak and said, “I was at Wigton for some hardware a few weeks since. I was hungry, so I called in at Greggs’ bakers for a couple of sausage rolls. A bloke who looked about sixty bought a steak bake. He was enjoying the craic with the forty-odd year auld bloke serving him who he obviously knew. He paid with a tenner from his wallet, but there was a fumble with the change. The lad serving catcht most of it on the glass serving counter but a coin dropped on the floor. The old bloke put his foot on it to stop it rolling under the counter and bent down to pick it up. The lad serving laught and said, ‘Well, Lad, look on the bright side, that’s your exercise for the day done and dusted.’ Laughing the bloke buying the steak bake replied, ‘When I was eighteen I was five nine till a car crash fucked my knees. When I could walk eighteen months later I was five four and I resented that. Now I’m turned seventy and I’m damned grateful because the ground isn’t so far away and it’s a sight less far to fall.’

“There were three of us waiting to be served, all blokes, an elderly bloke of maybe eighty who lookt it, as a lot of you know I’m fifty three and the other lad was maybe a few up on me. We laught and swapped lies for maybe five minutes. It was good craic. The old guy waiting to be served said, ‘It’s all okay as long as we can laugh about it. A mate of mine as I went to school with had a bad do wi’ his ticker a couple of month back. He’s okay, but he’ll never get out o’ that wheelchair till he’s fitted out for his wooden overcoat.’(35) So I reckon any o’ us as is able to to be here of a Saturday night is doing okay.” There were nod, murmurs and expressions of agreement running around the room from men of all ages and their sons and grandsons, many of who were still at school, too. For Bearthwaite men mortality was a fact of life, but it was an article of faith, a way of life if you like, that the only acceptable response to old father time and his mate who carried the scythe was a middle finger raised in defiance. When their time came they would accept it with as much dignity as circumstance allowed them, but they were never going to make anything easy for the old man and his grim reaper.

Vincent the Bearthwaite slaughterman and butcher had suffered from polio as a child. He’d never been able to walk far even using his sticks. Known as Vince the Mince, he smiled and said, “My auld lass and I are well past our sell by dates and looking forward to when Nicky and his generation are looking after the meat supply for us all, but as long as I can use my sticks to reach a pint o’ Bearthwaite brown bevy I intend to keep doing. Once Nicky teks ower the business I’ll help out when asked and do a bit just for the hell o’ it when it suits. Rosie has telt me she intends to do the same. There’s nay point in fashing on it(36) because it’s just how things are. Pass that bottle ower, Lad, please.”

Pete responded by saying, “That’s enough o’ the doom and gloom, Lads. Dave, you got owt to mek us laugh?”

Dave replied, “There’s something I saw on You tube recently under the heading of general advice. I wrote the web address down. I’ll pass it round for any to mek a note of if they feel so inclined. Pass this round because I was careful to copy the text exactly, including the stupid mistakes.” https://uk.yahoo.com/style/im-completely-convinced-entire-wo.... “I’ll read what it actually said. ‘I drive around a lot for work and I recently saw some signs for a dentist that says they offer euthanasia for their clients who might be scared of going to the dentist. I was driving so I couldn’t take a picture but I thought it was really cool since I never really liked going to the dentist. It got me thinking as to why tattoo places don’t just do the same? I have a low pain tolerance so I’d think that if a place offer euthanasia is probably be more likely to visit.’ sic.”

The hoots of laughter took a while to fade and Alf added into the relative quiet, “Jesus, that is one thick(37) bastard! Even I get that. I know I can’t compete wi’ Dave for funny tales but I read something that might mek you laugh that I found on a website I went on because I thought it was chemically related to engineering. Something to do wi’ rust prevention or removal I thought to start wi’ because there was mention o’ ferrous oxide which along wi’ ferric oxide is essentially rust. It was a bit o’ a puzzle to me to discover it was a recommendation embedded into a genuine engineering site for chocolates. I didn’t get it at all, but Ellen explained someone was obviously totally stupid because they weren’t Ferrus oxide chocolates as the advertisement said, but those ones wrapped in gold coloured ally foil stuck into little cake cups.” There were a few smiling faces around the room, but most looked puzzled. Alf explained, “Seems they are called Ferrero Rocher chocolates. They contain hazel nuts.”

Sasha said, “I’m sure I’ve telt you this before, but I’ll tell you again. There’s an ancient Turkish proverb that says, ‘When a clown moves into a palace, he doesn’t become a sultan. The palace becomes a circus.’ I recall that proverb, not just at every election but every time I think about comprehensive education too. The theory was the clever would help the disadvantaged to achieve better. The reality was the achievements of the clever sank like a stone to join the idiots at the bottom. Some educators said the entire population of kids created a new lowest common denominator and that became what even the cleverest of them aspired to. They all became idiots like that guy with the low pain tolerance. The tragedy is we know and have proven here that both politics and education can be universally improven, but few listen because it takes a lot of time and effort and all have to desire it. All the herd out there want is the free, effortless, magic pill that works instantly. Even worse most of the outsiders’ bright kids were lost in the state sector thereafter and the jobs they would have filled were taken by the best available which were mostly, at best, mediocre kids whose parents were wealthy enough to afford to educate them privately.”

~Paid – Ofgem Rules~

Alf asked, “Were you ever paid for your power cut by ENWL,(38) or are you still waiting, Dougal?”

After storm Éolwenna Dougal Woodrington had been without power for a little less than seventy-two hours which by his reckoning meant his supplier, Electricity North West Limited, had owed him two hundred and five pounds according to Ofgem’s rules. Eighty-five pounds for the first forty-eight hours and a further forty for every complete six hours the supply was off. Ofgem being the electricity and gas regulatory authority. “I telt you, Lads, that I was expecting to have to argue to at least get some of the money, and I considered my chances of getting it all to be nil. I reckon some poor office junior is in for a serious bollocking if not being telt to collect his cards.(39) He must have screwed up big time because within a week a cheque for the full amount arrived through the post. Tell you, things have gone downbank(40) that badly you can’t even rely on incompetence these days.” At that the chuckles took a while to entirely fade. “Mind god alone knows how much damage the storm actually caused because after the big power cut we had four or five more within a month that lasted maybe half a day each. I presume those short power outages were to provide ’em wi’ the time to replace or service damaged equipment that was still working wi’ out having to pay us owt. ENWL said on the pre recorded messages that they were all due to faults on the high voltage part of the supply, so I suspect that we’ll be getting more cuts at least till they sort out all the damaged tackle that the storm caused. All this new technology as has bin invented in the last few decades doesn’t seem to have med any difference as to how long the power is out when we have a major blow. Thank god all our electricity supply cables and the rest of it will either be safely underground or in a proper masonry built building within the year.”

Sasha said, “Well, Dougal, back in eighteen forty-nine a bloke called Jean-Baptiste Alphonse Karr said that the more things changed, the more they stayed the same, and I’d be prepared to hazard a modest sum that it wasn’t original then. It has been updated in numerous ways, but they all mean the same. A popular one I’ve come across a few times is, same shit, different day.”

~Dave & Sasha on Politics~

Dave indicated his desire to speak. “I admit I’m going to have a major go at the American political system and America in general. Oh and Trump too probably. Lest any think that this is a case of jingoistic racism I have talked about this with Sasha and he is going to present the other side of the coin when I’m done. After that I reckon a pint and a glass of chemic will enable us all to consider what we’ll both have said in context.”

Sasha immediately added, “ Dave and I would like you all to consider what we both have to say as two valid sides of an equally valid view of the global power that is America.

Alf chipped in to say, “This should be good for a laugh, for owt good that comes from any governmental organization has to be accidental or even more likely a fuck up. Whilst we’re on stupidity what’s all the fuss about that fool Elon Musk using the so called R word. It took me half an hour on line to discover that the R word is retard. I do that to engine ignition timing god alone knows how many times a month and I’ve never had a customer complain yet when I telt them what I’d had to do to mek their motor run properly.”

Dave said, “I’m particularly interested in Trump’s foreign policy regarding Venezuela and Greenland and I’ll tek ’em in that order. Trump had the US military invade Venezuela and US forces captured the Venezuelan leader Nicolás Maduro and his wife following strikes on the country. Maduro and his wife were kidnapped and taken to the US, where he has been indicted on drug charges in New York. Maduro, in my opinion should have been captured by his own people tried and shot for what he has undoubtedly done of which probably only a fraction is widely known. However, whatever you think about the Maduro regime, Trump had his forces invade a country, which has long been recognised by the rest of the world as a sovereign state, against which as far as I am aware he had not declared a state of war. If that is legitimate so would kidnapping Trump and his family too and trying him in some other country on what would equally likely be trumped up charges. Pun intentional. There is no way Maduro can receive a fair and impartial trial in the US. So it’s a set up right from the start.

“Trump had no legitimacy to do what he did and it is extremely dodgy law to try someone who is not a US citizen in the US for purported crimes that occurred outside the US. Yes, without doubt Maduro is a monster and he has undoubtedly committed acts that were against the interests of the US, but so have Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping, and in all probability they have both caused more folk to disappear than Maduro could even dream about. Trump is acting illegally and purely because he thinks he can get away with it, which seems to be his definition of international law, if only as it applies to him. Trump has said the US is going to run Venezuela till such time as he can do a safe, proper and judicious transition. He has also said that his main interest there is the oil. That in my book makes him a thief too, but we knew that because he’s already stolen millions in taxes from the US governmental authorities, which is just another way of saying from his fellow citizens. Trump’s administration accuses Venezuela of flooding the US with drugs and gang members and as far as I can ascertain has provided no evidence of that. This thin end of the wedge endorses maybe even legitimises Putin invading the Ukraine and potentially does the same for Xi Jinping invading Taiwan some time in the future. It is a terrifying prospect that is not driven by national security, just greed for money and resources. It’s nowt but mob rule.

“As for the whole of the Greenland issue, European politicians make me sick. After months of Trump pushing and insisting he needed ownership of Greenland his, and I quote, whiplash inducing U turn on that caused the European politicians to smugly pat themselves on the back and announce that they’d stood up to the playground bully and made him back off. For sure the devil is in the detail, but there is more than a small amount in the media saying that part of the deal is that Trump can place, and again I quote, a significant number of US military bases on the island, which is what I suspect the bastard was after all along. None will be able to check what he’s doing in those bases, and he gets the control he wants, via a sanctioned but unspecified, maybe I should have said unlimited, number of boots on the ground, without having to pay for it. Still he’s eighty this year and it’s reckoned by many, a few of who should know, that he’s losing cognitive function. His body is holding up as well as many o’ ours and maybe his wheels are slipping, then again maybe not, but one thing is certain the Yanks will have to find another clown to follow in the palace at some point in the next twenty years even if he does legitimise a third term in office. Pass that powerful tasting tackle ower someone please. I need it te tek the taste o’ this rant out o’ my mouth. Then it’s Sasha’s turn.”

Pete interrupted the proceedings at that point to say, “Let’s sort some glasses out first, Lads, and send the chemic round. Somebody put a shovel o’ brash blocks and some logs on the fires whilst I wash some glasses. Alf, pull a few pints, Lad, will you? And some o’ you youngsters get some bar snacks out please. Tek a few bags for yourselves and I’ll pull you all a pint. Peter, see if your mum or your gran needs any change for the best side till will you please. The Christmas party tin seems to be awful heavy wi’ coins. If they do, deal with it if you would. Someone see if any o’ the dogs want out and deal wi’ it please.”

When all had been dealt with, the dogs were back in and the men had settled Sasha started, “First of all I have to say that in the main I agree with Dave. There are, however, things that I consider to be important that he left out. I agree with his views on Maduro, and I agree Trump is out of order with no international legitimacy. He has placed the US in the position of a rogue state, and I’m using his own definitions of such from a while back, rather than that of a guardian of democracy of which few would say there is much left of in the US. Where I take issue with Dave is that given Maduro’s influence in Venezuela there is no way he could be tried there. Either on the one hand he’d get away with it all and be reinstated, or on the other he’d be lynched without even a semblance of a trial. Which of the two would depend purely on who got hold of him first. Should Trump come to his senses, which I can’t see any likelihood of, he could hand Maduro over to the International Criminal Court that sits in The Hague in the Netherlands. The whole issue of Venezuela and who runs it could be turned over to the United Nations and if necessary the US could fight its corner in the International Court of Justice. Both of those options would give some faint trace of legitimacy to his invasion of Venezuela and his kidnapping of Maduro and his wife, but as I said I can’t see it happening.

“As for the Greenland Issue, again in the main I agree with Dave, and as he said the devil indeed will be found to be in the detail. The whole issue of world security in the arctic is a matter fraught with problems. I can’t see China getting involved in the near future because they have no contiguous territory with the areas that could be in dispute, but they’ve been quietly buying up Canadian mining, quarrying and resource extraction companies’ shares for years now and are doubtless playing a long game. Doubtless now that Trump has backed off over owning Greenland Canada feels somewhat better, but were I Canadian I wouldn’t be feeling any better at all. Even if Trump is playing tit for tat and silly children’s games over tariffs and decertification of Canadian æroplanes, which I suspect is a diversion to keep the eyes of the media of his other activities, he’s destabilising the Canadian economy in a way that would seriously worry me. Trump of course has Alaska which could prove to be a problematic border with the Russian Beringia National Park in Siberia facing Alaska over only fifty-five miles of the Bering Strait. The Bering strait is much narrower than that when the water freezes over during the winter. Russia has slightly more than fifty percent of the coastline facing the arctic. One source I read said it was fifty-three percent, but that would depend on exactly how the coastline were measured.

“Why everyone seems to be scrambling for control up there is based on what resources could potentially be available, especially rare earth metal ores, as global warming removes the ice cover. Again I agree with Dave, Trump seems to be acquiring the sites for as many bases on Greenland as he wants, essentially for free. He has aired his grievances with NATO in the media many times. If he has numberless, uninspected and uninspectable bases in Greenland he gets the control of the arctic he wants without having to contribute much more to NATO, or at least so far there doesn’t seem to any suggestion otherwise. One thing I think is certain is that no matter who gets the resources they’ll turn it into a polluted shit hole just like the Yanks have done with the US and the Russians have done with Russia. The Yanks don’t give a damn about killing and maiming folk, so wildlife and the environment haven’t got a chance. If you think that’s an extreme view read up on what the city controlled water company knowingly did to the folk of the city of Flint, Michigan by supplying lead contaminated water into the domestic water supply and then covering it up. There was even a major film based on the tale called Erin Brockovich with Julia Roberts playing the title rôle.

“Then there was the Union Carbide disaster. A modern conservative estimate puts the death toll at twenty thousand within five years of the incident, with tens of thousands more suffering life changing effects from a methyl isocyanate leakage at the plant located in Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh, India. That’s usually quoted as the worlds worst industrial incident. I refuse to call it an accident because the plant would never have been allowed to operate in the US where Union Carbide are based because it wouldn’t have anywhere near met US safety requirements, which is why it was built where it was. Don’t misunderstand me, I’m not particularly having a go at US companies or their corporate culture that places a far higher value on profit than it does on human lives, even of US citizens’ lives. I am having a go at them yes, but no more so than I’m having a go at the Russians and the Chinese. Both the Russians and the Chinese are definitely no better, it’s just harder to discover what goes on there. The scale of industrial pollution in both is hard to comprehend for a European. There are dozens of cities in China where mothers don’t allow their children to go out to play because the air is toxic and all open water is even more toxic. In some places nothing green grows, and I’m told there are many places far worse than that.

“In Russia there are hundreds of lakes of all sizes from massive to tiny that support no life at all because they are easy places to dump industrial waste products. The death toll from starvation due to the fish and other wildlife, both animal and vegetable, disappearing, toxicity from drinking the water and directly from breathing the air around the plants that cause the pollution hasn’t even been estimated. Lake Baikal, a huge lake set in an awe inspiringly beautiful environment, was once the pristine source of some of the purest water in the world. It was so impressive that even Genghis Khan who ruled the area in the eleven and twelve hundreds declared that no building of anything was allowed near it. Back in the early 1960s, the Soviet Union unveiled plans for a huge new pulp and paper mill on Baikal’s southern shore which was to be the first factory built directly on the lake. The scheme drew unprecedented protests from Soviet scientists and intellectuals, but to no avail. The Soviets had invented a new tough cellulose fibre for military aircraft tires, and said they needed Baikal’s pure water to make it. ‘In defence of the motherland,’ Premier Nikita Khrushchev reportedly declared, ‘Comrade Baikal, too, must work.’ Now there are large portions of the lifeless lake that are not safe to drink.

“The same can be said of the Chinese industrial mentality which doubtless will become of more significance in the arctic in the future. As far as the media indicates there are absolutely no environmental restrictions placed on Chinese industrial organisations as long as they produce huge output to sell abroad. I doubt very much that the international monitoring of China’s nuclear energy plants is any more effective than that of Russian plants. I don’t believe the Canadian arctic will prove to be much different. Industrial pollution as a result of resource extraction will kill just about every organism that’s up there. Neither the US nor Russia give a damn about the environment and by then just about all the Canadian industrial big boys will be owned by the US, Russia and probably China too. However, there’s bugger all we can do about those sort of things, which is not to say there’s nowt we can do. It’s been said many a time before, ‘Think global and act local,’ so we look after our part of the world and try to influence those as live around us and from that point of view we’re doing better than okay. Just as aside there have been discussions of relocating some of the arctic mega fauna to the Antarctic, various seals, walrus and polar bears were considered, but I suppose unless the three mega megalomaniacal narcissistic nations are brought under control that will only defer the extinctions.”

~Recycling Other Folks’ Stuff~

In the best side of the Green Dragon the ladies having exhausted their usual topics of births deaths and marriages were casting about for something to keep them entertained for the remainder of the evening when Juliet and Robina arrived an hour later than would have been expected of them. “Sorry we’re late, Ladies. It’s only an hour since we returned from the North East where we were looking into a source of somewhat degraded polymer waste that we, well mostly Robina really, could have potentially used to make various bits and pieces we could produce to sell to outside, mostly components for other engineering outfits. We’ve only had time to go to Robina’s, shower and change and here we are. I was glad to be able to get out of my overalls and as you can probably tell I’m wearing some of her clothes. That spot we visited opened some time after the second world war, [1939-1945] and I doubt it had ever been cleaned since. There was a least a month’s rubbish on the floor and the walls were a quarter of an inch thick in grime. Squalid didn’t even nick the edge of it. Ellery is there any chance of you doing my hair and nails tomorrow?”

Ellery Graham was a local hairdresser who had half a dozen local women and five apprentices working in her recently much enlarged salon and due to Bearthwaite’s expanding population was always in demand. “As usual we’re pressed at the moment, but if you can get in at just before eight tomorrow morning I’ll fit you in because for sure you can’t walk around looking like that. I’ll give you a trim and some of the younger lasses can deal with the rest.” Juliet nodded in gratitude for she’d caught her hair on one of the walls she’d described as worse than squalid. “Robina, I’ll do you over lunch if you like?” Robina too nodded in gratitude knowing that Ellery was usually closed after Sunday lunch because her grandchildren came round, and her staff appreciated the time off to be with their families. Some couldn’t work Sundays due to family commitments.

Juliet ran a large sized workshop where twenty-six women worked, most of them only part time, operating injection moulding machines, a couple of extrusion machines, numerous vacuum forming machines the largest of which had been fabricated in Bertie’s workshops and a collection of rather strange looking locally made machines that washed, dried, shredded and compacted heated, waste plastic wrap from haylage bales before pressure forming the sticky, partially melted plastic into robust, rot proof construction balks the smallest of which was three by two inches [75mm x 50mm] of which they sold large quantities pre cut at twelve, fifteen and twenty feet long [ca. 4m, 5m, 6m]. They produced the balks on a continuous process so in theory they could be produced at any length required, and they were currently looking into the possibilities of extruding the balks via adjustable dies to facilitate producing the very long ones requested from time to time. The longest they had actually produced to order so far had been forty-two feet long and twelve by nine inches in cross section [13m x 300mm x 225mm].

They earned a significant part of the workshop’s income from producing large custom made balks of whatever size their customers required, some of which, despite the overhead hoists, required their entire workforce to manage, because they were laid up in adjustable steel channels of considerable weight, and some of which like pre stressed reinforced concrete beams were laid up with structural steel reinforcing bars in them which increased their weight considerably. As Maddy, who usually worked laying up balks, had always said, “It ain’t glamorous, but it’s well paid work that keeps the wolf from the door.” Maddy and her man Harrison had ten officially adopted ex street children but they also had two hidden ones. A chubby woman, she had long jokingly complained about what her teenagers could eat without seeming to gain an ounce in weight. Harrison’s stated view was she should stop complaining and join the girls for ballet, though all her friends knew that should she have done that it would upset him for he was more than happy with her, as he described it, well covered bones.

The women involved regularly produced batches of thirty feet long balks that were sixteen by six inches [10m x 400mm x 150mm] for coastline defence contractors who used them as replacements for now rotten and damaged tropical hardwood groyne(41) timbers of that size that had already seen over a century’s service. The groyne boards or boards as they were known were usually ordered a hundred at a time which required four waggons to effect delivery. Occasionally the contractors collected the boards, but normally they were delivered by waggons operated by Bearthwaite drivers. The waggons backed into the workshop and the trailers were loaded by an overhead hoist in not much more than an hour. Often the drivers just left a spare trailer dropped in the workshop till the women had produced the boards, loaded it as they produced them and were ready for its removal. The coastline defence contractors were interested in taking delivery of forty-five foot long boards of the same cross section and the women had already put all in place for their production.

Turk had agreed with Jake, both heavy vehicle drivers, when he’d said, “The only difference it will mek to the drivers is that we’ll have to use forty foot lang trailers wi’ five foot o’ balk hanging ower the arse end o’ ’em. We already have the forty footers, so that’s no big o’ a deal. Just ring any o’ us when you want a collection, or send us all a group text and we’ll sort it out amongst oursels.”

The entire work force of women were interested in all and anything to do with polymers of all kinds and had recently expanded their operations into thermosetting(42) materials as well as the thermoplastic(43) ones which they had worked with for some time. After their recent work with softer elastomers(44) for the seals on Christine’s lids for Kilner jars [US Mason jars] they were planning a number of projects to capitalise on their recently gained experience and understanding. A recent development for them had been the production of various polymeric materials in a variety of cross sections for machine shops to use as machining stock for lathes, milling machines and even for one of their customers who still used an antiquated shaping machine. Their initial production had been when one of the machinists in Bertie’s workshop had asked for a five foot [1·5m] length of polypropylene which he could turn down to achieve a four inch [100mm] diameter cylinder. From there sales had taken off and surprisingly generated new sources of raw materials, for the buyers had been only too glad to negotiate some of their polymeric machining wastes as part of the price paid for their purchases. Robina was primarily concerned with injection moulding and extrusion whilst Juliet was primarily concerned with vacuum forming and balk production. Juliet had also run the workshop since she had initiated it in a small corner of one of Alf’s workshops, some years ago.

“You don’t seem particularly enthused about the idea, Robina. How did it go?”

“Not well, Elle. The bits as expected were all sprues(45), reject product and broken off mould flash(46) along with any left over bits that they claimed had all been injection moulded just once before. I suspect they’d been used till they wouldn’t successfully produce their products any more because they had a granulator in one corner. That’s a machine that breaks sprues and the like up small enough to replace a proportion of virgin plastic granules in a further moulding run. It’s what we use to be able to inject the by products that we buy, though we use virtually no virgin granules. I could smell that they were running their machines over hot because that makes the plastic more fluid which cuts down their cycle time.” Robina saw some puzzled faces, so she expanded on her remark. “Most hot plastics have a distinctive smell, and that smell changes in a recogisable way as the processing temperature is increased. When a plastic is hotter it is more liquid, so the moulds can be filled faster, which means they can produce more mouldings in a given time. Even a few seconds per cycle makes a lot of difference using automated machinery which normally runs twenty-four seven. Which means they make more money. It also means they have to increase the cooling of the moulds before they can remove the parts. From my point of view what matters about that is that the hotter injection temperature degrades the plastic more which limits what we can make with it. Such a material is by no means useless, but it’s worth far less to us than material processed at a lower temperature, and they expected us to agree with the stupid money price they were asking for it.

“It was the usual male nonsense we encounter in engineering environments regularly. Obviously as mere women clearly we couldn’t possibly know anything about polymers or processing them, so we spent a day in a disgusting environment that didn’t just smell of what any polymer processing plant smells of, it stank of revolting smells that were definitely biological in origin, blocked soil pipe drains or dead vermin probably, and we spent it with men who didn’t seem to be aware of the smell and clearly thought we were a source of easy money ripe for the plucking. We said we’d booked lunch at the most up market local pub we’d spotted on our way in because we didn’t even wish to ask if they had a ladies loo or even worse if they did what condition we’d find it to be in. When we returned after lunch, though Juliet seriously considered leaving and going home, we encountered what was probably the most intensive and certainly the longest mansplaining(47) session I’ve had to endure for years and Juliet said the same when we left. Why on Earth can’t the male idiots out there in our line of work be like Bearthwaite menfolk. I’ve listened to some of our menfolk for hours at a time concerning aspects of what I do for a living and never once have I felt patronised nor condescended to. Quite the reverse those sessions aided our endeavours tremendously. Surely it can’t be that hard to maintain a professional attitude to other professionals.

“After I’d had more than enough I interrupted the worst of them who’d been pontificating about what I don’t know because I’d given up listening to him a long time before. He was so full of himself he hadn’t even noticed that neither of us were paying him any attention. They were all more than a little shocked when I telt them that looking at the spray marks on the injected products particularly around the injection sites made it clear that financial requirements were driving them to run the process far hotter than was usual and then they had to use aggressive cooling to keep their cycle times as low as possible. Both of which would work to freeze in a higher level of stresses eventually leading to significant product embrittlement(48) and ultimately early failure. I added that the depth of the ejector pin(49) marks indicated that the products were still over hot when ejected from the moulds which meant as they cooled they would be subject to considerable distortion. Finally I told them that the price they were asking for their by product was way too high for material as significantly thermally degraded as it clearly was. I offered them a quarter of what they were asking and said that was my best offer. They started up with their chauvinistic nonsense again which was the point at which we walked out on them.

“They’ll get back to us trying for a better price than my offer in a few days. They’re obviously in a difficult position because for whatever reason, financial difficulties, greedy shareholders or owners maybe, they clearly need to keep their output up, but that degrades the by product to the point where they can no longer recycle it themselves and none else is interested in buying it. They are already working a twenty-four seven, three shift system with each operator minding as many machines as is possible, so maybe they need to do a cost analysis optimisation on their output profits versus what they can sell their resulting by product for. They said they worked to keep their machine down time(50) to a minimum, but eventually that becomes self limiting because when a mould requires attention continuing to use it without fettling(51) it is a receipt for financial disaster, so I reckon we were their last hope because I don’t know of any other processor like us who just uses other folks’ by products. However, we’re not interested in dealing with them now at any price because we don’t want to do business with folk we don’t trust to be actually selling us what they claim to be selling us. That material had definitely not been processed just once or twice either. Too, certainly neither of us wish to have to risk the possibility of ever having to visit their premises again.

“We do need further sources of injection moulding materials more to keep our existing customers happy and to attract new ones rather than to keep us all in work. To keep us all in work all we have to do if necessary is to increase our production of heat formed plastic balks because they have a relatively rapid turnover, so I doubt we’d be storing them for long. We don’t advertise at all, yet new customers are constantly appearing as a result of word of mouth from satisfied customers. The demolition and clearance crews have said they’ll collect discarded haylage bale wrap for us if we’ll pay them in custom sized balks for building their extensions to the building they use at the quarry site which looks like it’ll keep a few more of our folk in work. Plastic balks are becoming increasingly used in a variety of applications rather than using pressure treated timber sections in damp environments because they don’t rot. They are somewhat more expensive than pressure treated timber, but they outlast by a significant margin all and any timber treated or not which allows users to give longer guarantee periods and of course they pass the purchase price on to their customers. If we manage to extrude the balks we should be able to drop our prices by a considerable margin, virtually down to the price of pressure tret timber balks.”

Juliet added, “We certainly don’t need to be involved with companies of the like of, Messrs Cheatham, Steele and Ripov Co. Ltd.,(52) because if it comes to it all of us can operate all the processes we use, so as Robina said we can simply switch to producing something else. Too, virtually all of us are part time, so there are other things we can do to earn a living. I can always spend more time working on the farm with Kelvin and the others which will make my kids happy.” Seeing puzzled faces again she added, “My man Kelvin and I are part of a farming coöperative collectively referred to as Oak Copse Farm. There are eight of us, four couples, and our children involved.”

Aggie asked, “So what did Alf say when you spoke to him on your return journey? because for sure you’ll have got a holt on him to get his reaction.”

Juliet blushed and replied, “I’m certainly not going to repeat what he said, but he agreed walking out had been the best thing to do, and he passed on a couple of contacts who would possibly be interested in selling their injection moulding sprues and other waste material.” There was considerable laughter at that for all knew that Alf, Ellen’s man, had never been the most diplomatic of men. Many years ago, as a young man, he’d been notorious for having said, ‘My hurt feelings don’t take food out o’ my bairn’s mouths, and I’m certainly not bothered about hurting any other bugger’s feelings just because they can’t cope wi’ reality.’

When the laughter settled down Arraya said, “It’s just the same for me, Juliet, when I go out collecting stuff on my own. Even wearing overalls and driving the big truck some of the men I come across feel the need to patronise me. They also think they can rip me off. If Monroe is with me usually they don’t even try, and that’s despite the fact that he’s five foot nothing and only nine stone and I’m six two and thirteen and a half stone and grew up wi’ no sisters fighting every day wi’ my five older brothers.”

“Aye,” Aggie nodded sagely and said, “It’s the boobs that do it, Lass. They equate having boobs with stupidity, uselessness and a total lack of physical strength.” A lot of the outsider women looked long at Arraya, who was massively built, and, despite a substantial bosom and pair of hips and a backside she herself said indicated shire horse somewhere in her genetic make up generations back, also had an even more impressive musculature.

“Happen you’re right, Aggie, but it does become irritating when they want to give me instruction on using the fork lift stacker truck that locks on to the back of the waggon for transport when I’ve been using one since long before I left school. What makes it worse is most of them haven’t got a clue and certainly couldn’t pass the stacker truck competence test.” Arraya explained, “I and my man Monroe make a living collecting all sorts of things from outsider pubs, restaurantes and various other establishments. Pallets, bottles, drums, both plastic and steel and all sorts of other things. Whatever such places wish taking away we take it as long as it’s free and it’s safe. We don’t touch chemicals, asbestos or anything else that requires a special licence and training to handle. We’re not prepared to pay to remove other folk’s waste, though we are prepared to swap some materials with folk who’ve been more than usually helpful. Most of the time it’s a decent job, but like all work it has its downside too.

“However, all the stuff we do collect various Bearthwaite folk are able to use as feed materials for any number of purposes. Most of the metal we collect gets used by someone rather than being weighed in as scrap. When I first started doing the job I wouldn’t wear men’s overalls. I had overalls that were like men’s with a bib top above the waist fastened over the shoulders, but they had long protective skirts below the waist fastened to the tops. To be able to work in them they were split up to the waist on both sides with a maybe a foot of fabric from the front overlapping the fabric at the back. You can still get them off the internet. They didn’t keep me as clean as men’s do these days, but the real reason I stopped wearing them was because men out there didn’t take me seriously, and after I had to put a couple in hospital for trying to lift and get under my skirts I decided that men’s overalls were a better bet when I was working out there. I don’t like looking like a bloke any more than any other Bearthwaite lass does but it does keep me feeling safe. Mind the steelies(53) help too. After I knocked a bloke down and delivered a swift kick to his nuts wearing steelies the rest left me alone and it didn’t take long for the word to spread, but they just can’t stop patronising me.

“I heard that decades ago, long before I was born, Alf said, ‘There’s nay such thing as rubbish, only unimaginative folk who’ve got nay idea what to do wi’ stuff.’ I suppose that’s become a pillar of Bearthwaite philosophy as regarding making our way in the world, which doesn’t necessarily mean earning money, for it’s a long time since we recognised that obligations owed by decent folk are worth far more than mere cash. Too, with decent folk we’ve always managed to amicably negotiate such stuff as part of deals that work to everyone’s advantage.” What Arraya didn’t mention was that such deals were in no way available for the taxation authorities to play a part in which benefitted all parties involved other than the taxman. For that reason they were also illegal. “A particularly good example of such would be glass. It is used for various purposes here by many folk in a wide variety of applications. Many of the large bottles and jars we collect are simply reused, often after Iðunn and her glass blowers have modified them in some way, usually transforming the jar tops to suit Kilner jar [US Mason jar] closures. Every now and again we drop jars of jam, pickles, honey or other food stuffs produced here off as a thank you for storing the stuff for us till we collect it. Other quality glass is used as a raw material by Iðunn and the other glass blowers. If no better use for glass can be found as is usually the case with window glass and the like brought to the quarry by the demolition and clearance teams they wait till there’s enough to be worth crushing and it is used as sand which works well in concrete for the builders and in various soil improvement mixtures used by the allotment and tree nursery folk.

“Various vegetable oils have long been produced by the growers and farmers of the Bearthwaite community for cooking and more recently on a much larger scale for producing fuel. For larger scale food usage cooking oil is mostly available in twenty-five litre drums that we have collected from restaurantes, chip shops, fast food establishments and the like that the engineers have their apprentices steam clean, but smaller containers ranging in size from a litre to five litres have been available for years from Dave and Lucy’s general store. There’re two one thousand litre tanks of different cooking oils in the store that Bearthwaite housewives have their own containers filled up from. The original small store became a moderately large supermarket employing dozens of local folk years ago. In particular the litre spirits bottles from public houses that we collect are used with locally produced pouring mechanisms and labels for oil to be bottled in and huge numbers are sold outside for kitchen use. The local delivery vans that distribute all sorts to everywhere from some of the most remote settlements to the bigger villages sell them by the hundred. They fetch the empty bottles back for sterilising and reusing too. Our activities help to keep a lot of us in work, but that’s just what all Bearthwaite folk aim to do.

“Still,” Arraya smiled, “Eventually the fools out there will all come to realise we do actually know what we’re doing and messing us about only costs them more money in the end. As I repeatedly ask them ‘If you know so much about it why do you ring us up to shift it? Why don’t you recycle it yourself if it’s as easy as you say?’ I get it worse than Monroe, but some of them try it on with him too. Last month some time we were going to collect two waggon loads of damaged pallets somewhere round Whitehaven way. We’d collected from there before, but the site manager said that they now required paying for them. Monroe telt him that if we drove away empty it would cost a hundred quid apiece up front before we would return which wouldn’t cover the cost of a single skip [US industrial dumpster], but either way we weren’t paying for his rubbish that other than us he’d have to pay to be taken away. There must have been five hundred pallets or more, well more than two loads even pulling the forty foot trailers we’d borrowed from the quarry lads. The men down at the quarry would have been able to make two hundred decent ones out of the lot, certainly not many more, for most were just shattered planks barely holding together and fit only for firewood. They were in such poor condition we must have used twice as many ratchet straps as usual to make sure they stayed on the waggons till we arrived back here. For the time involved it won’t be good paying work for the quarry lads, but it will keep them going when better work is in short supply, so they were worth collecting, but not worth paying for. They just stack stuff like that up out of the way till they’ve nowt better to do. We don’t charge them for loads like that, but we don’t pay for our firewood either. It works out well in the end.” Some of the women who had only started visiting the Green Dragon with their husbands recently had begun to realise that indeed Bearthwaite was as unusual a place as they’d been told it was.

“What happened with the pallets, Arraya?”

“In front of the man I telt Monroe that I’d heard enough nonsense for one day, the man was boring me and I was hungry, so it was time to go home because the kids would need fed. My kids, even the lasses, will start on the table top if kept short of food for too long. Only last week Monroe picked up a half dozen loaves from Dave and Lucy’s store and by the time I’d brewed a pot of tea two of them had gone. The kids said they’d just eaten them with butter and jam to put them on till tea time. So I went for some more bread whilst Monroe started sorting out the bacon joint with the kids peeling potatoes and preparing the cauliflower. Anyway back to the pallets. We climbed into our waggon cabs and as I was closing the door the man changed his mind, so we loaded up and left. We parked the still loaded waggons with the keys left in them at the auld quarry. Those as work there would move the waggons to wherever it was convenient for them to off load the pallets. I picked up the remaining pallets from Whitehaven the day after using a smaller trailer. All that irritation with outsider men has given me a need for another brandy punch if you would please, Harriet? And some of those mixed ginger and almond nibbles too if I may?”

To be continued in the bestside of the Green Dragon Inn in GOM 68.

27142 words including footnotes

1 Beebell, a name originally used by the media for Bearthwaite Business Enterprises Ltd, BBEL, and subsequently adopted by Bearthwaite Business Enterprises Ltd. It is the holding company for all collectively owned assets of the Bearthwaite valley coöperative that every adult resident of the Bearthwaite valley community holds an equal share in. whether the live in the valley or outside it.
2 A group of magistrates that work together is known as a bench of magistrates in the UK.
3 Shillings on the pound. There were twenty shillings in a pound, i.e. for 5%.
4 Ridge and furrow is an archaeological pattern of ridges and troughs created by a system of ploughing used in Europe during the Middle Ages, typical of the open field system. Ridge and furrow topography was a result of ploughing with non reversible ploughs on the same strip of land each year. It is visible on land that was ploughed in the Middle Ages, but which has not been ploughed since then.
5 Contour ploughed, ploughed parallel with the contours of the land rather than up and down hill. Contour ploughing minimises soil erosion which up and down ploughing facilitates.
6 Mouldboard, the part of a plough that turns the sod over. It also has a profound effect on the degree of shattering the sod experiences as it turns over.
7 Hedge dyke, often the two words are used in Cumbrian versions of English interchangeably. A common example being to trim the dykes, to cut the hedges. A distinction is sometimes made when a hedge is said to be planted atop a dyke, here the dyke refers to a bank of soil, rocks or a mixture of the two. A dyke may be such a bank without anything planted on top. Like a lot of dialectal words usage and pronunciation can vary with a matter of the few miles between two nearby settlements.
8 Craic, gossip entertainment, generally taking pleasure from the company one is in. Also crack as craic is pronounced.
9 PET, polyethylene terephthalate.
10 Defra, the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs is a ministerial department of the government of the UK. The department is responsible for environmental protection, food production and standards, agriculture, fisheries and rural communities in England.
11 Natural England is a non-departmental public body in the United Kingdom sponsored by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs. It is responsible for ensuring that England’s natural environment, including its land, flora and fauna, freshwater and marine environments, geology and soils, are protected and enhanced. It also has a responsibility to help people enjoy, understand and access the natural environment.
12 AI, in this context artificial Insemination.
13 Crowner, old term for a coroner.
14 Abulling, when said to be bulling a cow constantly make loud characteristic noises that can be heard for more than a mile indicating she is receptive to a bull and ready to be bulled, to put her in calf.
15 A bin et, have been eaten.
16 A version of a very old expression of which there are many variants. They all boil down to, “He who would sup with the devil needst use a very long spoon.” It’s a mediæval idiom that Shakespeare refers to twice in his plays. Its literal meaning is that if you get involved with the Devil you should have the means of keeping your distance. Metaphorically, eating with the Devil is dangerous, and you should do it with a long spoon so that you don’t get too close. Ancient Alan is equating officialdom with the devil and suggesting that they need to be clever and devious when dealing with them.
17 Yance ower, dialectal once over, a long time ago, also used in stories, once upon a time.
18 See GOM 49.
19 The Gershambes were the despotic family that had owned the Bearthwaite valley and far larger estates too for centuries till 1964. They raped and hanged as they pleased during those centuries and many folk were saved from them as a result of the care and diligence of their neighbours.
20 Lonning, lane.
21 NCSG, National Child Support Group, the umbrella independent organisation referred to elsewhere. In reality there is no official such group, though unofficial mechanisms based on the idea exist in the UK.
22 TA, the Territorial Army. The UK’s volunteer reserve military who train with the regular army.
23 The full expression is a penny for your thoughts. It means what are you thinking?
24 NHS, National Health Service.
25 Law speakers, senior and well respected members of the Bearthwaite community who play a major rôle in its governance. A Viking term that goes back a millennium.
26 Cumbria was divided into two counties on the first of April 2023. The new counties are Cumberland and Westmorland & Furness.
27 Lumpectomy is surgery to remove a portion of tissue from a breast. It’s most often used to treat breast cancer.
28 RN, Registered Nurse.
29 The Knights Hospitaller was a medieval Catholic military order founded in 1113 CE with the full name of 'Knights of the Order of the Hospital of Saint John of Jerusalem'. After their base was relocated to Rhodes in the early 14th century CE, the order's members were often called the Knights of Rhodes and when they moved again in 1530 CE, this time to Malta, they were subsequently known as the Knights of Malta. The original purpose of the order was to provide aid and medical care to Christian pilgrims to the Holy Land, but it soon became a military order which acquired extensive territories in Europe and whose knights made significant contributions to the Crusades in Iberia and the Middle East. The Knights Hospitaller, identified by their distinctive white eight-pointed cross on a black background, participated in many other campaigns besides, notably those involving the Byzantine Empire. The order still exists today in several modified forms in many countries worldwide, ranging from the Roman Catholic Sovereign Military Order of Saint John to the volunteer Saint John's Ambulance Brigade.
30 The Dales a rural area of glacial valleys that were all in the historic area of Yorkshire.
31 West Highlands, understood to mean of Scotland.
32 A hunert, dialectal a hundred.
33 Flait, dialectal fear.
34 Yan, dialectal One.
35 Wooden overcoat, coffin, casket.
36 Fashing on it, dialectal worrying about it.
37 Thick in the UK means stupid.
38 ENWL, Electricity North West Limited.
39 Collect your cards, decades ago every UK employee had a card for their National Insurance stamps, which cost money to buy from the Post Office. The employer paid for the stamps and stuck them onto the card. When someone left a job the card was returned to the employee to hand to his next employer. Used thus the term meant you were fired.
40 Downbank, dialectal down hill.
41 A groyne [US groin] is a rigid aquatic structure built perpendicularly from an ocean shore or a river bank, interrupting water flow and limiting the movement of sediment, especially longshore drift. It is usually made out of wood, concrete, or stone. Though the use of such plastic ones made from haylage wrap as referred to here has been increasing in the UK for a couple of decades.
42 Thermosetting polymers, also known as thermosets, can melt and take shape only once. After they have solidified, they stay solid and retain their shape permanently. If reheated, thermosets decompose rather than melt. Examples of thermosets include epoxy resin, polyimide, and Bakelite. The vulcanisation of rubber is an example of this process. Before heating in the presence of sulphur, natural rubber, polyisoprene, is a sticky, slightly runny material, and after vulcanization, the product is dry and rigid.
43 Thermoplastics do not undergo chemical change in their composition when heated and thus can be moulded repeatedly. Examples include polyethylene (PE), polypropylene (PP), polystyrene (PS), and polyvinyl chloride (PVC).
44 An elastomer is a polymer with viscoelasticity and with weak intermolecular forces, generally low Young's modulus and high failure strain compared with other materials. The term, a portmanteau of elastic polymer, is often used interchangeably with rubber, although the latter is preferred when referring to vulcanisates.
45 Sprue, the waste piece on a casting, as of metal or plastic, left by the hole through which the mould was filled.
46 Injection moulding flash is excess plastic that escapes the mould cavity, forming thin, unwanted protrusions on parts. It is most common on the moulding parting line, often appearing as thin fin like projections.
47 Mansplaining is a pejorative term used when a man explains something to a woman in a condescending, overconfident, and often inaccurate or oversimplified manner without regard to her own expertise.
48 Embrittlement is the loss of ductility of a material, making it brittle.
49 The purpose of ejector pins is to apply a force to eject a moulding from the mould. In some cases this process can leave surface marks known as read through or pin push. It is a complex matter to design ejector pin operation sequencing and integrating that into the over all injection process. Here the implication is that the moulding is still too hot when the pins have operated to push it from the mould. If it were too hot it would also be too soft and the pins would sink in to the plastic and leave indentations that would remain as the plastic cooled and hardened.
50 Machine down time, general term that applies to any machine in an industrial setting. It is the time when a machine is not in use due to routine maintenance or emergency breakdown repair.
51 Fettling, a word with many meanings, many of which are limited to a small area of the country and are dialectal. Fettle can be a noun or a verb. Here it is a verb and used in the sense of to sort out, to fix, to mend or to repair.
52 Messrs Cheatham, Steele and Ripov Co. Ltd., a play on Messrs Cheat them, Steal and Rip off Co. Ltd..
53 Steelies, steel toe capped working boots.